thirty-three.
Bucky was in tears as he laid in what used to be his and Steve's old bed. The frame creaked with every shaking breath and groaned with every sob. It'd been so long since he was here last, but somehow it felt all too familiar to him.
The last time he was here, it was cold and dark. A draft came through the poorly sealed windows and the door rattled with every gust of wind. He didn't remember why he was drawn to the place, but he remembered the feeling in his heart. The dark, throbbing despair that ached with every beat of his heart and filled his veins with ice-cold water. He remembers the way that The Winter Soldier made his way through the apartment. He was slow, eyes accustomed to the darkness that engulfed him. He let his eyes flick over each object in the small space but froze when his eyes landed on a photo.
Inside of the frame were three people, an older sickly looking woman, a smaller wiry-looking man, and a darker man that made something click in his brain. He was looking at a lost memory, his old self staring back into him with eyes that could no longer be recognized as human. In the glass, he could see the reflection of himself, and now he was something he couldn't stand. His hair reached his shoulders, his jaw was set in stone.
His gaze was as cold as the air outside but his heart was colder. On his hands, blood. He remembered scrubbing them until they just bled more. He kept circling back to that picture that night, staring at the other man. His blue eyes awoken something inside of his chest, a flourish he didn't remember feeling before. It hurt, but it felt beautiful, a strong bonding like love that he couldn't believe he'd ever forgotten, and a name that he held to like his closest secret.
Their names plagued his tongue like the copper taste of blood and drove him mad with the longing of who they used to be. He believed them both to be gone, and in a way they were. He remembers the day that the woman in the photo passed away. Her life was burdened with wars she knew that she couldn't win and a life that she could never have beaten, and she was taken not by men but by sickness uncured.
And the young boy- no, man- in the photo was long gone now too, his body traded in for a bigger and stronger version of the one he'd sported in the past. He briefly recalled a taller version of the man standing by his side during the war, touching his shoulder as they stood in the snow, kissing him as they laid in their tent... His memories clouded with gunfire and death, his heart falling as quick as he once did.
He remembered that fall all too well, the dread welling up in his throat as Steve got farther and farther away until he disappeared from sight. He never thought that fall would end, but he knew that he would always remember the way that Steve cried out his name, the pained voice echoing off of the earthy walls around him.
His heart-rate spiked at the thought of what happened then, and he shot out of bed. It took him a minute to ground himself, to remember that he wasn't back at that place anymore, and he wasn't that guy anymore. He didn't think that Nat would be back from the stores for a long while yet. She was determined to find the perfect curtains that would bring life to the place, but still resemble the old ones. She even took one of the moth-eaten piles of fabric with her.
Steve was at the grocery store, but God only knew when he would be back either. He'd usually only take so long by staring at the prices in outrage, he remembered when everything was cheaper, but there also wasn't a lot to choose from back then either. Maybe some cheeses and meats, eggs and a few ingredients here and there, but they never had the money for much so they only got what they could.
He was still muffling his cries with his arm when the front door opened, but even his heightened senses couldn't help him out of this one, because it was taking everything that he had to try and shut off his mind.
Steve, who had returned without any perishables of the kind, could feel that something was off and sat his bags down before making his way into the bedroom.
There, he saw Bucky lying on his back, his flesh arm across his face to quiet his cries.
And his heart sank.