[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]

He nods as well. "You almost never did," he murmurs.

It's part of why he'd believed she was dead, in the end. He'd held the broken and burned pieces in his hands and known she was gone, with only these few fragile scraps remaining.

[from_the_outside]

"I won't again."

She strokes her hand over his hair again, as soothing as she can make it. "We'll get it fixed and I won't take it off. I shouldn't have that day."

Maybe if she hadn't, he wouldn't have believed Fury. And then he would have come to see for himself. Maybe he would have found her.

[nerves_of_ice]

“Hey,” he says, softly, as he pulls back to look at her.

“Don’t blame yourself. You hear me?”

[from_the_outside]

"Hard not to."

So much grief and misery. Maybe it could have been avoided. Maybe there was one small decision, somewhere along the line, that would have changed their fates, that she didn't make. "If he hadn't given it to you as proof..."

She trails off and shakes her head. "I guess it's not worth thinking about. It happened. I can't change it by wishing."

[nerves_of_ice]

He reaches up to brush her hair back from her face, tucking a lock of it behind her ear, letting himself marvel at the fact that he can again, that she’s here, that she’s safe.

“Thinking about it can drive you crazy. Trust me, I know.”

[from_the_outside]

She tips her head into his touch, gentle.

"I don't want to lose any more time with you," she murmurs. "I want everything we ever talked about having one day when we got back here."

[nerves_of_ice]

"All of it," he murmurs. "Every dream we had, we'll make real."

He starts to lead her the few steps to the bed to sit down, spots the camera discarded there, and gives it a truly rueful look before he turns back to her.

"So you figured out why I hid it from myself, I guess?"

[from_the_outside]

Sharon makes a soft sound. "I don't think my necklace is all of it."

She turns away long enough to find a tissue and deposit the necklace carefully into it, then sets the soft, thin paper onto one of the bedside tables before she turns back to him and reaches to take his hand. "Was it?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"No," he admits, barely audible, letting her take hold of his hand without resistance. His glance slides to the camera and away from it again.

[from_the_outside]

It's her turn to coax him to come sit down on the mattress, keeping his hand in hers as she sits next to him.

"Should I put it away again?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"It's not the camera," he clarifies, after a moment. "It's what's on it."

[from_the_outside]

She shakes her head, not quite understanding. "You didn't want to see your old photos?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I..." His voice trails off there for several long seconds before he swallows, hard, and looks up at her.

"I hadn't offloaded all of them from Steve's last visit yet. The one just before you left."

[from_the_outside]

Her lips form a soft 'o' of understanding, and she slips her other hand over his, cradling his hand between both of hers as she remembers: laughing, cold beers, silly innocent games, hours with the three of them chatting together. And Bucky taking photos, smiling and happy.

Then he lost her. And in the months before Thanos snapped his fingers, he put the camera away and didn't download the photos. And then he was back, and Steve was gone. And Nat. And her, still. But all those moments were still frozen inside the camera, as fresh as if they'd just happened.

[nerves_of_ice]

The expression on her face makes it clear that she's realized, and Bucky nods. "I can't look at them yet," he whispers.

His hand tightens on hers, just a little. "I know I wasn't enough. I understood - I understand. But I can't... I can't look at those pictures of us yet."

[from_the_outside]

"Baby." Her heart aches with every soft word. "It's not your fault. You're enough. Of course you are."

He couldn't save her and he couldn't save Nat; it must be killing him slowly to have not been able to save Steve. "More than enough."

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head. "No, I wasn't. I know that. It's okay. It's why I told him to go. One in a million chance, right? He had to take it."

He looks up from their hands and into her eyes as he admits, barely a breath, "But I miss him."

[from_the_outside]

A cold spike of dread stabs through her, and she grows suddenly very, very still. "What do you mean, you told him to go?"

She's reaching, grasping for the things she thought she knew were true. "To the fight? To take out Thanos?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky stares at her in confusion.

"To go back. In time. When he took the Infinity Stones."

Silence falls between them for a few seconds.

"I thought you - you said you knew."

[from_the_outside]

She stares at him in surprised horror.

"He died," she says, slowly. "That was what all the news said. That he died fighting Thanos. You said there was a memorial, I thought -- he did what?"

He...

Left?

[nerves_of_ice]

"That's what they - when he disappeared, when he didn't come back, that's what they - we - decided the public should know, but you - I thought you - I didn't realize you didn't --"

He's babbling, he realizes, as he hears himself, and makes himself shut up for a second.

"After the fight. The Infinity Stones, from the gauntlet. They had to go back, I guess, to the points in time where they'd come from, or it'd screw things up somehow. They used Pym's particles, from long-ago research; Scott was the one who knew about them, and they used the first batch to go back and get them in the first place so they could use them to undo Thanos's snap..."

He draws a slow, careful breath. "But they had to go back. Which meant someone had to take them. Steve volunteered; of course he did. But it also meant - it meant he could, he could go back to, to before, when he was still on ice, when Peggy..."

He trails off there again for a moment, then whispers, "He asked me what I thought. We talked about it. And about Sam. About the shield."

[from_the_outside]

Shock washes through her, followed swiftly by a rush of rage that starts as a cold flood and soon heats to boiling, until she feels almost incandescent with it. "He left?" she says, disbelieving.

"He went back in time? To -- what would make him think, Aunt Peggy would hate that -- "

She would, Sharon's sure of it. She'd be disgusted that he could leave his friends, that he'd give up on his life, all to come back to her. But... if Steve didn't come back, then maybe Aunt Peggy didn't throw him out on his ear. "How. How could he think that was a good idea?"

[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 --"