Chapter 1: Demons Biting At Your Heels

A/N: This story was written before Captain America 2 came out. Will eventually turn into a Bucky/Steve/Natasha relationship. Oh man I haven't uploaded fanfiction in, literally, years.

Coming back from it all was slow. Bucky remembered being held in the SHIELD infirmary for months until the days melted together like the memories in his head. Too often, he woke up not knowing who he was or where he was. In times like those, he thrashed and fought in his confusion until the sharp sting of a hypodermic needle sent him back into merciful unconsciousness.

Those were the better days.

On the worse days, he did remember. In fact, he remembered more than he cared to. He remembered sunny days in Brooklyn, lounging out on the fire escape with a skinny, asthmatic boy whose face boasted the brightest smile he'd ever seen. He also remembered dark, blood-drenched rooms where there was nothing but him, his knife, and half a dozen butchered corpses lying at his feet.

Bucky Barnes' memories. The Winter Soldier's memories. Both were a tangled mess in his head.

It was weeks before Bucky settled into this new "normal" of working for SHIELD.

Just five days after he'd broken through HYDRA's programming, sitting there in his cell trying to come to terms with all that he'd done and trying to decide how the hell he was supposed to put that all behind him, Nick Fury paid an unexpected visit. The director of SHIELD cut an imposing figure standing in the doorway of his cell, and Bucky was instantly on edge.

"At ease, soldier," said Fury, before walking carefully to stand before the small cot Bucky was sitting on.

Bucky didn't quite relax. He was quiet as his eyes followed Fury across the room, waiting for him to offer some explanation for the visit. He didn't have to wait long. Nick Fury didn't beat around the bush.

"I'm here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative."

Bucky blinked. "Come again?"

'Avengers'? Weren't those the people who'd helped catch him? Natasha Romanoff and…

"It's a group of…superheroes…for lack of a better word," continued Fury. "They protect the world and its stability. I'd like you to join."

Surely he'd misheard. Of all the reasons Nick Fury would willingly waltz into his cell—the Winter Soldier's cell—this was the last thing Bucky had in mind. The idea was so ridiculous that Bucky almost laughed right in Fury's face. After everything he'd done…it was a surprise they hadn't killed him when they'd first captured him.

"You're must be kidding. I nearly broke your world."

"That's true," agreed Fury. "And you would have, as well, if not for the timely intervention of some of our best agents." Fury took a step closer and Bucky had the distinct sensation of being backed into a corner. "But now I want you to help them rebuild that world. If you feel even the slightest bit of remorse for what you did, Sergeant Barnes, then this would be a good way to atone for it."

It was true. The guilt had been eating him alive ever since he got his memory back. He remembered all the horrific things the Winter Soldier had done and it tore him apart. Sure, he hadn't been in control but it still couldn't erase the memory of pulling the trigger, the resounding crack of the bullet tearing through his victims' skulls, or the deep red pools that stained the ground in his wake. It was enough to make him wake up vomiting in the middle of the night.

He shook his head. "You should have just killed me."

Fury seemed to consider this for a moment. "Yes, well, that was the initial plan."

"Then what stopped you?" asked Bucky, genuinely curious.

The corner of Fury's mouth twitched slightly. "You have a skillset that's very valuable. However, the Council still ordered your termination, citing that you were too dangerous to let live. Let's just say there was someone who was willing to move heaven and earth, fight gods and men, to give you a second chance. I think, for his sake, you'd better reconsider my offer." Without another word, Fury left, leaving a stunned Bucky to ponder his options.

In the end, he chose to join the Avengers and work for SHIELD. There wasn't much else he could do. Bucky wasn't so naïve as to think that after everything that's happened, he could just waltz back into the civilian lifestyle. Things just didn't work that way. While the programming had been broken, there was just too much about him that was no longer normal. His carefully honed fighting instincts were still there. He still subconsciously scanned and catalogued all the exits in any room he entered. He still didn't feel complete without the cold steel of a Beretta 9mm pressed against his lower back. All those things aside, there was still the matter of his less-than-human arm.

So Bucky settled for making this his new 'normal,' because he owed it to Steve to at least try at life again. Steve, his best friend and the one he'd tried so damn hard to kill on numerous occasions, who took his punches and held him down when he was having one of his fits in the middle of his deprogramming, who Bucky later learned had put his career on the line to argue for his best friend's life. Bucky was sure that even if he lived ten lifetimes, he could never make up everything he owed to Steve. From the orphanage when they were little, to the midst of war and seventy years later, Steve was still by his side.

That didn't mean things between them had returned to the way it was before Bucky had fallen off the train. If anything, things had become more strained after Bucky joined SHIELD.

When he was still recovering in SHIELD custody and fighting the programming, he remembered Steve visiting him nearly every day. Bucky was too out of it to remember much except that Steve talked to him during those times. Held him down when necessary but mostly, he just talked. The specific details were blurry but Steve's voice had been soothing. It reminded him of days long-gone when the two of them would huddle under the covers in their small Brooklyn apartment, trading promises and stolen kisses.

