[for Spud]

[onlyapassenger]

It's almost quaint, Bucky thinks. Here he is, sitting across from a fellow vet, armed with a cup of tea sweetened with honey and a combat knife strapped on his thigh. He opted to shower first, as much for Spud's benefit as his own, and it makes for a surprisingly nice way to unwind after a long night's work, the pair of them sitting on Bucky's porch.

"Told you I did tea," he says, spooning more honey into his cup.

Comments

[sorrydearie]

"I could actually. My father was Irish." He would spare Bucky the accent though he was still more than capable of producing it if he had to. The boyhood Celtic phase may have been relatively shortlived, but its influence was still present years later.

"Laurence Patrick Odell, son of Michael Patrick Odell of the Dublin Odells," he said, gesturing rather grandly to himself with his free hand. "Hence Spuddy."

[onlyapassenger]

"Huh. And so your secret origin's revealed," Bucky notes, amused. "I'd wondered where Spuddy came from. A little less obvious than mine, but it makes sense."

[sorrydearie]

"Well, I'd hardly call it secret, even if my mother's family would probably have preferred it if it was." As if making a conscious effort to distance himself from his Irish heritage, Laurie took a reserved, polite sip of his tea, as English as he could be. All the while he was aware of laying it on a bit thick solely for Bucky's benefit. "Instead it's largely unmentioned, as though willfully ignoring it will make the history disappear eventually."

[onlyapassenger]

"My best friend's Irish-American," Bucky replies, rolling his eyes a little at the show. "Never saw anything wrong with that, so damn what anyone else might say."

Given his own life, however, Bucky lacks most of the prejudices of his era; the extent of politically correct language eludes him at times, but his mistakes come from a lack of knowledge instead of any malice, and it's the one area where he's always quick to offer an apology and correct himself. Growing up around a man like Steve, anything less wouldn't have been tolerated.

[sorrydearie]

"Normally very little is said about it at all," Laurie said, keeping up that bit of reserve till the conversation would no longer require it. "My father left when I was quite young and died not long after." After the divorce, but that most definitely had never been mentioned in polite conversation. Laurie couldn't picture his mother willingly discussing it with anyone, no matter the circumstances. So he would not discuss it either, old fashioned as the notion might have been.

"I went rather Irish during school. Of course, it didn't help with the nickname and if I had known I'd be joining the army later on ..."

[onlyapassenger]

"Don't think anyone could blame for not knowing," Bucky replies, mouth quirking a little. History makes the advent of the second war seem all but inevitable, but he remembers growing up at the time. No one wanted another war, not after the first one.

[sorrydearie]

Laurie nodded, making an affirmative noise into his tea. He wouldn't have minded changing the subject. He may not have known war was coming, but at least when it did come he had stood up and volunteered to do his bit. He had been able to contribute, no matter how briefly, to something bigger than himself. It was a feeling that Laurie rather missed.

"How are things progressing below us? I've heard that the situation's been getting a bit tricky of late."

[onlyapassenger]

"'Tricky' about covers it," Bucky admits, dragging a hand over his face. He nearly drowned, again, just a few days ago, and while he's had a number of close calls in the years he's been on the Island, while he walked away just fine, the events of that early morning mission have been playing on a loop in his mind's eye every time he has a quiet moment to himself.

"We're making progress, but not fast enough for my liking."

[sorrydearie]

"I sometimes wish I could go and help you lot."

He resisted the urge to touch his knee self-consciously. Of course, there was no need for Laurie's moments of guilt. Most of the island seemed more than happy to sit safely above ground, awaiting results as a select few did the work, and he supposed he ought to do the same.

"Mind, it's only sometimes."

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky gets it, he does, both at a personal level and having watched all these ex-superheroes still trying to make a difference even if they've been stripped of all the powers that had allowed them to help out at home. But there's more than one way to help, and he looks at Spud with a steady expression.

"This is helping," he says, gesturing to the tea. "Know it doesn't seem like much, but having a reason to come up for air got me through today's shift."

[sorrydearie]

"Well, then. If keeping the home fires burning is what I'm best suited to, I'll have to keep on doing so," Laurie replied. It wasn't exactly what he would have wanted to hear, but he smiled slightly anyway. Acting dissatisfied with his lot wouldn't help anyone now would it?

"Surely the prospect of a bit of tea wasn't the only thing though."

[onlyapassenger]

"You'd be surprised," Bucky replies, glancing away. He shakes his head a little, dismissing an unvoiced thought and picks up his cup.

"But enough about me. How've you been?"

[sorrydearie]

"Much the same as always. The bookshelf finally saw fit to give me a decent book and that singularly momentous occasion has been the highlight of my week." Such was the state of his life. While Bucky fought monsters, Laurie had won a minor victory against the bookshelf. Embarrassment caught up with him and he took a prolonged sip of tea, reddening somewhat.

