strangetrip | [GP/EP] Check-in Day

The woodwinds in her collection were for noodling mostly, and the violin was for memory of her family, but when Curnen really wanted to play she turned again and again to her guitar. This would probably always be her best instrument. It was the first of the month, she’d been here over a year, and it was probably a check-in day. So she sat on the lawn with her instrument in her lap, sending out a subtle magic to call anyone stranded in their little world this way.

At one point, though, she set aside the guitar and turned her face to the sky. For just a few minutes she required a different kind of magic.

It had been a week now since Scanlan had vanished in the battle. And Pike, too, though Curnen honestly couldn’t have cared less about her going away if she tried. Still. The two of them were family to people very dear to her, people who missed them. And Scanlan had been her friend. You marked something like that with a song.

Of all the money that e'er I had
I spent it in good company
And all the harm that e'er I've done
Alas, it was to none but me
And all I've done for want of wit
To memory now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all

It was a traditional Irish goodbye, a farewell to friends said with love, drinking, well wishes, and the hope of meeting again. She couldn’t think of a better one for the occasion. And as she sang she twined her magic into her voice in a new way, sending the song to any ears that needed it, ears of those who knew and missed the departed. Not all of them might understand it, not all of them knew what she was, but she didn’t particularly care about that right now. The song was more important than the hiding.

Once the last note had dissipated she picked up her guitar again and resumed her work. If there were anybody out there, they had to know where to go.

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It seemed mostly internal - highly useful, in certain circumstances, but in terms of external detection.... "Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm loath to disregard any possible advantage." If nothing else, Bucky would be more than decent backup, on occasions when he needed a quieter companion than his brother.

Thor was many things. Subtle wasn't generally one of them.

"If you'll take my advice, never stay in a cage if you have the opportunity to leave it behind." There was something almost bewitching in the idea of being somewhere untouchable and untraceable... but there were many such places in the universe, surely. There was no reason to stay on one so pink. "But I'm sure we'll have time to convince you to my point of view on that."

Bucky nodded his head slowly. "I... I'm not sure I want to go back." His head tilted to the side and he stared at Loki. "There were people looking for me." He shrugged his shoulders. There would always be people be looking for him, no matter where he went.

Glancing down at his metal hand, Bucky flexed it, making a fist and letting it out slowly. It was his arm, something he couldn't change about himself. He wasn't sure what Loki meant, what he'd been asking about in regards to his arm, but it clearly wasn't what Loki wanted.

"I have the feeling we have lots of time. We're both stuck here," he said softly.

"No need to go back. Go somewhere else. That's what I intend to do." Whatever he and Thor agreed, the simple fact that the man refused to give him warning about what was coming meant that the safest thing to do was run. Nothing personal, just reasonable reaction given current information.

"But yes. Plenty of time." There was always plenty of time, and it was important to be patient in prison. Be patient, find things to occupy the time. But still, the more time that passed, the less peaceful one could be about it. At least it wasn't solitary confinement. "And at least we're not completely surrounded by definite enemies." Completely surrounded by possible enemies was, of course, both different and a constant.

"They always find you." Bucky shrugged and took another sip of his drink. He turned to Loki. Being on the move was not a bad thing. He'd gotten good at it, to be honest. Didn't mean he liked it, though. Just once, he wished he could find a place and stop running. He wished he could just be left alone.

This place may be a prison, but could he stop running here?

Bucky frowned at Loki. "Enemies. Not surrounded, but I've already run into one of mine. Wanted to shoot me," he murmured. Bucky slugged back his drink and reached out to pour himself another. They may not be surrounded, but he sure didn't like running into Stark on his first day here. "Time is an illusion," he said softly. "It's a constant. What is one day for one person is one year for another. Watching people die. Not easy."

Not surrouneded? "You're an optimist. That's fun." Loki turned to put his back to the balcony railing and lean on it. He rarely cared about people dying; a trick he'd learned over the course of a fifteen hundred year life. There were exceptions, of course, but by and large death was easy. Even, on occasion, his own.

But saying so out loud would hardly endear him. The point about time was more interesting anyway. "And it's more difficult here. People stuck in a past, or a future, or a different universe entirely. Perhaps fortunately, all the old rules apply. When faced with multiple options, we don't have to know. We just decide."

"I..." Bucky frowned. Was he an optimist? "The... The old me was," he said softly. It was hard to describe it and not sound complicated or confusing. "I... I guess?"

He gazed up at Loki. "Decide." It made sense, in a way, but it also confused him more. He wasn't sure how he felt about being here. It was hard to wrap his mind around it. Part of him wanted to go to his room and never come out. Then, he wouldn't have to run into Stark that way. "What rules?"

"People are always people, wherever and whenever they come from." It was the only rule that mattered. Whatever people knew, or thought they knew, as long as one bore in mind that they were adversaries in almost all cases, it was easy to step back, look for the cracks, decide what was true in the moment, and go to work. And they were often childish about time - Thor was almost certainly a case in point. "Time happens one thing at a time. If someone says 'oh, you did this' and you didn't or haven't yet? You decide. Agree with them, fight them, whatever. What hasn't happened isn't real unless you let it be."

By the same token, whatever had happened was real, but you still had choices. Excuse it, own it, whatever. There was a list. "People think truth and reality are immutable things, but they really, really are not."

Currently, Loki had opted to philosophize at a confused one-armed man. Likely not the best decision he'd ever made, but he did like talking.

Bucky really did try to keep up with Loki in the conversation. Some of the words made sense, but some of them? The words were deep and they went right over his head. Loki had been practically going philosophical on him and that just wasn't Bucky's world. Steve had always been the smart one of the two of them.

Bucky was kind enough not to just ask the man if he liked to hear himself talk. Since, clearly, he did.

"Like..." Bucky frowned. "This place. She... She said time and space, not here. Stuck?" He glanced up at Loki, his brow furrowing. "So... Stark came from my future. He knew things I had not done yet," he murmured. "To him, it's real. To me, it's... Not?" Did that make him better or worse than how Tony saw him. He wasn't sure. "But... We're stuck here. So, I... I can't fix it or change it. And he'll still feel the pain of it, even if I didn't do it..." Bucky was half talking to Loki and half talking to himself, trying to understand and work it through in his own mind.

"It's... It's like the East River. It flows. It's constant. Always moving. You can try to block it, but it would have to be a really big rock," he mumbled.

“If there’s nothing to be done, there’s nothing to be done. His feelings, his problem.” Unless it was useful to take them on in some way, but mucking around in emotions was tricky, difficult, and generally had very little real payoff.

Time did flow like a river, sometimes; Loki couldn’t play with it himself, but he didn’t need to in order to understand that he refused to be bound by anything but his own decisions. “Or a multitude of small rocks.” Or a ditches sufficient to bleed it away.

Not a bad metaphor, all things considered. “I’d concentrate on keeping your own head above water. If we’re talking rivers.”

[GP/EP] Check-in Day

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