1664/Shield Brothers

Shield Brothers
Date of Scene:	26 July 2017
Location:	The Godsend Bar, New York City
Synopsis:	After forty years, the Winter Soldier and John Aaron cross paths again, and Ares assesses for himself the nature of the Soldier versus that of James Buchanan Barnes.
Cast of Characters:	Ares, Winter Soldier
Tinyplot:	Tayaniye

---

Ares has posed:
    The Godsend bar lives and dies on two things, the weekends; and happy hour. During the weekend it's for the tourists, prices go up and people get a little taste of the authentic New York experience. During the week, however, the place is for the townies. Happy hour sees a mass of blur collar workers descend on the place, sitting in large groups, enjoying their time together while the current sportsball game is played on the big screen televisions up on the wall, except for the one monitor that displays today's Keno numbers.
    Today, at the end of second shift, the place is busy. A good chunk of the men from Local 477 Construction and General Building are in evidence, holed up around their usual table. Most are just chattering, adding their voice to the ambient rumble of the crowd that's only interrupted at times by the clack of billiard balls, and the occasional raucous bit of laughter.
    But the fellow known as John Aaron, he's settled at the end of the bar, hand around the bottle of his beer as he watches the reverse image of the game on the television, his eyes on the mirror behind the bar itself. Occasionally he'll take up a few salted peanuts and consumes them absently.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The Winter Soldier has a Handler, and then he has handlers: lesser creatures tasked with the general work of keeping in touch with an asset in the field. Mostly they communicate with the Soldier, in his wanderings, in chalk marks and dead drops discarded under rotting trees or stuck between the bricks of old buildings, but sometimes there's just no substitute for what can be done in a face-to-face interaction, however brief.

They tend to choose crowded, public locations for stuff like this. It seems counterintuitive up until you realize how suspicious it looks for two guys to be standing around in abandoned and vacant lots, heads bent together in conspiratorial conversation.

The Soldier and his handler have been at a table towards the back of the Godsend for a short time now, finishing a companionable pair of beers and talking about work, just like most of the rest of the men and women occupying the bar. Of course, the nature of the work they talk about is slightly different than that of most of the other people here, but they keep that on the down-low, couched in code phrases and innocuous half-statements.

After a while, the Soldier's handler gets up and takes his leave. The Soldier himself lingers to avoid drawing excessive attention. To complete the act, he gets up and heads for the end of the bar himself, leaning against it and waiting to catch the bartender's eye.

His own eye catches something almost immediately. John Aaron is a distinctive man, especially when you're practically right next to him. A blue eye regards Aaron sidelong, considering, before the Soldier's gaze turns back forward. "Kak dela, John Aaron?" he inquires, low to keep the Russian from being overheard. How you doing? Been a while.

Ares has posed:
    A glance to the side is given as the voice is heard, and John Aaron turns to look upon the man. His brows lift and he meets the man's gaze with an easily offered smile. Rising to his feet he turns to the man and extends a hand, "Soldier!" His voice is strong, resonant, though it only draws a few glances. Should the hand be accepted he'll draw the other man into a brief fraternal embrace which is little more than banging on the back a few times before stepping back to meet eyes again.
    "It has been some time. We will sit and drink unless your time steals you from me." He gestures to the side, a hand curled in the direction of the bartender, a man who knows the incognito Olympian well. John nods towards the bar behind him and for his efforts the tender rewards him with a bottle of brandy that's set down with a clink.
    Turning back, Ares looks upon the soldier again. "Tell me what has passed, or rather what you will."

Winter Soldier has posed:
The smile is returned easily, the man who knows himself as 'Yasha' clasping the offered hand and stepping into the embrace without hesitation. His returned slap to Aaron's back, as he disengages, is made with the left arm. John Aaron is more than capable of taking it. This, the Soldier has seen with his own eyes.

There is a certain ease to him, as he settles to the seat beside John Aaron. It is an ease he has always felt in the other 'man's' company, one that he is barely aware of consciously, much less able to explain or quantify, but which bears a sense of like encountering like.

"Time," the Soldier echoes. He settles his left arm to the bar surface, with a deeper and more hollow sound of contact than would be expected. His gaze lifts briefly, silently counting. "Forty-one years. You look as if no time has passed at all."

What has passed? Ares wishes to know. The Soldier's expression turns briefly wry as the Olympian mindfully accounts for the needs of confidentiality. "The Cold War, for one," he says, only pausing to pull over the glass the bartender slides to him. "I woke and it was long over. I miss it, in some ways. The work these days is not the same."

