(AA) Thank you to everyone who let me know they were enjoying this story! I meant to finish it sooner, but I got offered overtime at work, so I took it. Here's the last part, as well as an epilogue 'cause I guess I'm a sucker for a happy ending.
IV. Bucky
1944
Steve found him, after.
On the one hand, Bucky had never wanted Steve to see him like this, especially not now, not this Steve. This Steve with the rippling muscles that everyone called Captain America. This Steve that Bucky still hadn’t gotten used to, not even after all these months with the Howlies. This Steve that didn’t need Bucky anymore.
On the other hand, he was grateful it was only Steve, and not the rest of them. He’d patched Steve up so many times growing up. He’d seen Steve at his weakest, and Steve wouldn’t judge him for this. He clung desperately to that thought as Steve helped him to his feet and covered Bucky’s nakedness with his trench coat. Steve wouldn’t think less of him. He wouldn’t-
A sudden burst of pain, and Bucky’s knees gave out. He hung off of Steve’s shoulder like a ragdoll, futilely commanding his legs to work. Futilely commanding his ass to stop throbbing. He felt the blood on the inside of his thighs, unbearably sticky. He knew it wasn’t just blood.
“Hey, man, stay with me. You’re gonna be okay, just stay with me.”
Bucky heard the horror in Steve’s voice. He was horrifying. This was different from all the times he’d held Steve’s tiny body up and told Steve that everything would be okay.
He couldn’t get his legs to work. To his immense shame, Steve swept him up in his arms as if he weighed nothing at all and began to walk out of the room Bucky had been held in. He couldn’t move, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t tell Steve to put him the fuck down.
“Fucking Hydra,” Steve snarled. “I’d kill them all again if I could, slower this time. I’d fucking rip- ”
Everything Bucky had been tuning out over the past few hours of his ordeal came rushing back to the surface. How they’d found him, surveying the Hydra base through the scope of his rifle while he waited for backup. How he’d fought, killed a few of them, but there had been too many and he’d been overwhelmed. How they’d brought him inside the base, to this room, and stripped him. To search him for weapons, he’d thought. He hadn’t realized what they were going to do to him until the first man had thrown him to the floor, crawled on top of him, and shoved his-
No, but that couldn’t be what had happened. That didn’t happen to people like him. It was something that men, evil men, did to girls. Something that men like him stopped. It didn’t happen to him. He must be remembering it wrong, it must have been something else.
He could still feel the residue on his thighs. He could still feel the ache of having so many men inside him that he’d lost count. He was horrifying, he was disgusting, and he was ashamed.
“You’re gonna be okay, Buck,” Steve said again when they were outside. “You’re gonna be okay.”
It was still daylight. Bucky had thought it would be dark by now, but the sun blazed cheerfully overhead. They’d found him in the early morning, and what they’d done to him inside felt like it had been an eternity, but it hadn’t been. It was still daylight.
Bodies of Hydra soldiers littered the ground outside the base. Bucky found his voice.
“Put me down,” he croaked indignantly. “I can fucking walk by myself.”
The ground was soft under his bare feet. Pine needles pricked his toes.
“I couldn’t find your clothes,” Steve said apologetically. “I looked, but I couldn’t find ‘em.”
Bucky wrapped Steve’s trench coat tightly around him. It was warm underneath the shining sun, but he was shivering. He could feel the ghosts of their hands on him, ripping off his clothes. Clawing at his naked skin.
“It’s fine,” Bucky grunted, staggering forward. His legs cooperated this time. “I’ll get new ones.”
“Bucky- ”
There was concern in Steve’s voice. Pity. Bucky bristled at it.
“I don’t wanna talk about it, Steve.”
He couldn’t look at Steve as he took another shaky step forward into the forest surrounding the base. He tried to remember if they’d been finished with him by the time Steve had found him, or if Steve had seen the last one on top of him. He couldn’t remember. Or maybe he didn’t want to.
“Bucky, look at me. Please.”
