Routine Adjustments, Catch-All Log for February [Open+Closed prompts]

[worthallthis]

characters: Soldat etc, open and closed prompts
location: Various, see each prompt
date/time: February 4 - 15, non-event stuff
content: Some new additions to the usual routine, some quiet grieving, and some dancing
warnings: Just the usual Bucky shit


I. Expanded Patrols, All Over + Invincible [Open]

With downtown open, and so far away in the snow, patrols take a little longer. Soldat spends a week in early February balancing locations until they find the optimum route for the morning and afternoon patrols (or, the 0500 and 1600 patrols, since there's no real morning or afternoon in a world of endless night). After that, snow and ice or not, they can be found reliably following one looping path or the other, depending on the time of day. Sometimes with company, sometimes not. Sometimes stopping at the scrapyard to give the dog-spirit a treat and sift through the junk in search of something useful. Sometimes wandering the halls of the school, wondering what it would have been like to attend one. Sometimes glowering at the mall downtown with the stupid crocodile spirits in the lower level.

And after, lingering in the warm Invincible tavern room and kitchen, listening to people, playing music softly on their tablet, and munching idly on sandwiches or whatever Midge has made that day while they play a newly remembered boredom-dispelling game: solitaire.

They're willing to segue into poker, should anyone come to join them before they get up to clean their dishes in the kitchen and go home to sleep.


II. Expanded Hours, Gym [Open]

Wednesday and Friday, like clockwork, after the 1600 patrol along the downtown loop, Soldat is at the gym with Javert and Jason for weapons and survival lessons or, if no one shows up for those, sparring and practice. Because practicing outside is kind of dumb when it's freezing, and because the trees behind Aziraphale and Crowley's cabin are starting to look rather worst for wear, Soldat winds up adding another day during the week-- sometimes Monday, sometimes Saturday, whenever they have time. They just show up at the rec center and throw knives at things, slash at imaginary opponents all across the gym floor, and hit things with the flesh fist (the metal one doesn't need to practice; it's a machine).

Feel free to join in. Or watch and wolf-whistle. Whatever.


III. Fading Hope, Church [Open]

Between actual routine activities, Soldat has spare time. They don't normally like spare time, and try to find useful ways to fill it, but the first week or so of February, it's good that they have it, because they spend most of it in the church.

Scarlett, their very first friend since Steve Rogers, had an obituary. Scarlett has been gone for possibly weeks. Scarlett might still come back, and Soldat wants to be there when she does. Or at least find her as soon after as possible. Make sure she's all right.

So they sit in a pew near the back, feet propped unrepentantly on the pew back in front of them, and hold a notebook over their knees, sometimes writing (slow and halting, occasionally hasty scribbles), sometimes just staring at the blank pages. Waiting.


IV. Buck Up, Sad Boy [Closed to Misty]

Scarlett is gone, apparently for good, but. Well. They're not. And other people are not. And they can only wallow in Sad for so long before the Sergeant nags them into doing something they enjoy, even with the Asset apparently enjoying the mope. So after clearing out Scarlett's things from her old room (boxing up the more personal effects in their own room, distributing her canned food supply to the store), they head to Misty's.

They have a plan. This will cheer them both up, they hope. So they knock, tablet already out and clutched to their chest, and hope she's awake.


V. Dragged Along for Research [Closed to Sora]

The library is not really Soldat's favorite place, but here they are anyway, trailing along behind Sora, looking around at the books in a somewhat blank and lost manner. There's so damn many. How do you even know where to start.

Thankfully, that's what hyperactive teenagers are for. Start them in the right direction, Sora. Or at least start them somewhere.


VI. Wildcard

Got an idea not on here for something you'd like to do with Soldat before the memshare event? Hit me up, I am open to p much anything and everything.

Comments

[arsarcanum]

Sora flashes a deuce at them, distracted by this next photo he's focused on. "I checked it out. We have it for two weeks. If you need it for longer, you can recheck it." He puts that hand down and continues on his task. Click click! "I mean, if you're just talkin' about today, yeah, sure, but I bet two weeks is gonna be more than enough time to get through everything. It's just that you might need to return it." Can they do that?

