imfollowinghim | thirty ✪ text

[Bucky's been avoiding announcing that he's back, and that he remembers. He's still uncomfortable being out in public with people staring at him, even though he has been out more than he had been when he first got back. Morgana cut his hair, and he's showering and shaving regularly, so he looks a little more like himself (except he's not wearing combat uniforms, and he's still covering up his left arm with long sleeves and a glove), but there's still something tense and on edge about him, something hollow and dead in his expression.

But something about Arthas' announcement, his manifesto, that because he's been wronged he's allowed to take this ship and everyone on it down with him makes something stir in him, something that sounds like Zola's saw and the hiss of the cryo pod and Pierce slapping him in the face, and it's hot and cold and angry, and he doesn't want to keep hiding. But he also doesn't know how to reconcile the idea that this is happening because wardens failed, because the system failed, and those people are long gone.

There's a lot he should probably say about himself, too, but Steve's already covered it. Everyone knows what happened, and there's a part of him that's still angry about that.]

i'm back. dillon and jean made me remember.

i'm still a warden. [Even if he's not sure he should be.] it's been a long time, for me.

[A really, really long time.]

[Filtered to Mickey, Jimmy, Stiles, Kira, Mason, Ben, Lydia, and Motorcycle Boy]

sorry.

[For not remembering, or weirding them out. He probably owes them more of an explanation as well, but he can't find the words of it any more than he could for the rest of the ship.]

[Private to Dillon and Jean]

thanks.

[Warden Filter]

who's taking responsibility for arthas?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Ben, who is ever and always deliberate, pointedly replies on video. He would go find him if he thought it would be better but for now, this will have to do.

He is utterly serious.]

You have absolutely nothing to apologize for, Bucky.

[Ben, he figured, would be one of the harder people to face. It's why he'd deliberately tried to stay away from him once he'd first gotten his memories back, why he'd gone to Morgana before him or Helena or Steve, and hearing it say that makes it all the more apparent to him that he made the right choice staying away.

It's good to hear, but it hurts, too, and he can't bring himself to switch on the video.]

you don't know that.

[Ben understands why his own screen remains blank. He really, really does.

And he is absolutely confident of his own reply:]

I do. You know I do.

[If he remembers anything about Ben he knows that he is one of very few people that can understand exactly how little of it is fault and how much of it is merely attempting to cope with the hand that has been dealt, with what others have made of you. If he knows anything, it is that Ben does not lie or exaggerate or mindlessly soothe.]

[That's all true - Bucky does know that. He just also knows that Ben doesn't know everything that happened to him, that there's no way he gets the full extent of all of it, and then there's just the fact that Ben never had a choice. Bucky can remember moments of something that could maybe have passed for clarity, where maybe if he'd fought harder, pushed more, been better-

Or he just could have given up and died. Why hadn't he done that?]

sometimes i could remember a little, when they'd leave me out for a couple weeks. i should have tried to get away.

[He'd tried once, he thinks. Hadn't worked out so well.]

[Ben had a choice. Manticore wanted him to think he didn't, that none of them did, and he didn't have any other choices that would have allowed him to do much differently, but he did have some choices. This is what he's had to learn, here. How to live with the responsibility that comes with free agency, how to live as a victim that is no longer a victim of anyone.

No one but Bucky can know the extent of what happened to him; it is the same for Ben, no matter how anyone else tries, how many files they have on him and his life, the things he did. He is grateful for the attempts but at the end of the day, he is alone with himself. Bucky is alone with himself.

But not alone, period.]

There were reasons that you didn't. I know you. I am your friend still, and I would listen, or not, as you like. But there is no reason to blame yourself for what has happened.

they sent me after steve.

It was a test.

What happened?

thirty ✪ text

[ Private : Video ]

[ Private : Text ]

[ Private : Video on Ben's end indefinitely ]

[ Private : and Text on Bucky's probably indefinitely 8( ] also cw for brief suicidal thoughts

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