Bucky Barnes (bleedtowin) wrote in districtmarvel, @ 2015-08-27 08:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | backstory, bucky barnes, steve rogers |
Who: Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers
What: Steve tries to get through to his friend.
Where: Victor's Village, D8
When: Backlog! Set about two weeks after Bucky's Victory Tour, after the 66th Games.
Most of the time passed since the arena had been a fog, intermixed with terror and bouts of fury that vanished as quickly as Bucky's escort could get someone to push a sedative on him. They told him when to smile, where to sit, what to do, and mostly Bucky did it. Sometimes they took him to parties or events and people with colorful hair and gleaming teeth would talk too much and touch the metal of his arm, and Bucky would remember the flickering dark of the arena, the crack and tear of bone breaking through skin, the constant screaming that he stopped knowing when it was his or not or just a gamemaker trick - and then he would come back to himself and be somewhere else, no real memory of how he'd gotten there.
There'd been a part of him, small and fragile but still there, that had thought maybe it would be better when he was home. Maybe he would remember what it felt like to be home, and then something other than the terror, or the blankness, or the rage would come back. But they'd ushered him off the train and through the last of the parties, and nothing had been the same. Home wasn't small and sparse but sturdy and familiar. it was a sprawling mansion in Victors' Village that he'd never been any closer to than the streets outside, when he'd been a kid sneaking in for a glimpse in the windows with Steve. It was a house filled with expensive things that weren't his, that didn't smell like anything he remembered. His sister and mother walked quiet around him with careful voices and sad eyes after the first time he woke up screaming. Home wasn't home, and he wasn't himself. Nothing was the same. Nothing would BE the same.
When he was aware, Bucky spent all of his time aware of that, dwelling on how he'd left part of himself in the Capitol and would never come back, and there was nothing solid left to come back to. It was better to be in that dim place where everything was muted. But it was harder to get there without the constant push of needles or pills or drinks.
Becca had come up to the room Bucky knew was his now, but was just another perfect place the Capitol put him into that didn't fit the bones and metal of his body. It was three times the size of his old one, but the walls felt like they were hemming in, pushing their way in on him like the arena's had in one of the endless, twisting hallways he'd had to climb his way out of. He'd tried to listen to her, but whatever Becca said had just gone through him and she'd given up, leaving the pills they'd given him on the nightstand with a glass of water. As soon as she was gone, Bucky swallowed them down, then bolted down the stairs, even if he'd longed to slip out the window because the stairs were the way they'd expect him to go. This was home. He was meant to be safe at home. It didn't feel safe.
The push of the walls lightened once Bucky was outside, where he could see the blank of the sky, feel the bite of the air that wasn't cold enough to be desolate, just brisk enough to make him feel a little more ... present. What was left of him to be there, anyway. There was a little arranged garden between the houses in Victors' village. Erskine was there, somewhere, in his own house. But Bucky hadn't tried to speak to him. He hadn't tried to speak to anyone.
Right after he'd woken up, there'd been a room with no windows and only one door where they kept him. He only vaguely remembered that he'd woken up once before that and lunged at anyone who'd gotten close to him, and then they'd kept him in the room until they were sure he was manageable. The new drugs had kept the worst of the panic at bay then, so the push of the walls had been there, but ... less. And no one had come in when he was aware. Just Bucky, alone in a room with no windows and no people.
It was probably fucked up that he missed the heaviest of the drugs, and even more fucked up that he missed the room with its silence and emptiness.
He settled in the garden on one of the little prettily carved benches that were probably made by some district craftsman with gnarled hands and a leaking roof they shared with three other families, just so a couple of Victors had a place to plant their asses if they needed to run out of their fancy house. Bucky sat and stared down at his hands, eyes tracing the shape of flesh and then metal, flexing the left over and over, waiting for the pills to kick in and push everything further away again.
He heard the scuffle of an approaching footstep before he caught sight of movement, and Bucky was up and moving before he thought about it, surging to his feet and swinging to face the intruder, expression twisting into something close to a snarl for just a second before it fell away, going blank again. It took him a second for anything like recognition to settle there. "Steve." But ... bigger, somehow? He'd grown some before he left, Bucky remembered, but now it seemed more obvious.
Or maybe he just wasn't seeing right. That happened too.
Steve was here. He'd forgotten Steve was here. Steve was part of home and this ... wasn't really home. Somehow, Bucky had forgotten to put that into place when he'd tried to tell himself this was home, no matter how it felt. There was a brief flicker of a thought that maybe Steve could still be home, but it went out before it lit into anything real. Steve was different too, and Bucky ... Bucky was barely there. But he remembered Erskine taking him aside, telling him not to say anything, not to give away names they didn't already know. And Bucky knew how Steve felt about the Capitol. How he'd hate the Victor's and their perfect carved benches and how he'd have seen everything Bucky had been and done, even if Bucky couldn't remember it all. Steve and Bucky couldn't be the same, either.