shorthand: C.O.= Commanding Officer, P.O.= Parole Officer
Trigger warning:
TW:
mild mentions of suicidal ideas- no details, no attempts.
alcohol/alcoholism.
unintentional self harm/ (not conscious anyway)
ptsd
"You sure you want another one? Five of those would have most of my regulars plastered to the floor, and you've had ten."
"I don't get drunk."
"I've heard that before," the smooth bartender answered conversationally, pouring another glass and sliding it to his mostly silent patron. "From you it's almost believable. Kinda like Cap.- you know, Captain America, drinks a jug when he's here, never even gets a buzz."
"Difference is, I pay for my own drinks." Bucky answered stiffly.
"He pulls a crowd, that's for sure, good for business." The man answered cheerfully, wiping the still clean bar top and then turning his attention to glasses. "I'll make you a deal, tell me what's on your mind and I'll buy the next round myself."
"What, are you a therapist now too Mack?"
"Bartender, psychologist, not so different really; we all read people, their limits, their vices, their pain."
"I've got a- a friend." Bucky said slowly, rolling the glass between his gloved palms.
"A friend?" Mack nodded. "Right."
"What would you say was wrong with someone if they kept getting into dangerous situations and didn't try to defend themselves?"
Mack slowed his pretended cleaning and looked thoughtful. "You're friend, knows how to defend themselves? You sure they ain't just freezing up?"
"No, she- she knows her way around a gun."
"She a vet like you?" Mack asked. The edge of one rolled sleeve shifted higher on his bicep as he reached for a new bottle.
"Hoorah."
"Hoorah." Mack answered back, pouring a generous four fingers into a fresh glass. "You're friend needs help. Serious help."
"It's not, I mean, I don't think…" Bucky trailed away.
"I can't tell you what's going on with your friend, buddy, but I've seen guys like that, just hoping someone else will do the job so they don't have to."
Bucky cleared his throat, pushed the empty glass away and laid a few bills on the counter. His right hand clenched around the bike keys in his pocket.
"Hold up a sec," Mack stalled, pulling a notepad and pen from below the counter, "I know a guy, he's good, helped me a ton." He scribbled a name and number from memory. "Please, for your friend, doing anything is better than waiting for the worst."
Bucky was ready to turn away, but something in the barkeep's voice held him there until the paper was in his palm.
The gun trembled, like life itself, hanging in the balance. The Asset stood firm against cold steel at his temple.
Bucky, screaming under a ton of muscle he didn't remember building and walls, walls, walls, and more walls, created from pain, reinforced by the hateful words in the red book.
Still. The Asset was still as stone. The recruit seemed to be losing faith with every drawn-out breath.
"Do it, just pull the trigger, let it be over." "steady your hand, aim, count your heartbeats, fire between them." "Please, let it end." "I don't want to die." "Take the pain away, please, just…" "Steve, he'll never know." "Please God, if he's alive, don't ever let him know."
Marble, silent, unmoving when the trigger echoed an empty-chambered click.
One more recruit added to the ranks, one less body for the mind-bound asset to carry out.
Deep. Deep inside that atrocity of automation, a mind laid bare, sobbing its terrible relief and re-doubled horror.
There was a light on when Bucky let himself into the gym at midnight. The office door was ajar and in the dark he saw a familiar figure curled up on the couch. Quietly he closed the door and continued on, still needing to release the guilt he carried.
Usually, the gym was spotless. Tonight, there was evidence of another's nightmare fueled purging. A smaller bag hung from his favorite hook, a stool in the spot he usually did pull-ups on the rafter beam. A stool and a lighter bag were not that odd.
But…
The blood. Smears of it on the punching bag. And there was the rope, different shades of rust in the shape of finger prints, pooled at the foot of the stool.
Still, it took Bucky's dream addled mind several minutes to piece it all together.
Blood on the bag. Maybe somebody forgot to wrap their knuckles. But so many hits? No-one in their right mind wouldn't have noticed immediately. In their right mind…
He spun on his heel and stared at the rope. There were no knots, no kinks in it to suggest there ever had been. And the rusty prints were towards both ends, like someone had been holding on to the last few inches and their hands had slipped.
Right mind.
Whose right mind, not his certainly.
The door to the office burst in and he leapt the across the space to the couch holding his breath against the smell of liquor and his own fear.
Not another. Not another body to carry, to bury, to wish he knew how to mourn. Not another stranger dying alone.
A pulse. Thready but there.
"Wake up, come on, wake up." He said, his voice rising in urgency. "Stay with me honey, you've got to stay with me."
"Wha-, huh?" she mumbled incoherently, squinting against the dim light of the hallway and shivering.
"Have you had anything to drink besides this?" Bucky asked, lifting the empty bottle off the floor to show her.
"Ung," her eyes fluttered shut again.
"Don't, don't sleep now, come on, I think you're dehydrated, you've got to get some fluids in you first."
"mm, then sleep?" she nuzzled her head into the armrest. "could sleep."
"No, come on honey, open your eyes, I'm not going away." When she refused to acknowledge his words, he added more firmly, "if you can't wake up, I'll have to call for help. Hospital, or Avengers, you choose."
