[ WWII AU ] a ghost story

[from_the_outside]

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."

Comments

[nerves_of_ice]

Not a threat; not to Steve, anyway, and that's what matters. Moving with deliberate care, Bucky lifts his left hand away from Steve and holds it up in the air, trying to signal he's not going to attack.

He can't lift his right the same way, and Steve's still clinging to it. He squeezes his friend's fingers, then spreads his own, pulling himself free. "It's okay," he murmurs, for Steve's ears alone. "Your friends are here. It's gonna be okay now."

Bucky settles back on his heels and rises to his feet. He takes a step back, away from Steve, then another as he lowers his left hand slowly back to his side.

[marvel_npc]

Sam keeps a close eye on him as he edges closer to Steve – who is reaching out, he sees. To the damn Winter Soldier, while he bleeds out into the mud.

"Steve, stop moving," Sam tells him, firming up his voice. He stares down the Winter Soldier, then touches at his ear, speaking to someone on the other end. "Yeah. We gotta get him out of here."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Do what he says, Steve," he rasps, low and harsh, his eyes on the Black man who's watching him back. Bucky's careful to hold himself immobile, trying to minimize any appearance of threat.

Not that it's likely to work, but he doesn't know what else to do.

"Can you help him?"

[marvel_npc]

"Oh, you wanna help him, now?" Sam says, sarcastic. "You tellin' me you weren't the one putting those bullet holes in him? Again?"

He comes close enough to drop to one knee by Steve, feeling his pulse and checking the pallor of his skin. "He's lost a lot of blood," he says, this time to the person on the other end of his earpiece. "Yeah. I know. Send her down."

Standing once more, he takes aim at the Soldier, covering him. "We can help him. Don't get in the way."

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky stays silent. There's no defense to be made, and he doesn't even try. He takes the man's anger as the well-deserved blow it is and absorbs it.

Instead, he takes a third step backwards, then a fourth, giving them all the room they need. He stops there, careful to remain in view so that Steve won't be worried.

Don't go. Not again. Guilt sears through every inch of him.

[from_the_outside]

In response to Sam's call, a bundle lowers out of the chopper, quick and careful, and lands on the ground. The next moment, another figure – this one in rumpled slacks and a bloodied, wrinkled striped shirt – edges out of the helicopter's body and jumps down on a line that pays out as she goes.

She's in worse shape than Sam, thanks to... everything... that happened before, and her tussle with Rumlow. Climbing down the line wasn't going to be an option, but Nat has the tremors from her Widown's Bite and Fury's holding the chopper steady, so they'd rigged this up, instead: a line that lets her descend in a controlled fall, the wind blowing her hair into a golden cloud around her head.

Sharon reaches the ground and straightens, then takes in the scene before her. Sam, with his pistol lifted. Pointed at – her heart lurches, painful – Bucky. And between them –

"Steve." She grabs the bundle and moves swiftly forward and falls to her knees next to Steve, checking him over with light fingers before she cradles his head and speaks to him, low, trying to see if he'll respond to her. "Steve," she murmurs. "It's me. We're going to get you to a hospital, okay?"

[marvel_npc]

"Gonna be fine," Steve mutters, slurring his words somewhat, but he can't seem to make his mouth work right. "Don' worry."

He blinks hard, trying to clear his vision. He can't quite focus on her face, but she has to know. "'S he still here?"

[from_the_outside]

She grinds the heel of her hand into her eyes to stave off the tears that catch there and try to fall. "He's still here," she assures Steve, running her hand gently over his hair. A quick glance at Sam has him opening the bundle and taking out some of the field bandages from within.

It's not until Sam's busy staunching the bleeding wounds that she can give Steve a small, slightly shaky smile. "He's still here."

She can see his boots at the top of her gaze. So she knows it isn't a lie.

Her heart thuds in her chest, leaving her light-headed as she slowly tracks her glance up, until she's looking at him once more. This beloved face, that had been watching her with no recognition whatsoever. "Bucky's here," she promises Steve again, though her eyes are on the Winter Soldier.

And her last word is addressed to him. "Right?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods once, very slowly, his gaze never leaving the two of them. "Right," he manages, and feels each word as sharp as glass in his throat, slicing him to the bone.

"Sharon's right, Steve. I'm here."

[from_the_outside]

Steve catches clumsily at her hand, and she lets him hold onto her, his grip uncharacteristically weak. "Don't let him go," he mutters, and she smiles at him again, small and sad, but real.

"I'm on it, Cap," she promises. "Just rest. Let me take over with this, okay?"

Don't let him go. She doesn't have the first intention of letting Bucky disappear, not now that he's calling them by name, not now that he's looking at them with recognition. She's spent too many nights dreaming of seeing his face even one more time.

Sharon lets her hand stay in Steve's as Sam works on him, then braces herself before she looks up again. She needs to: the wave of grief and longing and agony and wariness that slams over her would wash her away, otherwise. She swallows, sets her shoulders and lifts her chin.

SHIELD might no longer exist. But she's still Agent Thirteen, and she can take it. She can take anything she has to. "You know me?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He swallows, and nods his head. "I do now," he says, low but clear.

She'd descended from that copter like the angel he used to tease her about being, her hair blown around her as bright as any halo.

He doesn't make any attempt to move toward her. "Sharon. I know you."

[from_the_outside]

He says her name, and a million memories flood through her mind: the field in France, his room in London. Her name on his lips; whispered, laughed, sighed, moaned.

She allows herself a deep breath. "Good."

The smile that curves her lips now can hardly be called a smile at all; it's more a shadow that tucks against one corner of her mouth. "Welcome back, Sergeant."

[nerves_of_ice]

He can't hold her gaze, not in the face of her kindness and the subtle shift to her expression. He lets his own drop, looking at where Steve's lying so still beside her while the other man works over him.

He's brought such pain to these two he'd loved so much. It would have been better if he'd died in the fall; for them, for the world, for everyone.

"You have to get him to the hospital," he whispers. "Somewhere safe. Please."

[from_the_outside]

"We will." At her nod, Sam begins unfurling the sling, and she shifts to help him move Steve onto it.

Her glance keeps returning to Bucky – Bucky, Bucky – and she frowns at the way he's holding his right arm. "You need medical attention, too."

[nerves_of_ice]

"It's not - I'll be fine." It should be worse. Would have been worse, if Steve hadn't been trying not to hurt him more than he had to, where he'd been trying to kill the man who was his best friend.

"You need to hurry."

[from_the_outside]

"We're going as fast as we can," Sam tells him, sharp. Sharon helps him clip the sling around Steve, then looks up at Bucky again. "Come with us."

Sam slants a look at her, but she ignores him. "Bucky – "

She has no idea even what she wants to ask, what he can even give, but she knows she can't let him go. Not for Steve, not for herself. She shakes her head at herself. "Will you come?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He doesn't miss the look the Black man gives her, and he can't blame him even the slightest bit. He shakes his head.

"I'll meet you there." He's careful to say nothing about when.

[from_the_outside]

She can't bear to think of him vanishing once more, but he's right: they have to get Steve to the hospital, and it'll take both her and Sam to get him back up to the copter. "Promise me," she says, low and desperate.

"You've made me promises before. Steve, too. Promise me again."

[nerves_of_ice]

All the breath sighs out of him in a rush as though he's taken a hard punch to the gut.

He doesn't want to do it, but every second they delay makes Steve worse. "I promise," he says, low but clear, then repeats it to be sure. "I promise. Both of you."

[from_the_outside]

It'll have to do. She nods at him, which sends dizziness swirling through her head once more – she hasn't eaten in far too long – and finished clipping Steve into the sling.

Getting up, she unclips the line from her harness and runs it beneath the sling, then clips it to itself and clips her harness to the sling as well. "Bring us up," she tells Fury and Nat, as Sam gets on the sling.

As they rise back up through the air, her gaze never leaves Bucky, standing there below.

[nerves_of_ice]

He watches as they disappear into the helicopter, and doesn't move until it flies off in the direction of the city and the nearest hospital - a good one, he hopes. Only then does Bucky pick up Sharon's forgotten phone and head into the underbrush, making his way across the north end of the island. Long before they'd built the Triskelion at the south end, Roosevelt Island had been a national park and preserve; due to a combination of political influence exerted by environmentalist groups and a good deal of public pressure, half of it is still. Right now, that suits his needs perfectly.

He avoids the established trails and circles around the memorial in the center of the island, moving through the trees like a ghost. It won't be long before more rescue crews start to arrive, and he's got to be gone before then. He stealthily makes his way into some bushes at the edge of the water on the west side, studying the pedestrian footbridge before he approaches it. For the most part, it's empty of people, save for a few foolish souls who are congregating on the far end, pointing at the smoke rising from the wreckage and trying to film it with their camera phones. Good enough.

It's a little hard to use his right arm still, but he hadn't lied to Sharon. He's healing already, he can tell. He unsnaps one of the ammo pouches at his belt and pulls out a tightly-wrapped fabric ring, which he slides over his left wrist and unrolls into a thin black nylon sleeve that he uses to cover his left arm. Once that's done, he steps out onto the trail and hurries out onto the bridge, darting glances over his shoulder every so often, just as though he's another one of SHIELD's escaping personnel. Nobody pays much attention to him; they're all looking at what's left of the south end of the island. Nobody notices when he moves past the bicycle racks at the end of the bridge and into the parking lot, stopping at the nearest motorcycle. It's the work of a moment to trigger the ignition; mere seconds after that, he roars off, accelerating up the George Washington Memorial Parkway and away from the ambulances and police cars that are screaming down the highway toward the devastation that he's left behind him.

He abandons the bike inside the mouth of a sewer tunnel and disappears into its darkness. It's not far to one of the emergency caches, where he can get what he needs.