"Christ, Bucky should have fallen from the train earlier."
Present Day: 2023
“Did something happen?”
Raynor, with her pursed lips and no-nonsense bun, and Bucky blinks, except he’s not really here. He’s not processing, everything seems faint. Numb. Like it’s happening to someone else.
‘No.’ He croaks, focusing on his metal fingers, on the wind that howls and rattles at the glass window, three floors, he’d survive the fall, and the jump would be rough, but his chance at escape would be high. From the vantage point of the room, from where he’s seated on the rubbery, plastic couch, which he hates, he can easily access the door, except Raynor’s in front of it, and she’s a soldier, doesn’t she know about vantage points and exits? Is this another form of manipulation on her part to make him feel trapped? Feel like the Asset, so he’ll open up?
Bucky feels like him, his long hair swinging to shield his face, and he remembers the way the man-Jack? John?-with his cruel hands yanked on it, like Rumlow had, or Rollins or Pierce and Karpov, and on and on and on- till all their faces blur to one, and a simple pair of hands turn into hundreds, and Bucky’s suffering. Drowning in a sea of touches, and mean words, and cruel men.
“James?”
Bucky opens his mouth, and with a terrible moment of icy realization, of shock, he bites back the words that spring up to his throat as she snaps his name. “Ready to comply”, strangles and withers on his lips, the words taste like that one awful Cigarette Morita had shared with him, which had tasted like wet dog, and moldy socks and had left an awful taste on his tongue for days afterwards.
With that realization, he’s suddenly thrust back into the world, into the present, and he can feel the grief in his chest, the tears that burn in his gaze, the way his shoulders curve, to make himself smaller in front of his superior.
He can’t speak, he goes silent and shakes his head, and as a man with as shifty a memory as he has, he recalls everything that man did to him in that alleyway, everything he allowed to happen. Yet it doesn’t matter, it’s not even the worst thing he’d gone through, and hell, he’d even enjoyed it, once he was able to focus on that and not the fact that the man was brutally assaulting him at the same time. What an asshole.
He stares at Raynor’s notebook, stares at it and stares, and there’s this terrible emptiness that fills him. A sort of internal fatigue in his bones, where he can’t quite feel at all, almost like a calm, because his body and mind have simply given up, and Bucky finds he doesn’t mind.
Because Bucky’s at the end of his goddamn rope, if alcohol won’t help him sleep, maybe a very high concentration of drugs would, wasn’t Raynor always telling him he has to socialize? To get out more?
Bucky almost smiles at the face she makes, as neutral and strict as always, and she sighs her Alexander Pierce-like sigh, and she looks worried.
“Barnes, this is the longest you’ve gone without saying something snappy or childish. You look-you look like-” Her words falter, and Bucky knows she’s referring to his hollow cheeks, his sunken eyes, hell, he was in better shape as the asset and they fed him through a tube!
“A убийца?”
She blinks, and he blinks, and she looks incredibly wary, and Bucky internally swears, “Was that Russian? Is there a reason we’re speaking Russian?”
Bucky clenches his jaw, but he can’t speak, he just can’t. He hadn’t meant to say, “a killer” in Russian. He’d been trying to answer her question to explain he knows he looks shitty, that he knows he looks like a shell-shocked soldier in battle, yet the words won’t come out in English.
There’s some old, and weary terror and grief taking hold in his gut, silencing his mouth and he can’t-
What was it Zemo had said, that he was afraid to “open his mouth”, because the horrors Bucky had experienced would never stop?
Raynor’s genuinely worried now, and Bucky doesn’t kid himself for one minute that it’s over him, and she sighs, “James, if this is a Winter Soldier thing-”
He shakes his head, frantic, and panic roars to life in his throat, because she’ll inform her superiors, tell them he’s still not fully free of his programming. That he’s a threat.
“Нет! Scheiße, nein!” Bucky fists at his hair, and tries to hide his tears, because he can’t explain it to her, and the word’s are coming out wrong, and panic seized hold of his mind, causes his lungs to stop working, as that panic holds them in a vice grip, as he yanks on his hair, rocking back and forth, forcing the words to come out, trying to at least breathe.
He’s only distantly aware that Raynor is telling him to, “Calm down!” Her voice is nearly yelling, and he feels too much- because it’s-
“James, calm down!”