Steve’s voice broke, and Bucky looked at him automatically. Steve looked lost, like he needed Bucky again, which was absurd. This Steve didn’t need him. Especially not now, not after the state he’d found Bucky in.
“I’m here for you,” Steve promised him. “Whatever you need, okay?”
Bucky thought for a moment that he was going to give in to his weakness. That he would fall to his knees and weep at Steve’s feet for what had just happened to him. For what had been taken from him. He closed his eyes, swallowing hard as he clenched his fists against the temptation. The moment passed.
“I need you to promise me that you won’t tell anybody about this.”
He opened his eyes to see Steve’s face. Steve had that stubborn glint in his eyes. The glint that used to mean that Bucky was going to end up finishing a fight that Steve was about to start. Back when Steve had needed him.
“Steve,” Bucky said in warning. “That’s what I need from you. Okay?”
“Okay,” Steve promised after a lengthy pause. “I won’t tell anybody, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
Bucky found a dead soldier with feet his size, and Steve found another with appropriately-sized pants. They rendezvoused with the rest of the Howlies, and Bucky made up a bullshit story about being held up in his location until Steve had come to his rescue. Steve slapped him on the back, lying about how the two of them had taken down the Hydra base together. The rest of the Howlies were duly impressed.
Bucky did his best to keep himself together after that. Not to flinch when he was touched unexpectedly. Not to glare when he caught Steve watching him carefully, or snap at him when he quietly asked Bucky if he was okay. Not to remember. Not to feel the ghosts crawling across his skin in the night.
Three months later, he fell from a train barrelling through the Austrian Alps. After that, he had other things to occupy his mind.
*
2016
Steve came back from Lagos different. Bucky could see it in the sag of shoulders and hear it in the despair in his voice. It worried Bucky. Steve was usually better at hiding his depression.
Bucky had been living at the Avengers’ compound ever since Steve had found him in Bucharest. True to his word, Steve had done everything in his power to ensure that Bucky got amnesty. It had been easier than Bucky had thought, between Stark’s money, Steve’s influence, and Natasha’s intel. The government panel had taken one look at the files and footage of what Hydra had done to create the Winter Soldier and had granted him a full pardon. Bucky suspected that they’d been trying to wash their hands of their own complicity in the SHIELD/Hydra mess, but ultimately he didn’t care. He didn’t want to poke the bear. He was free.
He wasn’t an Avenger. They’d offered him a spot on the team, but he’d turned them down. He was done with fighting. He’d been done with it the day he’d answered his draft notice. He only stayed with them because they let him and he had nowhere else to go. He had no viable job skills, beyond the fighting. He didn’t feel trapped, because he could leave whenever he wanted. He just chose not to.
Bucky could go out in public unnoticed most of the time, but he’d get recognized enough to make him uncomfortable. If it wasn’t recognition for what he’d done as Hydra’s pawn, it was for the other thing. The thing Steve had dragged him into.
He didn’t blame Steve for that. Not really. It still irritated him that Steve had told, but he understood. It wasn’t as if Steve had laid out every graphic detail for the world to see, either. Just his name and that it had happened to him during the War. Bucky knew Steve hadn’t meant to betray him. Steve had thought Bucky was dead and he’d been trying to do the right thing, to help people, the way he always had. That was what had drawn Bucky to him back when they were kids, and it was what made him stay now. Steve Rogers was so goddamned good, and if he could find something worthwhile in Bucky than maybe Bucky wasn’t a completely lost cause. Even if they were still awkward around each other, every small conversation an attempt and a failure at restoring their bond the way it had been, at least he knew that Steve believed in him. Considered him his friend.
Except now, three days after the Lagos mission, and Steve wouldn’t look at him directly.
Bucky knew they’d gone after Rumlow, who’d been calling himself Crossbones for whatever fucking reason. He knew Rumlow had died by his own hand, a suicide bomb thwarted by Wanda and Vision. Bucky was glad for that. He was glad he’d never have to look at Rumlow again. He’d been the last of the Hydra soldiers who’d hurt Bucky directly. All the others had died two years ago when the launch of Insight had failed thanks to Steve.
