#i have my ao3 and my imagination i dont need your services thank you | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

commanderquinn · 10 months

Text

Good Space Chapter 3: Hey Gringo

! i dont! keep these posts! updated! like i do! ao3!

that means you're going to find typos and shit (and possibly minor detail changes) that don't match the ao3 version! that's because im not going to bother fixing the tumblr posts until i finish good space as a whole. im only uploading them here as a backup tbh

—

master list / ao3 chapter link

—

warnings: ayyy!! none this time!! unless you wanna count Highly Disrespectful Thoughts ❤️ tho!!! the flashbacks are shuri, heads up for anyone who is a big baby (like me) and still crying over WF. also (shocker) bucko angst/panic attacks

song: it KALEO time!! istg there are golden oldies and hippie classics on this intended playlist, we just havent gotten to them yet. this choice is mega self-indulgent on my end ngl, buuuuut thats the whole fic in general lbr (side note: every time i write Angy Ava, i want you to imagine the vocal intensity of jefferson airplane’s lead singer, grace slick)

the timing of this chapter could NOT have been better with the probably-russian hackers knocking out ao3 that long. i mean it dude, im pretty sure the universe had a good chuckle over this one bc i sure as shit had to sit here and go “youre pullin my leg bud”

also now feels like a good time to mention, for absolutely no reason in particular (definitely not bc of Bucky being a Huge Simp this chapter), that i hc bucky as a dom with service top leanings. i just didnt wanna give the impression that reader is dom for this and accidentally get anyones hopes up with no payoff. i try to avoid that as much as i can bc god knows i drop Big Honkers on y’all every damn chapter, id hate for you to get all the way to the end of this and not get your cookie, y’know? (i am, ofc, down to write mega sub bucky for smut-shot requests)

also remember when i mentioned giving ava a HANDFUL of physical details for writing fuel? 🌝 (ur gonna think im funny rlly soon, dw)

anyways if you dont have adhd, good luck and god speed with the idiots thinkin abt each other in this chapter ❤️ im so sorry in advance 🥺😔

—

Febuary 17th, 2015

"Good morning, Sh—"

"Have you left your worthless husband yet?" Shuri impatiently taps a finger against her elbow, where her arms are crossed over her chest.

She watches Ava sigh on the other end of the vidcall. The woman looks too tired. She needs rest. Shuri wants to stab Alec all over again. She's going to make a new, self-lacing, possibly electrified dagger just for the occasion. "I know you're just trying to—"

"We can come to get you. I will send T'Challa. You must promise me that you will have him get me something from Washington." Shuri raises a stern finger, pointing it directly at the camera. "Do not let him pick it out himself—"

"Shuri, honey, I love you with all my heart, but please—"

"I want you to pick it. The furniture in your office is ridiculous; I want something like that."

A smile far too small pulls at the corners of Ava's lips. Her smile used to move freely, and it will do so again if Shuri has any say in the matter. Which she does. "Well, thank you, I work very hard to keep it ridiculous. Now—"

"It will make me think of you whenever you are not around to make fun of my brother with me. My mother will get the lawyers you need to start your divorce—"

"I—sweetheart, please, it's been a very long night—"

"It is the afternoon where you are. You have not even had breakfast, have you? Of course not. You are busy doing the work while Alec—"

"Shuri!" Ava puts a hand over her eyes and takes an unsteady breath in. "I'm sorry. This is—it's been a long night. I didn't mean to yell at you—"

"You need to start yelling much more, Ava. Aim it at your worthless husband while you tell him you are leaving," Shuri argues, entirely fed up with how the doctor allows the spineless dickhead to make her miserable. "T'challa will remove him for you while you stay here with us."

Alec—she refuses to call him Ryder; the man does not deserve to have taken the doctor's name—leans into the camera view, his expression bored. Dismissive. Shuri wants to smash his wrinkling, greasy face in with her fist. "While I appreciate the offer, your majesty, my wife and I can handle our private life alone."

Shuri glares back at him, one of her eyebrows hiked as far up as she can comfortably get it. "Do you really think being aware of your presence on this call will deter me from reminding my friend that you are a demon?" She looks pointedly at Ava, who's still covering her eyes. "He is a demon. A pasty, rude demon."

"Alec is going to shut the fuck up now, I promise." The fingers over Ava's eyes pull in until she's pinching the bridge of her nose tightly. She looks as if she's fighting off a migraine. She probably is. And it is Alec's fault. "That way, we can get this over with, and I can finally get some sleep—"

"Which you need and are not getting enough of." The words slip out before Shuri can stop them.

Ava's shoulders deflate slightly. Her hand drops, and she attempts another smile that doesn't reach her eyes, making Shuri feel a pang of guilt. "No, I'm not. But I will, just as soon as we finish the basic adaptation matrix. I promise."

Ava always encourages her to speak her mind, no matter what. Sometimes it gets her into trouble. She is not looking to berate her favorite Canadian; she loves leaving the vidcomm between their labs on. The open connection is a comforting window into the outside, one that lets Shrui indulge in any question or raving that passes through her mind.

Alec is a poison in her friend's life, and Shuri will not back down from reminding her of that. But mother and Nakia have sat with her over this, explaining that sometimes, an abused heart will cling to what hurts it. They have to be supportive while Ava works through this. She's getting there. Just not nearly fast enough for Shuri's patience.

Father has been reminding them all that Alec is a risk, given what he knows. Trusting Ava means trusting her for the duration, and they can't go back now. If she says she is handling the issue of separating the man from her work, they have to allow her room to do that. But T'Challa has been ordered to keep close, or at the very least, ready to go.

As much as she despises Alec, Shuri does not wish to see Ava hurt in this. Not any more than necessary. She is also not interested in trying to control her friend the way her mother sometimes tries to control her. It is infuriating.

So, taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, she lets some of the fight leave her. For the sake of Ava, not the pasty demon. "I have the latest build ready for transfer."

"You're sure you've secured the connection on your end?" Alec has the audacity to question, even outside of the frame. "I'm not interested in spending my week chasing traces of this—"

"Do I look as if I will hesitate to strike you, colonizer?!"

—

"I'm just saying, Humpty Dumpty."

"Fuck off," Bucky wheezes at the billionaire, compressing the towel he grabbed from his new medkit against his ribs. Why he expected to make it through his first mission back without having to crack it open, he's not entirely sure now that he's sitting in the hindsight. Getting shot today was, if he's honest with himself, entirely predictable. It's his luck, after all.

"We let you out of the house again for five minutes, and you've already broken yourself." Tony shakes his head as he tsk's, making Bucky roll his eyes lazily. "What's Ryder going to think? If you keep this up, you'll give the woman a complex about draining your mojo."

"She's going to think I throw myself in front of armor-piercing rounds for idiots that don't notice when they're being shot at." The mention of Ava brings the doctor's smiling face to the forefront of his mind. Bucky leans back against the Quinjet's co-pilot seat, letting his eyes fall closed.

He could take care of this latest injury himself. That's what he usually does. Thanks to the serum, all he has to do is keep the wound clean for a few hours while his body stitches itself back together. Nothing's broken, and he'd be in much more pain if anything were punctured. Hell, he'd probably be dead already. The fix for this is so easy it'll practically handle itself.

"You always get so cranky after you've played the hero." He hears Tony kick his feet up on the Quinjet's main controls. "Take a breather. Maybe a bow or two. Believe it or not, it's possible to accept a compliment now and then."

"Grandstand more often, got it."

Ava's probably going to hear about today's incident now that Bucky thinks about it. If anything, Steve's going to make sure of it. He doubts she'd guilt him for not being comfortable with an optional trip to medical. They've been having more conversations about boundaries and comfort, and she's been unwaveringly supportive of him moving at his own pace.

"You don't have to grandstand, you gigantic baby," Natasha chides from between the chairs. Her hand smacks against his shoulder, making Bucky grunt softly. "A whole new world is going to open up for you when you relearn to accept praise."

Tony snorts, long and loud. "Has he reached that stage of modern education yet?"

"I reached that stage of education before you were born, Stark." Bucky's not territorial over his reputation anymore; those days are long since passed. The grand majority of his mojo got left in the 40s. He's just tired of Tony's shit. That's all it is.

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Ava might feel bad that he didn't come to her for something like this. He doesn't... want that. He doesn't want her thinking that he doesn't welcome her help or that he doesn't trust it. He... he does. He doesn't just appreciate having the option; he enjoys it. The new routine is a breeze, and his neck feels better than it ever has. At least that he can remember.

"I'm confused," Tony mumbles around a mouthful of snacks. The man never stops eating. "Are we talking about your no-no years, or did you and Rogers hit up underground bars before Germany?"

"I know all his secrets from the vanilla days; they never went to any of the fun ones," Natasha confirms. It's not like Bucky was going to take the verbal bait anyways. Steve still falls for it regularly.

"I like how you don't deny having the rest of the answer; I feel like it tells me all I can tolerate about the icicles when it comes to this. That's my favorite part about you, Romanoff. You know when I don't need to know, you know?"

His dumbass friends might as well be background noise with Bucky's mind this firmly in the memory of Ava's office. She's been so good to him, especially over this last week while she pushed through all the red tape for him. He'd been expecting it to take an eternity of hounding Steve all by his lonesome, but she got him back in the field in under two weeks. His best friend had actually been kind of pissy about it behind closed doors. For Bucky, it was like getting sprinkles on top of his cake.

He's been thinking about getting flowers delivered to her lab for the trouble. It feels like too much whenever his thumb hovers over the confirmation button. He's reached the part of staring at the order details four times.

"I'm pretty sure your country doesn't appreciate it as much as you do. They tend to fight cold wars over it."

"Well, yeah, but our country—you see what I did there? That was a pretty funny communism joke. And it works as a reminder for both of us that you're actually an American citizen these days; isn't that wild? Back to the point here, our country fights wars over stuff we do ourselves all the time, so that doesn't feel like a fair reason to dismiss our friendship."

The doctor's forcing him to expand his music library. Her taste there is as scattered as her taste in movies, but she's got some leading themes he's been able to pin down. The 60s and 70s are huge for her, expectedly, and she's got a lot of nostalgia over the 90s. Paige keeps her versed in all things pop, folk, and country, according to her.

