Rebecca
Monday morning dawned bright and early. Darcy Lewis, however, did not.
Shitshitshitshitshit, she was so late. Darcy scrabbled at her classic navy blazer, trying to get the buttons done up in the right order while simultaneously cursing the babysitting hangover that had caused her to sleep through not one, but three alarms, putting her into the Defcon Three level of lateness. Who knew that infant care could be so thoroughly exhausting? Well, probably every new parent throughout history, but whatever. Shit and hell, where the frickety frack did she put her ID badge?
Darcy rummaged around the various piles of miscellaneous crap that she kept in her room, finally recovering the badge from underneath a pile of quasi-clean work clothes from the prior week. Geez, she really needed a system of organization. Maybe she’d let Bucky have a go at her room. He was like a robot when it came to efficient organization. Darcy quickly scanned her mess of a room, eyes lighting on several pairs of underwear and bras of questionable cleanliness. Yeah, on second thought, nevermind. Maybe she’d just ask him for some robo-organizing tips. But not right now, because oh my god she was so late!
Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she raced out of her room and into the kitchen to dig out a bagel from the pantry, stuffing it into her mouth with all the grace and elegance she’d been blessed with since birth (i.e. none.) She slid to a halt in front of Lana, preparing to brew up a cup (hey, she might be late, but she was useless without coffee) when she noticed a steaming travel mug of coffee sitting on the counter next to the brewer.
Darcy picked up the cup and yelled out the kitchen entrance, “Yo, Barnes, this coffee for me?”
“Yeah, noticed you were running a little behind this morning, thought you could use the assist,” he shouted back from the vicinity of her living room. For not the first time, Darcy thanked her lucky stars for providing her with such a thoughtful roommate. She grabbed the coffee and exited the kitchen to join Bucky in her living room.
“So, so late, Bucky,” she sighed, pausing when she caught sight of him sitting on her couch. “Though not as late as you, buddy.” Bucky was nursing a cup of coffee, still decked out in flannel pajama pants and a hunter green henley, with an impressive case of bedhead even by her standards.
“I take it you’re not joining me for my morning commute.”
Bucky grunted in the affirmative. “Violet kinda took it out of me. Thought I’d take a day of rest...and research.”
That piqued her interest. “Oh? What kind of research?” she asked while slipping on her less than practical, but utterly beautiful, red, patent leather Louboutins. Seriously, praise be to the Stark payroll. And Pepper Potts, Darcy’s personal work-style idol.
Bucky rolled his neck on his shoulder, stretching out the tension there before answering. “Taking care of Vi...brought back a lot of stuff for me about Rebecca.” He paused for a moment, eyes tracking the lines of her ceiling in thought. “I know she isn’t...alive. Steve told me when he brought me in, but he didn’t give details and I didn’t have it in me to ask yet. But I’d like to know now. Find out how she turned out, what she did with her life. Hell, she might have some kids and grandkids running around somewhere.” He let out a slow breath and brought both hands to cradle his mug before finally meeting her eyes. “I just...I gotta know, ya know?”
Darcy hummed and nodded. “Ok, well, you need anything, you let me know. I can probably get access to records that the general public can’t, if you need it.” Bucky gave her a curt nod and a murmured thanks. With that, she tucked her keys into her purse and headed down to the parking garage. Even sans a passenger, there was no way she was riding the subway in these heels.
During the commute, Darcy couldn’t help but mull over Bucky’s decision. This was a good thing, right? Bucky exploring aspects of his past, things he’d missed out on. Maybe it meant he was ready to make peace with all of it, everything that he’d lost or had stolen from him. She truly hoped he found family from the experience as well because Bucky was inherently a people person. Even if Hydra had beat and burned it out of him for seventy years, it was still there at the core of him. She could see--having tracked his progression of mental health since he’d been brought in a little over a year ago--how much faster he’d healed just by being surrounded by people willing to help him. Despite the anxiousness and paranoia that crowds and strangers still gave him, she could see that he truly blossomed when surrounded by people he knew and trusted. If this research project invited a few new family members he could love and trust into his life, well, in her opinion, that was time well spent. She sent up a silent prayer to Thor, Frigga, Odin, and even Heimdall that Bucky would find what he was looking for that day and then urged her car out into the flow of traffic.
