lilies with full hands

written for this avengerkink prompt. bucky is pathologically accepting of touch.
PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS IN THE TAGS. though none of the past traumas themselves are too graphically described, the story is pretty much entirely centred around the aftermath, particularly the resulting issues of consent.
title from virgil's "aeneid."

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter Text

His body is not his own.

This may not be the first thing they teach him, but it is the first thing he learns.

When it hungers and thirsts, he cannot feed it. When its hair grows, he cannot cut it. When it has waste to expel, he cannot choose where to empty it. When it bruises and bleeds, he cannot stop it.

When it freezes, he cannot warm it.

Even after everything else starts to melt away, after all the painstaking minutes and days and weeks and months spent learning how to reclaim what is his, this is the one lesson that remains ingrained within him as deeply as the cold that continues to burrow within the very marrow of his bones.

He may not have his body but at least he has his name, though it doesn’t make him feel much better.

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” the man in blue says to him while everything is falling; the walls are collapsing into themselves and the plane is plummeting into the Potomac and his heart has dropped to his stomach.

Then, weeks later, not in a plane, not wearing blue, the man – Captain Ameri-, no, Steve – is saying “Bucky,” and nothing is falling but he still feels like he is.

“I’m never going to be him,” is the first thing he tells Steve once he’s finally allowed himself to be found.

Steve insists it doesn’t matter. That he doesn't have to be, that he can be whoever he wants.

But the thing is, he wants to be Bucky Barnes, even though it terrifies him, even though he feels like a thief every time he hears that name applied to him and not to the man with his face that he’d read about at the Smithsonian for hours every day for two weeks before finally deciding to give it a go for himself.

The name feels nice but also wrong, like a rank he has not earned, a pleasure he does not deserve to know.

Still, pleasure is pleasure and he’s desperate for it whether he deserves it or not, so he takes it when it’s given and the way Steve’s eyes light up whenever he – James, James Buchanan Barnes, Bucky – responds to the name like it’s his own almost makes it seem like he is actually worthy of it.

Nobody notices it at first because nobody touches him, which sounds more extreme than it actually is, because the pool of potential people from which this ‘nobody’ is drawn is about 98% Steve, who fusses over Bucky with his face and words and everything else except his hands.

Fair enough, Bucky thinks. Thinks of the blood on his own hands and the grotesque topography of his body and his face that is a cheap imitation of some precious ancient relic.

He wouldn’t want to touch himself either.

Sometimes, however, he catches Steve beginning to reach out towards him with the same reflexive ease as a person extending their arm in response to someone else’s offered handshake. He’s always left a little awed by just how natural a motion it seems to be for Steve’s body, how perfected and polished it is, even after all this time of not doing it.

Bucky knows a thing or two about muscle memory. It was, after all, what he operated on for seventy years.

But it’s something that runs a little deeper, a little darker, than mere motor learning that has him disappearing inside himself whenever someone else’s body threatens to overlap with his own.

At first, he thinks that’s why no one will lay a hand on him. His brain may be fried, but he’s not stupid; he sees the way they watch him, like he’s a landmine that will detonate beneath just the slightest pressure. He sees the sad understanding in Natasha's eyes and he knows Sam probably told them all about neurosis and battle exhaustion (“It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder now,” Steve says uncomfortably one night as he’s stripping urine-stained sheets from the bed, Bucky watching him miserably from the doorway, stinking of piss and fear and shame). About how Bucky might not want to be touched after what happened to him.

It’s only when Bucky sees his own reflection in the television screen one afternoon that he realises he’s given them absolutely no indication that he feels this way. He’s sitting on the couch, watching the blank screen as if it was actually playing something. He likes the television when it’s turned off, when it’s quiet and safe, not full of loud colours that are too bright and move too quickly, but he knows Steve hates it when he spends too long staring at nothing so he tries to shift his gaze every now and then to placate him.

Steve comes to sit beside him, arm beginning to curve to fit Bucky's shoulders as he’s lowering himself onto the couch, but, as usual, he stops himself before any actual contact is made and even shifts a couple inches away from Bucky before he finally takes a seat.

Bucky watches all this in the TV screen. Watches the fluid movement of Steve’s arm, interrupted by the split-second of realisation before it withdraws. Watches the sofa sink beneath Steve’s weight. But most attentively of all, Bucky watches himself. The Bucky on the screen does not flinch, does not freeze, does not stiffen, does not seem to react abnormally at all, which seems decidedly odd considering the cacophony that went off like an air raid siren inside his head the moment Steve began reaching towards him.

And then, suddenly, all that noise is replaced by a vast, engulfing silence, so huge that he becomes but a speck. It is a terrifying emptiness the likes of which he has only ever experienced as a sodden, helpless thing being hauled out of a chair whose slick leather and cold metal he can still smell to the point where the new car scent of Natasha’s Corvette Stingray once had him vomiting onto the side of the road and Steve had to come pick them up in his Ford hybrid with the cloth seats.

None of this internal turmoil is visible in the Bucky on the screen, however. If anything, the Bucky on the screen starts to lean in towards Steve, with nearly the exact same instinctive effortlessness as Steve’s initial gesture towards him, though where Steve’s movements are natural and open, Bucky’s are more automatic, mechanical.

It’s only a slight inclination, but certainly enough to be noticeable, to be interpreted as a need for more.

(Show me how much you want this. A malicious purr in his ear, breath hot against his temple.)

Steve must have noticed.

Steve must have noticed that Bucky wanted this (good boy he’s good he’s a good boy) but instead of closing the space between them, he widened it. Bucky takes this to mean that Steve hasn't been acting distant because he's worried about how Bucky might respond to the physical contact. It means the real problem lies in Bucky himself.

Bucky watches the way the thick, toughened flesh around his prosthetic dries and peels off in dead strips and he thinks he understands. Even his own skin doesn’t want to be near him.

When Bucky gets frustrated because he thinks he’s not getting better fast enough, that he’s not doing it well enough if he’s even doing it at all, Sam is the one to put everything back into perspective for him.

It’s Sam who makes petty ‘demands’ like “pass me the remote” or “go take another lap” and doesn’t get mad when Bucky scowls at him instead of listening, just waits patiently for Bucky to realise this and then smiles when he does. It’s Sam who invites himself over for dinner, throws a Chinese food takeout menu at Bucky and tells him to check off what he wants, then after phoning the restaurant Sam points out to Bucky that he had chosen each one of his dishes without panicking or looking to someone else for help. It’s Sam who drags Bucky out for a run and grumbles when he laps him three times in twenty minutes, but once they’re home and changed and Sam has convinced Bucky that Gatorade is safe for human consumption, he reminds Bucky that even just two weeks ago he had been slowing himself down to match Sam’s pace because he didn’t trust himself to make it around the block on his own.

It’s Sam who comforts but doesn’t coddle or condescend, who somehow manages to handle him carefully without making him feel like he’s made of glass.

It’s also Sam who’s with him when he has a panic attack while Steve is out getting groceries, and he asks Bucky if it’s okay to rub his shoulders as Bucky is knelt down before the toilet puking up everything he's eaten that day.

Bucky nods, used to acquiescing while on his knees, and hopes that not saying it out loud makes the yes a little less of a lie, because he likes Sam and would prefer not to lie to him.

Like most things that start out okay and then go horribly wrong, it was probably all Bucky’s own fault.

“On the helicarrier... how did you know?” Steve asks him. “What was the first thing that made you remember?”

Bucky does not answer for a long time, but it’s not because he’s trying to remember, it’s because he already does.

It was the way Steve touched him, though really this means the way Steve fought him, because that was the only contact they’d had by that point (and because Bucky’s understanding of touching and fighting are still so hopelessly intertwined that they might as well be interchangeable words). Steve had touched him as though he felt the pain of each blow he landed on Bucky’s body tenfold, touched him in a way that suggested they used to touch a lot differently, in some other life. Every time a fist came towards his face, Bucky could almost imagine how those fingers would feel if they were uncurled and pressed palm-flat against him.

“It was all in the hands,” Bucky says finally, fatefully, and neither of them realise the road this sentence has sent them on until, like most things that start out okay and then go horribly wrong and are all Bucky’s own fault, it is maybe too late.

After this, Steve slowly starts to use his hands more and more, and, in almost exactly corresponding increments, Bucky slowly starts to disappear.

It’s not a lie, though, about Steve’s hands.

They are a little different every time Bucky remembers them – sometimes small, sometimes big, steady or shaking, clean or charcoal-stained, warm or warmer (nothing really feels cold to either of them anymore, not after the ice), balled up into fists or laid open and tender – but he always recognises them somehow, and by extension, recognises himself.

Sometimes, when the skies are clear enough, he can remember how he has always existed in relation to those hands. He remembers a life where those hands substantiated his very being, letting him know where his body began and where it ended, providing him with comfort and strength, even when they were feeble with fever or split along the knuckles because their owner routinely insisted on picking fights he’d never win.

Bucky knows there is a lot more that those hands used to do for him, do to him, because it’s all coming back to him in clippings and snippets of familiar gestures and recreated touches, except Bucky is pretty sure that when it’d happened the first time around, Steve hadn’t always had to ask if it was okay beforehand.

Which he still does now, even after weeks of Bucky saying nothing but yes, and even for the tiniest things, like giving Bucky a congratulatory pat on the back, or cupping Bucky’s hand with his own, or sitting particularly close to Bucky on the living room couch. It makes Steve’s movements towards Bucky no longer seem as natural as they once were, because even back when Steve would start to reach for him only to stop and draw away again, at least it meant he was so used to being able to touch Bucky freely that he couldn’t even remember how not to. Now, however, his actions have lost all that effortlessness and are instead painstakingly premeditated, and something about this makes Bucky feel sick.

At first he thinks it’s guilt, and maybe part of it is. Guilt that this is yet one more way in which he can never be the person Steve wants him to be, the person that Steve deserves.

But there’s something else to it, something subtler and more insidious, twisting at Bucky’s insides whenever anyone asks if they can touch him. He always says yes, so it’s not his answer or actions that are the problem. Somehow, it’s the question itself. Whenever anyone poses it, he knows he’s doing something wrong, he just can’t quite put his finger on what it is.

So he lets others put their fingers on him, until finally they no longer feel like they have to ask for permission each and every time, and the gnawing thing inside of him settles like a whale carcass sinking soundlessly to the ocean floor.

He learns this means he must be getting better.

“Man, you’re doing really well,” Sam tells him one day, giving his flesh shoulder a light squeeze.

Bucky knows it must be true if Sam is saying it, because Steve is gullible in his hopefulness but Sam is as sharp-eyed as his codename and has less to lose by refusing to pretend everything is okay.

Steve beams at both of them and rests his hand on the back of Bucky’s neck, gently playing with the downy wisps at the base of his hairline.

Bucky nods, glassy-eyed and absent, waiting to be shown which way to tilt his head.

“You used to get your ass kicked a lot,” Bucky says out of nowhere over breakfast, because Steve likes to know when he remembers things.

Steve splutters a little on his coffee. “I... Yeah. I did.” He worries on his lower lip before adding carefully, “You were always there to patch me up, though.”

Normally Steve tries not to talk about the past, resolutely avoids voicing any references or comparisons to the 'old' Bucky, knowing it just makes this Bucky feel guilty and sick and pressured to live up to some impossible standard. Today, however, Bucky feels secure enough to ask to hear some more about it, like a little kid requesting a bedtime story.

They’re just fairytales, after all.

“What did I do?” Bucky asks quietly, because he genuinely wants to know how he used to make Steve feel better so that maybe he can do the same thing now. “To- to help, I mean.”

Steve tries not to show his hopeful excitement at the fact that Bucky is prodding for more information instead of clamming up and disappearing into his bedroom for hours at a time, but even though Steve can keep a stiff upper lip like it’s nobody’s business, in the end his face is too open and honest to really be able to hide much.

“It was all in the hands,” Steve says with a shy smile, echoing Bucky’s fateful words from what feels like so long ago now.

He reaches over across the table to rest his hand over Bucky’s flesh and bone one, which had been curled into a loose fist next to his napkin but goes slack the moment it’s enveloped by someone else’s warmth. Bucky waits with unflinching patience for his hand to be guided. Slid through a pair of restraints, perhaps, or yanked roughly, expectantly, towards the zipper of someone’s trousers.

Steve just gives the hand a tiny squeeze and then lets go.

Bucky frowns, confused, and Steve must think he is confused about what was being said because he starts to explain what he meant.

“There was this Johnson & Johnson first aid kit that hung on the wall of your bathroom,” he says. “Your ma always managed to keep it stocked somehow. I swear, you knew the inside of that kit better than you knew your own wardrobe. You... you’d clean the cuts with iodine and it stung like hell and you’d say that oughta teach me a lesson. Your house had a deep freez— I mean, a freezer, so there was always ice available. You’d wrap a block of it in cloth and press it to wherever was swollen most and you’d run your other hand through my hair as you told me how stupid I was.”

Bucky is silent, engrossed by the story, by the idea that he was once able to deal relief and comfort in the same way that he now doles out death. After a moment he notices that Steve suddenly looks embarrassed.

“Steve...? What is it?”

Steve laughs a little, a sad, affectionate sound and he says, “It’s funny, ‘cause even when it hurt, it was okay, because it was you. You used to joke that I must like getting the tar beaten outta me, what with how often I let it happen, and yeah I guess some of it had to do with what Natasha calls a ‘savior complex,’ but I think what I really liked was... having you around. Afterwards.”

“You’re an idiot,” Bucky states plainly, drawing another laugh from Steve, lighter this time, more melodic.

“You’re a jerk.”

Bucky stiffens unexpectedly at these words, feeling like an actor who’s forgotten his lines, knowing there’s supposed to be more to this exchange than he’s been able to offer but he’s at a loss as to what it may be.

Steve seems to notice Bucky’s distress and quickly says, “Uh, anyway...” in an attempt to change the subject, but he has nothing with which to follow it up so for a moment there is just an uncomfortable silence.

Eventually, Bucky says, “Couldn’t I do anything without you?”

Steve stares at him a little incredulously. “...Did you not hear anything I’ve been saying? You were always the one saving me, Buck. From myself, mostly.” He allows himself a bit of a self-deprecating chuckle. “It was me who couldn’t do anything without you.”

That’s when Bucky realises he’d asked the wrong question. What he’d really meant to say was couldn’t I be anything without you? Because he remembers how it felt to have someone to take care of, someone who needed him like that. It felt like a guarantee that he would always mean something, that he would never be alone. In his fear of needing anything, Bucky found solace in being the one who was needed.

More than solace, perhaps. Perhaps validation.

After all, what would he be, without Steve?

If Steve was the sun, brilliant and golden and unstoppable, then Bucky was the moon, weathered and dependable but shining only because of someone else’s light, and hiding a dark side that everyone knew about anyway, even if they’d never seen it.

Distractedly, Bucky’s brain drifts to the Apollo moon landing. He was actually awake when it had happened, having been on an assignment in Honduras.

Three days earlier, he’d fired a cannon at the jet of an El Salvadoran Air Force captain who, Bucky eventually learned, had remained in the plane in order to pilot it away from the city and make sure it crashed into uninhabited land.

Bucky wonders how he felt as he saw the Honduran fields rushing up to meet him, if he felt the same way Steve did when he'd put the Valkyrie in the ocean.

Wonders if it’s anything like the way Bucky felt when he fell, then realises that it probably isn't, because Steve and the air force pilot died as heroes and Bucky died as nothing.

Steve says, “...Bucky?” and Bucky immediately zeroes in on the voice to block out the whistle of icy air rushing past his ears but it doesn’t work, he can hear the crunch of bone and the whirr of some horror instrument that he’s pretty sure you’re not supposed to use on anyone who is conscious and his heart is lashing out like a battering ram against the bars of his ribcage because he knows what’s next, he knows what’s coming, and the anticipation of it is almost worse than—

“-cky?”

—every muscle in his body is locked in place. He feels rusted shut. His lungs are bags of sand, nothing works—

“Bucky, you’re safe. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. I’m your friend, Steve.”

—coughs even though there’s no air in his body to be expelled, so it comes out as more of a choke and—

“The year is 2014. We’re in my apartment in Washington, D.C. We’re having breakfast. You’re safe.”

—wiggles his toes like the man with the wings suggested he do, feels the cool hardwood floor beneath his bare feet. Smooth, varnished oak. Not laboratory linoleum or alpine snow or the gravel of an unpaved road in the hills of Tegucigalpa.

“That’s it, Buck. Come back to me. You’re safe.”

Safe.

Bucky blinks. Once, twice. Experimentally takes a slow, deep breath. No more sand. He tests out other parts of his body – his hands, his knees, his tongue, his jaw – and is relieved to find them all more or less operational, if not completely and utterly drained. He knows he looks as worn-out as he feels because Steve is watching him with worry stamped all over his face.

Steve swallows nervously before he clears his throat and asks, “Can I... Can I touch you?”

His face is earnest and hopeful and sad, just like all the other instances he’s asked Bucky for his permission, though now he only does so when Bucky has been having a difficult time.

Bucky’s mind clouds over with frost and fog and he feels himself nod, feels the firm yet gentle grip of two strong, familiar arms wrapping around his torso, and it distantly occurs to Bucky that this should be making him feel safer, grounded, but the only thing going through his brain right now is blankness.

In that other world, the one before all the cold, Steve’s hands and body were the prism for all that light inside of him that Bucky – in that other world, the one before all the darkness – thrived on, leaning into its source like a flower that turns to face the sun.

In this world, though – the real world – he is more of a black hole than a flower. A perpetual collapse, swallowing entire universes whole.

Chapter 2 Notes:

sorry for the delay! i was on vacation for a while. this chapter is a bit short but hopefully it's enough to tide you over :)
again, please heed the warnings in the tags. additional warning in this chapter for references to self-harm.

Chapter Text

There is a part of Bucky that knows, logically, that whenever Steve touches him, it is just to share his light. He knows that Steve’s hands are nothing like the ones that used to cause him so much pain and, sometimes, worse still, unbidden, mortifying pleasure. He knows this.

Between the memories and the stories and Steve’s palpable relief whenever Bucky lets him in, Bucky has picked up on the fact that touch was a huge part of who they both once were, not only as a unit but also as individuals. Physical closeness had apparently been just as important in their relationship as other elements of intimacy like trust and support and understanding, because it was through that physical contact that those elements manifested themselves.

For Bucky in particular, touch was also a way to speak even when words failed. The subsequent language it produced was one unique to just the two of them, and it was both thrilling and comforting to know that they had a way they could share with each other that could not be taken away by anyone.

When words were not enough, they had their bodies. They expressed with touch what could not be said with voice.

Bucky may have been a sweet-talker with the ladies according to Steve’s anecdotes but he was not as verbal as Steve, who, even when his words came out clumsy and bumbling, has somehow always managed to get his point across in ways that Bucky never could, whether it was an impassioned soapbox speech or a rousing battle cry or even just a seemingly casual heart-to-heart.

Bucky, on the other hand, finds it harder to give life to his feelings through speech alone. At first he thought this was yet another repercussion of what had been done to him, but Steve told him that it had kind of always been like that for him and Bucky finds a strange solace in knowing that something from his old self had managed to survived the cold, even if it isn’t necessarily something pleasant.

On the good days, he doesn’t notice it. On the bad ones, it leaves him itchy and restless and he snaps at anyone who tries to talk to him, frustrated by his own inability to speak the way he wants to.

On the worst days, however, it makes him feel mute and muzzled, like he’s still wearing the mask they’d kept him gagged with for years. The volcanic pressure of all the things he cannot say builds within him like magma, sizzling out of sight beneath the brittle crust of his skin with no way to escape. His patchy memory tells him that in the past, he used to relieve this sensation by using his body in conjunction with another’s (Steve’s). He’s not one hundred percent sure how this worked, all he knows is that there was something about being close to Steve that somehow made everything else go away, as though the warmth of Steve’s body cancelled out the fever raging in Bucky’s blood.

But both touch and words no longer provide an outlet for this terrible pressure, so Bucky is forced to create one himself. Breaks himself open to release all that unbearable heat, introducing his blood to open air in hopes that it will have the same effect as it does on lava – cooling, settling, leaving him airy and buoyant like pumice rock floating on water.

Those days don’t happen nearly as often anymore, but Steve still occasionally prods Bucky to ‘talk to someone’ about it, about everything, even though Bucky resolutely continues to maintain that he doesn’t see how that could possibly help. How could it, if he can’t even put anything into words? Even if he could, he does not understand how it would be beneficial. Nobody's ever solved a thing by being a chatterbox. If anything, talking too much only ever led to trouble. Loose lips sink ships, and all that.

Still, Steve tries to explain to him that there are special doctors for this kind of thing now, that the brain is an organ just like any other, and, as such, it can fall to illness just like any other, too. Sometimes, Steve says, talking is good medicine for a sick brain.

Bucky never was particularly good at science in school, but this still doesn’t sound quite right to him.

“There are... other things that might help,” Steve says cautiously on one of the worse days, unable to keep his eyes from flickering down to the bandage wrapped around the length of Bucky’s right forearm.

Bucky makes a noncommital sound in his throat, entire body prickling with shame. Steve wasn’t supposed to see this. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not now, not after Bucky had gone months without an incident this bad.

“Sorry,” he mumbles after a moment, because it seems like the right thing to say.

“C’mere,” Steve says gently, pulling Bucky in closer to him, tugging him down until Bucky is reclined on the couch and his head is rested in Steve’s lap.

For a very long time, Bucky remains absolutely still, does not even so much as breathe as he waits for the next inevitable step, and alarm seizes him as he realises he does not know what Steve wants him to do. He’s not giving Bucky any of the signals that Bucky is used to – he’s not pulling Bucky’s hair or cupping the back of his head to guide him, he’s not grinding Bucky’s face into his crotch or tapping his chin or pinching his nose shut, he’s just letting Bucky lie there, so maybe this is a trick of some sort, a test to see if Bucky remembers what Steve likes, but that’s not fair, Bucky thinks wildly, because this isn’t something they’ve ever gone over before, so how is he supposed to know—

He’s jolted from his panic by the feeling of the sofa creaking beneath them as Steve shifts his weight a little to drape his arms across Bucky’s upper body. It’s a protective embrace, there’s no doubt about it, but Bucky still can’t seem to let himself melt into it the way he feels he should be able to do.

“Buck?” Steve says quietly. “Is this okay?”

Bucky finally lets himself exhale, relieved to be back in a familiar situation. He knows what to do now. He knows how to be good.

“Yeah,” he says. “This is... okay.”

“You used to get all wound up like this sometimes, especially when we were teenagers,” Steve begins hesitantly, and when Bucky doesn’t reply, Steve takes this to mean it is all right for him to keep talking. “You... You’d say it felt like you were going everywhere at once, and it kinda helped for me to... to hold you together, as it were. Both figuratively and literally.”

Bucky remains silent, torn between memories of laying chest to back on top of the bed blankets during too-hot summer nights with all the apartment windows open, and sharper, newer nightmares of too many hands, endless hands, pressing him into cold metal or brick wall or plush mattress.

There is a part of him that knows, logically, that held together is completely and utterly not the same thing as held down but his body does not seem to be able to tell the difference.

Bucky remembers being told about the time Steve threw himself on what everyone had assumed was a live grenade, curling up around it in order to contain the blast and protect his comrades.

Bucky can’t help but to think that the way they sometimes lie together now is kind of the same idea – him the volatile explosive and Steve using his own body to minimise the damage. It’s not much different from what Steve had done on the helicarrier, and the idea of it happening again, of Bucky going off and Steve being the one to absorb the impact in order to keep everyone – including Bucky – safe, it’s enough to make Bucky feel nauseous.

He hates this – being a liability. A burden. He’s holding Steve back, and it’s not just Steve who suffers as a result, it’s everyone. Steve could be out saving the world and helping people, but instead he’s stuck at home babysitting a goddamn mass-murderer.

As much as Steve insists that having Bucky back is worth whatever sacrifices he’s had to make, Bucky knows this can’t always be true. Steve loses his patience sometimes, and Bucky can’t exactly blame him. He knows he’s fucking difficult to live with; he knows it because he lives with himself every second of every day and it’s a constant struggle at best, utterly unbearable at worst. In some ways, he thinks Steve might even be the more unlucky one of the two of them, because perhaps the only thing more painful than enduring what Bucky is going through is having to watch it happening to someone you care about and being virtually unable to stop it.

After all, Bucky has seen the despair and helplessness on Steve’s face despite Steve’s best efforts to act otherwise, and he hates that he’s the one that put it there. If it weren’t for him, Steve could be out in the world doing what he does best, and countless lives could be all the better for it, Steve's very much included.

“I don’t care,” Steve murmurs into the crook of his neck whenever Bucky’s guilt threatens to eat him alive. “You’ve looked after me my whole life. Now it’s my turn to take care of you.”

Bucky thinks of alien invasions and rogue robots and sinister secret societies and he’s pretty sure Steve has it all wrong. Bucky can accept that Steve is willing to sacrifice his own happiness for Bucky, but it does not seem fair that the rest of the universe has to lose out, too, and all just because some monster needs someone to help him relearn how to be a man.

“The world needs Captain America,” Bucky argues weakly. “It can do without me.”

“But I can’t,” Steve replies simply.

“Your priorities are fucked-up,” Bucky informs him, and Steve laughs for the first time in days.

Bucky’s night terrors have stopped ever since he and Steve started sharing a bed, and Steve is so happy that Bucky can’t find it in his heart to tell him that the only reason he no longer has any bad dreams is because he no longer sleeps.

Instead, he spends the nights loose-limbed and slack in Steve’s embrace, acutely aware of every breath, every heartbeat, every unconscious twitch of muscle in the other man’s body, searching these movements for anything that might help him figure out what Steve wants him to do.

Despite Steve’s assertions that he doesn't mind that Bucky is not the same person he once knew, Bucky knows that Steve still maintains a tiny bud of hope that one day everything will resolve itself and he will have ‘his’ Bucky back again. It’s obvious from the way Steve lights up whenever Bucky does or says something that the old Bucky would have done; conversely, it’s also clear from Steve’s distress whenever Bucky has a bad day.

As much as Bucky likes Steve, maybe even loves him, it can get exhausting constantly having to play a part. Even if he’s not striving to live up to a certain unspoken expectation, he still always feels a certain pressure to be okay, because he can’t stand the look on Steve’s face when he isn’t.

Bucky likes Natasha Romanoff because she never makes him feel like he has to be anything he’s not.

In return, he lets her be anyone she wants. She tries out different identities like she’s modelling clothes for him, searching for what looks best and feels the most comfortable, and Bucky likes this because it’s the safest way of doing something new.

Steve finds out about their little game when he comes home one day to find them sitting at the kitchen table drinking carton wine even though neither of them can really get drunk anymore, Natasha calling herself Nataly and wearing a smile that actually reaches her eyes.

“Nat,” Steve hisses, hovering next to her with his brows furrowed in disapproval. “What are you doing, you’re going to confuse him.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “He’s not a baby, Rogers.”

“He’s been having a tough week, I just don’t think this is a good i—”

“Um,” Bucky says, “He’s also right here and can hear everything you’re saying.”

Steve immediately looks sheepish and Bucky gives him a weak smile to let him know there’s no harm done. Besides, it’s not like Bucky isn’t used to people talking about him like he’s not there, or, worse, like he is there, but is viewed as little more than a dumb animal that can’t possibly understand what’s going on, let alone be entitled to an opinion. He remembers this being a common occurrence. Remembers how even if he was the topic of the discussion and there were decisions being made that would affect him, he had no right to take part in any of it unless someone better than him explicitly requested his input.

Even if they did, it was always just a taunt (“isn’t that right, you little bitch?”), meant to further assert their control by putting him in situations where he was forced to agree with them ("yes" "yes what" "yes sir").

At least right now, even though Steve and Natasha are talking about him like he’s not there, they seem to be discussing his wellbeing. They’re not frigid surgeons idly debating amongst themselves which part of him to cut open next while he’s lying right there next to them, wide awake, listening to every word.

The first rule was not to move.

If he thrashed or arched or screamed too much, they’d pump him full of what must have been some kind of paralytic, trapping him fast like an ant in amber, petrified in every sense of the word. His body became the most intimate of prisons and the most treacherous of traitors, betraying him to the enemy and leaving him in a state of total helplessness, able to feel every tugged tendon and slice of skin but not being able to voice his agony, let alone put an end to it.

He eventually discovered that if he learned to hold relatively still, if he bore the pain steadily and silently and let the whitecoats shape and arrange him as they saw fit, he could at least be spared the sucking terror of being trapped inside his own body.

So why does he still feel like this now?

“-cky?”

Bucky’s head jerks slightly at the sound of his name – or at least the last syllable of it, which is the part he hears the most often nowadays because he seems to be somewhere else whenever someone’s trying to talk to him.

“Sorry,” he says automatically, and Steve has long since given up chiding him every time he apologises unnecessarily but he still sends Bucky a bit of a mournful look.

“Steve?” Natasha asks eventually, “Can I talk to you in private for a moment?”

Steve blinks a couple of times. “Okay...?”

They disappear into the bedroom, closing the door behind them. Bucky could probably hear what they’re talking about if he listened hard enough, but he realises he doesn’t care enough to try. This sensation of absolute indifference isn’t new to him, but he’s more used to feeling it whenever there are someone else’s hands on him, reminding him of how to disappear.

He doesn’t know how long Steve and Natasha are gone, but when the door opens again, only Natasha comes back.

She tells Bucky that she’d explained everything to Steve so that he’d understand he didn’t have anything to worry about. She says she told Steve that while none of her identities are false, they’re not complete, either; each one has a little bit of her in it, but she’s been so many people over the years that it’s hard to remember where she left which part of herself. So she goes through everyone she’s ever been, picking and choosing what to keep and what to discard, much like putting together an outfit from pieces from different collections.

“Steve’s a great guy,” she says, “But there are some things he can’t understand because he’s always known exactly who he is.”

Bucky nods in agreement. Even before the serum, Steve had been everything that Captain America embodied, it’s just that back then Bucky was the only one who’d noticed.

Natasha reaches out to touch Bucky’s wrist and he stares straight ahead, expecting her hand to curl around him with a too-tight grip. He doesn’t quite know how to react when that doesn’t happen.

“We’re a lot alike, you and I,” she murmurs.

Bucky gives a slightly hollow laugh. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

Natasha does not even so much as crack a grin when she replies, “Neither should you.”

They are silent again and Bucky gives this whole exchange a bit of thought. He and Natasha are indeed almost frighteningly similar in many ways, both lost and twisted and desperately searching for some sense of self, but there is one key difference in their methods: Natasha has the option of finding pieces of herself in all the people she’s been, whereas Bucky has no such material to draw from. All he has to work with are glorified memories from a very biased source, and since Bucky knows he’ll never be the man from those memories, he doesn’t know what to do. He has to start from scratch, except worse, because starting from scratch implies a clean sheet, a blank canvas, and Bucky’s slate is full of decades worth of vandalism from other people’s wills. He somehow has to purge himself of everyone else before he can even begin to think about who he is.

He wonders if he got rid of everything they had made him, if there would even be anything left.

Distantly, he remembers someone else’s words, cold and clinical and prophetic, explaining that sometimes in order to build something better, you first have to tear everything else down.

It occurs to Bucky that he could apply this principal to himself. He could flourish like a forest fire. If it works out then great, and if it doesn’t... well, the worst that could happen is that he disappears completely, and even that is a best case scenario in and of itself.

Chapter 3 Notes:

additional warning in this chapter for a brief reference to suicidal ideation.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

When you spend nearly seventy years without your body, it’s hard to get back into the habit of having one. In the first two weeks after he’d dragged Steve from the Potomac, the number of times that Bucky had slept and eaten could have been counted on the fingers of a single hand and hygiene hadn’t even entered the picture at all. He’d wandered around D.C. in a growing panic as he felt himself becoming sicker and sicker but couldn’t for the life of him figure out why.

It wasn’t until Steve had brought him home like a stray dog, filthy and bedraggled and starving, that Bucky truly came to realise just how many little daily tasks are involved in the upkeep and maintenance of the human body.

For weeks, maybe even months, he had constantly needed to be reminded to carry out those petty practices. Brushing his teeth. Shaving. Changing his clothes. Trimming his nails. He had to learn how to read his body’s cues to know when it was trying to tell him it needed to be refuelled or recharged.

Even today, he sometimes forgets about the less important things.

“Your hair is getting long again,” Steve says to him one afternoon, reaching out to finger the dark strands that hang just below Bucky’s shoulders.

Bucky absently reaches up to touch his hair as well. He can’t remember the last time he’d gotten it cut. Actually, he’d never gotten it cut since maybe 1944, at least not professionally. He’s hacked it down to around chin length a couple of times in the months since he’s come back, but has yet to be comfortable enough to let someone else wield a sharp object near his face.

“You know,” Steve says, sounding a bit nervous, “I could. Um. I could maybe cut it for you. I mean... Nothing fancy, but... We used to trim each other’s hair when we couldn’t afford to go to the barber’s and it always turned out decent, so...”

He trails off, shuffling a little on his feet with an uncharacteristic self-consciousness that Bucky finds strangely disarming and before he knows it, he’s rinsed his hair in the bathroom sink and is currently standing before it with a bedsheet draped across his shoulders and Steve hovering next to him with a pair of scissors in his hand, asking him how short he wants it to be.

Bucky shrugs, and this time it’s not because of HYDRA’s conditioning that he can’t make up his mind, he just genuinely cannot muster up the concern to form an opinion on the matter. Natasha once told him that changing her hairstyle can help her feel more in control of her own body, but it’s always just felt like a nuisance to him. He’s so used to living a life that is pared down to the absolute bare minimum of operations that sometimes even the necessities seem like either an insurmountable chore or an unnecessary extravagance.

After a moment of examining his meaningless face in the medicine cabinet mirror, Bucky says, “You decide.”

Steve’s lips tuck themselves into the little frown that Bucky has come to learn means Steve is debating with himself whether or not to push the matter, but ultimately, and thankfully, he does not.

“Okay,” he murmurs, seemingly to himself. Then, more to Bucky, he says, “Tell me if you need me to stop, okay?”

Bucky doesn’t respond. The idea that he could say stop and someone would actually listen to him is an almost overwhelming concept. He has half a mind to test it out to see how it feels, but the moment Steve reaches out towards him, that possibility goes up in smoke, though Bucky can’t quite figure out why. The rational voice in his brain tells him that he wouldn’t get in trouble for it, that Steve would no doubt stop everything he’s doing the moment Bucky exhibited any uneasiness, but there’s another voice in there, too, not any louder yet somehow so much stronger, base and intrinsic and insurmountable. Much like animal instinct, Bucky could no sooner ignore it than a Pacific salmon could refuse to swim upstream to spawn and die. It’s something he does not understand and definitely does not enjoy and it might even kill him in the end, but he is helpless to do a thing to stop or change it.

He closes his eyes as he feels Steve pinch a length of his hair between his fingers. He’s surprised when he does not flinch at the crisp snip of the scissors so close to his face; he’s been sent diving for cover by much less. Perhaps it’s because that huge engulfing silence is back, the one that makes everything in his world disappear except for the area of his body that is being occupied by another. It’s paradoxically both terrifying and peaceful in here, in this vast void where he needs not heed a thing except for what he is being told to do.

Steve nudges the back of his head; Bucky leans forward. Steve prods him to the left; Bucky turns in that direction. Steve tugs on a strand of hair; Bucky tilts with the pull. It’s a very linear set of commands that is comfortingly easy to follow, the last of which has Bucky with his chin tucked down towards his chest as Steve brushes bits of hair off the back of his neck.

He’s not sure how long he stays there staring at the ground before he hears Steve saying his name in a slightly worried tone that suggests he’s been repeating it several times now. Bucky still doesn’t look up.

“Hey,” Steve prods, sounding increasingly puzzled. “It’s all done now. What’re you waiting for...? I promise I didn’t butcher it.”

Bucky does not move.

It’s only when Steve says, “C’mon, at least look up,” that Bucky finally lifts his head, the fog around his brain beginning to clear.

He examines his reflection and is shocked to see that he looks... almost nice. His hair hangs just by his ears, parted slightly to the side, and even though it’s still sticking out in damp tufts, he can imagine how he might even look halfway decent once it’s dried off. The person staring back at him in the mirror isn’t the hollow mockery of one who had walked into the room thirty minutes ago, nor is it exactly the quietly courageous face that’s illuminated at the Smithsonian, but it’s something in between.

Something Bucky thinks he might be able to live with, given enough time.

There is never enough time.

They are both men out of time, but where Steve is out of time as in chronologically displaced, Bucky is out of time as in rapidly approaching the end.

Maybe it’s only fair, Bucky thinks, that two ghosts such as them who have had more than their fair share of time should finally be feeling pressed for it, though he’s not sure if Steve feels the same way so he decides to ask.

He has no idea how to phrase the question, however, so it comes out as a very vague: “Y’ever get scared sometimes?”

“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific,” Steve says dryly.

Bucky swallows, struggling for words. “After the ice. Has it ever felt like you didn’t belong here?” Before Steve can give the obvious affirmative reply, Bucky quickly elaborates, “I mean, like you literally should not be here. Like it- it’s a mistake. And one day someone’s gonna realise it and come take you back.”

Steve inhales sharply. “Is that what you’re afraid of?” he asks, voice soft and sad. “That they’re going to take you back?”

(It is.

Even though he’s been free for long enough that he should know better, there is not a day that goes by without him feeling some degree of dread either that he will end up back in HYDRA’s clutches, or that he has never actually left them in the first place and none of this is real, it’s all just an extremely sophisticated program meant to break him even further. On most days he can relegate this fear to a niggling tickle behind his eyes, but every now and then he has to walk around the entire apartment touching all the walls and floors and furniture, smelling the spice rack and the shampoo and the aftershave, to make sure it’s all really there.)

Bucky says nothing.

“Buck...” Steve begins in a helpless voice.

Bucky tenses, hating the way Steve makes it sound like Bucky’s fears are Steve’s own personal failures. Like he feels he should have done more to help Bucky feel safer, worked harder to help Bucky get better. Bucky doesn’t know how to convince Steve he’s being irrational; after all, this is the guy who blames himself for not having gone after Bucky when he’d fallen from the train, even though there was absolutely no way he could have known Bucky had survived.

“Just answer the damn question,” Bucky cuts in flatly.

Steve thinks about it for a long time before he finally replies, “Not... exactly. I’ve never worried that me being here was something that shouldn’t have happened, nor have I been scared that you being here is a mistake, either. But...”

“But what?”

“But... I’m always scared that one day you’re going to wake up and decide that it is.”

“I’m not gonna... leave... if that’s what you’re saying,” Bucky says in a bit of a strangled voice, unable to be more specific about what they both know he means by leaving. “It’s just...” He huffs a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know, I just feel like... Like I’m living every minute on borrowed time, and- and one day they’re gonna nail me for it, maybe not now, maybe not even for a very long time, but one day. And for every day that they don’t, I feel... I don’t know... Guilty? Like when we were living in that building where you had to skip over the bottom porch step because it was rickety, and we fell behind on rent but Mrs. Caldwell didn’t have the heart to kick us out.”

Steve looks a little taken aback, perhaps by the amount of detail Bucky was able to recall in this memory, and maybe also because this is the most Bucky has said at one time in weeks. This is how Bucky tends to let stuff out; in bursts and implosions separated by vast stretches of constricted, mounting silence. They were about due for a break. It’s impossible to tell until it happens whether it will be a small pop or a catastrophic rupture, so Bucky can only be relieved that this time around has been comparatively harmless.

Or maybe not, because Bucky doesn’t notice that he’s been clenching his flesh hand so tightly that his nails have dug into his palm until Steve reaches out and gently uncurls his fingers, white-knuckled and blood-tipped. Bucky stares down at the damage, confused. He doesn’t know what to do with his hand once Steve lets it go so he just watches it drop gracelessly into his lap and wonders what he’s going to do now to dissipate this awful restless tension that he can feel rippling through his whole body like an electric current.

“We’re all living on borrowed time,” Steve says solemnly. “Some people are just charged more interest than others, that’s all.”

Bucky barks out a bit of a hysterical laugh. “I’ve never been good at managing my finances.”

“Well, okay, let’s think about this a sec,” Steve suggests, the sensible bastard. “You feel like you’re running out of time. What are you afraid will happen?”

“It’s not so much the fear of running out,” Bucky admits, “It’s more the feeling that it... doesn’t belong to me. It’s not mine to use.”

If Bucky were a little more focused, not still jacked up on the last buzzes of nervous energy, he’d realise what a pervasive theme that seems to be in his life. The sense that he still does not have the right to that which he has always owned, be it body or mind or even something as abstract as the temporal space he occupies.

“Of course it’s yours,” Steve says, surprisingly fiercely, reaching out to grab Bucky’s shoulder and give it a bit of a shake to drive his point home.

Bucky lets his entire upper body flop about in Steve’s grip and he can’t remember what they’d been talking about that’s gotten Steve so worked up but he thinks it might have been important.

Bucky has come to learn that shit is probably about to get either very heavy or very ridiculous whenever Steve starts a sentence with So I was talking to Sam...

Today it appears to be the former.

“So I was talking to Sam,” Steve says, “About this whole... feeling like a temporal mistake... thing. He thought it might help to do something that means something to you. Like, find a cause, I guess, is the closest word I can think of.”

Bucky raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“For me,” Steve says, “One of the biggest problems I had after I came outta the ice was dealing with the fact – or, what I thought was the fact – that I was living in a world that no longer needed me. I felt... like an anachronism. The things I’d been so certain were right and true were suddenly all thrown into question. Even now, I sometimes still feel like what I believe in no longer fits into the way the world works.” He cracks his trademark self-deprecating grin. “People keep waiting for me to get with the program.”

Bucky snorts. “They’re gonna be waiting a long time then.”

Steve laughs a little, but his eyes are still serious as he continues, “For a long time I didn’t know what to do with myself. Propaganda posterboys aren’t exactly in high demand anymore, and even the way wars are fought now is so completely unfamiliar to me that I’d probably be useless as a soldier. Then SHIELD came along and I found a purpose again.”

“Yeah, that one turned out real great,” Bucky drawls.

“Okay, so I made a bit of a judgment error there,” Steve admits good-naturedly. “But it did give me a much-needed purpose at the time. And then... Then I found you.”

“I’m not a goddamn charity case,” Bucky growls.

Steve looks mortified. “No! God, no, no no, I- I didn’t mean it like that. I just... I-”

“No, no, stop, ’m sorry,” Bucky mumbles.

Ashamed by his outburst and afraid to meet Steve’s eyes, he starts picking at the nubs on the sofa. Fabric, of course – Steve donated all his leather furniture to Goodwill once it became clear that Bucky would never be able to live with the smell of it (yet another thing Steve has been forced to give up because of him, Bucky thinks bitterly).

“It’s okay,” Steve says gently. “I guess I’m just trying to say that it’s important to find something that means something to you. Let’s start small. What makes you happy?”

Bucky just gives Steve a blank look.

This isn’t something he’s given much thought to, much in the way that someone starving to death probably doesn’t care what’s for dessert. It’s not like he’s had a lot of time to entertain the idea of happiness, not when he has to fight tooth and nail for every inch of sanity he clings to. Not when it sometimes takes every ounce of strength he has just to be able to remember what he’s doing here. Anything more than this crude existence feels like an impossibility, an unattainable luxury that he’ll only ever be able to see on other people and can’t even begin to fathom how it might feel.

“It’s okay if you don’t know,” Steve says quickly when Bucky is silent for too long. “To be fair, I didn’t have an answer either, when Sam asked me the same thing not long after we first met. It’s probably not even something we really ever think about, consciously, but maybe it’s not a bad idea to try. So. What’s the very first thing that comes to mind? When you think about being happy, I mean.”

Bucky mulls over this for a moment.

“...Not being in pain?” he tries eventually, hoping he hasn’t gotten it wrong.

The stricken look on Steve’s face instantly tells Bucky that this was not the right answer.

“Damnit, Buck,” Steve breathes, sounding like he’s about to cry.

Automatically, Bucky says, “Sorry.”

Steve curses again under his breath, pulling Bucky in close for an awkwardly positioned hug there on the sofa. In his rush, his arms wrap around Bucky’s instead of beneath them.

Bucky wills himself to remain pliant despite the fear mounting in his gut at the feeling of his arms being pinned to his sides. He wants to tell Steve that he doesn’t have to hold him down like this, that even if Steve lets go, Bucky won’t thrash or try to squirm away, he won’t even scream, he promises he’ll take it quietly (good boy, he’s a good boy), even if whatever they inject him with feels like he’s being plugged with napalm (he’s good he’s good he’s good), even if they decide to cut him open again—

He wakes up horizontal.

“Mrrrmph...?” he says.

Steve’s panicked face comes into focus above him. “Bucky? Oh, thank god. How do you feel? You fainted. It was just for a moment, but even after you opened your eyes you were just sort of... stuck.”

Bucky says, “Fuck,” because it seems like the most appropriate reaction.

“Should I call someone?” Steve chatters nervously. “Maybe I should call someone.”

“No,” Bucky objects swiftly. “No, it’s okay. I... um, I must not have eaten enough today, that’s all. Sorry.”

The lie crackles in the air like a neon sign. Lack of food might be a reasonable culprit to blame for the initial loss of consciousness, but it does little to explain the state Bucky had apparently been in when he’d come to, and they both know this. The question is if either of them is feeling up to facing it, or if they’re both willing to pounce on the offered scapegoat and continue on with their charade.

“I’ll go make you some soup,” Steve says eventually.

He stands up and heads to the kitchen.

Notes:

i totally fell into the hair-cutting trope i am so sorry ~~not sorry~~. it just felt like a good opportunity to convey bucky's pliancy when it comes to his body being directed by someone else.
also sorry for the dwindling wordcount of each chapter. i've already written more but this seemed like the best place to end it.
ok i'm done trying to justify myself now
as always, thank you so much to anyone and everyone who has been keeping up with this trainwreck of a story. it means more than you could know ♥

Chapter 4 Notes:

additional warning in this chapter for talk of suicidal ideation. heavy references to past sexual abuse and consent issues between bucky and steve also become more pronounced.

Chapter Text

Maybe it’s too many consecutive sleepless nights, maybe it’s the cumulative stress of constantly ducking in and out of his own head at the slightest brush of someone else’s skin, or maybe he’s just too goddamn tired to fight anymore – whatever it is, Bucky has begun to unravel.

Steve actually notices it before Bucky does, though, with Bucky remaining convinced that he’s doing relatively well because he hasn’t been the upfront kind of not-okay that’s noisy and colourful and can be spotted from a mile away. Sure, he’s barely sleeping and spends his waking moments caught in a slow-motion stupor, forgetting things like what month it is or which meal is appropriate for the current time of day, but he’s never crying or panicking or screaming or otherwise losing his shit so he must be okay, right?

It’s not until Bucky overhears Steve talking on the phone when he thinks Bucky is asleep that he realises there are other, quieter ways of being not-okay that hadn’t even occurred to him.

“Maybe I’m just being paranoid,” Steve is saying, “But I just- hmm? No, no, nothing like that, it’s actually been a pretty uneventful couple of weeks, it- it’s hard to explain.” Pause. “Yeah, I guess...? Well, actually, I don’t know. He’s usually awake when I get up but always says he had enough. He... Yeah, distracted. Gets confused a lot.” A longer silence, then: “Mmm... Okay. I will. Sorry again. Thanks, Sam.”

Bucky frowns to himself in the darkness of the bedroom. He hadn’t noticed any of these things that Steve seems to be worrying about, but now that he gives it some more thought, he realises Steve might be on to something.

He does not like this realisation.

When Bucky hears the click of the phone being returned to its cradle, then the sound of footsteps padding towards the bedroom, he flings the covers back over himself and lies very still. The door creaks open ever so slightly and Bucky knows without having to look that Steve is peeking in and watching him with that ever-present sadness in his expression that has been tracking lines down his face that weren’t there in 1945, that might not have been there even as recently as last month.

“Bucky?” Steve calls out softly.

Bucky doesn’t move, not even after Steve repeats his name one more time.

The door eventually closes again and the footsteps recede in the other direction.

“I’m a little tired,” Bucky says vaguely when Steve asks him about it later.

Exhaustion is a pretty good blanket excuse; Bucky has learned that movie stars use it all the time to get away with things. Of course, it’s usually just a cover-up for something a lot worse, and everybody knows it, but Steve must be just as tired as Bucky is because he merely accepts Bucky’s flimsy justifications, too drained to do anything else.

They are both too worn-out to face all the sinister possibilities that lie lurking beneath their little charade, so as long as Bucky keeps offering him an easy out, then Steve is only too willing to take it.

After that, Bucky tries a little harder.

He knows only too well what happens if he does not.

It used to be that getting struck down out of nowhere was what terrified him most, but he’s since come to learn that the alternative is even worse: the horrible anticipation of being able to feel the rolling black clouds creeping up on him and the sheer helplessness of knowing he is powerless to stop its advance.

Nevertheless, he still tries, even if most of the time he doesn’t know why he even bothers.

He forces himself to get out of bed, even out of the house on the days when he’s feeling particularly plucky. He throws himself into old hobbies that have occasionally been successful in fending off the smaller black clouds – cooking, crossword puzzles, crocheting, colouring books (“Everything you like starts with a C,” Steve had once uselessly pointed out, to which Bucky had smirked, “Seems like I have a theme going on, Cap.”).

Steve seems reassured by the rise in Bucky’s level of activity, and even Bucky himself manages to attain some semblance of relief, but as always it’s only temporary and in the end, all he is doing is running.

There was a time when his pride never would have let him run from a fight, but dignity is a luxury he has long since learned to live without.

So he runs, but the fight runs right after him.

Sometimes he has half a mind to just lie down where he is and wait for it to catch up, but the ruthless survival instinct inside him that he still can’t seem to smother no matter how hard he tries will not let him rest until he’s driven himself into the ground.

You will live, that leering voice hisses at him, taunting him, mouth a blooming red stitch of hyena laughter, Live, or die trying.

The strangest part is that sometimes he cannot tell the difference. Does not know if he is alive or dead. He thinks, if that’s what you could call the erratic misfiring of wayward neurons through the electrocuted mess of cells that is his brain, that he can’t be dead since there’s no way that being dead would hurt this much, but then again, he knows only too well that not being dead does not necessarily guarantee being alive.

It’s been a long day.

Steve is away for most of it, some bullshit meeting with government officials that he’d been stressing about all week. Bucky putters around at home, keeping himself distracted by alphabetising all of Steve’s books and records, then Sam and Natasha come over and they play what is perhaps more rounds of Uno than is appropriate for three adults. At dinner, Bucky cuts his finger while slicing the vegetables for the baked ratatouille he’s preparing but doesn’t realise it until he notices the trail of blood he’s left around the kitchen, at which point he reacts with a disproportionate level of distress, as usual. It’s as though all the anxiety he hadn’t been feeling in the past couple of weeks was merely lying in wait for this moment to unload on him all at once. He forgets about the ratatouille because he’s too busy panicking and promptly freaks out even more when Steve comes home because he’d promised Steve a nice meal for when he got back from his tiring day but instead the ratatouille is burnt because Bucky can’t do anything right.

Once Steve manages to talk him down, they eat the burnt ratatouille (or Steve eats most of it, repeatedly reassuring Bucky that it tastes fine, while Bucky just stares miserably down at his meal, pushing the crisped vegetables around on his plate), then they retreat to the bedroom for an early night.

In what is perhaps a leftover instinct from the way he was conditioned to play dead on cold operating tables in basements and bank vaults, Bucky lays flat on his back like a wooden plank with his arms at his sides. It's the only position in which he can hope to get any sleep at all - any other way feels too wrong and he can’t relax, but it’s also a vicious catch-22 because lying supine makes him all the more vulnerable to the episodes of sleep paralysis that occasionally seize him upon waking, locking his body in place, demon sitting on his chest, wicked frothing face made out of a thousand dripping grins.

He pulls the covers all the way up to his eyes because it’s safest that way, then the world goes a shade darker as Steve flicks off the light.

“Good night, Steve,” Bucky whispers after a moment, remembering that this is the kind of thing you’re supposed to say before bed.

“’Night, Buck,” Steve replies in a sleepy murmur. “Love you.”

Bucky’s head whips to the side to stare at Steve, but Steve is laying with his back to Bucky, seemingly already halfway to dozing off. He does not appear to realise what he’s said, or if he does, he clearly doesn’t think it’s a big deal.

Bucky has a very strong inkling that saying this to each other was once just as much a part of their bedtime routine as putting on their pyjamas and brushing their teeth, but right now it comes as a jarring shock, shaking loose everything he thought he’d known to be true. He is a Mesopotamian being told the earth is not flat but round, an alchemist realising he will never be able to transform anything into gold. He can feel the residual vibrations of Steve’s words reverberating through his bones, echoes of those same syllables being laughed beneath blanket forts, breathed into nibbled shells of ears, whispered on ferris wheels and fairgrounds and in foxholes.

“Were we in love?” he asks Steve bluntly. It’s not the first time he has considered this possibility but it is the first time that he’s sought a confirmation of it.

A split-second too late, Bucky realises that he has no idea what he’d do if it turns out to be true, but before he can give it any further thought, Steve bolts upright in the bed, startling Bucky so badly that his hands dig into the mattress tightly enough for his metal fingers to rip through the bedsheets.

“Sorry,” Steve says quickly, sounding oddly flustered.

Bucky untangles his fingers from the torn sheets and also says, “Sorry,” even though he’s not quite sure why.

(He thinks maybe he apologises so often for the things that aren’t actually his fault because he knows there’s no way he could ever say it enough to redeem himself for the things that are.)

“I was never sure how to talk to you about it,” Steve says uncomfortably. “People didn’t think it’d be a good idea.”

“So you talked about it to everyone except me?” Bucky grumbles. “...I don’t even know what ‘it’ is.”

Steve runs a nervous hand through his hair, making it stick up in odd directions. He’s still sitting upright; Bucky can see his shadow in the darkness from where he has not yet moved from his own position on the bed. He doesn’t seem to be able to look at Bucky, which Bucky finds simultaneously a relief and a disappointment.

“I didn’t want to make you feel pressured about that, too, on top of everything else,” Steve says. A pause, and then: “But, yeah... To be honest, I don’t think there was ever a time when I didn’t love you, in some capacity or another.”

Bucky stares up at the ceiling and does not reply. His heart won’t stop fluttering like a delirious little moth and he feels light-headed even though he’s lying down. He has absolutely no idea how to process this information; nobody ever briefed him on this kind of thing before.

“Love and ‘in love’ are two different things,” he says slowly, trying to compile enough data to figure this whole thing out.

“They are,” Steve agrees. “Well, most of the time, at least.”

Bucky frowns, confused. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve loved you in every way a person can love someone else,” Steve says softly. “Sometimes in one way at a time, and sometimes in all of them at once.”

Bucky is shocked by the frank, fearless honesty in Steve’s voice, an earnestness that somehow manages to override the terrible melodrama of the words themselves. He wonders how Steve can bear to leave himself so open like this, so exposed and susceptible to attack. Doesn’t he realise the infinite number of ways this weakness could be pounced upon and used against him? Anything you assign value to just becomes another thing that the enemy can take away.

He feels the bed shift as Steve lays back down again, and he knows Steve is facing him this time so he chances a glance towards him. The colours of everything are flattened in the darkness but Bucky still knows what they look like because if there is one thing that has managed to survive through the cold, blooming year after year like a perennial flower, it is the colour of Steve’s eyes. Bucky has dreamed in that exact shade of blue before, dreamed about it even before he realised what it was, when everything else was steel and frost and bright arterial red.

He thinks about Steve’s words again, mouths them silently to himself, fascinated by the way the single-syllable four-letter word rolls off his tongue, loaded as a gun. It doesn’t feel the same as when Steve says it, because the strangest part is how Bucky actually believes it when Steve says it, though he’s not sure if it still stands with the less-than-fairytale-ending way things have turned out.

So he asks, “Even now?”

“We haven’t reached the end of the line yet, have we?” Steve says.

Bucky thinks this is debatable but decides to let it go.

He wakes up the following morning to soft sunlight streaming through the gap between the window curtains and the wall and realises with a start that this means he must have actually fallen asleep at some point. He lies there in the bed for a little while longer, waiting to reacclimate to his body, a post-cryo thaw habit that he still hasn’t been able to shake. He wiggles his toes first and slowly makes his way upwards, test-driving various muscles until he’s certain that everything is in working order.

He then turns to his right and sees that Steve’s side of the bed is empty, which sends a spike of panic lancing through him even though he knows it’s irrational. He manages to keep himself together enough to smell the light roast coffee coming from the kitchen and remind himself it’s because Steve is out there brewing a fresh pot, because Steve has not abandoned him and HYDRA is not about to come bursting in here at any moment to take him back.

Sure enough, Bucky shuffles into the kitchen to find no HYDRA agents whatsoever, just Steve standing over the stove frying what could very well be an entire carton of eggs at once. The giant yellow mass in the pan looks like something that might come to life at any minute.

“’Morning, sleeping beauty,” Steve says brightly when he notices Bucky.

Bucky can’t recall the last time he’s seen Steve look this at ease and it’s impossible for him to keep himself from cracking the tiniest of smiles when he replies, “You seem chipper.”

Steve gives a good-natured shrug. “Woke up on the right side of the bed, I guess.”

Bucky wonders if Steve’s mood has anything to do with what they’d talked about last night. Though Bucky hadn’t exactly reciprocated the feelings that Steve had expressed, he hadn’t reacted negatively either, and probably by this point that’s really all Steve can ask for.

“Oh, I think the toast is almost ready,” Steve says casually, nodding towards the toaster.

Bucky nods back, grateful for the subtlety of the suggestion. Steve knows how embarrassed Bucky is by this particular neurosis of his that has him preferring to pop the toast himself because the shrill ding of the toaster unhinges him if he’s not prepared for it.

“What do you want on yours?” Bucky asks Steve once he’s plucked the bread from the toaster.

“Butter, please.”

This domestic performance continues all the way up until they’ve eaten breakfast and Bucky has nearly finished washing all the dishes. The whole time Steve has just been chattering on and on about baseball and television and the migratory patterns of Arctic terns – basically everything that isn’t what happened the previous night.

When he can’t stand it any longer, Bucky says, “Are we gonna talk about last night?”

Steve is unable to keep the surprise from showing on his face. Bucky supposes this is fair seeing as it’s usually Steve who tries to get Bucky to talk, and never vice versa. Bucky wonders if bringing this up is a big mistake, but he can’t stop thinking about Steve’s words and maybe he’s making something out of nothing, but he hasn’t been able to get them out of his head.

“I- I didn’t want to push it,” Steve says uncomfortably.

“It’s okay. I want to talk about it, I think. You said some... stuff.”

“I meant it all.”

Bucky stares down at the last plate that needs to be rinsed, clutching it tightly enough that it slips right out of his sudsy hands and clatters into the sink, making him jump.

“I don’t... I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he admits, hating how childlike he sounds.

“Nothing,” Steve says quickly. “You don’t have to do anything. I’m sorry if I messed you all up by telling you that stuff. It’s just... god, I’ve had that inside me for so long, and I never thought I’d actually be able to say it to you. Never in my wildest dreams. I’d lost my chance once, I wasn’t about to lose it again.”

“What if I can’t love you back?” Bucky asks quietly, finally looking up again.

Steve’s face clouds over slightly but his voice is even and sincere when he replies, “I can live with that. You’re here. That’s good enough for me.” Steve must see Bucky open his mouth to start to protest because he continues with a surprising intensity, “Bucky... I thought you were dead. Do you have any idea what that did to me? I flew a plane into the damn ocean! I didn’t have to stay in that thing to bring it down, but after you fell, I couldn’t find a reason not to.”

Bucky stares at Steve with a horrified expression on his face. He's never heard Steve speak like this before, and it’s terrifying. Of course Bucky has never put Steve on the same pedestal on which the rest of the nation put Captain America, but in all the years he’s known Steve (but is that really that many, a cruel voice hisses into his ear, when you've spent most of them as someone else and can't even remember the rest?), he's never expressed this kind of sentiment. He’s always been the hardiest guy Bucky knew, regardless of how strong his actual body was. To realise that he may be just as vulnerable to the same terrors and sadnesses that have threatened to bring Bucky down is a frightening, jarring concept.

Steve gives a harsh laugh. “Yep. Some great American hero, right?”

“Steve,” Bucky says helplessly, and he cannot help but to wonder if this is the kind of pain he subjects Steve to day in and day out, when the barren look in his eyes betrays the secret that he does not want to be here.

He’s a rotten friend and an even worse human being.

It’s almost as though Steve is following Bucky’s train of thought – it’s been known to happen – because he says, “But it’s okay because you’re back, you’re here and you’re fighting so hard. I can’t ask for much more. I really, really can’t.”

“I could try, though,” Bucky suggests uneasily. “To be more, I mean. To be... him.”

Steve shakes his head frantically, but the yearning that’s adding another hue of blue to his eyes hints at something else even as he’s saying, “No. No. Don’t try to do anything you don’t want.”

“I do want it,” Bucky insists feebly. “I think.”

He might not sound very convincing, but as far as he can tell, it’s not a lie. He does want this; it’s quite possibly the only desire more substantial than which television channel to watch that he’s ever been able to identify. He's heard the way people speak of love as if it has magical healing properties, and while he’s extremely skeptical of this claim, he’s desperate enough to try anything at this point. He is just at a total loss as to how to do it.

