12117/A Real Workout

A Real Workout
Date of Scene:	03 September 2020
Location:	Gymnasium, The Triskelion
Synopsis:	Peg and Bucky start in a friendly sparring match and end almost dying as the very base they live in turns against them. Bucky learns what wins: A vibranium arm or a steel door. Uncomfortable memories visit in more than one way.
Cast of Characters:	Winter Soldier, Peggy Carter
Tinyplot:	Ghost in the SHIELD

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Winter Soldier has posed:
    Habits are comfortable. It's deceptively easy to slip back into an old habit once the opportunity presents itself, and especially when meeting old friends after a very long absence. Of course, habits are also dangerous, as everyone here knows very well. Habits make you predictable, and the predictable fall easy prey to those with fell designs.

    So, why not combine both?

    In the spirit of the old days, Bucky has taken up the old gauntlet, so to speak, and took his old friend up on the offer of a good sparring session. Of course, he's faster now, and much stronger, which means he's constantly trying to slow himself down and limit himself to avoid hurting his sparring partner. It's a good way to get bruised quickly, although luckily it's unlikely the marks will still be there when he leaves the gym.

    Suffice to say he's long since stopped underestimating Peggy Carter and got his head into the game. He's still at only three quarters speed when he lets loose the fast left-right cross followed by a deceptive jab, but seriously considering going all out soon.

Peggy Carter has posed:
    No, Peggy didn't have super soldier serum in her or even much of a boost from anything other than literal decades of training and knowing him that damn well. Knowing him as both Bucky *and* the Winter Soldier, even if she only knew one of those faces in information files, save those few very close calls. If there are any hard feelings from the one that almost got her, they are clearly gone. Not a hint of fear that the old programming is still in him. She's happy to face her old friend in the ring, unadorned of any weapon or armor other than her own wits and muscle.

    "Still holding back..." She commented, slightly breathless, but not faltering yet. She'd be wearing bruises for a few days after the spar but that was no matter to her. It kept her sharp. She blocked the cross as naturally as sliding into a dance move, though it'd leave a bruise, and shoved away his jab before going low, trying to take a shoulder to his stomach with the full force of her weight behind it. She didn't know if she could knock him off his feet, but she'd try.

Somewhere, very quietly, the emergency doors that seal off the room in case of incident were starting to hiss into place silently.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    "Don't want to hurt you ag- *OOOF*" Point to note, a shoulder to the stomach is quite effective. But it is said that where the shoulder goes, the body follows, a maxim used in practically every compliance hold ever taught, and as Bucky gives way under the shoulder, he drops his own elbow to hook behind it and drag Peggy along to the ground where it seems he's headed. That would bring his superior strength into play, if only he can hold her there.

    Easier said than done.

    But it's a move that wasn't in his repertoire when they were raiding strongholds and depots in the mid 40's of the last century. He's picked up some new tricks, along with a healthy sense of paranoia (oh contradiction in terms), and some part of him notices the doors closing by themselves. But a larger part of him is trying to avoid another fist in the face, and that part is very much higher on the list of priorities right now. "Oh, good one."

Peggy Carter has posed:
There is something off, but Peggy's mind isn't quite there yet either. She mostly expected him to take her down with him when she gave so much of her momentum into that tackle, so her body is already twisting in efforts to not be trapped by him. Both legs to one side and her fist follows up with the same arc her body travelled, using gravity to her advantage. When he just bats her away with that block before she breaks his nose, she's rolling to the side, just trying to get out of his pinning range. If he got her down it'd be over.

"Bigger they are... harder they fall!" She banters out between a few ragged, shallow breaths. He has her on the edge of exhaustion but she's not giving up, not until he actually gets her down or she somehow manages to pull out a highly unlikely victory. She always enjoyed fighting past what limits she felt like she had. Nothing has changed 90 years later.

But she does slightly pause a dangerous moment, dark eyes landing on the window that usually looks out into the rest of the gym, now covered with metal, "Bucky, did we-" One should never pause in a battle.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    A fist to the face often offends. Although, between friends, in a friendly sparring session, the offense is often short lived. And, at any rate, Bucky's face was covered by a metal fist in a quick block, so the offense never arises. As Peggy twists to get out of range, Bucky sacrifices defense for a swift... /very/ swift straight punch to the head, at a speed that most humans would fail to even spot, let alone react to.

