armeyets | for viuva.

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for viuva.

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[ it's a desperate war, and getting more desperate by the day.

practically every month is another injury, another casualty. sergeant james barnes of the PPDC loses his arm: the kaiju rips off the jaeger's arm first and he feels it like it's his own, because for all intents and purposes it is his own, and the nerve damage leaves him screaming and screaming and screaming. it's almost a relief, when they're slammed to the side and he winds up caught between two iron plates, the damage to his human body matching the machine. they wind up having to cut his limb off at the shoulder in order to get him out.

and the neural damage that steve took piloting the jaeger back singlehandedly— well. it left him bleeding from the ears, brain fried, on the verge of a stroke. one more ride in the jaeger and you'll have an aneurysm, the psych analyst says. retirement, the psych analyst says. an honourable discharge.

steve takes his retirement about as well as can be expected — answer: not well — but he eventually agrees to transfer to jumphawk pilot instead. at least that way he can still be involved; can still be with the deployments in the field; can usher the jaegers safely out, even if he can't sit in that driver's seat anymore.

and as for his partner—

normally, any other soldier would have been forcibly retired with his kind of injury. but the beauty of the jaegers is you only need one arm, anyway. you can be half a man and still pilot just fine, so long as you have the right partner. so stark and banner over in j-tech rig barnes up with a prosthetic, good enough to open hatches and climb ladders and liaise with the weaponry UI, and they tell him as long as he stands on the left side of the conn-pod, it'll be fine.

he's still undergoing the last of his physical therapy, trying to ready himself for the field again, when it's another day and another funeral for another ranger. this one catches him off-guard, like a punch to the jaw out of left field.

because somehow, he'd never expected it to be nat.

he had trained natasha romanoff, years ago, back when he was the kwoon fightmaster and before he was promoted to pilot. his sync scores with her had always been good, but not as good as his with rogers, or hers with her sister. which leaves a grand total of unfinished man and an incomplete woman, both walking wounded, both missing their other halves.

so the question is: will they be drift compatible?

the new partnership isn't officially announced in front of the whole squad, or anything, in case it doesn't work. instead, marshal fury summons barnes to his office and tries it discreetly: try belova, he says, his one eye impassive, and barnes thinks: okay, sure.

so later that week, he texts her an invitation: spar in the kwoon room after hours?

which, everybody at the shatterdome knows what that actually means. the matchmaking, the combat scores, probing at each others' compatibility like it's a goddamn first date. testing the waters. when yelena shows up at the kwoon room, he's standing there patiently leaning on the stick, dressed in loose trousers and a white undershirt, which reveals all the gleaming metal of his arm. he's alone. for this sort of assessment, he doesn't want an audience. ]

[ the kaiju take, and they take, and they take. it doesn't matter if it's boat of ten people, half a city or her own sister — there's worldwide news coverage for it and then it's onto the next thing because they don't stop. she doesn't think they ever will.

but yelena remembers. she remembers her heart being lodged in her throat when she saw teeth twice the size cut through the armour of their jaeger like it was nothing. she remembers that that was the first time she'd ever seen dread in her sister's eyes. she remembers that the last thing natasha ever said to her was: this was fun.

yelena was still in her head, when the kaiju just about swallowed her whole — a flash of indescribable pain and inescapable terror that filled her lungs as if she were actually in there with her — and then, nothing. nothing but hot, angry tears that blurred her vision as she screamed herself hoarse.

(she only survived because she was fuelled by rage, by grief. she bought herself enough time to get pulled out of combat — herself first, their jaeger hours later — by using what little kinetic energy her arm had left to launch the kaiju away from her. two other rangers were deployed, and saved the coast of busan.)

natasha still gets a funeral; it's closed casket, because the body that was recovered from the kaiju's got was hardly even a body by the time they'd fished it out. captain shostakov is a drunken mess at her short-lived memorial. dr. vostokoff is straight-faced, stoic, but her puffy eyes suggest otherwise. yelena is quieter than usual, but that's just because her head is elsewhere.

they give her time, at least, after natasha's passing. and with the time they give her, yelena doesn't come out of her (and nat's) quarters for three days.

and they waste no time throwing her to the wolves, trying to partner her up with somebody else not even a week after losing her older sister, except yelena is too unpredictable. (read: impulsive, volatile, a little unhinged.) she didn't think that somewhere on that list would be sergeant barnes - and well, she's not completely against going up against him because he happens to be on her short list of people she respects.

it's why she responds to his text with a very simple: see you there

yelena sets foot into the kwoon room, all of her hair done up in a number of complex braids. their outfits are identical, from her white tank top to her pants — issued to all rangers and rangers-in-training alike at the shatterdome.

she makes her presence known by using her foot to step on the end of the other stick and propelling it upwards, catching it with her left hand. she salutes him with her right— ] Sergeant.

Did I keep you waiting long?

Nah. You're alright.

