imfollowinghim | fifteen ✪ spam

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[It's been over a week since Bucky was almost beaten to death maybe a couple yards from the infirmary, and he feels... fine.

Fine. Sore, tired, still healing, but fine, and that's so deeply unsettling that he really doesn't know what to do with it at all. At all, because he's gone this long without having to talk about what happened to him in any detail at all, and he definitely doesn't want to start now. It's just a lot harder to dismiss little differences like increased appetite and tolerance to alcohol and apparently painkillers now, too, as not a big deal when the deep black and blue bruises on his ribs have already faded to almost nothing, when it should take a friggin' month for broken ribs to actually start feeling better, not days.

He's scared. He's been scared of what this is going to mean for a long time, and two days ago, after he'd shooed Steve away, locked the bathroom door behind him and turned on the shower, he'd spent a distressingly long time staring at his own reflection in the mirror, wondering if now's the time his face is going to start peeling off to reveal some monster right out of a pulp underneath.

So he stays quiet about it, tries to pretend like he still feels like shit and doesn't want to do much - which isn't a difficult thing to pull off, because all of this means he is pretty fucking miserable - and if he's a little more sullen and cranky than usual, Steve seems to be chalking it up to the fact that he's got three busted ribs and a bad concussion, and leaves it at that. It works out for the most part.

But eventually, boredom does get the better of him. Sitting around in bed while you're recovering - unless you're really out of your mind with fever or whatever drugs were trying to help nudge you back along to health - is fucking terrible, no matter who you're with or where you are, and obviously it's not like he expects Steve to be keeping him company the whole time he convalesces. They can't both be sitting around in Steve's room feeling penned in and bored.

Bucky slips out of Steve's room sometime after his friend heads out to go for a jog, and as much as he wants to go for a run or punch the hell of something in the gym, he heads for the dining hall and helps himself to a giant stack of pancakes instead. Now that he's not as achey or metabolizing painkillers out of his system too quickly, he's even more ravenously hungry than usual, and winds up settling at a table near a corner, facing the door to get to work on finishing breakfast. The bruises around his eyes are gone, and there's still a bandage wrapped around his left hand - even though the cut's healed, he'd changed the wrappings himself so no one would get suspicious - and as much as he looks burned out and tired, he's in a lot better shape than he has any right to be, and kind of looks it.]

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[Morgana isn't good at forgiveness. She never was, even when the facts that made up her world were vastly different than they are now. Her facts are colder, harsher, but though there is not often forgiveness, sometimes there is understanding.

She's angry, on Zane's behalf. Angry, seeing what dying did to him. Angrier seeing what killing did to him. The worst of it is that she doesn't know how to fix it, or erase it from his heart. She can't. And she doesn't know how to forgive the cause.

The trouble is, there are two causes. The clown, the madman - and Bucky.

Bucky, who knows what it is to be a captive. To be tortured. Bucky who is, she thinks, a friend. Bucky, who killed Zane.

It's difficult to hold both bits of knowledge side by side, and she waffles when she sees him in the dining hall, taking her time to find her own breakfast. It's a lot of wasted effort - she comes away with porridge and an apple, but by the time both hands are full, the decision's made. She heads to Bucky's table, and jestures at a chair a cross from him.]

May I?

[The thing is? Bucky's not more than vaguely sorry about what he did. Zane seems like a decent guy - weird, but decent - and so he can recognize it's a shame he had to die.

But Zane killed Allison, and he was going to kill him, and then maybe someone else, and so Bucky's choice had been more than obvious. Not really a choice at all, honestly.

Still, it's rough being in a spot where you've suddenly got to be facing the people you've killed, and their friends. It's not like he's done much chatting with the buddies of the Nazis he's killed, or the HYDRA guys or whoever. The civilians he'd interacted with usually seemed less scared of him and more relieved they were there, or maybe even pissed off the Commandos or the US Army or whoever else had invaded, so this is just. Different.

Especially because he thinks of her as a friend, too, so Morgana gets a sort of awkward looking stare at first, like he's not sure if she's being serious or if he should start apologizing right this second or not. Instead, he lets out a breath and nods, attempting something like a smile.]

