milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"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.

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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."

"It's no problem," Bucky assures him. "Not like it's a secret any more anyway."

"Steve's still causing trouble; fighting the fight, taking care of what's needed." He shrugs his left shoulder pointedly. "I'm off the field for the time being, until I deal with this and get my head on straight, after everything."

There's an odd expression of... recognition, perhaps? Fellow-feeling? Jealousy? Maybe. Just a smidge. He can see, now, out of the spiral that his life had become, it would have been better for him to admit he came out of the war less than whole directly after the victory (or as near as possible, very hard to admit anything when passed out in your soulmate's arms, turns out). He wouldn't have even had to lie, directly - just mention who he'd been captured by, an the rest would have followed.

But he'd wanted to see Jiang Cheng become Sect Leader. He'd wanted to be there, when they reclaimed Lotus Pier. An then there never seemed to be a good time.

And then there were the Wens.

And then there weren't the Wens.

Ah well. At least now his bones don't hurt.

"Is there a plan? To deal with... that?" Wei Ying asks, with an irrepressible urge to fix things. Can there be a talisman to help with a missing limb? ... There probably isn't, but that doesn't mean he can't make one.

There's something about Wei Wuxian's expression that feels ... familiar, somehow. The look in his own eyes sharpens, just for an instant.

"Head first, arm later," he says. "Probably not a good idea for me to get the arm back until we're sure I can't be controlled again."

Wei Wuxian stills like a hunting dog gone on point. This... is something he knows entirely too much about.

Though probably not from the direction Bucky would approve of.

He tilts his head, eyebrows raised questioningly. He has enough manners to not ask directly, but... that's definitely something he has a good chance to help with.

Wei Wuxian may have an entire lifetime habit forcing a need to make himself useful.

That kind of reaction is impossible to miss.

"Looks like that means something to you," he observes, neutrally.

Wei Ying laughs, a little, on reflex - a slightly overwhelmed, slightly despairing laugh. He's never really had to explain what he's done - people have either seen it first hand, or heard of it through various degrees of translation and mutation. He's never really told anyone here exactly the extent of what he did in the war, what the Cultivation world considered heroic, and then demonic in turns.

He's not afraid, not really. Unless Bucky suddenly produces a dog, he doesn't fear for his physical safety. But he does love the sort of anonymity he has here - the Yiling Patriarch doesn't exist in Milliways, except to a few people. He's not looking forward to calling forth that particular ghost.

"In my world, many years ago, there was a war. My world has cultivators - people who work and study to build their own personal qi. In times of peace, we can help suppress and disperse demons, send wandering ghosts to their rest in the afterlife, that sort of thing. Some can even reach immortality. When the cultivation clans go to war against each other..." He grimaces. "I developed a method to take control of the fierce corpses and demons our enemy was creating. Later I was able to return the spiritual cognition of a friend who had been turned into a fierce corpse, though I could still command him, if needed. So I have... experience, in that sort of thing."

His gaze goes from interested to stunned disbelief, then shifts into something much sharper as he listens.

"So," he says, when Wei Wuxian has finished explaining. "You can do mind control. Of monsters and demons. Through magic."

Silence, for a long, long beat. He wraps his hand around his coffee mug.

"And you have a friend who's a zombie? Whose mind you returned? Does he remember what happened to him?"

This guy looks like a strong wind might blow him over, and he's sitting here talking about things that HYDRA would salivate to get their hands on.

"He remembered how he died, and... most things, after he came back." Wei Wuxian still doesn't have a good explanation for what happened in Qiongqi Pass, but at the time no one had been in a rational post-fight dissection sort of mood. "I thought he was destroyed, years ago, but... I may have been mislead on that."

He saw Jin Guangshan pour out the ashes of 'Wen Qing' and 'Wen Ning', and the assembled powerful cultivators had seemed to think that he was telling the truth. But now he knows Wen Qing had been a prisoner instead and is now here, and Wen Ning... well, he's definitely not ashes.

He takes a second to absorb that. "Okay."

A beat.

"What happened to the others?"

"The other fierce corpses and demons I controlled, you mean?" Wei Wuxian asks, for clarification - there's been so many 'others' in his life. Tragically, the answer is often the same.

"Yeah, them -- wait, are there other others?" he asks, a little startled. "Other zo--, er, fierce corpse friends?"

"Not... friends." Wei Wuxian sighs - he knows his life was a mess, he knows. "In the war, Wen Ruohan would often reanimate our dead comrades as fierce corpses to use against us."

Wei Wuxian shrugs, the expression on his face one that belongs on a different body, one that went through a brutal war.

"I asked them if they'd prefer to exact revenge for their deaths. Most wanted what I offered."

"Jesus," he mutters. "This Wen Ruohan sounds like a real piece of work."

He's been having trouble reconciling the cheerful young man with the platter full of bao with the one who sits across from him now, but the look on Wei Wuxian's face now is one he recognizes all too well.

"At least you gave them a choice." A beat of silence falls, then he adds, "Take it from someone who's fought without one: it matters."

"Mmm." He nods - there were only rare instances where he grabbed control by force, and most of those had been in the early days, trying to stay alive in a place that very much wanted him dead. Or at least alive-esque. He was never quite sure where he stood on that line, after that point.

"But to answer your earlier question - they were destroyed, in the war. Those that had once been men were sent on, the demons eradicated."

He'd thought he was done, at that point. He hadn't really expected to wake up. after the darkness claimed him.

Surprise! Turns out it's a theme.

"I'm guessing you won," he observes. "Or else you wouldn't have had the chance to do either."

"Mmm. Wen Ruohan was stabbed in the back, while he was attempting to strangle me. Since I distracted him, I like to think I had something to do with his death." While Wen Ruohan never earned the especially ferocious hatred that Wen Chao did, Wei Wuxian will never be sorry for his death.

"Seems fair," he agrees.

Wei Wuxian shrugs - not much, he's found, turns out to be fair in war.
"So that is how I know so much. I don't know if it is applicable in your situation, but..." He trails off, and grabs another bao to give his hands something to do.

"Wait, what?"

He's clearly missed something somewhere along the way. Bucky stares at Wei Wuxian in surprise.

"Applicable to me? How do you mean?"

Whoops. Was that one of the parts he said inside his head or outside? Probably not the one he assumed, based on reaction. Hah. It's funny, how often he gets those mixed up.

... Funny, yup!

"You said you wanted to be sure no one was controlling you. I might be able to help with that." There. That was the actually said this time, right? Yes. Wonderful, fantastic. Wei Wuxian stuffs his mouth full of bao so he can't say anything else.

Several thoughts crash together in his mind at once, as he keeps staring at the younger man.

"... um," he starts, after a few seconds. "I'm not dead." Long periods of cryogenic stasis notwithstanding, he's never actually died.

"Or a demon."