[AU] there's grief of Want and grief of Cold

[from_the_outside]

She sleeps later than she had the day before – a combination of not having to get up and go to the doctor and exhaustion – and when she comes downstairs, the house is quiet but coffee is already made. After making herself a cup, she pads barefoot to the door and steps out into the crisp mountain morning.

She's unsurprised to see that Bucky is up, and to find Steve's motorcycle gone from the driveway. "Steve head out already?"

Comments

[from_the_outside]

"That is a very kind lie."

If that were true, she would have been able to find the right words before. She wouldn't have these stupid broken ribs. She wouldn't have fooled herself into thinking –

Instead, her thoughts are a tangle and her feelings are even worse and words are marbles in her mouth.

(If she's done everything right, why does she feel so terrible?)

"But all things considered, I'd say we as a group are doing pretty well. Net positive, for sure."

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head.

“I don’t lie to you, Sharon.”

[from_the_outside]

"Maybe not. But you're not straight with me, either."

Look, he has every right to shut down a line of questioning if he doesn't want to answer. But it still stings that she'd said it matters to me and he'd waved it aside like nothing. She sighs and scrubs both hands over her face.

(It doesn't really help this time, either.) "Look, you don't have to talk to me about anything if you don't want to. I just thought we were, you know..."

She teeters on the edge, backpedals. "...Friends. Getting to be, anyway."

[nerves_of_ice]

“We are.”

He draws a deep breath, then let’s it out slowly.

“Okay. If you think I haven’t been straight with you - what do you want to know?”

[from_the_outside]

I like you, she'd said. I care about you. It matters to me.

Does she really want to hear him reject it all to her face?

Apparently. "You put that postcard in my mailbox," she says, because there are a lot of things she's bad at and many she's good at, but she is best at spotting a cliff and flinging herself off it. "Even after you almost didn't. Why?"

Oh, hell. In for a penny – "Why the Spinnerei?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He blinks. He’d thought - well, he doesn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that.

“I thought you’d like it. The Spinnerei, I mean,” he starts. “And I…”

He’d told her to ask, he reminds himself.

“… wanted … to see you.”

[from_the_outside]

Well, it's not like she didn't set herself up. "Right," she acknowledges, feeling a little deflated.

So he had been straight with her, after all. "To set up a mission."

Oh, look at that. It's almost time for her next dose, and then she can just fall asleep and not have to think about this anymore for at least a few hours.

[nerves_of_ice]

He hesitates for what feels like a very long time.

“Not just that.”

[from_the_outside]

He'd kept asking her why, over and over again. Now the shoe's on the other foot, but she doesn't exactly feel great about it, keeps thinking back to the morning and the tightness in his voice, how he'd kept answering around her questions.

So it takes her a while to decide to ask, "Why else?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He’d told her he didn’t lie to her, but he hadn’t realized how hard it would be to—

—he pushes the thought back before it can lead his mind in a spiral, quickly.

“After Thessaloniki,” he says, carefully. “I thought, maybe, that you were… that you might — that —“

He stalls out there for a second and tries a different approach.

“You didn’t treat me like the asset. It bothered you when you had to pretend to. So I thought maybe you might … that I could be a person, again, with you.”

[from_the_outside]

Oh, okay.

This, she recognizes. The stops and starts, the carefully chosen words. She'd done it herself only moments ago, hadn't she? I thought we were... friends.

Thinking is for losers. She's been thinking all day, and where's it gotten her? Time to do this the Sharon Carter way. She takes the few steps she needs to come closed enough to reach for his hands, taking one in each of hers and holding them firmly. "You were right," she tells him, looking up into his face with all the fierce stubbornness so many people have tried to tell her isn't ladylike, isn't appropriate.

"I do. You can. And you are." Her hands tighten on his. "I would have loved going to the Spinnerei with you."

[nerves_of_ice]

“But I’m not,” he tells her, quietly. Even as he does, he curls his fingers around hers, both warm skin and cold metal, and holds on. “Zemo proved that. No matter what you and Steve say.”

[from_the_outside]

"No, he didn't."

