Catch-all July

[muscovy]

Who: Muscovy and assorted people
What: Lots of things
Where: Lots of places, see subject lines
When: Throughout July
Warnings: TBA

Comments

[wipedclean]

[The language the stranger speaks is... Almost but not quite like Russian. It's clear they're in the same family, enough that he can understand what's being said, but it's... Strange.]

I don't have a home.

[Steve would disagree. Steve would insist he's from Brooklyn, but the only attachment to Brooklyn he has is Steve.]

[muscovy]

[Well, that's one thing. Not feeling at home somewhere. But that wasn't quite his question, or not all of it. It only was the right answer to the feeling that his question meant to convey.]

Where were you born, and where did you live?

[wipedclean]

[He's quiet for a moment, thinking.]

I'm told I was born in America. But I don't live anywhere. I am where I'm needed, where I'm sent. For a long time, it was Russia. But it has been many other places too.

[muscovy]

Why did your parents leave?

[He's heard of people losing their memory, but usually that only pertains to a few hours or days around a certain event. He's never heard of a case where someone lost their whole childhood, so he must have been very little still when he left. And leaving as a child usually means the parents leaving with their family.

...America sounds like a place fairly safe from hunger and raids though, from what people have told him, so he wonders what might have made them leave.

...] Why were you in Russia?

[wipedclean]

[He tilts his head at that question, confused by it.]

My parents? I... [He frowns.] I don't have parents.

[He shrugs a little.]

I was in Russia because my handlers were there. Because I was needed there.

[muscovy]

[The second part makes sufficient sense, but the first...]

You are not human?

[That is strange. He would have really thought this guy to be human. He looks very human, that strange arm aside.]

[wipedclean]

[He frowns. This is... difficult to explain.]

I am... technically. But I was trained to be a weapon.

[muscovy]

If you were born as a human, you have to have parents. All humans have parents, even if they don't know or like them.

[But another aspect confuses him.]

How does being trained into a weapon make you less human?

[wipedclean]

Yes, but they're gone.

[He doesn't remember them. They're not important.]

I'm faster and stronger than most. I can do things that others can't or won't. I don't... I shouldn't have emotions.

[He frowns a little.]

They call me a weapon and treat me as one, therefore that's what I am.

[It makes more sense when Pierce explains things.]

[muscovy]

So you have parents, but they are dead. That is different from not having parents, yes?

[That is delivered with firm certainty. Some people don't have parents, but then you would not only have to come into existence without them but also never have adopted any.

Then he tilts his head, though he is still smiling the same smile. Bucky's words remind him a bit of Rey. I should not have emotions. Monsters don't cry.]

But you have emotions. What emotions do you have?

[There are people who are.... monsters, weapons, whatever you will name it. Who become unfit to anything else but destruction and either can be used as that or become liabilities. But neither Rey nor this guy really sound like those people, and well... there are emotions like rage and disgust and lust that those people can still feel, but he didn't sound like that was the kind of emotion that he was talking about.

It's not something that he would have thought about like this two years ago, but he's since had a friend and then mother... not mother now, but still family that doesn't remember him... who had an issue in this direction. So he had to think about it.]

[wipedclean]

[The question grates at him, because he shouldn't have any emotions, really, but here... here there's nothing stopping him from having every possible emotion. There's no one punishing him for it, either.

He's not sure yet what the result has been on his effectiveness.]

I... have most emotions, I think.

[muscovy]

Do you feel pity?

[There are a lot of other emotions that are important, but especially listening to his father's songs, he got the feeling that pity would be regarded as the crucial one.]