Not sure when or how this alternate version of TFATWS Ep2 popped into my head, but once it did I couldn't let it go until I wrote it for real. This is probably the darkest thing I've ever written, and that's saying something. Trigger warnings for suicide and brief graphic imagery.
Bucky never thought seeing that stupid, nauseatingly-patriotic shield would bring him anything but a sense of safety and warmth. That shield and the man who carried it had protected him from countless threats—and, at one point, protected the rest of the world from him. But seeing it here, brandished so casually by this stranger, filled him only with hopelessness and fury.
When Steve told him he wanted to give the shield to Sam, Bucky trusted him. He'd thought it was a great idea. Nobody would ever trust Bucky, a hundred years old and semi-stable at best, to bear such an important responsibility. Sam was the obvious choice, if Steve wasn't sticking around to continue wielding it. After the battle, Bucky dared hope that they'd finally be together, both their minds and bodies intact. But Steve had other plans. Plans that didn't include Bucky.
Steve had taken him aside the day before the mission and explained everything. The words, "'Til the end of the line," sat on his tongue the entire time, but he never summoned the courage to say them. Bucky knew Steve's stubbornness. Once he decided he wanted something, nobody could convince him otherwise. Not even Bucky. Besides, he deserved to live the life he'd always wanted. Even if that life didn't include his best friend.
"Thank you for understanding, Buck," he'd said when he finished, although Bucky had given no indication that he understood beyond muttering an, "Okay." He'd been too busy staring into Steve's eyes and wondering if they'd still be the same striking shade of blue when he came back. "Nobody else knows about this, not even Sam, so you have to keep it a secret," Steve had urged. "If they know, I'm afraid they won't let me go."
For a moment, Bucky had considered spilling the beans to stop Steve from going on the mission, stop him from leaving, but his loyalty to his best friend exceeded his childish need for him to stay. He'd never betray Steve like that. And he'd thought that Sam would never betray Steve either, yet here sat this obnoxious military brat holding the shield that Steve entrusted to Sam.
As he sat on the floor of his apartment, hot rage boiling in his gut, he realized that Steve had been wrong. Sam clearly couldn't be trusted. That shield which had protected Bucky was now in the hands of a government puppet and he'd probably never see it again. His last, most tangible connection to Steve was gone. Bucky was adrift. Throughout his whole life, Steve's moral compass never failed him. He'd never met a truer judge of character than Steven Grant Rogers. Or so he thought.
Steve was wrong about Sam. Steve was wrong about Sam. And if he was wrong about Sam…that infallible moral compass maybe wasn't so infallible.
Unable to listen to this fake Captain America any longer, he grabbed the remote with his left hand and smashed the off button so hard the entire thing cracked. Whatever. It didn't matter. He grabbed Steve's notebook, the one containing his list of names to make amends with, and crossed out every single one of them. What he was about to do would bring justice to them all.
Before slamming the book shut, he tore out a page and scribbled down all the thoughts in his head that threatened to drown him. He wanted whoever found this to understand why he did it. Bucky retreated into the bedroom that he never actually slept in and set the piece of paper on the floor. One of the conditions of his pardon was that he couldn't keep weapons in his apartment, but it didn't matter. Bucky didn't need one. He sat down beside the note and held his left hand in front of him. Bucky turned it over, admiring the sleek vibranium joints that moved soundlessly as he flexed and extended his fingers. This one worked better than the Hydra arm ever had, and it hurt him less where it connected to his torso. Still, it was more weapon than limb, and it always would be. Using it for this felt almost poetic.
~0~
Sam was on his way back to the States after a disastrous encounter with the Flag Smashers when his phone rang. He didn't recognize the number. Torres was sleeping, and Sam figured no conversation could be worse than sitting here ruminating on his own failure, so he picked up.
"Have you been in contact with James Barnes?" the voice asked with no preamble.
"What?"
"Do you have any intel as to his whereabouts?"
"No." Sam hadn't texted Bucky in over a week. The man ignored his every offer for communication, so Sam had given up trying to reach him. "Why do you ask?"
"He missed his court-mandated therapy. There's a warrant out for his arrest. We suspect he's flown the coop and are contacting all known associates."
That didn't bode well. Bucky hadn't missed a session since the conditions of his pardon were outlined six months ago. If he ran away for whatever reason, he hadn't told Sam anything. "Well I haven't seen or heard from him. Have you tried his apartment?"
"A team is on their way there as we speak. We're just covering all our bases."
"Sorry I don't have any more intel than that. Barnes is not exactly the type to update me on his business very frequently."
