[oom] something in my mind freezes up from time to time

[from_the_outside]

She hardly has any time to protest when Nakia appears like a vengeful storm sweeping into Shuri's lab and hauls Sharon away like a child who has snuck out of bed.

"Nakia –!"

"I will return her once she is ready," Nakia tells Shuri, who looks like she's barely holding back laughter, and then drags Sharon down the short corridor to the train platform, tapping out an order on her Kimoyo beads as she does.

"Do I get to know what's going on?" Sharon complains, and Nakia gives her a flat look.

"Stretch your arms up as high as you can," she commands, and when Sharon hesitates snaps: "Well?"

Annoyed, Sharon does as requested, but can only get her left arm about halfway up before wincing and letting it drop again. "As I thought," Nakia says, patronizing, and ushers her onto the train.

What follows is a series of tests and scans Sharon submits to with poor grace. "I'm fine!" she protests. "It's been six weeks!" But the Wakandan doctors either don't believe her or are too scared of Nakia to ignore her orders, and Sharon finds herself on the business end of a needle or two and several strangely warm lights that do something uncomfortable to the ribs she'd broken and then re-broken.

"Why does it hurt more now?" she complains, and Nakia smiles peaceably. "Because you did not take care of them before and now they must heal properly. You will be fine tomorrow or the day after."

And whatever arguments Sharon makes, she refuses to hear.

---

Nakia keeps her resting for the remainder of the day, feigning deafness when Sharon asks about going either to the lab or to see Bucky, and the evening and night pass without incident. She does manage to see him the next day, but it's brief: Nakia had swept in shortly after sun-up with coffee and breakfast and informed Sharon she would be taking her to meet several of the different tribes. And that it would likely take all day.

So Sharon contents herself with waving to Bucky from a distance as she and Nakia pass by: the children must have been freed from their lessons because they're clamoring around him. She meets a slew of people whose names she tries her best to remember and returns to the Citadel that evening with a few colorful braided and beaded bracelets around her wrist and several yards of beautiful cloth one of the village women had pressed on her. She doesn't know what to do with it; Nakia takes it with a secretive smile and promises to find a purpose.

But the next morning, she's up and out before Nakia can show up with plans again: the doctors had said she would be fine today, and she has somewhere she needs to be. After she's made use of the coffee maker she'd wheedled out of the kitchen staff, showered, and changed, she's heading down the halls of the Citadel to the station.

Shuri had said first thing. They may already be there.

Comments

[from_the_outside]

I don't hope for anything. Not anymore.

She can hear him barely whispering it on a roof in Leipzig as she looks over at him.

Hoping for something. Even if it's something as small as for a photograph to turn out the way he wants. "I'm sure it will."

She glances up at the sky without moving her head, then lets her glance come back to him. "How could that be anything but a great picture? It's amazing."

Tipping her head back, she looks up. "I've gotten too used to city light pollution. I forgot how beautiful the stars can be."

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods, a small movement, barely visible out of the corner of her eye as she watches the sky above them.

"I would always watch the sky, when I could. Outside the cities, anyway."

[from_the_outside]

"Well, you've got quite the show right here."

This was the right choice. Star-gazing with him in the middle of the night beats anxiously staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, hands down.

She shifts her weight to settle back down on the blanket so she can keep looking up without straining her neck, but it's a little bit of a mistake because the throw smells like him, just like it did when she napped on it the other day, and between that and how close he is, some aching thing opens up in her stomach, sore and wanting.

She breathes deeply against it, and keeps her eyes on the stars.

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods, and lapses into silence, alternating between looking at the sky and keeping watch on the world around them. Nothing stirs; there's no threat. He watches anyway.

Every half-minute, the camera shutter clicks, marking down the time to the end of the hour.

[from_the_outside]

It doesn't take a lot of self-examination for her to figure out why she's so much more relaxed out here with him under the huge, arcing night sky than she was alone in her room, but she lets herself think about it a little lazily anyway.

Feeling safe. Not just in Wakanda. With him.

It's probably why after a while, she just forgets to open her eyes back up again after blinking slowly.

She's just resting them. It's even true, until she accidentally drifts lightly off to sleep.

[nerves_of_ice]

He realizes what's happening when she stops talking, and stays quiet while her breathing deepens and evens out into the slow, steady rhythms of sleep.

For a while, he considers trying to carry her inside so that she can rest on something more comfortable than the ground, but eventually decides against it. She's not deeply asleep to begin with, he's pretty sure, and there's no way he'd be able to lift her with only one arm, not without jolting her from sleep.

The camera clicks a final time once the hour's done and whirs softly as it resets itself. He leans forward to snap the lens cap into place, and otherwise doesn't move.

Let Sharon sleep as long as she can. He'll stand watch.

[from_the_outside]

It isn't long. Maybe fifteen minutes or so, before she shifts minutely and opens her eyes, before she pushes herself back up to sitting with a deep breath, rubbing at her face. "Sorry, I think I dozed off there for a second."

Blinking sleep out of her eyes, feeling slightly fuzzy around the edges, she gives him a quirking half-smile.

