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[riskless]

@nile.freeman | ■ ▲ ◌ ▼

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[deadthenred]

I turned twenty in 1945. [ And that was the last birthday he got in the proper order. He's closer to 90 than 100, thanks. ] It's not what you're thinkin', though.

[ Whether it's vampires, or something else. ]

[riskless]

[ there's no dramatic wtf, she already knew he was old. ] I turned twenty in 2014. [ she is a child compared to all the old men and old andy she apparently knows, but that doesn't make her childlike. ]

My only thoughts are vampire or immortality, so any third options are definitely gonna need explanation. [ a beat. ] And to be clear, that's immortality without the need for blood sucking.

[deadthenred]

[ He frowns. ]

Immortality and slowed aging aren't the same thing. [ But that's not the point, so he switches the subject. ]

You wanted to know what happened to me, after the war. I blew off my arm in '45, fell into a coma, and when I woke up it was 2015.

[ Which is true, more or less, but he's leaving something out. ]

[riskless]

Technically you never said anything about slow aging till just now.

[ she pauses a moment to wonder if their limbs grow back? has andy ever lost an arm? joe a leg? when she thinks about it, she still has a lot of questions. ]

Cryogenics? [ yes she knows a fancy word or two! ]

[deadthenred]

[ Bucky doesn't exactly recommend the "losing an arm" experience, but to be plain, he doesn't remember most of it.

He nods, once. Not as large a gesture as the ones he used to make. ]

I blew my arm off and fell a few dozen feet into the North Atlantic, so that's probably where they got the idea.

[ Bucky really hopes this doesn't turn into a discussion on who "they" were. He ain't sure he's ready for that. So instead, he tries to steer the subject. ]

In my world, the '40s was when powers first started showing up. Men who could fly, or lift tanks like they were paper, that sorta thing.

[riskless]

Sounds like the ocean might have prepared you for the upcoming deep freeze. [ ayyyy. was that bad?? maybe it was bad. ]

We don't have superpowers like that. No crazy strength or anything. Just the healing, and that's a couple thousand years old. But there aren't too many of us, only a handful at a time.

That mean you have a power too?

[deadthenred]

It didn't, but that's a nice thought. [ Is he sore on this subject? He might be sore on this subject. ]

And no, I don't have powers. [ But he has to correct himself. ] I mean, I guess here— [ Everyone gets a power, but, he's not thrilled about that, and it shows on his face. ]

[riskless]

[ wHOOPS! she will back off that trajectory, but offhand jokes are her default to lighten the mood, or to distract herself from her own stresses. she just has to work on what works with bucky. ]

I lost my healing basically as soon as I got it. Feels like some shit luck, considering I'm not even at home. But I got a new one. Not sure which I'd prefer. What do you have now?

[deadthenred]

Nah, it's fine. [ It isn't fine. But Bucky doesn't know how to talk about his trauma. It's not something they teach you how to do in the Army, or in KGB school. And so he usually winds up feeling awkward, or makin' someone else feel awkward.

He's definitely cagier in real life than he was in the dream. Smaller, somehow, even if he takes up less physical space. Cagey. ]

And maybe it isn't unlucky. [ But what does he know about powers? ] I mean, it'd be worse if you got used to it, and had to fight without it. [ He's fought Wolverine; he knows how he leaves openings that'd get anyone else disembowled. ]

Crappy to end up here, though.

[riskless]

[ he is super cagey, but she's not particularly bothered by it. he went through the second world war and was frozen in for decades, for thus far reasons unknown. she doesn't miss the way he completely avoids her question about what he has now, but. she won't press. (yet.) ]

I'm probably in a better place than the others, but it woulda been a nice gift to have when I don't know what's happening in this place. [ how is she supposed to throw herself out of windows now? ]

At least I still remember how to fight without it. [ not that someone like andy needs that. nile doesn't think anyone could beat that woman, immortality or otherwise. ] I'm not about to have an identity crisis over suddenly losing it.

[deadthenred]

Who wants to live forever, huh? [ He has definitely not heard the Queen song. He is pop culture illiterate, unless you're talking Bogart. ]

Hard to die here, as long as you got backup. [ At least, death from misadventure. The medical tech is good enough to take care of it. ] Still, s'weird they'd take it away, just to give you something else.

