Hey, guys! So at the Memorial Day parade this morning, I was struck with inspiration and I decided to jot this down. It's pretty short, considering how long-winded I usually am, but I think it turned out largely the way I'd envisioned in my head.
I won't get mushy gushy, I won't get overly sappy and sad. But I always end up in a somber mood on this holiday. So I won't say much. I'll just...leave this here. Let me know what you think. Love y'all.
Also: thank you all for your service, both then and now. I love. Each. And every. One of you.
((()))
In Memoriam
"They're having a parade downtown, if you wanted to go…?" Jane asked as she rooted through the refrigerator.
Darcy shrugged. "That's okay, Jane."
The scientist frowned. "Really? Are you sure?"
She shrugged again. "Just gonna be a quiet day."
It was silent for a few moments while she stirred creamer into her coffee. Darcy always felt awkward on these mornings; her and Jane had grown apart a little bit, and she couldn't help but think it was all because of Bucky.
But Darcy had never been the type to follow the grain and she couldn't help but defy her former boss's opinions, no matter how fast they were shrinking. As time went by and Jane saw the careful tenderness between her former intern and the assassin, she got quieter and quieter concerning her reservations and Darcy wondered when she'd bring it up next, praying it wouldn't be today, of all days.
"Where's Bucky, anyway?"
She replaced the creamer—she and Jane had been trying to reconnect over coffee on some mornings lately and she was glad that it seemed to be helping. It had been a long time since they'd shot the breeze over something other than science, Thor, or her dangerous romance with a World War Two sniper-turned Soviet assassin. "Downstairs. Sparring with Steve."
Jane pulled a face. "Today?"
She flinched, then swallowed. "Yeah. Why?"
Jane, flushing, shrugged awkwardly and lifted her mug to her mouth for a sip. "I dunno. Just seems like a weird thing to do on a holiday, that's all."
She nodded, glancing up out the window of their high-rise, desperate to change the subject. "How's it coming with the device?"
Under Thor's strangely insightful guidance, Jane had been working on her own 'Bifrost' machine, working on a way to shrink the way the Rainbow Bridge worked in order to facilitate travel from Earth—or, rather, Midgard.
Jane shrugged. "Eh. It's going. Slowly—" She sighed, dropping her mug to the counter. "You sure you don't wanna go to the parade? I mean, it's a holiday, after all. It's a time for fireworks and the National Anthem and stuff like that. It's supposed to be a really nice parade, right?"
Darcy hesitated, before finally sighing. "Just—not today. Okay, Jane?"
She frowned again, but dropped it—at least temporarily, Darcy knew. Jane could be like a dog with a bone once she got an idea in her head—totally relentless. "I can't get the transverse model to reflect the progress I've already made, which is frustrating. If I can't see the progression, I'm totally hampered in moving my next step forward. The math just won't add up."
Darcy chuckled, nodding. Like Jane knew that Darcy understood everything that came out of her mouth. "I flunked Trig, Jane—remember?"
Jane shrugged, shaking her head into the middle distance, likely going over the equation again. Darcy was surprised she didn't start pretending to write in midair, her brow furrowed. "I notice you're not itching to get outta here like you usually are in the mornings—Tony driving you crazy in the lab lately?"
She'd taken a couple days off so she'd have time to gather plans for the day. Thank God Natasha had volunteered to do the shopping this time. It seemed to be like Murphy's Law around the building—if Darcy left the premises, something blew up.
But Jane didn't take holidays—at least not normally. Maybe her missing her friend in return had spurred her to take a break. Or…maybe Thor had. The big brute was surprisingly insightful and tactful since his fall from grace. Darcy had to hand it to him, really. She could always count him as an ally.
She rolled her eyes. "Something he was working on yesterday was smoking. Had to wait a half hour to get going again—it was all over the lab floor—the entire wing, I'm serious!"
Darcy smirked. "Yeah…sounds like Tony." Likely another battle with the evil Drone 13.
"When are you back? I need your sanity and I need you keeping him from blowing things up, Darcy!"
She chuckled. "I only took two days, Jane. Chillax." She snorted. "Are you telling me that your PhD doesn't qualify you for Stark Wrangling?"
She rolled her eyes. "Are you absolutely sure you don't wanna go downtown? I mean, it really sounds like your sort of deal. There will probably be some sidewalk shopping and stuff."
Darcy sighed.
But Jane was adamant, pointing at her. "You know what I heard? I heard de Blasio wanted Steve to do a speech at the 9/11 memorial and he said 'no'. Can you believe that?! That's not like Steve at all!"
Actually, that sounded exactly like Steve.
Or, at least, the Steve she knew.
