Life After Death

by Team Damon

Sequel to Breath of Life. He's overcome a lot to get to where he's at, but he still has a long way to go. She knows that it's not going to be easy, but she also knows that he's worth it. And neither of them have the slightest clue what in the world they're doing. Bucky/OC, post-TWS and non-Civil War compliant. Now complete!

27. Chapter 27

One of the worst feelings in the world, Steve had known since 1945, was the feeling of standing somewhere and having to watch something horrible happen to someone you love without having the power to do a single thing about it. As Sam described it, being there just to watch... it was uniquely horrifying in a way that only those who experienced it could truly understand.

Steve had never wanted to Bucky to know what that felt like. But now here they were, in the middle of a busy intersection in the heart of New York City, and Summer was laying on the pavement in front of where he was crouched, bleeding and broken in at least one place that was visible to even Steve's non-expert eyes. Coming back and finding her like this when he had realized that she and Bucky weren't behind him had made his blood run cold, made him instantly think the worst because of how lifeless a woman otherwise so full of life had looked in that moment. The horror that he had felt wasn't just for Bucky but for himself, having watched Summer become such a regular part of his own life with her smiles and positivity to rival his own, and now seeing her so badly and suddenly hurt had hit him like a brick wall.

Meanwhile, no matter how loudly Steve yelled at him to stop, Bucky was across the street in the middle of trying to kill the person who had caused all of this.

"Steve, go!" Natasha yelled from Summer's other side, and Steve was up and on his feet running just as the sounds of sirens started blaring from down the street.

This was bad. Not only was Summer's condition unknown - and it looked bad - but the driver's car was now in pieces, having been unceremoniously ripped apart by Bucky probably less than two minutes ago. But that wasn't why Steve was running. He was running because Bucky was punching the driver's face into the concrete, and judging by the unnatural angle of one of the kid's legs, Bucky had broken it as an eye for an eye sort of thing.

Steve gave up trying to call Bucky's name and get him to snap out of it that way, instead running behind him and immediately grabbing him with both arms and hauling him back, off of the now-bloodied boy on the ground. Bucky fought him wildly, and trying to hold him back was like trying to restrain a rabid dog while dodging flying limbs and fists at the same time.

"Bucky stop, stop!" Steve pleaded, finding it almost impossible to hold Bucky back in his current crazed, adrenaline-enhanced state, but he didn't have a choice. Bucky eventually managed to turn around and then tried to throw Steve off of him, but Steve grabbed him and shoved him on the side of the car as he urged, "Bucky, stop and look around you. The ambulance is almost here, cops are almost here. You can't get arrested, especially not right now when she's gonna need you."

Bucky still struggled against Steve's hold, but the cold, vacant look in his eyes was slowly replaced by the dawning of realization. "But he... he..."

"I know," Steve said, his face pained. "I know, Bucky, but you've got to leave now before the cops get here."

Bucky's eyes widened in horror and he shook his head vehemently. "No! I can't leave her - I won't leave her. I -"

"If you don't leave now," Steve urged in a harsh whisper, "They're gonna find you and they're gonna know who you are and you will leave her for good. You just ripped a car apart in front of witnesses, Bucky. You need to run."

He shook his head again, his eyes now shining with filling tears as his face became suddenly almost childlike in its horror. "I can't leave her, Steve."

"I'll stay with her, I promise," Steve said, looking over and seeing that the ambulance was there now. "And we'll get you into the hospital with her. But you have to leave now."

Not struggling anymore, Bucky blinked a few times, clearly coming back to himself in some capacity now, and he said after looking around, "They'll know you let me go."

Steve paused for only a moment before it became obvious what needed to happen. "Hit me. I'll hit the ground, then you run."

Bucky's face managed to fall even more. "Steve -"

"Dammit, Bucky, do it before they take you," Steve said, his tone one click away from becoming hysterical.

To his relief, Bucky's expression then hardened slightly, and as his right hand balled up into a fist, he said, "Take care of her until I get there."

Steve would have nodded, but the sudden and rather hard punch to his face knocked him back too quickly for him to do anything. For the sake of the punch's purpose, he went with the momentum of it and fell to the ground, and when he looked at where Bucky had once been, he saw no trace of him.

He breathed a sigh of relief. At the very least, now he didn't have to worry about Bucky being arrested, hauled away, identified, and then never heard from again. But Summer was still hurt and the kid who had hit her was now laying half-dead on the ground as well, and this was all still very, very bad.

He got up and ran back to where Summer was, and he was further relieved now to see no fewer than eight paramedics surrounding her. Natasha was speaking to one of them, and when she caught Steve's eye, she walked quickly to him and asked, "Is he gone?"

Steve nodded. "I'm gonna have the black eye to prove it. Have they said if she's okay?"

"They just started working on her," Natasha replied. "She's breathing and her pulse is okay."

Steve nodded, though his eyes were glued to the pool of red underneath her head. Aside from her leg - which he couldn't stand to look at again after the first glance - it was the worst looking part of it all, and it was hard to not think the worst.

"He asked me to go with her, but I don't think they'll let me," he whispered to Nat, watching as they carefully loaded her on to a stretcher and strapped her so securely that no part of her body could move. "Do they let friends ride in the ambulance?"

"No," she shook her head. "Go run to them and start asking if she's okay. Tell them you're her fiancé."

He turned and looked at Nat with slightly wide eyes. "But -"

She pushed him from behind and hissed, "Go. You go with her like he asked, and I'll go find him."

Steve couldn't try to come up with another plan, because then Natasha vanished just as quickly as Bucky had. He then looked back in Summer's direction and did exactly as Nat told him to do, taking on the role of hysterical fiancé and descending upon the paramedics with half-shouted questions and pleas to ride in the ambulance with her. He thought he must have been getting better at this lying thing, because the medic who appeared to be in charge gave him the green light with a dismissive wave.

When they loaded her into the ambulance, he climbed in behind the medics and sat on the only free space that there was, on the very end of one of the side benches on the wall, and his eyes went to the monitors that she was now hooked up to. He stared at the numbers while his mind worked at a mile a minute, his thoughts chaotic and overlapping as they fired at a rapid rate. He would need to answer the police's questions about the boy who was being placed into a separate ambulance. There would be a lot of questions. The boy could give a very detailed description of his attacker. There would be an investigation, undoubtedly.

He wanted to only worry about Summer, pray for her to make it through this and still be the same laughing, bubbly friend that had sparked new life in his best friend, but unfortunately, there was a lot to worry about.

"Does she have any allergies?" asked one of the medics, startling Steve out of his thoughts.

"Oh, uh... no, none that I know of," he replied.

"Is she taking any medications?"

"No," he replied before he remembered something Bucky had mentioned almost three months ago. "Yes. Birth control. In a shot."

Bucky should be here, he thought as he watched the medic nod and then note the information on a chart. He could be here if only that kid had not provoked even deeper anger when he had tried to run. He could be here if only he had controlled his violent impulses, but could Steve even blame him?

"Any diseases like diabetes or heart disease?" the medic then asked, and Steve continued to answer the questions to the best of his ability, hoping that he was right, not needing to act to appear as fearful and sick as he felt every time he looked at Summer. It was still incomprehensible that this had actually happened, and there were so many horrible things that could result from this that he couldn't even bear to list them all.

But the most important thing was Summer being okay. He continued to watch her monitors and everything the medics did for her on the way to the ambulance, knowing that if she didn't recover, the sanity that Bucky had worked so hard to develop and maintain might just shatter into too many broken pieces to be put back together.

---

Bucky was good at many things, but disappearing was a particularly well-honed skill that came very much in handy that night. It didn't make the reality of the situation any easier, nor make any of it easier to believe.

He didn't want to just be in denial. He wanted to crawl inside of denial, wrap up his entire world in the idea that this was all a nightmare and that any minute he would wake up tangled up with Summer in his sheets, and she would be whole and healthy and not lying broken in the middle of New a York City intersection.

But, unlike the days where a machine would take away reality and replace it with mind-numbing cold and nothingness, he found that while he could outrun the authorities, he couldn't outrun the truth of what had happened. And when he ended up in a dark, filthy alleyway behind some random building, he half-stumbled against the wall and then slid down against it to the ground, shaking with the effort it took to breathe and not completely fall apart.

