garbage all the way down (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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hydratrashmeme2015-09-09 07:23 pm
trashmod) wrote in hydratrashmeme2015-09-09 07:23 pm
Dumpster #3: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Holy shitballs, look at us go. Welcome to Captain America fandom's resident wretched hive of scum and villainy: ROUND THREE. AKA Bad Guys Do Dirtybadwrong Things To Your Faves, AKA the Hydra Trash Party kinkmeme. As usual, BLANKET NON-CON AND NSFW WARNINGS apply: just assume going in that everything in this landfill is unfit for human consumption.
Rules in brief: don't be a jerk except to fictional characters, warnings for particularly fucked-up garbage are nice but not required, thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor's kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two, off-topic comments may be chucked out of the dumpster at management's discretion, management's discretion decrees that omegaverse, soulbond AUs, D/s-verse, non-superpowered AUs, and dark!good guys AUs are off-topic.
[Round 1] [Round 2] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained bygreenkirtle)] [Round 3 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]
Round 3 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 4.
Rules in brief: don't be a jerk except to fictional characters, warnings for particularly fucked-up garbage are nice but not required, thou shalt not judge the trashiness of thy neighbor's kinks unless thy neighbor is trying to pass off their rotting banana peels and half-eaten pizza crusts as a healthy romantic dinner for two, off-topic comments may be chucked out of the dumpster at management's discretion, management's discretion decrees that omegaverse, soulbond AUs, D/s-verse, non-superpowered AUs, and dark!good guys AUs are off-topic.
[Round 1] [Round 2] [Fill post] [Chatter post] [hydratrashmeme Pinboard archive (maintained by
greenkirtle)] [Round 3 in flat view (comments in non-threaded chronological order, most recent last)]Round 3 is closed; comments and fills in existing threads are still welcome, but all new prompts go to Round 4.
Mini-fill: Out of Focus [Epilogue]
(Anonymous) 2015-10-09 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)----
Finally, the picture was out of his head. Bucky closed his eyes and rested his head against the back of the couch. With the weight of the image gone, he can finally think again -- process the events of the day properly. Steve had made a particularly nice dinner that night that Bucky should really thank him for. And he was pretty sure he'd rejected Steve's overtures in bed this morning, so now that his head's clear again, he should really make it up to Steve tonight....
Bucky leaned over to nuzzle in Steve's shoulder, and found it stiff and unyielding.
Bucky sat up instantly. Steve sat stiffly beside him, fists clenched and resting on his thighs, right hand holding a pencil that he'd snapped. For Steve to be this stiff -- whatever was in his head was Very Bad. Another victim of assassination? Maybe the look on Howard's face when....
Then Bucky caught sight of the sketch that was laid carefully on the coffee table. It wasn't a victim, it was him. Bucky shivered. It was *that* moment. He'd forgotten until now, but...
"You said this was the moment when you decided to stop existing." Steve said quietly beside him. "When you gave up."
Bucky swallowed. That was true, but also much more complicated. And even though half of it was lost in the mess of his memory, this was something that Steve needed to understand. Something that he needed Steve to understand.
"This was... early. They'd amputated my arm but were still working on different prototypes. They told me that you were dead, and that everyone thought I was dead, so ... it was just me." Bucky gently touched all his bruises in the picture. Funny how he didn't remember any of that part. "This... this stuff wasn't particularly new. I'd long gotten used to the everyday torture stuff, and it always healed. They'd keep me in the dark for a couple of days, then pull me out and the torture happened again." He chuckled. "I was like Prometheus -- stuck on the rock -- couldn't do anything about the vulture, but it couldn't exactly kill me, either."
Bucky picked up the sketch and leaned in to Steve, pushing him and feeling him loosen a bit. "But this one time... they threw me in like usual but forgot to close the food latch, so light came in and reflected off the two-way mirror in the back." He didn't even know he was in a converted interrogation room until then, and that he was being watched the entire time. Not that that's hardly surprising. "It was the first time I really saw myself, my whole self since ... well, since London."
“And seeing myself like that... at first I didn't even recognize myself." What had gotten to him the most was the stubble, actually. Bucky had always stayed clean-shaven for as he could remember. "And seeing the actual physical evidence of what they'd been doing to me --- I realized that they weren't going to give up, that even if this current batch of HYDRA got bored or whatever, there'd always be another batch. They're right, you know ... it doesn't do much just to cut off the head of an..."
"...ideology" Steve said, grimly. Bucky shrugged. He was going to say "institution" but Steve always thought about these things differently. And at this this shows that Steve was thinking about what he was saying.
"So when I saw myself like that ... I knew that I couldn't win. That even if I kept fighting and refused their demands until I died, that's still not winning. No matter what, I wasn't going to see my family again, or really do anything else a normal person would. As far as anyone was concerned, Bucky Barnes was dead." Bucky could feel Steve trembling from emotion beside him, but he kept going.
