honeydew

The marriage had been decided long before either of you had learned what love was supposed to feel like.

Your parents called it practical—an alliance between old names, old money, and old expectations. You had been young enough to believe that perhaps something warm could grow from something arranged. In the beginning, as kids, you and Bruce were inseparable, and that alone had convinced both families the match was right. 

Then Thomas and Martha died.

After that, Bruce became someone else. He was still polite, still impeccable in his manners, but the warmth he once showed you cooled into something distant and untouchable. You told yourself grief needed time. 

Time, however, did not soften him. Not even after you were married.

Wayne Manor was vast, echoing, and unbearably quiet. You learned his routines quickly: late mornings, later nights, long absences disguised as board meetings and galas. When he was present, he treated you with the courtesy one reserves for a a business partner. You were his wife in title, in public, in carefully curated photographs. In private, you felt as if you were another obligation that he needed to fulfill. 

At night, he came to you.

And damn him for that.

Bruce Wayne touched you with a fiery passion that felt almost cruel, because the only access you ever had to him was through his body while he kept every part of himself that truly mattered locked away. He knew every inch of your skin, every place that made your breath falter and your resolve weaken. He knew exactly how to draw those soft, needy sounds from your lips, how to make you arch into his touch and forget—if only for a moment—how alone you truly were.

Afterward, he would disentangle himself, murmuring something noncommittal—or sometimes saying nothing at all—before retreating behind the cold walls he had built around his heart, leaving you alone in a bed that felt far too large for one person. 

In the last three years of marriage you two barely ever slept in the same bed. 

Tonight was no different.

The sheets were still warm when he rolled away from you. You lay there, staring at the canopy above the bed, listening to the subtle rustle of fabric as he stood. The air felt colder without his body beside yours. Like always you waited—foolishly—for him to say something. Anything.

Instead, you heard the soft click of cufflinks being gathered from the bedside table.

You drew the blanket up to your chest, the silk cool against overheated skin, and pushed yourself up slightly. Your throat tightened. You had rehearsed this moment in your head more times than you cared to admit. In every version, your pride stayed intact, your voice steady, your heart locked safely away.

But now that the moment had come, the words felt like a knot lodged in your throat, refusing to be undone.

You cleared your throat.

“Bruce… we need to talk,” you said at last. You watched his head turn slightly toward you. “I think we should get a divorce.”

Bruce stilled.

His fingers, halfway through fastening his shirt, slowed—then stopped altogether. For a moment, he didn’t turn around. His back remained to you, broad and rigid, the multitude of faint scars along his skin catching the low lamplight. You wondered, not for the first time, how many parts of him you would never truly know.

Finally, he spoke.

“…A divorce.”

He said the word slowly, as though testing its weight.

“Yes,” you replied quietly.

Your gaze remained fixed on the rumpled sheets, on the faint crease where his body had been moments ago. You didn’t trust yourself to look at him—not when you’d worked so hard to keep your voice steady, to sound composed instead of heartbroken.

“This arrangement—whatever it was meant to be—is nearing three years,” you continued, forcing yourself into the role you had at work. She was someone who could survive this. You imagined you were sitting across from him in a boardroom instead of in his bed. “Both sides of the agreement have been fulfilled. Our businesses share mutual benefit, and I’ll make sure any remaining terms are honoured after we separate. As for personal assets, I’ll transfer any Wayne stock I hold back to you. There’s nothing I want. The proceedings should be smooth.”

It sounded clinical when you said it that way. Like a business transaction instead of the quiet unraveling of a marriage.

Bruce was silent for a beat too long.

“And what does your family think of this?” he asked at last.

You lifted one shoulder in a small, detached shrug. “We are no longer children,” you said evenly. “I’ll handle them.”

Then, after a brief pause, you added, “I’ve already had my lawyer draft the papers.”

That finally made him turn fully toward you.

“They’re ready,” you continued, your fingers curling into the blanket as if it were an anchor. “Sign them when you have a chance.”

Something dark and unreadable crossed his expression. Not anger—not quite. It was more as though a realization struck him. His jaw flexed once.

“You’ve been planning this,” he said.

“Yes.”

There was no apology in your voice, despite the quiet admission.

Bruce studied you then—truly studied you—as though trying to reconcile the woman before him with the silent presence who had moved through Wayne Manor for years without complaint. His wife in name. His obligation in practice.

“And if I don’t sign?” he asked quietly.

You finally lifted your eyes to his.

“I see no reason you wouldn’t,” you said evenly. “We’ve been bound long enough to understand the politics involved. The expectations. The image expected of us.” Your voice remained steady, even as something fragile drew tight beneath your ribs. “We can continue to honour the terms our parents agreed upon—sharing company resources and maintaining professional relationships—without being tethered to each other.”

You drew a slow, careful breath.

“At least this way,” you continued, “we’ll both be free. Free to see whoever we want,” you added factually. “Without pretending this is something it isn’t.”

Bruce’s gaze sharpened at that.

For the first time that night, something cracked through his composure. You weren’t sure whether it was anger or jealousy—neither made sense, not when he had made it painfully clear he had no interest in you. And yet Bruce had always been possessive of the things he considered his. You supposed that even if you were unwanted, you were still, in some quiet, inescapable way, his.

“Is that what this is about?” he asked. “Someone else?”

You didn’t answer immediately.

Your fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket, knuckles paling. For a fleeting, treacherous moment, you wanted to scream the truth at him—that there had never been anyone else. That there had only ever been him. That you had loved him quietly and completely since the two of you had been children.

You swallowed it down and met his gaze steadily.

“If you’re implying I’ve been disloyal in our marriage, Mr. Wayne,” you said coolly, “then you’re mistaken. But a divorce,” you continued, your voice carefully controlled, “would certainly make things easier for you.”

You hated the faint ache that followed the words. Hated how it lodged in your chest like a bruise you kept pressing, testing to see if it still hurt. You forced yourself to breathe through it, to keep the bitterness from seeping into your tone.

Bruce’s brows furrowed, and for a laughable moment, he almost looked confused.

Images surfaced in your mind of all the glossy tabloid photos you’d seen of him with  unfamiliar women on his arm. Once, they had felt like an insult. A personal humiliation dressed up as celebrity gossip. Over time, you had learned to numb yourself to them.

They were proof of something you had taken far too long to accept.

Bruce Wayne had never truly been yours.

Not in the ways that mattered.

And if this marriage had been a performance sustained by obligation and expectation—then the kindest thing you could do now was end it. Free both of you from the sham you had tried so desperately to believe in.

You lifted your chin slightly, resolve settling despite your aching heart.

“Letting each other go,” you said quietly, “is the only honest thing left for us.”

His jaw tightened.

Without looking at you, Bruce finished buttoning the remainder of his shirt, movements smooth and decisive. When he finally spoke, his voice was cool and detached as it always was when he spoke to you.

“Very well. We can discuss the details in the morning.”

The finality of it struck harder than anger ever could have.

“I gave Alfred the papers,” you said, forcing composure into your voice. “You can review them with your lawyer. See if anything needs adjusting.”

He paused at the door.

For the briefest moment, his hand rested on the handle, fingers stilled, as though he might turn back. Hope—dangerous and unwelcome—flared in your chest.

Then he nodded once before striding out.

The soft click of the door closing behind him echoed through the room, impossibly loud in the sudden silence. 

Only then did your composure falter.

A shaky breath tore from your chest as your shoulders sagged, the tension you’d been holding dissolving all at once. You pressed a hand to your mouth, swallowing back the sob that threatened to escape, blinking hard against the sting gathering behind your eyes.

You should have felt relief.

This was what you had asked for. What you had planned. 

But all you felt was the ache. Deep. Persistent. Settled beneath your ribs like something bruised and broken.

His agreement hurt more than his coldness ever had.

You curled inward beneath the blankets, the bed suddenly too large, too empty, and wondered when you had mistaken hope for foolishness—and how much of yourself you had lost in the process.

The second the bedroom door closed behind him, Bruce stopped.

His hand came up to brace against the wall, fingers splaying against the cool wood as a slow, controlled breath left his chest—nothing like the fracture splintering through him beneath the surface. For a moment, he simply stood there with his head bowed, the echo of your voice still ringing in his ears.

A divorce.

He had not expected this.

Bruce knew the marriage the two of you shared was not warm. From its very bones, it was meant to be a business arrangement—an old practice among families like yours and his. Alliances forged not from affection, but from legacy and stability.

Still, he had never imagined that you were unhappy enough to want out entirely. To sever ties so cleanly.

He had never mistreated you. Not intentionally. He had given you freedom—space when you asked for it, privacy when you wanted it. He had been loyal. He had ensured you lacked nothing, had seen to your comfort, your security, your needs.

Wasn’t that what a husband was supposed to do?

And yet—

There were things he had never given you.

Truth, for one.

You didn’t know about Batman. You didn’t know about the bruises hidden beneath tailored suits, or the blood scrubbed from his hands in the dead of night. You didn’t know about the darkness that followed him like a second shadow. He had never wanted you to.

That was how he protected you.

Or so he had told himself.

Bruce closed his eyes, despite what he told himself and how much he tried to distance himself from you. He had loved you long before the marriage ever existed.

You had grown up together. And even back then—when he was too young to understand what the warmth in his chest meant whenever he looked at you—Bruce had loved you.

After his parents died, when the world turned dark and he learned just how cruel and unforgiving it could be, you were the single light that remained in his shadowed life. You were his constant. Proof that not everything he loved had been ripped away.

But grief hollowed him out. Anger took root in places love could no longer reach. He didn’t know how to show you what you meant to him without letting that rage bleed through, so he did the only thing he believed would keep you safe.

He kept his distance.

When you both turned eighteen, you left for college.

You—brilliant as ever—were accepted into Princeton on merit alone. Bruce followed you but he walked a different path, his admission secured not by intellect but by the Wayne name and the weight of its money. He could have earned his place the way you did—he knew that—but at the time, he simply hadn’t cared enough to try. 

That summer, between semesters, your parents pressed the issue.

The marriage.

You had both been young. Far too young. But grief and expectation had a way of cornering people into compliance, leaving little room for refusal. You married quietly and quickly, promises spoken like obligations rather than vows, your futures decided in hushed rooms by people who believed they knew best.

For a brief few months afterward, something almost hopeful emerged. The warmth you once shared began, slowly, to return. You chased away the shadows that surrounded him, and Bruce started to feel—just faintly—like the boy he had once been, before loss had hardened him. There were moments when he laughed without effort, when the weight on his chest eased enough to let him breathe.

Then Joe Chill’s hearing for release was announced.

And everything unraveled.

The anger Bruce had kept buried finally clawed its way to the surface, sharp and uncontrollable, and it turned on the one person standing closest to him. On you. The words he hurled were cruel—unforgivable things he didn’t truly mean but could not stop himself from saying. Rage drowned out reason, grief warped into something vicious.

You struck him across the face.

The sound echoed through the room, louder than the gunshots that haunted his dreams.

It snapped him out of it instantly. The fury drained from him all at once, replaced by horror as he saw what he had done. The tears slipping down your face felt like shards of ice driving straight through his heart.

He had hurt you.

The one person he had tried so desperately to protect.

And he had hurt you.

The truth of it had struck him with devastating clarity—just how far he’d fallen, how perilously close he was becoming to the very kind of men he despised. Men who let anger rot them from the inside out. Men who destroyed the people they claimed to love.

That realization was why he disappeared.

Five years.

He let the world believe Bruce Wayne was dead.

When he returned—scarred and remade by violence and discipline—the marriage still existed on paper. You had never divorced him. The bond remained, a legal echo of a life neither of you had truly lived. And when you stood before him again, there were no accusations. No demands. Just a quiet cold acceptance that hurt more than hatred ever could.

For three years, you stayed.

Until tonight.

Bruce dragged a hand down his face, breath heavy, chest tight as he looked back on the weight of every choice he’d made.

He had thought what the two of you shared was enough—that providing for you, giving you everything you could ever want or need, and keeping his distance was somehow kinder than letting his love reach you and risk corrupting you with the darkness he lived in.

But for the first time since the gunshots in that alley, Bruce Wayne realized he could lose you—just not in the way he had always feared. You had slipped through his fingers without him even noticing.

His fingers curled into a tight fist, knuckles whitening for a brief moment before he forced them to relax. Bruce drew in a slow, steadying breath and straightened, his shoulders settling back into place as the familiar mask slid on.

Tomorrow, he would deal with your request.

Tomorrow, he would be the Bruce Wayne Gotham believed he was again. 

But tonight, the city needed Batman.

And Batman could not afford to feel.

He turned away from the bedroom door and moved through the quiet halls of the manor, his footsteps soundless against marble flooring. With every step downward, he put more distance between himself and the ache in his chest, further from the woman he was losing.

The platform lowered. Batman rose to meet him.

In the Batcave, the world was simpler. Pain had purpose here. Rage could be sharpened into something useful. The suit waited offering Bruce the chance to take off his true mask and be the man he believed he needed to be.

As he suited up, Bruce locked the thought of you away into a mental compartment he had perfected over years of survival.

Batman would give him the distraction he needed. The city’s violence and its endless demand for justice asked nothing of his heart.

And as the Batmobile roared to life, Bruce told himself this was better.

It was a lie.

Batman moved through Gotham with a brutality that hadn’t surfaced in years. Strikes landed harder. Interrogations ended quicker. His patience wore thin, stretched to the edge of fracture. Thugs noticed. So did the GCPD. Whispers spread through alleyways and across rooftops alike: the Bat was angry tonight.

He barely registered it himself.

Pain had found an outlet—and Gotham was paying the price.

“My, my,” a familiar voice purred from the shadows, silk and amusement woven through every syllable. “Someone’s in a mood.”

Bruce stiffened, then exhaled slowly through his nose. He didn’t need to turn to know who it was.

“Not tonight, Selina.”

She stepped fully into view atop the adjacent rooftop, black leather catching the glow of a flickering streetlight. “What’s got your tail all twisted up?” Selina drawled, her head tilting as she studied him with open curiosity.

His jaw tightened beneath the cowl.

His silence was answer enough. Selina’s gaze lingered, sharp and perceptive, tracing the rigid line of his shoulders, the coiled violence he hadn’t quite burned off yet.

“Ah,” she murmured, a knowing note creeping into her voice. “That bad.”

He finally turned to face her, his cape shifting with the movement.

“Drop it.”

She smirked, utterly unoffended. “You know I never do.”

A beat passed. Then another.

“You’re usually better at pretending to be emotionless,” she continued, her tone light, though her eyes were anything but. “Tonight? You look like you’re one bad thought away from breaking someone’s jaw because they looked at you wrong.”

His fingers flexed at his sides, the leather of his gloves creaking softly. “I’m handling it.”

Selina arched a brow. “Sure you are.”

She stepped closer, her boots soundless against the rooftop. “Whatever it is, it’s eating you alive. And last I checked, that never ends well—for anyone.”

Bruce’s gaze hardened, cutting back toward the city that demanded so much of his attention—except tonight, it seemed intent on giving him space he didn’t want.

“It’s none of your concern.”

Selina rolled her eyes, any trace of coyness evaporating in an instant.

“Oh, spare me the bullshit, Bruce,” she snapped. “What’s going on?”

He hesitated.

The pause was small—barely perceptible—but to someone who knew him as well as Selina did, it might as well have been a confession. His jaw flexed, the words catching somewhere behind his teeth before he finally forced them free.

“…She wants a divorce.”

Selina’s expression stilled. Surprise flickered across her face before settling into something more softer. He didn’t look at her when he said it. Couldn’t.

“Well,” she said slowly, exhaling through her nose, “that explains the excessive force.”

He shot her a sharp look.

“I’m serious,” she added, her tone hardening, humour falling away. “…I didn’t think she’d be the one to pull the plug.”

Neither had he.

“She’s already had the papers drawn up,” Bruce continued, voice low. “Gave them to Alfred.”

Selina blinked. “Damn.”

She crossed her arms, studying him in a way that made his skin prickle beneath the armour. It was too uncomfortably perceptive. “And how do you feel about that?”

“I’ll handle it,” he replied automatically.

She snorted. “You always do. Or rather—you bury it under a mask and hope it stops hurting.” Her gaze softened, just a fraction. “Do you want the divorce?”

Selina already knew the answer to that, after knowing You and Bruce for years she had a good insight on the marriage you two had.

Bruce turned his attention back to Gotham, to the endless sprawl of lights stretching out before him—the city he was trying to fix. Some days, he wasn’t sure if he was failing at that too.

Selina sighed at his silence, already knowing what his answer was. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “That’s what I thought.”

She stepped closer, her voice lowering. “You know, for someone who prides himself on control, you’re awfully bad at fighting the battles that actually matter.”

Bruce’s hands curled into fists again, the truth pressing uncomfortably close. Because for once, the enemy wasn’t something he could punch. And he had no idea how to stop himself from losing.

“I’m not going to keep her tied down if she’s not happy,” he murmured, the words dragged from him like a concession he wasn’t ready to make.

Selina scoffed, the sound sharp against the night air. “God, you’re impossible.”

She stepped closer, boots silent, eyes hard now.

“Sometimes you’re a real idiot, Bruce,” she said bluntly. “And take it from a woman—if you love her, you don’t just let her go and call it noble.”

His jaw tightened. “You don’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand just fine,” Selina shot back. “You think giving her space is protecting her. But from where I’m standing? All she sees is a man who never chose her.”

The words hit harder than any punch.

“She loves you, Bruce,” Selina continued, her voice lower now, edged with something almost gentle. “But love doesn’t survive neglect. It survives effort.”

He looked at her then, something raw flickering beneath the cowl. “I don’t know how to do that without dragging her into my mess.”

Selina’s expression softened—just a fraction. “You don’t have to give her your mask or your war,” she said quietly. “You just have to give her you.”

A beat passed, and Bruce’s jaw tightened. “Batman is who I am,” he said quietly. “This shouldn’t be her burden. She deserves more than my darkness.”

“Fight for her,” Selina urged. “Because if you don’t, someone else will—and you’ll be left wondering when exactly you convinced yourself that letting her walk away was the right thing to do.”

With that, she turned and disappeared into the night, leaving Bruce alone to mull over his thoughts.

You didn’t see Bruce at breakfast the next morning.

The absence was expected—yet it still left a hollow weight in your chest as you took your seat at the long dining table alone. Sunlight filtered through the tall windows, spilling pale gold across untouched china and silverware that gleamed far too brightly for the mood you were in.

When you asked Alfred, he hesitated. “Master Wayne had an urgent meeting to attend to,” he said gently.

You swallowed and nodded in acknowledgment. There was no point pressing him; Alfred had always been loyal to Bruce’s silences. Your appetite had vanished entirely, the thought of food turning heavy in your stomach. After a moment, you rose from the table and excused yourself.

Work, at least, would keep your mind occupied.

As Mrs. Wayne—and after his disappearance—you had taken on operations at Wayne Enterprises rather than returning to your family’s firm. Bruce had never shown much interest in the day-to-day management of the company, and so the responsibility had quietly fallen to you. Over the years, you had become the steady spine of the enterprise: overseeing logistics, restructuring departments, smoothing fractures before they ever reached the board.

And now, you knew that role was nearing its end.

With the divorce, it made sense logically, to return to your family’s business. You would no longer be Mrs. Wayne. Titles mattered in rooms like those, even when people pretended they didn’t.

Still, you wouldn’t leave recklessly.

If everything proceeded smoothly, the divorce would be finalized within a month—two at most. That gave you just enough time to ensure a seamless transition. To find someone competent, steady, and capable of holding the company together once you were gone.

Wayne Enterprises deserved better than being left scrambling.

And Bruce—whether he realized it or not—deserved someone who wouldn’t allow his legacy to crumble simply because you were no longer there to hold the reins.

You dressed carefully, smoothing your hands over your clothes as you slid your composure into place the same way you always had, and left the manor with your head held high.

Whatever came next, you would meet it prepared.

Because if this marriage was ending, then it would end cleanly—without collateral damage, without regret, and without giving anyone reason to doubt the woman you had proven yourself to be.

A car waited out front, its dark exterior gleaming beneath the morning light. Your assistant stood by the open door, tablet clutched a little too tightly in her hands. One look at her expression had you pausing mid-step.

“What’s wrong?” you asked.

She hesitated, then exhaled. “I… I thought you should know—Julie is at Wayne Enterprises.” Her mouth tightened as she added, rolling her eyes, “She came to see Bruce.”

Your body went still.

Julie.

The name alone was enough to tighten your chest. She had been a childhood classmate—more Bruce’s friend than yours. In truth, the two of you had never really gotten along, though age had taught you both the subtle art of diplomacy. Even back then, she had always been chasing after Bruce. It was unmistakable that she was in love with him.

The last you’d heard, she’d started a modelling career and moved to Metropolis, tangled in an on-again, off-again relationship with Lex Luthor.

You supposed she was finally back for Bruce.

If not for the arrangement—if not for the contracts and the expectations of parents who treated marriage like a merger—you had always been certain Bruce would have chosen her. You had realized it back in university.

The memory surfaced from years ago.

It had been a late evening, your class had run longer than expected. The corridors were nearly empty as you walked through them, the sound of your footsteps echoing softly. 

You slowed, instinct prickling, and peered around the corner to see Julie stepping closer to him, rising onto her toes as she leaned in to kiss him.

The sight made your stomach drop. Heat rushed to your face as humiliation flooded through you. You turned away at once, retreating down the corridor before either of them could notice you, before you had to confront what you’d just seen.

Bruce had never known you saw.

You had never told him.

But from that moment on, you realized the truth. That despite the arrangement, Bruce had never truly been yours.

You inhaled slowly, steadying yourself, then gave a small nod.

“Thank you for telling me,” you said evenly.

Your assistant watched you closely, concern flickering across her face, but you offered her no reaction.

You stepped into the car, the door closing with a soft thud.

Whatever Julie’s presence meant—whatever history was resurfacing—you refused to let it derail you now. You had already chosen to leave him. And if Bruce Wayne was moving on before the ink on the papers had even dried…then you would find a way to move on too.

You arrived just as Bruce appeared to be leaving the building—Julie at his side.

For a fleeting second, your fists balled at your sides before you forced them to relax, smoothing the reaction away as you lifted your chin and stepped out of the car.

Bruce froze the moment he saw you.

“Y/N!”

Julie’s voice was bright. “Hey! Long time no see!” she said warmly, stepping forward for the customary cheek kisses before retreating back to Bruce’s side. “Bruce and I were just going to grab lunch and catch up. You want to come?”

You ignored the knot tightening in your throat and shaped your mouth into something that resembled a smile, shaking your head once. “Unfortunately, I have a lot of work to get done,” you said evenly. “I’m sure we can catch up another time.”

Your gaze slid past her—unavoidable now—and landed on the man who would soon no longer be your husband.

“Bruce,” you said calmly, “I trust you’ve had a chance to review the papers and get them signed?”

Julie’s smile faltered, confusion flickering across her face as her gaze moved between the two of you.

Bruce hesitated. “Not yet,” he replied. “It’s been a busy morning.”

Your eyes slid back to Julie.

“I can see that,” you murmured, tension threading its way into your voice despite your efforts to keep it even.

“What papers?” Julie asked.

You raised a brow, something cold and brittle settling neatly into place. “Bruce hasn’t told you?”

“Y/N…” Bruce warned quietly.

You didn’t look at him.

“We’re getting a divorce.”

Julie blinked.

“Oh.”

The single syllable hung there—surprised, yet almost hopeful. Julie’s gaze darted to Bruce and then back to you, something unmistakably hungry flickering across her face.

“I—I didn’t know,” she said, her voice deceptively softer now. Her hand fell to Bruce’s arm, almost as if to comfort him.

“That’s understandable,” you replied evenly. Your gaze flicked briefly to Bruce, whose expression had gone entirely to stone. “It was a recent decision.”

Bruce stepped forward at last. “This isn’t the place for this.”

You met his gaze without flinching, then inclined your head with a forced smile. “You’re right. It isn’t.” Turning back to Julie, you offered a polite nod, “Enjoy your lunch.”

There was no accusation in your tone. No bitterness. You refused to let them see the pain beneath your composure. You stepped past them both, heels clicking against the pavement as you headed toward the building.

“God, she’s such a fake bitch,” your assistant muttered under her breath.

You fought the smile that threatened to break through, but a small twitch at the corner of your lips betrayed you anyway.

Behind you, you could feel Bruce’s gaze boring into your back as he watched you disappear into the building.

And when the doors slid shut behind you—sealing you away from the sight of them together—you told yourself one thing with unwavering certainty:

You would not beg for what should have been freely given.

Not love.

Not loyalty.

Not him.

You entered your office to find your usual breakfast waiting for you—coffee and a pastry from your favourite place on 23rd. You sighed softly in contentment as you took a sip. Perfect, like always.

If there was one thing you were certain of, it was this: when you left, you were taking your assistant with you. She went above and beyond for you. 

You sighed when you finally got home, the sound slipping out of you before you could stop it. Your head throbbed from staring at a screen for most of the day, numbers and contracts blurring together long after you’d shut your laptop. You’ve been determined to lock in one final deal for the company before you left. The Eden Project had been years in the making, and for the first time, it felt close enough to touch.

You just needed Nexus on board.

Lex Luthor, unfortunately, was being a pain in your ass—and deliberately so. He was circling the deal like a vulture, trying to steal it out from under you. If the project went through, it would mean that abandoned or underused properties owned by Nexus—land poisoned by decades of Gotham’s chemical runoff—would be transferred to Wayne Enterprises. From there, the Eden Project could finally begin: restoring the soil and waterways, rebuilding what had been left to rot, constructing affordable housing, and establishing a new clean water plant.

