[AU] a piercing comfort it affords

[from_the_outside]

For such a busy morning, the afternoon and evening prove remarkably quiet. Sharon's tired to her core, but she finds it just as difficult to rest as Bucky does, when she tries to cajole him into a nap. He only shakes his head at her, acquiescing to rest on the couch without actually sleeping.

She doesn't ask why. She's listening for the sound of Iron Man's repulsers just like he is.

But nothing comes, even after she's called Ross to update him and learn that the JTTF translators and analysts had come to the same conclusion she and Bucky had: that Zemo planned to impersonate him and set a bomb to spark a manhunt for the Winter Soldier.

Ross sounds grim as he tells her they'll need to find some more permanent solution to the power outage problem, then hangs up after he's extracted a promise from her to check in as soon as she learns anything.

Dinner is a quiet affair. Jet lag has her by the throat, but she can't sleep until she hears back from Steve and knows for certain that Tony won't be crashing down on them again.

If he does, she needs to be ready.

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[nerves_of_ice]

He waits until he's sure she's deeply asleep, based on the sound of her breathing and the way her body shifts as she relaxes, then opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling.

He needs to try to rest. He knows that. He's just reluctant to disturb Sharon with the inevitable nightmare.

Bucky spends several minutes trying to mentally prepare himself to wake in silence, no matter what, before he closes his eyes and lets himself fall into the darkness.



He's not sure which city this is. It looks a little like Berlin; a little like Washington, D.C.; a little like Moscow, and a little like New York. The Winter Soldier pauses at a corner, careful to stay out of the ebb and flow of people, and glances down the street as though merely checking the traffic.

It's harder and harder to remember the mission details, but some things never change. He just has to keep going, and it'll all come clear. He knows it will. It always does. There's no--

"Bucky?" There's absolute shock in the voice behind him. He doesn't turn, even as chaos erupts in his mind.

The voice in his head can't stop him. It can only watch. The Winter Soldier won't let it interfere, even as his body goes still and he readies himself. He knows his duty.

[from_the_outside]

On her side of the bed, Sharon is so deeply asleep she does not even shift when her dreams begin, aside from her eyes flitting back and forth behind her lids.

(The river – light – her dad telling her some story that fades without any needs to comprehension.

She doesn't wake.)

[nerves_of_ice]

"Bucky!" Rather than attract more attention, he turns and gives the blond man who's staring at him in shock a cold look. "Who the hell is Bucky?"

Locked in the ice and iron shackles of the Winter Soldier's programming, the man who was once Bucky Barnes struggles and screams in silence, his desperate pleas unheard. Steve, no! Run! Get away! Don't--

While the blond man is staring, the Winter Soldier looks past him and watches as a brown-haired man approaches a pretty blonde woman sitting at an outdoor table at a nearby coffee shop. He recognizes the man - Colonel Helmut Zemo, his handler, who turns and smiles at him.

"Soldat. Now."

He pulls a gun from behind his back with his right hand and fires two shots at the woman, then whirls to strike the man with the full force of his left arm as she falls to the ground and chaos erupts around them.

(In the silence of the Virginia night, his strangled gasp is clearly audible, as is the sob that follows it.)

[from_the_outside]

She can't say whether she wakes up at the gasp or just before, but she's blinking, confused in the dark, when a sob rips from Bucky and she jerks fully awake.

Pushing up onto her elbow, she leans over to put a hand on his chest, as soothing as she can make it before she shakes him gently. "Bucky," she says. Even quiet, her voice sounds loud in the silent room.

"Shh. You're dreaming. It's okay."

[nerves_of_ice]

The fight is brutal in its force. In the way of dreams, the environment around them blurs, until the Winter Soldier is straddling the blond man, who looks up at him, unresisting.

"Then finish it," he says, as the Winter Soldier aims the pistol at his forehead, ignoring the screaming in his brain. "Because I'm--"

("It's okay.")

He bolts from sleep with the sharp crack of the gunshot ringing in his ears, jerking upright in a single swift motion.

[from_the_outside]

She has just enough warning to shift back far enough so that he doesn't hit her as he jerks awake, but her hand stays on his chest and she keeps her voice low. "Bucky," she says. "Bucky."

She shifts to sit up with him, sheets muddling around their hips. "It's okay," she murmurs. "You were dreaming. Everything is okay."