[riskless]

[ the song IMMEDIATELY gets stuck in her head. it's a miracle she doesn't start singing it tbh. ] Forever's a pretty hard concept. The woman who found me, explained it all - she's thousands of years old.

[ and nile knows it to be true, but it's still wild to think about. ]

Yeah, I got the impression that the medical levels of this world are highkey advanced. Immortality's not the worst thing to lose in that scenario, as long as it can bring me back from a neck wound just the same.

[deadthenred]

Yeah. Think I'm gonna try not breaking my neck, anyway. [ He says this. He even means it. But Bucky's never lived a life that would keep himself safe. ]

I wanna go back, if I can. [ Do most of the Displaced want that? Likely. He'd like to go a back a good bit farther than most. Sometimes he catches light reflecting black across the skyline, and there's nothing he wants more than for it to be 1945 again.

It's something his father told him once: People are built to crave impossible things. ]

Dying makes everything tricky.

[riskless]

I prefer a broken neck to getting stabbed in the neck. [ she is speaking from experience. ]

Me too. [ she's got her new family here, and that should be enough, but it still isn't the same. nile knows they'll all help out, it's simply what they do. ] Nothing against any new powers, but I know I'm gonna miss home.

[ a beat. ] I've already died a couple times now. I wonder how well the medi-units hold up against that.

[deadthenred]

[ Bucky has died three times, and he's been lucky that it's never stuck. Still, the way she says that— ]

And you knew you were gonna come back?

[riskless]

Yeah, for all of them except the first, the neck stabbing. I was in active duty, got hit, thought I was gonna die, so when I woke up without a scratch from a gaping wound, it was pretty alarming. Andy's the one who found me before they shipped me out for all kinds of tests.

[ a beat. ] I broke my neck and several other bones jumping out a window about - eighteen stories up? Fastest way to take a man down when you know you'll survive the fall in the end.

[deadthenred]

You can just shoot people in the head, you know. That trick works pretty well.

[ Says Bucky "I tried to jump off the Statue of Liberty onto a Nazi with a jetpack" Barnes, sole arbiter of sanity. ]

[riskless]

I didn't have enough time to shoot him first. It was part take him out quickly, part using my own body as a shield. I took him with me.

[ if she shot merrick, he would have shot andy in the same breath. better to yeet him out the window with herself in tow, clearly. ]

[deadthenred]

[ Despite having been a professional killer longer than most people have been alive, Bucky finds doesn't want to talk about all the ways he's found to end a life, quickly and otherwise.

So instead he says, with a twist in his lip: ]

I don't like heights.

[riskless]

I wasn't really thinking about the height part.

[ she knows she pressed a button to go up an elevator in the first place, but the whole ordeal sort of took precedence over what floor she was on. ]

I just wanted to save Andy.

[deadthenred]

Yeah.

[ He exhales, heavy. Bucky understands that, at least. Hell, that was how he blew off his arm.

That had also involved falling from quite a distance. But he wasn't thinking about that, at the time. ]

[riskless]

That's what it has to be about. Saving people, helping people. Honestly, there's a lot to grapple with about... all of it.

But I don't want you to think my violence is for the sake of it.

[ she did decapitate a vampire, with relative familiarity, right in front of him, and openly admitted to pushing a guy out the window with her. ]

[deadthenred]

It doesn't matter what I think. [ He shakes his head. ]

I mean, not that it doesn't matter. I just got no place to judge.

[ But that doesn't help either. You have to make those justifications, draw those lines, in order to keep going. In order to live with yourself. Bucky does it all the time. ]

[riskless]

I wouldn't have accepted judgement anyway. [ she is half teasing, half truthful. ]

Still wanted to offer it. I've gone on missions with ageless people before, but none involved vampirism till now.

cw: mentions of gore, bad historical myths

[deadthenred]

You should've seen the one with the frost giant. [ Not the first part of it— there was a nasty Nazi blood ritual that involved Atlantean sacrifices. That part wasn't fun at all. Or the part that came after, with the Hammers of the Serpent turned a bunch of supervillains into second rate gods.

But the frost giant fight was fun. ]