To you, it felt like the first honest step toward undoing the damage Gotham had been choking on for decades.

Lex Luthor, however, saw those same polluted dumps as cheap acquisitions—perfect places to bury private facilities and questionable labs behind closed doors. You couldn’t fathom how Julie could stand dating a man like him. He rubbed you the wrong way every time your paths crossed. Too arrogant for his own good.

You were halfway through pulling off your heels when you noticed him.

Bruce stood at the top of the banister, half-lit by the low glow of a wall sconce, his posture rigid—as though he’d been waiting there for some time. The sight of him made something in your chest tighten despite your efforts to keep yourself steady.

“You’re home late,” he said, his gaze sweeping over you, unreadable.

“I had a lot of work to get done,” you replied, rubbing at the arch of your foot before straightening. “I want the Eden Project locked in before my departure.”

“It’s too dangerous to be out in Gotham at this hour,” he said, his tone firm, his gaze tracking you as you started up the stairs.

You exhaled slowly, exhaustion threading through you. “Gotham is always dangerous,” you replied without turning back. “And like I said, I had work to finish.”

You moved to pass him.

His hand closed around your arm.

The contact stopped you cold.

You looked up at him, surprise flickering across your face before hardening into something guarded. His grip wasn’t rough—but it was firm, unyielding, as though he were anchoring himself as much as he was trying to keep you there.

“Is there something you needed?” you asked quietly.

“Why?” he said.

The single word stopped you.

 You raised a brow, feigning calm ignorance even though you knew exactly what he meant. “Why what?”

“The divorce,” he clarified.

You studied him for a moment—really studied him. The tension carved into his shoulders. The way his gaze searched your face, as though he were looking for an answer that might absolve him of his own shortcomings.

You exhaled softly.

“We both know this was a business transaction between our families and nothing more,” you said evenly. “I thought I could handle that. I truly did. But this—” you gestured faintly between the two of you “—isn’t what I want.”

Bruce’s jaw tightened. In his mind, the meaning was clear: him. He wasn’t what you wanted.

“So I see,” he said quietly. “And was I such a bad husband that you decided to end it?”

You lifted a brow, the question landing somewhere between disbelief and exhaustion.

“Do you think you’ve been a good one?”

The words weren’t cruel. They were simply honest.

Bruce didn’t answer right away. His mouth opened, then closed again, the silence stretching thin as he searched for something—anything—that might justify him.

“You were never unkind,” you said, your voice softening despite yourself. “But I see no reason to keep us trapped in a loveless marriage. I’m setting us both free, Bruce.”

You hesitated, the truth pressing at your chest before you let it out.

“So you can be with someone you truly want to be with.”

You turned to leave.

You barely made it a step.

He strode forward, and a sharp gasp tore from you as you stumbled back, your back meeting the wall. His arms came down on either side of you, bracketing you in as he leaned close.

His presence stole the air from your chest. You looked up at him in startled disbelief, his body caging you in without ever touching—yet close enough that you could feel the heat of him.

Your fingers twitched, aching to grip his shirt, but you forced them still.

He leaned down, close enough that your traitorous heart stumbled. Your pulse roared in your ears as his lips brushed the sensitive skin of your neck, then drifted toward your ear.

“And who said I don’t want you?” he murmured.

It took everything in you to press your palms against his chest and push him back—gently, but firmly. You turned your face away, your gaze dropping to the floor as you swallowed hard against the tightness in your throat. You couldn’t look at him. Not when your resolve felt so fragile.

“You want my body, Bruce,” you said softly. “And I need more than that.”

You straightened, drawing your composure back around you like armour.

“Sign the papers, Bruce,” you finished quietly. “So we can start the proceedings.”

Before he could respond—before he could reach for you again—you slipped past him, moving away with a steadiness you did not entirely feel.

Your footsteps echoed softly down the hall, each one carrying you farther from him, farther from the life you had endured and the love you had never been allowed to keep. You didn’t look back.

Bruce remained where he was, frozen in place, watching you go.

Every instinct in him screamed to call your name. To pull you back and promise you everything he had deprived you of for so long.

But he couldn’t.

Because giving you more would mean giving you the truth.

Of who he was.

Of the darkness he carried.

Of the violence that shaped his nights and the war he waged in secret.

And he would be damned before he let that darkness swallow you whole.

Yet even knowing that… he selfishly found he could not bring himself to let you go.

You ignored the paparazzi photos of Bruce and Julie’s lunch from the day before. You refused to stare long enough for envy to take root, for that familiar ache to whisper that you had never been enough. You refused to spiral into self-pity.

Instead, you buried yourself in work—in the Eden Project. You were so close now, you just needed to seal the deal with Nexus and kick Luthor’s arrogant ass to the curb.

You’d planned to spend the entire day sealed away in your office, insulated by schedules, reports, and decisions that didn’t ask anything of your heart. It was almost working—until the door opened.

You looked up.

Bruce stepped inside.

You paused, confusion flickering across your face. In three years, you could count on one hand the number of times he’d set foot in your office. 

Your assistant peeked in behind him, mouthing a silent apology. You waved her off. If Bruce wanted to see you, there wasn’t much she could do about it.

“Lucius tells me you have him looking for your replacement,” Bruce said, shutting the door behind him.

He ignored the two chairs set neatly across from your desk and instead moved closer, his presence filling the room in a way that made your spine straighten instinctively.

You leaned back in your chair, wary as you watched him sit on the edge of your desk in front of you as though it belonged to him.

“I do,” you said simply.

“Why?” he asked. “Is it the pay?”

You blinked, genuinely taken aback. “Bruce… have you even looked at the papers?” you asked. “We’re getting a divorce. Once it goes through, all my shares revert to you. I won’t be a Wayne anymore.” You gestured faintly, as if the logic should be obvious. “It would be a conflict of interest for me to stay here while returning to my family’s name.”

“Keep the shares,” he said immediately. “You’ve been the backbone of this company for years. A name change doesn’t erase that. We’re not replacing you.”

You sighed, rubbing at your temple as frustration edged in. “Bruce,” you said patiently, “it’s not proper.”

Something shifted in him then.

In one swift motion, he surged forward—one hand bracing against the arm of your chair, the other gripping the backrest as he caged you in, an echo of the night before. You hated how his mere proximity made your breath hitch. His dark eyes locked onto yours making you painfully aware of the shallow rise and fall of your own breathing.

“You’re not leaving, Y/N,” he said quietly, as though the decision had already been made. “I’ve already told Lucius to stop the search.”

Your eyes narrowed.

You leaned forward in anger, closing the already dangerously close distance until your faces were inches apart. “You can’t do that, Bruce. Once the divorce is finalized, I’m leaving.”

His jaw tightened. “What do you want?” he demanded. “We can renegotiate your contract. I’ll give you a raise. A larger stake in the company. Another office—hell, name any price.”

For a fleeting moment, the desperation beneath his usually controlled exterior slipped through.

You shook your head slowly, something sad and resolute settling into your expression. “What I want isn’t something money can buy, Bruce.” You needed distance—clean, undeniable distance. A clean slate, far from him, so you could finally move on.

He stilled.

“You don’t get to decide this for me,” you said calmly. “Not as my husband. And certainly not as my employer.”

For a moment, Bruce said nothing.

Then he straightened, stepping back just enough to smooth his suit into place. His jaw flexed once, tension rippling beneath the his cold composure, before he inclined his head in reluctant acknowledgment.

“Very well,” he said evenly. “But as we are still legally married, there are obligations we can’t ignore.”

You tensed. You already knew what was coming.

“Tonight is the gala,” he continued. “Both our presences are required.”

You raised a brow. “We don’t usually attend together.”

He shrugged, deceptively casual. “If you’re insistent on the divorce, we might as well let people see that we’re parting on amicable terms. It avoids rumours.”

You exhaled slowly, resignation settling in. You wanted to stay—wanted to keep working on the Eden Project—but the gala offered something useful. Nexus board members would be there. This could be an opportunity to chat with them individually and sway them to Wayne Enterprises side.

“I’ll meet you there,” you said.

“No need,” Bruce replied without hesitation. “Alfred will drive us together.”

You held his gaze for a beat longer, searching for something to explain his odd behaviour but his face gave nothing away.

“Fine,” you said at last.

Bruce gave a curt nod, already turning toward the door. “We’ll leave at seven.”

One thing about being old money in Gotham was the endless procession of galas. Charity dinners, fundraisers, benefit auctions—each one requiring polished smiles, practiced charm, and carefully chosen outfits designed to show that you belonged among Gotham’s elite. These events demanded hours of preparation, a luxury you rarely had. Fortunately, you’d learned long ago how to adapt and prepare around your busy schedule.

That was why you kept a small collection of emergency dresses in your office.

You opened the wardrobe tucked discreetly behind a panelled door, your gaze skimming over the hanging fabrics inside. Most were refined and understated. Creams, ivories, soft neutrals. Dresses that were considered the safe choices, keeping the clean cut billionaire wife appearance you had worked hard to craft.

Mrs. Wayne. The perfect executive wife.

Your gaze caught on something different, tucked into the far corner of the wardrobe.

It was a stark contrast to the simplicity of the other dresses. You remembered buying it on impulse, a rare moment of indulgence, telling yourself you’d wear it someday. A promise you’d never quite been brave enough to keep.

It was still appropriate. Still elegant. But there was no denying it carried a risk your usual choices carefully avoided.

You bit your lip, fingers hovering just short of the fabric.

Soon, you wouldn’t be a Wayne anymore.

The thought settled over you with an unexpected mix of grief and relief. A quiet ache paired with something lighter, freer. Beneath it, something firmer began to take shape—a resolve edged with steel.

You were tired of dressing for expectation. Tired of shaping yourself to fit what was required by your parents, by the Waynes, by a city that thrived on image more than truth.

You wanted—just once—to choose something because you wanted it.

Not for the cameras.

Not for the headlines.

Not for him.

So, in a split-second decision that felt far braver than it should have, you reached forward and pulled the dress free.

The fabric slid into your hands, cool and smooth beneath your fingers, and for the first time in a long while, you felt excitement bloom in your chest for the fact you were dressing for yourself.

By the time your assistant arrived with the hair and makeup team, you were in your dress and heels. You turned as she stepped into the room, and she nearly stumbled to a stop, eyes widening in open shock.

“Goddamn,” she breathed. “You look fucking hot.”

A surprised laugh slipped from you, light and genuine despite everything. “Thank you.”

She circled you once, hands on her hips, shaking her head in disbelief. “Seriously—if Bruce even looks at anyone else with you dressed like this, he’s an idiot.”

You forced a smile, though ignoring the sharp tug beneath your ribs.

You used to like to dress like this before. Long ago when you didn’t have all this expectation piled on you. Yet even then, he had chosen Julie.

That was the truth you’d learned the hard way: Bruce Wayne had never been incapable of desire. He had simply never allowed desire to become love where you were concerned. Men, you’d learned, were remarkably adept at separating the two.

So you let the comment pass without response, turning your attention back to what remained to be done. You allowed the hair and makeup team to guide you into the chair, surrendering to their practiced hands as they set to work.

By the time you stepped outside, dusk had settled over Gotham, the sky bruised purple and gold between the towers. The air was cool against your bare skin, refreshing after being cooped up in your office all day.

Bruce was already there, waiting. 

He stood near the front steps, jacket buttoned, posture immaculate as always. If he had ever chosen to, he could have had a very lucrative modelling career

At the sound of your heels clicking against stone, he looked up. Whatever expression he’d been wearing faltered at the sight of you. 

His throat bobbed as his dark eyes drank you in with an intensity he failed to mask. Without thinking, his hand rose to his collar, tugging at his tie as if he suddenly found it too tight.

You looked like yourself. Not Mrs. Wayne, the woman molded to fit beside him. But the woman he knew before he left Gotham and began his crusade. 

“…You look,” he began, then faltered, his jaw tightening as though the right word had slipped just out of reach. “You look… beautiful.”

There was something unsteady in his voice—just enough to make warmth bloom traitorously in your cheeks.

“Thank you,” you replied evenly, despite the way your heart began to race. Clearing your throat, you stepped closer and reached up to straighten his tie, the silk cool beneath your fingers. You tried not to think about how little space separated you now, or the way his gaze had locked onto you with an intensity that made it hard to breathe.

When you finished, you moved to step back but his hand found the small of your back instead, keeping you there.

Your breath caught as your eyes snapped up to his. For a moment, it seemed as though he might say something. His lips parted, then pressed together again, the unspoken words settling heavily between you. Slowly, his hand fell away.

The sound of an approaching engine broke the spell.

You cleared your throat and stepped back, putting distance between yourself and whatever that moment had been. Headlights swept across the steps as the car pulled to a smooth stop. Alfred emerged at once, opening the rear door with his usual practiced grace.

“Shall we, sir? Madam?”

Bruce straightened, and you could see his walls coming back up.  He gestured toward the open door. “After you.”

You hesitated, just for a second, turning back to meet his gaze. If you hadn’t known him as well as you did, you might have missed it—but there was something there. You could’ve sworn it was regret. Or longing swirling in his eyes. 

You shook off the thought, dismissing it as wishful thinking.

You broke eye contact first and without another word, you slid into the car.

Bruce followed a moment later, settling into the seat beside you. The door closed with a soft click, and Alfred took his place behind the wheel. As the car pulled away, the glow of Wayne Enterprises receded behind you,

For several moments, neither of you spoke.

Bruce sat beside you, posture rigid. You stared out the window, watching the city unfold—familiar streets, familiar towers—everything suddenly carrying the strange weight of impermanence. After all, who knew if Gotham would still feel like home once the divorce was finalized. You certainly had the money and freedom to choose to leave if you decided.

“Is that a new dress?” he asked at last breaking the silence.

“Mhm. Not really,” you hummed. “I’ve had it hanging in the closet for a while. I just… thought it was finally time to wear it.”

He glanced at you then, his gaze lingering longer than necessary, something unreadable flickering across his face.

“It suits you,” he murmured.

You turned toward him in surprise, the softness of it catching you off guard. Then his phone vibrated.

His attention dropped immediately to the screen, as it lit up his face. You didn’t mean to look, but the name had caught your eye and you felt your heart drop.

Julie Madison.

Your gaze drifted back to the window, the city lights blurring slightly as the car continued on. You let your expression settle back into neutrality, smoothing away the flickers of hurt you refused to acknowledge. 

This—this—was why you were leaving.

Not out of anger. Not even because of betrayal. But because of the quiet, relentless reminder that you were never his first choice.

He steps off the bed and into the resolute silence of the cabin. There was a hole by his bedroom door after a regrettable night of alcohol. Mead. Something that had his head spinning and bile stuck to the walls of his throat, and of which he doesn't even remember the name of the next morning.

It's all fleeting, anyway. Names, labels, lives.

He cooks himself breakfast on an old pan.  The room is bone-cold, and the floorboards creak when he drags the decades old chair from the dining room to the porch.

Paint peels under his feet, and his toe curls. A dull, faded orchestra of evergreens as far as he can see. He's had a target on his back since he was a kid, always under the gaze of something beyond his understanding. Always making sure he doesn't take a step out of line, or let too much life into his heart.

It's been a while since he's felt that. Like it had finally decided he learnt his lesson, that he wouldn't dare to take a new breath without considering if he deserved it. And so he doesn't wonder if there are irises staring back at him with the same lifelessness with which he watches them, day after day, hour after hour.

The outside cools his blood to a standstill, and he is almost entirely certain he is alone. The vast expanse of an empty sky, bearing no clouds, no birds. Some days, he almost thinks he can feel you when the winds move.

He thinks he's past the point of insane.

__________

His friends are kinder than he is. To a fault, almost. God knows he hasn't given them a reason to be.

After a couple of months of shifting to the middle of nowhere, there are fifteen fucking knocks to the door.

Bucky flings it open, ready to chew someone’s head off. Raging, still in the ratty old t-shirt and sweatpants and socks with holes in them that you swore you would burn. He is armed with a battalion of curses and threats, only for words to die a quick death at the tip of his tongue.

“Hey.”

Bucky's muscles tense to the point where they might crack, but he forces his arm to lower. 

“Been a while,” Sam says, arms crossed over his chest.

He doesn't know how he's hunted him down, given the nature of his disappearance, but Sam was nothing if not determined in his humanity.

With nowhere else to turn, Bucky silently pushes the door open.

________

“I like what you’ve done with the place.”

Bucky glances around the house. There are cobwebs hanging from each corner he sees. Bulbs coated with dust. Fine china starting to fade with unuse, and utensils slowly beginning to gather rust.

He doesn’t reply. He’s offered him water, but Sam declines.

“You get cell coverage out here?”

“Don’t make a lotta calls,” Bucky’s vocal chords sound like they’re lined with gravel.

“We noticed.” Sam leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Talked to Dr. Canmore?"

"Yep." Not since the psychiatrist was forced to clear him after Bucky showed no signs of violence, or returning back to him. To him, that concluded the purpose of their relationship.

"And?"

"There's nothing to say, Sam," he rebukes, gruff. "'M fine."

Sam looks like wants to raise an eyebrow, but the patience he's grown over the years from dealing with those worse than the mess setting in front of him disallows him. "Get enough food?"

Bucky flashes him a thumbs-up, and feels the onset of a migraine.

"Sunlight? Water?"

"'M not a fuckin' plan--" he begins harshly, but clears his throat. "You?"

"Doin' alright." Sam shrugs. "Been training a buncha new recruits, getting in touch with new ones. Superheroes are poppin' up all over the place. Got a girl saying she can control squirrels."

Bucky nods absent-mindedly, picking at the hem of his shirt. He thinks you would have found that amusing, considering that you thought Scott Lang's schtick was a bit on-the-nose too.

“Do you want to?”

Bucky sharply shifts back into focus. “What?”

“Help out,” Sam clarifies. “Recruit, train.”

Bucky’s jaw inadvertently tightens. “No,” he says sharply.

"Could be good for you."

""M done with that life." 

Sam's eyes reflect a reality that's different, but he still relents, "Okay. Whatever works for you."

Bucky can’t say he retired, exactly. He’d unceremoniously quit and had gone AWOL, but it had never been on paper. SHIELD was gracious enough to accept in whatever form they had, sending him funds every month as an unofficial pension.

“You should drop by sometime. Compound's all re-done."

Bucky shifts in his seat like the chair is too small for him. “‘M not exactly a joy to be around.”

“You’re actin’ like that’s somethin’ new,” he riffs, mouth curling into a smile. “Still.”

Sam's a good man who often lets his instincts lead the way, and if he's insisting on Bucky to return then something must be worth listening to. But his only company's been the thoughts in his head for a while now, and they're no good. What's impure about him surely wraps its tendrils around the world around him, poisoning them.

It's difficult, impossible, even to shake the suspicion growing on him, crawling up his back.

“Alright, well–” Sam pushes himself off the couch “-- just give us a call if there’s anything you need help with.”

Bucky may not have as many words as he used to, but he hasn’t forgotten his manners. He walks Sam to the front, where his truck lay parked, all polished from the last time he saw it.

"You got everything you need?” Sam asks again, and something inside him ignites a spark.

“Yes.”

Sam nods, hand on the hood of the truck, giving him a final look up and down. The few seconds of a leeway fans the spark into a red-hot anger, one that has Bucky's muscles painfully tight.

"Right. See you aro-"

"Why'd you come here?" Bucky interrupts. "To check if I'm losin’ it again? SHIELD couldn't get Dr. Canmore on the line so they send their next bet to tranquilise me?

Sam's eyebrows raise this time, and Bucky thinks he's finally managed to piss off the last person who cares if he's dead or alive, but everything in him is too hot, too scathing to bother.

He wants someone to get it, what it's like to claw at concrete walls with raw fingertips and broken nails. He wants someone to see what it's like, living like they've been injected over and over with needles.

"I know it’s hard, man," Sam replies, gentle like cool water on a burn.

Bucky's hands freeze, because he realises very quickly he wanted someone to hurt.

"Just thought you could use knowin' you had someone there," he continues. "Got flowers too, but I wasn't sure if you'd..."

Something in Bucky deflates, and he wants to cower into a ball. Bury himself so deep underground that he doesn't have to deal with how his ribs feel like they're cracking into splinters all over again.

Sam's already moved towards the passenger side door, and pulled from it a beautiful arrangement of evening primroses and jasmines. Of course Sam remembered.

You would have loved it.

"I don't have anywhere to keep it," Bucky croaks. He's turned the home he bought into a tomb, and he's closed the door to any remainder of life waiting to be lived.

Sam simply hands it to him, and Bucky takes it cautiously like it'll wither in a second. His touch is venomous and his want is a death-sentence, but the flowers stay alive.

"If you ever find a place," Sam says, squeezing his shoulder, "leave something there, too. Might help."

________

He'd add 'liar' to the list of words he's chosen to describe himself, if he said he didn't think about it every second since you died.

The idea initially comes to him like a snake, slithering and winding its way up his shoulder to hiss into his ear. He shudders the first time, jaws clenching, and dismisses it immediately.

But 'sinner' is a word he would use, and so on nights when he's awake too long and when your laugh sounds like a draft in his ear, he entertains the thought.

Indulges in it, grotesquely allows himself to think of an alternate ending, where his presence had not corrupted your fate, and you would have been alive and vibrant and trying out new flavours of gelato from the corner store. Stealing kisses from him, half awake, and dragging him to watch sunrises from the roof.

He thinks of things he'd do differently. Retire a lot faster. Took you to the National Parks like he said he would. Make sure your scent seared itself like a tattoo on all his clothes, because there's nothing on earth that replicated it and he's turned it inside out trying.

When the air is icy and the skin aches where his metal arm meets flesh, he thinks of how you always flicked his shoulder when he passed an off-hand comment under his breath, but muffled a laugh when his insults got more creative.

But soon, it will be closing in on two years since Bucky's last heard you groan at his stupid comments and the lake is just as pristine as the day he bought the cabin. The water glimmers like shards of diamond and there are days he thinks it's too still for even his liking.

"Have you ever been to Asgard?" you ask one night, legs splayed over his thighs.

He looks up from the book he's reading, pencil tucked into his ear. "I have not."

"Not even once?" you ask, distracted from whatever show you had gotten hooked on on TLC. Ever since you'd discovered the channel, you were convinced it was the best way to learn about "his culture". Sometimes he tuned in to learn about updates to "his culture" in the years he was gone.

"Strictly earthbound," he replies.

You nod, eyes drifting back to the TV. He watches you for a few seconds, hand gently squeezing the arm closest to his.

As it always was, your posture was pin-straight. Always ready. Like sitting still wasn't even an option. He used to think it was because you were never truly comfortable around him, until he realises that that was simply a part of you.

Bucky re-adjusts his glasses. He was getting old. His back pained and creaked like an old door hinge more each time.

He didn't think he'd get here. He's growing to love it. Mission reminders and target locations get replaced more and more with reminders that he still has to put the leftovers in the fridge from the date earlier that night, and that your shampoo needed a re-stock.

"Would you want to come with me one day?" you ask suddenly.

He puts the book down, and you turn away from the TV again. 

He can always tell when you're thinking. The world buzzes a bit. When you're older than a few galaxies, the universe and you become not so distinct.

"Might be a bit too grand for a fella like me."

"I think you'd like it," you counter, "and you're in a relationship with me. You'd fit in as well as anyone could."

He's still not sure how he's managed to accomplish the second part but you must have liked something about his ragtag sarcasm and social isolating tendencies.

Bucky's growing older each day. You're the closest thing he's seen to eternity. He doesn't think he would fit in, not with his thrift shop t-shirts and unbridled insecurities.

"Do you want me to?" he asks, hesitant.

He's met Thor, and he's heard mostly about Loki through childhood tales and news reports. Thor didn't seem to mind him, but then again, Thor saw the best in everyone.

"I'd like to show you the place I grew up," you reply, playing with his metal fingers. "You showed me yours."

"That's a couple'a streets from here, sweetheart," he reminds playfully. "Not exactly another realm."

The corners of your mouth lift slightly. "But you feel connected to it, don't you? That it is a part of you?"

Bucky intertwines your grins and keeps it there. He's always felt something towards Brooklyn. Something that kept him going when Siberian frost nipped at his skin. Tethered.

But when he'd shown you the place he grew up in, it wasn't the same. Brickwall had been overlaid with plaster and paint. Doors ripped off their hinges, wallpaper a ghastly white instead of the stained floral print his sister and he drew on. It was unease, trepidation.

It didn't feel like his anymore. Probably because Bucky didn't feel like him anymore.

"Yeah," he replies after some thought, even though it's not entirely right.

"I feel that way about Asgard," you continue the thought. "Being here is lovely, and I love learning of all the things your people do, but--"

"It's not the same," he interjects gently. "I get you."

You look at him and smile, and Bucky feels the same gnawing feeling that this is something that's too good, too pure for him.

God of the Night Sky and the Mortal of Blood Stained Hands.

It shouldn't work, but you've already got a drawer in his shelf for your belongings. You've talked about moving to a cabin by the woods if you ever wanted to settle down. You kissed him that morning, and once more on his shoulder, and the last time he's laughed this much in one dinner was the one he had the night before with you.

"Whichever day you're ready," you promise. "I've got a feeling you'll be convinced."

Bucky presses a kiss to your fingers, and you turn back to the TV with a smile.

He watches you for a while. Your fingers continue to play with his. Bucky thinks getting older may just be worth it.

You made a dozen or so trips back to Asgard since the conversation, and he pushed his involvement on each one with the unfailing and ultimately misplaced  certainty that he'd have time.

