"'So, um, what if I did tell her the truth?'
'She'll hate you.'
'No no no, maybe she would understand, maybe everyone would understand-'
'Everyone will hate you. … You think you're going to turn around, all of a sudden, and start telling everyone the truth? You can't even tell yourself the truth.'" - Dear Evan Hansen, 'For Forever (Reprise)'
Chapter 4: I'm Okay
Bucky stared longingly out his windows, taking in the city with hungry eyes. The bustle of the world outside seemed so much more welcoming than it used to. Only part of him still saw it as somewhere to escape, the traffic and crowds as a way to lose pursuers. A larger part was trying to reconcile it with the city he used to know. The rest of him welcomed its speed and distant noise as a distraction from the noises in his head. If he could only get out to it, drown himself in the people and lights and unfamiliar streets. But he couldn't.
He wasn't technically allowed to go outside, even just on the roof of the building. He'd agreed to those restrictions because he didn't actually have a choice. The government said he was a danger to civilians, and the Avengers, citing his safety, agreed to the new rule. Never mind that Bucky hadn't been outside for weeks or anywhere but this building for months. And since he knew that JARVIS was an artificial intelligence, meaning that he didn't need to sleep and he didn't have lapses of judgement or attention, there was no "sneaking past" JARVIS or waiting for him to mess up. There was something that hurt about realizing that even here nothing he did was private, his own. Steve had promised him that JARVIS wouldn't share Bucky's activities with anyone unless it was absolutely necessary, just like he was one of the team. Bucky pretended, to Steve, that that made it alright, but it didn't.
No, he didn't want to stay here. He found that the concept of running away, vanishing into a crowd and becoming just another unknown face, was an addictive dream. A dream because it was near impossible now – his face was familiar, his whereabouts known, and his minders clever enough (probably) to catch him. It wasn't that he didn't like the Avengers, or that they were overbearing or unfair or mistrustful, it was… other things.
Tony looked like his father, too much like him. Sometimes the admission was on the tip of Bucky's tongue, and he could hear himself saying it: "I killed your father." But there was no good way to say that, no good way to tell the person responsible for his safety that he had murdered his parents in cold blood. It was harder because Bucky had cared about Howard, even though Howard had always been a little too cavalier for his liking about certain things. Not that Tony would care about Bucky's grief if he found out.
Natasha was one barbed memory after another, someone he couldn't understand and couldn't escape. He knew he should let their shared past go – it was only painful for him and awkward for her – but he couldn't seem to. Although sometimes it captured his imagination how she had let go. Part of him thought that if she'd been able to let go of her past and move on, maybe he could too. Another impossible dream.
And for all that Bucky felt safe with Steve, he also always felt like he had to lie to him. He knew, logically, that Steve didn't expect Bucky to be the same as he'd been seventy years ago, but everyone seemed to expect that of him, and it was hard to stop pretending. It was safer, too, to be someone he wasn't.
The thought of running away and being something else, something normal was a precious fantasy he clung to, because maybe if he ran fast enough he could leave the screams behind.
There were so many screams. In his dreams, in his unguarded moments; his screams, their screams; sometimes moans and gibberish but always, always full of hate. It got worse when he looked at JARVIS' statistics on the wallscreen. The statistics that showed Stark brand stock dropping at a slow but steady rate, the ones that showed a red bar of anger slowly rising higher and higher above its counterparts.
Tony said the government could publicize Bucky's crimes better than the Avengers could publicize the things that would defend him, and they couldn't risk letting people see him as he was now because letting anyone into the Tower at this point was too dangerous, and letting him out in public was clearly not an option. Even the Stark Enterprises employees had been moved out of the Tower to a temporary facility elsewhere in the city. And as for their evidence, Murdock insisted it was best kept their own for now. It was in their interests, Murdock said, if the public only got the full force of the evidence when the trial was going on. Bucky didn't really care at this point. He was distracted by keeping himself sane.
"Hey, Buck."
He turned and smiled half-heartedly at Steve. "Hey. Need somethin'?"
"No," Steve said. Bucky wasn't sure he was telling the truth, but he didn't comment on it. "Just bored to death is all."
"Mm." Bucky shrugged and looked back out the window. "Have you tried botherin' Tony? He always seems to be doin' somethin' entertainin'."
"He likes to 'entertain' himself by making fun of me," Steve huffed. "So no."
"Aw, come on, Steve," Bucky said. "Where's your sense of adventure?"
"Shut up." Steve waved his hand good-naturedly. "What're you doing?"
"Admirin' the view. City's changed a bit."
"A bit, yeah."
"So actually I'm bored too. Whaddya say we go someplace, get food?"
Predictably, Steve sighed and looked away. "You know we can't, Buck. It isn't safe."
