1427/Volume 5

Volume 5
Date of Scene:	18 July 2017
Location:	West Harlem, New York City
Synopsis:	Peggy Carter comes face to face with the Winter and Soldier and finds him familiar. He has no such recollection.
Cast of Characters:	Winter Soldier, Peggy Carter
Tinyplot:	Tayaniye

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Winter Soldier has posed:
The Winter Soldier has been one of the most elusive mysteries of the 20th century. Few people even believe him to be real, given how generally understated and invisible his influence has been in the course of world events. For decades he has been a ghost, working so silently that it is hard to even attribute his kills to him. Most could as easily have been mere accident.

But even a phantom can leave footprints behind. Sometimes he does make a splash, and the more obvious works of his hand are more easily readable to someone able to slip through time than they are to the average person.

The scant trail has led Peggy Carter here, to New York of 2025. The Winter Soldier is said to have resurfaced, out of freeze. There are some SHIELD agents pursuing him even now, though for the past few weeks there has been little to say. There's been a few hotspots people know to watch due to prior activity, there, however. West Harlem is one.

The area around West 151st Street is quiet this time of night, especially on a weeknight, most of the working class either abed or at night shifts. It makes it stand out all the more when a flicker of movement crosses the low roofs of the area, settling atop one across from a small cluster of buildings-- among them, a motel and convenience store.

Peggy Carter has posed:
The Winter Soldier. A name that has haunted Peggy through years. After he acceptance of Rip Hunter's plea for her to help save time, she has seen quite a few things in her travels. One that stuck with her over the years was a trip to Dallas Texas in 1963 and seeing a man with a metal arm walk away from the assassination of JFK with a sniper rifle. All she caught as a glimpse, but it was enough to birth a quest.

Throughout her travels and now that she is stuck in 2025, she has kept an eye out for that man who she came to know as the Winter Soldier. Through her contacts and her SHIELD clearance, she learned more about him. Now, though, the chatter is impossible to ignore. The ghost has reappeared in a big way and she is quietly determined about her mission to find and bring him in. How is the same man from 1963 still an active agent? Well, how is she still an active SHIELD agent? All she knows, is that she believes it to be the same man and that she will track him down.

She 'casually' listens and catches up on the chatter and field reports, finding herself on a rotating amount of rooftops every night in hopes of catching a glimpse of her metal armed whale. Tonight, it seems, is her lucky night. Perched right at 150th Street is Peggy Carter and she notices the movement across the low roofs.

Running forward, she leaps across roofs and pursues toward the motel and convenience store. Maybe she's actually found his temporary lair.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The night is still around Peggy as she closes in on her elusive white whale. She lost sight of him once he settled in atop that roof, but surely he must still be there when she arrives, right?

Except he's not. Once she reaches a vantage point to be able to look down and take in that rooftop, there's nothing and no one to be seen. There's no indication of where he might have gone, either, up until another flicker of movement registers in one of the windows of the top floor of the building itself.

Seems like he's gone inside. Perhaps he has quarry within the building itself, tonight.

Peggy Carter has posed:
Nowhere. Upon landing on the rooftop, she searches across it and behind all angles until she sighs and squares her shoulders. Not here. There's a soft curse as she then looks about her to see if she can find a trail until her attention is drawn to the movement in the window.

Following her instincts, Peggy watches for a few moments - it's just as likely this is a trap, especially if this Winter Soldier is supposed to be as good as it is said he is. Using a rope, she ties it off at a leg of the water tower and secures herself to it. Then, she starts to climb downward toward the window of the top floor, carefully and softly. A peek through the window is given.

The rope allows her to swing forward just slightly and then back against the wall should anyone attempt to look out the window to see her there.

Winter Soldier has posed:
There is not even a dropped hair, nor a scuff mark, to indicate he was ever there on that roof. If not for that flash of movement, he would have been gone into the wind once more, as he has been countless times before this. It is no wonder he has been mythologized over the years.

Yet at the same time, that little flash of movement doesn't quite square with the legend. He's supposed to be infallible, unstoppable, untraceable, and yet here he is... letting himself be seen through a window. Has he grown careless with the years? Is he susceptible to age, and have the ravages of time caught up to him?

Or is he baiting a trap?

Peggy is careful. She doesn't commit. But when she rappels down softly beside the window to take a peek through before she takes any action, her brief glance will yield nothing. No one is within the room she can see from her vantage point beside the window.

