The Red Book with the Star

by MarvelManiac24

The trigger words have special meaning to him. They evoke an emotional response upon their intentional utterance. Bucky remembers mere flashes of his past which resonate so deeply and have been twisted so severely that they can make him a tool for destruction without his control or consent. And control over these words means control over the Winter Soldier.

The restraints are tight against his arms and legs. If he flexes his left arm, he can hear the strain of metal against metal. The restraint over his shoulders reminds him of the ones in amusement park rides. They took Bucky's mobile prison cell to a room with a table laid out in front of it. He knows that there's cameras watching him, and people on the other end of those cameras watching him, but he doesn't search for lenses. He doesn't look because he knows the cameras, and the people behind them, are there.

"You pulled me from the river. Why?"

Bucky closes his eyes. He breathes out. Steve was right. He did know why, but he doesn't know how to say it. Because he felt that he needed to? No, that would only provoke more questions. Because his body was doing things without his permission? Bucky had plenty of experience with that. He knew a lot about seeing his body react and not being able to stop it. He knew what it was like to have his mind scream No while his body ended another person's life. He knew why he pulled Steve from the river. In the same way that he didn't have a choice but to kill his targets, Bucky didn't have a choice in saving Steve. His body wouldn't let him do anything else.

A man comes into the room. Sits at the table. Says something about being there for Bucky's mental evaluation or something. Bucky does to him what he did to all the others who said they were there to help him or at least implied that: he ignored him. He interacted with the man in conversation, but it was an ignored conversation. Those people like the man in front of him put on false faces that were bright with the lie of help, but they wanted to manipulate him. He was familiar with the type. Hydra always had their lies of help gouged into their faces and had the guts to use words in support of those faces. Bucky ignores the man and his pseudo intentions until he says "James".

He looks up at the man. "My name is Bucky."

Bucky doesn't care if the people watching him saw this reaction to his name, but he cares if Steve saw it. He wants Steve to see it, which makes him wonder about Steve's current situation and if he was able to see it. Given Steve's previous contributions, Bucky doesn't think that they would lock Steve up like they did to him.

The lights flicker, then the room goes dark, darker than before. Bucky looks around, unsure if the man at the table has to do with it, but trusting his gut.

The man goes into a bag and pulls out the red book, the one with the star. Bucky knows that book. He shifts in his cell, the metal on his left arm groaning against the restraints.

The man opens the book and looks to the pages that know how to imprison Bucky more than any cell ever could.

The trigger words have special meaning to him. They evoke an emotional response upon their intentional utterance. Bucky remembers mere flashes of his past which resonate so deeply and have been twisted so severely that they can make him a tool for destruction without his control or consent. And control over these words means control over the Winter Soldier.

His memories and emotional ties to those memories were hijacked and taken from him, long ago. Whatever they did to him, they were able to get out the things they needed in order to mold Bucky into a weapon that they knew they could use. They tore things from him for their own benefit. The trigger words work because they've taken precious events of his past and turned them into a tool for their own ideas of destruction. They use his significant memories against him and erased the rest. They made him a weapon whose only memories are related to making an accurate kill.

When their weapon is turned on to "live", it's like they drill into him with an auger and his own will is shaved out, his gaping self-control then replaced and stuffed with the will of others.

The man looks over the auger-words. He reads in Russian but Bucky doesn't hear them in a different language. Once the words are read, languages blur together and become one.

"Longing."

This one makes him question his breathing. It's about Steve. Of course it would be. They had to start his activation sequence with something powerful to shock him into compliance. Bucky has to force the air through his clenched throat. The memories come to him in flashes, their meanings and effects wrapped up and summed into one word that only takes a second to say.

On every date that he went on, before being the Winter Soldier and even before Steve was Captain America, Bucky wanted Steve to be there instead of the dames. He still managed to have good times with the women, and he didn't dislike their company, but they weren't Steve. Even on the double-dates that Bucky orchestrated, he thought more than a few times about ditching the ladies and going off to enjoy themselves instead of making Steve tag along with a girl that didn't appreciate him like Bucky did. The double dates were the closest he had to going on dates with Steve, but he longed for something else.

Even in the war, he wanted Steve there with him. This was before Steve risked his life to save Bucky and saved the other men in the 107th as a side mission. Before then, when his bed of dirt and rocks didn't appreciate his body heat like Steve did, he wanted Steve there. When he couldn't give Steve his rations to keep his little body going, that's when he wanted Steve there with him. When he made jokes that the other men didn't laugh at but Steve would've clutched at his little stomach over, that's when Bucky longed for Steve.

After DC and the Triskelion, he wanted to look for Steve. He did look for Steve, but remained out of Steve's radar. He was almost caught by Steve's friend, but Bucky's good at hiding. Before that, he didn't have a mission or even an objective to aim his energy and thoughts and life towards, so he aimed it at finding Steve. When he did, all he wanted to do was be next to him and see him smile for once in too long. He found Steve and craved to be next to him, but he couldn't even remember his life before the Winter Soldier's. He couldn't remember anything about himself, but he remembered Steve and how to kill. Bucky didn't trust himself, given the only two things that he remembered, so he didn't pursue his longing of Steve.

But he gave into his longing, once. When Steve was in the hospital after DC, Bucky went to his room. He watched Steve's friend go into the hospital and followed him to Steve's room. At night, after Steve's friend was gone, he snuck onto the roof and slid down the side of the building to Steve's room. He wanted to stay. He saw pictures in his head of Steve raising his eyebrows in a mix of surprise and happiness at Bucky being there when he woke up. He imagined how the corners of his mouth would raise like those eyebrows would. He only wanted to stay there and be with Steve, even as Steve rolled his head to the side when Bucky held the window open and had one foot up on it, ready to slide down to the ground. Even when his body was leaving, Bucky longed to stay with Steve.

Bucky also wanted to die. The longing for Steve and the realization that he couldn't have him made him want to die. With everything that they put him through, the things he could remember and even worse, the things that he couldn't, Bucky wanted to die. He longed for the release of death and he tried to get it in every mission that he went on, but his body ignored his want. He tried to force a mistake on himself or get caught in the enemy's hands or make his death look like an accident, but he wasn't allowed to die. He was programmed to such an extreme that he couldn't let himself die, not even if he fucking wanted to.

Hydra took his longing for Steve and twisted it. Twisted it like tinfoil that could never be smoothed out again, wrapped it so tight that it formed into a deadly point, a point that they could hand to their soldier and make him use as a weapon for their planned killings.

They gave Bucky the memories of Steve and how he longed to be with Steve. They gave him these memories and not others because they knew they could manipulate these memories to their benefit. Bucky hated them for it. He hated them so much that he only felt the need to scream and kill, to throw his arm around and strike something, if not for his restraints. He hated this manipulation and the use of Steve because Hydra made him believe that they could give Steve to Bucky and erase the longing in his heart, in his soul. They made him think that if he would obey, they would give him Steve. It was never proven true, but Bucky couldn't remember their promise. He could only remember the idea of the promise and not the end of it, the end where Hydra was lying. He could remember the shape of the promise, but not the frayed end that was cut from his memories.

They inserted false memories of being with Steve into his regimen of trigger words. They… They had actors that were the same build and had the same look as Steve before and after becoming Captain America. There were actors for Bucky, too. They scripted scenes and played them out. They made Bucky watch these scenes. Normally, he would participate in these scenes by talking to the actor that he was electrocuted into believing was Steve. Sometimes, though, they had to rely on the Bucky actor to input dialog.

These scenes were staged memories that were supposed to look like real memories to Bucky's mind. He was watching these scenes like a performance, but they were intended to be reflections on his memories that were already formed in his mind. Fuzzy edges, one focal point at a time, only a few senses working at once… These scenes were supposed to feel like memories in every detail. To make this work, they had to slide these staged memories in between the real ones, the real ones that Bucky confessed about in his torturing, so Bucky couldn't tell the differences between them nor their authority in his history.

In all of the staged memories, they forced Bucky to wear goggles that made the edges of everything look soft, not crisp like they do in live images, like the actors in front of him were.

Hydra made the Steve and Bucky actors go on mock dates. They held hands. Bucky rejected the women that came up to him and held on tightly to Steve at his arm. The women would be in disgust at them and Bucky's gesture that Steve was his date because of the time that they were in, when Steve was still small. That's how Bucky remembers things. Before and after Steve became Captain America.

They gave the Bucky actor a Steve to sleep next to in the 107th. There were guns emptying themselves and screams and fires sounding in the background, but there was a little Steve sleeping next to Bucky. Wait, no. The Bucky wasn't an actor. They gave the real Bucky a Steve to sleep next to. Bucky didn't know that he was still strapped down and had electrodes on his head. All he knew was there was a small blond next to him and he wasn't going to get up, regardless of the straps holding him down. That body next to him was real, in its small breaths and its little jerks while it slept. Bucky knew he was real, whoever he really was.

"These are the things that we can give you. You can either have memories, or feelings. Memories mean you can remember the past, but feelings… Feelings mean that you know the memories happened. If you behave, we can give you the feeling of having him."

The words were lies.

Bucky's response was reaching out for the Steve actor, who was standing behind the man telling him about this promise-lie of memories and feelings.

They were lies, those memories and feelings that they promised, but he wanted them. He wanted to feel them. This is how they got him to give into their will. This is how they got him to drill out his own will and hand it to them on a silver platter, then how he stuffed their will into that hole left over in his being. They first made him a deal he would rather die than refuse.

His memories after DC and the Triskelion were real. They weren't touched by Hydra and their filthy, sharp tools and augers. Bucky's memory of DC and giving into his longing was associated with the first trigger word because he needed something real to deal with the uncertainty of his other memories that were blended together. Bucky put those memories in himself because he couldn't hear the word anymore without shutting down. He needed his reaching out to Steve at the hospital or Bucky was sure he would die after hearing "longing" again. He left Steve at the hospital because he needed to work on the other nine trigger words before he thought he could see Steve again.

That's what Hydra did to him. One word had the capability to kill Bucky, or at least make him believe that he was going to be killed. That in itself was something that he longed for, though. Death. Hydra knew that he wanted to die, so they gave him another thing to make him rely on them. They took his longing to be dead and made him believe that he couldn't live without Hydra. If he was dead, where would he go? He had a purpose with Hydra and he could be a fist to form the future. Surly, shaping history and crafting it to their idea was better than his death. At least, those lies were what Bucky was forced into believing.

Bucky's trying not to look like he's gasping. He blinks. The man looks to the blood-red book again.

Bucky thinks he protests against this man saying these words, but he's not sure. If the first word made him question his breathing, the second makes him question his voice. To Zemo, only seconds pass after he said that first word. But Bucky experiences his abused memories in overwhelming detail in those same seconds.

"Rusted."

Bucky is thrown into thinking about how he feels when he's taken out of stasis, when they take him out because they need their soldier and their weapon back. There were different people around him every time he woke, the previously present doctors and caretakers either being deceased from old age, combat, or other things. He never woke up to the same people around him. Perhaps that was intentional, so he would feel threatened from the beginning of his revival by having new faces to look at every time.

His rusted feeling covers his arm, his body, his mind. When he's being unfrozen, he would get a general sense of being rusted and the need to be trained and fixed back into shape. He would feel like gears that were mistreated so badly that they melted together and started to become one. The gears can't move against each other and rotate. The gears corrode away and lose the shapes of themselves while becoming a new, inseparable shape.

When it was happening, his whole body would feel like it was trying to work again. His tendons would be stiff, his muscles would be tight, and his bones felt brittle. Any motion made him feel like he would break. He couldn't move his body at first, since his mind would come back before his body did. This would surprise the people he woke up to because they thought the mind should function after the body defrosts. Bucky would even scream because he didn't know what else to do with his body being reanimated. They tried to muzzle him a few times, after he came out of stasis and even before he was put on ice, but his screams would carry through. He would pass out because he would forget to breathe through his nose with the muzzle clamped down over his mouth. With his mind serving no help to them, they had to help him walk, sit, stand, and just move. It was like his body forgot how to move and it had to be taught again. Like the oxidized gears, he has to be prepped to move again.

His left arm would take the longest to regain the ability to move when he was taken out of stasis. It would sit there, twitching, while it tried to make connections from the metal to his nerve endings to his brain. Bucky would be told to move his arm and he would get a convulsing mess of an attempt. It would swing and twitch and move in the opposite directions that he told it to. His arm would bounce in the air like it was a flesh arm numbed from all feeling. They would jot something down about his arm and compare the time it took for his arm to regain movement to the times it took in the past to perform the same movements and actions. When his arm wouldn't regain movement, they would have to go in and check the connections. Bucky hated when they did that because they were poking at his nerve endings. It felt like he was being cut with a chipped sword, with long strokes cutting into his nerves, but only in a precise location. The handlers would stab at the gears with that sword to get them to move again.

If the arm wouldn't obey the user, Hydra was sure to make it obey the owners. They would take it off and check their soldier's housing of nerve endings, shocking the connections one by one until they got a response, and the response was Bucky pleading for them to stop. All the while, they would be telling Bucky that he could have pleased them by just moving his arm. That's all. That was all they wanted, for him to move his arm. And he couldn't even do that. They would tell him this while they were stabbing at his gears to start moving again and while Bucky was crying out for them to stop.

"We will stop, once you move your arm when we tell you to," were their response to his cries and his begging.

While they told him about his history of episodes after waking from the ice, they wouldn't give him a sling for his left arm. It would hand there limply and sometimes twitch. If they told him to move around, his arm would swing around and hit his stomach, back, chest… If they told him to move his arm and it couldn't move, Bucky would be given disappointed shakes of their heads. They would look at his arm twitching and be disappointed at how he couldn't move it. Bucky would think that he was trying, and that they shouldn't be disappointed in him, and that he couldn't do anything more, but he would still feel unworthy of their attention. The handlers would whisper about how unworthy he was and made sure that he could hear him as they wrote down the disappointing results. They would tell him that the other times he woke up were more promising, even though these were lies and he only ever became more tolerant to the effects of coming out of the chamber.

They knew that this disappointment in him was worse than the physical abuse that they could ever put him through. Hydra fucking knew that he hated to disappoint. They knew that Bucky would stop doing something, even avoid coming close to doing something, if he disappointed someone enough. They knew that it crippled him from trying an action again because he was so afraid to disappoint. They were the ones who fucking tortured it out of him, so of course they knew. This manipulation of Bucky's hate to disappoint was just one of the many tools in Hydra's shed– no, in its arsenal and army of brainwashing methods.

Though his mind would always be the first to come out of the cryogenic chamber, it was always the last to really recover. His body would recover before his mind could, so that made him even more of a threat when they woke him up. There were gaps between his mind and his body that didn't translate across that gap between the two. He would find his hands around people's throats and his brain wouldn't tell him to stop. If he couldn't think logically, the handlers would be in danger because orders were nothing to him. Bucky lashed out at them more than once because they were doing things to him that he didn't understand and his only reaction was to attack. Without his mind to guide him, he chose to fight the confusion rather than flight away from the confusion, not that flight was ever really an option to him.

As an effect of the chamber, his mind wouldn't put things together in the right order. He would see the doctors and wonder what they did to him, not what they were about to do to him. He would see food and think that it was for him to give to someone else, not for him to eat. He would hear the handlers talking and think that they were talking about their personal lives, when they were actually talking to him. When he would mention Steve like Steve was as much their friend as he was Bucky's, he would cry out when they got mad at him and tried to fry his memories out. Even when they did shock those memories out, he wouldn't understand what he did wrong. When they would tell him to stop talking about Steve, he would just keep trying to tell them that they shouldn't be afraid of Steve and he would tell them how much Steve meant to him. When his mind did come around, he couldn't remember what he did to make the handlers so mad. His mind would feel like the rusty gears because, like he was thinking from the perspective of the gears, he wouldn't know why the handlers were so mad at him for not functioning. They would take their frustration out on the rusting gears, raging at them until they moved again.

