#astarklandscape

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand-” mused the short, scruffy man with the bow tie to his new acquaintance, a pair of steaming hot beverages positioned firmly on the table between them. Even he had to admit, encountering such a figure as Tony Stark had not been part of the day’s schedule - not that he’d ever possessed such a thing to begin with, but regardless - though it certainly made for an interesting turn of events.

NOT LEAST BECAUSE THE MAN WAS CAPABLE OF HOLDING A VERY GOOD LEVEL OF CONVERSATION.

COILING HIS FINGERS AROUND THE HANDLE OF HIS CUP, HE LIFTED IT TO HIS MOUTH AND TOOK A GENTLE SIP. Hot tea, milk, not a singular granule of sugar. Perfectly done, and a much-needed tonic to the cold that has settled into his bones; the consequence of having just returned to Earth from a predominantly ice-ridden planet somewhere in the universe.

“-Why must you call yourself Iron Man if your suit is clearly made of a nickel-titanium alloy? Surely Nickel Man would be more appropriate? Rolls off the tongue very nicely, too, don’t you think?”

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He hated this. — Fucking hated it. The forested road leading up to the warehouse was bloody and scattered with fallen security guards and broken weapons. Logan’s claws were out, hands stained crimson all the way up to his wrists; he wasn’t fucking around or doling out any second chances here. This whole place was exactly like the lab he’d been locked up in — like so many hundreds of Mutants had been locked up in, and while that posed a good argument against Logan taking this mission, it was exactly why he wanted to be here.

The bastards had it coming.

The alarms were sounding by the time Logan reached the massive industrial front doors. He wasn’t exactly taking the subtle approach, after all. Behind those locked doors, guards were reinforcing it and piling in to prepare for the one-man onslaught. On the roof, snipers arranged their weapons without a word nor warning to Logan. They thought they were shooting to kill — and they tried.

@astarklandscape || end of the year meme || accepting

@astarklandscape

Following the hour she’d spent with Tony while he upgraded her prosthesis, the Winter Soldier did her best to follow his advice. She kept her thoughts to herself. She asked no questions. She worked as hard as usual in her training sessions. She told no one that she had begun to remember snatches of her life before HYDRA -- snatches of Bucky Barnes’ life. By all appearances, to the colonel and to her team, she was functioning normally.

But the colonel decided to wipe her mind again anyway. Maybe he wanted to test Tony’s redesign of the machine. Maybe he just wanted a clean slate before she began to work with the agents who had now been injected with Howard Stark’s serum. The reason didn't really matter. What mattered was that, right now, she could still remember Tony’s instructions.

Pretend it hurts more than it does.

Tony wasn't there when she was brought into the room. That was probably for the best. If he wasn't there, then his face couldn't give anything away. All the Winter Soldier had to worry about was her own plans to deceive the colonel. She didn't even have to act as she was strapped into the chair and the bite guard was forced into her mouth. Her body could recall what had happened last time, and she was shaking, sweating, her heart pounding and her breath ragged as the memory poured through her.

The clamps closed over her head. The machine began to whine. But where the first shock should have been was a mere tingle. It still made her body jerk, but there was minimal pain. She cried out anyway, of course, because if Tony’s sabotage was to succeed, she needed to sell it. And sell it she did, with screams that sounded as though they were being ripped from her throat.

When to colonel was finished, when he had her pulled upright and taken back to her cell, she sat alone in the dark, prodding at her memories. They all seemed to still be there, and her head wasn't aching the way it usually did. As far as she could tell, Tony's plan had worked.

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She didn't see Tony again for over two weeks. Colonel Lukin had given her her new orders and set her to work training his new supersoldiers. It was difficult, and frightening -- they had been good combatants to start with, but now they were even faster and stronger than before. Also, there were five of them, but only one of her. By the time she got to her last session of the day, she’d been sparring for hours and she was tired. But her students were fighting fresh. No wonder they tended to overpower her in the later matches.

The colonel was pleased with their progress, but he was slowly growing less concerned for his original Winter Soldier. It didn't seem to matter to him whether the new soldiers injured her, and he started sending her back into training before her injuries had finished healing. She found herself fighting on sprained joints and half-healed broken bones, something that had never been required of her before.

You have to do better, Yuri had told her the last time he had splinted her up after Josef had snapped her wrist like a twig. You have to prove that you are still valuable, or the colonel will decommission you.

He’d looked worried, and that had frightened her more than his gentle warning.

Today she was sparring with Josef again -- knives this time -- and it wasn’t going well. The Winter Soldier was deadly with knives, but so was he, and he was bigger than her and stronger than her and more brutal than her. Despite her best efforts, he was able to disarm her, and then he grabbed her, twisting her prosthesis up behind her back in a way that made her shoulder scream and the metal plates creak ominously. She knocked her other hand against his thigh, trying to tap out, but he didn't let her go. Instead, he raised his knife. She tried to break free, but--

She gasped as the blade plunged into her chest, once, twice, thrice. Dimly, she could hear the colonel shouting for the match to stop, and she staggered and fell against the wall as Josef let her go.

“Get her out of here,” the colonel snapped to Captain Oleneva. The woman saluted and then gestured to two of her subordinates, who half carried, half dragged the Winter Soldier to the med bay. There was blood in her mouth, and she was having trouble breathing. Something was definitely punctured, and it seemed to be sheer luck that Josef’s knife had missed her heart.

“Agent Trifonov!” Captain Oleneva bellowed.

Yuri snapped to attention and, when he saw the blood soaking through the Winter Soldier’s shirt, said, “Get her on the operating table.”

The next hour was a haze as she was examined and stitched up and given bags of her own saved blood. By the time Yuri finished and she was moved into one of the recovery rooms, she was pale and grey with pain.

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I knew, durin’ the war, that Zola had done somethin’ serious to me in that lab of his. I didn't know what. I mean, I knew he’d cut me open, and injected me with a bunch a weird liquids, and burned me, and made me breathe gas, and all sortsa other awful shit. But I didn't know what he’d been tryin’ to accomplish by doin’ all that.

I just knew things had changed.

It was my senses that I noticed first. I could see farther, and navigate by less light. I could hear even the quietest noses. I could smell smoke on the wind faster’n anybody in the unit ‘cept for Steve. I tried to put it down to adrenaline or practice or somethin’, but as time went on I stopped bein’ able to fool myself like that. My memory got sharper, too, and the math I needed to do to hit my targets got easier. Like my brain was runnin’ faster than it used to.

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For sure! I’ve been writing Bucky for six years, so she’s absolutely grown and developed as I’ve explored more aspects of her character. I think that’s pretty common when you write a character for a long time; I know my Theo Nott has changed drastically from when I first started writing him/her circa 2005. Fifteen years gives you a lot of time to try new things out and see what works and what doesn’t.