“I want to kiss you,” Steve says suddenly, his voice scarcely more than a desperate whisper as though the situation is so delicate that a single vibration in the air could cause everything to shatter.

It occurs to Bucky that kissing is something that lovers do so maybe this is a good place to start and he tries to fight down the swell of fear he can feel rising from the pit of his stomach, like that old whale carcass inside him has inflated with bloat and is coming surging towards the surface.

Steve asks, “Can I kiss you?”

And Bucky has a vague memory of these same words, whispered in this same frightened heated breath, but in that instance he was the one doing the asking, it was high noon on a slick-skin summer’s day and Steve was laughing nervously into his mouth, he still tasted like the ten cent Nathan’s Famous hot dogs they’d just eaten—

right now, Bucky's hands are slick with dish detergent, Steve tastes like eggs with too much ketchup—

...wait—

—no kissing, they warn him with disgusted condescension written all over their features, and though they don’t elaborate, the implication is clear: kissing is for lovers, for humans, even for animals, and he’s lower than even that—

But... there was one of them, one of them who did like to kiss him, who always commanded that he kiss back, and even though Bucky never knew what to do, his body would move on without him. The man kissed like a predator, like he wanted to rip Bucky’s throat out, all nipped lips and clacking teeth, a clumsily choreographed pantomime of a fight to the death.

Bucky retreats into that corner of his mind and relinquishes the reins of his body to muscle memory and the last of the talons of his programming that are still hooked into the deepest part of him. Distantly, he is able to realise that the way Steve has begun to kiss him is soft and chaste, yet Bucky can’t stop himself from reciprocating as if it’s a challenge.

Even in acts of love, the only thing Bucky knows how to do is fight.

He comes back to himself at the sound of Steve gasping for breath and stumbling backwards. Bucky’s lips feel cold and empty at the loss of contact and he has to run his tongue along them to make sure they’re still there.

“Shit,” Steve pants, staring at Bucky with a bit of a wild look in his eyes.

Still running on autopilot and adrenaline, Bucky raises a cocky eyebrow at him and, because it seems like the kind of thing the old Bucky would say, he smirks, “What, that your first kiss since 1945 or something?”

Steve throws his hands up in exasperation. “Seriously? Why does everyone think that?”

“Who’s everyone?”

“Well, just Nat and now you, but it kinda does a number on a guy’s pride.”

“I’m not saying it was bad,” Bucky insists lamely.

“Let me guess, you were just wondering how much practice I’ve had,” Steve grouses.

“No! ...Well. Maybe.”

Steve makes another fed-up noise in his throat and Bucky is just glad his diversion tactics are successful in keeping Steve from noticing how badly he’s trembling now that he's started to come back into his body.

He's even more relieved that Steve does not think to ask about how much practice Bucky has had since 1945.

Chapter 5 Chapter Text

If the last couple of weeks had Bucky unsure of whether he was alive or dead, these past few days have left absolutely no doubt in his mind that he is most certainly the former, but in the worst possible way. He is too alive, joltingly and jarringly so, a walking bundle of worst case scenarios, an exposed wire bucking in bathwater. He feels like he’s cranked up ten notches higher than the safest setting. Everything is too big and too loud and too much. Even his own heartbeat is deafening.

He exists only in decibels of fear, ranging from an itchy anxiety to pure, abject terror. It’s the going-everywhere-at-once feeling Steve had mentioned he was prone to, like everything inside him is supercharged, atomic, one wrong step away from total catastrophic destruction. He might as well be a hand grenade in a paper bag, and nobody and no body – not his or Steve’s or anyone’s – can hope to contain him.

(Steve still tries, of course. They lay together like spoons, with Steve wrapping his arms around Bucky from behind. He hugs Bucky like this even after Bucky wets the bed on more than one occasion because his bladder seems to need emptying twice as often nowadays and he is utterly unable to pull himself free whenever someone is holding him. Not once does it even occur to him to ask Steve to let him go.)

It also does not occur to Bucky that his coming-apart has happened exactly in conjunction with the progression of his and Steve’s relationship. After all, it’s not as though it’s a particularly drastic development – mostly it’s just Steve touching Bucky in all the same ways, only more often and perhaps with an extra degree of tenderness. They rarely kiss, and even then, it’s usually just an innocent peck on closed-mouth lips, so swift that Bucky barely even has time to react aside from a fleeting flicker of static in his brain like a television with bad reception.

Certainly nothing to have a total breakdown over. If anything, Bucky finds it kind of nice to finally be able to give something back to Steve, after all the taking he’s done.

So even though he is jumpy and electric and feels like all of his cells are at war with each other, he’s so used to the maddening carousel of his moods that he just figures this is simply another one of his turns. There’s nothing that can be done about it but wait it out.

So Bucky waits.

He waits through migraines and nausea and pain that pops up in places that he is quite sure do not even exist. He aches in dimensions beyond that which the body can comprehend.

It’s four thirty a.m. when Steve pads into the living room, carefully announcing his presence as he approaches, and finds Bucky opening up the battery slot of the television remote, examining it for evidence of tampering.

“Bucky,” he says, voice quiet and sad, “This is the third time tonight. Please... Please come back to bed.”

Bucky flinches, deeply ashamed of what he’s been caught doing. Again. A sweeping perimeter check of the entire apartment, inspecting all the windows, the doors, the balcony, the electronics, the floorboards, the walls. As if some sinister foe might have somehow snuck its way inside in the mere hour since he’d made his last round.

“Sorry,” he croaks out, because it’s all he can say. He can’t justify himself, can’t try to explain why he’s doing this because his reasoning sounds ridiculous even to his own ears.

His eyes flit nervously over to where Steve is standing in the doorway. For all the strength and bulk of his frame, he seems oddly small all of a sudden, dwarfed by the enormity of the suffering he bears on his shoulders, Atlas buckling beneath an ever-expanding universe of pain.

Not for the first time, Bucky abstractly entertains the idea of leaving, so Steve could have his own life back. He believes it when Steve says that losing Bucky had destroyed him, but he also knows that Steve would get over it eventually. He would find someone else. He would survive, if not flourish, because Bucky is no better than a tapeworm, feeding off Steve’s vitality all just to continue an utterly worthless parasitic existence.

“Come sit on the couch with me for a moment,” Steve says. Bucky visibly hesitates, prompting Steve to add, “Or stand, if that feels safer.”

Bucky nods gratefully, remaining on his feet as Steve takes a seat on the sofa, looking up at him with that same open, familiar face that Bucky knows he once found endless solace in – warmth in those eyes, courage in those cheekbones, love in those lips – so why can’t he seem to feel it now? Or rather, he does, he has a sense of it at least, but it’s detached and off-limits, like he’s at a museum looking at some ancient artifact through a sheet of protective glass.

“Are you... anywhere else, right now?” Steve asks him gently.

Bucky shakes his head miserably. “No. I know where I am and what time it is and everything, I just... I just still gotta make sure.”

“Make sure of what?”

“That they’re not trying to take me back,” Bucky whispers, horribly embarrassed by this admission that sounds even sillier when he says it out loud.

Steve sighs unhappily. “Bucky, I already told you, you’re safe here. You’re with me. The alarms are all armed, the windows are bulletproof, everything is locked. We’ve got a direct line to Avengers Tower and Agent Thirteen is right across the hall.”

There is an edge of impatience in Steve’s tone, which Bucky knows is perfectly understandable considering the ungodly hour it is and the fact that they’ve had practically this exact same conversation not even ninety minutes ago. A part of Bucky wants to push Steve even further, until he can no longer maintain his fucking self-sacrificing saintliness and finally gives up on Bucky like he should have done long ago.

“I don’t... I don’t know what else to do,” Steve says after a moment, voice thick with a mix of helplessness and resignation.

“Nothing,” Bucky replies tersely. “It’s okay. Sorry for waking you again. You should go back to bed, you need your sleep. I’ll... take the couch.”

Steve’s face scrunches up like he might cry and Bucky feels a little sick. “Bucky, please... Come with me. Please.”

Bucky starts to shake his head, fully prepared to stand his ground on this one no matter how much Steve’s begging breaks his heart, but then Steve is reaching out to put a hand on Bucky’s upper arm and Bucky can do nothing but follow him back to the bedroom, hobbling after him like an old, dying dog.

Bucky waits.

He waits through whirlwinds of panic, flashfloods of acute, clutching terror that have him utterly convinced that he’s having a heart attack or he’s drowning or someone has drilled a tiny hole into his skull and is currently siphoning out all his hard-earned memories as he speaks...

...but then the dust settles and everything is how it should be. The universe has not a hair out of place.

He is Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf all rolled up in one.

“Buck, I’m getting real worried about you,” Steve says uncomfortably as he’s peeling a damp towel from the back of Bucky’s neck after one of his worst panic attacks in months.

Bucky doesn’t move from where he’s curled up on the couch, boneless and breathless and gone, but an involuntary shudder runs through his entire body, prompting Steve to rest what is meant to be a protective hand on his shoulder. Bucky immediately stills.

“You can’t keep living like this, Buck,” Steve murmurs sadly, his thumb rubbing gentle circles on Bucky’s arm.

“No fuckin’ kidding,” Bucky wheezes with a humourless sort of chuckle.

Steve takes a deep breath. “I’m just gonna go ahead and say it: you need more help than I know how to give.”

“What are you saying?” Bucky asks in a small voice, because to him it sure sounds a lot like I give up on you.

As usual, Steve must be able to sense exactly what Bucky is thinking because he says, “I’m not saying I’m giving up on you, because that’s never going to happen. ‘Til the end of the line, remember?”

“So what are you saying?” Bucky repeats.

“I- I guess I’m... I think maybe you should go to someone who actually knows what they’re doing, that’s all.”

Warning bells instantly go off in Bucky’s head and he scrambles to sit up despite the dizziness it causes.

“You mean like... a doctor?” he asks, unable to keep the alarm out of his voice.

“Look, I know you’re afraid. Hell, I’d be afraid, too, and I don’t even have the same, um, background... as you do with... medical personnel.”

“I already told you a thousand times,” Bucky says, trying to sound biting but his words are frayed at the ends with fear, “I don’t want anyone mucking around in my head.”

“I know, I know. But these doctors wouldn’t be like that. I promise. They’re... they’re there to make you feel better.”

“I don’t want anyone making me feel anything!”

“Damnit, you know what I mean! They’re there to help you.”

“That’s what their doctors said they were doing, too,” Bucky chokes out, remembering false claims of We’re only here to help and broken promises of This is for your own good, cooed to him in exaggeratedly reassuring tones that had him almost falling for it every time. Either they had been extraordinarily convincing or Bucky had merely been all too desperate to believe them, hungrily snapping up whatever small comforts – real or imagined – were offered to him, because he was so starved for relief that even just the promise of it was good enough for him to jump through their hoops to get it.

Well, he’s learned his lesson now. He’s sure as hell not about to let that happen again.

“Don’t you trust me?” Steve asks suddenly.

“Of course I trust you,” Bucky snaps back, bristling that Steve would even think otherwise.

It comes out sounding clipped and over-defensive but the truth is that Steve is probably the one person he trusts more than anyone in the world, which may not really be saying much considering how deeply wary Bucky is of absolutely everyone else, but it should still mean something, shouldn’t it?

“I trust you,” Bucky asserts, trying to rein himself in. “Just like how I trusted you when one of the first things you said to me when I came home was that you’d never make me do anything I didn’t want to do.” He stares evenly at Steve, letting the words sink in, before he prods, “I was right to trust you on that, wasn’t I?”

Steve’s shoulders slump in defeat, just as Bucky predicted. Steve has a glaring blind spot when it comes to wanting to accommodate any and all of Bucky’s bids for autonomy, a temptingly exploitable trait that Bucky tries not to abuse but right now he can’t help it – when he’s scared, all rules about fair fighting get thrown out the window. The only thing that matters is that he survives.

Still, Bucky feels a twinge of guilt when all Steve does is nod wordlessly, so he says, “Hey, I’m sorry, okay? Look, how about this... We’ll just... wait a li’l longer. You know how things are, sometimes it’s real bad, but then it’s not.”

Steve still looks unconvinced but does not dare to go against Bucky’s wishes.

“We always make it through in the end,” Bucky says, with a confidence he does not feel, “Even if it’s just by the skin of our teeth.”

On Sunday afternoon, Steve suddenly gets up to answer the door. Bucky hadn’t heard anyone knock but he knows that's because their friends are under strict instructions to text Steve instead of knocking when they come over, following an incident last week that had Bucky ripping the entire knife drawer right out of the slot in his haste to find a weapon. Incidentally, the knives are now hidden away in the highest cabinet of their kitchen cupboards that they never actually use.

(Bucky went looking for them when Steve was in the washroom one day but pretends he still doesn’t know where they are.)

It’s Sam at the door, and it only takes one look at his face for Bucky to know that he’s not just here to play board games like they usually do on Sunday afternoons.

Bucky blinks at him several times, says, “Oh,” and then shoots Steve a bit of an accusatory glare.

“I thought talking to Sam might be a good compromise,” Steve says defensively.

“Isn’t a compromise supposed to be something agreed upon by both parties?” Bucky points out with a scowl.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Sam says, glancing between the two of them before his eyes settle on Steve. “You didn’t tell him I was coming?”

“Not... exactly,” Steve says guiltily.

Sam takes several steps forward until he’s standing closer to Bucky than he is to Steve.

“Hey Bucky, how’s about you and me go to the other room and we can talk about what a sneaky little bastard this guy is,” he says in an overly-conspiratorial stage-whisper.

Steve rolls his eyes, but the relief is apparent on his face when Bucky just shrugs and follows Sam into the bedroom, closing the door behind them as Sam sits on the bed. Bucky remains hovering by the doorway.

“Do you guys want me to step out or something?” comes Steve’s voice from the other side of the door.

Sam looks to Bucky, who just shrugs again.

“Why don’t you go play some backgammon or whatever you geriatrics do for fun?” Sam calls back. “We won’t be long.”

They hear Steve mutter, “You can’t play backgammon by yourself,” and then the television comes on with the volume turned up a little too high.

“So,” Sam says with a slight nod in Bucky’s direction, all the lighthearted breeziness gone from his voice. “What’s up.”

“What did Steve tell you?” Bucky asks suspiciously. He hasn’t moved from where he’s standing in front of the door, entire body tense and ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.

“Just that things have been a little rough,” is Sam’s judicious response. “Said you still weren’t comfortable with seeing a therapist but maybe it’d help to talk to me. Purely in a friend-to-friend capacity.”

Bucky compulsively clenches and unclenches his flesh hand several times before he says, “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s okay. Are you having any thoughts about hurting yourself? Or other people?”

Bucky shakes his head, and it’s not a lie. For the latter point, at least. He thinks perhaps it’s maybe not even a lie for the former, either, since technically he does not want to hurt himself, he just wants everything to go away.

“Okay, good,” Sam says. “Now, why don’t we start with why you think Steve might be worried right now.”

“He’s always worried,” Bucky replies with a sad, knowing smile. “But... I don’t know. I’m just. I can’t relax.”

“Hypervigilance?”

“Yeah, I guess. I keep doing safety checks of the entire apartment. It’s driving Steve crazy.”

“Has anything happened in the past few weeks that might have triggered this?” Sam asks. “Anything stressful or different? Any changes, even good ones?”

Bucky thinks about ketchupy kisses with dishwasher hands but according to Steve this is how things had always been with them, so he’s not sure if it counts as an actual change so much as it is something reverting to its original, purest form.

“Not really,” he says.

“Are you able to pinpoint what you’re scared about?”

All of a sudden Bucky breaks into a coarse burst of laughter, making Sam frown.

“I’m scared for myself,” he says, a bit incredulously, like this is a realisation he has only just come up with now. “Not of myself. How sick is that? The nightmares, the flashbacks, the anxiety, they’re all about the fucked-up things that have been done to me. Not the even more fucked-up things I’ve done to other people, or might still do, if I’m not careful. Hell, I almost killed you! And Steve! How can you guys even stand to be in the same room as me?”

“Bucky,” Sam begins cautiously, slowly rising to his feet.

“Who knows how many innocents I’ve slaughtered,” Bucky babbles on hysterically, “How many lives I’ve destroyed... And yet the only person whose pain bothers me is me!”

“Bucky, you’ve got every right to your own pain. That doesn’t make you sick, it makes you human.”

Bucky shakes his head vehemently, staring not at Sam, but past him, a haunted look glazing over the chilled blues of his eyes. “Not human. Weapon.”

“Even if you don’t think you’re being bothered by the suffering of others,” Sam continues, “We know how much it tears you up inside. We’ve seen it. And we know how much the thought of losing control again scares you, but it’s because it scares you so much that we know you’re still you in there. You’re a good man.”

“A gun feels nothing for those it kills,” Bucky whispers, like he’s reciting something he’s been told. “It grieves only for the bullets it’s lost.”

“Bucky, I’m going to come closer to you, okay?”

“A weapon,” Bucky repeats dazedly.

“Bucky?” Sam tries again. “Can I come closer?”

Bucky’s eyes refocus and he stares at Sam as if it's the first time he's seeing him. “...S-S-Sam?”

“Yeah, it’s me. You with me? I’m going to take a step towards you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now I’m going to hold your hand, if that’s all right.”

“Y-yeah.”

Sam reaches out and takes Bucky’s flesh hand in his own, giving it a tiny squeeze.

“You feel that?” he asks Bucky.

Bucky stares down at their hands, at Sam’s strong, lean fingers and his own reddened bite-scarred knuckles. He feels it, but at the same time, he... doesn’t? He is acutely aware of every millimetre of skin that he is currently sharing with Sam, but it’s as though the rest of his body has disappeared. He now exists only in the part of him that is being touched by someone else.

Still, he says, “Yeah, I feel it.”

“You feel it because you’re a human being, not a weapon,” Sam says.

It sounds so absurdly simple, so glaringly obvious, that it has a high potential to come off as horribly condescending, but Sam somehow manages to avoid that pitfall as he always does, and the comfort the statement induces in Bucky is almost palpable.

It brings with it a dull twinge of guilt, however. Guilt that Bucky seems to be able to find a solace in Sam that he does not get from Steve, even though he should. Even though Steve is the one who has been by his side since the very beginning, fighting with him and for him, doggedly refusing to give up on him even though Bucky has given him every reason to do so.

And yet here Bucky is feeling better after a five minute talk with Sam than he has in the past whole week with Steve.

Maybe it comes down to the fact that there are some things he simply cannot share with those who love him most. Things that he can only talk about from a safe distance, with someone who doesn’t have as much invested in him. Of course he knows Sam cares about him, and Bucky does include Sam in his extremely short list of people who he doesn’t want to disappoint, but for some reason he feels a certain sense of security with Sam that allows him to be more open than he could with Steve.

Bucky supposes that this would be what a therapist is for – establishing a connection while still remaining safely impersonal – but he still is only comfortable talking to people he trusts implicitly, which leads to yet another of the many catch-22’s in his life: he cannot talk to a stranger because he only feels safe around the people he is already close to, but he cannot talk to them either because he doesn’t want to be a burden.

“Thanks, Sam,” Bucky says shakily after a long stretch of silence.

Sam grins at him in that way that lights up his entire face. He releases Bucky’s hand and gives Bucky a tiny pat on the back.

Bucky is still breathing heavily and he must look as exhausted as he feels because Sam says, “How about we just leave things for now. I know you weren’t exactly prepared for a good ol’ round of sharing and caring, but you did good and I can come over at another set time if you want to talk further.”

It’s an offer that Sam has been extending ever since Bucky had come back to himself enough to not want to kill him anymore ("I ain't trying to head shrink you, but I do want you to know I'm always here to talk, from one vet to another"). Bucky has never formally taken him up on it, though. They’ve had a few brief, impromptu exchanges such as these during times of crisis but that’s about it, and as helpful as they’ve been, they've also always left Bucky feeling guilty and disgusted with himself.

He just can't bear the thought of being a burden to Sam in the same way he is to Steve. Best to keep his poisonous emotional footprint as small as possible.

“I think I’m fine,” he says finally, wondering if the words sound as hollow to Sam as they do in his own ears.

“Look, I know you’re probably so sick and tired of hearing this,” Sam says, “But you really should consider going to a professional. I’m kinda outta my depth here, if you hadn’t noticed already.”

“I doubt there’s a single doctor on this planet who wouldn’t be out of their depth when it comes to me,” Bucky replies dryly.

Sam surprises Bucky by chuckling good-naturedly and joking, “Ain’t that the truth.”

Sometimes you just gotta laugh so you won’t cry, Bucky remembers Steve saying to him once, another alleyway, another ass-kicking, crooked grin dripping red.

Bucky decides to give it a try.

Chapter 6 Notes:

additional warnings for a single-sentence mention of (unintentional) self-harm and extremely brief discussion of abuse.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Things keep getting worse.

Where Bucky was once stuck on a single agonising setting, he now has one more, but it is all the way down at the other end of the dial and there is absolutely no safe space in between.

On one end of the scale, he is still constantly on edge, with everything from a creaking floorboard to the beeping of the microwave buttons being pressed making him jump out of his skin. He is irritable and irrational and short-tempered, to the point where he sometimes verbally lashes out at Steve for the tiniest infractions. His flashbacks – normally deceptively quiet affairs where he is trapped in some other time and place inside his head but exhibits no real external reactions aside from the physiological – intensify into total immersive experiences wherein he is literally living out a particular moment, with all the fighting and screaming and thrashing that it entails.

These blaring days of nerves and noise are interspersed with silent stretches of lost time as the pendulum swings in the other direction. In what is perhaps an effort to recover from the immense strain it has been under, his brain virtually shuts down. Sometimes his body shuts down with it and he remains a useless plank of dead wood beneath the blankets for hours at a time, but often it carries him through the motions of entire days, leading him through surprisingly complex tasks such as cooking meals or cleaning the bathroom, and when he comes to, he won’t be able to remember having done any of it. He’ll wake up and suddenly it’s dark outside or he’s dressed in different clothes or he’s done the grocery shopping and even managed to get every item on the list.

It is in the aftermath of these episodes, when he is blank and exhausted and vulnerable, that he can feel the Winter Soldier clawing its way back to the surface with a renewed vengeance, the return of a wicked presence inside him that he’d been foolish enough to believe he’d buried forever. So far he has been able to smother it before it is able to do any damage, but he lives in constant fear that one day he will find himself awakening to the all-too-familiar sight of his hands and clothes covered in blood that isn’t his.

He wakes up on the living room floor. Under the kitchen table. In the bathtub.

He wakes up with flesh under his nails and deep bloody gouges in his thighs.

He doesn’t want to wake up anymore.

Bucky is sitting on the bed folding a pile of clean laundry and Steve is beside him on his laptop looking to order a miniature zen garden online when Bucky says out of nowhere, “I think I should go.”

He can’t bring himself to look up from the socks he’s been trying to match up but he sees Steve’s entire body go rigid in his peripheral vision. Steve closes the laptop with a bit too much force, making Bucky flinch.

“W-why... why do you think that?” Steve asks, unable to keep the tremulous terror out of his voice.

Head hung with shame, Bucky mumbles, “It’s not... I’m not... ‘m not getting any better.”

It’s the first time he has dared to say this out loud. He had wanted so badly to believe it wasn’t so, tried to convince himself that if he just held on a little bit longer, tried a little bit harder, everything would eventually turn out okay.

But it’s just too tough to fight it anymore. All of it. The presence in his head that isn’t him, telling him to destroy other people, and the one that is him, telling him to destroy himself.

Perhaps the most maddening part about it all is that for a while there, he thought he’d been getting better. He’d been slowly but surely dragging himself out of that soulless vacuum of existence where it took every last bit of his strength just to keep his head on straight, just to keep breathing. Both Sam and Natasha had explained that in the initial phase of his recovery it may feel like he was working hard and gaining very little to show for it, but they’d also assured Bucky that once he got a hold of surviving, he’d be able to take the next step into actually living. And while Bucky may not have been there quite yet, the point was that it seemed as though he’d been on the right track.

He’d been remembering more and more every day, and while most of it wasn’t pretty, it still meant he was coming back to himself. He’d even acquired enough basic survival skills to venture into more sophisticated functions. No longer constantly in imminent danger of drowning, he was able to safely test the waters of life’s smaller pleasures. He discovered a dazzling world of music and technology and food and film that he had no idea could even exist, and on his better days, the universe felt like this huge, wonderful secret that he had finally earned the privilege to be let in on.

There is no more of that wonder now, none of that sense of reward or worthiness.

The effect of Bucky’s words on Steve is immediate. He practically tosses his laptop across the bed and scrambles over to Bucky’s side, frantically closing a hand around Bucky’s forearm as if he’s worried Bucky is going to up and leave at this very moment.

As if Bucky couldn’t just wrench himself free and snap Steve’s neck within seconds if he really wanted to escape that badly.

Then again, isn’t that exactly what he could have done every single time a HYDRA tech had laid him bare on an operating table or pushed him back into that devil’s chair? Sure there were the leather straps and metal clamps, but they were mostly to contain his convulsions; he likely could have broken free of them had he exerted enough force. Even the armed guards surrounding him would not have posed much of a threat for a soldier of his caliber. He had certainly fought his way out of hairier situations.

Yet he never tried to defend himself from HYDRA.

He may have lashed out on occasion, flinging a doctor across the room or choking a guard with his cybernetic hand, but his petty acts of rebellion were more or less the equivalent of a child throwing a temper tantrum. A petulant brat who declares he’s running away from home, storms dramatically out the door, but only makes it halfway down the block before freaking out and scampering back to the house with his tail between his legs.

All of a sudden it occurs to Bucky that Steve is talking; Bucky knows this because he can see his lips moving, can even hear sounds coming from his mouth, but none of them seem to be words he can recognise let alone understand. Meanwhile, Steve’s hand is still wrapped around his metal arm, squeezing it tightly, and the prosthesis can feel pressure but not texture or temperature, cannot tell the difference between cold metal restraints and a lover’s desperate grasp. All that exists is the sensation of being gripped, carrying with it the sinister promise that resisting will merely result in punishment and pain.

He doesn’t even realise he’s closed his eyes and gone somewhere else until he feels the hold around his arm let up and registers a worried voice saying his name. He snaps his eyes open with a gasp, finds splintered blue staring back into tsunami storm, and Steve has that look on his face, the one that Bucky hates, the one that’s probably a lot of the reason Bucky feels it would be best for both of them if he left.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“We can work this out,” Steve says desperately, and Bucky has a feeling that this is more or less the gist of what Steve had been saying the whole time Bucky hadn’t been able to hear him. “Whatever is going on, it... we’ll figure it out, o-okay? I know you’re having a particularly tough time right now, but we’ll- we can make it through. You said it yourself, we always do. Right?”

“It’s not a matter of we, though,” Bucky argues halfheartedly. “You’re fine. It’s just me who’s all wrong.”

To Bucky's surprise, Steve grinds out a bitterly incredulous laugh. “I'm fine? God, Buck... I- I know what I feel is nothing compared to how hard it is to be in your head, but it... That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt me, too. Most of the time I feel like I’m barely hanging on, damnit.”

“That’s exactly why I should leave!” Bucky says, a bit triumphantly, pleased to have roped Steve into proving his point for him. “You don’t have to feel like this. I’ll get out of your hair and then you’ll be okay.”

Steve looks horrified, though Bucky can’t possibly imagine why; he thought his reasoning was straightforward enough.

“Wait,” Steve chokes out. “You think- you really think that’s the problem? That you’re the problem?”

“I am, though, aren’t I?”

“Bucky... god... no... That’s the farthest thing from the truth. The problem is... What hurts is knowing that you’re hurting... And that’s gonna happen whether you’re living here or not. But at least if you’re here, I can feel a bit better knowing that I can be there for you.” A pause, then: “If- if you want me to be, that is.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything.

The colour visibly drains from Steve’s face and his voice is very small when he says, “Buck? You... you do want me here, don’t you?”

Yes.
No.
I don’t know.

“If you’re saying you want to leave because you’re worried you’re being a burden, or- or whatever, then I can tell you for a fact that that’s not the case,” Steve continues, still very quietly. “But if you want to leave because you... want to leave, then I...” He swallows hard. “I won’t stop you.”

Bucky notices that Steve apparently does not even think to consider the third possibility, which is that Bucky wants to leave because for every step backwards that he takes, the Winter Soldier gains a mile.

Bucky does not bring this up, though. Steve has enough on his plate without also having to worry that Bucky is going to kill him in his sleep, though he feels a little guilty because Steve certainly deserves to know if his life is in danger. But talking about it would be too hard so Bucky figures it’s easier just to run.

After that, everything happens in a bit of a blur. At some point, Bucky packs a small overnight bag. Calls Sam. Has a surprisingly calm and coherent discussion with Steve about his plans, saying that he’ll only be gone a few days; he just needs a change of scenery and some time to sort his head out. Steve seems slightly reassured by the fact that Bucky will be with Sam, interpreting it as Bucky taking charge of his own wellbeing, but his eyes are still shimmering tidepools of worried blue as they head downstairs to Steve’s car, Steve gripping Bucky’s hand tightly in his own the whole way there.

Bucky has no recollection of any of this, though.

He wakes up at Sam’s house.

Steve is talking to Sam in a low voice and Bucky knows without even having to listen that they’re talking about him, because Steve’s mouth has that sadness-tugged shape that it always forms whenever he’s talking about Bucky these days. Bucky knows it wasn’t always like this. He remembers, from a lifetime ago, Sarah Rogers divulging to him how Steve’s face was all sunshine and wonder whenever he spoke to her about Bucky (“Mommm!” Steve had whined, mortified, and Bucky may or may not have gloated more than was necessary), and it makes Bucky dizzy with shame to know that it’s his fault Steve has lost one of the few things in the world that makes him happy.

It’s his desire to make up for this combined with the deeply ingrained need to please that has Bucky dutifully leaning forward into Steve’s lips as Steve kisses him goodbye. He tries to match Steve’s movements like Steve is leading them in a dance, but he’s not sure how successful he is because this is a waltz that is new to him and he doesn’t know his steps. Steve is kissing him long and deep and desperate, as if he’s in danger of being swept away and Bucky’s mouth is his anchor, but Bucky doesn’t know how to be that lifeline for him.

They have kissed like this before, Bucky realises after a moment, thoughts drifting back to a pale sunrise in 1943, the morning he was to ship off to England.

Same kind of kiss, different kind of war.

Bucky is so caught up in his own head that it's not until Steve has left that he notices the odd way in which Sam has been watching him.

“What?” he asks, an over-defensive edge in his tone. He knows that things are different in this century when it comes to men loving each other, but he still can't help but to feel an almost aggressive readiness to defend himself.

“You and Steve,” Sam says, no judgment in his tone, just a vague curiosity.

“What about me and Steve?”

“How long has that been going on?”

“Since the late 1930’s, I reckon,” Bucky replies, trying to sound glib but the joke falls flat.

Sam fixes Bucky with a terrifically unimpressed expression to let him know he’s not going to get away with brushing this one off as nothing.

“I’m serious, dude,” he says, voice gentle but firm.

Bucky stares down at his feet, distantly noticing that his socks aren’t quite the same shade of navy blue. “He kiss- we kissed. A few weeks ago. I think.”

He’s not sure if he has permission to talk about this. Steve hadn’t given him any instructions either way, but with HYDRA it was certainly not allowed.

He lifts his head and sees that Sam is still watching him carefully, which makes him even more nervous. He watches Sam right back, on the lookout for any sign that he might have done something wrong, something he could be punished for.

But Sam simply asks, “And it’s been kind of a regular thing since then?”

“I... guess...? I mean, it’s nothing real hot and heavy or anything. Just...” He makes a vague gesture with his hand. “...You know.”

(He realises that Sam probably doesn’t know, but he’s not exactly clambering to go into detail, and Sam probably isn't particularly eager to be enlightened about it, either.)

“Man, no one tells me anything around here,” Sam complains, but in less than the time it takes to blink, his voice reassumed a solemn tone as he asks, “And are you okay with it?”

“With what?”

“Did you want Steve to kiss you?” Sam clarifies.

Bucky frowns. “I- I don’t understand the question.”

Sam’s eyes darken and Bucky swallows hard, unable to tell what this reaction means. He sees sadness there, but also shock and a shade of what might even be disgust. Even though reason insists that it is not directed at him, the less rational but more overpowering part of Bucky’s mind cowers away expecting some kind of retribution.

Sam tries again. “Do you like it when Steve kisses you?”

It’s ostensibly a very simple question but the connection between Bucky’s body and his brain is still wired all wrong, making it impossible for him to be able to tell. Every touch, whether it’s an accidental brush of the hand or an intimate embrace from a trusted friend is a fraught, complicated affair based on a complex system of punishment and reward that he doesn’t quite understand (though perhaps ‘reward’ is too generous a word and it would be more accurate to say ‘relief’). He may be able to make his own decisions and deduce what he likes and doesn’t like when it comes to things such as food or pastimes or even people’s personalities, but when it comes to his body, he is at a total loss. He does not know how to interpret contact in a way that doesn’t have to do with what the other person wants.

“I don’t... not like it...” he says eventually, meaning to sound more sure of himself but his voice acquires a bit of a questioning pitch at the end.

Very succinctly, Sam says, “Shit.”

Bucky shuffles uncomfortably on his mismatched-socked feet.

“We’re gonna have to talk about this,” Sam says in a tone that leaves no room for argument. “Right now, you can just get settled in and try to get some sleep, but tomorrow we are having a talk, dude.”

Wordlessly, Bucky nods and retreats into the guest room.

The bed is firm.

Bucky does not get much sleep, his head too awash with a bullet rain of whiplash thoughts, all of them colliding and contradictory, none of them making sense. He worries about Steve, misses Steve, is angry with Steve. He feels an almost petulant sense of abandonment even though he was the one who did the running.

He also spends hours thinking about what Sam had asked him, about if he was okay with kissing Steve. He wasn’t lying when he said that he doesn’t not like it, which by default should mean that he does, but he’s not sure that’s entirely true either.

He wishes there were a way he could look at things with a clear mind and not through the warped prism that HYDRA turned his brain into. He feels a surge of bitterness towards his old handlers for this (“your captors,” Steve always corrects him whenever Bucky uses words that are too innocuous for Steve’s liking), though interestingly enough, resentment is not a sensation that he is used to despite it being a seemingly obvious reaction to the horrors he’d been put through. Instead, any anger he feels about his situation is usually directed inwards. Rather than placing blame on those who were truly responsible, he places it on himself. For being weak, for not having fought back hard enough, for not being able to get better.

Right now, though, the fire coursing through his veins has nothing to do with his own perceived shortcomings. It is an utter relief, to be able to release some of that rage that has been soaking septic in his blood, threatening to poison all of his organs. Normally he does not let himself feel too much outward-bound anger, afraid that the Winter Soldier will latch onto it and use it like a rope to haul itself out of the black well of his psyche, but right now it is so liberating and cathartic that he doesn’t even try to reel it back in.

He wraps himself in it like a security blanket and drifts into a restless, dreamless slumber.

“Sleep well?” Sam asks him conversationally the next morning over breakfast.

Bucky thinks his ragged appearance more than speaks for itself so he doesn’t answer.

“Ooookay then,” Sam mutters, seemingly to himself, then to Bucky he says, “So. Can we talk?”

Bucky gives a sullen shrug, increasingly his only form of communication nowadays. He scoops a single blueberry out of his granola yogurt mix and pops it into his mouth, chewing it slowly and intently to avoid having to do anything else.

Sam apparently does not like to waste any time when it comes to getting down to business because right off the bat he says, “How do you feel when Steve kisses you?”

“This is going to be such an awkward conversation,” Bucky groans, but does not protest because it’s something he wants to be able to figure out, too.

Because as things stand right now, he has no idea, and he’s desperate enough for answers that he’s willing to open up to another human being about it even though it scares the shit out of him.

Or rather, he would open up about it if only he knew what to say.

When Sam notices Bucky struggling to answer, he suggests, “How about this, then: how does your body feel? Think about yesterday when Steve kissed you goodbye. Can you remember anything about how your body felt?”

Bucky frowns, thinking hard. He’s always somewhere else whenever it happens, plus he’s so out of touch with his own body that he doubts he’d be able to decipher what was going on with it even if he weren’t a million miles away.

After a lengthy consideration, he finally replies haltingly, “My body felt like it was being tugged along on a leash.”

Sam’s expression becomes horror-struck for a split-second before he’s able to school it back into a veneer of calm. “Okay. Yeah. That’s not... It’s not supposed to feel like that.”

“I know that,” Bucky sniffs, except he doesn’t really, and he hates how dumb he feels right now.

“And lemme guess. You never told Steve.”

“I couldn’t,” Bucky whispers furiously, frustrated that Sam just doesn’t seem to get it. “That’s not... allowed.”

He cringes, realising it sounds so utterly petty when he says it out loud like that.

He doesn't know why he expects Sam to make fun of him for it, but he's still oddly relieved when all Sam does is ask, “But telling me is allowed?”

“It’s... complicated,” Bucky says, not sure how to explain why it’s so different. “It’s like... Steve is the one who- he takes care of me, right? And. So. That means he’s the one I’m supposed to be... being good for.”

Bucky’s voice gets tiny at the end of his sentence. This is the first time he’s admitted this element of the dynamic between him and Steve to anyone else. Including himself. He wanted so badly to be able to get his fairytale ending where Love Conquers All and it’s a little sobering to realise that that’s just not how things work.

“Steve’s your friend, Bucky,” Sam reminds him. “Not your handler. You don’t have to be anything for him.”

Bucky shakes his head vehemently. “I have to be Bucky Barnes.”

“D’you think maybe that has something to do with why you felt you had to leave?” Sam asks delicately. “To escape the constant pressure to be someone else?”

“It’s not like Steve does anything to make me feel that way,” Bucky objects, feeling obligated to come to Steve’s defence, but after a slight pause he adds, “I don’t know, it’s like... Sometimes I feel like I don’t even fit in my own skin when I’m at home.” He frowns. “But I don’t know why I feel like that.”

“This thing can mess your head up pretty bad,” Sam says in what is perhaps the understatement of the century. “I’ve known far too many vets who have left loving spouses and supportive families because their brain was telling them that that was the only way. And I won’t lie to you, sometimes it is. Sometimes trauma fucks someone up so badly that staying with them would be unhealthy or even dangerous for the other person. But as far as I can tell, you and Steve are on good terms with each other, so that’s a good sign.”

“I’ve been yelling at him a lot,” Bucky confesses, ashamed. “Like, a coupl’a days ago he asked me if I was okay one too many times and I just... exploded at him. Accused him of being clingy and overprotective.” He blinks, as if struck by a sudden realisation. “...Oh my god. That’s terrible.”

“He kind of mentioned that to me,” Sam admits. “But that’s a far cry from the kind of shit I’m talking about that will drive people apart. I’m talking actual abuse. Verbal. Even physical.”

Bucky feels a trickle of dread slide down his spine. “You mean, you think I might... I could—”

“I’m not saying that’s what you’re going to do,” Sam cuts in quickly. “But I am saying that it does happen. I’m not kidding when I tell you that trauma will turn someone into a completely different person.”

Bucky makes a hysterical sound in his throat that’s halfway between laughter and a sob. “Well, what better candidate for that than someone like me who’s already got that potential in him? Someone who is already capable of killing his friends!”

“Hey. Hey, it’s okay. I don’t actually think that’s what will happen. At all. We all know how hard you’ve been working to get those thoughts out of you. I’m not worried about that at all.”

Bucky is quiet, choosing not to mention the scratches that the Winter Soldier leaves in his brain during the night, teeny tiny little nibble marks that Bucky makes sure to smooth over first thing in the morning when he gets up.

“What I’m worried about,” Sam says after a moment, “Is the lack of communication between you and Steve. You two really need to sit down and talk about this – about how you really feel when he touches you – and if you want me to be there when you do it then I will, but either way, it’s got to happen.”

“Then things will be better?” Bucky asks, unable to keep the naïve, childish desperation out of his voice, and knowing full well that it’s an impossible question to answer honestly, but right now he just wants to be told everything will be okay even if it’s a blatant lie.

“It’s certainly the place to start,” Sam replies carefully, and for the first time in months, the blooming pressure expanding within Bucky’s ribcage has less to do with fear than it does with something else he can’t quite identify, something lighter and more radiant that he thought he’d lost the capacity to feel a long, long time ago.

Notes:

just a heads up that i'm not sure how good i'll be at updating while the world cup is going on lol. but as always, thank you again for reading and commenting and caring about this story ♥

Chapter 7 Chapter Text

There are some things that are different about staying with Sam and there are some things that are the same.

Sam has more television channels than Steve, but there is still never anything on. Sam eats a lot of salads and drinks a lot of unappealingly-coloured smoothies (“Not all of us are blessed with super-soldier metabolism,” he grumbles), but every now and then he also likes to get super-greasy extra-cheesy pizza from the same restaurant that Steve orders from.

Bucky does not burrow away into his own head as often when he’s with Sam, but he still has to check all the doors and windows in the house several times a day and always positions himself in the part of the room that gives him the best view of his surroundings.

Despite all this, he still feels safer with Sam than he did at home. It’s as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, and Bucky feels immensely guilty for it. Sam is careful with Bucky in a way that Steve never was, but of course Bucky can’t fault Steve for that because the guy was doing the best he knew how to do, and it’s not like Bucky ever let him know how he was really feeling. Plus, it’s kind of Sam’s job to know what to do in these kinds of situations.

Another thing about staying with Sam that is different but also the same is that Sam often asks Bucky how he is feeling physically, which is something he had done in the very beginning, when Bucky was still learning how to interpret physical cues like hunger and tiredness. Now, Sam does it more to force Bucky to acknowledge his body as something he is instead of something he has, and also to try to show him that what’s going on in his body can sometimes help him figure out what is going on in his head.

“If the ache in your chest had a voice,” Sam says, “What would it be trying to tell you?”

Or, “If the tightness in your stomach could talk, what would it say?”

The answer often starts with Steve, but Bucky’s still not quite sure what comes after that.

One thing Bucky is certain of is that he does not want to have The Talk with Steve until he’s able to sort himself out a little more first. Then again, this could very well be that he's just trying to put it off for as long as he can, because he doubts he’ll ever be able to sort himself out enough to really feel comfortable enough to do anything.

“It’s all about honesty,” Sam tells him. “And like everything else, you gotta start with yourself before you can move on to other people. You don’t have to tell me or anyone else just yet, but if there’s anything you’ve been keeping from yourself, now’s the time to ‘fess up.”

Purely on unthinking impulse, Bucky tells Sam anyway. Best to kill two birds with one stone.

He says, “I can feel him trying to come back.”

Sam’s expression becomes very serious. “Who?” he asks, even though Bucky is pretty sure he already knows.

“Him,” is all Bucky says, because even though he’s trying to be honest, it’s still too hard to say it out loud.

“The Soldier,” Sam says grimly.

Bucky clenches his human hand as tightly as he can, digging his nails into his palms and trying to lose himself in the sting as he whispers, “I was getting scared I’d hurt Steve. That might’ve been part of why I came here.”

“Wait, but you’re not scared you’ll hurt me?” Sam demands, feigning indignance, but Bucky has a feeling that Sam is a little more nervous than he’s letting on, and he can't exactly blame him.

“You were never the objective of my last mission,” Bucky explains, hoping to assuage whatever concerns Sam might have for his own wellbeing. “You were just... an unfortunate side-effect.”

Sam grumbles at this but does look a little more relaxed.

“So it's okay,” Bucky continues, “'Cause it’s not... It’s not programmed into me the way it is with Steve. And with Natali- Natasha.”

“Dude,” Sam says uneasily, “This stuff is kind of waaaay above my pay grade. I’m... I mean, combat PTSD is really the only thing I’m qualified to help with, and, like, we get some POW’s, but that’s really the only... I just don’t know if I’m the right person to help you.”

“You’re the only one who can,” Bucky says, a little desperately, nauseous with a mounting panic. “I can’t- There’s no one else, they’re all... it’s too... I just can’t. You don’t have to do anything, really, just... It still helps. Even just to... be here.”

Sam looks skeptical, and it suddenly occurs to Bucky how fucking needy he sounds right now. So much for not wanting to be a burden.

“I’m sorry,” he says abruptly, feeling the heat of shame colouring his cheeks, “I- I shouldn’t’ve said that. I had no right to ask you to- I can... I should... go.”

He jerkily starts off for the front door, as if he’s just going leave right then and there, without taking his stuff, without even knowing where he’s headed. The sheer lack of rationality of this course of action does not even occur to him, his head is such a mess.

“Whoa, hey, hold up,” Sam says, scurrying in front of him but still making sure to keep his distance as not to seem like he’s blocking Bucky's escape route. “You most definitely should not go. Look, you know I’ll always be here for you whenever I can, but... Well, that’s kinda all I can do. And I don’t know if it’s gonna be enough.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky repeats despondently.

“You’re not in trouble,” Sam tells him.

Bucky swallows hard. “I’m still sorry, though.”

“Okay. But you didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”

“Okay,” Bucky agrees, even though he doesn’t understand, because on the one hand he knows Sam wouldn’t lie to him, but on the other, there’s no way that Bucky hasn’t done anything wrong when the fact that he is even here at all is an abomination in and of itself.

Sam has to go to work the next day. He suggests that Bucky go with him, maybe sit in on a group session or even just check out the resources that the VA has to offer, but Bucky isn’t ready for strangers and opts to stay home instead.

He’s tidying the house – it’s the least he can do, really – when Steve calls. They make slightly uncomfortable small talk, artfully skirting around the real issues at hand, until the tail end of the brief conversation when, just as they’re saying goodbye, Steve says, “I love you, Bucky.”

Bucky freezes.

“You don’t have to say anything back,” Steve adds quickly when Bucky doesn’t respond. “I just thought... I just thought you should know.”

“I know,” Bucky says quietly, because while he may not have any idea what love means, he does know that it is something Steve feels for him, and something that Bucky was once capable of feeling, too.

Maybe loving is something that can be (re?)learned the same way Bucky has retaught himself to eat when he is hungry and rest when he is tired and focus on the colours and textures of things when he’s in danger of being caught up in another place and time.

Maybe there’s still hope for him yet.

“Thank you, Steve,” Bucky whispers, because if he can’t return Steve’s words to him just yet, he can at least try to express his gratitude.

On the other end of the line, Steve’s breath shudders like tectonic plates reshaping the planet.

“How does love feel in your body?” Bucky asks Sam when he gets home from work.

Sam blinks several times, clearly not expecting this question. “...What?”

“Never mind,” Bucky mumbles, embarrassed, not quite sure why he brought it up.

“Hey, no, it’s okay,” Sam says, coming to sit next to Bucky on the couch. “Sorry for my reaction, you just caught me off-guard, is all. But honestly? I have no idea.” He chuckles a little to himself, then adds, “Hell, I don’t even think I really know what love feels like in the brain.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, and tries not to be too disappointed.

Later that night, he texts Natasha about it, but she only replies with love is for children and then an emoticon of a pitcher of beer.

The following morning, despite Bucky’s guilt-filled protests, Sam arranges to go into work a few hours later because he wants to talk to Bucky about something.

“What you asked yesterday,” Sam says, again getting right down to business, “Was that about Steve?”

Bucky thinks it’s pretty obvious what the answer is so he doesn’t reply.

“It was about Steve,” Sam decides.

“I don’t know what to say to him,” Bucky mumbles, anxiously fiddling with a loose thread in the sleeve of his shirt. “I don’t want to upset him.”

“That’s kinda what got you into this mess in the first place isn’t it,” Sam points out.

It wasn’t, though. At least, not in the beginning. In the beginning it had been entirely about self-preservation – his body instinctively doing what it had been taught to avoid pain, or rather to minimise it, since avoiding it completely was never an option. He let himself be moulded like clay, having learned his lesson in the most brutal way possible that that which does not bend will be viciously, violently broken.

However, admitting that to Sam would be admitting that Bucky still hasn’t shook off HYDRA’s influence as much as they all liked to think and he can’t bear to let anyone down like that so he just says, “Yeah, I guess.”

“Can I ask you something that’s gonna be sooo awkward for the both of us?” Sam says.

“Uh,” Bucky says, not liking where this is going at all. “Okay...?”

“Did it ever go... farther than kissing? With Steve?”

Bucky tries to swallow but all the moisture seems to have evaporated from his mouth. He is pretty sure that the answer is no, but there’s a nagging voice at the back of his head reminding him that it’s impossible to really be able to tell. If he’s able to float through entire days without knowing how, and his memory is already shoddy to begin with, then who’s to say that something more didn’t happen between him and Steve during one of those stretches of tightly-packed blankness?

“I don’t... think so,” he says thickly after a moment, words sticking to the roof of his mouth like taffy. “I’m... pretty sure that... no...?”

“Wait, you’re really not present at all when it happens, are you?” Sam asks, and he sounds so alarmed by this realisation that Bucky can’t help but to feel reprimanded.

“Sorry,” he says.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Sam assures him for the millionth time. “But can I just ask you one more supremely awkward question?”

“Don’t know if I should agree to that before I know what the question is,” Bucky grunts.

Sam rolls his eyes. “You’d make a fine lawyer. Anyway. Not being present. Is it something that happens only when you’re, um, being... intimate...? Or is it whenever anyone touches you at all?”

Bucky gives a miserable nod, the shame rendering him speechless.

“Even all the times someone asked if it was okay to touch you and you said yes?” Sam asks, looking stricken, like he’s afraid of the answer.

Bucky feels himself actually start to tremble. How did Sam figure this out? He wasn’t supposed to let anyone find out. It wasn’t allowed. He was supposed to keep it all inside of him so that he didn’t cause any trouble, didn’t bother anyone (“Will someone shut that thing up, I’m trying to work here!”), and he had been doing it, he’d been doing his best to be good, but as usual his best just was not enough—

“Bucky,” Sam is saying. “Bucky? James. I need you to breathe.”

Bucky gasps, noisy and rattling and frantic. Too loud. Not allowed.

“That’s it. Now again, but slower.”

He tries once more. The air doesn’t clatter in his throat as badly as the first time.

“Good. Good. Do you want to try to stand up?”

Bucky blinks, staring down at the floor and realising that it’s a lot closer than it had been just a second ago. It appears he’d fallen to his knees at some point. He grips Sam’s living room table with his human hand, not trusting his metal one not to snap it in two, and shakily hauls himself to his feet.

“How about we sit on the couch?” Sam suggests, and Bucky all but collapses into the plush cushions. Sam sits across from him in the armchair.

Too exhausted to be coherent, Bucky shakes his head blearily and mumbles, “In trouble.”

“You’re not in trouble, Bucky.”

“I know,” Bucky says frustratedly, because it’s true, because intellectually, he knows that of course Sam isn’t going to punish him for what just happened – he even knows that what just happened wasn’t actually anything bad or wrong at all – but emotionally and physically, that lesson has yet to set in and he doesn’t understand why.

“If you need to be reminded of that at any time, just ask, okay?”

Bucky gives a mute nod, knowing that he probably won’t ever say anything, because it’s too embarrassing. He’s not a goddamn child, having to ask permission for everything he does.

And yet... that’s exactly what he feels like.

“Do you need to take a break?” Sam says, a little uncomfortably.

Bucky cringes at having been the subject of the verb need twice in a row. He hates the idea, its implications of weakness, vulnerability, lack of control. He thinks he might have been like this from the very beginning, and his time with HYDRA only served to further that fear of being dependent, seeing as he’d relied on them for practically every basic function needed to sustain life and they’d done a piss-poor job of it, frankly.

At the same time, however, the idea of being anchorless terrifies him as well. For all his fears of being touched or being hurt, he knows he would always choose even the most cruel company over being on his own. Sam had explained to him that this kind of thinking comes from something called complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which Bucky gathered to mean is kind of like what Sam and maybe Steve have but more complicated.

He’d Googled it afterwards, morbidly curious to learn more. What he’d found was grim, and a lot of it he didn’t understand but one part that had stuck out to him was how complex PTSD is caused by “prolonged exposure to social or interpersonal trauma, disempowerment, captivity or entrapment, with lack or loss of a viable escape route for the victim.” It was his situation with HYDRA to a tee. Which he then took to mean that the frightening symptoms and discouraging prognosis would fit him to a tee, too, so he’d promptly stopped reading and closed the browser.

“Bucky?” Sam prods when Bucky is quiet for too long.

“What? Oh. Sorry. Um. No, I don’t need- I’m fine.”

“Can we keep talking a little, then?”

“I guess.”

“You don’t sound so sure... You have permission to say no, you know. Do you want to practice saying no?”

“That’s not the problem,” Bucky says, unable to keep the quavering frustration out of his voice. “I know how to say no. It’s just...”

He trails off and presses his lips together in a tight line as he struggles to express himself. The awful wordlessness is back, the feeling that he’s face to face with an attacking enemy and he’s armed only with language but it is a weapon he does not know how to wield.

He gestures helplessly at himself and says, “It’s when it comes to... This. My... my body.”

“You have trouble saying no when it comes to your body,” Sam clarifies.

“Yeah, I... I guess.”

He’s not sure what he was expecting from Sam in response to that but it’s certainly not what comes out of Sam’s mouth next, which is:

“Can I tickle you?”

Bucky stares at him in disbelief. “Are you... mocking me?”

“Just answer the question.”

“No!”

Sam gives a pleased-looking nod. “Very good.”

Bucky frowns, trying to process what the fuck just happened, and when it dawns on him, he protests, “Hey, that doesn’t count.”

“It absolutely does count.”

“It does not! I was allowed to say no then.”

“That’s the point, man,” Sam says. “You’re always allowed.”

That’s when Bucky realises that Sam wasn’t trying to make fun of him at all, he was merely illustrating the true simplicity of the issue at hand and Bucky had walked right into his trap. Bucky is actually a little surprised by just how appreciative he is of the somewhat absurd way in which this scene played itself out. Sam managed to turn what could have been an intensive, overwhelming exercise into something so casual and manageable that Bucky didn’t even stop to think about it, but instead of feeling like he was being belittled or trivialised, he actually feels relieved. Relieved to discover that he is in fact capable of taking a stand when it comes to his body, even one as seemingly trifling and silly as this, and even more relieved that the world did not end because of it, as it had so often felt like it would.

Of course, there is an endless universe of difference between rejecting a teasing verbal offer to be tickled and retracting the permission to his body that he’d already given away to someone else, but... well, what was that saying they were always telling him?

Take things one step at a time.

Before he leaves for work, Sam suggests that Bucky write Steve a letter. He says it might be easier than talking face to face, especially since Bucky still has trouble expressing himself on the spot.

Bucky likes the idea, but he’s worried it might seem cowardly; he thinks Steve certainly deserves to hear the truth coming straight from the source.

“Look at it this way,” Sam says, “It’ll be even more ‘from the source’ if you write it out, because you’ll have time to think about what you want to say and the best way to say it. When we talk face to face, sometimes it gets harder to say certain things, or we blurt out things we don’t mean, y'know? I think it might be easier to be honest if you do it this way. But it’s up to you.”

He leaves a pen and a notepad out on the kitchen table.

Bucky sits there staring at it for a very long time before he picks the pen up in a trembling hand and starts to write.

Steve,
I’m sorry for

Rips the page out, crumples it up.

Steve,
There’s something I haven’t been telling you

Rip, crumple.

Steve,

Scribbles over his own writing in a violent scrawl, hurls the notebook across the room. Feels a momentary flash of anger at Sam for leaving him alone in this volatile state but then reminds himself that Sam has a fucking life outside of scraping human trainwrecks off his own kitchen floor.

Eventually, he guiltily retrieves the notebook and tries again.

Dear Steve,

You know I’m no good with words sometimes so sam thought it might help to write this out instead of say it. First I need you to know that you never did anything wrong. I know you did your best. I saw the pamphlets you got from Sam and the websites and the books you were reading, all just to try and help me. You did all the right things.

It was me who messed up. I said yes to a lot of things I now know I wasn’t ready for yet. You were always so good to ask if you could touch me and I thought it was okay but I guess it wasn’t really. Sam asked me to describe how my body feels when someone touches it me and I said it feels like I'm being pulled along on a leash which he says is not how it’s supposed to feel. And I know I should have told you this first thing but I didn’t and I’m sorry.

Please don’t be mad at yourself. It’s my own fault. You’ve been nothing but good to me. I want to come back home and try to fix things if you will let me.

I’m sorry.

-B

Chapter 8 Notes:

additional warnings in this chapter for mild self-harm, suicidal ideation, some gory imagery and violent impulses. also, the consent issues between steve and bucky are discussed in more detail.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Bucky emails a typed-out version of his letter to Steve that very evening, with Sam also giving Steve instructions not to try to contact Bucky about it until at least the next morning. Bucky knows Sam did that so Steve would have some time to sleep on it, to cool off and collect himself before he and Bucky can talk about it further, but Bucky thinks that the agonising waiting and worrying might even be worse than immediately having to face an irrational, overemotional Steve. (He also has the sneaking suspicion that there isn't enough time in the world to lessen the blow for Steve.)

Bucky doesn’t do very well with waiting. It brings only connotations of dread and foreboding. He has learned that he is always waiting for either one of two things: a)something bad, or b)something unknown. Most of the time, he is waiting for the bad things he knows. With HYDRA, he waited for the electroshock machine to power up, waited to be punished, waited for his targets to wander into the crosshairs of his Dragunov SVD. Here and now, he waits for people to leave him, for people to give up on him, for Zola or Karpov or Lukin or Pierce to reappear and spit their serpents’ laughter into his face as they sneer did you really think you could escape us that easily?

Waiting for something unknown isn’t that much better. His overactive imagination inevitably conjures up countless possible worst case scenarios and then decides that all of them are going to happen. At the same time.

Currently, waiting for Steve, it’s kind of a mix of both. It’s waiting for some things that Bucky knows will happen – Steve feeling guilty, Steve being angry at Bucky, Steve hating Bucky – and it’s also waiting for some things unknown – just how angry will Steve be? Will he hit Bucky? Will he ever even want to talk to Bucky again?

Sam gives Bucky a funny look when Bucky discloses these fears to him.

“Dude, you’re not thinking straight,” he says gently. “This is Steve we’re talking about. Steve who feels guilty for not having gone after you when you fell even though there was literally no way he could have known you’d survived. Steve who probably blames himself for global warming because there was one less polar ice cap after he defrosted. So if Steve’s gonna feel anything about what you said in that letter, it’s going to be directed inward. And I’m not saying that’ll be pleasant to deal with, either, but you gotta get it in your head that he is not going to hate you or hurt you.”

Bucky thinks about this a moment and reluctantly acknowledges that it makes sense. Steve isn’t going to be mad at Bucky, even though Bucky did something that wasn’t allowed. Steve is going to be angry at himself. And Bucky hates how fucking selfish he’s just proven himself to be, since he’d worried only for his own wellbeing when it came to the possible consequences of reading the letter, when he should have known all along that the person who is going to be hurt by it the most is Steve.

At the same time, however, Bucky isn’t really too concerned about how Steve might be taking it, because Bucky can’t imagine himself actually mattering to someone enough to cause them any real emotional distress. Rationally, he knows this is fucking stupid, seeing as Steve had been ready to let himself die because Bucky mattered that damn much to him, not to mention the fact that Steve is currently condemning himself to a smothering, exhausting existence because Bucky apparently matters enough for Steve to devote his whole life to helping him get better.

And yet even with all this seemingly irrefutable evidence, Bucky just finds it too hard to believe anyone would actually be troubled by his pain. Nobody he’d met in the course of seventy years had ever given a flying fuck about it, so why should things be any different now? He recognises that Steve is very clearly affected by his suffering, but Bucky is pretty sure that Steve could just get over it if he really wanted to.

The way Bucky sees it, he is sort of like a sad movie that you watch once, are mildly upset about for a brief period of time immediately after, and then do not think about again as you continue on your merry way.

All Steve needs to do is walk away.

Bucky does not sleep a wink that night. Paces on and off for hours in the guest room, a bundle of nervous energy with nowhere to go, bristling static and spastic inside his too-thin skin. He hadn’t been able to stomach eating dinner, and the combination of hunger and nerves is making his gut feel like it’s eating itself alive. Eventually he gets too dizzy and can no longer stay on his feet so he perches on the side of the bed with his head between his knees.

He then tries to distract himself with cognition games on his phone or the travel-sized book of crossword puzzles that Sam had brought home with him today, but neither of those options end up as effective as digging the ragged nails of his human hand up and down the length of his thigh until the flesh is nothing but a raised railway track of thick reddened lines following the path of his femoral artery as he wonders what it would be like if he did this with a knife instead of mere fingernails and maybe accidentally-on-purpose nicked it a little too deep.

He starts imagining this in more and more detail – how far the arterial spray would spurt, how long it would take before he lost consciousness, what it would feel like if he stuck his finger into the gulping wound and wriggled it around – before he realises what he’s doing and forces himself to stop.