Ares has posed:
    "Indeed," John seems at ease speaking so in this place, though assuredly they may get a glance or two, but his words are not curtailed too much as he responds. "A good chunk of time, and indeed. I do the Tae Bo to keep in shape." His lip curls as he takes up the bottle and holds it up as if having gained some lovely prize on a game hunt. He tosses his head to indicate an aisle of booths away from the bar, "Come regale me with what you will."
    That said he slides off of his seat, taking the bottle and the two shot glasses, carrying them easily as he wends his way through the local crowd, giving a nod to some as he passes, smiling to others. He's known her, to a degree at least, that much is evident.
    It's when he reaches a table in the back, second from the last but nestled comfortably out of the line of sight of new arrivals. The glasses clink down, the bottle's opened, and he pours the glasses first before taking a seat. His glass is held up, "To reunions, of sorts. Moments of surprise shared that brighten an otherwise expected flow of the world." And if the sentiment is shared, they shall clink.
    Either way, after that he'll take his seat.

Winter Soldier has posed:
A grin flickers across the Soldier's features as John speaks of doing 'the Tae Bo' to keep in shape, but he does not immediately speak to it. Aaron rises with an eye towards privacy, and the Soldier holds conversation for that.

Some relic of an older world and its courtesies, still embedded deep in him and unable to be erased, keeps him standing courteously while Aaron-- the effective host here-- still stands, himself, and delivers that short toast. "Overdue reunions," he makes addition, taking his filled glass and clinking it with Aaron's. "Vashe zdarovye." With that, he takes his own seat a moment after the other man.

His blue eyes regard the other man with some frank curiosity. "You talk like a man who's settled down," he says, picking the thread of conversation back up without a hitch. "So what has passed with you? This is a strange place to find you, yet you seem well known here."

He turns his glass absently in his left hand. It is gloved, for obvious reasons. "It seems more has changed, since the last time I was active, than just the shape of the world, and the names of the wars." A moment's pause. "Do you still speak to Natalia?"

Ares has posed:
    "I have, I am afraid." Settled down. "Grown fat in this land of luxury." John offers in that calm tone, settling into his chair opposite the other man. He sets to the refilling of the glasses, bottle turned on its side and gurgling as he offers a generous amount of liquor to each, spilling only a little. That done he sets the bottle down with a firm thud that causes it to slosh faintly. "I have a job, I relax on what I have earned over the years. Time passes. I am content to watch."
    He takes a sip of his drink then and meets Bucky's gaze, "You should consider it. Indeed the world has changed, the war has passed, nothing is quite the same. Such conflict is best left to the young, our stake in matters has passed." He gives a small wave to a passing server, perhaps just doing enough to insure she wanders by when she has the chance.
    Gaze turned back towards the Soldier, John gives a small nod, "Passingly. She has her interests, I have mine. She speaks ill of my choices in fashion, I tell her she has the taste of a village match-maker." His lip twists.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The Winter Soldier's expression flashes a brief lightning-flicker of contempt as Aaron speaks of America, a land of luxury and wealth that has softened him. Perhaps as a mark of respect he does not say anything aloud, instead accepting the refill and draining the glass again, without any apparent ill effect from the strong liquor.

"And what changed your mind?" he asks. "What I saw of you, forty years ago..." His gaze goes briefly distant, recalling a man of barely-suppressed action and reined violence, a powerful man who in the end was obviously not merely a 'man' at all. "Well," he shrugs. "You seemed quite at ease with yourself, back then."

He draws to a distinct pause when Aaron suggests he too should consider it. The world is better off left to the young now, old ghosts like them best exorcised from the land. His expression flickers oddly, like some deep-buried part of him wants to agree, even though his head is already shaking no. "I already had no family or life to my name when I lost my arm and my memory at Prokhorovka," he says. "Eighty-two years later, a habit of war is hard to break." He snorts, amused. "Besides, my handlers would lose their shit if I quit. They already lost Natalia."

He speaks so convincingly of it-- this falsified record of a life he believes he has led, but which never truly existed. The illusion he is his own man, and not a captive.

As far as Natalia? Natalia, who he now seems to remember? "Her choices disappoint me," he says briefly, a great deal going unsaid amongst such simple words. "I still have some hope to convince her to return. It's beyond me what spurred her to choose such a new life for herself."

