woundedwinter | Sandbox thoughts

Bucky is as dedicated to the team as Jack is, but they're both alone. Jack a time anomaly or something and Bucky, a man thrown into the future with no memory of what had happened to him or why.

He's also a solider, so the warning only gets a clipped nod. Tonight means he'd better gear up sooner. "Any idea on what took it out? Was it Rift activity?"

Weapons were a given, along with trackers and the cold weather gear Jack mentioned. Bucky gathers it quickly, then pauses before grabbing extra gloves. His new arm is made of smooth and sleek metal plates, but he has no idea what cold may do to it's function.

Jack keeps smiling, but his eyes shift blankly. “It wasn’t the Rift. But it was something that came through it,” he says, headed out of the sunken kitchen. This is going to call for some of the bigger guns on their team.

Leaving Bucky, he takes the steps two at a time around the center of the Hub to the third floor and half slides, half barges into a dark lab. “Knock knock,” he says.

“Most people just knock,” the man says from the desk where only a small light illuminates the books he’s reading.

“Not most people,” Jack reminds him. “Whatcha doing tonight?”

The other sighs. “Oh I don’t know. Being dragged somewhere dumb with you?”

“Yep. Three hours. Suit up. It’s going to be cold.”

((So I play a lot of weird characters. Do you know Magnus Archives? I like both Jon and Martin from there. I also have Sylar, Peter, Matt and Mohinder from Heroes. I could bring back in Loki or Tony. JC from Jesus Christ Superstar (the arena version, not the Biblical version). I have Ten floating around since he’s my favorite doctor. Will Graham from Hannibal. John Watson from Sherlock. Sam Tyler from Life on Mars. Marshall - the vampire from being human…. I really don’t go for all the super powered people now that I look at my usual line up. Any thoughts?))

"Oh. That's comforting." Bucky is pretty sure the Something that came through the Rift wasn't friendly. He doesn't look up as Jack goes off in search of backup.

He hauls the gear into place while he waits, trying to ignore any lingering worries about the Rift. How many nights has he woken up choking on screams?

((I don't know Magnus Archives but I do know s1 of Heroes. I love Ten and have a Nine around somewhere. I read Red Dragon so I'm not sure how much Will from the series lines up against the book.
John Watson is a delight and he'd be amazing to throw against Stephen should we drop him in.

But all are good!))

Despite the rather full Hub, only Jack returns to where Bucky is gearing up. Just like he’s the man’s father, he starts checking over him to be sure his coats are on correctly and he has enough warming pads strapped on.

He even gives Bucky’s hood a little tug. “I want you to keep this in your mind when we go. You want to turn to your right to throw up.” They all throw up the first time. And the second. And the third usually.

Jack, for all of his fussing, has his parka open and only a pair of fuzzy earmuffs on. As if that would do anything for the cold.

He glances at his manipulator and then at Bucky and finally at the brooding figure staring down at them from the railing. “Come on, Gabriel. We’re waiting on you.”

“Don’t call me that,” the man frowns, but starts down the steps anyway.

((If you have time, you should listen. It’s a horror podcast. Very well done. Super compelling. It’s about an archivist who is in charge of sorting out stories told by people who believed they were real and goes from there. The end made me cry so bad))

There's something familiar about the way Jack tugs at his gear that keeps Bucky from arguing with him or batting his hands away. He's doing it because he cares, because he's a good leader.

And hadn't he done the same for the Howling Commandos decades ago?

Angrily he pushes the thoughts away. Now isn't the time to get lost in the past. "Yeah, we all know the drill. Barf to the right."

His eyes cut to the newest member of the party. Huh. "C'mon man. Sooner started, sooner parted, that's what my Ma used to say."

((Very cool! I'll have to add it to my to listen list))

The man scowls, dark eyes drifting to Barnes. They’d met, a few times. Usually in passing. He keeps to himself. Everyone here basically does but Sylar is one of the few people that really only ever comes out when called. It’s safer for everyone that way. Himself included.

