oom + dual ep: a door from wakanda

[from_the_outside]

OOM: The morning after this:

During his first morning as a free man, Bucky speaks with Steve, makes an important call, and does his best to express his gratitude to T'Challa before heading to the lab for a consultation. And then...

"Did you mean what you said last night? About wanting to find a place for a drink, or to go dancing."

 

Featuring NPC versions of: King T'Challa, Princess Shuri, Okoye, Natasha Romanoff, and Steve Rogers (written prior to Steve's return to the bar).

---

The first figure to step through the door and into the Bar proper is a familiar one – tall, a little scruffy, shaggy brown hair, neatly pinned sleeve where his left arm would be – though the lightness in his eyes and in the way he carries himself is something new.

So is the woman whose hand he holds as he guides her through the door. She's tall and slim, dressed casually in light pants and a white tank top, and the look on her face is one of such comical surprise it's nearly dismay.

"Holy shit," says Sharon Carter. "You were not kidding."


Tinytag: Sharon Carter

OOC: After months of OOMs leading up to this point, here we are as Bucky and Sharon enter the bar together! Two pups, two muns, two wildly different timezones. Ask for either one or both. Slowtime is, as always, welcome, especially as we head into a holiday weekend in the States. Ping Lorna or Aspen if you have any questions!

Comments

[strongerthanyouknow]

"Huh." Sara actually looks a little surprised. "I haven't heard of that one before."

There's no attempt even to look like this isn't a normal consideration. Or anything new. The idea of several places. Outside of time and place. The probability of just adding in another. Just a mental note on the name. She'll have to see what Gideon & Mick make of that once she's back home.

"And, you-" Sara flicks an arrow point with her pointer finger, her other fingers still wrapped around the now mostly empty glass, at Sharon. "-nice to meet you, too." There's that relaxed, easy smile still. Sincere, if not familiar. "It gets easier. Promise. Old hat eventually, too, if you're around the whole thing long enough."

[from_the_outside]

"The wine helps," Sharon tells her.

So does the context of the last few years of gods and aliens and enhanced humans. "Sounds like this is a pretty common occurrence for you, though."

[nerves_of_ice]

“More than usual around here,” he agrees, looking curious.

[strongerthanyouknow]

"It's my third. I actually thought one of my crew broke time and space again when I walked in the first time." There's a strangely bright smug, and amused tuck to her mouth saying all of this. She's proud of her work and her crew, all told. Sometimes they really did screw things up for the better.

"But Mike & I got that straightened out pretty quick; what with the whole status of the intermingling time violations this place pretty much is and somehow absolutely ignores."

[from_the_outside]

There's a lot to unpack in all that; Sharon focuses on the first part to catch her attention.

"Does that happen a lot? Your crew breaking time and space?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky blinks in surprise and then narrows his eyes, his focus intent.

He remembers very clearly talking with Nick Fury about how important it was not to screw up the future, right here in this very bar. He hasn’t let himself wonder if maybe there’d been another way.

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara hums a little in consideration briefly before, "I wouldn't say--" There's a vague pause and wave of her free hand in the air, which might question what exactly her definition is of: "--a lot."

"We only accidentally put dinosaurs in the Los Angeles 2017 on the way to Aruba once, and that was years ago now. Plus, it was more of a wrinkle with fixing someone's whole-hog rewrite of our entire current reality." If one didn't count that every new greenie to the crew stole the jump ship and tried to break The One Cardinal Rule of being a Legend at least once.





Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Except Sara. Whose only one thing she wanted most (in every sane waking moment never changed, never breathed, never forgave, never relented and) would unravel everything and everyone she knew, including herself.

[from_the_outside]

"Well, so long as it was only once," Sharon says, dry.

This place is intensely weird, but if Bucky's expression and intent focus is anything to go by, this is pretty odd even for Milliways.

[nerves_of_ice]

“Rewrite of reality,” he repeats.

Carefully.

