Authors note:
Trigger warnings for entire story:
evidence of thoughts of self harm, evidence of suicidal thoughts (no actual attempts, no graphic depictions of harm)
Remembered deaths and murders. There will be crying.
Happy ending though, the hurt is all for healing
Thanos was killed in Infinity war, no snap, no time travel.
"C'mon man, just once, to convince your PO you're trying." Sam said, wheedling and doing his best impression of Steve's puppy eyes.
"You are my PO." Bucky grunted back, beginning another round of fast and furious punches to the state-of-the-art dummy. There were some advantages to living on the Avengers compound. Sam following him around wasn't one of them.
Sam ran a hand over his short hair and looked up at the ceiling, a dramatic display of frustration only partly faked. "Convince me then, Bucky, give me a reason to write a good report."
"You don't have nickname privilege, Wilson."
"If you don't show up to the next appointment, I'll revoke your bike privilege. I mean it Barnes. Tuesday, 9am." Sam stomped away stubbornly.
Bucky landed another tight set of blows on the dummy, frustrated when it kept popping back up. Sam didn't make idle threats. He considered gutting the rubber man before him like a fish to see what its insides where made of. Stark had designed it though and even if it would make him feel better, he was still on thin ice with the man.
He hit it again, hard as he could.
The malformed face reeled back, self repaired and bounced back up, smirking blankly. Bucky thought it was a smirk anyway. He half expected it to speak.
'I could do this all day.'
Bucky dropped his fists, stalked away to shower. How bad could it be, really? Some doc sitting in a white room, asking probing questions… terrible, he decided. But he'd go, he needed his bike.
It wasn't at all like he'd expected. the walls were a soft blue, there was artwork, a forest of trees, the doc didn't wear a white coat.
It wasn't what he'd expected.
It was worse.
"How'd it go?" Sam asked in the car on the way back to the compound, he was using the gentle voice people use when handling injured wildlife, afraid of the fangs and concerned for its welfare while it thrashed in the twisted barbed wire.
Barbed wire.
Artillery rocking, bucking, earth, mud sucking at his heels. The cold barrel of a gun against his cheek. Down the sights, squinting against the constant flash of machine gun fire.
A target. An enemy. A German. Young. Bucky could have counted the boys pimples.
5 on his forehead. 3 on the chin.
He held his breath, waited for the space between heartbeats.
And with a featherlight caress of the trigger, another man fell.
Bucky tucked his chin down, pressing his lips tightly together. What he refused to say to the patronizing doctor, he wouldn't say now, not when the image of his most recently returned memory was so fresh. Still gunpowder and mud-clay on his teeth.
"That bad?" Sam glanced at him, then back to the road ahead. "It takes time, to get comfortable enough to begin, don't feel bad if you're not there yet."
"I'm not going back."
"Raynor comes highly recommended; she was in the service herself."
The coaxing tone grated Bucky further and he snapped out loud, "and what difference does that make Sam? Its not like she, or anyone else has been through what I've been through. They can't help me."
If Sam said anything more before Bucky got out of the car, he didn't hear it beyond the angry electric buzz in his skull. He punched the infuriatingly indomitable dummy, swam 20 laps in the pool, soaked in the oversized bath in his suite for 3 hours to try to chase away the chill and the memories it brought back. But the nightmares persisted.
1am, he slipped past the entry guards on the motorcycle Steve had given him. The wind stung his face, but he relished in the roar of the engine beneath him, the raw power and possibilities it offered.
A 23 minute ride brought him to a small town with a gas station, café, and a grocery store that had been refurbished since the compound had begun to give them so much new business. The second street wasn't so brightly lit, houses, a small apartment building and laundromat, an auto repair shop and a car wash.
At the very end sat a small square building, windows so heavily tinted he could see his reflection in them. 'Stone's Gym' hand painted on a small square of plywood with the hours underneath. Mon-Fri 8am – 7pm
No cameras. No cars. Perfect.
He picked the lock quickly, looking over his shoulder to check that the street remained empty and quiet. He closed the door carefully behind himself, and did a cursory scan of the room.
All the usual stuff; treadmills, several different weight machines, a boxing ring and an open flat mat for wrestling. An emergency exit sign glowed in the dark at the far end of the rectangular space marking a hallway leading to a backdoor escape. And there to his right was what he was looking for. Several punching bags hung from hooks in the exposed overhead beams, every possible variety of heavy weight bag stacked against the wall, speedbags and opposition body bags stood on stands.
Bucky avoided those, too much like the indomitable dummies he'd come to hate.
He selected the heaviest bag, swapping it with the light bag on one of the hooks. The bag jerked wildly as he hit it, and he modified his throws so he wouldn't accidentally split the leather. He didn't want trouble, or questions; was already memorizing every surface his fingerprints could be on, making a plan to wipe the place clean before he left.