She stiffened and pressed her eyelids tightly together before opening them. "No, I don't want, no- nobody, don't you dare."
Bucky took a step back to open the fridge and pull out a couple bottles. She was struggling to sit upright when he returned, and he sat down beside her, mindful of the space between them, but near enough to catch her if she fell. Something that seemed quite likely.
She curled in on herself, holding her hands oddly against her belly. She didn't reach for the electrolyte drink he offered, but she tilted her head back when he pressed it gently to her lips.
"Just a little at a time." her soft growl turned to a moan as he pulled it away. "Sorry."
"Can't catch a break." She mumbled leaning against him to brace herself and reaching a curled hand to the bottle. "C'mon, lemme have it."
"I need to have a look at your hands." Bucky said, letting her take another sip before setting the bottle on the floor and taking her left hand in his own.
"That your best line? Works on all the honeys, does it?" She slurred out, unresisting.
He shook his head, dismissing her drunken rambling as he inspected the split knuckles and bruised fist. "Why didn't you wrap them?" She answered his question with a disparate shrug. Slowly, carefully he prized her fingers from their stiff curled position, stretching them and causing fresh welts of blood to ooze from the cracked skin. A rope burn marked the palm and spotted the undersides of her fingers. "What exactly have you been doing?"
She shrugged against his shoulder and whispered, "losing." She offered her other hand, a matching set of wounds, and a matching set of callouses on her palms under the burn.
"How long?" Bucky asked in a hushed tone. In the semi dark, in her inebriated state he felt a little guilty, but she had said she wouldn't talk unless she drank. He decided, swallowing the guilt with a swig of electrolyte; she needed to talk.
"3 years." She answered, then hiccupping slightly she reached for the bottle he offered. She held it carefully in both hands, using her palms as her fingers returned to their painfully curled prior condition. "you meant tonight… I dunno, maybe 10."
"What happened tonight?"
"Jackson. Jackson called."
"Who's Jackson?"
"My C.O." She chuckled bitterly, "not even his name you know, but he was a johnny Cash fan."
"Jackson?"
"Yeah, Buddy called him that, was always humming that stupid song after a call from home."
"Buddy, that's the rookie who nicknamed you?"
She stayed silent for so long Bucky was beginning to think she'd fallen asleep on him. Her shoulders began to shake and she whispered in a broken voice, "damned rookie, I tried, I tried so hard. I just, I couldn't- I couldn't hold on. Buddy, I'm sorry buddy. I'm so, so sorry."
"What happened." Bucky breathed out the words, afraid to break the spell, afraid to break her completely.
"Fell, maybe 20 feet, I couldn't hold on, hands were slippery. So hot, so wet, and he… I can't save him. I can't, I keep trying, but I can't hold on! Buddy! I'm sorry, buddy, I'm so, so sorry, I'm sorry Buddy…"
Instinct even older than decades of conditioning prompted Bucky to move, to wrap an arm around her heaving shoulders, nestling her against him like a fledgling under a mother's wing. The shaking was traded for trembling and he urged her to drink more as the fever fired through her with help from his own unnaturally high body temperature.
She fell asleep there in his arms. Bucky shifted to make them both more comfortable, watching the rise and fall of her back as the clock on her desk tic-tocked along comfortingly. When she was well and truly under, he extracted himself, arranged his jacket over her and made his way back to the gym.
The rope no longer mystified him, but he moved the stool back to its usual spot beside the weight bench. She hadn't been trying, the injuries she'd inflicted were not the result of intent.
Still, he stared at the blood on the other weight bag as he worked round after round into his own.
Thump-thump, thump-thump.
Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump-thump.
His fists on the leather, machine gunfire, the approach of a chopper, the heartbeat rushing in his ears. He worked against the bag as though it were the enemy, every enemy in every war. Names and faces of terrible men and women who had ordering killings without mercy. He pounded each one until he could imagine them laying in a heap on the floor. No, not dead, but rendered harmless by his hand.
Futile as he now was, living under constant supervision, no fight to win, no clear enemy before him, untrusted even by Steve. There was nothing he could do. No way to prove himself, to prove he could do good. No reason to keep living except that same un-extinguishable hope that had cursed him to six decades of memory wipes. Even then, when he'd begged for death in some forgotten place inside his own mind, he'd been relieved the gun was empty.
And he'd hated himself for it.
Hated that he still wanted to survive.
No longer. He would go on living, because he'd found some good to do.
When the woman woke on the couch of her office, she would find another electrolyte bottle beside her, the jacket still serving as her blanket, the gym tidied, and the offending rope in the trash- cut into foot-long sections.
A sticky note on her fridge with two phone numbers
One for: Robert Kilne -therapist, a friend said he's good.
And one labeled with the familiar monogram: JBB- Stay hydrated.
A few days later Bucky found a new note next to his with two words written on it.
You first
Authors Note:
Stay hydrated.
If you need to- make a call.
I promise there are still sunrises worth staying for, always, just keep breathing my dear, it gets better.