[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]

The look she gives him back is rueful and sympathetic.

"It'll mean faking my death again," she tells him, and then adds, wry,

"And you'll probably get blamed for it."

[nerves_of_ice]

The blow lands, sharp and unexpected.



"Me?"

[from_the_outside]

She squeezes his hand, hoping he can feel enough of it through the haptic sensors that it will be some comfort. "If I 'die,'" she says, "and you disappear, that's the most likely scenario. At least, as far as Madripoor knows."

Tugging lightly on his hand, she shifts so there's room for him to join her on the couch. She still feels light-headed and her chest hurts, but her thoughts are clear and a plan is beginning to lay itself out before her. "Come here, let me explain."

[nerves_of_ice]

He allows himself to be drawn up to sit beside her and puts his arm around her, gently, supporting her and holding her close.

"Okay," he says, on a long, weary sigh. "Tell me."

[from_the_outside]

"I know," she says, and reaches up to stroke his temple. "I'm sorry."

Once he's settled, she turns, letting one leg curl up into his lap so she can face him. "If we're going to get out of here without a host of bounty hunters on our tail," she tells him, "we need a clean break. Anders is with Mateo, right?"

She hardly waits for his acknowledgment before pushing onward, thoughts piling up almost faster than she can speak them. "I'll fire the security team for allowing the attack and hole up here. At the same time, I'll suggest to Mateo that I was the mastermind behind this attack, not Anders. I invited all my competitors to one place and set Anders up."

She watches him closely. "We'll set a bomb in the penthouse. I'll die in the blast, you'll disappear. Madripoor will think that you've been keeping an eye on me all along, maybe for the Power Broker, maybe for Mateo. That you won my trust and convinced me to fire the security team – after all, you've been dismissive of them since you got here. And that once my guard was down, you struck."

A thought hits her, and she almost smiles. "And you'd take the Danish egg on your way out, of course. As reparations."

She sits back, spreads her hands. "That gets rid of the art dealer, gives you a way to disappear and never come back, and still lets me operate as the Power Broker even outside of Madripoor."

[nerves_of_ice]

He listens in silence, doing his best to keep his expression from letting anything show, forcing himself to consider the plan she's presenting with ruthless practicality.

"Why tell Mateo you were the mastermind?" he asks. "To get him gunning for you?"

[from_the_outside]

"I won't," she tells him. "Not directly. I'll let something slip to the security team when I fire them; they'll talk and the rumor will spread. I'll nudge it along as the Power Broker, suggest that maybe Anders was in league with me. If he's still alive, he'll turn on me in a second, trying to keep himself that way. If he isn't..."

She shrugs. No great loss there. "All we need is enough of a rumor that it wouldn't be strange for someone to take me out. Especially if the Power Broker gets pissed that I almost killed his favorite."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Not 'someone.' Me."

There's something odd - something taut and edged with darkness -in his voice for a moment before he gets it back under control, cool and neutral and even.

"And with the conversation I had with Lin Chao earlier - if anyone remembers it after all this - people will believe the Winter Soldier reclaimed the Russian treasure as payment. Easily."

[from_the_outside]

"Yes," she says, after a second. "You."

She reaches to lay a hand gently on his cheek. "I'm sorry, baby. But it could work. We could go – tonight, even. Tomorrow at the latest."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I know." He holds still under her touch.

"Tomorrow. Time for the rumors to spread. Time to source and set the explosive. Time for me to get the plane ready without anyone realizing."

Bucky sighs. "I hate it. But it's a good plan. It should work. Fury'd laugh himself sick."

[from_the_outside]

She grimaces as she pulls her hand back again. "Well, I learned from the best," she says, wry. "I know you hate it. I'm sorry."

But there's a tiny smile crooking the corner of her mouth after she blows out a sigh and coughs again to clear her throat. "But we're going home. It'll be worth it."

And this time she's going to make sure nothing, nothing at all, stands in their way.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Yes," he confirms, and reaches to catch her hand in his. "It will."

He's eyeing her a little more carefully now, the reason for which becomes clear when he asks,

"In the meantime... what did the doctor tell you?"

[from_the_outside]

She reaches over to the table for her water, shaking her head. "To call her if anything goes seriously wrong," she says, wry.

"She gave me a shot and some oxygen. A little rest, I'll be fine."

[nerves_of_ice]

The look on his face shouts volumes about his opinion of the doctor.

"Uh-huh," he says, dryly. "Why don't we get you cleaned up, in some clothes that don't have poison residue on them, and then see?"

[from_the_outside]

She's not going to argue. The quality of medical attention here in Madripoor leaves a lot to be desired. "That sounds like a really good idea."

One last night here. She can't say she'll miss the place. Putting a hand on his shoulder, she pushes herself up and off the couch to set actions to words.

[nerves_of_ice]

He lets her get to her feet before he simply stands and swings her into his arms, then carries her toward the French doors and the bedroom beyond.

[from_the_outside]

She laughs, though it hurts her throat and her chest, and puts her head on his shoulder, affectionate and amused.

"I have legs, you know," she points out. "They work and everything."

Not that she's complaining. If he wants to carry her around, let him; she doesn't want to be more than an arm's length from him, either.

[nerves_of_ice]

He makes a disapproving sound and otherwise ignores that observation, carrying her all the way through to the ensuite before he lowers her to the floor.

"Bath or shower?"

[from_the_outside]

"Shower," she says, leaning against the sink and watching him. A bath sounds wonderful and she'd rather not stand for too long, but the steam from the shower should help her breathing and her sore throat. She can sit on the floor of the tub if she needs to.

[nerves_of_ice]

The look he gives her at that is frankly skeptical. "Okay. Stay there for a moment."

Bucky disappears through the door into the bedroom and goes to retrieve soft, comfortable clothing for her. He's back in very short order, and examining her to see how difficult it'd been for her to stand while he was gone.

[from_the_outside]

As ordered, she hasn't moved – though whether that's because her legs are behaving enough to let her stand or because she's resting nearly all of her weight against the sink is anyone's guess.

"Thanks," she tells him, and nods to the counter. "You can just leave them there."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Uh-huh," he says, laying the clothes where indicated. "Now, are you going to let me help you with your shower?"

[from_the_outside]

"What are the chances you'll take 'no' for an answer?" she asks, but it's rhetorical. She gives the shower a resigned nod, giving him the go-ahead to turn it on as she starts peeling off her clothes, tossing them into the hamper nearby.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Pretty slim," he informs her. Bucky turns on the shower and leans down to unfasten his boots, then starts stripping out of his own clothing.

From his manner, he's focused on practicality rather than anything else.

[from_the_outside]

She's tossing pants and underwear into the hamper when she glances up at him. The sharp breath she takes when she sees the scrapes and bruises left from his accident earlier kicks off another round of coughing, and she's watery-eyed once it's passed.

"Bucky, your leg –"

He's right about her not having it in herself to stand for too long, but she walks slowly over to him to look him over, hissing like it's her own leg that's been scraped raw. "That looks like it hurts."