"Understood. Thank you, Mr. Wilson."
Sam hung up and sighed in frustration. The last thing he needed on top of this clusterfuck of a mission was Bucky making trouble. Why couldn't he just lay low and go to therapy like a good traumatized POW? He'd made it clear that he didn't want anything to do with Sam, yet here Sam was getting dragged into his business anyway. He just hoped they found him and sorted things out without Sam needing to intervene. There was enough on his plate already.
That same phone number called him back right after they touched down. Sam strongly considered not answering, but figured they were probably calling to let him know they found him and were handling the situation accordingly. When he picked up the phone and the voice said, "We found him," he thought his suspicions were confirmed, but something about the tone didn't quite add up.
"Okay, so why are you calling me about it?" Sam asked suspiciously. If they found him, what did they need Sam for?
"He, um…he has something to say to you."
"So put him on the phone."
"I can't do that. Mr. Wilson."
"Why not?"
A long pause. "He'd dead."
The gears in Sam's brain ground to a halt. "What?!"
"We found him in his apartment," the voice said bluntly. "Apparent suicide. There's a note addressed to you."
Sam's stomach churned riotously and a disturbed chill wound its way up his limbs. Bucky…suicide…and a note addressed to Sam? Jesus fucking Christ. God, where had things gone so wrong? Sam had made a career out of counseling troubled veterans—how the fuck had he not seen that Bucky, probably the most traumatized veteran of them all, needed help? How had he accepted his reluctance to communicate without second thought?
"Mr. Wilson, would you like to see the note?" the man asked.
Fuck no. Sam didn't want to hear whatever Bucky had wanted to tell him before he killed himself. Nothing could possibly make him feel worse. On the other hand, Bucky wrote this for him in one of his last moments on Earth, and Sam owed it to him to listen. After months of neglecting to hear him when he'd been silently screaming for help, Sam owed it to Bucky to hear him out, even if his words would wreak even more devastation on Sam's already ravaged psyche.
"Yeah, if he specifically addressed it to me…I wanna see it."
"You're the only known contact of his by the name of Sam, so I think it's a safe assumption that it's for you."
Sam could tell this man did not often handle this type of situation. He spoke with none of the caution one ought to when discussing a suicide victim. Then again, he probably had no training in that department whatsoever. Their team had been sent to Bucky's apartment to make an arrest, not collect a body.
"I can be there in two hours."
"Okay."
Only after Sam hung up did he realize Torres had been staring at him concernedly throughout most of the conversation. "Is everything okay?" he asked hesitantly. He must've been able to tell by the look on Sam's face that the answer was probably no.
Sam shook his head. His limbs were still ice cold and his stomach churned threateningly. He thought he might throw up if he repeated the words aloud.
"Sam?" Torres sounded scared now. "Is it Sarah?"
"No."
"Then what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."
If that wasn't the worst choice of words he could've used. "It's Bucky," he managed to squeak out.
"What about Sergeant Barnes?"
Sam swallowed painfully. "He killed himself."
Torres's face paled instantly. "Oh my God. That's…awful. Is that where you're going?"
He nodded.
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"No." Sam had no idea what awaited him in that note and therefore no idea what his reaction might be. There was no reason to risk Torres witnessing anything that might scar him for life. "I'm going by myself."
"Okay. But if you need anything, please don't hesitate to ask. I know your relationship was…complicated."
"Understatement of the year," he grumbled. Bucky had ripped the steering wheel out of his fucking car and tried to kill him and his friends. Then Steve partially broke him out of the murderous trance he'd been brainwashed into by Hydra and Sam attempted to track him down all over the world. They teamed up to fight some of Steve's superhero friends, then some alien with a God complex. Finally, their mutual friend and pretty much only tie to each other fled into an alternate timeline, and that was that.
Sam had tried to look out for Bucky, because he knew that's what Steve would've done if he were still here, but it was hard to look out for someone who didn't want to be looked after. But he definitely could have done better than this. He'd put in the bare minimum effort to check on Bucky, and this is what became of it. Sam half-expected old man Steve to appear through an orange sparkling portal and throttle the life out of him for letting this happen to his best friend.
He marinated in that self-loathing the whole way to Brooklyn. It only got worse once he arrived because Sam realized that, while he had the address in his phone, he'd never actually been to Bucky's apartment. Some friend he was. Once he actually found the right building, he numbly stared at his steering wheel, remembering the sheer terror that overcame him when that metal arm ripped it out of his old car. Sam would give anything for that metal arm to come and rip this one out, but he knew that would never happen.
