thearena | The day the earth stood still [closed]

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The day the earth stood still [closed]

Who| Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes and Bruce Banner
What| Steve dies, Bucky reacts about as well as he always does but luckily, there's Sam to help him out. Then, a couple days later, Bucky finds Steve and Aang's personorbs and destroys them with Bruce's help.
Where| The science labs and out in the spaceport.
When| Spanning the days after Steve dies.
Warnings/Notes| Mention of violence and gore.

It never works. He tries and it never works, Steve always dies first.

Bucky doesn't see it happen, he's not close by, he's unaware of the location or the cause. He finds out by standing by one of the spaceport windows and seeing the stars rearrange themselves into Steve's face and all of sudden it's like he can't breath, grief and rage pulling him apart. Following on the heels of knowing Aang died makes it even worse.

What is he supposed to do when he can't protect the man who freed him from HYDRA's control? The man he'd known all his life. He'd distanced himself after almost killing Steve himself because of a nightmare and now look what had happened.

'till the end of the line, was what he said. If it takes a hundred turns to make that right then Bucky will do it. Right now though he can't think and turns away from doing the logical thing of returning to the Avengers lab to see if anyone else knew what had happened to his friend. Instead he turns away from the stars and descends into the base, ready to take out his emotions on the monsters the Capitol created.

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A few days after Steve's gone and Bucky is functioning a lot better, thanks to some helping hands and soothing words, combined with reminding himself that even with Steve gone he still has a Mission to do. His friend would not want him giving up and abandoning the rest of their group. Bucky might not intend to win himself but that doesn't mean he can't help someone else to.

The best thing he can do to that end is keep himself busy and Bucky is constantly on the lookout for supplies, as well as the small list of priority targets he has (it still stings that Black Tom had escaped him, a fact he remains sore at Thor over). So it's in the middle of scavenging that he first hears it.

Bucky!

Bucky!

Steve and Aang's voices, one after another ring out and echo down the halls. A chill takes shape and becomes solid in Bucky's stomach in the wake of them. He's hearing things, he has to be but not a minute later they call again, louder and more insistently. They keep calling to him until, in what is almost a daze, he follow the sound into a room despite knowing it will almost certainly be a trap.

It is but not the kind Bucky is expecting.

When he cautiously enters the room they are calling from he finds two small round robots and on registering his presence the voices grow louder and louder. It sounds so much like Steve and Aang that Bucky is frozen in place, shocked as the words fly at him, questions and requests and playful jokes that echo in his ears. It's cruel, and wrong and the fact that these things even exist is a violation but he can't move or bring himself to do what he should do, destroy them.

Instead he stands and listens.

Edited 2014-12-20 17:50 (UTC)

Bruce is worried about Bucky. Steve is the man's compass, and with Steve gone, he seems lost. In the arena, that could turn into something really bad. (He would be lying if he said that worrying about other people doesn't help him--doesn't keep him from thinking too hard about how his anger is progressing.)

So he keeps an eye on Bucky and notices when he wanders off. He doesn't intend to follow him--just check to make sure he hasn't found any angry aliens or something.

And then he hears the voices. Steve and some little boy. Shit.

Bruce doesn't run or otherwise show his alarm. He walks. He hears the voices--playful, gentle, even bantering with each other like any human would (a lot of old man jokes for some reason), but he knows from experience how the happy voices can quickly turn around and become downright evil. There is very little as jarring as hearing your friends blame you for their deaths, insist that they had been imprisoned in the balls by the Capitol and would die if you broke them, call you a monster and play on every vulnerability they would know about.

He nudges the door open with his foot and leans against the threshold, looking down at the orbs warily past the frozen assassin. "It's not really them. They'll say it is, but there's nothing in there but circuitry."

"I know..." he started, sparing a glance backwards towards Bruce when the other man entered, enough to know an enemy hadn't slipped in at his back.

God, and God he thought in ways he didn't before, words he'd abandoned and had purged out of his system except for when he had to play the part running through his head. The weeks in this arena kept turning and he kept thinking, clearer than he had before when the Mission wasn't directing him in what to do. He thought and he remembered, Steve's voice and now Aang's.

You don't look so good, Buck.

Hey Bucky, want to see a neat trick?

"Shut up!" he snapped suddenly at the orbs, rocking backwards a step, his metal hand reaching and catching the edge of a table, forcing dents into the metal with his fingertips. "Shut up."

He wants to keen towards them at the same time as being repulsed by what they are, a mockery of the people he cares for.

Bruce presses his lips together. He's tempted to just kick the orbs away, but they'd come back somehow. Seeing their reactions to dead friends is just too entertaining for the Capitol to leave it alone.

"If you break open their casing, I can disable them no problem. They're full of parts we could probably use." Keeping voice soft but clinical. Not acknowledging how sickening it is to hear Steve and a little boy talking from soulless robots. Not feeding into Bucky's distress. Giving focus.

