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

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

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.)

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She doesn't sleep well, exactly, but she does sleep, waking up every little while to have some more water, use the lavatory, or just watch him with dark, tired eyes as he flies them home.

Occasionally nightmares shake her awake, variations on the same one she's had all week: they arrive and she is arrested. Or worse.

But at one point she blinks awake to see the horizon limned in the shimmering watercolor lights of the Aurora Borealis. She reaches for his hand and watches it with him in silence for a long time, and for a little while manages not to think of anything at all aside from how lucky she is.

By the time the coast of Greenland slides away beneath them he can feel his own weariness beginning to settle in his bones, but a careful self-assessment confirms that he'll be good to go for hours yet.

Which is fortunate, as they're starting to enter more populated airspace. Bucky turns the volume up on the radio and starts monitoring more closely as they begin the long arc over Canada that will eventually lead them down to New York.

They left in darkness and they'll arrive in the pre-dawn gloom, which is good, as far as she's concerned. There shouldn't be too many people up and around and paying attention to them in the small hours of the morning.

But it does make this whole trip feel even less real than it did to begin with. She pulls herself from her cycle of catnaps as they soar over Nunavut towards Quebec, gets up to make a new pot of coffee and dig out something resembling breakfast that Bucky can eat one-handed. She sits cross-legged in the co-pilot's chair and sips at her coffee, watching as the sky gets busier, as the lights of once-familiar cities begin to sparkle in the darkness below.

He waits until they've crossed the US-Canada border before he reaches under the console to the left and flips a switch. Something beeps loudly and all the instruments flicker. The flight plan displayed on screen blinks out, and is replaced by one that shows an itinerary from Wayne County Airport in Detroit to Teterboro.

Bucky gives her a bland look, and takes a swallow of his own coffee.

She glances at the screen as it blinks, then shoots an amused glance his way. "Neat trick," she says, as mild as he's ever managed, but they're so close and it's starting to thrum through her veins now, pushing out the fatigue poisons and beating in her blood like a drum:

Home, home, home. Nearly there.

"One of a few," he agrees. "Better get buckled in. I'll be calling in for clearance and our landing pattern in a few minutes."

He leans over to give her a quick kiss, running his fingers into her hair and cupping the back of her head in his hand.

"Almost there, baby. Hang on just a little longer."

She kisses him back and smiles at him. They're both worn and drawn and they desperately need sleep, shower, and at least twenty-four hours where nothing bad happens, but they're almost home. She straps in as requested and watches with interest as he checks the instruments, as the little dot that represents their jet inches ever closer to the East Coast.

As soon as is reasonable, he calls the tower, transmits their flight information, and requests an approach clearance. The time of day helps; there aren't nearly as many flights inbound as there might otherwise be.

Within minutes, they're authorized to proceed, and Bucky sends the plane slipping down through the air on the designated heading to circle the airport, maintaining altitude as instructed. Ten minutes after that, they hear,

"Hotel Zulu, cleared to land runway one-niner."

A surge of adrenaline races through him, and Bucky glances at Sharon with a grin as he sends back, "Confirm Hotel Zulu landing runway one-niner," and swings them around into the descent.

Like someone in a dream, she watches the airport grow in the window as they descend towards New Jersey. She can see the skyscrapers of New York; if it were light enough she'd be able to see Long Island Sound. All of it so familiar it hurts.

Her breathing comes faster and faster as they slip lower and lower, and then Bucky's initiating the landing sequence – there's a bump and a skidding sensation – and then she's home. For the first time in seven long years, home. She's a bundle of nervous energy as they taxi in, as Bucky talks through their arrival, as they come to rest in a hangar, and then the hatch opens and she can walk down the stairs and onto US soil for the first time in seven years.

Nobody arrests her. Nobody sees her and shouts. Nobody pulls a gun. She breathes in the muggy night air and looks at Bucky with shining eyes, absolutely unable to speak.

He stands at the bottom of the staircase, the plane shut down and its door locked, his pack slung over his left shoulder next to the bag with the boxed egg and the wrapped painting tucked under his right arm, and just watches her take in the world around them.