Darcy bit her lip, looking out the window again at the distant buzz of old, classic fighter planes going by overhead, and caught just the barest sight of them high up before they disappeared. "He's not Captain America all the time, Jane. He's just Steve Rogers. Can you imagine what it feels like to wear that weight all the time?"
Jane sighed. "…Yeah. I guess. But on a day like today? You'd think he'd be all excited about the uniform and the shield and that he'd be game for something like that, right?"
Not in the slightest.
Darcy went over to the window and looked all the way out at the crowds on the sidewalks, all dressed in patriotic colors for the various events of the day. "…It was a long time ago for the rest of the world, Jane. But they lost men—their friends. And it wasn't so long ago for them, either. You know?"
Jane scowled at the reminder.
"I know that's hard to remember, but…Nat and I live with it every day. You know?"
Jane set her empty mug in the sink and joined her at the window. "Maybe it would do them good to get out there, though, you know what I mean? That's all I'm saying. It is Memorial Day, after all."
She opened her mouth, annoyed that she felt forced to explain it—
There was a knock at the door.
"It's open!" she called instead.
Natasha appeared in the entryway, two paper grocery bags in her arms. "Hey, guys," she called in her calm, demure voice as she set them on the counter.
"Hey," Darcy called back. "Get everything?"
"Yep." The spy began unloading the bags onto the counter: a package of bacon, ground beef, sliced cheese. Ketchup, mustard, a bag of chips…
"All I'm saying is that it might do the two of them some good to, like, get out there, gain some recognition, you know? I mean…"
Darcy sighed again, crossing the room to help Natasha unload the groceries.
The two of them shared a quiet, knowing look, and the only reason Darcy knew what the spy was thinking was the passivity of the other woman's stern face.
No one seemed to understand Bucky—and Darcy's mind concerning Bucky—like Natasha did. If there was one woman Darcy could feel closest to in all this, it was Natasha. It was strange. When they'd first met, she'd been the most intimidating woman the intern had met in her entire life. She'd barely felt comfortable with her relationship with her sort-of boss, let alone standing in a room with a Russian spy.
But now?
Now, she couldn't imagine being friends with anyone else.
Wanda kept it fun.
Jane kept it crazy, and Darcy would never, ever rule that out, not when they'd been through so much.
Maria…well. She wasn't sure about Maria yet.
But Natasha.
She was an ally. It turned out, they were of strangely like minds.
And if anyone could understand their tradition, it was her.
She never had to explain herself. Bucky never had to open his mouth. She didn't have to elaborate if plans were being cancelled. Natasha just…understood. Loud and clear.
But Jane was still talking. "…Steve's already a national hero, you know? He should be out there, you know, raising morale, getting the recognition he deserves, as a soldier, and a war hero, not Captain America. He's both, you know? And Bucky—"
"Jamie has no interest in going out there in front of a crowd of people with his Purple Hearts, okay, Jane?!" Darcy snapped, then winced as she realized how harsh her defense sounded. She nervously twitched her wedding ring on her finger and bit her lip.
Jane stared at her.
"Sorry," Darcy rasped, clearing her throat. "Didn't mean to…be a bitch."
Jane hesitated, her eyes downcast. "He…has a Purple Heart?"
She slammed the six pack of Corona Light down on the counter harder than she intended. "You don't lose and arm and become a POW and go Missing In Action and not get one, Jane," she said. "Same way you don't go through what he went through and not get one posthumously. Which is creepy, but it wasn't like he could stop it."
Jane bit her lip.
Natasha's hand found Darcy's on the counter and very lightly settled there.
Oftentimes, Darcy didn't know what to do with all the underlying anger she held onto. She'd tried to let it go, but being with a man like Bucky Barnes—seeing his wounds every day, no matter how healed he was—she had yet to master the art of pushing it down and out of the way.
His capture.
His torture.
His enduring spirit under a long, bloody history as a brainwashed assassin, forced to kill dozens and live with the consequences…Sometimes it ate at her.
Like today.
It was floating very near the surface.
She'd nearly cancelled with Jane, but felt guilty as soon as she picked her Starkphone and had immediately slid it back into her pocket.
And it wasn't as though she'd had a sounding board in Bucky that morning. He'd kissed her naked back and left early, leaving her to get the much-needed, usually elusive, serum-brokered sleep she'd negotiated in the early hours of sunrise, easing the door shut on his way to meet Steve.
He had a knack for cooling her temper. After all, he'd had much longer to tread the waters of his own anger and bitterness and he was better at mastering his emotions than she was. Usually, when she was upset over his damaged life, he cooled her down with a laugh and a careless shrug, some well-placed, perfectly phrased philosophical line that put it all into perspective. That, and the reminder that he was happy now—with her. That always did the trick if nothing else did.
