Archive of Our Own

The first time Steve saw Bucky after the fall was one month later at his dining room table. He had sensed the change before he walked in, felt the air shift as if it too understood the gravity of this meeting. But Bucky - was he still Bucky? - existed in the way only an absence of existence could; concealed in his own shadows. Steve was drawn to him the way that all light in the room was. He sucked it in and consumed it and Steve could only stand stock-still for fear he might falter in as well.

His skin prickled with tension, and his blood was alight with the fact that Bucky had found him. He had come back. He'd said, you're my mission - was he still? Steve didn't know how much time had passed between walking in and standing, breathing, but he still had his keys clenched in his left hand and he reminded himself where his shield hung in the hallway.

It didn't feel like there was silence, in fact the room felt far too loud, and Steve thought he might have to shout for Bucky to hear him over the cacophony of everything not being said. He was terrified of scaring him away. He didn't know what to say, how to move, he didn't know which parts of Bucky had survived and whether he was supposed to appeal to the wreckage or the salvage.

"Bucky," was what he said.

There was a spark and the absence of light was no more. Bucky was a living, breathing thing and Steve would pour out all the light he could to fill up such an empty space.

"I'm not." Was what Bucky said.

Something broke inside Steve with the sound of his voice. But at least he could hear it. Perhaps this wasn't the old Bucky, but they still needed each other. Steve had known he was done for the moment he'd stepped out on this quest for his best friend, but this wasn't about him. This was about whoever this broken man was in his apartment, and whatever he needed to be fixed.

"What do you need? Why d'you come back?" Steve resisted every instinct he had to move closer and rooted his feet to the floor. Bucky's face was hidden in darkness but Steve could hear the sharp intake of breath, and couldn't imagine what it must be like for him. He tried not to focus on it too much. He had to keep it together for both their sakes.

Bucky's answer came out forced and rough. "I need to know." He was gritting his teeth.

"Know what?"

"Who you are. Really. I can- Remember things now. But so much is missing. So much is- Taken. Gone."

"Buck, we can get through this. I can tell you anything you want to know, everything. From start to finish." Steve was on the verge of lifting his foot from the ground. His hand had reached out unbidden, the way used to calm a spooked horse, the way that said, trust me, it will be alright.

Bucky moved then, slowly, calculatedly, and so unlike everything that Steve knew. It shook him, and he quickly raised his other arm in an expression of surrender. Standing, Bucky's face caught the yellow light from the street lamps out the window. He was pale yet dark; a hollowness covered him like a relentless, sickly rain cloud and Steve knew it was his job to show him the sun again.

Bucky stared out the window. "I found him - James Buchanan Barnes. I found him and I know where he was born and what he did and when he did it." His jaw tensed at the wavering of his voice. "But I don't know why. I look at his face and I'm nothing but a shell. I'm nothing. I'm not him, Captain Rogers. I don't think I ever will be."

Captain Rogers. "You don't need to be. You've got nothing to prove."

Bucky's faced creased with pain; a deep, sorrowful hurt that Steve would have given anything not to see and then anything to fix. His long hair, black in the dimness, framed the intense frown of his forehead and before Steve knew what he was doing he had travelled across the room in three steps. Bucky didn't move away.

"We can face this together. It's never gonna be the way it was. It can't be. But it can stop being this and start being something better."

Bucky looked up and Steve was sure he heard the angels sing somewhere, though the room was quieter now. Softer. All that Steve could see in the once blue irises was something lost and grey. But then, against all odds, Bucky gave a self-depreciating half-smile and Steve's heart flooded with hope. Because whether Bucky thought so or not, there was nothing more like his old friend than that familiar, perfect smile he had missed for an age.

"So strange." Bucky said, his voice barely more than a whisper. "To hear someone say that. To... feel something that's not just the mission."

Steve frowned despite himself. "What's the mission now?"

