Summary: Inception. That is all.
Notes: Whoo. Thanks, guys, for the feedback! Seriously, I live for the comments section! lol Anyway. I'll leave you guys to it. We're on the second-to-last installment, here, so again, if you have ideas or anything, please let me know! Love you all! Tell me how you like! Sarah PS-Don't own Marvel, don't own Inception, and the title is from the David Cook song of the same name. LOVE that song!
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He felt like he'd dozed off.
Could you doze off if you were…wherever he was?
He had to assume, at this point, that he was unconscious somewhere, for this all to have unfolded, though his memory was spotty and he couldn't remember much.
The last thing in his head was making love to Darcy the morning she went to talk to Bruce and Tony. They'd given them some pretty awful news. She'd gone for a walk, alone, to clear her head.
Then…nothing. Various scenes, pacing in front of huge windows, a beautiful sunset, a catatonic Darcy, and making tea, these things all formed a collage of things he'd done, but they quickly faded to gray in his mind's eye.
Just nothing.
This, conversely, was not nothing.
This was very, very far from nothing.
If the small pieces he had really spoke for anything, he could swear he was in Central Park.
More specifically, he was in front of the duck pond off of 104th. In fact, there was the bridge, and the rock he'd sat on with Darcy—
And just like that, there they were, in front of him, the memory coming up out of the mist of his mind, and he stood there, an audience of one on the scene they'd made, that last time he'd asked her to lunch. Just before things had really blossomed, before they'd exploded into bright Technicolor, warming him all the way down to his toes.
When he'd finally worked up the nerve to kiss her.
"You suppose they think about important things?" Darcy spoke, echoing the memory in his head, one of the clear ones that he could recall with stunning detail.
He cherished it, so it was bright and sparkling in his mind, a small treasure he kept close to the chest.
He'd married an absolutely, stunningly beautiful woman. But that day, he remembered her looking so breathtaking that he'd felt barely able to speak.
"What's sorts of important things?" he asked from beside her.
She smiled, her chestnut hair lifting in the soft breeze, and readjusted her weight on the rock, smoothing the material of her daisy-patterned skirt. "You know: what they're supposed to be doing. What the point of it all is. That sort of stuff."
He smirked at her, lifting an eyebrow. "You're wondering whether or not ducks have philosophical quandaries?"
She snorted, reaching out to shove his shoulder, and her hand stayed there, warm on the cotton of his blue v-neck, her bright yellow nail polish refracting the sunlight filtering through the canopy of trees surrounding the pond. "It's called making conversation!" she teased, bumping his shoulder with her own and edging closer to his reclined position on the rock beside her. "You know, something you're going to have to master, now that you've returned to the land of the living?"
And she smiled at him, quirking an eyebrow, and he remembered being mesmerized by the sweeping cat's eye of her coal-black liner. "You're gonna have to walk me through it; I'm probably pretty rusty."
She shrugged. "Totally okay. I am here. For you." She giggled, leaning forward to toss another piece of bread from her unfinished sandwich into the water, where a mallard quickly paddled over to snatch it up. She paused. "How'd it go with the doc this morning?"
He watched his own shoulders tense. "Fine. She told me the nightmares are normal." He snorted. "Because dreaming of yourself with your hands around someone's throat is totally normal."
Completely nonplussed by this confession, Darcy leaned into his shoulder, then, full-bodied. "They'll fade. You'll see. It'll all fade until it's just foggy half-knowledge." Her voice softened. "Soon you'll be standing up straight. I know it."
He sighed, looking away, squinting at the far edge of the water, where a group of teenagers were laughing and attempting to splash each other in the muck. "Half-knowledge isn't a side-effect of a photographic memory, Darce."
She didn't try to argue with what she'd known to be true. She'd just smiled. "I like when you call me that."
He looked at her, their faces so close he could've pulled the trigger then, already, if the moment had felt just right. "What?"
"Darce. It sounds sweet."
He flushed lightly, the tips of his ears going pink, and picked up another piece of bread, tossing it into the water. It floated for a moment before a duck came upon it. Then another appeared. Then another.
And another.
They started squawking at each other, battling it out, nipping at each other with their beaks for the treat that would quickly lose its buoyancy.
Darcy started to laugh, the sound like freedom in his ears, and he smiled.
Then, one of them decided to climb onto shore, eyeing them determinedly, like he was sure he'd get his share.
"Oh, God!" Darcy cackled, edging back a bit. "Take it, just don't bite me."
But the duck ignored her and made a beeline straight for Bucky, quickly followed by another, and they started to hover, standing there and giving him beady eyes for more food.
Darcy was giggling now, uncontrollably, as they quacked and stared.
Bucky sighed, but edged back, looking apprehensive. "Shoo."
She snorted. "There you go! Just what you wanted: they're not afraid of you!"
"Ducks weren't exactly what I had in mind." He took up the bread.
They closed in on him, getting much closer than he expected, completely domesticated.
Darcy scrambled up. "I don't want any duck poo on my new skirt!" She paused. "And I just realized how terribly girly that sounded! I take it back!" She took half the bread from his hand and started tearing it and tossing it out at them.
They gathered, pecking it up and downing it quickly.
"They're getting violent," he observed.
Darcy snorted, tossing out another piece. "Yeah, maybe they're rabid. We should think about making a strategic retreat."
He nodded, smirking. "We only have so much bread."
And then it was gone and they were standing there, watching all the ducks munching quietly on their prizes.
She slid her small hand around his wrist and tugged. "Now!" But her ballet flat caught on a rough edge of the rock and she teetered uncertainly.
Bucky slid his human arm easily around her waist and steadied her, pulling her against him.
