[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

[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 --"

[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.