Molly Walker (knowswhereulive) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2018-04-02 14:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, !completed gdoc, !log, ~2018 april, ~25 points, ~~bucky barnes (notzimniysoldat), ~~molly walker (knowswhereulive) |
Who: Molly Walker and Bucky Barnes
What: Residual Fears
When: Monday
Where: Their house
Warnings: nothing really
Status: Closed/Completed gdoc
Ever since it happened, she refused to put words to it, it was too hard and it hurt too much, Molly had been actively avoiding her dad. She couldn’t help it. It was impossible to look at him and not remember that for the first time ever there hadn’t been a speck of love for her in his eyes, or to not remember that for the first time in the years she’d known him, even including the him that hadn’t been this him, she’d been scared. She’d always known he was dangerous, capable of things she couldn’t even imagine, but she’d never looked at him like that. To her, he’d never been scary. Never once had she been anything but completely trusting and loving. She’d never even thought to be scared of him no matter what anyone said.
And now she knew why she should be.
The injuries were mostly not physical, a few bruises from hitting the wall, one from his hand, all already fading. She didn’t know if the ones that couldn’t be seen were ever going to get better. He’d been the safest place she knew. Someone who would literally kill for her if need be, someone who was always there to hold her and protect her from her past. Someone who’s understood what it was like to have lived through so many horrible and hurtful things. She didn’t think that was true anymore. Even being in the same room wasn’t easy, every glint of light off his metal hand reminding her of the marks on her skin and the terror unlike anything she’d experienced before.
It was just the two of them in the house at the moment, and Molly tried so hard to act like things were fine, like everything was normal, but as soon as the parents who could protect her were gone, she immediately retreated to her room. She didn’t know the right way to be around Bucky anymore.
***
Bucky was exhausted. He didn’t trust himself to sleep most of the time, even after it was revealed that the literal Boogeyman has been behind the nightmares. The thing was, now that he’d lived through one of his worst fears, it felt like he was starting back at zero. Maybe even a mile or so past that, since it was hard to even face his family. It was a testament to how far he’d come that he managed to get out of bed - or more accurately, leave his and Kara’s room - and face each day. He still cooked for everyone, still cleaned up after, but he was quiet and withdrawn, only a shadow of the man he’d become in Madison.
He’d taken to hiding in the garage, working on the motorcycles. He heard the others leave but didn’t pay it any attention until his stomach rumbles from hunger and he realized it was lunchtime. Bucky wiped his hands and headed back inside, figuring he could make a sandwich or something. When he heard movement and music coming from Molly’s room upstairs, he sighed. She’d been avoiding him and with good reason. He let her, too. Let her have the time even though it hurt.
If he was hungry though, she would be, too. So he set about making actual food, one of her favorites. Once he was finished cooking, he made a plate for her and carried it on a tray upstairs. Bucky set the tray down in front of her door and knocked softly.
“Made you lunch,” he said, tentative and half worried she’d tell him to fuck off. He waited a beat and then turned to go downstairs. He didn’t want to push her and she probably wouldn’t eat if he was hovering.
***
Bucky bringing her lunch when she was feeling sad was so irritatingly normal that he didn’t get the chance to take more than a few steps before the bedroom door was flying open. Arms crossing immediately, Molly frowned at his back. He wasn’t helping anything. She understood that he had his own things going on and he was probably messed up too, but he wasn’t helping and the whole situation just sucked.
She didn’t know if she wanted him to try doing the dad thing or if she wanted him to just go away, though. Probably neither. She was still scared of him, but she missed him. They’d always had a good relationship. Not so much right now.
“I’m not hungry.” She was. She always was, she was a teenager and she was growing and there was never not hungry when mealtime came around. But she was mad at him, and that was the easiest way of showing it.
***
He'd expected to be ignored. It hurt worse than being yelled at, but if that was what she needed, he was willing to take that hit. He'd been the one to hurt her, to attack her. Bucky was honestly just glad that he hadn't hurt her beyond some bad bruising. He could have killed her and that was what terrified him the most.
When he heard her door open, he kept walking in the hopes that she would take the food he'd offered. Instead, he heard her say she wasn't hungry and Bucky stopped where he was at the top of the stairs. He didn't believe her, not even a little, but he did slowly turn around. He just wasn't sure what she wanted from him.
"Okay," he said after a moment. He walked slowly toward her, hands loose at his side. "I'll take it back downstairs." Bucky thought that was the right response, but he honestly wasn't sure. He wasn't sure about anything anymore.
