The Pen is Mightier! (penismightier) wrote in chaotic_library, @ 2015-07-24 18:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | bruce banner, bucky barnes, marvel, novel, pepper potts, r-rated, steve rogers, tony stark, yuuo, yuuo: marvel |
[Bucky Barnes; R] Puddle Of Grace: Chapter 4
Character/Series: Bucky Barnes; Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: R
Notes: So I realized after I decided on Once Upon A Time as the show Bucky briefly watches that Sebastian Stan was in it as the Mad Hatter. That was completely accidental. In retrospect, it's funny, so I'm leaving it in. I like invoking meta.
Title: Puddle Of Grace- Chapter 4: And Lost Inside Her Empty Mind
Author: yuuo
Word Count: 6505
Summary: Pepper established a firm routine for them, mostly to keep Tony from going overboard with a lack of sleep or food.
she opens up her weary eyes
the foggy cloud of vision fills the air
she strains to make some sense of all the
abstract shapes and colors everywhere
-Josh Woodward
Pepper established a firm routine for them, mostly to keep Tony from going overboard with a lack of sleep or food.
"You're not in your twenties anymore," she told him at his first protest. Apparently, his age was a sore point, because he pouted at her, then agreed, pretending he only was for her sake so she wouldn't worry.
Breakfast and dinner were with both Pepper and Tony, the latter otherwise in the basement, leaving Bucky to sit with Pepper and Steve as they visited, with no polite way of extracting himself.
Fortunately, the need to do so went down a little bit at a time as Bucky became more familiar with Pepper. She was charming with a good smile and a good sense of humor. Unabashed sarcasm and sass were part of that humor, and it made Bucky laugh.
He decided that maybe having other friends besides Steve wasn't too bad of an idea. As long as they were all smartasses. Smartasses were the best people.
But while making friends and staying with them was nice, after a couple days, his mind decided he wanted a break. He wanted to go back to his own place, with his own bedroom, his own bathroom with the sometimes sputtering pipes, and his own damn kitchen where he could cook to his black heart's content. Pepper's cooking was good, but Bucky really wanted the stress relief of baking a billion batches of cookies, just because he could.
"How close is the suit to being done?" Bucky asked Tony over breakfast of what he hoped would be the last day.
Tony didn't answer right away, being polite enough to chew his food before speaking. "Almost done. Should be done this afternoon. We'll take tonight off and then leave early in the morning." He jabbed another bite of crepe onto his fork. "You're not impatient or anything, are you? Wanting to get away from the lovely Pepper's company?"
Bucky shook his head. "No. I just don't like leaving jobs hanging."
"Well, don't worry, this one's about to get off the swinging rope. Which reminds me, come downstairs with me once you're done eating. I want to get another look at your arm, make sure I didn't miss anything."
That sounded very much like something Bucky didn't want to do. "It's working fine."
"Of course it is," Tony said. "I was the one that worked on it. But you really don't want to chance that you'll have to retreat again because your mechanic was working with technology he wasn't familiar with. Not that you'll have to, but just for peace of mind." He eyed Steve. "His peace of mind, mostly, but, you know, just for everyone involved."
Bucky gave Steve a betrayed look. He damn well knew that Bucky didn't like his metal arm being messed with. All for his damn peace of mind. What about Bucky's peace of mind? He was going to steal Pepper's cayenne pepper from her cupboard and coat Steve's underwear with it. Jackass.
"Don't start," Steve said, not even looking away from his food. "You'd do the same if positions were reversed."
Bucky was not about to deny nor confirm that.
"So you two either have the best bromance in the world, or you developed telepathy because of your respective projects," Tony said. "Cap, you didn't even see that look."
"I didn't have to," Steve said. "I've been his best friend for over ninety years now."
"So no telepathy."
"Will someone define 'bromance' for me so I know whether I need to kick him or not?" Bucky asked.
Pepper decided to answer for Tony, allowing him to take the bite of food that was hanging on his fork. "It's a term used to describe two male friends that, under any other circumstance, could be seen as a romantic pair, but the affection is platonic. You two pretty much fit the definition."
Bucky looked at Steve, keeping a very flat expression. "So does this mean my jokes are completely appropriate?"
"Only if you follow through on getting me chocolates on my birthday," Steve said without missing a beat.
