trainwrecked | For ashyperfume

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.

"That's not what I meant." She sucked a burst of air in between her teeth, her jaw clenched. Logic and emotion collided dizzily in her brain; she fought for clarity, for her own single-minded rage. "You want me to tell you why I'm pissed off. If you want it, you don't get it in a nice little package, all analyzed like I'm a data stream rather than a person. When you did wrong, you get the whole fucking ball of shit, and you deal with it."

"When I deal with it," his voice was very quiet, and completely without infection, "they are still trying to find out what caused the damage to the dead bodies decades later."

It wasn't a threat, not even a warning. Just a reminder.

He remained silent, still, for another long moment.

"I should go."

"No." The word was spit between her teeth, sharp. "You sit, and you listen. Because that's part of being a decent human being. You sit. Everything else destroys and walks away."

"If you say so." Still the same inflection-less voice. "I wouldn't know." Though, after a moment, he added, quieter yet, more with contemplation than with contained anger. "Though, while I do want to hear, 'sit and listen' seems more like what one would expect of a dog, or a child. Appropriate, in the situation."

Was he trying to irritate her? Sometimes she would swear he was, even in his idle contemplation, even in his "reminders." He could have, after all, chosen to be quiet, to not comment. But he still somehow felt the need.

Whether he believed it or not, it still spoke of something wholy human to her, something rebellious, lurking just beneath the surface.

She expelled breath sharply through her nose, shifting to her feet, coming out to plop down in front of him, settling on her knees until her position was an echo of his. Her eyes were icy pale, fixed to his face.

"Most of my life gets played by someone else's rules." Her jaw tightened. "No matter what, ever, I don't seem to get to choose. Because someone always thinks they know better. You can argue that every single thing I've done is in reaction to something else, someone who 'knew better.' I don't need that from you too. I don't need someone else who looks down on me, who thinks I can't or shouldn't make my own choices. I want to make my own choices, James. Even if they're 'bad' to you, even if they put me at risk, they're still mine. It means I'm alive. It means I am -- or can be -- something more than what I was supposed to be."

"So if you want to guard me, protect me from whatever's out there, look down on me because you know what it is and I don't, scoff that I hold up a dagger against the world and it's not enough . . . I don't need that. Not from you, not from anyone. If you're going to do that, you can get out now."

He traced her motion from the moment she was in his line of sight again, but her words. Her words made him freeze. On the one hand, he could comprehend the familiarity of what she was describing. On the other hand, it was infuriating, how she could even think to call her life controlled by others. She was eating food she was choosing, drinking wine she probably knew about and had selected herself. She probably hadn't spent decades being fed intravenously, leaving her incapable of selecting her own nutrition for weeks...

She knew nothing of people taking her choices away, compared to him.

But he had learned already that he was not a fair comparison. For anyone.

She knew about people taking her choices away, was what he was left with once he stifled that anger away. And he had done it to her, too. That... was an explanation that he understood, and he gave her a slow, thoughtful nod, his own eyes gradually clearing even if his left hand was still locked tightly enough that if he were made to move, it would screech with the howl of metal forced too hard. Slowly, he tilted his head to one side.

"Why would protecting you equate to looking down on you?" A moment, and he clarified his question, "usually, if a person was assigned protection - against me - they were people that were looked up to, whether they were actual employers or not."

They used to be the people who were his targets. There was always a reason for that.

As to her actual point... he'd thought they'd addressed that last night. She wasn't going to rely on him to protect her, and he had agreed to it. For him, that had settled that. So he said out loud the answer that he had. "I was protecting myself, not you."

He'd told her so already, hadn't he? She could have died, if the person she opened the door to had a gun on him and shot her from close range. But it would have still left him with cover and a great point to take on the attackers. Yes, if the attack was of a different kind, he would have protected her, as well. But those were more complicated hits. People rarely went for complicated.

Though he certainly often did.

It wasn't a comparison, her lack of control against his own. Just a separate type of pain. One, like fire, at the hands of a group wholly unfeeling, absolutely all-consuming. One, like drowning, at the hands of those who should have loved and been loved best. Both taking, reassigning, reshaping fate, sending fissures, then cracks, decaying and snapping and twisting, recreating into something completely unpredicted.

Better for them both that it was a road left untaken. There was no fair comparison to make.

Her eyes flicked away at his question. Rested somewhere beyond his sight line. Saw nothing at all.

"And your commentary about how I could still have been shot in the chest when I pulled my knife? That expression in your face? Your comparison that I might need to be helped like a person who might get run over by a car in the street? The question about if I should just let you sit by idly when you're such a good weapon? Your fervent reminders about how dangerous you are?" The line of her brow puckered. The words had started sharp, but ended thin, hollowing until they were almost empty. "How small we must all be to you. Little ants, so fragile."

"My commentary how you still could have been shot was exactly what I mean - I wasn't there to protect you. I could not have protected you. It would have been futile - it was the strategic position. Yes, if the opportunity presented itself, I would have preferred to both neutralize the threat and keep you alive. But you chose your risk, there. I chose the safer - safest - place in the apartment."

He didn't even realize that the admission was still there. Not so much of guilt - he hadn't moved to cover her weakness - but of being invested in her survival.

He watched her, after the words had all sunk in. "My words are truth. You are free to see what I do, if you can observe it without endangering my job, whenever I strike. There's little else I can do to warn you." And, with the same even tone. "Ants have no choice. They do what their queen requires to survive and propagate." One finger pointed at her, without his hand stirring from his knee. "You're the one who has choice. I... am learning. To avoid the choices that were made for me."

She watched him through his first explanation, silent, her eyes clear, quiet.

