Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The thing Bucky remembered best was the fall. Most everything else was a blur.

It was a freak accident, they said. Train going a bit too fast hit a rock slide on the track, not stopping in time because of the short amount of time between spotting the rock slide verses hitting it. The front of the train immediately got fucked, crunched like a tin can, pinned under the rock slide and a few hundred tons of speeding train. The rest of it turned into a broken mess, like a splintered stick a particularly destructive toddler got a hold of. The trailers went in all different directions, and Bucky’s, at the front, crumpled and popped open like shaken soda can before it veered and hung off the side of the cliff.

Bucky doesn’t remember getting on the train, or even really where they were or why. He can’t remember some of the past week. He thinks they were just doing some sightseeing, a little family vacation, but he doesn’t know, not for certain, not anymore. They tell him that he was in Italy. He can’t remember having gone to Italy. He can’t remember. They tell him that he got transferred from the Italian hospital back to the one in Brooklyn as soon as he was stable enough for it.

At least that part makes sense.

Bucky remembers having a grip of some metal bar, who knows where from. He remembered the cold unsteady metal in his hands, fingers holding tight, holding on for dear life so hard his arms aches.

There’s a blur of motion. The inside of the train was crushed, he couldn’t see anyone and something in his mind tells him that he’s the only one that survived because he fell outside somehow. He remembered how the bar in his hands gave with a groan and a crack.

Then free falling, empty air swallowing him up, tearing at his body, the roar of wind in his ears.

He fell for only a few seconds, seconds filled with panic and his own scream in his ears. The flailing, the desperate reach for the train, to grab onto anything as gravity was lost around him, as gravity pulled him to the ground, unyielding to his burst of desperation and fear before he landed hard. He remembers a bolt of pain through his body, his head cracking against something, hearing the groan of metal above him, and then nothing.

He wakes up without his left arm, alone, in a strange place, with strange people, and he panics. They need to sedate him three separate times when he wakes up and freaks out, knowing that his family is dead and he’s in pain, and he can’t feel his arm, and everything hurts-

And then blissful darkness following a sharp pinch in his neck.

The fourth time he cries, hot tears flowing down his flushed face, sobs trying to contain themselves in his chest and choking him. A nurse has to help him calm down, keeps speaking to him in soft tones, telling him that he’ll be alright, and everything will be okay, but Bucky doesn’t believe a word she says because he knows it’s not true, not true at all.

When he feels empty, and his face aches and eyes burn, they tell him what happened.

The explain that after he fell, a large piece of the train landed on his shattered left arm, mangling the practically unsalvageable limb further. They say it was a miracle the fall didn’t kill him. They say it was a miracle that the piece of train didn’t land on him and crush him, how it actually pinned his arm so hard it practically turned into a tourniquet, which let them save him despite laying there, unconscious, his arm mangled and bleeding, for over an hour. They say it was a miracle that he just cracked his skull, broke some ribs, how his left arm took all his weight and the force he fell onto it. They say it was a miracle that he only had bruises, scrapes, and lacerations and otherwise, considering the state of the other bodies on the same trailer as him.

They say him surviving was a miracle.

Bucky looked around the barren room, white almost blinding him, and machines hooked up to him left and right, the odd feeling of both having an arm and it being numb hovering by his side, and thinks that this isn’t a miracle, this is a curse. His parents were dead, and he missed them so much it physically hurt not to have them there, an ache in his heart and head, like a throbbing relentless headache, the beeping of the monitors around him contributing to each ache, a heartbeat where two were gone.

He was miserable, and he could tell that it rubbed off.

The sad orphaned teenager who had no visitors save a skinny blonde boy who half looked like he belonged in the hospital and a CPS agent. The idiot from CPS somehow got it across that people weren’t looking to adopt armless traumatized teenagers that looked like they had been sleeping on the streets, too. Sure, Bucky looked a little rough around the edges, but it seemed a little unfair. Bucky liked his long hair, he could do a lot with it. Braids, buns, the whole shebang. His mom always liked it long, though his dad was hesitant when Bucky said he wanted to grow it out a few years ago. He grew to like it too, after they got past the horrible too-short-to-do-anything-too-long-to-be-presentable stages.

The grief was crushing with everything that continued to happen. Then, as icing on the top of the fucking cake, while Bucky was still in the hospital, Steve had a sudden cardiac arrest attack because of the heart arrhythmia that Steve’s grandmother never got treated along with the stress that came with a best friend being in the hospital. Bucky knew that cardiac arrest, especially sudden cardiac arrest, was very dangerous. What he didn’t know is that about 95% of people who get it die within minutes. Steve was lucky enough to have an ambulance practically just down the street and he collapsed on the sidewalk, not up in his apartment.

Very, very, very lucky.

That was the real miracle, that Steve survived. If Bucky lost Steve, he would have taken a scalpel to his neck or found all the pills he should never swallow and down them with bleach. Bucky knows himself well enough that losing everything, losing Steve on top of it all, would have ruined him. He would have been nothing, he’d be an empty body. His blood would have meant zip to him, the pain would have dulled to nothing. He would have been a husk.

It’s a scary thought. It’s a very scary thought, knowing that if anything happened to the one thing he can call his own, his best friend, the boy who was Bucky’s last link to his life, he would do anything to join him at the end of the line. It’s a desperate, possessive, unhealthy thought, but it floats by him, hovers out of sight until he’s thinking about everything.

Bucky wobbled through the hospital on unsteady feet to visit, drugged with painkillers, off balance because of his arm being gone, and found himself sitting in the chair next to Steve’s bed feeling kind of subdued and helpless as he held Steve’s cold hand. They had done this medical hypothermia thing to him to make sure he didn’t get brain damage and he was still a bit frosty. Bucky doesn’t understand all of it, but Steve himself looked pretty trouble about the whole thing when he was conscious enough to understand what was happening.

Bucky hated talking to people now. He used to be the life of the party, the goofball, the extrovert, Steve’s best bud, a guy who knows how to fill the time with fun, but now he found himself snapping at nurses and doctors. They offered condolences, told him if he wanted to talk about it he could, told him that they were sorry it happened. It didn’t mean anything, they didn’t understand. He got fucking stuffed animals and he hated them because he’s getting presents for his parents being dead and him losing a fucking limb. He didn’t fucking want anything to remind him of what happened, especially glass eyed fluffy bears. His reminder was with him permanently, a big fucking empty sleeve.

He minded the sweets less, helped distract himself from the pain, but he loathed to speak to anyone, despite the bribery.

Steve understood the most. He recognized that it sucked, and he said sorry too, but he understood what Bucky was feeling. Understood the pain. He didn’t try to give Bucky presents, not that he could with how fucking poor both their families were, the medical costs of all this had to be insane but it wasn’t Bucky’s problem and apparently Steve’s mother had life insurance that Grandma Rogers was saving and used to pay for Steve’s medical bills.

Steve gave Bucky reminders of how happy he was with his family, how they’d be remembered. He told Bucky he didn’t have to be accepting or happy about it, didn’t have to put on a smile because it really fucking sucked. His emotions were his own, he could be angry and sad, and ache down to his soul. He told Bucky it was all in how he got through it that was important, not sticking on a smile and calling me fine.

It made him fucking cry every time, and it made him angry, but never at Steve. Not Steve, who sat on his hospital bed with him and let Bucky hold at him so hard it left bruises, face buried into Steve’s hospital clothes as his wet sticky face from crying. Not Steve, who tried to fight a nurse when she came in when Bucky couldn’t stop crying and needed a fucking minute, okay? Never Steve, who kept him grounded.

They traded emails. They’d never needed to have them before because they lived so close, used to sit on opposite fire escapes and talk, put a plank over the railings and walk over. When they got bigger, they used to jump. Stupid of them, Steve broke his leg falling once.

Bucky couldn’t attend the burial, as he was in a medically induced coma for it, but before Bucky was taken to his foster home, his CPS agent let him visit, standing a respectful distance away while Bucky just about sobbed his eyes out over two cold headstones with his parents' names on them. It was a kind of shitty day, hot and muggy, but no sun out. If the sun had been shining, Bucky would have felt worse. Feeling drained and exhausted, his head hurting, world-weary, he places the stones he brought on each headstone and stood, fist clenched as tightly as his eyes as he tried to get himself under control.

He wondered why it happened, why it happened to him, why it happened to his family. Bucky’s mom and dad had never done anything to deserve this. It didn’t make sense. Though, maybe it wasn’t supposed to. It made Bucky realize just how little control he had over life, what happens around him. Steve. His family. All of it was up to crazy fucking chance and Bucky got dealt shit cards.

It was all just… happening around him. He had no control. It made him feel small. Useless. He wanted to be invisible and disappear.

Bucky packed up his belongings at home, a few books, a couple of photographs, the laptop he got for his Bar Mitzvah, his clothes, his dad's jacket, and his Dodgers hat. They might not have been in Brooklyn for over sixty years, but it was at least their home city. He left his baseball bat, his glove, and his ball. Not a lot he could do with just his right arm in that regard and he wouldn’t have Steve to come play whenever. He took his multi-tool, his lucky top, his journals (they’re not diaries, Steve, cut it out ), his iPod, and headphones.

It hurt most to leave his guitar behind, but he just couldn’t make himself bring it knowing that he’d never be able to play it again. Well, that’s not true, it hurt most to leave the apartment behind, his home, where he was raised and where he had been tucked in at night by his parents. It hurt most to leave his life behind because it wasn’t something he could take with him except in his memories, but leaving the guitar hurt.

After losing his arm, Bucky was struck by what he was unable to do, or at least, what was very difficult. Tying shoelaces, buttoning his pants, playing video games, playing guitar, turning book pages because they kept closing, making food, cutting things, riding a bike, putting clothes on, getting clothes off. It was a hassle. Everything was a hassle. He managed. They did a whole stupid PT thing and taught him the basics on how to function, but it wasn’t super comprehensive.

Bucky was taken away by his social worker, Jen Tennent, to meet his foster parent, Chase Williams. She gave him her card and a nice smile. Not a lot of interacting between them, but it wasn’t a problem. The house was… decent. Small, but still bigger than his old apartment. No trees, smallish backyard, chain link fence all around. But he’d never had a yard before. Chase himself had a beer belly and looked like he slept five hours each night. Seemed okay enough, but Bucky didn’t have any strong opinions either way, he just wanted to be left alone.

The first night was the worst. He felt like he was in the wrong place. He wanted to go home to his mom and dad, but he couldn’t. His nightmare that night was so vivid he didn’t know where he was when he woke up and didn’t move for five minutes because he thought his arm was pinned by metal and agony.

When he snapped out of it, the feeling of being somewhere else fading as reality settled onto his shoulders, he scribbled down what he dreamed last night in his journal, what he was feeling. He sighed and rubbed his face glaring at the horrible sunlight shining outside the window. He felt tired and his mood wasn’t helping. Bucky had been internally feeling ‘what the fuck ’ for a while. Usually when everyday things were nice outside of his own funk. So seeing the sun shining like that made him want to put his fist through his window.

Breakfast was a bowl of cereal. Stale Cheerios. Bucky stared at his bowl. He’d eaten most of it, but the Cheerios got too mushy and he didn’t want to go after the last fifteen or so. He’d been staring for ten minutes. Maybe he should do something about it. Bucky ripped his stare away and noticed Chase smoking in the living room, watching the news. It made Bucky wonder if smoking was anything like drinking. Was it weird to smoke at eight in the morning? Or not? His parents never smoked. Neither did Steve’s grandma.

