A/N - These characters do not belong to me, I'm just borrowing them for a short period of time to lay out my story before your eyes. I promise to give them back soon (maybe)

Pairing – Steve Rogers (captain America) and Bucky Barnes (The Winter Solider, James Buchannan Barnes) (Stucky)

Reviews are always nice if you have the time, whether they be positive or constructive criticism, but otherwise, please just enjoy my work. And Welcome to the land of NeverNiamh. I plan to be uploading a new story every week from different ships and fandom's, so please stick around if you want to see this grow as I do. For now I don't have a beta so I apologise for any spelling mistakes or anything of the sort, hopefully there won't be any though.

Brokenly Calling Out Your Name

He is broken.

A shell of what he used to be. His mind is a desolate landscape, once flourishing green and beauty, an undeniable picture of memories and hope, a life, a being; now ripped, burned, colours washed away, everything torn from his fragile, broken fingertips. Dirty brown hair crumpled beneath hands trying to block out the ever present memories and not-memories, the glimmers of a past, the horrors of a monster. The being of winter, of ice, of rage. The Solider who was really just a gun.

Honestly if the blonde was being truthful, he didn't know if the landscape could ever be replenished, he didn't know if the picture could ever be re-painted, didn't know what it would look like if it ever was. But in truth that wasn't as hard to grasp as the idea that he didn't know if he could help him, didn't know how to help him; in those moments when he walked round the corner and saw the brunet huddled in a heap on the floor, rocking backwards and forwards, movements harsh and jagged, breaths coming in small pants. He didn't know how to help melt away the ice, the winter. He just...didn't know.

Perhaps, should he have been as brave as everyone in this world seemed to believe him to be, then the blonde would go to him. As a boy, when his lungs were set against his body, everything he was being defined under the terms "sickly" or "weak", he remembered - oh how he remembered, as if it were simply yesterday - the brunet boy saving him. Whenever he was subject to an attack, his lungs giving out on him, his body convulsing in the need for air, he'd be rescued by the taller boy. He'd come out of nowhere, place their foreheads together: "share my air" he'd say, their mouths so close together that the blond hair truly believed he could, and he'd suck in lungfuls of his best friends air, the sweet taste of it, like cinnamon, and his body had always calmed itself down. Always.

And now it was the blondes turn to repay the favour, to save his best friends life and….he couldn't do it. He didn't know how. He really didn't. He didn't know how to fix what was oh so broken. He didn't know how to share his air. He was moving through murky water, unable to make out his mission anymore, his mission to save him, to save them both. Himself and the best friend he'd thought he'd lost forever.

Put the blonde up against the world and he'd find a way to save it, to mend it. Place him in front of something that truly mattered and he wasn't sure how to do anything but break it more than it already was.

/

The silence in the living-room was vast; it spread out like a deep breath of air before the battle, the conquering sound of impending defeat. The occupant of the room was thrown into seconds - minutes, hours - as a soldier, watching himself kill needlessly in the name of a cause he didn't believe in, a cause he'd once lived to oppose.

"Steve."

The word was a quiet whimper from his lips, almost like a cry for help from someone who'd forgotten the original word. It was desperate, a filling sound that pushed away the air from the room and instead filled it with the lonely heartbeats of need, a desolate crying call.

Blonde hair appeared in the doorway, his well built shoulders – the ones he'd been granted with by a serum running wild throughout his body - shaking ever so slightly, the only sign that he was at all affected by that voice.

"Steve, please….I-I'm s-sorry….please….s-save me," the words were as broken and jagged as the human himself, begging, he was begging. It was a noise as heartbreaking as a child's cry for a dead mother.

The blonde stood frozen, his mind listening to his old best friends words, his old best friend calling out for him.

"They...t-they say I have to forget about you. T-that y-you're the en-enemy-" he sucked in a breath as the blonde felt one being pulled from his lungs, the exhale to his inhale "-b-but…..I don't want to hurt you Steve. I d-don't want to be a weapon. I….I protect you. T-that's my job. Look after Steve, never let him get hurt."

The world was in his palms again, he was just a kid, a little kid even after he turned eighteen, his body to weak to hold him up, hold up the spirit inside him that no one could see. He'd been dumb though, stupid. Extremely stupid, extremely dumb. Got into more fights than he could handle trying to stand up for what was right. Honestly if it hadn't been for his beautiful brown haired soldier he'd probably be dead already, would have died way back then, before any wars even began.

"T-they don't let me t-talk about you. I-it hurts. They hurt m-me. W-weapons aren't allowed to have feelings…." he sounded so damn defeated, shaking, sobbing, broken. He was broken, so broken.

"Steve….Steve….I'm sorry Steve….I think I'm…..I think I'm losing…."

It was like a wave, a tidal pull, the blonde felt it rip through him, push him forward, compelling him to move closer, closer. A hand reaching out steadily, "Bucky..."

Blue eyes, pale, like frost, were suddenly over reaching him, over his mind, over his body, staring straight through the blonde, wide and full of uncontained surprise. Surprise...and fear. A harsh fear that seemed to grip his body, his limbs shaking more violently than before.

"Steve! You can't be here! You can't! Don't let them get you...they can't get you...Steve..." he looked in panic, like someone had set his house on fire and it was burning, down, down, down. Encasing them both in rumble and dust, smoke that would fill their lungs and bury inside their hearts like poison.

"Bucky, breathe," the blonde whispered calmly, "you're not there. It's not real. You're here with me. You're safe. You're home."

The confused eyes that turned on him, disbelieving, made his heart break. "No. Stop. You can't give me that kind of hope Steve...you can't..."

"It's not hope." The blonde was right by him now, crouching down in front of him, as if he was just a child, just a kid who didn't understand why the world was so damn painful, why everything eventually got consumed by fear and pain. A child who wouldn't see that through the fear and the pain, we find hope and love. Something worth living for, if he hold on tight enough. "It's real. I'm here, you're here. You're safe. I saved you. We're going to get you better. No one is going to hurt you again."

The whimper he the brunet let out was full of every meaning, every emotion, every memory. The turmoil with in leaking out in an icebreaking sound. Anger and pain, love and hatred, fear and hope and everything in-between.

A metal arm uncurled, it's surface cold, smooth, – once the fist of hydra, the deadly weapon of enemy's hidden deep within allies, lies and trust – now just a hand, a memento to remind it's owner just what he'd done, and the ways he'd taken pleasure with it, the women and children he'd destroyed in his own grasp. - It moved forward, unshakingly, to grasp at the blondes shirt.

"Steve." It was the same word as before, the same tone, almost like a cry for help from someone who'd forgotten the original word. Desperate, filling sound that pushed away the air from the room and instead filled it with the lonely heartbeats of need, a desolate crying call. Except this time, there was a hint of something underneath it all, underneath everything there was a hint of hope.

And this time it was answered, "Bucky."

And maybe the blonde didn't know how to fix him, perhaps the winter had clung on to hard, had already destroyed its victim to a point of no return, to a point where spring just wouldn't come anymore. Perhaps the brunet was too broken, perhaps he'd always be broken. But in that moment - that long drawn out moment that would shift and form, the brunet eventually ending up within the blonde's arms, his breathing slowed in a sleep where if you looked upon his face, you wouldn't see the broken lines of a weapon, you'd see the recovering lines of a man. The first sleep void of nightmares; the first, but certainly not the last, time he'd sleep wrapped up in Steve Rogers arms – in that moment, it was okay. Because hope was breathing a new life between them. And maybe, they could find a way to survive.