AN: In comic canon (and implied in movie canon), the Winter Soldier kills JFK. The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reference concerns the 1931 film which is infamous for its transformation scene.

And The Wounded Sing

Part Nine

By: Wynn

In the building by the knoll, he tracks the car. Driving slow, the top down, the figures inside are exposed and vulnerable as they wave to the gathered crowd. He sights first the woman, her dark hair shining in the sun, then the man beside her, the acknowledged leader of the free world. He smiles and waves and his suit stretches tight as he twists around to greet those streaming behind. Through the scope, his smile blinds. Bucky blinks and shakes his head, hearing a whisper, a hush of a howl in the back of his mind, but then clarity returns and he shoulders the gun. As he takes aim, the woman leans forward and presses a button on the dash. The beat shifts and the strings crunch and the howl in his mind grows, culminating in a crescendo of screams that he silences with the pull of his trigger.

The star guides his way, making his bullet sure and true. At the shot, the tire explodes, sending the car tumbling down the hill. He follows, his eyes tracking the pink pillbox that catches on a gust of wind. Glass crunches beneath his boots as he strides down the embankment. The man lies on the ground, bleeding red through his blue suit. In the car, the woman hangs, suspended by the seatbelts like an arm in a sling. She catches his eye in the mirror. Blood and lavender scents the air. Bucky reaches into the car, brushes cool fingers against her cheek. She shivers at the touch and he flinches, but clarity returns as the speakers crackle and the static whispers and the howl subsides in his mind. He closes his hand around her throat. She tries to speak, always she does, but he tightens his grip, and thunder rumbles in the sky beyond as her light fades and she dies.

The man on the ground gasps and wheezes, panic setting in as Bucky turns. The star illuminates the cuts and bruises, the knife strapped and gleaming to his thigh, the doubts in his mind. Gazing down, he expects defiance, but despair greets him instead, and he stills at this, the world wrong, but he couldn't go back. Order remains to him, and pain too, and as he kneels on the ground, the second greets him as an old friend as a cracked and bloody question swirls up through the sky.

Bucky?

He wakes, gasping, his hands clutching the sheets. Cold sweat clings to his skin, and his heart races in his chest. Bucky sucks in a lungful of air followed by another and another, but the crisp breaths fail to ease his discomfort. Lurching upright, he reaches for the glass of water by his bed and he downs the lot, trying to drown the nightmare of Steve and Darcy in the car, in the place of Howard and his wife and… a president before? Bucky swallows at the vague memory. Hydra never told him more than he needed to know, the logistics of his assignments only. He seldom knew the identities of his marks, unless those proved to be tactically advantageous. They never even told him Steve's name or his Captain America moniker. He'd just been briefed on how well Steve fought and his durability, nothing more, nothing about the man, the soul within. Just how best to kill the body.

Bucky shivers at the thought of Hydra. The shiver carries him to his feet and out through his new door, installed the day before as he hid in Darcy's apartment. He stops in the doorway to Steve's room and peers inside, but he spies no one in the bed, the sheets and blankets as pristine as they had been that morning. Pulse thrumming, he makes his way to the living room. Steve sleeps on the couch, slumped before a stack of files on the coffee table. Lawyer résumés and court cases that bore even the smallest shred of relevance to his situation, information gathered to prevent him from being transferred from his Hydra imprisonment to incarceration here for his crimes against the state. He wonders now what the Hydra files released by the Widow contained about him, whether his sordid history lay bare for all to see or if even Hydra treated him like a ghost, reducing his existence to the barest minimum.

He wonders how much Steve knows.

Shivering again, Bucky strides forward. He eases a file from Steve's hands, placing it beside the rest on the table without glancing inside, then he pokes Steve in the knee and says, "Come on, pal. Let's get you to bed."

Steve flinches at the touch, but he doesn't wake. Frowning, Bucky starts to reach for him again, only to stop as he recognizes the grip of a nightmare. Then Steve whimpers and Bucky moves, pushing the table away and crouching unencumbered before the couch.

