Author's Note: So for everyone who follows other works of mine and has me on an update listing, this here is why I've been radio silent for the better part of a month and a half. Well, this, and I had finals which were all thesis level writing amounts, and then I was out of the country for the better part of May on a bit of vacation and research for work. This is for Librarified2004 on Tumblr for the whumpexchange writing challenge (My first challenge guys!). Anyway, the request was a sick fic, fever, etc, and the prompt was "Shh, I got you. You're safe, I promise."
Onward!
The strangest thing, Tony decided, about having Bucky as part of the Avengers was the change in Steve.
Steve Rogers, Captain America and all around Boy Scout was apparently a closeted prankster and child at heart. Instead of long winded lectures about truth, justice and the American Way, Steve was now more likely to rise to any challenge issued by Barton.
Or worse – Natasha.
Or even worse – Tony himself.
And Steve had always been the 'mom friend'. Hands down, without a doubt, the most stable out of all of them. He even beat out Clint half the time, and that man was an actual parent.
They found out why Steve had a habit of reminding people about their language. Bucky had a mouth like a sailor. Even Natasha was known to turn her head in wonder at the colorful phrases that Bucky came up with when he and Steve were arguing or mid battle with baddie of the week.
Arguing wasn't even the right term for it. More like old married couple bantering. Like Bucky couldn't help the knee jerk reaction to treat Steve like he was still going to get in over his head in a fight. Or Steve kept forgetting they were now the same size and Bucky could and would take him out in a sparring match.
It was weird.
Tony wasn't sure what he expected of Bucky. For one, he has the nickname Bucky. Seriously. Jimmy would've made much more sense. Jim. Jimmy. Jimbo.
Okay, fine…maybe not that last one.
But Bucky? He sounded like an alternative version to Rocky from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Enough that Tony often referred to them as Moose and Squirrel. Bucky sounded like the kid was naturally extroverted – confident enough in himself that a ridiculous nickname would be endearing instead of off putting.
And maybe at one point – perhaps in in the 1940's before he was drafted into a world war – he was.
Current Bucky was as introverted as a shadow.
Part of it, Tony knew, was that Bucky wasn't sure how to behave around anyone but Steve. Steve was a constant in Bucky's life – he was there before the War, before HYDRA, before the Winter Soldier, and here he still was. Steve, outside of physical appearance, was more of an omnipresent fixture in Bucky's life than even Bucky himself.
Steve filled in the blanks Bucky didn't even know he had, and he managed it with such an ease that Bucky was no longer self-conscious about gaps in his memory because it seemed no different than any other conversation.
"Remember the woman down the hall from your folks' apartment?" Bucky would ask, looking wistful over a mountain of pancakes. "She used to make pancakes like this, right?"
Steve would shrug, steal one of the pancakes as he walked by, and would fill in partial details. "Mmm, Mrs. Balicki. Her's were potato based though, I think."
"Right. Because she was Polish?" Bucky would smile at the memory, one not tainted by HYDRA or genetic experiments by mad scientists. "She came over after the Great War with her husband, but she would keep an eye on you when your mom was working late."
"You mean kept an eye on us," Steve would correct, before the two of them would devolve into arguments about who was the one who really needed the extra eye on them – Bucky with the four sisters, or Steve, who was alone but ten times the trouble.
It was easy to forget they were two genetically engineered super soldiers.
It was even easier to forget that they weren't the same type of super soldier. Steve became Captain America in one go – step into the pod Howard built as a 88lbs, sickly waif, step out as a six foot tall all American Dream.
No one knew what happened to Bucky.
Or when.
There were parts they could piece together – Steve mentioned he'd found Bucky away from the other prisoners, tied down to a table and delirious. The base had been destroyed, no notes found, and honestly – it had never occurred to Steve to look further. In the 40's, genetic experimentation was confined to science fiction novels. No one ever thought The Island of Doctor Moreau would become a reality.
Something happened at the prison Bucky was found in. Something subtle enough no one, not even Barnes, noticed in the following months. But something let him live through the fall from the train. Something let him survive barbaric surgery to install a cybernetic arm in place of the one he'd lost in the fall.
