Control is a strange concept for Bucky. In his 106 year life, his relationship with it has been fraught. Sometimes it has been the bane of his existence. Other times he has wanted it so badly, he felt like he was losing his mind.
His relationship with Control was circular, not linear. It always led back to the other thing. He would lose it, and want it. But once he had it ... it lost its appeal.
++
As the Winter Soldier he had no control. Over any aspect of his life. They decided when he woke, when he slept, when he ate, when he did a shit.
(Seriously. His toilet breaks were timed and scheduled, like a goddamn housebroken dog.)
He wonders sometimes, if there were any parts of the real Bucky present during those years, would he have fought to regain control? Or would he have slipped back under, knowing that it was better to not have to deal with his actions? If he had been afforded control, even a tiny bit, how could he have continued to live with himself?
How could he have lived with all the things he had to do?
The lives he took?
The bones he broke and knives he plunged into living people. Into their flesh and bone bodies. Their blood coated his hands, his face, dried in his hair, stung his eyes. So much blood, he could have drowned in it.
How does a man deal with that?
No, he sure as fuck wouldn’t have wanted to have to deal with that stuff while he was doing it.
It is bad enough dealing with it now, decades after the fact.
++
Now. Now he has control. He is fully in control.
(Well, there was a grey period there, when he had a little control, just a smidge, but it kept flitting away every so often, thanks to the psychopathic asshole whose plane he was currently sitting in, and isn’t that the most fucked up thing you’ve ever heard?)
But now, he is his own man.
For the first time in decades.
Now he has an apartment and a phone - that he carries in his pocket thankyouverymuch - and a therapist who likes to tell him all the time that he is In Control, that he is Free.
To do what, exactly, he isn’t sure.
Because he is, after all, a 106 year old man, with a metal arm, and a Brooklyn apartment and a head full of the most fucked up kind of shit you could imagine. And that kind of stuff doesn’t play well, you know, on first dates.
A 106 year old man who sleeps on the hardwood floors in his apartment because the bed is too soft and it reminds him of drowning.
A 106 year old man who engages in self-flagellation by befriending the elderly father of one of the many (formerly) nameless people he killed.
A 106 year old man who feels so utterly, utterlyuseless; out of time and directionless and pointless in this post-whatever-war-they-are-up-to world.
But control is the goal and he has it all. He can do what he damn well wants. So, with this newfound control, he chooses to dive headfirst back into yet another fight.
Do what you know, right?
And on top of that, he decides his sparkling return to criminality will be orchestrating the jail break of the man who wrestled away the first gasping breaths of control in 90 years.
++
The words don’t work. He tried them and they did nothing.
No. A Lie.
If he’s honest, they scared the living shit out of him, they made him taste bile at the back of his mouth, they made him want to hyperventilate because he felt like his throat was closing over ... but aside from that stuff: totally fine.
Zemo assures him it was not “personal”, that he was a “means to an end.” He is dubious, at best, about that, but gives him the benefit of the doubt, because they really do need him. And yes, the cars, the plane, the title .. the fucking coat, it’s all a bit much, to be quite honest, and when they reach cruising altitude he feels his stomach flip-flop, knowing that Zemo is watching him.
Appraising him with those cool eyes.
Knowing that he once held the power.
That he is still powerful.
Men like him can be sitting in a high security prison cell and still ooze power, safe in the knowledge that money and charm and intellectual needling will get them where they need to be in life.
So Bucky reminds himself; you’re in control. You made this decision.
But now Zemo’s taking about Madripoor, and disguises, and Bucky becoming someone he claims is gone ... and his heart starts to race.
Controlcontrolcontrol. You are in control.
++
This was a terrible idea.
He cannot remain in control in this situation. It’s too much, it’s too heady a combination. The bar, the people, the music, the smell; alcohol and sex and weed. The grit of coke on the floor. The shady shit happening in the corner.
The leathers he’s wearing.
The illicitness of it all.
“Ready to comply, Winter Soldier?”
It’s all threatening to tip him over the edge. He barely has a handle on it. He can clench his jaw and glare around him all he wants, but that creepy-crawly feeling is itching under his skin and it’s frying his nerve endings, stretching his tenuous grip on himself, like an elastic band pulled too tight.
Everything is too much.