His hands were stained with blood, both Summer's and the kid who had hurt her, and everything felt like it was moving too fast, spinning out of control. Her scream and the sound of the car hitting her played on repeat in his head, making the monster inside purr rather than retreat to the buried place he usually managed to keep it locked inside of.

He wished Steve hadn't stopped him. It was taking all of his will and every last ounce of strength to not go back there and find the kid and finish the job.

But the other part of him, the voice that countered the monster and belonged to the man he had once been, was simply too devastated to give in to those murderous instincts.

He had seen people die from less. He had killed people himself and seen less blood drip from their bodies than what had been dripping from hers. But even if she did survive... what kind of shape would she be in? He had lifted a car from off of her leg. She had hit her head hard enough to potentially lose at least some of her memory.

And worst of all, he didn't know what was happening, because he had let the monster out and now Steve was with her instead of him.

He didn't know when he had begun to cry, because the truth was that he had never stopped once it had happened, but that was how Natasha found him. Slumped against the alley wall, hands covering his face as he didn't even try to fight the tears from falling. He couldn't remember the last time he had cried, but now, he couldn't stop.

"Barnes," she said softly, and he could tell by the sound of her voice that she was close. "Get up. We need to get you to the tower and then to the hospital."

He dropped his hands slowly and looked up at Natasha, seeing through the blur of moisture that she wasn't unaffected by all of this either, judging by the look on her face. But she was a rock. She was strong when others weren't, and this was one of those times.

"... Is Steve with her?"

She nodded. "He had to lie and say that he was her fiancé to get on the ambulance, but he's with her."

He nearly punched a hole into the alley wall. He was grateful that Steve was with her, but damn it, he should be the one with her. And he had nobody to blame but himself for the fact that he wasn't.

"Come on," she said. "There's a lot to do."

Those words sparked something in his head that he had not realized until that moment. David was at the tower, blissfully unaware that anything was wrong with his mother. Paul was all the way across the country, trusting Bucky to take care of his sister.

They both needed to know. And he had to face them now, knowing that he had failed them both.

He got up and followed Natasha out of the alley, but not before she stopped him and gave him a look that was both gentle but stern as she asked, "Are you okay?"

He knew what she was asking. He nodded. She searched his eyes for a moment before nodding herself, and then they were back on their way, now that she seemed to be at least somewhat assured that he wasn't going to try to kill anyone else that night.

The truth was, he just didn't know. He didn't know anything, other than the fact that if he lost Summer, he might find HYDRA and hand himself over just for the simple relief of having the pain, and the last year, erased from his mind

---

David was asleep when Bucky got back to the tower, giving Darcy and Sam heart attacks when he stepped off the elevator pale as a ghost and covered in blood that wasn't his own. He left the explanations to Natasha, retreating to his room to scrub the blood away and change into clothes that weren't stained with the evidence of the night's horror. He moved on autopilot, feeling his chest tighten every time his racing thoughts turned to David, who would sleep tonight but awaken in the morning to... what?

Every time he blinked, he saw her crushed leg or her bleeding head, the blankness on her face as she laid there unconscious or the split second of horror that he had seen in her eyes when she had seen the car coming.

When he had finished cleaning himself up and was dressed, he left his bathroom and then headed straight for his door, not intending to look anywhere else lest he see something of hers that might make him fall apart all over again, but he failed at that when he caught a glimpse of a pair of her heels sitting next to his dresser on the floor. He stopped and stared at them, the ice threatening to freeze over his blood again as his heart took another stab right to its center.

Those shoes, as innocuous as they may have seemed to anyone else, symbolized and meant so much more than just what she wore on her feet. She teased him with those shoes, enticed him with them, walked on them at the top floor of the tower as she did her work, danced on them, wore them with a sense of confidence that had grown significantly since he had first watched her stumble clumsily in high heels on their first date months ago.

Now he wasn't sure if he would get to see her do any of those things again.

A soft knock to his slightly open door snapped his attention away from the shoes, and he looked up to find Natasha standing in the doorway.

"Ready?" she asked. He shrugged vaguely and she added, "Steve checked in. They made it to the hospital and they're working on her now. He's dealing with the police."

The police. God, what a mess he had made of something that was already horrible. His eyes dropped and his expression became confused, and as if Natasha could read his mind, she said, "We've got this. We'll figure it out."

"But the kid," he said, and the hoarse, small quality of his voice made his very bones cringe.

"One thing at a time," she said.

Bucky nodded, trying not to think about what might happen if the kid ended up dying from his injuries, or recovering and identifying his attacker. Then there was the whole matter of witnesses seeing a man tear a car apart with his bare hands.

"I screwed up."

"That's an understatement," Natasha replied honestly. "But it's not like you're the first. Come on."

He nodded then and followed her. On the way out, Sam gave his shoulder a pat and offered his help in anything Bucky needed. He nodded back, appreciative of the gesture but well aware that there was nothing Sam or anybody else could do.

Things fell into a blur when he followed Natasha into her car, taking the passenger seat and suddenly feeling the weight of his phone in his pocket like it weighed a ton. He didn't want to touch it, didn't want to pick it up and use it to call one of the people that he was most terrified of facing, but it wouldn't be right for anyone else to do it. He couldn't put it off, either, because whatever happened to Summer, one thing that he knew beyond a doubt was that she would need her brother once she woke up.

And so, as Natasha drove them through the dark streets of the city, he steeled himself as best as he could and pulled out his phone. He found one of the last numbers in his admittedly sparse contacts and stared for just a few seconds before he forced himself to hit the call button and press the phone to his ear.

Paul answered after the second ring and didn't bother with a hello. "Oh God, this can't be good."

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw, unable to speak for a moment. Of course Paul would know that something was wrong immediately. Bucky never communicated with the man at all unless he was visiting and standing or sitting directly in front of him.

"... Hello?"

He drew a deep breath and forced out words that cut worse than knives to have to speak. "She... something happened. She got hurt."

The single word that Paul said back was so small and horrified that it almost sounded like a child had spoken it. "What?"

He closed his eyes again and dragged his hand to his face, feeling the tears swell up again behind his eyes and threaten his ability to speak.

He couldn't do this. He couldn't. But he had to.

"There was a car," he muttered. "She was crossing the street and it didn't stop and it..."

"Oh my God." Paul's voice sounded like the exact mirror image of what Bucky felt. Horror and disbelief and all of their shared worst fears combined.

"She's gonna need you," Bucky said. There was silence for a few long seconds, and then the line disconnected.

He dropped his phone and then stared forward at the road, his hand held over his mouth as if it could hold back what he was feeling. As hard as that was, he couldn't imagine David finding out about this. It was too much. Just imagining the look that would be on the boy's face and the fear and the confusion...

"Almost there," Natasha said, glancing over at him. "Keep it together."

He nodded, but he knew it was in vain. Keeping it together implied being whole, and as long as Summer was broken, then so would he be as well.

---

Summer would have surely teased him about the hat on his head and how ineffective of a disguise that it was, but the only thing that Bucky could think of when he stepped into the hospital was the smell.

It was enough to make him stop in his tracks as soon as he had walked through the automatic doors and feel like an invisible wave had broken over his head. Suddenly, at the worst possible time that it could have happened, for a split second he wasn't standing in a New York hospital. Instead, he was held down, restrained, back in the center of all his worst memories and in the hands of HYDRA, all because they must have cleaned the damn lab facilities they kept him in with the same chemicals used in hospitals.

But Natasha recognized his suddenly vacant stare for what it was, and her hand on his arm made him blink and return partially to the present.

"You okay?"

He nodded, blinking a few more times and pushing away the flashback that he most certainly did not need right now. It didn't stop the cold sweat that he had instantly broken into, however, or the sudden paleness that had descended upon his already-pallid face.

"Yeah, yeah," he shook his head. "It's the smell, it's..."

She looked at him for a moment before nodding, understanding. "You'll get used to it."

He didn't think that he would, but it made no difference. All this did was make an already impossible night even more difficult.