“Steve? What’s wrong?”
The old Bucky wouldn’t have asked. The old Bucky would have let the wound fester, pretended everything was fine when it clearly wasn’t, and let Steve be the one to break down and confess what was wrong. This new Bucky, still figuring out exactly who he was, didn’t have time for that. He needed Steve to look at him as if he was worthwhile.
Steve looked at him, eyes hollow with grief and guilt. That was confirmation enough for Bucky’s suspicions as to why Steve had been avoiding him. His suspicions about all the things a cornered Rumlow with nothing left to lose could have said to Steve before he’d died.
“What did he tell you?”
Steve glanced around, making sure they were alone in the common room. Bucky had already verified that for himself. Friday could probably hear them, but he didn’t really care.
“Everything, Buck,” Steve’s voice cracked. “I know you don’t want me to apologize, but- but I’m sorry. God, I’m so fucking sorry.”
Bucky was ashamed, and he was angry because of it. The one favor that STRIKE team had done for him was cut the camera feed whenever they’d come to the vault to use the Asset. There was no evidence of it anywhere, and now that Rumlow was dead Bucky was the last surviving witness. No one else should have known.
“God,” Steve sank down on the plush sofa, putting his face in his hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop,” Bucky snapped. “I told you, I don’t want your apologies. What they did isn’t your fault.”
“He said- ” Steve was weeping softly, his voice muffled. “He said they never would’ve gotten the idea, if I hadn’t said anything. They would have left you alone.”
Bucky had known all this, through inference. Hearing it verified, however, putting all the pieces of his vague recollections together, made his blood run cold.
“Shut up.”
Bucky’s voice was barely audible. If Steve heard him, he didn’t listen. His hands dropped from his face to his lap.
“They gave me money, for the MSSN. Rumlow, he- back then he said they’d taken a collection to support me. It was so much money, I was so honored.”
Bucky’s mouth had gone dry.
“And in Lagos he told me how it was all money they’d collected from people fucking bidding on you.”
At least Boone had never gotten her chance to cash in, Bucky thought with grim satisfaction. There hadn’t been time, after he’d failed to kill any of the targets except Sitwell, and then Boone had been killed in the melee at the Triskelion.
“I didn’t think about it after, when I knew they were Hydra. Where they got that money and why. I should’ve fucking known.”
“Shut up!”
Bucky hadn’t meant to yell. At least, he didn’t think he had. He’d just been trying to get something audible passed his lips. Steve’s mouth closed and he turned wide, streaming eyes up toward Bucky.
-bony hand swiping tears angrily away as Bucky came to help him to his feet. “I don’t need help, Bucky,” Steve said with wounded pride. His lip dripped blood and he had quite the shiner on his left eye. “Humor me, pal,” Bucky said kindly, hand outstretched. After a moment, Steve grabbed Bucky’s hand and let him lift him to his feet-
“I didn’t mean to yell,” Bucky said slowly. He spoke slowly sometimes. Getting words out in coherent order could be a difficult task. “It’s just- you’re talking like I’m supposed to say something to make this okay, and- and I can’t. I can’t be there for you, the way I used to. Especially not for this. I can’t absolve you of this, Steve. I can’t.”
“I know,” Steve looked down at his lap again. “I’m sor- I mean, I know. I can’t put that on you.”
He looked so lost, and Bucky chafed against his instincts to say whatever he could to get Steve to stop beating himself up. That wasn’t Bucky’s job.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Steve said quietly. “I shouldn’t have. I made it worse.”
It wasn’t Bucky’s job to fix this, but, fuck, he wanted to. Steve needed him.
“Look,” Bucky sat on the sofa beside Steve, leaving several inches between them. “I’m not- I’m still not okay with everything, okay? But it’s awful hypocritical of you to blame yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. You didn’t make Rumlow or any of those other guys do that stuff. They did it on their own.”
