Arthur Lester (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lestercraft) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
silentspringlogs2024-03-07 10:13 am
lestercraft) wrote in silentspringlogs2024-03-07 10:13 am
Entry tags:
Part Three: The Drive
Who: Arthur and Bucky, possibly more later
When: Early March (after the bird attacks)
Where: Maybe leaving Sweetwater??
Open/Closed: Noted in prompts!
Applicable Warnings: No Good Very Bad Awful Ideas
Closed to Bucky
Arthur hates using his Bluetooth, but it's easier than trying to blindly wander around trying to find the man he's after.
Look Bucky its its Arthur I was wanting to um to talk to you about the about something you mentioned at dinner before. Right so if if if you could come find me we could discuss it in person thanks. Fuck how do you turn the
...he also hates speech to text a lot.
When: Early March (after the bird attacks)
Where: Maybe leaving Sweetwater??
Open/Closed: Noted in prompts!
Applicable Warnings: No Good Very Bad Awful Ideas
Closed to Bucky
Arthur hates using his Bluetooth, but it's easier than trying to blindly wander around trying to find the man he's after.
Look Bucky its its Arthur I was wanting to um to talk to you about the about something you mentioned at dinner before. Right so if if if you could come find me we could discuss it in person thanks. Fuck how do you turn the
...he also hates speech to text a lot.
no subject
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."
no subject
"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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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."
no subject
"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."
no subject
"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.
CW ptsd flashback
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."
no subject
"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.