The Long Journey Home

22: We don't believe, we only fear

[ Chapter notes: TFATWS 1x06 ]

It's the instigator's shift, the guard that refuses social niceties and takes a little too much pleasure in the power he wields over those incarcerated here. They'll develop a mutual understanding to ignore and be ignored, or ...

For now, Helmut is content to be a model prisoner. He'll let the guard's attempts to rile him slide over and around him. There are men like this everywhere. If it gets to that point, he knows just how to deal with him.

          Trouble is here now, in New York. It followed from Riga -- and Madripoor, before that. At this point it's hard to say if trouble follows in your wake, or if you are following it. It's wound around you just like that thistle that is twisted up within the darkness that dominates your internal landscape.

          Bucky's going to meet Sam. This is what they do. He's a super soldier and Sam can fly. That knowledge does nothing to stop you from worrying.

          Something's going down. I'm meeting Sam. Stay here. Stay safe.

          Safe. That word again that everyone around you seemed to like to say so much. That promise nobody is capable of keeping. That lie everyone keeps trying to peddle, even Helmut.

          Stay here. He'd phrased the request like he thought you were going to argue with him, like you were going to argue against his plea that you stay at the apartment. Yes, ok, there was a moment when you felt the urge to accompany him, mingled in with the slew of questions filing into the muddled mess in your head. There is no longer a queue, just what sits closer to -- and further away from -- the surface, all whirled together within.

          It is a thought that lasts until he tells you where he's meeting Sam, where the something is going down here in New York. Close, which is good for meeting up with Sam and being able to react to whatever it is that Bucky keeps talking around rather than saying outright. As soon as you learn where his hesitance makes sense: the Global Repatriation Council's headquarters in downtown Manhattan.

          That ill feeling that you've so frequently battled with returns. Bucky thought -- maybe they'd both thought -- that you'd want to go see the NYC base for the organization that has impacted your life so much in the years since the destruction of Novi Grad. Thanks, but no. You'd learned your lesson from the last time. Insisting on going while in Riga was a bad idea, even with the intention of trying to help them fact find, trying to act as an interpreter. What good would a polyglot be, here? What could you possibly contribute in the efforts of reacting to, trying to stop, whatever's happening.