Nightingale (Sequel to Solider Boy)

Thirty-Six

Steve cleared his throat, apparently surprised. Bucky wasn't sure, he was still staring at the table. He couldn't bring himself to raise his face and look at his friend. If he did, Bucky feared he'd freeze up, become paralyzed and not be able to speak. If he told Steve everything, then...then it was real. It wasn't just some place that hovered in between their respective realties. This would merge it all together, for better or worse. Melody had asked him not to say anything, he'd promised not to, but that was when he knew she was alive and well. Bucky couldn't stay silent anymore. He couldn't carry this alone.

"The Nightingale?" he repeated. 

"Yeah."

"Really?"

Bucky laughed without humor. "Yeah, really."

"You said, last time that you didn't want to talk about it."

"That was a month ago," Bucky replied dully. "I wasn't ready then. I'm ready now."

"Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't have said anything if I wasn't." 

Steve was silent for a second. Bucky didn't have to look at him to envision the intense look on his face. This was the only thing Steve didn't know about his time in Hydra. The one thing Bucky had kept on lock down until now. In that time, Steve had plenty of time to imagine just who Nightingale was. Bucky didn't have to read minds to know his ideas were probably all very wrong.

"Tell me about it." The phrase was the same one Steve used every time Bucky came to him, ready to discuss one more thing about Hydra-further proof that every theory he had about the Nightingale was completely wrong.

"Melody is the Nightingale." 

"What?"

"Melody is the Nightingale," Bucky said again. "I just called her that when we were alone. I don't even know how it happened, but it did. I didn't mean to love her-."

"Okay hold on!" Steve cut him off, which was very unlike him. The hysterical edge to his voice was enough to make Bucky look up at him. His face was white and his eyes were wide, hands together in the shape of a T. "Time out! Back up!"

"What's there to go back to?" Bucky asked. "I haven't even started." That was the beginning of the story-or at least the part that he needed to talk about. 

"You love her?" Steve asked, laying his hands out on the table, but his wild eyes still remained. "You're in love with Mel?"

"Yes."

"Mel Frasier?"

"That's what I said."

Steve didn't lose his shocked expression. "Are you serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be? What's so hard to grasp about it?" Bucky asked, loosing his patience. "Hydra fucked me up pretty well, but I didn't lose my ability to have emotions Steve. I can still feel love." Melody was proof enough of that fact. 

"I'm not trying to say that!" he exclaimed. "I just can't get my head around the Mel portion of this, I mean I've seen you two together and you never treated her any differently than most doctors you saw. I mean, yeah you were politer, but I just thought-."

"That it was because she was Sharon's friend and I owed her? No." Bucky smiled, recalling just how he'd treated Melody when they'd first met. He'd been so terrible to her, so rude and ungrateful all the time and she'd never stopped trying to help him. "I love her. Like I said, I never meant to, it just...happened. At first, I didn't really want anything to do with her. She wanted to help me, but I was too angry and hopeless to accept it. I treated her so badly, despite everything she was risking but she still didn't give up on me. I eventually got a wake up call but that was just the start."