"Steve. Steve." Bucky lays a hand on his knee again and gives it a firm shake. "Come on, buddy. Wake up. You're having a—"

Steve shoots up, his eyes open but wild, his mind still caught in the dream. Bucky retracts his hand, inches back half a foot, and waits. Steve stares blind for a few seconds before focusing on Bucky. When he does, his face twists and he closes his eyes, and Bucky feels his throat swell at the soft hitch of breath in Steve's chest.

"It's okay," he says softly. "I'm okay. I'm here. I'm fine."

Steve nods. He lifts a hand and rubs it across his face. Bucky tenses at the glimpse of a tremor in his fingers, testament to the brutality of his nightmare. Steve blows out a long breath followed by another and another, and Bucky wants to laugh, nothing else he can do, the two of them haunted by more ghosts than one lifetime deserved.

Rather than laugh, he says, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Steve cracks open an eye. He peers at Bucky sidelong, a faint wisp of humor easing the burden on his brow. "That's my line."

"Technically, that's Darcy's line. But I don't think she'd mind us borrowing it." He pauses then, the memory of the motel surfacing, of his prior attempt to comfort someone upon waking from a nightmare. He remembers standing before the bed, his heart still beating wildly in his chest at the strangulation scare with her headphones. He'd rejected her offer to talk after his dreamt trauma woke him. Offering now would be hypocritical, tactically dangerous, leaving him vulnerable to… to… memory, he thinks, pushing the word through the gaps in his brain. But he can't… He watches her hands shake as she drinks from her water glass, watches how she avoids his gaze, and he doesn't… he doesn't… He should return to the window; they would be searching, she hadn't driven far enough, hidden well enough to evade Herr… to evade him, but he can't,the thought of separation from her, of her leaving, of her hurting, fixing him in place.

"Buck?"

"Sorry," he says, focusing again on Steve, who frowns at him now, concern clear on his brow. "I just… I remembered the motel. And Darcy. She, uh, she had a nightmare, and I—" He pauses again, a smile starting to form at his first stilted attempts at consolation. "I asked if she wanted to talk. She sassed the shit out of me for doing it 'cause I shot her down not two hours before. Made me watch cat videos with her instead." His smile widens at the joy she took in watching those insane balls of fur, in sharing with him something that she loved. From the corners of his eyes, he sees Steve start to grin, and he shifts his smile to a scowl. "Shut it."

Steve holds up his hands. "I didn't say anything."

"Good."

"But if I did…"

Bucky throws his head back and sighs.

"If I did," Steve continues, "I would say she's a good friend. One that's a little too obsessed with my eating habits," he adds, lifting a brow. "But a good friend."

The comment about food makes Bucky look again at Steve. Darcy harped on him about eating in the first few days of their acquaintance, the stress of the new world into which he had fallen and the constant threat of recapture distracting him from doing so. Now she harps on Steve, and the revelation rips back the curtain for Bucky and reveals to him the truth. A month and a half since he reappeared in Steve's life, and he's already driven him to this, worn to exhaustion from trying to help him.

Bucky swallows down the realization, not wanting to fight with Steve. Pushing him to care for himself, to admit his limitations, never ended well in the past, even after Steve took the Super Soldier Serum. Then he cited the war and Hydra and how so many had already died and how this is what they made him for, doing what other men couldn't, going above and beyond again and again and again. Bucky figures he'll encounter more of the same now, age and the passage of time failing to mellow Steve. Not with how recklessly he fought on the goddamn carrier.

"She is a good friend," he says standing. "And I am too. Now get up and go the fuck to sleep."

Steve tilts his chin at Bucky. "I will if you will."

The urge to roll his eyes swells within Bucky. No. It never ended well, Steve a fucking stubborn bastard. Tamping down the urge, he says calmly, "I will. Believe me. I fully appreciate sleep and all its benefits now. I want as much as my brain'll give me. But…"

"What?"

Bucky debates the truth, but he doesn't want to Steve to bypass sleep to come with him. So he says instead, "Darcy. My nightmare... She was in it, and it… it wasn't good. And I just… I know it's dumb, but seeing her'll help me settle, so…"

"So you have to go. I understand," Steve says, standing now. "And it's not dumb."

