Chapter Text
Fear.
The seizing of the heart in a clawed grip, reducing the brain down to something primal and instinctual. The sense that something horrible will befall you in time, and you’ve no choice but to sit and wait for it like a dog pacing in a crate. An instilled emotion, by nature or by heavy hand, in an assertion of control you lack.
Bucky had become very familiar with this feeling. Whether it was Steve’s illness scares, being drafted to war, huddling down in trenches, being captured and experimented on, or knowing he’d spend the rest of his days in a HYDRA lab, all he ever felt was fear.
Two strong hands were wrapped around his biceps, dragging him back to his cell. His head was spinning, body aching from the new bruises and old scars. The guards had no care for his comfort; they pulled him along, unwilling, despite his pleas, their expressions nothing but apathy. Bucky could never imagine that absence of empathy from a human being, and seeing it in front of his own eyes — toward him — made him truly understand that he was an object in their minds.
As they threw him onto the cold concrete, he curled up against the far wall and forced his lungs to draw in air. When the guards didn’t retreat, though, this overwhelming sense of dread fell over him, making him lash out like an animal. “Please, please let me go home. Please, I— Please don’t,” he begged, voice shaking. “I don’t want to die. Please, it hurts,”
The guards stared at him, no emotion in their faces. Bucky let out a sob through tightly gritted teeth. “What the hell is wrong with you people?! I just— I want out. Please, God, I want out. Let me go.”
They exchanged glances, the only sign that they were even alive. One of them smirked, and Bucky’s stomach dropped. The guard rushed forward and picked Bucky’s weak form up by the shoulders, slamming him back into the wall. Bucky’s head bounced off it and his vision went white as he fell onto his hands and knees. He heard a laugh through his ringing ears and then a boot was colliding with his stomach.
A hand fisted in his hair and forced him to look up. He was met with the snarling face of a guard, eyes cold and tormenting. His words were accented. “You don’t have a home anymore, soldier. You will rot here.”
Bucky bit through the tears and held his aching ribs with his normal arm. The other one was metal, shining and gray with a star as red as blood on the shoulder. It was foreign to him, and yet he couldn’t get away from it. He’d tried to rip it out, the first few days. He couldn’t remember what they did to him after that, but his body shuddered from the memory. Every time he looked at the disgusting scar tissue across his skin, he felt like something beyond himself. A monster, maybe.
One of the guards grabbed him by the back of the shirt and hauled him up, and that’s when Bucky started to slip from reality.
The headline of the newspaper stared back at him like bared teeth. Every time his eyes traced the ink on the page, it was like a knife in his gut twisting and twisting until he was hollowed out. The man holding it was smiling something ugly.
Captain America: Remembering Our Nation’s Hero.
His first instinct was denial. It wasn’t real. They’d tortured him over and over again, stripping away his hope and battering his body into nothing but a bloody mess, and now they were going for the killing blow. He couldn’t let them. He had to hang onto his sanity.
“This is fake,” he whispered. He couldn’t muster anger into his voice. “You made this. It’s not real.”
The man — his handler, supposedly — grinned. “I thought you may say that.”
He turned to switch on a television, firing up a broadcast. It was a tribute, speaking on the tragic and sacrificial death of Steve Rogers in the Arctic. Every fuzzy word from the speakers made tremors run up his spine. It was like the world around him had gone dull, ripping out the last of the roots tying him to the Earth.
Grief seized him and he began to tremble. Tears, unwanted, pricked at his eyes until they burned. He shook his head vehemently.
“No. No, no, no…”
“You are alone in this world, Soldier,” his handler spoke. Sadistic, unsympathetic. “Your death has been memorialized already. The man who fought for you to be remembered is gone. You are already forgotten in history.”
His metal arm clutched at his chest, like if he dug hard enough, he could rip out the beating heart trapped within his ribcage. A scream, broken and angry and ruined, ripped from his throat. Every last piece of him was chipped away in that moment; every bit of hope still left in his soul was torn away with a taunt. The world, cruel and unloving, laughed down upon him. There was no God, there was no salvation. He died that day on the train, and he was nothing but a body refounded.
These people, riddled with sin and hate, dragged Hell up from its resting place so Bucky could look it in the eyes and long for it. It was that day, staring at the broadcast, that Bucky lost his will to fight back.
“Again.”
The shock of electricity drove through his brain like a hammer drives through a nail. Every nerve in his body was on fire, overloading the signals to express nothing but pain.
“Again.”
His vision went white. It felt like his brain was sloshing around in his head like mush. His body, devoid of autonomy, twitched and thrashed on its own accord. Every thought he tried to conjure died like the tissue of an infection.
“What is your name, soldier?”
His name. God, his name. There was something he was supposed to remember, something he’d been clinging onto. An identity, a number. He’d tried to scrawl it into the walls of his cell and paid the price for it.
“Солдат!”
The words fell from his lips like blood. “I am an asset of HYDRA.”
“Again!”
A bonfire. Gunfire and dirt. The smell of cigarette smoke and burning tobacco. A woman’s voice as she prepared medicine. Coughing, rough and guttural. Clinking dog tags and a promise to come home. It all fell like sand through his fingers.
“What is your name?”
An old sketchbook with rough pages. Blue eyes and sickness. A cold table and an army helmet. Injections, electricity, blood, the sweet taste of a mother’s cooking, warm blankets in winter. A number.
James Buchanan Barnes.
Three, two, five, five, seven, zero, three, eight.
“Again!”
Asset, Barnes, Soldier, Sargeant. Fire, grime, and relief. A friend, a savior, a soldier.
“Again!”
