Title: No safer place
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Characters: Bucky Barnes/Darcy Lewis
Rating: Teen
Length: 763 words
Content notes: Contains angst, relationship breakup, swearwords, unhappy ending
Author notes: Since the thing I was trying to write for Safe is now at 6,000 words and counting *twitch*, and I have a bang fic to finish this weekend, I opted for a short and unsweet bit of angst to bridge the gap
Summary: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

“Why?” Bucky asks, raw and empty and awful, and Darcy hesitates. She’s got one hand on the doorknob, the metal cool and sweet under her palm, and the other curled around the strap of her rucksack, tight enough that she’s sure the webbing is leaving an imprint on her skin; abrasive and uncomfortable and indelible, at least for now.

Not unlike Bucky, if she’s being fair.

“It’s different with him,” she hedges, and Bucky barks out an ugly laugh that makes the hairs on the back of Darcy’s neck stand straight on edge.

“Been takin’ notes, doll?” he asks, a little meanly. They burrow in, those words, under Darcy’s ribcage in a way that makes it painful to breath and Darcy sucks in her next breath as more of a hiss.

“You make me feel everything,” she says, carefully, and she hates herself a little for the small flare of hope she sees curl in his eyes, hates even more the way that pulling out the next few words scrapes her throat like nails on a chalkboard. “But he makes me feel safe and I, I’m sorry Bucky, but I need that right now.”

The unspoken and you can’t give it to me hangs in the air, heavy and suffocating enough that Darcy’s fingers itch to take it back. She sees the word land, solid as a blow, and the split second when Bucky just… stops. His expression smooths over, his mouth a flat line and his eyes unreadable. There’s a wealth of unspoken truths in there; stuff that Bucky doesn’t want to hear, stuff that Darcy can’t say, stuff that neither of them wants to admit. That, Darcy thinks, is half their goddamn problem.

“You should go,” Bucky says, indifferent to the point of cruelty, and it’s Darcy turn to wince, because she never meant to hurt him, and she never meant to hurt herself. And yet, here they are and, for all the she’s the one leaving, it still feels like her heart is breaking.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and she’s not sure whether she’s apologising to him or to herself. She’s not sure it matters much either way.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, but Darcy doesn’t think it’s an agreement, or even an absolution so much as an acknowledgement. She’s doesn’t know if he forgives her.

She knows she doesn’t forgive herself.

“Just go,” Bucky says, again, words like the casual flick of a whip, and they scour against Darcy; cutting deep to places she’s not sure she knows how to heal. If she was braver, she thinks she’d stay. Challenge him, confront him, argue it out until they reached an equilibrium

Then again, if she was braver, they wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.

Bucky turns his back as she opens the door; the dismissal so clear he might as well have hired a billboard in Time Square. Darcy squeezes the doorknob hard enough to make her knuckles creak and her wrist ache. When the tears well up, blurring her vision, and leaving her eyelashes heavy and scratchy, she tells herself it’s just a natural reaction to the pain. She tells herself it’s not because it hurts in a whole other way. She almost believes it.

But then. Darcy’s been telling herself a whole world of shit since New Mexico.

“I’m sorry,” she says, again, helplessly. “Okay? I thought… well, whatever. Doesn’t matter. I’m sorry.”

Her confession fills the space between them, tremulous and vulnerable, and Darcy doesn’t want to wait to see if he responds, to know how it feels if he doesn’t. Curiosity’s a murderous bitch, and sometimes, sometimes, she thinks it’s safer not to know. She slips out of the room, fingers wrapped right around her rucksack strap and her eyes firmly fixed on the corridor ahead of her. She can’t look back; she’s not sure she can do this if he follows her.

Even knowing that, the masochist in her still leaves the door ajar as she leaves, just in case, and it’s stupid and dangerous and tempting fate, and Darcy might as well paint a target on her back and ask to get cupid’d. But, there’s a jagged-edged empty feeling in her chest, that throbs in time with her pulse in a low ache, and it’s ironic, because Darcy’s pretty sure the point of trying to be safe was not to get hurt, but there it is. There’s no point being safe if she’s already sorry.

As far as she can tell, the only thing that follows her out of Bucky’s apartment is the silence.