The White Queen (S.Rogers)

Chapter 18

"Do you understand, Captain, what I am telling you?" Marino leaned back in his chair, and crossed his legs. "I don't even know how deep her secrets go. What she is still hiding? How far she will go to protect them? to tell the truth, I don't think she even knows what's she's hiding from herself. She has pushed so much down, for so long, just to survive, that I am worried about what will happen when it all comes bubbling to the surface."

"Why are you telling me this?" Steve finally drained the glass in his hand in one go. "You ask me in here, to question my intentions, regarding Brooklyn, and then basically try to scare me off, by telling me she's mentally unstable?"

"I just want you to be prepared." Marino stood up, reaching for Steve's glass. "I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to have a normal life, a normal relationship. But anyone who decides to go into that with her, needs to be prepared. Because there will come a day, when the weight of everything will eventually try to crush her. And she needs someone who is strong enough to hold her up, through it all."

He poured more liquor into the glass, and handed it to Steve, coming around the desk, to lean against the front of it. "So the question I want to ask you. Are you strong enough? Are you strong enough to pull her back, when she finally comes to the edge of her sanity?"

Staring at his glass, rolling the crystal around in his hands, Steve considered the question. Personal feelings aside, Brooklyn was important to Bucky. If Steve failed to protect her, if he failed to keep her safe, if he failed to hold her together, then he would have failed Bucky.

He thought of, in the brief time he had known her, how she seemed to swing back and forth, emotionally. How she seemed to be totally with him, in the moment, fully focused, and then could go where she was almost cold, stone-like. Like the world couldn't touch her. He had assumed it was due to her not knowing how to handle a situation, in the outside world. But perhaps Marino was right. Perhaps it was due to the fact that she was somehow split, inside herself.

And Juliana, that sweet, fresh faced little girl, she would be the collateral, if her sister hit the wall. Juliana would be the one to suffer, the one to live through the hell that would be left if Brooklyn imploded.

Steve thought about how he would feel, if Brooklyn, that shy sweet woman, the one who didn't know how to cook, who was hesitant when touching him, but freely admitted she liked his kisses. The woman who had loved the random bunch of flowers he had given her, the woman who had dropped everything, just to kiss him. How would he feel, if she disappeared from his life? How would he feel, if she let go, and drifted away?

The higher function of his brain rejected the idea. It refused to allow him to consider his life, now, without Brooklyn.

The dark part of him.... That part of him that he refused to let out unless it was during battle? That part was shaking at the bars he kept it behind, snarling in denial at the loss of Brooklyn.

Simply put, he was not going to let his woman disappear on him, either physically or into herself.

Draining the glass, he snapped it down on the desk, and leaned back. "How do you propose we keep her from losing herself, then?"

Marino grinned. "Good. First thing is, when things happen, she needs to be pushed to deal with it. I've talked to a few people about how to deal with PTSD. A lot of them seem to think that the best way to handle it is with kid gloves and such. But, knowing Queenie? She wouldn't know what to do with that. Pushing her, making her confront what she has done, and what was done to her? It's probably the best manner. If she can't run from herself, then she has to fight it."

Steve considered this. Marino was correct. Nothing would help Brooklyn better than facing her past. She sure wouldn't be healthy. But the question was how to help her, without breaking her completely?