Read All About It, 1/5

[mangacat201]

~*~

You stand close to the glass, so close that your breath almost fogs it up, but not quite, because you need to see the moment when the familiar – strange, distorted, ruptured – view of the City changes with the movement of the quinjet that will head for the helipad on the roof of the Tower any minute. Your hand is splayed wide against the window surface, as if that could bring you closer, like tasting the currents of the air. You make sure it’s the right hand this time, after the man in the walls has told you discreetly of the cracks and hairline fractures in the triple shielded, bulletproof glass you left when you didn’t care to think about it last time. It’s not that you really care about property damage or Stark’s bitching about superhumans being super-high-maintenance – a pinnacle of irony if you’ve ever seen one – but you won’t compromise the integrity of any space Steve lives in… stays safe in.

You don’t really listen consciously to the status updates even though you asked for them, information stored in those mechanical places they carved out in your brain, muscles tensing and releasing in reaction to something that passes by your conscious mind. The fugue state scares him, when he’s there to witness it, you know, but it’s sometimes the only way you can stay silent and contained instead of lashing out and laying waste to everything that’s around you. And right now, after the news that they’re coming back battered, and bruised and rent apart from the fight, it’s the only thing that keeps you from burning the world around anything that could, would, has, will do him harm. It’s not healthy, they say, this fixation, the absolute focus, exchanging one set of objectives for another that you follow just as single-mindedly. But every time someone brings it up, you just look at them, at those people – each broken in their own way – and ask whether they’d rather you go back to what your mission was before, and suddenly everything else seems more interesting than that particular topic. You know that the ways you’ve been made into a weapon, a tool, are never going to go away, neural networks branded into scars that will never yield back the memories they scorched out. You've made your peace with that, even though he hasn’t, and there’s no resentment left when the little guarded space you have for emotions is filled and crowded with more important things. So you accept that your world is only ever going to revolve about one thing, and why not him, since he’s worth it. Was worth it before. And that the price is that you shut yourself off whenever he’s not there, let in the cold voluntarily, because otherwise you’d burn too bright. Burn everything in your path.

Your eyes catch the movement fractions of a second before the building tells you they’re here, and you follow the decent of the small jet, resisting the urge to run up to the platform at top speed. You are a soldier, battle-hardened, strong, not a hysterical girl at homecoming. Still, your feet turn towards the upper levels, the commotion of the team scrambling from the jet, and this time… this time something is different. Urgent. Disorderly. There’s Stark, mask drawn, face white, shouting orders into thin air. There’s the sound of footsteps behind you as personnel rush in, purposeful chaos. And then you see a flash of blue, a flash of red. Different red, more red. He’s there, listing, one arm slung over the shoulders of the archer, the other pressed against his side where the fabric of his uniform gapes inches apart - a lot wider than his splayed hand can cover, and your world narrows in a second to that focal point where life is draining out of him, splattered across his pale, pain-cramped fingers. In an instant, you’re analyzing the wound, ripped flesh, flayed skin, your mind running half a dozen scenarios of how you’d cause such an injury, seven different ways of how someone could have fended off such an attack if they’d been covering him in that moment. Watch the rapid fire breaths as they sit him down on a gurney, push him to lie back, hear the agony he tries to keep down behind clenched teeth. But all you can think is how nobody watched his back the way you would have.

The subdued mechanical whirr of your fist is fading into background, and the rage in your core goes tight, then cold, palpable. You barely notice the bustling activity suddenly ceasing around you, one of the medics still half bent over him, frozen in your presence. That’s when he turns his head slightly, eyes only half-open but widening to full and round in a second from something he must be seeing on your face.

“Buck, no…”

His voice breaks off unexpectedly when you dart forward, your fingertips feather light on the wrist of the free hand on his side, with a kind of deliberation, tenderness that is so at odds with the violent storm raging in your chest. Touch is something you haven’t allowed yourself in all those months since you’ve come to find him, when you didn’t trust your muscles not to turn against you, wreaking havoc without control. Your heart is suddenly beating hard and fast, throat closing off against the words, but you have to get them out, can’t lose any more precious seconds.

“I want in.”

You look him in the eyes, then lift your head to search the gaze of the others, Stark, the archer, the girl from the Red Room, making sure they get exactly what you mean. When you are satisfied the message got through, you step back and out of the way, thanking the lucky stars that there’s at least one sensible person on Stark’s med staff who doesn’t waste any more time before throwing themselves back into keeping Captain America from bleeding out all over the floor.

