AN: Title from the Disney song from "Tangled", 'I See the Light', sung by Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi. And the italic dialogues are translations taken from English to Russian.
*Lyrics from "Let's Call a Heart a Heart" by Billie Holliday, lyrics by Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke
TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of war-related PTSD, torture, body shaming, child abuse, human trafficking, and involuntary sterilization of women…
"Тоска... Ржавые... Семнадцать... рассвет... печь... Девять... доброкачественный... возвращение домой... Один... Испугать машину..." (Longing… rusted… seventeen… daybreak… furnace… nine… benign… homecoming… one… freight car…)
Sergeant James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes was no stranger to nightmares of his past every time he went to sleep.
When the trigger words for the Winter Soldier echoed in his subconscious, he expected to see himself trapped in that damned contraption, strapped to a chair, electric shocks exploding through the veins of his temples to subdue and brainwash him.
Some days, he could still feel the branded burns of his skin, especially after he had cut his hair and saw the scorch marks and bruising that would always mark him.
But instead of the cold steel bunker in the icy tundra mountains of Siberia, he dreamt he was back further in time.
After enlisting in the US Army following the Pearl Harbor attack, he had enlisted in 1942, trained with the 107th Infantry Regiment and was deployed in '43 to Europe…
His unit had been captured one fateful night in the Italy countryside during combat… and even before the torture with the super-serum incinerating his body, just the adrenaline and horror of warfare was enough for a lifetime.
His voice yelling out to his comrades orders he could barely understand over the deafening explosions and artillery gunfire. He should have died in battle… but now he was in an overextended life in a faster world with technology his 1940s mind would have boggled at…
But at the end of the day, he was here in the moment, with calm and peace… like his time with the Wakandans in hiding.
Here back in Brooklyn, in bed mostly naked with a certain blonde-haired, green eyed former Black Widow… her warm body fused to his own, mewling in half-asleep groans as his motions had roused her and he waited in silent humor for her to chastise him.
Yelena turned her mussed up head to face him, resting her chin on his pectoral, her fingertips feeling along the border of skin tissue between Bucky's metal arm and his shoulder where his forced amputation would always remain.
"Sorry I woke you up, Blondie." Bucky whispered, his flesh hand gently pushing strands of tangled hair out of her face. He needed to see those round sharp eyes of hers.
"I'll make you pay for it later, Sergeant." Yelena yawned in a cranky tone, nuzzling her nose against his chest, her hand moving to feel for his heartbeat, slowing down to a normal rate in his ribcage. "What was the nightmare about this time?"
He looked into her eyes, any trace of joking absent in her expression as she sensed his uneasiness. As she always did…
"The war… before HYDRA captured my battalion."
Although she had no super serum in her veins, she bore similar scars to his own, scars he had kissed on her skin until she no longer felt their burn.
The first time they had seen one another without clothes, they had seen every little wound and bruise. Bucky had spent several moments feeling the scar along Yelena's stomach, listening to her explain how she had received it after her completing her Widow training when she was hardly a legal adult at 17 years old.
Damn that word, "seventeen"…
The involuntary hysterectomy, or the "graduation ceremony"…
"It's something that would matter more than a mission or a target. I'm not able to have babies… but I'm not sure if I even want one after everything. Just gaining my own self as a person is hard enough. Finding my own needs and wants and having control over the rest of my body and mind." Yelena felt Bucky's hands caress her bare hips, holding back tears of vulnerability.
He worried that his metal hand was too cold on her flush skin.
But the vibranium felt soothing on her numerous scars…
His lips kissed along the sewn together surgical stitching embedded in her abdomen…
And she had begged him to taste her down there between her thighs… she hadn't expected him to excel at oral pleasure… saying with a teasing banter as they cleansed one another afterward that his tongue was talented beyond knowing other languages.
They rarely spent nights apart after that first time.
One night, he showed her how to slow dance to some of the '40s songs he knew on his stereo. Yelena wouldn't admit it, but she loved him singing in her ear, "Let's Call a Heart a Heart" by Billie Holliday…
*"When we're in a friendly situation,
My conversation may not be smart.
But if we're to have a perfect understanding,
Let's call a heart a heart"
Though her preferred favorite was "It's Been a Long, Long Time" by Harry James' brass band and Billie Holliday's iconic "I'll Be Seeing You"…
What could be said but she was a romantic at heart… sue her…
He had told her all he could recall about his youth back in the 1930s and '40s. His friendship with Steve Rogers, his stint in his teenage and young adult years as a boxer to make extra money with the Depression finally winding down…
She had given him a sharp look when he had mentioned the girls he remembered dating. Especially a redhead he had taken to Coney Island and spent all his train money trying to win a stuffed bear to impress her…
Dolores was her name… or "Dot" as he had called her.