She gasped, catching herself up, her hands on his chest. She blinked her large eyes up at him, the blue of them making his mind up for him before he could think twice. "If I didn't know you better, I'd think you engineered tha—"
But she didn't get to finish, the rest of her accusation lost in the press of his mouth to hers, the scruff on his jaw pressing into her soft skin.
She made a soft noise of surprise deep in her throat and angled her mouth against him.
The mewling sound did things to him that had him clamping down again on all his self control.
It had been a long time—decades, in fact—and that chaste kiss had been the hardest thing he'd done since waking from his menacing slumber. Hard, because it was everything he wanted, but it also served to illustrate how long his body had been denying his attraction to her.
It was as if all his testosterone flooded his synapses at once and he tightened his arm around her waist, so desperate to follow the flare of want and need where it directed him.
But he couldn't.
This moment was too tentative and new, too sweet with warm affection for rough urges. With a slow, deep breath, he pulled back to find her looking up at him with those big, doe eyes, the color high and soft in her cheeks, a little breathless, her heart pounding against his ribs.
He swallowed thickly and looked down at her with what he was sure was undisguised want.
She smiled. "Took you long enough, Soldier Boy."
And he laughed, the sound bubbling up from inside, heady with relief.
"Bucky!"
He blinked, snapping from the vision to look around.
Like something out of Alice in Wonderland, there was a door, a random, wooden door set in the side of the trees to his left, right in the center of the scene, as though it had always been there.
"Buck?!"
And Darcy's voice was coming from it.
Tentatively, he edged toward it, frowning, but unable to push down that same flash of want and need now, presented with her voice, so near.
"Jamie?!"
He came to it and stared at the wood grain for a moment, the door tickling at some familiarity in his mind.
"Jamie, baby—c'mon, where are you?"
That was all he needed, a thin note of fear in her voice, and he turned the knob and opened the door—
To find he was still in his old room, and he was standing in the doorway to the closet.
((()))
For a while, Darcy wandered around aimlessly, opening and closing doors with random whimsy. They were all different.
One was clearly set up for George Barnes'…funeral…things.
One was a living room that looked like something out of the Twenties, all with antique pieces, furniture and an old radio, and piles of newspapers, all with historical headlines. She'd stood there for five minutes, openmouthed, studying the atmosphere, the history of her own lover, hidden in the past, behind bookshelves and memories, bloody handprints and the tang of metal.
Then another, softer room, with barely anything in it but for a few books, a worn baseball and glove, a pennant flag, small bed and dresser set, a pitcher and ewer, and a trench coat, very large. Too large, made for a grown man, and she wondered if this was a memory of Steve's room, Steve as he'd been, small and poor.
Then there was a book shop, tiny, with books piled haphazardly on every flat surface, all marked for nickel and dime prices. If she thought she could get away with it, she'd have swiped the old, molding copy of The Great Gatsby and stuck it in her pocket. She was still—mysteriously—in the clothes she'd last been in when she'd stolen into the lab and fallen asleep in the bed beside Bucky's unconscious form.
Some rooms she'd rather not have stumbled across.
Metal.
Terrifying metal instruments.
She opened one at one point to find absolutely nothing in the steel-lined room but a chair.
The Chair.
Her heart in her throat, she'd slammed the door behind her, and she could swear someone was yelling in pain, distant and echoing, and she had to dig her fingernails into her palms to keep from flinching at the memory of Bucky's terrors.
Once or twice, she thought she spied him—or, rather, The Winter Soldier version of him—stalking ahead of her, as though searching for something in particular, but when she tried to follow him, he disappeared around a corner ahead and was gone by the time she got there.
Just how many fucking doors were in this house?!
She paused at one point to backtrack in her mind, and remembered that she was wandering through Bucky's maze-like memory.
Of course. There were dozens and dozens of doors, containing any multitude of horrors. The Winter Soldier was bound to have slides—like film—all flowing throughout, like Sherlock's Mind Palace.
And she was the rat. And she was lost.
And it only got worse from there.
She opened her twelfth random door—she'd been counting—and stumbled across a dreary scene.
Bucky sat—very near the age he'd been in the last awful vision, perhaps a bit younger—in the far corner of the room. This room was neatly furnished, with tools set out beside a worktable—
Where a woman's body was laid out.
She actually jerked to a shuddering stop, her flats squeaking on the worn hardwood floor.
He looked like he'd been slapped as he curled himself as deeply into the corner as he could, staring at the woman with tired, bloodshot eyes. Mournful eyes.
Seeing this vaguely familiar look, she forced herself to study the dead woman clearly waiting to be arranged in her funeral dress.
She was pretty; hopelessly gaunt, but pretty, with cornflower hair that seemed somehow familiar, and soft, delicate features that reminded Darcy of a music box ballerina.
Sarah.
It had to be.
It not only explained his clear desire to be as far away from her as possible, but was undeniable when she finally settled on the woman's eyes—open in death and a beautiful blue.
God, did Steve look like her. The same hair, the same eyes, and a similar shape to the mouth that Darcy felt sure lent itself to the same gentle, affectionate smile.
From what little Bucky had told her, she'd gone unexpectedly—though she'd been sickly most of her life, like her son. Though the TB had been latent in her for years, her last winter had been brutal and fast, withering her down to nothing.
She felt certain that he and Steve had sat vigil over her the night before as she was carried off, and now here Bucky sat alone, holding vigil over her in death.
She'd only ever seen him distraught enough to cry once.
But the look on his face hadn't changed.
His eyes were red and his face gaunt and pulled in, milk pale.
His hair was a little longer and a lock had fallen loose over his eyes, but he didn't reach up to brush it back. He just sat, staring at the woman that Darcy just knew had been more mother to him than his own, legs pulled up on the chair in a defensive, submissive posture. His shirt was loose and unbuttoned at the collar and his scuffed shoes were worn at the soles.
