#aweways

It goes like this—

He’s your best friend, and he’s going to war. He’s Sergeant James Barnes now, part of the 107th, awaiting orders. And you? You’re a volunteer nurse, and you’re being shipped off in a few days time. 

You’re not going because of him. You’re going because you want to help, but you know you’d never be able to fight in a war. So being a nurse is the second best option. 

You tell him over a shared pack of Marlboro’s and a piece of apple pie and shitty beer. (He’d stolen the piece of apple pie, and he’d admitted to it with a sheepish grin, knowing that you were about to scold him about it as you always do whilst feeling more fond of him than anything, but you don’t. Not this time.)

He got mad at you, and he’d stayed mad until the morning that you were to leave. Bucky came and sent you off, and he hugged you so tight and you could’ve sworn you felt something wet drip along the side of your neck, but— Bucky Barnes doesn’t cry, so maybe you were imagining things. 

That’s the last time you see him. 

Until it isn’t. 

You’re in the med tent, changing the dressing on a soldier’s wound from a bullet, when you hear a familiar voice. But you don’t let yourself get distracted (not yet), because you’ve to do your job first. 

Then you’re done and you turn around, and it’s at that exact moment that he walks into the tent, traces of laughter on his face even though half his face is covered in blood. 

He seems to see you at the same time, and then he’s mouthing your name, and you’re mouthing his, and then you’re speed-walking towards him and hugging him tightly but gently, relishing in the feel of your best friend (is he just that though?) against you again. At long last.

You’re literally in a war zone, but somehow— it feels like home. 

Bucky gets sent out on a mission. 

He never comes back, and you feel like you’d never be able to breathe properly again.

Everyone is staring at Captain America as he leads a whole bunch of captured soldiers back into camp. Captain America isn’t dressed in tights and that dumb cowl he’d used for his performance before. 

He’s got a helmet on, one with the letter A, and a leather jacket with multiple tears in it. He’s still got his tacky outfit on underneath it, you can literally see the star on his chest under the jacket. 

But. But. 

The one you’ve got your eyes fixed on is the man walking by his side, with a rifle in his hands. His second-in-command.

It makes sense, because if you ever thought that the serum would change who Steve Rogers was inside, and who he loved and held dear to his heart, then you never really knew Steve at all.

Because walking beside him is Bucky.

Bucky’s alive. 

And Christ— it feels good to be finally be able to breathe again.

Bucky’s come in for you to check that the wound in his side is healing alright, and he waits till it’s just the two of you in the tent to tell you that he’s going to follow Steve on another mission.

You want to get frustrated, but you can’t, because you know him. He loves deeply and he’s fiercely loyal. 

He was offered an honourable discharge, and he was going to take the offer. But then Steve—Captain America—he told Bucky about how he wanted to form a team, with full intentions on storming HYDRA bases. 

Bucky couldn’t leave Steve out here alone. Said all he had back in Brooklyn were his family, and Steve, and you. You and Steve were here, with no intentions of leaving any time soon, so he stayed. 

You get it, though. So you say nothing when he tells you of it, instead choosing to focus on his wound. 

And when you’re done, Bucky pulls you in for a hug and you stay like that, holding him like it’s the last time. You stay like that, unmoving, in each other’s arms, for feels like eternity. (It’s still not enough.)

You pull back, pressing your forehead against his and shutting your eyes tight. You have no right to ask him of this, but you’re going to. “Come back to me. Please, for the love of God, come back to me.”

Bucky pulls away, pressing his lips to your forehead in a hard kiss. “I always do, don’t I?” He mouths against your skin, and it makes you smile, but there’s something bitter about the way he says it.

You take a step back, biting on your lip. “Go kick some ass,” you smile, kicking gently at the sole of his boot.

And he laughs, winks back at you. “Trust me. A lot of asses are getting kicked.”

You never know if he comes back or not, because the base is ambushed and there is a stinging pain down your arm and then you see nothing at all. 

It goes like this—

They call you a Winter Soldier. You are merely one, though not the first. The first Winter Soldier is the one that trains you, all of you, and he has a metal arm and long hair and is savage in training. 

The original Winter Soldier.

You don't know why, but you think you know him. His face is in countless memories that you see through your own eyes, though you don’t know why you’re seeing it because as far as you’re aware: you’ve never met him before.

With those stolen memories, you feel...

You feel. You feel emotions. You feel a warmth spreading throughout your insides when you see him, and your heart stutter in your chest when his eyes pierce through you.

But that doesn’t make sense, does it?

You feel yourself coming to, and you know you’re a machine who should not feel fear or pain, but you’re already fearing the pain that you know is going to come with being defrosted. 

