bucky barnes-ulric (whatthebucky) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-03-28 11:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | ₴ inactive: bucky barnes, ₴ inactive: nyx ulric |
WHO: Nyx Ulric and Bucky Barnes
WHERE: Vallo Forest: Their Home
WHEN: March 28th, 2021 - Late Night/Early Morning
WHAT: Bucky has a nightmare of a memory from one of his lives and remembers a failsafe he came up with. Nyx vows to find another way.
WARNINGS: Talk of death, torture, the usual.
So many different lives lived and with all of them in his head now, sometimes it got a little noisy in Bucky Barnes' head. Shuri had helped him get his memory back from the decades of HYDRA brainwashing he had suffered back in his home reality, but he hadn't done much more than just deal with it, when it came to the memories that he had first gotten of Blackpoint. Then, later, of Tumbleweed. Sometimes, things fell to the cracks and, then later, resurfaced when he least expected it. It was good that he didn't have to sleep much to maintain function because the nightmares he had some nights were awful. Memories sometimes manifested that way and sometimes they were good dreams. Tonight, it was a combination of a memory of Zemo reading the trigger words that wiped him clean and ready for compliance and Betsy Braddock in Tumbleweed helping him deactivate them. Then installing the kill switch. Bucky didn't know how he had forgotten about this. Or maybe the memory hadn't seemed relevant to his current life, so it had floated to the bottom while he parsed through the rest. Whatever it was, his brain was remembering it now, leaving him gasping in deep breaths while his heart threatened to jump out of his chest. He reached for the notebook he kept on the nightstand on his side of the bed, for moments like these. Sometimes a memory gave him information he didn't want to forget again. If he wrote it down, he couldn't forget it. Steadying his shaky hand through sheer willpower, he wrote down the sequence that would leave him in a vegetative state if spoken aloud. He had Betsy install them, in case he was ever compromised. Only Natasha had known them because he couldn't have counted on either of the Steves to pull the trigger if he needed them to. And Tina…well, it would have been cruel to Tina, to let her have this burden. But Natasha could have done it, if needed. He stared the words on the notebook paper, moonlight shining down on them from the bedroom window. They were clear as if it was daytime, sitting there so innocently. Bucky was so caught up in looking down at them, he didn't realize he was bleeding from his nose until a couple of droplets fell onto the words. "Shit," he muttered, reaching for the box of tissues on the nightstand. Pulling a tissue out to dab at the page, while his other hand pulled more to hold against his bleeding noise, he sighed, closing his eyes. So, he guessed that meant the switch was alive and well. Sleep was definitely a challenge in their house. Even with the fatigue that came sometimes from the magic flowing through him Nyx still found it hard to just - shut down. Easier though when the both curled up in the bed at night, grounded with the feeling of Bucky next to him. But even then, it was a fickle thing. Wrought with his own memories, and the ever present fear that one day everything he'd built for himself could just be taken away. Again. An anxiety that often manifested itself in his dreams, kept him on a wire edge between sleep and awake. And very easy to rouse. Which is why he started awake not long after Bucky. It was a pretty common occurrence, one of them waking the other. Often enough that while worry seeped into Nyx (because nightmares were awful and he knew well enough that Bucky had lifetimes worth of material for his sleeping mind to draw on and none of it anything good) he was still calm as he flicked on the lamp on his bedside table. At least until he saw the blood. "Hey," he muttered and hurriedly pushed himself up to sit. He dropped a hand on Bucky's shoulder and studied him. "What happened, you okay?" Bucky knew there had been a more than good chance that he would wake Nyx, but he hadn't exactly been thinking clearly when he had awakened, caught up in the memories he had been reliving. His shoulders were tense, but they relaxed a bit when he felt his husband's touch, immediately feeling a calm that hadn't been there before. "Sorry for waking you," he said, voice still rough with sleep and slightly nasally due to the fact that his nose was still bleeding. "I'm okay, just a nightmare." Well, it was more than that, but he wasn't sure if now was the time to drop bombshell news like an embedded kill switch on Nyx. They already both slept not that great and he knew if he brought it up now, there was no going back to bed for either one of them. "Go back to bed, sweetheart." Nyx shook his head with a yawn. He was still a bit groggy but he knew getting back to sleep wouldn't be an easy task. It was what it was. He'd never hold it against Bucky just like he knew Bucky never held it against him when the situation was reversed. Their demons didn't give a shit about a regular sleep schedule. "Nah, it's fine, I'm awake," he told Bucky. He dropped his hand and pressed a quick kiss to the spot before he got out of the bed. He moved to the ensuite, filled a glass with some cold water and then turned it to run warmer to wet a face cloth. He returned back to the bed and traded the water and cloth for the book with Bucky. He settled next to Bucky, close enough that their shoulders touched and his legs pressed against Bucky's and read over the words, brow creasing. He was used to the little snippets of memories that suddenly came to Bucky being a bit haphazard but this list of words was far more random than usual. "What's this?" Bucky handed the book over without question, there being no secrets between them. At least, never on purpose. He discarded the tissues in the wastebasket and wiped at his nose with the cloth, hoping his healing factor was doing its