Queen of Crows

Bucky found you just pulling down the end of your shirt as he enters your room. Closing the door softly he stands with his back against it and watches you begin making your bed. The way you work is methodical and soothing to observe. You aren’t rushed and never look up at him. In some ways, he feels he is intruding on an intimate moment. There is something personal about seeing you in the space you have carved out for yourself. He can tell that while it is somewhat personalized it is also still just a room.

“I miss the smell of the sea.” You speak suddenly, reaching out to straighten your mountain of pillows. “I was born near the sea…”

This peaks his interest. As far as he’s aware you’ve never spoken of where you were born or any part of your history.

“The sea?” he prompts. “You like the ocean?”

You nod as you finish with the bed and go to stare out the window. “Endless stretches of water always look so inviting to me and I can remember splashing in the waves with… It hurts to be landlocked sometimes… Like I’m trapped. Do you feel trapped?”

Choosing to ignore the lapse in your sentence, Bucky leans against the door and closes his eyes. “I feel trapped all the time. By my past and by my potential future. The memories I have and the ones I can’t quite reach. What color were my mother’s eyes? Who was my first kiss? I can remember exactly how to kill a man with penknife but not those important details. I feel like Steve is holding on so tight to me that I’m suffocating. Doesn’t he understand how stifling he is?”

“He cares. Possibly too much, but he wants to support you to the point of reforming you.” Resting your head against the cool glass, you stare down at the street. “What he wants is to make you who you used to be, but you can’t ever go back to that person. Can you accept that?”

“Maybe…”

“I don’t see that you have much of a choice. Bad or good, the future will come no matter how much you try to stop it.” You turn your back so you can meet his gaze as he cracks his eyes open. “The questions is - what kind of future do you want? Decide on the man you want to be and set out to achieve that. The past has shaped you but it doesn’t define you. Remember that.”

Bucky’s head bobs up and down as he stares at you. He forgot how beautiful you could be and as you stand their looking like his savior and insanity wrapped in one he realizes how dangerous you are. With eyes that see everything he’s trying to hide, he knows that he’s exposed under your sharp gaze. You’ll take him apart bit by bit if it amuses you. Staring at you, Bucky comprehends that to you he’s prey. A small bunny lost in the forest before the bird of prey swoops down and devours it.

It has been a long time since he felt helpless. He hadn’t liked the feeling when HYDRA had him. But later when the two of you are eating sandwiches together for lunch he comes to the conclusion that he doesn’t mind feeling helpless next to you because it means you’ll take care of him. And if there is one thing Bucky Barnes needs it is to be cared for by someone like you.

~

The others observe your newfound friendship with Bucky hesitantly. It begins with him eating meals with you, Nat, and Clint. Soon it progresses to coming to the lab to observe the tests Tony and Bruce run on you. Slowly it grows as he finds that your presence eases his anxiety. He starts to bring you gifts every time he leaves the tower – the occasional bunch of flowers, a book he thought you would enjoy, or plums (a personal favorite of his). Despite spending more of his time with you he doesn’t deviate from his usual activities. He still jogs with Steve every morning and then trains with him in the afternoons. Fury won’t clear him for missions yet, but he is encouraged to go out and interact with people; to rejoin society.

And he does.

Because it means he’s able to share the world with you.

If he goes to a park he brings you back tales of college students playing frisbee and children complaining to mothers. Or if he decides to wander a bookstore he’ll return with obscure novels by authors no one has ever heard of. He never brings you best sellers. When he finds out you can speak Russian he spends an entire week only speaking Russian with you. This leads to annoyance from the others since only Nat speaks Russian apart from you. Though Clint gets back at him by having conversations in sign language with you. Then Bucky starts testing you with other languages. Can you answer in French? German? How’s your Mandarin? It becomes an amusing game to him, and he hasn’t had anything really amusing since before he became HYDRA’s puppet.

Whenever he leaves the tower he sees them. Large, black birds that are his shadows. They dot the trees and ledges above him and every time he looks at them they seem to squawk in acknowledgment. It makes him feel safer to know that you’re somehow watching out for him.

However, Steve hates it.

He loathes you and the way he feels you’re turning the team against him. You never leave the floor you’ve been confined to except for the times you go escorted to the lab, and yet he can’t help but feel you’re plotting. Planning something that will bring them to their knees. Bucky smiles for you more than he does for Steve and it eats him alive. When he looks at you he sees his own darkness reflected back at him and it burns.

With the way you meet his gaze and smirk it is obvious you know what you’re doing to him. How he can feel his anger turn molten under his skin to the point he’s afraid if he coughed it would come up sooty. The rage Steve felt was hot and every moment he heard your name or saw you flamed the fire until he was afraid he would be burned from the inside out. Flames may be light but they create darkness. They breed darkness with a vengeance.

