[ 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]

At least she'd had someone. Maybe it had helped Steve as well, in some way.

Bucky nods and accepts one of the mugs, silently.

[from_the_outside]

She hands another mug to Steve, then doctors her own with milk, sugar, and a little cinnamon, then turns to lean against the counter, thinking about Bucky at the Smithsonian. What must it have been like, reading his own history? That of his friends and companions? "We actually came here, for a while, after I came back," she murmurs.

"Aunt Peggy had kept all the files and your letters. They were up in the attic."

[nerves_of_ice]

He holds the coffee in his right hand, trying not to draw attention to his gloved left, and watches them both.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, low and harsh but clear. "I - I tried to stay."

[from_the_outside]

Steve makes a choked sound and shakes his head. "I know," he promises, desperate. "We know, Buck."

They could play the blame game all day long, each of them trying to shoulder what they think is their share, the others rejecting it. Sharon swallows her own guilt and comes to Bucky's side, then sets her hand gently on his left shoulder. "We missed you," she murmurs. "But it wasn't your fault, Bucky."

[nerves_of_ice]

A faint shudder runs through him as she touches his left arm.

(you are to be the new fist of HYDRA)

He stares down at the flat surface of the island, not looking at either of them.

[from_the_outside]

He trembles lightly beneath her touch, and she casts a worried glance over at Steve. "I know we have a lot of questions," she murmurs. "Are you going to be able to answer them?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I don't know." It's low and weary. The island is clean and bright and spacious, he observes, absently. Just like the kitchen, and the house, and the two of them standing to either side of him. He's the smudge of darkness in the middle of it all.

He lets out a slow breath and looks up. "I'll try."

[from_the_outside]

"Whatever you can," Steve says, bracingly. "This isn't an interrogation, Buck."

"It's definitely not that," Sharon agrees. "Why don't we go sit down and get comfortable?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Maybe it should be."

He glances toward the living room, then back at them, waiting for someone to lead.

[from_the_outside]

Steve pats his friend's shoulder and starts coaxing him toward the great room and one of the couches, where he'll be able to sit next to Bucky without crowding him.

Sharon follows, then curls into an armchair nearby, where she can see both of them without straining her neck. "What do you remember from after the fall?" she asks, finally.

These questions will be awful for all of them, but there's no way out but through. "How did they get a hold of you?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He sits where Steve indicates he should, leaning against the back of the couch with his body aligned and his back straight, hands resting lightly on his thighs as he waits, passive, for the questions to follow.

Bucky looks up at Sharon as she asks the first. "Cold." There's no hesitation. "Pain in my arm, what was left of it. I don't know how that part happened exactly. I smashed against a rock, or a cliff face or something - it was big and rough and my arm caught, and, well."

He shrugs. "Cold's what I remember most. It was snowing. The snow was soft, except for the chunks of ice and rock. I lay there and watched it snow for a while. I don't know how long. Two Russian soldiers on patrol found me. They dragged me to an outpost."

[from_the_outside]

She sees Steve's tension as it rises, guilt swallowing him whole. "Steve – "

It's not quick enough. His hand clenches, and the mug he's holding shatters, sending coffee and shards of crockery over his hand and knee and the carpet below.

[nerves_of_ice]

He jerks away and to his feet at the shot-like sound, whirling on the instant into a crouch, left hand partly outstretched and ready to respond to the threat --

--only to realize that there's no threat here, no shots fired, nothing but Steve and broken ceramic and an aching storm of grief and agony that tints the very air around them with pain.

Instinct overrides conscious thought. He goes down on one knee in front of Steve and catches the other man's hand in his gloved left, turning it over, palm-up, looking for signs of injury.

[from_the_outside]

She startles, badly, at his swift motion, and hopes he didn't see the way she sloshed her own coffee as she jerked away.

Steve uncurls his fingers as Bucky reaches for his hand, showing a pinkened palm but no blood. "I'm fine," he says, and gives Sharon a rueful glance over Bucky's head. "Sorry about the mess. I'll clean it up."

"It's okay." Her pulse is finally beginning to slow. "It's just coffee."

[nerves_of_ice]

Silently, he rises to his feet and retreats to the kitchen. He comes back with a clean dishrag that he'd wrung out under hot water, which he gives to Steve for his hand, and a clean towel that he uses to wipe up the splashed coffee, then as a repository for the pieces of mug.

He doesn't speak a single word through any of this, lost in his thoughts instead. Should he have lied? Would that have been better?

[from_the_outside]

Bucky starts to clean up before either of them can do anything. Steve gives her a worried glance as he cleans off his hand, then reaches for the dirty, mug-filled towel from Bucky. "Here, pal. I'll take that."

As he heads to the kitchen, Sharon shakes her head and looks back at Bucky. "This is going to be tough for all of us," she murmurs. "Sit down, Bucky. It's okay."

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head, but sits down as instructed anyway. "Should I not have said?"

[from_the_outside]

"No, it's just – "

" – that I didn't go looking for you." Steve finishes the sentence, then comes back to sit on the couch, looking at Bucky with his expression clear and open and full of sorrow. "I'm sorry, Buck. I didn't think – none of us had any clue you could have survived. I should have looked. I should have found you first."

He breathes, deep and shaky. "I'm sorry."

[nerves_of_ice]

"You had to finish the mission." He says it automatically and with perfect agreement, like there's no doubt, like there could never have been any other option. Something else occurs to him, then, and he blinks and looks more closely at Steve.

"Of course you didn't know. You couldn't have. No one could. You don't need to apologize. There was no reason for you to look."

[from_the_outside]

"That doesn't matter!" Steve's voice is tight and distraught. "We could have gotten Zola later. But you..."

His words choke in his throat, and he fists his hand on his knee. Sharon sets her own coffee aside – it was just an excuse anyway – and leans forward. "We didn't know," she murmurs. "But when I got back, and Tony Stark went through all the files and notes... he did theorize Zola was attempting to make you into a super soldier."

[nerves_of_ice]

Something flickers in his glance at the mention of Stark's name, right before his gaze goes bleak, then empty.

He looks down at his left hand, not meeting anyone's eyes.

"He did." Quiet but clear. "He said I would be the new fist of HYDRA."

[from_the_outside]

Steve stiffens, and she wonders how much of Zola's plan was pure pettiness: taking a symbol of freedom, Captain America's best friend, and turning him into a weapon for everything he'd hated.

"Not anymore," she says, low but firm.

[nerves_of_ice]

He doesn't say anything, but just keeps looking at his hand.

You changed the century, Pierce had told him, and he hadn't been wrong. Seventy years of blood and death and destruction at his hands, clearing the path for HYDRA to achieve its ends. He doesn't have the pieces in any kind of order yet, most of them being shattered fragments and flickers in his broken mind, but he knows they're there. All of them. Just as the controls remain, ready for activation at any time. He may have walked away, but he's not free. He never will be.

He'll have to explain, if they don't already know. He's not sure what they know now. He just doesn't know how to begin.

[from_the_outside]

"Bucky."

He's staring at his metal left hand, and she's not quite sure how to snap him out of it, or even if she should. "You don't belong to them anymore."

[nerves_of_ice]

Ah. So that's where he should begin.

"Pierce is gone," he agrees, and finally looks up at them. "But there are others still out there. Any one of them could activate me, if they know the controls."