pennysheets | For Sabetha

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For Sabetha

It's been five days since he missed their rendezvous, vanished from all their usual haunts. Even with her connections and skills, it took that long for her to find this little sliver of HYDRA and find its root. The building Sabetha traced them to looks abandoned from the outside, an old hospital in a rural part of Russia, now overgrown with weeds. But the lock on the gate is new, and she'll note subtle security cameras. Not beyond her skill, though, particularly if she takes the time to note when guards arrive-- out of a dirt track in the back, not the main road-- and takes out one with the right size to steal her uniform.

She can sneak inside to the modern lab below ground, and she can slit the throat of the guard outside the white-tiled cell, and she can put said guard's eye to the scanner to open the cell, but inside she'll find not her twitchy but implacable companion in murder and thievery, but a blank-faced weapon that lunges for her as soon as she pokes her head in the door.

It's been over twelve hours since they last refreshed his programming, but it still rattles around in his skull. They don't have a Chair here, but they do know the Words, and it's only a matter of time before they reassemble a Chair to complete he recalibration. To make him truly mission-ready.

Something inside, deep inside, where the Words can't touch, doesn't want that. But he can't help but feel his body grab for the intruder, knowing his duty here, knowing he can only go with his new handler. She'll have to be quick on her feet to avoid him, but it's not impossible: they also haven't fed him in those five days, in the hopes of keeping him easier to handle if the brainwashing fails, and he's not nearly as fast or as strong as he ought to be.

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Poison. Not something he can do anything about, if it's true. Another little thread inside him lets go, because if it's true, he can't save his handler even if he goes to him now. He's as good as dead whether or not he's actually dead right this moment, and pulling him out of the building right now won't make him not as good as dead.

It might not be true. But he doesn't care. It helps.

He leans his cheek into her palm, since she didn't hit him or pull away. He's going to take what he can get. "Very you," he dredges up. "Untraceable?"

"Utterly. The reaction burns itself out while making them bleed to death from their eyeballs." She pauses briefly, then adds, "That's not an exaggeration. There wasn't time for finesse, so I had to get creative with one of the guards who was rotating out."

There's something a little bit haunted in her eyes, in spite of her almost cavalier tone. It's pragmatism more than morality that leads her to prefer finesse - people are more likely to come looking for vengeance when there are bodies on the ground - but that kind of ugly death still leaves its mark.

So there's definitely poison, even if it isn't necessarily as widely dispersed as she's allowed her words to imply.

(That's what the incendiaries are for, in part.)

He knows. He knows that look, and he knows the feeling behind it. He's got enough back since killing Steve that he knows intimately what looks like that come from. Another thread of Words inside breaks, falling on the edge of what compassion he has left. Of what care he has for her.

He wants to help her more than he wants to obey his handlers. He thinks he might even be able to kill any other guards they come across. There's a smoldering anger at the last couple tangles of the Words left, and the people who put them there.

He kind of wants that, too. He takes her hand from his cheek, kisses her wrist this time, then asks, "Did you do everything you meant to do here." Is she ready to go? Because he is ready to go.

"Everything important," she says, meeting his gaze steadily. Another day, another facility, and she might raid the labs on the way out, recoup some of her costs by way of the black market. But that isn't her objective here, and she doesn't think to care about the lost opportunity. She's here for him, and she's stolen enough intel to further his hunt once it's been decrypted.

Everything else is trivial.

"Time to start the fireworks."

"Good," he says, firmly. Then again, more fiercely, "Good. Burn it down." No one's going to survive. Sabetha is thorough. Maybe he can't slit all their throats, but he can watch them burn. And if any of them get in his way, on their way out, he is... 84% sure he can take care of them. That's solid enough odds.

He pushes up from the wall and lets her hand go, turning towards the door, forcing himself to walk straight. "Fifteen minutes." He's going to assume Sabetha has a car waiting.

There's a faint chime as she arms the incendiaries - and god, but modern technology is occasionally terrifying - and she nods briskly. "Starting now."

There are only three guards on the way out. Three, out of however many are in the facility, who were clever enough - or unfortunate enough - to realize where the trouble might lie, and able to escape the chaos Sabetha'd made of their locks. She's armed, and more than willing to fight, but unless he seems to need the help, she's more than willing to let him vent his rage on those foolish enough to get in the way.

The first one Sabetha does have to handle herself, because Bucky freezes-- after that, after watching her leap out from behind him to handle the threat, after seeing someone supposedly on his team go down without any urge to help them, another Word shatters in his brain. He gifts the body with a few vicious kicks before he's ready to move on.

After that, he takes out the last two himself, and happily.

He's exhausted by the time they get to Sabetha's getaway car, and they only have a few minutes of leeway before the timer is due to blow.

"Are we far enough away from the blast radius?" he asks, leaning on the car a moment and staring at what little they can make out of the building from here. He sounds a little more like himself, at least. A tired, angry, slightly unsteady him, but the jerky, halting speech is gone. "Can we see it?"

