bakerstreet | My mission

My mission

YOU'RE MY MISSION

You're the kind of person who works best with a stone-set goal or a purpose in your life. Even if those duties were thrust upon you with no input of your own, even if that's all you know - especially if that's all you know - you find yourself most at home when you have a job and you do it. Unfortunately, though, what you've dedicated yourself has gone belly up and you're left reeling.

That is until you find a new mission: a person. They could have shown you kindness when you needed it most, they may seem like someone with a cause. A cause, that's good. That's what you need. You can serve this.

All of your focus, all of your resolve, all in one place; it's no wonder when your feelings begin to blur and "professionalism" and such is no longer the order of the day, if it ever was. So now, you're dedicated to them, which has its ups and downs. You have to protect them, keep them safe, keep them successful, and do what needs to be done for them - their dirty work, if need be - though they may not ask or want this. They especially may not want your brand of service. But loving them normally, of course, would be the most healthy way to channel all this, yet perhaps you're not sure how. You could learn...

...or you could continue with the mission.

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[Winter Soldier Days, anyone?]

There is a woman in the Winter Soldier's dreams. Blond hair, green eyes. She stalks him in the shadows, never fully walking into the light. But she doesn't need to. He sees her. He knows she's there. He always does.

"Winter God," she calls out in Icelandic, her accent thick, almost ancient. She always seems to misname him — or so he believes. But she knows better. Who he truly is. What he has become.

She also knows he doesn't recognize her. She's not even sure what he thinks she is, other than a ghost who refuses to go away.

Ghost sounds about right.

The dreams come to him most frequently when he's in the ice, between missions. The cryosleep makes it all that much easier for her to slip into his subconscious, no resistance to be had like that.

The trouble is, he remembers her when he's awake again. That face… he thinks he could never forget that face.

He quickly learns that mentioning the woman from him dreams gets him nothing favorable from his handlers. They don't like questions, so he stops asking about “the Angel”.

In a way, there is a sort of peace in his frozen nap time he does not know any other time. He wonders if it has something to do with... her.

The dreams with her in them feel more real than the muddled mess of memories that can't seem to unfold no matter how hard he tries to make it.

“Who are you?” he asks, and this is the first time he's even tried speaking to her, too curious now to keep ignoring her when she just keeps coming back.

Edited 2024-03-08 00:04 (UTC)

She's surprised that he answers her. He never does.

And try as she might to squash the glimmer of hope beginning to bubble inside her chest, she's unable to. She so desperately wants him back that she's resorted to this, even if her efforts might just amount to nothing. Compared to whatever spell Odin has placed on his soul, her powers are limited; so is her influence, thanks to the spell that had been placed on her.

Slowly, she steps out of the shadows and into the light, green eyes taking him in. He looks so different in this cycle... yet she can still see traces of him, especially around the eyes. She can't help a small smile at that, and at the thought that he can at least see again, see her.

She doesn't want to overwhelm his mind and break the dream, though, so she keeps her reminders subtle. Her long, golden hair is in an elaborate braid, in the style he favored to weave himself, threaded with small silver ice-flowers. Her face is scarred, yet only from Baldr's flames; it's the face he knows, and she hopes he'll remember.

She stands before him in what appears to be a simple light blue nightgown with a long slit running up the skirt on her right side. She used to tease him that it was a matter of being practical, so she can draw out her dagger from its thigh sheath without obstruction. He used to complain that he was never going to get anything done with her looking like that.

"You are not going to believe me if I tell you," she answers. She doesn't want to play games with him — not those kind of games, anyway — but she also doesn't want to spook him. He doesn't even remember his present life, stripped away by whatever it is Hydra has been doing to him. How is he supposed to just accept a stranger's word that she was his everything?

Because that's who she is.

The green of her eyes is so striking it might have taken his breath if this weren't only a dream. It is only a dream, he thinks. What else could it be, if not? He doesn't really have memory enough–– from either life–– to be able to guess at that, unfortunately.

"I might," he tries to bargain with her. "I know... you're familiar." Speaking on a personal level is... strange. A little foreign, if he's honest. He doesn't do much talking anymore, except for mission debriefings. "I just don't know why..." and the pinch of his brow and the slight huff that leaves on those words show that fact frustrates him.

His eyes–– sharp as a dagger and blue as the ocean–– track her and he can't exactly help if there's even a little bit of a predator-prey feeling to it: that's just who and what he is in this life. A weapon other people use, without concern of what he wants; but weapons don't have feelings, or choices, or opinions, so why would they care, when they only see him as such?

Still. She moves with a grace he's not sure he's seen before. Or rather, he knows he has, if only from her alone, because he's sure he knows her. If he could just remember. "If you won't tell me... then, why do you come here... like this?" he gestures vaguely. "Don't you want me to remember?"

Funny how it sounded so much more like a plea for her to help him than anything else.

He's responding. This time he's actually responding, not merely existing. The flame of hope in her chest grows stronger, especially when she feels something close to emotion in his words. Perhaps, with a little more time and a lot of persistence, she'll finally get through to him.

Dreams are, for the most part, controlled by the dreamer. But he doesn't have enough memory to draw upon, and it's not actually forbidden for dreamwalkers to interfere. So she helps him along. A small push of magic into his subconscious and an ash tree materializes, bursting to life in middle of a landscape of nothing. It's the tree outside Valhalla, the one she'd climbed as a child and he after her.

She raises her arm to take hold of a branch, letting it carry her up as it continues to grow. Then she sits on it and gazes down at him, daring him to follow.

"I do want you to remember. But I do not want you to get hurt. You... are important to me." Her voice breaks a little at that, and she swallows. "Remembering is not easy for you."

