9524/Dream a Little Russian Dream

Dream a Little Russian Dream
Date of Scene:	08 January 2022
Location:	1117 Brighton Beach
Synopsis:	Walking in dreams, Bucky confronts a past decision and Wanda thinks he isn't quite as damned as he believes he is.
Cast of Characters:	James Barnes, Wanda Maximoff

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James Barnes has posed:
In his Spartan place at Brighton Beach, Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, lays on an old couch, his legs hanging off the side of it, and his head resting on the very comfortable lap of one Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch.

The television is playing something but neither of them is paying attention. Rather, they are captivated by something else: something within. With their eyes closed, both the assassin and the sorceress are within the former's mind.

It's quiet right now, as they stand in the hallway of a Russian building, somewhere in...

<< Moscow. >>

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Wanda has just enough awareness that the house won't burn down without her noticing. That much eludes quite a few sorcerers and witches, so she enjoys an uncommon degree of success in self-possession. Streaks of reddened light glow around the worn golden ring on a chain hung from her neck.

The mind contains unfathomably large universes. Whole worlds exist inside the space of two thoughts. Bucky's may be awash in mist or great voids, where it all gets dark. She knows to walk with light feet before they go too far.

Mockba. Moscow. The great metropolis of the subarctic, perched far to the east. Certain things are familiar even from someone used to Berlin and the Balkans. The smell of onions, rattling radiators that never run long enough, old carpet with that unmistakable signature glue that turns weirdly waxy with age. Her head tilts as she listens for the groan of pipes coming alive, the tramp of feet. Maybe a chair rocking by a window as an unfortunate elder peers out the window and imagines better days when age didn't devour him.

James Barnes has posed:
Bucky doesn't move. He just listens. Memory is strange. Because it's _his_ memory, they're both experiencing it from the relatively same sensorial point of view; a little bit of magic is enough to make them seem to be standing next to each other, separate them from his original self in the memory. Magic fills in what is otherwise impossible: different directional perceptions.

So when Bucky reaches out to touch Wanda's shoulder and direct her attention, it's so they can see _him_ turning the corner -- the old him, the one that's here to, inevitably, murder someone.

<< This doesn't end well. >>

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
The man who walked these halls did so with a different perspective than his ghosts, suspended in the midst of events that already transpired, fixed points in a life rushing headlong into the twenty-second year of the third millennium. Details settled as filler and as much from his own subconscious memory banks or imaginations provide tangible relief.

<<For them or you?>>

A question that bears asking only because the likely outcome for the latter appears so unlikely. She steps back to him, shadowed by the wall. <<You are the director and actor here. I merely provide the means. Normally we might not be seen, but nothing is certain where dreamscapes are involved.>> Her thumb ringed twice-over brushes his side, stone band and its corresponding glass one both charged to act.

James Barnes has posed:
Bucky turns and tilts his head when he looks at Wanda, giving her a _really?_ look. He smirks at her and then turns back towards the ghost of his past.

The Winter Soldier is approaching a door when the door explodes outwards and sends him flying. He passes through Bucky and Wanda, tumbling ass over tea kettle. Then, men in suits and speaking Russian file out of the room bearing firearms.

<< Someone told them I was coming. I'm still not sure how they found out. >>

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
His smirk is met with raised eyebrows. Rules on the conquest of dreams might very well shift with the dreamer, to their peril. With a shrug, she skims her hand over her disheveled auburn hair. Tangled waves would resolve to curls with a comb, but none here and this is a place where even her composition can subtly or dramatically move simply to satisfy the expectations of his unawake mind.

The explosion brings shards erupting in fixed patterns, where no physical laws need be obeyed. She flexes her hand, feeling for the emotions permeating the realm. What emotions there may be; a man vaunted for his self-control might not let any in or know how to let them out. But contending with a witch isn't so straightforward.

<<Who were they?>> she asks, watching the Winter Soldier come under Russian firearms and unblinking, dark eyes. The sort of thing that would harbour terror for most people.

James Barnes has posed:
<< Bratva. Except for the short one. That's Gasparov. Low-level Hydra implanted in the local government. He decided that Hydra wasn't giving him enough benefits, so he split off and employed the mafiya to run his operations. >>

The Winter Soldier rises and before he's on his feet, two of the five Bratva are dead; one with neck snapped and the other with his throat torn entirely off by metal fingers. There aren't clean kills; they're brutal, and his eyes are cold and quiet.

<< So they sent me. >>

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Gasparov; a name that doesn't ring bells, though several regional HYDRA divisions or high-profile leadership might be necessary to trip Wanda's knowledge of them. A hundred years of bad behaviour won't translate into immediate recognition. The witch frowns a fraction. Violence is a part of their mutual existence.

She does not have to like it. Witness beside the living man, her fingers seek his hand, a subtle reintroduction of connection though it already exists across other media. Bratva fall, dead bodies little more than heaps. Might be impersonal, might be he remembers every detail of their clothes or faces. That level of significance matters for later study, perhaps. The bright snap of bone or the dull recollection of blood, disregarded. What makes the man, what makes the sum of his life?

<<No one likes competition. Least of all HYDRA. An offense to the core.>> A smirk, then.

James Barnes has posed:
<< This isn't the important part, >> Bucky says, even as his psychic hand wraps around hers and he squeezes it gently.

