"Bucky's a sinner who prays, and he prays to Steve."
Bucky Barnes was a religious man, in the way many people were religious, in the way many people fell to their knees and prayed when in trivial times-he had too once, during war. As a young Sergeant, he recalls kneeling in some blown-up church, his dog tags cold, and swinging against his sweat soaked shirt. Sometime after Azzano, where the horrors of what had been done to him, horrors he knows Stevie knows, but doesn’t want to admit he knows, because Bucky doesn’t want him to admit he knows either.
Because the truth is, and it’s a damned, heavy truth that Bucky’s carried for most his life, and it goes like this; Bucky Barnes is rotten, filthy rotten and with the twisted serum that’s now been polluted into his already dirty blood- that rotten core of his would only grow.
"You’re rotten, James!” His father would roar, swinging his meaty fist back, and against the hollow of Bucky’s then young and fragile face. “Rotten down to your very last fucking core!”
It wasn’t the pain of the hit given to him by his drunk old man, though that hurt too, but it was that terrible truth, that hurt him more than anything. That made that awful, feral monster in his chest claw and chew on his organs, bite and chew and spit out pieces of Bucky’s bleeding, ruined heart.
Because Bucky knows, god he knows, he knows, he knows.
He’d been able to charm the pants off every and any dame that had caught his eyes, all the way from Brooklyn to France, and had been able to help his mother, and play the role of the dutiful son. Had played the role of Stevie’s protector, of his little sisters’ antagonizers, of the perfect student, of the soldier and of the killer.
Yet, he was rotten down to his bones and his very soul, and his father, before he had died, had known it. Had known that whatever twisted, cruel, monstrous thing that clawed and screamed under Ben Barnes is bones, as it did beneath the flesh of his father before him-Bucky had inherited it too.
Had known even then, that if he let an ounce of that show-he’d be ruined, and Bucky Barnes was nothing if not a facade created to please, of swaggering presence, and carefully constructed cocky smiles, all made and carved to prevent that ruination from happening.
Yet-as he knelt in 1944, the Howlies sleeping in the broken church pews, the fire still crackling in the corner, where the wood floor gave away to dirt, Bucky knelt, and prayed.
His shaking hands clasped his dog tags, as he knelt before the crumbled, twisted statue of the Holy spirit, and his eyes burned, his eyes, clenched tight, held back dreams and awful truths that threatened to swallow him whole, that gave leeway for that monstrous beast under his flesh to do so.
He would not cry, he couldn’t-would not nullify this place, not with his filthy tears, because this church- despite being broken, and filled with rotten wood, despite being blown to hell in the middle of a war- that marble statue of Christ still stood, gazing down on him, face twisted in pain, as though sharing his agony or perhaps facing his own.
“Father-” Bucky prayed, because he always prayed to his father, or god, or whomever, god in any case at least would not have swung at him and beat him bloody for showing feelings the way he is now, for fighting back the urge to shake and cry.
His shoulders shake, and he clenches his fist, bowing his head to his hands, from where they still held his dog-tags.
“Father-God-Jesus anybody I’m lost-and I know-I’m sorry-” The words are broken gasps, hushed whispers as he tries not to wake the howlies sleeping a few feet away from them, Steve’s large body slumped outside the church doors, because the jackass had wanted to take watch and had fallen asleep.
“Father-I know-” Bucky begins again, his eyes opening against his better judgement, a few damned tears rushing past, dampening his cheeks, “I know I prayed to you to keep Stevie safe, that it was my life for him. I keep well on that promise to you, god, but god, I’m afraid. I’m so afraid-”
He stiffens because Dum-Dum lets out a particularly large snort and rolls over, and he relaxes again as the man settles once more.
“I know you might be angry-know I shouldn’t have prayed to Stevie-"
He croaks, a terrible truth, he called out for Steve.
Laying on that table in that place, with hellfire burning and wasting away at his flesh and soul, his humanity, he’d begged for Steve. To help him, he screamed and screamed and screamed till they shoved something in his mouth, till one of the Krauts hit him so hard, he’d lost a tooth-yet he screamed still.
Steve had come, and Bucky knew in that moment, in that horrifying moment where Steve was shouting at him to go, as that factory burned around them in Azzano, as Bucky had felt an inch of that never ending rage, and had let it show, “Not without you!”, he’d roared, and that beast had screamed with him. Because didn’t the damn scrawny-now big dumbass know there was no Bucky without Steve? That he kept Bucky’s monster at bay and that is when he learned his second, startling truth; that god would take Steve away.
That whatever god was up there would rip him away, after giving him a taste of what heaven feels like, because Bucky had prayed to Steve, and Steve had become big, and Bucky didn’t believe in god damn miracles, nor coincidences, yet as much as he loved his sci-fi novellas-he knew he was damned. Because God would be jealous, because you’re not supposed to love your family more than him, aren’t supposed to pray to your brother or your lover and that in itself is the worst kind of sin.
So as they marched all the way back to Camp Leigh, Bucky had prayed, had prayed and prayed and prayed-till his already messed up head, and burning, changing limbs felt as though they were going to scream with how hard he begged.
“Not Steve-” He’d prayed, “You want to punish anyone? Take me. I’m rotten, this serum will only reveal that-hell war already did.” Bucky had choked out, a few meters away from everybody else, tilting his forehead against the bark of a tree, pressing his fingertips against the bark, hard enough to draw blood, yet it never broke skin.
“Me-not him. You take me, and you let him live till he’s a hundred, and past that. You give him a life, because I was always the worst kind of sin-the worst kind of evil. I'm corrupt, and I’ll ruin him, so ruin me first, and when I die, and that hellfire in my veins is on my skin, eating away at flesh-let it take me to rest, and I’ll rest well, even then.”
The words were poetic and something sappy Stevie’s Ma would read to them, yet they seemed fit, a bargain struck, and so the ruination of James Bucky Barnes begins.