#v; galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

Self vs. non-self (and the integration of the Winter Soldier into Bucky Barnes)

As you pointed out in your question, my Bucky has incorporated the Winter Soldier into her self-identity. Whereas MCU!Bucky says, "I am not the Winter Soldier anymore," my Bucky, like 616!Bucky, has accepted that the Winter Soldier will always be a part of her. She's discussed this before with @invncibleiron's Tony -- that Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier aren't two separate personalities.

Bucky has come to the conclusion, looking back on her life, that the seeds of the Winter Soldier were always there. She's always had a certain ruthlessness to her, especially in defense of the people that she cares about. As a child in Brooklyn, that usually involved not being afraid to use her fists to teach someone who hurt her sisters or Steve or her friend Rosie Finn a lesson. She fought by trying to get the bullies on the ground or running away as quickly as possible, even if that meant breaking a nose or knocking out some teeth.

These people are mine. How dare you try to harm them?

Still, when she was young she did her best not to leave wounds that wouldn't heal. But the brutality of the war and the trauma from having been raped, tortured, and experimented on in the Red Skull's factory stripped away a lot of her younger self's qualms about that. She found that killing came easily to her, and also found that she didn't feel particularly bad about killing, either. It had to be done, so she did it -- competently, thoroughly, and without remorse. The Nazis and the Red Skull were murdering innocent people and causing untold suffering for those who survived. Bucky found that unconscionable, so she did everything she could to put a stop to it in the most permanent way possible. Dead Nazis can't kill again.

This world is mine. How dare you try to destroy it?

The pieces of Bucky that would comprise the Winter Soldier were already in place by the time she fell off that train. All that was left for Zola and Karpov to do was to strip away the parts of her that weren't the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier is just Bucky Barnes with her conscience, memory, and free will removed. The fact that she was already suffering from amnesia caused by the fall and her subsequent death made their job easier. It would have taken a lot more work to break a Bucky who could remember who she was and what she believed.

I think it's important to point out that, even as the Winter Soldier, she wasn't a bully. She was competent and brutally efficient, but when she was controlled by the Soviets she always made an effort to avoid collateral damage, and she clashed with her handlers over that tendency on more than one occasion. Alexander Pierce broke her of that habit, but even when she was under his control, she never took any joy in hurting people. She followed orders. She did the job that was assigned to her, because that was all she knew how to do, but she did it without passion or pleasure.

When she finally escaped from HYDRA and came back to herself, she had to come to terms with the fact that yes, she had been the Winter Soldier. More than that, she still was the Winter Soldier. So she decided to make use of that fact. Bucky has always been practical. She'll deploy any tool in her arsenal, and the Winter Soldier is now another tool that she can use. People are terrified of the Winter Soldier, so she'll use the name and the reputation to strike fear into the people she has to fight.

There's also one additional fact that Bucky knows but has never given voice to, which is this: She's seen some of the worst the world has to offer, humanity at its most wretched, cruelest, and most malicious. Based on those experiences, she's come to the conclusion that sometimes, to make the world better and to spare innocents from death and suffering, certain people have to die. And, that being the case, she'll take the responsibility for killing those people, because she can bear it. She knows some of her friends, particularly Steve, would cut themselves up inside over having to make that call. So she'll make it instead to protect them.

#bokketo #meme answers #headcanon #hc list #v; brooklyn bird #v; sergeant barnes #v; dead of winter #v; galanthus nivalis #v; city heartbeat

[kevinscottgardens]

27 January - 2 February 2020

What a week. We were without gas at home until Thursday! Now all is back to normal. I found out some very dear friends, Elizabeth, Rob and Alessia, are moving to New York City for two years. This is in addition to Denis and André, who told me two weeks ago, they will try to move to France by the end of the year - eager to remain Europeans. Friday evening at 22.00 GMT Brexit finally happened which is very depressing.

