nerves_of_ice | [oom] see right through my walls

He walks back to the little hut in silence through the cool, dark quiet, broken only by the hum of insects and the call of various night-birds whose names he doesn't know.

The goats are asleep when he arrives. One or two of them give sleepy bleats as he checks that they're safe in their pen. He hushes them and leaves them be, instead walking down to stand by the lakeshore. He stands there for some time, watching the water ripple in the moonlight.

Somehow, he doesn't know how, he'll have to figure out how to cope with Sharon's bright laughing presence without letting himself want. Wanting anything would be too much, he fears - and fears, at the same time, slipping back into the habits of all the long years before.

Weapons aren't allowed to want anything. Only the mission matters.

Whatever answers the lake depths might hold, it keeps to itself. Some uncounted time later, he goes back inside, and goes through his evening routine without thinking.

The purple-and-smoke-colored throw rests on the chest at the end of his bed. He lies down and stares at the ceiling in the darkness, and doesn't let himself think, and doesn't sleep, and doesn't sleep, and doesn't--

In the deep of night, he gives in. He pushes his pillow to the side and folds the throw under his head instead. If he tries hard enough, he can almost imagine that he can smell the scent of her hair.

She sleeps like shit.

It's not just –

It's everything. She hasn't had a really peaceful night since the last night before Aunt Peggy died and everything fell apart, and over the last few weeks she's rarely felt safe enough to sleep a full night, and no matter what she tells herself about how impossible it would be for someone to get her here, she still doesn't feel safe.

She spends the night starting awake in a panic and then staring at the ceiling or into the dark, too tired, too anxious, too sad. It aches in her bones, like the ribs that finally healed but which will probably always be a little weak, a little prone to aching in bad weather. And by the time morning comes, she feels like she's hardly slept at all.

Daylight brings a whole new enemy: the clock. It calmly ticks the morning away while she watches it from the comfortable armchair by the window and the sun rises higher and higher.

He's expecting her. She knows that. Even though – he'd still said he'd see her in the morning. Told her to come yell at him. But even after a shower and some fresh clothes, she can't stomach the thought of going down there to face him, feeling like a fool and unable to explain herself. Sitting right here and feeling sorry for herself all day long sounds like a much better plan.

Nakia, on the other hand, disagrees.

It's almost noon when the cheery knock comes and Nakia comes sweeping in, beautiful and warm as a summer sun, but her smile fades when she looks at her friend. "Well?" she says, gently, and Sharon spills it all.

Fifteen minutes later, when she's done, Nakia is silent for a long moment, and then stands decisively and strides to the door. She's very nearly through by the time Sharon's brain catches up to what's happening. "Nakia, where are you going?"

"To give that man a piece of my mind!" Nakia is fuming and protective, and the thought of her storming down to the lakeside and rounding on Bucky with all the righteous fury of a September hurricane is the first thing that makes Sharon laugh all morning.

"I should go," she says, rueful, and Nakia presses her hand. "You do not have to," she reminds Sharon. "You have some healing to do, as well."

Sharon takes a deep breath, and shakes her head, finding a smile that's almost, nearly close to her usual quirking one. "Come on," she says. "When have I ever given up on something just because it would be a good idea to?"

Nakia does, at least, insist on walking down with her, and Sharon's grateful for her bright, cheery company every step of the way – especially as they get close to the lake, and hear the children shouting, and Sharon's heart thuds with trepidation.

(At least in the sun, she thinks, she doesn't look quite as terrible as she had in the mirror this morning.)

He watches the sun rise while sitting cross-legged on the ground outside the hut, a piece of flatbread brushed with lentil paste serving as enough of a breakfast to provide needed fuel. As the goats began to stir, calling sleepily to each other, he gets to his feet and goes to feed them their daily ration of grain, checking them over and brushing dirt from their coats in the usual routine.

Sharon hasn't shown up by the time the sun lifts above the horizon, nor does she appear by the time it clears the trees. He keeps one eye on the Citadel, trying to ignore the fact that he's doing it, and reminds himself that she'd been exhausted. She's probably sleeping late.

It helps when the children show up after their morning classes are done, as by that time he's taken to pacing in circles back and forth between the hut and the lake, trying to talk himself out of going to the Citadel to see if everything's all right. If she's avoiding him, well, she likely has reason. Maybe seeing Steve last night caused her to have second thoughts.

