from_the_outside | [ WWII AU ] a ghost story

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[ WWII AU ] a ghost story

It's been almost two years since she's been home, and little by little, the grief has gotten easier to live with.

It hasn't gone away. But she's able to focus on her job, watch movies, chat with friends, sleep most nights. She still dreams about him, but the dreams are tinged with wistful longing and only sometimes does she wake up with tears on her cheeks. She can't have his picture out in this apartment, Kate's apartment, but it's safe in the mountain house, along with his last letter to her, and she has a scan on her phone to look at when the long day is over and she's in bed, the stars from the lamp he'd given her filling her dark room.

Steve has helped, more than she could ever explain, and she hopes she's helped him in return. Aside from a few deeply classified missions here and there, they haven't worked together all that much, but she still sees him almost every day. In the halls, she's undercover as his mild-mannered neighbor, Kate, but in her secure apartment they can talk over anything, everything.

And it works. Every day is a little easier. They lean on each other when they need to, and they spend hours remembering and reminiscing about Bucky, talking shop, chatting about how Steve's fitting into the future. It's nice. She still misses Bucky, an ache that never really goes away, but they can both breathe through it, work through it, live through it.

She's on her way up from the basement laundry machines when she hears a familiar step in the hall, and has to smile to herself – first her own, then Kate's sweeter, more open one. "Hey, neighbor."

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"I can't know that for sure." Her voice shakes, but she keeps it as clear as she can, even as she grips Nat's hand hard.

Her smile crooks, wry. "And, anyway, I couldn't keep it up. When I heard them talking about the mission to capture Zola, I knew which one they meant. I knew it was – "

Her throat closes up, and she swallows again, hard. "So I told him. Bucky. I told him what happened. And he went anyway. Because otherwise Steve wouldn't have had someone at his back."

"Then you do know," Nat points out. "Because you tried. And... and he went. And... well."

She's doing the math in her head. "So... six months? About? I would have noticed if you'd been gone on mission that long."

"Half a year there," she murmurs. "About a week here. I got dumped at the last place the cube was used: in New York."

She leans her shoulder against the back of the couch, rueful. "Tony Stark was on me about five seconds later. He had some kind of alarm rigged up to let him know about portal activity, I guess. He brought me to the Avengers tower. Steve was there."

"I've just learned time travel is real and I already hate it," she grouses. "Or maybe I can add that to the cube's account as well. Okay."

She tips her head to the side, studying Sharon's face. "So Steve was there. And realized you'd come back?"

"I was still wearing the uniform," she murmurs. "There wasn't a lot of warning before it snatched me. He knew right away, as soon as he saw me."

She nods, slow. "And so the two of you had common ground. A lot of it." She can't help herself, and glances over at the computer again.

"A lot of it," she agrees, quiet. Those first few days with Steve, the later ones at the mountain house, they're all burned into her memory. She breathes out, long and shaky, through her nose. "We needed each other after that. 'You watch my back and I'll watch yours.' That's what we said."

She smiles a little on hearing this. "Well, you're both good at that."

Her glance rests on the picture for a moment longer before she looks back at Sharon. She's pretty sure she doesn't need to ask, but she also thinks it might help her friend if she does. "It was serious between the two of you, wasn't it."

It's not really a question.

She nods, and her own gaze flickers to the photo once more. "I was writing to his sisters, by the end," she murmurs. "He asked me to come back with him to Brooklyn."

(""So you see, I have to come back.")

The old familiar ache spikes her chest, and she turns her glance back on Nat, her eyes dark and sad even as she finds a small smile. "I'm really glad he knew you, later. And he wasn't totally alone."

"You might not want to thank me for that," she murmurs, as an old complex knot of guilt and grief and love and fear and pain twists her up inside.

"I'm not sure it did him any good, in the end."

"I'm not sure knowing me did, either."

Did she only make things worse? Did she, in some horrible way, cause his fall to begin with? Sharon shakes the thoughts away and squeezes Nat's hand. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"I don't believe that," she says, firmly. She looks at the photo again as she says. "You two look happy. And... and in your case, I doubt he was punished for it."