Saturday morning I finally started making the lasagne for which I bought all the ingredients last weekend before the gas was turned off. Saturday afternoon I visited Rui in Kennington and we had a good catch up over one of his one-pot specialities. Then we wandered over to Mercato Metropolitano, a vibrant location with lots of nice things to eat, in Elephant and Castle. We enjoyed gelato for dessert. Then I headed to Barnes Bridge to visit Elizabeth and Alessia for pre-dinner drinks and a stint in the jacuzzi. Elizabeth caught me up on her whirl-wind trip to New York City last week, where Alessia had three days of interviews at schools to start in September. Then I headed to Clapham for a very nice evening at Sonja and James’ home for dinner.

This morning I made my way to work where I ran back-to-back workshops, for groups of twelve, on how to make kokedamas. It was a fun day, though exhausting. I’ve been asked to review the garden’s Galanthus collection and that is what I worked on most of last week. I’m going to verify all the names, find out what species we are missing, where to purchase them, and their ideal growing conditions. Galanthus nivalis is the most common western European snowdrop. Then, there are about twenty others starting from Italy, through Turkey to Iran.

Plant of the week

Amaryllidaceae Galanthus nivalis L.

common name(s) - common snowdrop, snowdrop synonym(s) - Chianthemum nivale (L.) Kuntze; Galanthus alexandri Porcius; G. imperati Bertol.; G. melvillei Voss; G. montanus Schur; G. nivalis var. atkinsii Mallett; G. nivalis var. hololeuca Celak.; G. nivalis subsp. imperati (Bertol.) K.Richt.; G. nivalis var. majus Ten.; G. nivalis var. minus Ten.; G. nivalis f. pictus K.Malý; G. nivalis f. pleniflorus P.D.Sell; G. nivalis var. scharlockii Casp.; G. nivalis var. spitzneri Podp.; G. scharlokii (Casp.) Baker G. umbricus Dammann conservation rating - Near Threatened native to - Pyrenees to Ukraine location - Embankment west, accession 2016-0197 leaves - applanate in vernation (are held flat against each other in bud), more or less linear and 50mm to 150mm long x 4mm to 8mm wide at flowering; smooth and semi-glaucous (dull greyish green) flowers - consists of six tepals, outer three are larger and more convex than the inner ones; inner flower segments are usually marked on their outer surface with a green or greenish-yellow V- or U-shaped mark over the small sinus (notch) at the tip of each tepal habit - perennial, herbaceous bulbs, to around 70mm to150mm tall habitat - most frequently occurring in moist conditions in deciduous woodland (Fagus silvatica, Quercus spp., Carpinus spp. etc.), and occasionally in coniferous woodland (Abies spp.). Also occurring in meadows, pasture, amongst scrub, near rivers and on stony slopes, particularly on calcareous soils. pests - narcissus bulb fly and slugs disease - Stagonospora curtisii, Botrytis galanthina hardiness - to -15ºC (H5) soil - humus-rich, moist and well-drained soil that does not dry out in summer sun - part shade propagation - by offset bulbs, either by careful division of clumps in full growth (in the green), or removed when the plants are dormant, immediately after the leaves have withered; or by seeds sown either when ripe, or in spring. Professional growers and keen amateurs also use such methods as twin-scaling (using twin-scaling it is possible to multiply one bulb into 16 to 32 (or more) viable bulbs in a couple of years, whereas natural propagation might only lead to a doubling every two years or so) to increase the stock of choice cultivars quickly.   nomenclature - Amaryllidaceae - the name of a country girl in Virgil’s writings; Galanthus - milk-white flower; nivalis - snowy, snow-white, growing near snow NB - In 1983, Andreas Plaitakis and Roger Duvoisin suggested that the mysterious magical herb, moly, that appears in Homer's ‘Odyssey’ is the snowdrop. An active substance in snowdrop is called galantamine, which, as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, could have acted as an antidote to Circe's poisons. Further supporting this notion are notes made during the fourth century BC by the Greek scholar Theophrastus who wrote in ‘Historia plantarum’ that moly was "used as an antidote against poisons" although which specific poisons it was effective against remains unclear. Galantamine (or galanthamine) is used to treat mild to moderate dementia (problems with mental function or doing daily tasks) associated with Alzheimer’s disease. People with this disease have low amounts of a chemical acetylcholine in their brains. A decreased amount of acetylcholine has been linked to dementia. Galantamine works to prevent the breakdown of acetylcholine. This increases the concentration of the chemical in the brain, and may help decrease the symptoms of dementia. It is not a cure. Galantamine also occurs naturally in daffodils and other narcissi. Galanthus nivalis is also an emmenagogue, and as such it stimulates or increases menstrual flow and so can induce an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.