In theory, it would be easy enough to figure out what exactly that was. Between Tony and Bruce and the entire database of information they'd collected over months of Tony's spying on SHIELD/HYDRA, they would've been able to figure out more.
Did Bucky age?
How fast did he heal?
Could what happened to him be reversed?
Was it stable?
When Fury suggested they find out, it was a tie between Steve and Tony who shot it down first, and which one was more violently opposed.
Steve knew what it was like to be an experiment, treated less of a person and more as a weapon – a threat against those who would oppose.
Tony knew what it was like to be sliced open without permission or anesthesia to be forced to live even when he didn't want to.
Unless Bucky wanted to talk about it, no one was going to go make him.
It worked for the most part. Bucky realized that even if he and Tony didn't get along, it didn't mean Tony was going to back the first government organization that wanted to strap Bucky down and open him up in the name of science. His trust in the others besides Steve seemed to solidify as weeks wore on. What started off as a begrudging association between Bucky and Tony was now bordering on full blown Science Bro territory (seriously – who would've though Steve's best friend was a super science nerd?) along with Bruce. Natasha started threatening Bucky every time he tried to apologize for shooting her when he was trying to kill her asset. And no one was more understanding than Clint about being brainwashed into doing horrible, unspeakable things against your will as if you were a passenger in your own body.
Unfortunately, while it seemed cruel to press Bucky on the nature of his time as the Winter Soldier, it might've been helpful.
Especially when they discovered that HYDRA didn't care about creating a superhuman immune system to go along with the advanced healing capabilities.
In fact, it turns out that an immune system was actively discouraged.
It made sense, in a weird sort of way. They'd made Bucky super strong. They'd made him durable. They made him a killer. But HYDRA made loopholes. They made exit strategies. They'd proven that well enough when they found Arnim Zola living on as a computer program years after the flesh and blood version died.
If one day Bucky's programming failed, their only option to try and get him back would be borderline biological and chemical warfare. They needed him susceptible to drugs and brainwashing and disease because it was the longest, most effective leash they could have.
All of it made sense, but it never occurred to anyone until it happened. It might not have been as bad as it became except for Bucky's ingrained response to hide weakness.
It was no secret Bucky didn't like the cold. Spending years in cryofreeze was bound to leave a bitter taste towards inclement weather. It also didn't help with his mechanical arm, or where it was crudely meshed in with human flesh. It caused aches and pains, pinching when skin became super cooled because it was in direct contact with metal that Bucky had trouble gaging the surface temperature of.
Stupidly, it never occurred to anyone that Bucky didn't like the cold for any other reason. It just seemed obvious that he wouldn't for any number of physical reasons.
Who would've thought that the Winter Soldier could catch a cold?
It also didn't help that Bucky didn't get sick by degrees. He was fine, and then he wasn't.
"You feeling okay?" Steve asked, running a less than subtle evaluating eye over Bucky who was leaning heavily on the counter. Next to his metal hand was a steaming mug, a tea bag tag hanging over the side as it steeped.
"I'm fine," Bucky snapped.
But he wasn't. Bucky had hacked off the long hair HYDRA kept on him, looking more like his old self, but it meant he lost a convenient way to hide his face. Steve could see the paleness, the tired circles under bleary eyes.
Steve hedged slightly, not sure if he should push it or not. Bucky didn't welcome fussing.
"You don't look fine," Steve said cautiously. "Is your arm bugging you?"
The temperature in New York hadn't risen above forty in what seemed like weeks. It had been raining and cold, alternating at night with sleet and freezing rain and even snow. Tony and Clint complained about arthritis for most of it, the former cranking the temperature in the labs to sauna levels and the latter returning to his house where it was considerably warmer weather.
Bucky didn't answer, instead choosing to scowl over the top of his mug as he held it close enough to touch to pale cheeks. He hunched his shoulders, not bothering to straighten up as he glared. It might've been more impressive if Steve couldn't see the minute tremors that shook his frame.
It didn't escape Steve that he'd chosen tea over coffee, and that he'd put almost more honey than water in it. It was an old fall back to their early days in New York, when there was no such thing as a Walgreens, and Bucky's mom was a firm believer that tea and honey fixed everything.
"I think Tony has some cold medicine around here somewhere," Steve hedged, trying to sound like he wasn't pushing. "If the honey doesn't work, anyway."
