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

Current Location: Madripoor
Current Music: call it what you want - taylor swift

Entry tags:

[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.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only | Expand All

"Okay."

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

"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."

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."

She retreats to the dining room and sits at the far end of the table, where she can keep a suspicious eye on Inga.

(Somewhere, deep down, she feels a little bad about this. Inga and Sarah have been as loyal as she could expect in this viper's pit of a city. Bucky had said maybe you can't burn it all down and walk away from the ashes but that's exactly what she has to do.

And that means them, too.)

She makes the first of several calls as she waits for the coffee, again speaking quietly, but not quietly enough not to be overheard. "It's me," she says, into the speaker, glancing at the main room. "Has he talked?"

By the time she's done, she's established a few things: one, that she's harried and stressed and maybe starting to come unhinged, and two, that she's a little more interested than she should be in finding out what Anders did or didn't say to Mateo over the course of the night before.

When the coffee is ready, he makes no move to take up the tray himself. After an uneasy look at him, Sarah picks it up and carries it to the dining room.

He stalks after her without saying a word.

Sharon waits at the table, watching Sarah coolly as she sets the tray down and gesturing for her to wait while she pours herself a cup and doctors it the way she normally does. Once finished, she hands both cup and saucer to Sarah, watching her closely.

"Try it," she says, in a tone that brooks no refusal. The woman stares at her in shock.

"Miss," she protests. "I've worked for you for years –"

"Someone tried to kill me last night," Sharon tells her, sharp. "Someone who knows their way around my establishment. Try the coffee."

Sarah stares at her, but slowly raises the coffee to her lips and sips it. Sharon reaches for the cup, satisfied.

He doesn't join Sharon at the table today. Instead, he goes to lean against the wall, watching Inga and Sarah and all entrances and exits - door and windows both.

"That will be all for now," she tells Sarah, who nods and exits, though not without a wary glance at Bucky.

The rest of the morning is absolutely fraught. She works herself into a near panic a handful of times, shouts at Inga, has intense whispered conversations with Bucky, spends hours on her phone alternately talking to someone or someones or sending messages. It's not long at all before Inga and Sarah are casting suspicious as well as wary glances at Bucky.

Not just at him, either, as the rumors she'd planted earlier begin to take root: that she isn't paranoid because someone tried to kill her, but because she tried, and failed, to kill her competitors.

It helps that Anders isn't dead yet. She keeps up a constant stream of communication with Mateo, coaxes him to ask Anders how he knew what to use and when. Anders, like she expects, rolls on her instantly in an attempt to save his own skin.

It isn't proof, but Madripoor has never needed hard evidence.

Edited 2021-05-03 19:19 (UTC)

He watches dispassionately as Sarah and Inga decide that he's the likely cause of trouble, then as they begin to skirt Sharon even more warily as the rumors continue to fly. He wonders what Mateo thinks of all of this, as Sharon presses him harder and harder, and is unsurprised to hear that Anders has seized the chance presented to him.

In the meantime, he continues his review of the security cameras and systems, along with the infrastructure of the penthouse and the gallery below, coolly musing on the best way to set things up for an explosion. It's the only flaw in the plan, at least when considering the way the Winter Soldier's operated previously: the knife in the dark, the unseen, unexpected strike. He's been far too visible here, far too independent.

But if Madripoor's expecting him to act as an independent operative, one who no one could hire because he'd already been hired... well, that narrative could work, and work well. And if he arranges the explosion in a way where there's plausible deniability, clean and quick and utterly destructive, then it'll be more likely to be attributed to him.

By the time he works through that logic, he's hit on the right solution.

It took her years to set herself up here. It takes fewer than six hours to burn the whole thing to the ground.

Mateo, to her surprise, pushes back a little against the narrative she's trying to establish – he's either even smarter than she thought or liked her more than she realized. Not that it matters; the Power Broker tells him with no room for argument to take care of Anders. That's he's already seeing to the art dealer.

