in the midnight hour I can feel your power

[notreadytocomply]

(Prompt: 02 • HUNGER. Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.)

---

If Bucky were being honest with himself, the reason he's still awake would be the memories come to gather at the window of his mind in dark, foggy silhouettes against a backdrop of screams. Luckily he's lying to himself and blaming his rumbling stomach -- which is true, but not the real reason for the season.

Sleeping never comes easily for him when not induced behind glass sparkling with cryogenic mist, and tonight is no exception.

So Bucky shuffles off to the kitchen at 2:14 a.m. in pursuit of a midnight snack. The shitty apartment is eerily quiet, no sirens in the distance for once. For a moment it feels too out of place, as if Bucky were looking at the scene from afar--

But then he comes back to himself just as his hip bumps the handle of a pan sitting on the edge of the sink -- of all places, why couldn't the culprit (Bucky) just put it two inches farther into the sink? -- and

CLANG!

Bucky sets his jaw, ready for the inevitable oncoming reaction waiting to burst through the door in a flurry of fifteen-year-old spunk.

Comments

[notreadytocomply]

Alright, that's enough attempted abuse -- so Bucky grabs the spatula out of her hand, catches a wrist with the other.

"Ten words. That's all it takes for me. Do you even know what that's like? Watching it all happen from far away as you're doing it?"

He tuts.

"What the hell do you know? There's no satisfaction. How many times I gotta tell you?"

[witchplz]

Rahzel doesn't even struggle against his grip, she doesn't bow or break, not like the metal he can twist, nor the bodies he has befallen.

She's steel incarnate.

(does she know what it's like? to be unmade? to be pulled out to make room for something else to be stuffed inside?)

Her expression twists in her body's stead.

"Tell me again and again and again until you're blue in the face! Tell me that and only that, not these words! Fight, god damn you! You don't get to talk about yourself like that because that's giving up."

[notreadytocomply]

"I'm fighting every day!"

But he doesn't relent in his grip, doesn't want to hurt her -- God no, that's the last thing he could take at this point -- but she's the only thing he's got anchoring him for now.

And it scares him shitless, more than anything he's ever been asked (or ordered) to do.

"You think I want to give up? You think after everything they did, I want them to win? I don't need someone worrying about me. You're just weighing me down."

The second the words leave his lips he wishes he could take them back. But she probably already knows, and it unnerves him that she can read him as easily as this.

"Why do you even give a damn?"

[witchplz]

"Because it hurts, you idiot!" Stubborn is as stubborn does. She steps on his foot, though not with the entire weight of her tiny four foot frame. "It hurts just seeing you like this! Thinking you don't deserve someone to care...How could I not give a damn?! So tough shit!"

If he keeps this shit up Rahzel's going to twist him into a pretzel.

"So how dare you ask me something so stupid. Ask me that again and I'll rip your nose off and make it into sushi."

[notreadytocomply]

He barely feels her foot come down on his but does enough to know she means business.

"The only person who would even give me half a chance is someone...well. I definitely don't deserve his forgiveness. I don't deserve or want anyone's."

He lets go of her wrist and leans forward, bracing his full weight on the counter with locked arms.

"You'll end up hurt if you stay, too. And end up with some really nasty sushi."

[witchplz]

She can't take this anymore. Despite her release, Rahzel steps forward and, with all of her might, slams her forehead into Bucky's. Her teeth chatter in her skull as pain zings throughout her head.

"Look what you did now! Pain I can take, pain I'm still here for despite all of that. And there's nothing you can do about my choices besides shut up and take it."

She rubs her hands against the red mark she knows is there and huffs.

"If you don't want forgiveness so bad, then why do your eyes plead for it every time you look at me? Or at anyone? Answer me that, smart ass."

[notreadytocomply]

"What the--"

Actually and truly stunned, Bucky takes a second to blink and stare as she continues on. He's pissed off that she's this deep inside his head, can read him when he's been trained to hide it, hide his mind behind a citadel of interlocking walls.

