It’s been sixteen days that Clint’s been out in the black, and Bucky is pretty sure he’s the only one that thinks the guy is still alive.
He can understand it - the tub had been leaking atmo like a Phr’yl Warden leaks self-satisfaction, and the vis-screen had shown that Clint was bleeding in at least three places, and those were just the places they could see. He can understand the mourning, and the flares they’d fired into the black, and how they’d all taken something to remember him by. The pitying glances are maybe the worst, when Bucky insists that they don’t divide up the rest of Clint’s shit just yet, but he -
Yeah, okay. Maybe it ain’t exactly a belief. Maybe it’s a worn-thin clung-tight hope wound between tired fingers, and maybe he can’t bring himself to let it go.
Even with Stark’s funding they’re all piled up tight together in the ship, bunked up and hard to avoid, and Bucky can’t fathom how Clint has made it feel somehow empty. The common space is missing his feet crossed on the crate there, and the bunk room is missing his snoring, and everyone’s taking turns flying from the co-pilot’s chair ‘cos they can’t bring themselves to sit where he ain’t. Bucky sometimes takes his bunk, though, lit by the gentle flickering light of the holopics Clint collects; he’s got scratched up images of creatures and seas and grasslands and ships, things that he remembered or wanted or had never seen. He’s got Bucky, too, captured with the rest of the crew, here a blank expression, and there a scowl, and one gently stuttering grin. Bucky hadn’t known he’d ever looked at someone the way he looks in that holopic. Hadn’t thought he’d been that clear.
He rolls himself out of Clint’s bunk, wrapping the fuck-ugly purple blanket around him before he shuffles out into the common room and through to the bridge. Natasha’s in the co-pilot’s chair, which is the best possible option; she has the same aching wound he won’t admit that he’s suffered, and she never tries to make him talk.
She sucks in a breath, when he sits in Clint’s chair. Feels like it takes all the air outta the goddamn room.
“I shoulda told him,” Bucky says, low and raw. Natasha flips a switch that doesn’t much need flipping, just for something to do with her hands.
“He knew,” she says, and her smile looks like it hurts. “He was waiting.”
it hurts like a gut shot. It hurts like a fuckin’ admission.
“I -” he starts, but he’s cut off by a crackle from the hailer, followed by the succession of tones that says whoever the message is from they’ve sometime been counted as crew. Sure as hell doesn’t match up with the Vaktash cruiser the computer starts screaming about half a second later, now that it’s in range.
Natasha scrambles for the hailer, giving out the ship’s ident and asking curtly for theirs in turn. Instead there’s a cackle of familiar laughter that makes Bucky choke up with all the saltwater he couldn’t bring himself to waste.
“Hey Tasha,” Clint says, loud and obnoxious and the best thing Bucky’s ever heard, “didja miss me?”
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