"If I start referring to the US as my country, you people will expect me to do things like register to vote. Or put up wallpaper."

"I don't think anyone's expecting you to be legally allowed to do that. The voting thing, not the wallpaper. In most states. For multiple reasons. Although, the wallpaper might be a good call."

Ava invited him to their absurdly large archive of playlists during his second session. The ones Paige curates are nothing but insanity. Not one of them makes a lick of sense. Bucky decided that he should have expected that, given her Energizer Bunny reputation. Ava's are less scattered; more organized. Soothing for his mind to digest. He's been using them as workout music ever since. And driving music. And general background noise.

"I don't think I'd know where to start buying wallpaper. Do you even want me putting that shit on your expensive building?"

"Not really, but the idea of walking in on you rolling paste on the living room walls is worth anything it could take to fix them later."

God, she's funny, too. He could listen to the woman's awful, soul-crushing puns and subsequent cackling for hours. He'll never say that to her face, not for as long as he lives, but they've made him feel lighter every morning that he's gone to let her work him over. He's already stolen two of them to torture Sam with. Another thing he's not going to tell her.

"Maybe I should start smaller. Bruce keeps suggesting a car that has legal registration."

"Heeey, that could work. You'll be signing up for mailing lists and bitching about state tax in no time. You know what?" He hears Tony snap his fingers. "We should get you a houseplant. Work you up to having a fish or something."

Alright. Maybe he'll go to Ava. He doesn't want her to think he's trying to blow off her expertise again. Or that he's avoiding her. He's not; he really does like hanging out in her office. Even if it's technically a medical appointment. He's a lot more eager to visit her than his therapists, that's for sure.

"I am not paying taxes," Natasha scoffs. "If you think I'm tying a legal address to my name, you're out of your fucking mind. Moreso than usual."

"You don't think you'd enjoy having a cave to lurk in?"

"What makes you think I don't have one already?"

"I'm talking about a real house, not a safe house."

This injury isn't related to his cybernetics. It's his ribs, well below any of his implants. He's not entirely out of the loop when it comes to what doctors have to do to get their licenses. She no doubt had to pull a lot of hard hours during her residency. Maybe she doesn't want to patch up the tower's notorious grouch every time he takes a hit. But he doubts she'd ever be impolite enough to refuse him walking in.

"I have my space here: bathroom, laundry room, small kitchen. If I haven't bothered decorating that, what makes you think I'll want to do it for an entire house?"

"Aww, come on. Look at Ryder! She's having all kinds of fun making her place as obnoxious as possible. That could be you after a few online shopping sprees."

Bucky's eyes open slowly, his brows drawing in when the second verbal mention of Ava pulls parts of his attention back to the conversation.

Fuck, not going to medical still leaves the option of her taking offense. Okay. Alright. So, he'll split the difference and go to emergency intake. He's pretty sure she's listed as his surgical contact in the tower now—he can't stomach looking at his own medical file, not even the written records. Any injury this big will get flagged for trauma support, and she'll be notified. Then it's up to her what she wants to do. That feels like a good compromise.

"She's doing that to reclaim it from Alec; that's different. I don't have the same motivation. For me, it's just going to be extra work.

"Who's Alec?" Bucky asks without thinking. If the universe doesn't hate him today, Natasha's just going to assume he's being his usual kind of paranoid.

"She hasn't mentioned him?" Tony sounds surprised. "Alec's her ex-husband."

Ex-husband? She was married? And she's not anymore, meaning she might be—

He shuts down that train of thought immediately.

Reclaiming the space of her house implies they lived in it long enough to form some heavy memories. She hasn't mentioned having a kid, and she strikes him as the type to bring up something like that pretty fast. So it was just the two of them, most likely.

"People usually don't like talking about the egocentric sack of shit they used to coexist with," Natasha points out. Of course, she already knows about the doctor's history. It's her.

"Bad divorce?" he prods, trying not to sound overly invested in the answer. These assholes will take it as an invitation.

"Oh, the worst," Tony confirms. "Shithead tried fighting her on it tooth and nail. She had to borrow my legal team just to get the guy to fuck off and leave her alone. He even kept her surname after the divorce; can you believe that?"

An uneasy feeling starts to rise in his gut, making Bucky look over at him. Then up at Natasha. "What kind of won't leave her alone are we talking about?"

"Down, fido, my lawyers took care of it. There's no need to start tailing him. Aside from being a self-absorbed asshole that insists they'll," Tony's voice turns scornful as his fingers form air quotes, "work things out with time, he's toothless."

"She's got concealed carry permits she earned properly if that makes you feel better," Natasha offers up. The thought does help ease the tension building in him.

He won't read Ava's file, no matter how bad the buzzing gets. But he might check in with JARVIS about her home security. He's noticed her name on the system logs. She, or at least her house, is linked to SHIELD's network despite her general distrust of the organization. He understands the opposing priorities completely.

He caved and read Wyatt's file two nights ago. The buzzing had been building since Ava mentioned him wanting an autograph, and it finally got to be too much. Nothing's lurking there aside from an impressive list of historians from all the fuck over Georgia and Alabama. The kid's got more family than some towns have population.

Bucky leans forward with a muted groan to change the autopilot's intended LZ of the Avenger's balcony to the entrance hanger for medical. If he's going to grit his teeth through the antiseptic over a couple small holes, he's damn sure not going to haul his ass through half the tower while his ribs leak. His patience has limits, and that's pretty fucking far over the starting line.

Tony looks over at him with a deep, suspicious frown. Bucky frowns at him right back with the same level of scrutiny. He can feel Natasha staring a hole into the side of his head, even if he can't catch her in his peripherals. He hates both of them with a passion at the moment. He knows what's about to happen—

"Did you just… prioritize your own health," Tony questions like he's baffled by the very idea. His whole upper body turns in the seat as he looks up at Natasha excitedly. "Oh my god. He's doing it. All by himself." He raises a hand to his chest and looks back at Bucky. "They grow up so fast."

It's good that the autopilot is on. If it weren't, Bucky would be tempted to crash them out of spite, mostly because he's sure he'd survive it. "Very funny."

"All it took was a hippie that gives him candy," Natash adds, her voice dripping with smugness. "Who knew."

"Both of you can fuck off." Bucky doesn't like how close she just got to his primary motivation on the first try. Old habits die hard, et cetera. And he hates that he can't tell if she was trying to guess. If he's lucky, which he isn't, she was just making fun of him.

Natasha knows about his visits to the florist's website; he's fucking convinced of it now. He doesn't know how, and he can't outright call her on it. If he does, he could fuck up and make himself right. There is nothing worse than having the Black Widow as metaphorical family. Not even Steve's hovering.

She and Tony harass him for the remainder of the flight. It's not long, mercifully, and he's starting to regret not grabbing something for the doctor. They were in Montreal, of all places, so it would have been fitting. He figures she'll understand once he shows her his side. The train of thought makes him wonder what part of Canada she's originally from. She hasn't brought it up.

His foot is already bouncing by the time he reaches the elevator. He's still got the surgical towel shoved tightly against his ribs. He hopes she gets there fast if she ends up taking the call. The last thing he wants to do right now is sit around in the burn of antiseptic and bleach while he fights off the urge to bolt.

This is good, Bucky reminds himself as he takes his first few steps into medical. He's sat through plenty of trips to emergency intake. He can handle walking into his first optional one. It's a non-issue. Completely.

When JARVIS informs him that his file and general vital scan have been submitted for intake, the buzzing gets so intense that he almost leaves. The pace of his sergeant walk, as Sam likes to designate it, slows to a crawl. Then he thinks about a doctor with concealed carry permits. One that lets her house be monitored by a government organization she's actively pushing herself to trust. All in an effort to contribute something good to the world. The buzzing eases, and he picks up his pace, headed for the solo observation room JARVIS listed for him.

There's no moment of standing involuntarily from nerves this time. He doesn't have to force himself to sit back down and wait, even though the room smells wrong. His skin is crawling, and he wants nothing more than to put a throwing knife in his hand like a goddamn security blanket. But he doesn't panic. He doesn't try leaving.

Baby steps.

When the door opens, it's devastating. There's no diminutive hippie with UFO-sized glasses smiling at him on the other side of it. It's a guy in a plain white lab coat without artistic stitching, one that Bucky's never met before in his life. He's already squinting down at a tablet, meaning this will be his doctor for the duration.

This was the worst plan he could have possibly conceived. The universe is humbling him for thinking he could get away with something like this without some kind of suffering. He just wanted to make up for being dismissive of her help initially. Now he gets to sit through this. How fucking grand.

"Barnes?" The doctor that's not Bucky's doctor looks up, his heart rate elevating by a few notches. He's putting in a lot of effort to look confident. It's not exactly working. "I'm Dr. Erickson. I'm guessing you're here for the bullet wounds JARVIS detected?"

"Yup." Bucky's not about to volunteer for small talk at the moment. It's a miracle he hasn't jumped off the biobed yet. "Where's Ryder?"

"Your primary is in a staff meeting at the moment." Erickson puts his tablet down on the supply cabinet's main counter. He's already starting to gather what he needs, leaving Bucky to figure out real quick if he's actually willing to do this. "Don't worry; I'll get you sewn up and on your way in no time."

He doesn't want it getting back to Ava that he bailed the moment she couldn't show up. He doesn't want to leave her with the impression that he's only going to take on medical care if it's her; that's not anywhere near fair. The woman is a brain surgeon, not his private physician. He can grow the fuck up and accept help from people that haven't gone through his gauntlet of verification.

"Great," he pushes out, lifting the side of his undershirt to offer an unobstructed view.

It's not great; it's fucking horrendous. The first touch of the new doctor makes the overly physical memory of the buzzing build so high, he can feel it in his teeth. They're not actually rattling in his jaw the way they did back then, he knows that, but it doesn't matter because his body is screaming at him that it's happening.

