MCA #9, Sunday Night
Aug. 2nd, 2009 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
screwyoumarvelThe first time around, the nightmares had been simple. He fell. Bucky died. (But he'd woken up, and Bucky hadn't died after all, even though it took him over a decade to find that out.) Sometimes there were scenes from the war mixed in for flavor, but mostly, that was it. He'd gotten past it eventually, started sleeping soundly more nights than he didn't. He'd moved forward. He'd gotten new nightmares, about Tony and Thor and Clint and Tony and Wanda and Pietro and Tony. About not being able to save them, either. A thousand scenarios; a million ways missions could have gone wrong. But it was better than the ice that still encroached on his dreams, now and again.
The second time around, he hadn't dreamed his death on the courthouse steps as often as what led up to it, starting with Wanda and ending with Tony hating him, refusing to listen, putting them all in danger to toe the line. He'd dreamed that ugly confrontation in the cell, and he didn't even have the consolation of being able to tell himself it wasn't real when he woke up. (Someone had sent him a recording, a few months after he'd revealed himself and come back, of Tony talking to his body. He'd believe it's real, and it might help, except Tony still won't talk to him.) And then he'd met another Tony and it had almost been like it was okay, like he had his friend back. He still couldn't look Sharon in the eye if he tried, but. He'd gotten better.
This time, it went like this: His body's telling him to attack, that he wants that, that the life pulsing under that skin is his for the taking, and Steve is begging Tony to kill him and Tony's looking at him with such revulsion and his eyes are brown--no, blue, and he's standing on the other side of prison bars in the armor and he's telling Steve he's wrong, and he knows he's wrong. He can feel it down in his bones, in how he can't take his eyes off that scar on Tony's neck that he put there, he hurt his friend, and Tony's eyes are brown and he's killing him, and it's what Steve wants but he's being pulled apart into a billion pieces and it hurts and the last thing he sees is Tony hating him and--
He woke up, gasping and clutching his chest, and if it took a long time for his breathing and heart rate to return to normal, he was okay with that. At least he still breathed and had a pulse. At least he wasn't...that. Eventually, he calmed again, and laid down to will himself back to sleep. But sleep wouldn't come, and he finally resigned himself to getting up and working out until dawn.
He didn't need to sleep enough to make it worth it.
((NFI))
The second time around, he hadn't dreamed his death on the courthouse steps as often as what led up to it, starting with Wanda and ending with Tony hating him, refusing to listen, putting them all in danger to toe the line. He'd dreamed that ugly confrontation in the cell, and he didn't even have the consolation of being able to tell himself it wasn't real when he woke up. (Someone had sent him a recording, a few months after he'd revealed himself and come back, of Tony talking to his body. He'd believe it's real, and it might help, except Tony still won't talk to him.) And then he'd met another Tony and it had almost been like it was okay, like he had his friend back. He still couldn't look Sharon in the eye if he tried, but. He'd gotten better.
This time, it went like this: His body's telling him to attack, that he wants that, that the life pulsing under that skin is his for the taking, and Steve is begging Tony to kill him and Tony's looking at him with such revulsion and his eyes are brown--no, blue, and he's standing on the other side of prison bars in the armor and he's telling Steve he's wrong, and he knows he's wrong. He can feel it down in his bones, in how he can't take his eyes off that scar on Tony's neck that he put there, he hurt his friend, and Tony's eyes are brown and he's killing him, and it's what Steve wants but he's being pulled apart into a billion pieces and it hurts and the last thing he sees is Tony hating him and--
He woke up, gasping and clutching his chest, and if it took a long time for his breathing and heart rate to return to normal, he was okay with that. At least he still breathed and had a pulse. At least he wasn't...that. Eventually, he calmed again, and laid down to will himself back to sleep. But sleep wouldn't come, and he finally resigned himself to getting up and working out until dawn.
He didn't need to sleep enough to make it worth it.
((NFI))
