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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When Bucky wakes up a good twelve hours later, he feels wholly like himself again. He also feels... good? He's clean, because they somehow managed to get his hair washed. He's dry and warm, piled under blankets. HYDRA got blown up, which is a knot of satisfaction in his stomach. And Sabetha was....

Where is Sabetha? He pats at the bed around him, looking for her, even though he hasn't pulled his head out from under the covers yet.

Because she had somehow managed the herculean feat of getting him to bed after he'd just about fallen asleep in the bath. It turns out sex for the first time in decades on top of a week of deprivation, a full stomach, and feeling safe is a recipe for completely losing his grip on consciousness. It feels vaguely rude. His half-awake brain supplies, Your mama raised you better than that, though what the mother he no longer really remembers has to do with falling asleep on a woman he has no idea.

"I was starting to think you'd be out a full day," Sabetha's voice says from a few feet away. There's a rustle of paper and the faint creak of floorboards before the mattress dips ever so slightly beneath her weight.

She stretches out beside him, though on top of the covers, and reaches out to catch his searching hand and bring it up to her lips to brush a kiss over his knuckles.

"How are you feeling?"

There she is. He finally pushes his head out from under the blanket, hair wild from sleep, so he can see her. That stills the threat of having to get up immediately and lay eyes on her. He smiles a little at the kiss. At her face.

Then he separates their hands so he can wrap it around her waist, instead. "Better," he answers. "Thank you. You feeling okay?" He's going to guess yes, since she's here laying close to him, since she seemed to be all right with what happened before he crashed on her, but it seems prudent to ask just in case.

"Feeling good," she assures, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips, the sort that might threaten to thoroughly ruin her reputation if anyone outside this room were to see it. It isn't soppy. She doesn't do soppy. But there's genuine warmth there, unmarred by any calculating edge.

She reaches up to smooth back his sleep-tousled hair with the hand he's just freed, and tucks her other arm up beneath her head, propping herself up on a slight, shallow angle.

Getting his hair to behave is at least a fifteen minute job, but she can get some of it out of his eyes, at least. He watches her get settled with a strange feeling of... what is that. He has to examine the feeling from a few different sides before coming up with the word "contentment". He's content. Sabetha is under his hand and his eyes, she looks happy, he's warm and safe....

So he smiles a bit more. That seems appropriate, in the face of her smile, which he finds he likes very much. "Good. Hope you got some sleep, too." He does remember her being there when he finally finished his crash into unconsciousness, so he's pretty sure she did.

"Some," she confirms. "I was here for most of the - well, it would be most of the day, technically." They'll need to correct that eventually, but she's used to working with a shifted sleep schedule, and with nowhere to be for the next several days while they wait for the heat to die down, it's not an urgent issue.

She'd been a little surprised when she managed to extricate herself from the blankets without waking him. A sign of just how exhausted he'd been, certainly. That it might also be a sign of trust is...surprisingly gratifying.

He strokes his hand along her waist and hip, smoothing down whatever clothes she might have put on since she got up. He wants to tug her closer, into his arms, bury his face in her hair-- but he also can tell he's going to start making unpleasant noises in his stomach if he doesn't fill it soon. One big meal isn't enough to make up for a week of starvation.

So he says reluctantly, "Guess that means it's my turn to get up." He quirks a sleepy smile at her. "You didn't happen to bring me any spare clothes, did you?"

"I did," she says, abandoning her quest to tame his hair now that it's mostly out of his eyes, and letting her hand drop to his shoulder, thumb idly tracing the sweep of his collarbone. "They're in the wardrobe. Tac gear you didn't have with you is in the locked compartment."

Not that there are likely to be any thieves aside from her in the area, but it never pays to skimp on precautions.

This is what they're doing now, he realizes. They're touching. Just wherever their hands will go, just idly, just for the sake of doing it. Bucky hadn't really considered this, before, keeping his hands to himself except for what was necessary for a mission, or tending a wound, or sometimes helping to gear up.