A cold metal arm. Orders and obedience. Growing hair and kicks to the gut. Scarring on his face from the machine that only ever brought him pain. An open cell door, cries in silence, freight cars and rust and coming home.
“What is your name?”
Pain. Obedience.
“I am the Winter Soldier, loyal asset of HYDRA.”
The man smiled the way predator bares its teeth at prey. The soldier’s eyes sluggishly moved around the room to find power-hungry, triumphant stares. They were watching, waiting, proud of their work. He couldn’t put the pieces together to figure out why. The picture was just out of his reach, smudged and shattered in an old frame face-down in the drawer of a nightstand. It wasn’t his duty to raise questions.
“There is hope for you yet, Солдат.”
The Soldier woke up with a start. Every instinct within him screamed to move, the way an alarm begs you to flee. His first thought was that he wasn’t in his cell; the surface he woke up on was soft, the home around him was warm and sunlit, and the floors were dark wood. The second thing he registered was the shape of a figure in his periphery. It was small and hesitant, but he reacted all the same.
After a quick weapons assessment, a metal hand shot up to wrap around the throat of the offender. He stood up and slammed them into the wall closest to him, making portraits and decorations rattle. There was a yelp, maybe a plea, and tiny hands clawed at his arm.
A child, he thought. Those were rare on missions. Had he been a witness? Collateral? It didn’t matter. Interrogate, extract information, execute. Leave as little evidence as possible and abandon the scene. Report the mission. Return to the Chair.
Objectives and logistics listed themselves in his mind to formulate a plan of action. He calculated risk and determined optimal methods as easily as breathing. And yet there was something nagging in the back of his mind, pushing and pulling and sinking its nails in. Had he forgotten something? Was he compromised?
Something wasn’t making sense to him. What… was it?
Sam had awoken to the scream. He’d know that voice and tone even in death, and his body acted without much thought. He leapt out of bed in his t-shirt and boxers and pulled the gun from under his pillow, retrieving the magazine from the bedside drawer and sliding it in smoothly. Sarah didn’t like guns in the house, but Sam had been paranoid for a while now, knowing that the Flag Smashers could easily find where she lived. He felt guilty not telling her, but he wouldn’t take any chances, not with his family.
His descent down the stairs was quick but cautious. When he got to the bottom of the steps and peered into the living room, though, his heart constricted and he raised the barrel to aim.
Bucky had Cass pinned to the wall, metal wrapped around the flesh of the boy’s throat and squeezing just enough to keep him coughing. Cass was struggling, kicking his legs and using his nails, but Bucky was unrelenting, as still as a stone statue.
The look in his eyes wasn’t quite right. It was emotionless and dangerous, his head tilted down and his brow furrowed. It was the same look that he gave in the bar when Zemo told him to attack.
“Bucky?” Sam said slowly. “Bucky, I need you to let go of him right now.”
There was no acknowledgement, like he was lost in a trance he couldn’t get out of. Sam’s finger slipped onto the trigger.
“Buck, you need to release Cass right now. You’re safe. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. I need you to let him go.”
Bucky slowly turned his head toward Sam and met his gaze. In that moment, Sam didn’t recognize him. He was looking at the Winter Soldier, and the Winter Soldier was looking back. Don’t make me do this, Sam thought. But when Cass glanced at him with desperation, he knew this was unavoidable.
He fired off a warning shot that pinged off the vibranium. The reaction was instant; Bucky dropped Cass, and the boy fell to the floor, sputtering. Instead, his entire attention was on Sam, turning his body to face him. His stance was stiff, and his shoulders were squared in a way Sam had never seen. Even in a t-shirt and jeans, he was intimidating enough for Sam’s hand to waver a little on the gun.
“Bucky, you’re in the Wilson family home with Sam, Sarah, Cass, and AJ. It’s five in the morning. You’ve just woken up from a nightmare. You’re safe,” Sam insisted.
There was no indication that Bucky even heard him. There was no signal, no shift in his weight, not even a breath as Bucky lunged at him, using his metal arm to clutch Sam’s wrist and tear the gun from his grasp. He tossed it aside and grabbed Sam by the shirt, slamming him back into the kitchen island. Sam let out a winded huff and drew one knee up, slamming it into Bucky’s abdomen.
“Cass, run!” he yelled.
Bucky stumbled, but didn’t stop. He went for a punch that Sam ducked away from, and his normal fist instead slammed into the counter, causing it to crack apart. He groaned as his knuckles split.
Sam spun around and kicked at the back of Bucky’s knees, driving his elbow into the man’s shoulder blades in hopes of taking him down to the floor. It brought Bucky into a kneeling position, but he recovered too quickly for it to be effective.
He reached back and grabbed Sam’s neck with his metal hand and slammed him into the floor. Sam groaned as his back hit the hardwood, but Bucky didn’t give him a second to breathe. He seized Sam by the throat and began to squeeze.
In blind panic, Sam started to flounder. Instinct won over and he started to pry at Bucky’s hand for a few moments before he realized it was pointless. Instead, he winced and wound up for a strike. I’m sorry, Buck, he thought as he drove his fist into the scarring between Bucky’s shoulder and metal plates. The effect was immediate; Bucky cried out in pain and opened his hand, letting Sam free. He sat back on his heels and clutched at the area, tremors visibly running through his body.
Sam felt awful for exploiting a weak point, but he was truly fighting for survival. The fact he wasn’t already dead suggested that some part of Bucky was holding back, but he was unpredictable and violent, so Sam wasn’t placing any hope in that. He’d come for Sam’s nephew, and that was when all holds were barred.
