[ Bucky can't say he's entirely comfortable with what kind of job he does while Steve's off on a solo assignment (what kind of man would he be if he was?), but he knows he can handle it. He won't struggle in pulling the trigger, and if it keeps him up at night, it won't be many. Bucky's not like Steve, and he never has been. Maybe something about the war made that more clear to him, but he doesn't need to be like Steve. He needs to be there for Steve, and that's all that matters. So if taking out an SS officer here or there, or running a mission Steve's sensibilities might not approve of needs doing, he'll handle it, so it doesn't come rearing back up at an unfortunate moment later on. It's just another way of watching his back, he knows that, Peggy knows that. But they know Steve won't see it the same, so it doesn't get brought up. Wetwork is always something that'll need doing, and Bucky would rather it was him than someone else he wouldn't trust as well to get it done.
Granted, this mission isn't exactly the typical kind he and Peggy get sent their way. Something about another Captain America running around London, and they know it's not Steve, because Steve's off in Belgium on special assignment. But apparently the likeness is close enough to set off alarms, so off they go, into the city, following trails to find the imposter. He's really not that great at steath, as there's tails everywhere (you'd think, if you were this bad at being sneaky, you'd pick someone less obvious to dress up as), so he tracks him down in pretty quick order, arriving at an industrial factory that's easy to quietly slip from shadow to shadow in. Steve doesn't know that about him either - that he's developed that since he got shipped over here.
The figure he comes up on is dressed head to toe in dark clothes, a couple firearms strapped to his thighs, and a pretty spot on replica of Steve's shield in hand. He's faced away, and while Bucky doesn't have a good look at him yet, he wants this guy handled and out of the way. A couple more slow, quiet steps, and he makes a loud, obvious metallic clack as he cocks the rifle he has trained on the back of the guy's head. Hi there. ]
Alright, pal. Jig's up. [ A wry tone, with a pretty heavy Brooklyn accent. He's ready to wrap this up and move on. Maybe he can get a walk around the city in before they have to head out again. Pick up some stuff for the guys. Yeah, sounds good. And yet, this is off. The guy, from here, could easily pass for Steve, the hair and all, but why bother? And why's Captain America wandering London? Maybe the sightseeing trip will have to be put off for another time. The other might still be lurking around in here somewhere... ]
Shield on the ground, hands on your head, or I'm givin' your face an extra breathing hole.
[How did they end up here? That's a long story. Steve caught up to him a few months or so after the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. as he was slowly remembering more and more of his past, though he hasn't recalled everything. Actually, there's still a lot he doesn't remember, especially about who he was before HYDRA. He'd slipped up in the middle of a mental fog (those happened more often as his head tried to fix itself) and left a trail that let him be found. Anyway, one thing led to another and he found himself caught up in a whirlwind of trying to stop a HYDRA operative from messing with the time-space continuum.
And now they're caught in the forties with no clue how to get the Time gem to work. Laying low so as not to run into people they knew in the past and screw up the future isn't hard for him, not just because that's just what he does, but also because he doesn't look much like he did in this time period. Steve doesn't have that advantage. The guy looks the same, walks the same, has the same damn shield, which he thinks he should have tossed into a river, and doesn't understand why he wouldn't. And while his memories of this time period are shit, it's not hard to guess that he wasn't a celebrity like Steve.
Steve isn't completely incapable of stealth, he'll give him that, but looking like he does in this time period, he's going to get noticed. So he shadows him for the most part, making sure that if Steve gets noticed, he doesn't. Element of surprise. But it's hard when everything is looking too familiar and giving him flashes of moments and headaches that test his mental stability. He clenches his jaw and forces his brain to focus through the frustration. Emotions are frustrating on their own, but add the fact that they're in this predicament on top of that and he's definitely not doing so hot.
He notices the figure tailing Steve a while before there's an actual confrontation. They haven't been in forties London for that long, so it's been tough to find a good place to hide out. They've done their best keeping concealed, but apparently their best (especially with Steve and his face and his shield) wasn't good enough. He is about to make a move when he catches sight of the face of the man tailing Steve and his chest seizes. Breathing is suddenly hard and for once he can't think of what to do. Under normal circumstances, he'd kill the man following them. But... that would be very bad for him.
