nightcathedral | (no subject)

Another wince. "Yeah... The guys shooting at me kind of planned to kill us once they were off-camera."

That is not reassuring, is it. "I was.... There was a lot happening. Happening fast. SHIELD had been compromised.... And then there was Bucky-" is that public? Does she know? "-and I wasn't sure...."

He touches his throat, lightly, remembering the feeling of warm metal contracting around his windpipe. "A lot happened."

That isn't an excuse. Actually it is an excuse, but he shouldn't be giving one. "I should have called. I'm sorry."

Olivia turns to give him a sharp look at that first comment. If that was supposed to make her feel better about the situation...

But it's hard to stay angry with him when she's just glad he's alive, especially once he's apologized, and she finally lets out a slow breath and nods. "Thank you. I hope you know you could have trusted me."

It takes another long moment before part of what he said sinks in. "What about Bucky?"

"I do know." He didn't, for a little while there - he didn't want to trust anyone at all, not Natasha, not Fury. He still doesn't trust the latter, even if he can appreciate his thinking from a safe distance. It was a lot easier to view everyone as the enemy, to divorce himself from responsibility for anyone but his targets.

You're my mission. His throat closes up. Steve stares out the window instead of looking at Olivia, trying to order his thoughts, but he's trapped in that moment, reliving the look on Bucky's face, the horror there. What had they done to him?

"He's alive," Steve finally says. "He doesn't - didn't - remember me. He was trying to kill us."

He touches his stomach lightly, over the bandages. "He almost killed me."

He doesn't add that he very nearly let Bucky do it. ....God, what was he thinking? What would it have done to Bucky, if he'd gone through with it? Too many variables. Too many what ifs. They're on the other side, both of them, alive. He knows Bucky is still alive.

Olivia draws in a sharp breath, swallows hard. It's hard to look at him as much as she wants when she's busy driving - she wants to pull over right now so this conversation has her full attention, or to somehow teleport home so she can wrap her arms around him and make absolutely sure he's alright. She watches him for as long as she can, and turns her eyes back to the road.

"I didn't know that. One thing we managed to keep secret, apparently... Are you okay? Is he..."

"He's alive," he says, fierce. It's as much for himself as for her. "After I... Well, I remember falling out of the helicarrier, barely. I remember hitting the water. He had to be the one who pulled me out. There was no one else around."

And they hadn't found a body, that he's heard of. As for whether or not he's okay - "I'm fine."

When the words come out, he's surprised to find he means them. He's not okay - physically that's pretty obvious. Emotionally, he's worn through. But he knows two things for sure. Hydra's still active. And Bucky is out there. He's not sure if this is what Sam meant when the man asked what makes him happy. Steve doesn't think happy is the right word. But calm, at peace, certain of his next move - those things, he is.

A thought occurs abruptly to sever his reverie. "I need to replace a truck."

She narrows her eyes, entirely unsure of his actual level of okayness, but she's not going to argue with him. Not now.

The abrupt change of subject startles her enough that she actually laughs, soft and fond, and it's not hard to figure out what he means. "Did you blow it up, or just steal it? If you remember where it came from, I can probably track down the owner."

They hit a stoplight, and she takes the opportunity to turn and look at him properly, reaching out a hand to take his lightly. "My place or yours? And do you want to grab some food that didn't come from a hospital cafeteria on the way?"

"Natasha and me borrowed it from a mall parking lot here, but it uh. Got blown up before we could bring it back."

He gives Olivia a wary look, braced for her disapproval at the confession of another near-death in the past 72 hours. When he starts lining them up like this, it's not a very pretty picture.

Her question cuts through his renewed tension. Steve rests his head against the seat and closes his eyes. "Yours. Mine has bullet holes in the wall and blood on the floor. ...And a broken window. I jumped through it."

Well, he's already started digging, China can only be so far away. He focuses on her hand, affection tangling with guilt as it always does. Sometimes the best we can do is start over.

"...Chinese food. I would really like some Chinese food."

Edited 2014-04-06 20:36 (UTC)

"God, Steve..." Hearing about people trying to kill him... She's almost used to that. It's part of both their jobs, and they've both managed to stay alive so far. But hearing about this many separate incidents at once is a little much. "I guess it was only a matter of time before someone trashed your apartment..."

