Translated from French by my friend Cindy Mezni, check her out she's an awesome dystopia/dark fantasy author !
"people say monsters don't have nightmares,
oh, but sweetheart, how do you think monsters are born ?"
— they are just dying to wake up / k.s. (aka worthystevie on Tumblr)
желание – Longing
He knows he's dreaming when he's trapped in his ice coffin.
At least, he believes it, because when the men in white coats wake him up, he's in agony. Impassive, they take away what is most dear to him without even knowing it; the residual sensation of well-being. Of safety.
Of happiness.
He frowns and grits his teeth, trying hard to remember the source of this feeling. Images flash behind his eyelids closed for too long — a young and smiling face, a carousel, an ice cream, the ocean, skyscrapers — his heart is about to explode and his eyes burn with unshed tears in his frantic struggle to hold on to these memories.
In vain.
Only the ghost of his dreams haunts him now, veil of bittersweet peace tearing itself apart a little more at each passing second the process is getting nearer to its end, until it disappears completely. Soon, as many needles pierce his skin and pliers tinker with the circuits of his metal arm, the list starts and the train of his already chaotic thoughts derail.
ржaвый – Rusted
It's hard to breathe.
And it's not just because of the black mask covering half his face, but because of the smell. The walls of HYDRA's secret base haven't resisted long to the Siberian blizzard. Through the years, even the inside of the bunker has rusted because of the humidity-filled wind seeping through the air vents, making the stench pervasive.
It's even worse when it combines with that of blood. Some unlucky peasants or political prisoners that are thrown to him from time to time, just to keep him sharp like the knife he uses to kill them, one after another. HYDRA agents look at him behind the safety of the bars, chronometer in hand. He rarely needs more than a few seconds.
Standing in the middle of dead bodies, he only senses two things.
The rust and the cold.
Семнадцать – Seventeen
When they were seventeen, Bucky and Steve decided to spend their meager savings to go to the new amusement park of Coney Island in south Brooklyn. Steve had initially been reluctant, but Bucky had ended up convincing him, as always. He knew his friend felt down, after having been rejected the day before by the art school he'd always dreamed of going to.
They left in the late morning and took the subway to the end of the line. It was a hot summer day, the park was jam-packed. Kids were playing cowboys and Indians among the crowd, lifting up in their mad run the dresses with polka dots of young girls who pulled them down while giggling, to the chagrin of their boyfriend. The heady fragrances of cotton candies and candy apples were making the visitors dizzy as surely as the roller coaster was.
Steve wanted to try winning a stuffed animal at a shooting range but, because he was barely able to hold the heavy rifle, he missed all the targets.
"Crap! I'm never gonna be good at anything!" he said, slaming the weapon back down on the counter.
His blue eyes with freckles of green in them misted over and he clenched his fists, full of the disgust he felt for himself since his birth. Bucky grabbed his shoulders and, with a gentle finger under his chin, made him meet his gaze.
"Hey! Hey, Steve, I don't wanna hear you say that again. You ain't a lightweight, you hear me?"
Affection flashed on his troubled face.
"Bucky..."
"Another try, please," Bucky said to the carny, putting a dollar on the counter.
Despite Steve's protests, he went behind him and helped him with the rifle.
"That's it, hold it like that with your left hand halfway around the barrel and the butt in the hollow of your shoulder. Now, stop breathing, aim and fire."
He couldn't help but stare at his friend from the corner of his eye: the vertical wrinkle on his forehead every time he concentrated — especially when he was drawing —, his lips pinched, his surprisingly long blond eyelashes.
The shot broke his contemplation and the target.
"I did it, Bucky! Did you see?!"
"Of course, I saw that, punk," he answered, bursting with pride.
"Jerk," Steve said back, beaming.
Thanks to his advices, he won a teddy bear that he hold out to Bucky.
"Take it, it's yours."
"You kiddin'? What do I will look like with a stuffed animal, back at the barracks...", he said, laughing, already imagining the ribbing of the other soldiers.
Crestfallen, Steve sighed.