References, bibliography:

Gledhill, David, (2008) “The Names of Plants”, fourth edition; Cambridge University Press; ISBN: 978-0-52168-553-5

IUCN [online] https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/162168/5551773#habitat-ecology [2 Feb 20]

Plant List, The [online] http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/record/kew-307568 [2 Feb 20]

Plants of the World [online] http://plantsoftheworldonline.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:64496-1 [2 Feb 20]

Royal Horticultural Society [online] https://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/7568/Galanthus-nivalis/Details [2 Feb 20]

Wikipedia [online] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galanthus_nivalis [2 Feb 20]

#Galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

Reasons to live

I'm going to split this into two parts: World War II and post-Winter Soldier.

World War II:

Bucky never wanted to go to war; as I've mentioned before, she was called up by the women's draft. And when she first went overseas, she was determined to survive. She wanted to go home. She wanted to see her parents and her sisters again. She wanted to see Steve again. She wanted to marry her fiancé, to settle down, to have a life.

That changed during her time in the Red Skull's factory. Not that she didn't still want to go home -- she absolutely did -- but she was so sick and so badly injured after Lohmer's beating that she just didn't think it would happen. She came to a point where she found herself forced to accept that she probably wasn't going to make it. That was why, when Zola's lackeys came around the day after her beating to pick a new subject for his experiments, she made sure that they picked her. Die in a cell, die in Zola's lab -- what's the difference? She'd be dead either way, and she figured she could at least buy her fellow POWs a few more days in which the Allies might win the war. She knows full well that she only survived because Steve showed up, and that if Steve hadn't come to rescue her, Zola would have kept on going until he killed her. She knows that Zola never intended for her to survive.

After the factory, as the war dragged on and she was dragged deeper into it -- not entirely unwillingly -- she started to get a feeling deep in her gut that she wasn't going to make it home. I think part of her was also aware by then that, even if she did survive and go back to Brooklyn, she wouldn't be going home. The war had changed her too much, and she didn't think she'd be able to go back to her old life. But she didn't see any point in agonizing over that. She was there to watch Steve's back. She was there to clear the way for her comrades. She was there to stop the Nazis and stop HYDRA. That became more important to her than going home. If you can't do something useful with your life when times call for it, then what's the point of living? At least if she died, she would be dying for a cause she believed in.

Post-Winter Soldier:

I'm not going to lie and say that Jane/Bucky has never contemplated suicide, because she has. In the immediate aftermath of her escape from HYDRA, she stayed alive primarily because she knew that if she killed herself, it would devastate Steve. And one thing Bucky has never, ever wanted to do is hurt Steve. As time went on and she advanced in her self-imposed mission of destroying HYDRA, her reason for staying alive shifted to spite (something she definitely learned from Steve). Karpov and Zola tried to destroy her. If she kills herself, that will mean they succeeded, and she won't let them succeed. In her own way, Bucky is just as stubborn as Steve. She's the unstoppable force and he's the immovable object.

Once she reunites with Steve and finds her way back to an equilibrium, she stays alive for a combination of reasons: Spite, Steve & Natasha, and the desire to do some good in the world. And while it's true that she does still have dark days and suicidal thoughts, she's also on the whole pretty content with her life. She has friends she cares about, she has a lover she adores, and she has a job that gives her a purpose. She's about as happy as she can be.

#bokketo #meme answers #headcanon #hc list #v; sergeant barnes #v; galanthus nivalis #v; city heartbeat #suicide mention cw

[murder-popsicle]

@rhodestoruin

Bucky was wrist-deep in dough when Colonel Rhodes wandered into the Tower’s communal kitchen. Natasha was in a funk, and Bucky had hoped that making some pirozhki to have with dinner might help brighten her spirits.

She wasn’t sure what the cause was – fallout from the Avengers’ last mission, the recent high-profile murder of an old colleague from their Soviet years, or maybe just plain bad memories – but Natasha had been tense and moody for a few days now, and so far nothing Bucky had tried had succeeded in lifting her spirits. But that didn’t mean Bucky was ready to give up; maybe comfort food would do the trick.