~*~

When the aftermath is more or less dealt with, and everyone is patched up and no longer close to dying anymore, you sit next to him on the bed where he jokes about being able to feel his flesh knitting itself back together, and how it itches maddeningly every time. You know that he secretly just revels in the warmth that spreads from where his elbow is pressed against your thigh, and you let him chatter if he feels like he has to keep your attention away, so you don’t notice and bolt. Words are still difficult, so you can’t tell him that that barrier has fallen, that you know with absolute certainty that you can trust your body to do everything in its power to keep him safe from harm. It’s exhilarating, the knowledge that you’ll be using the weapon for your own purposes from now on, new code writing itself over the trodden paths of hunt, lock, kill. You are well aware that there are hoops to jump through before you’ll get to go out into the field with him, but you weren’t built for perfect infiltration for nothing. If it comes down to it, you can fool every single one of them.

~*~

“I don’t like it.”

“I don’t care.”

Stark has been the last one to corner you about the issue, after every one of the other Avengers weighed and measured you in their own way. The mild-mannered doctor with the shadow thrice his size – I know how it feels to be afraid of turning against your own. Don’t. – the dangerous little girl that grew up into her own woman – a silent moment passing between them with eyes locked. It tells her all she needs to know. She nods. – the archer that treads so lightly in the rafters above them, you hadn’t even realized he was there to witness – if Tasha’s in, I’m in. – the god whose name sends a shiver down your spine you can’t explain – you are his shieldbrother, yes? (He extends a hand in a grasp that takes up your arm to the elbow. You don’t move a muscle. Bruises fade.). But you take out the words for Stark, because you know, he’s really the one to win.

“I don’t trust you.”

“I don’t want you to.”

That seems to throw him a little, turning from the window with a little clink of the ice in his glass.

“I want you to trust that I will keep him safe.”

There are no maybe’s in your world.

Stark lets you squirm a little more under his gaze, eyes never moving as he takes a calculated sip of 50-year-old scotch. You let your metal fingers catch and release with an audible click to give his ego the appropriate stroke for having rattled you. It’s only a human response after all. Even though you are still a mockery.

Stark smirks like he’s got you pinned down and then sets his glass down on the windowsill.

“Alright, I’ve had my publicists draw up a couple of proposals for press releases. You’ll have to review them, of course, to decide how you want come back from the dead.”

The mild surprise from the fact that Stark apparently expected you to pass his test is overridden by what his words imply. You flinch with your whole body this time, and the smirk goes wider still.

“What? You didn’t think you would be swanning in from the shadows whenever Cap needs you to knock off a few bad guys and then vanish again? We’re superheroes, pal, we’re flashy and loud. People are interested in us – there’s even individual fan clubs, if you care to go looking, you probably have one already. And as long as the Avengers are entertaining while doing the world saving thing, we’ll stay on people’s good side, even after the insurance evals for the property damage come in. You’ll be running with a guy who’s entirely decked out in the nation’s primary colors. That covert assassin shit? Not gonna fly.”

You make yourself stay utterly still while your thoughts race like lightening in your head, cold sweat suddenly covering your back at the notion of … exposure, a name, a face, a story, out there for all to see and dissect, open, vulnerable. A real person.

You want to run, crawl your way into the walls, wipe the self-satisfied grin off Stark's face with a fist. But then your mind quiets down, battle-ready, the breath before the pull of the trigger, and you understand.

This is the real test.

You asked them to give up part of their safety for you, now they’re asking you to give part of yours for them. You let your weight settle comfortably in your legs, arms behind your back, metal fingers curled tightly around the flesh and blood hand, hiding the tremor.

“I will do whatever is necessary.”

Stark purses his lips for a moment, then he nods and whips out a pair of his ridiculous sunglasses.

“Man, you got it bad.”

He brushes by with one hand clasped on your shoulder for a moment. The casual touch makes you bristle and grit your teeth, but you let it happen anyway, because this is how it’s going to be. When you hear the door snick closed behind Stark, you make a conscious effort to relax your locked up muscles and in a fancy grab the glass he left discarded right next to you. You throw it back, knowing full well the sharp sting of the alcohol will do nothing for you, but the taste calls up a lingering shadow of a burn that once would have clouded your mind and your judgment. Sometimes it’s enough to pretend.