"I didn't think about that..."
"What if you named him after me, instead?"
"Never. He doesn't deserve such a name," Steve joked, dodging his friend's nudge.
Bucky never knew that he did indeed name it "Bucky" nor that he slept with it every night after that, holding him tight in his frail arms.
Рассвет – Daybreak
When Steve's classes and Bucky's military service allowed them to, they met each other early, when it was still dark, and sneaked in a bus driving them to Red Hook. It was a poor neighborhood, therefore dangerous, but it was worth the risk.
They walked to the dockside after having bought a popsicle to a peddler and climbed to the top of a container to see a unique sight: dawn on Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.
Legs dangling in the air, they watched the comings and goings of the ships, the gaunt-faced sailors loading and unloading them in an endless cycle, cigarette in their mouth, the fishing boats coming back with their nets full of fishes, followed closely by a flock of seagulls.
And suddenly, the sun appeared, as if a huge movie projector had been switched on behind the boys. His rays started by illuminating the top of Manhattan's skyscrapers, turning them into as many gold arrows, which looked like they'd been planted there by giants. Then, they descended slowly but surely on their facades and windows, turning them into mosaics of light. They finally touched the outstretched torch of the Statue and, the more the sun was lighting up the latter, the more she wasn't anymore a menacing figure with demonic horns but a robust woman standing proudly, a crowned queen welcoming day after day the immigrants in search for hope.
The beauty of this sight making them often forget to eat their popsicles, they laughed when they reminded them of their existences by melting profusely all over their pants.
They stayed yet another hour after dawn. Steve was sketching the landscape or, at least he was pretending to, because at the previous page, he was actually drawing Bucky who was lying beside him on the container, arms crossed behind his head. His black hair was floating in the ocean breeze and his dark eyelashes were making shadows on his cheeks. Steve especially liked drawing the regular features of his square jaw, masculine features he'd never had and which made the girls' heads turn. A recurrent thought popped up in his mind — who did he envy the most: his friend or the girls who were lucky to go out with him? — but he tried not to dwell too long on this dangerous introspection. He preferred to concentrate on reproducing the most faithfully possible Bucky's muscular neck and his protruding Adam's apple, offered to him freely in this position, and his chiseled clavicles revealed by a brazenly unbuttoned white shirt.
By that time, Steve usually succumbed to the shame burning his cheeks and tore the page to throw it into the waters of the East River.
Печь – Furnace
The winter of 1930 was particularly harsh on the East Coast. The mercury never exceeded 32 degrees for several months and the whole city had disappeared under a blanket of frost. The streets usually bustling with activity were no longer full of gloomy silhouettes hidden under heavy wool coats. The clouds of condensation that were regularly escaping from their nostrils evoked solitary locomotives advancing cautiously on icy concrete.
Steve had caught a bad flu that his asthma didn't help. He was bedridden for three days with a high fever. His mother, Sarah, unfortunately couldn't look after him, because she had to work day and night as a nurse in the tuberculosis wing to make the ends meet.
Not that she'd have needed to find someone to watch over his son in her place, though; a preteen Bucky, whose eyes were shining with determination, was on their doorstep every night at nine o'clock sharp to take his "watch" as he liked to call it.
"I left tomato soup in the pot. Try to make him eat a little if he wakes up and give him some aspirin every four hours. You can also take some soup, of course. You're home here, James," Sarah said, hugging him tenderly.
"Noted, Ma'am Rogers. You can count on me," Bucky said, hugging her back.
He put his belongings in the hall and headed for Steve's bedroom down the corridor, his walking betraying a long habit. After all, he almost spent more time at the Rogers' than in his own family. He slowly opened the door and, in the orange glow of the beside lamp, saw a puny form curled on the mattress.
He went to sit on the bed.
"B-Buck?" said a wavering voice.
"Yeah, it's me, Steven. You hungry?"
His answer was unintelligible.
"What did you say?"
"I... cold..."
He felt his temperature. Steve let out a sigh of relief when the cool palm met his forehead.
Still burning.
Bucky bit his lip, anxious.