She gave the colonel a nod of acknowledgement as he passed by. That was about as much as they’d ever exchanged, apart from good morning or, on the nights that had been designated for team dinners, a polite could you pass the potatoes, please?

It wasn’t that she didn’t like colonel; it was just that she didn’t really know him. Bucky was still trying to find her feet here, after spending over a year on her own as a fugitive before finally deciding to seek Steve out, and in a tower full of people who were so clearly a team, a unit, she felt out of place.

Still, just because Bucky didn’t know him well didn’t mean she had any reason to be rude. So she glanced up, shot the man a small smile, and said, “Afternoon, Colonel. How’s things?”

#rhodestoruin #c: james rhodes #v; galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

@walkitoffrogers (Steve)

It had been over a year since Project Insight had coming crashing down into the Potomac and Bucky had escaped from her captors. She’d spent most of that time running – from HYDRA, from SHIELD, from the CIA, the GRU, MI6, and several dozen more governmental and covert organizations who all wanted to get their hands on the Winter Soldier.

And Steve. She’d been running from Steve.

But she hadn’t been running aimlessly. She’d buried herself in a mission of her own choosing – burning down as much of HYDRA as she could reach, along with what remnants of Department X she was able to unearth. It had kept her occupied while she pieced herself back together, and she’d made sure that HYDRA would never touch her again.

Breaking into his home in New York had been far too easy. He had no security measures beyond a locked door, and Bucky could open a locked door in her sleep. She would have to talk to Steve about that; she would have thought, after what happened in his apartment the night she'd nearly killed Nick Fury, that he would have upped his security measures. But then, this was Steve, and Steve would always be irredeemably Steve-ish.

Bucky wouldn't have him any other way.

Now she was sitting at his kitchen table, sipping a glass of whiskey from a bottle she purloined out of Steve’s cabinet. He wasn’t home yet. In fact, Bucky wasn’t sure where he was. But whenever he did make his way home, he would find her waiting for him.

#walkitoffrogers #c: steve rogers #v; galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

Young Bucky's perspectives on family

Bucky grew up surrounded by family. While her father was an only child and her paternal grandparents passed when she was young, her mother's family was enormous: Winifred O'Brien was one of eight children, seven of whom eventually emigrated from Ireland to America. Bucky likes to say that she couldn't throw a rock in Brooklyn without hitting an aunt, uncle, or cousin.

The O'Brien family was very close-knit. They all went to the same church, they were constantly in and out of each other's apartments, and they always banded together to help any family member who was struggling. Bucky can't even count the number of times her Uncle Dan crashed on the Barnes' couch at night while he was between jobs. If someone was sick, Aunt Mo would show up with a crock of soup. If somebody was short on the rent, her mobster cousin Tommy was good at "finding" enough money to help them out. The O'Brien siblings were immigrants in a foreign country, and they banded together and watched out for each other. They passed that on to their children, too. Family is profoundly important to Bucky.

Her definition of family, however, has never been limited to blood relations. Steve was adopted into the Barnes family and later into the extended O'Brien clan very quickly after befriending Bucky. The same was true of Rosie Finn, Bucky's closest female friend. During the war, the other Howling Commandos became family, became Bucky's brothers. To Bucky, anyone she cares about is family, and she'll watch out for them and protect them. This remains true in the present day: Steve, obviously, will always be family. Natasha is family. @invncibleiron's Tony Stark is family. @oftomorrow's Clark Kent is family. @symbioteburnout's Andi Benton is family. When she gets to know the Avengers better, the Avengers become family. Bucky may have many flaws, but her heart is enormous.

#bokketo #meme answers #headcanon #v; brooklyn bird #v; sergeant barnes #v; galanthus nivalis #v; city heartbeat

[murder-popsicle]

War as a political tool

This is a dicey one for Bucky. She never wanted to go to war, and she knows on a factual and intellectual level that the USA did not enter World War II out of altruism. They entered the war partially because they were attacked, and partially because they didn't want to have to stand on their own against a German-dominated Europe. The US went to war to protect its own interests.