"I'm fine," Bucky growled. "And I doubt it works on us anyway."
Steve had to concede to that point, at least.
"Okay…but if you start to feel worse, let me know?"
Bucky rolled his eyes, slowly extending his metal middle finger.
Steve couldn't help the smirk. It was as close to a 'sure, mom' that Bucky was going to give.
By noon, Bucky's cheeks now flushed and pink and he'd all but buried himself under a mountain of blankets on the couch, but refused Steve's offer to get a sweatshirt for him if he was really that cold. He claimed he didn't like fabric on his metal arm because it always managed to get caught in the moving joints. He didn't shiver anymore, which Steve wasn't entirely thrilled about, but Bucky still insisted he didn't need anything, stop worrying.
It was in Steve's nature to worry about Bucky. It threw off the rest of the Avengers for a little while, because everyone had assumed it would be the other way around. Steve had been the sickly one. Steve had been the one that picked fights he couldn't win. Steve was the one who lived with a mother who was a nurse that sometimes, despite her best efforts, brought home something from work to her already compromised son.
But what the others didn't know was that Bucky had a terrible habit of running himself ragged. He was so focused on Steve, on his sisters, on his parents, on everyone else, he could be walking next to Steve one second and then pass out two steps later. He didn't get sick as often as Steve did, but when he did, Bucky went down hard because everything would catch up at once.
And now, after all that Steve knew that he went through, what he suffered, he could hardly stop himself from turning into his mother when Bucky was hurt.
But this wasn't getting hurt. This was something Steve was hesitant to even put a label on, because if Bucky could get sick…what else could happen to him?
By five, Bucky had finally nodded off watching TV on the sofa, not even keeping up the pretense of being 'fine' anymore. He was miserable and achy and chilled and hating life in general, but refused to admit it out loud.
At least he'd finally given up on the idea Steve was going to go any further than the other end of the couch. His only acquiescence was that if Steve was going to stay, then he could refill the tea mug and glass of water whenever he needed it.
If that had been the end of it, it would've been fine. If the worse that happened was Bucky was miserable for a day with a headache and low grade fever, Steve would've been okay with that. It would've been manageable. It would hardly be worth remembering.
But it wasn't.
Steve was used to Bucky talking in his sleep. He'd done it waaay before the war. The only thing that changed over times was what was said.
When he spoke in Russian, Steve knew he was dreaming of his days as HYDRA's personal assassin.
When he spoke in German, Steve knew he was dreaming of the POW camp and Zola.
This time, he didn't say anything at all.
Bucky started screaming.
"NO!"
He woke up so violently Steve sat frozen in shock for a full five seconds before it even registered what Bucky was doing.
Bucky was clawing at his prosthetic arm, fever bright eyes staring in horror as if he'd never seen it before, flesh and blood fingers digging underneath the metal edging of his arm with a very real intention of trying to pull it off. His thumb nail snagged and caught on the metal, pinched between two moving parts and it didn't even register he snapped it in half as he continued to claw at it.
Shock wearing off, Steve tried to grab at his hand before he could do any more damage, but even sick Bucky was strong. Ignoring Steve's attempts to grab without further injuring or frightening, Bucky kept trying to sever the arm.
"Bucky!" Steve shouted, trying to get through to him even as he dodged wildly kicking legs as Bucky shoved backwards, as if trying to move away from the metal that was clearly attached to him. "Bucky stop, what's wrong? Does it hurt? Is it broken?"
Because why else would Bucky be trying to pry it off when he'd hardly ever paid attention to it before?
It wasn't until Steve managed to grab Bucky's hand, gently keeping it from gouging more bloody grooves into his shoulder that he felt the heat of Bucky's skin. He wasn't just warm, he was burning up.
Oh no…
There was nothing wrong with the arm.
"Bucky! Buck!" Steve tried to get Bucky's attention but to no avail. It was like Bucky couldn't even see him.
Steve tried to remember what his mom had always said about fevers. Aspirin could bring down a fever, but he wasn't about to try and get Bucky to swallow anything right now. Ice baths were bad – they caused a person to shiver harder, which would raise their core temperature even more. Tepid water. Tepid water he could get.
The problem was going to be getting Bucky to it without having to fight him for it.
