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*waves*
Heya. Well, so - it's nearly February, wow! Can't believe it. It's been cold-warm-cold-cold-*cold*holyfuck-warm here, so very weird. Heating bill is way too big, as usual. *sigh*
BUT, all that aside, i bring fic! Avengers fic. I know! Who'da thunk! But i love the movies (all of them except the Hulk ones - Bill Bixby is forever my Bruce Banner), and i've had this idea kicking around for ages, so... Fic. :)
I thought - getting your arm busted up and then amputated, possibly without anesthesia, is pretty fucking traumatizing. And then Evil Nazi Scientists (tm) graft some kind of horrible, metal killing-arm onto you? Without your consent? And torture you?
I can't imagine Bucky *liking* having that arm on him, so...i wrote about it. It's Gen, it's not terribly gory or anything, and I posted it over at AO3, too.
'What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I.'
Walter de la Mare - Napoleon
They tracked him for five months - New York to Chicago, Pittsburgh to Seattle, Boulder to Tulsa - following a bread-crumb trail of dead bodies, burned out buildings, unexpected subsidences that exposed decades-old sub-basements.
Nothing was ever left in his wake but smoke and blood, shattered glass, cooling meat. Fire took out what weapons could not, a scouring of the past. The worst was the abandoned vault of a long defunct bank. It looked to have been torn apart with steel razors and spiked clubs, not even enough left for Tony to analyze. The sheer rage - the hate - that had produced such destruction was sobering, and a little frightening. That night, Steve and Sam sat across from each other in a local dive bar, drinking, saying nothing, both going to bed sober. Steve had never wanted to be drunk so bad in his life.
It felt...fruitless. It felt like the world's longest game of tag. It felt like failure, and Steve lay down in the bland, beige square of bed in a bland, beige hotel room that night feeling as if the world were grinding him down. This chase - this hunt - was dragging him into mud, thicker and darker with every step. Suffocating him.
But when he closed his eyes, all he could see were Bucky's eyes on the helicarrier, terrified and desperate, his face twisted with horror. Whatever they'd done to him - and the file Tasha had left with Steve gave too much detail, and not nearly enough - Steve had seen it cracking, that day. He'd seen something, he was sure, of the man he'd thought dead and gone, and no matter how deep he got, no matter how ugly the slog became….
He couldn't stop. He would not. Because it wasn't about him, and this was the least - the very least - that he could do for his oldest, dearest friend.
During the last month, things got...sloppy. Instead of precise bullet wounds in hearts or heads, the bodies they found were slashed and rent - beaten open, dragged to pieces. They tracked him through messy explosions and wholesale destruction, shattered machineries painted with gore, and Sam said, quietly, as they drove away from one such scene, that Bucky seemed to be getting...worse.
"You mean, worse than tortured for seventy years, or worse than committing multiple murders for revenge?" Steve asked, and Sam looked sideways at him, his fingers tight on the wheel of the truck.
"I mean, before, he was methodical. He was killing people and destroying things, but it was...controlled. He seems...pretty out of control."
Steve thought about the last site. About the hollowed-out body of the man who seemed to have been a scientist, his intestines strung in loops around his throat. About the soldiers with blown-apart knees who seemed to have been beaten to death with a metal pole, or possibly a metal fist.
He thought about the bloody marks on the walls and floor, as if that same metal fist had scratched and clawed and dug, in a frenzy of hate. 'Out of control' seemed like a pretty nice way of putting what was looking more and more like - psychosis.
"Is it really a surprise?" Steve said, quietly, and Sam sighed, turned on the radio, and they drove.
They found him in Detroit at the tail-end of November, alerted by a late call from Tony - something about algorithms, CCTV, police radio. It led them to a sprawl of derelict buildings that, except for the architecture, could have been Cologne, or London after the Blitz. Dozens of buildings were fire-scorched, fallen in, crumbling down into the murky snow that lay in grey heaps. Steve could see wobbling lines of graffiti, spray-bombs of blue and black and red, and icicles the length of his body where chance and sunlight had created channels of snowmelt.
"Old Packard auto plant," Sam said, his breath puffing out white as he rubbed glove-clad hands together. A few scattered streetlights sent a weak orange glow over the structures nearest the road, and Steve could see a muddle of footprints, human and animal; bits of trash; a tangle of rusting metal that might have once been a machine.
And then, faintly, coming through the hushed silence like something out of a nightmare, Steve could hear a voice. It was shouting, unintelligible. It rose, higher and higher, and then broke off, only to swell back again to audibility, a babble of just noise, punctuated by a grinding shriek, metal on rotting concrete.
Beside him, Sam took in a sharp, hard little breath, and Steve... Steve just moved. He strode out, two, three long steps before breaking into a jog, and then a sprint, leaving Sam behind as he tracked through the aisles of listing buildings, weaving in and out of shadow, old snow and new ice crunching under his feet.
