Skies Clearing (Maximoff Twins fanfic)

Chapter Twenty

"The fear of facing your fears is harder to overcome than the fear itself."

BLUE

The bullet drawing feels like it is burning a hole in space itself where it lies under my pillow.

I can't sleep.

I know what the missile means. I know what the playing cards mean. I can understand the colors and the feelings scattered haphazardly through the pages of my memory book.

But the hail of bullets, it feels different. Looking at the picture, even as colorless and rough as it is, makes my chest burn and my heart stop beating.

When I draw Stark's armor, I can see only the curve of brass shells in the metal. In the blurring fall of Wanda's skirt is the rubble of a city that I run by too fast to see. In the arch of Clint's shoulders is something that screams target and danger. So I leave these drawings unfinished.

I leave too many drawings unfinished.

"Can I see your new memories?" Bucky asks me one afternoon, when we are lying on opposite sides of the couch, each with our memory books in our laps. His is haphazard and marked with sticky notes and words scribbled too messily for anyone to read. It is his fourth memory book, and it is nearly full.

Mine is closed, and my hand will not move from the cover to open the book again. All of the last drawings are little more than lines, overshadowed by the bigger memory that keeps threatening to burst out.

We both know that it helps to talk through the flashes we put in the books, especially with someone who wasn't in them. I know what's in his book. He knows what's in mine. And we say nothing about them.

Bucky sits up and reaches out for my drawings.

I let him take them.

Bucky flips through the last pages, and then back again. He turns the unfinished sketches around to see them from another angle. His head tilts and he frowns. "What's up with these, Silver?"

I don't know what I can say. I shrug.

"They're not memories," he says.

"They were going to be."

Bucky pulls his legs in and sits cross-legged, leaning over my book, his hand on the points that were meant to be Clint's arrows, before they became hot daggers in my chest.

"So what stopped that from happening?"

I think of one paper, smudged and folded three times and tucked under my pillow where no one will see it. I can't answer, partly because it terrifies me, and maybe even more because I don't understand it enough to know what to say.

"It's your bad one, isn't it?"

"My what?"

Bucky sighs and lays his book down next to mine. "When I was in Romania, remembering, I got to a point in my memory book where I could only write one scene. But I didn't know the whole thing. Just that... it's cold. Freezing cold, and I'm up in the sky. I feel helpless, terrified. Then all at once there's this pain...." Bucky touches his shoulder, where metal meets skin. He doesn't finish.

My hand drifts to my heart. "It won't go away."

"I know, Silver. It's bad."

"How did you fix it, Bucky? What should I do?" My accent is cut with desperation and I can't help it but I need him to tell me, I need something I can do.

He shakes his head. "I wasn't like you. I was lucky. For me, Steve came, we fought, the helicopter fell out of the sky, I hit my head and then I remembered. There was so much at once."

It's not fair, and it makes the ache of a sob rise in my throat. "What do I do, Bucky? Please."

He moves his flesh hand to my shoulder, and meets my eyes. "Hey, hey. We're going to figure it out. Right, Silver? We'll figure it out."

I turn away, and can't reply.

"Okay?"

I nod.

"Okay. Do you want to talk through it with me tomorrow, when we're a little more calm?"

"No," I say quickly, and my voice cracks. "No, I mean, I want to do it now."

"You sure?"

"Yes. But I- I need to get the page." I stumble off the couch and walk to my room, too shaky to run and too desperate to hold on to reality. The paper is exactly where I left it.

When I get back, Bucky is sitting cross-legged on the floor, having left both books closed on the couch.

"Hey," he says. "D'you mind if I call Sam up to talk with us? He's good with this kind of thing."

I bite my lip and run a hand through my hair. "Okay."

Bucky opens his phone.

I sit down and immediately zone out. My hand tap-tap-taps on top of the page, and Bucky's voice is just background noise.

A soft knock on the wall heralds Sam's entrance. "Hey, Pietro. Bucky."

I force a smile and nod.

He sits down next to me, knee-to-knee, completing the triangle of our crossed legs. "So most of the team is out today, or training newbies. We shouldn't be disturbed."

"Great," says Bucky.

"How do you wanna do this, Pietro?" Sam asks.

"Um, I should probably show you the drawing, no?" I fiddle with the corners of the page and start to unfold it.

"If you like."

I open the paper and lay it out in the middle of our circle in all its smudged-black-ink glory. Dread sinks in my chest.

"Explain it to me?" Sam asks.

I start with the outside, pointing at the vague flashes on the sides. "These are the buildings. There are lots of them."

"Are they city buildings? Skyscrapers?"

I shake my head. "Small. They're broken. The stone rubble is all over." I move to the lines further in. "That's my speed. It isn't usually so sharp, but I am running faster than usual."

"Why's that?"

"I'm desperate." And I point to the bullets, angled down but still pointing right at me. I shiver and press a hand to my chest.

Sam looks down at the picture, and then back at me. "You're doing great. In the memory, can you hear the gunfire?"

I close my eyes and remember the sound. "Yes. Machine gun fire. And people screaming."

"Are you trying to get away from the bullets?"

Am I? I think through the flashes, the desperation, the direction. It's raining fire and I'm running, legs burning, faster faster faster time is all you have, and I could outrun the bullets but - "No." - I keep going faster faster faster against every instinct straight into the line of fire, I'm reaching for the deadly hail, skidding in the dust, willing myself to be the target.

I lose count of the impacts slamming into my chest, nearly knocking me over. A moment later the pain follows, searing hot and I can't breathe can't breathe can't think except to turn because I have to see -

The arrows trembling in their quiver, the man curled desperately around a boy, holding him tight to his chest. The shock in his eyes when the dust clears and he's still breathing. The realization and pain when those eyes meet mine.

And the words I choke out through my smirk like coughing blood - "You didn't see that coming."

My vision whites out.