While Bucky recovered, Sam stood and grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter. He wasn’t going to beat the fucking Winter Soldier in a knife fight, but he knew it would buy Sarah and the boys some time.
Bucky rose to his feet, panting, clearly in agony, and still didn’t snap out of it. He bit his tongue hard enough that blood leaked through his lips and fought through the pain. Sam was looking at a being forged to kill under any circumstance, more machine than anything resembling human. He was conditioned and programmed to complete a mission, even at his own expense, and it was his awareness of that that shook Sam to his core. The Winter Soldier knew he was an asset and that failure was unacceptable, so he persevered, the way a starving animal must continue to hunt, knowing the threat of death is lurking over them.
Sam attacked first this time. He swung the knife in an arc and Bucky leapt backward to avoid it. He blocked the next strike with his metal arm, causing Sam’s wrist to crumple and drop the weapon. Bucky caught it before it hit the floor, and Sam knew he was screwed.
He kicked Bucky’s knee as hard as he could and rammed his upper body into his chest. Bucky staggered backward and fell into a defensive stance, glaring at Sam viciously.
Okay, Sam thought. This is gonna go really badly.
Bucky went for a tackle, and Sam turned into it, causing them both to crash into the floor on their sides. Bucky groaned and hauled himself on top of Sam, who hadn’t recovered yet, and landed a few blows to Sam’s cheek with his flesh hand. Sam felt his nose crack under the hit and his face began to burn badly. Blood streamed from the wound.
Sam tried to throw his hips up and shove Bucky off of him, but he didn’t budge. He tried to kick at him, but Bucky didn’t even flinch. He used his nails to scratch down Bucky’s face in desperation, tearing skin open in the process, but Bucky did nothing more than bare his teeth and sling another punch. Sam’s head hit the floor hard enough for stars to swim in his head.
As Bucky began to raise the knife, Sam felt true fear overtake him. The soldier wasn’t going to stop.
“Bucky,” he begged. “Bucky, no! It’s Sam! It’s Sam Wilson! Bucky, please wake up—”
Bucky faltered, his arm frozen in the air. A look of confusion overtook his expression, but he didn’t come back to reality. It looked like the thoughts in his head were conflicting, like something was pulling him away from his own mind. He was looking at Sam, but he wasn’t seeing. Behind his eyes was a war waged on his own consciousness; The Winter soldier and Bucky Barnes, wrestling for control over an old, beaten body.
When he spoke, it was mumbled, like he was saying it to himself and trying to believe it. “James Buchanan Barnes. Three, two, five, five, seven, zero, three, eight…”
Sam nodded frantically. “That’s right. You’re Bucky Barnes. Come on, man, wake up, come on.”
“J-James Buchanan Barnes,” Bucky murmured. “Three, two…”
“You’re in the Wilson family home with Sam, Sarah, Cass, and AJ. It’s five in the morning. You just woke up from a nightmare. You’re safe, Bucky,” Sam pleaded.
Suddenly, Bucky whined and pulled back from Sam, dropping the knife. It clattered to the floor, and Sam quickly kicked it away.
“James Buchanan Barnes. Three, two, five, five, seven, zero, three, eight…”
“That’s right, that’s you. You’re safe, Bucky.”
Consciousness snapped back to Bucky like a rubber band pulled and strained too far. One moment, there was a haze over his mind, and the next, he was on his knees, crouched over Sam with a knife in hand. He’d dropped the knife like it burned him, searching Sam’s eyes for some sort of explanation, but all he was met with was unmasked terror and distrust.
He scrambled back against the kitchen cabinets, tucking his knees into himself and trying to remember what happened as his heart rate doubled. It felt like there was cloth over his mouth, constricting every breath and making his lungs scream. The kitchen was a wreck, from splintered wood to cracked marble and blood. The knife on the floor glinted back at him tauntingly.
“What did I do?” he gasped out. “Sam, what did I do? What did I do?!”
Sam sat up with a pained groan, clutching at his clearly-broken nose and visibly winded. “Just breathe, Bucky. We’ll talk about it when you’re calm.”
“What did I do?” Bucky insisted, tears burning the corners of his eyes. “Sam, I need to know, please,”
“Not right now, Buck. It’ll only make it worse.”
He could feel a pulsing ache from the crook of his shoulder where flesh met metal, like the nerves were screaming at him. He raised a trembling hand up to his face and felt thin lines spanning from his cheekbone to his chin. His knuckles were shredded and cracked. He’d bitten through the side of his tongue. His head raged with a migraine that was surely not to go away soon. He tried to calm his racing mind, but it was like trying to tame an animal still in a cage. He fought for control, but it was a battle he’d never hope to win.
Then Bucky saw the firearm on the floor. A pistol, CZ P-10 C. Recently fired, it looked like.
Everything in Bucky broke apart like a flake of snow in the winter. It all began to set in. He’d attacked Sam. One of them fired off a shot. What had he done?
He thought he was free. He thought every trace of the Soldier’s programming had been eradicated in Wakanda. And here he’d gone and proved them wrong, going after his friend in his own home with his family sleeping upstairs. He’d woken up with a knife in his hand, about to plunge it into Sam’s chest. He needed to be detained. He needed to call SHIELD, to go to the Raft—
Sam kneeled down beside him and put his hands on either side of Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky’s eyes snapped to his. “Bucky, I need you to breathe. Cass woke you up from a nightmare and you didn’t know where you were. It’s not your fault.”
Bucky shook his head, fighting back the sobs clawing their way from his mouth. “No, no, Sam, you need to… you need to get rid of me. Call Fury. I need to go back into cryo, I need— I need—”
“Bucky,” Sam snapped firmly. “Stop. We’re gonna get you help, okay? Just stay there. Don’t move. I’m going to get us cleaned up and we’re going to talk about this.”
