2185/Anamnesis

Anamnesis
Date of Scene:	26 August 2017
Location:	Various(?)
Synopsis:	With the Winter Soldier captured, the difficult task of undoing decades of brainwashing awaits. Loki, making use of the Mind Stone, sets out to do just that, enabling Steve Rogers, Mercy Thompson, Sam Winchester, Melinda May, and a very cross Winifred Burkle to assist him in the repair of the Soldier's fragmented mind. Additional guidance comes in the periodic appearance of Claire Temple(?).
Cast of Characters:	Mercy Thompson, Sam Winchester, Loki, Melinda May, Captain America, Winter Soldier, Claire Temple, Winifred Burkle
Tinyplot:	Tayaniye

---

Mercy Thompson has posed:
The last two to three days have been a whirlwind of activity.

A trap for the Winter Soldier was laid at a junkyard. It was there that Mercy, Sam, Fred and Dean managed to capture the brainwashed assassin. And while Mercy would love to say it was from their skill-sets, really, it was pure luck. Luck and the fates smiling kindly on them that night.

Messages were left at SHIELD for those that needed to know. A simple message of 'We got our friend secured. Please send back-up.'.

Now it's evening at Mercy's Garage. The garage itself is locked up tight from unknown visitors, as well as regular customers. The only ones that have been allowed in or out is the small rag-tag group that's set out to capture the Winter Soldier and eventually save Claire. The main garage area is where most people can be found, including the Winter Soldier. His metallic arm has been strapped neatly to his torso thanks to a large bulky chain that's been wrapped around him. The ends of that chain rise high upward to the ceiling and have been secured by rebar and weld to one of the heavy foundational beams of the garage. Anything that was within reach of the Winter Soldier has likewise been removed and the room is never without a guard.

Though tonight perhaps there's more than one guard on duty, as Mercy Thompson finds her way into the garage proper. Unobtrusively she's tucking a small phone back into the pocket of her coveralls and as soon as she's inside her gaze will move to the Winter Soldier's form, before she looks up to see how the chain is holding up under pressure. "Okay, everyone is on their way." Is what she'll say to those assembled within.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Despite all the drama and tension that has been going on for Sam Winchester outside of this garage, he still has a vested interest in seeing the matter of the Winter Soldier and his missing captive through. Given he can't find any answer for Dean's dilemma-- and given Dean seems to have flat out taken off again-- he has gladly volunteered to play extra guard duty on this night, of all nights. He's there in his bulletproof clothes, there with his Beretta, and there with a grim, tight look on his face (bruised, as it happens, from a fight with Dean, though that was the case all three days he's been in and out of here) that doesn't give away much more than readiness.

He has taken up a position in the corner of the room, and he nods quietly as Mercy speaks. This is it...either their plan works tonight or Claire is pretty much lost.

And so, too, will Bucky Barnes be, because their list of plays will shrink down to exactly one.

This is not a thought he's discussed with anyone else. It seems particularly ironic in light of his assurances to Fred that he wouldn't prey on or hurt other people willingly. But then again, he isn't sure his girl would fault him for this thought in particular.

He exhales, banishing all of it. This just has to work. Period.

"I did another walk of the neighborhood about 15 minutes ago," he reports. "I didn't see any signs of trouble." They might have time to make this happen, is what he means, but it's a stark reminder that they could be attacked by Hydra at any time. It won't take them that long to figure out what happened, and even less time to track them down once they do.

Loki has posed:
Four lattes in a cardboard carrier may well be an impressive display of dexterity, a feat matched only by the entire server body of the food service industry. A jaunty step carries a perfectly nice man employed as a perfectly respectable art consultant with the world's pre-eminent auction house. The fact those shoes cost enough to rent a house in most American cities doesn't detract from his readiness to go to battle in style with the necessary accessories. A few good women, some dodgy men, and a flat white in his left hand just in case lattes prepared with fair trade, sourced beans by seasoned coffee connoisseurs who don't wear green aprons aren't to anyone's taste.

Loki Odinson, prince of Asgard, master of spells, the trickster, god of stories and mischief, cuppa joe delivery service. Fine, for exactly one mortal ever.

He has a dim view of doors standing in his way, and more of a concept for an entrance.

So the lattes show up in front of Sam on the nearest table or shelf, and barring a table, floating in midair. One has a frownie face puppy -- golden retriever, as it happens -- to considerable artistic detail staring right at him.

Hey, those baristas earn their keep when tipped in good luck, gold, and the occasional sly grin.

Loki himself, in his typical Liam appearance, cruises through an inner doorway to take up a proper spot against the wall. He crosses his arms over his chest and adopts that casual half-smile one shade off deserving of a slap to clean it off his expression.

Melinda May has posed:
The message left at SHIELD did not go unnoticed. While the more invested party seems to have been unable to be here, May has managed to arrive instead. She enters shortly after Liam, visually taking stock of everyone in the room and then approaching Sam. As last time, she's going to have nothing to do with the coffee.

"Any word from Dean yet?" she asks Sam quietly while watching Liam and Mercy moving about.

Captain America has posed:
Since arriving yesterday, Steve Rogers hasn't really left the garage. He's undoubtedly Steve, not Captain America, but Steve. The suit had been left at SHIELD. And in a way, leaving it made him feel less like himself than wearing it. But something about it felt off, which is why his appearance is relatively nondescript save for the haircut. His shield, however, hadn't been left behind.

The symbol, worn on his back, remains there as he crouches on the floor of the garage, along one of the back walls. He hasn't really spoken to his friend--not since the warning from Mercy or the way things turned so awry, but he also hasn't left either.

But despite the silence, his blue eyes continue to reflect sheer determination. But behind that determination, his heart aches. Hope keeps him steady and staying the course. But the thought of time, of what Hydra did to his friend, and his inability to act weighs on him. Just enough.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
Sam in that corner of his. It's enough to earn a nod from the coyote. A second nod is added when he apprises her of the absence of trouble. So far.

Loki's arrival isn't missed either. Or perhaps the initial arrival of the coffee and then the man himself. Upon seeing him Mercy offers a fleeting smile, but overall her countenance is pretty serious. Grim, even. Then it's onward to May's arrival and Mercy says, "Agent May, I'm glad you could make it." And finally the Captain or rather Steve Rogers. The coyote will turn a not-unsympathetic look upon him, but that's about all. There's things to do and those things need to happen now. Lives are in danger.

As such, Mercy's gaze takes the whole group in for a singular minute, before she speaks again, "The sedative I gave him will only last three to four hours tops - we should get to work." And those last five words are meant mostly for Loki, as Mercy's gaze returns to the Asgardian Prince. "Which means you're up, Liam. Just tell us what you need us to do."

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam doesn't know whether to chuff a laugh at the coffee cup or...or frown at it. But...if he frowns at it, he might prove the point? Either way, he finally shoots a tense, quick grin to Liam. "Thanks," he says.

It's worth noting that Sam is willing to drink convenience store coffee that's been sitting in a Sip and Go for 6 hours, so he really lacks the rarefied tastes to appreciate everything Liam has done for them in this department. The fair trade beans, the true freshness, the exquisite flavor notes...all missed. It's coffee. It's hot. It's good. He salutes Liam with it and he takes a sip with apparent satisfaction.

He's a heathen.

May's query gets a quick grimace and a shake of his head. But he doesn't want to talk about Dean right now, or go down that rabbit hole in the least. He focuses his attention on Liam, instead, all to the goal of learning exactly what it is he needs to do to right the wrong they've all been struggling so hard to correct, this thing that has brought this strange, unlikely group together and forged for them a bond.

Loki has posed:
Loki reserves the flat white for himself, and he certainly has no reason to bother drinking it. Not as yet, anyways, for the caffeine hit promised within the milk-coffee concoction comes later. A number of different substances might be consumed by the time the night is through, and not a moment until then. Anyone remotely capable of detecting such might easily observe his aura is supercharged by an abundance of magical energy, the excess occasionally bleeding off in a wavering glimmer of his green eyes.

Each person receives a look in turn, a nod for Melinda and a pointed look at Captain America's shield. Professional interest. How /do/ you apply paint to vibranium and is there anything which doesn't just run right off with the merest scratch? Wrong line of inquiry there.

"Good evening, naturally." He has the capacity to smile, although the thin hunter's smile of a hunting cat. "What you need to do, friends." And Captain America. He's an unknown. "This is bound to be somewhat tricky and fine-tuned work. I'm only reworking the entire story of a man from the beginning to the end, exactly what he is, with your assistance. Be clear in your goals and remember him as he should be, as you'd like him to be if you don't have that." He glances up, collecting his thoughts. "Bloody hell, how to tell you what you need to know."

Simple, then. "Let me set up expectations in advance. Do not, under any circumstances, touch the object I'm using. I don't believe in hyperbole but in this case you'll suffer a fate worse than whatever unpleasant death your minds can conjure and it will last for an eternity. Anything goes wrong before, flee together. None of this no man left behind business. Unnecessary sentiment under the circumstances. Believe me, I'll survive whatever happens."

Melinda May has posed:
May nods to Sam at his grimaced non-answer, then as she also turns her attention toward Liam she blinks, then pulls a phone out of a pocket inside her jacket. Reading something on the display, she quickly sends a reply message then leans to tell Sam sotto voce, "I have his location now, and I'll be getting updates on his movements."

Then Liam speaks up and her attention is on him again. As he explains, she resolves in her mind that she wants Barnes to have the chance at freedom again. No expectations about who he's supposed to be, that's not up to her to decide. Simply that he have the freedom and peace to make that choice for himself.

At the directive to run should something go wrong, May can't help but look toward Rogers. That is going to be the single most difficult thing the man might have to do. And if need be, she'll drag him out of her by the ear herself. She doens't care if he's nearly a foot extra height and double her body mass in muscle, she WILL drag him out of here.

Captain America has posed:
Steve nods towards Mercy in vague acknowledgement before finally straightening to a stand. His gaze lingers on Sam a few beats, but it's Liam's look at his shield that prompts his eyebrows to lift and his trademark smile to appear. His arms cross over his chest, and in a strange impression of his WWII action figure, his smile turns grim.