Tony stared at them, aghast. "And you don't want us joining you in these jokes when you throw out such great one-liners in front of us? You're both teases. I hope you drive each other crazy at night."
"Just on the odd occasion where there's only one bed and two of us," Bucky said, pretending that he didn't catch the joke. "He steals covers and says I kick in my sleep. Which is a lie."
That actually earned a pause from Steve, who set his fork down so he could stare at Bucky hard enough that he might drill a hole in his head. "Bucky. Every time I stayed the night at your house when we were kids, you'd send me home with bruises on my legs from your kicking. My mother thought you were abusing me until the first time you stayed at my place and she realized you were just a restless sleeper."
"And exactly how do you know I haven't outgrown that?" Bucky demanded. "You haven't been complaining about it since we got here."
"That's because the bed is so big, you'd have to kick like a mule to even reach me from your side of the bed."
"Oh good, the bed is big enough to avoid causing a divorce," Tony said. "I didn't want to be labeled as the responsible party for breaking up the greatest love story of the twentieth century." He finished off the last of his crepes. "Wonderful as always, Pepper, but I gotta get back to work." He pointed at Bucky. "You, my workshop, as soon as you're done with that fabulous breakfast that Pepper made for you."
Bucky motioned idly at him with his fork. "Go. I'll be down when I'm done savoring this."
Upon getting downstairs- after appropriate thanks to Pepper -Bucky immediately saw a problem. He didn't have the code to open the door to Tony's workshop. "So do you plan on checking my arm through the glass, or did you just forget I'd have to be able to open the door?" he asked Tony from the bottom of the stairwell.
Tony looked up from his computer. "Oh." He tapped away at a couple more buttons on the screen before getting up and opening the door for Bucky.
"'Oh', you say." Bucky resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he entered behind Tony. He looked around the workshop, taking in what he was in too much pain and too panicked to notice before. The geek was strong in that room, computers and mechanics married in what had to be the best work room that Bucky had ever had the pleasure of seeing. Even the office he worked in once upon a time wasn't this nice.
Leave it to a Stark.
As his gaze swept the room, he hesitated before where the chair was the other day. He was having too much fun trying to keep his mitts off the shiny toys in the room to want to go back to that part of his past.
But he couldn't help it. He wanted it gone, feared that it wasn't, worried that if it was still there that he'd get thrust back into the mindset of a weapon that was being 'fixed' because he wasn't working correctly.
"I got it put away," Tony said, as if he'd read Bucky's thoughts. Bucky barely had a chance to look at him sideways for it before Tony motioned towards where the chair used to be. "You were looking for it. Come on, you're sitting over here." He tilted his head forward to a bench next to his main computer display.
Bucky followed, though his gaze kept returning to that empty spot where that chair had been, like it might reappear, a nightmare ready to be relived.
"It's like a trainwreck, isn't it?" Tony said, pulling Bucky's attention back to him. "Can't look away from it, even though it's horrible." He pulled out a rolling chair out from under the work table with his foot. "Sit. With your back to that. Put your arm up on that table for me."
With one more glance to where the chair used to be, Bucky plopped himself down on the stool and put his arm up on the table. There was still a cold chill down his spine, having his back to that empty space. His words were snappish. "If you could work on my arm like this, why did we bother with that stupid thing to begin with?"
"Bruce's suggestion," Tony said, hopping up on the table and moving over to sit cross-legged by Bucky's arm. "After so many hours in pain, he figured it'd be best to put you in a chair that you could lean back in, give the rest of you a chance to take a break. We had no idea about the other chair. Something your not-boyfriend didn't warn us about."
"And what reason would he have for telling you?" Bucky asked, watching as Tony grabbed a tool and started poking around in the area of the injury.
"None," Tony said in a very matter-of-fact tone. "I was just observing. I do that a lot. Observe, that is. It's good to keep an eye on your surroundings and what's going on." He made a thoughtful noise, tapping the computer in Bucky's arm that he was working on. "Looks in one piece to me. It's functioning fine?"
"Yes. I told you that upstairs."
"And Cap wanted me to double-check it. If there wasn't something else I've been asked to do, I would've told him he was insulting me. The wires look good, too."
