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duplicity | inbox
hey, this is murphy. i didn't pick up because i don't want to talk to you.
audio ○ text ○ video ○ spam etc
hey, this is murphy. i didn't pick up because i don't want to talk to you.
hey, this is murphy. i didn't pick up because i don't want to talk to you.
a couple days after their argument, tbh, bc he wouldn't have kept this up for long
welp, they get jack as he is. jack, the selfish, bitter, terrified little asshole that he is. again, murphy's paying the price for jack having his head stuck up his own ass.
while jack's been stopping by to see murphy in the hospital every single day since the attack, but he'd missed yesterday, and he'd felt like a fucking jackass for ditching him. clearly, duplicity has been softening him, because jack can only stand the one day of it before he's back in the chair next to murphy's hospital bed. thankfully, he was asleep when jack came in, and he took a moment to look over him. it's been a couple weeks since the attack, and the lighter bruises are clearing up, less black and deep purple around murphy's throat, more a vague yellow and pink. he still looks so goddamn broken, and jack's glad he came when none of the others were around, because it starts to choke him up, and his pale ass skin has never done him any favors in hiding when he gets teary.
jack waits in the chair next to the bed, not climbing into it with him this time, but he weaves his fingers between murphy's and pillows the side of his head on their forearms, pressed side by side. maybe it's the motion that wakes him up, or the touch, or maybe murphy was awake the whole damn time and jack was too busy hating himself to notice, but when his eyes blink open, jack watches him from where he is for a still handful of seconds. ]
I'm sorry. [ he murmurs, voice with an embarrassing, but barely there kind of squeak to it. things he doesn't care about anymore when it comes to murphy. ] I can't lose you.
[ and he can't lose bucky, either. he has no fucking clue how to do this. ]
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The drugs help, Murphy sleeps, but it’s a dreamless sleep. It’s just a calm blackness that swallows him whole. Instinctually, even as he wakes, Murphy squeezes the hand that is holding is. He makes a sound, something of a gravelly hum.
He sucks in a breath of air through his nose and slowly expells it right out with a soft sigh. As his vision focuses, Murphy recognizes the face and the voice that owns the face. His expression remains flat, an unyielding impassiveness as Murphy stares at Jack. A lot has happened in a very short amount of time and the weight of it has Murphy nearly choking beneath it.
Murphy hasn’t said anything yet, the seconds feel likes minutes and minutes feel like hours. A clockless moment later, Murphy slips his hand from Jack’s and uses his elbows to prop himself up a little. And, for the sake of not looking more like a weak ass bitch, holds in his wince. ]
I can’t be around him.
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so, for nothing, essentially. he made murphy feel like shit for absolutely nothing.
watching him now, jack can't blame him for the distance, for pulling away, for any of it. jack was supposed to have his back, and he didn't. enough he ended up here to begin with. ]
I know.
[ honestly, jack's just glad his face isn't setting murphy off. while there's plenty of difference between him and barnes, you can't ignore what's identical beneath it. ]
I would never ask you to be.
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His anger flickers for a moment. Murphy's hurt but he can't tell what is hurting more, his body or the pang of pain on his heart. But he can't, he's already looking pathetic, vulnerable and weak. Murphy needs to keep some of his dignity, whatever that is left in any case. ]
Why are you here, then [ , Murphy asks, his voice already going wet. He leans back, rests his head against the pillow so he can look up at the ceiling. The sting of his eyes, tears can't roll down his cheek if he's laying like this.
Maybe gravity won't be a bitch to him right now. ]
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To say I’m sorry.
[ he murmurs, quiet and sheepish, looking down at the bedsheets under his empty hands, swallowing back against a lump in his throat. No one’s in here, no one’s listening, and even if they were, tehy wouldn’t give a shit, and still, that anxiety creeps up jack’s spine.
He doesn’t look up as he tells him. ]
And I miss you.
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If Murphy had the energy, he might have turned on his side so he was facing away from him because that's how you deal with your issues. They're gone if you can't see them, right? That's why he fucked off to the other side of the ring, he couldn't look at all his fuck ups. He could turn a blind eye to all the concerning and disapproving looks. The silence during meals ate away at him more than he could have imagined.
So he curls in himself and just waits until people forget about him. It hurts less than people leaving him first. The pain is still there but maybe it just hurts a little bit less? Murphy can't tell the difference.
Jack can afford a spared glance from Murphy, a sidelong look. ]
How can you go to him after he tried to kill both of us?
Jack Has A Lot Of Feelings: Part 468435143
I’ve seen POWs, I’ve been one, and I’ve seen torture and interrogation, but what they did to him? Most countries wouldn’t even let you do it to lab rats. [ it comes in a sad, quiet voice, and while emotion doesn’t often show on jack’s features in a genuine way, he’s already wrapped up in it from missing murphy. It’s too hard to keep this choked down as well, splotches of red pulling up on pale skin around his eyes, cheeks, nose and lips. ] There’s a machine. They’d have to put a mouthguard between his teeth, because the first time they tried it, he shattered a few of them from the pain of it. Two metal plates came down around either side of his head, locking down around his skull, and… they put him through electric shocks so intense it burned every memory of who he was, where he came from and the life he’d had out of his head.
[ Jack breathes out slow, sniffles, and runs his nose against his sleeve. He hates thinking about that file. He hates thinking of the man he’s known, who held him while he sobbed, who’s talked him through panic attacks and listed off what things he finds beautiful about him, and been everything that the words safem comfort, contentment and belonging mean to him, being put into that machine… and made to experience so much pain that it could alter his mind. It breaks his fucking heart. ]
To turn him back to him, Will had to— [ jack sucks his lips against his teeth, remembering watching this, and he doesn’t have the luxury of being able to get lost inside his head right now, already too raw and out in the open with murphy. He swallows back against emotion and keeps going. ] He had to act like one of the Soldier’s handlers, and God— The man who punched through my door, who nearly broke your neck? He was terrified of answering a single question wrong. He couldn’t even understand the concept of being an autonomous creature with a choice in any of it, he was just scared, like an abused dog that can’t understand why it’s being beaten. Just of a question. I watched him shake, and I listened to him scream and sob like his soul was being ripped out of him, before we got Bucky back. Or, someone who could actually recognize the people around him that he’s known for months, for decades.
[ it was a haunting thing, and jack’s still having nightmares about it. Especially seeing as, at this point in time, jack still hasn’t seen his bucky really come back. Only a catatonic husk. No longer the winter soldier, but not the man he knew either. God, but he’s so fucking terrified they won’t ever get him back. ]
I’m sorry, but I— I can’t look at him and see a monster. [ That’s not what something evil looks like, and leaving him with the blame is doing exactly what the torture was designed for - giving someone truly twisted a scapegoat formed from a victim. jack has to take a second to scrub the heel of his palm against his eye, pushing tears out of them. he hasn't really taken a second to really feel about this yet, and here, with murphy so hurt, and bucky maybe never coming back, and jack helpless to do anything that feels right, it's all he can do not to just sob. ] If I knew who read him the words, believe me, Murph, I would rip out their spine and gift it to you on a silver platter with a goddamn bow. But this wasn't Bucky.