He looked at Natasha, at the cool and calm picture that she presented, and she gave him an imperceptible nod before walking again. He followed her, keeping his head down and silently trying to mentally prepare himself for what lay ahead.

Natasha checked her phone as they walked, and according to her, Steve was still dealing with the cops somewhere in the hospital. Avoiding them, Natasha asked an older woman at the front desk about Summer, and the lady directed them to the second floor, where the ICU was located.

On the short elevator ride there, Natasha leaned slightly closer to Bucky and said, "Tell them your name is James McAdams. If you're not a spouse or family they won't let you in."

He furrowed his brows and said, "But I thought Steve said he was her fiancé."

"He told the paramedics that to get in the ambulance," she said. "He's been dealing with the police ever since he got here. I can guarantee you he hasn't lied since then. At least not about that."

The doors then opened, and Bucky drew a breath that didn't help him calm down very much. Pretending to be Summer's husband didn't bother him, but the insinuation that Steve was lying to the cops to cover for him did, just a little bit. He had to wonder what the story was that Steve had concocted to keep all of this away from Bucky, but it would mean nothing the second the kid described his attacker.

But he could worry about that later. For now, he and Natasha walked to the nurse's station after they stepped off on to the second floor. As soon as they arrived at the desk, a nurse in light green scrubs with dark skin and a friendly smile looked up and asked, "Can I help you?"

For half a second, his mind went blank and everything swirling in his head suddenly refocused entirely on the only thing in the world that truly mattered at that moment, which was the woman that was somewhere on this floor, behind the two large doors blocking the ICU to his view.

"I'm... my wife is here," he said quietly, the words not feeling as strange as he might have thought they would. "She was in an accident tonight."

"Name?"

"Summer McAdams," he said, feeling another pang just from saying her name.

The nurse typed some on the computer in front of her, and then after a moment, she said, "Looks like she was just brought up here less than an hour ago. It'll be a little longer until they allow a visitor."

He had been afraid of that. "Is she okay?"

The question felt as stupid as he thought it sounded, but the nurse was kind and said, "I'm not her nurse, but I'll find out who is and ask for you, okay?"

He nodded, muttered his thanks, and then watched as the woman stood up and and then disappeared behind the ICU doors. He didn't move an inch or hardly breathe until she came back, which was a full five minutes later.

"The good news is she's stable," the nurse said, moving back behind the desk. "Right now they're waiting on a few tests to come back to know the extent of her injuries. The doctor knows you're here and will be coming out to talk to you soon. The waiting room is just down the hall to your right."

He nodded, thanked the nurse again, and tried to make that information satisfy his need for more as he turned and headed down the hall with Natasha, who hadn't left his side once. He didn't know much more than he had before, but at least now he was closer to Summer, and soon - hopefully - he could be by her side again.

He had nearly reached the waiting room when Steve exiting the elevator further down the hall caught his eye. He and Natasha stopped just outside the waiting room and Steve quickly caught up to them, asking in a quiet voice, "Is there any news?"

"Just that she's stable and they're waiting on tests," Natasha replied. "What about the police?"

Bucky watched Steve as he dropped his voice down lower and replied, "Well, they sure seemed like they believed my story once they got my name."

Nat sighed and muttered, "I hope the story was a good one."

"I said that she's a friend," Steve explained, "and that after... it happened, some guy came out of nowhere while I was trying to help her and attacked the driver. I tried to stop him, we fought, he ran away."

Bucky cast his eyes down to the floor, not wanting to think about that and what he had done in his rage anymore. Then Steve added, "I did have to give a description, and I kept it accurate enough that when the kid gives one, it won't be drastically different."

"You mean if he gives one," Natasha remarked somewhat darkly. "Speaking of that, I'm going to make a few calls. Find out his condition."

Steve nodded as she walked away, and then he glanced at Bucky and led him into the waiting room with a comforting pat to his shoulder. There were a few others in the waiting room, an older man by himself and a few women who looked like sisters sitting together, and Steve led Bucky to the most deserted corner and then sat him down. Bucky kept his eyes mostly on the floor as Steve leaned in a bit closer and said, "I'm sorry, Bucky."

He looked up and looked at the man like he was nuts, like that was the last thing he had the slightest reason to say. But Steve just shook his head slightly and said, "I know what it's like to watch something like that happen. And how it feels when you know there's nothing you can do about it."

Bucky knew what Steve was referring to, and he couldn't think of a thing to say back. He just nodded slightly and then cast his eyes back downwards, and they sat there in silence for awhile. He wasn't sure how much time had passed when a man's voice called from a short distance away for a "Mister McAdams", and it took a few full seconds for him to register that it was him who was being called.

His head snapped up and he jumped to his feet before he had even taken a full glance at the doctor. It was an older man, wearing a white lab coat and holding a chart under his arm, looking at Bucky through small square glasses as he walked to him and said, "You're the husband, right?"

He nodded without hesitation, stopping a few feet in front of the doctor. Steve wasn't far behind. "How is she?"

"Well," the doctor began, glancing at the chart, "the leg's in bad shape and she's got one hell of a concussion and two broken ribs, but aside from that, she's stable. So far her scans are clean but with the kind of hit that she took, memory and other functions are always a concern, but we won't know that until she wakes up."

He blinked. "Wakes up?"

"She's pretty heavily sedated at the moment," the doc explained. "Honestly right now the leg is my main concern. The injury is very significant and over the next 24 hours, we'll know whether she can keep it or if there's just too much damage."

Bucky's eyes widened. "You mean... you might have to..."

The doctor nodded sympathetically. "It's a possibility. But I'm optimistic. It says here," he checked the chart again, "that her leg was pinned under the car for about a minute. That's important because if it had been longer, the chances of the leg being saved would have dropped significantly. Like I said, I'm optimistic, but we need see how it goes over the next 24 hours."

Bucky nodded, his brain processing the information, trying to find at least a degree of relief in the doctor's words, but there was only so much to be had. He would only be relieved when she was awake with her memory intact, and her leg still attached to her body.

"Now we're not big on visitors in the ICU at these hours," the doctor said, "but I can take you in to see her. I can't guarantee how long you can stay, though."

"Okay," Bucky nodded quickly, jumping at the opportunity. He turned and looked at Steve, who gestured for him to go on, and Bucky gave him the most grateful look that he could muster while making a mental note to thank Steve later fully for everything he had done to help that night.

The doc nodded and gestured to the large doors down the hall. "Follow me."

Bracing himself, Bucky fell into step slightly behind the doctor, trying to stuff down the dread that he felt and be strong instead. As much as he needed to be next to Summer, a part of him was terrified to see her in the state that she was in. He hadn't realized how much he relied on her to be strong and whole for the both of them until now, and now that she had an undoubtedly long recovery ahead of her, the thought that now he had to be the strong one was almost too much to bear.

But he focused on one thing at a time, as his therapist had stressed many times, and his eyes snapped up from the floor when the doctor asked him a question.

"How long have you two been married?"

He faltered for a moment before blurting an answer, the first thing that popped into his head. "A year."

"Still newlyweds," the doctor sighed. "I'm so sorry. But the good news is that she's young and I've seen full recoveries from much worse. She's right in here."

Following the doctor past a line of rooms with numbered doors, he held his breath when the man stopped at one and reached for the door handle. He opened it and then gestured for Bucky to walk through first, and while still holding that same breath, he put one foot in front of the other and stopped as soon as he walked inside and laid eyes on her.

The room was small, just large enough for a bed in the center and the necessary equipment, plus a small solitary chair in the corner. And in the center of it all, in that bed, laid the woman he loved.

Her leg was bandaged completely from mid-thigh down and elevated in a way that looked horridly uncomfortable. Gauze was wrapped around the crown of her head, and wires and tubes ran from multiple parts of her body to various machines and monitors, all beeping noisily and displaying her vital signs. Her face was paler than usual, and though her eyes were closed and her face looked calm, it was an artificial sort of calm and not the kind of genuine, blissful kind that he liked to see on her face when she was sleeping next to him. This was all wrong - everything was wrong, and it made the tightness in his chest ache and radiate through his whole body.

