james "idiot" barnes. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lostsoldier) wrote2013-11-03 12:37 pm
lostsoldier) wrote2013-11-03 12:37 pm
Entry tags:
ataraxion app ★ at its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death
P L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Jenni
OOC Journal:
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: No.
Email + IM: Please PM + AIM at carlotta.valdes
Characters Played at Ataraxion: None!
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes / Winter Soldier
Canon: Marvel Comics (616)
Original or Alternate Universe: Original Universe
Canon Point: Captain America Vol. 5 #14, just before the cosmic cube gives him his memories back.
Number: 132
Setting: Marvel Universe
History: (Note: Due to numerous retcons and ambiguity re: whether the original Captain America comics actually occurred as written in 616 continuity, what follows is primarily based on Ed Brubaker's 2005 rewrite and the 2011-2012 Captain America & Bucky series.)
Bucky was born in Shelbyville, Indiana, in 1925. His mother died when he was young, a few years after the birth of his younger sister, Becca. After his mother's death, Bucky's father raised them on his own while he was stationed in Camp Lehigh, Virginia, but given the demands of his work, Bucky often ended up taking care of himself and his sister. Bucky learned to put on a brave face, to pretend to be happy even when he wasn't, a lesson that proved tragically more useful a few years later, when his father was killed in a training exercise. Becca was adopted by their aunt and shipped off to boarding school, but due to Bucky's age, love of the military, and familiarity with the base, he was allowed to stay on at Camp Lehigh.
Bucky became something of a camp mascot, busying himself selling non-requisitioned supplies to soldiers stationed at Camp Lehigh. Prone to flirting with local girls and getting into fist fights with their less-than-pleased boyfriends, Bucky proved to be a natural fighter, and just before his sixteenth birthday, he was chosen for special assignment. He was sent to the UK for several months of rigorous training before being shipped back to Camp Lehigh, where he was introduced to a young Steve Rogers, who would be his partner.
From 1941 to 1945, Bucky and Cap went on hundreds of covert missions for the Allies, teaming up with a variety of other heroes including Namor, the original Human Torch, and his side-kick Toro as part of the superhero team The Invaders. Bucky also led several youth hero groups. To the public, in the accompanying news reels and in-universe comics, Bucky was Captain America's plucky teenage side-kick, intended to provide an American answer to the Hitler Youth movement in the same way that Captain America was an answer to Red Skull. However, the reality was a bit darker. Due to his smaller stature and natural talent for stealth, Bucky was the team's scout, which often meant sneaking ahead and slitting throats before the enemy had a chance to attack. The real war wasn't as glamorous as the news reels, and Bucky became responsible for the jobs that were considered too unsavory for Captain America and other high-profile heroes to be associated with. Cap was the hero, and Bucky did the dirty work. He didn't complain; he'd been putting on a brave face for most of his life, and he wasn't about to let it slip, but exposure the full horror of World War II, from combat kills to concentration camps, probably didn't do great things for a teenager's psyche.
Near the end of the war, when Bucky was 20, he and Cap tracked a villain named Baron Zemo to an island in the English Channel where Zemo was preparing a drone strike. They were captured and tortured, which mostly meant Bucky was tortured and Cap was forced to watch. Zemo then strapped them to the drone, but they were able to escape as the drone was launching. Cap and Bucky grabbed a motorcycle and caught up to the drone, grabbing onto its tail, but discovered the drone was booby-trapped. Cap was able to let go and fell into the English Channel, where he remained frozen until his re-discovery decades later. However, Bucky's sleeve got caught, and he had only just freed himself when the drone exploded.
Since Bucky's remains were never found, the US military assumed he had been attached to the drone when it exploded, and he was presumed dead. However, in reality, Bucky was picked up by a Russian submarine helmed my a man named Vasily Karpov, who was searching for the remains of Captain America in hopes of recreating his super-soldier formula. Bucky was severely injured, his left arm gone, but due to the temperature of the water, he was still alive in a suspended animation state. Karpov sent Bucky back to Moscow, and a team of scientists was able to revive him successfully; however, he was found to have no super-soldier formula in his system and to be useless for interrogation purposes besides. A head injury had left him with total amnesia, except for reflex memories of his combat skills, which he turned against his captors. Karpov decided to put him back on ice until another use for him arose.