Your eyes open when the cryo door is opened, and the original Winter Soldier is looking back at you with wide eyes (they’re so blue) as he pulls off the equipment that’s keeping you alive whilst in cryo.

“Y/N? Hey. Hey, Y/N. We need to get you out of here, okay? We’ll get you outta here,” he’s talking, and you’re puzzled, to say the least, because you’re not supposed to talk. 

Especially not in English. 

You blink at him, not saying anything, even as he’s got you out of the chamber. Because saying anything before you’ve gone for recalibration would lead to less than pleasant things.

“Hey,” he speaks again, now his hands are cupping either side of your face, and he’s ducking his head down to look at you.

You think you know him. You know those eyes. 

“Y/N, you with me? It’s me. It’s Bucky. C’mon doll, you know me. You know me,” he damn near pleads, and he chokes out what you think is a laugh. “We’ve been best friends for ages, and you used to—” he—Bucky?—breathes out another laugh. “— you used to help me patch Steve up when I couldn’t ‘cause I was too bruised up to do it for him. And when I was serving, too, you helped me ‘cause you were a nurse. Remember that?”

You still don’t say anything. You’re... confused. 

He seems to know it, too, because he tightens his jaw, nods to himself, and then he’s picking you up and jogging out of the base where you (and the others) are kept when you’re inactive. 

You make it out, and he places you on your unstable feet to pull off his coat and pull it over your shoulders before he’s picking you up again. He brings you into a jet where it’s no longer freezing cold (not like cryo, not like the snowy weather outside) and you don’t know what’s happening.

This isn’t how things go. 

You should be getting wiped, getting a recalibration, and then being sent out on a mission. This isn’t what usually happens. 

He’s in the front of the jet, flipping switches that cause lights to come on and adjusting knobs, frown set on his face. 

This is the Winter Soldier that trained you. 

But it isn’t. 

“I think I know you,” you manage to say, though your voice is so soft and croaky and hoarse because of how you’ve not spoken since you were last active. 

But he whips his head around to look at you, almost taken off guard, and he looks right at you. His lips are parted as he abruptly stops all movement.

He stands, almost hesitantly, and makes his way over to you. “You do,” he says, as quiet as you’d spoken. “Your name’s Y/N Y/L/N. We met in school. Many, many years ago. Been best friends since we met, really. We used to, uh. When we got older, we used to smoke Marlboro’s and share apple pie,” he tells you, his eyes with a faraway look in them and tone drifting off.

He breathes out a laugh. “You used to, uh. Used to give me shit for stealin’ the pie. ‘Cause I usually did. And you’d always rag on me about it, but you’d still eat the damn pie anyway.”

You blink at him, your eyes trailing over every curve and slope of his face. 

Eyes that are blue and grey at the same time look back at you, and you lift a hand, cautious and slow, and brush the tip of your index finger against his cheek. 

His eyes stay open, staring at you, lips parted still. 

He licks at his lips, “We used to do everything together. Almost everything, anyway. And like, we’d have times where we didn’t speak for a while, but we always ended up coming back to each other, ‘cause we always needed each other. Or, well. I know I always needed you. I...” he trails off, darting his eyes away, though his right hand comes up to link his fingers with the one you’re trailing against his skin. 

“I loved you,” he—Bucky? The Winter Soldier?—says in a hushed whisper, your hand against his lips.

“I think... I think I loved you, too.”

He blinks, then he’s smiling, then he’s laughing.

“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” 

Bucky blinks, looking back at Steve, looking away from the one person he’d been fixated on for far too long. He arches a brow, hums, acts like he hadn’t heard Steve’s question. The kid shoots him a flat look. Bucky shrugs in response, looking away and nicking Steve’s glass, taking a swig of the... Ribena. 

“I thought this was wine.”

Steve shrugs. “Was in the mood for Ribena.”

“... In a wine glass?”

Steve shrugs again, “Was feeling classy.”

Bucky snorts. “Seventy years in ice, still a goddamn smartass.”

Steve offers up a grin, shrugging for the third time, snatching his glass back. “You’re avoiding the question, Buck. You are, aren’t you? In love with her?”

Yes. Bucky doesn’t say it out loud, though. Saying it would be him admitting it out loud for the first time. 

And that’s something he doesn’t want to do. Not because he thinks she’s below him or some fucked up shit like that. It’s the opposite, really. She’s too good for him.

Bucky fucking hates himself. 

Where Steve is stupid and reckless and self-sacrificial as he does dumb (really dumb) things, Bucky just does it— not giving a shit if he comes back in one piece, or in twenty. He won’t call it dying for his country, dying for his city, dying for the people. Bucky’d call it dying and thanking god for finally having some fucking peace. 

