Chapter Text
Matt notices something’s wrong when Steve comes to pick him up instead of Bucky. He has tried to persuade them to let him take the train, but they tell him it’s faster to drive, and really, they don’t mind at all.
“It’s Wednesday,” Matt says by way of greeting, as if Steve doesn’t already know. Wednesday is therapy day for Steve. The only other time Steve picked him up on a Wednesday was the first day back at school.
“You look tired, Mr Rogers.” MJ has barely looked up from her book, but she’s right. He’s pale and his shoulders are sagging and he’s not flashing a billion-dollar smile like he usually does when he picks them up from school.
“You want a lift home or not, kid?” Steve tries to tease, but it comes out a little terser than he probably intended. Not that MJ notices.
“Not if you’re too tired- I can get the bus, like a normal person.”
“Nonsense,” Steve insists, opening the car door and ushering them in.
Steve doesn’t ask his usual slew of questions on the drive to MJ’s, so they fill the silence themselves as well as they can. As usual, it dissolves into friendly dispute- Matt only knows Steve is paying attention because of the occasional laugh or snort at a particularly witty rebuke.
“Remind me why we’re friends again?” Matt asks MJ, with a roll of his eyes, and she shrugs.
“We have the same last name, so we were sat next to each other in homeroom, and you decided to talk to me.”
“More fool me,” Matt grumbles, hunkering down into his seat in a huff. Steve gives him a look in the mirror, like he’s trying to ask if that’s how you’d treat a lady. Matt holds his tongue because she started it will not go down too well.
Steve doesn’t start driving home until he’s sure MJ is safely in her house with the door shut behind her. It’s only then that Matt brings up the fact that it’s a Wednesday, and on Wednesday’s Bucky comes to pick him up. Not that he minds that Steve is there, but the two of them run a tight ship, and the order of things is not usually disturbed.
When Steve pulls over on some random residential street and shuts the engine off, Matt knows something is very, seriously wrong.
“Climb into the front seat, so I can talk to you properly,” Steve asks, and Matt does as told without question. The slam of the car door is unnecessarily loud.
“Is Bucky okay?” It’s a stupid question to ask, and Matt already knows that the answer is no, but a small, childish part of him wants to hear yes, it’s all fine, we just decided to change the routine we so stringently stick to for the sake of our sanity because that’s what we’re used to as military men, and because it’s helpful for coping with everyone’s PTSD, for fun!
Steve is quiet for way too long, so Matt’s mind runs away with him. Logically, he knows Bucky doesn’t go on missions without Steve, even if Steve goes without Bucky (though that is a rare occasion) but his unhelpful brain brings up images of Bucky dead at the scene, Bucky in a coma in hospital, Bucky bloody and beaten and-
“Buck- Bucky’s having a bad day,” Steve says evenly, and he’s not looking at Matt.
Fuck.
The hollow feeling in his chest has stayed, but the cause has changed. Bad days mean days when the soldier comes back, or rather, when Bucky has to fight him off more than usual. Matt knows about bad days, but he hasn’t seen one yet. He doesn’t know if this is better or worse than the scenarios he’d thought of.
“Nina-” Matt doesn’t really know which question he’s going to ask. Where is she? How did she get home? Is she okay to be staying at home with Bucky if he’s not well?
“Freddie dropped Nina home. It’s not so bad,” Steve fills in the gaps, like he knew what questions Matt was going to ask. There’s definitely an unspoken yet that neither of them want to add.
“If it gets really bad,” Matt’s mouth has gone so dry, his tongue is sticking to the roof of his mouth. “If it gets really bad, what happens?”
“You and Nina will go and stay with Natasha until the coast is clear,” Steve tells him. “It’s better if you guys don’t see,” he sighs, “the soldier.”
Matt feels more than a little bit guilty for the fear at the pit of his stomach. He shouldn’t be scared of Bucky, not when it’s not Bucky’s mind in his head, Bucky wouldn’t ever hurt him, he promised-
“Are you going to be okay?” He asks, and Steve seems a little perplexed by the question- like it’s never occurred to him that he’s allowed to be affected too.
“Don’t you worry about me, kid, I’ll be fine.” Steve’s reassuring smile and squeeze of his shoulder are a little weak for Matt to fully believe him. Probably because Steve doesn’t believe it himself.