Then there’s Alice in the corner, shaking her head, except she’s still young, and not dead, because she’d lived a long life and had become a teacher and a scientist and Bucky was so goddamn proud of her, even though she never got the chance to see him again. That she wasn’t even really here.
“Breath Jimmy, Breath!” Alice is- ghost? Hallucination? Clone? Hell, who knew in a world where a purple toad could kill billions of people with a bunch of shiny rocks.
“SOLDIER!” Raynor roars so loudly, and Bucky flinches so badly, he’s suddenly back in his body, and he’s on the floor- when the hell had he gotten on the floor?- and he goes silent, deadly still. Raynor is breathing heavily from where she stands behind her chair, her eyes disturbed, her face pale. He’d startled her so badly she even dropped her precious notebook.
“Sorry-” Bucky croaks.
He means it this time.
Raynor doesn’t say anything and Bucky knows he fucked up big time, she’d never seen him so much as laugh, so his outburst was probably a little bit shocking for her.
Bucky flattens his hair, and curls the filthy brown strands behind his ears, and gives a twist of his lips, which he hopes comes off as a disarming, apologetic smile, but he
probably looks like he’s in pain.
God, he is, he’s in so much pain.
He sits on the couch, and shows Raynor he’s a perfectly functioning human being, and she frowns, at a loss, not even bothering to pick up the forgotten notebook on the floor.
She sits back in her chair, her eyes wary, watchful.
Bucky doesn’t want to say it, but he has to, because she’ll write him up as a nut, and bye-bye pardon, hello Mad-House.
' I had sex-it went badly.’
She tries to wipe her face clean, as Bucky tries to keep his face neutral, calmer, though still uneasy. Yet even in his state, he catches the look of understanding, and dare he say even sympathy, as it flashes lightning quick in her dark eyes, before it’s carefully put away, and hello cold, assessing therapist.
Raynor picks up her book, and her pencil, and her hands are steady; she doesn’t sigh, yet she asks, “Was it with a man or a woman?”
The question is said without judgment, but there’s a reason she asks, and he knows the reason, yet he can’t seem to open his mouth and tell her.
Something slimy, and older than him churns in his gut, he thinks of the queers in him and Stevie’s old neighborhood in Brooklyn, the way men would spit at them, and call them “fairies”. Or worse, the way the church would drone on and on about immortal sin, and Hell, and the unnatural temptations that the devil uses to trick good, god-fearing Christians.
He recalled the way Steve would look away during those parts of the sermon, his face pale and burdened, and he knew there were some things that Steve Rogers would never speak about. Like his father, when he’s struggling or needs help, how Bucky sees Steve’s blue eyes snag more to very good-looking men than they did to good-looking dames.
Bucky remembers it all, and he knows things are different now, but Steve hadn’t dared touch him in this world, even when he was leaving, it was all surface level hugs, pats on the back, that Bucky as a sergeant would reserve for his platoon members.
But, there had to be a reason, whether it was because Steve Rogers was ashamed, or because he didn’t love the man Bucky was now. The haunted soldier wearing his old pal’s skin, a killer forged from the memories of someone else, and the skills of that soldier, and nothing more. Like a broom that’s lost all its edges, yet the sweeper still keeps the handle out of some asinine obligation. Was that what Steve did for him? Just stick by Bucky even though he’d done terrible things, tell him it wasn’t his fault, and show time and time again that he would always choose him. Whether that be in terms of the Avengers, his mantle, the world, or his friendship with Tony Stark. Out of some moral obligation he had? Not because he loved Bucky now, but because he loved him then? Is that why he left?
Bucky feels sick, bile rises in his throat, and he’d much rather talk about the man in the alleyway than think of Steven Grant Rogers and why he left.
“I’m assuming by your silence it was a man.”
Bucky stares at her, and he probably looks as shitty as he feels, he holds his trembling hands, and his shoulders curl in shame, “You don’t seem surprised.”
The words are a resigned croak.
Raynor sets her jaw, her gaze direct, “In this day and age, it’s not hard to assume what you and Steve Rogers might have had, as roommates.” Her lips twitch at the word, and he wonders why that’s funny; must be some cultural joke. More so, he tries not to physically grab at the flare of pain in his chest at the words, “Might have had.”
