pennysheets | Ghost AU

He's ruining a careful and ongoing attempt to be nondescript, is what he's doing. No one should be looking, presumed dead, she'd read of her own fate, but she's decided she would like to keep it that way. The news had run pictures. Several states and months between it and her won't change that.

Her hair is worn shorter now, pulled back into a ponytail. Her top is a perfectly generic floral of perfectly generic cut that could be mistaken for anything fresh off the racks of any major retailer. Her jeans are bootcut and dirty at the hem, her boots black and upon any inspection designed with outdoor labor in mind more than aesthetics. Her coat is plain in a similar manner as her shirt, but warm, and sporting impressively deep pockets.

The smile she offers this stranger is practiced, but pinched. The motions familiar, the sentiment rusty. His eyes met only for a moment before her own dart aside, pretending to occupy themselves with the menu behind the counter.

"No," she answers, accent likely indicative of some honesty. "Passing through. Look of those clouds rolling in though, figure I should get something warm before it starts raining."

She doesn't ask if he is, hoping that will be the end of it.

"Damn. Was hoping you could tell me what the best thing to get here is," he says. He looks about as generic-drifter as she does, in his worn-in combat boots, loose jeans, two shirts, and leather jacket, long hair tied back and face not cleanly shaven. He's been out in the world for a full day and a half, tracking her down from the location of the spell-sighting; he's only got another day and a half to complete the mission.

"You on your way somewhere in particular?" he adds, looking back up at the menu as if trying to decide, himself. Just talking to pass the time. There's someone else at the wheel, someone who can use his natural smile and friendly nature like a shield, or he wouldn't sound so casual.

"No." Not quick and not nervous. Leisurely. "Just road tripping. Maybe a museum today, depends on the weather."

It's beginning as a drizzle, not yet audible, but steady. The line advances, and if it speeds him up it's worth suggesting, "Hot chocolate. Nowhere has bad hot chocolate."

"Starbucks has bad hot chocolate," he counters, and he has no idea how he knows that. He doesn't actually remember ever getting a hot chocolate at a Starbucks. Apparently the ghost does, but he isn't sharing; whether it's some mission they've been on that got taken from him after, or if it's someone else's memory, or if there's times when the goddamn ghost is out on his own drinking bad hot cocoa.

But his mouth smiles, all casual and friendly, as he says, "But I'll trust your judgment, give it a go."

He's up next, so that's probably the end of it, since she doesn't seem particularly interested in talking and he can't to make her suspicious. No matter how much he'd like to.

The cashier smiles preemptively at him, her greeting warm for what must be the hundredth recitation of it that day. An idle observation about the rain is made, a laugh preloaded no matter his reply, and he's efficiently punched through and cashed out.

Misty follows, smile thin as she endures the same greeting. A hot chocolate of her own, a protein bar, and she's set, cash already in hand. The cashier counts out change slowly, eyes flicking from the open cash drawer to customer. She asks Misty, finally, if they went to high school together.

Misty laughs like she's venting something, eyebrows sympathetically arched as she roughly pockets her change. No, she says, just one of those faces.

Turnaround is quick, and without another word she's out the door. It's coming down harder, enough that she feels the impact of individual drops through the hood hastily pulled overhead. Despite no stated destination she walks quickly and with purpose, sips taken from the cup in her hand almost as an afterthought. A motel waits a mile up the road, a wiser move than hitchhiking in the rain.

For fear of appearing guilty, she's learned not to look behind her.

He's already outside, and up on a roof with his chocolate, when she comes out. He watches her walk from above, not even bothering to drink the cocoa, which is just like adding insult to injury. If he's going to have this shit existence, at least he could have some goddamn hot chocolate.

He ignores the rain. It won't slow him down. He wishes it would. Wishes he could miss a jump, or a catch, or even just look away. But he doesn't have a choice, here. (Don't, come on.) The ghost doesn't answer, just starts following her on the high road, leaping lightly across alleys and creeping along rooftops. The motel is noted, considered as a possible destination, but he's looking for alternates right up until she goes inside.

Then he circles the building, checking to make sure she didn't go back out another exit, eyes roving over windows in search of one with a light turning on. The motel isn't that big; it shouldn't be too hard to pinpoint, if she's staying.

Two rooms flicker to life as he passes, and depending on how much time he's calculating for check-in it could be a clear answer or fifty-fifty shot.

She's quick to turn the television on, eager for background noise as she sheds her jacket, debates - and decides against - a shower, takes a lap around the room and sinks into the bed. There's that protein bar to gnaw on, a dated popcorn ceiling to stare down, and some sketch comedy to half-mind as she moves onto deciding whether or not she wants to sleep.

It's only eight, but it isn't like there's much else to do.

It could be either room. So he waits a little longer, and is rewarded fifteen minutes later with a child in the not-Misty room opening the curtains for a moment before a parent pulls her away and closes them again.

A few other rooms in the motel are occupied, but they're all on the first floor, and his quarry is on the second.