He hasn’t had gruesome thoughts like this since the very beginning, when the Soldier was still right there with him most of the time. At first, his head was full of ghastly visions of the deaths of other people, all bursted eyeballs and chopped-out tongues twitching like dying fish, no doubt brought on by his guilt over the similar atrocities he’d committed. Those grim reveries then evolved to have Bucky himself as the main subject. He often envisioned himself swallowing razorblades or setting himself on fire or breaking all his fingers or carving himself open to replace his left kidney with a live grenade. His head was constantly awash with bloody variations of his own demise, which he didn’t understand because he hadn’t even been particularly suicidal at the time, and yet his thoughts were all obsessively centred around death and dying. He now thinks this might have been his earliest way of suppressing the Soldier, who would try to come out in those visions of other people being killed, so Bucky would wrestle that bloodlust from the Soldier and turn it inwards on himself, resulting in the horrorshow of self-violence that would then play on a maddening loop in his brain.

Now that he thinks about it, those images had been so graphic, so vivid, so intrusive that he’s surprised he hadn’t lost himself in them and actually gone out and done all those horrible things, either to himself or other people, just to get his brain to quiet down.

He wonders if it’s too self-serving to chalk it up as a victory that he was able to restrain himself.

Steve is always saying that Bucky should be proud of himself, but Bucky thinks it’s a bit of a stretch to think he’s allowed to feel accomplished just because he hasn’t killed anyone in a while.

His phone eventually buzzes just before seven o’clock in the morning, Steve’s number flashing on the screen. Bucky fumbles with it so badly that he drops it twice before he’s able to answer, careful to hold it in the hand that won’t accidentally squash it like a soda can should he lose control of himself.

“Hi, Steve,” he says quietly.

“Bucky,” comes Steve’s equally measured voice, but Bucky can tell that there is something huge and roaring hiding behind that misleading softness.

There’s a long, uncomfortable silence, then Steve says, “W-why didn’t you tell me, Buck?”

He sounds like he’s been crying, maybe still is. Bucky wonders if he’d been able to sleep at all, or if he too had spent the night being tormented by his own thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky chokes out, because it’s really the only thing he can say, but he knows it’s not enough, will never be enough.

“All those times that I—” Steve’s voice breaks and he doesn’t try to put it back together.

“Don’t be like that, Steve,” Bucky warns, because he doesn’t think he can handle Steve’s epic guilt complex right now, not when it’s so inexorably connected to something that Bucky has done. “Don’t. Didn’t you read what I wrote? I told you not to feel bad because it was all my fault.”

“That’s the thing, though – it’s not!” Steve cries out. “You literally couldn’t say no – so, no, it’s not- it is not your fault at all. This one’s entirely on me. I should’ve known better. I mean, I read the file on what they did to you – I couldn’t sleep for a week afterwards – I should’ve known that nobody can just... just bounce back from that like it’s nothing.”

“What can I say,” Bucky replies gruffly, “I’m a good actor.”

His extraordinarily weak attempt to lighten the mood goes completely unnoticed by Steve, who continues to catalogue all the things he thinks he did wrong.

“I should’ve noticed how you were never the one to instigate any of the touching... Not once. Even though when we were kids I had to damn near peel you off me every five minutes. And you’ve been so... so docile, just like you said, about being... on a leash... God, it’s all so obvious now, and I can’t believe I... I should’ve been able to fucking see something.”

“There’s no way you could’ve,” Bucky argues, his anger mounting. “Jeez, Steve, you’re not a fucking psychic or something—”

“You’re my best friend. I shouldn’t need to be psychic to know that my best friend is hurting, and that I’m the one hurting him!”

“You weren’t hurting m—”

Steve barks out a bitterly disbelieving laugh. “No? Then how come things only started getting real bad after I... And... And then I kept touching you and you kept getting worse. Months of your hard work just... just fucking gone down the drain because I couldn’t keep my stupid hands to myself. You were in an extremely vulnerable place and I... my god, I... I took advantage of that.”

“Don’t make this into something about you, Steve,” Bucky hisses, suddenly infuriated, because the last thing he needs is to have to put Steve back together, too, when he’s still in pieces himself. “Please don’t. I don’t- I can’t be responsible for alleviating your fucking guilt right now. Not now.”

The sound of Steve taking a sharp, jagged breath crackles across the phone line. “Damnit... I- You’re right. I’m sorry. Oh god, Bucky... I’m s-so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky murmurs, all the fight suddenly sucked right out of him. “It’s... okay.”

For a long time, the only sound is that of Steve’s uneven breathing, punctuated by the occasional sniffle. Bucky sits dry-eyed on the bed, unsure why the things he’s feeling in his brain aren’t translating into anything in his body.

“I’d understand if- if you didn’t want to come... back,” Steve mumbles after a moment.

Feeling finally kicks in to Bucky with all the force of a punch, his thoughts automatically jumping to the worst possible conclusion: that Steve doesn’t want him there but of course he’s too nice to say it outright so he’s trying to give Bucky hints.

“Y-you want me to leave...?” Bucky stammers, hating the way his words fracture in his throat.

“What...? Oh, no, Buck... I didn’t mean... I don’t mean that I don’t want you to come home, because I do, I do more than anything, but I just thought that maybe it wouldn’t... I’m not sure if it’s healthy for you to be around me.”

“But... I don’t want to be anywhere else,” Bucky whispers, surprising even himself with his words.

He hadn’t realised just how true they are until now, after he’s heard himself say them out loud like this. He does not want to be anywhere else. Even though the way things had been with Steve had sent him spiralling to one of his lowest points yet, he’s convinced that that’s only because he’d let it get out of hand. If he had just dealt with the issue immediately instead of allowing it to drag on and become exponentially worse, then maybe this never would have happened. But it did, so now all he can do is try to fix it.

It may not be the wisest idea, but neither Bucky nor Steve have a particularly good track record when it comes to knowing what’s best for them. All Bucky knows is this: for all their faults and flaws and fuck-ups, Steve is home to him. And while he may not be able to handle the physical intimacy of their relationship just yet, he desperately craves closeness of some kind, and the only person he wants that from is Steve.

Steve does not seem to agree, however.

“I could have... violated you!” he practically shouts, making Bucky flinch, both at the sudden rise in volume and the jarring nature of the statement itself. “Hell, I essentially did!”

Bucky swallows several times then asks, “Did we...?”

There’s a strangled, horrified sound from Steve. “Wait... Do you mean to say... you don’t... you don’t remember... anything?”

“Some things,” Bucky argues weakly.

“No, we never... Never. Just... kissing. And. A bit of. Sort of, touching, I guess. Nothing that... There was never any, um, climax... But, my god, Bucky, I could have done... I would have done more. And you wouldn’t have been able to stop me, would you?”

“Steve, it’s not your fau—”

Steve isn’t listening. “Oh my god,” he mumbles over and over again, then dissolves into a bit of a coughing fit. “I’m gonna... I think I’m going to be sick...”

“...Steve?”

The only response is a terrible heaving gasp that sounds like it’s shredding Steve’s throat.

“Steve, you gotta breathe,” Bucky urges, trying to remember the kinds of things that Steve has said to him in the past to help him regain control. “Steve, listen to me. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“Of course I’m okay,” Steve snaps, but his voice is too wrecked to sound biting. He takes another quivering, soggy breath. “It’s... you who... How can you possibly feel safe with me?”

“You didn’t know,” Bucky says pleadingly. “I know you’d never hurt me on purpose.”

“I don’t want to hurt you at all,” Steve counters in anguished frustration, “Whether on purpose or not. Natasha was right, this isn’t—”

“Wait, you talked to Natasha?” Bucky interrupts, feeling slightly betrayed for some reason.

“We texted a bit, yeah.”

“What did she say?”

Clearly feeling like he’s already revealed too much, Steve fumbles a little before he says carefully, “She thought maybe being around each other practically 24/7 isn’t really the best thing for either of us.”

“I don’t want to be anywhere else,” Bucky repeats, a little desperately.

“I know. Me neither. But I gotta say... I see where she’s coming from. We... We’re messed up, Buck. How can we be good for each other if we’re not even good for ourselves?”

This is it, Bucky thinks, feeling oddly detached. Steve has finally realised the truth about Bucky – that Bucky is toxic and hopeless and terrible. Steve has realised this and now he is finally going to walk away.

Bucky wonders why he’s not feeling more panicked about this, seeing as it’s one of his worst non-HYDRA related fears. Perhaps he's not freaking out because it brings some twisted sense of relief, an alleviation of the guilt of knowing that he was deceiving Steve into believing Bucky was worth the trouble. He's always felt like a fugitive striding untouched through a crowded town square, hanging out next to his own wanted posters trying to clue everyone into who he really is, trying make them realise how awful and dangerous he is, and that they should either turn him in or run.

And yet Steve did no such thing.

Maybe it’s Bucky who should do the running, for both of their sakes.

“Okay,” Bucky says, sounding far away even to himself. “I... I’ll go. I’ll leave... right now.”

Vaguely, he wonders if the noises coming out of his mouth are comprehensible, if it’s possible for his words to make sense when nothing in his brain does. He gets up from the bed and stands there for a moment, swaying slightly on his feet. What was he doing again?

“Damnit, Bucky,” Steve says. “That’s not what I meant.”

Bucky sits back down on the bed and says again, “I can... go.”

“Will you just... Listen, I’m not trying to say I don’t want you here, or... or anything like that. All I’m saying is... maybe it’s not healthy that I’m the only person you’re ever around. And I know you’re gonna argue me on that, but... to be honest, I don’t think you’re even... I don’t think you’re in a place yet where you are able to distinguish what’s healthy and what’s not.”

Bucky frowns, trying to figure out what Steve is getting at and how it is any different than what Bucky has been saying. He’s still pretty sure that Steve doesn’t want him around, though, regardless of however Steve is trying to justify it.

“Where...” Bucky licks his lips nervously. “W-where am I supposed to go?” He pauses, then tries to sound joking as he adds, “If you hadn’t noticed, I’m kinda short on alternatives.”

Steve hesitates again. “Well, there’s this... this program...”

“You want to lock me up,” Bucky says shakily.

“No! It’s just... It’s a day program. Five days a week. You can choose between one that’s eight hours a day or one that’s six hours. You’d come home to sleep and on weekends.”

Working for HYDRA was kind of like a day program, too, Bucky thinks wildly, if not a bit hysterically. He got to go home to sleep. For years at a time.

“I just want to come home,” he says in a tiny voice, disgusted at how pathetic he sounds but unable to make the words come out any differently.

There is silence on the other end of the line, but Bucky can practically hear the internal war that Steve is waging against himself.

Finally, Steve says, “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

Bucky spends most of those thirty minutes bent over Sam’s kitchen sink thinking he’s going to throw up, even though he hasn’t actually been able to eat anything since yesterday’s lunch. He’s not sure why he’s so wound-up. It’s only been four days since he’s last seen Steve, but it’s the longest they’ve been apart since they’d reunited, and so much has changed - or is about to change - that it may as well have been another seventy years separating the two of them.

By the time Sam’s phone buzzes announcing Steve’s arrival, Bucky has calmed himself down by partially removing himself from the situation, letting everything become blurry around the edges, which he knows he’s not supposed to do, but right now he doesn’t see any other option.

He’s heard of people being beside themselves with some feeling or another. Right now, he is outside of himself with nothing.

It's safe, he is safe, he is not there.

But Steve is, Steve is there, looking desolate and beautiful standing there in Sam’s doorway, framed by soft sunlight and shy shadow, eyes that same shade of unmatchable blue that Bucky has memorised like a poem. Struggling to reel himself back, Bucky clings to that colour, reciting it like a verse of prayer meant to help someone get through a difficult time.

Steve’s face crumples the moment their eyes meet and he says Bucky’s name very quietly but does not make any move to come closer. Distantly, Bucky wonders if Sam had given him any instructions about that, and oddly enough, he is almost disappointed. He can feel a pulsing ache somewhere inside his left ventricle that is very distinctly longing to be closer to Steve, deeply unsettled by what feels to be this unnaturally large amount of space between their bodies, but at the same time, he knows that if that space were to become any smaller, he would probably react rather poorly.

This is perhaps the most frustrating part about the warped circuitry of his brain. The way it’s stripped him of all ability to enjoy the things he knows he once did. How it does not even let him properly want the things he knows used to bring him happiness and comfort. Every desire he has is only half-formed, tainted with terror and twisted by dread before it can truly take shape. Absolutely nothing is simple with him anymore, and the idea that he might have to fight with himself for every tiny pleasure for the rest of his life is a daunting, discouraging concept.

“So,” Steve coughs, rocking a little on the balls of his feet.

For a moment all three of them just stand awkwardly in the middle of the living room with nobody sure how to start talking.

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate,” Sam quotes in a nervous attempt to break the tension.

Steve glances over at Bucky and explains, “That’s a famous line from this movie called Cool Ha—”

“I know what it’s from,” Bucky snaps, not mentioning the part about how it had been one of Alexander Pierce’s old favourites, how it had been playing on Pierce’s television on more than one occassion when Bucky had been summoned to his house.

“Right. Sorry,” Steve says, not looking sorry at all.

“You know, I think you get way too much pleasure out of no longer being the most clueless person in this century,” Bucky complains.

“I do, actually.”

“At least I was awake every now and then,” Bucky points out. “You slept the entire seventy years. I think technically I still win.”

If it occurs to either Sam or Steve that this is probably negated by the fact that Bucky had his memory wiped every time he woke up, they are both tactful enough not to bring it up. Bucky considers making a joke about it himself but thinks maybe that’s too morbid, even for him, plus he knows Steve won’t find it funny at all. Still, he’s glad that the tension seems to have been broken ever so slightly, at least for now.

“Well,” Bucky says, before things can get too awkward, “Uh, I guess we should. Um. Go...?”

“Right,” Steve agrees, staring down at the floor.

Bucky picks up his bag of things and takes a hesitant step towards the front door. Then another. Steve takes a step back as Bucky approaches him, giving him a wider berth of personal space.

“Steve?” Sam says just as Bucky has started putting on his boots. “Can I just talk to you for just a minute?”

“Just me?” Steve asks uneasily, sending a worried glance in Bucky’s direction.

Bucky drags his lips into a shaky smile and says, “I’ll wait in the car.”

The drive back to the apartment is terse and silent, though Bucky decides to declare it a success because he managed not to panic despite being restrained (by his seatbelt) in an enclosed space.

He’s not sure what he expected to happen once they got back home, but it probably wasn’t Steve disappearing into the bedroom and shutting the door behind him before Bucky has even gotten his boots off. Bucky stands there staring at the closed door for a very long time, not sure what any of it means.

Notes:

oops i angsted again sorry :B

Chapter 9 Chapter Text

The first day back is all averted eyes and loaded silences and strained courtesy. Steve keeps disappearing into the bathroom at random intervals and re-emerging with his face scrubbed red, insisting that nothing is wrong, while Bucky sneaks repeated glances at him and quickly looks away whenever Steve tries to catch his eye. It’s like they’re back at square one, caught in an encore of the precarious waltz they’d woven around each other during the first few weeks after Bucky initially came home, two thrown-off wavelengths fighting to fall back in sync.

Steve takes the couch that night, leaving the bed for Bucky, who lays on it like a cadaver for several agonising hours before he decides he can’t stand it any longer and he tiptoes into the living room.

Steve is fast asleep, no doubt exhausted by the day’s emotionally draining events, and despite the unconscious flicker of pain that occasionally furrows his features ever so slightly, he looks more at peace than Bucky can remember seeing him in a long time. His breathing is deep and even and his face looks younger, less world-weary, no longer leaden with the weight of the burdens he doggedly refuses to cast off.

A muddy memory wades through Bucky’s mind of the same sleeping face, except it’s not really the same face at all, it’s much younger and thinner and papery pale, drawn with pain and glistening with cold sweat, and the breathing is different, too - an awful gasping crackle that Bucky can recreate in his own head with startling precision. That he can remember it so well shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, though, seeing as it was the soundtrack of far too many sleepless nights spent sitting at Steve’s bedside listening vigilantly for that dreadful wet rattle to make sure it never stopped altogether.

It’s the sensation of sheer helplessness that stands out the most from this memory. The sick dread of not knowing if his best friend was going to make it through the night. He remembers pleading, bargaining, even praying, despite being on the fence about the existence of God. He never knew if the fact that Steve always survived was a sign that God did exist, or if the way Steve still got sick again every winter was a better indication that He didn’t.

“That’s not how faith works,” Steve had told him. “Faith is still believing in something even when it seems like there’s no more reason to.”

Bucky remembers going to church sometimes but he’s not sure what he’d believed in when he was young. It’s hard to imagine he’d ever known anything other than the gospel of pain and unholy suffering that has been his only religion thus far, kneeling to deities of destruction with death as the only higher power there was.

But watching Steve sleep, his chest rising and falling in a reassuringly steady rhythm so unlike the uneven, shallow stuttering that had haunted so many of Bucky’s childhood nights, Bucky realises that there just might be more to the world than pain. Both he and Steve are living proof of that, for in a universe that has tried its hardest to keep them apart – battering them with poverty, illness, and loss, sending them reeling through the perilous avenues of history, past mortality and beyond the dimensions of death itself – they’ve still always found each other, and Bucky will be damned if he folds his hand this late in the game.

He curls up on the floor next to the couch and closes his eyes.

The next morning he is woken up by Steve swearing loudly and tripping over his own feet as he scrambles not to step on Bucky.

“Jeez, Buck!” he gasps. “What are you... Have you been there all night?”

Bucky clumsily uncoils himself and sits up, muscles aching from the unfamiliar position they’d been kept in. He looks up to see Steve’s mildly befuddled face staring down at him.

“Didn’t want to sleep alone,” Bucky mumbles, lowering his eyes in embarrassment.

Steve makes a concerned-sounding noise as he crouches down next to Bucky, about an arms-length away. Bucky timidly lifts his head again to meet Steve’s gaze, almost expecting to find anger there, but of course the only thing he ends up seeing in the tides of those endless blues is sadness.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, as usual.

Steve shakes his head. “No. No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I... I reacted really badly yesterday. First by coming on too hard and then by shutting you out. I just was so... I thought you wouldn’t want me anywhere near— ...No, you know what? I’m not going to try and justify myself because I can’t.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky insists meekly. “I get it. You were trying to make me feel like it wasn’t my fault by making it your fault. But it’s not your fault either, you know that, right?”

Steve says nothing, just swallows hard and looks away.

“Steve, say something. Please.”

“I’m trying,” he murmurs after a moment. “I’m trying real hard not to feel like it’s my fault, because I know that’ll just hurt us both in the end, but... it- gosh, Buck, it’s hard. I can’t- it’s killing me knowing that I caused this to happen to you. You had been doing so well, and then I messed everyth—”

“You’re doing it again, Steve,” Bucky interrupts dryly. “How many times do I need to tell you? It’s not your fucking fault. You didn’t know. I didn’t let you know. So if anything, it’s my fault. Okay?”

Steve looks bewildered for a second before he shakes his head and says with a weak grin, “We make a real pair, don’t we?”

Bucky surprises them both by laughing a little, albeit a bit hysterically.

“Speak for yourself,” he retorts.

There’s a slight pause, then Steve awkwardly says, “Well, we should probably talk...”

“Probably,” Bucky agrees unenthusiastically.

“Okay. Well. I was, um, reading up on some stuff and talking to Sam and... if you’re gonna be staying here – if it’s gonna be just us two – there’s gotta be some... rules. That’s basically what Sam was talking about when he asked to speak with me alone yesterday.”

Bucky’s breathing picks up. Rules. He should have known this was going to happen at some point. After all, freedom is a privilege and Bucky has been nothing but bad in these recent weeks; of course someone was going to have to put their foot down and reel him back in. Put him back in his place. Really he’s just surprised that it took both Steve and Sam this long to come to this conclusion.

But then Steve says, “So let’s talk about boundaries,” and Bucky realises he has no idea what’s going on.

“Boundaries?” he repeats dumbly.

“You know, like, what’s okay and what isn’t okay. Limits. Drawing the line.”

“I know what boundaries are.”

“Okay, okay,” Steve says, raising his hands slightly defensively. “Sorry. So...?”

“...So?” Bucky repeats, raising a perplexed eyebrow.

Now Steve looks confused, too. “Sooo... any ideas?”

“Why would you want my ideas for your rules?” Bucky demands suspiciously, sensing a trap.

Steve gives a long-suffering, almost petulant sigh, and for a moment they could be teenagers again, arguing about which players the Dodgers should sell or whether the Lincoln Model K looked cooler than the Cadillac V16.

“No, Buck,” Steve says, slightly impatiently, “They’re supposed to be your rules.”

“Oh,” Bucky stammers, stunned, then for the second time in less than five minutes, he dissolves into slightly nervous laughter.

Steve apparently doesn’t share his amusement; instead he’s just looking remorseful again. “I realise now that it’s something we should have laid out from the very beginning. We could’ve spared us- spared you all this pain..."

This is a thought that has occurred to Bucky on more than one occasion ever since everything had come out in the open. Because despite how scary it is, he certainly cannot deny how relieving it is that the people around him are now more aware of what's going on with him and are adjusting their actions accordingly. The results have exceeded his expectations by so much that he's not quite sure why he'd been so certain that letting the truth come out would spell disaster and catastrophe and, worst of all, punishment. He feels like an idiot knowing that he could have been spared these past torturous months of panic and pain, just like Steve said, if only he hadn't been so stupid as to keep everything sealed up tightly inside of himself.

His life is just a series of regrets and could have been's.

"It just seemed like you were handling things so well," Steve is still chattering, but suddenly his face goes white and he says, "Wait, I didn’t mean to sound like- like I’m blaming you... oh, god. That’s not what—”

“Steve, stop,” Bucky cuts in before Steve can jet off on yet another guilt trip.

He wants to counter that he wouldn’t fault Steve for blaming him because it’s pretty much the truth – Bucky had faked it so well in the beginning that nobody had realised the true extent of the damage done until it was far too late – but he knows that if he tries to claim any responsibility, Steve will simply work harder to blame himself.

So Bucky just says, very neutrally, “It’s okay. Yeah, maybe we should’ve talked about this earlier, but there’s no way anyone could have known. Besides, we’re doing it now, aren’t we?”

Steve forces a shaky, grateful smile. “Y-yeah... You’re right. Okay.”

“I don’t know how to make rules,” Bucky admits in a very small voice.

He feels extraordinarily vulnerable all of a sudden even though he’s supposedly the one in charge right now. He thinks back to the first time he ever fired a gun, how he’d felt both frightened and unstoppable because of the power he wielded.

He just doesn’t understand why being the one in control makes him feel so helpless.

Sensing that Bucky is getting overwhelmed, Steve says, “Can I start by making one rule, then?”

“Go ahead,” Bucky says uneasily, unable to keep from fearing the worst even though he knows Steve would never come up with the kinds of rules that HYDRA had, like he has to ask permission to relieve himself or he's not allowed to say his own name.

Sure enough, all Steve says is, “I will never ever punish you for saying no to anything.”

Bucky swallows nervously. “That’s... good to know?”

“So, every day we should practice saying no,” Steve continues, doing that thing again where he includes himself in whatever statement should apply to Bucky only, and while Bucky usually finds it irritating, right now he’s mildly and pleasantly surprised to discover that it’s helping him feel less alone, which has probably been Steve’s intention the whole time.

“I know how to say no,” Bucky insists, recalling the similar conversation he’d previously had with Sam. He thinks for a moment, trying to figure out how to explain himself. “It’s just when... With my body, and... stuff... That’s when it’s... harder. And... especially when it comes to... like, being touched already but... wanting it to stop...”

He trails off and frowns at how little sense he’s making.

Yet Steve still seems to be able to grasp what he’s trying to say, because he reiterates, “So you mean it’s harder to say stop than it is to say no.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, envious of the ease with which Steve was able to put that into words.

Steve’s face is twisted into a self-loathing grimace, and Bucky knows Steve is remembering all the times that Bucky went along with whatever was being done to him because he couldn’t tell Steve to stop.

“Then it’s also a rule that you won’t ever be punished for saying stop,” Steve says quietly, “Even if it’s for something that you might’ve initially said yes to.”

Bucky’s head is swimming as he tries to take in what this all means. Nothing is fitting together properly. He already knows that Steve would never (knowingly) force him to do anything he didn’t want to do, so why is he still so unspeakably relieved to hear it worded so unequivocally by Steve himself? And yet, despite both the preexisting knowledge and this new relief, he still cannot fully shake the creeping fear that it’s all a lie, even though Steve has never given him a single reason to think that.

All three thoughts that are bouncing around in Bucky’s head right now are ones that contradict each other and he doesn’t know what to say.

He desperately hopes Steve is somehow able to discern that it’s not his fault. That Bucky’s reaction to touch has nothing to do with Steve himself or how Bucky feels about Steve; Bucky's problem is with the concept of physical contact in general. Rationally, he is capable of recognising that there is nothing to be afraid of, because Steve is gentle and kind and Bucky knows Steve would never hurt him, yet this objective knowledge somehow does not seem to translate in his own mind, which means that any touch feels like a threat regardless of who it’s coming from. It’s not right, Bucky thinks despairingly to himself, that his body and brain should automatically catalogue Steve into the same category as all those people who had hurt him, when Steve is absolutely nothing like them.

“Bucky...?” Steve tries.

“...Hi,” Bucky says dazedly, nonsensically.

“Did you hear me just then?”

“Yeah. I... did. Sorry.”

“That’s something we’re gonna work on, too, okay? Staying present.”

“Maybe I’m always present, but you’re just so boring that I have to tune you out,” Bucky says.

It’s an almost tastelessly flippant jab that comes out of nowhere and leaves a floundering Steve looking so taken aback that Bucky can’t contain a snort of laughter, after which Steve too gives in to a fit of shakily relieved chuckles.

“You’re a jerk,” he tells Bucky affectionately.

“Punk,” Bucky replies, without even having to think about it.

It takes the rest of the morning, but Steve eventually coaxes Bucky into making his first real request, that being that though he does not want to sleep alone, he would prefer not to share the bed anymore. He damn near starts hyperventilating after he says it and can’t stop himself from tearfully apologising over and over again, feeling like he's done something incorrigible, but once he’s calmed down enough to be left alone, Steve pops out to Wal-Mart and buys a small cot for himself which he sets up in the bedroom and Bucky sleeps through the night for the first time in months.

Steve has started to ask Bucky about how his body is feeling all the time, probably on Sam’s suggestion, but Bucky has a suspicion that Steve has no idea what to do after that, because Bucky will answer and Steve will just say something noncommittal like “Okay,” or “Hmm.”

“Is this a test?” he eventually asks Steve.

“...What? No, it’s not a test. It’s... Well, Sam just thought it would be good to keep you thinking about your body, like... like keeping in touch with an old friend.”

Or getting to know a new enemy, Bucky thinks bitterly, because while all this focus on his body has indeed done its job in making him more aware of its existence, he’s not quite sure he likes it.

Of course he’s always known how disgusting and mutilated his body is, but there’s now a distinct self-consciousness to this knowledge that did not exist when there had been more of a disconnect between himself and it. It seems more personal now, as opposed to before, when even though he still hated his skin and his scars and his right pinky finger that’s crooked from being broken repeatedly and healing without being properly set, it was easier to pretend that all his flaws were merely foreign things he carried along with him, and therefore could theoretically drop at any given time. But now, as he slowly begins to learn to include his body in his sense of self, it’s becoming clear that these defects are not so extraneous after all, they are a part of him, and as such, they are not so easily shaken off.

Yet despite the skin-crawling revulsion he feels whenever he sees his own reflection, he has become almost obsessed with examining every inch of himself in the bathroom mirror, entranced by his own existence. He stares fixated on the edges of his body where his presence ends, as well as the curious mass that fills the area within that outline. He watches his limbs move, watches the space that he occupies shift with it, imagining himself scything through some mighty metaphysical curtain like Moses parting the Red Sea.

He’s spent so long staring at his body that it’s started to make no sense to him, much in the way that repeating the same word enough times in a row will cause it to lose all meaning.

“I can’t keep thinking about this,” Bucky says frustratedly to Steve after he’s asked him about his body one too many times in a single day. “It’s making things too… complicated. And it’s just fucking annoying. Like being aware that you can see your own nose. Your body isn’t something you’re supposed to think about so much. It’s just supposed to… be… there.”

Steve looks a little helpless after Bucky’s mini-outburst, and Bucky feels slightly guilty because he knows Steve doesn’t exactly understand why he’s doing this either, he’s just taking it on good faith that it will help.

“This is something you’re going to have to talk to Sam about,” Steve admits. “I’m not really sure how it’s supposed to help, to be honest. But… you have been a lot more – I’m not sure if ‘focused’ is the right word but it’s the best I can think of – like, you’re not… spacing out as much anymore? So I think it must be doing some good.”

Bucky thinks about this for a moment and decides that it’s more or less true. He hasn’t retreated into the quietest crevices of his own head at all in the past couple of days, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell Steve that he thinks it has less to do with him focusing on his own body and everything to do with the fact that there’s no longer under the constant looming threat of physical contact.

He knows Steve feels bad enough already, because Steve does not touch him at all, does not ask to touch him, does not even instinctively start to reach for him before withdrawing like he used to in the very beginning.

There is a hyper-attentiveness to Steve’s every movement that was never there before, and Bucky hates to admit it, but he does feel a lot safer, even if he doesn’t understand why. Or rather, he knows perfectly well why, but the reason - the fact that he knows Steve will not touch him – doesn’t make any sense, and his guilt about it is overwhelming. He can only imagine the amount of care and concentration it’s taking Steve to keep himself from performing what were once such fluid, natural actions for him, and Bucky feels like he’s doing Steve a terrible injustice by denying him the right to that which he was once free to access as he pleased.

Natasha tries to explain to Bucky over the phone that the right to his body - how he presents it, what he chooses to do with it, who he lets touch it and in what ways - belongs only to him. No longer is his body merely something that other things happen to, it’s something he can control, and this applies not only to his body but also to many other parts of his life.

“It’s called agency,” she says.

Bucky doesn’t get it. “Like... the CIA...?” he asks blankly.

Natasha inhales sharply and mutters, “Fuck,” the way she does in those extremely rare times when she realises she’s in over her head.

She comes over the next day with a basket full of bath salts, scented candles, massage oils and a housecoat so fluffy that Bucky is pretty sure it’s made from at least 95% clouds.

“Your assignment is to pamper yourself,” she tells him in that no-nonsense tone that means she’s not fucking around. “Today you’re to be treated like a fucking king.”

Steve immediately offers to help, clearly eager to play a bigger role in Bucky’s recovery, but Natasha shakes her head and says firmly, “Sorry, Steve. But James has to do this one on his own.”

Steve frowns, looking hurt, and Bucky wonders if Steve feels as lost as Bucky has felt ever since he realised Steve no longer needs him the way he used to. If Steve feels like the one purpose he’s ever had in his life, the only thing he was good at, has been rendered useless and archaic. Bucky can’t stand the thought of Steve feeling that way and is about to make another one of his unnecessary apologies for it, but then he remembers that, unlike him, Steve has always been meant for far grander, greater things, so he probably doesn’t feel too bad about not being able to help with this one miniscule task.

“This is about James reclaiming himself and his body,” Natasha explains when she sees Steve’s disappointed look. “Of course everyone is different, but doing stuff like this really helped me in the beginning, when I was still getting used to the concept of not being anyone’s weapon or plaything. So here’s what you’re going to do, James. You are going to light some smelly-ass candles, you’re going to get into the tub, you’re going to put on some fucking Enya or something and just... relax. Breathe. Get to know your body. Recognise it as your own and treat it as something precious and extraordinary.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, feeling a little overwhelmed, but not too adverse to giving it a try.

“What’s Enya?” Steve asks.

Bucky feels a bit silly carrying out Natasha’s suggestions but he does it anyway. He dims the lights and picks out candles that smell like vanilla and peppermint. Draws a frothy hot bubblebath, hooking the robe on the rack next to the tub for when he gets out. He passes on the music because he doesn’t like not being able to hear if anyone is approaching when he’s in the washroom alone, but once he slips into the water he manages to relax enough to close his eyes.

He lets the tension dissipate from his muscles and into the bubbles where it swells and bursts out of existence, and this brings with it such a rush of relief that he can’t help but to let out a soft sigh. He breathes deeply and evenly, working to maintain a steady tidal lull, and concentrates on each part of his body individually the way he sometimes does upon waking, reacquainting himself with them one-by-one in order to better understand how they form a whole.

Emboldened by how comfortable he feels, he decides to try something radically different: he touches himself. He starts out by simply tapping himself gently on the shoulder, then tentatively tracing the line of his collarbone. As his fingers creep southward, the even thrum of his breathing is thrown off and he has to pause for several minutes to reorient himself. He anchors himself by inhaling the soft scent of the candles, feeling the smooth ceramic of the bathtub beneath him and the playful tickle of the surrounding bubbles. Tries to work out how all these sensations contribute to his acknowledgment of his own body.

Eventually, he feels grounded enough to be able to slowly run his human hand down his chest, across his stomach, and while he does not dare venture anywhere in the forbidden territory between his hips and his thighs, he resumes his course on his knees, his calves, his feet. He focuses on the sensation of skin against skin, the feeling of being in control, of being touched but not being hurt.

By the time he steps out of the bath, the water is tepid and flat and he is the texture of a giant prune, but he feels more alive, more human, than he has in a long time.

That night, for a record-breaking second time in a week, he sleeps dreamlessly.

Chapter 10 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

There’s always something.

Bucky should know this by now.

He’s just one of those people for whom the fates have a certain arrangement when it comes to how much good is allowed in their life. If he is gifted anything more than his allotted share, the universe will swiftly work to realign itself, meaning whatever he gains in one area, he must lose in an equal or greater amount in another.

(Steve is another one of those people. How twistedly fitting it is, then, that their happinesses are so inextricably connected, moving in time and step with each other.)

There is a week or so during which both Bucky and Steve are allowed to enjoy a reprieve of sorts. Bucky may not make any great leaps forward, but he maintains what little he’d fought to gain, which is in itself tremendous progress. He only does his surveillance checks of the apartment every couple of days now instead of several times in a single night. He takes more long, luxurious baths and practices asking for things and expressing his body’s needs.

Perhaps most importantly of all, the Winter Soldier has once again gone silent.

It’s not until the two of them are supposed to meet Natasha for dinner one Thursday evening that Bucky gets the first taste of what he’s had to lose to compensate for the past week of relative peace.

They’re all dressed to go, Steve can’t stop talking about how good the stuffed eggplants are at this restaurant, Bucky’s even got his shoes on, but then Steve opens the door and it occurs to Bucky that the next step is to actually walk out the door and suddenly everything seems impossible.

Steve is already a few feet out in the foyer before he realises that Bucky hasn’t moved from the entranceway of their apartment.

“Buck?” he coaxes, unable to keep the worry out of his voice.

Not now, Bucky begs himself, closing his eyes tightly, fighting to will away the impending collapse. It’s made all the worse by the fact that this is coming on the heels of the longest stretch of relief he’s had in months; at least when his days were consistent in their perpetual, unwavering blackness, he always knew what to expect. It wasn’t pleasant, but at least it never taunted him with cruelly fleeting glimpses of wellness, letting him have a single tantalising taste before swiping it right out from under his nose again, as if to say See this? This is what you could have... but don’t.

“Bucky?” Steve says again, stepping back inside and closing the door again. “What’s going on?”

Nostrils flaring as he struggles to keep his breathing steady, Bucky backs away deeper into the apartment.

“I don’t want to go,” he mumbles, disgusted by how childish he sounds.

Steve’s face falls. “Why not? You’ve been wanting to try this restaurant for ages.”

Bucky just stubbornly shakes his head. How can he explain it to Steve when he doesn’t fully understand it himself? Everything just feels wrong somehow. His head feels wrong. The way his hair is styled feels wrong. The metal arm is definitely wrong. He looks down at the dress shirt and jeans he’s wearing and he’d felt handsome in them just a minute ago but suddenly they feel wrong now, too. How could he possibly have thought that it would've been acceptable for him to be out in public when everything about him is just so awful? Thank goodness he’d noticed before it was too late. How humiliating it would have been otherwise. People would have pointed, laughed, been disgusted.

This brings up another obstacle. People. Bucky hasn’t left the house since he’d returned from Sam’s, and he hadn’t thought much of it because it’d never really come up, but now he’s realising that going outside means people, and that’s just one more reason to stay home. He’s never been able to handle crowds very well, but at least on his good days he could usually manage a quick trip to the grocery store or a jog around the block at an hour when there weren’t very many other people out. Right now, however, even just stepping out onto the street feels impossible, despite the fact that Steve would be right there with him.

He thinks this may have something to do with the newfound sense of (relative) safety he’s become accustomed to at home. Back when Steve had been unaware of the true extent of Bucky’s issues, there had been nowhere Bucky could go to feel secure; the outside world was terrifying and the inside wasn’t much better, because Steve still thought Bucky was okay with being touched. But now that everything is out in the open and Steve has amended his behaviour to accomodate Bucky’s needs as best he can, their home has become the safest place Bucky has known in a very long time.

It’s Steve’s knowledge of the situation at hand that has made all the difference. If Bucky goes outside, he will be surrounded by people who do not have that knowledge. People who have no idea the damage they might do just by standing too close to him. Of course, this has always been a concern when going out in public, but it wasn’t nearly as apparent before, when Bucky felt the same sick fear whether he was outdoors or in. It really didn’t matter where he was if he was going to feel vulnerable either way. But now that he’s finally found a place where he does feel safe, everywhere else seems a hell of a lot more daunting.

“C’mon, Buck,” Steve urges gently, “You’re okay. You can do this.”

“I don’t want to go,” Bucky repeats with a slightly hysterical edge to his voice.

“Can you at least tell me why?”

Bucky bites his lip, feeling humiliating tears of frustration prickling at the backs of his eyes. “I don’t know. When do I ever fucking know?”

“Hey,” Steve says, slowly raising his hands in an attempt to look acquiescent, “Hey, it’s okay. We don’t have to go. I’ll call Nat and tell her you’re not feeling well, all right?”

Bucky manages a wordless nod, kicking off his shoes and staggering into the living room where he drops heavily onto the couch, breathing hard like he’s just run a marathon. He hears Steve’s indistinct voice in the other room as he talks to Natasha on the phone, explaining the situation and apologising profusely. Bucky feels like a shitty friend. Not only does he ruin everyone’s night, but he can’t even own up to it himself.

Steve eventually comes over to join him, trying to smile. “Everything’s fine. We’ll just have a relaxing night in, sound good?”

“Is Natalia mad?” Bucky asks fretfully.

“Of course she’s not mad. She says she hopes you feel better soon, and to call her if you feel like it.”

Bucky nods miserably.

“What...” Steve swallows nervously. “What’s going on? Talk to me, Buck.”

Bucky hunches forward on the couch, knees on his elbows and his head in his hands as he says in a muffled voice, “I don’t... know. Too much... Too many people.”

“Nobody is going to hurt you.”

“That’s not- I know they won’t. But I still... I just don’t want to be around anyone right now, okay?”

Bucky raises his head in time to see a muscle in Steve’s jaw flicker the way it does when he’s upset and Bucky realises that Steve must think he’s being included in Bucky’s statement about not wanting to be around anyone. Bucky thinks about saying that Steve is an exception, but he’s not even sure that’s true at this very moment and before he can figure it out, Steve has disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Bucky wondering how everything suddenly went so sour.

The following day, determined to prove to himself that yesterday’s incident was just a one-time hiccup and not necessarily indicative of the path of things to come, Bucky agrees to join Steve on an early morning jog. Steve assures him that they won’t go far, and since it’s only just after six a.m., there shouldn’t be very many other people out.

Bucky makes it out to the street without much trouble. He takes a deep breath. He can do this. He concentrates on the chirping of birds overhead, on the way the daybreak air is crisp and revitalising and how the sky’s palette of pale dawn pastels cloaks everything in its soft tinted glow.

He can do this.

Steve takes off at a leisurely pace and Bucky follows, matching his breathing and his steps, feeling surprisingly energised. After over a week of not leaving the house, he’d forgotten just how much he loves being outdoors at this time of day, when most of the city is still asleep and the birds are the only chatty citizens and it feels like the sun rose just for the two of them.

This sentiment lasts until they reach the end of the block. There, another jogger who had been approaching them on a path perpendicular to theirs ends up not too far behind them once they turn the corner. The sight of an incoming person already had Bucky’s breath picking up but it’s the sound of footsteps behind him – so jarring in the stillness of the streets – that really sets him off.

He stumbles once, gasping, head whipping around to scan for danger, and he notices that the distance between him and the other jogger is becoming progressively smaller. His mind screams at him to run but the message must get lost before it reaches the rest of his body because he cannot seem to move. The fingers of his human hand start to tingle as the footsteps behind him get louder and closer, suddenly multiplying into a stampeding army at his back, and he can’t tell if he’s its leader or its target but either way it means someone is going to get hurt and he still has enough wits about him to feel ashamed that he hopes it is someone else instead of him.

He lurches forward, this time catching the attention of Steve, who instinctively reaches out to steady him by grabbing his elbow, and even though he immediately releases his hold once Bucky’s found his footing, being touched for the first time in ten days kicks Bucky’s panic into overdrive.

His breath snags hard, heart erupting into an uneven staccato, he can’t move, his body is a useless bag of soggy twitching flesh—

“Is he okay?” he hears someone asking, assumes it’s the other jogger but he can’t really see anything through the salty smear of his vision.

He’s going to pass out, right here on the street, in front of a stranger, oh god how embarrassing—

“Sir? Are you okay?”

No, he tries to say, No, I’m dying. He thinks that much is obvious, that his skin must be rippling with the force of all the terror rebounding about inside of him, that the crazed tumble of his heartbeat is booming like a rockslide for all the world to hear. He is a firecracker that won’t stop going off, an ineloquent shrieking decibel of disaster.

There’s Steve’s voice saying, “Yeah, yeah, he’s fine, he- he just needs some space. Please, just- I got this, he— no, don’t touch him!”

Bucky flinches away in a random direction to escape hands he cannot see and isn’t sure how much time passes with him hunched in on himself, trying to breathe through a pinched, coiled throat, before he hears Steve say his name and and he realises that it’s just the two of them again.

“Buck? It’s just me now. It’s Steve. You’re safe. You with me?”

Bucky makes a sound like a dying animal.

“Breathe with me, Buck. In... And... hold it. That’s it. Now out. Real slow.”

Bucky tries. Tries to breathe from his stomach instead of his chest like he was taught to and to make the exhalation longer than the inhalation. It doesn’t work the first few times, leaving him still dangling off the precipice of panic for several more minutes until finally his pulse evens out and he’s able to take a breath without it quivering like a manic guitar string.

The first thing he does once he’s halfway to lucid is scan the immediate area for any further danger. Aside from the rumbling of a passing car, the streets are quiet again. His brain vaguely registers Steve’s presence beside him but is unable to assess the threat level he poses due to the conflicting pieces of information that his unreliable head is providing him with.

Steve is a friend, but people are hostiles. Steve’s proximity means safety, but bodies mean danger.

Steve must pick up on Bucky’s turmoil because he takes a small step backwards and says, “Bucky, you’re safe. I’m sorry for before; I saw you about to fall and I reacted before I could think, but I’m not going to touch you, okay? You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you.”

Vaguely, Bucky notices that this is the first time he’s actually reacted to being touched, as opposed to simply going pliant beneath someone else’s hands. He’s not sure if the fact that physical contact now triggers panic instead of dissociation means he’s gotten better or worse.

All he knows is that he is absolutely mortified by what just took place. Having an attack in public like this has always been a disproportionately huge fear of his. In the thankfully few times it has happened in the past, it’d left such a lasting impact that he’d holed himself up indoors for the days if not weeks to come, afraid that it would happen again if he went outside. A self-perpetuating vicious circle.

Right now, all he wants to do is return home and never leave.

How stupid he’d been, to think he’d be okay. How foolish to let himself believe it. He should have known better. Yesterday’s embarrassing incident had been a warning shot, but today has supplied all the proof he needs that no matter how much progress he makes, he’ll always be doomed to backslide.

He doesn’t want to lift his head and have to see the disappointment that will inevitably darken Steve’s eyes once he also realises this.

“Bucky,” comes Steve’s soft voice, somehow able to penetrate the deafening ring of Bucky’s self-loathing.

Bucky still doesn’t look up.

“Bucky,” Steve says again, and normally a soft nudge would accompany this quiet plea, a gentle hand on Bucky’s shoulder or a palm laid on the small of his back, but of course things are different now and Bucky is stunned by just how palpably he feels that absence.

He is still shaky on his feet but Steve does not dare to offer a supportive arm as they begin the interminable walk home, a grim-faced and determined death march towards a fate worse than the grave.

Bucky is surprised when Steve’s first reaction isn’t to call Sam, but then Steve uncomfortably explains that he thinks Sam needs a little time to himself after everything that’s been going on and Bucky immediately feels like a colossal jerk. He’d never even stopped to think about how his neediness might have been negatively affecting Sam and his own recovery; he’d leaned so heavily on Sam when Sam himself was still scrambling to find his footing.

Bucky suddenly has the overwhelming urge to call Sam and apologise, except he’s too exhausted to do anything but collapse bonelessly into the bed, which is where he stays until the sun sets and one day melts into another, tomorrow promising nothing except more of the same.

Bucky barely gets out from under the covers for several days, though it’s not for a lack of trying. At one point he makes it as far as the kitchen where he pours himself a glass of orange juice, but his head’s so mixed-up that when he's done he puts the empty cup in the fridge and the jug of orange juice into the pantry. Another time, he ventures into the living room to try to watch television, though he keeps it on mute and stays on the channel that only shows old black and white movies, because lately he’s been so hypersensitive to sound and light that every noise, movement and colour feels like it's splitting him apart.

Steve sometimes finds him wandering blankly through the apartment, searching for a room that hasn’t yet been colonised by sadness.

This goes on for another tense, tenuous week until one day Steve tells Bucky that he talked to Natasha who talked to Bruce Banner who talked to Leonard Samson, who is a friend of Bruce’s and also a therapist.

“You mean a doctor,” Bucky says suspiciously.

“There are lots of different kinds of doctors,” Steve tries to explain. “Bruce is a doctor, too.”

“And you tell me he turns into a giant green monster that can flatten a city.”

“Well... Technically yes, but—”

“Do you see what I’m getting at here?”

Steve doesn’t fall for Bucky’s attempt to deflect the issue with ill-timed bad humour.

“I’m serious, Buck,” he says. “I know you were doing better at first because—” he swallows hard, “—because I’m not... touching you... anymore, but it seems like things are getting difficult again, and... well, you can’t go through life just- just avoiding everything. We have to actually face it, and deal with it, or nothing’s ever going to change.” He pauses, then asks quietly, “Don’t you want things to change?”

At those words, Bucky entire body is set alight by a strange, combustible combination of indignance and shame. The former because Steve has no right to make these assumptions about him and the latter because he knows it’s true. He likes to tell himself that he’s trying the best he can, that he’s doing everything in his power to get better, but how can that be the case when he remains so steadfastly unwilling to do the one last thing he has not yet attempted? The one last thing that everyone alleges could help the most.

“Of course I fucking want it to change!” Bucky shouts, hating the way his voice cracks towards the end of the sentence. “You really think I like being like this? You think I like being sad and scared all the time, and not being able to get close to someone I love because... ‘cause I- I’m so fucked-up that I can’t tell the difference between touched and- and... and being hurt? I hate it, Steve! I fucking hate it!”

And with that, Bucky bursts into tears. As if this whole outburst wasn’t humiliating enough. He quickly turns away from Steve, pressing himself into the farthest crook of the couch as if he could somehow squeeze himself in between the cushions and disappear. He has not cried like this in months, if ever, and to say it comes as a shock would be an understatement.

He feels the sofa shifting beneath him and pulls his face out of the pillows to see that Steve has moved closer to him but has taken care not to make any actual contact. He has a completely helpless, bewildered look to him, most likely because his most effective way of consoling Bucky – by holding him, petting him, kissing him – is no longer a viable option so he clearly has no idea what else to do.

“Bucky,” he says, in that all-too-familiar plaintive tone, “Bucky, I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to- I know you want to get better, and you’re doing so well, you hear me? It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Bucky is struck by how strangely inadequate the words feel when spoken from such distance, when not whispered into his hair or his ear or the crook of his neck, and he wants so badly for that distance to disappear but he doesn’t think he could handle it if Steve made any movement to make that happen.

That’s when it occurs to Bucky, even through all his hysterics, that there is another option that he could try.

He could close that distance himself. On his own terms.

The idea is so wildly simple that Bucky feels rather silly for not having come up with it earlier; though to be fair, he doesn’t think he’d ever truly wanted this before, at least not as much as he does in this very moment.

“Steve?” he croaks once the tears have subsided enough for him to be able to speak.

Steve’s eyes instantly meet his, huge and glistening and desperate. “Yeah, Bucky?”

“Can I... touch you?”

Steve’s eyes get even bigger somehow and it’s like he can’t get the words out fast enough when he gasps, “Yes, oh god, yes, of course you can, Buck.”

Bucky takes a deep breath and slowly reaches out with his flesh hand until the tips of his fingers are brushing Steve’s chest. Steve’s eyelids flutter shut as he inhales sharply, the air quivering between his slightly parted lips, like it's the first breath he's taken in years. Bucky eases his hand closer, flattening it so that he ends up with his palm over Steve’s heart, feeling the sturdy thump of his pulse, that affirmation of life spreading its curious warmth beneath Bucky’s death-dealing fingers and into his death-dealt body.

Bucky trembles. He has no idea how he’s supposed to be feeling right now, nor is he too sure of what he actually is feeling. All that exists is the palm of his hand and the heat of Steve’s chest radiating through the thin cotton of his shirt. He has zeroed in on the point of contact much like a camera zooming in to focus on one minuscule feature, with everything else being shoved out of the frame or else going blurry.

Steve opens his eyes again, locking his gaze to Bucky’s as if he’s able to sense that Bucky is at risk of being swallowed up whole.

“You with me, Buck?” he asks softly, voice husky and low.

His words bring Bucky back, and Bucky reminds himself to pull his focus back a step so that he can capture the full picture and not get lost in a single tiny detail. He concentrates on his hand and moves upwards from there, up his arm, to his shoulder and through his torso, until he has relocated the rest of his body.

“I’m here,” he whispers, and realises from the lack of hiccups in his voice that he’s stopped crying and hadn’t even noticed.

He feels Steve’s chest rise and fall beneath his hand as Steve murmurs, “Good. You’re doing real good, Buck.”

It could be seconds or it could be centuries, but eventually, Bucky pulls his hand away, letting out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. He stares uncomprehendingly at his hand for a long time, unable to figure out why nothing hurts.

“Sam said that might help,” Steve says breathlessly after a moment. “Having... To have you initiate things. For you to- to be the one in control. He said it... Was it okay? Did it help?”

All Bucky can do is give a faint nod.

There’s another pause, then Steve asks, in an uncharacteristically shy voice, “What you said before... Was it... was it me you were thinking about?”

Bucky blinks, a few leftover tears still beaded on his lashes. “What?”

Steve fidgets anxiously. “When you said... you don’t like not being able to get close to... You said to someone you... love.”

The last word tumbles from Steve’s lips as barely a feather-brush of a whisper, but it manages to take the whole universe down with it.

“I...” Bucky swallows, licks his lips, struggles not to think about it too much with his head and instead tries to go with his gut. “I think so.”

Steve’s face breaks into a stunned, shaky smile, so radiant and blooming and grateful, and Bucky’s I think so becomes more of a Yes, probably.

Notes:

the wonderful and talented CrazyHyper was so kind as to make a fanart for this piece, which you can find here so that you can tell her how crazy AWESOME she is.
(reference photo from here.)

Chapter 11 Notes:

additional warning in this chapter for a brief incidence of self-harm. some self-applied victim-blaming from bucky.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Steve seems to have been injected with a newfound hope ever since Bucky touched him, smiling more often and singing in the shower, but try as he may, Bucky can find no such sense of joy after this supposed milestone in his progress.

Instead, he is more confused than ever. He will be the first to acknowledge that touching Steve had felt good that day, had actually provided some of the solace that he had so desperately been seeking. But now, the thought of physical contact, even when instigated by himself, once again makes his skin crawl and his brain splinter with scraping shards of memory, of hands all over his body, horror-hands that even when they weren’t technically causing him pain were still hurting him, leaving their indelible marks. His return to this inability to be touched is made all the more frustrating now that he knows he is capable of it, but he just can’t seem to choose when.

He’s also still not one hundred percent certain what had possessed him to touch Steve in the first place, whether it was courage or impulse or desperation or an explosive mix of all three. He thinks it might have had something to do with how terribly vulnerable he was feeling at the time. He had run all his defences into the ground, and maybe in some weird trick of reversal, this openness made him susceptible to his own inner workings, allowed him access to parts of himself that he would not have been able to find otherwise. Parts of himself buried so deeply that even HYDRA hadn’t been able to dig them up and destroy them.

The parts that remembered how to love and touch and feel.

He fears he’s lost those pieces again.

It’s as though some door has closed inside him once more, locking him out of his own feelings, his true feelings, the ones that are not twisted and warped and tainted by everything that had been done to him.

He strikes a blade to his skin in sheer frustration, creating a long vertical slash down his sternum in a futile attempt to reopen that portal, then spends the next couple of hours bundled up in several layers of clothing to keep Steve from seeing where the blood had soaked through his shirt.

He doesn’t heal as well as Steve; the wounds don't close up as quickly and he can still scar, the serum flowing through his veins just a cheap, polluted version of something pure, just like he is.

Steve casually brings up Banner’s friend Dr. Samson again over lunch one afternoon, though Bucky’s not quite sure why, since he thought he’d been doing a pretty good job at appearing okay in the past couple of days. Then again, maybe Steve thinks that Bucky would be more receptive to the suggestion if he’s in a better headspace, and Bucky doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he doesn’t feel like he’s in a good place at all. He couldn’t bear to let Steve down again, and certainly not when Steve’s in such an optimistic mood.

“I know you said that if you ever saw someone, you’d want it to be someone who understands the... superhero thing,” Steve says.

“Superpowers,” Bucky corrects him, because while he is a great many things, a hero is certainly not one of them. “The superpowers thing.”

“Okay, the superpowers thing,” Steve reluctantly concedes, having long since learned to be very selective when deciding what is and is not worth arguing about.

When Bucky says nothing to shut the idea down completely, as he normally would’ve by this point, Steve jumps to the opportunity to chatter on: “Anyway. This guy... he’s worked with... Not just with Bruce, but also with other people with similar... abilities. Y’know that government mutant group, X-Factor? He’s worked with them, too. He’s based in West Virginia at the moment, but Tony St— I mean... uh... Tony said he’d pay to have him come here to D.C., if you want.”

Bucky stiffens at the name Stark, even though Steve had stopped himself from getting the whole word out.

Bucky doesn’t remember much about Howard. He’d read about him at the Smithsonian, knows he had a hand in the project that had transformed Steve into Captain America, and Steve had told him how Howard had been the one to fly him to the HYDRA base to rescue Bucky and the rest of the 107th, but Bucky doesn’t really have any of his own memories of the man.

Just of the Rolls Royce Phantom VI whose drum brakes he’d tampered with to send Howard and Maria Stark careening to their deaths.

Bucky’s suddenly lost his appetite and drops the grilled cheese sandwich he’d been about to take a bite out of.

“Why would Howard Stark’s son want to help me?” he asks bitterly. “He saw the mission report. He knows what I did.”

“Yeah, he does,” Steve says quietly, “And he forgives you. Just like you need to forgive yourself. He knows it wasn’t really you.”

Bucky gives a cynical, disparaging snort. “The hell it wasn’t.”

“Buck—”

“Even if it wasn’t me, or what- whatever, doesn’t mean it wasn’t still my fault. None of this would’ve happened at all if I hadn’t been so... so damn weak that—”

“Bucky,” Steve cuts in with a fierceness that catches Bucky offguard, “Don’t you even think that. You fought them every step of the way. Why do you think they had to... to wipe you so often? Because you wouldn’t stop fighting. For seventy years, you fought.”

“That’s what you think,” Bucky mutters with a grim shake of the head, recalling all the times he’d just stood there and took whatever was being given, went along with it like a dead fish floating downstream, let hands upon hands do with and to his body whatever they pleased, even when he could have taken down everyone in the room without breaking a sweat.

“No,” Steve insists, “It’s not just what I think, it’s what’s what I know. And you know how I know it? ‘Cause you wouldn’t be sitting here with me otherwise. You fought them the best you could, Buck. And the way I see it, you won.”

“Shitty prize, though,” Bucky says with a weak grin, gesturing halfheartedly at himself as if he could encapsulate everything that is wrong with him in a single vague arm movement.

He meant the statement mostly as a joke, but there’s no denying that there’s also some truth in it. Even if he had fought HYDRA as hard as Steve claims he did, and even if the fact that he’s still here means he was victorious, what exactly is it that he’s won? A life of debilitating terror, swept with sadness and with guilt forever gnawing on his bones like a starving wolf. That’s not a life. It’s just another longer, harder battle, and he’s tired, he’s so tired of fighting.

He doesn’t want to feel like this anymore.

So, quickly, impulsively, without giving his brain a chance to talk himself out of it once again, he says, “Okay.”

Steve gives him a bit of a quizzical look. “‘Okay’ what?”

“Okay, I’ll... see him. Banner’s friend.”

Even as the words are coming out of his mouth, Bucky can’t quite believe he’s saying them. What the fuck is he getting himself into? He has no idea how this whole thing is supposed to work aside from what Sam has told him; knows anecdotally from secondhand stories that it’s helped a lot of people, Sam included, but Bucky still doesn’t really understand any of it. Nothing like this had existed during his time and people still seemed to get by fine.

The way Steve’s whole face lights up like the sky on the Fourth of July (which Bucky spent hiding under the bed while Steve begrudgingly made the briefest public appearance that he could get away with) makes Bucky feel like a fraud. He doesn’t deserve for Steve to look at him like he’s saved the world when all he’s doing is something that he probably should have done long ago. Something that most people would be able to do without a second thought. Has Bucky really become so fucking useless that something so menial is considered a huge accomplishment?

He used to be a hero for fuck’s sake, if the history books are to be believed.

He’s still a hero, if Steve is to be believed.

Bucky doesn’t understand how he can have so much faith in Steve with everything except for this.

There’s so much that has to happen before Bucky can have even just his first session with Doc Samson that he’s already tempted to just throw in the towel right here and now. He talks to Doc Samson on the phone (or rather they’re on speaker and Steve relays what he can from Bucky’s nervous mumbling) for a mere ten minutes, and subsequently spends the rest of the day in a shivering huddle beneath the blankets, feeling absolutely drained.

He also has to fill out what feels like an endless amount of forms and questionnaires. He’s not stupid; he knows what it means when he checks off all the highest numbers and the boxes that say ‘very much applicable’ for most of the questions. He doesn’t need a bunch of clinically-worded assessment sheets to tell him just how utterly fucked he is, and he’s not particularly keen on Doc Samson finding out either.

It’s an apprehension rooted in two seemingly opposing causes: on the one hand, he’s worried Doc Samson will take one look at him and write him off as a hopeless cause, but on the other, he’s terrified that the doctor will think he is exaggerating, if he even believes him at all. The line at which Doc Samson will no longer be willing to suspend his disbelief is probably a lot higher than your average person’s considering his clientele, but Bucky still wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up being thrown right out of his office for being a fraud, for wasting the doctor's time with what were clearly a bunch of made-up problems.

Bucky doesn’t voice any of these fears to Steve, though, just grimly circles ‘almost all the time’ next to the question that asks how frequently he experiences feelings of hopelessness and despair.

Sam calls the day before Bucky’s appointment.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch earlier,” he tells Bucky, sounding genuinely apologetic. “Things were... I had to take care of myself a little.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says, feeling sick with guilt for having added to Sam’s already full plate without even considering the consequences. “I’m sorry for... being so much trouble.”

“Nah, s’all good. So I hear you’re going to see that Samson guy tomorrow?”

Bucky picks fretfully at the unravelling stitching of his sweatshirt and says, “Um. Yeah. Tomorrow. Just to... I don’t know, get some... advice or- or something. Just to hear what he has to say. I don’t want to have to talk much.”

“Fair enough. Listen, even if you don’t end up saying a word, I’m proud of you, man. You’re doing a very brave thing just by going.”

Bucky does not know what Sam is saying, all rational thought having been abruptly evicted from his brain upon hearing the word ‘brave.’ It’s perhaps one of the last words he’d ever use to describe himself. He had been a scrappy kid according to Steve, but unlike Steve, he’d fought more out of pride than principle, and as a soldier, he fought because it was the only way to stay alive.

The exhibit at the Smithsonian had made him out to be some sort of hero – Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country – but the truth that he’s always kept harboured inside of him like a dormant disease was that he hadn’t given it willingly at all, it had been brutally wrenched from him, stolen first by gravity in the Austrian alps and then by thousands of volts in HYDRA safehouses all over the world, year after year after year.

If he’d had the choice, he wouldn’t have given up a damn thing.

“Does it still count as being brave when it scares you shitless, though?” Bucky wonders aloud.

“Dude, that’s what makes it brave. You don’t need courage for something that doesn’t scare you.”

Sam goes on to explain to Bucky what might happen at his visit tomorrow. Says it’ll likely just be a ‘getting to know each other’ type of deal because it’s their first meeting. Bucky may or may not be asked about his past but he can disclose as little or as much as he feels comfortable with. He's under no obligation to say anything he does not want to. The doctor will probably also want to know what Bucky is looking to change or improve in his life, so Sam suggests that Bucky give that some thought tonight and write down anything he wants to remember to bring up tomorrow. He could also write down anything he thinks might be too hard to say in person.

