Southern Surrender

The Southern Pines farmers market was already alive with motion and sound, every street and stall buzzing with that unmistakable Saturday energy that belonged only to small towns in full summer bloom. The air hung thick with humidity, but it wasn’t oppressive yet—just enough to bring a gleam of sweat to the brow, a stick to the backs of knees. Banners fluttered lazily above the booths, strung from light poles like bunting for some unseen parade. The streets were lined with picnic tables and clusters of families, their dogs weaving between stroller wheels, children darting in every direction like fireflies.

To anyone else, it might have felt idyllic. To Bucky, it was just noise.

They had barely gotten ten steps in before Torres, clad in dark aviators and walking like a man freshly resurrected, began to mutter curses under his breath. He was visibly green around the edges, his usually energetic gait reduced to a dragging shuffle that screamed regret.

“I’m gonna die,” he moaned, gripping a bottle of something green and offensively herbal. “This is it. This is how I go out. Death by fermented kale.”

“You did this to yourself,” Yelena said dryly, keeping pace beside him with infuriating ease. She wore a linen tank top, sunglasses perched on her head, and the smug expression of someone who had stopped drinking two shots earlier than everyone else. “I told you not to try and match Sam.”

“You dared me to do it!”

“You said, and I quote, ‘You’ll have to pry this tequila from my cold, dead hands.’”

Torres groaned dramatically. “They’re about to be cold and dead, all right.”

Bucky trailed behind the pair, Sam beside him, but quieter than usual. Not in mood, but in movement. Sam still radiated that unshakeable warmth—his shoulders brushing Bucky’s just enough to ground him, his hand occasionally resting on Bucky’s lower back like a tether. But he was also nursing a mild hangover, as evidenced by the oversized bottle of water in his hand and the way he winced every time they passed by a musician's stand.

Still, Sam smiled. He always smiled. And every time Bucky caught that smile out of the corner of his eye, it softened something aching inside him.

The market was a sea of colors and scents. Cornbread, ripe peaches, lavender sachets, fresh honeycomb. Booths brimmed with produce and preserves, flowers and handmade crafts. Children squealed with delight at bubbles blown by a street performer. An old man played a battered fiddle near the corner. The air was thick with sunlight and joy.

Bucky hated it.

He hated how much he wanted to enjoy it, and how impossible it was. Every laugh sounded too sharp. Every footstep behind him made his shoulders tighten. His metal hand itched at his side, and more than once, he found himself checking for exits, identifying potential threats, calculating reaction times to hypothetical dangers that didn’t exist.

He couldn’t shut it off.

“Hey,” Sam murmured, his voice close to Bucky’s ear, soft but steady. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky lied, eyes darting to a vendor slicing watermelon too quickly with a cleaver.

Sam didn’t buy it. He never did. Instead of pressing, he slipped his arm around Bucky’s waist and guided him gently away from the crowd, toward the far end of the market where the booths thinned out and the air felt a little less claustrophobic. His touch wasn’t possessive. It was protective. Calming. A reminder that he was here, that he saw Bucky even when Bucky didn’t want to be seen.

Torres was busy half-collapsing near a trash can, Yelena holding his sunglasses while he made a dramatic gagging sound.

“Drink more of your stupid juice,” she said flatly, handing it back. “I’m not dragging your corpse through the market. You’ll scare the vendors.”

“You’re a monster, Belova. A MONSTER.”

“No. You’re a lightweight. Big difference.”

Bucky and Sam left them to it, weaving through a family with twin strollers and a booth advertising organic goat cheese. At the edge of the market, they found a quiet stand selling plums and cherries beneath a striped canvas tent. A small fan whirred behind the counter, and the woman selling fruit offered them a cheerful wave.

Sam picked up a plum, inspecting it with mock gravity before holding it out.

“Best plums on the East Coast,” he said, flashing Bucky a crooked grin. “Trust me. I’ve eaten a lot of fruit in my day.”

Bucky huffed a soft laugh, accepting the fruit. He took a bite and let the tart sweetness flood his senses, grounding him in something immediate. Something real.

“You’re ridiculous,” Bucky murmured softly.

“And yet,” Sam replied easily, “you’re still here.”

Bucky looked at him then, really looked. At the way Sam’s curls were still slightly mussed from sleep, at the sweat glistening on his collarbone, the curve of his lips that always held the promise of mischief or tenderness depending on the second. He couldn’t believe he got to have this. Got to have Sam. The thought, instead of comforting, twisted like a knife in his chest.

Because if he lost this—if he lost him—it would be the end of everything.

Sam reached out and brushed a thumb along the line of Bucky’s jaw, like he knew. Like he always knew.

“Hey. Don’t spiral,” he said quietly. “Everything’s okay, Buck.”

“I’m trying,” Bucky admitted, and it came out rougher than he meant it to.

“I know you are,” Sam said, and leaned forward to press a gentle kiss to Bucky’s temple.

Behind them, Torres moaned from somewhere near a flower cart. “I swear to god if someone hands me a lavender-scented candle, I’m lighting myself on fire.”

Yelena shoved him toward a bench. “Good. Maybe the smoke will clear your sinuses.”

Bucky let himself smile. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Sam pulled him closer, tucking him beneath his arm. “Let’s go buy some plums and pretend we’re normal,” he said. “At least until Torres throws up on someone’s dog.”

Bucky huffed a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh but wasn’t bitter either. It was the kind of noise that came out when he was trying. Sam took that as a win, squeezing his waist gently as they turned back toward the vendor stall where small wooden baskets of blushing, ripe plums sat nestled among leafy greens and berries.

The woman running the stand was humming some old country tune under her breath, swaying gently behind a makeshift table covered in sun-faded gingham. She looked like she’d been growing fruit her entire life—hands weathered, smile easy. Her eyes landed on Bucky, and for a heartbeat, her expression softened into something knowing.

“You two take care of each other,” she said as Sam paid, placing the small basket of plums in his hand. “You’ve got that kind of look.”

Bucky glanced down and away, unsure what look she meant. Sam just smiled and thanked her, guiding Bucky back through the sun-washed crowd.