He stepped closer to her slowly, his eyes sweeping along every inch of her, as the doctor checked the monitors and marked a few things on his chart. Bucky went to her left side, unable to do much more than stand there and stare, feeling the tenuous control he had gained over himself in the last few hours start slipping again.

The doctor patting his shoulder almost made him jump and slam the man to the wall in sheer surprise, but all he did was flinch slightly.

"We'll take good care of her. And like I said, our policy in the ICU on visitors isn't the best, but I'll see what we can do about letting you stay here tonight if you want."

He nodded quickly and replied, "Thank you."

The doctor nodded, gave him a tight smile, and then left the room, the door softly clicking shut behind him. Bucky then turned back to Summer, back to the pain that the sight of her lying there helpless and sedated caused him, and it didn't take long for his resolve to crumble alongside his emotions, all of it beyond his control.

He didn't touch her, afraid that if he did, she would break completely and be lost to him for good. Instead, he gripped one of the rails of the bed and stared at her, giving in fully to the pain and turmoil within instead of trying to ignore it or control it like he had been ever since Steve had pulled him off of the kid and told him to run.

He tried to be grateful that she was alive, that the doctor was optimistic about her chances for recovery, and he was. But there was no positive way to look at this. Even if she walked again, it would be a long time, and he knew that without having to hear it from a medical professional. Everything was going to change now, and she was going to have to deal with pain on a scale that she had never experienced before. Her life as she knew it had turned upside down. David's comfortable routine was going to be shot to hell, and that was the least of the reasons why this was terrible for David.

She had promised David only hours ago that she would take him to the park on her next day off and spend the whole day with him doing whatever he wanted to.

Bucky had promised her that Fridays would be their day to go dancing every week. She had gotten so much better at it since he had first begun to teach her those months ago. Her confidence had grown and she had moved with ease earlier that night, his equal in every sense of the word within his mind, and things had been so good that he should have known that something horrible was coming.

But in the end, as with everything else, it was his fault. That she was lying here and not safe in a warm bed under the same roof as her child was his fault, even more so than the kid who had been driving the car that hit her.

He had been born to lose, to fall and to hurt every single person that had ever cared about him. Maybe he had shed too much blood, caused too much death and pain by his own hands, and now this was a taste of all of that catching up with him. Maybe there was simply too deep of a blood debt for him to pay, and this was fate or whatever the hell was out there's way of collecting overdue payments, while helpfully reminding him that even with all of his unnatural strength and deadly skill, he still couldn't protect those that he loved most in the world from a damn thing.

He cried quietly, but deeply and hard enough to make his chest rattle, until he ran out of tears to cry. And all the while, the only part of her that he allowed himself to touch was the ends of a small piece of her hair that laid against the bed. His flesh fingertips pressed down on those strands as he pleaded silently and uselessly to her to wake up, to be okay, to walk again and forgive him for something he would never forgive himself for.

---

The night passed in a blur. Eventually Bucky sat down in the tiny chair in the corner, staring at Summer's monitors and letting the beeps and the noises and the sound of her breathing hypnotize him into a dull, entirely horrible, sense of hazy numbness that did nothing to comfort or calm anything he felt inside.

Nobody asked him to leave the room. Instead, Summer's main nurse, a friendly, motherly dark-skinned woman with eyes that were some of the most kind he had ever seen in this century, rolled in a different kind of chair for him to sit in and even grabbed him a pillow. He awkwardly accepted the kindness, answered the nurse's questions about them and their situation, and in turn asked her if Summer would be waking up soon.

"I can't tell you that, honey," the woman had said gently, replacing one of Summer's IV bags. "But it's really for the best that she's out right now. Even with all these meds we're giving her, she's gonna wake up in a whole lot of pain."

He couldn't cry or let himself get worked up all over again over that, because he wasn't sure that he was capable of producing tears at the time.

About twenty minutes later, the nurse returned with a bottle of water and some bag of random snacks, saying that there was a "blonde pretty boy" trying to convince the head nurse to let him violate their policy of one visitor to a patient at a time so that he could bring Bucky sustenance, but since the answer was no, she decided to do it for him and lend a hand herself.

Bucky wasn't sure how to handle that kind of kindness from a stranger, and he was pretty sure that she wouldn't have been so nice had she known that he had almost murdered a kid earlier. Or that he had murdered more people than he could count in the course of his life.

Not long after that thought had run through his head, he got a text from Steve telling him that Nat had found out the kid's condition. He was in another hospital across town and was in a coma. She hadn't been able to find out much more than that.

Then, as he processed that information, he got a text from Paul saying that he would be there within an hour or two. Bucky had no idea how that was possible, since even if he had managed to get on the first flight from California to New York, that would still put his arrival at least three or four hours later than that. But Bucky didn't comment on the strangeness, and Paul didn't say anything else. Bucky had heard the nurse mention that a brother had been calling the hospital every hour to check on her condition. He wasn't surprised or offended that he would rather ask the nurses about Summer than him.

A few times, in the course of the night, his eyes closed of their own accord, and the sound of the beeps and clicks in the room lulled him to uneasy sleep. His head would slowly drop to the side and he would doze only to jump and wake up with a sickening start when he would see Summer being hit by the car all over again. This cycle repeated itself until the sun began to rise, by which point he stood up and started pacing the room in order to stay awake and stop torturing himself with the memory of the accident and her scream.

And through it all, she still didn't wake up. She stirred a few times, but her eyes never opened. The longer time dragged on, the more he started to worry that she really had sustained some kind of brain injury beyond a concussion, but then he reminded himself that they had overloaded her on drugs and that they had said that her scans looked okay.

With the morning came a shift change and daytime visitor policies that allowed two people in the room at once. Bucky had sat back down in the chair and had gone back to staring at the monitors when the door opened and he saw Steve's face peek inside. Then a familiar sense of cold and mild panic settled over him when the door opened more fully and Paul appeared in the doorway.

He stood up immediately, unsure of why but moving on an exhausted form of autopilot at this point. Paul looked his way for one very small fraction of a second before turning his eyes to his sister. Bucky stood against the wall, glancing at Steve who gestured that he'd be outside and then closed the door. He then turned his own eyes back to Summer, as Paul slowly walked closer and looked at her, the silence in the room utterly deafening.

It felt like an eternity passed where neither of them said a word or moved an inch. Paul just stood there, his expression moving from shocked to sad to horrified to angry. Bucky didn't look up to see any of it. He didn't know what to say to the man, what he could possibly say that would mean a thing at a time like this. If he was Paul, he would hate himself. He wouldn't just stand there like that. He would clench his fist and turn around and punch himself right in the...

Bucky's snapped up when he noticed that Paul had turned around and was now standing in front of him, but before he could register the blind fury on the man's face or his fists balling up at his sides, Paul threw a punch at his face. It wasn't a particularly good punch, but it landed right on the left side of his jaw and he stumbled back a bit against a blood pressure monitor due to the sheer unexpectedness of the hit. Once he righted himself and turned his head back towards Paul, he saw the devastated and furious look on his face, and then it was no surprise when he grabbed Bucky by his shirt and yelled something so full of sadness and rage that it made Bucky's self-hatred reach new heights.

"You promised me you would protect her!"

Bucky's eyes stung as he replied with a voice that was barely above a shaky whisper. "I'm sorry."

When Paul answered with another punch, a harder one that connected with his nose this time, he didn't fight back. He didn't try to stop the man, not even when he hit him again, and again, and then again. He didn't move an inch, letting himself be Paul's punching bag because he deserved it, he deserved every last punch and much worse.

The faint taste of copper in his mouth was the last thing he noticed before Paul was suddenly being pulled away from him, and Bucky looked up to see Steve as the reason why. Nat was there too, and there were also some concerned hospital staff at the door, probably ready to call security and kick everybody out at any moment.

He wished that they had just let Paul keep going. He straightened up against the wall, wiping his bottom lip with his right hand that then came away slightly slightly bloody, and he watched as Steve tried to calm Paul down.

"It wasn't his fault. There was nothing anybody could do."