It was still summer, so he could basically do whatever he wanted. It didn’t seem like Chase was too invested in his location. Bucky dumped his leftover cereal in the sink and went to his room. He put on his mother's necklace, pocketed his lucky top, grabbed his iPod and earbuds and mumbled that he was going out to Chase.

He kind of just wandered around, keeping his head down, not looking at anybody, even though he was also keeping track of where he was so he didn’t get lost. That would be worse. He’d have to ask for directions or something.

“I was walking~ far from home, where the names are not burned along the wall. Saw a building~ high as heaven, but the door was so sm~all, door was so small. I saw rain clouds, little babies, and a bridge that had tumbled to the ground. I saw sinners~ making music, and I dreamt of that sound, dreamt of that sound,” he sang softly to the lyrics as he traveled.“I was walking~ far from home, but I carried your letters all the while. I saw lovers~ in a window, whisper, ‘warn me like time, warn me like time.’ I saw sickness blooming fruit trees. I saw blood and a bit of it was mine. I saw children in a river, but their lips were still dry, lips were still dry.”

He found a library and the school. He realized he didn’t know if he had summer reading stuff to do because schools always had bullshit summer reading assignments and he considered the building. The hours on the sign said that the middle school was open, so he hesitantly found the front office and stepped inside.

The secretary blinked at him probably surprised to see a visitor, much less a ragged looking child who probably had bags under his eyes. “Um, what can I do for you, honey?”

“Um,” Bucky mumbled, not meeting her eye. “I think I’m going to school here. For eighth grade. I… wanted to see what the summer reading was?”

“Oh,” she said, realizing what he needed. “Of course. Let me just print you a sheet, honey. Just wait here and I’ll get you something.”

She had a ton of papers on her desk and she started rummaging through them to find the correct sheet. “I coulda sworn-” she muttered. “Hold on a sec, hon, I’ve got to find the copy so I can put it through the copier. Do you mind holding some things for me? I don’t want to mix piles and I’m pretty swamped.”

“Um. Okay,” Bucky said, dully surprised and suddenly nervous. He held out an arm and she put a few binders and a stack of papers on it. His arm started trembling pretty soon.

“You might want to use both hands, honey,” she said as she flipped through some folders.

“Wish I could,” Bucky said immediately and then found himself surprised that he even joked about his missing arm like that.

She looked at him, quirking her head and scrunching her eyebrows. She looked at his dangling sleeve and realized that it didn’t hold the same contents as the other one did. Her eyes widened comically, like dinner plates, full moons, bigger than they had any right to be. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she said, flushing red and bringing her hands up to her face, almost giving her cheek a paper cut.

“S’okay. Y’didn’t know,” he replied awkwardly. “I’ve got ‘em if you don’t add any more.”

“Okay, yeah, sure. I- found it! I found it. Okay, so you can put those on the blue binder there,” she pointed and Bucky awkwardly tried to slip the stuff out of his arm without spilling papers. He was very close to failing when she gave him a hand and then went off to copy the page. He felt stupid, not being able to put it down right, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

“I’ll make a couple so the next people don’t have the same hassle, sorry hun.”

“S’okay,” Bucky mumbled. When he got it, Bucky folded the thing with his hand and stuffed it in his pocket. “Thanks, miss,” he said politely.

“You have a good day now hun.”

“Thank you, you too.” He ducked out and went wandering again. Eventually, he felt tired and went back to the house, finding nothing of interest except the library. Chase was in more-or-less the same position, but now he had a beer. Bucky knew he worked, worked during the week, had a job as a welder, or something. He wasn't sure.

“I’m back,” Bucky offered.

“Great,” Chase said shortly and Bucky went back to his room, closing the door.

Bucky sat in his room and scribbled down what he did, taking a brief break to spin his lucky top and just stare at it. It was the creepiest thing on the face of the planet. It was one of those older plastic tops that played a melody when you spun it. It was so old, though, that the quality of the recording had somehow degraded, whether through use or low battery, that it sounded scratchy and haunted. It sounded like spinning it would literally summon the devil or something.

It played an electronic bit of Für Elise and used to have a little light inside that lit up when it spun, but when the volume cut and didn’t come back, Bucky snipped off the light and it worked again. It also fuzzed out, skipped, and replayed portions despite having played them a few notes before for no reason. It still sounded like Satan's spinning top but Bucky loved it to bits and was dead convinced it was lucky despite the creepiness of the static tune that sometimes cut out to spin in dead silence, how could anything so comically evil be anything but lucky?

It was a gift from Steve from when they were seven, got it at a thrift store for fifty cents.

So it was a very lucky top.

He finished his entry and made himself some mac and cheese for dinner because Chase didn’t seem inclined. It was fine. Mac and cheese isn’t hard to make and doesn’t really require more than one hand. Opening the top of the box was a bitch, sure, but he could just kinda tear it off between his hand and teeth.

Later, he checked his email.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Hey bucky how you doing? Settling in? Jeez, I dunno. I hope it’s nice, at least. Anyway, that mangy alley cat that comes around every week let me pet her. She’s real sweet. Hell on my allergies, i was sneezing for like an hour after, but still.

Bucky read the email twice and blinked slowly, feeling a tug of fondness in his chest.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

Im ok. House ain’t bad. Nice about the cat. She’s cute, if… ugly. And Jesus, what were you doing that close to cats ur allergic to like all animals, give them a break. dumbass.

Over the weeks, Bucky settled into the foster house some. Chase and he barely interacted, except at a distance. Bucky noticed that Chase had a perpetual five o'clock shadow and sometimes forgot to shave, didn’t care too much about how he looked, his appearance or otherwise, kinda smelled gross. It wasn’t bad… at first. Chase mostly left him alone, drank beer from the moment he got home until the moment he passed out on the couch. Kinda cranky, but Bucky attributed that up to him being perpetually hungover and having backaches from sleeping on the couch so much.

Starting school in September was a pain but also a freeing experience. He was new so there were no expectations on him and the teachers liked him because he focused well and did his work on time, didn’t talk to other kids in class, didn’t care to. He sat in the back, he kept his head down, and he was quite, willing himself to vanish into the wall. Gym was kind of terrible because he was still getting used to his new balance, hated the way his fucked up stump looked, the scars, and he wanted to keep his jacket on even in 90-degree weather.

At the house, Bucky was left to his own devices, but he had to make food for himself, was too unnerved to ask for help with anything, and by the time he was put into his last year of middle school, he still was not over the unnerving lack of response from his missing arm. To compensate for that, he just wore his dad’s jacket and a baseball cap. The sleeves were just long enough to cover his hands to the knuckles, so he positioned the sleeve whenever he sat and quietly asked for other people to do things that required two hands.

It almost was convincing enough. Sometimes he forgot it was missing, and it was nice. He had to buckle the strap across his chest because one strap of the backpack kept slipping off his shoulder though. Quick reminder, that was.

All the pencil sharpeners in the classes were handheld ones or those ones bolted to the walls with the crank, so he got by with dull pencils, pens, of mechanical pencils. Sometimes it made his handwriting look shitty, but Bucky had bigger problems than penmanship.

For one, Chase started getting snappish when he was drunk, which was a lot of the time. It started small. A shout, a violent swear, a bit of pushing, a swat upside the head when chores weren’t done. Bucky didn’t give a shit, he was just tired of it. Bucky didn’t like when he yelled and called him names when he didn’t do his chores or when he didn’t get the man a beer fast enough, but it wasn’t bad. He just had to do what he was supposed to then he could escape to his room, insults ringing in his ears and following him into his nightmares.

Sometimes he snapped that Bucky was going to hell of being a Jew when he was especially drunk, so that was great. Bucky started hating Chase, slowly and surely. Hate that boiled in his stomach and made his glare cut across the room.

But besides that, he was starting to get worried about what Chase would do if Bucky celebrated any of his holidays or celebrations so he celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on the down low. His family was one of those twice-a-year-Jews, who only went to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur so at least disappearing for a day was easy enough. He wasn’t familiar with the synagogue nearby, but he got through it with his head low and minimal questions, stuck close to the wall as everything went on.

He ate apples with honey on Rosh Hashanah, couldn’t make challah, didn’t know if he could buy it anywhere. It made him bitter to not be able to celebrate the way he always had, but he didn’t bring it up.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

L’Shana Tova! Hope the honey you’ve got there is as good as the stuff my grandma gets at the farmers market!

In all honesty, the sweetness in Bucky’s life was probably just Steve. Everything else was bitter, stale, or bland, like ash on his tongue. He refrained from eating on Yom Kippur and went to the synagogue, luckily Chase didn’t notice.

Despite keeping his Jewishness on the down low, Chase continued to be irritated from the moment he woke to the moment he fell asleep, seemingly annoyed that Bucky was in his space, irritated that there was a kid he had to take care of in exchange for the checks, pissed that Bucky got in the way and didn’t listen. He got irritated by nothing, scowled and glared at Bucky all day long. Their conversations, if they had any, were short, clipped, and tense.

Chase occasionally smacks the back of Bucky’s head really hard when he’s zoning out, and it makes Bucky feel dizzy with pain for a minute. If Bucky was in the way, Chase would push him aside, sometimes into a wall to get him to move. Sometimes Bucky lost his balance and fell over hard, sometimes hitting a table or a counter. Bucky just put a pack of frozen peas on his bruises and stayed in his room, feeling exhausted.

He was truthful in his journal. He told it honestly what he felt, what was bruised, and basically detailed how uncomfortable it made him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do the same with Steve. It didn’t matter, really. It was bruises and names, so what? Didn’t matter, it all healed, wasn’t much of anything. Bucky sometimes forgot about them.

Steve was ninety percent of the reason Bucky kept going, if he was being honest. Steve was a rock, only an email away at any time. Checked in with Bucky just about every day. Bucky couldn't afford to pollute their friendship with all this shit. He wanted Steve to think he was happy, wanted to talk about other things, not his stupid problems, so Steve stayed happy. He didn’t want to unload on Steve, so he replied simply with little detail and more interest in Steve's day. Sure, Steve puts out angry justice filled vibes too, but the happy vibes are what Bucky wants to keep going. It was nice to have somebody that cared.

Steve was… a little punk sunshine. He didn’t deserve this burden on his mind. He deserved to go out to protests, fight some asshole in an alley, be a dumbass about that, and try to get vaccinated or something for fuck’s sake. Bucky remembers all the times his parents talked about it, how they were worried that Bucky was gonna get the measles or something, but it didn’t stop either of them. Point is, Steve didn’t need Bucky complaining about his day.

Especially after that fateful Friday afternoon. Bucky usually did his homework first so he could enjoy his weekend and not have to worry about anything. That way he could go out and stay out for as long as possible. Usually, he went to the park, but sometimes he didn’t want people looking at him, so he went to the library and sat in a dark, secluded corner to read.

He had found out a way to prevent pages from being lost when the book closed when he turned pages. Basically, he bent a paperclip in a certain way so a single bent end held the page at the top of the book. Bucky could slide the page out carefully and then if it closed while he did that, the paperclip would have transitioned and he could open to his page easily.

He was typing something up for English single-handedly, which required more glancing at the keys, but he was getting good at it, when Chase shouted from the living room.

