November, 2015

…

Bucky Barnes was incapable of making decisions.

He didn't know how to make one, the Winter Soldier had no need to; his superiors made all his decisions for him, it was his job to follow orders. It was his duty to not as questions and to follow blindly, to shoot without thinking and pull the trigger without ever looking back.

Bucky had once prized himself on his suave nature, on his cool personality and quick humour. He had been the image of the proper man back in '43, before Steve became Captain America and he himself had been captured by HYDRA and experimented on by Arnim Zola. Back in the times when he had need to make a proper decision for himself, but he had spent seventy years as the Winter Soldier and old habits die hard.

So when Steve asked if he'd like a hot shower or a cold one, he didn't know what to say. He was grimy from a mission, blood and dirt was caked into every crevice of his body. He hadn't shaved in a while, and his hair was beyond dirty, indeed it would've been easier to just cut it off. So when they returned, Steve had practically shoved him into his flat's high tech bathroom at Stark Tower, as if bathing was of the upmost importance, before debriefing or eating or being assigned a new assignment.

It wasn't, Steve didn't understand. Bucky would wash if Steve told him to, because he was his superior and even eight months after he'd been liberated, Bucky Barnes couldn't function without orders.

Steve had shown him how the shower worked, which tap controlled the hot and the cold, passed him a towel and dropped clean clothes onto the countertop. Bucky stared around blankly, tugging at the hem of his sweatshirt because he didn't know what else to do.

"Here, I'll just turn it on for you," Steve had said. "Hot or cold?"

"It's irrelevant," he remembered saying, shaking his head. "Water is water."

"Which would you like more?"

"I-I," Bucky said, his heart rate rising. He didn't know, he couldn't comprehend questions any longer. Which was it? He had no idea what to choose. He could feel the panic start to rise in him, a terribly hot feeling that he couldn't ignore. He had to make it quickly. Bucky could feel sweat dripping down his shoulder blades, and he shook silently in front of his best friend, who had no idea what to say in response.

After a minute or two, Steve took him by the shoulders and smiled gently at him.

"Hot it is," he said, turning the tap. Steam filled the room, and the sound of rushing water grew. "I'll be in the next room. If you need anything at all, yell; I'll come and get you."

The door shut with a click, but Bucky knew his orders. He turned and stripped himself of his clothes and threw them into the chute Steve had shown him earlier.

A hot shower would be nice, Bucky thought to himself, and stepped into the spray.

Bucky closed the glass door and when he turned, water tumbled through his dank and greasy hair. Dirty water pooled around his feet before slipping into the drain, brown and black and red: the colours of dirt and rubble and blood. It had been his first time in the battlefield not as the Winter Soldier, but as Bucky Barnes. For some reason, Steve thought it would be safer to bring him into combat than to leave him behind, something he had agreed to even though he hadn't understood.

Bucky was known to panic when Steve was out of sight, even when he was in the next room. He had been known to threaten anyone and take hostages if he had the slightest inclination that Steve was in danger. So he was never told. He was kept in Steve's floor of the Tower at all times. Tony knew that the whole world was looking for him, so Bucky hadn't been authorized to leave the tower until a month before, and only then under the strict supervision of Steve and the new kid Sam, Tony and Nat keeping watch from above. They knew he couldn't be trusted. They knew that the Winter Soldier was the biggest security threat other than the Hulk and that letting him into the Tower could be disastrous to them all. But they also knew that he was just a man, and he was Steve's best friend. Even Tony couldn't resist the look in Steve's eyes when he asked for refugee.

Steve came back to New York after what had happened in D.C, mainly because he knew he knew he had an entire floor to himself at Stark Tower, but also due to the fact that going to D.C in the first place had been a dead end. Peggy would never be twenty-three again, and waiting by her bedside hoping for her to remember him was too much to bear.

So he came back to New York, to someplace he understood. He brought his motorbike and his records and his books, and once his affairs were tied up, said goodbye to Peggy Carter and brought Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes back with him to Brooklyn.

Compared to Sam, the rest of the Avengers didn't know what to make of Bucky. He was a murderer, he had shot Nat and almost murdered Steve six months before. They didn't understand why Steve had defied direct orders and stayed by his side anyways. But even then, the Avengers trusted Steve, he was steadfast and honest and strong, and if Bucky was the one bright point in his messed up life, then they weren't going to argue with him.

It was late when they got back, just after three in the morning. Tony had met Steve and Sam at the airport, sedated Bucky and drove them back to the Tower in case he started to remember and tried to take them all out again.

Once they reached Steve's floor, Clint was already there, a stack of pop tarts and a half gallon of coffee at his elbow, perched on top of the fridge.

"Who the hell is that?" Clint asked, his eyes following the unconscious man in Steve's arms.

"The Winter Soldier," Tony said, shutting the door behind him. "Knocked out by yours truly. You're welcome."

"Tony," Steve said, and then faced Clint. "He's my best friend. He's sleeping on my floor under maximum surveillance. If anything happens, I'll be the first one to sedate him. Okay?"

"It's your funeral," Clint said.

Understandably, it had gone over just as well with the other Avengers. Nat knew who he was, was wary but understood what Bucky meant to Steve, and knew better than the rest to let the subject drop. Banner hadn't known, he never had the access to SHIELD files like Nat had, but when Steve had explained who he was and what was going on, Bruce was the one who volunteered to help Tony with Bucky's rehabilitation.

"No need to thank me yet," Bruce had said to Steve with a quiet smile. "I don't know if he can be fixed. But we'll try. His bionic arm has to be removed, that's for sure. It could be infected or have some sort of poison in it in case he went against orders. Tony's gonna scan the arm for tracers, just to watch our backs. The last thing we need is HYRDRA figuring out that Barnes is here."