“Is Cass okay?”
Sam’s hesitation made Bucky’s stomach sink. He thought back to the gun and looked down at his hands in shock and horror. “Did I…”
“No! No, no, no!” Sam said quickly. “He’s okay, he’s just shaken.”
Bucky looked up at Sam through tears. “Who fired the gun?”
“I did. I was trying to get you away from Cass.”
Two pieces of information were catalogued in his mind, then: he did go after Cass. Sam thought it was severe enough to fire the pistol at Bucky. That’s how far gone he’d been.
“Sam, call SHIELD. Please, I’m begging you, I’m not safe to be here, please—”
Sam’s voice was stern. “Bucky. I’m not doing anything until you’re calm.”
“What if—”
Bucky’s words were cut off from a sharp shake of the head from Sam, who’d wet down a rag and crouched in front of Bucky again with it. The blood from his own nose was already wiped off, but the cartilage still needed to be corrected. Wordlessly, he took Bucky’s knuckles and began to gently press the rag to them, soaking the cloth red. Bucky bit his lip through the sting.
The warmth made his heart rate begin to settle, his breathing evening out into quick pants. Sam didn’t falter or flinch back even once as he cleaned Bucky’s hands, as though the task was helping ground him too. He’d switched from battle mode to being the calm, caring man he always was. Whatever was going through his head, he didn’t show it. If he was thinking about how he was going to get rid of Bucky, he didn’t indicate it.
When he finally composed his thoughts, Sam began to speak, his voice even and slow. “Bucky, I want to make it very clear that I don’t blame you for all of this. I should’ve told the boys not to wake you up or bother you when you’re out of it. But I also need you to know that this is going to have consequences.”
Bucky nodded. He was shaking so badly that Sam had to hold him still.
“Now, I don’t know what those consequences are going to be yet. My nose hurts like hell and Sarah’s about to be really pissed at you. You also put your hands on my nephew, and I can’t say I’m not unbelievably angry about it. But… it’s not your fault. I need you to know that.”
He stood up to re-wet the rag and crouched back down, leaning closer this time. He raised his hand, silently asking for permission, and Bucky granted it. He gently dragged the cloth down Bucky’s face, cleansing the blood from his stubble and getting a better look at the scratches. His skin was still under Sam’s fingernails.
As the shock wore off, Bucky leaned further against the cabinet, crying silently. There was still panic overwhelming him, but he was trying so hard to keep it together. If he lashed out again, he didn’t know what Sam would do to him. So he muffled his sobs and tried, without success, to stop his trembling.
“I’m sorry,” he whined. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Sam.”
Sam hushed him. “You didn’t mean to. I’m going to keep reminding myself of that, so you need to, too.”
A few more apologies still fell from Bucky’s mouth, whispered and frantic and broken, but Sam didn’t chide him for it. They both knew Bucky was never going to forgive himself for this.
He flinched back hard enough to make the cabinet rattle when he heard the creaking of the stairs. He braced himself for the storm, tensing and pulling his knees tighter to his chest like it would shield him, but he knew nothing could save him. It was time to face the consequences.
Sarah emerged in the doorway, clearly emotional and rattled. Her eyes were filled with tears, and her expression was both terrified and enraged. When she saw Bucky, her entire body shook with fury. “What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you?!” she shouted.
Sam hung his head. He didn’t rise to Bucky’s defense. He knew he deserved it.
Bucky’s lack of response seemed to egg her on. “I let you in here because Sam trusts you, I feed you, I let you sleep on my couch, and you put your hands on my baby's neck?! You fire a gun in my home?!”
She rushed toward him, and Bucky stood up on shaky legs to accept the punishment she was about to deal him. She grabbed him by his shirt and pushed him back into the cabinets, despite the obvious fear in her eyes. The slap, open-palmed, was expected before it came. “Don't you ever, ever put that metal arm near my son again, do you hear me? I don't know what terrible thing you went through to make you act like this, but it's not going to happen here. Pack your things and get out of my house!”
“I'm so sorry,” Bucky whispered.
“No,” she growled. “Don’t. I don't want to hear that. Get out.”
Under his breath, barely audible, he began to recite the only thing he knew. Despite the cloudiness overtaking his mind, despite all the memory loss and uncertainty, there were two things he knew. Two things he’d been clinging onto for years. “J-James Buchanan Barnes. Three, two, five, five, seven, zero, three, eight. My name is James Buchanan Barnes, three, two, five…”
“Sarah—”
She whirled on Sam. “Don’t!”
He gently rested his hand over her arm. “Please let go of him. He's scared.”
And Sam was right. Bucky’s entire body was overtaken with fear, too vulnerable to be masked with indifference. Every ounce of it was present in the way he held himself. He looked like he was staring down the barrel of a gun and waiting for the trigger to be pulled. He hadn't been that scared in decades. There was no dissociation, no place in his mind to retreat to — he was in the present, aware, and wishing he was anywhere else.
Sarah must've seen just how pathetic he looked, because she took her hands off of him and took a step back. “What's wrong with him? What's that number?”
His head was slipping between times. Part of him was in Sarah’s kitchen, part of him was in the 1940s, still being broken in by HYDRA and anticipating a punishment bad enough to leave him on the floor of his cell for days. The circumstances were different, but at his core, he was still just a soldier that did something wrong and expected correction.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Please don’t do this. Please.”
Bucky was fading out again. This time, though, it was a different version — this Bucky was more human, less machine. He wasn’t angry, he was frightened. Every few seconds he’d go from looking at Sarah apologetically to looking at nothing, his expression begging for some semblance of mercy. His breathing was ragged and uneven, and his crying didn’t cease.
