losthunter | Helping a Friend In Need

Steve's impeccable in his timing, PINpointing to the coordinates the minute it's hit the designated time and looking around once before spying the artist and approaching the table that's been set for three.

If there's a place set next to Hunter that will be the one Steve takes.

"Hope you weren't stuck waiting here for long." Even though Steve's on time and knows it, he needs to be polite. It helps ease his nerves a bit.

With only three chairs at the table, it is easy to select a chair next to Hunter. The other man smiled at Steve. "No. You are on time."

Another enters the cafe. The woman is dressed fashionably. She has long blonde hair. And appears to be in her mid-30s.

She looks around the room, until she sees Hunter. April smiles.

"Hello Hunter." She approaches the table. "And you must be Steve."

"Miss Kent?"

They've only met once before in the Nexus briefly if he's right, but Steve still looks more than a little bit startled. He feels a bit underdressed suddenly, in his teeshirt tucked into jeans.

"I..sorry. It's good to see you." He's looking at Hunter now. They know each other?

"Good to see you again." April takes her seat at the table.

"You have already met?" Hunter laughs a little.

"We had a good conversation about education. And art." April smiles.

"I actually know April... because I used to hang out a lot with an older version of her son, Will, who had visited the Nexus when I first arrived," Hunter explains to Steve. "It was because of Will that I learned about April's unique abilities. And how she helped me survive a magical curse."

An older version of her son?

That sounds kind of confusing, actually, but Steve's seen enough time travel (accidental or otherwise) and dimension hopping not to ask any questions about it. He might not understand it, but he believes it to be true.

Some of Steve's unease lifts a little bit at knowing he's not going to be talking to a complete stranger about this.

"Has Hunter told you anything yet or...?"

"He just mentioned that I might be able to help you, by using my special abilities. But not how." April smiles. "It never came up, when we talked. I am psychic, telepathic and a telekinetic."

"She helped heal my mind, when I was under a curse," Hunter adds.

Steve shifts uncomfortably in his seat at her skill set and nods ever so slightly. That all sounds handy but also a bit worrisome. He's had his mind played with before by Wanda. It was not an enjoyable experience.

He's going to take the opportunity when the waiter comes back to get himself a cup of coffee, something to hold and sip and ease his nerves a bit while they talk.

"So...I'm...I'm not the one who needs help. It's...it's a long story."

When the waiter comes around, Hunter orders a hot chocolate, and April orders tea.

Hunter reaches over to take Steve's hand in his own, showing his support.

"Just tell us as much as you can."

"Bucky's...even when I had nothing, I had Bucky. We grew up together. When my Ma passed away from tuberculosis, he moved in with me so I could afford to have a place to live after I got kicked outta the apartment she and I had been living in."

Steve stares down into his cup of coffee for several minutes. Nearly startles when Hunter takes one of his hands. It eases some of the tension in his shoulders. He nods.

"He's a soldier too. Sniper. I rescued him and his regiment from a Nazi laboratory and base. I didn't know it then, but they'd already started experimenting on him." He talks about how after that Bucky was the only one able to keep up with Steve on the missions. About the train hijacking that went wrong. Bucky falling off and plummeting down the mountain pass.

He chokes up then, breath seizing in his throat. Takes a moment to clear it and swallows down a gulp of coffee.

"I didn't see him again until about a year after I woke up in 2015, New York. Though I didn't realize it was him at first. After everything they'd done to him."

April listens carefully to Steve's story. She lets herself get lost in the story, letting his emotions speak for him. She is also tuning herself to him... so that her voices can guide her.

In a way, she is there, beside him, as he watches Bucky plummet down the mountain pass. The sense of loss is very tangible for her.

"What did they do to him?" She asks, softly.

"They took his left arm and replaced it with a metal one. Ripped into his brain and did something. Programmed him. Took away his free will and replaced it with The Asset. The Winter Soldier. Sent him out on assassinations and then put him back under for another decade until they needed him again. Wiped his memory every time he started to come back to himself."

They faced each other in the street. He turned and looked at Steve and didn't even recognize him. Bucky? Who the hell is Bucky.

Five simple words that ripped Steve Roger's heart out and strangled the life out of it.

He refused to kill Bucky, on the helicarrier. Expected Bucky would kill him instead. But he hadn't. He saved Steve's life. There was still something inside The Asset that knew Steven Grant Rogers.

"Even when he got away from them, there was still a way to control him. Control his mind. He couldn't disobey. I...I couldn't save him from what they did to his mind. So he's under again. Safe in Wakanda."