"Aw, hell."
"Yeah."
"You're a bundle of laughs, ain't'cha? Come on, what about stickin' it to the government? Can't we just go anyway?"
"Sticking it to the government isn't really in your best interest right now."
Of course it wasn't. Bucky grumbled under his breath and rubbed his left arm. This was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. He could tell Steve was feeling guilty, though, and while he kind of wanted to use that to his advantage, maybe get some outside time anyway, he couldn't bring himself to do it. So he pushed himself to say something he'd been thinking for a few weeks. "So I feel like I gotta apologize for somethin' I said to you, when I was, you know, screwed up."
Steve immediately pulled a face, which Bucky had categorized as the "oh come on, no man it wasn't your fault" face. Bless Steve for his insistence that Bucky was blameless in the whole thing, but he didn't seem to understand that, ultimately, it didn't matter. He held up a hand.
"Shut your face, punk, I know it wasn't my fault. You don't gotta tell me every time. Now, here's the thing. I told you that you let me fall off the train cuz you wanted me gone. Like you don't already worry about that stuff, since you're a dumbass."
Steve started sputtering, stuck somewhere between trying to be reassuring and being very offended.
"But I know you didn't. And since you ain't gonna listen to yourself I'm gonna tell you: for the record, I ain't mad at you. I fell and there's nothin' you coulda done and sometimes you gotta deal with that." He grinned bitterly. "You've been tellin' me exactly that for a while now, and now I bet you know that it don't actually help worth a damn."
Steve laughed shortly, seeming surprised at his own amusement. "Okay, okay, sorry."
"Why," Bucky groaned, disbelieving, "is it that when I'm tryin' to apologize to you, you turn it around on me?"
"It isn't my fault!"
"Oh, for- Steve." Bucky gave up. He wasn't good at these sorts of conversations, especially with Steve, because Steve just didn't follow the script Bucky wanted him to. Bucky wanted it to be straightforward, where he said the things he needed to, Steve got it, and they moved on. But Steve was a punk who just wanted to argue technicalities like "well you didn't decide to, it was Hydra."
Oh yeah, that's right, forgot, guess in my memories when I was choking the life out of Howard, that wasn't my hand and I was completely uninvolved.
It wasn't like Steve was stupid, or wrong, he just didn't understand. Bucky thought Natasha might, but, well, he still wasn't talking to her much. He did think he should talk to Clint, sometimes, but whenever he thought seriously about it, he had to acknowledge that actually he didn't want to talk to anyone about his feelings.
Steve swayed back and forth for a second, then blurted, "I just wonder what you're thinking, sometimes."
"Don't everybody," Bucky mumbled. That made Steve laugh a little, but then he kept talking.
"I just, I mean… You talk a lot, around everyone, but sometimes you just sort of… stop, and I guess I just wonder if you're okay?"
Shit. Bucky knew he got lost in thought sometimes, but he'd thought he'd done better at hiding that from everyone else. Still, talking over the screaming was hard, and sometimes he had to stop and try to block it out. "Steve, I haven't been 'okay' for almost eighty years. Can you stop askin' me that stupid question?"
"You know what I mean," Steve said stubbornly.
"Actually, I'm not sure I do," Bucky said wearily. "What do you want me to tell you? That I'm not feelin' guilty? Cuz that would be bullshit. That I'm fine? I'm not. What the hell am I supposed to say?"
"I don't know, maybe there isn't somethin' you're 'supposed' to do, Buck, maybe you could just answer me!" Frustrated, Steve tapped his fist hard against his thigh, then crossed his arms. "What, you really think I think you're gonna be fine? I'm not fine, none of us here are 'fine,' so maybe you could just answer what you know I'm askin'. It's not rocket science, I just wanna know if you're managin'."
Bucky looked down. Yeah, he knew what Steve meant. He knew what they all meant. It was like a scale. "Okay" meant he wasn't going to start breaking things or screaming because he was handling his feelings well enough. "Okay" meant he could deal with the stuff in his head. "Not okay" ranged from "I'm going to cry" to "I'm considering jumping off the roof." When they asked, all they meant was "do you need us to help somehow." He wanted to do things alone, but he understood that when they said "are you okay" they were offering him a way to ask for help. He'd figured this out a few weeks ago one day in the lab, when Bruce had been working on something and Tony had taken a break from his project, touched Bruce's shoulder and said, "Hey, you good?" He'd played it off like it was casual, but Bucky had caught the way Bruce smiled wryly, looking anything but good, and said "Yeah."
None of them was good at asking for help, so they tried to make it easier.
It wasn't really easier. Bucky didn't like that they did that. It meant they were watching, it meant they thought he was struggling when he was trying to keep them from noticing.