“Your ‘ma’ was a wise woman,” he says, and takes the quicker way down to the pair. He flies. Or floats. It’s hard to tell and he never wants to talk about his abilities.

Jack usually just calls him the Swiss Army Knife and keeps it moving.

“To the right, Gabe.”

Sylar snorts. He doesn’t vomit. Not anymore. “Just us?”

“Yep. Let’s hope we’re close. If we aren’t, take Barnes to the location. Come back for me when he’s safe,” Jack says. Sylar rolls his eyes and their Captain sets the cuff to open the vortex to Antarctica. “I’ll go first. Bucky on my six.”

((Oh I have an umbrella Academy Klaus too. Hmm. Bring in whoever you want too!!))

Sylar doesn't talk much. Hell they've barely crossed paths since Bucky arrived, but he's seen his abilities in action and they're pretty amazing. So if Jack is bringing him along? This is gonna get messy.

Probably.

He doesn't protest at Jack's direction, getting him to safety first. Sure he's got a new arm and enhanced strength to go along with it, but he's not exactly invulnerable.

The vortex is staggering and he jerks himself to the right after stepping through. The cold is like a slap in the face and funny enough, it keeps him from vomiting. Barely.

"What the hell?" Jack's luck didn't run out this time, they're staring at where the base used to be. There are lights on in one of the secondary and surviving buildings.

((Oh if you bring him, Diego will have to come too. Someone's gotta keep an eye on Klaus))

“Huh.” Jack flips his manipulator closed and pushes between the two men. The snow here is hard, easy to walk on, as if there was once a plowed road beneath them. Massive hands slap each of them on the back as he takes the lead. Sylar will be in the back, scowling as if it’s his job to be sour, leaving Bucky between the two. They’re not exactly protecting him, but he is their newest member. And new members tend to have the lowest probability of long term employment at Torchwood.

At the front door, Jack uses his cuff to open the locking mechanism and as the heavy metal slides open, rumbling with effort, a waft of warm air hits them all. Behind Bucky, and audibly frowning, Sylar drawls: “Jack…”

“It’s fine,” the Captain insists. “You both stay just inside. I’ll go up and see what we’ve got using up our electricity.”

((Yay!!! Okay Klaus is part of Torchwood. He probably bothers Bucky all of the time too.))

A glance over his shoulder confirms that Sylar likes this just about as much as Bucky does. He thumbs the safety on his gun and follows Jack anyway.

There are voices ahead that sound like they're arguing. A younger voice, maybe a teenager, insisting that he can do more while another reminds him that spiders don't do well in the cold.

Spiders? What the hell? He glances back at Sylar.

“Most things don’t do well in the cold,” Jack calls, because that’s what Jack does. The man is infuriatingly reckless, though Bucky might understand if he knew why. Calling attention to himself is harmless, for the most part. He and Gabe can handle whatever it is that’s upstairs.

Bucky…. Maybe not so much.

Since the other two insist on going with him, Jack is going to switch from playing Captain to playing Uncle. His breath puffs out as he strides up the metal staircase in regulation RAF boots and the coat he wears under the parka billows out with each footfall.

Now, he should be concerned that there are no bodies here. Torchwood Five had been irradiated by the explosion that closed their Rift and as far as Jack knew, they’d all died. He is, however, more concerned by the voices upstairs.

“How’d you fellas get up here,” he continues as he turned into the research lab.

There's a startled sound from above and Peter leaps smoothly to the wall, skittering across to get a better look at the strangers. Bucky swears under his breath at the sight because he's just a kid.

"Uh, hi?" Peter half-waves. "Did a weird light drop you guys here too? I got the power running again so we don't freeze but there's too much interference to get out any kind of signal for help."

"I'm Peter. This is Mister Constantine."

