trainwrecked | For ashyperfume

It was probably for the best that he didn't quite notice the old lady or her dog, other than as another pair of eyes that he needed to keep his face hidden from while still obscuring it from any cameras, as well. Nothing to actually pay attention to.

Fuu's state of not-quite-déshabillé, on the other hand, made him stare for a long moment, conflicting reactions warring inside. On the one hand, he'd killed women dressed more or less like that. He remembered the pattern of stain a knife cut could lead to, as opposed to bullet hole, on that kind of robe.

On the other hand, with her guard down, inviting him into her apartment underdressed like that? Woke up a very remote part of his mind, and he became aware, for the first time, that she was an attractive woman. It didn't cause urges, exactly, but it startled him - it wasn't an awareness that he was used to having.

He suppressed both reactions, stepping inside, and asking, so very intelligently, "Chinese who?"

Chinese who? That caught her a bit off-guard in turn, causing her to blink sharply as he forced her to catch up with his thoughts. ". . . Food, James."

She pushed the door closed behind him, twisting back towards the main room. For her turn, she seemed to be completely unaware of the effect of her clothing -- or was fine with having him look. "Though maybe if you're lucky, someone of the actual nationality will deliver it."

The short front hallway opened into a large room replete with large, high windows -- windows currently obscured with a fine veil of drapes. Each room flowed into the next, the kitchen with only a low bar to separate it from the living room and what was obviously Fuu's work area -- a wide desk with a cluster of monitors and a few towers, piles of work-oriented papers scattered over the surface along with odds and ends like bits of motherboard, wires dangling. Even the bedroom was visible -- an untouched-looking bed behind a shoji screen.

The rest of the room was neat and clean -- almost too much so -- with furniture in clean lines in shades of gray, beige, and dark red. The two things out of place seemed to be the desk and an afghan lumped over the back of the couch, the pillow at one end ruffled as though someone had been using it for a bed.

There were few ornaments, but a number of pictures set on shelves. Along one side of a false fireplace, a shelf with photographs -- a young woman and a man, the frames turned slightly towards each other, a small vase with two lilies between them. On the other, a portrait of an elderly Japanese man, hands gnarled like the roots of a tree, and with it a small carving of an animal that looked a great deal like a running fox.

Pause. Socialization and, well, modernization of things were leaving him way out of clues. "I'm not angling for talking with one." Brief, though it wasn't bitten off or otherwise unpleasant. He didn't need to explain that he'd gotten confused, she figured it out on her own, and it was one of the good things, about. This. Her. The situation, from their first conversation onward.

After a moment, he did remember to add, "thank you."

His eyes scanned what was visible of the apartment, taking in the details, but he interpreted a very different set of information (he would remember, and, perhaps, eventually would find significance in these details). Lines of sight. Vulnerabilities. Exits. Areas where he would be completely out of sight, despite the openness of the place.

When he was satisfied with his analysis, he slipped into one of those spots and... of all things, took an elastic band out of his pocket and tied his hair back. It wasn't a good disguise, but it did help in obscuring his face, for low-quality surveillance cameras. Yes, he was giving her clues. No, it wasn't by chance.

Then he looked at her again, the hesitation caused by the sight far shorter than at the first glance. "Not many people actually come here, do they." Not nobody. But not many, at least that was his conclusion - being wrong wouldn't be the first time. Not even the first time for the evening.

It wasn't many people who could take Fuu off guard as readily as he did. In some ways, perhaps, it might have been one of the things that appealed to her about him; he was a surprise, a mystery and a challenge, one that kept her analyzing, processing, re-evaluating, always moving to meet him on the same field.

At other times, it was inconvenient, especially when he inadvertently stripped her bare. Her breath caught in her throat, and she pressed her lips together before a high, soft laugh escaped like a small explosion.

"Most people say 'nice place.'"

Well, she'd admitted that she was alone, hadn't she? In their previous meeting, she she'd asked him to come. It wasn't as though he'd made a grand revelation.

But it still hurt as though he'd pushed a fist into her abdomen. She pressed her lips together again, looking away, out towards the obscured skyline.

"Do you drink?"

Edited 2014-07-14 02:09 (UTC)

As few as his actual social graces were - and they were few - he was able to read people. He saw the hurt, and it surprised him. Confused him. He tilted his head, blue eyes wide and focused, at her.

"I'm sorry. I don't have much reference." On nice, on apartments, or on visiting them. Business was something else, something he was trying to stay away from. Per se.