Rather than being creeped out by the body, she felt herself drawn to him across the room, and she was beside him before she'd decided to move, setting her hand on his warm left shoulder. "I'm sorry, baby," she murmured.
He flinched, like he could almost hear her, but didn't otherwise acknowledge her.
She frowned, puzzled by this new development, and wondered how exactly this link she'd somehow formed with him really worked—
But then the door was swinging open and banging on the far wall. "Alright, Jimmy?" George Barnes asked.
It was Darcy's turn to flinch, for the question wasn't asked in a warm and comforting way, but rather in the style of someone slurred by drink.
Bucky flinched again, eyes finally leaving Sarah's body to pin George to the wall across the room. He did not speak.
"You ready to take care of this, kid?"
"How drunk are you, pop?" he asked then, his voice raw but projecting, as though he gathered his nerve like so many warm blankets around him, the presence of his father steeling his spine.
George snickered as he swayed. "Just drunk enough." But he tipped a bit, catching himself as he closed the door behind him. "How 'bout you?"
Bucky rolled his eyes and slid down off his bench, not looking at Sarah's body on the table. "You can't even do this sober?"
George ignored him.
But he persisted. "Seriously, pop, you can't even take care of Sarah without a flask on your hip?"
Finally George paused and blinked down at the woman, then up at his son. "Who?"
Bucky's face went white in anger. "'Who'? We've lived down the street from her for years, pop. Sarah. And Steve?"
George frowned. "The scrawny kid?"
Bucky started laughing, low at first, and with a slightly hysterical air, as he pulled a hand down his face. "Yes."
The drunkard pointed. "And this is his ma?"
His son took a deep, deep breath. "You've known her for years, pop. The least you could do is prepare her with steady hands."
George stilled, as though finally coming to some sort of understanding. "You can always do it, you want to, kid," he suggested, his tone curdling around the edges.
Bucky flinched. "I was hoping I could…help." He sighed. "But if you can't even stay sober—"
"That's enough, kid. I ain't gonna stand here and listen to you—"
"That the point—you're barely standing!" Bucky's voice rose as he interrupted. "Go upstairs and sleep it off. I'll do this."
George snorted. "Oh, you will, will ya? You could never stomach it before, sonny."
Bucky's jaw tightened. "I can stomach it just fine. What I could never stomach was the way you did it like a machine—and now you do it like a beast," he snapped, glaring down into his father's face, half a head shorter than him.
That did it. George found enough steadiness to shove him back a step.
Bucky caught himself up on the table.
"You don't talk to me like that, boy," he threatened. "You wanna do that, you get outta my house. You always been a lousy son, it's about time you got outta my sight. I can set up the dead broad myself."
But Bucky moved too fast for Darcy to even follow, and before she knew it, his fist had swung and George was sprawled on the floor, eyes wide in shock, his jaw reddening and his lip bleeding.
There was a charged moment of silence as they stared at each other, Bucky breathing hard, color high in his cheeks, where it always pooled when he was upset. "Nothing I'd like better," he snarled.
Slowly, George pulled himself to his feet, levering himself on the table. He glanced down at Sarah, then spat a mouthful of blood onto the wood slats of the floor, glaring at his son with a muted, drunken anger. "Then you handle the dame. And then get outta my house."
He turned, skulked across the room again, and then it shook as he slammed the door behind him.
For a long moment, she watched Bucky stare down at Sarah, breathless and pale. He shook out his hand, and she saw it shook as he set it back down again, his knuckles bright red.
She stood staring at him, this younger, softer version of him, but still with those same traits peeking through. It was akin to déjà vu, and she narrowed her gaze, tracing his blue eyes, his cropped hair, and the familiar expression on his face: all his wheels turning.
It was odd. This was clearly Before Bucky, Then Bucky, compared to Her Bucky, and that she was watching him become Her Bucky, watching all the things that had molded him.
And at the same time, he was exactly the same, fundamentally unchanged.
He was a familiar stranger, a phantom of the man she'd married.
She was about to open her mouth and try to communicate again, sure that some corner of his mind was aware of her presence, that they were sharing some strange sort of dreamscape, but a shadow passed behind her, muting the light in the room, and she spun, catching a sliver of bright vibranium flashing past the doorway.
She took off, darting out the door to leave that version of Bucky to mourn in peace, and followed his alter ego out into the hallway. "Oh, no you don't, James Barnes," she muttered.
He was halfway down the hall, his left hand clenched into an iron fist at his side.
"Jamie!" she snapped, starting to lose her patience with the whole endeavor. She'd stay here—wherever 'here' was precisely—for as long as it took to get her man back—but that didn't mean she wasn't going to have some words for The Sorcerer Supreme when she got back to—wherever 'there' was precisely. She was suspicious that he'd been deliberately vague in his encouragement and if she was right, she did not appreciate this trippy wild goose chase. "Jamie!"
There was a telltale hitch in The Winter's Soldier's step, but he didn't stop. Taking that as progress—she'd take what she could get—she bounded after him. "Jamie, damn it!"
She trailed him for what felt like forever as he stalked down hallways, through doors—that led to more hallways—and even down hallways she was suspicious shouldn't really exist, passing through walls and barriers that only served to drive home that she was in the maze of someone's subconscious, rather than an actual building.
She was sure, after all, that hers looked—if not the same—then very similar, with, perhaps, a few less twists and turns.
One such hidden room, tucked away and seemingly difficult to find, put her in a front row seat to their first night together, and she blushed, picking out different things she hadn't noticed then, on the inside of the moment.
Her face was pale rather than flushed, which usually meant she was nervous.
