Sandbox thoughts

[woundedwinter]

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.

Comments

[spacehopper]

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.”

[woundedwinter]

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."

[bottledblond]

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.”

[woundedwinter]

"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?"

[bottledblond]

“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.”

[woundedwinter]

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?"

[bottledblond]

“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.”

[woundedwinter]

"I know it's a lot, but I trust Jack. I trust Torchwood. They gave me a home and a purpose when no one else would." A man over a hundred with a mystery arm that no one can identify left Bucky isolated and alone until Jack Harkness opened up Torchwood and took him in.

"He's been trying to help me get answers. What happened to me, why was I gone so long."

Focus Barnes.
He clenches his jaw and touches the comm. "All is quiet down here. Nobody's home."

"So he's a good kid who can climb walls, huh? And the other guy throws fire?" Yeah, they'll do all right in this weird world.

[bottledblond]

Steve chuckles. “I don’t know what to tell you. I thought the weirdest thing about my life was that people watch movies on tiny rectangular phones that they keep in their pockets.” He straightens up as they hit a stairway and nods that they should go down.

Steve first of course.

“How long have you been here? It was two days since you fell that I dropped the plane in the water. And maybe six months since I’ve been trying to figure out how Brooklyn became so rich— my old building is townhouses now.”

He shoulders open the door to the stairs and glances over the railing. Darkness.

“You have a guy that can lift people up without touching them, though, so I think you win the crazy right now.”

[woundedwinter]

"I woke up in New Mexico six months ago, it was another month and a half before I found Torchwood." Bucky scans the rooms ahead of them. No thermal signs.

"They kinda specialize in crazy. Sylar keeps to himself mostly. Not sure what his deal is but he sure as hell gets the job done when we need him to."

[bottledblond]

Steve gets a bad vibe from the guy, like he used to get from some of the Commandos…the ones that were maybe a little too violent on the uptake. He isn’t sure what to think about these sorts of abilities people have, but it could be something like the serum he was given. It made him strong. But it also isn’t particularly well known for doing the kindest things to people who probably shouldn’t take it.

“Gotta be honest with you, pal, I don’t know how I got the shield. It wasn’t with me. I was getting coffee. My sketch book and pencils— gone. But the shield was strapped to my shoulder when I got here. And John mention—“ Steve doesn’t get the word out so much as gasped out as he’s suddenly pulled into the darkness to Bucky’s right.

[woundedwinter]

Oddly, it's nice to hear that Steve was doing something as normal as getting coffee and drawing. The closest he's been coming to that is sparring with Diego or letting Klaus teach him about modern music and even then it had been a struggle.

Bucky hisses out a curse as Steve's jerked off his feet. He slaps the comm again. "Got company down here Jack." Without waiting for a reply Bucky triggers a flare and draws his weapon.

"Sound off Rogers." C'mon pal, give me a sign.

[spacehopper]

Jack is not about to leave Gabriel with John. It takes the other guy a long time to get that tick under control around new people with abilities. He still can’t trust him around Klaus. If Gabriel falls off the wagon again, especially here, Jack is going to have a problem. They don’t have a support system him and John is powerful enough that he might not be able to snap the guy back again.

When Peter suggests they pair up, Jack insists they become a triplet. “Gabe has it here,” the Captain says, one hand on Peter’s shoulder as he smiles at John. “So where are you from?”

He can feel the eye roll behind him. You can’t take the flirt out of the Fixed Point In Time. Sorry Sy.

[trenchcoat_brigade]

The flirting comes as easily as breathing to John and he tosses a smirk at him. "Liverpool, but of late I've been jaunting through time until I found myself pulled in here with Captain and the boy."

Peter scoffs in the way only a teenager can. "I'm eighteen, I'm not a kid!"

Constantine holds up his hands, "Right, right. Sorry lad. Teenager with extraordinary abilities from the future doesn't quite roll of the tongue as well."

Ugh. Adults. "Spiderman. Or Peter. Either is fine."