"It looks... pleasant to spend time in, and reasonably secure - though I doubt you needed me to say that. And I - can, though it doesn't have much effect. I was not supposed to get inebriated, after all, no matter who tried to make it happen."

She was quiet, still a moment more, before suddenly she was in motion again, pushing off from the couch. Leaning over the low counter, she tugged a bottle of wine from the rack. The corkscrew was already on the counter itself; she worked at it, slicing the long, curling spire into the cork.

"Alcohol isn't just about getting drunk," was her soft reply. "Surely you knew that too, once." Pale eyes flicked up towards him with small, wry smile. "Though it certainly doesn't hurt the allure."

The bottle released the cork with a sharp pop of sound, almost like punctuation. She shifted around the counter for glasses next, stretching up to gather two from a higher shelf by their long stems. "The apartment is paid for by my employer, so you owe me nothing on it. It's a place to work and a place to sleep, and little more than that. The security was good enough. With some improvement."

He watched her, without stirring much. He doesn't even try to help her reach up (he would have, once, and bumped against her, and laughed about it, too, but it didn't occur to him, now), his eyes dark, and thoughtful.

"There is much I probably knew, once." Quietly. When he handed him his glass, he'd take it with the right hand. The flesh one.

"The biggest problem with finding out what I did is that it's been overlayed by other things, programmed things, so many times that I can't tell what's real and what isn't." His mouth did quirk, slightly, up, at that. "That is why I try observing social interactions, like that party. Quietly, staying as much out of the way as is plausible. It helps sift through the facts. But it's far from either fast or perfect."

She released a breath, sliding the wine bottle aside, lifting her glass in turn. "Life is experience, James. It's hard to learn how to live it just by watching everyone else. You live by making experience, trying things, making stupid mistakes, doing things you regret. Doing all that, you learn what direction you have to take -- and maybe, in the end, what it all was really for."

Reaching forward, she touched her glass to his with a soft, ringing note. "Maybe someday you can be inside the party instead of outside of it."

Edited 2014-07-19 00:35 (UTC)

His eyes remained on her, as she talked, and he didn't interrupt. Carefully, he raised his glass, after the chin-chin, nodded, and took a small sip. It was good, sound advice, he knew.

But.

It wasn't necessarily completely applicable to him.

"I... want those things. But they are far too dangerous - to the party, even more than to me - until I've walked the direction I have to take to the end. Until I've completed what it's all for, and have to seek for a new one. Until then..."

He leaned back, without taking his eyes from hers.

"Until then, I'm grateful that you're cautious enough to let me in without drawing a sniper rifle shot just because I'm around you."

Sometimes advice said more about the giver than it did about the receiver. Fuu watched him back over the rim of her glass, taking a slow sip.

"You shouldn't thank me for that. And as forewarning, I'll challenge you on that -- the not trying. Every chance I get."

His eyebrows rose, not a little ironically. "Would I be here, if I weren't trying?"

Honest question, despite the look he was giving her.

And, another.

"What should I be thanking you for, then?"

Her eyebrows rose back at him, undaunted and ironic in turn. "Would you be trying if interacting with me gave you anything but a choice?"

As a knock sounded at the door, she reached to place her glass on the counter. "As for the other, the night is still young -- and although the glass in the windows is one-sided, I'm not sure it's bulletproof."

Weaving past him, she padded towards the door. Apparently answering it in a negligee for deliverymen was not an issue.

He snorted, quietly, but the delivery came before he could actually answer. He moved like a shadow behind her, and, before she could actually unlock, let alone open, the door, he was behind it, weapon in hand. Ready to deal with any threat that might come through the door, should there be such.

He didn't try to stop her.

But he was ready to react, if she'd made a bad call.

Fortunately, she hadn't. The delivery boy had a more extensive reaction to her appearance, but along the same lines as his (appreciative), and almost tried to chat her up, but he was probably instructed not to hassle the customers or he'd get fired, so he swallowed most of it.

When she was ready and closed the door, he was there, his eyes glittering in amusement from the shadows. "I've grown appreciative of my choices, yes. I wouldn't have called you the other day, if I wasn't trying. And you said you were going to take your safety in your own hands, rather than rely on my protection. You've survived long enough that I took your word on it - and I still will. Don't prove me wrong."

