8259/Dindin!

Dindin!
Date of Scene:	15 October 2021
Location:	1117 Brighton Beach
Synopsis:	In a call for recipe help, truths are laid bare.
Cast of Characters:	James Barnes, Wanda Maximoff

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James Barnes has posed:
Another day.

Another life.

Bucky had been by himself. Struggling to live and learn new skills that don't involve killing anybody. This is a surprisingly difficult concept for Bucky to set his mind to. As a result, Bucky is putting together some Italian-style food...but he doesn't know how to cook any of it.

<<Wanda. Can you help me cook food?>>

Bucky knows how to make rations and simple food like Mac N' Cheese...but this is a bit beyond him. Hopefullu the Chaos Magician gets back to him if he might risk burning his food and house.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Another day. Another year.

Wanda and Pietro had their joint birthdays earlier in the week, celebrated with no expedient fanfare. That isn't their way. Life for them meant death for their mother, but also, they're used to life being tougher. Having a nice meal to eat together somewhere is hardly high on the list.

Bucky learns not to kill. She learns not to hide from cards or a few slices of cake. It all makes sense.

When he calls out to her, she's busy writing a thank you card for someone, engaged in helping with an event. Putting the pen down, her head lifts into the void. A smart fingertip pressed to her pendant ring, and she murmurs, <<I can. Do you need me to bring anything?>> It's not the first time she stocked the pantry for him or brought proper food.

One witchy nose wrinkle later, she's capped and set the pen aside. Then she moves through the door, out into the mansion, possibly expecting to claim a few things. <<What do you have, and what are you hungry for?>>

James Barnes has posed:
<<No, you don't need to bring anything. It's just Italian food. Pasta, salad.>>

Bucky didn't know it was Wanda and Pietro's birthday , and this did not come. Or perhaps he did and he simply sent a text telling her happy birthday. Bucky is a patient man. He is willing to wait as long as necessary for her to arrive on her own time.

<<You are welcome to bring anything you like. I Enjoed your company last we spoke, despite the ritual not helping as much as either of us would like.>>

While he waits, he sits down on the floor, petting Lily with his metallic hand, the dog happily wagging its tail as if knowing it's happy to be relevant.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
<<Pasta and salad are the excellent basis for a meal. Good to see you including vegetables other than ketchup.>> A tease lifts the thoughts stretching over the distance with a clarity not quite on par with a cellular phone. The cellular phone can give a clear voice, but not anything more. Emotions packaged in a humming vein bloom like flowers after the rain.

Wanda collectively plucks a red coat from a peg and heads out to the foyer for the house. Any further and she will end up on Fifth Avenue or across from Central Park, some of the finest real estate in North America and totally unsuitable for someone who will open a doorway between places. She reaches for the door handle in front of her, whispering eldritch words that evoke command over powerful forces, narrowing her focus down until the other side comes into focus in the mind's eye. A moment later, when she pulls it open, the door leads to a forgettable corner of Brighton Beach. There are so many, it's almost a point of effortlessness to go through.

Then the air pops. Sound crackles softly. The city sweeps her up in its embrace, and she takes a breath, getting her bearings in the diesel bite of sulfur, a glossy wet kiss of cool air and borscht cut by the sweet stink of garbage rotting in a dumpster. Onward, then, a path veering past familiar shops and a sidelong turn heads closer to Bucky's house, though it's not entirely instantaneous. Showing up on his doorstep unexpectedly isn't quite the way to go.

<<The ritual helped. I can speak to you, yes? Then it serves its purpose. We can always improve.>>

Another few minutes and then she will reach the door; Lily likely smells or hears long before.

James Barnes has posed:
<<Do you doubt my ability to maintain myself?>> Bucky replies in response to Wanda's prodding and teasing, but she can maybe feel some slight amusement from Bucky in response to her humor. He remains where he is, leaving the food uncooked and alone to handle the winds of nature alone.

She reaches the door and it seems to open for her before she feels the need to knock. The link is two-way, and Bucky has eyes and ears everywhere. Gotta resist HYDRA as best he can.

He smiles softly at Wanda as he steps aside from the door to permit her entrance. "Thank you for coming. I know you've been busy. It is appreciated."

she leads her to the kitchen in a very poorly decorated and furnished home. There is a blanket on the floor, even though he has a bed that looks like it's been untouched, a living room with no couch.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
<<I have witnessed your addiction to fast food and nutritional standards that would be acceptable to a teenager, no one else. Proof in your own pudding, James.>> The familiar voice is her own, although respectfully contained. The light knock to his door would be nothing to interrupt the flow of conversation, but it's mostly a rap of her heels on the ground until she slips into the house proper. An oddity in the neighbourhood where so much is constructed on two, three, five storeys. But then, oddities embody who they are.