“Does that happen a lot?”

[strongerthanyouknow]

That intensity. The one Sara's been demarcating off them since she looked at them the first time. Much like a lot of other people in this place she passes or talks to. Sharon's got it, but Bucky. They're both fighters. She'd stake her life and another death on it. But. Him.


The question is complicated. Her good girl smile sobers.
She hadn't intended to end up this far into this, had she.

"It's our job to make sure it doesn't." Which, if it needs to be a job. With a crew. "Or that it's stopped as soon as it starts."

[from_the_outside]

Back before he went under, during one of the briefings with Fury, she'd put a hand on his wrist to try and bring him back to the moment. It had backfired.

This time, Sharon shifts just enough in her seat to let her leg press, warm and reassuring, against his. "Sounds like a pretty interesting job," she observes.

"You said 'crew?' Do you have some kind of ship?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He glances sideways at Sharon and leans back a little in his seat, letting her take the lead and consciously relaxing his intent focus.

“Sounds neat.”

[strongerthanyouknow]

It doesn't bother her -- the consideration framing up fast in her mind on that count -- and the telegraph of Sharon shifting very marginally, and Bucky relaxing only adds potential cents of confirmation to her suspicions. Well, and adds another layer to it. But that one is more fact in a field and less the cloud of a question she keeps schooled from her face.

It's that stillness and the hum of sharpness right under it. Too familiar.

Sara picked up her toast, taking a bite as she nodded.
Swallowing and saying, "The Waverider."

[from_the_outside]

"Huh."

She's stopped sipping at her wine. It's a reflex from the old days in the field, when she had to be focused and at the top of her game, so any drinks she had were nursed and not drunk.

Sharon spins the stem of the glass between her fingers and asks, interested and conversational, "How exactly does someone get into that line of work?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He doesn’t react, other than to look mildly curious and interested in Sharon’s question.

[strongerthanyouknow]

"It's a lot different now than it was." When the OG got conscripted with one big lie and one big truth (that they were famous in the future, remembered by everyone, revered as legends; that the world of 2166 was a flaming wreck that no human survived).

"We're not often in places long enough for people to join us, and I don't like pulling any more people out the present, the past, or any time aberration than I have to." It's a multitemporal balancing act. What they can know. Where to put each of them back. If they do or don't have to erase their memories before they leave.

(If they even manage to make it out alive.
There are too many that haven't, too.


And yet people kept coming.)

[from_the_outside]

"Sounds like it's not for the faint of heart."

Chitauri and gods of thunder are bad enough; she's not sure she wants to add time travel into the mix.

[nerves_of_ice]

“That’s for sure,” he drawls. “Sounds like you could use a place like this to take a break occasionally.”

[strongerthanyouknow]

"Probably." Sara takes another bite of her plain toast. It's better than the honest answer, both of those choices. Sara, without a demanding focal point. It becomes a problem. She does. Or, more aptly, it does. That endless, unbeatable, only ever at best in a draw stand, darkness inside of her.

With easy fluidness born of years of talking to her people,

"What about you two? What do you do?"

[from_the_outside]

"Right now? Not much," Sharon tells her, easily. "A little consulting here and there, but mostly I'm on a kind of sabbatical."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I tend goats," Bucky says. "Mostly that means I try to keep them from wandering off."

[strongerthanyouknow]

Those ... are not answers. Or they are answers, maybe even true answers, but they are exactly nothing in the direction of anything like concrete answers, too. They definitely don't answer any of the questions not on her tongue.

"Sounds like this would be a great place to get away, for a little livening up, in both cases."

[from_the_outside]

"It's doing a bang-up job so far," Sharon tells her. "But really, the goats are pretty lively. Especially if they think you have food or they've decided to climb a tree."

[nerves_of_ice]

“Or if there’s a soccer game,” he says, very dryly.

[strongerthanyouknow]

"I didn't even know goats climbed trees."

They're definitely a thing she's never had to think much on.