He keeps tailing them both, keeping an eye on the situation as he tries to get his mind to think of something. But it's not every day you are confronted with your past self that you have been trying desperately to remember. It fucks with your head. And then there's a gun to the back of Steve's head and he stills, listening to his past self speak and the burst of familiarity at the sound of his voice is alarming and almost painful. He'd shed that accent a long time ago, he thinks. Nowadays he seems to slip in and out of flat, neutral American and some subtle Russian depending on where his head is at in the moment.
He decides to wait and see what Steve does before making a move.]
[ It's been strange. He can't call any of this catching up where he left off, the version of him that lived all this is still chasing HYDRA across Europe. Living all this. Meaning reaching out to anyone risks exposure. It's all become a different kind of isolation than he's used to. It's worse. Those old familiar haunts, the friends he would never see again, all the mistakes he could fix.
Maybe he wants to get caught. Maybe that's how he's ended up with a gun trained at the back of his skull.
They're being watched. Steve can't guess what's going through his head right now - but he can guess that the feeling must be mutual.
The finger at the trigger is a different story.
Both hands go behind his back, slowly, and he undoes the straps to the shield, letting it clatter to the ground. It'd been easy to give up on the helicarrier, here it's been more difficult. He wants to say it's purely for practical reasons, but that's stupid. There's nothing practical about carrying around Captain America's shield when you're not supposed to be Captain America. But he's stubborn, so here they are. There's a second where his brain automatically goes through the motions of calculating how fast Bucky in the 1940s could pull a trigger versus how quickly Steve might disarm him. It's background noise.
(either that or let him put the bullet in the back of his head and hope it blows out the front of his face so bad they don't recognize it)
His hands don't quite make it to the back of his head before he sucks in a breath and lets some words follow: ] 1934. Pneumonia. Coulda used an extra hole to breathe out of.
[ The look on his face, cool and calm and sure (and, apologetic), is solely for the benefit of their silent observer. ]
[ As the shield bangs against the stained concrete floor of the industrial building, it makes the same familiar resonance that Steve's shield always had, and that seems so bizarre to him. He knows Steve's shield is one of a kind - Vibranium, or whatever the hell Stark had been yammering on about, being incredibly difficult to find. Even the hook up that keeps it strapped to Steve's back is the same. And when the voice comes, it's all too familiar. It's a shock that seizes him up, and for a moment, Bucky's hands are going lax on the rifle. Keeping a distance, about two or three yards away, he paces around the man in a radius to come to his face, and confusion pulls his brows knit. It's Steve. It looks just like him.
Bucky's seen a man pull his skin off and expose a red skull under it. He's seen HYDRA's weapons and all the impossible things they can do. Making somebody look and sound like the famous Steve Rogers? Can't be that far out of the realm of possibility.
1934 - Pneumonia. Bucky'd sat around next to his sick bed, talking to him about baseball and his new asshole boss at work. He was worried, yeah, you have to be any time someone with Steve's kind of health does so much as sneeze, but he knows it bugs the crap out of him to feel as weak as he is. So he'd acted like it was any other day. Just hanging around, shooting the shit with his best friend. But that, even, you can glean from medical records, and given how famous Captain Rogers and his origin story is now, that'd be easy to get a hold of. He needs something more specific to prove it. Something only him and Steve know. After thinking for a moment, eyes narrowed cold over the sights of the rifle, he lifts his head, posing a new question. ]
I bought you an artbook that summer. What was it?
[ It was Rembrandt. He remembers, because he spent a month trying to build up the cash for it after he saw Steve sketching the old lady that lived on the bottom floor of the apartments. It's was all 'Buck, you didn't have to, I can't take this' and 'But I did, so stuff it and say thanks'. The memory seems like a lifetime ago now, pacing in this dank, shadowy building with a rifle clutched against the hollow of his shoulder, staring down the sights and ready to pull the trigger the second he needs to. So much had changed since then, and he knows there's no going back. Not really. ]
[He sees the look on Steve's face from where he's watching and doesn't really understand the apology there. He's been getting better at reading expressions. Before, he could read people, but it was clinical and detached; he never understood subtle cues or how to actually know a person to their core. But the more he's exposed to Steve, the more he figures out what his faces mean and why. So he knows that Steve is apologizing for something, but he's not sure what.