She doesn't know if she wants to talk about this or not, but Sharon deserves to know, especially now, with everything.

"I mentioned he was one of my trainers, right? In the program."

"You did." And based on Nat's reactions, the way she'd paled when they talked about him, she suspects it ended up being more than that.

Her smile is rueful. "He always was a good teacher."

"He was," she agrees. "But at the time I was so furious at - well, at a lot of things. And nothing ever seemed to bother him, or even affect him, and it made me mad. So I set out to get a reaction from him. Not by trying to hurt him or anything like that; I could tell pretty fast that wouldn't do anyone any good, including me. More like being... unexpected. Better than expected. Surprising." She draws a soft breath and looks up at her friend.

"And somewhere along the way, it turned into wanting to see him smile. And then one day... he did."

She can imagine it clearly enough, even without knowing all the details of the Red Room. Nat has been stingy with them in the past, for good reason.

Sharon squeezes her friend's hand and smiles back at her. "I get it. He's got a good smile."

"Yes. He does. Did. I don't think he smiles any more, Sharon," she says, as gently as possible. "I don't know if he can."

"Anyway, that was the beginning of it, for us. I still don't know exactly how long we had together, given everything." Stolen moments and secrets that added up to something far more, something impossibly precious and just as impossible to keep.

"But in the end we were compromised." She keeps her voice steady by an effort of will, even as she feels her body tighten and her fingers grow cold. "It was bad."

"Maybe not right now," she says, grimly determined. "But I defy even him not to smile at Steve Rogers, one day."

Now that he has his memories back. Or some of them, anyway. She has no idea how much or how little he remembers, but it's a start. It has to be.

But for the moment, her focus is on the woman in front of her. As Nat tenses, Sharon leans in to give her a warm hug before she pulls back again. "How bad?"

She's distantly surprised that Sharon hasn't pulled away from her on hearing that they'd loved the same man, in their own ways, at different times. She can't keep herself from hugging her friend back, grateful that she's in her life.

"Bad," she says again. "There's a reason I knew what my Bites... what electricity would do to his arm. When they found us together that last time, it was clear they'd already known. They came prepared."

A faint shiver runs over her skin. "They dragged me out of the room in front of him while they piled people on him. Bodies to hold him down. Hit him over and over again with taser rods, with anything they could to stop him, so that he couldn't - couldn't fight - he tried, but--"

She grips Sharon's hand, tight. "Even after they shut the door, I could hear him screaming. It... it was the last time they let him out of cryostasis between missions, I heard."

Each word feels like a punch to her gut, but she grips Nat's hand and holds on tight. "It's not your fault," she manages, finally.

Every horrible thing that happened to him, it happened because there were evil men using him for their own ends. She grasps Nat's hand and gives her friend a determined look. "They did that to him. Not you. I'm... I'm glad you had each other."

"I know." Most days, she even does. Most days. "But now..." She shakes her head. "Just... don't get your hopes up too high, Sharon. You know?"

"Who, me?" Sharon digs deep and finds a smile from somewhere, one that says I have a hand full of aces when she's actually holding nothing at all. "I always keep my hopes manageable."

Nat gives her a skeptical look. "You remember who you're talking to, right?"

"Yeah." Her smile's sweet, even though it hurts her mouth. "One of the best friends I've got."

She takes a breath and gives Nat's hand a little shake. "And he's going to need us both to help him now."

She squeezes Sharon's fingers and lets herself take a slow sip of coffee before she answers.

"I'm not saying no," she murmurs, finally. "I'm not. But if he doesn't want to be found, he won't be. You need to be ready for that. I looked for him until I had to stop. I had to make myself stop."

"You were on your own," Sharon says, firm. "And he was still in their grip. Things are different now, Nat."

She glances over at the photo, then at her friend, something complex and rueful shading through her eyes. "Do you mind? What I told you?"

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