nerves_of_ice | [oom] see right through my walls

"Yes."

The faintest hint of confusion wisps through his tone.

"I thought you'd want something familiar. I thought -- I wanted you to -- I thought you'd find it a comfort to have them with you."

And he'd also thought he had no right to keep them; no right to take what she'd offered.

"I kept the other throw. The one you gave me before."

She huffs another laugh, but this one is humorless. "Of course you did. Because you keep being good to me even when I don't deserve it."

He's not lying. She's sure that was part of it, but the rest –

"But that's not what it...felt like. Bucky –"

She can't help herself. She stops walking, and reaches for his hand to keep him from walking past her, so she can look up into his face.

He looks so confused. She has to try to make him understand. "It felt like you just wanted them away from you. Do you understand? Those things – they're me. Me and you. And you...didn't want them. Me."

Her smile holds no humor or laugh whatsoever. "You could have just said, 'Sharon, I don't feel that way about you, let's just be pals,' and – I mean, I wouldn't like it, but I would listen."

Probably.

Her heart is racing and she feels like she's just run a race, but she stays stock-still, watching him.

He starts to protest when she says I don't deserve it, because she does, of course she does --

-- and then she keeps going, and the realization hits him with the force of an explosion.

Bucky stares at her, mind reeling, as his hand tightens compulsively on hers, as understanding crashes in.

"No, I couldn't." He manages to force the words past his lips, even as a cold, distant, all-too-familiar part of him points out that he could let her believe this, that it would resolve the overall situation if he did.

Except that he can't. He can't. Not and be who he is. Who he wants to be.

"I couldn't have said that. Because it would be a lie."

Her eyes shift back and forth, searching his face, looking for the lie and finding nothing but absolute honesty. "So –"

His hand is so tight in hers that she almost can't feel how hers is shaking. "So I wasn't wrong, before?"

She's staring up at him, trying to tamp down on this hope that keeps trying to claw its way along her ribs and through her chest. "That night in Leipzig, I thought – it seemed like –"

She sighs, closes her eyes, sets her jaw, and stubbornly tries again. "It seemed like you felt the same way I did. There was this – spark. Did you?"

It's quiet here, by the water. Even the sound of children's laughter is dim and distant, making it feel almost as if they're the only two people in the world right now.

"You weren't wrong."

He makes himself keep his eyes on her, makes himself not look away.

I care about you, she'd said.

"I did care. I do."

But, threatens to leap from his tongue next, and he bites it back. That can wait. Undoing the pain and hurt he's caused her is more important. This is more important.

That unspoken but rolls between them like an invisible rock.

...No. Not like a rock. Like an invisible Steve Rogers, tall and smiling and too perfect to be true.

And the most important person in Bucky's life.

I should never have shown you that photo, she thinks, a little sadly, and steels herself with a deep breath, lacing her fingers carefully through his.

"But?"

"But," he agrees. He glances down at their linked hands and takes a slow, deep breath of his own before he looks back up again to meet her eyes.

"Steve's my best friend," Bucky says, and it's quiet, but oh, so clear. "He always has been. Always will be."

"When we were back in Brooklyn, before the war, before the serum, women would always look past him to me." He says it without bragging or evasion, as a simple matter of fact. Sharon knows his background already, knows what kind of man he used to be, before the war, before the Winter Soldier.

It's who he is now that's important.

"Neither of us were -- there was nothing serious, with any of them. But." He searches her face, hoping he can make her understand. "Steve - Sharon, if he cares about you like that, if he loves you -- how I feel doesn't matter. I can't do it. I can't be the one to break his heart. I can't."

When he meets her eyes again, she holds his gaze steadily and doesn't interrupt, even though she feels like she's going to shiver herself into a million pieces.

Yes. She remembers Aunt Peggy telling her about Bucky Barnes: handsome, charming, quick with a line. She's sure that before the serum, even with all his qualities, Steve was practically invisible next to his best friend.

It may have been seventy years ago, but it's as real now as it was back then to Bucky, she can tell. The pain in those smoke-blue eyes of his is crystal clear and real.

But. He said if.

"And if he doesn't?"

Her voice is just as quiet, but they may as well be standing here in their own universe by the lake. There's nothing to hear around them but the breeze in the grass and leaves and the soft ripple of water against reeds. She shakes her head. "You don't know that he feels that way. I don't want to break his heart, but I'm not willing to break mine on a guess."

Softly: "Or yours."

Hope blazes inside him like wildfire, deep and unexpected and stronger than he's felt in longer than he can remember. He closes his eyes against it, trying to keep her from seeing it in his face. Hope's a lie. He won't lie to her.

She deserves the truth. All of it.

His next breath is ragged as he raises their joined hands between them. He keeps his eyes closed as he kisses the inside of her wrist, his lips warm against the delicate skin over her pulse and lingering for a moment before he lets go of her entirely and takes a small step back.

"I'm a broken man, Sharon." He opens his eyes again and looks back at her, hope smashed flat and buried like it was never there in the first place.

