milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

"Go. Go! Take this journal and write down everything you can remember. It will help, I promise you."

"Princess--"

"Do not argue. Find somewhere quiet, where you won't be bothered."

"The kids aren't a bother."

"They are also not quiet."

* * * * * * *

It's been a long time since he's been here, enough that if pressed he couldn't actually say how long. He hadn't exactly meant to come, either, but he'd been thinking about finding somewhere out of the way when he walked out of Shuri's lab, and there's no question that Milliways fits that description better than anywhere else.

About ten minutes later, Bucky Barnes is settled in at one of the quieter booths in the back, the journal open in front of him. (A close observer might notice that each page is subtly embossed with the logo of the Wakandan Design Group.)

He's holding a pen in his right hand and tapping it against the blank page. From time to time he sets down the pen and picks up the cup of coffee waiting beside him instead. A swallow or two later, he repeats the process, swapping cup for pen.

His left hand is immaterial to the whole process, as it's entirely absent. A series of gauze bandages are barely visible under the collar of his shirt, and his left sleeve is neatly pinned shut over where his arm used to be.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Much better. Thank you." He's not being an ass either. This is better. Information and reasoning. This he can handle. Even if he doesn't necessarily like it.

"Okay, enough about all that stuff. I'm not fighting you again because that's just stupid. So, instead, how long have you been coming here?" He motions around to the bar. Bucky's like super relaxed in the various oddities of the place, so he's definitely been here a bit longer than Peter's couple of weeks.

"You're welcome," he says, a little amused.

"Time's kind of messed up for me. But -- Steve first showed me this place back during the war. World War Two."

He reacts very well to people who treat him like a person and not a small child.

"Wow. Really? You've been coming here that long?" Then his face shifts. "Oh - oh man! That's incredible." There's a lot of science going on in the background. "Like, it's a thing that shouldn't be possible, but it totally is if you dig into the theories and move away from what we think we know about the universe. I mean, it's amazing!" Someone should probably stop him before he really get started.

"What theories?"

Peter Parker has the distinction of being one of three scientists that Bucky Barnes is generally willing to listen to, apparently.

(The other two are Shuri and Dejah Thoris.)

"And yeah, that long. On and off. But when talking about how much time has passed here, it's not as much."

He's pretty sure of that, anyway.

"Well, weren't you like... I'll say 'off-line' for some of those 70 years that Cap was frozen?" He sort of shrugs. "So, you could bounce around a bit and time would be really weird for you, I guess."

There are so many possibilities.

"Theories? Oh - um - like theoretical physics that sort of explores the stuff we can't really see or prove - yet." Way oversimplifying, but primarily because he's not that far in his physics studies yet. "There's a multiverse theory. That there's not just one timeline, there's hundreds and thousands of them. Or more. Well, like, scientists where we are haven't proven it, so most people wouldn't believe it exists. Though, even if they did prove it, people still wouldn't believe it unless they actually experienced it. But they haven't been able to disprove it either. So some scientists consider it not really a theory because of that. It's fascinating even before you get here..." he gestures to the surrounding bar area, "...and find out it's real." He stops talking, but mostly so he can take a breath.

"Offline? Sure," he agrees. "Or frozen, that works too. Not the whole time, though."

He frowns a little at Peter's explanation.

"I don't get how people - okay, except here, here's different, obviously - could experience multiple universes when they only live in one."

(The narration mutters something about Marvel realities and throws its hands up.)

"But okay."

"Um - technically, you can't? Like, not at the same time. You'd have to jump between universes. I'm pretty sure if you were in more than one at once, your atoms would just rip apart and you wouldn't exist anymore. But that's way outside what I know of quantum mechanics and super high level physics." That's like PhD territory. Peter's a junior in high school. A genius one, but still.

"See, here, in the bar, I think is sort of a nexus of realities. Like a bunch of them all sort of just link here." He is spitballing hard on this one. Lots of guessing and reasoning. "But somehow without really banging into each other - because, like I said, that'd probably be bad. So, maybe this is a sort of pocket universe that tethers all the other ones together and people sort of drop in here like they went down a big slide through a hole in space."

The mental image makes him grin.

"I guess that's the hole, then," he says, tipping his chin toward the observation window. "Sounds reasonable."

A nod. "Probably. Or that's where you go if your slide misses the bar. Which, if that's a thing, let's hope that doesn't happen."

"You probably wouldn't notice if it did," he points out, dryly.

"Not for longer than about a nano-second if that long."

He finishes off his bottle of root beer. Then asks, "Do you drink anything other than coffee?" Bucky's had at least three cups since Peter sat down. And, Bucky'll just have to roll with the random topic change.

"When I feel like it."

He takes another sip. Something like amusement flickers in the glance he sends Peter over the edge of the mug.

"Why, don't you like coffee?"

Peter narrows his eyes a bit as he looks back at Bucky across the table.

"Would you want to see me hyped up on caffeine?"

It startles an actual laugh from him - not a chuckle, not a soft half-breath of humor, but a true, full laugh.

"Okay, fair. You've got a point."

He shakes his head, still amused.

"I bet you'd be a hell of a sight, though."

"I mean, you saw me moving around the airport. And that was just me. Add caffeine? Yeah, that goes up and my nerves almost start vibrating. It's weird, so I mostly stay away."

"Smart guy."

"Most of the time, yeah."

"Uh-huh."

Bucky empties the latest cup of coffee and sets it aside to await another refill, then studies Peter with interest.

"Steve said you were from Queens. What do you do there when you're not in school or running around with the Avengers, getting into fights?"

Edited 2021-03-03 13:48 (UTC)

He grins back.

"I build computers. I read, watch movies. Hang out with my friends. Between school and hero stuff, my time is pretty full. What do you do for fun?"

"Sounds fun," Bucky observes.

"Right now? I tend goats."

"Goats? Is that fun?" He lives in the city. The only goats he's seen are at the zoo.

"It's peaceful," he says, simply.

"So sure, I guess so. They're weird little things."

"Yeah? What do goats do? Aside from eat everything."

"They yell a lot. Bleat, I mean. Wag their stubby tails when they're happy, like a dog would. Climb things. They're pretty funny."

"I've only ever really seen goats at the zoo. And in videos on YouTube - they like to climb on stuff it seems." Now he has a mental image of goats climbing all over Bucky and that's pretty damned funny.