The first stitch going through his skin makes him want to put his fingers through the doctor's eye sockets. His mind goes over all the ways he can violently put at least ten feet between them without having to get up. Looking back, it's probably good he didn't reach for the throwing knives. He's not unhinged enough to stab someone unprovoked; he's better than that. But they'd have been distracting to his impulse control, that's for sure.

Dr. Handsy is pulling the first suture in tight when the door to the observation room opens again. Bucky doesn't look up, his eyes locked on a random point on the far wall while he focuses on his breathing. He only looks over when a billowing, maroon pant leg enters his peripheral.

Thanks to a bunch of dead Nazi scientists that used to hide out in the mountains of Russia, Bucky Barnes has a trigger in his brain that is entirely out of his control. One that, when activated by his own interest, lets him process his surroundings in a sliver of the time that it should for a human mind. It is exceptionally helpful in the field.

Watching Ava Ryder walk in, wearing a suede jumpsuit that mercilessly frames her curves, proves to him that having it in the 30s would have gotten him shot by someone's father. Definitely before he left Brooklyn. Or before he got chased out by several fathers banding together with baseball bats. In the time it takes her hand to come off the door handle and make its way to her hip, his mind goes on one hell of a fucking journey.

He already had more than a vague idea of the shape of her before now; he can't help it. Comes with the territory of doing threat assessment for a living. God knows his eyes have slipped down to her chest on a shameful amount of occasions. Her tits are being held up and pushed together fucking beautifully at the moment. Typically, that would hold all of his attention.

But this is the first unobstructed view of her that he's gotten, thanks to the lab coat being nowhere in sight, and good fucking god. Holy fucking shit. Godfuckingdamn.

She's half turned from him at this angle, so he's only getting a side view. That's more than enough to show off an obscenely rounded ass and the cushy thighs it rests on that are going to haunt his fucking dreams. It's bigger than his hands by a margin that's outright glorious. The mental image of his fingers digging into it, of how it would make her skin dip under the pressure, makes his blood race.

He can't spot the outline of any underwear at first. Then her hand makes contact with the jumpsuit, and his eyes pick up on it. Right there, above the top of her finger, pulled up high over her hipbone. There's a thin band leaving an impression in the fabric. An extraordinarily thin band. There is nothing else in sight.

Pulled between Ava's legs, right at this very moment in time, is a strip of fabric that Bucky's tongue would fit against perfectly. Right under that is a taste he's been catching himself wondering about for two weeks now. One good, long drag of his nose. That's all it would take to push in whatever she's picked out for the day and soak it with that taste. He could get it back out from between her lips with his tongue, pull it to the side with his teeth to give himself room to feast—

Bucky tries to shift his weight as nonchalantly as possible while his brain slows back down. The comeback from tactical analysis is always jarring, with this one being especially so.

He's the worst kind of bastard. An awful, selfish, perverted sonofabitch. There's not shit he can do to change that. How unfortunate.

"David," Ava greets, the name coming out as tense as the closed smile plastered on her face. "You can put that down."

The other doctor doesn't look up from the work his hands are doing. "That you, Ava? I heard you were—"

"Now."

Bucky's back straightens up as David looks at her nervously, taken aback. Bucky doesn't blame him; he didn't know her voice could get that forceful.

David sort of laughs, which feels like the worst possible choice to Bucky. But, hey, not his call. "What, do you want me to just—"

"I want your hands off my patient right now. I'm not asking." She watches with unwavering intensity as the other doctor lets the needle and thread drop from his hands. She visibly bristles at the patronizing expression on David's face, her head tilting aggressively. Bucky kind of wants to watch her hit him. "I'll be back in less than a minute, sergeant. I need a word outside with Dr. Erikson."

"Take your time," Bucky assures, the tension bleeding out of him already. His ribs are leaking, and there's a piece of doctor floss looped through his skin that he's going to have to cut out of himself tomorrow morning. The immoral evaluation of her outfit that his head threw at him is going to eat him alive. Forever. Especially when he's trying to fall asleep for the foreseeable future.

All things considered, though, he feels fan-fucking-tastic.

David still looks somewhat shell-shocked, and there's real insult starting to creep into his posture, but the guy doesn't argue. He follows Ava back out of the room, not bothering with a goodbye in Bucky's direction. When the door closes behind them, his super hearing picks up on Ava reaming David about prioritizing patients before ego. She goes into detail about the deep shit he'll be in with her if he keeps ignoring her written orders, long before it ever gets him fired. She tacks on why her anger should scare him a hell of a lot more than the idea of that. Then she instructs him to keep his damn hands off her patients and get back to the intake desk.

The protective streak makes Bucky's chest feel warm, a half-smile pulling at his lips. She's a handful, alright. One he'd give anything to be brave enough to send flowers to.

Ava is calm, cool, and collected when she leans back in through the doorframe, hanging off it with a soft smile. "Hiya, stranger. I hear you picked a fight in my motherland today."

"I hear it has an arms dealer problem. I wanted to see if I could help." He gestures down at the needle swinging from his ribs without looking at it. "Not all Canadians are as welcoming as you, turns out."

"Eh?" she fires back, hamming up the accent. "Wellll, I'm not about to let a few cranky arms dealers tarnish our reputation. What do you say you push that bandage against your new bragging rights, and we head for my office?"

Licking his bottom lip nervously, he tries to give her a confident smile. "You were busy with something."

"Not too busy for my favorite popsicle." One eyebrow raises sternly. "You are not allowed to tell Steve I'm playing favorites." God, she's cute when she tries to deflect. It's never worked. At least not on him.

"That's—" Shit, where to even find the fucking words for her. "You don't have to do this. Go out of your way like this. I don't mind getting patched up by random medics. Comes with the job."

Her smile turns impish. "That's cool and all, but I mind when people ignore basic ethics just to have a story about stitching up an Avenger. If you need to tell yourself I'm using you as fuel for a workplace pissing contest, go for it. Whatever gets you off that biobed." She leans back, leaving the door open wide behind her. "Come on; I can't stand the way they organize these damn shelves. I wouldn't patch you up in here even if you did pay me. Next time, head for my office first."

Bucky does as she ordered, pushing the surgical towel she packed for him against his side, not minding the sting in the least. He swallows down the point that, by every definition there is, he's not an Avenger. "I'll follow you, doc."

—

"Alright," Wyatt plops his hands down on the glass of the holo, his expression determined. His tight curls bounce with the motion, making their resident gumdrop look adorable, even through the discomfort. "Let's get to dissectin' this cacophony. All in one go, preferably, so I don't feel like yackin' up my lunch two days runnin'."

Ava's head tilts sympathetically. "Oh, honey, tell me you didn't—"

His hand comes up, with his index finger pointed to the ceiling. "Nope. But I got close a couple'a times thinkin' about this." He mutters several things under his breath about creepy Nazi bastards while he pulls up the raw data from Bucky's implants. "All the more reason to get it the hell over with."

"A whole day of digging through coded war crimes," Hannah deadpans quietly, raising a steaming mug to her lips. "I'm glad we get the fun assignments."

"You'd ditch us if we didn't," Ava jokes. She scrolls through the sergeant's file absentmindedly on her tablet, reviewing the vitals added just a few hours ago. He actually came to medical. For something as minor as a field injury. Of his own volition.

"Mmm. I don't know. It's pretty fun watching a brain move like Jell-O. You might have been able to convince me to stick around just for that."

SHIELD's primary system makes a blaring noise of disagreement as Wyatt loads the main file structure. He frowns, looking over at Ava with concern. "Its askin' for administrative override."

"Heeey, that's that thing Tony says I'm not supposed to abuse. That's probably not a good sign." Ava pushes her glasses further up the bridge of her nose and leans over to get a look at the error. "JAR, I'd like some reassurance we're not about to trigger an ancient LoJack if you wouldn't mind advising here."

"There are safeguards in place for importing code with an unknown source," JARVIS reports in. The warning on the screen is dismissed, presumably by him, and a new window comes up. A log of the programming in Bucky's cybernetics going through digital quarantine loads rapidly, with line after line being highlighted in red and labeled HYDRA Suspected. "I will process them for you. One moment."

"We have to clean the Nazi code before we can beat it to death," Hannah mumbles against the rim of her mug. "I think I kind of like that."

"Please, Hannie, I'm hangin' on by the skin'a my teeth here." Scrubbing his hands over his face, Wyatt groans exhaustedly. He drags them down slowly, giving Hannah a pleading look over the tops of his fingers. "You know I'm always here for supportin' you—"

"I'm aware." The ex-marine's clipped tone makes Ava snort and look back down at her tablet. They both know stopping him now isn't going to cut off the word vomit.

Wyatt's hands thunk back down onto the glass. "I'm so proud'a ya, y'know that—" And there's the thickening of the accent.

"I know."

Ava's eyes skim over the list of everything detected in Bucky's wound, locking on the word leather in particular. Today was her first look at his work gear—she's got a feeling he doesn't call it a uniform—in person. It was hard to keep professional in front of six and a half feet of Hi, how are ya? wrapped up in that much heavy black. The sounds that his vest made when he dropped it on the coffee table— Jesus. He's got to be packing enough in there to arm a small country.

"All's I'm sayin' is that if I have to hear about murder right now, I might actually upchu—"

"Please don't."

Ava's too scared to ask what's in the sergeant's pants for a multitude of reasons. Professionalism is lower on the list than it probably should be. It's a shame, too. He's downright hilarious when he lets himself talk. There's not a doubt in her mind that he'd come up with something unbearably good—and unwaveringly dry—in response to the loaded question.

"A'right then. We're in agreement. No bad thoughts today. We go in like—like excavators, right? With our helmets and our 'lil pickaxes, and we get what we need so we can—" The way he cuts himself off makes Ava look back up in concern. She finds the most horrified expression on Wyatt's face. "That—ah shit, that didn't come out all that right. That was mean, wannit? Insensitive. I'm not tryin' to belittle what the sergeant's been through."

"You weren't belittling anything," Ava assures, reaching out to rub his arm. "I think he'd be the first one to race you to a fossil joke about this."