Something else he'd been asked to do? Bucky almost yanked his arm away in wary suspicion, but years of conditioning to sit as still as possible when his arm was being worked on kept him from moving. The best he could do in response was to give Tony a look to remind him how dangerous it could be to mess with a weapon that always had a finger on its trigger.
"This metal is fantastic," Tony said, not appearing bothered by Bucky's death stare. "Wish I knew where Hydra got their hands on it and if there's more. I wouldn't mind a suit made out of it. And keeping it out of bad guys' hands, also a good thing." He set his tools aside. "Looks good to me. Clean bill of mechanical health from the world's greatest mechanic-slash-engineer. Now." He sat up straighter, almost leaning backwards on the table. "My other agenda. Or one of them."
"Looking at my arm wasn't even one to begin with, was it?"
"No, no, I was genuinely asked to do that." Tony pointed off to Bucky's right. "Second agenda. Show off the suit."
Bucky looked over just as a light switched on by the far wall, illuminating a stretch of glass panels across the length of the wall that Bucky hadn't seen before. Behind one of the panels was the iconic red and gold Iron Man suit. The other panels had other suits in various stages of creation.
Tony hopped down off the table. "JARVIS, pull it out. I have a sales pitch to give." He passed Bucky on the way to the suit. The glass panel raised, and the suit stepped out on its own. "What do you think?" Tony sounded like the proud parent of kid graduating from Yale.
Bucky walked around the suit, admiring the smooth construction, the various small pieces of metal and how they fit together to maximize movement efficiency, the articulation of the joints. "I think I'm glad that Hydra never came up with this," he said. "I've seen some of the news reels from New York. It's a fantastic piece of machinery."
"A modern marvel, if I do say so myself," Tony agreed. "This one's updated from the one you saw. She runs a bit better, she's got better weapons, all sorts of new toys. The repulsors have a stronger output, means she goes faster, means she's very efficient at frying the bad guys. You should appreciate that, this thing's going to be covering your ass in Kiev if there's still trouble there."
"I appreciate any back up we get, if it keeps Steve safe," Bucky said, stopping to study one of the shoulder joints. "I see why you'd want to build one of these out of the stuff my arm is made of. You could make joints that don't have to have metal shifting over metal. Keep the inside stuff safer."
"Kinda what I thought," Tony said. He went silent for a few seconds, giving Bucky more time to investigate the suit, before speaking up again. "And since you gave the wonderful segue, speaking of Cap, I have a third agenda, and no, you're not getting out of being subjected to it."
Bucky stopped, his flesh hand on the shoulder joint of the suit dropping to his side in a slow, hesitant manner. He took in a deep breath, bracing himself for whatever stupid thing Steve was having Tony do. "What'd he put you up to?"
"Getting you to talk." Tony turned back towards the workbench where the computer he'd been fiddling with when Bucky got downstairs was. He acted like he assumed Bucky would follow.
Bucky almost didn't. He already knew what was going to be said, and he already didn't like it. But he followed anyway. Tony said he wasn't avoiding this one, and he was probably right. If Bucky didn't listen to him, Steve might try to get creative, and that was a headache Bucky wasn't in the mood for.
"I see you clammed up," Tony said as he seated himself at the computer. "Good. Because all you have to do right now is listen."
"I promise nothing."
"Try anyway."
Bucky answered him with a silence that was as close as Tony was going to get for the moment.
Tony stared at his computer like he was reading something, abruptly ignoring the lecture he was supposed to give Bucky. "JARVIS, check the download, looks like something's glitching." He looked up at Bucky. "I'm gonna be straight up honest. I've been recruited to try to cut the stitches keeping your mouth shut. Cap's worried about you. He wants to help. I know what it's like. Wanna guess how I know?" Tony didn't actually give him any time to not care enough to guess before he continued on. "Because I've been in his shoes. Little known fact, Pepper was also subjected to experiments."
"Has everyone here been part of an experiment?" Bucky demanded, feeling an unhappy drop in his stomach. The club membership kept gaining unlikely names.
"Not everyone, but she was," Tony said. "Old acquaintance of ours developed a serum called the Extremis. Tapped into an empty spot in the brain that controlled healing. But the stuff was unstable. People who were injected with it didn't tend to last long. Sure, they regrew limbs within seconds, but the Extremis burned too hot, caused them to explode into bitty pieces of burning flesh all over the place. Not pleasant."