But she'd woken alone. He'd sweetly left her a steaming cup of Starbucks, yes, but she was alone and when her memory had flickered over which day it was on the calendar, the tension had immediately ramped up in her shoulders, and hadn't eased.
She was hopelessly, boundlessly protective of him, and though she knew—knew—that Jane didn't mean it that way, knew that she was just trying to drum up a nice, overdue girls' day out, she couldn't stop the harsh words from snapping out of her mouth.
It was still silent when the door opened and the two men in question entered the suite, laughing and damp, fresh from the showers. "…Oh, yeah, Rogers? Well, you just remember who taught you to box," Bucky was saying as he shut the door.
"You are never letting those welterweight titles go, are you?" Steve chuckled, shaking his head and dropping his bag by the door.
They stopped, looked up, then at each other. "Who died in here?" Steve asked, blinking at the somber girls.
"No one!" Darcy returned, smiling brightly—falsely—and Jane sighed.
Bucky chuckled and crossed to the bedroom to throw his gym bag onto the bed while Steve occupied himself in searching out the remote.
Soon they were joined by the noise of ESPN, the pregame for the Dodgers and the Yankees just wrapping up.
"Looks like you guys are…doing a little cookout," Jane finally muttered.
Darcy nodded.
"Total travesty that they moved to LA," Steve said, shaking his head at the TV as Bucky reentered the room, pulling a hand through his hair. "Absolute betrayal."
"Don't start, you two," Natasha commanded, the corner of her mouth turned up in a smile. "You guys get going on baseball and you just get yourselves upset."
Bucky smirked as she crossed to the fridge, pausing to press a kiss to Darcy's cheek. "Yeah, well, that may be true, but there's no way in hell I'm rooting for the damn Yankees." He shuddered.
"Got that right," Steve called from the couch. "Grab me a beer, eh?"
Bucky retrieved two from the fridge and crossed back to the television. He passed one to Steve and threw himself down on the other end of the couch.
"So…is this, like, a thing…?" Jane asked, sounding hurt.
"It's not a 'thing', Jane. It's…" Natasha started, then paused, looking surprisingly awkward and helpless as she shot Darcy a pleading look.
"It's…their thing," Darcy clarified, gesturing at the men with her head.
Jane glanced up just in time to see the two men share a long, somber look, silent. Then they clanked the necks of their beers, raised them and drank.
"See?"
Jane nodded, but kept trying anyway, doing her best, Darcy knew, to move past the awkwardness, the scientific reasoning in her brain skating entirely over the whole point. "Are you sure you guys don't wanna just get outta here, though, and go watch the fireworks later or something?" She smiled. "I mean, it's just men and their sports. And baseball is boring."
Darcy sighed, watching Steve and Bucky glance silently at each other at the comment. But neither of them said anything about the perceived slight. "Sorry, Janey. Maybe tomorrow night we can go out, huh?"
"Yeah," Natasha said, joining in. "Tomorrow night."
Jane, slumping and rolling her eyes, sighed and nodded as she moved toward the door. "Alright. Whatever. I guess I have stuff I can work on downstairs—if Stark hasn't blown the place up yet."
Darcy laughed as she ushered her friend out. "Maybe you can get some work done before the place comes down around our ears."
"Bye," she called, already sounding distracted as she went down the hall, fingers tapping in clear code that she was already doing math in her head.
Darcy chuckled and shut the door. "Privacy Mode, eh, JARVIS?"
"Of course," the digital butler replied.
Beer, baseball, quiet somber reflection.
That was their thing on Memorial Day.
No busy, loud cookout on the roof.
No parade.
No fireworks.
To most people that was what Memorial Day was; to Darcy, that was what it had been her whole life.
But to Bucky and Steve it was a day for quiet tradition. Unspoken, unwritten remembrance. A little sparring to work out the early morning frustrations. Whether that meant survivor's guilt or residual pain over a broken past, it didn't matter.
A Dodgers game. A few beers.
And a quiet day to remember what they'd lost. The men, the friends, the lives.
The freedom they'd bought, in an act of defiance, at such a high, high price.
The scars they bore.
The history they'd written.
The lives they'd lost.
Natasha took a quiet seat in the armchair kitty-corner to the TV, plucking up Steve's beer from the side table and stealing a sip.
Darcy slid in beside Bucky, folding her legs up under her and burrowing into his side. He raised his arm so she could get situated, then wound it around her middle and settled his hand on her thigh. "You didn't wanna go out with Jane?" he asked, his voice low as the Star Spangled Banner started playing, the ball players lined up to remove their hats and bow their heads in remembrance, especially on a day like today.
"No." She smiled softly, reaching up to brush his hair behind an ear, before laying her head down on his shoulder and nestling against him. "I'm right where I want to be."
((()))
"For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost."
~Frederick Buechner