(Though a part of him doesn’t even know if he’d get peace, even in death.)

Bucky hates himself, and there is plenty good reason for him to hate himself.

And then she came along. She came along and turned his world upside down and made him smile and laugh and— good god, Bucky had never asked to feel happiness again, all he’d ever asked for was a little less pain.

Along with this girl came happiness and no pain at all. 

He’d decided then, that she was the sun. Bright, beautiful, and the world needed her. And if she was the sun, then he was the moon— constantly chasing her. 

He didn’t deserve to be near her, didn’t deserve to know her, definitely didn’t deserve to love her. (Don’t even get him started on the shadow of a chance that she might love him back.)

“Why won’t you talk to me?” Steve asks, voice cracking almost, and Bucky looks at him again— but all he sees is the ninety pound kid with black eyes and cuts on his cheeks. “I won’t, like, try anythin’. Sabotage you, or like— I dunno. Won’t try to embarrass you in front of her. I just want you to be happy, Buck, I won’t fuck this up for you.”

Bucky can’t help the snort that he lets out. “’s not,” he pauses, chuckling. “’s not that, kid. I promise. It’s just—” he shrugs a shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Yeah...?” Steve arches a brow.

“Yeah, I’m in love with her,” Bucky very nearly mouths, not looking at Steve, but not looking at her, either. 

“I always imagined you’d sound happier about something like that,” Steve says casually, and Bucky’s lip quirks up unintentionally. There’s a nudge against his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t... mean to.”

“Didn’t mean to... what? Fall in love with her?” Steve sounds confused, but he’s right, as he almost always is. It’s annoying. Bucky nods, anyway, still not looking at him. Steve scoffs out a laugh, “We don’t choose who we fall in love with, Buck.”

Bucky’s eyes follow her movements. She’s with Barton in the gym, the latter teaching the former how to shoot an arrow “with style and precision”. She can shoot an arrow just fine, hit the bullseye more often than not, and all she’s doing now is mostly humouring Barton. 

She catches his eye through the window and winks at him, grin all sorts of cheeky, and Bucky can’t help the tug at his lips. He rolls his eyes playfully, and that’s got her stifling a laugh before turning back to watch Barton give her an archery lesson that she really doesn’t need. 

She keeps looking back at him at every few intervals though and Bucky can’t seem to look away.

“But—” Steve continues, his voice seeping into Bucky’s ear. Bucky turns to look at him, only to see him already looking back, kind blue eyes shining like someone’s poured the ocean in them. “— we do choose to stay in love with them because it fills that part of ourselves that we choose not to love.”

Bucky almost snorts. There’s a lot of himself that he doesn’t love. Everything, basically. He wants to scoff, say that that ain’t true, ‘cause there’s no way someone like her could love all the things that he hates about himself.

Then he’s reminded of how she never treats his metal arm like it’s anything less than his arm, and of the time that she was the first to approach him after he’d temporarily slipped into the Soldier before coming back to himself. 

She was never afraid of him. If anything, she was afraid for him. 

“You look at her like she’s... home, and you’re just trying like hell to figure out how to get back to it.”

Bucky swallows, doesn’t want to admit that Steve’s right, he’s so fucking right, because Bucky hasn't known the definition of home since the forties. Home was a cramped apartment with shitty lighting and a tiny bed.

But now— home isn’t a place. It’s just two arms and a heartbeat and a smile that could light up the entire world. (Lord knows it’s lit his.)

“Maybe,” he allows, side-glancing at Steve, before he’s getting to his feet and walking over to her. 

She looks up when he walks up to them, her cheeky grin turning soft and her eyes shining like there are stars trapped inside of them.

(There are. He swears he’s seen stars dancing in her eyes before.) 

“Barton,” he calls out, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from her.

“Barnes!” Barton greets with a crooked grin. “Come for an archery lesson?”

“You know she doesn’t need lessons, like, at all, right?” He gestures over at her, arching a brow. “I’ve seen her shoot. Hits the bullseye every time.”

Barton raises a brow, then looks back at her. He narrows his eyes at her, disbelieving, and she shrugs a shoulder, lifts the bow and shoots. It hits the bullseye.

“I can’t believe you let me treat you like someone who hasn’t even ever held a bow before, oh my God. What is wrong with you? We could’ve been doing something else for the past fucking— past hour! What is wrong with you—”

Her laughter rings in his ears like the best damn thing he’s ever heard. She laughs and laughs and her eyes are crinkled in the corners and she’s half-heartedly blocking herself from Barton’s playful pokes with the end of his bow and she stops to catch her breath, catching Bucky’s eye, running towards him to seek refuge from the pokes, and Bucky laughs, too, holding her in his arms and half blocking her and Bucky—