Hydra made him believe that if he didn't want to feel rusted again, then he should obey them. He wouldn't need to be put on ice if he obeyed them and didn't refuse their will. They, like parents who put their children in time-outs, told Bucky that he chose to be put in the cryogenic chamber because of his actions. And every time they told him this, all Bucky could think was, "You expect me to be okay with murdering people?"

They offered to train him back to a mobile condition. That was what he wanted, what most of his mind was dedicated to achieving. He wanted to feel more than those rusted gears. So they trained him. They gave him frequent reminders of their generosity to retrain his body into functioning. His will was bent too much by then to think that they put him in the chamber in the first place. Hurriedly, they would retrain the Soldier's body into functioning better than the melded form of one rusted lump. They made his gears break free from one another and begin to reform into their own separate shapes. Hydra, they reminded him, were the ones who chipped back at the oxidized metal and down to the workable material underneath. Hydra, they drilled into him with their auger, was the reason why his gears were reforming and had teeth rather than lumps. Hydra, they hypnotize him with, made his gears rotate again. Hydra, they would finally tell him and wouldn't let him forget, could put him back in the chamber the next time he disobeyed and make his gears rust away to nothing.

They recorded Bucky's screams when he came out of the cryogenic chamber. They made him listen because they needed to remind him of what would happen to him if he disobeyed them again. They showed him how his only reaction was to scream while his body felt like it was a seized engine. They would show him the muzzle that he almost bit through because he tried to scream behind it. The handlers told him that his screams would happen to him every time he was put under. They would show him real evidence of his struggles and they would tell him the only prevention for it was to not disobey their orders.

His mind responded first to being out of stasis, but it was the most rusted over. He could move before he knew why he was moving or why he should be moving. This made Bucky a threat as much as it made him pliable to Hydra's influence. Making him remember how Hydra was apparently helping Bucky when he couldn't help himself made him respond well to the word "rusted". They would tell him all the reasons of how they were helping him when he only seemed to be hurting himself. If he would lash out, they would tell him that they were there to help him and record it for Bucky's future reference. At the same stage in his reanimation, the handlers would show him how he reacted the previous time he went under and how they helped him wake up. This was the strongest evidence that they used to get Bucky to obey, just based on one word.

In the mobile prison cell that sits before Zemo like a basket of golden eggs ready to be stolen from, Bucky is panting now. The man at the table stands.

"Seventeen."

It was the age that Bucky could almost smile at. The two of them were being dumb and young, though it wasn't Steve who suggested that they get alcohol. Bucky came to Steve's house when his mother was out and they shared the remains of a bottle of whiskey. It was right after prohibition ended and there was plenty of booze to pass around without being persecuted. There was enough of it before, too, but it was much easier for Bucky to get a hold of it after alcohol was legal to have again.

"Do I even wanna know where you got that from?" Steve asked when Bucky was standing at his door holding a paper bag by the top.

Bucky smiled down at him. "That doesn't matter as much as where we'll be putting it." He walked in without letting Steve say it was fine for him to enter.

"My ma's still here."

Bucky froze and slowly turned around to face Steve. He mouthed "Is she?" and put his hand over his mouth in mock shock. Bucky laughed and relaxed his stance, walking to the cupboard for glasses.

"Buck, she's really here."

"Oh, is she? She must've ran from the hospital because I stopped by and saw her there before I got this." Bucky took the half-empty bottle out of the paper bag and swirled the liquid around in it, motioning to it. "And you know what she told me? She told me to stop by here and tell you that she's working late tonight. So I think you're lying when you say that she's in the house still." Bucky poured while he talked and handed Steve the smaller glass after he was done talking and pouring. Steve looked down at the glass and back up to Bucky.

"What, you think it's poison or something? I wouldn't kill you like that, Stevie. Besides, you'll probably get yourself killed by standing up to one too many bullies. Not everyone tolerates you like I do, pal." Bucky clinked their glasses and Steve swung his eyes to the wall.

"Yeah, ha ha, pal. I just think that, with all the things I got wrong with me, I shouldn't be drinking like–" Steve's mouth hung open around the words but Bucky wanted to know what he was going to say.

"Like normal people?" he guessed and Steve shook his head once and the corners of his lips pulled back, thinning them. "Well, I'll tell ya one thing Steve," Bucky pushed the bottom of Steve's glass up so it was closer to his face, "You never were normal, never mind your sickliness. I'm not trying to make you normal. I'm just exposing you to new things." Bucky downed his glass and immediately started coughing. Steve raised an eyebrow at him and Bucky gave him a thumbs up. "It's good, I swear," he choked out, his throat straining against the burn.

Steve laughed once at him and set his glass down on the table. Bucky rushed behind him with his arms outstretched to make Steve pick the glass back up and pushed it into Steve's hands. Steve was laughing and holding his hands up in protest, but Bucky wrapped Steve's hands around the glass for him and let it go so Steve was forced to hold into it.

"Come on, Stevie. It's really not that bad. You're always cold so it'll warm ya up." Bucky was beaming at his last piece of logic.

"I really don't think that's the same kind of 'warm', but I do think that you're full of shit." Steve drank it, nonetheless. And started coughing immediately after. But Bucky was proud.

They continued drinking until the bottle was gone. The looseness of their tongues was inversely proportional to the amount of alcohol left in the bottle. Pretty soon they were calling each other long slurs of insults and calling other people even longer slurs of insults. Then they were talking about each other. What they mean to each other, what they would do for each other, what they would give for the other to live…

"I love you, Buck."

Bucky swung his arm over Steve's shoulders and rocked the two of them back and forth a few times. They were sitting on the floor of Steve's bedroom with their backs to Steve's bed. "I love ya too, pal."

"No, I mean–" Steve sat there with his mouth open. It looked like his jaw got stuck around words that he wanted to form but wasn't sure he should, like they were physically holding his mouth open and not letting it shut.

"Whaddya mean?" Bucky pushed him over and Steve laid his face down on the floor. "Aw, don't do that." Bucky fell once on his attempt to get up, then put one knee on the floor to reach over and roll Steve over. Steve covered his face with his arms and Bucky fell over next to him trying to get them off. Bucky rolled onto his back and flicked at Steve's arms.

They laid in silence until Bucky felt sleep approach. He was aware of the sound of cars, people, and Steve's breathing around him, but they were just background noise. He was aware of the noise, but he wasn't listening to any of it.

"I'm in love with you, Bucky."

That, Bucky listened to.

Bucky could almost smile at the memory, if not for the end of it. He could smile at it if he imagined himself staying there with Steve and telling him he loved him in the same way. He should have told him, since Steve never brought it up again after that. Instead of staying and being with Steve, when Bucky was seventeen and young and an idiot, he got off the floor, went out of Steve's room, and left the house. He didn't even turn back when Steve was calling his name, calling out to him as he opened Steve's bedroom door. He mentioned to Steve the next day that he didn't remember any of it beyond putting the empty bottle down. Steve looked down, then smiled and agreed for his own recollection. Bucky did remember it though, but he couldn't own up to walking out on Steve that day. What was worse to him? Bucky knew that Steve remembered it.

Hydra knew that Bucky walked out after Steve told him he was in love with his best friend. They knew because Bucky had to tell them that. They knew that Bucky would swim across the ocean and hike across every mountain just to tell Steve that he loved him too. They knew of this torture that Bucky went through without their influence and they used it against him anyways. Because they have no regard for human life. They didn't care about how Bucky felt, and he knew that as much as he knew that he loved Steve.

Not telling Steve he loved him was Bucky's single greatest regret in life and Hydra played off that like they just hit a goddamn grand slam. The base runners weren't running, though. They would take one step forward and stand there, then take a few more steps, then step back. The runners in that grand slam wouldn't jog around the bases; they would take their fucking time and stop for something to eat in the meantime. Hydra would string this torture out for as long as they could because they knew that it affected Bucky so much. At every mention of him not telling Steve that he loves him, Bucky thought those base runners were being slow just for the damn enjoyment of seeing the pitcher hang his head in defeat. If he could, the pitcher would take back that one pitch, but he already threw it and it was long gone beyond the fence. Bucky would take back telling Hydra that he walked out after Steve told him he loved him and never said it back, but he couldn't take that ball back from over the fence.

But they dared to tell Bucky that they were proud he walked out that day when he was seventeen and young and stupid. Hydra told him that they were happy with his reaction because it showed that he could walk out in compromising situations. Bucky didn't feel comfortable with the circumstances, so he stood up for himself and left. Had he been weaker, he would have lied and told Steve that he loved him too and they would have been abominations together.

They dared to tell him that walking out on Steve was a sign of strength. They dared to tell him that their hypothetical love was shameful and that telling Steve he loved him back was a lie. They dared to say all of that, and the worse part? Bucky listened to this explanation because it was a convenient way to let the wind blow away his problems like it was nothing more than dust. They equated Bucky's pitiful avoidance of being in love with another male to him being strong and showing a cold detachment to the concept of love. Apparently that made for a good assassin. Detachment. That same detachment also made it impressively easy for Bucky to lie and tell Steve that he didn't remember that night.

The handlers were so impressed with his detachment of Steve's feelings that they praised Bucky for it. Meanwhile, all Bucky could think about was how they were able to praise him for doing something so shameful. It was like they were praising him for taking out another target, this time being Steve's heart.

After telling Bucky how impressed and proud they were of what he did to Steve, he almost started to believe it was a good thing to do. Besides, they would say, it's not accepted for men to be together like that. Even so, they would say, Steve was a small guy and probably couldn't get a girl, so he made his friendship with Bucky into something more, just to be with someone who accepted him. Plus, they would say, it's not like Bucky actually felt the same way about Steve. If anything, Bucky was actually saving Steve from the prosecution and witch hunt associated with those faggots. The things that the Hydra demons said were to test Bucky into arguing with them. If he showed a hint of anger at their comments, they would know that he was one of them, one of those fags, and they would be swift to condition those feelings out of him. If their weapon dared to be in love with another man, Hydra would have its own witch hunt into Bucky's memories.

But if there was anything that Bucky was going to hold on to until the end, it was his love for Steve. At the end of his line was his love for that kid from Brooklyn.

Mention of this age is enough to make Bucky stop breathing and want to stop breathing. With it, he would remember how he wasn't good enough for Steve, but was impressive on Hydra's standards. He remembered why he had to believe that Hydra was right and why he couldn't show that they were wrong. He looked out to the end of a white line of rope, almost too thin to see, but he was still able to see it waving in the wind. Bucky looked out to that line and saw Steve at the end of it.

Again, the memories and the meanings flashed to him faster than Zemo could read the next word. If he were to try and explain the memories as they came to him, Bucky couldn't do it. The meanings behind the words were too complicated and vast to explain in anything but the one word itself.

This time, he's sure that he fights against the restraints. He's still not sure if he's telling the man to stop saying the words, so he physically acts to stop the man from stealing away his will.

He doesn't know if he spoke before, but he hears metal groaning in this act of defiance, at least.

"Daybreak."

In the war, when Steve and Bucky were becoming a tag team of lethal soldiers together, Steve talked to the Commandos about the sunset. They tried to make fun of his appreciation for beauty and how artsy he was, but they didn't push him too far for two reasons: he was Captain America, and Bucky would beat the living shit and the dead shit out of them. Mostly, they didn't make too much fun of Steve because they didn't want to answer to Bucky.

They were sitting around camp at night when Steve was talking about the sunset again. He wasn't the one to bring it up, but another soldier overheard the conversation and the Commandos needed to explain it for him. They started to mistreat Steve's interpretations so he started to talk for himself.

"I don't owe you guys anything," Steve said, his cheekbones slightly pink. He would blame the color on his proximity to the fire they had in the middle of their circle, but Bucky and the other Commandos knew better than that. "But at least I can see how nice things are in this hellhole of a life we got over here."

"Hellhole?" Dum Dum was taken aback. "This is like my second home over here! You got the mice, you got the disease, you got the death. Not enough food for me, just like home!"

"Like you need more food," Bucky chimed in.

"Oh, so the gunner can talk?" Before that, in the evening of picking on Steve, Bucky was quiet. He usually didn't have much to say, unless Steve was around. If Steve was around and alone, Bucky wouldn't want to shut up. He never gave up the chance to talk to Steve, not in the uncertain environment that they found themselves in.

"Yeah, I can talk. I can talk up a storm that'd black out the sun if not for you guys constantly bitching and moaning." Bucky kicked up his heel and laid it across his other leg. He laid with his back to the trunk of a tree, his thighs glowing by the fire. His eyes flicked to the side, to Steve, before he looked straight ahead at the woods again. They were at the edge of a field, apparently watching out for anyone else that might be in the area, though Bucky was the only one watching. He was always watching for danger, when Steve was around. If there was danger, he would break Steve out of it or throw himself on top of it to save Steve.

"Well someone's on the rag."

Bucky sat up and dared them to laugh. He looked at them all, daring them with his sniper-accurate and deadly stare for anyone to laugh at the comment.

"Come on, guys. You know I hate it when we fight." Of course Steve was the one to speak up. Steve, of course, was on the ledge with Bucky and knew where Bucky stood. "We're a team, so we gotta get along or one of us is gonna end up dead."

Usually Steve's word would end the conversation, but not on this night, for some reason.

Jones kicked a log in the fire, turning it over, stirring it. "So it's fine if you give him a hard time. Why isn't it fine for us to?"

"Because I understand him!" Bucky knew when to stop picking on Steve. Bucky knew where the ledge was for Steve, and he always knew how close Steve was to standing at the edge of that cliff. Bucky knew because he was always there with Steve, his hand tight on the rope attached to Steve. He knew when words would send Steve over that ledge, knew when Steve was one step from falling, plummeting off it.

Bucky knew when not to push Steve because his hand was on that line connected to him.

"Fuck you guys, I'm going to bed." Bucky got up and headed for his tent, hidden safely behind the trees like the others. He said that he was going to sleep, but he knew he would stay awake because they would be talking about him. Bucky understood that they knew he could hear them, too. So they would be talking behind his back when they knew he could hear them doing it. What a nice goddamn team.

He had to ask himself, though. Why did he care so much about them teasing Steve? He only asked himself because he didn't want to think he already knew the answer. He had to ask himself to deny the fact that he already knew why.

Bucky grew up with Steve. He knew the hurt look Steve got when he said something that lined Steve up with the edge of that cliff they were standing on. Steve had his back to Bucky, on that cliff, blind to Bucky's hand either letting that line go and pushing Steve off or not. Bucky had the power to push Steve off and Steve trusted him enough to keep his back turned to Bucky. That's why Bucky got mad. They didn't understand the trust that Steve had in Bucky to not push him over that ledge. They couldn't even see the same cliff that Bucky and Steve stood on, so how could they imagine what it's like for Steve to keep his back to Bucky out of trust?

That's why he cared so much about their comments. Because they didn't understand Steve like he did. And they pretended that pushing Steve to that ledge was fine, but they didn't even know what they were doing. Why would he care so much? Because they didn't even fucking know what to care about.

No. Fuck what he thought. Fuck what they made him question about himself. What gave them the right to say things to Steve like that? What gave them the right to pick on Steve like–

Oh.

It's like the bullies that he would throw himself into, or let himself become a punching bag, for Steve. It's for Steve. Goddamn, of course it was. What in his life wasn't for Steve?