There was a distinct hesitation. "I don't know. Sometimes... I forget. Sometimes you are. And then sometimes you're not." Bucky's throat was tight, and Steve knew because he'd heard it before. Old conversations echoed through his head and he focused on the fact that he couldn't treat Bucky like he once had.

Steve lowered his voice to something calm, something he hoped was reassuring - he could feel an outburst building inside his friend. He leant forward slightly, trying to contain the stab of hurt when Bucky leant back. "I can help. And- and what's left of S.H.I.E.L.D. can help too. We can fill in the blanks. No one is going to make you do anything anymore, you can start over, do whatever you want-"

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT."

Steve pulled back from the fury and frustration suddenly emanating from the man before him. The Winter Soldier was flame. Steve held his gaze, held it through the fire and would burn if he had to.

"I don't know, I don't know." Bucky broke away with hands at the sides of his head. He was gripping his hair like he could pull the confusion right out of his brain. He was leaning against the glass of the window, away from Steve, as far as he could get.

Steve stepped back, but just once. Bucky was curling in on himself and Steve noticed, for the first time, what he was wearing. It was civilian, at least, but then it had to be. The Winter Solider get-up couldn't be much more obvious, and it had creeped Steve out anyway. But though he was glad to see him with some semblance of normalcy again, the simple jacket and jeans seemed too casual now; too easygoing for the person he was, and for the places he'd been. But then, Steve could say the same about himself.

"Look, I came here because you're in my head all the time and I can't stand it. I can't stand seeing your face everywhere I go, on every damn magazine and TV set. I need to figure out what it is you are to me... And I need to flush it all out."

Steve's eyes widened. He had to be misunderstanding. "Flush it out?"

"Flush out all of this..." Bucky gestured between them both with his metal hand. "Whatever this is. It's too much. I need to get it over and done with so I can breathe again. God, I want to breathe again."

"But what do you mean by flushing it out? You can't forget."

"No..." He breathed a humourless laugh that sent chills down Steve's neck. "Can't forget. That's something - I remember it all now. I can remember what I ate yesterday and the day before. All the people I've seen, I know all their faces. Yours the most. I can see them all, finally. No more forgetting. Never again."

Steve stepped backwards again. "You're a boat that's gone off course, Buck. But you can always come back in. Maybe you just need something to tether you to shore."

"Are you suggesting that you're my anchor?"

"I'd like to be. I want to help and I have to try. But you don't have to accept. You've been through a lot, so much and... I can live knowing that you're alive, and safe." Steve felt like the floor was about to crumble away, and, frankly, he'd had enough of falling to last a lifetime. More than one.

Bucky leant away from the window and stood, his eyes burning a line straight and unflinchingly to Steve's. "I don't know what to think anymore. What to believe. Don't know what to do."

There was a painful lull and Steve forced the words from his throat. "What do you remember?"

Bucky walked away from the window and back to his seat at the dining table. Steve couldn't tell now if his slowness was due to practice or fatigue. Neither sounded any good. Steve followed him and sat down at the corner, a single chair of separation between them. He knew he was transfixed on the lines of Bucky's face and trying to figure out where all the new scars had come from and searching for the old ones. He was glad the lowlight hid his stares. Bucky licked his lips, just the same.

"There are moments when I see you behind me, and you're different, you're smaller. And I know why, I've seen the records, always on your left, but... I never felt it until after. Then you're saving me. You save me from them and I feel what he felt. It's overwhelming." Bucky clenched his fists. "But it's not full. No matter what I remember or re-experience, there is an emptiness that I can't escape. Blurred edges when they should be pointed sharp."

Steve gave an aborted gesture of reassurance that left his hand laying awkwardly on the table. Bucky sighed like nothing mattered, and Steve listened while he fought through each and every memory he could put into words. He struggled through them like they were a physical gluttonous substance dragging at his body as he attempted to move. Steve filled in the blanks with what he knew and was careful when adding what he felt - should Bucky be put off by any confession of the depth of his feelings. Steve watched the face of his friend transition from desperation through to disbelief to utter revelation.

