Notes:
TW: Brief WW2 flashbacks, non-explicit death of very young soldiers.
o
Since his last conversation with Stone, Bucky frequented the gym more nights than he stayed home and he always checked the office first. Stone hadn't been in the last dozen times, but he knocked anyway. No answer. He picked the lock. And smiled when he flicked the light switch on.
There was a new note on the minifridge, a slow growing collection neither he nor Stone seemed willing to throw away.
Thanks for looking out for me Sarge
SM (a smiley face)
Bucky had drawn another bigger smiley face next to it, satisfied that she would understand the doodled sentiment. Until the seam of the heavy that he'd been trying not to destroy suddenly gave way that same night.
Order another bag. Sorry. JBB
You overpaid again
I'll order another flat of those drinks you like SM
The tip was for the trouble. JBB
No trouble, but I'll accept it if that makes you feel better SM
The new bags are good. JBB
Glad to hear they meet your standards.
Any snacks you like? SM
Why? JBB
To accommodate my most generous gym patron of course,
sweet tooth? Or salty? SM
This last had a little arrow pointing to a several stacked boxes, chips, pretzel bites, protein bars, peanut butter cups and several other offerings he hadn't tried before.
He was uncomfortable with the over abundance of the gift but as Stone seemed to feel the same way about the money he'd left to replace the equipment he was steadily wearing down, he decided not to turn it away. After working up a sweat and an appetite in the gym he returned to the office and dutifully tried one of each, swishing the grape drink around in his mouth to cleanse his palate before moving onto the next. He left his note under the last on the fridge.
The brownie is my favorite. Thanks. JBB
Bucky returned to the compound with a satisfaction not entirely explained by chocolate but the feeling evaporated the instant he was saw Sam in the hallway outside his living quarters, he was tight and wore an expression of frustration and worry that scrunched his forehead.
"Steve…" was all Sam said at first, sighing deeply.
"What happened?"
"He's shut me out Buck, I can't get through to him."
Bucky nodded and jogged the short distance to the suite inhabited by his oldest friend. Steve sat on the floor in the corner of the pitch black room and the light from the open door- which should have dazzled his open unblinking eyes -didn't even seem to register.
"Steve." Bucky breathed softly, afraid to stumble over any psychological tripwires by approaching too quickly.
Steve didn't seem to see him, or to be seeing anything at all. Nothing real in any case. Thousand yard stare blindly into the dark floor. Bucky moved closer, making some noise with every footfall and clucking his tongue softly. A short sequence tapped on the wrist of his prosthetic and his hand glowed softly blue and he knelt a few feet away, on Steve's level, holding his palm out low to illuminate his own face.
"Steve, it's me, Bucky."
Blue frozen irises reflecting the light responded sluggishly contracting against the icy blue glow. "Buck?"
"Can you tell me where we are?" Bucky asked, not daring to look away from the strange glazed expression.
"Can't you see?" Steve whispered, gesturing with his hand at something only he could see.
"Sorry Steve, I can't see what you're seeing."
"The flashbang must have blinded you temporarily," Steve moved suddenly closer, grabbing Bucky's jaw with an ungentle hand and examining his eyes carefully, "no visible trauma, does it hurt?"
"No Steve, its just dark that's all," Bucky answered, he swallowed back the lump in his throat. Steve was coming around, behaving a little more like himself, it was the first step back to reality. "Don't remember much either, can you tell me what happened?"
"We overtook the position Buck, it worked. But they're all…" Steve swallowed and rubbed the back of his neck in that old tortured way, his face contorting over words he couldn't say, starting and stopping in bursts, "no prisoners to question Buck, they're all… and we needed to question them, need to find him, we have to find the base and stop him before… They're all dead. Bucky. They're all so… so young Bucky. Just kids. They're just kids."
With those last haunting words Bucky knew what Steve was seeing, was seeing it himself.
Crumbling rock and dust beginning to settle on the chaos of the unexpectedly brief fight to overtake the command post. No more muzzle flashes, no signs of movement from the broken building except for the flickering of yellow flames in the stairwell and the slow flash of a red warning light.
The last hydra base before he- before the train. Hydra's high command had abandoned the place and left a small detachment of Hitler youth behind to defend it alone, trained and equipped but woefully unprepared to handle a real war coming down on them. The howling commandoes had not been prepared for what they found when they made entry. It rattled every last one of them but Steve was the only one who couldn't numb the memory with the whiskey they shared that night. And there had been no time to face it, the next day they'd been put back on mission, fueled with a new layer of hatred for the man they were hunting, pouring their anger into their fight against Red Skull and his cruel minions, Bucky fell from the train and Steve had yet another moral wound he couldn't anesthetize, another abscess on his conscience.
"I'm sorry Steve but we've got to go now, this place is rigged to blow and we've got the files, we can't stay here." Bucky stood up slowly.
