Chapter 5
“Bucky.”
For a moment it was all Steve could say, all he could think. He stared at Bucky across the gap of those few feet between them, and Bucky just kept blinking up at him, his expression unreadable in a way it had never been before, not to Steve.
The more Steve strained his eyes, the more Bucky’s features were revealing themselves through the dark. He looked terrible, hair tangled and unkempt, cheeks hollow and sunken beneath an overgrowth of stubble. Blood was dripping from his nose, an undignified smear spanning all the way down his chin. A neater trickle of blood stained his ear, the same way Steve remembered it had when he’d pulled Bucky off that table after Azzano all those years ago. But then Bucky’s chest hitched, pulling for breath from beneath the weight of the rubble pinning him down, and none of the rest of it mattered anymore because, god, at least Bucky was alive.
Steve surged forward, unsure what he was going to do, just knowing that he had to close this distance between them no matter the cost. “God, Bucky —”
“Please don’t touch me.” Bucky forced the words out in a rush as Steve’s hands reached for his chest, poised to pull him free. Steve froze, heart dropping like a stone. It was familiar by now, the sound of Bucky begging.
“Okay. Okay, I won’t.” He sank to his knees in front of Bucky instead, sitting on his hands to keep them from pulling Bucky close the way he’d been imagining doing since the fight on the bridge.
Steve waited for Bucky to take control, to show him how to navigate this situation governed by a whole set of unspoken rules Steve didn’t know. But Bucky just sat staring at him, his face as blank as ever. He pulled in another hitching breath. It sounded like it hurt. Steve winced, but forced himself to hold back from reaching out again.
‘“I’ve been looking for you,” Steve tried softly, when it became clear that Bucky wasn’t going to talk. “Everywhere, Buck. Do you —”
Do you remember? Do you know me? Do you care? Nothing sounded right.
Bucky sighed, tilting his head back a little further where it rested against the remains of one of the building’s walls. “I know,” he murmured, lips barely moving with the words.
Steve had known it already, but his heart still broke a little at the admission. “Buck,” he started, and he could hear how desperate he sounded, and Bucky was tensing up, glancing over his shoulder for an escape route that didn’t exist. Steve forced himself to hold back the barrage of questions he really wanted to ask.
“What happened?” he finished weakly.
Bucky huffed out something that almost sounded like a laugh. “Was trying to take down the base like I did the others. Agents showed up and got the jump on me. Got in a firefight, knew I was going to lose. Remembered there was an emergency kill switch for the whole damn base, and I triggered it. Just had to hope everyone in there with me went down with it.”
He told the story in chunks between rattling breaths. It was all Steve could do to keep from reaching for him, maybe to shake some sense into him and remind him that you were in there, too. Or maybe just to free him from the wreck and never let go of him again.
“So that was you,” he said, forcing his voice to stay even. “All those HYDRA bases Sam and I found, you were the one who took them down. You got rid of all those agents. And you were the one that left all the —”
Steve stopped short, suddenly unsure if he was allowed to mention the tapes.
It was the first thing he’d said that elicited something like an emotional response from Bucky. His face, formerly blank from trauma and shock, flashed with unease. He started shifting, pulling against the rubble on top of him like he wanted to get up, but the concrete on his chest kept him stuck fast.
“Yeah,” Bucky finally managed, his voice like gravel. “That was me.”
He looked at Steve, and for the first time since they’d made eye contact Steve caught a hint of Bucky in his eyes, soft and human. That flicker of familiarity just made everything else that much harder to understand. And Steve just had to know.
“Bucky, why? Why would you show all that to me?”
Bucky gave him a questioning look, like Steve was being slow for not picking it up. “You said you wanted to know.”
Steve didn’t understand. “I – what?”
“You were talking to Wilson, and you said you wanted to know what happened. Said you wanted to have that time back, and I couldn’t — I couldn’t come back, I couldn’t give you that, but I… owed you. For what I did to you.” Bucky winced, remembering the helicarrier. “And this was the best I could do.”
Steve felt dizzy. He had to reach out and steady himself on the ground to do away with the sudden feeling of falling. He looked for malice in Bucky’s face—wanted to find it, even, would have preferred for this all to have been a cruel plot hatched by the Winter Soldier to make him suffer—but he saw nothing but sincerity.