When Bucky could properly sort out his memories from the Winter Soldier's memories, he often revisited that time. It was before the war, when things were much simpler. They only had each other then. It was during one of those times that Bucky had made a promise he swore on his life he'd keep: he'd be there for Steve and would always protect him.

He'd kept that promise even after Steve was no longer the frail, sickly boy who Bucky bailed out of back alley fights but Captain America, a hero and symbol for all. Even then, he hadn't so much as hesitated to follow Steve back into the front lines where he quietly watched Steve's back and sniped every enemy that tried to sneak up behind them. He'd kept that promise all the way up until the day they went after Zola. Right up until the metal railing broke and he plummeted into an icy cold expanse with Steve's roar of despair still ringing in his ears.

He woke up some time later, not as himself but as something different, entirely remade. He fought alongside a fiery red-headed woman who he used to call Natalia. He thinks he might have loved her, but not in the same way he'd loved Steve because he didn't remember Steve. Just when he thought that he had it all figured out, everything went black again. The next time he woke up—really woke up—he was face-to-face with his best friend who was bleeding from multiple wounds that Bucky himself had inflicted. The shock and the horror nearly crippled him as he let go of the knife and dropped to his knees, shaking with the dawning realization of what he was doing and not understanding why he was doing it at all. He just knelt there, shaking, even as Steve dropped down and enveloped him in an embrace Bucky didn't think he deserved at all, muttering comforting words like "it's going to be okay, Buck. It's going to be okay."

It was never going to be okay. He'd broken his promise.

Bucky was on probationary Avengers status because SHIELD technically didn't fully trust him yet. The Council had only granted Fury's proposal on the condition that Bucky moved into Stark Tower alongside the other team members where all the Avengers and Tony Stark's near-sentient AI could watch over him.

Meeting the rest of the Avengers team was an awkward affair. He'd only fought against Natalia (who now called herself Natasha) and Steve because the others were either away on assignment or preoccupied with one thing or another.

Now the whole team was gathered in the same Tower as him and it was made clear, in no uncertain terms, that until he could prove himself trustworthy they would treat him as anything but. Steve had bristled angrily at their distrust but couldn't do anything about it. Their worries were well-founded, after all. Natasha was the only other person besides him who hadn't looked at Bucky with wary eyes, but Bucky supposed it was because she had probably gone through a similar ordeal when she switched allegiances and understood him better than most.

Bucky initially had a hard time believing this was the group of heroes that Fury—and the world—placed so much faith in. They were a mismatched lot, half of whom weren't even military. A couple of trained assassins, a defrosted super soldier, a man who turned mean and green when he got angry, a billionaire who flew around in a red and gold tin can, and the crown prince of another realm who spent his free time lounging on Earth. It made so much sense when he found out that their heroic team effort in diverting the alien invasion of New York had been mostly a thing of circumstance.

It didn't matter too much though. Bucky himself was an anomaly as well, so he just brushed the Avengers off as one of the more minor issues of what was going on in his life right now.

The other thing that surprised Bucky about the current situation (one that he couldn't quite ignore despite his best efforts) was Steve and Natasha. Well, more specifically, Steve with Natasha. Obviously their relationship status was known to the rest of the team because nobody bats an eye when Steve loops an arm around Natasha's waist when he plops down on the common room sofa with her, or the kiss he plants on her cheek right after. Tony even makes the occasional crude jokes towards them that have no effect on Natasha but send a mad blush creeping across Steve's face.

It made Bucky feel…weird. He'd dated Natasha and thinks he might have loved her just before he was put on ice again. He and Steve had had something too, however brief and undefined it was, before his 'death'. That was seventy years ago though, and Steve was allowed to move on. Bucky just didn't expect moving on to mean hooking up with Natasha—his Natalia—especially since he never even expected to see either of them again.

If Bucky was honest with himself, he'd admit that he was a little jealous, of both of them. He envied what they had in each other, what he could have had with either of them.

No, that wasn't true. He was looking back through rose-tinted glasses. He and Steve had lived in an age where love between two men was forbidden and looked down on with disgust. That's why they had to hide it behind closed doors and make love in hushed voices. It would have never lasted. He remembered when Steve became infatuated with Peggy and his own stirrings of jealousy when Steve gave her the soft glances he had previously reserved for Bucky alone. Still, he would have shot himself before he let his love for Steve tarnish the other man's reputation as Captain America.

With Natalia, it had started as a thing of convenience. Both tools of the Red Room, they found comfort in each other. Sooner or later, their superiors would have found out about their tryst and broken them up—which they did. Involvement between two agents was forbidden because it decreased their effectiveness in the field, or so they were told. Love was a hindrance and there was no place for weakness in their lives. What happened between them didn't start as love but with time, the meetings became less about fulfilling a physical need but an emotional one.

Bucky remembered cradling her after a botched mission, her blood staining his hands red, praying to whatever god that would listen to a man like him to please not let her die. Rescue came just in time to prevent her from bleeding out and Bucky remembers how he was almost giddy with relief when she opened her eyes and smiled at him, her fingers brushing his. That small gesture had been reported. They were separated soon after that. He was put back on ice.

