Summary:

No trigger warnings for this chapter, just lots of introspection from Bucky, and a little peak into Sarah Stone's mind

While Stone slept in the helicopter, Sam and Bucky talked.

"You gonna ask, or am I gonna have to get an extinguisher for when the gears in your head start a fire?" Sam asked, with that knowing smirk Bucky hated.

"How have things been… The climbing and everything."

"It's been fun." Bucky glared at the back of Sam's head until he elaborated, "climbing has been interesting, she could teach if she wanted but no matter how hard I work, I'll never be as good as she is."

Bucky chewed over it for a minute before asking, "and what about the… you know, the talking thing, I introduced you so she could talk to someone."

"We talk. She's been through a lot and it comes out in bits and pieces but," Sam shot a look over his shoulder that Bucky couldn't interpret, "it's like this Buck, she sees me as a mentor, so when I ask, she'll tell me, but I think what she really needs is a friend."

"Can't you do that too?"

"I don't think so," Sam paused, opening and closing his mouth a few times, "from the conversations we've had, I think it should be you."

"I'm—"

"Before you start just let me say this, she trusts you, enough to give you free reign in her gym and what's more telling, she let you help her just now."

"A couple of buckles Sam, not a big deal." Bucky tried to shrug the idea away, uncomfortable with the idea. Stone's head lolled to one side and he shrugged out of his jacket, rolling it up and wedging it between them so she could rest against it instead of his cold metal shoulder.

"She wouldn't have let me do it Buck," Sam said raising his brows significantly, "she never let me help with anything, no matter how stiff her hands got, but you were practically carrying her down the mountain."

Bucky didn't have an answer to that and they sat in silence for the rest of the trip.

The smell of antiseptic was the first thing Sarah noticed, it stung her nose but she didn't dare open her lips for a deeper breath, the dust was awful even through the mask she wore. A beeping sound in periphery caught her next and she looked for the source.

"I thought you said it was clear Mills." She barked into the headset.

She was annoyed. Mills and another soldier had been assigned to escort them on a recovery mission and though they had done their job well enough, Mills in particular had been cavalier, scoffing at their concerns, and making crude comments under his breath as they covered the body. Buddy had rolled up a towel and used it as a pillow to cradle the head, something he apparently thought was "unnecessary" given the man was dead and saying "that was what happens when you put a woman on the team, a bunch of sappy soldiers." Farris had been about ready to rip into him then but Sarah had shook her head and her team followed her lead, ignoring the mans taunt and finishing the job. She'd let it go, wasn't the first time she'd heard it. Now however the anger began to build.

"Are you questioning me?" Mills growled into the speaker in her helmet. "Said I cleared the building, didn't I. So, it's clear."

The beeping continued and Sarah bit back the words she wanted to say, again looking for the source. But it was wrong. This isn't how it happened. There hadn't been a beeping sound, and she and Buddy had seen the bomb first so why wasn't it there on the stairwell?

Foggy everything was clouding up, a dust storm? Inside the building? Nothing was right. Or maybe this was what was supposed to have happened. Farris and Jackson started down the stairs at the foot of the stretcher, Stone and Buddy stabilized the head, matching their pace. It smelled like a hospital, all wrong, and she felt cold, odd given how much they'd sweated climbing up these stairs in the first place, maybe there was a storm rolling in. Any moment now

Beep. Beep. Beep.

She blinked but everything stayed dark. The world spun, strong arms lifted her, and she was floating, landing like a feather on something softer than soil. All of the oddities of the scene made sense. It had been a dream. She blinked again, but still couldn't see, then wondered if she'd blinked at all or if that too had been a dream. Disoriented and exhausted, she slipped back into sleep.

Sitting at Stone's bedside, Bucky stewed over the conversation with Sam.

"Don't leave her alone in there Buck, she hates hospitals."

That's what Sam had said. The nagging feeling he couldn't quite place previously now snapped into crystal clarity. Sam knew something about her, something Bucky should have known. He had also implied that Stone would be more open with Bucky if he allowed it. Her hand tightened around his fingers and he watched the muscles in her gnarled forearm flex against scar tissue, twisting and puckering the skin.

Stone had been a mission, a project, an experiment. The word crossed Bucky's mind and brought with it a wave of nausea. To him she had been a reflection, a wounded creature like himself and he'd taken it as his mission to prove that she could be saved. That he could be saved.

