If you COULDN'T tell, I SUCK at writing fighting scenes haha. I try and kind of gloss over it and leave it up to the reader's imagination since my is lacking there. You gimme them fluff/sex scenes I GOT YOU. Sci-fi and action-y things like missions and fighting….eh…
Chapter 30
"Get her into the shower and I'll find some sweatpants that might fit her," Steve murmured as he held the door open for Bucky to guide Clara inside. She made no protest as he led her down the hall and into the bathroom he shared with Steve. It wasn't tiny, but he was aware of how tiny it felt with another person in there, too.
Wordlessly, he leaned into the tub and twisted the handle, letting the water run as hot as he felt would be comfortable to her. She could always make it hotter, but he didn't want it to hurt her. Clara stood behind him, watching with arms wrapped around herself. He pulled a clean towel from a cabinet and put it on the counter for her.
"You're gonna be alright," he whispered, brushing her bangs out of her eyes, which were still wide despite the calm look on her face. He moved to leave, but she grabbed a fistful of his sleeve.
"Please…don't…" Her voice was hoarse and scratchy, and he realized this was the first time she'd spoken since the warehouse.
"No one's going to hurt you, I promise. There's only one way into this room and I'm going to be guarding the door the whole time." But she didn't look convinced.
"Please don't leave," she said again, her grip tightening.
Bucky shook his head and turned to lock the door behind him. "I won't. Promise." He motioned towards the steaming shower before being the gentleman and turning to face the corner of the bathroom. There was a pause before he heard her slowly taking off her clothes and climbed into the tub, clearly sitting on the floor, no doubt in a ball. He wished he could help her so much more than this…
Clara's mind was blank, and she knew she needed to regain control, to put her training and advice she'd given others to use. It was so much easier to apply that knowledge when it was neatly wrapped in advice given to someone else. Easier said that done, as the saying went. She needed a distraction, or a sense of normalcy. Something familiar to shake the constant barrage of memories of cold and pain.
"Have you remembered anything new lately?"
Bucky turned and put his back against the door, sliding to the floor. "Some," he responded vaguely. "The good, mostly. Before the war."
"Tell me about it." Her voice was somewhere between a demand and a plea, and Bucky's heart ached a little.
"She said she was gonna hijack a plane to come visit me when I shipped out."
Clara chuckled and pulled her knees to her chest, letting the hot water from the showerhead hit her across her back. "That sounds like her."
"She said she was gonna become a nurse, but I don't remember if she ever did or not," Bucky mused. "Steve said we wrote while I was overseas, but I don't remember any of that."
Clara frowned at her toes. "You didn't read all the diaries? Bucky, she became a doctor because of you." Another laugh escaped her lips. "I became a doctor because of her, so I guess indirectly, I became a doctor because of you. Maybe this was fate."
Bucky's mind spun at that. She had gone on to be a doctor? "I didn't read the third one," he realized aloud.
"Why not?" Clara asked. She had picked out the ones where she knew her grandmother mentioned him in depth. Bucky was mentioned in nearly all of them, in passing here and there. Mostly on days where she'd had a rough day and had wondered what life would have been like, how things could have been different. The biggest what if in her life.
"Your grandfather," Bucky replied flatly. "I'm not ready for that."
"I asked her once if she ever told grandfather about you," she murmured, remembering that day so clearly. It was one of the last good days Connie had had before she passed nearly a week later. "She told me she was leaving me some things in her will. When I asked what, she showed me her diary, the last one. She said she was giving me her memories, the good and bad.
"So I asked if she meant the war, because she had been a nurse in Italy for a little while before the war ended." Clara took a breath and tilted her head back to let the warmth of the water spread over her face for a moment. She wiped her face before she continued, Bucky waiting silently. "She said that her life had been full of ups and downs. She said that she didn't think grandfather was the one she was meant to be with."
Bucky frowned at that. "How could she say that about her own husband?"
"They had their moments," Clara shrugged. "They loved each other, don't get me wrong. Because I said the same thing, shocked she would say something like that about grandfather. She took your photo out of her diary and told me about this boy she met when she was twenty-something, but that he died in the war. She said two years of loving you was not enough, and she never really got over you. I didn't believe her until I read her diaries."
"I was the reason she became a doctor…"
"I have an uncle named James," Clara mentioned smoothly. "Uncle Jim. I asked grandmother if she'd ever mentioned you to grandfather, and she said of course she did." Bucky could hear the smile in her voice. "She said it would have been a disservice to both of you not to."