A hint of a smile blooms as she holds out her hands. "I shouldn't come with nothing so we will make do, da?" Traces of her Transian accent bleed through English, but oddly never Russian, which she can speak nearly as good as a native. Smartly wigging her fingers, she glances around, taking in changes and details, then turning her focus back to Bucky. "'Busy.' Not nearly as busy as you would imagine."

Removing her boots takes a few minutes after unlacing it, tugging on the laces to open up the footwear, and wiggling her feet free.

James Barnes has posed:
Bucky could eat all the junk food in the world and he's still be at peak condition. HYDRA's version of the serum is some nasty business, but it does it's part against the evil of carbs and fatty acids. <<I don't eat junk food. Not often.>> Bucky replies to Wanda with a soft smile.

There have been no changes, no effort for changes at least are seen. But that doesn't mean the space isn't appreciated. It is spotlessly clean, almost as if Bucky has worked hard to keep his trace minimal, despite how hard that is to do so.

"It's not much, but it'll do. I'll accept any of your expertise that you're willing to share. I'm sorry if the floor is cold. Cold temps are...comfortable for me."

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Not fair, that. Mind, her twin can eat literal mountains and burn off the energy in around fifteen minutes at top-ish speeds. Totally unfair to be free of the evil of carbs. She, at least, has to burn her energy out through the mundane means of occasionally changing the world and blasting people or things.

<<We have broad descriptions of 'junk.'>> So she might, child of the crossroads of Europe. Then again, food by her standards is sometimes not precisely palatable. She takes in Bucky's space as much as him, lacing her hands together. Peace offering, that, though gestures are hardly necessary to master any casting. Still, though, she's content to chase where he leads into the kitchen. "First rule of cooking," dropping into spoken words versus mental is rather easy, really. "You make what you can with what you have, and it is not a science. More an art, with a few basic principles. So let's see what we have around you. And you forget, I slept outside more than in and on harder, colder floors than this, mm? It was not a walk in the park. Transia, Serbia, they are mountainous places."

James Barnes has posed:
It's both a blessing and a curse. He probably won't age visibly too much over the course of the next fifty years. Blame it on the serum keeping his cells nice, healthy, and active. They pushed him to his peak human limits, and will keep him there so long as he has the serum coursing through his veins. Even still, Bucky seems to smile softly as Wanda takes her first steps in the teaching method.

She was always so very kind to him, even when he had no right for someone to be kind to.

The first rule of cooking. She speaks as if it were the first law of thermodynamics. But that is the essence of art, to treat such as law - a bendable one - but law. Bucky acts as if he were at boot camp once more, listening to what she says as if they were the last words he will ever here.

A kindness that she even speak at all to him.

"I figure comfortability is a bit more preferable." Bucky tells her with a soft nod, his eyes softening as he feels less embarassed about it.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Kindness is owed to none, but deserved by all. An axiom of many human religions and philosophies, kindness and its sister compassion underscore the foundation for society. Civilisation wouldn't get very far without some manner of patience and tolerance present in the average person, aimed for their fellow citizens.

But then, certain factors go further than that where Wanda is involved. Commitment for therapy and companionship stretch into a nebulous area populated by boundless possibilities. For someone used to manipulating reality consciously or not on the quantum scale...

Is it real? It must be.

"You know, there are good cooking shows to watch. Some on television, some on YouTube. I like one fellow, he teaches the basics for a good meal every time," she adds merrily. "Babish. You know him? If not, we should see him together. There's always Julia Child, so interesting!"

She moves with a little more ease, headed for the kitchen, gesturing expansively. "Show me what you have done already. We start there."

James Barnes has posed:
Yet given to so few.

The concepts, powerful as they are, sometimes are not enough. Sometimes it needs help from love and mercy. Yet sometimes...hatred, greed, bloodlust win instead. It's not fair...but then again, nothing is.

"I don't have cable." Bucky says the words as if it might end Wanda's whole suggestion. He even vaguely knows Julia Child, only in the sense that he's seen her name on books before. "If it's available, I wouldn't mind watching with you. I don't think I'm good movie company though." Bucky suggests, his eyes turning then to the kitchen as he reveals his progress.

