bionicstaringmachine

Hel stands with her eyes closed in the middle of the bustling crowd. The words of the people around her, once foreign and unfamiliar, begin to make sense the more she listens. Languages have always come easy to her, along with glamour — abilities that help her blend in more easily wherever her travels take her, as one with a divine charge to protect the Tesseract.

But the Tesseract is not here. Something else is, however, and after a moment, she slowly makes her way through the crowd, inching closer to the stage. Up there, a human is showing off some sort of flying vessel of his creation. She frowns, wondering if it's dwarven-made, and how in the Realms could that have happened without the Tesseract. Or at least she wonders up until an explosion sends the car falling back to the stage. Very anticlimactic.

"Stark Gravitic Reversion Technology," she repeats under her breath after the inventor, her eyes trailing up to the letters on the stage. Stark Industries. Well, that must be the man's—

A boy knocks her a step back as he hurries past. He apologizes, but he's so harmless and scrawny that she can't believe he'd done it with any malice, and so she waves him off. She turns back to the stage to see what else might be next and why her instincts had led her here, only to lock gazes with a blue-eyed man in some sort of uniform.

Suddenly she can't breathe. She knows someone with those eyes, but he couldn't possibly be here. She'd left him for dead that night she'd fled with the Tesseract.

Bucky's determined to enjoy his last night until only God knows when the war effort would be over and he'll be able to come back home. The fair's something that they can walk around for a while, have some fun - chat up a dame or two, knowing him - and it'll help get any of those nerves that come along with knowing you're headed off to war first thing in the morning, from getting the better of him. And the worry that his best friend is gonna do something stupid while he's gone.

The display, even if it ultimately fails is an impressive one because it's like nothing he's ever seen before. He's sure it's the kind of thing that might be close to things he's read about in the dime novels he likes to pick up when he can ( when he's got a little extra to spend, something that ain't going to a date or something else to impress a girl ), but it impresses him and leaves him in awe for a moment.

"Holy cow," he mutters but realizes, that might not be about the failed attempt at the flying car but instead the woman his eyes end up locking onto. There's a brief moment where he thinks he's glad he didn't set up a double date for his last night, because it frees him up to stare at this woman. Then he wonders how long it's been and if the way he's staring is gonna lose its charm all of a sudden. It also means he's lost track of Steve and isn't running off after him, either.

It's not like the crowd is sparse, but as he comes in closer to this woman and speaks to her, all the other noise around them becomes unimportant.

"It sounds like something outta a science fiction novel, am I right?" He's saying as he glances from her then to the stage and back. He's talking about what they just saw without realizing he's making a remark on something else entirely. He gives her a smile after, already working on that charm of his to keep her from walking away.

He takes a step toward her, and the illusion, or whatever had washed over her, breaks. It's a different man, with eyes that remind her now of the blue of the Tesseract. She has half a mind to leave; she's not supposed to be mingling with the locals like this. She's supposed to be a ghost, her sole purpose the recovery and protection of the Tesseract. But why can't she look away from him?

Especially when he throws a smile her way. Disarmed, she barely realizes after the deed is done that she's smiled back at him too, a matching grin to his charming one. She doesn't even know what he's talking about, exactly. Science fiction? "Was there anything more before?" she asks instead, in English but with a clipped accent that sounds like Russian or German. "I just arrived." After a beat, she feels compelled to add, "From out of town."

While she won't see it, Bucky feels relief when she smiles and speaks to him, since while it's not like he's never struck out ( it's happened at least a time or two ) he'd hate that to be how he spends his last night before he ships out. He'll take talking to a beautiful dame over having to think about how he's heading off to war in the morning.

"I dunno, I kinda just got here myself. Not from outta town, but to the fair," he explains as he nods a bit to say yes, of course that makes sense. Her accent is different - she sure as hell doesn't sound like she's from New York, from Brooklyn no less. "Where're you from? Your accent sounds like you're a long way from home." She brought it up, being from out of town, he might as well go a bit further with it.

"I'm James," a beat, barely even half a second as he huffs out a quick laugh, "Bucky. Most people call me Bucky." His family might call him variations of James at times ( Jimmy, Jamie ) it's Bucky that's stuck ever since Steve became his best friend. Just like it'll follow him overseas and he might as well just accept it.

Sounds like you're a long way from home. Ha. He has no idea.

"Tønsberg, in Norway." It's not a lie. Though it's not the whole truth, either. Not that she intends on revealing that information to him — or anyone else, for that matter. Still, it would be good to see if word has spread about what happened back there. He looks sharp, like he belongs to some kind of military order. Maybe he'll have something.

"Bucky," she repeats as he laughs, and she can't help feeling like wanting to laugh now too. "I'm Hel." Distracted, it takes her a second to realize that she probably shouldn't be using that name, if only because she doesn't want to get linked back to the stories the people of Tønsberg had come up with in the many years she'd been asleep. It's better if nobody thinks about looking at her (and her background) too closely. "Helena," she quickly adds. There, now at least 'Hel' sounds like a nickname.

There's a low whistle at her answer as his eyebrows jump a little at how far away from home she is. That makes sense now, where her accent is from. "Yeah, you're a long way from home," he says in an amused tone, the warmth in it evident the moment it comes out. He's only put in the time it takes for him to become a sergeant in the army, so he hasn't become beaten down by the war yet - that's for his days starting with tomorrow - so it's easy for him to be like this with a complete stranger. "I'm headed outta town myself tomorrow morning. England. Not as far as where you're from, but still pretty far. Guess where you were probably looking to get away from the war, I'm getting thrown into it."

Other than knowing that Norway was occupied, he can't say he knows anything about what's happening where she's from outside of what he's heading overseas for as it is. The war. He doesn't think there's anything suspicious or out of the norm in what she's said so far, since he can see why someone would wanna get away from all of that.

"Nice to meet you, Hel." He throws on a wink at the end, forgetting all about how he's supposed to be keeping track of Steve - he hasn't even realized that his friend hightailed it out of there before he took notice of Hel in the first place. "Bein' from out of town and all, you don't have a chaperone hanging around here, do you?" It's his way of asking if she has a date, if there's someone who's arm she's supposed to be on because he might be trying to get her on his for the rest of the evening. He can walk her around the rest of the fair or take her dancing, to make sure he's not letting his last night of freedom go to waste.

Thankfully he does the talking, because she hasn't fully grasped Midgardian geography yet, only following the trail of magic left by the Tesseract — even if it meant crossing an entire ocean into a dead end. But he does confirm that he's involved in the war, and that piques her interest a bit more. At least she has a lead now.

Not that she isn't already interested in him. When he throws in that wink, she just thinks it's cute, and when he asks about her chaperone, she gets a sense of what he's really asking. While she still has the mission at the back of her head and the ghosts of her pasts... oh, what the hell. She hasn't had any fun in years. What's one night?

"Unfortunately not. Or should I say... fortunately not?" She didn't think it would be possible for her to slip back into her old, playful self, not after everything she's been through, but her lips lift easily and her eyes gleam knowingly. "You look like you could use some fun on your last night." And she knows she's a lot of fun. She always has been. The darling of the court, the realm's favorite princess.

open post.

at the expo, 1943

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