you belong with me, not swallowed in the sea
Pt 5
Steve doesn't think what Natasha has arranged for him and Bucky is a safehouse of hers – or a hunting cabin, or a tourist getaway. She sends him an email with a map to the location and photos of the place itself attached. The subject line – the only personal message – says: You owe me, Rogers. The cabin looks small, but modern and comfortable inside, just like a tourist cabin would be. But it's situated several hours from the nearest town, in a forested area of the country that is as far from a tourist hotspot as possible. It's also not in a location Steve thinks Natasha would choose for a safehouse – too isolated; she is better at blending into crowds, not hiding down long and lonely back roads. Steve doesn't know what the cabin's intended purpose is to be honest; all he knows is that it is, according to Natasha, safe. And it is indeed, something suitable.
It takes Steve several hours to convince Bucky to leave the safety of their hotel wardrobe, even with a sedative to smooth Bucky's jagged-sharp nerves and make him more pliable. He is wobbly after the sedative, and stares at Steve with eyes that seem caught between a dog-like obedience, and an equally animal fear. When the sedative begins to wear off halfway through the trip to the cabin, Bucky's edgier, but doesn't react badly as Steve was afraid he would. Instead he hunches down in his seat and hugs a blanket to him like a child, hair in tangles around his face, scruff that is now long enough to be called a beard making him look wild and dangerous. His eyes gleam like coins as he stares out at the landscape skimming past, and Steve talks in a constant quiet stream of simple, little things. Meditative exercises that he found on the internet, calming imagery, happy memories, funny stories about working with Natasha, or travelling Europe with Sam, or Steve's attempts to adjust to the modern world.
Bucky looks out the window at the scenery, but Steve thinks he listens, and sometimes a small smile flickers at his mouth. Mostly when Steve is telling the stories that make him look like an idiot. Ya dumb punk, Bucky would've said in another lifetime, and ruffled his hair rough and affectionate. Instead he shines faint with the edges of a grin, and that is enough.
The cabin is set well off a dirt road that cuts through a large forested area, and Steve takes their rented truck along a winding rutted track to reach it. It's slushy and uneven as hell, and they spend ten minutes skidding and jolting along the track, bouncing up and down in the truck cab until Steve thinks he's going to end up black and blue all over. And when he looks across at the seat beside him, he sees Bucky is grinning. "Faster," Bucky says in a voice that wobbles from the bumps, and there is a mad, pure kind of joy on his face. "Go faster."
So Steve goes faster, flooring the pedal and flying through the trees like they are invincible instead of just hard to kill. Skim-jolting over bumps and down slopes, rattling in their seats until it feels like their very bones are going to come apart in pieces, unhooking and unhinging. But Bucky just hangs on tight and bares his teeth in a feral kind of grin, and laughs. And Steve goes faster.
When they arrive at the cabin, Bucky draws the tranq gun that he has adopted as his and refuses to be parted from. He is cautious and silent as he scouts around the cabin exterior – suspicious, and oddly protective of Steve in a way that reminds Steve of Brooklyn and long ago. Steve is empty-handed; he threw away the other gun on the long trip out to the cabin – breaking it down and scattering the pieces across Russian roadsides. He hates to lose one of their weapons in case they get into a tough bind, but he can't risk having a gun around Bucky. Anything is lethal in Bucky's hands, sure, but a gun makes it too easy. The key to the cabin is where Natasha said it would be; hanging from a nail just under the front porch. Steve lets them in, the mustiness of long disuse tickling in his nose, stale and still.
The cabin is four rooms; one is both neat, modern kitchen and simply decorated lounge, one is the bedroom, one the bathroom, and the last a tiny laundry space by the back door. Bucky says it smells like blood, and points out faded dark stains on the carpet that look like blood spatter. He doesn't seem particularly bothered by that fact, though it gives Steve the heebie-jeebies. But he trusts Natasha when she says this place is safe.
Before they left Moscow Steve bought a full stock of groceries that are stacked in cooler bags in the back of the truck; Bucky helps Steve carry in the bags, and puts the groceries neatly away in the kitchen while Steve brings in more things. Aside from groceries, Steve bought new clothes and toiletries, and those bags Steve dumps in the bedroom by the door, before pausing with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning into the door frame and staring at the one bed with a small frown. There is no wardrobe, and Steve wonders if Bucky might finally end up sleeping in the bed without a hiding place to retreat to. If he does then they will share a bed again like they used to in Brooklyn; the thought makes an uneasy heat pool in Steve's belly.