"I've taken out the food. I don't trust my cooking abilities." Well...at least he's honest. "It is a simple start but a complex road. Be patient with me." Its not a command, but a plea.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Not given enough, and thus the reason for so many superheroes. They fulfill the prophecy for a lack of good intentions and ready forgiveness. What awaits if not a world of sorrows, riveted by dissent and condemntation? Fracture lines weeping hate could be arguably what forged them, both Bucky and Wanda the byproducts of an ideological divide rooted in an inability to see kindness or tolerate such 'weakness' as the core of morality, or humanity.

The world might not be fair, but Wanda might very well argue the only thing defining life itself -are- those things.

"No need for cable, use the Internet." She scoops out her phone, one of those Stark-provided things, and sets it down on a counter. "You can even ask JARVIS to read out the recipe or find something for you, but I like to do it myself. Not wise to trust someone else to finish what we can complete ourselves, is it?" The hints of her accent come in and out, not quite smidged and filed off. Putting a palm on the counter, she leans slightly, watching Bucky curiously. Amber-green eyes miss very little, tracking after him and then to the array of ingredients he's set out before them.

"Patient? Always. A good teacher needs to listen and be responsive," she agrees. "I am your friend, too. A bad friend to rush you. Before I really start, I like to have everything prepared, by the way. Cut up the vegetables or meat, have everything measured and set apart. Preparation becomes very easy then."

Her gaze seeks his. "Do you have a recipe? What exactly are you making? This is the key to start."

James Barnes has posed:
So many heroes.

Such a simple concept.

It almost feels pointless. If people valued home and hearth more than power and money, the world would be a much happier place. Bucky read the line in the Hobbit when it came out in '37. If only he actively remembered that.

If only he remembered many things.

"I guess I'm not used to it. I'm used to bare minimum. Used to nothing but what's in the field...even using a permanent phone is something to change. I feel like I lost myself twice. I don't know who I am...only what I'd like to be. Even still, I appreciate what you freely give. I only know one other person who would do the same."

Then orders are given. Soldiers follow orders.

Bucky starts to rhythmically cut up and dice the meat and veggies available, cutting fast and with grace befitting someone who knows how to use their knives. "No." Bucky replies to any hint of recipe. "Jarvis?"

<<Yes sir?>> asks JARVIS's disembodied voice, and Bucky gives him the ingredients and asks for the best recipe they can make with it. JARVIS replies with at least five recipes. "Pick the one that sounds good." Bucky advises.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Heroes aplenty, villains nearly as prevalent. Is human nature so corrupt, so deeply flawed to require them both?

Such a simple truth, as Tolkien wrote. Such a difficult achievement to accomplish, especially in an age that prizes individuality over the best interests of the group.

If only they knew now what Bucky and Steve understood then. Life moves on.

"Few people know who they are. Vanishing few can put together who they went to be with who they are at a given moment. We have one as a mutual acquaintance, and he is famous for it." She turns up an amused smile. "I dread losing myself. Not as a twin, but the other reasons. A shadow that persists could always consume me given the chance."

When JARVIS can be trusted to find a delicious meal that's reasonably suited for someone's skills, she tips her head and listens. "Trenette al pesto. We will use linguine in this case. Yellow potatoes, green beans cut into one inch segments. Pesto with pine nuts, garlic, and a pinch of salt. We will add basil after it's all mixed up. I will show you to mix those up. You probably do not have the basil or pine nuts, maybe no mortar, but that is easy."

Why order from Starkazon? Forget that. She spreads her hands and then flicks her wrist around, twisting motions that come together. <<I cheat, but then it is worth it this time.>>

James Barnes has posed:
Heroes and villains are like good cause evil. For balance and harmony to exist, you must have both. Both the light and the darkness counteract yet work together in order to bring forth the day and night, under both do living and unloving creatures thrive. People must remember also that if one of us fails, we may yet all fail. Look at leaders who failed, yet it was their people that paid the price. Did history remember them fondly?

Hint: depends on the person.

"I think I'm different in that sense in that I never had myself to begin with. To Steve and museums, I'm James Barnes. Now I'm just...well, Bucky." he frowns softly. He doesn't remember the names or faces of his mother and father, the names and faces of the Howling Commandos who fought to their last breath against Nazi Germany and HYDRA.

"I just don't remember." He looks at his metal arm for a moment. The reminder of the monster HYDRA made him. "Cheating the system helps us. Helped me survive. If you can, then be my guest." He watches as her wrists move and flex, bringing shapes and power into life. Bucky will never understand.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Red apples, stained souls. Whatever they consist of, the sources for evil cause cannot be divorced from the experiences that make them who they are. An assassin from a member of a lauded unit from World War Two, an Avenger from a mutant supremacist terrorist turned mutant royal. They are what they are, but not wholly because of the grafted lives made from displacement and resettlement.