[worthallthis]

"Oh." Oh, seriously? Two whole weeks? Two whole weeks? Soldat interferes with the photo-taking by actually hugging the book up against their chest. "I'll take a picture of every damn page. And I'll return it on time. I promise."

[arsarcanum]

Sora will flip his tablet up to his chest trying to get it out of the way, but sees what they do with the book and smiles. "That's what I did with the picturebook too." Speaking of... Sora has one last thing to bring up with them now that he, they, and the picture book are all in the same place, but he has no intention of harshing their high.

"Take your time with it. And if you ever need the book again, you can ask the Librarian for it, but sometimes they'll just have whatever on hand." Sora gives them a thumbs up. "See? It's random, but it's gotta be worth trying, right?"

[worthallthis]

"It's worth trying," Soldat says, still quiet and a little rough. "Thanks, kid." They never would've bothered with this, if not for him. Sora's the one who found the book. This is very much Sora's doing, here, and whether or not it brings back any concrete memories beyond familiarity, it's still a good thing he did.

[arsarcanum]

"Glad to help." Hey, he just likes seeing them happy. Self-esteem stuff aside, it's hard enough just living. Anything he can do to make it less of a pain to keep going is a step worth taking, in his opinion.

Sora's gonna... tilt over to the side, opening his picture book to a certain page, then swiping through to the photos app on his tablet. If they're determined to do this page by page on their own, then he's going to do a little bit of documentation himself. "Do you need any help? I don't know if these tablets have infinite storage, but if you run out of room, you can send stuff to me to keep." Sora's a pretty avid picture taker, but he hasn't run out of room yet.

[worthallthis]

"They have a lot of storage, but probably not infinite. And I have a lot of music files. Those are big." They consider the book thoughtfully. It's less that they want to do this on their own, exactly, and more that it's... well, it's personal. And they want to go slow. "I'll see. Have a USB drive, too, but it's also got my music on it."

Look, the USB drive is their backup. In case something happens to their tablet (or themselves, carrying their tablet) and their new tablet and has lost all their music.

[arsarcanum]

"That's smart. More room for your swing stuff. And dad music." Maybe he'll get one if he runs out of room for pictures... Or maybe he'll just give Alastair some cards and ditch the place in utter embarrassment in a few days. WHO KNOWS.

Anyway, he'll arrive in the picture book to the page he's thinking about, then swipe to the corresponding page on his tablet. He nods. "Thought so. It changed. Hey, remember that book I was talking to you about last month? The one that looked like my island?" He turns both book and tablet, setting them side by side. On the right is the picture he took last month, an illustration of a boy with familiar spiky brown hair, sitting on a leaning palm tree trunk and splitting a paopu fruit. On the left, in the book... the exact same image, except two people have joined him. One's a blond boy with a pair of glasses, and there's a slight dash on his mouth that looks a bit like a scar. The other... is a man in mostly black, with an arm that is clearly metallic in nature.

[worthallthis]

"Dad music," Soldat repeats, incredulous. The possibly-mock-insult, and mostly-mock-offense, at least shake them out of the emotional moment. "You. Who said my music slaps. Call my taste dad music."

Also means when they look down at the book page, they're distracted enough to only frown, and ask, "You had a friend with a metal arm back home?" Look, they're smart, but they don't always make the obvious connection when it's regarding themselves.

[arsarcanum]

"All music is dad music in forty years," Sora intones, but he's grinning. "Still a jam, though, don't get it twisted." Sora has nothing against dad music, although admittedly he finds very little classic rock appealing. It's just harder to dance to in a way he prefers!

Sora wasn't trying to look at Soldat expectantly, but really, he thought this part was obvious! So much so that he looks a bit wounded when it goes sailing over their head before... realizing... "Oh, I did, but he was never at the island." He's not really sure why Cloud wore that metal claw for a while when he clearly didn't need it.

"Anyway, that was gold, his hair was spikier than mine; this is silver, this is you, dude." He reaches over and taps their little illustration for emphasis. "You're the only guy with a silver metal arm I've ever met. And this is Jason - Jason Grace? It's his glasses." He'll then motion to the little picture on his tablet. Look, soldier! "It's changed. You and him weren't in there before."