[nerves_of_ice]

It takes a long moment before he can subdue his ragged breathing and find it in him to speak. Every muscle under her touch is as tense as spring steel.

"Sorry. I'm. I'm sorry."

[from_the_outside]

"Nothing to be sorry for," she tells him, an echo of earlier. His chest and shoulders are so tight she may as well be touching carved marble; she shifts a little behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders, working her thumbs into the tense muscles there.

"Bad one?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He twists under her hands, unable to let her out of his sight for the moment. She's here, alive, her hair undarkened by blood and worse.

"Yes," is all he says.

[from_the_outside]

She frowns, but moves again, sitting on her hip to face him instead of sitting behind him so he doesn't need to twist.

He doesn't want her out of sight; that's not a good sign. Her left hand goes to his shoulder to rub at the tension there; her right lifts to smooth over his hair.

Very softly, she says: "Tell me about it?"

[nerves_of_ice]

His lips move, forming the word 'no,' but he doesn't say anything. He remains still under her ministrations, watching her.

[from_the_outside]

"Okay," she says. "Okay, baby."

Her fingers are gentle in his hair. "Lie back down with me?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head, and doesn't move.

"Can't. Can't sleep."

[from_the_outside]

"Okay." She squeezes his shoulder, then lets go so she can lean over and turn the beside lamp back on. It clicks into life and spills warm light over the pillows, the sheets; gleams mellowly off his metal left arm.

Whatever he saw, it might help to shine a little light into the dark. "That's fine."

[nerves_of_ice]

He draws a deep breath, then another, and another. It's a little too quick, too fast, but the act of forcing air in and out of his lungs helps.

"I'm sorry," he says again, after a moment. The light helps, playing softly over her hair and face. Concerned though her expression is, it's not empty and blank, and he's able to push the nightmare back further.

"Go back to sleep, baby. I'm - I'll be fine."

[from_the_outside]

"Don't be an idiot."

She's tired, but the rest she got helps, and anyway there's not a chance in hell she's abandoning him to whatever nightmare just drop-kicked him into panicked wakefulness. She reaches for his right hand and presses a kiss into the palm, then sets it against her collarbone so he can feel her breathing, feel her pulse beating.

(The way he's watching her...)

"Just sit with me for a minute and breathe."

[nerves_of_ice]

His fingers curl very gently over her shoulder, his thumb moving back and forth against her collarbone.

He's quiet for several seconds, as ordered.

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I thought I could keep from ... "

A long, long pause.

"The ones mixed with memories are worse."

[from_the_outside]

"It's okay. Seriously."

And only to be expected. He has decades of trauma to wrestle with, and he's been doing it on his own.

To be honest, nightmares are probably the best anyone can hope for. She reaches to take his left hand, letting it rest between hers in his lap. "Yeah," she murmurs. "Harder to tell them from reality."

[nerves_of_ice]

He flinches very slightly as her fingers close around cool metal, but doesn't resist or pull away.

"I didn't mean to wake you."

[from_the_outside]

She pauses as he flinches, but when he doesn't pull away just lets their hands rest together.

"I know. I don't mind," she tells him. "I'd rather be woken up than for you to be alone when they hit."

The way she's sitting, she can press her thigh against his hip, warm and solid. "Whatever you dreamed... even if it got mixed in with memory, it didn't happen this time. Just a dream. A bad one, but still."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I know it didn't happen."

There's not an ounce of doubt in his voice, the reason for which becomes obvious as he continues.

"I didn't kill you. Or Steve."

[from_the_outside]

...Well. That would certainly do it.

"No, you definitely didn't do either of those things."

She lifts her hand from his left one and feels her own pulse, smiling. "Yep. Still ticking."

[nerves_of_ice]

He gives her a look of disbelief before shaking his head and letting out his breath in a quiet sigh.

"Do you want to know?" His tone is carefully neutral.

[from_the_outside]

"Will it help to talk about it?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I don't know," he says, honestly.

These nightmares are different from the more shadowed dreams of all those years ago, the ones that he lost when he lost the memory of what it was to be human, something more than the Winter Soldier. Will talking about them make them sharper, more real, stronger? Or will it make them fade? He shakes his head.

"I don't know," he says again. "Probably not."