"There's no Mister, mate. It's just John," a voice drawls as the second man makes himself visible. His eyebrows loft at the sight. "Well aren't you three an attractive rescue party?"

“Oh wow. Two of you,” Sylar snorts, rolling his eyes. He can’t take any more flirting, though Jack really does not overtly do that with him. He mostly treats him like a child and, yeah. All right. He isn’t mad about that. He likes the care and the attention.

Jack is all smile, hands on his hips, as he surveys the two. Both look human, though he can’t get a read on the blond and the kid is clinging to a wall. Arachnidions don’t really do human skin, though. Interesting. If either happens to think he smells extra pleasant…. Well. He can’t help that. 24th Century humans and their pheromones are just a part of nature. “Captain Jack Harkness. That’s Gabriel Gray—“

“Sylar,” he insists, though his back is turned and he’s poking at things.

“And Sergeant James Barnes.”

“Bucky?”

From behind them, obviously having come up the stairs following the trio, a very surprised and familiar looking blond stands in the doorway. He lowers the shield, mouth gaping. It’s almost as if he’d seen a ghost.

Bucky will hear someone coming

Hearing that voice is like falling into the Rift all over again. Bucky forgets about everything else, charging forward to throw his arms around him. The news reels he'd looked at after his disappearance said that Steve had died, fallen in battle and here he is alive.

Peter smiles as he jumps down, landing in front of Jack. The other man seems a little grumpy and not in the mood to talk. "That's, uh, Steve. How did you find us?"

“We came to figure out why a Rift opened for exactly two minutes and then closed up again at one of our defunct bases,” Jack says, good-naturedly, glancing over his shoulder at Steve and Bucky.

The other Captain (that will get old, fast) has his gloved hands on Bucky’s shoulders, grip maybe a little too tight, though he is obviously trying not to squeeze too hard. “How did you— You fell and— that was years ago,” Steve breathes, before the hand on Bucky’s metallic socket gives him pause and causes his hand to slip down to his bicep. “What happened?”

The grip could never be too tight and Bucky's joy at seeing him again is swiftly dampened at the question. "I don't remember. I remember falling, flashes and then waking up when the Rift dropped me in New Mexico."

They have so much to catch up on, but this isn't a safe place to do it.

His eyes flick back to Jack. "We need to get them out of here. If the Rift opened there's no telling what else could have slipped through."

Jack nods that he’s heard Bucky but he isn’t about to just take anyone that the Rift’s dropped off back to Cardiff. This is exactly what happened to Torchwood India and he’s not prepared to lose everyone in one go.

“So you all know each other?” The Captain asks, purposefully not looking at Steve. He doesn’t need to have Bucky start a riot.

Unfortunately, Steve takes point. Work to be done comes first. “We don’t. Pete here says he knows me. But I haven’t met Pete or John.”

Jack’s eyebrows raise.

“Are we all human?” Jack continues, which actually draws a snort from the quiet man in the corner.

"Never seen them before," Constantine confirms. "Not until that bloody tear pulled me in."

Peter huffs, "I'm from further ahead in his timeline," he points at Steve, "but I know who he is and I know how he knows Mister Bucky."

His nose wrinkles, "And yes we're human. I just.. I had something happen to me a few years ago."

Time travel isn’t good on the best day. It tends to bring Time Lords around and as much as Jack loves the Doctor, he’d really rather stay clear right now. He tends to ask all sorts of questions and make faces at him, as if just being in his presence makes his teeth hurt. And Jack can understand that. He’s wrong in every sense of the word, even the good ones, and the Doctor doesn’t really like things that don’t step in time with the rest.

So maybe they’ll just table that for the moment.

Jack sighs at Peter. “Now that I can relate to. All right, just hold still, I’m going to scan you all,” he says before Gabriel clears his throat.

“Not to interrupt your measuring contest but…. Turns out some spiders don’t mind the cold.” The man gestures as the room behind Peter and John. The white surface is glowing black. Very black. Spiders. They’re swarming spiders.

