The Long Journey Home

13: We are free to choose but not free of consequence

[ Chapter notes: TFATWS 1x05 ]

          Washed and changed, Bucky focuses on getting the doors back on their hinges, as much as he's able. His injuries don't look quite as bad now that the smears of blood are gone from his skin. He won't let you get a closer look, though.

          "I was nanny to a little boy, once." Is it the first time you've brought up your past job history? You remember being deliberately vague on the plane – and The Baron had intervened when he found questions too probing. Have you brought up Carl before, when not in conversation with his father?

          Bucky harrumphs, keeping his focus on the doors. It can't feel good to push air abruptly through his nose like that, but then he's assured you it isn't broken. Everything looked worse, mostly, than it felt. He still seems to be moving around more gingerly than you've noticed previously.

          Annoyed with the male ego you're being offered for your efforts, and the feeling of betrayal over bringing up Carl to someone who wasn't there and didn't know, you switch your focus to the continuing effort to right the room from the altercation that happened earlier in the morning. It feels, now, like it happened so very long ago. Maybe – maybe you'll have better luck with Sam, once he returns. There's also the chance that Sam is being seen by medics involved with the chaos at the site. It would make sense... but then why would Bucky avoid utilizing that same care?

          "Zemo's kid."

          "Carl." The little general's name is out of your mouth before you've had time to think about the resulting squeeze of thistle around your heart. It follows, just as it always does. At least you don't have to also suffer through watching it land as a dagger strike to his father, too.

          Will you see him again? The Baron? Will you add that last moment in the bathroom to the cycle of last moments in your head? That feeling of being sucked into the darkness, the feeling of freefall, starts to swirl within you again. That last link to Before has unspooled, that last link you had to someone who understood exactly what losses you'd suffered for having suffered them himself.