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faebriel · 2 years ago

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and you caused it: chapter 3

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In which Niki has a terrible secret, Puffy just wants to move on, Tommy sneaks into casino parties and Wilbur learns to deal with anger being justified. Or - the one thing they don't warn you of, when dropping nuclear warheads on old friends, is fallout.

in chapter three: a prisoner goes free, niki and tommy try (and miserably fail) to get along, and some breaking and entering is committed. just out of curiosity, y'know.

wc: 5.2k

wilbur watches from phil's verandah, old coffee mug in hand, as the remaining syndicate spills from their houses. the world is a dull grey before dawn, as if the sun is loitering beneath the horizon until everyone is all saddled-up and kitted out in their armour and weapons.

not wilbur, though. of course.

"Why didn't you tell me about all this?" he asks Phil, question just as poised as it is nonchalant, as he emerges from the house. Just about gives Phil a bloody heart attack, is what it does. He thought Wilbur would still be asleep. "Top secret," he says. "You know how Techno's like." "What, Techno put all this together, then?" Phil pauses. "How'd you find out, anyway?" "Niki told me." Phil's eyebrows raise, and despite how the man clearly wants to ask more than that - his mouth opens, then he looks at Wilbur like he's just a kid again, and closes it - he just descends down the porch steps with the quiet clink of armour against armour. "Didn't think she'd do that," he mutters - more to the snow than anyone else, barely caught by Wilbur, as he heads towards the stables. And then, thrown over his shoulder - "and get some proper fucking sleep!"

if that was the plan, he wouldn't have made himself a fucking coffee, would he. but he decides to mollify phil for once by returning to bed, even if he spends more of his time casting glances between the ceiling and his communicator than watching the backs of his eyelids.

---

a few more hours of crisp morning, and somehow niki finds herself waiting around the arctic again.

it's not comfortable. the place is full of too many memories for her not to miss it, and even if the syndicate is out on their little mission, the thought that she might run into wilbur again is stressful. wobbuffet can sense her anxiety, and it's making her apprehensive too.

fortunately, it's not too long before she spies a small group returning from the greater smp, just over the horizon.

"Niki," Dream heralds her, extending a hand to shake. She supplies hers primly, and he shakes it with the same amount of delicacy - an amused huff behind his mask, but nothing else. "Long time no see, huh?" Not long enough. "Something like that," she agrees. "I apologise, I couldn't make the recovery myself. Some things came up." Her eyes slide over to Techno's, stony. He looks away, but keeps his mouth shut. Good. "I understand entirely," Dream replies, with a kind of curl in his voice that makes it sound like he's grinning behind that dish-mask of his. It makes her stomach turn, angry and roiling like the seas. "Could always make it up with a pastry or two, right?" It's clearly meant to be a joke, and Phil supplies an awkward laugh, but Niki still finds her fingers forming fists in the sleeves of her jacket before she remembers to titter politely. They leave thumbprints of flour behind, white on coffee brown. "I'm sorry," she says, sugar-sweet. "I haven't baked anything for a while now." "Ah, a shame," Dream says abashedly. The falseness oozes from him like tar, sticky and ill, seeping into the bones of everything he touches and turning it sickly. It curdles his tone, makes her blood boil beneath her skin. It's a damn wonder Phil and Techno keep a straight face. It's a damn wonder she didn't fully see it a year ago. Something acrid rises at the back of her throat - an old feeling, the kind of feeling she would have welcomed last winter when she was cold and dark and angry and bitter and that she should cast off now that she knows better. It overwhelms her senses, fills her mouth with the taste of blood and clings there. Sticky and metallic, lining the insides of her throat. She can't let it go. The words thrum beneath her skin, and for better or for worse, they're the same thoughts she had before TNT rained down on L'Manberg - she will not die, she will not lose a life for Tommy's sake at the hands of this man. "Well, you'd best be getting on your way," Techno says, ever blunt - and even as he hands Dream the reins to a horse, his eyes jut cautiously over to hers. "There's your debt repaid." "Alright, alright, I know when I'm not wanted," Dream laughs. Always with the jokes, this one, although these words have an edge to them - a challenge that he isn't powerful enough to assert. Not right now, at least. "I'll see you around, Techno. Take care." Sounds more like a threat than a goodbye, but Techno still lifts a hand in farewell as Dream gallops off into the distance. Not in the direction of the city, for now. Good. Techno then turns to her. "Reconsiderin'?" Niki shakes her head. He tilts his head away from hers in response - if he weren't wearing the mask she'd be able to figure out what he's thinking from the expression alone, but he won't be taking it off until Dream's long disappeared over the horizon. She'll be gone by then, too.

she's made her appearance, established her alibi. should be enough. she doesn't have much business left in the arctic - she moved most of her things by ender chest the day before, and the rest was... destroyed. techno, still awkwardly distant and standoffish, doesn't encourage her to linger. funny - for as proficient as he is in combat, even he seems to find the newfound crevasse between them difficult to traverse. she waits til she's certain dream is gone, gone away before she climbs back onto wobbuffet and heads towards the nether circuit.

---

that is day one.

more days pass, and with every one the city seems to get smaller. niki is caught in a kind of (hah) limbo - avoiding the distant shapes of other players on the surface, but unable to steer away from tommy, tubbo and michael's constant clatter in her city. (day two, she gathers more supplies - but paranoia trips at the back of her mind, because she's alone again alone again even in the endless noise of her own base, hated and feels like the forest has eyes on her, asking why so much spruce, nihachu? they need the charcoal to keep the torches and furnaces burning, to keep a small room warm for michael to sleep in.)

both tubbo and tommy are far too outdoorsy for this kind of captivity. tubbo's set himself loose on her spare materials, chests and chests stacked with stone and ores and redstone dust - in half an attempt to mollify him, niki's given him free reign over some of the less-used parts of the city for "improvements", whatever that means.

(the other half of that is an attempt to get back on his good side - he's stopped glaring at her so openly, ever since they left snowchester, though his pointedly cordiality is almost as bad.)

she's overheard him mutter about building some kind of rail line - whatever wood-and-metal contraption that's engulfed half of her storage rooms and the library space doesn't look like a rail line, but niki supposes that she's not the expert. he's already rigged a headache-inducing network of redstone and lamps through their farms, spitting out double the amount of wheat and potatoes that niki had managed to put together on her own. at least they won't go hungry. tubbo always makes a point to ask her permission before shoving another set of iron beams across a walkway and carving redstone tracks into the walls (where did that mischievous kid from l'manberg go, wrecking mostly-well-meaning (or at least, fun) chaos through their houses and their gardens? you would be lucky if he mentioned his plans for utilising your base as a dreamon-beacon or something, let alone if he asked first), but once she's given the go-ahead, he single-mindedly settles into refining all things productive in niki's city to a knife-edge.

sometimes she walks through these parts of the city, counting each new rung of iron and stone set into her walls. she realises she's missed an opportunity to do this with tubbo not hating her - missed any opportunity she had to invite tubbo to her city under normal pretenses. now it's locked away beneath the earth forever, and she doubts her friendship with tubbo will ever see the light of day again, either.

she misses ponk. she misses hbomb. she misses enough things already - she can't waste time missing things that never even happened.

tommy, on the other hand, is still climbing the walls. he has his little hobbies - he does a bit of sewing, a bit of embroidery, has even taken to baking experimental breads, but it's all clearly time-killing. whenever she comes back to the city he's always waiting at the foot of the stairwell, arms out to help her unload supplies and a million questions on his tongue. who did she see? did they see her come home? did she say hello to them? did she see wilbur? did she see ranboo? did she see - and for this part his voice always goes hushed, as if he might summon the man's presence just by saying his name) - did she see dream?

she saw ponk and hannah, she sure hopes they didn't see her come home, and no she didn't say hello to them, avoiding the cult - she didn't see wilbur, she didn't see ranboo, and no, she didn't see dream.

it doesn't even do much to ease his nerves - he's just as twitchy when she returns as he is when she leaves. she thinks he just can't help himself from asking. she remembers how quiet the server went after tommy's death, paths decked out in flowers and monuments, and thinks - well, she can't really blame him. being away from the beating life of the server is, for tommy, probably about the same as being left without air or water.

doesn't mean she doesn't start getting testy about it all, though.

particularly when he asks after techno, or phil, or wilbur.

it's been just over a week when, sleepless, niki finds herself prowling the city corridors. her plan is to wait the morning out in the library, but when she passed the beehive nook, she finds tommy awake and fidgeting with the flowers.

she can't just ignore him, and hopes a polite greeting will suffice - but when tommy looks up at her, startled by her approach, there's pure anxiety in his grey eyes. part of her still wants to turn her back - clamouring for time to herself, which feels so sparse when the city is live and awake with activity - but there's a more responsible, more nostalgic part of her that insists she stay.

niki resigns herself to a night amidst the flowers.

even she doesn't really know what she plans to achieve. back in l'manberg they all had night terrors from the war, she remembers that, but tommy almost always took them directly to wilbur, if tubbo even let him leave their bunks (clingy, tommy would joke, as if he wasn't just as bad). fundy was the one who would come to her, sometimes tubbo. wilbur had only deigned to tell her that he shared their nightmares at all in the last few months.

is this what all those awkward conversations of rehearsal was for? some shitty, third-act twist? somehow, she still feels unprepared. she still feels like she doesn't know her lines. she doesn't feel like talking, like breaking the nighttime peace that is so fucking rare these days. it's precious. she doesn't want to hand it over. haven't I handed over enough, some part of her thinks, whines - but if that were true she wouldn't be the only person sitting here, and she wouldn't have no one to comm as she waited awkwardly to see if Tommy will find his voice, and she might even have slept through the night. she would still have techno and wilbur and phil and ranboo and puffy and god, who else? so she tosses the thought out.

finally, tommy speaks.

“He’ll kill you, y’know,” Tommy says. There’s a grim, grey look on his face - not frowning, not spitting and cursing, just resigned. Limp. Playing dead. “If he finds out you let me stay here. He’ll kill you.” Niki huffs, absent-mindedly blowing a thick chunk of pink-blonde out of her face. Dream is - Dream is formidable, terrifying, powerful, and she knows that. She has seen him in battle, and it’s only ever been on the opposing side. But only from afar. Dream has never spared her a second glance - not even purposely overlooked, like Eret or Fundy, just passed over - and Niki doesn’t hate him for him, really, she hates him for the axes he holds and the TNT he palms off to her friends and that hollowed-out, horrible bliss in Wilbur’s eyes when he said Dream was his only friend. It could be anyone behind that mask, and to Niki, it wouldn’t particularly matter. The hatred she feels for him is direct, almost mechanical with how it just makes sense - she doesn’t burn with anger at him like she has at Wilbur. At Tommy. Well. She hasn’t. Tommy is trembling now, and Wilbur is somewhere out there with gunpowder on his hands again and that lost, empty look in his eyes that burns her up inside like kindling and makes her stomach turn. She tries not to let it show. “Tommy,” she says. She’s trying to be careful. “Dream doesn’t care about me. He wouldn’t track me down like that. He doesn’t care.” And to think, that’s a benefit for once? “Yeah, I know that,” Tommy says immediately, barrelling immediately past the implication that probably would offend a lot of people, and probably would offend Niki if it referred to anyone else - but Tommy stares dead ahead, unblinking. “He’ll kill you to teach me a lesson. Because I let you help me. Because of me.”

niki is a lot of things, but afraid of dream is not one of them - she struggles to comprehend tommy's fear. or, at least, the fear on her behalf. she can defend herself, no matter what tommy keeps babbling about revenge and consequences, and from across the broad crevasse of misunderstanding, his concern looks more like condescension. the more frustrated niki gets, the more stubborn she becomes - she rebuts tommy's warnings, half in an attempt to console him, and half because she simply doesn't believe they can be true. and on tommy's part, yet another instance of being brushed off about dream when he knows he is right the guy is just as infuriating - though god forbid either of them actually explain why they frustrate the other so fiercely. they don't fight outright, but the conversation sours into tired, bitter jabs.

"You don't listen," he scowls. "None of you fucking listen to me." Frustration crawls up Niki's throat, pulls fire into her tone. "I have listened to you, Tommy! For a long time! I listened well enough - before doomsday - " "Exactly!" He cuts her off, arms tightening around his knees. "What happened at doomsday? Exactly, eck-fucking-zactly what I said would happen - " "Do you honestly think that's what I cared about at the time, Tommy," Niki spits, righteous. "Do you think I just didn't know what I was doing? Just because I didn't like what you had to say, that doesn't mean I didn't listen to you." He doesn't say anything to that - instead, his face twists into a fierce, grumpy pout, and he angles his shoulder pointedly away from hers as he curses her out under his breath to a nearby bumblebee.

they part, after that - niki stalks off to the library to sulk, frustrated that tommy refuses to ever take her seriously. tommy refuses to budge from the bee nook, frustrated that niki refuses to ever take him seriously. and no one listens, and no one learns, and they keep spiraling down into bitter nosedives governed entirely by their own senses of guilt and burden and frustration, goodnight, the end.

well. not quite.

there's still a server running hot that exists outside the confines of the underground city, after all.

---

more days pass.

---

it has been just over three weeks since the casino exploded, and wilbur is starting to think that - once again - he might be losing his mind.

that's the clean way to name the incident, isn't it? it's been just over three weeks since the casino exploded, which means it's been just over three weeks since phil and techno broke dream out of prison, which means it's been just over three weeks since wilbur has spoken to niki or tommy or, fuck, even like, tubbo. even ranbus has buggered off to god-knows-where. his mind is an endless tumble-skip of well, you deserve it and god, so angry and why niki?

why niki?

the question grates at him. for the longest time, wilbur has taken niki's gentle trust as a fact of the universe - the sun rises and falls on a timer, unless an admin wills it so; water flows to the lowest point of land; witches never spawn in mushroom fields; niki is levelheaded and trustworthy and all the things wilbur is not.

it appears he may have made that last bit up.

it's disconcerting, upsetting, like the plane of land beneath his feet tipping on its side and his stomach twisting as he tries to get used to this new sense of gravity. for the long, broken line of his life, wilbur has trusted niki's judgement as so-called second to god. he built that pedestal so naturally that he didn't even recognise its existence. that even now, when its smashed so thoroughly into pieces, he struggles to pair the niki in his mind's eye to the woman raving excuses in the casino before its implosion, to the shaky woman spitting insults back at him over l'manberg's corpse. for the first time he sees himself in niki - unstable, pathetic and deranged all at once - and it is uncomfortable.

but even then -

niki fought beside him to reclaim manberg. they had shared that.

and though he paid it little attention at the time (the thing about limbo - plenty of free time to turn every living memory over in one's mind, like searching for bugs beneath upturned stones...) he recalls whispers of the plan she and eret had while the lot of them were split between manberg and pogtopia. TNT. it's a brutish and imprecise tool.

and he thinks of her fierceness. her determination, her drive, how she burns with feeling and lets it power her in a way that others can't bear the vulnerability to pull off - all things that he had basked in the glow of, and all things that can burn and scald and tear up the object of their hatred. the dim awareness that he had been that object, once - but it was niki, so of course that fire was righteous. he had accepted the blame without trouble.

but pointed towards something more valuable...

oh, niki.