***
By the time Darcy had returned her car to the underground garage of her apartment building, it was well past dark and her feet were well past enduring her painful, if exquisite, heels. The red t-strap heels were safely tucked under her arm as she dragged herself down the hallway to her apartment door.
Mondays were almost always like this, leaving her wrung-out and working late. She was one of the few Stark employees who absolutely refused to mix her work and home life, leaving PR issues to pile up over the weekend and having to deal with them on Mondays. Despite the increased workload, she had no regrets. Weekends were sacred. What kind of corporate monster would she be turned into if she allowed herself to succumb to answering emails over the weekend? Yeah, no thank you. She still had her soul and looked forward to never losing it to The Man. She’d work late for ALL the Mondays if it meant she got to keep her weekends to herself.
She was, however, relieved to have the exhausting day come to a close and maybe spend a couple hours decompressing with a bottle of wine and conversing with a handsome nonagenarian. She always did enjoy her time with the elderly.
She was surprised to find when she stepped into her apartment that it was totally dark and seemingly empty. Generally Bucky was waiting for her in the kitchen with steaming plates of pasta if she worked late and he hadn’t gone in with her that day. Tonight there was no tell tale smell of deliciousness wafting through her home or bright lights streaming from her kitchen.
She moved further into her home, stopping at the end of the wall that separated the entryway from her living room. She called out a tentative “Hello?” into her apartment and was startled when she saw a body shift in the dark of her living room. After the initial pounding of her heart, her eyes finally adjusted enough to the dark to see that the person lounging on her couch was, in fact, Bucky and not a faceless Bad Guy.
Jesus, he nearly gave her a heart attack. She stepped closer to where he sat with his arms stretched out across the top of the couch, head leaned all the way back. For a moment she thought he’d fallen asleep there, (why else would he be sitting in the dark?) but readjusted her conclusion when she saw that the city lights outside her window were reflecting off a significant amount of wetness on his cheeks.
Oh shit, this was bad.
Sitting in the dark and crying never bode well for anyone, whether it be a traumatized super soldier or a teenaged girl.
Crap crap crap, approach with caution. Do NOT tip the obviously emotionally unstable assassin into further instability.
She moved closer to him, standing about two feet behind and a bit to his left, keeping in his peripheral but also making sure to keep the couch between them. Sure, he could hop over the top of it and strangle her to death in four seconds flat, but she’d left her purse (and taser) by the front door with her shoes, and a couch shield was the best she could do under the circumstances.
“Hey Bucky,” she said softly, creeping closer to the couch but still staying to his left and within his field of vision. “Everything okay, buddy?”
Bucky took a deep, shuddering breath before letting his eyes drift open to stare at her ceiling. “Nope,” he replied, voice thick with tears and likely alcohol based on the three empty bottles of rum sitting on her coffee table.
Oh boy, this was way bad. Like, cataclysmic bad. “Is it about your sister?” Bucky gave a curt nod, a shudder passing through him. “Do you...do you want to talk about it?” she asked hesitantly.
Bucky shrugged his shoulders, “Not much to talk about. Started researching this morning. Found her death certificate right away. No name change to wade through; she never married. Never had kids. She...god, Darce, she was sixteen when she died.” He’d begun to shake in earnest the longer he talked, his body vibrating with barely contained despair.
Darcy reached her left hand out, hesitating for a moment, before planting it on his left shoulder and firmly anchoring him to herself and the couch and giving him what small comfort she could. He let a sob out at her touch, rolling his head to pin her hand and wrist between his shoulder and cheek.
He stayed like that, attempting to calm his breathing enough to continue, his stomach quivering with the effort. “There’s more,” he said thickly. “She...she didn’t just die, she--god, she was murdered.” Darcy gasped sharply at the revelation, her stomach clenching with dismay and grief for her friend.
After a moment, he continued quietly, “I looked up the police report. She’d been targeted on her way home from her after school job. They found her body shoved behind a dumpster in an alley, like yesterday’s garbage. Report said it was payday and the guy that did it had been watching her for a while, per his confession. They caught him trying to pawn the necklace that I gave her when I enlisted.”
Fresh tears slid down his cheeks, slowly running over her wrist and fingers. “But the worst part,” he continued. “The worst part is that it was my fault.”