Bucky laughs a little at that last suggestion, because he's pretty sure that would mean writing down everything.

The first thing Bucky notices about Doc Samson is the mane of green hair. The second thing he notices is that the man is not wearing either all black or a suit or a white shirt or a bowtie, so it’s a lot easier to distinguish him from the kinds of doctors that Bucky is used to. He thinks he remembers talking about this on the phone the other day and feeling stupid for telling his doctor how to dress, as well as for asking that the makeshift office Stark had set him up in contain no leather furniture. He’s grateful and frankly quite stunned that his requests were actually met.

The third thing Bucky notices is that Doc Samson does not seem angry or even impatient despite the fact that they are four hours late to the appointment because Bucky had quite a bit of trouble leaving the house.

Doc Samson says hello, coming over to shake only Steve’s hand while he just gives Bucky a smile, which is another thing they’d discussed in their initial phone call.

“H-h-hi,” Bucky manages, feeling awkward and intimidated like a little kid meeting his parents’ friends who all smile too widely and lean in too close and ask him too many questions about what he wants to be when he grows up, in voices that are too loud and too high.

Like a child, Bucky has half a mind to try to hide behind Steve. He does not move deeper into the office until Steve does. Doc Samson double-checks with Bucky whether he still wants Steve to be involved in the session, Bucky nods, then they all sit down and begin.

A fog settles in after that. It’s not the nasty, debilitating kind of haze that Bucky is used to, though; it’s more just like his brain can’t keep up with this unfamiliar situation, can’t process any of it fast enough to really be able to form much of a reaction, either positive or negative. His thoughts are working relatively properly in that he’s speaking coherently and in full sentences, it’s just his emotions that he cannot access.

They discuss his answers on the various questionnaires he’d filled out, touch upon the feelings and symptoms he’d reported, and he speaks as though he’s describing having the common cold. To his disbelief, he finds himself talking about things he didn’t think himself capable of disclosing verbally – particularly ones relating to HYDRA – and he does so with about as much emotion as a weather reporter that’s half asleep.

The part of his mind that feels like he’s outside of himself, watching himself, is astonished by what it’s seeing. Here he is relaying to this total stranger the kinds of things that he cannot even tell Steve when it's just the two of them. Things he normally cannot even think about without going into hysterics. He’s being very vague in his wording, not going into very much detail at all, but it’s still more than he’s ever been able to say out loud. So far he hasn’t even had to use the notebook he’d brought along that contains some of the things he thought he wouldn’t be able to vocalise.

It’s like he’s talking about someone else, and someone he doesn’t care much about, if his total lack of compassion is anything to go by.

Then again, he is someone he doesn’t care much about, isn't he?

He laughs suddenly at this thought, which makes both Doc Samson and Steve frown. Steve also looks a bit queasy, most likely because this is the first time he’s heard most of what Bucky is saying, though Bucky doesn’t understand why it comes as such a shock since it’s basically all there in HYDRA’s file, which Steve has read.

Bucky had actually considered taking his file to his appointment so that he wouldn’t have to say a single thing, but there’s stuff in there that he wouldn’t even have let Steve see, if he’d been around to stop him. Stuff about how his conditioning had involved not only physical and psychological torture, but sexual violence as well. And that’s not even including what HYDRA agents did to him off the record for their own sadistic pleasure, which is something that Bucky still hasn’t brought up with Steve.

He’s certainly not about to bring any of it up with Doc Samson either. Not even the utter detachment through which he is able to communicate the physical component of his mistreatment is strong enough to overcome the crippling shame he feels in every cell of his body when it comes to the sexual aspects.

“What are you laughing about?” Steve asks him.

Bucky snaps his mouth shut. “I- no, nothing.”

“You seem very calm considering the traumatic nature of what you're talking about,” Doc Samson observes.

The careful neutrality in every one of the doctor’s words and actions is deeply unsettling to Bucky, who gets very nervous without constant indications of how the other person feels or what they want. How is he supposed to know what to do if they’re not giving him any signals?

Bucky flounders for a response, even though it hadn’t really been a question. Truth be told, he doesn’t have a single clue why he’s so seemingly level-headed right now. Steve never pushes him to talk about what’d happened to him, but any time he’d try to bring it up himself, his palms would become slick with sweat and his body would begin to shake. Not once had he ever been able to detach like this. Perhaps it’s the more clinical setting that they’re currently in that has allowed Bucky to take a step back from himself.

“Can you tell me how you were feeling as you described those things to me?” Doc Samson asks.

Bucky opens his mouth to reply but quickly closes it again when he realises he has absolutely no idea. He wasn’t feeling anything at all; that’s why he had been able to talk about it. He glances at Steve, as if he'd find an answer there. Steve's expression is still clearly horrified but now there's also a sheen of fury to it, which Bucky for once has the sense to know is not directed towards him, but it certainly makes him wonder why he’s not able to dredge up more of a reaction himself.

“There’s no right or wrong answer,” Doc Samson reminds him gently when he’s silent for too long. “This isn’t a test. We’re just here to get an idea of what we’re dealing with.”

“I... don’t know... how I... feel...” Bucky mumbles, words coming out all sluggish for some reason.

Thankfully Doc Samson doesn’t push the matter any further, and they go on to talk about Bucky’s goals. Oddly enough, this is where Bucky begins to have trouble talking and has to pull out his notes. He sinks lower into his chair, feeling horribly self-conscious as Doc Samson reads them, even though the man doesn’t react aside from a few thoughtful nods.

Bucky can’t even recall much of what he’d written on this particular topic. He’d stayed up for hours last night thinking about it, and the list of things he’d like to change is so hopelessly vast that he had difficulty picking out individual points from the giant, convoluted mass of all that is wrong with his life.

He thinks he would just like to feel normal, but the truth is that he has no idea what that entails. Sometimes Steve expresses a melancholy wish that things could go back to the way they used to be, but that means nothing to Bucky, who has no such point of reference to return to. He feels such a sense of fractured disconnect from what little good he can remember of his previous life that he doesn’t even consider any of it as things that have happened to him. For the most part, they feel like other people's memories.

The memories that feel the most like his own are all more sensory recollections than depictions of actual events. He remembers the heat and sweetness of Mrs. Rogers’s apple pie. The dissolving granules of cotton candy on his tongue. The smell of cigarettes, of gasoline, of the fish market by the pier. He even has body memories of the way he and Steve used to fit together – the exact degree of inclination needed for his chin to rest at the top of Steve’s head, the curve of Steve’s spine nestled against Bucky’s chest – but those are the hardest to reconcile with the present reality because of how much both their bodies have changed, and of course because of the newer, more powerful memories entrenched in him by the bodies he’s been close to since then.

replace bad memories with not-bad memories is something that Bucky does remember writing as one of his goals for Doc Samson. He went for 'not-bad' instead of 'good' because the latter seemed like it was asking for too much.

They keep discussing Bucky's goals, which according to his notes include being able to get close to people again, sleeping better, and getting more comfortable with being out in public. Doc Samson offers tentative encouragement, saying that it will take a lot of hard work, but they are realistic and attainable things to aim for.

“However, I can't help but to notice that self-forgiveness is nowhere on this list,” he notes.

“Self-forgiveness?” Bucky echoes blankly.

“Is it because you don't think you deserve to be forgiven?”

Bucky laughs shakily. “Wow, you don't pull any punches, do you, Doc?”

The doctor gives him an infuriatingly placid smile.

Bucky clams up and says nothing.

When it becomes clear that this is one of the no-fly zones in terms of what Bucky will or will not touch upon, the rest of the visit is spent going over coping strategies, grounding techniques, and other survival skills, as well as exploring other treatment possibilities, all of which have too many acronyms for Bucky to keep track of and it all kind of goes over his head.

He leaves Doc Samson’s office with a folder of worksheets, the number of a specialised trauma therapist, and a completely blank and empty head. It’s not until Steve pulls the car up in front of their apartment that a seal seems to break and the realisation of what he’s just done finally hits Bucky in full force, but even then, it’s more of a physical reaction than an emotional one. He starts shaking all over, as though all the things he hasn’t been able to feel in his brain have been rerouted through his body to be experienced somatically.

Steve pulls the keys out of the ignition and turns to face Bucky worriedly. “Buck? Everything okay?”

All Bucky can do is nod. He thinks if he tries to speak through his closed-up throat and chattering teeth he might either throw up or cry, and he’s done enough of both in the past few days that he’d really rather it not happen again right now.

“Is there anything I can do... to help?” Steve asks anxiously.

Bucky can hear it in his voice that Steve is desperately hoping Bucky will want to touch him again, but Bucky knows himself well enough to be able to recognise he’s not ready for that right now so he shakes his head. It occurs to him that this is perhaps the first time he’s ever been able to deny someone access to his body. The realisation leaves him flabbergasted, though he has a feeling that the only reason he was able to decline is because Steve had not phrased it in a way that was centred around touch. He makes a note to mention this later on, but right now, all he can do is sit here and shake and try to breathe.

They stay there in the car for another twenty minutes, with Steve unable to do anything but watch helplessly as Bucky struggles to calm himself. When it becomes clear that it’s not going to happen without a bit of outside help, he manages to ask Steve to talk to him, about anything at all, just give him something to concentrate on that isn’t what’s happening.

Steve falteringly begins recounting the times the two of them went to Steeplechase Park, how Steve had always refused to go on the Flying Turns, and how the Parachute Jump still stands on Coney Island today and they should go see it sometime. He apologises for dragging Bucky to the Modern Venus Beauty Contest in the summer of 1935; he hadn’t known at the time that ladies in swimsuits did not rank particularly high on Bucky’s list of things that interested him.

Bucky wheezes out a small chuckle at that last bit. That tiny gust of breath nudges the universe back into place enough for him to finally be able to exit the car and head upstairs to the apartment.

He just makes it into the living room before his legs give out on him completely, leaving him in a bit of a heap on the carpet, which is where he stays for several minutes before realising that Steve is still standing in the entranceway of their place, seemingly in a daze.

“Steve?” Bucky calls out softly.

Steve’s head snaps over to look at him, eyes wild like he’s been caught red-handed doing something he’d expected to be able to get away with. “Huh?”

“You okay?”

Steve laughs nervously as he comes over to join him. “Me? Why are you worrying about me?”

“’Cause you sure as hell won’t.”

“I don’t need... I’m always okay. It’s you who...”

“For the love of god, Steve, please, just think of yourself for once. Okay? You’ve fucking earned it.”

Steve sighs heavily, sinking down onto the couch on the side closest to where Bucky is still sitting on the floor. “It’s just... Hearing about all that terrible stuff... It’s so much different than just reading about it. Even though HYDRA’s documents are a lot more... detailed... hearing it coming out of your mouth, in the first person, it really... God, I’m just- I’m so sorry, Bucky.”

There is genuine pain in Steve’s voice, and Bucky doesn’t know how to feel about it. The odd indifference from earlier is back. Those who know what he went through always seem so horrified by it, and he doesn’t know why he can never muster up the same kind of reaction, even though it happened to him.

“Aren’t you angry about what they did to you?” Steve had asked him once, his own fury barely concealed in his voice.

Bucky had fixed him with a slightly baffled look. “Should I be...?”

“Yes, for fuck’s sake! Buck... They stole your entire life from you. They made you suffer so badly, and- and even though they’re gone now, you’re still suffering. God, it makes me so angry I can’t even see straight.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Bucky had replied in a sarcastic drawl.

He’s trying to remember how the rest of that conversation had gone when Steve asks, “So, what did you think? About the doc?”

“Wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be,” he admits, and he’s telling the truth.

He’s not sure what exactly he’d been afraid would transpire – maybe that he’d be pushed too hard to talk about things he wasn’t ready to deal with, or that he’d have another thoroughly humiliating breakdown in front of a total stranger – but none of it ended up happening, and even though he still doesn’t see how any of it is supposed to help, he’s nonetheless encouraged by the fact that it didn’t go as badly as he’d feared.

“Do you think you’ll want to see him again?” Steve asks.

Bucky hesitates. Despite the fact that the visit itself had gone relatively smoothly, it’s the buildup before and the crash afterwards that he doesn’t want to have to face again. He’d spent most of the morning and previous night as a vomiting, hyperventilating mess, and right now, he’s so fucking exhausted that he feels like he’ll disappear if he doesn’t consciously cling to his own existence. Even though he recognises to some degree that all of his worrying had been unnecessary seeing how well things had gone at the appointment itself, he can already feel an anticipatory sense of dread at the mere thought of having to do it all over again.

Bucky says, “I...” and then trails off.

“Both Sam and Doc Samson said you can’t really get much done in just one session,” Steve reminds him.

“I know that,” Bucky replies, a bit too curtly.

Steve is quiet for a moment, then says, “Can I just ask you something?”

“Whenever people ask you if they can ask you something, it’s always because it’s something real heavy,” Bucky grumbles. “But okay, shoot.”

“On your list of goals... You said... You said you wanted to be able to get close to people again.”

“Yes, I was referring to you, you punk,” Bucky sighs before Steve can even properly get the question out.

Steve’s face breaks out in a dopey sort of grin. “Yeah?”

“Hey, don’t go getting your hopes up, though,” Bucky warns him, not wanting to be too much of a downer but also not about to lead Steve down a path of false optimism, “I... I think it’ll still be a long time before I can even so much as accidentally brush shoulders with someone.”

He lets out a small laugh that ends up sounding a lot more self-disgusted than he’d meant it to. He hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself, let alone out loud, but he honestly cannot envision himself as ever being truly comfortable with being touched. It might not even be possible for him anymore, and the worst part is that he doesn’t want to be like this. Unlike the earlier days, when he'd had so many other things to think about that physical contact hadn't exactly been one of his priorities, it’s grown to become so much more important to him. He wants to be able to give and receive love the way he used to do so easily, but he literally cannot imagine a life in which this would be possible.

Steve doesn’t seem too discouraged, though. “No, no, of course,” he says hurriedly. “I can wait, Buck. For as long as it takes. I mean... I’ve waited seventy years already, right?”

Another grim chuckle from Bucky. “Right.”

“Right,” Steve repeats dumbly. Then, softer and more hesitant: “Oh, hey, and Bucky?”

“Yeah, Steve?”

“...Thank you.”

Notes:

tbh i haven't seen the hulk movie and i have no real experience with doc samson aside from what i've read in the x-factor series so i'm sorry if i totally butchered him; i just wanted to be able to keep all the characters in the MCU :S
also, i'm going on vacation next week so there probably won't be an update until i get back.
in the meantime, thanks again for reading!

Chapter 12 Notes:

i have to say that i do not have any personal experience with this kind of trauma or the treatment thereof, and though i've done a fair amount of research into the process, i know there is a lot i must be missing, so please do not hesitate to correct me on any gross inaccuracies.
that being said, i feel like it should also be noted that there will be some practices depicted in this story (particularly in upcoming chapters) that definitely should not be interpreted as an ideal way to handle trauma treatment, because even though bucky is off to a good start, i'm really trying to show how difficult it is to find a suitable or even just competent therapist for issues of this magnitude.
warnings in the tags apply especially for this chapter. thank you for reading ♥

Chapter Text

“This is stupid,” Bucky declares after the third time of being asked to identify and describe an object in the room. “Of course I can fuckin’ tell you about this stupid blue coffee mug right now, because I’m not flipping my lid.”

Steve gives a long-suffering sigh. “You heard what Doc Samson said. You gotta practice this stuff even when you’re not... flipping out... or whatever. It’s supposed to make it easier for your brain to do it on its own when it actually needs to. Because sometimes by the time you realise you’re slipping away, it’s too- you’re too far gone to start trying to focus on this stuff, so this is supposed to help your brain do it more... automatically, I guess.”

“I can’t believe this,” Bucky complains, ignoring Steve. “I can’t believe he gave me homework. If I wanted to do homework all day, I’d go back to school.”

“Bucky, we didn’t even have homework when we were in school,” Steve points out mildly.

“Well, it’s the principle of the thing.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “C’mon, Buck. Concentrate.”

Bucky gives a petulant grunt but nevertheless resumes his meandering amble around the room, naming shapes and sounds and colours in an exaggeratedly enunciated voice.

Steve isn’t amused. “Bucky, you’re not taking this seriously.”

“That’s ‘cause it doesn’t feel very serious,” Bucky huffs stubbornly. “As a matter of fact, it feels fucking ridiculous.”

“Yeah, well, in like an hour when you’re freaking out again, it probably won’t feel so ridiculous, now will it?” Steve snaps, in a voice harsher than Bucky’s ever heard from him.

Bucky abruptly drops to his knees in a stunted, graceless motion, something about the leeringly rhetorical way the question was barked out setting off some deeply buried trip wire that he hadn’t realised he had. Garbled murmurs of similarly phrased inquiries (You do want to be a good boy, now don’t you?) echo within his head, questions uttered with the same sarcastic malice, drawing forced agreement from him like snake venom being sucked out of a bite.

“Oh shit,” he hears Steve mutter, and there’s the sound of movement as he crouches down next to Bucky.

Bucky doesn’t register this, though. He’s still on his knees, eyes closed, head tilted back slightly to bare the vulnerable flesh of his throat as a sign of submission, and this has unleashed an intensely vivid memory of being in the same position in a safehouse in Kosovo, paralysed by his own helplessness, mind cripplingly blank save for the implanted mantra of be good be good be good.

“Bucky,” someone’s saying frantically, and some part of him knows that this is a name, his name, but that doesn’t make any sense because he doesn’t have one of those, he’s not allowed to have one of those.

“Bucky, where are you right now?”

The voice is bewildering. It’s speaking nonsense and doesn’t belong, but Bucky’s conditioning to respond when he is asked a question is strong enough to override his confusion and he manages to stutter out, “Y-Y-Yugoslavia,” then scrunches his eyes shut even more tightly as he waits for the inevitable punishment.

It never comes. He peeps an eye open, sees a face that would not have been there in 1981, hears a voice saying that it’s 2015 and Yugoslavia no longer exists, which actually sends him into a bit of a tailspin because if this place he’s in does not exist, then has he ceased to exist along with it?

It’s not until he clenches his fists against the ground and notices that it’s carpet, not cement, that he is able to realise what’s happening.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you,” he croaks with a bleary smile once he’s able to speak, “To force me to practice.”

Steve blanches. “Bucky, I- I would never try to... to trigger you on pur—”

“Nah, I know, I’m just messin’ with you,” Bucky says, hoping the breeziness in his voice can sufficiently cloak the fact that it’s not one hundred percent true.

After all, Bucky had been being difficult. Disobedient. Of course it would have been within Steve’s rights to put him back in his place. Bucky should just be grateful that Steve had only used his voice and not violence.

Still, there’s another part of Bucky’s brain that’s shouting how wrong he is to think that. Steve cares about him. Steve would never hurt him. Bucky knows this empirically. And yet his body still reacts as though it has no idea.

“That’s never happened before,” Bucky says a little dazedly.

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Hmm...?”

“I’m usually not... Voices don’t usually set me off like that.”

Steve somehow manages to look even guiltier, and the first thing Bucky realises is that he sounded like he’s blaming Steve in an incredibly passive-aggressive way. That hadn’t been his intention; he was merely telling the truth, or at least, what he’d believed was the truth – now that he thinks about it, a harsh tone alone probably wouldn’t have affected him this badly, and it was more a combination of the voice and the body memory of being on his knees that had really done it.

The second thing Bucky realises is that he kind of wants Steve to feel like he’s being blamed, so he doesn’t mention how his posturing had contributed to the flashback and instead lets Steve think it’s entirely his fault. Bucky hadn’t been aiming to make Steve feel worse, at least not initially, but he can’t deny that he’s now getting a perverse sense of satisfaction out of it. Maybe Steve should feel bad, should have known better than to raise his voice at Bucky like he had. Bucky is trying so fucking hard; the least Steve could do is respect his efforts and be patient with him.

“Bucky, I’m so sorry,” Steve says, and he actually sounds like he might cry, and suddenly Bucky feels terrible about his own spiteful thoughts.

He had no right to malign Steve like that. Steve is patient with him, unremittingly and unrelentingly so, and while he’s still only human, a lesser man would have long since given up.

For a moment Steve seems to debate with himself whether or not to open his mouth again, then he says, “It’s just... This stuff is important and you’re treating it like... It’s just frustrating when you’re so damn stubborn! I don’t understand why you’re so resistant to something that’s supposed to help you get rid of a bad thing, you know?”

Bucky lowers his eyes again. He has a bit of an idea why he’s been so bullheaded about the whole thing, and it has nothing to do with the flimsy protest he’d used before, about finding it to be a silly, useless activity. It’s something a little darker and he doesn’t think Steve would like it at all.

“It’s not always a bad thing,” Bucky mumbles, feeling inexplicably embarrassed.

“What’s not always a bad thing?” Steve asks curiously.

“Going... away.”

“You mean, like... dissociating?”

Bucky nods unhappily. “I know I’m supposed to be... I’m s’pposed to stay present and all that, but... well, sometimes the present’s not exactly a nice place to be, so it feels better to be somewhere else. Even if that place is nowhere.”

Steve’s expression becomes distinctly anguished. “Oh, Bucky...”

“Kinda stupid, huh,” Bucky says with a crooked, self-deprecating smile.

“No, it makes a lot of sense, actually,” Steve replies quietly, getting an odd far-off look in his eyes, and Bucky wonders what he’s thinking about.

“You’re not going anywhere on me now, are you?” Bucky asks, trying to lighten the mood of an honest, serious question by having it come out sounding slightly like a joke.

Steve manages a smile and shakes his head. “Nah. But you know, you’re right about it not always being a bad thing. I read somewhere that there are different levels of dissociation. Technically, even daydreaming is a form of it, though obviously a lot less severe. It’s when it starts to interfere with your life and health that it’s a bad thing.”

“It doesn’t interfere with my life,” Bucky objects halfheartedly, and it’s such a glaring lie that Steve doesn’t even dignify it with a verbal response, just fixes Bucky with an incredibly unimpressed look.

Bucky doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so protective about his ability to disappear completely. It’s almost as though it’s become some prized possession that he refuses to let anyone touch, let alone take from him. Because despite all the trouble it’s caused him – the crushing numbness, the ending up in places and not knowing where he is or how he got there, the Winter Soldier rearing its ugly head through the fog – the truth is that this is something that has protected him when nothing else could. Not even Steve. When things got to be too much, when they took his body for themselves, he could remove himself from it and retreat inside his head to make it all go away for a little.

He’s afraid of what might happen if he isn’t allowed to do that anymore. Afraid of what he might feel. Sure, deadening himself to the world has left him unable to experience any kind of joy or pleasure, but he figures that’s a reasonable price to pay for also not having to feel pain.

It’s as if Steve can read his mind because the next thing he says is, “These exercises aren’t just about bringing yourself back from that nowhere place, though. They’re also supposed to bring you back from flashbacks and panic attacks and stuff. Which—” Steve’s eyes dart about nervously, “—I’d say is something worth practicing.”

Bucky can’t argue with that.

“Look,” Steve continues, firmly but not unkindly, “I know it’s not anywhere near as bad as what you feel, but I know what it’s like to need to be out of the present for a while. During the war especially I used to try to find somewhere safe in my head to be. Sometimes that’s the only way to get by. But... you gotta find healthier ways to do it, Buck. And I’m sure Doc Samson can help you with that.”

“I guess,” Bucky says dubiously. Then, thinking about what Steve has just said about sometimes needing to go away himself, he asks, “Where did you used to go when you went someplace else?”

“As long as I was with you,” Steve replies solemnly, “I never had to go far.”

For the rest of the week, Bucky does his ‘homework.’ He sets aside fifteen minutes of every day to walk slowly around the apartment and take in sights, sounds, textures, smells. Right before bed, he works on his breathing and does muscle exercises to purge his body of nervous tension and help him sleep. He even does the self-talk bit every morning despite how silly and embarrassing it feels to wake up and tell himself that he is safe and worthy of being treated well, both by others and himself.

He’s not sure any of it is really doing anything, though, because he still feels pretty much the same. Trying to make it through the day is still like navigating a minefield. While drunk. And blindfolded. And riding a unicycle. The bombs do not seem to have become fewer or easier to identify or any less damaging. If anything, coming back from flashbacks has gotten to be even more difficult lately despite all the practice he’s been doing; they bombard him more often, each one leaving him more exhausted than the last, making him less capable of dealing with the next.

He knows this takes time, having been told as much by anyone he’s talked to, but what people don’t seem to understand is that time isn’t always a luxury he can afford. He may not be in crisis at this particular moment, but there’s no telling that the very next second won’t send him hurtling headfirst into disaster. All it takes is a single misstep, and the clock starts its fatal countdown. This isn’t just some open-ended affair where slow and steady wins the race; there is, in fact, a very real deadline in place. There is a limit to what he can endure, and once that threshold has been surpassed, the time is up. Game over.

He feels like he’s trapped on the top floor of a burning building, smoke clogging his lungs, flames nipping at his skin, and the people down on the ground are telling him he just needs to be patient.

He simply does not have that kind of time, nor that kind of strength.

The morning of Bucky’s second appointment with Doc Samson goes by marginally better than the first. Bucky is still completely unstrung, but he keeps his food down and they’re only an hour late instead of four (though Bucky had gotten ready as though the visit started two hours earlier than it actually did, meaning he was technically still about three hours late).

The session begins rather harmlessly, with Doc Samson asking Bucky how his week went, and if there’s anything in particular he’d like to work on. Bucky has nothing to report. He tells Doc Samson that he worked hard on his homework but was frustrated not to see any results, which of course prompted that dreaded promise of it takes time.

Doc Samson then requests Bucky’s permission to ask Steve how he thinks the week went, and Bucky grants it to him even though he’s afraid that Steve’s answer will show that Bucky’s answer was wrong and Bucky will get in trouble. Steve says that things have been tough but not notably moreso than usual. He also brings up the fact that Bucky was triggered by the sound of an angry voice for what Steve believes was the first time.

Bucky bristles with irritation at both himself and Steve. He had overlooked the fact that Steve would probably mention that incident because it was seemingly an anomaly, and even though he’d said it was okay for Steve to answer the doctor’s question, it still feels like a betrayal somehow. When Doc Samson tries to ask him about it, Bucky just shrugs and makes something up about having been in a more delicate state than usual that day due to lack of sleep.

They shoot the breeze for a little bit after that until Doc Samson somehow manages to segue into saying that he wants to try looking deeper into what Bucky had told him during last week’s visit. Bucky’s whole body goes tense.

“I don’t... really remember what I said,” he admits, trying to contain his growing unease. How much had he revealed to this man he had only just met? Will it be used against him now?

“You don’t remember anything at all?” Doc Samson asks.

Bucky thinks for a moment. “I... talked about HYDRA...?”

“You did.”

“What... What exactly did I say?”

Doc Samson glances down at his notepad, turning back to the previous page. “You touched briefly upon how they conditioned you, but mostly you talked about your missions and the mind-wiping process.”

“What did I say th-the... conditioning... involved?” Bucky asks. He’s quite certain he hadn’t revealed anything he hadn’t meant to, but he still has to be sure.

“Are you sure you want to hear this, Buck?” Steve says softly.

Bucky squares his jaw and straightens his posture in grim determination. “Yes.”

“Well, in short...” Doc Samson begins carefully, “Beatings, sleep deprivation, starvation, electrocution...”

“That’s it?” Bucky presses, trying not to sound too relieved.

Doc Samson is a sharp one, though, because he looks Bucky straight in the eye as he says, “Why, is there something else you aren’t telling me?”

Bucky can’t keep himself from cringing a fraction of an inch into himself, but he recovers quickly and replies as smoothly as he can, “Well, there was also solitary confinement, maintaining stress positions, subjection to light and noise, and fucking with my head until I didn’t know which way was up, but yeah, that about covers it.”

He’s doing it again, that thing where he talks about what happened to him in an empty newscaster voice, or worse, like now, with all the flippancy of a mildly offensive joke. He’s not sure why he does it but he can’t seem to stop himself. Surely it must be a good thing, though, if it allows him to speak of things that he’d otherwise be incapable of expressing?

Doc Samson does not appear to agree. “You sound very... nonchalant, as you did last week. I asked you how you felt as you were recounting these past events and you were unable to answer, which suggests to me that you have not adequately processed your trauma. Do you think you would feel differently if we were to discuss them in more detail?”

A slick wisp of dread begins to rise up from the pit of Bucky’s belly but all he does is give what he hopes is a careless shrug.

“All right. Then how about you describe to me your most vivid memory?”

That terror-tendril seizes Bucky by the throat without warning and Steve must notice the change in Bucky’s demeanour because he says, “Whoa, I don’t know if he’s ready for that yet.”

“That’s for James to decide,” Doc Samson tells him calmly.

“He has trouble making his own decisions,” Steve protests. “If you give off the impression that that’s what you want him to do, then he’ll do it.”

“I appreciate you looking out for your friend, Steve, but this is James’s session and he is the one in control of how it plays out.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Steve says, his voice rising a pitch, “He still can’t even tell me no most of the time.”

The argument isn’t very heated, if it can even be called an argument at all, but Bucky is completely unaccustomed to witnessing any form of confrontation and it unhinges him greatly, plus the sound of two people talking over him as though he isn’t there reminds him too much of being strapped in place with voices above him idly determining his fate.

He supposes this means he’s more susceptible to sharp tones and angry voices than he thought. Fantastic. Another thing to add to his seemingly endless list of Things He Should Be Able To Handle But Can’t.

He hunches in on himself, as if trying to disappear physically as well as mentally, and begins slowly rocking back and forth as he waits for everything to be safe again.

Eventually, his mind registers Steve’s voice, gentle and steady, and he’s dimly able to realise that the danger has passed but he’s still having trouble coming back. He spent the whole damn week practicing this for fuck’s sake. Some good that did. Steve has to coach him through identifying objects and picking out colours several times over before Bucky is able to continue.

The first thing he says is, “Sorry.”

Steve and Doc Samson are also quick to apologise. Doc Samson praises the way both Bucky and Steve handled the situation, but also stresses the importance of pushing oneself, says if Bucky cannot confront his memories, then he will never be able to process them in a way that will allow him to let them go. He then retracts his initial request of wanting to hear Bucky’s most vivid memory and asks instead for Bucky to describe any past occurrence that he thinks he can handle talking about, and to remember to do his grounding exercises as needed to get him through his answer.

Bucky does not respond for a long time. The flat detachment that had allowed him to drone on so impersonally during last week’s session is nowhere to be found right now. It seems he’s unable to recreate that same state of functioning dissociation and any time he tries to step back a little, he ends up taking it too far and removing himself from the picture completely.

Eventually, he decides to bring up what is perhaps the most ‘normal’ of his decidedly unique inventory of horrors, figuring it might be the easiest both for him to talk about and for the doctor to understand.

“I was awake when they cut off the arm,” he says in a quiet, wobbly voice that he doesn’t quite recognise as his own.

(He actually pictures Sam chiding him for referring to a part of his body without using the possessive, and this almost makes him smile in spite of himself.)

Steve can’t keep from cringing, but Doc Samson’s expression remains carefully blank as he asks Bucky to describe the experience in more depth, with a focus on sensory details. This is called exposure, Doc Samson explains, and it will help to desensitise Bucky to these memories until they no longer leave such an impact.

Bucky remembers the gleaming, clinical edge of the scalpel as it sank almost gracefully through a red, pulpy mess of meat and muscle. The putrid taste of his own vomit. The indifferent whirr of the saw that sent flecks of his own flesh and bone spattering onto his face.

He remembers all of it, and he hates how he is able to recall every single detail of some of the most horrific things that have ever happened to him, but the good parts of his past – and he knows they exist – are little more than a fragmented mist not solid enough for him to draw strength from in order to balance everything out. It just doesn’t seem fair that his brain’s ability to retain information is incapable of working both ways.

He wants to ask Doc Samson about how to change this, but he cannot speak. He hasn’t said a word since Doc Samson asked him to go into more detail about losing the arm. He might have been okay just describing that single incident, but the images are bleeding into one another and he can’t keep his thoughts contained to that one memory. His mind is getting away from him, the buzz of the bone saw is leading into the crackle of the electroshock machine is turning into a stun baton between his legs and he tries to tell himself he’s okay because he knows none of it is happening right now, it’s more like a gory slideshow is playing itself out in his head and he knows they’re nothing more than images from a reel but they’re just so vivid and they won’t stop—

“Bucky!”

Steve’s voice. Bucky at least has the sense to distinguish this through the layered chorus of so many different pitches of pain resonating through his skull. He hangs onto it with all the desperation of a drowning man clinging to a life buoy, but it’s no match for the whitewater rapids of his memories and he can feel himself being sucked under. He tries to remember the exercises about the colours and there was also one that had to do with counting that he’s never tried before so maybe—

—they make him number off each blow of the bullwhip out loud, eleven twelve thirteen, but fourteen comes out as a scream and he has to start all over again from the beginning...

...oh, that’s why he’s never tried that one.

At some point, he registers Doc Samson handing him something, which he takes without questioning it. It’s cool and smooth, maybe some kind of polished rock, and he unconsciously turns it over and over in his hands, squeezing it, running his fingers along its glossy surface, and the tactile sensation along with the sound of Steve’s voice is finally enough to bring him back.

He’s exhausted. This is the second time he’s had to fight to anchor himself in less than ten minutes and his brain feels like it has whiplash from being thrown so viciously into and out of reality. He’s not thinking too clearly at the moment, but he’s pretty convinced that his memories, as intrusive as they may be, have never battered him in such rapidfire succession like this before, so it must have been Doc Samson’s pressing for information that led to this unmanageable influx. This so-called ‘therapy’ must also be the reason why his flashbacks have been getting more and more difficult to return from; all this shit wouldn't be floating around in his head so close to the surface if he wasn't being forced to think about it all the time. He’d been doing just fine before he started coming here. This is just making things worse.

He wants to tell Doc Samson that he quits, but for once his body seems to refuse to let him be impulsive and instead of saying I don't want to do this anymore, all he can do is mumble, "I don’t want to talk anymore.”

He stares straight ahead, past Doc Samson and into a fissure in the drywall behind him, imagining himself becoming very small and disappearing into the cracks. Noticing himself trying to slip away yet again, he looks down at the object that Doc Samson had handed him. It’s a small stone, oval-shaped and cloudy purple in colour. It doesn’t seem like anything special, so he doesn’t know why he’s so grateful to slip it into his pocket when Doc Samson says he can keep it, nor can he explain what makes him pat his thigh every now and then during the rest of the session to make sure it’s still there.

He squeezes the stone in his hand all the way home and decides not to cancel next week’s appointment after all.

Chapter 13 Notes:

you know those irresponsible therapeutic practices i warned about? that would be this chapter. it would also be why karla sofen aka moonstone is making an appearance - i needed a marvel psychiatrist of ill-repute lol (but don't worry she's not actually ~evil~ in this).
btw this is not meant to either malign or promote any particular form of therapy as being better or worse than another - something that works like a miracle for one person could be damaging for someone else - but it is my understanding that any responsible therapist would NOT begin this kind of treatment on someone who is still as unstable as bucky is at this point in the story.
also, i should probably repeat that i am writing most of what happens in this chapter based on research and not personal experience, so please do leave a comment if there are any glaring inaccuracies while also keeping in mind that not everything portrayed in this story should be taken as an ideal approach to trauma treatment.
thank you for bearing with me!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Bucky has hit an impasse.

It seems Doc Samson has been hesitant to try to delve any deeper into Bucky’s past after a few frighteningly unsuccessful attempts, so for several sessions in a row now, they’ve just worked on grounding and mindfulness and chatted about relatively mundane day-to-day events. At first, it was a relief to be able to take a break from the heavy lifting. The dread Bucky would feel the night before and the morning of his appointments became almost manageable, and he even started seeing Doc Samson alone, without Steve at his side.

But it’s been several weeks now and it feels like he’s gone nowhere at all, not even backwards, really, which is what Sam had warned him would probably have to happen before things could truly start to get better. He knows this is mostly his own fault for not having been able to handle addressing the real stuff, but he still can’t help but to be incredibly frustrated by how stagnant he feels.

Steve assures him he’s on the right track, but even if this is the case, he’s hit a roadblock and can go no further with the resources available to him. He may be more knowledgeable about getting through flashbacks and panic attacks, but the frequency at which they occur is still at a near-debilitating level. His sleeping patterns have marginally improved, but other than that he hasn’t gotten any closer to accomplishing any of his goals, least of all the one about physical contact, which he views as the most important, the deciding factor, the finish line that needs to be crossed for him to be able to say I’ve made it.

All he really does anymore in therapy is go over things he already knows. Though he recognises the need to keep practicing what he’s learned, it just doesn’t seem like Doc Samson is offering him anything that he couldn’t simply do on his own by this point. With this in mind, he walks into his eighth overall session fully intending for it to be the last.

As he enters the office, a dull twinge of guilt tugs at his gut because he hasn’t told Steve that he's quitting. He knows Steve would just freak out and there would be an argument and nothing good would come out of it. It's happened enough times already; therapy has become a bit of a tension point between the two of them, particularly when it comes to Steve nagging Bucky about the parts of his file that he continues to keep from Doc Samson.

(“It’s more than just something in a file, Buck,” Steve said flatly, “It’s something that obviously continues to affect you, and I know it's hard to talk about, but nothing’s going to change if you’re not honest about it.”

Incidentally, that was the first day that Bucky went to his appointment alone.)

Bucky figures he’ll deal with Steve’s reaction to him stopping therapy after the fact, but it turns out he doesn’t have to deal with it at all, because today Doc Samson has a different idea.

He tells Bucky about the specialist whose number he’d given him on the first visit. She’s a former colleague who is trained in a different kind of therapy called eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing, or EMDR. It’s said to be highly effective in treating PTSD, and Doc Samson believes Bucky might be able to make some real progress with it.

Bucky listens carefully as Doc Samson explains the process to him. It’s full of terms like ‘bilateral stimuli’ and ‘maladaptive encoding’ that he doesn’t understand, and even when Doc Samson gives him the layman’s version of the rundown, Bucky still doesn’t see how thinking about something bad while moving your eyes back and forth is supposed to help put it in a more healthy perspective. What he is able to understand, however, is that this kind of therapy is supposed to work well and work fast, and that’s really all that matters to him.

It sounds so helpful and obvious that Bucky is angry no one had told him about it sooner; he thinks Sam might have mentioned EMDR once or twice, but never went so far as to recommend trying it out. Bucky knows he should be wary of anything that seems too good to be true, but he’s so desperate by this point that he’ll try almost anything. Certainly nothing could be worse than things staying the way they are.

He leaves the office with a bit more of a bounce in his step and an appointment with Dr. Karla Sofen at one thirty p.m. the day after tomorrow.

Bucky does not get the reaction he’d expected when he tells Steve about it on the drive home.

“So you just said ‘yes’ right away?” Steve asks with a frown.

The doubt in Steve’s voice hurts more than Bucky would like to admit. Steve’s approval means so much to him for reasons that he can’t fully explain and he thought Steve would have been proud of him for agreeing to try something new and different instead of bolting away in the other direction like he normally would in the face of change.

“I thought... I thought you’d be happy,” Bucky says in a small voice.

“I’m not... not happy,” Steve insists swiftly. “It’s just that... I mean, you said it yourself that you don’t even really understand how it works—”

“It’s supposed to help,” Bucky says, a tinge of desperation colouring his voice. “Isn’t that all that matters? Like, remember how one of my goals was to replace my bad memories with... with not-so-bad ones? That’s pretty much what this is meant to do.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t even talk to me about it first.”

A sudden anger flares up in Bucky’s body. “I don’t need your permission,” he spits out with what is perhaps more resentment than is warranted.

If he weren’t so riled up, he might’ve been able to notice the fact that this is probably the most assertive he’s ever been, even if it is only because he’s upset. After all, it’s a long way from his usual default setting when upset, which is somewhere between guilt-ridden silence and cowering passivity.

Steve pounds the steering wheel in frustration, and to his credit, Bucky does not flinch.

“Damnit, Buck,” Steve sighs, “That isn’t- that’s not what I meant. I just thought maybe we should’ve looked into it a little more. Discussed it. Done some research.”

“Well, Doc Samson said it’s supposed to be really good for, you know, this... kind of thing. Even the DVA recommends it for combat stress. Apparently some people start to feel better even after just one or two sessions, and the best part is that I don’t have to talk too much about the... about... what actually happened. I just have to think about it.”

“Okay, but we still don’t know anything ab—”

“Look, you’re making me not want to do it at all,” Bucky cuts in heatedly, fighting to keep his words steady. “Is that what you want? For me to give up before I’ve even started? ‘Cause it sure sounds like that’s what you want.”

He is unable to keep the hurt out of his voice; he doesn’t know why Steve seems to be so determined to burst his bubble. He had left Doc Samson’s office on such a promising note, with his first real hope for true relief, and hope is pretty much all he has at this point. He can’t help but to feel considerable bitterness towards Steve for trying to take that away from him, despite the quietly rational part of his brain telling him that Steve is just trying to look out for him, like he always has. But how is Bucky supposed to get any better if he doesn’t take a few chances?

“Of course that’s not what I want,” Steve says in a strained voice. “I shouldn’t’ve- ...I- I’m sorry.”

Bucky waits for Steve to say something more, but he’s silent for the rest of the ride home. After he parks the car in front of their apartment, he doesn’t get out, just sits there in the driver’s seat for a very long time, staring at his lap.

“Steve...?” Bucky asks timidly.

The distance between them, despite being quite narrow in actual metric measurement, feels frighteningly untraversable all of a sudden and expanding by the second. Bucky wants to reach out, to touch Steve and make sure he’s not going anywhere. He wants so badly to open up a two-way channel between them to engage in an equal exchange of comfort and closeness and warmth, but as always, his corrupted brain vetoes the motion before it’s even brought to the table.

“’m scared, is all,” Steve mumbles after a moment.

This strikes Bucky as an odd thing for Steve to be feeling.

“This is just so... new to me,” Steve continues. “These past few weeks have been... I don’t know, it’s just all so different and I- I know I’ve been pushing you to try therapy like I was some sort of expert on the matter, but to be honest, I really have no idea how it’s supposed to work either. I was just starting to get a handle on how talk therapy works, and now there’s this EDM...EM...R...” He shakes his head blearily and trails off, looking lost.

Bucky laughs a little, humourlessly but not unkindly. “You’re scared? Then how do you think I feel, being the one who’s actually having to do it all?”

Steve also manages a bit of an unsteady, self-disparaging chuckle. “Damn,” he says, “When did I become the careful one and you the one who’s all gung-ho and ‘shoot first ask questions later?’”

“You’re finally starting to act your age, I guess,” Bucky replies, smirking.

“You’re older than me,” Steve points out, and then, as an afterthought, because this single syllable word has often proven to make things better ever since Bucky was able to remember the exchange, he adds, “Jerk.”

In the time between Doc Samson and Dr. Sofen, Bucky tries to learn more about what he’s about to do. He goes on the Internet and what he finds seems encouraging (though he admits he doesn’t read too many of the negative articles, justifying it to himself by saying he doesn’t want to scare himself off). He also asks Sam about it, and while Sam says that his knowledge of EMDR’s effectiveness is based only on statistics relating to combat veterans, he basically confirms everything that Doc Samson had said.

Bucky figures his situation is similar enough for the results to be the same.

He is, after all, first and foremost a soldier.

It’s a two hour drive to Dr. Sofen’s office the next day. Steve didn’t like the fact that she’s so far away, but Doc Samson explained that it would have been practically impossible to find someone close by who would be able to take Bucky in right away.

Bucky actually doesn’t mind the long car ride. It’s given him time to prepare himself, to think about what he’s going to say.

(Or rather, to think about what he’s not going to say. He knows he should probably at least mention those forbidden details if he wants to be able to get the most out of this treatment, but he refuses to even so much as touch upon them, hoping that they’ll conveniently resolve themselves as he deals with everything else.)

He decides to go into the appointment without Steve, who looks like he’s going to fight him about it but in the end all he does is set his jaw and nod, saying he’ll be back to pick Bucky up in an hour and a half. Bucky feels guilty about how relieved he feels; it’s just that he’s not sure what is going to happen today and he doesn’t want Steve to be there if things get intense, his shame of being witnessed in a vulnerable state overriding his nervousness about being alone.

Besides, Bucky thinks he’s handling things pretty well alone. It’s a completely different atmosphere than the morning of his first visit with Doc Samson. Perhaps it helps that he’s had several weeks to become more accustomed to being in a therapeutic setting.

Dr. Sofen’s office is tidy and sparse. A couple of chairs, a couch. An abstract painting that doesn’t make any sense. There is also an assortment of gadgets that – even though he knows they must be for the EMDR – makes him a little nervous, until Dr. Sofen introduces herself without making any move to shake his hand, which immediately puts him more at ease.

She tells Bucky she received his file from Doc Samson – he’s momentarily speared by a heart-stopping panic before he realises that she means his medical folder, not the HYDRA one – so they don’t have to rehash anything that he’s already talked about if he doesn’t want to. He most definitely does not. She then asks him how he’s been doing with grounding exercises and safe space visualisation since they will play a key role in the process, and Bucky feels like that’s all he’s worked on for the past month so he says he’s pretty well-versed in the area by now.

After that, she explains the treatment to him in a way that makes slightly more sense than when Doc Samson had done it. She says that trauma disrupts the brain’s ability to properly process information, hence why past, present and future are so tangled up with one another and his emotional, mental and physical responses to many things are so incongruous to reality. For some reason, receiving stimulus alternately to the left and right sides of the body is supposed to help the brain dislodge these scrambled thoughts that have been ‘stuck’ in the time of the trauma and rearrange them in a way that allows them to be processed correctly. From what Bucky is able to gather, this will be done by receiving bilateral stimulus of some form as he focuses on a certain statement or belief that he would like to change, and Dr. Sofen will guide him through recalling a previous experience that had instilled that belief until the memory is resolved and the belief is amended.

He can hardly contain his anticipation. This is precisely what he’d been looking to do ever since he’d come to understand just how deeply every part of his present - from how he copes (or does not cope) with things to the way in which he views himself - is affected by his past, warped completely out of context by factors that no longer apply but that still remain deeply encoded in his brain. Maybe now he’ll finally be able to walk with one foot in front of the other, eyes to the horizon instead of constantly looking back over his shoulder.

They start straight away, which surprises Bucky a little because Sam had said this kind of thing usually takes a lot of prep, but he doesn’t think he really has the right to say anything because Dr. Sofen is the expert, not him. She must know what she’s doing. Maybe he already covered the basics with Doc Samson or something.

Dr. Sofen begins by asking what kind of stimulation Bucky would prefer. The practice was originally derived from having the patient’s eyes follow a doctor’s side-to-side hand movements, but nowadays they can use anything from a light bar (too dizzying) to a pair of headphones (not a chance; the feeling of something around his head reminds him far too much of being surrounded by the prongs of that machine) with sounds alternating from ear to ear.

Recognising that he responds better to tactile sensations, Bucky chooses a pair of buzzers that he’s supposed to hold with one in each hand. When Dr. Sofen does a test-run, however, he discovers that the vibrations are not identical because his metal hand registers them differently than his flesh one. Dr. Sofen suggests that he place the buzzers beneath his thighs like some of her other clients do, but he feels nauseous at the mere thought of having something touching him there, even if it’s just an electronic device, so instead he opts to put them in his shoes, under his feet.

Dr. Sofen activates them with a remote a few times to get him used to the sensation before she asks him what negative cognition he’d like to target first.

He answers without even having to think about it: “Touching always hurts.”

“All right,” Dr. Sofen says, writing something down in her notes. “Now, let’s change that negative belief. What positive statement would you like to replace it with?”

Bucky mulls over this for a moment before he nervously replies, “Touching is safe.”

He unconsciously shrinks into himself after that, expecting punishment for a bad answer, or at the very least, some kind of mocking disdain.

He gets neither.

Dr. Sofen merely says, “On a scale of one to seven, with one being ‘not at all’ and seven being ‘completely’, how much do you believe this positive statement to be true at the present moment?”

“One... and a half?” Bucky tries, not wanting to put himself at the very bottom of the scale but knowing that anything more than this would be an outright lie.

“Now I’d like you to picture an incident in your past where the negative belief was reinforced.”

“Just one?” Bucky snickers with a contemptuous snort, and he knows this irreverence is a sign that he’s not connecting properly but he doesn’t know how else to even come close to broaching the subject.

“Multiple memories with similar target themes can be clustered together,” Dr. Sofen suggests.

“That... really doesn’t narrow it down at all.”

“Try a memory where the negative cognition was made particularly clear.”

Bucky tries to swallow down a knot of dread. He’d come into this session with certain parts of his past carefully stowed away inside the deepest corner of his head, not to be touched under any circumstances (at least not right now, he told himself, insisting to himself that he’s not trying to avoid these things completely, he just knows he’s not ready to face them just yet), but being honest in this exercise would mean having to open that box.

“Do I have to tell you what it is?” he asks, stalling for time.

“Not necessarily, but I’d like you to describe to me the feelings associated with the event.”

As he had when Doc Samson tried to get him to access his memories, Bucky forgoes the worst of them in favour of something more manageable. The loss of his arm had already proven to be too much for him, so he scales it down even further, to some random nondescript beating that he figures he could use to represent any and all of his physical mistreatment.

He’s doing remarkably well in restricting his thoughts to a mere good old-fashioned trouncing, not allowing his mind to wander anywhere darker and more dangerous, but when he tries to come up with some kind of emotional reaction, he finds he cannot.

“It... hurts...?” he says eventually.

“Physically?” Dr. Sofen asks.

“...Yeah.”

“Where?”

“Wherever they’re hitting me,” he says before he can stop himself.

“And how do you feel emotionally while this is happening?”

“Bad,” Bucky replies unhelpfully, and he’s not sure if a hint of impatience flickers across Dr. Sofen’s face or if it’s just his paranoid imagination, so, desperate not to fuck everything up, he also says, “Powerless.”

He’d gone with the first word that popped into his head, not thinking much of it, but when he hears it spoken out loud, he’s left momentarily stunned by the realisation of just how accurate it is. It must have been the first thing to come to mind for a reason.

Dr. Sofen writes this down and says, “Where in your body do you feel this the most?”

“Everywhere,” Bucky answers, in a whisper for some reason, then he adds, “My... my limbs mostly...?”

Dr. Sofen tries to coax a bit more from Bucky before resigning herself to the fact that this is probably the most she’ll be able to get out of him for the time being, so she asks him to rate how strongly he experiences the negative emotions associated with this particular memory, on an ascending scale of one to ten.

Bucky doesn’t understand why he’s rating stuff in sevens for one thing and tens for another, but he answers, “About five,” for this particular situation, because it’s far from being the worst he’s been through, in the grand scheme of things.

“Keep thinking about your target memory,” Dr. Sofen tells him, “And I’m going to activate the buzzers. Remember, you’re starting off by picturing the target, but you shouldn’t force yourself to keep your mind on that thought only. Let it wander. Open yourself up to images, emotions, bodily sensations. Go with the flow, and then we’ll talk about where it’s taken you.”

Bucky nods, steeling himself. He’s not sure if he can do this. The only reason he’s been able to make it this far without losing it is because he’d been very careful to focus exclusively on this one relatively benign incident. He’s afraid that if he loosens the parameters, the memories will start to bleed into each other and overwhelm him like they had when Doc Samson tried to get him to talk about losing his arm.

To his credit, he tries.

He forces himself to remember fists and boots and the different hurts they produced depending on where on his body he was being struck. Imagines the taste of copper lining his mouth. He twitches a little.

But his reaction stops there. It’s like he has an entire house that he desperately needs to clean out - there are flies buzzing around, mold growing everywhere, asbestos in the walls, he is literally being poisoned as he speaks, but he’s only able to focus on the contents of a tiny, already-tidy drawer.

After maybe thirty seconds, Dr. Sofen stops the buzzers, has him take a deep, cleansing breath, and asks him how he feels now. He’s afraid to tell her that he feels exactly the same because it must mean he’s doing something wrong so he just stares at his lap and doesn’t reply.

Dr. Sofen is quick to pick up on the fact that Bucky has thrown up a wall of some sort. For the next forty minutes, she works on breaking it down by having Bucky visualise himself chipping away at a literal barricade as the pulses continue to go off beneath his feet.

He feels the exact moment the barrier gives way. Faint hints of sensation come trickling out little by little until the entire wall collapses and everything comes bursting through all at once.

He’s suddenly flooded by the sense of powerlessness in his limbs that he’d mentioned earlier. The failure of his arms, which instead of defending him merely hung loosely by his sides. The uselessness of his legs, which rooted him in place instead of running for safety. A knot of sickness begins to form in his stomach and he doesn’t even realise he’s begun to double over into himself until the buzzers stop and he hears Dr. Sofen’s voice asking him how he feels now.

His voice comes out startlingly small when he says, “Worse. Sick. Afraid.”

He can’t seem to vocalise anything more than that; full sentences are out of the question at the moment. His body, which he has spent so long ignoring, is finally making itself heard and he has no idea how to put it into words, let alone know what to do about it. When Dr. Sofen asks him to rate his distress on a one to ten scale, it’s shot up to an eight.

They repeat the procedure several more times after that, with Dr. Sofen occasionally interjecting in between sets to attempt to push Bucky in the right direction – reminding him that he’s safe, that the people in his life now are not the people who hurt him.

None of this sinks in.

Despite Dr. Sofen’s guidance, Bucky feels like he’s being sucked deeper and deeper into this kaleidoscope world of too-colorful fragments of violently shaken thought. He’s completely lost sight of his original target image, cannot recall anything specific or concrete, just the associated sensations of terror and helplessness and strikingly palpable physical aches in the places where he’d been hurt the most devastatingly.

It’s the sensation of pain in some of the most intimate parts of his body that causes him to check out completely.

His eyes are open but suddenly everything appears so faded and far away that when he closes them he doesn’t really feel much different. He has no idea if the buzzers are still vibrating under his feet because his entire body has gone numb. The pain has vanished, but, of course, so has everything else – his voice, his muscles, his senses.

This is deeper into his own head than he’s ever gone before but he still has enough awareness left in him to be alarmed. There is nothing he is more afraid of than the loss of control, and right now, he does not appear to be in control of a single part of his body. It brings to mind memories of being paralysed – whether chemically or by his own helplessness – in the cruel, unflinching clutches of his handlers. However, it’s not long before his brain takes care of that fear, too. It dulls into little more than a muted nonentity, joins the rest of the nothingness that currently makes up his entire existence.

He wonders if this means the treatment has worked the way it was supposed to. He hasn’t come any closer to replacing his negative cognition with the positive one, but he does feel an undeniable sense of relief, though that could easily just be the sensation of total absence as opposed to its own self-sustaining feeling.

He’s not sure how long he stays disappeared like this. Awareness returns to him in a toxic sludge crawl. First he regains the ability to move, even if it’s only in slow motion. Then he starts to be able to register words, realises that Dr. Sofen is talking to him, telling him where he is, asking him questions. He thinks he answers her but he can’t really be sure.

He doesn’t quite make it back. Holding the worry stone from Doc Samson helps a little, but he’s still far from being all the way there. His body remains numb and he doesn’t realise he’s digging his nails into his palm deep enough to draw blood until Dr. Sofen’s voice cracks like a whip through the fog, telling him to stop hurting himself. Her tone is sharp and urgent and that sends him drifting away again for a little.

The next thing he is fully conscious of is Dr. Sofen speaking to Steve, who seems to have appeared out of nowhere, about how Bucky will probably feel very out of sorts for the next day or two as his brain continues to process what it had unearthed. Bucky is surprised to see Steve is here; it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s been an hour and a half already. Absently, he wonders how many minutes he’s lost this time to that ever-enticing blankness he has yet to fully want to shake.

It swallows up the entire car ride home and most of the afternoon. He feels like he's been completely hollowed out. He is clean inside, empty and safe. When the nothingness finally dissipates, an extreme fatigue is the only thing that takes its place. It’s exhaustion on a scale that he has never experienced before, not even when he was a half-crazed starving animal wandering sleepless around D.C. for days on end.

It doesn’t hurt, though, and it’s not even that unpleasant. He figures he’ll just snooze it off like a bad hangover. Dr. Sofen had warned him that his symptoms would likely increase in the immediate aftermath of the session because of all the hard work his body and brain are doing, but this? This is nothing.

He has no idea just how very wrong he is.

Disaster builds up around him as he sleeps like death for the rest of the day and long into the night, blind in the eye of a tornado, blissfully unaware in the belly of the beast.

Notes:

*ominous music*

Chapter 14 Notes:

major MAJOR mental illness-related content warnings for this chapter.
i don't want to give too much away, but if this is something that you need to be careful for, please see the end notes for the details.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Bucky dreams.

His subconscious runs rampant, tearing up his mind like a pen shredding paper as it’s dragged too viciously across the page. He’s seeing in sounds and hearing in smells and tasting in colours, feeling transparent and exposed like those fish whose organs are visible through glassy see-through skin. He’s swallowed a sparrow-scatter of terrors and each one is splitting down the middle, multiplying in his stomach like nonsensical amoebas. Dangling cracked fingers, swimming in jars of hair, roaring trains that run on blood and ice.

And, in between all the phantasmal nonsense, moans of horrifying lifelike clarity. Bubbling electrical burns and bursting sutures. The procedure has already started. Stale air in the suffocation of a sucking black mask. Someone is begging for their life before their cervical vertebrae give way beneath his hands. He tries to say he’s sorry god he’s so so sorry but remorse has been programmed out of the Soldier like a bad gene and all that comes out of his mouth are teeth.

He wakes gasping and choking, doubled over with a hand cupped before his lips, expecting to catch molars and incisors but the only thing he ends up with is a handful of his own vomit, dribbling between his fingers and getting all over the sheets.

Steve is by his side immediately, unable to keep himself from moving to touch Bucky on pure, panicked instinct, though he catches himself just in time and settles for pulling the soiled blankets from Bucky’s body and flinging them aside.

Bucky can’t breathe. Stomach acid sears his throat and nose, he hurts between his legs, and he’s shaking so hard he’s surprised that the rest of the world isn’t quaking along with him. Even though he can’t remember what the nightmares were actually about, they were more vivid than any he’s ever had, leaving a residual terror settled on him in a slick matted layer like oil in a gull’s feathers. He makes a distressed keening sound in his throat as he claws at the flesh of his neck and face, smearing them with puke as he tries to scrub the fear out of his skin.

“Bucky!” comes Steve’s horrified voice, “Bucky, stop!”

Steve’s hands enter Bucky’s peripheral vision as Steve cannot help but to reach out and try to get Bucky to stop scratching himself. Bucky recognises the posturing of these kinds of hands, the strike-ready cobra-like caution, and there’s no way he’s going to let them take him again. He’ll fight this time, even if it means getting hurt twice as badly later.

Even if it means the chair.

Bucky slips away from the incoming hands, lashing out a metal fist before he wriggles out of reach. The figure in front of him manages to evade the brunt of the blow but the fist still connects and the person falls backwards with a grunt of pain.

Shockingly, it does not make any move to hit Bucky back. It doesn’t retaliate at all, and for the first time in his life – in this life, at least – Bucky feels like he is capable of defending himself.

But something about this picture isn’t adding up.

At this point, there should be a whole team of guards holding him down, using their full body weight on each of his limbs to pin him to the ground. There should be a steel-toed boot in his face and an arm around his neck and the pinch of the hypo before everything slowly starts to frost over.

Someone’s not following the script.

“Easy, Buck,” that someone says, “It’s just me, it’s Steve. Your friend.”

That’s definitely not part of the script.

Bucky crumples to the ground and sits there frozen in place as he tries to figure out what the fuck is going on until suddenly the scent of peppermint kicks him in the head. All at once, he seems to come to life, hands scrabbling around on the floor as if searching for purchase. He opens his eyes, blinks, breathes.

“That’s it, pal,” Steve murmurs from where he’s crouched down a few feet away from him. “Come back to me. You’re okay. You’re safe. It’s 2015, you’re in your bedroom, nothing is going to hurt you.”

“Ice,” Bucky gasps out, needing more than just scented oils and the sensation of carpet beneath his palms to anchor him, and Steve obligingly hurries off.

Bucky doesn’t know what’s happening to him. While he’s clearly no stranger to nightmares and flashbacks and body memories, this is unlike anything he’s ever experienced. Though he knows exactly when and where he is, the horror-track is still playing on an incessant loop in the background, cloaking everything in a sinister veil of skin-crawling malaise. He keeps trying to shove it aside, but like a sheet of slippery velvet it just swishes right back into place.

His brain simply will not shut off. It’s as if all the nasty sensations that had been stirred up and brought to the surface by the EMDR have branded themselves into his consciousness, sizzling like hot asphalt that will never quite cool, damning him to that hiss and heat forever. It may not be overwhelming him at the present moment, but just as a continuous drip of water can drive a man mad, something does not need to be excruciating to be unbearable.

Steve returns with a bowl of ice cubes as well as a glass of water, which he carefully tips towards Bucky so he can sip from the straw as he takes an ice cube in his human hand and holds onto it as if his life depends on it. Maybe it does.

He still thinks it’s kind of funny how this particular grounding technique works so well on him, all things considered. He’s noticed that the longer he’s been off the ice, the less menacing the cold seems, perhaps even veering so far in the other direction as to become a symbol of comfort and security.