__________

You wouldn't approve of the way he'd kept the cabin. You wouldn't approve of the way he lived. He knows that, but he also knows if you were around then he'd have a reason to actually sow more than vegetables in the land he keeps digging up. He'd make sure of the table cloth that he found stashed away, leave the blinds open more to allow light to reach his room.

He looks at the bouquet of flowers by his feet and thinks that laying it by a boulder would be insignificant.

So for the first time in a long while, he prays the act of creation will bring him some respite and builds. 

A little hut, with sticks he finds around the place, and makes it big enough to house Sam's bouquet from the wind and sun. He carves out your name onto the boulder, painstakingly with his pocket knife until each letter was guaranteed to last a century. He adds the year of your birth, and can't find it in himself to add the year you died.

He steps back and exhales. It's a memorial. It's a start.

__________

Bucky spends most of the day digging up dirt, sitting out on the porch and looking for firewood. He’s learnt how to grow his own vegetables, and how to go into town unnoticed for other essentials.

And now he has something to tend to.

It starts with fickle sticks and grows into something sturdier. He brings the memorial stronger wood, and bands to hold it together. He looks for wildflowers and pretty leaves, bunches them together and leaves them under the protection of the small roof.

It's the most he's done in over a year.

Months go from crawling to a standstill when it nears October. Bucky leaves the house less often.Truth is, the sky has never entirely recovered since you were gone. It's never truly dark-- a faint navy blue or even azure in the days leading up to the anniversary.

He's seen people puzzle over it-- call it the newest effects of light pollution or climate change. There is no reasonable answer, but the one that exists is that you left and you took the constellations with you.

Still, evening always comes faster and he can't quite stand being out at that time, when there is a void where he used to feel you the most. Instead he stays asleep for as long as he can. He makes use of the brief time he has to fix himself some food, and bare minimum upkeep.

He gathers the last of the flowers he can see around, some leaves that hadn't entirely been lost and makes his way to the lake.

"Forgive me, sweetheart. Season's changin' and I don't got a lot of options," he says lowly and to the hut that's managed to stay up.

Bucky looks at the sparse flowers in his hands and thinks that he'll make the godforsaken trip into civilisation to get you better ones. Ones you really liked, colourful and dynamic.

For now, he tries tying them together with a blade of grass to make it look less pathetic. It breaks every single time-- he's never been very good at being delicate.

Something around his wrist catches his attention. Some days he forgets it isn't a part of him.

His hair whips rather majestically around his head. He’s used to the sting when it strikes his skin, only reflexively reaching up to tuck it behind his ear.

“Hair tie?”

His eyes snap to yours in surprise. You've never really talked to him before, just brief nods and smiles along the way. Bucky wasn't exactly the patron saint for socialising either. He's always thought something about you was otherworldly. He didn't consider himself significant enough to be going out of your way to talk to either.

“Would you like a hair tie?” you repeat. “It’s rather bad out there.”

“Uh, yeah,” he replies, though he’s never considered that as a solution. “Sure, if you’ve got one.”

“We’ve learnt to carry them around when you fight alongside the likes of Thor and Volstagg.” You smile, reaching into the compartment of your belt. “Long hair looks good. Doesn’t always work that way.”

Bucky gives you a tight smile, feeling slightly embarrassed but a voice in him compels him to accept the kindness you’re offering.

He quickly secures his hair into a lower bun, giving more show to cheeks dusted pink.

“I’ll give it back after the mission,” he promises.

“Don’t.” You pause, giving him a once-over. “It suits you.”

Most days he remembers it's one of the only things he's still got of you. Still, he ties the flowers together with your hair tie-- and they stay this time.

"See you next week," he says, and a wind blows past him. Pathetically, he dares to hope it's a sign from you.

___________

Two sharp knocks on the door, but his eyes are open before the second one. It wasn’t like he was getting much sleep anyway.

When his arm doesn’t keep him up, it’s the ache in the rest of his body to be near you. Trailing kisses up your arm and watching wildfire heat spread through his neck when fingers tip up his chin. Lips trying to catch each other until panting breaths matched.

He flips over to the other side. Both sides of the pillow are drenched with his sweat. Christ, if this was how it was going to be in the days leading up to the anniversary, he can't imagine what would happen the day of. 

Someone rapps intently at the door, only picking up pace when Bucky chooses to ignore it. By all means, he’s retired. That alone should entitle him to some fucking peace, but no. 

He curses as he drags himself out of bed and pulls on a shirt, shuffling to the door. When he pulls it open, his eyes are probably murderous, but there is no one to catch the daggers. There is a simple brown cardboard box, labelled with his name.

Bucky, with a narrowed gaze, takes a step away from the box and instead heads into the open air. But there is not a soul, even as he stalks around the cabin and really stops to listen.

He comes back to the threshold and eyes the box. Using his foot, he swiftly kicks the lid off it and braces for an impact that doesn’t come.

There are shirts. And a mug. He frowns, kneeling down to shuffle through the contents, only to find bits and pieces of things he just…left behind when he left the compound.

Pictures he never really got framed. Socks with torn toes. Sweatpants. Laptop.

And there’s a tiny box. His chest twists the second he lays eyes on it so much that he thinks he’s been injured.

There’s a ring in there. Not really even an engagement ring, since you were gone before he had a chance.

Just a ring. But it’s enough to make him suddenly feel the weight of the air around him and he’s forced to take a seat right there on the steps. There’s nothing else in there of you, just old mission reports that mention your active involvement. Maybe if the smell of cardboard hadn’t permeated through the fabric of his shirts, he’d have traces of your scent.

Fragmented parts of his life, like snapshots of his history, running through his mind like an old film. It makes him question, for a second, if death was finally catching up to him.

Well, it was late. He’d been kept waiting for years.

_____________

The day itself is grey and sullen. In crackles of electricity, he can almost feel Thor’s state of mind. He tries not to think that in a few years, you’d be gone for longer than he knew you.

He rounds up leaves as orange as mandarins and ties them together with the hairtie. He clears up the last bunch he’d left and takes a seat on the shore of the lake. Cloudless and barren. Chill.

He can sense the end of the battle is near– he sees Sam a lot less overhead, even his gun didn’t require as many re-stocks. His pace slows to match the few that are left around him, and he’s already wondering how he can finish this quicker to get to help with search and rescue.

But Bucky didn’t even have to be told. Mid-punch, something in the air shifts and a deep shiver runs up the curve of his spine.

Before he even straightens up the sky explodes from the early azure of dawn to a blinding white to a blood-curdling crimson. His body reacts faster than he does, because the speed at which his stomach drops is only rivalled by how fast he was sprinting to your last known location.

He yells names through open comms-- yours, Thor's, Sam's-- turning the corner and immediately feeling the full force of a blast shove him onto his back.

With a groan and the force of his left hand, he presses into his ears to stop the excruciating ringing. He feels someone pull him up– blue, red and white kevlar against bruised skin and he’s already pushing away.

“Sam, where–” he blinks furiously, trying to read what word’s Sam’s got on his mouth because his head is still spinning. “She–”

He hears something about Thor and building and searching and forces himself to look at the force of a multistory highrise that’s collapsed into rubble on the street.

Something about impaled and sacrificed and he feels like vomiting violently, shoving Sam aside to stumble through the dust and smoke, teeth clamping down on his heart in his mouth.

Thoughts of you waiting under rocks, choking while fly ash turned your lungs to rock, suffocating.  Every second of his incompetence is a second you spend wasting away where he couldn't find you.

It takes hours for Thor to give up searching through the rubble. It takes Bucky days.

It took a few seconds for the sky to turn red. It took weeks to turn from crimson to the ghost of blue it still remains.

God of the Night Sky and A Man Too Slow.

Your body is never found, and Bucky never forgives himself. It takes a whole month to be able to look at the night. Some days he hides his face from the moon, afraid of wrath.

____________

When Bucky gets the call, he isn’t exactly sure how to respond. One, because he didn’t even know you had his number memorised and two, he’s not sure how you’ve allowed yourself to get arrested. But it’s 2am and he’s on his motorcycle, on the way to the police station, still entirely confused about what exactly was going on.

“That’s him.” You point, jumping up from behind the bars.

You look lovely– someone’s gotten you out of the battle armour he usually sees you in, and into something that passes as authentically Earth-like.

He makes a mental comment to tell you, but to still be discreet about it. He's not really sure where the both of you stand these days. You've got him agreeing to braids in his hair like a viking, and sitting next to him during team nights. He's got you reading the entirety of Lord of the Rings and going to museums with him to steal back his belongings. But he's not really sure.

Bucky’s eyebrow twitches at the fact that they’ve got you locked up, but you look entirely unfazed like it’s a new restaurant or escape room you’re checking out. Excited, even.

"Hey,” he says calmly to whoever wants to listen, “what the fuck?”

The grin you give him is sheepish and he already kinda wants to laugh, but he fights back a smile.

“Broke two tables at the bar two blocks down,” the officer replies. “Looks like she was going for a third.”

“I promise, I did not mean to,” you swear to him. “I did not realise your furniture would be so weak.”

Bucky looks at the officer wearily. “Had t’lock her up for that?”

Whatever the officer was expecting, it was not Bucky's lack of respect for the law or private property.

“Well– superpowers– we’re not really sure–” he stammers.

You watch the man curiously, while Bucky's eyes flicker over to you. He knows you could bend the bars of the jail cell and walk right out, so indulging them was clearly a choice.

“I’m an Avenger, I’ll take it from here,” he interrupts, making his way over to you.

“I’m gonna need to see some ID–”

“Google it,” he bites back, before turning to you. “Y’okay?” 

“I’m great,” you reply, full of life as if it wasn’t the middle of the fucking night. “It was a lot of fun.”

“How’d you know my number?” He mentions for the guard to unlock the gate, ignoring the swelling in his stupid chest.

“We are friends, are we not?” you ask, a bit confused.  

Bucky can't figure out if he's surprised or disappointed- a good mix of both, perhaps. He's glad you consider him a friend, but something in him aches dully. He positively despises it and how often it's been creeping up on him whenever he sees you around the compound. He was a 100 years old, not some lovesick fuckin' teenager.

“Yeah. We are,” he agrees, turning to glare at the officer who was holding up his phone, eyes darting between it and Bucky’s face. “Could y’move faster? It’s late.”

The guy hurriedly unlocks it and you step out, stretching your arms over your head before waving goodbye to the guy and sauntering off. He watches you go for a second before pressing back a small smile.

“The bar-”

“Tell them to get stronger tables,” Bucky calls from over his shoulder, not even waiting for a reaction. “Send the paperwork to the Avengers office, and put the bail on the tab.”

He finds you outside, arms crossed over your chest while you wait for him.

“Thank you.” You give him a smile. “I forgot that it would be late for you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he waves off. “Wild night, huh?”

He had heard that some of the agents who had shifted here recently were checking out the hubs around town, but he had no idea that you’d be with them. It made sense in hindsight. More often than not, you were seeking recommendations and guides on how to learn what it was like here.

“I’ve seen worse.” Your eyes shine, and for a second he thinks that they even glimmer like starlight. “I did not realise breaking tables would be such an issue.”

“Yeah, we tend to be possessive over stuff,” he scratches his neck, almost embarrassed for his kind. “Coulda kept the cops out of it, don’t know why they had to go through all this.”

“I will have them replaced. Ours will not break, they’re made for Asgardian parties after victories in battle.”

He nods slowly and wonders if a crane would be enough to lift the table into the joint. It was nearly 3am, and he was out here with you in front of a police station, and he can't stop his stomach from fluttering. He wants to punch himself.

“Are you hungry?” you ask suddenly.

Bucky’s head tilts. He definitely had dinner….maybe. Half a leftover burrito and an apple.

“I’m starving,” you add. “I saw this place along the way here–”

Not to rub it in, but Bucky Barnes, smooth player and charmer extraordinaire, blanks. He's about sixty years off his game, and sure, he thinks you’re real pretty and that maybe he’s always wanted to know what it’d be like to buy you dinner and maybe hold your hand? If you were good with that? Maybe even–

“Like a date?” he blurts out and immediately wrings his fingers.

You falter and he wishes he was never born. “A date?”

“Like– getting dinner together,” he tries to remedy. “Breakfast. What time is it?”

“Yes, that is what I asked.” Your head cocks to the side to match his in confusion.

“No, like– like different. Not just dinner– yeah, dinner, but more–” Christ alive, he wishes he could run into traffic, but the road was deserted.

You wait for him to explain a little better where he was trying to get at. He can feel his ears burning bright.

He just shuts up instead.

“Dinner-breakfast, but more,” you test slowly.

“...more romantic?” he tries finally, defeated. “A date. Romantic date– I’m tryin' to ask you out here.”

"Oh.”

The world is very still. He thinks he will hand in his resignation tomorrow and disappear.

He had done his part, embarrassed his mother and every internet poll that deemed him the most suave and mysterious Avenger, and could now die in peace.

“A date it is, then. Breakfast-dinner, but more,” you reply.

Oh. He thinks he’s probably going to combust but you lean over to press a small kiss to his cheek, and now he’s sure he’s going to combust.

“Humans think too much,” you say simply.

"Think I'm more of an exception than the norm,” he mumbles.

"Aren't I lucky," you tease, and tap on the helmet. “Don’t suppose you’ve got an extra?”

Bucky’s eyes fly open, and the blankets get kicked off in a frenzy. His chest heaves as he sits up, rubbing furiously at his eyes.

He knew it was going to be bad, but he didn’t think it would be this fucking insidious. 

He moves to wipe the sweat from his brow but comes back dry. The air is still cold even though he keeps the window shut, and he turns to it to see a thunderstorm taking place outside.

He watches the drops pelt against the window and trees shake violently for a moment, forcing himself to breathe as he rakes his hand through his hair.

Before it clicks, and his stomach drops.

“Fuck,” he hisses, not even bothering to throw on a jacket before bolting outside.

The path that he’s trodden a thousand times before looks entirely unknown, and had he not been reliant on his muscle memory he would have had no clue where he was heading. Inky blue trees, harsh and sharp, and he's sure he's gotten a few scratches on his face already as he sprints through the forest to the lake.

The boulder is there, the carving of your name remains but the hut of sticks and leaves-- it lays strewn across the land.

And the hair tie. The fucking hair tie.

He crawls miserably on his arms and knees, relying on the light from a clouded moon to guide him through every inch of grass. Eyes burning red, he continues to scour until morning breaks with twilight.

6 years he’s kept it with him. 6 years, and it’s gone with the rain.

He lets out a cry, fist driving into the earth, barely met with any resistance.

God of the Night, and Devil of Misery.

_______

The flowers had dried up and left him to rot with them. The lake was troubled on more days than not. He had a ring that was neither entirely yours, neither entirely his and no more than the traces of your skin in his memory.

So this time when the idea appears to him like a snake, crawling and inching up his back to tell him that he deserves it, you deserve it. It would solve everything.

He is no stronger than Eve. He had fallen from grace a long time ago. He shudders just as he did the first time, but now it felt like more reprieve.

_____________

“James,” it greets, hollow like a windchime.

His voice comes out more gruffer than he expects from months of unuse, “Got a minute?”

The light retreats further into the house, away from him. He watches it fade as it travels, unsure of what to do until it pauses, hovering in one spot.

It waits for him, he realises. He slips the beanie off his head and into his pocket, before hesitantly taking a step into the cabin. The floorboards creak under the weight of him the way his own used to months ago. Now they were well-worn and all the corners that made the most noise were identified and memorised. The house and its resident both stayed silent.

Bucky finds Wanda with her eyes closed, palms pressed into her knees as she sits midair, body levitating like she was held up by a marionette.

The room is lit dimly, the only light enough to see Wanda and he understands that the woman he met years ago and the one in front of him now were not the same. Even without his serum, he has a feeling the hair on his body would be standing up, adrenaline replacing desperation and fingers bound tightly into a fist. But even with his senses on high alert, Bucky finds it hard to find a reason to care.

“You found me.”

They gave him back his laptop. He knew the Avengers had eyes on her– but only because she was allowing them.

“What brings you here?” she asks, eyes still closed.

“I need a favour,” Bucky replies, voice unnaturally strong.

“Most do,” she hums, bones cracking when her head creaks to the side. “What is it that you want, James?”

“Got a feeling you already know,” he replies.

“Humour me.”

Bucky’s eyes burn the more he continues to stare. He feels sweat trickle down his back in a clean line. The room felt like it was closing in on him with every pulse of light, crawling into his skin and scraping up and down his bones until–

“I want to bring her back from the dead.”

Wanda’s eyes stay shut but a sick, twisted sort of smile works at the corner of her mouth. “Who?”

“You know who,” he swallows thickly.

Wanda straightens her head till she is sitting pin straight again, eerily firm as if her spine had been replaced with a rod.

“It has been months. Nature would not have been kind to her.”

“But it’s possible,” he says– asks, really.

“Anything is,” Wanda tuts. “But all that time would have eroded away at her.”

“We never found the body." He hates how his voice quivers for a second. “And she’s not from this Earth. That’s gotta count for something.”

“Depends.”

“Can you do it?”

“I can.”

Bucky feels relief flood into his system, an ecstatic sort of euphoria that has his heart lead–

“But I won't.”

And it goes back to how it was. Cold. Bitter. Was this some sick fucking joke?

“Why?” His voice drops an octave.

“Time will heal you. Getting in the way of that is only harmful to you.”

Real fuckin’ rich coming from you, he wants to scream.

“I tell you this because I know from experience.” It’s almost as if she reads his mind. Probably does. “Bringing someone back from the dead is not what you think it is.”

“I’ll handle it. Whatever it is.”

“Can you?”

Bucky wavers, brows furrowing. “Yes.”

Wanda hums, the same smile from before returning to her face. “Your spirit is admirable. But I’m afraid I can’t grant you this wish.”

Bucky feels white hot inside, and like his world crumbles into a dark heaving mess. “Wanda–”

“It’s for your own good, James.” If he wasn’t so full of rage he’d maybe hear the fondness that hid behind a few of her words.

“How would you know?” he snaps. “Vision wasn’t human–”

Wanda’s eyes snap open. Bucky is forcefully shoved a step back, arm jumping up in front of him in a second. For the first time he notices that the light wasn’t shining on Wanda– it was coming from her. Crimson red and pulsating as fast as the blood raced through her veins.

“You think Vision was the first time I’ve lost someone?” Her voice is cold. “You met him, James. You knew his name.”

Bucky’s grown to carry guilt on his back like Atlas. A little bit more is hardly a burden. “This– it’s going to be different,” he says. “She’s not a mutant, she’s a God, Wanda–”

“So you think you can match up to that by playing one?” Wanda’s voice raises. “You don’t get to pick who stays dead. You don’t get to choose. I didn’t. None of us did.”

“I wasn’t there when she died. If I was, then maybe–”

“That doesn’t mean anything. I cannot give you this favour.”

“Then consider it repayment. Of a debt,” he finally exclaims. “You said it. You owed me one. I’m cashin’ it in.”

Days of starvation just so that the kids could eat. If his handlers knew, they’d make him kill them with his bare hands. He gladly accepts fifteen more broken bones just so that the twins are kept together, and even when he goes back under, the sight of their big eyes, too big for their faces, staring at him haunts him in his nightmare.

“I just want another chance.” Bucky’s stare is strong, voice steady. “I’m tired of praying. I’m sick of it. I’ve been begging my whole life for a second chance at everything. You think I want to be here? That I get to be the one that’s still alive?”

The glow around Wanda looks like it should burn her. All consuming and vicious, like blood splattered on a wall.

“Please,” his voice reduces to the strength of a child. “Just try. That’s all I’m askin’.”

Bucky watches as the light slowly dims to a silhouette, leaving him blinking back the burn on his iris. He loosens his fist, knowing later that his fingernails probably broke through the skin of his palm.

Wanda’s chest rises and falls.

She closes her eyes. “Leave.”

He wordlessly turns on his heel. It was stupid of him to hope, he supposes.

______________

Autumn dies for December to grow, and he starts staying inside more than he already does. Snowfall covers the roof and the treetops. He swaps eggs for soup and makes batches large enough to last the whole day. The ground freezes over, and he looks for ways to keep his self-sustaining system going, but trips to town become more frequent.

Sam visits once more, and brings some more things with him this time. Books, a journal, some old box sets of shows. Bucky nods along to the conversation, asks after his family and when the time comes, rejects another offer to come to spend Christmas at the compound.

He accepts Sam’s flowers with more grace than the last time. The door closes, and he leaves it by the couch.

__________

He attempts to rebuild it. Pulls together some stronger branches and heavier stones. A new memorial lays together half-heartedly. Dejected. A little miserable looking.

He stares at it a little too long before one swoop of his arm cracks it in half and leaves it strewn across the grass.

Bucky doesn't try again.

__________

“Did you come up with the constellations?”

It's a stupid question, but he's always curious about you.  

“Hm,” you reply at first. “Not in the sense that you’d think.”

Bucky turns away from looking into the abyss and towards you. His flesh hand continues to trace shapes into your skin as your neck rests on his bicep.

“I didn’t place them in a way that was meant to be drawn,” you reply. “My mother used to tell me when I was a child that the spirits of those I cherished would live on through parts of our creations. For others, it would be through groves of orchards, or rain that corrode caves into mountains.”

Bucky watches the fingers of your free hand dance nimbly, while the other stays tucked between the both of you.

“I was young when I realised that certain lights were brighter when I felt too much for someone. Pain, joy, rage,” you continue, fingertips pointing upwards, “Those stars, satellites– whatever you wanted to call them– they were the ties I had to those I loved. So sometimes, I would move them with me so that every time I looked up, I would see that I had company.”

He tears his eyes away from you and towards where you were gesturing. It’s subtle at first, but then he sees– stars moving faster than they should, darting all around the canvas of the night like runaway splotches.

“Over time, those on earth noticed patterns and called them constellations. I’ve always seen it as my family,” you say, gently dragging a barely lit star from the corner of his eye towards the centre.

“That’s for Thor. Sif.” You take turns to point. “Loki. Fandrall. Hogun. My parents.”

Each seems to glow a little brighter as you call out their name. “There’s one for you, as well.” Your finger drops, finding its way back to comfort on his chest.

Bucky’s eyebrows raise.  

“You’ll have to see for yourself which one it is.” You leave a kiss on his jawline, and he instinctively tugs you a bit closer. “It won’t be any fun if I tell you.”

He doesn’t need to ask. There’s one slightly to your left, that’s glowing a little brighter tonight than the rest. His chest swells, and there's a profound sort of speechlessness that engulfs him. He never really knows what to say around you anyway.

“Really fuckin’ love you, you know that?” he mumbles into your the skin of your temples.

“I’ve got a clue or two.” You laugh and along with you, so does the sky.

___________

Bucky eyes fly open, fingers digging deep into the pillow. Not because of the way his brain was choosing to torture him again.

But the fact that the fucking person from before was back at his door, even though it was the middle of the fucking night.

He lets the first three knocks go unanswered but by the fifth one, he’s ready to unleash the force of the shitty month he’s had into whoever was here to drop off the next box of fucking whatever.

He doesn’t even bother pulling on shoes or straightening out his clothes. Hair wild and untamed and fury in his eyes, he marches down the steps of the cabin with a select choice of words for SHIELD and their stupid protocols.

With enough force to pull the door from its hinges, he yanks the door open, eyes ablaze and mouth set in a scowl.

And the earth stops spinning. 

The absolute wind gets knocked out of him and he’s scared to even blink because this has happened to him before. It’s happened, and his eyes have closed and it’s left and he can’t afford that again–

He freezes when a hand reaches out to touch his bicep. Because that has never happened before. He’s always woken up before this.

At the threshold of the cabin, he falls to his knees. His joints ache the same way they did in church all that time ago when his fury was masked with tears.

“Oh,” he whispers, kneeling before the essence of a God he thought abandoned him.

“Bucky?” you ask, confused and soft, hand reaching out to cup his cheek before lowering yourself to his height.

Bucky makes somewhere between a strangled noise and a strange laugh, head reeling.

“You’re back.” His hands fall at your waist lightly like he’s afraid to disrupt still water.

“What’s–” your sentence is interrupted when your eyes roll back into your head.

Moments later it goes limp, and his reflexes move faster than he can comprehend as he grabs you, body springing into action when his mind gives up on him.

He lets out a sigh of relief loud enough to be a sob, fervently holding up the dead weight and a rhythm returns to the stillness of the night, one he’d forgotten the sound of. If he was even the slightest bit aware, more than grateful, he would see the signs from then. His vibranium doesn’t warm when it meets the sliver of skin as he bunches up your shirt in his grip. It feels like he’s breathing in Antarctic air, not spring drafts.

“Thank you,” he whispers against your shoulder to whoever is listening. “Fuck– God, thank you.”

_______

"It's been a month."

"A week, and that's pushing it."

"You're pushing it," you mumble, tightening the straps of your armour, "I do not know how you live like this. Do you always just stare at the ceiling when you're bored?"

"Sometimes I like to switch it up. Look at the floor," Bucky adds gruffly, to a roll of your eyes. "Maybe the door on the days I'm feelin' real fancy."

"You will just let your TV lay that way? With half the screen missing?"

He shrugs half-heartedly. "Sports season's done. Got nothin' to watch."

"Hmm," you pause a second. "'No' to your offer then. You may take that as my formal reply."

"'No' to Thai takeout later?" Bucky squints out into the twilight through the window of the ammunition room. "Lebanese then?"

You raise your eyebrows, tightening the leather around your wrists. "Goodbye, Barnes."

"Bye," he replies, checking to see if his knives sat securely in his old tactical pants.

You send him a nod before you start striding towards the door.  The jet had landed a while ago, still onloading agents and recruits from the compound. 