"I'm gonna warm you up some soup, okay? Stay here."
A hand weakly hold him back by the bottom of his pullover.
"No! Please... Stay."
The blonde's drooping eyelids didn't take away the intensity of his feverish gaze on him. Bucky gave in with a sigh and sat back on the bed, sickly fingers still clinging to his clothes like they were a lifeline.
They stayed like that for a long time. Bucky only got up to fill the basin with fresh water, with which he tirelessly wiped off the sweat from his friend.
However, as the night went on, Steve's shivers worsened. He mumbled in his restless sleep, convulsed, kicked at invisible opponents and wept silently. Bucky was pacing the exiguous room, dead worried. It was by far not the first time Steve was sick, but it was the first time he was afraid he might not make it through the night.
When he was about to put on his coat and run down the street to ask for help, Steve regained consciousness.
"Buck-k..."
Bucky literally threw himself at his side.
"Yes, I'm here, Steve. Talk to me."
He hated the pleading tone of his voice. Steve's wild eyes became focused when they met his. A small smile stretched his pale lips, which he pinched before opening and closing them again.
Bucky thought he wanted him to give him a drink and he did that, after having put a tablet in it and let it dissolve in the water. Steve sipped it a few times before being taken by a violent coughing fit that forced him to lie down on his side.
"I-I'm sorry, Bucky...," he croaked when he stopped coughing up his lungs.
Because I'm so weak, you can't sleep. Because I'm so weak, Ma works herself to scrape out a living. Because I'm so weak, I'm a burden for anyone I love...
"Stop your nonsense, punk," Bucky said as if reading his thoughts.
Steve smiled sadly and gripped the left shoulder of his friend, hoping he'd understand by this gesture his gratitude and everything he felt for him, all those feelings threatening to get the better of his defective heart day after day, which sometimes made it hard to breathe and sometimes reminded him how to.
"Jerk," he automatically replied.
The blossoming smile on Bucky's lips rivaled in light with the sun that would rise in a few hours.
"I'm still cold...," Steve muttered, frustrated to not dare expressing his desire explicitly.
But he didn't need to.
"Gotcha, Rogers," his friend snickered as he bestrided him to lie down next to him.
Bucky pulled him against him after he slipped under the covers and rested his chin on the top of his head, not caring about the blond hair rendered sticky by sweat that adhered to it right away. The discomfort submerging Steve was quickly replaced by a feeling of comfort and safety like he'd never felt before, even as a child in his mother's arms. He could feel the heart of his friend beat against his back more than he could hear it, a hypnotic rhythm lulling him to a deep sleep despite his best efforts to stay awake.
For his part, Bucky took longer to fall asleep. It was like embracing a furnace. It was so hot that after some time, he was unable to tell where his body stopped and where Steve's began. They were fused like an alloy that'd once been from two separate metals.
Still, nothing in the world could have made him leave that furnace. Here, under the soaked blankets, he was where he was meant to be and where he'd always be; with Steve.
The following morning, when Sarah Rogers came home, she found her son curled up in the arms of his best friend, both sleeping soundly.
Девять – Nine
The first time they met, they were nine. Bucky was playing ball with his classmates when an unusual gathering took form in the school yard. Curious, he followed the others and made his way through the yelling children.
He caught sight of a tiny boy curled up on the ground who was gritting his teeth to not cry out in pain every time he received a kick from the school yard bully, a kid whose above-average size equaled his wickedness.
As soon as his assailant was growing tired, the boy stood up with difficulty and swung his fists that made as much impact as a flick. The bully invariably hit back, which was enough to throw the boy to the ground like a ragdoll, and the kicking started again.
After the third round, Bucky had enough. He stepped between them, arms folded over his chest, chin jutted out in defiance. He wasn't as tall nor as strong but he had what he lacked: cunning.
"Move!"
"No. Pick up someone your own size, you jerk."
