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

kind that means hes in the hospital & not here

is it the kind you can get help for?

["Can he get better" is really what he means.]

maybe

[Pause.]

the way u were acting the other day

was that the memory loss or were u on something or

[Because the funny thing, in a way that's not actually funny at all, is that Wilson had been a little bit like Mickey fears Ian will be when he gets back.]

[He's honestly tempted not to say anything, just as he always has been when he's been asked about this stuff, but... Steve told everyone the basics anyway. What's the point of pretending like he didn't?]

that was 70 years of hydra frying my brain any time I remembered enough to ask questions.

[Well, that's. Comforting? No, not really.]

jfc

yeah.

[He doesn't really know what else to say to that, so he doesn't reply for a while. He's not a natural at being comforting or even empathetic, and they're not really friends, even if they'd forged an alliance of sorts before Bucky left.

But Bucky and Ian were some kind of friend, and Mickey does at least get that he can't let that disclosure go without some kind of... coda or closure or something. A sorry for your loss. Showing up, somehow.]

he'd probably have some army cult ritual shit to say but idk any of that so. i guess he'd want me 2 say welcome back

[Like he even knows he can still speak for Ian, like he really knows what he'd want, but that shit's not Bucky's problem.]

thanks.

[It's good to be back, really, in more ways than one, even if it's weird.]

are you ok?

[No.]

ya u?

[Congrats, Mickey, you might be the first person to summon a smile out of him in seventy years.

A small, pained, totally disbelieving smile that you can't see anyway, but.]

no.

[It's like a long time ago, when Zane had talked about how much he'd loved his father on the network: the vulnerability of it somehow shames Mickey instead of the other way around. Even the people he's told things to since he got back, it's been like... like this. He tells them what happened but he's fine. He survived. He's coping. He's fine.

That's how men are supposed to talk, but he finds himself staring at the single word and feeling like a wretched coward anyway.]

~~me ei~~

[His problems aren't Bucky's. They're not even close to the same level. He deletes the half-written confession before it can be finished and sent.]

anything i can do?

[It surprises him, and makes him uncomfortable for reasons he knows Mickey probably doesn't get - he doesn't know the details of what he did while he was the Winter Soldier. He doesn't know how much blood's on his hands. He doesn't deserve stuff like this, especially not from someone who's got to be dealing with his own issues and just not saying anything about them because that's usually easier than admitting hey, my life is falling apart.

(Maybe if he'd just been honest with Steve, things would've been different.

But maybe not.)]

i don't know. [He doesn't. But it seems better trying to clarify that he's not telling him to fuck off.] the range is still missing.

[Not that he really trusts himself to be firing a weapon right now, but.]

[There's a pause after that, but like fuck Mickey's going to judge anyone for wanting to get their shitty feelings out by firing bullets into things.]

i can probably fix that

spooky admiral powers

[Bucky is immediately more curious about what exactly that means in practice, because it definitely does not sound like something you want to have access to.]

what's it like?

idk

nothing most of the time i just know i can do some shit

then i need like a fucking nap afterwards

maybe that's where he is huh

never really thought about him needing naps before.

better that than some of the other theories tho

guess so.

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