He went north, as near as he could tell, deep into the maze of rust and crumbling concrete, coming at last to a building half-eaten by fire, blackened brick in heaps, rebar twisted by heat, and light, leaping up, living flame somewhere inside. Steve felt his heart kick in his chest, panicked stutter, and then he was seeing the way in, seeing - as he was sure Bucky had seen - a mostly stable series of slabs and compacted garbage, a route through.
Steve could hear Sam coming up behind him, breathing deep and steady. He was talking under his breath, but loud enough for Steve to pick it up, even from a good fifty feet away.
"Don't do it, Cap, don't you do it. God damn, shit, fuck, hell, wait for me, don't you fucking do it-"
"Sorry, Sam," Steve muttered, and climbed.
Bucky had got in through a second storey landing, a window unblocked by rubble. From there, though, his path went down, and Steve stepped carefully, slowly, making sure each foot was securely planted before he moved the other, being as quiet as possible. As careful, because the last thing he wanted to do was rush in and make Bucky think he was under attack.
No, Steve had to go slow, and so, slowly, he moved, and he listened.
Bucky's voice, hoarse and breathless, babbled first in Russian and then in German, and then lapsed into what sounded like Italian, or possibly French. It was mangled, though, slurred and disorganized, nothing but random words standing out to Steve. Nothing that made any really sense, just a few things, here and there.
Tried to make me...every time...saw you...not me, not me...off…off!
The last word was screamed, Bucky's voice gone hysterical, and Steve abandoned both stealth and caution and leapt the last few feet, dodged around a hulk of rusting metal and there, there... was Bucky. There was a fire burning, half in and half out of what looked like the remains of an industrial tub. Scavenged bits of wood and trash were heaped in it - spilling out of the rent-open side - and flames churred and hissed, sending shadows crawling up the walls, distorting everything.
And Bucky was there, crouched like a demon against the far wall, his long hair matted and his t-shirt ragged, boots half laced. Blood or something had left streaks and splotches up the thighs of his once black trousers, and there was mud smeared on his chin, across his cheek. His eyes...were animalistic.
He saw Steve and bared his teeth, hissing like a furious cat. Steve froze when Bucky's hand wrenched a length of metal from the tub, the very tip glowing a sullen red. He didn't seem to notice that the whole length of it must be hot, might be burning his palm and fingers, he simply brandished it, his arm shaking, wavering in jerky figure eights, and Steve finally realized - he wasn't using his left arm at all. The metal prosthetic hung at an odd angle from his shoulder, streaked with soot and blood, the silver plates dull, several askew. The fingers seemed to be twitching convulsively, restless little movements that meant nothing. The sleeve of his t-shirt had been shredded away from the metal, ripped almost to the collar, the torn sides gaping open, exposing his entire shoulder.
"Get out!" Bucky roared, English now, and he slammed the metal bar against the edge of the tub, making sparks fly.
"Bucky, please. It's...I'm Steve. You know me, Bucky." Steve held his hand out, not daring to step forward, but desperate to, anyway. "You knew me, back on the helicarrier. You saved me."
Bucky stared at him, shaking his head as he crept along the wall, getting more of the fire between him and Steve, the bar in his hand scraping along the rim of the tub with a grating squeal. "I said. I suh-said. The man on the...on the bridge. I knew him, but I knew him, I said, I...I…I-" Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and jerked his head back, rapping it sharply into the wall behind him, and Steve winced at the dull crack.
Bucky swayed for a moment, panting, and then he lifted the bar again, the point weaving. His stare was bleak, wounded. "I said no, I...I fought, I k-k-killed one, two, three, four...I did, I did, but they, but they...." His face contorted suddenly, going from cornered animal to fury in seconds. He lifted the bar high over his head and Steve tensed for a throw, for a charge.
Instead, Bucky twisted, bringing the bar down on his left arm, metal ringing off metal, sparks leaping from a joint near the elbow. His voice rose in a scream - rage, pain - and he brought the bar down again and again and again, awkward, powerful blows that warped the plates, that made it unseam, somewhere, on his shoulder. A line of blood welled up and ran down, spattering on his face when the bar smacked down again. "They, they, they did this, this, this!"
Bucky stopped then and hunched forward, panting harshly, his lungs wheezing. The arm made an overtaxed, buzzing kind of noise, and Steve belatedly wondered about explosives, poisons - who knew what Hydra had put into the damn thing.
"Bucky, please, please stop. You're hurting yourself. Look, I just want-" Steve stepped forward, finally, forgetting his earlier caution, and Bucky straightened up, head tilting warily, the bar coming up again, clumsy. His whole right arm was shaking, weak and bruised under the dirt, and oh, God, Steve just wanted to gather him up and help him, make him stop.