His bold words were met with a chorus of surprised "oooh". The brute didn't appreciate that someone was challenging his authority. He growled like a bear and threw himself on Bucky who used his momentum and his arm as leverage to make him fall. When his back hit the ground with a thud, the violence of the impact expulsing all the air out of his lungs, it felt to Bucky like the whole school yard trembled. The kids cheered Bucky but the bully got up to his feet, furious. He tried to punch Bucky but he dodged it by crouching before taking advantage of this opening to throw him a right hook in the crotch with all his strength.
The brute bent over and fell rigidly to the side, his bovine eyes wet with tears.
Bucky had won. He didn't enjoy his victory, though, preferring to ignore the hugs and congratulations of his classmates to kneel beside the beaten boy.
"Hey, pal, you're okay?"
The blonde stared at him with a mix of admiration and jealousy in his baby blues.
"I could do that all day," he said, wiping the blood running down from his split lip.
The determination in his eyes had left a mark on Bucky right then; an infinite raging and burning resolution, the unquenchable fire of someone who simply never gave up.
He laughed, a sound without any trace of mockery, and helped him up.
"I have no doubt."
The crowd of children already stopped paying attention to them and was splitting up, what was happening not satisfying their childish cruelty anymore.
The boy brushed his beige cropped pants off and replaced one of his suspenders on his bony shoulder.
"What's your name?" Bucky asked him since he persisted in being silent.
"Steve. Steve Rogers."
"James Buchanan Barnes."
"... Like the president?"
"Exactly," Bucky said, surprised he knew about such a forgotten character of American history.
Bucky noticed that a dead leaf was still caught in his blond locks. He reached out to get it but Steve recoiled.
"Relax, pal. Not everyone wants to pummel you," he joked, his voice gentle.
He resumed his gesture and, this time, Steve didn't flinch.
добросердечный – Benign
He's waked from his artificial sleep and sent to the Middle East for a level 4 contract. Not because of the threat the target represents — an Iranian diplomat in his fifties whose overweight showed his exuberant wealth — but because of the security system of his domain.
Nothing he can't get past, though. Lying in the bushes on a hill about a mile away, he shoots down every guard who has the misfortune of being in the sights of his Barrett M82A1M and neutralizes the surveillance cameras on the facades in the same way. He dismantles the tripods of the weapon to put it over his shoulder and runs to travel the distance separating him from the property, as silent and deadly as the Persian leopard living in these desert lands.
He gains momentum and smoothly climbs the whitewashed walls. He lands on the other side, then runs for cover behind a low palm tree near the pool. A guard who's escaped his notice passes close to him with his flashlight. Fortunately, he'd taken care to cover his metal arm with anti-reflective paint, so he's completely invisible when the beam ends up on him by chance. Once the man has gotten past his position, he follows him quietly and cuts his throat right when he discovers the body of one of his fellow guards, long before his hand even has the reflex to grab his walkie-talkie.
According to his infrared goggles, he's the last form of life in the domain's gardens. He projects his grapnel on the railing of the second floor and climbs the rope, walking nonchalantly against the wall as if it were a sidewalk. He comes up to the bay window and cast a glance inside. His target sleeps peacefully in his satin sheets, unaware of his impending death. He cuts a circle in the glass and put his hand through the hole he made to unlock the glass door.
In the bedroom, he stealthily skirts around the huge canopy bed and kills his target with a silencer bullet in the head.
His mission should end there, but there's a rustle behind him that draws his attention. He turns around, gun ready to fire.
A little girl looks at him from the other end of the barrel, her big, dark eyes wide-open. A cuddly toy is on the ground, next to her bare feet. It's probably what he's heard crash.
He's unmoving. An order in Russian immediately sizzles in his comm.
"She's not a threat," he answered in the same language, his words a pure contradiction with the gun he's still pointing on her.
The order is repeated more severely.
He bites his lip under the mask, hesitates for the first time in... Did he ever hesitate in the past? He can't remember.
The gaze of the girl falls on the form of the man he just killed, his still hot blood sliding on the silk like a dark and sticky oil before dripping on the floor.
Then, everything escalates quickly: she opens her mouth — was she about to scream? speak? He'll never know — and there's a shot, as automatic as the one who pressed the trigger.