“What’s wrong with him?” Sarah demanded again.
Sam rubbed a hand down his face. “I don’t think he’s fully with us right now.”
“Stop ignoring my question, Sam!”
“I don’t know, Sarah!” he shot back. “He was brainwashed for seventy years, I don’t know what goes through his mind when he’s like this!”
Sarah recoiled. “What?”
He stepped forward and ushered Sarah to move out of the way. She glared at him, but obliged and took a few steps backward. Sam stepped into Bucky’s line of sight and waved his hand around. Bucky’s eyes didn’t follow the movement.
“Bucky, where are you right now?”
“I–I don’t understand, sir,” he responded immediately.
Shit, Sam thought. It was bad. “Can you tell me your name?”
“James… зимний солдат…”
“Do you remember Steve?”
It was a shot in the dark. To his luck, it worked. Bucky’s eyes widened and he seemed to come back to himself for a moment. “Steve. Yeah, Stevie.”
“That’s right. Do you remember me?”
He squinted at Sam for a few moments. “I don’t… I…”
“My name is Sam Wilson. You’re in the Wilson family home. It’s five in the morning. You had a nightmare.”
“I had a nightmare.” Bucky repeated.
“Can you tell me about the nightmare?” Sam asked.
“I was begging,” Bucky muttered absently. “They didn’t listen. I didn’t have a home to go back to.”
Sam didn’t understand, but he got the sense that Bucky was talking about the early days of HYDRA. The times when Bucky still had the hope left to beg. “What else, Buck?”
“The newspaper. Steve… he was gone. I saw it. The broadcast. Then… the Chair. I was in the Chair. I couldn’t remember. Three, two, five, five…”
“Do you know what year it is now?”
Bucky, brokenly, shook his head.
“It’s twenty-twenty-four. We were on a mission to stop a terrorist group known as the Flag Smashers. You recruited Zemo to help us. We’re in Louisiana now.”
“Zemo,” he repeated. “The trigger words.”
“They don’t work anymore, Buck. You went to Wakanda and they fixed you up. You’re in control again.”
“Control?”
“Yeah, Buck. You’re in control.”
Bucky blinked the tears out of his eyes as recognition began to dawn on him. When he looked at Sam, he tilted his head and his expression softened. “Sam,” he choked out with a sob.
“That’s right, that’s me,” Sam said comfortingly.
He brought Bucky into a hug, wrapping one arm around his back and putting his other hand in Bucky’s hair. Bucky slumped against his shoulder, exhausted, and shuddered out a long sigh. Sam slowly lowered them to the floor, sliding onto his knees and keeping a tight grip on the soldier. Bucky’s entire body went limp in his arms.
Sarah, looking uncomfortable, just crossed her arms. “I need him out by seven.”
Sam nodded silently. As much as he wanted to defend Bucky and express how much it wasn’t his fault, Bucky had put his hands on Cass, and that wasn’t taken lightly. Sam’s blood was still boiling beneath his skin, but he couldn’t, in good conscience, chew Bucky out for it. Bucky was torturing himself enough over it.
It was Sarah’s home, ultimately. And she wasn’t wrong to be furious after Bucky put his metal hand around Cass’s throat and forced Sam to open fire on him. She was keeping it together more than he ever expected her to, and he had to be grateful for that. He just didn’t know where they were going to go yet, because he wasn’t kicking Bucky out on his own. Bucky could manage alone, he was trained to survive under any conditions and Sam knew that, but he still refused to do that to him. Bucky clearly needed help.
He didn’t know when he started to rub circles into Bucky’s back, but it seemed to help, because Bucky was no longer shivering. Instead, there were quiet, vulnerable whimpers as he tried to calm himself. Sam felt like he was seeing so much more of Bucky than he ever wanted to.
He gave Bucky a few pats and pulled back, trying to get him to look at him. Bucky’s eyes roamed before they met Sam’s. “We’re gonna have to find somewhere else to stay, okay? Do you wanna get washed up first?”
He shook his head. “You can’t go with me. I’m gonna… I’m gonna turn myself in, I think. I’ll call someone.”
Sam sighed and let his tone grow more serious. “Bucky, they’ll lock you in prison and treat you like an animal. That’s not what you need right now. I want you to call Raynor while I pack our things and tell her what happened. Leave out the part with Cass, okay? I don’t want her to report you. This was a fluke, Buck. Just a fluke. You’re still you.”
“Shower,” Bucky mumbled.
“Yeah. Yeah, you can do that first. I’ll give you a change of clothes.”
Sam stood up from the floor, offering Bucky a hand to help him up too. Surprisingly, Bucky accepted it, using his other hand to steady himself with the counter. When he swayed, Sam slung an arm over his shoulders.
Together, they made their way toward the bathroom. Sam deposited Bucky on the lid of the toilet seat, turning to grab him a towel from the shelf. He turned on the faucet and began to run the water for a bath, putting his wrist under it to feel the temperature as it heated up. Once it was hot enough, he nodded to Bucky.
Before he could exit to go pack, Bucky grabbed him by the forearm. Sam spun around, still a little jumpy, but froze when he saw how raw and exposed Bucky’s expression was.
“What’s wrong?”
“Would you… stand guard?” Bucky asked.
Bucky didn’t usually ask for much, even in his normal state. When he dared to, he always looked ready to hear the refusal. There was this resigned look he got, like he knew even asking was pushing the limit. He had this notion that he didn’t deserve even the most basic generosity, and often wouldn’t even bother opening his mouth. He was someone who kept everything internal and never let those bottled up emotions crack open, knowing the explosion would be devastating. So Sam didn’t even hesitate when he heard the request.