"Back off, just...b-back...off…." Bucky's gaze went scarily - utterly - blank for a long moment, and the bar sank in his grip, dipping down until the now-cooled tip touched the floor. He stood there, frozen, and Steve took another step forward, slowly.
"Buck?"
"What?" Bucky said. He blinked, obviously bewildered, staring at Steve as if he'd just appeared out of nowhere. "You. You are...the man...you said...ssaid- Steve?" he asked, his voice cracking, and Steve felt a surge of giddy, breathless joy.
"Yes. Yes, I'm Steve. Steve Rogers. We...grew up together." Another step forward, and another, and Steve could feel the heat of the fire on his shins. "We went to war together. You know me. I want to- I want to help you, Bucky, please."
"Ssteve," Bucky said, his voice full of wonder, and he staggered forward a step. The left arm swung, inert, taking him off balance, and he staggered sideways, curling himself around the pain, gasping in a handful of shaky, hitching breaths.
"I want it…off, want it off of me, off !" His raw voice was agonizing to hear, and it only worsened when he shifted his grip on the bar so he could shove the slightly flattened, narrower end up under a plate and pry. The plate curled back with a squeal of protest, sparking, and Bucky screamed again and convulsed, crumpling to his knees, the bar clattering away across the concrete. He huddled there, right arm tight around his ribs, looking up at Steve through locks of lank, ragged hair, his chest heaving..
"Steve, look what they...did to me," Bucky said, and his voice was a thready whisper. The nails of his right hand clawed at the arm, smearing blood. "Steve, please, please-" He gave a hoarse, hysterical sob, and Steve didn't care, he didn't care anymore, he didn't care what Sam had said, what Tony had cautioned, he just moved. Crossing the short distance to Bucky in a moment and crouching down in front of him, Steve reached out, curling his right hand around Bucky's, stilling the frantic scrabbling of his fingers, folding his own hand down tight around Bucky's and pulling it off the arm and into Steve's chest.
"Steve," Bucky whispered, his blue eyes eerily bright in their red-socketed rims, tears streaking through the grime on his face, dampening the tangled hair across his lips. "Please, take it off, take it off of me, Steve, please, please...."
"I- I will, I promise, Bucky. God, I'll do anything...I'm sorry, I'm so damn sorry, Buck, so damn sorry." Steve cautiously lifted his other hand to wrap around the nape of Bucky's neck, and Bucky turned his head, pushing his wet cheek into Steve's palm, his eyes falling shut. He breathed in hitching, wheezing breaths against Steve's skin, and Steve wanted to scream, to cry. Wanted to find some Hydra survivor and twist his guts into a knot. God, he wanted to end them all.
A grating sound made him look up, and Sam was there, standing at the edge of the space, firelight sliding across his dark skin, shadowing his eyes. He didn't move - didn't speak - and Steve nodded to him, just once, and then turned back to Bucky.
"I promise, Bucky. I'll help you. I've got you now. I've got you."
The sun was shining, pale and not particularly warm, but brave. It had been a long, frigid winter, with a lot of snow and ice - climate change, Tony said, and global warming. Looking that up had been both interesting and frightening, and Steve didn’t really like to think about it much.
He just knew he was glad to see the sun shining; glad to know that, after today, the days would be getting longer, and the nights shorter. He imagined the fuzz of green that would spread across Central Park, and how the last of the sleety snow would melt from the sand at Coney Island, and the sea would lose its hard, grey edge and mellow to blue and green again, racing up the warm strand.
Steve realized his hand, without conscious thought, was drawing the curve of the beach there, the gentle slope of dunes and the long, straight finger of the boardwalk. He smiled a little, shaking his head, and looked up as a sudden swirl of cold air danced around him.
Bucky was just slipping in through one of the heavy, beveled glass doors that led to the deck, his cheeks pink and his still long hair tangled from the ever-present wind here near the top of the Tower. He was bundled in jeans and layers of tee-shirt, thermal shirt, flannel and hoodie, and thick socks with big, furry boots that Sam had called Abominable snow boots - they reminded Steve of Eskimos. Tasha said they were the bastard offspring of Uggs and tribbles. Either way, they were warm, and Bucky seemed to love them. They let him sit out on the deck for longer, crosslegged on the edge of a decorative planter that was empty, for the moment.
He said the wind - the silence - helped him get his head straight, when all the noise and color and flash-bang-whizz of the twenty-first century overwhelmed him. Steve understood that, for sure.
Bucky didn’t look over, concentrating on getting his boots off with the boot-jack, and standing them neatly on the rubber-backed mat Steve had brought home. It was striped in colors of yellow and green and robin’s egg blue. More Spring in the dead of winter - Steve’s unsubtle hope for the future, for regrowth, new life.