They found the others easily—hard to miss Torres, who was half-collapsed across a bench like a discarded marionette, one arm draped over his face, groaning as if the weight of the universe had personally offended him.

Yelena sat beside him, perched prim and satisfied, sipping an iced coffee like she hadn’t spent the last thirty minutes half-dragging, half-scolding Torres through the market. Her long legs were stretched out, aviators low on her nose, her face tilted toward the sun like she was catching every last ounce of it.

“Oh good,” she said without opening her eyes as Sam and Bucky approached. “The functional adults have finally returned.”

“I am dying,” Torres mumbled into the crook of his arm. “My body is shutting down. You’re going to have to carry my coffin in those matching outfits.”

“They’re not matching,” Sam said, offended.

“They might as well be,” Yelena muttered. “Dark jeans, tight shirts, brooding expressions. It’s like watching a Calvin Klein ad directed by grief.”

Bucky smirked and handed her a plum. “We’ll make sure the flowers at your funeral match your sunglasses.”

Torres didn’t move. “Just bury me in this bench. Right here. I’m not moving ever again.”

“You’ll have to,” Yelena said, standing up and sliding into the space he occupied. “This is the good spot. Prime sun.”

Torres peeked from under his arm and whined. “Not fair. I was here first.”

“And I’m here better,” she replied coolly.

“Bucky?” Torres groaned, flailing an arm toward him. “Back me up.”

Bucky took one look at the empty spot of grass near the bench, then at Torres’s mournful, hungover expression. “No.”

Torres looked betrayed. “What the hell, man?”

“You’re dramatic,” Bucky said, dropping into the seat beside Sam, who had already sprawled comfortably, legs stretched out in front of him. Sam leaned against Bucky like it was second nature, like it was his place—because it was—and kissed the hinge of Bucky’s jaw before placing a plum in his hand.

Bucky accepted it without hesitation this time, sinking his teeth into it as the juice burst across his tongue, sticky and sweet. He felt Sam’s fingers tracing soft circles on his thigh through the fabric of his jeans, grounding him without even trying. The scent of fried food and wildflowers floated in the air, kids shrieked in delight somewhere near a balloon vendor, and a man in suspenders played the fiddle beneath a striped umbrella.

He let the noise roll over him like water. There was a part of him still on edge, the part that counted exits and memorized stranger’s faces, but it was quieter here—like the sunlight was melting some of the tension in his bones.

Yelena tilted her head back farther and sighed, content. “This is nice. I should get one of those ridiculous big straw hats.”

“You’d look like you run a cult,” Sam offered.

She didn’t disagree. “A fashionable one, though.”

Torres groaned louder from the grass. “Why is the ground spinning.”

“Again, because you’re a lightweight,” Yelena said, kicking a stray ice cube at him from her cup. “And because you mixed tequila and whatever that blue drink was.”

“It tasted like battery acid,” he muttered, face half-buried in the grass. “But it went down smooth.”

“You’re lying to yourself, kid.” Bucky said, finishing the last of his plum and licking the juice from his thumb.

Sam hummed and nestled closer, resting his head briefly against Bucky’s shoulder. “See? Told you. Plums fix everything.”

Bucky looked down at him, his heart tugging painfully in his chest at the sheer ease in Sam’s posture, the warmth in his eyes. “You could’ve handed me a rock and said it was a remedy and I’d probably still feel better.”

“Because I’m a miracle worker,” Sam said with a grin, nuzzling his shoulder.

Bucky let out a real, quiet laugh and tucked his chin briefly atop Sam’s head.

There was something impossibly grounding about the moment—the press of Sam’s body against his, the dull hum of the market crowd moving around them, the distant shriek of a kid laughing near a stall of honey sticks. It was like being wrapped in some kind of fragile magic, like if Bucky could just hold still long enough, memorize the feeling of this precise second—the curve of Sam’s shoulder against his ribs, the warmth of the sun pressing into his back, the echo of Torres’s groaning from the grass and Yelena’s sarcastic commentary about a nearby Pomeranian in a pink bowtie—then maybe he could preserve it. Keep it sealed tight in a corner of his mind untouched by ghosts.

He closed his eyes, breathing in slow. Sam smelled like sunshine and spice and the lavender soap they’d started using at Yelena’s house. His vibranium fingers, still slightly sticky from the plum, curled softly against Sam’s forearm, and he could feel Sam’s pulse steady and warm beneath his thumb.

It felt like safety. And it scared the hell out of him.

But he didn’t move.

Not until Yelena clapped her hands and announced that if she didn’t get a funnel cake in the next five minutes, she was going to hijack the stand and make one herself.

Torres, still sprawled on the grass like a corpse in aviators, simply groaned, “Bury me in powdered sugar,” and Sam laughed so hard he nearly snorted.

That broke the moment—softly, easily—and they stood together, Sam taking Bucky’s hand without asking, weaving their fingers together as they drifted back into the market crowd.

The morning had grown warmer in that Southern Pines way, where the sunlight felt syrupy and thick and the humidity clung to everything like a second skin. The air buzzed with chatter and movement—kids tugging their parents toward lemonade stands, couples with canvas tote bags full of fresh herbs and jams, dogs panting beside their humans, tails wagging in a blur.

Bucky smiled at something Sam said—something about buying Yelena a custom-made apron that read “Widow of Vengeance & Funnel Cakes”—but a dull ache began to throb behind his eyes, slow and pulsing. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose with his thumb, dismissing it as a side effect of not having slept well. His body was probably just dragging after the last few days of tension, and the market’s loud energy wasn’t exactly helping.

They wandered past a flower stall, Bucky helping Sam pick out a ridiculous bouquet that looked like it belonged in a Lisa Frank coloring book—blazing pinks and neon oranges, all clashing like a traffic accident. Sam insisted it was ‘joyful’ and Bucky muttered something about needing sunglasses to survive its presence.

He should have laughed more at Sam’s proud expression. He wanted to. But there was a strange tightness starting to build in his chest—like the edges of his body were humming wrong, like he’d stood up too fast and the world hadn’t caught up.