When they get home, even the air feels oppressive. Matt decides, then and there, that he hates it. Nina is curled up in the window seat, chewing on the end of a pen as she stares intently at a crossword- she’s got one hand on a page at the back of the book, meaning she’s looking at the answers.
“Matty!” She calls out when she’s finally noticed him, and Matt’s eyes immediately dart to Bucky’s in the kitchen. He’s filling a vase in the sink, though the sudden noise has made him tense.
He’s not wearing a shirt, like he’s preparing to throw off his metal arm at any given second. The harness across his shoulder’s his clear, and makes it look like his skin is shining- on any other day, perhaps the arm would be cool- but right now, it’s making Matt’s gut clench in fear.
“Hey there, Little Bird,” Matt practically whispers, kneeling down so he can give her a proper hug. Steve is next to Bucky, though they aren’t touching, which is extremely disconcerting.
“We picked flowers today at lunch with Freddie,” Nina informs him, pointing at Bucky and the massive bouquet he’s trying to arrange in the vase. It’s not as artful as Steve, perhaps, but beautiful all the same.
“They’re beautiful,” Matt tears his eyes away from Bucky so he can fully pay attention to Nina. She waves at Steve when he looks over, and he tiredly waves back.
“Papa said to stay out of the kitchen today,” Nina whispers to Matt as she hugs him again, and Matt squeezes her tighter.
It’s only when they’ve settled in the window seat again that Bucky comes over to say hi, Steve following him like a shadow.
“Hey, Matt,” he says tightly, like he’s in a lot of pain and desperately trying not to show it. Matt gulps.
“Hi Bucky.”
“How was your day at school?” The question is slow and monotonous, and Bucky still hasn’t put the vase down on the coffee table like Matt thought he would- like his brain can’t handle more than one action at a time, or he’s completely forgotten what he was in the living room to do. Part of PTSD is flashbacks, loss of time, panic attacks, and other time disruptor activities that leaves a person bewildered and wondering what they were doing- that’s what the website had said.
Goldstein had taken him to the side after the first short session, had explained PTSD, but he’d done his own research by then.
“It was okay- everyone’s a bit crazy because Homecoming is next week-”
That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say.
Bucky’s face contorted, and his mouth twisted like someone had burned him, and his metal hand that was holding the vase rose so it was by his head. Like he was about to throw it.
Matt dives across to cover Nina before he even has time to think. He’s holding her close to his body and instinctually, she’s clinging to him. He puts a hand behind her head so she can’t turn to look at Bucky, even when he does- she only hears the smash of the vase against the wall.
By a sniper’s standards, it missed them by miles. By anyone else’s, it’s way too close for comfort.
Matt realises as he looks at Bucky that he’s looking at the Soldier- his mouth is a thin line and his eyes are blank and uncaring, and it’s only at Steve’s voice that gets rid of that look.
“Buck, please.” He’s begging, and his hands are clenched by his sides like it’s paining him to keep them there. Steve looks so broken, and it’s as jarring as Bucky’s red-rimmed eyes.
It’s added to the list of things Matt never wants to see again, but knows he will.
Bucky comes back to himself almost as quickly as he became the soldier. His chest heaves with a shuddering breath and his expression changes to one of horror as he looks from Matt and Nina to the broken vase on the floor.
There’s a rapidly darkening patch on the carpet, and there’s petals removed from their flower heads strewn across the floor.
Bucky staggers back and reaches for the two of them simultaneously, and he looks so confused and so wounded that Matt wants to go to him. But he stays where he is, Nina clutched tightly to his chest. His eyes dart between Bucky, Steve and the door, and Bucky must notice because he makes a choked sound.
“I am so sorry,” he whispers, and he’s breathing hard and focusing on Matt and Nina as he pulls off his arm, carefully placing it on the coffee table like a morbid centrepiece in place of the flower vase. He moves backwards, like he’s headed for his bedroom and Matt barely remembers how to breathe.
“Papa?” Nina pulls away from Matt, and before he can stop her, she’s looking over his shoulder at Bucky. Matt does not miss Steve moving very slowly towards them.
“Are you okay?” Matt has picked up enough Russian to know what she’s asking.
Bucky whimpers and collapses into the doorframe.
“Oh, moi malenkiye,” Bucky flinches at the Russian, like he didn’t mean for it to leave his mouth, “miei cari, I am so sorry.”
“We have to go,” Steve says quietly, and he’s guiding Matt and Nina toward the front door, blocking Bucky from sight, but Matt can hear him stumbling into the bedroom.