There is a crash from the kitchen, and Steve stiffens and glances over his shoulder at Bucky with unthinking, automatic fear. But Bucky's just fishing a fallen and dented can of beans out of the otherwise empty sink, shooting Steve an apologetic kind of look as he juggles an armful of cans and the dented beans. Steve snorts a laugh – it's so Bucky to try to grab everything at once – and moves to help without thinking. For a split second, it's almost like everything is normal. They have the beans – with several more cans added – on toast for dinner, eating at the table, the tranq gun laying there within Bucky's reach, like a security blanket. There is no TV, but Steve's phone gets the internet even out here, and when Bucky's streak of calmness continues, Steve spends the evening showing him funny videos on YouTube.
It's fierce victory and an aching joy when after hours of videos, Bucky finally dissolves into shocked laughter at the screaming goats Sam had showed Steve months ago. And then the laughter turns into hysterical tears that Bucky can't explain the cause of and Steve spends the next three hours with Bucky clinging to him; crying an unending flood of hot tears into Steve's shirt, his shoulders shaking as he sobs, the two of them tangled together like halves. Steve cries a little too.
Bucky remembers more, but he's not getting any better. If anything, it feels like he's getting worse. Vacillating with dangerous instability between two increasing extremes.
One minute Bucky is someone who prefers to be called 'James', who is sometimes so much like Bucky used to be that it is like going back in time to what could have been after the war, if things had turned out differently. There is a fragility and a knife-edge nerviness to him that never used to be there, but the essence of Bucky comes flashing through now and then in precious fragments. And then the next minute, Bucky is the broken shell that Zola made him into – hollowing him out, scooping out his memories like pumpkin seeds, carving Bucky into the shapes he wanted, and setting a cold, dead light to shine where he used to be.
Steve can't keep up, and he knows he's not enough to help make Bucky better, but Bucky refuses to talk about going back home, to the US – specifically to New York and Stark Tower – clamming up whenever Steve tentatively tries to mention it.
Weeks pass.
On a sunny afternoon they go exploring through the forest. Bucky climbs a tree like a monkey, and seems amused by Steve's uneasy worry for him. He refuses to come down – out of sheer annoying stubbornness rather than any worrisome reasons. Steve clambers up after him in the end, and they end up both clinging to the tippy-top of the tree, swaying dangerously back and forth in the wind and staring out at the wilderness around them. Bucky smiles at Steve and his eyes crinkle up, his hair whips back in the wind, and his hand entangles itself with Steve's. It's beautiful.
On a sunny afternoon while Steve is making food after they get back from their tree-climbing exploration, Bucky opens his human wrist with a knife he pilfered from the kitchen, and Steve finds him all crimson and ashen white slumped down in the shower stall. It's not enough for him to bleed out, but it's enough to damn near stop Steve's heart when he goes to check why Bucky's been so long in the shower, and finds a sodden heap of broken person with wounded bewilderment in his eyes, and a knife held absently in his metal hand.
"Why?" Steve asks the man he calls James and thinks of as Bucky as he bandages him up with shaking hands, so thankful that Bucky didn't decide to cut his own throat or something else that wouldn't have been so easy to come back from. So frightened. So frustrated, because he tries and tries and it's one step forward and another straight back. "Goddamnit, James, why?"
Bucky just shrugs and his eyes are flat and dead, and his body is a crumpled husk, and Steve wants to shake him until he is him again and not this familiar stranger, naked and wet and nothing. Bucky smiles and it is dead and flat just like his eyes. "Why not?" he says, and Steve bites his tongue so hard it bleeds the taste of pennies in his mouth, and he is silent as he wraps Bucky's wrist in neat white bandages that hide the red and ragged slash through his flesh. There is nothing Steve can say that Bucky will listen to.
Because I love you, he thinks hard and angry as his teeth sink into his tongue – but when he has said it in the past Bucky just looks at him with a blank expression that hurts more than he can bear. So instead he holds the words inside him, his chest aching at the strain of it.