As he said the words Bucky felt something lift from him. Something he’d been holding on to ever since he picked up that pamphlet and read Steve’s blurb about him. Maybe something he’d acquired even before that, ever since Steve found him unable to walk out of that Hydra base in Germany. He felt the blame, shifting to where it belonged. Not on Steve. Not on him.
“Christ, Buck,” Steve was looking at him like he was worthwhile again. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known. Nobody deserves the shit you’ve been through, but especially not you.”
“Nobody,” Bucky agreed stiffly. “But I’m not above anybody else in that.”
He believed that wholeheartedly. He wouldn’t wish what he’d been through on anyone. Not even Rumlow.
“Did any of the others hear what Rumlow said?”
He didn’t know if he could look at any of the people he’d slowly come to view as friends again if they’d heard what that STRIKE team had done to him.
“No,” Steve shook his head. “We all got separated. He was done by the time Wanda and Vision got there and stopped him from taking me and that city street out with him. Wanda put him in a force field and Vision helped her hold it together until the shockwaves ended. All they heard was him screaming as he burned.”
There was dark satisfaction in Steve’s voice.
“He burned,” Bucky repeated, that same satisfaction tinting his relief.
He hadn’t felt completely free before, he realized now. There had been that shadow lurking at the back of his mind. A shadow that could find him, overwhelm him, speak a disjointed string of Russian words, and make him do anything. There were still others out there, he knew, that could do the same, but none that had done the things Rumlow had done to him. As selfish as that was, preferring the shadows that had made him kill over the ones that had used him for their sick pleasure, he couldn’t help it.
He smiled as the shadow burned away in the light. Steve searched his face with puzzled hope.
“Bucky?”
Nearly two years later, and Bucky still wasn’t ready to forgive Steve for telling his secret. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to be ready. He swallowed hard.
“I’m hungry,” he swallowed again. “And, uh, Sam was telling me about some diner about fifteen minutes from here. Said they had something called ‘unlimited pancakes’. Sounds like it’s worth checking out.”
He let the invitation hang in the air. Steve’s eyes widened joyfully.
“The future’s an amazing place,” Steve quipped, smiling slowly at Bucky
“That it is.”
Bucky rose from the sofa and offered his right hand to Steve.
Fill: Speaking Out (4/4)
IV. Bucky
1944
Steve found him, after.
On the one hand, Bucky had never wanted Steve to see him like this, especially not now, not this Steve. This Steve with the rippling muscles that everyone called Captain America. This Steve that Bucky still hadn’t gotten used to, not even after all these months with the Howlies. This Steve that didn’t need Bucky anymore.
On the other hand, he was grateful it was only Steve, and not the rest of them. He’d patched Steve up so many times growing up. He’d seen Steve at his weakest, and Steve wouldn’t judge him for this. He clung desperately to that thought as Steve helped him to his feet and covered Bucky’s nakedness with his trench coat. Steve wouldn’t think less of him. He wouldn’t-
A sudden burst of pain, and Bucky’s knees gave out. He hung off of Steve’s shoulder like a ragdoll, futilely commanding his legs to work. Futilely commanding his ass to stop throbbing. He felt the blood on the inside of his thighs, unbearably sticky. He knew it wasn’t just blood.
“Hey, man, stay with me. You’re gonna be okay, just stay with me.”
Bucky heard the horror in Steve’s voice. He was horrifying. This was different from all the times he’d held Steve’s tiny body up and told Steve that everything would be okay.
He couldn’t get his legs to work. To his immense shame, Steve swept him up in his arms as if he weighed nothing at all and began to walk out of the room Bucky had been held in. He couldn’t move, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t tell Steve to put him the fuck down.
“Fucking Hydra,” Steve snarled. “I’d kill them all again if I could, slower this time. I’d fucking rip- ”
Everything Bucky had been tuning out over the past few hours of his ordeal came rushing back to the surface. How they’d found him, surveying the Hydra base through the scope of his rifle while he waited for backup. How he’d fought, killed a few of them, but there had been too many and he’d been overwhelmed. How they’d brought him inside the base, to this room, and stripped him. To search him for weapons, he’d thought. He hadn’t realized what they were going to do to him until the first man had thrown him to the floor, crawled on top of him, and shoved his-
No, but that couldn’t be what had happened. That didn’t happen to people like him. It was something that men, evil men, did to girls. Something that men like him stopped. It didn’t happen to him. He must be remembering it wrong, it must have been something else.
