logsinthenight | Truth is like a loaded gun

It's late in the "day" (or whatever people want to call 24-hour periods when there's no sun) after the carrion flowers start blooming and spreading their nasty smell everywhere. When Scarlett gets back to her room at the Invincible, the door is slightly ajar. Visible through it, before entering, is... guess who.

Wedged into a corner made by wall and bed, near the window and with a sight-line through the door before anyone comes through, is the Soldier.

Or, to be more specific, the Sergeant, because for the second time today, a combination of scent and action took him back to something he's lived before, during the war. He has a gun in the metal hand pointed at the crack in the door, and his nose and mouth buried in his elbow as if that could make the smell go away. What expression can be seen over his forearm is definitely afraid, maybe a little wild.

As soon as he sees Scarlett, and Scarlett sees him in turn, the gun drops a few inches, pointing more at the floor than at anyone coming in. It's obvious that at least something's different, because he doesn't shy away from meeting her eyes like he usually would-- he holds them. He's not entirely sure how he knows her, but something inside says "safe" at the sight of her. That's why he came up here. "Safe".

The scent of death that permeated Beacon, should have been unsettling but for Scarlett? It was familiar to the point where it bordered on comforting. An unpleasant yet accepted reminder of home: The death and decay that clung to the earth when the world went to shit. When there were no more medical examiners to carry away and dispose of the bodies. When there were no more city workers to cart off the trash and dump it into a landfill.

Her world may not have been a place of safety or warmth, but it was familiar and there was comfort to be found in the known. It was the unknown that set Scarlett on edge, like why the her door to her room was now open. What it was that lurked out of her sight and just how ready for a fight did she need to be. She and Tinman might be in a strangely good place now, but she still knew that he couldn't necessarily control what he did during those 'memory malfunctions' and as much as she knew she didn't want to have to hurt him - she'd rather avoid dying if she could help it.

Still when she enters, her hand is wrapped around the grip of her sword. Scarlett's dark gaze sweeping the room in search of a threat. The grip on her sword loosens the moment she lays eyes on him, despite the gun aimed directly at her face. Her exasperation at them always doing this not quite taking hold once she takes in his appearance. Memory Malfunction. Those two words like the prick of a thorn. The woman knowing that this could get messy and yet, she really didn't want to fight him.

She watches as the barrel lowers, her own hand gently dropping down to her side and she perhaps hadn't realized how little they made eye contact, until his light blue eyes connect with hers. She can't help the slight twitch of her mouth at that one, seemingly insignificant word. Not an amused smile, but something that holds just a flicker of warmth in it.

"Yeah." Her voice steady as she manages something that resembles a half smile. "Safe." Confirming it for him, but not immediately closing the distance so as not to make him change his mind about that. "Plus you wouldn't shoot me anyway."

"Fuck, you don't know that. I don't fucking know that," he says, voice a little shaky, maybe a little higher pitched than usual. But the gun does go down even further, resting on the floor next to him.

She knows him. Somehow that's right, even if it makes no sense. He's never seen her before in his life. (But he can't remember his own fucking name, so what does that say about his memory right now?)

"I don't know how I know you." They fucking did something to him. On that table. The weird metal arm, the problems with his memory, the smell of death following him even out of the creepy-as-shit lab. What did they do to him?

"Yeah I do." As if her belief that he won't might be all he needs to ensure he never will. He might not be entirely sure who she is, but it's his accent that gives him away. His voice lacks the ease and confidence she's heard before, but it's still that 'other' side of the Tinman who is at the wheel now.

"We've met... a couple of times." Her words cryptic under the circumstances. "We have a - " There's a wryness to the grin that pulls at the corner of her mouth. Scarlett shaking her head. "A mutual friend I guess you could say?"

Rather than approach him right away, Scarlett holds up her hands as if to show him she's not a threat, her hands moving to remove the harness for her larger weapons to try and further put him at ease.

"I'm Scarlett... Though you seem to like to call me Doll." Something bordering on teasing in the way she says it, almost like she's scolding him for it but without actually meaning it. "I never have caught your name, though."

"Sounds like me. What else you gonna call a pretty dame who looks like she could take your head off." Sarcasm yay.

