[ 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 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?"

[nerves_of_ice]

“But,” he agrees. “Someone has to pay. For what I did. For what HYDRA did. And it’s not going to be either of you.”

[from_the_outside]

"It's not going to be you, either," she says, stubborn. "If anyone's going to pay, it'll be HYDRA itself."

That grain of an idea is slowly blossoming in her mind into something resembling an actual plan. "What do we even have a team called the Avengers for if not to do some avenging?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"That's not - I meant," he tries to clarify. "You can't - neither of you. If you try to keep them away from me, you'll become the enemy. You'll be a target. They're already going to start asking how much Steve knew. Could have known. If he's been hiding things. It won't stick, not the way things are now, but the more you try to block them from me, the worse it'll get."

He shrugs his right shoulder at her question. "I don't know. Until now, I never went up against them... not directly. The shadows were different."

[from_the_outside]

Sharon frowns at him. "When you say we'll become targets, do you mean for HYDRA or for the international intelligence and defense community?"

She watches him, tucked away here into this cave with her. "Or the government?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"HYDRA's spinning right now. Free-fall. But there's more of them out there. Hidden bases all over the world," he tells her, low and even. "Distract and redirect. The more they can use the chaos to hide and rebuild or rework the other things they're doing, the more they will."

He gives her barely a second to absorb that before he continues, "The government will be looking for someone to blame. Some reason HYDRA went unnoticed. Someone to put on the hook for destroying Insight. You know I'm right about this."

[from_the_outside]

She absorbs that a moment, thoughtful, then looks back at him with her eyebrows arched and a pert tilt to her mouth. "Seems like the best option is to take the fight directly to HYDRA, then. Go after those bases and their people."

Sharon purses her lips and taps her fingers for a moment, exaggerating a moment in thought, then shrugs. "Well, I was looking for something to do with all this sudden free time."

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky eyes her. She doesn't seem like she's kidding. Still, he has to be sure he's understanding her correctly.

"Go rogue?"

[from_the_outside]

"Is it going rogue, though?" She cants her head, considering him.

"Or is it just... freelancing?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Depends on if you're signing up with another agency or not, I guess."

Since SHIELD's no longer an option to freelance from.

[from_the_outside]

"Well, exactly. I'm a free agent right now." She shrugs.

"There's nothing stopping me from going full vigilante."

[nerves_of_ice]

He eyes her harder than before. "We'll see," he settles on. This doesn't seem like the kind of thing that should be decided in a cave, without more planning. Not for her, anyway, although it's not unfamiliar to him.

[from_the_outside]

"Yeah." She squeezes his hand, unsure if he can even feel the gesture, then lets go and pushes up to her feet.

"Come on, let's go back. Steve's probably up by now."

[nerves_of_ice]

He gets up as well, but hesitates before heading for the opening to the outside. Bucky steps to the side and runs his fingers over the little shelf again.

"What did you use this for? Anything?"