He waits until her light goes out again before he heads across the street and starts quietly prowling into the building and to her door, and listens at said door for a long few minutes before crouching to start picking the lock.

He's met with no resistance, the lock no more complicated than one may expect of a three-point-five star motel and no soul waiting just beyond it. She's visible from the entryway, curled in bed facing the door. Television off, the only light is the mottled blue of stormy skies beyond the windows, the glowing numbers of the digital clock on the bedstand, her silhouette small against the windows and her face - one arm, draped over the edge of the mattress - outlined delicately in red.

The door opens silently. She doesn't stir.

The floor doesn't creak, and his footfalls are silent against a carpeted floor.

What ultimately drives her to stir can't be chalked up clearly to any outside stimuli. Still one moment and staring up at him, eyes blown wide the next. A small noise in the back of her throat, choked with sleep and edging rapidly into panic - a louder noise afterward. Something straddling the line between exclamation and yelp. She rolls away from him, tumbling over the opposite end of the bed. Not enough of a drop to land in a crouch, and one knee takes her weight hard.

She stands up regardless, and after surveying the immediately available options, opts to rip a bedside lamp from its socket.

Without another word it's pitched at his head. She doesn't wait to see if it makes contact, instead attempting to dart past him - around the foot of the bed, then a straight shot to the door.

Dammit, of course she has to make this difficult. If he had even half a hope that she could make it difficult enough to get away, he'd egg her on, but unless she sets the place on fire, he's afraid it will just wind up with her getting hurt in addition to kidnapped.

The metal arm swats the lamp aside and right into Misty's path, to trip her up.

(Just let her go. Come on, don't do this.)

The ghost is charging at her in the wake of the lamp, flesh hand reaching to catch at her hair, the fastest thing to grab to slow her down even further, if the lamp doesn't do its job.

She forces herself counterintuitively to halt, a split second, enough that the body of the lamp flies in front of her - the cord whips across her legs in passing, an annoying, startling sting, but by the time she's processing it there's no longer any obstruction.

Until there is, the hand in her hair unwelcome and unforgiving. Her head snaps back, wrenched to a standstill as the rest of her continues to try and press forward, out to the door, out to the hallway where she could scream--

But she's drawn back, back, and as her eyes water and the curtains begin to smoke some panicked animal part of her brain insists this is it, this is the end.

The smoke is a good sign. (What? No it's not! What if she burns the place down!) As usual, the ghost ignores him, and instead uses that grasp on her hair to pull her back against his chest, metal arm clamping around her torso and metal hand going to her mouth. The little pressure-release of gas in the palm hisses out over her mouth and nose.

He knew this was a capture not kill mission. The problem is, he knows what happens to the people he's sent to capture.

It's smoke, she hopes. It's fire. Light behind her she cannot see that will grow and swallow this sorry place whole, herself with it so long as she takes him. It bleeds together, greys and yellows and cool blues, and her legs give out from under her. Everything else goes before she can hit the floor.

She wakes, first thinking, soft. There is a pillow under her head, a blanket draped over her, drawn close in her sleep. And it is soft. Her eyes fly open and she is met with green-black wallpaper, stately stripes and flowers extending from floor to ceiling. Blue bedding, clean and warm, the headboard a warm, polished wood. A table against the wall, metal, with what looks from her distance like a change of clothes and toiletries.

This is not her motel.

She sits up slowly, touches her feet to the rug waiting by the bedside.

There is a door. She speeds to it despite knowing well before she's on her feet that it will be locked, and it is.

The next minutes are spent - perhaps predictably - screaming and shouting, searching for anything to throw and realizing to her fury there wouldn't even be anything to throw things at.

By the time any visitor rolls around, she may seem to have mellowed, seated on the floor with her back to the foot of the bed.

He shows up over an hour after she wakes, maybe fifteen minutes after she stops screaming. He's not got the run of the manor, but he has some freedoms, only because the ghost is well and truly bound and can't go against certain orders.

He spent that hour in his own lushly appointed jail cell, right next to hers, leaning on the bathroom sink and listening through the walls. Hating himself. Hating the ghost. Hating fucking HYDRA for doing this to all of them.

The door opens and he slips inside, closing it neatly behind him-- it won't open again until someone outside lets him out. The traveler clothes are gone; the body armor is gone; he's just in slacks and a button-down and well-worn boots, hair freshly washed to get the soot and sweat out of it.

He looks at her feet and says, "Hi."

She rises, a movement quick and inelegant enough to clearly signal she's panicked. Backs toward the wall, and realizes to her ire the only thing to throw is a pillow. Useless.

She throws it anyway.

"Where am I? Who are you? Why am I here?" Staccato, spit out more than asked.

He catches it. Even without the ghost at the forefront, he doesn't even have to think about it.

"This is the midwestern base of a group known as HYDRA," he says, voice toneless. "I am the host for the Winter Soldier. And you're here to be host to the Black Widow." He sighs, looking at the pillow in his hands, mismatched flesh and metal. "I'm sorry."

The blanket follows, hastily folded into a ball that unfolds the minute it meets air and falls well short of him.

