[oom] you don't need to save me, but would you run away with me? // Part 2

[from_the_outside]

It's a long, long week. 

All the weeks here are long. She's been exhausted since she first arrived, and it hasn't gotten any easier – she's just gotten used to it.

What she isn't used to is watching what it does to Bucky.

He keeps busy, vanishing shortly after breakfast and not reappearing until well after dark, sometimes not until close to midnight. That doesn't mean she doesn't have eyes on him – she has eyes everywhere in this city. Some of what he gets up to he tells her about. Some of it she sees or hears about.

Some she only pieces together after the fact.

For example:

Four days into his stay she sees a flurry of alerts and messages about a gang of thugs that had decided to tangle with him in a Lowtown market. The videos of him throwing them into plate glass windows and walls and storefront doors travel through Madripoor like wildfire.

And then there are the rumors. It's public knowledge he killed Cade and that he's been seen with the art dealer: what no one knows is why, and the whispers grow steadily more frenetic as the week rolls on. The general consensus seems to be that the art dealer had Cade disposed of in order to help her own climb to power. More than one person attempts to contract him for help with an unsolvable problem. No one manages to hire him. No one seems to know what he wants.

Worse is that as the power dynamic between those on the lower rung vying for Selby's position fluctuates, he deliberately allows himself to be seen more often, delves more deeply into Madripoor's seedy shadows. She doesn't understand until her security catches a would-be assassin she saw coming a mile away, and then she realizes: his involvement with her, with Cade, has painted a target on her back.

So he's decided to paint a larger one on his own.

He loses weight. She pushes breakfast and dinner at him, but he eats mechanically, hardly seems to notice. The lines drawn on his face seem carved into rock. He stops smiling except occasionally when they're alone in the middle of the night, or when his phone pings with a text from Sam.

On the fifth night, he stops sleeping. 

He wakes up from a nightmare he refuses to talk about, and for the next few days she doesn't see him sleep at all. He's catching catnaps like he used to back in the Winter Soldier days, she thinks, but she's not sure. Every day he's a little quieter, a little more grim.

Which is why it's so strange that her apartment is completely filled with flowers.

Everywhere she looks now, there they are: large, expensive bouquets in fancy vases on nearly every available surface. He's had one delivered every single day, and every day she hates herself a little more for bringing him here. Every day he tells her come home with me.

Every day she tells him I can't. And he looks at her with those determined, weary eyes, and her heart breaks a little more.

It's a little over a week after he'd first arrived that she's hosting clients again. The party hasn't even started, and she already wishes she had a drink.

(There weren't any flowers today. She wonders if that's a sign.)

Comments

[from_the_outside]

That even tone of his is setting alarm bells jangling in her head.

"Remember how you promised not to shoot him?" she asks. "You still mean it, right?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I won't shoot him." He glances at her. "Again, that is. And I promise. Again."

[from_the_outside]

She studies him, but only shakes her head after a long moment.

"If you want to sit in, fine," she tells him. "But if it turns into a shouting match, I'm breaking it up. It happened. He did what he did, I did what I did. If you're going to be angry at anyone, it may as well be me."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Thank you." It's amazing how polite he sounds, really. "There won't be a shouting match."

[from_the_outside]

"Why do I think that's somehow going to be worse?" she mutters, but it's mostly to herself as she looks back out the window.

Her stomach is in knots again. She should have some water.

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky glances sideways at her again, studying her face, then reaches out to take her hand.

"It'll be okay, baby," he murmurs. "I'll be good."

[from_the_outside]

"You deserve to be angry."

His hand is warm and real and gentle and she doesn't understand why he hasn't gotten angry at her yet.

She's the one who left. She's the one who didn't tell him the truth about the mission. She's the one who stayed in Madripoor and didn't reach out, not to him, not to anyone, when they came back. He'd always worried about hurting her, but she's the one who hurt him, terribly. "I get it."

[nerves_of_ice]

"So do you. And I'm not going to make things harder for you," he tells her. "Or at least I'm going to try really hard not to."

He runs his thumb over her fingers, slowly, back and forth.

[from_the_outside]

"Even if you did, it's less than I deserve."

It's one thing if she'd had to, if she hadn't had any choice. She'd convinced herself that was true.

But then he appeared and it turned out it wasn't. And she'd chosen wrong, again and again. "I'm not angry at him, Bucky. Not anymore. It stopped being his fault when Thanos snapped his fingers."

[nerves_of_ice]

He opens his mouth to argue with her, then visibly rethinks things. This is neither the place nor the time to get into that discussion, and neither of them are in any condition for it.

"You don't have to be mad at him if you don't want to be," he says, quietly. "It's okay, baby."

He says nothing about his own anger, and keeps the lid on it tamped down firmly.

