[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]

"Probably, somewhere, but --"

He gets up and goes to his pack, digging around a little in a front pocket that on closer inspection turns out to be a flat hidden pocket behind the more obvious main one, unobtrusive and usually unobserved. Bucky pulls out a small notebook and a pen, comes back to the table, and offers it to her.

"There're still some blank pages toward the back," he tells her.

[from_the_outside]

She accepts the book, frowning slightly at it. "Isn't this..."

A soft shock lances through her chest as she flips through the first pages and recognizes the handwriting and the lists there, as memory carries her unceremoniously back to a hallway in DC, Steve's earnest blue eyes and the smile on his face as he'd written down thai food.

She smiles slightly as she looks at his list, then flips through the rest of the pages, glancing as she does at the new lists, the different handwriting. The names. She flicks a look up at Bucky, but says nothing about it for the moment.

He's right: there are blank pages towards the back. She carefully flattens the book and begins making a list of her own. "Okay," she says, numbering a few lines. "Pardon. 'I'm still alive' paperwork."

She taps the tip of the pen on the paper for a second, then adds,

"Find Fury and make my report."

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods confirmation as her question breaks off mid-word, but says nothing else about it. Steve's notebook. Steve's lists. His own.

"I've got a folder full of 'I'm still alive' paperwork," he tells her. "There was a lot of that. Some of it'll be different for you, I figure, since turns out I was listed MIA, not KIA. Anyway, if any of it helps..."

Bucky breaks off there with a shrug.

[from_the_outside]

"I'm sure it will," she says. "That'll probably have to be its own list, just to keep from getting stuck in red tape."

She makes a new line. "Shift my accounts."

She's already planned to empty her cover accounts into several of the ones she holds for the Power Broker, but she'll have to have at least one or two under her own name, and that means finding some inventive ways to move money so 'Sharon Carter' doesn't come under suspicion.

[nerves_of_ice]

"There are probably a lot of those, huh." He seems amused by that for some reason.

[from_the_outside]

"A few," she hedges, and folds her arms on the table to look up at him, grinning.

"What, you're surprised?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Nope," he drawls. "More surprised that you never asked me how I managed to pay for the Cézanne."

He takes a sip of champagne before concluding,

"Let's just say I understand having multiple accounts. Most of mine are from ... before."

[from_the_outside]

"I assumed it was old HYDRA funds put to much better use," she tells him, amused, and goes back to her list, adds a new line.

"'Talk to my parents.'"

She actually has no idea if her parents think she's dead or just missing, isn't sure what Fury might have told them or the government or anyone other than T'Challa.

[nerves_of_ice]

"Well, yes," he agrees, before his glance darkens into something more serious.

"They'll be happy to see you," he murmurs.

[from_the_outside]

"I'll be happy to see them, too," she says, and reaches back across the table to squeeze his fingers again.

"Baby, you don't know how much it means to me that you checked in on them. Thank you."

[nerves_of_ice]

"You're welcome." He curls his fingers around hers. "It was the least I could do."

[from_the_outside]

"It was a lot more than a lot of other people would have done," she tells him, and lifts his hand to kiss it before setting it back down again and going back to her list.

"Um...'get some new clothes.'"

She is sick to death of wearing all black all the time.

[nerves_of_ice]

He grins at that.

"New York's good for shopping."

[from_the_outside]

"That much I do know," she agrees, pointing the pen at him with a smile.

"Even though I guess it'll pretty much have to be online shopping until these first few things get crossed off."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Maybe for a little while, but not for too long," he reassures her. "I can bring stuff in, too."

[from_the_outside]

"I'm sure you'll have better things to do than play courier for me," she tells him. "Though it's very sweet of you to offer."

She looks back at the list, tapping the pen thoughtfully. "Am I missing anything?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Something complicated crosses his expression at that reminder, and he scrubs his hand over the back of his neck before he lets it drop.

"Yeah, well, I can still help out."

Bucky looks thoughtfully down at her list.

"Nothing's coming to me now. But we can always add more as we think of it."

[from_the_outside]

She gives him an inquisitive look as she closes the notebook for the moment and lays the pen down to take another bite of dinner.

"Something on your mind?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Nothing new," he says. "Just what you said reminded me of some things I've got to do."

Do the work, he hears Sam say, and a small, rueful smile quirks the corner of his mouth. Start with one.

"Things I've got to work on."

[from_the_outside]

"Yeah?"

She finishes her meal and pushes the plate away, then sips at her champagne. "Anything I can help with?"

From inside the apartment, anyway.

[nerves_of_ice]

He starts to shake his head, then hesitates.

"I don't know. I don't... I don't think so." Bucky meets her eyes, and although the look in his now is more tired than before, it's somehow also accepting.

"I think it's something I have to do. To... give people closure."

[from_the_outside]

She finishes her champagne and listens, studying the look in his eyes. Not dread; trepidation, maybe.

To give people closure. She thinks back to so many conversations back in Wakanda, and flips the notebook back open to the pages with his handwriting. To the list of names. "These people?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He taps the right-hand page. "These people especially. Those others," he adds, nodding at the opposite page, "are something different."

"But these... these are people I hurt. As the Winter Soldier."

[from_the_outside]

She nods, her thumb smoothing over the list of names before she closes the book and offers it back to him.

"You're right. I probably can't help with it. Not with the closure part, anyway." Her smile is very sweet as she reaches for his hand. "But I'll be there to help you. If you want."

To talk, or not talk if that's what he needs. To help him plan. To be there when he gets back.

It's all possible now.

[nerves_of_ice]

He smiles back, and closes his fingers around hers. "I'd like that."