Bucky's arm jets out to grab your elbow, pulling you back into him. He's well aware it's only because you let him.

"I'm kiddin'," Bucky laughs at the matching smile on your face. "I'll get it fixed. I'll fix it myself. Just marry me, please. I'm growin' old here, sweetheart. All this questioning's not good for my heart."

"You're already old. And we will talk about it when we get back," your fingers press gently into his chest, and he can feel your touch even through the bulletproof vest. "Your laws-"

"There's no law out there that says ex-enemies of the state and Gods can't marry. Even if there is, it'll be just another one I have to break."

Your eyes twinkle when you laugh. Bucky sees remnants of old cosmos in there, as he always has.

"We'll talk about it when we get back," you promise. "Be safe."

"Can't guarantee that."

"Try not to die, then."

"Always."

He can't remember a time when he wasn't the last one on the jet, owing to goodbyes like this. You never opted to join them, reaching the same way Thor does.

The night was uncharacteristically calm, especially since he knew that miles away you were about to step into another battle. But it's good. The night means you will be at your strongest, and that is what he hopes for.

Bucky allows a few seconds of silence to take you in, skin glowing even against harsh fluorescent lighting and a cool air of confidence around you. You raise an eyebrow at him, because this is far from the first time he has done this. He would never divulge why.

He takes a chance to press a quick kiss to your lips, humming. "I'll get the TV fixed when we're back."

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Barnes." You smile, thumb swiping across the dent in his nose, an imperfection in a sea of many. "Thai for dinner?"

"Lemme check my calendar." Bucky takes a step back, feeling his heart constrict in a way that he's gotten used to craving. "I may have an opening."

"Please, don't try too hard."

"I'll have my secretary get back to you."

You roll your eyes, fighting a smile. "I love you."

"So, that's a yes then?"

"Get on the plane, Bucky." You sigh. "You already know the answer."

"Love you more." He grins at you, bright and like he's never known sadness. "Catch you later."

____________

In the days that pass, he doesn’t know how to be.

His body leaves him no choice–  staying up all night, waiting for Wanda to show up at the door, fingers burning to take it all back. He keeps the doors locked and windows shut, as if ageing wood would provide any sort of a barrier when it came to her will.

Bucky walks around in a trance, eyes glossy and body stiff like he isn’t sure how much of what he’s seeing is real.

Your body, housed in his old clothes, looks three seconds away from death. He keeps a bucket by the bed from when you cough up dust, the last remainder of old organs. He massages leg spasms, and muscle cramps from your neck.

He keeps a towel close by for the nausea and anything in between as your body fights off the shock of a rebirth. Allopathy is useless when you're a God either way, so he resorts to herbs and roots to alleviate as much as he can.

Your lungs struggle for air at night. He’s already awake, propping you up to make sure you’re breathing better. He rubs at your back in circles the same way he used to do for Steve and finally takes a breath when the wheezing subsidies.

He fervently tells you he loves you every time you slip back under, and wipes at your forehead with a wet cloth to ease the warmth. He’s met with coughing fits and clenched eyes.

Exactly one week from your return, a trip downstairs to gather more firewood for the room and Bucky falters to a stop near the kitchen.

There's a note pinned to the dining table with no indication as to how it got there.

The debt is repaid. This was by your will. Whatever happens next will be by hers.

Every hour, he watches rotting flesh, dissolved muscles and clotted blood crawl out of your mouth. He forces himself to watch. It was his choice after all.

Bringing you back from the dead was never going to be easy.

_________

A week later, the remains of your old body stop exhuming itself. Perspiration beads line your forehead, and he thinks the salt of sweat is your first act of creation. 

Your breath steadies. Nights go smoother. He learns he can live off of two hours of sleep. 

He toys with the idea of telling someone. Sam. Thor, even.  But your lips are bluer than he’s ever seen, even more than when he’d introduced you to blueberry juice pops when the heat beat down on you both in July, and you’d kissed his red-stained ones. 

The longer he stares at you, he dismisses the idea. Something in him says that beyond being something they could accept, they could actively bring a stop to what he was doing right now. 

He couldn’t afford that. Not now, not ever; not when he’s let you down once before already. It’s a secret for now, then. For as long as it needs to be. 

__________

In the days later your nervous system seems to be rewiring itself. The first time he sees you with your eyes open, the plates he’s holding clatter to the floor. 

“Hey,” he whispers, fingers clutching the side of the bed, “Hey, honey. Can you hear me?”

But your eyes never meet his. He slowly follows your gaze to the closed window, eyes glassy and surrounded by strings of red. 

He sees you mouth something, and desperate as he is, he never truly understands what it is before you’re gone again.  

His exhale leaves staggering, head dipping to your arm as he clenches his eyes tight till he sees spots. 

_____________

Bucky starts leaving the windows open. The ones in your room, at least, and only when he's there to keep watch.

It becomes a mission then. The next time you opened your eyes couldn’t be to the desolation he lived in for months. He looks for flowers. Vines. Anything to make the place look less dreary and miserable. He cleans the blinds, and dusts the paintings in the room.

The cells in your body seem to be working overtime– every day there is a little bit less that reminds him of where you came from. Scabs fall away faster than they grow, leaving unbroken skin.

He notices it late. There is only one wound that remains-- a red, jagged scar along your stomach. It looks angry. Heals slower than the rest of them. It is the only place Bucky sees specks of gold instead of bronze when you exert yourself too much.

__________

It takes a good amount of time. He should have anticipated it— the next time you awake, and the next few times after that are only when the sun chases beyond the horizon. 

He drops to your side with questions of “can you hear me?” or “does something hurt?” but each time, something outside the widow holds your attention dear to its chest and unwilling to share.

The moon rays become an elixir more powerful than anything from this Earth. Light almost surrounds you like a cloak, sinking into your skin and drowning in your bones. 

He stays up at night, massaging your arms and your temples, but you are still so cold to the touch he isn’t sure the blood is circulating at all. So he gets more firewood. Makes sure the house is warm all the fucking time.  

Stagnant. Still. Some nights he thinks he can see you looking at him from the corner of your eye.

The second he turns, you lay unmoving as before.

________

He stands labouring over the stove. There's a batch of rich tomato soup, with bread toasting in a skillet nearby. He alternates between wiping down the bowl to serve you in, though you still haven’t eaten, and stirring the soup to stop it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. 

He makes note that he still has to get more gauze from the town, and proper tools to sand down the chairs before he can even think of--

But something interrupts his to-do list. It's so soft, he thinks for a second he's imagining it. But the ladle he's holding clangs against the pot, and he abandons the bowls with such hurry that he wouldn't be surprised if it's in shards.

He races up the stairs, three at a time, his heart is thumping louder than the floorboards creaking.

It’s silent. He can hear his own arm whirring quietly.

He lets out a breath when he sees you haven’t changed positions since he last saw you, and wordlessly turns to head back downstairs to an over-bubbling cauldron of soup. 

"Bucky?"

It’s almost like eternity whooshes past his ears when he realises that he wasn't imagining it.

“Hey.” He drops without a second thought to your bedside, knees scraping against the wood. “Hey. Hi sweetheart. What do you need?”

“Water,” your voice is hoarse and just above a whisper, but you’re looking at him.

You’re fucking looking at him, and your eyes are a share darker than he remembers them being.

He makes a grab for the jug by your bed and holds a full glass to your lips carefully, watching as water treacles in through chapped lips. 

"How are you feelin’?" He hates how shaky his voice sounds, as if he wasn't prepared. As if he hadn’t been waiting.

It takes a second for you to form the word. "Tired."

His fingers brush against your cheek. "What can I do for you?"

You don’t respond, and he watches your chest rise and fall heavily again. You were asleep again.

He bites into his lower lip so hard he can taste the rust of his blood. Moonlight filters in through your curtain and he runs his thumb over the corner of your eye, placing a kiss on your forehead.

It was a start.

___________

Bucky grew up with siblings he outlasted and an absolute wildfire of a friend. It was safe to say the man had more patience than most.

The same conversation repeats three more times over the next few days, and he answers each time with as much tender refrain as the first, begging to know where he can help and what he can do.

“Tired” turns to “I’m tired” turns to “I’m just tired”, and with each he is as proud and hopeful as he was when you talked the first time. 

You begin to eat finally, and he hopes his skills aren’t bad enough to send you to the other side again. Spoonfuls of soup. Bites of bread. A glass of water, and then two. 

“Buck,” you rasp.

And he’s as ready as he was the previous day, with a gentle, “Tell me, sweetheart.”

You’ve already gotten a slice of bread into you today, and you’ve slept through the night. He’s considering this one of the best days you’ve had so far, and that alone is triumph enough to ease the anxiety that pervades him. 

“I was dead.” But this was new. 

Bucky blinks, not sure if he heard you right. Your eyebrows knitted together tells him he did. 

“You were,” he confirms, not daring to breathe. 

“But now…” you trail off, as if you were expecting to wake up that minute. 

His Adam’s apple shifts up and down. “Things changed.”

“How?” you ask, eyebrows pulling together even tighter, and he worries it takes energy that could be used elsewhere.

The muscles in his jaw tighten anxiously. The floorboards press into his knees. 

"You did something?" your voice comes back quietly. 

His silence is enough of an answer.

"How long was I gone?"

"It’s been a while, honey," he replies, eyes never leaving yours. 

Your head turns to face the ceiling, a deep exhale working its way through you. Bucky's eyes drift to the scar on your stomach, hidden under the fabric. Thorny and broken.

"Who knows?"

His gaze shifts back to your face, but you aren't looking at him.

"Only me," he says, voice unwittingly dropping before adding, "and Wanda."

"Wanda," you repeat quietly. "It was magic."

Something familiar sets into Bucky's chest. Heavy, pressing down on his throat and making the bile rise.

"I'll get you more water," he says, pausing briefly to look at you, but you continue to stare at the roof. "I'll be right back."

You don’t have a response for him. As he makes his way to the door, it follows like a shadow. He pauses by the frame to look at you once again, but your eyes have closed.

Bucky watches for a second, swallowing thickly. It feels all too similar to guilt.

__________

Bucky dedicates himself even more vigorously to the house. He finally takes out the cutlery, cleans it up the best he can and wipes down the table every single day.  He spends the day collecting fruits for juices and vegetables for broth. Firewood. Making sure everything is sharp enough to use, and the traps he set up in his initial time here were still functional.

He checks to see if the trees can take the weight of the swing he’s hoping to fashion out of bark. How fast it would take to polish the porch chairs and flooring, and what exactly it would take to do that.

No matter how much he cleans, it isn’t enough to wipe the look on your face from where it was seared into his brain like hot iron.  

A week later he's in the garden, digging up the ground to plant seeds. It's January, and it's still fucking freezing, but he's gonna fucking try anyway.

He's got a hold of seeds of poppy, marigold, daisies and who knows what else, and plenty of fucking time.

"You garden now?"

He looks up in surprise. You lean against the backdoor, no winter coat on even though it's freezing. It flashes in his mind that you look paler than you used to, and he wonders if that will go in time. 

“I’ve always gardened,” Bucky defends weakly, and tries to keep his tone normal. “Just– not well.”

Arms crossed over your chest, you ask, “Has that changed?"

“Can’t say it has, sweetheart." He looks at the mess he's created on the ground. "'M tryin', though.”

The corner of your lip upturns into a faint smile. His stomach twists painfully.

"You're up," he says, a little too late. It came faster than he thought it would. Then again, you weren’t human. You didn’t always listen to the laws of nature. 

"Y'feeling cold?" he adds quickly. 

You shrug, pushing off from the door to slowly take a seat. Your legs dangle off the ledge of the porch, barefoot. Bucky waits for you to swing your legs like you always have but you stay still.

He dusts his hands on his jeans and stands, tugging his jacket off his shoulders and holding it out to you. "Can I?" 

"Go on," you allow, and he drapes it around your shoulders, making sure it isn't likely to slip off before stepping back.

A draft blows past you both without either of you saying a word. Discarding the little shovel on the ground, Bucky chooses to take a seat beside you instead.

"You will feel cold, won't you?" 

"I'll be fine, don't worry 'bout me," he reassures. 

"Seems like you have it covered already," you say, making a motion to imitate the shape of his beard. "Mighty fine mane you've got there, James. You could give Odin a run for his money."

He gives a short chuckle, threading his hands through his hair that reaches down to his shoulders.

He’s finding it hard to formulate words. He couldn’t even tell if his mind was racing or entirely blank.

"You've got grey in your beard now," you observe. It sounds wistful. Sad even, and all of a sudden he’s left realising that he doesn't know how long it has been for you.

"Been a while since I got a haircut." 

Christ, he was drier than a brick. His conversational skills and charm had deserted him along with the rest of his luck. 

You lift your eyes from his beard to his face, scanning from his hairline down to his chin. "You look as handsome as you always have," you say and his heart jumps. "Just a bit..."

Sadder. Tired. Mistrusting.

"Older," you settle on.

He'd grown more wrinkles than he could count, and his skin didn't bounce back as much as it used to.

Beyond that, he smiled a lot less. He spent more time thinking than verbalising.

“You need help?” He hears you ask faintly, head gesturing to the patch of dug-up mud.

“You need to get rest,” Bucky shakes himself out of it. “I’ll get you some–”

“I’ve rested long enough, Buck,” you say assertively. 

He wonders if you did. Bucky remembers what you told him of Asgardian funerals. How your body is set floating along a river, and your soul lifts towards the sky to rest. You never got to have that. He doesn’t even know if they sent an empty log along a cold river.

"Tomorrow?" he delays.  

You look at him briefly before nodding.The ground stays untouched and the sky still greys. Bucky sees you take a few deep breaths, shuddering when a draft of wind blows by. He silently shrugs off his scarf too, and wraps it around your neck loosely.

You simply let him. Minutes pass in silence, and neither of you make any motion to move. 

You bump your shoulder into his. "I see you haven't fixed the TV yet."

A swift exhale leaves him in the form of a laugh. He turns away so that you don't see how his eyes begin to burn.   

"Sorry, honey," he croaks out, "I've been distracted."

The smile you give him is melancholic, and that's enough to dissolve his red eyes from a warning into tears.

_________

Bucky buys every single streaming platform available, and every channel available on cable.

That night he takes apart every single component of the television, wipes it down and puts it back together better than before. He only rests when it's 2am and the sound of late night commercials softly flood the living room.

__________

Bucky takes the guest bedroom, initially, a floor away from you to give you the space you need. 

He then realises it's too far, it's too risky. Sheepishly, he shifts to the same room as you, but makes himself a place to sleep on the floor with blankets and a pillow.

You voice your protest, and even though he’s spent three years curled up beside your sleeping frame, he says his back could use the hard surface now. 

He gets you clothes from town. Sweaters and socks, scarves. Things he knew you used to like and things he always promised he'd get if he had another chance. You take them with a small smile and a thanks. He sees you wear them around the house, and while they're exactly the size they should be, and the colours he knows you love.

There's a nagging feeling in him that they don't sit right. They don't look right. Still, you wear them on the days you can leave the bed. He shows you around the house. The good parts, at least, and pretends like that’s how he’s always lived even though he can tell you see right through his facade. 

He’s there when you thrash around at night. Bucky's up before the minute is even over, at your side and gently calling your name till you jolt awake. He hands you glass after glass of chilled water, rubbing your back in circles till the wave passes. It’s entirely too reminiscent of what you used to do for him, and he hopes the familiarity would do you good. 

Sometimes you tell him what you saw. Darkness enveloping you for hours, holding you close and sliding its vines over you, binding your limbs like rope before you're shoved into blinding light.

“Last I remember was the fight," you say one night, as he wipes the sweat from your forehead. "I cannot tell how much of it was real, it's--"

And you pause and struggle, and he's at a loss for words because you never have been. You've always known what to say. You've always had a thought you wanted to share. 

"Thor told me a little bit," he offers quietly. "If you'd want, I'd tell ya."

You look at him, conflict raging behind drained irises. "I was fighting. I heard them say something about-- there was a building with civilians hiding."

"Yeah, there was," he confirms, voice tight.

"They wanted to-- do something to it." You close your eyes, brows furrowing in concentration. "I told Thor I would get them out before anything happens. We had done it so many times before."

"He said there was an explosion."

The sky explodes from the early azure of dawn to a blinding white to a blood-curdling crimson.

And Bucky was too slow to get you out.

"I don't remember that," you say and his eyebrows furrow. "I remember--"

Bucky watches you hesitate for a second before your hands nimbly move the fabric of your shirt slightly to reveal the outline of the scar, inhaling sharply. 

"I wasn't careful enough. There were civilians I was getting out and someone from behind--"

It dawns in a slow realisation the reason why the scar hadn’t healed yet. Why it stood out from the others that littered your skin. Bucky had thought for this long that you'd died in a blaze, trapped under bricks and mortar. That you had been left suffocating because he hadn't been fast enough, that he wasn't good enough.

"I knew I would not be awake for long. I just wanted to get rid of as many of them as I could."

"The building came down." He swallows the rock in his throat. "We spent days searching through it."

"I think I was gone before the explosion happened."

It makes sense-- the sky shifted all too quickly that day. You were gone before he even had the chance. Your fate had already been sealed. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I should have been there.”

“I’m glad you weren’t. It wasn’t a pretty sight.”

"That's not–" his words come out in a rush, stumbling over each other, insistent. "If I was there--"

"There is no point in punishing yourself," you interrupt his spiral. "It was a choice I made. I would do it again. It was what had to be done."

He swallows thickly when he knows the conversation ends there. 

__________

Some nights Bucky settles on pressing a kiss to your knuckles, and lingers there for a second longer than he should. 

You turn to face him from your place on the bed, looking at him like you've known him for centuries. Some nights it feels like you have.

_________

Bucky builds you a swing. It's a little ridiculous, and it takes a whole week to do it.

But your face breaks into the biggest smile he's seen since you got here, and he can taste the sun on his tongue. The strange feeling in his stomach is alleviated for a moment, and replaced with something closer to pride.

You spend hours on it while he works on parts of the house. He makes sure you've got a blanket with you at all times, even though you’ve never once told him you feel cold.

You ask him questions about everything. Him, the world; like you’re trying to relearn what you’ve lost.

"How long ago did you buy this place?" 

"Nearly two years ago," he replies, paintbrush in hand as he swipes up and down the deck. "Owners hadn't come here in a while and they wanted it off their hands quick, so I made an offer."

You hum, using the balls of your feet to swing yourself higher. "I have always wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this."

Bucky’s painting halts for a second as he fights a smile, but he doesn't respond. The squeaking of the swing stops. He looks over to you, only to find you already looking at him.

"Is this why you bought it?" you accuse.

Bucky returns to painting the wood, face turned away.

"You are far more of a hopeless romantic than I ever remember you being."

He scoffs out a laugh. "You'd'a run away."

"I wouldn’t have." You narrow your eyes. "I have had suitors in the past who've done far worse. You are far from the most embarrassing."

"You laughed when we kissed for the first time," he points out, amused.

Your jaw drops. "That was because I wasn't expecting it. You'd been courting me for months, I thought you were never going to move beyond that."

"I was tryin' t'be a gentleman," he defends. "I didn't know how they do it in Asgard."

"Well, for starters, they don't kiss someone after dropping tiramisu all over them."

He cringes, but it doesn't escape him that memories of the both of you feel like they're accompanied by a light this time, instead of dread. "Could you blame a fella for bein' nervous?"

"I do not know why, you had no reason to be."

He wants to ask if you've seen yourself before. He was damn near pissing himself whenever you got too close to him. The tiramisu was just collateral damage from when you chose to wipe cream smudged at the corner of his lip that night. 

When he lifts his head to look at you, you're back to swinging. Back to your own world. A new one you seem to have constructed for yourself since you came back. Back then he was privy to all your thoughts, no matter how mundane they were.

Right before he goes back to painting the deck, his brain makes a small connection. It's a small detail, but one that holds a lot more weight the more he begins to notice.

Your back curves in on itself ever so slightly. No longer pin-straight. His grip on the brush grows a little tighter.  

__________

February rolls around. Bucky's only managed to work up the courage to hold your hand occasionally when you go for walks.

Fingers laced in yours, he shows you parts of the woods he's discovered that stray from the main path. The shrubs that look like they're alight when the sunset catches them. The trees that have a hole right through the centre, like they've taken a bullet.

You keep him out longer and longer, and by now he’s run out of things to show you. He ends up repeating a lot, but you look glad each time, like you’re learning something new about him each day even though he’s dredged you through the same mud path at least thrice now.

He wants to think that it’s because you like having longer to hold his hand. 

You listen intently, asking questions whenever you could. You let him know what parts you like better, and parts you’re glad he’s left behind, even if it was recent. 

Bucky blushes from head to toe when you pick a flower and tuck it into his hair, and you smile it away with a swing of your hand. 

"You get visitors?" Your mouth moves in tandem with your fingers that weave together a crown from stray leaves and blades of grass. You tell him, even though he remembers, that it was something you learnt from Sif growing up. 

"Sam drops by every now 'n then."

"Do you visit them?" you ask, hands twisting deftly and with skill of someone who’s done this all too many times. "How has everyone been?"

Should he tell you he's been sequestered? That he dropped everything and disappeared overnight because the questions of 'are you fine?' and 'do you want to talk?' became as suffocating as a thick cloud of smoke.

"Last I heard, they were doin' alright." He hopes it's enough.

"I tried talking to Thor," you tell him casually, but it feels like a cold fist clamps down on his chest. 

“And?”

“I couldn’t hear him,” you tell him, just as normally and he’s disgusted that he feels even the tiniest bit of relief. “I couldn’t hear Heimdall either. I know he’d respond if he could hear me, so I can only assume he hasn’t.” 

“You’re sayin’ you’re not able to talk to them?” His voice sounds small.

“I believe I lost the ability to communicate with them,” you tell him, tying the last bit of grass together. “I don’t think there is precedence for when someone comes back from the dead.”

You hand him the crown, and Bucky doesn't dare to meet your eyes. It’s too small for him. It’s closer to the size for a child. 

"'M sorry, honey," he mumbles. It returns to his stomach. The sick, gnawing feeling that he’s tried to obtain salvation for.

"I still have you,” you tell him, “But you were here for this long without anyone. It must have been lonely.”

Truth be told, he never really noticed. It almost seems like he’s forgotten how it felt.

"Hasn't been for a while, now." He squeezes your hand.

"I don't like the idea of you staying here alone.” Your eyes scan his face. "You deserve to be around others."

Bucky doesn't know what it is about the way you say it-- like you're not entirely sure you're here either. Like you aren't real. 

He calls your name, unsure, scared even. You answer with a hum. 

"Are you okay with being here?" It’s too late to be asking this. 

Your face pulls together thoughtfully, but he can't decipher what you're thinking.

"I like spending time with you. Always." 

Your head leans on his shoulder, and you resume the tune you’re humming. Bucky tries not to think about the fact that you haven't quite answered his question.

_________

He wakes up on the ground again, not to your muffled groans or bed sheets being thrown to the ground.

You're not in bed. The window is open. There's scattering downstairs, and it's followed by a strange scent, and for a second he panics.

He scrambles down the stairs, mind already conjuring pictures and images so vile and ghastly--

But all he sees is you in his biggest shirt, one that you yourself once got him as a joke for a punchline he can’t really remember right now.

And you're surrounded by broken pans, bent forks and an entirely indiscernible charred mass on the bottom of a skillet.

"I tried to cook," you admit, "like on TLC."

"And you broke the pan?" he asks, a little stunned, a lot more in love. 

"I did not realise your cookware would be so weak." You try so desperately to hide a smile. "Tried to scrape it off using the fork."

He looks at the misshapen piece of cutlery.

"And what's that?" He slowly makes his way into the kitchen towards you.

"The remnants of a frittata." You hold it out to him.

Bucky takes the handleless skillet from you and looks at the ashes.

"What do you think?" you ask.

Bucky holds it back out to you. "Could use a few more minutes on the stove."

The smile you try to hold back breaks into laughter and his face lights up in surprise. It's the first time since you've gotten here, and the first time in years since he's been graced with the sound.

He bites his lip when you take it back from him, all while still giggling, like he doesn't quite believe his ears.

"I do believe I would fare better at toas-- oof."

Bucky pulls you into his chest, arms wrapping around you like a weighted blanket. The pan drops to the counter as his head falls to your shoulders.

"I missed you so fuckin' much," he utters desperately into your neck, clenching his eyes closed so tight it hurts.  

"I missed you too," you say softly, arms circling his waist, pulling him closer.

___________

The days start to get warmer. Your skin still stays cool to the touch. It's something he's getting used to. For years he was used to waking up at night to turn down the thermostat, just so that he could stay under the covers with you without burning up.

But while good days increase, there are the ones you spend too feverish to get out of bed. You sleep the whole day, only waking when he brings you food.

March fades the dark circles around your eyes as much as it can, but they never truly go. The scar on your stomach doesn't heal beyond a certain point, and is always ready to turn garish and violent on days you can't get your head to lift.

Bucky wonders if you’ll ever get better. 

Fevers break when the mornings do. You tell him you dream of the same thing over and over. Darkness, holding onto you with the same tenacity as a mother stops a child from running into a flame.

You walk with your shoulders drooped, and always some sleep in your smile. Sometimes he hears you call for your parents, who he knows haven't been around for a few hundred years. He hears Thor's name, and Loki's during nights that are more peaceful.

On days that are good, you spend time helping with the garden and for once, the flowers start growing. Tree bark he can't break into two, you manage with one hand. You watch shows together on the couch, and he massages your head when it's in his lap.

And finally, Bucky shows you the lake when it thaws over. Crystal clear waters let you peer at the little plants growing on the bottom, and the sunlight glows in the ripples.

