[EP] dated for January 10th

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky had been counting the days to January 6th since the first of December, as eager to get his old arm back as he was for the initial change of scenery, but the date came and went with little ceremony and no magical return to the status quo. While he'd hesitate to call himself surly as a result of this, he hasn't exactly been a bucket of sunshine, either.

His temper short and his patience shot, Bucky's tried his damnedest to keep his chin up as the days stretch on, but there's only so much to be done about a clockwork arm that's been in a state of constant repair since the New Year. He's been going without it, lately, not wanting the hassle while he goes about his business, but this afternoon was meant to be the exception. He'd worn the damn thing so he could go get food for the house only for it to become dead weight before he could get to any shop. Closer to the Compound than he is to home, he ducks inside in the hopes he could fix the damn thing and go about this day, but even this plan doesn't go without obstacle.

Seated in the corner of the Rec Room, his left arm detached and laying motionless on a table, he's nearly done with the temporary patch up job when--

"Dammit," Bucky mutters under his breath, the tool he's using slipping from his grasp when he turns it a hair too hard and it catches. While he doesn't care to be doing such technical work out in the open in the first place, with limited options, he's making do. Still, frustrated, he backs up his chair and kneels to the ground to retrieve the screwdriver.

Distantly, he's aware he's attracted some attention, but at the moment, he doesn't care too much about saying hello.

A public EP, open to anyone; played in a private journal just because it's predated.

Comments

[radicalize]

Determined though Lucy had been not to let herself fall apart this time, that she wasn't herself was a fact made plainly apparent. She'd barely slept, barely eaten, looked far less put together than she usually did; the ring she had worn for months was no longer around her finger, and she seemed more withdrawn than was customary for her, like she had retreated into herself, gone quiet rather than looking for a fight. There wasn't anything to fight, and that was part of the problem. Railing against nothing would only leave her more exhausted than she was already, and three days after the fact, she was utterly drained. She had things to do, arrangements to make (or to break, rather, the wedding having been in the works since summer), but doing them made it all seem so fucking final, and while she'd rather have put everything behind her, working up the energy to do so was a different story. It took enough out of her to keep it together at home, to make sure she was okay in front of Samantha. The rest of the time was a different story.

Not the sort to hole up inside, though, and needing both the air and to be around people, she had ventured up to the building that the Compound had become; coming across Bucky there was unplanned, but probably fortunate. It was about time she found him, to let him know that plans had changed. Taking a seat just nearby, she just looked at him for a moment, grateful that he was still there at all, before she drew in a deep breath and spoke. "Hey," she said, quiet, more for what she seemed to be interrupting than any reasons of her own. "Everything okay?"

[onlyapassenger]

"My arm's sitting on a table," is Bucky's terse reply as he resurfaces, face flushed, but screwdriver in hand. He's distracted enough that he doesn't bother looking over to Lucy until he's managed to get a grip of the screw again, though by the time he does, his arm goes all but forgotten. Somehow he doesn't even to ask what's wrong; it's written plain across her face. They've been through this before, the two of them, though now, there's no file to burn.

"...when?"

[radicalize]

On more than one occasion, Bucky had called her an open book, someone who wore her bleeding heart on her sleeve, and other variations on the same. Lucy had never disputed it, either, well aware of the truth inherent in such claims. So it was that she wasn't as surprised as she could have been when he knew at just a glance what had happened. This wasn't the first time he'd seen her in such a state, anyway, though it was different with Pete than it had been with Bruce, whose name was really Bryce, whom it was possible she had never known at all. It was a whole future that had been pulled out from under her this time. Somewhere, deep down, she was painfully resentful of that, but mostly, she was just fucking tired.

"Couple of days ago," she answered, teeth pressing briefly to her lower lip. "Guess I shouldn't really be surprised, right?"

[onlyapassenger]

The first thing he wants to tell her is that she should've come to him sooner. That he could've helped her, though he doesn't know how. There's no helping someone through a loss of this magnitude; there's simply being there when needed. Not wanting to give her the impression that he's blaming her, however, when nothing else could be further from the truth, he just drops what he's holding, and turns in his chair to face her fully.

"C'mere," he says, waving her towards him with his one arm, and doing his damnedest not to feel as ridiculous as he probably looks. It's just not fair that she'd have to go through another loss so soon, but then, nothing about life is fair. He learned that lesson a long time ago; why it keeps surprising him so many years later is a mystery.

[radicalize]

At the invitation, Lucy didn't hesitate to move towards him, not worrying, for the moment, that he had an arm on the table that apparently needed to be worked on. Maybe it was selfish of her, but she so rarely was that she supposed she could be forgiven for it this once. Having another shoulder to lean on, even just someone else whom this place hadn't taken away, meant the world, and though she had every intention of putting that into words, for the moment, she didn't know how to. There was too much and not enough to say all at once. Even having long since gotten used to this, it never actually got any easier, nor did the fact of that become any less difficult to cope with.

"It's just the way things go around here," she murmured, half to herself, a little dazed despite her best efforts not to be. "I know that. I knew that going into this, and it still..."

