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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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.

He shrugs, and sets the replacement glass in front of her.

"Sure. Doesn't mean you don't deserve to have it be taken care of."

"Doesn't it?" she echoes, very obviously unsure of this concept and not yet picking up the voka bottle again.

"No one ever has."

"No. It doesn't."

He picks up another piece of gauze and holds it up so she can see it.

"Why don't you let me be the first?"

Slowly, very, very slowly, Sinthia breaks from the utter stone-stillness she'd been holding as they spoke. She isn't at all sure of his motivations, nor of what this will end with, but her fingertips twitch as she studies him from the way he holds up the gauze piece to the way he so calmly meets her eyes, like he has nothing to fear from her.

How he has nothing to fear from her she does not understand; he got away from what they were. Why would he want to help someone who hasn't yet?

Ever so slowly she turns her hands palms-up, exposing the dozens of little cuts from the glass, some with the shards still embedded.

"Should've asked for tweezers, too," he mutters, studying her hands. "I don't suppose you can levitate those pieces out?"

Carefully, he starts to dampen the gauze in the warm water.

Sinthia hums her assent to that lightly, head nodding, though she's still tightly-wound like a spring under tension. The glass bits tug on their way out, but one by one they do pull themselves free, landing ont he table with somewhat morbid little tinkling sounds.

It's hardly the first time, or the most painful, time she's yanked something out of herself where it didn't need to be. At least the glass isn't stopping worse bleeding, though each of the tiny cuts is now weeping a droplet or three of blood.

"Is it strange, not having the arm anymore?"

"Yeah. It is."

He finishes wetting the gauze, manages to approximate wringing it out over the bowl by squeezing it with his fingers, and shakes it until it's not crumpled any more.

"I'll get used to it eventually. Hold still, okay? I'm going to wash these out."

He moves to dab at her cuts with the cloth, gently.

She is still for quite a while, looking not at her hands or his but the table between them with a pinched brow as she holds her hands steady, gently cupped as if imitating a bowl. It's not painful to watch her blood trickle out, it only tickles like a tiny bug crawling over her skin. It's difficult for her to get words started, but once she does and the first sound from her own lips almost startles her, she keeps going.

"I miss...knowing what to do," Sinthia manages eventually. "Not what it was. But knowing that I wasn't just wrong. I only remember bits and pieces from before Sarajevo. Nothing I can tell anyone."

"Because they wouldn't understand? Or because there's not enough there?"

He finishes cleaning one hand and starts on the other with the same gentle care, changing pieces of gauze when necessary.

She shrugs. "Both. How do you tell someone you know war history so well because you remember it?" No easy answers there.

"I don't remember more than...a year. Maybe two, since the end of the war."