[spacehopper]

“Spiderman.” It’s not a question from Jack. It’s a statement. He is not laughing at Peter, he wouldn’t do that to one of his kids, but he can’t help but be amused. The memory of a little boy playing superhero in the backyard calling him Uncle comes to mind, as it tends to, at the worst time possible. Jack doesn’t hold onto it. He made the right decision.

And now he has a new pack of misfits, all given to him by the Rift. Not his Rift. The Cardiff Rift is stable (as stable as can be at least). It’s these outliers that keep spitting up new people for him to collect.

Before Bucky, it happened fairly regularly. He’d thought he and Gabriel shut down the anomaly but no. New Mexico. Right under their noses. To be fair, they had been off planet at the time but coming back to a new comer had been a little jarring.

Evidently the Rifts are back to playing games.

Three at once, and ten other anomalies all at the same time? That’s probably bad.

No matter.

“I think we’ll stick to Peter. We don’t have a Peter,” Jack jokes. “Take a right. We’ll go upstairs.” And then back to John: “I actually have a good track record with blond British men named John, you know.”

[trenchcoat_brigade]

It's not as bad as Germany, Peter thinks. He takes the lead as they head up. The others might object but his abilities will keep both him and the rest of them safe. He has a thousand questions about Rifts and how they factor into space and time and what the anomalies mean, but it's hard to ask when Constantine has a new target to flirt with.

Eh. It can wait. Right now Peter just wants warmer clothes and a really big lunch.

John snorts and checks his pockets for a few artifacts that will prove useful if they find another fight waiting for them. This man isn't Des.

You sent me to Hell, John.

He shakes the memory off and winks at Jack. "Mate I have a feeling you don't strike out often."

[spacehopper]

Jack is not exactly sparse with his flirting, those he is far more choosy with his companions. Despite being the very definition of pansexual, given the wide variety of life out in the universe, very few people cause him to slow down and enjoy. They grow old. He does not. They die. He does not. Relationships are fleeting and impossible when you can’t even spend a lifetime with someone. He’s tried. He’d stay with someone their entire life but history has taught him lessons that resentment and hatred are easily bestowed a partner that can never be anything but young and attractive.

That is not a problem right now. John is just a flirt to flirt kind of guy right now.

“I’d say I’m about average. I swing at a lot of balls,” he grins. Bucky’s voice comes through the comm that the sweep of one part of the complex comes up clean and he responds: “no action on our end either.”

Did he have to put it that way? No. But it’s no fun otherwise.

Halfway up the stairs, Peter will get his tingle. All of the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as a low him fills the air.

((I am not super familiar with Constantine, just the bits he showed up in legends of tomorrow. I think Barrowman was in parts of the Arrowverse but I never kept up on DC other than the occasional crossover.))

[trenchcoat_brigade]

"Oh but I bet you handle them well," he sasses back. The banter is easy and while John is sure Jack would be a lot of fun, he's hardly looking for anything more than a good time. The people he grows to care for wind up dead, or worse.

Usually worse.

Peter freezes at the tingle and braces himself. "Hold up. There's something up there. Something not good."

((Matt had his own series as Constantine before coming to the DC verse, so I draw from that and some of what happened on Legends. He has so much comic canon it's hard to keep it all straight so I try to stick to the series.
Barrowman was on Arrow as a bad guy, Malcolm Merlyn. Very fun to watch))

[spacehopper]

“A lot of people’s not good is other people’s pretty great,” Jack calls up, but he charges up anyway. He doesn’t usually want to be canon fodder, but he’ll fare a little better than the spider kid and John will. He’d seen them both react to the danger in the lab and he has a feeling they’ll do the same now.

Rift creatures aren’t always hot men and a teenager, though. And Jack isn’t about to let anyone die on his watch.

Of course, he’s no where near as fast or strong as Peter and despite charging up the stairs, the mist reaches Peter first. That is less a problem though. It’s the shrieking that follows that’s worrying. Jack immediately presses his hands to his ears. They’re wet. Ah great, he thinks. Must be blood.