When Sharon turns to him, he walks forward and cups the back of her neck with his left hand, gently, and bends down to kiss her.

"Welcome home, angel."

She returns his kiss and cradles his face for a moment between her hands, her heart so full she can't speak, can barely breathe.

Home. And for a moment, she doesn't care that it's the place that shut her out, burned her, called her enemy. It's still where she was born. Where she grew up and lived. Where she became who she is.

Who she still is. Somewhere. I don't have a home, she'd told him, and it was true, but she doesn't want it to be true anymore. She doesn't want to be homesick anymore.

So she nods and smiles a little at him and takes another deep breath before she trusts herself enough to speak. "Almost."

If she has a home, it's not a place. It's just wherever he is. "Brooklyn's waiting."

He smiles, and it's sweet and warm with gentle promise.

"It sure is. Come on. Let's grab a cab."

Bucky shifts the painting to his left hand and takes hold of her hand with his right, drawing her after him towards the other side of the terminal. As he'd expected, there are more than a few yellow cabs lurking in line across from where the car services drop off and pick up. Bucky leads Sharon to one and opens the door for her before he puts their things in the trunk and climbs in after her, giving the driver his address.

This is all so normal it's making her head spin. How many times did she sit in the back of one of these yellow cabs, heading out from an airport? Just yesterday that all felt like a life that happened to someone else, and now here she is and it's like the last six years in Madripoor were just a bad dream.

(They weren't. She has so much still she needs to do.)

She almost laughs at the familiar scent of cab interior, at the cracked seats and surly driver, and when Bucky slides in and closes the door and the cab pulls away, she sits close to him and puts her head on his shoulder to watch the city as it slowly appears through the windows.

He kisses her hair and looks past her out the window on the other side of the cab as they make their way along the turnpike and highways, across the bridge and across Manhattan and down streets that become more and more familiar the further they go. At this time of the morning it doesn't take too long, maybe three-quarters of an hour, before they're pulling past the green trees and old brick of the buildings in this well-established neighborhood.

The cab slows to a stop in front of one of them, and Bucky swipes a card through the payment terminal on the back of the seat, leaving a good tip, before he gets out and goes to collect their bags.

He meets Sharon on the sidewalk and nods toward the building. "It's that one," he murmurs, indicating the half-flight of stairs that leads up to a wooden door with a large white-curtained window overlooking the street. Bucky takes her by the hand and leads her up the stairs, then fumbles his keys from the outer pocket of his pack and unlocks the door.

Edited 2021-05-06 03:01 (UTC)

He was right, she realizes. She is going to like it here.

She likes the old brick buildings and the spacious sidewalks. And the trees: there were no trees around her in Madripoor. Nothing alive and growing, nothing fresh and green. She looks around, taking in the quiet neighborhood, as he unlocks the door, then waits for his nod to make her way inside.

He has to feel around a little for the wall switch, as he's not used to keeping the overhead light on - normally he just adapts to the daylight through the windows, the glow of the television, or some combination of both. But this early in the morning that's not going to help, much less as Sharon's not familiar with the place yet.

It means that the soft white glow from the ceiling fixture clearly illuminates the wooden floors, bare of even a throw rug; the beautiful exposed brick wall to the right, behind the large flatscreen television on its minimalist black wooden stand; the small kitchen at the other end of the room, next to a hallway and behind the marble passthrough counter designed for barstool-height chairs that are still absent here; the black-framed photograph of the night sky hanging on the wall to the left; the armchair with two blankets lying draped across it, one purple-and-smoke and one green; and the small wooden side table with a black metal stand, from which hangs a piece of cracked glass art.

She blinks in the sudden light and turns slowly, taking it all in with a complicated knot of emotions. She's too tired to try untangling them right now, but the prevalent force hitting her is a confusing mix of happiness and sorrow. She's nearly light-headed with joy at being here, a place she's been in for fewer than thirty seconds but which already feels more like where she belongs than her ostentatious penthouse ever did, but...

"Haven't gotten around to decorating much?" she asks, turning to smile at him.