Niki is... a loose canon. He rolls the sentence around in his head, lets it acclimate uncomfortably to its surroundings. It's the kind of thing Wilbur didn't really recognise, when he was alive - or at least, not without rose-tinted glasses. Niki is confident, but not brash. Emotional, but not violent. Perhaps she had seen him through that rosy gaze too, before his death. Now he knows better.

idly, he finds himself venturing towards niki's abandoned cabin - he's still living with phil at the moment, as quackity refuses to have him on las nevadas land (really refuses this time, makes their fun little playfights look like a fucking olive branch in hindsight), though he still gets a chill down his spine when he ventures further than the porch. anxiety, or something. in any case, neither phil or techno could bear to do anything with the cabin, and now it just sits there unused and unlit like a stark reminder against the glow-white of snowdrifts marking out the horizon.

(techno absolutely refuses to discuss whatever argument they had, actually, which means phil is not saying shit because of privacy. the two of them are as bad as each other when it comes to gossip - all too happy to listen in when it's someone else's turn on the rumour mill, and all too happy to keep their mouths clamped shut when it's theirs. when it's something either of them care about, at least. which says all it needed to about niki and techno before... well. he knew they were close, not best buds close.)

the door is unlocked. is that a surprise? he mulls the thought over as he enters, taking in the destruction. glass and flour and tipped-over flowerpots line the ground, forming an awful kind of texture beneath his boots. the place is doused in cold, as if someone had layered it in a thick, cool blanket. dust hangs in the air like snowflakes.

how strange to think that a few short weeks ago, he had laid upon this couch - warm and noisy as the two of them chatted away over baking and brewing. it's all gone cold and silent, now.

he takes in every abandoned detail that he can, soaks himself in this empty shell. the weapons rack against the back wall, littered with dull knives - the cheap, brittle ones, obviously, the ones that weren't worth taking. the kitchen bench, now cold and dusty. dying flowerbeds. glass carpeting the floor, crunching under his feet with every step. the bed is the worst part of it all, somehow - it's the least-destroyed thing in the room, quilts left stacked and forgotten. they look handmade.

it draws him over. he runs a hand over the weight of the quilt sitting at the top of the stack - it's heavy, good-quality wool, rich with colour. crocheted. someone put a lot of fucking time into it. when his hand trails the edge of it, he recognises the repeating pattern - teal and cream frame ringed-round eyes of ender, framing patches woven with pink, with green, with reds and blacks and whites and gold. he's seen the matching coats the four of them wear.

the syndicate, woven into something warm to sleep with. now it sits empty, abandoned, in the dust and debris of niki's cabin.

it's a distant, strange, uncomfortable. like watching a tragedy unfold before him - one that doesn't really concern him, for once, but is still faintly distressing. he snatches his hand back as if it's been burned, goes to walk past the bed, until his boot catches on some limp thing half-spilled across the floor and he deigns (big mistake) to look downward.

he doesn't recognise it, at first. funny. it was his first, after all.

the worn leather is cold and smooth beneath his fingers - picking the thing up feels like walking over his own grave, and it's only then that he sees the deep slashes in the back of the thing, and realises that really, he is. he reaches blindly into his memory, and come to think of it - he remembers niki wearing a coat like this, not that he'd thought much of it at the time. it must have just been similar was a simple refrain. and even then, if he pushes his memory further, there's a distant memory of a woman who could be niki amidst falling fire and rubble, tearing down a wooden path...

but that memory isn't his to recall, anyway.

she had this, the entire time. ever since - ever since i died. now abandoned too.

the sheer wave of feeling that overcomes wilbur is difficult to discern. there's sadness, even grief, nestled right next to that familiar, burning anger. there's the sense that he's fucked up something important again, although that's a thought he's simply deemed permanent for now, and then a part of him that screams righteous that he was right, he was right, traitors get what traitors deserve. there's something that could be a faint cousin of - impossibly - nostalgia, even staring down at the evidence of something so miserable.

and he misses niki.

perhaps he is of weak character. if he wasn't, he might not feel so compelled to reminisce.

his circling thoughts are cut off by the sound of his name, phil calling him from somewhere outside - wilbur sticks his head out of niki's doorframe to see him blustering through the snow. there's some hubbub in the distance as techno negotiates armour with carl.

you good? wilbur asks him.

for a moment, phil's eyes skirt knowingly past wilbur's, into niki's empty house - for fuck's sake, old man, he's not here to be picked apart - but fortunately, phil breezes past it.

did you get a comm from tommy? he asks instead.

no? no. is this a trend, now? is the rest of the SMP in some group comm that wilbur has not been invited to? he swallows the bitter feeling, although it still tastes like poison as it passes his gullet, and informs phil as much. phil looks less surprised, less knowing at that, but his expression doesn't lose any of its gravity.

alright, phil tells him. i'll tell you, 'cause i think you oughtta know, but you can't take this one all personally, wil - tommy's calling us for help, for some reason. and if he's doing that, then -

something must have happened.

(to call on phil and techno, of all people - no offence to them, but wilbur knows his brother, and he's a hell of a lot more observant than too many people refuse to give him credit for - )

something must be wrong.

---

the sun has just passed its noon peak when niki returns to her city. she loads her backpack with oak and iron ore and a few pumpkins she found wandering the overworld (a treat for michael, because god knows the kid deserves it and god knows the rest of them deserve a quiet night, for once), winds her way through the nether paths, steps out towards the winding staircase of her city.

immediately, she realises -

There is something wrong. It dawns on her, as she steps down the narrow staircase to the ravine - it’s dark, too dark. There is still a torch burning at the top of the staircase but the next is tipped over, kindling scattered over the floor, extinguished. The stone-carved steps descend into a thick darkness, the type of heavy black that she only finds deep, deep underground. Not in her city. (There are other signs, although she doesn’t notice them later - boot scuffs at the entryway, leaving marks in the grass that surrounds it, and a faint, clean smell of potions as she descends down the staircase.) Potions can't hide it all. Gunpowder pricks the space behind her nose, an arrow-bolt into Niki's heart - it ignites within seconds, propelling her flight down the tumbling staircase.

her city lies in ruins.

it is as if some grand, wild creature has torn through the place - entire walls of the city crumble, spilt into gravel and rubble and ash. gunpowder leaves scorch marks against the stone, marking out smudged, defiant bootprints. the beehive nook, the library, the bakery, her bedroom - she takes in the wreckage of the cavern with a heart that doesn't dare to beat and lungs that don't dare to take in breath.

the bridge is broken down before her feet, and numbly, she scrambles down to the well of the cavern - and from this new vantage point she can see her garden still smoldering, the flowers blackened and curling downwards towards kicked-open earth. the trees she so painfully grew beneath the dim torchlights are twisted and shelled-out, stark fingers that crumble to the ground without their leaves. her feet propel her forward without thought, and she rests a hand against its trunk - there's still scant flames licking at its insides, and she feels the heat grow beneath her palm. she can't move it, can't lift it away from the burning wood. she can't. it is as if she's frozen, shadows flickering beneath the flames and the broken lanterns and the kindling strewn carelessly across the floor, throat filled with the smell of gunpowder and sickly honey from the cracked-open beehives.

she can't breathe. she can't think. part of her can't believe what she's seeing even as the heat builds beneath her palm, even as she tastes gunpowder and blood on her tongue, even as she watches the blackened bark glow with embers.

another precious thing, gone. gone. every hour she poured into this place - making it safe, making it hers - is destroyed.

niki feels that she has been destroyed with it.

she should be angry. oh, she is angry - the feeling rushes in as soon as she puts a name to it, floods her veins with gasoline. she feels sickly and lit up with flames all at once, struggles to swallow around the ash in her throat. the silent screaming thrums through her blood, makes her skin itch. even so, it remains locked inside her mouth. she can't open it. she can't talk, because if she says a word, everything will spill - tar and fire and poison and blood.

tommy and tubbo emerge from the wreckage - tubbo pushing past niki to stand by the mouth of the staircase, a squalling michael shushed in his arms, as tommy and niki lock eyes.

this wasn't me, tommy says, immediate. niki, you - you have to believe me, it was dream - i swear, i swear on prime, on the discs, on tubbo, on fucking anything -

what happened, she asked. what - what happened here, tommy?

he tries to swallow, and almost chokes on his own spit - if niki thought she had seen tommy wound up before, well - she was naïve.

it was dream, he insists, dream found us, found this place, and he called to us and i heard the spark i heard the flint screech against the iron i heard the TNT ignite and -

“We hid,” his face falls into his hands, voice breaking into a hysterical laugh, “in the walls.”

niki is barely listening.

you humoured him, the voice in her head tells her. you stuck your neck out for tommy again, and now what? everything you fucking cared about is gone. everything is gone.

this is his fault. this has to be his fault.

the gasoline running alongside her blood shrieks for a match.

“Tommy,” she hears herself say. Her voice is tight. He flinches away, head bowed. “Please, just - go. Wait outside.” His face crumples. Something tugs distantly at her chest. “Niki, I - ” “I’m not - it’s not you, Tommy.” He needs to leave. She can’t hold onto her head for much longer. “I need to - I will catch up. Outside.” He doesn’t look convinced, still shying away from her like a spooked rabbit - but he leaves, he leaves, slinks off towards the staircase and leaves her alone in the wreckage.

niki waits until she hears their whispers fade, waits until the sound of their shoes scuffling against the staircase sinks into silence. she counts her breaths - in, out. in, out. each one deep, only mildly ragged.

it is only when she is entirely convinced that she is alone that she falls to her knees, like a puppet with its strings cut, and screams.

#my fics #and you caused it tag #my art #i dont really have much to say abt this one except fawking lord i am writing more of this from scratch than i expected i would have to #it's ok!! we are having fun!! i hope at least #oh yea and the syndicate have little matching capes if u go back to the character designs i drew like two yrs ago you can see they match lo #ive drawn niki in the same coat but havent ever posted her in it i think. sooo. launch ✨✨

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darabeatha · 1 year ago

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((i'm gone for a month, come back, and smol has picked up the literal devil as a muse ○_○ (SDFSD JOKES ASIDE, SMOL IM EATING THIS CONTENT UP ITS SO INTERESTING??)

/ NONONONOONONONONONONO SKELLY WAITTTTT THIS ISN'T WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!!! -TRYING TO STUFF HIM INTO A BOX- IT'S JUST SOME GUY CALLED STAN U HEARD IT WRONG PLS COME BACKKKK

#;ooc #ooc #this must have been truly--- something- OIRTRITYRTG #I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE ITTT #my christian conciousness sweating bullets #NO OK BUT JOKES ASIDE! ITS FRFR VERY INTERESTING #like; i'm taking mostly the stand point of viewing the entirety of it like a story; and its just fascinating #originally i really wanted an angel bc they are s o cool; theres so much about them but at the same time so little funnily enough #i was lit days old when i learned recently that just like d.emonology; there's also the study of angels! a.ngelology!#so as u may see im really a baby; but paradise lost was s o interesting when i heard the story i couldn't stop thinking about it #ITS ABOUT THE TRAGEDY;; AND THE HOPE;; AND THE TRAGEDY-#but also very apreciative of the support; i know it can be a very tricky subject; but its just like: :O!!!#i'll keep updating u with interesting deets and quotes and ideas ✨😌😌 still cooking ☝️#ALSO IM SO GLAD TO SEE U ON MY DASH AGAIN BTW!! always a delight to see u skelly 😭😭😭😭😭

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requiemforthepoets · 2 months ago

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you say good morning, when it's midnight ⟢ OP81

main masterlist | fic playlist | series masterlist

PAIRINGS: oscar piastri x female!reader

SUMMARY: you and oscar grew up together, and despite being neighbors and best friends with her sister, hattie, you never really talked or had a conversation with him. until one day, where he randomly texted you out of nowhere.

REMINDERS: this is purely fiction, the way how the character is portrayed in my story does not reflect the person that is portraying my character in real life. always separate fiction from reality, and do not repost or copy my work in any way.

WARNINGS: use of y/n, inaccurate information, fluff, humor (i try), and minor typographical errors

WORD COUNT: none

AUTHOR'S NOTE: hello, it's been a while since i last posted. i decided to take a break from writing and i also decided to run a new blog, and i'm on my other blog. this idea is only a spur in the moment kind of thing, i saw one conversation and ever since it had been an idea in my head. this one will be a socmed au, and inspired by simple plan's song 'jet lag'! also, there's this one panel where there was a name there, don't mind it bc i'm too lazy to edit it out haha lol. i hope you'll enjoy this one, and i'm pretty much open in making this a series, so pls lmk your thoughts about it!

yn.jpg 🔒

liked by hattiepiastri, and 126 others

yn.jpg just another day of me romanticizing my life as a neuro student 😗✨

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hattiepiastri YOU GOT THIS BESTIE! CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOU NEXT WEEK! ♥︎ liked by author

yn.jpg the only thing that's keeping me going is that i'll be seeing you next week!!! 🥹

yourmom You got this, darling! I love you ❤️ ♥︎ liked by author

yn.jpg love u too, mom 🥹💖

𓆉𓆝𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓇼

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danysdaughter · 1 month ago

Note

(first off, i adored come home to me so much)

can u pls do one where bucky and the reader knew each other before the hydra thing, but they both ended up in hydra's clutches, and instead of completely dehumanizing the two, zola programmed them to be some form of ally/handler situation, so when they both break out of hydra's clutches it gets very angsty and they argue/hate each other because they don't know if their bond was them or hydra-made. and then the ending's up to you.

no srsly, ur writing is literal art. its like fantastic in ways i cant describe.

i can die happy if u'll take this idea.

did I go a bit overboard? yes. do i have any regrets? no. I really tried to make it as you described, babe, hope you enjoy 💕

The Soldier and The Vixen

pairing | 40s!bucky x fem!reader & winter!soldier x fem!reader & post!tfatws!bucky x reader

word count | 14k words

summary | Once comrades bound by war and affection, two soldiers-turned-weapons are reshaped into monsters by Hydra, their humanity fractured and memories blurred.

