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

"You're welcome. When I do get pushed into a bartending stint, you should come back, I'll show you how to make soup." Wei Wuxian promises cheerfully. Look, everyone should know how to make Significant Soup, it's practically a diplomatic necessity. How are you supposed to tell someone you love them without soup?

~~No you can't just say something don't be ridiculous~~

~~Also does anyone have a vegetarian recipe for pork rib and lotus root soup?~~

Bucky grins, quick and bright -- just a little, just for a moment, but it's there.

"You do know you don't have to wait for bartending to get access to the kitchen here, right?"

"Mistress Sunshine is often in the kitchens, but she is a very good baker." Wei Wuxian agrees, but with the implied knowledge that you have to really know what you're doing to be allowed unrestrained access. His shijie, for example, would have definitely had access.

"She is," Bucky agrees, almost fervently. "Back during the war, the entire squad was ready to fight for her cinnamon rolls."

"I've been in there a couple of times, but not to make anything. Once was to help Sunny, actually, and the other time I was on KP for a week - er, dishwashing duty," he thinks to explain.

"Same for our little village - her goods were always a treat." He tries not to dwell on the faces of the dead, missed though they are. "Is washing dishes such a popular punishment around here?" If he had a nickel for every time he heard that he'd... well, he'd have two nickels, but that's still way more than he should have.

"Depends on who's giving you the punishment," he says, his tone more than a little dry.

"Washing dishes, cleaning the stables, gardening in the greenhouse, and time in the cells - those are just the ones I know about."

A beat of silence, as he considers how that sounds.

"I only did three out of the four."

... that's probably not any better.

"This place is so weird." Says the former first disciple, who is used to an entirely different sort of punishment scheme.

"Well, yes," he agrees. "But why d'you say that?"

"Since when is gardening, indoors, a punishment?" Wei Ying scoffs. "Most of those things are just jobs. They're not even difficult!"

"You're not wrong, but--"

He shrugs, pinned sleeve shifting slightly with the movement.

"-- I guess if you're coming here looking for a place to relax, being made to work's punishment enough."

His expression flattens a little as he adds,

"Plus the cells, for anything more serious. What they think is serious."

Bucky studies Wei Wuxian a little more closely.

"I guess the rules are a little tougher where you're from?"

Wei Wuxian is a thin man, very clearly recently rather underweight and undertrained for someone being critical of routine punishments. He is starting to fill out, but it's... going to be a while to undo the damage Mo Xuanyu left him with.

"Quite definitely. And Jiang clan was one of the more lenient clans - if Lan Clan was running this place, it'd be much different."

Poor Sunshine, she'd spend her life doing handstands and writing lines, for making food with actual flavor.

"Different how?" he asks, with clear interest.

Wei Wuxian's almost as thin as Steve used to be. More wiry, though.

"This place has three rules. They have three thousand, carved into the rock, all rigidly adhered to without fail." Wei Ying informs him, eyes wide. He lies, but unknowingly. It's been over a decade since he's seen that stone wall, and if he'd seen it recently, he'd know there's now over four thousand.

With one specifically about not associating with him.

Bucky stares at him.

"Hold on, did you say three thousand?"

"Right?" Wei Ying is delighted that someone understands how completely unreasonable this is. "When I accompanied my siblings there when I was younger, I managed to break... oh, at least six, the very first night! It was such a mess." He laughs, evidently not too terribly bothered about this potential political disaster.

Things were... simpler then. Not simple, but... definitely not as fraught as they became.

He shakes his head.

"Remind me not to visit. I'd make a wreck of things just by walking in." A quick grin flashes. "Like you, it sounds."

Wei Ying grins, unrepentantly. At least for that night, he is entirely unrepentant.

For most things, he is unrepentant. He mourns the choices, and his inability to beat the odds, more than any particular action.

"I was not an ideal student that summer."

"In a place with three thousand rules? Who could be?"

"Most did alright, though that could be because I was there to draw the ire of Lan Qiren, our shifu." Wei Ying is slowly coming to the realization that there really was nothing he could have done to actually win Lan Qiren's favor, but there wasn't much that he did to help his reputation that summer.

"So scapegoat, bellwether, and decoy all three," he summarizes, even as he files away the unfamiliar term and likely meaning by context.

"Busy summer."

"Mmm." Wei Ying hums, "It was perfect."

It wasn't, it really wasn't - there was Wen Chao lurking around the edges, and Jiang Cheng fretting, and the Peacock dissing his shijie, and the endless Lan punishments he earned, but... he'd met and befriended Lan Zhan, and spent a summer with Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli, an had adventures... it was all he could hope for, in a summer before war descended.

He chuckles at that, as he finishes off the bao he'd taken.

"My friend Steve would get a kick out of that."

"Steve?" Wei Ying asks curiously, not-so-subtly inching the bao pile of doom closer to Bucky. "Does he also 'wreak things by walking in', as you say?"

"Sometimes," Bucky agrees, taking another of the bao. "Especially when he's leading a team."

"He's my best friend. We used to get into a lot of trouble together."

Edited 2021-03-11 16:11 (UTC)

"Used to?" Wei Ying asks, curiosity getting the better of him. "Ah, forgive this one if it is too much to ask."