( HOW COULD I EVER LOVE SOMEONE ELSE? )

[disparaged]

Bucky's been haunted by ghosts before. The majority of them tend to take up residence in his mind, refusing to give him a moment's rest. He figures it's deserved. Given that they'll never have a chance to rest again, it only makes sense that's the penance he has to pay.

But as he pulls Sam's truck to a stop and cuts the engine, he's not quite sure what—or who—he's seeing standing on the porch of the Wilson family home. He'd ensured to catalogue every little thing he could pick up belonging to those that Steve had held dear. Sam and his inability to stand still, and the way that he hid his insecurities and worries about never being good enough behind his loud voice. Sharon had reminded him so much of Peggy, but she had been a softer force in comparison to her aunt. And Natasha… always seemed so familiar despite being as slippery as a fish and a chameleon. The moment he seemed to get a good read on the red of her hair, she'd cut it short and dyed it blonde. She never seemed to stick around long enough for him to get a handle on her.

He's slow to get out of the truck and even slower to slam the door, purposefully letting it make a sound loud enough to either make her disappear because she's a figment of his imagination or inform her that someone's home. When she doesn't disappear… All he can think of is perhaps they'd gotten it wrong.

It's stupid and it's strange, but given the Big Three and what he's witnessed and been through over the last handful of years alone… Someone not being dead when they were thought to be is something he knows all too intimately and well. It still manages to take him by surprise.

With his brows furrowed and his eyes narrowing, he's slow to walk up the familiar dirt path to the front porch steps. Although he seems disarmed—there's no gun in sight, and all he has in his hands is a calico bag that seems to be bursting—Bucky prepares himself just in case. After Walker and Karli, he's learned he needs to be prepared for anything.

"Uh, hey." Poignant, very earth-shattering. Sam would have a better idea of what to say in this moment. He's the wordy one; Bucky's the one who stares. Sam knows what to do; Bucky follows him, always at his heels. But he can't walk backwards and drive to fetch Sam from the docks—Natasha's already seen him.

"Sam's not here," he says absently.

And that's what he does—he stares at her with a slight crinkle to his brow.

Comments

[bornrussian]

The slam of the truck door isn't needed to alert Natasha to the fact that she is no longer alone. Below the lazy rustle of leaves in the wind, it's easy to pick out the rattle of an old engine and the crunch gravel beneath the truck's tires as it makes its way up the driveway. She's been watching its progress through the reflection of one of the windows.

It's Sam's truck. But not Sam driving it. The differences in driving style are minute -- Sam's a little less decisive, a little more fluid in his driving -- but obvious enough to a trained eye.

Natasha watches his reflection too as he makes his way up towards her. Even unarmed, Barnes is dangerous. That arm of his a lethal weapon in and of itself. Her shoulders remain perfectly relaxed though a small part of her tenses for a fight that isn't coming.

His slow trek up to the porch gives her plenty of time to take in the familiar cut of his shoulders. She should've realized in coming here there was every possibility she'd run into him. They've made the news together, him and Sam. But Natasha didn't think-- Or maybe she did. Maybe subconsciously, she was hoping it wouldn't just be Sam.

At the creak of wood when boot meets the first step up to the porch, Natasha turns to face him. She keeps her hands by her sides, twisting them just a fraction to let him see her empty palms.

Not a threat.

His hair is shorter than she's ever seen it in person. Now he looks more now like the man in the Smithsonian exhibit or the handful of carefully hoarded, sepia tinted photographs Steve kept than the Winter Soldier.

It's a good look for him.

"I figured as much when no one answered the door," she tells him with an uneven smile that seems to only tug at one corner of her mouth. Like she is really just a friend swinging by. Like she isn't back from the dead.

The loose and easy posture making her seem perfectly at ease with his scrutiny. She lets him take in her hiking boots, the worn jeans, the army green jacket, the blonde tipped braid of red hair falling over one of her shoulders. Like it isn't still a little strange to see James' face stretched over another man's features, his eyes staring at her like she's a new puzzle to be solved.

It's been lifetimes since she lost him, the handful of times they've met since only hammering the nail deeper into that particular coffin. She should be used to it. Maybe it's nostalgia that hits her now, twisting in her gut like a coiled snake. Watching him fly into dust five years ago tugged at the old scar on her heart.

You're alive.

The two words sing in her chest, just below her clavicle, ready to fly into her throat and out her mouth. But she swallows them down with more effort than shows on her easy expression.

If it was Sam standing before her, she would already be hugging him and telling him that she missed his stupid face. Follow it up with some quip about only really missing his pancakes to preserve the emotional arm's length she keeps everyone at. But Sam's different. She's earned a certain amount of proximity.

Barnes, for all intent's and purposes (for all that she knows exactly what his hands feel like against her skin, or how to fit her body against his to steal an hour of sleep in his arms), is a stranger.

"I'm glad you came along, I was about to take a bobby pin to this lock." A vague gesture in the general direction of the front door, a general assumption that a) he has a key, and b) he will use it to let her in.

[disparaged]

At that, he regards her with a small smile. It may be strange to her to be on the receiving end of it, but Delacroix has softened Bucky Barnes (and all of his walls) considerably. He doesn't think much of it, easily comforted by a small task he knows he can complete.

Wordlessly, Bucky turns on his foot and takes a few steps away from her to a small round table. In its centre of a small flower pot filled with dry dirt. He easily lifts it up and slides a silver key out from beneath it. Brandishing it between his fingers with a small smile, he returns to her and slots it into the keyhole.

"I keep telling Sam he needs to find a better hiding spot," he says, turning the doorknob. Once the lock unclicks, he gives the door a gentle push with his left hand.

From the front porch, the inside of the house looks empty and dark, save for the back of the house near the kitchen where the light streaks in blindingly. The living room's well-lived in with his duffle bag by the side of the couch and pillows nestled in the corner to give people the space to use the couch as it had been intended for: not to be Bucky's bed.

He gestures for her to step inside first with a simple, smooth movement of his hand. Some old manners don't die quite as hard as he fell. "Guess maybe he was onto something if the world's best spy didn't think to look under there," he teases.

Then again, Natasha did die. Or seemed dead. Or maybe that's just the story they all told each other since she didn't come back from the mission both Sam and Bucky are still trying to wrap their heads around. Turns out, the ant guy happens to be more useful than he looks.

But here she is, in the flesh, with her hair a lot longer than he remembers it being. The red looks better on her than the blonde. She seems more like Natasha with that colour... even though Bucky has no idea who Natasha really is.