Sam noticed it almost immediately.

“You okay?” he asked, tilting his head slightly, his tone light but his eyes sharp. “You’ve gone all squinty.”

Bucky forced a shrug. “Didn’t sleep well is all. I’m okay.”

Sam made a small noise of sympathy, reaching up to smooth his hand briefly along Bucky’s jaw. “You want to head back? I can tell Yelena and Torres to wrap it up.”

Bucky shook his head. “No, it’s fine. You’ve barely had a day off in weeks. You deserve this.”

Sam searched his face, clearly not convinced, but nodded anyway.

They kept moving. Torres had somehow stumbled back to his feet, propped between Yelena and a basket of peaches she’d threatened to dump over his head if he tried to sit down again. He was muttering something about being betrayed by alcohol and swearing vengeance on tequila, while Yelena responded by shoving a cucumber in his face and asking if he wanted to marry it.

The banter around him continued—easy, playful, real—and Bucky wanted to lean into it. To smile and roll his eyes at Torres and toss some flirty quip back at Sam and pretend like everything was fine.

But something wasn’t fine.

The ache in his hand had started small—barely noticeable, a flicker of discomfort beneath the scar tissue of his palm. But now, it felt like something was blooming there. Hot. Sharp. Like a splinter of metal twisting under the skin.

He flexed his hand subtly, watching the way the tendons moved beneath the scar. No inflammation. No visible injury. Just pain. Quiet and insistent.

He told himself it was nothing. Stress, maybe. The kind that coils in old scars when you don’t sleep and don’t eat and your heart hasn’t stopped pounding in your chest for a week straight.

But the ache didn’t stay contained.

It started to crawl. Up his forearm. Into his shoulder. The vibranium arm felt too heavy, the muscles of his left side compensating in a way that made him lopsided, awkward. Sweat beaded at his hairline, and he wasn’t sure if it was the sun or something else, something buried and dangerous uncoiling inside him.

“Bucky,” Sam murmured again, closer now, voice low and intimate as they slowed near a quieter row of booths. “You’re clammy.”

Bucky tried to smile. “Yeah, well, I AM the brooding type, Wilson. Moisture comes with the package.”

“Don’t make me take your temperature with the peach I just bought,” Sam threatened gently.

That earned him a ghost of a grin.

“Let’s sit,” Sam said, steering him toward a shaded bench near the edge of the market square, where a little band was setting up under a canvas canopy and the foot traffic thinned out.

Bucky didn’t argue.

He let Sam guide him down, sitting with an exhausted exhale he didn’t mean to let escape. Sam took the spot beside him, a hand still warm and steady against the back of his neck, rubbing slow circles into the tense muscle there.

He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deep. The scent of sugar and earth and summer dust swirled around him.

A rustle announced Yelena’s arrival, followed by a dramatic, flopping sound.

Torres had collapsed at Bucky’s feet.

“I have seen the face of death,” he groaned, cheek pressed dramatically against the concrete. “And she looks like last night’s bartender.”

Yelena rolled her eyes and took the spot beside Bucky, tossing a peach pit into the nearby trash can with military precision. “If he throws up on your boots,” she said, “you owe me a new cucumber.”

Bucky blinked at her. “I’m not following.”

“You will,” she replied cryptically.

Torres moaned. “I regret all my life choices.”

“Good,” Yelena said, and patted his back without any sympathy whatsoever.

Sam leaned over to press a kiss to Bucky’s temple. “See? Normal. Banter. Chaos. The American dream.”

Bucky laughed, but it was hollow. A weak echo of what he wished he could feel.

Because beneath the jokes, beneath the heat and the sun and the hum of the crowd, something was building. Quiet. Relentless. From the scar in his palm to the center of his chest.

He didn’t know what it was.

But he had a feeling it was going to get worse.

-----------------------------------

The sun had begun its slow descent behind the pines by the time they returned to Yelena’s cottage, casting the sky in a dreamy palette of apricot and lavender. Long shadows stretched across the driveway as the truck came to a gentle stop beside the wraparound porch, the breeze carrying with it the scent of turned earth and the distant murmur of horses in the pasture. The market had been chaotic, loud, and sun-soaked—Southern Pines in full, vibrant swing—but now the air felt heavy again, still laced with the tension of an approaching storm that had yet to fully arrive.

Bucky stepped out of the truck more slowly than usual, boots hitting gravel with a muted crunch. The slight disorientation that had begun in the market hadn’t lifted. If anything, it had grown roots. His body, though outwardly whole and strong, felt just a touch misaligned—like the axis he usually rotated on had shifted imperceptibly to the left. It wasn’t enough to make him stumble or draw attention. Not yet. But he noticed. And that was enough.

A dull headache had settled right between his eyes, a low, persistent pressure that made him squint more than he wanted to and blink harder against the remaining light. It wasn’t painful so much as it was… there. Present. Like something pressing from the inside out, waiting.

He told himself it was nothing. Just fatigue. Just the last few days finally catching up to him—the lack of sleep, the return of the scar’s phantom ache, the tangle of something half-remembered clawing through his subconscious like a dog scratching at a door. He couldn’t be getting sick. That was impossible. He had the serum, a body designed to metabolize and fight off anything short of a biochemical weapon. But still… he couldn’t shake the growing awareness that something was off.

They didn’t go inside right away.

Instead, Sam suggested they sit on the porch, where the air was cooler and the breeze tugged lazily at the hanging wind chimes. Torres, still dramatically ill, slumped into the porch swing with the weary resignation of a man who had seen the other side and barely crawled back. Yelena vanished into the house with a mission in her stride, leaving behind only the echo of her boots on the hardwood and a flippant comment about cornmeal superiority.

Sam settled beside Bucky on the top step, thigh pressing against his, warm and familiar. Bucky let himself lean in slightly, finding the grounding he’d been chasing all day in the rhythm of Sam’s breathing, the casual closeness of his presence. His hand itched to reach out—to take Sam’s, to hold on like he might fall off the edge of the world if he didn’t—but he resisted. Something in his chest was wound too tight.

