these are the times that try

[deadthenred]

WHO: Bucky Barnes + various
WHERE: Red Wings, the safehouse, ???
WHEN: Late March.
WHAT: Catch-all log for March, with some open prompts.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: N/A, will update if it changes.

[ Prompts are in the comments below. PM or message me at lightfellows if you'd like a closed starter. ]

Comments

[deadthenred]

Yeah, but it's not gonna be fair to that person either, and there'll be more mess.

[ This is an idiot who volunteered for military service. He figures he still gets to complain about it. ]

For me, it was always peeling the potatoes. I convinced 'em it'd take longer for me to scrub the baseboards because I was shorter than everyone else.

[ He isn't short now, a little bit taller than Hawke, even. ]

Worked most of the time.

[championofsnark]

Ah, a do-gooder. Good on you. [It is said with warm appreciation, if not a quality she openly shares most of the time. Hawke saves lives and takes care of people, or she used to, but she usually got embarrassed if anyone pointed it out. She is quite respectful toward others who do it more openly though.]

Maybe we should make a list or something. Mum tried to do that with us and chores. [It didn't work. But it was at least an attempt. She raises an eyebrow at him because he's not short in the least, not now.]

You were a youngster when you started then? I was a scrawly little thing myself.

[deadthenred]

[ Bucky doesn't really think of himself as a do-gooder, but he's not gonna protest. He has learned from experience self-loathing isn't as charming as it seems. ]

I didn't hit my growth spurt until I was around twenty. [ And by around twenty he means he's actually not sure because that was when the Soviets started keeping him on ice. ]

Before then, I was always small for my age.

[championofsnark]

My brother was around seventeen before that. One day he was this little snot and then the next day he was a taller snot.

[Hawke's her tone is light, despite the fact the was is intentional. Her brother's been dead for ten years but he lives brightly in her mind regardless. Loss is a part of the grim reality that is her life. She tries not to dwell as much as possible and remember the good parts.

She goes and gets a cloth so she can help dry off the plates, content at least to contribute in some small way when he's being helpful. She pauses and offers a gloved hand to him. She learned early on in this place to wear gloves at all times.] Hawke. Like the bird, with an E at the end.

[deadthenred]

That's how it works.

[ Bucky catches the past tense, but he's not gonna push her on it. What he does is think of his own kid sister— who's nintey-one going in ninety-two. He'd visited her, to tell her that he wasn't dead, and everything else besides, but who knows how much she really heard. Age had put holes in her mind, her hearing. Time did that. ]

Here, lemme just—

[ He takes the rag she's brought over and dries his hands off. ]

Bucky Barnes. Bucky with a y at the end, Barnes with a B.

[ Since she's wearing gloves, he won't bother switching to his left hand to shake. ]

[championofsnark]

Bucky Barnes, hmm, it really bounces off the tongue doesn't it?

[There's a ring to it, she means. It's very easy to remember. She shakes his hand firmly.]

You being a military man, do you prefer Barnes or Bucky?

[It's not entirely the reason for why she goes by Hawke solely, but it is a part of it. They definitely went by last names and it always suited her more than her old woman first name Marian. Of which she's already sulking about being in her name on that magic network thing.]

What's the arm made of? I've never seen one like that. Is the armor over the armor is the arm just made of armor?

[It might not be polite to ask about a limb like that, but she also doesn't tiptoe well.]

[deadthenred]

Doesn't matter. Been out for a while.

[ Out of the Army, anyway. 'Course, most people called him Bucky even then. He's got a handshake that has been through many USO tours. ]

It's a prosthetic. Metal the whole way through.

[ He doesn't seem bothered by the question, though. ]

[championofsnark]

I'll go with Bucky. [She likes the name. It's unique to her. She grins a little.] Hopefully you won't buck the name off. [Absolutely no regrets about puns. Ever. Her friends have tried and she just laughs.]

Brilliant, that must be helpful. It looks like it packs a wallop, break a face in one go. Have you tried out the fighting rings yet? You look like you could clean up.

[Muscular and with a bit of competent confidence to him. Hawke knows a fighter when she sees one. She's often fighting herself, the only way she can get her erratic energy out.]

[deadthenred]

No. [ He shakes his head, then grabs another dirty plate. Bucky's had some bad experiences in sketchy underground fighting rings. He doesn't like to fight for money, or gain. But— he can't deny that's his skillset. ]

Are the fighters there any good?