Ares has posed:
    A small smile, given easily as the tall man rests his hands around the base of the glass, shaking his head a little. "The passage of time? The appeal of the world? I've given much already for those that looked to me for guidance, prayed for my aid. There is a time when one must decide that it has been enough. For them to have no masters and look to themselves." He lifts a hand, fingers flaring faintly as he waves off his own words.
    But then he speaks on the age devoted to war, the lack of connections. He nods, "I would still bristle at the presumption of it. Wouldn't you?" His brow furrows. "A life time of effort granted, being treated as a being who is and will always be put to use until used up? I have seen such a behaviour before, broken many hammers in the past, to be treated as such is to be treated as a tool."
    "And bah, if they take exception... then grab a handful of your medals for the many times you have saved the fatherland and throw them at them. It will be enough to if not blind them so you can depart, it'll at least deafen them with the heavy clatter so you can stride out with pride."
    But then Natalia is brought up and he holds up his hands, shaking his head. "Perhaps her thoughts follow likewise. I would have a better life for her, and for you."

Winter Soldier has posed:
There is a moment, sidelong and searching, where the Winter Soldier regards Aaron and says nothing. It comes in tandem with what Aaron says of people looking to him for guidance-- praying for his aid. A memory rises in his mind of a man who tanked a massive bomb blast point-blank with few apparent ill effects other than a considerable amount of charring.

"Did you answer their prayers?" he wonders. "And if you did, who answers them now? Not too much seems to have changed, even with their newfound... freedom."

But the subsequent words of John Aaron have a strange effect-- words that paint him as a resource, a tool, a weapon to be wielded and put away. The Soldier frowns as if to disagree. Then, the frown transitions to one of thought. Then strain. The corner of an eye twitches, as if some brief internal struggle were waged. "I /am/ a weapon," he eventually says, mind fallen back into its prescribed ruts. "I have few illusions about that. I accepted that some time ago."

Whatever brief internal voice wanted to reach out to Aaron's words seems to have been temporarily silenced. He lifts his left arm, looks at the hand. Even through the heavy sleeve and glove, the slithering sound of metal articulating, plates sliding past one another, is faintly audible. A mark of obvious inhumanity. "I was engineered to be that way. I'm not suited to peace, nor quiet." He shakes his head. "I know my purpose, and it's to provide those things for others. People like to pretend that these things can be bought in any way other than someone, somewhere, shedding blood. Better lives are for the innocent."

Ares has posed:
    "If their sacrifice is enough. It all depends on what they set upon the altar," John's eyes meet the Soldier's and for a time there's no hint of that subtle facade that ever plays upon his features, that hint of the other seeing to slip through faintly like the dimmest line of light illuminating the underside of the basement door. "If one sacrificed their life, their loved ones, their very selves... I tend to hear them."
    At that he takes another drink, "But now, the world carries on. You see it is arrogance that we feel, to think that it needs us. Arrogance to think it will not carry on." His lip curves faintly as he looks to the man, "I work with these people..." He gestures around himself absently, "They hold me as dear, some of them, perhaps. But when I am away... but if I disappeared? Perhaps there would be a moment of mourning. But they would adjust. The world would go on."
    A small shrug is given as he downs his drink, then goes about refilling his, and the Soldier's as well if he needed. "Now. You imagine that it requires you alone to save the great state? Is that not arrogance. Or perhaps, dare we say, hubris?"

Winter Soldier has posed:
That brief eye contact brings the Winter Soldier to a still silence. In that moment, there is an impression that comes and goes, a vague feeling congruent with a certain sense of continuity that the Soldier has observed from war, to war, to war. The Second World War. Korea. Vietnam. The Cold War and its many child wars. Afghanistan. Iran. Iraq. The Gulf.

The Winter Soldier has been in all of them, his hand briefly turning the tiller of each one in passing, and in each one there has been something about it that felt familiar. There is that sense, again, now.

Then it passes away, and two men drink from their glasses. He does not pursue that line of conversation further. "Those I work for are not content for the world to simply go on," he admits instead, though he is tellingly silent on his own thoughts on the matter. Perhaps he doesn't have any. It was not necessary to program him with any to have. "They believe it would be... better, with guidance. Looking around, seeing what people do left to themselves, I don't know if I disagree." Is he allowed to disagree?

He shrugs. "Maybe they want the same as you. Better lives for those around them. Some sacrifices have to be made for that." He has accepted that one is himself.

