A/N: This is my first foray into the Marvel world - let's just say I'm testing the waters.. Don't own. Don't sue.
The water pounded down upon him, a familiar cold pressure on his shoulders and neck. It was almost comforting to him, his freezing skin, but then he wasn't even sure what that even meant anymore. Comfort. It was something that hung in the back of his mind, a ghost of the past that niggled and haunted his every step like a faded photograph. He wasn't sure what it was but he knew that he'd had it at some point.
Before.
Before the man on the bridge… The man in the blue suit.
He growled low in his throat and tipped his head forward, bionic and flesh fingers tugging at his snarled hair in an effort to stop the barrage of noise in his head. Voices, shouting, gunfire and screaming… So much screaming. He writhed under the spray of water, long legs kicking at the shower cubicle's wall, tile breaking under his booted foot. He heaved a long, desperate breath. Why wouldn't they just shut up? Sometimes they were loud and at the forefront of his mind, others just a whisper and painfully unclear. Sometimes, just sometimes, they sounded like they were under water; muffled and hard to decipher, as if it were raining in his head.
"..Don't make me do this…"
He snarled, a soundless baring of teeth and his fingers tugged harder at his hair. "Stop…" He muttered quietly, mindless to the sting of hair coming loose in his inhumanly strong grip.
"..I'm with you 'til the end of the line..."
Pain.
A searing agony erupted in his chest, his stomach twisting and turning inside him until he felt like he was going to throw up and he coughed as the bile worked its way up his throat, burning a hot trail all the way from his gut.
The man... He knew him. He was the man on the bridge. He knew him. How did he know him? Something inside him snapped when he rehashed those words in his mind. They sounded so familiar. Why were they so familiar?!
The strip light overhead flickered and buzzed then there was an audible snap and the room was pitched into darkness. He didn't notice. He was too busy crouched and rocking beneath the cold spray of water, bloody fingers gripping his head and dry, heaving sobs wrenching from his stomach. His face itched from the unfamiliar wave of emotion, tears burning a track down his tired, pale face.
He couldn't remember anything ever hurting like this before… He couldn't remember a time when he had ever felt an emotion like this, everything was usually so clinical and set in concrete. People died by his hand, he didn't care who they were or how old. Men. Women. Children. It never seemed to matter.
He threw up properly this time, the look on the man in the blue suit's face when he'd seen his face on the bridge all those days ago haunting him.
"…Bucky?!"
Bucky.
James Buchanan Barnes.
He keened, a low pitiful sound escaping him as he rocked, eyes screwed shut.
"Bucky…" he gasped, "Who the hell is Bucky?"