17727/Bats and the Bucky

Bats and the Bucky
Date of Scene:	21 April 2024
Location:	Avengers Mansion - Meeting Room
Synopsis:	Natasha talks to Bucky about the atrocities in Appalachia. While Bucky suffers from guilt, Natasha attempts to redirect him in a more professional way. Natasha is a friend. But she is not nice.
Cast of Characters:	Natasha Romanoff, James Barnes

---

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
It was personal to James. Natasha knew that. She knew what tremors it hit wtihin him. And what sorts of stakes it rose. But also as it was something personal to him, he would put himself at risk whether or not it was deserved. And Natasha knew the willingness to not accept failure as an answer. But she also had tokeep an eye on him to ensure he wouldn't verge towards something self-destructive. Rogers wouldn't reel him in. So if push came to shove..
    Natasha had to be ready.

James Barnes has posed:
So very personal to James. So much so that he made a complete nuisance out of himself by hovering over doctors and scientists and whoever else might have been in the room with the rescued miners. He never said a word, but Bucky never has to say a word to convey his feelings - impatience, anger, fear - they all came through in his ever present scowl.

That led to someone telling him to /get out/. Which led to him pushing back. Which led to push coming to shove. Can Natasha talk him down and get him away from it all before he risks it all?

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
It's something that Natasha understands all too well. And that if push came to shove, she would be doing the same thing. However.. Natasha has taken it upon hard the rule that life has impressed upon her. Enhanced by her age and her crimes..

No attachments. But it was her own rule. Not one to be put upon other people.

"Barnes. We must talk." She would corner him in the meeting room, activating the lockdown protocols. THey had privacy ahd he could NOT change the subject.

James Barnes has posed:
He started to argue, started to push back, started to say he couldn't leave Trip now that they've found him. But in the end, Bucky bit it all back letting only a soft snarl of a sound escape before following along.

Gratitude for her help with all of it, it will surely come... eventually. Once he's calmed enough to not feel like his insides are clawing to get to the outside.

It starts off bad once Bucky's trapped in the room. He paces like a caged animal for a few moments, then he finds a wall to lean against - arms crossed over his chest, then some more pacing - a little more holding up the wall and finally...

He voices his /biggest/ fear through all of this. "What if it's fucking HYDRA? What if I put that town on their radar?"

It's not a crazy leap to make, it's clear /someone/ is experimenting on people. Sometimes Bucky forgets that all monsters that go bump are not HYDRA.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would fold her hands together and lean against the wall. "Hydra would broadcast it. They're not knownf or subtlety. If this was a trap designed to lure you or widespread experimentation, there would be signs of it." While Hydra was capable of long term infiltration, doing so in an isolated rural area on such a limited scale went far against their normal methods of operation. And so Natasha used logic to try and make her point.

"They would not care about somewhere so small and so meaningless. There are easier places for them to conduct experiments upon the helpless. It's isolated, but not isolated enough. And if it was Hydra their subjects would nto have been able to escape so cleanly en masse. Nor would much of the town have been left unharmed."

James Barnes has posed:
His rational brain knows that Natasha's right. His irrational fear isn't so easily quelled but Bucky doesn't push the issue further. "Did they escape though? I'm not so sure. It almost feels like they were 'put back'."

Now he's back to pacing again. "He was just a kid when I saw him in person last, eighteen... but a father too. His son is still out there."

Pacing, pacing, pacing. It's a wonder his teeth aren't cracking with how tightly he's clenching his jaw. His left fist keeps clenching and relaxes.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha doesn't tell him to relax. It's a pointless gesture. One cannot force emotion to go through and be done with. And while one can compartmentalize.. It's not the best long term strategy.

"What makes you think that?" That they were 'put back'? "Talk me through your conclusion."

James Barnes has posed:
"Too much time between disappearances. From what the others found out, too many sightings since the first one. If they all escaped at the same time why were people reporting seeing 'giant birds or bat like things' before all of them had even vanished?"

The pacing stops, but it's like Bucky just doesn't know what to do with himself. He stands behind a chair, gripping its back and putting the poor thing in danger of becoming kindling.

"They had nothing, Natasha. /Nothing/, but they still found food for a stranger to join them at their table...." Okay, little off topic, but sometimes a train of thought jumps tracks all on its own.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
It's Bucky sorting through things in his head. It's not processing, it's merely him talking. It's not getting things out of his system. But it's letting Natasha follow his train of thought as it comes out. It's giving her useful data on Bucky and his exact connection to everything going on.

"That makes sense. So someone has a degree of control over them and over time summons them back. They'll be moving their center of operations now." Even if it wasn't the cave where the bats were 'roosting'. Natasha would veer on the edge of paranoia.

"You know the area. Where are locations that would make for good alternative basing zones?" Her methods of influence are to purely try and direct Bucky towards specific objectives.

James Barnes has posed:
"I lived with them for three months, working in the mines with Trip's father, Isiah..." The words are softly spoken, quietly, even for Bucky. But talks of centers of operation and locations snaps him out of the past.

"That mountain range is /huge/, Natasha. But if I wanted to keep something secret, it wouldn't be down in the foothills. Towns are small, but words spreads between them fast. They might not have a clue what's happening, but they'll all know /something/ is happening soon enough and they're not helpless. If they figure out that someone is taking their men? They'll take up pitchforks and shotguns and go looking for who's responsible."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would fold her arms together, "Then think of alternatives. How you would go about narrowing it down. How are they concealing things? Magic? Technological? Look at the locations the bats came out of. Figur eout what physiological needs they have to roost. Use that to narrow down your search."

What did they eat? How much space did they need to rest? how far might their flight range be?

How to locate caves? Heat sensors? Groun dpenetrating radar? Sonar or sound pulses?