In 1954, it did. He was brought out of stasis as an early test subject for a Soviet brainwashing and spy-training program under now-General Karpov's Department X. Bucky was fitted with a bionic arm and brainwashed through sensory deprivation and mental implantation, a process made substantially easier by his preexisting memory loss. Department X made him loyal to no one but them, then trained him in espionage and assassination. Code-named the Winter Soldier and believing the nickname "James" to be a joking reference to Captain America's side-kick rather than his actual name (not funny, guys :c), Bucky performed outstandingly in the field, able to pass for American seamlessly and take out vital targets without drawing suspicion.
(As an aside, Bucky has been credited with killing various important targets during this period, including Hitler and Wolverine's wife Itsu Akihiro, but neither match his timeline; he was still in stasis when both died. Therefore, I don't consider these canon.)
Until 1957, Bucky was the perfect Soviet killing machine. However, between missions, he was tasked with training other Red Room spies, one of whom was Natalia Romanova, aka Black Widow. What started as casual flirting on the training field escalated into a whirlwind romance behind closed doors, and something changed in Bucky. He started to remember his humanity again, to question his orders, and to disobey his superiors. At first it was only small infractions, carrying out the forbidden relationship at all and later sneaking away to see Natasha once she was betrothed to someone else. However, in a subsequent assassination mission, Bucky balked at the prospect of shooting a target in front of his young daughter. He missed his shot, ended up having to run the man down on foot with substantial collateral damage, and was lucky Natasha had been trailing him and was able to take the girl to safety so he could finish the mission. The whole thing was a disaster, and it proved to their superiors that the relationship (which they had of course known about already) was damaging to Bucky's programming. As punishment to them both, they were forcibly separated, and it was decided that Bucky would be put in stasis and brain-washed between all future missions, erasing his memories of Natasha.
For the next fifteen years, the Winter Soldier continued to carry out assassinations of the most pivotal Cold War targets. (Except Kennedy.) In 1972, after completing a mission in the United States, he failed to appear at his extraction point. His handlers tracked him back across the country, following reports of witnesses seeing a suspicious, paranoid man who seemed confused about the year. After weeks off the grid, he was found at a New York City flophouse with no memory of (or no interest in divulging) what he had been doing. It was recommended that he be excluded from future missions on US soil, but he was returned to active duty as needed.
In 1983, Major General Karpov requested the Winter Soldier as his personal bodyguard in his final years. Karpov had been shamed by Captain America and Bucky during WWII, and he appreciated the irony of a former American hero protecting Russian interests. Bucky was tasked with disrupting American interests in the Middle East during this period, and in 1988 he was returned to stasis indefinitely after Karpov's death.
However, Karpov passed the Winter Soldier on to his protege, Aleksander Lukin. In 2005, Lukin revived the soldier and sent him on a mission to kill Red Skull, retrieve a power source and all-around powerful object called the Cosmic Cube, and help him take over a small country. Bucky set up an elaborate framework of fall-guys to deflect blame from Lukin, including kidnapping Sharon Carter, killing Jack Monroe (the stand-in Bucky Barnes from the 1950s), and framing Monroe for Red Skull's death by bombing an occupied building in Philadelphia. Along the way, Bucky had a few run-ins with Captain America, and SHIELD began to suspect his real identity. Bucky also began to question Lukin's orders, although only superficially.
Unfortunately, when Bucky had killed Red Skull, Red Skull had hopped bodies into the cube and subsequently into Lukin, slowly beginning to control him. Lukin, realizing the cube's power and attempting to rid himself of Red Skull's influence, asked Bucky to take the cube to a nuclear fallout shelter for safe-keeping. Captain America and Falcon descended on the base, and Bucky set out to intercept them, but he missed his shot at Falcon, suggesting his mental programming was beginning to destabilize. However, when Cap confronted him directly, Bucky denied all memory of him, to the point that Cap told Bucky, if he really doesn't remember him, he should just shoot him. So Bucky shot him. (/jazzhands) And from that point, he'll be waking up on the Tranquility.
Personality: The default persona Bucky presents to the public is an amalgam of purposeful unobtrusiveness and what could be considered his real self. He comes off as a casual, laid-back kind of guy, likable but not necessarily memorable, just your average Joe — or more importantly for his purposes, your average American. He's the kind of guy who likes pancakes and baseball and maybe guns a little too much, but he's so entrenched in old-fashioned American culture that it's hard to imagine him as anything else. He has built a career out of not drawing too much attention to himself, but while he generally keeps a low profile, Bucky is far from a wallflower. He can be charismatic, even charming, and when the mood strikes him (or it serves his purposes), he's prone to teasing, banter, and idle flirtation. Though only rarely as outspoken or sarcastic as he was in his teenage years, he still has a sense of humor, and yes, it is still kind of corny. (Not for nothing has he earned the nickname James "Idiot" Barnes.)