Bucky unzipped the hoodie and hung it on the hooks that doubled as some kind of abstract wall art (Tony had insisted when he discovered that Steve was going to put a coat stand there), then unwound the thick, knitted scarf from his neck, hanging that, as well. Then, finally, he turned and met Steve’s gaze, a crooked little smile on his face.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Bucky. There’s chili on the stove. And cheese and sour cream and...stuff.”
“Saltines?”
“Yeah, saltines,” Steve said, grinning, and Bucky finally grinned back, his eyes a pale and electric blue in his wind-stung face, his chapped lips flushed from the cold. He went off to the kitchen, banging around, and Steve started adding a tiny rendition of the Cyclone coaster to his drawing, tracing the curves and loops from memory. A couple minutes later, Bucky came back out of the kitchen, balancing a tea tray in his right hand, loaded with a big, deep bowl of chili and a tall glass of milk. He set it carefully on the coffee table and then folded gracefully to the floor, picking up his spoon. At least half a dozen saltines were crushed across the top of his chili, and a neat stack of six or eight more were standing ready by the bowl. He dipped up a spoonful and ate it, making appreciative noises.
“You’re making me hungry again,” Steve said, and Bucky shoveled another spoonful into his mouth.
“Sam an’ Clint’re coming up later. Better get it while the getting’s good,” he said, muffled, saltine crumbs spitting past his lips to scatter across the tray.
“Jeez, were you raised by wolves?”
“You calling my Ma a wolf?”
“I don’t have a death wish,” Steve said, tossing down his sketchbook and getting up to get his own bowl and milk. Coming back into the living room, Steve stopped for a moment, just...looking.
Bucky had tugged Steve’s sketchbook closer and was studying one of the drawings, absently spooning up chili, gaze fixed on smudged pencil. The left sleeve of his flannel shirt was pinned up, empty. The thought of a new arm (“A better arm, Barnes. Better, stronger, faster! I can rebuild it. I have the technology!”) was still too much for Bucky. Still left him shaking, flashing back to memories that were both distant and excruciatingly new and raw. He was coping fine without it, didn’t really seem to mind at all, though Steve could foresee a day when he might decide to let Tony go wild.
Actually, Steve was pretty sure Tony was up to at least version three of a prosthetic arm for Bucky already. But Bucky said he could still feel his arm - his old arm, flesh arm - sometimes. Could feel the green-stick agony of it, the snapped bones that had rendered it useless to both him and his captors. So long as he was still coming to terms with losing his own arm, he didn’t want to even think about replacing it, and Steve understood that. He needed time to...to mourn, as it were. To grieve, and to let go.
Steve shook his head, dismissing those thoughts, and went to settle on the couch beside Bucky, digging into his own heavily-doctored bowl. Cheeses and sour cream, scallions and bacon bits and spicy croutons.
“You can’t even taste the beans in that mess,” Bucky observed, crushing a couple more saltines over his chili, and Steve just shook his head.
“Three kinds of cheese, Buck. Three.”
“So, what, you’re a Frog, now?”
“Dernier’d kick your ass for that.”
Bucky laughed, a little rusty, but true - solid. His memories were coming back, slow but steady, the very oldest ones first. They were hazy, sometimes - disconnected - but without the endless, vicious scrubbing by Hydra tech, it was clear the memories were still there, but the route to them - the connections that made it possible for Bucky to bring them out - were badly damaged.
But he seemed to be healing those connections, or finding new routes to them. Nobody really seemed to know how, but, honestly, Steve didn’t care. It was enough that Bucky knew, and was healing, day by day. How wasn’t important. Bucky had told Steve, back around the new year, how they’d stopped having to physically torture him to keep him from resisting after just a few months. They’d come up with the machine that had wiped him clean, and kept him docile. Sort of. So long as they didn’t leave it too long, because they could only bury who he was - what he’d been - not eradicate, not erase. The times they’d kept him out too long - used him too much - he remembered waking up, remembered knowing. And he’d killed some of them, then, fought them, tooth and nail, until brute force and drugs and the machine turned him back into a robot.
When they timed it right, Bucky had said, his voice low and hoarse, just a whisper in the dimness of his bedroom, he’d laid down and let them wipe him clean, despite his fear, despite the agony. Just nothing left of himself to say no.
Steve had felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to him, when Bucky had told him that. Felt like he’d been flayed alive. But now, watching Bucky gesture broadly, telling a story just to know he could, half a saltine in his hand and crumbs on his shirt, light and life shining all through him, making him all but glow….
Steve knew, he was going to be okay.
