|
  |
OOC Note: This scene segment parallels Our Kind of Traitor. At the point when Bucky takes a stab wound from Black Widow, the three unseen Bucklings take matters into their own hands and pull him out of harm's way. A deus ex this is not. It just proves how dangerous the wolf pack is.
Ghost, Ghost, Ghost.
A ghost implies a thing invisible. This is not invisibility, not truly. This is a sense of being pulled through the whisper-thin barrier of shuddering, terrible cold and cold ceasing to hold any definition at all. No transformative crash through a mage's gate, the transition feels terribly odd: dipping a finger through the broken film of ice on a winter pond or blowing away snow from a windowpane. Colour shifts hard blue, emphasizing whites with a distinct tinge gone cyan or sapphire or ultramarine. Light stretches starkly brighter. Dark dips darker, but keenly refined in detail. Take his native ability to see, widen the visible spectrum without going ultraviolet, and welcome to the world.
Lazar is fully in the flesh, such as there is flesh, hauling the elder brother up by the arms. Legs? Those are another matter for Evgeniy to manage. Nikita who yanks out the hilt of the dagger and looks at that metal projectile. Nothing like ice to do the heavy lifting, smacking at the electrical lozenge until the device pops free. If the knife won't do, the pry-bar effect of Evgeniy's lockpicks will.
His first, almost whimsical thought, is that this is death. Again. For real. Maybe final, this time, though it's never managed to stick before. Whatever cold world they've taken him in to….he's still wounded, and badly so. There's the well of blood at that hip, and the fish out of water gasping of someone who's got at least one collapsed lung. Consciousness is an iffy proposition, let alone speech. But there's the roll of eyes at them, gaze trying to take in all at once. It's not making any sense, not yet.
Death looks uglier, really. Neither is death entirely in colour in the same way this place is. Neither would death reach into the stab-wound and pull out the broken-off chunk. The sharp, fine point is hard enough for Nikita to extract, but he wastes no time turning on the bullet-wound with great care. Locating the broken pieces and extracting them are different degrees of difficulty. Evgeniy is comparably required to hold Bucky down against any shaking or resisting them. Lazar hisses under his breath, supporting the shoulders. The bullet casing, bloody, goes flying to the ground after the inert metal disk.
Staunching the hole comes next, and that involves a rip of cotton, stripping off the bottom of Lazar's shirt. The material packed into the wound isn't perfect and pressure will have to do the trick until they can make better than a sharply tied off bandage. Still, efficiency rules. That goes for the hip.
«Good thing Kyr did not see this. He might have punched something,» Nikita muses. «Nothing breaks you down.»
Lazar isn't buying it. Collapsed lung, that requires some work. «Shut up. No talking. Hospital?» Two heads shake.
«His Captain?» More shaking.
All of them….well, not all of them. But it's the first time he's seen them free and assembled in any number. Consciousness wavers and those exchanges are conducted in what feels like underwater depths - blue-skewed light, that pressure and lack of breath, and words gone strange and slurred. His body jerks in pain as they do what's needed to remove slugs and shards of blade, but it's all beyond his control….and there's a certain release in that.
Not until Peggy Carter moves will Volya disappear into the shadows. It's no trouble on his part to sneak away as the SHIELD director hauls off the redheaded assassin. Quick footsteps, rapid file, and he retreats into the gloom on a wide arc.
The three shrouding the Winter Soldier stop their discussion and stoop. Evgeniy switches places with Lazar to support from the shoulders, Nikita smoothly shifting to handle the weight of the legs. Ideally some kind of pipes and a sling to traverse the distance with a wounded Bucky would work, but the latent problem: their psychokinetic is over there, in tangible form.
A burst of movement and Lazar is off like a shot, a full parabola leap arcing over the tracks. He drops down and keeps running, circling around the spot where Volya should be. Tracing him should be easier, the light is much sharper. Playing tag with the Hunter, even for the Ghost, is a nightmarish proposition and hence their fallback plan. Nikita and Evgeniy retreat for yon access tunnel, never putting too much space between them. Slow and smooth. The pack can do that.
Tag, you're a ghost now. When the Hunter lopes up to meet them, Lazar's face is a mask and the device is with him. That flat, electrical one. Russian questions zip and slide back and forth, a decision finally made: «Get a doctor. Bring to the rooftop staging area.» Volya and Evgeniy to get Bucky there. Nikita and Lazar to hunt the unfortunate healthcare provider. Things go bad, get Adam. Why Adam?