Leipzig AU: the choices we make

[nerves_of_ice]

It's a month after Thessaloniki when he slips the unmarked, unstamped postcard in the mail at Sharon Carter's apartment.

(It had taken him the entire month to decide to reach out. He'd spent most of the time burying himself in his self-imposed work and not allowing himself to think about anything other than the mission. Eventually, he'd realized that it wasn't working, and that there was only one way to find out what he now needs to know, even if he can't admit even to himself exactly why he does.)

Of course there's always the chance she'll think it's just an advertisement and ignore it. If she does, he'll try again with something a little more obvious before deciding she's not interested in reconnecting. Still, he thinks she's clever enough to catch it, and to decode the message, which isn't that subtle when it comes down to it: time, place, location.

It takes far less than a minute to pick the lock on the mailbox security panel - two seconds, maybe three, and he's able to pull it open, drop the card on top of her mail, and secure it once more.

Bucky makes his way from her apartment back down the Berlin street quickly and quietly, cap pulled down to hide his face, and disappears into the crowd.

Comments

[from_the_outside]

"Okay," she says again, and sets her coffee down, keeping the mug between her palms as she looks at him.

"How is it different from what I think?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Because it's not just that I'm the Winter Soldier," he says, quietly. "Not just that I'm an internationally wanted terrorist and assassin."

His tone's very, very carefully level.

"It has to do with the fact that I can't trust my own mind. HYDRA programmed me, Sharon. Like a machine. And in D.C., they gave me a kill order. For Steve."

[from_the_outside]

Shit.

She ignores the voice that's loudest in her head, the one that sounds like Nick Fury, but it's impossible to turn off the years of experience that brought her where she is, the career that's been part of every waking moment of her life for longer than she's even been in it.

"Bucky," she says, after a long, silent struggle with herself. "I want to ask more. I want to know. And I want to help. But I don't want you to tell me anything that you don't absolutely trust me to know."

Not when her job should be to hunt him down and bring him in. She's already walking a fine line, but his is even finer, and if he has some vulnerability that the Task Force could or should exploit, she is damn sure she doesn't want to be the one who knows about it.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Okay." Softly said, and simply, too. He meets her eyes without evasion.

"I remember what you told me before. It's okay. Ask."

[from_the_outside]

Every minute you spend with me is more ammunition they get if they ever order me to hunt you down. That's what she said before. I wouldn’t have a choice.

But it's not exactly true.

There's always a choice. She tucks that thought away and nods. "Okay," she murmurs. "But stop me if it feels like too much of an interrogation."

She takes a breath and lifts her coffee for a swallow, her mind racing. "You said they programmed you. How?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Straight for the heart of it all. He has to admire it, even as his breath tries to lock in his throat. Bucky wages a short war with himself. He'd known what he was offering when he said it. She needs to know, especially now. She'd never been one of his named targets herself, but she needs to understand what she's getting into if she's going to - if they're going to --

Realizing he's been silent a few seconds too long, he manages to wring a wry, rueful flicker of a smile out of himself. It's barely there for an instant, but at least it's there. "I don't know exactly how they did it. I'm not a scientist."

Pure, acid loathing eats at the word.

"But it's - there's a set of activation controls. They'd use them when bringing me out of cryo, after the chair and crown, to reset me. Make me a blank slate. 'Ready to comply.' Then they'd give me orders, and I'd carry out the mission."

[from_the_outside]

She shoves the horror down as hard and fast as it rises – she can let it consume her later, the thought of what they did to him, to his mind. I'm a weapon, he'd said, and this is what he'd meant.

But she can't let it overwhelm her now, even as she's breathless for a moment with crystallized fury. She wishes she could kill Smith all over again. "Is there anyone left who knows them?" she asks, ruthlessly keeping her voice steady.

"And if there is, do they have any way to get to you?"

No, she hopes. It had taken her months of work and a few strokes of pure luck to find him.

Hopefully it's even harder for what's left of HYDRA.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Besides me?" The flicker of wry humor's there and gone. Bucky shakes his head.

"I don't know. But as long as no one from HYDRA gets their hands on me again, it doesn't matter. And I'd rather die first."

[from_the_outside]

"They won't."

Every syllable carries cold certainty, at odds with the way she reaches to curl her fingers around his, coaxing him to look at her, to believe her. "Because we'll take every damn one of them out before they can even try. Okay?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He twines his fingers with hers. "Working on it." Just as dryly as before.

"It's okay, Sharon. Well. No, it isn't. But - I've had time to get used to it. Things are - they're better now. Even on the run, it's better. I promise."

[from_the_outside]

"I'm glad it's better," she tells him, soft and sure. "But it can still get a lot better from here, Bucky. You're right, this is big, and I get why you think it wouldn't be safe for Steve now, or maybe even anytime soon. But that doesn't mean it has to be forever."