The explanation about what's going to happen causes every muscle in his body to tighten. He's one of the few here who has genuine memories of /Bucky/. Everyone else who would is long gone. His head lulls to the side, catching May's look. His eyebrows lift with a not-spoken question and comically the grimness in his smile fades.

He's reasonably sure that Agent May can read minds.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
The extra shine to Loki's aura isn't missed by the coyote. It's like a beacon to her senses and something that isn't easily missed.

But, like everyone else, Mercy's attention stays upon the man that most know as Liam. She'll listen to what he has to say and while his last words earn a furrowed brow full of concern, she doesn't offer any type of refute to them.

At this point all she can do is simply trust. Trust him. The people around her. Trust that they all will live through whatever is about to happen.

The byplay between the various people within the group isn't lost upon Mercy, but again, there are other priorities right now. "I'm ready." Comes her words, resolve easily heard within them, even as the coyote now turns to look towards the sedated man.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam nods a wordless thanks to May, marveling for a brief moment at how intent she is on taking care of them. It's warming, but it's also very strange.

He compartmentalizes well though, and soon May's mothering is put out of his mind in favor of the task ahead. He grimaces faintly. All he knows are the comic books...

But that's not true. He remembers the man who spoke to him in the park, too. The man who was just trying to find his way. He thinks he can do a bit with that. "Ready," he says quietly.

He rather believes Loki will survive, so yes, he'll even pay attention to the other instructions. Hunting 104: sometimes you run like Hell cause that is the only play you've got left. As to not touching the thing? He grips his coffee as if he is afraid that his hand might accidentally twitch out and slap atop it. It won't, and it doesn't, but sometimes the mind can do weird things upon hearing there's an instadeath item in the room.

Loki has posed:
For a moment of fanfare? There simply isn't any. "Liam" opens his hand, reaching for something clearly not present in the still hush of the garage. One instant, nothing; the next, Mercy's senses may be bombarded off the scale that even he's displayed before her and that includes a certain garden at the foot of his mother's Tower. Gilded segments woven around one another form the shaft solidifying from the empty aether, curved to support a glittering blue stone that defines blue better than anything like sea, sky, Hope Diamond. To be fair the Hope Diamond would sulk and cry at that piece of the universe's formation caught in a metallic form.

Then there's no simple Liam in a fine suit, there's the Asgardian prince as himself. The clothes stay put, but he naturally walks around much taller than even Sam. In another lifetime, he might have pressed the pointed tip of the sceptre to the sedated Winter Soldier's chest. Not here.

A sip of the flat white and down the cup goes, but within arm's reach. He looks up and the Mind Stone flares in response to some mental command, the microcosm of every shining star fomented in the cauldron of the Creator's mind pulsating and throwing white motes all around. A strobing pulsation runs through the staff, a conduit through him as he paints a burning sigil on the air. The mark is plain as day. It etches out the meaning and essence of a person: James Buchanan Barnes.

Similar small runes are likely to appear in rapid profusion over each person, spidery crawl or bold glyph or rough-hewn. He doesn't need to speak his own; the Stone knows his mind, and he masters its. Unleashing the story while binding them together is almost too easy. And so it is not. No story ever ends as intended at the start, the first time.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Directed by Loki, the energy of the stone wipes away all perception of the physical world. It attunes, linking minds, bridging connections, and offering the group a window in to essentially... repair the damaged mind of a man lied to for eight decades.

What form would such a reconfiguration job take?

The stone does not answer at first. But then, eventually, it presents something. The group's senses begin to work again.

"I'm disappointed in you."

"I know, dad."

The voices are the first thing to resolve. Images are slower. The setting is the main room of a military base's family housing, spare and plain, but well-kept. There's a young boy sitting at the table, probably no more than ten, watching a little girl playing with a doll across the room. An older man, perhaps mid-thirties, watches them both. Nothing about the scene is particularly interactive for the group. Not yet. This is a memory, with the faint faded gloss that recollection tends to have.

"You really let me down here," the man says, exhaling a sigh. "You can't keep picking all these fights. It doesn't matter what the other kids say."

The boy looks at the floor. "I'm sorry."

The man shakes his head. "We'll talk about this when I get back." He moves to the front door, and there he exits.

The boy stares at the closed door. "I promise I won't do it anymore," he says, but there's no one to hear. Maybe he's just rehearsing for when his father gets back. Though of course, certain people among the group would be well aware -- James Barnes' father never did actually come back. Not that day. Not ever.

Which is why it might be a surprise when, after a few moments, the back door of the small home opens and another man comes in. He's dressed all wrong for America of this time period, his clothing that of a Red Army officer, and when he speaks to the boy it is in Russian.

"Idi syuda, syn," he says, gesturing the boy to come with him. "<Your father, he is dead. You must come with me, now.>"

Melinda May has posed:
As is normal for may, she analyzes everything she sees and hears, noticing immediately when Liam seems ... more. And the sigils indicating each individual in the room. Those she attempts to memorize, though whether or not she succeeded...

It's the memory of a young boy and the Red Army soldier that elicits a frown, and she can't help but think (likely loudly enough that any telepath in the room would pick it up), 'You can choose to say no. It's okay to say no.'

She also flicks a glance at Sam then at Steve to see how they're faring, knowing that both of them for varying reasons have cause for this to affect them rather badly.

Captain America has posed:
Steve stares at the memory, not quite sure what is to be said or done, or even if interjection is needed. The beginning feels right. The hallmarks of the gloss, the way it sheens, and even the early somber mood at the declared disappointment all feel right. The real-ness of the memory actually causes his gaze to settle on the floor, semi-embarrassed at being an uninvited spectator in his friend's mind.

But the uniform catches his attention. His features tighten and his gaze lingers on the figures in the memory. "Come on, Buck," he whispers softly. The reprimand is gentle, but still present. "You've got this," his voice remains low. His gaze hones in on the child's face and he coaxes quietly. "You didn't even know Russian back then," he scratches the back of his neck and his weight shifts from one foot to the other.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
The power emanating off of the mind stone is enough to bring the coyote's gaze back to Loki. In fact, it's enough to cause the dark-haired woman to stare, nearly dumbfounded by the amount of energy around that magical artifact.

And then Loki is there, not Liam, even for all the Migardian clothes that he wears.

The initial sigil that's drawn pulls Mercy's attention away from Loki and now onto it. Mercy will stare for long seconds at it, before her gaze moves to the rune that suddenly appears above her. Seeing that sigil above her, Mercy's expression shifts from concern and grimness to resolve. For those that know Mercy, her thoughts are simple to read. This will work. It has to. They will save him and Claire. They will.

And like that the group is within the mental scape of the Winter Soldier. It might be disorientating for Mercy if this was her first visit upon another plane, but this isn't. And so, the coyote immediately looks about herself. First at everyone near, to make sure all of them are there, and then at the memory that plays out before them.

Those words of Steve's causes the coyote to look away from the boy and the Russian soldier and back to the Captain. Then it's back to the scene before them. "If he goes with him we should follow."

Sam Winchester has posed:
The scene...of a father telling a son that he's disappointed in him makes one Sam Winchester flinch, because it hits way too close to home. For just one moment, what he thinks he's seeing is a father berating his son for not taking care of his younger sibling well enough.

But then he realizes he's hearing Bucky's dad chastize him for getting into fights. That it's not the same thing at all, really, and that the parallels are really actually pretty loose. That allows him to concentrate on thinking of what might need to be done here, because he surely is not certain in the least. Still, the others have tried one thing. He'll try another.

He addresses the Russian soldier, just in case. "You weren't here," he tells that Russian. "His father was speaking English. That's an American doll. This is an American home. There's no reason why he should go with you. Now if you were an /American/ soldier..."

Sam even tries to /visualize/ the man at the door as an American soldier, to fix this thing that's broken.

Loki has posed:
Telepathy is well within Loki's capacity, among a gamut of other abilities. The raw energy spilling through every atomic iota, filling out the spaces, energizing him with the limitless abundance of consciousness. For an instant, for a lifetime, his psyche spreads through the building and into the city. His green eyes brighten to the magnitude of stars as he swallows the power down into himself. Embers sparkle at the edges of memory when he drops in on a vision he shouldn't see, the stone lost in his grip when the staff vanishes.

Narrowing his thoughts down to one point, one place, is harder than he might ever mention to anyone alive. His mouth clamps down and his expression forms a mask without pleasure or pain, wiped clean. He could imagine, if he tried, a father telling a son he doesn't live up to expectations. That he's not good enough. That he isn't like the other, the brother, the friend, the right --

No. When his mouth slides up a little, the smirk settles in. Let them do their work. For now.

Claire Temple has posed:
"Wrong. All wrong. None of you are guests here, so don't start acting like one."

That voice stirs up at their backs -- soft, tired, but as direct as a fist. A voice some people here have heard before -- and not heard again in some time.

Claire Temple sits along the dusty floor, wearing white, the long hem of some immaculate dress lain silent over the hardwood. Her head bows, burdened by the weight of a metal collar welded around her throat, bridled with a silvery length of chain that fetters her to one wall.

She was not there a moment ago. A figment, like the rest? A memory fused and grafted until this patchwork mind?

"Lymphocytes keep the body alive," says the nurse, and though she lifts her dark eyes, she does not look on any of the group. As if some rule of this landscape disallows her to. She shifts, and her ornate chain slithers noise from its many links. "They target the cell they decide's gone wrong. The cell that's been messed with. Corrupted. Infected. The immune system makes its call and it sends out the lymphocytes to induce apoptosis. They don't talk it down. They don't reason."

Claire tilts her head, the heavy fall of her hair casting her turned face in shadow. "If you're here to fix, then fix."

Winter Soldier has posed:
The images flicker. American army base. Soviet army base. Here English lettering, there Cyrillic. The chatter of passing soldiers outside veers between English and Russian. Even the color of Bucky's little sister's hair changes, between glances. It's supposed to be brown. Sometimes, it's blonde.

In his chair, the boy clutches briefly at his head, as conflicting voices speak to him. Tell him not to go. They hold him in place.

Sam focuses on the thought of the soldier being //American//. His outline... shorts out, wavering, and he flickers too. For half a second, he's an army major, with pensive sad eyes.