“Bring me a beer!” he called out.

Bucky had had a long day, okay? He got a C on a history test, which is a class that he’s actually good in, his lunch got soaked when his water bottle cracked, someone had teased him about his missing arm, they did something that required two arms in gym and the teacher tried to insist he have someone to help him and Bucky wanted the opposite of that, and on top of it all, he’s got a lot of homework.

“Get it yourself!” Bucky calls out aggressively. It isn’t eloquent in the least. It’s not even clever. It’s blunt and annoyed and based off hot annoyance. Chase had working legs and two arms, he could walk across the house to get a bottle of whatever he drank like the world was ending.

There’s a silence and a groan of effort as Chase stands up. He staggers over to the kitchen, appearing with an empty bottle and a lit cigarette in his other hand. “Good for nothing shit,” he growls at Bucky, and as he walks past Bucky, he presses the glowing tip of the cigarette into his back.

The pain is instant and jarring. It’s worse than burning yourself on the stove because it follows him as he jerks away and Bucky scrambles out of his chair, it clattering over as he backs away. The pain feels like it’s digging into his skin and spreading, like he got stung by a wasp that was on fire. It ached and throbbed and Bucky stared incredulously at Chase, eyes wide.

“The fuck are you lookin' at? Get the fuck outta my face,” Chase snapped, waving the bottle and turning to the fridge.

Bucky grabbed his stuff and escaped to his room, locking the door behind him.

He sat on the bed, putting his hand around his other shoulder and feeling around the blistering wound. There was a hole in his shirt now and there were still ashes in the wound, so Bucky took his water bottle and, realizing he doesn’t have a washcloth or anything in his vicinity, grabs a clean shirt, wetting it and trying to clean the burn off, grimacing against the pain as tears sprung to his eyes.

He should get an ice pack, maybe some antibacterial cream, something, run cold water over it, but he doesn’t want to go outside his room right now. Or ever maybe. After a while, he dabs the burn again, breathing against the pain, and throws the shirt in the laundry basket in the corner. It’s fine. It’s just a little burn. It’s hardly bigger than a fingernail. He’s got homework to do.

He notices an email from Steve and opens it up.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Hey, how was ur day? I got hw and im so bored.

Bucky bites his lips and taps the chassis of the computer thoughtfully.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

My day was ok. got a c on a test and a lotta homework too. Hows ur gma?

Chase started hurting him more often, he must have realized that Bucky wouldn’t do anything about it. Bucky stayed out more and more, doing his homework at the library, staying after school to help out teachers, finding a place to plant himself and do whatever. He got extra credit or paid for it, they seemed to realize he needed it, so that was a bonus. He spent his meager earnings on stuff like cheap microwave dinners that he could make at school or the library staff room, Neosporin, burn cream, and band-aids.

Bucky kepts emailing Steve. He wakes up tired, curses lowly at the knowledge that he has to climb out of that welcoming darkness and actually do things, and struggles out of bed because at the end of the day he’ll get an email and he’s gotta have something to say. He goes to school, staying as long as he can, goes home, gets a bottle thrown at him, sweeps up the broken glass with a lit cigarette pointed at him like a gun about to go off, does his homework, and checks his email.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Hey buck, what’s up? I got a new pin for my jacket, it’s a little cat with gold on it sitting in some plants. Its pretty. Oh, and happy Hanukkah!

Bucky stares at the screen, tension bleeding out of his shoulders. He slumps over his desk, dragging his hand across his face as the bright white glare from the screen cuts into the dimness of the room. Tears pricked his eyes and he pushes the welling sadness and longing down into his chest, taking two deep breaths before he’s fought his way back to dull apathy.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

Thanks, and my day was pretty okay. Pin sounds cute. How's the weather in brooklyn? Sucks here. Lotta fuckin snow.

Bucky gets a few more burns, round and darkened into his skin. Chase does it with no warning. Sometimes Bucky didn’t even do anything wrong. Bottles fly, silverware, plates, sometimes. It’s just… tiring. And painful. Chase is just so… angry all the time. It must suck to be so angry that you feel the need to take it out on somebody else. Chase doesn’t seem to have anything but his bottle. It almost makes Bucky pity him.

One day he comes home to unwashed dishes and an angry face. Bucky’s already got himself mentally prepared for a punishment, just about offers his arm to the cig in Chase's sneering lips. He’s got used to that particular pain. They guy’s clearly drunk already and still has a bottle in hand.

“You’re such a fucking disappointment. Can’t fucking do anything right. I told you yesterday to wash those fucking dishes and I come home to this shit? What the fuck!” He motions widely, as if in pissed exasperation, his limbs responding sluggishly, without any grace, and he breaks his bottle while performing it, hitting a wall. Chase scowls at the jagged end and then looks at Bucky.

Bucky freezes, following the way the glass glints in the light. He barely has any time to move or jump back as Chase jabs the glass at him, shoved into his stomach before Bucky can get out anything more than a strangled‘No-!’

The force of it drives the air out of his lungs physically and the sudden sharp jagged pain bursts into awareness. Chase twists it a bit as he starts to yank it out and something snaps off in Bucky’s gut, he can hear the dull cracking noise. There’s a moment where he doesn’t feel anything, too stunned, too wide-eyed as he stares down at his stomach, little bits of green glass sticking out of a bloodied shirt.

Then the agony hits him. He can’t see past the pain, it’s all just light and sound and twisted nausea in his stomach. He feels like he’s been stabbed, and he knows he has, but that’s exactly how he’d describe it if anybody asked. Bucky almost throws up with the pain, legs feeling weak and adrenaline the only think keeping him upright as he watches blood leak down his shirt.

Chase was still pissed and seemed not to realize the extent of his actions as he scowls and flings the glass against the kitchen cabinets, where bloody glass shatters and scatters across the counter top. “Next time you get it fucking done when I fucking say or I’ll start chain smoking and use you as an ashtray! God damn, fucking- stupid fucking kid! Get out of my fucking face!”

Chase storms off, swiping a beer from the fridge and letting it stay wide open as he goes into the living room, leaving Bucky to deal with something like a two-inch long piece of glass somewhere in his stomach. Bucky’s knees go weak and he slides down the wall to the floor, hand hovering over the blood and glass, fingers shaking too hard. He can’t bring himself to put pressure on it, even as he sees blood drop down his shirt and stain. He needs help. He really needs help.

His eyes water as he breathes, carefully standing up and teetering, the pain coming and going with each motion, his vision blurry and too bright. His legs don’t cooperate and his backpack is now way heavier than it was a second ago. He lets it slide off, hand hesitantly pressing into the blood to staunch the flow as he dizzily wobbles back to his room. The pain flares up and he leans against the wall so he doesn’t fall over.

The card. His agent gave him a card. She’d know what to do. He has his computer. His email can call people.

His knees gave out down the hall and he let out a choked moan as the pain and sensation of blood dripping out of him sent a hot flash up his spine. He weakly spits some bile from his lips, not realizing that anything was coming up. The ground wavers in front of his face and he forces himself to breathe. He opened his door with a blood-smeared hand and stumbled in. He panted with effort and opened his computer, wiping his hand on his pants, opening his email, and shakily put the number in, smudging blood all over the keys and mouse pad. He’ll have to clean that up later, it’ll be a bitch and a half to get it out from between the keys

. He sat and waited in his chair as it rang and rang.

“This is Jen Tennent, Social Services.”

“Come get me,” Bucky managed. “Please. Come get me.”

“James? Is that you? What’s wrong?”

“I need help. Oh, god, there’s so much blood,” he says, looking down at his stomach, seeing it staining the front of his pants and start dripping onto the chair. “Come get me please,” he wheezed. “Please, it hurts- I- I need help, oh, fuck, please, ah -”

The glass shifted in his gut and the sudden pain almost made him black out. He slipped out of his chair, not feeling the impact with the floor, feeling ill, hot and unfocused. The walls and lights waver around him. He put his hand to the blood-stained shirt and put as much pressure as he could into the wound.

He was out of it for a bit, reality coming and going. At some point he heard noises, maybe something breaking, cracking wood, and then his door was shoved open and there his social agent was, people behind her. He registered them trying to talk to him, maybe saying his name, a hand on his shoulder, and someone shouting, frantic motion that had unfocused colors, time going too quickly around him, but it all felt blurry and cold. He knows that he was moved, but everything stopped at some point and there was peace and quiet.

Bucky sank into it.

Bucky woke up in a recovery room feeling drugged and groggy. He felt stitches and bandages on his stomach and that told him that he wasn’t dying anymore, not that waking up was any better, apparently. He looked around, vision blurry as the light stabs into his eyes, making them water. He noticed the IV in his arm, the stupid little finger clamp, and the cold air next.

Jen was sitting at his bedside, dozing by the look of it.

Bucky tried to sit up and groaned at the flash of pain that spreads from his stomach. He stopped moving, but the noise snapped Jen out of it. She sat up straight and looked at him immediately. “James, hey, how’re you feeling?” she asked, rubbing her face and trying to make it appear as though she wasn’t asleep. She pushed her hair back and blinked a few times to focus on him.

Bucky peered at her. “What happened?” he rasped. He noticed that his throat was dry and licked his lips.

Jen let him have an ice chip and he sucked on it dutifully.

“I came over after you called me after I called 911,” she explained. “Mr. Williams was drunk and there was broken glass and blood all over the floor. You- you were in bad shape, James. They had to remove a lot of glass from your abdomen.”

“Oh,” Bucky managed dumbly. He doesn’t know what to say, beyond that. “That’s… sounds ‘bout right, I guess. Can- can I get my laptop back? I gotta email my friend or he’s gonna worry.”

“Oh, I’ve, ah, actually got your stuff. The police needed the computer for evidence, but I got it cleaned up and everything after they gave it back. Give me a second.”

She rummaged around through Bucky’s duffel bag and handed his computer over. Bucky opened it and noticed a good handful of worried messages.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Hey bucky how’s ur day ben goin? Ive got the stomach bug again and it sucks cause I’m barfin up my stomach and I feel awful. Wish you were here to keep me company.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Hey bucky u didn’t reply yesterday. Did u forget to send of something?

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Bucky, are you okay? Where are you? Please reply.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Bucky, please be okay. You better be okay, yu asshole.

That was four days worth of messages. He must have been out for four days. Shit.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

Hey, Steve, sorry i didn’t reply. I lost my charger and my computer died. I had to buy another one and it took a while to arrive.

Jen looked over his shoulder and frowned. “Why are you lying to him?”

“Cuz he doesn’t need to know,” Bucky said through gritted teeth. “It’s fine.”

“You got stabbed with a broken bottle,” she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air in pure exasperation.

“It’s… fine,” Bucky hissed back. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

She sighed and rubbed her face tiredly at his response. “Listen, James. There are signs of abuse all over your body. Cigarette burns, bruising. Why didn’t you tell anybody?”

“It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t necessary,” he said, irritated, feeling a bit dizzy as his stomach moved. “I was fine.”

“Okay,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Listen, because you seem adamant to hide this kind of stuff, we’ll be making more frequent visits and check for any signs of abuse. We take this sort of stuff very seriously because sometimes it’s overlooked entirely until it results in death. We… really, really want to avoid that at all costs.”

Bucky pushed his hair out of his face and didn’t meet her eyes. “Okay,” he mumbled.