[ since steve's transfer and while bucky's been grounded, he's been spending more time with the PPDC troops lately: dinner at a rollicking table of soldiers in the mess hall, sam promising to teach steve the ropes of flying one of those beastly jumphawk planes, steve shaking his head in bemusement. bucky being teased by the group (hey, we're being graced with the presence of a ranger, fellas), even as he followed his best friend and drifted a little further away from the other rangers. just for a time.

so it occurs to him now, too late, that he hasn't seen yelena since the funeral. he'd slipped; even before nat's death, he hadn't seen much of either of them. the rangers' sleeping schedules usually wound up completely inverted from each other, night shift and day shift staggered and trying to give enough coverage to the shatterdome and the coast, making sure there was always one jaeger crew on deck at any given moment.

when she approaches, bucky straightens. hesitates. unsure if he should say something or acknowledge it at all, probing at the edges of that still-raw, messy wound.

but nat was his friend, too, and so in the end: ]

Sorry it's so soon. Normally I would've given you more time, but—

[ a sheepish tilt of one shoulder, a gesture of his metal hand. he doesn't even have to say it. they both know. pilots should have more time to grieve the loss of their other halves, but the war doesn't wait for anyone. the breach would open again, and the kaiju would come again and again with no respect for their recuperation, and so if marshal fury said to pair up and get back in the saddle, they'd damn well try to pair up. the pool of sync-capable pilots was dwindling year by year, and so broken crews were being re-cobbled back together, and mechs were being scrapped and salvaged in order to repair the remaining units.

they had no choice. ]

[ she steals a glance (or several, let's be real) at bucky's person, giving him a once over. the last time she'd seen him was in passing, at nat's funeral. yelena couldn't really see his arm then, hidden by the suit, but she can't take her eyes off it now. so. cool, she thinks.

then he says that he's sorry and that he would've given her time— perhaps all it takes for yelena's walls to come down is a little bit of sympathy. her pokerface is gone; her brows come up for a second — she's taken aback. but the surprise settles in, and her features soften. she gives him a smile— a sad one, but a smile nevertheless. ]

But there is no room to be grieving in the middle of a war, I know.

[ everyone knows it. but it's different coming from bucky. maybe it's because she knows him on a more personal level and because he was actually natasha's friend. she is at ease here, even with the silence that hangs between them. it's comfortable, and she welcomes it.

and even if he's ten, twelve feet away from her — he still feels closer than the other candidates she wrestled into the mats and on their backs over the last couple of days. ]

You should've texted me sooner. I would have come running, you know. [ it's yelena's turn to be sheepish and she does it in the form of a grin. she rolls her neck and lifts her stick to tuck it under her arm, pointing it at his metal one. ] Will you be able to get a score on me with that thing? It looks pretty heavy.

It is.

[ a frank, easy admission; he's still getting accustomed to the weight of this thing shackled to his shoulder, the way it throws off his center of gravity and balance and gait, skewing everything ever so slightly to the left. he's been doing dexterity exercises, stacking coins, assembling a jigsaw puzzle borrowed from someone else's quarters. he's taken to carrying around a small therapy ball, absentmindedly flexing his metal fingers around it, rolling it across his palm, tossing it from hand to hand. notsomuch rebuilding the muscles, but trying to get accustomed to controlling them, the delicate fine-motor movement so he can actually aim a missile in the conn-pod, or pour a cup of coffee, without accidentally glitching everywhere and shattering the mug in one overly-strong metal fist.

it's a work in progress. ]

'That thing' is one of the best components Stark and Banner could build, though. They're, like, mad scientists over in J-Tech. If they can build plasma cannons and neural bridges, they can get me a working arm.

[ bucky says it lightly, as teasingly as he can, although there's still— something. some strain at the corner of his eyes, the smile just a little too forced. this, too, is a raw wound. ]

I'll keep up. Heard you've been wrecking the cadets this week, though.

[ his admittance is surprising when it shouldn't be, because what is james barnes if not brutally honest?

yelena mulls over it for a couple of moments, thinking to herself: he is showing his cards to trick me, as he praises to the heavens the gods (read: the comedic duo that runs the lab, stark and banner) that graced him with the metal arm he's had to lug. but, she's gotta give it to him — he makes it look effortless. just like with everything he does. she's seen him and steve go at it in the kwoon room, late in the evening coincidentally enough, while she and nat were waiting for their turn to use it. yelena didn't mean to study their exchanges then, but she's glad now that she did. ]

Is that what they're saying now? [ she snorts, and keeps her lips from curling into a smile although it's incredibly clear that she's horribly smug about it. ] The Marshal kept tossing them my way, saying that they need practice. And it is true.

[ yelena steps forward some, until the tip of her stick resting against his metal shoulder. ]

Let's hope you don't need as much, Barnes.

[ he feels the weight of the stick pressing against his shoulder, but only by extension: she rests it against the metal which weighs against his muscles and tendons in turn, and it all feels distant, muted. but it's an opening — an invitation — and so bucky's expression splinters open into a knowing grin. he can't resist mouthing off just one last time, dropping in these last few words before he breaks into movement: ]

We'll see, Belova.

[ and then it's like the starter pistol's gone off, and they both spring into battle. he cuts into fluid motion, his stick snapping upward and knocking hers away from him, no longer pressing against metal or flesh alike (either one would count as a point scored after they begin, a mark in her favour). there's the sharp crack of wood against wood as she meets each of his strikes with one of her own, always fending him off even as he presses forward across the mat; a step with each jab of the stick, each pivot trying to get in past yelena's guard.

he notices immediately: it's not the same as fighting with steve. she's so much shorter than the other man, her center of gravity different. less brute strength, more lithe ballerina grace. bucky has to adjust, account for it. in fact, it's so much like fighting nat (there's a distant twinge, a dull ache under his breastbone upon remembering it). the two women were trained so similarly, they're practically mirrors of each other.

and yet. different.

each time she meets him in the middle and then pushes back, bucky starts to feel that flicker of hope — maybe this will work. it's the question which rangers ask every day in the kwoon room with their bodies, trying to find the answer in that delicate balance and choreography across the mats: will they be compatible? can they speak each others' language?

a few steps in, the more that he doesn't score a point on her and she doesn't manage to hit one on him, he's already starting to think: hell, maybe they could. ]

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