Then he snaps back. The enforced reality, the declared lie, is too strong. The world twitches, the fabric of its reality spasming in invisible displeasure. It yanks the chain locked around Claire's throat -- or the image of Claire -- strangling her silent and stapling her back against the wall to brake her advice away.

"<They will not wait>," the soldier says, and seizes the boy by the arm to drag him away.

Melinda May has posed:
May startles at Claire's voice suddenly there and pulls a weapon before she fully realizes that the woman is a part of this...well, Vision Quest is as close an analogy as she can come up with. The chances of more startles is too high, and she doesn't want to risk injuring anyone actually here. So she does something that Sam has likely seen her do only once before and the others likely never.

She removes her jacket. It behaves like a much heavier garment than it appears to be, and she moves near-silently set it on the floor behind Steve -- where she can't get to it easily. Added to the pile are knife sheaths from her forearms and a small pistol holster from her right hip.

Moving back so that now both Steve and Sam are between her and her discarded weapons, she returns her attention to what's unfolding around them, unconsciously crossing her arms as if chilled as she again thinks toward the boy being dragged by the Red soldier. 'They might take your body, but they can't claim your mind.'

Captain America has posed:
Steve has no idea who Claire is, but it doesn't change the reaction to the advice. His blue eyes lid and he inhales a long breath, holds it, and releases it slowly. His own thoughts push to somewhere else.

Camp Lehigh had looked like almost every other American army base Steve ever toured, but the warmth he feels towards it is wholly different. The place changed him. And as such, the image etches permanently onto his memory. He recalls the smell of the Virginia summer and the way the humidity hung in the air, thick and heavy. His mind maps the dusty trails around the base, locating each important building in turn..

But towards the soldier, he prods his thoughts, //You were... kinder than that// he hones in on the few details he'd picked up over the years. //..and broken up that you had to tell a kid he lost his only parent.// His lips twitch into a side-smile. //And he was fast talking. Persuasive. Convinced the lot of you he should stay. I still don't know how he did that.// Even with just the thought, the admiration colours every corner of his face.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
The changes to the memory is watched by Mercy. Her gaze is pensive as she considers what to do. While she's had some experience within the astral plane, for the most part, it's still a vastly unknown thing to her. She can only let instinct guide her at this point.

That doesn't stop her from sliding a look towards Loki. She considers asking a question of him, but before the words can leave her mouth a familiar voice is heard.

A familiar person seen. At the sight of her friend Mercy can't quite stop herself from exclaiming, "Claire!" Which probably isn't the best reaction, since time is of the essence here, and Mercy knows this isn't the real Claire. A shadow of her, but not the real one. That doesn't mean she isn't listening to her friend's words. She is. No matter that she only understood some of Claire's rather technical speech. Thankfully, Mercy still gets the gist of what she's saying.

"Kill the soldier!" The mechanic suddenly blurts out and along with those words a handgun will likewise appear within her hands, and while she stares at the gun with some surprise, that doesn't stop her from moving. The gun itself will be raised and pointed at the soldier. The trigger pulled and one singular bullet sent towards the Russian man. It's aimed for the man's torso, the largest part of him, because Mercy is not a sharpshooter in any sense of the word. Once the gun is fired Mercy turns to May and tosses the gun at her. "Agent May! Use this."

For May it'll feel like any sort of handgun she ever felt, heavy, solid, with a weight to it - even if it's not necessarily a 'real' gun.

And as soon as the gun is out of her hands Mercy turns back to the now silenced Claire. "I promise we'll be there soon."

Sam Winchester has posed:
The image of what Claire is going through sets Sam's mouth into a grim, tight line.

Fix it, she says, and it's clear that talking, visualizing, and all of that isn't working. In fact, it seems to be hurting Bucky to do that. He's clutching his head. That's the opposite of what they want.

They are the immune system. He knows that analogy. It's one that his entire family uses while conducting The Family Business. They target the cancerous cells of the world so the body of humanity can live. But surely pulling his Beretta and peppering a vision with bullets...

He's thinking that even as Loki shoves a mental construct at him. A knife. Somehow, he understands this will work within the confines of the vision without sending bullets to ricochet all over Mercy Thompson's garage.

It's familiar. It's right. Mercy shoots and commands them to kill, verifying what must be done. She shoots him in the torso, but that might not be enough to end him.

So Sam doesn't hesitate. He steps forward in one swift motion, slashing over the boy Barnes' head so that he might attempt to slit the throat of the Russian who thinks to drag him away. It's a motion of smooth, savage violence, efficiently and brutally carried out.

Loki has posed:
Claire's appearance draws a stir of ultramarine motes picking out a halo around her head. Not much to see there, dust suspended in a sunbeam that trickles along the chain link by link on its way to the ground of the cell. Through every brief point of contact, Loki senses the nature of the thick chain, whether constructed of thought, will, divine oath or curse for all it matters. He can spare that much.

Congealing the mercurial form of the Mind Stone into tangible constructs requires another diversion of effort, but little enough. He spins his creations by visualization in his mind, and projecting the outcome where they may most be needed. For you, a present, for you a present, for *you* a present! Reality bends within the astral, defining intent in a focused form. His contribution to the moment is, predictably, unpredictable.

Dancing shards form a handful in his palm, standing edge upright. He blows cold air across them, the glistening facets frosted over briefly and containing the sum of heartbeat images from a life lived. Two of them move in elbow's reach of Steve. Inviting him to take them, use them, fling the remembrance glass-knives if necessary.

The rest? He spins around them, a blurring array possibly intended defensively. Loki might also be considering assaulting any of the eyes of chaos in the eddying memory-scape that the Winter Soldier has. Little girl with blonde hair? Pinned; forced to be brunette. Wall shows a Cyrillic stream when it used to be Latin alphabetic? Pinned down.

Melinda May has posed:
May reaches to snag the pistol that Mercy throws at her and ends up with ... two objects in her hands. One is the pistol she just caught, the other a set of bolt cutters. She immediately aims the pistol at the Red soldier, but then Sam's there proving that he learned his Hunting skills well. And spoiling her aim. So she drops the pistol and doesn't wait to hear it clatter to the floor.

She moves as fast as Sam did. But not toward the soldier. Toward Claire. And she reaches to cut through the chain linking the woman to the wall. She WILL cut through it. She refuses to believe otherwise.

Claire Temple has posed:
The shout of her own name does not turn Claire's head.

The figment only turns her face away, each and every minute movement of her body heralded by the constant whisper of that chain, holding her in place -- the mind's authority maintaining dominion over its constructs.

There is a constant tremor to her hands of someone counting the moments of her own borrowed time. She waits --

And at the first gunshot, Claire animates. The chain shifts as she lifts her head. Through her black hair, the ambient light plays off her dark eyes. The first signs of violence make her voice hitch in relief.

"Yes," she pleads, "you need to --"

The chain pulls tight. It pulls Claire backward, newly-formed halo and all, hands grasping uselessly at the collar around her throat. She fetches up painfully against the wall, strangling silently.

When May comes for her, she looks up, with no air to speak more words. Dying, the woman only fixes May with an impatient look, questioning --

The chain cuts, and Claire falls bonelessly forward. She gasps for air, and speaks with what time she has, "Go save h --" before she sinks down, losing texture and form, the figment folded back into the mind.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The boy struggles fitfully as he is dragged, but the false memory is too strong for whatever fragment of true recollection still exists in Bucky Barnes' fractured mind. He fights harder, it seems, when May and Steve speak, their encouragements and factual recollections giving the true personality some strength to resist being dragged back into its comfortable lie.

But the bolstering effects of the truth must, it seems, be coupled with severe action against the lies planted in his mind.

Mercy and Sam act swiftly on the advice of the guide that wears Claire's face. The bullet hits home in the torso of the false soldier, staggering him in place for the finishing slash of Sam's knife. The throat opens with no resistance at all, but oddly enough there is no blood. What spews forth is a sort of falsity, a negative energy, a miasma of wrongness that slowly dissipates.

The false vision simply crumples, wrinkling up and evaporating, wisping into nothing. The memory shudders a last time and //snaps// into place, its last lingering incorrect details ironed out by Loki's surgical attentions.

The boy looks up, and his eyes finally recognize a face. "Steve?" he asks. "Steve, I -- "

The world //pulls//, stretching and fading out of all color, the scene changing. The image of Bucky is wrenched away. Their surroundings shift to a blaring whiteness, a blankness adorned only by the crawling patterns of frost spidering over glass in an intricate lacework.

The only thing to be felt is the cold. A cold so intense it settles straight down into the bones. A cold great enough to freeze a man into pseudo-immortality.

Eventually a pinpoint of light winks in the distance, in a wordless guide.

Captain America has posed:
The way the images move, the encouragement and incitement to violence, has a dizzying effect as does the Loki provided weaponry. Steve reaches for one of the glass-knives. He steps backwards, a near stagger, as the soldier is destroyed. The movement of the energy and its lines has his expression turning to a frown. The assault on his friend had been severe. No question.

His lips part at the sound of his name and his eyes train on the boy's face. "Buck!" he calls loudly. The pang of it is unmissable as it echoes in his voice when he calls back to his friend, frantically willing Bucky to return. Hope.

To the white ever expanding cold, he calls again, not losing that same warmth, even amid the chill that threatens to reach his bones and freeze him again, "Bucky!" The ice hasn't been kind. It stole decades. And its intensity causes Steve's shoulders to draw together as it threatens to stifle out any sense of warmth. But the light in the distance ignites that hope more. "Come on, Bucky," he murmurs softly.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
Sam's attack is seen and the only thing Mercy can think is good. Hopefully that ends the soldier if her bullet didn't.

Then May too. The clatter of the gun brings the coyote's attention to the fallen weapon. She'll reaches for it then, intending to keep it and bring it with them. It'll have other uses, she's certain. Then it's back to Claire and Agent May. "You can do this." Mutters the coyote to the SHIELD agent and when the links break, Mercy looks relieved. That relief is only momentary as the shadow Claire slumps and then dissipates to nothing. "We will." Comes Mercy's promise to the air as she once more turns back to the memory at large. Her gaze track around the 'room' to everyone. Sam, Loki, May, Steve and then the little boy. When the boy looks to Steve, recognizes him even, Mercy's attention goes to the first Avenger. She watches the very brief interplay between the two, before the young man is stolen away once more. And while Mercy has to wonder what Bucky might have been about to say that question within her mind doesn't last long.