The door creaked open and Yelena returned, a red checkered towel draped over a basket brimming with warm, golden corn muffins. She carried it like a prize, triumphant.

“They’re still hot,” she warned, tone dry but fond. “Eat them and praise me accordingly.”

She plopped the basket down in the middle of them and tossed one directly at Bucky.

It should’ve been nothing. A casual arc through the air. He should’ve caught it without thinking—muscle memory, ingrained reflex, the kind of thing his body had been trained to do a thousand times over.

But the muffin hit his open palm and slipped.

It bounced off his fingertips and landed with a soft thud on the wooden step between them.

The silence that followed was immediate, palpable. Even Torres, half-dead in the swing, lifted his head in vague concern.

Bucky stared at the muffin for half a second too long, then reached down, scooping it up with a faint, humorless smile.

“Guess even I have off days,” he muttered, turning the muffin over in his hands like it might explain something.

Sam frowned. “You okay?”

Bucky didn’t meet his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, too quickly. “Just tired.”

Yelena sat down slowly across from him, legs folding beneath her with the grace of someone still used to sitting in combat-ready positions even when surrounded by baked goods.

“No,” she said flatly. “You don’t have off days.”

Her tone wasn’t accusing. It was matter-of-fact. Observant. And it made the headache behind his eyes spike just slightly.

Bucky looked up at her, something in his expression beginning to fray at the edges. “I’m fine,” he said, the words clipped.

Sam’s hand brushed gently down his back, a quiet touch that Bucky barely felt through the sudden static in his bloodstream.

“No offense,” Yelena continued, voice softer now, more careful, “but you’ve been walking around like someone replaced your bones with sandbags since this morning.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Then why aren’t you eating?” Sam asked gently.

Bucky blinked down at the muffin still in his hands, realizing he’d been holding it like a grenade, unmoving, untouched. He slowly set it down on the porch beside him.

“I’m just… tired,” he repeated. “Long week. Long few months. You’ve seen me worse.”

“That’s not the same,” Yelena said quietly. “This feels different.”

Bucky ran a hand through his hair, biting back the urge to snap again. The ache in his chest had returned—not physical, not quite—but something hollow and sharp all at once. The scar in his palm was throbbing again, a heat pulsing outward that wasn’t strong, just steady. Persistent.

He felt Sam watching him closely, and it made something in him recoil, like he didn’t want to be seen too clearly right now. Like if Sam looked hard enough, he’d see the cracks forming.

“I’m fine,” Bucky said again, too softly this time, and the words didn’t even sound real to his own ears.

He knew Yelena didn’t believe him. She didn’t push again, though. Instead, she reached over and took one of the muffins for herself, peeling the paper back with steady fingers.

Torres groaned from the swing, breaking the tension. “Why does your porch feel like an intervention?”

“Because you need one,” Yelena said without looking up.

“For what?”

“For your taste in whiskey. And karaoke.”

That pulled a huff of air from Bucky’s lungs—a laugh-shaped breath, even if it never fully formed. Sam leaned into his shoulder again, more of a lean now, like an anchor.

“We’ll take it easy the rest of the day,” he murmured. “Hang out here, maybe grill something later. You up for that?”

Bucky nodded. He didn’t trust his voice.

The lie hung in the space between them, unacknowledged but not unnoticed, and he turned his gaze back toward the porch railing before anyone could see how close he was to unraveling. He stared out at the pasture, pretending to watch the way the wind stirred the tall summer grass beyond the fenceline, how the shadows from the slowly rolling clouds bent and stretched like long, lean specters creeping across the land. The distant thunder had softened to a low hum in the atmosphere, almost imperceptible now—almost.

He listened to the quiet scrape of Sam’s bottle against the wood as he set it down. To the subtle creak of the porch swing as Torres shifted, groaning about how the world was still spinning and it was absolutely Yelena’s fault for letting him drink so much tequila. Yelena snorted, unapologetic, throwing a crumpled napkin at him without lifting her head from where it rested against the post.

Bucky offered a small chuckle, carefully measured, as if the sound might steady him. It didn’t. The act of speaking—of joining the conversation at all—felt like threading a needle underwater, everything muffled, his focus slipping like water through clenched fists.

He stayed like that for the next hour, maybe longer. He wasn’t sure. The sky slowly dimmed, the light softening from golden to blue, and Sam eventually stood and stretched, his movements smooth and easy. “Alright,” he said with a clap of his hands. “I’m lighting the grill. Yelena, tell me you have something more exciting than sad farmer’s market kale in that fridge.”

Yelena pushed herself upright. “I’ve got steak. And corn. And if you’re feeling brave, some questionable Polish sausage I forgot I bought.”

Torres groaned again. “If I smell meat, I’ll die.”

“Good,” Yelena muttered. “One less person to feed.”

The laughter that followed felt distant to Bucky, like he was on the wrong side of a glass wall. He made himself stand, careful and slow. His knees didn’t quite lock the way they should’ve. He said something low and teasing to Sam about making sure not to overcook the steaks—something he'd normally say with a wink or a smirk—but the words felt flat even to him. Sam grinned back anyway, all sun and warmth and dimples, tongs already in hand as he moved toward the grill.

Bucky watched him go, unable to look away.

The way the fading light cut across Sam’s shoulders. The casual roll of muscle beneath his thin white tee, the threadbare hem fluttering slightly in the evening breeze. The way his laughter carried as Yelena threw an ear of corn at him and he caught it effortlessly, pretending to faint from the effort. It should have been grounding—comforting—but Bucky only felt a deeper ache in his chest, like his body knew something his mind refused to grasp.

He sat quietly as dinner was made, offered soft responses when prompted, but even those became less frequent. His thoughts grew hazier by the minute, like fog rolling in behind his eyes. The ache in his palm had now bloomed across his wrist and up his forearm—a warmth that wasn’t painful, exactly, but dull and wrong. He flexed his fingers absently beneath the table and they responded… sluggishly.

No one seemed to notice. Or if they did, they didn’t mention it.