    But the knuckles come to rest a hair from Peggy's head, as if Bucky is suddenly frozen in time. In that moment, he spots the same danger signals that she has seen, eyes darting around. Windows, doors... the isolation protocol has triggered.

    "Well, that's not good." he manages some measure of British understatement that he picked up so long ago, standing and offering Peggy his hand to pull her up, even as his head seems to be on a swivel. "Why aren't the alarms going off?"

Peggy Carter has posed:
As his fist comes within a literal hair's width of her head, her eyes momentarily snap sideways to him and for just a second she banters back, "Good one," echoing his words earlier. But there's no time for more witty banter and less time for sparring as they've both well noticed something is very wrong.

She accepts his hand, it's polite after all, pulling herself up to bared feet and then using one hand to brush sweat from her eyes so she can evaluate the room a bit more clearly as she catches her breath. "I... don't know. Aren't these isolation protocol? Have they deemed one of us... needs... Isolating?" She stares in shallow breathed confusion, making her way over to one of the controllers at the side of the door. The screen is dead.

If he moves to check any of the other screens -- the boxing interface, the other door, even the temperature control, they're all black. Not even the dimness of a sleeping monitor, but no power behind them at all.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    "If they thought one of us was dangerous, they'd have tried to separate us first. No sense in leaving a valuable agent with a compromised one. Besides..." and here Bucky smiles as he heads over to another terminal to punch in his code and find out what's wrong this time "... I happen to know we're both perfectly trustworthy. Probably either a glitch, or Steve trying to crash a jet on us again."

    Tap. Tap tap. Tap tap tap tap. THUMP. Percussive maintenance. If it ain't broke, it ... probably is now. At least, the screen is cracked. "Damned computers. Most of the time you don't need them, and when you do they're broken."

    Luckily he's got his gym bag with him, by the door, and in one of the inner pockets is the phone he rarely uses because it doesn't look like a phone. And that's just weird, to Buck. "I'll call upstairs, tell them send someone to come fix the damn things. If by some miracle we're not being invaded by aliens or giant robots or something."

Peggy Carter has posed:
She tosses another amused, somewhat affectionate smile in his direction as he calls them both trust worthy. "Steve's been banned from Jets for at least another fifty years so... I'll go with a system glitch. And I don't know. I'm some strange replicant a box of Howard Stark's vomited out, for all they know. And you've got that arm. Maybe they finally decided we're just two liabiities." It's gallows humor, but it's a joke never the less. Peggy jogs over to another one of the panels, no luck with it.

Then she stares at the one he maintained. Lips pull into a firm smirk. "Well, it's certain not functional *now*." She curses softly beneath her breath, not really panicked yet, but there is an inching worry of something being very wrong working it's way up the back of her neck. She kneels down, feeling along the seal of the door, searching for any catch or crack.

The release of something else into the vents is deathly silent. Literally. Nothing normal human ears could pick up, and the faint change in air quality in the room doesn't really have a scent either. But poison is poison. Probably another redundant safety system, made to handle inside threats as quickly as possible. But even then, it should only be a knock out dose and this is far more than that.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    If he'd been aware of it, the presence of the poison is probably the one thing that would reassure Bucky that this is not some kind of way to take out the Winter Soldier unaware. If that were the case, the whole room would have been flooded by now with the nastiest toxic gases that modern science could devise. As it stands, he remains blissfully unaware of the additional problem as he fishes his phone out of the bag and taps the screen far more carefully than he did the previous one. Facial recognition, go, this is indeed your master picking you up and commanding thee to make a call.

    Bucky's phone may be the only one that recognises its owner by a scowl.

    "Where's the bar things? There's supposed to be bar things at the top of the screen, there aren't any. No bracket things to say how fast the phone is talking to other computers either..." it comes out as half a mumble, as the Winter Soldier holds his smartphone at arms length and points it in different directions, hopefully. "What's wrong with good old fashioned comm wire and a wind-up handset? At least that doesn't break. We had tanks drive over the damned things and we could still call the command post to tell them there were tanks around afterwards." With that assessment of modern technology, the phone is unceremoniously dropped back in the bag, while Bucky takes another look around. "You think we're the only ones locked in?"

Peggy Carter has posed:
At least he had his phone. Peggy's is all the way back in the locker room with her own shower bag because there is no part of her that wants to be tied to work 24/7. That was her life before. As she realizes what he's pulled out of his bag, she grins, "Ah... I think the bar things are what tell you if it's working, or not. If it has signal. Which means..." That's really the first hint she gets that something is wrong. Very wrong. She didn't like phones, but she knew how to use them. She studied well. SHIELD should have full signal.

