[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

[nerves_of_ice]

"Mm-hm," he agrees, and makes no promises. She's right, though; he's going to need to rest some, if he's going to fly them out of here.

Bucky makes sure she's settled comfortably, keeps his arm around her, and wills himself to fall into a light doze - one that'll let him react to any change in her breathing, and one that'll let him rest without going deep enough for nightmares. He hopes.

[from_the_outside]

Unsurprisingly, she sleeps like shit.

Part of it is that she just doesn't feel all that well still. Her chest still hurts a bit and so does her throat, which she supposes isn't unusual after being poisoned.

Part of it is that she always sleeps like shit now. She's slept better since he's been here, but she still dreams almost every night, still wakes up throughout the night, still sleeps shallow and restless.

But most of it is that nervous sensation she remembers from being a kid on Christmas Eve: nerves and anticipation and fear and hope all tangling up in her chest and head until sleep seems impossible.

It isn't. Eventually, she drifts off, as she usually does, but strange dreams and images flit through her sleeping mind and the deep, drowning slumber she so desperately needs seems utterly out of her grasp.

She'll sleep on the plane, she tells herself, when she flits back to consciousness for the latest time. She'll sleep in Brooklyn.

[nerves_of_ice]

It could be worse, he decides, when his eyes open in the darkness of the curtain-shrouded room. He slept some, at least; light, hazy, sleep washing in and out like waves at the edge of the surf, but it was still enough rest for him to be fully operational, well within mission parameters--

He shakes his head, a single tiny movement back and forth, and lets his breath out in a quiet sigh.

[from_the_outside]

Beside him, Sharon frowns at some half-seen dream, shifting restlessly in the muddled sheets.

She's not quite awake, but her internal alarm clock is beginning to jangle.

[nerves_of_ice]

He runs his hand lightly over her hair and reaches for his phone on the bedside charging pad.

Sam: Didn't hear from you yesterday.
Sam: And don't you dare start leaving me on read again, old man. I WILL come after you.

He's not even aware of how the sudden grin brightens his face.

Bucky: Busy day, that's all.
Bucky: But don't worry. Back soon.

Sam's evidently paying attention, because the response is immediate.

Sam: Great news!

[from_the_outside]

"Is that Sam?"

Drowsily from where she's lying by his side, blinking myopically at the lit phone screen in the dark room. "Tell him I say hi."

[nerves_of_ice]

Bucky smiles and leans over to kiss her.

"You got it."

Bucky: Sure is.
Bucky: Sharon says hi.

He chuckles at the phone as it lights up with multiple messages.

Sam: Hi Sharon!
Sam: Are you reading over his shoulder?
Sam: 'Cause if so I can start dishing all the dirt.

[from_the_outside]

At his chuckle, she pushes herself up to lean her head against his shoulder so she can see the phone screen, and smiles a little herself.

"Dirt, huh?" she asks, amused through her weariness.

[nerves_of_ice]

"No," Bucky tells her, and types quickly.

Bucky: Shut up. Or else.

Sam: Fine, fine. I can wait.

Bucky: I'm turning the phone off now.

He sets it face down on the table and kisses her hair. "Good morning, baby."

[from_the_outside]

"Morning." She closes her eyes as his mouth presses against her hair and puts an arm across his stomach.

There's a small smile on her face when she adds,

"You know I have his number, right?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I know." He sounds amused and resigned at once.

"It's still pretty early. Want to nap a little longer?"

[from_the_outside]

"Yes," she tells him, although she's not sure that's exactly right. She's as tired now as she was when they first came to bed, but she's less interested in chasing another hour of restless sleep than in lying here with him for a moment's calm.

Things could go wrong. They have before. And if they do, she wants to have had this beforehand.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Okay."

He puts his arm around her and coaxes her closer, trying to get her to use him as a pillow.

[from_the_outside]

She sets her head in the hollow of his shoulder and turns to her side to press her body against him from chest to toes, hooking an ankle over his as she sighs and closes her eyes again.

At least her chest feels better. Small favors.

[nerves_of_ice]

He kisses her hair and listens to the sound of her breathing. It sounds better than last night; less labored, less shallow. There's still no hint of the wheezing, whistling sound that he'd feared so much, and he can feel some of the worry that had clenched tight within him start to ease.

Bucky rests his arm against her, his hand lying in the curve of her waist, and allows himself to just be still for a moment.

[from_the_outside]

The hour flies by.

She doesn't sleep. Her mind is too busy crafting carefully worded messages that she'll need to send, checking off the lists of what she needs to do, how she needs to do it.

It won't surprise anyone when the art dealer gives in to paranoia and fires her security team and holes herself up in the penthouse, or when it's suggested that she orchestrated a hit in her own establishment. She just needs to make sure the right people hear the right thing.