She runs her thumb gently along his hand. "I'm going to help. As much as I can, however I can. And maybe we'll find a way."

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods, slowly. "Maybe." He's not sure there is one, but he can't bring himself to extinguish the spark of hope that she's trying to stoke into a flame - whether for him or for herself or both, he doesn't know, and it probably doesn't matter anyway.

"But you see, now? Why I can't risk it? I can't risk him. I came too damn close as it was."

He swallows, hard, and his hand tightens on hers. "I know myself now. I know him now. But if anything of that last mission's still buried in there - if it is and I slipped, even for a second--"

[from_the_outside]

"I get it."

As much as she can, anyway. She lets him hold onto her hand and holds on right back, trying to lend him a little bit of warmth and steadiness and reality. "I get it, baby."

[nerves_of_ice]

He squeezes her hand again, then lets out a quiet sigh.

"Sorry for ruining breakfast."

[from_the_outside]

"You did no such thing," she argues. "I'm the one who started dragging you through all this."

She lifts his hand and presses a kiss to his fingertips. "You haven't ruined anything."

[nerves_of_ice]

He turns his hand in hers to cradle her cheek.

"You needed to know, anyway. But ... still. I'm sorry."

[from_the_outside]

"It's not your fault," she promises, her fingers gentle over his as she leans her head into his touch. "None of it."

But she can understand how he'd hate telling her – not for him, incredibly, but for her. Because that's what he does. That goodness in him that shines through all the cracks. "But we don't have to talk about it anymore right now," she adds, soft, trying to give him an out he can easily take if he needs it.

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head. "Like I said... you needed to know. Especially now." He strokes his thumb over her cheekbone. "So ask, if there's anything else you're wondering about. I'd rather you know."

Bucky draws a careful breath and says, gently,

"And if any of this - if it changes anything, I'll understand. I promise you that."

[from_the_outside]

Sharon sighs, very softly, and turns her head to press a gentle, lingering kiss into his palm, her eyes fluttering shut. "Bucky," she murmurs, and looks back at him.

"It doesn't change a damn thing. None of it. I'm still coming to Tirana. I don't regret a second of last night. And I want to see you again. And keep seeing you, if you'll let me."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I'll let you," he answers, just as quiet. Slowly, he draws his hand away, trailing his fingers through her hair as he does. "Count on it."

[from_the_outside]

"Good," she murmurs. "I will."

She tips her head, enjoying the sensation of his fingers in her hair, and reaches for her coffee again. Sharon sips at it, trying to figure out the best way to phrase her next question. "Are there restrictions in the programming?" she asks, finally.

"That keep you from volunteering information? Is that why it's easier if I ask?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Quite suddenly, he loses all appetite. He takes another bite of his food anyway. They don’t get to do this to him. Not any more.

He washes it down with a swallow of coffee and sets the mug aside as he shakes his head. “Not…exactly. That’s something a little different.”

He stares at the table between them, searching for the words to explain. Low and unsteady, he says,

“It took them a while to - to figure out the method they settled on. The memory wipe and controls. At first, before that, I was - I thought I was - more of an agent. But I… I did something that… showed too much independence.”

He can still hear Natasha screaming, himself cursing, feel the glass of the cryo chamber under his hand. Bucky flattens his fingers against the tabletop.

“I was a weapon. Weapons are tools. Tools don’t have - they’re just there to be used. So they… they stripped me of the ability to ask. To want. To choose. Anything.”

[from_the_outside]

She doesn't have super-strength but she almost bends the fork in her hand from the sudden strength of her grip anyway. I argued with myself for weeks, she remembers him saying, and that small phrase suddenly opens up in her head.

"You've been prodding at it," she murmurs, focusing ruthlessly on the matter at hand, desperate to be done with this as soon as possible, to stop causing him pain. "The restrictions. What they did. Is that what you meant when you said you were learning to be a person again?"

[nerves_of_ice]

“Part of it.” He glances up at her again, unaware of just how weary and haunted the look in his eyes is. “I’ve been— practicing, I guess. Making choices. Little things. Like picking between kinds of fruit at the market. Trying new things to see if I have an opinion about how it tastes. Stuff like that.”

[from_the_outside]

"Good for you," she murmurs.

Everything he's done, everything he's trying to do, he's done alone. Everything until she shoved her way in and for some reason he decided to let her tag along, to trust her.

With a jolt she remembers telling him you deserve to want things and feels like whacking her head on the tabletop.

Way to rub it in, Carter.

Her appetite is gone; she puts down her fork, trying to absorb everything he's saying and shove down on her immediate furious response at the same time. "I don't know what else to ask," she says, finally. "I don't want to keep hurting you."