thearena | All this nature and I forgot my toggle.

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All this nature and I forgot my toggle.

WHO| The MCU Cast and anyone who passes by!
WHAT| The Avengers make it through their first week!
WHEN| From the middle of the first week to the start of the second week.
WHERE| The caves near the river.
WARNINGS| Talk of death, animal slaughter. Clint.

Tony knew three things.

This wasn't his week. He wasn't dead yet. And it was a really relaxing feeling to be once again surrounded by Avengers in an arena.

While it took them all a few days of crossing each other's path and in at least one instance of one of the team actively trying to Kill Tony, they all for the most part found themselves together making a little camp in a small but defensible cave for them all to sleep in while still able to defend it. To be honest, Tony hated the idea of the cave for very understandable reasons, but made do by trying to sleep as close to the entrance as possible.

The camp had started with Tony and Steve, after Steve had found Tony ~~cowering~~ hiding in a crevice which he used to escape Thor who had only had Tony's extinction in his mind. After that the others came close enough to happen upon it on their own, or by coming across each other during scavenging.

During the week, most of them seemed to get something from Bianca Del Rio and others, none of it remotely unwanted. Tony was especially glad for the fire starter kit, and made a mental note to make sure he gives her those sill booklet things of free foot massages from him. Because right now, that kit was the only thing making him feel of any use, because everything else so far is really escaping him.

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"I know you're up there." he tells the tree branches. There's no point in him hiding any longer so Bucky doesn't understand why he does.

He pulls the circlet off his head to take a proper look at it and... flowers? Bucky blinks at it, puzzlement writ across his face. He'd seen the flower meadow when he'd set out to explore the arena in the second week, gone to the edge and then decided there was nothing worthwhile in going further into it. Knowing the Gamemakers the flowers would be poisonous, except perhaps not if Aang has made this from them.

Bucky sets the spear down, goes into a crouch and then jumps high enough to catch the lowest branch of the tree and haul himself up.

As soon as Bucky's standing on a branch, Aang holds his own circlet to his head before swinging upside down on his own branch, which puts them face-to-upside-down-face.

"Hi, Bucky."

Aang's face is partially hidden by a scarf, but his eyes are scrunched in an unmistakable smile. "You know, I have a lot of flowers. I'll just keep putting crowns on your head if you take them off."

"Hi." he says, looking Aang up and down, pleased to note he's obviously been sent sponsor gifts and is keeping warm with them.

Settling himself on the branch he looks at the (slighlty bruised) flower crown in his hand and then the one that Aang is holding. They just look like normal flowers. "Why? What's the point of them?"

"The point is that they're fun."

Aang bends to perch on his branch again, grabbing his basket before jumping down to the branch Bucky is sitting on, his movements light and careless as always, as if falling off the branches wouldn't possibly kill him. He sits down next to Bucky with a basket full of fruit, flowers, and a pair of musical reeds.

"And they look nice. And they make people feel better about things." Aang takes off his gloves, putting them in his lap so he can more effectively pull out flowers and start linking them together. "I can braid some in your hair, if you like. I'd braid them in my own, but I don't have any." Even in the arena, he shaves with a little knife a sponsor gave him. It's not as effective as his razor in the Capitol, but he can make do.

"I don't see how they're fun."

Taking a hint from Aang, Bucky also sits down, balancing easily on the thick tree branch. He holds the flower crown between both of his hands, turning it this way and that. It's pleasant to look at, he guesses, and there's tickle in the back of his mind like he should remember something associated with flower crowns. He picks at the memory but soon gives it up as just a feeling, a hint that he can't yet bring up.

"Do they make you feel better?" he's not sure he wants flowers braided into his hair, it wouldn't be very helpful when it came to going unnoticed. "You could always grow hair, you know."

"I grew it out once, but I didn't like the feeling of it and it made it a lot harder to feel the air around me. That's why airbenders usually shave at least most of their heads."

