milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"Go. Go! Take this journal and write down everything you can remember. It will help, I promise you."

"Princess--"

"Do not argue. Find somewhere quiet, where you won't be bothered."

"The kids aren't a bother."

"They are also not quiet."

* * * * * * *

It's been a long time since he's been here, enough that if pressed he couldn't actually say how long. He hadn't exactly meant to come, either, but he'd been thinking about finding somewhere out of the way when he walked out of Shuri's lab, and there's no question that Milliways fits that description better than anywhere else.

About ten minutes later, Bucky Barnes is settled in at one of the quieter booths in the back, the journal open in front of him. (A close observer might notice that each page is subtly embossed with the logo of the Wakandan Design Group.)

He's holding a pen in his right hand and tapping it against the blank page. From time to time he sets down the pen and picks up the cup of coffee waiting beside him instead. A swallow or two later, he repeats the process, swapping cup for pen.

His left hand is immaterial to the whole process, as it's entirely absent. A series of gauze bandages are barely visible under the collar of his shirt, and his left sleeve is neatly pinned shut over where his arm used to be.

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"Nothing, yet."

He remembers her, oh yes. Schmidt's daughter, who'd seen him in the factory, who'd been through hell of her own. He'd had to leave all too abruptly last time they'd talked, the first time they'd met.

He makes himself take a careful breath, and nods a greeting to her.

"Got it torn off in a fight," he says, finally. "The repair process is ... complicated."

Especially since it's not just a matter of repairing the physical arm, but so much more.

"Oh," she says lightly, watching him breathe and looking away.

"I'm sorry." She's not sure what to say about someone she's fairly sure she had a hand in torturing. She still doesn't remember, and it's sudenly uncomfortably clear again. "Are you...alright? Without it?"

"Thanks," he says, more gently than most might expect.

"You know what? I am. I'm -- taking the time. Figuring a few things out."

Edited 2021-02-22 03:55 (UTC)

"What are you figuring out?" she asks, turning towards him but not yet really moving from her spot.

He might not want her too close, and she's trying to learn how to talk to people. How to determine who actually wants to talk with her, too, though it's a hard process. The curve is steep.

"What comes next."

He sets the pen down and switches to his coffee.

"How about you? Anything interesting?"

She lifts a shoulder, up and down in an elegant (and slightly less mechanical than the last time) motion, spinning her glass around one fingertip in a lazy, lilting circle. "I moved, I'm not in Sarajevo anymore," Sinthia explains. "I'm in Amsterdam now. It's pretty, everything's snowy and iced over."

She likes the cold when fewer people are out and about. It makes her feel less overwhelmed in their presence. She bites her lip, worrying it back and forth between her teeth; though she doesn't know him and he certainly doesn't know her, there's a connection between them, though tenuous as a spiderweb thread. They know the same treatment, at the hands of the same people.

"I want to go to America. I've never been, I don't think. But I remember hearing the soliers talk about it. I just...don't know how to get therem."

"Passport issues, or picking a place?"

I remember hearing the soldiers talk about it. He wonders if he was one of the soldiers she remembers. He's pretty sure he'd talked about home; they all had.

"Both," she says deceptively lightly, not looking up for the woodgrain for a moment. "I don't have a passport, and...I don't know where I'd go. I don't have any documents in my name."

"Where to go - I can give you some recommendations, if you want."

He's frankly surprised to hear she doesn't have papers, or a source for them, and asks,

"Not in your name. In anyone's?"

She shifted, almost saying something but not quite there. "I would. If you don't mind," Sinthia murmured. "I stole someone's identification to get out of the country. But by now she will have reported that, and those papers would be flagged for international travel."

He nods, and takes a sip of coffee.

"Do you like cities?"

"Should I not?" she asks, brows lifted. "I like them...I suppose? The ones I've been in I like."

"I just ask because some people don't. Especially if they don't like crowds."

He leaves it unsaid whether or not he thinks she might be one of them.

"New York."

"Is that where you are?" she asks.

"I...don't mind crowds. Usually everything just...blends into a noise. Like a train going by," Sinthia explains haltingly, as if unsure of her words. "I don't know if America is at all the same anymore. But I want to know why they--why all of you liked it so much."

He shakes his head. "No. But I grew up there. I loved it there."

It's no more a secret than any of the rest of his life that's printed on the museum wall.

"Hard to explain, I guess. No country's perfect. But it's full of life."

"I don't know what it feels like to love a place," Sinthia murmurs softly. "It's better than where I grew up, though?"

He knows where that was.

"Yes."

Without an iota of hesitation, and with absolute certainty.

She makes a soft sound, noncommittal at best; though there are many, many reasons for her to hate where she grew up, but she has a singular memory of looking out that wide, wide window at the snow, peaceful and quiet.

It's the only peaceful and quiet memory she has. That she knows about.

"...I'm sorry. For what we did."

"You were a child. Under his control."

He shakes his head.

"I don't blame you for that, Sinthia."

"I do."

That answer of all of her words is quick, unhesitating. She knew exactly what she was doing; she was young and terrified and she still knew. The choice and the consequences for each outcome had been made very clear to her.

"I don't remember all their faces. But I remember what it felt like. Every time."

("Do you even remember them?"

"I remember all of them.")

He nods, silent in his understanding. He still doesn't blame her. He can't, not a child. But he knows what he'd said to Steve when Steve had offered him similar protection, freedom from his own actions.

I know. But I did it.

"Okay," he says, finally. "Then how about this, instead? I forgive you."

Edited 2021-02-23 03:50 (UTC)

That makes her look up, and the glass spinning around her fingertip stutters in its revolution as she jerks her head up, focused on him to the exclusion of all else in the room.

Her eyebrows pull together and her gaze flickers over his face uncertainly.

"...Why would you do that?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

He seems absolutely sincere, as does the question itself.

There are several false starts to her answer, where she opens her mouth and closes it again without a sound.

"I killed your friends." Unspoken, but very much understood by both of them, is that it was painful and likely slow. "You should want me dead the same way."

"Zola killed more."

Level and steady.