nerves_of_ice | [oom] see right through my walls

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."

She quells the instinct to reach back out to him, because she's not sure he would even feel it, or if it would help if he did.

It would be more to comfort herself, and that's not important right now.

She only listens in silence, her hand working itself into and out of a fist, that fist getter tighter and tighter, her knuckles going white as her face pales to her lips.

He's the one who lived through this nightmare. She only has to listen to every single word. She can fantasize about killing HYDRA agents in revenge for it later.

That statement, in cold flat Russian, curdles her blood. "So now when someone makes you choose," she says, quietly, "that's what you expect? The shock, the pain, getting...wiped?"

Edited 2021-03-02 18:47 (UTC)

"It's not as simple as expecting. The programming goes all the way to the bone. Deeper. My body remembers even when my mind doesn't. Or sometimes before it does, I guess. It's hard to describe."

He blows out a harsh breath, then tries to do just that.

"Everything fades, from the edges in; light, sound, everything. Thoughts-- scatter and overlap each other so fast I don't know how to respond. Usually memories, now, ones that are somehow tied to whatever's happening. My muscles tighten, waiting for the pain; nerves overload with misfires and god knows what else. It's a mess. I'm a mess. But I'm working on it. Have been, since D.C. Trying small things. Getting used to being able to want; to ask; to choose."

Bucky huffs out another small breath, this one wry and tired and somehow rueful.

"You know, when the news about Vienna hit, I was in the market? Buying plums. Allowing myself to pick which ones I wanted, just for the taste -- just because I could. It's a little thing, but..."

He shrugs and turns to look at her, finally, and his eyes go wide at the look on her face.

"Sharon."

Plums.

He'd just wanted some plums. To pick the ones that looked best to him. To make just one of the tiny choices she takes for granted every second of every day.

She thinks about Smith and imagines slowing herself down, going cut by cut until there was nothing left of him but fear and blood. And then nothing at all.

She takes a sharp, deep breath through her nose, and swallows, blinking at him. "What?"

"You're so pale."

Cautiously, as if he doesn't want to frighten her, as though he can't help himself, he raises his hand and brushes his knuckles over the back of her cheek.

She's not expecting it, and without time to prepare can't stop herself from making a tiny, sore sound in the back of her throat. It's like he found a bruise or bone fracture and decided to really lean his weight into it, instead of just a featherlight brush of his knuckles across her cheek.

"I'm okay." She's frozen, watching him with huge eyes gone dark and dilated, and she doesn't dare move in case he takes his hand away. Every instinct is shouting at her to push forward, every logical thought reminds her to stay back. "I told you, I just...didn't sleep very well."

Her throat bobs as she swallows, and she gives herself this, just turns her head a little into his touch. "Can I ask a follow-up question?"

He leaves his hand there for a second, then lets it drop.

"Ask anything you want."

Get it together, Carter.

"Okay. So. Choices."

She clears her throat and sits up a little straighter. "You said they had you pick between choices, right? So what about making a decision on just one option? Like...when Shuri asked if you wanted to call Steve, or T'Challa asked us to come to dinner. Can you pick 'yes' or 'no' for a single choice without too much trouble?"

Belatedly, she realizes why he hasn't named the goats yet. An open-ended choice like that? It's surely impossible right now.

"I guess it's the difference between if someone asked you if you wanted to eat, versus if you wanted a hamburger or chicken."

He says it again, this time in a different, much gentler tone: "Ask anything you want."

Bucky shifts position slightly, turning away from the lake and toward her. "It's less about the question and more about the stakes. Stuff like dinner, whether or not to eat or what to eat - I've been practicing that for a while, so it doesn't really hit."

"Things like calling Steve, or whether to accept an invitation - that's harder, because it's about what I want, but..." It's so hard to articulate this. He's not sure he even could, if it weren't for Shuri and T'Challa and Steve and everything they've done over the past almost two months. "... but without the pressure to choose, I can do it. Most of the time, now."

"It's when the stakes are high, or there's no clear path, where there could be a wrong answer... and I'm feeling forced into it without a way out that it can be a problem."

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