Let's just skip the whole name bit. That's too disturbing to think about right now, when he's already on edge and feeling like he got thrown into next fucking Tuesday. The gun comes back up at her movement, not quite trained on her, but ready to do so if any of those weapons come out of their harness.

"Are you HYDRA?" he demands. Because his friends (well, his unit buddies, anyway) would have told him if they knew a dame like that. He's sure of it.

There's a slight raise of her eyebrows, the muscles in her face jumping as she tries to process the words he's just spoken. Scarlett looking momentarily off balance as she tries and fails to register then accept the compliment in there.

"Sure." Managing a huff of air that was supposed to be a chuckle? As she carefully removes her harness and sets it on the table, still with her eyes on him.

"Harker, actually. Well...Van Helsing if you want to be technical, I guess." Her tone casual and easy as she slips into what's fast becoming their brand of snarky tête-à-tête. The name Hydra wasn't wholly unfamiliar to her. She'd heard The Tinman mention it before and uses that now to to try and establish some common ground.

"I may be an asshole, but not a Hydra Asshole. " Scarlett casually moving a couple of feet closer before sinking down onto the ground to keep them on the same level: her movements slow, deliberate, all intended not to startle him into shooting her again.

He can see how careful she's being. He's torn between annoyance, because what the hell does she even know about him, and gratitude, because it helps. The gun comes down again when she sits, resting that arm across his knees. The plates on that fucking metal arm are shifting with his tension, and resting it there helps a little. He focuses on the minutia, just for now, just until he calms the fuck down a little more. "Van Helsing. Like in Dracula?"

Guess what, Scarlett, the Sergeant has some culture and has read an actual book.

Edited 2019-10-11 03:10 (UTC)

She flinches. Actually flinches when he says that name, a tension rolling through her shoulders and she can feel the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end as a dire warning echoes in a memory that sees her gaze drop to the ground.

"You shouldn't say that name." A hint of warning in her tone but it's not her he needs to worry about, just things this version of him probably believed could never exist. "But yeah. That Van Helsing." Her gaze lifting to meet his so that he could see in that moment how much she wasn't kidding.

"It's. A fuckin' book," the Sergeant says, confused-- but, you know what, that's just the kind of day he's having. He leans his head back against the wall behind him, bangs it gently once, keeping his eyes on Scarlett just in case she makes a move.

She's not gonna make a move. Somehow he knows that, and it's weirding him out. "But sure. I got a metal arm, escaped from a creepy HYDRA lab, and don't remember my own name-- I'll humor ya."

"Yeah? So's the encyclopedia Britannica." Not only does she not make a move but she actually appears to settle in, pulling her knees up to rest her arm on to, the other cradled lazily in her lap. She might be most of her way to healed but she still wasn't going to push it.

"Vampires. They're a thing. I've been known to kill a few in my time." All very matter of fact as she gets him up to speed. "So no name huh?" Her head canting to one side as she studies the difference in behavior. "What were you doing that landed you in a lab?"

"Prisoner of war. My unit was up against HYDRA, and it was a fuckin' travesty, they scattered us like cats." He finally looks away from her, up at the ceiling instead. "Most of us were captured and put to work. Some of us got the privilege of bein' experimented on. Fun shit, right? Gotta figure that's where the arm and the memory problems are comin' from."

Well. He's like a third right...

Edited 2019-10-11 04:16 (UTC)

Her eyebrows slowly crawl up her forehead and while there's nothing about the story that's particularly warm or fuzzy, the hint of a smile actually touches her lips before she can push it away.

"Army man, huh." Scarlett pointedly ignoring the slight pull in her chest. "Yeah, you gotta figure." Adding his story to a much bigger puzzle that he couldn't fully comprehend. What Tinman had told her. What Army man had. At this rate she'd know him better than either side knew himself.

"It's not what you think it is." Changing the subject just as quickly as they'd fallen into. "The smell. I mean stinks to high hell whether real or not but it's not - they're not bodies."

"Yeah?" The Sergeant shuts his eyes. God, he's tired, but no way in hell is he going to sleep any time soon. Even closing his eyes shows him the needles and machines. They open again, head rolls to one side, looking across the room for something less unnerving than staring at Scarlett.

Feels like he ought to be doing more of that, like it's normal. Unnerving.

"It was in that lab. I saw the poor shmuck they carted off before I got the table, he had to be dead most of the day. What is it out here?"