After all, the only time no one was hurting him was when he was frozen.

We Russians only have our winter.

That’s all he has, too.

...Wait. No.

That’s not true.

“Not anymore,” he says out loud.

Steve looks at him, confused. “What’s that?”

Bucky blinks a couple of times as Steve’s face comes into focus. There’s already a bruise rising on his cheekbone. Shit.

“I hurt you,” he says blankly.

At about the same time, Steve asks, “You with me?”

“2015, Washington D.C., yeah, I got it,” Bucky replies tiredly.

He squeezes the ice cube tighter. While there may no longer be any immediate risk of him being swept away by his memories, the flash bulb visions are still going off behind his eyes at a dizzying rate and it’s just so exhausting. Like operating at 110% capacity at all times, unable to slow down.

“Okay, okay, sorry,” Steve says, “It’s just... Well, yesterday you asked me where you were like three times in the span of a couple of hours, so I just...”

Bucky tries not to look like he doesn’t remember having done that because he knows it will just make Steve even more worried.

Instead, Bucky just repeats, “I hurt you.”

Steve touches his bruised face with a ginger hand and shrugs a little, his smile surprisingly unforced as he replies, “Been hurt worse.”

“Yeah, I guess this pales in comparison to being shot four times and pummelled repeatedly in the face with a fist that can crack concrete,” Bucky deadpans.

“Don’t forget stabbed, too,” Steve adds helpfully.

Bucky lets out a slightly breathless snorting chuckle. Sometimes they’ve got a twisted, tasteless way of coping, but it gets the job done.

“You, uh, you want to go get cleaned up?” Steve tries after a moment.

Bucky doesn’t move. His brain may be buzzing away at maximum velocity, but his body is running on empty. He doesn’t think he could get up even if the entire building was collapsing around him.

“Then you just stay here and I’m gonna go get a couple towels, ‘kay?” Steve offers.

Bucky nods gratefully, sinking a little into himself and trying to suppress a yawn. When Steve comes back, Bucky’s eyelids are drooping and the half-melted ice cube has fallen to the floor because he no longer has the energy to make a fist. He takes the towels and slowly wipes himself clean as Steve changes the sheets.

Once the bed is remade, Bucky just barely manages to haul himself back into it, murmuring an exhausted thanks to Steve, and he closes his eyes for maybe forty-five minutes before the nightmares are back and they do it all over again.

The dreams don’t let up. Bucky spends the rest of the night drifting off into almost-sleep only to be bolting screamingly awake less than an hour later.

Come morning, he is completely undone. Exhaustion has worn down all his defences. He tries to do his little disappearing act and finds that he is unable to. His body shows all the signs of being not-there – it’s numb and slow and feels like it’s missing huge chunks of it – but he cannot for the life of him unplug his brain, which continues to broadcast its unwanted programming in blaring sound and full colour.

It’s hard to know how to stop it, because he’s already fully aware that none of it is real so it’s not a matter of bringing him back to the present, and his concentration is too shot to really be able to distract himself. He does breathing and muscle relaxation and visualisation, all to no avail. He forces himself to get up and switch rooms every now and then until it gets too tiring. He and Steve try to play I Spy, but Bucky keeps forgetting what object he was thinking about and becomes too frustrated when he can’t figure out Steve’s answer.

Then Bucky tries pinching and picking and pulling.

It works a little better than everything else, but after the third or fourth time of having to tell Bucky to stop yanking out his own hair, Steve breaks down.

“Bucky,” he chokes out, voice fractured by an imploring helplessness, “I don’t- I don’t know what to do. Please... tell me how to help you.”

Bucky just smiles sadly at him. “Buddy, if I knew... then we wouldn’t be in this mess, now would we?”

He doesn’t mean for his answer to hurt, but Steve starts to cry and Bucky doesn’t know what to do about that either.

What Steve does end up doing is calling Dr. Sofen – who says it’s perfectly normal for things to get worse before they get better as Bucky’s brain continues to process his trauma – and Doc Samson, whose phone goes to voicemail so Steve leaves him a frantic, barely-coherent message.

While Steve tries to get a hold of Sam, Bucky coops himself up in the bathroom because everything feels like a threat and this is the only room with a lock, so it’s the closest he can get to keeping the world at arm’s distance.

The thing is, he’s now stuck in an enclosed space with the biggest threat of all: himself.

Throughout the morning, the images in his mind have developed from flash bulb memories of the past to ever-sharpening polaroids of possible futures, all of them roads leading to the same dead-end, whether the means of transportation is by knife or rope or gun or gravity. These thoughts – no, they’re more than just thoughts at this point, they’re almost fantasies – simultaneously soothe and scare him. On the one hand, it’s unbelievably if not morbidly reassuring to know he has an out, should things come to that, but on the other, he still has enough reason left in him to realise just how much danger he’s in.

It seems decidedly odd to him that he can want something so badly and yet also be so afraid that he will take the required actions to attain it. Afraid of himself, of what he is capable of. He’s well-acquainted with the unsettling feeling of not being able to trust himself, but it’s always been relating to things he did not want to do, never something he actually wished for, and this lack of control frightens and infuriates him.

He absently reaches a hand down his sweatpants and begins to claw away at the top of his thigh, gouging his fingernails in as deep as they will go and dragging them along the same route over and over again until the skin splits apart. It settles him a little. This, he can control.

“Bucky?” comes Steve’s voice from the other side of the door, and there’s anguish in it, but surely it must be a trick to get Bucky to let him in and he’s not going to fall for it.

“Bucky, please open the door.”

Bucky ignores him. The hand he’s using to scratch himself is getting tired so he starts rummaging around the bathroom for better tools. Tweezers. A nail clipper. Not good enough.

He’s never been more frustrated by the invention of electric razors.

“Bucky, don’t make me come bustin’ in there,” Steve says.

It’s too broken for it to sound like a threat, but nevertheless, Bucky backs away into the farthest corner of the room, bracing himself for the door to get kicked in or otherwise thrown off its hinges.

It does not.

Instead, there’s a slight click and then the doorknob is turning and Steve is standing there doorway, holding an unfolded paperclip in one hand. His face immediately falls when he lays his eyes on the scene before him – Bucky wild-eyed and shaking, blood soaking through the leg of his pants, the medicine cabinet practically emptied out onto the counter with the sharp objects carefully, conspicuously set aside.

“Oh god,” Steve breathes, and he looks like he wants to run towards Bucky as fast as he can but he manages to restrain himself to taking small, careful steps forward.

Meanwhile, Bucky’s initial fear has bubbled over into a startlingly acute fury. Steve had no right to barge in on him like this. No fucking right.

“I locked the door for a fucking reason,” he hisses. “Get out.”

Steve’s eyes are a too shiny shade of blue and they widen almost comically as he stammers, “Bucky, I- I—”

“Get out!” Bucky shouts, flinging out the metal arm and sweeping everything that was sitting on the counter to ground.

Steve flinches but doesn’t back down. “Bucky, listen to me. I don’t– I’m not meaning to invade your privacy. I’m sorry. But I really don’t think you should be alone right now. You’re... you’re not thinking straight. I’m scared that you... I-I’m afraid you’ll do something you might regret.”

Bucky feels inexplicably affronted by what he perceives to be Steve’s lack of confidence in his ability to control the Soldier, who has been strangely quiet despite all that's been going on. Perhaps there's no time to think about eliminating other people when you're too busy wanting to eliminate yourself.

“I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he sniffs.

“That’s... not what I’m worried about,” Steve says quietly.

Bucky frowns, uncomprehending.

Steve says, “I can’t let you hurt yourself, Buck. If you’re... I mean, if you might be a- a danger to yourself...” Steve’s voice cracks here and he has to clear his throat before he can continue. “If you’re not safe here, you need to be in a hospital.”

The mere mention of incarceration makes Bucky shiver and he folds into himself in defeat, sinking to the floor beneath the weight of a shockingly sudden sadness. He swears he’s not trying to do that. He just can’t help the way that his jugular is itching for open air, or how his mind won’t stop calculating the precise degree at which a pistol should be angled in the mouth to cause maximum damage to the brain tissue. He realises he needs to let Steve know, because Steve had once made him promise to tell him if he ever feels this way – really feels it, because while they both know he’ll probably always view death as a relief of sorts, there’s a world of difference between that abstract contemplation and actual active intent – but he can’t bring himself to say it out loud.

Instead, he just slurs, “’m tired, Stevie,” the nickname slipping out before he even realises what he’s saying, and it feels right somehow, like home. “Don’want this an’more.”

Steve lets out a small sob as he drops to his knees a careful distance away. “I know, Buck,” he whispers. “I know. But it... It’s gonna be all right, you hear me? You’re gonna be all right.”

Steve has always been a terrible liar, but Bucky chooses to believe him just this once.

Steve manages to coax Bucky out of the washroom and into the bed, where he tucks Bucky in and feeds him a bit of soup. Eventually, the combination of Steve’s soothing presence and Bucky’s own exhaustion leads Bucky into a restless snooze that’s peppered with astonishingly vivid but thankfully less terrifying dreams.

He’s not sure how long he dozes off for. The next time he opens his eyes, startled out of sleep by a mini-nightmare, he is alone in the room and can hear Steve talking to someone on the other side of the door.

“I’m so sorry for doing this to you,” he’s saying, and from this sentence alone, Bucky already knows that Steve is talking to Sam, because these days it seems like the only thing either of them ever do to Sam is apologise. “It’s just... Doc Samson is back at the university in West Virginia and can’t get here until tomorrow and I didn’t know who—”

“Hey, man, it’s okay,” Sam reassures him. “I got someone to cover me at work, s’all good, and I’ve got tomorrow off so I can be here as long as you need me.”

There’s a pause, then when Steve speaks again, it’s wet and ragged and very much the voice of a man at the end of his rope. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Sam. It’s like... like seeing him fall all over again, but for months at a time, and I- I don’t... I can’t take it anymore.”

“No one can blame you for that, Cap. It’s not easy, what you’re doing. You gotta give yourself a break or you’re gonna burn out.”

The words hit Bucky with all the crisp harshness of a sharp slap and he’s left reeling so badly that he doesn’t hear Sam finish his sentence with: “You can’t help him if you’re not taking care of yourself, too.”

Instead, the only conclusion that Bucky’s overwrought mind can draw from the conversation is that he’s worn out his welcome here. He can’t argue with that, really. He knows how much of a burden he is. A chore. He’s an invasive species in a time and place in which he does not belong, draining its resources, starving everything around him out of existence.

He stops listening to whatever is being said in the other room and begins to survey his own surroundings for something with which to solve this problem for once and for all. For everyone’s sake.

How can something be selfish if it’s for the greater good?

The only selfishness in this act is the fact that he will be depriving himself of the suffering he knows he deserves to continue to feel for lifetimes to come for everything that he’s done, but he justifies it with the fact that it will spare Steve from being dragged down with him.

This is the last distinct thought that runs through his mind before everything just sort of shuts down and this becomes nothing but another mission. He approaches it with the same detached yet single-minded resolve as he would any other assignment, collecting data, analysing his options, evaluating risk and reward. His entire being has been reduced to this one sole purpose.

With all his calculations, he should have known better than to smash the mirror with his metal fist.

The sound of something shattering not only immediately brings Sam and Steve rushing into the room but also somehow manages to snap Bucky partway out of his daze. He looks down and is mildly shocked to see his bare feet surrounded by shards of glass. He notices he’s holding a particularly pointy piece in his flesh hand and is in the process of transferring it to his metal one and he wonders why he’s doing that.

“Oh my god, Bucky!”

He looks up, sees both Steve and Sam standing in the doorway. Steve is crying, and the part of Bucky that can feel feels awful for bringing him to tears several times in a single day, and it’s only the afternoon.

“Bucky,” Sam says, voice considerably calmer than Steve’s but still tighter and tenser than Bucky’s ever heard from him. “Bucky, please put the glass down.”

Bucky stares down at it. Very distantly, it occurs to him that the rationale behind switching the shard from hand to hand is that the extra strength in his metal arm will make it easier to slice through all the necessary flesh and tendons.

He looks back up at Steve and Sam.

“I’m sorry,” he says vacantly, raising the piece of glass to his throat.

Steve starts to cry harder, and Sam all but throws him out of the room. Bucky watches all of this with a certain impassive interest.

“Bucky, let- let’s talk about this, all right?” Sam suggests. “Can you please put the glass down? Just for a moment. Just while we talk.”

Bucky narrows his eyes suspiciously and does not move. The glass is cold against his neck, but quickly warming up from the heat of his skin.

“I understand that you’re in a lot of pain right now, Bucky,” Sam continues, still in that overly-controlled and careful tone, each word slow and even and meticulously selected, “And I think... a lot of people in this situation don’t actually want to be dead so much as they just want the pain to stop. Is that anything like how you're feeling?”

Bucky bites down hard on his bottom lip and nods, lowering the glass shard ever so slightly to allow for the tiny motion of his head.

“Okay. Okay, that’s good. That’s good to know. ‘Cause there are other ways to make it stop. Think about all the other times you’ve felt like this and still made it through. It means you can do it again.”

“Don’t wanna keep doing it,” Bucky whispers fretfully, because that’s the truth – he knows he is technically capable of surviving practically anything, but having to do it over and over again, forever? He doesn’t have it in him.

He remembers having read a pamphlet that claimed suicide was a permanent solution to a temporary problem, as if that was supposed to dissuade someone from doing it. What it hadn’t mentioned was the fact that even if the problem was temporary, it would keep recurring.

What it failed to recognise was that the permanence of the solution was what made it so appealing in the first place.

“I know it feels like this is what the rest of your life is gonna look like and that’s daunting as hell,” Sam says, startling Bucky because that’s exactly what he was thinking, “But it’s... It won’t always be like this. Can you just— please, can you put down the piece of glass and we’ll talk a bit? Let us help you work this out. Together.”

Bucky hates the way that Sam’s cautious voice and hope-laced words are contributing to the growing sense of ambivalence he’s starting to feel about this whole thing. Also, even though he knows logically that Sam is trying to help him, he can’t help but to feel like he’s being manipulated in some way.

Still, he does as Sam says, slowly lowering his hand before he finally tosses the broken shard aside, trying to reassure himself that he’s not weak for having let Sam talk him out of this. Trying to convince himself that this doesn’t mean he’s giving in.

“Thank you for doing that, Bucky,” Sam tells him, the relief apparent in his voice. “Now, please don’t move just yet; there’s glass all over the floor and you might cut your feet. Steve’s gonna go get some towels to lay over the glass – Steve? You hear that? – and then we can go sit down, okay?”

Bucky gives a bleary nod, not really sure what’s going on, but there are orders to follow so he knows everything will be all right.

Steve quickly comes back with towels (how many fucking towels do they have in this house anyway?) and Bucky steps across them to safety – in perhaps more ways than one.

They head to the living room, where Bucky sits on the couch while Steve and Sam remain standing, glancing uncertainly at each other for reasons that Bucky is too tired to try to interpret. They exchange a few words, then Steve retreats back to the bedroom and Sam slowly approaches Bucky.

“You mind if I sit here?” he asks.

Bucky gives a listless shrug.

“I’m not going to do anything unless you explicitly give me permission,” Sam informs him, so Bucky nods warily and Sam takes a seat on the opposite end of the couch.

“I sent Steve back to clean up ‘cause I didn’t want you to feel double-teamed if we were to have a little chat,” Sam tells him, “But if you would like him to be here, we can wait for him.”

Bucky thinks about this for a moment. Remembers how he sometimes feels he can’t say certain things when Steve is around.

He shakes his head.

“Okay,” Sam says, and there’s a bit of an uncomfortable silence as neither of them can figure out what to do next, then Sam asks, “You wanna tell me what’s on your mind, man?”

Bucky swallows hard. The fog in his head is beginning to clear and the implications of what has just happened are hitting him in full force. He is shaky and weak and light-headed, very much the way he used to feel during the war whenever he’d narrowly escape with his life, overwhelmed by contradictory feelings of both fragility and invincibility – the looming awareness of his own mortality combined with an odd confidence that he can survive anything.

“I didn’t mean to,” he whispers. “I mean... I wasn’t... I’m sorry, it- it wasn’t what it... I...”

Quickly picking up on Bucky’s growing agitation, Sam interrupts, “Easy, it’s okay. Nobody’s mad at you. We’re just... worried, you know? We just want to understand what’s going on so that we can help you.”

“It won’t stop,” Bucky murmurs, making an indistinct arm gesture around his head. “I keep... seeing things. Feeling things. I can’t... I can’t turn it off.”

“Listen,” Sam says, and there’s a polish of anger to his voice that Bucky doesn’t understand, “I’m pretty sure that it’s the EMDR that is making you feel this way. Steve told me that you started the actual reprocessing part of it right away? That should not have happened. EMDR can be hugely destabilising – people take months to prepare themselves enough for it, and that’s even just with single traumas. I didn’t— I feel like it’s partly my fault for making it sound like this miracle treatment when you asked me about it, and I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says listlessly.

“No, man, it’s really not. I had no idea they were gonna throw you in the deep end like this. And the doctor didn’t even wrap things up with any safety visualisations or anything, just let you leave when you were so dissociated? That’s... fucked-up. But here’s the good thing.”

Bucky must give Sam an odd look because Sam quickly adds, “I mean, as good a thing as it can be in this generally all-around shitty situation. It means that this – the way you’re feeling now? It’s just temporary. And I am in no way trying to diminish how bad it feels this very moment, but you need to know that it won’t last. You will get through this.”

All this information is making Bucky’s head swim. He had a feeling that maybe Dr. Sofen had been pushing him too hard, but he hadn’t felt entitled to say anything because it’s not like he would know any better than the professional, right? Plus, what if she had been following protocol and it was just his own fault for not being able to handle it? He didn’t want everyone to see what a fucking failure he is. But to hear Sam say all this stuff to him right now is validating and comforting in a way that Bucky hadn’t realised he’d needed to hear.

Still, Sam’s not getting the whole picture.

“It’s not just that, though,” Bucky mumbles.

“Hmm?”

“I didn’t...” Bucky pauses to nervously lick his lips. “I don't want to make Steve have to- to watch me... fall... forever. Thought it’d be better for everyone if- if I just finally... hit the ground.”

Sam’s eyes initially widen in surprise before collapsing with a rueful sadness. “Are you talkin’ about what we... Oh, Bucky... That’s not...”

Seeing Sam fumble for words isn’t something that Bucky is at all used to witnessing, and he wonders if he’s done something wrong.

“Look, man,” Sam says once he’s collected himself, “I’m not gonna lie to you – it’s hard. It’s hard for you, and it’s hard for Steve. Imagine if your places were reversed. Wouldn’t it be tearing you apart seeing Steve in pain like that?”

Bucky gives a small, miserable nod.

“But,” Sam continues, “Would you ever think of Steve as a burden? Would you want him gone?”

A vehement shake of the head.

“Well, that’s exactly how Steve feels about you. It’s tough and it’s scary and it hurts like hell, but he’s in this for the long haul. We all are.”

“’Til the end of the line,” Bucky agrees quietly.

Once everything has settled down a bit, Sam asks Bucky point-blank if he’s still suicidal, prompting what appears to be a full-body wince from Steve, and some stunned silence on Bucky’s part.

Sam glances at the both of them before he shrugs. “Best to be upfront with this kind of thing.”

“No, I— I’m okay,” Bucky says in a tiny voice, embarrassed for some reason.

Now that the storm has ostensibly passed, he feels incredibly foolish for having made such a scene. A couple of hours ago, he’d been so certain that the way he was feeling was fatal, that there was no way a human being could possibly endure that kind of pain and live.

Yet here he is now, lazing about on the couch, exhausted and empty but more or less unscathed.

He is a malingerer, a fraud. He made a garish spectacle out of his suffering, manipulated his audience into falling for his tragic act and exploited their compassion to bleed them dry, like a counterfeit charity for a nonexistent cause.

“I’m okay,” Bucky says again, a little more resolutely.

Steve looks like he wants to protest, but when Sam gives a decisive nod and doesn’t press the matter any further, Steve follows that example.

A part of Bucky distinctly notices how easily and unquestionably his answer was accepted, meaning that in the future he could probably lie about it and get away with it for long enough to—

No.

He won’t think like that. He can’t.

Sam stays at their apartment for the rest of the night. He and Bucky team up to peer-pressure Steve into going out with Natasha to unwind, while Sam and Bucky order Thai takeout and eat in front of the television. Sam doesn’t try to talk to Bucky about what happened, just chats with him about work and sports and books and quietly helps him through a series of panic attacks before putting him to bed.

Steve comes home at around ten thirty to find them both asleep, Bucky in the bed, Sam on the couch, the whole house mercifully, soundly still.

Notes:

specific chapter warnings: detailed suicidal ideation, non-graphic self-harm, description of nightmares, some vomiting, more or less attempted suicide.
EDIT: i really hope that this chapter does not dissuade anyone from seeking the treatment they need. in this story, bucky was not at the point in his recovery where he could handle this kind of processing work, plus he was in the hands of a thoroughly incompetent and irresponsible therapist. this is not supposed to be representative of the emdr experience, so please do not be turned off by how it turned out for bucky. take care of yourselves!

Chapter 15 Notes:

the warning for past sexual abuse applies particularly to this chapter. additional warning for internalised victim-blaming on bucky's part.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

They say you learn something new every day.

Today, Bucky learns that Sam is better at making pancakes than Steve.

It seems almost eerily surreal, to be sitting here with the two of them, eating breakfast and criticising Steve’s pancakes, when less than twenty four hours ago Steve was in tears and Sam was in crisis mode and Bucky had been thisclose to terminating his own existence.

It just serves to show that Bucky had made much ado about nothing and that the universe would not have noticed either way. The world kept on turning. The sun rose this morning heedless of the fact that one of its subjects had been fully intending not to rise with it.

Bucky’s not sure why he’d half-expected things to somehow be completely different when he woke up this morning. As if yesterday’s incident was supposed to have been a catalyst of sorts, setting some earth-shattering plan into motion.

He thought that he’d at least feel different after what happened yesterday. Like a person who goes through a near death experience and comes out with some unique wisdom or eye-opening affirmation.

Instead, it's been a decidedly anti-climactic affair and he’s still just his usual uncomfortable self. A monster that doesn’t fit inside the skin it was given.

Nevertheless, a new day is a new day, and Bucky tells himself he’ll make this one count.

This plan gets off to a rough start.

He has yet to shake the last of the after-effects of the EMDR – the thick, sadness-tinged fog, the distressing body memories – and then once Sam leaves, Steve tells Bucky that he has an appointment with Doc Samson this afternoon. Bucky yells at him because he never agreed to that and Steve shouts right back, saying Bucky can’t expect to do something like that and not be made to see a professional about it afterwards.

“Don’t you get it?” Bucky bursts out at him, “It’s them ‘professionals’ that did this to me in the first place! You’re fucking nuts if you think I’m gonna go back to any of them.”

It’s true. He can accept that they were probably all meaning well, but these past few days have thrown him so badly that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to trust another so-called expert again.

“The only reason I’d ever go back to Dr. Sofen is to give her a piece of my mind,” Steve says tersely, “But... I mean, Doc Samson was okay, wasn’t he? He seemed like he was helping you a little?”

“He’s the one who fucking sent me to her,” Bucky snaps back. “And no, he wasn’t helping. Anything he told me, I could’ve figured out on my own.”

It's at once both the truth and a lie. A lot of the stuff he'd talked about with Dr. Samson had been so seemingly self-evident that he's sure he would've been able to figure it out by himself - hell, a lot of it he already had, and had already tried - but it did admittedly help a bit to have someone keeping him focused. But it wasn't enough.

“If you want to stop seeing Doc Samson after this visit, that’s fine,” Steve says, “But that means we start looking for someone else.”

Bucky grits his teeth, wanting to argue just out of principle, and because he honestly doesn't see how any of this could possibly help, but at the same time he's so desperate to believe that there's still hope for him out there somewhere, so he says, “Fine,” but begrudgingly, almost petulantly.

“Fine,” Steve replies, in an unbelievably catty tone.

They engage in a brief glare-off until Bucky mutters, “We’re like a coupl’a goddamn children,” and Steve chuckles a little, which means they’re good.

The leadup to the visit with Doc Samson is slightly less good, bearing a striking resemblance to the difficult morning of his first appointment.

Once they do finally get there, Bucky waits outside Doc Samson’s office as Steve goes in to talk to him alone at first. Bucky hadn’t wanted to be present during that conversation, fearing that Doc Samson would mock him or be angry with him or not take him seriously and challenge him like a district attorney grilling a defendant’s witness.

It starts off calmly enough that Bucky can’t make out much of the discussion from the other side of the door, but Steve raises his voice a couple of times when he’s on the subject of almost having lost Bucky and it makes Bucky jolt in surprise because he hadn’t been thinking about it in that way at all. That Steve would view Bucky’s absence as a loss, not a benefit. That he would feel grief, not relief.

The fact that yesterday Bucky had been virtually one hundred percent convinced that everybody would be better off without him is a testament to just how warped his judgment must have been at the time. Normally, he’s able to recognise that his absence would be devastating to Steve. The only variable that changes depending on how much he hates himself that day is how long it would take Steve to get over it, but he always acknowledges that it would indeed have some kind of damaging effect.

Yesterday, however, there had been none of that acknowledgment whatsoever. He truly believed with every fibre of his being that he’d be doing everyone a favour by going away, and it frightens him knowing just how far off the path of reality his thoughts are capable of veering. As if he needed another reason not to trust his own brain.

After maybe ten minutes or so, the door to Doc Samson’s office opens and Steve invites Bucky in. He nervously walks up to take a seat, fiddling with the purple worry stone in his pocket, feeling inexplicably guilty all of a sudden, like he’s committing some type of betrayal.

To his credit, Doc Samson appears to be deeply, genuinely sorry about what happened. He offers several apologies and Bucky readily accepts them all, because despite what Sam had told him yesterday, he still feels like this was mostly his own fault anyway.

Then Doc Samson admits that he had underestimated the true extent of Bucky’s issues and thinks he should exclusively see a trauma therapist.

Bucky’s heart plunges to his stomach. Even though he’d been planning on quitting himself, it still stings. Like wanting to be the one to break up with someone only to have them dump you first.

He’s being given up on. His longtime suspicion that he is beyond hope has been confirmed, by someone who is trained to recognise this kind of thing, no less.

Doc Samson tries to reassure him that it’s not that he thinks Bucky is ‘too broken’ to help, it’s more that he is acknowledging his own limitations as a therapist. He says something about how Bucky also needs someone who doesn’t split their time between two cities, someone who can be available whenever he needs them, but if he'd like, he can still continue with Doc Samson until he finds someone else.

Bucky is only kind of listening at this point. He’s been in a bit of a daze ever since waking up this morning, forgetting what he’s saying halfway through a sentence, unable to concentrate on anything. He figures there’s no real need to be paying rapt attention right now because he’s already got the gist of it, plus Steve can fill him in on whatever he’s missing.

Even though discontinuing his work with Doc Samson was Bucky’s own idea, he can’t help but to feel an unsettling rootlessness now that those ties have actually been cut. He feels aimless and lost. A weapon without a hand to guide it. A wandering rōnin.

He returns the purple worry stone.

He doesn’t know where to go from here.

So, as people in this era seem to do when in need of guidance, he goes on the Internet.

With his laptop angled carefully away from Steve’s curious eyes, he looks up trauma therapists in his area. Despite still being deeply wary of the idea, he at least has the sense to acknowledge the possibility that it might work out a little better this time now that he’s seeking out someone who is actually properly qualified to deal with him. He’s new to this whole thing; hadn’t realised just how many different kind of therapies there are, and though he doesn’t dare hope for too much, it’s reassuring to know that perhaps he hasn’t exhausted all his options yet. That there could still be something that might work for him.

He knows he has about a five minute window before he starts to panic and abandon the search so he works as quickly as he can. His body is so jacked up on nerves that the glare of the computer screen feels overwhelming and his vision is going tunnelly but somehow, in the scuttling mess of accreditations and acronyms that are swimming across the page, he manages to find Dr. Maureen Lyszinski, Psy.D., member of the American Academy Of Experts In Traumatic Stress, located a five minute drive from their apartment, on one of the lettered streets just off of Connecticut Avenue Northwest.

Sam comes over after dinner that evening to help Bucky draft up an introductory email to send to Dr. Lyszinski to see if she would be a good fit for him, asking her questions about her methods and expectations and how much experience she has in which areas of treatment. Sam also has Bucky list not only his goals, but also his boundaries, which takes Bucky upwards of a very tense hour because of how difficult it is for him to even so much as conceptualise a line that no one will make him cross if he isn’t comfortable with it.

“I’m real proud of you, man,” Sam tells him once the message has been completed and sent.

Steve nods from where he’s sitting across the table from them. “Me too, Buck.”

Feeling shaky and lightheaded, Bucky just lets out a nervous laugh, uncomfortable with being in the spotlight like this. People keep using words like brave and strong and it makes him feel paradoxically both like a fraud in disguise or a saint on a pedestal. Either way, he is going to be letting them down eventually.

He’s determined not to let anyone down anymore. Maybe that’s the thing that has changed the most since yesterday. Of course, he’s always dreaded being a disappointment, but there’s an extra dimension to that fear now, one that has less to do with his own insecurities and more to do with wanting to protect the people he loves. He’s never seen Steve as distraught as he’d been yesterday, and though Bucky had been too out of his head to really notice it at the time, it’s all too clear to him now.

He never wants to make anyone feel that way again. So if he can’t get better for himself, then maybe he can do it for somebody else, for the time being. At least just until he learns how to do it for himself.

He and Steve go to bed not long after Sam leaves. It’s only nine o’clock but they’re both exhausted enough to sleep for years, except Bucky wills himself to stay awake because he’d rather be delirious with fatigue than have to face the same kinds of dreams that he has had for the past two nights. He is distinctly aware of what a terrible idea this is, and how he’ll end up paying for it tenfold later on, but at this point he doesn’t know if he could fall asleep even if he tried.

Steve is the one woken up by bad dreams that night. Bucky watches him tremble and gasp in a huddle on his cot, feeling sick to his stomach when Steve wraps his own arms around his knees, because that’s supposed to be Bucky’s job, Bucky is supposed to be the one to hold Steve to make it all go away, but he can’t.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers into the dark.

A sonnet of wet, tremulous breathing is his only reply.

Bucky eventually crawls out of bed and wordlessly sits down next to Steve on the cot, close enough that the wrinkles of their clothing brush up against each other with all the loaded heat of a grazing bullet.

Bucky claws his way through the following day with considerable difficulty, even with Steve helping him practice staying grounded. He’s not in a bad way, but he’s certainly not all there. The looping reel of images and bodily sensations that had been eating him alive has finally come to an end, but he’s still left with a skin-prickling anxiety that just won’t go away.

It certainly doesn’t help that he can feel Steve watching him like a hawk at all times, with those sorrow-bright eyes that betray everything he isn’t saying.

Also adding to Bucky’s anxiety is the fact that it’s been twenty-four hours since he’d emailed Dr. Lyszinski and he has yet to hear back from her. Of course, the only explanation for this lack of reply that his faulty brain can provide is that she already hates him somehow, or that she can tell from what he’d written that he’s a hopeless case that you couldn’t pay her enough to take on.

He doesn’t even bother telling Steve about these thoughts because he already knows how fucking nonsensical they are, but it doesn’t stop them from feeling any less real.

It turns out that all his worrying was for nothing, as usual.

He gets a reply from Dr. Lyszinski the next day. It’s a relatively detailed response, much of it too wordy and clinical for Bucky to understand, but what he does manage to take away from the somewhat intimidating wall of text is this – Dr. Lyszinski wants to help him.

Which, theoretically, means that she believes he can be helped, and this is perhaps the most encouraging thing of all.

“Looks like I got me a new doc,” Bucky says to Steve when he comes to join Bucky on the living room couch.

Bucky angles his laptop towards Steve so he can see the message for himself. He nervously watches Steve read it, searching his face for a reaction that might help Bucky derive his own, because everything feels very far away right now, way beyond Bucky’s realm of understanding. Steve’s brow is slightly furrowed in that way that means he’s deep in thought, he’s nodding slowly as he reads, but suddenly his eyes narrow and he frowns.

Bucky immediately fears the worst, even though he’s not quite sure what that might entail.

“She sounds very knowledgeable and her approach seems like it’d be a good fit with you,” Steve says carefully, “But... Well, she says she specialises in the treatment of... um... sexual trauma...”

Bucky actually flinches at this, horrified by his own carelessness. Of course Steve was going to read that part of the email and of course he was going to ask about it, and this is it, Bucky’s world is about to go supernova, to be blown wide open and then collapse into itself, becoming the merciless black hole he’s always felt himself to be.

Steve doesn’t seem to notice Bucky’s reaction, though, his eyes still fixed on the screen as he continues, “I don’t know, I just think maybe... I mean, I know from your— from the file that they did some- some pretty sick stuff to... But, like, to see a doctor whose focus is on something that doesn’t really apply as much as... I don’t know, it just seems like it wouldn’t be as productive...?”

Bucky has no idea what kind of expression he has on his face right now, just knows that he has gone extremely, unnaturally still, his body held in an unwaveringly taut line, stretched within millimetres of snapping.

Maybe it was unrealistically optimistic of him, but he had really been hoping that he’d somehow be able to get through all of this without ever having to reveal that part of him. He figured that while he probably wouldn’t ever be able to shake it completely, he could at least bury it deep enough that it might as well be gone. He could harbour it inside himself like an unaffected carrier of some fatal disease, a recessive gene that would only present itself if exposed to extremely specific circumstances that he would work extra hard to avoid.

It's already bad enough that Steve had seen what was included in HYDRA’s files. Genital torture. Object insertion. Electrodes and stun batons on and in the most intimate parts of him. Being denied clothing for weeks and forced to assume degrading positions for hours at a time as rows of faceless black-clad soldiers jeered and taunted him.

Bucky would have done anything to keep Steve from finding out that the true extent of HYDRA’s uses for him extended far beyond all that - into missions where Bucky was not a weapon, but a cheap replacement for whatever carnal luxuries the HYDRA agents were missing from home. Or, worse, for whatever twisted fantasies that they couldn't find any willing participants for.

“Bucky?” Steve says, and it’s barely a whisper but the vibration of it is enough to twang the taut wire of Bucky’s body to the point of breaking.

“You really think that’s all they– that the stuff in my file was all they did to me?” Bucky snaps, throwing anger over his words to cloak his shame.

“Bucky, wait...” Steve’s voice cracks and he swallows hard, eyes huge and pleading. “What are you...”

Bucky pulls his legs up to his chest and turns away from Steve. “You’ve been to war, Steve,” he mumbles into the couch cushions, “You know how men get when you throw ‘em into an environment where they’re taught that the normal morals no longer apply and- and they’re lonely and angry and don’t know if they’re gonna live to see tomorrow...”

“Don’t even fucking try to justify what they did,” Steve growls.

“Combine that attitude with a pretty little thing that’ll just lie there and take it, and what do you get?” Bucky gestures at himself and grins, a frighteningly unhappy rictus that’s all teeth.

“Bucky, stop...”

Bucky turns to look at Steve for the first time. The stricken expression on his face is making Bucky feel used and shrivelled, the shame desiccating him into nothing but a dried-up shell. Steve is already so disgusted, and Bucky hasn’t even told him the worst of it yet: that as they had used his body in every conceivable way, they had also made him like it. Beg for it. Thank them for it.

And so, desperate for anything that wouldn’t hurt, he’d done everything they’d asked of him.

Which is why he feels so sick knowing that Steve thinks he fought for seventy years. Knowing that he’s somehow given Steve the false impression of being strong and brave when the truth was that he’d broken beneath just the slightest pressure, fallen apart so quickly and easily in their hands.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, because that’s all he knows how to say.

“God, no, don’t say that,” Steve gasps, sounding horrified. “It’s not... It’s not your fault. Nothing that happened to... I mean... You know it’s not your fault, don’t you?”

Bucky just gives a careful shrug. There is a detached, objective part of him that is almost able to accept that he’s not entirely to blame, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to fully believe it. Not when he knows the truth about himself and the kind of person he is.

Steve looks like he’s going to press the matter further but all at once something appears to dawn on him because the dismay in his expression suddenly acquires a much darker tone and his mouth parts slightly as if trying to speak but nothing comes out.

“Steve?” Bucky asks uncomfortably, unable to guess what might have triggered this reaction.

“All those times,” Steve begins haltingly, voice hoarse and tight, “All those... Whenever I... Oh my god, I’m no different from them, am I? I... You didn’t want... I- I hurt you the same way they did. No wonder you— I mean, no wonder things got so much worse, because I was... I put you through that all over again.”

Bucky stares intently down at his own knees as he mumbles, “That’s... It’s not the same thing.”

“The hell it isn’t!” Steve practically shouts, making Bucky huddle into himself even more. “Oh, fuck... I’m sor- I’m sorry. For everything. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Bucky says, anger beginning to seep into his tone. “Do we really have to go over this again? Can you just— I can’t deal with having to be the one to convince you that it’s not your fault.”

Steve takes several deep, charged breaths, nostrils flaring slightly. “Right. You’re... right.”

Bucky looks up at him again. Steve’s entire body is practically quivering with the effort of containing his emotions, expression tense and mouth pressed into a tight, deeply unhappy line. Even though he’s keeping his words on lockdown, his guilt is still so palpable, hanging so thickly in the air, that Bucky’s throat feels tight when he tries to breathe.

He doesn’t know how to make Steve believe that it isn’t his fault, and he needs Steve to believe it, because the last thing Steve needs is another irrational reason to hate himself, plus Bucky doesn’t think he can handle Steve pushing him away again like he had after he’d first found out the truth about how Bucky felt about being touched.

That last part doesn’t make any sense, though, and Bucky is fully aware of it – how can he dread being pushed away and yet also be afraid of getting too close? There is a need inside of him, something powerful and intrinsic that he can feel on a cellular level, that craves the exact kind of physical intimacy that he also fears, and he has no idea how to reconcile these two warring parts of himself in a way that won’t break him apart.

In a sense, he almost misses the way things were before, when people were still touching him, because even though it was quite literally killing him, at least it wasn’t confusing. At least he wasn’t setting himself up for automatic disappointment by wanting two contradictory things.

“Bucky,” Steve says suddenly, jerking Bucky out of his miserable daze, “Buck, I need you to promise me something.”

“Sure,” Bucky says, slowly and a little dubiously.

“You gotta— I need you to promise me that you won’t... don’t ever let me do that to you again, okay?”

Bucky’s not certain what he’d been expecting Steve to say but it definitely wasn’t this, and all he can do is ask, “Do what?”

“Anything... Anything that you don’t want me to do.”

“Sure,” Bucky says again, still wondering what Steve’s getting at.

“I mean it, Buck,” Steve presses. “I need... I want you to feel safe with me.”

Bucky doesn’t know how to respond to this. He’d be lying if he said he felt safe with Steve, but it has little to do with Steve himself and everything to do with the fact that he doesn’t really feel safe anywhere.

“Can we try something right now?” Steve asks.

“Depends what it is,” Bucky replies suspiciously.

“Well, Natasha kinda suggested it to me this one time, but I never got a chance to— um, anyway... I’m going to reach towards you – real slow, and I won’t actually touch you – but I want you to try... try telling me to stop.”

Bucky swallows hard, his heart rate already beginning to pick up. He wiggles his toes against the fabric of the couch, breathes, thinks about the colour blue.

“Or,” Steve suggests quickly, “You could say no to me right now if you don’t want to try it at all. But either way, you’d be accomplishing something.”

It’s a devilishly ingenious plan, Bucky will give him that.

“You’re a real punk, you know that?” he grumbles.

Steve gives him an infuriatingly self-satisfied smile, and for a moment everything is simple again, simple and familiar and safe. Bucky grabs onto this wisp of a sensation and clings to it for dear life.

“Okay,” he says, voice coming out in a nervous rasp.

Steve’s eyes widen slightly, as if he hadn't expected this to actually work. Bucky soaks up the shade of blue.

“Okay?” Steve verifies.

Bucky nods, his mouth, tongue and throat no longer able to remember how to form words. He runs through the scattered inventory of his mind for ways to keep himself calm, but everything feels too bright and blank and—

“Maybe we should do this another time,” Steve says worriedly.

“No,” Bucky grinds out, clenching his fists and curling his toes before relaxing them again, as if trying to force the nervous energy out of his body. He’s not sure when or how he suddenly became so bold, but he’s determined to get through this, through this one tiny thing, if only to prove something to himself that he doesn’t quite understand, he just knows that it’s important.

“Fine,” Steve concedes. “Oh, and if it’s too hard to stay stop, like, the actual word, then just... I don’t know, just say anything, okay? Just say anything at all and I’ll stop.”

This somehow eases the pressure a little bit and Bucky feels slightly more secure. “Okay.”

Steve sets the laptop on the coffee table and then turns to face Bucky on the couch. They’re sitting about an arms length away from each other, meaning that Steve just has to extend his arm to touch Bucky, and this is good because Bucky doesn’t think he’d be able to handle having Steve’s entire body moving towards him.

True to his word, Steve reaches out incredibly slowly, keeping up a running commentary of “You’re safe” and “Just say when” in a low, soothing voice as Bucky watches his hand with all the hyper-alert wariness of a prey animal that knows it’s being stalked.

His mind is on the verge of overloading, his brain sending all sorts of conflicting data firing every which way. He’s not in danger, but his body is insisting otherwise. Someone is reaching out to him in a way that’s almost comforting, but how can that be the case if touching always hurts? He fidgets in his seat to try and stay present, listening to the sound of Steve’s voice and trying to remind himself that he is safe here.

It doesn’t work as well as he’d have liked it to.

Steve’s hand is getting closer and closer, and it’s not Steve’s hand anymore, Bucky’s not sure whose it is, all he knows is that he needs it to stop right now. He should run or fight or at the very least speak, but his body won’t cooperate, he’s frozen in place, terror-strangled, mute—

Then all at once, his fear lends him a sudden surge of strength, freeze melts into flight, and he scrabbles backwards as he all but gasps out, “P-please.”

It’s a disgusting word, full of weakness and defeat, sticking sour like vomit to the back of his throat and he's almost positive that nobody will listen to him. They never do.

To his utter astonishment, however, Steve stops.

The hand retracts itself immediately and, perhaps most shockingly of all, no punishing touch takes its place.

Bucky lifts his eyes to meet Steve’s, the wonder shining clear on his face, and he says, a little breathlessly, “Fuck.”

Steve has the shakily relieved expression of a person who just narrowly got away with something huge, but he still manages to sound like a little shit when he snorts, “Seriously? You make this enormous step in your progress and all you can say is ‘fuck?’”

“Sorry, I hadn’t thought to prepare a speech,” Bucky quips back.

The lightheartedness of his own voice surprises him considering how wound up the rest of him feels, though he’s not quite sure why. Nothing happened. He should be able to relax now. Sure, this whole exercise had practically undone him, but it’s over, and he’s almost shocked by how simple it was. Shocked and embarrassed. He doesn’t understand why this tiny little task had felt so overwhelmingly impossible, nor does he know why it still feels that way right now – even though he literally just proved to himself that this is safe, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to do it again.

“You did so well,” Steve murmurs after a moment, as if he can hear Bucky’s self-berating thoughts. “You're amazing. You’re incredible. You know that, right?”

Bucky shifts his weight uncomfortably. He knows that denying it will just make Steve try even harder to convince him, and he’s too exhausted for that conversation right now, so he just smiles a little, looking shyly up at Steve from beneath his lashes. It’s not exactly a yes, but it’s definitely not a no, either.

Notes:

it's kinda obvious now that i'm just pulling the names of random marvel doctors out of a hat lol. i admit i haven't read any issues with dr. lyszinski, but she's treated kitty pryde and rachel grey, and i wanted to keep everyone in this story in-universe.
thanks for reading!

Chapter 16 Notes:

how did this chapter happen so quickly
i don't even know
it's a little shorter though
once again, much of this chapter is being written on research alone, so please forgive any errors/correct them, but gently because i'm a delicate flower
special thanks to doctorcakeray for their insight on dr. lyszinski in canon :)

Chapter Text

Bucky decides to have his first visit with Dr. Lyszinski alone (Steve commends and frets over him in equal measures). The moment Bucky steps into the office, he can already tell that this is going to be a different experience than the ones he’s had so far. The room is set up in a way that he never would have imagined a doctor’s office to look – there’s the usual chair where the doctor sits, as well as a couch for the client, but for some reason it’s not pushed all the way up against the wall and is instead positioned so that there are several feet of space between the two. A puffy-looking blanket lies folded into a neat square on one of the seats and on the floor in front of the sofa there’s a yellow crate containing a variety of seemingly disparate objects – simple puzzles, Nerf balls, containers of silly putty and play foam, a Slinky. The desk next to Dr. Lyszinski’s chair is home to an electric kettle, a couple of coffee mugs, bottles of essential oils, and in the far corner of the room lie what Bucky feels to be the strangest props of all – a mat and dog’s food bowl.

He must have a bit of a flabbergasted look about him, because once they’ve introduced themselves, Dr. Lyszinski gives him a warm grin and says, “A little different than you’re used to, is it?”

“I’m not exactly used to... any of this,” Bucky admits, “But, yeah, it- it’s not really what I was expecting.”

“This one room has to be suited to fit the needs of several different people,” Dr. Lyszinski explains. “For example, it helps some people to have a dog present during the session—”

“A dog?” Bucky interrupts, his interest piqued.

Bucky likes dogs. Steve sometimes tells him about the strays they used to give up their last strip of bacon for, or how during the war Bucky was devastated when they had to leave behind a mutt he’d befriended in a bombed-out town just outside Rome. These days, Bucky hasn’t really had much contact with dogs, but he’s noticed that when he’s out for a run, for some reason he’s never as nervous around people who are accompanied by a canine companion. This is perhaps counter-intuitive considering the theoretically high threat posed by a strange animal, but he just somehow feels more comfortable with one around.

“Some of my clients benefit greatly when I bring along my shaggy four-legged co-therapist,” Dr. Lyszinski says with a smile. “There are many ways in which having an animal present can help; if you think this is something you’d like to try, we can discuss it once we've gotten to know each other a little better.”

“I’d like that,” Bucky says, trying not to sound too excited, and he wants to ask about the funny positioning of the couch but he’s not sure whether it’s appropriate.

Dr. Lyszinski seems to pick up on his curiosity on her own, however, because she adds, “I have a client who prefers to sit behind the couch to speak about difficult things. As for the other stuff in this room... let's see here... Well, the weighted blanket helps with grounding, as do the items in that box over there, on my desk and here in this cabinet. I’ve got essential oils, half a million types of tea, some scented lotions, music to play... Once we figure out what works best for you, we will equip the room accordingly to suit your needs as well.”

That last sentence leaves Bucky speechless. It’s such a simple, undemanding statement, but its implications are almost overwhelming to him; no one has ever made him feel as though he had the right to have his needs met – hell, he’s not used to having needs at all. They were never even acknowledged, let alone satisfied. It has been so ingrained into him that he exists solely to fulfill the purposes of others that he has no idea how to respond to the tables being turned, with someone else actively offering to accommodate him.

He takes several deep breaths before he asks, “Do you have any worry stones?”

His new pocket-sized lifeline is blue, just a shade darker than Steve’s eyes.

During the course of the next hour, Bucky is repeatedly left astounded by just how much of a difference it makes to be interacting with someone who is specifically trained in trauma treatment.

Before they begin, Dr. Lyszinski offers him a cup of tea, which he awkwardly declines, so she pours one for herself and the light, gentle scent of it puts him at ease for some reason. They then start off by discussing what he’d written in his email, particularly his concerns about the pacing and intensity of memory processing work. She acknowledges the fears he has due to his past experiences and asserts that here, he will be in control at all times. He will dictate how much he discloses to her and when, and she will not push him to divulge any traumatic details until they both believe he is ready for it. Right now, her main focus is safety and stabilisation, though she admits that it might help to have at least a general idea of what they’re up against.

It’s at this point that Bucky wordlessly hands her HYDRA’s file. It’s not the entire thing, just scans of some of the most relevant pages, and Bucky had been debating with himself over whether or not to bring it today but he figured it was the easiest way to get this part of the job done.

“Is this something you would like me to read now, or later?” she asks him as she takes the file from his shaking hands. She does not make any move to open it.

Bucky shrugs, unconsciously clenching and unclenching his fists.

Still not opening the folder, Dr. Lyszinski says, “Is this something that’s difficult for you to talk about?”

A mute nod.

Dr. Lyszinski seems to contemplate this for a moment before she carefully places the folder on her desk.

“It was very brave of you to share this with me,” she tells him, and he scans her voice for some indication that she’s mocking him but even though she speaks a little too carefully and deliberately for his liking, there’s only sincerity in her words.

“If it’s okay with you,” she continues, “I’m going to read it later on today.”

Bucky nods again, entire body seeming to sag with relief. He really hadn’t wanted her to look at it in front of him at all, dreading having to see her reaction, which he could only imagine would have been horror at best, utter revulsion at worst.

After that, they discuss a plan of action for the short term as well as one for the long term. Dr. Lyszinski tells him that her treatment approach involves three phases – stabilisation, processing, and re-integration – but they will be focusing almost exclusively on the first stage for the time being. It involves building trust, establishing emotional and physical safety, and understanding and managing ‘trauma responses’ like hypervigilance and dissociation.

“Oh, so you mean, like, symptoms,” Bucky reiterates, unfamiliar with the term ‘trauma responses.’

“Technically, yes,” Dr. Lyszinski agrees, “But I feel as though that word doesn’t properly encapsulate the true scope of the matter. It fails to take into account the complexities of trauma and the effects it has on the body and brain. Because that’s what these ‘symptoms’ are – they are effects of trauma. They aren’t indications of something that’s wrong with you, but rather indications of something that’s happened to you. They are completely understandable responses to a traumatic situation. They might even have been necessary, at the time of the trauma.”

Bucky frowns. “How...?”

“Well, let’s take dissociation for example. Let’s say a person is forced to endure unspeakable abuse at someone else’s hands. Staying present and remaining fully conscious of what was being done to them would have been impossible at best, unbearable at worst. So to cope with it, they might have withdrawn or pretended it was happening to someone else. They did what they needed to do to survive at the time, and it became encoded in their brain as a necessary adaptation. A survival mechanism. What we need to do now is recognise that the danger has passed, so that survival mechanism is no longer necessary. Then we can replace it with a more proportionate response.”

She fixes Bucky with a slightly expectant gaze as she waits for him to acknowledge what she’s said, but all Bucky can do is gape at her.

It’s a lot to be taking in right now, and although her slow, steady way of speaking had been grating him a little at first because he thought he was being talked down to, he now realises how important it is that she gives him time to let her words sink in.

Once they do, their impact is tremendous.

Even though he’s read all the educational pamphlets from the VA, from the doctor’s office, from the Internet, this is the first time he’s really had this explained to him in a way that doesn’t make him feel crazy or otherwise defective. He’d been so convinced that these neuroses of his were proof of some kind of failure on his part, of his inability to overcome hardship, but this is the first time he’s been able to see his ‘symptoms’ as signs of resilience as opposed to weakness.

This realisation, this epiphany, is so immense that he freezes up and forgets to breathe.

Dr. Lyszinski must think he’s checking out, because she asks him if he’s still with her and suggests that he experiment with some of the grounding objects in the yellow box. He’s okay, but he picks up the Slinky anyway and lets it roll through his fingers.

Dr. Lyszinski then asks if there is anything in particular that he would like her to do if he ever finds himself dissociating in the middle of a session. Bucky is nervous about giving her the power to bring him back – what if he doesn’t want to come back? – but he knows it has to be done, so he tells her about how Steve asks him to describe things in the room, how it helps to have something to smell or touch.

However, he suddenly realises that she might interpret this as wanting to be touched, so he starts to clarify but quickly clamps his mouth shut again because he’s not allowed to make demands like this.

“What is it?” Dr. Lyszinski asks patiently.

Bucky’s breathing is starting to hitch. “I like having something to- to touch, but I don’t... I mean... don’t... I d-don’t like...”

He’s babbling, all kinds of words coming out of his mouth in a disorganised tumble – all the words except the ones he actually needs to say.

“T-touch,” is the best he can do, digging his nails into his palm of his flesh hand.

“You don’t like to be touched,” Dr. Lyszinski says.

Bucky gives a slightly rigid nod.

“Yes, you told me as much in your initial email. I won’t touch you, James. You have my word.”

Another tight nod.

“You seem tense,” Dr. Lyszinski notes.

Bucky stops playing with the Slinky and looks down at himself with a frown. He hadn’t really noticed that he was particularly tense – how could Dr. Lyszinski have detected it if he can’t even feel it? It worries him to imagine what other things she might be able to pick up on – the secrets he carries hidden inside of him, gift-wrapped with guilt and swathed in shame – without him even being aware of it. The idea that she might be able to see through all the convoluted layers he’s wrapped himself in for protection is more than a little nervewracking.

“I feel the same as usual,” he says guardedly.

“Could it be possible that you are always tense?”

“I... Maybe...?”

This isn’t really something Bucky has given much consideration to, but now that he thinks about it, the muscle relaxation exercises he’d practiced with Doc Samson did usually result in a better night’s sleep, so that must mean something. It’s just that he’s so accustomed to all his body’s petty malfunctions – the migraines, the random aches and pains, the near-constant upset stomach – that they’ve long since become his baseline, his normal, and it never occurred to him that things could be any different.

Dr. Lyszinski goes on to explain how trauma is stored not just in the brain, but also in the body, and her treatment approach involves tackling both sources at once. She says she will teach him to recognise what his body is trying to tell him and how to process physical reactions just like his brain processes memories in order to heal. It sounds very much like what Sam had always been trying to do with him, but Bucky had never really understood why or how it was supposed to help.

He can’t believe how many new things he’s learning in this single session. First he learned the reasons why his brain acts out the way it does, and now the same is being done with his body, with this treacherous bag of flesh that he has always viewed with such wariness and contempt because of the way it always seemed to betray him without warning. He now realises that it all kind of makes sense. Why certain postures or positions triggered very specific flashbacks, why there is still pain in the places he was hurt the most, how fear expresses itself in his pulse and breath and nerves.

What his brain may have forgotten, the body remembers. What the brain cannot rationalise, the body manifests. Quite frankly, the idea of becoming better acquainted with his body terrifies him. The increased awareness of its existence has been a double-edged sword so far, bringing with it a host of bewildering sensations that he’s not sure he really wants to experience more of, not even the so-called positive ones.

But maybe, just maybe, he’ll be able to teach his body and brain to work together as allies instead of enemies, to weave back together all these fractured parts of himself and truly start to live as a whole—

—and there it is again: that swell in his chest that he’s only recently come to recognise is that ever-elusive feeling they call hope. It’s pushing against his lungs and his heart, but it’s a buoyant kind of pressure, so unlike the crushing weight he’s used to, and he thinks it could be for real this time, he knows what he’s getting himself into and he can see how it just might be able to help.

He would weep if he knew where to find the tears.

Bucky can’t stop talking about Dr. Lyszinski on the car ride home. He proudly declares that he didn’t ‘zone out’ during the entire session. Tells Steve that he felt so comfortable around her, and even though she talks a little slowly, he likes that it gives him time to absorb what’s being said and think about how he’s going to respond. He describes his changed perspective on his symptoms, how relieving and empowering it felt to be validated in that way, and he tries to explain all the stuff she said about the body but he doesn’t think he does a very good job of it. He raves about all the cool things in Dr. Lyszinski’s office, expresses his enthusiasm at the idea of working with a therapy dog, and also shows Steve his new worry stone, but doesn’t mention the bit about how he picked it out because the colour matched Steve’s eyes, because that’s just creepy.

He’s so caught up in babbling like a kid after his first day of school that it takes him a moment to notice that Steve is crying.

“Shit,” he says, perking up in alarm. “Steve, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

Steve sniffles loudly and wipes his face before he briefly looks away from the road to give Bucky a small smile. His worry stone eyes are clear and polished and for once the upward curve of his mouth doesn’t look like it’s fighting for its life against a sadness with the gravity of Jupiter.

“Nothing,” he replies shakily. “That’s why I’m— nothing’s wrong at all. That’s why I’m crying.”

The moment it becomes clear that Steve isn’t actually upset or anything, Bucky slouches back down in his seat and grumbles, “You’ve become such a sap these days, I’m almost embarrassed for you.”

Steve laughs, truly laughs, and Bucky realises that he’d almost forgotten what that sounded like.

He expects Steve to come back with some snide remark, but his voice is earnest and sincere when he says, “I’m just so damn proud of you, Buck. To think, just a few days ago you were...” He trails off awkwardly, pauses to regroup, then leads things in a safer direction by continuing, “What I mean is, you’ve really taken charge here and you’ve come so far in so little time, and it’s... It’s just amazing.”

The praise make Bucky beam, but he also can’t help but to feel a little apprehensive. He’s suddenly wishing he’d kept all his optimism to himself. That way, it won’t be so mortifying if (when...?) it all goes wrong, as things are wont to do with him. It’s one thing to fail, but it’s another, much more humiliating thing to fail when everyone knew just how much you wanted to succeed. It’s like being left at the altar. It’s failure with an audience - an audience that had such high expectations.

Bucky starts to regret his enthusiasm even more when he realises that getting Steve all excited means it’ll just crush him twice as badly when (if...?) it doesn’t work out, and Bucky doesn’t think either of them can handle that again.

And fuck, here his mind goes again, sabotaging itself, making sure it’s over before it even starts. He makes a fist with the metal hand, abstractly considering slamming it into his own temple as if maybe that could dislodge the tangled pathways in his brain and force his thoughts to cooperate.

“Buck?” Steve asks, glancing over at him.

Bucky jolts in his seat. “Huh?”

“You got quiet all of a sudden. Everything okay?”

“Oh. Y-yeah. Everything’s... okay. Or at least, they will be.”

“That’s the spirit, Buck,” Steve says with another truly genuine smile, and despite all his misgivings, all his doubts and fears and reservations, Bucky smiles back, because when the sun is shining so brightly, the moon can’t help but to glow, too.

Chapter 17 Notes:

as always, please heed the warnings in the tags. this chapter also contains a brief discussion about child abuse and deals a lot with bucky's feelings of self-blame.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Bucky’s homework for the week is to put together an emotional first aid kit of sorts. He writes down a variety of grounding techniques onto brightly coloured flashcards, makes a list of positive affirmations, gathers comforting items like a patch of fluffy fabric, a vial of peppermint oil, a paper crane that Steve made. He puts all of these things in a shoebox that he leaves by the bed and then he starts to work on a travel-sized version that he can take with him wherever he goes.

He has long since learned the importance of being ready for this kind of thing, but he still can’t help but to feel thoroughly foolish as he’s assembling his little kit. He’s embarrassed that he even needs it at all. Other people can get through the day without constantly having to be prepared for disaster, so why can’t he?

Suddenly disgusted with himself, he shoves the stack of flashcards to the ground and sits glowering in his chair, breathing hard through his nose.

“Bucky?” Steve asks, looking up from where he's doing origami across the table from him.

“This is fucking stupid,” Bucky mumbles through gritted teeth. “I shouldn’t- it’s pathetic.”

“What’s pathetic?”

Bucky gestures at everything on the table. “All this. It makes me feel so... Knowing that I need all this just to be able to... to do anything, really.”

“It’s not stupid,” Steve says with a frown. “So you need a little extra boost to get by sometimes. It doesn’t make you... weak, or whatever you think.”

Bucky still looks wholly unconvinced, so Steve tries again: “When we were kids, you always made sure I had my asthma medication with me.”

“O...kay...?” Bucky says, not really seeing where this is going.

“I was so embarrassed to have to carry ‘em around,” Steve continues. “I got made fun of for it, and I just hated feeling... different. Hated being reminded of what I couldn’t do. This one time we went to the store to get Goudey cards – d’you remember those? The baseball cards with the stick of gum? – anyway... I’d lied to you and said I had my medication when really I didn’t, and then I had an asthma attack in the store so you had to run home to get it and oh man, were you ever mad at me. You chewed me out good once you were sure I wasn’t going to drop dead on you.”

Bucky has absolutely no recollection of this incident, and it makes him a little sad because he wants to know everything there is to know about that life, the life he had before the war took it away from him, before HYDRA warped it into something monstrous and unrecognisable.

“It’s not the same thing,” Bucky says after a moment. “You... you were sick. You couldn’t help it.”

“Tell that to everyone back then who thought asthma was some kind of hysteria. You can’t help it any more than I could.”

“Yes I can!” Bucky bursts out. “I... I can. I can do better. Try harder. Be... just... better.”

Steve makes a pained sound in his throat. “Bucky... You’re already doing all of those things.”

Bucky glances over at Steve. He’s doing that thing again where he looks at Bucky like he’s too good to be true, which has been happening a lot lately and it makes Bucky nervous but it’s not like he can do anything about it. He can’t exactly tell Steve to stop smiling so much or ask him to drain the love from his eyes whenever he meets Bucky’s gaze. Steve’s more than earned a break, and Bucky will do everything in his power to make it last, even if it means having to hide away in the bathroom and pretend to take a shower as he wrestles down a panic attack alone.

“Buck?” Steve asks after a moment.

Bucky gives a noncommittal grunt.