Darcy shook her head fiercely, finally finding her words. “Oh no, Bucky--honey, that’s not true. How can you even say that?”
Bucky let out a bitter laugh, shifting forward out of her grip and leaning his elbows across his knees. “Because it is true, Darcy,” he said over his shoulder. “You wanna know why she had that after school job?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, barrelling on to his point. “It was because I was dead...or may as well have been. Pop had been dead for years when I went off to fight the goddamn Nazis, and Ma got a bad case of pneumonia that first winter I was at basic. Her lungs didn’t work quite right after that. So with me and Pop dead and an ailing mother, who else was going to be the breadwinner? Of course it had to be Rebecca. But if I hadn’t been such an idiot, chasing after Hydra, pretending to be some kinda...some kinda hero with the fuckin’ Commandos--” Bucky cut himself off. He realized he’d been shouting at the end and Darcy didn’t deserve to bear his wrath.
He sunk back against the couch, leaning his head back and sighing in relief when she replaced her hand on his shoulder. “I could have gone home, you know,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper and colored with shame. “After Steve rescued me and the 107th from Hydra. I was all cleared to be honorably discharged. Coulda gone home, got a job, taken care of Ma and Becca. Maybe even got married and had some kids. But I...I didn’t. I kept thinking that Steve needed me to watch his six. I mean, I’d been doing it for so long, the thought of letting Steve run around Europe without me, doing God knows what, with his usual cavalier attitude towards parachutes and well thought out plans...I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t leave my brother. But I was so stupid. Stupid enough to think we were invincible, that the Nazis and Hydra and death couldn’t touch us.” Bucky paused, his thoughts flitting behind his eyes, sorting themselves into knots and whorls of discontent and pain.
“But it did. I fell from that train and Steve tried to kill himself on that fucking plane and nobody was left to keep my family safe. God, Becca must have felt so alone. So scared. And now all I can think about was that she was so young and she was hurt and killed and I wasn’t there to stop it and I should have been.” Bucky reached his flesh hand up to lace his fingers with hers, his left arm coming down around his middle and his knees pulled up to his chest, essentially curling himself around the point of contact between them.
He began to cry with a brokenness that Darcy had never witnessed from a grown man before. He wept and shook with the gut-wrenching power of his despair. It was almost childlike, the way he sobbed without control, alternating between wails and incoherent pleas for forgiveness from his long dead family. It shattered her heart, stopping the breath in her chest with a bone deep ache. How could the world be so endlessly cruel to this one man? She drew closer to him, tightening her grip on his fingers and lifting her free hand to twine into the hair at his crown. She stood there with him for a long while, weathering the storm of his sorrow with him and soothing her fingers repeatedly through his hair.
Some time later, his crying began to slow, his breathing returning to mostly normal with only the occasional wet hiccup. Still she stroked her fingers through the soft strands of his cropped hair. His head lolled back against the couch, his red-rimmed eyes meeting hers as she leaned over him before he closed them on a sigh.
Slowly, so slowly, Darcy pulled her fingers through his forelock, stretching it out to its fullest extent and then allowed her fingers to drift down to the soft skin of his brow. She dragged her fingertips over the skin there, smoothing out the the furrows before circling over his temples, and then slowly allowed them to skim over his cheekbones, his eyebrows, down the blade of his nose, skipping lightly over the crest of his lips, and finally, pressing from the dimple in his chin and gliding up along the edge of his jaw. She repeated the circuit, tracing the edges of his face with the lightest of touches, until his breathing was slow and even and the spasms in his chest had completely subsided.
She thought he might have gone to sleep if it weren’t for the firm grip that he still had on her left hand while the right continued it’s soothing progression. He eventually broke the silence that settled over them.
“Thank you,” he rasped softly, eyes still firmly closed. “For...for staying with me. Letting me talk. For this,” he said, jutting his chin towards the hand that was sliding down past his jaw again. “Feels...nice. Comforting.”
Darcy hummed quietly in the back of her throat, before answering. “My mother would do this for me when I was upset or exhausted or if I was having trouble falling asleep. She was always so good at comforting me.”
Bucky shifted an eyebrow up slightly. “Was?”
