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 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?"

[worthallthis]

Super hero. Oh, the irony.

"It's always out of order. No context. A couple I have specific dates for, mostly missions. Because I remember reading the briefing and there was a date on it. For anything with Steve... it's a guess. Don't know how old I was when I was captured. Don't know when I was born." They shrug a little, arm plates shifting but with a purr rather than a buzz. That's not a disturbed sound, just a settling sound.

But Steve memories. "The best I can guess. The one on the fire escape, we were adults. Before the war. Has to be the latest one I have. Earliest would be taking him home for Hanukkah. In the middle would be patching each other up after a brawl-- teenagers. Younger than you are, now. Not by much."

[arsarcanum]

Sora slowly nods, mentally putting the pieces together. "So wait, if the earliest was taking him home for Hanukkah... that means you were kids back then, right? You guys were childhood friends. Like me and Kairi and Riku." No wonder they kept getting memories of him back, especially if they ended up together into adulthood. He wonders if he would have done that with Riku and Kairi if they had the chance to grow up together.

The brawling sounds familiar, though, and patching each other up on top of that. Not that they were doing much but play-fighting each other, but when you're young and don't know how to pull a punch, things like cuts and bruises happen. "You two were together until the war... I guess that's when you two would have had to leave each other, wouldn't it? Because if Steve had asthma or something, he probably wouldn't have passed the physical." Unless there were accommodations for that sort of thing back then, but Sora isn't familiar enough with the history of the military for that. (There was a brief time when Skyler considered joining the military, but decided against it. Didn't want to leave home.)

[worthallthis]

"Oh, no. Definitely not. There's no way he could've gotten into the army. Basic would have killed him. Must've had to leave him. I'm. Pretty sure I got drafted?" There's a sense of frustrated futility to the Sergeant's memories, the sense that he'd never wanted to be there. "Or I might not've left him, either. Dumb punk needed looking after."

[arsarcanum]

Sora tilts his head. "You... getting out of the draft? I dunno." He's not really up on his history, but he's pretty sure that if one wanted to dodge the draft, they'd have to lie at the physical or be really rich and lie at the physical. The second kind of person didn't get in trouble for it. The first kind... Sora isn't sure what kind of person the sergeant was, and if he did lie, it's not like Sora would blame him, but he's pretty sure that he wouldn't lie just to be able to stay with one friend. (Would he?)

"Why do you say that you might not have left him? Like... if you remember being captured around then, then you were probably in it." There were probably Nazis in America back then, but considering the level of American paranoia, Nazi kidnappings don't seem likely to him. Unless, of course, Bucky's world is much more different than Sora's Earth than he'd first been lead to believe.

[worthallthis]

"No, I was definitely in the war. Rank of sergeant, designated marksman-- sniper, you'd call it. I didn't dodge draft. What I mean is. If I hadn't gotten drafted." They pause, looking back down at the cover of the book about Brooklyn, trace the grainy photograph lightly with one flesh finger. "Would never have signed up on my own. That's all."

[arsarcanum]

"Oh." Sora thinks about that, looks at the little photo... then down to the book, to the island and the trees and the ocean and its fruit. He can close his eyes and remember the heat on his face, how the sand felt under his shoes, under his bare feet. What Kairi's laughter sounded like when she was gulping for air, desperately giggling. It feels so real.

A war that they never wanted to be in. And friends they wouldn't have left if they had the choice. "Yeah," Sora says softly. "I get that."

[worthallthis]

Soldat lets the silence linger a moment more, then sighs and heaves themselves to their feet, offering Sora a hand up, too, if he's not fast enough on his own. They're gonna get started on taking pictures, back home. Enough loitering around in the library being sad messes. "Thank you, Sora. This is. This is really great."

[arsarcanum]

Sora barely even notices Soldat moving, although he does notice the shift in position in time to blink up at them. He looks down at the hand. Huh.

"So long as you remember you can do the same thing I did." He closes his own book and hauls himself up. He can take some credit for getting Soldat here and asking the Librarian for books this time, but he's more interested in them knowing that sometimes it's fun to take a stab at the unknown and hope there's something waiting at the other side. Sora doesn't think he does anything special! He's just used to holding onto hope.

[worthallthis]

Whereas Soldat's sense of hope died a long time ago, and taking initiative is pretty hard for them in general. The unknown isn't something they even like thinking about that much. But this was good, and a nice way to spend the afternoon-- minus the Asset's appearance, anyway. The rest of it.

"I'll try," is what they say.