silentspringlogs | Part Three: The Drive

It's hard not to be defensive when Arthur is making that face. Also, Bucky can't help but be a little miffed that some British guy, going by his accent, is preaching to him of all people about freedom. The same kind of freedom that gets pedaled to all these stars and stripes folks that he's apparently concerned about on a regular basis. The same kind of freedom that Bucky had fought and for all intents and purposes died for. That does not exist. That has never existed.

That Sweetwater is the kind of place HYDRA always wanted to build using the same mechanisms that HYDRA knew best how to manipulate doesn't escape his notice. He doesn't want to defend them, but. That doesn't mean he can't see that not all the outcomes are bad.

"This war is real. I was there. I'm not saying that being Big Brother's toys is good for anybody. But you're not doing anyone any favours by coming in with your ideals and 'liberating' this place."

"The only people I want to liberate are our own," he says coldly. "And I'm not so naive as to think we have even a chance of saving the locals. You can only help people that want to be helped, and these people have proven that they are too far gone, time and time again."

If they're so stupid as to let themselves be taken in by this fucking cult, if they weren't strong enough in their resolve to keep trying no matter what, then they deserve whatever the fuck happened to them. But Arthur refuses to let himself be manipulated like that.

"I'm not just going to sit here and let Pollock fucking torture us into compliance." It's a dark, furious mutter as he keeps walking, but it's more of a declaration to himself than a snarl at Bucky. "I am the captain of my soul. No one else."

"It's not so simple," Bucky says quietly. If Steve had just given up on him the way Arthur's giving up on everyone here, Bucky wouldn't be here today. Granted not everybody has the patience nor the personal investment nor the determination to take on this Sisyphean effort and push this insurmountable boulder over the hill. But someone has to try to at least get these people to wake up and want something better for themselves, even if there's no point trying to free them, or save them.

He's spent many years with several men like Pollock - not that he wants to talk about it, at all - but. It's not about resolve. Even the coldest, hardest, strongest, most battle-tested and defiant bed of rock gets worn down by that steady trickle of water in the end. He watches Arthur storm away, silently following. In time maybe he'll come to understand. Bucky didn't hate every single moment of his time with men like Pollock. And he's not weak or delusional or stupid for it.

Or, well. Who knows. Maybe Arthur's right. Maybe Bucky wasn't strong enough after all. If that's the case, they have nothing to worry about then.

"Regardless." They have better things to worry about than what the locals were getting up to behind closed doors, how they were letting themselves be sucked into this bullshit.

Arthur wasn't going to let himself be that stupid. Not now, not ever again.

"We ought to get someone to check the whole perimeter at some point. There might well be something off the main paths that we didn't travel far out enough to find. It would make more sense to stay as far from the roads as possible if someone wanted to set up an exit through this thing."

Bucky grunts. Regardless of whoever that 'someone' is - even if Bucky were to go himself, which he likely would, perhaps tomorrow, although he's not sure if he could cover it in a day - he's pretty sure Arthur won't be satisfied with whatever report he got back without checking it out himself.

"I'll need one of those gas station maps. And a pen." It's a little old-school, but. Old school just happens to be the school Bucky comes from. At least they're not making plans holding the map down on the bonnet of a jeep while getting shot at.

It's how Arthur would have done it, even disregarding the technological options available. He always found it easier having things laid out physically in front of him.

"Good idea. It'll help us lay out where exactly the edges are, how tight the area truly is that we're stuck in."

It's not small enough to feel trapped, given the drive out here, but it didn't feel good to know they didn't have the option of leaving.

"I'll leave that to you, then, at your leisure." Now that they've hit a wall, for the moment, now that he's injured and two rows into this with Bucky, he's finding his energy flagging into exhaustion. Not resignation, but there's a fine line between giving up for today and giving up for good, and he needs to rest before he steps over it without realising.

"Can I take you home, or?" He's not being deliberately obtuse - he genuinely doesn't know if making such a suggestion would be perceived as being-- patronising or whatever. Of course he's not going to make Arthur limp home, but he's not sure if he's supposed to stand around waiting until Arthur has felt like he's proven whatever it is he feels the need to prove and keels over in pain, exhaustion, frustration, some combination of the three, or if he's allowed to suggest that maybe it's not such a great idea to keep going.

"I haven't--... I've been living under a rock, alone, for eighty years." Would it be funnier if he faked a laugh or if he just left it like that with his deadpan delivery? "This would be easier if you just. Told me what you want me to do." Waiting for Bucky to learn how to pick up on all these social cues, one would be waiting a very long time.

"That's probably for the best." He can acknowledge his limits (under duress, apparently, but still), and that he's definitely burned some sort of bridge with Bucky in all this.

When Bucky continues, though, he pauses to listen, give it his whole and genuine consideration. Because...

He presses his mouth, but the expression is decidedly more self-admonishing than outward anger.

"I..." the words get stuck in his throat for a moment, but finally he swallows and sighs. "You're right. I'm- I am treating you like you're being deliberately obtuse, but I- I'm the one who is causing this strife. I..." He lifts his hand to run through his hair, doing nothing to settle it from his fall. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't realise how much my circumstances have come to frustrate me, it wasn't fair to lash out at you for it."