"They're just sophisticated recordings. The people they are imitating are probably back safe in the Capitol away from all of this." Because as long as they stay interesting, death isn't really death. Steve and the boy are probably still as safe as they can ever be, back in the Capitol where there aren't any aliens to kill them or robots to taunt them. Bucky may need the reminder.

His voice never wavers. Soft and calm.

His words seem to do nothing but spur the little robots on. Of course, they're here as instruments of torture, just the same as anything else. Anything to break them down and make the Tributes down and make them more entertaining. He's getting a better grasp every time of how entertainment factors into it, marking the difference between his new captors and the old ones.

Their methods weren't dissimilar but they had different goals with what they used those methods for. HYDRA broke him down to build him back up in their image, the Capitol just seems to want to break them, make them snap and enjoy the pain that came from it.

"They're safe, I know that, I--" he clenches his jaw and shakes his head, "We need to shut them up." his voice sounds different to normal as he steps towards the orbs, doing his best to ignore their questions as he grabs the one talking like Steve first.

Just a second of effort with each, then Bruce can do his part and it'll be over. It seems easy and he's woefully under prepared for the scream that erupts from the little robot as he pries off a panel of its casing with his metal fingers, a scream unmistakably in Steve's voice. Bucky immediately drops the machine like he's been burnt, backing up with a horrified expression on his face. "Shit!"

Bruce would like to think he was prepared for the scream, but nothing really makes you prepared to hear something like that. He winces, his hands twitching to slap over his ears, but he forces his hands to stay at his sides. Calm. It's not real. It's a synthesized recording.

But now both of the robots are screaming. The little boy voice babbles pleas and attempts to reason. Like the robots have figured out their intentions and intend to torture them into complacency.

"Break the chassis and I can disable them," he repeats, having to raise his voice over the noise, making an effort to take long, deep, meditative breaths. Block out the screams. He's done it many times before. Not too different from tending to large groups of sick and dying people, really. Block out the screams of families, work as hard as you can, move on without thinking if the current patient dies so you can save someone else.

It's not real, it can't be real. Steve never screamed, he can't remember Steve screaming. Not even when they were kids and he broke his arm in a fight. Aang -- he doesn't know but he can't deal with it, he needs to escape but he also needs to destroy these abominations against his friends.

There's an order.

Maybe Bruce didn't mean it that way but he takes it as one. Orders are easy, so easy to follow. Orders make the world simple, requiring only obedience from him. The Soldier can do that. This is the mission, destroy the casing of the robots and he'll do it.

Pale, blank-faced, Bucky moves to the Steve-orb first and rips off its outer shell before moving to repeat the process with Aang's.

Bruce immediately picks up the Steve-orb, his mouth in a grim line as the robot starts addressing him, too--Banner, I thought you weren't like this, I thought you weren't a monster, Bucky don't let him do this to me--and spreads out the various wires inside with his fingers before finding a chip inside and yanking it out with more force than necessary.

The robot goes quiet, and any lights flashing inside of it go out.

He flinches hard at that cry, that plead from the Steve-bot but doesn't break to it. His part with that one is done and a moment later Bruce mercifully silences the voice. One down, one to go.

Aang is as bad, his voice is so young and it hurts him to hear it that way, setting off unpleasant echoes in his head of other young voices pleading in ways he doesn't want to pursue, ways he shies back from. His fingers rip off the casing, sweat trickling down his temple from the mental strain of holding himself together before he wordlessly thrusts the second robot towards Bruce, a silent plea in his eyes to make it stop.

He sees the plea. He nods and takes the robot, balancing it under his arm as he works his fingers through the wires.

Bruce hasn't met the boy, but it still hurts to hear what sounds like a child pleading for his life. No, no, I don't want to die yet, Bucky I thought we were friends, don't let him do this, I'm not going to come back, please I don't want to die on and on and on. Crying and screaming. Bruce scowls, concentrating on breathing as he digs to find the circuit. The robot starts making breathy, panicky breathing sounds, like it's become short of breath despite not breathing, and it lets out a blurted, teary--Help me!--before Bruce yanks the damn chip out and crushes it in his fist. The voice stops short. The room is silent, and Bruce needs to keep breathing.

"Well..." He takes another deep breath. "He sounds like a cute kid."

He'll need to meditate before he can cannibalize the parts. Breathing. Air. In and out. He glances at Bucky. "How are you holding up?"

Bucky is trembling, the sort of fine nervous trembling that belies someone fighting to stay still and not lash out. He wants to yank the orb back and stop the noise, the threats of the Capitol through Aang's voice and the panicked breathing like he was having a asthma attack and didn't that just hit more of Bucky's buttons. He could scream himself for all the good it would do.

He keeps quiet, he keeps still and finally there is blessed silence.

"He is..." he manages, hoarsely, taking a deep breath to try and calm his racing heart down, reaching for the grounding techniques Sam had tried to teach him before the arena. Childishly he wants his tribble but that's far and away impossible right now.