He plays with the children, and then, when he realizes he's too distracted to do a good job of that, he gives in and watches while they play with each other. He still can't keep himself from looking at the Citadel every few minutes, which means he spots Sharon and Nakia coming as soon as they're visible over the edge of the hill.

As they get closer, worry sets in. Sharon looks -- well, she looks worse than he's ever seen her, including when she was covered in smudges of dirt and blood in the underground facility in Greece, and Nakia looks as coolly regal as a carved statue.

"Hi," he manages, as they reach him. He doesn't realize how poor a job he's doing of hiding his concern. "Good morning?"

"Sergeant Barnes." Nakia's tone could etch steel.

Edited 2021-03-02 02:59 (UTC)

When she sees his face, two things happen:

First, her stomach plummets and twists and then fills up again with butterflies like she's back in tenth grade, and second, he looks so concerned that she wants to go stick her head into the lake so she'd at least have a good excuse for looking like shit.

Damn. "Hey," she says, and smiles even as metaphorical frost swirls from Nakia's skirts. She turns to her friend. "Thanks for walking me down," she says, and her tone is light but she fixes Nakia with an intent look. Whatever her own feelings, he doesn't actually deserve to be on the receiving end of whatever Nakia had planned to say.

They have a silent battle of wills for a moment, but Nakia finally shakes her head and steps in to give her a hug. "Remember what you are worth," she says low, into Sharon's ear, and then steps back to nod, coolly, to Bucky before sweeping back off across the grass.

Sharon watches her go, then scrubs at her face and wanders up to him, looking around with a crooked half-smile. "Where's your fan club?"

"The kids? Er, both kinds - over there," he tells her. He points in the direction of the forest some distance away, where the children can be seen chasing the goats in and out of the smaller trees and around bushes in the shade. On second glance, it's possible the goats are chasing the children. Either way, they seem to be having fun.

He doesn't bother to look at them, though. All his attention is fixed on Sharon.

"Did something happen?"

"What? No."

She's looking at him a little strangely. "Nothing happened. I just – didn't sleep very well – God, do I look that bad?"

She scrubs her hands over her face again like it might help. (The lake idea is sounding better and better, honestly.) "Awesome. Thanks."

"I didn't mean that," he protests, "I just meant--"

James. Darling. Natasha's voice whispers in his memory with an echo from years past, at a time when he'd screwed up so royally that he wasn't entirely sure if she was going to throw him out the window he'd just climbed in to apologize. How did you ever think that was a good idea? You idiot man.

"Okay, maybe I did mean that, but not like that," he tries, carefully, feeling a little like his words are quicksand sliding out from under his feet. "You just look so tired, and--"

He swallows, and tries again.

"When you didn't show up this morning, I was ... worried."

Oh, this was a bad idea. She should have stayed in her room and seen what the Wakandan version of Ben & Jerry's is like. Or maybe she should have let Nakia yell at him.

Or maybe she should yell at him herself, but the thing is?

He's allowed to not...want her back. As much as she wants to say that he's not. "Nothing happened," she repeats. "No Task Force agents climbing in through the window, no shoot-outs, no fights. Just...couldn't sleep."

There's a beat of silence while she looks at him, and then away again. Not being able to sleep doesn't explain why she wasn't here earlier, but maybe he won't ask.

"I'm sorry I made you worry."

He shakes his head.

"No, that's -- you didn't do anything wrong." Just because he'd expected her to show up doesn't mean she had to. She doesn't owe him anything. Anything at all. She's done so much more than he could ever expect by coming to Wakanda in the first place.

And now she won't even look at him. All his instincts are screaming at him that something's wrong, very wrong, disastrously wrong, but he can't for the life of him figure out what it is.

He sets his mind working at the problem with some desperation as he asks,

"Do you... um." He glances around, raking his hand through his hair. "I guess, um, there's not much to show you that you haven't already seen. Except the lake?"

The lake that is right there and impossible to miss seeing, he realizes, and closes his eyes briefly in an effort to keep from wincing.

She does look at him now, with faint disbelief. "You mean that lake?"

The big one that's about twenty feet away? That lake?

She huffs a breath of a laugh and shakes her head. "You know what? Yes. I would like to see the lake."

Maybe she could dive into it. Or push him into it. Either way it would at least break some of this tension. "Is there a spot around it you like?"

