Owner	Pose
Melinda May	After receiving the list of items Sebastion requested and realizing it was in a format that made no sense to anyone unfamiliar with Sentinel tech, she tasked R&D with trying to figure it out and sent a message asking to speak with Dr. Pym. While they wait, though, she wants one more SHIELD agent on board with this. Having again brought Skye along, she knocks at the door to Bucky's quarters then picks up the still-hot covered stewpot she's brought along. The smell has likely been tantalizing Skye, but nope. No peeking. And if Skye wants to help carry something, there's an also warm canvas sack whose contents smell buttery and bready.
James Barnes	He answers in jeans and t-shirt, with off-duty Lili peeking past his leg. The sight of them with food makes him blink. "Smells good," he says, stepping aside to let them enter. The living room area's in dining room mode, with the fold up table there. "Peggy's out for now. Wanted to go for a walk by herself. C'mon in."
Skye Johnson	The parts Skye wasn't much help with. Mostly she shrugged at the list. "He's a cyborg. I'm a hacker. It's not like I get what most of this stuff does." Well, does, maybe, but is? Yeah. No clue, other than it made the electronic parts of him go. Much like she expected the cyborg parts of Bucky were a garbled mess of multisyllabic words that mostly boiled down into 'makes Bucky go'. "You know, I was thinking how similar the two are. I mean.." She halts that thought when Bucky answers the door, giving him a crooked smirk. "May is mean. She wouldn't let me peek. I think she likes you better than me right now. Hey, did I tell you, last two times she had me alone, no food? I know, right? Like what the hell is that." Other than she was in hells deep of trouble, and she knew it, but much of this was to lighten the load preemptively over what was likely going to be a fraught little topic. When invited,she steps inside his place. "Looks nice. Much better than my digs when I lived here." Which was entirely true. Skye's quarters had looked like nobody lived there other than the proof of her electronics lying about.
Melinda May	May nods her thanks when Bucky invites them in, and steps carefully to avoid Lili's paws as she does so. "This is Skye's next cooking lesson. I usually make a batch first so she knows what she's supposed to get." And, for some unfathomable reason, she felt the need to make something like TWO GALLONS of the stuff? Regardless, she doesn't just presume and go through to the kitchen even if she does know the layout of these quarters as well anyone who lives in them. "I hope you like chili."
James Barnes	"She knows I'll eat things you wouldn't eat?" Buck offers, tone a little quizzical. It's an odd meeting, and he's not yet sure what he thinks of it. The living area's pretty plain, save for a toy box in the shape of a dog bone - Lili's toys, presumably - and a fleecy throw blanket over the back of the couch. He keeps what personal stuff he has in his own room, it seems. But he gestures them in. "Sure, I like chili, and so does Peggy, too." Lili, trying to be hospitable, goes over to her toybox, lifts off the lid and rummages for a moment. She produces a green plastic barbell and comes back to parade it in front of them, hopefully.
Skye Johnson	"If you mean vegetables, then yes, she knows I won't eat them." Except under strictl;y regulated circumstances. "Nah, I was in deep shit. And she's mean.. wait.. what do we mean my next cooking lesson? Hey! I thought we were going to talk to Bucky about our guest?" Lili Skye murmurs to, "I think I'm being held prisoner in the kitchen, Lili. Send for reinforcements! If I don't come back, tell Clint I loved him." Okay, she might be milking this.
Melinda May	"Your turn to cook is on another day, Skye." Her expression is a mild 'laying it on a little thick there' glare that completely lacks any heat. She probably put it all into the chili. She IS Asian, after all. She sets the cookpot on whatever convenient counter surface she finds, then reaches to take the sack of breads away from Skye. "We do have a more serious reason for our dropping by though, Barnes. But, I don't want this chili to go to waste either." Lili gets a brief pat on the head and a gentle rub of one ear before May leaves her be. Sorry, maybe next time.
