Bucky Barnes Part One
Bucky Barnes woke up quickly, because he always did these days. He swung his legs over the side of his bed and took deep breaths for a moment, letting the dream fade back into his subconscious. There was a knock on his door.
“What?” he called, irritated.
“I just wondered when you were going to be ready. We need to leave soon,” Kendra called.
“I’ll be out soon,” Bucky promised, standing and rubbing at his eyes.
He heard her footsteps depart, smelled the coffee she must have brewed while he’d been asleep. He let himself have another few minutes to breath, then he got up, got ready, and walked out to the kitchen where Kendra was cradling a cup of coffee at his small table. He poured his own cup of coffee and sat next to her. He was hungry, but he wasn’t supposed to eat anything until after the surgery because they were worried it would make him sick. He sipped the bitter coffee until the cup was empty, rinsed it out and set it in the sink. Kendra was already finished with hers, and she rinsed her cup out and set it beside his before turning to him.
“Ready?” she asked.
Bucky nodded. Rings of reddish gold light washed over Kendra, and then she stood before him in ghost form. Scarlett. She offered him a hand.
“May I?” she asked.
He nodded, placed his hand in hers, let her pull him flush against her body. Slowly, she floated up off the ground, holding onto him tightly, her chest pressed to his back.
“Okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Bucky agreed, quietly.
“Good, cause I don’t wanna be late,” she answered.
Then, in the blink of an eye, a green swirling portal opened up in front of them and Scarlett flew them into it. They moved through a dizzying series of portals, until they exited the swirling green of the Realms for a gorgeous city. The buildings were sleek and well designed, but there were trees and grass and dirt roads throughout the whole place. The view from above, where they were, was breathtaking. Bucky let the scenery wash over him, grateful for his enhanced eyesight in that moment. Scarlett, holding onto him from behind, laughed joyfully.
“I love this city,” she sighed, happily. “Welcome to Birnin Zana, the capital city of Wakanda.”
Bucky whistled in appreciation as they approached what he assumed was the palace. They flew closer, then Scarlett slowly stopped and turned them so their feet were towards the ground. She lowered them slowly, spinning around in one full circle, probably for dramatic effect. They landed softly in front of the huge doors of the Palace, and Scarlett stepped back from Bucky, walked around to stand next to him.
The huge doors swung open and Danny, in ghost form, flew out.
“Scarlett! Bucky!” he called, waving, even as he approached them.
That was definitely the kid Bucky remembered, but who would, apparently, not remember him.
“Hey,” Scarlett said, once Danny was close enough, and opened her arms.
Danny slammed into her with such force that for a moment Bucky was worried she was going to fall over backwards. But, both being ghosts, they just drifted backwards in the air a few centimeters. Scarlett spun Danny around once, and he laughed the same, joyous laugh that Scarlett herself had done when they were above the city. Bucky wondered, with no small amount of guilt, how long they had been separated because of him.
Danny pulled away from Scarlett and turned to Bucky, still grinning wildly. He held out a hand.
“I’m Phantom,” he introduced.
Bucky shook his hand. “Bucky,” he offered, feeling dazed.
When he met Danny before, well, for Danny it was in the future, but for Bucky it was in the past, his introduction had been very different. He’d been in human form, for one, and he had been much more timid. Hadn’t offered a hand, just waved a little, nearly whispered his name when Bucky had asked. Once they got to know each other, Danny had been a bubbly, excitable, confident kid. Who, it seemed, Bucky was seeing now.
Bucky was thrown out of his musings by two more people walking out of the Palace. A man and a teenage girl walked out, side by side. They reached Bucky, and the teenage girl offered a hand.
“I’m Shuri,” she introduced.
“Bucky.”
The man beside her turned to Bucky. “I am King T’Challa of Wakanda. Welcome.”
“Um, thank you,” Bucky answered, awkwardly.
“Don’t mind my brother,” Shuri dismissed. “Come with Phantom and I,” she ordered, turning on her heel.