Now free but haunted, they struggle to untangle love from programming, grief from guilt, and healing from the wreckage of who they used to be

tags | ANGST! ANGST! and more ANGST! graphic violence, torture, emotional trauma, brainwashing, PTSD, abuse, trauma bonding, psychological manipulation, non-consensual experimentation, abuse, power imbalance, gore, unhealthy attachment, angst/no comfort, miscommunication, mutual destruction (a bit too much?)

a/n | wowww, I am not gonna lie, I actually cried while writing this, also this fic explores dark themes with little to no comfort (we die like men)

likes comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨✨

ᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀʟɪsᴛ

divider by @cafekitsune

Village Outskirts, France, 1945

The earth was damp beneath your stomach. Rain must’ve come through earlier — you could smell it in the mud, the churned-up grass, the faint rot of old stone and war.

Through your scope, you watched two Hydra guards lounging outside a crumbling checkpoint. They were smoking and laughing about something in German, distracted, backs too often to each other. Sloppy.

You pressed the button on your radio once, holding it close to your mouth. “Movement. Two guards at the eastern entry. Smoking. Lazy. Easy targets.”

There was a short pause.

Then Bucky’s voice crackled through, “Fox, you always know how to sweet-talk a guy.”

You almost smiled. Almost, “Only the ones who talk less than they shoot, Sarge.”

A muffled laugh came through the line. Morita muttered something you didn't quite catch, probably teasing Bucky again. He was an easy target.

“You got him good,” Dum Dum grinned from somewhere behind you.

Steve’s voice cut in — level, steady. “Enough chatter. Fox, take the lead. We move on your signal.”

But you were already moving.

You didn't need backup for this. The hill rolled down into a slope that gave you full cover, and you slipped down it like water over rock. Quiet. Efficient. Knife drawn. You counted your steps with your breath. When the first guard turned his back, you were already there.

One sharp jab under the ribs. Drag him behind a crate.

The second didn't even turn in time.

Ten seconds. Two bodies. No gunfire.

You tapped your radio again.

“Checkpoint clear.”

As you were climbing back up toward the rendezvous, Bucky was waiting at the top of the ridge, crouched behind a low wall. He glanced at you, smirking.

“Miss me?”

You scoffed, brushing dirt from your sleeves. “I was gone ninety seconds.”

“That’s longer than I like you being out of sight.”

You arched a brow. “Is that concern, Sergeant Barnes?”

“It’s tactical observation, doll.”

There it was — the nickname again. You didn't bite. Bucky flirted with anything that had a skirt, and you were the only girl on the team. You’d learned not to take him seriously.

Behind you, Gabe whispered over the comm, “God, just kiss already.”

You blinked. “Excuse me?”

Bucky turned sharply and pretended to check his rifle. He didn't say another word. You frowned, completely missing the flush rising in his cheeks.

You shook your head, then returned to the task. The rest of the unit fellin. You walked point. Bucky took his usual position at your flank, and the rest of the squad fell into formation like a well-oiled machine.

The village ahead was half-destroyed from past shelling. Stone walls broken down to the foundation. Trees blackened by fire. The kind of place where shadows hid snipers and death sat behind every door.

You spotted it first — a tripwire buried in the dirt, nearly invisible. You paused, raised your fist to halt the line, then rerouted them five feet to the left.

Dum Dum muttered, “You’ve got eyes like a hawk.”

“I’ve got better things to do than walk into obvious traps,” you muttered back.

You didn't make it twenty feet past the tripwire before you heard the explosion — further down, where another route would’ve taken you.

“Hydra knows we’re here,” you said into the radio. “Get to cover. Rooftops—snipers at twelve o’clock.”

The first shot cut through the air a moment later.

You hit the ground, narrowly dodging the bullet. Dust sprayed over your face. A hand grabbed your vest — yanked you behind a broken column.

Bucky.

He positioned himself between you and the direction the shot came from, body tense.

“I had it under control,” you whispered.

He didn't even blink. “Didn’t say you didn’t.”

He was still too close. Too steady. His eyes flickered to you, just for a second, like he was making sure you were still in one piece. You didn't notice. You never noticed.

You moved past him before he could say anything else.

Firefight erupted in bursts. The unit scattered into cover, returning fire. You darted through the alleys, knife flashing when you came across two patrols rounding the corner. Your blade slipped beneath ribs and across throats. You didn't flinch. You’ve done worse.

Bucky caught your eye across the street — both of you ducked behind separate walls. You tilted your head. He nodded once. You moved again, clearing a side stairwell while he took the main door.

“Tech’s inside that chapel,” Steve said over the comm. “Fox, Bucky, with me.”

You kicked the door open first. Bucky was right behind you.

He tossed a flash grenade — you shielded your eyes, waiting for the burst, and swept left as soon as it cleared. Two Hydra agents — you took one in the leg, knocked his rifle away, finished it with your knife. The second one came at you with a baton, but Bucky had already taken him down with a clean shot to the chest.

When it was over, the silence was louder than the fight.

The tech was here — something glowing with an unnatural blue pulse. You didn't go near it.

You turned to Bucky instead, breathless. Dust in your hair. Blood on your sleeve.

“Think this’ll finally get me a promotion?”

He was looking at you differently. A flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. Maybe it was the way the light hit your face. Maybe it was the fact you were both still alive.

“You deserve a medal, Fox.”

You grinned, wiping blood from your cheek.

“Only if it’s chocolate.”

────────────────────────

Somewhere in the French Countryside, 1945

The mission had been hell, but tonight, the world was quiet.

The campfire crackled in the middle of a half-collapsed barn, broken beams overhead like the ribs of a long-dead beast. Outside, wind stirred through wheat fields. Inside, there was warmth — not from the fire, but from the laughter.

You sat with your knees pulled up, perched on an overturned crate. Your boots were still muddy. Blood on your sleeve had dried to a dark rust. Dum Dum had found a bottle of something vaguely alcoholic, and it’d been passed around in uneven sips.

Morita was telling a story — probably the fifth exaggerated war tale of the night — gesturing wildly with his hands.

“…and then this guy,” he pointed at Bucky with a dramatic flair, “says, ‘I got this,’ climbs onto the back of the Hydra truck barefoot, like a damn lunatic—”

“I didn’t think they’d be hot-wiring it in motion!” Bucky cut in defensively.

“That’s not even the dumbest part,” Gabe added, smirking. “The dumbest part is that he forgot the explosives.”

Laughter broke out around the fire. Bucky groaned and dropped his head back with a loud, sarcastic, “Thanks, fellas.”

You tried to hold in a laugh — and failed. He shot you a look, mock offended.

“You too, Fox?”

You shrugged, biting down on your grin. “Well. I was the one who had to double back and grab the damn charges.”

“She ran through enemy fire like it was a morning jog,” Steve added with a small, proud shake of his head.

Bucky nudged your shoulder with his. “Guess I owe you another one.”

“You’re keeping score now?” you asked, dryly.

He smirked. “Only when I’m losing.”

The fire cracked again, glowing warm across the faces of your brothers-in-arms. Everyone relaxed in a way they rarely could — backs against crates and sandbags, boots kicked off, dog tags clinking faintly as they leaned into one another’s stories.

Gabe tilted his head toward you, half-grinning. “Alright, Fox. What about you?”

You blinked. “What about me?”

“If you weren’t doing all this,” he said, gesturing vaguely around the barn. “If you weren’t dodging bullets and saving our sorry asses, what would you be doing?”

Immediately, you shook your head. “Nope.”

Cackling broke out around you. Morita leaned forward eagerly. “Oh, come on.”

“Not happening,” you said, waving them off.

“You gotta tell us now,” said Dum Dum. “That reaction alone just guaranteed it’s embarrassing.”

Bucky grinned beside you. “C’mon, Fox. We tell you our secrets. Like how Morita’s terrified of goats—”

“I am not—”

“—and how Dum Dum can’t wink without sneezing—”

“It’s a medical issue—”

“—so it’s only fair we get yours.”

You sighed, shaking your head slowly. “Fine. But if any of you ever breathe a word of this outside this barn, I will personally replace your shaving cream with gun grease.”

They leaned in, like children around a ghost story.

You looked into the fire, picking at the fraying seam of your glove. Then.

“I used to want to be a singer.”

Silence.

Then, chaos.

“No shit?”

“What kind?”

“Like on stage?”

“Do you have a stage name? Wait—please tell me it was Foxy somethin’—”

You groaned again, instantly regretting every life choice that led to this moment.

“It was just something I wanted when I was a kid,” you muttered. “Doesn’t mean I was any good.”

“But like, jazz club singer?” Dum Dum asked. “Torch songs?”

You didn’t answer. The heat in your cheeks did.

And then Gabe — bless him — decided to chime in, puffing his chest out like he had the perfect line.

“I mean… I just can’t picture you doing something that… you know. Girly.”

You turned your head toward him, slow and sharp.

“What?”

The fire seemed to go still.

Gabe blinked. “No—I mean—just like, you’re so good at, you know. The not-girly stuff. Like, killing people—uh—”

You raised a brow, voice flat. “So I’m in the military and that means I’m not allowed to be girly?”

Gabe opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again. “No! That’s not—I didn’t mean—like, you can, obviously—”

The others had lost it by now. Bucky had his head buried in his arm, shaking with silent laughter. Morita was wheezing. Dum Dum was crying.

You nodded slowly, arms crossed. “Uh huh. That all you got?”

Gabe looked around like someone might save him. No one did.

“I just meant… you seem so… sharp! And you don’t… I mean you never… like, dresses—not that I wouldn’t like if you wore one—not that you need to—”

“Dig up, Gabe,” Bucky offered helpfully.

You shook your head and pointed your canteen at Gabe like a knife. “One more word and I swear I will make you run laps in full gear tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Gabe said, finally surrendering to his embarrassment. “Thank you for your service.”

Once the laughter died down, Dum Dum leaned forward with a mischievous grin.

“Alright, Fox. Now sing us something.”

You stared at him.

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Oh, come on—”

“Absolutely not.”

“Just a few notes—”

“You’d have to drug me.”

“Well,” Bucky said, elbowing you gently, “I do still have some morphine left in my pack—”

You shoved his arm away with a scoff, but couldn’t help the flicker of a smile.

And as the boys erupted into more teasing, and Gabe tried to crawl under a tarp in embarrassment, you leaned back against the crate, warmed more by the people around you than the fire. You didn’t sing, not that night. But Bucky stayed next to you, quietly.

And he didn’t laugh when you said you used to want to sing.

He just looked at you like he really wanted to hear it.

────────────────────────

Moments After Intercepting Zola's Train— Alpine Forest Edge, 1945

The wind had sharp teeth.

It howled between the trees like it was mourning too. Snow swept across the ground in restless swirls, half-covering the train tracks already. Everything was white and still and wrong.

The wreckage lay behind you, steel twisted into the mountainside, black smoke curling up into the gray sky. Arnim Zola had been secured. Hydra’s tech recovered. It was supposed to be a win.

But Bucky had fallen.

The team stood in the brittle silence of it. Steve was turned half away, jaw clenched so hard you could see the muscle twitch in his cheek. Morita and Dum Dum said nothing, eyes fixed on the ground. Gabe was pacing, too angry to stop moving, like stillness would make it real.

You stood near the edge of the embankment, where it dropped into a forest of pine and snow. Your lungs burned with cold, but you kept staring down, searching the white for anything — a shape, a shadow, hope.

Finally, you squared your shoulders.

“Cap.”

Steve didn’t answer at first. You stepped closer, louder now.

“Steve.”

His eyes flicked to you, red-rimmed and hollow. “What?”

“I want permission to go after him.”

Silence.

Then a bitter breath of disbelief. “Fox…”

“You know I’m the best tracker we’ve got,” you said, tone steady, firm. “I know how to read the land. If anyone can follow his path through that fall, it’s me.”

“There’s no way he—” Steve cut himself off. His throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “No one survives a drop like that. And it’s too dangerous. You can’t go alone.”

“I have to go alone,” you insisted. “A squad would slow me down. I’ll move faster on my own, quieter. Look—”

You crouched down in the snow and started sketching with your glove. “That ridge curves around. It’s a drop, yes, but if he hit snow, or an outcrop, or even slid—”

“Even if by some miracle he lived,” Steve said quietly, “he wouldn’t last long. Not in that cold. Not with the injuries he’d have.”

You stood again, breath quickening with urgency. “If he’s alive, he’s got a chance—but not if I waste time arguing.”

“Fox—”

“If I don’t, he dies. Hypothermia will set in fast — minutes, if he’s bleeding. I might not have long, but I might still have enough time. You give me two days. Just two. If he’s alive, I’ll bring him in. If he’s not…” your voice faltered, just for a second, “then I’ll bring his body home.”

No one spoke. The wind did.

You kept your eyes locked on Steve. Pleading without begging. Heart breaking but hands steady.

“I’ve gone on solo missions before. You know I can handle it. The Colonel trained me for it.”

His jaw flexed again. You could see the battle behind his eyes. Orders versus loyalty. Logic versus love.

And then his shoulders dropped.

“Two days,” he said hoarsely.

Relief hit you like a wave. You gave a quick nod, already reaching for your gear.

But Steve stepped closer, and his voice lowered — gentler, just for you.

“Keep safe out there… alright?” he said softly. “Seriously. And if you need backup, you radio. Doesn’t matter what time. Doesn’t matter what. I’ll come running.”

You paused, swallowing hard. The cold stung your eyes, but you didn’t blink.

“Understood, Captain.”

Steve looked at you for a long moment. Then, softer still — your name. Not your call sign.

“Come back.”

You stood at attention, gave a crisp salute.

“I will.”

Then you turned, and vanished into the snow.

────────────────────────

The snow had swallowed your tracks hours ago.