He understands it, distantly. HYDRA had only ever touched him for maintenance or punishment, or for missions. So of course he kept doing that. There was no reason to do anything else. (And thing else made him skittish and uncertain.) And she did, too, whether because that was her nature or because he did, first.

Except now there's this: her hand at his throat and his on her hip and neither of them are hurting the other. And it's... it's good. It's gentle. It's not something he He has to blink a few times against an unfamiliar blurring, then scrub his face into the blanket when he realizes he probably shouldn't be crying. He's safe. He's fine. He didn't murder Sabetha or go under the Chair, and she's touching his bare skin and it's good.

Sabetha's hand stills when she catches the glimmer of wetness in his eyes, before he tries to scrub it off with the blanket. She isn't expecting the tears. They aren't exactly a shock, either - most people would be feeling fragile after the hell of deprivation he'd been put through, and that's without his history or the sudden long step past the boundaries they'd previously had in place for their partnership.

She scooches closer, tipping her head to rest her forehead against his, her hand sliding around to rest against the back of his neck, beneath his hair, almost protective.

"It's all right if you feel a little shaky," she says quietly. "Let go. I'll be right here."

He shuts his eyes, a little shudder running through him. Let go. How do you even-- do that. His control over how he expresses his emotions is usually rock solid, with the rare exception of a panic attack over some unexpected trigger. Maybe he no longer denies having them, but they usually stay safely on the inside, where they can't interfere with anything. Even kissing Sabetha had been something he decided, not a lapse of thought.

Apparently his body is handling this one for him, though, because the tears don't stop, and he can't stop shaking. He curls closer to her, further in on himself, tucking his head into her shoulder and sobbing. It's a quiet break-down, he mastered near-silent crying years ago, but it's still distressingly obvious when he's pressed into Sabetha's neck.

This is definitely not what Sabetha asked for in this partnership. He's just hoping she puts up with it for a little while, because he can't stop.

Sabetha carefully slips her other arm around him, feeling him curl in on himself, trembling like a leaf, tears soaking into her collar. While most of her is engaged in protective concern, there is a small part of her mind busy thinking viciously murderous thoughts about everyone involved in pushing Bucky to this point.

Poison and explosives had, perhaps, been too kind.

"I've got you," she says. The rest is in her native Catalan, soothing nonsense - she's never taught him the language, and doubts he has the presence of mind to piece it together from the languages he does know at the moment. The point isn't understanding, anyway. It's to give him a kind voice, reassurance that she's here, that she's not angry, that she isn't going to abandon or lash out at him for breaking down, any more than she would if he were wounded badly enough to overcome the serum's healing.

It takes him several minutes to get through it, and when he's finally swallowing down hiccups and just clinging quietly to her, he feels... better, a little. Somehow. Less like everything is overwhelming and horrible and probably going to try to kill him or wipe him again.

He doesn't move away yet, shifting his grip at her shirt to one around her waist again, though his flesh hand is curled up under his chin, between them. "Someday I'm gonna learn that one," is what he says first, voice quiet and kind of worn out. Crying is exhausting. "Then you can't keep secrets from me by using it."

He's not actually serious about the secrets thing.

Her shoulders shift slightly in a silent laugh, as much relief as it is amusement. If he's joking about her languages, then he is, while not okay, at least back on something resembling steady ground.

He doesn't move away, and neither does she, quashing the urge to pretend indifference to regain her sense of control. Temporarily, at least; she is what she is, and much of what she is is an alley cat in the shape of a woman. She strokes a hand gently along his spine, down and back up.

"Make it worth my while, and maybe I'll teach you," she says. "At least the interesting curses."

She's an alley cat and he's a beaten dog. What a pair they make. He hums a little, then shifts his head up enough to press his mouth once into her neck, instead. "Probably could come up with something," he says against the skin.

Maybe not sex... right now. He doesn't have the energy, and he feels too raw after the crying jab, but it's a thought. They've got a few days for experimenting, and the bath was just the first one. But a kiss, a promise, that he can do.