"Bucky, can you hear me?" Steve tried again. "It's me, Buck. It's Steve. Just look at me, huh?" He kept his gentle but firm grip on Bucky's hand, following it even as he tried to pull it loose to continue to claw at his other arm. "Just look at me. Come on, there you go. It's Steve, okay?"
Slowly, almost painfully so, Bucky stopped trying to reach for the metal arm, blinking owlishly up at him.
"Steve?" he croaked, sounding lost.
Steve offered a small smile. "Yeah, Buck. It's me. Let's get you up, huh?"
Bucky didn't move.
"Bucky?"
Bucky reached out a tentative hand, fingers splayed out and almost touching Steve's face but not quite, following the curve of his cheek, the angle of his chin. As if he was trying to match up details in his head to the ones he saw. His brow furrowed in confusion.
"They said you were dead," he whispered.
"I'm not, Bucky. I promise you, I'm not," Steve said quietly, not daring to move.
He hoped it was just a nightmare. A nightmare made worse by the fever he clearly had raging on, but nothing more.
Like the ones Steve had of the train.
Bucky slowly shook his head. "No."
No, what? No, he wasn't dead? No, he wasn't here?
Steve opened his mouth to ask, but in an instant, he saw a flicker of something dark in Bucky's fever bright eyes.
Something he hadn't seen since the Triskelion.
Super human reflexes were the only thing that kept Bucky from latching his metal hand around Steve's throat as he lunged forward with a speed that belied his illness.
"No!" Bucky shouted, launching himself at Steve with enough force to rock them both backwards, throwing off Steve's precarious balance where he'd been kneeling in front of Bucky as the two tumbled to the floor. "You can't have him!"
Steve didn't have much of a chance to wonder at the odd wording before Bucky's wild swing almost hit him in the head. He didn't have the time or the patience to try and talk Bucky down from whatever fever driven nightmare plagued him. Not if his temperature was high enough for him to be hallucinating, and judging from the heat Steve could feel through both his clothes and Bucky's anywhere that they came into contact with one another, it was much higher. In a strange sort of detachment, his mother's words reminded him 104 degrees is when someone starts to get delirious. 107 is when they hit the point of no return. Those three degrees matter.
With the wild swing that hadn't connected as he intended, Bucky's balance was violently off, and Steve used it to his advantage. He held onto Bucky's arm, using his own momentum against him as he pulled him completely around, using his leg to shove Bucky's weight to one side. In one movement, he managed to flip Bucky onto his back, rolling with him so he essentially wound up with his friend in a restrictive bear hug from behind.
"Bucky, I'm sorry, I really am, but I swear to you, I'm trying to help," Steve apologized.
Bucky's response was to launch his head backwards, the back of his skull hitting with a sickening crack against Steve's nose as cartilage and bone gave way.
Steve stumbled, seeing stars, but kept his grip even as his eyes automatically teared up.
That was going to leave a mark…he thought absently as he felt blood run down his lips, fighting the urge to sniff. He'd been punched in the face enough to know that was always a bad idea.
The closest bathroom was thankfully the one off of Steve's room, so there was nothing breakable he really cared about because dammit all if trying to wrestle with a delirious and pissed off Bucky Barnes wasn't like trying to fight a honey badger.
At one point Bucky pulled his feet up to almost his chest, tucking his head down as he threw his entire center of balance forwards, making Steve stumble and almost drop him again before kicking his bare feet up to brace against the wall and shove them both violently backwards, denting the plaster behind them.
Steve actually preferred Bucky's dirty fighting techniques. It made it easier to pretend he couldn't hear the constant litany of horrifying words.
Some were shouted.
Some were whispered.
Some were begging.
Some were threatening.
Bucky's mind jumped sporadically, all of his nightmares bleeding into one. He was in Germany at the POW munition factory. He was falling from the train. He was waking up in a lab with a pieces of him replaced with HYDRA machinery.
He was being erased.
And through it all, Steve could hear his own name being repeated over and over again and felt his own heart break.
Pinning both of Bucky's arms with one of his, Steve flung the shower door open and twisted the temperature knob to the middle, practically tumbling into the shower with Bucky who was now openly sobbing. If this didn't work, Steve didn't know what the hell to do, or even who to call. How the hell could he even leave Bucky long enough to get Tony or Bruce to do something?
