I got the idea for this one-shot whilst listening to "Drumming Song" by Florence and the Machine. Some lyrics are incorporated... so I guess that makes this a songfic, huh? I altered the wording though and the lyrics are actually integrated into the story, not standing out/separate in italics or anything. So hopefully it doesn't feel clunky or forced.
And I guess "Drumming Song" is kind of a love song, but I'm using the drumming sound as Bucky's memories trying to fight out of where they've been locked in the Winter Soldier's head, rather than anything romantic. But I guess you could read this as bromantic or romantic, whichever you prefer.
I hope you enjoy!
The sound had started when the Soldier's mask had come off.
The sound had started when the target's blue, blue eyes went wide and he gasped like he'd been stabbed, stared in betrayal like that stab had come from someone he'd thought was his friend, stared in horror like he'd just seen someone come back from the dead—but the Soldier hadn't managed to stab him, the Soldier was alive, and the Soldier was this man's enemy.
The sound had started when that man said, "Bucky?" like the word was simultaneously the sweetest and the most horrible thing he'd ever tasted.
The word felt bloody, almost like it hurt.
"Who the hell is Bucky?" the Soldier asked, because this man was surely confusing him for someone else.
But that was the moment something in the back of his mind began pounding.
It was soft, at first, a gentle but incessant tapping. But it got louder and louder till it felt like he'd been slammed in the back of his skull with a crowbar, the sound pulsing in bright bursts behind his eyes and tasting like blood in his mouth.
The Soldier was on the verge of screaming even before he was strapped back into the chair, and his mind wiped clean, rough and harsh and painful like the inside of his skull was being scrubbed with a metal-bristled brush.
Then the noise was silent.
It was silent until he saw the man again on the helicarrier, and the tapping started again, turning to a knocking as the Soldier stared the man down on the metal bridge.
As they fought the sound just continued exacerbating, turning to a pounding, a rattling, a banging, a booming, a thundering. A small nuisance that could be ignored, then a headache that could be suffered through, then a migraine that was damn near crippling.
There was a drumming noise inside his head that started when this man was around, a banging and a pounding like someone fighting to get out.
There was a drumming noise inside his head that threw him to the ground, and he swore that the target should hear it it made such a godawful sound.
(Louder than sirens, louder than bells, sweeter than heaven and hotter than hell.)
When the Soldier shouted, "Shut up!" it wasn't so much directed at the target who was talking to him, but at the voice in his head that this man seemed to make worse.
And it wasn't until the man said, "Then finish it. 'Cause I'm with you till the end of the line," that the sound crashed through the Soldier's skull so loudly he couldn't move couldn't think as he stared at the target's face, and he started to be able to pick up words amidst all the screaming.
STEVE! A voice was screaming as the man fell away. Grab my hand!
And suddenly that was so much more important than any mission you could ever remember.
In the water it was dark and murky and with the Soldier's breathing ceased, held still in his lungs, he realized the drumming sound was pounding to the cadence of his heart, and his heart was racing.
The noise was so loud he couldn't even register the pain from his dislocated shoulder as he dragged the man ashore, staring down at that face and wondering why the voice was still screaming now that he wasn't in any immediate danger.
With every step the Soldier took away from the half-drowned, half-dead man on the beach, the banging got slightly quieter, seeming to lose its willpower he dragged himself and the screaming thing in his head farther away from what it seemed to be fighting for.
The noise had been reduced once more to a tolerable knocking, but it refused to go away.
All day, all night, a drum inside his head, a begging and banging against a locked metal door, the sound resonating and clanging throughout the emptiness of his skull.
And finally he gave in, and in stolen civilian clothes entered the museum, the Captain America exhibit, because that voice was still whispering Steve, sad and broken and desperate on the other side of that door in pitch black darkness.
But in the exhibit, the banging got progressively louder and louder as he read about Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos and—
Bucky.
He stared, drinking in the information on the sign about the man with the name that this Steve had called him, and the thing in his head went from banging on the door with its fists to throwing itself bodily against it, yelling, shouting, screaming.
Screaming that yes that is me, I am Bucky, I AM.
And the noise was too much, and he had to get out, he had to get OUT because this drumming, this war drum in his head, it needed to STOP.
But whatever was behind that locked door, it wouldn't stop fighting.
So he ran to the river and dove straight in; he prayed that the water would drown out the din. But as the water filled his mouth, it couldn't wash the echoes out.
It couldn't wash the echoes out.
He swallowed the sound and it swallowed him whole, till there was nothing else inside his soul, as empty as that beating drum, but the sound had just begun.
And it was dark and the water was cold against his skin that felt far, far too hot, and the water in his mouth tasted foul, vaguely of mud and motor oil and he had no idea what else, but it diluted the taste of blood and it stung his eyes when he opened them to look around at the murky, black-green depths.
He couldn't help but think, as he let the current sweep him along, that if he just stayed down their long enough then the water would fill his lungs and his mind would fill with cold, sweet, silent darkness.
And this burning, this awful pounding would go away. He wouldn't hurt so much. He wouldn't have to deal with the screaming, with the voice that insisted, I am Bucky I AM.
The voice that shouted, let me OUT, dammit.
The voice that pleaded, please, Steve. Please? Steve...
Air was bubbling from his parted lips when he spotted something through the greenish darkness; a sliver of red and silver sticking up out of the sediment.