But he's also more focused on what Steve said. 1934... He wracks his memory for it. Focuses until he has another headache. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This time he got a bit of a halfway recollection, nothing visual, just sounds. Coughing sounds and a distant teenage voice yammering on about work and a boss. Then it's gone.
Apparently, it got his past self's attention though. He tenses as he watches himself move around to get a look at Steve's face and ask a question. Again, he finds himself trying to remember, to answer the question before Steve does. Unfortunately, he can't and at this point he just has a migraine bad enough to make even the Winter Soldier wince. He backs off with a frustrated grinding of his teeth as his emotions start to overwhelm him.
Calming himself to a cool detachment, he eases the clip out of his gun silently. In case something goes wrong, he should make sure he doesn't accidentally shoot his past self in the head. But he can use an unloaded gun just as effectively. The clip goes into the pocket of the dark 40s pea coat he snagged and he waits.]
[ The apology's for stepping in it, getting caught. He meets the gaze of the man circling to face him, sucks in a quick breath through his mouth. Eyes trail over the familiar line of that nose, the curve of his mouth. The hollows under his eyes and cheeks aren't so deep as they are now, threatening at the edges ever since the night Steve found him strapped to a table. He didn't understand back then. Couldn't get Bucky to talk about what had happened without the whole subject getting brushed off.
Back then he thought all they needed to do was win the war and go home.
While his friend in the shadows unknowingly struggles with the question, the answer comes to Steve easily enough (once he's caught his breath again). One side of his mouth pulls up into the beginnings of a lopsided smile, because it's hard not to, even now. ]
Rembrandt. Cost more than my good pair of shoes and I kept refusing to open it until I was out of bed. [ Because he'd been afraid of getting spit and snot all over those beautiful pages. ]
[ Not only did he get it right, he gave that extra bit of detail that only Steve would know. No one else in the apartment, a small argument Steve had wheezed out at him between coughing fits, quiet enough not even the neighbors could have listened in.
A chill runs up Bucky's spine, and everything in his mind involuntarily jerks back to that table he'd been strapped onto, in the dank lab of the HYDRA compound, his mind so far gone he'd been babbling numbers and facts about himself by the time Steve showed up. But his memory hadn't been screwed with, had it? How could you even get that out of Steve to begin with? His head is spinning, struggle obvious in how his expression is pulled tight, brows deeply knit, but lips hanging parted, something that isn't exactly shock, but certainly isn't calm, registered there. ]
Steve Rogers is supposed to be in Belgium right now. We got word from him this morning. [ Maybe they did. Usually the protocol is mission reports sent in the morning, or as soon as they're in a place they can manage it. So he's assuming, yes, but for these purposes, he'll keep that to himself. ]
So you wanna tell me what the hell I'm supposed to be thinking about this? [ Though his tone is even, low, there's a measure of shake in it. Like maybe they'd took something from him. Somehow. Pasted everything he knew about Steve into whoever this is. But the question is, why bother? ]
[Even though he's removed the ammo from his gun, he still holds it tightly in his hand at his side, finger tense against the trigger as he listens to the exchange. The gun is useless unless he decides to throw it or bash someone's skull in with it, but he has his arm for that, and the idea of letting go never breaks its way past a sudden jolt of anxiety building in his chest and throat. So he keeps clutching it, forgets about it in favor of rolling Steve's answer over in his head.
His eyes eventually slide to the ground in front of him in heavy surrender to the fact that all he can remember, even after hearing it, is the vague echo of a cough, the smell of must and paper and the heavy presence of illness, hot and clammy on the air. He works his jaw around and abandons the search in his mind, closing his eyes and willing the headache to go away before looking back up and over at Steve and Bucky Barnes.
He hears his own voice state facts, and can tell that those are the facts that he believes, not the facts he knows, especially in this moment. The distinction between those two things is something most people don't realize or think about on a day to day basis, but he's aware of it always, and apparently so is this other him. It's the first thing so far about his past self that he relates to, even if it's only a faint shadow of the doubt and fear of his own reality that he's become familiar with.
Still, he doesn't know what to do besides watch and wait and try to stay level, grounded. The gun in his hand creaks under the pressure of his grip and he distantly remembers he's holding it with his metal hand. A thought flickers across in the distance, telling him to be more mindful. The gun is his anchor, an illogical one on the brink of being ruined by his own dependence on it crumpling it, but he's got nothing else.]
