"Bucky and the Devil are besties."
Present Day: 2023
Bucky’s sobbing on his knees in some broken-down church in Manhattan, and he’d looked everywhere for Steve’s dog tags. He assumes that the women he slept with had stolen it off him, yet she was gone by the time he’d gotten back inside the Rave. So, with panic wild in his chest, flipping over tables and sleeping bodies, he’d ransacked the place until the owner and two massive bouncers had told him to leave or they’d call the police.
Bucky had been ready for a fight, prepared to burn this place to the ground if it meant getting those damn two chips of metal back, but then he’d thought, what was the point? Steve was gone, Steve didn’t want him, so why was he working so hard to cling to the man?
The realization had drained the life and fight out of him. Bitter, he’d mumbled an apology to the owner and stepped out into the freezing rain in scratchy faded jeans, without underwear, with his shirt on backwards and no shoes. That woman’s hands were still all over him, and Bucky was just lost.
The rain was pouring so hard that the streets of Brooklyn were nearly bare, and he walked on and on, and on, until he reached some church in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen. Maybe, if Bucky were lucky, some robber would come by, try to rob him, and maybe shoot him dead. Unfortunately, Bucky looks homeless (again), so he doubts the chances of a hit-and-run gone wrong would be high.
So, Bucky had knelt in front of the statue of Christ, soaking wet, and devastated, and had cried so hard, even the priests had left him alone.
Yet, after all this time, all those years of torture, and bloodshed, and programming, he finds himself kneeling against the cherry wood, tears streaming down his face, and this time it’s not for his Handlers, or to Hydra, it’s to god. So, for the first time in 70 years, the Winter Soldier raises his head to god, and weeps, and god weeps with him.
The Winter Soldier wasn’t religious; it wasn’t in his programming, yet James Bucky Barnes was, and sometimes when the Soldier would be forced to kill a particularly young target, or somebody Hydra knew was a parent, he found himself murmuring a jumble of words. They were nonsensical, and the soldier had been disturbed by them, but even then, he’d find himself mumbling, just low enough so his comms couldn’t hear;
“Have mercy on their souls, and not one shred of that mercy, on mine.”
Bucky Barnes had always been a bit dramatic, and Bucky exhales shaky, and weeps into his hands, he hates himself, because he doesn’t know if that woman had stolen it, or god forbid, he’d traded them for just drugs.
The horrible part is, Bucky will never know; he’ll never know why James Barnes back then had fought so hard against his chance at being happy. Why he was so fucking ungrateful for all the love he had in his life, because the Bucky of now, would damn religion, because he’s going to Hell anyways, and would damn his morals and ethics, and would have kissed Steve as though he were starving, and starving he’d been. He’d been starving for a hundred goddamn years.
Except he’d told Steve to go, because despite how shriveled and rotten he’d become during his time in Hydra without Steve Rogers, without his sun, Bucky knew he didn’t deserve that love, and he knew he wouldn’t keep Steve from having that life he deserved, and that happy ending wasn’t in the form of some washed up version of his old buddy.
Wasn’t the wrecked and ruined ghost of a man he’d become, because what people fail to realize was that Bucky Barnes had always been mean, and he’d always been a killer, Hydra just took away his feelings-his grief and his guilt, and had cultivated a better, more efficient gun.
“Well, you look like you’re having a bad day.”
Bucky turns, and he’s silent, stiff; he’d thought he was the only person here, aside from the priests. He turns to see a well-dressed blind man, because even if the man hadn’t been wearing his shades indoors, or holding the cane in his right hand, Bucky can tell from the way he shifts and reaches out that he’s blind. But he frowns, because the man walks silently, knows how to adjust the weight on his feet, as though always prepared to jump into a fight, perhaps he’s army-or worse.
The man smiles, and he looks like a bit of an asshole, and also he caught Bucky crying which is humiliating in itself, so Bucky spits out, through gritted teeth, “How would you know, pal? You’re blind.”
The man grins, and he reaches out to find the first pew and sits atop it, and Bucky doesn’t move from where he’s kneeling on the floor, and the man tilts his head, as though listening and he says in a dry voice, “You’re not wearing shoes, and your knees must hurt from kneeling, so you’ve had better days-pal.” He says sarcastically, then in a more sincere tone, “Why don’t you sit for a second? I don’t think Jesus will mind.”
Bucky casts the man a wary glance, that’s just fucking creepy, though he could have easily identified that by listening, really-really hard. He’s enhanced, he has to be, or maybe really well trained.
Bucky stands, knees cracking, as he walks over to the pew, and he stares down at the man, and gives him the most withering, Winifred Barnes glare, and the man looks up at him, and smiles, pleasantly.
“You’re military, or-” Bucky accuses, and the man’s smile tightens, “Something like that. You’re military as well, extremely trained, you’re light on your feet-and-”
The man frowns, brows pinching, “Where on Earth did you get an arm like that?”
Bucky’s jaw clenched, “Who the fuck are you, pal?”
The man shrugs, “More importantly, who are you? A military man, with an advanced prosthetic like that, and the old Brooklyn inflection?” The man muses to himself, and Bucky’s nearly trembling with how uneasy he is, ‘Hello Sergeant Barnes, sir, it’s an honor.”
The man holds out his hand, and Bucky sighs, because hell, he sits on the pew and takes the guy’s hand.
“Who are you?” he croaks, weary, too tired to care if the man was hired to take him out or not, if he's decent enough, hopefully he won’t kill Bucky in this church.
The man smiles dryly, “Matt Murdock, I worked with your defense team for your plea bargain.”