You ran anyway — boots crushing down through the icy crust of the forest floor, slipping sometimes, catching yourself hard against trees. Your lungs burned with each breath, white puffs turning sharp in the frozen air. You followed the slope of the mountain where the train had disappeared from sight — zig-zagging across ridges, checking every ravine, every indentation in the powder.

It was somewhere along a narrow ledge above a frozen stream that you saw it — the faint suggestion of disturbed snow, barely visible unless you were looking for it. A jagged slide mark. Something heavy had fallen.

Your heart slammed in your chest as you scrambled down the embankment, knees hitting ice, hands out to brace yourself. You moved quick, scanning, scanning—

Then you saw red.

You froze.

Blood in the snow — bright, brilliant, and far too much of it.

It streaked in uneven drags from the edge of a rock face down into the brush, and then—

Your breath caught.

Bucky.

He lay sprawled half on his side, unmoving. Snow clung to his lashes, his uniform soaked through. His left arm — what was left of it — hung at an unnatural angle, nearly torn from the shoulder. His mouth was parted like he’d tried to call out and never finished the sound. Blood had soaked the snow beneath him dark and wide.

You were moving before your brain caught up.

“Sarge?” you gasped, skidding to your knees in the snow beside him. “Sarge— Bucky—Bucky, come on—”

Your gloved fingers hovered over him for a split second, terrified to touch, terrified he’d be cold—

But his chest moved.

Faint. Shallow.

You pressed two fingers to the side of his neck, heart pounding as you felt it—

thud.

...thud.

Faint, but there.

Your voice broke with urgency. “Hang on, James. I’ve got you. You’re okay, you’re not gone—”

You dropped your pack, already pulling out your emergency wrap, trying to stem the bleeding. His skin was ice. His lips had gone pale blue. You leaned over him, shielding him from the wind, fumbling for your radio, trying to think past the adrenaline crashing like waves—

Crunch.

Snow behind you shifted.

You didn’t hesitate — one leg snapped out behind you hard, boot slamming into the weight approaching fast from your blind spot. You felt it connect — a grunt, a body collapsing in the snow.

You twisted, low and fast, grabbing your knife from your belt, coming up just in time to block the arm of a Hydra soldier lunging in. Steel clanged against steel. You shoved back with everything you had, pushing the fight away from Bucky’s broken form.

You ducked a strike, twisted the knife out of his hand, and drove your elbow into his face—

But then another set of boots crunched through the trees.

A second soldier tackled you from the side.

You hit the ground hard — snow exploding under you, your knife skidding out of reach. You twisted, managed to throw him off just long enough to scramble back toward Bucky—

Only for a third shadow to emerge from the trees. Then a fourth.

You swung out with your arm, striking one across the temple, disarming another. You were fast—a blur of movement, rage, and desperation—but even you had limits.

A rifle butt slammed into your ribs. You doubled over. Hands grabbed at you. You kicked out, catching one in the knee—

But something cracked against the side of your head.

A sharp, searing light burst across your vision— And then nothing.

Darkness took you.

────────────────────────

Hydra Facility — Undisclosed Location

Consciousness came back like drowning in slow motion.

First, the cold. It bit deep into your skin, sharp and metallic. Then, the ache — deep in your limbs, like your bones were filled with lead. And then the restraints.

Metal bands across your wrists and ankles. Another across your chest. Your head lolled to the side, sluggish from whatever they’d pumped into you — sedatives, maybe. Or worse. You blinked against the blinding fluorescence above, and the white ceiling bled into sterile silver walls.

Then you heard it.

A scream.

Your pulse lurched.

It wasn’t just pain. It was agony. The kind of sound that tore through a person’s throat, primal and ragged. The kind of scream that told you someone was being unmade.

Your neck turned slowly — every muscle protesting — and you saw him.

Bucky.

His body was arched against the restraints on a second slab just feet away from yours, eyes wide, back bowed, mouth open in a raw, broken scream.

There were wires threaded into his temples. Metal rods at his temples, at the base of his skull. Tubes and cables running into his chest. You couldn’t see what they were pumping into him — only that whatever it was, it was wrong.

“Bucky!” your voice cracked out of your throat, hoarse and half-broken. “James—!”

No response. He didn’t hear you. Or he couldn’t. His eyes didn’t see anything.

“Stop it!” you screamed at them instead. Your voice echoed against cold steel walls. “STOP—he’s not a test subject, you bastards, HE’S A PERSON—”

You thrashed, muscles seizing against the restraints, lungs burning, tears springing from your eyes without your permission.

Across the room, a man in a white coat calmly noted something on a clipboard.

A technician adjusted a dial.

Bucky screamed again — hoarse now. And then it broke off into choking. You watched his body convulse against the slab, chest heaving. His face twisted in confusion, pain, terror—like he didn’t know who he was anymore.

You didn’t care what they were doing to you. You didn’t care if your arms were bound or if the sedatives were still in your bloodstream.

You fought.

You fought like hell.

“Let him go!” you shouted, voice nearly gone now. “Let him go, you motherfuckers!”

Someone finally turned toward you — a man with cold eyes behind round spectacles. Calm. Curious.

Zola.

He stepped closer, glancing at your vitals on a nearby monitor. “Interesting,” he murmured in a thick accent, adjusting his gloves. “She is already… aware. So soon.”

“I will kill you,” you spat. “I swear to God—”

“Oh,” Zola said gently, “I think you will be quite useful to each other.”

And then the world tilted again.

Another needle. Another rush of cold in your veins. And the lights above you fractured into fragments.

The last thing you heard before the blackness swallowed you whole… was Bucky sobbing like a child.

────────────────────────

Time had stopped meaning anything.

It could’ve been days. Weeks. Months. You didn’t know.

All you knew was the burn.

Your veins felt like they were filled with acid — crawling fire under your skin, surging in waves that left your limbs trembling, your fingers twitching, your pulse racing like it was trying to outrun death itself. You’d stopped asking what they were putting in you. Every time they came near, you tensed out of instinct. But the sedation would hit before you could do anything.

They never said what it was.

You didn’t know it was the serum.

You only knew that afterward, your body would spasm uncontrollably. Your mind would short-circuit. You’d hear voices that weren’t there. Remember things that hadn’t happened. Feel your strength surge… and then vanish.

But worse than the pain�� was him.

Bucky hadn’t spoken in days.

Maybe longer.

He lay still on the other slab, eyes open but unseeing, lips dry and cracked. His breathing was shallow. His face had gone hollow, sunken in the cheeks and under the eyes — like something was draining him from the inside out. They didn’t sedate him anymore. They didn’t need to. Whatever they'd done had left him... vacant.

His new arm — if you could even call it that — sat like a slab of cold iron where his left one had been. Crude stitches and blackened bruises ringed the place it had been fused to bone and muscle. You could see the puckered scars, raw and inflamed, where metal met skin. It looked like it hurt just to exist.

You doubted he could even lift it.

And yet… they’d called it a success.

Whatever that meant.

Now, finally — mercifully — the room had gone still. No needles. No voices over the intercom. No restraints being tightened. Just… stillness.

A few minutes. Maybe hours. You couldn’t tell anymore.

Your throat was dry. Your body, sore and exhausted. But you shifted — weakly — on the slab beside him, head tilting just enough to face him. The cold of the metal table seeped into your bones, but you ignored it.

“Bucky…” you whispered, voice rasping out like broken glass. “Sarge… can you hear me?”

He didn’t move. His eyes stared at the ceiling, unfocused.

You didn’t care.

You turned more toward him, trembling slightly as your fingers strained to reach across the few inches of space. You couldn’t touch him — the restraints didn’t let you — but you reached anyway, as if the effort alone could bridge the gap.

“I’m gonna get us out of here,” you murmured, voice cracking. “I swear. You’re not gonna die in here. I won’t let them take you like this.”

Silence.

You kept talking. You had to.

“You remember the fire escape outside our barracks? That stupid thing that barely held two people? You used to sneak up there and fall asleep. Said it was the only place quiet enough to think.”

Your throat tightened.

“You promised me, one day, you’d go back to Brooklyn. Fix that bike of yours. Open a little garage. Said I could come help out if I wanted to. You remember that?”

No response.

You felt your heart break, slow and jagged, like a fault line cracking open.

“Please, Bucky… just—just look at me. Just one sign. I need to know you’re still in there. I need you.”

Your voice dropped to a whisper. “You saved me. You always did. So let me do it now. Let me get us out. Just hang on. Please.”

You didn’t cry.

You didn’t have the water left in your body to spare. Just dry eyes, raw throat, and a heart held together by frayed sinew and willpower.

Your arm shook from the strain of keeping it extended.

And still, you kept reaching.

Even when he didn’t move.

Even when the silence stretched so long it pressed on your ribs like weight.

Even when your vision started to dim again from the drugs.

“I’m here, Sarge,” you breathed, barely audible now. “You’re not alone.”

The only sound was the soft hiss of the air vents above. The low electric hum from the lights. And the faint, hollow echo of two hearts still beating.

One stronger than the other.

But still alive.

────────────────────────

Hydra Conditioning Chambers – Months Later

You’d lost track of how many times they brought you in.

They stopped asking questions. Stopped pretending it was about compliance. This wasn’t interrogation anymore. It was reshaping.

It started with pain. Always pain. Electric currents through your skull, your spine, the base of your neck. Your nerves became war zones. Your teeth cracked from clenching. You screamed until your throat was raw, until the air itself tasted like metal and blood.

They were trying to make you forget. Rewire your instincts. Strip you of anything you and replace it with something Hydra. Something obedient.

Something empty.

It worked on Bucky.

At first, he resisted. He screamed. Fought. Raged.

But you saw the moment it broke him. You heard it — the silence that followed a round of electroshock so violent it left him convulsing, slack-jawed, frothing at the mouth. His eyes had gone glassy. His lips trembled, whispering things in Russian that made no sense to him — things they had fed into his brain on repeat. Words he didn’t understand but couldn’t stop.

“Зимний Солдат.”

Winter Soldier.

You heard the way they said it. Like it was sacred. Like it was done.

And you—

You were next.

But you wouldn’t break.

Not like him.

You bit down so hard during one session your molar cracked. They doubled the voltage. You passed out and woke up vomiting, body convulsing on the floor, your restraints slick with blood from split wrists. You couldn’t tell if the screaming in your head was yours or theirs.

Still, they failed.

Still, they couldn’t crack you.

You were fire in frostbite. And it drove them mad.

“Too resilient,” one of the German doctors muttered in frustration as he scribbled notes on a clipboard, his glasses slipping down his nose.

“Willful,” Zola corrected. “It’s in her nature. A Colonel's daughter. Born to take orders, yet somehow defies.”

“And yet she will yield,” said the Russian operative beside them, arms folded, watching you with reptilian calm. “We will make her. The лисица will hunt for us in time.”

Vixen, they called you.

The name they gave your file: sleek, lethal, deceptive. Born to track. Built to seduce and eliminate. A predator with a soft face.

You were their ghost soldier. Their shadow. Their whisper in the dark.

But only if they broke you first.

That session, they left you strapped to the chair, soaked in your own sweat and blood, nerves twitching like wires cut loose. Alone. Left to steep in the pain. Like Bucky had been.

You lifted your head an inch. Just enough to glance across the room.

He was there.

Sitting still.

Not restrained. Just… motionless. Eyes forward. Breathing shallow.

He didn’t even look at you anymore.

They had him.

And you were next.

Your throat burned. Your eyes felt too dry to cry. You weren’t sure your vocal cords worked. But still, out of nowhere — out of a deep, primitive place inside you that remembered being human — you sang.

Softly. Shakily. Croaky and cracked.

“I’ll be seeing you… in all the old familiar places…”

“…that this heart of mine embraces… all day through.”

It wasn’t a melody anymore. Just broken notes wrapped around splinters of memory.

Home. Whiskey laughs. Bucky smiling sideways when you called him “Sarge.” Steve saluting you for the first time. Dum Dum tipping his hat. Warm fires. Rations shared.

“In that small café… the park across the way…”

Your voice gave out halfway through.

But you kept whispering the words. Just for you. Just to remember.

Because even if they hollowed you out — rewired you, broke you — they couldn’t take that. Not all the way. Not yet.

You were still Fox. Somewhere under the blood and static and numbness.

You had to be.

Because if you weren’t… who would save him?

Years Later

They became Hydra’s ghosts. Whispers in the dark. Proof that monsters weren’t born — they were made.

When the war ended, and the world began to stitch itself back together, Hydra burrowed deeper. Quieter. Smarter. And in the vaults of ice and concrete beneath their hidden facilities, they began sculpting legends.

One of steel.

One of silk.

He was not subtle.

Where silence was needed, he brought screams.

Where compromise existed, he crushed it.

The Winter Soldier was Hydra’s enforcer, the blade they drove into the heart of history. He appeared across decades like a fracture — impossible to trace, impossible to stop. A phantom draped in shadow, eyes like glacier glass, grip like a bear trap.

He assassinated presidents. Ministers. Scientists. He sabotaged governments with the pull of a trigger. One shot — a bullet through a man’s skull, or through the spine of a nation’s future.

His missions were clean. Untraceable.

No witnesses. No evidence.

Only death.

Hydra rewired him with electroshock and Russian syllables. They hollowed out James Buchanan Barnes and replaced him with a weapon that did not question orders, did not feel guilt, did not hesitate. A ghost of a man with a new metal arm and no memory of mercy.

Cryogenic stasis kept him sharp, young, lethal. He lived in decades like they were days. A century’s worth of kill orders etched into his hands.

He never left survivors.

Unless Hydra told him to.

If the Soldier was Hydra’s hammer, the Vixen was their scalpel.

She bled behind enemy lines in silence, slipping through borders and barricades like a breath. She did not wear fear on her face. She did not leave blood in her wake — only secrets gutted open and missions left in ruin.

They called her лисица, the vixen, because she was cunning. Patient. Uncatchable. A whisper with teeth.

But it wasn’t always about killing.

She was Hydra’s infiltrator, a master of mimicry and seduction, of dismantling men without lifting a weapon. Where the Soldier brought force, she brought erosion — crumbling fortresses from within.

And to Hydra, she was a triumph of psychological warfare — what the Red Room would later attempt to replicate in their Widows. But she came first. She was the original phantom siren.

