You may need comfort food and/or alcohol for this chapter. If you have small, cute animals to pet, please have them to hand.
Darcy doesn't wake up in her own bed. She knows that as soon as sleep slips away from her, the sudden step into consciousness made more jarring by the unfamiliar surroundings. Not least of these is the firm body pressed against her back, and the arm around her waist holding her tight to that body.
She doesn't need to open her eyes to know who it is.
She opens them anyway, knowing she'll never get back to sleep now. They're still on Bucky's sofa, the empty coffee table right in front of her. Somehow during the night they've slid onto their sides. He's spooning her, his breath tickling across the top of her head where she's tucked under his chin.
Darcy doesn't ever want to move. She's content to lie here forever, maybe arch into him and remove what little space there is between them.
On the other hand, she wants to run away as fast as she can. Only the memory of how wrecked Bucky was last night keeps her from bolting while he's asleep. She needs to make sure he's okay to be left alone before she goes.
Steve apparently never returned during the night, and she never left. She isn't sure what time it is, but the light filtering through the blinds hints at mid-morning. She should be at work but she has her suspicions that Steve has covered for her. Instead, she settles in, waiting for some indication that Bucky is waking up.
Her bladder gives out on her first, since Bucky doesn't seem to have any intention of being conscious. She clenches and hopes she can wait, but it will not be ignored.
When she moves, trying to peel Bucky's arm away, he shifts and holds her tighter, muttering something into her hair. She grips his arm more firmly, wedging her hand under it so she can lever it away from her body—thankful it's not his left arm—and then has to contend with the blanket wrapped around them. By the time she's free and sprinting for the bathroom, she knows he's awake, but she doesn't look back.
She uses the facilities, washes her hands, then helps herself to some mouthwash. She also tries to sort out the mess that is her hair, but without a comb it's about as easy as calming the fluttering in her stomach. Yesterday's mascara is smeared under her eyes, so she takes a moment to wash it away. Her glasses must be out in the tangle of blankets somewhere. She hopes they survived the night.
Before she heads out, she sends Steve a quick text. He's awake. Can you come by? I need to get to the office.
Then she takes a deep breath and steps back into the living room. Bucky's sat up, though he still looks half-asleep, and he's rubbing at his face. He looks…snuggly. Every inch of her wants to curl up under the blanket with him again.
Her glasses are on the floor by his feet. She crosses the room to put them on, then scoots back so she's not looming over him.
"How are you feeling?" she asks.
He grunts, looking at her through the hair hanging in his face. "Better for sleeping. Thanks for staying."
"It's nothing," she reassures him. "Are you going to see someone today?" He needs to talk about what happened last night. It was clearly something to do with his time in Hydra, and he's often reluctant to talk about that with her.
"Yeah, I'll get something booked in." He stares at her, and all the sleepiness has been chased from his eyes. He looks like he's weighing something up, making a decision.
"I have to go, but Steve's on his way," she says, trying to find a balance between concern and cheerfulness,
"Okay. I'll come see when you finish work."
Somehow, she doesn't think this is going to be a simple catch-up.
She swings by her quarters for a shower and change of clothes, then heads to the office. It's ten-thirty by the time she arrives, and her inbox is already groaning under the strain. She's barely got started when Nat arrives.
"How is he?" she asks.
"Better than he was last night."
There's no attempt to tease Darcy, even though there's no way Nat doesn't know she was in his quarters all night. It's a testament to the state he was in after the mission.
"Good. I think I figured out why Rumlow led us to that vault."
"Bucky's been there before."
Nat nods and drops a manila folder onto Darcy's desk, opening it to a particular photo: a foreboding black-and-white shot of what appears to be a dentist's chair with sinister additions around the head area. Darcy winces. She's heard of this chair.
"This shot was taken somewhere else," Nat explains, "but we know Pierce was seen in the vicinity of that bank several times. He had the arrogance to use the front door rather than the tunnels."
"You think they kept Bucky down there?"
"I don't think he was stored there, no, but it was probably used to brief him on missions Pierce had a personal hand in."
Stored. Like a piece of equipment, packed away until it was useful again.