Called out on his own personal arrogance, he betrays half a smile, admitting to it. "Maybe it is," he says. "But I have an eighty-year track record backing me, so far. It's not entirely out of my ass."

Ares has posed:
    A small snort is given as he looks aside, John shaking his head slightly as he holds up his glass under his chin, swirling the liquor slightly. "A very state of nature approach to mass morality." John lifts a nod towards the waitress when she comes by again, holding her tray to her chest.
    "Can I get you gentlemen, anything?" She asks with a somewhat sincere openness.
    "I'd like the chicken tenders, please." At that she looks to Winter should he want something, but then she departs.
    Alone again he looks back to the man and says, "I had this lovely metaphor I was thinking of composing using the nachos as a visual aid, but I'm really more in a mood for chicken." His lip twists, as if this is all... on some level, a game to him, or perhaps with the years passed he has seen much and allows it only to get its talons in to a certain degree.
    "But now tell me, for those who want better lives for others, why is it those others often have to make such sacrifices? Seems to me a life of example, charity, sacrifice... would that not be a stronger argument?" He tilts his head to the side, "But then again those things do not carry with it power."

Winter Soldier has posed:
John's philosophic dismissal of the aspirations of Hydra is met with the relative indifference of the Soldier. The reference escapes him. The man he was before he was stolen and warped was not a man of high erudite education, and since then the Soldier has learned little except the trade of war. And this: "It's not really for me to question." The yoke he wears is heavy, indeed.

He glances up as the waitress comes over. Her request if he wants anything is met with a curt shake of the head. No pleasure on business, it seems.

And now Aaron has a question to pose: why do those who wish better lives for mankind seem happy to have others make the sacrifices? Why not personally lead lives of charity and sacrifice?

This is a point where John Aaron, with his careful speech, may become aware he has reached the edge of the personality that is the Winter Soldier. Though he has been convincing as a man up until now, these probing hypotheticals find the weaknesses in what is ultimately an engineered personality, built from a base of the personality of James Buchanan Barnes himself-- but then maimed and ripped open of any of the components that made it human. Empathy, guilt, remorse. Autonomy of thought.

He could say what James would have said-- a cynical observation that for such people, better lives for others is usually the palatable, media-friendly, and entirely secondary objective to the primary, which is better lives for themselves-- but it would be speaking against his masters, and the leash on him is strong.

Instead, all he says is, again, "It's not really for me to question." There is a brief, hollow moment, where he is obvious for the construct he is-- then it passes, and he affects half a wry smile. "I'm better at the execution than the thought exercises."

Ares has posed:
    A small frown touches John's features as he looks across the table at the man. "Ah." The tall man lets that single syllable linger as he looks across the way at the man, brow furrowed in thought. The drink is forgotten for now, it is held light and to the side. Then he shakes his head, "It is troubling, then." John turns his head aside, as if following the progress of the waitress and then looks back to him. "You see I have only known you in this manner. Your self is there in elements, but you are chained. It saddens me."
    He looks away and shakes his head, "I argued at a point for your existence, for the words advanced by the person I was discussing with is what should have primacy. The you that existed for what, two dozen years? Less? Or the one that has held strong for such time since. Their thought was that the original should be held to be the true."
    He settles back in his chair, frowning. "I argued against it, because for me... my past was the darker self. Did I ever tell you what I was like in ages past?"

Winter Soldier has posed:
Confusion infects the Winter Soldier's expression like a slow spreading plague as John Aaron reaches his rueful determination, and speaks. The conversation has taken a leap, one he cannot follow, referencing an argument of which he is not aware, speaking of him as if he were two people.

But-- he is two people, isn't he? No, more than that. He was a child, orphaned early, with no company but the rage he felt at his circumstance. He was a young soldier in the war that mankind thought would end all wars. He is the Winter Soldier, now. And he is someone else, beyond all those things, someone else--

--that gets clamped down on again, hard, by the conditioning. The Winter Soldier frosts everything back over into cool calm. "I don't know," he says, "what you mean."

Did I ever tell you what I was like in ages past?

"No," the Soldier says, and finishes his drink with narrowed eyes.