“You’re already trying harder and doing better,” Steve insists. “I know it might not always feel that way, but... you are.”

Bucky shakes his head stubbornly but Steve’s words manage to reach him enough that he doesn’t try to argue anymore.

The closer he gets to his second visit with Dr. Lyszinski, the more Bucky finds himself deeply regretting having given her HYDRA’s file, even the vastly pared-down version. By the morning of the appointment itself, Bucky has decided he doesn’t want to go.

“Talk to me, Buck,” Steve says pleadingly as he struggles to get Bucky out of bed, “What’re you so afraid of?”

Bucky just burrows further beneath the covers. How can he explain this to Steve, to someone who has no idea what it’s like to let themselves be twisted into something they swore they’d never become? Steve may hate himself for a lot of stupid reasons, but none of them have to do with giving up. Even when he was small and the odds were stacked so enormously against him, he never gave up. He may have been – and still is – an idiot, but at least no one could ever accuse him of being weak.

Bucky is a different story. His weakness is the reason why countless innocent people are dead, why his body is a foreign object, why he hurts in places he doesn’t understand.

Everything in HYDRA’s folder... he allowed it to happen to him. Once Dr. Lyszinski figures this out, she won’t want to help him anymore.

“Bucky, please,” Steve practically begs, making Bucky feel sick. “I promise you, whatever you’re scared might happen, it... it won’t.”

Bucky still doesn’t reply, just continues to be a lump on the bed.

Steve gives a resigned sigh. “Fine. But you gotta call Dr. Lyszinski and tell her you’re not coming. It’s only polite.”

“What’s with all the fucking ultimatums?” Bucky snarls, alight with a sudden fury that finally draws him out from under the covers. “First it was ‘okay, you can stop seeing Doc Samson but you gotta find someone else.’ And now this? Why does everything I do have to have a- a fucking condition attached to it? I swear, it’s like you think I’m a goddamn child.”

Steve’s eyes flash with a frustrated anger and he snaps, “You’re right. You’re not a child. That’s why I’m not gonna be the one to mop this mess up for you.”

“You’re being over-dramatic, this isn’t a fucking mess.”

“Whatever.”

Steve waves a dismissive hand in Bucky’s direction and gets up to leave the room, leaving Bucky sitting on the bed with his entire body buzzing with anger. He’s going everywhere at once again. He wants to peel off all his skin and let whatever it is inside of him that feels like it’s burning him alive come bursting through to the surface to sizzle away into nothing.

He scratches his thigh for a good minute until the inferno inside him finally settles and he realises, as he often does, that the person he’s most angry with is himself.

He picks up the phone.

Dr. Lyszinski answers on the second ring – incidentally, right before Bucky was about to chicken out and hang up.

“H-hi,” he says uneasily, hating the sound of his own voice. “It’s Bu— uh, it’s James. James Barnes?”

“Oh, yes, hello James,” Dr. Lyszinski says. “How are you today?”

“Um, fine.” There’s a pause, and when he speaks next he fully means to tell her that he’s not coming today, but instead all that comes out is, “Did you read the... the thing?”

“The file you gave me last week? Yes, I did.”

Bucky scours her tone for some kind of reaction, but her voice is impeccably neutral and he can’t figure out what she’s thinking, which makes him extremely anxious.

Unable to stand it any longer, he dares to ask, “And...?”

“We can talk about it in an hour when you come for your session.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t... I mean... I’m not... I can’t come in today. Sorry. I- I’ll still pay you, obviously, but I—”

“James?”

“Yes..?”

“Forgive me if this is a false assumption, but is there, by any chance, a connection between me reading the file and you not being able to come in?”

Bucky laughs nervously. “You some kinda telepath or something?”

“Clients have often had a difficult time right after having opened up about what happened to them. Actually, by sharing that file with me, you got it out of the way much faster than most, which makes it understandable that this might be extra difficult for you – you essentially just shared some of the most painful parts of your past with a stranger. You haven’t yet built a relationship with me. You don’t know how I’ll react, or what I’ll think of you. But if you come in, we can talk about it, maybe address your fears and put them to rest.”

Bucky knows he must look like an idiot right then, sitting there on the bed with his mouth hanging partway open, because he can’t believe this woman is for fucking real, because she’s somehow managed to peel away a lifetime of protective layers in just a few minutes, and this scares him but not as much as he thought it would, which is actually the part that scares him the most.

When he finds his voice again, he croaks, “Guess I’ll see you in an hour,” then hangs up the phone and wonders what the fuck just happened.

Dr. Lyszinski must be able to tell how on edge Bucky is from the moment he walks into the room because the first thing she has him do is identify where in his body he’s feeling the most tense (everywhere – he feels like one giant clenched fist). They go over the contents of his first aid kit and focus on getting him to relax before they actually begin talking about anything.

“We don’t have to discuss the actual contents of the file,” Dr. Lyszinski says once Bucky’s loosened up ever so slightly, “But if it’s okay with you, I’d like to hear about how it felt to share it with me.”

“It helped that I didn’t have to be around when you read it,” Bucky admits, fretfully twiddling his fingers.

“And why is that?”

Bucky fidgets uncomfortably and leans over to pluck the Slinky from the yellow crate so he has something else to focus on while he speaks.

“I didn’t want to see how you’d react,” he says softly, bouncing the Slinky from hand to hand.

“How did you think I would react?” Dr. Lyszinski asks.

Bucky hesitates. He doesn’t want to offend her by making assumptions, but at the same time, he knows that she has every right to be repulsed by him, so he’s not going to pretend he deserves any better.

“Figured you’d be... disgusted,” he replies curtly.

“And why is that?”

“Well, why wouldn’t you be?” Bucky snaps with a bark of mirthless laughter.

He’s getting agitated now, not understanding why Dr. Lyszinski is making him catalogue every single thing he hates about himself. She must already know all the answers, so why must she mock him like this, by forcing him to say them out loud?

“It’s all right, James,” she says gently after a moment, seeming to recognise the need to slow things down. “For the record, the only thing that disgusts me are the people who did this to you. Yet you seem to be convinced that I have reason to be disgusted with you, and I’m wondering why that is.”

“Because I let it all happen,” Bucky whispers in a haunted voice.

He puts the Slinky back into the box because he’s worried he might rip it apart without even realising it and instead he makes a fist around his worry stone until his knuckles go white.

“I just... I fucking lay there and took it,” Bucky continues, voice laced with a bitter loathing, and he doesn’t mean to keep speaking but he can’t seem to stop. “Nobody even had to hold me down or- or anything. I just... I’d do anything they asked. That’s literally all they had to do – was ask. I could’ve taken down everyone in that room, but instead I- I just... I—”

“James,” comes Dr. Lyszinski’s voice through the whirlwind building up in Bucky’s brain. “Let’s take it easy, okay? Put your thoughts on hold. Can you tell me what you’re feeling in your body right now?”

Bucky forces himself to take a step back, breathing deeply and closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again in order to maintain some kind of connection to his surroundings.

“My... my neck is really tense,” he says tentatively. “My shoulders, too. It... The tension spreads down to my arms and I’m—” he looks down at his hands and notices with a dim surprise that he’s making a fist not only with the hand clutching the worry stone, but also with his metal one, “—Oh...”

“James, are you familiar with the fight or flight response?” Dr. Lyszinski asks.

“Yeah. It’s like... how animals react when they’re under threat, right? It’s a survival thing, I get it. But that’s the thing... I didn’t do either. I could have. I could have easily done both. But I didn’t.”

“Would it help to do so now?”

“What? How?”

“Well... You’re familiar with fight or flight, but what about the freeze and fawn responses?”

Bucky frowns. “I... I’ve never heard of those.”

“Freeze is pretty self-explanatory,” Dr. Lyszinski begins, “And while you may think you were just ‘letting it happen,’ the truth is that the freeze response is a completely legitimate survival mechanism. Sometimes neither fight nor flight are an option – either they are not possible, or they would result in more harm. That’s when the freeze response takes hold. Like a prey animal going limp and feigning death in a last-ditch attempt to escape. That animal is not just ‘lying there and taking it.’ He’s doing what he feels will give him the best chance of survival.”

Bucky gives this a bit of thought before deciding he’s not convinced. He’s not a fucking possum. He’s a finely-tuned weapon. A killing machine.

Dr. Lyszinski goes on to explain in further detail the way the human nervous system reacts when under threat. How the parts of the brain responsible for conscious thought shut down to allow automatic instinct to take control, which, while useful for getting through the moment of danger, leads to the later inability to process what happened. The use of an immobilising defence (i.e. freezing) as opposed to a mobilising one (i.e. fighting) during the moment of trauma may cause a sense of incompletion that later manifests itself in a variety of maladaptive ways. Feelings of helplessness. Guilt. Bodily tension.

“Now, going back to what you were feeling in your body,” she says, nodding at his hand, “Do you think we can pick up from where we left off there?”

“Okay,” Bucky answers uncertainly.

It’s not hard for him to put himself back in that place of utter self-disgust at his own uselessness. It’s a constant with him – the feeling that he could have, should have done more. He concentrates on the tightness at the base of his skull that radiates down through his shoulders and arms and, sure enough, both his hands unconsciously start to clench up again, raising slightly as if preparing to strike.

He quickly drops them, chest heaving as he suddenly finds himself gasping for breath.

He had been about to fight back. Stupid stupid stupid. Thank god he’d been able to stop himself. He would have been in so much trouble.

“What happened?” Dr. Lyszinski asks.

“I- I can’t,” Bucky babbles, struggling to swallow down a growing panic, “It’s not... I’m not allowed to... I can’t...”

Dr. Lyszinski takes a moment to try to calm Bucky down by getting him to focus on his breathing before they try again. This time, Bucky manages to hold his position, but his heart still feels like it’s on the verge of bursting and his hands won’t stop shaking.

“What are you feeling now?” Dr. Lyszinski wants to know.

“Like I need to... to strike... out. Punch.”

He says this in a whisper and ducks his head as he's speaking, as if expecting punishment, but Dr. Lyszinski just nods, then instructs him to hand her the pillow that’s sitting next to him on the couch. She then holds it out in front of him at arm’s length.

He blinks several times. “Am I... Do you want me to do what I think you want me to do?”

“Well, normally I get clients to push against the pillow in order to recreate the defensive motions they were unable to complete during their trauma. But... those clients don’t usually have super-strength, so I was thinking maybe you could punch the pillow instead. Worst case scenario, the pillow explodes, but at least I don’t get shoved through the wall.”

Bucky laughs a little. “Are you serious?”

“Believe it or not,” Dr. Lyszinski says, as unflappable as ever, “Completing a previously interrupted active defence sequence can actually reduce the feelings of powerlessness and anxiety that are associated with past responses.”

Bucky really doesn’t understand how this could help, but he decides to humour her anyway. It’s not like it’s a particularly difficult task.

Except maybe it is, because the fist he’s making is shaky, his hands still quivering too badly to really stay clenched, and when he hesitantly bumps it into the pillow, it’s a thoroughly pathetic blow that he fully expects to be mocked for. He’s surprised when Dr. Lyszinski doesn’t do so, just gently urges him not to hold back.

He tries again, this time making a bit more of a thump. Dr. Lyszinski points out to him how his posture has changed – he’d been hunched in on himself for the first strike, but now he’s slightly straightened out his spine and raised his head a little. She advises him to go with this for his next hit.

He sets his shoulders, draws his human arm all the way back, and punches the pillow so hard it’s knocked out of Dr. Lyszinski’s hands and flies across the room.

Immediately he recoils, eyes wide and pulse picking up again.

“Shit,” he whispers, horrified. “I- I- I’m sorry. I didn’t- I mean, I—”

“You haven’t done anything wrong, James,” Dr. Lyszinski says. “You did well. You completed an active defence response that had been impossible to execute at the time of the trauma. How does your body feel now?”

“Energised,” he says, a little stunned by the realisation. “But, like, not... not the bad kind where I’m going everywhere at once. More... focused.”

He looks down at his still-clenched fist and feels a sudden pang of bitterness. He’s never told anyone this, but there are times when he misses the way he used to feel when he was out in the field. Lethal. Invincible. It had only been the higher-ups at HYDRA who had full access to all of his... functions - as far as the rest of the world was concerned, he was the stuff of legends. Something to be viewed and treated with a fearful reverence. Of course, he hadn’t exactly been aware of it at the time, but he knows that he did feel unstoppable and deadly when leading a mission, basically the complete opposite of how he felt at all other times.

(If only they could see you like this. This being on his knees, his head being forced up by his hair. They’d never be scared of you again.)

Of course they wouldn’t be. Not if they’d seen the way he’d melt into any pair of hands that reached towards him. Which is another reason why the whole ‘freeze’ thing doesn’t apply to him – like Dr. Lyszinski had pointed out, freezing implies immobility. Non-action. But he’d done a lot more than that. He hadn’t just gone limp and pliant – he’d done something far more participatory.

He’d acted, but not in the defensive way encompassed by the fight response.

Instead, he’d taught himself to give them what they wanted before they even had to ask, and he’s pretty sure there’s nothing in nature that can explain away that one.

Unless...

“What’s the fawn response?” he asks.

“The verb ‘to fawn’ can be used to describe acting in a subservient manner,” Dr. Lyszinski replies. “An exaggerated willingness to flatter or please.”

Bucky swallows hard, feeling horribly exposed all of a sudden.

“The fawn response is perhaps a little less innate and a little more learned,” says Dr. Lyszinski, “But that doesn’t make it any less valid of a survival mechanism. Let’s take the example of an abused child. He can’t fight back against an adult abuser, and he quickly learns that running away will only get him punished. Freezing may work sometimes, but the child might also seek to please his abuser in order to pre-emptively avoid or lessen pain. The fawn response is particularly visible in cases where the survivor depends on the abuser for his basic needs – this reliance makes the other responses a lot less viable.”

Bucky gnaws away at his lower lip as he tries to take all this in. It makes sense in some ways, but also doesn’t, in others. It may justify why he’d tripped over his own feet to please them, but it doesn’t exactly do much to explain the way he'd actually longed to do so, longed to do well and be told he was good, craved it with a need akin to hunger or thirst.

“But... I’m not a child,” he says finally.

“That was just an example. Anyone of any age can be a victim of abuse and thus develop these coping strategies.”

Bucky’s face feels hot, particularly behind his eyes. He thinks this means he might be close to crying, but nothing comes.

Confused and overwhelmed, he asks, “Why’re you telling me all this?”

“Understanding how trauma responses work can be instrumental in reducing feelings of guilt or shame,” Dr. Lyszinski replies. She pauses, then adds, “You are not at fault for how you acted, James. You did the best you could with what extremely little you had. And you survived.”

She sounds so much like she means it that Bucky almost – almost – believes her.

Bucky doesn’t talk as much on the ride home after this session. He’s too exhausted. Steve seems to pick up on this and thankfully doesn’t push him, just keeps glancing nervously over at him at all the red lights. By the time they return to the apartment, Bucky would like nothing more than to collapse into bed and sleep for days, but there’s something he wants to try while he’s still feeling bold enough.

He asks Steve to join him on the living room couch and hands him a pillow.

“What’s this?” Steve asks, and Bucky wonders if Steve’s always looked this cute when he’s confused.

“This is kinda what we— what Dr. Lyszinski and me did today,” Bucky says awkwardly, then proceeds to explain as best he can what he’d learned about uncompleted defensive actions.

He keeps his eyes glued to his lap as he speaks, worried he’ll see derision or scorn on Steve’s face. He knows he’s not doing a very good job explaining it. Steve will probably think the whole idea is stupid.

His fears prove themselves to be unfounded, as usual.

Steve grips the pillow in front of him and Bucky takes a deep breath before he starts to push against it, just with his arms at first, then he allows himself to add more pressure by leaning his full upper body weight into the pillow, forcing it back into Steve’s chest. He tries to pay attention to his body as he’s doing this. The way he’s using not just the muscles in his arms and shoulders, but also those in his back. His breathing is ragged but even and he can almost feel Steve’s hands through the pillow, strong and steady and solid the way they’ve always been.

Finally, Bucky drops his arms and leans back, panting for breath and feeling thoroughly spent, but in a good way that paradoxically also makes him feel alive. Not in the sense that he’s fired-up and electric, but more just that he is a living, breathing, feeling thing.

Steve’s eyes are wide and searching as he anxiously asks, “Did it work? How do you feel? Did it help?”

Bucky feels like he's about to pass out, he’s so damn tired. Instead of answering, he positions the pillow against Steve’s leg, lays his head down on it, and lets his eyes flutter shut with the faintest of smiles dusting his lips.

Notes:

sorry if i bored you all with all the psychobabble omg
also i'm worried i'm rushing things a little??? idk. maybe even a stone-cold grinch like me just wants to finally see some real healing ;)

Chapter 18 Notes:

additional warning for brief references to past suicidal ideation.

Chapter Text

Bucky meets Dr. Lyszinski’s co-therapist on his fourth visit, following a particularly difficult third session during which they’d attempted to identify his main triggers and his brain decided it couldn’t handle that discussion so it switched off. They’d ended up having to go fifteen minutes overtime because Bucky was still very dissociated and Dr. Lyszinski wanted to make sure he was safe before he left her office.

After that, Bucky was extremely reluctant to go back, discouraged by a combination of fear of what he'd be made to feel and humiliation that he hadn't been able to cope with the subject matter the last time. He had actually called Dr. Lyszinski the day before his appointment, intending to cancel, but once again, she managed to talk him out of it, saying she would bring her dog in tomorrow and they could take it easy.

Excalibur is a tricolour Cavalier King Charles Spaniel with a goofy mouth and huge innocent eyes. Though he perks up from his spot at Dr. Lyszinski’s side the second Bucky walks into the room, he doesn’t approach Bucky until Dr. Lyszinski instructs him to do so, which she does only once she’s confirmed with Bucky that he’s ready for it.

On Dr. Lyszinski’s command, Excalibur jumps up onto the couch next to Bucky, nudging his thigh with a paw. Bucky stares down at him in disbelief, eyes flickering to Dr. Lyszinski’s, unsure of what to do.

“You can pet him if you like,” Dr. Lyszinski says encouragingly.

Bucky’s hand hovers just above Excalibur’s head for several seconds. He still can’t get over the way the dog is looking at him. Like the sun shines out of his goddamn ass, and Bucky knows that it doesn’t actually have anything to do with himself specifically, since Excalibur likely looks at any and everyone this way, but that’s exactly what makes it so reassuring. There are no strings, no expectations, no judgments. Excalibur doesn’t care about the horrible things Bucky has done. He’s not disgusted by the way that Bucky had given in to HYDRA so easily. He’s not disappointed in Bucky for not getting better fast enough.

He just wants a nice head-scratch.

And Bucky knows he doesn’t deserve this kind of unconditional acceptance, but god, he’s so desperate for it that he’ll take whatever he can get, regardless of whether or not he’s actually earned it.

He slowly lowers his hand.

The moment his skin comes in contact with that glossy soft coat, a gasp squeezes past his lips before he can stop himself. Excalibur is warm and responsive beneath Bucky’s palm, nuzzling up into his caress with a satisfied whine, and it strikes Bucky with all the force and velocity of a meteor crashing to Earth just how utterly devoid his life has been of this form of contact. Of this kind of safety.

People say you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s been lost, but in this case, Bucky hadn’t realised just how much he’d lost until he’d gotten it back.

He feels like his world has acquired an entirely new dimension. It’s something so far beyond the capacity of his understanding that he has absolutely no way of making heads or tails of it. How can someone describe a sensation they’ve never had the chance to experience, let alone the ability to process? He is a blind man that has been gifted with sight, or a pair of deaf ears hearing music for the very first time. Seeing as touch is one of the five senses and he has been denied this particular aspect of it for longer than he remember, it’s not even that much of an exaggeration.

His thoughts drift to Steve as he wonders if this is anything like the way Steve must have felt after the serum – the unbelievable relief of having shed shackles that he’d resigned himself to bearing because he’d long since come to learn that that’s just the way things had to be. The realisation of this new freedom comes as a biblical shock, a divine epiphany, and Bucky has no idea what to do with any of it.

He doesn’t realise he’s frozen up until he feels Exalibur’s wet nose bump expectantly up against his palm. The dog props his two front legs up on Bucky’s thighs so that he’s laying halfway on Bucky’s lap, and this weight literally acts as an anchor, securing Bucky in place.

“He likes you,” Dr. Lyszinski notes.

After a few abortive attempts at speaking, Bucky says, a little shakily, “H-he probably likes everyone, though.”

“He is a bit of a sucker that way,” Dr. Lyszinski admits with a smile. She watches Bucky ruffle Excalibur behind the ears for a bit, then encourages him to describe how he’s feeling right now.

“In my body or my brain?” Bucky asks.

“Both. But you can start with whichever is easier.”

Bucky considers this for a moment before deciding that it’s easier to read physical sensations than emotions, which is a testament to just how bewildering his own brain is – that even the totally alien concept of his body makes more sense.

He’s dizzy and breathless, but not in the panicky, out-of-control way that he’s used to. It’s more of an excitement that somehow also manages to be a source of comfort. He likes the warmth and weight of Excalibur’s body, the way it’s grounding him, reassuring him that he exists. Whatever tension he’d been feeling in his muscles has been drained from them almost entirely, leaving him clean and light and fresh.

“I feel like I’ve been drowning my whole life and this is my first breath of air in a century,” he says finally, voice small and embarrassed, his eyes remaining fixed on Excalibur instead of meeting Dr. Lyszinski’s gaze.

“I suppose that’s a description that can be applied to both brain and body,” Dr. Lyszinski muses, prompting Bucky to nod in vague agreement.

Beneath his fingers, Excalibur continues to react eagerly but undemandingly to every scritch, scratch and stroke, and Bucky can’t help but to marvel over all the ways a pair of hands can be used on another living creature for something other than causing pain.

The session goes by quickly and towards the end of it, Bucky starts to feel guilty for having wasted Dr. Lyszinski’s time by spending a good chunk of it just talking about dogs. To be fair, though, Dr. Lyszinski herself had facilitated much of the conversation, asking him all kinds of questions about dogs – how he feels around them, if he thinks he could handle the responsibility of having one. She encouraged him to play with Excalibur and got him to try commanding Excalibur to go sit further away to practice setting boundaries.

With maybe fifteen minutes left on the clock, Dr. Lyszinski suddenly veers the discussion away from dogs and onto the topic of Bucky’s goal of becoming more independent.

“Are there any tasks in particular that you associate with achieving this goal?” she asks.

“Leaving the house, mostly,” Bucky replies, with a wry, mirthless grin meant to indicate that yes, he is fully aware of how pitifully low a bar that is to set for himself.

Coming to therapy or visiting Sam are basically the only times he ever steps out of the apartment nowadays, and that’s only because he can travel from one place of relative safety to another in the protective bubble of Steve’s car. Once in a blue moon he manages to go for a jog with Steve at some ridiculous hour of the morning, but being out and about in public, in the presence of other human beings, remains a huge obstacle for Bucky.

Dr. Lyszinski gives a thoughtful nod. “Do you know what specifically prevents you from doing this now?”

Bucky lowers his eyes, his human hand that’s resting on his lap going rigid as he unconsciously digs his nails into the fabric of his pants. There is absolutely no way to answer this question honestly without revealing just how pathetic he is. He’s a grown man, a goddamn super soldier and master assassin no less, and he can’t even walk out his own front door.

Excalibur, who had previously been relaxing on the mat in the corner of the room, suddenly gets up and hops onto the couch next to Bucky, as if he can tell that Bucky could use some kind of support, or at the very least a distraction. Sure enough, Bucky stops clenching his fists and instead and runs his fingers through Excalibur’s fur as he takes several deep breaths.

“It’s the people,” Bucky says finally, focusing intently on the act of petting Excalibur so he doesn’t have to think about anything else. “They get... I hate it when they get too close. Like, this one time I tried to go grocery shopping alone - bad, bad idea - and it... It took me almost an hour to cash out ‘cause any time someone came and stood behind me in the checkout line, I- I couldn’t take it and had to leave. Then I felt stupid walking out of the line so many times, so I— each time I’d pretend like I’d forgotten something on my shopping list that I had to go back and get. I ended up with like a dozen extra items that I didn’t need.”

Bucky shifts his weight uncomfortably, embarrassed by his own story. He still doesn’t look up. He hopes that Dr. Lyszinski will offer some advice on how to deal with this, but she just asks if he has any other examples.

“I dunno,” he mumbles, “I guess... I’m always scared of having a... Scared that I’ll panic in front of everyone, or, you know... dissociate... and forget where I am, or... It’s just... Of course this just makes me all the more anxious...”

“Do you find that these reactions affect you less if you’re accompanied by another person?” Dr. Lyszinski asks.

Bucky gives an emphatic nod, though he still can’t tell what point Dr. Lyszinski is trying to make here if she’s not actually going to help him with any of it.

That’s when she tells him about service dogs.

Dogs trained to get people out of flashbacks, panic attacks, or dissociative episodes; to lead their disoriented owner to safety; to use their bodies as barriers to keep strangers from getting too close. Dogs who can lower feelings of hypervigilance by being taught to do the kinds of room searches that Bucky still sometimes has to get up in the middle of the night to perform. Dogs who learn how recognise and stop compulsive behaviours by redirecting the person’s attention elsewhere.

Bucky is floored by what he’s hearing. Sam had once mentioned something about service dogs for veterans, but Bucky always figured they were for people with some kind of physical injury. It never even occurred to him that an animal could help with the kinds of tasks that Dr. Lyszinski is talking about right now.

He leaves her office with a list of relevant Internet resources and an unfamiliar feeling of something that might even be excitement welling up in his chest.

Steve is surprisingly receptive to the idea of getting a dog when Bucky nervously brings it up at the dinner table that evening. Bucky explains the variety of jobs that they can be trained to do, and, just for good measure, mentions the fact that it could help him with his touch issues. It may or may not be a bit of a manipulative move, but it turns out to be entirely unnecessary, since Steve appears to be enthusiastic enough about the prospect even before Bucky brings up that particular point.

Bucky’s not sure why he’s so stunned by Steve’s positive response. Why he expected to be shot down either with angry exasperation or dismissive disdain.

Or rather, he is aware of the reasoning behind that expectation – it’s because those are the two reactions he’s the most used to receiving whenever he asks for something – but he’s ashamed because he should know better by now than to think Steve would ever treat him that way. He hopes he doesn’t look too shocked when Steve welcomes the proposal with a keen smile and a lot of eager questions. He doesn’t want Steve to know that he’d been making all sorts of totally unfair, unfounded assumptions about him.

Steve is possibly even more excited than Bucky is about the dog, so Bucky feels the need to be The Responsible One by pointing out all the things they need to take into account before making a decision. However, it comes out sounding more like a very negative list of reasons why they shouldn’t even consider it at all, which prompts Steve to accuse him of self-sabotage, though not in an unkind way.

“Look, I understand,” he says, and Bucky hates hearing this from anyone because of how often it’s proven to be a completely false assertion, but he decides to give Steve the benefit of the doubt for now. “You... you’re trying to protect yourself from disappointment by not getting your hopes up. Or maybe there’s even some unconscious part of you that won’t let you hope for something better because it doesn’t think you deserve to get it. I don’t know. But, Buck... it’s... You’re allowed to want something good for yourself. And you’re more than allowed to actually get it.”

Bucky swallows around the boulder that’s unexpectedly materialised in his throat. Apparently Steve did understand in this particular instance, more or less, and it’s simultaneously disconcerting and comforting for Bucky to know that there’s someone who can read him so well.

Once they finish eating supper and washing the dishes, they do a bit of Internet research and then go about making a list of the pros and cons of getting a dog for Bucky. It eventually becomes quite clear that the former outweigh the latter, and seeing it all laid out concisely and to-the-point like that helps Bucky feel more confident about making a positive decision.

“What’re you going to do if I end up getting one?” he asks Steve. “A dog, I mean.”

Steve gives him a bit of a strange look. “I guess, like, all the normal stuff people do with a dog... Walk it, play with it, feed it.”

“No, no, no, I mean... what are you going to do with all the free time that you’ll have?”

“I... don’t get it,” Steve says, brow furrowing in confusion.

Bucky gives a slightly impatient sigh. “The whole point of getting a dog is to help me be more... independent, right? So that I can do more things on my own and you don’t have to... to look after me so much. So that you can actually have a life.”

“I don’t mind looking after you, Buck,” Steve insists, and the earnestness in his voice makes Bucky want to tear out his own hair.

“Yeah, well, I mind,” he says brusquely, frustrated and ashamed. “And you should, too. God, Steve... when’s the last time you ever did something for you?”

“You’re saying this like I'm always acting purely out of altruism alone,” Steve replies in a slightly bitter tone. “Truth is, everything I do for you is for me, too. I’m... I’m more selfish than you think, Buck...” He looks away, taking a quivering breath before he says quietly, “When you first came back, y-you... you asked me why I didn’t just...” Another shaky inhalation. “You wanted me to put you down like a rabid dog. D’you remember that?”

“Kind of,” Bucky says uncomfortably.

Those first few weeks are little more than a jumble of static inside his head that he’s not particularly eager to sort out. He remembers blanket sensations of confusion, terror, fury. Not many specifics, except...

“I told you it was selfish of you not to kill me,” he says, sounding stricken.

“Yeah. You said... y-you said I was selfish for... keeping you here when... when being alive h-... hurt you so much.”

Horrified, Bucky whispers, “I’m sorry.”

Truthfully, he’s never really looked back to the way things had been at the very beginning. It’s hard to remember, both in the sense that his memory is patchy and also in that it’s painful to do so. But now that he actually thinks about it, even he can’t deny that he’s made remarkable progress since then.

After all, he’d been little more than an animal at the time, driven purely by survival instinct, and yet even that most basic of impulses was not strong enough to drown out the relentless force driving him in the opposite direction. Towards extinction. He was a barely-walking rarely-talking abomination, because to have a deathwish is to go against nature, against everything he’d been born and bred to be.

Which means it was perhaps the first independent thought he’d had in seventy years.

And it had nearly killed Steve.

Even when Bucky was himself, he realises with a sickening start, he couldn’t help but to hurt people.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, a note of desperation edging into his tone.

“It’s okay,” Steve murmurs. “You’ve come a long way since then. A really long way. It’s incredible, really. Lots of people thought you wouldn’t... thought you wouldn't able to come back at all. But you’re here.”

“I’m here,” Bucky repeats uneasily.

“You’re here.”

There’s a long pause, then Bucky says, “But you’re here, too.”

Steve gives him a puzzled frown. “So...?”

“C’mon, Steve,” Bucky prods, “You told me I gotta try to be excited about my future, so what about you? If I... if this... If there wasn’t anything... keeping you here, what would you want to do with yourself?”

“Y’know, if you’d asked me this a year ago, I’d’ve said I have no idea,” Steve admits. “But I’ve been giving it some more thought lately and I realise there’s... there’s so much I’d like to be able to do. God... the war took so much from us, Buck. I know I... I walk around talkin’ the talk, all the stuff people want to hear from Captain America, and I believe in all of it, I do, it’s just... I don’t know, I feel so selfish saying this, but sometimes I wish we’d gotten the chance to live a real life when it was all over. The chance to experience all the good things we were fighting for. And I’m just starting to realise that maybe now, maybe we can. We got a second chance, Bucky. And I want to do so much with it. I want to learn a new language. Grow my own vegetables. Illustrate a children’s book. I want to see the Pyramids and the Grand Canyon and the Great Barrier Reef.”

“Those are all great things,” Bucky says quietly, and he means it, even though it makes him a little sad for reasons he can’t understand. “I can’t wait for you get to do them all.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Steve counters, “I’m not just gonna go jet off and do all this stuff just because you— ‘cause you’re able to stay home alone, or whatever. Anything worth doing, I... I- I’d want you to be there doing it with me.”

That’s when it occurs to Bucky why he’s suddenly feeling so sad. The future is still such a foreign concept to him; it’s hard to think very far ahead when it’s already such a battle even just to make it into the next minute. He lives second by second, because to try to imagine anything beyond that is to become very overwhelmed, very quickly. He supposes this inability to conceptualise the future could be why the feeling of hope remains so unfamiliar and frightening. The future can easily exist without hope, but there cannot be hope without some kind of understanding of the future.

So to hear Steve talk about these wonderful things he wants to do with Bucky... It’s hard for Bucky to come to terms with. Sure, it would be fantastic to be able to do them all, but there is such a divide between the objective part of his brain that recognises this and the part of his brain that he actually responds to that he simply cannot insert himself in that situation and find it believable.

“You can’t let me hold you back, Steve,” Bucky mumbles, hunching in on himself and avoiding Steve’s gaze.

“What? What on earth are you talking about?”

Bucky sniffles a little. “I can’t... I’ll never be able to do any of these things. You can’t wait for me to be well enough to join you 'cause you’ll be waiting forever.”

“Don’t say that, Buck.”

“Why not? It’s true. How am I supposed to come with you to- to fucking Egypt if I can barely make it across the goddamn street?”

“It won’t be like this forever, Buck,” Steve says softly. Bucky just gives an unconvinced grunt, so Steve adds, “There are still lots of things we can do together. Like... once you get more comfortable with going out, we can get a plot of land at one of the community gardens and grow vegetables there. You can help me design characters for my illustrations. And we can buy one of those Roseanna Stone computer programs to learn a language right here at home.”

Bucky knows this is supposed to be a really touching moment between the two of them but he can’t keep himself from bursting out cackling.

“Oh my god,” he wheezes out between snickers, and it’s not even that funny but he can’t help himself, “Are you seri— Roseanna Stone, Steve? Who the hell is Roseanna Stone? I think you mean Rosetta Stone.”

“You know what, Bucky?”

“Mm hmm?”

“Fuck you.”

Chapter 19 Notes:

this is kind of really not at all how getting a service dog goes, but for the sake of keeping the story moving, i sort of... condensed the process. i hope that doesn't take too much away from this chapter :X
also, thank you to stringbean for having thrown out the idea of a service dog way back towards the beginning of this story :)

Chapter Text

If there’s anything good that came out of resurrecting S.H.I.E.L.D., it’s that they’re still so desperate to have Captain America back on board that they’ll do anything that might expedite his return. All Steve has to do is casually mention that he might have the time to participate in a small operation every now and then if Bucky is better able to take care of himself, and suddenly there’s an opening at the top of the waiting list of a private organisation that provides and trains service dogs. The next thing they know, Bucky has been accepted into their program and their apartment has been approved for placement.

“I cannot believe you used your status as a national hero to receive special treatment,” Bucky says in a scandalised voice as they’re driving to the centre where Bucky is to meet the dog they’ve matched him up with.

“Whatever,” Steve replies with a dismissive shrug, “I’d say we’ve fucking earned it by now.”

It’s such an absurdly out-of-character statement and the fact that he knows Steve isn't joking at all is what makes Bucky laugh and laugh and it doesn’t even occur to him to put himself down like he normally does by thinking he hasn’t earned a thing.

When Bucky meets the two-year-old German Shepherd named Nomad, it’s the closest he’s ever come to knowing what love at first sight feels like.

She trots up to greet him with an eager curiosity that manages to be enthusiastic but not overzealous, sniffing his hand and looking up at him with expressive, intelligent eyes. Once Bucky begins to pet her in earnest, she sheds her professionalism in favour of flopping to the ground and rolling onto her side, nuzzling Bucky’s leg excitedly when he kneels down to stroke her belly. Her trainer, an Iraq War veteran named Jack Monroe, seems impressed by their instant bond.

Nomad is already task-trained and more or less socialised, so all there is to do before she can officially start her job is for her and Bucky to learn how to work together as a team. After an intensive ten day program of training and bonding exercises, Bucky and Steve are able to take her home, where her training will continue with specialised in-house sessions to further customise her skills to meet Bucky’s individual needs.

Neither Bucky nor Steve get much done that afternoon. Bucky gives Nomad a tour of the apartment, describing everything to her with the grandiose flare of a real estate agent showing a dream house as Steve watches from the sidelines with a big dopey grin on his face. They spend a very long time just sitting on the couch with Nomad between them, cooing over her and pampering her and pretending not to notice when their fingers come agonisingly, electrically close to brushing up against each other whenever they’re petting her at the same time.

After dinner, however, it’s time for Nomad to go for a walk and Bucky suddenly finds himself regretting everything. The fact that he’s already had practice handling Nomad in public during the training sessions with Jack completely disappears from Bucky’s mind and he finds himself spiralling into a panic.

“This was such a bad idea,” he chatters, pacing back and forth across the living room with Nomad’s leash clutched tightly in both hands.

Nomad is watching him uncertainly from a short distance away, tracking his movements with her eyes but not quite sure what to do just yet.

“Bucky,” Steve tries.

Bucky just shakes his head and keeps pacing. “Why did I think I’d be able to— oh, fuck. Steve, I made a big mistake. I can’t do this. And it- it’s not fair to her, I shouldn’t’ve taken her if I can’t take care of her properly, I should have fucking known... I can’t—”

At this point, Nomad takes action, putting herself in Bucky’s way to force him to stop in his tracks. He looks down at her, stunned, as if he’d forgotten she was there, even though she’s the reason he’s panicking in the first place.

“You should go lie down for a sec, Buck,” Steve says quietly.

Too jumbled to protest, Bucky obliges, absently stumbling into the bedroom. Steve and Nomad follow.

Steve points to Bucky and says to Nomad, “Pressure.”

Nomad jumps up onto the bed next to where Bucky is laying on his back and she drapes herself over his upper body with her front paws resting on his shoulders. Bucky takes a shuddering breath, closing his eyes as an inexplicable relief settles within him. He’d been skeptical of this particular task when they’d practiced it with Jack, fearing that the weight would feel too much like someone holding him down, but he was pleasantly surprised to discover that pressure applied to the right parts of his body actually had a calming effect. He’s not sure why it helps – he’s not sure why any of this stuff helps, really – but all that matters is that it works.

Nomad lays there quietly for as long as it takes Bucky’s breathing to even out. Once he’s finally calmed down, he signals for her to get off him and slowly sits up. He showers her with verbal praise as he runs his hands all across her body, still astonished by the feeling of being able to give affection so freely in the way that he thought he’d never be able to do again. It’s a selfish outpouring of love, he’ll admit, because he’s doing it just as much for his own benefit as for hers, if not more, but he thinks that’s probably the case with most kinds of love.

It takes a little while longer, but the three of them eventually make it out the door, Nomad looking snazzy in her service dog vest in sharp contrast to the decidedly unstylish Bucky and Steve, who are both in their go-to low-profile garb of a nondescript jacket and a baseball cap pulled low over the eyes.

At first, Bucky is all darting glances and quick, sharp breaths. It’s not particularly busy outside, but there are still enough people walking around that he can’t bring himself to relax. Too many possible threats. Must be on high alert at all times.

Whenever someone approaches them on the sidewalk, Bucky is quick to strategically position himself at Nomad’s other side, creating a buffer between him and the other person. This helps a lot, and after that, things start to get a little easier. Bucky is still anxious as hell, but he is able to let his shoulders drop and stop himself from constantly scanning his surroundings, telling himself that Nomad will be able to pick up on any danger long before he does, so if she’s not worrying, he has no reason to either.

When they return to the apartment, Bucky checks the clock and is shocked to find that they’d been out for just over half an hour.

“Th-that’s impossible,” he says dumbly. “I... My limit is, like, fifteen minutes, tops.”

“Guess you broke your own record,” Steve says with a hopeful, beaming smile.

Bucky looks down at Nomad and murmurs, slightly incredulously, “Guess so.”

Nomad holds his gaze and cocks her head.

Jack Monroe comes over to their apartment every Thursday afternoon. He helps Bucky refine Nomad’s abilities to apply directly to her work with him – they work on teaching her to recognise the signs that Bucky is dissociating or having a flashback; to identify and fetch his grounding objects without being told; to interrupt him when he’s scratching himself by pestering him to pet her or brush her instead.

It’s not always easy.

Nomad is still learning, after all, but even if she were infallible, there is only so much she can do and there are times when all of it still wouldn’t be enough. There are flashbacks that she cannot shake Bucky out of. Fits of paralysing sadness that can’t be cuddled or licked away. There are bad days when he still panics in public even with Nomad at his side, and these usually precede even worse days where he has to beg Steve to walk her because he can’t himself get out of bed.

Nevertheless, things are probably better than they’ve ever been. Bucky can already tell the difference – he’s more active, he feels centred and safer and more purposeful. Nomad gives him a real reason to get on his feet and out of the house. She wakes him from nightmares and snuggles up next to him to help him fall back asleep. If his hypervigilance is acting up, he can tell Nomad to sweep the room and when she comes back without incident, he’s able to relax knowing that if there was anything out of the ordinary, she would have alerted him to it.

She also provides Bucky with much-needed opportunities to safely practice giving and receiving love with his body. Just as he and Steve used to communicate through the unique dialect of their touch, Bucky reacquainting himself with physical contact is a lot like learning another language, with his body learning to arrange itself in entirely different ways, just like a tongue has to learn to fold into unfamiliar shapes in order to form sounds it’d never made before. There are times when his accent is thicker than others, all jerky gestures and stunted strokes, but with every day that passes, his hands become a little more fluent.

The positive changes in Bucky’s disposition and demeanor within the first couple weeks of taking Nomad home do not go unnoticed by Dr. Lyszinski. She encourages him to bring her to a session, and it makes such a difference that soon she’s accompanying Bucky to every one.

However, the absolute best part about having Nomad around is the relief that it’s provided Steve.

With Nomad's help, Steve no longer has to bear such an immense burden on his own, and he has felt the impact it’s made almost as palpably as Bucky has. The alleviation of this weight is made clear in Steve’s lighter laughter, in the looser lines of his body, in the way he no longer holds himself like he’s a tightly-coiled jack-in-the-box in constant danger of bursting open. Their finer moods feed off each other, a delicate symbiosis of synchronised smiles and pillows propped up on thighs.

But there’s always something.

The universe creaks in protest and begins to realign itself again.

Bucky’s not sure how it happens.

At some point, a seed must have sown itself in his head, and he does not notice until it’s embedded its roots too deeply to be extracted.

It presents itself at first as a deceivingly innocuous malaise that has him feeling ever so slightly off, in a subtle way that he can’t quite put his finger on, as if all the furniture in the house had been moved an inch to the left. He startles a little too easily, has more trouble making decisions, finds it harder to fall asleep. The amount of distance between himself and Steve that he requires to feel safe becomes wider.

The seed continues to grow.

He can’t shake the feeling either that something terrible is about to happen, or that something terrible has already happened and he just hasn’t figured out what it is yet. He begins to over-analyse the behaviour of everyone around him, whether it’s Steve or Sam or Natasha or Jack or the strangers he passes on the streets, scrutinising their every action and reaction for clues to some secret that he can’t even identify. He has no idea what he’s looking for, just that there has to be something.

Because there always is.

He tries to hide these new misgivings for as long as he can, though, hoping that eventually they’ll just blow over on their own. He doesn’t bring it up with Dr. Lyszinski. He fine-tunes his smiles and his laughter and is careful to tell Nomad to do a perimeter sweep only if Steve is in a different room. Most importantly, he forces himself to always sit closer to Steve than he’s comfortable with, because if there’s anything that Steve would be able to pick up on, it’d be Bucky suddenly needing a noticeably larger amount of space, especially after all the supposed wonders Nomad has been doing for his issues with physical contact.

He thinks he’s doing a pretty good job at keeping everything under wraps until one afternoon Steve asks him, completely out of the blue, “Is everything okay, Buck?”

Bucky can’t keep his jaw from dropping slightly in surprise and he unconsciously starts shifting his weight away from Steve on the couch.

“Y-yeah, of course,” he stammers. “Why, um, why do you ask?”

Steve keeps his eyes trained on Bucky’s face for an uncomfortably long time, as if searching for all the things that Bucky is refusing to say.

Meanwhile, Nomad looks up from where she’s been curled up in her doggy bed and appears to be evaluating the situation.

“I don’t know,” Steve says finally, his voice very quiet. “You just seem... on edge. And... sad.”

Bucky frowns. Steve is probably right about that first one, but... sad? Bucky tries to remember how he’s been acting recently but he’s been having memory problems on top of everything else that’s going wrong so he can’t really remember. He’d think he’d know if he was sad, though.

“Y’know,” Steve says uncomfortably, “I- I hope you know that— You don’t gotta keep things hidden for my sake. Like... I understand that since things have been pretty good for a while, you might feel, I don’t know, like you’re not allowed to be— I mean... I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’re allowed to have your bad days.”

“It sounds like you want me to have bad days,” is Bucky’s terse reply, and he knows it’s completely untrue, but he feels like a cornered animal whose only option is to lash out.

He expects Steve to be angry with him. To yell at him, to tell him how stupid and wrong he is.

Except Steve just looks horrified, and that’s when Bucky realises that he didn’t expect Steve to be angry so much as he actually wanted him to be.

He realises that the way he’s been feeling these past few weeks – the anxiety, the unease, the vague sense of wrongness – it’s all because he’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and since it had yet to do so, he figured he’d try to set it off himself, just to get it over with, because he can no longer stand the anticipation.

“I- I don’t— that’s not what I meant at all,” Steve whispers, still looking stricken, and Bucky is so, so angry with himself for putting that expression on his face.

“I know,” he mumbles halfheartedly, hunching forward on the couch to place his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “I’m... sorry.”

Nomad sees this and decides she’s needed. She trots over to sit at Bucky’s feet, leaning into his legs to provide some grounding pressure. Bucky sits up, startled, having forgotten that she’s been trained to recognise the posturing of someone in distress. He looks down at her with a small, grateful smile that he hopes she is somehow able to understand as he reaches forward and ruffles the thick fur at the nape of her neck.

After a moment, he straightens himself up again, looks Steve in the eye, and says with more conviction, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Steve says instantly. “I just... I want you to feel like you can be honest with me. I don’t ever want you to think you have to hide anything.”

Maybe it’s the soothing effect of having Nomad nearby, or maybe Bucky’s just too tired of being alone in this fight, but whatever it is, he actually finds himself opening up.

“It makes me nervous,” he says, head lowered again, voice slightly muffled, “When it’s... when things are too... good.”

He’s not looking at Steve but he can only imagine the all-too-familiar look of anguished helplessness that’s painted on his face right now.

“I think I understand,” Steve says, very carefully. “It’s completely normal for people to be nervous about new things. And feeling this way – feeling... good... it- it’s very new to you. You’re not used to it and it’s scary.”

“You and Dr. L been hanging out behind my back or something?” Bucky asks with a slightly forced chuckle.

Steve isn’t laughing.

“I felt that way a lot when I was younger,” he says quietly. “I mean, obviously not at the same— the same level, or whatever, but... Well, you know I got sick a lot. And whenever I was okay, it was like... like I was just waiting to fall ill again.”

Suddenly Bucky feels extremely foolish, not to mention disgusted with himself. How arrogant of him to act as though he had exclusive rights to this kind of misery, to assume that his own feelings were so uniquely terrible that Steve couldn’t possibly understand him. Bucky had his head buried so deep in the sand of his own suffering that he completely failed to acknowledge the fact that pain exists for other people, too. And it’s not just anyone’s pain that he’s ignored, it’s Steve’s. His best friend, whose pain should matter to him the most.

“Sometimes,” Steve goes on, “I couldn’t even enjoy the times when I was healthy because I was too busy dreading getting sick again. Because I knew it would happen. Because it always did.”

“But then one day it didn’t,” Bucky points out, finally looking up.

Steve’s eyes are a little too shiny but his smile is genuine when he says, “And one day it won’t for you, too.”

Bucky just shakes his head, eyes bleary and lips tight. “There’s no serum to fix what I’ve got, Stevie.”

There may not be a serum, but there’s Dr. Lyszinski.

“Steve thinks I’m afraid to let myself feel good,” Bucky tells her at that week’s session, cautiously framing it as something that Steve has observed just in case it’s not the right thing to be feeling.

Dr. Lyszinski won’t let him skirt his way out of this one, though, because she asks, “Are you?”

Bucky gnaws at his lower lip, looking down at Nomad who is curled up on the floor by his feet. “I... Maybe. I guess.”

Dr. Lyszinski tries to get him to pinpoint what exactly it is he’s afraid of so that they can address the problem directly. Bucky isn’t really sure, though, so he goes for the reason that Steve had provided, because it seems accurate enough.

“I guess it’s ‘cause I’m not used to it,” he says. “To feeling good, I mean. It’s too... different. And it’s not even like I’m, like, having this spectacular time right now or anything, but, well, things are better than they have been in a long time, so... I don’t know, I can’t stop worrying about when it’s going to end. ‘Cause... in a way, feeling even just sort of bad after feeling okay is worse than feeling very bad all of the time... The contrast of it... it’s just... I know that when things get bad again, I won’t be able to take it.”

“These are all completely understandable reactions given the circumstances,” Dr. Lyszinski says gently. “You’ve been undergoing a lot of changes recently, and even though they’re mostly for the better, it’s still change, and change makes people anxious.”

Bucky nods blankly.

“You will always have your ups and downs,” she continues, her voice frank, “That is simply something you will need to accept. And I understand that you're trying to lessen the impact of the crash by not letting yourself fly too high, but really all that's doing is depriving you of the chance to feel any highs at all. The good comes with the bad, it’s just the way things are. But that’s no reason to keep yourself from enjoying what precious good times you do happen upon, and the key to that is learning to live in the present. Much in the same way that flashbacks happen when the present is intruded upon by the past, your anxieties are the result of the present being intruded upon by the future. The secret to overcoming both problems is to learn to live in the moment.”

Bucky cringes. He hates all this talk about this mythical thing they call the present. According to everyone else, it’s supposed to be the safest place, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way very often. Then again, it’s not like the past is any better, and neither is the future, since he is so incapable of visualising a tomorrow that isn’t just a blueprint of all his yesterdays, so basically it’s just a lose-lose-lose situation.

“This is not to say that we should completely disregard everything that isn't happening in this exact moment,” Dr. Lyszinski adds, “Because we do need to learn from the past and prepare for the future, but it’s all about being able to control the extent to which we allow them to influence the present.”

She proceeds to teach Bucky about mindfulness, which he’d kind of touched upon with Doc Samson but never really got the hang of. To Bucky, it kind of feels like a more complicated version of grounding and he doesn’t think he’s very good at it. It’s not just about being present in both mind and body, which is already difficult enough for him - it also involves being able to experience his thoughts, observations and feelings in an objective way. He’s tried to do this before, to access his feelings with a nonjudgmental neutrality so that they won’t overwhelm him, but he always just seems to go too far in the opposite direction and ends up flattening all his emotions out of existence.

Dr. Lyszinski starts off by getting Bucky to practice his breathing before they move on to becoming mindful of his surroundings. He cycles through his senses one by one – sight, smell, hearing, touch, even taste, when Dr. Lyszinski pours him a cup of lavender tea and gives him a piece of dark chocolate – and he tries to accept everything he takes in at face value, without picking it apart and over-analysing it or associating it with something else. He attempts to listen to the sounds of the cars outside without worrying about who’s in them and where they’re going; attempts to view the objects in the room without coming up with all the ways in which they can be used as weapons.

It’s much harder than it sounds, and at first it makes Bucky extremely anxious, which doesn’t seem to make sense because this is supposed to be helping him relax. As usual, Dr. Lyszinski helps him understand why this is – she explains that for someone who is used to navigating the world with only survival in mind, focusing on something unrelated to self-preservation can make them feel very exposed and vulnerable. Bucky is so accustomed to having to dedicate every ounce of his attention towards keeping himself safe that he has trouble knowing how to interpret his surroundings in any other way. This is also why being in a state of relaxation can sometimes, paradoxically enough, create a sense of unease, which is exactly how Bucky feels right now.

“How about,” Dr. Lyszinski suggests, “Instead of aiming for feeling relaxed, you first work on feeling safe?”

Bucky just gives her a vacant stare.

“I don’t even know what that would feel like,” he finally says with a bitter laugh. “That’s like... trying to get someone who’s been blind since birth to describe the colour red.”

He feels incredibly stupid when he admits this. Stupid and hopeless. How is he going to get better if he literally has no concept of how it’s supposed to feel?

That’s when Dr. Lyszinski pulls the focus back even more, to imagining a safe space, and Bucky can’t help but to feel like a failure for having to go back to the basics like this. It’s something he was supposed to have been practicing from the very beginning, but his skepticism had caused him to avoid it – he feels like he needs something more tangible than just some abstract idea inside his head. He’s expecting Dr. Lyszinski to be angry with him for not having worked on it, but she just chides him gently and asks him to try doing it now.

He’s never been good at this visualisation stuff, so his safe place is very simple. A void, almost. Smells like cotton candy and sounds like the ocean. Nomad is there. Everything is blue and warm, like Steve’s eyes, but Steve himself isn’t a part of it, because Dr. Lyszinski advised against having any people in his visualisation in case something happens between them and their presence no longer feels safe.

Bucky tries to memorise how his body feels when he’s thinking about this place so that he can apply it to other situations. Dr. Lyszinski says that if his mind doesn’t know what safety is, perhaps his body can lead the way.

He does a little better with the mindfulness exercises after that. Some things are easier to do than others – for instance, he’s pretty good at eating chocolate mindfully, since even the most creatively paranoid parts of his thinking can’t come up with many unsafe associations with the act.

His homework for the week is to continue to practice mindfulness in his every day activities. Be mindful while he’s eating, cooking, sitting, walking. Then, when he feels comfortable enough, he is to try to actively engage in a pleasurable pursuit – or at least, what would be a pleasurable pursuit if his brain weren’t so twisted out of shape that it doesn’t quite know what pleasure means anymore – and see if he’s able to enjoy it now that he’s learned more about how to live in the moment.

Bucky finds himself leaving Dr. Lyszinski's office feeling rather overwhelmed by all this. It sure seems like a lot of work, even though it really shouldn’t be. After all, part of his homework is literally just to have good time. That’s not something people should need to practice, and he’s worried that having to work so hard to enjoy himself will suck all the enjoyment out of it.

He’s worried it won’t be worth it.

If Steve notices that Bucky is very quiet on the drive home, he doesn’t say anything.

Chapter 20 Notes:

omg i'm sorry for updating so often (i swear i do other things in life, too...)????? cuz like a lot of you guys are nice enough to leave a comment on every chapter, and i feel bad like i'm making you guys feel obligated to keep doing so. idk i'm always worried that i'm forcing people to do things out of obligation I HAVE A COMPLEX OK but i guess this is basically to say
a) thank you, to anyone who is reading whether they comment or not, and
b) it's totally okay if you don't reply to every part, but of course i am always grateful if you do ♥
also, additional warnings in this chapter for bucky's intense feelings of guilt/self-blame.

Chapter Text

Mindfulness turns out to be a bit of a double-edged sword for Bucky. On the one hand, when he’s able to apply it to an actual activity, it does help him stay in the moment and protects him from being swept away by either past or future. But if he’s doing something more passive or body-centric, such as lying in bed or having a shower, then all that zeroed-in focus often unearths body memories that he doesn’t understand and doesn’t know how to deal with. After a particularly bad incident where trying to be mindful while changing into his pyjamas leaves him with a ghostlike sensation of hands undressing him that lasts all night, Bucky decides to move on to the next part of his homework. The part where he’s supposed to try to enjoy himself.

“What are some things that I used to like to do?” he asks Steve.

Steve looks deeply uncomfortable. “Buck... This isn’t really something I— you gotta figure this one out on your own. I can’t— No one can tell you what to like.”

“I don’t want you to tell me what to like,” Bucky huffs in frustration, “I’m not looking for orders or anything, I swear... I just need to know where to start. C’mon, Steve. Just gimme some ideas. Please?”

Steve still looks reluctant, but Bucky can tell that his resolve won’t last much longer, and he feels slightly guilty for exploiting the way Steve is so happy whenever Bucky is able to ask for something that he is never able to say no to him.

“You like...-d... all sorts of stuff,” Steve begins, unable to keep the wistful tremor out of his voice. “One of your favourite things to do when we went out was go dancing, which I was terrible at, by the way. You liked baseball, Greta Garbo movies, the old mystery shows on the radio... And of course you had a penchant for all the amusement park rides that I couldn’t go on without getting sick.”

Bucky manages a small chuckle, even though he’s started to feel very sad. The person Steve is describing – the one who liked dancing and the Dodgers and Queen Christina – he doesn’t exist anymore. Steve will never get that person back.

“There are things you like now, though, aren’t there?” Steve insists, a little desperately. “You like cooking and listening to music and... and you have Nomad now, and you love her. Oh, and board games! We haven’t done that in a while, but we always have fun when Nat and Sam come over, don’t we?”

Bucky gives a neutral shrug. While he technically does ‘like’ all the things Steve has listed, he still can’t help but to feel that they’re not so much pastimes he does for his own amusement as they are ones used literally just to pass time. He doesn’t necessarily seek out these activities for his own pleasure, he simply does them because it’s something to do that isn’t sitting staring off into space all day.

Nevertheless, he is able to recognise that this is probably as good as it’ll get for him, so he goes with it.

Sam and Natasha come over the following afternoon and Sam brings the Game Of Life. Bucky has apparently played it before but doesn’t remember, though he’s quick to pick up on the rules.

At first, he tries to play the game mindfully, focusing on the topography of the board with its little hills and valleys, the sound of the spinner wheel as it ticks and twirls, the way his minivan-shaped playing piece feels in his hand. All this ends up doing, however, is making Bucky take twice as long as everyone else to complete his turn, because he’s concentrating too much on not concentrating on anything else.

Steve must think this means Bucky is having one of his foggy days, because he keeps glancing at him in between turns before he finally leans in and asks in a low voice, “Everything okay, Buck?”

Bucky tries not to notice the way both Sam and Natasha suddenly become very interested in sorting their money. He blinks and says, “Yeah... why? Do I seem like I’m not?”

“No,” Steve replies quickly, “No, no, it’s not— I mean, it’s nothing. Sorry. I was just... making sure.”

“I’m okay, Steve,” Bucky sighs, embarrassed that Steve is checking up on him like this in front of their friends, like he’s a freakin’ little kid who can’t take care of himself.

After that, Bucky changes his approach. He realises he’d been trying so hard to be in the moment that he was becoming consumed by it – getting trapped in one spot instead of allowing himself to go with the flow. So, instead of focusing so intently on anchoring himself in one place, he simply lets things happen, taking them in as they come and releasing them when they go.

He’s surprised by how well this works. He ends up having – dare he say it – quite a bit of fun. There’s something oddly comforting about playing a game that’s centred around the most mundane aspects of life, because they’re all things that he – and everyone else in this room – have missed out on. Bucky may not be able to get a job or raise a family, but he can collect career cards and fill his tiny plastic minivan with tiny plastic children.

Natasha wins the game by several thousand dollars, though Sam thinks she should be disqualified since she saved a lot of money by dumping most of her children on the side of the road, to which Natasha replies that you have to think outside of the box to get ahead. When Steve takes Sam’s side by pointing out that infanticide doesn’t count as innovative thinking, Natasha looks to Bucky to back her up, but all of a sudden Bucky is feeling a little sick because he is pretty sure he’s killed children before and he unceremoniously excuses himself to the bathroom.

Everyone else is tactful enough not to say anything when he brings Nomad with him.

Bucky sits on the closed toilet seat, trying to will himself to stop shaking, stop thinking, as Nomad props her front legs up on his lap. He stays there for a good ten minutes, and feels an irrational sense of abandonment when Steve doesn’t come to ask if he’s all right, even though he knows he’d just clam up if Steve did.

Once the worst of the dizziness has passed, Bucky takes off his socks and stands up, relishing the shock of the cool tile against his bare feet as he goes to the sink and runs cold water over his flesh hand until his fingers are numb.

By the time he emerges from the bathroom, Steve is tidying up the snacks they’d been eating and Natasha and Sam are gone. Normally Bucky would be mildly offended that they left without saying goodbye, but right now he’s just thankful that they know him well enough to recognise when he can’t handle even just the most customary of human interactions like parting pleasantries between friends.

When Steve sees him, he immediately puts down the bowls he’d been holding and rushes over to Bucky’s side, looking fretful. “What happened there, Buck?”

“I freaked out a little but I’m okay now,” Bucky replies vaguely, not wanting to deal with Steve’s fussing. It’s not even really a lie; he is feeling a lot better than he was just fifteen minutes ago.

He helps Steve clean up despite being thoroughly exhausted, then drops heavily down onto the couch.

“You seemed like you had a good time, though,” Steve says hopefully as he comes to sit beside him.

“Actually, I did,” Bucky replies, slightly stunned by his own admission.

“Maybe we should do it again soon?”

Bucky swallows a few times, then says shyly, “Yeah, but maybe next time, it— maybe it can be just you and me?”

Steve’s head whips over to stare at him.

“I mean,” Bucky chatters nervously, wringing his hands, “Like... it was a little nervewracking trying to— This was the first time we’ve had that many people over in a while, and it was maybe a little too much all at once, too many people, and I just—”

“No, hey, it’s okay,” Steve cuts in. “Of course we can do something just the two of us. I... I’m sorry if today was too overwhelming for you.”

Bucky looks down, fiddling with a loose thread in his sleeve. “Nah, I was fine. But... yeah, maybe, um, just us next time.”

“Of course, Buck,” Steve says, sounding oddly feverish. “Anything... anything you want.”