Green light. She hits the gas, but doesn't reclaim her hand just yet.

"We can do Chinese food."

"I really wasn't planning on that many near-death experiences in one weekend."

He gives her hand a tiny squeeze. "Oh, and my neighbor was SHIELD. Just as well in the end, but I'm definitely keeping an eye on who moves in next door from now on."

She glances over at him, thumb running over the back of his hand, and smiles faintly. "If you'd been planning them, you'd be in a lot more trouble right now."

She clenches her jaw, fighting down another wave of annoyance - at least this time, it's not at Steve. If SHIELD hadn't already been blown up, she'd want to burn it to the ground herself. "Of course she was. At least tell me she's not the reason there are bullet holes in your walls..."

"Natasha says she's nice." It's a limp defense. "She's not responsible for the bullet holes. But-"

But she might be the reason Nick Fury is alive, and that's definitely not knowledge Steve wants to share aloud, not unless they're somewhere he's sure of their privacy. "She got Fury to the hospital while I chased the shooter."

He lifts her hand so he can press his face against it, feel someone close and alive. "That was Bucky, too."

Olivia's fingers tighten around his, and she nods. She's not surprised Natasha knew either, less surprised that she didn't tell them... but at least Natasha apparently approved of the agent they had watching him. That actually does make her feel better.

"So he's alive. And we don't know where he is. Do you think he's still dangerous?"

"Yes." Bucky has always been dangerous. Before, though, the danger was at least on Steve's side. "I have to find him. I have to help him. Before someone else finds him and does worse than Hydra already has."

This time when he sits back against the chair, Steve lets himself go limp. "I should have insisted back then that we look for his body. I should have done something more than I did."

"You couldn't have known." She pulls her hand back gently. "You can't anticipate this kind of thing, Steve. But we'll find him. It seems like we'll have a lot more free time to look, now..."

He exhales a faint laugh at that last part. "Yeah. Makes things easier and more complicated."

But he can't smile when he says it. Even if Olivia tells him he couldn't have known. Even if she echoes Natasha - none of that is your fault, Steve - he can't make himself believe the words. With each other until the end of the line. He sees Bucky's face, ragged with exhaustion from Zola's experiments, lit by flames from the factory floor. No! Not without you!

"He would have looked."

"And he'd have had a much better reason to think you might have survived," she points out. "I know you would have looked if you thought there was a chance... and we're going to do the best we can for him now."

They turn on to her street, and she slows down enough that she can really look at him again, expression soft. "But not until you stop wincing when you move, okay?"

He touches his stomach bandage again, a nervous gesture Natasha would doubtless point out if she saw it. She already threatened to cut his fingers off if he kept touching the stitches in his face.

"He could be anywhere by the time I'm done healing."

He could be half-way to anywhere now, Steve reminds himself. And to take on Bucky again, if that's what has to happen, he'll need to be in peak condition. That doesn't mean he's happy about it.

Relief spreads across his face when he sees her building. It'll be the first time he's been out from under some kind of observation since....

He started to think 'since the wreck' and then realized he'd been either under surveillance or hunted since who knows how long before that. He unbuckles, opens the door, gets out - each movement carefully measured to look as uninjured as possible. The walk up to her apartment is harder. He bumps the thigh that Bucky shot agains a rail at one point and wonders what colors his face turns, while he hangs on to the wall to keep from falling.

When they get inside, when he breathes in the familiar smells of her apartment, sees the world rolling on outside her window as though nothing's changed, he exhales, finally finally starting to relax.

Steve settles on her couch with a tiny groan and tips his head back until it rests on the cushion behind him. "It smells so much better here than the hospital."

Olivia laughs, already heading for the phone now that she's sure Steve's not going to collapse (which was a legitimate concern a couple times there on the stairs). "Well I am glad to hear that."

She pauses, phone in hand, just to watch him, smiling faintly. He looks awful, more battered and exhausted than she ever wants to see him looking... but it's so nice to have him back on her couch, alive and in one piece. She really had worried, for a while.

"I'm glad you're here, Steve."

The call to the Chinese place doesn't take long - they know her and their usual orders, and it's still early, so the delivery shouldn't take too long. The instant she's done, she moves back to the couch and settles down next to Steve, careful not to bump him anywhere. She doesn't know what parts of him hurt, yet, so she's just going to assume 'everything'.