"But he promised... he promised me, and now look at her. Look at her! None of this ever would have happened if he had just left her alone. First her house, and now this. He's..."

Paul whipped around then, still being held back by Steve, and pointed a finger in Bucky's direction, his eyes vicious. "I don't care who drove the car. You did this. You did this and you know it." Steve tried to tell him to stop but he went on, while Bucky stared at him and made no effort to defend himself. "I knew something like this would happen the minute I met you. I knew it. I knew you'd hurt her."

Everything coming out Paul's mouth was irrational to everyone in the room aside from Bucky. To him, Paul was merely saying the very same things that he had been telling himself since this happened, but that didn't make hearing it from him any easier. He wasn't aware of how his eyes were shining again, or how he looked slightly nauseous as he listened to the rant, because his focus was on the stiflingly hot sense of pure shame creeping up his spine.

He felt less than human, like he was worth less than a speck of dirt on the ground. Everything he had ever hated about himself and his past and his present converged through Paul's words and left him with only one option that he felt worthy of: running away.

He walked out of the room, stormed out of the ICU through the two main doors and into the hallway outside, having no idea where he was going or what he was doing. But the shame was overwhelming, the regret and the reality of it all, and letting it all fall on his shoulders pushed him into a fight or flight sort of dilemma. And there was no way he would fight to defend himself.

He heard Steve catch up behind him as he stomped down the hallway.

"Bucky," Steve said quietly, trying to keep the sound of his name away from other ears. "Stop, come on. He's in shock, he didn't mean any of that."

Bucky didn't say a word. He just kept walking, wishing Steve would just leave him alone.

Steve caught up fully and reached out and gently grabbed his right arm. "Bucky -"

He snapped. He couldn't help it. He turned around and threw Steve's hand off of him, then pushed him with such force that it shocked even himself. It felt vaguely like he was watching himself do this, rather than being in control of his own actions. Steve hit the wall, leaving a dent in it, and then Bucky held him there with his right hand while his left pulled back, ready to spring forward and pummel his friend for absolutely no reason.

What stopped him was Natasha barking his name from the other end of the hallway. Bucky's slightly crazed, still-shining eyes darted to her and then back to Steve, which was when he saw the sad and bewildered look on Steve's face. Then he looked at his own fist, metal underneath the holographic image making it look like human flesh, and then he let go of Steve and stumbled back so fast that it almost made him dizzy.

He was losing it, falling apart, unraveling. He could feel it, and there was nothing Steve could do to help him, despite his best intentions.

"Stay away from me," he said in what was meant to be a menacing growl but instead came out as a broken half-plea. He turned then and walked away, back of his shaky right hand wiping at his eyes, and he had no idea where he was going, but all he knew was that he needed to go.

Meanwhile, Steve automatically moved to follow him, but Natasha grabbed his hand and pulled him back. "Let him go, Steve."

He looked at her like she was nuts. "But Nat, he's -"

"You can't always help him," she said bluntly, despite how she knew his face would fall slightly as soon as he heard those words. "That's not what you want to hear but it's the truth. You're smothering him if you go after him now."

Steve looked at her, then down the hallway where Bucky had disappeared, and then closed his eyes as despair washed over his features. Natasha let go of his hand as he leaned his back against the wall, running his hands over his face before he muttered, "This is horrible."

Natasha pursed her lips slightly, not disagreeing in the slightest. "And it's almost about the time that David will be waking up."

Steve suddenly looked at her in quiet horror. She drew a breath and said, "I'll go after him in a little bit, after he's had time to calm down. Go keep an eye on her brother."

"You sure?" Steve asked.

She nodded. "Yes. I think he needs a certain... approach right now that isn't your strong suit."

Steve looked a little saddened by that, but he didn't argue with her. She gave his hand a slight squeeze, then turned to let go and head the way that Bucky had gone.

Steve pulled her back at the last minute, his hands going to her face and holding it gently as he leaned down and pressed a short, gentle kiss to her lips that she hadn't expected. When he pulled away, he opened his eyes and said sincerely, "Thank you, Nat. For everything."

She nodded, just the slightest quirk to her lips, and then they parted, one going one way and the other going another. If nothing else, they were as good a team in a personal crisis as they were in a national security one.

---

Bucky wasn't fully sure why he had ended up outside, in the back of the hospital, not far from a row of dumpsters that lined the building. Maybe it had been the air that he needed, or just solitude, or both, but regardless of why he had come here, it hadn't helped.

He didn't want to be there. He wanted to be with Summer, at her side where he had been all night, but now he was afraid to go back. He was afraid to do anything. He didn't know what to do, and his spiraling self control was sparking genuine panic in his head. He hadn't felt this out of control since the night he inadvertently led HYDRA to Summer's home and caused its destruction, only this felt worse.

He sat there alone for what felt like a long time before he heard footsteps. He knew who it was before he looked up, and this felt a lot like when she had found him in the alley way the night before.

"Feeling better yet?"

He almost laughed. Instead he continued to stare forward and said nothing, because there was nothing to say and he wanted her to go away. He knew she wouldn't though.

When she sat down next to him, he blinked a few times in genuine surprise, but he still wouldn't look at her. She didn't say a word for a long time, both of them appearing to find the pavement in front of them quite fascinating.

Finally he had to ask the question that had been on the tip of his tongue since he heard her footsteps. "Why are you here?"

"That's your question?" Natasha teased lightly.

"You don't like me. You never have. I don't like you that much either." Apparently, emotional turmoil made him very honest.

"I think it's a little more complicated than that," she replied.

Finally he turned his head and looked at her, his eyes like dead weights in their sockets. "It's not."

She rolled her eyes slightly at him, like he was missing something obvious, and she turned her eyes forward again and said, "Mirrors aren't always pleasant to look at, Barnes."

Maybe he was simply too tired and upset to understand such gibberish. He blinked and furrowed his brows. "What?"

"The same people made us who we are," she said, leaning her head back and glancing up at him. "Not the same individuals, but the same ideas. The names change but the people are always the same and they're always there. Methods change too but the results are the same. Take the person out and replace it with higher purpose, skills that nobody else has, loyalty to... whoever's pulling the strings."

He stared at her, watching her eyes take on a far-away quality that he knew all too well.

"I try to forget all of that," she said. "I try to make up for what I did but I know I can't. Nothing can. That's the reality that nobody wants to admit." Then she looked at him and said, "Seeing you every day makes it a hell of a lot harder to try to forget."

He still didn't understand. It wasn't like their histories were linked in a personal sense. She turned away again and went on, "It was never that I didn't like you. Sometimes I don't like myself. And we're more alike than anybody realizes."

Oh. His eyes widened slightly, in slight disbelief over what she had admitted, especially when she was the picture of confidence most of the time. But he knew self-hatred. He knew exactly what it was that he saw etched on her face at that moment, though he had never seen it there before.

"Everything you've done, I guarantee that I've done it too, and probably worse," she said. "It's all on the Internet, if you're curious."

He wasn't curious.

She turned back to him then and said, "Steve tries his best to help you. But he doesn't always realize that sometimes he can't. He can't because unless you've experienced what we have, there's just no way to fully understand it. That's why I'm here instead of him."

"I don't think you can help me either," he said quietly.

"Maybe not," she shrugged. "But there's a little boy back at the tower who needs you, and I'm his best shot at convincing you of that."

His eyes widened and it felt like a weight dropped on top of his chest. He shook his head. "I can't."

"You have to," she said a little more sternly.

He shook his head, feeling panic creep back up on him. "I don't know what to do with him. I can't tell him what happened. I can't..."

"Listen to me," she said, her tone utterly serious as she turned more fully towards him. "I know you're panicking. I know this is terrifying and it's a nightmare. But that doesn't stop the world from spinning. You can't stop either."

He stared at the ground, muttering, "Paul should get him. He'd know what to do. He's family, I'm not."

Nat looked at him slightly incredulously and said, "When Paul visited the tower, who was David attached to the entire time? Who does he see every day? Who does he know? He doesn't know Paul, not really. Not like he knows you."

When Bucky continued to shake his head, Natasha sat up straighter and surprised him by calling him by his preferred name and not his surname, as she usually did. "Bucky."

