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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* * * * * *

He leaves Steve's bike and Sharon's phone for them to find and drifts back into the city. Most of his equipment is cached on a few different rooftops, which is fine for now. He doesn't know what he's going to do next, but there's no sense in running blind until he figures out where he's going to run to. Wearing a baseball cap to partially obscure his face, he wanders along the edge of the Mall, moving back and forth among some of the tourist groups as though he belongs there. It's while he's drifting past one particular tour guide that he discovers that there's an exhibit on Captain America at the National Air and Space Museum.

He lets himself be drawn into the crowd as he approaches the museum. It's easy to do; there are a lot of people headed that way. He uses that fact to blend with the swirls of motion among different groups and continues to follow the crowd, past the signs with Steve's face on them, into the first of the exhibit halls. Most of what he sees brings back scattered flickers of memory, not much more, until he rounds a corner and sees his own face looking back at him.

Slowly, very slowly, he approaches the brightly-lit display and begins to read.

Several minutes later, he's drifting with the crowd once more, struggling with the chaos in his mind. He spots a side room that's advertising a documentary of some sort and ducks inside, hoping to find a moment's balance under cover of darkness, only to freeze in his tracks at the sound of Peggy Carter's voice.

Her address had been in Sharon's phone, he remembers.

It's probably not a good idea, but he can't bring himself to care. It's the work of only a few minutes to make his way back out of the museum and onto a bus that'll take him where he needs to go.

The townhouse door opens at his knock, and Anna looks out with interest and a little suspicion. After the message she'd received from Sharon and Captain Rogers – and what had happened yesterday – she thinks it's reasonable.

"Yes?"

"Hi." He digs deep and finds a smile, at least a small one. "I'm a friend of Sharon's? I guess you know she's been busy these last few days, and I told her I'd swing by and see how her aunt was doing."

"Oh!" Anna smiles at him and opens the door a little wider. "Isn't that sweet of you? Come in, come in."

She waits for him to enter, then closes the door behind him. "She's doing well, all things considered. I did as Miss Carter asked and made sure she didn't see the news. And we're far enough out that things were mostly quiet. Who shall I say is calling?"

"I'm glad to hear it, and I know Sharon will be too." He can't use any of the established cover names that has an ID that he might actually need, because he's certain if he does they'll be tracking it about two minutes after Peggy tells her niece he came to visit, and it's sure as hell he can't give his real name, so he makes a snap decision.

"Jim Wilson," he says, stealing Sam's name for his last and surprising himself with the first. He doesn't know where that comes from when he says it, and it's only after a second or two goes by that he gets a dim flicker of memory. Becky. Becky had done that, trying out different nicknames for him, teasing him with each one. It's with an effort of will that he manages to keep his thoughts from showing. "She probably won't have heard of me, though."

Not by that name, anyway.

"Very good."

She bustles over to the parlor door and opens it after tapping her knuckles on the frame. "Miss Peggy? You have a visitor, a Mister Jim Wilson?"

Anna opens the door and indicates he should go in. "She's a little clearer today," she whispers. "But you let me know if she's getting foggy. I'll just run and put the kettle on."

"Thanks," he murmurs, trying not to react to what she's just confided. A little clearer? Getting foggy?

He nods to her and ducks into the room, keeping his cap pulled low for the moment while he hovers by the door, giving her time to react.

She's seated on the couch, neatly dressed in skirt and a light jumper, looking out the window. At the sound of the door opening and her guest entering, she turns to look, frowning very slightly. Jim Wilson? It doesn't sound familiar, but then it wouldn't be the first time her mind betrayed her.

He comes in, a tall young man wearing a baseball cap – inside, what cheek – and hovering near the door. Peggy feels a bite of impatience. "Well?" she asks, crisply. "Will you come closer, or do you intend to make me squint at you the whole time you're here?"

The woman sitting on the sofa is much older than the one he remembers and who he'd just seen on the movie screen, white-haired and fragile-looking, but the snap of her voice reaches right down to his core and yanks him straight upright as if ordered to attention before he can even think about it.

Bucky makes sure the door is shut, then takes a couple of steps forward, and tips his head back so she can see his face. "Hello, Agent Carter," he says, quietly. "It's been a while."

That voice... "Oh – "

She breathes in sharply, her frown vanishing as her eyes widen, before she peers much, much more closely at him. "No, it... "

Drat it all to hell, she'd thought – hadn't Steve said – but it's just possible she isn't remembering things clearly. And yet, how could it be anything else, when he still looks so young?

For a moment, her frown returns, as her glance tracks over his shoulder, looking for someone else. "It couldn't possibly be."

