[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]

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."

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky stares at her.

"What?" he echoes, blankly. "You think -- what?"

[from_the_outside]

"I really don't know how much more clear I can be," she says, a little impatiently.

She's not going to say it again. Saying it once was bad enough already.

[nerves_of_ice]

"You think I should try."

Something is changing in the set of how he's holding himself, tension threading through his body as his tone flattens, becomes harder.

"You think that because of a past we shared decades ago, when the two of us were -- when she saved what there was left to save of my very soul, for as long as she could -- that I should slam back into her life and shatter the happiness she's found for herself the way I destroyed the rest of the Avengers? You think I'm the sort of person who would willingly do that?"

He can hear himself getting louder, and for once, he doesn't try to stop it from happening. Stunned shock, pain, and rising anger twist together inside him in a boil.

He uncoils himself to his feet in a single swift motion and strides away, toward the lake.

[from_the_outside]

"...What?" she says again, utterly bewildered, but he's already up and moving away like a sudden freeze settling over the lake, the field, the blanket, her.

There's a stunned second where she doesn't move, but then she's up and following him. "That's not what I meant – that's not what I think, you know I don't think that."

She's pleading. She can hear it in her voice, but she swallows her pride and just lets it happen. "Bucky, please. That's not what I said. Or what I meant. I only meant...if you could both be happy, wouldn't that be worth a shot?"

He's close now, but feels so far away; she's not sure how near she should come. He's never been this angry or hurt with her before. "I don't think you would shatter her happiness. How could I? You make me happy. It's only...it's only reasonable I'd think you'd make her happy, too."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I told you." He doesn't turn to look at her, instead staring out over the water. "We're different people now."

You could at least recognize me, she'd said, as his hand locked around her throat and began to squeeze.

Nat says 'don't be a stranger,' Steve had told him, just hours ago, and he'd replied, Tell her I said 'not any more.'

Could there be something between them, the way there had been? Would he want that? Would she?

[from_the_outside]

"I know, I just –"

Just, what? She's not sure she even knows. "It's none of my business, I know," she says, a little desperately.

She watches him, every muscle in her tense the way every muscle in him is tense, and swallows hard. "I keep hurting you." It's so soft, it's nearly a whisper.

By accident, maybe, but she keeps doing it. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything." And, because she means it, she repeats: "It's none of my business."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I'm not that fragile," he says, flatly. "I won't break. Or not any more than I have already."

He turns away from the water to level a considering look at her.

"Maybe it should be."

[from_the_outside]

That's not the point, she wants to argue. He shouldn't have to break for pain to mean something.

But she's put her foot in it enough already, and any thoughts of arguing go out of her head anyway when he turns to look at her. "What do you mean?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He doesn't hesitate.

"I mean maybe knowing is the only way for you to understand."

He doesn't continue beyond that, but waits to see what she has to say.

[from_the_outside]

"Knowing what?"

Knowing...about him and Natasha? She's pretty sure she'd rather not, but she's the one who made this bed and now she has to lie in it.

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head at that, openly and very obviously disbelieving, and stays silent for a few seconds.

"When I said we were different people," he says, finally. "I meant it."

A beat.

"Sharon... the reason I was screaming, this morning, is because of what happened when we were compromised. I told you about it before. When they stripped everything away of my mind, of me, but the weapon. What they did to Natasha ... she became someone else to survive. She had to."

[from_the_outside]

That disbelief hurts almost as much as anything else; she wasn't being facetious. She's as lost in this conversation as it's possible to be.

And then the hurt becomes something else, becomes feeling sick to her stomach: at the way he was treated, the things they did to him, to Natasha, and why.

At her own selfishness, because she still doesn't want to hear it.

But he's telling her, so she can take it. She can take almost anything. Her throat bobs as she swallows, but she doesn't let her gaze flicker from his, only stands there, listening.

To whatever he has to say.

[nerves_of_ice]

"She's still your friend," he says, and now his tone has shifted back from that hard edge to something far more gentle. Something reassuring.

"She didn't lie to you, Sharon. She's still the same person you've always known."

[from_the_outside]

Oh, this gentleness is so much worse. She doesn't deserve it. Her feelings are not the ones he should be worried about right now.

Her throat feels thick. "I know."

Natasha Romanoff has always had a talent for being anything to anyone, but that's because all her chameleon colors live in a real person who has perfected the art of staying alive.

She believes her friend. She knows her. "Why do you think this is so hard?"

It's because she's not as good a person as he is. And nowhere near as good as Steve is. She's selfish and jealous and no matter how hard she tries to cram that ugly feeling away, it's still there. "I'm just –"

There's that just again. She sighs and tries again. "I know we're not...anything...so whatever you feel about Natasha is none of my business. It isn't," she reiterates, a little sharply. "But if we ever were..."

But they're not. And she needs to stop imagining that they might be. He's made himself more than clear.

She reaches up to rub at her forehead and shakes her head. "Never mind. It's not relevant."

[nerves_of_ice]

"It might be."

Very, very softly. He stays where he is, and doesn't move.

"It could be. Maybe. Relevant, I mean."

[from_the_outside]

She looks at him for a long, heart-stopped moment.

"Okay, then." Her throat is so full she can barely talk; her voice comes out a near whisper until she swallows and strengthens it.

"If we were, I wouldn't want to worry about whether or not you'd change your mind and pick my friend instead of me."

She's watching him very carefully. "But it isn't. Relevant.

"Right?"

[nerves_of_ice]

She hasn't slept, again, he realizes. Neither has he. It's been only a couple of hours since Steve dropped a bombshell on everything he'd thought he knew. He hasn't figured out what to do about it, any of it.

Do not be careless with her, Nakia's voice echoes in his mind.

"I don't know," he answers, honestly, holding her gaze with his own. "I'm still a bad bet, like I said before. I'm still a wreck, and that's not going to be different any time soon. And I'm always going to have history with Natasha. I loved her, Sharon. In some ways I always will. I can't change any of that."

He draws a careful breath.

"But Steve and I talked, earlier. He said he'd talked with you, too."

[from_the_outside]

"He did."

The rest...it matters. But not much.

It's not the history she's worried about. After all, she's loved other people, too, and always will. It's the potential future that's been gnawing on her all day. All night, too, she realizes. It's got to be well after four in the morning by now.

So she focuses on the thing she knows she can answer. "We agreed we're better off as friends."

She pauses. Then: "What did he say to you?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"That the two of you agreed you're better off as friends. That you mean a lot to him... but not the way I thought you did."

He takes another careful, deliberate breath.

"That maybe I should let myself think about ... how I might feel."

[from_the_outside]

She's holding herself very still.

"That sounds like good advice."