Standin' on the edge of something much too deep
It's funny how we feel so much but we cannot say a word
We are screaming inside, but we can't be heard
‘I Will Remember You,‘ Sarah McLachlan.
She dreams of... kisses. Nibbling kisses and a rough voice that could whisper sweet little nothings and the filthiest of things against her ear. She dreams of that same rough honeyd voice making her undone while talking to her in Spanish.
Katherine hadn't known Spanish, but the Poison Arrow had-- so in her dream-memory she knows that the she-of-the-dream didn't know what the words meant, but the she-that-is-witnessing the dreams understands the words.
She dreams of warm, rough, girlish hands on her hips and standing on her tiptoes to steal a kiss, and another, and another, making the other woman laugh and call her spoiled.
They had loved to fight each other-- not real fights, but disagreeing between them had been so fun, so fantastic. They'd make love and still keep on fighting and moaning and kissing and laughing until Kate remembers how much Katherine loved her.
Until she remembers that her dream is not a dream and Kate sits ups too quickly and nausea hits fast-- before Clint is even completely awake she's running towards the bathroom, throwing up water and heartache and emptiness.
The memories, tho. Those stays.
**
The Badness in the air starts when Bucky doesn't hear the usual thump-thump-thump of arrows hitting targets. It's early enough that the farm should still be full with kids, the weather still warm enough as well despite the fact that some leaves are starting to brown and gold all over.
When he opens the door, he finds a hollow eyed Barton sitting with his dog and no Kate on sight, drinking from a beer. He puts his bag down slowly. It's no good to startle anyone in that house, lest you're Lucky. Clint looks up at him.
“Hey, welcome home,” Clint shakes his head. “We should start dinner.”
“Barton.”
Clint sighs, rubs the back of his neck. “Kate remembered a few things. It's... bad.”
In Clint Barton language regarding Kate, 'not good' means bad and 'bad' means 'war', means Kate in 'nam and Kate has much more memories of that than he does: the treatment for her was different, since a lot of the times she had to be out for whole weeks and they didn't erase all of those. Bucky looks at Lucky, who gives a soft low whine and then at Clint, who is, probably, not moving because Kate had told him not to. But no-one had said that to him.
“Chicken for dinner sounds good,” he says, stretching. “Think I'll go and stretch a bit before.”
He doesn't pretend not to see the relief in Clint's eyes, he just doesn't mention it. Of the three of them, none is good at being gracefully grateful.
Once outside, he simply has to follow the tracks Kate left as she ran away, careless of them in a way an assassin would never be, which is, probably, a sign that she is getting better. He's not surprised to find her quiver empty, nor the target destroyed. Half the arrows are ruined too, and Kate's eyes are rimshot red and her mouth is set on a flat, tense line. Her shoulders are so tense that she seems to be shaking.
“I'm back,” Bucky says, tries to keep his tone light hearted. “I brought back a few souvenirs. How was your weekend?”
“I forgot her,” Kate says, her voice dripping anger and resentment. “I never promised her anything because I was never going away... but I forgot her. I loved her so much that after the Olympics, I was going to come out publicly, as big as I knew how to make it. I was so in love.” Kate closes her hands in fists again and Bucky swears he can almost hear her grit her teeth. “Its been almost two years since I'm free and I didn't remember her until today, how could I have forgotten her?”
Bucky doesn't say 'it's not your fault' because Kate knows that. He doesn't say 'they steal what's important' because she also knows that.
Instead, he sits down by her side but without touching-- touching has to come from Kate, when she's like this, and he gets that. Their bodies weren't their own for so long that now, free, they should get ot decide everything regarding their bodies. It's another thing that he shares with her that he wishes he didn't.
“Tell me about her?”
Kate gives a laugh that it's almost a cry. “I don't remember enough of her”
“Then what you remember,” he suggests. Both Kate and Clint have been there for him, the nights when he's trying to reassemble his memories, when he's telling them about his sisters, his parents, about Steve, trying to reassemble what was true, what wasn't. It's the least he can do, he thinks, to be there for her as well.