Bucky nods, grateful for the acceptance. He follows Steve down the hall, waiting at his door until he climbs into bed. Steve just shakes his head and sighs, but he complies, shoving the sheets and blanket to a pile by his feet as he settles down to sleep. Bucky crosses to his room, grabs his socks, boots, and hoodie, and dons them before leaving the apartment. Then he takes the stairs to Darcy's floor, the lie quickly becoming truth in his need to know that she's safe.

He counts on the door being unlocked, despite his berating of her for her lax security before. And it is. There's even a small nightlight in the foyer that he knows that she left for him, Darcy down for the count usually once she fell asleep. The gesture simultaneously soothes and unsettles him, his dream rearing again, Bucky choking her as she hung suspended by the seatbelts, unable to escape. He closes his eyes and tries to banish the image, to recall instead the trust in her eyes when he touched her for the first time with his left hand. All he does is blend the two and mar the good moment, so, gritting his teeth, Bucky eases down the hall to her bedroom.

There, he peeks inside and finds Darcy safe, asleep on the bed, curled in a loose curve around a thick green pillow. He wants to join her, to crawl into the space behind her and curl into her as she curls into the pillow, but the sour taste of the dream still taints his mind, so he turns from the door and makes his way back out of the apartment instead. Stability. He needs stability. He needs to sleep without the aid of miracle drugs, long enough at least to let Steve relax, long enough to allow him, maybe, to stay with Darcy, to be with her as he wants to be and as she deserves.

In the gym a new mirror hangs, replacing the one that he broke in his prior attempt to exhaust his mind into compliance. He can't return to that state, can't lose the progress that he's made since then. The thought of unraveling in the same way, of unleashing his internal devastation upon the world around him, upon the people around him, makes him shiver. He can't. He can't. He can't. He needs… something. Something different. Something that worked.

Shivering again, Bucky glances at the clock. A little after five. Long enough for a short workout to help ease his mind and prepare him for the conversation at hand. Crossing the gym, he sheds his hoodie, draping it beside the free weights and begins to stretch. The longer he finds himself out of cryo, the more he discovers he needs to exercise in this way, particularly his right arm if he wants to keep it in any semblance of balance with his left. He stops and shakes his head, a humorless smile twisting his lips. Everything needed balance. The body and the mind, and he had neither, brain and body both carved open and laced through with grit and steel.

Sighing, Bucky reaches for the fifty-pound weight. He begins, focusing on his breathing and on his form, but as the minutes pass, his movement catches his eye, the glimpses that he sees in the mirror as he lifts and lowers the weight. Bucky clenches his jaw and turns away, but the image of Darcy appears before him, how she stared at him in his jeans and wet t-shirt, how she claimed that there was something worth seeing when she looked at him. The last time he had peered into a mirror mist blocked his vision. The time before that his fist did. A glimpse in glass, in a motel mirror and the one in the Prius, but nothing else, the fear within him paralyzing and preventing him from anything more.

And what had that gotten him? Disintegration and doubt. The near destruction of all that he'd just achieved in his life. He swallows, torn, fear snatching the breath, then the weight falls from his hand, slamming onto the mat as he turns and faces the mirror.

The first thing he sees is his left hand, glinting in the light. He never examined it much before, never wanted to when he remembered, the arm glaring evidence of his present reality, or when he forgot either, the arm simply an extension of himself, another weapon for him to use. Now he lifts his arm and peers at his hand, at the multitude of plates, layered like mail, shifting as scales on a snake. He bears no scratches along the metal though he remembers jamming his fingers into asphalt to slow his flight off of Steve's car, though he blocked bullets in his fight against Hydra at the diner. Perhaps Tony would know what kind of metal they had used to make his arm. Something strong enough at least to resist all harm save that inflicted by Steve's shield.

He remembers the technicians in the bank vault prying back plates to repair the damage wrought by the Widow's electric weapon. He watches those plates slide now, glide along an inner layer of metal and wires. The part of him piqued by Howard Stark and his technology recognizes the skill involved with making the arm, but any admiration burns when he spots the star branded onto his shoulder. Twisting toward the mirror, Bucky hikes up the sleeve of his tee to get a better view. The star covers multiple plates, likely painted after construction and installation. Bucky scratches at the red, but he makes no mark. He considers wrenching apart the stand for the weights to mar the perfection of the star, but the feel of scar tissue beneath his fingers has him ripping his shirt off and moving closer to the mirror.

