[for Jason] brothers on a hotel bed

[onlyapassenger]

It's been two days since Bucky brought an unconscious Jason back to the hut they shared, and nearly four since Bucky fled from the very same place, too distraught from the events in Moscow, imagined and otherwise, to stick around. Leaving, though, had turned out pointless; his guilt chased him around the whole of the island, inescapable and intense

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[prodigaljaybird]

Jason feels like he had a truck drive over him and park right on his chest, his body stiff and heavy, asleep and aching in strange places like he hasn't moved in an age.

He'd been...at the Manor, afraid of his own bed and curled in with Lux instead who, by some miracle, had allowed him near her, but the voice calling to him isn't hers, and the ceiling, when his eyes blink open, is familiar. It's not the home he left, but it still feels like that, like home.

"Bucky," says Jason, sitting up all at once, propelled past his own fatigue with the realization that Bucky came back. It takes his eyes only moments to adjust, to find him, but it feels like forever. "You're back."

[onlyapassenger]

"Woah, take it easy," says Bucky, turning on the spot with his hands held out in front of him. It occurs to him that he ought to turn on a light or something, but he almost feels better about having the conversation that promises to follow in the dark. Maybe it's cowardly, but that's more or less how he feels for having run in the first place. At the time, though, it had seemed like the best option at his disposal; he'd been confused, angry, and highly armed, though the guilt ensure he wouldn't do anyone harm, except, maybe, himself. Even days after the fact, it's hard not to take Jason's simple greeting as a blow to his conscience.

"You've been out for days."

[prodigaljaybird]

That's insane, but so is waking up in Gotham, so is sitting down to play cards and blinking into a Soviet medical bay instead, and from the way Jason feels, he can easily believe it. His throat is dry, but not tortuously so, and his stomach feels hollow enough that Jason knows he'll be eating everything in sight as soon as he's moving again.

His head hurts, brain equal parts sluggish and on fire to sort everything out again. He knows he went to sleep in Gotham, and before that, his old cave, and now he's here. "Did you..." he says. Bucky must have brought him here, but - "You weren't asleep, too? What the hell is happening?" He doesn't want to get upset, he's felt enough of that in the last handful of days to last a lifetime, and Christ, he needs to get off the ride for a while. "Why is it making us do this?" he murmurs, and then, even more quietly, because he doesn't even know where Bucky's been, "Are you okay?"

[onlyapassenger]

The kid's bombarding him with questions, but it's only the last that finds its target, giving Bucky a moment's pause before he so much attempts to answer any of them. That he's got a few of his own is, apparently, besides the point, though why Jason cares if he's okay is chief among them. Bucky doesn't like to make a habit of agreeing with the bad guys, but given all that he's done, it doesn't make sense to him that everyone's so quick to forgive and forget.

"Whoever runs this place is a sick bastard, that's why," he says, raking a hand back through his hair. "Don't know why the hell I was spared. Didn't think this place was into giving breaks."