Chapter 2
Bucky travels with Wanda studiously ignoring him from the driver’s seat. Apart from the occasional sideways glance, or the odd mumble their journey remains relatively uneventful. They had been driving for just under two hours to an unknown destination. Bucky wants to ask where they are headed but soon opts against it. She takes a sharp left turn without bothering to slow down and the wheels bump alarmingly across scrubland before settling onto the narrow strip of tarmac that winds ahead of them. Every few moments the road would dip suddenly causing the car to jolt its way violently across the multitude of potholes and cracks. It made Bucky feel quite sick. Wanda eases off the accelerator as the first houses begin to appear. Eventually he spots a weathered signpost at the roadside, its cracked face strangled with weeds making it impossible to read the name.
Before he’d even registered it, Wanda hits the brakes, stops and abandons the car halfway up the road, leaving Bucky alone. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he steps out of the vehicle and into the quiet space of this grey, cloudy morning. The wind nips at the back of his neck and sends a shiver down his body. He pulls out his phone to check their location but there’s no signal. It was strange, given how many houses there were in this region, that there wouldn’t be any connection.
He huffs, stuffing the phone back into his pocket before turning slowly on his heel to survey the area. He was met with an array of sizeable houses lined up next to each other on either side of the road, stretching far beyond where he could see. Judging by its scale he presumed there to be at least a thousand people living here, though that didn’t seem to be the case. Bucky felt a dreary atmosphere hanging densely above this curiously lifeless town. He couldn’t even identify so much as a flicker of movement in the windows.
Bucky shakes his head and strides the few yards to catch up with Wanda who has taken a particular interest in one house.
“Where are we?” He asks folding his arms across his chest in an attempt to preserve body heat.
There’s a lengthy pause and then, just at the point at which he decides he’ll have to break the silence, she answers. “We needed to find a concealed area if we wanted to do this.”
Concealed? How was this place concealed? It wasn’t like there were any fences surrounding the town. People could enter and leave as they wished. Then again, it does agitate him that he still hasn’t caught sight of anyone yet.
“Come on,” she says moving forward, “I know a way in.”
The front door of the house is locked but Wanda seems to know there’s a side entrance round the back. It makes Bucky wonder whether she’s been here before. The door swings open with a loud creak and with it the slight smell of damp. Bucky’s eyebrows crease in confusion, as well as disgust. The expectations that its exterior had given him quickly dissolved as he hears glass crack beneath his boots. He considers telling Wanda that they’re still breaking into someone’s house, though as he negotiates his way through the rubble he concludes that it was in fact abandoned. How long had it been like this? Were the other houses just as neglected as this one?
The corridor they’re in leads off to a set of stairs or to the left, to what looks like the remains of a living room. Bucky’s glad Wanda chooses to head into the living room rather than up the stairs. Who knows how long that rotting wood would be able to maintain their combined weight.
Upon entering Bucky trips on something, dislodging a pile of newspapers which slide to the ground with a thump. He glances down, turning his head to read the title on the front page:
‘Whole town disappears without a trace. Effects of the blip? Or more?’
He stares at the wrinkled print, trying to make sense of it.
“Not the nicest place is it?”
He turns to find Wanda crossing the room, a worn out chair tucked comfortably under her arm.
“Not particularly.”
Her lips curl up in a slight smirk as she settles the chair down in the centre of the room.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Wanda says, circling round to his field of vision, “about Steve. Why do you want to go through all of this when you’ve still got him?”
Bucky’s face drops. He has been expecting this question, or something like it, ever since he joined her in the car earlier. But now it’s here, the question settles heavily on his chest and he struggles to find an answer.
Wanda folds her arms. She’s watching closely, looking for some reaction.
“He has his own plans.”, he replies finally, looking around the room in search of something to focus his attention on instead of Wanda. “When he returns the stones...he’s staying behind.”
“Oh.”
“You know,” he pushes on, regardless of his emotions beginning to take hold, “I thought that after all these years...after everything we’ve been through he’d want to stay. I mean-,” he chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief, “he just got me back. He just got everyone back and now he wants to leave.” Bucky straightens up and moves away, leans against the peeling wall and lets out a wavering breath, trying to regain control of his emotions. “But I guess he made up his mind a long time ago.”
