12111/In the Garden Of...

In the Garden Of...
Date of Scene:	22 July 2022
Location:	Latverian Border
Synopsis:	After Faust ravages Latveria, volunteers help the regular everyday people.
Cast of Characters:	Wanda Maximoff, James Barnes

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Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Ltveria isn't a place that people tend to go freely or wantonly. Least of all those raised in Transia, a region with so many names and identities. Like all the Balkans, a broken place. The crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Europe, as it were.

Yet it's on the Latverian border that the universe's heart stands. The woman who is better known as the Scarlet Witch has been there for weeks. Occasionally she returns to New York but it's not often.

The Avengers might know where and why she's been. Reality warping by Felix Faust has apparently been an insult to injury, so she's stayed in the UNHCR refugee camps, helping those who she can. In plain clothes, she tends to the injured, helps those twisted by their experience, trying to understand why it's not 1408.

James Barnes has posed:
James Buchanan Barnes knows a little something about feeling "out of time". Not as violently as these people, of course, but at least somewhat. He can empathize, to some extent, and that helps. He hasn't been here nearly as much as Wanda, but he's not a stranger anymore. As it stands, he's here more and more because he's worried about her than anything else. He takes a step up behind her and first reaches out with his mind -- touching hers, so she knows it's him through their connection -- and then his hand wrapping over her shoulder. He's in a jacket and gloves to hide his metal arm. "Wanda."

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Out of time is one thing. Being in another apparent view of reality is another. The few times Wanda's stepped through the magical barrier wall around the whole country, she's managed to keep a wedge of reality moving with her. A few times she's come back in clothes that are out of time; sarcanet, houppelands, robes. Weird dresses.

For the moment, she isn't teaching kids or checking on medical reports or patients. Not that she is a doctor, and her efforts here are a whole lot less obvious. The assumed name of Cinzia covers the fact she is not a Cinzia, or Italian, or anyone less than herself.

Instead, she's folding a blanket pulled from its plastic cover, courtesy of a delivery from Lithuania. Several Belgian crates probably contain nothing fun like chocolate, but just more really dull rations. At least people eat. Bucky might find the similarities of this camp little different from elsewhere in the world; it's merely a different war and more wintery in the colder months. His touch jars her from dealing with another scratchy recycled blanket made into a square, something nice to stick on a bed. "The schedule's in the--" German, not English, pops to her lips.

Until she turns slightly and there he is, cool fingers and warm thoughts. "Wall, in case you wanted to heroically set up cots for the next tent." Her mouth rises. "Sebastiano? Vittorio? What did you end up signing in under?"

James Barnes has posed:
Bucky smiles. "Giacomo." Because of course he did. "Not very imaginative, but easy to remember. Except for you, apparently," he teases; there's no vim or vigor in his words. He just steps over to her and takes the blanket away, wrapping his arms around her. "You think maybe you need to take a break? I can feel your exhaustion." He lifts his hands up and presses his fingertips to her temples, looking her in the eyes. "You're no good to anyone if you drop dead from exhaustion, and then *I* have to go to the afterlife and bring you back and that means I can't help anyone, so that's two people down."

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
"Better than Santiago. Or Iago. He did not come to a good end, did he?" She is still comfortable speaking in German, though flipping to Italian would make more sense. A trial run then; "Do you mind opening that crate for me? Giovanni was in here earlier. Don't blame me for having my ducks out of a row." Wanda winks, not too upset by the prospect. She instead pauses long enough to return the hug, her chin coming to rest on Bucky's shoulder. A place that's comfortable, even if it may be hard. "This is not working myself to exhaustion. My thoughts are exhausted trying to determine how to wipe out Faust's amplifiers. The bigger powers have done most of the work but I still don't like how they operate." Her smirk brightens into a real smile. "You'd go to the Underworld for me? That's very good of you. Will you wear a dark outfit and the anti-glare eye stuff?"