Bucky spends the rest of the day feeling a bit like he’s full of clouds, the little incident in the bathroom all but forgotten. He watches a rerun of Bewitched with Steve and laughs several times. He finishes everything on his plate at dinner. Makes eye contact with someone he passes by when he’s out taking Nomad for a walk.

It’s not until he’s settled into bed for the night that everything changes.

This has always been the most dangerous time of day for him. The window between wakefulness and sleep is when the worst of his thoughts come out to feed. It’s when he is at his most vulnerable – forced to empty out his brain in order to relax enough to rest, he’s left without the protection of his usual distractions. It’s then, when he’s exposed and open to attack, that all the nasty feelings come creeping in. They hold his brain hostage, and he never quite knows what it is they’re demanding for its release.

Tonight, he can’t stop thinking about how much he’d enjoyed himself that afternoon, but it suddenly all feels very wrong somehow.

It’s not the unease he’d previously described to Dr. Lyszinski, about being unable to have a good time because he was too worried about when it would end. No, this is entirely different, because he was able to have a good time. It was fine when it was happening. It’s only now that it’s gone wrong.

That’s when Bucky realises what it is. The only feeling he’s ever known to come after the fact instead of before or during.

It’s guilt.

It’s not that he’s afraid of feeling good. It’s that he knows he has no right to be.

This realisation seeps into practically every corner and crevice of his life. It’s an almost surreal experience, to go through your days so acutely, intensely aware that you do not deserve a single bit of what you have. Of course, Bucky has always known this about himself, but at least before he’d been making up for it by being thoroughly miserable most of the time.

There is no longer that sense of atonement now that he’s been doing better. Even when he was at his lowest, it was still more than he deserved, but now? Now it’s just obscene.

He remembers once having told Sam that he was disgusting because he felt like he was only ever affected by his own pain, not that of the countless people whose lives he’d destroyed. Maybe now that his own pain has receded ever so slightly, it’s created space for the pain of others.

On one hand, this guilt is a luxury. He hadn’t had the time to indulge in it before, not when he was so caught up in his own agony that he had absolutely no room for anything else.

On the other, the guilt is worse than anything he’s ever known. He’s powerless against it, because he has absolutely no way to redeem himself, seeing as no amount of punishment, whether self-inflicted or otherwise, could ever come close to paying penance for what he’s done. His only option is to allow himself experience it in full. To let it consume him. Because even then, he’d be feeling but a mere fraction of the suffering he’d caused other people.

He says nothing about any of this to anyone. Not to Steve, not to Dr. Lyszinski.

Instead, he holds it close like a wedding vow. Something that’s meant only for him. He can’t have anyone take this away from him, because letting himself feel this way, refusing to spare himself a single ounce of this misery, it’s the only right thing he’s ever done.

It’s not long before this plan strikes a distinctly Steve-shaped roadblock.

Bucky has been getting worse – he’s sluggish and spacey and short-tempered, harder to shake out of flashbacks and more prone to panic. None of this goes unnoticed by Steve, whose face is now constantly pulled into a vague expression of worry, and it makes Bucky feel horrible because the whole point of this plan was to punish himself for hurting other people, not to hurt other people even more.

“Bucky, please,” Steve says to him, unable to keep the imploring fear out of his voice, “Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong. Or— or at least talk to Dr. Lyszinski. Or... anyone. Just... please just don’t keep it all inside.”

Bucky shakes his head stubbornly.

From then on, he tries a little harder to hide it, which of course simply makes everything worse because trying to maintain a veneer of wellness eats up so much of the energy that he needs to actually be well. With his resources divided and watered down like this, his decline steepens, to the point where his own pain once again takes centre stage and pushes everyone else’s out of the frame. Suddenly he no longer cares about penance because he doesn’t think he can stand to feel this way even just for another second.

And so, just like he’d done under every kind of torture he’d been put through, he breaks.

He digs out copies of all the reports from the Winter Soldier’s missions and that week he walks into Dr. Lyszinski’s office and drops the folder onto her desk.

He doesn’t quite understand his own reasoning behind this, only that he’s doing it out of desperation. He supposes it might be a combination of testing the limits of Dr. Lyszinski’s compassion and wanting to get an objective perspective on the matter. Everything depends on her reaction. Either she will confirm everything he’s ever suspected to be true about himself, which would in many ways be a relief, or she will do the opposite, meaning there may just be hope for him yet.

“I’ll say it to you as many times as you need to hear it,” Steve had told him once. “It’s not your fault.”

For some reason, though, Steve’s words have never been enough. Neither have Sam’s or Natasha’s. Bucky knows it’s odd for him to be pinning everything on Dr. Lyszinski right now when he’s already received more than enough reassurance from the other people in his life, but he needs it from her the most because he knows she’s not obligated to give it to him like his friends are.

She picks up the file from her desk but doesn’t open it.

“What’s this?” she asks carefully.

“Every reason why you shouldn’t be trying to help me,” Bucky replies, voice flat.

For the first time since they’ve met, Dr. Lyszinski looks like she’s not quite sure what to do, though she seems to be able to tell that Bucky is challenging her in some way.

Finally, she just says, “Would you like me to read this now?”

Bucky nods tightly around the heat of the bile rising in his throat. He swallows it down, compulsively flexing his fists, ignoring Nomad’s attempt to get him to pet her.

Remembering what Dr. Lyszinski had said on their first visit about why the sofa isn’t pressed all the way up against the wall, Bucky goes and sits behind it so that he doesn’t have to see the disgust that will inevitably colour Dr. Lyszinski’s face when she learns the full extent of everything he’s done. He knows he deserves to feel every ounce of her hatred, but he just doesn’t think he can handle that right now. Not from her.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there for, tucked away behind the couch with his knees drawn up to his chest, Nomad snuggled up beside him despite his previous rejection of her comfort.

After what feels like a nanosecond and an eternity all at once, he picks up on the smell of peppermint, hears Dr. Lyszinski’s voice saying his name, and it’s only then that he realises he must have checked out at some point. It’s been a while since that’s happened, and he’s so angry at himself for letting it happen now because it feels like yet another step backwards.

Shakily, he hauls himself to his feet and forces himself to take a proper seat on the couch, though he carefully avoids looking Dr. Lyszinski in the eye.

“James,” she says quietly.

He feels himself begin to shake.

“James. It’s all right. I’m not thinking anything bad about you. My opinion of you hasn’t changed.”

“Well it should,” Bucky snarls, raising his head, “Now that you know what I am.”

“And what is that?”

“A murderer,” he spits out, every syllable trembling with venom. “A cold-blooded killer.”

“That’s not how I see it at all.”

Bucky just lets out a bitter, disbelieving snort.

“James, listen to me,” Dr. Lyszinski says, and her tone is so firm that he snaps to attention, “You are not to blame for any of the things in these files. You were not acting out of your own free will. You had about as much choice in the matter as a bullet coming out of a gun.”

Bucky shakes his head furiously. “Sorry doc, but that’s baloney. It’s like that stupid slogan that people who think they should have the right to walk around with assault rifles are always saying – ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’ Well, yeah, maybe, but they’d probably find it a lot harder to kill anything if they didn’t have the gun in the first place.”

“But you’re not a gun, James,” Dr. Lyszinski points out calmly.

“Then that makes it even worse, doesn’t it? If I wasn’t a gun... If I’m not... a weapon, that means I’m a- a person... and a person knows the difference between right and wrong. So that means I knew it was wrong and I— I did it anyway.”

“But if I’m not mistaken, you were told you were doing the right thing.”

Bucky falters, getting a little confused. “Well... yeah, but...”

“You were literally brainwashed, James. And even then, the only way they could get you to do what they wanted was by making you believe you were doing something good.”

“No... No, I- I should’ve been able to tell, though, th-that it wasn’t actually—”

“How aware were you of what you were doing?”

Bucky’s shaking intensifies. He fishes the worry stone out of his pocket and stares at it until everything is tinged with blue.

“I don’t know,” he confesses in a tiny voice, after a long pause. “I... I remember... sometimes... it felt— maybe not wrong, exactly, but... not... right. I couldn’t... I didn’t really understand what was happening, a lot of the time. But I do know that I... I only wanted to be good... I didn’t w-want— I didn’t want to hurt people. I swear.”

“I believe you,” Dr. Lyszinski assures him, but he doesn’t quite believe her. “Now, repeat that last part again.”

Bucky frowns. “I... swear?”

“Before that.”

“I...” Bucky’s voice suddenly gives out as he realises what she’s trying to get him to say.

He licks his lips, clears his throat.

Says, very quietly but very clearly, “I didn’t want to hurt people.”

“That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing a cold-blooded killer would say, now does it?” Dr. Lyszinski notes, and her face is all warmth and not anger and she’s not telling him he’s terrible or kicking him out of her office and nothing makes sense anymore but Bucky thinks he might just be okay with this because the sense things were making before kind of really sucked.

“I have to write letters to myself for my homework,” Bucky complains, the disdain apparent in his voice.

Steve asks, “Letters about what?”

“One apologising to myself for treating myself badly, and another—” Bucky swallows hard and looks away, “—forgiving myself. For... everything.”

“I think that’s a great idea.”

“It’s a stupid idea.”

“It’s not,” Steve asserts flatly. “Bucky, you... You feel guilty, of course, I get it. And I understand that there will always be some part of you that blames yourself, even though I hope one day there won’t be. But... Don’t you see, Buck? We’ve all forgiven you by now. So even if you do still think it’s your fault... it’s time you start trying to forgive yourself.”

Bucky thinks the apology letter will be the easier one to write, so he starts with that, but only gets about as far as

Dear James,
Sorry.

before he gets stuck.

The second letter is even worse. Bucky can’t think about forgiving himself without also having to think about all the things he’s trying to forgive himself for, which sends him spiralling into a panic that bottoms out in a depression that lasts for days.

Once again, Bucky calls Dr. Lyszinski the morning of his next session to tell her that he can’t make it. He doesn’t think he can face having to tell her that he couldn’t even complete this one simple piece of homework.

But once again, she somehow knows exactly what to say. She manages to wheedle the truth out of him – that he was ashamed for not being able to write the letters – and promises that she’s not angry or disappointed. She apologises for having given him a task that he wasn’t ready for, and something about the way she says that – ‘wasn’t ready for’ instead of something else like ‘couldn’t handle’ – is so immensely reassuring that he finds himself agreeing to come to his appointment after all.

There, Dr. Lyszinski apologises again for pushing him too quickly and reminds him that he is always in charge of the pacing here, which he realises is supposed to comfort him but instead he just feels coddled and dumb. He knows he was very specific with her about not wanting to rush into anything, but for some reason the fact that she is actually heeding his request is making him feel useless. Maybe it’s because he knows he’ll never be able to push himself enough to make any real breakthroughs, so in a way he’s depending on someone else to force him to take that extra step. At the same time, however, he knows that if anyone were to do so, he’d either shut down completely or run for the hills and it would be a disaster all over again.

He just feels so terrible for not being able to handle moving any faster. He hates that he’s wasting twice as much of Dr. Lyszinski’s time, twice as much of Steve’s money, twice as much of Steve’s life. He has no right to put everyone else’s plans on hold just because he wants to take the scenic route to recovery. All the people in his life – Steve, Sam, Natasha, Dr. Lyszinski – they’ve all been so unbelievably patient with him; it’s only fair that he pay them back in kind by actually getting better.

When he tells this to Dr. Lyszinski in an embarrassed mumble, she writes down a list of some of the problems he’d been having when he'd first come to her. Then, she gives Bucky a Sharpie and has him cross out all the things that no longer apply and rewrite them as the way they are now.

Some things stay the same, but there are a lot more corrections to make than he would’ve thought.

This time around, Bucky’s homework is to get himself in a good place and then pretend he’s writing a letter to someone he loves who is going through the same thing as he is, since he’s not yet ready to show that kind of empathy to himself.

After a lavish long bath, he shuts himself in the bedroom with a pen and a notepad and Nomad by his side, and while he can’t quite bring himself to put his thoughts together in a particularly cohesive way, he manages to make a couple of point-form notes.

Dear friend,

You’re having a tough time right now but that’s okay.
You’ve been doing better even if it doesn’t feel like it a lot of the time.
You’re trying so hard.
You’re safe now.

I know you blame yourself for a lot of things.
You think you should have been able to stop them. To stop yourself.
You think you must be so bad to deserve what they did to you.
You think you’re weak for letting them do it.

But the truth is:
Bad people did bad things to you because they were bad people.
They made you do bad things because they were bad people.
You are not the one who is bad.

It’s not your fault.
You did the best you could.
You’re doing the best you can.

You’re safe now.

Bucky doesn’t realise how badly he’s shaking until he goes to rip the page from the notepad and the paper is fluttering almost violently in his hand.

He looks down at it uncomprehendingly, as though every letter has suddenly been replaced with hieroglyphs, because that’s how they’re registering in his brain right now. He doesn’t understand a single word he’s written. This kind of compassion, at least when directed to himself, is completely incomprehensible to him, like a dead language. But it’s one that he’s willing to try to learn, to try to bring back to life.

Chapter 21 Notes:

you all said you didn't mind my total inability to stop posting this fic for even five minutes, so here we go. as always, thank you so, so much to anyone who is reading and/or commenting. this story would never have made it nearly this far without you.
additional warning in this chapter for an incidence of ableism.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Things begin to improve as Bucky gradually allows himself to let go of his guilt. Where he might have once sought to drain it from him through an open wound, both literally and figuratively, he is now learning to let it slowly dilute itself until it can trickle out of him on its own. He works on atoning for what he’s done in the past not with his usual method of being cruel to himself, but by being kind. He does little nice things for his friends, like baking them cupcakes or knitting them tea cozies. Donates canned goods to the food drive. He tries to take care of himself by developing a stabilising daily routine and writing more notes to himself disguised as letters to loved ones.

It’s not easy, and it doesn’t always work, but he keeps practicing, and the better he gets at it, the more leeway he has to work on his other goals.

The thing he’s the most desperate to tackle is the issue of physical contact.

Now that the more dangerous feelings have begun to subside, that near-unbearable sense of absence has begun to reemerge from the tangled wreck of half-formed needs and shapeless wants inside his brain. Nomad’s presence has undoubtedly helped him immensely, but it’s just not enough.

It’s not Steve.

During a session where he is feeling particularly bold, Bucky brings up the subject of touch with Dr. Lyszinski. He’s been having a good couple of weeks, and he’s noticed that the better he feels, the more palpable that bewildering need for closeness becomes, as if there’s something inside of him that he wants to be able to share with someone else in a very specific way.

The first thing Dr. Lyszinski does is teach him about boundaries. At first Bucky is a little annoyed because it’s not like he doesn’t know what the word means, but the more Dr. Lyszinski says, the more he realises he has no idea how to apply those meanings to his own life. When she tells him that boundaries are created to promote and preserve personal integrity, his brain goes absolutely blank for a good five minutes because of how unfathomable a concept that is for him.

“Interpersonal trauma,” Dr. Lyszinski says, “By its very definition, involves the violation of a person’s boundaries. Ordinarily, people are able to feel safe because they can always assume that their boundaries will be respected. Trauma, however, completely robs a person of that assumption, to the point where they might come to believe that they do not deserve to have boundaries at all, let alone ones that will be abided by.”

Bucky’s entire body starts trembling as he takes all of this in and he dizzily signals for Nomad to settle onto his lap before he becomes too overwhelmed to communicate.

This is not how he’d expected the conversation to go when he’d awkwardly asked Dr. Lyszinski for advice on how to deal with his touch issues. He hates to admit it, but he’d been looking for some kind of quick fix, maybe a few exercises to try at home, and then poof everything would be better. He hadn’t realised just how incredibly deep-seated the roots of this problem truly are, and that resolving it would take a complete overhaul of his belief system.

Dr. Lyszinski says that in order to be able to safely give and receive physical contact, Bucky will first need to learn that he has the right not only to define his own boundaries, but also to enforce them.

For what feels like the millionth time, Bucky insists that he’s more or less gotten the hang of that in most areas of his life, which may be a bit of an exaggeration, but he doesn’t think it’s an outright lie. He tries to explain that it’s just when it comes to his body that he really has a tough time.

That’s when Dr. Lyszinski teaches him about saying no, which makes him feel even stupider than when she’d been explaining boundaries but he listens anyway, the fingers of his human hand running absently through Nomad’s thick coat.

“There are lots of ways to say no that don’t necessarily involve uttering the word itself,” she says. “Sometimes no words are needed at all. Expressing it verbally is probably the most explicit way to implement a boundary, but can you come up with any ways that you could convey no without using words?”

Bucky thinks for a moment before he remembers the exercise they’d done with the pillow and he says, “Pushing the other person away?”

Dr. Lyszinski nods. “That’s certainly one way to do it. You could also draw away from the person or adopt a facial expression that displays your discomfort. Even an involuntary reaction such as freezing up or flinching could be – or at least should be – interpreted as a sign that you want the other person to stop. Of course, the unfortunate truth is that not everyone will be perceptive or considerate enough to be able to pick up on these non-verbal cues, but when it comes to the people you trust most in your life, those should often be enough, so in times when you’re finding it hard to say the word no, you could try communicating in some of these other ways.”

Bucky’s thoughts wander, inevitably, to Steve. How he doesn’t even accidentally reach out towards Bucky anymore. Bucky can’t really remember how it feels to have someone starting to touch him because it’s been so long since anyone has even so much as asked to do so, and now with Nomad by his side, he’s also able to keep most strangers at a safe distance. He wonders how he might react if someone safe were to extend their hand towards him now. The mere thought of it makes his breathing hitch and his pulse canter, but, for perhaps the very first time, the idea of never being able to experience the warmth of another human being’s presence also makes his chest seize just as badly, and he thinks that might just make all the difference.

Dr. Lyszinski suggests that Bucky experiment with his boundaries regarding personal space with someone he trusts, and from there he can try to work up to practicing it with actual physical contact.

Bucky turns to Natasha for help.

For some reason he’s always felt more immediately comfortable around her than with anyone else, maybe because of the extra level of understanding that they share from having come from such similar backgrounds. He also has the suspicion that – because of that background and the fact that she is a woman – she is more familiar with the experience of inhabiting a body that so many other people believe they have some kind of right or entitlement to.

After all, she was the one who had tried to teach him about ‘agency’ and introduced him to all those simple but effective ways of reclaiming himself. She was the one who’d suggested to Steve that he try reaching out towards Bucky to get Bucky to practice saying stop.

When Bucky awkwardly asks her for her help via text, Natasha comes over on an afternoon when Steve is out going Go-Karting for the first time with Sam. She arrives armed with another collection of indulgent self-care items – lotions, oils, sheets of silks and furs and fabrics.

They sit on the floor of the living room and start off by pampering their own bodies. At first, all Bucky can do is run his human hand across the different pieces of cloth, immersing himself in the various tactile sensations as he watches Natasha brush her hair and paint her nails. The whole time she speaks softly to him about how treating herself well on the outside can help make her feel good about herself on the inside, and Bucky has a feeling that he’s currently seeing a side of Natasha Romanoff that most of the world doesn’t know exists.

This thought is comforting to him for some reason, so he picks up a brush and runs it through his own hair, focusing on the gentle nip of its bristles and its tugging on his scalp. He lets Natasha paint his pinky nail silver, feels the cool wetness of the lacquer through the nerveless keratin. It’s all strangely invigorating in a way that he wouldn’t have imagined this type of activity being.

After that, Natasha opens a tub of vanilla-scented moisturiser and slathers it across whatever expanses of exposed skin she can reach without actually removing any of her clothing. Again, Bucky only watches at first, transfixed and astonished by the sight of someone exploring their own body with so much confidence. This is clearly a pleasurable experience for her – the corners of her lips are quirked up in a small, contented smile and her breathing is deep and even – and her visible satisfaction eventually convinces Bucky that he might like it, too.

He chooses a luxurious coconut butter, swiping his human fingers through it before hesitantly rubbing them against the sole of his foot. The areas of his body to which he can apply the cream are restricted by the fact that he can only use the one hand since he doesn’t want to get lotion stuck in all the grooves of his metal arm, but he likes that it gives him an excuse not to have to touch himself all over. He sticks to his feet, his neck, even slips a cautious hand down his shirt to reach a part of his chest, and they sit in comfortable silence for a little while after that, allowing Bucky to soak up all the sensations he’d just experienced and regain his bearings.

Eventually, Natasha turns to Bucky and asks if he still feels up to practicing telling her to stop, and he’s exhausted, but in a nice, relaxed kind of way, so he says yes.

They get up off the floor and go to sit on the couch, facing each other, then Natasha asks quietly, “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Bucky replies without even having to think about it.

The effect that this tiny one-syllable word has on Natasha is oddly apparent. Her eyes widen ever so slightly and her breathing becomes audible.

“Natalia...?” Bucky asks worriedly.

That flicker of vulnerability vanishes so quickly that Bucky thinks maybe he’d imagined it.

“You know,” Natasha says slowly, “After Steve saved me from the missile strike on Camp Lehigh, I asked him if... if he’d trust me to do the same for him if it were the other way around.”

“He said yes, didn’t he,” Bucky guesses with an affectionate roll of his eyes.

“Yep. But it— I don’t know, it really got to me somehow... People like Rogers... They don’t trust people like me. It just doesn’t happen.”

She doesn’t say it with any self-pity in her voice, just a flat matter-of-factedness that somehow makes Bucky’s heart ache for her even more.

“Good people are always the first to forgive us, though,” he points out softly.

“It’s not even just the fact that he’s such a good guy,” Natasha says, “I don’t know what it is exactly, 'cause, I mean, trusting someone to save your life isn’t even really that big a deal. That kind of thing can be bought. It’s... it’s trusting someone with all the other stuff inside of you that’s— and I realised... I did. I trust Steve with more than just my life.”

“He tends to have that effect on people.”

“He does,” Natasha agrees with a chuckle. There’s a pause, then she adds, “I used to think that love and trust were the luxuries of children and fools.”

“But now?” Bucky asks, genuinely curious.

Natasha smiles, broad and sly. “Well... I never did have a real childhood. So I’m cashing in on everything I missed now.”

Thinking about this is what keeps Bucky determined and grounded the entire time he’s practicing saying stop. It had never occurred to him to try to seek out everything he’d missed out on, because he’s always been too busy dealing with the fallout of having had those things so brutally taken from him in the first place. Now that he’s been given a bit of breathing room, however, he realises just how fucking badly he wants to be able to experience all of those luxuries he’d been denied.

Trust. Touch. Safety. Love.

He doesn’t want to just scrape by. Mere survival is no longer enough. He wants more.

This realisation hits him like a punch in the face. That not only is he wanting something, but he isn’t automatically shooting himself down for it.

He is allowed to want this.

And maybe, just maybe, he’s even allowed to get it.

This confidence is rattled a couple of days later, when he, Steve and Nomad go grocery shopping. Bucky is already a little nervous, because even though he’s been getting better and better at leaving the house, it’s always been for walks down the street or to the park - never indoors, where Nomad might turn a few more heads. His only experience with being indoors with her is during the training sessions with Jack, when they’re familiarising Nomad with some of the stores and restaurants that Bucky would be frequenting the most often. There, Jack is always the one to address whatever prying questions that strangers might have about Nomad and her job. Thankfully they’ve never had to deal with any real assholes yet, but Jack warned him that it will happen, and it would be just like Bucky’s luck to run into one now, when Jack isn’t with him to expertly handle the situation.

Bucky’s posture is that of a hunted animal when they walk through the automatic doors of the supermarket, all rounded shoulders, coiled muscle and darting eyes. The lights are too bright and the rows upon rows of items are overwhelming, but Bucky had chosen to come to this store because there would be more space to accomodate Nomad, and, he’d added wryly, if anyone gave him shit about her, a big-name company would probably be the most eager to make it up to him once he went to the news about how they denied a war veteran entry to their establishment.

It’s not as bad as Bucky feared it might be, though. He can feel people staring, some of them with obvious disapproval in their eyes, but nobody actually approaches them and they get most of their shopping done in peace.

That is, until they’re down to the last few items on their list.

Steve is inspecting some bell peppers while Bucky waits a few feet away as not to clog up the aisle when he hears someone behind him say, “That’s such a good idea.”

Bucky jumps and turns around to see a young man looking down at Nomad.

“I- I’m sorry, w-what?” Bucky asks, hating the timidness of his voice. He’s getting dizzy, like he stood up too fast on an empty stomach.

“To put a vest on your dog like that,” the guy says in a slightly impatient tone that suggests he thought Bucky should’ve been able to tell what he was talking about, “So that you can take him everywhere you want.”

Bucky just stares, speechless. He turns to look over his shoulder at Steve, who, thankfully, has picked up on the situation by now and is only a step away.

“What’s going on here?” he asks, his voice rougher than usual, so unlike the warm but genuine politeness that usually colours his tone when he’s talking to a stranger.

If the man recognises Steve, he doesn’t show it, just chatters, “I'm so gonna try this with my boxer. If you can get away with it, I know I'll be able to.”

Again, Bucky glances anxiously at Steve, not knowing how else to react, and he’s almost shocked to see the tension in Steve’s face, like it’s taking every ounce of his self-control to keep himself from punching this guy in the face.

“What is that supposed to mean,” Steve practically growls, the words coming out sounding like more of a threat than a question.

The guy snorts and gestures at Bucky. “Well, I mean look at him. He’s obviously not disabled, but no one's gonna say anything 'cause everyone these days is so worried about being PC.”

Bucky feels like he’s going to throw up.

He doesn’t hear how Steve responds because Nomad is tugging him away, leading him towards the exit, and Bucky still has enough awareness left in him to be thankful that this is one of the stores that he and Jack had trained Nomad to navigate, because he knows he would not be able to find his own way out of here in the state that he’s in.

Jack had given him a rundown of the kinds of reactions he might face when out with Nomad, from restaurant owners denying him entry to people who don’t seem to be able to read the patch on Nomad’s vest that says not to touch or distract her. He also told Bucky that there’s an unfortunate growing trend of people passing their pets off as service dogs, but not once did it ever occur to Bucky that someone might think that about him, possibly because he’s so acutely aware of all the ways in which Nomad has helped him that it’s hard to believe the rest of the world isn’t able to see it, too.

Today has proven itself to be a reminder that no, they do not see it at all.

When they look at Bucky, they don’t see what Bucky sees when he gazes into the mirror, which is a barely-functional sorry excuse for a human being who can’t fucking take care of himself.

They see a healthy, able-bodied (when he’s hiding the metal arm, which he nearly always does in public) young man with no visible reason to be accompanied by a service dog.

They see a fraud.

Then again, that’s kind of what Bucky has always felt like, too, though not in any way that has to do with Nomad. It's more in the way that he feels as though he is conning the people in his life into thinking he is worth more than he is. Today’s exchange has merely served to reinforce that view of himself – that he is doing something wrong just by existing. That he is somehow overstepping some kind of boundary by trying to live more comfortably. He’s always feared that he’s taking advantage of people’s kindness and patience and caring, like accepting a prize he has not earned, or even won, and right now, he feels that way more than ever.

He crouches down on the ground by the side of the store and puts his head between his knees, trying to get everything to stop spinning. He feels Nomad messily licking his hand, and it’s keeping him present, but not really doing anything to chase away the sick feeling that’s bubbling up in every part of him.

He’s not sure how long he stays like that before he hears Steve’s voice saying his name, and it sounds so comforting and familiar after this whole disaster that he nearly bursts into tears.

He looks up to see Steve crouching low in front of him. Says, “Stevie,” in a bit of a sob.

Steve’s face crumples. “God, Buck, I’m sor- I’m sorry... I’m so sorry that happened. That asshole had no right—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bucky cuts in, lowering his eyes in shame.

“Yeah,” Steve says quickly, “Yeah, of course. Let’s just... let’s go home.”

They pile into the car, Bucky opting to sit in the back seat so that Nomad can lay across his lap. The ride back to the apartment is silent, and it’s not until they’ve walked through the front door that Bucky asks quietly, “So what did you say to him?”

Steve suddenly looks very embarrassed.

“I, um, I may or may not have told him he could go fuck himself,” he confesses, staring at his feet.

Bucky lets out an undignified squeak.

“I know, that was totally the wrong way to respond,” Steve says, “And I regret it, but only because it would’ve been more productive to educate him instead of just go off on him like that, but I— god, I was just so angry and it’d caught me so offguard, I couldn’t— I didn’t have time to think about what to say.”

Bucky lets out a slightly bitter laugh. “Well, that probably wasn’t the last time you’ll be talking to someone like that so you’ll get another chance.”

“I don’t... I hope you don’t let this get to you too much, Buck.”

“Funny you say that, ‘cause I was definitely seriously considering never leaving the house again,” Bucky deadpans, except upon seeing the look on Steve’s face, he quickly adds, “Just kidding.”

“No you’re not,” Steve replies, but his tone is light and teasing.

There’s a pause, then Bucky says, “Hey, Steve?”

“Yeah, Bucky?”

“Thanks. For, you know... Lookin’ out for me like that.”

“Always, Buck.”

Bucky is a little off for the next few days, so it might not have been the best idea to have Natasha over again, but he does it anyway, while Steve and Sam are out for lunch. This time, she’s brought with her a box of markers.

Bucky frowns. “What’re those for?”

She hands him the box and holds her arms out towards him, palms up, twigs of blue veins visible through the milky white of her skin.

“Draw something,” she says.

Bucky just stares.

“It’s the next step,” Natasha explains. “Instead of diving right in to skin-to-skin contact, we can start with using a marker. I know it sounds kinda new-agey and weird, but—”

“No,” Bucky says quickly, “No, it doesn’t. It- it’s actually a pretty neat idea. I never would’ve thought of it.”

“So you want to do this?” she verifies.

He gives a determined nod. He takes a red marker from the box before deciding that it might ending up looking like blood, so he switches it for a green one.

“What do you want me to draw?” he asks.

“It’s up to you.”

“But...” Bucky shifts uncomfortably. “But it’s your body.”

“And I trust you with it.”

This concept is thoroughly confusing to Bucky, but he figures Natasha knows what she’s doing, so he uncaps the marker and slowly, hesitantly, brings its felt tip to the skin of Natasha’s wrist, holding it there for a moment and making a blotchy wet dot. When he anxiously looks up at her, looking for reassurance that he’s not doing anything wrong, she gives him an encouraging nod. This emboldens him to drag the marker up the length of her arm, tracing the almost translucent path over her veins all the way up to her elbow. The end result looks like some kind of thin, mournful tree.

“Sorry,” he says for some reason, voice oddly tight.

Natasha gives him a bit of an exasperated look but her tone is gentle when she says, “I asked you to do this, remember? And I could’ve asked you to stop at any time if that’s what I wanted. Because I know you would have.”

There’s a pause, then Bucky says nervously, “So, um, d’you... You wanna do it to me now?”

“If that’s what you want.”

“I... Yes. Th-that’s what I want.”

Bucky can’t help but to notice that Natasha accepts his permission unquestioningly, unlike Steve, who has been known to double and triple-check with Bucky just to be absolutely sure. Though Bucky understands that that’s Steve’s way of making certain that Bucky is doing something purely out of his own free will, it sometimes has the opposite effect of making Bucky question himself and his own desires. His wants and needs are bewildering enough to him already without someone making him second-guess himself, so the way that Natasha takes his consent at face value is almost a relief.

Natasha takes a black marker and begins to write Bucky’s full name in tidy careful printing on the back of his right forearm. She has him read out each letter as she goes to make sure he’s staying present, but somewhere around the first A in Buchanan, he starts to feel hands all over, unwanted fingers trailing their deceptively gentle way down his body, and he must zone out because the next thing he knows, Nomad is licking his face to bring him back.

“Fuck,” he groans once he realises what happened. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“James, you did well,” Natasha tries to tell him, but he’s so fucking upset with himself that her words don’t even register.

He stares bitterly down at the incomplete words on his arm. It looks how he feels – jagged and unfinished and inadequate – and he’s so unbelievably angry at himself for having reacted this way.

“It’s all right,” Natasha murmurs. “You did great. We’ll keep practicing, okay?”

Bucky takes a deep breath and waits until he's sure his voice will come out steady and even then he says, “Okay.”

“You’ve sure been sending me out a lot lately,” Steve comments as he’s heading out the door one evening.

Bucky tries his best to look innocent; he’s been working on the exercise with the markers with Natasha so that he can surprise Steve with it once he’s perfected it, and he thinks he’s almost there so he doesn’t want to give anything away.

“Just thought you could use some you-time,” he says casually.

Steve looks at him with a lingering suspicion then says, “I wouldn’t mind some us-time, too, though.”

“It’s coming,” Bucky promises.

It happens the following week.

Bucky hands Steve a blue marker and says shyly, “Can you write my name? The whole thing?”

Steve gives him a bit of an odd look and Bucky can tell he has a lot of questions but the only one he utters is, “Where’s a piece of paper?”

Bucky swallows hard. He rolls up the sleeve of his right arm and extends it towards Steve, his voice soft but steady as he explains what he and Natasha have been working on for the past two weeks whenever Steve was gone.

Steve’s eyes widen and his face cracks into a stunned but delighted smile, like a kid coming home to a surprise party.

He takes the marker from Bucky and begins to write. The felt tip is cool and moist against Bucky’s arm, not at all like Steve’s fingers would feel, but the fact that it’s Steve’s hand directing its movement is more than enough for now.

Bucky watches Steve’s face intently – the concentration in the furrow of his brow, the wet pink tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, his earnest eyes in their ever-familiar cornflower blue – as he quietly murmurs out every letter as it’s written, able to distinguish each one by feeling the path it traces on his skin.

It feels... incredible. Bucky finds himself staying present not just because he knows he should, but because he wants to be able to feel every bit of what is happening. His heart is pounding so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if Steve can hear it, though it’s not the crazed galloping of a panicking pulse, it’s more of an acrobatic thrill in his chest. He just can’t believe how not-scared he feels right now. He might not go so far as to say he feels safe, but it’s certainly more comfortable than he’d ever imagined himself being with someone this close to him.

Steve looks up at him once he finishes the curl of the last S, breath wriggling from his slightly parted lips in a soft gasp. He looks like he wants to speak but nothing comes.

“Steve?” Bucky asks tentatively.

Something in Steve’s eyes seems to come to life, blue with heat and flame instead of sadness, and he says, in almost a whisper, “James. James Buchanan Barnes.”

Bucky looks down at his arm and shivers under the way Steve’s voice feels inked into his skin. He reads his name over and over and over. It’s his name, something that belongs to him, something he owns, but he’s perfectly okay with how it sounds tucked away in Steve’s mouth, safe and secure like a baby crocodile protected between its mother’s fearsome jaws.

Notes:

after 21 chapters of this thing, i feel like i know you guys so well lol and i want to be able to cry with you about Cap Things. so if you don't mind being followed by an erratic poster who overshares at weird hours of the night and is prone to deleting all their entries every couple of weeks, my ~**~fandom blog~*~* is here, but has no posts because i just made it.........

Chapter 22 Notes:

the warning for past sexual abuse applies particularly to this chapter.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Bucky and Steve start to write something on each other almost every day. Often it’s just a single word, occasionally entire confessions, sometimes nothing more than a nonsensical assortment of lines and shapes and dots, but either way, Bucky can’t believe what a difference it’s made. Because he’s still more comfortable with writing things out than saying them out loud, he’s been able to communicate certain sentiments that he’d never been able to express before, and as a result, he feels closer than ever to Steve. Safer than ever.

And with that comes an inexplicably overwhelming sense of sadness.

“I don’t understand it,” he tells Dr. Lyszinski. “Things are better than they’ve ever been.”

“Can you describe how the sadness feels?” Dr. Lyszinski asks. “Is it heavy? Tight? Where do you feel it in your body?”

“It’s... bone-deep,” Bucky begins, struggling to find the right words. “I- I can feel it everywhere, but, um, I guess in my chest mostly. But... it’s different than what I’m used to. It’s not the empty dead weight of depression, it’s...”

He trails off, clenching his fists in frustration. Dr. Lyszinski waits patiently until he’s able to continue.

Finally, he takes a deep breath and says, “It’s almost like... grief.”

He stops himself there, because that doesn’t make any sense. Grief is bereavement. It’s associated with loss, which Bucky hasn’t experienced – if anything, he’s gained more than ever in the past few weeks – so why does he still feel this sorrow so acutely in every cell of his body? It billows up within each one of his organs, bubbles in his bloodstream, crackles nonstop through the electrocuted circuitry of his brain.

“Grief,” Dr. Lyszinski repeats thoughtfully. “As if you’re... in mourning?”

Bucky nods uncomfortably. “Yeah, I guess... But I don’t get it, ‘cause it’s not like I’ve lost anything recently.”

“How about less recently?”

“What...?”

“How safe do you feel right now?” Dr. Lyszinski asks. “Will you be all right if we go a bit deeper into the past?”

Bucky frowns. “How far back into the past?”

“As far back as it takes to find a loss that you could be mourning.”

“Uh,” Bucky says, “I- I guess that’d be okay. But I can’t think of anything that might...”

Wait.

He contemplates the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks of grief.

Death.

“I died,” he whispers, stricken. “The train... When I fell from that train, it- it may not have killed me, but it took... It still took my life.”

The truth of what he’s just said strikes him with all the breathtaking force of a solid punch to the gut and he feels himself actually becoming winded by its impact. Dr. Lyszinski notices right away and gets him to regulate his breathing before they continue.

She points out that the grieving process is recognised as a necessary step in being able to ‘move on’ after incidents of tangible loss like the death of a loved one. Less recognised, however, is the need to grieve the types of loss that do not involve something physical. The types that you carry inside of yourself. Because these losses, too, need to be mourned in order to be processed and overcome.

“Unlike with the traditional grieving process, where it is obvious what has been lost,” she says, “The first stage in this type of grieving usually involves having to acknowledge the fact that there has been any loss at all, particularly in cases where there is no understanding of a life ‘pre-trauma’ from which one is able to draw a comparison. This can be especially difficult because you are, essentially, trying to mourn the loss of something that you might not necessarily have even had in the first place.”

As recently as several months ago, Bucky probably would not have been able to wrap his head around any of this, so it’s a testament to how far he’s come that he can readily identify some of the things he is missing.

Safety. Trust. A sense of self. The ability to interact with people.

“I didn’t just lose these things,” he says suddenly, voice trembling with suppressed emotion, “They were taken from me.”

Dr. Lyszinski gives a solemn nod. “Is this the first time you’ve had this realisation, James?”

Bucky merely sits there, stunned, for a long time.

It’s more than just a realisation. It’s a fucking epiphany.

Ever since he’d been made to write that letter to himself and the fog of guilt slowly began to dissipate in his brain, Bucky had been starting to feel a slight change in terms of his perception of what had happened to him, but he couldn’t figure out what was different about it. Perhaps it took these past few weeks of relative comfort and safety to drive the point home – the more he’s learned to care for himself and accept the care of others, the more he’s begun to recognise the possibility that he didn’t deserve what was done to him, and with that recognition comes an inevitable sense of sorrow.

Of grief.

No one is more surprised than he is when he starts to cry.

Bucky is absolutely silent on the drive home, completely and utterly drained by everything he’d learned during his session. It’s a good kind of drained, though, if such a thing exists. He’d felt so foolish when he hadn’t been able to stop crying in Dr. Lyszinski’s office, but he can’t deny that it had been an unbelievably cathartic experience, leaving him with an almost purified sense of relief, as if something huge had been purged from him, which he supposes it had.

He’s never expressed that much emotion before. Not once. He’s cried tears of frustration, of shame, of fear, but never sorrow, let alone sorrow over what had happened to him.

He thinks about the range of reactions he’s seen on Steve’s face when it comes to what Bucky has gone through. Anger, horror, empathy, sadness. All of them are feelings that Bucky has never been able to muster up about his own situation.

Until now.

Suffice to say, for someone whose emotional spectrum has thusfar consisted only of different shades of terror and pain, this sudden opening up is more than a little overwhelming, and Bucky sleeps for most of the rest of the day so that he doesn’t have to feel it as much.

Really, Bucky’s just surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

It’s dawn and Nomad is whining to be taken out because they’d walked her fairly early on in the evening the night before. Steve is still mostly asleep but Bucky has been lying awake in bed for almost an hour so he tells Steve to stay where he is; he’ll take Nomad out alone.

He’s done it before, after all. A quick jaunt around the block when the only people out are joggers or other dog-walkers, most of whom have now seen Nomad around often enough that they know not to let their pets distract her.

He can do this.

This remains true for about ten minutes.

That’s when he sees the bowtie.

The man wearing it is all the way across the street and the rest of him looks nothing like any HYDRA tech in Bucky’s memory – he’s young and bearded, dressed all hipster plaid and jeans two sizes too small – but it doesn’t matter. Bucky’s last distinct thought is who the fuck wears a bowtie out at six in the morning? before his throat closes up and he actually physically takes a step backwards because he can feel a hand on his chest pushing him back into the chair.

Everything becomes licks of electricity and whirring machines—

Moisture on his human hand. That doesn’t make sense.

There’s too much colour. Where is all the clinical silver and gunmetal grey? The cloudy hues of pain only penetrable by the sharpest of shrieking high-voltage whites? He pushes blindly out with his metal arm, finds nothing. That doesn’t make sense either.

His human hand is still wet.

Bucky looks down.

Nomad is licking his fingers like her life depends on it.

Like his life depends on it.

Reality comes crashing back down onto him with all the weight of a sledgehammer. It pounds in his temples and squeezes at the backs of his eyes, but he’s here. He’s here and he’s safe. He kneels down to wrap his arms around Nomad’s neck, face pressed against her coat, whispering words of praise into her fur for a job well done.

He sits there on the edge of someone’s front lawn for several more minutes, playing I Spy with himself until he thinks he can make it home without getting lost, both literally and figuratively. His head is always a foggy jumble of tangled perceptions and missing pieces after a reexperiencing episode, even if it’s as short-lived as the one that had just happened, and for heart-stopping moment there, he has no idea how the fuck to get back to the apartment...

...until he realises that it’s literally just down at the end of the street.

“You’re an idiot, Barnes,” he mumbles to himself as he hauls himself to his feet, feeling incredibly stupid for everything – for being sent into a tizzy by the sight of some hipster’s bowtie, for forgetting where he was, for being foolish enough to believe he could do any of this on his own.

The block-long journey back to the apartment feels like a goddamn odyssey, and when he finally returns to the safety of his home, the only thing he wants to do is crawl under the covers and stay there for an hour, or ten.

The sound he hears when he approaches the closed bedroom door stops him in his tracks.

It’s a moan.

It’s simultaneously both familiar and foreign, a song he once knew by heart without ever having heard it before, low and breathy and trembling, punctuated by the rhythmic sound of motion that can only mean one thing.

Bucky has a foggy image of eyes squeezed tightly shut, plush reddened lips caught between teeth, needy gasps hot against his throat.

He stares at the closed door, paralysed.

A detached part of him marvels at how calm he is right now, all things considered. Then again, he has a feeling that there’s just so much going on inside his head that it’s all cancelled itself out. He doesn’t know what to think, how to feel.

So he thinks and feels nothing.

Just backs away and sinks down onto the couch in what feels like slow motion.

Time passes. He’s not sure how much.

Eventually, Steve emerges from the bedroom wearing only a pair of boxers, a towel slung across one arm and a faint sheen of sweat still gleaming on the perfect planes of his chest. When he sees Bucky, all the colour drains from his once-flushed face and his expression becomes one of horror and mortification that Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever seen before.

Bucky can tell that Steve can tell that Bucky knows exactly what was going on behind that door.

Really, Bucky’s just surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.

Two young men living in a single bedroom apartment, spending virtually all of their time together... there were bound to be a few embarrassing incidents.

Except there really weren’t.

Not with Bucky’s utterly non-existent sex drive and Steve constantly looking after everyone except himself.

Bucky feels stupid and selfish for never having thought about this before. They’ve never talked about it, Bucky’s never caught him in the act and Steve never leaves any evidence, but obviously Steve has needs, too – needs that, clearly, are not being met.

And it’s Bucky’s fault.

He’s been trying so hard and he thought he’d been making good progress, but evidently it’s just not enough.

Steve says something in a flustered mumble as he bustles off to the bathroom where Bucky hears him washing his hands, then he pops back into the bedroom to put on a shirt and pants before he comes to sit next to Bucky on the couch. Bucky may or may not flinch away, and he can’t decide whether that’s progress or not.

“So, um,” Steve says, eyes lowered, shoulders hunched, whole body radiating discomfort, “I, uh, didn’t think you’d be back so fast.”

“Had a bit of a problem,” Bucky replies tightly, not wanting to go into detail.

Slight pause. Then: “You okay, though?”

“Yeah.”

A long, terribly awkward silence follows. Bucky calls Nomad over and has her come sit on the couch between them. She yawns, lays half her body on Bucky’s lap.

Staring intently down at the fingers he’s running through Nomad’s fur, Bucky says, “Maybe it’s time you started, you know... dating someone.”

Steve gives him an uncertain, worried look.

“What—” he swallows nervously, “—What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Bucky grinds out, irritated by what he views as Steve’s wilful obliviousness. “You should date someone. Else, I mean. Someone who you can actually kiss and touch and fuck... Someone who can actually get you off.”

Steve cringes visibly, either at the crudeness of Bucky’s words or the resentment with which they were uttered, or perhaps a combination of both.

“Bucky, is this about... what you heard?”

Bucky just makes a frustrated noise, angry that Steve doesn’t seem to be able to see what’s right in front of him. Either that, or he’s trying to wheedle it out of Bucky himself, which Bucky refuses to allow.

“Talk to me, Buck,” Steve pleads, and fuck, if he had a dime for every time he’s heard that one...

“I don’t— it’s not fair to you,” Bucky replies finally, still not looking up from Nomad. “You shouldn’t have to be held back by my... You should be with someone who can give you what you want.”

Steve has that awful, stricken expression on his face that he always gets when Bucky’s said the wrong thing. It’s an expression that should be anger, but never is, and Bucky almost wishes it would be, because at least it would be a sentiment he can understand. This incomprehensible sadness that Steve always seems to feel about Bucky, for Bucky, it doesn’t make any sense, and Bucky hates being the cause of it.

“B-but... you’re what I want,” Steve says in a strangled voice.

Bucky merely eyes him with an intense suspicion.

“You really think I care— that getting off is that important to me?” Steve asks, looking hurt, which infuriates Bucky for some unknown reason.

“It’s obviously at least a little important,” he spits out with a bitterness that he’s immediately embarrassed about because he knows he has no right to be feeling it.

“You think this is your fault, don’t you,” Steve says quietly. It’s not a question.

Bucky doesn’t answer, letting his silence speak for itself.

“You feel... You think you’re obligated to... oh, god, Bucky, no. You’re not... It’s not like that. I wasn’t... This isn’t about you not, um, you know... doing that with me. You know that, right?”

Bucky just nods, even though he doesn’t really understand. He’s pretty sure that this is the most uncomfortable conversation he’s ever had. He hates that Steve can’t even say the real words right now, and he automatically comes to the conclusion that it’s because Steve thinks he’s disgusting.

Steve must be able to tell that Bucky doesn’t quite believe him, because he adds, “Even when we were, uh, having sex regularly, I would still... you know. And... so did you. It’s... completely normal.”

Bucky feels an odd heat rising to his cheeks, though it’s not from the explicit candor of Steve’s words as much as it’s disbelief towards the thought that Bucky was ever able to do that. To touch himself in that way. To make himself come. All without fear or revulsion or shame.

Because nowadays, he cannot even so much as fathom the concept. His cock is a despicable abomination at worst, meaningless dead weight at best. For all the work that he’s done reclaiming his body, this is the one part of himself that he doesn’t think he’ll ever truly be able to accept beyond its most practical functions, and even then, it’s difficult. He only ever handles it when he’s using the washroom or cleaning himself and the sight of it hanging there limp and soft between his legs never fails to disgust him. It is the part of his body that had made him the most vulnerable, that had betrayed him in the worst possible ways, and the notion of actual willing pleasure being derived from this treacherous piece of flesh is absolutely unimaginable.

Then again, this isn’t about his pleasure. It’s about Steve’s. And no matter what Steve tries to say about this not being Bucky’s responsibility, Bucky still feels like he owes him something.

He knows that if he were to tell Dr. Lyszinski about this, she would say something complicated and clinical about how his conditioning has led him to believe that sexual gratification is all he has to offer, that the only way he knows how to repay people is with his body, or something like that.

But Bucky’s come a long way from that.

Perhaps as not as far as he’d like – since really the only reason he’s not getting down on his knees for Steve at this very moment is because he has enough awareness to realise that that’s not what Steve wants – but at least these days he actually looks for cues from other people to try and deduce what they want from him instead of blindly assuming that they’re just looking to get off.

In some ways, this is even more nervewracking than if it were just to be about sex. Because sex, he understands. It’s simple and unequivocal and he knows what role he needs to play.

Now, however, there are all sorts of hints and signals that he has to interpret in order to be able to distinguish what he’s supposed to do, because while he may no longer be automatically handing his body over to whoever seems to want it, he’s still quite helpless in the face of other people’s desires. That need to please, to be good, it’s still there, but it’s so much more complicated now that he’s realised just how many different things there are for people to want from him.

He thinks he knows a way to fix this.

He wordlessly gets up and retrieves the pack of scented markers that Steve had bought for him a little while ago. He can feel Steve’s eyes nervously tracking his every move, silent, desperate, hopeful.

Bucky slides a purple marker from the box, shoos Nomad off the couch, and takes a seat next to Steve, whose breathing has become audible in the suddenly stifling silence. It culminates in a gasp when the tip of the marker touches down on the back of his hand, and Bucky can’t deny that there’s something oddly thrilling about the way Steve still reacts so intensely to this even when they’ve been drawing on each other almost on a daily basis for the past two weeks.

Bucky writes the word sorry, because he is, except when Steve looks up at him, eyes big and bright with some unidentifiable emotion, and asks him what it is he’s sorry about, Bucky can’t seem to answer.

“That’s because there’s nothing you need to be sorry for,” Steve insists.

Bucky shakes his head. “Or because there’s too many things.”

“Don’t let yourself think like that, Bucky. Don’t go back to that place. You’ve been doing so good with managing your guilt. None of this is your fault, remember?”

“I just wish I could give you what you want,” Bucky confesses in a small voice.

“I already told you,” Steve says patiently, “I’ve already got everything I want right here.”

“No,” Bucky says automatically, wanting to dispute this claim but not quite sure what his rebuttal is going to be. “You... You’re just saying that. You can’t possibly—”

“Buck, do you trust me?” Steve interrupts, and for a moment Bucky thinks this is some kind of trick question.

He says, “You know I do.”

“Then trust me to know what I want. Allow me—” Steve’s voice breaks and he takes a shaky breath before he can continue, “—Allow me the dignity of my choice.”

Bucky opens his mouth, entirely ready to keep arguing about this, but something about the far-off look in Steve’s eyes and the wistful sadness in his tone makes Bucky stop. Instead, he just presses his lips together and writes okay in watermelon-scented scar tissue pink on the inside of Steve’s forearm.

In the days that come, Bucky notices that the slightly astounded relief he’d been feeling after his last session with Dr. Lyszinski has dulled significantly, and his ability to experience grief about what had been done to him has become practically nonexistent.

At first, he’s confused by his own dismay about not being able to feel sadness. Why would anyone actually want to feel that way? He’s not sure he can answer his own question, but he guesses it might have something to do with the fact that as long as he’s able to be upset about what happened to him, then the more he can believe it wasn’t his fault. He knows he probably doesn’t deserve to be relieved of his guilt, but he simply cannot bear its burden any longer and will do whatever it takes to unload it, even if it means having to feel such a profound sorrow.

Plus, just like Dr. Lyszinski had said, grief is a necessary process, and if that is indeed the case, then Bucky would like to get it over with as soon as possible, please and thank you.

Frustrated, he sloughs his way through the week with some difficulty, his anger with himself occasionally seeping through into short-temperedness towards Steve, who can tell something’s wrong but seems afraid to ask.

Eventually, Bucky decides he’s sick of stewing in his own disappointment and tries to adopt a more productive approach. He remembers how he suspected that his capacity to grieve his own losses was encouraged in part by the fact that he’d recently been experiencing a lot of the sensations that he’d been missing out on for so long because of what had happened to him.

He calls Steve into the bedroom.

“Bucky?” he asks worriedly once he comes in. “What’s going on? Is something wrong?”

Bucky just says, “I- I want to try something.”

Steve fails pretty spectacularly at keeping his excitement under wraps, his eyes brightening and his normally agile body seeming to trip over itself in its haste to sit next to Bucky on the bed.

“Anything you want, Buck,” Steve says, a little faintly.

Bucky takes a deep breath, brow furrowing in concentration as he lifts his hand. He pretends not to notice how badly his fingers are shaking, though he’s actually a lot calmer internally than his body would suggest, and it's frustrating how his body and brain still cannot seem to fall in sync with each other.

Steve starts to say, “Bucky, what—”, but he’s cut off with what sounds dangerously close to a whimper when Bucky cups his hand with his own. Steve’s fingers twitch minutely beneath Bucky’s palm, but otherwise Steve remains completely still, staring straight ahead and barely even breathing, as though he’s afraid that this moment will shatter beneath the slightest motion.

Bucky notices this seemingly odd behaviour and asks nervously, “You okay, Stevie?”

This breaks Steve out of his trance, and his head snaps towards Bucky, looking at him with an oddly beautiful astonishment shining on his face. Bucky's uncertainty about how he's currently feeling is all but eliminated by the sight of the effect it's having on Steve, and not even just in the way Steve's reaction has confirmed that Bucky is doing what Steve wants. Instead, for perhaps the first time, Steve's reaction is making Bucky realise that this is what he wants for himself.

“I'm more than okay,” Steve murmurs, letting out a trembling breath. “W-what... what about you? Are you okay?”

“More than okay,” Bucky repeats with a tiny smile, the most honest echo in history.

Notes:

i think this story is finally coming to an end. i know how it's going to finish, just gotta connect a few more dots to get there.
i cannot thank you guys enough for having stuck with me on the longest piece i've ever been able to write, but i'll try and save all that self-indulgent mawkishness for the endnotes on the last chapter :)
ALSO if you've followed me on tumblr can you please let me know so i can follow you back (which i have to do with a different account, since my fandom tumblr is a sideblog, so don't be alarmed if you get a seemingly random follower cuz it's probably just me); and also because i'm all anxious not knowing who any of these people are lol ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶

Chapter 23 Summary:

warning for a reference to a real-life case of extreme child abuse, but no details are given.

Chapter Text

The latest in Bucky’s string of Feelings That Do Not Make Any Sense involves an inexplicable anxiety in the immediate aftermath of having held Steve’s hand. He’s not sure what his body is trying to tell him with its bothersomely heightened startle response and shallow manic heartbeat, he just knows that for the rest of the day, he feels uneasy in his own skin when he should, ostensibly, be feeling good about himself.

He should be feeling the way Steve looks – face-splitting grin, easy laughter, body no longer carrying itself as if it’s moving against a powerful current.

After all, it’s not like Bucky had done something he hadn’t wanted to do. It was quite the opposite. Bucky had been craving Steve’s skin so badly, had zeroed in on his warmth with all the lethal single-mindedness of a heat-seeking missile, and in each of their cells that touched, entire universes were born. Shouldn’t this be cause for celebration, not trepidation?

It’s such an enormous breakthrough that Bucky would be capable of recognising it as such even without Steve gushing wild words of wonder and pride.

It isn’t until Bucky talks about this with Dr. Lyszinski the following day that he comes to realise Steve’s lavish reaction might actually be part of the problem.

“I guess I’m worried I’ve set a precedent,” he says as he distractedly passes the blue worry stone from hand to hand. “Like... I’ve raised the bar too high and he’s gonna be expecting this to happen all the time now. Or... something.”

“Has he said or done anything to indicate that he feels this way?” Dr. Lyszinski asks.

“Well... no, not really,” Bucky admits, “But... I can just feel it, you know? He’s so... hopeful.”

“There’s a difference between hoping and expecting.”

“I guess,” Bucky says dubiously, though he’s not really sure what the difference could be, because in his experience, whenever someone hoped to get something from him, they usually got it. Hence, the expectation.

Dr. Lyszinski’s frustratingly reasonable piece of advice for him is to discuss how he feels with Steve, which is of course the last thing that Bucky wants to do. He hates to admit it, but he’d kind of been hoping that she would have been able to provide him with some magical other option.

Still, Bucky knows that he cannot afford not to talk to Steve about this; look what happened the last time he kept things to himself.

He still hasn’t quite forgiven himself for having let things get so out of hand. He also feels he doesn’t have the right to really complain about how bad it was because it was his own fault for not stopping any of it. The shame and guilt and regret continue to eat away at him in corrosive little nibbles in the dead of night, despite Dr. Lyszinski repeatedly trying to convince him that the fact that he regrets not having enforced his own boundaries is already a huge step forward from when he hadn’t allowed himself to even have any boundaries at all.

“I don’t know how to say it to him,” he confesses in a small voice, hating how childish he sounds, how foolish he is for not being able to figure this out on his own.

“You could write it down,” Dr. Lyszinski suggests, knowing that he sometimes communicates better that way.

Bucky thinks of blueberry ink and water melon scars and how there’s not enough skin in the world to be able to express how he feels.

Bucky is in the bedroom trying not to have a meltdown as he rewrites a fourth or fifth draft of his letter for Steve when Steve himself knocks on the door, saying he’d like to talk about something.

“I hate it when people say that,” Bucky grumbles, quickly hiding his notepad under his pillow as Steve enters the room, “Because it always means it’s something big. If it was just some little thing, they’d just come out and say it.”

Steve laughs a bit nervously. Bucky has noticed that Steve's been on edge all day, but right now he looks like a kid who’s about to show his parents a disappointing report card and Bucky can’t help but to feel a roiling dread amass in his gut as he tries to figure out what he’s done wrong. He doesn’t think he’s fucked up recently, but of course that doesn’t necessarily mean Steve doesn’t have a good reason to be upset with him.

Maybe, Bucky thinks wildly, Steve wants him to leave.

Maybe Steve has finally had it with being forced to look at this stranger wearing his best friend’s face day after day after day and he’s finally realised that no matter how much progress Bucky makes, it will never be enough. He’ll never be the Bucky that Steve remembers, and this is it, Bucky’s entire life is about to scatter like ash and he can’t even say he’s that surprised, really—

Shut up, he tells himself firmly, resisting the sudden urge to slap himself across the face. You’re doing that thing again.

As in, taking a tiny concern and blowing it way out of proportion until it’s become the end of the world.

Catastrophising, is what Dr. Lyszinski calls it.

Bucky will be the first to admit that he’s rather prone to this.

And often, if not every single time, his assessment of the situation ends up being grossly, enormously inaccurate.

This time it’s no different.

“I, um, just wanted to talk about the day before yesterday,” Steve says, anxiously wringing his hands as his eyes flit everywhere around the room except Bucky’s face.

“Then talk,” Bucky replies tersely.

Steve worries at his lower lip, trying to figure out how to phrase himself. “It was... It was wonderful, Buck. I- I thought about it all damn day afterwards. Hell, I’m still thinking about it.”

This doesn’t seem like the beginning of a conversation that’s going to culminate in the termination of a relationship, so Bucky allows himself to relax ever so slightly, even managing a catty smirk as he says, “Steve, it was, like, ten seconds of hand-holding, not a goddamn one night stand.”

“I know, I know,” Steve insists with a small, embarrassed smile, “But it’s just... It was so special, and I was – am... so proud of you.”

He pauses, and Bucky fidgets uncomfortably, unsettled as usual by being the focus of what he views as excessive, undue praise.

He’s starting to wonder what the hell Steve is trying to get at when finally Steve takes a deep breath and says, in a markedly more solemn tone, “As much as I loved that we were able to touch like that, I... I want you to know that it’s not— I don’t expect anything from you, okay? Like... I know how you get about this kind of thing, how you feel, I don’t know... obligated to... But. You’re not. Not at all. What happened, happened, and it was wonderful, but I don’t want you to be worried that I’m just, like, waiting impatiently for it to happen again.”

Steve glances at Bucky for some kind of response, but Bucky just gapes at him, jaw slack, because this is exactly the discussion that Bucky had been dreading having to initiate, and it turns out he hadn’t needed to stress about it at all.

“Bucky?” Steve says.

“What? Oh. Y-yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Okay, that’s... Thank you, Steve.”

“You understand, though, right?” Steve prods. “That you shouldn’t feel any pressure to do that again – or to do anything you don’t want to do. I wasn’t lying when I told you that having you back was already all I could ever ask for. I know that you... I understand that you feel like you’re not giving me what I want, but... I want exactly whatever you feel comfortable giving me, whenever you feel comfortable giving it.”

Bucky’s head is spinning with all of this new information. He loses a bit of time as he tries to sort everything out, coming to only once Steve’s repeated his name a few times.

“Sorry,” Bucky says automatically. “It’s just...”

He trails off, unsure what he was going to say, just knowing that none of this can be right.

Despite trusting Steve completely and possessing the objective knowledge that Steve is telling the truth about only wanting whatever Bucky is prepared to offer, Bucky still can’t help but to be wary of the entire idea.

Because if there’s anything that Bucky’s come to learn in his seventy years on and off the ice, it’s that everyone always wants something from him. They wouldn’t keep him around otherwise. A weapon is discarded once it's outlived its usefulness, and while he knows he’s not a weapon anymore, he doesn’t see how it should be much different for a person.

