Chapter update: Don't Wait Up for Me

[gwyn]

Don’t Wait Up for Me (35994 words) by gwyneth rhys
Chapter 4: Blind Alley

Chapter Summary: “It feels like a dream,” Bucky said idly, and he recalled it: that liminal moment when the ice came down and he wasn’t blank and black inside just yet, and flashes of a life he knew couldn’t have been his shone in his mind.

An informal announcement since I'm hoping to have the completed one later. There’s one more chapter, the epilogue, coming very shortly, maybe even by tonight if I can get rewrites done. 

Comments

Re: incoherent livereading comments

[kore]

Oh wow, that never occurred to me, to do a timestamp about Sam and Bucky's flying lessons. Ha. I actually like thinking of that, especially since Sam gets so outraged about Bucky's terrible behavior.

OMG YES

I always meant to do a timestamp of the throat-tearing incident in Dream of Caramel, which Min correctly advised me to cut a lot out of, but I never felt like anyone would really care, so it's always sat there. But I'll think about that--I'm not sure many people would care about this, either, but if you are interested that could be fun.

Aww, I would care! I'd love it!

I thought about having them go back and just climb down, but then it seemed like well hell, it's summer, Bucky would like to learn to use the wings, he can carry Steve with him…

That's awesome, it's so great because it was like a total reclaiming of that awful trauma for them, Bucky falling and Steve watching him and both of them really losing their young selves, their lives, at that moment, and it ties in with resurrection imagery too. I loved it. It felt like they really earned it.

I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I was really worried about the epilogue ruining the ending, like it would…I don't know, mitigate the ending of the real story, but I got talked into doing it.

NOOOOOO IT WAS GREAT. I love how it echoes the "where are we going, the future" line for one thing, which turns so dark in their canon, and the bit about closure, which typically I hate as a concept because it sounds like you close the door on something and it's final or whatever, but you really made it something so much better, about how it's ongoing, a real process. And they've been through SO MUCH, I do want them to be happy, and it's in a realistic and earned way.

(I just hope you want to keep on writing your fics even after CW comes out! I'm sort of afraid it will eclipse TWS and nobody will want to write stuff with that dynamic anymore.)

Re: incoherent livereading comments

[gwyn]

pssst: I'll let you in on a secret--I don't really believe in closure. I mean, maybe there are these highly elevated humans who can achieve something like that, but I just can't imagine that. I remember after my sister died people were talking about closure or moving on or whatever, finding peace and acceptance, and I'd be like "what does that even look like?"

So for me it's a process of just trying to make it less important and make room for other things, not--ending them, I guess. I can't see how it could be any other way for Bucky, especially, since he will never be free of what they did to him. Last year I went to San Diego for the first time since sis_r died and it was strange but also felt like I'd made an important step. I think both of them could see it as a first step. I'd hope so.

I'm sure so much of that plays into why I love these guys so fucking much.

Re: incoherent livereading comments

[kore]

pssst: I'll let you in on a secret--I don't really believe in closure.

AAAAAAAAAHAHAH YUP

Such a stupid fucking idea, I mean, "closure" like closing a door and lalala, everything is all over and Fixed? People don't work that way. NOBODY works that way. I mean, maybe when we DIE we get "closure" on something, but uh, I don't think that's how most people mean it. For me acceptance is a process, forgiveness is a process, recovery is a process. It's all ongoing. It's like Peter S Beagle said, "There are no happy endings, because nothing ends." Which sounded weird at first to me, because there's death and even entropy, but for everything conscious and alive it's all this ongoing Now.

I remember after my sister died people were talking about closure or moving on or whatever, finding peace and acceptance, and I'd be like "what does that even look like?"

//FACEDESK

Yeah, and it's still a big concept in at least US psychiatry today. You take a pill, you aren't depressed! You do x weeks of PTSD therapy, you no longer have it! Bullshit. It's like, some things you don't get over, and even the not-getting-over is part of dealing with it, if that makes sense, which it probably doesn't. I think there's a huge stigma against grief and depression and dealing with trauma in a way that isn't "Well let's just EMDR ourselves right out of it." But healing isn't erasing, we can't just make things unhappen.

So for me it's a process of just trying to make it less important and make room for other things, not--ending them, I guess. I can't see how it could be any other way for Bucky, especially, since he will never be free of what they did to him.

OH yeah, seriously. It's like that Dr Who ep about van Gogh, the pile of good things and the pile of bad things. I loved that. The bad things don't cancel the good things out, but it works the other way around, too.

Last year I went to San Diego for the first time since sis_r died and it was strange but also felt like I'd made an important step. I think both of them could see it as a first step. I'd hope so.

Aww, I'm glad you did that. It does sound like a real and big first step. A lot of times those are the hardest. At least for me, a lot.