Rikki Barnes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hero_reborn) wrote2014-06-19 12:15 am
hero_reborn) wrote2014-06-19 12:15 am
(no subject)
It doesn't take her too long to find a place to hole up. She's SHIELD-trained, knows a few things about how to survive if she has to drop off the radar until it's safe to stick her head out. Except that there is no radar here, no one to know who she is. She just has to survive.
One of the first things she does is look up her family.
They don't exist.
There was a Barnes family, of course. Even a Bucky Barnes who served with Steve Rogers and the Howling COmmandos back in World War II. But there's no record of her grandfather, and her grandmother married someone else, had a different family. About that time, she realizes she's started crying in the middle of a public library, and she has to gather up her stuff quick and leave before someone starts asking questions.
There's only one other man Rikki really ever considered family. In this world, Steve Rogers is still pretty recently out of the ice. He has a normal apartment instead of living at the Avengers Tower, thank god, because she doesn't know how she'd gain access to the actual living quarters in a world where she doesn't belong there. It doesn't even take much hacking to get his address.
Tailing him is familiar, in a weird way. She'd done it before, at home, back when it was a challenge, a game. If she could follow him without being noticed, they'd go bowling or get ice cream at her favorite place or something. It was training, not for real. Here... here it's so much easier, because he doesn't even know her. After the first few days to get an idea of his routine, she scales back from actually tailing to just happening to be places he likes to go. Maybe it's creepy, stalking Steve Rogers, but the thing is she doesn't know what else to do. She literally has nothing else on this world. If she doesn't have this to focus on...
Rikki plans out a meeting. In the Bucky uniform, of course, because no way was she meeting Steve the way she looked now, like some desperate, lonely homeless teenager. She gets a radio, keeps an ear out on police frequencies, but Cap here doesn't do that much fighting on the streets. So she just... keeps going for about a month. Takes on odd jobs for shitty pay so she can eat and have a place to sleep with a shower at least a few times a week. Does her best to keep up her training, but trying to keep up the activity levels of a superhero on a homeless teen's diet doesn't work too well. She hasn't lost much muscle mass yet, but her endurance is definitely taking a hit.
Actually finally running into him is a total accident, not at all what she planned. There's a creep that's been around her and some other teens she recognizes from the food kitchen she sometimes uses, makes her feel gross and defensive. She'd planned to check him out when in uniform, maybe have a chat with him about how it's not appropriate to prey on kids. But he makes the first move when she's in regular clothes, so that's how she has to take him on. Guy has size and strength on her, but she's clearly the only one of them who's been trained. Not too long ago, she'd have him flat on his back in a couple minutes, but she's exhausted and hungry and doesn't have her shield on her, so she keeps making stupid mistakes.
When she gets an opening, she runs, leading him to a more public area (more likelihood of stumbling across anyone else, more likely someone will call the police and get this slimeball off her hands). Unconsciously, though, she heads to the nearest familiar area, which happens to be the route Steve sometimes runs at night when he's not sleeping.
One of the first things she does is look up her family.
They don't exist.
There was a Barnes family, of course. Even a Bucky Barnes who served with Steve Rogers and the Howling COmmandos back in World War II. But there's no record of her grandfather, and her grandmother married someone else, had a different family. About that time, she realizes she's started crying in the middle of a public library, and she has to gather up her stuff quick and leave before someone starts asking questions.
There's only one other man Rikki really ever considered family. In this world, Steve Rogers is still pretty recently out of the ice. He has a normal apartment instead of living at the Avengers Tower, thank god, because she doesn't know how she'd gain access to the actual living quarters in a world where she doesn't belong there. It doesn't even take much hacking to get his address.
Tailing him is familiar, in a weird way. She'd done it before, at home, back when it was a challenge, a game. If she could follow him without being noticed, they'd go bowling or get ice cream at her favorite place or something. It was training, not for real. Here... here it's so much easier, because he doesn't even know her. After the first few days to get an idea of his routine, she scales back from actually tailing to just happening to be places he likes to go. Maybe it's creepy, stalking Steve Rogers, but the thing is she doesn't know what else to do. She literally has nothing else on this world. If she doesn't have this to focus on...
Rikki plans out a meeting. In the Bucky uniform, of course, because no way was she meeting Steve the way she looked now, like some desperate, lonely homeless teenager. She gets a radio, keeps an ear out on police frequencies, but Cap here doesn't do that much fighting on the streets. So she just... keeps going for about a month. Takes on odd jobs for shitty pay so she can eat and have a place to sleep with a shower at least a few times a week. Does her best to keep up her training, but trying to keep up the activity levels of a superhero on a homeless teen's diet doesn't work too well. She hasn't lost much muscle mass yet, but her endurance is definitely taking a hit.
Actually finally running into him is a total accident, not at all what she planned. There's a creep that's been around her and some other teens she recognizes from the food kitchen she sometimes uses, makes her feel gross and defensive. She'd planned to check him out when in uniform, maybe have a chat with him about how it's not appropriate to prey on kids. But he makes the first move when she's in regular clothes, so that's how she has to take him on. Guy has size and strength on her, but she's clearly the only one of them who's been trained. Not too long ago, she'd have him flat on his back in a couple minutes, but she's exhausted and hungry and doesn't have her shield on her, so she keeps making stupid mistakes.
When she gets an opening, she runs, leading him to a more public area (more likelihood of stumbling across anyone else, more likely someone will call the police and get this slimeball off her hands). Unconsciously, though, she heads to the nearest familiar area, which happens to be the route Steve sometimes runs at night when he's not sleeping.
no subject
He isn’t sure how he feels about that, if he’s happy to have the extra time to do more than he could if he needed the standard eight hours every night or if he misses the reprieve that those few hours can provide. If, of course, they’re not spent rehashing out traumatic memories or twisting fears into terrifying caricatures.
Tonight, he chooses to run instead of fighting the silent punching bags. Once he falls into a steady pace, he can go for miles without realizing how far he’s actually traveling. Sometimes, when his mind starts to wander, he comes back to himself outside of DC proper and has to hoof it back. This time, he doesn’t get that far. In fact, he’s barely three miles into it when he finds himself entering the scene of what looks like an attempted crime in progress.
There’s a teenager running down the road, heading straight for him, as a matter of fact. It’s too late not to raise at least a little suspicion about the haste with which she’s moving, but it’s the man giving chase behind her that sets off the warning bells in the back of Steve’s mind.
It never occurs to him not to get involved.
“Hey!” he calls, hastening forward at a fast clip. “What’s going on here?”
no subject
Or would, except that she turns to see who's approaching and it's Steve. For a wild second, she expects him to give her a lecture on everything she did wrong or give her his Disappointed "Rikki, You're Better Than This" face, but of course that's crazy because he doesn't know her here, she doesn't exist, and she kind of wants to run so she doesn't have to face up to that because this is not what she planned.