INBOX

[frostythehitman]

JAMES (BUCKY) BARNES

Hey, this is James. Text me if you need me. Or leave me a message if you want, but I'm probably not going to listen to it because, seriously, this is 2017 and no one uses voicemail any more.

VOICE | TEXT | VIDEO | ACTION

Comments

[frostythehitman]

Speak for yourself, I still wake up every morning thinking I'm gonna see an 18-year-old in the mirror.

[ But then his expression grows more somber, because Eren's right. All the memories and the regains he's received, they feel so fundamentally a part of him now that he might as well be a different person than he was before this Retrospec stuff ever started. All these regains aren't just from some guy from some other world, they're him. ]

...But that's probably gonna stop eventually too. Someday I'm gonna wake up and just--be a 36-year-old man. Like this is how old I'm supposed to be.

[ He doesn't know how to feel about it. He certainly doesn't like that thought--but is that even going to matter, once he gets used to being like this? ]

[usurpers]

[ oh, christ.

you know, that’s not something he thought about? and with that smile that used to be there . . . it’s now equally somber. ]

You think we’ll forget everything?

[ at the same time that there’s relief on eren’s shoulders, human relief— there’s also worry. he does not want to walk backwards.

even if what he’s become is questionable, eren doesn’t want to lose it. he doesn’t want to lose everything he’s learned. pain aside . . . pain, he can handle. lifetimes and lifetimes worth of teachings, and experiences, and what made him him now— he couldn’t get that back. ]

[frostythehitman]

I don't think we'll forget. I just think it's gonna be hard to tell what came from where. Like, I'm not gonna forget my life before this [ he gestures at his grown self ] but eventually it'll just seem like I'm supposed to be like this. It's all just...us.

[ He already has a hard enough time telling apart his regained memories from the 'real' ones. It's all started blurring together. Did he die of a fake suicide in prison? Or falling off a rocket? They both feel equally as real in his mind.

James has even given up on articulating the difference between himself and his other self entirely. He only bothers differentiating now when the people he's speaking to seem to care about the distinction. ]

[usurpers]

[ there’s much more ease to his shoulders, and one would still think he’d still be a little tense to the thought of what that all entailed— eren’s eyes are to the screen, but he isn’t truly watching what’s happening. he’s seeing a completely different movie in front of him. ]

How much of a difference do you still feel between memories? On a scale of one to ten.

[ maybe he’s just blabbering, but— eren has been feeling this way for a while, and no one else agrees. ]

[frostythehitman]

Where one is no difference at all and ten is totally, completely different?

[ He hums as he thinks about it, twiddling the ice cream spoon in his metal hand. ]

...Three.

[usurpers]

[ hm!! hm. ]

I’d say two or three, too. And I’m not bothered by it.

[frostythehitman]

Hah. I used to be.

But then I realized there isn't any difference between him and me. A person's just a jumble of memories, right? And I've already got most of his. All that's different is that I technically don't have a body count, but I tried pretty damn hard to fix that myself even before I remembered it. Which goes a pretty long way towards saying I'm the same guy.

[usurpers]

I remember that.

[ and the fact that back then eren was starting to feel his colors mesh from strictly black and white to grey, hm.

now all of him is as muddy as a thundercloud. ]

The only thing I see different about me now is the circumstance I’m in. [ he has a good life. a great, life, actually. he has a mother, a sister, his father in memory and in will, considering all of what he owns. he has a fiancé, he has a career, and he has a life to live now. it’s not three or four years, like he used to have. ] And— I wouldn’t want to be different.

[ because he knows who he is, to the core. eren jaeger doesn’t back down from responsibility or duty (no, he probably takes too much of it on his shoulders, is the problem) especially with this life, you know.

he has some comfort knowing he’d still do the same thing for life. ]

[frostythehitman]

Really? You wouldn't?

[ Even with everything he's remembered?

James doesn't know the full details of Eren's memories, but he knows enough that they can relate on some pretty horrific things.

And James considers those things enough that he, himself, would definitely want it to be different. He'd love to not be this person that he is. He'd love to go back to being that teenager two years ago. He may have been embarrassing, but at least he wasn't some criminal lost cause.

He doesn't see how Eren can embrace it so much as to be proud of it. ]

[usurpers]

[ eren doesn’t respond to this like he should. it’s quiet and he just fills his mouth with ice cream, looking at the screen but not really looking at it.

it’s not how he truly, truly feels, he’s lying about it. not directly to james, at least. it’s a lot of lying to himself. of course there’s a part of him that’d like to be happier, like he used to, but . . . ]

It’s hard to think I’d be ignorant again.