It has been over three months since Steve last spoke to Sam. He sends short, factual emails sometimes, to let Sam know that he's still all right and Bucky hasn't killed him yet, and to keep up with what he's doing. Just two weeks and several emails ago, Sam had been convinced by Tony Stark to temporarily relocate to New York, and is getting along well with Tony it seems – the two men bonding over their mutual love of mechanized flight. The phone rings a seventh time, and Steve's about to hang up, when it clicks through to the sound of a familiar, laughing voice.
"–shuddup, Tony, I gotta take – shut – go bother your girlfriend – goddamn, stop it, it's Steve – hello? Hey, Steve, you there?"
"…Sam?" Embarrassingly Steve's voice breaks, and he clears his throat, cheeks flushing hot.
"You need me, I'm there, brother," comes through the phone immediately in response to the strain in Steve's voice, worried but joking, and Steve chokes a weak laugh. He's perched on the edge of the cabin's lone but comfortable couch; perched on the damn edge in general.
"I need you," he says obediently, voice thick with emotion but smiling as he speaks, because god is it ever good to hear Sam's voice again. He says so with a catch in his voice, the words choked out around the lump in his throat.
"Whoa, man – coming on a little strong, there," Sam jokes, a little, silly thing that ends up stupidly making Steve think uncomfortable things about Bucky, things that he isn't supposed to be thinking. He thinks of all the things that it doesn't feel fair to Bucky to be thinking about in that way, but Steve just can't help it, because he's loved Bucky since they were boys, in every way you can love a person, and he loves him still now. But he shouldn't in that way, because Bucky shouldn't have such things put upon him. But. But.
Steve thinks of how the lines of Bucky look, all hard, scarred muscles in the shower through the steam, his hair falling in wet, dark sheets around his face, metal arm gleaming alien, and oddly beautiful despite its horrendous origin. Like the few precious times Bucky has laughed, and his mouth has curved into that wide, beautiful grin that takes Steve back – right back to before the war, and Steve feels love lurch like pain inside him every time. Like all the times that Steve wakes to Bucky watching him with an intently peaceful kind of expression on his face, the blankness retreated for a while and replaced with something that Steve thinks looks like tenderness. Like the feel of his face beneath Steve's fingers, and the smell of him when they sprawl together in the bed, and the way Bucky moves around the cabin with the threatening grace of a predator, the fearlessness when they go scrambling through the forest – climbing down sheer cliff faces and up to the slender top branches of trees.
Steve's not surprised that Bucky likes watching parkour videos on YouTube, although he often makes critical little sounds, and the glint in his eye says that he knows he could do it so much better. And then Bucky goes outside and Steve watches him with awe as he does do better.
"Steve? You still there?"
Steve clears his throat awkwardly, deliberately avoiding craning his neck to look through the doorframe at Bucky's sleeping form, all curled up on the bed in the next room. "I need advice, Sam. I need you to tell me what to do. Bucky needs my help, but I don't know how to… Nothing seems to make any difference, in the long run. He's remembering, but he's not getting any better."
"Maybe it's time to bring him home, Steve." A silence stretching out, Sam letting the words sink in. "You know, you don't have to do this alone, man. We're all here. Just one big happy family, according to Stark – it's kinda weird how insistent he was that I come crash here, if you ask me, but hell – he's fixing up my wings, so do you hear me complaining? He's given me my own suite, you know that? Everything set up just exactly how I like it. I shudder to think how much it cost, but I guess he can take it."
"He designed a suite for you?" Steve asks, laughing to himself through his confusion because it's ridiculous, and yet it does sound like something the mad billionaire would do. Steve's got a whole floor of Stark Tower waiting for him if he wants it. Bruce has already moved into an apparently' Hulk-proof' floor, and Natasha and Clint have been known to spend some of their downtime at the Tower. Why not Sam too? Tony was so much like Howard – in all the best ways, and some of the bad too, although Steve thought Tony's relationship with Miss Potts helped steady him. "Tony sure is...something else."
"I know, right? Seriously. A suite that's bigger than my whole damn house in DC. I think that means he likes me." A pause. "A disturbing amount." Another pause, and earnest affection and worry in Sam's tone. "Hey. Hey. Come back, Steve. You gotta come back. You can't do this alone forever."
