a weak and tortured bucky making sure steve gets to safety first
It’s because Bucky has a habit of letting Steve go first.
—–
1) Always let Steve go first up the stairs, so that you can keep an eye on him. It’s easier to count Steve’s breaths and notice when Steve’s heart does that thing that makes him stop and shake. Much easier to stop and pretend to tie your shoes while you wait, worried, than to realize 2 flights too late that Steve’s no longer with you.
Later: Your limbs are sore and numb from being strapped to a table for 2 days and you’re pretty sure you haven’t eaten and the entire base might be exploding, but when Steve says “let’s go up,” you tell him to go first.
——-
2) Steve’s walk was mostly normal, though he swung his hips in a certain way to compensate for his scoliosis, and that put a special cadence to his stride that you unconsciously match. Even without Steve around you would twist your hip back before swinging your leg forward. Twist, swing, twist, swing.
Later: Steve is leading the way through the forest, and you’re finally used to his height and broad shoulders and that dumb shield, but something still feels wrong. Somehow your pace doesn’t quite match, and you can’t figure out why.
——-
3) Colors don’t work the same with Steve, so always describe unfamiliar objects by their shape and relative location, like that square window past the third door on the left, or the man wearing that unseasonably long coat standing in the corner by the garbage can.
Later: The boys are singing in the other room and you’re at the bar with Steve, trying very hard to get drunk because of course you’ll follow Steve into whatever but that doesn’t mean you have to do it sober. “Steve,” you whisper, “Check out that lady by the door, next to that short thin guy who has his shirt open.“ Steve looks over. “The one in the red dress? That’s Miss Carter.“ You can’t decide what surprises you more – that Steve can see red now, or that he knows her name. So you decide you need another drink.
——-
4) When walking down a narrow dark alleyway always stay on the right, because Steve’s bad ear makes the right side feel blind to him (though damn if Steve’d ever admit that). On broad open streets, switch to Steve’s left side, so that Steve could hear you better through the noise.
Later: Dum-Dum gives you a weird look as you line up to charge into a Hydra base. “Why won’t you take the left flank for a change?“ You start explaining Steve’s bad ear before you remember that he’s not that Steve any more, and that Captain America doesn’t have a bad ear.
——-
5) Stuff in your left pockets are for Steve: the asthma cigarettes that Steve could never afford, a dime for that popcorn that Steve likes, tickets for whatever shindig you’re trying to drag Steve along to. Sometimes you put things there for Steve and totally forget about it, like extra paper and a spare pencil in case Steve wants to doodle. The left side always belongs to Steve.
Later: Steve is awfully quiet by the campfire. You sit down by his good ear and reach into your left pocket. “Hey,” you say, pulling out a news clipping about the war front that featured a lovely photo of Miss Carter. “You read this yet? They think Morita’s a Japanese defector, but the section on Dernier is priceless.”
—————
Still later:
Report on the Winter Soldier reset procedures
After the latest test run, only the following anomalies remain:
A) The asset tends to hug the right walls and not the left, and hesitates for 30 microseconds before climbing stairs. However, he does not hesitate when scaling walls or ladders.
B) When walking unopposed the asset has a characteristic and identifiable stride, which is dropped when he is making a covered approach.
C) The asset communicates via relative locations, often omitting crucial color information. However, he can be commanded to describe the colors of any object in impressive detail.
D) When dressing himself, the asset keeps his knives exclusively on his right side, and his left pockets are underutilized. This may be an effect of continued unfamiliarity with the new left arm.
After extensive field testing, we have determined that these anomalies do not impede the asset from completing his missions, and declare the reset process complete.
——————
(Some habits linger, even when the person is gone.)
You are born with the ability to see whether people listen more often to the angel or the devil on their shoulder, based on the opacity of each- if they listen more to the angel, it’s more solid and the demon is more transparent, and vice versa. You recently met a guy online and you’re finally going to meet. You go in for a handshake and glance at his shoulders, but you can’t see the angel. Only a solid demon.
Run. That’s my first thought and it keeps playing in my head over and over again. Run!
“You OK?” asks the man before me.
I realize I’ve been standing frozen, probably looking spooked. “Yes,” I fake what I hope is a convincing smile. I look back at his right shoulder, there’s nothing there, then to his left shoulder where a solid colored devil rests.
As he turns to our table I glance over the restaurant to make sure my powers are still working. There’s a woman one table away with a transparent devil and a translucent angel, she listens to the angel more. The woman across from her has a devil that’s translucent, she listens to it a little more than she should.
I’ve had this power my whole life, to see which side one listens to, but never before have I seen a completely solid devil, never before have I seen the angel completely gone…
Run!
Turning back to him I seen he’s pulled my chair out for me, watching me expectantly.
I could run now but what if he follows? Maybe it’s best I don’t tip him off, assuming I haven’t already, and sneak out while he’s not looking.
“Thank you,” I sit down.
He sits across from me and looks down, pulling on his long sleeves. “Order whatever you want,” he mumbles, “don’t pay attention to the price.”
“Oh, OK thank you.” I can barely pay attention to the menu. I glance over the restaurant, planning an escape route from the restroom.
“It was at 5:50,” he says, picking right up from where our last conversation online left off.
“I watched that video a dozen times and couldn’t see it.”
As we talk he seems just like the shy sweet boy I met online but then I glance at the devil on his shoulder and remember to be scared.
