1964-12-20 - Project Virgo: Waiting for Salvation - Redux
Summary: He's awake, and that makes life difficult for Bucky.
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rogue bucky 


.~{:----------: features=+views :-:}~.


Awake. Is he? Attempting to rise will end up with him down on his back again, pushed or pulled to remove any support that keeps him other than safely flat, for the most part.

Scrabbling on the walls is no rat. The grunt of effort, the extended arms of Evgeniy with their telltale wreath of tattoos isn't either. The hungry look shot at the woman clinging to Volya's back brings the hunter up to his full height, teeth bared, and threat rippling throughout the little knot of his kindred. Lazar eventually crosses his vision, pulling along a tired, weary ragdoll of a woman in an oversized sweater and shabby trousers. He might not even know her, if he's never dealt with Site I directly. Diane Ricoult has seen much better days.

"Fix him." Words given, a bag of medicines shoved into her hands, while she stands at the feet of the Winter Soldier. Anticipation holds the wolves at bay, but just barely.

Volya isn't alpha. He gestures short and curt. She sighs, and goes down to her knees. "You're hurt. They need me to fix this."


She's also seen him before, in footage, if nothing else. They filmed his captivity, they've filmed interviews done with him - he's got the kind of file that gets a drawer to itself, really. From ghostly foe to prisoner to probationary agent….and now this, one Lost Boy among the others. But he hasn't met her before.

No attempting to rise, he has sense enough on that front, at least. His voice is rusty, as he blinks at her. "….you're a doctor? They kidnapped you?" In English, this time.


Separate illusion from the conscious state. She is a petite, exhausted woman. Drawn features hollowed by absence of sleep and enormity of decisions, Diane is not in her best state. Her hands are swamped in her overly long sleeves, and she looks round at the five-in-one. Experience is on her side rather than the Winter Soldier's. Day in, day out, she dealt with two of them. These demons, probably unbeknownst to him, were part of the routine.

"I am not here to hurt you," she says slowly. Russian, not English, though she has the traces of her Quebecois accent. Lank hair pushed away from her forehead calls for an elastic band. "They asked me to come and help you. Oui, I'm a doctor." Doesn't matter it's in psychiatry and she graduated in France. Credentials are credentials, enough to tell her this is beyond screwed up.

Evgeniy watches from the crow's nest balcony. Volya stands guard like an angry dog. Lazar crouches, Nikita squeezed up against the original of them. The first and last. Together they're a unit fit to rip through anything not nailed down by the strongest mutant or supernatural powers, and not one will meet her eye. Or Bucky's.


He has no qualms about doing so - sunken but clear, those eyes, as he gazes at her. Fever has yet to set in, in earnest, so Buck's lucid enough, if pained. "I'm James," he says, quietly, as if she might not know - reverting to Russian. "A Russian agent tried to kill me. They got me out of harm's way." Not fast enough, it seems. There's still that smell of blood there, among the mustiness.


"Oh-four-nine," Diane hands the plastic bag back to the nearest of them. Volya gets the job no one ever asks for. Movement leads to a crumpling of paper, extracting a box, rummaging through a proper tureen of pills and bottles. He eventually pulls out the object asked for, a small orange vial with a plastic lid torn off without a second thought.

She takes the pills. Motions are twitchy and abrupt, in part from a tethering of deep weariness. "Antibiotics. Stops the infection." The rattle doesn't help and she presents the pills. "IV would be better but I can't set you up here." Her Russian has the feel of someone learned from a European expat, probably removed by a generation. "He says your lungs are bad. Any patching up or you already healing it? I know they don't stay down very long."


"We heal quickly." It is a 'we', now, and that's something….even if it's only tired surrender. "But it's bad, yeah. Water?" He could swallow the pills dry, but it'd hurt….and he's thirsty. "No pneumothorax, and they've bandaged entrance and exit wounds. I think I don't have any round rattling around in there, though I think the hip nicked bone."


"Forceps and tweezers in here. Sealed, open them for me." Precautions count. Diane rummages around while Volya is literally caught holding the bag, coming up with a large square; field dressing, which at least the younger ones understand to be useful for this. "No coughing up blood or bubbles? That's a good sign." She grimaces as she approaches, the other two watching her with burning pale eyes. Trust may be in short supply around here. Evgeniy keeps watch while Lazar does a pat down and they collectively come up with… a bottle. Unfortunately it's Pepsi. Oh well. She sighs at it. "Prop up. I need to check those dressings. No idea of what might be in there, but if they stuck to your wound, I have to remove that. You understand?"


"I understand," he says, quietly. "No coughing up blood after the first night, I think." Then he adds, as if to reassure her, "I've been wounded before. First time it was really bad was at Carentan." Which he doesn't look old enough to have done more than toddle around at, at most, but….she knows his real identity, his real age. "Could you get a message to Steve, maybe?" A hopeful lilt in his voice.


Toddling around that makes no mistake. The first aid material really counts as a gloss for the actual summary going on. Psychological profiling and a measure of how sane and with it the Winter Soldier seems is a rarity, even for O Division. She simply lacks the clearance to perform this kind of work, so take advantage of the situation when it arises. Any semblance of incongruity interests a little too much.

Diane goes done onto one knee, taking the tweezers from her willing helpmeet there. At least Volya makes no sound, and Lazar scowls. Pepsi is handed over by the Ghost; Bucky can choose to drink that or refrain altogether. Take as one will. He might get a glance at her uncertain expression, then the outer layers of fabric are pushed away with a clinical hand, exposing the sight of entry wounds, at least. If it comes to rolling the man over, she relies on the wolves of the Volga to do that. "Captain Rogers? Not very likely."

