A Dock to Shout From

So are we still trying
Or simply surviving?
Facing these giants
The bigger they are, the harder they fall

Bucky couldn't believe how much he missed Bruce.

Or, he thought darkly, maybe he missed the peace and good experiences that came with Bruce. He missed the lack of self-doubt that came when he was suturing wounds, setting broken limbs, and dealing out careful doses of medicine to wide-eyed, barefoot children. He missed the feeling of being someone's saving grace, of seeing boundless gratitude in the eyes of strangers instead of boundless fear.

And, he missed Bruce.

Bucky rolled over and flipped open the pitiful old laptop, a mechanical patchwork of discarded parts like a portable Frankenstein in order to avoid detection or signal tracers. He downloaded the simple, bare-code chatroom for the thousandth time, waited for the loading bar to fill. An empty text box stared back at him, the cursor blinking expectantly.

He lifted both hands to the keyboard—or tried. When the left one didn't join the right, memory caught up with him like an eighteen-wheeler on the freeway.

Right. Lost the left arm. Forgot about that.

Something like the soggy underside of grief wiped from his mind anything that he was planning to say. It wasn't that his emotions turned depressed and saddened—actually, he felt nothing at all, as if the thought of loss had simply sucked the energy from his body and mind and left nothing but a void.

Yet the cursor still blinked. Bucky reined his thoughts back with difficulty. Typing with one hand was new and awkward, but he managed to get out a single message:

RED: Are you okay

That would do. Then he rolled over and stared at the ceiling, filling the void in his head with the intricate patterns in the woodwork. Wakandan humidity lazily brushed around the room on the air currents that came through the window. Wakandan birds trilled in a distant canopy outside. Bucky shut his eyes, and it all faded to a reddish black.

When he opened them, not five minutes could have passed in blank silence. Yet when he rolled over, there already was a message waiting for him on the screen.

GREEN: Still here

Bucky didn't read anywhere past that. Something inside him un-coiled in relief, and he flopped back onto the bed with a silent prayer of thanks. "Still here." Bruce hadn't moved or stopped his work. He was fine. Bruce was fine.

To hear that nothing had changed for someone he knew had to be the best news Bucky could get today.

He rolled over and propped himself awkwardly on his one elbow. The message went on.

GREEN: Still here. House is fine. You?

And there it was. The bitter taste returned to Bucky's mouth.

There really wasn't anything of this that he wanted to rehash. He'd told Steve, he'd told doctors, he'd told psychiatrists, he'd told kings. (Well, one king.) Did he need to tell Bruce?

Do you need to tell the one person who will get it without you giving details?

Well, it was darn well good that Bruce didn't need details, because Bucky wasn't giving any. He punched the keys, strung letters into words and spaces, hit enter, and let the facts speak for itself.

RED: They got into my head again

He rolled over so he wouldn't have to look or think about it. Bucky scratched an itch on his stomach in the silence that followed.

He stole a glance at the laptop screen. GREEN is typing...

Bucky didn't let the lump back into his throat.

GREEN: I am so sorry.

It came after five minutes. Bucky stared at the words made of colored pixels and tried to envision the thoughts that went through Bruce's mind to write them, the countless jabs at the backspace bar and meticulous tries to re-type a message of genuine sympathy.

He didn't see it. They were just words, made of pixels.

And that drove Bucky mad, because he knew that Bruce really was sorry, and text just wasn't enough.

GREEN: Do you have a solution?

Bucky didn't have the energy to answer in full. Nor would it be safe, given the security situation; Bruce didn't even know that he was with Steve in a highly secretive African kingdom.

Bucky stopped to wonder how often normal people find themselves in situations that sound like it came out of a game of mad-libs.

The mental sarcasm at least gave him energy enough to peck out one more word. He shifted the laptop onto the surface of his stomach and tipped the screen down so that it wasn't in weird colors.

RED: Cryo

Then he stopped to drum his fingers on the warming surface of the laptop.

GREEN: Really?

Now that was Bruce. Simple and unassuming; kindness under biting criticism under kindness again. Bucky had to huff out a laugh. He could pour all his reasons over this measly text, but it wouldn't help.

He shifted the laptop back into the bed and sat up. Yeah, Bruce, really, he mulled back. Or do you think I'm low and tired and morbidly terrified of the whole idea or something? He scrubbed his face in his hand until the stubble scratched his palm.

GREEN: Remember MP.

Something twisted in Bucky's chest, and somehow it translated to a smile. Of course he'd call up Madhya Pradesh. That was where Bucky saved the life of the girl who'd been caught by her leg.

If he hadn't been there—if they hadn't been fast enough—

"It's not really about numbers," Bucky remembered. "You can't make up for the numbers, or trade one life for another. It's about...I don't know. Proving you're able to do something besides kill. And...the unbelievable part is, we are. It doesn't fix everything—doesn't come close—but it kind of helps."

Bruce had mumbled from the other cot in the tiny house, "I know exactly what you mean."

It didn't fix everything. Bucky wasn't sure that was possible at this point. But it gave him a dock from which he could start to shout at his ocean of guilt.

He pulled his hand down from his face to type again.

RED: Thank you

Bruce had to know that he meant it.

GREEN: You're welcome.

Bucky felt the ghost of a smile tug at his face. His single hand was getting used to typing on its own.

RED: Stay alive

GREEN: Likewise.

GREEN has left the chat room blinked on the bottom of the screen.

Bucky closed and uninstalled the program before he shut his laptop.

A/N: This is easily my favorite chapter out of all of War and Civility. The whole story is worth it just for this conversation. The chat room dynamic will probably be recognizable to anyone who watched The Incredible Hulk which wasn't thaT BAD, YOU GUYS, but I digress.

Remember what I said about springboarding other fics? This is the very first one! Put down "STAY ALIVE" in your reviews if you're interested in seeing...
- Bucky and Bruce running a clinic in India
- Bucky saving a girl from a collapsed bridge
- Bucky and Bruce getting captured by terrorists
- The Avengers (ALL of them) coming out to rescue them
- Bucky and Bruce assisting in their own rescue mission
- The origin of their secret code "stay alive"
Stay Alive is getting to be a much bigger and more unwieldy fic than even this one, but I'll do my best to crank it out if I know there will be an audience. Please let me know if you're interested! Thank you!

Reviews are laptops.