A hollow victory makes for a hollow victor

PERSONALITY.

Bucky of the present day acts very different from the Bucky that volunteered to enter the Games. That Bucky was easy-going, jovial, optimistic, brave and intelligent. Only the latter two traits survived. On a day-to-day basis, he will still be laid back as long as whatever’s going on doesn’t affect rebellion issues or potentially put anyone in danger. If it does, then the easy-going attitude snaps and seriousness settles on him. It’s this seriousness and strict attitude when it comes to ‘business’ combined with a fairness and patience that makes him a good leader type. He won’t stand for people endangering others or potentially ruining the efforts the rebellion has made and he makes that stance very clear.

The bitterness and cynicism that killed his optimism shows heavily in the sarcastic remarks or looks he’ll give people and in the dark-humor jokes he’ll make, all born from his snap disillusionment caused by the Games, Peggy’s trauma and Steve’s disappearance. With all ties to his family severed, the rebellion and its success is all he has left and he dedicates himself to it.

Still, even with his seriousness and more strict attitude at times, he’s not without his softness or kindness. It shows when dealing with younger or weaker people, a trait he’s had all his life; he will still become protective over people, though never to the point of exclusion from things. He has a nurturing side that shows up in glimpses and in the small real smiles he slips from time-to-time. For all intents and purposes, he acts cold with flashes of warm.

And where he’s cold on the outside, he’s burning on the inside. Most of his driving force is anger. Anger at the capitol for being douchebags, anger at the capitol for holding the Games at all, anger at the capitol for drawing Steve and Peggy’s names and tearing his life apart and anger at himself for getting drunk that night and loosening his lips. To this day, he will rarely drink and only when alone and when his guilt becomes too much.

Because, where there isn’t anger, there’s guilt. He feels guilty for having to kill all those people in the Games even if he wouldn’t change it for anything, he feels guilty that it wasn’t just his name chosen instead of Steve’s because he knew Steve probably felt badly for it himself and he feels guilty for getting his closest friend taken and, inevitably, killed. Bucky is not incapable of feeling happier or better things, but he stamps them down himself with the thought process that he doesn’t have time for it until the Capitol is overthrown. Now that the Capitol is, habit usually wins out over healthy behaviors.

Bucky is very strong-willed, as demonstrated in his Games, he is also as honest as he can be in any given situation. He’s prone to little white lies here and there and he will out-right lie if it’s to protect District 13 or another person, but when it comes to making promises to people he respects, he does everything in his power to keep them, maintaining the dependable nature he had before his life was wrecked.

As said before, he’s not a particularly optimistic person anymore, he doesn’t really ‘hope’ for anything. Whereas some other people might ‘hope’ the capitol will lose and go down, he relies on his will and conviction; there’s no other possibility but success in his opinion or he will die trying to obtain it, thus eliminating any need for hope. You can’t hope for something you consider fact.

Whereas a younger Bucky was very charismatic and charming and open to letting in new people, this Bucky is much more closed off. He still holds that charisma and charm, but they’re tools for him now, things to help him in his goals and to make others who might be stressed or losing hope feel more at ease. He rarely lets people in the way he used to. As long as he can see a person is driven, competent and has a good heart, he will be willing to trust them and work to gain their trust, but ‘making friends’ isn’t his goal and ‘sharing himself’ with others is something he tries to avoid if he can, it’s not something that can be afforded when death or capture could be around the corner. He’s lost everyone he’s ever cared about, one by accident and the rest by necessity all due to his own actions; getting that close to people again--until he knows the capitol won’t use them against him--isn’t an option.

Bucky is from post-game, so the Capitol has been torn apart and something new is in the process of being made. For once in ten years, he’s hopeful, but a lot of the habits and mannerisms he’s developed still hold strong. The work might be different, but he’s still a workaholic, dedicated to whatever project he’s picked up. But he feels and acts like he can breathe again, now that things are slowly getting better and he’s got the friends he’s adopted and family he lost back at his side. He still holds himself like a string held so tightly it might snap, but he’s improving little-by-little just as Panem is.

Being taken and turned into a super-soldier by the Capitol set some development back, his willingness to let others close and trust them have been damaged, but with the help of Sam and his counterpart (canon Bucky), he’s adapted far better than he would have alone.

Of course, being thrown into a situation where he’s the offworlder is sure to bring back some of that old District 13 Bucky in a snap need for the familiar.

HISTORY.

Bucky Barnes grew up on the farming plains of District 10 with his three younger sisters, mother and his best friends, Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter. These were the people he considered his family. Growing up, their lives were never easy with limited funds and more mouths to feed than could comfortably be accommodated for, but it was a loving environment, resulting in Bucky growing up a fairly good-natured child. There were was talk throughout the district about the Games and anger towards the Capitol, but it all seemed like a distant thing to the young trio of close friends.