Reaching out, the fingers of his flesh hand brushed against the (familiar) smooth surface, before gripping the edge and pulling it out of the mud: a perfectly round metal shield with a white star on blue, a stripe of red, a stripe of white, another stripe of red.
He briefly remembered Captain America letting his shield drop out of the helicarrier, saying "I'm not gonna fight you, Buck." Saying, "You're my friend."
And Steve had let Captain America's shield fall—his symbol, his weapon—as if it mattered nothing.
This is not the end, screamed the voice in his head, banging louder, throwing itself against the door, clawing at it, scraping. This is NOT the end!
With the shield gripped firmly in his hand, the Soldier kicked off from the bottom of the river and swam desperately for the surface with is metal arm while his right held the shield to his chest, his lungs burning and only half filled with air.
His head broke the surface and he gasped, coughing up part of the river, eyes blinking against the sudden light and still stinging from the water, as he began stroking towards the riverbank.
He didn't so much walk out of the river as drag himself from its clutches like a zombie exhuming itself from its grave.
Completely soaked and dripping, clothes clinging heavily to his body and hair limp and sticking to his face, he staggered onto dry land and collapsed to his hands and knees. Water trickled from his mouth as he stared down at the too-vibrant red, white, and blue shield still held tight in his grip.
The pounding in his head was still there, urging him to his feet, and he began walking through what appeared to be a park, tucking the shield beneath his jacket.
There was green grass and trees with green leaves and the air tasted of car exhaust and foliage and infinitely better than the river, and he tried to ignore everyone who was looking at him with fearful, wary gazes.
He shouldn't be out here in the daylight. But then again, nobody really ever noticed anything. (Not until it was too late.)
He could disappear, even in a situation like this, because he was a qualified ghost by nature and by nurture.
It really wasn't a difficult task to become nothing.
He was nothing more than a shadow in the night.
Shadow-silent, shadow-dark, shadow-soft, he slipped with liquid grace through the city towards where he knew Steve to be, the pounding in his head prodding him onwards like a whip to a horse.
It was a simple matter to break undetected into the hospital, a simple matter to sneak past the night nurses and find Steve's room, cracking open the door just enough to slink inside.
As he moved his feet towards Steve's sleeping body, he could hear the beat filling his head up and getting louder and louder. Filling his head up and getting louder and louder.
This drumming noise inside his head that started when Steve was around, a banging and a pounding like someone fighting to get out.
This drumming noise inside his head that nearly threw him to the ground, and he swore that Steve should hear it it made such a godawful sound.
But Steve didn't wake up.
The Soldier—Bucky, screamed the voice, I AM—took a moment to gaze over the man with the blond hair and chiseled features, the voice crying out at the wounds still visible, dark against the man's light skin, ghostly in the dim light that filtered in under the crack beneath the door and through the cracks in the blinds from the florescent lights in the hallway.
Steve's eyes were closed and his breathing deep and even, but his lips were pulled in a frown.
There was something achingly familiar about this whole setup, seeing Steve in a hospital bed, the smell of antiseptic overpowering and masking the scent of blood and sickness. Only he used to be smaller... weak, fragile, breakable.
Gently, softly as a moth, Bucky laid the shield on the bed next to the supersoldier, letting his fingertips ghost over the back of the man's hand. His skin was warm.
Steve's eyes flickered open, latching onto the Soldier's face.
"Bucky?" he whispered, gazing transfixed, as if this was some beautiful dream, and he was trying to memorize every detail of his best friend's face before it slipped away into nothingness, faded like a shadow into the darkness.
Bucky held his metal finger to his lips, the touch of it smooth and cold. "I am," he murmured, hardly more than a breath, and Steve's blue eyes were filled so much hope and fear.
The pounding in Bucky's head was joined by the pounding of his heart, and he couldn't help but flinch, wondering why Steve wasn't covering his ears from the din.
He would be covering his ears, if the noise wasn't inside his own head and all he'd accomplish would be blocking it in.
"Please," Steve rasped, lifting a hand weakly towards him. "Don't go..."
Those blue eyes glistened. "Bucky please..."
But Bucky had already turned and slipped back out the door, not quite as smoothly and quietly as he had come.
Steve's gaze fell and his hand dropped back to his side, but instead of meeting the soft sheets it rested against something cold and hard.
Running his hand over the (familiar) smooth surface, Steve gripped the fingers of his right hand around the edge and lifted up Captain America's shield, where the red, white, and blue design caught the slivers of light that filtered into the room through the closed blinds.
Bucky didn't make it far.
Outside Steve's door, Bucky leaned back against the wall, letting his head fall back as he looked up at the white ceiling.
He'd thought the noise would be quieter, now. But apparently the pounding had just begun, because his migraine got worse and he slid down the wall, whimpering.
"Make it stop," he murmured. "Why won't it stop?"
There was a drumming noise inside his head, and it had brought him to the ground, filling his head up so he couldn't hear his racing heartbeat.
(Louder than sirens, louder than bells, sweeter than heaven and hotter than hell.)
He couldn't even think through the noise, could only react as a nurse started to come around the corner—the nurse saw nothing, heard nothing, and Bucky was back inside Steve's room.
"Buck—" Steve started, looking up from his shield and trying to sit up, but in two swift strides Bucky had crossed the room, clamping a hand over Steve's mouth and pressing him back down.
"Why won't you shut up?" he growled quietly, partly to the screaming thing in his head and partly to the Captain. "I'm here, aren't I?"
Beneath his hand, he felt Steve smile.