Because I’m trying to motivate myself to actually finish a few key scenes, here’s a new snippet from While You Were Sleeping, my post-CACW Reverse Big Bang fic (heavy on the h/c sorry not sorry:
Bucky shut the notebook, swiping impatiently at the tears that had started to blur his vision. God, how could he have gotten everything so spectacularly wrong? All this time, he'd been running as far as he could away from Steve, certain that Steve only wanted to be around him because of what Bucky symbolized – the past, his youth, old friends and family he'd never get back – rather than the broken, lost shell he actually was. But, in reality, Steve had always seen Bucky, who he was, the flawed person trying to make things right, and wanted to get to know him the way he was now.
Which was more than what Bucky'd done. Everything he'd accused Steve of had, in reality, been him. Steve had been a symbol of his own failure, of his own past, not a person with his own thoughts and feelings and agency. The thought rankled as much as it shamed him.
"We were supposed to go home." He could hear how his voice was trembling, but forced himself to keep going. Finally giving voice to the nameless thing he'd tried so hard to shove back into its box. The nagging sense of wrongness that had followed him even into cryo and had stayed with him even when his brain had been trying to convince him that he didn't need Steve at all.
"That was the goddamn bargain we made before we formed the Howlies," he continued, softer now. "I'd saved him when we were kids and he'd saved me in Azzano and we were supposed to save each other during the War and come home and I couldn't –" His voice broke. "I couldn't –"
"But you did." Wanda's hands were gentle on his, her voice soothing, a salve he didn't deserve. "You saved him when the helicarriers fell and he saved you in Siberia and now it's your turn again and after that, perhaps it's time you both take a break and just learn to be."
A break. If only things were that simple. He'd had a debt to pay, and he'd shirked it, ran as far as he could, and Steve was suffering as a result. If Bucky'd been here instead of trying to renege on their bargain, maybe Steve would be with them. Maybe he would have been on that op, maybe he could have gotten to Steve before any damage was done, maybe...
Maybe Steve would be with him now, with his luminous smile and quick wit and respectfully casual touches.
He looked down at the notebook, the words blurring behind the sheen in his eyes. Even after the way Bucky'd treated him, Steve had still reached out. Tried, in his own way, to let Bucky know that he was still with Bucky, that he was still on Bucky's side. That they were still friends, even after the years and bloodshed between them.
"I joined the Army after Pearl Harbor because it was the right thing to do," Bucky started, licking dry lips. "Good men had died defending our country from attack, and a lot of innocent people were dying just because they looked different or worshipped different and it was our duty to try to make it right. To make the world right. But I also signed up to fight because he couldn't. Because the Army was ever going to take him, but they'd take me and I could take that hit for him, I could –"
He turned beseeching eyes to her, willed her to understand what Steve had once meant to him, what Steve meant to him still. "All I wanted back then was to protect him, and now –"
"You still are," Wanda said. Her touch was still cool and dry, another balm. The look in her eyes was far older than her years. "Because that's who you are and who you are to each other."
"And what if it's too late?" He knew, better than anyone, what Sinthea had been capable of. What he'd trained her to be. And her followers – her soldiers – had had Steve in their grip for six weeks. That was more than enough time to destroy anyone, even someone as strong and indomitable as Steve Rogers. "What if he can't be saved? What if...what if he doesn't come back?"
Her small smile carried with it an echo of old grief; dimly, he remembered that her brother had died in Sokovia trying to save civilian lives. "Then you do what he would have wanted – which is live." She curled her fingers around his. "Keep fighting. Keep helping the vulnerable and weak."
The possibility of it – of a world without Steve as his compass or ballast – made him sick to his stomach. "I'm not like him," he told her. "I'd be a poor replacement, I'm not – I never wanted to be him." He'd only ever wanted to follow in Steve's footsteps, not create his own.
"No one's asking you to step into Captain America's shoes," Wanda said. "You're a hero in your own right."
"I'm no one's idea of a hero." Heroes did the right thing, even when the right thing was impossible. Heroes thought about people other than themselves, fought for a better world, and never gave up, no matter what the odds. As for Bucky, he was the furthest thing from it. All he'd done was think about himself, protected himself at the cost of everyone around him, and the only thing he'd ever brought to the world had been destruction and death.
He let out a watery, sharp laugh. "I mentioned he's an idiot, right?"
"You did." She let her hands drop, taking the warmth with them. "But I've also gotten to know him a little bit since Sokovia, and he might see the best in people, but he still sees the whole person."
"He was never naive, no.” He’d got the shit kicked out of him too many times growing up to be some sort of idealist.
She nodded again, and now her look was triumphant. "Then trust that he sees you and thinks you're a hero anyway."
(Posting Date is July 3rd)
