[ andyr remembers what being a person was like, unlike bucky. knows what it's like to have his own clothes, his own house, his own bed. he knows nothing in that room at hapsburg is his, not even those stupid fish books. but he gets that everyone else here is free. that most of them will be going back to being free. not yet aware that bucky's still working on that part, rather than clinging bitterly to it like andyr. ]
you take them everywhere [ 'seems important' would be what goes after, but he keeps that to himself ]
[ he doesn't much remember any of it. not his home, his own clothes, or his bed -- he remembers war and heavy boots and the smell of blood and piss and gunpowder, acrid and burning. He remembers the electricity that crackles in the air, the squelch of mud and the cold that sets too deeply too quickly; faces of brothers that melt into fog, to mindless compliance.
He's learning to be himself again, and he's not sure he's doing a good job of it at all; there's no structure to the chaos and noise, and he comes to the entire notion of freedom like an elusive dream that he could wake up from at any moment. Cautious, but greedy as hell for it. He takes a long time to answer, and when he does, he speaks up to where he knows Andyr can hear. ]
A notebook and pen. Guns, bullets. [ The latter of which comforts him in ways he doesn't want to think too hard on. The former a talisman of sorts against the invisible menace in his head, the one that wash away everything he tries to make in a heartbeat. The seashell sits alone on a small table, and he reaches for it, fingers rubbing over the smooth, shining surface. He stares up at the vents where he knows Andyr is, and wonders why he asks -- supposes that it's his way of making conversation, knowing the other man that wears his face. Andyr, while bitter, he decides, is a tormented soul himself, wrecked and torn open and hurt beyond the telling of it; and his response is one of perpetual fury, burning hot because pain corrodes like rust, and fire keeps it at bay.
Bucky shares, and he could be talking about the weather for all the inflection his voice holds. Dissociating, he's heard of that. ]
[ for a still moment, andyr's quiet, brow furrowing. he doesn't think he means forgetting his stuff - he has so damn little of it. so forgetting what? alva had asked brainwipes. about how the clones would get memories stuffed in or taken out. how it wasn't always a perfect process. he'd already know, because of posie, and how someone had fucked up and left her with everything from her series. thank god for that, really, as it meant she had enough sense of herself to know what was going on. even if it left her with six iterations worth of torture.
it's what they've all been through, at this point, in the houses. it's just the norm. we experience this, we carry it, we wake up sometimes screaming and in a cold sweat. that's what makes people like val and miray family to him, despite how much he may dislike them. what you do after that is what matters to him, at least.
bucky's had something like that too. 'trauma', steve said, and the more andyr's watching him and talking to him, the more he's getting that it was on the worse scale of what you can call 'trauma'. while, with the others, it bonds him, given what bucky is and where they are and all that's been going on with these lookalikes, it makes him more wary than anything else. of what bucky might be. ]
You forget stuff often? [ he's calling down, through the grate he's sitting next to in the ventilation shaft. ]
[ Bucky says at length -- HYDRA is a raw wound barely festered, a thousand little thorns in his skin, in his mind. He wakes sometimes, thinks that he's come undone, every stitch that he's made to hold the pieces of himself together fastidiously picked apart with a hand much like Alexander Pierce's. He dreams of him a lot more, these days.
Thirty-six hours ago, he understood why. Andyr's questions bring him firmly back to the present, and he can picture him nested in the vent, right beside where the grill is. He wonders if the other's eaten, wonders if they feed him through the ports in the back of his neck but no, no; that's where they put the drugs and where they take things out, right? Andyr is a raw, open and aching wound that makes Bucky's stomach turn. Not out of disgust, he decides -- he hasn't quite settled on the feeling yet.
Bucky's fingers close over the shell protectively, as if it's a piece of someone's heart that helps keep him grounded, too. Objective: coax his latest stalker down from his perch above him. He looks thoughtfully at the little holes in the vent, and remembers there are exactly six hundred and twenty five of them (he learned that answer forty-five minutes after he'd almost crushed his best friend's larynx). He's quiet for a few moments, then speaks up again. ]
[ it's hard to say what that might mean, in terms of whether or not he's a case for concern, for them. andyr will have to talk it over with alva later, but for now, it's half curiosity, half actual information gathering. he isn't any kind of soldier or spy and never has been, even if his father was. hell, most days he still feels like he never really left high school. just put his entire life on halt when hapsburg took him. he'd also never really met anyone who'd gone through something similar to him that wasn't already in the Houses. it's maybe something he wants to puzzle out, with barnes. what was it that happened to him.