"And then the train."

"The train."

"I read about it. At the museum." Steve could see that Bucky was holding something back. He always gave the same shifty-eyed look with the restless curling of his lips. "But I- I suppose that memory hasn't returned yet. If it ever does."

"Maybe they all will." Steve prompted.

Bucky took a deep breath. "I don't know if I want them to. But this is better, somehow; sharing all this with you. I can hardly feel the mission in the back of my head, it's almost gone. I feel more like a person."

Steve couldn't hold back the happy smile that spread across his face; one which Bucky took one look at before returning to a lesser extent, but still. Said response caused Steve to, perhaps ungraciously, start to blush. In his defence, of course, he would say that it would take a heart of stone not to react to a grin you hadn't seen in seven decades. And when it was that grin...
"You are a person." Steve emphasised.

"Almost." Bucky nodded once, partially, as if he didn't really mean it.

"You have been, always. They were using you and controlling you but that doesn't mean that you're not still in there. You're a fighter, Buck. You survived it."

Bucky cocked his head and closed his eyes. "Trapped beneath your own skin."

Steve leaned towards him, ignoring the lump in his throat. "I can't imagine what it must have been like, and even now... I wish- I wish it had never happened, and I wish I'd gone to look for you." Steve knew he was travelling down a rocky path here but he didn't care. It was going to come out sometime and now was as good a moment as any. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't go to look for you. I didn't mean to leave you and I never will again."

Bucky had opened his eyes and was listening to him with a peculiar look on his face. "'Till the end of the line."

"Yes! Always."

"That's what you said before."

"Oh. Up on the helicarrier, yeah." Steve said, unsure, and looked at him curiously.

"No. Before, before."

Steve didn't answer.

"And there was another thing." Bucky was still and silent, waiting for the opportune moment; building the suspense, and creating something dramatic because some things never changed. His hair swung forward then back again as he lifted his face. His stubble, just the right length - the length it had been when he'd rescued his friend all that time before.

When Steve had pulled him from the table and taken him to safety - at least he thought he had - he remembered the way Bucky had looked at him that first time. The first time he'd seen Captain America and not Steve Rogers, the kid from Brooklyn. Bucky had come to understand that the serum had given Steve his life, his purpose, his soul. It was no stroke of luck. Steve had never believed that. He couldn't. And so he knew that however broken Bucky was now, there was a reason he had been given another chance to save him.

Another chance. Bucky leaned towards him. "I remember what you told him - me - after we escaped that complex. You didn't mean to, I remember that as well, you pretended it never happened because you were afraid of his reaction."

Steve didn't move, didn't dare to think or breathe or speak. Because he remembered what he'd said as if it was yesterday, and he had no idea what to do. He knew things were different now, in these times; that people didn't have to hide so much, and they were understood, celebrated even, but Bucky probably didn't know that. It probably didn't make a difference anyway.

"Do you remember?" Bucky said then, for the first time in doubt of whether Steve was on his side. He couldn't lie to Bucky.

"Yes."

Bucky shut his eyes and let his head droop backwards on his neck. "That is the memory that keeps me awake at night. Every dream I have is filled with the pain of that moment, a painful happiness - everything he felt and didn't say to you. He loved you back, you know, and it's taken me some time to figure out what the feeling was. Once I did, well, it's so obvious on you it's as if you're excreting it from your skin."

Steve's face suffered the brunt of his hot flush but he stayed frozen in his chair and hoped that the darkness hid his face. Bucky had brought his head back up and looked more lost than ever.

"There is this...thread inside me." He put the flesh hand on his chest, above his heart. "And it's connected to you somehow. I've been coming here for a while, sometimes when you weren't around and sometime when you were, trying to make it go away. But I think it just enforces it. A constant pull towards you that I don't even want to escape anymore. I can't want it. I have to stay around you, it does- It does make it better."