When dinner was finally served—steak, charred sweet corn, and thick slices of buttered bread—he pushed his food around his plate more than he ate it. Sam sat beside him, happily inhaling his meal, cracking jokes about the sausage being “illegal in most states” while Yelena pretended to be offended. Torres, after much dramatics and dramatic water-chugging, managed a few bites, head pillowed against the porch railing like a cat sunbathing sideways.

Bucky tried. He really did. But every bite turned to ash in his mouth, every swallow forced. His stomach coiled against it, and the dull pressure behind his eyes began to pulse with a steadier beat. The world was slowly beginning to feel… tilted. Off-kilter. Like he was walking through a dream and the corners kept turning into things he didn’t recognize.

He stood from the porch bench slowly, his limbs feeling like they belonged to someone else—like he’d borrowed his body from a less durable man and it was beginning to buckle under him. The slight shift from sitting to standing sent a slow roll of pressure blooming up from his spine into the base of his skull, thick and pulsing. He forced a breath through his nose, careful and quiet, and offered a low murmur to the others—just a quick “turning in” and a vague nod toward the house.

Sam turned his head, a skewer of charred steak still dangling in one hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. The lie left his mouth before the question had even settled. “Just think I need some sleep, is all.”

Sam looked like he might say more, but didn’t. Instead, he gave a small smile and nodded. “I’ll be up in a bit.”

Bucky didn’t respond—just moved.

Each step toward the front door felt sluggish, like he was walking underwater. The heat of the late afternoon clung to his skin, sticky and close, and his senses—usually so honed, so razor sharp—felt dulled around the edges. The porch boards creaked beneath his feet, the screen door groaned as it opened. He stepped into the hallway, the quiet of the house a stark contrast to the warmth of the porch laughter he left behind. That quiet swallowed him whole.

He approached the staircase slowly.

The first step up sent a jolt through his calf, not pain exactly, but pressure—unfamiliar and wrong. He placed his metal hand on the banister and clenched it tight, bracing himself as he moved to the next step. His coordination was off. His heel caught slightly, his thigh trembling with the effort of pulling himself upward. By the fifth step, his breathing had changed—shallow now, like his body couldn’t remember how to take a deep breath.

By the eighth step, a cold sweat had broken out along his brow.

Fuck. FUCK-

This was not normal.

He swallowed hard, pausing with one hand clenched white-knuckled around the rail. He wanted to say it was just exhaustion. That this was the result of sleepless nights and long-buried memories clawing to the surface. But the ache in his bones told another story. The pounding in his skull, the feverish flush creeping down the back of his neck—it was spreading. Something wasn’t right.

He reached the top of the stairs by sheer force of will, his body moving more from memory than strength. He walked the short hall to the bedroom he shared with Sam and pushed the door open with a shaky hand, closing it softly behind him.

The room smelled like warmth and linen, like Sam. There was a soft indentation in the covers from where Sam had napped earlier, the edges of the bed rumpled and inviting. But Bucky didn’t move toward it right away. He stood there, swaying slightly, his balance off.

His fingers trembled as he reached for the hem of his shirt. The fabric clung to his skin, damp from sweat that hadn’t been there an hour ago. He tugged it up over his head, the movement awkward and graceless, as if his arms didn’t quite know how to work in tandem. The room tilted slightly when he bent to remove his jeans. He steadied himself against the dresser, his left hand slipping slightly against the wood as a sharp jolt of nausea crawled up his throat.

He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and forced himself to stand tall.

The jeans came off eventually, fingers fumbling with the button like it was some kind of foreign mechanism. He nearly lost his balance when stepping out of them, his toes catching in the denim as he staggered backward and hit the edge of the bed frame with the back of his calf.

The pain didn’t register. Not really. Just a dull echo against the deeper, more encompassing discomfort pressing in on all sides.

He made it to the bed by sheer habit, crawling in beneath the sheets like he’d done so many nights before—but this time he didn’t curl into Sam’s side, didn’t wait for the soft rhythm of their synchronized breathing. He just lay there, rigid and still, the ceiling overhead blurring slightly as his vision swam.

The sheets were cold. Or maybe his skin was hot. He couldn’t tell.

The room had started spinning gently, as if the air itself was pulsing with something thick and slow. The hum in his ears was louder now, rising and falling like distant waves crashing somewhere far away. He tried to take a breath and found it shallow again, his chest refusing to expand fully.

The ache that had started in his palm had bloomed up his arm now, threading through sinew and muscle like heat lightning crackling beneath the surface. He flexed his hand beneath the blanket, turning it over to stare at the palm even though it was mostly lost in the low light. It didn’t look different. The scar was still there, the same one that had lingered for decades. But it burned now. Deep. Unrelenting.

He swallowed again. He wanted to call for Sam. Just softly—just enough for him to come upstairs and say it’s probably stress or dehydration or too many damn memories too fast. But the words caught behind his teeth.

Instead, he shut his eyes.

And the dark swallowed him whole.

The last thing he remembered was the sound of distant thunder, and the faint, far-off echo of someone—maybe himself—exhaling like it might be the last breath he had the strength to take.

--------------------

The voices came before the pain.

They filtered in through a static haze—frantic, disjointed, unfamiliar in tone even though he knew them all. A sharp word. A muffled curse. The slam of a cabinet. The sound of feet moving quickly, too quickly, and the tremble of something cold pressed against his burning skin.

But none of it made sense. He couldn’t open his eyes.

He couldn’t even remember closing them.

"Bucky. Bucky!"

That voice—Sam’s voice—rattled through his skull like a gunshot in a tunnel. Loud and distorted. He flinched, but it was internal. His body wouldn’t move. His limbs were heavy. His muscles didn’t respond. He felt like he was buried alive, trapped inside the furnace of his own skin.

He heard someone breathe his name again, closer this time, desperate and ragged. “C’mon, baby, wake up. Please, wake up—”

The bed jolted. A hand gripped his jaw, a thumb brushing roughly against his cheek. Sam.

Another voice. Yelena. Sharper, urgent, trying not to sound like she was panicking. “He’s soaked through. Jesus—his skin’s on fire.”

“Goddamn it, Bucky,” Sam hissed, voice cracking. “You have to wake up. I don’t—I don’t know what’s wrong.”