***
She wasn’t sure anymore either. But when he started back toward her she tensed up, fear creeping back in, and she hated that. She hated that one of the most important people in her life did that to her now and she hated that she was still scared.
Even more Molly hated that she knew that things weren’t right for him either and she didn’t feel strong enough to even try to help him. The closer he got the worse she felt and by the time he was back at her door there were tears in her eyes. It was all just too much. Things were messy and confusing and scary and hard and she wanted her dad back. But because she couldn’t deal with some bad dreams on her own, she’d gotten herself into a position where he could hurt her, walked right into it and she blamed herself as much as him for what had happened.
She just looked at him in front her, the tension making her tremble, her heart racing. He wasn’t going to do anything to her, she had to remind herself, she knew that he wasn’t that kind of person usually and she knew that Steve never would have let him stay if he was a real threat.
***
The way she tended made him falter for a moment, but then he kept his slow and steady pace toward her. Each step made it worse for her and it felt like he was being stabbed repeatedly or something because it hurt to see her so afraid of him. By the time he was standing right in front of her, he had tears forming in his eyes.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he whispered, his voice rough with emotion. “I’m so sorry, Molly.” He’d said it before. He’d said it repeatedly after he’d woken up, but he wasn’t trying to make her forgive him. Bucky was just trying to make sure she knew. It hadn’t been her fault. This was all his fault, for being broken and thinking he could have a family anyway. Broken things didn’t get to have a family.
“Should I- I’ll just take this.” She had said she wasn’t hungry. “I’ll be out in the garage,” he added. “I won’t come back inside until Steve or Kara get home.” Then specifically because they were capable of stopping him if it ever came to that. They’d make her feel safe. But he didn’t quite reach for the tray just yet. Not until she gave him some sort of signal that she wanted him to take it.
***
If anyone understood being broken and not being able to have a family, though, it was Molly. She’d had too many taken away from her by the world and all the terrible things it always did to her. She’d almost given up on ever having a real one. Until Bucky had come back and she and Steve had been able to start rebuilding something. They’d almost gotten there for real, too. They’d had something really good, and Molly had been really happy, ready to trust that she was just going to have their happy family forever.
That clearly hadn’t worked out the way she wanted.
“You think I know how to fix anything?” she asked, scowling. She wanted to be mad, not scared, so she tried to hold on to that instead. “You’re not you anymore. And you hurt me. You don’t get to hurt me.”
She knew he felt guilty, he’d apologized enough times and even if she hadn’t it was pretty obvious. But she didn’t think she was ready to forgive him yet. As much as she just wanted everything to go back to normal, she couldn’t say everything was okay and let it be. She was still afraid.
***
“No,” he replied sadly, “but I want to fix it.” He just wasn’t sure if she wanted to fix it. Bucky accepted her anger easily. It hurt a lot more than his handler’s physical punishments, but he knew how to take a beating in silence. He hoped that there was a way they could move forward from this, he just hoped that didn’t include him and Kara moving out or anything as drastic as that.
“I know I did.” He smiled but it was humorless. “That was what my nightmare was about. That I was the Soldier again, that I was hurting you guys.” Bucky didn’t want to know what could have happened if Kara hadn’t knocked him out. He didn’t have to worry anymore about her being willing to take him down if need be, and despite everything, it seemed to have brought his fiancé and daughter closer together.
“And then I woke up and I had hurt you.” Bucky had been a bit of a mess after that realization but Kara and Steve were doing their best to be there for him, as much as he allowed it, anyway. There was a part of him that had expected to get thrown out of the house. That’s what he would’ve done to anyone or anything else that hurt his kids.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me, Molls,” Bucky admitted. “I just hope I can prove to you that I’d never intentionally hurt you.” With the Dome, that was the only real distinction he could make.
***
She waited, listened, watched him. Really looked at him for the first time since that night. It wasn’t the same look she’d seen then, it wasn’t the loveless eyes that had stared at her then. But she still remembered, still hated that more than anything. It was still that person in there, she realized now that he’d always been like that, and she was terrified of him turning back at any moment. He could be as guilty as he obviously was, but he couldn’t promise that it wasn’t ever going to happen again, and that gave Molly enough pause that she wanted to just hide away from him.
She stood her ground though, wanted to take a step away and put some more distance between them, even knowing that she’d never stand a chance, but resisted. She wanted to be able to fix things, somehow.