"I am too." It comes later than it should. It's more thoughtful than he intends. He searches for her hand without opening his eyes, twining his fingers through Olivia's. "SHIELD sent a short range surface-to-surface missile to try and blow me and Natasha up while we were in the process of finding out how dirty they were. They downloaded Zola into a computer. An old computer, rows and rows of databanks, but it was him, telling me Hydra was alive and well and that I'd gone down for nothing. They hit us there - blew up his databanks, but I know better now than to think he's really gone. Natasha said there was an AI on the little..."

He waves his free hand vaguely. "USB thing Fury gave me, that it kept rewriting itself to counter her commands."

Steve shivers, then winces. The thought of Zola out there in the ether, a malevolent, electronic ghost.... "The World Security Council is dead. Except Councilwoman Hawley. Natasha took her place to get close to Pierce. I guess it doesn't make much difference, except to their families, any more."

SHIELD is a wreck. If the Council is remembered at all, it won't be kindly.

"...Bucky shot me three times. Thigh, arm, stomach. Stabbed me in the shoulder. Tried to strangle me before then, during the fight that got on the news. I cracked and bruised a few of my own ribs getting clear of SHIELD, and, well." He gestures to his face with his free hand. "He almost beat me to death before he... remembered something, maybe. The look on his face - he had to have remembered something."

He looks at their linked hands. A deep breath. "I was ready to go down with him. If that's what had to happen, I was ready to do it."

Edited 2014-04-07 23:17 (UTC)

Her fingers tighten around his, not entirely voluntarily. A part of her understands - she knows how important Bucky was to him, and she knows what Steve will do for anyone he loves. But the idea that she was that close to losing him, that the only reason he's not in the river under tons of rubble is the man sent to kill him...

"He didn't kill you. He pulled you out of the water. Something must have come back."

She blows out a slow breath, trying to release some of the tension, and reaches up to run a hand through his hair, deliberately gentle. His hair's not long enough to really fall in his face anymore, but she hasn't fallen out of the habit.

"But please don't do that again. I've gotten used to having you around."

He likes when she does that. What makes you happy?

I'll add it to the list, Steve thinks.

"I won't. Not on purpose." There aren't that many certainties where he's headed, but he can promise that much. "Got to get someone to eat your leftovers."

He hesitates, then leans forward enough to retrieve a pen and pad of paper from the table in front of them, groaning a little as he sits back against the couch. The note he writes is short and simple: Fury's alive. He's gone after Hydra.

"If Bucky had really remembered, remembered enough to make a difference, he would have come back. You could say he's more dangerous now than before. Before, at least, we could guess which direction he'd come from."

She laughs softly, running her thumb down his temple. "I do. Not on purpose is good enough." The best she can ever expect of him, anyway. She's okay with that, because she wouldn't do anything else if she were in his position.

Olivia frowns at the notepad, and nods a little. She takes the pen and writes back, Will he be in contact?

Right. They're still having a verbal conversation. If anyone is listening. She's honestly not sure anymore. Olivia drops her hand, and leans against Steve's shoulder. "Okay. So he's off the leash and no one's pointing him anywhere. Where do we start looking?"

Steve closes his eyes, leaning into the touch. It scrambles his thoughts a little, but not in a bad way. "Mmh. I asked Natasha if her contacts might know anything. She said she'd check, but that I shouldn't get my hopes up. Maybe we can dig through some of the files we dumped into the world, see if there's anything there, but other than that...." He lets the problem hang. "You don't have to help me," Steve says, knowing she'll answer the same way Sam did.

He finally opens his eyes and sees her returned note. Steve takes the pen and jots, Who knows.

Olivia can practically see his thoughts going to pieces, and doesn't exactly mind. He could probably do with a little less thinking, right now.

Her lips pull into a wry smirk at his written response - not unexpected - before she turns her attention back to him. She lets her hand slide down the back of his head, fingers tightening just a little at the hair at the nape of his neck.

"No. But I want to." She tilts her head, still smiling. "You can't really think I'd let you do this by yourself."

He closes his eyes again, feels his breath catch and quicken. "Stop that," Steve mutters, without real feeling.