Bucky looked away, towards the stairs, as if Pepper might materialize and assure Bucky that Tony was exaggerating. What the fuck was it with all the human experimentation happening within his primary and secondary social circle? It was like that little club wanted to stick close to home.
Before continuing, Tony gave another glance at the screen. "Twenty percent. Hm. Definitely slow." A few taps on the screen and then he looked back at Bucky. "Don't worry, she's not in danger anymore. I'm better than the guy who designed that stuff, I stabilized it. She won't burn."
Something very specific stuck out to Bucky in that statement. "Stabilized?"
Tony sat back in his seat, hands folded behind his head. "Stabilized." He seemed firm on not saying anything else on the subject. "I'm not prying into you, don't pry into Pepper. I'm not trying to get you to talk to me, the goal here is for you to talk to Steve. All I'm doing is the convincing."
"What you're doing is storytelling," Bucky said. He wanted Tony to get to the damn point that he knew was being made so he could go back upstairs and pretend the conversation never happened.
"For a reason," Tony replied. "Something else of interest to you. We were up on top of the rigging of an old oil tanker. The piece of rigging she was on was breaking, I told her to jump, I'd catch her." He looked back at the computer, and Bucky had a feeling that he was trying to push out his words, like he still had trouble with what he was about to say.
When he continued, his tone was flat. "I didn't catch her. She fell. Probably died. If it hadn't been for the Extremis, she wouldn't be here now."
Those words could've come right out of Steve's mouth. He could see why Tony was asked to do this. Tony knew Steve's position. But Tony wasn't trying to convince him of anything Steve hadn't already, and if Steve couldn't succeed, why the hell did Tony think he could?
"I know what you're trying to do-"
Tony cut him off. "Not entirely. Yeah, okay, you know that I'm trying to convince you that being in Cap's position hurts like a bitch. You weren't the only one hurt in that fall. But I also get how hard it can be to talk about being tortured. I never went through even half of what you did, I don't think anyone ever has or will. But when I was taken hostage by a terrorist group over weapons my company made, they... convinced me to help them. I was smart enough to get away without them realizing what I was doing. But lemme tell ya, that kind of convincing isn't pleasant. And I think that's the side you can relate to."
"All I'm getting is that if there's a god, he hates you."
Tony tilted his head in a half-assed shrug. "Probably. But if he's out there, he hasn't been nice to you or Cap, either. But that's not my point. My point is, I understand where you're coming from, too. I got this nice, happy little unique perspective that made me a better choice for this. Talk to him. Believe it or not, it helps. And it'll make him handle his side of the mess that is you two if he can help you, even if all he can do is listen. Do it for his sake, if not your own."
Bucky looked down at the ground, his metal index finger tapping nervously on his thigh. "I already told him I'm trying," he said, voice sounding smaller than he'd intended it to. His stomach was not happy with breakfast at that point, had tied itself into tiny knots with each word out of Tony's mouth. He wasn't trapped, he knew he could leave the workshop and go back upstairs and hide in his room with the tablet that had been rescued from their quinjet to read for until breakfast was no longer doing a die-in in his stomach. Steve would leave him alone, at least for a little while.
But simply packing up and leaving the uncomfortable conversation behind was easier thought than done. The mere act of simply walking away added a bowling ball to those knots in his stomach, reminding him that The Mechanic had yet to dismiss him, he was still getting new mission objectives. The Soldier was expected to comply and give no protest until he was released. He wasn't even sure what sort of mission his brain was trying to hide behind anymore, but the conditioning ran too deep. He could leave, but he couldn't. Not yet.
"Try harder." The Mechanic- Tony, Tony -held up a hand. "Before you get mad, keep listening. Try harder. You need to push yourself to try harder. You don't want Hydra to have that level of control over you, do you? You don't want them in your head like that anymore, right?"
Those questions made his mind recoil like he'd been struck, and everything inside freeze. He'd never thought of it that way, but he realized once the words were out that Tony was right. His right hand began to shake, just a bit, and Hydra was right there, taking control of his nerves through years of reset processes to stop the shaking, to show no weakness. Not in front of Tony, or anyone, really, but Tony specifically had already seen too much of the Soldier/Bucky/Whoever's weaknesses, he didn't need to see more.