“Papa!” Nina screams, and it’s so loud it makes Matt’s ears ring.
“Nina, no!” Matt hisses, but Nina ignores him.
“Papa! Daddy I don’t want to go- Daddy- Papa!”
There’s a growl from further inside the apartment that makes Matt’s blood run cold.
“Get them out of here!”
Natasha is already outside when Steve opens the door, and she readily takes a wriggling, wailing Nina from Matt.
“Natasha-” Steve says her name like a thank you and an apology all at once.
“Just go,” she says sternly, and Steve shuts the door behind them.
They’re half way down the hallway when they hear a crash from inside the apartment.
When they get inside Natasha’s apartment, Bruce is already there. Natasha heads straight for the armchair- Nina’s wailing has turned to whimpers, but she’s inconsolable all the same.
Matt heads straight for the bathroom.
He can hear Bruce calling after him as he falls to his knees with a painful thud, and then there’s only the sound of his retching as he throws up his lunch into the toilet. His hands are shakily gripping the sides of the bowl, and he registers that they’re rapidly fading in and out of visibility- they haven’t done that it a long time.
Worthless piece of shit! Beth’s voice, followed by the sound of a glass bottle breaking, rattles around his head like a broken record.
He absentmindedly lifts his hand to touch the scar on his temple.
“I got you, Matt, I got you.”
Bruce is suddenly by his side, holding his hair back from his face. When he finally sits back on his heels, breathing heavily through his mouth and nose like he’s been underwater too long, Bruce is poised and ready with a wet cloth to clean Matt’s face.
“I’m sorry,” Matt croaks out, and he can feel his face flushing with shame and embarrassment. He doesn’t need help. He doesn’t deserve help.
Bruce just shakes his head, like he knows Matt won’t hear a word of whatever he says.
Matt has to lunge for the toilet to vomit again.
Eventually, he stands on shaky legs, with Bruce’s help.
“There’s an overnight bag in the spare room for you.” Matt just nods. Natasha keeps one for him and Nina, just in case of emergencies.
He can hear Natasha singing Russian lullabies to Nina as he changes.
Bruce and Natasha make Nina eat dinner, but they don’t question it when he shakes his head, they just pack away the leftovers.
Bruce takes Nina for a bath, and Natasha takes a seat by Matt on the ridiculously plush couch.
“Are you feeling any better?” She asks softly, and Matt scowls.
“I’m not the one that’s sick,” he grinds out. Bucky is the one that people should be fussing over, not him. He only threw up- Bucky is trying to fight off a whole other person in his head. Natasha just purses her lips.
“I never said you were. All I asked was if you felt any better than you did in the half an hour you were vomiting.”
“I do, thank you.”
Nina wants to sleep in Natasha’s bed with her, so Matt is left alone in the spare room. He can hear Natasha and Bruce talking, though it sounds like they’re a million miles away, he’s so deep into his own thoughts.
“Jarvis?”
“Yes, Mr Jones.” Matt didn’t know if AI’s could sound sympathetic, but Jarvis did.
“You’ve got eyes on every room in this tower right?”
“Yes, but you can only access a select few.”
“Can you show me Bucky and Steve?”
Jarvis doesn’t respond for a minute, and Matt thinks that maybe he was too quiet, but miraculously, his phone screen lights up like it’s got a notification. When he opens it, he can see Steve sat outside their bedroom, with his hand on the door.
The audio comes as a shock, and he quickly turns it down so even he almost can’t hear it.
“I threw a vase at them Steve,” Bucky all but sobs, and Steve’s entire body seems to be shaking. Matt looks closer, and there’s five little blue bruises on his arm.
“That wasn’t you-”
“I’ve turned into him.”
Steve’s breath hitches and Matt finds his does too. “You are nothing like your father-”
“You saw me!” Bucky screeches, and Matt flinches. “You saw me then and you saw me now! I tried to hurt them like he hurt me! I swore I wouldn’t!”
“Buck that wasn’t you it was the Soldier! You fought him off – the vase didn’t hit them!” Steve yells back, and it’s very quiet for a really long time. At some point, the video changes so Matt is looking at Bucky on the other side of the door.
“I would never hurt our children,” Bucky whispers, leaning his head against the doorframe, and he’s looking directly at the camera, whether he knows it or not.
“No, you would never.”
“I love them,” he says, and it sounds more like defiance than confession.