Because this can't be anything other than a dream, he doesn't seem too bothered by the sudden appearance of the tree. He frowns as he watches it grow, and take her high up in the air right along with it.

Why does this feel... like something that is his, somehow?

He doesn't understand, but he wants to, and that is enough to drive him to climb up and up and up until he is in the branch just below where she'd perched herself. His eyes are on her the entire climb, and that stare is only more intense now that he's so much closer to her.

"No... it isn't," he admits with a deeper frown etching into his features at that. "Do... do you know why?" Why was remembering so hard? Could it really only be memory wipes he endures that keeps her away from him in his own mind?

She watches him intently as he follows her up the tree, seeing all the little facets of his different lives come together and the telltale things that make him him. That regal stance. Those warrior reflexes. Those fierce blue eyes.

"Your... handlers." She's not sure if calling HYDRA by name would make a difference to him, or worse, hurt him. "They tamper with your memories to keep you compliant." She doesn't know how aware he is of that fact, either, but it's the truth, and something much easier for her to dish out to him than their... other situation.

She continues, "But you are not only the Winter Soldier, or James Barnes." She pauses, hesitating, wondering if his mind will fall apart if she tells him too much, and the dream along with it. So she decides to try something else first, hoping to ease him into it. "Do you believe in reincarnation?"

He'd said to try him.

He tenses even at that word, a stiff jolt if tension in his shoulders, so it’s probably best she was vague as possible.

“I know that…” he says, a soft bubble of frustration in his words. “But there’s something else, isn’t there?” He doesn’t know why he expects her to have all his answers. Perhaps because he thought of her as an Angel for so long. Maybe he still does. Hard to say what he believes.

His brow furrows deeply at those words. Who else could he be? The question doesn’t leave his lips before hers lands on his ears. “I…” he frowns. There is something of a tug between the answers, “Yes…?” Unfortunate that it sounds more like a question than a confident answer. “I mean… I don’t kn—” he snaps his mouth shut. Somehow all possible answers to that question feel right. Deep down in a way he can’t figure out how to name.

“…do you think you can simultaneously believe in and completely discount something like that at the same time?” Are any of his words even making sense anymore?

"Ja, I do." She's not just saying it to make him feel better. She truly does understand, having seen enough of that duality among the Dead. She tries to put it into words for him: "The mind can forget things, especially when it gets too much. It shuts down to protect us from the worst of the dangers. But the body... remembers."

She shifts, sliding along the branch a little more so there's room for him should he wish to join her. An invitation, not an order. He's always had little by way of choice, hasn't he? Long before he even became the Winter Soldier.

"You had another life, before this one." Her tone is soft, almost wistful. She's not forcing him to believe, only appealing to that part of him that hasn't completely discounted the possibility. "We met when we were children. My father sent me to live with your family. I hated it, but I couldn't just leave, so I would hide in a tree to get away. One day, you found me."

She closes her eyes, overcome with emotion. It both feels so long ago now, and also only yesterday.

"You would always find me."

She isn't placating him; he isn't sure how he knows that, but he does. Bone deep, no doubt, that isn't what her answer is, but he doesn't know why he feels so strongly about that.

He doesn't know how to respond to choices, not anymore. Not like this. If anything, something that feels like a choice just makes him think it must be a trap. So he doesn't move to join her, even if some distant part of him wants to, that part is too quiet, too weak to break through the conditions he's been under.

Who was I? The words scream inside his mind, but he can't seem to make his mouth form the words. There were others, too-- Who is my father? Why did yours send you away?-- but they didn't feel as important as that first one.

Instead, he manages a different one altogether, "Where are you? I don't think I've ever seen you when I'm awake."

A shadow crosses her face at his question, her mouth twisting like she'd tasted something foul.

"We have the opposite problem," she says after a moment. Her tone is surprisingly much calmer than the expression on her face and the fire in her eyes, though she's only reining herself in for his benefit. She doesn't want the connection to break. This is as far as she's gotten with him all this time.

"My mind is free, but my body is trapped. Your father made sure of that." She laughs then, and it's the hollow, bitter laughter of someone at the brink of falling apart.

A slight frown creases his forehead when her mouth twists like that. No. He doesn’t like that. Likes even less that he’s somehow caused it. And doesn’t understand any of those feelings at all, all at once.

Pieces of the story are coming together, slowly, but it’s only the very outside edges of the puzzle. The picture is so far from complete, he still can’t quite make sense of it all.

“Why?” A question that sounds like that of a child still learning the world and how it works. And one so loaded despite only being a single word— Why did his father trap her? Why did he hate her so? Why didn’t he just want happiness for his son? just to name a few.

The truth might be a long story, but she can distill it into a version she knows he'll understand. What an irony, for him to be destined to keep living through the same tragedies.

It has to stop. She will make it stop. She'll defy fate and the Norns themselves if she has to.

"You were your father's greatest weapon." Much like what the Winter Soldier is to HYDRA now. Then the ghost of a smile flickers across her face, a small uptick of the corners of her mouth. "And I took you away from him."

The smile vanishes as she presses her lips together into a thin line before continuing, "He destroyed my home, killed my people, and banished me to get you back. When he realized he couldn't control you anymore, he had you killed and your soul bound so you could never find me and be with me. If he couldn't have you, nobody else could." She snorts. "He believed I was trying to take over his throne through you. He could not fathom that I simply loved you."

I still love you. But that might be too much, so she doesn't say it, though her gaze softens as she watches him grapple with the truth and its horrors.

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My mission

Bucky Barnes | MCU

that au we talked about but hear me out ok

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