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]

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.

[championofsnark]

Oh, people are married with kids by that point in some of our villages. That's definitely not a kid.

[Thus why she was aiming so low in the age department. A child felt like ten, and a kid more like twelve to fourteen. Hawke was young when she basically took over the family with her father's death. But that's the time period she's from. She started fighting and hunting as a child.]

The giant itself wasn't a superweapon? It sounds a bit like one.

[Although only one being and not a bomb which can do far more danger.]

Did it have ice magic? My sister used to freeze my bed as a prank when we were younger. My least favorite element.