Sarah. That was her name. And he'd learned it by accident. What he knew about her could fit on a very short list. She was a veteran, owned a gym and she wasn't afraid of him; he'd learned that much the very first time they met. Was that all?

"Buddy…" her voice interrupted his spiraling thoughts and she squeezed his hand again.

She had lost someone, and the guilt haunted her. She was reckless and fearless for herself, but that one time she drank too much he had seen the pain in her eyes. She didn't like fireworks or cream in her coffee, but she preferred the orange or grapefruit flavoured electrolytes. And today he'd learned more. Sarah Stone wasn't only a terrain specialist but a gifted free climber willing to put her life on the line to save a civilian, a complete stranger; she was embarrassed to be seen as weak, had been injured and hated hospitals.

Her palms were calloused and she had pushed herself almost past the point of endurance at least once before. Failing is what she had called it then but the truth was Stone had been testing herself for years, working to rebuild strength in her wounded limb. How much courage had it taken to agree to this climb, to trust herself enough to try again, to risk the possibility of failure she so deeply feared.

The dream returned, but it was different again, still wrong. Now it was Buddy on the bier and her arm was on fire, fingers grasping the handle, trying desperately to hold on as black oil coated them, she was losing, Buddy would fall and she couldn't stop it. A larger hand wrapped around hers, cool and metallic and holding fast to the frame of the stretcher and the panic flooded out in one long breath.

She knew whose hand had helped her and thanked him before drifting away from the dream into a deep sleep.

"Bucky."

Bucky let her squeeze his hand until his fingertips turned purple with uncirculated blood. He would have tolerated it for longer if it didn't seem like her injured arm was seizing, the muscles jumping in spasmic rhythm.

The prosthetic hand was cool and he laid it gently over her white knuckled fingers, and within moments she had relaxed, her breathing slowed and the stitch in her eyebrows smoothed into what he hoped was peace. Long minutes passed and she remained still. Bucky stared at the vibranium fingers. He had avoided touching people with that hand, still remembering the way it seemed to behave on its own all those years as the winter soldier. Of course it had been responding to his brain signals, but the fragment of himself that remained buried so deep had screamed for the hand to release more than one poor soul with no effect.

The hydra arm had become the object of his own inhumanity, the symbol of what they had done through him. When Tony blasted it off his shoulder there had been outrage at the surface but when the fight ended and Bucky walked away, leaving the arm behind in the hell that had been one of his prisons, there had been a sense of relief. And in Wakanda when they had offered him a new one, he'd said no thanks, grateful to be free from it. Until the fight came to him. He'd made the choice then to take it.

Dr. Kilne was big on identifying choice and personal agency and they'd talked about the new prosthetic arm at length. He chose this one, it was crafted to aid him not to harm, it looked and moved differently and it had been integrated into his nerves in a way that allowed him to feel something like natural stimuli from its surface.

Temperature, texture and torque could all be adjusted to his preference, even pain could be simulated, an unexpected answer to the phantom pain he had experienced, or what sometimes seemed worse- phantom itch, he could now scratch the prosthetic limb and feel relief. Still, regardless of how naturally it responded, he'd never quite seen it as a part of himself, using his right hand whenever possible and being careful not to touch anyone with the metal fingers. Something had shifted though, and Stone had started it, carrying his arm with all the dignity and respect of a real human limb. And just now he had reached out, not afraid, only concerned for her, and it had soothed her.

His left arm and hers stuck in his mind, and both the sameness and difference between them shamed him.

She had been suffering on her own and yet had rebuilt her strength, her confidence. Whereas Bucky, surrounded by people who wanted what was best for him, had treated himself the same way he'd treated his arm, like a contaminated weapon, useful only in a fight. A dangerous creature, unsafe, undesirable.

Soft slow breathing and her hand laying warmly in both of his taught him that he could comfort, that without amputating his arm or his past, he could be important, useful, wanted. He shook his head to leave the spiral of regret and guilt and shame.

Regret wouldn't keep her safe, and safe wouldn't keep her whole, and leaving her alone… well, Sarah had been alone long enough.

Notes:

It's been a long time since I've worked on this, I began writing this as an exploration of healing and my brother's struggle with ptsd and alcohol, perhaps in part to say to myself and the world that healing is possible.
Since he passed half a year ago its been difficult for me to pick this story up again, but this wasn't written for him alone, it was for you dear reader, and for me.
And so it is in that spirit that I have stepped back up to the plate, we deserve a complete story
Rest high Brother.