A/N: Did you ever notice how Winter Soldier!Bucky has a habit of choking Steve? Well I did, and then this fic happened. (basically this is the only way I buy Bucky choosing to go under after what went down in Siberia. i.e. this is essentially a headcanon that became a fic)
Penance
"Those bruises on your neck," Sam starts, a few days after Steve breaks them out of prison.
"It's nothing," says Steve, firm, final, a clear order: back off.
"That serum makes you heal faster than normal," Sam continues anyway. "So to leave a lasting mark like that, I figure you've gotta be getting the same injury daily. Or nightly?" He looks at Steve significantly.
"Forget it," says Steve in the same tone of finality.
"Hey man, I'm not judging," says Sam. "As long as you're staying safe, whatever gets you–"
"It's not like that," Steve interrupts, flushing slightly. "We're not– Bucky has nightmares."
Sam presses his lips together and gives a noncommittal hum leaning toward disapproval.
"He just doesn't always wake up right away," says Steve, a little defensively.
"Then you have to stop sleeping with him," says Sam. He's seen stuff like this before; he knows how dangerous it can be for both parties.
"That's not an option," says Steve.
"That's not an option?" Sam repeats incredulously. He knows Steve is stubborn, but–
"I told you to forget it," says Steve.
"Steve," says Sam, much softer, "what if one night he doesn't wake up in time?"
"I'll be fine," says Steve flatly, but Sam hears the unspoken I'll deserve itunderneath, and he worked at the VA long enough to get it.
The bruises on Steve's neck are a rosary: a symbol of a penance he'll never complete. Bucky was denied basic humanity for so long. It's only right he sometimes denies Steve oxygen.
Thanks to Steve's rapid healing, the bruises don't darken over the next few days, but they don't fade either, and his voice is raspier than it ought to be. Apart from this he seems fine, maybe even better than normal, about as happy and relaxed as Sam's ever seen him outside of some old war footage.
"We all find ways to forgive ourselves," Natasha murmurs one morning when she catches Sam staring at Steve's neck a little too long.
"Yeah, real healthy," Sam shoots back. Just because he gets it doesn't mean he likes it. His only real comfort is that Bucky's cybernetic arm hasn't been replaced.
Yet.
"It's not about health," Natasha reminds him. "It's about survival."
"That only works if you actually survive," points out Sam.
Bucky, meanwhile, seems to withdraw as the days go by – not that he was particularly exuberant to begin with. He lets Steve fill him in on all the things he's discovered since coming out of the ice – Star Trek, the moon landing, Marvin Gaye – favors Steve with frequent smiles that even sometimes reach his eyes, but Sam catches the way his face falls the moment Steve looks away, the guilt in his eyes as they trace Steve's bruises unhappily.
You're not doing him any favors,he'd tell Steve if he thought Steve would listen.
Instead, he takes the first opportunity he gets with Bucky, though it's over a week before he finally encounters him in a common area of the palace without Steve hovering by his side.
"I guess you two are still sleeping together," Sam says, without preamble.
"It's not like that," growls Bucky, a more defensive reiteration of Steve's embarrassed assertion a few days ago. Sam's inclined to believe them.
More's the pity.
"But you are sharing a bed," he says.
"You love him." It sounds like an accusation.
"We all do," says Sam, deliberately misunderstanding.
"Yeah, everyone loves Captain America," says Bucky bitterly.
Sam's been to the Smithsonian. He's seen the footage –
Steve and Bucky laughing together, happier than he's ever seen either of them in life; Steve and Bucky studying a map together, turning as one to respond to another Commando's suggestion; Steve and Bucky leaning against Steve's motorbike, shoulders pressing together; Steve and Bucky's eyes meeting in intimate, wordless communication over the other Commandos' heads
– and it's not like he's the only person to notice in the last seven decades. Pretty much every biography published in the past twenty years contains some sort of speculation, ranging from veiled to explicit (it doesn't help – or does, depending on how you look at it – that Howard Stark destroyed their diaries and nearly all their correspondence instead of handing it over when the government claimed eminent domain in the sixties); there's a biopic from the seventies that's far more subtle than its thirty-year banned status suggests; and the subtext in the early-2000s HBO miniseries barely qualifies for the subprefix. The internet, of course, is rampant with wild conjecture, and Sam's read nearly every essay and forum thread dedicated to the subject since coming to Wakanda and fought back hysterical laughter throughout each one because holy shit they had no idea.