"Between medical appointments and boredom very little actually happens to me here."

[onlyapassenger]

"Anything they can do for your leg?"

He doesn't usually ask -- he barely pays it any mind, in fact -- but it's a change in conversation. "Just with medical advances and all... The breadth of knowledge those doctors have here would put a field medic to shame."

[sorrydearie]

Laurie only just managed to avoid rubbing at his knee. Instead he began to play distractedly with the stick leaning against his chair. "Dr. McCoy seems to think he could do it some good, but only with more surgery. I've been under the knife three times before coming here though and I'm not exactly in any hurry to do it again."

[onlyapassenger]

"I don't blame you," Bucky replies, mouth twisting into a sympathetic line. He's not crazy about doctors as a general rule, and surgery is something he'd be just as eager to avoid.

"But the option's there, at least, right?"

[sorrydearie]

"Yes. I suppose I oughtn't grumble though. After all, I still have the old leg in one piece which is more than a lot of chaps can say. Really I'm quite lucky." The forced cheeriness felt uncomfortably sour in his mouth even as it was all too familiar. How often had he gone through the same routine back in England? Though, at least then it had served some purpose as everyone tried to stave off the general desperation of 1940.

Laurie had little doubt that on Tabula Rasa he could be as unrepentantly miserable about his leg as he pleased without anyone accusing him of spreading gloom and despondency.

Yet that didn't mean he intended to.

[onlyapassenger]

"Your leg and your life," Bucky agrees. He'd lost just about everything in the explosion that has cost him his life, so the loss of his arm seemed secondary at the end of the day. Still, there are moments he wishes he still had some sensation; as good as it is not to feel pain in a fight, domestic moments aren't quite the same.

He changes the subject. "What's your favorite thing about the future, anyhow?"

[sorrydearie]

Laurie paused for a time, tea halted just at his lips, and looked incredulously at Bucky over the rim of the cup. "I hardly think I'm qualified to say. There is an underwater city beneath my feet, there are dinosaurs on the other side of the fence, and I'm surrounded by time travellers. This isn't the future. This is a poorly plotted science fiction story." He took his delayed sip, thought a moment more, then continued with a shrug.

"If we were somewhere a little less fantastic perhaps it would be easier to separate the future from the impossible."

[onlyapassenger]

"I don't know, seems a lot like the future to me," says Bucky, shrugging a little. Spud might as well have described home, though Bucky's taken care to avoid mention of the more complicated parts of his personal history.

"Anything's possible. If that's not the takeaway from this place, I'm not sure what is."

[sorrydearie]

The disbelieving look on Laurie's face went nowhere, though it was now mixed with the faintest hint of a smile. Clearly Bucky was having a bit of a joke at his expense. The future surely couldn't be remotely like the oddities that surrounded him. "Some things maybe, but don't tell me dinosaurs have become the done thing in the year 2013."

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky thinks it over for a second, then says, "...well, actually..."

His version of the future likely isn't the same as what Spud would experience, though. Maybe in his world, dinosaurs don't occasionally find their way to the streets of New York.

He shakes his head a little and adds, "...you know, uh. I've seen it. The future, I mean. Or mine, at least. And not in some dream or trick this place pulled, the real thing."

[sorrydearie]

"How? You were in the war." That much was obvious. Laurie was positive that Bucky would never have lied about that. But how could he have seen the future when he barely looked older than Laurie did? If it was still some sort of joke, it wasn't a very funny one. "And you look ... You couldn't have been very far into it."

[onlyapassenger]

"I look good for my age," says Bucky, a wry smile quirking his lips. He sighs, sitting back in his chair. It's easy around Spud, ignoring all the things that came after his death, but it's disingenuous to an extent, to pretend that nothing did.

"Know what you were saying before, about a poorly plotted science fiction story?"

[sorrydearie]

"Oh God. Is this the part where you bring forth the hidden flying saucer or time machine, or reveal that it was all a Martian plot?" Amongst his normal diet of adventure books, Laurie had read more than his fair share of science fiction as a boy, ranging from the decent to the inexcusably terrible. His brain was more than capable of supplying wildly varying possible explanations for Bucky's claims.

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky snorts, though there's not much humor to it.

"Anything in your stories about being frozen?"

[sorrydearie]

He did, as a matter of fact, dimly remember reading about bodies frozen and reawakened in the distant future, but Laurie shook his head, a gesture that spoke more of disbelief than of any actual willingness to completely disagree with Bucky. He simply couldn't picture the man in front of him stuck in some sort of ice box, waiting to be thawed out. "You're pulling my leg now."

[onlyapassenger]

"Wish I was," he replies, meaning it. "I was born in '25 and died in '45, but I didn't stay dead for very long. The Soviets pulled me out of the English Channel a couple months later, and things just got worse from there."