Darcy nodded slowly, even though he couldn’t see it with his eyes closed. “Yeah. She, uh, she died. It’ll be two years ago on the 23rd.” She swallowed hard around the pain of the memory.
Bucky opened his eyes, the city lights reflecting off the irises, and looked up at her. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. The heartbreak and empathy in his eyes was too close and too real for her to deal with so she gently ran her thumb over his eyelids, encouraging them to close. He seemed to understand, and didn’t attempt to reopen them once she’d passed over the silky skin there.
“What happened?” he asked, gentleness infusing the rawness of his voice.
Darcy didn’t talk about her mom. Couldn’t talk about her and her death for months afterwards, not even with her family. And even now, it hurt her to address it, but she felt like maybe Bucky needed to hear about it. Maybe he needed to share in someone else’s sorrow for a little bit and maybe she could help impart some of the wisdom she had gained through her own loss.
She drew a slow, fortifying breath. “She got sick. Breast cancer. She went through six months of chemo and radiation and they told her she was cancer free,” Darcy paused, steeling herself for her next words. “But it came back within a couple months, worse than before and it--it--it just ate her up, from the inside out.” Darcy’s own breathing grew shaky and a few tears slipped down her cheeks into his hair.
“But I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t know how bad she’d gotten and how quickly. I was just starting in my position at Stark Industries and I was so selfish and focused on myself and I never seemed to find the time to come visit her and then all of a sudden it’s December and Dad is calling me and telling me I need to come down and say goodbye to mom, that she wasn’t doing so well and that he didn’t think she was going to make it and I...and I...” Darcy tried to stem the flow of words that had tumbled forward, taking in a measured breath before continuing.
“So I flew straight home, stayed with Dad and Angie and Rob at the hospital for almost two weeks and she just...wasted away before our eyes. She went from this still vibrant, cheerful, incredible woman to, to something else entirely. She couldn’t speak coherently, became so easily confused. But the worst was that she was in so much pain. Even heavily sedated, she would moan in agony while she slept, no matter how much morphine they gave her. And there was nothing I could do. I felt so helpless. I can remember sitting with her, listening to her breathe and each breath was a struggle, but I couldn’t stop listening, couldn’t stop myself from counting each one, wondering if it would be the last.”
Darcy stopped to swallow hard past the ache in her throat, leaning her head back on her shoulders, and letting the waves of grief crash over her for a moment. Bucky stayed silent, letting her process her thoughts, rubbing his thumb soothingly over the back of her hand.
“When I finally got the call that mom had passed, I was back at my parents’ house sleeping. And I felt...relieved that she was no longer in pain, but my heart ached for my mother, and I couldn’t stop crying. But the biggest emotion that hit me, by far, was shame.”
Bucky’s brow furrowed in confusion, but he remained silent. “I was so ashamed of myself,” she continued. “Ashamed at how selfish I had been, how easily I had squandered the last months of her life on stupid, meaningless nothings that I used to justify not visiting her every damn weekend. For a long time after mom died, I hated myself. How could I have been so stupid to let any moment I could have had with her pass me by?”
She let the heat in her voice dissipate for a moment, before pushing forward. “But eventually I realized something, Bucky. Yes, I could have visited Mom more frequently and I would have realized just how bad she was doing...but Mom could also have told me. She could have asked us to visit her, told me and Ange that she needed us to be with her. But she refused! She wouldn’t tell us a damn thing about anything, about what the doctors said, or how she felt, or the fact that she’d stopped responding to the cancer treatments. She wouldn’t tell us that they had started her on clinical trials, and even those hadn’t worked. Hell, she even swore Dad to secrecy, wouldn’t let him share a single bit of her reality to us. Wouldn’t let him try to get us to come visit because she was so scared to admit that she was, in fact, dying.”
Darcy parsed through her next words carefully, trying to sort them into the wisdom and point that she was trying to make to Bucky. “It took me a long time to realize it, but missing out on her last months of life...wasn’t my fault. But it wasn’t hers either. There was no one to blame. Not me or Mom or Dad. People we love die sometimes, but it doesn’t make it our fault.” She gripped Bucky’s hand tight, pressing her meaning and her fingers into him.
