яσвιи яє∂вяєαѕт (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
birdsbirdsbirds) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
psychoshenanigans2016-04-18 08:46 am
birdsbirdsbirds) wrote in psychoshenanigans2016-04-18 08:46 am
Nebulous // PSL
[what's worse: the fact that this is his sixth world-shift, or that he's starting to get used to them?
the sudden change of pace is disorienting, but he's always been sharpest in a crisis. he keeps his head down, follows the neon signs and loud music until he finds a crowd too strung-out to ask many questions. sure, it's immoral to sleep with someone just to rifle through their identification and use their internet connection, but he left that ethical horizon behind a long time ago.
helpful thing, that internet. sure is a lot more connected than the intrabase ever got, back home.
long story short, he keeps picking through sources and contacts until he gets an in with a group of local hackers... nothing flashy, really, just some college dropouts who like to get high and pick apart database security for kicks. they specialize in unearthing "government conspiracies", and Robin happens to be great at connecting the dots.
they start calling him Nines (his handle is "9thking" where necessary). his research into portals to other dimensions--which you'd think wouldn't have much of a search return--takes him pretty deep into the Hydra case. his reputation spreads from there, with him getting pings whenever a recovery or a hack uncovers something with six tentacles and a skull on it. sometimes literally. old photographs, and such.
so it's no surprise that he'd attract the attention of people looking for current members of the organization. he's just biding his time, sharing a crummy flat and poking around one secret society or another. he doesn't have any other cards to play yet, and even if he did--where would he go with them? so he waits for something else to happen, because his joke of a life can't go on for very long without someone delivering a punchline.]
the sudden change of pace is disorienting, but he's always been sharpest in a crisis. he keeps his head down, follows the neon signs and loud music until he finds a crowd too strung-out to ask many questions. sure, it's immoral to sleep with someone just to rifle through their identification and use their internet connection, but he left that ethical horizon behind a long time ago.
helpful thing, that internet. sure is a lot more connected than the intrabase ever got, back home.
long story short, he keeps picking through sources and contacts until he gets an in with a group of local hackers... nothing flashy, really, just some college dropouts who like to get high and pick apart database security for kicks. they specialize in unearthing "government conspiracies", and Robin happens to be great at connecting the dots.
they start calling him Nines (his handle is "9thking" where necessary). his research into portals to other dimensions--which you'd think wouldn't have much of a search return--takes him pretty deep into the Hydra case. his reputation spreads from there, with him getting pings whenever a recovery or a hack uncovers something with six tentacles and a skull on it. sometimes literally. old photographs, and such.
so it's no surprise that he'd attract the attention of people looking for current members of the organization. he's just biding his time, sharing a crummy flat and poking around one secret society or another. he doesn't have any other cards to play yet, and even if he did--where would he go with them? so he waits for something else to happen, because his joke of a life can't go on for very long without someone delivering a punchline.]
no subject
But even animals can love, and Steve Rogers remembers everything.
His mother, her face, her perfume. The Brooklyn smog, the white-washed buildings that turned black as the foundries spat coal into the air. He never saw the stars until Europe, he remembers that.
Bucky Barnes. Peggy Carter. Evelyn Scott. Scraped knees, glass-bottled Coke, Christmas hams, painting hotel lobbies and delivering newspapers and rotten apples saturating the air. Everything before the War. Everything after. Seventy years of lost time. And then he sees Bucky on a mall rooftop and it rattles everything loose, and he goes AWOL.
The first six months he's out of Hydra he lives a vagrant life. Grows his hair, a beard, steals clothing off clotheslines and warms his hand over oilbarrel fires. He finds he can't sleep unless he's crammed himself in some small space that barely gives him breathing room.
And then he wakes up one morning, walks back into Bucky's life and relieves him of half his wardrobe, a razor and a single side-arm, and with that he goes to war. The shield, he leaves behind. It's not his, he won't carry it.
He cuts a swath through Hydra, leaves a hundred scientists with snapped necks and glassy eyes. One in Argentina locks himself in a jail-cell and Steve rips the wrought-iron right out of the rock. Captain America was a good man, who knew mercy and moderation. The mutable shape he took in the shadows after is just a killer who remembers what it was like.
And sometimes, he can pretend. He's learned how to twist himself up into something he's not. He can be Captain America. He can be Steve Rogers. He can be Bucky Barnes, too, or any of the other men he's met long enough to catalogue the way they move, the way they speak and breathe and hold their cigarettes. A weapon is useless unless it can be concealed.
So the Soldier talks to all the right people, says all the right words. He listens to conversations whispered in corners. It leads him straight to Robin.
He cases the place over the course of several days and then, when Robin's out one day he lets himself into the apartment and simply stands stock-still in the centre of the living room with its flickering overhead light fixture and its clean-but-not carpet. From there, it's just a waiting game. He's dressed like Steve Rogers might, in modern clothes with a modern hair-cut, clean-shaven and well-fed. A body is a husk that requires regular maintenance. He isn't stupid enough to neglect it, even in favour of vengeance. As soon as 'Nines' comes through the door, the Soldier speaks (his intonation is eerily flat, stripped down, as if the only utility of the words is their innate meaning and not the implications of inflection),]
We need to talk.
no subject
so he knows that someone twice the size of his noodley flatmates is waiting on the other side. he's thinking along the lines of, say, an irritable debt collector. a hitman. an extremely broad-shouldered government agent. he barely hesitates in going in, because the key is in looking like he never expected a thing.
when the door is open, he does this very well... but not because he wants to.
someone he recognizes is standing in the living room. whatever they say is secondary to the sudden buzzing of a hundred pages in his ears--from where, from where? the height and the stance are indicative of home but he's not the blind one and he's not the strong one (he had brown hair) and he isn't followed by the smell of the caves of the stains of sorrow and the dream world never mattered enough to remember, which means--
crew. crew crew crew the cold one the metal one the girl the boy the kindness the mistake the doctor the soldier the-- soldier who'd break his knuckles because he--]
Steve.
