[ It's a blow he knows he needs to be prepared for and shield himself from, but doesn't. Some hits you just take. He lets Bucky go, because what else is there to do.
It's a reminder, if nothing else. The wrong Bucky for Sam, and the wrong Cap for Bucky. This place spit them out twisted up and ripped away from the cloth they're cut from. There's no forcing some realizations. Bucky still deserves to have these truths at his fingertips for when he needs them, if he ever will, like months of text messages going unanswered. And Sam knows he can't fault the man for needing time and space, and won't treat him differently for it.
Sam takes a long deliberate breath and waits until Bucky's out of sight to push the shield back off the table, lean it against the side, out of sight. Goes back to fixing and recalibrating what he can fix and recalibrate.
It's a weird, quietly resigned kind of loss, of a friend and partner who's never actually become either, and perhaps never will. ]
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It's a reminder, if nothing else. The wrong Bucky for Sam, and the wrong Cap for Bucky. This place spit them out twisted up and ripped away from the cloth they're cut from. There's no forcing some realizations. Bucky still deserves to have these truths at his fingertips for when he needs them, if he ever will, like months of text messages going unanswered. And Sam knows he can't fault the man for needing time and space, and won't treat him differently for it.
Sam takes a long deliberate breath and waits until Bucky's out of sight to push the shield back off the table, lean it against the side, out of sight. Goes back to fixing and recalibrating what he can fix and recalibrate.
It's a weird, quietly resigned kind of loss, of a friend and partner who's never actually become either, and perhaps never will. ]