HYDRA wanted his marksmanship, his strength, his hand-to-hand combat skills. They wanted his mouth and his ass. Hell, even when they put him away in cryo, it was because they wanted him to be able to last longer, so that he could be used again.

So what does Steve want from him? And he obviously wants something, because he’s still here.

“If you don’t want anything from me,” Bucky says finally, “Then why are you keeping me here?”

Steve suddenly looks very upset. “Keeping you— Buck, I’m not... Is that how you feel? Like I’m... like I’m detaining you? Like you’re some kind of prisoner?”

“What— oh, god, no!” Bucky says frantically, because Steve has it all wrong. “I mean... why do you still let me stay here... with you... if you don’t... If there’s nothing I can give you in return?”

“Oh, Buck,” Steve murmurs in that slightly melancholy way that Bucky has come to know means he’s just said something that was way off the mark, “That’s not how it works... Well, okay, a relationship is a system of giving and taking, I guess, but more importantly – at least, I think – it’s also about sharing.”

It’s possible that Bucky is now even more confused than he was before, and Steve still isn’t answering his question.

“What is it that you want?” he demands bluntly, voice tightening in frustration. “And don’t say nothing, ‘cause you wouldn’t still... I wouldn’t be here if that were really the case.”

“I already told you,” Steve sighs, “All I want from you is that you’re here. And I have that. But if you want me to go into specifics—”

“I do, actually,” Bucky cuts in brusquely.

“Fine. You want to know what I really want? I want you to be happy. Healthy. I want you to be able to see yourself the way I see you, the way Sam and Nat see you. Maybe not the way Nomad sees you, though, ‘cause we don’t need you getting that much of an ego—” Bucky rolls his eyes and Steve allows himself a little grin, “—but I want you to be able to recognise that you are a good person. I want you to believe in a future for yourself. I want you to know you deserve to... to feel safe and loved and cared for.”

Once again, Bucky can only stare at him. There’s a tightness in his throat and heat behind his eyes and something blooming its way up from his stomach to his chest and he doesn’t know what to do about any of it. His body was not built to contain this kind of emotion.

The only thing that makes him feel more stifled than not being able to find words is not being able to find tears.

Finally, because it’s easier to brush things off than let them sink in, Bucky grumbles, “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” Steve asks, but Bucky thinks Steve must already know the answer because the question comes out sounding almost like a dare.

“I mean what do you want from me, not for me,” Bucky grinds out. “As in, what you want me to do for you.”

“You’re not gonna let this one go, are you?”

Bucky sends him a slightly bitter but still shit-eating grin. “Nope.”

“All right, fine. Here’s what I want you to do for me. I want you to do a more thorough job of cleaning up all your damn hair from the floor after you brush it. I want you to not put juice back into the fridge when there’s only, like, one fucking inch left in the jug. I want you to watch every season of the original Star Trek with me eventually. And most of all, I want you to just—” Steve’s voice cracks ever so slightly, “—I want you to keep doing what you’re doing. Living. Breathing. Getting better.”

For what feels like the umpteenth time, Bucky is left thoroughly flabbergasted by what he's hearing. It’s... not what he expected, to say the very least. But it has definitely helped him feel less anxious about what possible motives Steve might have for keeping him around. He knows that Steve was always just trying to make him feel more comfortable by insisting that he didn’t want anything, but that ended up having the opposite effect because Bucky knew there's no such thing as someone who wants nothing, and his brain kept going to all sorts of terrible places on its own, so he’s glad Steve has finally provided him with some concrete examples of what he’d like to see from Bucky, regardless of how seemingly trifling they may be.

Maybe their pettiness is the best part of Steve’s little requests. It means they are feasible. He hated it when Steve would only ever say stuff like ‘I just want you to get well,’ because Bucky knows that will never happen, not in the way that they both would like it to, but now... Now maybe Bucky can finally fulfill some of Steve’s wishes, even if it just means sweeping the bathroom floor more often or topping his glass off with the last drop of lemonade.

Bucky takes the pen he’d been writing his letter with and writes a jagged thank you on the back of Steve’s hand.

With the issue of Steve’s intentions out of the way, Bucky’s brain decides to put forth a new complaint, because god forbid he ever have a quiet moment to himself.

The sadness has returned.

It had momentarily taken the backseat while Bucky was busy fretting about the possible repercussions of touching Steve, but now that that’s been dealt with, he can feel that distinctly unique breed of sorrow creeping its way back into the creases of his brain.

He can't stop thinking about how Steve said he wants Bucky to be able to view himself as being worthy of love and happiness. One night, in a nervewracking effort to convince himself of just that, Bucky takes the very first letter he’d written to himself out of his shoebox emergency kit by the bed. He starts off reading it the way he’d written it – as if it’s being told to a friend – and the impact is almost immediate: a profound, aching sadness for this poor soul who had to endure all that cruelty but did not deserve it.

After a few rereads from that perspective, Bucky pulls Nomad close to him and goes over it once more, but this time imagining that he’s talking to himself.

It kind of works, because Bucky starts to feel almost that same grief he had first told Dr. Lyszinski about a few weeks ago, but it’s more of a generalised sorrow that a tragedy had occurred rather than the mourning of specific things he’d lost. He’s fine with this, though. He doesn’t think he could handle acknowledging all the individual things that had been taken from him right now; maybe restricting his focus to what is most manageable is his brain’s way of protecting itself.

“I read this story in the news once,” Bucky tells Dr. Lyszinski that week, “About an Austrian woman who was kept captive by her own father for almost twenty-five years.”

“That must have been very disturbing to read,” Dr. Lyszinski points out in one of her more superfluous observations. “Do you remember how you felt as you were reading it?”

“Just so... sad,” Bucky replies softly. “I mean, once I was done having a panic attack about it... Just... yeah. A terrible, horror-filled sadness. And anger, too. Anger at the disgusting sicko who did this to her... But mostly sadness. Because this girl, this poor innocent girl, she had her entire life ripped away from her, and by someone who was supposed to care for her, no less.”

“Have you ever considered applying that kind of compassionate response to yourself?” Dr. Lysinski asks him.

Bucky gives a tiny nod. “I— yeah, kind of. I- I guess. I’ve been feeling that same kind of sadness lately. The kind you get when you witness another human being’s suffering. And I guess I’ve started to feel a little of it towards myself. I wasn’t sad about it before because I thought... I thought I deserved it all, and nobody’s sad when someone gets what’s been comin' for them, but now that I... Now I’m starting to think maybe I didn’t deserve it, so, yeah, it’s... sad.”

“That’s an incredibly important realisation, James.”

“It’s not the same as grief, though,” Bucky continues, fumbling to express himself properly. “Grief to me is more... permanent, in the way that you’re being sad for something you’ve lost forever. But the way I feel right now is more just, I don’t know, a more... circumstantial sadness, that this stuff happened at all. I don’t... I don’t think I’m really ready yet to grieve all the things I've actually lost because of it.”

Dr. Lyszinski nods and insists that he’s making huge progress simply by allowing himself to feel this sadness. Bucky thinks this seems counterintuitive, since shouldn’t progress involve feeling good? But then Dr. Lyszinski explains that in order to feel good, he must first learn to feel, period, and Bucky has to admit that she has a point there. He thinks back to when his days were little more than a foggy numbness, more or less bereft of pain but also completely devoid of any pleasure.

He thought he’d been keeping himself safe.

He’s finally come to the realisation that by trying to protect himself in that way, he was merely suffocating the very parts of himself that he’d been seeking to preserve. The parts that could experience emotion. That made him human.

It scares the hell out of him, but he thinks he just might be ready to feel again.

“Feeling feelings is hard,” Bucky announces to Steve later that week.

Bucky has had quite a few opportunities in the past few days to experiment with emotions outside of his usual spectrum of guilt and fear. He was irritated with someone at the park when they wouldn’t stop their dog from trying to play with Nomad. He felt pride when Steve, Sam and Natasha all complimented the new curry dish he’d tried making for the first time. He made small daily plans to do tiny things like treat himself to a decadent dessert, just to give himself something to look forward to. He banished his own terror with pure adoration when Nomad’s safe, warm body curled up around him after she’d woken him from one of his worst nightmares in weeks.

Steve sends him an affectionate smile and says, “Exhausting, isn’t it?”

Bucky sighs dramatically and flops down onto the living room couch. “Yeah. That’s it for me. I’m done.”

Steve laughs, which means Bucky laughs too, and it’s not necessarily fake, but it’s careful and cautious, because there’s been something insidious lurking beneath the surface of these last seemingly easygoing days and Bucky sure doesn’t want to taunt it loose.

It breaks free anyway.

Oddly enough, it happens not because he has a difficult day, but because he has a good one.

He smiles at a neighbour while out with Nomad. Accompanies Steve to the Dupont Circle Freshfarm Market for the very first time, where he’s a little overwhelmed by the amount of people but manages to keep a level head long enough to buy all the vegetables he needs for the stir fry he’s planning on making for supper. Sam comes over to play board games, dinner turns out to be delicious, and then it’s just Bucky and Steve alone together again and Steve says, “So that was a good day,” and all of a sudden Bucky finds himself trying very hard not to cry.

It’s grief, he realises, almost instantly. Real grief this time. Not just for what happened to him, but what he lost because of it.

A full lifetime. A whole past. An entire future.

He usually tries not to think of the kind of person he must have been before the war, but he can’t always help it, and though his memory of that time is obviously full of holes, he’s almost certain that the ‘old’ Bucky Barnes was a decent guy who thought being alive was a pretty swell thing. He remembers small flashes of feeling that seem to say so much even without a lot of context – bare feet sinking into hot sand on the beach, careless hands and carefree smiles, nervous giggles after dark.

It wasn’t until a few weeks ago during that enlightening session with Dr. Lyszinski that Bucky first truly began to acknowledge the possibility that that young man died when he fell from a speeding train in the dead of winter in the Austrian Alps.

And it’s not until this very moment on a Sunday evening when Steve is smiling at Bucky as if he’s the Bucky that Steve has loved his whole life, that the impact of that death hits Bucky in full, knocking the wind out of him, sending rogue kamikaze tears divebombing down his cheeks.

He remembers Dr. Lyszinski always telling him to go with his feelings, to allow them to run their course and not try to force them out or push them away or let them consume him.

Just like pretty much everything Dr. Lyszinski has ever told him, it’s a hell of a lot easier said than done.

Steve looks understandably concerned.

“Bucky?” he says frantically. “Did I— Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

For a long time, Bucky cannot speak.

This isn’t the kind of pain he’s used to. It’s not immediate, reflexive, reactive. It’s complicated and tangled and bewildering and he hates being hurt by something he cannot see because it means he doesn’t know what he’s up against.

It shocks him just how visceral the feeling is. It really does feel as though he is grieving a loss tantamount to death. Then again, maybe it’s not that different. It is a myriad of tiny deaths inside of him and it frightens him because he’s not used to experiencing a seemingly straightforward emotion like sadness in this convoluted sort of way. How is someone even supposed to be able to mourn a loss that is so intangible? It’s a funeral with no body to bury.

And holding a funeral means you’re accepting that death as fact, which Bucky isn’t sure he’s prepared to do just yet.

“Bucky,” Steve repeats, shuffling closer to him before freezing up and taking a step back.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky is saying, over and over again, the words coming out sounding like his mouth is full of broken glass.

“Sorry for what?” Steve asks, confusion etched across his face. “Bucky, you... You haven’t done anything wrong. C’mon, let’s go sit on the couch, okay? And maybe you can you tell me what’s going on?”

Bucky dutifully follows Steve into the living room where he sinks heavily onto the sofa, as if forced down by an inconquerable weight.

“What’s wrong, Buck?” Steve tries again.

“You were right, Stevie,” Bucky says with a bleary smile, “Today was a good day. And, I don’t know... Something about that just— I just wish this could’a been our lives all along.”

“Oh, Buck,” Steve breathes in an anguished murmur, “It still can be. It’s not too late.”

Bucky shakes his head furiously. “It was always too late. Don’t you get it, Steve? I’m never gonna be that guy again. I thought maybe if... maybe one day if I just tried hard enough, worked hard enough, then everything could go back to the way it was. I’d have myself back. Not that I even know who that is, but- but you do... You’d have your Bucky back.”

“Don’t start with that 'my Bucky' stuff,’” Steve warns him. “You... You’re your own Bucky.”

Uncomfortable with Steve’s honesty, Bucky groans, “God, you’re such a fucking cornball,” hoping to break the tension.

It must work a little, because Steve forces a tight laugh and rolls his eyes.

“I guess it’s just hard realising that I’ll never be... w-whoever I used to be,” Bucky says after a moment, voice distant. “It’s... surreal, almost. To realise that entire parts of you have been carved away and you’ll never get them back. I’m not... There’s no coming back from this.”

Steve’s eyes widen. “Don’t say that.”

He looks fucking terrified all of a sudden, and it occurs to Bucky that Steve might be getting the wrong idea so he quickly says, “Shit, no, I don’t mean it like that.”

Steve merely squints at him with an understandable suspicion.

“I’m not going anywhere, I swear,” Bucky insists.

“We don’t have to try to make things go back to the way they were,” Steve says, a little desperately. “I realise that’s not really a possibility. But we... We’ll make do. We’ll make the best of what we’ve got.”

“We always have, haven’t we?” Bucky says faintly, managing a tiny grin that doesn’t falter at the edges.

Steve matches his smile muscle for muscle and says, “Yeah, Buck... We always have.”

Chapter 24 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

That conversation with Steve must have unlocked some sort of floodgate, because Bucky wakes up the next morning and just can’t stop fucking crying.

He cries as he brushes his teeth. When he’s in the shower. While he’s watching television. Cries through breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He cries in heaving self-conscious sobs beneath his blankets and he cries quiet trickles of tears without even noticing.

It scares the shit out of Steve, who wants him to call Dr. Lyszinski, but Bucky tries to explain that it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

They’re in bed – Steve sitting against the headboard and drawing in his sketchbook, Bucky leaning his head on a pillow that’s propped up against Steve’s thigh and Nomad occasionally licking errant tears from his face – when Bucky says, “It looks a lot worse than it is.”

Because he knows how he looks – pale, drained, eyes swollen and glassy and reddened – but he also knows what he feels: a subtle, life-affirming relief gradually spreading throughout his body, like he’s flushing toxins out of his system.

He can’t see Steve’s face from where he’s curled up on his side, but he does feel Steve's muscles tense beneath the pillow and can tell that he isn’t reassured.

Still, Steve doesn’t argue, just lets Bucky cry silently until he finally dozes off, then stays there in the same position for the next two hours with Bucky asleep on his thigh, unable to bring himself to move even long after his leg has gone numb.

By his next appointment with Dr. Lyszinski, Bucky is more or less all cried out (as well as vaguely impressed that he hasn’t dried up into a giant raisin). He’s embarrassed when he tells her about it, but she helps him recognise that it’s undoubtedly a good thing, that he was brave to let himself not only experience but also express emotion so deeply, and he can’t deny that it’s left him feeling almost purified.

For some reason, however, this relief is short-lasting.

Where he once felt cleansed, he soon finds himself feeling hollow, and the emptiness expands inside of him until it’s acquired a mass of its own. He feels like a bird with a broken wing, hobbling about in circles dragging the useless dead weight of his sadness behind him wherever he goes until it eventually becomes too heavy to carry. He is then reduced to a paper doll version of himself, flattened out on the mattress, where he remains crushed in place regardless of how much Nomad whines and tugs at his sleeve and no matter how upset Steve looks when he stands in the doorway practically begging Bucky to get up.

Bucky takes to keeping his back to Steve and pretending to be asleep, though in his own mind he is sometimes pretending to be dead. It’s not a particularly difficult act to perform, not when the very architecture of his brain and body feels as if it is collapsing beneath its own weight like rotting wooden rafters.

“I’m calling Dr. Lyszinski,” Steve declares after several days of this, and that snaps Bucky out of his fake-nap in less than a second.

He struggles to his feet and follows Steve out into the living room to stop him.

“Don’t,” he growls, but it’s hard to sound menacing when you have to hold onto the wall in order to stay standing.

“Bucky,” Steve pleads, “You’re... I mean, look at you! This is the only time you’ve gotten out of bed in two days.”

“Not true,” Bucky argues weakly, giving up on trying to remain upright and sliding slowly down to the floor, “I’ve been getting up to go to the washroom.”

He suddenly has a strange urge to point out that if things were really that bad, he’d be wetting the bed again, but it’s been at least six months since that happened. However, he quickly realises with a jolt of shame that that’s not exactly the kind of milestone that someone in their late twenties should be boasting about, so he keeps his mouth shut.

Steve does not seem reassured by Bucky's pathetic attempt to assuage his worries.

“This isn’t... it’s not healthy, Buck,” he says wearily, lowering himself into a crouch to be able to meet Bucky's eyes. “Please, just-”

“Steve, I’m okay, I promise,” Bucky interrupts. “I’m just... There’s been a lot I’ve had to process recently and it’s just taking a lot out of me... I’m not— It’s nothing dangerous, or- or anything. Besides, I see Dr. L in three days anyway.”

Steve still looks very much like he wants to continue to object, but after a tense stare-off, he simply lets his shoulders drop and mumbles, “Just... promise you’ll tell me if it gets to be... bad. Okay?”

“Okay. Yeah. I promise.”

It turns out Bucky and Steve have slightly different definitions of ‘bad.’

From what Bucky is able to surmise from Steve’s increasing fretting, he already fits Steve’s interpretation.

Bitterly, Bucky can’t help but to think that Steve doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.

Not in the horrifically intimate way that Bucky does.

Dr. Lyszinski once pointed out to him that his standards for being okay are too low. He views anything that isn’t total rock bottom as being an acceptable state of existence, and ever since the crisis after seeing Dr. Sofen brought Bucky’s understanding of rock bottom to a whole new level, nothing’s ever really seemed urgent enough to worry about.

So, even though he’s sick with sadness and every movement feels like he’s fighting against a raging current, he says nothing to Steve, because if it’s not as bad as it could be, it's not bad enough to be a real problem.

Oddly enough, the moments when Bucky is the most alive are when he’s asleep and dreaming. No longer thick with the molasses terror of pliancy and paralysis, his nightmares spark with sound and fury.

The depression steadily whittles away at Bucky’s sense of logic during the three days before he sees Dr. Lyszinski, and by the morning of his visit, Bucky has come to the conclusion that he doesn’t want to go. Not just today, but ever again.

The anguished frustration on Steve’s face is both guilt-inducing and exasperating.

“Bucky,” he says, “I don’t... I don’t understand.”

“She makes things worse,” Bucky bursts out, slightly hysterically, angry that Steve doesn’t seem to be able to grasp a concept that Bucky thinks is so very obvious. “Look what’s— I was fine before she made me get all sad about everything. What kind of help is that? Telling someone they should let themselves be sad?”

“C’mon, Buck,” Steve says helplessly, “You know that’s not what she's doing.”

“No? Then why do I... I’ve never felt like this before, Steve. It’s... it fucking sucks! And if she hadn’t made me dig up all this shit in my head, then I wouldn’t be feeling this way.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Steve agrees, anger edging into his tone, “You’d be feeling the way you were six months ago. Do you really need me to remind you what that was like?”

Bucky opens his mouth to argue, but can’t seem to come up with anything to say, which infuriates him because even though his rationality is starting to come back online and make him realise that maybe Steve has a point, Bucky’s sense of petty pride doesn’t want to have to admit it.

Then again, Bucky’s not even quite sure that Steve’s point is particularly valid.

People keep telling him how much progress he’s made, but Bucky certainly doesn’t feel it a lot of the time. Sure, he's been able to do a few things that he might not have been able to handle before, but he still doesn’t really believe the big picture has gotten any better.

“Things aren’t that much different now,” he mutters with halfhearted petulance, hoping to goad Steve into providing some supporting evidence, because he knows his own perception of things can be a little... distorted... but it feels too self-serving to ask Steve outright to point out all the ways in which Bucky has gotten better.

Steve sighs. “They are, Bucky. Where’s that list of improvements that you worked on with Dr. L a little while ago?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky lies, inexplicably too embarrassed to admit that it’s in his emergency kit right by the bed because he reads it every now and then when he needs a reminder or two.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

“Well, even since then, a lot of things have changed,” Steve insists. “Look at everything you’ve been doing with Natasha and me. The markers. The skin lotion. You... you held my fucking hand, Buck! And you’re so much more tuned in with your emotions. Hell, even just the little day-to-day things have gotten better, too. You don’t have as many flashbacks. You sleep through the night almost every night. Ever since you got Nomad, you've also been going out every day, and you often don't even need me to come with you.”

Bucky had been hoping to feel reassured after being reminded of some of his accomplishments, but instead he finds himself just feeling extraordinarily dumb.

“It sounds so stupid,” he says frustratedly, “All these... This stuff is all just regular person stuff. Everybody acts like it’s this huge fucking achivement that I... I don’t know— that I go to the goddamn store by myself, or something, but... It’s all stuff that everyone can do.”

“You can’t compare yourself t—”

“I know, I know,” Bucky cuts in tiredly, because he’s heard it so many times before, but it never really seems to stick.

Steve looks like he wants to keep pushing the matter but doesn’t seem to know what else to say, so eventually he just quietly urges, “Please don’t skip your appointment today, Bucky.”

Explosive with anger again, Bucky fires back, “If therapy is so fuckin’ awesome, then why aren’t you doing it?”

And then he immediately feels like a colossal jerk because he knows the answer to that question. Not that Steve would ever let himself say it.

Because I’ve been too busy taking care of you.

It’s not that Bucky is so fucked-up that he can’t be left alone for a mere hour every week, but he knows the way Steve thinks – the way he doesn’t look after himself until everyone else around him is okay.

So when Steve mumbles something about currently looking into some options provided to him by Sam, Bucky is at first mildly shocked, but then horrified.

Because of course, he thinks that it’s his fault.

He has literally driven Steve crazy, to the point where it even overcame Steve’s stupidly self-sacrificing tendencies.

Steve can’t suppress his slightly sour snort of laughter when Bucky apologises for this. His dismissiveness makes Bucky bristle in irritation and embarrassment but at least it means Bucky is wrong about this, right?

Steve sighs, seeming to exhale all hints of bitterness with it, and says, “This isn’t your fault, Bucky. I mean, yeah, of course recent times have... They’ve done a bit of a number on me, but—” he allows himself a self-deprecating smile, “—I’m pretty sure I’ve needed this for a while now.”

“Yeah, since, like the early 1930’s,” Bucky snickers, trying to sound flippant to mask his relief that he’s not fully to blame, as well as to hide the shame he feels for having made something all about him when it really wasn’t.

Steve just rolls his eyes, but something occurs to Bucky.

“Did you go to see anyone right after you got out of the ice?” he asks. “I can’t remember if you did.”

“Not really... Which I admit was my own fault 'cause I lied my way through S.H.I.E.L.D.'s psych eval with flying colours, but... I mean, they worked to acclimate me to the world – got me caught up on history, taught me about technology and pop culture... They tried to make the transition as... comfortable... as they could. And I guess they did a good job. They certainly thought I was doing a good job. On the outside, I must’a looked like the most adaptable, well-adjusted creature in the universe.”

“But on the inside...?” Bucky dares to ask, dreading the answer.

“On the inside,” Steve says, staring down into his lap where his hands have curled into quivering fists, “It felt... I felt like I was bleeding out everywhere but nobody could see.”

Bucky’s heart seizes with sadness.

“I wish I could’ve been there for you,” he murmurs, feeling guilty somehow even though he knows full well that there’s nothing he could have done.

He’s expecting Steve to go off on another one of his ‘it’s not your fault’ speeches, but ends up pleasantly surprised when all Steve does is give Bucky a tired, grateful smile, which is more comforting than any words could have been.

Bucky still ends up skipping his session that day, though Dr. Lyszinski spends a good thirty minutes with him on the phone to make sure he’s all right.

And he is, really. He’s not suicidal. He’s not even that sad, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. He just... hurts, but in a way that he’s now able to realise feels oddly necessary. Clearly tears were not enough to flush out all that’s rotten inside of him, so, like insects picking skeletons clean of decaying flesh, this corrosive pain is eating away at all his most toxic parts in an effort to finish the job. It’s an agonising procedure, there’s no doubt about that, but Bucky doggedly pushes himself through it in hopes that once all the bad bits have been stripped away, he’ll be left with something bare and clean and maybe even useful.

It’s another few days until he actually regains some semblance of functionality. Little by little, he’s on his feet more and more often, shuffling around the house and managing to perform the simplest of tasks like pouring himself a bowl of cereal for breakfast or saying ‘good morning’ to Steve while it’s actually still the morning.

Life returns to him like blood beginning to rercirculate through a frostbitten limb. It hurts like hell for a while, but then he seems to come alive again, almost with a vengeance.

He doesn’t quit therapy. Enjoys many more bubble baths. Goes out to a Vietnamese restaurant with Steve and Sam and Nomad. Fills the entire length of Steve’s arm with a colourful mini-mural that Steve refuses to wash off for two days.

Bucky’s crowning moment of the week happens when he is at Steve’s favourite coffee shop with Nomad early one morning, wanting to surprise Steve with a cup when he wakes up.

A woman in line says to him, “You’re so lucky; I wish I could bring my dog everywhere.”

He glares daggers at her. Tells her, “I wish I didn’t have to,” and feels rather pleased with himself for the rest of the day.

Nomad draws Bucky out of a nightmare that he hadn’t even realised he’d been having until he woke gasping and thrashing and feeling like he was burning up from the inside out. He can’t remember what exactly he’d been dreaming about, but he knows it must have been worse than usual, because Steve is awake, too, hovering anxiously by his bed.

“Bucky?” he tries after a moment.

“'m okay,” Bucky says, almost automatically, but it’s not really that much of a lie. He’s shaky and shaken, but more or less all right.

Nobody speaks for a long time, then Steve says quietly, “You were mumbling your serial number in your sleep.”

“But... I wasn’t dreaming about the war,” Bucky says with a puzzled frown, bits and pieces of it coming back to him.

“I didn’t think you were,” Steve says. “Everything else you were saying was in Russian.”

“I... I fought them,” Bucky whispers suddenly. “The second time 'round, I mean. I... I tried to hold on for as long as I could.”

“I know you did, Buck.”

“But eventually I just- I just couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Nobody could have held out forever,” Steve says, extremely carefully. “But... Well, I read the file, remember? It took them a long time to... You certainly didn’t make it easy for them.” He pauses, then adds, “But even if you did... Even if you hadn’t... fought... It still wouldn’t make it your fault. You understand that, right? That no matter what you did or didn’t do, this is all on them. Not you. Never you.”

Bucky swallows hard around the lump that’s unexpectedly bloomed up in his throat, finding himself unable to speak. He blinks several times, determined not to start crying because he knows he probably won’t be able to stop, and on some sudden flare of unstoppable emotional impulse, he reaches out with his flesh hand and lays his index finger on the inside of Steve’s wrist, right over his pulse, searching for that life beat beneath his skin.

Steve jumps.

Flinching, Bucky quickly withdraws his hand, feeling dizzy and self-conscious and not entirely sure why he just did that.

“S-sorry,” he stammers out.

“Fuck,” Steve mutters under his breath, then, more clearly directed to Bucky, he says, “No, no, don’t be. I... Are you okay?”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Why are you asking me?”

“I mean... Uh... Did you... Why did you...”

“Sorry,” Bucky repeats, humiliation bringing colour to his cheeks, “I- I should’ve asked first... I should’ve—”

“No, it’s not that,” Steve says quickly. “I’m okay with you touching me, whenever, wherever, it’s ju—”

“Isn’t that a song?” Bucky asks, trying to derail the conversation because it’s embarrassing him for some reason.

But Steve won’t be deterred, saying “Let’s just assume that unless I tell you to stop, I’m okay with you touching me, okay?”

Bucky frowns. Doesn’t Steve realise what a dangerous statement he’s making? But then Bucky remembers that Steve isn’t a mess like him who doesn’t know how to tell someone to stop, so of course Steve can issue this bold claim without fearing what kind of horrible repercussions it might have, and Bucky feels very stupid all of a sudden.

“I just want to be sure that you’re okay with it,” Steve continues. “Remember what I said about you not... You shouldn’t feel obligated to do anything, remember?”

“That’s not how I feel,” Bucky insists, frustration overtaking all his other emotions, because Steve is doing that thing again where he means well but all it ends up doing is making Bucky second-guess himself. How is he supposed to figure out what he wants if Steve makes him feel like he doesn’t – or shouldn’t – want it?

Meanwhile, Steve is still looking guilty and doubtful, so Bucky says, “I swear, I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Steve, all I did was touch your wrist. Y’really think that if I felt pressured to... to do anything for you, that would be my first course of action?”

Steve allows himself a slightly sheepish smile. “No, I guess not... I’m sorry. I... Shit, I ruined a Moment, didn’t I?”

Bucky can’t help but to laugh a little. “Yeah, Steve, you kind of did. But there will be more.”

Notes:

*discreetly makes this the penultimate chapter*

Chapter 25 Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Once Bucky is more or less back to normal – or at least, his own skewed version of it – he returns to focusing on the matter of touch. He finds himself constantly watching the way people interact with each other, whether it’s his friends or people on the television or strangers in the street, trying to figure out what the difference is between himself and the rest of the world, what makes him so unable to communicate in this way that seems to come so naturally to everyone else.

As a result, he has really begun to notice how touch factors into everyday interpersonal relations. He observes what kinds of touches reflect which emotions. How touch is initiated and how it is received. The different ways people touch each other depending on the nature of their relationship.

The ease with which they are able to do so remains absolutely mystifying to Bucky, and even though it makes him a little sad because it reminds him of just how fucked-up his own relationship with physical contact is, it’s nevertheless fascinating to watch. From a spontaneous friendly slap on a friend’s shoulder while laughing at a good joke to the fluid synchronisation of a kiss goodbye, it’s incredible to see that people are able to interact with each other in this way with such unthinking effortlessness.

Even more incredible is the way that these interactions never appear to cause anyone any harm. If anything, they only ever seem to evoke the positive.

Intimacy. Laughter. Comfort. Love.

The more he sees, the more he starts to think that this could be something that he is allowed to experience, too.

It’s slow going in therapy, though. He often feels too embarrassed to really say much and too self-conscious whenever Dr. Lyszinski tries to talk to him about it. Eventually, she opts to give him some handouts that he can later go over on his own, provided that he take extra care to check in with himself emotionally and physically to ensure that he’s keeping himself safe, since he won’t have Dr. Lyszinki’s keen eye monitoring the tiny cues that he sometimes still fails to pick up on his own.

Bucky scoffs internally at this; he’s pretty sure he can handle a bunch of pamphlets about teaching kids about safe touch. He’s actually rather offended that Dr. Lyszinski gave him this material in the first place – it’s literally for children. There are phrases like ‘you are the boss of your body’ and ‘tell an adult.’ He’s not expecting it will take much effort to stay ‘safe’ when reading this kind of stuff.

There are no words for the humiliation he feels when he realises how wrong he is.

He’s barely halfway through one of the leaflets that night when he starts to gasp for air and Nomad has to repeatedly nudge at his human hand to stop him from digging his nails into the skin of his thigh.

In the other room, Bucky can hear that Steve has turned the television volume down and is probably listening carefully for any signs of distress. Bucky had told him that he was doing some homework in the bedroom and didn’t want to be disturbed, but hadn’t divulged the nature of the assignment, embarrassed by how childish it seemed, and he certainly doesn’t want Steve coming into the room now and finding out.

Bucky takes several deep breaths, struggling to calm himself before he’s too far gone to make it back. He lays down so that Nomad can provide some deep pressure therapy. Stares up at the bumpy topography of the stucco ceiling. Grips a fistful of bedsheets in his human hand.

He doesn’t know why he’s reacting like this. What he was reading wasn’t exactly triggering, at least not in the traditional sense of containing disturbing or explicit details, and it’s all worded so innocently and simply because of its target audience, so why is it sending him off the rails like this?

It takes him a moment to realise that maybe it’s not so much the actual content that’s getting him all worked up as it is the implications behind it all. This information he’s learning – about safe and unsafe touches, about learning how to say no – it’s all stuff that people a fraction of his age are able to understand and implement. And yet here he is, a fucking grown man, a soldier, a goddamn turbocharged killing machine – completely and utterly bewildered by all of it.

It makes him feel fucking pathetic. Hopeless, even. That he cannot comprehend these supposedly simple concepts that even children can grasp.

Or rather, he does understand them, academically, at least, but applying them to his own life is a completely different matter. Though he’s gotten a lot better at being able to recognise his own boundaries and what he is and is not comfortable with, it’s still a struggle to make his needs known to other people, and when it comes to the needs of others, he still hasn’t been able to shake that sense of obligation and responsibility to fulfill them even if it comes at his own expense.

It’s too much for him to think about right now, or ever.

He crumples up the pamphlet in frustration, crawls under the covers, and surrenders himself to sleep because even his nightmares are simpler than this.

He wakes up grumpy the following morning, and feels he owes Steve an explanation for his behaviour so he shows him the material that Dr. Lyszinski had given him.

“I’m not a fucking little kid,” he says, ironically in a rather petulant voice, “And I… I know all this stuff already. I just need to know how to feel it.”

“You should tell her, then,” Steve suggests. “You’re in charge of the pacing, remember? If you think you’re ready for more than what she’s offering, then you should tell her.”

“I don’t know,” Bucky replies dubiously, “That seems kind of… cocky, doesn’t it? I mean, she’s the professional…”

“Yeah, but you’re the one doing all the work,” Steve points out.

The gravity of this statement doesn’t hit Bucky right away, but once it does, he just sits there, mute, for a long time.

“I’ve been working pretty hard, haven’t I?” he says finally, flashing a wryly self-satisfied grin.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve agrees, “You really have.”

Having come to the conclusion that he’s at a point where psychoeducation is no longer as necessary as it once was, Bucky tells Dr. Lyszinski that he’d like to try a more hands-on approach. He insists he can handle it; his brain goes to too many weird, confused places when he’s merely reading about things, so he’d prefer to actually be able to engage himself instead of just being an observer.

So, while his ongoing homework is to continue to explore his own body as safely and comfortably as he can, this week Dr. Lyszinski also teaches him some more touching exercises, not unlike the ones he’d first practiced with Natasha.

The first activity involves playing a clapping game like Pattycake Pattycake or Pease Porridge Hot with someone he trusts. The second basically takes the drawing exercise and replaces the marker with an actual finger. After Bucky reminds her about how he had already been able to hold Steve’s hand, Dr. Lyszinski also suggests that he could practice being touched by Steve while guiding Steve’s hand with his own in order to maintain a feeling of safety and control.

It may not be the wisest idea, sort of akin to the people who teach kids how to swim by throwing them right into the pool, but Bucky decides forgo the first couple lead-in exercises in favour of diving headfirst into the last one, perhaps even taking it one step further.

Of all the interactions involving physical contact that he’s become hyperaware of lately, hugging is the one that stands out the most.

Mere touch is no longer enough. It’s too fleeting, rootless. He longs for the security of being held, the permanence of it. He is so unbelievably curious about how it feels to be able to find sanctuary in someone’s body in that way.

Which isn’t to say that he’s not scared shitless by the very thought of it, though, because he definitely is, but once again the thing that makes all the difference is that his fear of living a life devoid of the kind of warmth and comfort that only the closeness of another human being can provide is greater and more real than whatever past-tense out-of-context terrors his faulty brain can provide him with.

He and Steve are standing in the middle of the living room, about an arm’s length apart, an open bottle of peppermint oil sitting on the table next to them. Steve’s entire body is practically buzzing with excitement, while Bucky is fighting hard to stay present in his.

He reaches out, takes Steve’s hands in his own, and, quickly, before his brain has a chance to freak out on him, he guides them onto his own torso so that Steve’s palms are pressed against his waist. He hears Steve’s sharp intake of air, can feel the way Steve is forcing his hands to remain utterly pliant within Bucky’s grasp, taking great care not to apply any more pressure against Bucky’s body than Bucky will allow. Bucky takes a long, deep breath and looks around the room in a scramble to establish a firmer connection to his surroundings.

Despite all this, his brain decides it’s not safe.

The room begins to slide in and out of perspective, regardless of how hard Bucky tries to concentrate on the scent of the peppermint oil and the colours and shapes of objects in the room to keep himself grounded. He can pick up the sound of someone’s voice, sounding very far away, but cannot discern any actual words. Something bumps into his legs. He feels moisture on his fingers and looks down at his hands, finding that they are empty, which he is pretty sure wasn’t the case a moment ago, but he can’t remember either what he was holding or when he stopped holding it. His hands don’t even feel like a part of his body; he had to see them in order to remember they exist.

Eventually, his brain is able to draw its focus away from itself enough to recognise that the pressure against his legs is Nomad’s body leaning into him and the wetness on his hand is coming from her tongue.

Ah, of course.

As reality begins to fall back into place, it brings with it the usual flood of lightheadedness, exhaustion, and humiliation that he wasn’t able to control himself, the latter of those sensations only amplifying exponentially when he sees Steve standing a short distance away, holding the bottle of peppermint oil and looking vaguely panicked.

The worst part about this particular incident is that Bucky had truly believed he was going to be able to do this. He’d been almost eager to try it, desperate for a taste of that which he’d been denied for so long. He had wanted this so badly, and had been foolish enough to believe that that would have made any difference.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve says gently after a moment. “You did good. That was real good for a first try.”

“Don’t patronise me,” Bucky snaps, then immediately regrets it, even though Steve keeps a brave face, not allowing any hurt to seep into his expression.

Bucky folds to his knees on the floor, drawing Nomad close to him, frustratedly wondering why he can’t seem to do the same with Steve, even though Steve should, theoretically, be as safe a presence as Nomad is.

Steve lowers himself to the ground, too, his face doing that stupid thing where he looks up through his lashes with those annoyingly earnest eyes full of love and patience and compassion.

“Sorry,” Bucky mutters, staring down at his lap.

“It’s okay,” Steve says.

Bucky sighs in relief, glad Steve doesn’t ask for what like he has the tendency to do whenever Bucky says he’s sorry. He never really knows what exactly he’s apologising for, just that he must have done something wrong, which Steve never understands, so Bucky is grateful to be spared of having to try to explain it.

Eventually, Bucky says, “Maybe we can… try again, uh, another time.”

“Of course, Buck. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

Bucky raises his head at these words, staring at Steve with no small sense of astonishment painted across his face as it occurs to him that the almost panicked sense of urgency that used to plague his every waking moment is no longer there. For once, he doesn’t feel as if he’s trying to outrun a hurricane.

All the time in the world.

Both time and the world are his to do with as he pleases.

With that in mind, Bucky takes his time. He spends the week working his way up to the grand finale. Sam and Natasha come over and they have a big drawing session on each other’s arms. Bucky ventures out of his comfort zone by trying a clapping game with Steve, but the sounds and sensations remind him too much of being slapped, so instead they play Rock Paper Scissors, hands cupping over each other when paper beats rock, index and middle fingers snipping at flat-palmed sheets, stone fists laying down on scissors.

It’s all sparkle-eyed teasing laughter like a game should be, but every time their skin touches, Steve’s breath stutters and his entire body seems to flare with some unidentifiable energy, sending a ticklish thrill skating down the alpine knobs of Bucky’s spine.

He’s finally come to terms with the fact that he can no longer express intimacy the way he used to and has thus given up trying to do so, instead seeking to find alternate means to the same end. However, he’s always been afraid that none of these means would ever feel as good as ‘the real thing,’ that it’d always just feel like settling.

After all, how could the cold tip of a felt pen or even the playful bump of hands against each other ever compare to a true caress or sharing the breathy heat of a lover’s lips? Certainly it would never be sufficiently satisfying for him, let alone for Steve.

But then he sees the way Steve still reacts to these tiny touches like Saint Theresa in divine ecstasy, and he thinks maybe it’ll be enough after all.

“Why’re you smiling?” Steve asks him curiously.

Bucky startles slightly. He hadn’t even realised that his face had been doing anything in particular.

“I like watching you when I touch you,” he replies shyly.

Steve suddenly seems incredibly self-conscious.

“Oh jeez,” he says, flustered, “Am I— I didn’t mean to- to freak you out by… I’m overreacting, I know, but I just can’t—”

“It’s okay,” Bucky cuts in quickly. “That’s what I love about it. You make me… You make touch seem so… beautiful.” Steve opens his mouth to say something, a sly look on his face that Bucky does not trust at all, so he holds up a hand and says, “Shut up, I know how goddamn corny I sound right now. Don’t make fun of me.”

Steve seems to be able to tell how important this moment actually is and his expression instantly sobers up.

“Nobody ever reacted like that when I touched them,” Bucky continues quietly, averting his eyes. “They... They took what they wanted just because they could. Not because they actually… It didn’t actually mean anything to them. Their reactions… It didn’t matter who I was, just that they got what they wanted. But with you, it’s like… It’s like you react this way because…”

He trails off, suddenly feeling embarrassed by how much he’s opening up.

“I react this way because it’s you,” Steve finishes softly.

Bucky’s head snaps up to meet Steve’s gaze and he nods, smile tremulous but truthful, eyes wide and wet with wonder.

In spite of that hopeful note, everything is put on hold a few days later when Bucky pushes himself too hard again. He makes the mistake of placing Steve’s hands too low on his waist, which traps him in a series of horrific body memories that last for the rest of the day. This combined with a particularly difficult session with Dr. Lyszinski sends Bucky plummeting to a very unpleasant place.

It’s arguably not as bad as his last bout of depression that had him pinned to the bed, but it’s its own special kind of terrible in that he is more or less functional, but everything he does feels weighed down by disgust and regret. Whether he’s making coffee or picking out what shirt to wear, it feels like he is doing the wrong thing, making the wrong choice, just generally being inadequate in every possible way, and even in a few that hadn’t been invented yet.

It’s just so unbelievably frustrating and humiliating that he cannot complete that one simple task of keeping Steve’s hands on him, and he doesn’t know why he’s become so hung up on it, he just knows that he needs to do it. Needs to know that he can.

Turns out the third time’s the charm.

Bucky gradually claws his way back out of the rut he'd been in until he finds himself feeling brave enough to try again, and this time, he goes slow.

Maybe too slow.

“Sorry,” he whispers after they’ve been standing facing each other for a good minute without him being able to do anything.

“It’s okay,” Steve says immediately, “Take your time. Take as much time as you need.”

Bucky nods, biting his lip and looking down at his own hands. He curls and uncurls his fists and shuffles from foot to foot to remind himself that he has the power here, that he can move his arms and legs to run or defend himself if need be.

But, he tells himself firmly, there is no need.

He doesn’t realise he’s mumbled, “You’re safe,” out loud to himself until he hears Steve repeating it to him, and that gives him just the nudge he needs to get himself moving.

He has Steve continue to speak softly to him, to give him one more thing to anchor himself with, then his hands close around Steve’s and he carefully leads them towards his own body, settling them down on his waist just below his ribcage, a safe distance away from his hips, which remain an untraversable no-man’s land.

Still, unbidden memories of other people’s hands come battering through his consciousness, threatening to bring this moment crashing down around them.

But Bucky refuses to let it happen. Not this time.

He melts into Steve’s presence, into the memorised blues of his eyes and the way his hands remain feather-light in their touch despite possessing the strength to wring the life right out of a person’s throat. Bucky realises right then that power does not always have to lead to pain, that he can afford to relinquish even the most delicate and carefully guarded parts of himself to the people who love him, because they won’t twist them into something hateful, they will keep them safe, and, most importantly, they will always allow him to take them back.

“…Bucky?”

Eyes open.

“Bucky?” Steve repeats, looking concerned, “Are you… Is everything okay? You still with me?”

Bucky draws his lips into a shaky smile. He is working desperately against the current of his brain’s fucked-up circuitry, taking whatever ghastly leftover sensations he can detect of the wrong hands on the wrong parts of his body and exchanging them for what he feels right now – the steady security of Steve’s touch, the matched rhythm of their breathing, the harmonic notes of their pulse, all their functions operating in sync with each other.

“I’m okay,” Bucky whispers, “'m just… Replacing my bad memories with good ones, is all.”

He takes a decisive step towards Steve, so that Steve’s arms have to crook at the elbow in order to keep their hold on Bucky’s body and there is but a single foot of hypercharged space between them.

He feels all at once as if they’re standing in the middle of the solar system, entire galaxies of unexplored possibilities swirling around them in brilliant waltzing clusters. Even the ones that are as untouchable and temporary as supernovas are still giving off light for the time being, and he realises that this is all he can ask for, really.

He isn’t naïve enough to think that he will ever truly be as okay as he would like, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still carve out days that might make whatever pain he’s had to slough through to make it to this point feel almost worthwhile. Days where all it takes to remind him why he’s still here is the perfect cadence of Sam’s laughter, the cunning understanding in Natasha’s eyes, the vertex of Steve’s smile reaching a certain point.

Bucky drops his arms to his sides, letting Steve’s palms stay where they are, trusting them, allowing them to be the gravitational pull that keeps his universe centred.

His body may not be his own just yet, but it’s in good hands.

Notes:

aaaand that's a wrap, folks :)
now time for me to get sappy (⊙‿⊙✿)
believe it or not, this thing started out as a kinkmeme fill and was definitely was not supposed to drag out for so long. but, as everything unfolded, i realised that i couldn't take any shortcuts in rebuilding what had been broken, hence the resulting epic lol. so, i apologise to the OP for taking the prompt waaay off-track, but i also have to thank them for inspiring one of the most fulfilling writing experiences i've ever had. the people that i've met because of this fic, the response it's gotten, and the experiences that people have been so brave as to share with me... they've made writing this feel like such an incredible journey and i'm so thankful to have gone on it with you guys :)
if you want to keep in touch, find me on tumblr! and please say hi to let me know who you are so i can follow back :)

OH! and also check out these amazing pieces of fanart on tumblr because i still can't even believe people were nice enough to make these for me and i need to make sure they actually exist and are not just a product of my ego's overactive imagination!!
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
and a fanmix!!

Series this work belongs to:

Part 1 of give lilies with full hands Next Work →

Works inspired by this one:

War + Hell by Anonymous

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BaronSamedi on Chapter 1 Wed 14 May 2014 06:08PM UTC

I am in love with your words.
Seriously this is a fantastic beginning and I'm sitting here wanting so much more!
I love all the relationships here. Steve with his earnestness and Bucky helpless in front of it. And Sam, you have utilized him perfectly. This is exactly how I see him handling someone like Bucky
And damn, those little glimpses of what Bucky associates with touching sometimes really chilled me to the bone. Fantastic how you use the reader's ability to imagine the bad things that happened and tease our imaginations with just a few little sentences here and there. My heart broke for him each time.
Thank you so much! I can't wait to see where you take this next.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 01:10PM UTC
  
  no, thank you so much! I'm so thrilled that you find this piece to be effective, and especially that you like the relationships, which are my favourite element to write about but often also the most challenging.
  also, unfortunately I'm out of town for a couple weeks so it might be a bit of a wait for the next chapter please don't give up on me lol
  
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2. 1. BaronSamedi on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 01:54PM UTC
    
    No worries. I'm a fantasy fan. We've basically elevated waiting for the next part in a series to an artform (looking at you there George).
    Plus I believe the more time and care you can put in in it the better it will be.
    I'll be there whenever it's ready and in the meantime I'll throw it at every Stucky fan I know!
    One little question though...will there be smut or is Bucky done with physical relatipnships after his ordeal?
    
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  2. 1. refusals being too lazy to log in lol (Guest) on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 07:26PM UTC
      
      lmaooo ok good to know you've had a lot of practice at being patient xD
      unfortunately this is likely going to be an entirely unsexy fic, because I cannot write smut to save my life, but uhh yeah let's just say it's because of profound plotty reasons.....
      thank you so much for your support ♥
      
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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 01:14PM UTC
  
  oh wow thank you :o
  I'm really happy to hear that the way the flashes are done has had an impact, bc I'm never quite sure how much detail I should go into, if too little isn't powerful enough but too much becomes gratuitous.
  thanks again :D
  
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gravything on Chapter 1 Wed 14 May 2014 07:46PM UTC

oh god. This is visceral. This is deep breaths, and blinking up at the ceiling because wow. This is effective. This is sticking.
Thank you -- sincerely: you've made touch worse, you've made this thing that looks a bit like recovery into something still more jagged and painful and hopeless, and wow.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 01:17PM UTC
  
  thank you!!! I'm so happy to hear that this story had been so effective - it's such a stunningly beautiful prompt and I was worried I wouldn't be able to do it justice so comments like this are really encouraging :)
  
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biblionerd07 on Chapter 1 Wed 14 May 2014 07:46PM UTC

Ah, it huuuurts. Poor Bucky. And Steve's trying so hard. Gah, these two.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 01:19PM UTC
  
  "gah these two" is pretty much my entire thought process whenever I see, hear, read, talk or write about them :(
  thank you so much for taking the time to read and leave a nice comment ♥
  
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plastic_cello on Chapter 1 Wed 14 May 2014 07:57PM UTC

This was beautifully written; I'm sitting here in awe because the descriptions in which you used to describe Bucky's current state were both fascinating and heartbreaking. I always assumed it would be terribly hard to capture Bucky's transition from the Winter Soldier back to an echo of his former identity, but you captured it in a way that seemed both realistic and captivating. I have to say this is probably one of my favorite Bucky-centric stories; it was really well-done and just wonderful (I know I'm being redundant, I'm sorry!).

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 01:24PM UTC
  
  don't apologise!!!! my ego isn't complaining lol.
  no but on the reallll, thank you so much. I've found that the transition from winter soldier to Bucky is indeed a really difficult thing to write about, because it is (fortunately) so far beyond my own realm of experience that I really have no idea if I'm doing it right but comments like this are very helpful for letting me know I'm on the right track. thank you :)
  
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a_pocket_full on Chapter 1 Wed 14 May 2014 10:09PM UTC

Lots of other people have already said things like this, but seriously you are a fantastic writer. I have to say, the line about Bucky's skin not even wanting to be with him is possibly the best representation of mental illness I have ever come across, when your own brain can lie to you like that, and all there is to do is to rationalise and accept it.
Other than that I can really only echo BaronSamedi's comments, and also to say I can't wait for the next part!

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 01:32PM UTC
  
  ok you'll have to allow me a fangirl moment here because oh my god "finding bucky barnes" is a goddamn masterpiece. I've only started to come out of my shy lil shell in the marvel fandom so you'll have to forgive me for not having left a comment on the story itself yet but basically every chapter breaks me in a different and most wonderful way.
  ....having said that, maybe now you can get an idea of how much this comment means to me, coming from you. thank you sososo much!
  (and like I told baronsamedi, pls don't kill me but it might be a while til the next part bc I'm out of town atm but just know that I haven't abandoned this fic in the slightest!)
  
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2. 1. a_pocket_full on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 06:04PM UTC
    
    Totally the best reply I've ever had to a comment!
    *mutual admiration*
    And yeah, not to worry, I'm subscribed so I'll read it the moment it does come out. (Trying not to think about one of my fics that I've not touched since Christmas! D:)
    Thank *you* for writing this fic!
    
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Such_As_Seals on Chapter 1 Wed 14 May 2014 10:40PM UTC

Here's my heart. Just take it. I DON'T NEED IT ANYMORE. These poor boys.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Thu 15 May 2014 01:33PM UTC
  
  *stitches up your heart and gives it back to you*
  ♥
  
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wecanmakesomesense on Chapter 1 Sat 17 May 2014 02:33AM UTC

This is fantastic. I love how Bucky is getting better, but also not.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Mon 19 May 2014 09:36PM UTC
  
  thank you! and yessss, that's exactly what makes this prompt so horribly tragic - that all these things that ostensibly seem like steps forward are in actuality indicators of something worse ;_;
  
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Account Deleted on Chapter 1 Mon 02 Jun 2014 11:57PM UTC

"So he lets others put their fingers on him, until finally they no longer feel like they have to ask for permission each and every time, and the gnawing thing inside of him settles like a whale carcass sinking soundlessly to the ocean floor."
wow. just wow. such vivid imagery, that sentence stuck in my chest and has stayed with me since i read it. This story has some amazing writing in it!

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Wed 04 Jun 2014 03:06AM UTC
  
  thank you so much! fun fact: before i wrote this part, i had to google to see if whale carcasses actually sank that far down, which turns out they do - it's called a 'whale fall' and it becomes a hotbed of ocean life with its own mini-ecosystems :O
  
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Account Deleted on Chapter 1 Mon 16 Jun 2014 04:45PM UTC

This is a very brilliant and very deep story. The best I have read in a very long time. Your words are powerful. The way you describe Barnes trauma is haunting and real and it hurts. I am glad you show us that there is no easy fix after you have gone through hell like Barnes and that there isn't an easy cure and that even if you love someone it doesn't mean you can magically heal him. I am impressed by your skills. Brilliant fic you have here. Thank you for sharing it and I cannot wait to read more.

Last Edited Mon 16 Jun 2014 04:46PM UTC

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Wed 02 Jul 2014 03:42PM UTC
  
  omg somehow i missed this comment i'm so sorry!!! but thank you so much. even if you love someone it doesn't mean you can magically heal him yes! this is basically the moral of the story lol ;~;
  
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pekka_rinne on Chapter 1 Wed 18 Jun 2014 10:00PM UTC

Oh my god. I am so incredibly glad I doing this fic. You are my hero. I have no words for how into this story I am. Jdndbdjsksbdbs wow.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Fri 20 Jun 2014 08:52PM UTC
  
  eeeee thank you :)
  
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Nicole2686 on Chapter 1 Mon 23 Jun 2014 11:59AM UTC

Wow. Okay, just wow! There's something in this story that reminds me of another I'm reading; it's called Revenant, here's the link in case you don't know what I'm talking about... http://archiveofourown.org/works/1536380/chapters/3252230 The plot lines in both are totally absolutely different but there's something in the way Bucky is characterized that strikes a cord in me. It's not that he feels guilty for all the atrocities he committed as the Winter Soldier but rather that he committed them at all. He feels guilty for breaking. That the pain got to him and he shattered. Which I must say, bravo! I love how you do it and wanted to thank you for sharing this story. It's wonderful and I'm so glad I found another fanfic that thinks the way I do about Bucky and what is going on in his mind.

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1. Nicole2686 on Chapter 1 Mon 23 Jun 2014 12:00PM UTC
  
  And this review probably should have been for chapter 7, but oh well
  
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2. refusals on Chapter 1 Mon 23 Jun 2014 05:48PM UTC
  
  aaah yes that fic is on my embarrassingly long 'to read' list! (i do this thing where i start reading about a thousand long fics at once and then promptly confuse myself and have to start all over one by one........ smh) It's not that he feels guilty for all the atrocities he committed as the Winter Soldier but rather that he committed them at all. He feels guilty for breaking. yes!! i love exploring this as a part of bucky's characterisation, too. thanks for the link; it'll be awesome to read another story with the same idea, especially since the plots are completely different. and thanks for reading!
  
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wolfiefics on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Jul 2014 05:20AM UTC

This is a freaking brilliant description: If Steve was the sun, brilliant and golden and unstoppable, then Bucky was the moon, weathered and dependable but shining only because of someone else’s light, and hiding a dark side that everyone knew about anyway, even if they’d never seen it.
Absolutely freaking brilliant.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Sun 20 Jul 2014 03:46PM UTC
  
  thank you! ngl, i was pretty proud of that metaphor if i do say so myself lol :B
  
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spoonring on Chapter 1 Mon 28 Jul 2014 03:50AM UTC

oh angst and "If Steve was the sun, brilliant and golden and unstoppable, then Bucky was the moon, weathered and dependable but shining only because of someone else’s light, and hiding a dark side that everyone knew about anyway, even if they’d never seen it." that was beautiful.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Tue 29 Jul 2014 02:35PM UTC
  
  thanks so much! i was pretty pleased with that line myself tbh hahaha.
  
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asherlev1 on Chapter 1 Thu 07 Aug 2014 11:15PM UTC

Jesus, I just realized this fic isn't finished and I started it and now it's too late for me to go back. *laughs maniacally*
I'm actually a blubbering mess, if I'm being honest. I just tend to avoid Bucky recovery fics in general, because they make me sad. But this one latched its hooks into me and I have to keep reading in the hopes that Bucky will get better. You've etched such a tender, aching, vulnerable, careful portrait of him - I'm in awe. Thank you for this.

Last Edited Thu 07 Aug 2014 11:16PM UTC

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Fri 08 Aug 2014 03:11AM UTC
  
  thank you for your comments!! they sounded increasingly distressed, though - i hope you're ok lol. it means so much to me that you've given this story a chance despite not usually reading fics with this theme, and it means even more that you've become so taken by it. thanks again :)
  
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Qwervbnm on Chapter 1 Tue 02 Sep 2014 03:40PM UTC

It makes my heart trembling! Can I translate it into Chinese?

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Fri 05 Sep 2014 03:58AM UTC
  
  thank you! and wow i would be HONOURED if you would like to take the time to translate this into chinese! i'm chinese myself, but born in canada and can't speak or understand a single word lol but it would still mean so much to me :)
  
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2. 1. Qwervbnm on Chapter 1 Sat 06 Sep 2014 01:26AM UTC
    
    Thank you so much to let me do this. However, I may do it slowly cause I'm a little busy currently.
    
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GrimMalkyn on Chapter 1 Tue 09 Sep 2014 03:05AM UTC

So many fucking feels. Goddammit. How.can you be so good? Those little bits of desperation, the pee... the memories. Christ, you got me.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Sat 13 Sep 2014 08:36PM UTC
  
  thank you so much for both of your comments! i'm glad you've found this story to be so powerful.
  
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Elyze26 on Chapter 1 Tue 30 Sep 2014 07:23PM UTC

This part:
"If Steve was the sun, brilliant and golden and unstoppable, then Bucky was the moon, weathered and dependable but shining only because of someone else’s light, and hiding a dark side that everyone knew about anyway, even if they’d never seen it."

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ShadowSpectrum on Chapter 1 Fri 31 Oct 2014 08:30PM UTC

I have just finished reading this beautiful story of re-birth and I have a few things to say.
First of all, thank you so, so much for writing and posting this amazing story.
It is amazing, kind and patient.
I had to stop several times and leave a chapter or paragraph open for a day or two as I processed them.
Your so-called 'psychobabble' was number 2 favorite thing about the story, number 1 being Bucky's
conversations with himself. They way he managed to start seeing himself as a person...
You apologized for 'dragging things out' - but I always wished you did write more ...
You seem like a very dedicated researcher. You having stated that you have no personal
experience with trauma or PTSD, and what implies, makes me respect the amount of
research and empathy you have put into this story.
As a person who can heavily relate to this story - I have had an amazing journey with it.
It even made me realize certain things that went under the radar, and reminded me of other
things I have forgotten. It was a heavy but inspiring read, of hope and goodness.
I think it may have been a little fast paced (haha, simply because I am greedy) but
much slower than the usual fanfictions about 'healing'.
Ignorant people believing that the 'magical power of their pure love' is supposed to
heal you overnight, with no effort on their part whatsoever.
I have not been as lucky with partners as Bucky in your story is with Steve and friends,
but after decades of self-healing I can enjoy the warmth of love in your story without resentment.
I'm getting lost now, but the main point remains. Thank you.
Words cannot express...
I hope to read more psychobabble by you soon.
I tried finding a way to reach you to ask some questions in private,
but couldn't seem to come across it anywhere. If you are comfortable with divulging an email address, please please do so.
Very very grateful reader and fan.
:) may the feels be strong and comfy for you.

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1. refusals on Chapter 1 Sun 02 Nov 2014 05:30PM UTC
  
  thank you so much. this is one of the most touching comments i've ever read. my heart aches whenever i hear that someone relates to any aspect of this story, but at the same time it's amazing to hear that fic has been able to connect with people and maybe even help them in whatever way, no matter how small.
  i am so humbled by the stories of resilience and courage that people have been so brave as to share with me throughout the writing of this story and would love to continue talking to you, even though i gotta warn you in advance that i don't know how useful i'll actually be lol. do you have a tumblr? i'd rather not post my email address publicly, but i could message it to you if you find me on tumblr. ~~(though if you don't have a tumblr, i don't mind posting it in a reply here and then deleting it once you've seen it.)~~ EDIT: just realised that if you don't have a tumblr, the more reasonable thing to do is to drop me an anon message on mine with your email address. i'm such an idiot lol
  thank you again for this comment.
  
  Last Edited Sun 02 Nov 2014 07:37PM UTC
  
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maharetr on Chapter 1 Sun 30 Nov 2014 03:43PM UTC

Dear god. This has been on my to read list for a long time, open in a dusty tab so to speak, and this is the first time I've been able to finish the first chapter all the way through even after many attempts, because this... This is how actual recovery might go. Or not go, because he might not make it fully out, and it is so horrifying and unsettling and realistic and *hurts* to read. The bit where asking permission to touch radically changes the touch and the *everything* and Steve thinks things are getting better but they aren't, not in Bucky's head, and fuuuck.
I mean, I get the cheat sheet that says "this fic is 100k long, so the odds are in our favour here" but I would utterly believe based on this first chapter (and with all the kudos I can shower on your writing skills) that bucky doesn't make it back. And that is so unsettling and impressive. All the unsettled, uncomfortable kudos in the *world*, basically. (Goes for chapter two at last)

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