In some broken part of Bucky’s brain, he’d thought Steve would have been glad to find those tapes. Thought Steve had asked for them. He’d thought he needed to lay bare all the worst things that had ever happened to him just to repay a debt he thought he owed.
“Bucky…” Steve wasn’t going to cry in front of him. He wasn’t.
He wanted to tell Bucky how sorry he was – how he wished he could take it all back, wished he’d never seen a second of those tapes, wished he’d never let Bucky slip from between his fingers in the first place – but he couldn’t think of a single thing to say that didn’t sound hollow.
“You were listening to that?” he asked instead. “You were watching me?”
The reproachful look Bucky gave him told him he already knew the answer.
Steve wanted to be angry about it, all the time he’d spent tailing him around the world when Bucky had been right behind him the whole time. But somewhere in the middle of watching all those tapes, he’d stopped wasting time on anger. All he felt anymore was tired.
“Buck, why didn’t you just come home?”
Bucky actually did laugh at that, a bitter and ugly sound that morphed into a cough on its way out. Bucky hacked between shallow breaths, and Steve swore he could see something red bubbling at the corner of his mouth, but he forced himself not to help. Bucky had asked not to be touched. Steve owed him that much.
“You saw what they made me into,” Bucky finally said when he had enough air to speak. His bloodied mouth twisted into a grimace of a smile. “You know what I am now. You shouldn’t want me anywhere near you anymore, after I did — after I let them do —”
He was still smiling that awful smile even as panic stole his breath, took him from defiance to desperate, clawing guilt in an instant.
Steve was starting to think there had been an additional reason why Bucky had shown him all those tapes. But he was stubborn; no matter how hard Bucky tried to convince him he didn’t deserve it, Steve wasn’t going to stop loving him.
“It’s okay,” he murmured. He wanted to keep going, but the light of a flashlight was starting to seep through the cracks of the wreckage around them. A beam swept over their heads, and Bucky’s eyes went wide. He was tensing up again, redoubling his futile efforts to pull free.
“Steve?” Sam’s voice drifted in from somewhere he couldn’t see. “Checking in. Are you guys okay?”
It had been long enough; Sam had to have known what was happening, had to have heard their voices carrying through the clearing. Steve was immeasurably grateful for his cool head under pressure, for him falling back to avoid making Bucky feel any more cornered than he already was.
“Yeah,” he called back. “We’re good. We’re gonna be out of here soon.”
“Let me know if you need help,” Sam offered.
“Will do.”
Sam’s footsteps retreated, though Steve knew he wasn’t going far. Bucky looked at him, half betrayed, half terrified.
“You’re hurt,” Steve whispered in explanation. “Please let me help you.”
Bucky tensed his jaw, but he didn’t protest. Steve knew he had to be in dire shape if he wasn’t fighting back anymore.
“Okay?” Steve asked, climbing to his feet and reaching for the stone pinning Bucky’s chest.
Bucky seemed resigned to the fact that he didn’t have much of a choice. He nodded. He shifted his metal arm to shove at the concrete from behind so Steve didn’t have to lift the full weight of it off of him.
Steve tossed aside the heavy chunk and returned his attention to Bucky, taking the entirety of him in for the first time. Bucky’s clothes were dirty and disheveled from the collapse, hanging around a frame thinner than the one Steve remembered him having when they’d fought. Bucky was propped so weakly against the rocks behind him that, if they hadn’t just been speaking, Steve would have seen him and feared he was just another body left behind in the rubble. A few suspiciously rust-red stains marked the front of his torn shirt.
Steve tried to keep his face as neutral as possible; with Bucky already so skittish, the last thing Steve wanted was to do anything to set him off. He stood back, waiting for Bucky to make the first move, but when he did nothing but stare up at Steve from his slumped position on the ground Steve broke down and gently extended a hand.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
Bucky eyed the hand hovering in front of his face, waiting to help him up. He nervously wet his dry lips. Steve could see clammy sweat collecting on his forehead through the dark.