[worthallthis]

As long as he's not making fun of Soldat's music. The book thing is probably more important. It's definitely more interesting than bickering about music. They look between the photo and the picture twice more, expression blank, then go, "Huh."

A beat later, slightly more intelligently once their thoughts are in order, they say, "So the books might change. Don't look added, so the Librarian ain't just drawing people in. They actually change." Which could be completely random, some fluke of whatever powers are at play in this place... or very important. "Any other changes?"

[arsarcanum]

He's not! At this point, the soldier's probably more cultured on that front than he is. Play that funky music, cyborg!

Sora shakes his head, peering at the illustration himself. "No, not that I could tell. I mean, we could check, but that one was so weird that it was the first thing I knew I had to compare." Still, he'll obediently start flipping through the pages, looking between them to check for differences. Indeed, they all seem pretty much the same except for the one. "Maybe it'd be a good idea to start checking on different books just in case they change."

"I didn't tell you what this book's about, did I," Sora says as he works, half distracted. "The paopu fruit legend? You know, the yellow thing I had in my hand?" It was a little starshaped fruit with a yellow rind, and there are more of them in the palm trees as Sora flips through the book, so they shouldn't be hard to spot.

[worthallthis]

It's possible that only books that were checked out change, or only books related to individuals in particular, or only books related to certain people. It's also possible that all the books change, regularly, and no one looks for the same book twice to check so no one ever noticed. "Definitely should test this. Can give the Librarian your book back, see if it changes next time you ask for it. I'll give mine back once I've got the pictures, and ask after it again later. Maybe try another couple of books. Unrelated to us."

Then, a pause, and they add, "And no, you didn't tell me the story. Is it important?"

[arsarcanum]

Sora nods! It's a pretty simple experiment to run, especially since he's here every week. It might be something to ask the Librarian as well, although he's not sure if they have a straight answer for that, nor does he really care. He's just glad that it is happening, to be honest!

"Big ol' fruits, about the size of my head. Big enough to share, which is the point." Sora gets to the end of the book, and flips back to another illustration with his little self, but this time overtly sharing a piece of his fruit with a little redheaded girl in a white dress. "If you share a paopu fruit with someone else, your destinies will be intertwined forever. No matter where you go or what you do, you'll always end up back together again." He smooths his thumb over the page, studying the two little figures.

[worthallthis]

Soldat looks between the two people on the page, sees Sora's expression without actively looking at his face, and can make the connection. "Kairi," they say. "Do you remember doing this with her?"

[arsarcanum]

Sora blinks. He wasn't trying to make a connection there! He was just enjoying the moment. "Finally got around to it when we were sixteen." He takes in a breath and flattens the page out. "I guess I didn't see the point before. Kind of thought it was an old superstition." Kairi always liked those things, though. Lucky charms, legends, mysteries.

"I dunno if it did anything, but back in Locke City, there were a couple of girls I think were her. Marina was the only one I ever really got to talk to." He shakes his head. "They all forgot after a few months. It happened, sometimes. The memories don't stick." That's another thing Sora is always trying to not think about - if the universe can give him memories here, it can probably take them away, too. Where would that leave Skyler? If they're dead, would Sora be able to come back to this body again, like he did that one November?

[worthallthis]

That would be Soldat's worst nightmare, worse even than this being some kind of HYDRA trick: losing all their memories again. The metal arm hums, a few gears tightening inside, echoing Sora's unspoken but not invisible tension at the idea. "I've been writing mine down," they say. "Memories. What I remember. Maybe you could, too. It helps me to not worry so much about them. And there's these, now." They pull one of the opals out of their pocket with the metal hand, rolling it between their fingers.

[arsarcanum]

Sora laughs a little. He's been regaining memories for three years and what's there is almost literally endless, and it still seems like he has so very much missing. The solution, of course, is to only write down what's important, but so much seems to be important that the task is pretty daunting.