the question on hobbies, though, comes a bit out of left field, and andyr's frowning a moment, at the side of the vent shaft, trying to follow the train of thought of it. and then trying to figure out what the fuck hobbies he even has anymore. coming up a bit blank. he's hard pressed to call either fighting or working out hobbies, as they're more like survival training.
he reads, he supposes, and that's about it. which is what brings the eventual, sort of lame answer. ]
[ Bucky chooses not to answer that question. It's dangerous ground, it tells people that people can do this to another person and get away with it. That it's possible to completely unmake a person and grind what they are into sharp, mismatched pieces that cut when you try to reassemble them again. Bits of glass, wedged under fingernails.
But then Andyr offers a little piece of himself like he needs affirmation for what he likes, and he feels something twist in his chest. How strange they both are, two incomplete people trying to figure the other out. He thinks of Andyr tending to fish -- surely he must be gentle with them, the slippery creatures with scales gleaming, catching the light, and moving like a knife through butter.
He likes that answer. ] Have you kept any?
[ Probably not. Things like them don't usually have things to call their own. ]
No. [ he wasn't allowed pets. he was hardly allowed anything, after all the ways he found to kill with common objects. but books, he had. only one, at the start, for about a year or so, which, surprise surprise, was a old, discount copy of a marine biology encyclopedia. ] Read about 'em.
[ and yet, it'd been appropriate. their apartment, above his dad's school, was in the district down by the port, and every day on the walk to school, he smells dead fish. his dad had a boat they'd take out now and again, and those are some of andyr's best memories. sitting out in the port, with the waves of larger ships passing by to rock him, staring at the stares and listening to his dad tell stories. it seems like another life, now. ]
It was the only thing I had to do for a while. Sit in a room and... read about fucking fish. [ a hollow kind of laugh comes from him, echoing off the metal walls of the ventilation shaft, something self-deprecating in it. right. that was his life. that is his life. albeit, his literature collection has expanded since that first year. ]
Guess your brain just teaches itself to start liking that shit, after a while. So you don't go nuts.
[ Bucky lets the silence hang between them, contemplating his words. Having nothing to do but read about fish seems like a hellish exercise in itself -- but then again, people adapt to their circumstances, and Andyr obviously had. It's either that or madness, and he commiserates with that sentiment. He wonders if his captors were the same as HYDRA, but they seem to at least see him as a person.
Even so, that's cold comfort; you can see someone as a person and still subject them to the worst things your mind can dream of, and that obviously hadn't saved Andyr at all. He listens to that laugh and thinks of the gallows, the jokes that people crack when they know they're going to their deaths.
It's not funny at all, not really, those jokes.
He leans back against the wall, thumb rubbing over the smooth outline of the shell. Bucky's curious about him, and despite their unpleasant first meeting he's come to take a strange sort of liking to the fellow. You can't really hate someone who's come from largely similar circumstances, who wears the hurt so desperately and fiercely under all that rage. ] What's your favorite fish?
[ it'd been about three or four months of him banging on the glass they held him behind before they'd actually given him the book, just to shut him up and keep him occupied. unfortunately, there wasn't any cryofreeze to stick him in, and seeing as he'd be needed out of it every few days, it wouldn't have been practical besides. thus, for the sake of not having to waste anymore manpower or resources on him than they already were - a book.
as for madness, well, it's debatable how much he's really held onto sanity. but these days, andyr doesn't worry about that argument applied to him anymore. he isn't the kind of person that integrates to the outside anymore. he stopped trying to be, and after making that decision, the rest became somewhat easier.
forget the health of it, forget the morality people like alva or malakye still hold to (it works for them), forget whatever counts as humanity. he'd decided, all that matters, was hitting back as hard and as fast and as often as he could. ]
You ever heard of Bettas? Siamese fighting fish? [ maybe it's a little dumb, maybe childish, but he'd decided it when he was 17 anyway. sitting in that cell with the stupid book open on his lap, the page turned to all these glossy pictures of a short lived, beautiful species, prized for their aesthetic and their violence. it felt appropriate, in a twisted way. ]
No. [ If he had, the information he'd learned is lost somewhere in the mires of his mind, slipped in between the cracks the names the faces. But this is comfortable ground, right? Talking about fish like it's the most natural thing in the world for them to do, what with one of them being in the vent and all.