Peggy Carter has posed:
Peggy expected nothing less from the Winter Soldier. The more she goes through these motions, the more she feels as if she has been lured into a trap. While she's been careful in her tracking and hope to apprehend the Winter Soldier, this is a man who has acted successful for decades with only minimal evidence. The fact that she can track him? It worries her, even as she hopes that she really is that good.

There was no one on the roof. This is her lead. With the glance, she latches onto the windowsill and quickly and softly attempts to open the window to slide through and into the room.

Winter Soldier has posed:
It certainly does feel that way, doesn't it?

Especially when she slips into the room. Looks like an office in a typical office building. It's dark, it's empty, it's a perfect place for an ambush. There should be a pistol at her temple right now, a man melting out of the dark beside her, a metal arm whirring in to vise the breath out of her throat and the blood away from her brain.

Except there's not. There's just the half-open door across the room, the hall beyond, and another room across said hall, which she can partially see into. Still no visual on her target, but--

"Dobryy vecher, devushka," a voice echoes in the empty building. Sounds like it's coming from the across the hall, but the acoustics make it hard to be sure. "You Americans have this funny habit of... coming after me solo."

He laughs, as if at a private joke he is not sharing.

"Yes... Americans. I suppose it's cultural."

Peggy Carter has posed:
As Peggy moves into the room, she unhooks the rope and pulls out her gun. The barrel remains pointed at the floor and her eyes scan the area with a practiced ease of finding threats in a moment's time. Still, no sign of the Winter Soldier. For a moment, she thinks her overactive imagination has gotten the best of her: he's not here, she has broken into a room for nothing.

Then, however, the confirmation. "Dobryy vecher, Zimniy Soldat," she replies. Her accent is perfectly Russian, still not giving away that she is not an American, but British. She doesn't see how that would matter either way.

The obvious choice is to go out the half open door across the room, however, he checks everywhere other door first, gun pointed upward. The obvious choice is rarely the right one when dealing with Russian assassins.

"I didn't realize Americans had a proper culture," she replies with a bit of snark, the accent finally coming through.

Winter Soldier has posed:
It is plain that he knows someone has been following him, but not who that someone is. His mistaken identification as an American is one hint. His failure to use a name, another.

That she uses HIS name provokes a brief and heavy silence. It is not a pleased silence. He does not confirm or deny his identity aloud, however. Nor does he betray his surprise to hear a British voice rather than an American one, at the close of it all.

"They have one," he simply answers, his voice wry. "It's really kind of crass."

Silence, afterwards, as she checks the room. No doors but the open one. No choice but to go through it--

There is the slightest sound behind her. The creak of the windowsill.

The windowsill?

She will have to be quick to turn, because a split second after that minute noise, he is upon her, lunging as silently as a cat, knife bared.

Peggy Carter has posed:
The window. Of course the window. The place that she would never check.

As the Winter Soldier closes in from behind, she berates herself for her shortsightedness in not checking behind her.

He does not know her, that is something, the fact that he generally just assumed a tail is another. "Crass, yes, that's quite the descriptor." She's trying to get him to keep talking to do the old fashioned version of location detection. The more he says, the more she'll be able to find out where the voice is coming from, even with echo.

The creak, however, is what gives him away. Peggy whirls around just as Bucky leaps on her like the cat sure that he is catching the goldfish.

Hands reach up to catch the knife wielding hand even as she allows his momentum to throw her back: better to absorb it than take it at a full brunt. A knee comes upward to try and hit him between the knees even as she attempts throw him off balance and come out on top.

Winter Soldier has posed:
That's the thing about the Winter Soldier. He is so lethal because he attacks, constantly, from unexpected angles, so swiftly and brutally that his /effects/ are seen far before he himself ever is. And it becomes rapidly clear that while they were talking, while he was patiently drawing her attention, he was silently circling around, through the building, back out a window so he could come in through the one she just entered.

The last place she would expect.

At that point, it's reflexes and an old window that save her.

The knife-wielding hand is his right. The small difference in force and speed, between that and his left arm, means her immediate give before his momentum gets her just out of range of his knife blade, before he can push it into her heart. Her hands shunt upwards-- a redirection rather than a flat block-- skewing his attack high as she folds backwards before his forward movement. He bears her fiercely to the floor, bulling past her resistance, but before he can press his advantage, she drives her knee upwards.

He aborts his attack immediately and continues with his momentum, rolling over and past her and twisting to skid to a halt on all fours. He appraises her half a moment, animal-like, before he launches back off the floor and brings his left fist around towards her center mass with fatal, shrieking force.