After he was adequately healed he was released to his new foster parent. Linsey O’Conner.

Linsey was obviously and immediately a much nicer person. Her house was cleaner, she didn’t drink alcohol or smoke, she owned about, and he wants to be accurate here… six billion plants and she was constantly active, working out, doing paperwork, doing homework or assignments. She seemed to be working on an online degree while working in some IT business.

The new school was nice too. More windows, though. Bucky didn’t know that his last school didn’t have a lot of windows until the new school had a fuck ton of 'em. The sun was in his face nearly constantly and he shied away from it like a vampire, grumbling at it for being bright. It glared down on him and he glared back as much as he could without hurting his eyes.

The people were weird about how he was an amputee, some of them had never seen someone missing a limb up close, but it was another fresh start, even if he felt like a bug under a microscope and avoided everyone to the best of his ability.

Linsey was very insistent on shared responsibility rather than Bucky doing all the chores so everything was split exactly down the middle. He got to water and care for half the plants, he took out the trash every other day, did the dishes every other day, helped clean up on Saturdays and eventually Bucky realized that he didn’t have a foster parent, he had a god damn roommate. Her driving him to school each day was just carpooling. Taking turns doing the responsibilities around the house was keeping the shared space clean.

It kind of set him off, realizing that she wouldn’t… have the same responsibilities as a parental guardian. She did his paperwork and stuff, but she wasn’t concerned with his life and he, in turn, wasn’t invested in hers. It was coexistence. It was an odd situation to be in, and Bucky definitely preferred it to Chase, but… he kind of wanted someone to care about him. Ask about his day. Something. Well, he has Steve for that. It’s… weird.

He has nightmares more often with the move, somewhere there’s pain from his arm, some from his stomach, some just dull aches, other blistering marks on his skin that make him jolt awake, stunned. He sometimes forgets where he is when he wakes up, and if he wakes up shouting, he hides under the bed. Linsey never hears him, she sleeps like a log.

Bucky finishes middle school and writes the events of every day into his journal, eventually having to start a new one. Linsey did go out and buy him things, but that was the only ‘parental thing’ she ever really did. They ate dinner together though. Bonding time, or something.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Linsey sounds nice! Do you like the plants? Oh, and Happy Birthday!

Bucky thought about it, looking at the cactus on his desk, right beside his aloe plant, both of which he has given human names and writes back.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

Thanks. And yeah, actually. IDK, it’s nice to take care of them and see em grow. I got a cactus named bentley and an aloe vera plant i call ashley, so i guess im doin okay or something

Bucky slowly takes over all plant duties without Linsey’s knowledge. He buys seeds from Home Depot and starts his own little line of seedlings by a mostly barren window. He’s got bamboo that he could spend hours watching grow. Of course, it grows slow so that those hours watching have barely any change, but still. Calming. He thinks it unsettles Linsey how he sits motionless for hours, but he doesn’t care.

It slowly becomes obvious that Linsey has her faults too. Sometimes she vanishes for days, off studying or with friends or one of her… several paramours. Bucky was good at taking care of himself. That was the point. Linsey didn’t consider him her charge, she considered him her roommate. He could be left alone because that's what you do with roommates. You’re not all up in their business, you go out, enjoy stuff, have fun.

So occasionally Bucky kind of runs out of food. Big whoop. He makes do, finds stuff to do. He grows plants and reads and messes around on his computer. Cleans the house. Spins his lucky top. Goes around the house singing along to the music he downloaded to his iPod.

“I don't know why~! I just feel I'm~ better off~ staying in the same room I was born in. I look outside~ and see a whole world~ better off~ without me in it~ trying to transform it. You are out of my mind~ ooh! You aren't seeing my side~ ooh! You waste all this time trying to get to me, but you are out of my mind!” He sings, spinning in the living room as his iPod plays on the stereo.

Steve is great. He keeps sending messages and that's just how Bucky likes it.

But sometimes it’s so quiet it burns and he sits on the couch in the dark, wondering just when Linsey would come back. The plants offer no help at all and the noises outside, branches scratching against windows and wind howling. It’s… a lot sometimes, makes him want to sink into the couch cushions and stay there.

It’s June 12th, the anniversary of his parents' death, and he’s more alone than when the event occurred right in front of his eyes. He feels exhausted but is too afraid to sleep, scared the memory of bodies will haunt his nightmares.

Steve continues to be a delight.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Guess who’s 14?! This guy!

Bucky sends back pictures of cakes and firecrackers.

Bucky’s next relocation occurs because Linsey gets in a car accident. Breaks her leg, has a mild concussion, many lacerations, and bruises all over. She looks a mess. Basically, she isn’t fit to care for him from a hospital room, so Bucky packs his things and moves like a week before he starts High School.

It’s a bummer, and he wouldn’t voice his disappointment, but he felt it nonetheless. He can’t bring any of his plants. He has to pack up all his stuff again and read a different book for summer reading which sucks because he already read the last one. Linsey will be alright. She has a pretty nice lady looking after her in the hospital and who will probably continue to do so when she’s let out. Bucky doesn’t ask questions. He just tells her to heal quickly, gives her a quick hug, and is on his way.

This foster house has like… six other kids in it. The foster parents, Bill and Samantha Barnaby are frazzled but stubborn. Must be Irish, Bucky thinks immediately upon meeting them and seeing how they stubbornly hold out against the kids in their care. They have a big house, a large income, and determination that rivals Steve’s. Bucky wasn’t sure that was possible.

But… it’s crowded, and the kids are real bitter and real mean, real nasty little demon spawn. When the parents aren’t paying attention to them they poke at all the buttons they can on Bucky and each other. They search out every nook and scar and hit it to get a reaction. They’re malicious. They kill the plant Bucky was trying to grow by pouring bleach into the soil. They steal the battery out of his lucky top. They try to steal his computer and it takes nothing short of literally yelling at them to back the fuck off to get them to comply and retreat like a hyena pack, circling and waiting for a new opening.

Bucky doesn't know why they do it, but Steve’s words ring in his ears. ‘Bullies don’t need a reason.’ And in the end, he’s right.

School starts and Bucky is exhausted after the first day. It’s September so he has to find a synagogue for Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur is during the beginning of October, and he’s got to remember that because otherwise the days will blur together and he’ll lose sense of time and miss the days. He’s got homework, he’s got expectations, and the kids spit insults at him every time he goes to the house and soon Bucky is trying to figure out solutions to ease the pressure.

There’s no honey in the house. Samantha is allergic to honey. Bucky eats plain apples and spends a few bucks on challah from a local store. When everyone goes to do their own thing, Bucky collapses in the bed he now has claim over and falls asleep. It’s one in the afternoon. The darkness of his mind is soothing, and when nightmares harbor it, he can always wake up and try again.

He stays after school for help on assignments, he volunteers to help teachers after school, he does his work at the library, and, well, generally avoids everything and everyone he can. This being, he’s at the library when he checks in his email and finds a bone-chilling message from Steve.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Grandma died. Heart attack. They’re putting me into foster care.

Grandma Rogers is dead? That sounds like bullshit, Bucky immediately thinks. The idea is incomprehensible. With all her preaching of the body can heal any ailment stuff she pushed onto Steve, it seemed like she’d live to be a thousand, not just eighty whatever. Bucky stares for a long time, coming to terms with the impossible. He kinda feels bad, but he’s more startled by the fact that Grandma Rogers isn’t immortal and that makes him feel a bit worse.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

Shit, Steve, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?

Amazingly, the email comes back right away.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Yeah, I’m okay. It sucks. And I miss her. But… don’t know, I’m so fucked up after what she did to me that I’m almost thankful. They’re getting me meds so I don’t go into cardiac arrest via heart arrhythmia again and my anemia is getting treated and stuff. I’m gonna get vaccinated. Hearing aid too. I don’t know. It’s just… a lot right now.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

I get it. I’ve got your back, right? Till the end of the line.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Thanks, Buck. I really appreciate it. It’s nice to have you. Miss you like hell though.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

Same here, punk.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Jerk.

Bucky starts getting used to ducking the profane and abusive language of his fellow foster kids. Sometimes, on his bad days, the words cut deep. They make his bones and skin hurt and when they see that they renew their efforts. Some days Bucky goes to bed with foul language ringing in his head and tears in his eyes.

Other days he reacts to them like they’re his name. They don’t have anything on the pain he feels on a regular basis or the nightmares that pollute his sleep.

They don’t get physical, they don’t want any proof of their constant harassment as ‘cripple’ rings in the air and they hold things that require two hands over their heads. Playing video games, instruments, getting dressed quickly, ease of tying shoes. Nothing is safe. If he doesn’t perform to their equal it’s a target.

A few days after Grandma Rogers dies, Bucky gets a message.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Hey, I got to my foster home. The fosters are weird about food, so that’s whatever. How have you been doing?

Bucky frowns at the food bit and wonders what he’s talking about, but doesn’t poke into it too deeply.

gotacouplebucks@****mail.com

I’m okay. Miss the hell out of you. Foster house is what it is. Kinda hope I move soon, but whatever for now, right?

He wakes up one day to his hand in a bowl of warm water and wet sheets. He immediately flushes scarlet and bolts to his feet, staring down at the mess and horror, embarrassment, shame, and bone-deep humiliation, feeling red hot and ashamed and like he wants to die.

He shares his room with another boy and the child, the little monster, laughs behind his palm as Bucky shucks off his pajamas as quickly as possible and changes underwear without a second thought. He tries to get ready as he discreetly cleans up his mess, putting his bedding in the washing machine with his soiled pajamas and starting it, wiping at the mattress with a soapy wet washcloth, and even flipping it entirely.

He can’t look anyone in the eye, not for the entire day. He still wants to die and he knows that if anybody mentions it, he will.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Yeah, miss you too buck. Hope everything ends up okay. As soon as we turn 18 or are close by, we gotta team up again, just like old times, right?

It’s still difficult at night, especially because of the odd texture he feels under his sheets.

It’s one of those spreads you put under toddlers who wet the bed, clearly placed there by an adult because the kids don't have the resources to pull that off and he feels worse and worse. He slides off the bed, taking a blanket and pillow with him, and sleeps under the mattress, just marinating in humiliation. He barely even feels mad at the little shits, he’s just upset and wants to leave.

That just makes the kids bolder.

When the fosters go out to get some groceries and such real quick, Bucky suddenly finds himself pinned in the living room, two people holding him down as another grabs his wrist and starts pulling hard, foot braced against his chest. Someone forces a washcloth into his mouth and holds it there, as a gag as Bucky shouts and struggled, muscles straining. Panic lights up in his chest and his breathing gets harsh as he twists and tried to get away.

“We just wanna make you symmetrical,” one of them laughs, like it’s all such a big game. It feels like they’re really going to rip his other arm off. When his shoulder dislocates with a sickening pop he lets out a strangled scream. The rush of pain is like nothing he’s ever felt before, it’s inside his shoulder with no visible injuries, there’s no blood, there's no slow cold feeling as he bleeds out in the wreckage of a train, or on the floor of his bedroom, he’s just-

Pain-

screaming.

They back off, surprised, and Bucky writhes and gasps through the hot nauseating feeling ebbing from the area. The only good thing about them dislocating his shoulder is that Bucky knew how to fix it, having seen Steve pop his trick joint back in countless times. He’d even helped once. Problem being, he only had one arm so he had to stumble off to find something to brace his arm against while he popped it back into place and then collapsed at the second wave of pain and the quick relief that followed.