You notice the engraving on the boulder before he has the chance to divert your attention. When you ask, he tells you about the little memorial and the rain and the loss of the hair tie. 

Your hand squeezes his a bit tighter. He thinks no memorial can hold a candle to that.

You look at your reflection in the water a lot. Bucky sits beside you, skipping stones to see how far it can go, like he did in the harbour as a kid. Steve always used to win, no matter how much Bucky tried. 

"There was a lake by my school when I was child," you tell him. "When I was mad, I used to skip class to go sit there for hours."

“What made you mad?” He chuckles.

“A lot of things. I had too much energy to just sit there, and that was ‘unbecoming of a future leader of Asgard’.” Your face pulls into one of distaste. “I always thought there was more to learn about the world than what their books contained.”

Bucky collects a few pebbles from around him. "Did the lake make you feel better?"

"Always." You take a stone from him to skip across the surface. "Sometimes my friends used to join. Our elders said the water had the ability to remember. Loki used to make faces, and it would always linger for a few seconds before it disappeared. Even after we thought he was gone, I'd see his face there."

Bucky stays quiet, nodding at points to let you know he was listening.

"I used to see younger versions of myself sometimes," you continue, voice distant. "It always surprised me. I thought I used to know what I looked like. It was different each time."

You inch towards the shoreline, leaning forward on your knees. The clear water looks like an open sky underneath you. "I look different now, too," you say. "But I can't remember what I used to look like."

Bucky discards his stones to come join you, leaning down to where you were. The face staring back at him pulls a sick, twisted feeling in his gut. Deep in him, he knows what you're talking about extends beyond immediate impressions. Centuries of being intertwined with the universe had always given you lines and traces that transcended your physical appearance. 

You have always felt like the God of the Night.

Now you have been to the other side and returned, seen things others haven't and still kept intact. While he doesn't have the courage to admit it, he knows in his blood what you feel like. 

He's scheduled an appointment with him many times, but always just missed it.

Now, you feel closer to the God of Death.

"You've always been beautiful. Still are." It's a band aid on a gaping, festering wound.

Even still, you look at him with a smile. "So are you."

Bucky makes the mistake of looking at his visage in the water, and immediately recoils.

"Christ," he grunts at the difference between the both of you. "What a fuckin' mess."

"Oh, it isn't that bad," you laugh, watching him contort his face.

"Easy for you to say, you look stunning." He points to your reflection. "I look like I was raised by wolves."

"You just need a shave," you hum.

"I need a new face."

You leave aside his last comment to propose something entirely new instead, "I could do that for you."

"What? Give me a new face?" he asks and you give him a pointed look. "Oh. Shave my beard?"

"Same thing, no?"

He supposes so. "Alright," he agrees, with a certainty reserved for no one else. 

A small smile appears on your face, even though you aren't really looking at him.

Bucky watches you lean forward. Your fingers dip into the water, disturbing the reflection.

_____

Late evening finds you settled on the counter, armed and ready. "Lot of trust you're putting in me."

"I'd trust you with anything," he says, looking in the mirror to check once again that foam covers every inch of hair on his jaw. "You know this."

"Still," you note, watching him tilt his chin up. "I could do this with a dagger, if you'd like."

"This works fine, thanks."

You let out a laugh, and he finally steps in front of you, satisfied with his part. You swish the razor into water once again just in case, before leaning forward.

The first swipe goes agonisingly slow. Bucky watches your face screw up in concentration as you scrape down his left cheek.

You pull back and make a face. He raises his eyebrow in question.

"You are too far away," you declare, wrapping an arm around his bicep and tugging him closer.

Your legs wrap around his waist to keep him in place, locking behind his back. His breath hitches in his throat the proximity but you appear entirely unfazed, washing the razor again.

"Are you okay?" you ask, keeping one hand on his neck for balance as you get a much better go at his face.

"Yep," he thinks he says. It may just have been a sound.

You could have spent hours there for all he cares. He's too focused on the pressure of your legs on the small of his back and the way he's basically melted into your hand.

"Your eyes have always been my favourite feature," you tell him, blade carefully running down the curve of his jaw. "When you smile hard, there are these lines in the corner. It's like you can't handle being that happy."

He can't tear his sight from you, and from the fact that this is the closest you’ve been in years. You may as well have been telling him utter nonsense, and he'd still find it hard to control his breathing.

"But I have a soft spot for this." You lightly tap the bridge of his nose. He knows immediately what you're talking about. "I will never forget how stupid you were. Throwing yourself in front of danger like that."

"Couldn't let that guy touch you," his voice comes out an octave lower than what it was. "I'd gladly take a few more punches."

"That's why they stopped pairing us up on missions." The corner of your lip upturns, and you swish the razor around in water again. "You were being reckless."

"I'd do it again."

"One scar is enough." You tilt his jaw to see if you'd gotten everything. "I don't enjoy you getting hurt on my account."

Bucky exhales deeply when you get started on the other side. His hands itch to hold your waist, pull you closer like it’s been carved into the strands of his being, but they stay by his side. 

"I tried for so long after you were gone," he tells you instead, to gain a sense of control. "I went to the therapist. I tried talkin' about it. No one got it. It was the same thing over, and over."

How do you explain that it wasn't simply a person. He thought that that was where it ended-- everything in his life had finally culminated. And that was taken too.

"Went back to the roof a month after everything happened," he continues, studying your reaction. "It was s'ppsed to be a clear night. There was nothing in the sky. I couldn't see the constellations. I couldn't see your family-- I couldn't see you."

You listen intently, but never stop working at him. The longer you spent there, the more of his old face revealed itself to you. Worn, and aged a thousand years in a few months, but it was still the still face you swore to love and cherish for aeons. 

"They took all your stuff. Said it belonged to Asgard, they couldn't keep it here. Thor went off grid. All I had was pictures of us and the hair tie you gave me."

You clean the razor off in water, eyebrows furrowing at the information.

"It felt like you were never here. Like I'd just made you up all those years." You can hear the faint trembling in his voice. "But I had memories of you in all these places-- and I couldn't stay. It was easier to move here and start again."

Looking back at him, you realise you've already finished. There was nothing left on his face to clear.

"Was it hard?" you ask finally, letting go of the razor in the water. 

He looks at you, and you know he's struggling to form the right words. He looked like he wanted to scream, rip the hair out of his scalp, punch a hole through the mirror. 

"More than anything.” His voice comes out raw and peeling. 

Bucky watches you look at him for a long moment, and he wonders if he’s said too much too soon.

But instead you kiss him.

His arms find its way back home around your waist, and he feels you sigh against his mouth before your body relaxes, tilting your head to deepen it.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there,” you breathe, forehead leaning against his. 

"Don't," he begs.

You search his eyes for any kind of a message.

He kisses you harder, pulling you flush against him.

__________

Bucky moves into your bed after you threaten him well and good, and he knows you intend to keep your promises.

For the first time since he can remember, he keeps the windows open throughout the night and throughout the day.

It’s foolish, to think he was invincible. That what you had had finally cemented itself as final.  

You both stay in as long as you want. There is no hurry, nothing to get to. You talk a lot more. You begin to tell him sometimes at night that you see glimpses of what seemed like beyond the end.

Gold. Blood of ichor. Warriors fallen in battle go to Valhalla. Trees that kissed the skies, and valleys so green it hurt. Sometimes, in the corner of your eyes, you could see those you'd lost over the years waiting for you, hand outstretched.

No matter how hard he tries, Bucky doesn’t seem to get it. Every time he thought he was dead, there was only jet black silence and crushing pain. Then again, he never truly died.

But he isn’t ignorant. Fevers and fatigue that initially lasted a day, now knock you out for a week. There are times you throw up more than you've eaten, and the dark circles look like abysses.

He worries to the point of his stomach churning. You look like you don't have the energy to be here, even though you kiss him like you do. 

Bucky runs his hands over your scalp and tells you stories of his childhood. What he felt when you moved in with him, how anxiety made space for comfort. He reads you tales from other mythologies and marks the similarities in the stories you've told him over the years.

Each time you come around your smile gets more tired. Your shoulders grow heavier and your skin loses colour.

You still cook breakfast together. You still watch TLC together to figure out the culture on earth because even after all this while, you still maintain that's the best way to do it.

Things could still be good. But more often than not, Bucky wonders if he’s unknowingly surrendered you to a life you do not wish to live. 

_______

"Sweetheart?"

You continue to drag your finger through the water, oblivious to what he's saying. 

He calls your name, and there's still no response. April sees this happening more often, and Bucky's learnt that no matter what he does, it only seems to worsen.

He touches your shoulder lightly and you almost jump.

"It's getting late. Wanna head back?" he asks, because you’ve skipped out on lunch to stay by the shore the whole day. It seems like it’s the only place you want to be. 

"Yeah." You give him a small smile, wiping your hands on your pants.

"Want a hand?" he asks, holding out his.

You grab it, and pull yourself up, giving him a small peck on the lips along the way.

It feels comically normal. He wants to pretend that it is.

"Pasta tonight?" you ask breezily, slipping your hand into his.

Your fingers are ice cold to the touch. He forces back a shudder.

"Anything you want," he promises.

__________

He catches you humming as you water the plants, when you walk with him, while you read from the end of the bed. 

It's the song of my people, you tell him. They used to sing it when everyone was together.

He listens to the tune and tries to commit it to memory, but it changes far too often.

May catches you staring a lot more often. At walls. The trees. The lake is the worst.

On what would have been the fifth anniversary of the both of you being together, he brings you a cake. The both of you share it over a glass of wine, even though it clashes terribly and leaves an aftertaste.

You laugh harder than you have in the last few weeks and he gets to feel triumphant for an evening. 

You chase the frosting on his lips with a searing kiss, and that's that.

“What do you suppose it means?” you ask later that night, arm wrapped around his middle.

“What?” he mumbles, drowsy from a full stomach and good time.

“That I got a second chance and others didn’t?” your voice sounds distant.

Bucky is suddenly very awake.

“It couldn’t be that they weren’t as loved," you continue. "So then what made me different?"

He doesn’t have an answer.

He rolls over to look at you. But you are staring at the ceiling once again.

_________

His unwavering faith that he can learn to live with it feels like it’s eroding. 

Death changes everyone. He knows that before Steve left a few years ago, he wasn't the same Brooklyn-born spitfire. Steve's died a dozen or so times. He was reborn into a different soul each time.

Spring bounds towards you with warmth and life. The grass is greener, and Bucky's learnt there's more to life than just casseroles and toast.

You bring him more flowers to tuck into his hair. He wears them dutifully, and then learns to press them in between pages of books you both buy from old bookshops.

You give him wider smiles. You talk a lot less. 

Bucky learns that silence doesn't have to be filled. He's loved you in the winter, and he loves you in spring.

But there is always a tension simmering under the surface, just out of reach, like the sky reflecting in the lake. 

Sometimes you say things that he can't quite make sense of. Sometimes it's a lot more obvious, and the same feeling of guilt returns to his chest and flowers under his ribs.

So he asks you one day. You're on the couch, head in his lap while he reads a book you've annotated the week before. The only disturbances are when he stops occasionally to ask you why you liked a line, or why you drew a heart next to another.

You're humming the tune he can’t catch. 

There's nothing really wrong, but he knows. He can feel it in his marrow.

“Sweetheart," he calls gently. 

You look up at him. 

"Are you– are you happy?” And he leaves his heart, raw and unprotected on the line.  

You don’t look surprised. Not entirely knowing either.

A beat passes before you open your mouth to speak. 

“I like being here with you. I love you, I always have, and I will always love being here with you,” you choose your words carefully. “But I don’t know if I can feel that anymore. Happiness, I mean. Or sadness.”

Bucky keeps the book down. You don't lift your head from his lap.

“I feel like there’s a void where my body should be,” you continue in a chance to explain, “I feel like I'm made of air.”

“Are you feeling under the weather?” Bucky tries to find a rationalisation. Anything, that he can fix. That he can control.

You slight him a smile. “Not since the last bout.”

He doesn't know. He doesn't want to get it. He’s always felt that he was selfish, that that was ultimately what led to his punishments. This was a whole new level.

“I was born on Asgard. I have always felt like I was a part of the mud and the riverbed. They were a part of me as much as I was, them. I don’t know if that’s still…”

You pause, and Bucky feels time come to a standstill around him. 

“I’ve been reborn here,” you continue. “I don’t feel like anything is mine. I don’t feel like… I am a part of something. Even the night.”

He knew. Though he knows in his dreams he can still feel traces of Brooklyn carved into his bones, it had jaded over time, been eroded by years of waking up in places he couldn't place.

You sit up to look at him. Your eyes have an intensity to it that even the universe couldn't mask. 

“Do you really like who I am now?” you ask finally.

“I love all of you. Every one.” Ever changing, transient.

“How?” you ask softly. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

He swallows thickly and wills himself to ignore the chill creeping into his body. In truth there is so much he wants to say. He doesn't think that as a war-fractured man from the thirties who grew up in bloodshed will really have the sufficient words.

“I just do. Can’t help it.”

Even if you aren’t satisfied with his answer, he will never know it. He has known for a while now that he's been letting you down since the day he walked into Wanda's cabin.

You give him a slight smile. Lay your head back down on his lap. His book remains unread.

It felt like the beginning of the end.

It's a simple decision then. It would have been, for anyone who wasn’t born with a soul as corrupt as his.

One more week that is hard for you to get up from bed, turns into two. One more week that your face morphs into something he can’t quite recognise. He's never wanted to harm someone he loves, but he seems to do a fine job at it.

It's a simple decision, really. But simple didn't mean easy-- God knows he is anything but a saint.

When you see it finally, the fruits of a labour that took far too less time to manifest than justified the time he spent putting it off, the smile that appears on your face is blinding, he wonders how the sun even has the gall to shine.

“Thor,” you breathe out, only seconds before being engulfed in the most bone-crushing hug you’ve ever received.

Bucky watches from the sidelines, fingers wringing and entirely ready to be smithed to ashes.

“I came as soon as I heard,” he breathes into your shoulder. "I cannot believe this."

You pull back, and standing next to Thor gives Bucky a new frame of reference. One that isn't dependent on how you looked the week prior. He doesn't know how it slipped past him, how he hadn't noticed that you looked so different.

“You look wonderful." You grin at the behemoth of a man. "Your hair has grown out once more."

"They can try cutting it off my dead body," he replies defiantly, arms clasping at your shoulders to keep enough distance to study you from head to toe. "You'll have to give me a second. I didn't think this would be true, when Heimdall gave me James' message."

You look over at Bucky whose lips pull together in a tight line. 

He looks embarrassed. Unsure. Afraid. Guilty, and prepared to be berated for how long it took him. 

"It's true," you reply instead, giving him a smile. "Here, in the flesh."

Thor squeezes your shoulder once more, and laughs the same laugh he's always had around you. Loud, boisterous and entirely free. 

"The others will be thrilled. Sif, Hogun-- you have no idea how the past two years have been. There is so much to catch you up on."

Bucky knows. The fact that you're standing there today is living proof that he knows so well.

“I cannot wait to meet them." The corner of your lips upturn wider at his enthusiasm. "I've missed them terribly."

"We did not get to give you a proper farewell. Your welcome back will be a thousand times better," Thor says brightly. "We can return as soon as you say the word."

You look to Bucky, not for permission, but as a question he's known has been awaiting him a long time.

"Ready?" you ask softly.

He knows you didn't have to ask. That if you'd left him there and never returned, he'd deserve it and worse.

But you're you-- patient and kind. And he thinks that he can try to start redeeming himself.

__________

Turns out he wasn't wrong. Asgard really is too grand for a fella like him.

It is opulence-- gold and towering heights that bleed the love of its citizens and a history richer than words can contain.

Thor is smart. Aside from Heimdall, who greets you with the hug a father gives a child who's been away for too long, no one knows of your appearance until you are ready.

You get a few days in the tower to yourself, to breathe in the air that grew your lungs and touch the marble you've split your head open against in the past. The help are sworn to secrecy, and no one knows who Bucky is anyway except as the man who has been specifically allotted to the same room as you upon your request.

It doesn't take long for your face to pick up. Your skin comes alive with a vibrancy he didn't think he'd see again. You sleep sounder at night, and you eat more than you've had the appetite for in the last few months.

He trails behind you and Thor initially, not wanting to eavesdrop into conversations he has no place being a part of.

But you grab his hand, lace your fingers in his and tug him along as if to say that this is his home too.

He sees what you mean when you say that you are connected to the land. Clothes on Earth have never fit you right. Silks from Asgard decorate you like you are one in the same, like it flows from you.

_________

Reunions are a tearful affair. Lots of hugs are exchanged, punches to the shoulder, and kisses to various parts of your face.

“You have been alive for months, and we are just now learning of it,” Sif holds your hands in hers. 

“It took me a while to recover.” You give her a small smile. 

“We would have come as soon as you called,” she continues. “You did not have to heal alone.”

“I wasn’t alone.”

Eyes turn over to Bucky, and he’s suddenly very aware that the clothes he’s been given are too rich for him, too grand. He feels small, like they drown him out.

Despite what he’s saying, he feels as though he has deprived you. He knows that he has, and he has no one else to blame but himself. 

“Thank you,” Sif says instead, taking him by surprise. “We will remember this.”

“Don’t mention it,” he replies weakly.  

__________

It takes days to meet the closest of your friends, until they decide they had their fill. Bucky is slowly introduced to all of them. Boisterous and loud, most greet him with a wide appreciation. Others are less quick to warm, and he gives himself no room to blame them either. 

Upon insistence, he joins you for your welcome back dinner, and gets a seat right beside you. 

Your hand holds his the entire night, squeezing tighter when something makes you laugh, or when someone is particularly embarrassing.

When there is a lull in the conversation after hours, sly grins are exchanged.

"So, this is the one you raved on and on about." 

His eyebrows quirk in amusement.

"I did not rave," you huff. "I simply informed you--"

"For hours. Days even,” they drag on. “A great warrior from earth with eyes that could rival storms--"

Bucky chokes on his wine. You award your friends with several curses and glares.

"Long hair past his shoulders. Oh, and arms to die for--"

You take in the way his face has gone red, all the way up to his ears. You laugh and grip his hand tightly with an unabashed shrug.

"I am only glad that that's all you remember," you joke.

He thinks he should be buried in the garden for his sanity.

_________

Walks around the castle become increasingly common at night. You are mostly left undisturbed, and you take the opportunity to show him everything you've ached to.

Where you've learnt, where you first scraped your knee. The first arrow you shot. Where your parents met. The first and last time you cried over a friend gone astray.

He can't fathom why he ever thought he wouldn't be ready to know this. As if knowing more about you would cement the fact that he was lesser than.

“You look ethereal,” Bucky tells you one night, honest and true.

You look at him, a bit taken aback. There was nothing particularly different about you this evening. In fact, you’d chosen to stay away from festivities today to lie around the gardens with him, citing a headache.

“I should have said yes earlier,” he continues. “You belong here. It shows.”

A laugh leaves you as an exhale. “It feels different.” You run your fingers through his hair. “I don’t know if it would be the same if I brought you here years ago.”

“Different how?” Bucky closes his eyes and revels in the feeling of your touch.

“I don’t know,” you tell him. “I am not sure it is what I remember it to be.”

You don’t say anymore. Bucky doesn’t ask. 

He lays with you under a clear night sky, and your fingers deftly move the faint lights in the sky to mimic shapes of fishes and hunters. 

He notices the sky here, too, has taken the same fate as it has on earth. Not as full as it could be, always just a little less bright.

He assumed it would change when you came back. He assumed it would change when you came to Asgard.

The sinking feeling in his stomach reminds him of what he already knows is going to come.

_____________

There are nights you are dragged off by your friends for things that don't include him.

You shoot him a sorry smile and he tells you to just go with steady reassurance.

Bucky takes to exploring. He's been given robes to blend in. They always fit in a way that's too soft.

He looks at statues erected, memorials in place for those who've given up their lives for a bigger cause. He spots your name in there as well, as if they've not yet entirely sure that you're back. He spends hours at the library, reading up on things he couldn't find on Earth. Where heroes slain in battle actually go, what it's like over there. Stories of when they are brought back. None of them end well.

Thor finds him, and introduces Bucky to Asgardian mead that he swears got Steve tipsy. Bucky’s had a rough couple of years. He’s in no place to turn down a drink. 

He remembers what it's like to be 21 and drunk again and like nothing bad can ever happen.  When you choose to join in with them, Bucky finds he’s a lot braver and a lot smoother with liquor flowing through his veins. 

Stumbling through tower hallways, giggling and stealing open-mouthed kisses in the shadows like a bunch of teenagers until he has your back pressed up against the bedroom door. 

“Eager?” you breathe out when he nips at your neck, hands scouring every inch of you he can find. 

“What gave it away?” he mutters, pulling away to look you. 

Wild eyes and equally untamed hair, and there is a light in his eyes that outshines supernovae. 

“I love you,” you tell him, and it’s a startling moment of clarity in the middle of a juvenile hour. “I hope that always remains with you.”

Before he can respond, you thread your hands behind his neck and steer him towards the bed, mouth never once leaving his. 

________

Another solitary night, and it's by pure accident that he ends up retracing his steps to the first place he was introduced to in Asgard. He wonders how much of it was intentional, his conscience forcing him to a reckoning long awaiting him. 

Heimdall is there as always, standing tall with a grace that is still threatening. Bucky is not a fool-- he knows he can sense his presence.

Still, he looks only for a moment before making leave. 

"I hear it was magic that brought her back," Heimdall voices.

Bucky pauses in his tracks.

"Yes," he says, like he’s forced to respond.

"Are you aware of what it takes to bring a body back from the dead?" Heimdall asks, tone still. "Cells are broken and reattached if they do not malfunction. The brain is attacked with sensation after being dormant for months. The heart pumps degraded blood through vessels that have collapsed."

Bucky feels bile rise to his mouth at a memory that seems so far away. Enough has happened since.

Heimdall looks at him, steel cut eyes boring into his. “Our ancestors have tried this for centuries,” he says slowly. “It has always ended the same way.”

Bucky keeps silent. Wonders if the God can hear him swallow the lump in his throat– probably can.

“Tempering with fate has never fared well.”

“I’m not trying to play with fate,” Bucky finds himself moving on its own accord. “If this wasn’t supposed to happen, it wouldn’t have. I am not a God.”

Heimdall stares into his soul and Bucky feels suffocatingly exposed. “The separation between divinity and mortals is thinner than you may imagine.”

“I have no interest in crossing it.”

“Haven’t you?” Heimdall’s eyes flicker over to the direction you were last going in. “When your will supersedes reality– what else do you call it?”

“Luck.” His voice comes back stonily.

Heimdall gives him a wry smile. “No such thing.”

Bucky’s palms feel clammy, his stomach twisting into knots.

“Your grief is natural. But do not let it overpower your love,” Heimdall adds. “I am sorry you had to go through this. I'm afraid sooner or later you will have to see that you cannot disrupt the natural order of things.”

"Why?" His voice cracks and he curses himself.

Heimdall's eyes soften. "There comes a point where your love for someone becomes indistinguishable from hurting them. Your intentions are noble, but you already know where you stand."

Bucky quietly turns on his heel and leaves, but the conversation remains heavy on his mind for days to come.

_________

The first time you fall sick, really sick, like you used to be on Earth, Bucky watches from the sidelines as various people tend to you. Those with divinity at their fingertips, those with herbs and concoctions he’d never heard of, others with tools and prayers and everything. 

They try everything. It takes you a full week to recover.

Bucky sits, emotionless by your bedside, and feeds you from a spoon, food that your friends swore you grew up loving. 

Asgard was supposed to work. Being here was supposed to work. No one knows what to do, except to wait it out. As your fever quells and Bucky watches you open your eyes for the first time in a few days, everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he says quietly from your bedside. “How can I help?”

The smile you give him is tired. He gives you a small one in return, and leaves a kiss on your forehead. 

It feels all too familiar. 

God of the Night and the Devil of Cursed Fates.

_________

Thor teaches him the song, the one he caught you humming for months. It sounds different to what he remembers you singing.

He watches you thumb through titles in the Asgardian library, looking for a book of wildlife to show him. It only takes a few seconds for you to hum under your breath again, but Bucky is quick to ask this time. 

“Oh.” You blink. “I may have remembered it wrong.”

He tilts his head at you, but you go back to browsing through library books.

___________

Nights in bed, he spends tracing up and down your arm. He's full from a feast, and he's watched you dance around a courtyard with spirit and joy, and for the first time in years he feels like he can breathe.

You drag him along with you, and while he may have been quick on his feet in the thirties, Bucky was significantly older. You don't seem to care. You laugh like nothing has ever worried you before, and he finds it infectious.  

"D'you s'ppose we'd have been married by now?" he asks, breaking the quiet.

"I remember turning down your offer," you say, the corners of your mouth pulling upwards. "So, who's to say?"

Bucky's face breaks into a smile, one that looks particularly incredible in the moonlight. "You said I knew what the answer was already. Looks like that leaves the ball in my court."

You look at him, a little endearingly, and as he's come to expect, a little sad.

"I think we would have," you hum. "But you wouldn't have survived wedding festivities here."

He scoffs, rolling onto his back and feels his stomach ache dully. "Barely holdin' on now as it is."

You pull closer to him, fingers dancing across his chest. "Why didn't you try to find someone else?"

He exhales, sharper than he intends. "Didn't wan'to," he mumbles.

"I'd hate to think you didn't try to find others who loved you," you tell him, brows pulled together, "You have so much of it to give. It'd be a shame."