***
He can still see the look on Steve’s face as he came to sit with him the night before Tony’s funeral. The way his lips pulled tightly in discomfort told him, even before the words left his mouth, that this was going to be a difficult conversation for both of them.
They sit in silence, neither of them having the courage to meet each others eyes. Bucky breathes heavily through his nose, his eyes narrowing as he watches Steve’s fingers begin to play a silent drumbeat on his thigh.
“Just say it.” He croaks.
“What?” The tempo of his drumming coming to a stop.
“Come on, Steve, don’t take me for some kind of idiot. I saw the look on your face the minute you walked into the room.”
Steve nods, his body relaxing as if he’d just successfully broken the news. Bucky’s on the other hand, continued to strain as he waited for the inevitable. Steve swallows and shifts in his chair. “I’ve volunteered to take back the stones,” he begins slowly, “It’ll be quite a difficult task.” But that’s not enough for Bucky and he knows that. He won’t lie about this. “I’m…going to stay in the 40s. With Peggy.”
Peggy. The dark haired damsel he’d met for the first time in the bar.
Bucky is silent for a moment and seems to be considering his words carefully. “I guess you can finally take her dancing then,” he says quietly, “Not that you ever really learned how to though.” He hears Steve release a breathy chuckle, perhaps relieved their conversation took a lighthearted turn.
“I’m not that bad Buck-“
“That’s not how I remember it,” he says cutting him off, looking up at him for the first time. “Even I couldn’t teach you to stop stepping on my feet.”
“You remember that?” Steve is floored. He didn’t realise Bucky still had memories like those, but he supposes Shuri had worked extensively with him while he was recovering in Wakanda. It’s just…it never occurred to him that he would be able to recall something so intimate between them.
“I remember a lot more than you think, Steve.”
***
Seconds tick into minutes as Wanda pieces together the man she is dealing with. She knew some things about Steve’s past with Bucky, mostly from the Smithsonian and their brief conversation after what happened in Lagos. She saw how much Bucky meant to Steve and now, as she watches the soldier breakdown in front of her, she realises just how much Steve means to Bucky too.
The sound of shifting feet and a sniff catches her attention, and she blinks her eyes back into focus. Bucky wipes the tear tracks from his cheeks.
“You want me to sit in the chair?”
She nods, brushing aside her own tears.
“You’re still okay with me getting inside your head to do this right?” Wanda asks softly, as he sits down.
“Don’t worry, I’m used to people messing around with my mind.” He replies, trying to mask his anxiety with a sarcastic response.
What will she see? Will he have control? Is this even going to work?
“I know what it’s like,” she says suddenly, “Feeling…completely alone. Empty. Just this…endless nothingness.”
Their eyes lock. Bucky turns away first but does so slowly, not a defeat so much as a tactical withdrawal.
He clears his throat after a moment, settling down further into the chair. “Should we start then?” It was more of an order than a question. She nods and moves to stand by his right.
“I need you to relax,” she explains. “It’s clear that there are several walls of trauma that I need to get past in order to create this reality for you. It could hurt-“
“Just do what you have to do.”
Bucky knows worrying about it won’t do him any good. The pain will be worth it if he can finally have the life he was meant to have with Natasha.
He focuses ahead of him until he sees red wisps fill his vision. They fly from every angle, merging and mixing with one another. He could feel her energy taking hold of his mind. It was a strange sensation, unpleasant but nothing like how Hydra used get inside his head.
On second thoughts, maybe this was worse.
He starts to become disorientated, his fists clenching, fingernails stabbing hard into his palms while his metal arm whirls from discomfort. The pain in his head intensifies. He can’t see anything. Just dark shapes and then dull flickers of light. Bucky staggers, tripping over himself, landing abruptly against what he believed to be a counter. When had he gotten up? He grunts heavily and briefly closes his eyes in an attempt to regain control of his limbs. Was this how it was supposed to feel?
He’d only just managed to shift into an upright position when his head explodes. He lurches backwards and falls in slow motion towards the damp carpet. He expects a hard landing but instead he feels his body sink through the floor. His arms feel heavy, like slabs of concrete. He tries to speak but the words coming out of his mouth fail to register above the ringing noise hammering relentlessly at his eardrums.
His body remains paralysed as he continues to descend, the pain unbearable now. It’s getting darker, the light from this morning fades around him. He sees the distant glow of red eyes looking down on him and then after that there is nothing. Just darkness.