Which is when her gaze falls on the chair, and the two blankets draped over it, and the small piece of cracked glass art hung so carefully beside them, and the words die in her throat. She walks over like a woman in a dream to run her fingers over the soft wool while a cacophony of memories play in her mind: Leipzig. The day she came to Wakanda. All the times they sat on or wrapped in these blankets; all the nights they slept beneath them or pillowed on them.

Her touch is light, like she's afraid the wool will disintegrate beneath her fingers, but the blankets are as sturdy and soft as ever, the colors as true, and she turns to him with her eyes full of all the things aching in her chest. "Baby," she says, sore and soft.

He shuts and locks the door behind him with the motions of pure habit, then sheds the pack, bag, and painting onto the floor beside him with undue haste. Bucky drops his keys on top of the pack and walks forward to take Sharon in his arms, holding her tight.

"You're here," he breathes into her hair, barely a whisper. "Sharon. Sharon. You're here."

She's real and warm in his arms, not a dream or a ghost, and he feels something in his chest tighten.

Her arms go around him, tight, as tight as they can, and she presses her face into his neck. "I'm here," she tells him, her own voice hardly audible. Her chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with fatigue or gas or anxiety. She squeezes her eyes closed and holds onto him like she's drowning.

"I'm here. You brought me home."

Her soft whisper nearly drops him to his knees, and his embrace tightens further for an instant before he makes himself loosen it a little, afraid of cracking her ribs.

"You're home," he promises her, and strokes one hand along her back. "You're here. You're safe."

Bucky makes himself pull back just enough to look at her. "And baby, you've got to be exhausted."

You're safe, he promises, and she knows it isn't really true, but right now?

She hasn't felt this safe since she left Wakanda. When he pulls back to look at her, she smiles at him, feeling tissue-thin. "I am. God, I am. I'm so tired. You must be, too."

Her hand goes to his face, and she leans up to kiss him, very gently. "You did it, baby," she whispers to him. "You did it. And now – oh, god."

She drops her forehead to his chest, exhaustion bubbling up out of her in lightly hysterical giggles. "Can we please go to bed?"

He laughs, quick and soft, and picks her up in his arms. Bucky kisses her, then carries her down the hallway, past the bathroom, and into the bedroom at the back of the apartment. It's as sparsely furnished as the rest of the place, with a dresser, a sheet-covered bed and frame, and nothing else.

He sets her down, gently, and gives her another quick kiss. "Wait here and I'll get the bags."

Bucky disappears down the hallway and returns in short order with both bags, the painting, and the two blankets from the armchair slung over his shoulder.

She's right where he left her, except for her boots and socks, which she's taken off and tucked neatly under the bed.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she's taking stock of the size of the room and the bed and the dresser and begun making a preliminary shopping list... but it can wait. It can all wait.

The blankets get a fond look, as she starts stripping out of her clothes. She's too tired for it to be anything but practical, a way to get under the sheets and blankets and into his arms as quickly as possible, but she can't help but feel a little more like Sharon Carter with every piece of Madripoor she strips away. She desperately wants a shower, but she wants sleep more. "I feel like I could sleep for a week."

"You can, if you want," he teases, as he dumps everything but the blankets unceremoniously in a corner. Bucky spreads the blankets over the bed, pulls them back along with the sheet, and vanishes into the hall.

He comes back with a set of towels balanced in the crook of his arm, wrestling a second pillow into a fresh case. The pillow gets added to the side of the bed that he knows Sharon prefers, and the towels get placed on the dresser for her.

He vanishes a second time to make use of the bathroom - and to make sure things like toothpaste will be easy for her to find, along with adding a water glass for her - then returns after an extremely fast wash-up, leaving it clear for her if she wants. "Bathroom's across the way," he tells her, as he starts to strip out of his own clothing. "I'll give you the full tour of the place later, if that's okay."

"I wouldn't be able to remember any of it right now anyway," she assures him, rummaging through the pack for her toiletry bag, and takes one of the towels with her as she heads to the bathroom. Like him, she uses it and cleans up as quickly as possible, brushing her teeth and washing her face before heading back into the bedroom, making a beeline for her side of the bed.

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

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