It doesn't take long for the newest incarnation of the rumor to spread, that the Power Broker hired the Winter Soldier and gave him a mission, that the version of him who has been seen around town and at the art gallery is a cover, that he was keeping an eye on the art dealer all along. And it's not long after that before her security team comes running up the stairs, absolutely willing to believe the worst of the man who has been a thorn in their collective side all week long.

Which is perfect. Sharon refuses to hear them out, is absolutely unwilling to listen to any insinuation that Bucky has been playing her this whole time, that he's the real danger. She points out that they, her security team, are the only ones here who endangered her, and escalates the fight until she's fired them all in a fit of pique.

And when Inga protests, saying they've been loyal to her for years, that she shouldn't trust the Winter Soldier, she fires her, too.

Edited 2021-05-03 20:00 (UTC)

He follows the ex-security team out, absolutely prepared for the fight if it comes to it. It doesn't. Their loyalty, such as it was, appears to have been bought by coin only, and with Sharon having fired them, they're willing to leave her hung out to dry.

Except for the security chief, it turns out. As the rest of the team leaves, the man gets up in Bucky's face, standing in front of him at the gallery door. "I'm watching you," he snarls. "You're not as good as you think you are. She'll figure it out, and when she does I'll gut you and leave you for the fish."

Bucky stares him down in silence until the man turns and slams his way out through the gallery and to the street beyond, then turns to go through the building and set his own security modifications in motion.

By five o'clock, almost everything is ready.

Inga's gone. The security team is gone. The rumors she'd set are chasing around Madripoor like wildfire.

Sarah's gone, too. The only one of the bunch Sharon didn't fire. She tells her not to come in tomorrow, it isn't safe, and Sarah only nods, looking weary and a little sad, and says her goodnights, and then there's only her.

This is the hardest part of the whole plan. With the security team gone, anyone who believes that she orchestrated last night's hit is free and clear to take a pass at her. She can only hope their fear of thwarting the Power Broker and robbing him of his revenge is greater than their desire for their own.

In the meantime, she pulls the pack back out and adds the few things they'd been waiting on: the glass art, the angelfish magnet Bucky had given her. She hasn't eaten anything all day, but she's too nervous and wound-up to have something now.

Instead, she goes down to the gallery and into the vaults to remove the Royal Danish Egg from its locked case, carefully boxing it and putting it into a bag to be loaded into the car along with the pack and the Cézanne.

And then there's nothing to do but wait.

He takes the tablet from the monitoring station and makes sure that the software modification is in place. It is. The system's cut off from the outside, to prevent any of the ex-security team or anyone else in Madripoor from trying to get a look at what's going on in the gallery. He keeps the tablet with him as he makes his way through the building, watching for any sort of alert, watching over Sharon as he works.

He destroys the cameras that would show the car leaving the garage, and leaves the others for now - he'll destroy them too once they're in the car, but needs them to monitor for unauthorized access until then. He scans along the wall and breaks through the concrete to reveal the natural gas lines that feed the building, then rigs the valves and pipes to explode as soon as he activates the trigger. He does the same thing on the level right above the gallery, in the unfinished lofted ceiling below the living space above.

When he finally returns to the penthouse, he's lightly covered in concrete dust and oil, smells like smoke, and looks as grim as he ever has.

Sharon is standing, arms folded, watching the sun set on Madripoor from a spot by the window with no good sight lines from neighboring roofs, and she turns to him when he enters.

The pack, the painting, and the bag containing the egg are all sitting by the couch, ready to go in the car, and her pulse is beginning to pick up. Her blood pressure is probably skyrocketing. She takes a deep breath as she looks him over, her own expression exhausted and strained.

"Everything set?"

He nods, glances at the tablet, and sets it on top of his pack before crossing the room to her. Bucky draws her back from the window so that there's no chance they'll be seen, then pulls her into his arms.

"It's all ready," he murmurs. "Time to go home, baby."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject