InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "IT'S ALMOST OVER!"

mr. bucket; buckets of fun (sgt_barnesjb) wrote in snapthread,
@ 2019-05-21 09:31:00

Entry tags:

!partner thread, bucky barnes (mcu), natasha romanoff (mcu)

WHO: Bucky Barnes (MCU) and Natasha Romanoff (MCU)
WHAT: In depth talking about difficult things
WHERE: By the lake
WHEN: Evening, around sunset
RATING: TBD but probably not high?

Venturing out after being a shut in for so many days was still a daunting task. The ache in his chest was still very prominent; emotional healing wasn't something the serum helped to speed up. Bucky didn't do well with that and as a result all he'd wanted to do was stay hidden away in his house. Natasha and Clint had sort of put a stop to that when they came over with cake, and that had gotten him moving and functioning again. He was showering, eating, keeping up with his clothing. In other words, going through the motions. He was in survival mode, which was better than no mode at all as he'd been before they came to check on him. But it wasn't really living. Bucky wasn't going to be able to do that until he really faced what happened with Steve so he could put it behind him and move forward. That was what he'd said he needed to do, and what he knew he needed to do, but it was hard.

Hard, but maybe not impossible. One of the reasons he and Steve had finally faced each other with the truth of what was going on in their hearts was because they both had developed feelings for other people. In Bucky's case, two people. To complicate it a little more, Bucky knew that Natasha and Clint had feelings for each other too. It was what it was. None of them had really kept it a secret from each other. He and Clint were still kind of feeling each other out, and Bucky was really wanting to keep that going and see what happened. But he also knew that his feelings for Natasha were already there, left over from years ago, and he wanted her to know that. But to do that, she needed to know everything and that wasn't an easy conversation to have. He didn't put any expectations on what would come of it. In fact, he didn't think anything would. She cared about him, they shared a pretty intense past, but he also knew that she'd found Clint here, and if that was what she wanted and what he wanted, then he wanted he wanted it for them both. He just thought that, after spending so much time not talking about his feelings with Steve and how that ended up, that he needed to not let history repeat itself.

They'd agreed to meet by the lake, so Bucky left his house and walked to the lake. She was already there, near the water, and for a moment he just stood there and looked at her. It was so different, seeing her this way, outside. She took his breath away. His heart was still broken, not yet mended but that didn't mean a good part of it didn't belong to her. Bucky approached her then, and tucked a bit of his hair behind his ear.

"It's still weird," he said. "To talk to you outside."

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sgt_barnesjb
2019-05-23 01:25 pm UTC (link)

Not many people could understand the weight and gravity of the words 'I love you' in the way that Bucky and Natasha said them to each other unless they were in the same sort of situation the two of them had been in when they fell in love. They hadn't meant to, obviously. Neither was exactly in a position to even feel emotions, let alone the strongest of all in love itself. They'd been drawn to each other, curiosity turning into something that was agonizingly irresistible and undeniable. Those feelings culminated into a love that grew between them under the watchful eye of those who owned them at the time. And it wasn't the sort of love that was fleeting and unstable. To say you loved someone was one thing. To say you loved someone knowing and truly believing you'd one day die for it and still continue to act on that love was another.

That was what they'd meant to each other in the Red Room. Every time they stole moments in locked closets and when he would come to her room at night, every time they would spar even in front of those who'd just as soon put a bullet between their eyes and still let their gazes linger a little too long, they still did it even knowing they could die as a result.

And it was fucking worth it. Loving her had always been worth it.

What ended up happening was arguably a fate worse than death, and though they ought to have really considered something like that was possible, they'd been so convinced they were knocking at Death's door whenever they were making love that it never occurred to them that a far worse punishment was in store for them when they finally were caught. Of course, though; it made the most sense. HYDRA would never kill off their prized weapon in the Winter Soldier. Though they'd been creating more Winter Soldiers, none of them were perfected the way James Barnes had been. They wouldn't risk wasting him. And her? For her it was a lesson learned and paid for the hard way. Forcing her to watch while they forcibly put him through the brutal, violent reprogramming of his mind, burying his memories of her under a vicious trigger to murder her upon sight should they ever come in contact again -- yes, Bucky would've preferred the bullet between his eyes.

But then, if that had happened, he wouldn't have been able to tell her everything now. And she never would've gotten a second chance to love, with Clint. And so for that, maybe, he guessed he ought to just be grateful.

Odessa was a painful memory. He still felt horrible, tremendous guilt about it. He'd looked her right in the eye and shot her. But the one thing about it that made him wonder if maybe -- maybe -- there had been a flaw in HYDRA's programming was that he'd not made a kill shot on her. The Winter Soldier wasn't exactly known for missing, and definitely not for mercy. He'd been programmed to kill her, and he hadn't. Did it mean anything? Maybe it didn't matter, but sometimes it was little glimmers of hope like that that let Bucky sleep at night, or eased some of the crippling guilt he carried from having caused so much death and destruction for half a century.

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