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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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.

There's the faintest hitch in her slow, steady inhale at that name. Oh yes, he was impossible to forget. "I know."

But still.

Sinthia can't quite grasp the idea that he forgives her; she's never dealt with that, she has no basis for it, it's completely alien to her. "I don't...understand you."

"Not many people do."

Steve, first and foremost. Natasha, once; perhaps still. Joe. Sparkle, maybe. A few - very few - others.

"I want to understand." Someone. She wants to know what she missed, what it is that makes her just not...react to things correctly.

She tries and fails to come up with something else to say, and the glass tips over with a soft 'clink'ing noise on the tabletop; she tries simply tilting it back up without touching it, but what would be an easy task...isn't. As her fingertips twitch, tiny cracks appear in the glass, spiderwebbing out over its surface.

"Hey, take it easy," he says, but with concern and not condemnation. The high-pitched scree of glass cracking is unmistakable.

"Come on. Let's get you a new glass."

Her mouth firms and the glass cracks even more, the scree turning into the soft creaking that foretells an explosion; she almost doesn't react when it finally shatters and the vodka-rinsed glass bits prickle against her skin. A few slice her arms and cheek, shallow cuts that feel like nothing more than papercuts.

She's focused on the spot it had occupied as if the force of her staring could bore a hole in the wood, lips pressed tight together. "I should be able to remember. I keep trying and nothing comes back."

"Whoa--"

She doesn't even seem to notice what's happened, and he can't just sit still and watch. Bucky slides out of his booth and moves to her table.

"Sinthia. Hey. C'mon. Look at me, okay?"

She doesn't move when he speaks: if anything her hyperfocus only grows more intense, and the vodka bottle begins to shake ever so gently. All of the tension is abruptly released when he moves close enough to be seen in her peripheral vision, and Sinthia starts, muscles jerking abortively, as if she'd stopped herself from bracing for an attack.

"It's all wrong, I try to remember and nothing's there," says eventually, voice soft and tired. There's no more of the momentary fire of anger at being unable to piece together any memories. "I know I'm doing something wrong, but I don't know what. Nothing comes back anymore."

He takes a seat at right angles to her.

"I know that feeling," Bucky says, very quietly. "With you, is it like - the harder you try to remember, the less you can?"

He waves his right hand to signal a waitrat.

His positioning is likely safer for him--Sinthia doesn't even pretend to herself that he doesn't know it.

She is dangerous. She knows this beyond any shadow of doubt.

"Yes," she says softly. "It's...like there's nothing there. Like following a road, and then just a hole. I don't know what I'm missing," Sinthia murmurs, head tilted down as if she'd like to put her face in her hands, but that's a stupid thing to do in the middle of a crowded room.