“I–I can’t.” Bucky’s voice shook. He was suddenly looking anywhere but at Steve. “I can’t move.”
Steve’s heart jumped to his throat. Before he realized what he was doing he was kneeling at Bucky’s side again, fear and caution and common sense unable to hold him back as he scanned over the shape of Bucky’s broken body.
“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” he asked.
When Bucky still didn’t look at him, just stared down into his lap with something that looked like shame, Steve couldn’t help himself anymore. He reached out a hand and, with the very tips of his fingers, laid the barest whisper of pressure against Bucky’s right arm, the grimy stretch of bare skin just below the sleeve of his t-shirt.
Bucky looked at him then, wide-eyed. They were very close, Steve realized. He dropped his hand. He was unprepared for the way Bucky’s eyes followed the course of his fingers as they left his arm, not scared but strangely hungry, like he’d been starved for gentle touch and could still feel the remnants of it tingling against his skin. Steve knew that feeling. He’d known it in the cold months in the wake of his mother’s death. He’d learned it again when he’d woken up in the future, alone.
“Steve,” Bucky breathed, and for a moment it was all him, hurting and hardened after so many years of torture but with the essence of himself still somewhere inside of him, intact.
“I know,” Steve murmured. His fingertips tingled, too. “I know.”
It took every ounce of willpower Steve had, and another look at the blood staining Bucky’s face and shirt, to make himself pull away and stand up again. “Come on,” he said. “I’m gonna get you out of here. Gonna get you some help. Can you please just tell me what’s wrong?”
Bucky swallowed hard. “I can’t move.”
“Okay. It’s okay. Do you know why?”
“Can’t feel my leg,” Bucky mumbled, glancing down at the unmoving bend of his left knee. “It’s, like, it’s… asleep, or something. And my back, it — it’s not right. Got torn up pretty bad. My spine, it just feels all… messed up…”
Steve winced as Bucky started twisting where he was sitting, trying to demonstrate. “Okay, easy,” he said, steadying Bucky with a hand to his t-shirt-covered shoulder. “Easy. I’ve got you, Buck.”
Bucky glanced at Steve’s hand, leaching its warmth into his shoulder, then at his face. Steve offered his other hand down to Bucky again.
“Will you come with me?” Steve asked. “Can you trust me?”
It sounded desperate, even to his own ears. Bucky didn’t say anything — and that was fair, Steve supposed, he’d done nothing to earn that trust — but Bucky was still eyeing his hand. Not like he trusted Steve, exactly, but like he wanted to.
Bucky never opened his mouth to answer. But when metal fingers reached out to grip his outstretched palm, Steve’s shoulders sagged a little in relief. It would have to be enough.
Hauling Bucky to his feet was an agonizing process, Steve stammering apology after useless apology as Bucky grunted in pain and sweated, trying to pull himself up and arrange himself into a position where his legs could take his weight. It wasn’t ideal, moving him around so much with the injuries he’d sustained, but they didn’t have much other choice; Steve just had to hope Bucky’s serum-enhanced body was strong enough to withstand the continued abuse.
Bucky ended up with his metal arm draped around Steve’s shoulders, a fraction of his weight balancing on his trembling right leg and the rest of it hanging heavily from Steve’s side. Steve brought an arm around Bucky’s back to steady him and frowned. Bucky’s shirt was soaking wet, wetter than it should have been, even considering how hard Bucky had been sweating from the pain.
“Buck?” Steve shifted so that Bucky was leaning against his chest instead, trying to pull his own arm free and inspect it. Part of him had known what he was going to find, but when he caught sight of the dark red stains on his skin, his stomach still dropped with horror.
“Shit, shit — Bucky, your back — what happened?”
“Told you. Got in a firefight. Knew I was going to lose.” The words slurred together. Steve glanced at Bucky’s face and found it chalk-white. The longer he stayed upright, the less he seemed able to cling to consciousness.
“Okay, okay, let’s just — let’s go. You’re gonna be fine. Come on.”
Steve guided Bucky along the uneven route out of the rubble, supported him as he stumbled over rocks and debris until they made it past the remains of the collapsed building and into the surrounding grass. Bucky’s breath was shallow against Steve’s neck. Steve craned his head to look for Sam, finding his silhouette waiting at the edge of the treeline near where they’d parked the car.
Sam’s eyes widened as Steve approached. It was probably part wariness at being so close to the former Winter Soldier, but Steve could tell it was mostly concern. He couldn’t seem to look away from the dark blood staining Steve’s arm.
“It’s fine. I’m okay,” Steve told him. He glanced to Bucky and found him distant, unfocused eyes half-open and checked out. Steve supposed it was probably for the best.
“Buck’s coming with us. We’re gonna get him some help,” he told Sam, trying to keep his voice light on the off chance that Bucky was present enough to be listening. “But I-I think he’s really hurt,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Sam, can you take a look at his back?”
Sam nodded, ducking behind where Steve was still fighting to keep Bucky upright to take a look. Steve cringed when he heard Sam’s sharp intake of breath.
“Yep. That’s—that’s pretty bad. Looks like bullets, shrapnel, something like that. At least three entry wounds. Did you see any exit wounds when you found him?”
“No.” Steve’s mouth was suddenly dry.
“Alright,” Sam sighed. “His breathing’s not sounding too good either, Steve.”
Steve knew; Bucky was leaning so heavily against him that each shallow, crackling breath sounded directly below his ear.
“What exactly are you planning to do?” Sam asked, moving to stand in front of Steve again, addressing him head-on. “We can’t just bring him to a hospital. I know you know that.”
“I do.” Steve winced as Bucky pulled in an especially hard-fought, groaning breath.
“If I take him home, will you help him?” Steve said it fast, before he had time to doubt himself. “I shouldn’t ask, I know, and you don’t have to, it’s just — I know you’ve got medical training, and I just, I think it might be the only option —”
“Steve.” Sam silenced him with a look. “Of course I’m gonna help. Let’s just get out of here before it’s too late.”
Sam’s eyes lingered on Steve for a little too long before he turned to head back to the car, and Steve knew he was still thinking about the tapes. He knew Sam wasn’t just going to let that go, but somehow he was still here, still willing to help – for Bucky’s sake as well as Steve’s own.
Steve didn’t have time to dwell on how much of a miracle that was. “Okay,” he breathed to Bucky, still hanging off his shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.” And he followed Sam back through the trees, back towards home.
They headed back to the city with Sam in the driver’s seat, Steve sitting in the back with Bucky, trying to keep him steady and keep an eye on his condition. He’d tried laying Bucky down flat across the back seats when they’d first gotten in the car, but the horizontal position immediately made Bucky’s labored breathing worse, a gurgling sound bubbling up between inhales. Sam and Steve had settled for propping him upright instead, reclining the seat as far as it would go in an attempt to keep some of the pressure off Bucky’s back.
Bucky flickered between spells of awareness and dissociation as they drove. Sometimes he blinked at Steve with some hint of light in his eyes, and sometimes he stared straight forward, closed-off and empty. Steve ended up pressed right by his side, still not touching him, just listening to the sounds of air entering and leaving his chest as he breathed.
Somewhere in the middle of one of those blank dissociative spells, Bucky’s breath caught on something in his chest and he began to cough.
“Steve?” Sam asked from the front seat, glancing back to check in.
“It’s okay. He’s okay.” Steve hoped he didn’t sound as unsure as he felt. He pressed a cautious hand to Bucky’s chest, keeping him from doubling forward over himself. Tears were already swelling in Bucky’s eyes from the pain of coughing through broken ribs; he didn’t need to add a contortion of his damaged spine to the mix.
The coughs were wet, and something red was lurching out of the corner of Bucky’s mouth. There was no longer any question about whether it was blood. Bucky whimpered, eyes going wider with pain and fear at the taste.
“It’s okay,” Steve murmured. Distantly he felt the car accelerating, Sam pushing the speed limit as much as he could. Steve just held Bucky and kept whispering reassurances as his breathing became shallower.
“It's okay. You’re alright. You’re gonna be fine.” I love you. I love you. I love you. Steve felt it with every meaningless encouragement, even if he couldn’t say it.
“You’re gonna be okay, Bucky. Just hold on.”