Chapter 2.

Falling Apart.

"You were humming again."

Bucky woke with a start, banging his head on the underside of the bed. A'di laughed from the doorway, a lovely, musical sound.

"You did that on purpose," he said, rolling into the open.

"You cannot prove that. And if you stopped crawling under there, that would not happen."

"I was asleep. I keep waking up in different places."

A'di strolled inside, tossing a small book onto his bed. She was doing her best imitation of a lemon today, wearing a bright yellow sun dress that contrasted her midnight skin. Bucky was beginning to think she had a different outfit for every day of the year.

He scooted against the wall, flipping through the book. "Did you take my reading level down again?"

"In order to do that, you would have to have a reading level."

She had been bringing him books, lowering the complexity until he was looking at pictures with short sentences below them – or he assumed they were sentences. It was all nonsense. A'di persisted. Shuri occasionally came to ask him how he was, to remind him that she was working toward a solution, to encourage him to have hope. Ayo accompanied the princess, and sometimes A'di, but she had stopped coming after a couple of weeks. Either he was earning some trust, or falling out of her thoughts.

A'di was the only person he interacted with consistently, and he was fine with that. She made his day better, every day. She was easy to be around, energetic and kind, relaxed with him, like they had been friends for years rather than weeks – like she had no idea who he was before this, or she knew and didn't care.

"You are going too fast," A'di said, sitting against the wall beside him. She leaned her head against it, a dense braid of clay-caked hair draped over her shoulder. "You must study the words as you look at the pictures."

"I'm not gonna learn Wakandan," he said. "It's gibberish to me."

She feigned offense. "You insult my language?"

"I said 'to me.'" Bucky went back to the first page, where there was a picture of a little boy hanging a shirt on a clothesline, and a few symbols below it. One of them looked like a man with his arms out, another a circle with dots in it. "I'm assuming these are letters."

A'di took the book and whacked him with it. "Focus."

He studied her braid instead, "How long did that take to do?"

"Focus," she said again, opening another page for him.

Bucky looked over the new picture – a rhino eating from a bush, an unbroken line of twenty or more indecipherable symbols. "It doesn't make sense."

"You are not even trying."

"Why do you want me to learn?"

She shrugged, "I am a teacher. It is my job to educate the ignorant."

"I'm a little more ignorant than the kids around here."

"I enjoy a challenge."

Bucky sighed, "You're not letting this go, are you?"

"No. And I bring you your food, so I advise you to be on my good side."

He went on, nodding, pretending he was getting something out of the lesson. His mind wandered, trying to be anywhere but here. "Where are you from, A'di?"

"I live in Wakanda, clearly."

"I mean, where, specifically? There are other cities, right?"

"Yes, but I am from the Border tribe. We live in small villages."

"What brought you here, then?"

"I teach, like I said." She gestured to the book, "I usually teach children with books like these, using association to understand not just what letters go into words, but the unique ways that we can use language. You see, the words on these pages are the same." A'di slid closer, turning a page to point out that the sequence of symbols was the same for two different pictures. "When you read Wakandan, you don't just learn a language, you learn how to see patterns in languages. When I teach this to the children, it opens up the world for them."

"English is like that, sort of."

"English is convoluted and contradictory."

"Are you insulting my language?"

A'di smiled and rolled her eyes. "You are impossible to keep on task." She stood, heading for the door. "I will bring you a poster with the alphabet on it. Maybe you should dedicate some of your time to it, instead of throwing that ball incessantly against the wall."

"I'm never gonna learn it," he said again.

"We will see."

XxXxX

"How are you feeling, Sergeant Barnes?" Shuri said.

Bucky tried to take long, deep breaths, but they came out as trembling huffs of air. "Fine."

"You lie. Do you want something for anxiety?"

"No, no. Just get it over with."

"You will need to try to relax. Your cortisol levels are rising, indicating that you are-"

"I'm fine. Just start."

He was in the last place he wanted to be – strapped to a metal table at a forty-five-degree angle, heavy machinery hanging overhead, an IV in his arm, wires pinned to his bare chest. Bucky was tough, brave, running headlong into fights his whole life, but there was no situation where he was more vulnerable. His most vivid memories were not of his mother, not of Steve, but of a scenario just like this. It wasn't the pain, it was the helplessness.

Shuri was standing behind a glass window, a dozen screens around her. It was a small comfort to see her face, to know that she felt for him. He tried to force himself to hold onto that reality – it was her, not Hydra. Ayo was by her side, staring silently again. A few other Dora Milaje were near the door, hovering, ready to stop him if this went poorly. He found comfort in that, too, because he could not stand the thought of another murder on his conscience.

"You are safe," Shuri said through the intercom, looking uncertain. "I am going to give you low doses of radiation, followed by mild electrical shocks. If you want me to stop, tell me at any time, for any reason."

Bucky lay stiffly, waiting. He felt the electricity first. It was a little tickle, a gentle breeze compared to what Hydra did to him. He said, "Are you sure this table can hold me?"

"Quite sure," Shuri responded. "Everything will be alright." She spoke to someone else, but her voice was audible through the glass, "A normal man would be unconscious right now. Fascinating, isn't it? His body is resisting the electricity."