She didn't remember feeling directly nervous; in fact, she'd marveled at how relaxed she'd been. It had been a long time—a drop in the bucket compared to him—but she'd been more than ready to end her draught that night and so elated that things were falling into place for them.
It had helped that he was capable of lighting her on fire like she'd never been before. She liked to joke about it whenever he brought it up, but he was right; she wasn't always comfortable, given her upbringing, discussing deep matters of the heart. But she knew he was right; of course she knew he was right.
There was a huge, huge difference between sleeping with someone, and sleeping with someone you loved. And she'd clung to him desperately, her heart pounding out a sure rhythm in a tattoo against his own, tying them together.
Like Strange had said: people didn't always understand how actions could create ties, how words, spoken in the right order, could bind you to someone irrevocably, no matter what happened.
She'd suspected it of herself long before that night, but that night had made it clear to her that, no matter what happened, no matter what had happened, she wasn't going anywhere.
It was too late for her.
It was etched in stone, etched into her heart.
She watched him closely, studying the softness of him, so gentle with her, like she was a China doll.
And his hands were shaking—just barely—but they were shaking. But the soft passion of him was evident, the way he moved telegraphing not only his affection, but the fact that he finally—after decades and decades—felt alive again.
But watching him move from the other side was seriously doing things to her, so she forced herself to turn away—her face heated and her throat thick—and keep going, trailing after him at a short distance.
She passed another fight between him and George, culminating in yelling and a shattering bottle of something clearly past 50% proof.
She passed a strange scene of a playground, children running around, swinging on swings, yelling and joyful, in the middle of Manhattan on a cold winter day.
A gym. A boxing match.
She sprinted—literally—through a train car, her breathing ragged as she pretended not to notice the wind rushing through the destroyed door.
Their tiny apartment, the heater in the corner clanking uncertainly as Steve read in the chair beside it, wrapped up tight in a quilt.
A garage, loud with engine noise and repair.
A diner at evening rush.
A young girl—Becca—crying and yelling, and begging him not to go, her terror that he wouldn't come back.
She flinched away from a scene from long ago, the dark of night, the smell of gunpowder and mud, sweat and blood, and fear—the trenches, six inches deep in water. That one she had absolutely no desire to study any further than she had to, and she scurried after The Winter Soldier as they passed through it, glad for his rapid pace.
Feeling small and sad at these little pieces of his life, she tried again, her voice smaller than she anticipated, reaching out for him the only way she knew how. It had always worked in the past, when she needed him desperately, and he'd always been so warm and comforting with her.
Everything she'd grown to never expect.
"Jamie?"
This time, he paused, stopping in the middle of an empty room this time, hardwood floors and chipping paint on the walls. She wondered idly if these empty rooms were stubborn memories, things he had yet to bring to the surface that were still buried and forgotten.
She chewed on her lip. "I know you recognize me. You have to. I'm…I'm me. I'm in here." She felt foolish, gesturing around.
He turned to look at her, and the menace had gone from his lined eyes, melted into uncertainty.
"It's like you're leading me in circles."
He flinched.
She approached him, slowly, making no sudden movements.
He was totally still, watching her with defenseless eyes.
"Won't you let me in?" she murmured, reaching out for his arm.
But before she could make contact, he jerked away, starting off again.
She hadn't been prepared for how much that would sting. She stood there, her palm pressing into her sternum, sure that the pain in her chest was all in her imagination but unable to quell it.
But he stopped at the far end of the room, and glanced back, once, over his shoulder in a vaguely imploring way, as though asking her if she was coming or not.
Lurching, she went after him.
When he opened the door to the next room, though, she gasped as she peered inside.
((()))
There was a door set into the far wall.
It had been a long time since he'd seen his childhood home, but Bucky was fairly positive his room had only had the two.
So this third one, then…
Apparently, magically appearing doors were a thing now. Sighing, he went through it, somehow sure that this was another hoop he was required to jump through.
He came out into their kitchen.
Their empty kitchen.
But wait, no…it wasn't empty.
He stood on the entry mat as Darcy dropped her purse, crossed the room, opened the freezer, and pulled out the bottle of good vodka she kept up there.
Then she snatched a shot glass from the far cabinet, poured one out, and threw it back, hard and fast.
She winced, but poured another.
Then another.
Alarmed, he glanced around for some clue as to what memory he'd stumbled into, listening as Darcy's breathing grew faster and faster, then turned to gasping, then hiccupping, before she broke into desperate sobs.
She backed into the cabinets opposite the kitchen island, and slid down to the floor, folding in on herself as she cried her heart out on the tile.
His chest tightening, he crossed to the DIY board Darcy had made early after her move into the apartment, where important things were stuck, concert tickets; ideas; business cards; and a small calendar.
Late last February.
When he'd been taken by HYDRA.
He stood there, blinking for a long moment, staring down at her, curled into herself on the floor as hard, wracking sobs shook her small body, the false sunlight refracting off her new engagement ring.
Something rippled through him, something uncomfortable, something foreign. She'd mentioned that she'd fallen apart pretty hard, but…she hadn't mentioned this. The urge to comfort her was painful, and more painful was the knowledge that she was crying over him.
No one had cried over him in…ever? Becca, maybe?
On and on it went, too. It felt, to him, like she cried for hours, and when he reached out to touch her, his hands went right through her like he was nothing more than a phantom.
That was when he noticed the pictures.
There were photographs all over the walls, pinned up with thumbtacks.
Mouth open in surprise—this was not what their walls looked like—he stood and followed them around the space, cataloguing each one and surprised to find they were all of him.
Smiling.
Eating.
A few of him sleeping, looking more peaceful than he just about ever felt.
A few of him laughing, and one with Darcy's hand in the shot as she reached over to tug his baseball cap low over his eyes.
All of him.
Every photograph in the space was of him.
He blinked, confused.
