networkinthenight | [text] @helsing; I've always liked to play with fire [open]

[No wonder she's shit at accepting help. The Soldier has just enough tact not to say that out loud, no matter how comfortable it's getting with Scarlett. Instead it asks, half out of actual curiosity and half because some instinct says keeping her talking will distract from wound treatment,]

Why were you getting wounded at twelve?

[Because that seems awfully young to be needing to be bandaged up, by one's parents or not.]

[ She tries to get a better look at her wound as he cleans it, the grimace more from the state it's in than any actual pain. She could practically hear Charles Harker now, berating her for being so stupid.

But then he wouldn't like her being here at all, standing with the person who had technically done this. He would have wanted her to kill him. To keep killing him until he stopped coming back, so there was no chance this could happen again. ]

My Dad was preparing me. [ It's said casually like she hasn't just admitted something that would be jarring for most. ] For as long as I can remember he was training me in combat, weapons, hunting. That kind of thing.

He was... [ Despite what she's said, there's something of a fondness in the curve of her lips as she continues. ] He was pretty intense.

You really are like a Widow. They train from very young, too.

[Not that the Soldier exactly approves (Little girls shouldn't have to kill people. Period.), but it didn't really have a say in the matter of Widows, and her history is long past so disapproving now serves no purpose. It holds her shirt aside a little so she can see better, when she looks, then swaps the soapy washcloth for a clean one and a little more cold water to rinse.]

What was he preparing you for?

[Since she's not a spy. The Soldier thinks she's not a spy, anyway. A spy would probably be better with people than she is.]

[ She still doesn't fully understand what a Widow is, but she doesn't comment on them training young. To Scarlett, that was normal. She had no doubt there were plenty of people that wouldn't agree with how Charles Harker had raised her, but he'd given her a fighting chance. That's more than most of the world had. ]

The Rising.

[ It's funny how two words could define a horrific situation for one, while to everyone else they held no significant meaning. ]

A few years back, the world I'm from went to shit. Yellowstone blew, blanketing the sky with clouds of ash. That's when the Vampires came. Society collapsed. Most of the human population was either killed or turned and those who were left have been hunted ever since.

[ She doesn't even know if he knows what a Vampire is, if any of this makes the slightest bit of sense, but she talks like she's relaying facts instead of describing an apocalypse that saw hundreds of millions of people killed. ]

I hunted the hunters.

[Sounds pretty fucked up, all right. The Soldier isn't bad at imagining things, and it can picture that pretty clearly from what little Scarlett says.]

Vampires. Like Elena?

[That's all the Soldier knows about vampires, what Elena's told him.]

[ Scarlett tenses at that name, her expression difficult to read as the young Vampire in question continues to be a source of confusion for Scarlett. Either she was the Unicorn of Vampires and was all that she claimed to be, or she was one helluva liar. Either way it was clear that Scarlett wasn't entirely comfortable with her. ]

Worse than her, but yeah. Like Elena.

[ If she hadn't seen somebody she now trusted, fight their nature, she might never have believed what Elena was saying was possible. ]

They don't need to ask for Volunteers in my world. They just take what they want.

[The Soldier stills its hand on her shoulder at the tension. She's going to make it worse if she's not careful, and the Soldier's not really that great at making people relax. This is probably not the best topic of conversation for a wounded person.]

There's always someone worse. And people who just take what they want. Elena's not so bad, though. She was nervous and I had to cheer her up by telling her I was scarier.

[It was pretty cute.]

Edited (reread the scene, and Bucky wouldn't misrepresent it, so had to fix, oops) 2019-10-01 03:46 (UTC)

[ And yet she only tenses further at his words, Scarlett's fingers curling into the palms of her hands as she struggles to keep her temper in check. ]

Why? Because she was nice to you? [ A hardness creeping into her tone. Maybe Elena wasn't as bad as some, but she was still a Vampire and Scarlett struggled to believe she didn't have blood on her hands. ]

Everyone has two sides, depending on whether they see themselves as Predator or Prey. Just because you see the Prey doesn't mean they're not still a Predator.

[Oh, she's got the wrong idea. Not surprising, really, most people aren't like the Soldier in how it relates to actual people. It shifts its hand, squeezes the good part of her shoulder tentatively, and says,]

Scarlett. I don't trust anyone. Too many handlers.