A twisted red band encircles the metal disappearing into his shoulder. The band radiates down his chest in deep grooves. Shaking, Bucky lifts his right hand and lifts it to his chest; the grooves fit his fingertips, fit the nails bitten and blunt but present enough to wound. How many times must he have clawed at his chest for scars such as these to form? A memory lurches into view, of Bucky in a cell with bloodied hands, pulling and pulling and pulling at his arm, trying to wrest it free. His pulse accelerates and bile rises in his throat at the remembrance. He twists away from the mirror, nearly tripping over the weight in his haste to escape, stopping dead anyway when he sees Bruce by the entrance to the gym, watching him with wide eyes.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asks, his voice scraping raw in his throat.

"I'm sorry," Bruce says, easing back. He wears clothes for running, carries a towel and a water bottle in his hand. "I tried calling to you, but—"

"It's fine." Bucky presses his lips together and tries to calm the chaos inside of him. Whirling, he grabs his shirt and wrenches it on, stopping when he rips the seam of the left sleeve. "Fucking shit goddamn it all to fucking goddamn hell."

Bruce snorts. "That sounds familiar."

Clenching his jaw, Bucky looks up at him and glares.

"It does," Bruce says, steady in the face of the glare. "I've been able to build up something of a wardrobe the past two years, but for a long time, I had exactly one shirt and one pair of pants. I kept destroying everything else."

Bucky scowls a moment longer before turning away. "Congratulations," he mutters as he grabs his hoodie. "You and Steve out to get together and compare closets. His is real swell."

"I'm sure it is."

The dry tone grates. Bucky dons his hoodie, more carefully than he did his t-shirt, not wishing to destroy this gift from Darcy, then he starts for the door. He expects Bruce to move, but Bruce doesn't. In fact, he centers himself in its midst, preventing Bucky from leaving.

"Move."

Bruce shakes his head.

The urge to lash out rises within Bucky. He looks at Bruce and sees all the scientists, all the so-called doctors who ever tortured him, who cut open his chest and shoved metal inside, who put fire in his veins and ice in his lungs. Tensing, he clenches his left hand into a fist, but before he can move, Bruce speaks.

"You feel like a stranger in your own body, don't you? Why wouldn't you," he says, scanning Bucky from head to toe, his gaze lingering on his left arm. "You do things and don't remember them, you wake up someplace new and you're not sure how you got there, but you're bearing new bruises, and all you can do is hope is that, this time, you didn't hurt anyone. But you know that's not true."

Bucky backs up a step. He eyes Bruce, caught between fight and flight.

"It's not exactly the same," Bruce continues. "But you still feel like there's this part of you that's not right. That's not you. Except there's another part of you that knows that it is, and that terrifies you more than anything else."

Heart thrumming, Bucky peers at Bruce. There's a certainty within him that Bucky doesn't feel, but beneath that lies a thread of apprehension, not towards Bucky or what he might do, Bucky knows that feeling intimately, seeing it on more than one face throughout his time at Hydra, but towards Bruce himself, the kind of unease reflected back at Bucky each time he avoids a mirror, each time he twists and writhes as another memory surfaces concerning the sins of his past.

Bucky watches, wary, another moment before saying, "Darcy said something a few days ago about being here, how weird it was. She mentioned Tony in his tin can. Me with my head. And she said something about a raging green giant." He pauses, scrutinizing the flicker of emotion across Bruce's face. "That's you, isn't it?"

Bruce hesitates but then nods.

"How?"

"The Super Soldier Serum."

Bucky backs up another step, his eyes widening.

"Or a version of it," Bruce clarifies. He eases around Bucky then and makes his way toward one of the treadmills. There, he drapes his towel over the handrail and places his water in the open cup. It's a stall for time, Bucky knows, but one he allows, understanding as he does the disquiet underlying it. When Bruce faces him again, the disquiet does too, seen in clench of his hands and the hunch of his shoulders as he says, "I was contracted by the Army to try to recreate the serum using gamma radiation. It's a form of electromagnetic radiation, like what Howard Stark used—"

"To make Steve."

