Bucky sat on a cold metal chair. He could feel the individual pricks of hundreds of needles pressed against his skin. A sharp pain crossed his head, and his vision went dark. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t feel, then it was over. He could still remember, he fought to remember, because his entire life revolved around one person. Each time they shocked him, something disappeared. Bucky didn’t know what it was, of course he didn’t, but there was something missing, something important. He couldn’t let that happen to the memories of his person. He clung to them and fought against the pain, because he couldn’t leave just yet, because he knew that somewhere out there, he was alive, despite what everyone else might think, and damn if he wouldn’t fight till his last breath if it meant a chance to see him again, to make sure his little Stevie was safe.
___
Bucky remembered Steve.
How could he not? He was always the sin to Steve’s virtue. Bucky was the one sleeping around to get his mind off his worries, Bucky was the one who lied in an effort to protect himself, Bucky was the one who drank and smoked just for that small moment of peace. And when he was captured, Steve was the one who saved him.
Steve, his face glowing faintly, whether it was from the light of another room or from the pure goodness within himself, Bucky couldn’t tell. Like a guardian angel, he had cut the cuffs that chained the sinner to the table and lifted him to the light. It was all so unreal. His little sickly Stevie, all grown up and tall and healthy, it seemed impossible. But he could feel him. The only warmth in that cold room Bucky had been trapped in for so long, the only light in the darkness where Bucky had felt nothing but pain.
The sensation filled him, pouring into him from everywhere the two of them touched, melting the walls around his heart.
And he just couldn’t seem to hold onto him.
That day on the train, he remembered Steve reaching out, and his hand was so close, but Bucky couldn’t strain any further. The look on his face, his eyes glittering with the pain he tried to mask, Bucky hated himself for bringing that onto him. Maybe it was for the best that Steve thought him dead. At least that way, Bucky couldn’t hurt him anymore.
Being dragged into Hydra was worth it, because even if he could feel the scalpel carving its way down his ribs, even if he could feel the metal jaws of the arm constantly clamped around his shoulder, at least Steve was okay, and at least he wasn’t close enough to hurt him. A wave of relief washed over him because he knew that at least Steve could protect himself now, and at least Bucky could relax a bit more.
___
Bucky remembered escaping.
He punched his way out, the Hydra soldiers unable to defend against his metal arm and enhanced strength. The first thing he did was find Peggy, because she would know, she always knew where Steve was, even when he was trying to hide from the world and the misery of war.
He could still see the look on her face when he asked her where Steve was. She had looked down, her pretty lashes shielding the tears. She hadn’t said a word, merely turned and walked into the streets. Bucky had followed, not knowing what else to do, and suddenly everything looked familiar, achingly familiar, and he recognized the exact same path his feet followed when he wandered the streets after a fight with his stupid Stevie, when he didn’t know what to do or where to go. Force of habit nearly made him come to a stop in front of his mother’s grave, the one he had so often visited when he had nowhere else to turn to. But Peggy kept going. She stopped at a stone, freshly carved and decorated with bouquets of flowers.
Steve Grant Rogers .
There were more words, but it didn’t matter. It was a plane crash, he heard Peggy say. He sacrificed himself, that selfless idiot, to keep the tesseract from falling into the wrong hands.
The metal beneath his hand turned into stone, and the pinpricks of pain turned into horrible, aching spasms. Bucky’s remembered sinking to the ground, pressing his forehead to the cold surface of the gravestone, leaning on it for support as he had once leaned on Steve.
The grief washed over him in a wave, and he couldn’t breath. The pain was still as fresh as it was when Peggy had first told him. Or maybe it was heightened by the electricity pulsing through his head. The two melted together, and Bucky struggled to reach the surface of the whirlpool he was drowning in.
And just when he had fought to the top and taken a deep breath, another wave washed over him.
He couldn’t hold on anymore.
Instead, he let it carry him away.
___
Bucky remembered his childhood.
He remembered sitting down next to Steve on the roof of the apartment, the two of them watching the sunset together. There, they were above all the smoke and dirt in the streets, and Steve wasn’t constantly coughing and giving Bucky a heart attack. Steve would get tired, the frail little thing, and lay down, his head on Bucky’s lap, and Bucky would tell him all about the stars, the hunters and the heroes and the animals that roamed the night skies, and Steve would listen to the stories he had heard a million times before and slowly fall asleep.
