woundedwinter | Sandbox thoughts

Sandbox thoughts

Torchwood.
The last place Bucky was looking to find answers was in Cardiff, of all damn places, but he had run out of options.

Seventy odd years ago he was a solider, a sniper in the 107th and he had everything a fella could want. A best friend, a damn good career and a unit he cared for. A mission in the mountains had gone wrong. They were ambushed and in a desperate attempt to save his friend, Bucky fell. He didn't tumble down the side of the mountain or crash into the ice, though. He was swallowed up by a burst of blue-white light and six months ago he dumped in the middle of New Mexico with an artificial left arm and no memory of what had happened to him or why he'd been flung so far into the future.

He called in what favors he could, talked to anyone who would listen, desperate for answers. What had happened to him? Where had he gone? The Howling Commandos were long gone. He had nothing left.

It was easy to strike the deal in the end. Work with Torchwood and try and find the answers. They dealt in the weird and unexplained and god knows Bucky had enough of that.

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“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?

“Asking never works,” Sylar says, shaking out his hands. That had been a heavy lift with multiple people, two of whom had been struggling. Trying to keep them all upright had been a task, especially the teenager. Peter reminds him of someone he doesn’t like to think about, but he works extra hard to make sure he lands on his feet.

It’s not something he always does.

Immediately, Sylar focuses on the spiders instead as Jack consults his manipulator. Each one freezes, in a chain reaction, behind the force field.

Steve can’t help but look concerned, eyes questioning Bucky through glances alone. Who are these people? What just happened? Are you okay?

After all this time they can still have a full conversation with only glances. Bucky nods slightly. It's weird, but it's okay. They can talk soon.

Peter isn't so easily mollified, drifting closer to Steve as the weird guy with powers sets them back down and shakes out his hands like it had been tricky to do.

Constantine however, in a usual display of bad decision making, watches Sylar work. It's not magic that he's doing, but it tickles along his nerves.

"So did we pass? Can we get out of here? The power I rigged up isn't going to hold that field forever."

“Don’t worry about it, I have it handled,” Jack says with the world’s most award winning smile. He hadn’t been named the Face of Boe in his twenties for nothing, after all. He gives Peter a wink, not a sexy wink since he’s still a child, but a grandfatherly sort of ‘you’re safe with me,’ look. It’s likely very reassuring. Jack has that sort of air about him. “We have a few hours before I have to do any tinkering. And we still need to figure out where the bodies went. But hm. Yep! Human, human, human. All completely covered in dimensional dust. That’s something to really look into. Don’t get a lot of that. Time dust, sure, but the Rifts are really pulling a lot of heavy lifting!”

Steve blinks and his eyebrows furrow. He understood none of that except for one small thing.

Bodies.

“What bodies…?”

“There was an accident here twenty years ago. It irradiated everything. Perfectly fine now. But the team should be here. Gabe, spiders handled?”

If looks could kill— Jack does notice that Sylar stops the death stare when he sees Constantine gazing at him. That’s not good.

“Let’s focus. Kill the bugs. Save one for Owen to play Doctor with. Keep it moving.”

Mention of dimensional dust has John's attention and he's careful to secure what he can from his trenchcoat into a glass vial before it's tucked away again. He's familiar with the razzle dazzle Harkness is about, charm to disarm, but there's something hard underneath. Like biting on tinfoil.

Peter is willing to trust the new arrival and reports to Jack anything he'd seen while exploring.

"Steve and I can check the lower level." They know one another's patterns in a fight and Bucky needs just a minute alone with him. "I've got the tracers active and I'll call in if we find anything weird."

Because that's what he does now.

It’s not a good idea. This Steve Rogers is not the guy Bucky lost when he fell. They might not even have the same past, same memories, and Jack has already had a hard enough time trying to get Bucky out of his shell. Klaus does better than most of them, but that’s only because Klaus is a mess and Bucky has strong parental instincts and constantly needs to save people.

“Don’t touch anything. I’m not picking up radiation but there have been stranger things to happen today,” he warns. “Anything anomalous, report back.”

It might not be a good idea, but they need to divide up if they're going to cover the whole complex to find out what happened. Bucky trusts Steve to watch his back and he gives Jack a brief nod.

"We'll stay in contact," he promises as Peter volunteers to help Jack look around.

Bucky pulls a device from his pocket before taking off his left glove. "Come on Steve." They take the stairs down on the right, Bucky on point and Steve watching his six.

"A full staff doesn't just vanish, not after a blast that should have killed them."

This isn’t the time to talk. Shield up, moving out front as they sweep with Bucky checking any off shooting corridors they pass, Steve knows he should stay quiet. Even if they’ve been making a lot of noise. Even if he already swept this level. Even if they’re only looking for the dead.

“Still haven’t come to terms with losing you, pal,” the blond says in a low voice that bounced off the inward curve of the shield. “But that’s a good thing right? Because I haven’t. You just took a sixty year detour and got a nice hand.”

"I still don't know what happened to me, or why this happened," he raises his left arm. "Torchwood deals in weird and they didn't even blink at taking in a World War Two vet who'd been considered KIA seventy years back."

"Missed you too, pal. You got no idea how much." He pauses because Bucky needs this, he needs at least one answer. "The Rift, did it get you too?"

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “You died. I got a little carried away and dropped a plane in the ocean. Not really a long story just…. Reckless.”

He makes a sharp turn, holding the shield up even if he doesn’t think anything will jump out at him around the cornerback. At the silence, he lowers it again and chances a glance over his shoulder.

“I guess the cold water just agrees with me. Next thing I knew, it was 2012. Howard has a kid and…. I was sitting in a cafe and drawing and just trying to work up what I would say to the guy. Then I was just here and that kid that walks up walls was Mister Rogers-ing me.”

Bucky knew it and he turns, socking Steve in the shoulder hard. "You dumb jerk. You've been reckless our whole lives but that takes the cake, pal."

He pulls him into a quick and hard hug before they split apart to continue to scan the hallways and rooms.

"So the kid, he's from your time then?"

“To be fair, I had to stop Red Skull from getting his hands on the Tesseract so,” Steve says, cut off by Bucky’s arms. Even after he moves away, Steve can still feeling that hug. They hadn’t done enough of that before and now he can’t get enough. He still feels like his life is on tracks headed to doom. This is just another pit stop in purgatory.

He gives Bucky another look. God, he’d missed him.

“Uh, Peter? No I don’t know him. Or John. We just met here. He got the heat working though. Really smart kid.”

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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