James Barnes	Lili offers Skye the green barbell bone. Here. Take this. It's dangerous to go alone. Buck looks bemused, still. "Okay," he says. "Lemme get bowls - silverware's in that drawer." He owns actual things, and it feels weird. It's the first time he's had a private room of his own, an apartment that's his. Even if it is in a semi-secret government facility. He gives Skye a grin, and goes about setting the table.
Skye Johnson	Skye laughs at May's glare. "Oh, come on. It was funny." The younger agent leans over and whispers to Lili, "You understand, don't you girl?" The barbell bone is taken with utter seriousness. "This shall be my only light of hope in the darkness... and Clint really should borrow Lucky and take you guys out huh?" Lili earns a good patting for her efforts, then Skye turns her attentions back to why they came. "So, eat chili and talk over it?" Like that wasn't their usual modus operani. "And yeah, we have a guest here at the Trisk, and I was saying to May that I think you two have a lot in common and well, we should pick your brains."
Melinda May	Getting out the silverware, May helps Bucky and in short order the table is set. She even finds a decently large spoon for stirring and serving up the chili. Once everyone is settled with chili and yes, what appear to be scratch made drop biscuits, May expands on Skye's brief explanation. "We have taken custody of the Sentinel cyborg that goes by the name Sebastion. Stark and others in the Avengers are very strongly advising to terminate this individual, and Skye, Darcy, and at least one other are vehemently opposed." Yup. Straight into the deep end.
James Barnes	He's started eating, carefully, neatly. Her going straight in to it, though, has him looking up, expression mild. "What're the arguments for and against? I mean, I've kept abreast of the broader conflict, but....a lot of the stuff in there's above my clearance and my paygrade." He sits back, starts putting butter on a biscuit, lazily. 'Why are you asking *me*?'.....that doesn't get asked. Not yet.
Skye Johnson	Skye sniffs at her chili as though expecting it to be suspect, or containing hidden vegetables. The smell, however, is out of this world, and enticing, so she braves a spoonful, dipping the thing in and tasting just a bit on the tip of her tongue. Finding it not wanting, an actual mouthful is taken. "Well, other than a gut feeling, I don't know. It's the way he was talking. I know people can be liars and all, but.. okay, gut feeling. I guess some of that might be what we're here talking to you for. You're the only person we know who has kinda been like him." Yeah, she's not pulling punches either, but to be fair, May started it, and also, they are in a bit of a bind on this one. Bucky really is one of the only sources they have on how it was like to actually /be/ a sleeper.
Melinda May	"The Avengers are convinced that he's either a sleeper agent or straight up a time bomb in a Trojan cyborg. Based on Skye's impression and what I've heard from others, I'm willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt, or if he does prove to be an enemy, enough rope to hang himself with." She's started in on her chili as well. And yes, it's LADEN with hidden veggies. Her glance at Bucky, while seeming mild enough, is clear. She's prepared to help Sebastion hang himself if that's the direction this ends up going in. Is he willing to prepare as well?
James Barnes	Buck looks between them, pale blue gaze mild, thoughtful....a little withdrawn. Consulting with the fossil of Winter; he still has those spaces in his mind. Still has the memories. He chews a bite of biscuit, methodically. Then, "What evidence do the Avengers have that this guy is either of those things? What evidence do we have to the contrary?"
Skye Johnson	Skuye can't speak to the Avenger's thoughts, but she can speak to her own encounter with the guy. "It was the way he acted, really. Like confused as to how he was what he was. Said he'd only really just gotten a name. Seemed perplexed by the fact that he could do these things, like they were someone else doing them and he barely remembered being part of it." She shakes her head, and shovels another mouthful of chili. "Mostly, okay, so, here's the thing. People tell me their secrets all the time. Like big secrets. Things they don't tell other people. It felt like that. Like all the times someone has been... hoping that they weren't doing the wrong thing in telling me. Wanting to believe it was safe because they had to tell someone. Like that. That's how it felt. Not sure you can fake that."