“Yeah. I’ll be right in the doorway, okay? You tell me if you need anything.”
He nodded and began to peel away his clothes. Sam turned his back for some privacy, but he got the sense that Bucky was too out of it to care. He used to do that a lot, when he first was taken in by SHIELD — if you asked him to change, he'd strip right down without any qualms. It took a long time for Bucky to realize that he had autonomy and a choice. Boundaries were still something he struggled to set, years later. Sam suspected that Bucky would never fully come to terms with the fact he was just as human as everyone else.
He heard a hiss of pain as Bucky sunk into the tub and fought the instinct to turn around and check on him.
After a few minutes of silence, not even a splash of water interrupting it, Bucky’s ragged voice called out to him. “Sam?”
Sam tilted his head. “Yeah, Buck?”
“...Would you sit with me? Please?”
He finally turned, and when he did, his heart sank. Bucky was eerily still, knees tucked up to his chest and his arms folded over them. He was staring forward, tearing up again.
Sam moved over to the toilet and sat down on the lid, sighing out a soft breath. Bucky was chewing his tongue, like he wanted to talk but couldn't form the words. Sam had a feeling it was about the nightmare that had caused all of this.
“What did you dream about, Buck?” Sam asked.
“My first few weeks with HYDRA,” he murmured, like every word was a bullet to bite. “I was still fighting back. I was telling them to let me go. The guards, they… they kicked me around and told me I had no home to go back to. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted to me, at that time. It was all obedience training, the ethics of it didn't matter. At that point, I still thought… I still thought they saw me as a person. But they just looked at me like I was already dead.”
Sam closed his eyes and shook his head. “That's horrible, Bucky.”
Bucky didn't acknowledge him as he continued. “A few days later, they showed me the newspaper about Steve’s death. I thought they were lying to me. They turned on a broadcast about it.”
Sam didn't know that they ever told Bucky what happened to Steve, but he supposed it made sense. The best way to crack Bucky was to show him that he had no one left. And it worked.
“The next time…” Bucky’s voice broke. “I was in the Chair. I had to answer one question: what was my name? Every time I answered wrong or took too long to answer, I was shocked. By the end of it, I didn't know anything. I didn't even know why they were staring at me. My handler told me there was hope for me.”
Sam bit through the burning behind his eyes. “What answer did they want?”
“I am the Winter Soldier, loyal asset of HYDRA.” Bucky recited. It was so deeply ingrained in his brain through hours of torture that his tone even shifted with the words.
Sam had heard horror stories from other veterans. He'd seen human cruelty and blood drawn and prisoners of war during his time as a pararescue. He'd felt the unfairness of the world in his own bones. But every time Bucky spoke of what they did to him, he learned of new horrors.
There were some things Bucky would never tell anyone. He'd speak of some of his worst experiences, too desensitized to realize just how fucked up they were, but there were details he’d omit. Not because he didn't remember, but because he did. Sam didn't want to imagine what those things were, knowing that what he already knew wasn't the worst of it. He didn't think he'd ever be able to sleep at night, or look at Bucky without pity.
Bucky never wanted pity. He hated the sympathetic looks people gave him because acknowledging himself as a victim absolved him of the blame he placed on himself. He'd always say I should've been stronger, or I didn’t fight hard enough. He'd never tell you it wasn't me who did those things, because he saw himself as complicit. That journal he had, with those scribbled names — it was to ease his mind just as much as it was to ease the mind of the victims and their families. He just wanted to feel a little less evil for the sins he was forced to commit.
“Sometimes,” Bucky whispered into the quiet bathroom, “they'd shock me even if I answered correctly. Just to make sure I wouldn't forget. Or maybe, just… just because they wanted to.”
A thought struck Sam, then. “Bucky, how old were you when they took you?”
Bucky seemed to think about it for a while, mulling it over in his head. It took a few minutes for a response to come. “Twenty-six, the first time. Twenty-eight the next.”
“Fuck,” Sam breathed.
“Born 1917. I got captured in ‘43, rescued a month later. Fell off the train in ‘45.”
“What did they do to you before Steve rescued you?”
Bucky was quiet for another long moment. “They injected me with something. Back then, I thought they were testing diseases on me. I got so sick, the first round… Then they started to shock my brain. They were already planning to make me the Winter Soldier, back then. Steve rescuing me just delayed their plan.”
Sam hung his head. He remembered that story. “Steve said he found you strapped to a table, mumbling your name and your service number.”
“I was scared to forget who I was,” he admitted. “They never called me by my name. Some of the other POWs were starting to call each other by their prison numbers. I didn't want to lose myself.” Then Bucky added, in a quieter voice, “When they started to electrocute me, things got all muddled.”
“When I did pararescue, there were some men that had been locked up for years. Some of them were tortured regularly, some of them were left in their cells to rot. Some of the men had clung onto their dog tags because it was the only thing that could identify their bodies. They didn’t think they’d ever get out alive.”
Bucky’s voice cracked into something broken and miserable, and for a moment, he sounded so young. “They took my dog tags.”
Sam’s stomach sank.
If there was anything more important than a soldier’s pride, it was their dog tags. To them, it was not only proof of serving, but a morbid connection to their identity. He'd met old veterans who still wore their dog tags daily and others who burned them until the metal corroded. Sam imagined that during war in the 40’s, they held an even heavier weight. Over 78,000 U.S. soldiers were reported missing in action after World War II.
Sam wondered if Bucky’s family had ever been told what happened to him. The replicate tags he wore around his neck were bare of the sentiment the originals held.