Kate-- Bucky would say she sniffs, but Kate hates crying and hates anyone knowing when she cries. So he doesn't offer her a handkerchief that is not there and he keeps, again, from touching her. He just waits until Kate finds her voice again.
“Her name was America.”
**
May 2nd, 1976
“You could come with me, you know,” Katherine says, even when she already knows the answer.
America kisses her shoulder before she stands up. Katherine admires the long line of her back before she puts back on her bra and t-shirt again. “Sorry, princess, can't do. Got things to do.”
“Things, things.” Katherine sighs. America is ever so mysterious about these 'things' that cause her sometimes to disappear for weeks at a time. She always comes back knackered and sometimes hurt, but nothing serious and she doesn't go into hiding, the way some of Katherine friends have had to do. But whenever she asks, America simply says 'later' and she has started to assume might mean 'never'. “Will you ever stop calling me that? It's bad enough the reporters do it,” Katherine grumbles instead before she turns around up as well, no real bite in her tone.
“Not in this century,” America promises.
“January 1st, 2000, I'm going to remind you of this conversation,” she threatens (promises).
America snorts, warm hands on her bare waist and she moves her close, body to body, something molassy and warm in her smile that makes Kate wish that she had said 'no' to her parents idea of a trip before she has to commit herself completely to the Olympics.
“I dig that, Bishop.”
Katherine can't help it-- she laughs, happy and more in love than she has ever been as she moves to kiss America again and get her out of her clothes, pulling her towards the bed again.
If she had known it would be the last time she saw her, Kate thinks she would have actually told her how much she loved her. Love is one of those things that you have to say or then it's lost, it doesn't count. She had told America she loved her, but not enough, never enough and it stayed with every conversation she didn't have with her parents, with all the secrets she never told Susan, with every almost plan she had for a future with America.
Those die with her parents at the Pacific Ocean.
**
When they go back to the farm it's late, and Clint is waiting on them over the steps. Kate is close to teasing him, calling him a worrywart, remind him that the ninety years old and the sixty years old can take care of themselves without breaking their own hips, but when she sees his face she stops.
“What's wrong?” she asks, feels Bucky tense.
Clint rubs his neck. “The Avengers are coming here.”
Both she and Bucky tense, Bucky even more. With her, it was easy: Katherine Bishop had been dead, and her name was never linked to Poison Arrow. And Susan had used as much as Pierce's influences to erase every trace of her, anything that could link her to Hydra. Kate would never be Katherine Bishop again, not The Hawkeye, not legally, but thanks to her sister she could be Kate Bishop, someone from the family line.
Bucky didn't have that luxury.
“There's something going on, Stark made something, I think? Robots? Nat couldn't tell me much, compromised lines, maybe,” he adds. “So they needed somewhere to lay low.”
Because Clint hasn't, actually, retired. He had a medical leave, after Loki's torture, and to relearn himself with the auditive aids he had to use again after that, and the mission where he went to save her was a secret, and what he reported was that Poison Arrow had been taken down, and nothing about how he had helped her reclaim herself for the first time in decades until she could kill her handler, and Clint had said nothing about taking the broken pieces of woman that had been left and, not mending her, but giving her a safe space so she could start the slow rebuilding of herself.
But Bucky isn't ready yet, he still disappears on weeks at end and it's clear in how his shoulders tense over, how his expression shifts from 'dinner' to 'panic'.
And Kate owes him, for hearing her. For the scars they share. For not being completely alone in a strange world.
“I actually have to go to New York to sign some things,” she says. “I've been delaying on that. Barnes, want to come with me?”
Which is why they find themselves right in the middle of New York when the Ultron invasion starts..
**
June 25th, 1974
The police is coming forward, shields on front, and the protesters are chanting 'hell no, we won't go!' with all their might and then they start linking arms. Katherine links arms with her mom on her left side and on the right the most beautiful woman she has ever seen links arms with her and Katherine knows it's not the time to ask for a name or anything but for a moment she forgets when and where she is.