Oh, no.

"Don't do that," Bucky snips. Being a punching bag was part of those eighty years under his rock. He's physically and verbally uncomfortable with being apologised to. It's like-- well, he's not religious. But it's like sitting on the wrong side of a confessional.

Arthur is lucky he doesn't get shoved back into the car like a kidnap victim. But Bucky does get the door and tries to guide him in without bumping his head on the roof.

Somehow it feels a little easier to talk once they're both back in the car. Bucky takes a deep breath in and out.

"I just want you to tell me what you want from me. And be specific about it. That's all. I will do my best to get you what you want." He's not going to get offended if he gets talked down to like a child.

Jesus Christ he can't even apologise now apparently? That fans another spark of irritation, and he sharply shrugs Bucky's hand off when he feels it land to 'help' him into the car. He knows how to not hit his head on the fucking car roof, he has both hands to guide him.

And when they sit in the car, he jams his cane between his legs, and is content to be sullen and pissed off for the rest of the drive back about it, but...

Bucky tries.

And then he's annoyed at himself all over again for it, that he knows he'll give in every time for it.

"You need to remember that nothing is self-evident. At the very least, I need to know where we are," he says stiffly, "what avenues I have for movement. The room size - walls, doors, furniture. Just- approximations is fine, I don't need every quarter-inch. Any noteworthy features- maybe paintings, or books, or- I-I don't know, cult symbols carved into the fucking drywall."

Though admittedly, the more he explains, the more he finds himself calming down to think about it properly. "If there's anything that seems- o-out of context, for the scene, like how you- you said you found the tag in Pollock's torture room. Anything relevant to the reasons we are investigating; if we're looking for evidence of guilt, for someone being complicit in a crime, then a journal or safe would be more relevant than the paintings on the wall. Anything I ask for more details on, no matter what relevance you think they might have otherwise."

"We're in your car," Bucky says flatly even though he thinks that much is self-evident. "Nothing seems out of place here but if I pop the hood and see a time machine I'll let you know." He sounds too deadpan to be snarky about it, but at some point they may progress to a less rocky part of their relationship, where Bucky is much more comfortable being a smart-ass talking shit.

"Nothing seems out of place in the whole town. Other than us." He wishes he was more... 'around', in 1960. In many ways this feels like a second chance. To live this life the slow way round, albeit with the constant worry of HYDRA looming over his head.

There are some mornings before the worry kicks in though, where this just. Feels nice. Not that Arthur wants to hear it.

He wasn't asking for a test or proof of concept from Bucky in the moment, just something to keep an eye on in future: but when he speaks, and it's just 'in the car' and nothing else...

It takes all his self-control not to just get up and out of the fucking car and walk home. He's so fucking tired.

"After everything I've just explained, what makes you think I even know what my own fucking car looks like?" It's practically through gritted teeth, but he just sighs and flops harder into his seat, turning his face towards the window to hide his irate expression, even as his voice goes decidedly flat. "I-it doesn't matter. It's fine. We still found out something more about this place, we have items we can follow up on with the others to learn more later."

Clearly Bucky is going to need a lot more practice, because a car is-- a car. What's important about a car? Every car is more or less the same. Maybe the handbrake is in a different place, or the petrol cap is on the left side or the right. Back in this day they had hand crank windows, but Arthur wouldn't know about the advent of electric-powered windows anyway. Is it important what the odometer looks like? Or the texture of the seats? Or the steering wheel? Does he just want to know the colour of the paint job? Does he even have any concept of colour? Has he even driven before?

Somehow it feels like he's driving a sulking teenager around, but. In a weird way, Bucky doesn't mind. Maybe it means they'll have a quieter ride back.

"Okay," Bucky says simply. He leans over a bit to visually check on Arthur's leg for a few seconds - not something he would normally do if Arthur could see him do it, but he can't really stop being concerned until it gets tended to - but it doesn't visually look like something that requires a trip to the clinic, so Bucky stays on their path.

"You said you broke into the doctor's place?"

Just because he can't see you, Bucky, doesn't mean he misses the rustle of clothing, or how the seat creaks with the shift of weight or the limiting of his already tight personal space, however brief. It just makes him push tighter against the window, feeling even more prickly.

"I did, yeah." And he's sorely tempted to leave it there, in his shitty mood, but after letting the silence stretch almost to the point of uncomfortable he just sighs.

"It was my proposal. Numbers and Folgate helped me execute it: Numbers scouted the place for us, found a way in and an ideal time, and Folgate had an appointment with Pollock while he was at work to ensure he wouldn't come home to us intruding. We found a number of drugs in his home safe, all labelled, er- haloperidol, pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, ah... scopolamine, and..." He frowns as he thinks. "And sodium thiopental. Also a gun with a silencer, but Numbers said it was unremarkable, except for how all the serial information was removed. A-and a gas mask, mostly distinct because it was of much higher quality than the ones in the standard supply kits, probably military."

He gives an annoyed hum. "We were arrested when we left, of course. We broke into a house in broad daylight."

