semi-open;

[bracchium]

CHARACTERS: Bucky, Sam, Steve, and guests
WHERE: The Gardens
WHEN: Backdated to D040-idk 45ish?
SUMMARY: After another death in the nest, Bucky feels the need to run.
WARNINGS: Nightmares, talk of violence, etc.


[Death in the Nest never comes easy. Anakin's had been so violent and sudden and now Aoba's seemingly the opposite. Something planned and slow and when the pain of the loss surges through the Nest, Bucky's left shuddering in its wake. He can't stay here, that's all he knows in the moment as he surges from his quarters. His backpack is heavier than he remembers as he hefts it over his shoulder. However, he's only a dozen feet down the hall before a conversation with Sam springs to his mind. Over shared drinks, he agreed to think about not running, about camping, about seeking offered help when this urge rises.

But he can't bring himself to search for help directly. Not when all he can focus on is the pain of a purposeful death rocking through his nerves.

And yet his feet bring him to the Gardens, to dirt crunching under his boots instead of the darkness of the farthest corners of the Station. He's reminded again of Sam, of their talk of camping, and he quietly sends up a ping of his location to both his broodmate and Steve. The impression of his panic colors the leaves of the trees around him, burning incandescent over the link.]

Comments

cap trio

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam's focus on their connection is almost instantaneous, the moment he feels Bucky consciously thinking of him. It might not be open quite as wide as it'd been on Waypoint, but he never did really repair his shields with Bucky, and he's honestly not even sure he could.

Bucky sending his location would be more than enough to get Sam moving - if Bucky wants him, he'll always be there - but the panic means it's quicker than he might have otherwise. The panic brings an instinctive response across their mental link: the sensation of slow, steady breathing and the feeling of fingers laced together. ]

( I'll be right there. )

[ He can feel the shape of Steve's connection, too, so he sends it to both of them. It's not the first time the three of them have come together like this, and with the symbiote's enhancements to his speed, it's not long before he's at the Gardens. ]

[decommission]

[ Being outside the brood leaves Steve a step behind Sam and Bucky when the message flares in his mind, Bucky's panic setting his chest alight and shooting down his arm, the mark of his pencil suddenly changing course as though he'd just hit a bump. ]

( On my way. ) [ His response comes with the sensation of a third hand reaching for theirs, the last leg of a tripod.

He tucks pencil and pad under his arm before moving down the halls to meet them. ]

[bracchium]

[Bucky dives deeper into the gardens before he can really stop himself, even as Sam and Steve both send confirmation that they're on their way. He does his best to ignore the sensation of being cornered--- the reminder of Bucharest heats up his throat--- and to instead accept the mental impressions Sam and Steve send back his way.

But someone's dead and the situation calls too closely to the end of a mission to be ignored. Runrunrun sings under his skin as he continues to move.]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ The echo of Bucky's instinct to move hums in Sam's veins, for a moment almost overtaking him. But he can feel the sensation of Steve's hand in his, grounding him back to himself. He remembers Bucharest from the other side, remembers trying to chase Bucky down in Waypoint, and that second one makes him slow his own pace.

He stops in a part of the Garden that's reasonably well hidden, leaning against the strange bark of an alien tree. It'd worked better last time they were on the Station letting Bucky name a rendezvous spot. ]

( You're okay, sunshine. Where should we meet? )

[bracchium]

[Through the brood bond, Bucky can sense Sam stopping, giving him distance and it takes him a moment to remember that he asked for Steve and Sam to come, that he doesn't want to be alone. No matter how difficult it might be, he needs them here to help with the open wound in the Nest, and the questions that accompany it.

Sucking in a breath through his nose, he forces himself to count slowly, to anchor himself, to reach out again instead of running. Ahead of him, there is a small grove of what might be willow trees, if not for the strange purple bark.]

( The willow grove. )

[decommission]

( We'll be right there. )

[ It helps, in a way, that his connection to the pair of them is lesser outside the brood. The benefit to not feeling everything as strongly is that it keeps him a half step removed from being swept up in outside panic - and it's a bit easier to keep his own fears buried just beneath the surface of what's visible to the others. Barely.

He spots Sam's back first, slowing to a walk as he approaches them. ]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Despite the lingering sense of Bucky's panic, something like relief settles in his chest as the three of them find each other. There's a low, distant ache of guilt and grief from everything going on since they got back from Waypoint, and he - he has to remind himself that it's not selfish to want them close.