Bucky didn't remember falling asleep that night, but he remembered Steve whispering his name and putting his finger to his lips. Bucky didn't remember any of the other Commandos coming into the tent and going into their cots to sleep, but he remembered Steve handing him his clothes while he got dressed. He didn't even know what time it was, but he knew Steve was happy about something and he was willing to stumble to the ground and fall off that ledge if it meant that Steve would be happy.

"I found something. You gotta see it when it comes up." Steve was leading Bucky to the western end of the field, their camp at the southern end. It was still dark out and it was colder out than the inside of the poorly-insulated tent.

"Is it a hot shower? Haven't had one of those in a while." Bucky spoke with a dazed kind of slur, since it took him a good few hours to wake up and be around people in the morning, if those people weren't Steve.

Steve led him to a tree and started climbing. Bucky made a noise that was half laugh and half groan, but started climbing up after Steve. A tree was the simplest place that Bucky was going to follow Steve.

Bucky took another step up and the branch under his boot snapped. He quickly recovered, but not before Steve was turned down to look at Bucky's situation.

"It's too early for this shit, pal," Bucky chuckled up at Steve.

"It'll be worth it, I promise."

Bucky exhaled a laugh and continued climbing.

They got to the top of the tree, or at least as much of the top that they could get where the branches would still hold their weights. Steve was sitting with one leg on a branch, the other leg on a lower branch and balancing him there. One arm was wrapped up and holding onto a branch above him, the other pushing stray branches put of their way. This side of the tree had a bald spot that allowed them to see over the expanse of the field, over the trees behind the field and into the horizon of gentle hills. Steve's eyes were wide like they got when he saw something with potential, like when he found a jacket for Bucky when they were back home. The jacket had a hole in the elbow, but Steve said that's what gave it history. It was much too big to fit Steve, but it was perfect for Bucky. Even when the little Steve Rogers was shivering and caught a cold because he was looking for the perfect jacket that he found for Bucky, he wasn't thinking about himself. He was thinking about Bucky.

Bucky lined himself up closer to Steve to get the same view as him. If he made Bucky get up in the early morning when they should've been sleeping, he would get the same view as Steve. Bucky stood on the branch below him and had one hand on the branch that Steve was sitting on, his other hand on another branch for support. He was wondering what Steve was so happy to have found. At that time in the morning, the sun wasn't out but still gave off enough light for them to see the shapes of trees and hills and the field before them. Steve couldn't see things clearly from that tree or from the time of the day, but his eyes were still wide with potential.

Then the sun started to poke out from under the trees, and Bucky understood. When the sun started to rise and cover the trees in its blanket of glowing warmth that contrasted the dark and the cold of the night, Bucky understood. When the trees showed that they were more than one shade of green and they were all different kinds of shapes and textures, Bucky understood. When the sun rose high enough to color the clouds in pinks and blues and purples and when it lightened the sky into a soft blue then an orange rather than a deep dark blue of the night, Bucky understood. When the field started to glow gold like Steve's hair in the sun, Bucky understood. When the sun was high enough to throw its blanket over Steve's face and his smile, Bucky understood why he was there.

Steve dragged him up a tree in the very early morning to watch the sunrise.

"See, Buck? Daybreak. It's not all that bad here. They still have a sunrise, just like they do back home."

Bucky was in a tree to watch a sunrise with Steve, he learned. He also learned that Steve didn't just appreciate things that looked nice. He wasn't just a talented artist that saw potential in the bleakest of things, like a dirty piece of charcoal. Steve didn't just see a jacket with a hole in the elbow and think it was useless to him because it would fall off his small frame, and it wasn't good enough for anyone else because it had a hole in the elbow and was left in the trash. He didn't just see a tree with a bald spot and think that the tree was deformed or not as full and perfect as the other trees in the endless forest of perfect trees. Steve found the nice things in this world of shitty things.

Steve told him to watch the picture being painted before them, but Bucky was watching Steve more than the sunrise. He thought he had seen all that a sunrise could offer. Bucky thought the sunrise meant than he would live to see another day pass. Bucky thought that the sunrise meant the world would continue on spinning and exist because the sun was there like a guardian, protecting the life and giving warmth to the beings that needed it. But before then, before that day, Bucky hadn't really seen the sun rising. Before that day, Bucky looked at the sun rising and knew what it offered and meant to the world. After that time in the tree when the Howling Commandos were still asleep in their cots and had been making fun of Steve a few hours before, Bucky didn't just look at the sunrise and know what it meant. He saw it and understood it.

Steve didn't just show him what the sunrise looked like, what daybreak looked like. Steve, his smile and his laugh and his care and his fighting spirit. Steve didn't show Bucky daybreak over that field. Steve was daybreak.

No matter the darkness of the night or the length of the sunless days, Steve's smile would always be his sunrise. Steve's smile would throw its blanket over the world and warm the whole of life there. Steve's smile would understand the nice things in the shitty world and be happy to see them. Steve's smile was the sun and it warmed Bucky more than that yellow star's rays ever could.

An explosion, too close, ripped the painting of Steve and the sunrise into ugly strips. The Commandos were yelling below and then there was guns firing and explosions and–

They were heading for the tree that Steve and Bucky were still in. It was Hydra. But Hydra shouldn't have been there at that–

"Buck! Move!" Steve was yelling down at him. He wasn't smiling anymore.

Bucky scrambled down the tree and Steve was jumping down by the branch, trying to get to Hydra before Bucky could climb down. Bucky didn't like that idea, because Steve didn't have his shield with him. If they were just going to watch the sunrise, why would Steve need his shield? Steve found the ground and Bucky was still halfway up the tree. In the sun, Steve's hair looked like the field behind them, in that tattered painting of daybreak.

For some reason, Bucky froze. He was like a treed bear, but the hunters weren't shooting at him. The Commandos were coming into view and threw Steve his shield. But they weren't shooting at Bucky. It was like he was watching his hell break out before him. Like the ground below that tree had split open and revealed what his hell would look like.

No, this wasn't real. This was Hydra in his memories again. They were inserting their will into him again. They were twisting what he longed for into that sharp weapon and handing it to him again. The scene was fuzzy, the goggles were–

His gears screeched to a halt. Somewhere distant, like– like he was in another place, somewhere else he feels himself break free of something. Like he can move his arm again. He hears metal groaning.

Shit. Bucky didn't know what was real and what was Hydra.

Did they hit another grand slam? Were they taunting him and pointing at him and laughing while they ran around the bases?

Bucky couldn't see Steve on their ledge. He didn't have anything to hold onto. That line with Steve on the end of it was nowhere in sight.

Bucky couldn't see Steve. He couldn't see Steve's smile. Everything was in darkness.

He came back to the tattered painting and Hydra. Bucky thought that Hydra didn't deserve to be under the same light of the sun that Steve was under.

Wait–

They had Steve.

Hydra told him to come down from the tree and they threatened to shoot Steve point blank if he didn't. Bucky did what he was told. He didn't have a choice. Between staying up in the tree and seeing the rest of the sunrise and keeping Steve alive? There was no second thought.

When Bucky took the final leap down from the tree, he was immediately surrounded by Hydra agents. There were more men surrounding him than he thought were even involved in the short skirmish. They didn't touch Bucky, but their guns pointed Steve were stronger than any shackles that could be made. Hydra had the rest of the Commandos killed in front of them. Bucky didn't like them all the time but he didn't… He didn't want them to die.

"Buck–"

They hit Steve across the face with the butt of a gun to get him to stop talking.

"Steve don't– Don't talk. Just do what they want." His objective was to keep Steve alive at any cost. Even if that meant he was the cost.

"We don't want the captain to do anything," one of the Hydra officers said. He pointed at Bucky with the tip of his gloved finger. "We do want you to, though."

Steve's head snapped to Bucky's direction and he dropped his shoulder into the man on his left and kicked the man to his right down in the same motion. The officer that spoke to Bucky pulled out his gun and shot Steve in the leg without looking back. Steve dropped to his knees.

"Stop!" Bucky cried out, "I'll do anything! Just– Just don't hurt him. Please, anything." Bucky held up his hands and knelt on the ground. He looked down to the officer's boots. "Just don't take the sun away."

Those boots started walking toward Bucky. The officer bent his head to the side, reaching his mouth down to Bucky's ear. "If you cooperate with us, soldier, we'll let him smile again."

Hydra took him. Hydra took his daybreak, his sunrise. If they could take the warmth from Bucky's life, if they could take the sun, what was stopping them from destroying everything? He wasn't about to ask them that question.

That's why he prefers to work in the shadows. For the promise of daybreak coming. In the daylight, there's already light to see, but in the night, there's the known promise of the sun coming up again. And he knows that it's true because the Earth would be dead without the sun. So he knows that there's daybreak after he deals with his extended darkness, no matter how long he has to sit there.

Bucky continues on because he knows that Steve's alive, somewhere. Hydra made him that promise, that they would keep Steve alive as long as he followed their orders.

In the interrogation room, Bucky has one arm free and quickly frees the other arm. When did he free the first arm? Had he been telling the man to stop with these words? How did he get the red book?

He wants to lift up the restraint over his chest and shoulders, but not before the man with the red book says the next word.

"Furnace."

It was in the winter, of all times. In the spring, they could get along without heat, but not in the middle of winter. Not with Steve and his fragile immune system and his low weight that couldn't generate or contain much heat. Not when Steve had already developed a cold and was coughing through the nights instead of sleeping.

"I don't know when they'll get the furnace working again, pal," Bucky said as he slung his bedding, sheets and all, to Steve's bed. "Are you sure you don't wanna ask a neighbor about staying at their place until ours is more than an icebox?"

Steve coughed and shook his head, which brought on more coughing.

That damn kid. Steve denied that he was frail. He thought that ignoring or pretending that he wasn't so frail would help him beat whatever disease or ailment or combinations of illnesses that he had at the time. Steve thought that acting tough would somehow be his cure, like he would be healed as long as he had the mindset that he was fine. Like ignoring the illness would make it go away. Bucky didn't want him to give up on life and think that every cold he got was the end of him, but he didn't want Steve to act like nothing was wrong with him. If he would just at least acknowledge that… Bucky guessed that with all the illness in Steve's life, he had no choice but to act tough. Not for his own sake, but for the people around him.

But Bucky couldn't act like Steve was invincible. He knew that Steve wasn't and it made his chest tighten when Steve would smile and reassuringly say that he was fine. Because Bucky knew, he knew that Steve was saying it for Bucky's sake.

All he had for Steve to drink was water. Bucky had a pot of it heated on the stovetop. He would pick the pot up and pour it into a glass, then test it to make sure it wasn't too hot for Steve. He knew what temperature would burn Steve's tongue, so he always made sure the water was cooler than that, even if it meant that he would burn his own tongue. Bucky would pull Steve up and make him drink at least a few sips before he had to lay back down and calm his coughing. He wanted to do more for Steve than just sit there and watch him cough and wheeze.

Bucky went to the cookstove and cranked it as hot as it would go, leaving the door all the way open. In the little open box that was their apartment, the stove should have helped heat the room up. His next move was to drag Steve's bed right next to the goddamn stove to keep him from freezing to death. Bucky held his hands in the stove and rubbed them together. He was warming them partly for his own benefit, but he would give that heat to Steve once he gathered enough of it. Once Bucky's hands were warm enough, he was going to carry that heat to Steve and rub it into Steve's hands, his feet, his chest. Bucky would carry that heat in his hands like it was the medicine that would end Steve's cold. He would cup his hands and carry that heat like it could be trapped there, floating in his hands until he released it over Steve's little fingers and his nose like a cloud of warmth. From the stove to Steve's bed where he laid without the strength to get up, Bucky would carry the heat in his hands like it was Steve's life cupped in them. In a way, it was. And he would make as many trips as he needed to for Steve to be warm enough.

Bucky tried standing to gather more heat again, but Steve held onto Bucky's hand that was gently pressed on Steve's chest. Steve hardly had the strength to move his arms, let alone overpower Bucky's and make him stay there, but Bucky didn't move. Steve parted his lips like he wanted to talk, but Bucky saw the way he pressed his lips together and how he swallowed. Steve wanted to talk, but was afraid to make himself cough more. He wanted to talk, but he was too tired to.

While he watched Steve's face, Bucky pulled the layers and layers of blankets and sheets up only enough for him to get under them, lest he let out some of that precious heat that he was trying to bring to Steve. He slid one leg down next to Steve's legs, the other curled under and pressed against Steve's bed. Steve rolled his hips and slipped his leg between Bucky's. He tried to turn over and lay himself against Bucky's chest, but he didn't have the strength. Bucky couldn't have that. He couldn't have Steve bend his back that way, since that went against the odd curve of his spine. Rather than show him that he knew Steve didn't have enough strength to turn over, Bucky rolled himself against Steve, pressing his forearm to the furthest side of Steve's torso. He grabbed the top of Steve's ribs, right under his armpit, and pulled him closer, then left his hand there. Bucky pushed his other arm under Steve's pillow and wrapped it around his busy little shoulders. He tried not to lay directly on Steve because he knew about Steve's bad heart. Bucky was afraid of putting too much pressure on Steve's chest because his heart already had a hard enough time working. Steve's heart already had the weight of so many medical problems. It didn't need Bucky's weight on top of it too.

Steve laid there while Bucky got adjusted and positioned himself around Steve, not that he could protest if he didn't want Bucky there. Once Bucky was done, Steve pulled the blankets as far over Bucky's shoulder as he could, then bundled the edge in his fist and put his fist under his nose. The blankets didn't feel as thick with Bucky there. Why was that? It wasn't that Bucky made him colder and the blankets felt uncomfortably thin. It wasn't that the blankets were like a barrier between them, to protect Bucky from Steve's illness. Bucky was as healthy as a horse, so he didn't get sick like Steve did. A cold to Steve was pneumonia to Bucky. No, it was…

Bucky came up with an excuse for Steve. "Didn't want your back to get cold, pal." That was at least true. It justified why Steve couldn't roll over.

Oh. Bucky was a blanket. He made himself into a blanket for Steve. The other blankets felt thin because they were, compared to Bucky's sturdy body.

Steve pressed his forehead under Bucky's chin. His neck was warm. He made a good blanket, that protective jerk. He was warm and thick and soft and… and his smell calmed Steve's coughs. His smell calmed all of Steve, the sense flowing through him like the heat that Bucky ran to and from the stove with to give to Steve. Steve nuzzled his elbow under Bucky's arm and let his hand hang onto Bucky's shoulder. The stove was still on, but Steve couldn't let his blanket go to turn it off.

Steve's body relaxed and Bucky knew that he was asleep. He had to stay awake, though. He needed to make sure that Steve was still breathing through the night. Outside, the wind was whistling and throwing its bitter fists at the walls of their apartment's building, punching at the exterior to get in. Bucky would fight that coldness for Steve. He would run across the building, steal heat from other people's apartments, and run back to Steve with it cupped in his hands. He would punch back at those icy fists, even if it killed him, and use the last of his breath to warm Steve's hands.

He knew he had to stay awake. For Steve. But Steve was so warm under Bucky.

Before he opened his eyes again, Bucky felt Steve pushing on him. Bucky groaned and told Steve to go back to sleep, but Steve wouldn't stop pushing him. Then Steve started hitting Bucky.

Bucky heard something. A silence that he didn't understand the significance of. A silence that should've torn him from his sleep and sent him running across the city for help. A silence that, in the end, he knew would make him die if he didn't go before Steve did.

The silence. He couldn't hear Steve's breathing.

Steve stopped hitting him.

That hadn't happened before. Steve– He would know when he needed to go to the hospital, or Bucky would tell him that he had enough and they were going to get him medicine and help. But this time, this time was different. Bucky didn't see this coming. He stood on train tracks and didn't feel the distant rumble. He was looking into the horizon, but he didn't see the black beast blowing thick smoke as it approached. He was standing on the tracks and didn't hear the train blare its horn at him to get out of the way.