He could still feel the residue on his thighs. He could still feel the ache of having so many men inside him that he’d lost count. He was horrifying, he was disgusting, and he was ashamed.
“You’re gonna be okay, Buck,” Steve said again when they were outside. “You’re gonna be okay.”
It was still daylight. Bucky had thought it would be dark by now, but the sun blazed cheerfully overhead. They’d found him in the early morning, and what they’d done to him inside felt like it had been an eternity, but it hadn’t been. It was still daylight.
Bodies of Hydra soldiers littered the ground outside the base. Bucky found his voice.
“Put me down,” he croaked indignantly. “I can fucking walk by myself.”
The ground was soft under his bare feet. Pine needles pricked his toes.
“I couldn’t find your clothes,” Steve said apologetically. “I looked, but I couldn’t find ‘em.”
Bucky wrapped Steve’s trench coat tightly around him. It was warm underneath the shining sun, but he was shivering. He could feel the ghosts of their hands on him, ripping off his clothes. Clawing at his naked skin.
“It’s fine,” Bucky grunted, staggering forward. His legs cooperated this time. “I’ll get new ones.”
“Bucky- ”
There was concern in Steve’s voice. Pity. Bucky bristled at it.
“I don’t wanna talk about it, Steve.”
He couldn’t look at Steve as he took another shaky step forward into the forest surrounding the base. He tried to remember if they’d been finished with him by the time Steve had found him, or if Steve had seen the last one on top of him. He couldn’t remember. Or maybe he didn’t want to.
“Bucky, look at me. Please.”
Steve’s voice broke, and Bucky looked at him automatically. Steve looked lost, like he needed Bucky again, which was absurd. This Steve didn’t need him. Especially not now, not after the state he’d found Bucky in.
“I’m here for you,” Steve promised him. “Whatever you need, okay?”
Bucky thought for a moment that he was going to give in to his weakness. That he would fall to his knees and weep at Steve’s feet for what had just happened to him. For what had been taken from him. He closed his eyes, swallowing hard as he clenched his fists against the temptation. The moment passed.
“I need you to promise me that you won’t tell anybody about this.”
He opened his eyes to see Steve’s face. Steve had that stubborn glint in his eyes. The glint that used to mean that Bucky was going to end up finishing a fight that Steve was about to start. Back when Steve had needed him.
“Steve,” Bucky said in warning. “That’s what I need from you. Okay?”
“Okay,” Steve promised after a lengthy pause. “I won’t tell anybody, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
Bucky found a dead soldier with feet his size, and Steve found another with appropriately-sized pants. They rendezvoused with the rest of the Howlies, and Bucky made up a bullshit story about being held up in his location until Steve had come to his rescue. Steve slapped him on the back, lying about how the two of them had taken down the Hydra base together. The rest of the Howlies were duly impressed.
Bucky did his best to keep himself together after that. Not to flinch when he was touched unexpectedly. Not to glare when he caught Steve watching him carefully, or snap at him when he quietly asked Bucky if he was okay. Not to remember. Not to feel the ghosts crawling across his skin in the night.
Three months later, he fell from a train barrelling through the Austrian Alps. After that, he had other things to occupy his mind.
*
2016
Steve came back from Lagos different. Bucky could see it in the sag of shoulders and hear it in the despair in his voice. It worried Bucky. Steve was usually better at hiding his depression.
Bucky had been living at the Avengers’ compound ever since Steve had found him in Bucharest. True to his word, Steve had done everything in his power to ensure that Bucky got amnesty. It had been easier than Bucky had thought, between Stark’s money, Steve’s influence, and Natasha’s intel. The government panel had taken one look at the files and footage of what Hydra had done to create the Winter Soldier and had granted him a full pardon. Bucky suspected that they’d been trying to wash their hands of their own complicity in the SHIELD/Hydra mess, but ultimately he didn’t care. He didn’t want to poke the bear. He was free.