“Rebecca died...but it wasn’t your fault,” she whispered emphatically. “Our lives are not a series of cause and effect based solely on our own choices. It’s an amalgamation, an intricate...tapestry of our decisions and the decisions of those around us, weaving together and reacting to one another. Could you have chosen to take the honorable discharge? Yes. But Steve could have gone home, too. Could have stopped fighting Hydra on the front lines and used his expertise to help train others to properly fight in his stead. Rebecca could have decided to take different paths home or asked someone to walk home with her or avoided alleyways or carried a knife on her. Your mother could have volunteered to walk home with her. The bastard that hurt her could have made the decision to pick someone else or go hang himself or walk in front of the closest bus. But the fact of the matter is, everyone, including you, made the choices that they did and ended up with the only available outcome based on those combinations of decisions.”
Darcy and Bucky were both breathing hard at this point, the emotion of her words pulling at their lungs. “But--” Bucky began in protest, but Darcy cut him off.
“No. No buts, Barnes. When Steve made the decision to keep fighting, it was because he thought it was the best thing to do at the time. When you decided to follow him into battle, despite your honorable discharge, did you, or did you not, think that fighting by Steve’s side was the right thing to do in that moment?” Darcy peered down at him, tilting his chin up so that he had to make eye contact. They stared at each other for a moment, the heaviness of the question hanging between them like vine-ripened fruit.
Eventually, Bucky swallowed and nodded. “Yes. Yes, I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought that Steve needed me more. That as long as I was fighting, I was keeping my family safe from Hydra and the Nazis and keeping them fed with my army wages.” He blinked away fresh tears that were a mix of sorrow and the beginnings of relief.
Darcy smiled gently down at him, pleased that she’d been able to make the point she’d been aiming for, pleased that he was finding some of the acceptance and peace that she’d struggled so long to find on her own. She leaned down towards him, resting her forehead on top of his before speaking again.
“That’s all we can do, honey. Each day we have to make the decisions that we think are best, based on the limited knowledge that we have in that finite amount of time. We’re only human, we can’t know the path of every choice we will make, so we do the best we can to make the right decision and hope that those around us are doing the same. When I made the decision to stay focused on my new job, I thought I was helping to make the world a better, safer, more accepting place for the Avengers. I knew Mom was sick, but she’d already beat it the first time and I thought the second round of chemo would be no different. It was a foolish assumption, but she didn’t give me any information to the contrary. So I thought Iron Man and the Avengers needed me the most at that time. I thought I was making the best decision based on the limited information that I had. And then when everything went down the way that it did, hindsight being 20/20 and all that, I had to figure out how to give myself grace and forgiveness. We’re only human, Bucky.”
Her words resonated through him for a moment, etching themselves onto his heart and flooding him with forgiveness and peace. He was stunned at her insight and how quickly she’d been able to help soothe the deep ache, the impotent rage, the utter hopelessness that had been dogging him since his discovery of the details of Rebecca’s death earlier that morning. She’d been able to ease the hurt that not even three bottles of rum had been able to make a dint in. Gratitude surged through his chest at the thought of how kind Darcy was, how gently she had led him to the beginnings of self-forgiveness and peace. God, what a woman.
Darcy shifted then, pulling away from his forehead and straightening to stand over him again. He momentarily tightened his grip on her hand before she could pull it from his grasp. “Thank you,” he whispered to her. And then again, with more weight, “Thank you, Darcy.”
She gave him another of her patented sweet smiles, full lips pressing up the apples of her cheeks at the corners, eyes bright and kind. And then she was pulling out of his grasp and coming around the couch. She halted in front of her stereo that was sitting on a low shelf against her wall, squatting down and scrolling through her iPod docked there. She selected something on the small screen that lit up her face in profile and a soft melody began strumming through the speakers of the stereo system. She tilted her head to the side for a minute, listening to the song and making sure it fit the mood she was hoping to create. Bucky watched as she nodded her head in satisfaction and slowly rose from her crouch, her knees creaking subtly as she moved. She drifted towards the couch, moving slowly to the rhythm of the music, before coming to a stop directly in front of him, her knees brushing gently against his.
Bucky held his breath for a moment, wondering at the contemplative look on her face, full bottom lip tucked neatly behind her teeth. She continued to sway to the music in front of him, fingers grazing his knees as she moved, causing his heart to beat rapidly inside his chest with each casual brush. Finally, she reached a hand out, palm up, and looked him in the eye.