"I bet Rumlow saw him," she says
"So do I. It would also make more sense that when Bucky headed out on a mission, he went through the tunnels. If this was the place they held him before that last mission, when his conditioning was already slipping, he probably retains a memory of it."
So Rumlow led them down to those tunnels, hoping Bucky had enough time to retrieve the memory and suffer through it.
"Christ. Nat, do me a favor, if you get to Rumlow first, shoot him in the balls, okay? I don't care what you do to him after that, but tell him that bullet had my name on it."
Nat nods. "I have some other creative ideas, but we aren't supposed to torture people. We're the good guys." For a moment she seems to regret that. Darcy thinks she does too.
"Bucky thought he remembered something in Chicago too. He wanted you to check the file, but I don't know if he got around to asking."
"Yeah, there was a mission in Chicago. In the eighties. It…well, it didn't go smoothly. The notes indicate they had to subdue Bucky and expend a lot of effort getting him back to a pliant state. I don't think it was pleasant. It sounds like his conditioning started to break down, and I don't doubt Rumlow was aware of the incident."
"Shit. Nat?"
"Yes?"
"Shoot him in both balls."
Bucky arrives at her quarters with Chinese food in styrofoam containers. "I thought we could eat here. Talk." His eyes are solemn, thoughtful.
Her stomach has settled into a hard knot. There's a prickling down her spine, like a chill wind passing by, and for a moment she has perfect clarity. Even if she can't see what's going to happen, something is coming, something powerful and probably painful. It's written all over Bucky's face that he's not going to dance around whatever he's here to say.
"How did your day go?" she asks, ushering him inside and trying to push the feeling away. He crosses to place the containers on her counter, and she busies herself looking for plates.
"It went," he replies with a shrug. "I spent a lot of time talking things through, which helped me gain some clarity." He doesn't make a move to start dishing the food out, instead setting the plates down and turning to face Darcy. She stops rummaging through her cutlery drawer, and takes a breath, trying to center herself. She can see he's doing the same.
"The food can wait," he mutters, taking a step closer so there's barely a foot of space between them. Just close enough that it doesn't hurt her neck to stare up at him. She can feel the pulse in her throat.
His eyes are dark, mostly pupil, and he licks his lips before speaking again. She tracks the movement with her gaze, unconsciously, and she knows he notices. How could he not, when he's so focused on her?
"I know you want to avoid a relationship," he begins. "Because of your soulmate." There's a bitter edge to that last word, envy and distaste rolled together. "I knew, even before I heard you mention it, that you were trying to keep distance between us. You felt the pull and tried to put barriers up. I guess I understand, now, but I need you to know it doesn't have to be that way."
He reaches out for her hand, curling it between his and pulling it towards his chest. The contrast between warm, calloused skin and cool metal vies for attention with the increasing tempo of her heart, a frantic drumbeat in her ears.
"I might not be him. I might not be the man the universe gave your words to, and honestly, I'm glad, because anyone who could walk away from you doesn't deserve the privilege. But you don't have to shut yourself away and think there's nothing but loneliness coming for you. Not when you've shown me that it doesn't have to be that way."
Somehow, he's inched closer, and his head is bent towards hers, his hair forming a curtain around their faces. All she can see is those fierce eyes, the scant irises turned quicksilver in the dim light, and she has to concentrate on breathing.
"I try not to think about the future, but when I do, you're in every version of it that I want," he continues, and she has to close her eyes, because for a moment the knot in her belly, all that concentrated pain, shoves its way outward. Her heart squeezes, as good as if Bucky had taken it in his metal fist and gripped tight, and she shouldn't have opened her door to him, she shouldn't have stayed in the facility, she should have fled as soon as she realized how much the universe wanted to hurt her.
His palm on her cheek forces her eyes open, and he's radiating concern. "I want to make you happy, Darcy," he confesses, brow furrowed as he takes in her body language. "I can't, won't, make empty promises about always being good at that, but I want to try, and try, and try, until I get it right. I want to make you forget that other asshole even exists. I want to make you love me, like I love you."