She already realizes he doesn't fully understand what this place is and how he's here. That he didn't escape in the sense that he's thinking, but perhaps he still escaped in his own way. She might not know a thing about Hydra, or even the lab in question but she knew something about being kept in a lab and experimented on. SHit, she probably would have been him if not for people who raised her and the mother who helped her escape.

"Flowers, if you can believe it?" The kind of messed up thing that would only be present in a place like this one. "The whole place reeks of death but, it's not so bad in here." Thanks to him, though he doesn't remember tacking up her windows any more than he remembers his own name.

"There's bound to be a spare shirt or two around here some place." Scarlett lifting her hand to motion in front of her face. "Bit more effective than an arm for breathing." Cracking a half smile.

"Now you're offerin' me your clothes. I'm gonna start thinking you got designs on me, doll." The Sergeant doesn't sound like he's flirting. Well, it sounds like he's pretending to flirt because that's how best to hide when one is feeling broken and terrified in front of a woman who doesn't scare him or even seem to be asking much from him. "I'll take somethin', though. This is almost as bad as a fuckin' trench, and we all had shit wrapped around our faces there."

She snorts as if to instantly dismiss that idea with but it's perhaps made a little awkward by the fact that - look - she's not blind. He also happens to be the only person she's become comfortable simply existing around. At the end of the day, though? Just - no. For reasons that have nothing to do with him, no.

"Yeah, you wish army man." Dragging herself up from the ground to move over to the night stand by one of the beds in the room, heavy wood grating against wood as she drags open a bulky drawer. She drags out the same red and black flannel shirt she'd been wearing when he'd patched her up, giving it the smell test before tossing it his way.

"A trench?" Yeah, she caught that. "Didn't realize they still did that."

He hardly even notices the awkward moment, too worn out and on edge, lucky you Scarlett. Instead, he just wearily accepts the shirt and sees about folding it over his knees. (Don't I know this thing? Sure I've seen this before somewhere.)

In the end, he has to actually holster his gun, no matter how exposed that makes him feel, in order to manage getting it into a decent shape for tying around his face. "Guess it was a bigger deal in the first world war, but they still do it some. I've been in a couple, and they stank like you wouldn't fuckin' believe. Not just dead bodies, either."

He ties the shirt around his face and neck with the sleeves, and pauses, hands still behind his head, brows coming together. There's a familiar sensation to that. Not the trench mouth-protection, that was lighter, scented with some kind of herb. No, it's... something else.

She'd chosen that shirt for a reason, Scarlett watching the way he looks at it as if hoping to spy some flicker of recognition. Trying to get a sense as to whether his other half was still there somewhere, worried that maybe he might not be and yet not quite willing to admit as much to herself.

"Hmph." Shaking her head as she moves to take her place back on the floor, quietly noting that it seems to be a thing his other half did like he was always putting himself beneath her and yet she wouldn't allow it.

"I'd forgotten what it was like not to smell death before I came here." Those words said far too casually, almost like she forgets how different her life had been in the years before her death.

"I don't like it - I'm not a sadist or some shit but - I don't know. It's familiar, I guess?" Scarlett sharing little pieces of herself without somebody feeling like their pulling teeth.

"That's kinda. Shitty," the Sergeant says. "You can get used to a lot of things, but that's not one I'd want to... you know. Get used to." He sounds distracted. His brain is still working on the whole "why is this sensation familiar" thing.

(The fucking mask.)

When it finally clicks, more than one thing clicks at the same time, because that's a Soldier feeling, not a Sergeant feeling. Both hands come back up to tear the shirt off-- thankfully the shirt doesn't actually tear-- and hurl it across the room. The Soldier then runs both hands down its face, as if making sure it's still there, and only then focuses on Scarlett with a wince. On her shoulder, not her face, and when it speaks again, there's no more Brooklyn in its voice.

"Fuck. Sorry."

"Sometimes we don't get a choice." Only the slightest of strain in her voice as she speaks. She might accept the world she'd come from, she might have even felt vindicated by The Rising in a fucked up sort of way but she could still acknowledge that the world would have been better had Charles Harker been wrong all along.

She never really noticed the difference in him when 'Army Man' had taken the wheel before, but after so much time with him and then seeing the Tinman she'd gotten to know, take control? It was like watching two different people. It wasn't just where he would look, the way he'd hold himself or his voice. She could have sworn his features altered before her eyes, even though she knew them to be the same person. The same person.