He supposed if they were happy, he should be happy. He would have never been good enough for either of them anyways. If they had found happiness in each other, he wouldn't come between them. It was enough for him that they were both alive and both still in his life, he told himself. He silenced the small part of him that still craved for Steve's kiss or Natasha's fingers raking through his hair.

Bucky let them be and never made any mention of any of their pasts together. He wouldn't ruin what they had by dredging up any unwanted memories. He still had his own problems to deal with, so the matter of Steve's involvement with Natasha was their own, no matter how much it pained him to see them together.

He was given the floor just above Steve's, not due to his own choice but because it was the only floor not currently taken or undergoing repairs from an accident involving Bruce Banner a week before he was transferred over. Bucky would have preferred just about any other floor, though. It wasn't that he didn't want to be near Steve. He just…didn't. It wasn't right. Bucky felt like he'd disappointed Steve in the worst way possible. Bucky had been a strong man and a hero in Steve's eyes, not a warped killer. That image had been shattered the first time his mask came off in the middle of Steve's fight against the Winter Soldier.

He should have been stronger. He should have resisted their brainwashing and died a good man, not with the blood of innocents staining his hands.

Living on adjacent floors meant Bucky ran into Steve (and to a certain extent, Natasha) more than he did any other member of the team. For the first while, Steve did his best to reach out to Bucky as much as he could, even if Bucky just pushed him away. He greeted Bucky in the halls as if nothing had changed, or tried to.

"Hey Buck," he'd begin.

"Hey."

"If you're not busy later, you want to head downtown with me to pick up some stuff?" It was Steve's way of inviting Bucky to talk to him. Maybe he was hoping it would help.

It was no secret that many nights, the Winter Soldier's memories would overtake Bucky and he would awake to the sound of his own screams. Tony may have sound-proofed the Tower, or so he claims, but Bucky was willing to bet that with his super hearing, Steve could hear it on the floor just below him. In fact, if the slightly pitying looks the rest of his team mates shot him over breakfast were any indication, they all heard.

"Sorry. Got some stuff to take of." He didn't really. It was just an empty excuse and he knew that Steve knew. He felt horrible every time he turned down an offer to spend time with Steve but it just didn't make sense to him how Steve forgave him so easily when he couldn't even forgive himself. He wished Steve would get angry, maybe hit him even, because pain would be easier to deal with than this sympathy but Steve never did.

"Oh, alright then," Steve would reply, always with a hint of disappointment. "Guess I'll see you later?"

"Yeah."

That was usually the end of it and Bucky would hole himself up in his room. Eventually, one day, Steve pushed it. When the frustration that Bucky was just not talking to him finally built to a breaking point, Steve confronted him in the halls. Bucky was just returning from wailing on the gym's punching bag.

"Bucky, we need to talk," Steve cornered him.

"Yeah?" Bucky glanced up as he ruffled the towel around his sweat-soaked neck. He could tell something was bothering him because Steve's body language was tense.

Steve took a deep breath before he began. "You can't keep doing this, Buck. I know things aren't right with you but you haven't talked to anyone about them, not even me. What happened? We used to be best friends. We talked to each other about everything. Now, I wake up in the middle of the night to my best friend's screams and the next morning, he just walks around pretending nothing is wrong. I'm really worried about you. And…and I just want to help. Please."

Bucky slowly settled the towel down against one shoulder. He supposed he should have been expecting this sooner or later with the way he was acting. "What do you want me to say?" he finally asked.

It was painful to watch Steve, desperation etched clear on his face, all but begging his best friend to open up to him. It wasn't even his burden to bear but here he was, insisting Bucky let him share the load. All it did was make Bucky feel more like a pathetic wreck.

"I…anything."

Bucky shook his head. "I can't. Sorry Steve. I just…I can't do this. Not right now." He turned away.

"If not right now, then when?!" yelled Steve unexpectedly, his patience finally breaking. When Bucky didn't reply, Steve swore. "Damn it, James!" His frustration echoed around the empty halls. "I just…" his voice softens and cracks almost inaudibly. "I just want my best friend back."

He felt horrible but knew it was necessary. Steve could never understand. To share with him the memories of the atrocities he'd committed as the Winter Soldier would hurt Steve more than it'd help Bucky. It would tarnish the pureness that was Captain America. Steve needed to focus on his job and his duty to a country that needed him. Bucky was only one man.

One man who'd broken a sworn promise.

Bucky understood that Steve still saw him as the same man who gladly marched into war alongside Captain America and died a hero. How could Bucky ever tell him that the same man he cherished was gone?

"Sorry," Bucky said again. It was heart-wrenching but he continued to walk, his back turned to Steve, even as he heard the distinct sound of Steve putting a fist through the drywall.

After that, Steve stopped trying to get him to talk. He still greeted Bucky in the halls but made it clear he wasn't going to push anymore. Maybe he understood that Bucky needed his space but damned if he didn't still give Bucky wounded eyes. He hated how he was pushing Steve away…but this was his problem to deal with. These were his demons.