Chapter 6

Bucky had finally stopped running. Or his body had refused to continue running, rather. He sat in an alleyway, behind a pungent old dumpster, his knee drawn up to support his arm, the metal cooling his skin even through the heavy fabric of his trousers.

He had no idea why he was here, in the center of the Projects, but it was where his feet had taken him, and he sat, his head bowed, his hair dripping in the gentle rain that had just began, flowing down the center of the alley before him, reflecting the slate gray sky.

It felt like he was drowning; the voices in his head screaming, fractured memories, jagged and confusing, mocking him. There was no clarity, no real memories, just a flaming pyre of faces, names, events that he observed from an outsider's perspective, as if he couldn't remember he belonged in them. And always, Steve was there, looking at him with those hurt blue eyes, shock frozen on his perfect features.

"A lot of people are gonna die, Buck. I can't let that happen," he would chime disjointedly, his face distorting.

Bucky let out a strangled groan, clutching his head in his hands, his body rocking unconsciously. "Stop it," he begged himself, a strangled supplication that rubbed against his raw throat.

He almost did not hear the footsteps that echoed in the ozone-filled air, disturbing his tiny piece of the world.

"I thought I would find you here," a voice told him over the rain. He looked up through his dripping hair at the girl standing before him, his fist clenching almost involuntarily. It was the woman he had dreamed about, quite a bit more soaked, her bulky clothes hanging off her medium frame like robes in the rain. Her short hair was plastered to her rain slicked brow, tiny beads of water suspended from the curled ends like diamonds.

He stood, hulking over her, dark and menacing. He had her by the throat in seconds, feeling her fluttering pulse beneath his cold fingers like a tiny trapped bird.

"Haven't you tortured me enough?" he asked softly, and it was as if he had the thread of her life standing suspended there, in the rain. It would be so easy to snap that thread, make the vision flee from his presence, a shadow exposed to the harsh starkness of light.

"Bucky, it's me," she gasped against his grip, and he could feel the scraping of the words against her throat. "Bucky, don't do this, I'm here with you. This isn't an illusion."

He slowly drug her against him. "I think you're lying," he breathed in her ear, breathy over the sound of the rain sheeting over them like "Because you know what Cas," he laughed, husky and painful. "I can't tell if you're real or not. In fact, I'm probably back in my hotel room, and all this is in my mind."

He flung her away from him, clutching his head. "Why aren't I waking up?" he screamed. "I just want to wake up."

He fell to his knees, there in the wet, trying to remember when it was the last time he had really, truly felt something. And he just couldn't remember.

He felt a hand upon his shoulder.

"Bucky?' Cas whispered. "It is going to be okay. I'm here. I'm really here."

He did not know how long they sat like that, his knees planted upon the cold, soaked concrete, her hand on his shoulder. It felt like she was his last lifeline, as if her thread of life was the only thing keeping him from drowning in the desperation that filled his lungs, choking him. She knelt beside him, wrapping her arm around his shoulders, muscle bunching and shaking under her hand.

"It's okay," she whispered again. "You don't have to be alone anymore."

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, his voice raw. "Why are you here?"

"I came looking for you," she answered quietly. "And I told you, I'm Cas."

"How do you know me? Did I kill someone you knew?" he asked with a glimmer of old Bucky humor.

Cas laughed unsteadily, her teeth chattering. "Come with me," she said in answer. "I have a motel room where we can get that arm of yours dry. We can talk there."

Bucky looked her in the eyes for the first time. He knew it was probably a trap: she would likely try to kill him, but in that moment, he wanted to go with her. It was stupid, and weak, and an image of him breaking her neck, her warmth marginally warming his bionic arm as he let her back to slump upon the ground had a certain amount of seduction to it.

This was soon followed with a hollow sense of disgust. What the fuck was he thinking? He almost remembered what it was like to be...human. To be Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, with his sense of humor, his courage, his loyalty. Taking a girl to her motel room for some fun had been a usual occurrence way back when he was young, and full of life. Before the war. Before HYDRA.

Cas helped him off his knees, and he let her lead him out of the alley. Zola's voice echoed coldly in his mind, screaming for him to come to his senses.

"What are you doing?" he shrieked in Bucky's ear. "Kill her! Kill her now!"

Yet somehow, he allowed her to lead him, a ghost beside her, his boots making no sound upon the wet concrete, the rain coming down as a gentle pitter-patter. He would try to jerk his hand out of hers, as if his muscles had a convulsive mind of their own, and she would turn to him and whisper in his ear, her hands holding him comfortingly.

She finally ushered him into her room, locking the door behind them. He looked around, his trained eyes flicking over her small bag of belongings, it contents spilling like cotton viscera from canvas skin, and the darkened interior of the room.

He heard her walk into the bathroom, the metal towel rod clanking as she stripped it of its charge. Walking back out, she pulled the chair out from the rickety old desk, motioning him to sit. Bucky hesitated, watching her closely.

"We need to dry that off," she said quietly, motioning to his arm. He glanced down at himself, soaking wet, the droplets pinging off his bionic limb like tiny shards of glass shattering. Nodding silently, he just stared at her as she knelt next to him and began carefully drying each section and rivet.

"Who are you?" he growled huskily. "How the hell do you even know about me?"

Cas sighed as she worked, not meeting his eyes. "My parents and I were driving home one night. I had ballet practice, and it was late. My mom, she-she hated driving at night. Said all the lights were disorientating," Cas said with a sad laugh. She cleared her throat awkwardly before continuing. "We were hit head on by a drunk driver who couldn't tell if we were in his lane or not. My parents were killed instantly. I survived, in a coma. I don't remember...a lot. Until I started having these dreams. About you. For ten years I lived everything with you. All your missions, the torture, I was there. Even when they put you back into Cryo, I slept with you. Until two years ago, when they revived you again, I woke up and I still had this connection with your mind.

Bucky scrubbed his hand across his sweat slicked brow. Cas stared at his trembling hand, and stopped touching him, pulling away slightly.

"I don't understand this connection," she told him. "But after the events in Washington, I had to do something."

"After the events in Washington," he repeated quietly, rising jumpily from his chair and pacing around her. "I remember," he said suddenly.

"Washington?"

"Everything. I remember everything."

Cassandra stood from her crouch. "When?"

He laughed wildly. "I killed a man, in that piece of shit room I'd been in, and it just...all came flooding back to me. I remember the War, what they did to me, I remember Steve," he laughed again, and Cas felt tendrils of worry curl around her gut like barbed wire. "I can see their faces," he whispered. "Every single one."

"Of the people you killed?" Cas asked hollowly.

"It's...it's what I am now." his voice was hoarse as he backed away from her. "I'm a killer. Steve can't see me for what I am."

"Bucky, don't go," Cas begged, her hands reaching for him as he backed into the door. "Please, you can be saved."

"No," he responded, his voice suddenly very steady, and with the bang of the door slamming open, he was gone, a ghost into the night.

Cas sank to her knees, burying her face in her hands. She really fucked it up this time. She needed help. She needed Steve Rogers.