Nightingale (Sequel to Solider Boy)

Seventy-Six

Bucky had done and seen a lot of weird things in his life. Watching his fiancé remove stitches from her leg was up there on that list. Six days had passed since they'd gotten engaged, five since Wanda had stabbed Melody and now, the wound (just as she'd stated) was healed enough to no longer need stitches.

"How's your leg?" he asked, noticing the dark red scar tissue that had built up around the area. Freshly healed and with even more time, it would fade from red to white.

"Healed perfectly, scar tissue is maturing and no sign of infection," Melody relied cheerfully, grabbing the towel carrying the crusty remains of the suture and tossing the thing into the trash. "I'm perfectly fine-just like I told you I would be by the way."

Bucky rolled his eyes and grabbed the dinner dishes from the table. "I just got worried okay? It looked pretty bad."

"If it was actually bad, I would've been spurting blood like a fountain."

"Femoral artery right?" he guessed. He remembered Melody explaining that to him once, when she was going over details of a newly updated simulation program. A car crash with a family of five and that had been one of the injuries coded into the system. 

Melody's eyes lit up. "Yes!" She hopped down off the table slowly and put her full weight on the leg, taking a few experimental steps. "And no pain when in motion, excellent," she beamed and then sat down in the chair, pulling a pile of papers back towards her. 

"This more stuff for the sim?" Bucky asked, sitting down across from her and eying the black printing on the pages. He couldn't read upside down but the length of the material made him think it was no simple matter.

"No," Melody replied with a shrug. "They're still making the modifications I suggested last time."

"Immigration paper work?" That was his next guess, the same day she and Sharon had made up, Melody had accepted T'challa's offer and had been working on the needed documentation ever since. And she was holding a pen which only furthered the idea. 

"No."

"There's no way that's the latest medical journal. Way too thin." Bucky said frowning. He'd never read them himself. He'd tried once, just to see what got Melody so engrossed in them, but between the medical jargon and boring data, he'd given up and decided this was an interest Melody could keep to herself.

"It's not. It's  a statement."

"Statement of what?"

"Press statement. I'm still missing in New York remember? Sharon has a friend at the New York Times and said friend has agreed to release this statement for me. I'm just proofreading now." She glanced down again, scanning over the words and groaned, leaning forwards onto the table.

"What? Are you that bad at spelling?"

"No, I just hate writing. I'm bad with words."

Bucky grinned. "I know," he reached across the table and grabbed the sheet of paper. He didn't read the whole thing, just scanned it. It was a statement, not only about the shooting, but the scars that had been uncovered afterwards and how they'd gotten there and how it had ended. To the point, brief and ice cold. "Wow," he commented, "you really are bad with words."

Melody winced. "Yeah, I know. They're going to think I'm a psychopath."

"Or a sociopath." She raised her eyebrows. "I did a lot of reading when I was hiding in Europe-didn't have anyone to talk to and seventy years of information to catch up on." Bucky set down the statement and grabbed her hand, no longer smiling as she hadn't either.

"I don't know how to talk about this." She shook her head, glaring down at the press statement with a look of pure venom. In that moment, Bucky knew she wasn't seeing words on a sheet of paper, but the face of the monster who'd written the story. "I can barely talk to Sharon about it and she's Sharon. How am I supposed to tell thousands of people?"