[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]

He disables the camera that's focused on her car with a single silenced shot before he moves into its viewframe and opens first the trunk, then the back seat.

Bucky drapes the coats over the roof of the car, loads his pack into the trunk, and goes to take the painting and bag from Sharon.

"Get into the back," he tells her. "Lie across the floor, not the seat. I know it'll be uncomfortable and I'm sorry. But with the coats over you, you'll look like just a bunch of shadows to anyone who gets a glimpse through the window."

[from_the_outside]

"It's fine," she says, and gets in without complaint, lying across the footwell as ordered. He drapes the coats over her and she pulls one over her head and face, lets him arrange them over the rest of her.

It's all too easy, when he closes the car door, for panic to try and set in. The coats are claustrophobic, the footwell is digging into her back, and her breathing is the only sound aside from the small ones he makes as he finishes loading the car.

She casts her mind back to her long-ago training and counts her breaths, slows them, and when he gets into the car, she's lying as still and silent as if she really were just a pile of coats.

[nerves_of_ice]

He closes the door and makes sure to cover his mouth with his hand before he speaks.

"The next time I stop, it'll be to set off the explosion. You'll be able to hear it. I'll have to get out to do it. Don't move when it happens - we'll be on a public street."

He looks in the rearview mirror, just to check the surroundings. He can't see her, which is good.

"After that, the next stop will be the airport. Hold on. Here we go."

The car roars to life and the garage door lifts smoothly as they approach it. Bucky pulls out and away.

[from_the_outside]

"Okay," she says, barely on a breath, and closes her eyes as the engine turns over and the car begins to move.

This is it.

[nerves_of_ice]

He winds through the city streets as carefully as he can, driving with care not only for Sharon's comfort but also to avoid drawing any attention. He's careful not to glance at other drivers either directly or in the mirrors, knowing that if someone spots him watching them that way it'll cause alarm.

They blend into traffic as seamlessly as he used to blend into crowds on the run, and no one's around to notice or care when he pulls to a stop on the hill with its view of the city... and of the gallery.

"Hang on, baby," he breathes, and gets out of the car. Bucky walks to a clear spot with direct line of sight, activates the amplifier on his phone, and hits the icon on the tablet that will trigger the spark.

Three seconds later, the sky over Madripoor lights with murderous fury as the gas lines explode, taking the building with them.

[from_the_outside]

She counts silently to herself from the time she hears the car door close, waiting, waiting, wai –

The explosion is so bright she sees flickers of it despite the heavy coats, and something that's been festering and rotting in her for five and a half long years seems to burn away in clean, crisp, purifying fire.

She squeezes her eyes against springing tears; one escapes out of the corner of her eye and trickles down into her ear.

It's gone. He blew it sky high and she's free.

[nerves_of_ice]

He moves back to the driver's side door as other cars start pulling over and people pile out of them, pointing and staring. Bucky drops the tablet to the ground and shatters it into shards under his boot, then slides back into the car and pulls away.

"Almost there, baby," he murmurs, barely moving his lips. "You're doing great. Just another few minutes--"

[from_the_outside]

She doesn't nod, doesn't move, just squeezes her eyes shut and then blinks them into the darkness beneath the coats. "Almost," she whispers back.

Her back is killing her. She's going to be so stiff she won't be able to run if they need to. They just destroyed a multi-million dollar building and brought all of Hightown to a standstill.

She can make it a few more minutes. And then a few more after that. However many it takes to finally leave this place.

[nerves_of_ice]

It's just under ten minutes later when he pulls through the gate into the airport. He can see the plane in the open hangar at the far side, and brings the car around the back in a long, looping arc, pulling it inside the hangar and parking it out of view of the door.

Bucky scans the area before he gets out, then goes to the back seat door, pulls it open, and reaches in to help her out. "Keep the coat around you," he tells her, continuing to keep an eye out for others. "Keep your hair hidden. I'll grab the stuff from the trunk."

[from_the_outside]

She's already got the hood of her jacket up over her hair, and she nods, keeps her head down so nothing can be seen but her nose and eyes, the heavy coat obscuring her body enough that it should be impossible to tell anything useful about her height or weight.

She can't look around like this, so she sticks close to him, trusting him to catch anyone who might see. "Were we followed?" she murmurs. She's certain he would have said so if they were, wouldn't have come straight to the hangar, but her nerves are thrumming and she feels sick with stress. It helps to ask.

[nerves_of_ice]

"No sign," he promises. Bucky puts his arm around her - having draped the other coat over it, there's no sign of metal visible - and escorts her up the stairs into the plane.

He dumps the pack, bag, and painting to the side, drops from the top of the stairs to the ground, and tosses a small metal globe through the window into the car. When it activates, blue electric sparks crackle over the vehicle's body, shorting out all systems and wiping them of any tracking history or other identifying information.

Bucky flips the brake switches on the staircase, climbs it with more care than before, then braces himself in the door of the plane and kicks it hard so that it rolls across the hangar, clearing the path.

"Strap in," he tells her, already heading for the cockpit. "We'll be in the air as fast as I can get us there."

[from_the_outside]

She keeps the hood down even as she straps in, wary of anyone being able to see her through the plane windows, and grips the arms of the seat with bloodless fingers, her stomach in knots.

They're so close. This is when something terrible is most likely to happen, when they're so close she can almost taste it. She's dizzy with adrenaline flooding through her system with nowhere to go, nothing to fuel except the anxiety spiraling through her head, corkscrewing into her gut.