Also, in case you're wondering - SHOW IS BACK! AND I LUFF!! Oh, my boys. Oh, my *boys*! *smishes them*
Heya. Well, so - it's nearly February, wow! Can't believe it. It's been cold-warm-cold-cold-*cold*holyfuck-warm here, so very weird. Heating bill is way too big, as usual. *sigh*
BUT, all that aside, i bring fic! Avengers fic. I know! Who'da thunk! But i love the movies (all of them except the Hulk ones - Bill Bixby is forever my Bruce Banner), and i've had this idea kicking around for ages, so... Fic. :)
I thought - getting your arm busted up and then amputated, possibly without anesthesia, is pretty fucking traumatizing. And then Evil Nazi Scientists (tm) graft some kind of horrible, metal killing-arm onto you? Without your consent? And torture you?
I can't imagine Bucky *liking* having that arm on him, so...i wrote about it. It's Gen, it's not terribly gory or anything, and I posted it over at AO3, too.
'What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I.'
Walter de la Mare - Napoleon
They tracked him for five months - New York to Chicago, Pittsburgh to Seattle, Boulder to Tulsa - following a bread-crumb trail of dead bodies, burned out buildings, unexpected subsidences that exposed decades-old sub-basements.
Nothing was ever left in his wake but smoke and blood, shattered glass, cooling meat. Fire took out what weapons could not, a scouring of the past. The worst was the abandoned vault of a long defunct bank. It looked to have been torn apart with steel razors and spiked clubs, not even enough left for Tony to analyze. The sheer rage - the hate - that had produced such destruction was sobering, and a little frightening. That night, Steve and Sam sat across from each other in a local dive bar, drinking, saying nothing, both going to bed sober. Steve had never wanted to be drunk so bad in his life.
It felt...fruitless. It felt like the world's longest game of tag. It felt like failure, and Steve lay down in the bland, beige square of bed in a bland, beige hotel room that night feeling as if the world were grinding him down. This chase - this hunt - was dragging him into mud, thicker and darker with every step. Suffocating him.
But when he closed his eyes, all he could see were Bucky's eyes on the helicarrier, terrified and desperate, his face twisted with horror. Whatever they'd done to him - and the file Tasha had left with Steve gave too much detail, and not nearly enough - Steve had seen it cracking, that day. He'd seen something, he was sure, of the man he'd thought dead and gone, and no matter how deep he got, no matter how ugly the slog became….
He couldn't stop. He would not. Because it wasn't about him, and this was the least - the very least - that he could do for his oldest, dearest friend.
During the last month, things got...sloppy. Instead of precise bullet wounds in hearts or heads, the bodies they found were slashed and rent - beaten open, dragged to pieces. They tracked him through messy explosions and wholesale destruction, shattered machineries painted with gore, and Sam said, quietly, as they drove away from one such scene, that Bucky seemed to be getting...worse.
"You mean, worse than tortured for seventy years, or worse than committing multiple murders for revenge?" Steve asked, and Sam looked sideways at him, his fingers tight on the wheel of the truck.
"I mean, before, he was methodical. He was killing people and destroying things, but it was...controlled. He seems...pretty out of control."
Steve thought about the last site. About the hollowed-out body of the man who seemed to have been a scientist, his intestines strung in loops around his throat. About the soldiers with blown-apart knees who seemed to have been beaten to death with a metal pole, or possibly a metal fist.
He thought about the bloody marks on the walls and floor, as if that same metal fist had scratched and clawed and dug, in a frenzy of hate. 'Out of control' seemed like a pretty nice way of putting what was looking more and more like - psychosis.
"Is it really a surprise?" Steve said, quietly, and Sam sighed, turned on the radio, and they drove.
They found him in Detroit at the tail-end of November, alerted by a late call from Tony - something about algorithms, CCTV, police radio. It led them to a sprawl of derelict buildings that, except for the architecture, could have been Cologne, or London after the Blitz. Dozens of buildings were fire-scorched, fallen in, crumbling down into the murky snow that lay in grey heaps. Steve could see wobbling lines of graffiti, spray-bombs of blue and black and red, and icicles the length of his body where chance and sunlight had created channels of snowmelt.
"Old Packard auto plant," Sam said, his breath puffing out white as he rubbed glove-clad hands together. A few scattered streetlights sent a weak orange glow over the structures nearest the road, and Steve could see a muddle of footprints, human and animal; bits of trash; a tangle of rusting metal that might have once been a machine.
And then, faintly, coming through the hushed silence like something out of a nightmare, Steve could hear a voice. It was shouting, unintelligible. It rose, higher and higher, and then broke off, only to swell back again to audibility, a babble of just noise, punctuated by a grinding shriek, metal on rotting concrete.
Beside him, Sam took in a sharp, hard little breath, and Steve... Steve just moved. He strode out, two, three long steps before breaking into a jog, and then a sprint, leaving Sam behind as he tracked through the aisles of listing buildings, weaving in and out of shadow, old snow and new ice crunching under his feet.