To feel better with the two of them there. With how bad Bucky wants to run, he knows he's keeping the promise he made to let Sam and Steve help him when things get bad, and a faint hint of gratitude and pride curls out around them. ]

Sounds like now's a good time for a camping trip. Few days out here, just us?

nightmares {sam}

[bracchium]

[Since coming out to the gardens, Bucky hasn't slept much. Despite knowing the benefits of sleeping, despite the safety of his companions, he can't bring himself to shut his eyes, to face the slabs of amber glass in his mind. But even a modified weapon falls to exhaustion same as any other person. By the third 'night' as the lights dim, Bucky struggles to keep his eyes open. His bed roll is too comfortable to ignore and the weight of his sleepless nights too heavy.

He drifts off before he's aware of closing his eyes and he finds himself staring down a winding forest road, motorcycle humming underneath him. He knows this road, he's been briefed on his extraction target: serum in the trunk of Howard Stark's car. No witnesses.

No witnesses hums in his ears as he drives, as he swings a metal fist through glass and squealing metal shrieks through the silence. He knows what happens next; no matter how many times he sees it in his mind, their fates never change. His flesh and blood fingers close around Howard Stark's lapels.

Sergeant Barnes? Howard Stark asks, soon silenced by a curled metal fist that breaks bones, shatters eye sockets, and reduces his target to a pulp. Behind him a voice sobs and the Weapon-- Bucky-- eases one witness back into the driver's seat. The other, he curls his knuckles around, silences cries of agonies with fingers that crush. Howard and Maria. 1991.

Howard's eyes stare into nothing as Maria's go blank.

And Bucky wakes up, jacknifes from his bedroll to spill out of the tent, nerves shrieking as he moves.

He killed them. He killed them like he killed hundreds of others, like he tried to kill Sam on the Waypoint, like he tried to kill Steve in the glass belly of a gunship. The urge to run again digs under his skin, slices through logic and emotion alike to the amber core surrounded by swirling snow.

He shouldn't be here. A child was dead. Howard and Maria were dead, but a deadly weapon continued to walk and breathe.]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam's own sleep has been... hit or miss. There's been moments that could almost be fun, sure, sharing stories around the campfire and getting away from the drama that comes with living with the rest of the Nest. But Sam carries his own guilt, and Bucky's restlessness hums under his skin. It's hard to settle when he knows Bucky can't bring himself to close his eyes - but he doesn't want to push. He gets the feeling it was hard enough for Bucky to ask for this, to take refuge with the two of them instead of running off on his own.

So he offers support the best way he can, quiet and wordless, braids Bucky's hair, and outloud he sasses the hell out of him. When Bucky drifts off to sleep, so does he.

And when Bucky dreams - so does Sam.

He'd read the files they'd gotten on the Winter Soldier while they were looking for him, and he's seen some of what's in Bucky's head, but those weren't memories disguised as a nightmare. Those weren't first person, and he didn't feel every moment amplified by the absolute blankness of mind, the focus on nothing but the mission.

Sam jolts awake as Bucky does. He reaches automatically to grab for his challenge coin, fingers curled hard around the metal as he counts his breathing. 'My name is Sam Wilson. It's 2017. I'm on a space station in the middle of god knows where. Steve and Bucky are here.

I am not the Winter Soldier.'

That last one is a little different from his usual recitation of facts to ground himself after a nightmare, but right about now, he needs it. After a few moments, when the foreign nightmare fades and he comes back to himself, Sam pushes himself up to follow Bucky out.

He doesn't even need their connection to be able to figure out what's going through Bucky's head right now, but he can pick up on it anyway. ]

They always like that?

[bracchium]

[Behind him, Bucky can hear Sam's mantra, but there's no comfort to be found in it now. He is not Sam Wilson and he is the Winter Soldier. He is the one who dimmed the lights in Howard and Maria's eyes in 1991. Except he can still see them, still see the halo of dim light over the smoking hood of the car. Dirt crunches under his boots and he wonders if he ever got away, if he's walking on that road again with death. He doesn't do that anymore, his brain scrambles to provide, but here he is in the woods, along a back road, walking toward the car again.

But then the feathers at the ends of his braids scratch against his cheek and Bucky blinks. The smoking hood fades into the darkened shadows of the gardens, the cries of Maria Stark quiet and go silent.

He's on the Station. Steve and Bucky--- no, Steve and Sam are here. Steve, so small and fragile, and Sam, so willing to take knocks for a weapon parading around as a man.

He can't stay here. His instincts scream in his veins to runrunrun, but Sam's voice echoes in the otherwise silent gardens. That's why they were out here, because he needed to try, because he wanted to try.

The better question is 'when aren't they like that' but Bucky's too busy catching his breath to answer. It doesn't matter. He deserves the nightmares, deserves the faces that stare out from amber glass, deserves the crushing guilt and panic that fight for control in the wake of death.]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ One of the dangers of being too much in each other's heads, shared nightmares. It's not the first time it's happened with Sam, but it was probably the most intense - and Sam's not sure if that's because of their brood bond or just because he and Bucky have been completely inside each other's heads.