"You'll tell 'im I'm takin' this serious, won't ya—"

A small chuckle escapes before she can stop it. "Wyatt, sweetheart, it's not like he heard you—"

"You take your pills today, Combs?" Hannah's calm question makes the gumdrop freeze in place. She blows on her coffee, taking a small sip. "If you say you don't remember, I'm going to—"

Wyatt snaps his fingers, his expression shifting to relief. "I didn't, and I remember why, too." He rolls his chair back with a sudden push, aiming for his desk. He reaches out before the chair finishes the trip to grab his patch-covered messenger bag. "One'a the cats got int'a my coat closet; dumbass got stuck on a shelf for reasons I'm still not real clear on." He pops open his medication bottle, tossing a pill into his mouth with a level of dexterity that makes her jealous. "The hollerin' was s'damn loud, I thought the landlord was gonna come knockin'."

"Which one was it?" Ava asks. "Not the new kitten?"

"No, no—Juno's been'a dream. It was Galileo again. I love that furry little bastard, but sometimes he can drive me nutty ." He pauses to take a swig from another glossy vacation mug. Today's is advertising a campground Ava's never heard of that's the best in the Rockies, according to the swirling font. "I got new pictures of Juno if you want 'em, though."

"Yes, please," Ava confirms happily. Holding the teacup-sized ball of fur made her whole month when he last brought Juno in. Hannah ended up hogging most of the cuddle time, but the sound of little meows filling the day had been enough to make up for it.

Wyatt pulls his phone from his back pocket and brings it around to hook up to the holo. The system dings with the sound of a successful transfer after a moment. He loads a collection of new photos, zeroing in on one of Juno clawing her way up a window curtain—

The power to the lab shuts off with a loud, electric click. Everything plunges into darkness with the privacy setting on the glass walls keeping the sun out. It comes back on before Ava can react, the building's primary system switching to the emergency power grid. She and Wyatt lock eyes in panic.

"Oooh man, boss, did I just—"

"I'm sure you didn't," Ava comforts, trying to push down her own panic. It helps that she's heard Tony rambling about the work he's put into making this place indestructible. "JAR?"

There's no response from the AI. She trades another nervous glace with Wyatt.

"I know it was probably the Nazi shit, but I'm hoping it was the cats," Hannah says, sounding sincere. "I feel like that'll make a much better story."

"Oh my god, did I break JAR?" Wyatt looks between them frantically. "How often does he back up his servers? Did I kill'a piece'a JAR?!"

"I have not been murdered," the AI confirms after nearly a minute of being gone. "The safeguards reported a false positive regarding the programming of Sergeant Barnes' cybernetics. It has been handled."

Ava gives the hologram wall of code a warry look. "Handled by you?" There's a suspicion building in her gut around his phrasing, one that she's not planning on letting out of her teeth.

"Mr. Stark has a protocol in place that cuts off my servers in the event of any irregular activity. Given the nature of the programming's origin, the system is designed to er on the side of caution."

"That's a really fancy way of dancing around the point, JAR." She's trying to stay civil about this. It's not an easy venture, and she's pretty sure it's not translating at all. Even she can hear the frustration in her voice. "How about we cut the shit, and you tell me what the false positive was."

"There are automated routines running for Sergeant Barnes' implants. They are not harmful; I've taken the liberty of checking them personally now that they've been cleared through quarantine. I am creating a stable update to forward to—"

"How long have they not been harmful, JARVIS?"

Hannah sits up from her relaxed position at the avoidance of their favorite nickname for the AI. Wyatt's brows pull in nervously, his eyes never leaving Ava. They both know exactly what she's digging at.

There's a long hesitation from JARVIS. Short by normal social standards but an eternity for a sentience with quantum processors. "There is not currently a risk posed within the Sergeant's—"

Ava's out of her chair and halfway to the door before he even finishes the omission. Fueled by some of the most intense rage she's ever felt in her life, she marches out on swift feet. She's going to kill him. She's going to string him up—maybe hang him off the side of the tower.

America's fucking Sweetheart, her ass. America's Doomed Liar is a lot more like it.

"Where is he," Ava nearly growls, still stalking down the halls, leaving the medical wing in a hurry. "JARVIS, I know you're still listening; you tell me where that puffed-up, hypocritical—oooh , you tell me where Rogers is right the fuck now. And then you tell me where Stark is—"

"Dr. Ryder, I know you're not inclined to believe this at the moment, but I assure you—"

"You're right; I'm not inclined to do that at all." She takes a deep breath as she passes through the front entrance, slowing herself to a stop. With genuine effort, she pushes down her anger. "I don't want to keep yelling at you. I don't like doing it in the first place. If you don't want to tell me where they are, I'll find them myself."

Ava heads for the elevator to do just that. She's not expecting a response as she pounds the side of her fist against the button for the Datacrux's floor. It's likely to be her best bet to find any of them. There's not a chance in hell that she's letting her team dedicate any more time to this until she gets some fucking explanations.

Halfway along the ride up, the light around the button goes dim. A flash of anger rises in her until she sees the one for the executive level illuminate.

"Mr. Stark is not currently in the tower, but you will find Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes debriefing in the Situation Room," JARVIS informs her over the elevator's intercom, making the SHEILD agents around her pretend not to look over. She's tempted to ask them if it's the outfit.

"Thank you, JAR," she offers as an olive branch. Regardless of what's truly going on here, she doubts the AI is all that comfortable with the subject.

"You're welcome, Ava."

She's only been to this part of the tower once before. Tony dragged her up to the Avenger's balcony for a party after her divorce was first finalized. That's about the extent of her experience with this section. It's not hard to find her way with everything denoted like it is in the rest of the building.

The palm of her hand smacks against the door marked Situation Room, and she shoves it open aggressively. Both super soldiers, the Falcon, Black Widow, and a scattered group of SHIELD agents stare back at her in surprise. It doesn't slow her down any.

Ava points an irate finger at Steve in the uneasy silence of the room. "Unless New York just caught fire, you and I are about to have a very blunt conversation, captain."

"Hiya, doc." Bucky, unsurprisingly, is the only one in the room smiling at her while she glares daggers at Captain America. He's still in his not-uniform. There's still blood on it. The charm he's throwing her way reminds her that they won't want an audience.

"I'm going to ask the rest of you to leave," she continues, but her eyes stay on the sergeant as her finger lowers. "I don't think you'll want to be here for this, Bucky."

"What makes you think I don't wanna watch you beat up my best friend?" He leans back in his chair, his hands coming up to rest on his stomach as his smile deepens.

"Can I stay?" Sam asks, his voice eager. It's a damn shame this is how she gets to meet him. She doubts the Falcon has any clue about unethical research.

"Come on," Natasha insists with a serene nod in Ava's direction, grabbing Sam's shirt to drag him up from his chair. "You heard her."

"I—hey!" Steve looks so insulted as he watches his friends and various coworkers abandon him with zero hesitation. "You're just gonna—I don't even know what I did!"

"Neither do I, but I am very ready to hear about it," Bucky assures Ava, not an increasingly distressed Steve.

Ava taps her foot impatiently as the room clears out, leaving her alone with the super soldiers. She ignores the nerves radiating off of one of them and focuses on the one that looks delighted. "I'm serious. This is about your case. Specifically, the work HYDRA was trying to finish."

The mirth leaves Bucky almost entirely. His posture doesn't adjust from its reclined position. "Alright. Tell me what's got you livid about it."

"Steve here made me a promise that was broken in my lab a few minutes ago."

Steve's eyebrows pull in with confusion. "Which promise? Wait—a few minutes ago—Is this about that blackout? Ava, catch me up here; what the hell is—"

"You swore to me that the intention of HYDRA—at least where Bucky's case is concerned—was to make an army of super soldiers, nothing more." She's letting him process this one step at a time. It'll make yelling at him for lying a lot easier. That, and she's honestly worried the technophobe doesn't understand the gravity of the situation.

"I—" Steve hesitates, and she watches the switch to tactical assessment come over him. It's startling to see it directed at her from a face that isn't Bucky's. "As far as I know, that was the intention."

"Yeah? You're sure about that? You're sure you're not omitting something pretty fucking important to my job, Steven?"

"JARVIS, what was the blackout?" Bucky questions at half the volume he started at when she first came in.

Ava points at the sergeant insistently. "See? I'm guessing he doesn't even know, but he's sure as hell already on the right track."

"There was an incident regarding the coding found in your implants, Sergeant Barnes. It has been handled. I have prepared an update to their systems whenever you're ready to undergo a transfer."

"As your doctor, I'm ordering it. We can go back to my office after I'm finished ripping your friend a new asshole for lying to my face." Her eyebrows lower at Bucky in indignation. She's doing this for him, but that doesn't mean she's going to let him off the hook if he knew. "We should probably figure out if I need to do the same to you before we get there."

"Hey, hang on now." Steve raises one hand, likely to try to calm her, but changes his mind and puts it back under the table. She's guessing someone's finally clued in the out-of-time man about that practice making women want to throw something. At his head. "We might not always be able to talk about classified information—something you agreed to, I might add—but I've never lied about HYDRA's intent as far as I comprehend it. I've been very careful to hold up that end of our deal."

"Let me tell you how I know, for a fact, that someone involved in this case is doing a piss-poor job of lying to me about it. Since you haven't quite figured out modern tech, I'm going to try to keep it simple." Ava points a far less aggressive, more instructing finger at Bucky's arm. "In order for that hunk of metal to work, it needs to be programmed. The hardware needs software that can tell it how to read brain signals. A few decades ago, some Nazis sat in a room and wrote a bunch of code for that software. That's what was supposed to be in Bucky's implants. That's all that was supposed to be in Bucky's implants."

"Wait—what the hell else is in them?" The flicker of fear that creeps into Bucky's expression breaks her heart. There's not a doubt in her mind that he could sell her on any lie he wants to with his mind set on it. That's the point of infiltrators like him.

But Ava's willing to bet everything she's got in this world that the fear in him at the moment is genuine. He doesn't know. And it makes her feel awful.