She pushes at the edges of the metal door covering a bit harder, straining to try and loosen a seam, to get it to lift like a garage door, with no long. Finally, she gives her own full attempt at some percussive maintenance, the base of her palm shoved into one of the joints in a fully centered, well practice karate hit. To no avail, except a somewhat stinging palm.

"Hell..." She breathes out. A faint cough to follow. She is, apparently, still catching her breath from the fight because it's not all that easy to breathe. Maybe it's panic. She rolls back onto her feet, still mostly steady as she joins his side and scoops the phone back out of the bag. "...Something's... wrong. You should have signal. Try...resetting the thing. There is... no reason you don't have... signal." Breathing is definitely a little more of a challenge than before. "I...don't hear anything from other rooms. Is this whole place...sound proof?"

Winter Soldier has posed:
    "One of the eggheads told me it's because there's boosters all around. It's supposed to make the signal better, but I guess that's all down too." Because if everything stopped working, that stopped too, right? Bucky's not really analysing about how it's broken, he's just pretty sure that it is. That's all he needs to know anyway.

    The cough gets a slight frown. He's feeling absolutely fine after that sparring match, but then he always does unless he's going for three hours with Steve at full speed. That makes him break a sweat a little. Still, it's not like Peggy to be winded this long after a cool down.

    "Sound proof? Probably. Lockdown is pretty tight here, no way in, no way out. Sound proof, bomb proof, air..." Blink. "Air tight."

    He's up in a flash, looking up at the ceiling, noticing the vents wide open. Not big enough to crawl through, but open nonetheless. "Crap. Peggy, get something in front of your mouth and nose, now. There's a towel in my bag..." Okay, even in his hurry, he has to stop and clarify. "Haven't used it yet, don't worry."

    His next destination is the door, feeling it with his metal hand, pushing on the join between the jamb and the door. "Standard protocol in case of lockdown with a hostile presence. We're being gassed. Meaning you're being gassed, so we're getting out of here."

Peggy Carter has posed:
It's pure stubbornness on her behalf that Peggy hadn't realized that faint coughing was probably more than Bucky giving her a run for her money. She didn't want to seem weak, so she wouldn't *show* weakness. Even if the air in the room felt thick. It's not until his orders does it really click in, "Shit..." She breathes out, and then abruptly stops, not inhaling another breath until she's found that towel out of his bag. She gives not a damn if it's clean or not. She just needs it to *help*.

Only slightly frantic hands search quickly through the bag, dragging out the white gym towel and clasping it firmly across her nose and mouth. She inhales a ragged, slightly deeper breath, the room still uncomfortably warm but it's probably better than nothing.

"At this point, I'll pay for the property damage. Something is ...wrong and this is not the way...SHIELD takes care of... Agents who are threats." That's tacit permission for him to bring out the big guns. Or, well, the big arm, as it were, since her attempt to punch through the things was of little use. She's trying to stay on her feet, but it's a struggle now, leaning slightly against the bench. She probably doesn't realize she's swaying.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    "No... it isn't. Not SHIELD." It's about as dark a statement has come from Bucky in weeks, and he glances up at the vents with undisguised hatred. It won't do anything to him for a long while, but it's hurting someone he cares about. There's only one organisation he knows that works like that.

    The anger at that mere thought is channeled into a punch of inhuman strength at the join between the door and the wall, vibranium enhanced arm smashing into the obstacle with a force that would quite literally pulverise an unaugmented human, and has been known to disable vehicles and even light tanks.

    Obviously it's not enough.

    But that just lets him vent his anger and frustration on an inanimate object, putting every half-ounce of strength into the punch that he can muster. Pretty soon this room won't be air tight anymore, that's for sure.

Peggy Carter has posed:
The statement about it not being SHIELD, and the very personal *anger* behind that statement, is enough for Peggy to read nearly every inch of his thoughts. "...HYDRA." She breathes, ever so quietly, through the mask. His hatred is anger, betrayal of years lost, torture and nightmares. Fury that can be channeled through an arm into probably getting them out of this room.

Peggy's is quieter. The silent fight she's had for most of her life, since the war took so many of them and she was left to clean up. A clean up that never really finished, if current intel is to be trusted. And their current situation. She takes an uncertain step forward to him, usually sharp mind frantically trying to come of for some way to help but it's like thinking through fog. Then she's on her knees and she's not quiet certain how she got there.