"Look what you did. Now I'm too comfortable."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Don't be sorry," he murmurs. "I'm not."

[from_the_outside]

"It's not very good manners to fall asleep in the middle of talking to somebody," she tells him, with a breath of a laugh. And, sure, maybe her dedication to good manners is pretty fluid and dependent on the situation, but making them fit her requirements is her prerogative, right?

It's another second before she realizes that she isn't hearing something: the click of the camera shutter. She nods at it. "Is your time-lapse timer up?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I won't tell if you won't," he counters, before he nods.

"It finished a while ago."

[from_the_outside]

"Deal."

The little cat nap helped; she feels like she can focus a little better. Drawing her legs up, she leans an elbow on a knee and sets her jaw on her palm so she can look over at him.

What she sees makes her smile. "You look very content." More than that, maybe. Calm. Peaceful. "It's a good look on you."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Do I?" He sounds a little surprised, and glances away from the sky to look back at her. "Huh. Well, okay."

After a second, he adds,

"It was good to see Steve. Maybe that's why."

[from_the_outside]

"It was nice to see him."

She shakes her head, smiling, at the memory of him standing up to walk her out the instant she said she was leaving. "Surprising. But nice."

And helpful for clearing a few things up. "It was good to talk with him a little."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Mm-hm," Bucky agrees, without saying anything else.

She seems okay; not unhappy, from what he can tell. He's not sure he knows her well enough to know if she was hiding something, but he doesn't think she is, at least not right now.

[from_the_outside]

"Well, I'm glad he came by. Especially since you had a tough morning."

To put it mildly. "How are you feeling about that? I meant to check in earlier, but..."

She waves a hand in a way that means that's hard to do when your friend kidnaps you and you don't have a way to get in touch for multiple hours on end. It's a lot for one gesture, but hopefully he gets it.

[nerves_of_ice]

"I'm fine," he reassures her. "Really. Like I said - hell of a trip down memory lane, but nothing I haven't dealt with before."

[from_the_outside]

She doesn't look convinced, and there's a little worry line tugging between her eyebrows. "It didn't seem fine."

She's going to be hearing that agonized howl for weeks in her nightmares, she's sure. "It seemed like you were in a lot of pain."

That's putting it delicately. She's quiet for a second, wrestling with herself, until her concern outweighs her selfish desire to just...not talk about it. Maybe ever.

What he might need comes first. "Do you want to talk about it?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I was," he agrees, "but that was years ago."

Is it real pain if it's just a memory? He's not sure. It felt real, like living through it again, but...

He shakes himself from his thoughts and studies Sharon. I think it shook her up a bit, he'd told Steve, and the way she looks now isn't doing anything at all to dispel that conviction.

"Would it help if I did?"

Help you, he means.

[from_the_outside]

Her frown deepens, turning a little confused. "I don't know. Does it usually?"

He must talk with Shuri when episodes like this happen, right? Or Steve?

The idea that he just...keeps it to himself and doesn't think it's worth talking about is too sad to contemplate for long, even if she knows it's the likeliest option.

[nerves_of_ice]

Now he looks confused, as well.

"Usually?"

[from_the_outside]

Sometimes she hates being right.

"To talk it over with someone," she prompts. "Like...Steve, maybe. I know I'm not him, but I can listen, if it'll help."

[nerves_of_ice]

That faint look of confusion deepens.

"Why would it?"

It happened. It's done. They both survived. Neither of them can go back and change the past.

"I mean, I can, if you want," he adds, after a moment.

[from_the_outside]

Oof.

"Because it might have brought some things up to the surface that you hadn't thought about in a while," she says, carefully. "And sometimes it's easier to work through that stuff with someone else."

But his second comment makes her huff a laugh that's sharper than she means it to be. "It's not about what I want."

What she wants is to have never seen him stare out a window while remembering a past with her friend, but here they are anyway.

[nerves_of_ice]

He dismisses the idea of working through anything in favor of focusing on the sharpness of that laugh, trying to figure out what's underneath it. Concern is clear in his eyes as he studies her.

"You didn't know," he realizes. "About Natasha's past. Sharon--"

He shifts position, turning to face her more directly.

"-- don't be mad at her for keeping that secret. There was a time when telling anyone, anyone, would have gotten her killed, or worse. Old habits are hard to break."

[from_the_outside]

"What?"

She shifts to look at him, too, one leg curled on the blanket, the other drawn up, bracing herself on a hand. "I'm not mad at Natasha. I don't – there's no reason she would have –"

She's in real danger of just vomiting a bunch of words that don't make sense even to her, so she stops, takes a breath, and tries to organize her thoughts around the one thing she's been avoiding thinking about all day. "That's not what I mean. What I mean is..."

Hesitation is anathema to her whole sense of self. She braces herself, ruthlessly strips away the confusing layers of fog until what she'd known she'd have to say since this morning shines as hard and clean as a polished gun, and aims it directly at herself.

"Look, you know how I feel. But that, this morning, that was history. History I don't have. So if you still feel that way about Natasha, if you want to see if there's a chance you can get something back with her...I think you should try."