But the thing was, that wasn't what it felt like to Bucky on the ground. That wasn't why she stayed in the war. She stayed because when you have a country that's slaughtering civilians and shoving people into gas chambers and death camps, talking it out doesn't work. You have to stop that however you can, and if that means killing the people perpetrating such things, then she's fully in support of that. The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. So there's a massive disconnect for her between what she knows about World War II and what she feels about World War II.

She does not, however, feel the same way about the Soviet-Afghan War. The Winter Soldier spent seven years in Afghanistan with Vasily Karpov during that war, and she remembers it as a long and brutal slog. It was a proxy war with the United States, fought to advance Soviet interests, and it wrought massive destruction and death for no good purpose. She absolutely hates that she was involved, and hates that little kids in Afghanistan are still having their legs blown off by land mines to this day.

HYDRA also used war as a political tool, though they operated behind the scenes rather than overtly. They manipulated governments and insurgent groups to start wars, and then fed those wars to further destabilize the relevant countries and global relations. And they sent the Winter Soldier to assassinate key figures whose deaths would help that along on more than one occasion. Bucky regrets her participation in that system enormously.

On the whole, Bucky is torn about war. She doesn't trust governments -- not even her own -- to wage war for good reasons, but she does still believe that there are times, like World War II, when war is necessary to stop greater evil. It's the same as a street fight, just on a much larger scale. There are some people you can't reason with, some actions that can't go unopposed. Sometimes you have to stand up and say, "No, I'm not going to stand by while you do this, and if you continue in your current course of action, I will stop you by any means possible."

The trouble is that that's never going to be reason enough for any government. There will always have to be some element of self-interest to get a country to intervene in unconscionable events.

#bokketo #meme answers #headcanon #v; sergeant barnes #v; dead of winter #v; galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

continued from here with @bokketo (moved for beta)

Bucky saw the moment Steve brought Captain America out, like changing a jacket. He was the Man with a Plan now, the competent leader, the soldier with complete faith in his own abilities. The reminder of the war, of watching Steve don the mantel for each mission, was so strong that it stung. But that was Steve. He always stepped up. He always wanted to do his part, even if -- much like Atlas -- he saw his part as carrying the entire world on his shoulders.

"God, you're still you," she said, a slight tremor in her voice. "It's good to see you're still you."

They all get the same treatment as you? he'd asked. And the answer to that was...not exactly. So she said as much. "It's two different groups of operatives. And they all volunteered, so no, they didn't quite get the same treatment as me. The brainwashing wasn't necessary for them."

Arkady, Leo, and Dmitri had believed wholeheartedly in their chosen cause and had never fought back against the powers that be in Department X -- unlike the Winter Soldier, who had had sporadic incidents of disobedience the entire time she'd been under Vasily Karpov's control. That was why they'd started freezing her in the first place; her affair with the Black Widow had shown Karpov that he and Zola hadn't quite managed to eliminate all traces of Bucky Barnes. Deep down, under all the programming and the memory manipulation and the brainwashing, there was still a piece of her old self, stubborn and rebellious, fighting against those who sought to control her. Karpov couldn't have that, so he began stashing her away in cryofreeze between missions, like Christmas decorations shoved in the attic, to keep her more thoroughly under his thumb.

HYDRA's top squad, on the other hand, had fought back against their masters, but only after they'd received Howard Stark's serum. Now, looking back on events, it wasn't hard for Bucky to figure out what that had been about. The serum, as Dr. Erskine had told Steve, amplified everything, both the good and the bad, and HYDRA's fanatics had been a pretty poisonous bunch to start with. But the eruption of violence from them had stymied HYDRA's leadership, who had never met Steve or Dr. Erskine and thus didn't understand the forces they'd been playing with.

Best not to think about what Zola's serum had done to Bucky. That only ever resulted in her tying her brain in a knot. In her darkest moments, she thought that what had principally been amplified in her had been her ruthlessness, her ability to see the clear, straight line between the problem and the solution, and to do whatever it took to make that solution happen.

Aware that her thoughts were beginning to spiral, she focused on the feel of Natasha's hand in hers, the warmth of Natasha's body leaning against hers. After a few moments, she felt able to return to business. Steve couldn't help her if Bucky didn't give him the whole story.

