recolle | i was a high school atom bomb

Entry tags:

marvel 616: bucky barnes

i was a high school atom bomb

WHO: James and YOU!
WHERE: all over town, and also ~in his dreams~
WHEN: all throughout July!
WHAT: James doesn't remember a damn thing and is trying his best to navigate Recolle without letting on that something is off with him. Also, dreams.
WARNINGS: probably some violence in the dream prompts

1. time to finally fill his nighttime skulking quota
[ Okay, so it's a lie that he doesn't remember anything. He does remember a few things--and they mostly involve sneaking around to kill someone or training others to do the same.

He doesn't have any reason to do any of that now, nor anyone to do it to, but running around like this at least is refreshing--it's familiar. And he doesn't have to pretend to be James Barnes, whoever the hell that kid was. He can just be confused and empty, and try to connect with the few bits of himself he does know.

All of which is just how I'm justifying the fact that James is running around parkouring throughout the city in the dead of night, clad all in black. Even his hair is tied up and hidden under a dark baseball cap. (His arm, of course, is still completely exposed--he has yet to find a single piece of clothing that can cover it except for some neon monstrosity.)

He's just out here to get some fresh air and feel a rush, but to anyone else, it might look rather suspicious to see a mysterious figure skulking around and jumping from building to building. ]

2. he didn't choose the accordion boy band life, the accordion boy band life chose him
[ His father and sister gave him odd looks when he pulled out an accordion from his closet and he didn't want to raise any more suspicion, so...instead he's sitting in the park with it. Sure, he's still an odd sight, but at least here he's just some anonymous person with an accordion, instead of a person who apparently shouldn't be playing one.

He wonders why. Did James Barnes only play accordion in secret? Was he that bad that he was banned from playing it?

He tries playing a few notes. They come out warbled and discordant as his fingers clumsily mash multiple keys simultaneously. It wheezes like a fireplace bellows. Maybe he really was that bad. (Or maybe he was good once, and has just forgotten how to play the accordion along with everything else.)

Either way, it's kind of hard to ignore the sound of someone butchering Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. ]

3. DREAMS
3.a. a glorified hall monitor
[ James is here, but not the way you know him.

Most obviously, his arms have been switched--it's the left that's flesh now, and the right that's robotic. His hair is cut short. But other than that, his clothes and the eyeliner smeared across his eyes like a domino mask look pretty par for the course for James Barnes.

He (and you, now) stand in a long, possibly endless, high school hallway. There are endless rows of lockers and the walls are plastered in school spirit posters that look more like propaganda. James stands a good hundred feet away, posed in the center of the hallway with his arms crossed sternly. ]

Hey, you!

[ He approaches in (what he hopes is) a menacing stride. ]

Where's your hall pass?

3.b. i'd call this a teacher au except it's canon
[ In this one, James is much older--in his late 20s, perhaps. He stands at the head of a classroom of several large men who all look like they could easily be supersoldiers in their own right, if they weren't comically crammed into school desks. The writing on the chalkboard is in Russian, and everyone is speaking it too--but let's say for the sake of convenience that even a dream onlooker can understand it. A huge chunk of the classroom's wall appears to be a mirror, but upon closer inspection, the vague dark shape of a group of men behind it can just barely be made out.

James sharply taps a piece of chalk on the chalkboard and looks out sternly over his students. ]

Someone holds a door open for you as you enter a cafe. What do you do? You have five seconds to answer.

3.c. out of body experience
[ This time, there are two Jameses. One lays in a hospital bed, bandages on his hand and torso and cheek, with a tube snaking out from his chest to one of several machines at his bedside. There's no prosthetic in sight, so his left sleeve is completely empty. He's trying to read through a small pile of magazines sat in his lap, but doesn't appear to be focusing on the words. After a few moments, he grits his teeth as he tears several pages right out of the magazine in jerky motions, crumples up the pages, and chucks them at the wall as hard as he can.

The second James sits in a visitor's chair in the hospital room. He watches the first James in the hospital bed, impassive but curious, almost as if he's studying him. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

James tries to keep up a good poker face, but his expression only grows more confused as Togusa talks. Was Malik the at-fault driver in this car accident?