"Nothing to be sorry for." Her tone is as easy as it had been before as if all this wasn't as jarring as it might have been to somebody else. "Army man and I were just getting to know each other, is all."

"Sergeant. We've been calling him Sergeant. That's his rank." The Soldier takes a shuddering breath, then settles back against the wall again, a slump that should resemble the Sergeant's but somehow just... doesn't. It's both less comfortable-looking and yet easier with both the arm and its surroundings. "That's the second time today. I think something about the smell keeps. Bringing him out. With new memories."

Now its gaze lands on her face, to say hurriedly, "Scarlett. There was a time before HYDRA. When I didn't belong to them." This is a major revelation to the Soldier, okay, even if Scarlett and literally everyone else pretty much assumed that already.

"We?" Him and the 'Sergeant'? She was still getting used to the fact that they could communicate with each other, and yet seemed to be able to exist as completely separate entities, especially when they were in times of emotional strife, or caught in a bad memory.

"Yeah I, got that impression." That it was the scent that had brought him to the surface. Scarlett not entirely sure how much Tinman even remembered about the other one being in control. Wasn't sure how much she should even be telling him, just in case it pushed him over the edge.

He'd see no surprise in her eyes at his words, Scarlett nodding slowly and trying to muster up a small smile. Of course, she'd figured that much out, but it had to be progress to see that he had as well.

"You caught that, huh?" It cast everything he said to her in a whole new light, all the things he thought about himself. Like how he wasn't a real person because he didn't have family or friends. Here was his proof that he existed outside of the lab, whether he was ready to embrace that or not was another matter.

"Do you... get what all that means?"

"Yes. And Crowley, since the first memory malfunction with the Sergeant's memories was with him. He calls him 'the Sergeant person'." Amusing. Crowley talks funny. (You're one to fucking talk.) "Crowley doesn't know he's always there, though." Which does make the Soldier a little nervous. Scarlett has reacted surprisingly well to that information, but Scarlett has similar experiences, with dreams and that elder vampire person. Crowley might not react as well.

The Soldier rubs at its cheek again, still feeling the phantom sensation of the mask. Standard mission equipment, sure, but not pleasant. "I'm still working on. Placing things. It's new. It's. Overwhelming, the way he thinks. And the memories don't have a lot of detail. Just the immediate shit. Like he'll think about people from his unit in passing, but I don't get faces or names. It's frustrating. For both of us."

(And I still can't remember my fucking name.)

The Sergeant is still careful not to say their name, even in the privacy of their shared headspace. The Soldier still needs that remove.

Her brow furrows, Scarlett doing little to disguise her obvious unhappiness at the fact that he was still involved with Crowley but short of ordering him - which is something she refused to do to him - there wasn't shit she could do about it. That didn't mean she hadn't considered threatening the other man (or whatever he was) into keeping his distance, but where Tinman was concerned? He was just going to have to deal with her grunts of displeasure every time that name came up.

"It's probably going to take some time. You don't have to figure it all out overnight." The brunette more sure that pushing wouldn't help, yet already in the short time she'd known him she'd seen small changes in the person she thought of as 'Tinman'. It was like watching flickers of humanity return to him as he the two halves slowly tried to merge. "You might be able to, learn a thing or two from each other."

A month and a half isn't, objectively, a long time when it comes to counteracting the conditioning of a literal lifetime. But things are still changing, slowly but surely. One change being that today, the Soldier can deal with her displeasure without the urge to try and do something about it, and it will do so mostly by ignoring it. It can be a stubborn bastard, and Crowley is one of its two (2) designated friends in Beacon. Not giving that up just because the two of them can't get along. (If and when the threatening ever happens, there might be a freak-out, but for now? Ignoring works just fine.)

"Yeah. Like maybe not calling someone a 'dame', Jesus. At least I know where all his slang comes from. The memories are from the 1940s. World War 2." Guess how much older the Soldier is than you, Scarlett? Come on, guess. "And he's the one who knew what a hamburger was. And a-- milkshake." Small things. It's not entirely ready for learning big things from the Sergeant yet-- just knowing that there was a time Before HYDRA is big enough to adjust for now, without getting into the implications.

Flackback Fun Time

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