Real Talk; Steve & Grant
Steve wakes up, for the hundredth time in the past few hours, to the sight of a bland white ceiling and the beep of heart monitors.
And just as quickly as his eyes opened, they close again.
And all at once, all his senses go to work without his lucid recall: The fact that it's now dark out, judging by the lack of natural light from the closed curtains and the silence permeating his surroundings. So silent that he could hear snippets of conversation between a doctor and his mistress down the hall. The snoring of an on-call nurse a few doors down. The squeak of a mouse in the walls. The smell of anti-bacterial gel and stale plastic and sterile metal clogging up all the oxygen in the air.
His eyes open again. Just as he's suspected before.
Clearly, he's still in the hospital.
And clearly, the fucking nightmare of the past few days has, in fact, not been all in his head.
Which is truly goddamn unfortunate.
SHIELD is... gone. Or at least, most of it. He's worked with SHIELD long enough to know that it really is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg with The Triskellion. It may have been the headquarters of the entire, literal lie they've all been living under for all these decades but, he also knows that they have many, many bases of operation all around the globe.
He wonders if they can still be salvaged. His mind had been mostly on taking down HYDRA within SHIELD that he had just wanted to burn everything to the ground after... It's not all about him, he knows that.
Even now, in the calm following the storm, he wonders if the remaining, loyal people who'd dedicated their lives to-
Regardless, he's not gonna be here to see if and when the dust settles or not.
He has something he has to do first.
"You're up." He hears to his left in the slightly darkened room and it's maybe a testament to how Dr. Simmons has been working on these enhanced painkillers like they're the cure for cancer, that he doesn't startle nor has even taken into account the dark-haired man sitting next to him still during his earlier perusal.
That's probably also the reason why all the aches and pains and god the fucking amount of injuries on his whole body, are now down to a duller throb. And the pounding in his head has ceased some.
Hey, no drug's perfect.
He turns his head and meets a pair of dark, alert eyes belonging to his best friend.
"I am." He shrugs a bad shoulder at Grant's statement, sitting up with a grunt. "I wish I wasn't but, I am." He grunts some more and leans back, completely missing the expression that crosses the other man's face.
When he's stable enough and looks over at Ward, his friend is already on the move and is heading towards the area that holds the plastic pitcher and the sippy cups.
"Here. Drink that. Doctors said your throat would be dry." He says, watching him for a few minutes as he struggles get comfortable with his bad shoulder and the pitcher of water before immediately gesturing him for him to stop with a slight chuckle. "Look me help you with it, ace."
"Fuck off." He tries saying with no venom.
"Don't be like that." Grant retorts in a snap, the grin slight but, visible on his face.
He protests some more. Of course he does. He's a grown man. An enhanced soldier. He should be able to do this one thing on his own. He'll be good as new a day or two, he's certain. He's just never really sustained this much injuries in a really, really long time. Since the serum, actually and while getting at least mildly hurt in the field is still a possibility, it's not as easy it had been. Between his training and the shield, well...
As it is, though, after a minutes he lets it go and allows Grant to fuss over him. Partly because it's a very rare sight despite how close they've become as friends and also, because it brings about pang of nostalgia out of him in reminding him sharply of his childhood when Bucky and he used to patch each other up. Looking out for one another in the way they had.
Bucky... He feels that thing again. That tingle at the back of his throat. The burning sensation behind his eyes.
God, Bucky. The man who'd been his best friend in the world. His constant. His... brother.
It pains him to know that he'd thought one of the few people in the world to ever believe in him had been dead - and that had been bad enough - but, to know that all this time, he'd been-
He can't bare it and clears his throat before he could fall apart completely in a hospital bed of all places.
"Steve." He hears above him, a familiar strong grip on his shoulder bringing him back from his grief-stricken stupor. "Steve, do you want me to get a nurse or-"
"No." He manages clamping his hand over the one on his shoulder in a maybe too tight grab, judging by the surprise on his friend's face. "No, don't... I'm fine."
He's not, really. But, he sure as shit isn't gonna say so. He has no business bleeding on others. Although with that realization comes another.
His world has fallen apart all in the span of a few days... yet he knows he still has people in his corner. Including Grant. The man who's become his most unlikely of best friends.
Because he is his best friend. One of the many surprises he's experienced in the past year in a half.
They couldn't be more different. He sometimes wonders if those contrasts play into their friendship.
"You look like you got run over by a car and then got stomped on. You know that, right?"
He eyes Grant sitting back down. His hands clasped together over his stomach as he leans back in the chair. The dried cut down under his cheekbone. The number of bruises on his face. "So do you." He responds archly. "What happened?"
"What happened to you?" Ward demands, his brow cocking up into his hairline. His shoulder shrugging up, the only sign he's growing impatient. "You and Wilson told me the gist of it. Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier. You and Romanov were on the run. And then the Helicarriers... but that wasn't all of it, was it?"
