ic contact ★ i'm just a shot away from you

[lostsoldier]

--- » 025 » 132
"JACK DAVIS"
"FRED MONROE"
"SHIRTLESS MAN ON 005"
"MISS C4 2015"



James Buchanan Barnes

[ text ★ voice ★ video ★ action ]

Comments

[mindtricks]

[ everything is definitely not fine- he doesn't look fine, and the confusion, the sense of displacement, those tell her that also mentally, he definitely isn't fine. ]

About 28 hours away.

[ she's worried. her fingers move at her side, but she doesn't reach for him. then she remembers that touch grounded him, when they'd sparred ( when he'd let her hit her because pain was real- ) and so she does reach for him, a deliberate gesture that's slow enough for him to stop her or to back away.

her hand lands on his shoulder. ]

Did you hear about the extraction?

[lostsoldier]

[ He doesn't pull away, although the air catches in his chest. She'll touch him and it will feel like it did in Xenogen, like it's happening to somebody else, even though he can see it happen to him, his shoulder, knows it ought to feel like it's happening to him and it doesn't—

But her hand lands on his shoulder, and it hurts. Relief spreads across his brows on the tail of a wince, air hissing between his teeth. The skin doesn't feel right under the cloth, too soft in places and dappled with small, hard protrusions, but then, they're all changing. He doesn't say anything about it.

Instead, he shakes his head. Extraction calls to mind rendezvous points, handlers, debriefing — focus. ]

Of the nanites?

[mindtricks]

[ there's relief, but first and foremost there's pain and her hand drops away from his body almost immediately, an answering wince on her face. ]

Sorry.

[ for causing him pain. also for causion that distraction; extraction is a word that means something very different in a military context and for all that she's not military, judges are combat-trained.

she doesn't feel guilty for not having thought of that, though. can't anticipate everything, certainly not given the state she's in. ]

Yeah. Needs to be done before the jump.

[lostsoldier]

[ He watches her hand retract, only belatedly registering its precise intent — and she succeeded in that much, in grounding him a little; he's not unhappy for that.

That she's sorry for hurting him earns the faintest quirk from his lips. (People keep apologizing to him like he'll ever deserve it.) He shrugs it off. Metal thumb and forefinger click softly as he rubs at his eyes. Yeah, okay. ]

They can't just take them all out, can they?

[ How tired is he of nanites right now, just saying. ]

[mindtricks]

I don't know. [ a beat, and she doesn't comment on the fact that she thinks he deserves the apology, even if he doesn't. ]

I don't think so.

[ and it would be so easy to just stay here, leaning against the wall next to his door and managing to stay upright with relatively little effort thanks to it, but that isn't what she came for.

the expenditure of energy is required, however much she might wish it wasn't. ] Let's go. [ she forces her weight to rest solely on her feet, forces her shoulders to square. ]