He leans back against the wall, interested in what Andyr has to say, to discover yet another piece of this mystery that's hell-bent on stalking him. He thinks of Andyr as a boy -- had he been charming? Outgoing? Had he excelled in his studies, in sports? Somehow this feels too invasive for him to ask. ]
Do they fight each other? Or other fish? [ Because with a name like that, it's tough to imagine that they'd have any sort of pacifistic lifestyle. How much has Andyr absorbed about them, how deep did those roots go? ]
They're really territorial, so in nature it'd be whatever came into their space. [ in nature, but they didn't get the name from being in nature. ] But for gambling, people put bettas with other bettas and bet on 'em.
[ which is a near perfect replication of Andyr's life, down to cramped arenas, and rich people waving money and shouting at all sides, with a handler prodding at him through a grate to get on with it. or just shooting him up with adrenaline before tossing him in with another clone. and some days, another template. ]
They only live about two to three years, come in all these pretty colors and like small habitats with little current, so a lot of people keep them in one or two gallon tanks or glass bowls. [ it isn't terrible for them, but it does ring very true of andyr's life back home - kept behind a bulletproof, soundproof glass wall, for passersby to spectate at. bettas may be content with it, but he's not a goddamn pet. much as they'd like to make him one. ]
Pretty smart for a fish, too. They can learn tricks and shit, play with mirrors and algae balls, get used to routines, all that crap.
[ It's a surprisingly astute representation of Bucky's life, too -- right down to the tank they put him into when they're done with him. The other Winter Soldiers, the ones who had never quite responded as well as he did, the ones who now sleep within a forgotten base.
Bucky listens quietly, thinking of the cold, white Siberian wasteland. He wonders what Andyr's thinking about when he relates this to him, if he's lived a life like the betta's own. He thinks of multi-colored fish then, of all the things Andyr says they can do, and he feels a strange sort of sympathy for the fish. Never mind that they're smart, and are good with learning tricks and routines -- they're still captives, right? Colorful little creatures trapped in a bowl. ]
Did they treat you like that? [ The people who kept Andyr and forced terrible things unto him. Bucky thinks he'll never forget the wild fury in his eyes when the man had come at him, all that anger masking something Bucky immediately recognises -- because he sees it in himself, too. ]
[ A long stretch of quiet follows the question, the elephant in the room. he'd seethed about where he came from to barnes before, when he was fresh out of reliving the worst of it, but to just sit and discuss it, without the fury and the violence and the hate, feels too exposing, in a way. like admitting to something, to a thing you couldn't stop and couldn't resist. his voice does come, eventually, with a sort of hollowness to it. detachment. ]
I don't take well to tricks or routines. But yeah. Living in something close to a glass bowl. Soundproof, bulletproof glass bowl. [ after he shattered the glass once - bulletproof. after he made a lot of people unwilling to traverse that hallway by screaming profanities and the most disturbing bits of narration his mind could come up with through the glass - soundproof. silent and still, that's what they'd wanted. ] There's a bed, some books, a bathroom, and the longest wall's all glass, right out into the corporate hallway. Learned how to lip read pretty quick.
[ all of this present tense, because it isn't what they did, it's what they're still doing. it's the nightmare fortress he's returning to as soon as either the Ingress sends him back, or they get to that planet that's supposed to fix it. ]
Usually it's the clones that do cage fights, the expendable ones. But every now and again one Houses pitch one of their Templates against another's. See which one came out closer to dismembered. Best advertisement places like Hapsburg have, a way to prove their products comes from the best blueprints. [ they'd never let one or the other die, or at least, would try not to. too valuable. but there's a lot of damage you can do to a KN1 geared for combat before it's gone too far. ] But most often for quality testing. Clones always get a fraction of the natural augmentations their Templates have, but they want to get as close as they can.
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no subject
no shit, scruffy. what are they?
[ andyr remembers what being a person was like, unlike bucky. knows what it's like to have his own clothes, his own house, his own bed. he knows nothing in that room at hapsburg is his, not even those stupid fish books. but he gets that everyone else here is free. that most of them will be going back to being free. not yet aware that bucky's still working on that part, rather than clinging bitterly to it like andyr. ]
you take them everywhere [ 'seems important' would be what goes after, but he keeps that to himself ]
no subject
He's learning to be himself again, and he's not sure he's doing a good job of it at all; there's no structure to the chaos and noise, and he comes to the entire notion of freedom like an elusive dream that he could wake up from at any moment. Cautious, but greedy as hell for it. He takes a long time to answer, and when he does, he speaks up to where he knows Andyr can hear. ]
A notebook and pen. Guns, bullets. [ The latter of which comforts him in ways he doesn't want to think too hard on. The former a talisman of sorts against the invisible menace in his head, the one that wash away everything he tries to make in a heartbeat. The seashell sits alone on a small table, and he reaches for it, fingers rubbing over the smooth, shining surface. He stares up at the vents where he knows Andyr is, and wonders why he asks -- supposes that it's his way of making conversation, knowing the other man that wears his face. Andyr, while bitter, he decides, is a tormented soul himself, wrecked and torn open and hurt beyond the telling of it; and his response is one of perpetual fury, burning hot because pain corrodes like rust, and fire keeps it at bay.
