makinglies | After the rain stopped

The lights were out, the parties were only just starting and he'd just been released from the Capitol's medical care to get all the venom out of his system and to heal the gashes and cuts he'd gained from fighting the other tributes. He'd been unconscious and then he'd been busy with the doctors and Jason and whatever else he had to do to get them to leave him alone, he hadn't stopped to think about anything. Now he was standing in the middle of his room in the District 10 suite after everyone had gone to bed. He hadn't even gotten a chance to see Peggy. If Peggy wanted to see him after what he'd done. But, no, if there was one person who probably wouldn't hate him for his actions, it was Peggy.

He changed into something too soft to sleep in and sat on the edge of the bed. His fingers traced the two matching puncture wound scars on his arm for a minute or two before he stood and threw one a shirt with sleeves and left his room.

Hers was just across the hall. He snuck over and silently opened the door and closed it behind him. He knew how light a sleeper she was these days, so he made his way slowly and quietly to a spot a couple feet from the side of her bed so as not to startle her. Here he sat, legs crossed, fingers absently picking at the fluff of the throw rug like he might grass back home. She'd sense him there eventually and wake up, he just had to wait.

As he waited, it started to rain.

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Peggy was used to violence in a way she never thought she would be. Every time she closed her eyes, she was hiding under a primed machine gun or stomping on a twelve-year-old's neck or watching human bodies dissolve to nothing. She mentored people younger and older than her, and she watched them kill before being killed themselves.

Even so, it hadn't prepared her to watch Bucky, a boy she knew to be gentle and kind and loving, to kill so ruthlessly. Was this how it felt for Bucky and Steve, watching her butcher people alive? Was this how it felt watching her thrust a sword through her stomach?

She didn't hold it against him. She didn't know if he wanted to be alone or supported, so she left her door unlocked. They had slept in the same bed the night before the arena, both of them whispering reassurances that may have been more for themselves than for each other, and she had thought that that was her last time she'd ever get to touch him.

But he came back. It seemed impossible that both of them would win, but he came back. And the door was unlocked so he could come to her bed again if he wanted to. He did, apparently. She had only been wavering between sleep and wakefulness, so she was alert the moment she heard his hand on the door. She feigned sleep to see what he would do, if he wanted to be with her or to just see her. He sat down on her floor. She could hear rain beginning to fall.

She opened her eyes. "The floor's not nearly as comfortable as the bed." She pulled down her covers to invite him in.

The rain fell and Bucky went still, ready to bolt, at least until she opened her eyes and spoke to him. It was a war in his head for the sound of the rain which he felt like had left a permanent imprint in his head and the comfortingly familiar sound of her voice. She won out.

It wasn't that the rain scared him. It was that it had rained nonstop starting twenty minutes into the damn arena and after a week and a half of that, he never wanted to hear it again. He used to love the rain, the sound of it, the feel of it, the way it brought a certain peace. Now he hated it.

He stood and slipped into bed with her so he could immediately pull her close and bury his face in her shoulder. He needed to touch her, breath in her scent, know for a fact he wasn't dreaming.

Finally he spoke, voice low and thick.

"I was scared I wouldn't see you again."

He'd had that thick, unshakable determination to keep him going, but under it was the terror and it clung to everything like a mist.

For once, it was nice to have someone in her bed hold and cuddle her. She buried her face into his hair and held him a little too tight, like he might go away again, and just breathed him in. The Capitol and Arena had washed away the smell of grass that always stuck to him, but she could still smell him.

"So was I," she whispered into his hair. Whether she was saying she had been scared in her own arena or she was scared watching his, it was unclear. Either way, both were true. "But you're here now. You're here. You're with me." She kept whispering as she started to stroke his hair, like she used to do when he was sick or tired and she was tending to him instead of Steve because they didn't want Steve to catch what he had.

She wanted to tell him that he was safe, but that would be a lie. He was a Victor now, and that meant he would have to go through what she went through. She should tell him, warn him, but not yet. Not right on the heels of the arena.

He could feel his throat going tight and his eyes sting and the next breath he took shook in his chest, but he bit the whole thing back. There was comfort here, in her arms and in her voice, that should be more than enough. He wasn't going to cry on her, he was supposed to take care of her, it's what he'd been doing their whole lives, but especially the last two years. He could only imagine what it was like for her to come back here every year and watch the Games happen, he needed to keep himself together for her. For her and for Steve who would surely end up feeling guilt if Bucky acted any differently. He was dumb like that.

Of course, that brought a different issue back to his mind. His fingers curled in her nightgown and he pulled his face away from her enough to talk and be heard. "Do you think they'll hate me?" Any of them. All of them. Not her, he didn't think she would, she was probably the only person who got it.

She felt the hitch in his chest and she kissed his hair, expecting tears, but none came. Of course. Bucky would never give himself a chance to grieve.

“They won’t hate you, no.” She looked down at his face, looking at the way he struggled to keep tears back. Forever trying to be strong. She had tried to be strong too for a while, but it came crashing down on her. She carded her fingers through his hair, trying to give him what no one had truly been able to give her in his position: understanding. “They’ll be afraid of you. They’re still afraid of me. Now they know what you’re ready to do to survive, and that makes them wonder what they would do.”

She moved her hand from his hair to his face, gently tracing it with her fingertips. She had been scared she’d never be able to touch him again. She rubbed her thumb under his eye, wondering if she had looked the same as he did right now when she was struggling to stay strong. “You’re going to need to give them lots of smiles and charm on stage, but you don’t have to now.” She adjusted her hold on him so that one arm was around his shoulders, supporting his neck, and the other was on his side, like she was ready to shield him from something. “You don’t have to be strong in here. Let me be strong for you this time.”

Everything he knew would be over. His life would be changed forever. His family would struggle to help him with pain they couldn’t possibly understand, Steve would be wracked with guilt, and Bucky would be left in an unfamiliar house to be harassed by cameras and tormented by memories of what he had done. He would have to relive it over and over again as he went on the Victory Tour and was asked to Mentor with Peggy the future children to be slaughtered in the Games.

It’s okay to mourn the life he left behind.

After the rain stopped

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