14454/Summer Soltice..ish

Summer Soltice..ish
Date of Scene:	28 September 2022
Location:	Centennial Park, Southside, New Troy
Synopsis:	Sarah.. makes a friend? With Bucky??
Cast of Characters:	Sarah Connor, Winter Soldier

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Sarah Connor has posed:
The summer solstice just was almost done, and with it the longest day was nearly done. Watching the night lights flicker and suddenly *poof* to light, Sarah found herself taking a route in the longest part of the park. It involved a run in the outer part of the park, interspersed with places to do other fitness stuff - like pushups.

She'd just finished her first circuit, and was completing curl ups.

James Barnes has posed:
The first indication that someone else is around is a tennis ball bouncing along the path, followed shortly thereafter by a very enthusiastic German Shepherd. Follow ball and dog, at an easy trot, is a man in casual clothes. He's out for a jog, that much is obvious, likely taking advantage of the cooler temperatures now that the sun has gone down, but still determined to wear a long sleeved shirt and a pair of gloves.

It is, in short, him again.

The one guy that keeps showing up everywhere at the most unexpected times, although this time, like last time, he was accompanied by a dog. Lilli, according to her collar, finally catches the ball and dutifully returns it to her favorite human, who delights the dog by launching it again.

As the sun sets on the longest day of the year, summer is finally here. But Winter approaches.

Sarah Connor has posed:
Great. Probably some guy who thought he was god's gift to women, and what's a little woman doing out here by herself anyway.

At first, she was thinking she could ignore him. Right? But the dog was chasing its ball ever so close to her. And furthermore, it was encroaching upon Sarah's 6' personal space. (How does she be a waitress??)

Fuck. She stopped all that she was doing, and stared at the man. It's been her luck, if you look at them sternly, they almost always looked away, and hurried along. The one that didn't? She had other things to deal with them.

Wait.. she noticed the man. And knew him. James. James Buchanan. A SHIELD Agent. Who, according to him, wasn't going to tell on her. (Right. And what is this with all the SHIELD agents anyways??)

Leaning on the equipment (a single curl up bar) she nodded to him.

James Barnes has posed:
The casual glance towards Sarah doesn't betray that Bucky had already spotted who was near to his path some time ago... he never jogs anywhere without keeping a close eye on his surroundings, there's too much at stake to become complacent. Complacency is not a survival trait in his world. So he jogs on for a moment, then doubles back, whistling for Lilli, and aiming a jaunty wave towards Sarah. "Good evening Miss. Pleasure to see you again."

Nope, there's no cheesy one liner, there's nothing to indicate he's anything except a perfect gentleman meeting an old acquaintance. "I hope Lilli didn't bother you on the way past. She like to play with her ball so much she doesn't always look where she's going."

Sarah Connor has posed:
Sarah almost smiles. Almost.

"Well given the choice between dogs and people, I would take dogs anyday." Now she grins. "But you, I know. Please Sarah, that Miss makes me look around wondering where the young girl came from!"

A pause, then, "Were you really out here taking a walk, or checking on something?" Me, for example, providing the SHIELD agents had a pretty good idea of where she lived.

James Barnes has posed:
"Sarah then." And the smile is there, the famous Buchanan smile. Stooping down to pat Lilli along the neck, he holds his hand out for the ball. And as soon as the soggy ball is in his hand, he stands and launches it again, to let Lilli have her play time even while he continues to stand around.

"I try never to jog in the same park two nights running. Reasons... I'm sure you understand." A wink at that, and he leans on some of the equipment, keeping a sharp eye on his dog, meaning he doesn't have his eye on Sarah. A sign of trust if ever there was one. "Lilli likes it, she likes not kowing which park we'll be going to next. I'm told variety is good for dogs. Guess I'm part dog."

Sarah Connor has posed:
"Eventually, you will run out of parks, that way." Sarah shrugs. Sarah had a keen sense of lies, and according to that, he wasn't. Surprisingly.

"So, where is the other dog?" Remembering at the bar, he had two with him.

The ball she pretends not to see. because.. ewww.

James Barnes has posed:
"There's always more parks. And once you've seen them all, choose a random one and go again. Just never go to the same park two days running." And by now, Bucky could double as a tour guide for all the green spaces of the tri-state area, having visited each at least once. Seeing Lilli frolic, he glances back towards Sarah.

"Bear? Not mine. Was looking after him for... someone. Someone in a similar situation." And for the first time in the conversation, the proverbial portcullis has dropped in front of his otherwise friendly expression. It's still there, but frozen, indicating a topic he's not keen to discuss.