That incident marked the point where he didn’t feel safe sleeping inside, so he took his bag and a blanket and sleeps on the streets. It feels weird, almost like slum tourism or something, but Bucky doesn’t feel safe in that upper-middle-class home. Life on the streets, stopping by the house to pretend like he still lives there by sneaking in, is difficult but safer than staying at the house. He sleeps at the parks around, usually on a bench. Cops come around to get him to scram and he gets used to waking suddenly and bolting with his stuff.

One day, when he’s escaping from cops accusing him of loitering or something he ducks into an alley and crouches behind a dumpster, back pressing into a brick wall, side pressed against the metal of the trash bin. He’s surprised to find another man in the alley with him. He’s got a dirty bag stuffed full of clothes and a crate over a gallon of water.

Well, the alley isn’t too bad, even with company. The dumpster is actually for recycling, so it doesn’t smell, and there's just a little glass on the ground. Well, there’s also a needle over there, but just the one. Bucky takes a sheet of cardboard out of the dumpster and puts it on the ground, sitting and leaning against the building. This place seems as good as any to stay in for a while. Bucky pulls an apple out of his bag and starts to eat it, zoning out as he stares at nothing in particular.

He remembers the other man and glances over, then balancing the apple on his knee to reach into his bag and grab the orange. He holds it out in offering and the man hesitantly takes it.

“Thank you.” His voice is accented, Middle Eastern.

Bucky nods and goes to finish his apple.

“My name is Amir, what is yours?” the man asks.

“Bucky,” he replied.

“You are young to be on the streets, yes?”

Bucky shrugs.

Amir scratches his impressive beard. “I see. You are new to this, yes? You have no home?”

“It’s not safe for me there,” Bucky replies truthfully but isn’t inclined to elaborate.

“Ah. Well, this alley is big, plenty for two, I think.”

“Sure,” Bucky agrees.

Amir shows Bucky the tent cities in the area, under overpasses and bridges, one even in the nearby woods. They’re filled with trash and scrap, with poor people in several layers of clothing sleeping or sitting around. It smells rank and there’s a big trash pile that everybody uses for scraps and junk. One or two people were busy with cardboard sheets begging for money or food on the street nearby.

Amir and Bucky manage to finagle a beat up tent and stay in the one close to Bucky’s school and house. The people with signs let him save their spot on the corner as they run into a building to use the bathroom there. He took food from the house and passed it to the people in the tent city, people that can’t remember the last warm meal they had. A couple are drug users, addicts, but not all of them, and those that are seem to realize the problem but feel they can’t stop or don’t know how. It’s kinda sad, but he gets used to watching women and men pick at their skin, get snappish and irritable, vanish for days and come back high.

He can’t… can’t be around them too long. Their mannerisms remind him of Chase sometimes, but he can manage sometimes. Some of them are good people, so he feels okay most of the time.

He does his homework at the library, he showers at the school, he uses various restrooms around the town and gets money thrown at him just as much as disdainful looks. Bucky ends up splitting his cash or food with Amir. He usually shadows Amir when he goes somewhere and covers for him when he prays. People keep trying to walk between him and his sutrah. Bucky urges them around or glares at them until they move.

He learns where he can sleep, where he can hide, who to avoid. He knows to always keep his things secure in his bag, and he where you could get food for free or cheap, including dumpsters. He learns how to recognize dealers or undercover cops. He learns how to snap awake in a moments notice and bolt if the situation calls for it. He learns to take watch during the night, swapping between the people in the tents to make sure troublemakers don’t try anything. Cops too, not always good news. In fact, usually bad news.

He stays on the streets despite winter arriving and getting colder. He just gets more blankets and puts on a couple layers of clothes. He puts a tarp over their tent and Amir’s and fixes the bust zipper with tape and sticky velcro. He wakes whenever he gets too cold and shudders until he gets warm again, adjusting blankets and checking on Amir.

“Happy Hanukkah,” Bucky says with chattering teeth one day, hands against a trashcan fire in the center of the tents and on the shredded, piss-stained couch someone found and dragged over, Amir laughs, throwing his head back. “Anybody got a fuckin’ menora stuck up their ass they’ve been hidin’ from me?”

A pair of women sitting on metal mesh boxes start singing Christmas songs obnoxiously loud, which makes Bucky laugh too.

He figures out how to scale buildings with only one arm to get a safer, higher, place to sleep and avoid cops. He starts to eat less, sharing with Amir more often than not. He gets used to a passive hunger. He barely notices it sometimes.

He keeps most of his notebooks at the house, hidden under the mattress of his bed, but he keeps one on him, recording the day’s events before it gets dark.

He learns how to navigate the streets and how to hide things so they don’t get taken. Bucky finds the way that people pointedly don’t look at him agitating. It doesn't quite hurt, but the idea that they don’t even want to look at him because of his situation is shallow and makes him feel like some trash just left out. He even recognizes what is happening, which makes Bucky feel bitter and makes him want to be left alone.

He noticed people using his laptop as an excuse to not the people in the tent city cash, so Bucky sticks to only using it at the library or school. The librarian there, a Mr. Stan Lee, overall nice guy, always steals from the staff refrigerator and gives Bucky muffins and stuff. He likes to pat Bucky on the back twice, spout out some weird advice that doesn't make too much sence, and wander off. Sometimes it's kinda nice.

Like, "If you can't think of a reply to something, just say something sad sounding. You look pathetic enough to get a lot of pity points. That can help you go far in life, I swear by it." Which is weird, and maybe a little insulting, but not terrible advice.

It’s a few weeks after he starts living on the streets when Steve sends the message that pretty much tells him that his foster parents had been starving and neglecting him and the other foster kids and that the foster dad snapped and tried to kill Steve with a carving knife.

Bucky stares at the computer screen, walks a lap around the library as he processed that whole chunk of bullshit that happened to Bucky’s best goddamn friend in the whole world, and goes back to the computer with a washed face, a less frazzled mind and a lot of curse words.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

Holy shit steve what the fucking hell? What happened! What did you do?! What the fuck?!

That’s the simplified, censored version.

Steve explains how he got this plan to hide the food he received in the walls and ceiling fan and other places and how it worked up until the point where too many puzzle pieces snapped into place and a CPS agent had to come and check it out and caught them. The dude snapped, stabbed Steve, beat the crap out of him, and then was arrested. Steve added, with pride, that he bit the dude. After he had been stabbed.

Bucky can’t even comprehend Steve doing any of that except he can which is a weird notion to have. He says the group was split up and that Steve was with this German guy now.

Steve speaking the truth to him, even though he concealed it since he had arrived, hit something in Bucky and he wanted to tell Steve about the marks on his skin and how he was a roommate to his last foster parent and how the kids here use him like a punching bag, how he’s sleeping on the streets. His fingers tremble to do it, but he just… can’t. He doesn’t know why. He just knows that he could take it, and it wasn’t really a problem. Bucky found solutions. He did new things and figured it out. Just like Steve had. When it’s all resolved, he’d tell Steve. Maybe when they meet up after they turn 18.

Bucky shows up at the house when he knows the fosters are home to keep up the illusion that he lives at the house. He looks at vicious little children with serious issues as they play nice for the adults and can’t really make himself play up his life to the same degree. It’s a huge disconnect. He feels like he’s walked into another dimension. He just lies about volunteer stuff, tells them he sleeps over a friend's house and leaves when he can.

Winter gets colder before anything else and Bucky wakes so cold he can’t feel his hand or feet. It’s snowing steadily outside the tent and the wind is picking up something fierce, lashing violently at the tent, making the plastic nylon material flex and snap against the wind. Bucky tries to shudder warmth back into his limbs but fails. It’s after that that he realized that they need to leave or they’ll freeze to death out here.

He takes his backpack and shakes Amir, who swats at him and mumbles something in something Bucky doesn’t recognize. Something Arabic.

“Amir! Amir, wake up!”

Amir flails awake and glares, saying something Bucky can’t translate.

“It’s too cold outside,” Bucky urges, shaking him, pushing at his shoulders and patting his face. “We need to get somewhere warm or we’re gonna freeze to death.”

“Bah!” Amir yanks his arm away from Steve’s hand and rolls over, ignoring Bucky.

Bucky scowls. “Hey, fuck you too! But if you don’t get your ass up, you’re going to die in this tent!” Bucky pulls him up by his jacket and out of the tent.

“But I am not cold!” Amir protests.

“That’s a bad thing, idiot!” Bucky says. “Hey! Everybody! Wake up! It’s too cold out! We gotta find somewhere to get warm!” He bangs on metal with metal, sending loud clangs through the tent city. People start climbing out of their tents, groaning and shivering.

“Shit, yeah it is. Where’s Thomas? He was on watch tonight, he was supposed to tell us if it was too cold or something,” Jayla says with chattering teeth. Jayla was kicked out by her parents because they caught her kissing a girl. She was a bit older than Bucky.

“I thought Thomas got arrested last week.”

“Yeah, he stole, like, a bunch of shit from a 7-11,” Jackie agreed. Jackie was a heroin addict who was trying to get better but was struggling.

“Lucky son of a fuckin’ bitch,” said Morris, a vet who lost a leg overseas. He was always grumpy and his eyes held something in them Bucky recognized. When Amir was out, Bucky usually sat with Morris in silence. They had an understanding. “He’s got a fuckin’ room, medical care, food. Fucking son of a bitch. Too bad I’m too much of a fuckin’ pussy to try that shit.”

“Ah, shit. C’mon, let’s buddy system and split up. No way any building will take a dozen homeless people. Hey, wait, where’s Hailey?”

“Found her. She’s really cold, but not dead. Come on, Hail, wake up, we’ve got to go.”

“I’ll go with Amir. We’ll meet back up later, yeah?” Bucky said. When agreements sounded and people started leaving, Bucky pushed Amir onward through the snow. Most of the building around them are closed, locked, and empty. A few places don’t let them in at all, citing homeless shelters and saying that they aren’t charities. Nobody is on the streets in this storm, and ice bites into Bucky’s skin.

“I’m tired,” Amir complains.

“So am I,” Bucky responds. “There has to be somewhere and at the very least we’re up and moving.”

At long last, a 24/7 Starbucks appears, a brightly lit beacon on the horizon, and Bucky pushes Amir toward it. The rush of warm air is like a shock to Bucky’s system, like he forgot what being warm was like, but he dutifully stomps snow off his shoes and lets his teeth chatter violently.

The girl at the register straightens from her phone and spots them. Her eyes scan them both, from the holey clothes and double layers of ragged, dirty clothes to their dirty hair and finger less gloves. “Uh, we have a no loitering or vagrancy policy, or whatever it is, so you can’t-” she starts anxiously.

“I’ve got money, we can buy something,” Bucky pleads. “C’mon, it’s fuckin’ freezing out.”

She looks relieved. “What can I get you, gentlemen?”

Bucky gets a large hot chocolate and Amir gets coffee with one sugar. They sit directly under the heater, stripping off wet clothes and even their socks and shoes, taking sips of their drinks. Nobody else really comes in. It’s just them and the nervous girl at the counter.

After a while, Amir starts shaking as his body warms and remarks that everything hurts.

Bucky mimics his earlier protest and adds, “I told you so!” swatting at him to drive the point home.

