Your home in Sokovia was destroyed when Ultron decided to make it ground zero for his attempted coup of the world. Everyone had lost someone - some more than most. You? The family you'd worked for had perished - save one. The rumors were that he'd b...
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Misją.
Mission.
It's a word he knows. One he won't have to look up, later. He's heard it in so many languages that it doesn't much matter which one any speaker chooses to –
** Mission report. December sixteen. Nineteen-nighty one. **
Bucky flinches at the voice in his head, the memory summoned, and tries shifting in the driver's seat to see if it helps. It doesn't. He needs to focus on getting them there safely. He needs to focus on the road and the other cars speeding along, not how ineffective his attempts at banishing those hard voices from the recesses of his mind.
He blinks and swallows and focuses on her voice, instead, on the warmth that had filled every word as she spoke to him in Russian and then... He's heard her speak a good half dozen or so languages at this point. How many more does she know? And if he risks glancing over another time will she scold him again for not watching the road?
- - -
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It takes a good memory to accumulate languages. There's a question buried in the compliment that Bucky's trying to offer: how many languages do you have? How many might you share? You've wondered that same thing. You can't blame Bucky his curiosity about that history you've guarded so closely, the past you've only started to share with him in bits and pieces. It was the point of the game of languages you started with him, yes? Or maybe the point was to distract him from other places his mind might go and attempt to lure out that bright smile that warms his features and somehow find a way to hold it in place.
"You know, you don't owe Sam any money if he doesn't know I speak Russian." You can pretend, or try to. It is a double edged sword, your languages. In every place you were from the day you left Sokovia to the day your world shifted again in that bar in Madripoor, every day was a game of chance. Was it better to pretend you didn't know what was being said, that you couldn't piecemeal the conversation by leaning on languages you did have? And context clues. There are some gestures that translate universally. The only problem is that Sam and Bucky have been gaining familiarity with you, learning what to look for when you're trying to keep something hidden away.