Under the surface, however, Bucky is still a brainwashed Soviet spy, and the degree to which any of the above is genuine (versus a carefully constructed front) varies depending on how intact that brainwashing is at any given moment. As an assassin, Bucky is practical, goal-driven, and ruthless. In his first moments on panel with Captain America, he catches Cap in cross-hairs and suggests taking him out now to avoid future confrontations; it's Lukin who holds him back. Bucky prefers to think a few steps ahead, to plan out his moves with precision, and to cut his losses early rather than increase his risk. For example, he doesn't kidnap Jack Monroe to frame him; he kills Monroe on sight and plants his body in a building he's set up to explode, even though that's less forensically sound, because a dead body is more predictable than a live hostage. He's not the grandstanding villain; he's the guy who gets the job done quickly, carefully, and thoroughly, without sympathy or hesitation. When he is on his game, Bucky is a cold, patient, calculated killer, capable of using the above persona (or any other that suits his purpose) to get close to a target and show no qualms about betraying them in a heartbeat. While he is capable of emotional investment in people, he's also very capable of cutting those ties and compartmentalizing his emotions to finish the task at hand.
Both pre- and post-brainwashing, however, Bucky has been called loyal to a fault, demonstrating his willingness to risk life and limb for the soldier beside him during World War II. Vasily Karpov, and currently Aleksander Lukin, have enhanced that quality through brainwashing; Bucky is shown to be willing to jump in front of a bullet for either, and to give his life for their causes if ordered. He is dedicated to their goals and invested in their success, which will likely become a problem on the Tranquility, where he is lacking in orders, goals, or handlers. Of course, this implanted loyalty starts to break down as he spends time apart from his handlers and starts to build emotional bonds of his own, as we see during his relationship with Natasha, but the character trait is constant for him, and his true loyalty, once gained, is intense and absolute. It's also very limited in scope, however; the people he's loyal to, he is very loyal, but everyone else he is probably willing to stab in the back if the need arises.
Who Bucky really is is complicated by what he is — essentially, a sleeper agent. In addition to having amnesia, Bucky has been brainwashed and reprogrammed with more cover identities than he can count. It's important to note that the process was far from perfect, especially in the beginning, and Bucky's identities in particular have repeatedly disintegrated, when he was implanted with detailed identities at all. So he's aware, at some level, that if he really stops to think about it, he doesn't know who he is. That quiet existential crisis pervades his underlying psychology. But at the same time, he's been like this for decades; the vagueness of his identity is familiar, comfortable even, to the extent that his changeability has practically become one of his defining qualities. Bucky's lack of a sense of self is part of what makes him good at his job; it's easy for him to assume other identities (be they implanted or adopted the old-fashioned way) because he doesn't really know who he is to begin with. His own identity is cobbled together from such inadequate scraps, it provides meager basis for resistance, at least until he starts forming emotional bonds and vis-a-vis creating an identity of his own, independent from his work.
As of his canon point, while working for Lukin, Bucky had not been acting as a sleeper agent and therefore was not implanted with any specific cover identity upon waking. He knows he's a Russian spy, he's aware of his skill set and training, and his understanding of his life aside from those facts is superficial at best. Under pressure from Captain America to remember his past, it's notable that he does not show signs of remembering, but he does become agitated and distressed; his sense of self doesn't hold up under scrutiny, and that's alarming enough for him that he doesn't want to subject it to scrutiny. He is capable of remembering some things on his own — his defection in 1972 suggests his memories can be triggered by his environment, and his superiors have theorized that his mind may be trying to shore up the gaps in his identity by pulling his real memories to the surface — but it's a confusing, frightening process for him, and not one he's interested in undergoing voluntarily. On a day-to-day basis, it doesn't necessarily bother him that he doesn't know many details about his past; he doesn't need to, and it's a whole lot easier not to examine that deficit too closely.
He is, however, plagued by an underlying cognitive dissonance. Later in his canon, Bucky describes being brainwashed as feeling locked in his own mind, like he's just a passenger in his own body, watching himself commit terrible crimes and being unable to do anything about it. His personal morals conflict with his superiors' orders, and when his programming is fully intact, his inner self will never win that fight. However, as he spends more time on his own, his programming is liable to unwind. Even later in his canon, when his memories are restored and he starts working for the good guys, Bucky is much more willing to kill than other costumed heroes, so he's unlikely to turn into Gandhi overnight; however, he has an ingrained sense of fairness, a high level of sympathy for young people and children in particular, and a deeply buried desire to do the right thing, all of which get more and more difficult to quash as his programming disintegrates. When that happened in the 1950s, he was reminded of his humanity again; he became more genuinely personable, even playful, and began to let his inner morals dictate more of his decisions. However, he also became unstable, morally conflicted, and began making mistakes in his work. While later canon shows that it's possible for him to be a capable spy without compromising his morals, the road to that balanced state is likely to be rocky.