~*~

Somehow he knows you’ve jumped through all the hoops now when you slip back that night after staring out the glowing skyline for a long time, even though you doubt that the others told him what they were doing. You wonder if he sees it inside you, that small terrified being that cannot handle the thought of being out in the open. You could go back, draw up the ice, present the blank slate to protect yourself from the onslaught of humanity that burrows itself under your skin. You are all of them, a shivering husk of a person, a soldier, a man out of time and more and sometimes the clamoring in your head gets so loud you feel like you can hear nothing on the outside anymore. But then you look at him, and all the voices shout the same thing, and there is clarity in it, even if that makes you co-dependent and a bit insane. He doesn’t mind though, because while everyone orbits about Captain America, you are the only one that orbits around him. You are the only one who can, no matter how fragmented and broken you are. He’s a different kind of broken in his own way.

“Stark wants me to go public.”

His eyebrows slowly climb up his forehead, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s surprise about the suggestion, or the fact that you spoke to him like starting a conversation unprompted is something you do. Words are still difficult, and even if you struggle less with the concept of making decisions for yourself, communicating those still hits roadblocks in your head on a regular basis. It’s another thing you’ve decided to reclaim for yourself, because words were apparently a thing of yours, once.

“Are you going to do it?”

The level tone does nothing to indicate which answer he would like to hear, but you can feel the anxiety thrumming underneath every word.

“Yes.”

He exhales visibly and steps towards you, hands outstretched as if to grasp your elbows, but hovering half an inch short of actual touch.

“Are you sure?”

Anger flashes through you at the notion that he doesn’t trust your determination, but it goes just as fast. He only ever seeks to protect you, albeit in different ways than you want him to. You set your fingers lightly onto the place over his ribcage where the gash is still healing under his shirt and let your head sink down until your forehead lies against his collarbone. He is still but for the calm breaths lifting his chest underneath your touch, having learned by now not to trigger your reflexes when you are this close.

“Yes.”

“Want me to be there?”

You stand there for a moment letting the rhythm of your breathing slip into sync with his, while you try to imagine facing the outside of this bubble without him by your side.

“Always.”

You feel the light touch of fingertips brushing over your back, from your shoulder blade to the dip of your spine and back, setting your body to shiver with something unexpected, unidentified. You saw him move his arm out of the corner of your eyes, so this is not fight or flight. It’s a sensation you cannot remember feeling, but one you know.

And for one terrifying, fragile moment, you feel whole.

~*~

It’s surreal, the way you sit here in one of the Tower’s countless board rooms, Stark at the head of the polished table, lounging casually, as if the proceedings don’t really affect him at all. You sit a few chairs down to one side and regret it, because it turns your back on the floor to ceiling window front, which makes the hairs at the nape of your neck stand on end as if the laser dot of a sniper scope already burns at the base of your skull. You know it’s not true, but you barely manage to dampen your instincts in any ordinary situation, let alone something as high stress as this. But when you arrived the wall side of the table was already occupied by a bustling team of PR professionals, and the expensive wood of the table provides much needed space between you and people. From the way everything stilled for a couple of seconds when you opened the door, they need it too. The weight of his fingers on your wrist from where he sits next to you is the only thing keeping you from throwing yourself into the far corner of the room to get a concrete wall at your back between yourself and everything else.

At Stark’s subtle nod one of the PR people launches into a presentation of how a new addition to the Avengers is exciting, of course, but since your biography is rather… complicated, it will require careful planning to make sure the public gets to know what they can handle, and what you want known. They push some papers over the sleek surface, different drafts for you to read and decide what you want to go with. You fan them out a bit in front of you and start reading with the cursory, efficient way you’d deal with mission briefs. There is one that proclaims you were found in a chasm in the Alps and made the same miraculous recovery after being frozen solid for decades, for many similar reasons he did and are now merely taking the place you involuntarily vacated seventy years ago. Another one describes you as a Prisoner of War, captured after the train mission and subjected to a range of highly unethical medical experiments that explain your appearance, only to be found and recovered by chance in the wake of the chaos around the S.H.I.E.L.D./HYDRA takedown. And after several more or less detailed versions of that, there is one that describes the Winter Soldier as an enemy agent, turned, asking for sanctuary and the chance to redeem his actions, no mention of Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes at all.