Steve gets up then, like a magnet is drawing him, moving on soundless feet to the bedroom doorway and staring in at the single occupant, sighing. He keeps his voice soft when he answers Sam, watching Bucky sleep, breath coming in soft snuffles. He's curled in the centre of the bed, his face half veiled by shadows and his hair, and peaceful in sleep for once. If he is actually asleep and now playing possum, that is. "He doesn't want to. I don't – I don't want to take another choice away from him. He's…he deserves to be able to make his own choices now."
"And what about you?"
"I choose to be with him. Wherever he is. Whatever happens. I'm not losing him again." Steve doesn't mention the fact that he's already lost Bucky again; lost him to the Winter Soldier and the bewildered morass that is the remains of Bucky's mind. Whether Steve'll get Bucky back again is something he's still trying to figure out. He refuses to give up hope, but it's getting harder and harder to cling to it in the face of near-nonexistent progress and bone-deep emotional exhaustion. Steve rubs a hand over his face and sighs into the phone. "I'm not forcing Bucky into going through with anything he doesn't want. I can't."
"I understand that he's your best friend, Steve. I get that you would do anything for him, I do. And that's real admirable, but you have to look at the big picture – what happens when you run out of energy? Huh? What happens when you get worn down to nothing trying to shoulder this burden all alone, and you can't handle it anymore? How is that good for either of you?" Sam is hard and insistent, but full of concern. It comes from a good place, but it's not what Steve wants to hear. He pushes off from the bedroom doorframe - turns and walks away, as if he's trying to escape Sam's words. It's stupid because he keeps the phone to his ear as he crosses the small lounge and carefully opens the door. The night air is crisp and cool, and the half-moon is wreathed in dark whirls of cloud.
"I know, Sam. I know. But I can't –"
"This is why you called me, Rogers. I'm not stupid, and neither are you. You can't be his everything. You shouldn't be. You can't handle it, and let's be honest, as messed up as Barnes is; he needs more than just your shoulder to cry on. He needs professional help."
"Sam…"
"And that's why after months of all but ignoring me, you're finally calling me up. Because you need me to tell it to you straight. You've done all that you can on your own, and now - now, like it or not, buddy, you need to come home."
"I haven't been ignoring you!" Steve protests, feeling uneasy with guilt, because while he's had good reason, he has been all but ignoring Sam. Which isn't really fair on Sam, considering all he's done for Steve, but there hasn't really been any room for thoughts of anyone but Bucky in Steve's mind right now. "And – and I…I didn't call because I want you to give me…some kind of permission to take Bucky back whether he likes it or not, because I won't do that to him. Ever. I called because I need advice." He's angry by the time he's finished speaking, a clipped kind of tone twisting his voice - angry at himself and Sam, because Sam is at least half right. And he doesn't want Sam to be right. Steve wants to be enough; he wants to not fail Bucky, he wants to know how to fix things.
Sam is silent for a long moment, only the sound of his breathing proof that he is still there. Then: "That is my advice, Rogers. Come. Home. Come home and get Barnes – and you too – some proper damn therapy. A support system. People who are willing and capable of backing you up. Shit, man, you've got half a dozen people who want to help. Let us!"
"I can't." The words fall numb from Steve's lips as he shifts against the cabin doorframe, his eyes unfocused on the moonlit forest stretching out into the night. He feels cold and useless, and as though no matter what he does, he'll be failing someone. Betray Bucky's trust, or disappoint Sam - the choice is simple but no less unpleasant because of that. "I can't. Bucky..." It's all he has to say. Sam sighs, a harsh, short sound.
"Well, I tried. If you – or Barnes – change your minds, you know where to find us all. In the meantime, well, I'll talk to some people and see what…techniques I can find that you could use to help Barnes."
"Thanks, Sam." Steve is quiet, voice small and subdued in the Russian night, swallowed up by the shadows and moon-streaks. He is lucky, he thinks, to have such good friends. Sam makes a noncommittal sound, and Steve pictures him kicking back in his luxury suite in Stark Tower, nursing a bottle of beer and shrugging off Steve's gratitude in that careless, unselfish way he has.
"It's nothing, man. And hey, take care of yourself, okay? Alright? You aren't gonna be any good to him if you're a damn wreck."