"I'm a worse bet now than I was that night in Leipzig. Before I tried to kill you."

Her heart shudders to a stop in her chest at the way his eyes flash and then attempts to bolt straight through her ribs when he presses his mouth to her wrist, nerves firing into life like that square inch of skin is the only part of her that's really alive.

This is nothing like the sweet butterflies of Steve's kiss in Leipzig. This could burn everything down, and she'd be the one pouring gasoline on the flames as it did.

Her hand doesn't fall right away when he lets her go and steps back; it floats between them for a moment, then clenches into a stubborn fist. "If I wanted to play it safe, I would never have come to Franche-Comté or gone to Polygyros in the first place."

Be careful, Shuri had told her, but Shuri hadn't seen that burning hope in his eyes a second ago; Shuri isn't seeing how shuttered those same eyes are now. She tips her chin up, obstinate.

"I don't care if you're broken. Broken things can be fixed. And even if they never look the same – even if you don't look the same, even if you've got all those edges that don't quite line up right – you still deserve good things. You still deserve to be cared about. The only thing you don't have the right to do is tell me how to feel."

Edited 2021-03-02 14:23 (UTC)

Bucky shakes his head at her.

"I know better than that, Sharon. I'm not telling you how to feel, or how not to feel. I know you won't back down from a fight."

He's standing very still, trying to keep his tone even, but he can't prevent the thin threads of desperation and despair that snake beneath his words. He doesn't even notice them.

"But this isn't what about I deserve. I almost killed you. I almost killed Natasha. Steve. I did kill a lot of others. Both in Berlin and before. That I was - I am - the Winter Soldier - it doesn't matter, not to me. I may not have been in control of myself, but it doesn't change what I did."

"I remember."

She can't hear that agony in his voice and not try to mitigate it; she moves forward the same step he'd taken back, stubbornly holding his gaze. "Okay. Let's break this down. If it's not about what you think you deserve, then it's one of two things:

"One, you think maybe you'll try to kill me again. Or two, you want to punish yourself for all those sins HYDRA heaped on you, the things you did and can't change. Which is it?"

She advances on him slowly, like he's a wounded stray as likely to bite her from fear as listen to her voice. "I'm in no position to tell you or anyone not to feel guilty, and I know that even if I don't blame you, you blame yourself. I'm just – asking you to see it the way I do. Just for a second."

Okay. Let's break this down.

He shakes his head, unable to speak, unable to explain as she pushes at him, forcing a choice in front of him, demanding he decide, demanding he--

The world around him starts to dim with white flashes at the edges of his vision as the voices begin to ring in his head, sound and memory overlapping, louder and faster and insistent.

Wipe him and start over.
I don't know if I'm worth all this, Steve.
Mission report.
Ready to comply.
Your mission --
You could at least recognize me.
Soldat?
You are innocent of my father's death. You were used. If you come to Wakanda, we will make it so you can never be used again.
I don't care. He killed my mom.

His hand clenches into a fist as his vision blurs and his eyes go black, bleak, unseeing, as his skin pales under the assault of the past, as everything darkens into an overwhelming scream.

"...Bucky?"

He doesn't respond. She's not sure he can respond, and a thrill of panic screams through her.

Shuri, I should get Shuri –

But she can't leave him standing here alone like this. She doesn't know what to do, so she does what she's trained to do: throws herself headfirst at the problem. She pushes forward like a wave and presses herself against him, ankles to shoulders, her arms around his neck, her hand careful at the back of his head, her cheek to his so she can speak low into his ear.

Her voice is soft but fierce. "You are James Buchanan Barnes. You're in Wakanda. You're safe. You're getting better. Nobody is going to make you do anything you don't want to do ever again. And I'm not leaving you."

His body arches in an agonized jerk at the touch, at the sensation of being touched, lightning-stitched fire chaining along every nerve, destroying him to remake him into something else once more.

He throws his head back, teeth clenched, trying not to scream.

Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.
Bucky?
You're my friend.
You're in Wakanda.
You've known me your--
Nobody is going to make you--
Make you--
You--

All the strength drops out of his bones and he falls with it, sliding through her arms and into a crouch on the ground. He slams his hand into the soft dirt and clenches it tight, head lowered and breathing ragged.

Edited 2021-03-02 15:41 (UTC)

She drops with him to kneel in the dirt and puts one hand on his cheek, focused.

That was something, anyway. And this – maybe she does know a way to help with this. "Can you do me a favor?" she asks, gently. "Think about your goats. Don't worry about anything else, just picture them. Okay?"

She waits a few breaths, then says: "Can you tell me about them? How many do you have?"

"... six." He coughs, clearing his throat, still staring at the ground and the reeds, the lake beside them. "Six. Different ages. But there are six. Fuck."

He shifts sideways and sits down in a loose-limbed sprawl, one knee drawn up and one leg stretched out. He wipes his hand off on his pants and shoves his fingers through his hair, then turns his head into the touch of her hand, meeting her eyes.