"Given the size of your implants, I'm guessing not much," she tries to reassure. "We can always purge whatever is there later. However, if the code were as simple as 'read this signal, do this thing,' it wouldn't have been flagged as untouchable by Tony's security measures. The ones put in specifically to prevent JARVIS from being corrupted." She crosses her arms over her chest in exasperation, her eyes moving to one of the small security cameras on the ceiling. "Would you like to explain to the captain what kind of code it would take to accomplish that, JARVIS?"

There's another human-length moment of hesitation from the AI in response. "It would take adapting code."

"The part he's holding back—definitely because he's under orders not to break SHIELD protocol—is that something has to be driving the adaptation. There is such a thing as self-adapting code; that would absolutely explain it. If we weren't talking about something made in the 40s when HYDRA needed entire warehouses just to house a few terabytes of data." She glances over at Bucky. "While I'm sure the agents you scare the piss out of would disagree, your head isn't actually big enough to hold that much."

"You flirtin' with me to stop the panic or to apologize for not being Canadian for a minute?"

Ava blinks in surprise, the slightest hint of heat coming up the sides of her neck. That—she hadn't been—well. Steve's head turns to him, his eyebrows raising in mild shock.

Bucky clears his throat, then tries for a quiet chuckle, his eyes floating between her and the table. "Sorry—it's this damn room. Puts me in sergeant mode, makes me—let's get back to yelling at Steve."

"Thanks, asshole, I appreciate—"

"What makes you think I won't yell at you just because I'm Canadian?" Ava counters, finally recovering. "You trying to stereotype me, Barnes?"

The relief that comes off of Bucky is palpable. "I'd go for the hippie thing first if I was trying to do that."

"Didn't you sleep through the McCarthy era?"

"HYDRA gave me the long and short of it between naps."

Her hand flies up to her face to block a loud snort. Damn him, this is serious. But she's not about to begrudge him the gallows humor. She lowers it again while he smirks at her. "Do you mind? I'm trying to make an angry but valid point here."

"About a bunch of code that my head isn't big enough for," he continues for her dryly, one hand coming off his stomach to gesture up at it.

Ava sighs, the amusement from getting sidetracked by the Brooklyn heartstopper fading fast. "Not big enough by the standards of the 40s. By today's standards?" Her head tilts to the side sadly, readying herself to watch that fear in him get more substantial. "You tell me, Buck. Did the Nazis work in the mindset of single projects, or did they work in the mindset of generations that would lead a global empire?"

The words are the last piece to complete the puzzle in Bucky's mind; Ava can see it happen in his eyes. The expression of horror it yanks out of him will haunt her for the rest of her days. "Zola."

It's said in a whisper, and Ava's not even sure what the word is.

It takes Steve longer to reach whatever conclusion Buckys come to, and he looks resistant to the idea at first. "No, that's... no—Buck, you've been to what's left. You know what it took—"

"That's the point she's making, stupid. Look at how small everything's gotten." He stops, and Ava doesn't miss the sight of a hard swallow. "It makes sense. Think about it. It makes sense. They took care of the car until they could find an engine that fit. I was the prototype. Or—was going to be, at least."

The comparison—the one he's using on himself—is revolting. Accurate, but astoundingly revolting. She pushes past it, leaning down to tap a condescending nail on the table. "Hi, there. Still here. Still looking for some answers. What the hell is Zola?"

With Steve watching him like a hawk, Bucky breathes a long, tired sigh. "Not what. Who."

"I can fill her in," Steve offers to him quickly. "You don't have to do this."

"Oh, I'm not doing shit. She's going to do it all." Bucky locks eyes with Ava, his expression passive. Having the Winter Soldier himself that focused in on her makes her breath catch involuntarily. "How's your Russian, doc?"

"I don't speak a word of it. Do I need to for this?"

"No, I'm sure you've got plenty of ways to translate anything you feel like reading. You should look up doveryai, no proveryai while you're at it." He leans forward, resting his arms on the table. His eyes never once move away from hers. "JARVIS, transfer a copy of my archive access to Dr. Ryder. Full permissions. And the next time she asks you a hard question, you don't have to bullshit her. Tell her to call me."

—

April 6th, 2015

"I want you to bring me with you next time."

"No."

"Is that a no because you do not agree or because you are afraid of mother?"

"Both."

Shuri frowns at the security feed, ignoring the quiet laughter she can hear coming from Nakia on the other end. "Coward."

The camera mounted on T'Challa's dashboard shakes as he turns it back to his face, his expression annoyed. "Say that to my—"

"Coward."

T'Challa rolls his eyes and turns the camera back around as Nakia laughs harder. He will be mopey now, for sure. "I am not taking you to stare at a soldier's office with us."

"Why not?"

"To start with, I refuse to be trapped in a car with you for that amount of time."

"You should be so lucky! Now, what is the real reason."

"What part of royal family do you not—"

"You get to go to these things."

"And when you leave your lab long enough to learn to use the spears of your foremothers, that privilege can extend to you."

"Okoye is always ready to teach you, Shuri," Nakia offers up diplomatically.

"I do not need a spear to sit in a car annoying my brother," Shuri argues. They always do this to her. She is tired of it.

"You do not need to sit in a car annoying your bother at all." The moping has already started. She can hear it in T'Challa's voice.

"Fine. I will go to Ava's house and stay there while—"

"No."

Shuri slams her hands down on her desk, making the various instruments on it rattle precariously. "She is my family, too!"

There's silence on the other end in the wake of her anger. Then the camera turns again, this time by Nakia's hand. She doesn't stop the spin until it's pointed to show her and T'Challa. He does not look as annoyed anymore. He looks guilty.

Nakia gives her a sympathetic smile. "No one is trying to take that from you. We are only trying to keep you safe. We do not know how far Alec is willing to take things."

"And I am not willing to present the man with more temptations of power," T'Challa adds, the guilt on his face shifting to resignation. "It is not simply because I am afraid of our mother. I agree with her. And with our father. Alec Harlow is a man that is losing everything. That is a powerful motivator, Shuri."

"I am not afraid of that spineless demon," Shuri insists angrily. "I could handle him myself, thank you very much."

"Half the school children in Wakanda could," Nakia mocks under her breath.

She gets a stern look from T'Challa before he focuses it on Shuri. "It is not his strength we are concerned with. It is the allies he can call upon at any time. Men with strength and resources that we do not wish to deal with."

Some of the fight leaves her. Not much, but it does ebb. Her brother might be an idiot, but he is right about this. Ava would not be this afraid for no reason. She has been trying to disguise it when Nakia brings her for visits, which is how Shuri knows it is serious.

"I hate that man, brother." The word is far too inadequate. The contempt she holds for the worm who put fear in the heart of her favorite mad scientist feels immeasurable.

"As do I. As do we all." T'Challa smiles at her finally, his face softening. "I promise to bring you to hit him if he is ever arrested. That is when I will deem it safe enough."

"How many times?" she chases after quickly. "Can I bring a weapon?"

"You can bring exactly one weapon. Can you guess what it is?" The smile turns sarcastic as he reaches out and turns the camera back around to face Alec's office window.

"I do not need a spear to break that man."

"No, you need it so I can stop being lectured by Okoye for enabling your avoidance of tradition."

"That will not help. She wishes for me to sit through her lessons. I would just bring the spear to hit him over the head with."

Nakia laughs, the sound light and soothing. "I am surprised you did not go straight for the idea of skewering him."

Tilting her head down at her desk, Shuri hesitates. She picks up the ridiculous coffee mug Ava got her, spinning it around in her hands with somber movements.

Ava's last visit had been especially hard to stomach. The woman had looked so... empty as she talked about the start of the divorce. There had been no vengeful joy in her as she told Shuri's father she understood the gravity of the situation. No hard-won victory in her posture. There had only been grief and shame.

Shuri sighs, turning away from the screen to head for her lab's kitchen. She is going to fill the mug with one of the teas that Ava brings her. It will be a nice change from the energy drinks she has been binging. "No. I... I do not wish the man dead. I only wish to see him locked away somewhere he can never smile again."

—author end notes—

there’s one sentence in this chapter that is 14 words long (including contractions) that is the entire foundation of their incoming dom/sub and oh my g o d when i tell you that shit was cathartic to write 😫🤌 some day when this is finished, im gonna write a whole goddamn dissertation on that one sentence and all the narrative shit that tied into it in this fic so help me (YOURE ALLOWED TO GUESS BTW)

anyways, everyone is alive in wakanda bc i said so. and nakia and t’challa are really stupid uber mega important to ava’s backstory

i feel like we’ve all, as a species, Been Through Enough. you can talk my ear off abt anything, but dont talk to me abt the opening of wakanda forever i will Literally Die, i havent cried that hard over the first watch of a movie in so fucking long and i dont think im strong enough for a second. all i ever need for binging is winter soldier and black panther anyhow (FATWS is still growing on me and i only like it so far bc im a sambucky shipper. and a stucky shipper. and a 3 musketeer shipper. and a—i like making buckaroo be in love a lot. lets just. leave it at that). we can stop with the big owies thanks. let me escape to the fictional world where everyone is alive and Nothing Hurts, t h a n k s.

well. okay. some things are gonna hurt in this. probably really super bad too and youre gonna be really really mad at me when it hits. but like. theyre set up for comfort pay off so does it even really count??? i didnt think so, ty for agreeing 😌

ily 💖 tyty for reading 💞 and tyty in advance for yelling at me when i eventually hurt u ❤️🥰 i will understand, its okay, u are entitled to the emotional compensation on that one

#chapter update #good space

1 note · View note

kashimos-hajime · 3 years

Text

no regrets (8/8) | r.b.

summary: For the first time, he thinks of a future he could have, and someone who loves him, and there’s something bright in his heart. Or, Reiner finally understands what peace is.

WARNINGS: MANGA SPOILERS!!! angst, mentions of violence, we get our happy ending :) pairing: reiner braun x fem!reader word count: 6.7k

a/n: welcome to the last chapter!! thank you so much for being on this journey with me. there are a few callbacks to previous chapters so see if you can catch ‘em all heheh

masterlist

crossposted on ao3 x

Few months ago ymir asked if I could let her write one last letter to krista, and I did let her. I stood over her shoulder the whole time, watching her pen down all this sappy shit and I kept thinking about you the whole time, behind those walls. What you were doing, what you were thinking. Maybe if you thought about me. I dont know.

