onlyforthedream | Real Estate.

Being free to walk the island is almost as gratifying as being free to scour it will be. I'm taking care with my shoulder and the mostly-healed incision long my right side. A tropical environment is rife with opportunities for infection, as careful as I may be and as skilled as the clinic staff demonstrably is. Still, I'm out of bed, feeling better than I have in weeks- in just about as long as I can remember, if I'm honest- out in just blue jeans and a white t-shirt, surveying the layout of the place. There are boardwalks that lead out to the beach, well trodden paths, a sizable junkyard, it looks like- and people's homes. Some look like traditional, stilted island huts, of a good size and solid build. Some look more like small, modern houses. It definitely feels like a settlement, though, a community. One that I am not at present a part of.

I follow a trail south, crossing a creek as I do, and come out on sand that slopes down to ocean that looks like it goes on for forever. It's a pretty stretch- you can see a sort of curling peninsula that comes off the main body of the island a little ways out, like a sandbar. The place where the island curves northward, maybe the next direction I'll head, is lush and a darker green where it curves around the base of the mountain.

It's nice, down here. After a moment I turn and start to walk in the direction of what I have been told is dinosaur territory, and as I go I see a figure that is instantly familiar. I lift a hand, my right one come to that, in greeting.

"Bucky."

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"I thought I was going to go crazy," I say truthfully, ambling over.

"But I did not 'sweet talk' Dr. Grey."

"Bull," says Bucky once he's inhaled a gulp of water, dragging the back of his arm along his mouth. He's in no shape just yet to be offering a more eloquent argument, but he figures that's the pertinent information, regardless; Steve Rogers is a persuasive man in rhetoric as much as action, whether he acknowledges it or not.

I shake my head a little.

"We have a deal. I still check in in the evenings, I don't do anything too strenuous. She wouldn't have agreed to it if I wasn't in the clear, Buck. You can stop worrying," I add with a very tightly reined in and half wry smile.

"I'm not worrying," Bucky's quick to counter, taking the last of his gulping breaths before they finally start to level out. The humidity gives the air the consistency of soup, but the added challenge is welcome when there's little else to do; that's the nature of prison.

"It's good to see you out and about. I just don't want you to squander it, and end up back in that damn shoebox again."

"Trust me," I tell him, rubbing a hand over the back of my neck, "I'm appreciative enough of being out of there that it would take little short of a natural disaster to put me back in." I turn my head to look back out at the water and curling slip of land that slices through it.

"So far my earlier estimation stands- beautiful. You'd think if they wanted to keep everyone's mind off it being an enforced vacation, they would have made it bigger, though."

Something in Bucky's expression shifts, turns darker; taking Steve's cue, he looks away to stare at the water. This isn't the stretch of beach on which he came to shore months ago, but it doesn't look especially different, either.

"I'm not so sure they want to keep people's minds off of anything."

"Yet some people see this place as a reprieve, a haven, an actual fresh start." I turn my attention back to Bucky, a more compelling and, in some ways, puzzling point than the island.

"So are we to believe that it was designed to be both?"

His thoughts are a million miles away. As always, Bucky has to push Zemo's words out of his head, that he doesn't deserve a blank slate, that he's been handed too many already. What makes it all the more difficult is that Bucky agrees, to an extent. He was only a passenger all those years, a prisoner of his own mind, but his hands inflicted so much damage to so many people. And given that this place, this haven sees a need to remind him of his past at every opportunity, he can't see it as anything but a prison; he'd sooner call it purgatory, though he knows he's not dead.

"I don't think I'm the guy to ask," Bucky says after a long moment, his gaze staying on the water.

"You're here, Bucky," I point out.

"I think that makes you just the guy to ask."

Bucky arches an eyebrow, turning to give Steve a sidelong glance.

"That so?"

"You'd know better than I would," I point out.

"This is a pretty nice stretch of sand," I say, and I'm not sure if I'm taking an out or offering Bucky one. All I know is, there'll come a time when we'll have to stick to one topic, however uncomfortable it may be, for more than ten seconds.

"There are vacant huts around, but nothing down this way. I was thinking of speaking to- what's the man's name? Duck MacDonald? About starting construction."

For a moment I'm almost disappointed, but then I remember... He doesn't know where I live. Admittedly, it's not the reaction I would've expected from myself. Our situation is a whole lot more complicated than either of us have ever given voice to... And for good reason.

Bucky frowns a little, shaking his head, and says, "For what it's worth, I was advised against living on the beach by a girl who'd lost her hut in a hurricane. It's a helluva view, but you might be better off inland."

I absently plant one hand on my hip and rub the other across the back of my neck.

"Good point. Guess I got used to waterfront property, although my panorama view of the Upper Bay and Jersey was a little less pristine than this one would be." I glance at Bucky, smiling barely.

"I had a great look at Liberty Island from the kitchen, though."

"I know," says Bucky, not really thinking about the implications until after the words have already left his mouth. He's told Steve plenty about the future already, it's true, but Bucky's been careful about divulging his own part in it, for a number of reasons, his natural inclination towards reticence in regards to himself chief among them. Instead of lingering, though, he presses on in the hopes Steve won't ask for clarification.

"There's a stream that runs down from the mountain. It's not the ocean, but it's something."

My gaze sharpens for a moment at that brief glimpse into a future I missed. I never had Bucky over to the house, not before I- apparently- died. It's a depressing prospect, that the circumstances for Bucky seeing the place could be as innocent as his coming over once I- again, apparently- came back, or that it could have happened in the interim.

"I'll take a look," I tell him, scanning the lush rise of the island's trees, the mountain not so far off.

"Where did you set up shop?"

"...by, uh, the stream that runs down from the mountain," Bucky admits, biting back a short laugh that he tries to pass off as a cough. It's silly; he's spent so much time trying to run away from Steve since he got his memories back, but Jason's nagging apparently planted a few ideas in Bucky's head.

Rolling his eyes, he adds, "I'm just a little north of here. Had the same idea as you, with the water."

I've thought about the conversation I had with Jason that first day numerous times, of course, but to have come around to it with Bucky is, I have to admit, gratifying. I had meant what I'd said- that I would give Bucky the space he needed, not just regardless of but in part due to the number of questions I have, the things that lie between us that I don't think either one of us is entirely equipped to resolve.

It would be a lie to say I didn't want to regain the closeness we once had. It won't be the same- it can't be, because we're very different people than we were- but for whatever reason, the thought of being neighbors feels like a good first step.

"Show me," I say with a nod, and it's half a request for a look at the life Bucky's set up here.

It's a simple request, one Bucky honestly should've expected, but he's almost taken aback by it. He blinks once, his expression going blank for just a moment before he gathers himself, and musters up a smile.

"Yeah, of course," he says, shaking his head slightly, and he briefly claps a hand to Steve's good shoulder. "C'mon."

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