Steve and Peggy were Bucky’s best friends and the most important people in his life, where one went the others followed. However, from birth, Steve was a sickly child who most people didn’t expect to live for very long; it was always said that it was his stubborn streak that proved them wrong. Through every ailment, Bucky and Peggy were right there to support Steve and make sure he made it through. Faithfully, Bucky ran errands, did odd jobs and enlisted early in factory work instead of going to school, whatever he could to get the medicine of the week his friend needed and the food they all needed. Meanwhile, Steve would help with the Barnes’ household chores along with Bucky’s sisters and Peggy would come over early and often to share her school work and teach them what she’d learned.

Once he turned twelve, he started putting his name in the drawing more and more. Every time they needed a little more food to get them through, every time Steve suffered from something else, Bucky put his name in to get what they needed. He never hesitated or regretted doing it. Steve was a fighter and as long as he fought for his life, Bucky would fight too.

For years, luck was on their side for the drawing, every year they would go and someone else was chosen. Their luck ran out the year Bucky and Peggy turned 15. Peggy’s name was called or the Games and the boys had no choice but to watch as she was taken from them and then fought for her life. She nearly died, strangled by a garrote wire, but she lived and came back to them. She suffered nightmares and exercised to chase away her fear and pain, but they were always there to take care of her and hold her close, as long as she let them. Anything she needed they would provide; she’d come home and that was enough for them. At least, for two more years.

The reaping came again, but unlike what Bucky had always suspected would happen if their luck ran out, it was Steve’s name drawn this time and not Bucky’s. He was so mortified that for one second, all they could do was stare at each other, causing the peacekeepers to head into the crowd. That was when he reacted. Without hesitation, Bucky volunteered himself in place of his best friend; Steve wouldn’t survive like Peggy had and, if by some miracle he did, Bucky didn’t want the same trauma to chase both of his closest friends. He got a chance to say goodbye to his family and Steve before being taken to the capitol along with Peggy, now a mentor, and he promised them he would do anything he needed to do to come back to them.

It was a promise he held to. Bucky had always been naturally charismatic and good looking, and these things won him supporters with the help of his ‘good old boy’ visage and attitude. But it was his unwavering determination and willingness to break his own moral code for the people he cared about that won him the arena. The second the canon went off, he found a sword shaped like a sickle and began a slaughter. He killed 12 out of 24 contenders within the first twenty-four hours. The details of his game are here, but he won handily with a few life-threatening wounds that quickly became scars and reminders under the Capitol’s medicine.

His victory was celebrated in the face of Bucky’s stirring guilt and remorse, feelings he hadn’t allowed until after the arena was over, but he endured all of it with a charming and easy going smile. The night before he was meant to go home, his mentor abandoned him, taking the recent win as an excuse to retire and left Bucky at the mercies of the Capitol. he had a little too much to drink and one thing led to another which led to him spilling his misgivings against the capitol and the Games (sentiments his entire district held but only held weight now that he was a victor) in mixed company. This information made it to the wrong people who sold him out to the government. Bucky didn’t find out the consequences of that night until he got home.

It only took five minutes of being back in 10 for him to discover the government had reached out to silence him; before he’d made it back home, peacekeepers had taken Steve away with no explanation to anyone. When Bucky found the head of the peacekeepers for 10, they told him that was what happened to people who spat in the face of the government who gave them everything: prices had to be paid. It didn’t take him long to realize it was his actions,not Steve’s, a punishment meant for Bucky.

Bucky lost it, he became infuriated and started a fight with the peacekeepers. They couldn’t shoot him because of his new ‘Victor’ status, but they incapacitated him and a story was quickly spun about the tragic victor who lost his mind. The next news story that went out about Bucky happened a week later: ‘Tragedy strikes once again, District 10 Victor commits suicide.’ A terrible ending to a flashbulb of a Victor, tat’s what the media said.

Another denizen of District 10, an older man who’d watched the three friends grow up, took pity on Bucky and helped him escape and fake his own death, telling him it was the only way to keep his family and Peggy safe. The two stole away to the missing District 13, hoping against hope they wouldn’t only find a pile of rubble. Lucky for them, the rumors were true and they had somewhere to hide away, although the district they found was a desperate group trying to keep it’s head above water instead of the bastion of hope the quietest rumors had painted it as.

At first, Bucky was listless and unmotivated, having been locked up and declared crazy in the aftermath of losing his best friend had indeed unhinged him a bit, but a proverbial kick in the pants and the realization that he could make a difference and avenge on of the most important people in his life, got him moving again. In no time at all, he applied that same determination and aggressiveness to helping rebellion efforts, focusing on propaganda and combat efforts as well as dabbling in defense strategy, making himself a valuable asset of District 13. As the plague ravaged 13 and Alma Coin’s anger grew, Bucky was there to do anything and everything she might need to see District 13 become the rebellion Panem needed.