((I always meant to watch his show since he and Sara Lance bond over their bisexuality. And I wanted to watch lucifer too. One day I will have all the tv time. But I mentioned Magnus to you and now I’m listening to the show again like an idiot))

[peter_one]

Boy does he wish he had his suit! Peter drops to one knee at the shrieking, grimacing but he'll power through. He'll heal. He needs to stop the source before anyone else gets hurt.

Constantine is chanting, pushing back hard on the mist and the threat beyond it. Binding magic should shut the bastard down, he just needs another moment of concentration while his ears ring.

((Legends is really good. Best Constantine episodes are in season 4. I gave up somewhere in s5. Lucifer rocks. I even have the Devil himself journaled!))

[spacehopper]

Trying to go after Peter is impossible, but as John casts his spell and the mist recedes beyond him, Jack finds himself able to pull himself up from the floor. He’s pretty sure his brain had started to hemorrhage from the frequency, but the kid seems to be able to withstand it better. He hopes so.

“Keep it up!” Jack is yelling because he can’t really hear himself. His ear drums have burst but are on the mend. It’s actually a pretty unpleasant thing to regenerate, and Jack should know. He regenerated from pink mist once.

It’s about that time that Bucky calls for backup. Unfortunately, Jack can’t hear him.

Sylar, however, can. He sighs and gazes at the frozen spiders. “On my way, Barnes.” He has such a deceptively soft voice for a killer.


(( I watched it so sporadically. I loved Gary. And Beebo. Plus I liked that you could miss episodes and it would still be fine :) ))

[woundedwinter]

Great. If Sylar is coming things have clearly gone pear shaped with the rest, but that was how things ran with the Howling Commandos so he's used to the chaos.

"No thermal signatures but something grabbed Steve into the dark and he's not calling out." And sue him but he's worried as hell, losing Steve after finding him so soon might just fucking end him but his training keeps Barnes on mission.

"Sounds like we walked into the mother and father of all traps. Again." Because he remembers Rio and pulling the Hargreeves brothers into the fold once the dust settled.

[aptly]

“Rift phenomena,” is all Sylar says as he appears behind Bucky. His eyes close and he places his hand slowly on the wall. Clairsentience is not one of his favorite abilities, but it does come in handy. The memory of objects, of what happens to objects and the emotions left in them by the things that touch them is powerful. He gets bits and pieces of a story here—

But not the right one. These are the people of Torchwood Five. Three women, two men, and one non-binary person. All human. All sleeping with each other in various configurations off and on. This job does that, it seems. Provides reasons to have sexual relationships. He snorts and carries on until he sees one of the women succumbing to radiation burns…. And then evaporating.

Gruesome. But that explains the lack of bodies.

“Nothing non-human came through here,” he says before he picks up a clicking sound directly above them. His voice softens. “Barnes, when I tell you to, drop and roll to your left.”

[woundedwinter]

Torchwood has a steep learning curve but so far Bucky has managed. He doesn't startle at Sylar's appearance or argue with his direction. While he might not be the most trustworthy, he hasn't left anyone on the team to die.

"Keep him safe," is all he says before he drops and rolls. Steve has to make it though this safely.

That doesn't mean Bucky moves passively, he's got a gun up and trained on the target, his other hand on one of his many knives.

[aptly]

Sylar sighs. Keep him safe. Torchwood Three is going to have a new imprint on their walls soon. He hates it so much. “Keep yourself safe,” he says, reaching upwards to yank the air down around them. Something horrible squeals and as Bucky releases his knives towards the bulbous blob being pulled into view, it bursts and covers them both in red, steaming hot liquid.

With it, Steve falls as well, in a fetal position, just as drenched as the rest of them. Sylar breaks his fall with a little telekinesis before he shakes the blood like substance from his body like a dog.

“Jack? Nine left.”