"Smart," Steve said, "Thanks, Bruce. You have no idea how much this means to me."

…

Bucky spent all of his time on Steve's floor, mostly sleeping, and always nightmaring.

It was usually the torture.

He didn't want to remember it, he didn't want to remember all the people the Winter Soldier had killed. He didn't want to think about the families he'd broken and the lives he'd taken. It was a hard enough pill to swallow even when he remembered the whole story, which was rare.

He also spent a good deal of time screaming. He'd yell until his throat was hoarse and his tongue dry. He'd scream because the only emotion he'd felt for so long was rage and didn't know how to experience anything else. So everyday was spent in anger and frustration over his missing memories, his stolen time.

Steve said he understood but he didn't. He didn't know what it was to be remade, to be broken and stitched back together again over and over again for seventy years. No one knew what that was like. He was completely alone.

They also assigned him a therapist, an old employee of Stark that Tony trusted more than anybody at SHIELD. That man tried and failed to get Bucky to open up, to expose his feelings of anger and terror and rage, but he couldn't. The only person who could get Bucky to talk was Steve, so he talked to him instead.

His therapist didn't know what to think and diagnosed him with everything: PTSD, severe anxiety, dementia and amnesia. She had given him enough pills to last him a lifetime, wrote him a prescription that Bucky had never read.

He didn't need medicine or therapy or help sessions. He needed to be off the terrorist watch list, and he needed to be with Steve Rogers.

There were two types of soap in the shower, one white bar and one green. He had no idea which one to choose (soap was soap, right?), but after a closer examination, the white one smelled vaguely like coconut; an exotic smell that was foreign and uncomfortable to him, whereas the green one smelled like cologne, fresh and sharp. It reminded him of his father's aftershave, an old memory he hadn't remembered before.

He picked it up and ran the bar through his hair until the water ran clear, rubbed it over his arms and chest and back, through the matted hair and blood and wounds. He washed each leg, each foot, and made sure to even get around his toes. The dirty water pooled around his feet, and he washed until the water ran clear.

Bucky couldn't stand being dirty for one more second, he smelled like a murderer and the very thought sent chills up his spine. He didn't want to be the Winter Soldier any longer. He didn't know if he was Bucky Barnes anymore, but he wasn't a killed. He was just following orders, they didn't understand, he didn't remember what had happened, how many people he had killed. They had wiped his memory and tortured him for seventy years too. He was a weapon, and he was out of control. He had been out of cryofreeze for too long.

The steam did wonders for his head, it cleared his thoughts and made his purpose going forward clear. He would follow Steve Rogers (the man from the bridge, the skinny kid from Brooklyn) to the end of the earth. He'd go with him 'till the end of the line because Steve had already done the same for him. He had given him a home when the rest of the world wanted him dead. He had fed him and clothed him and made sure he ate and showered because thats what best friends do. They look out for one another other when they forget to do it themselves.

It had once been Bucky's job to watch after Steve, to keep him warm through the cold New York nights, to pull him out of fights, to keep him out of the army. Now the roles were reversed and Steve was watching out for him.

Bucky would follow him anywhere, do anything. Steve had given him a safe place to sleep when the whole world wanted to kill him. Steve was the one who kept most of the facts about his past from the rest of the Avengers, the one who told him to shower and to eat and the sleep because he couldn't function without orders after being HYDRA for so long.

He knew that Steve didn't like it. He knew that giving orders reminded him of the army and he couldn't bear to order his best friend around.

"He's not a dog," he remembered Steve saying to Tony. "He's a human being, he can make decisions for himself."

"Can he?" Tony had replied, looking Steve in the eye. "When was the last time that guy showered without you telling him to?"

"He can do it himself, you'll see."

"I know, but for now, he needs orders. It's all he knows."

Steve sighed, and Tony ran a hand through his hair.

"You know this guy might never be your best friend again right? Bucky Barnes might be gone. This might not be the guy you knew any longer."

"He'll get there, Tony. Just give him time."

Bucky didn't know if he'd ever get there. Everyday decision making left him anxious and confused, the options swirling around in his head until he couldn't even comprehend what they meant anymore. If he couldn't choose between hot and cold showers how could he be trusted in the field? How could he be trusted to not hurt Steve's friends in the Tower? How could he be trusted when his whole body was a weapon?

How would he know who the enemy was?

Steve was his anchor, he was the only thing he had to fall back on. Steve was one of the last things from the forties that he had gotten back and he was desperate not to mess it up. If he lost Steve again he would never forgive himself.

So perhaps the Winter Solider was dead, Bucky thought, turning off the water and stepping out of the shower. Perhaps Bucky Barnes was still in there somewhere, anxious to get out and be free.

Maybe one day he would be just a ghost story, the infamous Winter Soldier no one was sure had really existed or not. Perhaps one day he'd look back on this day and see how far he'd come. Bucky had lost almost everything. He had lost his arm, his best friend and his life in less than four minutes seventy-one years ago. He had been forced to bury his hate, his fears, his anxieties over Steve's death, the loss of his life and his family when he had become the Winter Solider and now that he was just Bucky once again, he wasn't really sure who that was anymore.

Maybe he'd never be fully okay. Maybe he'd never be able to choose between while soap and green soap or notice when he's hungry. But he had Steve, even when he had no one he had had Steve, and he would do anything to keep him in his life. Bucky wouldn't be able to stand it if he lost his best friend twice.

"Alright, Buck?" said a voice from behind the door.

Bucky smiled and threw on a shirt and pants.

Better now, Bucky thought with the semblance of a smile, and cracked open the door.

…

This is the first chapter of a (hopefully long) saga about the Avengers, interwoven throughout the MCU. Please request topics for me to touch on! I'd love to hear from you guys.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought :)

Love,

Violet Sky