She makes a small, pleased sound in the back of her throat at the brush of his lips and his breath against her skin. That feels distractingly nice.

"Mmm. I look forward to seeing where your creativity takes you," she says. Her hand strokes along his spine again, then comes to a rest between his shoulder blades. "Later. You must be starving. Do you feel up to getting up for a bit, or shall I see what we have in the kitchen that's portable?"

"I should get up." He feels like he needs clothes, anyway, after all that. Something to hide in, at least for a little while. Things will probably come off again eventually, since he does like that noise she just made, but for now, clothing.

So he gives her neck one more kiss, then pushes back a little so he can sit up.

She lets him go, and shifts back, propping herself up on one arm again. "Take your time," she says. "I'll go see about food. And coffee."

The latter is, in her opinion, absolutely as essential as the former to regaining some sense of normalcy.

"Coffee," he repeats, with a tone both hopeful and reverent. Sure, coffee technically doesn't affect him anymore, but he still loves it, and the memory of it helping wake him up every morning is soothing. So he pushes back the blankets and climbs off the bad and onto his feet. Can't get coffee until he's dressed.

She said he had clothes in the wardrobe. He just has to get to it and pick something. It will be with far too vicious a satisfaction that he picks out exactly what he wants-- heavy and warm and in the opposite of tactical gear colors, today.

The corners of her mouth twitch faintly with amusement at that. "Well," she says, a hint of laughter - perhaps just a little relieved - colouring her voice. "At least you have your priorities straight."

She pushes herself up and swings off the bed, heading for the door and the kitchen beyond. By the time he emerges, there will be fresh coffee, and food cooking. (And, somewhere in that span of time, she's found a moment to change her tear-damp shirt; Sabetha is nothing if not fastidious.)

"Always," he agrees.

He takes the time to visit the bathroom, wash his face and teeth, and get two layers of socks and shirt on (just one set of pants; he's not that in need of covering up) before he gets out into the kitchen. He's also determined he is not even going to mention the crying jag. It never happened. It won't happen again. (It might, at some point, but he's going to pretend.)

What he is going to do is come up beside her and, making sure she knows he's there and won't be surprised, tucks an arm around her waist while she waits on whatever's cooking. "Any news while I was out?" He assumes she has some access to the outside world from here.

She leans back into him, letting her head tip back to rest against his shoulder.

"Attempted bioterror attack in Lagos," she says. "Probably a coincidence, the timing, but I've put out a few feelers. Nothing yet about a fire in the wilds of Russia, but that'll be below the fold news even after someone takes a pass over to make sure it won't spread to the forest."

This is nice. This he can do, slipping the other arm around her, too, hooking thumbs against the waistband of her pants. It feels comfortable, especially after the emotional overload of twenty minutes ago. "Probably nothing to do with us," he agrees. Then, voice a little harder, "And even if HYDRA knows what exactly happened yesterday, now. They won't want it very public. Too many questions to be asked."

He hopes she got some good data from their computers. He's going to be itching to blow shit up by the time it's safe to leave their safehouse.

"Mmm. I'm expecting a two-sentence mention of a derelict post-war facility catching fire due to lightning strike in a couple of days. Just to close the books for anyone who might've caught sight of the smoke on the horizon."

There's nothing she immediately needs to do with her hands, and so she lowers them to cover his, flesh and metal both.

"I should have everything I pulled from their system decrypted in a day or two. Doing it on an isolated machine takes longer, but we have the time."

And it's safer by far.

"Yes," he agrees. Both that they have time, and that he can see why it would take longer. He can be patient. For a few days, anyway. Having her leaning back against him is probably more of a balm than anything else he could think of.

He drops his cheek to her hair. "Will you come with me? After. I want to take down as many as we can find from that data." Anyone who knows the words. Everyone who knows how to make a Chair. And there's no one he'd want on his team for that but her.

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