"Don't think I don't know what this is about."
He jumped, spinning to find that Darcy had stood, and she was staring right at him—through him, it felt like.
He stared.
"Because I know exactly what this is about. All this?" She gestured around at the photographs, tears still damp on her cheeks. "You still don't think you're good enough."
He opened his mouth, stunned silent.
But she cut him off. "No, don't even try to bullshit me, Barnes."
They stared at each other, like a challenge, and he wasn't about to take the first shot, a bit of déjà vu tickling his subconscious at the thought of their last—and only—fight.
She squared off. "You still think of yourself as a monster—don't you?"
Again, he opened his mouth, but wasn't sure what to say.
"They took away your will power, Jamie," she insisted, her beautiful face hard, like marble.
He longed to brush away that stray tear and marveled that he could be homesick for her when she was standing right in front of him—or some version of her, anyway.
"They stripped you. You didn't do any of that of your own free will. You were a puppet."
He swallowed, looking away. "I know. But I still did it," he murmured.
"I. Don't. Care," she snapped, glaring at him. "I don't fucking care anymore. And neither should you. It's over. You can't take it back. So why continue to torture yourself over it?!"
He opened his mouth, then shut it again, then opened it, his throat tightening at the familiar guilt. "Darce…"
"You're still letting them control you, letting it control you. You're carrying around this guilt, and it's weighing you down," she continued, coming around the kitchen island. "You think you don't deserve to be a part of SHIELD, a part of something good?"
He swallowed it back again, unable to look at her. "I'm no superhero, Darcy."
She scoffed, looking away and shaking her head. "I don't care if you're a superhero—I don't care if you're a garbage man, Bucky! Fuck Maria. Fuck Jane, and fuck Wanda, and fuck anyone else if they're so fucking stupid they don't understand."
She approached and reached up to cup his face, her small hands icy cold as she looked deep into him with those clear eyes. "All this?" She gestured at the photos again. "This is how I see you. Just a guy. It sounds seriously cheesy, but I don't give a fuck if you're a superhero, Jamie—as long as you're my hero. That's what I've been trying to tell you for the past two years."
Before he could reply—or even comprehend what she'd just said—there was a thunderous knock on the door.
He snapped around toward it, but then—
The room was gone, their apartment was gone.
He was back in his old room, alone.
((()))
Darcy wasn't sure what she'd been expecting. Another scene from The War, probably, maybe a memory from last New Year's, as they'd rushed through Manhattan, or another disturbing go-round with Alexander Pierce.
But it certainly wasn't this.
Her tiny apartment.
The one she'd holed up in when she'd first come here, the one she'd hated with everything in her up until last January, when she'd kissed it goodbye and watched Buck, Tony, and Steve haul her boxes into the moving van, and relocated to Avengers Tower.
There was her old ratty couch, second-hand from one of her college roommates at NYU. The scratched coffee table she'd paid fifteen bucks for at a resale shop in the middle of July, dragging it home in over ninety degree heat and pulling her tank top away from her torso, the Friday of 'Friday I'm In Love' totally soaked through with sweat. The dark blue she'd painted the walls still looked fresh, though, and the print of The Swing by Fragonard was straight as a beam on the far wall, over the couch.
Her laptop on the desk in the corner.
Her tiny kitchen, a row of boxes of Ramen on the counter next to the expensive espresso machine she'd splurged on.
The plush blue area rug.
Her TV.
The shelf where she kept all her books on one side, DVD's on the other.
Her record player by the window, and her stacks of LPs.
Everything.
It was her apartment in immaculate detail.
She stared around, mouth slightly parted in awe.
But why would he have a memory of this place—and one so devoted to every perfect facet? He knew she hated this place, as much as it was a part of her. She'd been determined, after college, to strike out on her own, to never go back to Nate's house, to avoid roommates, to hold onto that job with Jane with everything she had.
He knew all that.
And he was sharp and clever, and she had no doubt he saw how much she loved their place in the Tower, all the little trappings she'd added, clocks here and there, framed photos. She knew her attachment to the place was one of the things she didn't have to voice to him. If she did, he'd just give her that soft, wry look and smirk, and say "I know." And he'd wink at her.
She was hit, then, with such a strong wave of homesickness for him that it set her gasping, and she sat down hard on the chair that she'd kept at the bar, glad it was pulled out, and rubbed her palm over her smarting sternum again.
How the fuck was she supposed to do this?
She was entirely lost in the maze of his mind and she wasn't sure she was capable of pulling them both out again.
They were doomed to lie there in that lab forever, while they chased each other around this rat trap.
Just like that, her old familiar friend was back: hatred. Hatred for Alexander Pierce, and Arnim Zola flared to life in her again, rekindled by the state of the tangled mess she was currently wandering through.
She'd never been inside anyone else's subconscious before, but she was pretty certain that even the most scatterbrained person's mind was less scattered than this one.
And only because they'd jammed him like a radio signal for decades.
She stood, breathless with anger, but found herself unsure of what to do. The Winter Soldier had disappeared again, and she knew this apartment like the back of her hand. What new things was she supposed to discover in here?
"You're very close to the center now," a familiar voice spoke behind her, near the door.
Gasping, she spun.
It was Bucky.
Not Her Bucky, but…perhaps someone closer to Steve's Bucky. Older, closer to pre-War Bucky, his hair slicked back, his suit neat and tidy, his shoes shined, like he'd just walked back from Sarah's funeral or something.
And he was looking at her, speaking to her, aware of her.
She stared.
His brow creased. "You're almost there."
She blinked. "And my…spirit guide…is telling me that my old shitty apartment is close to the center of…his own subconscious?"
Other Bucky smirked down at the floor and shuffled his feet. "Sort of."
She blinked again. "Why?!"