The dangerous life Bucky leads has also shaped his worldview, and as his programming relaxes, that too is likely to surface. He has no expectations of survival; he could die today, or tomorrow, or ten years from now, and even if he lives, he might not remember it. As a result, while he plans his work thoroughly, he lives his personal life entirely in the moment. For someone with no past and no real control over his future, there's nothing more important than the present. It's why he didn't hesitate to act on his and Natasha's chemistry, why he was willing to risk everything to spend a few more nights with her, and why their brief romance was so desperately important to him. It doesn't matter to him that it was brief; for all he knows, their lives will be too, and he'd rather take a risk than waste the opportunity. More generally, he values the little things, transient experiences and simple pleasures, all the more because he may never have the chance to again. While he doesn't always have the freedom to stop and smell the roses, he is acutely aware of his own mortality and thus has a pervasive appreciation for the present moment.
For similar reasons, Bucky is generally pretty unflappable. He's too well-trained to let fear show or affect his judgment, of course, but more than that, he genuinely doesn't have much to lose — he doesn't know who he is, so he has no life to fear losing, and no expectation of survival or indeed of a pleasant existence. His own mind scares him, but remarkably little else even ruffles his feathers. While he doesn't remember the specific horrors he's been through (and specific triggers could certainly bring those flooding back), he's frankly been through so much shit at this point, everything else seems pretty tame in comparison, space kidnapping included. While I don't expect him to pass his time on the Tranquility completely unscathed, he can usually provide a level head and a calm exterior in a crisis — until he can't, and then you might want to run.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
Bucky is 100% baseline human, but he ranks amongst Marvel's top assassins. He is proficient in hand-to-hand combat as well as armed — guns, knives, poisons, explosives, weapons of opportunity, whatever. An expert marksman, his weapon of choice is a long-range rifle, but he has extensive and varied training in the use if lethal force. While his fighting style is certainly less graceful than Natasha's, for example, there is a similar acrobatic quality to it that suggests more than your average level of agility. Combined with his stealth, he's a pretty effective killing machine.
Outside of straight-up assassination, Bucky has mastered the usual hallmarks of spycraft. He's an excellent actor, multilingual, proficient in code-making and breaking, resourceful, observant, and practiced in deception. A virtual ghost, he's known for his ability to blend into his surroundings, slip past security unnoticed, and walk away without anyone sparing him a second thought. While a little behind on the popular applications of technology, he is excellent at security systems, bypassing even SHIELD's with relative ease, although his general hacking ability is only about middling. (He's been asleep since the '80s, ok, give him a break.)
Then, of course, there's his big metal arm. While it is indeed big and metal, it's not supernatural or even that high-tech at his canon point. Built in the 1950s (though likely improved upon since), the bionic arm responds to Bucky's neural impulses like a real arm, allowing him a similar or greater level of dexterity. It's made of an unnamed alloy comparable to Captain America's shield, allowing him to do dramatic things like punch said shield and decimate other metal objects, but it doesn't have any of the EMP or holographic capabilities of his later SHIELD upgrades. It is, however, significantly stronger than your average arm.
Bucky's arm is also a weakness, however; it is detachable, although not easily, and while he is trained to compensate for its loss, having one arm is a pretty big disadvantage in a fight. Big metal arms also make it hard to get past metal detectors. :[
In addition, Bucky is more vulnerable than average to mental manipulation and control, be it supernatural, technological, or otherwise. His brainwashing makes him more susceptible to suggestion (though usually only from specific individuals), and having been erased and rewritten so many times has left him with an unstable mental foundation, especially given his underlying traumatic amnesia. This will likely worsen as his mental programming begins to unravel.
Inventory:1 bionic left arm(If this seems like too many weapons, I'm fine with dropping some! Bucky tends to be kinda notoriously well-armed and doesn't carry much else.)
