strongerthanyouknow | Unnamed Legends/Avengers Verse

The Waverider isn't foreign to having the every now and again visitor, picked up in the middle of a mission. Dragged along for one. Dropping off, like so much chaff or a wayward puppy. The Avengers aren't exactly that, but at the end of the day The Avengers aren't Sara's concern. Her people are. Time is.

Cleaning house, and sweeping the people out, brings with it a sort of peace.
Another check in the books, that means they are at the end of the mission.

Means they can pretend for five or ten minutes, they're normal. Eat a damn meal all together, without everyone running off helter-skelter, guns at blazing. Means she can get some rest, in a bed really, really not made for three, but they've found ways to make it work, and there's nowhere else she'd be. Just a few more loose ends and mission notes to tie up. Then, a cursory glance over the timeline to see what and where Gideon thinks they should be headed next, and she'll be done with today.

[ For Bucky's Request To Come Aboard & Steve/Sara Conversations About This ]

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As she gets closer, Steve crosses his arms over his chest. He frowns at her, biting his bottom lip because he has things he wants to say that he really knows that he shouldn't. He knows that Bucky needs this. His reservations aren't about Bucky.

It's about the team that he's going off with. A former assassin. People he doesn't trust. How can Bucky really feel this is his place? Why can't he just come home and be with Steve and the Avengers? They would always have a place for him.

"I get it, okay. I do. He'll be able to sort himself out and he'll be... Nobody will be looking for him with you." Steve sighed. "Just watch his six, okay?" Because he can't tell Bucky what to do. He can't order Bucky around. And he really shouldn't be the mother hen that he knows he is appearing to be. "Make sure he comes back."

It's an odd dichotomy, and one she thinks comments on Oliver Queen and her crew more than anything else, that it's offsetting. Watching someone with that much power, have the mannerism of someone she would expect to be much smaller, softer, quieter. But he isn't. He's a brick. It's the ruin of emotion that degrades the image.

Or maybe, rather like Sara herself, the image that is Captain America, and the person at the core are very different things. Necessary and undividable now, and yet still very different. She watches him. The crossed arms, the bitten lip, the way his eyes move, the way he sighs. The weight of what she's taking from him is so apparent. Even though, again, it's not her.

But if she had to leave Mick, Leonard, any of her people with him, would she be very different.
Maybe her version would involve a knife, but she thinks she'd be in his shoes, still.

"I'll do my best," Sara says, as a hand rests on her hip. "But I'm not making any promises for him. I barely know your friend. Enough to trust him out of my sight on the ship. Enough to know I could probably take him down if I had to. But not nearly enough to make that kind of promise for him. Not even for my people. I'll give him what he needs, but he'll have to figure out the rest himself."

Whether that was coming back or not. Sara couldn't be helpful in that way.
Sara hadn't stayed in Star twice now. Not even though it would always, always he her home.

Maybe if she knew Steve before he became what he is now, she would understand. Or maybe Bucky can show her a picture of him when he's small and skinny, practically a runt. There are images of him in the Smithsonian in the exhibit. The truth of the matter is that Steve is only a brick on the outside. Inside, he's still that tiny hint of skinny Steve, at least when it comes to Bucky Barnes. He tries not to let it show, he tries to be strong and brave Captain America for others, but Bucky really is his weakness.

He doesn't get mad at her. He doesn't show any sign of tension or emotion and he doesn't fault her for her response. She doesn't know him, doesn't know Bucky either. She has no reason to care and Steve can get it. In a way, it almost makes things worse, but he won't comment on it.

"I understand," he said softly. "You... You need to... He... Bucky's not just my best friend. He's my everything." Steve remains strong. He doesn't cry. His lip doesn't tremble. He doesn't move from where he's standing, but he hopes his words convey everything. If he loses Bucky twice, after losing Peggy, it would kill him. "He's chasing something he has to chase. And I... I have to let him chase it." Even if he hated it.

Edited 2018-11-12 05:43 (UTC)

Sara can sympathize, and even if her expression softens, it doesn't give the things it really makes her think. Just for a second. Just the flicker of a candle flame. Martin, and Rip, and Jax. Laurel. Her dad. Things you think you can't survive until you have to. Until you wonder if there is a too much, or there is only that. Survival. There and gone in the blink, even if it leaves a greater weight in her heart as she nods.

"He has to find out who he is, that isn't what--" very much not who; that's on purpose -- "Hydra made him," Sara says with the economy of bluntness that avoids being rude or judgemental, without giving up honesty. Even alludes to understand.

"There are a few of us here who knows what that's like."
Even if she means Mick, more than herself. They didn't choose it.

(She did.)

In all honesty, Steve could survive without him if he had to. He'd done it once before. Watching Bucky fall from the train had been the hardest, most gut wrenching thing in his life. His best friend, watching him disappear from sight and not being able to do anything about it. He'd lived without him once. If he had to, he could do it again.

Damn if he didn't want to have to.

Slowly, Steve nodded his head in understanding. He really did get it. HYDRA. If anyone knew about HYDRA, it was him. Zola. All of it. HYDRA would be the dirty curse word he'd never be able to forget. Still, he doesn't have to like it. And he gets it. Bucky feels like this is where he needs to be. He feels like the others are like him, even if Steve doesn't see it that way. He knows that he has to let Bucky go, but he hates goodbye.

"Sometimes things happen to you. Things you don't get to choose. Things you have to deal with," he says softly. "I get it. It's not easy to move on from, well, things."

Steve shivered, finally lowering his arms to his sides. "Whoever he finds himself to be, at the end of it? I'll be here waiting."

Somethings happen to you.
Things you don't get to choose.
Things to you have to deal with.

He's talking about Bucky, and even though Sara's expression remains a sympathetic neutral, she knows she doesn't fit his example and she knows it would do him no kindness to remind him of that. It doesn't change that she's probably the best person on this ship, in all Bucky's option, for someone with options for him to explore. A team that can stop him, or at least slow him down seriously, if he makes the wrong ones.

"If you promise him that, make sure you can back it up."

This is careful. Maybe even too careful, too close.
A kind of tether that shouldn't be left dangling in the black unless meant.
Unless you know what that promise can mean, can bring back from the black, too.

Steve's shoulders seem to square and his face takes on a harder look. He glances up at Sara, his jaw set and his brow furrowing a little. He's not sure what she's implying with the words that she is saying. "I'll back it up," he states, his voice firm. "No matter what, end of the line, that's how I feel about him. He'd have to kill me to get rid of me."

He doesn't say that they've already tried and been there.

"He'll always have me. If he wants me."

Unnamed Legends/Avengers Verse

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