It doesn't matter, really, because Sam'd be out here the same even if he'd just heard Bucky waking up from his nightmare.

Bucky'd wanted to try. He is trying, and hell but Sam's grateful for that. He doesn't really know how to tell Bucky that he doesn't think he can do this without him, not with what he can feel pouring off Bucky in waves. Of course, he figures some part of Bucky might know that, seeing as Sam can't exactly hide it from him - but they don't gotta talk about it, at least, when Bucky's caught up in guilt and fear and panic.

He knows how well it goes talking with Bucky about what he deserves even on good days, let alone after a nightmare like that with everything else going on. So he stays quiet there, for the moment, and instead holds out his hand, fingers splayed in invitation.

Breathe with me, he offers, a silent impression across their bond.

Then maybe they can talk about that willing to take knocks for a weapon shit. ]

[bracchium]

[Bucky knows the moment Sam has extended his hand; with the brood link blown so wide open it's sometimes difficult to remember he only has the one arm. Yet, Bucky doesn't immediately accept the offered comfort. He deserves this and worse, deserves his stomach trying to eat its way up his throat, deserves the live wire planted beneath his skin, searing his nerves. What he most definitely doesn't deserve is to be comforted. He caused those deaths. He killed Howard and Maria Stark, nearly killed Steve and Sam.

And now someone else was dead while the weapon lived.]

[sizeofyourbaggage]

( Yeah. You did. ) [ It's a simple, easy acknowledgement, no qualifiers. It was Hydra behind every one of the people who died over the years, but it was Bucky's hands that killed them. He's the one who gets to live with the memories. Telling Bucky that it's not his fault, no matter how true it is - it doesn't change that. ] ( It ain't the same - but I know what it's like to feel guilty being alive when others are dead. )

[ He stares down at his hand between them for a long moment, then looks back up to watch Bucky. ]

( Will you look at me? )

conversations {steve} (warning: mentions of suicide in this thread)

[bracchium]

[It's surprisingly nice to camp out in nature like this, even if it is, in some ways, artificial. The bright greens and deep umbers of the trees surrounding their campsite don't ease the nightmares that overtake him or the the overwhelming guilt that burns away his gut, but he finds the scenery relaxing nonetheless. Another dinner of hot dogs and cooked veggies don't stimulate his lagging appetite, so he gets up to walk, so Sam and Steve can eat without casting worried glances every five seconds.

His nerves continue to sing as loud as the first day, as the pain of another lost Nestmate dwells upon them all. This was not accidental, this was not a casualty of war, this was a child who needed an escape but no one provided one. They offered clothes and a helping hand to a weapon who butchered hundreds, who helped him make decisions, who let him want things.

Guilt burrows deeper into his gut as he walks, fingers running along the silver feathers of the bracelet curled about his wrist, and suddenly he doesn't want to be alone on this walk anymore.]

sorry for the delay! (suicide stuff here too)

[decommission]

[ Steve hadn't been close to Aoba, couldn't understand what would drive the guy to that point. A part of him is angry at Aoba for giving up. Leaving a gaping hole in his place. A broodmate of Angel's - that's a whole different kind of pain agitated when he thinks of her.

His skin itches, restless legs moving toward the invisible line that pulls him past their shared campsite, half-eaten food left behind. ]

Feel like running? [ Going for a run, he means, not running away again. The closer he gets to Bucky, the more he feels antsy, his friend's nerves tickling under his own skin. Instead of closing off that sliver of connection, Steve carefully holds the thread, letting his own ache vibrate in sync with it. ]

[bracchium]

[In the back of his mind, Bucky can hear the Steve's questions, feel the filtered anger and confusion. While Steve tries to open their bond wider, Bucky attempts to close his tighter, to hide away behind the billowing snow drifts and barbed wire fences. How is he still walking and alive when a child who deserved so much more died? He remembers the confusion surrounding his escape from HYDRA, how the nightmares lay just behind his eyelids, how every bite of food felt like one bite too many when guilt stuffed his throat.

It's a lot like now, how he wants to sever the thread holding him to the rest of the others, to finally ease them of the burden of a drowning man threatening to pull them under with him.

But Steve is at his side, preventing Bucky from doing anything overt at the moment.] Yeah.

[He reminds himself to run slower as he starts a jog.]

[decommission]

[ The ice permeates, but in Steve's mind it transforms into a memories of mid-autumn, when the chill of coming winter first began to set in the apartment. He always liked the crisp air, just before the real cold forced everyone to bundle up in heavy layers and boiler heat dried out the air in the tenement.