He wasn’t an Avenger. They’d offered him a spot on the team, but he’d turned them down. He was done with fighting. He’d been done with it the day he’d answered his draft notice. He only stayed with them because they let him and he had nowhere else to go. He had no viable job skills, beyond the fighting. He didn’t feel trapped, because he could leave whenever he wanted. He just chose not to.
Bucky could go out in public unnoticed most of the time, but he’d get recognized enough to make him uncomfortable. If it wasn’t recognition for what he’d done as Hydra’s pawn, it was for the other thing. The thing Steve had dragged him into.
He didn’t blame Steve for that. Not really. It still irritated him that Steve had told, but he understood. It wasn’t as if Steve had laid out every graphic detail for the world to see, either. Just his name and that it had happened to him during the War. Bucky knew Steve hadn’t meant to betray him. Steve had thought Bucky was dead and he’d been trying to do the right thing, to help people, the way he always had. That was what had drawn Bucky to him back when they were kids, and it was what made him stay now. Steve Rogers was so goddamned good, and if he could find something worthwhile in Bucky than maybe Bucky wasn’t a completely lost cause. Even if they were still awkward around each other, every small conversation an attempt and a failure at restoring their bond the way it had been, at least he knew that Steve believed in him. Considered him his friend.
Except now, three days after the Lagos mission, and Steve wouldn’t look at him directly.
Bucky knew they’d gone after Rumlow, who’d been calling himself Crossbones for whatever fucking reason. He knew Rumlow had died by his own hand, a suicide bomb thwarted by Wanda and Vision. Bucky was glad for that. He was glad he’d never have to look at Rumlow again. He’d been the last of the Hydra soldiers who’d hurt Bucky directly. All the others had died two years ago when the launch of Insight had failed thanks to Steve.
“Steve? What’s wrong?”
The old Bucky wouldn’t have asked. The old Bucky would have let the wound fester, pretended everything was fine when it clearly wasn’t, and let Steve be the one to break down and confess what was wrong. This new Bucky, still figuring out exactly who he was, didn’t have time for that. He needed Steve to look at him as if he was worthwhile.
Steve looked at him, eyes hollow with grief and guilt. That was confirmation enough for Bucky’s suspicions as to why Steve had been avoiding him. His suspicions about all the things a cornered Rumlow with nothing left to lose could have said to Steve before he’d died.
“What did he tell you?”
Steve glanced around, making sure they were alone in the common room. Bucky had already verified that for himself. Friday could probably hear them, but he didn’t really care.
“Everything, Buck,” Steve’s voice cracked. “I know you don’t want me to apologize, but- but I’m sorry. God, I’m so fucking sorry.”
Bucky was ashamed, and he was angry because of it. The one favor that STRIKE team had done for him was cut the camera feed whenever they’d come to the vault to use the Asset. There was no evidence of it anywhere, and now that Rumlow was dead Bucky was the last surviving witness. No one else should have known.
“God,” Steve sank down on the plush sofa, putting his face in his hands. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop,” Bucky snapped. “I told you, I don’t want your apologies. What they did isn’t your fault.”
“He said- ” Steve was weeping softly, his voice muffled. “He said they never would’ve gotten the idea, if I hadn’t said anything. They would have left you alone.”
Bucky had known all this, through inference. Hearing it verified, however, putting all the pieces of his vague recollections together, made his blood run cold.
“Shut up.”
Bucky’s voice was barely audible. If Steve heard him, he didn’t listen. His hands dropped from his face to his lap.
“They gave me money, for the MSSN. Rumlow, he- back then he said they’d taken a collection to support me. It was so much money, I was so honored.”
Bucky’s mouth had gone dry.
“And in Lagos he told me how it was all money they’d collected from people fucking bidding on you.”
At least Boone had never gotten her chance to cash in, Bucky thought with grim satisfaction. There hadn’t been time, after he’d failed to kill any of the targets except Sitwell, and then Boone had been killed in the melee at the Triskelion.