James Barnes has posed:
"I'd go to Pluto for you." Beat. "The planet." Beat. "Is it a planet again? Who cares. But no. No anti-glare. I want whoever's down there to know I mean business." He kisses the top of her head and then takes a step towards the crate she mentioned, his hand gripping the edge and yanking it open without much fanfre. He switches to Italian without much effort; Hydra did one thing right: they filled him chock full of languages. "What don't you like how it operates? The amplifiers, or the bigger powers?" Because let's be honest, the jury's out on the latter as much as the former at this point.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Wanda lightly breaks free of Bucky's hug with some reluctance. She has a plastic bag to throw into the recycle bin, not that plastic waste goes anywhere useful. How would it in a camp, when this rural corner of borderland Latveria isn't even serviced by much more than roads? "It should be. I don't care about the planets in the Oort Cloud. Pluto is close enough to be worthy." Pluto, always a planet.

Her gesture counts for something. At least with another blanket being folded, added to a stack. "Faust used power amplifiers to make this happen. He enslaved very powerful people. A Lord of Chaos. A hateful druid. Eclipso." Say that name three times fast. "I had luck convincing one not to unleash on us but to turn on him. He's been stealing things and causing trouble for a long time."

James Barnes has posed:
"Sounds like the kind of guy you send someone like me to deal with," Bucky says with a raised brow. He means the kind of person that needs a bit more of a lethal touch than you usually get from the likes of Captain America. Steve may be okay killing soldiers during a literal war, but he's been drawing harder lines than Bucky for a while now. Personally, Bucky still things ending someone permanently is still an acceptable solution when they haven't gotten the message already. He shrugs. "Get me near him, I'll put two in his forehead." Or something. "Assuming that would work. Magic." He shakes his head.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
"He's a wizard, Giacomo. You do not send people to them. He reshapes reality. Your usual options won't work." To say nothing of what might happen to that arm of his. Turned to a wooden prosthetic? Something like Tycho Brahe's nose? She shakes her head, smarter than some to bring it up.

"I need to find out if they removed him fully yet. The effects remain on the ground, everywhere else. They're hard to miss."

James Barnes has posed:
"You say that, but in all the legends it's usually not other wizards that take down the evil ones, it's knights and pages, and adventurers." He flashes her a smile, sitting on a closed crate. "But I'll follow your lead. You know best about this stuff, in any case." He takes a deep breath and then holds his hands out to her, trying to summon her closer. "But maybe tonight we can go home and sleep in our bed, huh?"

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
The smile grows. "Ever since you got Skyrim, everything is a game. What happened to the man who scowled at consoles? Now you will be up at 1 AM waiting in line for the first delivery?" Wanda chides Bucky affectionately as she finishes another two folded blankets and moves to the crate he opened. More blankets, waiting to be stripped from their sanitary plastic wrap and fluffed up. He can snatch her along the way, as she moves into his reach. "Do you want to go bac so badly? I have a hard time imagining bed when this is here. When people need help. Even for /Doom/, this is a n act of..." She pauses. "He's up to something with the power invested around here. But he is also very much worried about his people. I'm not doing this for him, but I appreciate the hardship of standing alone."

James Barnes has posed:
"I've moved on. The Witcher 3 is my new drug." He wraps his hands around her elbows and pulls her in between his legs, wrapping his arms around her waist and and resting his hands on the back of her thighs. He tilts his head back to look at her. "I can sleep on dirt or cement. It doesn't make any difference to me. But you get tense at night here, you haven't relaxed in weeks." It's a testament to his dissociation that he can apply the tender worry to her and leave himself in veritable austerity without actually recognizing that's what he's doing. Still, he worries.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Wanda pointedly looks at Bucky as he draws her in. "Gwent, then? Have you lost your mind to cards?" Because cards were a sin when he was young and they are now, albeit in digital form. Her cheek rests against his, and she breathes a little softer. "I can't be relaxed anywhere. Their stress is my stress." The stress points on reality are her stress. "This, here, helps keeps me a little sane. I like to help, and doing something rather than throwing money or acting like my full-time job somehow fixes this."

James Barnes has posed:
Bucky looks at Wanda and then takes a long, deep breath, lifting his hands up high and taking her face in them. He brings her down until he can kiss her, smiling against her mouth and closing his eyes. "Okay." He shrugs, and pushes her hair back behind her ears. "We'll stay then and keep helping. But if I see a Doombot, I'm shooting it."