Yet Raynor continues, oblivious or uncaring of Bucky’s reaction as she states, “The man ran into an open battlefield for you, and defied the government time and time again, there was of course speculation of your relationship, even back then. Though, I’m assuming the government at the time didn’t want to lose the only weapon they had against the Nazis, asking. ”
She’s talking so casually, so callously, and Bucky feels like he’s going to be sick, he presses his trembling palms to his eyes, “Please don’t say that.” He croaks, “Don’t you dare tarnish his legacy by suggesting he-”
Raynor’s brows raise, and she gives him a look, “I have a nephew that’s gay, James. It would have been nice for him to have had an advocate like Captain America growing up.”
Bucky flinches and exhales shaky, he’s surprised she’s sharing about his family, but perhaps she’s trying to extend an olive branch, he after all, did “open up” for the first time, even if it was to explain that he wasn’t crazy.
Bucky wants to explain to her that Stevie wasn’t like that, that Bucky had been the rotten devil the church pastor on his block would rave about. That he’d seduced his best friend, had fought so hard against it, and Steve was so angry with him, all the time. Because Bucky would be kissing him one second, then calling him pal the other, and least they forget the whole mess that was Peggy Carter. Christ, Bucky should have fallen from the train earlier.
Raynor glances at him, and there’s pity on her face, “Regardless, this man you slept with, it brought back bad memories?”
Bucky’s nearly relieved to be back on this topic, until he realizes he has to talk about that.
He goes mute, jaw clenched, and Raynor sighs.
“James, I just wanted to let you know, the government has a pretty good understanding of what you went through. But as your therapist, only I know those key details. I’m sorry, it’s a breach of your right to privacy-” She explains, not sounding sincere at all.
“-But given your history, it’s a crucial one. Did you hurt this man?”
Bucky goes rigid, and god knows he’s a killer, and it’s a perfectly valid question to ask. She probably thinks he’s freaking out about kissing a man that isn’t Steve, as though James Barnes hadn’t been the biggest whore in Brooklyn, and he’d gotten worse during war.
Probably thinks he’d rushed into something he wasn’t ready for, and given his past, he’d lashed out.
But Bucky hadn’t even thought of hurting the man, not even to defend himself, not even when he’d gotten aggressive halfway through their kiss. Not even as Bucky had joked and had tried to tell the man to calm down, and ease up, but the man was mean, and someone who’d clearly done this before.
He’d rammed his elbow into Bucky’s throat in answer, and his blue eyes seemed black in the dark of the alley, with how much hate filled them.
Bucky had been frozen, confused, some programming locked in, as he couldn’t move-he couldn’t move. Some survival technique he’d developed as the Asset, to just stay still and take it, or maybe- he was just a coward.
But the man had snarled, and it had cut Bucky down to his core, “Just stay fucking still, you fucking faggot, or else you’re going to wish you never stared at me the way you did-” He’d laughed, his voice gravely, well-built, and tall, and Bucky had cowered.
Because the man was yanking down his pants, smiling in this cruel, sadistic way he’d seen imprinted on Brock Rumlow’s face every time the man had approached his cell in Hydra.
“Jesus christ-” The man continues, and he’s unbuckling his own pants, sneering, “You should have seen yourself, fucking pathetic, batting your lashes like some fucking whore-”
It’s nothing he hadn’t heard before, hell Rollins would sing worse things about the Asset’s lips just to piss Rumlow off. Yet it’s everything Bucky had ever voiced in his own head during the war when he and some poor soldier would tussle around in the bushes. It’s every nasty term, self-hating expression he’d cursed at himself, when those Hydra guards or scientists would hurt him like that, and worse. Worse- because sometimes he’d been forced to enjoy it.
“Jay-”
Raynor doesn’t finish, because Bucky’s standing, his breathing ragged, his eyes watery, and she leans back as though she expects him to start shouting in Russian and German, again.
He gazes at her, and he lets her see for once, the pain on his face, the grief in the hollow of his bones, and the emptiness that fills every crack and crevice of his soul.
She looks upset, unsure, and he clears his throat, and he hates the way his voice shakes, “You’re probably the worst fucking shrink, ever. Ya know that, huh, doc?” He spits, and perhaps she’d realized she’d messed up big-time because she doesn’t try to stop him as he storms out.