Not when the shift takes them to a place even more inhospitable than before. Immediately Mercy can't stop the automatic gesture of her arms folding around herself, trying to ward off the wild shift in temperature. Her eyes quickly move around the group, looking for anything that can be seen and like Steve, Mercy sees that speck of light in the distance. "There!" She exclaims, "That way." Mercy states the obvious once more, then, "Remember, none of this is real. It's a mind over matter sort of thing. Believe you're not going to freeze to death and you won't." Or so she believes, thanks to her own lesson learned from a previous encounter upon this more mystical plane and something Mercy will likely never forget.

Sam Winchester has posed:
The reminder is needed, because Sam's teeth start chattering violently. He draws in on himself, glad he's wearing three layers, but they aren't enough layers. He believes he won't freeze to death, but that doesn't make him comfortable.

But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in the least. Grimly he plunges forward towards that light, looking for the next thing they have to correct, the next target that he needs to plunge his knife into. The fact that he is grimly silence is mostly a matter of focus; there is little he can say that will be helpful now, and there is a job of work to do. A bloody job of work that is as familiar to him as breathing, as sleeping. But he is a little afraid to think overmuch, afraid, now, that he will somehow insert his own memories into Bucky's own mind, foul things up further.

Fortunately, this is all very straightforward. Identify threats. End threats. As long as they don't target the wrong bits, this will work out.

Loki has posed:
Cold in a memory isn't much concern for the rightful ruler of a kingdom cloaked in ice, clothed in the raiment of winter from which all life began and will inevitably end. Loki fears no ice, incarnated in memory or not. His contribution is the roiling confidence that pierces minds, injected via dozens of thin pinpoint holes traced in radiant blue. <<Fear nothing. Dread nothing. This can't hurt you.>>

Easy to say when cloaked in the Mind Stone's power and his innate genetics, thanks a lot, Laufey. (Also screw you and die, Laufey, footnote 2, dear reader.)

You are me, we is he. Let fear abate somewhat, and the warping snow melt a little before the summery prince.

He withdraws some of the spinning shards to himself, drawn back to await being flung out in a sea of piercing needles when the opportunity presents itself. A hidden serpent lurks in the depths of the Winter Soldier's mind, and he intends to stab when the moment arises.

"Really, it's not /that/ bad."

Melinda May has posed:
The moment Claire disappears May drops the bolt cutters and looks at the others just in time to see their dreamscape go white and frigid. And she had the brilliant idea to leave her jacket on the floor. But she knows that as much as she hates the cold, it's got to be so much worse for Steve. So she's promptly crossing toward him again, this time to make sure they don't lose him to this frigid fascimile.

Taking one of Steve's arms, she pulls him along after Sam, mentally willing that spot that Mercy pointed out to be visibly, notably closer with each step. Closer, nearly there, they'll be warm again soon. They'd better be. Bucky's at the other end of this, Rogers, keep moving.

Liam's ability to mitigate the cold somehow does help, though she can't help but wonder why it seems to feel like a bit of an 'F you' at the same time. "See, Rogers? Liam says it's not that bad."

Winter Soldier has posed:
The world changes as they move into the flaring light. But the cold does not.

You only find cold like this in the depths of the tundra or the peaks of high mountains, and in the fractured mind of the Winter Soldier, there are memories of both. Those memories shouldn't exist at the same time, however, and that's where the landscape before the group becomes a problem.

They step out into a jagged battlefield.

Volgograd was once known as Stalingrad, when one of the greatest battles of the Second World War was fought there. But no matter the name, it has always been a flat stretch of land by the river Volga, sweeping and open and broken up only by the buildings of the city in the distance. There have never been mountain ranges in the area, much less ranges of the height and prodigiousness of the Swiss Alps, yet here the Swiss Alps are -- for whatever reason.

The broken landscape is a physical impossibility. The kind of rugged landscapes only seen at high altitudes on mountainsides are sewn inexplicably into the flatlands outside Stalingrad.

The one constant across both settings, the only thing that seems to belong in both settings, is the snow. Howling, driving snow that whistles around the jagged peaks, and shrieks across the unobstructed plains.

Slowly, like the fade-in of an old television set, sound starts to fill in the silence. The sound of screams. The sound of shouting. The sound of gunfire and explosions. The sounds of war -- all originating from the besieged city of Stalingrad, to the east. Tanks trade fire across the plain. Men clash in the fields, in the streets.

Men die, cutting one another down, writhing their last in a melange of snow, mud, and blood.

To the west, perhaps a mile distant, rears an improbable sight: what looks like the interior face of a plunging gorge. At the top of this gorge, thousands of feet up, can be discerned the faraway traces of railroad tracks, winding along the side of the rearing mountain.

The tracks are empty-- for now. Steve would know they won't stay that way long.

A familiar voice cuts the silence. The voice of the Winter Soldier-- or, as he must think himself to be in this time period, Yakov Aleksandrovich Morozov. He's no more than a few hundred meters distant, halfway between them and the city, trying to direct a knot of men and a tank with barked orders in Russian. He's having some success in getting the entire affair turned around, presumably to face some threat.

A threat that hits the tank with a rocket a moment later. The entire thing flares up, and the explosion rocks the earth even beneath the group. Yasha, tank, and soldiers alike vanish in a haze of violence, flame, and smoke.

Captain America has posed:
Steve quirks a half-smile at May's note and Liam earns a small nod as he's pulled along by the SHIELD agent, "I'm not really friends with the ice anymore," and then with a coy smile, mostly because he gets so few references and the ability to use them, he adds, "I guess I just have to let it go." His eyebrows arch, and even if May doesn't know the reference, he takes easy satisfaction in knowing even one. Someone could probably blame Lewis.

But that momentary change in his demeanour slips as they're drawn to the landscape that makes no sense. His expression sobers, losing any momentary humour while the sounds draw him to memories of a similar mountain-face. His eyes linger on the train tracks. Much like Camp Lehigh, the train has been permanently seared into his mind's eye. But the landscape itself is sketchy at best. He wills his way to the tracks. "No," he murmurs softly, more to himself than Bucky or anyone else witnessing this vision.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
The small reprieve from the cold by Loki Odinson is enough to help push Mercy further onward. His cavalier description of how 'bad' it really is only earns a quiet noise from the woman. She can't quite agree with those words of his.

Expectations of a warmer climate within the next memory are sadly not met as snow and wind swirl resolutely around the group.

The howl of the wind, the harshness of the battle around them takes a minute to be heard, but when it is it's not just the wind, the snow and the cold that takes Mercy Thompson's breath away. It's the death and the destruction before her that likewise does. It doesn't matter that she's already had a glimpse into similarly bleak memories from the Winter Soldier, but this time (perhaps) the recovery from the shocking realities of war comes a heartbeat quicker than ever before. Blame it on a combination of seeing those aforementioned memories and also the accumulation of everything that's happened in the last few days. Weeks really. A hardness is settling into the lines of Mercy's personality that wasn't quite there before.

Pulling herself away from the visual terribleness Mercy strives for objectiveness. Looking for what doesn't fit.

That mental step back allows Mercy to see the area with the eyes of someone who's studied history. And while Mercy might be a little rusty and the landscape is a jigsaw of oddities, that doesn't stop her from finally realizing their location. Mostly from the river, the battle before them and the war-torn town that can be seen. That realization is what brings her eyes around to the mountains. "Those mountains. They're not right." The gorge has yet to be seen and while her gaze was turning in that other directions, her attention is suddenly caught by the sound of a familiar voice. Seeing the Winter Soldier, Mercy quickly turns to Sam, the two having the weapons Loki constructed for them. "I think this battle is the fake part." And while she'd like to say she feels reasonably certain of that, she can't quite commit, so there's an unspoken 'I think' at the end of there. "We should -" And her words end there, as the ground lurches beneath her feet, causing the coyote to stagger a few steps.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam Winchester stares at all of this in dismay. He can't tell what they're supposed to kill here. The straightforward puzzle has become considerably less straightforward, and he glances helplessly back at Steve to see if he can identify what they need to do here. Mercy says that the battle is the fake part, and he grips his knife like he might just wade in and start killing soldiers. But then the ground rumbles, Mercy's staggering. He at least puts out a hand to try to steady her and hold her up.

"He just went down there," he says, of the man who was just swept away by the explosion. "Do we go down after him maybe...?"

This is battle as he's never seen it, but as his father did. It makes his father's description of their stalking of things that go bump in the night as a war seem...strange. Inaccurate.

Loki has posed:
Trains. Planes. What's next, a flotilla of half-dead Soviet soldiers hauling immense chains through the tangled landscape? The Night Nurse's admonishment rings still in the halls of memory and in the crackling retort from their guns. <<Go save him.>>

It hurts to watch a man suffer... if Loki were remotely human, prone to the same cares and concerns of those on a field of war. Asgard is the crux of Ten Realms, around which it may be said the spindle of creation rotates with Midgard at its centre. Yes, an incredibly biased worldview but essential to understand the desultory response.

So what, it's a field of killing and another murderous mission from the hundreds of similar days Bucky - or the Winter Soldier - spent fighting and campaigning.

"Understood," he answers the coyote. He inhales deeply to ground himself in memory, the unrolling scroll of the Caucasus laid out literally between his hands. Frigid river, white plains. His fingers steeple and he sweeps his hand to the side, clearing the board and all the extraneous snow-capped pieces with it. Dwindling on the mountains, reverse orogeny rewards the Earth by restoring the prosperous fertility to the fluvial plain.

He holds to the grim notions while striving to limit any quakes, going down on one knee to touch the boggy foundation.

The storyteller's voice is soft and compelling, following a definitive cadence. Hey, he's probably narrating for Odin and all Asgard. "The city of Tsaritsyn on the yellow water, jewel of the wooded steppe. Here walked James Buchanan, once, in the shadow of a hungry winter. Soft plains watered by your rivers, under veil of ice and snow, recall yourself. No stony peaks, no folded heights. Where he fell, he was carried by the river..."