The time between the apartment and the hospital were a blur to Bucky. Time was lost to him, as lost as to him as his coat when he wrapped Steve up in one of the blankets on the bed and threw the door open, yelling for help. He tore his throat apart, yelling for someone to help Steve. He ripped it apart like an animal in a zoo rips the morning meat apart. He ripped his throat with words of concern for Steve.

Some of the neighbors opened their doors and stood out in the hall. They were there to see what Bucky was yelling about more so than to help Steve. Some of them were there to tell Bucky to stop yelling, that he was waking their kids, or he was keeping them up when they had work in the morning. Others were there to see if they could help, but stood idle as the presence of others made them think that someone else would step up. They opened their doors to that hall for different reasons, but they all stood there for the same reason: Bucky was crying, holding a small, unmoving man wrapped up in a blanket.

"Don't just fucking stand there. Help him. Someone fucking help him." Bucky's language made a few of the neighbors close their doors.

An older woman left her door open and limped over to Bucky. She was familiar with Steve's illnesses and took one look at him. "Go to the hospital. Now."

Bucky's brain switched into a different gear. He went from frozen with worry to deadly with accuracy. He was efficient. He hit every step at the widest stride of his legs. Every movement of his body was aimed at getting Steve the help he deserved.

"You can't carry him there, there's a storm going on!"

"Yes I can!" Bucky yelled forward, his words hitting the walls of the hall and carrying back to the neighbors. He wouldn't even turn his head away from the goal of Steve in the hospital. "I keep him warm." He would fight the storm. He would scare away the cold with his screams.

Across the city in the blizzard that would eventually snow in him and the employees and patients at the hospital, across the streets with their abandoned cars and snowed-in buildings and homes, across the world he would run for Steve.

He ran in the snow and against the wind that slapped him in the face. Bucky's arms and legs were pleading with him to stop running, to let Steve down, to give in. His body begged him to stop and rest, then to stop carrying Steve at all. His body begged, but his mind could only see Steve's little face in Bucky's blanket and his mind could only see that path he had memorized.

"Fuck myself," Bucky thought as he shielded Steve's face from the punch of the wind. He was getting Steve to that hospital. Even if it killed him, he would haunt the nearest fucker into getting Steve to that damn hospital.

"Steve? Hang on there, pal." Bucky tripped over an obstacle that was hidden under the snow, bloodying his knees in the white when he fell. "If it's the last thing that you ever do, if you can't do anything else for me ever, I'd be okay with it. All you gotta do is breathe. Just breathe, Steve, even if it's the last thing you ever do for me. Because that's all I want."

Bucky was kicking and screaming for them to let him into the hospital. He didn't remember getting there, but he remembered Steve gasping for a breath. He was there with Steve, and he would tear the front of the building off to get Steve inside.

When they let Bucky in, they were staring at the man who ran alone through the blizzard and had a snow-covered blanket in his arms, clutched to his chest like it was his life wrapped up there. They tried to clean the snow off Steve but Bucky just walked to the neared gurney and laid him down, unwrapping his life there. They had to turn Bucky away when they took Steve because they knew, without even knowing who Bucky was, that he would fight them to stay with Steve if he saw Steve being rolled away.

Bucky wished his mind went blank when they were looking at Steve in some unseen area of the hospital. He wished he couldn't think, but his mind was buzzing, speeding, racing with the thought of Steve. He didn't even know what he was really thinking. It was a mix of thinking about life without Steve, of what was wrong with Steve, of how he could mess up so damn badly, of Steve's little smile before he fell asleep. He would think about one thing that led to another that led to another. It was like was looking at a book with a bunch of words and sentences on it, but they all had to do with one thing. There were so many different words and sentences that could easily be applied to something else, but they were all about one thing. The book revolved around one thing, around one central part of Bucky's life that was so essential t him that he couldn't understand a life without it.

"Steve," Bucky said, pleading, into the dark, cold hallway of the hospital. Steve's name was a prayer, a name and a person, a prayer for him to be okay.

In their apartment, the stove was still roasting the air within its belly, though there was no meal in its sight. The layers of sheets and blankets were letting out the heat that Steve and Bucky tried so hard to trap there. The furnace was still dark, cold, void of the heat that Steve needed, of the heat that Bucky cupped in his hands.

Bucky sat in that hall, waiting, waiting, his mind alive but dead with the thought of Steve.

There were footsteps. Bucky looked up. The doctors told him about all the problems that he already knew Steve had. His heart, his asthma, his stomach sores, his inability to absorb nutrients, his history of childhood illness… Bucky already knew about all of that.

"What're you actually saying to me?" Bucky's lip turned up without him telling it to.

The doctors exchanged a look. The one on the left looked down. "The complications, they… They're all working together now. They're all contributing to his condition. We think it was started from exposure to cold temperatures."

Bucky's face snapped from a distant, concerned stare to white hot with fury. "The cold." They were not telling this to him. They were not–

"No. I kept him warm. I turned the stove on and gave him hot water and–" He didn't tell them that he slept next to Steve. They wouldn't understand. They knew he wasn't Steve's relative, so they wouldn't understand why he was under the blankets with Steve. Bucky looked at them, still white-hot mad that they were telling him that Steve was sick because Bucky couldn't keep him warm.

Bucky's face fell from white with anger to dark with sorrow. "You… You don't know what you're saying to me." He turned from them and sat on the nearest chair.

They were saying that he didn't protect Steve. They were saying that Bucky couldn't protect Steve from the illness within him.

"We're sorry. We don't think he'll make it."

Bucky stared at the wall. "Fuck you."

They left him and he sat there until the sun rose, until the sun shined too bright against the new snow, reflecting its rays into the hall. The light and the warmth abandoned him, abandoned Steve. The sun was there to warm the planet, but it failed Steve.

The sun was shining too brightly, but Bucky never felt so cold. The hospital made him feel like he was back out in the storm with the wind punching him in the face. Like he was fighting to trudge through the snow and trying not to step on things that would make him drop Steve. He had to look down just to make sure that Steve wasn't there, and he was disappointed when he wasn't. Bucky felt so cold that he thought he would freeze there, immobile like a statue, hanging in time forever in the hospital where Steve was taken from him. He felt like he would stay there forever if he was told he had to leave without Steve. There was no point in leaving if he had to go without Steve.

There was something in him that was familiar with that cold, but he didn't know what. He had only ever been in the cold for hours at most, but in a building and away from the piercing wind. The cold he felt in the hospital was a different cold, like he knew it but didn't know it yet. Like a cold that was used as a weapon against him. Like he was a collared animal in a zoo and was made to obey the zookeepers. He felt like a bear that was cornered with guns and spears pointed at it while the snow fell onto him, laying on him like a death sentence. Bucky felt like Steve was another bear in that pen, but he was behind the zookeepers, laying in the growing snow. Were they pointing their weapons at Bucky because he tried to protect Steve? No, that wasn't the question. The question was, why were there people between him and that little Steve bear? Bucky felt that he swung one of his massive, sharpened paws at them to get to that other bear, and they shot him.

No, this cold was different from the cold he had felt before. This cold penetrated him like bullets all over his body. Those bullets went so deep into his flesh and froze the skin around them. He was being shot at, with icy bullets that stopped him from living, but didn't kill him.

Wait, he knew this cold.

He was being frozen. Alive. Against his will. Because he was protecting Steve.

Bucky didn't remember closing his eyes, but they were open and he was on a table with unfamiliar people around him. He was cold. Bucky looked around, searched for blankets for some reason.

"This person that you knew, in another life," someone in a uniform said and held up a picture of a blond man, "He died. He killed our most influential leader when he did, though. You will forget him. And we will make you forget him. You will only remember him when we want you to."

It was hard to hear him. Bucky was so cold. Bucky thought that there should be something, a furnace or a fire, or at least a goddamn blanket to help warm him. They were talking to him, but he wasn't listening as well as their tone indicated he should have been. He looked at that picture again.

Steve.

Steve? That wasn't– Where did he get that name from? Bucky thought of a field and a sunrise. He thought of a promise. The promise to keep this Steve and his smile alive if Bucky did what they told him. There was another promise to give Bucky feelings of this Steve. He didn't remember this Steve, but he tore out of the table he was strapped to and tore at the nearest man's throat. His left hand was more efficient at that than it should have been. When Bucky saw metal there by his side, he grabbed at the next man. Then they were pointing guns at him. Bucky didn't recognize the threat and tore the throat of the man in his hand.

Instead of shooting him, they took something and shocked his arm. The electricity coursed through the metal and went into his shoulder. It was worse because of the metal, Bucky knew. His arm fell limp. They lowered their guns. The men started to walk away while other men in white coats came in to do something with him.

Bucky's voice was small. "Wait."

One of the men in uniform turned around. "What is it, soldier?"

"Don't make me forget him."

The men looked at each other. One of them pointed to the picture of Steve and the other tilted his head up in understanding.

"We may be able to meet that request. You will remember him, but not in the way that you want to. When we're done with you, you won't want to remember him." They knew that if Bucky was remembering Steve, it was because he was being activated. They knew that he would remember those things about Steve that they used against him.

Bucky's blood felt like the bitter wind slapping him in the face. And the cold is a reminder of what he can't have.

The man with the red book is closer to him now. Bucky's fighting against the restraints. He feels a chill ripple through his body, from his bones outward to his skin. The cold makes bumps appear on his skin, his hairs bending from those bumps and standing up.

"Nine."

James was back to when he was such a little guy. It was the day after this birthday. After that year, he would be able to show people a full set of his fingers when they asked him his age. In two years, he wouldn't be able to use his fingers to show people how old he was. James felt like he was losing a part of himself, since he couldn't show people how old he was with his hands. He felt like he missed out on all those past years because he had only recently discovered how much he liked seeing his age held up to people on his hands.

He was looking down at his hands, one with a few coins in it. His family gave him them to go and buy a toy or some candy down the street. He was only nine, but his family trusted him to make it to the store and back. Without his knowing it, they had also told people to watch out for James while he made his way there and back, in case he got into trouble. So, they weren't sending him there without any supervision, but James didn't know that. He would have a fit if he knew that. He would run off alone to prove that he could.

James heard laughing and something hitting metal, like a fence did when he hit it with a stick. He looked to his left and didn't hear anything in that direction. He looked to his right and saw a kid with a stick. There were three of them, formed in a semicircle around something that James couldn't see behind a dumpster. The coins felt hot in his hand, so he kept walking.

At the store, he went and asked the worker man how much his handful of coins would get him in candy. He didn't understand the concept of money at the time, or prices, so he felt better asking rather than guessing and having to put candy back. The man turned to a phone and peered over at James' hand. Ten pieces, he said. Ten whole pieces! James was getting one of every kind that he liked.

The man at the counter was talking about how someone was fine and how they got to the store right on time. James figured it was about someone bringing in something to sell. He didn't care about that, though. He cared about getting his ten whole pieces of candy. That money thing was like magic to him. He could give people shapes and colors of things and they would give him stuff in return. He didn't understand how the money was worth anything, since the only value he saw was in objects themselves and not in coins.

James hopped up on the stool at the counter and knelt on it, his elbows on the glass and his coins in his hand. The man asked him what he could get him and James pointed and named all ten candies that he wanted. The man picked them out too slow, it seemed, because all James wanted to do was take them home and look at them. All ten of them! He realized that ten was as many fingers as he could hold up and he smiled.

The man put James' bag of candy on the counter and held his hand out for the money. James took the bag in hand first and then handed the man the money. The register made a satisfying sound that signaled a purchase was made, and James hopped down from the counter and headed out the door.

On his walk home, James held the candy tight in the bag. He was practically skipping with the idea of having ten pieces of candy all to himself. He already had it planned out. He would only have one a day until they were gone. He promised the candy that he wouldn't eat them all in one day. Every day that he ate one more, he could count down on his fingers until the candies were gone. He didn't want to lose that opportunity to count on his fingers in the very first day of having the candy. He could wait to eat them.

When he neared the place where the three kids were circling something, James got a different view of the scene. They were around a little kid. Littler than himself. Those kids were pretty big, so he thought about walking past it. But he was already stopped on the side of the street. What was that thing that his ma told him about mean people? If there was someone being picked on, he should do everything he could to help them. His mother didn't say anything about kids that were hitting and kicking another kid, though. She had only told him about kids saying mean things.

James could have sworn he heard one of them call the kid on the ground a runt. Well, if his ma told him to stand up to kids who were saying mean things, he would. James carefully put the bag of candy in his pocket and walked over to the four kids. One of them saw James coming and hit the other to get him to look. Once they were all looking at James, the tiny blond kid on the ground too, he crossed his arms and puffed out his chest.

"Whatcha guys think yer doing?"

The kids looked at each other, grinning, and elbowed each other. "We're just having fun with our little buddy here," one of them said.

"Yeah, we're just messing around with him. Right, kiddo?" This kid kicked a little cloud of dirt at the one on the ground.

The little blond kid's eyes were wet.

James uncrossed his arms, his hands forming into fists. "Don't look like that from here."

The kids laughed, then their laughs died when they saw James' fists. They laughed again when they thought James was dumb enough to fight all three of them. He had never been in a fight before, so he wouldn't know how to move or what to do, but he had watched some guys hitting each other before. So maybe he could just copy what he saw those guys did in their fight.

James' hand brushed his filed pocket.

Or maybe he wouldn't have to fight at all.

"I got an idea, guys," James said, pulling out the bag of candy. "I'll give you guys this if you leave him alone." James held the bag out for them to see.

The boys were curious enough to not laugh at the notion right away.

"Whatcha got in there, buck-teeth?" One of the boys asked.

"Yeah, buck-tooth boy? What's in there? Grub?"

James' nostrils flared at them pointing out how his teeth were too big for his head. He set the bag down and walked to the side. He knew that the adults could see him from that far down the alley, so the kids would have to be really dumb to take his candy and beat him up right there.

"Come and see," James challenged them. Boys being boys, they wouldn't back down from a challenge. As the boys neared James, he started to walk to the little blond kid. He put himself between the bullies and the little kid. If they were dumb enough to come after them when they had candy, he was going to scream for the adults to help. That was his backup plan.

The older kids picked up the bag and looked inside. They looked at each other and rubbed shoulders and elbows. Their hands dove into the bag and they stuffed their faces with James' precious pieces of candy.

"Thanks Bucky!" One of them sneered and had chocolate smeared across his teeth. The others mockingly thanked him, laughed, and called him "Bucky". Then they left. He hated them. He hated that name they gave him. He hoped he wouldn't have to see any of the kids again after that day, just so they wouldn't call him that. James counted every candy that they ate. He looked down to his hands. He still had one pinky held down.

James' hand flew to his pocket and he pulled out a single wrapped caramel candy. His face lit up with a smile, then he heard the little blond kid get up. James looked to the kid, to the candy, and to the kid again. He sighed with pity for the kid and held his hand out.

"Here."

The kid looked up to him, eyes wide with misunderstanding. Then he took a step closer and held his hand under James'. James twisted his palm downward and let the candy fall into the kid's hand. The kid looked down at the candy, and back up to James. He had one candy left, and he gave it away. There were only so many money presents that his family gave him, so he had to spend the money wisely. He had to wait months and months to get another ten pieces of candy, and he gave it all away to some bullies and a snot-nosed kid.

At least he could always show people, with his fingers, just how many candies he lost helping a kid not get bullied.

"How old're ya, kid?"

The little guy sniffled and wiped at his nose. "Eight."

