needlebearer | [Consignment] IC Inbox

FROM: barnes.james@cdc.org

Your location?

FROM: stark.arya@cdc.org

Right now? I'm in my Rover.

FROM: barnes.james@cdc.org

I will be there soon.

[And maybe a bit over five minutes later, a second text:]

FROM: barnes.james@cdc.org

Outside.

[She jumps out of the door of the Rover, down into the snow.]

You could have just knocked.

Could have.

[He nods. But he didn't because knocking is polite and he hasn't done things like that in a long time. Then he turns to her and simply holds out a sword in a black scabbard that's lightweight and about her size. He doesn't know a ton about swords, but he knew enough to get one that wasn't too big for her.]

The weapon you know. [Is all he offers as an explanation. It's simple logic to him more than goodwill (though it's that too somewhere deep down and buried).]

[She stares at the sword for a long moment, unable to believe that it's for her. For a second she feels Needle's loss acutely, stabbing through her. Needle was home. Needle was Jon Snow's smile. Nothing could ever replace it. But she can't think of this as a replacement, this is a continuation. She needs to get stronger here, after all. She could train and train with this, and when she finally gets back to Westeros she'll be good enough to cut Joffrey in half with a single sweep of the blade. She slides it from the scabbard, testing the feel of it in her hand, and she can't keep the grin from her face.

The next thing she knows she's slamming into Bucky, sword still in her hand, wrapping him in the tightest hug she can give.]

[Since she's a child, he doesn't react extremely to the sudden hug, but since it's been 70 years since someone has hugged him... he's stunned for lack of a better word. He looks down at her, not sure how to react and then after a pause, he puts his hand (the non-metal one) lightly on the back of her shoulder.

Having no idea how to interpret... anything, the longer the hug lasts, the more tense he'll become. But he doesn't break it first. You just have a very confused and stunned super soldier assassin on your hands right now, Arya.]

[It takes her a long moment to break off the hug. She hadn't realised how much she'd missed this sort of affectionate physical contact. She wasn't even sure when the last hug she'd gotten was. Certainly before she'd left King's Landing.

What flashes through her mind is Yoren holding her tightly to him so that she wouldn't see as her father's head was severed from his body. She feels her head spin, and for a second she wants to push away, but the snow under her feet and Bucky's hand loosely on her shoulder root her in this time and place.

When she steps back, she balances the blade in her hand, getting used to the feel of it.]

What's it called? All the best swords have names.

[When she eventually steps away he finds himself letting a slow breath out of his nose to steady his head. It's hard to say what's coursing through him right now, but though he becomes less tense, it's not relief he feels, oddly enough. Instead of getting caught up in that internal mess, he watches her balance the sword and get a better feel for it. It's obvious that she's had training and he'd known that from what she told him when he met her on the ice, but it was never clear until now how familiar it was to her.

The question gives him pause and his brow furrows slightly.] I didn't name it.

You should. It's important. Even more important if you do it.

[She slices the air in front of her, then sticks it in the snow while she attaches the scabbard to her belt.]

What about something in that language you spoke before?

[A pause. Okay, he can accept that idea. In his understanding of things weapons don't have names (it's why he didn't the whole time he was with HYDRA), but her world is not his. He supposes that she'd want the name of it to be important in some way, he's not sure how though.]

Russian. [He supplies.] That is the language.

[Another pause as he thinks on it more, glancing to the side.]

Zimnij volk. [Pronounced "ZEEM-neey vohlk."]

[Arya cocks her head to one side, repeating the words and staring at the sword, trying to make them fit. She looks back at him with a satisfied nod.]

What does it mean?

Winter wolf.

[Russia is mostly covered in snow, he's the Winter Soldier and wolves in Russia are sturdy survivors and even in the modern world manage to terrorize men in the rural areas of the country. They're known for attacking in large groups and are respected for their intelligence and ferocity and even when alone they are formidable. But they are also hunted. It felt appropriate from what he knows of her, though he knows nothing of where she comes from. Though they come from both vastly different and yet incredibly similar places, and for that reason he just accidentally named it something more significant to her than he realized. It also helps that he gave it to her on an ice planet, that influenced the name too.]

[She stares at him in surprise, swallowing down the emotion that threatens to overwhelm her at hearing those words. It's the last name she expected him to say - although she's not at all sure what she would have expected - but it's so fitting to who she is and what she's been through, that for a second she's not sure if he knows far more about her than is even in her file.]

That's perfect. That's me.

[A blink and a look of confusion and then after a short pause, he asks:]

You are a wolf?

[That's what she's saying if he's understanding correctly...]

Yes.

[She replies unhesitatingly, meaning it as literally as he does. A lone wolf whose pack has died one by one, struggling to keep padding on forward through the snow.]

My family's sigil is the direwolf. And we come from a place as cold as this one. It fits perfectly.

[His brows twitch up slightly at that explanation because that is... not what he expected. For what he decided to be that accurate. He's silent for a moment and then another thing that hasn't happened in a long long time occurs. His expression relaxes a bit and the corner of one side of his lips curves up the slightest bit.

You couldn't really call it a smile and he's not fully aware of it, but it's something closer to positive than what is normal for him.]

... Russia is also cold. [He wouldn't call it "where he comes from" though that's how he thought of it before he learned who he was (though he still sometimes thinks of it that way, he knows it's not true).] There are wolves. But they're not sigils.

[Choosing the wolf part of the name was mostly coincidence, he thinks. His features settle back to something more neutral after he explains the similarities that resulted in the choice of name.]

[She sheathes the sword, attaching the scabbard to her belt, but in only a few seconds she's taken it back out and is turning it over in her hands, proud to hold her own blade again, proud that he trusts her with it.]

Do you miss it?

[A brief pause as he looks up around at the snowy landscape around and beyond the rovers. It's not a question that requires a lot of thought for him like a lot of questions tend to.]

No.

[The reason why might be a bit more difficult to explain, though.]

[She's a little surprised. She'd assumed that all of the recruits would miss the places they were brought from, that they'd rather be anywhere than here. But given Bucky's general demeanour, she guesses that he must have come from circumstances even worse off than her own.]

I do. There's a lot that I'm glad to get away from, but winter is home. [And she knows she'll never see home or family again; that she has to make a new one now if she's to have one at all. She suddenly wishes very strongly that Bucky would be her family, but she's not sure that he'd even understand what she meant.]

[He looks back down at her, watching her face as she talks and then nods, not really in a way that says he understands missing "home" but he understands the concept of belonging to something and then having it torn away. His understanding of it comes from twisted circumstances, of course, but at least he understands the concept in some way. It's a fragment of humanity.

She and Steve can bond on the point of wanting him as family. His understanding of family is warped much like his understanding of belonging, but there's deeper, buried parts of him that know what it truly is. For him, that is expressed in actions even though he hardly understands in the forefront of his mind and she'll likely find that she won't need to ask him.]

What about here? [She asks it rather tentatively, knowing that Ajna and the CDC were the last things she could ever call home. Still, there was a lot here she would miss, not least the man standing in front of her.] When we go back to our own worlds, will you miss it?

[The look on his face when his gaze is directed back at her makes it obvious that he hadn't really considered that idea before. His eyes flicker with some kind of conflict and unsureness and he almost says that there is no going back. But something stops him.]

... I don't know. [He says instead. His tone and the slightly conflicted and lost look on his face shows that that's genuine.]

I will. [She feels like it's a weakness admitting it.] Some of the people here, I don't want to lose them. I'm scared that I'll forget everything here when I go back, too.

[Consignment] IC Inbox

Day 17, not long after the supply drop

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couldn't think of anything better and conjugating russian is hard pff

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