He looked up at her, his eyes almost supernaturally blue. "It's all tied together. This is linked to his earliest memories of you."
She glanced around again. "And I'm…"
He finished for her when she let her question hang. "You're the thing he protects the hardest. The part he locks away, where he can't find it."
She blinked again, shaking her head. "You're talking in riddles. Where who can't find it? That doesn't make any fucking sense."
But God was he gorgeous with that slick, thirties hair. She was painfully reminded again of the fact that she hadn't been good and laid in way too long.
That smirk again. "The Other Guy."
She shook her head again. "No, but I think I made nice with him—he's the one that led me in here."
God, she sounded like a crazy person.
He narrowed his eyes. "Then you are close."
She sighed, and pulled her hand down her face. "Close to what? What's at the center? I hate Star Wars, dude—don't talk like fucking Yoda. Little gremlin," she added under her breath.
He took a step toward her. "You. You're at the center."
She jerked her head back. "Me?"
He nodded. "Strange said that you understand better than most what a bond creates."
A chill went down her spine and she narrowed her eyes as she idly wondered just how this mental connection was supposed to work—were they like a two-way radio? "How do you know that?"
But he didn't answer her directly. "You're closely tied to him, now. You're buried deep. Just a little further." He nodded toward the far end of the room, where the apartment broke off into the claustrophobic bathroom on the left and the bedroom on the right.
There was a door there, where there hadn't been one before.
She stared at it, eyes wide. "But, what does that even mea—?" she started, turning.
But he was gone.
"Seriously?" She rolled her eyes. "For fuck's sake," she grumbled, stomping across the room. "Like Alice in Wonderland. I'll show you Wonderland." She grabbed the doorknob. "For anyone less than James Barnes…" She turned the knob and opened the door to find herself in a rather rundown, dreary hallway.
It was empty but for a door set directly opposite.
And the Winter Soldier was there, guarding the panel with arms crossed.
And he didn't look happy to see her.
((()))
"Don't look so distraught, Stark," a voice spoke from behind Tony, in the dim dark of the lab. He jumped, and turned to find Strange hovering in the doorway, his cape back on. "Things will come together."
Tony snorted, turning back to the bed. "Oh? And you know this, how, Oh, Great Wise One?"
Strange smirked, but seemed otherwise unoffended as he came into the room, that weird cape buffeting softly around his feet, though there was no breeze, not even a draft. "I know. I sound like some crone from an old myth. But. I've learned my lesson. It was a hard one. And I've studied until I can't study anymore, then I've gone back for more. Things run in patterns, Stark. This one will run its course."
The inventor sighed and pulled his hand through his hair, setting it sticking up, giving his exhausted, 2-am face a hysterical sort of look. "I'd feel better if I could see the pattern." He squinted tiredly at the sorcerer. "You can't…hook that up, can you?"
Strange smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "Sorry. No."
Tony huffed out a sigh and sank into the plastic chair beside the bed. "Figures."
The room was silent, now, all the machines turned low at Strange's insistence that everything now was a waiting game. He'd even insisted that they leave Darcy right where she'd curled up, lest they break whatever tenuous connection there was between them. So Bruce had groused, but settled for monitors on fingers, quiet machines monitoring heartbeats, and sitting back and being entirely too restless. It was eerie, Tony thought, for neither of them had moved, like they were some creepy art installation about sleeping through your life or something else deep and thought-provoking. Their chests rose and fell, but that was it. Bucky was still, his vibranium arm failing to give any further indication of his current state; Darcy's hand was still resting on his hip.
In the back of his mind hovered the constant thought that they looked peaceful—like Romeo and Juliet at the end of the Second Act. Only there wasn't nearly enough blood.
Tony could hardly stand it. "It's funny, you know…" he started. "With most people, I'm…like oil and water. I put up so many walls with my father and I've never cared enough to toss down a ladder to most people."
Strange nodded.
Tony wasn't sure why he was opening up. The sorcerer was practically a stranger to him. Something about him just…made you open your mouth.
"Most people think that makes me a monster, I guess."
Strange shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Usually someone with high walls doesn't build them to keep others out, but to keep themselves in," he said, his voice low. "To keep themselves in, not because those people don't feel enough—but because they feel too much, too strongly. They build those walls to keep from crumbling under all the weight of what they feel. It's a sort of armor for the heart, don't you think?"
Tony snorted again, shaking his head. "So which kind of person am I?"
Strange tilted his head. "Stark, I don't need to study you very hard to know what type you are. The fact that you came to me tells me all I need to know."
Tony sighed and slumped back in the chair, his eyes never leaving the living statue on the bed. "This is my fault."
Strange didn't contradict him. Normally this might've pissed Tony off, but he had the feeling that he did so, not out of agreement, but because he didn't feel he had enough information.
Then he spoke.
"Unlikely. But, it doesn't surprise me that you feel that way. Everyone makes their own choices, Stark. You, of all people, ought to know that. And you can't change the past. And you wouldn't be able to anyway. Grandfather Paradox."
Tony pulled a face. "My ability to change back then would be impossible because the reason for my desire to change hasn't occurred yet?"
Strange shrugged. "Pretty much."
Tony narrowed his eyes at him. "Rumor has it you've done your own travels through time."
Strange gave him a sly look. "Just because I have a tool that allows me to bend the rules doesn't mean I use it lightly. Besides, certain things are linear, and unchangeable."
Stark snarled low in his throat. "Okay, okay, Doctor Who. You're not making me feel better."
"I don't really have to. This will work itself out. This is about them at its core. This was set in motion back in Hawaii, when Barnes was exposed to the TMS device. Just give them time to untangle themselves."