I’m starting to see the appeal of wrting what youre not strong enough to say to a persons face. I never thought Id find myself on the other end of this stick. for some reason, I thought that I could stop myself, resist the temptation, or maybe that I didnt feel for you as strong as I thought I did once I was away from you. I was wrong.

What do I even say? I mean shit, I can barely see, my limbs are barely in tact, and all of it—shiganshina, it haunts me, even though I cant really remember it that well. Half of it goes black and then I remember hearing your voice, I remember Bertholdt, I remember you screaming.

You couldve walked away. why didnt you walk away? It doesn’t make sens. Why did you think to cut me out? Why did you try to save me? Im trying to make it make sense inmy head. It’s not working.

Fuck I dont know what I was thinking when I asked for a paper and pen. Why am I asking you questions? Its not like ill ever understand. At this point, I think it’s pity thats letting Zeke let me waste ink on trying to write straight. He doesn’t know what im doing, but thats better this way. Better than sleeping—better than eating. I just wanna talk to you and this is as close as I can get. Its my own damn fault, but I dont care.

I completed my mission. After this, im done. ill give up the rest of my term. I dont want any of that glory anymore. I dont want to be a hero. Im just done.

Fuck, my head hurts so much. I dont really know if what im saying is making sense. Im hoping you never read this.

im sorry. I wish I could explain it to you some day, but chances are, ill be dead soon. Whether for treason or because they need to pass on the Titan, and I wont be able to see you again. Which means youll never know how sorry I am. How much I

Thats okay. I dont think youd believe me now even if I did say anything.

I remember your dream to live by the lake with a bunch of kids. You know I started to wonder if youd mind if they were our kids, not just some orphans who needed a home. I’d imagine one of them with blond hair. Imagine them swimming in the lake.

Never told you that was my dream too. Never knew i could have a dream of my own, something only I wanted and not just something to further marleys damn agenda, til I knew you. Sounds stupid but its true.

I think youd like Marley, if we weren’t sworn enemies. Just want you here with me right now. make me sleep easier knowing you’re there when I wake up.

Dont want secrets either. Fuck I miss you so bad. I feel s o tired all the time.

I rember when i first saw you all could think about was how you were the most prettiest girl id ever seen. I don know if you know thats why I tried to distance myself. Knew I couldn’t get distracted from my mison. happened anyway. Wish I could tell you that.

wish I could tell you I love you. Wish I could see the look on yur face when you try lobster for the first time. Youd love it. Not sweet, but tons of desserts here too.

Shit. And the ring on your finger. ill put a ring on your finger. I promised. i swear ill go home and buy a ring for the moment I see you again. Might not be pretty but will do the best I can.

Olnly wnat only wnat only want to see you again and beg for your forgiveness. Let you know if I had a choice, I wouldnt have done it. Would take it all back, nd stay. i wanted to stay, stay with you and the others. I used to want to spend the rest of my life in those walls, now I think im sick and tired of them dividing people who arent even that differnet.

My eyes are beginning to burn. Worse because the skin is sitll growing back. Fucking hell god I miss you. miss your smile more.

I know i dont deserve your forigvneess forgiveness. I want you to be angry with me. I deserve as much, and I cant ask you to, but

With love,

Rienr

You fold the letter, eyes closing as your fingers trace where the ink bled, the old tear stains wrinkling the paper beyond measure. Some are older than others, and you trace over his name again, your eyes burning, your throat tight enough to suffocate.

You’re leaning against the wall as everyone disembarks. They had taken Eren off first, Hange and the others getting ready to depart for the city while Connie and Jean lift a covered stretcher too white for the vivacious girl that lays dead beneath it.

They pass you silently, and you catch sight of a certain captain approaching, his pale eyes nearly swallowed by the shadows haunting his face.

“Captain,” you say, straightening. Placing the letter back into the tin, you slide it back into your pocket as he folds a green jacket over his shoulder. You give him a nod.

“You made it out alive,” Levi observes. He stops beside you, eyes more focused on what’s ahead. No doubt he’s not looking forward to having to take Zeke to wherever he needs to go—somewhere far, far away from Eren. You cross your arms.

“It’s good to see you, too, Levi,” you intone. Sighing, you step in beside him and look out at the Walls you can’t see in the distance, your entire body wrought with a strange fatigue that’s only sewn into muscles by adrenaline leaving the body. “I think I’m going to stay.” He tilts his head to you, eyes flickering to your face, and you mirror the shift, your arms tightening. “I can’t leave this unfinished. Not after Liberio.”

“The farm will have to be abandoned,” he points out. “The kids, too.”

“I’ll make sure I move them where someone can take care of them. Somewhere north, far away from the brothers,” you assure, although still, your heart begins to sink and you close your eyes, exhaling deeply. “I have to hope they understand.”

Levi only nods, and you open your eyes as he wordlessly takes the jacket off his arm and offers it to you. Grasping it wearily, you open your mouth to ask questions but he only sets off, back towards the cabin where Zeke is still being held, and you snap your jaws shut, looking down at the jacket.

When you unfold it, you swallow the hard rock in your throat at the blue and white slipping beween the folds of olive green before there’s a sharp whistle. Looking up, you see the carriages already beginning to load up, and you glance back at the door where the captain has disappeared through before jogging down the ramp.

You slither your arms through the sleeves and shuffle the fabric along your frame as something thumps against your thigh, and you frown, reaching down into your pocket and coming into contact with something smooth and hard.

Withdrawing, your lips part at the green bolo tie gleaming in the lights of the port and you, without another thought, pull it over your head, letting it fall against your breastbone.

“For your services to the Survey Corps.”

There’s no time to second-guess now. No time to debate.

“Good to have you back,” Hange murmurs as you walk towards the carriage taking Mikasa, Armin, and the others back to the city. You tug the lapels of the jacket tighter around yourself and flash them a weak smile.

The Wings of Freedom on your arm feel like a brand, and it prickles your skin as you climb in after them.

Distantly, he remembers flashes.

Eren reaching forward for Zeke, the exhaustion ripping him every which way, the sound of ODM gear whizzing in his ears as he tries to make sense of the punctured sensation in his armour.

How he had softened his nape, intending to die then. At least, let his death have some meaning, he had thought. Let him make one last effort to repent for everything he did to Paradis, and to his friends who’d been more family than his own mother.

He slips in an out of consciousness for the next few days. He doesn’t know what is up, what is down, but he does recognize his surroundings blearily, the way his head spinning somehow slowing when he presses his temple to the wooden floor.

How can he almost hear your voice in the echoes of the panels, countered by someone who almost sounds like Annie before he drifts off again.

When Reiner finally regains consciousness again, he wakes to someone crouched down in front of him. Jerking up, he lets out a sound before a palm slaps over his mouth and your face is shoved against his own.

“Shut it,” you whisper fiercely. “It’s just me.”

Your name muffled by your own hand, his eyes begin to burn and you lift your palm away as he sits up and you draw back. You’re dressed in clothes that look like they’ve seen better days but you’re relatively uninjured as you pull back. New lines adorn your face—one of the many prices of their damned war—and you only look exhausted.

Sitting up, Reiner’s whole body groans as he leans against the wall, but he can’t tear his eyes away from you. Your hands are hovering around his body like you’re scared he’ll collapse and there’s a fracture in your mask.

Something gleams on your finger and his eyes flit to it, his heart lurching when he realizes what it is.

The ring. You’re wearing it. You…

For a moment, a glimmer of their teenage selves shine through and he wants to reach for it—touch it so he can remember what it’s like to be happy. He thinks it’s an awful like now; the swelling of his heart so big he can’t breathe; the way his lungs are static in his chest; how he can’t say anything because there are so many words that want to come out first.

“You’re here. You’re alive,” he finally settles on raspily. Your eyes glint with a youthful pain as you nod.

“So are you.”

And he doesn’t know who moves first—you or him. Nothing is forgiven as their bodies crash in an embrace that lacks grace, but they cling onto another like the world is ending and they’re the only ones left standing.

Maybe they are.

He buries his face in your neck, and your arms are so tight around him your fingers dig into his shoulders as your body melts against his and his skeleton sags in his own body.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against your skin, eyes fluttering shut. “I‘m sorry.” A hand against your neck and an arm around your waist, he wraps his legs around your own and traps you against him. You seem to only sink into him even more.

Is that enough? I don’t want you to hate me.

You suck in a breath, and then it comes out shuddering. “You can spend the rest of what life you have left repenting for making me fall in love with a man who was always supposed to die.”

Softly, in his mind, your voice cools the searing heat of hatred inside him. It’s enough. It has to be.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. It’s like they’re the only words he knows. He can’t remember ever meaning it this much. For him dying, for making you love him, for ever coming to Paradis. For loving you. For loving you. “I’m so sorry.”

“I know. I know.” Your face turns to press against his own. Your lips brush against his jaw and his eyes slide shut, tears rolling down his face. “I read every single one of your letters.” Drawing back, you cup his face in his hands and your fingers smear his tears all over his cheeks as his palm rests against your neck. Thumb stretching up to touch your chin, he feels sobs shuddering in his throat at seeing you again—looking at him almost like you used to. “I can’t begin to understand, but I know you are. And I know you love me.”

Choking, he gasps, “You should hate me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I should.” You’re crying, too, voice thick, tears stubborn on your cheeks as you give him a watery smile. “I should hate Marley, too. But it’s beautiful there. The water by the sea… I want to be there with you next time. We need to go together, before you leave me alone, okay?”

Reiner doesn’t quite hear you. He hears Marley, and beautiful, and he’s never noticed how beautiful you are when you cry, but right now, it’s the simplest truth he knows.

“Okay.”

When you tilt his chin up and kiss him softly, something inside him explodes from the gentleness that makes him want to crack in the palm of your hands. It sears him from the inside out, makes him grab onto you like you’ll disappear—this is another dream, isn’t it?

It has to be.

You can’t be kissing him again after four years. He doesn’t deserve it. You’re an illusion, something his mind made up to deal with the pain. He’s finally cracked for good, just like Bertholdt said he would, and he’s the devil, not you.