"Didn't see the point." Bucky hopes he doesn't sound as sharp as he does in his head.

"If something were to happen tomorrow, and I am no longer here," you begin and he wants to beg you to stop talking about this, "It would break my heart if you didn't go on with life as you were meant to live it."

"This is how I'm meant to live." He sounds pathetic-- obsessed, and entirely dependent but he isn't sure you know. "This is it. This is the best it's ever gonna get for me."

You look at him, eyebrows knitted. Your thumb caresses his jaw, running across the sharp curve.

"You deserve more," you say gently. "You do. Life has been unkind, but you will always deserve more."

You’re doing it again. Preparing him. For the inevitable he knows is looming on the horizon. The one he saw in Heimdall's eyes.

Still, you notice that it is too much for him, and you break the tension with a smile.

Outside the window, the sounds of a party continue on. You would be out there too, if he hadn't noticed the slow in your movements and the dip in your energy. He instead gave his lack of stamania as a reason and asked if you would join him in the room, for which you shot him a grateful look.

"You never gave me a ring," you remind instead, voice teasing.

Bucky looks at you wearily before silently getting up from the bed. 

You sit up in confusion, watching him trail across to the wardrobe and pull out the clothes he was wearing on his first day here.

He shuffles back into bed and turns to you, holding out his hand in a request.

It takes a second but you give him yours, and he silently slides a ring onto your finger. Even in the darkness it glitters like it’s made of light.

"I've had it for ages," he tells you. "Woulda given it to you quicker if you'd just said yes the first time."

You laugh loudly, and hold his face in yours before kissing him hard to the sounds of a fading party.

__________

The effect wears off gradually. It goes the same as it does in the cabin. 

You begin to space out visits. Stay in for a day or two, which increases as time passes. Though the castle help are ever gracious and at your beck and call, you send them away in exchange for quiet nights in.

Bucky wipes your forehead with cool cloth. Feeds you nectar by hand and tells you of everything he's learnt since the time you've arrived there.

You begin to look sick again, and miserably, he does not know what to do. You've been attended to by the best of medicine that the nine realms have to offer. You've spent nights with your friends, drinking in joy and embodying love.

But you are dying. You have been since you came back, and he can no longer choose to look past it in hopes for a remedy.

He looks at you like you've given the world the light it bathes in, and wipes your perspiration with his thumb.

You smile back at him in your sleep, and he lets that slow the march towards the end.

_________

One of the good days, you lead him to the lake. The one where water remembers. You point out faces. He discerns them to be some of your friends a couple of hundred years ago.

He follows as you walk along the banks, letting you show him yourself through the years. Some streaked with tears, others with joy so infectious it has his stomach doing flips.

"That is the last time I came here," you point at the last one. "Two months before it happened."

He remembers the trip. He thought he remembered how you were back then, that he'd etched into the crevices of your mind.

When he looks down, he sees a different person. Your face is light. The weight of circumstance does not weigh you down.

You were right when you said you did not recognise the person you were.

That night in bed, he holds onto you tighter than he has, no longer afraid of causing more damage. He has already done the worst, and you've taken it without a word.

“Bucky,” you call.

He doesn’t trust his voice to answer, so he just makes a noise.

Your eyes meet his intently and he knows. You do not have to say a single word to him. 

You’ve made a decision. It was your will, as Wanda had told him all those months ago.

“I'm sorry,” his voice cracks. “I'm so sorry. It was so selfish.”

“It's okay,” you press a palm against his cheek and shudders from the cold.

“I love you.” His eyes burn, but he forces himself to take more of you in. “I love you so much, I'm sorry. I just wanted a second chance.”

“I know.” You smile but your voice is sad. “I know. I understand.”

“I don't know how you aren’t angry at me." I don’t know why you stayed.

You look him in his eye, giving him no space to run. "I would have done the same. If I could, I would have done the very same thing."

He chooses to believe that, despite what Heimdall has told him. If he tries, he can find heat in the frigid veins.

"But we are simply delaying the inevitable, my love." You press a kiss to his forehead. "I no longer belong here. I am not who I was. I doubt I will ever be."

He loves every version of you. He already loved, and he will always learn to love whoever you change to be.

"I know it is hard, but I have to go," you tell him softly.

His eyes burn and his head stings.

"I grew up with friends I loved, and a family that loved me. My life was good," you tell him. "I didn't realise how much I wanted to give that forward until you happened. I will always love you for that."

Bucky kisses you till you can't breathe and his tears mix with yours.

Till the morning breaks and you have to tell everyone of your decision, he tells you over and over again a tale you already know. Everything he's ever felt. Everything that’s happened in the last few months– his revolving door of therapists and all the movies he’s watched and all the bakery foods he thought you'd like.

You listen, and you tell him stories he memorises to heart. You are still dying. 

But this time he is there, and in that lies his true second chance. 

________

A month later, and not a day before that.

You pass away quietly, surrounded by people instead of rubble. He holds your hand throughout, and for long after even once your chest stops rising.

The Asgardians let him stay for as long as he wants, still and quiet. No one says a word as he presses a kiss to the crown, leaning his forehead against yours for as long as the universe permits.

The funeral goes by in a haze. Everyone gathers, even after such short notice. No matter how much time he had to prepare, the air was thick, and he swallows down his discomfort.

A gentle breeze whispers through the columns of the great hall, carrying with it the soft, mournful melodies of Asgardian lyres and flutes.

In the center of the pyre, you lay, ethereal even in repose. Around you, night-blooming flowers bloom alongside, as if the sky itself was paying its respects.

Thor recites the ancient eulogies. With reverent hands, they guide the vessel into the river that flows through Asgard.

As the vessel drifts away, a hush falls over the assembly. Just before reaching the edge of the waterfall, arrows shoot fire onto the wood, letting the flames consume the casket. Bucky holds back a cry. 

Thor hits the staff, and the casket continues onward instead of falling off the edge. Within a flash Bucky sees an orb rise above you and shoot off towards the sky.

Thousands of lights are let loose into the sky. He closes his eyes, says a few words no one will know except you, and lets go of the soul orb given to him.

And that was it.

________

Bucky looks at the last of his belongings, tied tightly together. 

There were a few things he was allowed to take with him, things that belonged to you while you lived here. He's grateful more than anything, that he's not relegated to photos.

He was made to stay a few more days in Asgard while everything was completed. Though the people were lovely, and he's more than glad he came, he knows that this was where this ended.

He exhales, looking back at the place where he spent the better part of three months.

"You will be alright?" Thor asks, walking with him to the courtyard.

He shrugs. It was still fresh, but the utter despair he had felt the last time had been replaced with a quietness.

"You?" he asks in return.

Thor smiles, and claps his back and Bucky is forced to take a step forward.

"It will be an honour to remember her," he says, and for a moment, Bucky feels a sense of peace at his words. "You are always welcome here."

A small laugh leaves Bucky in the form of an exhale. "Don't be a stranger, Thor."

The God summons the Bifrost and the force is enough to make Bucky hold his hands up to his face.

"I'll see you around. Thanks for everything." His lips pull together in a tight smile.

Thor takes a second, but then says, “You will be alright, James.”

It’s reassuring, he thinks. Bucky nods and turns, taking a step towards the bridge.

"Wait," Thor calls loudly, "I almost forgot."

He turns to him in confusion, and a list of possibilities running through his head.

"She told me to give you this," he says, "She used to carry them around for us."

From around his wrist, he pulls off a hair tie and holds it out to him.

Bucky takes it, a little stunned.

________

Two months pass.

Bucky stands on the threshold of a door that is foreign to him.

His head falls, but his arms raise either way. Two swift knocks and he takes a step back. He looks around nervously, hands stuffing into his pocket. His car lays at the end of the long driveway, ready to leave at any given moment.

For a second, he thinks about making a run for it. But the door swings open and Bucky's eyes quickly dart up.

"Hey," he says, voice coarse. "You got space for one more?"

Sam looks at him in initial surprise, but it fades to softness when he notices the shape the man is in.

“C’mon, Buck,” Sam says softly. “We’ve got you.”

Bucky lets out a staggered breath, and leans over to pick up his backpack that Sam's already beaten him to.

He takes one good look at the sky. Dark, clear and finally returned to the way it had been for centuries.

His lips twitched in what was almost an attempt at a smile. Almost, because while he sounded amused when he said, “Maybe I’ve been thinking about blocking it with all those stupid pictures you’ve been sending me,” his expression was clearly attempting for a scowl. The ‘attempted’ scowl and ‘almost’ smile gave him kind of a weird grimace that he shook off for a tired look. “Sorry,” he said, ducking his head a bit. “I was just getting out for a bit, wanted to see your neighborhood, and then I…couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

Scoping my neighborhood wasn’t too out of bounds considering Steve spent enough time here. I was honestly more surprised Bucky hadn’t been around sooner. “Were you gonna stop by?”

He glanced at me for a split second. “I thought about it,” he said. “I don’t like spending too much time…out, and I didn’t have anywhere else to end up. But then that seemed…weird.”

‘Needed a place to go but then felt awkward about it’ was a feeling I could very much relate to. Was it weird? Sure, but I could truck with weird. “I was gonna go to the store to pick up some snacks,” I said. “You wanna come with and see if there’s anything you like too?”

He grimaced for real then. “Most food is wasted on me.”

“I’m sure we can find something. And everybody needs to eat– might as well make it something good.” But as hesitant as he seemed, he still looked a little lost. “Well, can you stomach the sight of it? I will find something else to bribe you with if it means I get help carrying the bags back home.”

That did the trick, and he visibly relaxed. “I can help,” he said, in a tone that more said he actually wanted to.

“Great,” I said and motioned him to come along, and he fell right in step. “And don’t worry; where we’re going is pretty chill at this time of night.”

“It is late,” he said and I could feel his side-eye.

“Sometimes you throw the dice on ‘murder’ or ‘dealing with too many people,’” I said. “I haven't lost yet.”

“Yet,” he repeated, again sizing me up. He sighed in dismay and muttered something under his breath.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Now: onward!”

~

To his credit, he only looked a little wide-eyed at the grocery store I had selected. I’d wished I was a little lazier, because then I could have done with the little bodega I liked, but they didn’t have some of the things I was really craving, and had the basic energy to get. So, mid-sized grocery store it was. “You good?” I asked and hoped I would get a real answer.

To his credit he did at least look like he considered the question before he rolled his shoulders and nodded.

“Okay,” I said, taking him at his word. He was a grown-ass man who’d been living a hard life on his own power for years now. I wasn’t about to infantilize him– or lead him to think I was going to be doing any digging. Better for him to find out right away that trying that ‘polite’ shit with me was a bad idea. “If I turn and don’t see you, I’ll assume you ducked out for a minute. Poke or text me if you’re going to leave entirely; I’m adding your arms into my shopping calculations.”

He snorted. “I thought this was a ‘snack run?’”

“Snacks can be meals if only you believe,” I said. But I took one basket to carry around. “Fine. Small snack run, only because I wanna go home ASAP. Now– let’s hunt.”

I couldn’t see the eyeroll, but I felt it.

Honestly though, he was pretty good company to have. He was so unobtrusive sometimes I had to double-check to see if he was still there, only to find him actively scanning the shelves. He grimaced at things sometimes, but then was too quick to look elsewhere for me to see what he was judging like that.

“How am I supposed to get a feel for what you like if I don’t know what you hate?” I whined and bumped into him half-heartedly.

He snorted, and squinted at me. “Why do I get the feeling you’re just bein’ a nosy cuss?”

“Because you’re smart,” I said normally and went to snag a bag of chips. I didn’t care for them, but Steve would demolish them easy. I grabbed another two bags. Chips were light, at least. “And god, we have got to update your vocabulary; I think I’d feel better if you just called me a nosy bitch.”

He stopped so suddenly and sputtered. I peered around him and his beautiful draping 90’s boyband hair to see his face doing very strange, minute contortions, until he looked at me with wide eyes. “I’m not gonna call you that!” he said as though I had mortally wounded his honor. He then pulled out his phone and started doing something with it. “That’s not– that word hasn’t changed that much has it…?”

“Relax, I was making a bad joke.” I patted his arm as consolingly as I could. He squinted at me again. “I call myself a bitch all the time. It’s most of my personality. Just ask Steve.”

“No it isn’t.” He scowled, but he put his phone away. “And Steve would never say that about you.”

“I think I’ve pushed him pretty close sometimes,” I said. “But he’s also an asshole, so his opinions are a little weird.”

“Hmf.” But he stopped looking like a fluffed-up cat and we got on our way. “You are kind of an asshole.”

“How am I an asshole but not a bitch?” I asked. Mostly rhetorically.

“It’s ruder,” was all he said to that. We turned and faced down the freezer aisle– and he stopped. This, actually, was quite familiar.

“Stay here; I’m gonna grab two appetizers and then we’re gonna go down a different aisle,” I said.

He scoffed. “I can handle standing next to freezers,” he said, and actually gave me a dirty look.

That was fair. “I know you can. But I swear it’s fine– Steve doesn’t like it either,” I said, trying to be as even-keeled as possible. I understood– both the reticence to go, and the impulse to prove himself a big tough guy– but me being too concerned would just be patronizing and no one liked that shit. “And I’m not even going halfway down; I’ll be back in a second. Just hang out here and…” I flashed him a big smile and ended with, “…Chill,” before I walked down to get my two items.

“Asshole,” Bucky muttered before I was a few steps away, and I laughed. But he did stay, and wait for me to come back.

“So what would it take?” I asked absently as I peered over the remaining aisle names. “To get you to call me the big B?”

“I’m not going to do that. Steve would clock me.” He shuffled uncomfortably. “And it would be something…too far, I think.”

“Interesting.” So that was out. “Good boundaries. You’re probably going to hear it a lot from me though, so that’s your warning.”

“You’re a warning,” he mumbled.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” I said, but I tugged at the very edge of his sleeve and we went for my last point of interest. The spread was looking good; it just needed a couple more things. “Okay, now…” I looked up and down the last aisle and sighed. There was so much stuff. “I’m looking for something kind of fruity and small. Easy to eat when you need something to munch on. If you see something good, let me know.”

As we walked his eyes scanned the shelves with a focus I’d only seen in nature documentaries about hawks. But he did zero in on a section of shelving, looked at me, and pointed. I grinned, and bit my lip to keep down a ‘good boy.’ I wasn’t sure of all the ways he’d been dehumanized over the years– context clues pointed me more towards ‘thing’ than ‘pet’– but better to stow the potentially offensive comments until I knew I wasn’t going to be stabbing into soft underbelly. Dumb jokes could come later when I knew him better. For now…

“Jackpot,” I said, scanning over the boxes until I found something that looked good enough. I was tired and wanted to go to bed. “See anything you like?”

He hesitated, but I followed his line of sight and picked something off the shelf. “Oh,” I said. “I think Steve’ll like these.”

He smiled slightly, and briefly, and looked at me with an intensity that wasn’t necessarily bad. “And maybe I’ll try ‘em too,” he said, a little quieter.

“Excellent.” I dumped them into the handbasket with flourish. “Let’s check out and get the fuck out of here. I’m people’d out.”

He snorted. “You’ve only been around me.”

I waved my hand. “There’s other people around.” But I led him along to the checkstands and while we waited, I commented, “I’m surprised you’re not people’d out just being around me.”

He gave me a small, wry smile– and then ducked his head away again. I shifted the stuff in my hands, and looked at what I had him holding. It wasn’t unmanageable– maybe three or so bags, and not that heavy.

“Hey,” I said and waited until he at least lifted his ear in my direction. “You can scoot, if you like. I won’t take offense–”

He gave me a very flat look– and right on, at that; eye contact and everything. “I’m walking you home,” he said, as matter-of-fact as I’d ever heard.

“I’ll be okay,” I said.

“Yes,” he agreed easily. “Because I’m walking you home.”

I rolled my eyes, but it was my turn to use my own unimpressed look. It, predictably, didn’t work at all. Bucky took three of the four bags and left me to handle the chips while I also scrambled to put my wallet away and chase after him out of the store.

“You’ve got a weird idea of being a gentleman,” I said. Bucky snorted, taking my inane comment in the spirit in which I had intended, and we walked back to my place. He had a moment outside where he hesitated upon seeing a couple of other people going inside, and I stopped and hung back to watch them go in.

“It’s fine,” Bucky huffed, a little sullenly.

“The elevator’s not that big, and I’m not super keen on sharing it always either,” I said. I gently bumped into him. “You’re not the only asocial miser around, you know.”

He looked at me with suspicion in his squinted eyes, but he looked away again. “You got a long way to catch up to me,” he said quietly.

“I’m not catching up to anybody, I just am what I am,” I said and started walking again. When we got inside nobody else was in sight, and we were able to wait in relative peace. “It is kind of weird though, that Steve keeps attracting people like us.”

Bucky snorted, but said nothing. He didn’t really say anything else at all, actually; as soon as I unlocked the door he slipped in and set the bags down. After an awkward pause he nodded respectfully in a way I almost expected a perfunctory ‘ma’am,’ but he managed to stop himself, and as soon as I said, “Have a good night,” he was out the door so swiftly I was sure if I ducked my head out in the hallway I wouldn’t see him.

I rolled my eyes and started unpacking my bags, stopping for one good yawn before I got back to business so I could get to bed. That had gone about as well as I could have expected. I had spent some more time with Bucky, without Steve or anyone, and nobody had died, nothing caught fire, and no one had been mortally offended. Also, it was kind of nice to know I wasn’t actually the worst socializer in the world. Win, win, win, win.

~

he doesn’t respond to that. perhaps, he deems your question not worth answering. a lot of your questions are treated the same way.

you tear the piece of bread in two and dip it into the bowl of soup he begrudgingly bought for you earlier. you’re tempted to put your feet up on the table but you doubt the nice old lady who owns the cantina would appreciate that. it probably would piss off the Mandalorian even more, you reckon, which makes the act all the more enticing.

“or you do know where we are going and you’re actually leading me to my eventual death?” you speak with half a mouth full of bread and sip some of the warm beverage. “or you don’t know where we’re going and you’re going to lead us both to our eventual accidental death? also, can we get something else to eat before you kill me? i’d like at least one last big meal before you strangle me to death.”

his helm slightly turns your way and it brings a smile to your face. “are you ever going to keep quiet?”

alright, granted they are stupid questions. which you like to ask on purpose just to get on his nerves. mostly because he won’t give you much to work with in terms of where exactly he’s taking you. or even who the fuck hired him. but since he’s bringing you in alive and not in cuffs, you don’t think you’ll be worried about it too much… for now.

“sometimes.” your bat your eyes, placing your chin on your palm to patronize him even further. “why? do you like my voice, Mando? i can talk for the entirety of the journey, if you like.”

it works. like a charm.

you watch in pure glee as his helm tips back and he lets out an audible exhausted sigh as he shakes his head as if asking the heavens to spare him from your presence. it brings you such joy to poke the nexu. serves him right. he shouldn’t have taken your bounty puck.

“dank ferrick, just–” he cuts off, muttering another curse under his breath as he pushes back his chair and stands up. he points a finger at you. “stay put.”

ori’buyce, kih’kovid. all helmet, no head. authority figures have never gotten along with you. their inflated sense of dominance just rubbed you the wrong way.

you’ve never been one to listen to them. you hardly listened to your mother since coming of age, you’d think this Mandalorian know better than to try and boss you around. of course, he doesn’t know that about you. he’ll learn though. with time, he’ll learn.

“i'll try to.” you murmured as he went to speak with the bartender. probably for information.

you suppose his first lesson in learning about you should start as early as now. you take it as your cue to slip out the back while he’s preoccupied.

Ghost comes back to the table and surprise, surprise, you weren’t there.

he sighs. “oh, for fuck’s sake.”

stay put, my ass. you roll your eyes as you make your way out of the cantina. you need supplies. a couple of nets, metal string and all the other goodies you're gonna need for where you're going.

the net was easy to find. Sorgan has an abundance of those, considering a lot of the locals are krill farmers. metallic rope? not so much. no matter, you'll find it in the next star system. probably somewhere that isn't a backwater planet.

but despite that, you actually like it here. so unlike where you grew up with all the noise and violence. you think your father, had he kept to his word, might have taken you to a place like this.

you could almost see yourself growing up here. playing with the other children in the river or hiding amongst the tall reeds. resting under the shade of the trees. feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin without having to look over your shoulder for your entire life. it’s very nice here. peaceful. a feeling you’re not quite familiar with.

probably never will–

you’re startled when something snags on your pant leg. your gaze snaps to the ground to see a… a baby? “oh!”

a very green baby. with the biggest (and cutest) ears and biggest brown eyes you’ve seen on any living thing.

“hi, there.” you said, uncertainly, watching the little critter with curiosity. you squat down to get a closer look. “where did you come from?”

it's a cute little infant creature. soft green skin, a hairy, wrinkled head and an adorable smile. you've seen many kinds of species whilst traveling across the galaxy but none quite like him. you wonder who had the thought to use a potato sack to make the tiny robe.

you giggle when the little guy grabs your finger with his claws. a woman's voice startles you.

“Grogu!” you turn to look in the distance, a woman running towards you, huffing and puffing under the warm sun of Sorgan. the length of her blue dress flows around her legs as she hurries forward, looking anything but pleased. “please stop running off, little one. i really can't keep up with you.”

she rests her hands on her knees and pants heavily once she comes to a stop. and it’s at this point when you realize that she’s close enough that there’s a noticeable bump on her belly.

stars, it’s no wonder she’s sweating.

“you should listen to your mom, kid.” you said to the little green guy, smiling as his claw clung to your finger. you pick him up and walk over to meet her halfway.

“he barely listens to his father.” the mother added with a tired laugh as you hand her back her child. “thank you.”

“no problem.” you nod to her. she holds the kid up to her shoulder and gently pats his back. he reaches up to pull on her earlobe. she turns her head to kiss his little cheek in response.

just when you thought you'd have a moment to yourself, you spot the familiar hulking stature of Beskar coming towards you from the same direction the woman came. the closer he is, the heavier his steps become as you watch him storm towards you with what you assume might be the intent to strangle you.

“i thought you said you'd stay put.” he spoke through gritted teeth, laser focused on you.

you don’t know how much you enjoy more; the thought of him having to search through the entire marketplace of this little village on Sorgan or him becoming even more angry when he found you. the little kick you get out of getting under his armour, his skin. knowing that there is more man than metal, knowing that you are capable of making his blood simmer and boil like water over a heated pot. that’s what’s keeping you sane at the moment.

your shit-eating grin is too hard to tamper down. “i said i'd try.”

“you can't be running off like that.” the tone of his voice raises.

so does yours. “ah, well. can't do much to stop me, now can you?”

“wanna bet on that?” he steps forward with the challenge.

your eyes narrowed considerably as his shadow looms over you, threatening to swallow you whole. the chill of his glare seeps into your bones but you refuse to back down.

some days you wonder if you like deliberately knocking on death’s door. it’s often exhilarating, sure, though you wonder if it’s worth it. dying by the hands of an angry giant doesn’t seem like the best way to go.

“i didn't realize there were other Mandalorians in town.” the woman says, cheerfully interrupting the tense atmosphere.

the silence that follows was damn near palpable. surely not. your face drops at the mere thought of it.

“you've got to be kidding me.” you glance at the Mandalorian, exasperated. “there's more of you here? is that why you brought me here?”

he ignores you, turning to the woman in blue. “where is he?”

her face brightens even more. the kid blinks up Mando, wide brown eyes staring in curiosity. “oh, you know him?”

“wish i didn’t sometimes.” Mando replies dryly.

“well, i reckon he’ll be glad to see you then.” she says, adjusting the babbling baby in her arms. “come on. i’ll take you to see him.”

“that would be much appreciated.” Mando dips his head in gratitude. “thank you.”

she turns, throwing one last smile as she begins the journey back to her village. “this is the way.”

the words bleed into your chest. a phrase you’ve heard far too many times as a young girl. words you clung to when your mother’s voice raised too high, when the days were too rough and when you went to sleep hungry.

this is the way. your father had said those last few words to you before he left.  

the other Mandalorian is her husband. you facepalm when you realize this moments after seeing her kiss the side of his helm.

stars, you should've guessed with the way she didn't seem so phased by the sight of your Mando.

“i made some new friends today.” she says, gesturing her head to you and your Mandalorian.

friends. you look to him and see him glancing at you. a scoff escapes you before you can stop it. some friend he is. you think you’d rather be stabbed ten more times throughout your lifetime than consider this guy your friend.

you sat cross-legged next to your Mandalorian. while the young lady who led you to the village, then her hut moved around the table, pouring a cup of tea for you, herself and for the kid playing on her Mandalorian’s lap.

his armour is silver. the mark of a horned creature on his pauldron. he’s quiet. nearly as much as your Mandalorian. not as cold but just as intimidating. the woman is oddly cosy around him. if you didn’t know as much as you do about Mandalorians, you’d say that she’s a lover, but…

the kid. the little green guy babbles nonsensically, bouncing and joyful as a child can be whilst the Mandalorian listens and holds on to his little claws.

no. she’s a lot more to him than a lover. and that kid... he’s a foundling. these three…

your chest squeezes painfully when you realize…

they’re a clan.

you’ve might have heard of them. something about a Mandalorian and a child wreaking havoc on Nevarro. something about a girl getting kidnapped by him. you don’t know, there was no time to keep track of that bounty whilst you were avoiding people who were after yours.

you cleared your throat, attempting to get up. “this is a conversation between the three of you, so i'm just gonna–”

“no.” your breath hitches when the Mandalorian sitting next to you clamps a hand on your thigh, forcing back down. “sit.”

the warmth of his palm seeps through the fabric of your pants, through your skin, right down to the bone. something in you just shuts off. you don’t know why you listen. sit. like a damn massiff.

you glare at him. he doesn’t bother to look at you.

the woman looks between you and him, curious as a lothcat. no doubt she assumes that your… relation to the Mandalorian might be similar to hers. it makes you want to scoff again.