Her voice is just as quiet, but intent. "Bucky, I've been around a lot of weapons. Believe me, I've never felt about any of them the way I feel about you. Because you're you. A person. One I care about."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Sharon. I c-- You--"

Dangerous, dangerous ground, he realizes, as light flashes and flares at the edge of his vision. His grip tightens slightly, even as he veers in a different direction, trying another tack.

"I thought," he starts, and is relieved when that tiny bit of distance is enough, for the moment at least. "That... before another mission. Before - before anything, I guess."

One corner of his mouth quirks up in a quick, rueful smile. "There's a glass artist there. I was going to show you their work. To ... try to explain. Both what - what I am, and what I - what maybe I ... could be. Someday."

The smile fades.

"But then, Zemo. And so."

[from_the_outside]

She thinks again that she really should have just shot Zemo and been done with it. What's one more sin on her shoulders?

His fingers tighten on hers and she lets him hold on as he stumbles through an explanation, starting and stopping in a way that's far from his cool focused competence during their missions.

God, same, though. Give her a nest of bad guys to infiltrate and neutralize over talking about her feelings any day of the week. "You could still show me," she encourages, soft.

"I bet they have a website."

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods, and glances around without moving, as if looking for a computer.

[from_the_outside]

Her laptop is upstairs and she is absolutely unwilling to go that far – he's as tense as an animal before flight – so she squeezes his hands and lets go to reach for her phone, instead.

She flicks open the browser and offers it to him. "Show me?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He has to assume it's secure, especially with how Natasha'd just tracked Steve through an insecure device. Sharon's a CIA agent, was a SHIELD agent; she has to have already thought of everything.

He doesn't need to look up the site. He types the address for the Spinnerei into the address bar, then clicks on the tile for the artist's shop and hands the phone over to her.

[from_the_outside]

She accepts the phone back and scrolls slowly through the artist's page, pausing now and then with her thumb on the screen as she wrestles with an internal roil of emotions.

It's not just glass art. It's art that's literally made from shattered glass, fused back together with bright metals to create something whole and scarred and beautiful. She pauses on one particular piece and taps the image until it fills her small screen: gunmetal and glass and a few bright glances of gold.

She studies it for a long few moments before looking up at him. "They're beautiful."

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods. "I spent some time in Japan," Bucky tells her, still quiet. "There's a concept. Kintsugi. It's the idea that a repair - the history of damage itself - is part of a new whole. This is that, but more."

He glances at the phone, taking note of the piece she's stopped on, then back at her face.

"Something broken made new."

[from_the_outside]

Something broken made new.

She is way out of her depth here, but it's not like that's ever stopped her before. "I think I get it." What I am, he'd said. What I maybe could be.

She doesn't close the window before she puts the phone back down on the island, before she looks back up at him. "I like you," she says, bluntly. Why bother talking around it? "I like you a lot, just like you are. Even when you're driving me crazy, I like you."

None of the movies she's seen or magazines she's read have prepared her for anything like this; all she can do is bull through the way she always does and hope for the best. "I know you're putting yourself back together – pretty sure I'll like you then, too. What Zemo did, it didn't change that. Any of it. For me."

[nerves_of_ice]

He’s quiet for several seconds.

“I wish — Zemo,” he says, and stops, visibly searching for words.

“Maybe it’s better. That he caught me before. But I would have liked to take you out, that night. At least once.”

[from_the_outside]

It hits like a bullet, center mass, and she wants to argue. They couldn't possibly have missed their one chance, could they? He's still here. So is she.

She wants to rail against the resignation in his expression, but stops before she does, takes a slightly different tack. "Come on," she says, trying for a smile and mostly getting there. "I thought about you every day for a month. Trust me, it doesn't seem 'better' from where I'm standing."

[nerves_of_ice]

He smiles a little at that.

“Every day, huh?”

[from_the_outside]

"Every day," she confirms. Her smile is bigger than his, and there's nothing rueful about it.

"Of course, some of those days the thoughts weren't very flattering, but –"

The crunch of tires on stone brings her back to earth like a slap; she turns too quickly and bites back a yelp of surprised pain. "Oh, come on. What now?"