You find your hand trembling slightly as it hovers over that last one and try to sort through all the noise in your head. They are all the truth in their own way and all lies in much the same way. It’s laughably easy to figure out their strategic objectives one after the other, but you can’t seem to latch onto one that doesn’t feel wrong on a fundamental level. The tension you sense rising with every second you stay silent is not helping, and you can feel your muscles locking up in anticipation of a strike. So naturally your brain latches onto something apparently unrelated to the monumental decision of which parts of your life to throw out into the public eye.

“Those are all written in first person.”

For a moment, everyone in the room seems to be as stumped by the words as you are for uttering them. The young woman who had taken the lead earlier blinks once, half opening her mouth, before she seems to remember that she’s a professional and finds her voice again.

“Uhm, yes, that’s because they’re statements for you to read out at a press conference.”

A loud cracking sound fills the air and all eyes swivel to where the fingers of your left hand have visibly cracked the edge of the table so that splinters drop onto the carpet at your feet. Heart hammering in your throat, you berate yourself for the miscalculation. Of course it’s not just going to get printed everywhere, they expect you to go out and talk about it yourself. Prove that you are who you are, that you can be what he needs you to be. And you should have known, you should have figured it out before, but you didn’t think past what you are going to be telling to how you will tell it. You hear him draw a sharp breath, ready to speak, and that corner sounds like a very good idea right about now. And if you lose a few seconds to a blackout between your chair crashing into the window, and the unyielding wall hitting your back, that’s better than one of the 47 ways you could kill all the people in the room making it down the wire. You ball your hands to fists and try to get your hyperventilating lungs back under control, but all that happens is your vision starts swimming, and you get the feeling that everything you’ve reached for is slipping away settling like a weight on your chest.

He is there in front of you not a minute later; arms open as if to offer an embrace, but keeping his distance all the same. You should feel boxed in, should feel betrayed by the way he obviously puts himself in front of you as a buffer to shield all the fragile human beings in the room as if it’s necessary, (even though it obviously kind of is.) but the only thing you can process is the fact that his bulk hides you from everyone watching as you fall apart. You reach out to wrap your hands around his upper arms, and there will be bruises that you’ll feel guilty about later, no matter that he scoffs at them, but right now you need to hold on to reach a balance between the gut-wrenching panic, and the rage about all the things that come so easily to people, used to come easy to you, that have been taken away from you, locked away behind walls of pain, and cold, and death and indifference.

“Bucky…”

You know he can feel your flinch in reaction to that name, and he’s been careful not use it, because it makes you uncomfortable. Something in the back of your head responds to it, but then you always feel like the image of a man in a cracked mirror, and the pain from all the shards digging out from the inside shows. Still, sometimes it slips out, especially in tense, emotional situations like this and reminds you both that, no matter what you do, you are always going to fall an inch short of the real thing. The unease on your end is not the only reason for his restraint after all.

“This wasn’t a good idea. You’re not ready…”

“NO!”

The vehemence of the exclamation seems to startle the both of you, but you can’t let up now, because if you let him, he will use his worry and concern for your comfort, to talk you out of the whole thing, and comfort is not what you want right now. You need to get past just figuring what you want and into doing something about it as well. You lift your head and look him right in the eyes, another point of contact you’ve shunned a lot up until now, but you are done denying yourself.

“I can do it, I know I can…”, you see Stark lingering at the other end of the room over his shoulder, notice the gaggle of underlings seems to have vanished at some point during the episode, but what you have say is maybe more for Stark’s benefit than anybody else’s. “I just… I need some time. To think about it.”

His worry is still palpable, but before he can come up with any argument of why you shouldn’t continue, you straighten your back, press down your fingers much more gently on his arm, with the tentative sensation that still accompanies the concept of touch that is not designed to cause the maximum amount of damage and mayhem. Your breathing is still a little labored but not uncomfortable anymore, now that you’ve actually bought yourself a strategic retreat, a bit of relief.

“Give me a couple of days to process, alright? I didn’t… I’ll figure it out.”

You catch Stark nodding sharply out of the corner of your eyes, before he too ambles out of the room as if nothing of significance happened just now. And Stark’s leaving snaps your attention back to him, and the way he looks at you, which is surprising. His eyes are wide open, lips slightly parted, face slack, and he looks… as if he’s happy and proud. You are bit confused about what you might have done to make him look at you like that, but the shiver traveling down your spine in the wake of that realization is old, new, terrifying, good, and you find that you don’t really care anymore how this meeting went to hell so fast, and just want to stay in this moment for a beat longer.

Chapter Two