[It stops there. (Fucking HYDRA. One thing we agree on.) The plates in the metal arm ripple with a metallic sound, then settle, and the Soldier gets back to the wound, putting the washcloth aside to get the clean bandages.]

That doesn't mean I don't like people, anyway.

[ One of these days she was going to probe when he says things like that. Handlers makes him sound like a spy and the thing is? She believes he could be just that, but it's hard to focus on the questions she wants to ask when he's squeezing her shoulder. It's such a small show of affection that it could easily be dismissed by most, but to somebody who has rarely been touched in her life? She can't help but stare at his hand. ]

That's how you wind up dead. [ Her voice pitched low. Almost like she's reminding herself of that fact instead of telling him.

She grows quiet for a time, letting him work in silence as she stares at his metal arm. Scarlett focused on whatever dark thoughts that are running through her head before she speaks again. ]

What happened to your arm?

Edited (Phone tags are hard ) 2019-10-01 05:05 (UTC)

Maybe.

[The Soldier's pretty sure its died a few times, though. It's less worried about dying than it is about getting through everything on the way there. And now it's giving its first ever friend (that it can remember, anyway) a comforting shoulder-squeeze while explaining it doesn't trust anyone (that's probably weird). It's not even really sure why it did that. It felt good, though.

It lets things go quiet, then, until her question.]

It's always been like that.

[(Come on, you know that ain't true. I don't remember it. You don't remember any damn thing. Neither do you.) Expression briefly frustrated, the Soldier corrects itself,]

As far as I remember, anyway.

[ She's the one who insists she trusts no one, while allowing the man who shot her to tend to her wounds after suggesting he can spend time with her because he wants to. There's not a lot about this friendship that makes sense, except perhaps, for the way that it feels.

Her eyes narrow at that reply, at the frustration in his features and she shifts, pulling her shoulder out of reach as if to try and encourage him to focus on her instead of his wound. ]

Is that what those memory malfunctions are? You're remembering things you didn't before?

[Now that's an uncomfortable topic. For a moment, the Soldier is silent, unsure. (She's not a handler. She can know these things. Besides, the other handlers aren't punishing you for remembering shit, either. So far. Look, you want me to tell her? ... no.) So the Soldier finally answers, itself.]

I think so.

[It stares hard at her half-bandaged shoulder, finding itself annoyed and antsy that now it can't keep its hands busy. The metal one clenches and whirs a little. But the words keep coming.]

It's happened twice now. With you, and then later when I was asleep. Two different sets of memories. Both of them fucking awful.

[ She regards him silently, her expression serious yet thoughtful as it adds another piece to the puzzle that has been her - friendship? She supposes that's what this is - with him.

She shifts again, offering him her shoulder again but not quite ready to let the subject go. ]

Why do you call it a malfunction? [ Like he's a machine, not a man. Like it's an error and not simply a suppressed memory that's rising to the surface. ] Because they're shitty memories or...

[At least with something physical to focus on, it doesn't feel quite as much like it's being interrogated for things it's not fucking supposed to even have. (Like with Crowley. Jesus, why does everybody wanna talk about our feelings?) The Soldier gets back to carefully trying to get the bandage in place without jostling her injury or mussing her shirt too much.]

I'm wiped before and after every mission. Memories coming back is a malfunction. They interfere with proper functioning.

[Still not a person, after all. Its face makes a grumpy expression, but its hands are still gentle.]

Them being shitty just means I don't know if I want any more of them.

[ It's just one piece of the puzzle but it steals her breath away. Parts of what she'd been thinking but hadn't fully understood, making sense. What was a person but a collection of experiences and emotions, layered over the spread of time? ]

Shit...

[ But he'd said it himself. It wasn't that he had no memories. They were still in there, somehow, and they were coming back. She just didn't know if that was a good thing or not.

She allows the silence to stretch out for a while, letting him focus on her wound as Scarlett instead allows his words to turn over in her mind. ]

Maybe... it's not a malfunction? [ Her words tentative, half because she's still trying to piece it together and half because she doesn't want to push. ] Maybe this is just, how you function now?

Gonna hope you got that wrong, doll, cuz that's gonna be a real fucked up kind of functioning.

[(Oh, come on.) The Soldier pauses in tying off the bandage to whap the side of its own head. With the flesh hand, not the metal one, because otherwise, ow. At least it rattles the Brooklyn out of its voice.]

Sorry. Not wrong, though.