He pauses a moment and looks down. "It's a long story. Figured it'd just weird you out so I haven't said anything."

[sorrydearie]

"Yes. Yes, I suppose it is the sort of thing that would... weird you out." He tried his hardest not to gape like an idiot, but what Bucky was saying was incredible. How was one meant to respond to that?

"It's all just ... Now don't take this personally, but, well, it's a bit difficult to believe really."

[onlyapassenger]

"What if I told you I had proof on me?" he asks, glancing up at Spud. He taps on his left arm, the one that looks, for all appearances, as real and warm as his right, thanks to a very sophisticated hologram.

"This is a fake."

[sorrydearie]

"If it is a fake, it's a damn good one. It looks more real than one of my own arms." A substantial part of Laurie continued to hope that it was all still an elaborate prank. It was easier to accept than the possibility that Bucky might be something other than just a fellow soldier.

[onlyapassenger]

"Welcome to the future," he replies with a one-shouldered shrug.

He eyes Spud more carefully, and then decides, "You're freaked out."

[sorrydearie]

He drank some more tea, his hands and motions steady as a rock, just to show how unaffected he was. "I am not freaked out. I'm merely trying to take it all in, that's all."

[onlyapassenger]

"I'm still a soldier," Bucky says, wondering if it wasn't a mistake to tell him anything, "who fought in the same war you did. That part's the same, promise. I just saw a little more of the aftermath, is all."

[sorrydearie]

"Oh, I believe you. It doesn't change any of that." Laurie frowned, his brow furrowing. Trying to make sense of everything that Bucky had said was giving him a headache. "I'm just trying to make sense of it still, that's all. You've got to admit it sounds incredible."

[onlyapassenger]

"I'm not the most unbiased judge," Bucky points out, holding his cup between his hands and tilting it , absently, from side to side. "It's just my life, you know? I've heard more incredible things."

He's quick to add, "Which I'll keep to myself so I don't give you an aneurysm."

[sorrydearie]

"Thanks." Laurie threw a somewhat wry look in Bucky's direction. He was struck by a sudden, childish urge to demand the other man prove it all, like one schoolboy refusing to believe another's story until a suitably convincing souvenir was produced. Naturally, he couldn't and didn't say anything of the kind, but the thread of disbelief was still there, woven through everything he thought and said.

"You know, you've made my own life look dreadfully dull by comparison."

[onlyapassenger]

"That really wasn't my intention," Bucky replies, blinking up at Spud. "Just..." He pushes out a breath and leans back in his chair. "You're a friend. Seemed a weird thing to keep lying about, even just through omission."

There are other secrets he isn't so eager to share. That he worked for the Soviets, that he was brainwashed, all the terrible things he'd done as one of the world's most deadliest and efficient assassins... Telling Spud that he saw the future seemed the most harmless. His fingers itched over the button that controls the hologram on his arm, but Bucky doesn't press it.

"Would showing you help or are you gonna keep looking at me like I'm a liar?"

[sorrydearie]

"It couldn't hurt." Laurie shrugged, finishing the last of his tea, but not putting down the cup. Holding it wasn't much, but at least it gave him something to occupy his hands with. "Though it's not because I think you're a liar. Honestly, it's not."

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky sighs, dubious, but after another moment's hesitation, he presses the button. Flesh and muscle seems to melt away, leaving gleaming metal in its place, a white star encased in a blue circle outlined in red marking his shoulder. He holds out his arm, palm flat, and flexes his fingers into a fist.

"Not a liar."

[sorrydearie]

"I didn't say you were," Laurie said after a long pause. His hand twitched for a quick moment as though he was seriously contemplating touching it, then drew back. "Christ, that's bloody impressive."

[onlyapassenger]

"You can touch it," Bucky replies, rolling his eyes a little. "Not that I'll feel it. The hologram -- what hides it -- simulates the look and feel of flesh when I need to pass for normal, but it's for everyone else's benefit, not mine."

[sorrydearie]

So this was the future. Laurie brushed his fingers hesitantly over Bucky's arm, somehow still half expecting to meet flesh instead of the shock of cold metal. It was enough to occasion a low, impressed whistle. He had seen more than his share of artificial limbs, but none that had come anywhere near as complex and functional as that. "I know chaps at home who'd have done just about anything for one like that."

[onlyapassenger]

"The original model was Soviet tech built in '45," Bucky explains, slowly flexing his fingers so Spud can see the machinery at work. "Didn't have all the bells and whistles like this one, but it did its job. Still... Not so far off as all that."

[sorrydearie]

"I am well and truly impressed, Mr. Barnes," Laurie said, settling back in his chair, but still watching the other man move his mechanical hand. He could only imagine what life might be like if they had amputated his leg, if he had been able to get something like that to replace it.

"Well and truly impressed. Upon my honor, I shall never doubt you again. Even when it comes to dinosaurs."