Bucky pushed out another breath, his anxiety mounting.

"Sergeant Barnes, I am going to play a recording of the words now. I will analyze your brainwaves while you are in this state, and then quickly release you."

Bucky closed his eyes.

The words.

He knew them well. Hydra had put them in his center, in his soul, and each syllable raked through him. He burned from the inside. Shuri kept repeating, "Everything is okay," but her voice was nothing. Bucky felt the same urgency, the same fear that he did when Zemo picked up that book, when he started to take control. He could not break free this time.

Bucky was briefly unaware, floating, locked away somewhere without sight, without sound. He heard the song his mother used to sing, felt it slip away.

And just like his nightmares, he saw the lives he had taken. His memory failed him when he tried to think about his life before Hydra, about his parents, about his siblings, but the things he did as the Winter Soldier were cruelly vivid. Gunshots. His fist wrapped around throats, twisting, breaking bones. People begging for mercy – even people who were just in the way. Collateral damage. None of it mattered, just the mission. He had dates and times, locations, orders spoken from many mouths, all of them arrogant, all of them monsters.

In this state there was a terrible mindlessness, darkness, like the things that made him human were gone. He was not himself, not anyone, but a vessel without a mission, waiting in the void for some direction from the puppeteer.

And then he was awake again, trembling violently, thrashing in his restraints.

It was never like this. It never stopped with the activation – the reset followed, creating a clean slate, destroying the fear and doubt and leaving nothing but a shell in its wake.

Shuri was shouting, "It is alright! It is alright!"

Her words were still nothing – nothing in the face of fear. Bucky yanked on his wrist strap over and over, twisting, turning, until the bone cracked. He could think of nothing but escape, of running until the threat was gone. The words echoed, looming over him, like living, breathing monsters. His mother's song left his memory, dripping out, stealing the joy it had given him.

"Let me out!" he screamed, "Let me out! Let me out!"

The cage around his chest released.

Bucky hit the ground, struggling to his knees, cradling his broken wrist. When the door opened, he ran for it, only to find himself flat on his back a moment later. Ayo had her foot on his chest, a spear to his throat.

He lurched toward the spear, his fear becoming desperation.

Ayo pulled it away, startled.

"Do it," he said, falling back. "You can't fix me. Just do it!"

Shuri was behind Ayo, trying to reason with him, "Sergeant Barnes, please, listen-"

Bucky shut his eyes, sobbing. "Just do it."

He was falling apart.

Ayo stepped away and he turned away from them, cradling his arm, trying to bring back the memory of the song. It was gone. Even after weeks of being in Wakanda, weeks of relative peace, it only took a few words to destroy him.

Shuri made empty promises. He had false hope. Decades of darkness had ruined him.

XxXxX

Bucky looked up when someone caught his rubber ball midair.

Ayo was standing in his doorway. She leaned her spear against the wall, giving the message that she came here in peace. She usually had a serious expression, empty, betraying no emotion. It was different today. Maybe seeing him break down into a sobbing mess had changed her opinion of him – for better or worse.

He didn't care either way.

He only spared her a glance, instead studying the Wakandan alphabet that A'di had hung on his wall. He found sanctuary in the patterns, spending the long days alternating between tossing the ball and committing the letters to memory. Bucky had nothing else.

"Your sulking has worried Shuri," Ayo said, her voice uncharacteristically soft, her face lacking its usual scowl. "She is afraid that she has hurt you."

It was the most Ayo had ever said to him in one sitting.

Bucky said, "You can tell Shuri I'm fine. I just don't want to do this anymore."

"She has dedicated much time to helping you."

"Best not to waste any more, then."

"You would give up after one thing does not go your way?"

"One thing?" Bucky vaulted off the bed, coming face-to-face with her. Ayo did not flinch, did not reach for her spear. "I spent ninety years as a lapdog for Hydra. You think some kid with a few gadgets is gonna magically fix me? You saw what happened in there. I haven't had one thing go right since they got in my head."

It had been days, and the memories were still vivid.

Hydra would have wiped his mind, kept him from experiencing the aftershock. It was worse to remember, and impossible to explain to Shuri and Ayo. He was trapped with it, unable to run from something that lived inside him.

She said, "Captain Rogers seemed to believe you could be cured."

Bucky held his hand out for the ball. "Steve is a better man than me."

"What would you have us do, then? Let you sulk in here for the rest of your life?"

"Kill me. Put me in prison. It doesn't matter."

"If you truly want to die, I can strike you down here and now."

Bucky backed off, going to sit on the bed, letting her keep the ball. His arm was sore, anyway. "I don't want to die."

"What do you want, then?"

He tried to pull his scattered thoughts together. "I just want to be me again. I want them out of my head. I want to… be free."

"You will be," Ayo said simply, tossing him the ball.

XxXxX

A/N: In this chapter I tried to describe what was the worst part of my mental health journey – the feeling of helplessness. For me, it was the center of many other problems. It's not just being hurt, but knowing that there's nothing you can do to stop it. When I think about what Bucky might have faced in Wakanda, I always come back to Shuri needing information on what his brain is actually doing when he's in the Winter Soldier state. His goal, then, is on the other side of his biggest fear.