[championofsnark]

Some of them are extremely good, and the rest are likely to get better the more the snot is kicked out of them.

[Hawke's always done better learning from her failures and she is making a name for herself more for her cheery conversation in a fight than her actual skills, although those are decent too.]

I'm used to being one of the best warriors in my area, so there was some pride swallowing at first.

[The Champion is not a title for someone who is nice to animals and gives great hugs, it's for the best killer in the city. At least that's the way she sees it.]

[deadthenred]

Really? [ He raises an eyebrow at that. Not a skeptical eyebrow— she clocks like she could handle herself in a fight. But a "maybe it would be fun to spar sometime" eyebrow.

Though, his last attempt at friendly sparring did not go well. ]

I've taken a few punches in my time. [ He smiles just a little, though it's a dumb thing to brag about. ] And I need money. I just— I dunno. Bad memories.

[championofsnark]

Really. [Hawke's grin is fast and bright, like a flash of sunlight.] I usually look a lot more intimidating with my armor and collection of sharp pointy things.

[She looks like she can fight, but only seeing her in motion really sells the level of expertise. She prefers looking like she's fairly average otherwise. Hawke doesn't like standing out, despite the life she ended up choosing. She chuckles at his reference to punches.]

You've got the look. And the money is good.

[She tilts her head at the last part but there understanding in her pale eyes.]

You could always start small and go from there, but there's other things to do here that don't require being punched. Probably. You could become a professional dish washer.

[deadthenred]

Armor?

[ Like Iron Man? Probably not like Iron Man, right? ]

I think doin' this professionally would earn me some weird looks. [ Because there's no way he could keep gloves on the whole time.
He doesn't mind people asking about his arm in the Safehouse, but outside it's a whole other ballgame.

Still. There's some dignity in being a professional dishwasher. He wouldn't look down on it. ]

I was thinking maybe construction.

[championofsnark]

Yeah, armor. Cheastplates, boots, gloves, helmets. Irons and metals mixed with cloth and leather.

[So not like Iron Man, medieval style. Hawke's armor is not top of the line either, especially not recently. It's well used and it fits and suits her, so she doesn't care that much, but there are shinier sets out there worth more. She's always preferred quality of movement and speed than brute strength. She misses walking around with it; it's difficult not to feel exposed everywhere she walks.

She also doesn't look down on dishwashing. In Kirkwall that'd be considered a good career, one less likely to lead to being stabbed in the street. ]

Well you do look very strong, which I assume would help in construction. [He has excellent tone, she admires that in anyone.] Is the arm helpful then? If I didn't see you using it now I might think it just something visual, not useful.

[Hawke's terribly curious and she's never seen anything quite like it. It moves as well as a normal arm.]

Do you have normal feeling in it? [After a beat.] Sorry about all the questions, I can be a pest. Feel free to tell me to fuck off at any time.

[deadthenred]

[ He actually thinks that's pretty neat. He liked Prince Valiant when he was a kid. But Bucky gets the sense that he'll be answering the questions, for now. And he probably couldn't match Hawke's nosiness if she tried.

He doesn't tell her to fuck off. ]

I— [ But he isn't sure where to start, or how much to say. It's also not something he really thinks about. ] It isn't like a real arm. I can feel some things— [ Pressure, mostly— he knows when someone's touching it, or when he's holding something. ] But not the same way.

[ Warmth. It was hard to feel warmth. ]

It's a lot stronger than my other arm, though.

[ And he kind of grins when he says that. Bucky does like punching stuff. ]

[championofsnark]

Ooh, an upgrade of sorts in that way then.

[Hawke is somewhat able to control herself in the way that she doesn't ask him to touch the arm or poke at it; she has some boundaries. Barely. Although just thinking about doing that makes her curious yet again.]

Does the empathy bond happen with it? I suppose it wouldn't necessarily need to be skin to skin with us, yeah?

[There's a reason Hawke keeps gloves. She's already incapable of stopping herself from wandering through people's dreams, so it seems only fair to respect physical distances too. She can't help her curiosity; she's a little bored, for one, and also fucking lonely despite having been on her own for months before this. Being around her best friend again, before coming here, made that gaps more noticeable. She hungers for conversation, like most extroverts.]

I came very close to getting my leg torn off by a dragon once.

[deadthenred]

No, it—

[ Bucky had to wear gloves, anyway, before coming here, to give him the illusion of normalcy. He is not a very touchy person. The arm, though, isn't his skin, and he can't feel things the same through it, anyway. ]

A dragon?