"These kids Buck, we…"
"I know Steve. But we've got to go, take my hand." Bucky waited for Steve to grasp his offered right hand and he pulled him up to his feet. "That it, just hang on and follow me, ok." Bucky walked Steve to the window and threw the curtains aside to reveal the softly lit grounds of the compound park. "Look out there and tell me what you see Steve."
"Its green. Buck, why is it…" Steve shook his head, squeezing Bucky's hand tighter, and pressing his eyes shut. Open. Shut. Open. Again, and again. Finally, the grip eased up and Steve dropped Bucky's hand altogether to brace against the window frame, knees weak. "I did it again, didn't I."
"It's okay Steve."
"It's not. It's anything but okay." Steve's hoarse voice dripped self reproach.
"Not what I meant… It was awful, what happened, it was awful and we feel awful and feeling awful about it is allowed, heck, if it never bothered us, we'd be monsters." Bucky said slowly, carefully treading back over ground he had already walked himself, afraid to set Steve off again, terrified that he himself would slip to deep into the shadows and images Steve's narration had brought into his view. The room blurred in front of him.
Boyish faces covered in the fine dust of war, marred with the paint they'd used to camouflage themselves in the rocky subterranean tunnels and the blood of battle…
No. He couldn't afford to fall into it right now. He repeated the truths in his head like a mantra to will away the memory that sought to swallow him.
I am James Bucky Barnes, Steven Rogers is my best friend, we are human, we can't change what has happened, we can face what we've done, we are human, we are not infallible, we can be forgiven.
He breathed it in and out slowly until he could be sure of himself.
It was true, just as it was true that they felt awful for those boys, and it was true they would have saved them if they could, it was also true that they couldn't go back and do things differently. "There was nothing we could have done Steve."
"If we had known."
"We didn't."
"But if we had."
"I know." Bucky put a hand on Steve's shaking shoulder and murmured it again, "I know Steve, I know." Steve wasn't ready to move past the hurt yet, he wasn't ready to let go of the what-ifs and accept what had happened. The wound was open now and he had to let it hurt before it could begin to heal.
They stood there for hours that felt like days, staring at the green lawn- perfectly smooth and crater-less, and Steve said nothing and Bucky pretended not to notice the tear drops on the carpet.
Bucky drove Steve to therapy the next day, and stuck by his side through twenty laps around the Olympic sized pool and another twenty around the running track. Steve was running from his mind as stubbornly as Bucky had done himself, and this time it was Bucky who stuck to his side despite his clear wish for isolation. But Steve wouldn't speak and Bucky wouldn't make him. He'd talk when he was ready.
A day passed. Then night fell again and Steve softened in the fading light. That ephemeral moment when the veil of solid reality seemed thinner, the shadows capable of hiding the tracks on their tear streaked faces. That was the moment Steve would ask Bucky a question, simple at first. Merely, "how do you sleep?" and from there the conversation would find its way out into the darkness around them.
There was a pattern Bucky was beginning to see, Steve wouldn't let himself go there on his own, but he would follow.
Bucky had always been worried that sharing his own struggles would burden Steve more, and to avoid heaping that on top of the overblown sense of responsibility Steve already carried, Bucky had avoided being completely honest about the stuff he'd talked with the doc about in therapy. Yet he'd been unable to keep it in forever and the first time he let it out all unsanitized and raw and horrible, Steve had seemed to breathe a little easier and then the words had poured out in a flood until they were both exhausted with the pressure of it, weary yet lighter than before.
Sleep came easy on those nights and Bucky didn't make it to the gym for weeks. The bags under Steve's eyes were lessening, and he was smiling more at the small pranks Bucky and Tony played, there was improvement, small as the steps seemed.
There was a long way to go and Bucky still woke from nightmares almost every night, but there was a way forward, for him and Tony and Steve, and all the rest of the avengers too. But the others were not his domain, they had their own support networks and confidants and he was grateful they did.
One pebble remained in his metaphorical shoe. Stone. Friendly fridge notes were all well and good but if what Sam said was true, she was too much like Steve, holding it all in, letting it consume her in silence. It was time for the second phase of his plan to begin.
He left another note on the fridge that night.
Dinner Friday? My treat. JBB
Meet at the gym, 7pm? SM
I'll be there. JBB
0
Notes:
How are we doing? Had enough water? Food? Human contact? Grass contact?
I've decided to reframe this story a little in terms of how I build Stone's character, I often use characters and fanfics like this to explore some of my own relationships and traumas and Stone was intended to represent both my own and a brother's relationship to ptsd, I've since lost that sibling and I think from here on out, I'm going to let Stone stand in for my struggle with not being able to save him. It's not a character shift so much as it is a shift in my relationship to said character, and what I want to say through her story.
I hope for all you dear readers, that you too can leave a little hurt behind you, that together in this story and these words we can find just a little more hope and light and grace for every step we take.
One
small step,
forward,
just a
small step