[ 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 squeezes her fingers and leaves his hand in hers as they start to walk back again.

After a moment, he huffs a faintly amused breath. “If you were wondering if I did, I guess you kind of have proof now.”

[from_the_outside]

Sharon glances over at him at that. "I was," she murmurs, a little wry. "Wondering. So... that's good to know."

She flicks another look at him. "It's been a long time. Even without everything that happened to your memory... I'd have understood if you didn't feel the same way anymore."

[nerves_of_ice]

“I didn’t know I could feel anything anymore.” Low but clear. “I know I’m not the man you remember.”

[from_the_outside]

"I don't think I'm exactly the woman you remember, either." She looks ahead to the path they're taking, the thinning of the trees that means they're almost back.

"I had to hide a lot. Even from you."

[nerves_of_ice]

“I guess we’ll find out who we are now.” He glances over at her.

[from_the_outside]

"I guess so." People who still love each other, she hopes, or who can fall in love all over again. She knows what he says, but surely there's no way every part of Bucky's big and generous heart, that was so full of love, could be wholly gone.

At least some of it, she knows, was still there, for a little while. He'd loved Nat, too.

[nerves_of_ice]

“I’m sorry,” he says. Again. He doubts it’s doing any good but he doesn’t know what else to say.

“That I wasn’t able to stay. Stay him. Stay at all.”

[from_the_outside]

Him, he says, like he's not talking about his own past self, and she looks away, blinks back a sudden stinging scrim of tears as her throat thickens. Is she going to have to mourn him all over again?

Is the man she loved so much still, forever, gone? "You were taken," she says, flat. "HYDRA can make their apologies to me when I go for their throats."

[nerves_of_ice]

She looks away from him and he doesn’t know why, but he knows it was the wrong thing to say.

“Okay,” he murmurs.

[from_the_outside]

It's easier to focus on revenge than it is to think about her still-broken heart. Belatedly, she realizes her fingers have tightened almost painfully hard on his. It's an effort to relax them, but she does, after a moment.

[nerves_of_ice]

“Hurt, angry, or both?”

Quiet and matter of fact.

[from_the_outside]

"Let's focus on 'angry.'"

Which is really an answer of both, but it's not like he needs to hear her say it. She's hurt him enough already.

[nerves_of_ice]

It’s what he’d figured. Bucky looks up toward the house.

“Do you want me to stop apologizing?”

[from_the_outside]

She does look over at him, now, and there's a well of hurt under the banked fury in her eyes, along with something sore and longing. "I'm not going to stop you from saying things. No one's going to stop you from saying what you want anymore."

[nerves_of_ice]

The pain in her eyes slices him like a knife. “That’s not what I asked.”

[from_the_outside]

"No, it's not." She shakes her head at him, minute.

"But if it helps you to apologize, apologize. Just know I don't think any of it's your fault. And neither does Steve."

[nerves_of_ice]

“I still did it. All of it.” More than either of them know.

She still hasn’t answered his actual question, but he thinks he knows the answer anyway.

[from_the_outside]

"Yeah?"

She slows to a stop, drawing him to a halt with her before she looks up at him. "If it had been me or Steve who had been lost, and brainwashed, and tortured, and turned into a human weapon, would you blame us?"

[nerves_of_ice]

“No. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t blame yourself.”

He looks away again, scanning the treeline before they step out of cover.

[from_the_outside]

"You just said yourself you could not want things," she points out. "I know you must feel guilty. I just want you to understand Steve and I don't think you are."

[nerves_of_ice]

“I understand that. I do.”

What it means in the end they have yet to see.

[from_the_outside]

"Okay." Whatever he might be looking for in the treeline, there's nothing but birds and insects as they step out into the clearing where the house sits and begin crossing the lawn.

[nerves_of_ice]

He tries to brace himself internally for whatever’s coming next as he walks beside her back to the house.

Coffee first, though. That seems a small enough thing to allow himself to anticipate. Safe, too.

He hates what he’s doing to her, to them, by the sheer fact of what he’s become. Maybe he should try to contact Natasha; she’d gotten out, she’d assimilated somehow, she must know how it’s done. Maybe she’d at least be willing to tell him how to avoid the land mines he keeps tripping over.

[from_the_outside]

She sets a hand lightly on his back as they head up the stairs to the porch and into the house, where Steve looks up from the paper he's reading at the island, a cup of coffee in his hand. It gives her another pang to see him there — a glimpse into another life, maybe — before she smiles at him. "Good morning."

"Good morning," he returns, glancing between them. "Have a good walk?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky nods. It's easier than trying to say anything else, even if he knew where to start to explain, even if it weren't private - and then he realizes there is something he can safely say. "Sharon was showing me around a little."

His glance flicks to the paper. "Any news we should know about?"