[ That's a lot, even for him. He wants to hear about the dragon. ]

[championofsnark]

[That's interesting. And probably a relief. It would mean he could at least use one hand to deal with people without worrying about transferring anything. Hawke's fine with gloves, she wore them plenty in her day-to-day life since she carries weapons and doesn't wear down her hands. She's still adjusting though.

Hawke grins, her eyes lighting up. She always likes talking about dragons.]

Yeah! She was a high dragon, red, beautiful, ferocious. It's a good thing we got her to land because I wasn't great at fighting anything that high above me.

[They had long range weapons but nothing that could really attract a dragon. She came down to deal with those pesky mortals and ended up paying for it. But Hawke loves dragons.]

There's a variety of dragons that prey on certain territories, and people always end up irritating them and need saving.

[deadthenred]

How big are we talkin'? [ Fin Fang Foom size? Sue him, he still likes a good adventure story, and that's clear from how his demeanor changes. Not that he shows much emotion, either way, but his interest in this dragon is more than politeness. ]

And why do people build where the dragons are?

[ Probably because they haven't got much choice. That's usually how it works. ]

[championofsnark]

[Her eyebrows furrow as she thinks through the best way to represent its size. Hmm. She moves her hands small and wide, but it's not as if she can express the size of a dragon with her arm length.]

I'd say the size of a fancy Imperium ship? The biggest kind. Vaguely. Possibly bigger.

[Of course her only frames of reference are things that fit within her world. But she thinks about it and nods. Isabela's ship would have been too small, but she could see Tevinter coming along with something giant enough to suit a dragon. Nothing like it has come into Kirkwall though, otherwise she'd be able to point to it. She doesn't know if that's helpful to someone not from the area.]

It hasn't exactly been a choice. Sometimes they leave them alone, but then trade routes are the only way to keep your family alive, so. [She shrugs. They take the chance. Or beg the Champion to handle it for them.] That beauty had cut off an entire trade route to my city from the north, eating or burning everyone coming by. So they made sad starving villager eyes at me until I went.

[deadthenred]

Yeah. I guess you don't always get to pick the easy paths.

[ He immediately thinks of an aircraft carrier, but no. That's probably not right. The scale is completely beyond him. ]

I killed a frost giant once, when I was a kid. [ Back when he had two regular arms. Is he bragging? He might be bragging. ] I'm gonna pretend it was that size.

[championofsnark]

Well if it isn't dragons on the path it's some other kind of beast. As someone who once lived in the middle of fucking nowhere, there's always something trying to eat you.

[It's said very matter-of-factly because it is a matter of fact. Hawke and her family came to Kirkwall to try and outrun the Darkspawn and all that came with it. She's not a city girl by birth, otherwise she wouldn't know how to live off the land. Not that it matters in this place in the least; no land to find life out of.

Her eyes brighten at that story; she is duly impressed! Bragging approved!]

Oh that's brilliant, you mean frost as in has ice powers too? [She grins at him.] And as a child too? How did you manage that?

[deadthenred]

I was a kid, not a child. [ He was what, eighteen? ] Anyway, I just threw a grenade at it.

[ He's not so great at this storytelling. His training is all in leaving out the details, not filling them in all pretty. But he realizes Hawke might not know what a grenade is, so he's quick to add— ]

That's… like a bomb, I guess, small enough to throw. There's supposed to be a bunch of different kinds of giants. The frost giants live in the cold. They don't like being blown up.

sorry for the wait *waves at life*

[championofsnark]

What is a kid compared to a child for you? Eight? Twelve?

[She is about to ask what a grenade is, so good call on that, when he explains instead. Hawke listens, very enraptured by it.]

A bomb you can throw easily with your hand? [That's very interesting! Hawke is not terribly fond of bombs herself, having a terrorist ex, but this is more of a fantastical story than that.] Well no one really does like being blown up. It's terribly inconvenient.

[Hawke's curiosity is ever burning.] Why were you fighting frost giants?

no kidding

[deadthenred]

Seventeen? Eighteen? [ He'd have to think about the timeline. ] I hated when people called me a kid.

[ He's older now, old enough to recognize how young he really was. How young so many of them were, really, in that war. Still hasn't unpacked that, really. ]

Heard rumors of some kinda magic Nazi superweapon. Went to do recon. Then the frost giant decided to fight us.