agentlelog | —in the service of the Queen; I belong [closed]

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—in the service of the Queen; I belong [closed]

Who: Bucky Barnes (

sinistral) and Queen Fayura
When: during the Tangled Webs event; in response to the Queen's summons and the web she weaves
Where: in the queen's Residence
What: on hearing what happened to the young girl, Bucky seeks an audience with the Queen
Warnings: mention of past torture (mental and physical)

It's not a comfortable thing, the summons in his head. Bucky understands now that it's just the way of things here, these mental communications, but he doesn't have to like it. Still he hastens to the Residence as quickly as possible. He hasn't had much in terms of direct contact with Draega's ruler, but that doesn't mean he's going to ignore the mental summons.

It may have been uncomfortable but what follows is even more so.

He's quiet through the explanations — not unusual for him of course, and that standoffish air is one he'll attempt to keep. While it seems to him that the Queen clearly isn't giving all the details she knows or suspects, he doesn't blame her for it. It unsettles him to hear of it, violence done to the mind; it had been his hope to escape such a thing simply by being here, but apparently that isn't to be.

It's after the meeting has dispersed that he sends a message to the Queen. He's not sure at all what she knows of him, or how much of the dream-that-may-not-have-been-a-dream that brought him here is actually true. Still he's a little surprised when she grants him an audience, mostly out of the assumption that she would have other, more important things to do.

"Queen Fayura." The greeting is simple, and simply given; casual conversation isn't his strong suit. "Thank you for seeing me."

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Fayura grants Bucky's request because she does have important things to do. Finding the Black Widows, capturing them, and... solving this current trouble is very important. She assumes his request is driven by information to share.

They meet in her Queen study, the one with the blackwood doors and desk that she uses only when she needs to do court business. Shelves full of books line the walls, painted a soft, cheerful yellow. A plush carpet covers the floor. Comfortable chairs face her desk, but they do not match it. Clearly, only one piece of furniture was made for this room (the desk) and everything else was an afterthought.

She is not behind the desk when Bucky enters but rather standing before one of her shelves. To one side, large windows let in the afternoon light, highlighting her and casting a faint sheen over the spidersilk gown she wears. It drips off her, more like liquid than fabric, and the crisscrossed webbing across her chest and shoulders looks like spun gold in the sunlight.

"Lady Fayura," she corrects him, her tone so absent that it lacks any censure or sting. This has become common for her. They call her "Queen," the Strangers, and while title rarely matters to her, it certainly matters to others. "You have information about the coven?" she asks as she plucks a book from the shelf. Turning, she inclines her head toward one of the chairs. "Please, sit."

She moves toward him. Instead of sitting behind her desk, she sits directly across from him. On the air. There is no stool beneath her, just Craft holding her up and expectation in her eyes.

He is not made to wait and Bucky certainly appreciates it. Time is valuable simply for its fleeting nature, how it cannot be regained once it is gone, and that’s in part the reason why he’s dressed in full combat gear, the clothing and equipment he’d had on himself when he’d been brought to Draega. There’s hunting to be done yet; his plan is to go into the city as soon as he leaves her presence.

And what a presence it is! While he’s certainly not drawn to the human form out of desire, Bucky can recognize something of beauty in the way Fayura dresses, how she holds herself. The sunlight only serves to do her favor; if the mind equates beauty with power, then powerful she certainly appears.

"My apologies. Lady." He’s still very much learning the customs of this place, and commits to writing this one down later. He takes the chair she indicates, sitting somewhat stiffly despite its comfort. A moment of curious interest crosses his face when she sits in the air but as much as he’d like to examine this use and mastery of the so-called Craft, this is not the time.

The question is a little more difficult to answer, mostly because the answer is not an affirmative, but a tangential. "Not about the coven. About the mind, and it may not help you at all."

Not about the coven. Fayura briefly considers asking him to leave and come back later, but that he's curious about the mind gives her pause. Matters of the mind are not quickly dismissed by the Blood. Fayura especially doesn't dismiss concerns about the mind. She's had too much experience with broken webs and shattered chalices, minds poured out on the altar of the self.