"Three of 'em were Department X agents," she said, keeping her voice level, trying to detach herself from the memories. "I trained 'em in the 1970s. They were supposed to be put into stasis, shipped to America, and activated at a later date -- like unusually deadly sleeper agents. The other five were HYDRA agents who got dosed with a serum that Howard Stark reverse engineered from your blood."

For the briefest of moments, her voice wavered, because thinking about the fact that she'd murdered Howard, the man who had helped Steve rescue her, a man she'd counted as a friend, never failed to upset her. But she pulled herself together and continued. "They went crazy after the serum," she said. "No big surprise. I mean, they were real zealots to begin with, and you know what Dr. Erskine said about givin' his serum to a bully."

Of course Steve knew. He had been the one who had told Bucky.

For the first time since the change of topic, she looked Steve in the eye. "They were s'posed to replace me, see?" she said. "But HYDRA couldn't control 'em, so they stuffed 'em in the freezer. And I dunno where they are, but they're worse'n I was. They could take down a country overnight if somebody got their hands on 'em."

#bokketo #c: steve rogers #c: natasha romanoff #v; galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

@bokketo (Nick Fury)

"So, Nat tells me this is more SHIELD's wheelhouse than it is Avengers business," Bucky said, sitting down at the table across from her new boss. As she spoke, she set down a stack of files three inches thick, as well as her tablet. If there was one thing she'd learned in her four months of working for Nick Fury, it was that it was best to have all your intel at hand when you went to propose a course of action to him.

She opened the top file, pulled out the top two sheets of paper, and passed them to Fury. "I did an unofficial briefing for you," she said. "This is Project Zephyr, an old KGB operation. Long story short, me and Nat've been lookin' for these guys for about eight months, and we've hit nothin' but dead end after dead end. Maybe somebody else would think it's time to give up, but I don't think so. If the three of 'em are still out there somewhere, they are a threat and we need to find 'em. I trained 'em myself. Each one individually is almost as good as me, and not to brag, but I'm one of the best. The three of 'em workin' together would be pretty damn formidable. So me and Nat agreed, we need more'n just the two of us at this point if we plan to find and neutralize these guys. Whaddaya say?"

#bokketo #c: nick fury #v; galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

[ Arm in Arm || Closed ]

@invncibleiron​​

As requested, the day after Tony had repaired her prosthesis, Bucky arrived outside the door to his workshop, her arms laden with the necessary edible offerings. “Knock knock?” she said out loud, because the only other alternatives would have been either kicking the door or banging on it with her elbow; she had a sack of burgers in one hand and was balancing a tray holding two milkshakes with the other.

“Miss Barnes. Mr. Stark is expecting you,” said JARVIS’ voice from overhead. The doors opened silently, and Bucky gave a nod of thanks towards the ceiling before entering the lab.

She looked around, but didn’t see Tony right away and didn’t feel comfortable poking around without his permission. Luckily, though, there was some empty space on the table nearest the door, so she was able to set down the food and free up her hands. “Tony?” she called. “Your burger delivery’s here. It’s Five Guys. And I brought milkshakes, too.”

After sampling a variety of modern-day burgers, Steve and Bucky had decided that if you had to buy from a chain rather than an independent grill or diner, Five Guys was the place to go. And in this case, Bucky needed to pick a chain, because their burgers were designed to be ordered to go, rather than eaten inside a restaurant. Plus, Five Guys did milkshakes, and Pepper Potts had been kind enough to tell Bucky what Tony’s favorite flavor was.

Bucky wondered if soda fountains or malt shops were still a thing in the 21st Century. She wondered if Tony had ever tried an egg cream.

Finally, she spotted him, as he rolled out from behind a partition on one of his little wheeled stools, some complicated tool that she didn’t recognize clasped in one hand, and kicked his way towards her. She gestured to the burgers and said, “I wasn’t sure how many you wanted, so I got a round half-dozen. Figured we could split ‘em while we talk.”

#invncibleiron #c: tony stark #v; galanthus nivalis #[ arm in arm ]

[murder-popsicle]

✘ from nat!