Bucky skips school that day to stay inside and keep warm, as the weather really doesn’t get any better. They buy another drink each and trudge over to a nearby laundromat to clean and dry their clothes. He and Amir sit in their boxers and shirts, people throwing them looks as they wait. As soon as his hoodies are dry, Bucky pulls them out of the dryer and shucks them on, warmth ebbing into his skin and defrosting his bones. When they’re both ready to go, they walk out into the cold again. They went back to the tent city to check in with six of the twelve, and then, deciding it still too cold, take some stuff from their tent and go to find other temporary lodgings.

They tried for the homeless shelter, but they were full up and the exhausted woman with a bundled up baby on her hip looked like she needed in more than they did, so in the end, the two just scoured the town for a new place to sleep.

They end up in a parking complex for some apartment building, huddled by the elevator because whenever it opened warm air rushed out and heated the stairwell they slept in. Their sleeping bags and blankets helped too.

Winter turns to spring after March and Bucky celebrates his birthday by buying a cheap cake from Walmart that he splits with Amir. Amir actually gets him a gift. It was a two-liter bottle that had been cut in half, with dirt and a plant inside. Bucky wasn’t exactly sure what kind of plant, but it was pretty to look at.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “When’s your birthday? I wanna be able to return the favor.”

“Ah, late in the summer. August 18th.”

Bucky considered. “A’ight. Guess I’ll have to wait for it. But really, pal, thanks.”

“Easy gift.”

“But a good one,” Bucky countered. “I like it.”

Bucky finished his freshman year with B’s and C’s by some goddamn miracle. A day afterward, he was offered a new foster home by his social service agent. A rich guy, the CEO of Hydra Industries, some real estate tycoon or some shit, was welcoming Bucky into his home, a grand luxurious home with his own room and nice furniture and a better school system.

Bucky said yes without a pause, and would never admit that he thought of Annie as he considered a billionaire taking in a foster kid. It was stupid and he reminded himself so over the course of the entire day.

He stopped by the tent city and explained his situation to everybody. “I’m getting moved,” he explains. “To a new foster house. Hopefully, it’ll be nicer, but I wanted to say goodbye before I leave. Oh, and Amir, I wanted to give you this.” He passed over twenty dollars and a new backpack. “Y’can open it now. Happy early birthday.”

Amir did so and blinked in shock at the snuggie and non-perishable food in it. “Thank you, my friend. These- these will be very useful.”

Bucky gave Amir a grin and a lazy salute. “Good luck.”

“Thank you, you too.”

Bucky packed up his stuff and was quickly moved to a dark looking house.

It was large and imposing, looking more like a prison or an office than a house. He sort of thought it was a warehouse before they actually started going inside. He was quickly given the tour and shown to his room. It was nice and big, already furnished. It had a couch, a bed, a TV system, a desk, and a bookshelf with a couple of novels. It had a kitchen stocked with food, and there was a little coffee table in front of the couch too.

“I think I’m gon~na like it~ I’m sure I’m gon~na like it~ I think I’m gon~na like it here! ” filtered across Bucky’s mind as he sat on the comfortable bed and looked into his own personal bathroom.

He recorded the day's events in his journal and spun his lucky top, listening to the creepy tune.

He couldn't get comfortable on his new bed, so he shoved himself in a corner with blankets and a pillow and slept in his pants and jacket. He fell asleep thinking how swell it was to be taken in and thinking that he’d finally be able to enjoy a foster house. Finally.

The next day quickly proved him wrong.

Sure, at first it was fine. He was fed really delicious pancakes with strawberries and whip cream by Mr. Peirce’s bodyguard who seemed nice. He was tall, fit, had this fluffy hair and a nice shadow sort of beard. Mr. Peirce was busy with work, so Rumlow was ‘assigned’ to keep an eye on Bucky. He showed him around, pointed out major parts of the huge house, facility really, and even drove Bucky to the park so they could walk around and see the town.

They went back after just before lunch and Rumlow stepped aside to talk with this scientist looking guy. The scientist kept throwing looks at Bucky and Bucky fidgeted with his lucky top and waited for Rumlow to be done.

Rumlow came back and smiled at him. “You mind having some coffee with me? My old man got me in the habit of having coffee before lunch and it’s nice to have a guy to talk with,” he said, clapping Bucky on the shoulder.

“Uh, sure,” Bucky said, thinking that was weird, but not the strangest thing he’d ever heard.

He remembers putting some cream and sugar in his coffee, taking a few sips, and then everything got woozy, his limbs felt heavy and uncoordinated, and he started falling back, a set of strong arms and firm hands catching him before he hit the floor and blacked out.

He had… sensations. He heard words, repeating, monotone and in a language he didn’t know. And pain, in his head so that his brain felt like it was bleeding and blades against his skull and hands touching him. He could feel skin pulling and pain in every part of his being. He felt an ache all the way down to his fingertips. He could feel the cold sensation of drugs flowing into his arm and spreading, maybe some drool sliding out of his unresponsive mouth. His skin felt cold, like he was under an AC unit.

He could feel something wrong inside him, like there was something moving around in his head.

And then he woke up.

He shot up into a sitting position, groaning at the headache as soon as it hit him. He felt dizzy, and his stomach was all over the place. He felt something tugging at his scalp and ran his fingers through his hair, eventually finding a long line of neat stitches. It traveled from above his right temple around his head and swooping to the top, all hidden by his dark hair. He followed it all the way and then back, pausing when he felt something hard against his nail. There was a little… port or something by his temple, small, like a phone charger.

Bucky’s blood went cold and his hands froze. He stumbled out of bed and fell almost immediately, legs tangled in sheets. Upon standing, shakily and woozily, he found his stuff on the desk. His clothes cleaned and dried, neatly folded, his lucky top, necklace, and iPod, with earbuds, besides the clothes.

Upon realizing he was no longer in his own clothes, he looked down and saw that he was dressed in soft black sweats. They weren’t even his. He felt frantic tears prick his eyes in confusion as he desperately tried to figure out what happened. He ran his hand through his hair, pulling at it and realizing that that really hurt with the stitches. He let go and tried to take several calming breaths.

Then he looked outside, and then at the clock. It was late at night, not the early evening anymore.

Bucky fumbled for his laptop and found his email already open, starting as he found messages to Steve that he had never written but looked like they were.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Hey buck, how’s the new house? Nice for summer to finally be here, right?

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

Yeah, its not too bad. I’ve got a huge room all to myself and stuff too. Hows the german guy?

Bucky stared in horror, ice in his veins. He hadn’t written that. Someone must have looked at his emails and found out how he wrote, emailing in Bucky’s stead. He looked at the current date and realized he had lost an entire week. He scrambled for his journals, finding no entries for the last seven days, no matter how many times he desperately flipped through the papers. Nothing. Not even a date. It was just… blank, like the week never even happened, a gaping hole in his memory.

What had happened to him? Why did he feel like shit? Why did he have stitches in his head and a splitting headache? The questions piled up into a daunting horror story that made his skin crawl.

Okay. Bucky had a lot of shit happen to him. He’s gotten burned and stabbed and had his arm pulled out of its socket, and slept on the streets, but this… this really takes the cake. This is beyond not okay. This is something else entirely. This is a whole realm of confusing and absurd shit and Bucky doesn’t have words for the wrongness he feels all the way to his core, making him feel sick to the bone and in all of his cells. It’s like he wants to throw up but his stomach is empty, his soul is just fucking dry-heaving.

And… there’s no internet. Bucky tries to connect, but it looks like it’s been parentally locked. He can’t contact anyone.

He hesitantly opens the unread email anyway.

punkkid1918@****mail.com

Hello. Bucky, is it? This is Abraham Erskine, Steven’s foster parent. I’m sorry to say that Steven was arrested today for assault. He punched a neo-Nazi in the park and the police officer there was, unfortunately, quick to act. I’ll keep you updated, but Steven will not be able to reply himself for the time being. He is fine, I will stress, but he is going to juvenile court soon and the lawyers say they see little way to get him out of the assault charges. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I can deliver messages between the two of you, if you wish to.

-Dr. Erskine.

Bucky closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands, letting out a uneasy sigh. Missed his chance. Missed his fucking chance. Now he doesn’t have Steve. Whatever happens to him is his alone.

He’s alone.

It makes his eyes water in the dead silent room. “Shit,” he hisses out. The feeling is bone-chilling, makes him feel small and fragile in the big empty room. He hunches over, putting his hand over his face to try to hide tears no one will see. “Shit, fuck.”

That feeling of no control comes back with a vengeance to the point where he feels hopelessness fill his heart to the brim, only the fact that Steve exists and cares about him keeping it from swallowing his soul up. The darkness of the room is crushing him and he reaches over to pull the cord on his desk lamp, forcing it back before it can smother him. He stays there for a few hours, staring at the message and trying to figure out what to do, who to go to if he even can.

The door opens and Rumlow steps in, prompting Bucky to check the time. It’s not quite six in the morning. Rumlow doesn’t look soft anymore, doesn’t look caring or earnest. He’s decked out in a bulletproof vest and has guns strapped to each thigh. He’s got a knife strapped to his calf and some kind of utility belt that probably has ammunition in it. His gaze is calm and apathetic, he's got a sort of unimpressed grimace on his face and crosses his arms.

Bucky stares at him, trying to figure out what is going on.

“Oh, good. You’re awake,” Rumlow says easily.

“What did you do to me?” Bucky finally manages.

Rumlow grins like it’s a joke when he says, “We made you the new fist of HYDRA.”

Bucky doesn’t know what that means.

“You didn’t try to contact anybody, did you?”

“Couldn’t,” Bucky replied.

“Good. Because if you tell anybody what happened to you, HYDRA will have them silenced, one way or another.” Rumlow shrugs nonchalantly. “That’s just how it is.”

Bucky nods, a lump in his throat preventing him from replying.

He gets a day of recovery time before they use the Words on him. They walk him through what was done to him, how they implanted a bunch of devices in his head, attached to his brain, wired through it intricately, embedded into his cerebellum, that shut down everything makes him Bucky and rewires all that energy into the device, making it act like a person instead.

Bucky stares at the X-Ray, seeing this big metal… thing covering his cerebral cortex and other parts and bits of his brain with these protrusions and other attachments fanning out. It had a little offshoot to his right temple for the port, little attachments to the inside of his ears that recognized a line of trigger words, and it was also wired into the part of his brain that controlled movement, which just made him feel wrong, like his skin was crawling. Bits of metal fanned out to attach to random parts of his brain, connected by thin wires. Once such part was attached to the language part of his brain, for reasons unknown to Bucky but widely discussed between the scientists.

They did it all in five days. Three days unconscious as Bucky healed, with the help of some temporary healing accelerant they gushed excitedly about.

Bucky stared at them, trying to project ‘this is most fucked up thing I’ve ever hear in my life ’ at them and get them to understand that this is fucking… horrible. This is criminal, this was disturbing and invasive and just plain fucking weird. This was not consented to, this was a bane on humanity, and it was in his own fucking head.

One of the doctors noticed the look and faltered before looking back to his colleagues and managing to ramble some more before petering off and splitting from the group to check some readouts.

The effects of this… device was basically the creation of an artificial person that was waiting for activation at any moment. It’s the most fucked up version of DID or something that Bucky has ever heard of. They put something, someone, inside him he can’t get out unless he wants to die. It’s looking like a pretty good option too, except he couldn’t bear to do that to Steve, rage-filled bitter little pill Steve, his best friend who’s loyal to the end. Till the end of the line. That’s what they always said. Till the end of the line.

Rumlow leans against the table and whistles, impressed. He jerks his head to a little device shown in his neck, a little bright spot in the x-ray. “That’s a tracker. So running away really isn’t going to get you anywhere, you hear me?”

Bucky nods heavily in understanding.

He goes back to his room with a weight on his shoulders he doesn't know how to deal with. He writes it all in his journal, detailing what they told him, and then opens his computer. The internet is back on. He doesn’t even consider telling Steve.

gotacoupleofbucks@****mail.com

Thanks doc. Can you tell that dumbass I wanna talk to him when he gets out? Do we know how long that will be?

The next day, at breakfast time, Rumlow stares Bucky in the eyes and starts saying something in another language, rough and harsh. Bucky could feel himself slipping away and doesn’t have time to panic before he’s gone.

Every time he snaps out of it, when the control comes back to him, he’s sore. He aches, moving and walking hurts. He can’t even chew without it hurting so he just drinks the protein shakes that Rumlow puts in front of him mindlessly, feeling too exhausted to do much else. He wakes up with bruises and cuts he doesn’t know how he got, with blisters on his hand and feet.

Sometimes he wakes with his head pounding. Light and sound hurts, like nails scraping a chalkboard. He lies in bed and tries to breathe through it, tears pricking his eyes as he holds his head together. It feels like someone is taking the flat side of a hammer and hitting him with it. He takes four ibuprofen and climbs into bed again, feeling nauseous.

Erskine does give him some good news. Steve is only going to be in juvie for about six weeks because he gave a very rousing and convincing speech to the judge about… well, Nazis being shitheads and deserving punches, but in a much more polite and convincing way. Very patriotic. Bucky approves, amused at the idea.

Bucky loses so much time he has only ten entries written down in an entire three weeks. Ten. Ten instances of him walking up bone sore and recording what injuries he has, what hurts the most, and what day it was. Of course, there was also the three or so headaches he’s woken up with, the ones that make him wonder if his brain is scrambled and trying to fix itself by making it worse.

He can’t tell if whatever has control of him sleeps during that or not, and that’s the worst part. Could that person living in Bucky’s head parade around as Bucky for a week at a time? Is it controlled somehow? Do they have words that reverse whatever it is to give Bucky control back? Or do they just run the guy to the bone and he snaps out of it when he sleeps, sometimes for a day or more?

Rumlow gives the information freely when Bucky brings it up over a breakfast of nutrient shake.

“Actually, it’s kinda both,” he said casually, like he didn’t know words that made Bucky into something he wasn’t every time they saw each other. “See, we do have words that break it down, but it also happens through sleep naturally. We’ve just been trying to cram in training so we keep the Soldier working for hours at end. The actual effects last for about six hours, little less, but it’s clear when you start coming out of it, so we just renew the effect.”

“Oh,” Bucky says. “Does… my arm get in the way?”

“Actually, no, believe it or not. It just means we can focus on training one side more. Don’t have to even it out or train both at once, except for your legs, but you mostly just run and jump with those, so that ain’t hard.”

“Now climbing,” Rumlow said, with a frank voice, making a motion with his spatula as he was making himself some scrambled eggs, explaining to Bucky how they were training his brainwashed self to be a killing machine like he was discussing the fucking weather. “That’s tricky for the Soldier right now. You got a good arm, but it isn’t strong enough to have you climbing for too long or holding onto a ledge yet. And you have to kind of pull up and let go and really quickly grab a new hold so you don’t fall straight off the wall. It’s not preferable for an actual infiltration experience because not all handholds are gonna be secure so you might just lose your grip and fall off anyway.”

Bucky thought about it. “Huh. Never thought about that.” He bit his lip. “If that was gonna be a problem anyway, why’d you do all this to me? Specifically?”

Rumlow tapped his temple. “A few reasons. One, you’ve got the right kind of brain. We’ve been in your medical records. The train accident? They had MRI’s and all sorts of scans, so we had a good chance of the procedure working and taking hold. It did, too.” Rumlow gave a cold smile. “Two is going to stay a secret, and three, your CPS record hinted that suicidal tendencies might be in your future so if it didn’t work, well, we had an excuse for a body.”

Bucky felt chilled and he shivered against the steel eyes looking at him.

When the shake was gone, Rumlow slid over like a snake. He pushed Bucky's hair out of the way and Bucky fought not to move against the feeling of violation and disgust that follows at the intimate movement. Rumlow leans close to his ear, making Bucky’s nerves spark and an uncomfortable knot form in his gut, and whispers words into his head.

Bucky wakes up strapped to a table and swallows immediately. It should say something that he’s getting used to waking up like this, it should, but he can’t think past the anxious nerves bouncing around under his skin. He’s been stripped down to a pair of boxers and he feels exposed and his skin burns with mortification. There are machines hovering over him, long needles attached to strange chrome devices. Bucky tries to move a bit, but they really accounted for everything. He can’t even move his head and his skin itches with that realization.

A man leans over him and Bucky tracks him with his eyes. He tries to say something, he’s not even sure what, honestly, but it appears that he’s been gagged and nothing but muffle sounds follow.

“Well hello,” the man says, his round glasses gleaming. He looks ill, his hair is gone. “It is nice to see you finally joining us, Mister Barnes. My name is Dr. Arnim Zola. I’ll be…” he pauses, a wicked grin splitting his lips. “Having some fun with you today.”

Bucky feels cold and he looks at the needles and metal hovering over him.

Zola hums neutrally, following his sight line. “Ah, yes. My trinkets. I’ll be testing them out today, such excitement!” Zola looks back down at him, looking amused. “What? Not going to say anything, Mister Barnes?”

What an asshole, Bucky thinks.

“Oh, I hope to see great things achieved with you.” Zola sighs. “It’s a shame I won’t be here long enough to see what becomes of you.” Zola takes something off a tray, a small needle filled with a clear fluid. “I’m not as handsome as I was in my youth, it’s true, but most of this-” he motions to his face. “Chemotherapy that isn’t working. But it doesn’t matter. I have plans. But what you should get out of this, Mister Barnes, is that I’ve got not much left to lose.”

Zola looks into Bucky’s eyes. “It’s made me take such fun risks as of late. Yesterday, I smoked a pack of cigarettes. It’s not like lung cancer will kill me before pancreatic cancer does. Today,” Armin trails off. “I will be injecting you with a serum that has, so far, killed every rat, cat, dog, and rabbit I’ve injected it into.”

Terror coursed through Bucky and he feels hot tears from in the corner of his eyes. He doesn’t want to die. He- he’s scared shitless and he’s starting to panic for real now.

“Oh don’t be a baby,” Zola childs, patting his cheek. “Half of them died in almost no pain. The other half suffered from organ failure for several hours before drowning in their own blood as their skin fell off. If it does fail. I am most confident in this one, I’ve incorporated research from a man I hate to admit is a much better biochemist than I am. Statistically, you’ve got a decent chance at going peacefully.”

Zola hums and twirls the syringe in his fingers. “You won’t be needing this,” he tears Bucky’s necklace off his throat, the metal biting into his skin before snapping. Zola drops it on the side table with a look of mild disgust. “Now, what I have here is an immune system repressor. I don’t want your body rejecting and fighting my serum.”

Zola pushes the needle into his arm haphazardly and Bucky swears he can feel the cool liquid pushed into his vein and he shudders, closing his eyes and letting the water that pooled there flow down his cheeks. It doesn’t hurt much, not after all Bucky’s been through, a tiny needle is like a poke, it’s nothing, but what it means, the start of the experiments, whatever Zola has in store for him, it scares him and he tries to even though his gasping breaths.

“I’ll give that about fifteen minutes to work,” Zola says in disinterest. He doesn’t leave though, he just sets a timer on his watch and folds his hands together, watching Bucky intently.

“I bet you’re wondering why they’re letting me play with you like this,” Zola comments. “The only successful candidate for the brain interfacing technology, the only survivor. Well, the answer is, since you have proved that it works, and presented the kind of mind we need for it to work, we don’t need any more trials. As we speak, five other candidates are going into surgery.”

Zola gives a cold satisfied smile. “You, Mister Barnes, are replaceable. If this works, you will be invaluable, of course, but for now, you are no more important to anybody than a blue-collar worker is to a CEO.” Zola laughs at his own little joke. “Even after that, we’ll be having fun with you so we can see the basis of our other subjects. By seeing how you react, we’ll already know how they’ll react. Do you see, Mister Barnes? Do you know what that makes you?”

A lab rat. Disposable.

It hurts to realize that. It hurts to hear that after all that pain and agony and mind-numbing horror, he doesn’t even matter, but Bucky can’t really pinpoint what else he wanted Zola to say. He wishes that Zola didn’t say anything. He wishes that fear that had been quaking under his skin could go away, but it doesn’t.

Zola hums again and takes something off the table, a small sharp scalpel. Bucky watches it spin in the air, guided by Zola’s fingers. “Ooh, what I will do to you, Mister Barnes. I’m glad I thought to gag you. I’d hate to have to get earmuffs halfway through my experiments from the screams I’ll be pulling out of you.”

Bucky was now hyperventilating, making the world feel numb and fuzzy and too light around him.

Zola leaned over and pressed down on his chest hard, hard enough that all the air he sucked in was let out and it was a challenge to breathe in again, though manageable. After a minute, Zola let go and Bucky’s breathing returned to a better semblance of normal.

Zola then took the scalpel and looked at a file he had beside him. “Experiment #32557038. We don’t actually follow a numbering scheme. Do you have any idea how obvious that would be? Oh, the first attempt, number one? It would get boring, you could easily recognize what numbers belonged to which project. We assign a random serial number to each test subject and experiment. I like to make up stories with each number that relates to my test subjects. Hm. Three.” Zola looks at him. “Three functioning limbs.”

Rude, Bucky thinks nonsensically and lets out a muffled shout when the number is carved into the side of his stomach. The blade doesn’t go deep, Zola isn’t trying to disembowel him, he just wants to mark him like livestock.

“Two. Well, there are two of us in this room. Five.” Zola considers, tapping the bloody scalpel against Bucky’s hipbone, letting a drop of blood flow down his side. “Your surgery and recovery lasted five days. Another five, the number of minutes it took you to succumb to the drugs put in your drink beforehand. Seven. I’m honestly at a loss. Do you have a suggestion?”

Bucky can’t answer, he just watches Zola’s face.

“Well, seven for lucky number seven, I suppose. You’ll be needing that luck.” The number sets into his skin, blood oozing down his side. “Zero. Well, generally speaking, how much you’re worth, a zero-sum,” Zola laughs and carves the number, completing it with a slash across the inside. “Three. Again, I’m having trouble coming up with something! I suppose, three for the Third Reich.”

Bucky hates every second of that number carved into his skin. He’s so mad he doesn’t even feel the pain. He’s furious and it makes his blood pound at the injustice of it. He wants to beat the shit out of Zola, that fucking Nazi, spit on him, break his glasses and make him eat the shattered glass and metal fragments. He hopes the cancer hurts as it kills Zola, and he struggles against the binds, screwing up Zola’s work.