“friend of yours?” she asks the Mando next to you.

“quarry.” you pipe up before taking a sip of your tea. “was doing just fine before he grabbed me.”

her eyebrow raises. she and her Mandalorian glance at each other before coming back to you. your Mando sighs deeply, shoulders slumping down as he shakes his head. “i saved her from getting killed.”

“you wouldn’t have had to do that if you hadn’t followed me because your presence drew in other bounty hunters.” you reply, not even bothering to look at him.

“they were going to find her either way.”

“yeah, and i had plans for when that happened.” there’s a pause in the air that makes you smile. you glanced at him, tilting your head. “remember?”

reminders of how you two met will always bring a special kind of joy in your heart. because the frustrated noise that comes through the modulated vocoders was all too satisfying that it made you snicker.

“you're strangely chipper for someone who's been abducted.” the woman points out, gesturing at you with her cup of tea. the child crawls into her lap and whines, pulling at her dress. she glances at him, gently whispering, “hold on, honey.”

she lifts the spoon from the cup, blows on it and brings it to the baby’s lips. the little guy hums in delight before her Mandalorian plucks the child from her lap when he’s done.

“it was that or the other hunters who wanted to bring me in dead.” you explained, shrugging.

a smile tugs at her lip. she glances at her Mandalorian. “sounds awfully familiar.”

“Cyare.” he warns, barely turning his helm to her. “don't.”

she gives a closed mouth grin, absolutely radiating with joy. now that seems familiar. you suppose it’s a rite of passage to annoy the first Mandalorian you come across. it brings a smile to your face.

the hand on your thigh squeezes again. you swat at it, quietly hissing, “quit it.”

your Mando clamps down on your thigh again, harder this time, his help tilting to you when you scowl at him. the bastard doesn’t budge no matter how much you try to remove his hand this time. you grit your teeth as he speaks to the couple.

there’s mention of routes to take. the safest and fastest both coming with their own advantages and disadvantages. it's hard to care when you're the one being transported like cargo and you're not under immediate threat.

“that system is crawling with Imps. best you avoid it.” the other Mando informs you.

it’s hard to keep track of the conversation beyond that, so you don’t. your eyes continuously drift to the hand on your thigh the entire time and for the first time, you rue the day you ever met him.

later, you and your insufferable Mandalorian loosely follow the woman and her foundling to where she’s leading you.

While walking beside him, you roughly jerk your elbow against his arm. “must you be such a pest?”

he retaliates by shoving you. “only following your lead, sweetheart.”

you promptly grind your teeth in silence and try not to let the endearment needle its way under your ribs. you’re led to a small barn, where you’ll both rest for the night.

two beds, thank the lucky stars, on either side of each wall greeted your sight when you entered the barn. it was a cosy place. made entirely of wood and thatched with tall, golden grass. the beds each had a pillow and a blanket laid atop layers of grass and a thin mattress.

hopefully, if the deities are willing, you’ll be able to sleep through the night long enough to see the light of tomorrow.

you pick a bed, plop down on it and start taking down your shoes. the room is quiet for a long time as you both settle down. well, while you settle down anyway. Mando just lays back on his bed while you take off your shoes and unfold the blanket. you lay down under it and wish you’d had the chance to at least take a bath because you just hate feeling grimy when you have to sleep.

you turned to face his direction and curled your arm under your head. even laying down, he still manages to look like a massive beast that could easily strike at any given moment. he’s every bit the Mandalorian as your father was. every bit the Mandalorian you’ll never be.

it’ll always hang over you. this gaping hole in your chest whenever you look at him and never truly connect. aruetii. outsider. a foreigner to your own kind.

his voice startles you. “thought you were going to sleep.”

he hasn’t moved an inch. somehow, you’re not surprised that he knows you’re staring. someone who’s constantly a threat to others must have his head on a swivel.

“i’m trying to.” you said.

the room falls into silence once more. your eyes slowly blink as you watch him breathe. his chest moves up and down, a reminder that there’s more blood and bones under those layers of Beskar.

he sighs, finally fed up with your staring, and turns his head. not enough to face you but shifted enough in your direction. “what?”

curiosity has been burning at the back of your head for days since he took you. you’ve been tampering down question after question has not been easy but since since this is the perfect time to pry–

“were your parents Mandalorians or were you a foundling like the little green guy from earlier?”

the quiet on his end makes you want to take back the words and swallow them back down. he shifts a little. “what do you know about the Creed?”

it’s not as hostile as you expected. in fact, he seems more intrigued by your knowledge. so you take that as a sign to continue. “a little more than most people do.”

“oh, yeah? and who told you about it?”

flashes of another helm haunt your memory. your curiosity suddenly wanes. there’s a moment when you wished you hadn’t asked and kept your thoughts to yourself.

but you answered anyway. your voice is frail and quiet, “my father.”

“and where is he?” Mando asks.

“dead.” it’s the first time he looks at you. “or he just didn’t care enough to come back after he left. i don’t know, it’s been years since i last saw him.”

what do you know about your father? past the fact that he was a great father until he wasn’t. you’d already gotten used to your mother not giving much of shit about you from a young age, but your dad? that… yeah, that one hurt real bad.

it still hurts. suddenly not mattering to the one person who showered you with love. suddenly finding yourself standing on your own with no one looking out of you. leaving for a mission that mattered more than his own kid.

your back leans against the wooden wall and you sigh. a hush follows you, a sorrow that falls upon the room.

you don't remember much about him. just... moments when you didn't feel on edge. when you felt his arms around you as he lifted you up and told you stories about how someday, Mandalore will be restored to its former glory and you would be there to witness it.

it's all a distant haze now. all smoke and dust that clouds your eyes when the world goes quiet.

the Mandalorian sits up from his bed, prompting you to do the same. you're almost startled by what he says next. “is that what your mother told you?”

a weird inquiry. it doesn't sit right under your ribs. it feels almost accusatory.

there hasn’t been a man who you crossed paths with that didn’t have a bone to pick with your mother. that’s how much of a piece of work she is. always ready to antagonize, ready to con and kill if and when necessary. she’s got more enemies than the Empire had stormtroopers and that’s saying something.

but it’s the way those enemies seem to somehow gravitate toward you that you always have to be on guard. every day, you’ve had to stare them down as they bear their teeth at you while they draw near.

are you staring down another one right now?

you angle your body to slowly face him, narrowing your eyes. “what do you know of my mother?”

“same as most.” he says. “that she's a liar.”

you scoffed. that you already knew. “yeah, and?”

he pauses, tense as the air. you stand still, poised and ready for an attack. even if you keep your eyes locked on him, it’s second nature to log every potential weapon in the room. there wasn’t much to work with. no chairs, your usual go-to. your knife is always in your boot but he would overpower you in an instant if you don’t scream for help fast enough.

you also doubt a bunch of krill farmers could do anything to him.

although, one thing does stick out to you. why is he not concerned that you know more about his culture than the average person? why is he not interrogating you for answers about that?

moments passed and he didn't move from where he sat. “you really wanna know who hired me?”

your eyebrow raises. “does it matter if they want me dead?”

“it matters if they don’t.” he counters with a soft voice.

it makes you pause, makes you wonder things you’re not sure you want to wonder. he's never spoken to you like that. he's always made it known that you're a nuisance to him, that you're a thorn in his side. this is... this is new.

though you're all too aware of the implications behind his words. it’s never a good sign when a warlord wants you brought in alive. usually, it means they want to torture you. and quite frankly, you’ll take your chances with death any day when it comes to bounties like that. “are you going to tell me if they don't?”

the silence on his end tells you all you need to know. you hum and nod in conclusion.

“yeah, that's what i thought.”

you don't think it's worth bothering him about it. he's pretty tight lipped about everything, as anyone of his kind. very secretive, keeping their cards to their chest. you can understand that.

it doesn't, however, mean that fact doesn't make you clench your teeth. to the point where you feel like they might shatter.

your father told you a bit about the Resol'nare. a code to live by. a way of life of any honourable Mandalorian with common sense. which is everything that you are not.

you barely know Mando’a. forget having armour and a decent education in your father’s culture. at the very least you got the self defence part down but you don’t think that’s worth much when you don’t have a clan to look after, to add any value to. and with what your own parents put you through, you doubt you’d find yourself raising a kid anytime soon, let alone an army.

you’re not worth any of it. you’re worth nothing to no one.

it shouldn't hurt you anymore to admit that. it shouldn't. you've learned to accept it. yet...

if it didn’t hurt, you wouldn’t be holding back tears every time you see a mother and father and their child. the clan from earlier. a vision of what was once yours. what was not meant to last. a fate that wasn’t meant for you. you've long resigned to something far less dignified.

Mando's head tilts in a way that makes you wonder if he's curious. if he has more questions to ask. he probably does. you're struck by a sense of... intrigue. you're intriguing to him. why does that burst a flame of heat in your chest? the thought of being interesting to the most interesting person around. it's not easy to grapple with. him wanting to peer under your layers to see what makes you tick.

you should be more concerned with what he's saying to you. about the people who hired him. why they want you alive. why they even want you to begin with. you can’t think of anything you have to your name besides the clothes on your back. you can’t think of anything they’d want from you.

why wouldn’t they want you dead? with your track record? your mother’s? don’t even mention the kind of crowds your father pissed off. you don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to put a knife to your throat. it’s a scary world out there. harsh and unforgiving to your mother’s and father’s crimes.

when you think back to the clan of three, you wonder if they’ll end up with the same fate as you. the thought makes your chest tight with a foolish kind of apprehension. an unsettling kind of hope that they don’t succumb to the same misfortune you’ve had to go through.

this Mandalorian, the one staring you down like you’re a caged animal, is a new kind of misfortune. he represents everything you’ve lost. everything you could’ve had. he is, perhaps, deep down, something you could’ve been.

(you envy him. you envy him in a way that burns a hole in your chest. like vines coiling up from deep within and wrapping around your ribs, your heart, your throat–)

you’ve never had anything in common with any of your other enemies or strained acquaintances. none of them have ever evoked a deep ache in your chest that makes you want to scream at the heavens, demanding it brings back what was denied of you.

a purpose. a family. honour.

the Mandalorian is not a threat. for now.

you rest your back against the wall, shoulders drooping.

“i’ll ask again.” he finally speaks after observing you, after making sure your defences are lowered. smart. “what do you know of your father?”

he doesn't demand an answer. the softened tone of his voice feels like he's extending his hand from you. coaxing you to take it, coaxing you to hold, to have. to nestle in his lap and lay your head on his chest.

there's no demand. just... something. something warm. something kind. an awaiting embrace. a place to rest. somewhere soft.

“he wore Beskar.” your hands rub on your thighs as you sigh. “same as you.”

it's the first time you've mentioned it to anyone. some people know. usually those who grew up with you.

your father didn't show his face much around people. you only realized at a much later stage in life that the only time he ever took off his helm was around you and when you were alone with him. you don't think even your mother got to see his face. but you did. to this day, it's still unclear if that's a good thing or not.

you don't know if you want to keep remembering the face of the man who abandoned you.

“didn’t get to see him many times, but i suspect that was my mom’s doing.” your eyes stayed on your knees. “i thought that one day, when i was older, he’d take me to see his covert. he promised that i’d get to see it. he promised that i would walk amongst other Mandalorians.”

what a dream that was. you wish he hadn't planted it in your head knowing he wasn't going to be there to make it come true.

that was cruel of him. perhaps more cruel than your mother has even been to you.

“but he left when i was ten.” you shrugged, eyes cast down. “then my mom told me he died a year later.”

you never really believed that.

you knew your dad. practically invincible as any Mandalorian is. while the thought of him abandoning you would be unlikely, you can’t imagine how or why he wouldn’t come back for you. if he was dead, you would know that somehow.

someone would’ve bragged about it. showed you a sliver of his armour that was taken as a trophy upon his death. someone would’ve mentioned something about a dead Mandalorian to you. with details.

you’ve gone looking. you’ve checked. there’s no body. only death could have prevented him from coming back if he truly loved you.

yet...

the Mandalorian lays down. he faces the ceiling with a hand under his head and the other on his stomach. a long silence stretches over the two of you. you watch the hand rise and fall. you’re struck with the urge to place a hand on his chest just to feel his breaths. just to bask in the warmth of his strength. he probably won't allow it.

but you don’t understand why he wanted to know about your parentage. you think he’s just curious to know why you’re dead set on annoying him every step of the way to his destination.

you hope he got his answers. because you don't think you can give any more of yourself like that to a man who's keeping you chained to him.

slowly, your eyes drift shut as you try to finally fall into slumber. only to be startled by his voice once more.

“i was a foundling too.” your eyes snapped open. he continued when you said nothing. “maybe older than the green baby but a foundling, nonetheless.”

you... you weren’t expecting that.

a small piece of himself. the image of him without his armour. the image of a young boy, terrified and alone. a child. lonely and cursed to walk the universe alone. a child without purpose, without protection. without a clan. like you.

a foundling.

he was lucky.

tears line your eyes as you screw them shut. you forfeit the thought of any deities ever favouring you enough to give you the chance he got.

a foundling.

he was very lucky indeed.

Clan Djarin and the small village send you off with supplies to last you weeks. the Mandalorians nodded to each other while the baby and his mother waved at you. parting ways with them was bittersweet.

but it left an ache in your chest.

“you’re awfully quiet today.” Mando intoned. “something wrong?”

you stopped believing in gods a long time ago. they couldn’t protect you from the kind of trouble your mother brought home.

but just this once... you pray to whatever deity is listening out there that the mudhorn clan stays together for as the stars burn. if you couldn’t be granted anything for yourself, then the gods could at least let you have this.

his ship has been quiet this morning. the chatter that usually fills the air (usually from you) is absent. your drive for getting on his nerves has simmered down since last night. no doubt it'll come back with a vengeance later but for now, you just simmer in your own thoughts.

“nothing.”

he doesn’t push. not like last night. you watch his helm shift as he refocuses on flying the ship.

you wonder who his buir was. you wonder what they saw in him that your own couldn’t see in you. perhaps one day, you’ll find out. or you won’t and won’t care to.

the journey leads you from a backwater scughole to a bustling city with high towers and skyscrapers that seem to touch the sky. you already miss the wood and dirt and all the green. concrete jungles seem to be where you usually gravitate when you’re about to get in trouble.

hence why you’ve grown to be extra cautious around any big city.

it's good for business, depending on which area within the city but that's where most criminals dwell. there are three kinds. petty thieves, lone wolves, gangs or the big corporate suits who run entire systems.

you’ve dealt with all kinds of them. considering that you fall into the ‘petty thief’ category, you know your own kin pretty well. you know where to keep your eyes and hands, careful to not let anybody pick your pockets. being distracted is the last thing you should be unless you want to end up with less credits than you woke up with.

things are... different with Mando.

there’s a wide berth that allows both of you to walk on by.

your eyes scan the area as you keep walking beside him. not one bounty hunter or pickpocket dares to come near. everyone either stares you down or looks away as you and Mando pass.

regardless of him acting as a repellent, you don’t feel brazen enough to throw caution to the wind. there's at least a hundred to one if you’re being realistic. your fingers snag on the cloth covering his elbow. he barely glances your way in question but your eyes are cast forward.

eventually, though, someone does take the risk to approach. or rather, approach and walk beside the Mandalorian.

both of you tense as soon as he’s close enough. one green Trandoshian. he doesn't say a word for a moment, waiting for acknowledgement. he gets it from you, barely, when you glance at him and catch the malice in his golden eyes.

he doesn’t get any from Mando, though. not yet. no, the armoured warrior keeps marching forward as if nothing happened. but you felt the sudden strain in his arm.

he’s already prepared for a fight.

when the moments pass, the interloper grunts first and still gets nothing from Mando. finally, he gives up.

“how much for the armour?”

the answer he gets is immediate. “not for sale.”

you wonder how many times this has happened to the Mandalorian for him to have a response lined up already. it almost gets a snort out of you.

the Trandoshian inhales deeply, his head leaning forward just a bit. golden eyes now fixating on you. your hairs stand on end. your jaw clenched shut at his exhale, a low hiss as his tongue flicks over a row of sharp teeth. the urge to reach for Mando’s blaster skyrockets by a thousand.

you can’t recall ever having a good experience with Trandoshians. then again, you can’t recall anyone who has. this kind is especially ruthless to anyone and everyone who looks like they’re easy to pick on.

this one reinforces that fact tenfold when he leans a little to the side to get a closer look at you. a cruel grin pulling at his teeth when he smells your fear. “how much for her?”

Mando stops walking that instant.

the hairs at the back of your neck stand on end. you feel as though the sky clouds and pours heavily until it drowns the whole world as you know it, filling your lungs with water and holding you down until you can’t find the strength to scream for help.

it’s unlikely that the Mandalorian will sell you, let alone even entertain the thought. he did not go through all the trouble to find you and bring you back to his employers just to give you up halfway through the job. but you feel that pinch. that awareness of being at the mercy of another. your life, once again, being put in someone else’s hands, precarious and delicate.

it’s why you preferred to be alone. the path of loneliness is easier to navigate when you don’t have to worry about getting a knife to your back. even if you don’t have a covert to stand with when the days are rough, even if you don’t have at least one vod watching your six on a job that looks like it’s about to go tits up in five seconds, you can at least count on your solitude saving you from things going far worse at the hands of someone else who doesn’t have your best interests at heart.

but for now… that person is not the Mandalorian who’s keeping you captive.

because he steps into the Trandoshian’s vicinity, blocking you from his line of sight. and he steps up to the intruder and looks him dead in the eye.

you watch with bated breath. the two staring each other down. you know everyone else was as tense as you are, waiting for all hell to break loose at the first sign of trouble.

“say again?” Mando asks. it’s a low rumble in his chest. a threat, daring the man to repeat that fatal mistake. “i didn’t quite catch that.”

you’ve faced countless adversaries. men who wouldn’t think twice about plunging a knife down your throat. men who control entire systems. women who would sell their own sisters to the highest bidder. starving teenagers who look for their next meal. all of whom you’ve survived with the skin of your teeth.

you don’t think you ever want to face a Mandalorian. although technically, you’ve faced him before, you realize now, with the hairs on your nape raising on end, that if he wanted you dead, he would’ve put you to the ground before you had the chance to leave your last hiding spot.

there’s a moment when you think it’s all going to shit. one hundred to one odds. an entire street of decrepit souls against you and the Mandalorian.

but you don’t see the Trandoshian’s expression falter. you only know that he’s backed away by the sound of boots against the ground. Mando’s hand doesn’t stray away from the gun at his hip.

it’s not lost on you that the rest seem to subtly fall back as their friend does. almost as if they’re unsettled by his retreat. if he doesn’t want to take his chances with this Mandalorian, then they probably shouldn’t either.

the mr-silent-strong-type quip echoes back to you in that moment. and it rings true. the silent strength he projects, washing over you, blanketing you in its embrace. warding off unwanted advances. protecting you.

when it’s finally time to leave, you’re jolted by Mando's hand slipping through yours. the fear, the noise, all of it slowed down and halted. everything stopped. even your breaths.

leather against bare skin. the heat of his palm melting into yours. for that finite moment, his grasp on your hand like lock and key. opening something in your that you haven’t yet discovered, that you hadn’t known existed.

you’re too stunned to mention it for the rest of the way.

he pulls you to another street. without a word, you follow him, your feet falling in step with his as if they were meant to.

you’re more than grateful that Mando doesn’t bring it up. ever.

neither do you. what would you even say? how do you even start to acknowledge that he held your hand in front of all those hunters? in front of everyone?

you don’t.

he didn’t need to. you very easily could have followed him without a problem all on your own. whatever the Mandalorian’s motives were for doing that, you would prefer not to know. even if you laid awake the entire night in your rented bed in an unnamed inn, questioning if you’d ever get to feel the warmth of his hand seeping into yours again.

the next day, you pretend it didn’t happen. you follow him around as diligently as you could while he speaks to one associate then the next. you keep your hands away from his. making sure that your knuckles don’t ever brush against his gloves so there’s no mistake or indication that you want for yesterday’s incident to happen again.

some part of you wonders if he wants it to happen again. another part wonders if he’ll reach over those precious few feet to you and take your hand. you don’t dare to entertain either one of those thoughts.

even if he’s not touching you, you still feel as though he is. being in his vicinity, you suppose does that. the Mandalorian’s protection is strong enough that it’s almost tangible.

then you reach this part of town that just makes you forget about him entirely. there’s a whole street of street vendors selling all kinds of things. unfortunately, you haven’t had a good meal and the smell of grilled meat made you want to remedy that immediately.

how could you resist good food when it’s right in front of you?

there’s one stall that draws your undivided attention. “i’ve got to try that.”

“no, don’t you dare–” he yells your name just as you scamper off to the lady selling variations of grilled meat.

you completely ignoring him. he sighs deeply once you’ve slipped well out of his grasp and went to the vendor. you order a kebab and immediately take a bite. he stands where he is, just observing you from afar.

“these are so good.” you chirp happily. “can i have five more to go please?”

the woman nods and starts to pick off the ones you requested and puts them in two paper bags. two more for you and the other three for Mando. it doesn’t take you long to get your order packaged in a brown paper bags and given to you. after that, you head back to where he’s standing.

you prepare yourself to get yelled at but surprisingly, Mando makes no attempt to reprimand you for running off like that.

“here.” you hold out one of the paper bags. “couldn’t not get these for you.”

after defending you from that one guy, you figured this could be the least you could do. you just feel slightly compelled to return his kindness somehow. even if it was an obligation.

he slowly reaches for the bag but doesn’t look at what’s in it. instead, he steadily holds your gaze and your breath. you are immediately reminded of how much you hate doing nice things. the moments where you feel like you could bury yourself under the ground, hoping that he accepts your peace. hoping that he… likes it.

you could picture him later. sitting alone in his ship, taking off his helm to take a bite of the grilled meat. would it be to his taste? or would he spit it out and throw it in the trash?

some sick, needy little part of you hopes he doesn’t.

he doesn’t say a thing as you two keep moving. not a thing about the Trandoshian who threatened you earlier. no complaints about how you ran off on him earlier, which you were surprised about (you were really hoping to talk back to him if he was going to lecture you about safety or something about you trying to escape him). nothing else about his family, his upbringing.

worst of all, not a damn thing about your peace offering.

not even a thank you.

it doesn’t– it shouldn’t bother you. it shouldn’t.

frankly, you were expecting him to throw it back on your face and call you an idiot for one reason or the next. the silence on his end stung more than anything. like your offering wasn’t even worth the acknowledgement. 

like you weren’t worth the acknowledgement.

you sat in your chair as he flew his ship, trying to tamper down the lump in your throat. the paper bag is nowhere to be seen. you never saw him open it or look inside. it was gone.

probably thrown out.

“so where’s our next pit stop?” you ask.

his helm barely turns your way. “somewhere warm.”

you quell the urge to kick his seat as the ship takes off into hyperspace.

Jakku.

“when you said warm, i didn’t think you meant blistering hot.” you grumbled as you walked out of the ship while shielding your eyes against the suns with your hand.

you already miss the air conditioning. usually, you avoid desert tundra terrains. death by environmental causes is one of the worst way to go. dehydration is slow and painful. and so is hypothermia. at least the barrel of a gun is guaranteed to grant you a quick death.

“keep your head down and don’t cause any trouble.” the Mandalorian says.

“hard to do that when trouble seems to follow me.”

he grabs you by the arm, though it’s not rough. just enough to pull your attention. just enough to make your blood blister in your cheeks even more than it already does.

“stay close.” when you try to rip your arm away, he tightens his grip, pulling you closer and reaching his other hand to grab your chin. “i mean it.”

you hold his glare. your breaths heavy and heady with what feels like anger for the way he just orders you around because he can. yet something sparks there. between you and him at that moment. heat blisters and blurs the line between hunter and prey and you can’t seem to fathom how or why it gives rise to other urges.

the urge to fill his palm with your cheek. to let it stay there and pretend for a second that you’re not a quarry and he’s not a bounty hunter cashing in on your head. a need to stop thinking. about everything. your life. his Creed. the rules of engagement of this entire transaction.

you don’t really know why. it’s just instinctual at this point to veer away from such thoughts with as much violence as you can. your jaw moved on its own and chomped down on the muscle between his thumb and index.

Mando rears back with a hiss, yanking his hand away before you can really do some damage. 

“did you just bite me?” 

you flash your infamous shit-eating grin. “point that finger at me again and that’s what’ll happen.”

he looks at you for a good long minute, seemingly contemplating if he should do it again to see if you’ll follow through with your threat. you will if he dares to try again. mostly for the fun of it. mostly to make him think twice before 

it’s unfair the way he gears his strength toward manhandling you just because he can. balancing the scales is what you do. getting under his skin the way you do.

he pulls away and like that, the heat drains as quickly as it bloomed. the cold space suddenly doesn’t feel so familiar. with him having invaded your space, permanently altering it, making you accommodate him, permanently leaving his mark when he leaves.

you hate that you feel the weight of his absence when he leaves you be. you’d been separated from him for quite a bit of time after that little spat. he left you to explore by yourself but didn’t go far. he was always in your peripheral. always near, just not breathing down your neck anymore.

you felt him watching.

not just making sure that you weren’t trying to run. just watching. observing. you don’t know what his play was but it felt nice not feeling him hovering over you every second of the day. odd but nice.

and you were just starting to have fun too. when you had ordered a bowl of soup at a cantina, you thought you had more time to enjoy your limited solitude. Mando stormed minutes later holding a duffle bag, just as you were blowing steam off of your soup and didn’t hesitate to beeline towards you.