[ He struck a nerve. Hesitates at the way Bucky's voice shakes, his expression briefly twisting up before he can smooth it out again. He knew this wasn't going to be simple or easy. Both hands start to lower from where he'd loosely rested them at the back of his head when Bucky had demanded it, settling at his sides. With the shield on the ground he's unarmed, except for the knife tucked in his boot. He stands straight. This is Bucky. Steve can lay all the cards out on the table, as unbelievable as those cards might be... ]
That you got it right. I'm in Belgium - the other me, the one that's supposed to be here. [ Both eyebrows raise and then furrow. He has to force himself again not to glance toward the shadows yet. ] You remember when you said we were going to the future? [ A joke, from before everything went to hell. Steve had been interested enough in going to the Expo, besides wanting to slip into another recruitment station, but Bucky was the one who always got a real kick out of science fiction. ] Turns out time machines are more pocket-sized than Wells', and they don't come with instructions. We're kinda stuck.
[ A beat, and he gives a quick nod, this time not directed to the person in front of him - ] You can come out now.
[He's not sure how else this could be handled. The truth, as insane as it sounds, is the only way to get out of this with minimal damage. "Minimal", more like the least most potentially devastating consequence of this entire trip. Revealing himself is probably the only way to prove the truth to his past self, but he stays where he is when Steve calls over to him to come out. He's stuck for a good couple minutes, unable to get his legs to move, the gun crumpling in his hand suddenly feeling heavy like a literal anchor weighing him there to the spot.
But he has no other compass for this situation besides what Steve decides is the best way. He's still relying on the judgement and orders of others to get through most situations, otherwise he either runs from the situation or does nothing. This is the hardest one yet, though, instinct to run and the reason to follow Steve's lead tears him in two and the dilemma constricts around his sternum like a python moving its way up around his throat. He struggles to breath.
Eventually, he gains control of his legs enough to step out of hiding, just enough so that who he is is obvious. He's wearing the knee-length pea coat, his hair is tied back and he has a dark grey newsboy cap pulled down to shadow his eyes. He only glances at his past self and then immediately looks away, trying to keep his head level, focuses in on Steve, desperate for guidance, orders, a better anchor than this now broken gun at his side.]
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no subject
Granted, this mission isn't exactly the typical kind he and Peggy get sent their way. Something about another Captain America running around London, and they know it's not Steve, because Steve's off in Belgium on special assignment. But apparently the likeness is close enough to set off alarms, so off they go, into the city, following trails to find the imposter. He's really not that great at steath, as there's tails everywhere (you'd think, if you were this bad at being sneaky, you'd pick someone less obvious to dress up as), so he tracks him down in pretty quick order, arriving at an industrial factory that's easy to quietly slip from shadow to shadow in. Steve doesn't know that about him either - that he's developed that since he got shipped over here.
The figure he comes up on is dressed head to toe in dark clothes, a couple firearms strapped to his thighs, and a pretty spot on replica of Steve's shield in hand. He's faced away, and while Bucky doesn't have a good look at him yet, he wants this guy handled and out of the way. A couple more slow, quiet steps, and he makes a loud, obvious metallic clack as he cocks the rifle he has trained on the back of the guy's head. Hi there. ]
Alright, pal. Jig's up. [ A wry tone, with a pretty heavy Brooklyn accent. He's ready to wrap this up and move on. Maybe he can get a walk around the city in before they have to head out again. Pick up some stuff for the guys. Yeah, sounds good. And yet, this is off. The guy, from here, could easily pass for Steve, the hair and all, but why bother? And why's Captain America wandering London? Maybe the sightseeing trip will have to be put off for another time. The other might still be lurking around in here somewhere... ]
Shield on the ground, hands on your head, or I'm givin' your face an extra breathing hole.
no subject
And now they're caught in the forties with no clue how to get the Time gem to work. Laying low so as not to run into people they knew in the past and screw up the future isn't hard for him, not just because that's just what he does, but also because he doesn't look much like he did in this time period. Steve doesn't have that advantage. The guy looks the same, walks the same, has the same damn shield, which he thinks he should have tossed into a river, and doesn't understand why he wouldn't. And while his memories of this time period are shit, it's not hard to guess that he wasn't a celebrity like Steve.