April listens carefully again. Letting Steve's emotions paint the picture for her. So that her psychic abilities have a better understanding of the situation.

She can sense Steve's raw emotions when Bucky didn't recognize him. She can sense how this is still hurting him. Every day.

"Perhaps I can save him." April doesn't want to promise anything yet. "Would it be possible for me to see him?"

Steve tenses then, but April will know that it's fierce devotion and the urge to protect above all else that is reacting now. His kneejerk gut response to keep everyone away and keep Bucky safe. It takes looking at Hunter's hand in his own and checking his strength so he doesn't accidentally hurt the other one for Steve to relax. Just a little bit.

"Yeah. I..I can take you to him."

Hunter notices how Steve tenses a little. He just wants to support Steve in the best way possible. So he asks a question "Would you prefer me to stay here, Steve, or do you want me to come along?"

"Might as well come."

It's not that Steve doesn't trust April, but he knows Hunter better than her and a second set of eyes keeping a lookout will make him feel marginally better. Once they've paid for their drinks Steve will fish out his PINpoint.

"Alright, hold on to me."

Bip.

It's warm here. Anyone dressed for the Winter weather in the Nexus is going to be uncomfortably hot in a matter of seconds. Steve is quick to shed his jacket over a nearby chair but he wasn't much more bundled than that so it won't bother him much.

They're outside around the corner from a large sleek modern looking building. It's a bit of a contrast to the deep African jungle surrounding the area. Steve has the codes to get inside the building, and further inside to the nearly empty hospital room deeper inside the complex.

Inside a cyro-tube is a scruffy looking man with pale skin and dark hair. Despite being asleep now, there are dark circles underneath his eyes. Steve approaches carefully and places his hand on the glass.

"Brought you some visitors today, Buck." Steve knows his friend can't hear him. It just makes him feel better to talk to Bucky.

Hunter is a little glad that Steve still wants him to come along. He might not have special powers like April does, but he wants to be there for Steve.

The change to a different climate is a little startling. Hunter strips off his winter coat. April had no winter coat at all, and her dress allows her to be dressed appropriately for the different climate. But she does put on a pair of sunglasses.

They both follow Steve inside the building. And to the empty hospital room. April carefully approaches after Steve. She smiles softly at the man sleeping in the cyro-tube. "Hello Bucky. I am April."

"And I'm Hunter." The other man understands how Steve can feel connected to his friend, just by speaking to him. Talking to Jim while he was in a coma was the only way Hunter got through that difficult time.

April places her hand on the cyro-tube. "Bucky. I am going to look at your mind. I just want to see the extent of the damage."

With her explanation said, she channels her psychic powers to reach out to Bucky's mind to as she described.

"Don't worry, Bucky. She's a friend."

Again, Steve knows Bucky doesn't hear any of it. But it puts him at ease to say it, and it's a good reminder to himself that April isn't here to hurt his friend. He glances back at Hunter before nervously folding his arms over his chest.

Meanwhile, for April, there are fifty years of dark memories to sift through. Torture he's been subjected to. Mind control. Programming of the human mind. Assassinations he's been forced to commit, sometimes even on people he knows. Used to know, anyway.

It's a long dark road in James Buchanen Barnes' mind, full of missing pages that have been forcibly ripped from his memories and implanted script that has no place in a human's mind.

April has been around a lot of people with dark memories. But even this is a lot for her to sift through. She can feel the torture. She frowns deeply at the memories of the mind control. The memories of the programming is what turns her normally blue eyes to a deep blood red.

The assassinations that he was forced to commit make April extremely sad for this young man. And especially as she recognizes the fact that some of those people were people that Bucky would have never hurt, without the mind control forcing the issue.

She sorts through the implanted script carefully, looking for the ties to his mind, looking for the clues on how to detach his mind from the mind control.

"His mind is incredibly damaged, Steve." April takes another careful look at the damage. She extends her powers to sooth the troubled man's mind to see if he will allow her access. To carefully check to see if there are any mind control triggers that would prevent someone from helping him.

Steve's seen the eye thing before in Wanda when she's using her own powers. It makes him shift on his feet, but his gaze is still mostly on Bucky's face behind the reinforced glass.

Ten words repeat themselves over and over wherever April turns to study the programming rooted in Barnes' mind. They're in Russian, but Bucky knows the meanings of these words.

Zhelaniye. Rzhavyy. Semnadtsat’. Rassvet. Pech’. Devyat’. Dobroserdechnyy. Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu. Odin.