Bruce nods.

At the nod, Bucky cocks a brow. "I'm guessing it didn't go so well for you."

This earns him a small smile. "No. And yes. You know the theory behind the serum? How it's supposed to amplify what's inside a person? Well, when you're a good man like Steve, then you get someone like Captain America. For someone like me though…" Bruce tries to shrug, but the gesture fails, wobbling along with his smile to smash upon the floor. Bucky feels the jagged ends prick him and scrape raw the doubt he previously expressed to Steve, how Hydra didn't make him, but simply molded and shaped the killer within.

"I was angry," Bruce continues, his voice soft. "I am angry. About… many things. I tried not to be for a long time. I pushed it all down, but the serum…"

"Pushed it back up."

Bruce nods again. He opens his mouth, hesitates, then swallows and says, "I could show you. Jarvis can relay footage from the lab."

Bucky peers across the gym. He takes in the set jaw and slanted brows, the stare that attempts to be direct but skitters off, down to the floor. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, he says, "Doesn't seem like you want to."

Bruce laughs. "I don't. But I've been encouraged to be more… open. And I don't want to make you uncomfortable with not knowing the truth. Seems you've lived too long that way."

He had. Bucky considers another moment before nodding, his curiosity about Bruce's condition getting the best of him. Bruce alerts Jarvis of his request, and, a second later, a projected image appears on the wall before the treadmills. As Bucky eases closer, he spies the lab in which Tony had built the chair and where he and the others had worked the curse and the miracle of helping Bucky to remember. Instead of the chair, though, Bucky sees Bruce sitting on the floor with his hands on his knees and his eyes closed. A few seconds pass in which nothing happens, nothing except the real Bruce turning away and busying himself with inspecting the leg press machine behind Bucky. Then the transformation starts. Whatever preparation Bucky had from Darcy's various quips or Bruce's own statements just moments before quickly reveal themselves to be inadequate. Bucky gapes, the video before him like a scene out of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, except bigger. And greener.

The footage shifts to the alien attack in New York. Bucky had researched this while Darcy slept in the motel, but he had focused on Steve then, obsessed with the itch in his mind of a bond with this man. Now he watches Bruce tear through the city, bringing down giant worms from space and smashing aliens like someone crushed a bug beneath a shoe.

"Holy shit."

"I've been practicing conscious transformations," Bruce says now. His tone compels Bucky to turn, stilted and soft with discomfort. He looks past Bucky at the wall, at the image of himself in the city. His mouth flattens, but he doesn't avert his gaze. Bucky watches Bruce watch himself, his heart pounding at the forthright consideration at which he has failed for seventy years.

Another few seconds pass before, sighing, Bruce returns his attention to Bucky. "I haven't lost control in a couple of years."

Hands trembling inside his hoodie, Bucky says, "Darcy mentioned you destroyed a city. Is that… this?" He points back at the wall with his elbow.

Bruce shakes his head. "That was Harlem. The last time was just before this. On a helicarrier. Of course, it's what happened in Harlem that has the U.S. government trying to imprison me."

Bucky freezes. A gasp catches in his throat.

His reaction does not go unnoticed by Bruce, who shrugs, a strained smile on his face. "It doesn't matter that I was trying to help. It likely won't matter that you were a prisoner of war. But Tony and Pepper helped me find a lawyer. I think they're trying to help Steve, too."

Bucky nods. The gasp lodges and clogs in his throat, choking him with the real possibility that his newly won freedom might be stripped away. He can't. He can't. Even if he should, even if he should be in prison for what he did, he can't, so he asks, the question cracking in the middle, "Any suggestions for me?"

Bruce nods. "Control the threat."

Stability. He needs stability. Bucky breathes in, the panic within him abating at the confirmation of his instinct concerning his situation. "That's why I'm here," he says now. "I couldn't… Sleep is hard. Nightmares and memories. And I don't… I don't want to be—" He clenches his jaw at his stuttered expression, breathes in and out, and then says, "I don't want to fall apart again, so you got any suggestions? You know, being a doctor and all."

Bruce takes a moment to consider. "There are pharmacological options. Sleep aids and the—"

"No."