He responds--seemingly both for himself as well as for Bucky, who's glaring at Togusa but doesn't speak.

"Why would I be pissed off? What do you mean, you 'profited'?"

The dream state follows Togusa’s unconscious, and his image shimmers for an instant. When James refocuses on him, Togusa is no longer in uniform, but khakis and a suit jacket, and his newer badge is in hand. He offers it over for James to see. Detective Togusa. “...I guess you never worked out the timing.”

“October, finding you and Dante and Cleo. Rosalind and Katherine, Tateyama, Vasilieva, Kaiba.” He can list it all out. “From the top brass perspective, that looked like a god damn hero move. Dramatic rescue, saving a bunch of young adults, it hit all the right notes. That’s what made them decide to finally promote me.” There is a deep cutting bitterness to his tone. “Never mind that the whole situation shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Or that we should have noticed you were missing sooner.”

Togusa spreads his hands out to the sides again in a helpless shrug of frustration. “Or that Retospec shouldn’t have given Malik a damn voice in his head. Nobody else can see what’s really going on, so I got rewarded for it, and you have every right to be pissed at me for it.”

When James sees the badge, he immediately seizes up. He knows he shouldn't, it's a dead obvious giveaway, but he can't help it. He didn't realize he was talking to someone from the police this whole time. He rapidly falls silent, replaying everything in his head, trying to see if he said anything incriminating at all. Granted, he doesn't have enough mission parameters in his head for there to be anything incriminating, but this is still cutting way closer than he'd like or prepared for.

Bucky, on the other hand, raises an eyebrow and gives Togusa a skeptical look. If he could, he'd be crossing his arms right now. While James is frozen in place, it's Bucky who responds.

"Really? That's what you've been feeling guilty about? Why the hell would I care about that? It's not like you caused the accident in the first place just so you could get promoted."

Togusa has to stop, because two really strange things just happened there. His brow furrows tightly in confusion, and he puts his badge away, absently pointing a finger at both James and Bucky in a 'hold on a second' motion. He looks between them, like he is trying to figure it all out.

He speaks slowly, not accusatorily, but very very confused. To James, pointing extra with his left hand, "I thought you already knew about my promotion, that's why I was in classes for those months instead of on patrol."

But he slowly looks at Bucky, "...but more importantly, what the hell do you mean accident!?" The word almost sounds like it makes Togusa sick. "This was no accident, and you've been the most hardline about putting the blame squarely where it belongs on Malik and Retrospec. Don't- doubt that, I want you to move on, yeah, but-" A very severe shake of his head, because this isn't James moving on, something is wrong here.

"What the hell changed your tune?"

James works his mouth, eyes open wide as he stalls to try and figure out what the hell is going on or what to even say. He is completely out of his depth here--he has nowhere near enough information to figure out what to say, nor does he understand what's at stake or how much the other version of him even knows. There's too many variables at play for him to even begin to understand what he ought to say.

Thankfully, Bucky picks up the slack. "Whatever. Accident or not, it doesn't matter. The point is, you had nothing to do with it happening. So you don't get to feel guilty about it."

Togusa's head is still spinning from the both of them. He thought he had a handle on what the hell this was, but that handle is completely gone now. He struggles for a word, but he instead settles for the first thing that popped into his head. "Bullshit. I just- what even is this? I want you to be okay with what happened, to eventually find some damn peace in it all. But sitting here and denying the facts is just as bad."

"Malik was at fault. Retrospec was at fault. What he did to you was intentional. Intentional on the part of something that Retrospec put in his head, yeah. But intentional. You're allowed to be pissed off over it, and if me trying to help you heal has gotten twisted up into the thought that you have to brush it all off? You don't."

But there is something the hell else going on here. Togusa's hand raises, runs through his head in sheer frustration, making the ends of his hair stick out.

James looks down at his hands and tries to digest all of this. He'd assumed that there was some massive accident that injured seven people, himself included. But now Togusa is saying that everything that happened was intentional on Malik's part, and that Retrospec was somehow involved too. Does that mean Malik's the reason he's missing an arm?