They used her face. Her softness. Her voice — when she remembered to use it — like a lullaby over a knife's edge. Where the Soldier was brute force, the Vixen was infiltration. Persuasion. Seduction when required, annihilation when ordered.

Her body was honed to perfection. Her mind, conditioned for silence and obedience — and yet, it never bent as cleanly as they wanted.

Not completely.

At first, it was small things.

Moments of hesitation. A flicker of something behind her eyes. The way her hands trembled after some kills — not with fear, but memory. Recognition.

She began humming to herself between assignments. Little songs from another life. She’d sit still in her stasis chamber before freezing, humming fragments of a tune they never taught her.

“We'll meet again, don't know how, don't know when…”

There were reports she disobeyed a kill order once. Let a target live because he had no evil in his eyes. They punished her for it. Re-conditioned her. Electroshock, isolation, more injections — but the slip had happened, and Hydra never trusted her fully again.

They realized she wasn’t like him.

The Soldier could be overwritten.

The Vixen resisted.

Not in screams or defiance. But in subtle, terrifying cracks.

Hydra scientists began to fear her — not for her violence, but her unpredictability. Her lingering humanity. That sliver of soul they couldn’t seem to carve out.

So they adjusted her protocol.

Where the Winter Soldier was deployed like a machine, again and again, the Vixen was locked away.

Preserved in cryo between missions. Thawed only when absolutely necessary. Only when no one else could do the job.

Only when they were desperate enough to risk the memories bleeding through.

They didn’t trust the leash they’d put on her. They only trusted the chain they wrapped around her throat.

And the serum? The serum wasn’t meant for kindness. It didn’t amplify goodness or nobility.

It magnified potential.

And under Hydra’s hands, that meant war.

The Winter Soldier's muscles knit themselves tighter. Bone density quadrupled. His reflexes reached inhuman speeds. Pain dulled. Healing accelerated. A shot to the chest became a stumble. A shattered femur became a limp for a few hours.

He didn’t stop.

He couldn’t stop.

The serum made sure of that.

And when paired with the metal arm — the marvel of Soviet-German engineering — the Winter Soldier became a force no one could match. Stronger than ten men. Faster than bullets. Unbreakable.

A walking extinction event.

He wasn’t meant to survive.

He was meant to erase.

The Vixen, however… she changed differently.

Hydra never expected the serum to work the same way. She was smaller. Lighter. Delicate in the ways he was brutal. But she was no less a weapon — just… sharper. More precise.

The serum didn’t bulk her up. It refined her.

Her muscles compacted into long, lean coils of strength. She moved like liquid shadow. Fast enough to vanish between blinks. Quiet enough that her footsteps could barely be heard on glass.

But it was her senses that changed the most.

Hydra didn’t know what to make of it at first — the way she would flinch at footsteps down the hall before they ever echoed. She could hear things miles away — the tick of rifle safety on a distant rooftop, the soft breath of a man in a hidden hallway. She could hear heartbeats. Lies. The subtle shift in someone's pulse when they spoke told her more than any interrogation.

They tested her. Over and over.

She could feel sweat in the air.

Taste adrenaline on a man’s breath.

Smelled metal, blood, gunpowder — emotions. Fear had a scent. Anger tasted like copper.

Her eyes could track the fall of a snowflake mid-battle. Her balance was inhuman. Her touch, so precise she could disarm a man without waking him.

Hydra called it a miracle. Zola called it evolution.

She was a new breed of operative — not just fast and strong, but impossibly aware. And that terrified them.

Because if she chose to disobey, to turn on them…

Even the Winter Soldier could not stop her.

They never told her she could overpower him.

They couldn’t risk it.

So instead, they bound her.

Psychologically. Physically. Systematically.

They paired her to the Soldier — not as an equal. As a subordinate. A tool under his control.

Her handler.

Her shadow.

Her leash.

When she failed a mission, when she hesitated, when she lingered too long near a song or a memory — he was the one they sent.

No guards. No scientists.

Just the Winter Soldier.

He’d enter the chamber where she sat — barefoot, arms folded over her knees, breath slow. She never ran. She never fought. Not unless she wanted it to be worse.

And he would carry out the punishment.

His face never changed.

His hands never trembled.

His eyes never closed.

Sometimes it was his fists.

Sometimes it was the silence between them — worse than any bruise.

They trained her to submit to him on instinct. A single word in Russian, a glance, a subtle shift of his body — she would obey.

But it wasn’t fear.

It was conditioning.

They had threaded her loyalty into his silhouette. Turned the man who once bled beside her into a god she knelt for.

The only one who could touch her.

The only one she responded to.

────────────────────────

Hydra’s underground compound groaned with the mechanical cold of concrete and fluorescent hum. Sterile, sharp. The air reeked of antiseptic and gun oil — a scent soaked into every slab of metal, every breath pulled through narrow lungs.

They’d returned just an hour ago from an operation in Prague.

The Soldier had gone first, dragged down the corridor by two guards, silent and compliant. They always processed him first — quick, efficient. He was easy. Slumped shoulders. Dull gaze. Programmed silence. The memory wipe rarely took more than ten minutes anymore.

But she had lingered.

Stripped of her weapons. Her boots left sticky with blood. Hands twitching at her sides like she didn’t trust they were done. Her pupils hadn’t shrunk. Her breathing hadn’t calmed. She stared at the floor like it was moving beneath her.

And when they reached for her—

When gloved hands touched her arm—

She snapped.

No scream. No warning.

The first man’s throat tore open before the others knew her fingers had moved. His blood sprayed up her face — red mist over pale skin — and she didn’t stop to see him fall. She pivoted. Fast. Precise.

A whirlwind of fists and sharp bone and snarled breath. The second scientist’s head slammed into the wall with a crack, spine folded in an unnatural twist as he slumped.

Then the alarms began.

Boots thudded down the hall. Gunfire stuttered from two directions — panicked, wild — and only some of it came from her. The rest came from soldiers firing before they aimed, hands shaking, watching Hydra’s most elegant weapon unspool into a beast.

It was like she could hear the triggers before they clicked.

Bang. Duck. Slide. Elbow to temple. Gun lifted. Two shots — center mass. Next.

She didn’t pause.

Not until there was no one left moving in the corridor but her.

Fifteen seconds of silence.

The floor gleamed with blood.

She stood in the middle of it all, chest heaving, smeared head to toe in scarlet. Her jaw twitched. Her eyes — still dilated — flicked up, wide, unblinking. Animal stillness. No longer in a mission. No longer in control.

Something had broken. Fully. Utterly.

In the surveillance room, a handler shouted.

“Отправьте солдата. Положите Виксен. Сделайте это сейчас—”

(Send in the Soldier to put the Vixen down. Do it NOW—)

Metal boots struck the floor.

He came with no hesitation.

The Soldier entered the corridor through the main blast doors, smoke curling from the edges of spent gun barrels. His face was blank. Cold. His metal arm hissed as it flexed, fingers twitching from a reset.

He stopped when he saw her.

Standing there like a revenant. Covered in blood, chin lifted, hair matted and damp. A raw tremble in her shoulders. Eyes glowing with something ancient, something nameless.

She didn't kneel. She didn't bow.

She just watched him.

The room seemed to shrink. Lights buzzed above them like flies. The blood beneath their boots had not yet dried.

His weight shifted. Right foot forward. Arm lowering slightly — coiled, ready.

Their eyes locked.

Like wolves before the first bite. No orders. No speech. No false names. Just… waiting. A battle written in stare alone.

Then he moved.

And so did she.

He lunged — fast, brutal. A fist like steel screaming toward her temple.

She ducked, slid beneath it, spun her heel into his ribs. He grunted, staggered — not from pain, but from surprise. She was faster. Not more powerful — not quite — but she was sharper. Tighter.

They wove through each other like old ghosts dancing.

His hand gripped her wrist mid-blow, twisted. She hissed, kicked at his shin. He blocked, slammed her into the wall. Her breath shot out. His arm pressed at her throat — but she rolled, broke free, slammed her forehead into his chin.

Crack.

He blinked, dazed for half a second.

She struck again.

Hard. Violent. Chest to chest, elbow to his jaw, knee toward his side — he blocked, shoved her back. They breathed in unison, rapid and harsh. His hair clung to his forehead. Her lip bled from the inside out.

Still, no words.

Just eye contact — burning. Challenging. Grieving.

The stalemate lasted three heartbeats.

Then the blast doors behind him hissed open again — dozens of Hydra agents storming the corridor with tranquilizers, guns, electric rods. The spell broke.

He made the decision.

He lunged — again — but this time not to strike.

Her back hit the floor hard, her limbs twisted beneath her, wrists already bruising. He was on top of her, pinning her down with the weight of a machine, his metal hand locked around her throat, thumb pressed against the pulse of her artery.

Her chest heaved, sharp and slow, like breath was foreign now. Like she didn’t care if she took it.

He should’ve done it already.

Should’ve squeezed harder. Should’ve watched her eyes roll back and her body fall limp like the countless others he’d ended. His expression was carved from granite — unreadable. His face spattered with blood that wasn’t his. But inside, something shook.

His fingers trembled.

It was the first warning.

She didn’t resist anymore. No kicks. No sharp elbows or desperate knees. No flash of canines, no snap of a snarl.

Just eyes.

Looking straight into his.

Open. Unblinking. Empty.

As if she wanted this.

As if the idea of dying — under his hands — was better than returning to the dark. To the chair. To the ice. To the silence.

That was the second warning.

A part of him flinched. Something far beneath the code, beneath the frostbite of his brain, beneath the echo of the Winter Soldier. Something warm. Ancient. Like a bone-deep memory of summer.

He tightened his grip.

He really did.

Muscles flexed. Metal joints locked. His jaw clenched so tightly his teeth ached.

Her skin was warm under his hand. Her pulse soft — waiting.

And she just kept staring.

Her pupils enormous. Dark. Not afraid. Not submissive. Just… ready.

A flicker of her lashes. A twitch in her lip.

And that was when he realized — she didn’t want to fight him anymore.

She didn’t believe he could choose not to kill her.

And she might’ve been right.

Because how many times had his handlers commanded him to hurt her? Punish her? And he had.

With precision. With obedience. With terrifying force.

They’d made him the hand that carved pain into her again and again. Bones broken. Breath taken. Blood spilled — by him.

And yet… she always came back.

Returned to her feet. Returned to him.

The punishments never took her away permanently.

She was still his. Not in name, not in language. But in the way gravity belongs to the planet. She was the only thing he’d ever hurt that didn’t vanish.

And now — he was supposed to end her.

To kill her.

And the Soldier — the one they’d broken, rebuilt, erased a thousand times — felt something crack.

His chest stuttered.

His other hand gripped her forearm like he was trying to tether her to the ground, to him, to something real. His breath began to shake — fast, shallow. His vision swam. He could see nothing but her eyes now. No blood. No ceiling. No walls.

Only her.

Her eyes were the only thing in the world he never forgot.

His fingers began to slip.

His breath rasped in his throat, caught between fury and anguish, and something deeper — something scarier.

His whole body trembled now. His forearm bulged with the strain of holding back. And then — like something finally snapped — he let out a guttural, choked yell, half agony, half animal.

He let go.

His hand released her throat.

He struck the concrete beside her head — hard — the ground splintering with the force, a web of cracks blooming under his fist. The shockwave trembled through her ribs. Dust curled into the air. His breathing was ragged, hoarse, chest rising and falling like a man who’d just outrun death and failed.

He didn’t look away from her.

He leaned down — slow, deliberate — and pressed his forehead to hers.

Not soft. Not tender. But grounded. Desperate.

Like he was anchoring himself to the only thing that still existed in his mind.

His forehead was burning.

Hers was cold.

They stayed like that — a tableau of blood and breath and failure. She didn’t move. He didn’t flinch.

Their foreheads touching.

Their eyes still locked.

Breathing each other in like that was the only way they remembered what it felt like to be human.

And for the first time in all the years Hydra made them into things — weapons, monsters, ghosts — the Soldier’s silence didn’t mean compliance.

It meant defiance.

He would not kill her.

Not her.

Never her.

Even if he didn’t know her name.

Even if he didn’t know his own.

He knew this.

Her eyes.

Her breath.

And her blood beneath his hands.

The blood hadn’t even dried when the reinforced doors slammed shut.

Alarms were finally silenced — but the aftermath echoed louder. Metallic clangs as bodies were dragged. Snapped bones. Severed limbs. The dead Hydra scientists were scattered across the floor like discarded parts. The walls dripped with their arrogance.

She lay on her back, still breathing.

Eyes wide, unblinking, staring at the splintered floor where his fist had broken through. One hand loosely curled at her ribs. The other slick with blood — hers, theirs, it didn’t matter.

He hadn’t killed her.

And that, to the watching Hydra handlers, was the most terrifying detail of all.

They didn’t ask questions.

They just knew she had broken. Completely.

She had killed without permission. Reacted without instruction. Moved through a room of trained guards and armed scientists like they were made of glass.

No trigger words had stopped her.

No handler had calmed her.

Not even him.

Only exhaustion had slowed her.

Only his mercy had spared her.

And that — that was unforgivable.

When they came to sedate her, he was already there. Standing over her like a specter, silent and immovable. The guards hesitated. The doctors murmured. Not a single one would meet his eyes.

His hands remained at his sides, but his presence was a warning.

Don’t hurt her. Don’t kill her.

They could see it in the way his jaw locked, in the way his body coiled like a tripwire. His programming demanded obedience — but something deeper, older, more human, was watching them with predatory stillness.

They kept her sedated through every moment. Through the wipe that never took properly. Through the muttered arguments in clipped Russian and panicked German about what to do with her. Through the decision that the risk was no longer worth the reward.

She wasn’t the Winter Soldier.

She couldn’t be tamed by words and pain.

She was something else. Something worse.

And he watched it all.

Not understanding why his chest hurt.

Not understanding why he remembered her face when everything else turned to static.

When they lowered her into the cryogenic pod, he followed. Shadowed them down the sterile hall without orders. The guards gave him distance — he didn’t look at them, didn’t need to. His eyes were fixed only on her.

She didn’t stir.

The inside of the chamber was lined with reinforced polymer. Her restraints were reinforced. But her expression was blank. Breathing slow. Completely still.

He stood just beyond the edge of the fog as the lid began to lower.

No commands came. He didn’t need any.

He simply stared.

As if some part of him knew that she was the only thing that ever made him hesitate.