He was just getting into a solid flow, absorbed in the sound of the bag under his fists and the blood pumping in his ears, drowning out the nightmare of memories, and the smug face of Dr. Raynor one perfect combination at a time.
"If your looking for cash, you won't find it here." A low female voice spoke from behind him.
Bucky turned to see a woman silhouetted in the front door. Tall and broad shouldered, but the thing that arrested his attention was the gun. She held it properly, in both hands and trained on a spot on the ground just in front of him.
Professional.
50 feet away.
1.5 to 7 seconds for her to raise it an additional foot and squeeze the trigger. If she had any reservations about killing a man.
0.25 seconds if she didn't.
He could make the back door if she was a bad shot. But he couldn't calculate the odds on that. And leaving a blood trail would just lead the cops right back to him and Sam would take his bike and Steve would look so desperately disappointed.
He raised his hands slowly, stepping sideways into the slight glow of the exit light. "I don't mean any harm."
"Get on your knees, cross your ankles, and keep your hands where I can see them" she ordered, as though she was in charge.
Given that she was the one pointing the gun, perhaps she was. In any case, Bucky obeyed, confident that he could still take her out from that position if she was an assassin.
"Why did you break in here?" She took several steps closer, still leaving a gap large enough to give her weapon the advantage.
He shrugged, freezing in place as she brought her weapon up with his motion. "Sorry, I- I just needed a quiet place to work out." His voice rough from lack of sleep and he thought he saw an expression like pity on her face.
It was gone before he could be sure, but the gun lowered again. "At 2 in the morning?"
"I didn't mean any harm, Ma'am, I swear." Bucky answered,
She moved slightly, took one hand off the gun and flipped a switch on the wall, returning to her ready stance as a dim set of lights illuminated just the punching bag area area, leaving her and the rest of the gym still in darkness.
He caught the slow intake of breath as his gleaming black and gold arm became visible, so soft that ordinary ears would have missed it. This woman was very good at masking her surprise. And she'd retained the advantage of darkness, while blinding him. Strategic; tactical.
"Sargent Barnes, I presume." She said calmly. The other unspoken question hanging in the air between her weapon and his head.
"Yes Ma'am."
There was an audible click as the safety engaged and she slipped the gun back into a holster at the small of her back. "Well, Sarge we're open from 8 to 7. Memberships cost 10 bucks a month or a 100 for the year." She walked a little closer, motioning him to get up.
He rose to his feet, rolling his shoulder a little. The new arm was better than the old soviet made one, but there were still kinks to work out. "I didn't want to bother anyone." He said by way of explanation.
She was close enough he could see her dark hair escaping in wisps from a loose braid. Shadows still occluded her eyes, but the expression of her mouth wasn't unkind. "You mean: you didn't want anyone to bother you... Isn't there a private gym in that massive complex you all live in?"
"Can't be alone there either, Ma'am."
"Even in the middle of the night?" She half-laughed incredulously.
"A.I. surveillance, for security. But she talks back."
The woman cringed sympathetically, "secure maybe, but it sounds awful."
Bucky shrugged one shoulder, relaxing a little more as she sat on a nearby thigh-master. Her shoulders rounded as she leaned forward, resting her elbow casually on one knee, her eyes still gauging his every movement. A careful display of pretended carelessness.
"Can't complain ma'am, pretty sure it's a condition of my parole."
"Parole? The news said they got the winter soldier out of there." She tapped the side of her head meaningfully. "Thought they cleared you."
Bucky gulped bowing his head and flexing his jaw. "Yeah. Doesn't mean they trust me, I'm still a juiced-up soldier with the history of an assassin."
"Didn't kill me though." She said, smiling. "Could have, five ways to Sunday, and I was threatening you with a weapon. Good case for self defense. There's a lot of soldiers who wouldn't have hesitated in your position."
"And you could have shot me when my back was turned, Ma'am." Bucky sighed deeply, "there's a lot of blood on my hands, I can't blame them for wanting me to pay for it."
"There's blood on all our hands." The woman answered solemnly, "but I still got an honorable discharge and a pension, for whatever that's worth. But you were a P.O.W. that's a whole different pile of crap to crawl out of."
Bucky shrugged again, growing uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation, the longest one he'd voluntarily had with someone other than Steve, Sam or T'Challa since he'd woken dripping wet with his arm clamped in a vice in Germany.
"Well Sarge, I suppose an exception could be made." She said, switching topics too quickly for him to follow. "There's a keypad on the back door, 831572. You break anything, you pay for it. Deal?"
"What?" Bucky managed to stumble out.
"Just lock up when you're done, I don't want vandals getting in again." She was walking away, throwing these words over her shoulder as she reset the locks and the silent alarm on the front door, then turned and walked past him down the short hallway to the rear exit.
He watched her go with more confusion than ever, realizing only when she'd melted away into the night and the steel door swung shut with a solid clunk, that he didn't even know her name.
Thus our story begins...