Bucky help his fingers up to the kid, all but his pinky. "I'm nine. I got one year on ya. And this is how many candies I just gave away to them." James put his hands down. "The last one is going to you, so you'd better 'preciate it." James walked with the kid to the street where he stood still, looking dumb as his head was pointed down at that candy in his palms. James looked down the street and saw his folks on the front steps. "You'd better eat that before someone else comes along and takes it." He tried to sound mean, but he just wanted to make sure the kid got the last candy without the bullies coming back for more. He wanted to make sure the kid at least got to eat the candy that James treasured for a short time.

The kid looked up to him and wiped his nose again, then unwrapped the candy and popped it in his mouth. His face went from wet and scared to bright and happy. Something in James' stomach flipped over like a pancake. He shook his head at the kid and started to walk across the street.

"Thanks Bucky!" the kid said. He was waving at James when he turned back to acknowledge the kid. Then the kid headed up the street, in the opposite direction as James and the bullies.

Funny. Within five minutes, James went from hating the nickname that the bullies gave him to liking it. Just because a little kid with a goofy smile and a caramel candy almost sticking out of his mouth siad it like he was a hero.

When he got home without candy or a toy, Bucky had to explain where the money went. He wasn't about to say that his candy was stolen, because he knew he was tougher than that. He wouldn't have let that happen. No, he told them the truth. He gave his candy away to a bunch of jerks that shouldn't have gotten it. They didn't deserve his candy because they were beating on this little runt of a kid, but he couldn't just let them kick the kid around. And he gave his last piece to a little blond kid that he never got the name of.

Bucky told them the story, and he told him how he got his nickname.

When he was thirteen, that same kid was getting picked on. That time, though, he asked for the kid's name. That time, he was going to stay with Steve Rogers. He wouldn't let another person pick on this kid that was happier than Bucky could ever be to eat a caramel candy.

But those same bullies came back for Steve in Bucky's nightmares. The same ones when Bucky was nine and gave his candy away for the kid that would be Steve. These bullies came back and beat Steve. They came back and wanted to steal more candy from Bucky. He remembered these nightmares because his parents would go into his room and, the both of them, would try to wake him up. Bucky would be screaming and throwing his arms and legs around under the sheets of his bed. He would be thrashing around to the point that his parents had to hold him down to wake him up. But that would only translate into the nightmare as the bullies holding him down and he would scream louder. When he woke up, his parents would have a lot of unhappy neighbors. They started to think that Bucky was being beat and screamed at night because of it. The neighbors started to talk about getting Bucky out of that house and into another house. He would cry at this because he didn't want to leave his family. They weren't the problem. It was the bullies. The bullies were taking his candy in his dreams and taking his family from him in his real life.

In these nightmares, Bucky didn't have any candy. They would shake him and hit him across the face until he was crying. Bucky could feel the hotness on his cheeks after they struck him there. They would demand that he give them their candy, like it already belonged to them, but Bucky wouldn't have any. Every time he said that he didn't have any candy, they would hit him and Steve. Steve would be crying from the first strike across Bucky's face. Bucky would beg them to stop hitting Steve– No, the blond kid. That's how he knew him then.

He was just a powerless kid to these older kids, who seemed much bigger in his nightmares than he remembered them being in real life. With every strike that they took on him and St– the blond kid, the bullies would grow and their clothes would change. Slowly, they would age and turn into men while him and the kid were still little.

First, their boots would grow. At another time, that would look funny to Bucky because their boots were too big for their bodies, but then their calves would start to grow. With another hit across his face, their thighs would grow. The clothes on their legs would change from tattered to clear, dark uniform pants. Buckles and straps would appear and their belts would hold guns. That's why Bucky didn't think their too-big boots were funny, because he knew that the guns would appear soon. With every hit that they landed on the blond kid and Bucky, their torsos would expand and lengthen and broaden. The dark uniforms would appear there, too, sometimes with different, weird symbols that Bucky didn't understand. Their arms would stretch out and reach further, land harder blows to the kids with every touch they made to their skin. Their heads were the last to fill out and mature. They would lose their longer kid haircuts and grow adult haircuts. Then hats would appear and Bucky knew that they were close to ending the nightmare. Knowing that should've relieved him, but he knew what the ends of these nightmares were like.

They would take out their guns, all of them would. The nine uniformed men would surround the two little boys and point their guns at them, acting like one being.

"You want to be a hero?" they asked Bucky, their voices suddenly deep and dark. He would cry that he didn't, but they didn't believe him. If he didn't want to be a hero, then why did he still look like the hero to the little blond kid? Why, even then when they had their guns pointed at the two of them, did the blond kid still look over to Bucky like he was going to pull out hundreds of caramel candies from his pockets and throw them out to the bullies– no, to the soldiers, and that would make them leave?

Then they would look to the blond kid. They would ask him if Bucky was still his hero, when they had broken bones and bloodied faces and bruised eyes and guns to their heads. They would ask the kid, and he would cry, not knowing what to say. They would tell him to say the truth. He would look over to Bucky and cry. He would tell them that heroes didn't let people beat him like Bucky did. He would tell them that heroes didn't sit there and cry about their coming deaths when someone else needed the hero to be strong. He would tell them that heroes didn't beg and plead for their own life while another person was there and they couldn't stop crying long enough to plead for their own life.

He would tell them that Bucky didn't have any candy.

Every time that the nightmare was about to end, they would shoot the blond kid first. His blood would splatter on their dark uniforms, but it wouldn't even show up on the black material.

Bucky would think that he should have done more, looking down at that little body on the ground. He would think that the kid was right, that he wasn't a hero for all the reasons that the kid said. He wasn't a hero. He never would be, just for saving one kid once and giving up the candy intended to be his ninth birthday present. He was as much of a hero as… As a kid who told some bullies to leave a kid alone. That wasn't a hero, not if the bullies came back. How could be ever be a real hero if he let these bullies kill the blond kid while he cried about it?

Then Bucky would remember that the soldiers in the dark uniforms wanted the blond kid to admit that Bucky wasn't a hero. They let the kid think that he would be talking to save his life. Then they would shoot him anyways. They would let the kid get is hopes up on living. How fucking dare they.

Every time that they pointed their guns at Bucky's head, every time that they pulled the triggers inches from his eyes, Bucky would see octopus-like symbols on them and not understand what they meant.

He's out of the restraints now. Bucky tries to think of another way to get out of the cell, but his body reacts without his brain to guide him. He was punching at the glass of the cell like he was punching at the cold to save Steve from its bitter attacks on his fragile little body. He's punching at the glass like he was grabbing at the throats of the people he would wake up to when he came out of stasis. He hears the cracking of the glass and he hears the cracks that the bullies made when they hit and Bucky's nose and the blond kid's mouth, punching the smile out of it.

Bucky loses track of where the man with the book is. He doesn't understand where his punching of the glass originated from, let alone when the man started walking around the room, taunting him like a predator circling its prey, like zookeepers subduing one of their animals, one beast of their vast property.

"Benign."

Bucky's fist pauses in the crater he was creating in the glass.

Some jackass was giving Steve a hard time at school. Like usual, or how Steve would put it, he didn't do anything wrong. Bucky knew that was bullshit because Steve would always be standing up to the bullies for other people. He would always divert the bully's attention from the other person and guide it to himself, like a matador with a red cape. It didn't matter if he knew the person or had to introduce himself after he let himself get punched into the ground. In those cases, he would have to introduce Bucky too, since Bucky was always there to help Steve up.

But Steve always had to stand up for other people. He told Bucky about the time when Steve was betting picked on and another kid came by and gave the bullies candy to leave him alone. Steve asked Bucky about that candy, about why Bucky had it hidden in his pocket. Bucky thought about saying that he didn't remember the incident. But when he was thirteen and saved Steve for a second time, he told Steve that he was staying with the snot-nosed kid for good, to make sure no more bullies came by to pick on him. That was the time that Steve introduced himself to Bucky. Bucky almost introduced himself to Steve, but Steve already knew him as the buck-tooth kid that gave away his candy. So Bucky had to tell him the truth about the candy. It was his ninth birthday present from his family. He didn't want the bullies to see that he had candy on him. He didn't want them to steal it. Kid Steve's eyebrows pressed together and his lips pressed out. Steve told him that the time when Bucky gave away his candy, that was the time that he knew he would do the same for other people. He wasn't big enough to take on kids in real fights, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try.

Like the little ginger kid that Steve was standing up for when Bucky came to the rescue at school, Steve would always stand up for others. Other people were big enough to stand up for themselves, but a lot of the time they didn't have the courage to. They would be big enough to put on a fight, unlike Steve, but they wouldn't because they were too afraid to. Then Steven Grant Rogers, all five feet of him, would come running to the rescue. He was too small to be a real threat to other kids, too small to stand up for himself or others, but he would stand on a box for other people, just to be above them. Steve would gather all the boxes that he could and build a grand staircase of them, then climb them like a throne on his way to the bullies and stand high above the bullies and yell down to them to stop picking on people. That staircase of his courageous boxes was always pulled from nowhere, like Steve had this reserve of boxes to stand on when other people didn't have their own.

No matter who it was, Steve would get on those boxes of his courage for others. Steve would stand up for others because a kid with big teeth came by and gave his birthday present to a pack of bullies to save Steve.

Bucky wondered, with that reserve of courageous boxes to stand on, just what kind of guy Stevie would be if he was a physically bigger person. He felt sorry for anyone that got in Steve's way, if he didn't have to stand on those boxes in order to stand over others.

But this guy, the jackass with the crooked nose and only half an eyebrow of hair on his face, this guy Steve would need help with. He was a few years older than even Bucky was, and taller too. The ginger that Steve was setting his boxes up for was crying on the ground, his knee skinned and bloody. Buck put himself between the ginger and Steve's staircase.

They were around the back of the school, with everyone outside for lunch. Even with all of the windows of the school open, it was like Hell in there. The school was shaded by its walls, but those walls were insulated to trap in the heat of the winter, not keep in the cool breeze that teased them when it flicked in and out of the windows. The teachers all agreed that they would let the kids outside for lunch, more to save themselves from the heat than anything. Even at the back of the school, there were people who started to notice Little Stevie standing in front of the big jackass. The teachers weren't concerned with it, not unless there was a physical fight. If so, Steve and Bucky would get hauled away by their collars. Bucky knew about that process about as much as he knew about Steve stacking his boxes to stand on.

The big jackass squared himself up to Steve. He stood a full foot taller than Steve. Bucky didn't even want to think about how much the weight the guy had on Steve.

"Move," the jackass grunted.

Steve looked up to the jackass, but standing on his boxes, he was really the one looking down.

Steve planted himself on that stairway of courage and care and… And another word that Bucky didn't know the name of. He planted himself there, stronger than any of the toughest trees. He crossed his arms like he was the one with all the authority in the situation. "No, you move."

Bucky knew that Steve wasn't going to fight back against that clown, just from seeing Steve cross his arms. If Steve crossed his arms in a confrontation, that meant that he was done with it, whether or not the other end of the confrontation understood that or not. Bucky wondered why Steve wasn't going to do anything more to the jackass, seeing that Steve would get set off for things lesser than what that bully did to the ginger kid. He thought that Steve knew something that Bucky didn't.

The jackass was confused to the point that Bucky snorted with a laugh. He didn't understand why this scrawny kid was facing him, since he weighted about as much as the jackass' leg did. He wasn't used to people standing up to him, Bucky thought, so he gave Steve a quick shove and walked away.

Bucky helped the ginger kid up and told him to go to the teachers to patch up his knee. He watched the kid run off, then watched Steve descend his staircase.

"Why'd you let him off so easy? Remember that Joe guy that just pushed a kid and you about went feral on him?" Bucky watched Steve take the last step off his staircase, the boxes behind him disappearing into nothing, transported back to Steve's reserve.

"His parents just died." Steve looked back to the bully, who was sulking at the edge of the schoolyard. "I heard it happened last week, so I didn't wanna make things harder for him." He looked to Bucky. "You never know, he could've just been pissy because that kid looked at him funny or something."

Bucky didn't know that. But that didn't justify the bully's actions. Just because he was having a hard life didn't mean that he was allowed to make some else's life hard. Steve had such a hard time not being sick and didn't grow up with a father, but he was always trying to make other people's lives better.

But he knew there was more to it than Steve was letting on. Steve gave the bully a sympathetic look, and Bucky knew what else caused Steve to not continue their confrontation. Steve wanted to show the bully some sympathy for his folks dying, but the bully would push it away like a kid pushed away vegetables. It wasn't "tough" or "manly" for one man to show sympathy for another man. Steve didn't want to be outright sensitive to the bully, so he let the guy off easy without making a bigger scene that it already was. Bucky knew that the bully wanted to prove that he was a man, since they were young guys and that's how they showed that they were tough. Though they were hardly considered men, the bully didn't want anyone threatening his attempts to prove that he was a tough man that didn't need anyone's sympathy.

But the two of them could have beat on him at least a little. If he wanted to prove that he was a man, then they could've had a good old-fashion brawl and shake hands after it was done. Then again, Bucky thought that Steve wouldn't want to punch the bully because of his sympathy, and because Steve knew what it felt like to be punched in the everything. From fists of bullies to the illnesses that plagued him, Steve knew what it was like for every inch of him to be beat up, from the inside out.

Steve turned back from the bully. He had more to say. "And because, if I don't needlessly fight them, then I know they can't hate me for being mean. Then I know they can't hate me for the same reason that I hate them."

Steve always had more than one reason behind what he did. While Bucky, Bucky just did things because his instincts told him to and because Steve needed him to.

Standing on those boxes for anyone that needed them, Steve wasn't a soldier of any military. He was a soldier of the people. He was one man in a war against bullies, and he would win the war, even if he had to fight it all by himself. Bucky saw that tiny blond kid standing on his boxes, as firm as a tree, and he knew that he would follow Steve anywhere to fight that war.

That was Steve. Always being nice to people, even if they didn't deserve it. Again, Bucky tried to think of a word that summed up what Steve and his staircase of boxes were in a word. Steve would be a wall against the bullshit of people being cruel to others, but he would show them the kind of sympathy that he showed that jackass that day at the back of the school. If he knew there were other circumstances that influenced someone's behavior beyond that person just being a dick, Steve would take them into consideration for his own response in his behavior. Bucky didn't know what this word was, but he knew that it was out there somewhere in the world for him to discover.

Bucky set up a mission for himself. If he heard a word being used in the same context that described Steve and his boxes, he would ask what that word meant. Like the miners in California that looked for gold in the dirt and in the rivers, Bucky would search the world of words for the golden one that would describe Steve. He would search the world of worthless rocks for that gold. If he heard rumors about that gold, then he would follow them until he found the purest nuggets and run to Steve to cash them in.

For the time being, with Steve's back turned to his evaporated staircase of boxes, Bucky would use Steve's own name to describe what that golden word was.

Years later, when he was overseas fighting in the war and Steve was trying to trick someone into getting him accepted into the draft, Bucky was thinking about that jackass and he was thinking about Steve. His mind was always full with thoughts of Steve, like a glass always full of something, whether it was water or air or combinations of the two. In Bucky's head, Steve was the water and the air in his cup and there was never a time where there wasn't something in that cup.

That's how, when he came across the golden word and was thinking about Steve, he knew that it fit Steve as much as Steve's name fit him.

There were these well-educated Brits that were talking in a bar and Bucky overheard them talking about doctors or something. One of the Brits was talking about a guy he knew that died a few months before, a guy who always treated people like they were friends and didn't raise his voice to them. He was the father of five kids and he never once raised his voice at them. When they scraped their knee, they would go to their father. When they had a bad dream, their father was there. When they were afraid of the dark, their father was there to scare away the monsters. This, the Brit said, could be mistaken as just fatherly love, but his friend expended this caring nature to everyone that he looked at. He never wanted to make anyone feel threatened by his presence, and he didn't want anyone to think that he was unavailable for his help.