The metal was made to keep in super humans. Maybe even the Hulk. But Vibranium is it's own special sort of thing and Bucky's anger behind it? Four punches in, and the door begins to buckle. A crumple in the metal which will serve as further weakness. He's going to have to shatter door and whatever lays behind it, but it's not a match for him. There's still no sound of alarm or help from the outside.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    Anger is a primal force. Long before the first modern human figured out how to use their intellect to overcome larger beasts, sheer anger had sufficed for the same job. "Hang on. I'm getting you out of here!" Bucky is /not/ going to lose a friend to one of HYDRA's tricks, especially not inside of the Triskelion.

    But that human did eventually learn how to channel anger, how to apply intellect alongside brute force, and that's an instinct just as strong in modern humans as it was back when napped flint was the height of technology. With the indents made, vibranium fingers dig through the rock around the door, grabbing hold of the entire frame. Bracing with his right hand flat against the wall, the Winter Soldier starts to pull with his left. The whole door might be designed to keep in superhumans, but was the wall as well? Time for an experiment in shearing force.

    "When the master builds a strong door..." Bucky mutters in Russian, grinning as he does, adding some more strength to the attack "... he probably saved his rubles on the wall!"

Peggy Carter has posed:
The Russian she hears muttered from him gets a breathless, almost sleep-drunk sort of laugh as Peggy leans against the side of the benches. "...US dollar... spends better... Than rubles." She mutters in Russian back to him, just happy she still understands. The sort of vague, tired banter she's clinging to just to stay awake. To keep buying them time for him to brute-force their way out of this. Normally Peggy was better at not taking the 'Smash it until it breaks' option, but she didn't have a lot of choices right now. Quiet as a whisper compared to his fist on metal, she sinks the rest of the way to the floor.

The door is *not happy*. The frame of it was made for some superhumans as well, but the joint between them? It wasn't. They'd never really had a chance to test these doors to their maximum limit. No one's really tried to break out of the gym before. So, with a teeth grinding *screech* of metal being ripped free from metal, the sliding door pulls free from the joint. Fresh air floods into the place, the 'exit' he's freed not much taller than a few feet off the ground, but it'll do.

Someone down the hall finally heard that. A few junior agents come rushing over now, ICERS out in hand because it absolutely sounds like the building is under attack, "REPORT!" Someone yells from beyond the pulverized door.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    When the door gives way, Bucky gives it one last heave for good luck. You can never have enough opening through a door that doesn't want you to go through it. Then he's frantically looking around for Peggy, and finding her collapsed on the floor.

    The white hot rage in him gives another twist, so that by the time he's carefully scooping her up from the floor his face is set like murder... which means it's set in an expression of such studied neutrality that it's inhumanly eerie. As fast as he dares (which is quite fast, under the circumstances), Bucky shoulders his way through the door, carrying Peggy in his arms.

    "If you don't get that gun out of my face in two seconds you are about to have a very bad day, agent." Despite being, technically, a Lieutenant he can sound like a drill sergeant when he wants to, and that was the kind of voice that normally drifts across parade squares. "If you want to do something useful, call medical and tell them I'm on my way. Then you can try to find out who just tried to kill Agent Carter."

Peggy Carter has posed:
The young agent with his ICER up trains it even harder on Bucky as the man comes around the corner with the momentarily unconscious Peggy Carter in his arms. While part of the base definitely just tried to kill them, the agent doesn't know that. He just sees a man who some still think of as a weapon, a liability, and the old director incapacitated. Bucky's spent a lot of time reading people and, for a moment, the agent is still deciding rather to shoot or not. His fear isn't for Peggy, but of Bucky. Maybe the Winter Soldier finally turned on them again.

Mostly ragdoll in his arms, the fresh air around her and tension of familiar (well, one is familiar, at least) arms beneath her is enough to drag Peggy back to some level of half conscious. Her head turns in Bucky's arms, coughing, somewhat violently, as her lungs remember what unpoisoned air is and desperately try to gulp in more. The world's still swimming, but she's not dead, at least.

"...The man gave you an order." She rasps out. She must feel like shit because she's not even fighting to get out of Bucky's hold, but she manages that much.

