“Clint, please,” Bucky whispers. He’s stopped waking now, staring at Clint’s back. “Please don’t shut me out.”
“What are you talking about?” he mutters.
“I mean it.”
“For the love of God,” Clint says sharply, but when he turns around and sees Bucky’s eyes, he falters.
“I know you.” Bucky looks around the dark, empty park. “I can tell something’s wrong.”
Clint sets his jaw forward, clearly upset. “It’s okay—“
“Please don’t shut me out,” Bucky repeats.
There’s a silence for a moment.
“You won’t get it,” Clint says finally, through gritted teeth. And that was it, the only flag Clint waved, the only true outward indication he was hurting.
Because for all the years Bucky’s known him, and even in the year they’ve been together, Clint has stayed a closed book. The parts of himself he lets Bucky see are either sugar-coated, or he brushes them off after the rough night, seemingly fine. Everything else, Bucky knew, he preferred to deal with alone.
He was tough, but maybe too much for his own good.
“I can try,” Bucky says.
And he wants to try to understand. He wants to be the person Clint can lean on, because lord knows Clint’s been there for him. He’s seen things nobody should.
Except Clint is stubborn. So stubborn, in fact, that he’s already walking away, towards the overlook across the river to Jersey, silent in the city lights surrounding the park that glow cold and empty. Bucky stands there for a moment, frustration and hurt twisting in his stomach. He knows Clint cares, he’s not insecure in their relationship, but he knows that the way Clint is living is not sustainable.
But instead of chasing Clint to the edge of the park, he lingers behind, and decides to take a lap. And during that walk, he thinks about them, and the twisted way that two broken people ended up together. He thinks about the things Clint’s seen, the heartbreak he’s felt, and the way he doesn’t really sleep any more.
To be fair, neither of them sleep very well, but with Clint it feels different. It’s like he’s haunted by all of the memories, because sometimes he sits up in their bed, with a terrifyingly empty look in his eyes, and it’ll take days for the life to come back to them. And for those days he’s just a shell of a person. And Bucky’s getting scared.
Because he’d lived that life for far longer than he’d like to admit, and he knows the ending to that story. It’s not a happy one.
But Bucky was lucky; he had people to lean on who understood, and while life isn’t perfect, he can manage the depression and PTSD that held him tight for so long. But it didn’t come without bumps in the road, and those bumps were ugly, and scary, and he still has scars from when he believed that death was the only answer. All he wants to do is help Clint avoid that path, because he knows more than anybody that it’s a slippery one.
Once he’s looped around the trail once, he tracks down Clint, who’s sitting on the edge of a small embankment that eventually, about a half-mile ahead, leads into the river. They’re high up, so the view of Newark and the rest of the little coastal cities of Jersey are visible, and beautiful. Bucky breathes in the fresh river air, carefully watching Clint’s outline for movement, for anything that might tell him what he’s walking into.
But as he walks closer, he realizes Clint is still and silent, and he’s pretty confident that he knows Bucky’s behind him. He’s got a way of sensing things, and knowing his surroundings, as any good archer does.
Bucky isn’t shaken, though, and instead continues forward to sit next to him, without staring, eyes straight forward on the lights that dance on the river.
“You don’t have to,” Clint murmurs, and Bucky doesn’t catch the way it shakes. “I’m fine.”
“I know,” says Bucky, but makes no plan to leave.
It’s not until a few minutes later, when Bucky steals a glance at Clint, that he notices he’s crying.
Silent, and unmoving, but with unmistakable tears collecting in his eyes.
Bucky’s heart breaks just a little more.
“Clint?”
But Clint just shakes his head, and shuts his eyes and lets the tears track their way down, and Bucky knows how much effort it’s taking him to keep sitting here instead of running away.
Bucky swallows, and reaches his right hand out, finding Clint’s, and he’s almost surprised to feel the way he grasps onto it like a lifeline.
After a little while Clint lifts his shirt above his eyes, wiping away the wetness and taking a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Bucky says softly.
“I don’t mean to be closed off. I don’t mean to.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” he says again, trembling. Bucky can’t remember a time he’s seen him like this. “It’s what I’m used to. It’s how I survived.”
“I know. But it doesn’t have to be like that anymore, right?”
“I can’t just unlearn it,” Clint says.
There’s a few minutes of silence, of Bucky listening to Clint’s shaky, careful breathing. He knows the wheels inside Clint’s brain are turning, but Bucky’s stomach twists.
