nerves_of_ice | [oom] I'll see you in the morning time

There's a long moment where she doesn't say anything, just breathes deep to feel his hand on her back.

If she's going to voluntarily remember all this, she's going to need it.

"It took me three years to get to where I was," she says, after a few more long, quiet breaths. "I told you some of it – a lot of it – but it was... not a pleasant time."

The things she did. The things she had to do. "Having anything that would tie me back to... before... was too much of a vulnerability. And in the meantime I was doing worse and worse things and I didn't have anything that could remind me of who I was before because I couldn't. I couldn't afford it. I couldn't be Sharon Carter if I wanted to live."

Slowly, he begins to run his hand back and forth as he listens. Between her shoulders, then along her spine, deliberate and soothing and anchoring her in the here and now. He hopes.

Maybe Sam has Fury’s number. If not, he can go looking.

“Uh-huh,” he says, trying to encourage her. Trying to make sure she knows he’s listening to every word.

She closes her eyes with a silent sigh, focusing for a moment on his hand smoothing over her back.

It helps. "So three years in, more or less, I set up the gallery, the penthouse. I couldn't have any photos or anything that was obviously from Wakanda. And you were gone."

That comes out a little strangely, a little too desperate. She swallows hard and focuses. "But I kept thinking about that art. It wouldn't be obvious, it would match everything else, and I was an art dealer so it would kind of be expected for me to have some pieces around. And I thought it would be nice – useful. Like a kind of code that was just from me to me. That maybe no matter how cracked and broken I got there was still some way to put the pieces back together. So I got it and I put it in my room where no one else would ever see it, and I looked at it every morning and every night and thought about you and found some way to get through another day."

His breath catches in his throat, going ragged, and he’s desperately grateful she’s not looking at his face.

—no matter how cracked and broken I got—

He understands, all too well. He remembers first looking through the window of the gallery in Leipzig, struck to the bone by what he was seeing and how it resonated along every nerve with the hope of an impossible dream made something more.

He presses his hand a little harder against her back as he makes a low sound to let her know he’s still listening, and stays otherwise quiet.

"It wasn't – I don't know how to explain it," she says. "It wasn't comforting. Most of the time it made me feel worse. But it was just enough to remind me what I was trying to do and maybe it was the only thing that kept me from just giving in and turning into the person I was pretending to be. So now –"

Now, what? She shakes her head at herself, trying to separate the part that's telling this story from the part that's having an intensely uncomfortable emotional relapse.

"So now when I look at it, it's like I'm back there. Then. Hanging on by a fingertip and thinking about how much easier it would be to just let go. And I know I'm not," she says, a little fiercely. "I know you came. I know I'm here. I know that's all real. And I couldn't ever give that piece up, it means too much to me. But I just – when I look at it now –"

She falls silent, shaking her head again. "I don't know how to explain it."

He carefully sweeps her hair away from the back of her neck, and leans over to plant a kiss on her nape.

“I get it, I think,” he murmurs. “We’ll find a way to display it where you can always see where you are, not just where you were.”

She breathes out a sigh and nods. Then, because that was intensely stressful and she feels as sore and tired from it as if she'd been pummeled and kicked, she shifts on the mattress to put her head in his lap and closes her eyes again.

He draws his fingers through her hair and over her shoulder, then repeats the slow caress over and over again.

“You’re so strong,” he murmurs. “One of the strongest people I know.”

"It doesn't feel that way."

The last thing she feels right now is strong. Exhausted, yes. Fragile, definitely.

But his hand in his hair and on her shoulder feels good and she just focuses on that instead of anything else.

“I know, baby.”

He keeps petting her, slow and steady.

"That feels nice," she murmurs.

After another few minutes, she adds, "Sorry for..."

She waves a hand in a vague gesture that means something like sorry for the emotional rollercoaster/bringing down the mood/the nasty surprise. She'd finally gotten some sleep, but she feels tired all over again.

“Hey. No.” He cups his hand under her chin and turns her head up so she can look at him.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing.”

It's a very kind lie. She has a lot of things to be sorry for, but he probably means the emotional whiplash they both just went through, and even though she's not sure she believes it for herself, she remembers saying similar things to him and believing them.

So he believes it, which means she can believe it. "Okay."

She's watching him with her eyes solemn and dark, even as she tugs at one corner of her mouth. "That's good, because this probably won't be the last time it happens."

He bends forward, leaning down to her, and kisses her. Against her lips, he murmurs, “Then we’ll deal with it, when it does.”

He says we and she just melts.

(It's been just her for so long.)

She kisses him carefully back, then shifts again to press her face into his stomach and wrap her arms around his middle.

"Okay," she says again, muffled.

He goes back to drawing his hand through her hair and along her back in long strokes, giving her all the time she needs.

She holds onto him for longer than she'd initially expected needing, but maybe that's not really a surprise. Finally, once the muscles in her back and shoulders have relaxed a little, she pulls back again and puts her head on his knee so she can look up at his face.

"I'm really glad you came back for me."

“I was never going to leave you there,” he says, quietly. “Not once I knew.”

"I know."

It's wry as she studies him. "It's why Fury told you I was dead to begin with."

He knew, too. And he wouldn't chance his mission going under because of a few inconvenient emotions.

His expression hardens into stone, but the cold anger isn’t directed at her.

”That was a mistake.”

She reaches for his hand, twining their fingers together and pressing the back of his to her chest, right over her heart. "Yeah."

There have been a lot of mistakes over the last six years, many of them hers, but that one...

Yeah. It was the wrong call.

He squeezes her fingers and doesn’t let go, keeping his hand right where she’s placed it.

“We’re here,” he says, after a moment. “That’s what matters now.”

"Yeah," she says again, and smiles a little. "Because of you."

His hand in hers is grounding; his knee under her head is solid and reassuring. "You did so good."

He looks down at her and smiles. “I’m just glad it didn’t have to come to any of my backup plans.”

That surprises a laugh out of her.

"Why?" she asks, amused. "What were some of your backup plans?"

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