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

[nerves_of_ice]

He shrugs his left shoulder, deliberately, and gives her a wry smile.

"Mostly, one ends up under the care of a doc who thinks it's a good idea for you to have something else to focus on while recovering."

[strongerthanyouknow]

That ...isn't actually a bad answer. There's logic to it. A lot, even.

Only in a brief flash of faces, voices, does Sara think of John, Gideon, Cisco, Martin, and Jax. Her father. Sister. Anyone who would beg her to stay down for a few seconds after the world decks her back into the ground and a mouthful of blood and dirt each again time. She doesn't. (Can't. Especially, then.)

But she's respectful, relieved every time one of her Legends listens and does.

There's the flick of a grin. "And you chose goats?"

[from_the_outside]

"More like an assignment," Sharon tells her.

Or therapy.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Definitely an assignment. I just do what they tell me," he says, looking perfectly innocent about it all.

[strongerthanyouknow]

Yeah, Sara doesn't buy that as an overarching self-characteristic comment, but the smile stays, tucks into one corner of her mouth. Maybe it's a more congenial smirk that begs that.

"Could be worse, right? At least they sound entertaining."

[from_the_outside]

Something twitches at the corner of Sharon's mouth at Bucky's bland comment.

"They are," she tells Sara. "But mostly it's a good place to get better."

And to hide out from the international authorities one might, hypothetically, have on one's tail.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Could be a lot worse," he agrees. "I'm happy with the current circumstances."

[strongerthanyouknow]

Sara's expression turns more speculative than exacting.


"Should I ask?" It's so much more Captain than Assassin.
But that's one of her hats, and she's only known them minutes.

[from_the_outside]

In response, Sharon looks at Bucky, some question in her eyes and the minute lift of her brows.

This is her first time here, and offering up personal stories isn't a strong point of hers anyhow –

But she'll follow his lead. It's more his story than hers, anyway.

[nerves_of_ice]

"You can if you want," he says, mildly. To Sharon, he adds, "After Berlin I gave up on ... well, you know."

[strongerthanyouknow]

No would have been a fine answer in itself.



"Recovering from?"

[from_the_outside]

After Berlin.

After his cover was irrevocably blown, after Zemo, after the trigger words, after fighting his way out from the JTTF.

After Siberia.

Sharon sips at her wine, sitting very still, waiting to see how much he'll say.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Brainwashing," he says, succinctly. "Mind control. A few decades of it. It's made things a little complicated, back where we're from."

[strongerthanyouknow]

There's a small noise Sara makes behind closed lips. A note of affirmative. No flicker of anything that would label itself as doubt, or suspicion. If anything there's a very, very, very still unwavering kind of acknowledgment. She'd had what amounted to most of a decade in total of one of those in The League. But several.

There's no pity. But she wouldn't wish that on anyone she hated.


"I'm glad it sounds like it's working out for you."
Not the brainwashing. The goats. Assignments. Treatments.

[from_the_outside]

In a reversal of roles from earlier, Sharon isn't tense so much as very deliberately relaxed.

(Even after the procedure, the tests, the test, the celebrations.)

Secrets were her stock in trade for too long, maybe. Her automatic reaction is to wait for the fight to start, except it doesn't.

It's... strange.

[nerves_of_ice]

“A lot better than it has been,” he says, easily. “Putting the pieces back together one at a time.”

[strongerthanyouknow]

There's a small nod. "Best way to do it."

With a glance between, in acknowledgment.
"And with people by your side you trust, and who believe in you."

That she doesn't think is too large a leap to make at all.
Not the way they satellite each other, especially now.


Not with what she knows, has lived, and done for Mick.

[from_the_outside]

"Mostly I just give him a hard time," Sharon says, amused.

"But his doctor is great."

[nerves_of_ice]

"She is," he agrees. "And you're not wrong, either."

[strongerthanyouknow]

"I've had a little experience with some of that, myself."

She won't claim it's the same. She wasn't mind-controlled, and her volition is a sticky wicket in the very middle of her still-growing ocean of blood. But even if it was the same facts, it wouldn't be the same. It never is. Whoever he is, they are, this is their own story.

[from_the_outside]

"Sorry to hear that."

God knows it's not a situation she'd wish on anyone.

(She'll never forget watching him stalk through the cafeteria in the JTTF, single-minded and lethal.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Likewise." Bucky's look is frank and open. "We won't push, but if you want to say..."

He shrugs.

"Some people do."

[strongerthanyouknow]

"That part is a few years ago for me now." The untrainable training and never giving up fighting the unwinnable war against the blood lust, that's forever, but her mind was, is hers. And the last time she had the same worst circumstances worth of a chance to go back to The League of Assassins, she finally didn't. "Got some of the best friends I have out of the teammates who saw me through it."

Even if only two of them were with her now.

[from_the_outside]

She thinks of Steve and T'Challa and Shuri and Ayo in the garden room the previous night, of Nat on the phone, and smiles.

"Good," she says, firmly. "It definitely helps when you've got a team in your corner."

[nerves_of_ice]

"It does," he agrees, quiet but sure. "I'm glad you have one."