The agent softens, suddenly not certain he's looking at the monster he thought he was. "...Y-yes... Sir!" And he dashes off, calling for medical. Another security team will be there in moments. No one else raises a gun on Bucky.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    "My boot, your ass, agent!" Bucky calls after the junior agent after he does as he's told. Having a gun drawn on him was, luckily, nothing new, and enough of James Barnes is alive in the Winter Soldier to understand what just happened. Were the roles reversed, he probably would have done the same. Still... he has a reputation to maintain, a bit of light terror never goes amiss.

    Something had turned on them today, that was for sure.

    It seems he's not going to offer Peggy the dignity of walking to medical, rather just carrying her just in case there are any further unpleasant surprises on the way. "Honestly, training these days. We'd never think of pulling a gun on ... " beat "... oh wait, we did. Nevermind."

Peggy Carter has posed:
SHIELD has finally snapped into realization that something is *very wrong* and a whole pile of techs are off to examine the room. The door. The computer systems. But the fact the response was so delayed says that no one knew a damn thing was wrong until Bucky made it out into the hall, which is probably a bad sign for how deep into their computers this thing is.

Peggy laughs weakly in his arms, still trying to gulp in a few extra breaths, but she seems out of the worst of it. The speed that anger gave seems to have been quite useful in this instance. "We... absolutely did. Ours just had real bullets." She rasps out to him, letting her head sink back against his shoulder. It's the metal one too. She has no fear of it.

As he turns into medical, she murmurs quietly, "...they just tried to kill us, didn't they?" She's not said the name again, but there's only one *they* she can be talking about. Eyes a bit colder, a bit harder, even as she's barely half recovered. A few med techs are quickly coming over to try and relieve Bucky of his burden.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    The journey is decidedly swift. Buck has long strides, and nobody gets in his way when he's clearly set on getting somewhere in a hurry. Door open by the time he gets there. Junior agents press themselves against the wall until he's past. By now it's obvious something is very wrong, and nobody seems to want to get on the wrong side of Bucky Barnes in full wroth.

    The door to medical is bumped open with his hip, just to spare Peggy the least possible impact. "Yeah." he mentions at length, just as studiously avoiding saying the name, but knowing full well that it's entirely understood who or what was behind what just happened.

    "Tried to. Failed again. And whatever doesn't kill us just makes us angrier."

Peggy Carter has posed:
Peg gives him one last look as the med techs usher them both over a bed, since he doesn't seem willing to set her down quite yet. There's a lot of weight in that look, years of fighting this mess only to have it pop up again. A slight realization of just how close she might have been to not making it through. Gratitude, and something more, just the pure trust she has in him. "...Thank you." It's a very little word for a lot of feelings, but it will have to do.

There's no more time for theories or reminscing, as Peggy's now down on a table and several doctors are getting her hooked up to monitors, an oxygen line brought it, just assessing the damage and making certain to get her out of any weeds. She's in good hands.

A quieter med tech comes over to him, looking the tall man up and down, cool blue eyes bracing to maybe face a recalcitrent patient. "Sir, you should get checked over too..." Behind him is a medical table. Wires, monitors, injections, echoes of the things that HYDRA put him through for years. Sure, it's SHIELD, but it's just a different coat of paint. Other flashes of harder memories.

Winter Soldier has posed:
    The sight of Peggy being taken away and into the care of medics doesn't improve Bucky's mood. So seething is he, in fact, that when the quieter medic comes over to invite him to be checked out, he actually smiles. Pleasantly. Danger sign.

    But despite everything that's happened to him on a table just like that, and despite all the painful memories all deciding to queue up for close revisiting, probably over the course of a few hours and a night or two as a bonus, he knows well enough that when he's feeling this angry, it's time not to express it when among friends... or, friendlies, at least. So, probably to the medic's surprise, his response is thus "Yeah alright, why not?"

    By tomorrow he'll be back to making jokes and laughing about it all, but for now... for now he takes a seat, and a deep breath, while the past flickers behind his eyes, and the smile hides it all.

Peggy Carter has posed:
The meek med tech can feel something off. She's trained as much as the next SHIELD agent in basic profiling and there is something colder behind his smile which just isn't right. But he's not fighting her, and she has a job. She draws in a slightly nervous breath, "Uh...we... can put you next to your friend..." She offers quietly, leading him to that table and starting to get him hooked up. The next hour is spent in assessment and quiet discomfort, but everyone will recover.

The computer techs? Find very little other than a mystery and a single hiccup in coding. But the hiccup gets fixed. Surely, everything will be fine. Accidents happen. Another day in the life at SHIELD.