She's crying when he kisses her, a soft brush of lips before he rests his forehead on her own. She doesn't think she can speak around the tightness in her throat, but somehow she manages. "Your words…" It's a rasp, as shredded as she feels.
"I don't care!" he growls, wiping at her tears with gentle, reverent thumbs. "They aren't important."
"They aren't mine!" She flings the words out between sobs, and something about the desperation they're soaked in makes Bucky still. He only blinks—once, twice, three times—as he stares at her, but she can see the gears moving behind his eyes, the pieces slotting together. It calms her, inexplicably stemming the tide of tears, even though she knows things are about to get worse.
"You never told me who he was. I-I never asked." He takes a shuddery breath. "Where are your words?"
She takes a step away, though his hands don't drop from her face, to lift the hem of her shirt and reveal the silvery scrawl across her hip. He reads them with dawning horror. She looks away from him, can't bear to look at him as he processes what it all means.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, and there's so much emotion in there she can't even begin to pick it apart: hurt and guilt and anger, and everything she wanted to protect him from.
She drops the fabric and shakes her head, dislodging his fingers from her skin. "Because I'm not yours, so it didn't matter. You've got someone else out there waiting for you."
He stalks away, rage simmering from him as she watches him move in her peripheral vision. He looks like he's after something he can smash, or put his fist through, but this is her space and he controls the urge, pulling the anger back inside, spitting it out in words alone.
"So you'd rather spend months lying to me?"
"I've never lied to you," she protests. "I haven't told you everything, but this is my life. My burden. I got to choose how I dealt with it."
"That's great—you get to choose. I get other people making decisions for me, again. I spent decades with other people controlling everything about my life, and you went and decided this without even including me in the process." Suddenly, the anger's gone. He's back in front of her, expression open and vulnerable, fingers in her hair. "I am done with that part of my life," he insists, the fierce words a vow. "No one gets to control it or shut me out. Not you, not the universe. I want you. Destiny can go fuck itself."
She pulls away again, until she's backed up against the door. "And when they turn up? The love of your life, your perfect partner?"
"Not interested. I will get these words cut out of my skin if I have to."
"What difference will that make? You know what they are. You'll know, just like I did. Even if you think you can run from it, one day you'll realize I'm not enough anymore. Like you said, you can't make any promises. One day you'll be gone, and it will be just be me again."
He closes in. "Please, Darcy…"
She puts out a hand to keep him at bay. "It's not your decision alone to make. It's mine too, and I already decided. I'm sorry if I didn't involve you in that, but trust me when I say I've got the shittier end of the deal. I can't open my arms to you and hope for the best. I can't. And it wouldn't work anyway—I'd spend every minute with you looking over my shoulder, waiting for someone better to come along."
She's calm by the time she's finished speaking. It's fed by the hollowness inside her, the ringing emptiness in her bones now she's said her piece. She watched as the conviction in her words reached him, settled in him, and destroyed the hope he'd carried all the way here.
"I love you," he repeats, like it will change anything, and Darcy wishes it would.
"I think you should go," she whispers, fumbling with the door handle at her side.
He nods, backing away enough for her to open it and let him pass by. He doesn't look at her as he leaves, and it's only when she closes the door behind him that she realizes she never said the words back.
It doesn't matter. It would only hurt him more.
Darcy leans against the locked door for what could be minutes, or hours. She only knows time has moved on because of the utter blackness outside her windows. Bucky isn't coming back, and she thinks this is one chapter of her life slowly closing, the pages turning around her. Tomorrow, she needs to seriously think about the next one, but for now it's only her and the cold Chinese food on her counter.
There are two days of numbness, then there are hands shaking her awake in the middle of the night. She blinks up through layers of sleep and gauzy darkness to find Nat crouching over her, distraught in a way Darcy never thought she was capable of being.
"What's up?" she slurs, fumbling for her glasses.
"It's Bucky," Nat pants. "The mission—he…"
Darcy sits up, shoving Nat away so she can move. She hadn't even know there was a mission tonight. "Did he have another attack?"
"No. Rumlow got to him. Darcy, he's gone."
To be clear, by 'he's gone' I do NOT mean that Bucky is dead.