job and staunching the flow. Tentatively, he pulled the cloth away - a shock of bright red on it still. He gingerly touched the back of his hand to his nose though and it came away mostly clean. Good enough. Drinking the water down, he put the cloth and cup on the nightstand and looked back over to Nyx at his side, as his husband read the mess of words he had scrawled onto the page. “It’s,” he started, knowing he wasn’t going to lie about it, but still unsure how to broach this topic. “Insurance,” he finally said, the pause between the words longer than it should have been. And knowing he owed it to Nyx not to leave him with such a broad answer, Bucky tried again. “Do you remember how I told you back in Tumbleweed that Betsy Braddock had helped take the triggers out of my head?” Nyx was used to what were probably strange conversations in the middle of the night, ones that dealt with some pretty heavy shit. That was a norm for them. But there was something almost immediately different about this one. A different sort of heaviness in the air that settled in the pit of his stomach. Insurance. He looked up from the page to Bucky. "Yeah, I remember that." Breathing deep, Bucky exhaled harshly. “Well, we’ve all seen how I can be when I’m not in control of my actions. It’s not good. And even with the triggers gone, there’s always a chance that the wrong memory update might come along or someone with secret knowledge could come through the portal. We have the worry now, just like I did back in Tumbleweed.” Looking over at Nyx, he could see the glaive’s face so clearly. “And so...I asked Betsy to put a sequence in my brain. Something that would wipe me completely, so no one could control me anymore. A last resort measure.” Another pause, then a nod down at the notebook in Nyx’s hand. “It would effectively kill me and those are the words to it.” The worst part about it was that it made sense. That logically there was a problem and this was a solution. Nyx knew well enough to know that not all solutions were - well - good. Sometimes they were just the only thing you had. But as pragmatic and realistic fighting a war had made him over the years it was hard to fall back on that now. Because this was his husband. His husband who had had decades of his life stolen by the people who turned him into a weapon, left him untrusting of his own mind and thinking that the solution was what Nyx now held in his hands. A set of words that would shut him down permanently. And whatever logic Nyx might have been able to reason with was gone, replaced instead with a terrible heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. The words on the page had already taken hold, locked themselves into his mind and he hated it. He looked to Bucky. "Who else knows this?" he asked as he lifted the book a little. “Natasha,” Bucky answered immediately, hating the look that was on Nyx’s face right then. God, why was his brain this stupid? They could have lived without this knowledge, been happier for it. Then again, a very small part of him was grateful for a way to have to shut him down if they needed it. Because as that magical key from a few months ago had shown them, there was always a chance that the Winter Soldier programming could come back in weird and mysterious ways. Just because he accepted that part of himself now, didn’t mean he liked it. “Not the one here, but the one from Tumbleweed. And I think...maybe Tina? That part’s blurry. I know I didn’t want her knowing, but I also remember people being sent back home and I started to panic, thinking Natasha might be too.” Which, you know, was great because that meant this was a conversation he was going to have to have with Tina too, to figure out what she might know. Running a hand through his hair, he reached out for the book. “I’m sorry, I should have stopped you before you read that. Maybe we can find a way to erase them from your head?” Tina’s too, if she did know them. And then he would go see if Natasha was willing to carry this burden instead. Nyx was quiet as Bucky talked and took the notebook back from him. Almost eerily so. A million things ran through his mind. And over and over the one, single thought that stood out above everything else. It wasn't fair. A mess of a thought that was this conversation in the middle of the night with his husband over words that would kill him because of something other people had done. That extended to all the ways everyone he'd ever loved in his life had had too much asked of them, too much taken from them… all for what? Someone else's gain. And he was so damn tired of it. He shook his head at the suggestion, pressed his hands to his face and let out a slow breath. "No," he said, the word caught in the back of his throat. "Fuck," he let out quietly as he dropped his hands, stood and took a few steps like he was about to start pacing the floor before he stopped. He felt utterly exhausted and wired at the same time, anxious and frustrated. Nyx knew, he had seen, what Bucky could be. What had been programmed into him for so long and the damage that could be done - to others, to Bucky himself. He knew the guilt Bucky lived with even now for all that had been done by his hands while he'd had no control over it. He knew the guilt Bucky would carry if he ever lost that control again. That at a certain point there was a limit to what someone could live with. And he damn well knew that he would have done the exact same thing if he was in Bucky's place. But when he looked at Bucky all those things he knew fell in favour of all that he felt. This was his husband, the man he had chosen to spend his life with. Nyx knew that the Winter Soldier would always be a threat in the back of Bucky's mind, one of those awful things they had to carry around. That would always be a part of Bucky, it was unavoidable. But when Nyx looked at him all he saw was Bucky. How long and how hard his husband had fought to be a person after being a weapon for so long. All the lives he had made better by being that person. How much they