[oom] all those times we looked up at the sky

[from_the_outside]

Karli's on the move; she'll strike soon. Bucky and Sam have been in long, tense conversations with each other and with Torres, and she herself has been keeping an obsessive eye on the tracker blip that is Batroc.

It's a lot. The air in the apartment is tense. But she still has to laugh at the sight that greets her when she walks into the living room: Bucky crouched down, his phone out as he takes a photo of Alpine, who is lounging in lazy grandeur, soaking up a puddle of sunshine.

"That'll be a good one," she approves. "Baby, I've been wondering – what happened to your nice camera? You didn't leave it in Wakanda, did you?"

Comments

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky shakes his head. "I think - I think it broke something in him," he says, quietly. "The Snap. What came after. He was grieving so much, Sharon. He held on for so long, but must have thought a million times about what he'd have done with another chance. What it could mean."

When he draws another breath, his own is shaking. "I couldn't ask him to stay. How could I?"

[from_the_outside]

"You shouldn't have had to," she says, furious. She's so angry with Steve Rogers right now she can hardly see straight -- grieving? Who hadn't been grieving? No one else had the chance to literally turn back time.

"Everyone has regrets. Everyone's got 'what if's'... you just told me, yourself, not to let them get to me. But he -- "

The words pile up in her chest and throat, enough almost to choke on them. "How could he be so selfish?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head again. "He wasn't - it's not like that," he protests. "Steve wouldn't - he didn't --"

[from_the_outside]

She never would have believed it of him. Never in a million years. "He did," she insists. "And I knew Aunt Peggy's husband, so it's not even that it was this timeline."

So Steve Rogers had abandoned his friends and run from the rebuilding they all had to do, had made himself a comfortable bubble with a dream of a woman who had lived a whole life without him.

Sharon's jaw sets. Would he have saved Bucky in that new universe? Would he stop HYDRA? Or had he just pretended to himself that an uncomplicated retirement was all he needed?

[nerves_of_ice]

"It's not like that, it's not!" he insists. Bucky shoves himself to his feet and starts pacing back and forth at the end of the bed, unable to stay still.

The look on Sam's face when he'd told him to go to where Steve was sitting on the park bench, so much older, with the shield in its case by his feet --

"He needed to. He had to."

[from_the_outside]

Sharon lets him go, watching from the bed as he paces. "He did not have to," she says, incredulous. "You can't convince me he had to. He wanted to, so he did. God, Bucky -- "

She gets up and moves into his path, keeping him from trying to run away from whatever it is he's not letting himself think or believe or say. "You don't have to defend him! He's a person, he makes mistakes. And this was a mistake. A selfish mistake. He left you behind, after he always promised he wouldn't."

She searches his face, looking for anything at all that would mean he's hearing her. "Aren't you angry at him?"

[nerves_of_ice]

She moves into his path, blocking his way, and without thinking about it he backs up until he runs into the wall and has to stop there.

The look on his face is agonized.

"He didn't abandon - he didn't, he wouldn't, not Steve -- he wouldn't--"

He's always believed it, it's been a cornerstone of his life since the war, and he can't let himself examine what she's saying too closely, he can't. Bucky veers sharply off on a tangent.

"I couldn't ask him to stay, not just for me, I couldn't, Sharon, I couldn't, it wouldn't have been fair--"

[from_the_outside]

"Yes, you could have."

She hates the pain in his expression, the loss in his eyes, the way, even now, he's trying to defend Steve Rogers. He gave Steve everything, and Sharon had always believed their devotion was mutual, but she can't parse how that's possible with a Steve Rogers who would go back in time, erase everything that's happened. Who would leave him, and Sam, and all of the other Avengers mourning their losses.

(No one's heard from Wanda in months. He abandoned her, too.)

Sharon moves slowly, coming towards him, not wanting him to feel trapped but unwilling to let him be alone. "He didn't just leave you. He left everyone. This whole life. The Avengers. Pepper and her daughter. Clint. Bruce. Wanda. But even if it was just you, Bucky..."

She draws to a halt before him, far enough to give him a little space but close enough to let him know she won't let him run from this. "That's enough. More than enough. You could have asked. Like I keep asking you."

Slowly, she holds out her hands. "I love you. I want you in my life forever. Stay with me. Please."

[nerves_of_ice]

He takes her hands, drawn to her like a compass needle to the north, even as her words crack the defenses he's been shoring up so desperately and rip them apart.

The sound he makes is broken and raw, an inarticulate wail of pain and anger and previously unexpressed betrayal and grief. Bucky goes to his knees, unable to keep his feet any longer, and pulls his left hand free in order to bury his face in it as he sobs.

[from_the_outside]

She follows him down in a heartbeat, her arms going around his neck, her hand pressing into his hair as she coaxes him to set his forehead against her shoulder. "Bucky," she murmurs, and just holds him, feeling his body jerk against hers. Each sob feels like it's going to rip him in two.

It's impossible to understand. It's so unlike Steve as to be utterly unbelievable. But here's Bucky, telling her it's true, trying so hard to defend the man who'd meant so much to him for so long.