“I thought he couldn’t get sick,” Torres’ voice was unsteady. Younger than usual. Shaken. “I thought the serum—doesn’t it—what the fuck is happening to him?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said again, voice splintering on the words. “I don’t know.”

Hands. Cold hands. Pressing cloths to his neck, his chest, his forehead. Someone’s fingers under his jaw, searching for his pulse. The sensation sent a violent shiver through him. Everything felt wrong. His skin ached. His joints ached. Even his hair hurt.

"Bucky, please," Sam whispered. "Just open your eyes."

The desperation in Sam’s voice was worse than the fever.

Bucky wanted to. God, he wanted to. But his body felt miles away. The fire was unbearable now—blazing behind his eyes, in the center of his chest, rooted in his hand like a glowing coal buried in flesh. His thoughts flickered in and out, disjointed, scattered.

A burst of pressure in the center of his chest—sharp, jarring. Sam. Sternum rubbing. Hard.

“Wake. The hell. UP,” Sam gritted out, pushing down like he could drag Bucky back from wherever his body was disappearing to.

He was floating again. Detached. The pain was eclipsing everything else, but not enough to pull him under. No, it wanted him to stay. To feel.

“Don’t you dare,” Sam growled, slapping his cheek again, and this time the sting cracked through the fog.

Bucky jerked, just barely.

“Oh thank God—there, THERE, do it again—” Yelena’s voice snapped, as Torres returned with more wet towels, stumbling and breathless.

Another slap. Harder. Then cold—sudden, shocking. Something icy poured over his chest and Bucky gasped, choking on the inhale. His eyes flew open for a moment, bleary and unfocused.

Everything blurred. Sam’s face above his. Yelena crouched near the bed, hair yanked into a messy bun. Torres, pale and shaken, clutched a dripping bag of frozen peas like it was an explosive.

Bucky blinked once. Tried again. “Wha…”

His mouth was cracked. His lips dry. The word came out mangled.

“Hey—hey, Buck, I’m here.” Sam leaned closer, hand bracing the back of his head, his other hand gripping Bucky’s wrist like it was the only thing tethering him to the moment. “You with me? Look at me, baby.”

Bucky struggled to focus. Everything was too bright. Too loud. Even Sam’s face didn’t look real—edges too sharp, colors too soft.

“What’s happenin’…” he slurred.

“Your fever’s at 106.” Sam’s voice broke on the number. “You’re weren’t waking up. You’ve been out cold—we didn’t know what was wrong.”

Bucky blinked, the corners of his vision starting to pulse in and out again. He could feel the tremor in Sam’s hands. The fear in it. That was the worst part.

He tried to sit up.

His body didn’t move.

“Don’t—don’t try to move yet,” Yelena said sharply, moving in to press another cold towel to his collarbone. “You’re still burning up. We’re trying to get your temp down.”

“I don’t…” He trailed off. The words wouldn’t come.

“I called a medic on base,” Torres said, voice too high, pacing in the corner. “They’re sending someone—should be here in fifteen.”

“No hospitals,” Bucky rasped.

“Jesus, how is he even conscious enough to say that?” Torres snapped, panicking.

Sam’s hand brushed back the damp hair from Bucky’s brow again, then rested on his cheek, thumb swiping tenderly over the high flush of fever. “You scared the hell out of me,” he whispered. “You don’t get sick. You don’t DO this.”

“I know,” Bucky whispered, though he wasn’t sure if he said it out loud or just thought it.

His heart was pounding. Too hard. Too fast. Or maybe too slow. He couldn’t tell anymore.

The room started to tilt. The edges bled out into darkness and light and something else—something hot and deep and unfamiliar crawling under his skin.

His hand ached. His whole body ached.

Yelena’s voice filtered in again. Low, steady, speaking in Russian now as she cooled his skin with methodical precision.

Bucky blinked slowly, and this time his eyes stayed shut.

“No—no, no, no.” Sam’s voice was right by his ear again. “Don’t close your eyes. Stay with me, Bucky.”

“’M here,” he whispered.

But his voice didn’t sound like his own. It cracked against his throat like a brittle matchstick, feeble and worn, barely audible beneath the chaos building around him. Sweat slicked his skin, soaking through the sheets and gluing fabric to muscle, even as he trembled beneath the weight of fever. His pulse pounded, hard and uneven, somewhere behind his eyes and in his ears—every beat a thunderous throb, as if the storm outside had crawled beneath his skin.

“Bucky.” Sam’s voice broke through the fog, tight with panic, sharper now. “Hey—hey, baby, you with me? Come on, stay with me.”

A cold hand slapped his cheek, light at first, then firmer. He flinched and groaned, his whole body curling as his palm flared again, that same impossible heat blooming in the center like it had been set aflame. Sam’s hands were suddenly everywhere—against his face, at the back of his neck, under his arm trying to rouse him—but Bucky could only blink slowly, helpless against the vertigo rolling through him.

“His temp’s still climbing,” Yelena snapped from somewhere to his right, her voice pinched with something rare—fear. “One-oh-eight point four. Torres, get more ice. Now.”

Footsteps pounded away, too fast, too loud. Bucky let out a shaky breath and tried to push himself up, but his limbs didn’t respond—not the way they should. His coordination, usually so sharp, so effortlessly tuned, was failing him. His body trembled like he’d been gutted of the serum, like someone had siphoned out the strength that once made him indestructible.

“It’s my hand,” he croaked. “S-Sam… it’s my hand.”

“What?” Sam leaned in, his forehead creased with worry, one hand brushing wet strands of hair from Bucky’s clammy face. “What about your hand? Buck, it’s fine—it healed.”

“No.” He groaned again, more insistent. “Hurts. Burns. It’s my—” He whimpered, slurring as another wave of dizziness hit him like a punch. “It’s wrong.”

Sam’s eyes flicked briefly to Yelena, who stood frozen at the foot of the bed. “He’s not making sense,” he said, voice thick.

But Bucky wasn’t hearing them anymore.