“I didn’t think about it after, when I knew they were Hydra. Where they got that money and why. I should’ve fucking known.”
“Shut up!”
Bucky hadn’t meant to yell. At least, he didn’t think he had. He’d just been trying to get something audible passed his lips. Steve’s mouth closed and he turned wide, streaming eyes up toward Bucky.
-bony hand swiping tears angrily away as Bucky came to help him to his feet. “I don’t need help, Bucky,” Steve said with wounded pride. His lip dripped blood and he had quite the shiner on his left eye. “Humor me, pal,” Bucky said kindly, hand outstretched. After a moment, Steve grabbed Bucky’s hand and let him lift him to his feet-
“I didn’t mean to yell,” Bucky said slowly. He spoke slowly sometimes. Getting words out in coherent order could be a difficult task. “It’s just- you’re talking like I’m supposed to say something to make this okay, and- and I can’t. I can’t be there for you, the way I used to. Especially not for this. I can’t absolve you of this, Steve. I can’t.”
“I know,” Steve looked down at his lap again. “I’m sor- I mean, I know. I can’t put that on you.”
He looked so lost, and Bucky chafed against his instincts to say whatever he could to get Steve to stop beating himself up. That wasn’t Bucky’s job.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Steve said quietly. “I shouldn’t have. I made it worse.”
It wasn’t Bucky’s job to fix this, but, fuck, he wanted to. Steve needed him.
“Look,” Bucky sat on the sofa beside Steve, leaving several inches between them. “I’m not- I’m still not okay with everything, okay? But it’s awful hypocritical of you to blame yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. You didn’t make Rumlow or any of those other guys do that stuff. They did it on their own.”
As he said the words Bucky felt something lift from him. Something he’d been holding on to ever since he picked up that pamphlet and read Steve’s blurb about him. Maybe something he’d acquired even before that, ever since Steve found him unable to walk out of that Hydra base in Germany. He felt the blame, shifting to where it belonged. Not on Steve. Not on him.
“Christ, Buck,” Steve was looking at him like he was worthwhile again. “You’re the best man I’ve ever known. Nobody deserves the shit you’ve been through, but especially not you.”
“Nobody,” Bucky agreed stiffly. “But I’m not above anybody else in that.”
He believed that wholeheartedly. He wouldn’t wish what he’d been through on anyone. Not even Rumlow.
“Did any of the others hear what Rumlow said?”
He didn’t know if he could look at any of the people he’d slowly come to view as friends again if they’d heard what that STRIKE team had done to him.
“No,” Steve shook his head. “We all got separated. He was done by the time Wanda and Vision got there and stopped him from taking me and that city street out with him. Wanda put him in a force field and Vision helped her hold it together until the shockwaves ended. All they heard was him screaming as he burned.”
There was dark satisfaction in Steve’s voice.
“He burned,” Bucky repeated, that same satisfaction tinting his relief.
He hadn’t felt completely free before, he realized now. There had been that shadow lurking at the back of his mind. A shadow that could find him, overwhelm him, speak a disjointed string of Russian words, and make him do anything. There were still others out there, he knew, that could do the same, but none that had done the things Rumlow had done to him. As selfish as that was, preferring the shadows that had made him kill over the ones that had used him for their sick pleasure, he couldn’t help it.
He smiled as the shadow burned away in the light. Steve searched his face with puzzled hope.
“Bucky?”
Nearly two years later, and Bucky still wasn’t ready to forgive Steve for telling his secret. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to be ready. He swallowed hard.
“I’m hungry,” he swallowed again. “And, uh, Sam was telling me about some diner about fifteen minutes from here. Said they had something called ‘unlimited pancakes’. Sounds like it’s worth checking out.”
He let the invitation hang in the air. Steve’s eyes widened joyfully.
“The future’s an amazing place,” Steve quipped, smiling slowly at Bucky
“That it is.”
Bucky rose from the sofa and offered his right hand to Steve.