Peggy Carter has posed:
Under different circumstances, it's very possible that Peggy died right there in an abandoned room. However, instead, she turns at the right moment and redirects the killing blow. Dragged to the floor, she rolls and shoves past the Winter Soldier as he centers himself and she does the same. Pushing herself up form the prone position that she found herself in, she watches the Soldier intently.

Having prepared herself, his animalistic attack is met with a counterpoint. She does not move backward, instead, she waits. The blow crashes behind her with a lethal blow to the wall, plaster and paint blossoming about them as Peggy slides to the side at the proper moment.

Using his momentum, she grabs that arm and attempts to toss him while at the same time clawing at his face to toss him and give herself an upper hand.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The Winter Soldier watches her as she watches him. His mask obscures everything about his features, even down to his eyes: red lenses regard her in lieu of a human gaze, framed by wild hair. His prowling stance fits in with the inhuman look of him, the assassin strafing slowly with a wolf's gauging, stalking gait.

There is no hint that he is surprised at her combat prowess, or underestimating her because she is female. The most lethal student he ever taught was a woman, after all.

When he attacks, it is despairingly quick, a viper-like strike that has little to no windup and does not telegraph at all. It is only the distance between them and her intent focus that get her out of the way, her senses attuned to carry her clear at exactly the right moment. The wall shatters instead of her ribcage.

It is lethal to stay in close quarters with him too long, and she acts instantly towards that principle. She's on his right side, his marginally weaker side, and what little momentum he's still got after hitting the wall she leverages to try to put him off balance. It's her clawing at his face which serves better to distract him, ultimately: he recoils harshly, but her fingers catch in just the right way to pull the entire thing loose.

Familiar features, twisted in an unfamiliar expression of fury and hatred, regard her during that brief split second of shock.

Peggy Carter has posed:
Peggy has managed to keep herself out of range of the Winter Soldier's killing blows, however she is not exactly unscathed. The smash to the floor, not to mention the wall has left its mark. As the wall beside her explodes right next to her, she turns her face just slightly in order to avoid getting the splinters and dust expelled by the force of his blow in her eyes. Closing them is certainly out of the question.

The rake across his face was a gamble, an attempt to pull the protective gear off of his face in order to reveal some sort of weaker place for her to attack with greater ease. She is unable to pull him off balance, but she manages to finally score some form of a victory in pulling the mask loose.

The anger, the ferocity, they evaporate. The narrowed eyebrows and almost scowl of determination instead raise upward and her tightened muscles relax in surprise. She knows that face, though she has never seen it with such hatred and unchecked fury.

"My God. Bucky?"

Winter Soldier has posed:
Every blow, with the Winter Soldier, is a killing blow. That she has survived so far speaks to her speed and skill.

His last one shatters most of the wall. Debris flies from the force of it, and Peggy turns just enough to avoid being blinded. She slides in quickly, while he's still extracting his arm from the broken drywall; he's too heavy, too solidly planted, to really shift, but she manages to tear off that mask protecting his face. /Obscuring/ his face, really.

The reason why becomes terribly evidence as it comes loose.

Familiar features, warped with hatred, stare blankly through her shock. She says-- something. A word? A name? It completely fails to register. If anything, he only looks annoyed, annoyed enough to pause in his assault--

"Who the hell," he demands in a snarl, "is Bucky?"

Peggy Carter has posed:
The tossing of the Winter Soldier was in the moment, a hope that the momentum of his ferocious attack would leave him unbalanced enough to allow it to happen. Of course with his arm still in the wall and his feet solidly planted, the smaller Peggy has no chance in making that happen.

Either way, she stays where she is: just out of the Soldier's grasp, staring at him in disbelief. Bucky Barnes. The assault is paused, he looks annoyed. Is this what happened to Bucky? Is this a change in the timeline?

Then, he asks, 'Who is Bucky?' Looking at him very directly, she says, "You are. You are James Buchanan Barnes. I used to know you as Bucky a long time ago." It's unclear to her whether he knows her and still wishes to kill her or does not even remember her. She intently studies his face, looking for any flicker of recognition of either her or his name.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Blue eyes flicker between her eyes, then the space between them, then back to her eyes. The Winter Soldier, judging distances, noting that it's too far for his easy reach. Clever woman.

Clever, too, to distract him so with these foolish questions. Except something about what she says nettles at his mind. He tries to ignore it wholly and cannot. There is a vague buzzing at the back of his skull, a phantom itch that wants scratching. He hesitates another few seconds. The corner of his left eye twitches in a tic he does not seem to notice.

