revivalproject | ★ 2 ★

WHO: Adult!Bucky!Cap and you?
WHERE: Around this snowy planet they're on.
WHAT: It's tough to be an adult when your best-friend-slash-boyfriend is not. Or, come to think of it, most of the people you know...
WHEN: Anytime during the Us Make For They event~
WARNINGS: Just Bucky-appropriate swearing, I think?

Bucky knew better than to just shove the first - or fifth - thing he came across in the village into his mouth. And once he saw the effect it was having on others... well, he doubly knew better. Which means, of course, now he is one of only a few adults in a sea of super-powered and/or hyperactive children. It... kinda feels like old times, except during actual old times, Steve was a lot easier to keep up with.

Either way - Bucky's got experience. He can be found doing his best to chase down kids and make sure they're dressed warmly enough, not getting into too much trouble, and getting enough non-candy items to eat. Once the candles appear and start multiplying, he might start hoarding the ones he can get his hands on - some of which turn out to be power crystals, so hey. There's that. His bunk on the Bloodsport - which is where he goes to catch catnaps, few and far between though they might be (thank God for being a super soldier) - has started to accumulate what looks like a year's worth of candles and power crystals on, around, and underneath it. Look, you can never have too many supplies.

After a day or two, he decides he's calling in reinforcements over the network:

Adults, sound off. We should each try taking a couple of kids apiece, based on who's got the resources to manage which powers or abilities or whatever. If we split up the responsibility, I think we've got the best chance at keeping everything under control.

I call Steve. And anyone else no one wants to handle, I guess.

He also shoots his beardy, metal-armed counterpart a text after he discovers the sweaters their hosts left for them: Hey. I think we're supposed to share. You want first dibs?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I shouldn't tell you James is a real popular name where I'm from, should I.

[But he's smiling, on his end, even if she can't see it. It doesn't matter if it's a common name. The reason she wants to name her child that isn't any less special, because of it.]

I would love that. In fact, this is me volunteering for babysitting duty. Whenever you want.

Well, Sansa is common enough where I’m from but if you chose to name a child after me, I would know the true meaning. As to babysitting? I will take you up on that. I may want the escape.

I guess that's true.

And for what it's worth, I think your name is very pretty. It'd be a good name for a girl, although I don't think Steve and I are gonna be having any of either kind. [Considering that's not. Exactly possible.]

But you might want to keep that escape route open. I'm definitely your guy.

I know I was standoffish to you at first and I'm sorry. I just loved him with my whole heart and it was hard for me to see his face on someone else. Please know I don't feel the same way now that I know you.

Sansa, really - I get it. I promise. When I first got to the Drift Fleet, I walked into a bar and say my dead best friend getting drunk there. Who wasn't actually my dead best friend. Who wasn't actually dead.

It was a really weird adjustment. It's hard to see the same face on someone else. Even if your brain knows the difference, your gut doesn't always listen.

I loved him. But you're part of him too - the closest thing I can have of him - so I want that. I've been trying to be your friend too even if it's different. I hope I've done well at it.

You've done well at it. I promise. I know I'm not entirely him, and I can't replace him - and I wouldn't try. But I want to be your friend, too, Sansa.

( It takes a while for another message to come because Sansa has lost composure and she hates when she does this. She doesn't often - she's a Winter Queen for a reason - but she'd loved Bucky as much as Jon or Robb. )

I miss him so very much. I don't give...I used to not give away pieces of my heart any longer because it was dangerous. It was easier not to feel. He had mine, though, in the very palm of his hand. He saw...during the calibrations, he saw things that happened to me, unspeakable things my husband doesn't even know in detail, and he never judged me for them. He told me I still had value when my dignity was stripped from me by force. No one will ever understand me the way he did, how it feels to be used. I know that you have his heart in you, that you're a part of him. That's the only reason I've told you. He thought he wasn't worth love but he was.

[Bucky's end is quiet, but just for a few moments. He can imagine how much it took to type that out, to decide to tell him that. And he can't say how much it means, that she was willing to let him see it.]

I feel like I thought I knew how to talk to him, and that was my first mistake. I always stepped right in it, every time I opened my mouth around him. But that's because he was absolutely not what I expected, and he deserved to be whatever, whoever, he wanted to be after what happened to him. So do you. And if you were able to understand each other, then I think that was a blessing, for both of you.

I'll do my best to live up to that - not because I want to be the same person, but because all the good things about him, I want those to be good things about me, too.

I want to tell you all of it in person, every bit of it. I want you to understand the relationship we had with one another and how he was with me, the things he shared with me. He had trouble with you and he felt like I was one of the only people who didn't expect things from him. I want to meet you in person sometime soon and tell you my full story and what little I know of his. I want to tell you what he did for me and why it's so important to me to use his...your name for this child. I wouldn't be alive if it weren't for him.

If that's something you want me to know, then I want to know it, too.

[Bucky's from a time when people were often a lot more private... but, admittedly, things had been changing. The war had changed that. And Steve, for all that he can be private, can also be completely, unapologetically open. And Bucky wants to respect that, when someone has something they want him to know. Even if this situation is more complicated than most.]

I think you understand him a lot better than I do. [And he's maybe a little ashamed of that, but he can't learn more without her help - help she seems to want to give him, anyway.]

Please remember, the good in him is the same as the good in you. He was you once and while he might have changed, he might have had that goodness turned on him, it was still there.

He was one of the gentlest, kindest men I've ever met. I have no doubt in my mind that he would murder someone in cold blood if necessary but he also...he had a tenderness, too. He was patient with me and kind. He let me cry if I needed to cry. He would put himself between me and anything that might hurt me even if that was my own mind. Your mettle might not have been tested yet like his but the girl I used to be is still here. I've just learned to protect her. He protected himself.

★ 2 ★

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