They talk a little longer before Steve starts yawning, and Sam all but orders him to go catch some sleep. Steve agrees reluctantly. He goes through the nightly routine before turning in. He checks the cabin's perimeter, locks all the doors and windows, sets the alarm, and makes sure the StarkTech they have set up to monitor the area is all in working order. Steve knows full well he's just stalling having to go crawl into bed beside Bucky; his mind is churning and sick with it, and he feels twitchy and fidgety. He doesn't want to go to bed like that – it unsettles Bucky. Sam's voice plays loud inside his head. Come home come home come home.
But home is where the heart is; home is with Bucky. Even when Steve had nothing he'd had Bucky. And even if Steve has everything – S.H.I.E.L.D, unasked for fame, a purpose, tentative friends in Sam and Tony and Natasha – without Bucky it all may as well be nothing. This is something he's both always known, and yet only just realised now in a moment of sharp epiphany. The man sleeping inside the cabin, curled in a comma in the centre of the bed with his dark hair tangled over his face, and dreaming in fragmented nightmares and decades-old memories, is the hub of Steve's life. He orbits Bucky, helplessly and unwaveringly, and it is anathema to think of forcing Bucky to New York against his will and holding him prisoner, evwn with the best of intentions.
Steve rechecks the perimeter's motion sensor feed on both the StarkTab and phone he uses, his mind still echoing with Sam's words. You can't be his everything. You shouldn't be. He slants a quick look through the doorway at Bucky as he moves quietly from the dining table to the kitchen. The double bed is dyed half gold by the lights of the living area streaming in the doorway, but Bucky's face is in shadow – all Steve can make out is a dark head, and the shape of Bucky's lean body beneath the blankets. He needs professional help. Steve gets a glass of water, avoiding the bedroom like a coward.
He can't force Bucky to go anywhere he isn't okay with – he can't coerce, threaten, or make Bucky go. Except Sam is right – Steve can't keep doing this forever, not alone. He's been teetering on the breaking point for a while already – why else would he call Sam? – and he doesn't know how much longer he can cope. Steve's not exactly what anyone would call stable; he should still be having bi-weekly therapy sessions himself, if the last S.H.I.E.L.D therapist he saw was telling the truth and not a Hydra agent. And that was before his best friend came back from the dead as an amnesiac assassin and tried to murder him. Steve doubts his mental state has improved since then.
He stands at the kitchen bench, leaning back against the edge and staring into the one bedroom, nursing his glass of water as though it's a fine whiskey. Bucky is unmoving beneath the blankets; Steve studies the half hidden lines of him, and wishes for the hundredth time that he had his drawing supplies. Pen never captures Bucky truthfully. Bucky is just a shape, feet and legs and line of flank easily visible through the blankets, and washed in the yellow light falling through the doorway. His lean, muscled torso and broad shoulders are hidden under the blanket in a camouflaging darkness, only vague plays of shadow and deeper shadow delineating his form. His head is visible only as an inky mess of dark that is his hair, and a pale sliver of cheek, and tip of nose. Steve wants to capture him in charcoal so badly his fingers itch.
Bucky is curled up like the little spoon waiting warmly to be fitted to the bigger one, nestled in on himself like a child cosy in his parents' bed, scrunched and snuggled under the blanket – it looks nearly sweet viewed through naive eyes. Steve knows better, though. In reality Bucky is hunched and drawn up like someone who expects to be woken with brutal violence, and is trying to shield their vital areas. He sleeps as though his next awareness will be of pain inflicted upon him, as if he will never be warm again, as if he is so alone in the world that he does not even have himself.
Steve puts the half-finished glass of water gently in the sink before his angry, tightening grip shatters it. He will not leave Bucky alone any longer, while he stands here dumbly, wrapped up in his own petty concerns. Steve may not know how he will continue to cope with this situation without falling apart, but by god he will find a way, even if that way is simply to ignore the fact that he is falling apart, and soldier on regardless. Bucky deserves to have a choice, and Steve will do anything for him to have that. He goes to bed with a light, careful tread in case Bucky is actually sleeping and not just playing at it. But Steve's shoulders slump with an anger that has mostly turned to grief, and the sheer exhaustion written in his face belies his light, easy steps. Sam's words still ring in his ears.
Come home.
He stares at Bucky with an expression that verges on idolatry, watching the other man stir beneath the blankets as Steve blocks the light streaming through the door for a brief moment. There is something hard and hot sitting in his chest like a clenched fist. He is home.
One chapter left :3 Please review!