Possibility of Tomorrow - 28

 

Cont...

It took time for Darling to wake up. It wasn't like the movies where she just blearily blinked awake. She had moments when she would open her eyes but not respond. Times she would mumble but not make sense, but slowly she was waking up.

 Shuri was fairly certain that she was in no danger of falling back into the coma after a week of her keeping up a steady sleep schedule and not forgetting anything. She and Cho were already talking about transferring Darling stateside to begin regrowing her damaged tissue.

 Darling hadn't said much. She was really quiet and seemed to be dealing with everything that had happened. Shuri was confident she remembered most of what happened leading up to her fall but the fall itself and everything after might be fuzzy. 

Bucky thought her silence had something to do with all the dead kids they'd found. Her face afterward was horrified, sad, angry, and something more. She'd known those kids; some looked about her age, she might have grown up with them. But she said nothing. She was sullen and quiet, so much, so it scared Bucky.

 But he just kept being there. Even as Steve and Tony urged him to capitalize on the good press and try and get a pardon. Even as they rebuilt without him. He stayed by Darling's bedside while she was asleep. Sat with her while they did their testing and rolled her out to the gardens when she wanted outside. It was a lot of sitting and being quiet. But Bucky could live with that. 

One day they were sitting in the gardens watching the city thrive beneath them when Darling finally addressed what had happened that day. 

"I'm sorry." It was so quiet a normal person would have missed it. But not Bucky. 

He looked over at her, "Why?" 

"Because I put you in that situation," Darling said quietly, watching the city life not looking at him. 

Bucky choked back the initial reaction to tell her no, she hadn't and instead asked, "How did you put me in that situation?" 

"Because I didn't take care of him earlier. That I left him there to fester." Darling said bitterly. 

Bucky rolled her words over in his mind and tried to find the right words to answer, "I don't think you neglected to do anything. I think you were surviving. And sometimes, surviving is running like a bat on fire from the past. And that's okay." 

Darling looked over at him, and he could see the weight on her shoulders from what happened, to him, to the other kids, to her. "Really?" 

"Yeah," Bucky assured her, "Sometimes you need time to process. You're not running necessarily or avoiding it. You're coming to terms with it. And when you're ready, you'll stop running." 

Darling looked at him for a long moment thinking about it, "Maybe." 

"Why don't you think that'll work?" Bucky asked. 

"Because the longer we run, the worse it gets," Darling said softly. 

"Maybe," Bucky agreed, "But what good is facing out struggles if we're not ready?"

 "It doesn't get worse," Darling answered shortly. 

"Yeah, but it most likely makes us worse." Bucky watches as Darling's face worked through anger, frustration, and regret. It was hard to tell with her face so disfigured, but if he were to guess, this conversation was over. 

Getting up, he offered to roll her back to her room which she agreed to. Once she was back in bed, did she speak again, "You may be right, but running doesn't feel right."

 "No. But it works in the end." Bucky agreed softly, "Trust me, it works." 

"And what happens when you can't run anymore?" Darling asked. 

Bucky thought back to the moment he'd stopped running and had been forced to think about what happened, "Then you sit down and think real hard on what really matters to you anymore. Once you know that, facing the past is clearer." 

"Clearer? Not easier?" Darling asked, confused. 

"No," Bucky shook his head sadly, "not easier. Facing our problems is never easy, but hopefully, it's clear." 

Please tell me what you think in the comments!

Follow if you like it!