"In fact, the only person who still cared that I was still Bucky was me, and at that moment, I didn't care very much." Bucky shrugged. "So I decided to stop. It was easier that way, to give up the stuff that was important to Bucky that wasn't doing me or anyone else a jot of good. For all this time, I'd been clinging to my name, my serial number, but the man in the mirror wasn't Bucky Barnes. I didn't even know it until I saw myself in that reflection, but I'd stopped being Bucky somewhere in the middle of all that had happened." Bucky remembered the clarity of that decision, the reassurance and calm that came from realizing that Bucky Barnes didn't matter anymore.
Steve caught him in a tight hug and Bucky almost laughed. Steve could be such a sap sometimes. He responded by pressing reassuringly into the embrace. "It's all right, Steve. *You* remembered Bucky Barnes. And when you did... suddenly it started mattering again." Bucky thought back to the helicarrier. "Sure, I gave up on Bucky, but you didn't."
Re: Mini-fill: Out of Focus [Epilogue]
(Anonymous) 2015-10-09 11:14 pm (UTC)(link)You also did a wonderful job with the tricky shit I couldn't figure out for the prompt, like why and how is this even happening?, explaining it with Bucky's dissociation and preoccupation with his recovered images. I loved that this is a regular thing they do together, that it's something Steve does all the time to help Bucky out. Some of your other choices for things he's drawn for Bucky -- ouch!
Really nicely done! Great minifill!
Re: Mini-fill: Out of Focus [Epilogue]
(Anonymous) 2015-10-10 12:58 am (UTC)(link)Okay I'm going to go off to cry about Bucky now.
Re: Mini-fill: Out of Focus [Epilogue]
(Anonymous) 2015-10-10 04:37 am (UTC)(link)I also love, as the OP pointed out, that you give us two very different perspectives on the same scene.
It is interesting that Bucky wanted to stop existing when he realized that he was the only one who cared any more if Bucky Barnes was Bucky Barnes, and that he decided he wanted to be Bucky again when Steve remembered him. We're often told (in the US, at least; I can't speak to other cultures) that we are supposed to be entirely independent and not care what anyone else thinks. It's useful in some situations, but not entirely practical. Humans are very much a social species, and it is nice to know that other people care about you. So on the one hand, I want this Bucky to recognize that he has value independent of Steve believing in him, but on the other hand I can completely sympathize with him deciding not to exist as himself anymore until Steve came along and remembered him.
Re: Mini-fill: Out of Focus [Epilogue]
(Anonymous) 2015-10-10 06:27 am (UTC)(link)"So yeah one thing I really enjoyed about this fill is getting to bring in the whole “Bucky’s mind is everywhere” flashback thing that Bucky does in the vault scene in the movie. I LOVE the idea of these scattered, disconnected, and uncontextualized mental images that keep haunting Bucky. As he’s recovering, he can slowly piece them together, but more likely than not, it’s just confusing and unsettling. A flash of a location – is that a place he was before the war, during the war, with the Soviets, or with HYDRA? A flash of a face – is that someone he killed, someone he worked with, or a random civilian? THERE’S NO CONTEXT.
And so I loved the proposal to get Steve to draw the particularly persistent ones. I can image the two of them studying the sketch afterwards, trying to place the image to a specific time and place. :) “Ah yes, these rooftops are clearly Eastern European pre-1990, but there’s some Italian influences as well as some Austrian influences, so I’m going to guess… Croatia.”"
And re: your second point about selfhood as defined by other people -- OH MAN that is SQUARELY in my Bucky feels. And I admit part of this is because sometimes I draw from the very Confucian perspective where you are defined by your actions in relation to others. But for Bucky in particular, I think his primary struggle has always been about how he defines himself in relation to others' expectations. Pre-war, he's the popular kid, the good student and the ladies' man -- because that's him performing up to societal expectations. And the special thing about Steve is that Steve gets to see him when he's NOT that. But then it's also easy to fall into being what Steve sees in Bucky: the good, loyal friend, the tease. Then during war, Bucky breaks a bit, and the tragic thing there is that Steve doesn't really notice, and still expects Bucky to be the same as pre-War. So Bucky performs as the Sergeant and Best Friend who always as Steve's back. It's easier to trust Steve's vision of him than his own. But then after the fall ... what then? What does Bucky Barnes mean to HYDRA? Nothing. They just want his body as a weapon, an asset. And I think that Bucky *does* think that being Bucky has intrinsic value, it's just that in the face of all those externalities -- it's just SO MUCH EASIER to let go. Put it on hold. No one else cares anymore, and it's just SO MUCH EFFORT to maintain all the bits that make up a Bucky Barnes. So in a way, erasing himself is Bucky's ultimate performance.
Relatedly, I think you see a little of this "no one around knows the real me" thing from Steve in the beginning of CATWS, too -- the subsequent muting of personality can be attributed to depression, but also the fact that there isn't anyone around who can be like "you're a little punk who doesn't know when to stop". When everyone else treats you as Cap, you lose a bit of the Steve.
Re: Mini-fill: Out of Focus [Epilogue]
(Anonymous) 2015-10-10 06:41 am (UTC)(link)Re: Mini-fill: Out of Focus [Epilogue]
(Anonymous) 2015-10-10 03:33 pm (UTC)(link)