Phantom floated after her as Scarlett and T’Challa started a conversation behind them. Bucky followed the teenagers through winding Palace halls until they ended up in a high tech lab.
“Knowing Scarlett, I’m assuming she didn’t actually tell you in detail what we’re going to do?” Danny asked, turning to Bucky.
“She said you could get the trigger words out of my head,” Bucky offered, forcing himself not to fidget.
“We can,” Shuri confirmed.
“It won’t be easy. It will be unpleasant, uncomfortable, probably painful,” Danny added, watching Bucky with his piercing green eyes.
“I can handle pain,” Bucky answered, face carefully blank.
“Alright then. Sit on the table there, and let’s begin,” Shuri spoke up, pointing to a metal table in the middle of the room.
Bucky suppressed a shiver at the sight of it, the sleek gleaming metal bringing up memories of things he’d rather forget. He walked over on wooden legs and sat on the edge of the table.
Danny walked over, his feet finally touching the ground, and stood in front of Bucky, at eye level.
“Did Scarlett give you any details?” he asked.
“Just said it would involve brain surgery and that you were helping because you had steady hands, even though you don’t know much about neurology,” Bucky recited.
“Ah,” Danny said, then paused, obviously trying to figure out how to phrase whatever he wanted to say next. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. I can’t fault Scarlett, because she didn’t really know all the details. I’m here because I’m a ghost more than anything else. I can, quite literally, get inside your head and figure out what the trigger words are and what they do to you on a very intimate level. And knowing that is essential to getting them out of your head. That part is Shuri’s job. And, yeah, she’s probably going to have to do brain surgery. Which will undoubtedly be painful, and you’ll need to be still. The kind of stillness that really only happens when someone is unconscious. But we don’t have anything strong enough to sedate you, we already know that. That’s also why I’m here.”
Bucky felt his heart speeding up without his permission. He couldn’t breathe. The idea of someone in his head, knowing what he was thinking, what he was feeling, being that helpless-
“-in two three four and out two three four, in two three four...”
Danny’s voice was calm and steady, his eyes locked on Bucky’s. One of Danny’s hands was on Bucky's chest and one of Bucky’s hands was on Danny’s chest and Bucky was following along with his steady, intentional breaths without really thinking about it.
“Good, good,” Danny murmured a few minutes later, when Bucky’s breathing had steadied and his heart had slowed down to a more reasonable pace. “You’re alright, you’re safe, you’re okay.”
Bucky realized he was just staring at Danny, eyes wide. Danny was smiling at him, just a little upturn of lips, the skin around his eyes tight with anxiety.
“Can you tell me five things you can see?” Danny asked, voice impossibly gentle.
Bucky looked around, feeling disoriented. “Um, you. Shuri. The walls. The ceiling. Lab equipment.”
“Good, that’s good. You’re alright, you’re safe. How about four things you can touch?”
“You, the table, my clothes, the air on my skin,” Bucky listed, realizing that the lost and disoriented feeling was fading.
“Yeah, great, so great. You’re in Wakanda, you’re safe, you’re alright. Three things you can hear?” Danny asked, and Bucky was beginning to feel like a little kid with the way Danny was talking to him but at the same time he was grateful because it made him feel better.
“You talking, my heartbeat, Shuri working.”
“Perfect. You’re safe. Two things you can smell?”
“Cleaning stuff and antiseptic.”
“Good. Everything’s alright, you’re safe. One thing you can taste?”
“Metal.”
“Perfect. You’re safe,” Danny repeated, for the millionth time. He used one finger to tilt Bucky’s chin up where Bucky had dropped it against his chest at some point, making their eyes meet.
“Better?” Danny asked, softly, his free hand still on Bucky’s chest.
Bucky just stared at him for a moment. “I think so,” he said, haltingly, and his tongue felt like sandpaper inside his mouth. “What the hell was that?” he followed up.
Danny sighed, shifted so he was sitting next to Bucky on the table, their sides pressed together. “Panic attack. They happen, when you have a lot of trauma especially.”
