aperturesubject0001: (Wheatfield)
Chell [Redacted] ([personal profile] aperturesubject0001) wrote in [community profile] silentspringlogs2024-03-03 08:15 am

[ota] February/March Catch-All

Who: Chell and her new neighbors!
When: Some February, mostly March
Where: Around and about!
Open/Closed: Noted in starters
Applicable warnings: Feb TDM warnings may apply; descriptions of agoraphobia. Anything that comes up will be in the comment headers.




a. The Errands - OTA, early February
Once the smoke clears, and people are allowed out of their houses again, Chell is faced with a brand new test: grocery shopping.

It's not like she's never done it before. She knows she has. Her memories of life before waking up in Aperture may be hazy in places, but she certainly knows that she used to go to the store and buy food and probably even make it sometimes, although she also has a feeling she used to eat a lot of microwave meals. That's not an option here. And her household has gone through most of the easy-to-prepare stuff like canned food during the lockdown, so now she needs to go restock.

And the thing is -- the thing is, Chell has faced down giant mashy plates with spikes and arrays of turrets training their sights on her and bombs and floors covered in toxic waste. A grocery store should be no problem. And yet, faced with the aisles of food, the people, the constant mechanical whirr and ching of the cash registers, Chell is finding herself uncharacteristically overwhelmed. She can't see the exits when she's trying to pick between oatmeal and cream of wheat. Everyone else seems to be moving with certainty and purpose where she's a welter of indecision and nerves. What if she picks the wrong thing? What if everything is poisoned? What if something comes through the door? What if she throws up? What if--?

All of which has resulted in Chell standing in front of the freezer case for at least five minutes, looking more like a deer in the headlights than a shopper. She moves out of the way when other customers need to get past her, but she doesn't seem quite able to shake herself into either picking something or moving along herself.

b. The Zoomies - mid-March, OTA
It's been several weeks of adjustment, and the idea that Chell doesn't need to be running for her life and probably isn't going to be put into cryosleep unexpectedly is starting to sink in. That hot urgency that propelled her through testing chamber after testing chamber is being replaced with a cool, prickly unease that never entirely goes away.

Unease, and boredom, particularly as the weather gets nicer and there's reason to be outside. Mid-March finds her in the park pretty regularly, despite the masses of pigeons, power-walking laps around the pond and the edge of the park. Occasionally -- very occasionally, and usually only if she thinks she won't be observed, because she's already gotten some odd looks for it from the locals -- her energy gets the better of her and she breaks into a sprint for a few dozen meters, her skirt fluttering indecorously and her jacket flapping behind her. Then she brakes to a walk again, breathing hard.

Who'd have thought that a whole town could still feel as enclosed as a salt mine?
freakymagoo: (258)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-11 03:55 am (UTC)(link)
He doesn't need to know how to sign to be able to tell she's afraid of him. For now he reasons that it's a good thing. Even if she doesn't recognise him, the Soldier's reputation is a double-edged sword he's contended with for many decades. Rather she not fuck with him than launch straight into mind games.

He doesn't have much exposure to signing beyond military commands so he isn't able to understand everything she's trying to tell him. He is, however, very comfortable with silence. He doesn't respond, the rusted old gears in his mind groaning as they turn while he figures out what he should do next. She looks genuinely confused, but he doesn't trust her. Should he test her? Try to find some identification? Murder her on the front lawn?

Clenching his teeth, he decides against the latter. He should at least murder her quietly in the basement. No witnesses. No reconditioning program.

He leaves her standing there while he retreats back into the house. He should turn on the radio, check the pager thing. See if anyone's mentioned anything. While he closes the door, he doesn't lock it. Although hopefully she doesn't go wandering around too much if she decides to come back in... in a previous fit of paranoia he's booby trapped the back door and the basement entrance, various other doors and windows.
freakymagoo: (246)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-15 07:07 pm (UTC)(link)
By the time she returns, he's already checked everything he needs to check and found every avenue of potential answers to be rather unsatisfying. Of course, he was aware that other people who showed up in Sweetwater like him, out of place and out of time, are housed together with people they don't know. Hasn't met anyone whose pretend spouse showed up many weeks later though. Nor has anyone mentioned that their photographs and wardrobes magically changed.

But he's managed to ascertain that she's supposed to be in the house, with him. And this is all her stuff. And he's already removed some of the booby traps so she won't get hurt, although he isn't taking all of them down. He might be newly married but he's not stupid. He'll just tell her about the ones he left up and expect her to be careful.