Steve took a ragged breath. "That's all I want. To make it better."

Bucky smiled again, a tiny bit, and Steve thought he might be developing an addiction. "So you will help me."

"Yes, forever, in anything. Yes."

Bucky nodded. "I'm going to kill them. I'm going to kill the ones that did this to me, and you're going to help me do it."

Steve's face dropped. "Bucky, I understand, but we can't rush into this..." He gauged Bucky's reaction before continuing. "There are things that need to be considered...for the safety of other people."

"I don't want to wait." Bucky spoke evenly. "But I can't go unless you do too. I need you with me, Captain Rogers."

The temptation was more than strong, it was extreme. I need you with me. He'd waiting so long to hear that. But he could wait a little longer. "It's Steve."

"So, Steve. Are you in?"

"It will take time and planning. HYDRA have spread farther than we ever could have imagined. And though we hit them hard, they're still out there." Bucky's eyes held him in place like a magnetic force. "I promise, I will help you do what you have to do, to protect you and the world, and stop it from ever happening again."

Bucky's eyebrows pulled in slightly, but then he reached out his hand, and Steve took it. He gripped it for all he was worth, and felt the skin, the muscle, the life and he stood up quickly, tugging Bucky up with him and into a hug. Before he could though, there was a yank and a sharp poke to his abdomen. It disappeared before he'd had time to process it and Bucky stepped backwards with his face a picture of horror. "Reflex - I'm sorry." He was holding up a small knife in his metal hand and let it clatter to the floor.

Steve was frozen for a second, then reached out for him. "You didn't do anything. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have tried to do that, it was stupid."

"No, it- It wasn't." Steve watched his face in the lowlight. It was vulnerable. "I'm tired of memories, Steve."

"Me too."

Bucky moved towards him and Steve resolved to let Bucky take this at his own speed. He wouldn't pressure him into anything at all. Bucky's eyes flicked up to his constantly as he searched for answers and approval. Steve stood by until Bucky's forehead had dropped to his shoulder and they stood close, partly touching and mostly not. Steve lifted his arms, tentatively, in order to give Bucky time to adjust, and then hugged him properly. It wasn't the same as before, but it didn't need to be. Bucky still needed him and he still needed Bucky.

Steve smiled when Bucky took a deep breath and exhaled into his jacket. He left a ball of warmth fading into his shoulder; Winter Soldier no more. He smelt like Bucky and something else, a few other things that Steve was a stranger to. He tightened his hold against his better judgement; he wasn't going to be a stranger to Bucky, he wasn't going to let him go ever again.

"You're warm." Bucky said.

"Yeah, I've got a good resistance to the cold."

Bucky's words were muffled against Steve shoulder. "This feels like a dream. The only difference is that there's no blank space any more. No more blankness."

Steve moved his face to Bucky's neck and got a nose full of hair. "Good."

Bucky sighed, then his arms finally came up to rest around Steve's back and Steve tried to get used to the feeling of hard heavy metal in place of flesh and bone. But this was Bucky now, and he would take anything, accept everything, and help him be whoever he wanted.
He hoped this wasn't taking advantage of Bucky in any way, with what he'd been through after all, did he really have sound judgement? Steve couldn't deny what he felt, but it wasn't fair to dump it on Bucky with the way he was.

Then Bucky laughed the light throaty laugh he used to when Steve was doing something he thought was stupid. It caught Steve off-guard and he pulled back in order to know the joke.

Bucky looked at him reproachfully. "It's like I can feel you overthinking."

Steve blushed, and this time he knew Bucky had witnessed it. His eyes lit up in a way that was almost... Teasing. Steve swallowed then cleared his throat. "I don't know what you mean."

"You're a bad liar. Always have been, I think."

Steve smiled awkwardly at him and put a hand to his shoulder, reeling him in again. "Bucky," he whispered, mouth drawing close to his ear.

Bucky hesitated. "Steve."

"You're my best guy."

"I know."