He looked at her, and she said, "Whether you realize it or not, right now, you're the only parent that kid has."

Her words served as a punch to the very center of his being, but not the painful kind that he had been struggling with since the accident. He stared at her with wide eyes that were trying to fill up with tears again, and the sad frown on his face deepened as he tried and failed to cling to disbelief of what she had just said.

He had absolutely no idea how to be a parent, how to even pretend to be one, but Natasha was right.

"You need to pull yourself together and go get him," she said. "And I guarantee you that when she wakes up, she'll be glad that it was you who took care of him and not someone else."

He stared forward again, mind racing as he asked barely above a whisper, "What do I tell him?"

"... The truth," she replied. "He's a tough kid. He'll get through this, just like she will. This isn't the end of the world."

He closed his eyes, taking a breath and then running the back of his hand over his eyes. He didn't want to do this, and just the thought of being the one to wake David up and tell him what had happened, changing his life and scaring him to death in a handful of sentences - it was the absolute last thing in the world that he wanted to do. But he had to do it. Natasha was right, even if he had not truly realized his own significant role in the kid's life until she had said the words out loud.

It was overwhelming, but then again, today, so was everything.

Eventually, after a few more steadying breaths and doing his best to calm his mind for the sake of what he had to do, Bucky leaned forward and brushed his hair back off of his forehead. He looked at Natasha one more time before he made himself stand up. "Thank you."

She nodded, and when she said "You're welcome" in English, he only then realized that they had been conversing in Russian the entire time.

He got up and got to his feet. Hopefully, by the time he brought David to the hospital, Summer would wake up and, at the very least, the beginning of this ordeal would finally come to an end.

---

Natasha drove Bucky back to the tower while Steve stayed behind at the hospital. He spent the whole ride there mulling over his words in his head, trying to figure out exactly what to say to David and how to say it. But all of his thinking left him no more prepared than he was when he first climbed into the car, and once he was inside the tower and on their floor, he headed straight for the hallway Natasha staying with him until he reached the door of the room that Summer and David shared.

"I'll be out here," she said quietly, and he nodded as she headed towards her own room. He turned back to the door and sighed, closing his eyes and turning the knob quietly before opening the door and looking inside the room.

It was a bit messy, since Summer had been preoccupied lately and hadn't had a lot of time to clean like she normally did, but he didn't pay much attention to the clothes and toys scattered on the floor. Instead, he looked at the bed, where David was burrowed under his red white and blue Captain America blanket and still sleeping peacefully, and with one more deep breath, Bucky made his way to the bed and sat on the side of it, next to where David laid.

The boy stirred a little at the slight motion of Bucky sitting next to him, and Bucky watched and waited silently to see if he would wake up on his own. When he didn't, Bucky reached out and hesitantly gave David's shoulder the tiniest of shakes, while he said his name in a tone so quiet and exhausted it barely sounded like his own.

That seemed to do the trick. David rolled over, his hands going to his eyes and rubbing at them before dropping them and opening his eyes, blinking them sleepily and then looking up at Bucky in confusion. Bucky had never woken him up before, so this was definitely an odd start to his day.

"Hey kid," he said quietly, trying not to cringe as David sat up and looked around, undoubtedly looking for his mother. When he looked back at Bucky, his mind went blank and useless for a moment, and his mouth opened but nothing came out.

How was he supposed to do this?

Before he could think of a way to start, David looked at him and signed something, placing his thumb under his chin with his fingers spread out in the air, and it took Bucky a minute to recognize that as the sign for "mom" or "mommy".

The tightness in his chest felt like a fist squeezing his heart at this point. He thought that his face must have been showing it, because David's expression grew more confused and maybe slightly scared the longer he stared at him. He knew something was wrong, so Bucky forced himself to say something.

"She... your mom... she got hurt last night," he said quietly, as gently as he could. "That's why she's not here. She's okay. But she's in the hospital right now."

David's eyes got a little bigger, and then his eyebrows furrowed. Bucky could see the little boy thinking, trying to understand what he was being told, so Bucky added, "I'm gonna take you to see her. You'll... you'll have to be careful around her because she's... she's hurt, but... she'll get better."

In his lap, David started curling his fingers together, fidgeting while he stared down and tried to think through what he was hearing. Bucky glanced down at his hands, then at his face, asking gently, "You want to go see her? We can leave now."

David then looked up and nodded, then sprang off of the bed and toddled into the bathroom. Bucky let out a sigh of relief, that having gone much better than he thought it would have, but David also had no clue of the severity of Summer's injuries. Once he actually saw her, then surely things would change.

But, once again, one thing at a time.

Bucky sat on the bed and watched as David left the bathroom, then went about his normal routine of getting dressed like it was any other day. Now six, he preferred to do everything himself, even picking out his own clothes and combing his hair, so that left Bucky with little to do, and he was relieved that the main things he had to worry about were food and drinks. Those should be easy. Hopefully.

After his clothes were changed, David grabbed his backpack from the closet and then went around the room, throwing stuff into it. In went a few favorite toys, his tablet and its charger, and then he zipped it up and sat on the floor to affix his little replica of Steve's shield on to the backpack, so that when he put it on, it looked like he had the shield on his back instead.

Once the whole process was done, and he put his shoes and backpack on, he stood there and looked at Bucky expectantly. Bucky stared back for a minute before snapping out of it and getting up, having been momentarily distracted by the very precise and almost methodical way that David had gotten himself ready. But thank God he wasn't a smaller, needier child, or else Bucky would have been even more clueless than he already was.

"Okay. Let's go," he said, leading the way to the door. David followed close behind, and after they made it down the hall, Bucky stopped at the entrance to the kitchen area and glanced down at David. "Uh... are you hungry?"

David nodded. Bucky then wondered how the heck he was going to figure out what David wanted when he didn't speak.

But David ended up making it easy for him, peering at one of the counters and pointing to something on it. Bucky followed his finger to a box of donuts from the day before. He breathed another sigh of relief, thankful that his choice was about as easy as it got. He grabbed the whole box, then turned to see David miming taking a drink.

Right. He needed a drink too. He knew that Summer always bought big economy sized packs of juice boxes because he was picky but would always drink those good, so thus began his search of the pantry and cabinets looking for the damn things.

It wasn't until he was crouched down searching under a pile of crap at the bottom of the pantry that he felt a tiny tug on the bottom of his shirt. He glanced behind him and saw David standing there, then watched as he pointed to a cabinet that he had already looked in. But he checked again anyway, and this time, he finally found the elusive juice boxes.

Having no idea how many of them David would need, he took the whole 24-pack and then balanced the donut box on top of it. "Ready?"

David nodded, and Bucky hoped that the first thing Summer would say upon waking up wasn't that she was going to kill him for letting her son eat garbage for breakfast. Then Natasha came back out, grabbed her keys from the counter, and asked if they were ready. Bucky nodded, and then then three of them headed to the elevator.

Once they were inside and the elevators doors closed, David shuffled closer to Bucky, away from Natasha, ever the boogy-woman, and Bucky felt a little hand sneak its way into his right one. He looked down at the boy, who still looked confused about all of this but was okay, at least for now, and he remembered that Summer always made David hold her hand whenever they left the floor, even if it was just the elevator. He was being a good boy, remembering Summer's rules in her absence.

Bucky gave his hand a tiny squeeze, smiling gently at David, and then cast his eyes back to the dwindling floor numbers above the doors.

So far, so good. He could only hope things would stay that way.

---

With Steve and Nat in the waiting room, Bucky found himself outside of Summer's room, David's hand securely clutched in his own. He hesitated for a moment, instinct telling him to try to prepare the boy for what he was about to walk in and see.

Standing there in the hallway, Bucky turned and knelt down in front of David, looking him in the eyes as he said, "Remember what I said about how she's hurt?" David nodded, and he went on, "She's going to look a little different. She has a... big... bandaid... on her head and one of her legs, and she's still sleeping. So... she looks different, but just remember that she's going to get better. Okay?"

He felt like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was David. The boy nodded, and Bucky gave him a tight smile before standing back up, taking his hand again, and opening the door.