He kicks his legs gently over the side of the branch. He finishes another flower crown quickly, which he plops on Bucky's head. "But I still like playing with hair, and flower crowns make me feel better. Do you want me to show you how to make one?"

"It makes you harder to grab too." Bucky says, practically, his elbow nudging lightly at Aang's shoulder before going to settle back in his lap. It's nice sitting up here in the tree, amongst the leaves. He can see the river stretching away into the distance and, if he turns his head, the mouth of the cave where his friends are.

This time he lets the flower crown stay sitting in his hair, a small weight that he's content to bear. "Yeah, okay."

"Yeah, that too. So it's better to keep it nice and shaved." Aang grins at the nudge--he's always happy when Bucky initiates physical contact, no matter how brief--before offering Bucky his basket full of flowers. "Go ahead and pick some that you think look pretty. Don't worry: I only picked flowers I recognized." There were lots of gorgeous flower he didn't recognize, but he decided that he didn't trust the Capitol to not hide something nasty in them.

He looks at the ring of flowers on Bucky's head, visibly cheering at the sight. "Flowers suit you. I should make crowns more often." It makes the man look... softened. Just a little.

Pretty. Bucky looks down at the flowers, then after a moment pulls out a selection of them in various shades of blue and violet. Blue is a colour that, while he wouldn't address it as pretty, holds a certain attraction for him. One of the shades make him think of the coat from the exhibit.

"Think one of my sisters told me that once." he says indulgently, then realises, oh, that's what the tickle in his head from earlier was. His sisters and flowers. He tries not to think much about his family. "How do I start?"

Aang perks up immediately. "I didn't know you had sisters." He wonders what they're like, and if they're helping Bucky after all the awfulness that had happened to him. It would be easier to remember things if Bucky has family around. Aang imagines girls with dark hair and weirdly round Water Tribe eyes, the sort that Bucky has. He hopes to meet them one day without the Capitol's involvement--they're probably pretty nice if they're related to Bucky and they like flower crowns.

Aang scoots close and holds up his hands so Bucky can see what he's doing with the flowers, slowly beginning to weave stems together. "Like this. It's like you're braiding the stems and you tie them into knots."

"Three of them, all younger than me." he answers quietly. Steve had told him their names and their ages, how they had all looked up to Bucky as their older brother and he had adored them in turn. He's tried to imagine their faces before the same way Aang is doing, not knowing how truly accurate the pictures he comes up with are. The way they looked, the way they sounded...

Bucky turns his eyes down to Aang's hands, reaching to concentrate on the task on hand. It seems simple and reassuringly repetitive. Carefully he tries to start the first one, grimacing as it turns out his metal fingers are not good at doing such delicate work. The first stem he tries to knot tears.

"Three little sisters? No wonder you're good with kids." And no wonder he feels so natural as a big brother, not that Aang really thinks of it in so many words. Airbenders don't have siblings so he doesn't understand them, but he's observed sibling relationships, and he's seen how nurturing they can be. He hopes that Bucky's sisters are helpful for him now, when his memories are still mostly gone.

(He still doesn't know that Bucky's sisters are long gone, and that Aang's not the only one who lost a lot of time.)

He watches Bucky begin work on the flowers. The stem rips apart under the metal's unyielding grip, and it's the first time it occurs to him that the metal might not be quite as functional as a real arm outside of combat. "It takes a little practice," he says, already picking out a new blue flower for Bucky to work with. "How much feeling do you have in your left hand?"

"Yeah?" he hadn't really thought of it that way before but now he does perhaps it makes sense. Bucky Barnes had sisters and he had Steve, all younger than him, smaller than him, people he protected. Maybe that is still part of him after all, even through everything that happened to him he still wants to protect. When he saw Aang, vulnerable and alone in the mall arena his action had been automatic.

Maybe that's a sign that there really is more to him than what HYDRA made of him.

Bucky discards the first flower, watching it fall to the ground below and taking the next one Aang hands him, frowning down at it, "Not much. I can tell pressure but it's not as sensitive as my right hand."