"Is it not enough to be 'just Bucky?' You are James, you are Bucky, you are the sum and weight of the life you led and the one ahead," Wanda says, forming the pine nuts and dropping them into the mortar. Chances are she displaced them from another cabinet, and the point of creating the pesto will come easily once he's finished chopping everything up. Instructions can follow about dropping in the garlic with the pine nuts, and using the pestle to grind the concoction up before adding a whole lot of basil. "This is a simple meal, different from a red sauce. Bolognese over pasta is very common, but this is something fresh and delicious."

Wanda's bright eyes shift from the cutting board to the mortar, which she pushes his way. "Grind this up. When it becomes more of a paste, we add the basil. It takes quite a few leaves. You'll bruise and tear them with the pestle, going round and round, until they are the size of your pinkie nail. After that, you add the olive oil, all measured out."

The thoughtful commentary comes while she works, turning to face him. "You may not remember it all, but it can still be there. We need to find the right way to unlock it. Sometimes we can step back into your memories to locate where the fracture points are."

James Barnes has posed:
Stained Souls.

Stained beyond all recognition. The red in his ledger is overflowing, gushing red. The experience may have helped make him the kind of person he is today, but that doesn't mean that James...Bucky...has to be happy about it. They may be what they are...but there has to be something better, a brighter horizon. If there is no brighter horizon, then what was it all for?

What was all the blood for?

Bucky frowns a moment at Wanda's words, kind as they are, they feel hollow against his soul. "I don't know. Maybe when I find out who James was...and who Bucky is...maybe then it will be enough. But until I have all the pieces of the puzzle, I can't know for certain." Bucky states, even as Wanda seems to instruct him to the mortor.

That he can do. Grinding is easy.

Bucky gently takes the mortor and pestle, his metal arm supporting the weight while the other gets to work on grinding it up. "Understood." Though its what comes -after- the orders that Bucky seems to think. "....what if the fracture points are too much? What if the monster is there, just waiting for the door to open?"

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Stained glass is beloved, a symbol of the divine touching Creation and thereby mingling with the mortal soul. Stained selves, however, dipped in sin or the scar tissue after experience, might be a whole other matter. Red as Bucky's ledger may be, he is in another column compared to the Scarlet Witch, who takes her namesake and lineage from that very hue.

For the acts completed, for the acts yet to pass. No accounting will ever be perfectly satisfactory, a run of numbers and suffering or rejoicing in delicate balance. What was it for?

"You are still piecing things together and that is natural. Psychic or advanced therapy can assist you with that," she explains lightly, "but the decision of your identity is still yours. You are not bound to be one or the other, nor the Soldat, but yourself."

She ghosts around him while he grinds the basil down. It's not a fast process. Reducing it to shreds will be a time-consuming affair, rather the point. Meanwhile, she prepares the olive oil and slides it over. "Take some of this and pour it in slowly, mixing it so the basil and the pine nuts blend smoothly around it. The pieces will still be ripped up." Instructions land with skillful ease on that front as she peeks over the broad line of his shoulder, chin resting briefly upon it. "So what if the monster is there? What will it do that you so dread?"

The whisper of a word hums in a pale sheen of certainty. "If the fracture points are too much, then they will be shored up."

James Barnes has posed:
Stained glass is present in many places of holy sites. Even the Vatican makes great use of stained glass to depict the Almighty, the Pope, etcetera, etcetera. What was it for? Perhaps that is now Bucky's choice to decide. If it was truly enough for him to be here in the here and now. Truly enough for him to be present here in this moment with Wanda Maximoff, someone who has been preaching to his soul, calling it back from lands of decay.

From lands of death.

"Therapy." Bucky seems to frown at the thing. "I don't know how much it'll help. The ritual you did helped...even if it was only a little." He tells her as he continues to grind the basil down. She ghosts around his presence, but he does not seem to notice or just chooses not to, focusing on one thing before moving onto the next. He feels the weight of her chin on his shoulder, however briefly it may be, as he adds in the olive oil slowly, mixing with a gentle rotation of the mortar.

Yet she may feel his hand gently brush against hers.

"I'm scared it will turn me back into it. Leftover programming, something else HYDRA did that I don't know about...I can't trust my own mind, Wanda."