He's standing silently at the top of the stairs, pillow clutched under his arm, watching her inspecting the inexplicable photo of them. Just one of several disconcerting photos sprinkled around the house.

"You can have the bedroom." His voice sounds a little haunted, a little empty as it rolls lowly down the stairs. "I'll be on the couch."
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[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-15 10:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Where did she even get the rock from? Whatever. He seems interested enough to stare and squint, but doesn't ask in the end. He starts down the stairs, grunting when she points out the photograph. His dog tags read his full name, James Buchanan Barnes and she'll be able to get a good look at it as he makes his way past her and steps into the lounge.

"Yeah. I know. Congratulations," he says dryly. She won the lottery here, stuck with the asshole of the neighbourhood. Look, he didn't choose any of this, and clearly neither did she.

"I'm your man now." Tossing the pillow onto the edge of the couch, he rubs his face a few times tiredly. He realises she might have a hundred questions, and he's not exactly being fully cooperative and eager and enthusiastic about this sudden new arrangement. He'll warm up to her eventually. For now he doesn't fully trust her. And truth be told he doesn't much like the idea of a complete stranger living with him. Figuring him out. Seeing him like this.

"When did you get here?"
freakymagoo: (200)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-16 08:58 am (UTC)(link)
Oh.

Oh...

"Um... hold on." Teetering somewhere between awkward and embarrassed, Bucky moves to the kitchen and grabs the shopping list pad that's magneted to the fridge. There's proper stationery upstairs but they'll probably have to go out and buy more. She might need to go through entire notebooks to have a conversation. Or at least have an entire notebook of pre-written responses and questions she can flip around to.

She gets half the pad and the red pen placed in front of her. He holds onto the other half and the black pen.

name = Bucky
military sign only
I will learn yours
are you hurt?


No expectation that they will have to be penpals permanently. But no promises on how fast he can start to communicate with her either.
freakymagoo: (037)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-16 07:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Sweetwater in Maryland
its 1960


When she is is just as important as where she is. As for who is in charge, his eyebrows furrow and he hesitates. He realises he doesn't have to write back, he could just tell her. But he doesn't know exactly who is in charge. He's still convinced it's HYDRA. But people here either genuinely don't know about HYDRA or everyone around him is trying to gaslight him. Again. And it's difficult to talk about HYDRA when they're supposed to play the all-American nuclear family part. It's difficult to have those affiliations, even though he's renounced them time and time again.

you broke into my bedroom
put your clothes in my wardrobe
didnt set off any booby traps
photoshopped yourself into my photos
slept in my bed


Shifty eyes. Squinting. What's the normal reaction to a home invasion? Invite her to stay in his bed and offer her breakfast?

trust no one
freakymagoo: (258)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-18 01:52 pm (UTC)(link)
He looks at her like something might be moving on her face. What does she mean by 'no'? Yesterday she was not in the photos. Today she is in the photos. The only reason he isn't stomping his foot and calling her out is because he knows he's been an unreliable narrator in his own life story. He doesn't fully trust his own grip on reality. Maybe she was in the photos all along and he just-- well. He doesn't know. But his mind does abnormal things to protect him from all these cumulative damages.

maybe
thought it was 2024
but I dont know


Far be it from him to convince her that he's the leading authority on the fabric of their current reality. He's still trying to figure out if the last 65 years happened at all or which part of what he thinks has happened is just part of a long cryo fever dream.

ok
same
but 3 months ago
freakymagoo: (246)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-20 02:01 am (UTC)(link)
is it?

He's willing to take what she's saying at face value. It's not the craziest thing he would have heard so far. And time travel hasn't been that weird since, well. Since that's how they saved the world, the last time he saw Steve.

dont know aperture
camera company?
dont do anything stupid
mad scientist doc


There's no way to talk about Doctor Norman that sounds less crazy or conspiratorial, but he wouldn't wish that reconditioning fate upon anyone. Not least of which because being strapped to a chair and electrocuted is kind of doubly traumatic for him, much as he pretends it doesn't affect him anymore.
freakymagoo: (057)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-20 05:09 am (UTC)(link)
Shower curtains? Bucky tips his head, still not sure what 'aperture' is exactly, and also trying to join the dots between those three things. It's starting to sound like some kind of smart home feature where people can... maybe portal out of their showers and have some machine autonomously draw their shower curtains...?

