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there was no undoing what had happened to them, the world or fate or simply the harsh reality, was that it would stay with them for as long as they lived. but there was a means to overcome it. to survive and live despite the violence, the pain, and the horror of it all. she wasn't too far gone to come back to something—someone—more. it was hopelessly optimistic to believe it, and bucky knew better than most that believing it was sometimes harder than even living it, but if he could do it, then so could she.
❝ all we can do is try, ❞ he said, with the same heavy quiet that had wrapped itself around her voice. try, fail, fail again. he wasn't saying that it would be easy, but then, nothing in either of their lives had ever been easy.
bucky holstered the weapon he'd taken from her in his waistband, casting one last glance at the dead man at their feet. blood had pooled around his corpse. ❝ time to go. ❞ he said, voice louder now, something like conviction laced into his words. ❝ i know how to start. ❞
the breath she took felt foreign, like she had forgotten how to hold air in her lungs without bracing for the next strike. the world had been sharp edges for so long — missions & orders, blood & consequence — that the thought of something mundane felt almost laughable. help someone with their bags? walk someone across the street? the absurdity of it settled in her chest like a stone, heavy & unfamiliar. she had spent so long being shaped into something unrecognizable, & now he was telling her to rebuild herself with the smallest, gentlest things.
she wanted to scoff, to tell him she wasn’t built for kindness anymore, that her hands only knew how to take, how to destroy. but she swallowed the words. because she had seen it in him — something she had thought impossible. the way his presence no longer carried the same weight as before, how the ghosts still walked beside him but did not dictate his every step. & if he could be more than what they had made him, then maybe — just maybe — she could too.
her fingers curled, then flexed, as if testing the weight of an idea she had never dared to hold. ❝ & if it doesn’t work?❞ she asked, voice barely above a whisper. but beneath it, buried in the quiet, was the real question: & if i don’t deserve it?