I’m looking at his shoulder so often that he glances back to see what I’m looking at. Worried about it I glance down and gape; on his arm a cut peeks out from under his sleeve.
He sees me seeing it and panics, pulling his sleeves down.
My gaze falls to the table and we sit there in silence.
This whole time I’ve been avoiding the people with the more solid devils because they listen to them more, I never questioned what the devils were saying. His devil isn’t telling him to hurt me, it’s telling him to hurt himself, that he’s worthless and doesn’t deserve me; and me acting scared of him isn’t helping.
“Don’t listen,” slips out before I’ve finished getting my thoughts together. I take in a long breath and speak slowly. “Don’t listen to the voice that tells you you’re useless, that you’ll never make a difference… You’ve made a huge difference to me.”
I risk looking up and see him teary eyed. “Thank you,” he whispers, and beside his head a barely visible angel fades back into existence.
Thank you so much for doing this prompt @hannahcbrown!
To all the amigos out there, know that you are loved ❤️
“What happens at the beginning of Ragnarok is so destabilizing for both Thor and Loki. They are all they have; as in, there’s nothing left. Everyone’s gone—Odin’s gone, Frigga’s gone, the Warriors Three are gone, Asgard is basically gone. And so Thor and Loki turn to each other and say, you’re all I have left. And actually, that’s enough.” – Tom Hiddleston [Empire Podcast]
I posted it on Pixiv for years ago, but someone who couldn’t sign up for the site ask me to upload Tumblr also. I hope you enjoy and spare me for my imperfect English, thanks.
one of the best heartwarming scenes between Zuko and Iroh. The fact that Zuko is truly repentant and Iroh is unconditionally forgiving despite everything he’s endured. And of course, they can make you cry one moment and laugh in the next.
Post Infinity War, slightly OOC Nebula because I have no idea how to write her. IW didn’t really inspire a lot of ideas for me in terms of fic, but as I was discussing it with doux-amer, part of this came about, so I finished it up. Very rough.
“What would you have done?” he asks. Nebula doesn’t look at him, doesn’t even blink. “With the Gauntlet?”
They are ten jumps away from Earth, or so she’s told him. They are five days out from Titan. (Five days out from apocalypse, and here he sits, flying through space on a dead man’s ship named after an 80′s rock singer with an honest to god cyborg to his left. It’s the perfect set-up for Tony to wake up at any moment.
But he doesn’t.)
Nebula is quiet for a long moment. Nebula is quiet in general – the most she’s ever spoken to him in one go is to tell him exactly how and why Peter Parker had faded away from his hands – but there is something pensive to her silence, so he waits.
“Destroyed Thanos,” she says after a moment, so flat and determined, no question. “Destroyed him and his ship and his ‘children.’“
“Aren’t you his kid?” Tony asks.
“I was,” she answers simply. Tony doesn’t know what to make of that, but he doesn’t ask. He got his answer, sparse as it was. He settles back into his chair and doesn’t watch the stars go past.
They’re between jumps. Nebula is hesitant to put him through too many at once, something about his puny human body being unable to take the strain. On these first few stretches of time between hops, they would drift near planets and Nebula would flip the outbound communicator on. He thinks she was hoping to hear of one planet that was unscathed, proof that Thanos’ power wasn’t absolute, but every broadcast was panicked, hurried, alien words tripping over themselves. After a while, she stopped listening.
Earth had no one to broadcast to. They were alone in their terror and anguish. And Tony is returning to bring back more. Would May Parker still exist, wondering where her son was? Would Wong be holding the Sanctum for a man who wasn’t coming back?
Was Pepper still there? Happy? Rhodey? Vision or Harley or Bruce or Nat or –
What if Steve was gone, too?
(What if the last thing the Avengers ever did was tear each other to pieces?)
He had persuaded Nebula to pilot him to Earth with the promise of other heroes who could help her take the fight to Thanos. There was a fifty-fifty chance that any one of them still remained.
Heads or tails.
“What would you have done?” Nebula asks abruptly, and it takes a minute for his brain to catch up. She still isn’t looking at him.
“Before?” Tony muses. “I don’t know. I had an infinity stone in my grasp before and that didn’t end well for anybody, so I’d like to think I’d just lock it up in a vault, maybe split the stones.” Maybe he’d fix his heart first, maybe he’d end world hunger, maybe he’d – maybe he’d – “I don’t know. Now, though? Now I – I just want Peter back.”
“The child.” It is not a question. Tony nods.
He’d want Pepper safe of course. His team. He’d want the Earth back, six billion plus with all their misery and hope. But Peter is still under his fingernails, in his clothes.
(Peter was barely seventeen.)
Nebula hesitates. For a moment he thinks she’s spotted something, but her eyes slide towards him, never meeting his own but fixing on his hands. “There was a moment,” she says haltingly. “Gamora offered me a chance to join her and her crew. I refused. I was going to defeat Thanos, and she just wanted to be happy. I didn’t want her holding me back. If I wore the gauntlet now, I would not ressurect my sister. I would go back to that moment, and I would say yes.”
Tony thinks of a dozen lost moments then, a cold bunker, a glassed room, a handshake in a park. But his mind stutters on a green lawn, a man in red and blue in his rearview mirror.
“Together,” he breathes. It tastes like ashes.
“Yes,” Nebula whispers back, and he doesn’t mention the tears in her voice.
It’s almost time for the next jump. Ten more, and they’ll be home. Fifty-fifty, he tells himself. Steve’s done more with less.
wupacing 