And then all chaos breaks free. When the police stars threatening them, the woman by her side grabs her hand and Katherine hesitates a moment before her mother says 'GO', and then the two of them are running-- over a fence, then by a backstreet alley, then another fence and then they're over the street, walking arm in arm, trying to appear nonchalant and as friendly as they can.
The woman leads her again to another alley where there's a car waiting and Katherine laughs even as she looks at her with wonder in her eyes.
“Just who are you?”
The woman winks at her. “Your ticket out of here, princess.”
Despite the terrible nickname – that stays – Katherine believes she might have fallen in love.
2015
Kate is not surprised that this new battle is Stark's fault At All and she is going to give a gleeful 'told you so' to Clint once they're back at the farm. Their farm.
God, Stark better not have caused her farm to be destroyed or she's not going to care that she's supposed to be hiding, because the possibility of losing it fills her with sick grief for one second. Her next arrow flies and explodes one of the Ultron robots to make it better.
“There's no end to them!” She tells Bucky, who's tearing another robot bare fisted. And she's already running low on arrows.
Before she can fire another one, an Ultron robot hits her, making her lose her bow and it takes everything in her to keep the robot from simply crushing her, fighting against the machine to make it stop choking her... and losing that battle, quickly. She's stronger than she was, thanks to whatever it was that Hydra messed up in her, But she's not the kind of super-soldier Barnes is, not completely. Poison Arrow's designation was infiltration, after all.
Just when she's thinking that she's not going to make it, unable to warn Bucky or do anything, suddenly someone is tearing the robot away from her and Kate falls down to her knees, breathing hard, shaking her head to clear the black edges around her vision and then she looks up.
She's wearing shorts and a blue t-shirt and a hoodie that seems a declaration of war. Her hair is longer now and, except her clothes, she looks exactly the same as the last time Katherine Bishop had seen her girlfriend, about forty years ago.
Kate hadn't searched for her, too afraid of what she might have found, because the chances that she would find that the woman she had been so much in love with was happy and maybe married and settled down and still fighting (because America Chavez would never, ever stop fighting, would go down fighting if she had to) were non-existent and all Kate had been able to do for the woman she had thought to settle down and have a future with, once upon a time, was to close her her eyes and hope, pray that her death, whenever it had come, had been a quick, painless one and not the infinite tortures that she knew existed and she had grieved for America as she did for her mother and for the woman she herself used to be.
And America is now standing in front of her, kicking robots away with a strength that shouldn't be possible and then, before she can say anything, before she can unwind the ache in her chest that seems to be spreading, America is hugging her tightly and Kate can't breathe, can't do anything but let her hold her.
“Kate,” she had never been Katherine nor Kate nor Kat nor anything other than 'Princess' to America, the only person in the whole world that had been allowed to call her that and not have her tear them a new one. America had called her by name no more than twice then and now she does it and she's crying, Kate can feel the way she's shaking. “I searched for you, I did, but I couldn't find anything...!”
Kate suddenly remembers, clear as day, a promise. 'Not in this century,' America had said, once upon a time. Remembers her promises about better days. Harsher ones, as well, but eventually better ones. Wonders if not-quite-super-soldiers are able to have heart attacks, because it really feels like her heart is aiming for one.
“America?” She suddenly feels kicked, completely unprepared for this surprise. “Are you really...”
America gives a wet, gaspy sort of chortle, sounding still broken hearted but a little amused and bitter and alive. Alive, alive, alive. Not her dreams alive. Really alive.
“I wanted to tell you, but I didn't know how,” she must see her confusion, her surprise. “I can travel through dimensions. And a friend owed me a favor, so he helped me travel through time once I got news of you.”
“Travel... what?” Her brain feels slow, too crowded. Her eyes feel like burning and she is not going to start crying, she refuses to do that.
America presses a kiss against her forehead, and her eyes are also rimmed red.
“I'll explain everything later, okay, princess?”
“Don't call me that,” she says, a reflex, but she pushes her away. “Later. I'm holding you to that.”
America grins and nods before she turns around again, punching another robot into small pieces. Kate manages to stop shaking enough to grab her bow and the few arrows she still has left, focusing on the battle ahead and not on the unexpected reunion.