“I didn’t...I couldn’t breathe,” Bucky reiterated, his heart speeding up again.
“I know. You’re alright now, just take a deep breath,” Danny answered, picking up one of Bucky’s hands where it had dropped on his lap and intertwining their fingers. Danny’s hand was icy, and somehow that helped more than anything else, let Bucky take a deep breath in and out.
“Shuri, could you get him some water, please?” Danny asked, nodding his head sideways at Bucky.
“Of course,” Shuri agreed, her voice soft, and walked off.
Danny turned his head to look at Bucky. Bucky turned his head to look at Danny right back.
“I know this is scary,” Danny started. “You don’t have to admit it, but I’ve dealt with more than enough terrifying things in my life to understand. I know the idea of losing control is probably what set you off, not the pain. You’ve dealt with a lot of pain, but losing control, someone being in your head, taking away your choices? Yeah, I get that that’s its own particular brand of hell. And it really sucks that in your situation things have to get worse on that front before they can get better.”
When Bucky didn’t say anything else, Danny took a deep breath and continued.
“But I want you to know you’re safe with me. I won’t lie that it will suck, but I’m going to make it as quick and painless as I can. I’m not going to dig any deeper than I absolutely have to to make sure we get the trigger words out of your head. I’m not going to care what I see or what I learn. I’m not going to tell anyone your secrets. But the less you trust me, the harder this is going to be for both of us. If you let me in willingly it will be so much easier. I don’t want to have to work my way past your mental defences. I will if I have to, but that would just make this entire thing so much worse in general. So do you think you can trust me? Let me in? Even just a little bit?” Danny asked, his eyes wide and imploring.
“Yeah,” Bucky said, softly, thinking of all the things this kid had done for him already. “I can do that.”
Danny smiled at him, a little sadly, squeezed the hand he was still holding.
“I’m glad,” he nearly whispered.
Bucky didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. Danny didn’t seem to mind. They sat in silence for a moment. Shuri came back and handed Bucky a large glass of water. He thanked her quietly, and she just nodded and went back to whatever she was doing. Bucky drank the water slowly, grateful that it washed the metal taste out of his mouth and made his tongue stop feeling like sandpaper. They were quiet for a while longer, the only sounds being Bucky and Shuri breathing and whatever Shuri was working with clinking quietly.
“Are you ready, Bucky?” Danny asked.
Bucky took a deep breath and nodded. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Alright,” Danny agreed, voice still soft. He squeezed Bucky’s hand one last time and then released it, floating off the table silently. “Go ahead and lay back on the table, please.”
Bucky took another deep breath and turned, pulling his legs up onto the table and laying back. He could tell his body was taut as a wire, every muscle protesting the arrangement.
“Breathe,” Danny soothed, squeezing Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s alright, we’ll start slow. I need you to try and relax. Take some deep breaths. We won’t do anything until you’re ready.”
“What’s first?” Bucky asked, trying to let himself relax.
“We need to know the trigger words,” Danny began, sounding like a professor giving a lecture, except his voice was smooth, soft, echoing that weird amount that ghost’s voices tended to do. Bucky had never quite been able to place his accent when he was in ghost form. “So I’ll overshadow you, which means I’ll essentially go into your mind and look for what we need. Physically, I won’t have any control over you. You’ll be able to move and breathe and exist normally. Mentally, you need to trust me. Let me in. I’ll be going through your memories, and it might take me some time to figure out where to start. Once I do that, it might take me quite a bit of time to make sure I’ve found all the trigger words. I’ll be bringing up your memories, your experiences, and basically reliving them. Depending on the memory, you might end up seeing bits and pieces of it while I’m accessing it, or reliving it with me. More often, I’ll get into memories that you might not have known you had, either because they were traumatic or because you were very young. It’s common that while I’m looking through your memories for trigger words, you’ll experience completely separate memories that my exploration has brought to your mind’s attention. Do you understand?”
Bucky was quiet for a moment, letting the words wash over him like the tide, waiting for the lingering echo of Danny’s voice to die down. Then he gave himself another moment of quiet to make sure he was really comprehending it.