She didn't believe him. Words. He was filled with words, logical tangles fighting to be untwisted and reasonable. Explanations, purposes. He believed them. He wanted to. But actions, intentions spoke louder, wound and twisted through his words.

She didn't know how to feel about them. They closed like a fist inside her chest, shook, even as they cooled. She only knew that both reactions should not exist at the same time.

"You're under the misguided notion," she said softly, "that those who haven't been through what you have have full, free will. Maybe we're not as constricted. Not in the same ways. But we're limited by the people we bond to and the people we become. One day . . . we wake up and realize we're trapped. We don't know how to be anyone else."

He didn't know how to explain it, though his anger burned hot, in his eyes, just for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was back to neutral.

"You know you like wine. I was fed intravenously for most of seventy years." His shoulders rose, and dropped. "Maybe it's a misguided notion. You'd know better."

Her fingers stretched out before she thought better of it. Grazed, braced against cheek and jaw -- a feather-light touch that was a bid for his attention, to draw him back to her. Her thumb smoothed the skin next to the bridge of his nose, under his eye.

"It's not a comparison, James." Her own tone had steadied, leveled. "Life here to life there . . . I'm not naive enough to think that there's a comparison. The only thing I'm saying is . . . life out here has its own bindings, and its own way of stealing your choices."

A breath. "Can we try again?"

Edited 2014-09-07 20:10 (UTC)

He stilled, not even breathing, when her hand was on his face. But didn't flinch, didn't strike, either. It brought up a very mixed reaction in him, and he wasn't ready to explore what it was exactly, not right now. Curled up on the floor and throwing up from the headache wasn't going to help the interaction any.

After a moment, he half-closed his eyes. Not quite, but almost. And nodded.

"If that is something that can be done, yes. Please." After a moment, he looked up at her again, trying to clarify, a little. "I see myself as apart. As... damaged. Flawed? I know exactly where my reactions are faster than baseline human, where I'm stronger. But the physical enhancements. They don't make me more. Only a better tool. You're not ants. Not... despised. Or pitied."

A small cant of his head to one side. "I wouldn't be trying to learn from somebody lesser, would I?"

He prompted the small, half-bloom of a smile again as her fingers lingered, then pulled away. "Well. There's something there that knows how to speak to a woman."

She moved to stand. "The food probably needs warming up, unless you managed to eat it all."

... and then he realized some of what had just happened. Genuinely registered some of what had happened. He watched her move.

"No, I did not, I was." Pause, and barely audibly. "Waiting for your instructions."

Then he got up, following at some distance.

"So, correct me if I finally misunderstood, but. What I did and said was offensive because you're female, rather than male?"

Social constructs: not his forte.

Catching her off guard seemed to be his superpower. Never mind super serum or a mechanical arm. With a sharp blink, she twisted back around in mid-step. ". . . What?"

"What you just said. I - do not talk or act towards women differently than men." The implications of that did not even begin to occur to him. "I've trained both. I've eliminated both. It's..."

He spread his hands. That difference hadn't occurred to him.

Why, yes, Fuu, if the most imposing, authoritative man you know had been there in your place, and by some obscure chance he'd let them in as close as he'd let you in? He would have acted the exact same way. Hope this might help.

Her eyebrows shifted up as she stared at him. She almost laughed at the pure, inexplicable consternation of it, and at his determination to make it right. His mind did work in other ways sometimes; what she'd seen as a light, playful comment meant to detract attention from the subject connected to a larger pattern to him.

"You're the one man I'd almost believe that from," she remarked softly, the smile faint in her eyes. Her head tilted -- a light gesture towards the kitchen. "Come eat."

She didn't quite wait for a reply, turning back towards the kitchen, though the words were not a dismissal, either. Her movement invited him forward.

Edited 2014-09-11 23:59 (UTC)

It gave him insight, her light comment. So it was good in that way, at least.

He opened his mouth to argue that he did mean it, then realized, this time, that the remark was a tease. So he closed his lips, shook his head, and followed her instructions.

"All right." He frowns slightly at the food.

"I've seen people eat some of those."

And, by implication, I've never actually eaten any of these kinds of food that I can remember.

For her turn, Fuu busied herself spooning small heaps into bowls from the paper cartons, popping them into the microwave where they hummed and spun, warming. There was sauce on one of her fingers; absently she tucked it into her mouth to lick it off, motioning to him to pass the carton of rice.

"How does it smell?" She'd caught the implication; the question forced him to form his own judgement rather than stick to the emptiness of his observations. The aromas of the food lingered in the air, revived by the warmth. "Usually if it smells good, it tastes good too."

Edited 2014-09-20 19:24 (UTC)

He watched her quietly, his face kind of blank. Just going focused for a few moment, then he shrugged.

"It doesn't smell like any of the poisons or explosives ingredients I can identify by smell." A.k.a. you lost him at 'good,' Fuu.

But he recognized the question, and, after giving his technically correct answer, his mouth pursed a little. "I've come to the realization that I was intentionally kept away from any reason to make judgments like 'pleasing or not' that were not related to the outcome of my missions. I can't tell you if I like the smell or not, though I've been working on trying to decide about perceptions in that context for a few weeks now."

Her shoulders lifted, unsurprised by the reply -- and also completely unbothered about it. "That's why I'm asking. You start somewhere." Again, the gesture. "Rice, please."

He blinked at her for a moment, then followed the direction of her motion, nodded, and finally passed her the carton with the same subconscious focused attention as all of the other things that he did.

"Yes. There are a lot of things to get started on."

He hovered for another moment, then settled against the counter, in a pose that was almost identical to how he had been before she'd retreated. It was convenient and well placed, from his point of view.

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