courtings | open post (steve rogers)

Steve found it hard to believe that this guy's girlfriend wouldn't know about what was going on over here. Just some research on the internet would probably get her all the answers that she needed, but he could also understand the man's worry.

The explanation he got for the New Tomorrow group was more or less what he would have expected, if only from the description of eco-warriors. It seemed a little fringe to be anything HYDRA was involved in, but then again, they were involved in everything and Steve doubted that his stunt had completely wiped them out.

"You seem pretty knowledgeable," he said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other as he looked the stranger over. "Or at least clued in on the political climate here. This is probably a long shot, but can I ask you if you've heard anything about someone with a metal arm here in the city?"

Was he laying it on a bit thick? The more he thought about it, the more the pain of losing her seemed to spark in his brain and made his chest tighten. Without thinking, he reached up to rub at the back of his neck, behind his ear, where the implant had been before he'd cut it out.

"What can I say? I spent a lot of time in a computer lab for my PhD being bored stiff while the Professor did stuff on the project. I got through a lot of news sites."

Well, it was sort of true. He'd done that in between conversations with Soleil and breaking down the security protocols on her system.

A metal arm? That was a very odd question and Lawrence's confusion wasn't actually feigned for once. "No... not that I can remember but I think something like that would be pretty distinctive. Sorry. Is that what brings you over here?"

It was distinctive, which probably meant that Bucky had gone out of his way to keep it hidden as he moved around and covered all his tracks. Steve had to hold back a sigh. He'd known he wouldn't get any sort of confirmation here, and yet he'd still asked. He was desperate at this point, worried he'd never be able to pick up Bucky's trail.

"Yeah, more or less," Steve said, glancing away and shaking his head. "It's kind of a long story." A very long story that started seventy years ago, and he wasn't getting into it with this stranger.

This looked like it was a dead end, though, so Steve wondered if now was the time to gracefully depart. "Thanks for answering my questions. I know I sort of showed up unexpectedly." And they were going to just ignore the fact that Steve had followed this guy to his home and knocked on his door like it was no big deal.

He wasn't exactly spy material.

Lawrence gave a soft laugh, shaking his head. "Oh, that kind. I know what that's like." He'd become part of a very very long story and he still wasn't sure how it was going to end. Hopefully not with him locked up somewhere. That would really suck.

No, Bright Star was going to be his best bet.

He raised an eyebrow at the sudden decision to leave. If he hadn't already been suspicious. "You sure? Oh come on, let's get your phone charged so you can try and call home. It's gonna be a whole before they get all the power restored. Maybe you can tell me about this metal-armed person and I can keep an eye out."

This was actually what Steve had been hoping for. He wasn't convinced with this stranger's initial explanation, and so if he could get a better look at things inside, it might shed some light on the situation.

Besides, getting his phone charged might not be the worst idea. He hadn't been in contact with anyone other than Sam, but having him on speed-dial at least meant that Steve could let someone know if things really went south.

"You sure? I would really appreciate it," Steve said with a small smile. "Though I guess maybe we should cover introductions first." The man didn't seem to recognize him, and that could have to do with Captain America not being that well-known on this side of the Atlantic. "The name's Steven Barnes," he said, offering his hand out for a shake.

"Yeah, sure. Not like my social calendar is full of thrilling engagements. Can't even find a coffee shop that's open," Lawrence replies with a smile and steps aside the let the man into the house. It's kind of studenty; battered furniture and a couple of games consoles with dust on them. Everything set up to make it look innocuous, not that anyone ever tried to come round, not with the people Soleil had got her claws into.

"Sure. Nice to meet you Steve," he said, shaking the guy's hand firmly. "Lawrence Fraser." Less distinctive than Emmanuel which was the first thing that came to mind. Not like Charlie was in any position to complain now. "You picked a hell of a time to come visit the UK."

No, Steve didn't have any social engagements either, save for Sam. There wasn't much time for friendship right now, not when he was spending all of his waking hours trying to get his friend back.

