[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]

"Uh-huh." He picks up the coffee cup and drains it, then sets it aside.

"But he's got that kind of grit. And he won't be alone."

[from_the_outside]

"No, he won't."

She watches him as he finishes his coffee, as his face sets into that neutral expression she knows all too well. She nods to his empty cup. "Do you want a refill?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I'd love one." Bucky looks up at her and smiles, small but real. "Thanks."

[from_the_outside]

She pushes out of the seat and reaches for his empty cup, then heads back to the galley to pour him another.

She leaves her cup in the galley. One's enough for her right now.

Slipping back into the cockpit, she hands him the refilled cup and leans down to press a kiss into his hair. "Here you go."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Thanks," he says again, and tips his head back to smile up at her before he straightens again and takes a swallow.

"You know, I wanted to ask about something you mentioned earlier," he starts, in a mild tone. "Reporting in to Fury." Bucky slants a sideways look at her. "Mind if I sit in?"

[from_the_outside]

That mild tone always means trouble. She looks over at him, narrowing her eyes.

"Why?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Just as mildly as before:

"I'd like to hear what he has to say."

[from_the_outside]

"I'm not sure you would like it," she tells him, skeptical. "And I am sure he'll want to know why you're sitting in on a report for a mission you weren't part of."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I didn't say I'd like what he's gonna say. But I would like to hear him try to explain himself." Mild is shading into very, very level, and he makes himself look away from her, out at the sky.

"I was part of it, Sharon. I just didn't know I was. Fury brought me into it to bribe you. He can deal with the consequences."

[from_the_outside]

He's looking away from her, but she keeps her eyes on him, feeling suddenly very, very tired. "What consequences?"

He knows as well as she does that Fury had already weighed all possible outcomes and come out on the side of this is fine. Hell, she doesn't even know if she's angry with him about it anymore. He didn't get snapped by Thanos on purpose.

"What could he possibly say that would justify any of it to you? There's nothing."

[nerves_of_ice]

Very, very evenly:

"Maybe I just don't want you to have to deal with him on your own."

[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?"