The car's solid, utilitarian, a far cry from the sleek, swift bikes that are Sabetha's preference at heart. It's built for rough terrain, for the risk of having to cut through brush and field, and for the ability to blend in to rock and forest with just a little help.

"We're far enough," she says. She'd built her windows carefully, given them longer than they should need under most circumstances to get to safety, and to transport.

She pulls one of the doors open, but lingers by it only long enough to pull out a bottle of water and an MRE bar before circling back around to his side and pressing both against his chest in silent command. It's not likely to be particularly satisfying, but it's calories and hydration, and he'd need both even if his metabolism didn't run well above human baseline.

"It's going to light the sky up like fucking Armageddon. We can watch."

He doesn't even notice her collecting supplies until they're pushed against him and his hand comes up automatically to either swat them away or accept them.

When he realizes what they are, he doesn't swat them. But he doesn't open either up, either, looking back up at the building with a fixed stare. "I want," he mutters. "I want to see it." He can want. He's allowed. He remembers wanting clearly, this time.

He's also pretty sure seeing the place blow up will blow away the last of the haze in his brain. (Eating probably would, too, but he's a little fixated at the moment.)

"All right," she says simply, and leans back against the vehicle, close enough to feel the heat of his body in the rapidly-cooling air, but not quite close enough to touch.

There isn't long to wait. In the first moments, the light that blooms along the horizon could be mistaken for early sunrise, and while they're well clear of any real shockwave, the outrush of air is still enough, here on the perimeter, to set the leaves rustling and ruffle their hair. The scent on that unnatural breeze is hot and acrid, all ash and seared concrete.

The light grows, orange and bloody red, reflecting off the low cloud cover until it's less like false dawn and more like overcast day.

After the wind has died away, and when he can see the flames on the clouds above, he finally shuts his eyes for a long moment, breathes in deep the smell of death and ash, and turns away from the dead.

In the process, he instead finds himself looking at Sabetha. She came for him-- he knows this, because she didn't get much of anything else. He knows how her ops work, usually, and this isn't it. She came for him.

They don't normally talk about feelings. He's not entirely sure he knows how and she seems to dismiss such things as beneath her. But he knows he didn't want to kill the thing he loves most in the world-- not again not again not again pounds in his skull-- and he knows she came for him despite knowing what he could do to her. What he knows he's warned her HYDRA could do to him. With him.

Also, she didn't hurt him when he kissed her hand. He wants to try that again.

He sets the water and food she gave him aside, onto the hood of the car, and reaches for her face. Slow, careful, telegraphing the movement.

They don't talk about feelings. And she, in particular, does not really do tenderness, not where it can't be written off as practicality, as cultivating a potential source or lookout or other asset - one she will most likely never use, but a potential nonetheless.

She does quiet company on harsh nights, and biting sarcasm when distraction is needed. She does unspoken consideration, makes space for others' needs and wants. Above all, she does loyalty.

She does not do tenderness. But she didn't jerk away or lash out with barbed words when he kissed her hand. And while her breath catches, a reaction so bone-deep she can't suppress the tell, she doesn't pull away now. She watches him in the bloody light of the burning facility, and feels the ground shift beneath her feet, and for once relinquishes the need to be perfectly in control.

One hand rests on her cheek, marked with a little blood from one of the men they'd killed. The other comes up to join it, cold though it is, cupping her face for a moment as he just looks at her, expression unreadable even for him. It's not murderous, though, and it's not blank. Intent, maybe.

The kiss he comes down for a beat later is not exactly tender. It's not expert, as he doesn't remember actually kissing before, but it is firm; it's not demanding, but it is stating without hesitation that this is something he wants, if she is willing to give it.

He is allowed to want things.

Because he doesn't demand, she finds that she is able to give. Her lips part slightly in invitation, and only that, allowing him to dictate just how far he wants this impulse to take them.

She wraps one arm around his waist, and rests her other hand on his shoulder, the one made of flesh and blood and bone, where he can feel it. It's less for balance than for contact, and for communication.

She wants this, too. Wants him, even if in the end it's only for a fleeting moment.

The impulse can only go so far, since they really should be getting out of here before someone comes to investigate the explosion.

But maybe a little further. He bumps her back against the side of the car, tilts his head, curls his right hand's fingers up into her hair, and takes the invitation to turn the kiss deeper. He does remember this, now... a little. From a long, long time ago. Apparently the person he used to be knew how to kiss a woman. There's supposed to be something he does with his tongue, isn't there?

Fuck, there isn't time now. He's going to have to experiment later. If she lets him do this again.

So, reluctant, he separates their faces, brushes their noses together instead. "Later?" he asks, voice a little hoarse and maybe a little worried.

She exhales a small, slightly rueful laugh, watching him from beneath her lashes, close enough that she can see the striations of colour in his irises in the harsh, flickering light of the fire. "Later," she agrees.

She strokes her thumb over the ball of her shoulder, then lets her hands fall away, leaning ever so slightly back so that her spine lies flush against the side of the car.

"It's a couple of hours to the safehouse. I thought we might want a border between us and this place."