But then you pull away just for a moment to smile, eyes barely open as you look at him with a sad tenderness that wraps him in an invisible embrace, and he is faced with the heart-wrenching reality.

The sky is falling, you are holding him tightly again, and they’ve lost their years. But you’re here. With him.

He knows that this isn’t a dream as he feels the coolness of the silver band on your finger and the heaviness in how he knows he hasn’t repented a damn thing.

Why him?

As you run your hand through his hair, you press their foreheads together.

“And I do want a family with you, by the water if you’d like,” you murmur fleetingly against his mouth and his eyes widen, cheeks burning, entire face crumbling as he turns his face in to your shoulder, crushing you in another brace. Sobbing into your neck, his fingers dig into your shoulders, wrap tight around your waist, squeeze you so close he isn’t sure where you end and he begins and your lips brush the shell of his ear. “Reiner, say it.”

“Please,” he whispers thickly into your skin, and you cradle the back of his head with a hand. He’s nothing more than shambles. “Please, don’t go.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight again,” you promise. His breath is hot against his own face as you pull his head back and cradle his face again, thumbs brushing away the tears from his red face. “Just a bit more. A bit more and then it’ll be all over, you know?”

And he understands, then, what you want from him. Struggling for breath, for his lungs to stop seizing in his aching chest, he cups your face that turns into his palm on instinct, your face wet with your own tears as, for a moment, they try to pretend this isn’t where they really are.

Like they’re still in that afternoon in Trost, a thousand years ago, with the kids flipping coins into the water fountain and a cream bun between them. Like they’re under the tree, apple juice on your wrist and his lips on yours.

Like it’s those trips to the city, the walks on the Walls. Honey is dripping down your chin and he’s pretending he doesn’t want to kiss you, or there’s grease smeared on his forehead, and you’re reaching up to wipe it off his skin.

Like a thousand moments all at once, and he nods to himself as you brush your hand over his temple. The world outside is startlingly quiet, as if the universe itself stopped everything itself to watch this moment, and Reiner takes a breath that bruises his sternum before he’s holding your left hand where that ring still sits.

And slowly, he pulls it off, whispering as firmly as he can. He’s sure he fails—he’s shaking all over from your presence alone.

“When this is over, I’ll put that ring back on your finger. I promise.”

The smile that splits your face is dazzling. It’s the smile he’s missed since the day he left it.

“We have a lot of things to work out, Reiner Braun.”

And your fingers barely brush his jaw before you’re leaning to press a sweet kiss against his mouth. It’s sugary on his tongue, like honey and apple slices.

Your back is warmer when you’re pressed up against Reiner’s. The ship is quiet, and their pinkies are just barely hooked on oen another’s as you stare blankly at the empty space between Connie’s boots. You don’t speak, and Reiner’s gaze is only on you. He can’t look at anything else now that you’re back by his side again.

There’s a cut on your cheek from the fight just half an hour ago, and there’s dried blood along your hands where your knuckles had split open, but everyone seems too exhausted to clean themselves up.

Reiner himself has a blanket pulled over his shoulders, and he sighs, slouching in his own sack of flesh.

Your head tilts towards him, enough that your temple presses against his cheek. His eyes close and he leans into your touch. Not a word passes by, but their hold on each other’s hands tightens. And Reiner thinks.

For the first time, he thinks of a future he could have, and someone who loves him, and there’s something bright in his heart. Something that hasn’t burned since he left Marley as a child.

Reiner thinks he doesn’t want to die anymore. He doesn’t want to miss you for another moment.

Raising from the steam, you groan, your hands searing from the inside out as you touch your face where you swore every inch of your skin had been stretched, but nothing seems out of sorts as you glance around. Everywhere, all your friends who had turned just as you had are in various states of disoriented. The air is still hissing, crackled with surprised screams and shouts of names as people look for one another across the field.

It smells like cooked meat and burnt hair, a none-to-pleasant mixture that turns your stomach.

Getting to your feet, you wipe at your face, trying to ignore the weird feeling underneath your nails and the ache seizing your muscles. Trying to ignore the remnants of Eren lingering like a ghost that won’t really leave you alone. You shiver, and a strange cold sweat takes over your body.

He had taken you to the sea, except it wasn’t the shore you were familiar with. There was a cabin nearby, with blonde children running, chasing after one another and a man with golden hair standing on the porch, firewood in his arms as he calls out silently. Or maybe you had been standing too far to hear.

“Eren… where are we?”

“Wherever you think you are,” he had said. “I just brought you where you wanted to be.”

A voice, quiet as a memory, catches your attention. “Here let me help.” A soft wind blows throw the mist, cooling your scorching face as you feel a presence stand behind you.

“Oh, thank you.” You look over your shoulder to see a tall boy, and your heart stops. Mouth dropping open, you stare at his foggy image, but he only smiles fully, a smile so tender it reaches every corner of you as you stumble forward, fingers stretching for him. “Bertholdt!”

His smile grows only that much more, eyes squinting a bit and a flash of teeth before he’s looking at your hand that passes through his chest. All at once, all the hope built up in your chest crumbles, and your hand snaps back, trembling just before him. He lays a hand over your own and your eyes begin to burn, tears slipping down your cheeks.

And then, softly, you barely whisper, “I miss you.”

Bertholdt’s smile merely grows, as if to say everything he couldn’t say before. As if to show he’s at peace now—that your last memory together isn’t every part of him, and your lips press together, trying to stop yourself from shaking.

Shadows form in the fog, and together, the two look as a freckled boy and another girl steps out of the mist a distance away, beaming like the sun. Connie and Jean stagger to their feet just behind you, and your heart lurches into your throat when you recognize them.

“Marco! Sasha!”

Someone calls your name and you turn around just as arms scoop you up and you let out a surprised noise before settling into Reiner’s arms. Looking over your shoulder to look at Bertholdt, your heart only sinks.

He smiles and Reiner lets out a sharp breath beside you, settling you down. “Bertholdt…” More shapes emerge. A shorter boy accompanied by another taller one, both alike in their features. You recognize one as the Jaw Titan holder before Falco, but the other—

“Marcel!” Reiner chokes out the name, hand stretching out to the fog, but the boy merely tilts his head and waves.

Closing your eyes, hot tears streak over your cooling flesh as you fling your arms around Reiner again and press your face into his neck. He cradles the back of your head, and he feels… somehow weaker, but still, there is that impassable strength in his core that wraps around you as he watches over your shoulder, still clinging on despite your clothes hot enough to burn.

I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive. It’s the only thought in your head. Your last clear memory had truly been the others taking flight, and the pain that had ripped apart your body before sewing it back together again in unjust proportions. Your limbs had been too big, your blood racing too warmly through your head as your legs pumped but your brain screamed to stop.

Your fingers had sank into Reiner’s legs to pull him down and you had watched—watched Jean take a bite out of him—

You shiver and Reiner’s arms tighten around you instinctively, constricting enough to let you know that his attention isn’t on you quite yet.

Boots shifting on the ground tentatively, your knees feel gummy as you draw back long enough to look at him. He still looks over your shoulder, and you follow his gaze to watch the mist retreat. Bertholdt and the other two boys fall into a pool of fog, and your lips part in a farewell, but it’s already too late.

He’s gone.

A wind sweeps through the battlefield, tickling your sweating neck and cooling your boiling blood.

“Hey,” a soft voice croaks.

Their eyes meet in tandem. He regards you softly, like you are the reason the sun rises and the stars hang at the sky. Overwhelmed, you can only cup the back of his neck and pull him into a deep kiss. Your other hand along his jaw, it takes all you can not to pull him into a bone-crushing embrace that’ll send them both to the ground.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” you whisper hushedly against his mouth, throat swelling as he lets out a soft noise of surprise as you pull him into another tight hug. You don’t care that you’re crushing him, just that his heart is pounding against your own chest. “I couldn’t stop myself. I’m so sorry.”

His eyes widening, he wraps his hands around your wrists and pulling you back just enough to kiss your fingers that crumple against his mouth. Clasping one of his hands in both of your own, you close your eyes and he uses his free fingers to brush the tears off your cheek before reaching into some dented tin you don’t recognize.

Eyebrows furrowing, you feel the heat leave your entire body, sapping your energy too, and your eyes snap to Reiner who steps back, cracking it open and presenting it to you.

“You’re not the one who has to be sorry. I don’t think I’m the Armoured Titan anymore,” he whispers. “I don’t know if I get the rest of my life back, but either way, I want to spend the rest of it repenting to you in any way I can, if you’ll allow me to.” A weak smile. “Truth.”

Your throat closes up, and you stare down at the ring so protected, gleaming despite the destruction around them. It looks almost out of place amongst the grime smearing your skin, the sweat drenching their skin, the smell of blood and metal clinging to their clothes, but Reiner only watches you with a tenderness you can barely meet. It’s so overtly overflowing with devotion that your heart is resting on your tongue, seizing control of everything.

You barely nod, chewing on your lip, trying not to cry even harder as his eyebrows rise in relief and he lets out a long sigh.

He lifts the ring out of the tin, snapping it closed before sliding the band back home onto your finger and all at once, everything floods you. The exhaustion, the pain, the hunger, thirst, grief wrapping around your bones and chaining you to the ground.

It’s over.

The minute he put the ring on your finger, it would mean it was over. No more blood, no more fighting.

Just like he promised.

You barely croak out his name before you fall to your knees. You trust him to catch you, and he does.

[THREE YEARS LATER]

Just after the Rumbling had stopped, you had gone back to Paradis alone and came back with three children to a man who was still uncertain in a world that was changing.

Since then, you’ve learned so much about the world, about yourself, about Reiner.

How he’s seized by night terrors even now, just like you, and how one thing that soothes it is going out for a walk while the sun still simmers below the horizon, the sky a dark navy blue spliced with orange rays. The intricate details like him making a point to tie his own tie because his father never taught him how or the way he has to chug his coffee so he has enough energy to get through the day.