Somehow, Bucky is aware enough to know better than to lie right now, "Not great."

Bruce risks a look at Bucky. The man looks terrible. If Bruce is shaken, he doesn't want to imagine how Bucky feels right now.

(He'd never admit it, but Bruce really wants his tribble too right about now.)

Breathe. In and out. Bruce takes a glance at the room, then at the hall outside of it, judging them safe from any immediate threats before slowly sitting on the ground, rolling the silent orbs gently into a corner for the moment. "I'll show you how I calm down from stuff like this." He pats the floor in front of him with one shaky hand. "Take a seat. This should help."

Bucky slowly blinks down at Bruce, like he's taking a moment to process what he's being told before he sits, almost collapses, down like a puppet with its strings cut. His body feels far too tight, especially around his chest. There's a vice around his lungs that's on the verge of making it impossible to breath.

The whole world seems too sharp, painful to look at.

"What do I do?" he asks, a small tremble in his voice.

"Get comfortable. Keep your back straight. You can close your eyes too, if that doesn't make you too uncomfortable. I'll keep an eye on what's going on around us." Bruce understands if Bucky doesn't want to keep his eyes closed inside of an arena, but if he chooses to, he can trust Bruce to make sure nothing sneaks up on them.

"Then focus on the feeling of breathing." Bruce deliberately slows his voice down. Makes it lower. Calmer. As soothing as he can manage. "Don't try to control your breathing. Just feel it. There's a lot of noise in your head right now, but don't pay attention to it. Don't let it distract you from the breathing."

Close his eyes? He doesn't know if he can, even with Bruce's word that he will keep watch on the area around them. It's not that Bucky doesn't trust him to keep his word, the man has proven himself as an ally before, but that he is all too aware of the many present dangers that the arena holds.

Then again, if he goes into a full blow panic attack here Bucky will be no good against anything, whether his eyes were open or not.

Taking the initiative to compromise he lowers his gaze down into his lap, keeping his eyes on his hands instead of his surroundings. For now this is the best he can do on that front.

Next the breathing. Bucky tries to do as Bruce asks and not listen to the part of him inside that wants to rail against what he's just witnessed. It's easiest to count. One, two, three... they're too quick and short but he's trying. Five, six, seven...

Eyes on hands. That's still better than Bruce was really expecting.

Bruce makes a point to make his own breathing slow. Something else Bucky can count, if he's so inclined. Something to help the other man time his own quick, panicky breathing.

"While you concentrate on that, start sweeping out any other thoughts you may have. Clear them out. You might not be able to do it perfectly your first time. That's fine. Don't get frustrated. If they're not leaving, just keep concentrating on the breathing, and they'll eventually go on their own."

They flick to the side a couple of times before Bucky resolutely makes himself stay focused on his hands. Yen, eleven, twelve...

He's listening, breathing and slowly but surely that is starting to calm down. That might be a hitch now and again when the memory of the robot orbs spikes but the progress is inevitably moving towards Bucky calming down.

Don't think. Don't think. Like when he was waiting for the target, his sniper rifle in his hands and his only focus was on what he was to do. Nothing else mattered, so push it all out of mind.

Bruce lets them stay in silence for a while. Just breathing. He waits until he himself has forgotten the sound of screaming children and teammates.

"Counting your heartbeat until it's slowed down can also be helpful." Bruce lets out a soft puff of breath. "Once you have cleared out your head, try clearing it of the counting too. It's okay if you can't make your mind completely blank. It usually takes a lot of practice."

He's quiet again, giving Bucky room to work on it himself. He keeps an ear out for any sound of something approaching them, but otherwise, he focuses on his own breathing, on his own peace. Over the years, he's gotten good at meditating. He feels his own heartbeat slowing to a crawl.

"You can stop whenever you're ready. We're not in a rush, though. Take all the time you need."

Bucky gives a tiny nod but otherwise doesn't respond.

He counts, he breathes, he stops counting and then he just is for a while. It's not as hard to sink into himself, to find that space away from the horrors as he might have initially imagined. Probably he's done it before when he needed to escape, when he just needed to be as horrors were carried out around him.

It takes half an hour before Bucky lifts his head again, about all the time he can let himself have when around them is constant danger. He looks at Bruce and licks his dry lips before speaking. "Thank you."

"Any time." He means that.

He stands up, brushing himself off before picking up the two silent robots. "I do that every morning when I wake up, and then every evening before I go to sleep. If you want to join me for either, you're welcome to."

Then he starts walking back to their base.

Bucky believes him. In his time with Bruce he's never known the man to lie, not once.

He watches him pick up the robots, still feeling that revulsion at their existence but understanding that Bruce could put what they were made of to good use. He nods to the offer and trails after the other man back to laboratory.

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The day the earth stood still [closed]

For Bruce

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Ready to wrap up?

Yep!