"Same to you, Lawrence," Steve said, stepping inside and taking a curious look around. He did it with the air of anyone entering a house for the first time, but he was also on the look out for anything out of the ordinary. Seeing how Lawrence had invited him in, though, chances were if anything strange was going on here, he'd already covered it up.

"That was sort of the idea," he explained, turning toward Lawrence with his hands in his pockets. "So, do you usually just invite strangers into your home?" He said it with a small, testing smile.

The house was steadfastly normal as far as Lawrence was allowing Steve to see. Nothing you wouldn't find in any student house in London. "Come on in. There's a spare charger somewhere. what kind of phone do you have?" Could you charge American phones on a UK socket? Something about voltage being different?

It probably didn't matter when you were on a generator.

He face Steve, matching his smile, and gave a dismissive shrug. "I dunno. Times like this, when everything's gone crazy, you try to pull together right? Blitz Spirit. The Greater Good," he added, a sardonic twist to his lips on the last part.

Steve, meanwhile, was oblivious about the voltage being different in other countries. All of his overseas traveling so far had been under SHIELD's jurisdiction, so he'd been using their tech and therefore hadn't had to even think about it.

He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. It was a smart phone, black and sleek. "It's Stark Tech." Would Lawrence even know what that was? Steve didn't know how far Stark's products had spread, if they'd made it to other countries or if it was mainly based in America.

"I think you're right, though. Pulling together, that's how wars are won. But still, thank you. You could have easily shut the door in my face."

Lawrence took the phone, taking a quick look over it. "Nice phone," he said. "Yeah, I think we get that stuff like three years later than the US." And who needed a phone when you'd previously had a direct neural link with a super intelligent sentient AI who could just feed you whatever information you needed.

He rooted around for a charger and managed to plug it in to one of the solar cells which he was mostly relying on now for smaller stuff. It slowly started to charge.

"I can't say I know much about that. I'm just a research student, not a soldier. Is that what you do? In the army? And don't worry about it. I'm glad to help out where I can, even if there's not much I can do."

If the clue about war hadn't given Lawrence an idea of who he was yet, then Steve probably didn't have to worry much. He was surprised that he'd found a way to charge his phone so easily, but he wasn't about to complain. Without SHIELD's resources to rely on anymore, Steve was pretty much on his own.

He leaned against the closest wall and nodded. "I'm a soldier, yeah." He probably couldn't say much more than that, and hopefully Lawrence wouldn't ask.

"So, what kind of research are you doing?" It seemed worth asking, especially since it had already been mentioned a few times. Art school had once been a consideration for Steve's future, before the war and the serum, but that was the most thought he'd put toward education. All the universities they had set up now -- it was pretty impressive, what people did.

Edited 2014-04-21 18:52 (UTC)

"Lot of soldiers around these days, keeping the peace and all," Lawrence said, falling into idle chatter as easily as he had with Stanton and Walker and the others. How long before he was actually going to have to start dodging the army? The sooner he left London the better he supposed.

He glanced back up, going to sit down on the battered couch. "The project was on 'the potential of self-evolving algorithms in the development of real-time natural speech recognition'," he said with a touch of amusement. "Computers and AI stuff. I basically did a lot of copying up research notes for the professor and the occasional bit of programming."

Sometimes soldiers were doing things much worse than keeping the peace, depending on who they were loyal to, but Steve kept that comment to himself. Better that he didn't make anyone too paranoid, and he had no idea how involved HYDRA was in all of this. Right now it was all assumption and conjecture.

When Lawrence sat, Steve also found a chair to settle into, facing the other man with clear interest in his gaze.

Especially when the word "algorithm" came up. It wasn't a word he could associate with anything good now, and his mouth twitched unpleasantly for a moment. Computers, AIs... naturally, what he thought of was Zola, though he'd been destroyed.

"What kind of algorithms?" Steve asked after a long pause.