The big forehead of the girl is pierced with a little black hole from where a thin trickle of blood flows. Her eyes absurdly squint to follow it in an ultimate animal reflex.
And her tiny body collapses.
His arm — the flesh one, not the metal one, it'd be incapable of that — trembles and his vision becomes blurry. He can't hear the voice barking endlessly in his comm anymore, drowned by the screams of his victims who are rushing like a shapeless crowd in his tortured mind to welcome yet another dead body in their macabre procession.
A remote-activated shock resets the circuits of his brain. He groans, staggers and shakes himself like a wet dog, fingers pulling on his long brown hair.
When he stands up a few minutes later, his empty eyes rests on the girl but her sight doesn't conjure any emotion anymore.
He leaves the domain as easily as he'd got in, quietly and without leaving any witness.
Back at the HYDRA base, scientists deem necessary to reprogram him in light of his recent failure in Iran. They make him sit on the chair, firmly strap his arms and legs before they hold out a mouth guard in which he bites obediently.
He knows what's coming but, this time, when the grip of the machine closes around his skull and electrical current set ablaze his entire nervous system, causing unthinkable pain, he doesn't scream.
He accepts the pain because he vaguely knows he deserves it.
возвращение на родину – Homecoming
He has no home. He doesn't know if he ever had one. Sometimes he thinks he's born in a tank filled with artificial amniotic fluid, connected by a silicone umbilical cord to a machine who acted as his mother.
He's not a ghost, because ghosts haunt the place where they died and to which they were attached, but he's breathing and the place where he is doesn't matter to him.
He's not a human being either. He's no longer one. He's something in between a computer and a weapon of mass destruction. Some days, he feels like his bionic arm is gaining ground on his flesh until it's covering him entirely, stripping him of his last shreds of humanity, and he wakes up screaming in an iron coffin.
He's a memory with no memory, surviving in the mind of a man who thinks about him every day on another continent, in another world, and he doesn't even know it.
He's nothing and yet, deep down, where his heart lies and insists on beating again and again — du-dum du-dum du-dum why does it not stop? —, he feels a twinge, a painful stitch, as if the organ was desperate for the missing piece to finally be complete.
And he thinks, maybe that's what home is: a fragment lost.
Один – One
It's almost the end of the list. He's empty of what made him, his memories, his identity, his feelings.
He's empty. As empty as a black hole and the stars it swallows are the lives he'll be ordered to take in a few minutes.
If he was still able to, he'd feel guilty to feel comfort in this state of non-being and he truly feels that because, for once, there's no fear, no doubt, no pain, only an imperturbable calm.
He finally feels like he's one and whole.
грузовой вагон – Freightcar
The world is barely audible because he's far, far away inside himself, nestled deep in his consciousness like a rabbit hiding in its burrow. Pine trees covered in snow flash before his bleary eyes as he yells to the point of losing his voice and an endless fall lifts his entrails under the effect of gravity.
That's the last thought crossing his mind.
Я готов отвечать – Ready To Comply
"Hello, Soldier," the HYDRA agent says in Russian before closing the red book with a black star on it.
Pause. Internal finalization of the process.
"Ready to comply." he says, his voice raw like that of a wild animal to which we'd have implanted vocal cords just to push nature's boundaries.
They take off his chains and he leaves, laden with weapons of all sizes and types, though he's the most dangerous of the lot. His mechanical swagger denotes an inexorable threat, a plague ready to strike, and his steps echoes like the drums of a war he's the only army of.
He kills his targets without qualms, looks at himself from a safe distance, while he riddles them with bullets, feels the bones that he easily crushes under his metal fingers, hears the screams of terror and supplication, and then the silence that always follows.
The blood mixes with the black war paint surrounding his icy blue eyes and he faces all the obstacles standing in his way with the terrifying rage of one who has no consideration for himself because he has no self anymore.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. I basically threw all the feels I had for Bucky in this fic haha so sorry if it was depressing
If you found any mistake please let me know :)