[ 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]

"It will be," she murmurs. He's always been more optimistic than her, but she clings to it now, needing it more than ever.

Sharon huffs a wry breath and shakes her head before she squeezes his hand again and lets go. "Seems like plenty to me."

[nerves_of_ice]

"You can say that again," Steve agrees. Bucky keeps his eyes firmly locked on the mess of a map that he's still trying to put together from the fragmented bits of his recollection.

Steve doesn't realize how good his hearing is, it's apparent. Although the other man had been speaking quietly, Bucky's pretty sure he hasn't missed a single word. He lets it all wash through him in a churn that he'll try to untangle and think about later, and only looks up when Steve comes back to stand beside him.

"I'm going to ask Tony to come here," he explains. "It's going to be hard no matter what, but I think it'll help if he can meet you. Are you ready for that?"

No. He doesn't say it. What good would it do? Bucky nods to signal acceptance.

[from_the_outside]

She watches them both, her arms folded back across her ribs again, but her eyes are more on Bucky than on Steve. He doesn't like it, she thinks, but it's not like he's going to push back on any of their decisions. Maybe not even if he could.

"Let us know what he says, Steve," she tells him. "Bucky and I will keep working down here."

[nerves_of_ice]

"As soon as I'm off the call," Steve promises. He gives Bucky a reassuring clap on the shoulder before pulling out his phone and wandering off in the direction of the back porch.

Bucky watches after him for a moment before he looks back down at the map and tries to refocus.

[from_the_outside]

She waits until she hears Steve's steps on the stairs, then comes around the table towards Bucky. "Hey."

Her hand lands, light, on his arm. "Are you really okay with this?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He keeps his gaze locked on the rough sketch and holds still under her gentle touch.

"Which part?"

[from_the_outside]

"Bringing Tony here."

All of it, really, but that's by far the most pertinent part just now. "Seeing him. Talking to him."

[nerves_of_ice]

He draws a soft breath and glances sideways up at her.

"It doesn't matter. He deserves to know. Whatever makes it easier on Steve and on him is fine."

[from_the_outside]

"It matters to us." She doesn't lift her hand away, and her fingers curl a little more firmly over his arm. "It doesn't have to be today."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Waiting's not going to make it any easier," he counters. "On anyone."

[from_the_outside]

"You know what I mean." Despite everything, she thinks he does, anyway. He knows she's trying to give him an out; she knows he'll never take it. She takes a deep breath, lets it out slow through her nose.

"Fine. But if at any point you need it to stop, I'm stopping it. Whether you tell me to or not."

[nerves_of_ice]

Very, very quietly, Bucky murmurs, "Guardian angel."

[from_the_outside]

Her smile is faint, but there, and warm. "That's right."

And she always will be, for as long as she gets any say in the matter.

[nerves_of_ice]

He gives up on the map for now and turns to lean back against the table, watching her instead.

"Howard. I - was he happy? Before?"

[from_the_outside]

Her fingers release as he turns, and Sharon folds her arms back up again before she shakes her head, uncertain. "I don't really know, Bucky. I was just a kid the few times I met him. And then after I got back, Aunt Peggy..."

Her lips press, wry. "Well, she wasn't exactly in any kind of shape to tell me about him. I know he was busy, with SHIELD and Stark Industries. But he was building weapons, war machines. I don't think it's what he really wanted to be doing."

[nerves_of_ice]

He absorbs that in silence for a few seconds.

"He recognized me." Low and bitter and absolutely defeated, but he doesn't try to hide it. "That night."

[from_the_outside]

Everything about the way he sounds, looks, makes her ache. She comes a step closer, lifts her hands to set them lightly on his chest as she looks up at him.

"I'm so sorry, baby."

[nerves_of_ice]

He shudders at her sympathy, at her touch, at the way she moves toward him rather than away from the monster he's become. Metal whirs as he shoves his left arm behind him and away from her, his left hand tightening into a fist at the small of his back, but he doesn't otherwise pull away.

"His son will want to know. Won't he? How, I mean."

[from_the_outside]

"I don't know." Probably, considering Tony's obsessive need for information; considering his tense relationship with his father and his much more solid one with his mother. "But it wouldn't surprise me."

She wishes Nat were here. She knows Tony better than Sharon does, might be able to predict his probable reactions. "Maybe. I don't think it would help anything, though."

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods. "Okay." The look in his eyes is bleak but determined.

"I don't know much about him. He was never greenlit as a target. Evaluated, I think, but they never sent me after him."

[from_the_outside]

"He's a lot like Howard," she murmurs, thinking. "But not, too. More... demons. But he's a good man. He helped a lot when I first got back, too."

[nerves_of_ice]

"He did?" Guilt twists deep inside him, and he figures he'd better get used to that, but it's accompanied by curiosity. "What did he do?"

[from_the_outside]

She runs her thumb idly over the rise of his collarbone beneath the fabric of his shirt. "I landed in New York," she tells him. "He picked me up and brought me to Avengers Tower, then got Steve and Fury. He checked me over right after I appeared, and then regularly after that, just to make sure there weren't any lingering effects from traveling via cube portal."

Sharon shakes her head, thinking. "He made sure I had clothes and a phone, offered me a place to stay... I wouldn't say we're friends, exactly, but we got to know each other, a little."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I'm glad. That you had someone to help. When you - when you got back." Carefully, deliberately, he raises his right hand to brush her hair back from her face before letting it rest on her shoulder for a moment.

[from_the_outside]

She leans into his touch, brief as it is, and lets her own hands slide to his sides, his hips, as he rests his palm on her shoulder. "Me too."

She'd been a wreck in more ways that one: uniform torn and dirty, later sobbing in Steve's arms. "He knows about my going back to the war... meeting you. All the others."