[from_the_outside]

"Being angry with him takes more energy than I have right now," she says, wry, loosely tangling her fingers with his.

"And who knows if he'll even let himself be found."

[nerves_of_ice]

"There's that."

Although he's pretty sure that if he puts his mind to it, there's nowhere on the planet that Fury can hide from him. Not forever.

"We'll figure it out. In Brooklyn."

[from_the_outside]

"Okay."

He's so certain. It's easy to just... choose to believe him. She smiles at him, a little, and squeezes his hand before she lets go and gets up. "I'm going to get some water. Want anything else while I'm up?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Water sounds good," he realizes, smiling back at her. "Also... why don't you bring back a pillow and blanket for yourself if you're going to hang out here with me?"

[from_the_outside]

"Nice try," she tells him, and slips her hands into her pockets as she steps into the galley. There are plenty of cold water bottles available; she grabs two and hands one to him before swinging herself back into the co-pilot's seat.

Cracking her bottle open, she takes a long swallow, then leans her head back against the seat as she looks out the window.

[nerves_of_ice]

When she looks back, she'll find that he's fiddling with one of the instruments and something on his phone, looking at maps and updating their flight plan.

[from_the_outside]

She frowns, slightly.

"What's up? Someone in our way?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"No, I'm just setting up an alternate route or two in case we need it," he explains, looking over at her.

"In case of bad weather or something like that."

[from_the_outside]

She nods, the tension she hadn't noticed snaking into her shoulders relaxing. How long will it be, she wonders, before she stops jumping at shadows?

Another swallow of water and she caps the bottle, sets it into the cupholder so she can put her hands in her lap and lean back again. "Good planning."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I try," he says, with a hint of humor. Bucky glances over at her, taking in the way she relaxes a little at the reassurance, the way she leans back against the seat.

She's exhausted. He's tired, but he's still got enough left to push through, especially with a nap somewhere along the way. But Sharon's running on her very last nerve and the end of her stamina, and he's pretty sure what's keeping her upright now is nothing more than pure will.

Maybe there's something he can do to help with that.

Instead of starting to point out different constellations and passing distant flights, he decides to stay quiet, letting the soft beeps and chirps of the instrumentation blend with the rush of air past the plane.

[from_the_outside]

She hardly notices when they lapse into companionable silence, just watches the clouds scud by, tracks the stars with slightly unfocused eyes, letting her thoughts drift. There are still too many spiked traps and pits in her own mind; she skirts around them with the ease of long practice and does her best to think of nothing at all.

Her chest still aches a little from the attack the night before, but not enough to keep her from breathing slow and easy. In. Out. Quiet sounds of the plane, quiet sounds of her own body. Bucky next to her, quiet and steady and absolutely faithful.

She doesn't notice when her eyes eventually slide shut and don't open again, either. She's already too fast asleep.

[nerves_of_ice]

He waits, listening to the sound of her breathing, watching the way utter relaxation steals through her as sleep overtakes her. Five minutes. Ten.

Fifteen.

Twenty minutes, and he double-checks the autopilot again before he gets to his feet and moves into the main cabin with silent, lithe grace. It's the work of only a few moments to stretch one of the leather, first-class passenger chairs flat into a comfortable bed. He drapes a blanket over it, adds a pillow and grabs a second, then gets another couple of blankets ready before he goes back to the cockpit.

Carefully, trying his best not to wake her, he scoops Sharon into his arms and stands up.

[from_the_outside]

Awareness does its best to steal through her, but it's clogged up and slothful; her eyes feel sticky when she tries to blink them open, and her body is so heavy.

She makes a questioning sound, low and tired, but doesn't resist as he takes her into his arms. He's warm and solid and she's so weary; she just puts her head against his shoulder and lets her eyes close again.

[nerves_of_ice]

He murmurs something reassuring under his breath in answer and cradles her against him until she settles again. Only then does he move, carrying her out into the main cabin, where he lowers her gently to the makeshift bed.

Bucky sets the second pillow next to her so she has something to hold on to and tucks the blankets over her. He waits until he's sure she's still asleep and likely to stay that way before he goes back to the cockpit to watch over their flight, leaving the door open behind him so that he can hear her if she calls out.

[from_the_outside]

Her dreams are mostly formless, though she recognizes bits and pieces here and there. Bucky's there. Sam, too. Karli. Mateo. If anything takes real shape, she forgets it almost instantly as her sleeping mind skips from shape to shape.

What is clear is when she blinks suddenly awake and finds herself holding not Bucky, but a pillow, and she gasps as she sits up, cold panic washing through her. It was a dream, she never left, he never came –

All of it flashing into and out of her mind in a second as she realizes she's on the plane, not in her bed in Madripoor, and if it was a dream, she's still sleeping.

It doesn't do anything to slow her pulse or keep anxiety from spiking through her blood, though.