And make it through the day.

[nerves_of_ice]

He lies quietly, watching the ceiling above them, and reviews the day ahead.

Timing's going to be critical. Between the time the security team is fired and the time they leave is likely to be the point of highest vulnerability. If someone's been waiting for an opportunity to strike, they might try it then, which means he'll need to establish himself as a clear deterrent. It also means that he'll need to take over the security feeds... all of them.

Bucky sighs and reaches for the phone again. First things first, though, and he sends a message to the hangar manager under the cover ID that Zemo's people had set up to arrange for the plane to be fueled and ready as soon as possible. At least in a place like this no one blinks an eye at having a plane on standby.

[from_the_outside]

She waits a few minutes more before rolling to her side and finding her phone, too.

(Not her personal phone. Not the art dealer's phone. The other one.)

There are a few seconds while she looks at it, then opens the messaging app and types out a few words to Mateo, sends them, and logs on into one of her other personas to start building the rumors around what happened last night.

Ten minutes later, she drops the phone onto the covers and pushes herself out of bed to get dressed.

[nerves_of_ice]

He takes a couple of minutes to wipe down his boots in case of residue, then slips into the dark jeans and black t-shirt he'd chosen, topping it with his jacket. Today is all business - the Winter Soldier's business, so far as anyone knows. No one will be expecting anything different, and they'd be surprised if they saw any sign of it.

He leaves the pack tucked under the bed and stalks over to stand guard by the door, waiting for Sharon.

[from_the_outside]

She dresses in black, as usual, and eschews makeup or brushing her hair, just ignores the dark circles under her eyes, runs her fingers through her hair as she looks in a mirror.

She looks exhausted and on edge and less put-together than usual, which is exactly what she wants. The people who see her today need to see her stressed and afraid, paranoid enough to slip up, to make mistakes.

And everyone knows that in Madripoor, one mistake is enough to get you killed. She goes back to the bed to pick up her phone, slides it and her hands into her pockets, and glances at Bucky as she hears Inga and Sarah move around the apartment.

Showtime.

[nerves_of_ice]

One look at her expression and he wants nothing more than to go to her, pull her into his arms, and assure her that it's going to be okay.

Unfortunately, he also knows that this is going to be hard enough for her as it is. She's got the persona pulled solidly around her, and he's not going to do anything to destabilize it. To destabilize her. Not now. Not when they're so close.

He lets his glance shift and change, though, just for a moment, keeping himself turned so that no one can see his face through the French doors, so that his body is between her and the outside world, and silently whispers: Home. Soon.

Two words, and then his gaze flickers into expressionless ice as he steps back, to the side, ready to follow her into the other room like a deadly shadow.

[from_the_outside]

One more day. She's made it six years. She can make one more day.

She flicks a glance at him but can't let herself respond to either the look in his eyes or the mouthed words. She can't. She can't let a single thing crack her cover today.

She lets a little more of her worry and stress come bleeding through and nods to him to open the door, then goes striding through with tight feline grace, clear strain in the line of her shoulders, in the nearly feral, startled glance she gives Inga as the woman comes into view.

"Oh, miss," Inga's saying, "I heard what happened, are you..."

She trails off as she looks at Sharon, mental calculations visibly running across her face. "I'm fine," Sharon snaps, giving her a suspicious look.

Everyone is a threat. She loosens her hold on six years of paranoia, lets a little more slip into her posture, her voice, her eyes. "No thanks to my team."

[nerves_of_ice]

He slips into the room behind her and stops one step back and to her left, silent and waiting. Everything about him screams a promise of violence - the way he holds himself balanced on the edge of some sudden reaction, the way he looks Inga over, evaluating her with cold, focused intent, the way he watches the room for signs of danger.

[from_the_outside]

"Oh," says Inga, clearly at a loss. "I'm sorry –"

"Don't be sorry," Sharon snaps. "Just do your job." She turns to Bucky, every line of her body drawn in stress and suspicion.

"Coffee," she says, then reaches for his arm to stop him before he goes, looking up at his face and letting a little of her desperation bleed through to her expression. He's the only one she can really trust. She lets that show, too. "Have her make a new pot," she says, low but loud enough that Inga can hear clearly. "Watch her make it."

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods, just once, and gives Inga a cold, scathing once-over before he strides to the kitchen, where Sarah already has the coffee service ready on the familiar tray. She looks up at him the second he walks in, concern on her face.

"I heard - we heard about last night," she starts. "Is she--" Sarah breaks off in shock as Bucky picks the coffee pot up in his left hand, heedless of temperature, rips the top off and empties it into the sink in front of her.

"Fresh coffee," he orders, and Sarah shrinks back from the harsh tone and the flat, empty look in his eyes. "Brew it now, while I wait."