[ 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

[from_the_outside]

She reaches out, and Nat reaches back. She squeezes her fingers, and Nat squeezes back.

They're such simple touches, but they're almost enough to break down again. Her throat closes at the touch of her friend's hand, at her gentle question. She can't quite say the words, so she only shakes her head instead, and lifts the hand holding her glass so she can wipe at her eyes once more with her wrist.

[marvel_npc]

"Kind of thought not. Hang on a second, okay?" she murmurs. Nat sets her glass down and gives Sharon's hand another quick squeeze before vanishing into the kitchen. The sound of water running in the sink echoes clearly, and then she's back, carrying a clean, dry dishtowel and one that's nice and warm due to having been wrung out under hot water.

She offers both as she sits back down beside her friend, and there's understanding in her glance.

[from_the_outside]

She accepts the towels with a wry half smile, then carefully dabs at her face with the damp, warm towel. It feels good against her sore eyes, her sore mouth. She lingers with it until it's cool in her hands, grateful for the chance to hide her face, even if only for a little while.

Once it's gone cold, she sets the damp towel aside and gently blots her face dry with the other. When she lifts her glance back up to Nat, her eyes are still sore and red, but her face is a little less flushed, and the streaks of her tears are gone.

[marvel_npc]

Nat smiles at her and takes the damp towel back to the kitchen. She comes back with two mugs of coffee, one light and sweet and one with milk only, and passes Sharon hers before she sits down again.

"So," she says, gently. "Want to talk about it?"

[from_the_outside]

Sharon sighs, long and sore. "I don't even know how to start talking about it, Nat."

She wraps her hands around the coffee mug, but doesn't lift it for a sip. "Most of it's classified to hell and back... or was," she realizes. "I guess at least some of it, at least, is out there now, along with everything else."

[marvel_npc]

Nat winces. "Should I apologize?"

[from_the_outside]

"Not even a little," Sharon tells her, firm. "You had to do it."

And Steve was right. SHIELD couldn't exist, any longer. Not after everything. So maybe it's a moot point.

She takes a deep breath and meets Nat's gaze. "I know you were working at the time. But did you know I was... gone... when everything happened in New York?"

[marvel_npc]

She frowns, cupping the mug absently between her two hands as she draws up one knee and turns to sit sideways on the couch, facing Sharon.

"I knew you were working with Selvik and the Pegasus team," she says. "I thought you were involved in the aftermath and cleanup out there."

[from_the_outside]

"No. I mean, I had been with Pegasus. But I wasn't there then." She leans to put down her coffee mug and gets up. "Hang on a second."

In her room, she carefully doesn't look at the ceramic lamp as she digs out her laptop. Carrying the computer back to the living room, she curls up once more on the end of the couch and flips open her screen, navigating with the ease of long practice through her firewalls and passcodes until she reaches her secured files, speaking as she works. "The damn cube lit up while I was standing next to it. It opened a portal and pulled me through."

For a moment, she stops, her eyes on the picture she'd pulled up. It's an effort to pull her glance away, but she manages it, even if she doesn't turn her laptop for Nat to see yet. "To France, 1944."

[marvel_npc]

She knows her expression goes blank when she's thinking this rapidly, trying to sort out her thoughts and reactions both, but to be fair it's not every day that you find out your friend has traveled in time.

"I really hate that cube," she murmurs, after a second, and makes herself take a swallow of coffee. "That must have been quite a surprise for everyone."

[from_the_outside]

"You and me both," she says, with feeling. "And it was. Stark – Howard Stark – tried to figure it all out... we don't need to get into that right now," she interrupts herself.

She looks down at the photo she's pulled up again, and her broken heart aches a little more. "I met them all," she murmurs. "Steve. Stark. Aunt Peggy. And... Bucky."

Sharon breathes deep, then turns her laptop to show Nat the photo she'd taken that day on the hillside with Bucky, when they were trying to steal a few desperate moments before Howard's experiment. In the photo, a breeze has tugged at her hair in its curls, and Bucky's handsome and bright and delighted next to her, the amazement at her magic camera clear and warm in his eyes. His arm is around her and she's curled into him, her own expression complex but her smile sweet.

[marvel_npc]

Nat stares. One hand goes to her mouth as she takes in every nuance of the photo.

It's been a long, long time since she's seen James that happy.

"Oh," she breathes, and looks up to meet her friend's eyes. "Oh, Sharon. I thought it was Steve. I thought you knew about James because of him."

[from_the_outside]

"In a way, I did."

She turns the laptop back around, but finds herself reluctant to shut the screen and close the photo. Sharon settles for putting the computer on the coffee table, and turns back to Nat with a deep breath. "I grew up watching those old reels, listening to Aunt Peggy's stories. Even if I hadn't gone back in time, I think I would have recognized his voice."

Her head is still aching. She reaches up to rub at it. When she speaks, she fights for ruthless control over her voice, trying to keep it from shaking. "Stark – Howard – he was worried about timelines. What would happen if one collapsed. He told me not to say anything about the future. And I couldn't anyway, I couldn't – "

It's been two years, but right now the pain is as raw and immediate as if she'd just come back, only just now seen Steve's face as he told her Bucky had fallen. Her voice grows thick. "I knew he was, was lost. I didn't tell them. I didn't tell them any of it. The plane, the ice – "

[marvel_npc]

"It's not your fault," she says, immediate and certain. Nat reaches to take Sharon's hand in hers again and holds on. "Don't think that."

[from_the_outside]

"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."

[marvel_npc]

"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."

[from_the_outside]

"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."

[marvel_npc]

"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?"

[from_the_outside]

"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."

[marvel_npc]

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.

[from_the_outside]

"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."

[marvel_npc]

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.

[from_the_outside]

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."

[marvel_npc]

"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."

[from_the_outside]

"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?"