@bokketo || send ✘ for your muse to run their fingers along mine’s scars || accepting

"That's from Zola," Bucky said, watching her lover trace the long, faded scar than ran down her torso, breastbone to pelvis. "The first time he had me, in that factory. Dunno what he was lookin' for. I don't remember the actual cutting. I just remember wakin' up and seein' the stitches. Freaked me out real bad."

#bokketo #c: natasha romanoff #v; galanthus nivalis #meme answers

[murder-popsicle]

@notbigondoors​

Bucky was wrist-deep in dough when the being everyone called Vision wandered into the Tower’s communal kitchen. Natasha was in a funk, and Bucky had hoped that making some pirozhki to have with dinner might help brighten her spirits.

She wasn’t sure what the cause was – fallout from the Avengers’ last mission, the recent high-profile murder of an old colleague from their Soviet years, or maybe just plain bad memories – but Natasha had been tense and moody for a few days now, and so far nothing Bucky had tried had succeeded in lifting her spirits. But that didn’t mean Bucky was ready to give up; maybe comfort food would do the trick.

She gave Vision a nod of acknowledgement as he passed by. That was about as much as they’d ever exchanged, apart from good morning or good evening. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Vision; it was just that she didn’t really know him. Bucky was still trying to find her feet here, after spending over a year on her own as a fugitive before finally deciding to seek Steve out, and Vision was...strange. He was a synthezoid, Steve had told her, which Bucky had come to understand as the opposite of a cyborg, a sort of partially organic android. Even the wild imaginations on display in her childhood science fiction magazines hadn’t come up with anything like that.

Still, just because Bucky didn’t know him well didn’t mean she had any reason to be rude. So she glanced up, shot Vision a small smile, and said, “Afternoon. How’s things?”

She would have offered him a pirozhok, in the future when they finished cooking, but she wasn’t sure whether Vision actually ate food. Did he even have a digestive system? Most of him seemed to be synthetic, not organic. It was a mystery, and she didn’t want to step on his toes or cause inadvertent offense.

#notbigondoors #c: vision #v; galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

Natasha slides into the bed, sighing internally at how big it feels without Jane there with her. She knows her lover should be back soon, but in the meantime, she curls up into a little ball and scrolls through some mindless media on her phone. The cats take that as invitation to join her. When Jane makes it home, she’ll find a the trio of them napping, with the cats making fuzzy pompoms on either side of Natasha’s face.

@bokketo

When Bucky finally returned home, she found the apartment still and quiet. Assuming that Natasha was sleeping, she slipped off her shoes, hung up her coat, and crept on stocking feet into their bedroom, where she was greeted by the sight of her lover asleep, looking a little bit like Mickey Mouse, if Mickey had ears made out of curled up cats. The sight filled her with a warm, soft feeling, and she slid into bed and wrapped one arm around Natasha's waist, breathing in the scent of the Black Widow's shampoo.

"I'm home, milaya moya," she murmured, and then pressed a gentle kiss to the back of Natasha's neck.

#bokketo #c: natasha romanoff #v; galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

[ Double Jeopardy || Closed ]

@abrooklynboy​ expressed interest in a trial thread

“Didn’t I just do this?” Bucky said, staring down at the stack of paperwork in her hands. “I could swear I just did this.”

‘This’ being stand trial for the Winter Soldier’s crimes. It had been an utter circus, and the only reason Bucky had pled not guilty was because she’d wanted the truth to get out in the open, and for that she needed the opportunity to present evidence – something she couldn’t do without actually standing trial. Much to her shock, and mingled relief and shame, she’d been acquitted. The evidence of seventy years’ worth of torture, brainwashing, and mental manipulation had convinced the jury that she wasn’t culpable for what she’d done.

The Russian government, however, disagreed, and yesterday they had announced that they were seeking Bucky’s extradition so that she could stand trial again, this time for crimes against Russian citizens.

This had, understandably, made Bucky a little upset.

People could call her a hypocrite for it, but the fact remained that the U.S. government had had decent grounds to charge her with crimes. But Russia? When they had been the ones who had forced her to commit those crimes in the first place? That was bullshit, and she had no intention of standing for it. She knew what this was really about. They didn’t actually want justice. They wanted to punish her for revealing Soviet secrets.