He went north, as near as he could tell, deep into the maze of rust and crumbling concrete, coming at last to a building half-eaten by fire, blackened brick in heaps, rebar twisted by heat, and light, leaping up, living flame somewhere inside. Steve felt his heart kick in his chest, panicked stutter, and then he was seeing the way in, seeing - as he was sure Bucky had seen - a mostly stable series of slabs and compacted garbage, a route through.
Steve could hear Sam coming up behind him, breathing deep and steady. He was talking under his breath, but loud enough for Steve to pick it up, even from a good fifty feet away.
"Don't do it, Cap, don't you do it. God damn, shit, fuck, hell, wait for me, don't you fucking do it-"
"Sorry, Sam," Steve muttered, and climbed.
Bucky had got in through a second storey landing, a window unblocked by rubble. From there, though, his path went down, and Steve stepped carefully, slowly, making sure each foot was securely planted before he moved the other, being as quiet as possible. As careful, because the last thing he wanted to do was rush in and make Bucky think he was under attack.
No, Steve had to go slow, and so, slowly, he moved, and he listened.
Bucky's voice, hoarse and breathless, babbled first in Russian and then in German, and then lapsed into what sounded like Italian, or possibly French. It was mangled, though, slurred and disorganized, nothing but random words standing out to Steve. Nothing that made any really sense, just a few things, here and there.
Tried to make me...every time...saw you...not me, not me...off…off!
The last word was screamed, Bucky's voice gone hysterical, and Steve abandoned both stealth and caution and leapt the last few feet, dodged around a hulk of rusting metal and there, there... was Bucky. There was a fire burning, half in and half out of what looked like the remains of an industrial tub. Scavenged bits of wood and trash were heaped in it - spilling out of the rent-open side - and flames churred and hissed, sending shadows crawling up the walls, distorting everything.
And Bucky was there, crouched like a demon against the far wall, his long hair matted and his t-shirt ragged, boots half laced. Blood or something had left streaks and splotches up the thighs of his once black trousers, and there was mud smeared on his chin, across his cheek. His eyes...were animalistic.
He saw Steve and bared his teeth, hissing like a furious cat. Steve froze when Bucky's hand wrenched a length of metal from the tub, the very tip glowing a sullen red. He didn't seem to notice that the whole length of it must be hot, might be burning his palm and fingers, he simply brandished it, his arm shaking, wavering in jerky figure eights, and Steve finally realized - he wasn't using his left arm at all. The metal prosthetic hung at an odd angle from his shoulder, streaked with soot and blood, the silver plates dull, several askew. The fingers seemed to be twitching convulsively, restless little movements that meant nothing. The sleeve of his t-shirt had been shredded away from the metal, ripped almost to the collar, the torn sides gaping open, exposing his entire shoulder.
"Get out!" Bucky roared, English now, and he slammed the metal bar against the edge of the tub, making sparks fly.
"Bucky, please. It's...I'm Steve. You know me, Bucky." Steve held his hand out, not daring to step forward, but desperate to, anyway. "You knew me, back on the helicarrier. You saved me."
Bucky stared at him, shaking his head as he crept along the wall, getting more of the fire between him and Steve, the bar in his hand scraping along the rim of the tub with a grating squeal. "I said. I suh-said. The man on the...on the bridge. I knew him, but I knew him, I said, I...I…I-" Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and jerked his head back, rapping it sharply into the wall behind him, and Steve winced at the dull crack.
Bucky swayed for a moment, panting, and then he lifted the bar again, the point weaving. His stare was bleak, wounded. "I said no, I...I fought, I k-k-killed one, two, three, four...I did, I did, but they, but they...." His face contorted suddenly, going from cornered animal to fury in seconds. He lifted the bar high over his head and Steve tensed for a throw, for a charge.
Instead, Bucky twisted, bringing the bar down on his left arm, metal ringing off metal, sparks leaping from a joint near the elbow. His voice rose in a scream - rage, pain - and he brought the bar down again and again and again, awkward, powerful blows that warped the plates, that made it unseam, somewhere, on his shoulder. A line of blood welled up and ran down, spattering on his face when the bar smacked down again. "They, they, they did this, this, this!"
Bucky stopped then and hunched forward, panting harshly, his lungs wheezing. The arm made an overtaxed, buzzing kind of noise, and Steve belatedly wondered about explosives, poisons - who knew what Hydra had put into the damn thing.
"Bucky, please, please stop. You're hurting yourself. Look, I just want-" Steve stepped forward, finally, forgetting his earlier caution, and Bucky straightened up, head tilting warily, the bar coming up again, clumsy. His whole right arm was shaking, weak and bruised under the dirt, and oh, God, Steve just wanted to gather him up and help him, make him stop.