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
"I offer it as an alternative. Actual therapists with proper credentials do work with the community like us," explains the witch in that soft tone. Sandalwood is one of the more familiar notes drifting around her, subtle but present, part of the multicoloured rose window of the self on display in a battered hall. If the body is a temple, is that the incense? Would it be a component of the spots that allow light into the psyche? "My qualifications exist in a different space. Familiarity with trauma, insights that come from what you show me, intuition. Walking through your dreams may not be a proper substitute for an unbiased professional, that's all. Counsellors can parse through different things."

And they do not walk through dreams or dance in the mind. They cannot read auras or end up held to a wall at the distance of a gun's barrel for touching the wrong faultline. Wanda Maximoff is many things, and so is he. They walk their own paths through chaotic and jumbled landscapes, some of the self and some in history, but neither so disparate to be forgotten.

"What it will require from you, either way, is an open mind and work. I can step through those doors you show me and bridge the gaps you have inside, but the path's one you would navigate too. With a guide, your own mind is not a foreign and hostile place. Not so much." She amends that, looking down to watch the pesto developing. Noodles boiling come later, but they might have to postpone setting water on the hob. Her fingers find his, the unoccupied hand anyway, a brief touch. "There may be programming, da. You could have mines left, but I trust you have strength and mental fortitude to withstand them. Even without my help, you endured this long. Give yourself some credit."

James Barnes has posed:
"Some of them are military. Straightforward and blunt, often looking for money and money alone and rarely care about what you are actually going through." Bucky frowns. He doesn't seem to be too trusting of therapists. "Easy to infiltrate. Most likely will be a reason for any kind of pardon." Bucky runs a hand through his hair ever so softly. "The body is the temple...does that make the mind the palace? If so, the enemy won." Bucky frowns.

We are such that dreams are made of. Bucky's dreams are nightmares...and he's had much better nightmares than what he is now experiencing. He went to the store earlier. He chose this spot for a reason. A lot of people here in town are victims of the Winter Soldier in some way. How do you look a man in the eyes and tell him that you're the one who killed his son? Their wife? Husband? How?

It feels impossible. Overwhelming.

Its not that he performed the actions, its the overwhelming guilt that comes with it, the effect on a mind that now has to stare at the door every second of hte day worrying that a man with a gun will burst through it at any conceivable moment.

The warmth of her fingers, however brief the touch is, wake him from his ponderings.

His fingers seek hers out, as if to hold her hand. Whether as an anchor to bring him back to reality, or understanding Wanda's importance in all of this...or maybe something else entirely, He takes a deep breath.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
"Those ones do not have Captain Rogers or Tony Stark in their orbit. I have a hard time believing that Steve would approve of someone so ill-suited to your temperament or experience." Military psychologists? The VA? Perish the notion. Wanda has just enough knowledge to stare that possibility down. "Any kind of pardon? Do you expect a military tribunal or a firing squad to descend at any moment? Conditional releases contingent on your behaviour, or else you will be condemned to the Raft somewhere in the mid-Atlantic?"

Were the doors to be blown open and a full flotilla of soldiers running in to secure the Americanized Asset, things might be very different indeed. Over a counter with proper ingredients for pasta, some of them magically conjured from a shelf elsewhere in the city, how dangerous can one man be?

"The mind can be a palace. It is one theory. To make your mind a fortress, a place full of rooms and protective walls, where your self resides in the centre. You have some protective barriers naturally, others trained, some unconsciously developed. You are the one who controls entering the doors, the strength of the passage."

A slim description, but distraction peels her away from the task of assaying the mental progression they might be making, a schematic to follow. Her chin still remains on his shoulder. Bucky might well want to shrug her off, and only fair, but with his fingers wound around hers, it's an oddly domestic situation.

"Just be."

James Barnes has posed:
Bucky has no desire to be in a circle of people essentially in a PTSD AA meeting. Because there is no other soldier who has been through exactly what Bucky has been through. Perhaps there is, but if there is...they arn't around anywhere near here." Bucky takes a deep breath. "I expect a firing squad or life in prison." Bucky replies to Wanda somewhat grimly. Despite his alliance with Steve Rogers and his current cease fire with Tony Stark, Bucky hears the words of the Raft.

"I might end up there, yes."

She suggests that the mind can be a palace...but also a fortress. Her chin remains on his shoulder. Her hand still remains with his hand. If someone were to notice them, they may as well appear to just be a happy couple.

"I don't know if I can be." Bucky replies. "I'll need your help, I think."