Winter Soldier has posed:
The distraction of the mountains recedes into the distance, under the guide of a god's sculpting hands. Perhaps it is for the best. What damage might be wrought to that true memory, by this false one that has butted up against it?

And, as has been surmised -- this is false. Oh this conflict happened, to be sure, the bloody Battle of Stalingrad recorded in all history books, but he was never here --

Out of the flame and chaos of the downed tank, one man walks. His shape is all wrong, lopsided, lacking the symmetry it should have. Dazed, gouting blood from the ruined stump where his left arm used to be, the stunned figure of Bucky Barnes -- of Yasha Morozov -- stumbles and falls in the snow.

He is still.

In the far distance, a small squad of Soviet soldiers walks along the line of the horizon. It is written, in a false memory, that within half an hour they will find the man who would become the Winter Soldier, lain in the snow.

Melinda May has posed:
Once they're where there's a visible horizon, May lets go of Rogers' arm, bracing herself for the battle ahead and letting her long-trained sense of balance compensate for the tremors that made Mercy stumble. But as Loki smooths out the 'battlefield', she listens to his words and then rushes forward, toward where Barnes fell and mentally wishing she had her sash whip with her right now.

"BARNES! Don't you /dare/ give up here, do you hear me?" If she can see him or anything, she's heading that way. Everything and everyone else be damned. No one gets left behind. That was pounded into her brain by SHIELD early and well. She's learned that that rule is not nearly so black and white since then, but here and now she plans to abide by it as much as she can.

Winifred Burkle has posed:
From behind, Fred watches, shivering. There is a narrowing of her eyes as she watches the proceedings. This is certainly disturbing, but she imagines nothing less of a man as disturbed as the one she has witnessed. She remains unsure he can be helped, but she is also here for support for her friends, unwilling to allow them to traverse this alone.

In the cold, she shivers involuntarily and follows the the steps of the others. Though she is not dispassionate, she watches the proceedings. May's yell is met with a start. This is where Bucky Barnes is supposedly rescued by the Soviets? That must not be how this happened.

Captain America has posed:
May's movement towards Bucky is seconded by Steve. "Everything is wrong here," he says evenly. With the mountains gone and the train tracks vanished, he's almost relieved, and it shows--in his eyes, face, and even very tension in his posture. The relief virtually radiates from him as he moves. Moments he's lived and relived get relegated back to the corners of his mind.

But the relief dissipates when he sees Bucky look like /that/. It's not Bucky. It's not real, but the closer he draws to his friend, the more his paces slow. His lips part and his head shakes. It's fake. It's not real.

"Come on, Bucky. We weren't /here/," his eyes flit about the scene and hone in on the Soviet soldiers "...this isn't you." But the notion of killing the memories and the falsehoods causes his face to blanch. The weapon is grasped tighter. His eyes close lightly and he hisses, "This isn't Buck."

The full meaning of the statement is left for the others to consider.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
Sam's steadying touch earns a quick smile of thanks from Mercy and while her thoughts similarly mirrored Sam, about killing the fake memories, the decision is (thankfully) taken out of her hands.

The majority of it, at least.

Loki's reply to her statement causes the mechanic to pivot slightly, so she can look back at the Asgardian. She watches then as he invokes his will upon the memory and when the wrongness of the landscape eases Mercy's expression turns thankful. No words of thanks, however, are said yet, not when Loki drops to knee and offers those last words of his.

And while the 'story' is listened to Mercy switches her attention from Loki to Fred, then May, the figure of Yasha walking out of the flames and finally to the Captain himself. "Come on." Mercy says to Sam, even as she steps to those so close to 'Yasha's' fallen form. The gun Loki created for her is still in her hand, held (for now) pointed to the ground. "You're right." Mercy says directly to Steve, noting his stricken features, the paleness of them. "It's not him. This is fake. The uniform is Soviet, it's not him." She states again, even as she looks to May and then back to Steve, "It's like the soldier from earlier - we have to kill it." It, not him. Mercy is trying to keep everything objective here - trying to make it easier, better. Something.

And like the Captain she too has noted the small squad moving off into the distance. "Before it can continue."

Sam Winchester has posed:
"Whoa, hey," Sam says, putting out a staying hand. "That's not how it went last time. Last time we didn't attack him, we attacked the memories that came for him. Look."

He points to the soldiers in the distance. "They're coming for him, okay? We go after them. If we go after him, we could really do him serious damage."

He's not sure he's right, but he's sure he knows what he is going to do. He starts running, not for the soldier, but to intercept the men coming for him. He hardly wants to run right up on top of them. He finds he has a -- thoughtform? -- Beretta with him after all. He tries not to understand how he can be running here and yet somehow standing in a garage; he just accepts that he can close the distance. And if he runs, it's just because he's concerned they might all take a wrong pass at the wrong man, when these men are who they might should shoot...which means the faster he figures that out, the faster he proves it, the faster he might prevent them from doing something rash.

Then again, he'd be one to talk about rash, but he really has gotten used to working either alone, or with his brother, which is so intuitive as to be working alone.

Either way, he's going to line up a shot on //that// group, and take one just as soon as he's close enough to do so, though he will also most certainly look for some cover. He's not entirely sure he can't be hurt here.

Loki has posed:
The influences of the Prince of Stories, the Trickster, cannot be seen immediately. There's no white-winged dragon circling overhead to impart the deceit of their surroundings. Instead those smaller indicators unravel certainty in subtle fashions. Think loudly and the stone conveys wishes upon the wielder, their psychic network linking the subtle impulses and rising emotional tide of all those bound by their name and sigil in Loki's mind.

Here, a weapon forgotten or riding on a belt all along, secreted away for just the right moment. There, a necessity, whether it's a better pair of boots or a warmer coat. Small adjustments to approach the necessities and guard against threats of the mind.

To undermine false truths implanted.

He prunes as a gardener approaches overgrown roses of a prized varietal, not by bushwhacking the damn thing but by cautiously selecting to snip back the suckers and remove the diseased leaves. Does Cap lack for his shield? Not its mental counterpart. Does someone need a beer? Good luck with that.

Melinda May has posed:
Sam's assessment is logical, and there are two ways to keep thsoe other guys away from Barnes. Sam is going for option one. May will go for option two: Get Barnes down and out of their line of sight. She suddenly realizes that she's got her sash whip in hand though it's the white of the landscape around them instead of its usual black, and something finally clicks in her mind. Liam is manipulating this landscape AND giving them tools to help. She can work with this.

Continuing on her path towards Barnes, she gets her sash whip spinning. Its usual whirring is almost completely covered by the wailing of the winds across these frozen plains. She again thinks as distinctly as she can, 'Liam, I hope this is possible. I want an elven cloak from Lothlorien.' She'll have to remember to thank Coulson later for forcing all of his nerdities on her.

Hey, at least she didn't ask for Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility.

Loki has posed:
To Melinda is the simplest of responses, a flicker of commentary that begs to be said, "Alfheim cloaks are ludicrously coloured. You would stick out like the last-place finisher of a paint marathon. If you insist, however, you can have that and some bread that tastes of cardboard." Because the player can't resist posing.

Claire Temple has posed:
The initial of Sam's shots ventilates a distant Russian soldier cleanly between the eyes. The construct goes boneless and folds with the heavy uselessness of a fresh corpse, collapsing to the ground. A highway of blood pools along the ice.

The other soldiers stop, and in a neat symmetry, look right and left and straight down on the body made of their number. They appraise it for a moment, then forget it a moment later, their bodies a rivet of discordant static that momentarily seams them back into the landscape -- and into existence again, as the programming fights to maintain its narrative. Their platoon maintains that forward approach until, either solely by Sam's gun or with help from others, they all fall and die.

At which there will be only the dead, cold land, the windblown smell of gunpowder and fresh death, and that constant, hypothermic cold.

And Yasha Morozov -- James Buchanan Barnes -- lain there, breathing wetly against a collapsed lung, with blood still gouting from what used to be his left arm.

She was not here a second ago. And here Claire Temple returns, looking more wraith than woman as she hangs, upside-down, by one chained ankle from a tattered strut of the nearby burning tank. Her white dress fans and moves unnaturally about her as if underwater.

Her dark eyes look at no one, focused someplace distant and far away. "You're not finished. There is one left."

Captain America has posed:
Towards Sam, Cap's chin lifts, even as the tall Winchester moves and he continues on his course towards Bucky, "The soldier worked last time because Bucky was //Bucky//. The soldier was wrong. This isn't him! There was no tank. There were no plains. //The person in this memory isn't real//," he asserts again. Not that he can bring himself to take down any incarnation of his friend. "This man that he's carting around--Yasha--isn't real, He //is// the false memory," his blue eyes train on the figure as he gives himself the pep talk.

The low sound of Claire's voice encouraging him has him grasping the crystal knife provided for him on this plane. Purposively, he treads to his best friend in the world. He falls to his knees to kneel besides Yasha. "You're not Bucky," he repeats softly. "You've gotta go." Even on this plane, Steve's eyes glisten as he speaks to the falsehood.

His hands tremble with the knife and his face scrunches together as he slices Yasha's throat.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Steve is spared at least this much: this false vision, like the last, does not bleed. When its throat is cut, it simply dissipates, sinking away into the snow.

The programming shudders as another of its foundational struts is broken. The world twists, seething in rage against the interference of that little Claire in the Machine. Ice crystallizes along the body of the broken tank, frost painting behind that little fragment of a guide trying to show the way. It shapes, solidifying, and spirals abruptly into a spear of ice.

It impales clear through the woman's middle. She slumps, dissipating, and the world dissipates away with her.

They awaken in a dark hallway. There are no windows, but there is a sense of depth that suggests they are far underground.

Two doors stand before the group, leading into two rooms side-by-side. Their interiors are visible, through wide viewing windows set in the walls: both are identical surgery rooms, fitted with operating tables. Over each operating table crowns some unidentifiable apparatus. Well, unidentifiable to anyone who has not seen a Vita-Ray generator. These are nowhere near the strength of the one that created Captain America, but they are an approximation.