James Barnes has posed:
"They're fucking bat me... man bats." Even he can't bring himself to call them batman or batmen. But... "Should we call up Batman and ask /him/ how much space he needs to rest?" He's being snarky, maybe even lashing out a little bit. The situation is something he can't directly lash out at and, in this moment, Nastasha is something he can.

"Witchblade sensed no magic from anywhere, has to be tech. Or it could just be a big giant ass compound in the side of a big giant ass mountain with one door like a needle in a big giant ass haystack."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would fold her hands, "That's something you can find out on your own. It's biology. If you're not sure on it, ask Simmons." Jemma. "Or McCoy. They're still gonig to need ways to operate and to act." She's now being more direct with him and more aggressive. Good, he's getting the hint.

"THen find it, Barnes. Figure out where you can look and narrow down the search. This is your problem."

James Barnes has posed:
Bucky snorts. "Biology? Not quite top of the course list." For HYDRA's elite assassins. Unless it's directly related to how to kill a target quickly and efficiently. Best pressure points to take a man down? He knows /that/ biology.

"They had a little girl, Ruthie. I found out she passed away - pneumonia - about six months after HYDRA found me in that town. You know they approached me with one of them holding her hand?"

But that train of thought has his vision bleeding red around the edges and that chair starting to crack under the pressure of his left hand gripping it.

"It'd have to be somewhere that the trees aren't so thick. Roots would make something like that all but impossible in a really heavily forested area."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would fold her hands together, "SO where would be more effective for that? High in the mountains where there's not as much vegetation? But that's further from inhabited areas, which makes nabbing targets harder. And means a much longer flight through thinner air for them. If they're lower down then it means there are fewer places they can operate from with as much room as they need to. But makes for a faster turnaround when they're deployed and gives them more energy."

James Barnes has posed:
"Places where the trees are thinnest would be in the logging towns not too far from Blackstone. But then why target Blackstone and not the other towns?" Bucky's grip on the chair relaxes to the point that he's no longer endangering its structural integrity.

"You think they'll find a way to save them?" he asks. His thoughts really are all over the place. "If... they can't /fix/ them, then what?" Will they 'euthanize' them? He can't bring himself to ask that question directly.

"We should have followed them..." His words trail off, his brain processing an idea that's kind of too horrible to process but... "What if we turned one of the ones we have loose at the mines again? If they haven't picked up home and ran with it..."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would nod at James, "They'll have something in them to draw them back to specific locations. If this is an experiment, whomever is running it will have to move their base on occasion. So they have a way to command them to a new position. So you can look into what it is. They can't be keeping exact track of them." Otherwise the small melee of however long ago would have lead to a complete abort of the operation.

James Barnes has posed:
As much as Bucky wants to just run in there, grab some miner he's never met before, toss them in a Quinjet and fly right back to let the guy loose? He doesn't. He takes a breath and then another. "First we need to see if they can be saved. If they can, we can't do that. We can't just use someone like that."

Both of them have more than enough experience being 'used'. Bucky isn't comfortable with showing someone else what that feels like.

"Morrigan said he's still in there, Trip, that she could feel him fighting."

He lets go of the chair completely and runs his hands back through his hair, leaving them - fingers laced together - at the back of his head. "They're family, Nat. The Foresters, Trip... RJ. They're all Rose has left now and I'm sure she thinks they're gone too. I don't know how to let her know that they're not, not yet, without turning her world even further upside down."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would listen over to Bucky, letting him get it out of his system. Talking through didn't lead to processing. But it did lead to conclusions, and hopefully to data. "All right. There's no reason to. That would be putting them in a situation where they could be hurt more. Also examination might reveal how they're being directed. It could be subliminal, it could be by a tracker chip. You can have them analysed by one of the specialists here and see if they can pick anything up." Lang might even be useful over for once.

Natasha understands and sympathizes,e ven if she doesn't agree. THis is personal for Bucky. They are his family in a way no one else is.

James Barnes has posed:
"I think that's what they're doing, but they're not doing it very /fast/," Bucky replies, the last bit coming out in a snarl. Sometimes it's hard to remember that fast doesn't equate to thorough. Sometimes it's even harder to realize when the latter is more important than the former.

"I should have kept a closer watch on them somehow." It had to come around to that eventually, guilt that he has no business carrying.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would fold her arms, "The past is the past. Save your recriminations for when they're safe and sound. You're wasting effort that could be spent recovering them." Now she's firm and blunt. He's had a few moments to think and to focus. Now she goes to try and entrap him when he's caught up in guilt.

James Barnes has posed:
"The past is always the past, Nat. Until it isn't," Bucky points out quietly. "I'm gonna go check in with Steve, maybe Stadler after, see what kind of equipment we can get in the sky over those mountains." He glances over his shoulder, gaze lingering in the direction of where they're holding the miners and adds, "I can't be here anymore."

It makes him feel useless, it's irrational, he's not a doctor or a science-nerd. It'd be like them feeling useless going against a Dreadnaught. "I think I'll skip Steve and head out to the Trisk to see if I can find Richard."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova wuold nod, "As you see best." Sh would gesture over at Bucky. "Make good use of your time while you have it." Her tone is firm. "Figure out your potential vectors of attack and research them and when you've narrowed them down get ready to counterstrike." Natasha considered Bucky as close to what she might as a friend.

Which meant she would redirect him as best she could to help.

James Barnes has posed:
Bucky lowers his hands from his head. "I'll call if I need you, Nat." ...he's not just talking about needing her for mission related garbage. If he needs... a friend, she's on that list too.

"If you hear anything about what's going on in there," he nods 'thattaway' toward where the science-nerds are doing science-y stuff with someone he considers family.