“I understand,” he finally said, softly.
“Alright,” Danny said. “Are you ready?”
Bucky waited a long time to answer. Neither Danny nor Shuri interrupted.
“I’m ready now.”
“Okay,” Danny said, softly. “I’m going to overshadow you, and then I’m going to give you a minute before I start digging around. I’ve never experienced this from your point of view, but I’ve been told it can be unsettling or uncomfortable.”
“Alright, go ahead. I’m ready.”
Danny nodded and floated up over Bucky, his back towards Bucky’s chest. Bucky’s breath hitched.
“Remember to breathe, Bucky. This will feel cold for a moment,” Danny said.
Bucky forced his breathing to even out. Danny’s form lowered until they were almost touching, then he seemed to disappear. Not even a second later, Bucky felt a wave of extreme cold pass over his body and he shivered. Then everything seemed to settle, and for a moment there was complete silence.
“Breathe, Bucky,” Danny chided, except he didn’t say it out loud.
Because he was in Bucky’s head. It was clearly his voice, though it sounded human when he was in Bucky’s head like this. Bucky choked back a hysterical laugh.
“Breathe,” Danny insisted.
Bucky realized there was black encroaching on his vision, so he gulped in air. Danny waited quietly, a buzz in the back of Bucky’s head, until Bucky got his breathing under control.
“ I’m going to start looking through your memories now,” he told Bucky.
“Okay,” Bucky whispered, out loud.
“Relax. Let me in. I’m not going to hurt you.”
It was only then that Bucky realized how tense he was, both literally and metaphorically. He took more deep breaths, relaxed, and tried to focus on the fact that this was Danny, who had only ever been kind to him.
“Good. That’s right, you’re alright, you’re safe.”
For an indeterminate amount of time, nothing seemed to happen. Then, there was something. Bucky had been braced for HYDRA, for pain, for triggers words and torture. But he knew as soon as the memory started that it wasn’t that.
He was outside, in an alleyway. Saving Steve again, for what was probably the millionth time, he thought. Except when he’d beaten the bully and turned to Steve, he recognized the memory. The split lip Steve had, the horrendous oversized flannel, the defiance in his eyes as he stared up at Bucky.
“What were you doing, getting yourself in the middle of that, kid?” Bucky had asked.
Steve’s expression grew even stormier, if that was possible. “I’m not a kid,” he asserted.
Bucky had chuckled, ruffled his hair. “Sure you’re not,” he’d agreed.
Steve had smacked his hand away. “Go home, kid, before you get yourself in more trouble,” Bucky had dismissed.
He recalled, reliving the memory, that he hadn’t been much more than a kid himself. Grade school, he thought, early grade school. But Steve had seemed so much younger, then, small and sickly.
“My name is Steve, not ‘kid’,” memory Steve grumbled.
In the memory, Bucky softened. “I’m Bucky. Do you need an ice pack for that lip?”
“No,” Steve had protested, pouting, even though his lip was swollen and he clearly needed an ice pack.
“That’s a yes,” Bucky argued, grabbing Steve’s arm and pulling him out of the alley.
“Jerk,” memory Steve mumbled.
“Punk,” Bucky shot right back.
The memory faded, and something deep inside Bucky ached terribly at having seen Steve again, but not quite seen him. He knew Steve was alive. He knew he was alive. He also knew that neither of them were the stubborn kids they’d been in that memory.
There were more memories, for a while. When Steve’s mother had died and he’d cried into Bucky’s chest for days, coughing and wheezing through his asthma attacks while Bucky held the inhaler and petted his hair. Steve’s face when Bucky had, in a moment of weakness, carried him like a bride over the threshold into their teeny tiny new Brooklyn apartment. Bucky’s own shock when, a moment later, Steve had smashed their lips together for the first time. When Bucky had first seen Steve after the serum, half convinced he was dreaming as his best friend and so much more than that lugged him out of the HYDRA base. Bucky’s spike of fear and anxiety when he saw Steve and Peggy interact for the first time. The night that followed, with him and Steve wrapped in each other’s arms and Steve whispering reassurances into his hair. More nights like that, after missions, Steve holding onto him under the stars, the other members of their team asleep on the other side of the fire. The stolen moments during the war, after a close call, with one or the other of them pressed against a tree, bodies tangled together.
