since @puddeneen asked and I realized I’d mentioned the flowers on twitter but not on here, the flowers in the frames from left to right are: gladiolus (strength, integrity), woodland sage (compassion, thoughtfulness, healing), and forget-me-not (remembrance, love, connections that endure time)
The boys have a bring your parent to work day. When Sarah can't make it, Sam and Bucky argue over who is the cooler choice. Bucky has a metal arm, but Sam is Captain America. (They both go)
While babysitting, Sam has to step out to run an errand. He returns home to his nephews teaching Mr Bucky "I read the Hobbit" Barnes how to play D&D
Sam prefers to be home with Sarah, but he and Bucky also have a place in Brooklyn. The boys spend weekends there sometimes, and they all get super into baseball (everyone rolls their eyes when Bucky complains about the Dodgers moving to LA)
They roast Bucky's cooking skills. Constantly.
Sam says the shield isn't a toy, but Bucky sneaks it off him once or twice when he's sleeping and lets the boys play with it. Sam laments that he's not the fun uncle anymore. Sarah says he never was
The boys learn that whenever Marvin Gaye is playing on the stereo, it's almost certainly because Bucky made Sam mad and this is his way of apologizing
Both Sam and Bucky love to have nice clothes. When Sarah finds out they need two closets, she laughs for ten straight minutes
The boys love teaching Bucky slang, though he never uses it correctly. Sam laugh-cries the first time Bucky offers to show him a fun "me-me"
Bucky isn't allowed to play video games anymore after the boys got him super into Tetris and he didn't talk to anyone for eighteen hours
Kyle can’t stay focused on Alex’s wild plan. He has a surgery scheduled for that afternoon and he needs to focus fully. With someone’s life relying on him doing his job well, he can’t think about danger or even about his desire to kiss Alex, or his uncertainty.
Kyle can’t stay focused on Alex’s wild plan. He has a surgery scheduled for that afternoon and he needs to focus fully. With someone’s life relying on him doing his job well, he can’t think about danger or even about his desire to kiss Alex, or his uncertainty.
Later, once the surgery has wrapped up successfully, he walks all the way to Master Sargeant Manes’ room. He stays in the doorway and watches the man in his coma. The man’s condition is baffling to everyone. By all Kyle’s predictions, Manes should have woken up a long time ago. All the tests come back clean and all his readings seem normal. Otherwise, he would be afraid that he’d miscalculated and damaged Manes’ brain irreparably by the dose or by waiting too long before getting help for him.
That still might be the case.
It’s another thing he tries to not think about, but fails miserably. He is sure Alex would forgive him, he is sure that his is already irredeemable in the eyes of the other Manes’ boys, but neither of that truly matters. If Manes never wakes up, he is going to have to come to terms with having gone against his oath. Although it was in self-defense and although he had done everything he could to avoid the consequences, he is not sure whether he can accept his own innocence.
“You deserve to live more than he does,” says Isobel’s voice quietly, if coldly, from behind him.
“Who’s to measure that?” Kyle asks as he turns to face her. She is holding her customary bouquet of flowers. “Were you reading my mind?” he realizes belatedly.
“I didn’t need to,” she says. “You are easy to read.”
He inhales deeply and let’s her walk past him into the room and replace the flowers. He always expects military security at the door, but there appears to be no need for it. There is a security guard by the entrance to the department, who didn’t use to stand there, but other than that, there is no one but the medical staff to worry about.
Still, Isobel’s next words come as a psychic whisper. It makes him flinch. “How do you resist?” she asks and she is looking at the monitors showing Manes’ vitals.
It takes Kyle a moment to realize what she means. “It’s not my call to make,” he says, voice snappy. If he tried to end Manes’ life now, it would make him a murderer. “It’s no one’s call at all. There’s brain activity.”
Isobel nods. She steps closer to the bed and rest her hand on Manes’ temple. “And what ugly brain activity it is.” She turns to Kyle again.
Isobel has a presence around her that doesn’t leave people unaffected, but Kyle notices it doesn’t have the effect on him that it normally would. It’s not just the hospital room. He has a boyfriend to return to and even though the relationship is fake, the feelings have become very real.
“I mean it, Kyle,” she says, voice unusually soft. Her next words come in through her telepathy again. “You had no choice. It was you or him. And still you found it in you to be merciful.”
She rest her hand on his arm and speaks aloud. “You’ll be happy to hear that I found someone to help our mutual friend put her life in order,” she says. “My late husband left me with some connections.”
It’s good news. Whatever plans and connections Isobel has, Kyle is glad that she wants to use them to get Rosa a legal identity. But even as he smiles at her, he thinks about the rest of her words. She is right, he knows. And most days he remembers it.
It doesn’t make the boulder in his stomach lighter as he later stocks up for a visit from Alex’s brothers.
turnnoffyourmind
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
germansingergirl