[nerves_of_ice]

She holds on to him and he lets her, his head against her shoulder and his body curled around her side as he grieves.

He'd told himself it wouldn't be all that different. Steve would just work his way up through time again, with the life he should have had the chance to live, and it's not like Bucky'd lose him, he'd just be older.

But then he'd -- and now he's --

He can't stop sobbing, even as his breaths turn to wild, ragged gasps for air, as shudder after shudder wracks him.

[from_the_outside]

His tears soak her shirt at the shoulder, hot and furious, as she holds him, as he shakes against her in wild grief.

Sweet Bucky Barnes, who held Steve in the highest possible esteem for so many decades, who believed in Steve when he believed in nothing else, who wrestled with his own self-loathing and hatred, who never thinks he deserves anything good, certainly didn't deserve this. A camera full of memories that probably feel like lies, because how could they exist in the same world as a Steve who would leave him behind? "Baby," she murmurs, tears of anger and sympathy spiking her own eyes.

"It's not fair. You didn't deserve this. He shouldn't have done it."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I miss him," he whispers, unable to force anything more past his cracked throat. "I miss him so much."

[from_the_outside]

"I know, baby."

She strokes her hand over his hair again and again, wishing fervently for Steve Rogers to appear out of nowhere so she could shout everything in her mind and heart at him, to ask him why, how he could hurt Bucky so terribly. "He was your best friend."

[nerves_of_ice]

"It's why I was so mad at Sam when he gave up the shield," he admits, muffled, without looking up.

"It was all I had left, and he just ... like it was nothing. Like it meant nothing."

[from_the_outside]

"I get it."

Her voice is low, quiet. She runs her hand over his hair, down over his shoulder and back, and back up again, soothing him as he's soothed her so many times. "I think Sam would, too, now."

Steve had been his friend, too, after all. Maybe his best friend.

[nerves_of_ice]

"He does." When he looks up at her, his eyes are red from weeping, but the certainty he feels about that comes through in his voice.

[from_the_outside]

"Good."

She leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to one sore, swollen eye, then leans her forehead against his. "It's okay," she murmurs. "Whatever you're feeling about it. Toward him. It's okay. It doesn't mean you love him any less. Or that you don't miss him."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I do, you know." Soft, so very soft, but clear. "Love him. Always will. Just like I'll always miss him."

He shakes his head, the smallest motion so as not to dislodge her. "I thought it'd be okay. I understood why he felt he had to go. I couldn't - I couldn't make myself tell him no. I thought, he'd come back in time, eventually, and then we'd... we could... but then he..."

His throat closes up there and he stops talking, trying just to make himself breathe.

[from_the_outside]

"Of course you do."

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, gravity pulls things toward the center of the Earth and Bucky loves Steve. But that life Steve had stolen for himself, the one he wasn't meant to have lived, stole him from this one not once, but twice. Because where is he now?

She breathes out, trying to keep it even, trying to keep her own anger at a remove. It's difficult to do when she can hear his heart breaking. "You shouldn't have had to lose him again."

[nerves_of_ice]

"He shouldn't have had to lose me either. Twice. Three times, if you count D.C.," Bucky tells her.

"He saw it happen. When Thanos - I felt it happening. It wasn't instant. I felt myself disintegrating, and I called out to warn him, and he turned and saw--"

[from_the_outside]

As he speaks, her old nightmare lifts into her mind's eye. She'd imagined, over and over, seeing it happen to him as she'd seen it happen to so many in Madripoor, hoping to God it had been quick and painless and that he hadn't known what was happening, that maybe somehow he'd escaped the confusion and surprise she'd seen on so many faces before they blew away into dust.

It had been weeks before she knew he'd been taken that day. She can't help how she clutches him, how her own breath comes in rough, rapid gasps, how she shakes as she presses herself against him, reminding herself he's here and alive, not a million pieces scattered to the winds.

There's nothing she could have done if she'd been there. Maybe, in that world, in that timeline, she'd have been caught by the Snap, too. "I'm not saying it wasn't awful," she murmurs, distantly pleased that her voice, at least, is mostly under control. "But he still shouldn't have left."

[nerves_of_ice]

Sharon's breath goes suddenly ragged and she shivers as she clings to him, and in an instant Bucky realizes what he's done with his thoughtless words.

"Shh," he says, shifting to gather her closer. "I'm here. I'm here now. I'm sorry, baby. I'm sorry."

[from_the_outside]

She presses her head against his, one hand curving at the back of his head, the other arm locked around his neck. "It took me so long to find out," she says, finally, her voice a bare whisper. "Madripoor was chaos. Everyone out for blood, scrabbling for power. I didn't know – I didn't know, not confirmed, for weeks. And then..."

And then nothing mattered, except the mission. Who cared if she lost herself to Madripoor, to the Power Broker? What did she have left? Nothing. "I didn't want to be in a world that didn't have you in it."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I know," he whispers, holding her close, holding her tight. If he closes his eyes and lets himself, he knows he'll be able to see that sun-bright day by the lake when everything shattered.

"I know, baby."