“When I got taken as a POW in ‘43, my only thought was that Steve was never going to survive. He lost his mother at eighteen, and I was taking care of him financially. He was just so sick all the time. Then I got drafted, and… Of course, the punk wanted to follow me. I don’t know how he even got in. I think for the first time, he felt like he was being useful. And then I go and get myself captured, and I just think, Steve doesn’t have anywhere to go.”
Bucky took a few breaths to compose himself before he continued. “Then he comes in and rescues me, and he’s bigger and stronger than I ever was. And as we’re walking back, I just kind of realize that I became the useless one. He didn’t need me anymore; he had that woman he wanted to marry, he had the fame, he was well-respected in the army. I was the one with nowhere to go, and he had the life he’d always dreamed of. I hated comparing myself to him.”
“I don’t blame you,” Sam said. “He did a one-eighty on you.”
Bucky sighed tiredly. “I was happy for him, y’know. He was finally healthy and happy, and everyone was showboating him around as the nation’s hero. He just didn’t look at me the same anymore. He hardly looked at me at all. Then I get out of the picture and he goes and kills himself a month later while I’m stuck in a lab. There was always a risk of losing him, y’know, with the amount of times he got pneumonia or scarlet fever. I never thought self-sacrifice would be the way he’d go out. In the end, I guess… I guess the same thing happened again. I’m here and he’s not.”
“He fought for you,” Sam offered. “One look at your face, and he abandoned everything he had.”
“Yeah. Idiot,” Bucky huffed. “I guess it was nice to know he still cared. Even seventy years later, with my brain all fucked up.”
He shook his head. “You should’ve heard the way he talked about you, man. It was like you hung the moon. You were the one that gave him the courage to become a soldier. Without you, we wouldn’t have Captain America, and we might not’ve won the war. No amount of bad you’ve done will ever outweigh that good.”
Bucky’s face scrunched up and his lower lip wobbled almost imperceptibly. “Don’t. Don’t say that.”
Sam frowned. “Bucky, you kept him alive and encouraged him to keep fighting. He saw you in that uniform and felt hope.”
“I was drafted,” he snapped. “I never chose to wear that uniform.”
“I’m sorry. I thought…”
“I was proud to serve, but I never willingly enlisted. I had Steve to take care of, I had a family and sisters relying on me. My dad died in ‘38 and I was the oldest. I couldn’t risk getting myself killed.”
“And… after?”
“I don’t know,” Bucky shook his head, calming down. “I don’t know. My younger sister married and had kids, but I never sought out her family. I know she has grandkids. My other siblings… I don’t even remember their names anymore.”
Sam blew out a long breath. “Did they ever do anything nice for you, man?”
Bucky laughed something empty and humorless. “When I got nice things, it was with the intention of taking them away. Sometimes they'd set food or something I needed in front of me and beat me if I touched it to get rid of temptations. There was… there was one handler that would smuggle me sweet things. It was never for free.”
Sam closed his eyes and wrung his clasped hands together to keep himself from shedding a few tears. It was never easy to listen to a soldier’s story. “Thank you for sharing with me, Bucky,” he said quietly. He cleared his throat, then. “That water's getting cold, you wanna go ahead and wash up?”
Bucky’s nod was delayed. “Yeah, I'll just— I'll just shower.”
“I'll stand in the doorway, okay?”
“Yeah.”
Sam returned to his post in the doorway as Bucky stood up from the bath and drained the water. He heard some fumbling with the shower knobs before it fully turned on, and steam flooded the room after a while. Bucky didn’t make a single sound as he cleaned up. Sam was straining his ears the entire time, worrying Bucky would stumble or need help, but aside from the occasional crack of a bottle lid and the steady stream, there was nothing.
While he was busy, Sam lifted a hesitant hand up to his nose to feel along the break. It wasn’t too bad, but it was going to hurt like hell to fix. He leaned over the sink, body turned away from the shower, and sucked in a deep breath before shifting the cartilage into place. His entire face burned and his eyes watered hard enough to blur his vision, a stream of red dripping down his chin. He bit his lip and gripped the counter to push away the pain overwhelming him. It wasn’t the first time, but it didn’t make it any easier. He was just glad there weren’t more bones broken in his face.
He turned on the sink and scrubbed away the skin and blood under his fingernails, guilt eating away at him. He’d done what he had to do out of survival. He protected his family. It still didn’t make it any easier to see the angry red lines down Bucky’s remorseful face.
He knew he’d be sore the next day. His back and his hip had taken the brunt of the Soldier slamming him around, and his throat still felt constricted from the metal hand crushing it inward. Some part of Bucky must’ve been stirring within, because if the Winter Soldier wanted his windpipe broken, it would be. The bruising was difficult to see against his skin tone, but the faint hint of purple was visible in the light; he had to silently thank the fact that it wasn’t obvious, because he didn’t want the reminder there for everyone to see. It wouldn’t do Sarah and the kids any good, and it certainly wouldn’t do Bucky any good.
The faucet squealed as the shower shut off. Bucky had been done in eight minutes.
Sam kept his back to him until Bucky mumbled that he could turn around. When he did, he glanced over to see Bucky with a towel around his waist, skin red from the steam. The scarring around his shoulder was raw and irritated from being scratched at with a washcloth. Sam tried not to stare at the long-healed marks spanning his torso, violent and cruel and unchangeable.
Sam went to his room to get a change of clothes and brought them back to the bathroom downstairs. In just the short time he was gone, Bucky had shut and locked the door. Whether he was doing it because he thought he was dangerous — as if that flimsy wood would stop him — or because it represented him shutting the world out, Sam wasn’t sure. When he returned, Bucky opened the door just enough to take the clothes and get dressed.
