[ 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 blinks slowly at that, honestly uncertain - wasn't it the obvious thing to do? - but takes her hand again without hesitation and waits for her to lead him to where she wants them to go.

[from_the_outside]

"I almost landed right on top of you," she tells him, as she walks slowly with him toward the back line of the lawn. "That night I arrived. And we just kept coming back to that spot, to walk around and talk and look at the stars. Dance, sometimes."

There's a tree near the edge of the lawn; she lets of his hand and spreads the jacket on the grass beneath it. From here, they can look out over the valley, see the constellations as they rise above the other ridge.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Blue light," he muses. "You... you rolled over and over. I told you to stay down?" It's a little unsure. "I - things aren't clear. My mind - it's not... whole." Not yet, anyway, and maybe never. "It's all there, I think, but it's... confused."

He waits for her to take a seat on the jacket before lowering himself to the ground on her left.

"It's pretty here."

[from_the_outside]

"It's okay. I can help you remember."

She puts her arms around her knees and turns her head to smile at him. "And you're right. Blue light; I rolled. You told me to stay down, and I kept not listening to you."

[nerves_of_ice]

Steve had said much the same, after she'd left to go into town, when they started talking about Brooklyn. Or rather, when Steve had started talking, and Bucky had struggled with memories that were fragmented and broken, too much to put together again all at once.

Bitterness rises and he forces it back, as he had before. HYDRA's stolen so much from him already - from all of them. He won't let them steal these precious minutes happening here and now.

"Why didn't you?"

[from_the_outside]

"Because I wanted to be on my feet when I found out where I was."

Sharon tips her head back, looking up at the stars. "You could have shot me, but you didn't. You listened to me. You made sure I wasn't hurt. And even though you had to report me, you made it as easy on me as you could."

[nerves_of_ice]

You made sure I wasn't hurt. Not then, anyway. He feels his breath leave him as though he's taken a hard blow to the gut, and tries not to let it show.

"I never wanted to hurt you." Low, but steady. "I'm sorry I did."

[from_the_outside]

But he'd been forced to. He'd been manipulated and tormented and made to forget himself so that HYDRA could use his body for all their ill-gotten gains. "I know you didn't."

Sharon looks over at him, eyes dark in the starlight. "I know you don't. And I wouldn't be out here with you if I thought it was going to happen again."

[nerves_of_ice]

She has her knees drawn up and her arms draped loosely over them; he shifts a little, sitting cross-legged beside her, and rests his right hand on one knee while he plants his left hand flat against the ground on the side away from her, trying to avoid clenching his fists or doing anything that'd distress her.

The trust she's expressing humbles him almost beyond words. He doesn't know if it's a good idea to ask, but he has to know. "Did I hurt you again? When I - you said it would be worse if, if I left. Did I - the other night - did I..."

[from_the_outside]

"Did it hurt when you jumped out my window and left me alone again? Bucky – " She shakes her head, her hair whispering over her shoulders. "Of course it did."

The last few days, it's like her heart never stopped breaking, like those two years of grief had decided to hit again all at once. She hasn't cried the way she did, alone in her apartment before Nat showed up, since she and Steve were here, reading his last words to them and getting drunk on her father's expensive Scotch. "I know – I think I know why you left. Maybe you were right to do it. But it still hurt."

[nerves_of_ice]

He lowers his head, staring at the ground in front of him, not really seeing it.

"You were so scared," he whispers. "I thought - I thought I was hurting you just by being there. I didn't know - I didn't mean - I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Again. Again. Helplessly, hopelessly, uselessly sorry. Acid coats the back of his throat, threatening to choke him.

[from_the_outside]

She swallows, remembering. Scared, oh yes, she had been. He'd been in her apartment, where he'd attacked her before, and if he'd tried, if he'd wanted to, he could easily have attacked her again. She knows damn well she's only alive because she hadn't been a target, because she'd been more useful as bait.