Edited 2021-03-02 04:17 (UTC)

"Yeah," he confirms, barely managing not to wince at her expression. It was a stupid question. "That lake. And... actually, there is."

He turns to walk on her left, gesturing toward the little footpath that leads through the grasses and toward the thicket of trees further along the shore. "It's this way."

She'd been fine when he'd left her and Shuri the night before. Whatever happened, it was between then and now... and based on the way Nakia had treated him, he's pretty sure he's to blame for it, whatever it is.

One way to find out.

Very quietly, he says,

"If I ask what I did, will you tell me?"

Edited 2021-03-02 04:24 (UTC)

"Yes." It's very simple, as they pick their way along a little path that curves towards and along the lakeshore. "I always do."

Ever since Franche-Comté, even. She's always been honest with him, and that's a hell of a thing for an intelligence operative like her to do. And even if she wanted to lie, that pained look on his face from yesterday when she attempted a harmless white lie would stop her cold before she could even try.

She doesn't look at him, but she's all too conscious of how his right hand is so near her left, and how much this is beginning to feel like their conversation in Leipzig.

"Are you asking?"

After all, he might not want to know the answer.

Without hesitation:

"Yes. I'm asking."

If he's responsible for the way she looks--

He's walked this pathway enough times that he doesn't need to watch his footing. It means he can look at her instead, searching her face.

"Sharon. What did I do?"

She breathes in deep through her nose, and tries to organize her thoughts. It helps to be walking along a dappled path by a green, quiet lake; it helps even more when the path begins to wind through some slightly scraggly trees.

But the words are hard, because the thing he did is not really the same as the thing that kept her up all night, although they're connected.

And try as she might, she's not sure she can explain how. "The ornament and my blanket," she says, after a long second. "You gave them to Nakia to put in my room, didn't you?"

Her stomach is just one hard knot, but she presses on, because she knows the answer to that question, and that wasn't – that wasn't it.

"You didn't want them in yours?"

"Yes."

The faintest hint of confusion wisps through his tone.

"I thought you'd want something familiar. I thought -- I wanted you to -- I thought you'd find it a comfort to have them with you."

And he'd also thought he had no right to keep them; no right to take what she'd offered.

"I kept the other throw. The one you gave me before."

She huffs another laugh, but this one is humorless. "Of course you did. Because you keep being good to me even when I don't deserve it."

He's not lying. She's sure that was part of it, but the rest –

"But that's not what it...felt like. Bucky –"

She can't help herself. She stops walking, and reaches for his hand to keep him from walking past her, so she can look up into his face.

He looks so confused. She has to try to make him understand. "It felt like you just wanted them away from you. Do you understand? Those things – they're me. Me and you. And you...didn't want them. Me."

Her smile holds no humor or laugh whatsoever. "You could have just said, 'Sharon, I don't feel that way about you, let's just be pals,' and – I mean, I wouldn't like it, but I would listen."

Probably.

Her heart is racing and she feels like she's just run a race, but she stays stock-still, watching him.

He starts to protest when she says I don't deserve it, because she does, of course she does --

-- and then she keeps going, and the realization hits him with the force of an explosion.

Bucky stares at her, mind reeling, as his hand tightens compulsively on hers, as understanding crashes in.

"No, I couldn't." He manages to force the words past his lips, even as a cold, distant, all-too-familiar part of him points out that he could let her believe this, that it would resolve the overall situation if he did.

Except that he can't. He can't. Not and be who he is. Who he wants to be.

"I couldn't have said that. Because it would be a lie."

Her eyes shift back and forth, searching his face, looking for the lie and finding nothing but absolute honesty. "So –"

His hand is so tight in hers that she almost can't feel how hers is shaking. "So I wasn't wrong, before?"

She's staring up at him, trying to tamp down on this hope that keeps trying to claw its way along her ribs and through her chest. "That night in Leipzig, I thought – it seemed like –"

She sighs, closes her eyes, sets her jaw, and stubbornly tries again. "It seemed like you felt the same way I did. There was this – spark. Did you?"

It's quiet here, by the water. Even the sound of children's laughter is dim and distant, making it feel almost as if they're the only two people in the world right now.

"You weren't wrong."

He makes himself keep his eyes on her, makes himself not look away.

I care about you, she'd said.

"I did care. I do."