She vanishes the book in her hands and folds both her hands on her lap. Her nails click quietly as she taps them together.

A shield snaps in place around the room, physical and aural. No one will enter her study while they're talking, and no one will overhear them. "Very well," she says. "What do you want to know about the mind? What can I tell you?"

Though he is by no means experienced in Craft, or even in being around it, there's just something in the air that says she's used it. Or maybe it's not in the air at all, maybe it's just that sixth kind of sense, the sense that lets Bucky know when danger is near, that has him moving to meet attack before it is fully formed. It doesn't matter, he thinks, at least not right now. Those distracting thoughts are not nearly as important as the woman in front of him.

"It may be what I can tell you." He pauses for half a breath, rechecking the ordering of his words before he speaks. My mind has been — broken. Torn apart. I don't know if anything of that experience would aid you in helping this young girl now. But if it will, I would give it to you."

She blinks, a bit taken aback by his confession. He wears a Jewel, so he can't be broken in the same way as the little witch. But a shattered web isn't the only way to break a mind, and Fayura knows that. Mother Night, she knows that better than most.

Very slowly, she begins a spiraling descent into her mind as she speaks, her progress so slow that not even Verim would have noticed. "Your wounds won't help heal hers, but after this, she might find you a kindred spirit." Her eyes sparkle at the word kindred, like it means more to her than it does to him. When she reaches the level of the Red in her own mind, she plucks gently at the threads, and listens with a psychic ear.

Quiet ripples move around him in subtle resonance.

No, his mind wasn't broken like the young witch's. His was so much worse.

"Would you tell me more of what happened to you?" she asks kindly. It's an invitation to share, not a request. The mind is as sacred to the Blood as anything could be; she will not violate his.

He can't even begin to fathom her thoughts. He knows too little of this place, of her, of how it all fits together. Allairavar has hinted that the mind is something almost sacred to the Blood but while Bucky still doesn't understand it in that visceral way of people born to it, he can respect that one's mind should remain one's own no matter the circumstances.

If allowing Lady Fayura near his own will do anything to help the girl, how can he refuse? "If it would help her heal, I would make myself available to her." He gets the sense that her meaning goes a bit deeper than her words, but he can't puzzle it through just now.

"Would you wish to hear of torture?" A fraction of his experiences is enough to turn a stomach, he knows. "And would you swear not to use the knowledge to harm another?" Not that he means to insult her; he simply does not have the luxury of easy trust.

The kind expression on Fayura's face stiffens not out of disgust or fear but a sudden roll of sympathy—and understanding. In her lap, her hands tighten, and the brown skin around her knuckles blanches white. With her mental barriers shut tight, that bleached skin conveys the tension hidden in her thoughts.

"I spent the first eight hundred years of my life wandering the wilds," she tells him. "I doubt very much that you will tell me of some cruelty I haven't seen or experienced myself."

She's lived through similar things. She's experienced pain and torture at the hands of others. Perhaps similar to his own experiences, perhaps not, but that pain shaped her as much as it has shaped him.

His eyes flick down to her lap only briefly; there's tension in her hands, and likely throughout the rest of her too. It could be a dangerous thing, he thinks, though he's pretty sure she wouldn't act against him with the intent to harm just because of what he says. Still he's aware of it; he can't be anything but.

"And here I thought one hundred was old." The wry statement falls a little flat, just given the gravity of the situation in front of them. But he does file away that information about his companion's age. Is it normal for her people, or not? It seems rude to ask, and certainly isn't the point of their current conversation. "But I will tell you what I can of my story, and hope it can be of help."

Even so, it's a few moments before he starts on the narrative proper, time spent organizing his thoughts. "I can't tell you everything, because I don't know it. I was a man once, a man who called himself Bucky. I don't remember being this man. What I do remember is the sensations of falling, and pain, and cold. It's a blur, but those impressions are strong. I don't know what happened after that, save that an organization calling itself HYDRA found me. I don't know how." He'll probably never know how, really, but the how certainly isn't important compared to the fact that they did.