It's solid planning, after her usual fashion. It also seems a little inconvenient now, though she knows full well that once the adrenaline wears off, they're both more likely to want sleep and food than to pick up immediately where they left off, even were they closer to a bolthole.

Still.

"We'll have to lie low for a few days, watch the fallout."

A few days in a safehouse, just the two of them. Good. There will be time for experimenting, then.

And time for sleeping. Because he pushes up from the car, from her, and finds that he wavers on his feet. He needs to blink away a gray haze before he steadies. "Think I'll need it," he admits, voice low. "Before I'm ready for another op. Or even to be out in public." He grinds his palm to his eye tiredly, the metal one fumbling for a door handle. "Fucking HYDRA."

Sabetha reaches out to steady him when he wavers, a reflex that is just a little bit absurd given the difference in weight between them. The car is much better suited for that task. "May they burn in the deepest pits of hell," she agrees, quiet but with a lash of venom.

Because fucking HYDRA.

She circles the car to the driver's side, pausing to collect the food and water he'd discarded on the hood. She deposits these gently in his lap before starting the car. "Eat. Drink. Rest, if you can." She gives him a smile, small and sly. "I promise not to bitch about you double-checking my security if you do."

He reaches vaguely for her when she touches him, lands his hand on her arm briefly, then pulls the door open and drops in.

"Deal," Bucky says with a hint of a smile, back, taking the water and protein bar. "I'll hold you to that."

He does, too. He alternates two bites of bar to a gulp of water, and finishes both slowly. He attempts to watch out the window, but within twenty minutes he's out like a light. Silent and still, face turned towards the window but reflected in it any time the light hits it right when she's looking his way.

She doesn't watch him, exactly. The back roads she takes are rarely driven, and are narrow and treacherous for it, demanding much of her attention. She steals glances now and then, enough that she notes the transition between watchful and sleeping. Her expression softens just a little, with only the night road and the waning moon to witness.

Eventually, they reach their destination, and the vehicle rumbles to a stop, engine ticking softly in the cooling night air.

He stirs once during the drive, but only fitfully, and then sinks back down after only a bleary look around. When the car stops, he twitches fully awake at last. And actually finally realizes he fell asleep, and left Sabetha to drive alone for hours. Nevermind that he obviously badly needed it.

"Are we. Did I. Ugh." He knuckles his eyes and smothers a yawn, looking a lot more human than usual in the motion. "Sorry. We're there? I can. I can do the perimeter check." Now that he's awake, he doesn't think he could settle if he didn't do it himself, and also, it can make up a little bit for konking out on her.

"Oh, good. I was starting to wonder how I'd get you inside," she says, tone only slightly tart. She gives him a searching look, then nods. "I'll put some food on."

She glances towards the horizon, silvered faintly with the promise of light - this time, from sunrise and not from flame. "Breakfast, I suppose."

He doesn't exactly squirm under her look, but his gaze does slide away from hers, like it does when he's uncomfortable being looked at. He's gotten better at that since she's met him, but sometimes it's still a bit much. Which means he definitely spots the lightening sky.

"Breakfast it is. I'll help when I finish the sweep." Because she deserves to rest, after breaking him out, fighting with him, and then putting up with a long drive to get here.

He considers touching her, but in the end, just levers himself out of the car and starts prowling around the building. Cabin or suburban house or apartment building. He feels better than he did before the snack and sleep, which isn't saying much, but it says enough.

It's a cabin - a relatively remote one, though it stands in a wide enough clearing that there's no chance for anyone to drop directly from the trees onto the single-story building. The drive is narrow, more right-of-way access than a real road. It isn't Sabetha's ideal - she's a city creature at heart, made for bustling spaces and ample access to people - but it's the sort of place where it would be easy to go to ground for a while.

And it's a place she's clearly had for a while, though she's never had occasion to bring him here - never, perhaps, worked a job messy enough that it was necessary. There are layers of sensors as he prowls the perimeter, melding almost seamlessly with the territory.

Inside, Sabetha does a quick sweep of her own before she busies herself with the business of preparing a meal. She tackles both tasks with equal seriousness.

It's not really his preference, either. A city is familiar. A city has background noise and light even in the middle of the night and cars to jack and multiple escape routes that aren't into wilderness. The past life he only remembers in shreds at a time was in a city, he thinks.

But if he must be in the wilderness, this isn't bad. There's space around the house. There's a sophisticated security system. There's sightlines. Knowing Sabetha, there's probably a second car a mile away out the back door. He can stay here without freaking out too much, he thinks.

Especially if they can come up with a compelling distraction.

He prowls through the front door about ten minutes later and does a second sweep of the inside. Just to make sure. He knows she's already done a sweep, she's thorough like that, but unless he does one too, he'll never settle. At least he's too tired to make the paranoid, exhaustive search he's done on occasion before, checking behind shelves and inside furniture. This is just windows, vents, and doors, before he comes up beside her in the kitchen, to see what she can put him to use doing.

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gorgeous description, hun

<3

and then you top it. seriously. so good ;.;

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