"Back off, just...b-back...off…." Bucky's gaze went scarily - utterly - blank for a long moment, and the bar sank in his grip, dipping down until the now-cooled tip touched the floor. He stood there, frozen, and Steve took another step forward, slowly.
"Buck?"
"What?" Bucky said. He blinked, obviously bewildered, staring at Steve as if he'd just appeared out of nowhere. "You. You are...the man...you said...ssaid- Steve?" he asked, his voice cracking, and Steve felt a surge of giddy, breathless joy.
"Yes. Yes, I'm Steve. Steve Rogers. We...grew up together." Another step forward, and another, and Steve could feel the heat of the fire on his shins. "We went to war together. You know me. I want to- I want to help you, Bucky, please."
"Ssteve," Bucky said, his voice full of wonder, and he staggered forward a step. The left arm swung, inert, taking him off balance, and he staggered sideways, curling himself around the pain, gasping in a handful of shaky, hitching breaths.
"I want it…off, want it off of me, off !" His raw voice was agonizing to hear, and it only worsened when he shifted his grip on the bar so he could shove the slightly flattened, narrower end up under a plate and pry. The plate curled back with a squeal of protest, sparking, and Bucky screamed again and convulsed, crumpling to his knees, the bar clattering away across the concrete. He huddled there, right arm tight around his ribs, looking up at Steve through locks of lank, ragged hair, his chest heaving..
"Steve, look what they...did to me," Bucky said, and his voice was a thready whisper. The nails of his right hand clawed at the arm, smearing blood. "Steve, please, please-" He gave a hoarse, hysterical sob, and Steve didn't care, he didn't care anymore, he didn't care what Sam had said, what Tony had cautioned, he just moved. Crossing the short distance to Bucky in a moment and crouching down in front of him, Steve reached out, curling his right hand around Bucky's, stilling the frantic scrabbling of his fingers, folding his own hand down tight around Bucky's and pulling it off the arm and into Steve's chest.
"Steve," Bucky whispered, his blue eyes eerily bright in their red-socketed rims, tears streaking through the grime on his face, dampening the tangled hair across his lips. "Please, take it off, take it off of me, Steve, please, please...."
"I- I will, I promise, Bucky. God, I'll do anything...I'm sorry, I'm so damn sorry, Buck, so damn sorry." Steve cautiously lifted his other hand to wrap around the nape of Bucky's neck, and Bucky turned his head, pushing his wet cheek into Steve's palm, his eyes falling shut. He breathed in hitching, wheezing breaths against Steve's skin, and Steve wanted to scream, to cry. Wanted to find some Hydra survivor and twist his guts into a knot. God, he wanted to end them all.
A grating sound made him look up, and Sam was there, standing at the edge of the space, firelight sliding across his dark skin, shadowing his eyes. He didn't move - didn't speak - and Steve nodded to him, just once, and then turned back to Bucky.
"I promise, Bucky. I'll help you. I've got you now. I've got you."
The sun was shining, pale and not particularly warm, but brave. It had been a long, frigid winter, with a lot of snow and ice - climate change, Tony said, and global warming. Looking that up had been both interesting and frightening, and Steve didn’t really like to think about it much.
He just knew he was glad to see the sun shining; glad to know that, after today, the days would be getting longer, and the nights shorter. He imagined the fuzz of green that would spread across Central Park, and how the last of the sleety snow would melt from the sand at Coney Island, and the sea would lose its hard, grey edge and mellow to blue and green again, racing up the warm strand.
Steve realized his hand, without conscious thought, was drawing the curve of the beach there, the gentle slope of dunes and the long, straight finger of the boardwalk. He smiled a little, shaking his head, and looked up as a sudden swirl of cold air danced around him.
Bucky was just slipping in through one of the heavy, beveled glass doors that led to the deck, his cheeks pink and his still long hair tangled from the ever-present wind here near the top of the Tower. He was bundled in jeans and layers of tee-shirt, thermal shirt, flannel and hoodie, and thick socks with big, furry boots that Sam had called Abominable snow boots - they reminded Steve of Eskimos. Tasha said they were the bastard offspring of Uggs and tribbles. Either way, they were warm, and Bucky seemed to love them. They let him sit out on the deck for longer, crosslegged on the edge of a decorative planter that was empty, for the moment.
He said the wind - the silence - helped him get his head straight, when all the noise and color and flash-bang-whizz of the twenty-first century overwhelmed him. Steve understood that, for sure.
Bucky didn’t look over, concentrating on getting his boots off with the boot-jack, and standing them neatly on the rubber-backed mat Steve had brought home. It was striped in colors of yellow and green and robin’s egg blue. More Spring in the dead of winter - Steve’s unsubtle hope for the future, for regrowth, new life.