For a brief, wild second that he would blame on Tony forever, Steve wished he had accepted the gag gift of Stark version of a Life Alert button.
The warm water hit Bucky in the face and he froze and for a moment, Steve was terrified he'd made things worse. What if the water didn't snap him out of it? What if it made even worse memories resurface?
But relief washed over him even as the room temperature water did when Bucky heaved an audible sigh of relief, slumping in Steve's grip as they both sank to the floor, the water raining down on them.
"It's okay. Shhh, it's okay, I've got you. You're safe, I promise," Steve whispered, his grip around Bucky relaxing from restraining to comforting. He didn't even care what he was saying, just trying to keep his friend from being alone in his nightmares.
After what felt like an eternity, he felt Bucky shift, turning to look at him with blue eyes streaked with red, looking lost as he surveyed the damage.
The two of them together had managed to fracture a few of the shower tiles, and Bucky's wild kicks had knocked a towel rack clean off the wall while Steve's elbow had broken the corner of the mirror.
"Steve?" he asked, sounding unsure even now that he wasn't hallucinating.
"Yeah, buddy. It's me." Steve didn't even try to hold back the sigh of relief.
Bucky was quiet for a moment, unresisting in Steve's grip.
"Did I…" he started, looking more embarrassed and ashamed than anything else. "Did I….go away again?"
Steve let his head fall back against the wall behind him, letting the water rinse the blood off his face, pretending like that was the only thing it was washing away. "No. No, you didn't. Not the way you're thinking."
Bucky nodded slowly, his eyes drifting shut as he drew in a shuddering breath. It was another minute before he spoke again. "They used the cold to make me sick," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "It took them years to unmake me, but it was always the cold that got to me. What a fucking joke that someone code named the Winter Soldier was intolerant of the cold."
Pieces clicked into place.
If the cold was used as a weapon to slowly break him down, if sickness was their way of controlling him and using his own body against him, Bucky's first reaction to feeling sick would be to hide it. No wonder he seemed to spiral downhill so fast. He could've been sick for days before he was bad enough for the symptoms Steve noticed to show. And the weather hadn't been any help. Not only would it weaken an already fragile immune system, it would drag him down even further with stress and memories of the days in HYDRA's prison.
"I'm sorry, Buck," Steve said honestly. "I know it can't be easy, but if you start to get sick again…you don't even have to tell me, but please don't let it get this bad. Maybe Bruce can help you find something that actually works, or –"
"They used you," Bucky quietly interrupted.
Steve blinked. "What?"
"It wasn't the cold that finally broke me down," Bucky said, hunching his shoulders against the water as he turned. He looked exhausted, but the red in his cheeks was finally beginning to fade. The shower wouldn't be a magic cure, but it was helping. "The day I stopped fighting was the day they told me you were dead. They even showed me the newspaper. After that…nothing seemed worth fighting for. So I didn't."
Steve knew the confession was likely the result of feeling so sick, but that didn't stop the surge of rage that made his heart pound and his vision tunnel. He never should've given up looking for Bucky when he couldn't find him in the ravine. He'd been convinced he hadn't remembered the exact spot correctly, or that he'd fallen through the ice and into the river below, or any other number of reasons that he couldn't find his friend to at least give him the burial he deserved. Maybe he would've found him. Maybe HYDRA would've found him, too, and at least they would've been together.
At least Bucky wouldn't have been alone.
"Don't," Bucky admonished. "It'll make you crazy playing the 'what if' game. Trust me. I know."
"I can't help it."
Bucky's mouth quirked upwards in a tiny, tired smile as his eyes drifted shut again. "Yeah. I know that, too. But you did find me. Even if it took you seventy years. You found me, and you brought me home."
Author's note: I probably could've tacked this on as a chapter in "Repairs" but that felt like a disservice to the requester. So it's a stand alone in sort of a wibbly-wobbly A/U that exists somewhere in the timeline of after Ultron, before Civil War (or just ignoring Civil War altogether). Also, I realize I skip around from Tony to Steve as a third person narrator, but I couldn't help it. Hopefully, it wasn't too jarring. Hope you enjoyed my very first ever challenge response!