Part Three: The Drive

[lestercraft]

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.

Comments

CW ptsd flashback

[lestercraft]

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."

[freakymagoo]

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.