Fuu took her time with the deliveryman. It was possible, in fact, that he'd even been there before, and he was young, barely college age. His Adam's Apple slid gawkily up and down his throat, fumbling for words that seemed appropriate without getting him fired. At last he seemed prepared, at last the nerve to work out more than one or two cracked syllables . . .

And the door shut in his face.

Fuu balanced the load of food in her arms, raising her eyebrows to the shadow formerly behind her door. Her neck arched slightly, hair sliding away from the bared line of flesh and tendons, her voice completely dry.

"And if I prove you wrong, Mr. Barnes, what exactly will you do? Will you save me? Rush in and snatch me from the jaws of death? What will that do for you -- confirm that I needed protection all along? In the end, who would you really be serving -- me? Or yourself?"

Her eyes narrow, pale and silver. "Let's not misunderstand something from the beginning. I live or die because I choose -- and because I choose to rely on myself."

A flick of her fingers, and the small point of a blade emerges in her own hand beyond the wrist of her robe, close to the wrist. "Nor am I exactly defenseless."

The smile that was in his eyes spreads to his mouth. It's not a nice or kind smile.

"That wouldn't have saved you from rifle fire to the chest, when you opened the door. Nor would I have been able to." He shrugs. "I was here for my protection. If I can help, I will. The way I wouldn't let a person get run over by a car on the street, if I can help them," he flexes his left hand, making sure the whir or the mechanism is audible, because he usually can, "and the way I'm bringing Hydra down for more than just myself.

"On the other hand, from what I've learned about," his smile turned just a little less predatory, just a little more uncertain, "friends, they don't leave each other in lethal situations. You're probably better equipped to explain who's served by that, should such a situation arise."

He hesitates a moment, then adds, "what would you like a weapon to do, sit around idly while the fighting passes me by? And I'm a very good weapon."

She stares back at him. Her eyes are silver now, narrow like a knife blade, and she advances on him, one bare foot after the next. "There is one thing you will understand. I make my own choices. And I will not put myself in your hands, no matter how it hoists your penis. If you're here because you think I'm weak, that I'm laughable in your eyes because I'm not like you and haven't faced the life you have, I'll be glad to show you how very stupid and wrong you are."

His eyebrows went up.

"I'm entertained by your anger, not by anything else. If I were to perceive you as weak or inexperienced, I wouldn't have met you last night, Fuu, let alone come here tonight.

"It's war. If I choose laughable allies, I'm dead, and I have work to do before I die. It's got nothing to do with my penis." He shrugged, but, after a moment's consideration, decided not to turn his back on her, not right now. He did trust her, but it would be accepted as a slight, at the moment.

"But I don't remember the life I've faced. Everything that I think I remember is potentially false, planted there during one programming or another. Why would I laugh at somebody not being this way?"

It wasn't placation, or a bid for her pity. Merely a reminder that his perspective was like no other she'd ever encountered, from man or woman or anything else.

And she was very welcome to attack him at any point of time.

She didn't. She didn't move forward. Her eyes seared at his face, calculating every inch of it. Every muscle was taut, as though charged with a surge of electric current.

"Well, one way you are like any other man." The words were sharp, but flat, blank. "Thinking that this is about you."

Twisting, she headed back towards the kitchen, feet striking dull pounding across the floor.

He shrugged, though he took a moment before actually speaking up, after her.

"What I do is about me. What you do isn't." He waited until she'd reached the kitchen, before finally stepping out of the niche behind the entrance door. He thought it safer not to assume what it was about, what she did.

After a moment's hesitation, he followed her, leaning slightly against the door-frame.

"What is the food, anyway?" There was some familiarity in the way it smelled, as she opened containers, but the sight brought no clear associations. It wasn't a conscious effort to change the subject, either. He actually didn't know.

Cupboards opened. Closed. Fuu moved about her own kitchen with the quick precision of a honed blade, her hands slicing through the air to bring a bowl down here, a glass there. Doors and drawers hit wood with punctuation marks; small paper boxes snapped open from their staples. It was more food than either of them could eat, open, exposed to the air.

"Chinese." The word was again sharp, punctuated. "Dig in. Work will begin later."

And again she was gone, off to the small corner of the apartment that served as a bedroom. There was no door . . . The shoji screen snapped shut behind her.

He didn't realize when it snapped, when the steel in his spine, the programming that had been done over and over again, tightened the noose around his neck, and her anger and command took on power over him.

But, by the time she'd promised him work later, he was completely in the mindset of listen-and-obey.

His voice was a little different, when he answered, duller, more child-like even. "Yes, ma'am."