He closes the door to the cockpit, and she's alone. Fear grips her heart with cold fingers, but she swallows past it – this isn't her nightmare. This is real.

He's not setting her up. He would never. He's taking her home.

[nerves_of_ice]

He switches on the cockpit systems and flips the radio to monitor local traffic while he checks the gauges to ensure everything's as it should be. Everything inside him is screaming at him to go now, now, now, but he knows that if he doesn't do it all by the book he'll draw the wrong kind of attention. He can't afford a single mistake. Not now.

Bucky switches on the mike and says, "Madripoor Tower, this is Hawker 800 Hotel Zulu, holding at hangar 5 and requesting taxi clearance for immediate departure." He's barely aware that his breath has stopped in his throat as he listens to the crackle of static.

Hotel Zulu, you are clear to proceed to runway 2.

"Copy that, Tower, Hotel Zulu proceeding to runway 2." The engines roar as he starts them moving across the tarmac.

[from_the_outside]

She's barely breathing and her fingers are white as bone where she's gripping the armrests as the engines roar and the jet begins taxiing slowly over the tarmac.

No black cars come racing out of the darkness. No airport security runs out to stop them. Her heart thunders in her ears as she risks a glance out the window, but the muggy Madripoor night is quiet.

Here, at least. The skyline is still smoldering from the wreckage of the gallery.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Tower, this is Hawker 800 Hotel Zulu, holding short of runway 2," Bucky says. He's glad he's able to use his right hand on the mike, for fear he'll grip too hard with his left at present. As it is, he's leaving permanent dents in the yoke.

"Hotel Zulu, you are clear for takeoff. No delay on departure," the control tower radios back, and Bucky closes his eyes for a brief second as the rush of relief threatens to swamp him.

"Copy that, Hotel Zulu clear for takeoff," he manages, and sends the plane barreling down the runway, rapidly picking up speed. The wind howls around them as he lifts the plane into the air, the city lights of Madripoor growing smaller and smaller first below and then behind them as Bucky takes them up to cruising altitude as quickly as possible.

[from_the_outside]

She's pressed back into her seat as the plane picks up speed, as gravity ceases to have any pull on them and the jet lifts nose-first into the air while Madripoor drops away behind them, and she can't stop blinking away the tears that gloss over her eyes. She stares out the window, her hood finally falling back, and watches as the city lights recede and nothing, nothing, nothing stops them.

By the time the jet finishes its climb and levels off, she's stopped fighting it, just lets the tears stream down her face as all the stress and pain and fear and loneliness of six long years finally begins to loosen.

They did it. He did it. Just like he promised.

[nerves_of_ice]

He sets the autopilot, double- and triple-checks it, checks the sky around them to be sure, then turns both radio and alarms up to full gain before he dogs the cockpit door open and goes back into the cabin.

"Sharon?"

Bucky crouches down on his heels in front of her, reaching for her hands.

"Baby?"

[from_the_outside]

She hiccups a breath and lurches into motion, undoing her safety belt buckle with alacrity so she can strip out of her leather jacket and hood and push them to the side along with the coat she'd been wearing before.

(She wants to feel free, free, free.)

As soon as she can, she puts her arms around his neck and hugs him tight, her whole body shaking the way his had when she first told him okay, you win. Let's go home.

"You did it," she tells him, voice thick. "You did it. You got me out."

She didn't think it was possible. Knows there's still more to do, still the Power Broker to reckon with, but...

She laughs and pulls back to cradle his face, her own tear-stained and lit from within. "Bucky, you did it. You did great. You did so good, baby."

[nerves_of_ice]

He wraps both arms around her and pulls her tightly to him, swinging her around in a circle in the middle of the cabin before he lowers her feet to the floor again and kisses her, again and again.

"It nearly killed me to leave you there the first time," he swears between kisses, low and fervent. "I could never have done it again."

[from_the_outside]

She clings to his shoulders and laughs like a kid as he swings her around, kisses him back over and over again, tasting salt on his lips. "You saved me," she tells him, and kisses him again. It's like a miniature sun is blooming in her chest; she feels light for the first time in years.

"You came back for me and you saved me. My hero. God, I love you so much, Bucky."

[nerves_of_ice]

"My angel," he tells her, and kisses her back. "I love you."

[from_the_outside]

She kisses him again, and once more for good measure, and pulls away to dry her face with her sleeve. She feels champagne-drunk, giddy with relief and happiness even as she knows they'll have a hell of a reality to face when they land. Maybe even beforehand.

But they'll face it together, and right now that's all she cares about.

Now that they're safe, she can finally take stock of the jet's interior, looks around with curiosity. "I have to say," she tells him, "as far as stealing jets goes, you picked a good one." It's comfortable, luxurious – the kind of thing she'd have had for herself, if she'd ever left Madripoor.

She wonders if there's any food on board. Or champagne. They really should celebrate.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Borrowed," he reminds her. "Technically."

Bucky smooths a hand over her hair, then rests it against her back. "Look around, if you want. We've definitely got time for you to poke into all the corners."

[from_the_outside]

"A lot of time," she agrees. Some, what. Almost eighteen hours? God, she might actually get some sleep. Hopefully the autopilot will let him rest a little, too. "In a bit."

For now she slips her arms around his waist and pulls herself flush against him, tucking her head into his shoulder. She can't stop smiling. "Oh my god, I'm giddy."

[nerves_of_ice]

He smiles back and holds her close. "Well, you've had a hell of a day."