He sinks against the couch, against Olivia, the world narrowed around the spots her fingers touch his skin. It's extremely hard to focus when she knows exactly how to keep him from doing it. His eyelids flutter upwards and he says without thinking, "Am I a bad kisser?"

"Say it like you mean it," she retorts, and pointedly does not stop. If he actually meant it, she'd pull away in an instant, but when he just wants to brood about things he can't change right now... No. That's not happening right now.

Instead, she shifts, leaning against him a little more - at least, until that question comes out of the blue, and she pulls away again enough to stare at him. "What?" she asks, half-laughing. "Did I somehow give you the impression that you are?"

There is a warm tickle collecting into heat at the base of his stomach, which really only leads to one thing. It would be easy to drowse, it's so nice to feel safe, and so odd, but then the little patterns her fingers draw against the back of his neck and head pause, and he wishes he hadn't asked that question. He reaches back to put his hand over hers, at least keeping the contact in place.

"Natasha," he says, but that is not really an explanation, or rather it's half of a very good explanation. "We were running, and she kissed me to hide our faces from the people who were after us - and then she made it sound like...." Vague motions with his free hand. "Well. Like I could use work. Practice, is what she said. You don't practice kissing."

That probably shouldn't explain everything so easily... but it does. She bites the inside of her lip for a second, then presses her lips together to try and wipe the amusement off her face. The grin she manages to get rid of, but it stays in her eyes, bright and fond and still just this side of laughter.

"Ah. I'll forgive her under the circumstances... and you're fine at kissing. I like kissing you." She settles back against him, thumb tracing little circles at the top of his spine. "If you wanted to do it a little more, I'd like that too."

He touches the spot under his stitches regretfully. "Maybe not the best idea right this minute."

Steve kisses her forehead, lips lingering close enough that they brush her skin when he speaks again. "Soon, though. As soon as possible."

He rests his face against her hair, conscious of the blonde threads stuck to his mouth and caught on the sutures. "Can I sleep here tonight?"

She's not used to him actually being injured enough that it sticks. It's unsettling, even knowing that he's fine, will be fine.

Olivia lets out a soft, slow breath, closing her eyes for a moment, and nods.

"Of course you can," she says, without moving away from him. "You thought I'd send you home?" To bullet holes and broken windows and blood on the floor. Not a chance. She's not letting him go home until it's cleaned up.

"No," he says, then pauses. "I didn't think so. I - it's polite to ask. I could've gone to a hotel."

He's so tired. He should probably stop talking. So he does, letting himself relax against her - and that's all the invitation he overtaxed body needs to shut down. Steve fights sleep, briefly, as he realizes it's coming, forcing himself to sit up properly. He gives the direction of Olivia's bedroom a bleary stare. "I suppose that means moving."

It doesn't occur to him that the Chinese food hasn't arrived. Right now all he really wants is a pillow.

"You can always stay here. Whenever you need to."

She settles her arm around him, runs her fingers lightly through his hair again. She should maybe send him to bed. There's food coming, she's going to have to move to get the door. But she doesn't have the heart to force him up just now, and the solid weight of him on her shoulder, the reminder that he's here and alive, is too much to let go of right away.

"Stay here. As long as you don't mind me shoving you off when the doorbell rings..."

She's waking him up to eat either way. He probably needs the calories even more than he needs sleep.

He presses his face against her neck, realizes after about three seconds that he's going to get a mighty kink in his own, and shifts so he can rest his head in her lap. The couch is too small to fit all of him - his legs hook over and hang off the end - but it's comfortable enough. He sighs, enjoying the feeling of her hands in his hair, trying to remember something else he wanted to tell her.

Steve reaches up to run his thumb down the side of her neck, eyelids fluttering low, then shut. His hand dips and falls against his stomach. One last, fading grasp at consciousness, and Steve is out.

The dream begins innocuously, as they so often do. It constructs an unfamiliar space from memories. A Hydra facility that isn't one he knows, all scalloped industrial halls and a high-rise that could be Avengers Tower or the Triskellion, and is more accurately a little bit of both.

It's empty. It's empty, but he can hear people screaming. The pounding of feet and the hammer of gunfire. He runs, trying to find the source, trying to close in on the disaster, sure at each corner he'll come around the edge and see the massacre he can't stop hearing. Shapes and figures flicker in front of him, gone before they solidify.

Bullets tear across the hallway, throwing chips of cement and plaster into the air. Steve strikes out blindly and feels bones break under his hand as the hallway erupts in flames. Water swirls around his ankles, freezing, black. Sam is dead at his feet. Steve hoists Natasha over his head with one arm, metal fingers locked around their throat. He squeezes, once, and her trachea gives as the world drowns in water and the sound of arctic wind.

Steve throws himself upright with a yell, grasping at the side of the couch for his shield, sweat burning his eyes. He's shaking when he remembers where he is, where his shield is not, and who he-

Oh God, did he hurt Olivia?

Edited 2014-04-22 02:05 (UTC)

The flailing as he pushes himself up knocks her away and hard into the arm of the couch - not enough to cause any real damage, but she can tell immediately it's going to bruise. She's less worried about that than she is about Steve, wide-eyed and panicky and trembling. It's not a good look on him.

She gets up slowly, eyes locked on his, and reaches carefully for his shoulder. "Hey. Are you okay?"

He nods silently, scrubbing his wrist across his forehead, trying to orient himself again. He touches his own throat, remembering Bucky's grip as the man hurled him backward into pavement. "I'm fine. I'm all right. Are you? Did I - are you okay?"

Okay, he's not doing as good a job of centering himself as he'd like. Steve swallows dryly, both hands braced now against the couch cushions to hold himself up. He can feel a spreading warmth on his stomach that probably means he tore a stitch. "I'm sorry. I don't know what - it was just a dream."

"Yeah. I'm okay," she says softly, settling a hand on his shoulder and giving him another moment to get his bearings. "It's okay. I've done a lot worse waking up from bad dreams, you know?"

Only a couple times, but when she has nightmares, there's a distinct possibility the bedroom gets set on fire. What's a few bruises next to that?

"Do you need-"

The doorbell rings. Olivia rolls her eyes toward the ceiling, swallowing down a curse. Great timing.

"I'll get it. You stay here and breathe."

He nods, watching her go and wishing she wouldn't, which is silly, because someone needs to answer the door.

A sudden, paranoid part of himself demands to know why he isn't with her making sure it isn't Rumlow or another Hydra goon, and he tells himself firmly that Olivia can handle herself, first off, and second, she'll shout if something's wrong.

Steve turns to put both feet on the floor and his head in his hands, then hisses and sits up quickly as pain jabs through his gut at his slump. Ginger, Steve peels his shirt over his head to examine the bandages at his midriff. Sure enough, one sports a spreading red stain. He watches it for a few seconds.

"First aid kit, Rogers," he says, happy for something to do to put the dream out of mind, and struggles to his feet.

Edited 2014-04-23 03:23 (UTC)

No one is trying to kill her at the door. It was, she'll admit, a minor concern, but for once, nothing disastrous happens just when they're starting to relax. Maybe just this once, they get a break.

She tips the delivery girl, shuts the door, and isn't especially surprised when Steve isn't there when she turns around. She has a guess where he's gone. She sets the bags of food on the table and spends a moment unpacking them before cautiously following Steve to the bathroom.

"Are you alright?" she asks softly, hanging in the hallway just outside.

Steve finishes cleaning up - putting away the first aid kit, tossing dirty gauze pads and used bandages - before he opens the door and comes into the hall, drawing his shirt back on. His head pops through the hole, hair sticking up in all directions. He kisses Olivia's forehead.

"Pulled a stitch. I'm fine."

"Thank you for not bleeding on my couch," she murmurs softly, though she honestly wouldn't have been too upset if he had. She appreciates the courtesy.

Olivia flicks a glance to his abdomen even though she knows he's just patched it up. There's a little blood on his shirt, but she assumes it was from before he got to the bathroom. She's had worse, and she doesn't have his healing factor.

"Food's here, if you're still hungry."

"Yes," he says, relieved yet again to have something to do, and that it's something he wants. He is hungry, as long as he doesn't think about everything else going on.

He practically inhales the food, grateful (not for the first time) that Olivia knows what his appetite is like. Steve scrapes the bottom of several containers before he even slows, and by the time he's full there's very little left to stash in the fridge. He sits back against the couch, careful of his injuries this time, and rubs his thumb across a speckle of something gravy-like on his shirt. "Much, much better than hospital food."