Sure. [He hesitates a beat, and then decides to just blindly forge ahead. That's worked okay before, right?

Right?] How're things?

[Right....Sure, right, that works. Morgana has so much experience with that working. She folds herself down into the seat, turning the apple over in her hands instead of diving into the more tangible food. His question earns an arched eyebrow, though she casts it down at her bowl before looking up at him.]

Well enough.

[She doesn't give any ground, keeps her tone neutral - a little cool, even. Which wasn't precisely her intention. For a moment, Morgana grasps at straws, wondering how to sort out where she thought this might go - and when she gives up, she does so with a sigh.]

Was he going to kill you?

[He had a feeling this was where this was going - and honestly, he'd probably be a hell of a lot less polite about the whole thing if it was one of his buddies who got killed, and he didn't know why, so he's not really holding it against her at all.]

He almost did. I just got lucky. [Bucky meets her gaze levelly, because it's nothing but the truth. It'd been nothing but chance that C'Rizz had shown up and thrown the guy off enough for Bucky to grab the gun and get a shot off.]

Doc said I almost fractured my skull.

[Except now he's wondering if he did, and if it'd just healed by the time he had to sit through the scans. Less time spent thinking about either of those things, the better.

He looks back down at his pancakes, cubing up another forkful before looking back up at her.]

I'm sorry it happened. [But he's not gonna apologize for stopping him from hurting anyone else.]

[She has read just enough medical texts to be concerned that he's up and about. Her eyes shoot over his face, up around the crown of his head, before returning to his eyes. For a moment, her expression stays hard, neutral and chilly. Forgiveness is not something she thinks she knows how to do. She's wrong, but it's still difficult to do.

When Morgana exhales, her expression softens. She understands. She doesn't want to, but she does, because even if someone she loved came for her, she'd kill them. And she wouldn't hesitate.]

So am I.

[She doesn't need the apology - she doesn't thinks he needs anything more than what he's already said, even though there is a cruel side to her screaming that it isn't enough. It will have to be.]

I can't believe you're up and around already.

[Bucky relaxes a fraction when it becomes more or less clear that she's not about to chew him out, because Morgana saved his life, once, and he doesn't want to wind up paying her back by pissing her off. Since they're both apparently ready to move on from that, he's more than happy to change the subject.

Except, you know, he doesn't really want to talk about the other thing either, so he gives a one shouldered shrug, casual as can be.]

I probably shouldn't be, [And he does his best to shoot her a cocky-but-charming grin like he would've back before... everything, and it doesn't totally fall flat? But there's probably always going to be a little part of him that feels sort of strained when he does it.] Like I said, I got lucky.

[Which is still true. But he figures between playing it off as luck and being AWOL from the infirmary or bedrest or whatever, he can cover the real reason why he's feeling a hell of a lot better.]

People always said I had a thick skull.

Very lucky. I know what he's capable of.

[Zane can be frightening. An out of control Zane is...not someone she would want to encounter like he did. It's why she keeps pausing, like she wants to ask if he's certain he's all right, if he doesn't need help getting back to his room. In the end, she decides he would ask - or if he wouldn't, he wouldn't accept the help anyway.

Her mouth curls wryly.]

People weren't mistaken.

[Bucky smiles a little wryly, like he's acknowledging the joke and deciding it's not worth discussing much further.

And it's not. Really. He got lucky. That's it.

(It's probably stupid to keep it a secret here. No one's going to force him into a lab, no one's going to tell him he's a monster, but it's still so hard accepting that it happened to him at all, and he just doesn't want to deal with it. At all. Ever.)

So he helps himself to more of his breakfast, and then changes the subject.]

How're you holding up?

[She lifts her shoulders lightly. She's struggling, so hard, with a thousand thoughts chasing themselves over and over. She's trying to look back, and forward, and see through to and end that doesn't include her death, but there's just too much. And she doesn't know how to ask for anyone's help, because she's not entirely convinced it's worth anything.

So she shrugs, and smiles a little wryly, and narrows the scope.]

Well enough. I spent most of that time in my room. The noise outside was awful - the corridor was some sort of ridiculous ride.

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