He glances over his shoulder but doesn't see anyone. Bucky takes another step closer and pulls the cap off of his head. "It's me," he says again. "Sergeant Barnes. Bucky. I know it doesn't make sense. But I - I didn't die."

"I know who you are." The words are a little sharp, even as they're just slightly uncertain.

What had Steve said? And had he and Sharon really been here together? She looks again over the Sergeant's shoulder, and is again surprised not to see Steve there, or her niece.

She fixes her gaze on Sergeant Barnes, an impossible man saying impossible things, and frowns at him, then lifts a hand and crooks her finger imperiously. "Come here, Sergeant."

"Yes, ma'am." He crosses the room the rest of the way without hesitation and goes down on one knee in front of her so that she doesn't have to look up at him.

She leans forward to study him. Her hands are older now, frail, but there's warmth still in the palm she cups to his cheek. He, like Steve, looks the same age as he had been, but there are differences, too.

The hair, for one. And Bucky Barnes had always had laughter in his eyes and a smile on his lips, the charming rogue. A troubled look crosses over her face like a shadow, before she frowns again. "Then... it did change? The future?"

He holds still under her touch. "No. I'm sorry," he says, quietly. "I fell, like Sharon warned me. But I didn't die. Zola's experiments, after Azzano - they changed me."

"No one knew," he adds, after a quick, soft breath. "It wasn't anyone's fault. I don't - I don't blame anyone. That's not why I'm here."

Her frown deepens, and she lifts her free hand to her temple, trying to sort through her muddled memories. The older ones are clearer, and she can quite easily recall the day they left for that mission.

The day he was lost, and Sharon pulled away. "Well." She catches his chin gently in her grip. "Steve and Sharon must be over the moon. Where are they?"

I made sure she didn't see the news, the housekeeper had said. As Miss Carter asked. The way she frowns and concentrates is deeply, deeply familiar to him from when he's trying to find something in his own mind.

(but I knew him)

Bucky finds a smile, just a little one, and holds still as she catches his chin. "They had a couple of things they needed to take care of first," he says. "I came on ahead. I hope that's okay."

She searches his eyes, uncertain. "You're always together, you three," she murmurs, and glances up once more, looking for her darling niece, for Steve.

They aren't there, and she's starting to feel as though something's wrong. The echo of her own furious voice sounds, muted, in her memory. "Everytime I turned around, there you were, right next to her."

"That made you pretty mad, too," he says. "A couple of times, at least, from what I remember."

He's beginning to think it was a mistake to come; he doesn't want to do anything that'll harm her in any way, and it's clear now that she won't be able to answer any of the other questions he had without him shattering her world the way he'd shattered everyone else's.

"Want me to go away and wait for them to catch up?"

"Hmm." Her fingers tighten on his chin and she narrows her eyes at him. "You had better be treating my niece like the lady she is," she warns. "I'll not stand for you breaking her heart again, Sergeant."

Being presumed dead is no excuse.

She shakes her head at him and lets go of his chin. "Don't be ridiculous. It's been years. I'm not about to turn you out on the street."

He winces at that, and something bleak flickers in his eyes; he can't help it. "She deserves every good thing," he says, simply, and covers any other reaction as best he can by getting up from his knees and moving to an armchair nearby.

"So, um, how have you been, these last years?" he asks.

Her sharp gaze arrows in on him at that flicker of expression, those words. Once he gets up and moves to the chair, he's too far out of reach for her to grab his ear, more's the pity, but she isn't yet so infirm that she could allow that cowardly attempt at a conversation shift to stand. "And what is that supposed to mean?" she demands.

Yes, certainly she agrees. Her darling niece deserves only the best; but she clearly recalls Sharon putting down her foot about that including the man now in front of her. "I did give her your letter, you know."

It takes him a second before he realizes what she's talking about. The memory of a night spent writing, desperately aware of time running out, slams into him. "Thank you," he says, quietly. "I'm sorry you had to, but thank you for taking care of that for me."

He takes a deep breath and makes himself meet her eyes. "I'm not well," he says, blunt and direct. "I've been... lost... for a long, long time. I have to figure a few things out. She's not happy about that, and I don't blame her."

"I know all about not being well, Sergeant," Peggy tells him, crisply, before she relents. "And I can tell you my niece has been instrumental in helping me through this... blasted infirmity. Steve – Captain Rogers – also, of course."

She lifts her eyebrows at him. "So you could hardly be in better hands."

"I know. There's no one better than they are." Quiet, but with a certainty that goes all the way to the bone.

He does know it. Now, anyway. Bucky studies Peggy's expression carefully.

"Are they - they've been doing okay, right? Happy?"

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