Despair and resignation are both clear in his own.

"I'm sorry. Sharon, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- and it wasn't your fault, just... I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she says, stroking the pad of her thumb gently over his cheekbone, his temple. "It was kind of my fault. Shuri told me to be careful. I pushed too hard."

She holds steady under his gaze, and doesn't move away. "This sort of thing is stressful enough even when you're not dealing with deprogramming and...everything else."

Looking at him, she can't help it; she pushes forward – slowly, carefully, so as not to alarm him – and softly presses her mouth to his forehead, everything in her aching for his poor shattered mind and the way he has to struggle through it like someone caught in a net underwater.

Her eyes are solemn when she pulls away again. "Are you okay?"

"It's not that," he protests, then goes speechless and freezes like a startled animal when she leans forward.

When she settles back again, he draws a careful breath, and nods in answer to her question.

"I'm okay. And it's not your fault. You shouldn't have to worry about -- that asking questions might -- fuck," he hisses again, frustrated with himself.

He makes himself breathe through it for another moment or two, then, finally:

"I know why it happens. I can explain. If that helps."

"Please," she says, bringing her hand back to her lap. "I don't want to hurt you, even by accident. It'll help if I know what not to do."

This might be way over her head and her paygrade, but like he said:

She never backs off from a challenge.

"Choices," he says, quietly. "Being forced to make them, being pushed to... unable to refuse them. Especially when they're -- related to that."

He'd been so careful for so long, after D.C., learning to exist as himself again, clawing back each breath of freedom bit by painful bit. Reminding himself that he could choose; that doing so wouldn't instantly result in agony.

Still, sometimes it was far, far easier to not. Drinking black coffee as a standard, unquestioned, always available, no matter what he might actually prefer. (He'd ended up liking it, always had, but still.) Deferring to Sharon on dinner and wine; accepting the house special rather than fight his way through selecting amid options.

"It goes back to how I was... trained. Programmed. What I was made." He glances at her.

"It won't be easy to hear," he warns.

Choices.

Her eyebrows flicker into and out of a frown as she thinks back.

It's early yet, if we wanted to try to do both in one day. Or we could hit the museum in the afternoon, then tour the cave tomorrow morning.

Lady's choice.

That's a choice to make.

Surprise me.

Fancy or authentic?

Figured I'd do better trusting your taste in wine than mine.

How had she never noticed? She's never shy of an opinion, so she just never thought about why he might ask for hers and follow it without question?

Her mind whirling, she settles carefully onto the ground, one leg curled and the other propped over it so she can lean on her knee and study him. "Okay," she says, simply, and waits.

Nothing about this is easy. And it's been so much worse for him. The least she can do is listen.

He nods, and looks away, out over the lake.

"It was different at first," Bucky says, quietly. He keeps his gaze fixed on the play of sunlight over water, on the movement of the grasses, watching things that aren't here. "After the - after I fell. I was hurt badly enough that I didn't remember much. Made it easy for them to layer the false memories and the first set of controls over the fragments that were left."

How much does she know about Natasha's past? He can't be sure, and won't reveal his old partner's history if she hasn't shared it.

"My first missions... I worked more as an operative. Assassin, undercover, whatever it took. I was more of a person then. The Winter Soldier was more of a person. But I guess I showed too much initiative."

"What is your name?"

"James R-- AAAAAGHHHH!!"

"Remember the chair?"

She watches him as he watches the lake, and tries to hold both things in her mind at once: his story of the past, and what is happening right here, right now. Her hand slowly clenches and relaxes as she listens, and at his question, she nods. "Yes.

"The way you took it apart...I thought it must have had something to do with what they did to you."

He doesn't answer that, not directly. Not at first.

"The Winter Soldier was a weapon. Weapons are things. Tools. Tools don't get a say in how they're used." His tone is level; empty and flat. "One way to turn a person into a thing is to take away their ability to choose."

He rests his hand against the ground beside him, unconsciously positioning it as if expecting something to lock around his wrist.

"They put you in the chair. Strap you in so you won't hurt yourself or anyone else," he tells her, still staring out into the distance, over the water. "Fix the plates against the sides of your head. Put the mouthpiece in so you won't bite your tongue off when the current hits. It won't muffle the screams, but that doesn't matter. No one who hears you will care."

His fingers clench into a fist, but he doesn't move his hand.

"The electricity, power, whatever it is - it scatters your thoughts. Like birds against a winter sky. You can't keep them. You can't remember them. There's nothing left of anything that came before. 'Wipe him and start over.' A clean slate. Nothing to interfere with the orders; with the mission."

"The first times they did it, they demanded I tell them things. My name. What I wanted. Pick between choices. Every time I did, they hit me with another shock. Eventually I couldn't remember what they were asking. I couldn't remember me. They did it over and over again until there was nothing left of the ability to choose at all."

In Russian, he adds, bitterly,

"Ready to comply."

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