Ares has posed:
    The tall man leans forwards a little, his chair creaking with a faint wooden complaint as he looks to the other man levelly. One hand lifts slightly, index finger extended as if making a point as he nods. "It was a time I was not entirely proud of. I lived for the moment, gave little thought to what I was doing save that it seemed to be what I was supposed to be doing." The older man shakes his head, "Though at the time I was proud. For really who could fault one for being so exceptional? The murder of people, cities, civilizations."
    The drink is tasted again as he then sets it aside empty, perhaps allowing him to have further should he so wish. "Whatever was placed for me was but a challenge, a puzzle to solve to get at the meat of the matter and then the blood would flow."
    "Eventually, however." John looks to Winter Soldier as if seeing past the man, just a touch over the shoulder and beyond as the memories come forth. "I had had enough. Oh some things happened to spur the moment forwards. But I decided to change, to become someone else. But according to the counter-argument given me, the elder, the original should hold primacy. So I argued for you to be that which you choose."
    "But there we have the rub. Your choice has been taken. And that sits poorly with me."

Winter Soldier has posed:
The Winter Soldier listens in wordless, expressionless silence to John Aaron as he relates his wild, violent youth. A god riding the tide of war, with no thought for anything but being the absolute perfect embodiment of the sphere he was made to rule. Most would flinch to hear a man speak so baldly of the cavalier slaughter of men and women, their cities, the overturning and scourging of their civilizations, but the Soldier seems to take it as a matter of course. He has devoted his life to the same-- or, had his life devoted to it for him.

He starts to shake his head right around the point where Aaron speaks of arguing for his freedom of choice. To choose his own life path and identity, as John Aaron himself once did. Not necessarily, even, to revert to the man he once was-- a man who may well now be dead, anyway, given all that has been done to him and the many years that have passed-- but perhaps even to become something new.

"You talk like Natalia," he says, his voice heavy with denial. "She also tells me a version of my life I don't recall. Not a single memory of it. What am I to believe? I remember making this choice you speak of. Making it eighty years ago."

Still shaking his head, he pushes his chair back. "It was good to see you again, John," he says, and in that he seems sincere. "But these insistences I'm someone I'm not... I can't keep hearing them. There is work to do."

Ares has posed:
    "Bide, Soldier." John holds up a hand. And that tone of his voice, it's a short precise command. It is a voice that has sent thousands hurling themselves against the stone of a wall with defenders raining death down upon them. It is a voice that has unmanned generals who stood against its wishes. And it is a voice that asks something of him now, levelly, firmly. No malice is there in it, no aggression. It is just a strength of conviction and an intensity of regard that is leveled upon him.
    "I will say this once. And then I will ask of you a question. It is a crux upon which I set your life." The tall man rests his hands upon the table. "I will not raise a hand against you. Nor will I stand to do you ill. We are shield brothers. And so I owe you that much at the least." He lifts his chin and then says almost formally, the pattern of his words almost ritualistic in their precisions...
    "But if you release me of my oath, then I will insure that all of your questions will be answered. That you will stand complete. And that you will have the /freedom/ to make your choice as to who and what you wish to be. If that is to return to this. To them." He gestures with but a glance over his shoulder, indicating who? Perhaps the handlers. Perhaps the world. "Then they will not hold you and I will make you free. But if your conviction is strong. At the least it can endure this."
    Those last words hang there and then he says firmly, steadily. "What say you?"

Winter Soldier has posed:
The single command arrests him with ease. It reaches in and rings somewhere deep in the DNA not just of the Winter Soldier, but that of James Buchanan Barnes: son of a soldier, and a soldier all his life. It is a voice that is many things, to many people: to this man, it is the voice of a commanding officer, and the military blood in him can no more disobey than a plant can turn away from sunlight.

His features are neutral as he halts, however, his eyes cold and sharp and clear as the edge of a glacier, soaked blue by the eroding sea. He listens, impassive.

Ares offers him a choice, and asks a question.

"And fuck up our relationship?" he says, wry. "Forty years out the window. I don't have enough 'shield brothers' in the world to be doing that shit." He shakes his head. "All to answer questions I'm not even asking."

His gaze darkens. The mirth wipes away. "I don't need to be made free from anything. I'm not held anywhere I didn't choose to be." The beauty of it is how convincing they make him sound.

Ares has posed:
    A nod is given as Ares lifts his hand, "Then another time, Soldier." He slides his hands off the edge of the table and settles back in his chair. For a moment the Fates might have leaned forwards in their old rickety wooden chairs next to their many threads and their spindles, watching, ever watching on the beings of the world...
    Only for them to ease back and sigh, the moment had passed.
    "Be seeing you." He says with a small smile at the corner of his mouth as he settles back into his chair, lifting a hand to offer a small wave to the man's departure.
    And with that... he turns his thoughts back inward.