[After]

[onlyforthedream]

My body is still in shock, or the memory of it, when I stagger and catch myself with one hand against a palm. My breath is pulling raggedly in my lungs and throat and every part of me feels raw, wind burned or frozen or scraped. The enormity of what we just went through is already slamming into me with the same kind of force as the waters of the

Comments

[onlyapassenger]

Experience should steady Bucky, but experience doesn't always matter. Where the return from Russia all those months ago was no less sudden or disorienting, the circumstances of the shift were, comparatively, more desirable. The darkening sky of Tabula Rasa at dusk is a a familiar sight, but not a comforting one, his body on this prison of an island, even as his mind is still struggling to tear itself away from the horrors of the North Atlantic

[onlyforthedream]

He's hurting, clearly, and I want to go over, but I can't move.

That's ridiculous. Pull it together.

"Bucky," I say hoarsely, taking a few stalking steps until I'm at his shoulder, but once there I freeze up again. I don't move to help him stand, I don't kneel and do something as basic as put a hand on his back to try and steady him. I just stand uselessly by.

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky swallows, though it burns, and closes his eyes; he remembers what he had for lunch, and doesn't need the reminder. The pain subsides as quickly as it arrived, but he's no less shaken for it, his body trembling from the shock of dying and being brought back to life once more. The fact that it was all in their heads doesn't count for much when it all felt so real, and even as he's cursing himself for taking so long to get it together, he knows there's no shame in it. Even so, he isn't the one who needs the help right now; what happened was as much Steve's nightmare as it was his own (more so, arguably), and Bucky's of no use to anyone on the ground.

Forcing himself to sit up, he drags the back of his real hand across his mouth, and looks ahead, half-expecting the drone plane to fly over the trees any second, so much so that he waits for it, listens for it. Only once he's satisfied that nothing is coming, that they're alone, does Bucky make to stand, taking a moment to find his footing (and even then, he ends up relying on a

[onlyforthedream]

I make some noise, something low and aborted in the back of my throat, but I can't answer him, as such. Now that he's got it together, more than anyone who just went through that should be able to, I can't look at him. My fingernails are digging into my palms so hard I can feel bruises forming, my body is rigid, my pulse is pounding in my throat and my temples and my jaw aches from how hard I'm clenching my molars together.

I still feel like I'm going to be sick, but I know what's making me feel that way is too deep and too in me to be gotten rid of, now.

I stand utterly still but for the barest sideways shake of my head. I can't find the words. There are no words for this.