"This mate of mine was the fucking definition of benign, and he ended up dead after the bombings." The man took a drink and leaned back in his chair. "It was too bad. He was such a good guy, too. His kids'll miss out on him, if they made it."

Bucky practically ran to the man and his friends. He felt like a kid that just got a hold of some spare change.

"'Scuse me, fellas. Can I ask you about that word you just said?" Like a gold miner, he would push as hard as he needed to on that shovel in the ground to get to the gold. Just like a miner, he would bend over the river and slosh water and dirt around in a pan until he found that gold. He would use his hands, to dig and to clean dirt, just to get to that gold.

They told him about that word, about the golden word that sounded like Steve's name without actually being his name. They told him about that word, and Bucky knew that he had struck gold. Gold like a field in a sunrise, gold like Steve's hair in the sun.

Bucky found that gold and he held it in his hands like he held the heat in his hands for Steve. He would take that gold and go to the nearest place to exchange it for what it was worth. It could've been diamonds or something else, for all Bucky knew, but that gold was priceless to him. He wanted to take it to the nearest exchange and have them tell him that he found some rare and irreplaceable mineral that they would pay him everything for. Then he would turn their offers down, all of them, because he knew the value of the gold in his hands.

That gold was Steve, and no one could take that away from him.

But when he looked down again, that gold was gone. It turned into coins that he thought felt hot in his hands and he wanted to drop them. But he couldn't move his hands. Those coins gave him no memories, but they gave him feelings. He felt like these feelings were a promise made to him, in another time in his life. The feelings gave him the overwhelming sense that Steve was in danger, like having that money in his hands would be the end of Steve. Those coins morphed from his gold and turned into something that would make Steve beg for his life.

Those coins started to erode on the edges to reveal teeth, then they fit together and started to turn against one another. He felt slow, tense, like he had just been sleeping on the ground and he was told to get up and start running around. Bucky felt like he was waking up for the first time in a long time, and he felt like the slow-turning gears in his hands. He felt like those gears as they rusted and withered to dust. Bucky dropped to his knees, the dust in his hands, the dust that used to be his word for Steve.

The red dust started to collect and then it was pressed into a bullet. Bucky felt cold, where the bullet touched his skin. He felt like the bullet was only there to make sure that he never moved again, not unless someone else told him to move. And someone was telling him to move. To do something that he didn't know yet but already knew. Like a mission that he hadn't ended yet, but hadn't started. Bucky yelped when he though he heard a gun fire, thinking for some reason that Steve was on the receiving end of that shot, but once he listened to the sound again in his head, he knew it was the sound of breaking glass.

Bucky looked around for any glass that would have broken, but he was alone in a dark hallway with the only light on dimly lit ceiling above him. He felt the bullet moving in his hands and he hesitated, but he had to look down. In his palms, he watched the bullet stretch out and flatten itself from the middle out, into a silver sheet that weighed nothing, not near as much as his gold should have. His gold. Bucky closed his eyes, shut them away from the sheet of metal in his hand, away from the feelings that it gave him. He thought of his gold, his word that described Steve. All Bucky thought of was the want to see Steve. The want to hold Steve's face in his hands and rub his thumbs over Steve's ears and press his nose into Steve's. The want to run Steve's back when he was asleep next to Bucky. Bucky's eyes flew open when he felt the metal in his hands twisting. It started to twist and formed into a sharp, deadly point. He knelt there, in that dark hall, with a sharp weapon in his hands. And then he heard his name coming from another room, down that hall. Bucky followed his name, knowing who said it.

Bucky stopped by the door, out of sight of the person in the room, and placed his weapon into his left hand. He put the weapon and his hand in his pocket, then entered the room.

Steve's smile lit the room like the sun when he saw Bucky. There were machines and tubes surrounding Steve, who was in a hospital gown and bed. Bucky felt no warmth from that sun in the room.

"Buck? What's wrong?" The sun disappeared, clouded over with the concern on Steve's face.

Bucky looked up and felt something falling off his face with the movement. His cheeks itched, and he felt something sliding down his face.

"Bucky?" Steve sounded more concerned that time.

Tears. There were tears running down Bucky's face.

Steve tried to talk to him again, but his voice faded. Steve's voice was replaced with someone else's voice, in another time and another place, circling him and saying words that put his mind in a cage. No, not in a cage. The voice and the words put Bucky's mind on a leash, with a collar tight around his throat. Bucky's upper lip twitched at the feeling of having himself leashed like an animal, and Steve's face turned white. It wasn't white from fear, though. Bucky became aware of himself, not only aware of those words and that circling voice, and he looked down at his hand. His hand was holding that sharp weapon, formed from his gold that turned into coins, then to gears, then to a bullet. That sharp weapon, the one that came from Bucky's longing of Steve, it was right through Steve's heart.

Steve's face was white because he–

"You're my mission," Bucky said.

The tears stopped falling.

Bucky picks up his fist from the crater he created in the glass. He sends his awareness to his face, to feel anything that's touching it. There's no tears there.

His head is full, too full, of memories and worse, of feelings that Hydra shoved into him like they shoved their will into him. There's only so much space left in that hole that they drilled out, and Bucky can feel the bottom of that space if he reaches his fingers into it.

These times, when he's between the trigger words, this is the only time that he can think for himself. That time is when he can act for himself and protest against the continuation of those auger-words being said to him. He knows it's ending soon, and he's scared. He wants to be relieved that the twisted memories and the feelings they injected into him will be done, but he knows what happens next and he's scared. He'll be aware of his body moving, but have no power to stop it. Bucky will be no more than the animal on the leash of the person who held that red book in their hands.

He knows it's ending soon, but he still punches at the glass.

"Homecoming."

He was sent back to the time when Steve was in the hospital after the furnace broke down.

Bucky rushed home, having only been there once since Steve was hospitalized. Bucky went there that one time, the day after it happened, to get Steve underwear and a blanket that he loved. He turned off the stove, which had been reliantly throwing off a blanket of heat for the room while they were gone. Bucky looked fondly at the stove for its hard work to keep Steve warm.

But this time that he went home was different. Bucky rushed home to clean it up and get it ready for Steve. Steve was coming home that day, and Bucky wanted to shift the scene away from what it looked like when the furnace went out and Steve was hit with an almost deadly blow. He wanted to dust, straighten, soak, brush, and sweep away what their home looked like when Steve was sick. He wanted to clean away those bad memories.

It did Bucky good to clean up the apartment and put away those bad memories. First, he put every one of the blankets and sheets into a metal tub and soaked them in water. With the dust that washed away, the memories of Steve's coughs washed away. In that slightly soapy water, the cloths soaked up the water and let out their memories of Steve trying but failing to turn over. Bucky washed away the silence that Steve went through. Those blankets and those sheets were hung up close to that furnace, which had been fixed while Steve and Bucky were at the hospital. The blankets and sheets were hung up to dry and Bucky went to the dishes. He cleaned the glasses that Steve drank hot water from, watched as the water slid in the glasses and slid out with the memory of Steve's cold throat. Bucky moved the pot from the stovetop and wiped the reliant stove off with a rag. With every pass of that rag on that stovetop, Bucky wiped away every trip that he made from Steve to the stove to Steve with the heat cupped in his hands. Bucky drew back the tattered curtains and let the light pour in like hot water into a cup. He kept straightening and cleaning until it was almost time.

Bucky went to the door and turned to look back at the apartment as a whole. He looked at the door and adjusted the table near it, the one that he rammed his hip into when he was getting Steve out of their apartment. He moved that table back to where it should have been and he felt the memory fade away from him, like moving the table had broken the link between that memory and the present. He took another look back at the apartment, nodded once to himself, and headed back to the hospital.

Bucky gathered Steve and Steve's things at the hospital and tried not to run home with him. He was full of energy, buzzing with it, to get Steve home where they could continue on from the war that Steve fought with himself. Bucky tried not to rush Steve because he was still cautious of Steve's health, as he would until the day he died. He would care about what that punk was eating and how he was sleeping at night until he took his last breath. Until Steve showed that he was back to normal and Bucky wasn't constantly nauseated with the thought of Steve possibly stopping his breathing again, until then, Bucky would worry about Steve at a maximum rate. Bucky was excited to get Steve back to the apartment and have him see how he cleaned it, but he cared about Steve, so he walked.

When they got back to the apartment, Bucky hesitated outside of the door, his hand held over the doorknob. He had his fingers and the inside of his palm pressed into it like he was going to open it, but something was telling him not to. His instincts were telling him not to open the door. For some reason, though he knew he left the curtains open, he had the feeling that the room behind the door was dark like a cave that hosted a beast and the beast would reach out to grab him and swallow him whole. Bucky stood there, looking at the wood where the door met the doorframe, looking at the dark crack there, and he felt cold.

"Buck?" Steve asked, not concerned with the magnetic pit that Bucky felt he was being pulled into.

"Sorry," Bucky said, turning back to hide his fear with a smile, "I wanted you to wait in anticipation."

Something behind his mind was telling him not to go into that room. It was like a space behind his head, held in the air there like a cloud, telling him not to open the door. A space outside of his conscious mind, but still attached there like one bubble formed on another bubble. It felt like he just discovered this space and didn't want to trust it, but was too afraid not to. It was like he was running from danger his childhood home, and this new space behind his head was a room that he hadn't seen before. He knew the rest of the house, what memories were laid there, where potential weapons were hidden, where he could hide from this danger invading his home. The fact that he hadn't noticed this room before, after years and years of living in the house, scared Bucky into him not hiding in that room. He trusted the other rooms to hide him from the danger. His mind was a known space that understood his past and present, but this space behind his mind, this space behind his head was telling him about his future.

That space behind Bucky's head told him not to open the door, but his body didn't listen.

Bucky opened the door and didn't find a dark room there that pulled him like a beast out of a cave. He wasn't pulled in by that beast and eaten whole. The room was just their apartment, and Bucky walked through the door with a smile forming on his face.

Bucky stepped aside to let Steve walk in, that smile reaching out to Steve through the air and infecting him like it infected Bucky. "Welcome home, soldier." Steve deserved that welcome, since he just fought the war of his life.

Steve looked back to Bucky, his smile brighter than any sun. Bucky saw gold there.

"Why'd you…?" Steve turned to the apartment, cleaner than it was when they first moved in there.

Bucky closed the door behind him, shutting it to that space he no longer felt lingering behind his head. "Because you deserve a nice homecoming."

Bucky cooked potatoes and biscuits and made sure that Steve was served before he was. They ate as the sun set, but the room was still bright with Steve to smile there. When they were done talking and eating, Bucky cleaned up and Steve went to lay down. Bucky checked the dryness of the blankets and turned back when he thought he heard Steve snoring. His eyes confirmed what his hears heard and Bucky smiled at the blankets. He took the only dry one and laid it out on him from one end to the other on top of Steve, who turned over in his sleep as a response to the warmth placed on him.

He stood there and looked down at Steve's resting face. He took a step toward Steve's head and turned, then sat on the floor next to the punk sleeping on the edge of the bed. Bucky had watched Steve sleep many times in the hospital, but this time felt different to him. This time, there weren't tubes that coiled around Steve and there weren't doctors trying to figure out what diseases were deciding to show themselves among Steve's long list of them. This time, Steve wasn't white from the thought of being in another hospital bed. This time, he was home.

This time was different from the others because Bucky put his fingers on the corner of Steve's mouth. He lined his finger up with the crevice between Steve's lips and let it rest between them. Bucky kept his hand there, with his fingers resting between those lips, and he felt Steve's little breaths on them. He kept his fingers there, feeling Steve's breath on them, the air more refreshing than a cool breeze on a cloudless summer day.

He didn't know how long he sat there feeling Steve's breath on his fingers. When Steve pressed his lips forward, right into Bucky's fingers, he didn't care how long he would have to sit there, as long as he got to be there with Steve.

Then something clicked in Bucky. It clicked, like the hitch to a truck. Something drove in him, like he was a tuck and this… this effort was his trailer. Something connected inside Bucky that he didn't put together before, even though he knew it. He saw that trailer and knew that he would pull it, but it wasn't hooked up before then. That trailer was his effort, his fight to stay with Steve. He would fight with everything he had and think of what anything else he could fight with in order to be with that blond punk breathing onto his fingers. He was hooked up and ready to drive across the country, across the ocean's floor, just to be with Steve.

Bucky looked at the door, the one that the mind outside his mind told him not to open. He looked right at it and smiled, crazed, like he just won a war.

When the door whipped open and a roaring wind came through, Bucky took his hand away from Steve's mouth. The wind knocked over a chair, swooped under the other drying blankets and threw them on the floor. The wind, like it was a person, tore through the room and tore down the work that Bucky did on their home.

The wind ripped down his clean blankets from their spots near the furnace. Once they hit the floor, it looked as if the little dirt there gathered and climbed on the blankets and soiled them. The wind dragged the blankets and the sheets to the bed and put them back on Steve. Bucky was hit with the memory of Steve pushing at Bucky under those blankets, of Steve hitting him then not hitting him. He was punched in the ribs with the memory of Steve not breathing.

Then Bucky understood what the wind was doing. It was dirtying their home with the bad memories, unpacking them, throwing them in Bucky's face and destroying Steve's homecoming.

The wind sliced at Bucky's face. It went to the glasses that Bucky tested hot water from and Steve drank from. The wind grabbed the glasses and threw them to the ground, shattering them there. The shards on the floor pierced into Bucky like the memory of Steve being too weak to hold up a glass.

It pulled out the chairs, back to where they were that morning, and the wind moved the table back to where it was when Bucky ran into it weeks before. Bucky was stabbed with the memory of bumping into that table, with a dying Steve in his arms, wrapped up in Bucky's blanket. Beside Steve's bed, Bucky fell the rest of the way to the floor, sure that he was bleeding from a hole drilled into him.

The wind picked up the dirt it carried into the apartment and threw it at the stove. The stove collected this dirt and let it build up until the dirt was inches thick. The wind opened the door on the stove and snapped it off. Bucky could feel the dirt on the stove, how it covered the stove from the inside out and made it useless. Bucky thought about the trips he took to that stove with warmth in his hands. He thought about how hard that stove tried to keep Steve warm.

Then it turned to the furnace. It took steps toward the furnace, like a man ready to destroy things just to watch it crumble under his hands. The wind went to the furnace and snapped the door off, then snuffed the flames out. The room went dark and cold too quickly. The furnace failed them again. The room felt like the cold that Bucky marched through to get Steve to the hospital. It felt like the fear that passed through Bucky like bullets. It felt like promise-lies that were told to him but never fulfilled, never even being intended to be fulfilled.

Like a lion, the wind roared at Bucky. It roared about him wanting Steve but never being able to have him, about how they could never be abominations like that together. It roared at him about being disappointed in letting Steve control him. That disappointment seeped into Bucky like a disease, consuming him.

Bucky tried to yell at the wind like he could scare it off, but it wouldn't leave. He ripped his throat open to scream at the wind for Steve. He punched at the wind and made himself a buffer from the wind for Steve. Bucky tried to fight the wind off, but it was like he was fighting nothing. It was like he was fighting something as tangible as his memories. It was like he was fighting someone else's will.

The space behind Bucky's head formed again. It spoke to him, somberly, that it was right.

Bucky saw the wind slowing, twisting hard, but slowing. It started to spin in several different shapes that were symmetrical. The wind spun in a sphere, then in a wedge below it. It spun in two cylinders beside this wedge and in two longer cylinders below the ledge, like legs. From nothing more than his memories or someone else's will, the wind slowed and hardened into the shape of a person. Near what would be this figure's neck, a symbol appeared that made Bucky feel like a kid again. An octopus-like symbol appeared and Bucky felt fear consuming him like the disappointment did. He thought he heard a gun fire off a single shot.