“Dance with me?” she asked softly, sweetly.
Bucky sucked in a breath but reached for her hand anyway, curling the metal fingers over her warm flesh ones. “I don't think I know how. Not anymore.” He bit his own lips at the nerves suddenly bristling in his gut.
Darcy chuckled quietly. “That's alright. We can just sway together, maybe? And hold each other? I think after everything we've shared today it might be good for us to just...hold one another. The healing of human touch, and all that,” she said with a nonchalant flap of her hand, a slight blush riding high on her cheeks.
Bucky had to admit, holding her kind of sounded like heaven. So he did. He let her pull him from the couch towards the middle of the living room, let her loop her arms around his ribs, palms flat against his shoulder blades and her cheek pressed to his heart. She was warm and soft and kind and everything he needed in that moment so he let his own arms drift around her, holding her to him and guiding her into a gentle side to side shuffle, much like what he'd done to soothe Violet the other night.
The song was slow and steeped in a feeling of melancholy, but it had a soothing, cathartic essence to it too. It had started out with a single, smooth male voice, but had been joined by a second male voice halfway through, the voices suddenly layering together and the music crescendoing into a guitar solo.
Underneath the music, Darcy sang along in a high, clear voice, “With every mistake, we must surely be learning...”
He let her voice highlight the lyrics to him, her emphasis pulling at his attention and causing an entirely different ache in his heart. Eventually the song came to a close with the two male voices crying out in wordless chords of sorrow that resonated with his own grief over the death of his baby sister.
As the last note faded, he reached for her hand, tugging it from his back, and spun her in a slow twirl before pulling her gently back into his arms for a tender hug. He rested his chin on the crown of her head, the soft curls tickling softly at his throat.
“Thank you, Darcy,” he said on a sigh. He felt her arms tighten around his ribs briefly in response. There was some unspoken signal between them and they both pulled away from each other at the same time, hands dropping to their sides and a small amount of awkwardness filling the space between their bodies.
Darcy rubbed absently at the side of her nose. “So, uh, I don’t know about you, but all this emotional crap always makes me hungry. You wanna order some pizza or something?” She looked up at him with eager eyes.
He snorted. “Yeah, you know me, Darce, I’m always hungry. Especially after I’ve sobbed my guts out like a goddamn kid in front of a gorgeous dame. That’s always good for working up an appetite,” he said sarcastically, trying to brush through some of the lingering embarrassment of being so broken in front of her with a bit of humor.
“You have to stop hanging around women and babies all the time. We’re starting to erode your staunch, emotionless masculinity. You’re gonna need Steve to hurry up and rescue you from all this estrogen,” Darcy replied, pulling her phone out of her pocket to place their order.
Bucky snorted. “Yeah, right. Stevie is the biggest crybaby I know. The kid cries at the drop of a hat. Angry? Cry about it. Happy? Cry about it. Overwhelmed with Patriotism? Cry about it.”
Darcy paused her order entry to look at Bucky, her jaw open in shocked amusement. “No way! Really? I’ve never seen Steve cry. Like, ever. And I was with him when he had to have a bullet dug out of his calf one time! Not a single tear was shed!”
“Physical pain doesn’t do it for him, it’s the emotional stuff that gets him going. He’s a real sneaky shit sometimes though, so he’s probably hid it from you a few times. You just have to look at his face real close, though. His cheeks get real flushed and his chin’ll get a little wobbly. Show him one of those cute puppy videos and watch his face. He’ll be fighting back tears, I promise you.”
Darcy gave a delighted little laugh and returned her attention to her phone to finish typing in the order. With their order successfully placed, the two sat down on opposite ends of her couch and started up one of the movies that Darcy had compiled onto a list that she’d titled “Things That Bucky Must Watch Immediately Or He Shall Be Forcibly Removed From The Circle of Friendship.”
Within thirty minutes, their pizzas arrived and they settled back in, munching and decompressing from the overly emotional evening. The movie was light and entertaining, filling them both with laughter and flushing the last bit of sorrow from their bones. When it finally ended, their hunger and hearts were fully sated and they found it easy to drift to their own rooms, slipping into their beds and quickly succumbing to dreamless sleep.