Bucky?

“You here to tell me I should take a nap?” he quipped, but his heart wasn’t in the joke, his shoulders slumping a little as he knocked back the remaining whiskey in his glass. Of course no one else had noticed, because he hadn’t wanted them to notice. Steve was still too buzzed on actually being out here that he hadn’t seen it. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to see it.

“Thought I was gonna die there,” Bucky blurted out, unable to keep the words behind his teeth as he huddled into Steve, a slight shiver running down his spine. Every day he’d woken on that lab table, he’d been convinced that it would be the day he would die. When they pumped what felt like fire, then like ice through his veins, and he screamed himself raw. And all he could think about was how he was leaving Steve.

Maybe that was what had helped him cling on.

“Before…before the lab…they weren’t gonna take me, they were gonna take one of the other guys…just a kid, he was only sixteen and I couldn’t let them take him down there Stevie…so I caused a fuss…” he rambled, remembering how he’d made a racket, how Zola’s beady eyes had turned to him with a look of interest, how he’d been dragged off then.

Steve’s stomach turns fully upside down and then twists into a knot like a fisherman’s rope when he listens to Bucky talk. But even as dread fills him when he imagines what Bucky is describing, he also feels a huge amount of pride. It was such a Bucky thing to do, to put himself on the line, to protect someone who needed it. Steve could still only aspire to be like him.

He was jealous, he had to admit it. The idea that Steve got to go home, that he got to live the perfect life with the perfect girl, all cosy and happy, the real American dream. It wasn’t that he thought Steve didn’t deserve that, lord, if anybody deserved it, it was definitely Steve. But Bucky…from the moment he’d shipped out in ‘43, he’d dreamed of coming home. He’d been offered the chance of an honourable discharge after Azzano, but he’d turned it down. He couldn’t leave Steve. 

But he’d missed home so much. He’d kept photos in his jacket pocket, of his ma, his sisters, his pa, god rest his soul. He’d always taken them out before he’d slept, studying their faces, their smiles, saying goodnight in a way. And then the train had happened, and HYDRA had happened, and by the time he knew who he was again…

Well, Becca had been the only one left, old and frail, and even then he’d had barely a year with her before she’d left him too. What he wouldn’t give to tease her before a school dance again, to braid Lizzie’s hair, to read Gracie a story. He’d give anything to feel his ma’s hug again.

“Everybody leaves…”

Her arms stay tight around him, trying to keep her own breathing steady as she attempted to comfort him.  It wasn’t fair.   It wasn’t just, and it never would be.  Bucky deserved to go home after the war.  He did more than enough, and he deserved to have a life that didn’t involve all of this chaos and destruction.  He deserved to have what Steve did...and there weren’t words to describe how sorry she was that all of that was taken so violently from him.  It wasn’t fair.  

Fingers from one hand gently smooth through his hair, thumb brushing softly above as Sharon held him close.  His words cause her to take a sharp breath, her arms squeezing him even tighter for a moment before shaking her head, and pressing another kiss against the side of his head.  

“We won’t,”  Sharon promised, her voice barely above a whisper.  “I won’t.  I’m staying right here with you- always.  So will Sam.  There’s nothing you, or anyone else, can do to change that.  You’re stuck with us…we’re here.  We’ll always be here.”

The agent lets a few more moments pass before pulling away slightly, moving her hands to his face.  “C’mon...lay down with me.  You don’t have to sleep but you need to rest...I’ll stay with you…c’mon.”  Her movements are slow, gently laying him fully down on her mattress, her eyes and touch are soft- careful not to force anything.  Once he was down on the pillow, she quickly moved next to him, an arm once again wrapping around him as she pulled him against her.  “I’ve got you Buck…I’ve got you.”

But for now he’s in it.

She says they won’t leave him, but he knows it’s lies. Oh, sure, they might stay for now. But time will pass and something will happen and then he’ll lose them and he’ll be alone all over again. In times like this, part of him almost craves the forgetting, the cryo. If he can’t remember, then it can’t hurt him, he can just be blissfully blank.

She’s pulling him down now, tucking him into her as they lie side by side on the bed, and the tears still run silently down his cheeks, dampening the pillow. He tucks his head underneath her chin, hiding his face in her shoulder.