"I remember them cutting into my arm. I don't know if they were doctors or scientists or engineers, just that they were removing parts of me. They must have given me something to put me back under, because the next time I woke, I had this." His left hand flexes into a fist before releasing. "I think I killed someone? I don't really remember, but I do remember being locked into a chamber and frozen."

His voice has gone flatter and emptier as the narration has developed; there's a clinical detachment in his expression to match. "HYDRA had strong beliefs. Order, but as they defined it. Steering the course of the world, but only along their path. To further their ends, they needed a specialized operative. The perfect soldier: one who existed only for the mission and nothing else, one who was unquestionably loyal, one who could be perfectly controlled. But the problem with a soldier is that he is also a man. The perfect soldier would not be a man, but how do you take that away from a person?

"They built a chair, one they strapped me into. They shot electricity through my brain over and over again, to wipe me of anything they didn't want, so they could replace it with what they did: knowledge of languages, of weapons, of fighting skills and tactics, of surveillance and espionage; anything and everything to make a perfect operative. They trained my body along with reshaping my mind; I don't know everything that has been put into me but I had more than human capabilities even before gaining this Jewel. And they implanted within my brain a way to control me, one that lasts no matter how many times I am wiped. When they didn't need me, they put me in cryogenic storage until the next mission."

He finally looks at Fayura again, truly looks with something more than the blank expression of the Soldier. "I told you it was not a pleasant story."

Throughout his story, Fay remains so tense she trembles. Some of those shivers are anxiety, too. Bucky's story isn't her story, but she understands. Mother Night, not knowing. Not knowing is always the hardest parts. Holes in the memory. Empty spaces where people and faces and places should be. Gray cobwebs strung across the mind, obscuring thought as much as the physical world. Danger everywhere.

She shudders as she exhales, and she swallows hard.

Black Widows. It sounds like he was trapped by Black Widows working with Medicos and Healers both, a group of people who understood the link between the mind and the body. A group of people who understood how to sever that link and reconnect it in new ways. How terrifying.

In the old days, by the Old Ways and if he had been a part of her court and not just a Stranger brought to her lands, she would have had the other males of her First Circle hunt those people down and bring them to her. Most of them would die wherever her males decided the killing field should be, but the ones who mattered would have been brought to her. She would have executed them.

But this is not the time before the Cataclysm, the Blood in Terreille have abandoned the Old Ways, she is not his Queen, and she cannot send her males to find his torturers.

Fayura inhales deeply, forcing her jaw and shoulders to relax.

"Yes," she says quietly. "That sounds very much like what Black Widows can do. That sounds very much like what was done to my Sister upstairs, except that what happened to her would have been quick. All it takes is a moment to destroy someone's inner web and render them incapable of wearing their Jewels." Her expression tightens, caught somewhere between resignation and a sad smile. "The Blood... when we descend into madness, we call that falling into the Twisted Kingdom. It's really just another way of looking at the world, one veiled and misty and full of strangeness. Its topography mimics that of the world around us, but it's filled with ghosts, of visions and monsters conjured by the mind. But there is truth in that mental landscape. Black Widows willingly step into it, and are trained to do so. That allows them to understand the mind and help to heal it. Verim or I could teach you, if you would like. Your mind is whole, just hidden from you." She licks her lips and glances to the side. "What the Blood call the Self... it sounds like that's what your monsters shattered in you." Her hands squeeze together, a convulsive reaction to her own words. "That, too, can be repaired, though it will always be fragile. If you like."

Again, she swallows hard.

"That... is something Verim could not help you with." But I can hovers unspoken between them. She can't bring herself to say the words, to confirm she's had this experience, too. But she has, and that is very obvious.

He's upset her.

He's too trained not to notice the tension in her body, in how she holds herself, the way she swallows, even her breathing. He hasn't just struck a nerve; he's pulled at all those strings, struck them into a discordant cacophony. He does feel somewhat bad about it, and mostly because of how she seems to be reacting: not with horrified disbelief. It says that parts of his story are all too familiar to her, and he hates that anyone has had to suffer so. Her words only confirm it.