How does a person even react to that? James, having neither experienced this incident nor known Malik, doesn't particularly care or feel any way about it himself--but he knows he's supposed to. Togusa makes it sound like he's supposed to be angry, and Bucky certainly was a few moments ago, but--angry how? Angry why? How does that translate into something he can express?

But then Bucky speaks up, seemingly answering James's own questions. "I'm not brushing it off. I'm just saying, you don't get to feel bad about it. And it was dumb of me to get so pissed off about it in the first place anyway."

If Togusa looks, he might see that even James is shocked by those words.

Togusa is going to have to deal with James later, because somehow Bucky has figured out the precise thing to say to get Togusa even more incensed. "What are we just strangers now? I don't get to feel bad when bad shit happens to you?" His mouth isn't even closing all the way in sheer shock. "Get it through your head that I care about you, James. You don't have to earn it, even when you fuck up, you don't have to get back in my good graces."

Togusa's arms fold tightly, almost self-protectively. Muttered in frustration. "You even did stop setting things on fire when I asked you to, so I thought we were past this."

Looking Bucky right in the eye. "I. Care. About. You. And it was right of you to get pissed off. What other reaction would anybody expect out of you? You haven't- gone after him or anything. So I know it could have been so much worse. You've been doing a good job dealing with it. If I haven't said that out loud yet."

Bucky lets out a sharp laugh. "Is that what passes for a 'good job' with me now? Not assaulting someone?" He's trying not to sound like he's choked up, but he definitely is. He can accept the rest of what Togusa just said, but that's the bit that immediately elicits a reaction from him.

Togusa's heart sinks right into his shoes, and he could kick the crap out of himself right now. Great job, dad. Remind him of his screwups when he's already down.

"That's not what I meant," stop that. Don't defend your actions, make up for it. His mouth forms a tight line. Breathe. Think again.

"You have every right to be as angry as you are over Malik and the warehouse and what he did to you all. I know I haven't always reacted the best way in how that anger just- comes out. I don't want you to lash out and hurt somebody else in that anger, more so because those are the actions that you'll regret."

Togusa puts a hand out towards the bed, resting on the guard rail, not daring to touch Bucky, but close enough to get his attention. "But you've been doing so well. You have been moving on. And what you have been doing is enough. I know you're doing all you can, and I am proud of you for it."

Bucky cannot deal with this right now. This amount of support and sympathy and pride in him just feels wrong and misplaced. He draws his knees up and buries his face in them, wrapping himself up into a sitting ball. For a few moments, he doesn't move or say anything.

Then, muffled: "You don't know anything."

Togusa lets him retreat, gladly. This whole conversation has drilled straight down to the nerves for the both of them. If he is feeling too vulnerable, needs another layer between them, he lets him take it.

Gently, keeping the supportive tone in his voice, even if he expects this will get another reaction from Bucky. "I know you didn't deserve this. And you don't deserve it still affecting you."

For a moment, James is forgotten in the chair behind him.

Bucky's tone suddenly grows angry and grows more to a shout. His whole body tenses.

"Shut up! What do you know about what I deserve?"

The windows grow bars on them, as if the hospital room is trying its best to be a prison cell.

Oh, are we shouting now? We're shouting now. Togusa is glad to take the bait.

"Frankly, what do you know, either!? You're so hard on yourself that you can't see it clearly when you actually need a break! Can't you just trust in what someone else sees in you for once?"

James is still sitting in the corner, rubbing his temple with one hand. He feels like he's watching children fight.

"Obviously not, because you're not even seeing me, you're seeing him!" Bucky points straight at James, who straightens up in alarm.

The statement startles Togusa exactly the same, and his head whips around to look at James, then slowly back to Bucky. "...what am I missing here, what's the difference?"

What the hell is James trying to tell him? "The both of you are the same." A gesture at Bucky in the hospital bed. "There'll always be a part of you stuck here, so long as you let it be. But you're working on it."

Bucky laughs sharply.

"It was never about being stuck here." He jerks his head over to James. "He's just better at lying."

James, for his part, is too busy opening and closing his mouth like a fish to even formulate a response.

That confused but slightly piercing look swings back to James. Togusa is far too good at piecing a puzzle together, and James might think he’s a good liar? But, “You’ve never lied to me. Not intentionally.”

