Chapter Text
Bucky jerks awake, panting hard as he sits up and claws at his bare chest. His fingertips find the constellation of old scars already embroidered into his skin by his own nails. The familiar feel of the roughened skin combined with the bite of fresh pain is grounding. With a grunt, he shakes off sleep’s lingering grip, knowing he’ll find no rest there tonight. He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and forces himself to breathe deeply in through his nose, pushing the breath out slowly through his mouth.
I’m no longer the Winter Soldier. I’m James Bucky Barnes, and I have made amends.
He repeats the mantra to himself inside his own head until the words lose all meaning and start to blend together. Brushing his hair out of his face, Bucky blinks at the dancing light of the tv still playing in his bedroom. As usual, he’s made himself comfortable on the floor with nothing more than a timeworn pillow and blanket. He scowls at the bed next to him, unable to make himself sink into its almost unnatural softness. It makes him feel like he’s suffocating, and although it’s too warm here to simulate the breath freezing in his lungs in cryo, he doesn’t savor the familiarity of feeling like he’s drowning on dry land.
Ghosts of his nightmares haunt his thoughts. They show no mercy, littering his vision with flashes of carnage as the cloying scents of blood, piss, and fear mingle inside his nostrils, clawing their way up his nose to set off more chains of vicious memory.
Bucky leans back against the cool wall behind him, pulling his knees up so he can rest his forearms across them. He stares at the tv, watching, but not really seeing, the colors change across the screen. He isn’t sure how long he sits like this before he hears the door click quietly open, the light from the television spilling into the dark hall beyond and illuminating the broad figure standing there.
“Oh…hey, sorry,” John mutters, stumbling over the apology as if the word ‘sorry’ is foreign to him.
Bucky rolls his eyes, his scowl deepening, and he lets out a beleaguered sigh.
“ What , Walker?”
John hesitates and he seems uncharacteristically flustered, shifting very slightly on his feet. He’s wearing a black tee with a faded Army Ranger logo on it and a pair of boxers. Clearing his throat, John changes his grip on the mug he’s holding and gestures towards the tv halfheartedly.
“Was gonna turn it off. Thought you were asleep.”
“Well, I’m not,” Bucky bites out.
This earns a snort from John, “Yeah, no shit. You do know it’s 3:17am, right?”
“You don’t exactly seem to be lost in dreamland either, Walker,” he retorts with unnecessary sharpness.
John rolls his eyes, “Jesus, you’re a real asshole, Barnes .”
Bucky scowls more deeply and watches some of the uncertainty slough off John’s shoulders like a blanket of snow as he predictably fortifies his insecurity with temper. The thought unexpectedly resonates with him and he can’t help but wonder if that’s exactly what he’s doing right now. Is he snapping at John just to cover up for his own sense of vulnerability?
Internally, he knows that John isn’t half as bad as he’s made him out to be in his own mind. The sting of Steve’s absence, the loss of everything he’s ever known, and the idea that someone so important and unique could be replaced as easily as breathing still boils his blood. His logical side knows that none of that was John’s fault, and that, for all his flaws, Bucky was cruel to him in a time when he not only needed, but had asked for his support.
Yeah, until he slaughtered someone using the last piece of Steve I had left...
He immediately chastises himself for that traitorous thought. The shield might once have belonged to Steve, but it was a symbol, not of the man himself, but for all he stood for. Steve would’ve been the first to remind him of that.
Even though John had still executed a surrendering man in cold blood…
And what? You’re so much better? Do you think Mr. Nakasima or his son would agree with that?
Bucky winces, his vibranium hand gripping his own knee with enough force to bruise. He blinks hard, willing the fresh onslaught of gory images projected onto the backs of his eyelids to fade just this once. Please not in front of John.
“...Bucky?”
Right. John.
He forces his gaze back to the man and startles. When had he gotten so close?
Bucky finds himself at eye level with the crouching super soldier, the snide smirk usually characteristic to John’s features replaced by something akin to concern.
“ Bucky ,” he says with more force as he snaps his fingers in front of Bucky’s nose, making it apparent that this is nowhere near the first time he’s tried to get his attention.
John seems to register the focus returning to Bucky’s eyes and he leans back on his heels, hands already rising to ward off the anticipated temper. The gesture makes something twinge in Bucky’s chest, as if guilt itself was coiling around his heart like a serpent and sinking its fangs in deep.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you? That thousand yard stare looked pretty familiar.”
He opens his mouth to answer, but finds that guilt has robbed him of anything cutting to hurl at the other man, and that’s left him lacking a reply of any kind. Bucky snaps his jaw closed and swallows, throat suddenly dry. He leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes again until he hears movement. When he peers at John through heavy lids, he stills completely.
The man has settled against the wall next to him, close enough to reach out to touch, but far enough to not make it uncomfortable. Bucky recognizes the silent offer of camaraderie in the gesture and is amazed to find himself grateful for it.
For a while, John simply sits quietly beside him, both watching the flickering tv screen with little interest. He opens his mouth a few times, but always closes it, seeming to rethink whatever he plans to say.