"I mention it only because Hydra may have altered your physiology. Destabilizing the levels of neurochemicals in your brain would likely make you more susceptible to their brainwashing techniques, so—"

Bucky holds up a hand. He closes it into a fist when Bruce glances at his trembling fingers. "I get what you're… But I can't. I— Not unless I can't do it otherwise."

Bruce nods. He raises a hand and scratches the back of his head as he reconsiders, and the panic within Bucky fades to manageable levels. "There are other possibilities," Bruce says after a few more seconds. "Alternate therapies and the like. Pepper and I do yoga here a few nights a week. You're welcome to join us."

"Yoga?"

"It's an exercise that focuses on breathing and flexibility, developing core strength. It's intended to help practitioners achieve mental clarity and stability."

"Ah."

A small smile appears on Bruce's face. "It helps. Drugs don't really work for me or Pepper, but a steady mind is vital to us both or—"

"You'll transform and she'll explode?"

His smile deepens. "They told you about the exploding then?"

"Yes. I can't really imagine her doing it though. She's so… together."

"She is," Bruce says as he moves toward his treadmill. "But we would be too if we didn't have what we have floating around in us."

Bucky frowns as he follows Bruce. "She was injected with the serum?"

"No. It's called Extremis. It was originally designed to help amputees, to help them regrow lost limbs. It had some… unexpected side effects."

Bucky freezes. He feels the plates shift in his arm, hears the soft whirr of gears and gyros. His mouth goes dry at the possibility. No Hydra tech. No blood-soaked history. Just his arm. Just him as he had been before. Complete and whole.

"I don't know if it would work for you."

Bucky jumps at the soft admission. He looks at Bruce, who stares at him, thankfully, rather than at his arm.

"Like I said before, your physiology… I don't know. I could look into it, if you wanted. There are… Your files from Hydra. They're online with the rest. I could review them, run some models and see how successful an infusion might be."

Bucky gapes. He can't not, the offer too unexpected, the thought of healing, of being whole, in body as well as in mind, too overwhelming. He looks away, trembling again. He hears Bruce shift and turn away and start to activate the treadmill, and Bucky knows it's out of deference to him, to give him time to process. His left hand twitches in his pocket; the weight bears down on him, making him sway. "Why?"

"I want to."

Bucky looks at him now, tears in his eyes. "But why?"

Bruce breathes in. He preps himself for revelation. Bucky does too, tensing against the disclosure to come. After a moment, it does, as soft and stilted as Bucky's own admission. "When I was first brought in, when Natasha found me, I… I'd been on my own for a long time. I was… Most were afraid. I was dangerous. But the team here… they accepted me. Even after I lost control on the carrier." His fingers worry the ends of the towel. He works his jaw, lets loose a soft exhale. "I didn't think I'd want it as much as I did. But I did. I do. So I… I'd like to do the same for you." Bruce glances at Bucky now and shrugs. "You don't have to decide now. It's a lot. But if you do, just let me know."

Bucky nods, once, slowly. He understands the strange intoxication of acceptance, the dizzying sensation the first time that Darcy approached him, and the sense of comfort he feels now with her and Steve. And now Thor and Pepper and Bruce, even Tony too in his way, all knowing who he is and what's done and still…

He shivers and hunches down, fighting for control. Bruce sends him a small smile before pointing toward a nearby treadmill. "Have you run yet?"

Bucky shakes his head.

"Do you want to? You don't have to. I just—"

"Okay."

Bruce nods and climbs onto his machine. Shaking still, Bucky unzips his hoodie. He drapes it over the towel bar of the adjacent treadmill before stepping on. He starts slowly, keeping pace with Bruce, eyeing him and the blank wall before them, the video footage no longer displayed, then the mirror to their right and the glimpse of his left arm as he strides in place. After a few minutes, the rhythm of their pace soothes him; the silence that Bruce permits does too. Bucky feels his mind still as his body loosens, relaxing into the pound of the run.

"So," he says after a mile of silence, taking another leap and hoping that he sticks the landing, "you don't have a red skull, too, do you?"

From the corners of his eyes, he sees Bruce smile. "Not that I know of."

Bucky nods. He feels an answering smile appear on his face, and he turns toward Bruce and raises a brow. "Good."