He sees the guy coming before Zemo even opens his mouth to speak, and when he does?
Good god, it is a relief.
This, he knows.He’s able to lose himself, to do what he knows. What he does best.
It’s a brief reprieve from having to exercise self-restraint. That, is exhausting, but this, this is easy. It’s fluid. It makes sense.
Bones crunch, tables break, glass shatters, blood splatters.
He can’t get drunk. But he remembers what it is like. That blurry feeling, where everything is nicely smudged around the edges.
That’s what fighting is. It smooths out the sharp edges of his life.
So it is horrifying when that brief respite is broken and he is hauled out into harsh daylight, and Sam’s hand is on him, and he has that look on his face, and it fucking guts him because Sam is so good. He’s so good, inherently good, like Steve was, and he cares so goddamn much about him (like he is worth a single shit) and it turns Bucky’s stomach that Sam thinks that this is hard for him.
That it’s something he doesn’t feel comfortable with.
That it’s something he doesn’t crave.
He glances around him, blinking the blurry edges away, and sees Zemo, a reverent smile on his face, the sick fuck, and the assembled crowd of bar-goers and, Jesus-fucking-Christ, their phones out, filming him. Those fucking phones he swears to god.
“Stay in character, or the whole bar turns on us.”
His breath comes in short puffs, now. He is in limbo, halfway between the duality of self.
Fighting fighting fighting.
All his life, fighting.
But never like this.
This is exhausting.
And it becomes infinitely worse when he is pushed down another corridor of shitty memories, as he’s being offered up as a piece of meat for Selby. Muscle memory is an insane thing, the way it works. Words can trigger, at least, they used to. But the tactile component of his past is far more ... visceral.
Zemo’s presence, so close, his voice in his ear, the accent, the cool, rough hand down his face.
Fucking all of it.
It’s all too much.
He is barely holding on, barely keeping it together. Gritting his jaw so hard he’s surprised he hasn’t cracked a tooth.
And he is hard, so hard and straining against the seam of his pants, and he knows they can see it. The whole fucking room, and he’s ashamed, yes.
Mostly because Sam can see it.
But in his brain, shame and violence and arousal are all mixed up, rewired after decades of re-education and forced compliance and he’s so insanely strung out that he is about to blow his load in his pants right here and now -
Until Selby gets shot.
And he gets back to working with his fists, only now he’s doing it with a raging erection, and god-fucking-dammit if that doesn’t just solidify how utterly hopeless he is. How far gone.
(How could he even have thought he could try internet dating? How to explain that particular quirk on his, thing, whatever they call it. Jesus Christ what an utter shitshow.)
++
He is practically vibrating on the ride back to Sharon’s apartment, he’s sure the two men can feel it coming off him in waves.
She shows him a closet full of clothes that fit him, and he stands in the empty room, stripped of the leathers, sweat cooling on his back, contemplating what he could break with his bare hands that would be the easiest to explain away as accidental, when he hears a soft rap at the door. He doesn’t answer.
Sam would come in anyway.
But of course, it’s not Sam.
He turns wordlessly to see Zemo standing in front of him. He can’t muster up the energy to glare at him.
He knows he’d see through it anyway.
He supposes he should be grateful the man isn’t wearing his usual shit-eating grin.
But he’s not sure whether this withering look of pity makes him feel any better.
Probably worse.
“You’re tired, James.”
Definitely worse.
“Self-control is tiring. Especially for one who has been ... looked after ... as you have been, for so long.”
His shoulders bunch tighter, up around his ears.
“I can help, of course. If that is something you want,” Zemo gestures with his hand in a roundabout way.
“I don’t need you,” he growls, “I’m not.. into that.”
“No, of course not. I’m not talking about giving you physical gratification, James. I’m offering you something more..” he pauses, searching for the right word, “.. mentally stimulating.”
He knows Zemo knows. It’s in the fucking book, in black and white.
Shuri managed to remove the activation words. Longing, daybreak .. all that shit.
There were hundreds of words with thousands of of uses.
At that point he was too ashamed to admit that particular part of his conditioning. So they were left untouched.
But .. they’re just words, right?
Just words.
Just a few words for a few moments of blissful subservience, where he doesn’t have to be in control, where he can just listen and obey?
He nods.
His relationship with Control was circular, not linear. It always led back to the other thing.