“Why do you think you’re lying now?” A glance back at Bucky, but no. He’s just told Togusa which one matters. “What is this really about, then? Why are we here?” Back to the beginning of their exchange, the question he never got answered.

Shit. If he weren't scrambling so hard for what to do here, he'd shoot Bucky a dirty look. Instead, he tries running through all the potential excuses he can think of. Not that there are any--he feels like his head is completely empty and it's making him start to panic.

Eventually, James settles on: "...I don't know."

And that much, at least, is the truth.

An unfortunate truth that sounds like a lie, especially with the way James is visibly panicking. He can’t say that it doesn’t hurt a little to see that look aimed at him. “But there is something you dont want me to know.”

Togusa sighs, the long-beleagured sigh of a parent. “I said you’ve never lied to me. You’ve hidden things before, but if I work out the right question and ask it, you tell the truth. I hope it’s because you trust me. Maybe it’s because you’re afraid I’d leave if you lied.”

He stops, even Togusa can feel that he is on some kind of precipice. “But you’re scared of me asking the right question. I dont want to put you in that position. I wont force an answer out of you. I will not do it.”

“James, I’m here to help. What is it you need help with?”

He feels like he has to give Togusa something. The man is already suspicious of him, so to keep denying it wouldn't help alleviate it...maybe if he gives him something, on his own terms, then it will satisfy him enough to leave James alone. Or, a little more alone, anyway. (What is it with how paternal he's being?)

The question is just, what can he give Togusa to work with?

"I..." He sighs. "I don't remember how I lost my arm." He assumes that's what this hospital stay was about, anyway--and he definitely doesn't remember it. Maybe if he admits to at least this tiny gap in his memories, it will explain enough of the odd behavior to defuse whatever mess this has devolved into.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do now." (Also, technically, not a lie--he's been waiting for orders, but he doesn't know when or how he'll get them...and he's starting to wonder if they even exist at all.)

Togusa stops, and he frowns deeper. He of course thinks that James means the memory of the other James. "How he did, you mean." But Togusa's usual constant protest of one self versus the other is a lot weaker. "Retrospec hasn't shown you that yet."

His brow furrows tightly. "Do you want to? Whenever these memories come back, it's like we're reliving them in the moment. Would you really want to remember-" getting an arm ripped off? "-whatever it is that happened?"

Togusa puts a hand to a specific spot on his chest. "However the other Togusa got shot? I sure as hell don't want to know." Half a lie.

James looks confused for a moment, but then he thinks he pieces it together. Togusa seems to think that the arm loss is related to this "past life" thing Retrospec is doing with them, not to whatever mysterious thing Malik did to land him in the hospital.

It's definitely not the interpretation he was expecting, and James looks down for a few moments, trying to figure out what to even say to that now that what he expected of the conversation has gone off the rails.

"Is it better to live the rest of my life not knowing how I ended up the way I am?"

Togusa's eyes squeeze shut. That hand on his chest clenches over the spot of his bullet wound. "It's not your life..." The objection dies quickly. "But you do have to live with the consequences of his actions. It's not fair at all."

His eyes open again and look at James seriously. "You're braver than I am, if you'd rather face this head on." Togusa doesn't want to know. He truly doesn't. Every once in a while, he can still hear Grell trying to calmly inform him that the size of the wounds indicate he was shot in the back. He is far too afraid of what that could mean.

Togusa looks down, a single mocking laugh leaves him. "Supposed to be the adult here, supposed to be helping protect you. But if this isn't a sign that I actually can't do that? And you never asked me to anyway."

In reality, the loss of his arm doesn't bother him. It's how he's always been, he's never known anything else--why would it bother him? He was just using it as an excuse.

The question still holds true, though--he's used to not knowing anything about himself. In fact, it's kind of an asset in his work. Not having anything to himself makes it easy to slip into being anybody else. But what he's doing here...is not the same. He doesn't normally replace someone literally--and even then, he doesn't get haunted by strange vision-dreams of their actual lives. He can't be as disconnected from his cover as he usually is.

"It's not brave. But if I have to live with it, I want to know about it. How am I supposed to know what to do next if I don't know what's already happened?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i was a high school atom bomb

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject