Stranded... out there

[stockingfeats]

Disaster. Your plane crashed, your boat holed, your guide has left you stranded in the depths of the wilderness. Certainly, your surroundings are beautiful in their way, but we all know that nature is long on majesty and short on mercy. And unlike those guys on the Discovery Channel, there isn't a Motel 6 around you can pop into.

1. Desert. Whether it's cacti and hardpan, or dunes and sidewinders, you'd better find an oasis fast. And take care... it gets cold at night.
   
2. Jungle. Ah, the rainforest, that thriving hotspot of biodiversity! ...and just as many toxic compounds as there are species.
   
3. Tundra. Doesn't matter if it's Farenheit or Celsius, the thermometer is too many digits in the negative. But hey, at least there might be penguins.
   
4. Mountains. You might be hungry and windburnt, but the view is unmatched. Watch that first step, it's a doozy!
   
5. Savanna. Lions and termites and baobab, oh my... Never mind looking for food, you might be food if you aren't careful. And stay out of trenches with too many wildebeest.
   
6. Deep forest. The woods are quiet, dark, and deep. Do you know how to tell edible puffballs from Destroying Angel? Better learn quick.
   
7. Deep space. Maybe the ship has lost its engines and is drifting towards nowhere fast, or maybe it's a space station long abandoned, but you know what they say--no one can hear you scream.
   
8. Island. Let's face it, it would be nice, if it had been your idea to be here. Where did the Swiss Family Robinson find all that stuff, anyway?
   
9. Motel. Never mind, there is a Motel 6. No, wait--Motel 5? Oh boy. You really wish they hadn't left the light on, because nothing it reveals is something you want to see.
   

Problems:

1. Weather: It's turning for the worse and you need a place to hide.
   
2. Hostile wildlife: Whether it's looking for lunch or wants you off its patch, this is going to be a problem.
   
3. No luggage ...or anything else, including food, water, or shelter.
   
4. Hurt: Perfect time to practice making splints out of sticks!
   
5. Other! Listen, it's a big world, it has lots of ways to make you miserable.
   

adapted from the Lost in the wilderness meme @ memebells

Comments

[communish]

Bucky wakes up at the bottom of a ravine, surrounded by fire and debris. Not for the first time.

He doesn't know how long he's been unconscious. Daylight won't touch this place for another month, so it's hard to gauge. His eyes are reluctant to focus - likely the brightness of the gasoline fire against the blackness of the night sky, likely also a concussion, maybe an intraocular hemorrhage. It takes him a moment to notice the vivid jade of the aurora borealis swirling across the darkness, casting an eerie glow on the heavy blanket of untouched snow around the crash site. It takes him a moment longer to remember how he got here. To remember the sudden snow storm that reduced their visibility to nearly zero, how the appearance of the lights seemed to correspond with the moment their power cut, taking out the small plane's engine and nav panel. How the pilot had tried to take the plane into a controlled descent while Bucky went to grab the parachutes so they could ditch the craft-- when they hit something.

From the looks of things, it was probably the mountain before him. If the pilot made it, which is doubtful, he's nowhere Bucky can reach him. Far above, he can see what remains of the nose of the aircraft, pieces of burning insulation slowly breaking off to litter the ground below. Which reminds him that he needs to move, before the engine fire or the falling wreckage takes him, too.

Bucky knows he's bleeding - based on the red in the snow around him, he has been for a while - but why isn't obvious until he tries to stand. At first, he thinks the sudden sharp pain is a broken rib. Until he sees the jagged end of the plane's metal tail frame poking through his t-shirt, and he knows he's pinned. If help were coming, it would be better to leave it in, keep himself from losing more blood. But he's deep in the wilderness, and the winter storm would make him hard find even if someone knew to look.

He knows he's on his own.

His metal arm is dead weight, another victim of the electrical storm. With waning strength, he manages to pull himself off the rebar, tying his undershirt tight around his middle to put pressure on the wound. Won't do a damn thing about the internal bleeding, but maybe if he didn't hit anything vital, his body will start to heal before it gets any worse.

One leg won't support his weight, so his steps are slow and faltering as he sifts through the burning wreckage of the cargo bay looking for his gear. His coat is badly singed, his bag is ripped and his flashlight's dead, but you can't see a problem with his flare gun or his pistol to look at them. He just needs to keep it together long enough to find a town. For his phone to kick back on. For someone to notice the thick smoke billowing out over the snow white mountains.

When the pain starts to fade, he sees that for the bad sign that it is. It could be the adrenaline - it probably is, in part - but it's likely a combination of hypothermia and shock. He just needs to keep going. No matter how cold it gets, how fast his heart is beating, how tired he feels, how nauseous he gets, how much his leg wants to give out underneath him, he needs to keep going.

He doesn't know how long he's been walking - minutes, hours, days - when he stumbles, falling to his knees. He slumps slumps back against a nearby tree trunk. He's sure he just need a moment to center himself, to breathe, before he gets back up. But he fires off a flare round, hoping it will find its way through the dense tree cover, in case he's wrong.

It's when he finally lifts his head that he sees her. There's a woman in front of him, close enough that he doesn't know how he didn't hear her coming. She's not dressed for the weather, but somehow, she doesn't seem cold. She doesn't even seem out of place. In fact, she looks familiar, like someone he met in his old life. Or someone he saw in a dream that's since faded from memory.

There must be a town nearby. No way someone would have found him this quickly otherwise.

"Thank fuck for you. I need a medic," He calls out, lifting himself to his feet. He was right. He just needed a moment. His strength is already coming back. "My plane crashed into- the mountain, back there. I was traveling with someone. I don't think he made it."

[twicemet]

The flapping of wings that signals her arrival is easily lost amongst the other birds, though the world slides into the background. It's just her and James Buchanan Barnes now. She waits for the right moment, the moment she instinctively knows, this time just after the flare.

A pity.

Dressed in a black knit beanie, and a light black snow jacket, Death in her traditional All Black Everything approaches, her ankh swaying freely in the cold air.

"No, no, stay down, it's alright," she tells him with a calm demeanor and a soft smile, "I know, Bucky. Your plane sent out an emergency signal as it hit. They're sending out rescuers in the morning, when the clouds lift." The pilot, a man named Marc Will, had hoped his passengers were alright, but doubted it.

Snow crunched beneath her boots as she walked toward him. She inhales deeply the scent of the mountains, the snow, the wet earth. The blood and gasoline are only background notes. She kneels in front of him, not caring that the snow would drench her denim-clad calves.

"Unfortunately, neither one of you are going to make it." It's always difficult to say. Some people know intrinsically who she is. Others are afraid and cry and try to fight. Bucky, she thinks, will surprise her. "I'm sorry."

[communish]

Bucky eyes her skeptically. Under different circumstances, "you're not going to make it" would sound a lot like a threat, but she doesn't seem threatening. She's apologetic.

He thinks he knows, now, who or what he's looking at. But he's not sure if this is real, or just the part of himself that wants to give up. Has always wanted to give up.

"I'm dying." Bucky concludes, more annoyed than upset. He has spent much of the last 80 years wishing for this. He was ten years old when Death came for both of his parents. At nineteen, he was little more than a child the first time he called on Death to come for him. Since then, Bucky has died, or nearly died, at least a dozen times. But he's never been allowed to leave. And every time he comes back, he wakes up in a world that's worse than the one he left.

There are the obvious culprits. The USSR -- who took his broken body and stitched it back together into something warped and terrible, an animal breaking its teeth on the bars of its cage. Who brought him to the brink of death and revived him hundreds of times over decades. And Fury -- who orchestrated Bucky's death and subsequent dosing with Infinity Formula to keep him in his assassin rotation when his stint as Captain America took him out of the field.

And then there are the less obvious ones. Steve has always loved him too much (and too badly) to let him go. Steve has used every wish he'd ever had to bring Bucky back from the dead, even though he never stuck around for long. And when they finally found each other again, Steve used the cosmic cube to will back Bucky's memories, all of his memories, even as Bucky looked on and said, "You should have killed me."

Now, now that he's finally started to build something for himself -- not something great, or impressive, not even something he particularly wanted, but something that was his -- that's when it comes for him again.

It's absurd. His life, his death, all of it.

"Let me save us both some time." Bucky starts, resting his hand on the tree next to him. Winter winds churn the snow to cover the trail of crimson behind him. "If you take me, you're just going to have to put me back."

[twicemet]

Truth be told, most people figure it out. But she nods. No point in lying to them. She's not here to scare them, but to comfort them. She's always seen herself as a friend, as often as she has been portrayed as foe.

"You are. The rebar did a number on you." She nods toward his midsection. "We're miles from civilization, so even if it didn't..." Wolves, bears, hunger, the cold, thirst. A thousand ways you could die out here. But it was beautiful out here. There were less beautiful places to die.

"You're not the first of your kind I've brought back. You won't be the last. But we won't know until we get there." That was for her eldest brother to know, and the rest of them to find out.

"You've had a lot more than most people, you know. That's not something to scoff at. You've seen me before, haven't you? You remember." Maybe she was lurking in the background. Maybe she flickered in and out as she took his friends, his victims, his family.

"We can wait, if you want. There's no rush." Time stopped for each person, it seemed, as she was everywhere she was needed all at once. "Take all the time you want."