There’s a split second where Bucky’s body twists and his head rolls back, and the video cuts out entirely.
It’s only then that Matt realises he’s been crying.
Matt watches the surveillance of Steve and Bucky whenever he gets the chance, whenever Bucky is more himself than the soldier, though he doesn’t let Nina see. She’s only little, after all- she shouldn’t have to see her parents like that.
Natasha doesn’t make either of them go to school- instead, she takes them to the park, and lets them eat ridiculous amounts of junk food, and watch all the movies they want- which would be great if he and Nina didn’t feel so shit. Nina only speaks in English when she absolutely has to, the rest of the time it’s Russian and even then, it’s only if she can’t communicate what she wants with hand signals.
She’s curled up in Matt’s lap in an arm chair when she says the first non-functional words to him since they left their apartment.
“I miss Daddy and Papa,” she says quietly, and it’s so sorrowful Matt feels his heart break.
“I miss them too,” he whispers back, dropping a kiss on her head and turning his face away so she can’t see that he’s got tears in his eyes.
Boys don’t cry.
She rests her tiny hand on his chest, just above his heart, and buries her face in the crook of his neck, and all he can do is hold her tight.
“It’s not fair,” she mumbles, and Matt swallows the lump in his throat. It’s not fair that two of the best people he’s ever met have to deal with this shit; that their baby girl has to know that her parents aren’t invincible, that even after everything this family, his family, has been through, they can’t catch a break.
“Fairs are for tourists, kid,” he says with a shrug, in a poor imitation of Bucky, but it earns him a sniffle which might just be a laugh.
Steve comes to visit them when he can, whether it’s for five minutes or two hours, and Nina leaps into his arms every time.
Steve is crouching by the front door, and hugging Nina close when his eyes meet Matt’s. He gets to his feet, rubbing Nina’s back in constant soothing circles, but he doesn’t take a step towards Matt.
“How are you holding up?”
“I’ve been better,” he shrugs, and tries for a smile but he doesn’t quite manage it. The look he gets from Steve isn’t sympathetic, it’s empathetic- there’s no pity mixed in.
With slightly less enthusiasm than Nina, he hurries over to wrap his arms around Steve, who shifts Nina in his arms so he can pat Matt on the back as well.
“Papa said to tell you he loves you very much,” Steve’s voice breaks a little as he talks, and it takes Matt a moment to realise Steve is talking to both of them. “I love you very much.”
“I love you too,” Nina instantly replies, and Matt there’s a crushing weight on Matt’s chest and a constricting force around his throat that’s barely letting him breathe, let alone talk, so he just leans into Steve and nods.
They’re only allowed to go home on the evening of day two, when Steve comes to get them. He carries Nina back, and Matt stays stuck to his side as close as he possibly could be without hindering any movement.
When they open the front door, Nina immediately wiggles out of Steve’s arms and races into the living room, where Bucky’s on the couch, wrapped up in a mountain of blankets. He wrestles free- with only one arm, the metal one is nowhere to be seen.
“Papa?” Nina asks cautiously, staying two feet away from Bucky, and it’s almost worse than outright rejection. Bucky swallows hard and reaches out his hand for Nina to take if she wants.
“It’s me, baby, it’s me.”
Nina doesn’t take his hand, but climbs up onto the sofa next to him and puts her tiny hands on his cheeks.
“The Soldier scared me,” she says matter-of-factly, and Bucky covers her hands with his.
“I am so sorry, my love-”
“It wasn’t you, it was him, so he should say sorry,” Nina nods, and Bucky looks up to the ceiling with a watery smile before looking back at her.
“How right you are, sweetheart, how right you are.”
Nina leans forward so their foreheads are touching, and brushes her nose against his. When she settles down next to Bucky, he turns to look at Matt.
“I-”
“Do you speak Italian?” Matt asks, and he’s not really sure where the question comes from, but he knows he doesn’t want to have the conversation that was coming right now.
“Well, I mean, I can-” Bucky stutters, and there’s the quiet sounds of Steve doing…something in the kitchen.
“No, I mean do you speak Italian?” Did you know how when you were just Bucky Barnes and no one else?
“My mom was an Italian immigrant, so she taught all her children Italian, yes.”
Matt sits himself next to Bucky, and they just stare at each other for a moment, until Matt takes Bucky’s hand in his.
“That’s cool.”
Bucky squeezes his hand tight.
“I guess it is.”