How is she making him unravel just that tiny bit?

When he speaks again, his voice is soft and he rubs the spot on his forehead. He looks at her as if he's never seen anything like her -- and he really hasn't.

"I destroyed so much. So many lives, families. And you're really telling me that I deserve more? Use your youth for something less depressing."

(Oh, Bucky, if you only knew.)

[witchplz]

Fiercely, "I'll use my youth for whatever I damn well please, thank you very much! And I've decided to turn your life around, remember?"

Okay, his head is a lot harder than she-- okay no, she definitely knew he was hard headed and stubborn and pigheaded. Rahzel knew this so why oh why did she risk her little head with this brute? Oh yeah, because they're friends.

"Does that mean you can't live your life too? Does that mean that you dying, that you just wandering around like a stinky hobo is going to honor their lives? No, it doesn't. Moving on would. You aren't a villain, you're a victim. The same as them."

And they know it, too. If heaven exists, they must know it.

[notreadytocomply]

"How generous of a life counselor. Headbutting me at three o'clock in the morning."

But his voice cracks, his hands curl into fists. He tries to keep the slightest of shakes out of them, out of his broad shoulders, but he knows she's way too damn attentive for her own good.

"How can the others see me like you do, though? I don't know if I could."

[witchplz]

"And my only fee is tears! Aren't I the best? Give me a sparkling review, will you~?" Somehow, despite the anger shaking in her body, the trembling of her shoulders from how tense this entire exchange has been, Rahzel smiles at him.

"Keep being good. Being that good man that you have always been and have never ceased being inside. Protect the weak. You can and you will."

[notreadytocomply]

Bucky has to squeeze his eyes shut hard against the sting of them, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows to steel himself. Not fast enough to miss her smile, and he hurts with how much he seems like he's seen it before. Many people share many features - that's one thing he's discovered after all this time.

"I don't know. I can't even protect myself from what they did. You never get to sleep because of me."

[witchplz]

Expression softening, her fingers curl around his chin, hold his face steady so she can ook into those eyes once he opens them.

"They messed you up, but they didn't know they gave you ways to protect yourself-- no, I don't mean kill. I mean hide, adapt, learn. You can be anyone if you need to be-- and they aren't counting on you being yourself."

Rahzel shrugs, a tiny roll of shoulders.

"You really are into that special snowflake thing, aren't you? I have my own reasons for not sleeping."

[notreadytocomply]

Her eyes are familiar, kind. Firm and steady, like Steve's...even when he was scared, his eyes showed nothing but determination and stubbornness. The same thing he remembered when fighting him before, in D.C.

"Definitely getting my practice hiding," he dryly smirks. "I don't know. Do they really expect what they did to last? Why else did they..."

He swallows again when he remembers the tests, the book, the words. Her hand on his chin steadies him like an anchor.

"Tch, whatever. I guess as long as you're here to insult me 'n' the beard I know the shit's not too deep yet."

[witchplz]

She doesn't know everything that he means. Why else did they? Rahzel doesn't know. She doesn't know, she doesn't, and oh, she doesn't think she wants to know why, doesn't want to follow the coils of that particular beast.

Her other hand cups his cheek.

"They don't expect a damn thing because they're so stupid they destroyed themselves. Their strength is what will destroy them."

A laugh wrenches out of her, finally, finally, like a sigh.

"That's right. As long as you have that, there's hope."

[notreadytocomply]

For a second, he closes his eyes, lets himself feel the touch of another human without hostility or an order to kill him. Human contact comes so infrequently lately --

--but it can't last. He can't let it last. It's not like that's going to get him anywhere. Depending on someone this much to pull him out of himself, it's asking too much of anyone. Especially someone with so much promise, so much spunk -- so much that reminds him of himself back when. The things he remembers about himself, at least, as if he's read them in a biography.

