I'll Keep This Secret For You

Chapter 130

You stand in front of your husband, so close that you're almost touching, but you're not. He hasn't held you all week. His head hangs as you fix his black tie. Not because he's watching you do it... but because that's how he's been all week.

Depressed.

There's no way around it.

And you can't blame him either.

This is hard enough for you let alone him and Peggy. You can't even begin to imagine what they are going through.

You've hardly been able to reach him, to get through to him all week. He's locked himself away in the bedroom and whenever you try to speak to him he turns the other way.

"Just leave me alone, please." Is all he would say. "I just need some time."

Today is the first day you have managed to get him out of bed. And that's only because it's the day of the funeral.

He looked like a mess this morning, still does really. But at least you managed to drag him into the shower and get him to eat something.

His breath hitches and you can see his chest starting to heave, overcome by his grief again.

"Hey." You whisper and gently tilt his chin up so that you can see his face.

He won't make eye contact with you though.

"You can do this." You look at him and nod sincerely. "I love you, and I know that you're strong enough to do this. You have to do it. For him."

He bites his trembling lip, trying to fight back his tears. But all too soon they slip down his cheeks and a sob escapes his mouth. He squeezes his eyes shut, causing more tears to spill out as his face contorts with some sort of twisted agony.

It's so hard for you to see him like this. It hurts you that he won't open up to you. But for him, this is such a sudden loss of someone he loves so dearly that it must be the same kind of pain as he felt when he lost his parents, if not worse after everything he and Steve went through together. And you were there to see how much of a toll that took on him as just a teenager. You know how he deals with grief. It's the same this time as last. He needs time. He will come to you when he's ready.

Steve was probably the person he could trust most in this world, perhaps even more so than you. Or at least in a different way.

The last week has been so, so hard for everyone. The day that it happened, once they all managed to pry you away from each other and you watched as they zipped Steve up into a body bag and cart him away, it's like a shadow was cast over everyone and has been there ever since.

Bucky didn't want to let him go. He clung onto him and begged the police not to take him. He thought they were going to use his body for science and cut him up and tear him apart. Howard promised that he wouldn't let that happen and that they would get his body back so that S.H.I.E.L.D could deal with it themselves, the way that the people closest to him felt best.

With Bucky clearly needing medical attention himself it was so hard to get him to agree. He kept saying he was fine and shoving people away from him. In a way he was almost being aggressive. It was actually kind of scary. But finally, once the adrenaline of everything that had happened wore off and he started shivering and getting weak to the point of almost passing out, his body just too fatigued from the exertion, they got him on a stretcher and took him back to the S.H.I.E.L.D medical centre where they got him on some fluids, treated his minor wounds an Howard fixed his arm.

He seemed okay actually the next day, all things considered. But When he came home, that's when he stopped interacting with anyone.

Poor Peggy has had to just carry on despite her heartbreak, what with having too small children. You can tell that all she wants to do is crawl into a hole and shut the world out for a while while she deals with and processes her grief.