You are Bucky, she says. James Buchanan Barnes.

"No I'm NOT," he suddenly howls, and he bolts forward in a wild pounce, his left arm swinging with a serpentine slither of its many locking metal plates. "Who told you to tell me this shit?!"

Peggy Carter has posed:
Peggy watches the Soldier, eyes locked not just on his face, but on his movements. While she's hoping that he will recognize her, she has not forgotten that he has been trying to kill her. There's a twitching of his eye, the pausing. Despite that, it seems clear that he does not know who she is.

Then, it becomes very clear that he does not even know the name James Barnes, unless he is being incredibly devoted to this role he is playing. As he bolts forward with the howl, Peggy tosses herself backward, toward the window. With the ferocity of his pounce, her own response is not guided or controlled: it is, instead, a desperate attempt to keep himself out of his grasp. Her shoulder connects with the opposite wall and her hands immediately move upward to push herself away from it before she is trapped there.

"You are," she tells him, firmly, if a little breathless from their fight. "No one is telling me to tell you anything. My name is Peggy Carter. We fought Nazis together in 1943."

Winter Soldier has posed:
Trapped in an enclosed space with an enraged Winter Soldier is not the best place to be.

Peggy makes the best of it. Throwing herself backwards, towards the window, she immediately rolls along the wall and pushes away, practically rebounding off it to slide past his strike. The wind off his metal fist touches her skin, but nothing else; his attack pulverizes the left side of the window instead of her body, his arm briefly sticking as it drives deep into the frame.

Even then, she keeps talking. It's just like his handlers have always told him. People will try to confuse him. They'll try to take advantage of his unstable mental state. They'll tell him all sorts of lies to get him to stop, to fail his mission. Yet-- the lies people tell-- are all kind of similar, aren't they?

Pain rips through his head at the very thought.

A little wild-eyed, he rips his arm clear of the window, widening the hole in the wall by a good few feet. She says they fought together. 1943. "I was in Kursk in 1943!" he barks. "At Prokhorovka..." He was. Wasn't he?

Something in him hits a limit. Perhaps he's remembering that she's getting a good look at his face now-- far too good a look. He whirls and vaults through the shattered window, clearly intent on flight.

Peggy Carter has posed:
Peggy's next intent is to get out, but she also cannot leave something like this unchecked. If this is truly Bucky Barnes, then she has to find out what exactly is going on here. It's clear he doesn't know who he is, or that this Bucky Barnes really was a man who was in Kursk in 1943. Time travel tends to muck things up and perhaps this is one of the side effects.

However, his eyes, his reactions, they're wild compared to the way he was practically toying with her previously. She's hit a nerve, she can feel it.

The window shatters in a spray of broken glass and wooden frame. A piece or slice across her arm where she rolls to cover herself from the debris. "You were in France!" she retorts back, pushing at the nerve she believes she has hit, needing to get through to him somehow.

However, the limit is reached, it seems and the Soldier launches himself through the broken window. Unable to help herself, she lunges to the window after him, but does not actually vault through it. Instead, she attempts to figure out his path of flight, despite being convinced that she'll look out and find nothing there.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The man who might or might not be Bucky Barnes is certainly not clarifying. His behavior is wild and erratic now, a far cry from the brutal and playful hunter that lured her into his killzone earlier.

There seems to be /something/ there, however, because he's certainly acting like a man who just had some deep nerve struck, even if he cannot seem to consciously recall anything himself. She tells him he was in France, and he stares at her in incomprehension.

Then he turns and bolts, vanishing through the window. Peggy lunges after, once she regains her feet.

But one thing that is certain about him -- he lives up to the many tales of him painting him as a ghost story, appearing and disappearing again like a wraith. Once she reaches the sill and looks out, she will find him gone.

Peggy Carter has posed:
Peggy stumbles to the window after the Winter Soldier's departure. As she feared, there's no sign of him. She looks up toward the roof and then scans the area, but he's nowhere to be found. For a few moments, she merely waits there, looking out. At this point it's more contemplative than actively watching. Stepping back, she looks at the wreck of the room they just fought in and frowns. The room is practically destroyed.

Cradling her arm against her chest, she looks to the shattered window and frowns. There's something there. She's not exactly sure what it is, but something is wrong here.

The moment over, she sighs and makes her way toward the stairs and back to the roof to gather her equipment. It seems as if she has something more to investigate. The Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes? Does anyone else here even know that?