[not a question, a recollection. he's standing dead-still in the doorway, but not because he expects conflict. his heart's thundering against his chest, but not out of fear. at least-- not yet. the fear will come crashing in as soon as he has a second to comprehend doubt.]
no subject
Very few people use that name.
He can hear the clock on the wall two rooms over ticking over a cacophony of absolute silence. No one uses that name because everyone who knew it, save two, are dead. When Sam Wilson asked what he'd like to be called, he'd told him, whatever you want. But he knows familiarity. He knows anguish. He heard it in Bucky's voice, catching on the same syllables like a soldier tangled up in razor wire ten feet away from a trench.
His expression flickers. He is still a compassionate man, for all that it's buried beneath ice and choked out by winter's grasp. But his fingers twitch like they're closing on a throat, and he doesn't do well trusting people that bleed around him. Evenly,]
Who are you?
[Why do you know that name?]
no subject
Robin. [he finally moves, breathing in. it's out again, silent, when he skips to the end just as flatly:] You don't remember me.
[his teeth are sharp and clever but only when he has something to sink them into. he can tear this apart or he can leave it for dead--but he needs to know what it is first. something is wrong and it's not just a lapse in acknowledgement. he doesn't mean to bleed, doesn't mean to tense up like an anxious animal--but at least if the shark bites, he'll know to bite back.]
no subject
[It's not said with any especial self-loathing. He is what he is. Monsters have mutable form. His memory of the Before is clear. The after is nearly the same. He hadn't anticipated that things might've slipped through the cracks. He kept a tally on the walls of how many people Evelyn asked him to kill.
Memories can be changed. Taken, twisted, put back wrong. Like puzzle pieces with jigsaw edges badly cut and forced into a shape they were never meant to conform.
This man expects to be remembered. The Soldier can use that to his advantage.]
Are you Hydra?
[Wariness is expected. Even Captain America was suspicious.]
no subject
but the last time he ran into someone in their own world, they'd been twisted into a certifiable madman bent on destroying everything around them (all in the hopes that their fate-mother would just come down from on high and give them the time of day). this Steve doesn't know him, apparently, and Robin doesn't have a whole lot of reason to assume that he knows this Steve any better.]
No sir, I ain't with anyone.
[that tiny hope of familiarity fizzles out, but maybe it's for the best. he drops his shoulders with a sigh, finally moving into the apartment and nudging the door shut with the back of his shoe. he resigns himself to the game again, starts locking memories back up where he doesn't have to think about them. that's the trick, you see--the less thinking, the less he has to be upset about.]
Am I in trouble?
[after all--recognition aside, someone imposing has broken into his apartment.]
no subject
No more lies. No more.
An observable difference, one James has mentioned to him quietly, is that Steve Rogers never used his body like a weapon. He was always conscious of his size, of his strength, and he went to lengths to try and mitigate the danger he posed to everyone except their enemies. The Soldier, then, is the distillation of all the impulses Rogers either avoided or ignored. He moves like he expects the walls to get out of his way and rivers to part before him, he uses his lethality in conscious, in spectacular ways, and he takes a step towards Robin now. Danger rolls off of him like a stormfront.
Very, very calmly,]
Call me 'sir' again and I'll break your neck. How do you know me?
no subject
I don't think you'd believe me. [eyes--away, somewhere else, and then back to Steve again.] Or you would, but it'd only frustrate you. It's not a very good story.
[idly, he wonders if he'd follow up on that threat. it'd be so easy to push that button, just one little syllable more than he's already pushing.]
no subject
Try me.
[Anything can happen in the new world. The one he built for Evelyn is imperfect, threatened by aliens and gods and all the monsters in between. He won't rest until all of Hydra is dead. He doesn't care if they go cleanly to whatever afterlife awaits them. But his suspension of disbelief is-- impressive, these days. There's little that warrants surprise.]
no subject
whatever Steve thinks of the explanation, it's given to him evenly and straightforward enough that it's either a masterful recitation... or it's the honest truth.]
I know you because you and I were both dragged from our respective lives and into something called the Drift Fleet up in... space. [he rolls his eyes. Gods in their Kingdoms, it does sound stupid out loud.] Unwilling participants from different worlds got gathered up and flown around for the entertainment of some nebulous audience somewhere. I knew you as my pilot--or, at least, some iteration of you. Time, reality, it was all kind of...
[he wobbles his hand. you know. multiple universe bullshit.]
no subject
You knew Captain America.
[Which was why he reacted as he did. Interesting. James Barnes did much the same.]
no subject
Who?
[he would be annoyed, if he had any idea of where to start with it...]
no subject
It's what they call him. Steve Rogers, Captain America. [There's a very faint shiver to him, the transition from one pair of dancin' shoes to another. Then,] I never liked it much.
no subject
his eyes glaze away again, and his limbs follow. he ducks to the side, starts walking around the intruder to make his way towards a jumbled construction of laptops, monitors, and cables splayed out over the width of a couple of sloping card-tables.]
What are you doing in my living room, Steve?
[he sounds put-out, now. the sentence may as well have ended with a period.]