"This is not a homecoming, soldier," the figure said as it split off into multiple silhouettes. "This place is not your home. Your home is not with this man in this time, in a messy, dirty apartment. You have no purpose here. How do you survive here? How do you pay for this place and that food you eat? You certainly do not have the talent for a long career. You need something else. You need us." The figures circled around Bucky like scavenger birds to a carcass. "You need stability in your life. This weak man is not the stability you need. He acts too randomly, fueled by the futile war against evil." They surrounded Bucky and made him press his body into Steve's bed.

"This man does not deserve a homecoming," the nine figures said together, as if they were of one mind, of one being. "He will never embrace the darkness around him. He has no place with you, or with us. You must rid yourself of him. He only holds you back from clutching the darkness in your hand and accepting it as the only true power in the world." The nine figures towered over him, bending over him and swaying like snakes. "You are not like him. You recognize the darkness in the world and fear it. Fear is a powerful device, one that can be used to protect the world from destroying itself. Everyone is safe in this world as long as they obey the things they fear."

The nine figures, swaying as if they were from one body, moved back from Bucky cowering on the floor. "This is not a homecoming for that man and that man is not your home. Your home is in the darkness, and this man can only exist in the light. If he were to live in the dark, he would glow in it and others would see him as a target. Would you want to be a target as well, standing by his side? We can offer you full acceptance into the dark, as long as you cast away the light."

Bucky wanted to argue against them, but his mind didn't move forward. He wanted to run, to rush at them and punch at them because they were more than air. He wanted to fight them, to protect Steve from the darkness and the cold, but he felt caged, like he was on a leash. He didn't have the room to run forward at them. He was held back by a force that made him feel like there was a hole recently filled up in his chest. This force made that hole and shoved something into Bucky that weighed him down and stuck a collar around his neck and put him in a cell like an animal.

Bucky reached up his hand to them.

"We are glad that you see it that way," the figures said, not offering their hand to Bucky. "But first, you must experience this darkness before you can hold its power in your hand."

Without warning, the wind and its hardened figures left. There was silence in the apartment.

Bucky sat there with his hand still outstretched for the figures to take. He couldn't hear anything. Bucky scrambled to put his hands by Steve's face, the weight and the collar and the cage gone from him, but its presence still strong. He held his fingers under Steve's nose. Without the wind blowing, it would be easier to feel Steve breathing. Without the wind blowing, it would be easier to hear Steve breathing.

He felt stillness. He heard nothing.

Bucky can feel the glass breaking away under his fist, under his punches. Only a few more punches, and he'll be out. Only a few more punches, and he'll stop the man with the red book from stealing his will away from him. Only a few more punches and–

"One."

After a particularly dangerous and disastrous mission, the Howling Commandos felt defeated. The mission was to infiltrate a Hydra base and try to take the highest authorities there as prisoners. They weren't dealing with Shmidt at all, not even close. Just some higher Hydra authorities that were a noticeable thorn in everyone's asses. The mission was routine, and the deaths of the Hydra officers were expected since they refused to be prisoners, but it ended with too many men dead.

The group that was known as Captain's Unit was an unofficial name that didn't make it into the records. The soldiers associated with this group were the Commandos and other men that rotated in and acted as backup for the Commandos, but never stayed with the team. This unit was sent in as a larger-scale version of the Commandos and everyone knew who the "Captain" in the unofficial title referred to.

Captain's Unit went in for the mission, but they only left with the Howling Commandos. Those that were left fled back to one of the mobile bases. The Commandos were lucky to get out and it surprised them that they did, given the number of men that were dead. They counted the dead and reported every one of the men that died in the routine mission. The disaster was no one's fault, but Steve felt the responsibility of it like the side of a mountain broke away and fell on top of him. Bucky knew Steve would feel the responsibility of that mountainside, like he was the one who caused it to fall.

"Someone's gotta talk to Cap. He went to his tent and said not to bother him, at least not until they stop writtin' down who's dead. But we know better than that." The Commandos and others agreed with Dum Dum.

Bucky stood, the assumed volunteer. "You guys think you can stop people from barging in?" The group nodded and voiced their certainty. "'Cause it'll take some time to talk to him. Might be up 'till dawn trying to get his sad ass up again." They told Bucky not to worry about it and Bucky knew that they would make noise as a courtesy to their private conversation. The men were familiar with the routine of getting Steve Rogers to let go of some of the guilt he felt after anyone died, or was even put in harm's way, under his leadership.

Bucky went to the tent and didn't announce it was him. Steve, who was also familiar with the routine, knew that Bucky would be the only one who tried to talk to him. Peggy tried once, but not in the same way that Bucky did. Peggy tried, but Bucky was more successful at it, so she stuck to talking to Steve after Bucky did.

Steve was sitting on his cot, his back to the tent's opening and his shield sitting in front of him. Bucky closed the tent and made sure that no one could see in, a privacy screen, in case Steve got emotional. The others respected this privacy because they saw Steve break down once before. It was after a failed mission, worse than the one they just went through but not by much. Steve was confident in his intel and there was a trap that no one saw coming. Turned out the friend he got his intel from was a double agent. There were no injured soldiers or prisoners left over. There were only the dead. No one saw it coming, but Steve thought that he should have. In the aftermath, the survivors and other officers and soldiers sat around and tried to figure out where they went wrong and how to avoid it in the future. They also talked about the men that died and how to send their bodies home to their families, if they could, and what they should do about the missing bodies. They were in the mess tent, the only enclosure large enough to host those involved and their discussion of the mission. Someone mentioned the guy that turned out to be a spy and Steve's back straightened with his self-imposed responsibility in the matter.

"I told you all to trust him. He was a defector and no one wanted to trust him, but I gave him a chance." Steve sounded like he was announcing the information. Then his voice was softer, reflecting on how he messed up. "And look where that got us."

One of the guys in the mess tent stood up. "Yeah, you told us to trust him, but we didn't have to listen to you. He made himself seem trustworthy. He tricked everyone. He didn't just trick you into telling us to trust him."

"But your trust was built on the foundation of my word," Steve said, looking up at the man standing. He was done talking, so he sat back down.

Steve continued on. "How many families did I destroy by trusting this one person? The information that he gave us was supposed to be a minor victory, but it ended in a major loss." Steve's voice was getting tighter and tighter. Bucky and Peggy looked at one another, both knowing that Steve sounded like before he cried.

"Those men signed up to give their lives for their countries, and for what?" Steve put his hand up, motioning to the direction that the bodies were carried in when they left the camp. "They died, as you all could've died, because I wanted to trust a man that made the promise of valuable information that could've set us only so much further in this godforsaken war." Steve let out the last two words in a shaky breath, that shake continuing on down a line of grief and making the corners of Steve's mouth pull back. His hand went to the bridge of his nose and he opened his mouth in a deep breath, shaking his head as the tears pressed out of his closed eyes. Steve rubbed at his eyebrows when Bucky stood and walked next to him.

Bucky put his hand on Steve's shoulder, squeezed it, and clapped it back down there in a grip. "They died so others wouldn't have to."

The men in the tent didn't think anything less of Captain America for showing his care for the troops. They should have, but the people there felt more connected to Steve when he cried for the dead.

In Steve's tent, Bucky stood there until Steve spoke.

"What am I even fighting for?" Steve was shaking his head at his shield.

Bucky looked down, then went and sat next to him. "Well, I can't answer that for you. But I can tell you what I'm fighting for." Bucky said, grabbing Steve's arm above his elbow, putting his fingers in the crook of his elbow. "I'm fighting for one thing. Something so essential to me that I can't be myself without it. One thing that I decided years ago that I would fight for until my heart stopped and my lungs couldn't take in any more air." Bucky moved his hand from Steve's arm to his back, then up to the shoulder furthest from Bucky. "I'm fightin' for you, Steve." With his other hand, Bucky held up one finger, lowering it at an angle that Steve could see. "You're my number one, pal."

Steve flicked his eyes over to Bucky, then turned his head down again, shaking it. "I'm not worth your fight, Buck."

Bucky felt like he was punched in the chest. Like he was punched from the inside, without touching the issue there. His chest tightened up like he was punched there, but the only thing close was the fist of Steve's words.

"If you saw yourself like I do, you'd know I could never think that."

"I could've gotten you killed. Damn it Bucky, I almost did." Steve bent over and put his head in his hands. "Again."

"You know I can make decisions for myself, punk," Bucky rubbed Steve's back again and looked at the shield. "If I thought that you were doing anything that I wouldn't do, I would've stopped following you around when we were kids."

"I still feel responsible."

"That's the burden of leadership. Not everyone can handle that. There's a difference between good leaders and great leaders. Good leaders care about those that follow them. They care so much that they think someone else should be calling the shots, because they can't handle the responsibility of doing it themselves. Great leaders care too, but they call the shots and live with the guilt of bad outcomes because they know that people need them to. Good leaders care and'll step down if they think they aren't doing enough, but great leaders know that others depend on them to make the hard decisions." Bucky leaned over and put his forehead against Steve's shoulder. "And you're the greatest leader I know of, Stevie."

Steve took his head out of his hands and turned it somewhat towards Bucky. He looked at Bucky's hand before he took it and held it in both of his. Steve rubbed the tops of Bucky's nails with the pad of his thumb. "I'm so scared of losing you."

Bucky turned his head over on Steve's shoulder, his temple lining up with the muscle there like one hand over another. "Then fight to keep me around."

Steve sat there with Bucky's hand in his until it felt like he polished all of Bucky's nails with his thumb. He turned his head against Bucky's, pressing into the head against his shoulder, and breathed out on Bucky's cheek. Steve wanted to stay there like that, rubbing his head into Bucky's hair and Bucky rubbing his temple into Steve's shoulder. Steve wanted to stay there like that and forget the war. Forget it all. Just them.

Steve opened his eyes when Bucky took his hand from Steve's and put it against Steve's cheek. Bucky's eyes were still closed, but he somehow managed to put his hand perfectly against Steve's face without looking. With his thumb, Bucky rubbed the bone under Steve's eye and pushed Steve's face closer.

"Buck?"

"Hm?"

When Steve didn't answer, Bucky opened his eyes tried looking up, but couldn't see his face. Steve put his hand on the side of Bucky's face and turned it, lifting it off his shoulder. Steve put his forehead against Bucky's and turned his shoulders more toward his best friend. Bucky looked down and to the side, so he wouldn't look right at Steve's eyes.

"One night. Please. Let me have just one night, and I'll never ask you, never really ask you, to do anything for me again. I almost lost you again today and I don't wanna… I just…" Steve pressed their noses together, the muscles in his forehead shifting into a tight bundle under Bucky's forehead, "Tomorrow, you can pretend like nothing happened, but give me this one night to be with you."

Bucky closed his eyes. Not because he didn't want to give Steve what they both wanted, but because Steve was acting like it would've been such a burden for Bucky to bare. Because Steve was begging to be with him and Bucky didn't have the guts to say that he didn't have to beg, that Bucky wanted it more than he wanted to live to see the end of the war. He longed for Steve and felt like he was supposed to have Steve, like it was made as a promise to him. He closed his eyes from the guilt that he felt for not telling Steve he wanted more than one night together.

So Bucky would give Steve that one night, not because he was doing Steve a favor, but because he was a coward.

Bucky pulled back and tried to pick Steve up, but forgot how much bigger he was than Bucky remembered. He changed his mind and slid onto the ground, then pulled Steve down so he was kneeling over Bucky's lap. Steve had his hands on Bucky's shoulders, resting them there because he didn't know where else to put them. Bucky was looking up at Steve's face and he put his hands on Steve's hips, guiding him to sit down on Bucky's lap. Steve turned his head away from Bucky and Bucky looked at his neck before he kissed it. Steve flinched at this, not expecting Bucky to give him what he wanted. Steve made the next move when he turned Bucky's jaw and swept his head to the other side of Bucky's to kiss him. Steve held Bucky's face in both of his hands and rubbed at his cheek bones like he was going to polish those too. Bucky moved his hands from Steve hips to the back of his knees, pulling his legs and his body close until their stomachs pressed together. Steve adjusted the way he was kneeling and Bucky moaned into his mouth. Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve's back and tried to get him even closer.

Bucky reached up to the cot and pulled the blankets from there, laying them out the best he could onto the ground behind Steve. In the motion of pulling Steve's shirt off, he messed up Steve's hair. He knew Steve didn't care about it when Steve rushed to get his hands back on Bucky's face, rushed to kiss him again after his arms were freed from his shirt above his head. Bucky kissed him back, running his tongue up and down Steve's bottom lip. Bucky put his hands on Steve's hips again and lifted him off his lap, setting him down on the ground. He rubbed his hands up Steve's back and leaned forward, laying Steve back carefully, like he was still that fragile kid. Once Steve was on his back, Bucky took off his own shirt and leaned back down to kiss Steve and press their chests together. Again, Steve didn't know where to put his hands, so he put one on Bucky's collar bone and rubbed at the skin there, and he put the other in Bucky's hair.

For some reason, Bucky doesn't remember a lapse of time. He wants to remember, but then he was looking down at Steve, who had his head turned to the side and his mouth open with small pants and his eyes almost closed. He wanted to remember this one night with Steve with as much detail that he could possibly hope to think of, but then he was telling Steve to look at him.

"It's…" Steve said with another pant, "It's embarrassing."

"Why? What is? It's me."

"Yeah, I know. We've known each other for forever," Steve's mouth opened again, but he didn't pant, a silent moan, "but not like this. It's embarrassing for you to look at me. I don't know what you want me to do. I've got no idea."

Bucky adjusted himself on his knees. "I want you to do anything that you think of. Forget if it'll work or if I want it because, Stevie, look at me. Because I want anything that you can think of doing."

Steve looked at Bucky then. Bucky rolled his hips into Steve and Steve looked right at him. Steve partially covered his mouth with the back of his fingers, but not from pain. He covered it like he could trap the noises there, like they would disappear if he held his hand over his mouth. Bucky pulled Steve's hand from his mouth, told him not to hide. It was their one night. He didn't want Steve hiding from him. Steve left his mouth uncovered, a small moan forming with every breath he took.

Then they were laying on the ground and Bucky felt cheated. He felt cheated of parts of that night that Steve got to remember and he forgot. He felt cheated of his one night with Steve.

"I love you, Buck."

Again, Steve said those words. Again, Steve said those words to Bucky and Bucky stayed silent. Again, Steve said that to Bucky and he fucking ignored him. He pretended he was asleep. Steve knew he was awake and wanted to hear those words back, Bucky could hear it in the way he breathed out, and again Bucky didn't say a goddamn thing. He was disappointed with himself, disgusted with himself. He could have sex with Steve but he couldn't tell Steve that he loved him enough to tear the world into its hemispheres for him?

Bucky's first greatest regret was not telling Steve that he loved him back then, so long ago when they were young and drunk and Bucky was stupid. His second greatest regret was not telling Steve he loved him after their one night together. His third greatest regret was that one and only night they shared, because he knew that they could never have it again.

Later in the night, Steve turned into Bucky and cried. Bucky wasn't sure if it was because Steve was happy that they got that night together, or if he was crying because he was sad to know that it would never happen again. In the dark, Bucky couldn't see Steve's face to see what his crying meant. Bucky wiped away Steve's tears, but he was too afraid to ask about them.

He couldn't remember half of their night together, but he could remember Steve crying. Well, at least he fucking deserved that.

Sometime in the night, Bucky sat up and Steve woke, wondering what was wrong. He was kind and lied that nothing was wrong, then Bucky could see his face. It turned from looking at Bucky to seeing right through him, as if he wasn't there. He looked right through him like glass. Then Steve looked around the tent, back to Bucky, not understanding why he was there.