“I do know.” She really wanted to be able to mean that, and mostly she did. “But...you did.” He hadn’t meant to, and that was the scariest part of him now. “And I’m not dumb; I know you can’t promise it’ll never happen again. I mean, I knew that before too but I never thought…”
Stopping, she just finished her thought with a shrug. She’d never thought anything bad would actually happen, not from Bucky of all people. She’d trusted, she’d believed, loved and now everything just felt different.
***
"I'm dangerous," he replied simply. That was something he lived with every day. That was what he tried so hard to manage and handle, why he tried so hard to direct those skills toward more constructive avenues. "That's why I'm pushing you so hard to learn how to defend yourself, why I'm teaching Summer the same."
Bucky knelt down in front of his daughter on one knee. "Someone could come along tomorrow and turn me into the Soldier and I won't know you, Molls." It was terrifying to think of, but it was the truth and they didn't have the luxury of sugarcoating it. "I can't promise I'll always be able to tell the difference between friend and foe. Family and foe."
***
Molly had opinions about learning to defend herself, ones that had changed now that she’d realized she needed it. She’d thought it was dumb, that there was no point because all she had to do was stay alive until he came to save her. Now she knew differently. She couldn’t learn from him. Learning from him wouldn’t help defend her against him. She needed someone who could stand a chance against him to teach her. She’d handle it herself.
She looked miserable, still watching him, not sure whether or not so just close the door in his face and hide again or throw herself into his arms and make him comfort her. She settled on just dropping her arms, body language changing to open up a little more. “I don’t want to know that you. I don’t want you to forget who I am again.”
For a young woman who was starting to come up on seventeen, she could still be very much a little girl. One who had been hurt and betrayed and just wanted to be loved now.
***
Bucky desperately wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her tight. "I don't want you to ever see that side of me," he replied honestly. "I hate that you had to see it at all, that I could ever look at you and not know who you are." It was one of his greatest fears and to have that all dragged to the surface had taken a heavy toll on him.
"But for as long as I'm in your life, that's the risk that comes with it." It was a risk Steve had agreed to, hadn't thought much about, and it was something they were going to revisit sooner rather than later. "That's why I made Kara, your dad, Natasha and Faith promise that if it ever came to it, they had to knock me out first and ask questions later." Molly was old enough to know the truth.
***
“I’m not strong enough to do it if they’re not there.”
That was a problem and a big part of why Molly was still so afraid. If everything went terribly and she was in trouble again, and Steve or Kara weren’t there to save her like Kara had been the other night, she was done for. She knew that perfectly. Bucky had thrown her against the wall like she was a rag doll and there was no way that she could stand up against that. If she couldn’t rely on him knowing and loving her to save her in a pinch, what could she rely on?
Knowing that he could snap and kill her and never know he was doing it was terrifying.
***
"No, you're not. But you're smaller than me, quicker, resourceful. And you'll always know where am I even if I can't see you." She could at least get enough of an advantage to run away and find safety. This was the first time the nightmares got so bad that he had been so overcome by them that he hadn't recognized the sound of her coming into their room. It broke his heart to know that it would be a long time before she'd feel comfortable enough to come to him for a nightmare.
"That's why I'm pushing you to learn. Because I can't promise that something like that won't ever happen again. And I need to know that you're safe." Molly was one of the most important people in his life. She had to be safe.
***
He made a pretty good point. Even if it was him she had to be saved from, she just had to do the same thing she would if she was waiting for him to come do the saving. She just had to stay alive until someone got to her. Until she was safe. She was still scared, she didn’t know if she was ever going to not be scared again, but this whole thing just sucked so much. She didn’t want to be scared or to keep avoiding him.
Him and Steve were more her parents than anyone had been since her birth parents had been killed and they’d been so close. She just wanted that back.
“You have to keep me safe. Even if you don’t mean it, just say it, okay?” Molly just needed him to love her enough to say what she needed to hear, enough to make things a little bit better. She didn’t know if it would fix anything all the way, it probably wouldn’t, maybe nothing could, but she wanted to hear it.
***
Bucky reached for both of her hands in his, careful to touch her with his human hand first and then the metal one. There was nothing but absolute sincerity in his eyes and he needed her to see that. "I will always do everything in my power to keep you safe, Molly," he promised her. The gravity of it was unquestionable.
"You, Steve, Kara, V, Summer, you guys are the most important people in my life. If anything ever happened to you...I'm just glad this time it was only a few bruises and a nasty shock." He would've torn his metal arm out if she'd gotten any broken bones or fractures or anything from what he'd done. Would've just boxed the damn thing up and figured out how to live his life without it.