Roughly six years after his ‘death’ and two years before the new system of Games brought the Offworlders to Panem, Bucky left District 13 for the first time since arriving and made his way to the Capitol to recruit some spies for the Rebellion. One of those spies was Peggy Carter.

She wasn’t pleased to see he’d been alive all that time and promptly punched him, but they worked it out in the end (albeit only functionally and barely, but enough for the job.) The next time Bucky went to the Capitol, it was to oversee an extraction mission. He stepped into the Tribute Tower for the first time since his Games and began to suffer a panic attack from his PTSD. However, he was found and talked down by one of the Tributes, Sam Wilson. This garnered some trust between them and proved to be the starting of a very strong friendship and one of the first personal connections Bucky had to the people now being forced into the Games. It was a friendship that would eventually turn into something more after Bucky was shot in one of the missions nearly a year later and came close to dying. The relationship he had with Sam would often help him keep his sanity and a reality check when he would need it most further down the line.

Bucky was named the liaison for the offworlders that slowly began to be brought to District 13, acting as their connection to the higher-ups and the goings-on of 13. Bucky didn’t want the job at first, not hardly, but Coin gave him little choice. However, over time, Bucky came to care for his ‘charges’ and even grew to be protective of them and their interests, effectively endangering his status in the eyes of the overly-paranoid and single-minded President who only saw the Offworlders as another tool.

Bucky wouldn’t become aware of this slip in status until he was forced into a dreamscape training alongside the offworlders to make them ‘better 13 soldiers’ without any warning or even a notion it was a dream. At least until he fell of the train they were raiding and woke up safe back in his bed. It was the first time in eight years Coin had given Bucky any reason to doubt, a feeling that didn’t sit well with the loyal left hand. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last.

As more and more of the Capitol and it’s secrets opened up to them and Bucky’s own hacking skills got better, he started to do some digging into whatever happened to Steve. He got some names of some people to look into from his friend and other Victor, Hannah Megido (The Handmaiden), and scraped together everything he could.

An unsanctioned trip via the motorcycle he’d rebuilt in his spare time took him back to the Capitol where he discovered the truth: Steve had been taken as leverage against him and Peggy as he’s originally thought, but he hadn’t died so quickly as they’d guessed. With Bucky’s ‘death’ Steve was useless to them, so the Capitol put him to new use and turned him into an Avox, one of the mindless tortured slaves of the Capitol and its denizens. He was given to the service of an elderly Captiolite until the offworld version was pulled into the Games. Seeing what kind of soldier Steve could be with the proper ‘enhancements’ the Capitol scientists took him back and experimented on him to try and duplicate the results. The only result was Panem!Steve’s death. Approximately a year prior to Bucky finding out about it.

The people who told Bucky all this didn’t live long past the realization of what it all meant to Bucky: he’d been in District 13 while Steve had been alive and rescuable for nearly a decade. Something Coin would have had to have known, considering the ties she’d had at the time. This was the final straw. The rebellion was still Bucky’s life, but his faith in his President and supposed friend was shattered and they neither of them could trust each other anymore.

This and his CR with the disillusioned offworlders in 13 were what led to the inevitable overthrown of President Coin, right as 13 was preparing to go to war.

During the final push through the streets of the Capitol, Bucky helped Sam break into a facility to save two of Sam’s friends. In the process, however, Bucky himself was captured. Still scrambling to find and use every weapon it had against the rebellion, the Capitol scientists used the serum they’d developed and used on Panem!Steve in their experiments now on Panem!Bucky; this time, it took and the serum changed Bucky into the super soldier they’d been hoping for. Unfortunately for them, they couldn’t start the process of brainwashing before Sam, forced to turn back from the fighting, came to Bucky’s rescue and freed him. The two fought who and what they could in the lingering remains of the battle but, for them, the war was coming to a long-needed end.

Something Bucky would have to come to terms with. It was a good thing, but something he’d been working towards for nearly ten years; he hadn’t been sure he’d see the end result, much less have to figure out a life after.

ABILITIES.

He’s trained in deadly hand-to-hand combat and skilled as a marksman and swordsman, he’s also peak human thanks to the serum, so all five sense are enhanced as is his speed and strength.

Bucky's well versed in technology and the hacking thereof, he's also fairly good at editing and finishing videos for broadcast and all the techniques needed to film said videos.

And he's a mean farmer.

Visualocities

Playlist

Specific Arena Info for the 68th Hunger Games

Bucky's IC caches throughout the Fleet