[ 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 doesn't do anything by halves," Sharon agrees. "And she was tough. She made me earn it, every step of the way. But she knew I had to be absolutely sure this was what I wanted with my life, and she knew putting me in the field meant I had to be at the absolute top of my game."

The shade of a smile flickers at the corner of her mouth. "Steve didn't test me on a third of what I can do. He knows that now."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Especially knowing when you were going to end up, for a while." He overcomes the impulse to run his fingers over the stone floor with the habit of long years.

"Did anyone ever figure out how it happened? Either time?"

[from_the_outside]

Either time. Her lashes flutter for a second as she blinks, pushing back the memories of that first awful day, the realization. "We still don't know for sure what brought me there to begin with," she says, quiet, trying to find words to tell him what she has to.

"Stark has some ideas, but they're basically the same as what we thought back then. But I think — Steve said you got hit with a blast from one of those weapons, and I'm pretty sure... I'm pretty sure what happened to you is what triggered me coming back."

[nerves_of_ice]

He was still before; now he's immobile. Bucky stares at her, eyes wide and dark as he struggles to absorb what she's telling him.

"On the train." His voice sounds rough in his own ears, and for some reason it seems like it's coming from a long way way. "When I - it blew me out the side of the car. That? It - I -- "

Pieces are trying to assemble in his head, but he doesn't like the picture. "The resonance. It - it broke it? It broke it. Breaking it sent you home."

[from_the_outside]

Never in a million years did she think she'd ever have to tell him this. "I think so."

Her voice, in contrast to his, is low and steady. She's holding herself ruthlessly under control. "From what I can tell, it happened at about the same time."

[nerves_of_ice]

He takes that in and sits with it silence for several long seconds.

When he does finally speak, each word is bitter and filled with self-loathing. "Looks like Howard should have just shot me without that damn wire cage."

It'd have been better for everyone, he's pretty sure.

[from_the_outside]

She shakes her head at him, her eyes dark and sympathetic. "He would never have done that," she murmurs. "And even if he wanted to, we would never have let him. And I— "

She breathes, tries to ground herself. "I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay with you."

[nerves_of_ice]

It rocks him, visibly so. Bucky shifts just a little, planting both hands flat against the ground, one on either side of him.

It takes him a while to find words. Any words. Even when he does, he's not sure they're the right ones, but in the face of her admission she deserves to know, doesn't she?

"I used to dream about it." Barely a breath, as if saying it any louder is too great a risk. "What it could be like. When the war was over, if. If."

[from_the_outside]

They shouldn't be here, in this cave in the woods. They should be in the field in France, or that little cottage hung with wildflowers. They should be in Brooklyn, talking about a future, instead of here in Virginia, talking about the past.

Sharon swallows, wanting more than anything to reach for him. "Do you remember any of it? What did you picture?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Pieces, maybe. It's all ..." He trails off there. She knows that already. Bucky sits quietly for a moment, trying to find more of it.

"I thought - used to think - if you, and if Peggy - brownstones are big. Enough space for all four. Different floors, maybe, to be close without - without living in each other's pockets. But still a home."

[from_the_outside]

Her smile quirks again, trying to picture it. What she comes up with probably isn't much like what he'd been dreaming about back then, but it's still a sweet thought. "I think I probably would have wanted us to have our own space," she says, but she's still smiling.

"But it's a nice thought."

[nerves_of_ice]

He shrugs. "It was just a dream."

[from_the_outside]

"But it could have been real."

She picks the slate back up again, running her fingers over the edges. "I used to dream about it, too. How we could all join SHIELD when it started... if you wanted to. Or maybe you'd do something else and I'd be able to come back to you every time I went away for a mission."

[nerves_of_ice]

He tries to imagine what it might have been like, if he'd lived to be the man he used to be. If Steve hadn't gone into the ice. If Sharon hadn't been pulled back through time.

He can't see it. There's nothing but glints of might-have-been with darkness and death and blood and pain over all the years between.

"I guess I blew that up too. I'm sorry."

[from_the_outside]

"You didn't."

Someone did, but it wasn't Bucky. She sighs and tosses the slate away, letting it skitter over the stone floor. "And even coming back here, I couldn't let go of it all. Hell, I bought that little cottage in France. The one in the woods. You filled it with flowers and we had a picnic outside."

[nerves_of_ice]

Flashes of memory surface as she describes it - sunshine and laughter, a long lazy afternoon together.

"You bought it?"

[from_the_outside]

"Yeah." She smiles at him, a little, her mind half somewhere else. "It was still there. And now it's mine, and I'm never going to let it get torn down."

[nerves_of_ice]

He wonders if she'll feel the same way a year from now, but recognizes that it's due to the way he feels that everything he touches he destroys.

She looks a little lost in her thoughts, and he hopes they're happier, kinder ones. She deserves that. Bucky just watches her quietly for a few moments.

[from_the_outside]

She blinks out of her memories and looks at him.

"Maybe we could go back, sometime. Walking around that area, seeing some of those places, it could help with your memories."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Maybe." He doubts it, but he has to admit that he doesn't know, and he's reluctant to quash that hint of hope in her expression.

"It may take a while. I don't know how long. I ... might not know for a couple of weeks at least. It's - I wasn't usually out of cryo longer than that. I think it had something to do with - with keeping me stable. Under control."

[from_the_outside]

Everything he says about what's happened to him over the last seventy years breaks her heart all over again... and makes her almost too furious to see.

Maybe this will be her new work. No more SHIELD? Fine. She can hunt down HYDRA all on her own. "There's no rush," she promises. "We're working without a map, here, so let's see how you feel in a couple of weeks and go from there."

[nerves_of_ice]

He’s not sure they’ll have that long. These few days are an impossible gift, but he’s under no illusions that the world will wait for long - and it’ll be howling for his blood. Someone has to pay; someone has to be blamed, and he’s the easiest target now that he’s out of the shadows, even if not completely.

“I’ll try,” he says, simply.

[from_the_outside]

"We'll try," she corrects. "It's not just you, Bucky. You have me and Steve back again. We've got you."

Now she does reach for him, for whichever hand he has closest to her, uncaring if it's metal or flesh. "We're not losing you again."

[nerves_of_ice]

She reaches for his left hand, and he’s pretty sure she’s done it unthinkingly because of the angle at which he’s sitting. It doesn’t seem to matter to her that it’s murderous metal, and that rocks him all over again.

He holds still and lets her take it. It takes him a second to find words, again, still. Maybe it always will, now. It’s been a long, long time since he was expected to talk, or allowed to for that matter.

“I know you mean that,” he starts. “Both of you.”

[from_the_outside]

That sounds like the beginning of a thought, or argument. She curls her fingers around the cool metal of his hand and doesn't let go.

"But?"