Sarah Connor has posed:
Holding up her hands Sarah mimics backing off. Afterall, her lies were thick and plentiful. Who was she to complain?

"Carry on? Walking is better than staying still." As if Bucky needed to be told that. "I find, most of the time I try to switch my cardio and physio depending which park I choose." And at home too. "I probably will regret this, but what gun range do you recommend? When you're not at your job."

James Barnes has posed:
"Walk and talk."

It was an old habit, to keep going while having a conversation, to eat up the miles and gets things sorted out at the same time. A soldier can't afford to stay in one place for too long. Lilli, understanding the concept, trots alongside, still proudly carrying her ball.

"There's a few places that aren't just for the weekend warrior, but you'll find they're crawling with off duty uniforms. Avoid the one on Staten Island, that's where the FBI agents go." Is he helping a fugitive to remain hidden? Huh... "Best place? Small range out in the Adirondacks, owner's someone who understand that sometimes people want to work on their skills on the quiet, with no questions asked."

Sarah Connor has posed:
Sarah isn't a 'real' soldier, but she might as well have been one. As they ate up the trail, and talked, she kept her eyes on the trails and beyond.

"Good, good. I've got some range practice, but I've been feeling I'm losing my edge. Adirondacks, did you say? Can you rent the whole shebang out?" After all, Sarah didn't like being watched, for one, and didn't want someone getting hurt while she pulled out her not-so-by-the-books guns.

Probably the first one most of all.

"Can I get a number for it?"

James Barnes has posed:
"Yeah, you can have the whole place to yourself. It's out of the way." And there's something he's clearly not saying about it. But if it's a range the Winter Soldier uses, it has to be discreet. Few places allow you to just show up with a high powered rifle and put a few hundred rounds through a steel target a mile away before dumping a few hundred rounds through a pistol outdoors.

As for a number... For a moment, Bucky looks like he's debating it, but then reaches into his pocket and hands a card over to Sarah. It's blank, aside from a phone number. "Give him a call. But not now... he's walking his dog."

Sarah Connor has posed:
As he tells her a little more about the place she nods, calculating how much she can take him for telling the truth. He /might/ be telling her a big bunch of lies. But something told her, in this, he was telling the truth. Or as much truth that can say.

Which wasn't any real problem. If this guy rented out to people like her, he was likely a person that was a little under to up and up himself.

It wasn't till he passed the number to Sarah that it all made sense: Bucky. It had to be him. Looking at the number to memorise it, she nods, then passes back. She never had any papers or names with numbers on her phone or person. "Thanks, I appreciate it."

James Barnes has posed:
"Don't mention it." The card is slipped back into his pocket, as if it had never been. "Full disclosure, it does get used frequently by a federal agent, but I've been told he's trustworthy."

Pause.

"And part dog, apparently."

Sarah Connor has posed:
*snerk*

"This would be Bean's dog?" Sarah had no illusions that Bean was also an FBI agent. He /might/ be, but he may not be. "No worries, I won't have any dogs." Perhaps Cameron, but didn't have to know about her until he did.

With luck, there wouldn't be any other terminators.

"Do you think he would have two weekends from today open?"

James Barnes has posed:
And it's like someone just flipped a switch. The smile is gone, the blue eyes suddenly cold as winter in deepest Siberia. "Who told you about Bean?"

This, it seems, is not a drill. Bucky is giving Sarah a look that implies danger at any kind of evasion or obfuscation.

Sarah Connor has posed:
So she'd guessed correctly. And by the look on his face, it was a bigger deal than she thought.

Quietly, Sarah answered him - totally truthfully, which for her was a bigger deal then he probably knew. "That's all I really know. The dog's owner was B. I guessed. And guessing from your face, it's probably more than I really want to know. Let me guess.. He's got a story similar to mine, only the FBI is helping him."

Not a question. She was fairly certain without details she was right.

James Barnes has posed:
The cold, the darkness, the Winter goes as quickly as it came, and Bucky takes a moment to collect his thoughts, looking ahead and then down at Lilli. As if he's asking permission from the dog to say what he wants to say... although, to be fair, she's never steered him wrong.

All in all, it takes two minutes of silence, two minutes in which he walks on, perfectly calmly, scanning the area in as casual a way as he knows how.

"Bean... is alive right now because most people assume he's dead. The FBI isn't helping him, if they knew he was alive they wouldn't stop until he was locked away somewhere. Only they'd get there second. Another organisation would get him first, and that would be a fate worse than death. Literally."