Steve focuses on those memories, times when he was alone (keeps his mind clear of the clean-cut version of his friend), for no other specific reason than that they're what's come to mind first. When he catches Bucky running a bit slower than normal he extends his gait, starting to pull ahead at a slightly more taxing pace.

Cocks an eyebrow. ]

That's all you got, gramps? [ Bucky doesn't have to hold back for his sake, jogging or otherwise. ]

[bracchium]

[For all that he tries to shield from Steve, Bucky still finds himself lost in thoughts of the past, stuck in the inky dark of pleading cries and useless tears of mercy. They all end the same, but he watches them all the same. Since Aoba's death, they rise at the smallest prompting. Handling a knife reminds him of Australia, of a woman with cobalt blue eyes wide and blank with a knife in her chest.

Beside him, Steve speaks and Bucky blinks before realizing that Steve's pulling ahead. Frowning, he picks up his pace to match Steve but not faster. He's not here to outpace anyone, no other soldiers to defeat or prove himself to.]

[decommission]

[ Steve's unconscious mind is most affected by the flashes of violence in Bucky's memory. During the day he can banish them, or take them in and transfigure them into something less threatening, like now. During the night his mind is vulnerable, though he can't always remember the faces.

Horrible as they are, he'll take those nightmares over the ones where he wakes up to find Sam curled over a body -

The gardens are humid, which means he's already sweating again. He matches pace with Bucky now, caught between trying to come up with something to say and coming up empty. After a minute he opts to keep the silence, the only sound that comes from him are even breaths, nothing like the rasping sound he used to make when they were kids. Even months later Steve still experiences a kind of high when he's exercising like this, the sensation bubbling in his bloodstream all the way to his head - and through the link. ]

open {guests}

[bracchium]

[The Gardens aren't large enough that he could ever hope to truly isolate himself from the rest of the Nest. The voices that clamor in his head seem quieter, but none have come across the trio camped out in a grove of trees. Not until now, that is. Bucky glances up at the sound of crunching soil, his nerves worn and strung tight but still very much alive and well.

They have company.]

{clint; guest starring sam}

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam knows who it is even before the sound echoes out - he and Clint can barely hide their presence from each other even when they try, after all - but he doesn't quite make it back from his walk around the edge of the trees in time to warn Bucky before Clint's close enough to make noise.

Still, Sam comes to stand next to Bucky, the feathers of his mind reaching out absently to brush across his. ]

It's just Clint. He's not as sneaky as he thinks he is.

[ Or, more likely, he knows how stupid sneaking up on soldiers and ex-assassins would be and isn't even trying to be sneaky, but still. ]

o7

[bracchium]

[Sam's presence eases the raised hackles in Bucky's mind. He hasn't spent as much time around Clint, but the glimpses he's seen through Sam give him a good impression. Still, he's not ready to talk to much of anyone outside of Sam and Steve. Between the nightmares and the continued aching from the death of a nestmate, the urge to run spikes through his nerves.]

slinks over here

[cognitived]

[ It's hard to hide his presence from Sam, but really -- Clint rarely tries anyway. With Barnes, it's different. Mind a blip, footsteps purposefully placed to offer a heads up. He's well aware of how stupid sneaking up on ex-assassins is. ]

You're just jealous, man.

[ A joke, not quite an ice breaker but definitely meant to diffuse some of the tension. Whether it works or not is debatable. Still, Clint's gaze slots over, and he offers a nod, lazy acknowledgement. ]

Barnes.

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam shifts a little, just enough that the back of his knuckles brush against Bucky's - an offer, just in case he wants something to ground him a little more. He knows that Bucky's not all that up for company right now, but he also knows that Clint's... got some things in common with him, and they might have a pretty unique understanding.

And selfishly, he's glad to see Clint. He chuckles, shooting Clint a tiny smirk. ]

Dunno, man, what's there to be jealous of? [ Sam reaches out with his other hand, making a grabby motion. ] Did you at least bring the feather twins?

[ He'd had to leave the pair of alien birdlings that Bucky got him when he came running to answer Bucky's call - he trusts Clint to look after them, of course, but he misses them.

And it might not be a bad thing for Bucky to see them. ]

[bracchium]

[Bucky stares over at Clint with hooded eyes before sending a glare Sam's way. He's not ready for this, he's not fit company for anyone not already knee-deep in his issues. On his bad days, Bucky barely spares a word for Sam and Steve, much less a relative stranger. The brush against his knuckles offers little comfort with the humming of anxiety in his throat. The mention of the birds catches his attention, but he tries to hide it behind a furrowed brow. He misses them too, the little bastards, and someone must have been caring for them while Sam's been away attending to the walking disaster. Guilt quickly silences the annoyance and anger that briefly springs up. He was the one who had to drag Sam out here.]