The simple, dead words slipped after her before the door was closed. He took a few automatic bites from the food she had set before him, without registering any of the flavors, then settled against the bar, not quite at ease though not fully at attention, his eyes fixed on the screen she'd left through, and waited.

Behind the screen, Fuu let herself cry. Rage and cry until the fury of her tears could no longer be contained and she stumbled into the bathroom, letting the force of them hiss between her teeth, the heave of air muffled by her throat.

The tears came anyway, even if the sobs did not, warm and thick on her lower lashes until they spilled over down her face. She held herself for a long moment upright, erect . . . then gave into it, sliding to the floor, pulling legs close to bury her face into her arms.

Proof, sometimes, that she was still just a child. What was she if words -- just words -- could still reduce her to tears? Her hands tightened, forearms flexing as though she could strike -- if, indeed, there was anything to strike.

But there wasn't even that. Her fingers slackened, and she wept.

The sounds were soft, and she bit through every one that she could, but they still might carry to the kitchen.

Edited 2014-08-03 00:54 (UTC)

The sounds took him a while to identify, and a little longer to snap him out of programmed stimuli-response sets. Crying did not add up with the person issuing commands.

Ever.

Crying was the target, sometimes. But Fuu wasn't a target. This datum was acquired after all programming, and he didn't doubt it in the least. Which forced him to focus, on what it mean, and on what he could do.

He moved quietly - most of the noise he made coming from his left arm, and the running of the faucet. Until, in the end, he scratched lightly on the screen in warning that he was coming in - and he only did so to leave the glass of water on the ground beside Fuu. There was neither humor nor mockery on his face, as he moved through the small space.

He didn't intrude as directly for long. But he knelt in front of the screen, close enough that the light from the rest of the apartment outlined his shadow. He was sitting in a correct manner, his body held with care - the Western World hadn't been the only place where the Winter Soldier had been supposed to blend in, to disappear.

"I apologize, Fuu. I don't know what mistake I made, but I would rather correct my behavior than..." He hesitated, considering the options. "Than risk repeating it mindlessly."

There was no derision in his voice, either. This was not in any way 'the woman went into hysterics, have to appease her' - in various ways, he had accepted her as a teacher, or maybe guide, when it came to actual interaction with people. Actual being people. He wasn't imposing his opinion on things over her, nor was he asking for what he clearly had forfeited - respect, probably. Trust didn't quite occur to him, because he didn't think anyone, not even her, should trust him.

But he was extending his own trust. In supplication. For her to decide what to do with.

She stiffened at the sound of him. But there was no room to move, no time to react, and suddenly he was in her space. Caught off guard, she froze exactly where she was, face buried into her arms, waiting for the next move. Waiting for him to sit, to speak . . . to intrude enough into her space to create justification for a strike.

The water glass clinked faintly as he set it down on the tile. She startled at the sound of it, at his footsteps moving away. Her head shot up only in time to catch his foot as it left the doorway. She heard him settle. Wait.

Damn him. God damn him.

It would be so much easier to condemn him. So much easier to fortify herself by hating him. The words were like a hand, cool against her cheek, turning her to look.

No. It wasn't that easy. She wasn't that easy.

"You want me just to tell you." The words were measured, held, but they shuddered beneath the surface, the syllables too sharp, gripped between the teeth. "Explain it to you. Factually, like it doesn't have any meaning. Everything has logical and structural pattern to you; it can be sorted and categorized and filed away. But people aren't like that. I'm not like that."

Her voice rose like a challenge. "You hurt me."

Edited 2014-08-13 14:29 (UTC)

He let the noise die out, after her outburst. Partly because he didn't know how to address her points, other than pointing out what she already knew - he was made, in his current existence, to hurt people. He was aware that he shouldn't have, but that wasn't the same as having control over it.

Instead, he focused his analysis on at least attempting to see things from the other perspective. Not emotionally, he couldn't, or couldn't afford to, do that. But he could attempt to see more points of view. It was better than following what his trained reflexes said. Go in for the kill.

"I suppose," he said, slowly, "there are at least two ways to take my question. It could be fishing for more information. Trying to get data on how to do it again. Or, it could be my trying to find out how to stop doing what I was trained. Is there anything not like that which I could do to prove to you which one it is?"

Saying sorry might have helped, but that wasn't one of the courses of action that had fully come back to him, and it had definitely not been programmed in even once, over the last seven decades.

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