"What are you talking about!?"

She certainly isn't suffering for lack of tone.

He doesn't even bother trying to catch that one. Just watches it fall. "Do you believe in ghosts, Miss Day?" he asks wearily. "Because I'm host to one who's bound pretty thoroughly by the group that sent me after you." He wants to hug the pillow to his chest, but he can't quite make himself be that vulnerable-looking in front of anyone, not after all this time. So he sets it down, instead. "And you're about to be, too."

He sounds insane. Doesn't look it, doesn't necessarily seem it, but he sounds batshit insane. Misty doesn't know what she believes, not big picture, but if only to spite where she finds herself now she decides resolutely that she does not believe in ghosts in any way, shape, or form.

As much may be clear in her expression, all taut skin and hard lines and clenched jaw.

Much as she'd like to argue, there's no arguing with insane people.

"For what?"

"For missions. To bring order to the world." It sounds rote, like he's listlessly repeating something that's been told to him many times, which is probably not helping the appearance of insanity here.

But he needs to tell her the important parts, whether she believes him or not. This, at least, is something he can let her test: "Miss Day, you should know. They've already started. You'll find you can't use your magic here, now. Not until they're ready for you to."

Instantly afraid she'll find him correct - listlessly, helplessly angry at that - she makes a point to not check. Clenches her fists, works her jaw, but doesn't so much as hope for a spark.

It's a concentrated effort to not believe him that proves, by happening, that she already does.

"For who?"

"For them. HYDRA. They're some kind of secret organization. Maybe a cult. They have their hands in everything-- government, religion, intelligence." He doesn't know much. And he knows so much. He has names, faces, positions... he doesn't have their purpose. Their motive, beyond creating order through fear and pain. Their short-term goals.

Deeply jarring, and she knows, feels it like instinct, that that rabbit hole isn't the one to prioritize. Too much to break down there that doesn't immediately impact her here, in this room, with this maniac.

"And they do this with ghosts? Of who, and how, and why- you, why me?"

"I don't know." He resists the urge to fall into a damn parade rest, shoving his hands into his pants pockets instead. "He's separate enough from me that even if he remembers where he came from, he doesn't share it with me. As for why me-- because I'm the first host to survive the possession in the past fifty years. And as for why you-- I think it's because of your magic."

How would they know, she wants to ask, but she's seen the papers herself. Winces.

Her eyes drop to the mechanical arm, and a nod toward it follows. "Lose an arm to it?"

He looks down, too, and pulls that hand out of his pocket to look at the segmented plates on his fingers. He flexes them, remembering the ghost of pain, even if there's no real feeling in them, now. It had been terrible, at the time, but--

--but nothing, it's still pretty terrible. "Yeah," he answers, voice low. Then, a little more at a conversational level, he adds, "You won't have to lose any limbs, though. The Widow ghost is different. I've already seen three attempts." So he knows how the ritual goes, by now. It's horrific in its own way, but at least it won't require her bleeding all over the altar.

Three attempts. Her mouth suddenly dry, she forces a sigh. Slow inhale. Slower exhale.

"What goes wrong? What happens when it does?"

His eyes drop back to the ground. "The other three potentials. Uh. Burned to a crisp. Big pillar of flame." Another reason they're hoping Misty manages to be the right choice, here. She's "survived" burning once before, and her magic seems to be strongly related to fire.

Even the Soldier is grimly eager, in the back of his mind.

"If I could get you out of here, I would. Believe me. All I can do is warn you, and--" He twitches, then speaks again, the Soldier dropping words directly into his mouth: "Don't eat anything they give you. You'll be hungry, but clean. And look for the lines of force."

The twitch registers as doubly unnerving in this place as it would anywhere else. The pit in her stomach at the notion of burning - worse, somehow, having endured it before - is little help. Her expression falters, feigned steel falling to make room for a pinched brow, darting eyes. Her hands fidget limply in the air.

Meek and resentful she then asks, "Lines of force?"

His own expression is steely, now. Intense, like he's not the same person he was a minute ago, apologizing and staring at the ground. The Soldier knows what she needs to do, and he's going to make sure she knows, too. "They will try to bind you. Look at me. Look at us. You will see what it looks like when you look the right way."

The shift doesn't go unnoticed, met by turns with a frenetic attempt at straightening, making herself taller and imposing as if that would do anything, and the shameful urge to avert her eyes and will herself to ignore him outright.

This was insane, and it was so much simpler to think him insane along with it. That it's all merely bad dream.

Yet.

"Am I looking for them, or to avoid them?" She asks, tense and quiet.

"Avoid them. The Widow will know how to undo them, but not if you are bound first," the Soldier says, gaze fixed firmly on her face, even if she won't meet his eyes. "So don't eat anything they give you. Drink only out of the faucet in the bathroom when they let you use it. The ritual will be tomorrow at dawn. It is always at dawn. You have sixteen hours until then."

Which means she's been out for a while before waking up.

Ghost AU

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oh wow never got this notif at all

R I P

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