"She's dead to them," Nikita says. "Left her for dead like they did us."


He waits, for now, on the drink. Rightly suspecting that the act of putting him on his good side will be enough to have him biting his lip and going paler than before, even with Niki's help. The gleaming length of the arm is forward, rather than tucked underneath him, but the pressure on the graft pulls things into uncomfortable configurations. No whimpering, but there are those beads of sweat on his brow again, and his breath comes in shallow panting.

No lines of infection extend from the paired wounds in chest and hip, nor along the knife wound tucked under one clavicle. He's pale, of course, that's unsurprising. "Cap….isn't an agent of SHIELD. We can trust him," he says, breathlessly.


The flip will be slow, and that means the psychologist has to skitter out of the way. Space in the groove is very much a limited commodity. Metal scrapes against the nest and the concrete underneath, the protective wall behind and the converging barrier beside Bucky preventing him from reaching where he might want to go. Bodies do a fine job at least of keeping him from melting. "I am probably terminated," says a woman very clearly alive, unless the whole spectral ambiance from Lazar extends into the lands of the dead. It may be the truth. Does he consort with actual ghosts?

Her fingers hang back, holding the corner of the opened field dressing. Waxy paper splits and drifts away like the discarded caterpillar's carapace, moth wings opened. She produces the sterile, sticky dressing, holding a corner. The rest is limp, curling. After a few tries, she gets the shirt bindings open one-handed. Volya has to lean over, awkwardly, to give a little more assistance with the bandage until she can peel away any clothes. It gets applied to the exit wound the moment everything is cleared. "Sorry but there's no trust at all right now."


"If you mean fired from the job, maybe. But….why would SHIELD kill you? We're the good guys," Ah, naive belief. He trusts Peggy, still, no matter what. And no agency under her aegis can have gone wholly corrupt, right?

There's the march of goose bumps over his skin at contact with chill air, and Buck tries to stifle his shivers. "Then….I have a girlfriend. She's not with SHIELD. She'll be missing me. Will you find her….or at least let her know I'm alive?" Trying to talk to distract from the pain….and equally upsetting, the weakness. Winter's there, quietly hating it, despising the American driving the bus.


Her expression cannot even muster the effort to expose weariness, or form a lie out of wholecloth. She shakes her head. Pale skin shows the bruises under her eyes from an absence of sleep. Diane's hands do not shake very much. Pressing down hard on the sticky edges of the dressing might hurt. Probably does. It's the only way she can smooth out the seal so it at least sticks to the skin. Still she listens for any hint of wheezing and when it fails to transpire then count her mildly more satisfied with the outcome. "The rest, not too bad. Wounds are clean. The blood I cannot help you with. They…" She looks askance. No shadows there beside her in the immediate space, but how hard is it not to spook surrounded by near carbon copies? Tough, as it happens.

"I am out of play. They'll find me sooner than later," Diane says in a broken croak, head put into her hands. "The pati… they go wherever they like. Nothing holds them." Nothing holds one of them, anyways. Her shoulders tremble. This is so far past her paygrade.


A shuffle here, a whisper of the deck there. A louder thump in the distance doesn't make much impact, but the decision materializes in the absent silence on high. Off goes Evgeniy.


It does hurt, and he's silent with it, eyes closing tight, as she works. No tears, no sounds - nearly as silent as Volya, in pain and weariness. Complaint and lament haven't worked since the war. When she's done, he curls on his side a little, head pillowed on the metal arm, letting the echoes of it pass through, breathing with care. His hair's fallen across his face and he hasn't the will to brush it away, for now.

"No, nobody can keep them in," he says, quietly. "When they go looking." No mention of Matvei. He at least can stay safe. A glance to see what's got Genya's attention, and he's waiting, silent.


Seal, push. New shirt pulled down, though the piecemeal approach is more like wrapping Bucky in layers to be packed off through the USPS. Don't mind the hobo, he just happens to be a wanted criminal sent under SHIELD's private account. Nothing seems to be problematic there, will it?

"You need rest. More than this. Somewhere warm and dry. But you probably will not sit still so long." Diane sits back, putting her hands over her face to brush her hair back, and address the sticky, gummy sleep in her eyes. "I won't talk about this. Volya, please. That is all I can do unless he wants coffee." Not that she has anyone else to tell.

Genya isn't coming back any time soon. All the more apparent with the others standing guard, watchful. Waiting on him, more than waiting on their brother-in-arms.


He'd shrug, if it wouldn't make him twinge and twangle like a cartoon clock with a broken mainspring. "I've got safe places to be," he says, a hair wryly. "But I can't get there on my own, and the Gray Brothers here won't take me. What about you?"


Because they're all lurking around the corner with a particular stolen VW bus and a ticket to the north country, aren't they? Somewhere in Storm King Mountain state park, the echoes of laughter between a redhead and a mildly startled soldier still elude capture by hippies. Their poor vehicle.

Lazar isn't much for moving, even as Volya practically hauls the Quebecoise woman up by her elbow, guiding her back. Three, then, with two prone to moving. The Hunter bares white teeth, eyes a narrowed mask. At what or who is a matter of painstaking assembly of puzzle pieces. "She is done," he forces out, no more.

Nika and Lazar exchange glances, as much as one dares. "Best place. Sleep here," suggests the burlier of them, to the Ghost's lack of a response. It's particularly difficult to surmise their conversation as it happens in ways largely defined as silent. Something familiar but not comfortable. A shrug eventually lays out. "Where?"


Content to drift and listen to them. "Where've they been keeping you?" Bucky asks Diane, after a pause. Even prone and eased back down, the ceiling is doing some alarming swooping and rolling. As if the sheltering roof were that of a ship at sea.


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