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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"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.

"Sometimes it helps me to go around the edges instead."

A waitrat scurries up in response to his summons, and he nods thanks to it. "Clean gauze and warm water," he asks, "another glass for her, another cup of coffee for me -- want anything else?"

That last is to Sinthia.

"There's just nothing there," she says quietly, shaking her head. "I keep trying. But there's just...holes."

The rat hurries off again as he nods.

"People told me not to try so hard. To let it just come back."

There is something almost infinitely wry about his tone.

"Believe me, I know how much that advice sucks. Sometimes coming at it sideways helped, though. Mind if I ask why you're trying to remember something right now?"

"I don't...I'm tired of being...wrong. I know I'm not going things right, I don't understand things. People don't talk to me more than once."

And if she's no longer an asset... what else is there for her to do?

"It's...lonely."

"I've talked to you more than once," he points out.

"So you're a little different. Around here, that just means you're normal."

Without needing to say it out loud, Sinthia just stares at Bucky and shakes her head. She isn't normal, not even here.

Apparently, especially here. She remembers the conversations she had with Emcee.

He raises his eyebrows. "You disagree?"

The waitrat returns with a tray full of the things he'd asked for. Bucky realizes very quickly that he can't take it with only one hand without being likely to drop it. He hooks his ankle around a chair and pulls it over to him, then nods to the waitrat to set the tray there and leave it.

Sinthia makes the softest huff of a noise in response to that, and as the waitrat moves to set the tray on the chair, she takes it. Not with her hands, mind, but it floats there just as still and steady as if those tiny rodent paws had left it on a solid surface.

She's watching it, unblinking before the direction of her gaze moves very slowly up to Bucky's face.

"I can hold it for a while." That should be enough to illustrate the ways she disagrees with his earlier assessment of her normalcy.

"Okay," he says, unruffled, and snags a piece of the gauze. "Give me a second."

He brushes it over the table, using it to collect the shards of shattered glass in a single spot on the opposite side.

"There. You can put it in that clear spot."

As if hanging by invisible puppet-strings, the tray follows the tilt of her head and settles on the table in the spot indicated.

"You don't have to clean up. I would have." When might have been the better question about that, but Sinthia glances over the contents of the tray and frowns a little. "It doesn't really hurt. You know that." He, she feels fairly certain, shares her tolerance for pain. It's a somewhat skewed scale.