Tony took his lack of response in stride. "And that right there is why you need to talk to Cap. Silence seems like a great defense at first, but it'll bite you in the ass. I know you probably don't consider me a friend yet, we haven't had a lot of chance to talk, but call this a statement from someone who thinks you're his friend. Don't destroy yourself."
Bucky found something in Tony's words to latch onto, to avoid the subject in a way that didn't leave him hiding behind the Winter Soldier. "You consider a near-stranger your friend?"
"I like making friends," Tony said. "Make up for lost time. I was out of the age range of my classmates all my life, hard to make friends in that situation. Cap and I have our differences in opinion, but you know, he's a good friend. I figure that anyone that he trusted his life to as much as he does you couldn't be a bad person to have as a friend. And calendar age aside, we're in age range of each other." He squinted. "I think. How old were you when they got you?"
"Twenty-eight."
Tony's face screwed up into one of extreme displeasure. "Okay, so I'm sixteen years your senior. I miss being the twenty-something CEO who ruled the world."
"Aren't you still the CEO that rules the world?"
"Nope." Tony glanced back to his computer for a few heartbeats, before turning his attention back to Bucky. "I'm not CEO anymore. Still my company, but I passed the title to Pepper. Frees me up to play with my own projects."
Bucky looked around the room, trying to see if he could identify any projects, see if his college education was still useful, or if it had become as hopelessly dated as his approach with women.
Okay, he hadn't tried with women yet, but it was probably pretty bad at this point.
If Tony noticed Bucky's curiosity, he let it slide, and simply fluttered his hand in the direction of the Iron Man suit and the other half-finished versions. "For awhile, those were my only toys. Kinda had some anxiety after New York. The fight in the city didn't bother me, I've done things like that in the past, but going up that portal made me decide I needed a lot of security blankets."
Then a rueful smile crossed his lips, like laughing at a joke that wasn't funny. "Believe me, you're not the only one around here that has issues. Which leads me back to one more mention of your zipped lips and Steve. Remember, he watched you fall. He thought you died. He blamed himself. Not trying to guilt you, but I think you owe it to him to at least explain why you have certain tics. Just think about it."
Bucky glanced towards the door, not liking the blindsiding of the return to that topic, and hoping that Steve would come down and save him before the reset processes took his brain again. But Tony was speaking in good faith, and Steve wasn't likely coming down anyway. So he looked back at Tony with a tired sort of surrender. "If I say you're my friend, will you stop bringing that up?"
That got a shit-eating grin out of Tony. "Well, I'll take the friendship and sure, I'll drop it for the moment. Can't promise I won't again if I think I need to, but you've been nice and cooperative, I'll give you a chance to digest all that before Cap and I decide you need another intervention."
Not quite what Bucky was hoping for, but for the moment, he'd take it. "As long as nobody tries to put me into therapy."
"Fair enough." Tony shrugged. "Therapy might not necessarily work anyway. Everyone's different. Pepper saw a proper therapist. I mostly annoyed Bruce, despite his protests that psychiatry wasn't his field. Maybe all you need is to talk to Cap. Or occasionally Pepper or I. But if it makes you feel at all better, head doctors are a lot better than they were in your day. You had lobotomies back then, didn't you?"
"They don't anymore?" Bucky hadn't exactly educated himself on modern psychiatry practices. In fact, he'd pointedly avoided finding anything out about that area of study, lest Steve start thinking anything therein would be good for him.
"Nope. Those went out of style with the invention of anti-psychotics. Don't remember when that happened, that's not something I regularly read about. But as far as I know, we don't stick ice picks into people's skulls anymore. Just some medicines that probably wouldn't work on you, and talk therapy. And there endeth the lesson. Now go back upstairs and tolerate our daily routine. I have some computer bugs to work out." He looked at the suit. "Her computer system is new. I rewrote the original program I was working with when I decimated the thousands I'd built up before. Got a few kinks I'm working out before we hit the skies."
Good, new subject and a dismissal. "I'm not going to be the one that causes your suit to malfunction in the Ukraine because I distracted you from your work."
"It'd be a nice return of the favor of not causing a divorce between you two weird old men."