But, threatens to leap from his tongue next, and he bites it back. That can wait. Undoing the pain and hurt he's caused her is more important. This is more important.

That unspoken but rolls between them like an invisible rock.

...No. Not like a rock. Like an invisible Steve Rogers, tall and smiling and too perfect to be true.

And the most important person in Bucky's life.

I should never have shown you that photo, she thinks, a little sadly, and steels herself with a deep breath, lacing her fingers carefully through his.

"But?"

"But," he agrees. He glances down at their linked hands and takes a slow, deep breath of his own before he looks back up again to meet her eyes.

"Steve's my best friend," Bucky says, and it's quiet, but oh, so clear. "He always has been. Always will be."

"When we were back in Brooklyn, before the war, before the serum, women would always look past him to me." He says it without bragging or evasion, as a simple matter of fact. Sharon knows his background already, knows what kind of man he used to be, before the war, before the Winter Soldier.

It's who he is now that's important.

"Neither of us were -- there was nothing serious, with any of them. But." He searches her face, hoping he can make her understand. "Steve - Sharon, if he cares about you like that, if he loves you -- how I feel doesn't matter. I can't do it. I can't be the one to break his heart. I can't."

When he meets her eyes again, she holds his gaze steadily and doesn't interrupt, even though she feels like she's going to shiver herself into a million pieces.

Yes. She remembers Aunt Peggy telling her about Bucky Barnes: handsome, charming, quick with a line. She's sure that before the serum, even with all his qualities, Steve was practically invisible next to his best friend.

It may have been seventy years ago, but it's as real now as it was back then to Bucky, she can tell. The pain in those smoke-blue eyes of his is crystal clear and real.

But. He said if.

"And if he doesn't?"

Her voice is just as quiet, but they may as well be standing here in their own universe by the lake. There's nothing to hear around them but the breeze in the grass and leaves and the soft ripple of water against reeds. She shakes her head. "You don't know that he feels that way. I don't want to break his heart, but I'm not willing to break mine on a guess."

Softly: "Or yours."

Hope blazes inside him like wildfire, deep and unexpected and stronger than he's felt in longer than he can remember. He closes his eyes against it, trying to keep her from seeing it in his face. Hope's a lie. He won't lie to her.

She deserves the truth. All of it.

His next breath is ragged as he raises their joined hands between them. He keeps his eyes closed as he kisses the inside of her wrist, his lips warm against the delicate skin over her pulse and lingering for a moment before he lets go of her entirely and takes a small step back.

"I'm a broken man, Sharon." He opens his eyes again and looks back at her, hope smashed flat and buried like it was never there in the first place.

"I'm a worse bet now than I was that night in Leipzig. Before I tried to kill you."

Her heart shudders to a stop in her chest at the way his eyes flash and then attempts to bolt straight through her ribs when he presses his mouth to her wrist, nerves firing into life like that square inch of skin is the only part of her that's really alive.

This is nothing like the sweet butterflies of Steve's kiss in Leipzig. This could burn everything down, and she'd be the one pouring gasoline on the flames as it did.

Her hand doesn't fall right away when he lets her go and steps back; it floats between them for a moment, then clenches into a stubborn fist. "If I wanted to play it safe, I would never have come to Franche-Comté or gone to Polygyros in the first place."

Be careful, Shuri had told her, but Shuri hadn't seen that burning hope in his eyes a second ago; Shuri isn't seeing how shuttered those same eyes are now. She tips her chin up, obstinate.

"I don't care if you're broken. Broken things can be fixed. And even if they never look the same – even if you don't look the same, even if you've got all those edges that don't quite line up right – you still deserve good things. You still deserve to be cared about. The only thing you don't have the right to do is tell me how to feel."

Edited 2021-03-02 14:23 (UTC)

Bucky shakes his head at her.

"I know better than that, Sharon. I'm not telling you how to feel, or how not to feel. I know you won't back down from a fight."

He's standing very still, trying to keep his tone even, but he can't prevent the thin threads of desperation and despair that snake beneath his words. He doesn't even notice them.

"But this isn't what about I deserve. I almost killed you. I almost killed Natasha. Steve. I did kill a lot of others. Both in Berlin and before. That I was - I am - the Winter Soldier - it doesn't matter, not to me. I may not have been in control of myself, but it doesn't change what I did."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject