[ 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."

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[nerves_of_ice]

He doesn't know what he was expecting, if anything. His mind is a swirling mass of chaos, his memory restored but not whole, bits and pieces of a shattered reflection that cuts him with its sharp edges.

Like now. "I'm sorry," he whispers, low and desperate. "I'm sorry. Sharon. I'm sorry."

[from_the_outside]

"It's not your fault, either."

She breathes, very evenly, then slowly sets her Kahr down on the coffee table. Without it, she feels bare and vulnerable.

It used to be so easy to be vulnerable with him.

Sharon takes one careful, wary step towards him, then another. When she's a few feet away, she holds out her hands, palms up. When she speaks, her voice breaks, just a little. "But I missed you."

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head, denying it, but stays silent. It won't do them any good to argue, and he's not even sure he can, not with this.

She sets aside her weapon, and he stares at her, surprised, before his eyes widen in true shock as she steps forward, as she tells him she missed him, as her voice cracks.

He almost can't make himself move. Not even to meet her halfway. But he can't leave her standing there like this, either.

His shoulder twinges as he pulls his right hand from his pocket. He ignores it, and reaches out to her, palm downward, making it entirely her choice.

[from_the_outside]

He offers his right hand, and she only hesitates for a second before she curls her fingers around his.

– his fingers gripping her arm, clenched in her hair, pulling her head back, hitting her, hurting her –

She shakes her head and holds on, stubborn, despite the wave of dizziness, the way her stomach churns. "You're alive," she whispers.

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods, and curls his fingers gently around hers in turn, letting her hold on to him as she chooses.

His left hand stays in his pocket, the metal of his left arm hidden by the light jacket he's wearing. He'd almost rather cut that arm off again than touch her with it.

[from_the_outside]

Her breath is coming a little too fast; she consciously takes a deep, slow one.

"Aren't you happy to see me?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He tries to speak and can only make a low, strangled sound. Happy is a word almost entirely without meaning for him. Flickers of memory from so long ago and distant that they seem to have belonged to another person entirely flash behind his eyes. That man would know what happy means, he's almost certain, and would be able to feel it.

Not him; not the Winter Soldier. Weapons don't have wants, needs, or emotions, and he doesn't know what to do with everything welling up in him now.

"I nearly killed you," he falls back on, a barely audible whisper.

[from_the_outside]

"That's not quite true."

Her own voice is a low murmur. She closes her eyes and fights back the flashes of memory that come, unbidden, before looking at him again. "You were very careful to not kill me."

[nerves_of_ice]

She needs to understand. What it does to him is irrelevant. He closes his eyes so he doesn't have to see her face as he speaks.

"You were a high-value associate of the target that intel indicated he'd do anything to save. Keeping you alive but at risk was the fastest way to bring him out of hiding before the deadline."

[from_the_outside]

"I know." He's keeping his eyes closed. His lashes smudge against his cheeks in just the way she remembers. "I was bait. Good bait."

Lucky me, she'd told Nat. Despite everything, she had been. Very lucky. If he'd killed her and then remembered... if he'd killed Steve...

But he hadn't. "It made sense."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I wasn't expecting the man with wings. He wasn't in the files."

He opens his eyes again, having discovered he can't keep them closed; the internal yammering about threat assessment and situational awareness is too loud. He stares down at the floor instead.

[from_the_outside]

"Neither was I," she admits. "I hadn't heard of him before. Steve must have only just met him."

He'd have told her about Sam otherwise, she thinks. He knows she wants to know whenever he's made a friend. She squeezes his hand, trying to get his attention. "But the result was the same. You didn't almost kill me."

[nerves_of_ice]

His glance flicks up at that, uncertain and wary as he searches her face before he shakes his head again and goes back to staring stubbornly at the floor.

[from_the_outside]

He looks back up at her, then away, and she feels like she's about to shatter into a million pieces. "I don't know what to do."

She wants to throw herself into his arms, to hug him and hold him. She wants to back the hell away from him and keep her gun between them. She wants to go back, all those years ago, and tell him the truth the first moment she arrived.

She wants some damn Advil; her head is killing her. "I thought I'd never see you again."

[nerves_of_ice]

Maybe it would have been better if she never had, he thinks. For her; for everyone.

“What do you want?” It’s a mere whisper, barely audible.

[from_the_outside]

Her fingers tighten on his, a moment of desperation, before she forces herself to let go.

"Does it matter?"

[nerves_of_ice]

This time, his nod is immediate and certain. He might not be able to give it to her, whatever it is, but it matters.

"Yes."

[from_the_outside]

She shakes her head at him, unconvinced. All this is bigger than her, now. It always has been.

But it's Bucky, and Bucky's asked her what she wants so many times that she doesn't know how not to answer him. "I want to be happy to see you," she says, low. "I want you to look at me and call me 'angel.' I want for you to stop putting yourself as far away from me as I can get. I want Steve to be better, and I want the three of us to hold onto each other and never let go again."

She shakes her head again, minutely, and looks at him. "Can you give me any of that, Bucky?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Every word cuts him to the bone, sharper than any blade. Slowly, his gaze lifts from the floor to lock with hers, bleak and nearly black with an intensity to it that's drowning deep.

"But you aren't." A shudder runs through him as he hears his own voice, as the truth of his words strikes home. "Happy, I mean. If I move, you flinch. Steve's in the hospital because of me; I put him there."

He draws a ragged breath, but doesn't look away. "The man who called you angel, who made you laugh and smile, the man who... " He trails off there as something splinters in his throat and swallows, hard. "I don't know who that man is, any more. I haven't for years. I can't give him back to you. I don't know how."

He takes another breath. "I shouldn't have come. I'm sorry."

[from_the_outside]

He's not wrong. She isn't happy to see him, exactly. Certainly not the way she always imagined she'd be, if the impossible happened. "It isn't that you shouldn't have come," she tells him, quiet but firm. "It's that you're asking the wrong question."

What she wants has been irrelevant from the beginning. She wanted him to live, she wanted to stay with him, she wanted everything he ever promised her.

She wants for him to still love her, the way she still loves him. But there's nothing either of them can do about any of that, it seems. "What I want, instead of what I need."

[nerves_of_ice]

He searches her face as if he could find answers to all their questions written there, somehow.

"Then what do you need?"

[from_the_outside]

You.

But even if he looks and sounds and walks like the man she loved and lost, it's slowly becoming clear to her that whatever HYDRA did to him has left him broken.

Which means her mission parameters have changed. Which means she has a new goal. "I need for you to stay," she says, very slowly. "And let me help you, the way you helped me once."

Every breath hurts, the way it had for weeks when she first arrived home. He's right in front of her, but all she can feel is the grief of knowing he died all over again. "I need to be able to tell Steve we have you back, when he wakes up."

Her throat works. "And I need to make HYDRA pay. For all of it."

[nerves_of_ice]

He can't stay. Not to mention the fact that he's going to be named one of the world's most wanted terrorists any moment if he hasn't been already, every second that passes makes it more obvious that his very presence the way he is now is tearing her apart. He can only imagine what it'll do to Steve, a Steve who remembers a man named Bucky and not the Winter Soldier, a Steve who would have died before hurting him, even to protect himself.

He pushes himself off the wall with determination and takes a single step forward, toward her.

[from_the_outside]

Her throat works, but she holds herself still with an effort, determined not to flinch away from him again, even as her stomach clenches.

She won't. She can control it. She won't be afraid of him.

[nerves_of_ice]

He sees her swallow, sees the way she's carrying herself, and knows, he knows that she's fighting every self-preservation instinct to not react.

Pride at her courage and sorrow for her pain threaten to tear apart what's left of his heart. Slowly, gently, he raises his right hand to cup her cheek, and strokes his thumb feather-light over the delicate arch of bone.

"It's okay, angel," he whispers. "You don't have to protect me any more. It's my turn now. Tell Steve I'll be in touch."

In the next instant he's moving, dashing for the window across the room.