Hi there !
Here is just a little coda for the first episode of TFATWS !
Just to be safe, I have decided to place the following warnings : past violence, suicidal thoughts (borderline), PTSD, depression.
As I said, it is small but those are themes that are covered and I wouldn't want anyone to get triggered over something that small.
Bucky jolted up, metal arm slung over his left knee, feet tangled in the blanket.
The images from his nightmare, well, memories, slowly faded and soon he was left with the soccer's game commentary.
Heart pounding, he took a deep breath, then another. Slowly, his breathing went back to normal and he turned his attention to the TV. After a couple of minutes of watching men running after a ball and more than a handful of them pretending to get hurt, his heartrate has slowed down and he decided to turn off the TV.
In retrospect, that hadn't really been his best idea. Now he was stuck with his demons in the middle of the night. His mind flashed to RJ and Yori. It had been weeks and he still hadn't worked up the courage to confess to the old man. Tell him the death of his son had just been bad luck, wrong place wrong time.
Bucky's gaze fell to his little notebook. His list of amends. He had wrongs to right. A ledger full of scarlet. It didn't matter he hadn't been in the pilot seat, he was the one who did it all. Assassinations, kidnappings, plotting, torture,…
Not for the first time, he thought people probably would have been better off without him.
Before... Steve had been what made him try to keep his head out of the water. The guy had believed in him, and Bucky hadn't wanted to hurt him. His memories weren't all there, probably never would completely, but even at first when his brain held more resemblance to scrambled eggs than to a human brain, the urge to protect the punk had been there.
But now... now he was in a sort of limbo.
He didn't want to die, but he didn't know what to live for.
One day at a time, therapists would say. It had been a lot of days already, and he didn't see an end to it.
At the end of the current one, he didn't feel better. Yori talking about his son, neither Leah nor the old man knowing he could understand, had started to cloud the day. Then his date, that had started rather well all things considered, had furthered the feeling. He had gone to see the old man, but his resolve had disappeared the moment Yori openend the door.
Now he was back in his little flat, one name crossed off his ledger two days prior, and one that had been screaming at him for weeks that kept circling back.
Now he was sitting alone with his demons. " If you are alone, that is the most, quietest hell", his therapist had said. He didn't like her very much, but she had a point. She didn't even know how much she was right. His mind had been his own private shell for years now.
Bucky's body might still be functioning, but he had been dead inside for a long time already.