“let’s go.” he pulls you up by your arm, forcing you to drop your spoon.

you made a distressed sound but you don’t think he cares as he pulls you along to the door. you looked longingly at your abandoned bowl, then to him. “but i haven’t eaten yet.”

“let’s. go.” he keeps tugging, keeps rushing you out the door.

you don’t know what’s gotten into him. you think it might have been the Trandoshian again or some other criminal who got under his skin. you think Mando might have seen or heard something that set him off.

it has to be.

but this attitude is nothing short of hard, considering everything. you thought you two had a momentary understanding. you thought that him giving you room to breathe was a result of something of the earlier encounter, with him grabbing your face. maybe even something of Sorgan, with you and him both sharing, both opening up about each other.

you thought–

maybe. the peace offering. it was the peace offering, wasn’t it? he’s mad that you offered him some kebabs for some reason and he’s going out of his way to be an absolute prick about it.

you dig your feet into the ground and it does little to stop him from marching forward. you huff, annoyed as he keeps moving you through a crowd. “can’t i enjoy my food in peace for five kriffing minutes?”

“you’re not on vacation, love.” the nickname jolts you as you keep stepping. you swear you feel his hand loosen around your wrist, though it’s not to let you go. but rather to slide his hand down and grasp yours. “come on, cyra'ika, let’s move.”

you just… you–

“Mando–” a breathless stutter falls out and goes unheard in the crowd.

you don’t know what to make of this. of him. of what the hell he’s doing. the worst of it was not knowing. of being left in the dark, wondering, wandering. only bumping into walls and walking a path that has no meaning or end.

he holds your hand. firmly, yet softly. hurrying through the rush and pulling you, stringing you along into an alley. even then, he doesn’t let go.

it means nothing. you make nothing of this. him holding your hand. him letting you in about how he grew up. him defending you from other people who sought to hurt you. it. means. nothing.

fact remains; he’s only pulling you towards his intended destination. once he collects on what he’s owed, he’s done with you. he’ll walk away and leave you to deal with whoever put a price on your head. he’ll leave and–

and…

he’ll leave.

so for him to just– do this. without any regard of how you might feel about it (not that he should but he’s given some indication that he’s not completely blind and deaf to your thoughts).

one minute he’s blistering hot as the sands of Jakku, then he’s as insanely cold as a snowstorm on Hoth. and then–

–then. he’s somewhere in-between. then he speaks softly. then he holds your hands. then he’s as cool as the nighttime breeze of Naboo. then he’s as lukewarm as the waters too.

then. you’re back to blistering hot Jakku. you’re back to insanely cold Hoth. and then and then and then–

it never ends. you can’t take it anymore.

you just… snap.

your hand rips away from his and the words spill out from the top of your voice– “what is your problem?!”

the alleyway is quiet and it makes your voice that much louder. he stares at you like you’d just shot him.

“if i’m not your prisoner, then don’t treat me like one, Mando!” you shoved his chest, though it did absolutely nothing to make him budge. 

it’s like trying to push against a brick wall. he’s annoyingly sturdy, which makes it hard to be remotely intimidating in his eyes, even as angry as you are. you hate him for it. you hate that he’s big, that he’s built like a fucking star destroyer and that he’s heavily armoured on top of all that.

what will it take to take him down a peg?

what will it take to get him on his knees?

a pair of cuffs are clapped around your wrists faster than could react. your eyes widen and he clasps his hand between your bound hands and pulls you by the cuffs.

“what are you doing? let me go!” you try and try and try to pull back but all it amounts to is having your boots scrape along the ground as he keeps marching forward like he’s hauling a fresh kill.

it’s utterly humiliating.

“guess what?” said Mando. he stops and looks at you and you swear he’s got a smug expression underneath that stupid helmet of his. “you’re my prisoner now.”

stupid helm. stupid Mandalorian. stupid, stupid, stupid–

he makes you feel so stupid and so small and so weak, it grates your pride like sandpaper on your skin. you wish you had fought harder to get away from him that first time around. you wish you’d set up a lethal trap to kill him, rather than just delaying him to make your quick escape.

“fine. you wanna act like a brat, love–” he finally lets you go, clearly perturbed by your incessant struggling. “then i’ll treat you like a fucking brat.”

he turns away from you and takes a few steps forward. it takes a few seconds for you to realize that he expects you to follow. “let me out of these kriffing chains, Mando!”

“you’ll find me at the ship.” he answers back without looking at you. like you were just an afterthought.

he’s walking away, knowing damn well that you’ll trail behind him because he knows it’s dangerous to be out here with your hands restrained. he’s got you cornered and the only way out is with him, regardless of whether you like it or not.

and you hate it. and him. you just hate every fibre of his being like you’ve never hated anything else in the entire universe.

“what? you afraid i’ll do more than just hurl insults at you?” you spit at his back, marching forward and yelled at the top of your voice. “you afraid i’ll lay you on your ass like the first time we met?! is that it?!”

that earned him a chuckle. “bold of you to assume that i’m even remotely afraid of a rat like you.”

“then take these off of me!”

“no.”

the denial was final. you're condemned to being confined in cuffs for the rest of the way to the ship.

you seethe violently under your skin as you try to think of the worst thing you can possibly say to make him as angry as he’s made you.

you take a deep breath, inhaling as much air as possible and scream the one word that comes to mind. it’s a shot that rings in the air and pings right against metal.

“hut’uun!”

but it rings true. because the divine moment when Mandalorian stops dead in his tracks fills your veins with a thrill unparalleled by anything you’ve ever felt in your entire life.

those few precious seconds of holding your breath are all you cling to. he slowly turns, the threat of his gaze is a knife to your throat. one which you foolishly brought upon yourself.

“what did you just call me?”

sweat lines your trembling hands as you clench them. your eyes slowly narrowed, a gun still warm with smoke oozing from the barrel. you keep your chin high and your jaw tight.

“you heard me.” your clipped tone does you no favours. it doesn't stop you from digging your own grave. “loud and clear.”

Mando drops the bag and storms his way towards you. feet kicking through the thick sands and burning a path straight to you that it makes your conviction falter. your steps stammer backwards when his arm reaches out and grabs you with a force that punches a whimper out of your throat.

he grips your face in one hand, fingers digging into your cheeks, the edge of his palm resting on your chin as he leans close. you can smell him. all steel and musk and gunpowder. none of the softness you would expect from someone with jagged edges and twice the vile rotten core of a soul not dissimilar to yours.

it startles you. the pang of a realization that he is the mirror to something you’ve been searching for your whole life. he is everything you could’ve been. should’ve been.

unflinching from the face of death. the face of honour, the very essence of it coursing through his veins, giving him life, giving him the very thing that you’ve scoffed at but secretly yearned for ever since you learned how to speak; purpose. wrinkling his face at the thought of cowardice. at the very thing you accused him of.

it makes you angry. makes you hate him. that he gets to live the fate that was stolen from you. it makes you want to rile him up. to bring him down to your level– chakaaryc. make his ethics questionable, dubious at best. downright wretched at worst. drag him down to being a petty criminal.

you refuse to let him be on the high ground so he can look down at you.

“say that again.” it’s a low snarl. a dare. a threat. something pools deep in your belly at the thought of taking him up on that offer. “louder this time.”

you don’t think you could’ve been any louder than you were the first time. daring to question his honour wasn’t the problem. frankly, you don’t think he cares if anyone calls him a coward, he’d probably just walk away and not bat an eye.

oh but you. you. it’s the fact that you’d done so in the very language he holds close to his chest. not a native tongue to him, not what he was born to (his accent gives him away on that end). but a language tied to a faith that means everything to him.

you don’t repeat the word. it’s vulgar. even to you, someone who’s barely dipped her toes in the culture but you know the word. you know what it means. you know it’s an insult of the highest degree to someone who dorns the Beskar’gam.

instead, you twist your face away just enough to snag your teeth on his gloves finger and bite down. your teeth don’t cut through the leather. but the bite is hard enough to earn you a grunt, frustration pouring out of him at being caught off guard. your blood tingles with a thrill especially because you’re in sheer disbelief that you took things this far, because you want to see what he’ll do next.

because you want to see if he’ll hold up to his promise of not hurting you. you want to see if those words were just for show, if they were just to placate you. to tamper you long enough until he sees his job through.

“you fucking–” the sharp retort quickly bleeds into silence and is swallowed back down his throat. you’re curious to know what it is.

he’s quick to rip his hand away but snaps back again. a venus flytrap. for a second, the thought of being slapped makes you flinch. only, fingers grip your jaw. he’s smart enough not to let his hand near your teeth again, only opting to rest it underneath your chin, nearly clasping your throat. the beat of your heart thunders in your ears like drums on Life Day.

the suns of Jakku bear down on the earth and though you may stand under the shade as you feel their humid weight slowly boiling you from the inside out, goosebumps prickle your skin as if you’d been standing in the cold for too long.

you think he wants to grip your throat instead– no. you know he wants to.

hell. you’re ashamed to admit that you want him to.

“bite me again and see what happens next.” he grits out through clenched teeth, fingers digging into your skin hard enough to hurt. the heat of his threat makes your skin pickle. you know it’ll bruise later.

(you hope it does.)

your eyes slowly drift down to his wrist. you clench your jaw, knowing that he feels the movement. to silently let him know that you’re not above behaving like an animal just to prove a point. or just for the hell of it. if he stoops as low as you or even lower, you still win because you’ll be laughing at the end of the scuffle.

he waits for you to act first, muscles taut and ready to retaliate against whatever else you throw at him. this time, you do nothing. just stare down his visor until he eventually unclasps his fingers from your skin while you breathe through your nose. you figure you’ve riled him up enough as it is.

it's a long walk back to the ship. Mando perp walks you in front of him the entire way there and only when he's satisfied with humiliating you, he then finally takes the cuffs off you and leaves you to wallow in the cargo hold.

you sit there alone, wondering if the universe really has it out for you. it seems to. apparently, making your existence as miserable as possible seems to entertain it or whatever deity is watching.

because in the hours you’d been left to sulk on your own, you’d gone from simmering with rage to wondering why you had even said such a thing to him in the first place. 

hut’uun.

you cringe at yourself, curling into a ball in the corner. stars, what the fuck could’ve compelled you to call him that of all things. a coward. in your father’s native tongue. using the very Creed Mando holds so close to his chest. it’s moments like this when you’re reminded that something just might be fundamentally wrong with you.

nothing about the Mandalorian is cowardly. it would be one thing to say it in Basic, he would have completely ignored that and let it roll off his back. but in Mando’a? not only calling into question strength but also his steadfast integrity.

it is an insult to the very core.

it makes you stand on your feet and seek him out. you slowly make your way down to the cockpit, where he most likely will be, while taking deep breaths and mulling over the words in your head. it’s difficult to think of anything to say to make up for the foolish mistake you made earlier. yet, you have to at least try to come up with something.

as you thought, he’s in the pilot’s seat, steering the ship to your (his) next destination. you hesitate upon entering, opting only to stand at the doorway. your shadow pours into the darkened cockpit.

you know that he’s aware of your presence. you doubt he didn’t hear your footsteps or doesn’t notice the absence of light streaming in from the hallway. he knows you’re there. he just doesn’t want to acknowledge you.

again. you sigh. blistering hot and now the ice is freezing you over. Jakku, Hoth. all wrapped in muscle and armour.

“Mando.” your tone starts off tight and sure. though you feel anything but. “can we talk?”

he doesn’t say anything. doesn’t move. just stares ahead at the vast space in front as if your voice never reaches him in the vacuum he wants to escape to.

you shouldn’t feel guilty. at all. he was the one pushing you around for no reason. you don’t want him treating you like his own personal rag doll, yet here you are, feeling the bile rise to your throat because you feel so fucking bad for calling him that.

“i…” you take a deep breath, eyes cast down in shame. “shouldn’t be so difficult when you’ve been far more gracious to me than most bounty hunters would have.”

pride stings your throat as you swallow it down. it tastes bitter. like the caf your mother would drink. like her heart. like yours. it stings. it burns. It hurts.

much of what you’ve put him through was because of your own complicated emotions with your parents. but that is not Mando’s fault. it was wrong of you to take that out on him.

the Mandalorian does not speak. instead, he swerves his chair and stands up. you back away from the door frame when it looked like he might bulldoze his way through you.

“Mando–” you try to call out, but he marches down the hallway.

you hate this. going from being the center of his attention, the very bane of his existence, to then… nothing. you’re nothing. to him. to them.

to everyone. you’re just nothing to everyone around you. not worth their time, their affection. not even their hate. they couldn’t be bothered to care.

you take a deep breath. and the words come out of your mouth–

“n’eparavu takisit.”

he halts in his tracks. just like he did earlier when he called you the other thing. he turns, the first sign that he’s noticed that you’re even there. and only glares at you from a distance, shoulders tense and hands clenched at his sides. his deep ire permeates the very air you breathe and you’d much rather suffocate instead.

each inhale releases with a shudder. your wide eyed stare can’t veer away from his visor, even if you wanted it to. even when heat stings the corners of your eyes.

“i’m sorry for calling you... that. i am. and– and it’ll never happen again.” your confession, you hope, is heartfelt. you don’t think you can bear another second of this stifling silence. yet, you can’t help but sharply add, “but you gotta stop shoving me around.”

still, shame blooms in your chest like weeds sprouting from wet earth. you hate that you even had to apologize for something that you never should’ve done in the first place. you hate that you had to endure the brunt of the Mandalorian’s harsh stare, his silence and worst of all, his apathy.

you realize, in the absence of whatever mutual understanding you had with him, how many boundaries he’s crossed. from bounty hunter to quarry, all of the things he’d done were, quite frankly, forbidden.

he could’ve very well let you starve since you set foot on Sorgan. but he bought food for you out of his own dime. and then sheltered you, protected you from the hunters on Jakku. stood his ground in a way that… that still makes something in you flutter violently when you think back on it.

holding your hand. pulling you away from danger.

spoke softly to you when he asked about your father. even softer when he revealed little about himself. as if you were a friend. someone he can trust. when you were anything but.

“a–anyway…” you stuttered, shaking your head. “that’s all i had to say.”

a few steps backward, then a swift turn and you find your way into the cockpit. where you sit down, fold your arms together and sulk. it’ll take a while, you think, for the shame to subside. in the meantime, you just have to endure it for the rest of the journey and hope the Mandalorian doesn’t make your life hell until you reach his destination.

you hope you don’t have to look at him for the next few hours, at least. if he wants time to cool off, he should have no problem staying as far away from you as his ship would allow. except, it doesn’t take him long for him to return.

“here.” he’s brought the bag from earlier and he drops it at your feet. 

your brows furrow at him for a moment before you reach down and unzip it. inside, are things you didn’t expect to see. things you never expected from him. ever.

clothes. a few shirts, long and short. pants too, alongside a new pair of boots. there’s a towel and products as well. soap, shampoo, face wash, moisturizer. the whole nine yards.

this is what he was lugging around the entire day. things that he bought for you.

a laugh bursts out of you as you pull the bag up onto your lap and rummage through the contents. “gee, Mando. do i smell that bad? is that why you were ignoring me the whole day?”

he grunts and takes the pilot’s seat once more, still facing you. watching you examine each bottle. the shampoo he bought smells nice. so does the conditioner. you’re going to enjoy soaking in a nice hot shower and change into clothes that don’t smell like sun and sweat and you’re going to sleep like a baby.

you’re truly touched that he went to such lengths, even when you were so horrible to him, to get you all this. regardless of the impending doom of the destination ahead, you feel less like his quarry and more like a guest on his ship.

you smiled softly. “thank you, Mando.”

and here you were thinking he didn’t care in the slightest. what a pampered little quarry you are. being spoiled with luxuries you shouldn’t be allowed on the way to being handed off to your next bidder.

morbid thoughts, yes, but they do keep you entertained and alert at the same time.

“it’s Ghost.” he says, starting you. “if you’re going to keep working on my last nerve for the entirety of this journey, then you can call me Ghost. but only when we’re alone.”

you blink owlishly at him. that… you weren’t expecting that. you weren’t expecting a name.

he gave you a name. his name. well, a nickname, really, but–

Ghost.

your heart flutters because he gave you a name. a small piece of himself. something not many are given. what could you have possibly done to be bestowed such an honour? it’s a strange feeling. being handed something so precious with the expectation that you’re to take care of it.

yet, you can see why that name was tied to him. he certainly acts like a ghost most days. quiet. moving like a shadow, almost as if he’s moving through the walls with his bulk.

but other days–

bite me again and see what happens next.

the gravel of his voice haunts you. sends a shudder down your spine, sends a tingle down to places you’d rather not acknowledge at the moment.

other days, the force of his strength is nothing like what a ghost is. other days, the sheer violence of his presence alone. the haunting rage that scorches the very earth he walks without him having to say a word.

it trickles at the back of your mind like a slow drip until it cracks open and floods your brain with the image of his hand shooting out through the air to grab something. a gun. a throat. the Trandoshian’s. yours.

“Poltergeist suits you better.” you pause. “or mr-silent-strong-type.”

that draws a tired chuckle out of him. you don’t know why the sound warms your cheeks. it is so jarring to hear him sound amused. like light pouring into a cold, dark chasm, warming you from the inside out.

you hope to get another laugh out of him before the end of his journey.

you took that much needed shower.

washing off the sands of Jakku felt so good. you lathered your skin using the loofah that was tucked in the corner of the duffle bag and made bubbles using the floral scented shower gel, letting it seep into your pores. you sighed in relief as the hot water sprayed over your body. then you got to washing your hair.

throughout the entire process, you swear you’ve never been allowed this much peace while taking a shower. all of these little luxuries given to you by the Mandalorian. why?

why do this when he was just going to sell you off to his employers? why do all this when he was just going to let you go? when he was just going to leave.

it doesn’t make any sense.

come on, cyra'ika, let’s move.

how could he call you that when he was going to leave you? doesn’t he know the implication of that endearment? doesn’t he understand that you don’t just go around calling people that? much less people who are supposed to be quarry. his meal ticket. a soul sacrifice for the wellbeing and survival of his covert.

cyra'ika.

you’re not even deserving of that word after what you called him in return. you cringe thinking back on it again. he called you something sweet. twice in the same breath. and you threw it back on his face.

now you’ll never hear him call you that again.

you turn the faucet and shut the water. the fluffy gown he got for you was almost too soft to wear. it enveloped your body like a warm embrace. you think you’ll be keeping this one for a long time.

you’re surprised to see him waiting for you just outside the ‘fresher. leaning against the metal wall with arms crossed. the sight of him makes you pause for a good, long moment. your cheeks grow warm when you quietly ask yourself how long he was waiting there. 

“water’s still hot.” is all you stiffly offer, your arms wrapping tightly around yourself, praying that the gown clings to your skin and doesn’t suddenly disappear.

something in your belly rolls at the idea of him seeing you like this. vulnerable. practically naked, even if you are wearing a gown that completely engulfs nearly every inch of your wet skin. you imagine him waiting out here, just waiting while you were in there, taking a shower. while you were in there, naked.

the perv.

what’s with him anyway? why couldn’t he have waited in the cockpit? was he hoping to barge in there while you were still taking a shower?

your skin prickles hotly at the thought of him doing just that. that must’ve been on his mind, considering how long you took to get cleaned up. he must’ve been impatient to use the ‘fresher and very much annoyed to have to share his space with you.

you’re just awful to him, aren’t you? always snapping your jaws at him, pushing his buttons, eating away at his resolve with every passing moment.

(you hope he dreams of you when you’re gone.)

“get dressed.” he orders. “we’re here.”

you blink belatedly as he pushes himself off the wall and trudges down the hallway.

so this is it, huh? the end of the journey. you’re no longer going to be travelling with Ghost. your shoulders slumped at the thought.

Ghost said his employer isn’t going to kill you or hurt you. so you wonder, again, what will happen to you? what is the purpose of going through the trouble of bringing you all the way out here?

you don’t have enough time to dwell on any of that as you find something to put on while the ship finally lands. the new clothes do make you smile a little as you get dressed. and you love the smell of your new boots. it wouldn’t hurt to have a knife on you for wherever it is you’re headed but that’s another matter entirely.

yet as soon as you step out into the new terrain, dorning your new jacket, you halt in your tracks upon seeing what’s in front of you.

there, walking on the sands of this unknown planet, are more Mandalorians before you. far more than you’ve ever seen at once in your entire life.

the mere sight punches the breath right out of your lungs and you stand there wide-eyed and mind frazzled. hoping that your eyes were deceiving you. hoping that we were asleep and that your mind was just wading through his quietly unsettling nightmare.

that’s... that’s a lot of armoured people moving around in one place. are you sure he brought you to the right place? you don't think he’s supposed to bring a bounty into... you know, his own home. the very place where his kin resides.

“you…” the words die in your throat as another Mandalorian rushes past you.

there’s foundlings everywhere with their freshly painted armour gleaming in under the gaze of the bright sun. veterans with chipped paint on their worn steel. young warriors who are on the verge of earning their signets. there’s entire families. entire clans. groups of people who belong together and live cohesively.

more than quite a few stop to look at you.

you feel the burn of their apprehension faster than you can try to catch your breath. you can feel their judgement. sharp thorns lined and aiming at you. the outsider.

“you brought me to your covert?” you turn to Ghost, who’d been following closely behind your steps. “why?”

his silence gives you no consolation, no hints, no answers. he stands as still as a statue. your throat tightens considerably. tears burn your eyes.

crying is not an option right now. you fight to choke the tears back down because crying in front of these your people is not something you want to entertain at the moment.

so many of your people in one place. you’re standing in their home. a sick sense of imposter syndrome hits you in the gut, except. it rings true. you are an imposter. outsider. you don’t belong here. aruetti.

you should leave. now.

but as you start to back away with your heart stuck in your throat, you bump into a solid wall behind you. Ghost firmly grasps your arms and keeps you there. your eyes stay fixed on the Mandalorians bustling around in front of you and you can’t get away from it.

you realize, in quiet horror, that there was no way you could’ve ever avoided this. that one way or another, your endless journey of no direction would’ve eventually led you to this exact moment. to be brought back to the people you’ve longed for your entire life.

yet when you’re confronted with it, you find yourself fearing the outcome.

he lets go for you to turn around and face him.

“Ghost.” he doesn’t move. not an inch. not even if you sound like you’re pleading. “who hired you?”

Ghost utters your name, his hand reaching for yours. some part of you can’t allow him to touch you. some part of you flinches and moves away before you can’t fully stop yourself.

some part of you, some long deep wound that’s been barely starting to heal tears wide open and starts to hemorrhage. and you think you’re going to choke on your own blood anytime now because your throat is closing up and it’s starting to fucking hurt seeing all these Mandalorians in one place.

seeing all of them as a unit, as one big happy family and he brought you here–

why did he bring you here?

Ghost doesn’t tell you why. instead, he looks at you like he’s going to break your heart and you don’t understand how he could possibly do that when he barely even knows you.

“i want you to know.” the confession spikes a chill in your blood. “i’m not getting paid for bringing you here.”

“what?” you squawk. “why?”

it makes no sense. for him to go through all this trouble for no pay at all. because what could possibly motivate him enough to come after you if not for a big briefcase full of credits.

the very nature of his kind, bounty hunters, is to put their very lives on the line for a good coin. unless…

he holds your gaze the way a mother cradles her child. he tells you nothing more, nothing you won’t find out in a minute or two. and it clicks.

this had nothing to do with him being a bounty hunter.

“whatever happens, just…” the silence on your end drowns everything out but his voice. you cling to his words through the roaring in your ears. “just hear him out.”

this had everything to do with him being a Mandalorian. this was for his tribe, his Creed.

before you can ask to hear who out, Ghost’s helm shifts up as he looks behind you. the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end before you even hear the voice uttering your name.

maybe if your heart wasn’t rattling like a bird in its cage, you wouldn’t have been so shocked to recognize the voice that had once lulled you to sleep when you were so young. it stops beating entirely. your breath held in your throat.

you turn to look behind you, hoping that you were just imagining this. hoping that this was all just one sick nightmare that’s got its hold on you and you just didn’t realize it yet.

but it wasn’t a nightmare. you were awake and living through something worse. you were living through hearing things you only thought were just midnight hauntings. voices of people you’d loved and lost.

the voice of a dead man.

the voice of your–

“buir.”

the saying goes seeing is believing. red armour bleeds into your vision. he stands tall, visor fixed on you and you alone.

you want to believe that you have been cursed since the day you took your first breath. as that would explain why everything had gone so wrong so fast before you were even old enough to understand what was going on. you want to believe that this curse has twisted something in you from the very core and taken away what you were supposed to be and left you with this thing that you are now.

what you don’t want to believe is what you are seeing in front of you. because the sight shatters everything you’ve known up until this very moment in time.

your father.

(Part 2/2)

translations:

buir – father, mother (parent, basically)

beskar’gam – armour

chakaaryc – rotten, low-life (generic adjective to describe an undesirable person of dubious ethics).

cyare – beloved.

cyra'ika – sweetheart, darling.

hut’uun – coward (worst possible insult)

n’eparavu takisit – i eat my insult / i apolgize for being rude

ori’buyce, kih’kovid – all helmet, no head.

(according to the Mando’a Dictionary)

this took way too fucking long and i've still got the second part to get to🤦🏻‍♀️

shout out to @lishdfish for spawning this fic💙

dividers by @cafekitsune

banner by @vase-of-lilies

offer a note in the picklejar