"Who the hell are you?" Steve said looking down at their clothes, thrown off to the side and only one blanket between them to cover their skin.

"What're you talking about?" Bucky asked him like Steve wasn't serious.

"What the fuck did you do to me? Why're my clothes off? Did you– Did you–" Steve ran his hand below him, felt what was there, and scrambled backwards, taking the blanket with him.

"Whoa whoa, Steve, wait a minute. Don't you know me? You know me."

"No I don't!"

Steve was pushing at the cot and trying to get away from Bucky. Bucky knelt there, not understanding what to do. He held his hands there, his palms up to Steve so Steve wouldn't feel threatened by his presence, but he couldn't get closer without Steve rushing to get away. Then Steve started crying again. No, not again. Again would mean that it was for the same reason as before. This time, he was crying because he thought Bucky raped him.

Bucky saw Steve on their cliff. He was running for the ledge. And Bucky didn't have a line that connected the two of them. So, if Steve went down, he would go down alone.

Bucky was thinking of ways to calm Steve down. He thought "Are you okay?" and "What's wrong?" but they come out as: "Quit your bitching." His mouth went against what his mind told him to do. His mind went first, then his body followed. Bucky didn't have control over himself when he reached out to Steve, grabbed his wrists, and tore him from his safe place by the cot and pinned him down to the ground. He knelt over Steve's waist and held his hands above Steve's head, Steve's arms weak under his grasp. Bucky was relieved that Steve calmed when he pinned him down.

Then Steve was gone. He disappeared underneath Bucky. Vanished. Steve jumped off that ledge, and turned to nothing in the air. Bucky would've jumped after him, but something was pulling at his neck and he couldn't move.

Bucky got mad. White hot with anger. White hot with the anger that he couldn't protect Steve. Again.

Bucky yelled out to scare something. He didn't know what. He screamed, tore out his throat and screamed. He cried out, a lion shouting into the sky. "Stop stealing him from me!" He shook with the anger that his voice vibrated with.

Bucky was hit, punched, beaten with the thoughts of his longing to have that one night together as disgusting. His bones were broken with the thought of him and Steve being together, together like the abominations that they were. They were witches, and there was going to be a witch hunt in the morning. Thinking of morning, of the coming witch hunt into his memories, Bucky didn't want to see daybreak.

In the same time that it took to beat Bucky with the memories and feelings and the knowledge that what he and Steve were together was abnormal at best, in that same time, Bucky felt relief from the wind. The wind came to him like a group of people ready to carry him off and to the help that his battered body needed. It carried him off to lighten his bruises and heal his bones. Carried him off to help him move again, like a rusted gear turning again. He thanked this wind, how kind this wind was to him.

The wind whispered to him that it was proud. Proud of him for not letting Steve trick him into saying that he loved him, even though he did. Thanks to Bucky, the team hit a grand slam. The base runners took their slow lap around the bases and Bucky, standing on the mound, waved at them like he was only there to help them. Bucky waved at those base runners like he was on the same team as them, like he was intimidated by them at the start of the game and now he was on their team. They had all the power hitters, all the best equipment, and the speedy base runners. The other team had everything going for them, even bribing the umps, so why was it bad to be on their team?

Wait, no, this memory wasn't real. Hydra wouldn't let him do that with Steve. Hydra would never let him be an abomination with Steve like that. But Bucky remembered those little moans, cherished them. Hydra would wipe these kinds of memories from him. But Bucky remembered how Steve smiled when he kissed him during their one night together. No, it couldn't be real. Bucky wanted it to be real, but it couldn't be.

But what if it was? What if it was real and Hydra's hold on him was so tight that he couldn't think anything more than what they told him, that it wasn't real?

Over him being manipulated into thinking it wasn't real, Bucky preferred to think that the memory was fabricated. If it was real, then it was something else that Hydra took from him. No, he hoped it wasn't real. They couldn't take something that was never there. Then they couldn't take something else from him and Steve, if it wasn't real.

Bucky hoped it wasn't real. For his own sake, he hoped that the memory of that one night with Steve wasn't real.

But he wanted it to be.

Bucky takes his last punch and the glass shatters. He takes his last punch and he escapes the cell. He thinks he's ready to fight, because the words aren't done being said yet. He thinks he can still fight the impalpable prison-words and the red book.

As he falls out of the cell, the man says the last word, and Bucky is devastated.

"Freight car."

They were standing on the mountains. The Commandos were on the edge of the cliff with a line attached to the other side, right above a set of tracks. Bucky looked over the edge and his heart beat faster, his face feeling tight.

"Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone on Coney Island?"

"Yeah, and I threw up."

"This isn't payback, is it?"

Steve looked back at the line with his mouth open, then down to the tracks below. "Now why would I do that?"

Jones told them that the Zola was on the train and he was moving fast. Hydra must've needed him bad for something. Fallsworth spotted the train and they sprang into action. Steve told them about the window of opportunity that they had and if they missed that window, they were dead like bugs on a windshield. Dum Dum was encouraging, as always, and told the bugs to get moving.

Steve went first on the line. Bucky was soon to follow, his gun slung over his shoulder and swinging by his right side. He held his legs together, stiffened them, to give himself more control while it felt like he fell toward the tracks. Bucky thought, looking down at the abyss below, that the line better hold up otherwise he and Steve and Jones were done for.

They approached the train and calculated their landings. Bucky hoped that the grips on his boots would give him enough traction to not slip off the top of the train. They moved across the top of the train, sure of every footstep, until they got to a ladder and Steve started to go down it. Bucky looked around, making sure that there wasn't any Hydra goons there to attack Steve while he was clinging to the side of the train. Then he followed Steve down and in.

Bucky closed the train's door and went right for his rifle. He felt more stable in the train, relative to the abyss that he had just flown over and the top of the train that he had stood on. Him and Steve looked down the cabin of the train and started to move to the other end, their guns held at the ready. When they got to a doorway at the other end, Steve looked back, mentally asking Bucky if he was okay with Steve going through it. When Steve got to the other side of the set of doorways, Bucky's side of the doors shut right in front of him. He only got a glimpse of Steve's panicked, helmet-covered face when he turned to shoot at the Hydra men.

Bucky shot at the other end of the car, then dove behind a crate to reload. Sparks flew by his head and his heart started to pound harder than when he saw the bottom of the mountain. Hiding behind the crate, Bucky shot at the men. Bucky saw that one of them was trying to get a better angle at him from behind the crate, so he took his pistol and shot down the car while he moved backwards toward another crate on the other side of the car. Then his pistol was out of ammo.

He crouched, his back to the wall of the train, his guns out of rounds. He crouched there and thought that he was done for. He tried to accept it, but Steve wasn't safe there without him. Then the door to his right opened and it was Steve to the rescue. Steve shook his pistol in the air once, telling Bucky that he was going to toss it over. Bucky caught the gun and Steve ran out, his shield held in front of him, toward a crate that was sitting on the rack in the middle of the car. Steve hit that crate, sending it down the rack and making the Hydra soldier dodge to the left. It only took one more shot for Bucky to put him down.

Bucky pointed to the dead man with his gun. "I had him on the ropes."

Steve didn't hesitate to answer. "I know you did," he agreed.

Bucky had his back to the door, so he didn't see when the Hydra soldier with the energy-throwing gun sent a blast in their direction. Steve told Bucky to get down, then held his shield up as he pushed Bucky down. Bucky heard the shot hit Steve's shield and felt something jolt the train. The shot had bounced off the shield and ripped a hole in the side of the train like a bear to a can of beans. The abyss of the mountains was right next to Bucky again, the relatively safe place of the train with a hole left in it. Steve was thrown back when the blast hit him and the shield was rocking back and forth on the floor of the train, powerless without a user.

A space formed behind his head. A bubble on a bubble. The mind outside his mind. It told him not to pick up the shield, that he would only become a target if he picked up the shield. The space behind his head sent out a cloud of darkness around the shield and suddenly Bucky was looking at a cave and he knew there was a beast in it. The hole in the train didn't contribute at all to how cold Bucky felt.

There was a weight pulling out from his chest. It pulled him toward the shield. There was a presence, like a collar, around his neck that, too, pulled him toward the shield. He felt caged and the only door was opened to that shield. The space behind his head told him not to pick up that shield, but he was pulled toward it.

Steve was down, so Bucky picked up the shield. Bucky heard Zola over the speakers, telling the Hydra soldier to kill Bucky. Bucky got off two shots from Steve's pistol before the soldier shot another blast of energy toward him. He didn't know how close he was to the hole in the train, but he was trying to move up past it, in front of it to a safer place where he wouldn't fall out.

Bucky was almost to the front of the hole, but the blast of energy hit the shield and Bucky went flying back. The shield flew from his arm and he hit the peeled-back metal of the side of the freight car. He rolled back against that peeled-back section of the train, rolled until he grabbed hold of what use to be a raining on the inside of the car.

Steve popped out of the hole and called out to Bucky. He started moving toward Bucky, balancing himself on the edge of the peeled-back metal, holding onto the railing next to the one that Bucky was clinging to with both hands. Steve told him to hang on while he climbed closer to Bucky. One of Bucky's hands slipped and he reached out for Steve, a gasp mixed with a cry coming from his mouth.

"Grab my hand!" Steve called out, his hand outreached for Bucky as the railing that Bucky clung to gave out on one end.

Bucky saw the line. Steve was holding the end out for him. Bucky was hanging over the ledge of their cliff of trust, and Steve was there with his hand out to Bucky.

"No!" Steve said, as Bucky held his hand out for Steve to take.

Then there was the sound of metal groaning. The rest of the railing gave out.

Bucky screamed, cried out and heard his voice bounce off the walls of the mountains and back to him. He tumbled down through the air, his limbs trying but failing to grab hold of that line that Steve held out for him. He cried out for the end of his life because he knew the abyss and the ground that waited for him at the bottom.

Then Bucky was suspended in the air. The time passed too slowly and Bucky knew this because he calculated how long it would take him to hit the bottom, back when they were looking over the edge of the cliff and Jones told them about Zola. He knew that he was paused in time like someone reached in and stopped the hands on the clock of his life.

Bucky used that time to look up at Steve. Steve looked back at him like he didn't even know who Bucky was. Steve looked down at him like he was looking through glass. Steve looked right through him, and he suddenly felt very alone in the air. There was no one else there with him, falling with him. He was the only one probably in the whole world who was falling off the side of a mountain, suspended there in the air. He felt dark, cold. Alone.

Bucky pleaded "Don't leave me," in his mind and Steve didn't do anything. He just stood there.

If they were in each other's shoes, Bucky would've jumped into that abyss right after Steve. He would've chased after Steve and chased him until their deaths. Bucky would've jumped over that ledge if Steve went over. Why didn't Steve jump for him? Why didn't Steve abandon everything to be with Bucky, like Bucky would've done for him? Why did Steve just stand there on that freight car and stare down at Bucky without diving out after him?

"Why did you leave me?" Bucky asked, suspended there in the air. "Why didn't you jump after me, like I would do for you?" He asked the air in front of him, the wind as still as the air in a sealed box.

"Why didn't you save me?"

But Bucky didn't have to ask. He knew. Steve meant more to him than Bucky meant to Steve. That was why he stood there in the hole in the side of the freight car. That's why he stood there and didn't see Bucky and didn't jump after him. Bucky's heart shattered like the glass that Steve looked through. He lost all of his fight. Lost his fight like he lost something tangible, like he lost coins or candy and he only had the power of a kid to get them back from nine adults. His trailer of effort to stay with Steve unhitched and was left abandoned on the side of the road. Put in the situation that ended one of them, Steve wouldn't be the one who jumped for the other man. Bucky saw the truth of Steve, and it broke his heart.

Where was his gold? It wasn't in his hands. If Steve was that word, why did he hurt Bucky like that? If that gold was in his hands, Buck was sure it would burn him.

With Bucky fell the crushed boxes that Steve used to stand on so long ago. These boxes were flattened into lines as thin as paper, but Bucky looked through them in the same way that Steve looked through Bucky. He looked right through them and he didn't even feel the urge to follow Steve in his war on bullies

The hands to the clock of Bucky's life were let go. He fell through the air again, until he hit something and blood splattered all around him. His left arm felt like it was as shattered as his heart was. Then Bucky hit the ground. By some cruelness, he landed in only snow and didn't die from the final impact. The pain on his left caught Bucky's attention and made it the only thing worth looking at. Bucky looked for his arm, looked to see how broken and bloody it would be and understand his pain, but it wasn't there. Then he understood the thing that he saw flying past him when he fell. When he hit the rocks near the bottom of the mountain, they tore his arm off like it was only a hair being plucked from his head.

What cruel force in the world made him land in snow, made him wait to bleed out instead of ending it faster?

The cold started to sink into Bucky like the teeth of a beast. He would rather have died quicker, but it wouldn't take him long to die with his arm seeping and the cold invading. He didn't think about moving. He felt as immobile as rusted, fused gears. There was nothing that could be done to get the teeth to turn against each other again, he was sure. The cold helped with this. He felt like he had been shot a thousand times and the cold was seeping into the holes that the bullets made. Even the bullets themselves were turning him cold from the inside out. The bullet holes were working the cold from the outside in.

The cold reminded him of the warmth that he couldn't have, of the sunshine or the furnace that he was never allowed to let heat him, flow over him like a blanket. It reminded him of the smile that he would never see again, of his own painting of daybreak, of his place in the dark without the light. The cold reminded him of the feelings that he was promised but never allowed to have made on his own.

He laid there, he didn't know how long, until he thought he heard voices. Then there were nine men standing above him, their coats and their bodies swaying in the wind. They had octopus-like symbols on their collars.

"It will be alright, soldier. You'll live through this. We will take care of you."

Bucky felt a longing to go back and have Steve give him the homecoming of his life. Steve would see that Bucky was alive and welcome him home. He looked up at the men above him who promised to fix him, and he still longed to go home to Steve.

"Unlike the people who left you here, we will take you away for care and we will heal you."

Bucky wished he could go back to when he was seventeen, back to when he should have told Steve that he loved him too. He longed to go back and show Steve all the ways that he loved him, count those ways on his fingers so Steve could see how many there were. Where would they be if Bucky told him that back when he should have? Where would they be if Bucky had told Steve he loved him when they had their one night together? But he knew what would've happened. He wouldn't have thrown the pitch that his other team needed for their grand slam.

He looked up at the men around him and let them tell him that they would take care of him. But Steve used to take care of him, that benign man who would spare even the bullies if they had a hard day. That Steve who had a shitty life but would try his best to make someone else's life better, even if they were a bully and Bucky thought that they didn't deserve it. That Steve who knew what it was like to have all of him beat from punches to illnesses. That Steve who cared so much for the men under his leadership that he would cry for them.

But Steve was the one who gave up on him. He admitted that Bucky wasn't a hero. He told Bucky that and Bucky believed him.

"We will rescue you. We will save you."

Bucky's mind was alive but dead with the thought of Steve. He found himself believing them.

Bucky's mouth thanked them without his permission.

He remembers the memories that are associated to his trigger words but he can't remember them after he's been activated. Then he forgets those memories, the good and the bad. He forgets what the trigger words are and he forgets all the things associated to them.

Just as fast as the words are said to him, he remembers. At the same speed after the ten words are done being recited, he forgets them.

He's a gun, empty of his own conscious thoughts and full of the potential for death. He's ready to kill on the command of his user's finger. He is a gun, and he needs the user to pull the trigger.

"Mission report: December 16, 1991."

His mind is screaming "No, don't do this," but his body doesn't remember why it's acting on its own, acting without knowing why, acting without remembering why it shouldn't be acting.

He looks at the man with the red book and his mouth moves without his brain's permission.