Bucky took a shaky breath, unsure of what to say to that. They were only together less than a year before he shipped out and never saw her again, though they wrote for over a year after that. And that short amount of time had impacted her life so much?
"Sometimes, when we get too emotionally attached to someone or something, when we lose it so suddenly while we're on a high, it's a very painful event. Some people take ages to move on, some never do," Clara explained slowly. "My belief as a professional is that grandmother didn't want to let it go, because even if it made her sad to think about, she still cherished that small amount of time she had with you."
"Do you have her letters?" he asked suddenly. "The ones I wrote her?"
Clara was silent for a moment. "I can check. If she kept them either I have them or my father has them with the rest of her belongings."
"Don't put yourself out on my account, Clara," Bucky grumbled. "You're doing enough for me, Forget the letters. I'll remember them on my own."
"Maybe," came her reply in a small voice after a few beats. "I want to get out now."
Bucky stood as she shut off the shower and he handed her towel to her over the curtain. He waited until she'd wrapped herself in it and pushed aside the shower curtain before he unlocked the door. "I'm gonna go find you some clothes, alright?" She nodded. "You want tea?"
"If it's not too much trouble…"
Bucky gave her a short nod and a small smile before he left the bathroom, closing the door behind himself. He found Steve sitting at the kitchen island watching the news. The kettle on the stove steamed, the top left open to keep it quiet.
"I boiled some water for her, I left some spare clothes on your bed," Steve said over his shoulder. "Might be a bit baggy, but they should be warm."
Bucky nodded and moved to fix a cup of tea, glancing at the TV. "They mention anything about the chaos I caused?"
Steve shook his head. "Nah, if they covered it we missed the brunt of it while we were preoccupied. Main story is still those files and some kind of celebrity scandal ring."
Bucky's ears perked up at that. "What are they talking about with the files?" he asked, trying not to sound as eager and nervous as he felt.
"A friend of mine did some damage control before you…before we talked in New York, but they're trying to find people to hold accountable. They want trials for some of the crimes detailed in the reports," Steve explained, watching Bucky pour hot water into a mug he got from the cabinet.
Bucky's hand froze, gripping a spoon and focusing hard not to bend it in his metal fingers. "My crimes?"
"You're on the list of possibilities, yes," Steve admitted. "But you're in my protection, Buck. They won't get to you unless you want them to."
"That's a nice sentiment, Steve, but even you're not above the law."
"Maybe not, but you don't deserve to rot in some high security prison somewhere," Steve argued back.
Bucky chewed the inside of his cheek as he collected the mug, spoon, and sugar to take back to his room, not wanting to argue this. He padded back down the hall, trying to make as much noise as he could as he made it to the room at the end of the hall. The light was on, the door wide pen, and Clara stood just inside wrapped in a towel, shivering again.
Bucky set the tea down on the nightstand and gestured to the clothing. "Put those on and you can have tea. I'll go find more blankets."
Clara nodded quickly and Bucky returned to the front of the apartment. He scanned the living room quickly, spying two folded blankets draped over the back of the couch, and took them back to his room wordlessly.
Clara was wearing a pair of sweatpants that bunched up at her ankles and a sweater. She was sitting on the edge of the bed with one of Connie's diaries opened in on hand, the other hand pressing the warm mug into her cheek.
"They say a person dies twice," she read aloud. "The first time, when you stop breathing. The second a little later on when someone says your name for the last time. While my time with Bucky was short, I still feel like he'd be proud of where I am today, despite having moved on and opened my heart to another. Today I earned my doctorate. I felt he was with me during the ceremony. He felt alive and well, and I know he's proud."
Clara shut the book carefully and set it aside.
"We talked about it," he said softly. "I remember asking what she wanted to do with her life, what she would be doing while I was away. She said she was considering training to become a nurse." He moved to sit next to her, draping one of the blankets over her shoulder. "I told her she was smart enough to become a doctor. She laughed at me."
"Product of the times," Clara muttered. "I never understood grandmother's attachment to someone she only knew for two years, nearly half a century ago." She looked up at Bucky, eyes wide, a tremble in her lip, her voice barely a whisper. "I understand now."
Something took over him then. It was mostly instinctual, something that had been dormant for years. He leaned over and wrapped his arms around Clara, careful not to spill the tea in her hands. After a few moments, he gently took the mug from her hands and laid her down, hoping she'd drift off to sleep that she very much needed. She hadn't so much as shut her eyes the whole ride back.
They fell into a silence in the room. Bucky watched the shadows drift across the wall as the sun finally set. He only moved to turn on the lamp on the nightstand to keep the room from being thrown into complete darkness.
