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His history is carved on his skin, a map of places visited and people killed, written in the cryptography of scars.
His healing ability is slower than Steve’s and though it heals the small hurts - the bullet wounds, knife injuries, broken bones - without issue, the big ones always leave something behind. On his body, on his mind, on his heart.
They can do something about those scars, her and Steve. It will take time. But there is something she can do, right now, about the ones on his arm, where scar tissue has melded with cybernetics, metal with bone.
It’s obviously pained him for days, and not so obviously pained him for…. Darcy’s not sure. She doesn’t ask. Steve still wants to, she can tell, but she shoots him a look from her perch on Bucky’s knees and he stands down, sinks back into the couch next to them, arm draped over the cushions, fingers brushing gently against the hairs at the nape of Bucky’s neck.
Bucky meets her eyes, nods. She won’t get words out of him right now. But that’s okay. They’ve already hashed out the details, as much as she can explain them, anyway.
She snuggles a little closer, feels Bucky’s right hand cup her hip, fingers flexing, stroking, soothing her or himself.
Then she touches him, fingers trailing across cool metal, warm rough skin. She focuses, sinks the equivalent of mental fingers into it, feels herself fall into the dark places between flesh and blood and bone, muscle and sinew, metal and electronics she can’t begin to understand and doesn’t try. She doesn’t need to. She reaches for the inflamed tissues, the trapped nerves, the abraded bone and strokes them, pushing healing energy, drawn from herself, drawn from Steve whose hand has joined Bucky’s just below her hip.
When she opens her eyes, Bucky’s staring at her, wonder in his eyes. Steve’s staring at both of them, like he can’t quite believe what he has in front of him, on his very own sofa.
Bucky carefully moves his shoulder away from her fingers, rotates his arm. “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he says, voice almost a whisper and if there’s a trace of tears, neither she nor Steve will mention it.
“That,” she says, leaning in to kiss Bucky’s mouth, to steal a kiss from Steve’s as he leans in for the same, “is what I like to hear.