His soft snores would drift up through the cool night air, and no matter how engrossed Bucky was in his story, he would always stop and cover Steve in a coat. He’d sit there in silence for a couple minutes, combing through Steve’s soft hair.
Maybe that’s when he fell in love with the boy. Because a few months later, when Steve was so weak he couldn’t sit up to eat, Bucky was so impossibly worried that he would stay up late into the night, kept up by the fear that if he drifted off, if he dared let himself relax, then maybe Steve would wake up, and maybe Steve would need medicine, and maybe Steve would be coughing up blood, and Bucky wouldn’t be able to hear because he let himself relax.
God, that kid made him worry like nobody else.
That evening, watching the color drain out of Steve’s face, was the worst night of Bucky’s life. The pneumonia was slowly taking over Steve’s body, his skinny frame shaking, and each breath he took rattled in his lungs. He stopped laughing at Bucky’s painful attempts at jokes, not because he didn’t find them funny, but because it hurt him too much to do so. He stopped turning his head to watch Bucky as he told stories, because he just didn’t have enough energy to tilt his head even a few degrees. Bucky watched the soul slowly leaving Steve’s body, and he thought that maybe, just maybe, this would be the end of the line, because Steve looked like death, lying perfectly still in the creaky bed, his faintly fluttering chest the only indication that he was still there, still listening, still alive.
A wave of pain washed over Bucky, a combination of the cuts being opened on his body and the fear of losing his best friend, his soulmate. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to forget this particular memory, maybe he could choose which memories to keep, because it was too hard to fight for all of them, and the pain from seeing Steve on the edge of death was almost too much to bear.
___
Bucky remembered his friends.
He was wildly popular because of his rugged looks, and despite the fact that he would constantly turn invites down to watch over Steve, he became part of a little gang. The four of them, and Steve if he was up for it, used to have so much fun together.
They bought a couple cans of paint one time, and little Stevie, sitting on the shoulders of his Bucky bear, as the others called him, created a masterpiece. They found an empty stretch of wall and Steve directed Bucky left and right, up and down, and the entire time, Bucky had a hand on the other boy’s bony thigh and another hovering over his skeletal back. They stopped often, flying drops of paint getting into Steve’s nose and causing a coughing fit, and after each, he would reach down, his hands over Bucky’s steady heartbeat, his head in Bucky’s hair, calming himself down and pacing his breathing.
Bucky could stay in the moment forever, their heartbeats synchronizing, Steve creating a masterpiece, his best pals grinning and looking on from the pavement of a dry summer night.
When Steve finished and Bucky was finally allowed to look, the wall seemed to have been graced with a magic touch. An American flag curled around an eagle, and the stars seemed to flow from the flag and glimmer in the eagle’s feathers. Bucky felt like he could reach out and the eagle would turn its head, then fly off in a great flutter of wings.
Night after night, Bucky would slip out of his bedroom to sit in wonder and admire the piece. With time, it slowly faded away, until one day, Bucky returned to see freshly painted white wall. That same day, Bucky was drafted into the 107th. Just like that, the magic seemed to disappear.
All Bucky ever wanted was to stay by Steve’s side, protecting him from the fights he always got himself into, telling him stories of faraway places, watching him sketch or paint or color, bringing magic into Bucky’s dull life. But that life was long gone. He knew it was real, the same way he knew the eagle was real because he could still see the shadow of a piercing eye over a hooked beak behind the coat of white, but it seemed so far away now.
___
Bucky sat in the metal chair and silently remembered. He let the waves of pain wash over him because he was numb to it now. How he wished he was just a kid again, fooling around with Steve, exploring the apartment for the first time, learning every nook and cranny like the back of their hands, back when everything was yet to be found.
The pain kept coming, washing over him, smothering him, comforting him in some sick way, because pain was permanent, pain was everlasting. When the relief of finally accepting death disappeared, pain would be there. When the grief of the name carved into that wretched stone disappeared, pain would be there. When the heart and soul of a loved one slowly slipped through his fingers, pain would be there. When Bucky finally learned to let go of his past, pain would be waiting there with open arms, waiting to wash him, wave by tormenting wave, to the great unknown.
And maybe, just maybe, that wasn’t so bad.