But that was the Winter Soldier. And whatever's left of that in him... at least he has some control over himself now. "I don't know if we're going to be able to make it through this without hurting each other," she murmurs, and turns her head to study him. "But I don't care. However much any of this hurts isn't anything to how it felt to lose you."

[nerves_of_ice]

They won't. Or at least he won't, no matter how hard he tries. The pain he'd caused them both earlier by answering questions truthfully and by failing to be the man they both remember has already proven that.

He sees her shift a little, but keeps his gaze firmly fixed on the ground for the moment. "I told Steve this already. And I don't think you're going to believe me any more than he did. But it wasn't your fault, Sharon."

Now he does raise his eyes, turning to look at her as he does. "That I fell, I mean. It wasn't."

[from_the_outside]

"I get that you don't blame me," she says, soft. "But that doesn't mean it wasn't my fault."

She shifts, releasing her arms from around her knees and folds her legs over so she's sitting on her hip, facing him. "I would have done anything to save you. I should have done anything. Bucky... you don't know what it means, seeing you. Even with, with everything. You were gone. You were gone."

And now he's here, and real, and solid, and still out of reach but alive. Alive. "I can't lose you again. I won't."

[nerves_of_ice]

"It wasn't your fault." His eyes are dark, but clear, his gaze level and steady. "Or Steve's. If anyone's, it was mine. But we all tried, Sharon. I don't blame you because there's nothing to blame you for."

The breath that he draws is shaky and uneven. "I - I tried to, to say this before. But it, I, I didn't - it didn't come out right. I don't w-- I don't mean this to hurt you. I swear I don't. But I'm not - I'm not the same as you remember, when I left you a w-- when I died, or close enough to. I'm broken. I may never be whole again."

[from_the_outside]

"Never say never."

Despite the lightness of the words, she means them down to her bones. Sharon shakes her head at him, ruthlessly shoving down on the fragments of her broken heart. "But even if that's true, even if you're never that Bucky Barnes I knew, even if you don't, don't love me anymore, or can't – "

It's her turn to take a deep and shaky breath. "That's not why I'm helping. I'm not in it for the conditions."

[nerves_of_ice]

"It's not that I d--" He bites down on his treacherous tongue hard enough to draw blood, and makes himself take a second before he tries again.

"... can't?"

[from_the_outside]

The thing is, she knows he'd try. In order to keep from hurting her further, she knows he'd try. If he can. Even if he didn't feel any of it anymore.

"People change," she murmurs. "Even without HYDRA messing around in your head, maybe it would have changed for you anyway." She casts about desperately for something else to say, some liferaft of a topic. "What didn't you say, before? When you left me a – ?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head, but doesn't say anything at first. It takes him several long seconds to find his way to the words. Should he tell her? Would it help or only make things worse?

He doesn't know. But he can't see how lying would make things any better.

"A widow," he whispers. "Is what I was going to say. Before."

[from_the_outside]

She blinks at him, startled.

It's not that she hadn't felt that way, but... "We weren't married."

[nerves_of_ice]

"That's why I didn't say it." His glance drops from her face to her hands. "I told you. I don't - some of what I remember's a little mixed up."

[from_the_outside]

"I know, but..."

But that's quite a thing to mix up. "You'd asked me to come back to Brooklyn, but that was all."

[nerves_of_ice]

He takes a slow, careful breath. "That was all, for then," he clarifies, and finally looks back up at her.

[from_the_outside]

Sharon swallows, hard, as new loss crashes over her. She'd mourned the life she didn't get to have, back then, with him, but she hadn't had any idea anything like this had ever crossed his mind.

She breathes deep and blinks quickly a few times, then gives him a small, sad, crooked smile. "Well, I would have said yes," she murmurs. "For the record."

[nerves_of_ice]

He hesitates, then reaches for her left hand with his right, very slowly, each small movement careful and deliberate. Bucky cradles her hand in his and looks down at it as he brushes his thumb over her fingers, just once.

"I won't hold you to it now," he murmurs. "But I'm ... it's good to know. Thank you."