He stares at him. Natasha had called him a terrible liar. And really, he doesn't make a habit of it so, at the time he'd thought it had just been her frustration and grief over Fury.
He should have known that she wouldn't say something like that if she hadn't meant it.
And that Grant Ward has been named the best since her. A trait that would have been worrisome if he didn't trust him so much.
"You went up there without an exit strategy, didn't you?" The other man asks, a carefully blank look on his face. His voice abruptly neutral. "You were either gonna save him or die trying." He adds, not bothering to form that into a question. "You knew the minute those Helicarriers started getting destroyed that you wouldn't get out on time and you didn't care, did you? Whether you died or not stopped mattering."
He blinks at the man sitting next to him and giving him a stare that's basically daring him to contradict him.
He's... not wrong. After deactivating the last Helicarrier, he had become so single-minded in trying to get to Bucky. Trying to get Bucky to see him. See him as the man he'd known. Trying to get through to him that he lost track of things.
He hadn't really wanted to die but, god, everything stopped mattering when Bucky had kept looking with that traumatized confusion. All that pain.
That's why he had stopped fighting.
A thought occurs to him then. Being pulled out of the water. Seeing the fuzzy image of somebody standing over him through barely open eyes. Recalling... a metal arm.
"He pulled me out." He says out loud.
He hears a scoff and turns, seeing Grant with an incredulous expression written all over his face. "Don't change the subj-"
"No. I know." He tries explaining. "I mean, he pulled me out of the water. Bucky pulled out of the water after the Helicarrier. I wouldn't be alive if-"
"Well, you also wouldn't have been half-dead if it weren't for him either." Grant snaps, a tight fury settling around the room that catches even Steve by surprise. "You wouldn't be here if it weren't for the fact that he beat the shit out of you and then shot and stabbed you and pounded your face in before allowing you to fall into the fucking Potomac." He could almost laugh at the clear sarcasm in the other man's voice if it weren't for the clear anger emanating from him. "So, if it's all the same to you, I would much rather not give him a thank you, after all that, for saving your stupid ass from drowning." He adds with a scowl.
He does chuckle here. He can't not. That very statement is the closest he's ever gonna get to a I care about your well-being,buddy, and I don't like you being hurt, it upsets me as he's ever gonna get and how could not allow himself a small bit of humor, strained though it may be, after this really shitty week?
A frustrated huff comes from the still scowling man at his bedside. "Yeah, laugh it up."
Eventually, though, his laughter does abate and die down, leaving another somehow less tense but, agitated silence in it's wake before Ward breaks it to his infinite surprise. "Steve?"
"Yeah?" He says slowly, watching his buddy's face and tight posture.
"Look, I know that he was your best friend." Steve nearly wants to say is, he still can be the man he'd known because of that small moment of recognition on the bridge but, he lets the words die in his throat, taking in his friend's earnest expression as they meet eyes. "I know you remember him as somebody else but... he doesn't know you. All that programming and brainwashing, it... can be very possible that it can't be fixed. Any of it."
"It can be." He utters hoarsely, his eyes burning again. "I can try."
"He hurt you." Grant says with a steely determination. "He tried to kill you. After all of that..." He trails off , shaking his head, his jaw clenched. "I can't let that stand. I won't."
"I know." He agrees to a certain extent because if he were in Grant's shoes, he would be saying the very same thing. No matter what, he protects the people that he cares about. But, they still include Bucky. "I know. It's just... I know there's some part of him that knows me. There has to be." He adds, throat clogging up. "I have to try, at least."
Grant just nods after a minute before leaning back again in his chair and looking away from him and Steve allows him this for a while. Letting him digest it.
He almost even adds that he can't possibly understand the situation... only to realize that he can. The specialist has told him bits and pieces of his childhood. That his parents were deep in politics and never around. That he'd had an abusive older brother and a little one that'd been most often the target of his harmful acts. And that it had taken his younger sibling almost dying in order for Grant to start fighting back against his tyranny.
But, he only knows the vague basics. Yet, he's never pushed. He's been curious enough but, he's never asked him what exactly went on.
He wonders if his childhood with his brothers plays into his anger now.
He could only imagine growing up like that because even when he had nothing, he had Bucky. A brother born from friendship though not by blood.
Though, now's not the time to bring it up, is it?
So, he brings another thing entirely. Brought up from the early part of their conversation.
"Grant?"
"Yeah?" He receives as his friend's head swivels to him again.
"What exactly happened to you?"
Apparently, he doesn't need to specify that he means during the HYDRA invasion because Ward just huffs out a sharp, reluctant laugh and rubs his palm over his face. "Oh, man, where do I start?"
(Just as well, too, because he gives him total shit for waiting to the whole waiting-to-kiss-the-woman-of-your-dreams-during-an-invasion thing.)