[onlyapassenger]

"Doesn't make it any easier," he finishes for her, the words half lost in her hair. Distantly, he wonders if he's really the right person to be comforting anyone through loss; though he's undoubtedly suffered it himself, more times than he can count, he's also been the cause of such a loss, and it feels almost wrong to play this role. But then he reminds himself that he's one of the people she has left, and it's not his job to take that away from her, too.

[radicalize]

Face pressed into his shoulder, Lucy nodded as much as she could without pulling away, figuring that summed it up pretty well. She ought to have been used to it, she thought, and in a sense, she was, but it hurt just as much as ever, if not more so, with every person who went, every loss she was left to pick up the pieces from. Right now, though, it was at least a little easier not to focus quite so hard on that. Max had been gone for ages — almost two whole fucking years, if she remembered right — but there was a reason why she'd asked Bucky to be the one to give her away, back when she still had a wedding to plan. He was the closest thing to family she had, and she would have been crazy not to be grateful for that now.

"It really doesn't," she murmured, her own words half-muffled. "Even when you think it should, it doesn't. It won't."

[onlyapassenger]

"You don't want it to get easier," he mutters, almost hoping she doesn't hear him, that she doesn't ask him to repeat himself. While he doesn't -- and wouldn't -- wish her to suffer, there's a measure of relief that she's not yet hardened enough to not feel each disappearance as keenly as the first. She's too pure -- too good -- to lose that spark, and though this place might seek to test her, she hasn't yet failed in that regard.

He worries about the day she does, and if he'll still be here to see it.

[radicalize]

Though half-aware that he'd said something, the words themselves got lost somewhere in there. It was like she'd said to Mathias, though, that maybe she still hadn't learned and maybe she never would, but she was — anyone was — better off for it. That didn't help her any now, though, still raw from the loss itself. There was more she could have said, that she wanted to, but as much as she wished she were able, she didn't have it in her to tell him thanks anyway for having agreed to give her away but it, for obvious reasons, wouldn't be necessary now. They'd barely planned for the wedding, but that didn't make it any less difficult to consider that it wasn't going to be happening.

"Thanks," she said instead, figuring that would suffice. It wasn't nearly enough, but it was something, and there was so little to say at a time like this anyway. "For — being here. And all."

[onlyapassenger]

"I'll be here as long as I'm able," he assures her. It's the only promise that's his to give, but it bears saying all the same. For as long as the bastards running this place allows him the opportunity to be there for her, he will be. Anything else would be unconscionable.

"So you don't need to thank me."

[radicalize]

No one was going to be here forever. That was all but guaranteed, only emphasized in Pete's disappearance. For now, though, as long as he was able was something to be grateful for in itself, and Lucy nodded, the motion slight but perceptible. "I'm just really glad you're not gone," she murmured. Everything had changed and it hadn't at the same time, but at least some things were consistent, some people not yet vanished like so many others had.

[prodigaljaybird]

For all his hero worship, Jason doesn't have Bucky's schedule memorized. Still, upon entering the Compound, it's a surprise to spy a familiar back hunched over a rec room table, Bucky's expression dark when Jason comes around to look at it, and his arm lying akimbo across the wood.

"Shit," Jason exhales, "is it busted?"

[onlyapassenger]

"Again," Bucky huffs, and screwdriver still in hand, he rakes his fingers back through his hair, mussing up the part. The damn thing works well enough when everything's in order, heavy though it is, but he's aching to get his old arm back. He'd even take the original Soviet version if it meant not having to do constant repair on something he'd like to use all the time.

"Frigging Victorian clockwork."

[prodigaljaybird]

"Let me do it," says Jason, sitting across from him. He's not yet been allowed to, always catching the ill-humored aftermath of a clockwork breakdown and not the malfunction itself, but he can do it. One can't be both a motorcycle rider and an expert bomb maker without being a total gearhead, too.

"It's gotta be hard enough with only one hand to work with."

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky considers the offer for longer than he has any right to, then slides both arm and tool over a few inches in mostly silent acceptance, a barely audible grunt accompanying the movement. He's not above getting help under the right circumstances, he just wishes this particular circumstance wasn't a problem, period.

[prodigaljaybird]

Jason grabs up both and gets to work; once he really gets in there, it's easy to see where the problem lies. It just needs a little time and some elbow grease, as Alfred would say.

"Thing's'll be back to normal soon," he says as he works, absently wiping a smudge of gear grease across his cheek. "Won't have to worry about all this clockwork bullshit then."

[onlyapassenger]

If Nick Fury ever makes his way to this godforsaken rock, Bucky'll be the first to shake his hand to thank him for the upgrade; he never realized just how much of an improvement the S.H.I.E.L.D. arm had been until he was forced to live with this piece of junk that was pretty to look at, but nothing else.

"Or so we hope."

[prodigaljaybird]

"It has to," says Jason, a quick flash of petulance over his features before it's replaced with concentration. "This endless cloudy gray crap is even worse than Gotham's. I want to see sunshine. I never got the damn flu in the sunshine."