And some days are horrible, haunting, but now, it is far outweighed by the good. He teaches Xav how to dress smart, takes the girls out shopping. Sometimes, he’s spotted around Liberio with a flame-haired boy riding his shoulders, you trailing behind hiding a smile behind some ice-cream.

Different nations, foods, cultures surround you now—citizens of countries coming to settle down roots, spread cuisine to Marley. The idea before, of humans so different than you but still similar at the root of it all, existing, still blows your mind. The technologies that you had never seen before, languages you’d never heard, sights you’d never seen, had all swarmed you as you stepped into a new world with him.

But there is always one thing you’ll come back to.

Leaning against the railing in the port city Reiner told you was the harbour he had left twelve years ago, and returned to seven years ago, you watch the clouds travel in slow drags across the pale blue canvas hung high above your head. The water spans for as far as you can see, glimmering under the sun and gorgeous enough to take your breath away. You pull at your coat across your chest absently, ignoring the tender growl of your stomach.

Breathing in the salty wind, you feel your chest expand at the litle fishing boats a little ways out.

Reiner was right. You don’t get sick of the sea. You never will—not of this much water. You still remember the first time you had swam in it, the salt-water making your hair crisp, the cold sweat forming on your your sun-warmed skin.

You feel a hand on your shoulder. Looking up, you spot blonde hair and warm eyes and smile. Your heart flutters a bit. You shift on your feet.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Reiner leans down beside you, and you clasp your hands, letting the sea wind curl against your neck. Reaching to slip his hand in between yours, he sighs and you lean against his shoulder, glancing at their pile of interlaced fingers. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” you whisper, although even still, you can feel a numbing at your fingertips. You remember what it was like to be a Titan, even now. The sensations haunt you—flashes of your own mutated body, the grotesque meat of your hands sinking into the ankles of the man beside you, the bloodcurdling roar spilling out of your throat.

Glancing at their fingers, you watch the flashes of silver of the rings play in the sunlight, your band now having a matching counterpart on his own hand. You grasp his hands tightly, bringing them up to your lips and his own grip tightens when you dust a kiss gently along his scarred knuckles.

“No,” you finally say at length. “I’m not okay. Going back to Paradis makes me nervous as hell, but we’ll manage.” He nods slowly, and you let go of his hands to wrap your arms around his neck. His own encircle your waist, pulling you flush against him and your eyes close at the familiar warmth—a warmth you’ve woken up next to most days for the past three years.

“Have you eaten yet?” he murmurs, and your fingers play with the soft edges teasing at your pads as his nose presses against your cheek. Your eyes flutter at the soft heat emanating from his skin, and you shake your head, melting against him. With one arm still around you, he slants his body away from just enough to pull a bag out of his pocket and it crinkles as he hands it to you. Taking it, you frown and look inside.

A cream bun. You can’t help the crumbling in your expression and Reiner holds your face in his hands carefully, kissing the corner of your mouth.

“Let’s stay positive,” he whispers. “We don’t know the situation until we get there and Historia briefs us.”

“I know,” you whisper and his entire expression eases at your words. His eyes gaze at you as if you’re the sole centre of his universe, and he cups your jaw more insistently, pulling you in for a gentle kiss, one you ease into, your eyes fluttering shut as his tongue traces the seam of your mouth. Laughing, you feel his little nose scrunch and your heart bounds up into your throat as he pulls back only to kiss you again, softer this time.

“Get a room!” A sharp female voice ruins their moment and you pull back just enough to see a red-headed boy running towards them and Reiner crouches down just in time to scoop Xavier up.

“When are you getting married?” he demands. “I was promised cake when you guys got married.”

“I dunno. When you move out of the house I guess,” you tease and Xavier pouts, rubbing at the side of his nose with the heel of his palm.

“Besides, you got cake for your seventh birthday, buddy,” Reiner groans as the boy twists in his arms. “You’re getting heavy. What are you feeding him?” he adds, smiling roguishly at you and you roll your eyes as Alina and Anya approach, sun hats protecting them from the glaring sun. Alina, grocery bags in hand, waves. Anya, who’d been the one to shout, tucks her coin purse back into her bag before flashing you a great big smile.

Only fifteen and seventeen. You can barely recall what it’s like being that young anymore, but you’re grateful they didn’t spend it the way you did. They get to know beauty, and no limits at all. The former comes naturally, the latter is partially because Reiner spoils them rotten.

Alina picks a flower with velvety purple petals from a bouquet she cradles in her arm, extending it to you.

“For good luck,” she says. “And protection.” Your heart melts at her words and you pause for a moment, looking from the gorgeous bloom to Reiner, occupied with the boy in his arms making silly faces at him. Then, without another moment, you sneak the flower behind his ear and he reaches up immediately to hold it against his head, turning to you in surprise.

“To protect the both of us,” you explain.

“Thank you. I’ll be extra careful now.” He looks at the girls, setting his free hand on Alina’s head heavily and she flushes, smiling grandly. “You three behave while we’re gone, alright?”

You nod. “Listen to Levi.”

“And listen to your sister,” Reiner adds to Alina and Xavier. The former rolls her eyes, the latter sticks out his tongue. “I’ll miss you.”

This is their home—their family that tumbles together into a huge hug, and you can’t help but stand back, watching how they all seem to merge into one unit, unaware of where one part of their reach ends and another begins.

As Reiner pulls you into the hug, your heart soars through your body, effortlessly pounding in your throat and in your fingers and everywhere at once. Liquid heat pools everywhere as Xavier screws up his face when you kiss his cheek, the same way Reiner does after he’s eaten something sour.

And maybe it’s a bit different, or a bit broken, the shards of their bloody history still poking at their heels whenever they think you’ve forgotten them, and it’s most definitely not perfect, but you would rather have it like this then anything else.

“Hey, guys!” Breaking apart, the family look over to see Armin, Annie, and Pieck walking over. Gabi and Falco meander a little bit behind, pushing Levi in his wheelchair, and Jean and Connie are running not far behind them, shouting at one another. You stifle a laugh and Xavier shimmies out of Reiner’s hold to run towards them. The girls follow after him, trying to hold back their runs but the closer they get, you can tell the more frantic they are to say goodbye.

So this is what they’ve made a peace. Something, you hope, is good.

Annie bypasses them quickly, making her way over to you and you survey her face as Reiner squeezes your shoulder, walking over to their friends. Her blue eyes are fixed on your face, and you feel your lips curving into a smile as she shoves her hands in her pockets. Her hair is swaying in the wind, gleaming flaxen, and you remind yourself, not for the first time, that Armin and Annie’s kids, if they ever decide they want them, will be gorgeous.

Hope for the future, and all that.

She stops in front of you, tucking a strand behind her ear.

“So,” she says at length, “we’re going back to Paradis. I’m surprised you decided to come with us. You don’t owe any of us anything.”

“I know. But… you’re my best friend. You do the talking, I fly the getaway plane, right?”

“Yeah. There used to be a time when it probably would’ve been the opposite.”

You nod, and they stand in silence for a moment, watching each other. Two women who should not have been friends, but were against all odds. You don’t think you would be here today if it weren’t for Annie.

Your heart lurches and you take a step forward just as she does, her mouth open to say something. You throw your arms around her and she lets out a noise in surprise as you close your eyes. Arms coming underneath yours, her hands dig into your shoulders and you smile against soft hair as she sighs, easing into your hug.

“Finally working together on an actual assignment,” you mumble and her head tilts as her small frame shifts, a hand patting you on the back as a sign for you to back up. “Just like we always said we would.”

Bluntly: “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“You, too.” Pulling back, the two look at one another for another soft moment before you remember the bag in your hand and you shift the bun up in the bag, extending it towards her. “Want some?” Her eyebrows rise in faint delight, before she’s reaching over, pinching and tearing a piece off.

You grin and do the same and you gesture for her to come stand by the rails with you, stuffing the bag into your coat pocket. Leaning against the warm metal again, you hear a seagull call. The plane you’ll be flying to Paradis floats on the water, the technicians giving it the final check before you take off.

If anything goes wrong while you help prepare and oversee accommodations for the rest of the ambassador group, you’ll remember to fire the black signal flare, but you trust Historia. You trust your friends.

You glance over at them, all laughing, and you notice that the flower has gone from Reiner to Pieck, who’s taking it out of her dark hair to tuck it into Jean’s, and his cheeks redden as he brushes it more securely behind his ear.

Annie catches your attention again, pointing out idly that they’ll have to separate soon when they finish with the plane, and you tell her to just wait a couple minutes more as Reiner catches your gaze. Setting Xav, who has somehow wormed his way back into his arms, down, he walks back over to you, and his hand trails purposefully over your back before resting at the nape of your neck, a reassuring weight on your body.

“You guys okay?”

“We’re fine,” Annie replies. “You have a clingy boyfriend,” she tells you.

“I think it’s charming.”

She rolls her eyes. Reiner smiles, and you pat the railing beside you—silent invitation. He leans in on your other side, clasping his hands and watching the fishermen pull themselves to shore, singing a tune to each other—one familiar to all three of them and one that you wish you could get out of your head.

“Soon may the Wellerman come…”

A faint breeze tickling at your fingertips as a sharp call for embarkment splits the harbour, you simply sigh and look over at Reiner. “I just want these last few moments to last.” His eyes meet yours, and he leans forward to press a kiss between your eyes. Annie lets out a soft noise of disgust and you bump your hip against her as Reiner pulls back.

Closing your eyes and lifting your head to the wind, you can almost imagine the one person missing standing on the other side of Annie, dark hair like spun, stained bronze and eyes like warm chocolate. He’d smile and tell them not to worry in that sincere way of his that makes you believe every word he says—as long as they were careful, they wouldn’t walk into any traps.

Your chest aches, and your lips tug into a heart-wrenching smile as you begin to sing along. Reiner slips a hand in between yours, pressing his temple against your head and you loop your other arm through Annie’s.

She rests her head on your shoulder, listening to your voice, eyes on the sailors bringing in their haul below them. Reiner hums the shanty softly, distractedly, eyes cast across the sea.

You tilt your head up to the sky, at the stars you cannot see but will join one day, and smile.

258 notes · View notes