"And you think their strength is gone, just like that? They'll just continue to hide away in the shadows? Hanging out and watching everyone?"

[witchplz]

"Like creepy voyeurs?" One rather unladylike snort later, she lightly pats his cheek, er, cheekily.

"I think...if there's something you can do to help, to help people when these bastards inevitably try to rise up from the trash, it could help you, too. But! But..." And she's slow, patient, makes sure she catches his gaze.

"Don't spend your entire life on revenge. Living is so much better. And yes, this is still a thing you call life."

[notreadytocomply]

"I don't want revenge," his voice is soft, eyes focused on something else entirely, something only he can see. "It's all I've done for seventy years, and not even my own. I'm tired."

Things he wrestled with, things that like tonight, kept him awake -- she makes so much sense in her approach to it. Even if she's young, she certainly isn't naive.

"But what about when I go back? When my brain takes me back? Is that really living?"

[witchplz]

"Go back? There is no going back. Even after that, those little hiccups, that's still progress. You're going forward, into the future."

Rahzel brightens; her entire frame seems to brighten like the sun, to hear that. She's so relieved: revenge is idiocy. It's pointless.

"You'll find your own way of living. Time is the only thing that's certain, really."

[notreadytocomply]

The future...right. A future that will somehow involve Steve Rogers, if their meetings so far have been any indication. Either way it's a future in which Bucky knows no one.

Except the little fireball beside him.

"Brownies are what make the future worth it." He smiles down at her, blue eyes meeting blue, and for a second he sees--

But he swallows and clears his throat and the moment's gone.

"So have I been good enough to get one yet? Or are you just gonna keep being a brownie tease?"

[witchplz]

He's changing the subject, he's pulling away from her, and Rahzel isn't sure, for a moment, if she should allow this-- if she should let him move on...so she grips the hem of his shirt in her hands and turns to press her forehead into his shoulder. Quietly, quietly, sighs.

"Brownies make everything better. Everything!"

If he can still smile like that then maybe everything really will fall into place. Smiling right back, she fetches that brownie, finally, and presents it to him.

"Here-- might be ice cold, though."

[notreadytocomply]

His eyes fall shut at the contact, the simple gesture that shouldn't have undid him as much as it did. Letting himself get too close to opening up about things she shouldn't have to hear about could quickly go south.

"I'm sure your annoyance at me made 'em extra good," he flashes a grin, an actual unconscious reaction, before he bites in.

"Oh shit. Alright, kid. Touché, the boxed brownies are a hit."

(If he doesn't think too hard, he can see something lingering on the periphery of his mind, a favorite sister offering him chocolate batter on a spoon. But the second he tries to focus on it, it's gone.)

[witchplz]

A laugh bubbles out of Rahzel, happy and pure. She loves to see the things she makes enjoyed by others, she likes seeing this man with that frown turned upsidedown.

So she, too, takes a brownie and digs in. Its like heaven, even when cooled.

"Ahhh, these are awesome~ Rahzel-sama did it again!"

[notreadytocomply]

He laughs, a real belly laugh, at her pride. He's gotta admit they're the best brownies he can remember tasting. But he knows even it won't put him to sleep -- not unless she put crushed up sleeping pills in -- but it's nice to feel some form of comfort.

"You've got some tricks, I gotta admit."

A pause, then:

"Got any that'll block out dreams?"

[witchplz]

That laughter is even more of a relief. If he can laugh, he can live. He can move on, even when he gets boggled down by the chains of his mysterious past.

Rahzel quickly finishes off her first brownie and goes for a second.

"I've got the perfect remedy! Infomercials. Get ready to be a couch potato, buster."

[notreadytocomply]

"God, no, do we have to?"

But this time he doesn't protest as he follows her. He just grabs the entire pan of the remaining brownies with his left hand because what is patience. But when they're this good...

"I can only take so much Billy Mays."