Bucky snorted. "Divorce? He still hasn't proposed."
Tony looked at him in mocking shock. "That jerk."
Okay, so maybe having Tony as a friend wouldn't be so bad. Bucky grinned "Keep calling him names, he deserves it. I'll go call him a few for you while you work."
"And already, you're a great friend. Make sure to tell him I disapprove of him not making an honest man out of you."
"I'll pass that along," Bucky said on his way out the door.
Pepper and Steve were in the living room, where they'd been spending pretty much all their time the last few days while Tony worked. That put them between the stairs to the basement and the guest room. Both looked up when he emerged from Tony's private playground. "Just so you know, Steve, Tony doesn't approve of you not making an honest man out of me," he said without even pausing as he passed by.
Behind him, Steve made an indignant protest. Pepper just laughed.
While Bucky had a feeling that Steve would be chasing him down eventually, he was left unmolested to return to the bedroom. He kicked off his boots before sitting on the bed and fussing with his pillow until it would provide decent support for him to lean back on it and read on the tablet.
His attempt at reading didn't last long. As entertaining as The Hunger Games was, his mind wouldn't stay focused. It was too full of Tony's words and memories he didn't want that had been dredged up as a result of the entire damn week. He switched to trying to catch up on several decades' worth of television pop culture.
Just like with the book, Once Upon A Time wasn't doing anything to tune out his thoughts, either.
Ignoring his neck's protest to the unnatural angle, Bucky thunked his head back onto the wall behind him. Tony's little sermon earlier into all about the grip Hydra still held over Bucky made sense. He could feel the sense to it, the logic off it.
Reason dictated that it would be smarter and less troublesome in the long run if he'd just talk to Steve about things. For both their sakes. But reason in the mind didn't matter much when that cold, frozen knot somewhere between his heart and his gut argued with it. Every time he opened his mouth to practice finding the words he needed, that knot moved up until it blocked his throat. The feelings were there, the desire maybe not so much, but even trying despite that, the words failed to appear.
It wasn't as though he could pick up Steve and cram him inside his brain and go 'see? This is the problem'. No, that would be too easy. So he had to figure out how to word whatever it was that Steve wanted him to say, and those words were behaving about as well as a toddler with an attitude problem.
He couldn't wait for the next day, when they'd be back on the field and leveling the Hydra base in Kiev. Everyone thought talking would help, but there was nothing more therapeutic that he could think of than blowing up the lab he was experimented on in. If he had a choice, he'd make like the internet and take off and nuke the site from orbit. But Steve told him they couldn't do anything that'd harm the rest of the city.
Damn.
Speaking of the mission and being stuck in the 'hurry up and wait' phase that he hated with a passion, he did have one last thing he could try to keep his attention. If it failed, then he'd give up and either join Steve and Pepper, or try to nap. He sat up, dropping the tablet unceremoniously onto the bed in front of him. After changing programs, he pulled out the 3-D imaging that Tony had built in for them when Steve first asked for the favor.
The image before him was the Hydra base they were after. There were a few missing places inside it that Bucky was still trying to piece together. His time there wasn't brief, but he hadn't been allowed to go wandering to get a feel for the place. He was relying a lot on the programming they'd stuck in his head to know where all the safehouses and bases were and how to navigate them in case of an emergency.
Three seconds after the doorknob turned, startling a year off Bucky's life span, Steve poked his head in before fully entering. "Hey. I thought you'd be sleeping or something."
Bucky shook his head. "No. Just preparing for tomorrow."
Steve closed the door behind him, then joined Bucky on the bed, scooting over to sit more in the middle. He studied the image the tablet had produced. "Still missing some pieces?"
"Yeah." He knew that wasn't what Steve really wanted to talk about, but Bucky wasn't going to say that. "I'm having trouble remembering what that place looked like. There were a lot of areas they felt I didn't need to know about."
Steve reached over and turned the image to where he could see better. "Those stairs go to nowhere."
"No, that's the area I don't know." Rather, he didn't know what it looked like, but he knew that was where the experiments were conducted. There was probably a lot down there that Bucky wasn't eager to go traipsing around.
Steve let go of the image, letting Bucky turn it back to himself to keep working. "If there's more down there, then that might be a good first spot to place some explosives."