Bucky shares, and he could be talking about the weather for all the inflection his voice holds. Dissociating, he's heard of that. ]
I don't want to forget anything. [ Not again. ]
no subject
it's what they've all been through, at this point, in the houses. it's just the norm. we experience this, we carry it, we wake up sometimes screaming and in a cold sweat. that's what makes people like val and miray family to him, despite how much he may dislike them. what you do after that is what matters to him, at least.
bucky's had something like that too. 'trauma', steve said, and the more andyr's watching him and talking to him, the more he's getting that it was on the worse scale of what you can call 'trauma'. while, with the others, it bonds him, given what bucky is and where they are and all that's been going on with these lookalikes, it makes him more wary than anything else. of what bucky might be. ]
You forget stuff often? [ he's calling down, through the grate he's sitting next to in the ventilation shaft. ]
no subject
[ Bucky says at length -- HYDRA is a raw wound barely festered, a thousand little thorns in his skin, in his mind. He wakes sometimes, thinks that he's come undone, every stitch that he's made to hold the pieces of himself together fastidiously picked apart with a hand much like Alexander Pierce's. He dreams of him a lot more, these days.
Thirty-six hours ago, he understood why. Andyr's questions bring him firmly back to the present, and he can picture him nested in the vent, right beside where the grill is. He wonders if the other's eaten, wonders if they feed him through the ports in the back of his neck but no, no; that's where they put the drugs and where they take things out, right? Andyr is a raw, open and aching wound that makes Bucky's stomach turn. Not out of disgust, he decides -- he hasn't quite settled on the feeling yet.
Bucky's fingers close over the shell protectively, as if it's a piece of someone's heart that helps keep him grounded, too. Objective: coax his latest stalker down from his perch above him. He looks thoughtfully at the little holes in the vent, and remembers there are exactly six hundred and twenty five of them (he learned that answer forty-five minutes after he'd almost crushed his best friend's larynx). He's quiet for a few moments, then speaks up again. ]
Do you have hobbies?
no subject
[ it's hard to say what that might mean, in terms of whether or not he's a case for concern, for them. andyr will have to talk it over with alva later, but for now, it's half curiosity, half actual information gathering. he isn't any kind of soldier or spy and never has been, even if his father was. hell, most days he still feels like he never really left high school. just put his entire life on halt when hapsburg took him. he'd also never really met anyone who'd gone through something similar to him that wasn't already in the Houses. it's maybe something he wants to puzzle out, with barnes. what was it that happened to him.
the question on hobbies, though, comes a bit out of left field, and andyr's frowning a moment, at the side of the vent shaft, trying to follow the train of thought of it. and then trying to figure out what the fuck hobbies he even has anymore. coming up a bit blank. he's hard pressed to call either fighting or working out hobbies, as they're more like survival training.
he reads, he supposes, and that's about it. which is what brings the eventual, sort of lame answer. ]
I like fish?
no subject
But then Andyr offers a little piece of himself like he needs affirmation for what he likes, and he feels something twist in his chest. How strange they both are, two incomplete people trying to figure the other out. He thinks of Andyr tending to fish -- surely he must be gentle with them, the slippery creatures with scales gleaming, catching the light, and moving like a knife through butter.
He likes that answer. ] Have you kept any?
[ Probably not. Things like them don't usually have things to call their own. ]
no subject
[ and yet, it'd been appropriate. their apartment, above his dad's school, was in the district down by the port, and every day on the walk to school, he smells dead fish. his dad had a boat they'd take out now and again, and those are some of andyr's best memories. sitting out in the port, with the waves of larger ships passing by to rock him, staring at the stares and listening to his dad tell stories. it seems like another life, now. ]
It was the only thing I had to do for a while. Sit in a room and... read about fucking fish. [ a hollow kind of laugh comes from him, echoing off the metal walls of the ventilation shaft, something self-deprecating in it. right. that was his life. that is his life. albeit, his literature collection has expanded since that first year. ]
Guess your brain just teaches itself to start liking that shit, after a while. So you don't go nuts.
no subject
Even so, that's cold comfort; you can see someone as a person and still subject them to the worst things your mind can dream of, and that obviously hadn't saved Andyr at all. He listens to that laugh and thinks of the gallows, the jokes that people crack when they know they're going to their deaths.