[ If her eyes had been closed she would have sworn there was another person in the room. It wasn't just the change in accent or the fact that he'd called her doll. It was the injection of life into his voice. The flash of personality that had her mouth falling open as she tries to convince herself she'd heard him right.

Her reaction to the hand smacking at his head is instinctual, Scarlett reaching as if to grab his arm and stop him. She catches herself though. A flash of uncertainty in her eyes as her fingers hover at his forearm. Her face searching like she can somehow seek out the owner of those words. ]

You don't need to do that. [ Apologize. Hit himself. Both? ] What just happened?

[Okay, this is even more uncomfortable. Embarrassing, even. The Soldier looks away, flattening its expression back down, as if that will help prevent more outbursts like that. A handful of people know about the memory malfunctions. Nobody knows about that.

(Well, now somebody does. Fuck you. Yeah, not gonna happen, pal.)]

That just. Happens sometimes. Mostly it keeps to the back of my head, but once in a while it takes over my mouth.

[That sounds. Really bad. The Soldier is probably certifiably nuts. Then again, given the torture and the murder and the constant literal brain-scrambling, that's probably not that surprising. It kind of wants to just flee, now. This is so embarrassing.]

[ There's a lot to unpack in what he's just said and she's not entirely sure she understands it any better now that he's explained it. Scarlett working hard to keep her features slack, her expression casually neutral as she rolls that over in her head.

She's no psych. She doesn't know shit about multiple personalities, beyond TV and movies and yet it would be easy to dismiss this as that if it weren't for the other little things.

She can see his discomfort written plain as day on his face, however. That more than anything keeping Scarlett from voicing one of the million questions going through her mind. She can't say that it was strictly normal, even by her standards but then she had shared dreams with an ancient vampire so... She couldn't exactly judge what was normal these days. ]

Okay. [ There's a casual acceptance in the way she says it. No trace of judgment or amusement in her tone. Scarlett's hand slowly dropping back to her side as she allows him a moment to process. ]

[The Soldier doesn't immediately resume its work, still looking to one side. Watching her reaction out of the corner of its eye, measuring the tone of her voice. All of it reads "carefully controlled" which could mean a lot of things, most of them not great.. (If you fucked this up... It'll be fine.) Not even the chatty presence sounds sure about that.

Reassurance might help.]

It isn't dangerous. Like the memory malfunctions. Just annoying. And not very respectful.

[(I'm respectful! Calling women "doll" isn't respectful, asshole. Since when?)]

The Doll thing? [ A smile lights upon her lips at that, a wry amusement dancing in her eyes and she lifts her good shoulder in a shrug. At least not particularly offended by it. ]

I've been called worse. [ Granted, they were usually intended to be so.

Something in her ability to be amused by it breaks some of the unspoken tension, those questions still bubbling beneath the surface but just about everyone she goes to say, sounds worst than the one before it. ]

Do you know... what it is?

[(See? I fucking told you, it's fine.)

The Soldier hesitates a moment more, then inches back over to finish tying off her bandage, at least. No need to leave it hanging if she's not going to be upset or angry or... whatever reaction one might have to finding out the not-a-person hears voices (well, a voice, anyway) and sometimes sounds like it's American.]

I don't know. Neither does it. It's just. There. There are some things it knows that I don't, like what dreams are.

[Yes, the Soldier hadn't remembered what dreaming was. Yes, it feels a little dumb. But to be fair, not a person. It hadn't dreamed in decades.]

And some things I know that it doesn't, like "doll" not being current slang. ... we argue a lot.

[ Upset or angry would hardly be the words for it. Bewildered? Sure, it was hard not to be but there wasn't much about their interactions to date that hadn't been that and then some. If she hadn't told him to fuck off after shooting her? She was hardly going to do it over this. ]

You argue? [ Okay. This is fine. Unexpected but, fine. ] So what like, you and he talk to each other?

[ So, bewildering was taking a turn towards unhinged but she still didn't think he was crazy. Fucked up by somebody or something? Definitely, but he was more present than he was not. ]

Does he know the memories or are they just yours?

It talks a lot. Sometimes I talk back, sure. Usually just to tell it to shut up.

[(Yeah, you're an asshole. Takes one to know one. Watch it, you're gonna start soundin' like me, pal.) The Soldier finishes her bandage and steps back again, wishing that had taken longer.

Her second question earns a single sharp headshake.]

I don't know what you mean.

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