Soon enough it becomes evident: they are seeing mirrored memories, side by side. One presumably false. One presumably true. Something else is no doubt becoming evident, over time: how it was that Hydra made a man think he was someone else for eighty years. Take his own history, and use it to make the bones of his false one.

Both rooms stand inert, frozen in time, a paused recollection. The left-hand memory starts first, springing to life with the rapidity of a video unpausing.

Two men approach the door. One is a younger version of Bucky Barnes, perhaps no more than twenty years of age, one-armed and somber. The other is a shorter, older man, a man with an avarice for knowledge in his eyes that respects no bounds of ethics. Dr. Arnim Zola.

"It is called the Winter Soldier Project," Dr. Zola says to Yakov Aleksandrovich Morozov. "It will restore your health and your left arm. Without it, you will be a cripple the rest of your life. With it... you will serve your country with a strength beyond any you could imagine. It is not without drawbacks, of course. And it cannot heal your memory loss -- "

"Let's begin," Yasha says. There is no hesitation as they enter the room, as Yasha submits himself to the operating table, as the doctor commences his work.

The right-hand image unfreezes, a moment later. It plays a different recollection.

In this one, Bucky Barnes does not speak. He does not stand on his two feet. He is dragged, one-armed, unconscious, by two men, and followed by that same good Dr. Zola. They shift him onto the operating table like meat. They strap him down, and they feed needles into his veins.

"The rest of this has to go," Dr. Zola says. "Even supposing that Soviet hack's mental reconfiguration procedure even works, he will be useless with only one arm, and I cannot attach any sort of prosthetic to //this//. Bring the bone cutter."

Bodies move about in the room. The grind of a reciprocating saw starts up.

From the animal moans of pain that begin to emanate from the room, their subject started to wake up partway through the procedure.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
Sam's words are heard and it's enough to cause Mercy's expression to shift to uncertainty. Yes, she had something of a similar thought in her head, but she resolutely pushed it aside. Only focusing on the wrong. Thankfully, for all of them, the figment that is Claire reappears. The help she bestows upon the group helps to clear Mercy's expression. And while the coyote was about to step forward to kill the false memory, thankfully Captain America takes it upon himself.

It's only when Claire's form is attacked by that ice spear that Mercy exclaims, "Claire!" Even though, again, she's not real and even as as the visions before them fade, Mercy has the stray thought that possibly the mental condition has some sort of safeguards in play here.

When eyesight returns Mercy looks around once more. Recognition is there within her gaze. Something about the mirrored rooms is familiar. That familiarity isn't realized until she hears the voice of Doctor Zola. She remembers that voice from another time and it's enough to bring the coyote completely around. She's watching the left side, the false side, and when Yasha and Dr. Zola walk into that surgical room Mercy reacts. "The left - it's the fake!"

And just like that Mercy shifts forward to barge into the left-sided room, her gun already raised. Anger can clearly be seen upon the mechanic's features, as she aims at her first target - Dr. Zola.

Then she fires; bang bang. Two successive shots sent on their way toward the monstrous doctor.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Mercy takes the doctor, and Sam Winchester's mouth sets in a tight line, because now he understands that the Winter Soldier is fair game too. And it's almost ironic. He'd promised the Soldier he'd kill him.

So he does, or tries. The young man eagerly signing up for the Winter Soldier project gets the brunt of shots fired from Sam's Beretta, raised and swiftly aimed into the back of the head, two shots of his own. He doesn't hesitate this time, because now the pattern makes a lot more sense, and now he's less afraid. "Someone tear apart this surgical equipment for good measure," he suggests, even as he stops to reload...just in case the false memory also comes with false guards barreling down on them to fight them for murdering two people in the middle of the hallway.

Loki has posed:
It might be wrong to destroy the memory of the equipment made, though Loki's lip curls in disgust at seeing the crude techniques. Mind, the same organization stupidly attempted to summon him and his brother to varying degrees of success that mostly began and ended in a titanic explosion of electrified and spell-charged force. The temptation is there.

Temptation shoved aside rather than falling into the blue. He simply smiles, that dark Trickster, and starts twisting, warping, changing things.

Melinda May has posed:
May watches the two options, and is very glad that Mercy picks out which one is false, though the reality was certainly less kind to Barnes. Stepping past the coyote and the Hunter toward the equipment in the room, she goes for a more surgical destruction of the equipment rather than what Thor likely would. This time when she thinks of something new to have on hand, she includes a mental image: a Leatherman multitool.

The control systems are identified first and with the multitool she works to dislodge the wires leading to the coffin-like thing, taking an extra moment to intentionally mangle the connection points as each wire is removed. Ideally, she'd completely melt the contactors, but this will do for the moment.

Captain America has posed:
The pit of Steve's stomach lurches at the sight of the equipment. The thought of any of this happening to anyone let alone James Barnes makes him ill. While he could smash any of the equipment with his fists, he tugs at the shield at his back--a thankful provision on this plane.

Red, white, and blue clatter hard against equipment as Steve lays waste to anything in front of him. It's not an elegant way to dismantle equipment, but it's, at least, effective.

Winifred Burkle has posed:
Through out the violence, the moving through the memories, Fred has mostly stayed on the outskirts. She is not exactly a melee fighter and she doesn't know Barnes as well as Steve Rogers does - obviously. She's not exactly sure what she can do. The vision of Claire, however, spurs for forward. She has absolutely no love of Bucky Barnes or the Winter Soldier, though she has certainly gained some insight as to why it is he may be the way he is. As far as she is concerned this man is responsible for quite a few problems that she finds inexcusable.

They are here now, though, in the room with surgical equipment and a lot of things to destroy. While May goes for the more surgical approach, Fred is not quite so surgical. It needs to be destroyed? Well, she is certainly in to do that. With her mind set and a pair of magical grenades from Loki, she sets the charges. A call of, "Fire in the hole!" And then, "Grenades!" Just in case they weren't sure what she meant by that. Immediately, she starts to back up.

Winter Soldier has posed:
The pattern of things has swiftly become clear to the group. When a programming is so insidious, so deeply-rooted, so reinforced over years and years to sound exactly like his own life, albeit with its details so slightly different... nothing short of forcible //erasure// of what is wrong will work.

Nothing short of deletion will suffice.

And they delete -- with prejudice. The storm of gunfire is both wholly unexpected and wholly effective, dropping the two men in the vision where they stand. The efforts of Steve and May make very short work of the equipment... and the charges Fred sets, to cap it all off, take care of the bodies and the entire room itself.

This time, the falsity around them does not try to snap back into being, does not retaliate against them. It is palpably weakening, the most major rewritten memories targeted and summarily erased. But there is one last thing that must be done -- one last linchpin to remove.

There are memories, and then there is sense of purpose and self.

The last setting is a shadowed bedroom in Moscow, wan streetlight shining through the window the only illumination lighting the scene. And the scene is this:

A man and woman, dead in their bed, throats slit, the sheets and blankets drenched in blood. The sickening coppery smell of it saturates the room, nauseating in its intensity. The perpetrator is still present, a heavily-armed, heavily-armored shape standing in the opposite corner as the bed, a dark swath detached from the greater darkness to stand over what looks like a cradle.

The sudden sound of a child crying confirms that it is a cradle. The dark shape of the Winter Soldier moves at the sound. His left arm catches the low light as he reaches down into it, and the crying muffles and stops.

The scene -- fuzzes, suddenly, like static. It shorts, and suddenly Bucky Barnes is on his knees instead, clutching his head. The child cries on, untouched.

Static. That image is gone again. The Winter Soldier stands as he was, left arm pressed down, and there is nothing but strangling silence. His features are locked in confusion.

Claire Temple has posed:
There is a slither of chain in the dark. One end braids into one leg of the cradle. The other end manacles Claire Temple by the wrist of her left arm.

Twice dead, she wears all the markings of her murders, blackened with bruising around the throat, her white dress heavy with a growing stain of blood from that ice impalement.

But here that captive figment of her curls along the ground, trapped as any part of this cyclic, unending scene of murder, her head bowed down, eyes on neither the flickering image of Bucky Barnes nor the nightmarish shape of the Winter Soldier, bent over crying gone eerily silent.

She sits between them, her back to the group, her dark hair casting her turned face in shadow. "Speak now," she begs quickly, urgently, "while you can -- he won't hear me -- before you lose him -- "

Mercy Thompson has posed:
The false memories destroyed. This is good.

Magic grenades are even better. And while she was just about to say something about those grenades, those words never make it past her lips. Not when the group is shunted to another memory.

Again, when eyes can see, Mercy looks to the room and the occupants (dead or alive) within. The slain parents, the sharp scent of blood and death, and the battered figure of Claire Temple and that cry of a baby. Mercy's expression turns pained and there's a quiet, "No.", from the coyote, even as she takes one step forward. Those steps of hers, however, falter when the memory stutters to static and shows Bucky Barnes for that brief moment. When the Winter Soldier reappears and Claire offers those words of hers, Mercy looks briefly to the group and specifically to the Captain, before she simply states, "This isn't you. Don't do this. Break the conditioning - you can do it."

Sam Winchester has posed:
Shadow over a cradle in the dark. The scent of blood in the air. A dead parent-- parents, in this case. In this case, a dead child, instead of one forever altered. The dead child is enough to cut at the heart of one Sam Winchester anyway, but there are things in this memory that freeze him in his tracks and send icewater cascading down his spine. He finds something breaking through the calm Hunter's efficiency he'd mostly adopted throughout this trek, bubbling up past his ability to compartmentalize. It twists his stomach, sickens him, saddens him, makes him wonder, and not for the first time, why this world is so very fucked up and awful, where God and the things that are supposed to champion the light of the world are to balance all the horror, all the grief, all the blood.

He's never found any such champions, save for people like the ones standing here. And the one trying to be reborn in flickering images, clutched heads, and looks of confusion. He remembers the man he met at the park, the man who had a rough sort of soldier's kindness.

We were all just some sort of kid once, the man had told him.