“Sometimes, when you say something out loud, it feels less scary,” Bucky murmurs.
“I already do that,” Clint mutters. “I was saying it out loud, before you sat down.”
Bucky looks at him quizzically.
“Natasha doesn’t have a grave, not a real one. Certainly not that planet that feels like a fever dream.” Clint swallows, and Bucky can hear the way his voice is shaking again. “So I picked out a grave for her here. We both used to like the view.”
“You were talking to Natasha?”
Clint sets his jaw forward, and Bucky knows he’s close to breaking again.
“It’s been a year,” he says shakily. “Tomorrow, it will be.”
Bucky knows. “Does it help? Talking to her?”
“It makes me feel fuckin’ crazy,” Clint breathes. “But it makes me feel like I’m not leaving her behind.”
“You shouldn’t feel crazy,” Bucky says.
“Sometimes the dead are just better listeners,” Clint says, and lets out a forced, broken laugh.
Bucky flashes a tight smile, but watches Clint carefully.
“What were you talking about? To Natasha?” Bucky asks.
Clint swallows thickly, squinting up, through blurry eyes, at the Newark skyline.
“I was telling her,” he whispers, trembling again, “I was telling her how much I miss her. And how I don’t feel like a person anymore, just a weathered machine with some broken pieces. And how sometimes, what we both saw seems like a fever dream, like it never happened.”
Bucky feels anxiety creep up in his chest, like a plague. Because those words are far too familiar.
Maybe the shock got to him, because Clint tilts his head, giving him a blank look, and Bucky has to try to shake the feeling quickly.
Except he can’t really shake it, not when Clint is looking too much like Bucky did two years ago, and fear seems to slip into his words.
“Clint, you can’t live like this,” Bucky whispers. “I know it’s hard. But you can’t.”
“Well, I don’t know how to fucking change,” Clint mutters, now angry and defensive. “Don’t you think I’m trying?”
“You are. You’re doing a great job. I’m sorry.”
Clint shifts, exhaling slowly, presumably trying to calm himself.
“That’s the thing, Bucky,” he murmurs. “Is that I am trying. I am. But I still feel completely out of my mind. Out of control.”
“After everything we’ve been through,” Bucky says, “it’s okay to feel out of it sometimes.”
Clint looks up at him, and Bucky’s suddenly lost in the dark blue of his eyes, in the way the city light shine, that make his eyes sparkle. He’s reminded of the person he fell for.
“What, so we’re both just crazy?” Clint whispers, and it sounds scared, like he’s just realized they were doomed from the start.
“We’re alive,” he answers carefully. “And besides, what does crazy even mean?”
Clint bites his cheek, gaze flittering out towards the water again. His answer is as empty as his eyes. “I don’t know.”
And for a moment, he looks so small and helpless that it seems to rip Bucky’s heart in two. He’s just a shell of the man he once knew, the fearless Avenger with the sharpest aim. He looks at Clint, and he looks… empty.
Bucky gets a cold feeling then, like he suddenly knows exactly what Clint’s trying to tell him.
His stomach sinks as he remembers, against his will, long nights on the floor of his bathroom, with a half a bottle of painkillers in his stomach and the other half in his palm, and how Sam drove him to the ER in the middle of the night, with a specific type of terror in his voice that Bucky won’t ever forget.
He remembers the way his hands shook as he held a handgun to his temple, and how Steve’s eyes flashed behind his eyes before he dropped the weapon. He still remembers the smell of gunpowder, and the sound the gun made as it clattered to the floor.
“You’re suicidal,” Bucky murmurs.
“I’m fucking crazy,” Clint whispers, trembling as he brings his hands up to cover his face. “I’m not supposed to be like this. I’m not supposed to—“
“It’s okay,” Bucky whispers, and he hopes his voice doesn’t betray him. “We can fix it. It’ll be okay, you’ll feel okay again.”
“You don’t know that.” The words are hardly louder than a breath.
Bucky shuts his eyes, as if to block out the world for a moment. “It’s going to be okay,” he repeats. He doesn’t know who exactly he’s trying to convince— Clint, or himself.
“I don’t feel okay.” Clint’s voice is pitched up, and shaking. “I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Why? Why would you not?”
“Because I figured living on suicide watch isn’t really living,” Clint whispers. “I just— I thought I’d just go out on my own.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bucky breathes, as anxiety builds. It takes everything in him not to explode, to berate Clint about how selfish and irresponsible that would be, to ask him if Natasha’s death was for nothing, because she died for him, right? But he can’t. Because even thought that’s his first instinct, he has to pull back, because he should know how it feels more than anybody. “Tell me what’s going on, Clint,” he says, keeping his voice steady. “When did this start? What happened?”
“When did it start?” Clint repeats. “I— I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Before Thanos? Before— before Ronin?” Bucky prompts. He knows it’s a hard conversation, but he pushes forward because he knows it needs to happen. Besides, Sam did it with him.
“Recent,” he answers numbly. “A few months, maybe.”
But they both know problems like this go back much further, and run much deeper.
“Have you— have you attempted?” Bucky’s voice catches.
“Almost,” Clint admits, and he doesn’t look Bucky in the eye. “Once. We just— we have access to so many guns. It would be so easy.”
Bucky has to take a deep breath for that one.
“And that’s it?”
“Yes.”
There’s a minute of silence— it’s neither comfortable or uncomfortable.
“I just want to say,” Bucky says, stumbling over his words. “I just want to let you know, that— that I love you. I love you how you are. Do you know that?”
Clint nods his head. “I know,” he says. “I love you too, Bucky, but— it’s not about that.”
“I know. I know it’s different. I just want to make sure you knew.”
Clint nods again, and Bucky sees the tears that have collected on his lash line.
Bucky continues, quickly so he doesn’t have time to break down. He’ll save that for later.
“I also want to let you know… I mean, our situations are different, I know, but… I know how it feels. That’s all I’m saying. You know I’ve been there, I know how it feels.”
“Yeah, that’s what fucking scares me,” Clint mutters. “Cause that just makes two of us.”
“I can still be there to help.”
“You can’t pour from an empty cup,” Clint whispers, and he’s shaking again, and it makes Bucky feel sick. Because he knew he had his own issues, his anxiety attacks and his PTSD, but he’s worked so hard to overcome it. It hurts to hear Clint so dismissive of that.
“I’m not— I can help, Clint,” he says, and it feels like he’s pleading. “I want to help—“
“You can’t,” Clint says, trembling. He takes a few quick, shaky breaths, and Bucky knows what’s happening.
“It doesn’t matter,” he swallows, shaking his head and deciding to leave that argument for later. “We’ll figure it out. Just… let’s go home.”
“I can’t.” His breathing is speeding up just as Bucky knew it would. Because he’s lived this life already.
“Shh, it’s going to be fine,” Bucky murmurs, glancing around. “It’s just you and me here, nobody else. You’re okay.”
But Bucky knows his words don’t matter, that Clint’s not really processing it anymore. He’s lost in his own little world, in his anxiety attack.
Regardless, it doesn’t hurt Bucky any less to watch. He just keeps talking every once and a while so that Clint knows that he’s okay and that he’s not alone.
Ragged, quick gasps of air are the only thing Bucky can hear, and he can’t even see Clint’s face because it’s covered by his hands. He’s hunched over like a crumpled ball of a human being and Bucky can almost feel the fear that radiates off of him.
“Clint, look,” Bucky murmurs, and reaching his hand up to his shoulder. Except, unlike before, this time Clint recoils from the touch. His breath is ragged and shallow, and his eyes are screwed shut. He doesn’t look at all like the person Bucky once knew.
“I’m sorry,” Bucky says quickly. “Clint, it’s okay. I promise, just… just stay here.”
But he’s already standing, heels of his palms on his temples, and Bucky can hear the panicked wheeze and can see the tears collect.
It’s in that moment that Bucky realizes Clint’s never had a panic attack before, that this feeling is entirely new and entirely terrifying. His heart breaks a little bit more.
“It’s— it’s an anxiety attack,” Bucky explains softly, hoping Clint is listening. “It’s going to be okay. You’re okay.”
For a while the only signal he gives is a slow shake of his head.
“It feels like I’m dying,” he chokes finally, wild eyes snapping open. They’re filled with anguish and fear, and he reaches up to feel for his pulse. “Bucky, I— I can’t.”
The words are choppy.
“Listen, you’re not dying,” he says, standing up. That was a mistake.
Because the second Bucky advances, Clint is gone. He’s turned, like a flash, and walks away into the darkness of the park, wringing his hands out, gasps of air growing quiet as he fades into the dark.
They both know that if Bucky wanted to, he could go after Clint, and force him down and force him home without even breaking a sweat. But they also know that that isn’t the point. Clint’s words echo in Bucky’s mind: living on suicide watch isn’t really living.
It makes his stomach twist to see Clint walk back into the dark, and that he wasn’t enough to make him feel better and make him stay.
But this is trust. He was putting his faith into Clint, that he would come back home when he was feeling better, and that he wouldn’t do anything stupid in the shadows.
Bucky sits there for a while, at the grave that Clint picked for Natasha, staring out into rippling water with something heavy tugging at his heart. Something helpless.
Because he can’t fix him. Some things you have to figure out in your own, no matter how much it hurts for the ones around you to watch.
He just hopes he can be enough of a crutch, to stop Clint from sliding down the same slope he did all those years ago.
—
Bucky stays awake that night, in the bed they share, big window open even though it’s freezing out. As the hours tick by, anxiety stirs in his stomach, because what if he was wrong to let Clint go? Should he have gone after him?
Should Bucky have seen this coming? After all, he was the one who should know him best. What kind of partner was he, that he couldn’t tell that Clint was slipping into oblivion, into destroying himself?
He tries to reign it in, to remind himself that he did see a change, and he did try to talk to him. He was there for Clint, he just wasn’t ready for the help.
But as much as he tries to stop it, his mind starts to wander.
The two of them have seen so much death in their lives; they’ve been on both ends of that line. They’ve taken lives and they’ve seen loved ones taken. But no matter how much you live it, it doesn’t haunt you any less.
Bucky can’t help but picture, in uncontrollable flashes, Clint’s lifeless body surrounded by blood and yellow tape. He pictures Clint’s last moments, trembling as he takes that last step off the skyscraper roof or pulls back on that trigger. He shuts his eyes tight and when that doesn’t work, he sits up, trying to think of anything else to fill his thoughts to distract himself from the scary ones.
For hours he sits awake, terrified that he’ll get a call or a knock on the door from a police officer telling him the news he never wants to hear.
He’s tempted to call Clint, or to track his phone and go find him himself to make sure he comes home. But he knows it would be useless; it would not only break Clint’s trust, but Bucky knows that if he didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t.
So Bucky doesn’t do either of those things. Instead, against his will and all his effort to avoid it, his emotions and fears overcome him.
Hot, salty tears well up in his eyes, and his next breath is replaced by a broken sob. He brings his hand to his mouth, inhaling shakily, and it feels like he’s being torn apart at the seams.
He sobs until he can’t hear the sound anymore, until his eyes have run out of tears, until he feels so empty that he might not ever be okay again. Because he loves Clint, that’s for sure, and yet there is nothing he can do to save him from himself.
What would he do if he woke up tomorrow and Clint didn’t? How could he live with himself, knowing he could’ve done something more to save him? How can Bucky help him fight a war no one else can see?
He thinks about calling Sam. He’s in need of a familiar voice. But the clock on their bedside reads 3:25, and he knows Sam is asleep and won’t answer, and besides, he doesn’t expect that from his friends. Still, he feels incredibly alone in this moment, as the cold air seeps into the room through the open window and seems to chill him to the bone.
He knows his depression isn’t doing him any favors either, and he thinks about calling it a night and trying to sleep, but he’s sure that will never happen.
So instead he sits awake on the side of the bed, feet on the cold wooden floor, eyes shut tight as tears track down his cheeks. He wipes them desperately for a while, but eventually gives in.
One thing Bucky learned was to never push his feelings down. Steve taught him how to make sure to feel that pain and fear, to internalize it, because you can’t be a human if you don’t feel pain. It puts everything else in perspective.
It’s four fifteen in the morning when he decides to go out to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. He knows because he glanced at the clock just before he opens the bedroom door, and what he sees on the other side nearly startles him out of his skin.
Shock and relief flood his veins as Clint looks up at him, eyes blurry and looking about as exhausted as Bucky feels.
“How long have you been here?” he asks, but it sounds more like a broken rasp.
“Long enough,” Clint whispers. “I’m sorry.”
Bucky stares, knowing how wrecked he looks, knowing that his face is red and puffy from the crying, and that he’s sure his eyes are sunken in from the exhaustion. There’s no hiding the breakdown. A twinge of bitterness sets in, because if Clint has been here for a while, he should’ve told Bucky, and saved him from that bit of misery.
“I was worried,” Bucky mutters. “I— I mean, should I have gone after you?”
Clint doesn’t say anything, lost in his own head, and for a split second, Bucky wonders if he was right. That maybe there is nothing Bucky can do, because he’s still fighting the same kind of demons, and that maybe they were both a lost cause, doomed from the start. The hallway he stands in looks incredibly empty, devoid of light and color, and the hardwood floors Clint’s seated on look bleak. It’s a perfect reflection of them.
But hell, Bucky has to try. If they were going down, he was determined to go down swinging.
So he swallows thickly and tells Clint to wait a moment while he gets them water.
When he turns away from the sink, Clint’s there next to him, and he can see his face from the dim refrigerator light, and he doesn’t try to decipher the look. Instead he hands him water and tells him to drink.
“Where did you go?” He asks finally, once Clint’s set the glass down.
He looks at him for a moment and Bucky’s heart breaks a little at the emptiness in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs. “I just walked.”
Bucky leans back against the counter, rubbing his face, to try to pull himself together a little more.
“I heard you,” Clint whispers. “I heard you, in the room, and I didn’t walk in. I’m sorry.”
Bucky swallows back the bitterness, putting aside his own frustration. “It’s okay,” he says. “It doesn’t matter. You’re here.”
Clint’s eyes shut, and when he opens them again Bucky sees shame.
“All I fucking do is hurt you, Bucky,” he says softly, and there’s a terrifying edge of sadness to the words. “It’s so selfish, I— I mean, I heard you crying in there. You’re hurting because of me.”
“I love you,” Bucky says in a whisper because he doesn’t know what else to say.
It’s then that Clint drops his head forward until it’s leaning on Bucky’s shoulder, and he feels the gentle shaking of him crying. It hurts his heart, and he wraps his arms around him tight.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’m not angry. It’s okay.”
“It’s not fucking okay,” Clint forces out. “Something’s not right up here.” He steps back and points at his head, and Bucky’s heart breaks at the tears that streak down his face. “Something’s not right, and I don’t know what to do.”
Bucky looks up at him and meets his sad, empty eyes but doesn’t say anything, and lets Clint keep talking. He figures it’s good for him.
“I feel like— like one day I’m just doing to snap, like I’m so close to giving up, and— just, something’s wrong, because I want to give up, and I know I shouldn’t, but Natasha’s gone, and my family’s gone, and Phil and Steve and all of our friends, and maybe I should join them.”
He exhales after that, shaky and uneven.
“You need to fight it,” Bucky whispers, searching Clint’s eyes.
“I’m so fucking tired of fighting,” Clint breathes. “I’m so tired of it.”
“One last fight, then.”
Clint swallows. “You’re like my anchor,” he says shakily. “I’m here because of you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
A mixture of relief and crushing anxiety forces It’s way through Bucky and he has to fight to keep his nerves under control.
“Okay,” he says finally because he has nothing else to say.
“I mean it,” Clint says, and guilt wracks his voice. “I went… I went to the sears tonight, just to see, and— and I just— I saw you, in my mind, and I couldn’t do it.”
Bucky’s blood runs cold at the thought up Clint standing up there, at the lookout spot he’d scouted a million times as Hawkeye, but this time with something darker on his mind.
Bucky kind of wants to break down again but he knows he has to hold it together.
“You’re telling me this for a reason,” he murmurs. “Right?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re telling me all this because there’s a part of you that wants to be saved.” It’s a bold statement but it’s a gamble he has to take. “It seems like there’s a part of you that knows you need help.”
Clint stares, and for a moment Bucky thinks that that’s it, that he’ll lash out and storm out and it could be the end. But that doesn’t happen.
Instead his eyes fill with tears. “I need help,” he admits with a whisper, but it almost sounds like it’s the first time he’s considered it.
“We’ll get help, then,” Bucky murmurs.
“When I explain it to you,” Clint says softly, “it makes it feel… smaller. Like it’s not my fault, like it’s actually some thing that’s dragging me down.”
Bucky’s heart swells at that because it’s exactly what he’d hoped for. Because it’s exactly what he had needed when he was at his lowest. It’s a cautious feeling of happiness, though, because they both know they’re far from out of the woods.
“Then you’ll keep explaining it to me,” he says. “And I’ll listen. Because I’m not letting you go that easily.”