Bratva do fall. Another two, one of them just dies on the Winter Soldier's metal arm after it passes through his sternum and grabs his spine. He squeezes and breaks it, before tossing the body aside. The other man dies from having his own gun jammed into his gut and fired three times in quick succession.

But Bucky is looking past the carnage, down the hall.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
She drifts after, whether holding Bucky's hand or disentangled. Walking in his path taken, the Soldier's footsteps matched one for one as far as she can remember. Carnage smelts dreamstuff down into piles of bodies, discarded heaps that are no more alive now than when he discarded. Broken lives and fallen bullets avoid making a clack where she goes by, nothing colliding solidly for now.

Spent casings might rise with her, if given the need, a silent call all that matters.

Whither dost thou go, Winter Soldier? Asking would not help, his mission a purpose painted in black shadows and red ink. <<I believe that. But there are markers here.>>

James Barnes has posed:
That final Bratva proves no more of a challenge than the other four, and then there's just Gasparov. He's caught by the throat, the Winter Soldier pinning him to the wall. Each second that goes by is another bone that is cracking under the pressure, another artery blocked, vein pinched, muscle torn.

But beyond the murder, a voice: "Papa?"

<< There it is. >>

A little girl, watching the Winter Soldier murder her father.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Make an offer: what would it be?

Close your eyes, and pretend this never happened.

Turn the nightmare into a dream, sweetening the outcome. Dropping Gasparov, walking away.

Take a deep breath, and let all traces of memory fade out of reach.

Wanda offers none of those options, though she might provide Bucky with a vial of nepenthe of another kind. Suspended between the living man and his past self, she waits in that hallway while he tears into a room. Goodbye, goodbye child. Innocence hovering on the cusp might be blown away like so much smoke. Even now, the tension ramps up, and her image shifts not from the Avenger but to the vagabond of life's cruelties. A flash and the teenager with hollow eyes and smudged shadows on her face watches, evaporating back into herself in seconds. <<Who we become is the sum of what our experiences were, even the involuntary ones, those we would have left behind. Judging by this, you have come to better terms.>>

James Barnes has posed:
<< Maybe. >>

Gasparov dies. The girl survives.

James Barnes wakes up slowly in Wanda Maximoff's lap and puts his hand to his forehead, looking up at her.

"But she didn't. I never looked her up when I got out." Probably to avoid feeling like shit should the girl have spiraled completely.

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
<<You recognize what you did. Nor do you try to make excuses.>> A gentle reminder flows as Gasparov's breath rattles away and his crushed veins struggle to produce enough circulation to a dying brain. Death is rarely sudden, but an ugly shutdown, last gasp efforts crunched together.

The girl has that grace of living. <<You remember her. Does that not count for something? You might have acted differently if you were completely bereft of your humanity.>> Turning for a moment, she faces Bucky himself.

Those amber eyes don't give him any relief, but neither are they horror-stricken.

James Barnes has posed:
"Does it count." Bucky considers this and then shrugs, shaking his head. "I don't know if it counts." He looks up at Wanda, and then slowly he folds at the middle sitting up on his couch and turning to sit next to her instead of lying on her. "I think maybe it only counts if it counts for _her_."

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Worlds clash and collapse. The witch still shuts her eyes, feeling for stirrings in the gloom, memory that might asset itself through the veneer of civility and control. She reaches out to touch Bucky's brow, almost blindly seeking, accurate enough if he chooses not to move out of the way. Against his reflexes, Wanda stands no chance.

"You let her live. That is a gift to yourself, as far as I choose to see."

James Barnes has posed:
He doesn't deny her touch. He just slumps back and leans his head back, letting her hand follow him as he stretches his hands out and rests them on his knees. He's tired; this sort of mental reviewing can really take it out of someone, and not in the way that his enhanced physicality can just compensate for.

"Maybe. Would it have been enough for you? If someone killed your parents in front of you but let you live?"

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
Bucky seated there like a discarded child's toy earns a sigh from Wanda. "We could have tea, but I am not sure either of us wants to walk very far to get it. Even if this place is the size of a locker." She teases him lightly. In that tone the familiar refrain for two people used to living with nearly nothing, and his own home acquired with help far exceeds an apartment that might've been in Brooklyn or a flat somewhere in greater Serbia or the eastern side of Berlin she could afford.

She contemplates his question, brushing her messy bangs out of her face. "We want things to be different when they cannot. She might have wished it different. Maybe she looked at her father, knowing he brought her so close to harm, and reviled him. Hate is an easy path, like negotiation. People tried to burn me alive, and I don't hate them. I am sad they were so afraid of me."

James Barnes has posed:
"Good enough, I guess." Bucky takes in a deep breath and then releases it, lifting a hand and sliding it along the back of the couch until it drops onto the shoulder of hers furthest from him, and he can slowly pull her towards him, leaning against her gently.

"Thank you," he says, "for the help."

Wanda Maximoff has posed:
The moment passes. Wanda smiles, lighting the fire that smolders away. The couch probably creaks under his weight, but with Bucky sitting up, she has the opportunity to shake her arm awake and restore her grip on reality itself again. Blinking brings the light down a bit from how it glares down on them, banishing the softest memories of dreams.

"Try not to move too fast," she says in warning. "We can get disoriented this way more than you think." Shifting to settle in against him, she stares at the TV for a moment. Nothing good on still.

"Or we can just do this, and have a very good nap."