Melinda May	May lets Skye explain her impressions, not offering interjections or opinions verbally or otherwise. This is one of the things she's learned to rely on about the younger agent that cannot be quantified in a skill assessment. Also, May's own gut instincts have been wrong before, so she sees the value in using someone's else's -- especially when they're regularly almost unnervingly accurate. She will never tell Skye -- or anyone -- this, but people who have been through the American foster care system seem to have this creepy-accurate gut instinct more often than not. It might smack of exploitation to others, but May rationalizes it as intelligent use of an agent's hard-won skill.
James Barnes	She gets Buck's pokerface. The eyes aren't dead enough for it to be a facsimile of Winter, but....it's almost disturbingly still. "All you can tell there, though, is what he sincerely believes," he says, eventually. "He may genuinely believe it. He may very well be confused as to how he got there and got to be what he was. You know they never actually bothered to give me that? No one ever tried to get me to sign on willingly, or make me believe that I had." He shrugs, takes another bite of chili. "Basically, I'm not hearing anything that makes me think he isn't a profound risk. But.....can he be used against the Sentinels? If he controls them, can we control him?" Utterly pragmatic.
Skye Johnson	Skye nods. She's not about to gainsay Bucky's point of view on this. That was one of the reasons they'd come to talk to him after all. "There is that," Skye says quietly. "But you can't make a machine become human. He's got human in him..." And okay, this might be cruel, but this wasn't about pulling punches today. Not when they had what could potentially be a breakthrough with regards to the Sentinels -- even if it were only as an unintended weapon against them. "Thing is, you were like that. Steve never gave up on you. You were still you inside there. We got to you." Kind of. There had still been layers of sleeper code they'd never realized, as witnessed in their destruction of Zola. He'd tried one last code against them in their attack. "We might not be able to break a sleeper code, be we have you. We have the Bobsey twins. We have Sebastian who wants to believe he's not what they made him. If we turn him off we lose all chances at *trying* to break that code. At using him if it can't be broken.. And we've got everything we learned from Zola to maybe help us." "If we deactivate him, we destroy the man, too. And right now the only thing he's really guilty of is maybe being a threat."
Melinda May	May nods slowly. "That's the angle I'm trying for. Encouraging a positive response from this individual can be to our benefit in multiple ways regardless of whether or not he is truly what he says he is and nothing more." She finishes off her honestly rather small portion of the chili and sits back in her chair. "So I want contingency plans for our contingency plans. I know that Stark and others with the Avengers are not going to like that we're appearing to help Sebastion. But we also need to keep it quiet that we don't just have rehabilitation as an agenda." She looks at Bucky again, recognizing him accessing his Winter knowledge even if he's not fallen into full Soldier mode. "That includes each of us being prepared to take him down if the Avengers do turn out to be right."
James Barnes	"Steve was wrong. I can sit here and say that, because it's true. And because there're enough people left who won't hesitate to take me out if something happens and I am a threat again," Buck's voice is quiet. "I mean, hell, be merciful, if we can afford it. IF we can keep this guy safe in custody and work on whatever's running him, do it." He gives one of those little shrugs. "Stark doesn't have to like it. But....what vulnerabilities does he have?"
Skye Johnson	Skye tilts her head at Bucky. "No, Steve was't wrong. Not entirely." She modifies her assertion to allow for her explanation. "We see you every day, Bucky. We see what it does to you that you were Winter. How it tears you apart. Makes you stop sometimes and second guess yourself. How you do everything you can to not be that man unless and until our lives are on the line, and even then it's not for yourself, it's for us. So no, Steve wasn't wrong. The man he believed in was in there all along. All we didn't figure out in time was how to let that man be in charge over the programming." And even then, if it were *straight* programming, there would have to be a way around it. If it were brainwashing.. that, well, that wasn't Skye's forte, but if it /were/ that, it hadnt broken the man inside, so there had to be a way around that too. "He's got human bits," Skye says. "They cut off an arm. He was beaten up. I think the more he loses of the cyber parts of himself, the more human he becomes. I just don't know how human he'll stay if we fix those bits." And it wasn't like they could go lopping bits off willy nilly to see what else human popped up. She nods at May, looking unhappy. "Then we need items that can't be electronically affected or jammed. They need an immediate neural and electronic effect. And that's likely the Bobsey twin's territory."