Steve isn't completely incapable of stealth, he'll give him that, but looking like he does in this time period, he's going to get noticed. So he shadows him for the most part, making sure that if Steve gets noticed, he doesn't. Element of surprise. But it's hard when everything is looking too familiar and giving him flashes of moments and headaches that test his mental stability. He clenches his jaw and forces his brain to focus through the frustration. Emotions are frustrating on their own, but add the fact that they're in this predicament on top of that and he's definitely not doing so hot.
He notices the figure tailing Steve a while before there's an actual confrontation. They haven't been in forties London for that long, so it's been tough to find a good place to hide out. They've done their best keeping concealed, but apparently their best (especially with Steve and his face and his shield) wasn't good enough. He is about to make a move when he catches sight of the face of the man tailing Steve and his chest seizes. Breathing is suddenly hard and for once he can't think of what to do. Under normal circumstances, he'd kill the man following them. But... that would be very bad for him.
He keeps tailing them both, keeping an eye on the situation as he tries to get his mind to think of something. But it's not every day you are confronted with your past self that you have been trying desperately to remember. It fucks with your head. And then there's a gun to the back of Steve's head and he stills, listening to his past self speak and the burst of familiarity at the sound of his voice is alarming and almost painful. He'd shed that accent a long time ago, he thinks. Nowadays he seems to slip in and out of flat, neutral American and some subtle Russian depending on where his head is at in the moment.
He decides to wait and see what Steve does before making a move.]
no subject
Maybe he wants to get caught. Maybe that's how he's ended up with a gun trained at the back of his skull.
They're being watched. Steve can't guess what's going through his head right now - but he can guess that the feeling must be mutual.
The finger at the trigger is a different story.
Both hands go behind his back, slowly, and he undoes the straps to the shield, letting it clatter to the ground. It'd been easy to give up on the helicarrier, here it's been more difficult. He wants to say it's purely for practical reasons, but that's stupid. There's nothing practical about carrying around Captain America's shield when you're not supposed to be Captain America. But he's stubborn, so here they are. There's a second where his brain automatically goes through the motions of calculating how fast Bucky in the 1940s could pull a trigger versus how quickly Steve might disarm him. It's background noise.
(either that or let him put the bullet in the back of his head and hope it blows out the front of his face so bad they don't recognize it)
His hands don't quite make it to the back of his head before he sucks in a breath and lets some words follow: ] 1934. Pneumonia. Coulda used an extra hole to breathe out of.
[ The look on his face, cool and calm and sure (and, apologetic), is solely for the benefit of their silent observer. ]
no subject
Bucky's seen a man pull his skin off and expose a red skull under it. He's seen HYDRA's weapons and all the impossible things they can do. Making somebody look and sound like the famous Steve Rogers? Can't be that far out of the realm of possibility.
1934 - Pneumonia. Bucky'd sat around next to his sick bed, talking to him about baseball and his new asshole boss at work. He was worried, yeah, you have to be any time someone with Steve's kind of health does so much as sneeze, but he knows it bugs the crap out of him to feel as weak as he is. So he'd acted like it was any other day. Just hanging around, shooting the shit with his best friend. But that, even, you can glean from medical records, and given how famous Captain Rogers and his origin story is now, that'd be easy to get a hold of. He needs something more specific to prove it. Something only him and Steve know. After thinking for a moment, eyes narrowed cold over the sights of the rifle, he lifts his head, posing a new question. ]
I bought you an artbook that summer. What was it?
[ It was Rembrandt. He remembers, because he spent a month trying to build up the cash for it after he saw Steve sketching the old lady that lived on the bottom floor of the apartments. It's was all 'Buck, you didn't have to, I can't take this' and 'But I did, so stuff it and say thanks'. The memory seems like a lifetime ago now, pacing in this dank, shadowy building with a rifle clutched against the hollow of his shoulder, staring down the sights and ready to pull the trigger the second he needs to. So much had changed since then, and he knows there's no going back. Not really. ]
no subject
But he's also more focused on what Steve said. 1934... He wracks his memory for it. Focuses until he has another headache. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. This time he got a bit of a halfway recollection, nothing visual, just sounds. Coughing sounds and a distant teenage voice yammering on about work and a boss. Then it's gone.
