Work Text:
Tony wants Stevie only because he never had a woman like her: honest, believing and lawful. Stevie is not impressed. Everything Stark has he gets too easy, for a big man, he is too much of a spoiled boy.
Natasha says that Stark has a big fat mouth, but he is a genius, he has money and power. Does Stevie think she stays with S.H.I.E.L.D. forever? There is no such word as “forever” in their business. From this point of view, Stark may appear useful.
“He is not my type of man and that is not going to work like that. I'm not letting him stay just in case. I'm not his kind of woman, and he is not my type of man.” Stevie feels like she is making excuses, sitting on the bar stool and feeling stupid.
“Do you mean you are a type of woman who doesn't care for her future?” Natasha makes a cocktail. Tiny paper umbrella remembers Stevie of a beach she's never been on. “You are too naive for a seventy years old, Stew. At least, tell me, what's your type.”
“My type is... decent,” Stevie tries to explain. “He is romantic.”
James Buchanan Barnes explores his nose with his finger when he is sure that nobody's looking. Stevie knows it about him, just like the fact he never washes his hands after the toilet. He thinks that the soap in public restrooms is dirty and full of microbes. So are his socks, but he doesn't care if his hair is shiny.
“He won't be grabbing my knees in the back seat of the car. And no bad language.”
“Fuck this shit,” cries James Buchanan Barnes somewhere in the back of Stevie's mind. “He's entire fucking leg is blown off!” It's long after girls with red lips and bleached blond hair have left their perfumed underwear at his place.
“There is another man,” Natasha says. She is not asking, she knows for sure. “The one who makes you forget about Stark.”
“No, there isn't,” Stevie insists. She is drunk a little and a lot of a stubborn.
Is there another man of there isn't? Sometimes Stevie sees Bucky in her sleep; Bucky she remembers, not Bucky she's seen. She wakes up so happy he is there, she wants to talk to him, to tell him all that's happened while he's been gone. But he is not there, only the window screeches in the frame.
Stevie has been in love with Bucky and Bucky's been in love with her, but they've never been in love with each other at the same time. Still, Bucky is Stevie's guy and she will do anything to help him, to save him, to get him out of any trouble he's got into, but...
Doesn't she feel it? Right in the stomach, like a punch, it outbursts both up and down. Good that Stevie is trained, she would throw out because of the shock. She feels it with her skin, how he looks at her and she wants to hit him right in the teeth. How brainwashed he's got while she's been frozen in ice?
“You are not my mission. You are my friend!”
“And you are my mission.”
When Bruce Banner is in his good shape – not in the shape of a green giant – he says, that Stevie has a kind heart that one can hurt easily. Luckily, her heart is heated with devotion and faith, so, if being hurt, it melts down the whole city just like a blast of a nuclear reactor.
Stevie wonders if Dr. Banner is trying to offend her in a subtle way she hardly understands or flattering her in a form that makes her question his intentions. Tony Stark loves that kind of jokes, that leaves Stevie puzzled. He never misses a bit to prove he's better than she.
Bucky wanted it, too. On the block, one could hardly compare to him. After Stevie became a living legend, for the first time in his life Bucky lost his dominance: Stevie had a leg-up, and he was driven in the shadow. Bucky was jealous with Stevie though he had the guts to accept it. But did he really accept it?
“It's a kind of destiny,” Natasha says. They stay on the balcony, Natasha smokes and Stevie is too concerned to call her to order. “Men are afraid of deadly beauties. Jealous. They feel like every step we take takes something from them. Fragile masculinity, maybe.”
Maybe Stark is really so, but Stevie doesn't believe Bucky hasn't spared her just because he has been jealous of her fame. He's been brainwashed, that's all. Her Buck is not that kind of a jerk, her Buck is a good man. He is lost, but he'll be found one day, and if not with Stevie's hands, then with his own.
It takes too long for Stevie to recover; she never really forgets. It is more than friendship, it's even more than love, the way she feels for Bucky. She knows, as it's been for all these years, what's right and what's wrong. She is demolished with the way right becomes wrong, and wrong switches to the right, but she holds on.
Stevie holds on even when she sees Bucky again. His robotic arm is stuck under the heavy metal press, he's so deadbeat she doesn't believe it's him. Last time they met, he said was going to kill her, but he wasn't. Was it because she refused to kill him, or his brainwashed mind just played tricks on her?
Stevie believes it wasn't brainwashing. It was Bucky who left her alive, on the bank of the river, when she refused to fight him though she could, she could fight him and win. Because Bucky, the real Bucky, he's never been able to kill her; just like she's never been able to kill him.
She asks him, “Buck, do you remember me?”
Bucky's eyelids are dark, but this time not from the grease – he is exhausted. It's not the best day to get the brainwashing out of his head and to make him Bucky back again, but Stevie believes, with all her flaming heart she believes he will say that something Bucky she knows would.
She waits, and waits, and waits. And when Bucky opens his parched mouth, every word falls heavy like a bomb, “Your mom's name is Sarah. You used to dress like a boy just to be conscripted, you wanted to fight Hitler that bad.”
“If you remember me,” Stevie says, still ready for betrayal, “why didn't you came to me when it's gone too far?”
“I couldn't,” Bucky is hurt badly. But Stevie is not going to help him until she is sure it's really him. She is not going to help an imposter. It's or Buck, or she leaves him to be on his own. She is too tired of being tricked.
“Why?”
“You would kill me.”
“I would never...”
“They would send you to kill me. I'm on the other side now, Stew.” Bucky looks into Stevie's eyes and she sees James Buchanan Barnes who used to see Stevie off to the door of her flat because he cared.
He cared, and he was her friend. He cares, and he is her friend.
“No,” Stevie raises her voice. “You've always been on only one side. The side where I am with you.”
***
If suddenly you want to read sm moar of me: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5970691