Bucky made a noise of agreement. He was getting a bit fidgety, waiting for Steve to say something about what was really on his mind instead of humoring Bucky's avoidance.
Oh for god's sake, just say it already.
"We'll show this to Tony tonight, let him get a look at it before we head out tomorrow."
Damnit, Steve.
Bucky dismissed the top floor, the part that was above ground, showing him the first basement that he knew. Down from there was the missing floor. Deciding that Steve wasn't going to say what he was thinking just yet, he started trying to fix the hallways that tapered off into a blank spot.
At the continued silence from Steve, who seemed content to just let Bucky stew in his own juices, he gave up. He'd been good at out-silencing Steve in the past, but Tony's little talk had crawled under his skin enough that he wanted to start scratching the words out like a parasite just under the surface. "Tony talked to me."
"I figured. You were down there awhile."
Bucky looked over at him, trying not to look as angry as he felt. "That has absolutely nothing to do with how you knew he did. You put him up to it."
Steve looked apologetic, though not enough for Bucky's tastes. "I'm getting desperate, Bucky. You won't let me help you. I thought maybe someone else could."
Bucky knew that. His fried brain didn't care. "Lecturing me doesn't help, it's just manipulative. You should know not to do that to me."
Steve took a deep breath, defensive. "So what am I supposed to do? I. Want. To. Help. You."
"Pray."
"I already do, and it doesn't seem to be working."
"Then keep waiting."
"How long?" Steve asked. "Until you've internalized everything so much that there's no chance of separating you from them?"
Bucky's right hand squeezed the image from the tablet into a twisted pretzel that dissipated at the aggressive grip. "Quit saying that. I am not theirs."
Liar.
He shoved the tablet aside so he could turn to face Steve better. "But fine, since you seem to be so interested in what goes on in my head, ask something. Stop just expecting me to start a conversation about the Winter Soldier Project. I don't even know why you feel you need to, you already know everything from the files." That was unfair and he knew it. He didn't care.
Steve didn't look impressed by Bucky's anger. He had the patience of a saint when Bucky had an episode, but when Bucky got hostile about it, Steve had that patience stretched thin. Bucky didn't blame him, even Steve had limits to his temper. "I don't want to start questioning you like this is an interrogation. I want you to tell me what's wrong when something's bothering you. I can't help you when I don't know what I'm working with."
"Like now?" Bucky demanded. "What's bothering me now is that we're having this stupid conversation. I don't want to talk about this."
"You never do," Steve said after taking a deep breath. "That's the problem. They hurt you and you're not letting me help make it not hurt as much. Talk to me. Please."
Bucky flinched. That tone sounded like Steve was on the verge of begging, if he wasn't already. Bucky didn't like it, it made him feel guilty and kicked up his older brother instincts to try to make everything better for a younger sibling.
But twenty-four years of being an older brother couldn't compare to decades of regular abuse. Thaw, reset, handed a gun, sent to pull the trigger, wiped, back into the cryo unit. Trying to describe that cycle that had become his life left him wanting to go hide in a corner until the terror went away, or at least abated enough for him to try to be a human rather than a weapon.
And Steve's insistence on pulling those feelings and the darkness into words that he couldn't articulate was really getting frustrating. Recruiting a near-stranger to help wasn't on his side, either.
"What am I supposed to say?" Bucky snapped, not meaning to throw verbal swords at him, but he could only take so much prodding of the bull. "Steve, I don't even know how to get words from my head to my mouth. I only sometimes think in words, how the hell am I supposed to translate what I'm thinking into something you'd understand?"
"You just did."
There was a squeal of tires in his head as those words hit him like a Buick around a tree trunk. His brain took a second to unwind that to realize he had just said something more than he had been previously. He looked away from Steve, stared at the tablet. "Please don't make me go back there."
Those were words that came readily.
Steve reached over and pulled the image back from the tablet. "You sure you can go back there?" he asked, twisting the image around to show off the blank spot in the second level basement. "I saw how you reacted to the chair. What're you going to do when we get to this place?"
"Blow it to hell," Bucky answered as if that should've been obvious. "I want to make sure nobody can use whatever's in there to make another Winter Soldier. I don't want somebody else to become like me. I know I'm fucked up, nobody else should have to go through this."