Nobody did.
Not Hydra, not SHIELD, not Tony, not even Sam at first. They'd all grossly underestimated the depth of Steve's devotion, and that had been their downfall.
Sam gets that. Steve appears to love easily, so it makes sense that nearly everyone has conflated breadth with a lack of depth (if you're willing to die for everyone, it follows you're willing to die for anyone).
What baffles him is that even Bucky is blind to it, after everything.
But heloves you, he wants to say. Don't you get it? He threw away everything for you, every time.
"They really don't," he says instead. "Kind of why we're permanent guests of His Majesty."
That still rankles a little, however much he prefers his palace apartment to a prison cell.
"That's not what I meant," says Bucky, sounding frustrated. "Nobody even looked at him before that goddamned serum."
"I didn't exactly have the chance," Sam points out. "Born about thirty-five years too late. But I'm not his friend just because he's Captain America. None of us are."
"Yeah, well, we'll never know, will we?" says Bucky.
– Steve squeezing Bucky's shoulder; Steve's hand brushing the small of Bucky's back–
"I'm not your competition," Sam feels compelled to clarify.
Bucky makes a soft, slightly disbelieving noise before he shakes his head and mutters, "Not you. He goes through wars the way I used to go through dames."
"Distracting from something else?" Sam prods, and Bucky laughs humorlessly.
"Something like that."
"It's not fair to you," Sam says after a pause. "Either of you. You have to see that."
"Nothing in our lives has ever been fair," says Bucky; he sounds more resigned than bitter.
"You're not obligated to be his war," says Sam.
Bucky shakes his head slightly.
"I owe him," he says simply.
"You don't," Sam insists. "Not this."
Bucky laughs again.
"You think this is just about the Winter Soldier shit?" he asks. "Or the war? We had a life, you know. Before all that."
– Steve and Bucky standing slightly apart from the other Commandos, bodies turned into one another as they share some long-forgotten secret; Steve's eyes lighting up and Bucky's going soft as Steve smiles–
"He always told me you saved him," says Sam. "Maybe you're even."
"We're not," says Bucky, "but it doesn't matter. Don't you think I'd say no to him if I knew how? All those years ago… I should have said no then. I should have asked him to take me home when we had the chance. I should have gone without him."
Wehad alife: a plural subject sharing a singular object.
"Why do you think I ran after DC? After I started to remember… I can't be with him and protect him from myself. I don't know how."
– Bucky's eyes following Steve's every movement; Bucky's smile slipping every time Steve looks away–
Perhaps sharing a soul is not such a romantic thing after all.
Sam clamps down on a sudden wave of panic.
"I did not become a fugitive for you to run away on us," he says quickly.
Bucky shakes his head.
"Running isn't the answer," he says. "I'll never reach escape velocity, serum or not. I know that now."
"He does have quite a pull," Sam acknowledges, and Bucky laughs softly.
"You have no idea."
For all he's sacrificed for the man, Sam's starting to think that might actually be true.
A few more days pass and Bucky becomes more withdrawn, even while Steve's bruises remain static.
Until the morning they don't.
Sam has a pretty good idea what's happened as soon as he's summoned to the infirmary, and the workmen he spies in Steve and Bucky's apartment when he passes by further confirm his suspicions. So he's mostly prepared to find Steve looking only slightly better than he did after being pulled out of the Potomac.
"He didn't wake up in time," Sam says flatly, "did he?"