"It was so awful." Her voice was so quiet next to him; he wasn't sure at first that she'd spoken. He chanced a glance down to where she was curled into his side to see her looking up at him, her eyes red and wide. "Is that what it was like for you? Terrifying and lonely and cold and—"
Bucky shifted, carefully rolling onto his side to face her, scooting down so they were eye level. "Every time," he breathed, taking one of her hands in his flesh one and running his fingers across her knuckles, which were still dry and cracking. She hadn't made it out physically unscathed.
"I'm sorry."
Bucky let out a humorless laugh. "Why are you sorry? If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have been thrown in there to begin with. I'm sorry you ended up in their crosshairs."
Clara's head tilted forward slowly until it came to rest on his chest. She cherished the warmth of him, so different from the cold of the last few days. "I…was so scared." Bucky's arm came around her and pulled her closer.
"I'm sorry, Clara, I'm sorry," he muttered into her hair. "I'm not a psychologist like you, I don't know what to say to make it all better or easier. All I can tell you is that I know what you're feeling. Really well." He dropped her hand in favor of brushing her cheek. "I know the cold, the loneliness, the pure hopelessness. The fear."
Bucky could feel her shivering, despite the thick blanket she was rolled up in, and he knew it was because she was remembering the torturous cold. She pulled back a little and looked up at him and he couldn't help but study her face.
Her dark, warm eyes that matched the dark chocolate color of her hair. He bangs lay straight across her forehead, slightly damp still from her shower.
"If I can get better," he told her, voice low, "you will, too. You're strong. Strongest girl I ever met."
Clara ducked her head again and they stayed like that for a while. When Bucky thought she'd fallen asleep, he moved to detangle himself from her. She'd been wrapped up in two other blankets beneath his comforter, but she'd managed to get a hole of him through the layers.
"Where are you going?" Clara asked as he rolled over to leave the bed.
"I was gonna go take the couch, give you the bed," he murmured, studying her confused expression. "Do you…"
"It's not the forties anymore," she grumbled, burying her face in the blankets to hide a yawn. "I'm a grown woman and can share my bed with whomever I want."
He let out a chuckle at how very Clara that sounded, pleased to see her slowly coming back around. "Technically it's my bed."
"Please just stay here," she asked quietly. "I just don't want to be alone…just for tonight? I-I'll be better soon, I'll be okay. I'll have to take that step eventually, but just for now—"
Bucky nodded and moved to get back beneath the blankets. "Alright," he said. "It's okay. I'll be here."
Bucky helped Clara re-wrap herself in the blankets, pulling the comforter on top of her, up her shoulders.
"How are you not too hot yet?" he asked casually.
Clara looked up at him with a smile in her eyes. "You never just thought about it and got cold?" she asked quietly. Bucky shook his head. "Interesting."
"Out of all the things that happened to me, that I did, the cold was—is the least of it," he explained. "But I can see how for you, it's the worst thing in the world."
Clara swallowed hard and Bucky scrambled to think of something to change the subject, but Clara beat him to it.
"This the first time you've ever had a girl in your bed?" Clara asked with a smirk.
Bucky cocked his head. "What? That wasn't in your files?" he asked in mock surprise, trying to lighten her mood.
"Oh," Clara scoffed. "I saw that exhibit, too, you know. You were somewhat of a ladies-man, if you can call it that."
Bucky laughed, a few female faces from the forties coming to the forefront of his mind. Aside from Connie, he remembered a few other girls. Dot, Ruth, several nurses Steve unintentionally helped him meet…
"What would you call it?" he asked her.
"These days, we call that being a player. A man slut."
"That's a dumb name for it," he muttered, mulling over it. "Slang these days…"
"You sound like an old man," she giggled. "My grandfather used to say things like that."
"I highly doubt it has to do with my age," he grumbled. "I can't possibly be the only one who thinks that sounds dumb."
"Then what do you prefer?"
"Charming," he grinned without missing a beat. Clara let out a laugh.
"I'll give you that one," she laughed. "You are indeed charming."
"Thanks, Darlin'," he grinned, taking her by surprise at the nickname.
And a sudden wave crashed over her, pulling her back under. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in the blankets again. This wasn't right. Not even a little. This was wrong. This man was funny and charming and sweet and kind and Hydra ruined it all. She was reminded of the cold and dark. That was what had taken all of that from him.
Bucky noticed the change and leaned over, flicking the light off on the bedside table. "Try to get some sleep," he murmured, shifting to slide further down on the bed. He pulled the comforter up over her. "It's healing, remember?"
"For memory," she said with a half a laugh, but still shut her eyes, obeying.