[onlyapassenger]

"Still don't know why you got the flu here," says Bucky, looking almost smug for a moment before the expression passes, like an older brother needling the younger.

Given the reminder, though, Bucky has to wonder if the weather was less of a factor than the stress of Bruce Wayne's arrival weakening the kid's immune system. After over a year of relatively sedentary living, it had to have been a hell of a shock -- the worry, the anxiety. The few moments of terror they'd experienced over the past few months were easy to bury, to move on from. But Wayne is a constant, now, always there, and not a force easily forgotten.

"I like England. I just don't like what it's trying to pass off for technology. This'd be dated in my day."

[prodigaljaybird]

Jason grins. If his own fair youth has left him too frail and delicate to resist the flu, he's pretty sure Bucky's incredible old age is fair game. Still, Bucky could kick his ass eight ways from Sunday one-armed, and Jason waits a beat before deciding it's safe to tease.

"Really?" he asks, pulling a tiny wrench from his own pocket. He's been meaning to make Lux one of the birds like they sell in the stores, and it's a better fit for the loose gear beneath his fingers. "Did you say shit like 'guvnuh' and 'good chap?'"

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky snorts, kicking back in his chair while he watches Jason work. He likes being in the thick of things, but in this instance, looking over the kid's shoulder isn't going to do any good.

"Never seriously," he replies with a roll of his eyes.

[prodigaljaybird]

"You totally did," Jason replies, aiming another grin through the fall of his hair. The shock of white still startles him at times, the streak now long enough that even he can see it if it falls just so, and he blinks before combing it out of his way.

"Tell you what, I bet you the snow will be gone in a week, and if it's not, I'll become a chimney sweep."

[onlyapassenger]

"Gonna do a dance number, too?" Bucky asks, brows shooting upwards as he coughs out a laugh. "Sing a song? Pretty sure we got a broom in the closet at home. You could start rehearsing tonight."

[prodigaljaybird]

"You'd kick me out faster than I could turn around," Jason laughs. "Pretty sure my singing'd make your ears bleed, anyway. But I'll wear one of those goofy little cap things."

[onlyapassenger]

"What, singing wasn't part of your training?" says Bucky, clucking his tongue in mock disappointment. "Jeez, what do you kids learn these days?"

[onlyforthedream]

I shrug out of the heavy, military green wool jacket I've taken to wearing and drop it over the back of a chair before walk around it, frowning a little.

"Is it giving you trouble?"

[onlyapassenger]

"Yeah," replies Bucky, not bothering to cover up his annoyance, even around Steve. There was a time, just a few short months ago, that he might've tried to slap on a happy face, but he's too frustrated to make nice, and Steve's seen him in worst shape than this.

"Gears keep jamming up. I don't know if it's cause of the cold or just shoddy workmanship."

[onlyforthedream]

"Don't we know someone?" I ask, sitting.

"I feel like we should know someone who specializes in this kind of thing."

Someone other than Tony Stark. That much doesn't need saying.

[onlyapassenger]

"I'm a decent mechanic, but I couldn't build something like this from the ground up," Bucky admits. His specialty runs more along the lines of guns and motorcycles and battlefield ingenuity. Rigging up a clockwork arm with Victorian technology isn't, exactly, his field. It probably isn't Stark's, either, but the guy has a bigger pool of knowledge to draw from, if nothing else.

Even so, he's not someone whose expertise Bucky is eager to seek out.

"There's probably someone around here who'd be willing to help, but mostly I'm just holding out hope that it goes away soon."

[onlyforthedream]

"I'm sure it will," I say, hoping to be reassuring without blowing smoke.

"By all reports, this doesn't last long. Still, if it keeps acting up, there's got to be someone we're at least passingly acquainted with. Maybe one of the kids. I think Hank mentioned Rogue used to work on the X-Men's Blackbird, as well. There should be some options."

[onlyapassenger]

"Well, it's already three days longer than last year," says Bucky with a tight smile, huffing out a breath as he finishes tightening one of the screws.

"I thought about asking Peter, but I haven't seen him around since the party."

[onlyforthedream]

I frown a little, at that. The city's big, but not that big.

"No?"

[onlyapassenger]

"Haven't really been looking, granted," Bucky replies with a shrug, apparently not too concerned. For as volatile as Peter's been since his wife disappeared, he seemed calm enough lately, if a bit subdued.

"...should I be?"

[onlyforthedream]

I shake my head a little. The change in the island and my new position on the council has changed our schedule, but I should see Peter soon enough.

"No. I'm sure he's just busy." Probably climbing the walls, or bridges, or whatever else he can get his hands on.

"Is there anything I can do?" I ask, nodding to the arm.

[onlyapassenger]

"Find the guy who gave me this damn thing so I can punch him in the face," offers Bucky, tone joking for all that the request is perfectly sincere. "That doable, Mr. Councilman?"

[onlyforthedream]

"For such an upstanding citizen as yourself?" I reply.

"I'll see what I can do."