"Even if it means keeping myself separate from you, I'll do it if it means you're safe." Bucky hoped that she'd be able to see how raw and open and honest he was. She deserved nothing less than the absolute truth.
***
The way he took her hands made a difference, but Molly still flinched noticeably when his metal hand touched her. She didn’t pull away, though, wanted to not be scared and was stubborn enough that she would force herself to put up with being uncomfortable for a minute if it was going to help what was broken between them. Whether he’d meant to hurt her or not wasn’t as important as the fact that it had happened at all but she wanted to be able to forgive him now. Or at least to start to.
For a moment, she was quiet. Unusual for her but this took some consideration. She needed to get this right and not let being scared win. She hated that bad things happened and she was too scared to deal with them like an adult. And she believed that he meant what he was saying. Neither of her parents lied to her, though she did believe he would right now if he needed to, and she just knew he was telling her the truth. And that was exactly what she needed to hear. It didn’t fix everything, she couldn’t just go back to the way things were before like nothing had happened, like she hadn’t seen something she really shouldn’t have had to, but it was definitely a start.
She smiled weakly and pulled her hands back, shaking her head and for a second it probably looked like she was retreating. Like his honesty wasn’t good enough but nothing could be more wrong. Rather than going back to her room, Molly just leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Don’t go anywhere,” she pleaded quietly. “You can’t leave me.”
Scarier than the what ifs and the memory of what had happened was imagining a life without him.
***
He waited, patient even though it was painful. He worried that she was pulling away, that he’d somehow made this worse, but Bucky let go of her hands the moment he felt her pull them away. Trying to force extended contact when she didn’t want it wouldn’t help anything, and that would’ve gone against everything he was, anyway.
But then she hugged him tight and it honestly took him a moment to close his arms around her gently. He’d meant that comment to be reassuring, to show her that he loved her so much he’d go without being part of her life if it meant keeping her safe. They’d been lucky this time around, but what if they weren’t so lucky next time? He’d bloodied and tortured Methos for kidnapping her. He would do worse to himself if he ever hurt her again.
“I love you, Molls,” he whispered into her hair. Bucky couldn’t promise that he’d never leave, not when the Dome was unpredictable at best about that kind of thing. The Dome could send him home or it could break him. Both options would take him away from her.
***
“Me too,” she returned just as quietly. Being scared, being hurt, hadn’t changed that, and Molly wasn’t mad enough that she would deny him knowing that. He was still her dad and was still so important to her. Maybe, then, they could learn to move past this. For real. Nothing was perfect, she wasn’t wholly comfortable wrapped up in his arms and she did noticeably lean her weight toward his human arm without even realizing that she was doing it, and the tension hadn’t completely disappeared from her body. Lessened, maybe, but she still didn’t know if she was ever going to be completely comfortable around him again. Not after knowing what she’d never wanted to know.
“Can you, like, stop being weird around me?” She couldn’t offer the same, but it was harder to feel like she could try when he was weird back. When he was avoiding her as much as she avoided him. It didn’t feel like there was anything to salvage when they both couldn’t stand to look at each other. It felt like there was something to be scared of and didn’t make Molly believe she was safe in her own house. She didn’t want that. She wanted to believe that Bucky was still going to be there for her and that if something bad happened again he was still going to save her.
Unless the bad thing was him. She couldn’t even begin thinking about dealing with that, though. That might be for after she was comfortable with him again. Hopefully it would be for never.
***
It meant a lot to him to hear her say that she loved him, too. Bucky would’ve moved him and Kara out of the house in a heartbeat if that was what Molly needed, but it was reassuring to hear that she just wanted things to go back to normal, or as close to normal as they could get. It wouldn't be easy because a lot of it had to do with his own guilt, but he would try if that was what she needed.
"Sure, I can do that," he told her with a grin. "Does that mean you'll come down and have lunch with me?" That would be a good step closer to normal, though Bucky would understand if she wasn't quite ready for it. "If you're hungry, that is."
***
“So hungry.” Maybe not so, but she definitely did want lunch despite what she’d said. She wouldn’t have had it without him making it for her, and without the talk, the reassurances that she’d gotten, but she could definitely eat. Could she eat with him, though? The thought gave her a second of pause.
“I guess I can keep you company,” she decided after a second, releasing him and smiling hesitantly. “Since you made it and everything.”
She didn’t even dart back in her room to grab her phone before going back downstairs with him. It was a gesture.