Finally, John breaks the silence, “You know, I used to dream of becoming Captain America and having my own Howling Commandos. I never needed to dream about having a Bucky Barnes of my own because I had Lemar…till I didn’t.
When I lost him, well, you know what happened probably better than I do. I think back and all I hear is the sound of his skull cracking or the feeling of…”
He trails off and Bucky turns his head to assess the other man. John’s throat bobs, one fist slowly clenching and unclenching.
“The feeling of Nico’s body giving way under the shield. I don’t- I don’t remember much else. Just sounds and sensations that I pray every day will leave me.
I can feel Lemar’s blood running through my fingers. I swear I can even taste the iron of it in the air.
I remember the way my body felt. Like I was dying of fever but the heat was refusing to burn me. Like I was shattered inside but the pieces were still sharp enough to cut.”
He turns then, to meet Bucky’s stare, and Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever seen eyes look so hollow since the last time he made himself meet his own gaze in the mirror.
“I wanted to cut everyone, Barnes. Everyone. Especially you and Sam.
And I tried, God, I tried. I blamed you, and I blamed myself, and I blamed Karli, and I blamed the Flag Smashers, but somehow Nico was the only one who paid.
I thought that the anger was going to consume me. It felt like scorching fire in my belly, and it was so exhausting, and I wanted more than anything for it to swallow me whole.”
John laughs bitterly, looking down to twist his fingers in the hem of his shirt.
“But, in the end, it wasn’t the anger that almost took me. It was what was hiding underneath, like turning a rock over to find a whole horde of insects. I thought I could drink myself to death, but I guess I shot myself in the foot with that one when I took the serum, didn’t I?
I pressed a blade into my wrists, but it turns out we heal awfully fast if you don’t go deep enough.
Jesus, do you know how that feels? Too stupid to die, too fucked up to live.
I looked down into a mile deep elevator shaft and I thought that this might be my chance.
It would just take one tiny step, and even I couldn’t survive that. I might have even gotten lucky and bashed my head open when I reached the bottom so I could go out the way Lemar did.
You know what stopped me?
Three idiots that, for the first time in a long time, made me feel a little bit of a sense of responsibility, of duty. I knew they weren’t gettin’ out without me, and for some reason, that just…didn’t sit right with me.”
He takes a sip from his mug and swallows mechanically, refusing to return Bucky’s gaze.
“On some days, my worst days, I don’t even regret it. Nico.
I think about it and I say to myself that he got what he deserved anyway. That he got what all of them should’ve gotten. Then the anger fades away and I’m left with…nothing.
No Lemar, no Olivia, no son, no justice, no reputation, no purpose.
Just the reality of what I’ve done and what I can’t undo. The memory of my failures.
I used to drink and drink and drink, just hoping to forget, but now I’m finding that maybe I do have something left. Maybe I’ve gained something here in this stupid tower. Maybe choosing to save those three idiots instead of stepping into the abyss was the best decision I’ve made in a long time.
I-, no, we have a family again, Bucky. I know that things are rough right now between you and Sam, and I’m sorry. I really am. I know how hard it is to be on those terms with your partner, but-”
He cuts himself off and ducks his head almost shyly, as if he hadn’t just bared his soul. When he speaks again, his voice is quiet and halfhearted,
“You’re not…you’re not alone. Like Yelena is always telling Bob, right? You’re not alone.”
Bucky finds that he’s been sitting there with his jaw hanging open and he snaps it closed, clearing his throat awkwardly. He watches John’s cheeks slowly reddening and he scrambles to find something to say.
“Nightmares.”
John snorts out a disbelieving laugh, “Nightmares?”
“You, uh, asked why I was up. Nightmares.”
Shaking his head, John’s eyes crinkle as he smirks.
“Yeah, man, me too.”
Bucky closes his eyes once more and his fingers clasp the bridge of his nose. He exhales, knowing exactly what he needs to say, but not wanting to actually say it.
“I’m sorry, Walker. For everything. I was grieving and I let myself treat you in a way that would’ve made Steve ashamed to know me. It was…it was wrong,” he forces out.
When he doesn’t get a response, he looks up to find John staring at him in shock and maybe? Relief? He quickly wipes the expression from his face and replaces it with a small smile that only quirks up one corner of his lips.
They go silent again after that and when Bucky next glances over, he sees that the other super soldier has fallen asleep, still propped up against the wall with his coffee mug leaning precariously in his grip. Bucky sighs and grabs a spare blanket from the bed beside him. With one hand, he sets the mug down and then carefully drapes the blanket over his teammate’s sleeping form.
“I’ve got first watch,” he murmurs.
John stirs a bit, but oddly, doesn’t wake up and that fills Bucky with an overwhelming sense of relief.
He mutes the tv and sits noiselessly next to the other man, resolving to give himself his own sense of purpose tonight. When he settles back down to keep watch over John, it’s with the ghost of a smile on his own face.
He doesn’t realize it till the next morning, but eventually he drifts off next to John and manages to sleep more peacefully than he has in a long time.