Bucky raises a brow, “You expect me to believe you’re a lawyer, kid?” he croaks, and the man pats the front of his suit and, in a fluid movement, pulls out a card. He hands it to Bucky, and Bucky takes it, and he nearly laughs, “Nelson and Murdock?” He sputters, and the man nods.
Smiling slightly, the man asks, “So why is an Avenger praying in the most run-down church in New York?”
They’re gentle words, and curious, and Bucky’s suspicion that the man’s here to kill him, hasn’t lessened, but he’s honestly so goddamn lonely, and the grief in his chest is eating him alive, so he answers in a weary tone.
“Why are you?”
He asks, eyeing the man’s very expensive suit and tailored shoes, he didn’t know who his legal team consisted of, because Wakanda had imbursed it, and Steve had handled most of the legal stuff. Bucky just cried on stage, and told the world that if they were smart, they’d put him down, and somehow the judge took that in stride, and cleared him. Idiots.
“Well, I’m not an Avenger, although I like the ambience.” Matt Murdock, who’s a blind lawyer, and can’t fucking see the ambience, responds dryly.
Bucky frowns at him and snaps in a much more biting tone, “I’m not an Avenger either, and don’t call me a Sergeant.’
Because Bucky Barnes wasn’t a Sergeant, he hadn’t been for a long time, and he’d never been an Avenger. The Avengers were heroes, Bucky was just there to make sure Steve was okay. Steve was the hero who cared about the war and the world, Bucky had just wanted to keep him safe.
Murdock frowns, and he looks almost sad, “Alright, Mr. Barnes.” He says simply, and he just sits there, and Bucky stares at him, slightly taken aback.
“That’s-that’s it?” he asks weakly, because most people would go off on a tangent, about how unfair he was treated, about who he should be, who he is or was, and yet the man shrugs, and continues in a calming voice, “I believe we have a right to how we perceive ourselves, if you say you aren’t a Sergeant, or an Avenger, who am I to tell you otherwise?”
Then he tilts his head to stare at the statue of Christ, except he’s blind, and Bucky runs a hand down his face and wonders how a blind man can see what his therapist can’t.
People have been telling him who he was, and who he should be, since he first broke free of his programming.
A Sergeant.
An Avenger.
A good man.
A hero.
A killer.
The Asset.
The Winter Soldier.
A soldier.
A murderer.
A friend.
A brother.
A son.
Bucky.
Bucky doesn’t feel like any one of those people, not anymore; he can hardly remember he’s allowed to eat most days, and he just feels lost. That’s who he is, lost, and the blind man beside him stares up at a God that billions of other people can’t see; he seems just as lost as Bucky.
They sit in silence, and Bucky relaxes, and rubs a hand through his rain-soaked hair, and glances at the man, “What’s your guilt?” He asks, as the man takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
The man faces him and smiles slyly, “Murder.” He answers in a soft voice, and Bucky raises a brow, but he believes it.
“Did they deserve it?” Is all he asks, his tone empty, and the man smiles sadly, “Does it matter?”
Bucky contemplates, and he stares at his hands. His hands, that have taken so many lives, even from before he’d had his will stripped away, and he doesn’t know how to feel, maybe this was his punishment, maybe God knew he didn’t deserve Steve Rogers, and it is a fitting punishment, Bucky thinks. Because it only proves how awful he is, that here he is angry and miserable over the fact that Steve didn’t think he was worth staying for, when there are so many people that will never have the chance to be angry at their loved ones ever again, because Bucky had taken that from them.
“No,” he answers, “It doesn’t matter.”
Because even when he was killing in a war, it didn’t matter what side you were on, because the man that drew his last breath from your gunshot was somebody’s son, someone’s sun, like Steve Rogers was his. Which means Bucky was responsible for killing not just people, but for killing their loved ones, as well, for how much hurt and grief he must have caused them, and that’s a very heavy cross to bear, and he’s very, very tired.
He can never cleanse the blood from his hands, never wash away the thousands of handprints on his scarred and ruined flesh, and he can’t purify his damned soul, so what’s the point of it all? Why had Shuri and T’Challa, and Steve and Sam, and so many others fight so hard to free him, to get him his pardon and his mind back, if he was just going to end up alone? If he was just going to have to live with the guilt and the memories of the past century, when he didn’t deserve to live?
Being the soldier was easier, but even then, Bucky thinks bitterly, that’s an escape he doesn’t deserve. He deserves to live with the guilt, deserves to live for another hundred years, because this is his Hell, perhaps he’d already died, and this was the existence he was subjected to, for all the horrible things he’d done.
“Does it get easier?” Matt Murdock asks, and Bucky stares off into the distance, and this lawyer who’s probably read his file, who probably knows the name of every person he killed, that the courts could determine based on evidence anyway, not including the number of nameless people he’s murdered during his time in war, and in Hydra.
“No.” Bucky croaks, “You can pray all you want, you can fucking flagelate yourself, but that guilt stays.”
Matt winces and exhales, “That blood isn't it on your hands.” He says quietly, “For whatever it’s worth, it wasn’t your fault, you didn’t have a choice.”
The words are so similar to what Steve had said years ago, that Bucky’s eyes water and he shrugs, standing, “My hands are still stained.” He murmurs, and the man gives him a sad smile, “There’s this quote-” Murdock continues, and stands as well, and the rain roaring against the church lessens, even the thunder quiets, as though the world, and all its' sinners and saints, want to hear what the man has to say.
“It’s something a nun told me, I’m not where she got it from, but it goes like this: If you’ve done something wrong, or wrong has been done to you, no amount of tears or blood in the world will cleanse that stain on your soul. So what should you do when you can’t cleanse your soul?”
Bucky frowns in question, and the man gives a small, dry smile.
“You pray.”