"She has to be over a hundred years old now." Yelena scoffed.
"So am I, technically. 109 years young and still going." Bucky had given her that roguish smile that he had used to charm the ladies back in the day, knowing it wouldn't work on Yelena.
"Don't pull that smoldering Disney Prince bullshit with me, Barnes." Yelena had tackled him into bed and he allowed her to do whatever she wanted to him, letting her know she had his full trust with their intimacy, knowing the other's strengths and weaknesses and boundaries with sex.
"One of these days, I'll sweep you off your feet, Blondie." Bucky sighed out in their bed, clutching her tight in his arms, knowing she knew the deeper context of his words.
He wanted to show her she was loved and valued beyond her childhood as an assassin-in-training and she had a whole future ahead of her.
"That may take more effort on your part, Sergeant. I'm not exactly a 1940s calendar girl. I even failed my ballet training in my first sessions starting as a Widow. I had gained more weight than the thinner girls, more than what was alluring and acceptable to be a dancer… I still remember the scale under my feet as I stood on it every day, the ballet mistress holding her cane to my neck." Yelena self-consciously felt the curves of her thigh, pulling Bucky's metal hand along with her to soothe the ache of scarred celluloid.
Where she had been pinched and pierced with measuring tape and uniforms tight on her body like a mannequin doll.
Bucky wasn't sure of what to say… being a male assassin with prior army training, he did have vigorous instruction himself as the Winter Soldier, forced to keep in constant muscular shape. The issue of body image had never really been brought up with his own captors.
He was but a machine to kill and follow orders.
He watched her bury her lovely face into the pillow, choking back a sob. "It's so stupid… I'm sorry."
He pulled her up to lie fully on top of him, both his flesh and metal hands feeling along every inch of her skin. Feeling every dip and curve and mark, smooth and rough and imperfect.
If they hadn't already been in bed before this reveal of her past, he would have swept her up off her feet no matter how she protested and carried her to their bed, letting her feel how she was light as a feather in his arms…
Showing her without words that she was flawless, the woman she was now and then.
If she asked him, he would track down any surviving commander of the Red Room and make them pay for hurting her self-worth and embedding her lovely skin with permanent scars. For trapping and torturing young girls… children, for Christ's sake…
He was already a grown man when he had been captured and tormented for decades.
She had been a small child, six years old, when she started training as a future Widow under coercion and entrapment.
Their legs twisted together under the sheets as he held her close.
However much of a Russian pain in the ass she could be at times, Bucky knew she concealed a sadness and vulnerability underneath her adolescent attitude.
Her fair share of nightmares could haunt her as well, no matter how roughly they made love, how tender the aftercare was between them, or how close he held her in silent darkness…
She would be a teenage girl, gaining an extra pound after sneaking a piece of chocolate cake during lights-out.
Deserts and extra calories were forbidden for the girls… to keep their beauty and slender weight intact.
The ballet mistress caught her with chocolate crumbs around her lips. Yelena was forced to stand on a chair for the rest of the day, stripped down to her underwear as everyone gawked at her humiliation, permitted no food or water or access to relieve herself.
The Pedestal of Shame, the punishment was deemed.
Whenever she woke up from that nightmare, Bucky would trace the scars along the nape of her neck and the back of her shoulders, where she would lay on her stomach and feel his fingers thread through her sunshine-golden hair as she reveled in his healing love and Bucky within hers.
Neither of them were perfect and it was a flawed love, with easy and hard days.
The war hero turned ice-cold killer from the 1940s and the modern day child ballerina turned fatal assassin learning from one another to break away from their torment.
In one another's shadows they saw the light in each other and they found a place to belong.
Yelena whispered in her native language to her soldier in the hushed bedroom, swimming in the brooding blue of his eyes, her fingers feeling the growing stubble of his jawline. "Ты моя новая свобода, Джеймс." (You're my new freedom, James.)
She called him by his birth name rather than his nickname, and he found it rather enthralling in her husky-throated voice, her forest green eyes shining with sincerity.
His metal hand held her warm cheek ever so delicately, his own eyes softening as she closed hers in wordless reverence of his simple touch with his appendage long considered a deadly weapon.
Bucky's response was simple and affectionate, his lips kissing her forehead as he heard her breathe in dozing sleep, brushing golden silk ribbons from her face.
"Ты моя новая свобода, Джеймс." (And you're my shining light, Yelena)