Bucky unzipped the hoodie and hung it on the hooks that doubled as some kind of abstract wall art (Tony had insisted when he discovered that Steve was going to put a coat stand there), then unwound the thick, knitted scarf from his neck, hanging that, as well. Then, finally, he turned and met Steve’s gaze, a crooked little smile on his face.
“Hey.”
“Hey, Bucky. There’s chili on the stove. And cheese and sour cream and...stuff.”
“Saltines?”
“Yeah, saltines,” Steve said, grinning, and Bucky finally grinned back, his eyes a pale and electric blue in his wind-stung face, his chapped lips flushed from the cold. He went off to the kitchen, banging around, and Steve started adding a tiny rendition of the Cyclone coaster to his drawing, tracing the curves and loops from memory. A couple minutes later, Bucky came back out of the kitchen, balancing a tea tray in his right hand, loaded with a big, deep bowl of chili and a tall glass of milk. He set it carefully on the coffee table and then folded gracefully to the floor, picking up his spoon. At least half a dozen saltines were crushed across the top of his chili, and a neat stack of six or eight more were standing ready by the bowl. He dipped up a spoonful and ate it, making appreciative noises.
“You’re making me hungry again,” Steve said, and Bucky shoveled another spoonful into his mouth.
“Sam an’ Clint’re coming up later. Better get it while the getting’s good,” he said, muffled, saltine crumbs spitting past his lips to scatter across the tray.
“Jeez, were you raised by wolves?”
“You calling my Ma a wolf?”
“I don’t have a death wish,” Steve said, tossing down his sketchbook and getting up to get his own bowl and milk. Coming back into the living room, Steve stopped for a moment, just...looking.
Bucky had tugged Steve’s sketchbook closer and was studying one of the drawings, absently spooning up chili, gaze fixed on smudged pencil. The left sleeve of his flannel shirt was pinned up, empty. The thought of a new arm (“A better arm, Barnes. Better, stronger, faster! I can rebuild it. I have the technology!”) was still too much for Bucky. Still left him shaking, flashing back to memories that were both distant and excruciatingly new and raw. He was coping fine without it, didn’t really seem to mind at all, though Steve could foresee a day when he might decide to let Tony go wild.
Actually, Steve was pretty sure Tony was up to at least version three of a prosthetic arm for Bucky already. But Bucky said he could still feel his arm - his old arm, flesh arm - sometimes. Could feel the green-stick agony of it, the snapped bones that had rendered it useless to both him and his captors. So long as he was still coming to terms with losing his own arm, he didn’t want to even think about replacing it, and Steve understood that. He needed time to...to mourn, as it were. To grieve, and to let go.
Steve shook his head, dismissing those thoughts, and went to settle on the couch beside Bucky, digging into his own heavily-doctored bowl. Cheeses and sour cream, scallions and bacon bits and spicy croutons.
“You can’t even taste the beans in that mess,” Bucky observed, crushing a couple more saltines over his chili, and Steve just shook his head.
“Three kinds of cheese, Buck. Three.”
“So, what, you’re a Frog, now?”
“Dernier’d kick your ass for that.”
Bucky laughed, a little rusty, but true - solid. His memories were coming back, slow but steady, the very oldest ones first. They were hazy, sometimes - disconnected - but without the endless, vicious scrubbing by Hydra tech, it was clear the memories were still there, but the route to them - the connections that made it possible for Bucky to bring them out - were badly damaged.
But he seemed to be healing those connections, or finding new routes to them. Nobody really seemed to know how, but, honestly, Steve didn’t care. It was enough that Bucky knew, and was healing, day by day. How wasn’t important. Bucky had told Steve, back around the new year, how they’d stopped having to physically torture him to keep him from resisting after just a few months. They’d come up with the machine that had wiped him clean, and kept him docile. Sort of. So long as they didn’t leave it too long, because they could only bury who he was - what he’d been - not eradicate, not erase. The times they’d kept him out too long - used him too much - he remembered waking up, remembered knowing. And he’d killed some of them, then, fought them, tooth and nail, until brute force and drugs and the machine turned him back into a robot.
When they timed it right, Bucky had said, his voice low and hoarse, just a whisper in the dimness of his bedroom, he’d laid down and let them wipe him clean, despite his fear, despite the agony. Just nothing left of himself to say no.
Steve had felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to him, when Bucky had told him that. Felt like he’d been flayed alive. But now, watching Bucky gesture broadly, telling a story just to know he could, half a saltine in his hand and crumbs on his shirt, light and life shining all through him, making him all but glow….
Steve knew, he was going to be okay.
Also, in case you're wondering - SHOW IS BACK! AND I LUFF!! Oh, my boys. Oh, my *boys*! *smishes them*
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