So what was it about computers and his research that had caught the man's attention. It left Lawrence on guard again, no matter how casually he sat. Some connection with the CIA like Jackson? Mossad like Pippa? Or something else?

"I can't go into huge detail," Lawrence said with a shrug. "I think some of the research was for the government so I had to sign confidentiality agreements and stuff, just to get onto the project." If he hadn't gone digging, if he hadn't had Soleil's prompting, he probably would never have known the full scope of what they'd been doing.

"It's like... code that changes itself as it learns, I guess is the easiest way to describe it. I mean generally, if you speak to a computer, you can tell. It has stock responses it can choose from, but that's it. This kind of algorithm would be able to learn and develop and respond to pretty much any interaction."

Everything Lawrence had to say about his work only made Steve more convinced that this research project was somehow tied into Zola's algorithm, or possibly was some kind of precursor to it. HYDRA's involvement seemed undeniable.

That didn't necessarily mean that Lawrence had any idea what he'd been a part of, especially if he'd been a graduate student and doing more of the busy work. Steve needed to push this, but he had to figure out the best way to do that without setting off red flags.

"And you said you were working under a professor? What was his name?" If anyone was going to turn out to be some kind of HYDRA sleeper agent, it would probably be the person heading this project. Steve just needed to find out that much, and then he could be on his way.

Some interest in the project then. Everyone who wasn't really into AIs and programming tended to have glazed over by now when he got into the details of the Porject. And this guy just wanted to know about the people developing it? Chasing down Emmanuel and Foster would lead him on a bit of a wile goose chase at least. It was quite possible that Lawrence was the only person from the Project still alive. Soleil had been... thorough.

"Robert Emmanuel, up at Inverness? And Aisling Foster. She's American, dunno if you've heard of her. If the field is as bafflingly obscure as it is over here, no reason you should have. It was a big deal though when she moved over a fair few years ago. Before I started of course, but I remember hearing there were possibilities in... oh, what was it... uh... security codes impervious to US and Chinese hacking."

None of which was even close to what they'd been researching, and all of it was information which was easy to verify with a few net searches. If they had any internet.

It was the sort of thing that would have made Steve's eyes glaze over back in 2012 when he first woke up, but now he could at least follow the basic gist of this kind of thing. He would say that Stark would be proud, but he probably would still find a way to be condescending.

Lawrence gave him the names he wanted, though, and Steve put them to memory so that he could research this more when he got back to the temporary apartment he was staying in. "I haven't heard of either of them, but I'd like to find out more now. Thank you for the information."

And he'd probably already overstayed his welcome, so Steve stood up and moved over to where his phone had been left charging. It would at least have enough of a charge to last for a few more hours, which was more than he could have hoped for otherwise. "And thanks for this too," he said, turning to wag the phone in Lawrence's direction.

"Anything I can do to help. I'm civic minded like that." And yeah, he was getting out of here early tomorrow. Hit up Bright Star for all it was worth and then get out before people collected themselves enough to start looking for him.

He didn't moved when Steve did, just regarded him curiously. "Odd thing to be interested in. pretty obscure research and most of it was pretty dull honestly. Thought you were looking for your metal armed guy. Can't say I ever saw anyone like that at the lab." He smiled slightly. "It's a long way up to Inverness. Where the first EMP hit."

Civic-minded? Steve couldn't quite shake the feeling that Lawrence was just humoring him until he got out of here, but seeing how he'd more or less barged in on him, that wasn't really what Steve would call bizarre behavior.

"Well, the two things might be connected," he said after a pause. The only connections the Winter Soldier had to anything was through HYDRA, so Steve had to hunt down what was left of the severed heads before they disappeared entirely.

"It's pretty far north, I know. It's all right, I don't mind traveling." It was going to be difficult with half of the country shut down, but Steve had never let that kind of thing stop him. He pocketed his phone and then moved back over to Lawrence, putting his hand out. "Thanks again."