Summer was still just as he had left her, drugged and asleep, her monitors beeping and displaying numbers in the normal ranges. By her side was Paul, sitting in the chair that Bucky had spent the entire night in, and as soon as his gaze fell on Bucky, he knew that the man still hated him just as much as he had an hour ago, when he had caused the cut on his bottom lip. But then Paul's gaze went to David, and both men were silent for a moment as David stared at his mother.

David only walked in a few inches before he stopped in his tracks and looked at Summer with wide brown eyes. Bucky felt the boy's grip on his hand tighten somewhat, and Bucky watched him carefully to gauge his reaction.

Before he could make sure that David was going to be okay, Paul cleared his throat slightly and smiled as he stood up from his chair. "Hey buddy."

Bucky glanced up at Paul as he walked closer, hand out like he expected David to leave Bucky for him. But David instantly recoiled, gripping Bucky's hand like a vice and hiding his whole body behind Bucky's. Paul's face fell, and then he looked up at Bucky with still-angry eyes.

"He should be with me," Paul said in a whisper, so that David wouldn't hear.

Before Bucky could say a word in defense of himself, a soft groaning sound from the center of the room made both men stop and look. Bucky's heart started thumping rapidly the minute that his eyes fell upon Summer, stirring slightly and just barely blinking her slightly open eyes. She was finally waking up.

"Summer," he said, bypassing Paul and accidentally knocking into his shoulder to get past him, taking David with him. He hovered slightly over the bed, watching her struggle to open her eyes and turn her head. "Summer?"

David was trying to look, but his small stature made it difficult, so Bucky picked him up. When her eyes opened fully at last, they fell on the two of them first, and she stared for a long moment before a few hoarse words left her throat.

"... David," she said, barely above a whisper, and then she swallowed and said louder, "Bucky?"

Relief washed over him, and Bucky genuinely smiled for the first time since the accident. She remembered him. She had her memory. She was still herself.

"Yeah," he smiled, still afraid to touch her. "Yeah, we're here. Paul's here too."

She blinked slowly, one of her hands slowly rising up to touch her head where the gauze still was. She turned to look on her other side, where Paul was, and she croaked out, "Paul?"

"Yeah," her brother assured her, one of his hands covering hers. "I'm here."

Her face the picture of confusion and utter bewilderment, she then began to turn her eyes back towards Bucky, which was when she saw her right leg covered and elevated.

Bucky cringed as she stared at the leg, then felt her head again, realization dawning on her that something was very, very wrong.

Fear was as plain as the blue in her eyes when she looked at Bucky and asked in a small, shaky voice, "What the hell happened?"

---

Beeping was the first thing she heard when the fog in her brain began to clear enough to allow her to wake. It was a familiar sound and yet not, because it didn't make any sense. Nothing in her room beeped like that, so unless JARVIS was broken and in need of a reboot, something weird was going on.

The problem at that point was, however, that she could not actually open her eyes, and she felt weird.

It wasn't pain, not exactly. It was more like a bizarre sort of radiating numbness, like she should have been in pain but wasn't. There was also another problem, which was that she couldn't exactly move. Everything felt too heavy, cumbersome, like she weighed a thousand pounds and needed a crane to raise her arm for her to get the irritating itch on her nose.

And the beeping wouldn't stop.

The sound of indistinct whispers was what she heard when she finally managed to crack open her eyes, which felt like little tiny anvils were sitting on top of to keep them closed. All she saw was a blinding light, way too bright to be sunlight or even the overhead light in her room, and her confusion grew exponentially.

That was also when she had heard her name spoken by a very familiar voice, and then Bucky was there, smiling at her with an expression full of relief that she didn't understand. Then David was there too, and most bizarrely of all, Paul, who should have been across the country in California. Right?

Had she not been under the influence of quite a few drugs, she would have been able to piece together where she was, and maybe even what had happened. But instead, when she saw her leg propped up and elevated and covered in white, and felt the bandages on her head, she knew nothing and had to ask with her voice that felt like it hadn't been used in a month.

"What the hell happened?"

Now able to hold her eyes open better, she watched Bucky's smile fade and something much darker and sadder take its place. Alarm bells went off in her head, and it took him a moment to reply quietly, "We went dancing last night. Steve and Natasha were with us. We were crossing the street and... some kid came speeding out of nowhere and..."

He trailed off, and he didn't have to finish the sentence. Suddenly she remembered; the images and the sounds and feelings came rushing back like a hammer to the center of her brain, or maybe that was the sudden deep, painful throb that she felt in her head. Either way, she could remember the crosswalk, the smile that had been on her face when she teased Bucky about walking her home, and then the split second's worth of horror she had seen on her face when the car was suddenly there, out of nowhere, unstoppable in its path directly to her. That was where her memory ended.

She turned her gaze from Bucky to her leg, and she began to realize that she had been really injured. She tried to take a breath, and it hurt like hell.

"What... what all happened to me?" she asked nervously, and her gaze flickered to David, who was back to standing next to Bucky. David was watching her closely, and she could see him getting more and more uneasy the closer she got to panicking herself.

"Concussion," Bucky said. "Two broken ribs. And your leg... it's... it was pinned under the car. I pushed it off, but it's... it's bad."

She looked up at him with wide eyes, then again looked at David, who looked like he was one step away from becoming hysterical. She took another painful breath and tried to steady herself for David's sake, but she wasn't sure anything could stop the freaking out that was about to happen.

Before she could ask anymore questions, the door opened, and she saw an older male doctor walk in with a nurse behind him. "Oh good! You're back."

She stared at the doctor, taking small breaths because they hurt less, and she tried to ignore the jackhammer pounding in her head as the two people swept in and her people moved aside for them.

"Okay," the doctor said, checking her monitors before turning back towards her at her left side, "Can you answer a few questions for me?" She nodded, and he asked, "What's your name?"

"Summer," she answered simply, before her brain caught up and she added, "McAdams."

"Good. What year is it?"

"2015," she replied.

"Very good. And who are they?" he asked, gesturing to Bucky and David.

"My son and my..."

It took her a moment to catch the word that Bucky subtly mouthed to her. Was he serious? Apparently he was.

"... Husband."

"Great," the doctor said. "Now that we've got that out of the way, I can give you a picture of what we're looking at injury-wise. You took quite the beating last night."

And then, Summer laid there in ever-increasing pain while listening to the doctor go into more detail about the same injuries that Bucky had listed to her. It was all rather straightforward until he got to her leg.

"Like I told your husband last night," he said, "with injuries like these, amputation isn't uncommon. It depends on the severity of the injury, obviously, and if we have a real chance to save the leg with surgery. It's something where we have to watch and run tests, but so far, I'm optimistic about our chances of saving it. We'll know for sure by tonight, but judging by your scans and last exam, I'd count on having surgery in a day or two."

Well, she supposed that was a relief, but at the same time... holy crap.

"Any questions?" the doctor asked.

She had about a hundred. "What kind of surgery?"

"An extensive one," he said. "Your knee is shattered, and that's just one thing we'll have to reconstruct. For the other fractures, best option is an intramedullary rod." He then used his hands as a measurement gesture as he explained, "That's a long metal rod that we'll put in the cavity of the bone. Helps you get back on your feet faster."

She raised her eyebrows and asked, "Will I get back on my feet? Because..."

The doctor sighed, putting his hands in the pockets of his coat and replying, "Look, I won't sugarcoat it - it's a bad injury. Crush injuries are tough and they take time to recover from, but you can recover. You'll probably have pain and arthritis down the road, but that can be managed. The important thing is, with treatment and physical therapy, you will walk again. It won't be easy, but you will."

"... Will I dance again?" she asked, afraid of the answer.

"What kind of dancing are we talking about? If you're a ballerina, then probably not. But if you mean more regular dancing, then yeah. It won't be easy, like the walking, but treatment's come a long way since the days when an injury like this meant the end of regular activities."

She nodded, then glanced at Bucky, standing there holding David's hand and watching her carefully, and then she looked back to the doctor and asked, "How long until I'll walk again?"

"That's something that will depend on a lot of factors," he replied. "On average, though, I'd say that most patients your age start taking their first steps in about two months."