"Bloody perfect," Constantine gripes, tossing his cigarette aside. He holds up one hand, muttering in a strange, harsh sounding language. A fireball bursts from his palm, landing in the middle of the swarm, incinerating everything in it's path.

Bucky curses and moves to act even as Peter leaps out of the way, webbing up as many of the thicker clusters of creatures as he can for Constantine to blast.

"It's always something, damnit."

Sylar exhales hard. Previously focused on anything other than the people here, his eyes dart immediately to Constantine. Where Peter hadn’t really pinged anything for him, the kid was mutated, almost wrong, and his abilities were nothing all that special, the other man? He can absolutely feel his mouth water.

Jack clicks at him with his fingers and Sylar blinks and snorts. “I wasn’t—“

“I know you’re not,” Jack replies before he lightly nudges him out of the way to get to the console. “I need everyone to fall back! I’m going to drop a force field on them!”

Peter uses his webs to pull Constantine out of an impending swarm and they both scramble to safety. Bucky knows that Steve won't back down from a fight, even if it's with bugs. "C'mon punk, fall back!"

He might not know how a force field works but he sure as hell knows when to be on the right side of one.

"The hell did those things come from?" He checks over Steve, then Jack and Sylar who looks.. oh that's not a good look. He trusts him, but temptation is something the guy wrestles with.

If Sylar knew that Bucky trusted him, he’d absolutely laugh. Bucky is safe because he’s not special. Whatever had happened to him is nothing that Sylar can take, the same as Peter ParkerMs ability is his alone due to its nature. But Constantine…. Magic is a weakness that he can’t get over. It makes his mouth absolutely water.

Thankfully, the temptation dies when Jack drops the force field on the spiders. His cheeks puff slightly, and he joins their leader. Jack, as always, is the safest of all. The Captain squeezes his shoulder before he turns back to the group.

“The Rift had fourteen separate events since we clocked it. One, two, three,” he says, pointing to the humans. “And four.”

“So we’re missing ten?” Steve chirps up, eyes falling on Bucky. “Or nine—“

“No, Buck’s one of us,” Jack clarifies. “Ten anomalies to track down. That’s almost nothing!”

"Wait, almost nothing?" Peter objects as he steps away from the containment field. "Isn't that like ten different anomalies we need to worry about?"

Bucky claps Steve on the shoulder. "We're okay. The Rift is what threw me forward in time, it tends to mess with anyone it grabs."

And he trusts Sylar because he has no reason not to. He's a solid person to have on the team, even if he keeps to himself.

"So can we get outta here? Or do we have to wait for something else to drop out of the sky?'

“No one is leaving yet,” Jack confirms. Bucky is new, but Sylar isn’t. He knows the drill.

“We have to make sure no one is going to try to kill us, take over the world, or blow it up.” They don’t know these people. The only reason they’d taken on Bucky was because he’d been vouched for by two different governments.

And, Jack suspects, that was only because both of those governments don’t like to deal with the ‘weird stuff.’

Exhaling through his nose, Jack gives Sylar and look and the dark eyes man lifts his arms, sending their three newcomers into the air. The hold doesn’t hurt then but it will keep them immobile while Jack talks.

“I need to get those scans. Don’t do anything crazy. We are just trying to keep everyone safe on this timeline.”

"Whoa! Hey!" Peter objects as he's lifted in the air while Constantine focuses his attention on the dark haired man who lifted them. Isn't that interesting?

Bucky holds Steve's gaze as he's lifted. He can only hope that his overall calm will keep Steve from causing too much of a fuss.

"You could have asked too," Peter huffs as they're settled back on the ground. Geez. Haven't any of them heard of the Avengers?

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Yay Peter!

:)

Oooh Constantine!

Hey Jack can't be the only one in a cool coat

I can see Peter wanting a cool coat now.

Well yeah, he's got to be fashionable too!

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