He has no interest in talking about his time spent with Doctor Norman - or anyone else's time, really. So he goes back to what he'd written before and underlines:

dont do anything stupid
freakymagoo: (037)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-21 02:30 am (UTC)(link)
He doesn't need to know how to understand sign to be able to read annoyance.

attacking the locals
asking too many questions
talking about the internet
sympathise with Nazis


His perpetually furrowed eyebrows deepen as he tears off the paper, lets her read his scrawl - look it's not as easy writing with one hand without the other hand to hold the paper still - and continues his seemingly random list of sins on the next sheet.

stop pretending to be a God fearing American
question or subvert authority
dye your hair pink
take laxatives with sleeping pills


Struggling to think if he's missed anything...

making escape plans on the pager
using the pager in general
eyes and ears everywhere

any questions?
freakymagoo: (246)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-22 03:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Well. She's going to find out that he's a man of two extremes. Either he will be excruciatingly vague and she has to decipher what all those grunts, chuffs, growls and groans are supposed to mean. Or she'll find him following directions to a tee. But having a sustained, semi-normal conversation, either written or signed or spoken - that's going to be quite a challenge for him.

He nods once, firmly, when she pockets the sheet. No idea what she's going to do with it. It was just a random dump of... recommendations to keep her head down and try and make it through this place in one piece. He didn't even expect her to take him all that seriously, truth be told.

Her question has him leaning back a bit, tilting his head, pursing his lips. What does a God fearing American act like? It's a weird question. One nobody's asked him before. This time he gives it some thought before he starts writing, so as he tears off that sheet and starts with a new list - although it is still a jumble of Sunday school, pre-WWII propaganda, Sweetwater conditioning, the man everybody else thought Steve Rogers was, and the man Bucky wishes he could be - it hopefully seems a little more coherent than the last list.

be kind to your neighbour
accept others differences
stand up for what you believe in
help and protect people
be fair honest and humble
go to church on Sundays
call your mom and tell her everything
work hard and dont cause trouble
and dont be an asshole


Of course, this is not the world he'd come from. It certainly isn't what Brooklyn looks like in 2024. But it may have never been what Brooklyn looked like in 1943, or before. It may have been what Uncle Sam told him he was killing other people for, what he would have liked to have died for. But it's not what Bucky went back to. And sadly, Sweetwater might be perpetuating more of these false comforts than any place or time Bucky has been through, as manufactured and plastic as the world around them is.
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[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-24 01:02 am (UTC)(link)
me neither

Well, actually, he-- hasn't looked his family up yet. He-- probably should? Try to connect with one sister at least? They won't be in Maryland but there should be a way to find them. He starts to turn away as that train of thought has him going down a dangerous path of hypotheticals and even a glimmer of hope. But his own family is mostly something of his past. The woman in front of him remains his priority and he promptly snaps out of it.

good gossip
befriend the locals
find alibis
itll be good for you
freakymagoo: (Default)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-24 03:26 am (UTC)(link)
She'll come to figure out soon enough that her husband is a 'do what I say, not what I do' kind of guy. Just one of many horrendously unendearing qualities about him. Hopefully in time she'll find a few redeeming things she can put up with at least...

cant leave
if you get caught theyll hurt you


He might not be telling her everything, but he's not being deliberately vague either. He just doesn't want her to get hurt. He doesn't want anyone in this town to get hurt.

i didnt mean to hurt you

Just in case she starts thinking he's part of whatever grander conspiracy is at work here. He did pull a knife on her after all.
freakymagoo: (188)

[personal profile] freakymagoo 2024-03-24 03:25 pm (UTC)(link)
He shakes his head. Maybe that's not universal for 'no', he doesn't know. But there's no God-fearing American man who would kick his wife out to the couch while he takes the bed. And Bucky's relationship with God might be on the rocks - hasn't been on anything more than shaky ground for eighty years now - but in some ways he is still traditional enough to be able to pass off as a local around here.

i dont sleep on beds

Which doesn't explain how he got into the bed last night, but then, she doesn't have an explanation for how she got in there either.

back door boobytrapped
and basement door
dont open
leftover mac cheese if you hungry


He'll convert those boobytraps to a trip wire at some point later today so she won't accidentally get herself killed. And they'll figure this... domestic situation out.

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