Melinda May	May tilts her head toward Skye slightly. The kid's not lying, and that's about a ringing an endorsement of what Skye's saying as May can offer under normal circumstances. "Appealing to the human aspects in this individual are our best bet, and one of the reasons why I want you to keep working with him, Skye. Also why I'm allowing Darcy as much access as she currently has." She looks at Skye. "I already have R&D working on that, but you know it won't be instantaneous. In the meantime, I'm thinking the safest way around having computing devices in his presence is to use only technology so old it doesn't comprehend the concept of networking."
James Barnes	He blows out a little breath, somewhere between cough and sigh. "Do you want me to talk to him, directly?" Buck asks, with a glint of human in his voice. "God knows I don't have any USB ports or Bluetooth capability...." They have him, and he knows it. How can he deny another sufferer what he was given?
Skye Johnson	"Yes," Skye says succinctly. Then adds, in a softer, sympathetic tone, "You don't have to do it alone, though. I think he likes me. If you want someone to be there with you, I'll go. I won't even open my mouth if that's what you want, but you don't have to do it alone." Because even if Sebastian was Sebastian, he was also The Winter Soldier, and she knew it was going to be hard for Bucky to face that. And Steve? While Steve was Bucky's best friend and protector, he was also Bucky's best friend and protector, and sometimes you couldn't save someone from a thing, all you could do was let them know you were there for them and let them face their demons.
Melinda May	"If you're willing to do so, Barnes, I'll authorize it. I did also want R&D to see about replacing his lost hand. I was thinking a simplified version of what you have, but of course not the same materials. You can even honestly claim that's why you're visiting with him." Because that would actually be one of the reasons. In May's mind, anyway. "If you any reservations at all about Sebastian, let me know. But until then, we're proceeding on the understanding that everything he's told us thus far has been in good faith without any ulterior motives."
James Barnes	He waves away any suggetion of help being needed. "Nah, I'll talk to him," he says, quietly. "And sure. If I need to go in to R&D and let them scan the arm....hell, I'll even let Stark look at it, if you think it would help." Buck rubs wearily at his face. "But sure.....proceed as if he's innocent, until we know better."
Skye Johnson	Skye nods. She has plans to visit Sebastian regardless, but she was willing to accept Bucky's decision. "So, how are we going to deal with him. And, you know, everyone else who will try to pressure us to not give him a chance." She was aware that SHIELD didn't have to bow to the whims of outside forces, but the Avengers were allies, and ultimately if things did go poorly, they'd need their help.
Melinda May	"We are going to treat him as the mistreated innocent that he has been presenting himself to be. And we will continue to do so until proven otherwise. If Stark or any of the other Avengers insist on pressing the issue, I'll go speak with them directly and privately." May is fully aware that they came very close to losing one of their own and is not dismissing that, but she is able to see the situation a bit more objectively. And from what she knows, one fact is clear: Vision attacked first. And in doing so, Sebastian proved that he passes at least one of the criteria for true sentience: fear of death. Giving the individual a chance to prove his innocence is also checking him for as many of the other criteria as possible in a subtle manner.
James Barnes	Winter Soldier has lapsed into that stillness again. Dinner's apparently forgotten, for the moment. He nods at that reply, lips thinned out.....as if well aware his own sympathies are likely to lead him astray.
Skye Johnson	Skye nods to May, "Well, if there aren't any other instructions for me, I'm just gonna do what I do." That comes with a slight grin, because, really, when was Skye ever anything else but herself, even if she had learned to tone it down to more appropriate times and places and levels. "I'll be the friend he needs. Bucky can be the control. You're the analyst. And we go from there."