Steve Rogers

Under the circumstances, he doesn't trust this Xavier any further than he could throw him -- not very far, going by the telling absence at his shoulder. They've stripped him, humiliated him, and he's meant to buy that they're trying to help?

No. He was supposed to avoid this, supposed to get up after that damned repulsor hit him in the back, but the seconds leading up to his blacking out are missing. It's only when his head slams against the bed in his attempt to break free, stars exploding in his field of vision, that he realizes Rogers must've got him with the shield. He bites down a scream, breathing hard through his nose as he continues his futile fight with renewed fervor.

"Don't have one."

Edited Date: 2012-05-24 03:46 am (UTC)

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I step in, leaning into Xavier's space, and pitch my voice very low. As badly as I want to talk to him, call him back, Bucky isn't at the wheel, here, and I know I would exasperate things were my presence known.

"Ask him what he's called," I suggest, then step away again.

Edited Date: 2012-05-24 03:54 am (UTC)

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"Alright. Then what are you called?" Charles says promptly, this time for Barnes' ears.

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"Don't play dumb with me, Chuck," he replies, baring his teeth in a cruel, ugly smile. Though his body doesn't relax against the constraints, he gives up on squirming, instead keeping his muscles taut, ready for any window of opportunity that might come his way. "You already know."

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They need a straight answer -- something, anything -- to get a clear reading on, but if even the simplest of questions is met with a dead end, Charles is no longer quite so confident this idea of his will work. Desperate to get something out of the man, he searches for a different approach. The conditioning was meant to be done by the Soviets; perhaps something as simple as a change of language might jog his memory?

"Humour me."

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His eyes widen in something like surprise. It's not the first time that he's heard Russian today, though Xavier sounds more fluent than that kid.

'You don't know what you're doing.' That's what he'd been told earlier, isn't it? For the first time, he's got to wonder if that wasn't the truth, the thought alone enough to send his mind reeling. His lips curl around a sneer all the same.

"...Winter Soldier."

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As much as he hadn't cared for it at the time, Charles is suddenly very grateful for all those instances he had to step inside a Soviet soldier's mind; it just might give them the edge they need to get through this. While it's too small a triumph to feel much relief, it's still a step in the right direction.

"And do you know where you are, Winter Soldier?"

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There's nothing to force him to answer truthfully, save for the ongoing threat that Tony might start to apply lethal pressure, and for about a second, he considers lying through his teeth just to test his luck. He doesn't know where this interrogation is going, still doesn't trust that they don't intend to kill him when all is said and done, but while every instinct would have him turn away from asking questions, those same instincts are less clear on answering harmless ones.

"...no."

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"His objective," I prompt quietly, concern lacing my tone for all that I try to keep it flat. Bucky's got a dark streak a mile wide, but that's not the same as this kind of hollow viciousness. Watching his features twist up that way doesn't just make me angry, it... hurts. It's wrong.

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He's observant. He's always been observant, though his memories extend only to that morning -- if it's even the same day. No longer thrashing around on the table, his breaths leveling out, it's easier to really listen. He missed it before, but now it's so obvious that he can't believe it slipped him by in the first place: there's someone else in the room and he's got a good idea as to who.

The illusion of calm shatters in an instant. His heart jumping up against bruised ribs, he fights to turn his head in a wild bid to see his real captor.

"Where is he?!"

Edited Date: 2012-05-24 05:12 am (UTC)

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Damn it.

"Not hiding anywhere," I say, and walk around to the side of the table that Tony isn't standing on. The side that's emptier on account of his arm having been removed. I can see McCoy reacting to something on the screen he's looking at, but I don't bother asking what. Just keep my eyes level on Bucky.

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With no EMP at his immediate disposal, there's no getting out of this by fighting a man in armor. If he's got any chance of escape, it'll be using that armor to his advantage. Enough pressure to the table could break it, and from there, it's just a question of finding a weapon... Provided he doesn't pass out first. As far as plans go, it's vaguely suicidal, but at this point, he'll probably end up dead either way. Might as well have some say in the matter.

Yet there's nothing controlled or dignified about the way he presses up against the tin suit, the effort grueling and frenzied in its attempt to force Tony's hand. Break the table and maybe he'll be able to complete his objective. Break the table and maybe he'll get out of this alive.

(He's in another room. A doctor stands at the ready, preparing to issue another jolt of electricity through his dead body, when, all at once, there's a flurry of activity: a speeding heartrate, a desperate struggle to breathe. Bucky sits up ramrod straight in the bed, unable to focus on anything beyond the excruciating pain in his shoulder, the sharp pinch in his chest, the bandage wrapping tightly around his ribs.

Who's Bucky?)

"You coward," he says, nearly laughing in his fury. "Is this the only way you think you can beat me? Strapped to a table?"

Edited Date: 2012-05-24 05:50 am (UTC)

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Jesus Christ.

There's no talking him down from this. There's no getting through this kind of blind rage. He's going to buckle the table if he can, and it's possible that he can.

The last time I went up against the Winter Soldier, he seemed indifferent or annoyed most of the time. He didn't get angry until I pushed him to remember who he was. And even then, when he pulled the trigger, point blank, even then there wasn't hatred like this, filling up his words and his eyes, coming off of him in waves.

"Bucky, we're gonna fix this," I say, the words falling out of me, just managing to pitch them over the racket he's generating.

"I swear it."