Apparently, it got his past self's attention though. He tenses as he watches himself move around to get a look at Steve's face and ask a question. Again, he finds himself trying to remember, to answer the question before Steve does. Unfortunately, he can't and at this point he just has a migraine bad enough to make even the Winter Soldier wince. He backs off with a frustrated grinding of his teeth as his emotions start to overwhelm him.
Calming himself to a cool detachment, he eases the clip out of his gun silently. In case something goes wrong, he should make sure he doesn't accidentally shoot his past self in the head. But he can use an unloaded gun just as effectively. The clip goes into the pocket of the dark 40s pea coat he snagged and he waits.]
no subject
Back then he thought all they needed to do was win the war and go home.
While his friend in the shadows unknowingly struggles with the question, the answer comes to Steve easily enough (once he's caught his breath again). One side of his mouth pulls up into the beginnings of a lopsided smile, because it's hard not to, even now. ]
Rembrandt. Cost more than my good pair of shoes and I kept refusing to open it until I was out of bed. [ Because he'd been afraid of getting spit and snot all over those beautiful pages. ]
no subject
A chill runs up Bucky's spine, and everything in his mind involuntarily jerks back to that table he'd been strapped onto, in the dank lab of the HYDRA compound, his mind so far gone he'd been babbling numbers and facts about himself by the time Steve showed up. But his memory hadn't been screwed with, had it? How could you even get that out of Steve to begin with? His head is spinning, struggle obvious in how his expression is pulled tight, brows deeply knit, but lips hanging parted, something that isn't exactly shock, but certainly isn't calm, registered there. ]
Steve Rogers is supposed to be in Belgium right now. We got word from him this morning. [ Maybe they did. Usually the protocol is mission reports sent in the morning, or as soon as they're in a place they can manage it. So he's assuming, yes, but for these purposes, he'll keep that to himself. ]
So you wanna tell me what the hell I'm supposed to be thinking about this? [ Though his tone is even, low, there's a measure of shake in it. Like maybe they'd took something from him. Somehow. Pasted everything he knew about Steve into whoever this is. But the question is, why bother? ]
no subject
His eyes eventually slide to the ground in front of him in heavy surrender to the fact that all he can remember, even after hearing it, is the vague echo of a cough, the smell of must and paper and the heavy presence of illness, hot and clammy on the air. He works his jaw around and abandons the search in his mind, closing his eyes and willing the headache to go away before looking back up and over at Steve and Bucky Barnes.
He hears his own voice state facts, and can tell that those are the facts that he believes, not the facts he knows, especially in this moment. The distinction between those two things is something most people don't realize or think about on a day to day basis, but he's aware of it always, and apparently so is this other him. It's the first thing so far about his past self that he relates to, even if it's only a faint shadow of the doubt and fear of his own reality that he's become familiar with.
Still, he doesn't know what to do besides watch and wait and try to stay level, grounded. The gun in his hand creaks under the pressure of his grip and he distantly remembers he's holding it with his metal hand. A thought flickers across in the distance, telling him to be more mindful. The gun is his anchor, an illogical one on the brink of being ruined by his own dependence on it crumpling it, but he's got nothing else.]
no subject
That you got it right. I'm in Belgium - the other me, the one that's supposed to be here. [ Both eyebrows raise and then furrow. He has to force himself again not to glance toward the shadows yet. ] You remember when you said we were going to the future? [ A joke, from before everything went to hell. Steve had been interested enough in going to the Expo, besides wanting to slip into another recruitment station, but Bucky was the one who always got a real kick out of science fiction. ] Turns out time machines are more pocket-sized than Wells', and they don't come with instructions. We're kinda stuck.
[ A beat, and he gives a quick nod, this time not directed to the person in front of him - ] You can come out now.
no subject
But he has no other compass for this situation besides what Steve decides is the best way. He's still relying on the judgement and orders of others to get through most situations, otherwise he either runs from the situation or does nothing. This is the hardest one yet, though, instinct to run and the reason to follow Steve's lead tears him in two and the dilemma constricts around his sternum like a python moving its way up around his throat. He struggles to breath.
Eventually, he gains control of his legs enough to step out of hiding, just enough so that who he is is obvious. He's wearing the knee-length pea coat, his hair is tied back and he has a dark grey newsboy cap pulled down to shadow his eyes. He only glances at his past self and then immediately looks away, trying to keep his head level, focuses in on Steve, desperate for guidance, orders, a better anchor than this now broken gun at his side.]