Still. No reason not to try. Sora nods! "The stones definitely help. They make me remember that at least all the memories were real." Even if he's not, at least the memories are. "I just... hope that if I do disappear one day, Skyler won't backslide too far." He shakes his head vigorously. If that happens, Skyler won't even remember Sora ever happened. He'll just be some hopeless delinquent dead for a reason he won't be able to remember completely. That's too scary. He can't let Skyler be alone if that happens. (But at least he won't have a reason to be as angry anymore. Maybe that will calm him down. Convince him that cooperating with all these strangers is for the best.)

"Have you written down the stuff about dancing yet? That's pretty new, right?"

[worthallthis]

Sure, it's a big task. More for Sora than Soldat, of course, but there's nothing wrong with tackling in small pieces. Getting the most important ones down first, just in case. "That was one of the first ones I wrote down," they admit. "Started with the ones I thought were most important."

And apparently something they enjoy, something social, and something happy counted as among the most important.

[arsarcanum]

"That's super important." Sora hums a little offkey, touching a finger to the little paopu fruit in the picture. "That's the stuff that makes you happy, right? Then that's the stuff you should remember." Well... along with the bad, too, but that's more there to support the good. There's gotta be a little bad.

"There are your sci-fi books. And Steve, in your apartment." The little artist. "Are there any other ones?"

[worthallthis]

"Sometimes bad ones are important, too," Soldat says, carefully smoothing out their own book's pages and closing it. They'll save the in-depth memory-hunting for back at the house, since they get to keep this for two whole weeks. "They. Explain things. I wrote down a few bad ones right away, too."

Other happy memories. They think about it a minute. "Most of the happy ones come from here. Beacon. But Aziraphale found a Hanukkah memory. Mostly Steve, but was bringing him home, and heard others inside."

[arsarcanum]

You were just the delivery boy.

"Yeah, the bad memories are important too," Sora agrees. At the very least the pain helps him remember to think of the pain of others. "They both help you grow, as long as the darkness doesn't get you first."

He curls up his legs in this aisle, getting comfy. "Tell me what you know about Steve. I like him."

[worthallthis]

No darkness is getting Sora, not when Soldat is around, at least. They lean back a little against the shelving, tipping their head back and looking up at the rafters. "He was little. Shorter than you, real skinny." Their voice is slipping Brooklyn again, though it's not the Sergeant. The intonation and posture is still all Soldat. "Always gettin' sick, bad lungs or somethin'. But I don't think. I don't think he let it stop him, much. Kept gettin' into fights that he thought were, hell I'unno, the right thing to do. Fights that I had ta rescue him from. He was an artist, drew ads and shit to help pay the rent."

[arsarcanum]

Sora's face broadens with his smile. He does like Steve a lot, and hearing about him endears him to Sora that much more. What a live wire. "Brave guy." Not at all like him. Sora never really did care that much until his adventures rolled around. When he got the power to help without getting his butt kicked... suddenly, it was convenient to care. So he did. The rest was character development.

Steve doesn't seem to be the type to need character development. Plenty of that already. (An artist? Just like Jason and Naminé and Mary.)

"He celebrated Hanukkah with you, right? With you and your folks? Wonder if he celebrated Christmas with his folks, too. Or maybe your families celebrated Hanukkah together."

[worthallthis]

Steve was always pretty unique. The Original (tm) had been more like Sora, looking out for his own and not even really noticing anyone else who needed help, until Steve. Steve made the protect imperative expand to all good people, not just his people. "He was. Catholic? So maybe the first one." They can't remember anything else about Steve's family, if he even had one. Presumably he did.

[arsarcanum]

Special guy. Would've made a pretty good super hero. "Catholic, huh. Me too. Sort of." He nods. "Probably would've done both, if he had folks to go back to. I hope he did. He sounds nice. Like the type to have a pretty cool family." Or at least the type to have learned on his own how to care about others.

"Do you remember things in the right order?" Sora gets memories sort of all over the place, so when he comes back to them, it's always a bit of a fight to figure out when something happened. Mostly he only has context clues to go on. "Do you remember, like, which memory of Steve is the very first one you have and which one's the very last?"