Guy with a metal arm and... Soleil? Nope, no connection there, he would have known about it. He'd been running The Burn after all, and you couldn't hide stuff like that from Soleil.

"Seems a pretty tenuous connection. We weren't working on prosthetics." Probably. He was pretty sure they hadn't been working on those.

He took the offered hand and gave it a firm shake. "Be careful. I know some places were... well, kind of a mess on the way down. Looting, rioting, all that fun stuff." Of course not he places Soleil had been watching over although who knew what was going on there now. "No problem. Say hello to the professor for me if you see him."

It wasn't about the prosthetic, but rather about what the Winter Soldier was used for, but Steve wasn't going to get into that now. Most would still consider him a myth, though Bucky had definitely attracted a lot of attention back in DC. It wasn't going to be nearly as easy for him to hide now, which meant he was going to go deep underground. Steve had to catch him before it was too late. It couldn't be another seventy years before they saw each other again.

Steve took the warning about the rioting seriously, nodding in response. "I'll definitely keep it in mind." Bucky would be able to blend into that kind of chaos, so if anything, Steve would have to look more closely in those areas.

"If I find him, I'll mention how helpful you were," he said with a quick smile as he pulled back and turned toward the door.

He was going to have to check up on this guy. He wondered if he could still get access to Soleil's files. Should be able to at the lab, even if it'll just be him. God that hurts, a slow ache in his chest, a life without Soleil.

If he'd just been faster, if Walker hadn't been so bloody stubborn...

Lawrence followed him back towards the door, his hands shoved in his pockets. "Thanks. Getting messages up there isn't exactly easy now, and at some point I should get back to work, right?"

"Maybe once this all dies down, yeah," Steve agreed, though in reality he didn't know if Lawrence should go anywhere near this research if it was really tied up in HYDRA.

"For now, though, just stay safe," he encouraged Lawrence with a quick smile and a pat on the shoulder. "Good luck."

And with that he headed out the door and down the street, hands shoved in his pockets. This hadn't been the biggest lead, but it was something, and that was good enough for him right now.

"Yeah. Assuming it's still going. Hard to do technology research when the tech got fried, right?"

He smiled back, and wow, this guy was actually, genuinely a nice guy wasn't he? It was a little disconcerting. "You too. Enjoy Edinburgh."

He waited until the man was gone out of the door before he locked up and went back to the computer. Bright Star. That was where he was headed.

He packed up and left London the next day, heading south towards the coast. It was easy enough to break into the facility when you had all of the access codes after all. And Easy enough to ingratiate himself with a few people in the nearby village, doing odd jobs in return for supplies while he tried to salvage as much as he could of what Soleil had been working for. Trying to see if there was any way she was still alive somehow.

Steve didn't end up enjoying Edinburgh so much as he found a lot of dead ends. Literally, as it turned out that Lawrence's professor was dead. Stranger than that, he'd died right before the EMP that had knocked out a good chunk of the power here for days. Could just be a coincidence, sure, but that didn't seem likely.

More digging turned up information about a group called The Burn, which had been tied up in the research into AIs. The most worrying thing about it all was the hinting that coercion had been used on some of their employees, and seeing how Steve was tracking someone who'd been brainwashed, it set off alarm bells.

A lot of the bases tied to the group were completely destroyed, most likely because they were covering their tracks, but there was one that still looked to be intact. It was called Bright Star, apparently, and it was located south of London.

After checking in with Sam (who also hadn't found any good leads on Bucky), Steve crossed the country yet again. He spent a night in the village nearest to the base, and thne headed up for the facility early the next morning, once again incognito.

It was as he circled the perimeter that he spotted someone approaching one of the doors. Steve was prepared to take cover, but then he realized he recognized the person.

"... Lawrence?" he called out from where he'd been standing a few yards back. What was a research student doing here? This was all starting to feel more and more suspicious. Maybe Steve had been wrong to take off without looking into Lawrence further, but here was his second chance.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject