Chapter 1
Bucky looks himself in the mirror, feeling as tired as he looks. He straightens his tie, pulls back on his single black glove, and hardens his face as he exits the restroom.
He thinks he’s gone to more funerals this week than the rest of his life combined. And while he knows the people left here care about him, he still can’t find it in him to let his guard down like he could with those who are gone.
He scans the scene in the church; it’s another sad one. Carol and her family are weeping in the corner, and Sam and Rhodes speak quietly in the back of the room. Barton and Banner are here somewhere, too, and the rest he doesn’t recognize. It’s a closed casket for Steve, and Bucky finds that an interesting choice. He figures nobody wants to see the wrinkled version of him compared to the one they all knew so well.
He’d learned ages ago that thinking about things too hard gets him nowhere, so instead of contemplating the implications of Steve’s going back in time, he’s just decided to mourn his friend as if he’d simply just passed in the war. Even though it wasn’t at all true.
It was easier than thinking about the fact that Steve left him here, all alone in the future. Except, Bucky thinks numbly, this is reality. It’s no maybe, no hypothetical, it’s just… real.
Nobody talks to him during the funeral, not until afterwards when he’s standing outside of the church waiting for a taxi.
Wind whips down the narrow street of Manhattan they’re in, but to Bucky the cold feels almost comforting. The city is quieter today— in respect for the dead, Bucky thinks dryly.
He sees Barton, out of the corner of his eye, hesitate to approach him. He finds it amusing, the way people walk on glass around him during times like these.
“You need something?” He asks flatly, still looking out at the street.
Clint pauses, and then his shoulders relax.
“No,” he says. “I just wanted to ask how you were doing.”
Bucky blinks, turning towards him finally. For some reason, that’s caught him off guard, and he stares at Clint dumbly for a moment. His eyes catch on the scar on the left side of his forehead.
“Geez, didn’t they teach you not to stare?” Clint grumbles, and Bucky’s quick to apologize.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m— I’m fine. I’m doing fine.”
Clint nods. “Going home?”
“Yeah.” Nowhere else to go, Bucky thinks.
“I know we were never close, but…” Clint trails off for a moment. “There aren’t many of us left. If you ever need anything, you have my number.”
—
Clint can’t help but feel himself keep glancing towards Bucky during Steve’s ceremony. He’s dressed sharply, in all black, his hair slicked back, and Clint thinks that maybe if he turned the image to grayscale, it would look right out of the vintage photos in the captain America museum.
He’s tense during the entire ceremony, though, and Clint can almost sense the exhaustion in his eyes. He wonders, for a moment, if Bucky has anyone he can turn to, now that Steve’s gone.
—
Pepper keeps the lake house, and invites what’s left of the team for dinner every few weeks. It’s the closest bit of family most of them have.
The afternoon air is warm, and a gentle breeze picks up the fresh scent of the lake as it passes over the deck. Chatter resonates behind Bucky, and the cold beer in his metal hand feels strange, but good. Comforting. He tries not to wonder about the last time he felt peace.
He laughs as Sam tells a joke, and takes another sip of his beer, feeling content for the first time in years. He only wishes Steve could be here to see it.
That knife is starting to dull, the one that pierces his chest every time he thinks about Steve. He can’t be angry, not really, but his heart twists with the thought of Steve being able to live the life he was always supposed to, something Bucky gave up on forever ago.
He’s happy for Steve, but it’s bittersweet.
Sam gets up to mingle for a little while, and Bucky finishes his beer and takes in the beauty of the lake, and the forest behind it.
Golden sunlight tints the water and the autumn leaves, leaving everything in an orange hue, while the gentle breeze sends ripples across the lake. The sky is a quilt of patches of blue and gray.
Nobody talks about the war, or the people they lost. That wound is still too fresh. They just laugh, and enjoy the warmth and sunlight, and the company of what’s left of their family, and leave the bad thoughts for another time.
—
And this is how things went for a while, their Friday afternoon barbecues at Pepper’s, the repression of traumatizing memories, and the illusion that everything would be fine.
Except Bucky’s been trying to tell himself that it is not an allusion, that hope is necessary, and he wouldn’t be a traitor to himself to believe in it. Because lord knows how much his hope had been beaten down, squashed until almost nothing remains, by his parents, his generals, by Hydra and the Germans, and then by the Russians.
Because in the end, they were all still healing.
Some faster than others, Bucky thinks bitterly, as he looks himself in the mirror again. He can feel himself slipping into apathy, into feeling nothing, just like he did for all those years. He’s not sure which is worse— pain, or nothing.
Living alone doesn’t help, either, and he can almost feel the ghost of the winter soldier, beckoning him into the dark, into the person he used to be before he’d come back to reality back in Bucharest.
—
Steve’s grave is bright white, as new ones are, in its own little courtyard off to the side in the Calverton cemetery. It’s a five hour drive from Brooklyn, where Bucky’s staying for now, but he’d decided he’d needed to get out of there for a little while.
He reads the plaque, a summary of all Steve’s accomplishments, and the little picture of him and Peggy, and then comes the familiar twinge of jealousy and then shame.
He looks up, at the elaborate gravestone, gated off with a wrought-wire fence as all notable ones are. He quickly hops the fence, staring at the little words engraved into the stone. Steven Grant Rogers — Born 4 July 1920 — Died 14 April 2023.
“Hey,” he murmurs, voice foreign on his tongue. Words feel clumsy, but he knows he should probably empty his brain of all those dark thoughts, and who better to tell them to than the dead?
“It’s been a few months.” He swallows, sitting down against the iron gate. “Might as well settle in, don’t run away on me,” he says, cracking a lopsided grin. The grin fades as he stares at the patch of dirt, with little sprouts of grass starting to grow, where Steve’s body lies.
“Pepper’s been having us over every Friday,” he starts. “She’s doing a good job of hiding how much she misses him. We’re all doing a good job of hiding things. But I’m kind of tired of it, actually, and— Steve, I can feel the soldier, in the back of my mind, waiting for me to slip up.” He stares at the headstone, holding his tongue. That’s a dangerous thought to have, knowing his history, but who’s Steve going to tell?
“I can feel him, and it’s just so easy to just shut yourself off, you know? To stop feeling things, to escape the…” he trails off, poking at the dirt with a stick. “The grief, and the fact that you left me here,” he whispers, so many thoughts swirling around behind his eyes, he hardly knows where to start. He shuts his eyes, feeling that pain in his chest. “I want to be happy for you. But it’s so hard.”
Saying that out loud feels like a sin. It’s so selfish, and evil, and he knows how much that would hurt Steve. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, hoping that somewhere out there, Steve can hear it. He falls silent after that, just sitting there, thinking, taking in the eerie silence of the cemetery. A lump starts forming in his throat, and he inhales deeply, trying to calm his nerves. But he knows how good this is for him, to talk it out, to feel this pain instead of trying to shove it away. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean it like that, it’s just… all I’ve got is myself, and I sort of clung onto this hope that I would have you at the end of this. And I know you were happy, with Peggy. I know that, I just have to adjust.”
He shifts, trying to imagine what Steve would respond, how he would go about this. But it’s impossible— and Bucky’s reminded of the cold emptiness of death, and how there isn’t anything Steve could say to this, to answer. Because he’s gone. The only Steve that exists now is in his head.
“Being alone isn’t helping,” he admits shakily. “God, Stevie, I could really use you here with me right now.” He feels the foreign sting of tears on his lashes, and he tilts his head backwards. “But you’re gone, and I know I have to just move on, but I don’t really know how. I don’t know what I’m doing, or how to fix it, or anything, I’m just going to keep slipping, back into what the soldier wants me to be.”
“What does the soldier want?”
Bucky’s head snaps up, squinting in the sunlight but now positively pissed off. He realizes it’s Sam.
“What the fuck?” He mutters, blinking quickly and hoping Sam can’t see the tears that have gathered on his lash line but haven’t fallen. “How long have you been there?”
“Like, a minute, I swear,” Sam says, hands up.
Bucky’s mind races, backtracking and wondering how much of that Sam heard.
“Fuck you,” he spits, standing up clumsily, vibranium hand on the railing. As gracefully as he can, which isn’t very, he jumps over the fence again, back onto the civilian side.
“Excuse me?” Sam’s words have an air of humor that Bucky doesn’t appreciate.
“You don’t just keep watching,” Bucky snaps, walking away up the hill. “What happened to courtesy, to privacy?”
“It’s a public cemetery, Bucky.”
“I don’t give a shit.” Quiet fury burns in his chest, and the feeling is much warmer than sadness and grief, so he moves closer to that one.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I was only there for, like, a second.”
Bucky doesn’t even answer that one. He’s already halfway up the hill, and he can tell that Sam isn’t following him, so once he’s out of sight he slows down. His heart is still racing as he tries to figure out what he did or didn’t say in front of him. All he knows is that he needs some air, and some space and some silence, so he starts wandering around the rows of graves on the other side of the hill, looking up frequently.
He winds his way through the cemetery, aware of the lump that’s still settled in his throat. He wonders, for a fleeting second, if any of these people in this cemetery are people he’d killed. He scans a few for familiar names, seeing if any match the ones in his little book, until he comes across one that stuns him.
James Falsworth. Born 1921 — Died 1992.
Bucky crouches down, staring blankly at the name. What are the odds?
James was one of the Howling Commandos, one of his best friends during the war, and someone he’d trusted immensely.
“Hey, old friend,” he whispers. “Haven’t talked to you in a bit.”
He sits there with James for a while, in the gentle sun, and for a second he almost feels like things might be okay. It’s a shift in perspective, away from the negativity he felt at Steve’s grave.
After a while, the sun’s starting to dip towards the tree line, and he’s acutely aware of how harsh he was to Sam.
The anger’s worn off, and now guilt nags at him, and Bucky’s one to right himself as soon as he can, so he quickly says goodbye to James and beelines it back to Steve and Sam.
Luckily, Sam’s still there when Bucky reaches the top of the hill.
“Look, I—“
“I’m sorry,” Bucky interrupts, eyes back on Steve’s headstone. “I was harsh. I’m sorry.”
He can feel Sam staring at him. “I was going to say that.”
Bucky turns, and a moment later cracks a grin. The scene is a little sad, and they both know it, but it’s a peace offering Sam’s willing to take.
—
“You know, they can always use help over at the compound,” Sam says, as they walk back to the parking lot.
“Where’s this coming from?”
“Nowhere,” Sam says carefully, but Bucky knows it has to do with what he overheard. “I just think… if you want to be around people more, it might be a good thing.”
—
Eventually, Bucky takes Sam up on that offer, and a few weeks later he’s driving a rental truck across New York, leaving his home in Brooklyn for the second time in his life.
When he gets there, it’s none other than Clint Barton helping him move in and Bucky’s glad to see a familiar face.
They chat for a while, just surface-level stuff, until all Bucky’s shit has been moved into his suite.
He spends the next few days unpacking, organizing, and getting used to the layout of the compound. His anxiety wouldn’t let him rest until he was sure of every exit point, every hallway and room and stairwell; it’s an occupational hazard, or maybe the fact that he’s been in so many collapsing buildings. Until he’s comfortable with the place, he won’t relax.
—
He’s wandering down one wing of the compound, and it seems a lot less used than some of the others. The walls are covered in dust, and many of the doors are locked or the rooms were empty. He’s starting to get suspicious of the place, until he turns a corner and finds a large glass case, seemingly well taken care of, filled with photos and little plaques of writing. They’re all of Natasha. There’s a couple candles, too, and Bucky raises an eyebrow. It looks a bit culty, but what does he know?
He turns around, taking the room in. It’s got a big desk, a few pots that may have once held house plants, and plenty of empty bookshelves and file cabinets. The walls are empty, but there’s dust evidence of space where photos must have been. The room gets a lot of light, and Bucky can tell that once, it was lively and in full use.
He almost jumps when he sees Clint standing in the doorway, back where he had just come from.
“So, you religious, or something?” Bucky asks, nodding at the candles.
Clint grins, and sighs. “No. She just liked the smell of those candles.”
Bucky stares at the glass case again, and a few of the photos. “This is how you keep her alive? In a forgotten wing of this place?”
“It’s not forgotten,” Clint says. “I just don’t— I don’t go here often.”
“Well then this is a coincidence.”
“I saw you on the surveillance,” he admits. “Thought you might be confused.”
“So you’re spying on me?” Bucky’s getting suspicious.
“No, not at all,” Clint says quickly. “I’m just… you know. I have to watch the cams. You understand.”
And Bucky does, he understands. The things they’ve been through… you have to take precautions. That’s what he’s doing now, isn’t it?
Bucky swallows, stepping towards the glass box again, and noticing that Clint’s in a lot of the photos. He looks happy, and younger; quite a bit different from the face he sees now. A twinge of sadness pulls at him, because it seemed like the life Clint’s lead hasn’t treated him kindly.
“This was her office?”
“And her suite, back in there,” Clint murmurs, gesturing towards a door at the back of the room.
Bucky had heard of how close Natasha and Clint were, but since he’d never really been close with either it had only been second-hand information. He doesn’t know the story.
But he knows that’s a conversation for another time. So instead he looks back, remembers to smile, and thanks Clint for showing him around before retiring to his place.
—
Realization hits him with a truck one night, after he’d had a few drinks with the rest of the guys. Since before the procedure with Shuri, that re-wired his neurons, that reversed some of the serum’s magic, alcohol hadn’t really worked on him. Something about his metabolism. He figures it was a side effect of the procedure, but now alcohol works its magic, and he’s not quite as used to it as he remembers.
He looks himself in the mirror of the common room restroom, as his face feels numb from the wine and his vision feels too much like strobe lights, and he realizes that he isn’t really Bucky Barnes anymore.
He’s someone else. Because Bucky Barnes died in 1945.
Decades after, in that year in Bucharest, before he got his Bucky memories back, he had a similar issue, but it wasn’t quite the same because he truly felt like a different person, like a blank slate. But now that he has all the memories that his body, his vessel has ever had, he doesn’t know which version of himself he really is.
Not that it matters much, he thinks bitterly. But it’s still a knife that twists around in his chest, the fact that he doesn’t even know which direction to go anymore to get out. He doesn’t even have Steve.
He feels like throwing up, and he hopes it isn’t the alcohol.
—
Bucky finds himself in the gym quite a bit more than back in Brooklyn. It feels almost simple; he’s working on his skills, on his strength, and that’s all his job is right now. He knows, eventually, Fury will assign them on some mission, but for now things are slow. It’s a strong few months for Bucky, being around all the people who live at or frequent the compound.
Bruce lives in most of the time, but his gamma lab is an hour or two south, so sometimes he just stays there for the week. Sam still lives in the city, but comes up for weekends and such to train with Bucky and to monitor the machines with Clint.
Scott has only visited twice because he’s manning a new outpost near LA while spending time at home.
While Rhodes travels frequently, his time is split between here and DC.
After a couple months of quiet, though, Bucky’s started to notice how empty the place feels, like everyone has a gaping hole in their chest that used to be filled by someone that’s now gone.
—
Almost as if on cue, Fury shows up that week, and hands them a couple of files and a briefing and tells them to start doing their homework.
And that’s when the buzz starts, like it’s breathed life back into what’s left of the avengers. The training grounds are alive with motion and laughter and sweat, and Bucky notes that spirits have lifted.
But something nags at him, a voice in the back of his mind that reminds him that this is all just a distraction, a sorry excuse for this team to have a purpose again.
When the dust settles, they will all be right back where they started. Alone and still mourning.
His heart feels like it’s in his throat, and anticipation tingles the back of his spine. He looks down at the blade in his hand, the one he was about to throw at the array of targets set up in front of him.
Bad thoughts spiral, as they always do, and he finally settles on the one that makes him feel sick to his stomach. Who is Bucky Barnes? It’s certainly not him.
But, wait. Of course it is.
He looks at the blade in his hand, and sharp realization cracks at him like a whip. These hands killed hundreds, maybe even thousands, so it doesn’t even matter who he thinks he is or isn’t; the facts are there, and he can’t escape who he’ll always be.
The soldier. He and Bucky are one and the same now.
Blood roars in his ears, almost deafening, like he’s under a waterfall, and his feet feel stuck in place. It’s the lack of control that makes him spiral for a second time, that feeling that he couldn’t move even if he tried, just like every time he went under and became the Soldier.
Bucky shuts his eyes, heart beating out of time. He grips the blade tightly, to ground himself, almost like a nervous habit, and now he’s aware of the way Clint’s noticed he’s stopped moving.
“Bucky?” Clint asks, from across the room, but to Bucky his words feel like they’re underwater. It’s only the two of them in there.
Bucky’s breath catches in his throat, and he feels like doubling over as pain shoots up his arm. He looks down, vaguely aware he’s done something he shouldn’t have, as blood pools in his hand and drips down his fingertips.
“Bucky,” Clint repeats, and now he’s walking over, with a concentrated look on his face, and Bucky wonders if that’s what he looks like during battle. But they’re not in battle right now. “You’re bleeding.”
No shit, Bucky wants to say, but he can’t find the words, or the breath, for it. His lungs feel inadequate, suddenly, as if every breath wasn’t enough, and didn’t pull in enough oxygen to fuel his body.
“I need to sit,” he says breathlessly, vision strained. He wonders if he’s having a stroke.
“I’ll be right back,” Clint mutters. Then he watches his rigid shape cross the room.
And then the nerves take over again, and he has to shut his eyes against another wave of nausea and spiked heartbeat.
His chest heaves as he gasps for air, squeezing his eyes shut. The nausea makes him spiral, and he feels like when your foot slips on the stairs, that moment of panic, but it’s much, much longer. He doesn’t quite know how long he stays down like that.
He comes to as Clint’s crouched next to him, white gym cloth in hand as he presses it against Bucky’s palm. They both watch as the fabric turns red.
For fear that the nausea would return, Bucky stays down, internally checking his vitals; heart rate is normal, breathing is returning, vision is crisp again. And while he still can’t shake that black, sticky feeling in his chest, it seems like he was going to be okay.
“Is it bad?” He asks, about the cut.
“It bled a lot,” Clint admits. “But you’ll be fine.”
“I heal fast,” Bucky murmurs, trying to sit up.
Clint’s got a first aid kit, too, which makes Bucky wonder how long he was under for him to be able to grab it without him noticing.
As he watches Clint carefully wrap his hand, he’s struck by his calm, yet efficient movements, probably weathered by decades in the field. Seasoned fingers wrap the tape, securing it in the right spots so nothing would be too tight.
“So,” he hears Clint say. “Are you gonna explain?”
Bucky looks up, feeling guarded suddenly. “Accident,” he murmurs.
“Yeah?”
Bucky nods, eyes moving away from Clint, ready to get out of here. He moves to get up, but suddenly feels extremely lightheaded, and sits back down and leans back against the wall, defeated.
“Yeah, you lost a lot of blood. Who knew such a tiny knife could cause so much damage?”
Bucky glances over, to where he was standing originally, and notices that all the blood’s been mopped up, and all that remains is a sheen of disinfectant spray. Jesus, Bucky was out for longer than he thought.
For a moment he wants to see exactly what he did to his hand, but he’ll heal quickly, and it doesn’t matter anyways. The damage is done.
“If you don’t want to tell me, it’s fine,” Clint says, voice serious. “But we’re partners now, at least with this mission.”
Bucky swallows, processing the implications. Clint deserves to be let in, because his life may depend on it.
“Anxiety attack,” he whispers. “It won’t happen again.”
“Okay,” Clint says, a sense of both understanding and passiveness in his words. And then he starts packing up the first aid kit, and Bucky’s almost stunned. He doesn’t know why he expected more of an interrogation, but that was it, and it was the start of a long journey in understanding how Clint Barton’s mind works.
—
Alcohol does things to Bucky’s system he’s not used to, not in seventy years. At first, he feels that warm, familiar buzz in his stomach, and benefits from the liquid courage. He has fun, until he doesn’t.
He finds himself in the restroom again, staring into his own lifeless eyes, searching for some semblance of the person he knew. He doesn’t find what he’s looking for.
Music and laughter come from behind the wall. He looks down at his hand, tracing the faint outline of the scar from a few days ago. He’s surprised it’s even still there.
He wonders, for a split second, what Steve would say about it. Would Steve call him weak, or unstable? After all, they’re both from a different era.
His face feels numb, another side effect of the beer and gin in his system.
Not wanting to continue those thoughts, he leaves the restroom, and re-enters the party.
—
Bucky’s two hands grip the cold, metal railing of the master suite balcony as he sits on the ground in front of it, staring out into the plains and forests of upstate. He’s technically not trespassing, because nobody lives in the master suite right now, and if he’s being honest sometimes he just comes here to clear his head.
The lights flick on behind Bucky, followed by a quiet, “there he is.”
He waits until the glass door is slid open and Sam and Clint both stand next to him before he turns his head.
Neither of them say anything at first, though, they just stare with some sort of look of pity which Bucky doesn’t appreciate.
“Would you guys stop?” he mutters, looking forward once again.
“Stop what?” Sam says flatly.
Bucky swallows, and shakes his head slightly.
“You’re drunk, Bucky,” says Sam.
“I’m not drunk.” His hands grip the railing harder, and he can feel his vibranium fingers make indentations in the metal. “Fuck you. I’m not drunk.”
“Okay,” Sam answers. “Fine.”
But neither of them leave. If Bucky wasn’t drunk enough to not care, it would be an awkward silence.
After about five minutes, Clint speaks up.
“Your panic attack, in the gym,” he starts, “I need to know it won’t happen in battle.”
“It won’t,” Bucky mutters, shutting his eyes.
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
Clint gives Sam a look that Bucky doesn’t care to decipher.
“At the cemetery, you said the winter soldier was still in there,” Sam says.
Bucky sets his jaw forward, readying himself for this conversation.
“Not literally,” he breathes. “He’s just… he’s a part of me, now.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Sam mutters.
“Then stop fucking asking,” Bucky snarls, cool icy exterior shattering. He looks up with an angry glare. “If you’re not going to try to understand, then don’t ask.”
“I’m asking because we’re partners,” Sam says dangerously, raising his voice. What he doesn’t say is that he needs to know if Bucky’s stable enough to do this. Bucky understands; it’s what he would do in this situation, too.
Bucky swallows, but doesn’t break eye contact. But he knew he couldn’t be pulled from this mission. Living here, spending time training and planning with the others, is the only thing keeping him sane, and he’s honestly afraid of what might happen if he truly let that dust settle. He can’t slip back into nothing again.
“Don’t tell Fury,” he says finally.
“Then you have to tell us,” says Clint.
“What good would that do?” Bucky challenges weakly, and moves to stand up.
It takes him a minute, because of the alcohol clouding his system, but once he stands, he turns back through the doorway.
—
Except he knows sleep won’t come, so instead he takes another flask of gin from the cabinet. He doesn’t quite know where to go, but sees the garden and field through the window and decides some fresh air might be nice.
The thing about alcohol, Bucky thinks as he stands in the elevator, is that it slows his thoughts and senses down just enough, and for a moment he wonders if this is what it feels like to be normal. It’s relaxing, and easy, and everything is slower and nothing matters when he’s drinking. He feels like somebody else, like he’s not Bucky, or the Winter Soldier, or anything in between. He just exists.
He takes a pull as he walks down the hallway into the first floor entryway. The burn doesn’t quite sit right in his stomach, but he’s too drunk to care, and instead wanders around the garden for a while, vision blurring.
“The fuck are you doing?”
He spins, off-tilt, and finds Clint. He looks him up and down, and in his fogged-up mind can’t help but notice the way he holds himself. He’s got a jacket on, but the definition of his arms are still somehow visible. Blue eyes meet his in the dim lantern-lit light, and they’re sharp and clear in contrast to his own.
“Gettin’ some fresh air,” he says, tongue heavy in his mouth.
Clint looks at him carefully. “You’re not cold?”
It’s then that Bucky notices the temperature, the way the air stings his skin. It seems the alcohol has kept him warm for thus long.
“I wasn’t,” he grumbles.
Clint hesitates, seeming to take in the scene, and Bucky notes the way his eyes linker on the empty flask on the ground.
“You’re not okay,” he murmurs.
“I’m fine,” Bucky snaps, pushing back. He points a finger. “You all don’t believe me.”
“Aren’t you tired of fighting?” Clint says. “You’re fighting Sam, you’re fighting me. You’re fighting yourself.”
Something burns angry in Bucky’s stomach.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” he growls, “to have so many versions of yourself, and hate them all.” The sentence feels like bile in his mouth.
“Is that why you drink?” Clint asks.
Bucky blinks, cocking his head to the side. He’s sure his face betrays his confusion, because he can’t understand how Clint isn’t pushing back. His words aren’t angry. They’re calm.
He swallows, glaring into his eyes, but doesn’t answer. He doesn’t think about the way he finds comfort in that blue, in a strange way.
“Can you fight? Can you execute a mission like this?” Clint challenges, stepping forward.
“I’ve been through worse,” Bucky says through gritted teeth.
“What does that mean?”
“I mean I’ve fought through worse. In Russia, in Germany, I— I lived through worse.” He stares Clint down. “I’m… trained for this. I know how to shut it all off. The winter soldier knows how.”
Clint doesn’t say anything, he just stares with those eyes and with some sort of sad expression that Bucky doesn’t care to place.
“I can shut it all off,” he repeats, words still slurred. He gestures to the air. “The soldier knows how to shut it off.”
“You can’t live like that,” Clint mutters.
Bucky swallows, anger boiling in his stomach again. “You haven’t been through what I have,” he spits.
Bucky can tell that Clint’s patience is wearing thin.
“Jesus, Bucky,” he growls. “This isn’t sustainable. This, what you’re doing now.”
“Oh, and you would know?” Bucky taunts, feeling dizzy on his feet.
“More than you think,” Clint warns dangerously, stepping forward again so they’re only feet apart now in the darkness of the garden.
“The hell does that mean?”
“I lived that life,” he snarls, right up in Bucky’s face now. “I did things even most criminals wouldn’t. I became someone else. Something else.” He steps back, and in his eyes Bucky sees something haunted. It makes his stomach twist. “You ever put a gun in your mouth? Tasted metal and gunpowder?”
Bucky’s stomach twists more, and it feels like his heart is in his throat. He nods.
There’s silence for a minute before Bucky internalizes this conversation. All of a sudden, the fight inside him goes out. Because Clint’s right; he’s tired of fighting, of pushing everyone away. He never pushed Steve away, so maybe he can do the same with somebody else.
Steve. What would he say if he could see him now, like this?
Tears sting Bucky’s eyes, and he quickly turns around, shaking his head and lifting his hands to his face. The vibranium hand is cold just like the air outside, and it’s another reminder of the versions of himself he never wants to live again.
“Bucky,” Clint calls, but he can tell he’s not following him.
Fear wells up in Bucky’s chest, because he realizes that Clint and Sam are right. He can’t do a mission like this, scared of the people he once was, and scared to slip back into being the soldier, but also relying on him to get him through it. He’s a walking hypocrisy.
“Fuck,” he spits, as tears start to fall. He wipes desperately, but they’re replaced just as quickly. If he’s being honest, he’s sobering up pretty fast.
Clint’s unlocked some memories Bucky had stashed away somewhere deep in the hopes he’d never feel this way again. He thinks about the pain of that first night after the war with Thanos, as he held a gun up to his temple with shaking hands, when nothing felt right even after they won. When something settled deep in his stomach, a twisted fear that honestly hasn’t gone away in all the months since.
The thinks about the time he was in Bucharest, or the version of himself that was there, and the way he’d taken all the pills he could find and chased it all with a bottle of vodka because learning who he’d been for all those years was just too difficult. It should have been enough to kill any mortal man.
He’s so acutely aware of that dark feeling now, the one that’s always sort of there, the one that he so desperately tries to distract himself from. Clint’s opened it up, exposed him, and now Bucky has nowhere else to look.
Suddenly, his body feels so heavy that he falls to the ground, crouching in the middle of the pathway as tears track down his cheeks. He stretches his t-shirt so it’s over his face.
Somewhere, in the corner of his mind, he knows how pathetic he looks. He just can’t find it in him to care enough, and besides, he’s sure Clint has seen worse. They’ve all seen worse.
After a while, after the tears have stopped and his chest has stopped heaving and his mind has stopped reeling, he’s aware of Clint’s presence, quietly sitting next to him in the middle of the path. Bucky’s almost shocked, because he knows he’s been here for a while because he feels pretty sober now.
“You stayed,” Bucky whispers, but can’t bring himself to look up.
Clint shrugs. “Nowhere else to be.”
Bucky swallows, trying to pull the shattered fragments of himself together, trying to remember what it was that he said in the beginning of the conversation, while the alcohol still had its grip on him.
“Are you okay?” Clint murmurs.
Bucky nods. He continues to breath deeply for a while, and swallow around that stone that’s lodged it’s way into his throat.
“Do you want to talk to me about it?”
It’s only then that Bucky looks up, and his eyes meet Clint’s. They’re such a beautiful shade of blue, Bucky thinks. He catches himself, but keeps staring.
“About what?” He asks finally. He knows how wrecked his voice sounds.
“Anything. Whatever you’re thinking.”
“I despise every version of myself,” Bucky says plainly, staring back at Clint. “I hate the soldier, but he’s a part of me now. I can feel him in there, trying to get me to become like him again.”
“Jesus,” Clint mutters, rubbing his forehead. “What does that mean?”
Bucky realizes he’s scaring him.
“Not like… a killer,” he backtracks quickly. “Just that he was so unfeeling. So numb and jaded. That’s what I’m scared I’m becoming.”
Clint seems to relax. “And you don’t want to be jaded.”
“I went to Steve’s grave the other day. And I told him all of this.”
“And?”
“He had nothing to say.”
Both of them sit there for a moment, in an uneasy silence, before breaking out in laughter. It’s short-lived, but it cleared some of that ice.
Bucky looks at Clint as they laugh, and he stares in awe at the way he looks when he’s happy. It’s like his entire face changes, from tense to relaxed in one instant. It makes something feel warm in the pit of his stomach, and he tries not to think too hard about what that might mean.
“But seriously. I never felt more alone than that, because I realized he only exists in my mind now. He will never have anything else to say. No words of encouragement or advice. Just nothing.”
“I get it,” Clint sighs after a minute.
Bucky knows he does.
They talk for a while longer, into the late hours of the night, and the topic starts to veer away from Bucky and his problems and towards just life in general.
But Bucky wasn’t interested in that. He was interested in the way Clint holds himself, how he speaks in a self-deprecating way but still manages to look dignified, how he’s both bold and humble. He notices the little inflections in Clint’s voice, the things that make him unique.
And yet— Bucky knows he still hasn’t cracked the code. Clint seemed to be an enigma, with many layers, and while he’d peeled open the first few, he knows there’s something there that’s buried deep down. Why did he care so much about Bucky, enough to sit here in the cold for hours on end, through the drunkenness and anger and fighting?
None of it made any sense. He studies Clint’s face, the scars and imperfections and colors and everything, as he speaks about missions back in the old days of SHIELD. And in that moment, he decided he didn’t really care about the fact he couldn’t understand Clint. He was just grateful he was here.