[ 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]

"I should have listened to you. When you warned me." He picks his way carefully over the landscape, moving in near silence through long habit.

[from_the_outside]

Sharon shakes her head, frowning at him. "You did listen," she points out. "We talked it all over, Bucky. None of this is your fault."

[nerves_of_ice]

He gives a very small shrug. It's somehow evident that he's not sure she's right about that, although he doesn't say anything.

[from_the_outside]

All she can think of now is that letter he wrote, how she'd cried after reading it, all those promises to try and come back to her. "I know you did everything you could. I know how hard you tried. I read your letter."

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods. "Peggy saved it for you, you said." He scans the area around them for threats, automatically, then glances over at her.

"I apologized. In hers."

[from_the_outside]

"Apologized?"

As if there were anything he needed to apologize for, to them. "What for?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Not coming back," he says. "Breaking your heart. Hurting Steve. I knew you'd both be devastated."

He'd known it the way he'd known the sun would rise in the east. "So I apologized. Asked her to look out for you two. And then she lost you both."

[from_the_outside]

"You didn't do that to her. You didn't do that to any of us." He's determined to hold onto the guilt, and she's just as determined to pry it out of his hands.

"Bucky, we lost you. You didn't leave us."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I didn't mean to. I tried. But I wasn't good enough. Strong enough." He glances over at her again.

"Maybe I didn't do that. But I did a lot of other things."

[from_the_outside]

She meets that glance with her own steady one and lifts her eyebrows at him, a little of the practical Agent Thirteen back in her expression. "Well, none of that's what we're talking about right now, so quit moving goalposts."

[nerves_of_ice]

He studies her face for a second, and something about the look on his own eases for a moment. "Okay."

A single beat of silence. "What are we talking about?"

[from_the_outside]

"I was telling you how nice it was to go walking with you back then." She quirks a smile at him, then tips her head at a clearing up ahead.

"And I was about to say: we're here."

[nerves_of_ice]

He shifts slightly to step into the clearing first, then moves to the side and waits for her.

Bucky looks around with new interest, taking in everything he sees. He's wandered around a lot in the past couple of days, but it's different knowing this place means something to her.

[from_the_outside]

She breathes in, smelling the wet rock and sun-warm grass of the clearing, and goes toward an opening in the rocky slope that's rising away from them.

"They aren't really caves, but when I was little they were close enough. And you can still hang out in them and stay dry when it's raining."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I bet it looks nice. Watching the rain from in there." He follows her across the grass and peers into the entrance.

[from_the_outside]

"It does." She ducks down and moves into the little entrance, where the air feels several degrees cooler, and hunts out the spot where she used to sit, cross-legged, reading or watching the woods.

"Probably they go pretty far back, but that was a little dangerous to explore, even for me."

[nerves_of_ice]

He watches her settle before cautiously making his way inside. Bucky starts exploring some of the near reaches of the little cave. “There could have been pirates. Or bears.”

[from_the_outside]

"Either just as likely as the other," she says, amused. "But there's always the potential of a cave-in, or flooding."

[nerves_of_ice]

He turns away from the wall and looks over his shoulder at her. "Please don't be caught in either."

[from_the_outside]

She lifts her eyebrows at him and shrugs. "I'm not planning to be."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Good." He trails the fingers of his left hand lightly over a niche in the wall that looks almost as though it could be a shelf, testing its depth in a way that's not likely to get him bitten by a snake or a rat or whatever might live here.

Finding nothing, he leaves it alone and continues his exploration.

[from_the_outside]

She smiles, watching him, tracing her fingers lightly over the stone floor.

"Finding anything worthwhile?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Just looking." He finishes making the circuit and comes back to join her. Bucky crouches down on his heels beside her.

"It's a decent place to hide. The stone would interfere with scans."

[from_the_outside]

"That is something I was concerned about at age twelve," she says, straight-faced. "But yeah, you're right. It would block most things."

[nerves_of_ice]

He slants a sideways look at her. "You could have been precocious. Who am I to assume?"