"I'm alive, aren't I?" Steve injects as much sass into the almost inaudible retort as possible, which is just so SteveSam actually has to bite back a smile.
"Where is he?" he asks instead.
"It's not his fault," Steve rasps.
"No, it's yours," Sam snaps. "Save your voice," he adds quickly, when Steve begins another painfully squeaky comeback.
Steve glares at him.
"I warned you," Sam continues. "This won't help him, Steve. Killing you won't help him."
"He would never–" Steve is cut off by a painful-sounding bout of coughing.
"Yeah," Sam agrees. "That's kind of my point."
He finds Bucky pacing outside the infirmary. He looks miserable.
"He'll live," Sam tells him.
"They told me." Bucky won't meet Sam's eyes.
"You know what you have to do," Sam says quietly.
"I think I do, yeah," says Bucky.
"Then do it," Sam says. "And don't let him change your mind."
"I won't," says Bucky. "Not after this."
"I'll help any way I can," Sam says. "Whatever you need, day or night."
"Thanks," says Bucky. "But I think this is something I need to do on my own. Just… take care of him."
"You're not running," says Sam firmly, an order rather than a question.
"I'm not running," Bucky confirms.
"Then always," Sam promises.
Natasha takes Sam, Clint, Wanda, and Scott out into Birnin Zana for the first time a few days later. Steve is still in the infirmary, although he's mostly healed; and while T'Challa publically granted Steve, Sam, and the other ex-Avengers asylum, the official line on Bucky is that he disappeared in Siberia, which means he's confined to the palace.
Birnin Zana is more or less like every other big city, except it's cleaner and the traffic seems less congested. The Wakandans give them a wide berth, but after everything that went down in and after Lagos, Sam can't really blame them. Even the reassurance of the king can only assuage so many fears.
Sam goes to visit Steve in the infirmary when they get back, but they tell him Steve was released earlier that day, so Sam goes to Steve and Bucky's apartment. He finds Steve sitting alone in the living room, staring at a blank page of his sketchbook.
"You look…" Sam trails off. He was going to say "better", but if anything Steve looks the worst he has since Siberia, lack of visible wounds and bruises notwithstanding.
"What happened?" Sam asks warily. Then, realizing, "Where's Bucky?"
"Gone," says Steve tonelessly.
"What do you mean gone?" Sam snaps, panic rising in his chest. "Gone where?"
Dammit! Goddammit, he'd promised he wouldn't run!
"T'Challa has cryo tech," Steve says flatly.
"He– he went under again," says Sam, feeling an odd mix of relief and horror.
You know what you have to do. He'd meant get his own bed, his own rooms, not turn himself back into an ice cube! Not leave.
"He said he couldn't trust his own mind," says Steve.
He'd only promised he wouldn't run. He'd never promised to stay.
"He was right," Steve continues. "You both were."
"That's not– this isn't what I wanted," says Sam. "For either of you."
"Yeah, well," says Steve. "At least this time it was his choice."
"We can wake him up," says Sam. "I'll go wake him up right now if you want."
"No," says Steve, not smiling but doing the closest approximation since he landed in the infirmary. "I've ignored his wishes for too long. Our whole lives, really."
There are five virtually identical enlistment forms in the Smithsonian sitting next to one lonely draft card .There was a deliberate plane crash that followed an accidental fall from a train. There is a twice-abandoned shield and a twice-severed arm.
Don't you think I'd say no to him if I knew how?
"Too many decisions have been taken out of his hands," Sam admits.
"Yeah," says Steve. "Not again, though. Not by me."
"Okay," says Sam.
Steve does the not-smile again. This time it almost reaches his eyes.
"Get the team in here," he says. "It's time to get back to work."
"It can wait," Sam starts to say, but Steve grabs his arm.
"Please, Sam," he whispers, his voice breaking slightly.
Take care of him.
"Okay, Cap," Sam says softly. "Whatever you need."
Of course, that's the one thing Sam can't give him, but a promise is a promise nonetheless.