1 duffle bag containing:
1 pair black leather gloves
1 pair black combat boots
1 set throwing knives
2 handguns (M1911 pistols), loaded, with 2 extra clips
1 double-sided shoulder holster
1 rifle (M4 carbine with night-vision sight), disassembled, with 2 extra clips
Appearance: Bucky is a white guy in his late twenties with brown hair, a little small in stature at 5'9" but weighing in at 260lbs officially, much of which is presumably due to his bionic left arm. He is well-built, at peak physical conditioning, with a broad-shouldered if somewhat petit frame. He keeps his bionic arm and hand covered most of the time and therefore can usually be found in long sleeves or jackets and gloves, generally black and casual/utilitarian in style. He has an unobtrusive demeanor and cultivates a default persona as Your Average Joe. PB: Sebastian Stan.
Age: 27, stasis notwithstanding. Chronologically about 80.
AU Clarification: N/A
S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
Ash falls in strange, dark clumps from his hair, bursting against the surface of the water before curling to join the spiral winding toward the drain. He doesn't move to stop it, just stands, still and silent under the steady rain — no, shower. He's showering. Disposing of evidence. There's a bottle of bleach just beyond the curtain, and for a second he thinks that won't be enough. He can't just wash it off, pour it all down the drain with a chemical chaser and expect it to disappear. There were too many bodies, striped-pajamaed and rotting and reaching, piled in that ditch—
(Who the hell is Bucky?)
—In the rubble. In Philadelphia. He just came from Philadelphia. He's at a hotel in New York City and it's 9:42 in the evening on October 27th, 19– 2005, and he's covering his tracks. He shakes his head, presses his eyes shut tight against the too-bright bathroom light, and sets to work.
That SHIELD hasn't shown up on his doorstep already is evidence enough they've lost his trail, but he steps out of the shower and upends the bottle of bleach down it anyway. Clothes disposed of, new ones donned, he takes the subway downtown, rides the service elevator up the back of a building, swipes someone else's keycard at the interior door, and treads silently through the dark to Lukin's office. He doesn't speak. There are enough words rattling around in his head.
(Who the hell is Bucky?)
Lukin doesn't look up as he enters. But then, he wouldn't. The soldier scuffs one foot against the floor to announce his presence, and that's enough; it earns a glance, but not a greeting. That's fine. They're not friends. He's just there to give a status report.
"Was there something else?" Lukin asks when he's finished, or more accurately, when he fails to leave. For a beat, silence is his only answer.
"He was a good match. Monroe." Jack. Nomad. The Bucky Barnes of half a century ago. A guy who'd tried to be so many things, in the end, he'd lost track of who he'd been when he started. It's funny, how perfect a fall guy he'd made. The man really had been a dead ringer for him.
"Your point, soldier?"
Trading his ghost of a smile for wince as the sharp, cold tendrils of a migraine begin to take root, the soldier lets his head fall to rest against the wall at his back. "Haven't got one, sir."
Comms Sample:
Linked, with permission:
A chat with Lisbeth.
One-sided reunions with Natasha.
(Note: Since I initially misunderstood the arrival scenario, I have rewritten an arrival post below that better reflects Bucky's reactions.)
Arrival: Take 2
Seem to be missing an arm. Huh.
Quick, careful eyes flick up to scan the room, its inhabitants, others being dumped out of stasis chambers onto the floor. Young, old, in between, people at varying levels of fitness and going through varying degrees of panic. Some not panicked at all. He watches those first as he pushes himself back on his heels, unhurried, giving the nausea and disorientation a chance to pass, but their reactions are varied; irritation, indifference, acceptance, calm. He notices, too, the numbers tattooed on each of their arms — 006, 020, 016 — the calm ones, most of their numbers start off lower; he doesn't see any of them with his 025 marking their forearms. It could be a pattern. It could be nothing. One thing is clear: these aren't all Red Room agents.
Not Lukin's, either, if he had to guess. Lukin. The cube. (Mr. Red White and Blue, so convinced—) No. He'll worry about that later. What's important right now is that he's awake, not where he expected to be, and surrounded by civilians instead of scientists. (If he feels a split second's relief at the latter, he doesn't acknowledge it.) Maybe it's a drop-off point. Maybe it's a mistake. He definitely needs more information.
Wayward arm nowhere in sight, the soldier gives a half-hearted grimace and stands. As he falls into step with the flow of the crowd toward the showers, he dons on an expression somewhere between frustration and patient resignation, looking for all the world like he's done a thousand times, and once too many. (The best lies are couched in truth, after all.) Once clean and toweling off, he finds his way alongside someone who looks to have actually gone through this a time or two. He can't hide the shrapnel-shorn tangle of a scar or hefty metal socket at his shoulder, nor indefinitely obscure the number tattooed on his good arm, but confidence, misdirection, and careful towel use can go a long way toward feigning normalcy.
"Hell of a thing, isn't it?" he says with a nod back in the direction they came.
Inventory