"I cannot even say if it's a mercy that it was quick." Mercy would have been not experiencing it at all; mercy would have been no one ever seeking to break another person in such a way, or in any way at all. Mercy seems almost a myth to Bucky sometimes, an idea more fantastic than realistic. "I will think on your offer. I have spoken briefly to Allairavar about my— situation. Not to the detail I have given you, but enough to make him aware that I could be dangerous, should those who know how to trigger me appear here. He too advised me to seek Verim or yourself. The current situation simply made me do so sooner than I would have anticipated."

Fayura goes on though, and there's a lot to read between the lines of what she says. He doesn't understand all of it; probably natural, considering that he is not of this world. But it's the way she says it more than anything else that has him leaning forward, just enough to put his flesh-and-blood hand atop hers for a moment of contact. "It's a generous offer," he starts, ordering his words carefully, "and one I have to consider. But my own struggle is not as important to me as what was done to that girl, especially if those who did it can still be brought to justice. My monsters, as you call them, made me into an assassin. And I will use everything that I know, that I am, to hunt these monsters now and bring them to you."

Bucky takes his hand back to himself, straightening back up in the chair. "And I will make myself available to this girl, if you think it might help her."

Fayura doesn't think his butchers will come here. Her web has behaved strangely due to her own lack of forethought, but she asked for heroes. Surely the web will be able to read through someone's delusions of grandeur and self-deceit to recognize a monster. Surely.

Except she's not sure and that's one more thing to add to her to-do list.

Tucking that thought aside, she manages a faint smile for the male across from her. "Your triggers could likely be removed with time and effort with the help of a well-trained Black Widow. And it speaks well of you that your thoughts are for the young witch." One of her hands slips out from under his and folds lightly over it. A gentle touch, barely there. She withdraws as soon as he does, not wanting to overstay her welcome. "I think talking with her will help you both. Be kind and gentle." She's sure he will, but it bears speaking the words aloud. "All broken witches wander the Twisted Kingdom at first, and she's not yet ready for someone to help her find her way out. She'll see the world differently than you do and will need your patience."

"I will consider it. I admit, I'm loathe to let anyone near my mind, even with the intent to help." Given what he's told her, he has a feeling that she'll understand. Besides that, he doesn't consider his own issue to be any sort of priority; from what he's been told, from what he understands, he and the other Strangers were brought here to help this place. He'll make that his priority, not seeking for answers to his own issues.

"I promise it." Gentle isn't a term he'd normally apply to himself, but treating the child with kindness and with basic respect? That's certainly a given. More than a given; it's how she always should have been treated, and not like some throwaway doll for monsters to toss back and forth until it broke. The thought still angers him. "I just wish something could have been done to prevent it."

Hindsight is a dangerous trap though. Misfortune happens, either naturally or with assistance, and while it's important to learn from it, the only direction to go is forward. "She will have whatever assistance I can provide. As will you, should you need my skills." A generous offer to make perhaps, but surely no more generous than her own. He may not like what he's become, but he won't deny its use.

Fay slides off her invisible stool. As her feet touch the floor, the shields around the room release. Her book reappears on her desk, open to a bookmarked page, and she turns the corner of her desk. The chair behind it pulls out with a thought, but she pauses with her fingers braced against the surface of her desk before she sits down.

"Please keep my offer in mind. Please also know that no one in this house will touch your mind without your permission." She gives him a faint smile. "If there's nothing else?"

It's interesting to watch these simple little things happen with that must be Craft. It's clear that it's an ingrained part of her life, natural and effortless. While Bucky doubts he'll ever feel the same about it, it still does provide an insight into the culture of this place — and that could be useful.

"I will. And thank you." He appreciates both the offer and the assurance that those of her household will respect those personal boundaries. Not everyone in Draega is of her household however; recent events show that clearly enough. He stands in a fluid motion, inclining his head toward her. "Nothing save the hunt for these witches and their webs. But I will report to you should I find anything unusual."

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—in the service of the Queen; I belong [closed]

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