It's not funny at all, not really, those jokes.
He leans back against the wall, thumb rubbing over the smooth outline of the shell. Bucky's curious about him, and despite their unpleasant first meeting he's come to take a strange sort of liking to the fellow. You can't really hate someone who's come from largely similar circumstances, who wears the hurt so desperately and fiercely under all that rage. ] What's your favorite fish?
no subject
as for madness, well, it's debatable how much he's really held onto sanity. but these days, andyr doesn't worry about that argument applied to him anymore. he isn't the kind of person that integrates to the outside anymore. he stopped trying to be, and after making that decision, the rest became somewhat easier.
forget the health of it, forget the morality people like alva or malakye still hold to (it works for them), forget whatever counts as humanity. he'd decided, all that matters, was hitting back as hard and as fast and as often as he could. ]
You ever heard of Bettas? Siamese fighting fish? [ maybe it's a little dumb, maybe childish, but he'd decided it when he was 17 anyway. sitting in that cell with the stupid book open on his lap, the page turned to all these glossy pictures of a short lived, beautiful species, prized for their aesthetic and their violence. it felt appropriate, in a twisted way. ]
no subject
He leans back against the wall, interested in what Andyr has to say, to discover yet another piece of this mystery that's hell-bent on stalking him. He thinks of Andyr as a boy -- had he been charming? Outgoing? Had he excelled in his studies, in sports? Somehow this feels too invasive for him to ask. ]
Do they fight each other? Or other fish? [ Because with a name like that, it's tough to imagine that they'd have any sort of pacifistic lifestyle. How much has Andyr absorbed about them, how deep did those roots go? ]
no subject
[ which is a near perfect replication of Andyr's life, down to cramped arenas, and rich people waving money and shouting at all sides, with a handler prodding at him through a grate to get on with it. or just shooting him up with adrenaline before tossing him in with another clone. and some days, another template. ]
They only live about two to three years, come in all these pretty colors and like small habitats with little current, so a lot of people keep them in one or two gallon tanks or glass bowls. [ it isn't terrible for them, but it does ring very true of andyr's life back home - kept behind a bulletproof, soundproof glass wall, for passersby to spectate at. bettas may be content with it, but he's not a goddamn pet. much as they'd like to make him one. ]
Pretty smart for a fish, too. They can learn tricks and shit, play with mirrors and algae balls, get used to routines, all that crap.
no subject
Bucky listens quietly, thinking of the cold, white Siberian wasteland. He wonders what Andyr's thinking about when he relates this to him, if he's lived a life like the betta's own. He thinks of multi-colored fish then, of all the things Andyr says they can do, and he feels a strange sort of sympathy for the fish. Never mind that they're smart, and are good with learning tricks and routines -- they're still captives, right? Colorful little creatures trapped in a bowl. ]
Did they treat you like that? [ The people who kept Andyr and forced terrible things unto him. Bucky thinks he'll never forget the wild fury in his eyes when the man had come at him, all that anger masking something Bucky immediately recognises -- because he sees it in himself, too. ]
no subject
I don't take well to tricks or routines. But yeah. Living in something close to a glass bowl. Soundproof, bulletproof glass bowl. [ after he shattered the glass once - bulletproof. after he made a lot of people unwilling to traverse that hallway by screaming profanities and the most disturbing bits of narration his mind could come up with through the glass - soundproof. silent and still, that's what they'd wanted. ] There's a bed, some books, a bathroom, and the longest wall's all glass, right out into the corporate hallway. Learned how to lip read pretty quick.
[ all of this present tense, because it isn't what they did, it's what they're still doing. it's the nightmare fortress he's returning to as soon as either the Ingress sends him back, or they get to that planet that's supposed to fix it. ]
Usually it's the clones that do cage fights, the expendable ones. But every now and again one Houses pitch one of their Templates against another's. See which one came out closer to dismembered. Best advertisement places like Hapsburg have, a way to prove their products comes from the best blueprints. [ they'd never let one or the other die, or at least, would try not to. too valuable. but there's a lot of damage you can do to a KN1 geared for combat before it's gone too far. ] But most often for quality testing. Clones always get a fraction of the natural augmentations their Templates have, but they want to get as close as they can.