With a deep breath, he forced himself out of the car and into the building. He could tell immediately which door was his by the two agents standing sentry. "Hi, I'm Sam Wilson," he said unsurely. The agent on the left jerked his head towards the doorway once and remained silent. Sam took that as his cue to enter.
"He's not…still in there, is he?" he asked. The note was about to be horrible enough on its own, Sam didn't need the image of Bucky's corpse to haunt him. His imagination would dream up plenty of horrors without actually seeing anything.
"No, the body's already been removed."
"Okay."
Sam walked inside. A dozen red flags immediately stood out. The apartment was stark. Bucky had lived here for months, but it looked like he'd barely moved in. There was a TV on a table, an armchair which looked like it had never been sat in, another empty side table, and a lone wooden chair in the corner. The TV remote lay broken in the middle of the floor. Beside the armchair sat a tangle of blankets and a throw pillow. God, was this where he slept? The kitchen counters were all bare. Sam didn't look, but he guessed the fridge probably was too. Another agent stood at the end of the hallway which led to the bedroom and bathroom.
Sam reluctantly trekked down the hallway, terrified of what he might find. The agent directed him towards the bedroom, where two more agents awaited. Sam expected to find bloodstains on the wood floors, or maybe a weapon, but there was nothing but a puddle of clear liquid and the aforementioned note. The bed was pristinely made; considering the pile of blankets in the living room, it had probably never been slept in.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing to the puddle.
"Forensics said it's cerebrospinal fluid."
That opened up an entirely new batch of unpleasant questions which Sam wasn't sure he wanted the answers to. "Can I pick up the note?"
"You can have it. This is an open and shut case."
"Yeah, the victim, killer, and weapon are all one and the same," the other agent remarked.
Sam had never seen such lack of sympathy from a person. He couldn't tell if this was the same man he'd talked to on the phone, but maybe they were all like that. "Makes sense that they work for the government," he thought wryly.
Terrified, Sam picked up the note. Sure enough, it was clearly addressed to him. His name was in big letters at the top. Sam recognized this paper; it was torn out of Steve's notebook which he'd used to make his list of history and pop culture to catch up on. He must've given the book to Bucky before he left.
"Can—can I have a moment?" he asked the agents. He didn't want to read this in front of strangers.
"Sure." They stepped out, closing the door behind them. Sam was alone, a puddle of Bucky's spinal fluid at his feet. He held up the note and began to read.
Sam,
Steve believed in you. He trusted you. He gave you that shield for a reason. That shield is everything he stood for. That is his legacy, and you threw it away like it was nothing. So maybe he was wrong about you, and if he was wrong about you, then he was wrong about me. And he was the only one who thought I was worth saving. 106 years was about 80 more than I was supposed to get, and considering my hit count I should've gotten the chair anyway. Of all the lives I've taken, this is the only one I've ever felt good about. Consider it justice for all those innocent people.
Bucky
Sam collapsed to the floor and screamed like he'd been stabbed. Everything went numb except the bright, gut-churning pain in his chest. One he got his own mind back Bucky had never shown anything but aching remorse for his actions as the Winter Soldier. He never got it through his head that he was a victim just as much as any of the people he was forced to kill.
He's not the kind you save, he's the kind you stop.
Sam's own words came back to throttle him. He had thought that of Bucky, once upon a time, before he saw any of the man beneath the programming. But he should've told Bucky that he was glad they saved him. Instead, he'd left all that responsibility to Steve, not wanting to infringe on their eighty-year friendship. Then, of course, Steve up and left them, left Bucky, and Sam should have realized what kind of effect that would have on Bucky psychologically. He'd been so happy that Steve finally got the life he always deserved that he forgot that Bucky had a dream life too, and that life probably included Steve.
Then Sam went and retired the most important relic of Steve's life to a museum. When he made that decision, he'd thought only of the impossibility of carrying it himself. He didn't even consider what the shield's retirement might represent to some people. Sam should've at least talked to Bucky before he did it. Steve might've handed it down to Sam, but that didn't negate Bucky's connection to it. His last link to his past and to his best friend, and Sam dropped it like a hot potato because he didn't like what the stars and stripes stood for. But that shield was never about America, not really. The government liked to think it was, but that shield stood for nothing more than Steve Rogers' grit and determination to stand up for the little guy.
"I'm so sorry," he stammered. Sam didn't even know if he was apologizing to Steve, Bucky, or both, but the guilt and remorse sitting in his throat was so thick he could barely breathe. This was undeniable proof that he wasn't fit to carry the shield. Captain America would never have let his friend die like this.