had gone through together to get to this point. His hands balled into fists at his side and released and his emotions running as high as they were it was easy to fall into being nothing but that and the magic that ran through his veins. He could feel Bucky, some invisible string from where he stood to where Bucky was on the bed. Nyx's head tipped back for a moment with eyes closed, just feeling it. He thought of the impossibility of finding each other again here after Tumbleweed, how even when Bucky hadn't remembered that time together they still were drawn to each other, how he had felt Bucky even in that damn snowglobe, like a tether from here to there. And just like that he knew. His eyes opened and he moved to the bed again, took the notebook and ripped out the page. "I get this, I do," he said as he held the page, his eyes determined as he looked at his husband. "But this? These words? I am never saying them," he said fiercely, "and neither is anyone else." He reached for the glass he'd gotten from the bathroom, held the paper a little bit above and it burned, the ashes falling into the glass. Nyx set the glass back on the bedside table and turned back to Bucky. He rested a hand, still warm from burning the paper, on Bucky's chest. He could feel Bucky's heartbeat beneath his hand, could feel him. "Whatever happens, however lost you might get if that part of you takes control.. I will find you." Bucky felt helpless, watching Nyx get out of bed. Almost immediately, it felt colder with him even just a couple of feet away. All Bucky wanted at the moment was to maybe be held for a while and be assured that they wouldn’t need the words, that things might actually stay okay for once. He wanted to forget this stupid nightmare of a life and just exist in harmony with his other half. Instead, they had to deal with this because his brain was never going to let them have peace. Maybe the kinder thing might have been for him to not pursue Nyx and fall in love with him and be at this point in their lives. Maybe it had been selfish to want more out of life, after everything he had done, after all those people he had hurt. He had a few therapists in his time help him understand that while it had been his hands, it hadn’t been his choice, and he had learned to let go of some of that guilt, but it would never completely leave him no matter what he was told and what he understood. Because he would also feel like that monster. He had accepted the Winter Soldier was always going to be a part of him, but maybe that also meant that he could never have true happiness. That would be his price to pay, for the lives he had ruined. Maybe he was an undeserving asshole, for marrying Nyx and trying for a white picket fence life. His mind was running wild with these thoughts and they weren’t going to slow down anytime soon, not unless Nyx intervened. And boy, did he. Bucky wasn’t sure what sort of reaction he should have braced for, but the one he got wasn’t it. He hadn’t expected Nyx to be angry at him, necessarily. But he hadn’t expected such an affirmation of their bond either. Watching as Nyx took the page out of the book and burned it, Bucky felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the flames in that glass and everything to do with that unseen tether between them. He wasn’t sure what his face was doing (was he tearing up? Maybe), but he put his flesh and blood hand over Nyx’s on his chest and took a shaky breath in. “Yeah, alright. We won’t use them.” Because even if it was selfish, he wanted this, wanted him and Nyx and the rest of their lives together, no matter how short or long that would be. And if he had to fight his way back from the dark abyss of brainwashing again, he’d do it. A thousand times over, he would do it. “I don’t know how I got this lucky, but I’m glad it’s you that I’m in this with,” Bucky said, smiling. Strained, but still smiling. It was maybe a bad call. That logically running on hope and faith that he could somehow figure out how to pull Bucky back from a terrible situation if it came to that was just that. Hope and faith. But Nyx was okay with it. He'd lost too much in his life, had too much taken from him. He wasn't going to lose this. At least not if there was any chance he could keep it from happening. More than that he knew Bucky was worth more than a last ditch resort. He was worth the fight. Whatever it took. Nyx turned his hand under Bucky's, laced their fingers together and brought Bucky's knuckles up to brush his lips across them softly. "Could say the same thing," he pointed out. Lucky was a good way of putting it. To find each other in the first place, to find each other again. He gave Bucky a smile in return, less shaky than Bucky's even if his own mind still raced a million miles a minute. "I love you, Bucky," he said softly. "Whatever happens okay? I'm not going anywhere." A fact that he knew had been said before, that was inherent in the vows they'd taken, the rings on their fingers. But one that didn't hurt to be repeated, especially in moments like these. Both he and Nyx knew that they didn’t really have a choice, if Vallo decided to send one or both of them away. But Bucky knew that’s not what he meant. He knew that what Nyx was talking about was the devotion they had sworn to each other. That even though there was always going to be the possibility that Vallo would try and fuck them over, that they were committed to each other and their happiness, no matter what might happen. Reaching up to pull Nyx down, he reached up to press a kiss to his lips, a little uncoordinated, but still a hard press of lips that Bucky hoped conveyed how much he believed the other man. When he pulled away, he tugged Nyx down by the hand he was holding. “Come back to bed. Even if we’re not going to sleep, we might as well be comfortable.” It was late enough in the night that they only had a couple of more hours before they had to get up and get going anyway. And maybe, in the warm brightness of the sun, they could figure out a way to move forward. |