A flicker—movement behind Yelena. A soft white dress. A braid falling over a slender shoulder. A face he hadn’t seen in decades, young and sweet and shining like the day he left Brooklyn. Becca.

She stood there silently, her expression heartbreakingly familiar. The same sharp jaw, the same freckles dusting her cheeks, only her eyes looked… sad. Disappointed.

“Becca?” Bucky gasped. He tried to lift his hand but it shook violently, slamming back to the bed. “Sam—she’s right there. She’s here—do you—do you see her?”

Sam jerked his head around. “See who?”

Becca stared at him, unmoving. Her lips parted as if to speak, but no sound came. Behind her, the storm howled against the windowpane.

“Becca,” he breathed again, and for a moment, the room tilted like the earth had come loose beneath it. “Sam… I think I’m dying.”

“No, hey, no,” Sam whispered, his voice raw. “You’re not. You’re right here with me. We’ve got you.”

Yelena shouted from the hallway. “Torres! Ice, now! Get the tub filled—we don’t have time, he’s about to crash!”

More chaos. Running footsteps, a door slammed. The house buzzed with motion and fear, but Bucky’s gaze remained fixed on his sister. Until… she wasn’t Becca anymore.

Her face changed—subtly at first. The softness hardened. Her lips pressed into a grim line, her eyes hollowed into something darker. The dress remained, but the innocence bled away.

Bucky’s mouth fell open as he watched the transformation.

The woman standing there now… wasn’t Becca.

She was someone else. One of them. One of the faces he’d seen in his nightmares—the long string of victims who’d haunted him in the dead of night, the collateral Hydra had left behind in his hands. Her face, once so full of warmth, now bore the weight of judgment. Her mouth moved, slow and deliberate.

A name. She was mouthing a name.

But he couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t understand.

“No,” he whimpered, flinching away. “No, no, no—please, not you. Not her.”

Sam was holding his face again, wiping his forehead with a soaked cloth, eyes wide and desperate. “What is it? Bucky, talk to me.”

“She’s not—” His voice caught, and he felt the tears come then. Hot and full of shame. “She’s not real.”

Torres burst back into the room, red-faced, arms full of ice bags. “The tub’s filling—I’ve got more from the freezer.”

“Good,” Yelena shouted. “Drop them and help me get him up—we don’t have long before he seizes.”

“No!” Bucky cried as the faces in the room multiplied—now there were more, dozens of them. Spectral shadows with hollow eyes, all watching him. Whispering things he couldn’t make out. Judging him. “Don’t—don’t take me in there.”

Yelena and Sam were at his sides now, gripping his arms, struggling to lift him.

“Bucky,” Sam pleaded, voice cracking. “You’ve got to help us. You’ve got to get up.”

“I can’t,” he slurred, his entire body wracked with shivers despite the burning fever. “I can’t… they’re all here, Sam. All of them.”

Torres stood frozen at the foot of the bed, pale. “What’s he talking about?”

“Torres!” Sam barked. “Move! Now!”

That got him moving. Together, they hoisted Bucky’s nearly lifeless body off the bed, each movement met with resistance—he flailed, weakly at first, then more violently. His body, drenched in sweat and burning with fever, jerked in their grip as if possessed. The whites of his eyes flashed between shallow blinks, and his limbs lashed out, driven by some primal terror neither Sam nor Yelena could fully understand.

"Bucky—" Sam grunted, adjusting his grip under one of Bucky’s arms as Yelena took the other, her jaw clenched with effort. “Bucky, it’s okay, we’ve got you, stay with us.”

He didn’t seem to hear them. His head thrashed back and forth, matted hair sticking to his forehead, breath coming in short, ragged pants. The ghosts—they were everywhere now. Dozens of them, pale as ash, silhouettes rimmed in flickering light, mouthing the same silent name again and again.

A name he couldn’t hear.

A name he couldn’t remember.

“No, no—get off!” he howled suddenly, shoving violently to the left. Yelena, caught off guard, slammed into the wall with a sharp grunt, her shoulder colliding with the frame hard enough to splinter paint.

“Yelena!” Sam cried, but had no time to help her—because a second later, Bucky’s other arm came free and struck Torres clean across the jaw.

Torres reeled, dazed, a smear of blood from a split lip already blooming as he stumbled backward.

“Shit—he’s strong—”

“Don’t let go!” Sam barked.

But it was too late.

Bucky broke free, his body stumbling sideways and crumpling just outside the bathroom, collapsing like a marionette with its strings cut. He hit the ground hard, face down, groaning, then twitching, trying to crawl forward as the pain in his hand—God, his FUCKING hand—lit up like it had been flayed open with a blade.

His right palm throbbed with an agonizing rhythm, the epicenter of his fevered misery, as if the wound that had long since healed had reopened in some deep, buried way—some way that didn’t show on the surface, but was tearing him apart from the inside.

The hallway light flickered, the thunder booming overhead like a war drum, low and shuddering.

And then—he saw it.

Standing at the end of the hall, bathed in the strobe-like glow of the failing lightbulbs, was a figure.

It was tall, wrong in the way shadows can be wrong, like it had been made in haste. Charred skin stretched tight across half a face. One wing—metal, broken, warped as if melted in fire—dragged behind it like a dead limb. And the eyes—oh God, the eyes. Bright, burning red, lit from within like the barrel of a rifle right before the shot.

Bucky screamed.

The lights blinked again—and the thing was gone.

“Sam,” he whimpered, his voice so small, so full of unspeakable fear. “Sam—there’s-, there’s something HERE—”

“I’ve got you, Buck, I’ve got you,” Sam said, his voice shaking now, no longer calm. “Torres! Yelena! We have to get him in now!”

The two scrambled back, bruised but breathless, grabbing for his limbs as Bucky kicked and writhed, blind with terror.

“Get off me! They’re looking at me—they’re all looking at me!”

“Who?!” Torres shouted, barely dodging a wild elbow. “There’s no one there, man—!”

“Just help me!” Sam roared.

Together, they lifted him again, dragging his dead weight toward the bathroom. The flickering overhead light buzzed like a wasp. Every shadow twitched with motion. Every ghost—every silent, mournful face—turned to watch.