As he emerged, he looked more clear-headed. His shoulders were more relaxed, and the haze in his eyes was almost gone. Sam’s clothes were just slightly small on him, but Bucky tended to wear clothes that clung tightly to his frame anyway. He wasn’t sure if the compression was comforting or if Bucky was a bit of a showoff, but he suspected a mix of both.
Steve had been the same way, but it was entirely to give everyone a view. He once explained to Sam that going from a disabled kid dependent on others to a very capable, strong-bodied force of power was something for him to take pride in. He was foul-mouthed, when he was young; quick to set someone off, even quicker to throw a punch, because the only way for him to be heard was to scream with all the air his asthmatic lungs allowed him. Being taller, all stunning brawn, and revered by the nation meant his presence itself commanded a room. The muscles peeking through that t-shirt were a silent threat — a promise — made long ago with a squeakier voice.
He’d told Sam about the sick fits every season, the way he was chronically ill and bedridden more often than not. Bucky had been an honorable boy, taking care of his family on his own and pulling an unfortunate man like Steve under his wing. Bucky’s mother would chide him for finishing Steve’s fights and bloodying fists, but he never went a day without protecting Steve.
Steve would insist that he didn’t need the help, but would end up beaten in an alley more often than not, marred by bruises just as much as he was marred by anger. Bucky would just walk him home and put a cold rag over his forehead, calling him a punk.
Those stories had made Sam tear up, thinking of Riley and wondering how their friendship would’ve been outside of the military. He never got the chance to know Riley as just a brother, not a comrade or a squadmate.
“I’ll pack up our stuff. You just… hang tight, okay?” Sam said.
Bucky ended up sitting silently on the couch while Sam padded around the house, picking up their measly belongings and stuffing them into a single backpack. He grabbed a few changes of clothes, their tac gear, their combined weapons — a pistol and Bucky’s ridiculous knife collection — and their toiletries. The two of them travelled light, a bad habit of being ex-military, and neither liked clutter. The backpack wasn’t even full by the time everything was tucked away.
Everything in Sam itched to go upstairs and say his goodbyes to Sarah and the kids, but he knew it wouldn’t be appreciated. Sarah was beyond upset with him, both for Bucky’s actions and not telling her he had a firearm in the house, and Cass had never seen Sam hold a gun, much less pull the trigger of one. They didn’t need his presence, they needed time to calm down and process. Meanwhile, Sam was doing his part by getting Bucky the hell away from them.
He reminded himself, over and over like a mantra, that it wasn’t Bucky’s fault. Clinging onto those words and his VA experiences were what gave him the strength not to scream at Bucky for the damage.
When it was time to leave, he pulled Bucky out of his statue-still dissociation by loudly announcing that everything was ready. Bucky had startled and begun to put on his shoes, but his hands were trembling so badly that Sam had to crouch down and help him. He managed to get his coat on by himself, but he didn’t bother with the zipper.
The chill morning air made Sam’s limbs feel heavy and tired as they made their way out to the car. The sun was rising, peeking over the horizon in hues of yellow and pink, and he would’ve thought it beautiful on any other day. His raggedy old Impala sedan sputtered to life as he turned the key in the engine, and he tossed the backpack into the back seat while he waited for the heat to come through the vents. Bucky didn’t say anything, standing off to the side with his hands in his pockets. He was shifting his weight, visibly exhausted, but more present than before.
It wasn’t until they got into the car and pulled out of the driveway that Bucky finally asked the question.
“Where’re we gonna go?”
Sam chewed his lip and sighed. “I don’t know. I think right now I just want a good breakfast.”
Since Bucky didn’t give any input to that, Sam began a route into town and figured he’d find a drive-thru to stop at. His biggest concern wasn’t where they’d stay, but how they were going to handle this entire situation, because avoiding it wasn’t an option. At the very least, Bucky was going to have to call his therapist and report the incident, which could easily end with him in custody. It was going to be a long day.
They ended up sitting in a shitty motel parking lot with even shittier fast food. Sam was too tired to plan their trip back to New York, so they agreed to spend at least another night in Louisiana, holed up in a two-bed room where they were unlikely to be bothered. The soft drone of the radio was the only thing keeping Sam sane as they ate. Bucky looked like he wanted to apologize again and again, but he kept his mouth firmly shut, lips pulled into a tight frown.
He didn’t speak for a while after they finished their food, but when he finally did, it was so quiet that Sam almost didn’t catch it.
“I killed two handlers while I was with HYDRA.” Bucky said, pleadingly, like he needed Sam to understand. “I fought them. I fought back.”
Sam’s chest constricted. After all that, Bucky still thought that he needed to justify himself, as if Sam would think that he was weak. He wished he could get it through his head that being powerless was not a choice. When fear is weaponized against you, whether you fight back or not doesn’t change your lack of control, he wanted to say. Even if you hadn’t, it still wouldn’t be your fault.
Instead, he settled on, “I know.”
Bucky turned to him then. His eyes were teary and desperate. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”
“I know, Buck. I know.”
He shut off the car and threw their trash away in a nearby bin. Once they got the motel key, he spent a few minutes fighting with the lock before the old door finally creaked open. There were two neatly-made beds with floral-patterned comforters and white pillows. The floor was a dark, blue-tinted gray, matching with the outdated wallpaper lining the room. An old armchair, a dresser, and a desk with a chair took up most of the cramped space. The bathroom was tiny and stocked up with questionably-clean towels. Sam just sighed and threw himself onto one of the squeaky mattresses.
“Let’s get some rest.”