"Yeah. You must be used dealing with way more trouble than I can give you with three little sisters." Bucky's good at wrestling Aang into submission and shaming him into taking better care of himself. He's good at humoring him when he wants to play and comforting him when he's sad. He makes Aang feel safe and happy, even when Bucky has such a hard time feeling safe and happy himself. "I bet you're a really good brother."

He reaches to touch Bucky's metal arm, then stops himself at the last second, his hand hovering over Bucky's. "Is it okay if I touch you? Stems don't press very hard, but I could press with my fingers and show you how tightly to hold it."

"I don't remember much," Bucky says cautiously, because he doesn't want to upset Aang with the own tangled web that is his past, or lack of it. There's too much there that... it's not something he wants the kid to worry about (and maybe that's proving Aang's point too) "But, I think you're right." he hopes he's right.

He would have liked to have been a good brother, someone who protected and cared for his family.

"It's okay, go ahead."

"I know I'm right." (He wonders what it's like to not even know that much about oneself.) "You're good with me, aren't you?" Little sisters can't be too different from looking out for a little monk boy. It helps that Aang can't really imagine Bucky ever being bad to the people he cares about, and anyone like that must be good with family.

Aang reaches and touches the inside of Bucky's metal hand (and it's an odd sensation, metal material with nonetheless organic life and motion) and gently slips his finger against the man's, judging the pressure and pressing against it when he feels that there's enough to hurt the flower. "Something like... this?" He thinks that's enough pressure. Hopefully, Bucky can remember how hard to grip from this.

"It's good you're confident." he says, with the smallest smile playing over his lips. Bucky is good with him, he thinks, he knows. More to the point he trusts Aang when he says that so he just nods acceptingly.

When Aang touches his hand there's a very brief moment where Bucky freezes. He doesn't know why, it's not the first time that Aang has touched the metal arm but seeing those small, delicate fingers against the metal this time hits something inside of him. Flashes of what that hand has done hit him in visceral detail of blood and broken bones, snapped necks and he barely avoids snatching it away as he clamps down on those feelings and memories.

That's not here. "Okay..." he nods stiffly, breathing deeply through his nose as he pays attention to the amount of pressure required for this task.

Aang is generally good at reading people. Moreover, he's good at reading Bucky. He feels the way the man suddenly freezes up and looks up at his face. "What's wrong?"

Did he do something wrong? Bucky is usually okay with limited contact if Aang warns for it or telegraphs his motions. He doubts it was just about physical contact.

"Nothing." he replies, quickly. Then he feels bad for it, knowing Aang is astute enough to see through that, especially since he picked up on Bucky's reaction in the first place. Bucky doesn't like to lie to him.

Finally he shakes his head, "Memories."

"Bad ones? What about?"

Now it's Aang's turn to feel bad. He winces at his own thoughtless curiosity--he knows well enough that Bucky has baggage that he struggles with, and the last thing he needs is Aang making him relive everything. "Sorry. You don't have to answer that."

He gently smooths his thumb over Bucky's metal finger. He knows that it doesn't feel the same as skin to skin contact, but he hopes it's a comforting gesture nonetheless. "Whatever it is, it's over for now. You can just focus on flowers and no one will tell you you can't."

Bucky tenses the moment Aang asks. He doesn't know how to tell him, if he can tell him. The fact that he doesn't want to is the only thing he knows for sure. Aang knows Bucky was forced to do terrible things in the past, that he had his memories taken and that he killed people. People... adults. Children are an entirely different level of horror. He doesn't know how to say it and how Aang would take it, that the Soldier would have once killed someone like him without a moments hesitation.

Aang spares him that choice almost immediately and the burst of grateful affection he feels is overwhelming. "Thank you." he murmurs, sure that he would be told his thanks isn't necessary but needing to express it all the same. Direction is welcome and Bucky has no qualms with taking it from Aang in this case.

He turns his gaze back to the task at hand.

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All this nature and I forgot my toggle.

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