And as if that's not enough, he sighs and takes a deep breath before he continues. "He's a kid. A kid that's a danger to powerful people because of what he can do, and what he knows. We made him disappear. And once what's going on has happened, he can disappear forever, the way it should be."

Another pause of about fifteen seconds. "Please forget I told you this, and forget you ever heard that name. There's agents further up the clearance list than me who don't know this much about him."

Sarah Connor has posed:
This was one of the shining moments that you could look back on and see there were two choices before you.

One was keeping on the way that you always had been. Or..

The one Sarah took.

Walking slower, with her voice kept down very low, she began.. "I'm sure you already know that the FBI has me on a very small list. It's supposedly for attempting to blow up a building in Metropolis. But it's more than that. When I escaped from their locked down Psych ward, they claimed I took my son hostage."

"I think it's more than that, and it rests on Skynet, and the Terminators. I believe that the FBI has been infiltrated. But more than that, my son John is what they want. They had him with relatives, filling his head with things. Telling him I was nuts. That what he saw isn't what he saw."

"We've been on the run ever since. Next year he will have graduated school and.. I don't know what. I'm not a very good person, but I can say, in truth, I've never killed a person." Yet.

James Barnes has posed:
There are times for honesty, when nothing but the truth will do. Bucky hears the confession... and, in truth, he already knew most of it. Some things are hard to hide, especially from an agency that deals with unusual hidden threats on a daily basis. But some things need to be learned at the source, and Bucky nods when the admission of truth is done. "If he's what they want, we'll have to make sure they don't get him. One way or the other."

And then, at last, it's time for his own truth. "I have killed people, Sarah. Many of them. It's... what I did. Not so much lately, but enough that I can't deny who I am. I used to be the main enemy of the people I work for now, and there are plenty of them who will never trust me. They've got a good reason for that."

And the glove comes off. Vibranium shines in the light of the lamps lighting the path. "Nick told you I lost my arm in the war, and got a prosthetic. That was true, but that war happened a long time ago, and this isn't just a prosthetic."

Deep breath!

"My name is James Buchanan Barnes, and I used to be the Winter Soldier." Pause. "There, that's what my therapist tells me I need to tell people I'm in danger of befriending. Some people tell you that I'm crazy, some people will say that I belong in some kind of institution. Not saying these people are wrong, only that they don't have the full story."

Sarah Connor has posed:
At that, Sarah laughs bitterly.

"And was going to tell you, that that little bit that I told you, would make you a target." Sarah takes a deep breath, and lets it go. "For a while, when John was younger, we lived pretty much off of the grid in South America. I was a gun runner, and for a while it was life such as it was."

"Eventually we managed a victory against Skynet, and stupid me, I thought we were done. I fell in love with a man. Considered marrying him. Skynet wasn't a problem. Right? Wrong."

"I had to abandon my love, to keep him safe, and I was on the road again. Anyone is in danger, or is danger. You can't imagine how lonely that life is."

She shrugs.

"Funny how our stories mesh in places. I.. I don't know about trust. But you're close? Sarah is my name. I go by Sarah Baum. And about 6 or 7 names besides. I.. dammit. Sarah Connor. I haven't told another person my name."

James Barnes has posed:
And a hand is then held out, bridging that small gap between them. "Sarah Conner. A pleasure to meet you again for the first time."

There's that smile again. The smile that promises that, comes hell or high water, friends will be protected... and that Sarah just made it onto a very, very short list indeed.

Sarah Connor has posed:
Sarah takes his hand and shakes it. Carefully. "Nice to meet you James. Wow, this is weird. I have this niggly feeling that.. I wasn't kidding you when I told you you would be in constant trouble. To get to John, they would use you to get to me. You wouldn't even know them from Clint, and Nick."

What has she done??

James Barnes has posed:
"Story of my life, really. It's been that way for ... hah, nearly a century now. I'm still here. Don't worry about me." And there is something odd about Bucky admitting to being at least a century old. It's that he doesn't sound like he's joking. And if that's true, then he's an extremely hard man to kill. "If they try to go through me to get to you, or John, they'll bounce. You can count on that."

Sarah Connor has posed:
Sarah raises a brow. Now whether he catches it in the dimly lit park, is his concern. "I'm going to give you a lesson on how to tell friends from terminators."

Really, what had she done?

But on the other hand.. "And how to actually kill them. It's a little more than blowing them up. There is a CPU that needs to come out, or they will reboot in under two minutes, and to prevent them from being used for parts, and resurrected with a new CPU you will need to burn them with a special solvent."

Whatever she has done, she was on a different path now. God help her.