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notawastedlife

This was an uncomfortable room to be in. This was troubling business. His mind absently skittered around the subject of programming, of different kinds of programming. Could someone who could get into his Starktech get into whatever conditioning triggers were built into Barnes, make Barnes into the next edition of the missile?

Couldn't say. If they had the info, sure, otherwise, different skillsets. Maybe wanting a pattern where there wasn't one, because that would mean a single culprit still extant, rather than several.

"We're going to have fix some broken bones, too, if we don't put him under again," Tony said. "He's not exactly responding well, here. Doc?"

The nickname he would have reached for was Bones, but it didn't work as well when it was actually their nickname.

Edited (damn you tenses) Date: 2012-05-24 06:46 am (UTC)

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"Yeah, I can do that too," McCoy sighs, given that it's not something that he'd really like to do given that he still hasn't figured a way to amp up the power on the bone-knitter, so it's still only capable of light fractures and he's got the feeling that if this guy gets a hold of them, they're going to need a hell of a lot more than that.

Still, he's got a good idea of where they're going to have to target. "Put him under again before someone gets hurt," he says, on the edge of pleading. Everyone's fine and he doesn't want to push things. He glances up at Tony, already knowing where he has to target. "I need a delivery mechanism into the brain accompanied by a light charge. I'm gonna do a reboot," he says, tossing the sedative to Tony so he can start assembling something out of his chemicals that'll go for the layers on top of the baseline and try and strip 'em away like paint thinner.

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Charles watches intently as Barnes' face goes slack and the last of the fight bleeds out of him. A disquieting silence follows, the sounds of struggle replaced with the cool back and forth of scientists at work. His own contribution done for now, he lingers by the table long enough to press a reassuring hand to Barnes' shoulder before getting out of the way. While he can't argue against the results, Charles would have hoped for a smoother procedure. He moves over towards Steve.

"The programming appears to have been built over James' own architecture rather than from the ground up, as we might have expected. His foundations remain intact," he explains as he reaches for the datapadd, pulling up the brain scan from the moment Barnes had first seen Steve. "See this here? His prefrontal cortex and amygdala -- that is, the parts of the brain that store long-term memory and process emotion -- lit up when you spoke to him. He recognized you, not from today, but from before... I believe the severity of his reaction was the programming trying to overcompensate for an emotional response."

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Xavier's talking to me. I'm not exactly sure how long that's been going on for. I blink, no longer looking through the datapad at Bucky's unconscious form, the stillness all the more disturbing when compared to the distraught, frantic, violent struggle of just a few moments before.

I wish Natasha was here.

"What- light charge?" I ask, looking up, finding McCoy.

"What happens now?"

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"Paint thinner," is what McCoy has to say about that, as he reaches out and finds drugs in order to achieve what Charles is explaining to Steve, trying not to think about what would happen if this were him and Jim, if Jim or any of his closest friends were ever like this. "Once it gets delivered..." Which is where McCoy needs Stark to help, "the light charge is just to try and reboot the brain, restore factory settings. If he's out cold, he shouldn't even feel it."

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"And do we know what the hell factory settings will be?" I ask.

"What about his memory? How much is this going undo?"

Edited Date: 2012-05-24 05:52 pm (UTC)

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"Every procedure carries risks," says Charles, stepping directly into Steve's line of vision, though he's mindful to leave the man some space to breathe. He needs it right about now, looking nearly as worse for wear as Barnes himself. While Charles wouldn't claim to know the Captain particularly well, they've been acquainted long enough for him to gather that this loss of control is exceptionally rare. This isn't a man who falls apart, and yet he's doing just that; in the end, they've found their trigger, after all, it's just for the wrong person.

Charles will need to tread carefully lest they end up needing to sedate another soldier.

"But theoretically, nothing. Given its location, the conditioning poses the greatest threat to his short-term memory, so if he loses anything, it'll only be a few hours. It's just as likely he'll remember it all. We're targeting what's forcing him to forget, not the memories themselves. He should wake up normal."

Edited Date: 2012-05-24 07:11 pm (UTC)

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notawastedlife

"Or as normal as any of us gets," Tony reflected, crossing to one of the tables; the island didn't really go for normal. He wasn't the place's biggest fan, by far, but he'd also never really been a fan of baseline normal as it was generally understood.

He took in Cap's state as he reached the table. He seemed... rattled. He almost felt like he liked the guy a little more for it. There was stuff other than saintly paragon-ness going on in that head, then.

"How light is light?" he said, regarding the tools at his disposal and then starting to grab pieces and patch them together, using the suit's HUD to keep it all finetuned. This was the brain they were dealing with. "Tell you what, I'll see about making it variable in case you need to refine it."

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"Variable, then I can reuse it," McCoy grunts, occupied with what he's assembling. He's keeping Rogue's lessons in mind, given that he'd needed to work with something similar when it came to various personalities built on top of one another. He bends down over the table, eyeing what he's got left to do. "Have we got five minutes? I need five more minutes and, you know," he says, a bit flippantly in Tony's direction, "however long he needs."

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"'Refine it'," I repeat and then the words are ripping out me, straining against my throat.

"In case the first time doesn't work? How many tries will this take? How many tries can he take? Tell me this isn't going to be a gamble, nothing but trial and error! He may be resilient but he's not goddamn indestructible!"

It's not the noise that alerts me to the fact I've slammed my fist into medical table, with medical instruments on it, or even the sensation of a knuckle or two splitting open. It's the fact that several people are staring. I'm aware of it, but I just don't care.

Edited Date: 2012-05-25 03:43 am (UTC)

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