"What if they can't? Hm?" Tony burst, shifting sharply in the chair to give the sorcerer a challenging look. "What if they're like this forever, trapped in a prison in their own minds, hm? What then?"
Strange fixed him with a steadying look. "They won't be."
"And you're so sure of that?" he snapped.
But Strange wasn't the least bit cowed. "Yes."
Tony huffed, looking away, back at the bed. His eyes darted up at the monitors, but he deflated quickly, his anger giving way to melancholy. "They've suffered enough."
Strange sighed. "I know."
Tony's heart in his throat, he murmured. "I just want my girl back."
((()))
Darcy held her hands up, palms out, as she stepped into the hallway, her heart in her throat. "Hi," she ventured.
The Winter Soldier glared.
She nibbled on her lip. "Don't suppose there's any chance you were just…waiting for me to show up, so you could show me inside?"
Nothing.
She took a step toward him.
He squared off.
She flinched, hesitating. The door slammed behind her, and when she jumped and turned, it was to find that the wall had mysteriously eaten it and behind her was, once again, bare hallway.
She sighed. "Of course. 'Cause this just keeps getting better and better." She sighed and turned back to her husband's alter ego. "Listen, Bucko. I'm assuming you're guarding the door because someone I'm looking for is being held captive in there? But I have to get through there. Okay? Seriously. This is what I came for. So whatever you are—figment, dreamscape, hallucination, whatever—you're gonna have to kill me to keep me from getting in there, okay?"
He took another menacing step toward her.
She slumped, looking at him. "You don't know who I am? Really? At all? There's no part of you that recognizes me?"
Nothing.
She rolled her eyes. "Get naked with a guy and it just goes right out of his head." She gave him a level, flippant look. "The sex? You don't even remember the sex? I mean, I don't think I'm anything to shake a stick at, really, but you'd think that would be pretty hard to forget. I mean, our chemistry is off the charts."
Still nothing.
Though she wasn't surprised, something in her deflated, a little hurt regardless of the fact that she'd known it was coming. Apparently, all the progress she'd somehow made had evaporated in the face of this—yet again—new version of Bucky. She had no doubt that this was a test—for both of them. "Jamie?" she murmured, taking a calculated risk and stepping all the way across the hall this time, right up to him, close enough to kiss him, if it weren't for the creepy mask. "You're my Jamie. I need you now—I need you to recognize me. Physically need you to know who I am."
Not a flicker of recognition.
She sighed. "So you're just The Asset, then?"
This earned her a scowl.
So some part of him had hated the term even then?
She took a deep breath, something deep down telling her this was it: this was Do-or-Die, this was the showdown. This was pass/fail. It was all in her hands here. "Well, dude, my Jamie is in there. So you're gonna let me through, or we're gonna have a real hard time on our hands, aren't we? 'Cause I'm not backing down. You don't scare me. I'm here for him and I'm not leaving until I've got him. You can count on that."
Without any indication what he was thinking or feeling, he reached out, set each hand on a shoulder, and pushed her back a step.
She stumbled to obey, frowning. "I'm serious," she said, stepping forward again. "You're gonna have to get blood on your hands, man. I'm not playing around."
He glared.
She took another deep breath. "This is gonna hurt." She darted left, feinting, then pelted right, around him, and just barely reached the door when he was grabbing her around the waist and tugging her roughly back again.
She kicked out, using her weight to unbalance and surprise him.
His grip broke.
She hit the floor with an echoing thud and pain flared in her hip. But she didn't stop, pushing through it like it was just another episode, leveraging herself back off the floor with a leg that she aimed at his shin as he loomed over her.
It did absolutely no good.
But she slid through his legs and back up, shoving herself into the door again, trying the knob, and pounding on it with a fist, denting the hard wood in the process. "Jamie?!"
((()))
He couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Bucky lunged up off the bed and threw himself desperately at the door. "Darce?!"
"Jamie! It's you?!"
Relief like none he'd ever felt washed over him. Wait, no. That wasn't true. It paled in comparison to the way it had felt that long afternoon, to hear Bruce come out into the lab hallway and tell him that Darcy was alive. But it came damn close. "Oh, God, you have no idea how good it feels to hear your voice, dollface!"
"Just hang tight. I'm gonna get you outta—!"
Pounding, the sounds of a struggle.
"Darce?"
Could she be hurt in this dream-space that they were in? Was that possible on this non-physical plane? "Darcy?!"
The unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh and he winced. "Just a sec!"
Definitely sounded like pain.
"Ya big jerk!"
A snarl—a familiar snarl.
He jerked back from the door, staring in shock.
((()))
"Hah!" she laughed as she darted lithely out of The Winter Soldier's way. "You're forgetting who trained me, ya big lug!" She ducked under an arm as he came at her again and tried the doorknob to find it locked.
She stopped, surprised into stillness. "Hey! I thought the whole point of this was to get to the door? I totally thought I had Inception down pat! Why the fuckity-fuck isn't this unlocked?!"
"Darce—watch your six!"
An awful weight slammed her against the door, and a very familiar hand snatched her up by her scruff and threw her—literally, bodily—across the hall.
She slammed against the brick and fell in a heap on the floor, the wind totally knocked out of her. Sprawled flat on her back, she gasped desperately for air, eyes wide as she clutched at her chest. She was totally vulnerable as he leaned over her.
Throat dry, she finally succeeded in pulling in a lungful of air, and the pain hit, washing over her in a wave of agony so profound she wasn't sure even any of her episodes had been so bad.
Everything screamed.
For one horrible moment, she wasn't sure she could move.
But she did; by some instinct, she pulled herself up just in time to avoid being grabbed again, some part of her shocked that he'd actually hurt her.
But he wasn't…him. Right now. He was…he was someone else.
She coughed, wheezing in pain as she sauntered back to the door. "Jamie!"
