traumatology: (114)
barky bunns ([personal profile] traumatology) wrote in [community profile] westwhere2023-02-25 02:14 pm

( just another day for brainwashing )

WHO: bucky barnes
WHEN: during part 2 of the mission
WHERE: gut's bind
WHAT: ~ possession ~
WARNINGS: probably violence


( starters in the comments )
downswing: (egalitarian)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-02-26 05:29 pm (UTC)(link)


( There's a grim, gravelly, crackling energy to the Gut's Bind, a sense of overflow and anticipation. Cloying, claustrophobic, filthied. He does not walk these grounds as a matter of leisure, only one of final, regretted recourse.

The paladins that rescue seals from dregs and direct the better part of their energies to same purpose mill and storm the caves and corridors, their sorcery flooding around them. He hesitates — prioritises, desperately, not to interrupt their paths, or violate the integrity of their magical balance through his presence alone.

In the midst of affording them a wide berth, he neglects to lend the same to the man he collides with, haphazardly, hand scattering invisible motes of dust and decay — before he knows the look of him, the blunt cut of his jaw, the arm — )


...Bucky. ( As Wanda named him. Not 'bucket,' but the approximation. ) The caves?

( They had — allowed the possibility to percolate into a plan, clumsy but well-intending. Lan Wangji yet wants his cutting wire, and if Bucky is already haunting these grounds, then surely he must be here, to the same purpose. )

downswing: (flux / fluid)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-02-26 09:59 pm (UTC)(link)


( There is... a scent to the moment, metallic. Like the ugly, telltale anticipation when a man searches the teeth of his hunting hound and knows he will find them red-bound. Bucky's... irritation is not unnatural to the Gut's Bind. It appears to thicken in the grounds, with exposure.

Lan Wangji, who has spared himself the unkindness of delving into the affairs of the native paladins, has yet to poison himself with inklings and tendrils of stray malice. To choke in their net.

Better not to court that disaster. And fairer still, to keep one who has — ingested this concoction to excess away from the worst of his own temperament. )


We move. ( He concedes, right arm slinging bound behind his back, both to honour the propriety of form and to signal, he walks unreadied to attack. Lacking the ambition of brutality, the means to escalate. Unhastened. )

To what destination?

downswing: (Default)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-02-27 11:40 pm (UTC)(link)


I see no child.

( He concedes, once more agreeable, perhaps in a gentle approximation of the exact tone he might deploy on children. He has raised a son, indomitable, kind. He may rear an accomplished man through the growing pains of his temper.

As long as he retains a mild disposition and a scrupulous talent for avoiding the milling crowds that bustle alongside them, minding the endless business of their seals, the reinforcement, the magic that stokes and soars and never quite latches

All will be well. Arguably, all is already well. )


You assisted the forges, the mines or the paladins' chamber?

( There is a helpful scarcity of alternatives in the cavernous undergrounds. )

downswing: (toil)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-03-01 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)


( ...ah. Temper still stoked, flaring. Like an incautious flame, ready to bloom and burst. He nearly flinches, caught aback not by the certainty of Bucky's anger, so much as the assurance of his helplessness against it.

He is not, eyes wide, the white of them bold, a scholar of rhetoric. Not the man equipped to handle finesse in conversation. Asked why, he only murmurs: )


There are few destinations in the Gut's Bind. ( And so, surely, Bucky must have emerged from one. Sure... ly. ) Before, you worked the mines.

( ...before Lan Wangji gently detoured them towards water. )

downswing: (first day alive)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-03-02 11:52 pm (UTC)(link)


I do not. ( A pause, tender. ) Know you.

( In the way in which men know one another, as true friends, bound. As comrades at war. Circumstances and duress have knitted them strange kinship. Lan Wangji, who has never shied from withdrawing himself from the scene of a social crime finds he is the accomplice of his own humiliation — tacitly begging for Bucky's tolerance, his appetite for companionship.

He cannot be allowed to continue as he is, a storm made flesh. There are options to dispel disquiet, from zither music of relaxation to walking every line of this ancient, dusky corridor. )


You are... inconvenienced?

( Perhaps best not to inquire if a man is truly angry. )

downswing: (十一)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-03-05 08:51 pm (UTC)(link)
( To think, he has now become the strange, barely tolerated breed of companion — the natural, gregarious conversationalist. Wangji, son of Lan, has never stood so accused. And yet, Bucky now transgresses into the assumption.

He makes a point of leaving Bucky an open path, the chance to walk undeterred. A cloying, dusty, hopeless corridor — how could Lan Wangji ever possibly deprive him of it? )


I walk to your side. Intending no disruption.

( Blandly, far too literally, the tension of his body only visible in the righting of his arm, how it hangs steeled, fingers clutching in a fist carved loose to turn, at any moment, on his hilt. His sword, if need me. )

What ails?

downswing: (estate)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-03-05 10:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Our paths align.

( ...because Lan Wangji trails after Bucky. A petty adjustment, when truths stretch and yawn and a man burdened with thousands of learned disciplines 'cannot lie' but may gently, precariously omit.

Now, to avoid any provocation to name where they are headed. It is no simple thing, falsity. Wei Ying must be applauded his native talent to flourish and elude, in the face of perpetual challenge. )


I trouble you?

( Conversationally, as if — the tendrils of sinister energy that yet cling to Bucky are not a tentative indication. The Gut's Bind is a foul place, unimproved by the presences of undeath that cling. )
downswing: (deed done)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-03-06 09:58 pm (UTC)(link)
You have yet to name it.

( Once more conversational, academic. As if he has born hundreds, thousands of similar conversations, wrestling the youth of Gusu Lan towards a logical conclusion. Ferry a child back to his senses, and he will rediscover his footing. This, Bucky is yet to learn.

...slowly, slowly. As simply and elegantly achieved as the next turn through the corridors, gently pivoting while a slew of paladins flock and fumble, swarming in. He murmurs the silhouette of excuses, nods apologetically, lets them by.

They are obstacles here, tolerated nuisances. Foreign and strange. )


Where do you flee?
downswing: (brokerage)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-03-08 11:06 pm (UTC)(link)


( They are two panthers, prowling. Growing increasingly, tirelessly irritated with the aberration of each other's behaviour. He wants, very badly, to grit his teeth and bare them. Wants to claw.

Instinct does not prevail over reason. Walk on, ignore the crowds. Ignore the cloying, blood-curdling, impetuous toxicity of the Gut's Bind and its magical volatility. )


What, then, are you doing? ( There must be a point to this, a destination. An end purpose. )

downswing: (desdemona)

[personal profile] downswing 2023-03-09 06:23 pm (UTC)(link)


( And what is that? But he knows, his spleen knows, his bone marrow, the gritty and grime of him. There is a look and a scent that men bear when they intend, worse than to kill — war's practicality — to put the hurt in those around them.

To torture, to slaughter, to make sport of bloodshed. An empty, flayed quality to their engagement. And Lan Wangji, who has never been accused of an excess of conversation, must wonder, now, when and where he learned his words.

How he can use them to stall. To glean. )


Namely?