The only thing that ever looked back at him — even when he hurt her — and saw him.

And now they were taking her away from him again.

Not killing her. But erasing her again.

He didn’t move until the hiss of the cryo chamber sealed shut. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Just stood there as the glass frosted over, her face vanishing into the white.

That was the last time Hydra made use of the Vixen.

1989.

Until they could find a better way to control her —

A better cage.

A better chain.

They put her back to sleep.

And that’s where she stayed — frozen, ghostlike, remembered only by the monster who’d once been ordered to destroy her.

2024

Rain lashed the cracked windows of the safehouse, a forgotten building on the edge of eastern Europe that smelled like rust and damp wood. The small desk lamp on the table buzzed faintly, casting long shadows over the spread of maps, photos, and red string that looked like a conspiracy board torn straight from a nightmare.

In the center of it all stood Bucky Barnes, his metal fingers clenched tight around the edge of the table, knuckles pale against steel.

Sam Wilson stood a few feet behind him, arms crossed, surveying the chaos.

“You really think it’s her?” he asked, voice low and measured.

Bucky didn’t answer right away. His eyes were fixed on a blurred photo — a grainy, static-frozen capture from a destroyed security feed. A woman with a mask over her mouth and nose making her face obscured, walking away from a warehouse swallowed in fire. But her posture, the deliberate stillness of her movements — he knew it.

“I know it is,” he said finally, like a fact carved from stone.

Sam let out a quiet sigh, rubbing the back of his neck. “Buck, we’ve been chasing shadows for six weeks. People say this is a ghost story. Urban legend. Vengeance incarnate. You sure it’s not just... projection?”

“She’s alive,” Bucky said, without even looking up.

The words fell like weight onto the room, pulling the silence taut. Sam studied his friend’s profile — the faint lines of fatigue around his eyes, the way his mouth twitched with restraint, with desperation.

“You say that like you’ve seen her,” Sam said gently. “But that pod in Belarus was dead. Power was out for years. She came out confused, probably didn’t even know what year it was. You think she’s operating on logic?”

“No,” Bucky murmured. “She’s not.”

He thumbed through a series of photos on the table — each one more brutal than the last. A scientist dissected in Munich. A financier found hanging upside down in Prague. Every man in the stack had once had ties to Hydra. However minor, however indirect. And each death had been executed with surgical precision. Silent. Clean. Gone.

Sam stepped forward, pointing at a red pin on the map. “Bucharest hit. Three Hydra affiliates. No alarms, no signs of forced entry. Security feed glitched for thirty seconds.”

“She’s learning,” Bucky whispered. There was no pride in it — only awe. And dread.

“She’s not just surviving,” Sam said, his voice edged with something colder. “She’s hunting.”

Bucky didn’t flinch. He nodded slowly, eyes flicking across the network of red thread. The ghosts of his past. And hers.

Sam hesitated before asking, “What if she’s not just targeting Hydra? What if she’s coming for you too?”

That stopped Bucky cold.

“She has every reason to,” he said after a long moment, the words thick with regret. “I hurt her.”

Sam was quiet. He didn’t need to ask what he meant. The history between them — the conditioning, the missions, the punishments — Bucky had carried them out without mercy. Not because he wanted to, but because they’d made him.

Sam hesitated before asking, “Then why keep looking for her?” His voice was soft, careful.

But something in Bucky snapped at that — not loud or explosive, just sharp. A quiet fracture under pressure.

“Because I have to,” Bucky said, voice low but rough, his hands bracing hard against the table. “Because she’s been frozen for thirty goddamn years, Sam.”

Sam blinked, standing a little straighter.

“I’ve been out for five. Five years free, and that’s not even counting the Blip. Or all the time Hydra dragged me out and used me,” Bucky went on, the words starting to slip faster, heavier. “And during all of that, I was hurting her. Again and again.”

His jaw clenched as he stared down at the mess of papers, eyes tracing her blurry silhouette as if it were some ancient ghost trying to speak back.

“She was always stronger than me,” he said, quieter now, almost like it hurt to admit it. “Mentally. She fought them. She never broke easy.”

He looked at Sam then, eyes rimmed in something not quite anger but something old and burning — a weight that lived in his bones.

“I owe her this,” he said. “I owe her the truth. And if she wants to kill me for it, I’ll let her. But I’m not going to stop until I find her. Even if she wants me to let her go, I will.”

But the truth was carved into his face. He couldn’t. He never would again.

────────────────────────

You sat on the edge of the couch like you didn’t know how to exist in a space this quiet.

Your eyes traced the seams between the floorboards, your hands folded neatly in your lap, unmoving. You hadn’t spoken more than a sentence since Bucky brought you there.

Not when he offered you a glass of water, not when he showed you where the bathroom was, not even when he—hesitantly—told you that you could have his room, while he slept on the couch.

You just nodded.

One, clean nod. Always polite. Always precise.

But not the way you used to be. Not the way he remembered.

In the 40s, you had fire in your voice. You had sharp comebacks, a cheeky grin that curled higher when you got under his skin. You could outrun, outshoot, outthink most of the Howlies, and still managed to hum a tune while cleaning your rifle.

Now, you barely ate. You hadn’t said more than a clipped “fine” or “okay.” You hadn’t looked him in the eye since you stepped inside.

Bucky still didn’t even know how he’d convinced you to come with him as he watched you from the kitchen, leaning his forearms on the counter, gripping the edge like it was the only thing keeping him tethered. His metal hand creaked quietly against the granite.

“You want me to put something on?” he asked, his voice low, worn. “TV, music… white noise?”

You turned your head slightly, the barest flicker. Your lips parted, like you might speak, then closed again. You shook your head, slowly.

He sighed. Not in frustration. Just... helplessness.

“You used to yell at me for humming off-key,” he said gently, like maybe a memory would draw you closer to the surface. “Said I could scare off birds from miles away.”

No answer.

Just your stillness. Just your silence.

And that ache behind his ribs grew sharper.

He stared at you, at your hunched shoulders and distant eyes, and for the first time, truly wondered if this was how Steve had felt.

Always reaching. Always hoping. Trying to pull someone he cared about out of the fog. Trying to bring Bucky back from the brink, even when Bucky had forgotten who he was. Steve had never stopped. Not when everyone else had written him off as a weapon. Not even when he’d fought against him on a damn helicarrier.

Now here Bucky was—on the other side. And he finally understood just how exhausting, how heartbreaking it had been. Watching someone you knew still existed beneath the wreckage, and not knowing if you’d ever reach them again.

He wanted to say something else, but then your voice cracked the quiet—raw, broken, hesitant.

“I remember… my father’s voice. Not his face. Just… how he said my name.”

Bucky went still.

You didn’t look at him when you said it. Your head tilted slightly toward the window, where the last of the day’s light bled across your cheekbone like gold dust.

“I used to hum while I tracked,” you said. “To stay human.”

He didn’t speak. Didn’t dare move. He just listened.

“I think I forgot how to feel warm,” you murmured. “Even when I’m not in the ice anymore.”

Your fingers twitched once, like your body remembered the motion of a weapon, or maybe a tremor from a distant past. The moment was fragile, stretched thin.

Bucky’s throat tightened. God, he wanted to tell you everything—that you weren’t alone, that he would wait as long as it took.

But he knew better. You weren’t ready for comfort. Not from him. Maybe not from anyone.

────────────────────────

It was a quiet afternoon. The sun filtered through the half-drawn curtains in pale streaks, painting long bars of gold and dust across the wood floor of Bucky’s apartment. The television was on, low volume, something benign playing that neither of you were truly watching. A news segment passed with a fleeting image.

Your eyes tracked the screen, not really watching. But then a flash of red, white, and blue passed across it. A helmet. A shield.

Your voice was flat when you spoke, cutting through the silence between you and Bucky like a knife. “I remember seeing him on TV. Cap.”

Bucky didn’t respond right away. You could feel his hesitation more than you could see it. His body shifted from where he sat across from you—still, guarded. You finally turned your head toward him.

“Where is he?”

He ran a hand through his hair, the metal fingers brushing just behind his ear.

“He’s gone,” Bucky said eventually, voice quiet.

You blinked once. Slowly. Processing.

“Gone?”

Bucky sighed through his nose. “Steve went back… after everything. After we won.” He paused. “He went back in time. Lived out his life. Came back… older. Real old. He passed away earlier this year.”

You stared at him. Not blinking now.

“So he left you behind.”

The silence after your words was sharp. Bucky’s brow creased. “No,” he said quickly, too quickly. “He didn’t—he was just—”

“You mean he could’ve taken us both home,” you said, not cruel, just even. Hollow. “Could’ve brought us back. But instead we’re stuck here. In a world that doesn’t know us. Doesn't want us.”

Bucky shook his head. “It wasn’t like that.”

“He gave up.”

“He didn’t give up!” Bucky’s voice rose, sharp with something he hadn’t meant to let out. “He gave everything, you don’t—he did what he thought was right.”

You looked at him, head tilting slightly. That same detached focus, the way your eyes pinned him—not with malice, but with cold fact. You weren’t being emotional. You weren’t attacking. That was what made it worse.

“He was selfish.”

Bucky stood now. Tense. His jaw clenched, his fingers twitching by his sides.

“Don’t say that,” he muttered. “You don’t get to say that.”

You stood up too, slow, unhurried. “He left you. After everything you went through. After everything we went through.”

“Stop it.”

“He took peace for himself and left us with the ruins.”

“That’s not what happened—he thought I’d be okay—he trusted that I could—”

“That’s not trust. That’s abandonment.”

“Stop it!” Bucky snapped, voice rough, cracking, fists clenched so tight his knuckles—flesh and metal—strained. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see how broken he was. What he lost. He earned that life.”

You didn’t flinch. Just stared at him, eyes dim but focused. “And what about what we lost?”

Bucky started pacing, running a hand through his hair like he could scatter the frustration from his scalp. “That’s not fair.”

“No,” you said, tone still maddeningly flat. “What’s not fair is waking up seventy years after your last memory and realizing the only people you trusted are either dead, ghosts, or decided to stay in the past.”

You turned, already walking toward the hallway, not angry — just done with the conversation.

“Don’t walk away,” Bucky said sharply, stepping after you.

His hand reached out — not fast, not forceful — just to touch your arm. Something gentle.

You flinched before he even made contact. The shift in your body was instantaneous — reflexive. A dodge like a breath, like muscle memory. Your spine stiffened as your arm slipped from his grasp, your eyes suddenly sharp.

“Don’t touch me,” you snapped, voice cold and loud and carved out of something ancient.

Bucky froze. His hand still hovered in the air. He stared at you.

You weren’t looking at him anymore. You weren’t really even here. Your eyes had gone somewhere else, farther back. You were breathing too fast, too shallow. Your body stiff, locked down.

And that was when Bucky understood. Really understood.

It wasn’t about him.

It was about him.

The one with the metal arm who used to drag you through concrete floors when you disobeyed. Who'd wrap his hand around your throat when your eyes held too much rebellion. Who struck you, again and again, because someone ordered him to.

Even when Bucky had been free for years, the ghosts still lived in his hands.

And you… you still saw them.

His hand dropped. Guilt flooding every inch of his face.

“I didn’t mean to—” he tried, voice lower now, thick in his throat.

You didn’t answer. You just walked past him, through the narrow hallway, closing yourself into his room, he had given you, without a word.

Bucky didn’t move for a long time. He just stood there. One hand pressed flat over the other. Like he could keep himself from reaching again. Like he could pretend it hadn’t happened.

But the truth was branded now—burning beneath the surface of his skin.

He hadn’t earned your trust.

And maybe he never would.

────────────────────────

You didn’t want to go.

That was the first thing you made clear, arms crossed, jaw set, suspicious eyes watching Bucky like he might lead you off a cliff instead of down the D.C. Metro escalator. You hadn’t asked where he was taking you. He didn’t tell you, either. Just said, “It’s important.” You didn’t like the way that word made your chest tighten.

The museum was too bright.

Too open. Too filled with noise and breath and movement. Everything felt too fast and too slow at once. Your boots echoed on the polished floors, steps cautious and silent like instinct, like old habits that had never really died.

Bucky stayed near but didn’t try to touch you — not since that day. He led you quietly, nodding at the security guards like this was something he did often.

You hated how many people were looking. Even when they weren’t.

When you entered the exhibit, the air shifted. Cooler. Calmer. Reverent.

A bronze plaque on the wall read: Captain America and the Howling Commandos. Beneath it — sepia photographs. Names. Artifacts behind glass. There were curved helmets, worn boots, faded letters.

Bucky paused beside you.

“This was the first place I came after I got out,” he said, voice quiet, like it didn’t want to disturb the ghosts on the walls. “Didn’t know where else to go. Didn’t even know who I was, really. Just… remembered pieces. Faces.”

Your eyes traced the familiar ones. Dumb Dum Dugan, Gabe Jones, Montgomery Falsworth. Jim Morita. Happy grins and tilted hats and the smell of gunpowder you could almost still taste.

Then you saw it.

Your own memorial.

It was set apart, just slightly — not grandiose, but longer than the others. The image they’d chosen was one you didn’t remember being taken. You were young — about twenty two— perched on a wooden crate in fatigues rolled at the sleeves, head turned mid-laugh, hair slicked back but wind-loosened, fingers curled around a rifle too heavy for your frame. Your expression was too soft for war. Your eyes too alive.

You blinked at it.

Above the frame was your name, carved in brass. First Lieutenant, Tactical Reconnaissance. Grey Fox.

And beneath it, the words Presumed KIA, 1945. Missing in Action. Last seen on mission in the Austrian Alps.

You felt your throat tighten and couldn’t explain why.

“Why is mine longer than the others?” you asked, quietly, too still.

Bucky glanced over at you, then at the plaque. “Because you were a big deal.”

You gave him a look, skeptical.

He shrugged, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets. “Only woman in the Howling Commandos. One of the first women to serve actively alongside combat troops. You were kind of… a symbol. They said your service helped inspire the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act in ‘48.”

You scoffed, faintly. “So they threw me on a wall.”

Bucky smiled, just barely. “They honored you. You meant something to people. Still do.”

You stepped closer to the glass. The uniform behind it was familiar. Yours. The same patches, same leather. There was even your knife — the one Howard Stark had gifted you before that last mission. The one you lost in the snow.

You didn’t remember losing it.

Didn’t remember dying.