"I'm managin'," he said quietly. The pitch of the screaming changed to a sound like laughter. "Gotta lot to think about, believe it or not."
Steve sighed. "I know you do, I just…"
"You worry," Bucky said. "You worry so much it's turnin' your hair grey to match your age."
"It's not- I just-"
"Look, you can worry if you want, Stevie," he said, turning and walking away from the window. Steve followed him, still sputtering a little. "But just cuz you're worried don't mean I ain't okay." Steve looked just a breath away from calling his bullshit, so he waved both hands to signal the end of the conversation. "Just… let it go, alright? Can we just talk about somethin' else? Like that time you got chucked in a dumpster and I barely got you out cuz we were both too short."
He knew that pushing the conversation towards their shared past was an obvious cop-out, and also that Steve was getting sick of it, but his friend (to his credit) sighed and went along with it. "Why the hell do you wanna talk about that? You were freakin' out almost more than I was."
"I was not!" Bucky protested, although Steve was right. They'd been hanging out in a neighborhood they weren't supposed to be in, and he'd accidentally run afoul of an older boy who Bucky was still fairly sure had been stealing. Jumping to Bucky's defense, Steve had immediately started yelling at the kid, and long story short, been thrown into a dumpster. Since they were both no older than ten at the time, Steve couldn't get himself out, and Bucky didn't want to go find an adult to help (because then they'd have to admit to breaking the rules). So instead, he'd clambered into the dumpster, given Steve a boost out, and then spent ten minutes trying to pile trash against the side so he could scramble out himself. Their mothers never managed to get out of them where they'd been, other than they'd ended up in a dumpster somewhere (since they couldn't hide the stench).
"You were," Steve insisted. "And then you almost couldn't get out of the dumpster yourself. I had to haul you over the edge at the last second."
"Yeah, and you tore my shirt and my ma wouldn't let me hear the end of it for at least one month."
Two buttons he'd lost off that shirt. His ma had mended it, but she lectured him for a long time. He'd heard it and actually listened, and it was good he did, because it wasn't even a year later that the whole country spiraled into what Steve told him was now called the "Great Depression." Bucky thought that name was appropriate. For him and Steve, whose families were already on the brink, it had been one of the worst experiences of their lives. Sure, he'd been through a lot worse since, but he still remembered how desperate his parents had gotten to looking, how a few years before the end of the crisis Steve's ma had died. He invited Steve to stay in their house, but they barely had enough to feed him.
"You're doing it again," Steve huffed at him, and Bucky blinked and shook his head.
"Shit. Sorry. I was just thinkin' – about the Depression, actually."
"Oh." Steve nodded. "Feels like it wasn't a big deal sometimes, doesn't it?"
"Kind of. I guess a lot's happened."
"Yeah. At least we always have something to eat now," Steve said, shrugging thoughtfully. "Even if we're both screwed up."
"I'll drink to that," Bucky snorted. "Or I would if I could even get drunk anymore. When I signed up for super muscles I never thought it would mean no more gettin' drunk."
"You didn't sign up," Steve said wryly.
Yeah, no kidding. Not even close. Bucky rolled his eyes and made for the kitchen. Even if he couldn't get drunk, he was still going to have a drink and a sandwich. "Whatever, pal. Same difference. Didn't figure on this part."
"Yeah, neither did I."
"Not that you'd try to get drunk, you goody-two-shoes. You haven't abused a substance in your life."
"Actually I have. I tried to get drunk after you died. That's how I found out I couldn't."
Bucky paused, fridge door half-open, then forced himself to pretend he didn't care. Stupid Steve, and stupid him for always worrying about Steve so much. "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard, you stupid punk. What, were you so mad you couldn't get wasted that you decided a suicide mission was the next best thing? Cuz I maintain that your judgement is actually total shit."
"Whatever. Jerk."
"Punk." Bucky closed the fridge, punched Steve on the arm, and tried to ignore how the screams just got louder.
A/N: So I have this amazing new headcannon that (obviously) Steve and Bucky had really thick Brooklyn accents. And Steve kind of learned to lose his because his mom taught him to use better grammar and then once he was famous and in charge he dropped most of the slang because he was supposed to be this classic American guy. But the headcannon part is that when Bucky gets used to not being the Soldier again, he has that accent again, and it's just really thick and classic New York and so Steve starts talking that way again and when he gets excited or mad he goes full Brooklyn. Basically I love writing New York accents.
Sorry this took me so long, btw! I started college, so I have a lot going on. Also I have become obsessed with Broadway, so I'm working a lot on a Dear Evan Hansen fanfic (with friendship and angst, as always). Go check that out!
Hope you guys are still on board with this fic - let me know what you think of this new chapter!