Longing, rusted, furnace, daybreak, seventeen, benign, nine, homecoming, one, freight car.

Over and over. Everywhere April turns the words repeat. Every time he's been made to take a life. Every time he's been made into The Asset. Every time he's been stripped away to nothing.

Do you comply, Soldier?

Do you comply, Soldier?

I comply.

"I have found the programming rooted in his mind." April frowns. "It will take time to disconnect his mind from the mind control attached to ten words. It is these words that have forced him to be the Soldier they had wanted."

"He remembers everything he was forced to do." She looks up at Steve.

"I would like to contact his consciousness now. I can bring you into the mindscape, if you wish. We should be able to talk to him there, without ever waking him. Would that be alright?" April is the kind of telepath that makes sure people know what she is doing, before she does it.

"Yeah, he does."

Steve knows that all too well. He remembers telling Bucky it wasn't his fault. That he couldn't help himself. That he wasn't in control. Remembers Bucky looking up at him with the saddest eyes.

"No, but I did it."

His breath catches in his throat and Steve has to swallow several times before he can manage to say anything. This is harder than he thought it would be. Much harder.

"I..yeah, that might be for the best. He won't trust you."

"I am going to touch your mind... and then slowly bring you into his mindscape. I would like you to think of a place where you and Bucky would feel safe. Where he would feel comfortable." April explains.

"I will keep watch over you both." Hunter notes softly.

April focuses her powers on Bucky's mind. First she reaches out to Steve's mind, slowly merging his image of a peaceful mindscape into Bucky's mind. Then she brings a mental projection of herself and Steve in that mindscape.

Finally, she reaches out to Bucky's conscious thought. Waking him up, but keeping a focus on keeping the mind control and their influence shielded away from the mindscape. She just wants this to be as calm as possible for Bucky.

"Thanks, Hunter. Thank you." Steve reaches out with one hand and touches the glass of Bucky's cryotube. Leans forward and rests his forehead against it and breathes deep. The glass fogs with his breath but Steve can still see Bucky sleeping behind the glass.

"If something happens, bring me back out of it, please." He shuts his eyes. Tries to do what April instructed. His first instinct is Home, their tiny Brooklyn apartment and their old bodies the way everything should have been. But he knows it will only upset Bucky. He's not that man anymore. He doesn't even remember being that man most of the time.

Instead Steve focuses on the dirty apartment he'd rescued Bucky from when everything went to shit. Bucky's safe house with the books and magazines and newspaper clippings of Steve. The dirty windows and tiny bed with only a mattress covering bare springs. Floorboards that creak with every step. The crisp breeze blowing through the apartment and the paper bag of plums perfectly ripe Bucky's brought back from the market.

Steve sees April first; she's standing in the doorway and nodding to him. When he looks down he sighs in relief that he's been able to imagine himself in his new body. It's harder to think of this as His, even after all this time. Bucky's asleep on the mattress, curled up and laying on his metal arm. He sits up when Steve moves and with the help of April's magic doesn't immediately engage fight or flight mode when he sees where he is. This isn't right. Where? How?

"Easy, Buck. You're still in Cryo. You didn't hurt anyone. I...I had to come see you, is all."

"Steve...? What's going on. Where--who is that."

April can sense Steve change his mind from his first instinct, to a different mindscape. It is his thoughts that she uses to create the psychic reality. One could hear the floorboards creak or feel the crisp breeze, but it is only because of the strength of the psychic reality.

"Hello Bucky. I am April Kent. A friend of Steve."

"He asked me to help. But I wanted to talk to you first. Share with you what I have learned and see what direction you want to take."

Bucky's clenching his jaw, pale face regarding April with suspicion. His eyes are more alive than they used to be. Than April would have seen in Steve's memories. But he's still a broken man. He turns to Steve again but says nothing.

Steve nods ever so slowly and only then does Bucky relax ever so slightly. He looks down at his arm and closes it into a fist. Opens it again.

"Is this real?"

"Sort of? April's a magic user. Like Wanda, sort of. She was able to let me talk to you while you're sleeping. Wanted me to imagine us somewhere safe, but I knew if I imagined us back home you'd be afraid something was up so.." Steve gestures around them. "At least this place you know."

"Damn it, Stevie...I told you I can't trust myself." He looks positively despondent when he looks up again. "You have to let me stay gone."

"That's why we're here, Buck. April might be able to help with the.." Steve gestures to his own head. "With all that."

Dark eyes turn and regard April again. Take in what she's said to him.

"Talk."

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