Your voice was flat. “They thought I was dead.”

Bucky was quiet for a long moment.

“Yeah,” he said at last. “They did.”

You turned to him. “Did you? After Hydra.”

Bucky didn’t look away. “For a while.”

Something in you curled tighter, like a spring wound too far. “When did you remember?”

He shifted, brow furrowing. “Not right away. It was all… fragments. Flashes. And even when I saw your face, I didn’t know if it was real. Steve had to tell me. He said you’d come after me — that the day I fell off that train, you went looking.”

Your breath hitched.

“I don’t—” you started. “I don’t remember that.”

“That’s okay,” he said softly. “I don't either.”

You looked back at the photo — that too-young version of yourself, all spark and reckless pride, before Hydra carved you hollow. You felt something stir in your chest — not grief, not quite. More like the shape of grief, wrapped around something else. Something you didn’t have words for.

It should’ve been easy to keep walking.

To follow the curved path of the exhibit, to drift past the tributes like a ghost among glass and old light. But your steps faltered when your eyes caught it — the photo.

It wasn’t a combat shot. Not a press photo or wartime propaganda. It was a quiet moment. Just the two of you. The Colonel stood in uniform, hat tucked under one arm, and you beside him, barely twenty. The background looked like the docks, water glittering, your dress hem catching the wind like a flag. He had one hand on your shoulder, firm but gentle. You were laughing — head tipped toward him, eyes squinting in sunlight, mouth open in mid-word.

Your stomach turned.

You hadn’t seen his face in decades. Not like this.

People always assumed a man like that — a military father, a colonel — would be stern. Emotionless. Cold. But he wasn’t. He was exacting, yes. Fierce when it came to protocol and discipline. But when it was just you and him? He was warmth and humor and the smell of clean shaving soap. The only one who called you by your full name and somehow made it sound like affection.

He was your favorite person in the world.

You reached out before you realized what you were doing — fingertips hovering above the glass, as though you could touch the edge of the photograph and fall through it.

Beside the picture was a framed newspaper clipping. A headline in bold type:

“Decorated Colonel Honors Missing Daughter in Public Address”

— November 3rd, 1945

Your throat clenched.

You hesitated. Then stepped back.

“I can’t,” you said quietly. “I don’t want to read it.”

Bucky glanced at you, then down at the plaque. “Want me to?”

You nodded once.

But He stepped closer, eyes scanning the plaque. His voice was low, a little rough.

“To say that I lost a soldier would be true. But to say I lost just a soldier would be a terrible injustice.”

“My daughter — the one you knew as ‘Grey Fox’ — was many things. A tactician, a tracker, a fighter more ruthless than most men I’ve commanded. She earned her place in the Howling Commandos not because of her name, or mine, but because she earned it. Day after day. Battle after battle. She was sharper than steel, braver than men twice her age, and she never ran from anything — not even fear itself.“

“She was stubborn from the start — wouldn’t follow the rules if she thought they were wrong, wouldn’t back down from any fight worth having. And yet she was kind. She was soft in the way only the strongest people are. She made people better just by standing beside them.”

“They’ll tell you she was tactical, skilled, a leader. All of that is true. But I want people to remember who she was when the orders were done. She liked swing music. Had too many pairs of shoes. And twice as many dresses. Spoke her mind without apology and carried a silver locket with her mother’s photo, that she thought no one ever noticed.”

You felt it then — the sting behind your eyes. The tears building, slow and traitorous. You turned your head away, lifting your hand as if the simple motion could shield you from what the words were doing to you. But they kept coming.

“And though the world may mark her as lost — let me be clear. My daughter is not forgotten. She lives in every fire lit in the dark, every brave voice in the silence, every young girl who believes she can stand in a place no one thought she should.”

“She gave everything to her country. And I don’t know how to say goodbye to her. I don’t know how to let go of my little girl—”

Then his voice cut off.

You waited. One breath. Two.

And when the silence stretched too long, you asked quietly, “Why’d you stop?”

Bucky didn’t look at you. He kept his eyes on the plaque, jaw locked. “That’s where it ends,” he said softly. “The article says he couldn’t finish the speech. He—” Bucky hesitated. “He walked off the podium, too choked up.”

You turned toward him slowly, scoffing.

“No,” you murmured, voice thick. “The Colonel never cried.”

It came out too genuine to be anything but memory. Something certain. Like gravity.

You shook your head, pressing your hand to your eyes as the tears spilled freely now, silent and hot, streaking down your cheeks without restraint. There was no sobbing. No sound at all. Just that kind of grief that closed in around the chest, so dense it felt like the world had narrowed to a pinhole.

“Thank you,” you said quietly, voice breaking on the edges. “For reading it. For bringing me here.”

Bucky stood beside you, hands flexing at his sides. He didn’t reach out. Couldn’t.

Not because he didn’t want to — but because he knew you wouldn’t let him.

And maybe, in that moment, standing in front of a monument to a life you couldn’t remember and a love you’d buried somewhere deep — that was enough.

────────────────────────

You sat at the window again, the late morning sun slicing through the thin curtains like a scalpel. You didn’t feel it. Couldn’t, really. You were aware of the light, the way it bled over your hands resting on your knees—but it didn’t feel warm. Just… distant. Like everything else.

Bucky was in the kitchen, fumbling with something—probably another attempt to make coffee the way you liked. You didn’t tell him he never got it right. He tried too hard. He always had.

The silence between you two was the loudest part of this place. Even when he tried talking, even when he looked at you like you were a wound he couldn’t cauterize. It made your skin itch.

He thought he owed you. You knew it. That was what this was. This apartment, this half-life, these careful touches and softer tones—this was guilt. This was his penance.

You didn't know who you were anymore, not really. The world had moved on. Your war was over but still echoing in your blood. Bucky was the only familiar thing left, and even he felt warped—like a shadow of something you couldn’t remember clearly. You used to laugh with him. Tease him. Steal his rations and call him pretty boy. Now… you couldn't even meet his eyes for longer than a breath.

You weren’t stupid. You knew trauma bonding. You knew conditioning. You knew how Hydra twisted wires until they sparked like emotion, cracked whips until loyalty sounded like love. What the Vixen and the Winter Soldier had wasn’t a bond. It was survival.

This thing between you and Bucky—whatever it was, whatever it had once been—it was born in the dark, bred in pain, sharpened by orders and obedience. Hydra’s hands were all over it. You felt it every time he looked at you too long. Every time he brushed your arm and you flinched.

This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. And he was too deep in his guilt to see it.

He was helping you because he had to. Because he’d hurt you. Because he'd bruised you in those white walls and watched handlers drag you by your hair. And this… this domesticity—it was the last bullet in his gun, a way to sleep at night.

So you stayed quiet. You stayed small. You tried not to think about the way he used to make you laugh just by cocking an eyebrow. You tried not to remember how you’d watch his reflection in puddles during missions, not because you were tracking him, but because you felt safer when you knew where he was.

That was all conditioning. It had to be.

It had to be.

────────────────────────

She sat at the window again. She always sat at the window.

Bucky stood in the kitchen, palms braced against the counter. The coffee machine groaned, spitting out something bitter. He didn’t look at it. He couldn’t stop looking at her.

Her profile was the same. Sharp. Still. But her shoulders—he remembered them being straighter. Her spine taller. Now they curled inward, like she was trying to fold herself into nothing. And it gutted him.

She hadn’t smiled in weeks. Not the way she used to. Not with that smart-ass grin that used to crinkle her nose and make the whole damn camp warmer. Back in the barracks, before the frost, she used to razz him about his hair. Called him “Sargeant Shampoo” once. He’d laughed so hard he dropped his tray.

That was real. It was. He knew it in his bones.

But she didn’t believe it. She thought he was helping her out of guilt. That their bond was a Hydra artifact. And Bucky could barely look at her without wanting to scream.

Because if that wasn’t real—if her laugh wasn’t real, if her hand in his wasn’t real, if the way she used to stay up for him when he came back from solo missions wasn’t real—then nothing was. Then he wasn’t real. Then everything he'd clung to in that white noise void of the Winter Soldier—every memory, every flicker of light—was a lie.

And goddammit, she wasn’t a lie.

She was the reason he didn’t put a bullet in his own head when the voices got too loud. She was the reason he hesitated in ‘89. The only one who ever fought him like an equal, and the only one who made him feel like he was more than just a loaded weapon.

She thought this was guilt.

Bucky had been guilty a long time. That was nothing new. He could live with guilt. What he couldn’t live with was this—this chasm between them, this damn wall she kept her heart behind. Like he was just another ghost from the operating table.

He closed the distance between them slowly, cautiously. She didn’t look up. Just stared at the sky, as if she was waiting for the war to start again.

“I know what you think this is,” he said finally, voice low. “You think I brought you here because I feel sorry. Because I’m trying to make up for what I did.”

She didn’t say anything.

“But that’s not why I’m here,” he continued. “I remember you. Not just in Hydra. Before. You—”

His voice cracked.

“You used to make fun of how I tied my boots. You once saved our whole squad by yourself. You—You were kind. Brave. And we were real.”

That made her flinch. He saw it in the way her fingers curled.

“I never hurt you because I wanted to,” he said. “I hurt you because I wasn’t me.”

She looked at him then. Her eyes were glassy, but not soft.

“And what if I’m not me?” she asked.

Bucky didn’t have an answer.

He watched her rise, walk toward the bathroom, close the door without a word. He could hear the faucet turn on, even though she never washed her face until after dark. He stared at that closed door for a long time.

And somewhere in his chest, something cracked.

────────────────────────

“This isn’t working,” you said, voice low, raw.

You stood in the middle of the living room, your arms wrapped around yourself as if you were trying to hold your own ribs in place. The quiet stretched, thick and suffocating, like it had weight. Bucky stood across from you, like always—close, but never quite close enough to make it feel real again.

He blinked, as if trying to make sense of the words. As if you’d just spoken in a language he forgot how to understand.

“What do you mean?” he asked, but he already knew.

You didn’t look up at him when you said, “I don’t think we should be around each other anymore.”

The silence after that was devastating. You didn’t mean for it to sound like a kill shot, but it landed that way anyway. He staggered where he stood, barely, but you saw it. Like your words had stabbed him clean through and now he had to pretend it didn’t hurt.

His breath hitched. His jaw clenched. “We can still try,” he said, desperate, his voice cracking like splintered ice. “We’ve come this far. Don’t walk away now. Please.”

Your heart fractured. You wanted so badly to feel what he felt, to be what he needed, to believe this could still be something salvageable. But every moment you were around him, it was like being underwater—your body drowning in silence, your mind screaming against the weight of ghosts.

“I don’t know how to be around you without... without being afraid,” you whispered. “Of myself. Of what this is. Of what it means.”

“You’re not afraid of me,” Bucky said quickly, eyes wide with something that looked like grief. “You never were.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” you corrected softly. “I’m afraid with you. I don’t know how to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. I keep waiting for the white walls to come back. For someone to scream an order. For the part of me that was me to vanish again.”

His mouth opened, but no words came.

You looked defeated. Not angry. Not cruel. Just tired—of yourself, of this world, of the weight you both carried. The kind of tired that lives in the bones.

Bucky took one small step forward. Then another.

“Just stay,” he begged, broken. “I’ll be better. I’ll—”

You shook your head. “It’s not you.”

He stopped.

“It’s what’s left of me.”

And then—because you didn’t want to leave him without at least one last thing—you opened your arms.

You let him touch you.

His hands trembled as they slipped around you, pulling you in like you were something sacred, something breakable. Your arms went around his neck, slow, unsure. His chin rested against your temple. Your heart raced and calmed at the same time, a contradiction of longing and fear.

You stayed like that longer than you should have. And when you finally moved to pull away, his hands reflexively tightened around your back. You stilled at the pressure—not rough, not painful, just… desperate.

A sad, shuddering sigh left your lips as you rested your forehead against his collarbone. You let him hold you a little longer.

Then, when you pulled away enough to meet his eyes, you looked at him like you were looking through time. As if you saw the boy from the barracks, not the broken man standing before you.

“I’m sorry,” you said, “that I couldn’t save you.”

Bucky’s eyes welled with tears, his throat working around something he couldn’t speak.

“I promised I would,” you continued, barely above a whisper. “Back when they took us. I swore I’d get us both out. And I didn’t.”

His hands loosened. Just slightly.

“I’m also sorry,” you said, voice trembling now, “that I don’t know how to be okay.”

You leaned in, pressing a single kiss to his cheek—a soft, lingering goodbye that clung to him like a fingerprint burned in time.

When you stepped back, his arms dropped, slowly, as if his body refused to let you go even though his mind knew you were already gone.

And Bucky—he didn’t cry. He just stood there.

Frozen.

Watching you walk toward the door like he’d watched so many things slip through his fingers. Like he had all the strength in the world but none of it could stop the fact that this time, he was losing you not to Hydra, not to death—but to your own will. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

You left him standing in the center of that apartment. Alone. Still reaching.

Still waiting.

Still loving you like it might make a difference.

Welp, if you've actually reached the end and want to read something that will make you feel better, I recommend, Come Home To Me

also:

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky x you #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fluff #james buchanan barnes #james bucky buchanan barnes

1K notes · View notes

arminsumi · 8 months ago

Note

tattoartist!suguru losing nonchalance when reader flirts with him?

im down bad for him holy hell

Oh, he's falling to pieces, got it bad for the girl he just met 'n he's gonna make a drunk little bet — y'think he's crazy enough to get your name tattooed on him? Or crazy enough to ink his name into your skin?

ㅤ★ wc; ~3k

ㅤ★ note; continuation of tattoo artist Suguru Geto!

ㅤ★ an; aaa!! you got my brain whirring like a laptop... tysm and i hope this makes u blush and kick ur feet as much as i did while writing!! 🍰✨

ㅤ★ tagz; @ohimsummer 💗@fairiesthrum💗 @heartofjasmina 💗 @kwonan 💗 @ghost-buddies 💗 @madamecorbie 💗 @mima0127 💗 @moggleatlife 💗 @natasaa13 💗 @yemmuishomeforthementallyunwell 💗 @wakashudou 💗 @khaothick 💗 @candy-s72 💗 @creamflix 💗 @starriesworlds

ㅤ★ warnings; sum alcohol/drunkenness

“So, was she joking, or am I your type?” Suguru asks, black eyes staring right into your soul.