All of them mouthing the same name.

The same cursed name.

He didn’t know what it was.

Didn’t know why it felt like it would be the end of him.

“No—no, not in there—please— Sam. SAM-!”

He clawed for the doorframe, blood smeared across the white wood from his trembling grip. Sam was behind him now, wrapped around his chest, trying to pull him back, while Yelena and Torres each clung to an arm.

The bathroom lights flickered.

The man with the ruined wing stood just inside the bathroom door, haloed in flickering light like a figure ripped from the edge of a nightmare. And then—gone.

“SAM! Sam, he’s here—he’s waiting—I can’t—I can’t—” Bucky thrashed in Sam’s arms, his voice splintering with panic, with raw, disoriented fear that knifed through the steam and sweat-laced air like a scream.

His body burned. His mind fractured. And still, the image lingered—glowing red eyes, half-melted wing dragging behind that charred figure, its edges blurred and wrong, like it didn’t belong in the waking world.

Bucky didn’t recognize him.

And that—THAT—was what made it worse than all the ghosts that had come before.

He didn’t recognize the man he’d destroyed.

It crashed over him like a wave, the possibility that he’d killed someone and buried it so deep that even the serum couldn’t bring it back. The weight of it lodged behind his sternum, pressing down like a vice. His thoughts spiraled, heat and guilt mixing until his limbs shook from more than fever.

He flailed again as Sam and Yelena tried to maneuver him toward the tub, his fists connecting once, twice, catching Yelena in the shoulder hard enough to knock her sideways. Torres lunged, trying to grab his other arm—Bucky's elbow clipped his temple, sending the younger man reeling back with a surprised grunt.

He was unraveling.

He was fighting them.

And the worst part was that some part of him knew it.

But panic overrode instinct. Instinct overrode sense. And the pain—oh, GOD, the pain—shattered what little was left of his grip on reality.

His palm throbbed, the old scar searing as if it were freshly cut, every pulse of blood like a warning bell. It burned up through his wrist, into his chest, into his head—until every thought was heat and noise and pain.

Sam caught him again, arms wrapping around his chest from behind, pinning him like a lifeline. “Stay with me, Buck. Stay with me—look at me, come on.”

“Why—why is it my hand? Sam, it’s MY HAND—”

“It’s healed, Bucky, it’s okay. You’re okay—”

But he wasn’t. He wasn’t.

Yelena was shouting now, yelling for Torres to get more ice as she scrambled back upright. Torres darted from the room, his retreat echoed in the thunder rumbling across the sky outside. The lights flickered again, casting the room into a stutter of dim and blinding white.

Bucky sobbed as they dragged him toward the tub. “I didn’t mean to—I don’t KNOW what I did—”

“Shhh,” Sam murmured, voice catching. “It’s okay, we’re here. You’re not alone.”

But he was. In his mind, he was surrounded by a wall of faces. Ghosts, all of them. Old marks. Victims. People he remembered with nightmares, people whose names he’d never forget, yet THIS ONE—

The man with the broken wing, standing just outside the veil of memory, watching.

And then they forced him into the ice.

It hit like fire.

He screamed, whole body bucking against the shock of it, muscles spasming beneath skin already drenched in fevered sweat. Sam got in behind him, slipping into the freezing tub fully clothed, arms coming around him again like an anchor.

Yelena pressed down on his shoulder. Torres returned and dumped bag after bag of ice into the water, the surface hissing where it met overheated skin.

“Don’t let him get out,” Yelena said sharply. “He’ll seize if we don’t break this fever.”

“Bucky, breathe—just breathe with me, okay?” Sam was right in his ear, voice steady despite the shake beneath it. “You’re alright. Just keep your head up.”

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t do this.

He felt the burn deep in his chest now, pain lancing up his neck and behind his eyes. The light was too much. The air too thin. The world around him too loud. And when the lights flickered again, the figure reappeared behind Yelena—closer this time.

Its red eyes locked onto his.

And it pointed.

Bucky froze, the struggle gone in an instant. He sank back into Sam’s arms like a stone, shoulders shaking, heart stuttering against ribs. “He’s here. He’s REAL. Sam—Sam, please—make him go away.”

“There’s nothing there, Buck. I promise. You’re just sick—”

“Don’t LIE to me,” Bucky whispered. His voice cracked. “He’s looking at me like I KNOW HIM—but I don’t. I swear to God, I don’t know what I did to him.”

Yelena turned, eyes sharp, searching the room. “What do you see?”

“Don’t!” Sam barked, eyes flashing as he held Bucky tighter. “Don’t make him focus on it—he’s barely hanging on!”

But it was too late.

The room filled again.

Not just with the winged man, but with them all—ghosts of his past lining the bathroom like sentries, silent and still, lips moving in unison, forming a single name.

A name he couldn’t hear.

A name he couldn’t remember.

They pointed at him.

One by one.

Accusation. Condemnation.

And behind them, Becca stood. She was disappointed in him too.

“No—no, I didn’t mean to—I didn’t KNOW—” Bucky’s chest heaved. “I don’t know what I did. I DON’T KNOW—please—”

Sam’s hand cupped the side of his face, ice water dripping off his own arm. “Hey—look at me. Right here, okay? LOOK AT ME. None of this is your fault. None of this matters. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

Bucky met his gaze.

And still, he saw them.

Sam held him. Yelena gripped his wrist to keep it from lashing out. Torres hovered, ice slush soaking into his jeans, his face pale with fear.

And Bucky whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—I don’t even know why—but I am. I’m SO SORRY.”

Then came the cold.

The deep, marrow-chilling numbness that crept from the water into his bones, slowing his thoughts, dragging the fire of his panic into quiet silence.

His body stilled.

His muscles gave way.

And as his eyes began to close, he heard Sam’s voice again—faint, far away now.

“Bucky—no, no, no—STAY WITH ME! Bucky, come on—stay awake! Please—just—PLEASE.”

The last thing he saw was red.

Not from the ghosts.

Not from blood.

But from the man with the wing—those terrible, glowing eyes, watching.

And then—nothing.