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“Jesus fucking Christ –”
“Hi, I – Darcy – Darcy –”
“You can’t just fuck off to Latvia and then call me-”
“Would you- would you-?”
“Stop it!” she cut in.
Bucky went still, leaning against the stone wall, closing his eyes. His phone went back to press against his ear, after she’d stopped yelling completely. Neither of them spoke for a whole minute.
“What were you gonna say,” she snapped, and Bucky huffed.
“I was gonna ask you to… shut up for two seconds,” he mumbled.
She let out a sigh, before it melted into a knowing laugh. She didn’t sound bitter, only tired.
“Oh, this is officially batshit now,” she murmured. “I’ve crossed into the shit that our therapists would underline five times in their fucking notebooks. I don’t even know why you’re calling. I don’t know what I have that you could possibly want.”
Bucky said nothing. He wasn’t going to interrupt her flow. He wanted to hear her voice. He’d never wanted to stop talking to her since the day they met. Everything else got in the way of that, but he knew he couldn’t pretend to be anything but who he was. At least he wasn’t lying to her.
He shouldn’t have called, and yet he knew he’d be worse off if he didn’t. They only had a little while until they were meant to meet Karli, and he needed something else, someone who wasn’t tied to this. He was in serious danger of breaking rule two with Darcy, but he selfishly wanted her to yell at him from across oceans.
“You make a lot of sense to me,” he said finally, after he drew in a breath and let it go. “And I know I’ve lost whatever chance I had.”
“You’re right, you have,” Darcy said, a little fiercer than he expected, but then she immediately fumbled the next words that slipped out. “B-but you didn’t throw my number away, and I don’t know how I feel about that.”
Bucky stared straight ahead, hearing her breathe, attempting to gather herself.
“I… I’m sure you’ve got your reasons for breaking Zemo out, but you won’t tell me.”
“I didn’t want you involved if it meant me breaking rule two.”
“You can’t – you can’t call me, then. That’s breaking the rules, I think,” she muttered. “What are you gonna do? Why is he with you?”
“He’s meant to help us stop more Super Soldiers from existing,” he said. His eyes slammed shut. “I really wanna take you out to dinner, if I get back.”
“If?”
“I might… I dunno,” he muttered. “I might have to go away for a while. I… I don’t want you avoiding me, regardless. I’m sorry I’m not better at this. There was a whole dance to it, a long time ago-”
“You’re on the top of John Walker’s shit list right now, and you’re asking me out?” Darcy said.
Bucky lifted his flesh hand, grinding his palm into his eye.
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. Because I like you. And you like me, too.”
There was a long silence after that, and he pulled his phone away from his ear, staring down at it. She hadn’t hung up.
“Darcy-”
“If you had any sense, you’d come find me and we’d go far, far away.”
Bucky thought of Wakanda, and how even the most remote places in the world were no longer untouched by the influence of Steve’s legacy. His heart sunk a little.
“But I know it’s not possible,” Darcy added, before he could attempt to deter her. She was on the exact same page as him. “I guess that’s your appeal. We haven’t had any time to slow down and think. I don’t do so well when I have to slow down, and stop moving.”
Despite everything, Bucky felt his stomach flutter. He swallowed, pushing off from the wall. He could hear Sam in the other room, the sounds of him checking his wings and fastening things into place.
“You have to go,” she said, and he nodded, before remembering she couldn’t see him.
“I’ve given it time,” he said, after a beat. “I don’t have to think about it anymore.”
“And what are you thinking?” Darcy asked.
“I’ll come find you,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t interrupt your schedule too bad-”
“Bucky,” she whispered, and he bit his lip. “I know more people are gonna die. I don’t want… I don’t know what I’d do if I got an alert in the middle of the night, seeing something I can’t unsee again-”
Rule number two. Don’t hurt anyone. He broke it the second he spoke to her in that parking lot outside Dr. Raynor’s office. He didn’t have to take her to get that cup of coffee, but he did. Every dumb little thing he’d done, when he wasn’t the Winter Soldier…
He couldn’t regret any of it, no matter how stupid it was. The point was that every time it was his choice, not someone else’s command in his head, overwriting his humanity.
“I’m gonna wait by my phone, like a sucker,” she muttered.
Bucky sucked in a breath.
“Yeah. I’ll call you.”
They lingered, and he could hear her swallow thickly, as if her emotions had finally seized her by the throat. She couldn’t joke anymore.
He let his eyes fall shut again.
“It feels like everything’s gotta get worse before it gets better,” he whispered. “But me and Sam have to stop this from happening. Or even more people will die. And I can’t leave the world like this, if this is how I go out.”
He hadn’t said any of that out loud before. He was doing the right thing, no matter what.
“You’re not alone anymore, Bucky. You don’t have to do any of it alone ever again,” she said.
His chest squeezed his heart and he sucked in a breath.
“Goddamn it, I really have to go-”
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll wait for you, okay? I’m saying it. I’m waiting for you, Bucky. You owe me another phone call.”
“Yeah,” he breathed.
He shut his phone with a shuddering breath.