Her jaw dropped. "Just first steps? In two months?"

He nodded. "It's a process, Mrs. McAdams. But just try to take it one step at a time. Rest. Focus on healing. I'll keep you updated and let you know as soon as I do about the surgery. How's your pain?"

Mind racing through the pain and fog within it, she muttered, "Really painful."

The doc then gestured to the nurse, who promptly got to drugging Summer back up. "You've got enough drugs to knock out a horse at your disposal, so just let us know."

She nodded, wincing at the pain in her head and her chest and leg and everywhere. Getting hit by a car, it turned out, felt pretty much like it sounded like it sounded it would, which was like hell.

The doctor examined her then, and as he poked and prodded, she let her mind run wild with thoughts that did her no good in that moment. She couldn't do her job if she couldn't walk. She couldn't take care of her kid if she couldn't walk, or at least it would take time to figure out how to. Then, how long would she be here, in the hospital? Probably a long time, considering the extent of her injuries, and that left David in an odd state of limbo. She wouldn't be able to care for him. She'd need help. She'd need...

She looked over at Bucky, still watching her, misery etched on his face. David was holding his hand for dear life and watching her with such fear that it made her chest hurt even more than it already was. On her other side was Paul, whose presence still confounded her, and he was taking everything in with quietly angry and horrified eyes that would turn soft every time hers would catch them. She hadn't missed the fact that his right hand was wrapped up and Bucky's lip was cut. She must have missed World War 3 when she had been out.

After the drugs had started flooding her system again and the doctor and nurse took their leave, Summer blinked heavily and looked at Bucky and then Paul, asking, "How are you here?"

"I was in Cincinnati for a conference," he explained. "I was actually gonna come here and surprise you in a couple days. But instead I cut the trip short and drove here when he called me."

She then looked at his hand, then turned and looked at Bucky, and in a small voice, she closed her eyes and began, "I don't know what's going on with the two of you but whatever it is, please let it go. I'm trying to wrap my head around this and I'm scared and I need help, I need both of you, and David needs everybody calm and -"

It must have been the drugs and waking up to a broken body that did it, because suddenly she was crying and she was a bit horrified at that, but suddenly both Bucky and her brother were on either side of her, doing their best to reassure her.

"Okay," Bucky said, touching her for the first time, covering the back of her hand with his. "Anything you need, Summer, I'm here."

"And me," Paul chimed in. "Don't worry about anything. Just... get better."

She wiped at her eyes, which were feeling heavier and heavier now that the drugs were really kicking in, and she looked up at Bucky and asked, "Can you bring David over here?"

He nodded, and a moment later, David was leaning slightly on the side of the bed, and she shifted as much as she possibly could to turn his way, which wasn't much. He looked at her with that fearful, worried, confused look he'd had on his face since she first woke.

She reached her hand out to his face, cupping his cheek and saying softly, "I'm okay, sweetie. I'm gonna be fine. I'm just gonna be stuck in this bed for awhile so I can get better. But I will get better, okay? I promise."

She saw a fat little tear escape one of his big brown eyes, but he nodded, and she smiled, wishing that she could hug him but knowing that she couldn't.

Then, rather than bring her hand back to her side, she reached for Bucky's right hand and caught it as she looked up at him, forcing her eyelids to stay open. "Take care of him for me, Bucky. Promise me you will."

He nodded, squeezing her hand back and leaning down, close enough to kiss her forehead. "I will. I promise. I'm so sorry."

He pulled away, and she looked up at him in confusion. "For what?"

"This was my fault," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I'm sorry." She furrowed her brows and blinked at him as he looked at her in pure despair and repeated, "I'm sorry."

"But... the driver did this, not you," she said, fighting the pull of sleep so that she could try to understand how in the world he was trying to turn this on himself. "How could this be your fault?" When he didn't answer her, a thought crossed her mind and she asked with a slight slur, "Did they catch the driver?"

Something crossed his face then, something dark and... shameful, maybe? "He's... in a coma."

She stared at him for a moment, at the way that his face was now torn between what looked like anger and disgust, and even in her current drug-addled state, she could tell that something was wrong. "Bucky, what did you do?"

He shook his head just slightly and said, "Don't worry about that now. You need to rest."

She would have protested, but she felt like she hadn't slept in months and could barely keep her eyes open. She did manage to find the strength to turn back to Paul, however, blindly reaching for him and saying once he grabbed her hand, "Thank you for being here. I love you."

He blinked suddenly moist eyes and said, "I love you too, kid."

"Be nice to Bucky," she said, closing her eyes. "Don't hit him again."

"... I'll do my best."

"Help him with David if he needs it," she added, head drooping and sleep overtaking her even as she kept talking. "But I want David with him. David's closest with him and he... "

She trailed off, then jerked awake briefly just long enough to turn to Bucky and slur his name.

"Yeah?"

"How come they think we're married?" she asked, eyes still closed and head drooping again.

"They wouldn't have let me stay if I hadn't said we were," Bucky replied softly, his voice comforting and sweet, pushing her even closer towards the arms of sleep.

"Oh," she breathed, speaking words that she wouldn't remember the next day. "Okay. I thought for a minute that we got married while I was out and that would have sucked and been... weird."

She didn't see the sad little smile that Bucky gave her as he continued to hold her hand, nor did she see the smile fade slightly when she added, "Especially since when we do get married someday I want to walk down the aisle."

Unbeknownst to her, his breathing froze for just a moment, his gaze intent on her closed eyes as her words sunk in and clicked in his brain. His eyes, already soft, widened by the tiniest fraction, and his mouth just barely opened as her grip on his hand fell limp.

Then she finally drifted off to sleep fully, brain shutting down and body relaxing under the onslaught of drugs that spared her of the pain while they lasted. She rested oblivious to the world, surrounded by the three most important men in her life, feeling safe there despite the terrifying ordeal the night before and despite the uncertain future awaiting her now.

There was a long and difficult road ahead of her now, but there was only one way to get down that road, and that was one step at a time - whether both of her legs worked or not. And the very first step, it turned out, was to sleep in the safety of the care of those that she trusted.

A/N: Posting this a day earlier than usual because, in the immortal and eloquent words of Peter Quill, I may be an A-hole, but I'm not 100% a dick, and after last week's cliffhanger, the least I could do was update a bit early lol. But hey, see, things aren't TOO bad, right? Right? *crickets chirping* ... Sorry about all of this lol. But hey, it's life (like in the story title! :p). Things happen. Also, let me assure any of you wondering that I am not going to drag out the misery here longer than necessary. I've done that before and it wasn't fun lol. My main thing is wanting to keep Summer's recovery realistic, so I've been doing a lot of reading about injuries similar to hers. I have exactly zilch formal medical knowledge, so I'm just going off of what I've read, so if anybody has personal knowledge or experience about these injuries and notice something off, please do tell me so I can fix it. But yeah... this is all a very necessary part of the story, and I am very confident that you'll all be happy with the end result.

Speaking of end results: I had been planning up until now to end this story around 35 chapters, but I have decided to heck with that because honestly it doesn't make sense to end this and then post a series of follow up oneshots. There's too much story left to tell after the point at which I was going to end it, so I'm just gonna let it go on indefinitely. I know I don't have the greatest track record with actually finishing monster stories *sweats nervously*, BUT this one is happening. I have far too many things planned that I'm dying to write. So anyway, my point is, we're gonna be here awhile! Lol :) I hope you'll all keep reading and enjoying reading as much I enjoy writing and plotting it with midniightwings96 (who is as always extremely helpful, like beyond helpful, and whom I thank for helping tweak this chapter, and, well, just about every chapter lol :D). I value and look forward to your feedback each week, even when it's yelling at me for leaving you all on an evil cliffhanger. Keep sticking with me! I've also got more side stuff coming, like the Steve/Nat piece I posted earlier this week. Next related oneshot will be probably in the next two weeks or so and a nice light & humorous (and other things) contrast to this current angsty period, since I don't want to overdose you all on angst lol.

Anyway, I love you all, and again, thank you so much for reading and putting up with me :D See you all next Monday!