"Are you alright?! Tell me you're alright!" came his desperate reply.
She coughed again, something in her chest giving way with a splintering jerk. Eyes clenched shut, she swallowed it down. "I'm fine."
"What's he done to you?!"
She tugged at the knob, but couldn't answer, as she was pushed back again, shoved to the left with a bone-jarring shake. She barely caught herself, a few choice words shaking loose in her mind. But she was determined to keep them in her head rather than on her tongue. No matter what this version of Bucky did to her, he was still Bucky. And once words were spoken, you couldn't take them back again. And she didn't want him to hear from the other side of the door. No matter how he hated his alter ego, she felt sure that he'd take at least a little of it to heart, and she could hardly blame him.
How on earth he was able to differentiate between himself and The Asset was mind-boggling to her. She'd have gone mad long, long ago trying to carry around the sins he shouldered.
She balanced on the wall and stared him down. "Well? I know what you've got. So bring it."
((()))
Raw horror pooled in Bucky's gut.
Certainly his own mind had conjured this as a test, right? Forced him to listen as The Other Guy took Darcy down while he was trapped, helpless to stop it.
Oh, God, he was beating up his own wife!
He pressed against the door, his breathing ragged as he pounded on it with his fist, feverishly trying to turn the handle with his left hand, hoping against hope—no matter how many times he'd tried it now—that his vibranium strength would snap the mechanism.
But his arm whined to no avail. The door was sealed.
((()))
"I'm not scared of you, dude!" she declared, planting her feet. "C'mon. Don't puss out now—bring it!"
Never mind that she was swaying unsteadily.
Never mind that her entire torso was screaming in pain.
Never mind that her right ankle was swelling at a rapid rate.
"Just ignore the pain, Darcy. It's not there. None of this is even real."
He came at her.
She dodged, darting to the right at the last second. "You just hate that I got all this way, don't you? You can't stand it!" she taunted.
He took a swipe, but she darted away again.
"All this time, and you can't expel me, can you? I'm like a splinter to you, huh?"
His left arm shot out again and this time he made contact, striking her hot and fast in her already injured ribs.
She jerked, gasping as she retreated, hands over the offended body part, hissing in pain. "The thing is," she continued, wincing. "You don't have to defend yourself against me."
She was well aware that the taunting was quickly turning into begging again, but couldn't keep the note of longing from her voice, not with her Jamie just on the other side of that door. "You know me!"
Was this what Steve had tried to do to get through to him two years ago, on that helicarrier? Had he begged his friend to recognize him to no avail, until he worked some magic?
He struck out again, snarling in anger or defensiveness, she wasn't sure and somehow managed to get her in the throat. "NO, I DON'T!" he snarled, in English, his first full communication with her.
She doubled over, coughing, hard, tasting blood. "God damn," she gasped, her voice hoarse. She glared up at him as he circled her, his menace a thing of fascination for her, really, if she was being honest. The contrast of this vicious, efficient killer with her gentle, quiet-souled Bucky was twice as striking in person than she'd ever imagined it could be. "I know what this is about."
He scowled.
"You defend yourself twice as hard because you still hate yourself. Isn't that right?"
He glared.
"You still blame yourself, don't you? You carry around so much guilt, but it's for nothing, Jamie!"
He surprised her, lashing out all at once, and he slammed her—bodily—back into the wall, growling. "SHUT UP!" he yelled, his voice going raw.
She coughed. "Fuck it, Jamie. It's over. They manipulated you. That was them, not you, baby."
He slammed his left fist into the wall beside her head, showering them with brick shards and plaster dust.
"It's over. You can't take it back." She was surprised to find she was crying, tears thick in her throat, but more shocking was the realization it had nothing to do with her pain, but his. "It's over, baby, and you can't take it back. I'm sorry, Jamie, but you can't take it back."
With a snarl, he released her and resumed his place at the door.
She leaned there, trying to recover while he seemed satisfied that he'd sent her a message. "Fuck it. Fuck HYDRA, and fuck AIM, and fuck Maria, and Jane, and Wanda—they don't get it. But they don't have to. You've suffered enough, you've earned your place with the good guys, Jamie," she pleaded, approaching slowly. "It's over now. You have to let it go."
He reaffirmed his stance against her as she approached, shoving her roughly back again.
She fought his grip, but he was too strong, and it didn't seem like her new strength was useful against him here. "I'm not afraid of you," she bit out, clenching her teeth. "You can try all you want to scare me away, but it didn't work last time and it won't work now. So do your worst, James Barnes." She squared her feet.
He stepped forward again, menacing and huge.
She glared up at his cold eyes, sharp over his mask. "I'm getting through that door. You're gonna let me in."
He stepped into her space.
"You know how I know?" she continued as she was pushed back.
He snarled again, shoving.
Again, she was trapped between him and the wall, her ribs protesting violently as she struggled. "Because you're not a superhero!"
He focused his attack now, and she could see the desperation in his eyes, like he needed to prevent her from speaking any more. Those eyes, they were looking more and more devastated—and more and more familiar. His left hand came up around her throat as he growled at her.
The pressure there increased and she struggled, shoving at his iron chest as her throat closed. "But I don't care if you're a superhero, Jamie!" she rasped. "I just care that you're my hero—!" Desperate for air, she managed to get her rapidly weakening fingers around the bottom of the mask.
He jerked away, releasing her.
But it was too late.
The mask came free in her hand, revealing the rest of his face.
She coughed violently, gasping for air, gagging as she clutched at her raw throat. She tossed the mask aside, tears stinging her eyes as she struggled to speak through her hoarse voice. "I just want my hero back."
Finally she was able to stand upright.
The Winter Soldier was gone.
And in the open doorway, staring at her, was Bucky.