Slowly it is tearing Steve apart and finally he gets to the point where he’s going to break. He finds you as it is nearing midnight and, without a plan in mind, sets on the attack.

“What are you?” He grounds his teeth together and crosses his arms. To anyone else it would be intimidating to have a large man, Captain America, glaring down at them. You take it with the grace of a goddess.

You don’t even glance his way. “A goddess. Or perhaps I’m merely a puppet with strings another pulls. Somedays I’m a hero and others a villain. What am I to you?”

Stance never wavering, he spits his reply out with menace dripping from every letter. “The devil.”

Laying down on the window seat and stretching your arms above your head, you let out a low chuckle. “Yes, sometimes I’m that too. It is hard to be defined by one title, one role, above the others. Are you Steve or Captain America or Stevie the little boy from Brooklyn? Can you be all three? Obviously, you’d like to see me as one despicable trait and then write me off as such. What if you had done that to James? He was the Winter Soldier for so long that for a time Bucky vanished beneath this new person. Do you see him as that?”

“No!” Steve’s arms uncross as he wavers before you. “He’s more than what they did to him. No matter what he’ll always be my best friend.”

“So, why is it so hard for you to look at anyone else that way? Do you see Mr. Stark as a drunk asshole? Dr. Banner as an angry monster? Natasha as the unforgivable assassin? Clint… well, he’s perfect.” You laugh at your joke, but then sober. “Are you perfect, Captain?”

Head hanging in shame, Steve whispers his reply to a room of darkness. “We both know I’m not.”

You get up slowly, as to not spook him, and place a gentle hand under his chin. Lifting his head so you can cradle it in your palms, you offer a sad smile. “And why is that so bad? You bleed darkness, Steven. We all do. Every person in this tower, in this city, in the goddamn world bleeds darkness because that’s the only way to let it out. You’ll always have it in you, but every time you take up that shield and stand against those who want to let their darkness become evil to the point of harm you bleed a little bit of your own darkness out. Stop bottling it up and let it out.”

At your words, he can feel the tears that he’s been choking on spillover. They run down his cheeks and over your hands. “I can’t.”

“You already are, Captain.” You hold him tightly and let him sob his bleeding heart out. The darkness he’s had strangling him and covering his skin starts to slip away as he releases it. It joins the shadows as they settle, no longer feeling threatened by Steve. When he had come in angry and ready to fight, every drop of darkness in the room had become a weapon ready to destroy him should he try to harm you. Now, though, it rolls off his skin. Caressing him as it leaves him a softer kind of darkness. It is no longer at odds with him.

~

Bucky wasn’t sleeping when Steve came in and sat next to him on the bed. They both sat facing the door with their feet planted and hands resting before them in poses that seemed relaxed but radiated tension. When Steve sighed and laid back so that he could stare at the blank ceiling, Bucky did the same. Neither spoke, but for friends as old as these two words were unnecessary. It became apparent that the rift that had been between the two was over.

“I never thought you were a bad person, Buck.” Steve answers an unasked question that Bucky has been holding onto for a long time. “You were never a bad person. HYDRA made you do bad things but they never made you bad. In fact, you’re the best person I know.”

“Then what was it?” Bucky closes his eyes afraid of what the truth could be.

For a moment Steve doesn’t reply. He heaves a heavy sigh and clenches the bedsheets in his hands. “I felt like I’d lost my best friend. When I woke up in this decade I was alone. There was no one to stand by my side and I – I got used to that. It took a while but I learned to adapt to this strange century with crap I don’t even understand. Then… Then you show up.”

Steve’s voice hitches, then wavers. “I-I didn’t know how much I needed my best friend until he was here but out of reach. But, I got you back! You were here and out of HYDRA’s grasp… But you weren’t really here. Too much of the time you were stuck in that place that HYDRA put you in and I couldn’t get you out of it. It became my mission to save you from yourself and I didn’t realize that I wasn’t saving you, I was crushing you under the weight of my own expectations. I’m sorry for that.”

“S’okay, Stevie.” Bucky mumbles as he lays his hands on his chest.

“No, it’s not.” With a shake of his head, Steve continues. “I’m sorry for making you feel like you were broken. No one comes through what you did without some damage. We all have damage… We all have darkness. It is what we do with that knowledge, with that darkness and damage, that defines us. You’re my best friend, Bucky. I’m with you till the end of the line, hell, even past that.”

“Till the end of the line.” Bucky intones as he holds up his hand, eyes never wavering from his spot of the ceiling.

Steve grabs it in his and they became brothers in arms once more. A friendship remembered and cemented, the kind that has withstood all the tests time has thrown at it.