Reality in Motion

relatable

If she could use any word to sum up the past few days it would be: tentative. Everything was tentative. While some days made her feel like she was getting closer with Bucky, others made it seem like she wasn't. Sometimes she knew where she stood with him, other times she had no idea. Nothing good, nothing bad, just sort of there. Yet, able to tip at any moment in one or another direction. Unstable, but stable at the same time. Like a soft rollercoaster -- one without any upside down loops.

Usually, they spent most days in his apartment because he didn't trust Dawson, which was understandable. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they didn't, sometimes she didn't even go to his apartment at all. For the first week, it was hard to think of any way to start any kind of conversation they ended up having. Which was ironic considering how she spent six months doing nothing but talking with Steve. She was rusty and she hated it; talking to people and getting them to open up was the one thing she had been good at. Even weeks later, there was a laundry list of things she still wanted to talk to him about, but didn't know how or where to start.

"Can you tell me about Hydra?" she asked carefully one day as they sat at the small table in his apartment. Two mugs were in between them; one filled with hot chocolate, the other filled with coffee. Since they had started seeing each other pretty frequently, he had stocked his kitchen with actual kitchenware and started buying actual groceries -- not just the protein bars and refillable water jugs. And sometimes, if he was in a good headspace, he'd make them a full meal, which she appreciated.

Immediately, she could tell she made the wrong choice in asking him about Hydra; he tensed up at the mention of the organization -- shoulders coming up and chin dropping down a bit. Clearly, he didn't want to talk about it. But Q did. They had a lot of things in common, but this was the most important one. She found someone who could actually relate to what she went through in the Hydra facility. Sure, she could talk to Steve about the super soldier-ness of it all, but this was different. And it was something she desperately needed. She still struggled daily with the mess inside her head, not having figured out how to calm herself down or stop from being suddenly overwhelmed or even what else beside they had "enhanced" in her.

"Please." she leaned forward a bit, "They did shit to me too, you know. And...I'm scared." she admitted. At that, his eyes flicked up to meet hers, an intense gaze holding her hostage. But the anger behind his eyes wasn't directed at her, no, it was directed at the organization who broke both of them only to rebuild them in their image. Except Q was never fully rebuilt.

"What did they do to you?" he asked lowly. The material of his gloved hand stretched across the metal knuckles as he made a fist. His eyes flicked around her face, pausing every so often on the same parts of her that he looked at when he rescued her in Moldova. He may have known where she was, but he had no idea what they did or why.

"They made me see things..." she started, brow furrowing as she thought back to the days spent trapped in the Hydra facility. Something she hadn't done yet, choosing to compartmentalize and ignore it for as long as she could. Only now, almost a year later, did she feel like she could finally start to process everything. Maybe it was because of who was sitting across from her, "Strapped me down to the chair." she rubbed her wrist at the memory of the straps that held her, lingering on the scars around each wrist from the hot wire. Almost at the same time, his wrist began to itch as a memory of the leather that was used in Zola's lab entered his mind, "Made it easier to torture me or inject me with things I guess. There was a woman...a girl really, who really fucked with me. The guy with the monocle had a different method every day...I don't know what else. I was sedated a lot of the time. Or hallucinating. But I can't...my brain feels different. And I can't tell if it's the P-T-S-D or something worse." she gave him a tight smile, wringing her hands together and feeling quite vulnerable after opening up to him. Something she hadn't yet done, but then again, neither had he. "I mean...have you ever been awake for twenty-four hours straight?"