ostavil: (007)
Bucky Barnes | The Winter Soldier ([personal profile] ostavil) wrote2023-08-11 09:40 pm

001 wakanda

There's peace in Wakanda. Bucky had spent a little while under the ice while Shuri figured out a way to work on his deprogramming and while it's been a painful process, it's a necessary one and he's glad for all her work on the tangled knot that's HYDRA and the mess inside his brain. It's all wired incorrectly, a bomb that never went off but still needs to be defused, and he's scared every time she goes in there that something will go wrong and he'll attack her; it hasn't happened yet.

When he isn't working with her or Ayo, he has a little hut to himself where there are goats and sometimes children come visit him to see the curious white man who has taken up on the fringes of Wakandan society. Steve has visited a few times but when they announce a visitor this time, it's apparently not Steve. They're still at the palace being received, though, so Bucky takes the time to tidy up where he's been staying as much as he can one-handed; he's neat by nature but he also isn't used to having company come by either.

Who could it be? Sam? Sharon? Bucky isn't sure who would come to visit him aside from those two and Steve. Tony Stark certainly wouldn't and he isn't sure the Wakandan government would even let him in. Would Wanda come to see him? He's not certain. He imagines she's in hiding the same as he is, trying to avoid the Sokovia Accords and their inevitable consequences on her. It seems she's suffering more from them than anyone else, even himself, so he doesn't think she'd risk coming to see him.

He catalogs the other people he knows and he comes up with Natasha. He's got a strange history with her. He's shot her twice while the Winter Soldier but curiously, both times, he'd shot her non-fatally. It's almost as if he'd known that she needed to live even if he didn't know her and that's not what the Winter Soldier does. He doesn't leave loose ends. He kills whoever is necessary, even an innocent bystander, and Natasha has been actively opposing him both times he's encountered her. Even when he'd been activated by Zemo he'd attacked her but didn't take her down. There's something in him that protects her and he wonders why that is and always has. He doesn't know why she'd visit him but he wouldn't turn it down, either, so when he hears someone at the door he calls for them to come inside.

"Come in, I'm not busy." He's just finishing up wiping down a counter in what counts for his kitchen and when he comes into view of the visitor, he sees that it is Natasha. Curious.

"Hi."
widowsdance: (37)

[personal profile] widowsdance 2023-10-17 12:21 am (UTC)(link)
It’s vulnerable, the way she climbs into his lap on the couch. Sideways, laying her head against his shoulder. Soft in a way she wasn’t before, just letting him hold onto her.

She doesn’t tell him that he used do this when he’s come back from a mission wiped. When he knew her but didn’t know her fully, finding her again. It was too much to think about.

“My nose is probably all messed up from having broken it, hope you don’t mind me looking all beat up.”
widowsdance: (14)

[personal profile] widowsdance 2023-10-23 08:04 pm (UTC)(link)
He's teasing her, and she doesn't even have it in her to fight back anymore. She's tired, of everything that happened. Of saving Yelena, of dragging her ass all the way back here and she just presses her forehead into his neck and let's him hold her.

"I'm tired," she murmurs softly there, as if it's an excuse for not being better prepared. Like she's afraid she's done something wrong is and is going to let him down by the way she is behaving here.
widowsdance: (31)

[personal profile] widowsdance 2023-10-29 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
"Absolutely not," she murmurs and shakes her head against his shoulder. She'd flown all the way here and she absolutely is sure that she wants to spend some time here with him. She knows he'd still be here if she fell asleep but that's different.

"It was a fucking nightmare, and I'm not ready to relive that in my dreams yet," she adds with a murmur. She knows he knows exactly what that is like.