Unfortunately Bucky doesn't quite seem to be aware when silence becomes too uncomfortable for anyone. He would have probably sat there without really pressing if Arthur didn't feel like giving up any more information.

He's only familiar with a couple of those drugs but what he does know of them... isn't good. His eyebrows furrow deeply as Arthur talks but the silence from his end stretches a little longer.

"Would've made no difference to you if you broke in at night." Not trying to be mean-spirited or rub anything in or anything - Bucky is just pointing out the obvious. Maybe it would have been more annoying for the others having to navigate by flashlight, but they were less likely to have gotten caught.

"Do you think he's a real doctor?" Just doesn't sound like it, between what Bucky's experienced, what other people have experienced, and what was present in his house.

The comment about breaking in at night just makes him snigger. He can see the logic, and it's not really wrong. It quite probably would have been more suspicious at night, especially if the doctor was home to tackle as well.

"The town certainly seems to treat him like he is," he comments dryly. "But when Numbers and I were getting interrogated, when he was in the room with us and Officer Clark, Pollock was the one in charge. Whatever he really is, he's important to this town."

He sighs as he leans back in his chair a bit, personal tension defusing. "He's a large part of why I think there's so much more to this town. Even beyond the obvious supernatural things occurring, the way he said it, that... he took an oath to take care of the people of this town, but also being physician to Sweetwater itself. I can't help but wonder if he means to refer to them as two separate entities."

"I've known guys like Pollock," Bucky mentions quietly, keeping his expression and tone of voice schooled into something neutral, devoid of emotion. "They think they're God's gift to the world and they think they can fix everything wrong with it."

He'll be the first to admit that he doesn't know the first thing about supernatural whatever. But all these guys with their speeches and their scalpels - they're all the same. For better or worse, Bucky doesn't put much stock into whatever Pollock thinks he is, whatever role he thinks he plays, whatever saviour complex he's nursing, whatever he believes this town to be. They're all crazy, and they're all either indifferent to hurting other people - especially when they think said other people are just collateral damage or hurting them is part of the solution - or they actually like it.

"Don't let him get to your head. He's just another asshole."

Arthur just scoffs.

"With all the shit we've been through here, with all the possibilities I have become aware of in my world, I can't dismiss the possibility. Not someone in such a prominent position as him, not when he's the one actively torturing us into compliance."

"Maybe you're right. Or maybe he just likes it." Who's to say at this point? Bucky doesn't know Norman enough to draw similar conclusions and honestly he would struggle to get to know Norman. He has no interest to be anywhere near him. He still thinks he's HYDRA. And despite what he tells everyone, his relationship with HYDRA is... complicated. Sometimes he feels like he's one bad day away from snapping.

"Maybe you would like it too. You don't know, until you're there. And then you don't want to know." He's not trying to say something about human nature or paint Norman as human. He could be. Or he could be something else. The two people in this car were something else before they got here - who's to say the same thing didn't happen to Norman at some point? But. They just don't know enough about anything at the moment, and it seems like they aren't able to leave town so their options of finding out more are pretty limited to the resources they already have at their disposal.

His memory flicks back, unbidden and with such clarity that he can almost imagine the scent of blood streaked on his face again, of the rock in both hands as he brings it down again and again and again on the widow's head. At the urge to vomit that he'd swallowed down in the face of John's own horror.

His jaw sets, a vicious working of muscle as he looks away from Bucky, his hand gripping the grab handle until he's white knuckled.

"No," he says, and there's gravity to it, a threat for if Bucky challenges that. "I wouldn't."

Bucky notices, and it sounded for a moment like Bucky had turned if the sound of rustling fabric is anything to go by, but ultimately he doesn't comment. It wasn't exactly subtle anyway, on Arthur's part.

"That makes one of us," is what he ends up saying instead. He's not uncomfortable thinking or talking about such a thing, although he's not sure if it's making Arthur uncomfortable. He'd like to think that he's a better man than that. That he would do the right thing no matter the consequences, no matter the personal cost. That he doesn't want to hurt people anymore. Only does it when he doesn't have a choice. That itch, it's just. Needing a purpose, that's all. Nothing to do with hurting people.

But is that really him? He's tried, all these years, to put his past behind him, to claw and crawl back to some semblance of humanity, to sit down and start to figure out what exactly they took from him, what he's lost, see if he can make sense of it all and try to put the old him back together again. But he doesn't know. And he doesn't think it was ever there. There was the smoke and mirrors that was the Smithsonian version of Bucky Barnes, that he could still pretend to be when Steve was around. But Steve isn't around anymore, and there's no need, no reason to try to be that Bucky anymore. The only thing that's left to do is to figure out what kind of man he's been made to become now.

If someone put him in Pollock's shoes, he doesn't think he'd have the thirst for hurting people in the same way. But he might be indifferent, which isn't a whole lot better. And more importantly, if it's certain people, he doesn't think he's above doing to them what the good doctor had done to him. He's not sure what that makes him, but. For now, he can settle for being a worse man than Arthur Lester.

Part Three: The Drive

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CW ptsd flashback

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