He clears his throat. He holsters his gun. Now he can say some things he was holding on to. The time seems right. His voice is soft. He suspects its Steve's words that will carry the most impact, but he'll speak just the same. Anything for this man to hold on to. "James Buchanan Barnes of the Invaders. You're my childhood hero, man. The scrappy younger one with the brains of the bunch, right? My Dad, he put a weapon in my hand when I was 8. And even before then I was so scared." Focus on the man, not on the scene. Earnest hazel eyes fix on James Barnes. "But even if what I read about you was mostly historical fiction, you set an example for me. I'd think about being like you. A courageous defender of the weak and innocent. And it gave me strength when things got tough. I'd sure like to meet the real you, man. I think I almost did, in that park."

Melinda May has posed:
May scrambles clear when Mercy yells 'Fire in the hole!' because she is only too familiar with it. Then the scene changes and her eyes sweep the room quickly. Just as quickly she's putting a hand on Sam's arm, and when he stops speaking she offers a few words of her own.

"You've done what you have to to survive. It never hurts any less, I know from experience. But the fact that you feel at all is proof that you're stronger than this. That you just need to keep surviving and you CAN until someone arrives to help you carry your burdens. You've made it this far. Stay with us and keep being strong, there's someone waiting for you." She looks at Rogers at that last.

Winifred Burkle has posed:
Fred scrambles back from the grenades even as the landscape changes. The figure of Claire is what she focuses her attention on at the moment, then the sound of the baby crying. The physicist's arms cross as she looks about them. The others speak to Bucky Barnes to try and break him from this, to offer words of encouragement. Instead, she says nothing. She has little to tell him in encouragement. The sudden silence of the baby speaks more to her, the shape of Claire Temple drawing her attention.

It's better not to say anything, let the others call to him.

Captain America has posed:
The static and its imagery leaves a visceral reaction in the pit of Steve's stomach. He physically aches at knowing what these people made James Barnes do. And the image of the two soldiers--one merciless and the other broken.

The brokenness extends. Steve crumples to the ground to where the Bucky had been. He kneels and sniffles, steadying himself against the dull ache that's growing in his chest. While Claire gives them direction, which helps them centre in this place, even without it Steve can't keep a cap on the anguish he feels. Mercy catches Cap's gaze as does May--both of whom catch his lack of pokerface and the sheer rawness of his emotions at the image.

There's an oddity at having an audience for this, but it doesn't change what needs to be said. "Bucky, //please//," his voice cracks around the words. "I know you," he murmurs softly. "This isn't who you are." He manages a flicker of a smile, broken, but present as he remembers fondly, "You're the wise-cracking, smart," his eyebrows lift, "and smart-mouthed defender of, the innocent." He actually manages a smile, "Even me. When we met," he almost laughs, "I was getting pummelled. Not far from Lehigh--corner store down from the base. You didn't know me from Adam, and you stood up for me." His expression softens.

"And you did that time and again. You're my friend. You're not some guy I was in the army with. You're not just some hero on a page. You're my friend. You're just. You're good. You look out for the little guy." He swallows hard. "And I'm sorry, Buck. I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner. I'm sorry," he chokes on the words, "I.. lost.. you on that train.. but I swear to you... I'm with you to the end of the line. Whatever it is."

Winter Soldier has posed:
The Winter Soldier is a silent shape in the dark as the words pour over him. He does not move, and the quiet goes on and on and on. People offer their statements of encouragement. Their personal anecdotes. Their admissions that they looked up to the man the Winter Soldier used to be, before. And Steve? He offers everything.

"It's the mission," the Soldier finally says, cold and calm.

"No... it's not," the same man answers himself back, in a different voice. He looks up and full into Steve's eyes. "Steve? This is not..."

He seems to finally notice what his own left hand is doing. His expression breaks in pure revulsion.

His right hand slips to his side. It unholsters the pistol there, drawing it with the fluency of decades of practice. He lifts the weapon straight to his own temple and pulls the trigger.

There is a //click//. The effect of the Mind Stone finally fades, eased off by the god controlling its power.

When the group comes to, back in the garage, it will be to find themselves in the company of a man. Perhaps the Winter Soldier... perhaps not. Probably not, judging by the way he's folded over, head in his hands, rocking and repeating something to himself. "No... no..."

There is little in his features but the utmost agonized confusion. He seems to notice his left arm for the first time, spasms in horror, and tries to claw past the chains tethering him to rip the prosthetic off.

Claire Temple has posed:
The effect fades, and takes the false landscape with it.

Claire Temple, a piece of it, no more than a fragment, tries to stand to find her own freedom --

-- and remains stopped by that chain. It holds the woman there, still strewn along the ground, whom... finally turns her head and imparts the group the first clear look of her face. Her eyes gentle. Her expression falls into a tired relief.

'Thank you,' she mouths, but there is no sound, no call of her voice -- it is pulled in with the rest of the vision, the chained woman with it. And gone.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
Mercy listens to everything everyone has to say. All of it. Especially the words of Captain America; the man who knows Bucky Barnes better than any of the here.

Then the coyote's gaze is turning back to the man they're trying to reach. To see if it worked and when he recites those terrible first words about 'mission', Mercy's expression begins to fall. Before she can offer any other words of encouragement something more humane returns. Of course, when Bucky Barnes realizes what he just did and pulls that gun, pressing it swiftly to temple, Mercy can't quite stop the quick denial, "No! Don't!"

But thankfully, the influence of the mind stone and its ability to make everything so real is removed. Not before there's one last glimpse of Claire -

Now it's back to the garage and there's a second or two where Mercy is shaking off the effects of the mind stone. Like waking from a dream. Or in this case nightmare. Horrific nightmare that wasn't even hers. As soon as awareness is there, Mercy's gaze turns quickly to the chained man within the garage. She watches him rock and offer those denials and when he reaches for his arm and tries to tear it off, Mercy finally reacts. She doesn't step forward, but she does say, "Stop it!" Her words loud, "You need to stop! Claire needs you!"

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam doesn't pull away from May's hand on his arm at all. If anything, he looks down at her briefly with something very like a strange and startled sort of gratitude. Her motherly overtures to him haven't gone missed, exactly,so much as they are unfamiliar and he's uncertain what to do with them. But a gesture of caring isn't something he's going to shake off, ever, and he finally gives her a quick, uncertain, and ultimately distracted (because of what they're about) little smile of acknowledgement. It's a sad smile to be sure. Everything about this is sad.

The word itself seems too basic, but it is what it is.

Then the soldier-- no. Then /Barnes/ is freaking out, something which makes total, complete, and utter sense. And Sam steps back a moment, because he's actually not equipped for this reaction in the slightest. Empathetic to it, of course. But empathy that carries him through witness interviews and allows him to bolster the few living victims he encounters in his line of work does nothing to tell him how he should react or respond when someone is having a psychological breakdown brought on by the sudden return of self...and the knowledge of the horrors that self has been forced through being shoved at him all at once.

Mercy invokes Claire. Steve, he's sure, will have something to say. Sam? Begins to wonder if he shouldn't have just brought more Vodka. So much more Vodka.

No. Probably wouldn't have helped.

Melinda May has posed:
It takes May a few moments to realize they're back to reality, and the moment she does, the first thing she checks for is her jacket and weapons. All present and accounted for? Good. Next ... damnit. She sees that Barnes is awake and aware and freaking out.

"Rogers," she says to get the man's attention, but in a tone that likely very few people here have ever heard from her before. She's stripped out every bit of the harsh commanding tone to her voice, worried that it'll make Barnes react badly. She steps around to where she'll be in his line of sight but well out of reach, then crouches down so she's not in any way standing over him.

"James." She's nowhere nearly earned the privelege of addressing him in a more familiar manner. "James, you're safe now. I know what it means to you right now. And I know you're strong enough to step past that loathing, just for a little longer, until we can help you set it aside without causing you any more pain than you're already in. Will you trust us?"

Winifred Burkle has posed:
When they're back to reality, Fred stumbles a bit. The very means of which they traveled is something that already is a very touchy subject for Fred Burkle. It's only knowing that they were not physically traveling that helped her through parts of this. Honestly, it was only the ability to possibly grenade things within the Winter Soldier's mind that made her spring forward. There were quite a few things she's witnessed that stunned her silent.

Resting her back against the wall - as far from the Winter Soldier as she can be - Fred takes a few steadying breaths, hands clasped in a white knuckled grasp behind her as she does so. They're back. Everyone is okay, they didn't actually go anywhere. Her eyes drift first to Sam, then to Mercy and May. They lastly look over Loki and Steve Rogers in a curious manner. The Winter Soldier, chained as he is is given a look - one still of mistrust and worry.

Captain America has posed:
The image of Bucky on the floor has Steve on the move. It's ill-advised, but he's not going to leave Bucky on his own. Three steps bring him to Barnes' side. Mercy's mention of Claire actually produces a cringe from Rogers. His eyes silently plead for a moment. Even one. But he doesn't verbalize the request.

He takes a knee and, without giving it a second thought, reaches to squeeze Bucky's shoulder. Earlier he'd been told to leave the Soldier his space, but he's not going to leave his best friend a mess on the floor. "Buck?" he says softly, checking if his friend is the one occupying his own mind. "It's Steve... I'm here..."

"Hey, hey, hey, hey," he chides softly when Bucky claws at his arm, moving to wrap a single arm around Bucky's chest. And even if it's thrown off, he's pushed away, or takes a beating for it, he meant it. He's here.

"Bucky, I'm here," he repeats softly. "I'm not going anywhere. We're all here for you..." it's an idea he stands behind, even as he takes notice of Fred's expression.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Steve reaches towards Bucky, and the man jerks away. He almost falls with his vehemence not to be touched, scrambling away as best he can with a chain wrapped about his chest and upper left arm. His blue eyes, wide and staring, jerk their gaze back and forth from face to face, focusing marginally more on those who speak.

Will you trust us? May asks. The former Winter Soldier stares at her, both understanding and not understanding her, before he folds under another apparent wave of nausea, his forehead nearly touching the floor. "Should've killed me," he says, with a voice raw and rusty from disuse. This voice, like as not, has not spoken freely in eighty years. "Should've just--"

Steve touches him again. James makes a horrible, grieving noise and pulls away again, pushing Steve back as he does, the chain rattling.