In a smooth motion, Peggy kicks the edge of her shield, sending it flying upwards and into her arm. It’s just another day for Captain Carter and her Howling Commandos, cutting a clean line through HYDRA’s toughest defenses. This most recent ambush had involved a rather large explosion as the finale, and Peggy had just noticed that Bucky had been knocked to the ground, and so she extended a gloved hand, lifting him to his feet. 

Bucky quirked an eyebrow, letting her haul him to his feet as if he weighed nothing. Hell, he probably felt like he weighed nothing to her, he’d seen her toss cars. Not that that was attractive. No, not in the slightest. Dusting himself off from his involuntary contact with the ground, he shook his head clear of the ringing in his ears.

“Ah, so you’re the baby of the family,” his eyes crinkle a little, gently teasing, but in no way malicious. He’d only been the baby of his family for three years before Becca had been born, and from then on he’d been on big brother duty. Not that he minded, he loved being a big brother.

“You’re a punk.”

The familiar prickle at the back of his neck was clue enough that somebody was watching him, following him, and one of his hands, stuffed into the pocket of the raggedy sweatshirt that he’d stolen from a supermarket, closed around a small pocket knife, tense. This was his own fault, he’d let himself fall into a pattern.

The voice that follows, oddly enough, relieves a little bit of the tension, but not by much. He’d known that Captain America Steve Rogers was following him. Of course he is, stupid little punk never knew when to quit his brain whispered, even though he had no idea where it was coming from. 

The problem is that Steve wants Bucky.

He wasn’t Bucky, not anymore, hadn’t been in a long time. If he concentrated, he could get flashes, figments of memories, of feelings, but every time he tried to reach for something solid, it slipped through his fingers. He couldn’t be what Steve wanted, couldn’t be the friend he’d lost. 

He doesn’t know though, what else Steve wants from him. Would he bring him in? He doesn’t know. His brain is a mess, and it makes his head pound with pain, and his left shoulder aches something fierce, the metal arm weighing down the joint, pulling at the broken skin. It had taken him over a week to figure out how to feed himself. HYDRA hadn’t needed a self-sufficient asset. They’d pumped him full of god knows what, wiped him and frozen him, time and again.

He’s a wreck.

“I’m not…” he starts, and his voice is raspy from disuse, quiet and uncertain, and he swallows roughly, “I’m not him.”

While his disguise somehow did offer him a shield from eager onlookers and even the paparazzi, he felt it was more important for the one he faced now to see him for who he is. Taking off the hat and glasses, he stuffed both carelessly into a jacket pocket. 

Hearing those words coming from Bucky hurt more than he thought was possible, like swallowing hot lead that made his stomach drop. 

Brows knit, he stared at the man for a moment before letting out a breath that he hasn’t realized he had been holding before quickly stepping forward, and pushing the other man and himself into a darker side–not a corner–out of the way of the most conspicuous display in the museum of Captain America’s story so that they can hopefully talk in peace.

“That’s fine.” He swallowed, hard; it was a lie but he’s determined to keep up the façade. However, Steve does know better than to expect the man who’s been brain washed for so long to be the long lost best friend that he has missed every day and he knows better than to expect Bucky to remember their shared past as he did.

Still. Steve wanted him safe and wanted to lend a hand where he can. It’s the least he can do for him for all the years he had looked after the skinny Steve who couldn’t even breathe correctly.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, ducking his head, almost like a child apologising for a wrongdoing. He wanted to remember, wanted to remember so badly, but it was so difficult. He was terrified that he might never remember, that HYDRA had truly stolen it all from him and destroyed it, as opposed to just being locked away.

Blue grey eyes looked up at the taller man warily. Something in the back of his brain registered that feeling as odd, telling him that he’d spent far more time looking down at this man than up, even if he couldn’t remember it. In truth, most of his memories that he’d managed to claw back, Steve looked nothing like this, save for one (”I thought you were dead.” “I thought you were smaller.”) What he could remember of him was small, skinny, all bony edges and bruises and angles.

Frowning a little, he barely registered Steve’s words properly, giving a shrug before slipping both hands, gloved so as to hide the metal arm, from his pockets. Brow furrowing, he raised them towards Steve’s face, pressing lightly around his jaw, obscuring part of it to his vision. With a slight tilt of his head, he could see it, that skinny boy with a penchant for trouble.