“Mm, well…” you hum, giving his form a look-over – god, if only you could feel how hard his heart’s beating when you do this. “Maybe.” You reply teasingly.

“Aw, just ‘maybe’?” he groans, now leaning his hip against the edge of the display case that housed the studs and gauge earrings.

“Yeah, just ‘maybe’ – I’m teasing. No, she wasn’t joking; I’ve always had a thing for the black hair, black nails, bad boy look…”

“The ‘bad boy’ look…?” he questions, recalling what your friend had said earlier about bad boys being just your type.

“Yeah, the ‘bad boy’ look.” You giggle.

His heart beats even harder, muttering a naughty little “Well, lucky me.”

“Nah, not so fast – I’m a smart woman.” You warn.

“Oh, are you?” he clicks his tongue in defeat, “Damn, would you believe that my type is smart women? No, no I’m serious… I’ve got a thing for smart women.”

Your cheeks grow hot, the heat spreading to your ears.

“I can assure you that the ‘bad boy’ look is just an aesthetic; I’m really an artsy dork making a living off doodling on people’s bodies.” He shrugs.

“Hm… maybe, maybe not.”

You rub your lips together. He briefly licks his bottom lip. You look him up and down. He looks you up and down. Body language open and alive with attraction, the both of you stand in this air of electric tension that Shoko spies from the other end of the room.

She watches as the two of you giggle like little flirts, observing how totally absorbed the two of you are in each other’s company. When you catch her eye, Shoko gives you a wink and points at her wrist, mouthing “five more” – fair enough, the two of you have promised to get pizza.

Pizza first, boys later, right?

Five minutes more go by – adding to the total of four hours spent at the tattoo & piercing parlor. But despite her discomfort and need for a change of scenery, Shoko decides to linger around just a little longer so that the two of you can indulge in each other just a little more.

But now you're getting nervous – Suguru has you breathless, holding you in a battle of who can flirt harder? which you're starting to lose.

He's captivated by you. This 6’3, tattooed, goth-grunge, slightly dorky man chuckles and smiles like he hasn’t had this much fun talking flirting with someone in years.

It's going well, then your smile trips him up. I know, it’s always the smile, huh? If you see enough of it, you slip… and that’s exactly what's happened to Suguru. He quickly grows obsessed with the way your cheeks look when you smile – the image burns into his memory without him even realizing it in the moment.

No, in the moment he doesn't realize the magnitude of your effect on him. He's just thinking about himself, about you, about —

“I’ve gotta go,” you say goodbye finally, “I don’t want to keep my friend waiting. But you’ll probably see my face here again… she loves dragging me along for these kinds of things.”

He stutters, “Oh! Oh… yeah – yes. Of course. Looking forward to it… maybe next time, you’ll be the one getting ink in your skin.”

“Yeah right.” You smile.

It’s your French exit that makes his heart throb in need.

No, don’t leave yet… I like you – don’t you ever wonder how many acquaintances in your life have thought this when leaving your company? And you’ll never even know.

Oh, Suguru was thinking so hard about asking you to exchange numbers or to meet up for coffee, but he didn’t want to come off as too forward – no, no… he had to maintain his mysteriousness. Or at least, he had to cling to whatever was left of it after revealing his inner dorkiness to you.

*****

After you leave, he wanders in and out of his studio, has small interactions with his co-workers, and doodles ideas for tattoos down.

Throughout all of these things, your face is at the forefront of his mind. Your voice echoes in his head as he recalls every detail of the conversation you two shared. Then he starts smiling softly as he applauds himself for being so gutsily flirty with you… a stranger, just someone, who he probably won’t see again…

A girl with no name.

God, why was he so slow? He didn’t even ask for your name. Suguru groans.

Yes, he probably won’t see you again… not unless your friend brings you along for her next visit. How long does he have to wait? Weeks? Months? That’s insane.

Suguru stops doodling, stares at the scrap of paper, and then looks up at the wall displaying his works. He rubs his fingers back and forth across his mouth.

I gotta.

He looks over to his phone. He reaches for it, takes it into his veiny hand, unlocks it, and scrolls through his list of contacts.

And then he dials his client’s number. Shoko Ieri.

*****

Now, it’s been just under an hour since you and Shoko left the tattoo parlour. She’s complained three times about the pain because exactly three times she has leaned back on the seat – squishing the fresh ink wound against her chair. You just cruelly laugh at how her eyes twitch in pain and each time.

The two of you sit eating pizza.

“He liked you. Why don’t we go back and you ask him for his number?” she teases.

“No way… he’ll think I’m too forward.” You shake your head.

Then three minutes later, Shoko's phone goes off. She reaches into her backpack. She looks at the caller ID, then at you, then at the caller ID, then –

“… is that him?”

“It’s him.”

“What’s he calling for! Me?”

“Absolutely he’s calling for you – I can bet gold on that.”

It stops ringing. She tells you she’ll text him back but guess what? She doesn’t even need to, because he calls again.

“Relentless.” She giggles. “I’m answering.”

“Pretend I’m not here!”

She winks at you and answers, “Hey, Suguru, what’s up?”

The two of you lean in until your foreheads press together – it’s still hard to make out every word.

“Yo.” You hear his smooth voice coming from the other side, “Sorry to bother you… (muffled)… your friend (muffled)… so embarrassed, so don’t tell her that I’m calling… (muffled)… what was her name?”

You clap your hand over your mouth when you hear those snippets.

She gives you a devious look before saying, “Oh! Well, she’s right here with me, actually, so you can ask her yourself.”

Mouth full of pizza, you freak out and X your arms to signal a fat NO WAY SHOKO! and fall to pieces all with the taste of pepperoni on your tongue.

But she just hands the phone over to you anyways, then proceeds to silently laugh as you spit out your pizza before talking.

“Hehlooo?”

“H-hey.”

You get right to the point. “My name’s Yn…”

“Oh… I like that… I’m Suguru.”

“What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

“Suguru. Suguru Geto.” He raises his voice.

Cheek hot against the screen of his phone, Suguru is silently freaking out at the tense silence. He can feel his stomach starting to flip. His mind blanks.

“Anyways! Um, that’s all.”

No. That’s not all. He has a novel’s length worth of things to talk about with you.

At this point, Shoko rolls her eyes at the two of you being so awkward on the phone and decides that she needs to take matters into her own hands.

So she snatches the phone from you.

“ – Suguru? Say, you wouldn’t be free on Saturday, would ya? Yeah, I’m going on a date with this guy… and I’d love to make it a double date with you and Yn if you’d like to –”

You hear him stutter out a yes, absolutely before Shoko can even finish her sentence. She grins.

Suguru can sense that the two of you are smiling and giggling. He can predict that the two of you are probably going to gossip about him being the 'dork from the tattoo parlor that called not once, but twice for the name of a girl he just met' – but he doesn’t care. He’s been presented an opportunity and taken it.

To hell with seeming too eager.

When the call ends, Suguru blows out a breath through his lips. Then he promptly texts his best friend. Dark strands of hair slip out of his sloppy bun as he puts his face over the screen, thumbs swift and eager.

Toru 🤞😜 lol bravo... but i thought u said she was out of ur league??

Sugu i mean... yes. she's way too pretty and smart for me. but i'm not gonna pass up this opportunity

Toru 🤞😜 still can't believe u called ur client just to get her friend’s name... lol

Sugu you would understand if you met her ok

Toru 🤞😜 damn she must be something else

Yes, yes you are something else — Suguru can’t even begin to describe why. Translating his thoughts into words isn’t his thing; he translates them into art.

****

It's later in the day. You're lazing around Shoko's apartment.

She confirms the time and place of the double date, and cackles on her couch while kicking her feet, teasing you for being so crazy about a guy you just met – her tattoo artist.

You just couldn’t stop talking about Geto Suguru.

“Shiiit, should I even let you and a bad boy like him be alone in a room together?”

“I can control myself.” you assure her.

She slowly shakes her head at you.

“Yeah right… but can he? I don't trust neither of you... miss crazy and mister crazy... you might just wake up with his name in your skin.”

You giggle to yourself, biting your thumb. “Maybe…”

“Oh girl…” she groans, causing you to giggle into yourself, “You’re gonna be licking the tail of his dragon tattoo by the end of the date tomorrow.”

“H-h-he has a what? And where?” you stuttered, lashes quivering.

She shakes her head at you. “God, you’re screwed…”

*****

It's Saturday night. The bar's more alive than ever.

You've learned that Geto Suguru does, in fact, have a dragon tattoo inked up his toned arm – and a tight-fitting black tank top that shows it off along with his martial artist’s physique, too.

He’s got a glint of the devil in his black eyes. Softly-delivered dirty jokes ready to roll off his pierced tongue. A habit of tilting his head and looking hungrily at your lips and neck.

“Martial arts, huh?” you ask with stars in your eyes.

“Mhm, I could teach you a few things.” He purrs in reply.

Your stomach starts squeezing and flipping – that’s got to be the flirtiest 'mhm' that you’ve ever heard in your whole life.

“You think so?” you purr back.

Now it’s his turn to feel that squeezy, flippy feeling in his stomach.

Fuckfuckfuck is all he could think when he looks into your eyes.

I’m gonna fall to pieces. You’re gonna be the death of me.

“Uh… do you two need some privacy?” Shoko teases.

Oh. It’s a double date. How could you forget? Shoko is literally sitting beside you at the bar with her date. But for a second there, it really felt like it was just you 'n this deliciously tattooed bad boy.

“Maybe.” Suguru chuckles coyly.

“There’s a hotel just next door…”

“Shoko!” you scold, playfully shoving her arm.

She giggles into herself, sipping down her cocktail innocently as if she didn’t just electrify the air between you and Suguru. His throat’s tensing, foot’s tapping up and down on the bar stool – boy’s got long spider-legs, huh?

Now after that, Suguru grins wider – showing off his pretty canines – his posture assuming something self-soothing; he holds his elbows, arms squished against his ribcage, which just makes his biceps more pronounced. Oh why, why did he have to wear a tank top like that? Surely he’s aware of the effect it has on girls. Or maybe he’s oblivious…

Nah. He's not.

*****

“Did it hurt?” you ask, trying to blink out the tipsiness from your love-drunk eyes but you’ve got three cosmopolitans surging through your veins.

“Not really… I’ve got great pain tolerance.” Suguru replies.

“Oh really?” you blink up at him again and his mind goes blank.

“Look at that...” He murmurs softly, not breaking eye contact with you. Where’s your friend and her date? Who knows. It’s just you and him now – and that’s all he wanted.

“Hm?”

“Not every day I see eyes like that…”

You widen your lips into a smile, “You’re laying it on thick.”

“Am I? Sorry – see, this is what happens after you feed Suguru too much rum. I just can’t keep my mouth shut.”

“That’s terrible… need someone to shut ya up?” you flirt.

He tilts his head at you, loose strands of hair shifting across his cheek. His left brow quirks up – he’s so taken aback by your forwardness but he falls right into it.

You just giggle flirtatiously after making that comment and pull the straw of your drink between your lips, sucking the remnants of a cosmopolitan into your mouth as sensually as you dare to in front of a bad boy who’s got bedroom eyes on you.

“I think I could do with some shutting up…” he admits.

“Mm,” you hum, “y’think by our third date you’re gonna snap and kiss me hard like we’re in a movie?”

Suguru smiles bashfully and looks down into his drink, swirling the melting ice cubes with a straw – slowly, round and round, they clink. Then he draws his gaze back to you, catching you with a sultry side-eye, and now it’s not just the ice cubes that are melting.

“Nah-uh…”

“Nah-uh?” you question.

“… I think it’s you who’s gonna snap first.” He says.

“Wanna bet?” you tease.

“Sure. What’ll be at stake?” he asks.

He keeps his sultry gaze on you as you look off to the side in thought for a moment. Your friend’s joke echoes in your mind.

“… you might just wake up with his name in your skin.”

Then you look back to him – his heart throbs but he’s trying to keep it together here, pulling his straw to his lips to get a sip of whatever rum still exists in his glass.

“Loser gets a regrettable tattoo?” you suggest.

He looks at you with a little bit of disbelief at your boldness.

“How regrettable?” he questions, one eye squinting shut in suspicion. He's wondering just how wild you actually are.

“Like my name on you? Or vice versa.”

He covers his mouth and lets out a chuckle hearing this. “You want me to tattoo my name on ya skin?” he teases. “Sure, I’ll bet on that.”

You can’t believe that he’s matching your crazy.

You stutter, replying only after a lingering moment of hot eye contact, “… there’s no way I’m gonna snap first…” you say boldly, proceeding to pop the cherry of your drink into your mouth and eating it right in front of the poor boy’s eyes. “ ‘m gonna have you walkin’ around with my name on you.”

Eyes glued on your lips, his breath catches in his throat.

“Yeah?”

Ooh, there it was. That feeling. That body singing electric songs feeling… that tummy-tightening, blood-rushing, skin-flushing feeling – it hit him all at once. He knows that if he were standing, his knees would have buckled now for sure, or at least he would have felt the tremor of your words under his feet.

He’s unsteady – smiling uncontrollably, looking dishevelled and softly drunk. Those rouge lips are begging to be kissed.

The bar grows quieter and quieter.

You’re hardly able to call each other anything more than strangers, and yet you’re leaning into him, closing the distance.

The tips of your noses are just inches apart now. You’re in each other’s air. He eyes out your lips, feels your hot, liquor-scented breath tickle his face.

But when you try and close the distance, he raises his hand and presses his thumb against your soft lips, stopping you.

“What happened to that bold statement, huh? Keep it together, baby; the bet’s on.” He feathers against your face.

*****

Tumbling into Shoko’s apartment after a night out drinking, you smile and giggle into the pillows of her bed.

She’s letting her hair down and swapping out her tight dress for jammies when she looks at you in your gleeful state.

“Someone’s in love.” She teases, coming over to tickle you.

“I’m not in love!”

“Oh, quit the act; I saw how the two of you said goodbye – you could barely hold yourself together. Drunk or not, I ain’t seen two adults giggling like that before.”

“Sh!” you swat her, “Not! In! Love!”

She takes a look into your eyes and observes your smile, then shakes her head. You're drowsy, so you make a dive into her bed and fall asleep almost instantly.

Shoko pulls a blanket over you, affectionately ruffling your hair.

“Madly in love, at the very least.”

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