For a moment, it seemed like Steve didn't know how to react to that, before he sighed and put his hand on Bucky's right shoulder. "I don't think you're as messed up as you think. And if you are, you're not beyond hope of fixing that."
Bucky looked own at the tablet and that terrible empty level. "That doesn't mean anyone else should have to do this."
"No," Steve agreed. "And preventing another Winter Soldier is a good thing. I don't think anyone would argue with you on that. I don't. But that doesn't mean the one that exists can't get his life back. I know you'll never be the same Bucky I remember growing up with. You already got changed by the war. So did I. You're not alone in this." Bucky looked at him just in time to see a small smile. "And don't look now, but you just talked about something that was upsetting you."
Bucky stared at his weapon hand. "Don't act like it was easy." It hadn't been, and it hadn't gotten anywhere near what was really sticking in his brain. He was scared of it. Scared of it still existing, like something that could reach out and grab him and drag him back into its hell. Preventing it from being used against someone else was secondary.
"I know it wasn't," Steve said. "But you did it. This is all I want. You talking. Me listening. Being a shoulder to lean on. It may not seem like much, but it does help."
Bucky side-eyed Steve. "It doesn't just help me, does it? Be honest."
"You're not wrong." Steve didn't look one bit ashamed for that. "I didn't catch you. I should've. If I had, Hydra never would've been able to do this to you."
Bucky closed his eyes, turning his head away so he wouldn't have to look at Steve when he opened them again. "You can't blame yourself for that, Steve. I'm the one that got my dumb ass blown out of the side of the train car."
"If it's not my fault, it's not yours either," Steve said, voice firm. "I didn't get to you in time. I couldn't help you," there was a brief pause, "and it seems that I can't now." Steve sounded like he might've been fighting off tears, the frustrated tremor in his voice familiar to Bucky. "I feel helpless. I don't know how to help the person that means the most to me in the world, and it-" He cut himself off, exhaling in a sharp burst of air. Bucky glanced at him, watching him close his eyes and swallow tightly. "It hurts. It hurts deep."
The tablet suddenly seemed very interesting and he wanted to go back to the conversation before he pointed out the giant white elephant that was tap dancing around the room. "I don't mean to hurt you. You know that."
Steve pulled him into a half hug, as if that might make everything better. It didn't, but the contact was nice. "I know." What he didn't say was that it hurt all the same. Bucky could hear that unspoken part, and it made his stomach do flip flops around his other internal organs.
"Anything I say is going to hurt you, you know."
"Yeah, but it'd help you. I can always go destroy a few punching bags if it upsets me that much. They're not a bad substitute for Hydra agents that I can't get at anymore."
Bucky tilted his head back onto Steve's arm. "A corner in the bathroom works better. And yes, I know you know about that."
"It'd be hard not to," Steve said. Then he pointed at the tablet. "Why don't you get back to work on that? I've harassed you enough right now."
Relieved, Bucky's shoulder muscles relaxed, tension draining out of him. He hadn't realized just how worked up he'd been, how tiring that whole conversation had been. "Go harass Pepper then. I'll be okay."
Steve patted his far shoulder before letting go. "I actually believe that this time. You're free to come join us when you're ready."
"I will."
Steve got up off the bed, and it was a small mercy that he didn't say anything else, just walked out and left Bucky to his thoughts.
Bucky decided he really didn't want to think anymore, not about his own life and the mess it was creating, so he forced his brain to immerse itself in someone else's problems.
Back to the Hunger Games.
Katniss was in a situation with a lot of issues that had no easy solutions. The hero of these stories never did. But there was one problem that could be easily fixed, and it was starting to annoy him. "Would you kiss him already? You're only marginally less irritating than Steve," he grumbled aloud. A few more paragraphs of getting lost in another world, and he was rewarded with a bit of satisfaction when she listened to him- why did characters even bother not to? -even if it was only supposed to be a show for the game cameras.
"'Bout goddamn time."
It felt nice to not have to keep his mouth shut when reading. The first time he bitched out loud, Steve gave him a side-long look (he didn't know why, Bucky had always expressed strong opinions about books). But he was alone now, goddamnit, and he'd bitch at Katniss to kiss Peeta all he wanted while he had the opportunity.
But really, it was about goddamn time.