In the end, it's something Mercy says that seems to pierce through his panic. Claire needs you. The phrase -- the name, more than anything -- hits him like a brick to the face. He reels back, stunned. Recollection appears visibly in his eyes... and with recollection comes the one way in which Bucky Barnes has always coped with the stressors in his life. The one way he's gonna cope with this one, too. His blue eyes flare, suddenly pinpoint focused, because they're focused down on just one thing: unadulterated rage.

He bolts to his feet. The lower half of his metal arm winds about the slack of the chain, his hand latching down on the links with a clash of metal on metal, and he lunges straight to the end of his tether with a violent jerk that shudders the beam above. Mercy's welding job is a good one. It holds.

The chain, however... doesn't. A savage pull of his left arm, a viselike clamp of his left hand, and a quick torque of his body jerks the chain again, slamming the links where they're weakest a second time. The thing breaks with a snap of parting metal, the bindings slithering free from his chest.

"I'm gonna fucking -- kill them -- " he swears, trying instantly to leave.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
The coyote watches all that's happening within her garage.

The people, their reactions, their silence, their inactions. It's all watched by Mercy Thompson.

Whether she sees that pleading look from the Captain is uncertain, but the mechanic offers nothing more. Instead, she silently watches the interaction between Captain and Soldier and the course of it is enough to cause the brown-haired woman to drop her sympathetic gaze away.

It's only as rage finally cuts through the general miasma of scents within the closed-up garage that Mercy's attention shifts back to Soldier and Captain. And when the Winter Soldier suddenly bolts to his feet Mercy can't quite stop tensing in response, an automatic flight or fight response from her. It doesn't matter that she can see him connecting the dots where it concerns the Night Nurse.

And while Mercy was just about to say something those words of hers are never said. Not when Bucky wraps that chain around his arm and then lunges forward. That's enough to cause the coyote to jerk back and several steps away, that fight response now clearly turning to flight. When her weld holds there might be a second of relief from the mechanic, but that too doesn't last long. Not when the chain snaps with a sharp retort of broken metal. "Holy -!" Mutters Mercy Thompson, voice edging towards an expletive that (thankfully) never comes. No, instead Mercy will watch the man try to /leave/ and that finally kicks Mercy into gear. A look is sent to Steve, then May, Sam and even Fred. Everyone in the room, really, even as Mercy says, "Wait! You can't just leave. You can't just attack them on your own. That's - you need a plan - /something/." Otherwise it's suicide, which was almost said, but the coyote caught herself just in time.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam takes out his Beretta and cocks it. "I say we plan as we go. We saw what kind of shape she was in. We all do this together, hit hard and fast with him leading the way, I say we can win this. It's also the only chance she's got. They're probably keeping her alive in the hopes of recovering him, but they have occultists. The amount of magic we just threw around here won't be missed, and given the location it might not be hard to figure out what we were doing. It'll take them a little time to be sure, maybe, but the moment they do, Claire's toast. I'm following him."

Also, the idea that the Soldier could have snapped that chain all along? Kind of unnerving, but all's well that ends well. Except it hasn't, not yet, not without their nurse. He glances at Fred, knowing how little she likes any of this, his eyes softening. He opens his mouth as if he might say something, and then ultimately closes it. She has to make her own decisions, unswayed by him, and he has the feeling asking her to stay is as bad as asking her to go.

Melinda May has posed:
May steps back when Rogers moves in to try and console Barnes. But then he lunges and snaps the chain restraining him and she knows better than to get in his way. Sam, though, might have a good idea there.

"Let us help you get to them," she offers the irate Soldier. The steel is back in her voice. "We'll make sure no one gets in your way."

Because sometimes? All you can do is let the man off his chain and get the hell out of his way. This way, hopefully, it won't be a suicide run on Barnes' part.

Winifred Burkle has posed:
Though shaky from their recent experience, the shriek of chain ripping from the wall immediately snaps into Fred's immediate attention. Without even realizing what she is doing, she shoves herself from the wall and into the Soldier's line of exit. Even as she does so, there is a wince - a visceral remembrance of the last time they met and he almost choked the life out of her. However, throughout their time in the Mind Stone visions, it was Claire that she focused on and she continues to do that now. Sending this unstable man off - alone? Unacceptable. She - for the moment - hasn't even seen Sam's glance toward her. Nor Mercy's. There is singular focus for the scientist right now.

"I don't trust you," she tells the Winter Soldier, soft, visceral, almost gravelly due to the still bruised wind pipe. The angry purple bruises he left on her neck are still visible through the tops of her shirt, despite her attempts to cover them.

"We did this to find Claire and we're not letting you leave without us."

Captain America has posed:
Steve is easy to shrug off. He backs up a good long step, but he's not leaving, remaining crouched beside Bucky until the chain breaks. Quick reflexes have him ducking in time to step away from the links. Mercy's pleading gets a faint shrug, Sam's lack of plan actually merits a tick of Steve's eyebrow, and May's thoughts on helping cause him to nod.

Fred earns a pull of Steve's eyebrows and he straightens and gives a nod to the door. The information about Hydra's occultism, the images they'd seen of Claire, and the determined nature of everyone in the room causes his demeanour to change rather drastically. Others have said their piece and their concerns.

"Let's suit," two simple words. His head turns towards May, "May, you have a quinjet?" A glance is given to the others in the room, and his gaze lands on Mercy--the calculating voice of reason. But while they might not have a plan, they definitely need one thing, "I think we need to suit up and then move."

Winter Soldier has posed:
A man may do extraordinary things when sufficiently motivated. Extraordinary things like snap a chain that had previously held him fast. Whether that motive is rage, or shame, or guilt, or all of the above...

Well, it doesn't matter.

People call out to him as he makes to leave, shout for him to stop. And amazingly -- for the first time in the experience of most people here -- he obeys. At the least, he slows. He sways slightly when he does, staggering, and his hands clutch into his hair as if to try to ground himself.

Then Fred interposes right in front of him. It is a brave move, even foolhardy, given how many times he's gone through her without hesitation or remorse countless times before, but this time her slight form might as well be a wall in front of his face.

I don't trust you, Fred says, standing her ground even in the path of the Winter Soldier -- or whoever he is now.

Whoever he is, he tilts his head -- and grins at her defiance, a horrible mirthless expression that's in truth more the baring of teeth than any genuine smile. There is a deep well of bitterness in the look, the nascent beginnings of a self-loathing that might not actually have any end. The hate he bears himself is clear in his voice when he answers, "That's smart. Very smart."

Momentum halted, the fight seems to go out of him. He stands stock-still where he is, head hanging, avoiding Steve's eyes at all costs.

Mercy Thompson has posed:
When Fred steps in front of the Winter Soldier, Mercy can't quite stop the look of concern that flashes across her expression, or the step she takes towards the other woman. That expression of hers only gets worse when Fred speaks of all the not-trust within the room. Because, in the end, it's the truth. There is an issue of trust here, at least for some. Mercy included.

When Bucky seems to agree with Fred's assessment, the coyote can't quite stop her expression from turning even more grim.

And while Mercy should add something to what Fred says, she doesn't. Instead she moves onto Sam, Steve and May's words and a look is turned towards them. "One, some of us don't have suits, two, like everyone said we're doing this all together and three, let's get something of a plan together. Or at the very least can you give us a run down of where Claire is, or her last known location, what we're up against and what defenses they have waiting? I, for one, would rather not die tonight." And while those last words could be construed as sardonic humor Mercy is completely serious.

Sam Winchester has posed:
Sam Winchester, a man who has hunted in flannel shirts most of his life, kind of stops and gives an incredulous look at 'suit up,' but he doesn't argue either. He is, after all, in bulletproof flannel now, so maybe he shouldn't talk. He watches Fred, but he doesn't interfere. It's...supremely ironic to him, really, that he does trust Bucky. He saw the two men, and he can hear that self-loathing.

He can also hear a situation that's getting tense and counterproductive.

"We could plan en-route. And...en-suit, I guess," he says dubiously. "Because those details //would// be good, Sergeant Barnes. From what... what was said before... there's a lot we ought to know."

Winifred Burkle has posed:
There is a narrowed eyes at the Winter Soldier as he stands down at her attempt to stop him. In fact, his own agreement in not trusting him is met with a bit of a furrowed brow. That is not exactly that she was expecting.

As for suiting up, Fred adds in to poor Steve's attempt at encouragement. She has no suit to get into. She is just a random physicist. "Yes, not dying is preferable," she agrees with Mercy. Though, that onus is not placed on the Winter Soldier. While her amiable agreement is met with Mercy, a look is turned to this 'Bucky Barnes' people are now calling him.

Instead, as people and even the Winter Soldier himself acquiesces, Fred moves to Sam now. There are enough people here to stop Bucky - as far as she is concerned. Now? She moves closer to the taller Winchester. "A plan would be best," she agrees.

Captain America has posed:
Ever stalwart, even with Bucky avoiding eye contact, Steve remains fixed where he is. His chin drops towards his chest and a flicker of a smile pulls at his features, at being so called out on the turn of phrase //suit up//. "I meant more along the lines of get ready." His eyes flit across the room at each of those present and his smile falters some, "Weaponry... at the //very// least..." he actually squints at that and then shakes his head. He'd run into trouble with nothing if it came down to it, but if not wholly necessary--why?

But he nods slowly with the others, "Any intel would be helpful."

Winter Soldier has posed:
So many things are wearing off now for Bucky Barnes, in these moments. The adrenaline of shock. The trauma of sudden remembrance and realization. And most cripplingly... the false strength granted by pure and unfiltered rage.

Now there is only the slow and painful process of truly understanding what it was happened to him -- who he has been and //what he has been doing//, and for //how long//. He starts trembling visibly, exhausted in every conceivable way, his harrowed gaze staring off at nothing at all. He shakes because if he does not shake, he might scream, or cry, or just break down and physically collapse, and none of those options are acceptable. Not now. Not here.

There's a lot we ought to know, everyone agrees. Bucky finally lifts his head, his blue eyes staring and haunted. It's Sam he looks at the longest, before his gaze drops again. He still cannot look at Steve straight-on.

"I'll tell you everything that I know," the former Winter Soldier agrees.