She scrubbed a hand over her face, sighed, and then looked at Steve. “This is a mess,” she said.

#abrooklynboy #c: steve rogers #v; galanthus nivalis #arc: every page spells liberty #[ double jeopardy ]

[murder-popsicle]

Steve: "Tell me that I don't sound like some old fogey if I say that kids are too reliant on technology these days? I was watching a baseball game on the telly and in the audience, I saw a kid pull up a calculator on their phone to figure out how many runs their team needed to win. What the hell is all that?"

@bokketo

"Aw, c'mon, Steve. Embrace your old fogey-ness," Bucky said. "You wanna know what gets me about kids these days? They can't read an analog clock! 'Specially if it's got Roman numerals. They're so used to all their devices givin' digital readout."

#bokketo #c: steve rogers #v; galanthus nivalis

[murder-popsicle]

@bokketo​ (Nat) || music starters/drabbles || accepting #13 - “In the Bleak Midwinter” by All My Faith Lost

In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan Earth stood hard as iron Water like a stone

"Weather like this always reminds me of Russia,” Bucky said, stamping the snow off her boots as she entered the apartment she and Natasha shared. She unwound her scarf, took off her coat, and hung both on the coat rack, leaving her clad in a turtleneck, her usual cargo pants, and a pair of woolen socks. Joining Natasha in the living room, she pressed a kiss to the crook of her beloved’s neck.

Unusually, Natasha wasn’t working on her tablet, but was sitting with a glass of wine in front of the TV, which was playing some vapid-looking Hallmark movie that Natasha clearly wasn’t actually paying any attention to. Bucky fetched herself a some wine of her own and joined Natasha on the couch, watching her lover with soft eyes.

“D’you remember the first time you kissed me, milaya moya?” she asked.

She certainly remembered. They had been on a mission in Omsk, holed up in a filthy hotel with only each other and the roaches for company. It had been snowing out, like now, and the cars and pedestrians had turned the once-pristine blanket of white into a brown muck that left that city looking as though it had been coated in a layer of coffee meringue.

Natasha had returned from a food run and then changed into clothes for sleep, and Bucky -- or the soldier, because that was all she’d been back then -- hadn’t been able to look away. Natalia Romanova was beautiful and cunning and deadly, all roses and creeping briars and too-wise eyes. The Winter Soldier had respected her, taken pride in her training, and grown to care for her. As a comrade, of course, or at least that was what she’d told herself. But that night, all she could think as she watched the Black Widow was, I want to kiss you.

She couldn’t say it aloud. Desire was not a luxury that either of them had ever been granted. Natasha, though, with her mind like a scalpel – Natasha had read it in the soldier’s face, for she’d stood on her toes, graceful as the ballerina she’d never been, and pressed her lips to the soldier’s own. Her mouth had been warm and soft, and the soldier’s lips had parted on instinct. But she’d pulled away after a few breathless moments.

Natalia, she’d protested.

Shh, Natasha had said, pressing a finger against the soldier’s lips. I need to know – do you want this?

Had she wanted it? Yes, she’d wanted it, wanted Natasha’s lips on hers, her arms around Natasha’s waist and her hands against the other woman’s skin. But she’d known that if they were caught, the punishment that would crash down upon them would be terrible to behold.

Still, the word escaped before she could bite down on it. Yes, she’d breathed. Yes, I want this. She’d met Natasha’s eyes, beautiful and sun-flecked, and forced herself to ask the same. You, she’d whispered, do you want…?

Yes, Natasha had said. The soldier had pressed a kiss to the pulse in Natasha’s neck, Natasha had dropped her hands to the soldier’s hips, and they’d melted together like butter, like snow, like chocolate left too long in the sun.

Now, more than six decades later, sitting beside Natasha in a comfortable apartment, both of them free, both of them in full control of their own minds, Bucky felt blessed beyond belief. And when Natasha looked over at her, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips and love shining in her eyes, Bucky knew that she wouldn’t trade the Black Widow’s company for anything in the world.

#bokketo #meme answers #v; galanthus nivalis #c: natasha romanoff #have i mentioned that bucky loves natasha? #because bucky loves natasha #so much #so so much