Then, suddenly, the memories were gone. Danny was looking down at him with that same sort of sad smile he’d been giving Bucky all day long.
“I got what I needed,” he explained.
“Oh,” Bucky agreed, quietly, not knowing what else to say. “What next?”
“Brain surgery,” Shuri answered.
“Fun,” Bucky deadpanned.
“Obviously,” Shuri agreed.
“Okay, but in all seriousness,” Danny interrupted. “Shuri and I need to talk for a little bit so I can get her up to speed on what’s happening in your head, and then brain surgery.”
“He is right,” Shuri agreed.
Danny turned back to Bucky. “Is there anyone you want to call while we’re talking? Anyone that might help you calm down?”
Bucky considered the question. His knee jerk reaction was Steve, but he didn’t think he was ready to face Steve yet. And, as far as he knew, there really wasn’t anyone else.
“No.”
Danny nodded, seeming to have expected this. “Alright, that’s fine. Hey, do you like dogs?”
“...yes?”
Danny and Shuri exchanged a look, then Danny stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. It was high pitched and piercing and, Bucky was sure, higher than a normal human could even hear. A moment later, a small portal opened and a little green ghost dog flew out, right into Danny’s face, yipping excitedly.
Danny laughed, rubbed at the dog’s sides, then held it out towards Bucky.
“This is Cujo. He’s very friendly. He can keep you company, if you want.”
Cujo wiggled excitedly at this possibility, obviously trying to get closer to Bucky. Bucky smiled slightly despite himself. He had always loved dogs but never gotten the chance to have one.
“Sure,” he agreed. “I think I’d like that.”
“Alright,” Danny said, grinning. “Incoming!”
And he released the little green dog, who half flew and half tumbled into Bucky’s arms and started licking his face enthusiastically.
“You two seem to get along. We’ll be back.”
In a dirty alleyway in Nepal, Stephen Strange looked down at the man who had saved him from being mugged. The man smiled, a little grimly.
“You’re looking for Kamar-Taj?”
“There’s so many things we don’t know,” Winter exclaimed, enthusiastically.
“I can believe that, but what you do know it’s...it’s unbelievable. It’s amazing. It could change the face of science!” Bruce answered, waving his hands wildly.
Winter laughed joyously. “ We could change the face of science,” she corrected.
They leaned forward across the lab table, noses almost touching.
“ We could, huh?” Bruce asked, grinning.
Winter leaned forward, then planted a quick kiss on his lips. She pulled back and Bruce blinked at her. Then he leaned forward and kissed her for much, much longer.
“Yeah, we,” Winter whispered, her lips brushing his.
“Together.”
“Scarlett, it’s time,” Clockwork said, voice unbelievably gentle.
Scarlett glared at him across the workspace in Long Now, clocks ticking gently in the background.
“ No,” she protested, vehemently. “ He’s just a kid.”
“He is,” Clockwork agreed, with infinite patience. “And he is the future King of the Realms. He is the future. We cannot protect him from it.”
“Why not?” Scarlett demanded, tears in her eyes now. “Why can’t he just live?”
“That was never an option for him,” Clockwork said, sounding, for a moment, very far away.
“ I don’t care,” Scarlett protested wetly, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“You’re both so young,” Clockwork murmured, drifting closer to her and tucking her hair behind her ear, letting his gloved hand cup her cheek. “Time will have her way. She always does.”
“I know,” Scarlett mumbled, burying her face against his chest.
“Daniel will be Ghost Prince, and then Ghost King,” Clockwork said. “It is his destiny.”
“I know,” Scarlett mumbled again.
Clockwork just held her against him, ran his fingers through her hair as she sobbed. Time would always have her way. Clockwork knew that better than anyone.