“Ah, ah, ah!” Zola childs, pressing his hand firmly against the wounds and making them burn tenfold. Bucky stops.

“I do love a good dash of irony,” Zola admits. “And finally, eight. Eight numbers in this serial.” Zola puts his finishing touches on the number and pulls a mirror over, reflecting it just right so Bucky can see the fucking perfect numbers on his side. They’re expertly done, perfectly professional except for the fucked up three near the end. It looks like a child tried to recreate a five combined with a seven, jagged and crooked and a bit too big. Bucky thinks that one number looks good simply because he fucked it up. If that number had been perfect too, he would have cut it off himself. He still might, if he gets out of this alive.

Zola’s watch beeps and his nasty grin returns.

Bucky's anger is swiftly overrun by terror as Zola pulls a machine over and places it over Bucky’s left shoulder, three ominous needles aimed at the flesh there.

“Let us begin.”

The three needles hurt, but the fire that swims into his veins is so powerful his vision white out. It starts like burning needles under his skin, itching and digging around, squirming like worms in the mud. He can feel himself screaming, his vocal cords going raw and ragged. The pain is inside of him, his skin itches and the sensation of his muscles seizing and being minced into shreds hurts, it’s agony. After the needles under his skin ease, they turn into an angry mix of fire and ice trying to push up out of his skin, like magma and glaciers are fighting for dominance and if Bucky’s skin and organs are burned, frozen, cracked, ripped apart, or cut up into minced meat, so be it.

He wants to claw his own skin open and bleed out the horrible liquid Zola put in and then die in that pool of blood. His shoulder feels like it’s dissolving, not even having it crushed in mounds of metal hurt this much. He wants to claw at his face, his neck, his stomach, and bleed. He tastes copper in his throat and wants to drown in it like how Zola said his other attempts did. Bucky can’t feel or see anything but the pain and anguish.

His head is throbbing with every heartbeat, every neuron, every cell, every membrane feels like it’s pounding, his skull feels like it’s cracking under the pressure of a cement mixer. He can feel himself trying to move it, trying to slam his head against the table to relieve some pressure, to knock himself out, to kill himself so he could stop feeling agony in his body, pain riddling his being like hundreds of shards of glass slowly being pushed into his skin, bleeding him dry.

At some point, when he can’t feel himself screaming, can’t hear anything over a roar in his ears, he forgets his name.

Colors flash and spark over him like firecrackers pressed against his skin, the hot tears that flow down his face feel like they’re being burnt there and makes it hurt worse. Everything that touches his body hurts, the smooth expanse of the table pressed the pain into any expense of skin it touched the straps keeping him restrained are hot leather pieces that rub and scratch and cut into his skin like knives, the needles still in his shoulder are moving under his skin like hungry leeches, the blood pouring down his side and soaking the back of his boxers is magma burning into him.

It takes him a long while to realize that the pain stopped at some point.

He can sort of think past the pain and its grip on his bones, skin, organs, ligaments and the sinew in his body, but only enough to let himself cry. He sobs and more tears follow. He begs a god he’s not sure he believes in anymore to save him, he cries for his mother, his father, for anybody to help. His muscles, sore from everything tensing up as he tries to curl in on himself. He sucks in big breaths and cries them out, choking on spit and blood in his throat.

Zola appears, grinning in glee. He touches Bucky, hands sliding over his skin and sending repulsed shivers across his body, hair standing on end. “Marvelous. It worked.” He touches where he carved numbers into Bucky’s skin and laughs. “Healed! With such wonderful scaring.”

Bucky doesn’t want to see. He closes his eyes. Zola rips out the gag and Bucky coughs again, startled, his eyes flying open, working his mouth as split and blood slid between his lips. He swallows the copper flavor down and stares at Zola, too frightened and distressed to say anything, tears still pouring down his cheeks in hot streams.

“How do you feel?”

“I don't want this. Just fucking kill me,” Bucky begs as he breathes through choked sobs. “I don’t want this.”

“Oh, but I can’t!” Zola says cheerfully. “I have so many more things I want to do now that my serum works!”

Bucky sobs again and coughs on some blood and spit.

“There were things I didn’t expect as the serum took hold, the seizure mostly, but it only lasted five minutes and the serum only took an hour to settle.”

It felt like days. It felt like minutes. Bucky doesn’t know anymore. Time works funny when you’re in pain. Bucky just wants to find somewhere dark without anybody there to curl up and die. He hyperventilates as he cries and the noise annoys Zola. He buckles the gag back on and Bucky passes out.

The next day, Bucky sits in a chair in a hoodie and sweatpants and socks and stares out the window, watching people in the street below. Yesterday he was being tortured and experimented on. Now he’s sitting in a chair people watching. The total difference between the situations is something he can’t grasp and before long he realizes that his eyes hurt with being open for so long and forces himself to start blinking again.

He has some new scars under his shirt. All with medical precision. Healed. He doesn’t understand. But he kind of does. Some sort of injection that can boost healing to impossible speeds, something that made him stronger and faster. Zola must have had fun with him after he passed out. Sounds like something out of a movie.

Bucky blinks his eyes again.

He doesn’t want to die anymore. Well, he does, but he doesn’t want anybody to kill him, which feels weird. More like he doesn’t mind if something suddenly kills him. He’s forgotten how to be scared of death.

“Death is a bitch,” Bucky says aloud, trying to put some emotion into himself, injustice, anger, fear, sadness, anything. “And you can fuckin’ quote me on that. Death is my bitch.”

Bucky can’t feel anything.

“That bitch doesn’t get to take everything from me and then deny me her sweet fuckin’ embrace. Now I’m gonna play hard to get because she’s being such a fickle fuck.”

Bucky thinks he feels better, but he probably doesn’t in reality.

He remembers to blink. His stomach growled and he mechanically gets up and goes to the kitchen. On the counter top is his necklace, the chain still broken. He stares at it for a minute before picking it up. He struggles to tie the thin chain back together before pulling it over his head. He eats the entirety of the fruit basket on the counter top, unwilling and unable to actually try to make some food and then goes back to bed.

The embrace of way too many blankets is perfect. He wraps them around his body, a pillow between his knees, and peering out of the covers at the bedside table, his laptop resting on it. He untangles his arm and pulls the computer over, searching up The Lego Movie on megashare before settling with putlocker. So what, he’s illegally watching movies, or whatever. What are they gonna do, arrest him?

As the movie starts, he pulls his arm back in and rests, eyes at half mast as he barely follows the story line.

Bucky is pretty certain that the Soldier met Mr. Pierce at some point, but the first time Bucky actually met the man was a month after being turned into what he is now. He didn’t wake up sore anymore, not since Zola, but he did wake up with more scars. He had started a list of his them in his notebook. Most of them have surgical precision, stitched up and then stitches removed, but the ones from training never look neat. They’re bigger, deeper, longer, messier, ragged, they ache sometimes.

They were in one of the medical rooms, the techs checking the implant for any wear through monitors and scanning equipment and looked interested by what they saw. Bucky was strapped into a chair, feet, ankles, knees, thighs, stomach, chest, arms, elbows, wrists, hands, and his head all tightly kept against the chair. It was a bit difficult to even breath and he had these scanning things pressed hard into his temple, a damn plug shoved into the port in his head.

They were also electrocuting him, he almost forgot in his interest with Mr. Pierce, his mind was dizzy and unfocused from the voltage. They were testing the device to see if any form of electrocution would cause it harm, in case Bucky had a run in with a taser or something. As it seemed, and to his despair, they were finding good results as the upped the voltage. The only good thing he had going for him was a bite guard and a twenty-second warning. He hadn’t pissed himself yet and they seemed pleased. Guess everything was hunky fucking dory.

“Good news, Rumlow,” Mr. Pierce said, walking in like he owned the place, which, well, he did. “The Red Room said that they’d take him.”

Rumlow looked over. “They did? A boy? Jeez, I bet that took some convincing.”

“Pocket change in the grand scheme of things,” Mr. Pierce dismisses. “Well look at you,” Mr. Pierce marvels, staring at Bucky.

Bucky would admit his physique certainly benefited from… the serum and the training. He was stronger, faster, more defined, more balanced. Despite that, having Peirce’s eyes on him made his skin crawl. He didn’t know what the look meant. They already took his bodily autonomy from him. Did that look signify something greater or was it just Peirce’s ‘a job well done ’ look? Had something already happened and he’d never remember it? His skin felt dirty at the knowledge of what they could have made him do, what could have been done to him while they have complete control.

He wants to throw up and he barely manages to keep tears from falling, only stopping it by telling himself if it had, he’d never remember it. If it hadn't, he’d never remember it. The perfect Schrodinger's Cat.

“Well that’s good,” Rumlow said and Bucky had forgotten what they were talking about.

“Exactly my thoughts, Rumlow. You’ll take him over tomorrow. Let him eat a big breakfast. He’s going to need it. They’ll do the hard work, you’re just charge of overseeing him and administering the words when he shakes it off.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pierce was checking in with the scientists and then he was suddenly gone and Bucky was panting against the residual shakes of electricity, the muscles in his stomach tensing uncomfortably. Bucky was left wondering when some things had moved and why people had traded positions. He spat out his bite guard. “What just happened?” he slurred, and spit dribbled out of his mouth. He wished he could wipe it away, but he could barely move, so it just slid down his chin.

A tech came to stand in front of him, looking down, hovering over him. “Can you repeat the number sequence I just told you?”

“The what?”

The tech made a face, a fascinated one, and it made Bucky’s stomach sink into his feet. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Mr. Peirce was talking to one of the doctors,” he whispered. “How- how long ago was that?”

“Three hours,” the tech grinned. “What a brilliant and unforeseen variable!” He turned to his colleagues. “This is perfect for cover-ups! If he can’t remember what he did, interrogations would be fruitless!”

“It works for him, but does it get rid of the memory on his drives?” another asked, not impressed.

“I think so! The right voltage fries memories spanning from three hours ago. They get corrupted and then deleted with the failsafe installed. Higher voltage might cover-up longer missions.”

“Of it might kill him and fry the tech,” another countered. “Does the electrocution kill neurons or just erase memory? Prolonged electrocution, if it kills brain cells, would make the Asset useless.”

“Can we do a brain cell count to compare between sessions, or compare past and future scans?”

“Do we have the technology to do that?”

Bucky shuddered and grimaced at the feeling of the connection unit still in his fucking head. It didn’t hurt, but it was really unsettling to be attached to something, to feel the plug slide into his head like how it shouldn't be able to because he had a skull in the way. Then he noticed the wetness in his pants and he flushed bright red, feeling his cheeks and body heat up in a reaction, felt shame and embarrassment well up. It seems they found the right voltage, he thinks in mortification. He wanted to die, mostly in horror. The only good thing is that those stupid scientists didn’t seem to notice, too up their own asses.

Small fucking mercies.

When Bucky wakes up the next morning, Rumlow is already looming over him, strong arms blocking him in and making Bucky feel small and helpless so caught off guard. Rumlow’s voice was deep with the Russian words and Bucky tries not to listen, tries to cover his ears with his hands, but he’s only got the one. Rumlow presses his left arm into Bucky’s chest to keep him down and pins his wrist to the bed with the other as he speaks.

The next time he starts shaking it off, like cobwebs over his head, who knows how long has passed, he feels a thin, callused hand on his wrist.

Bucky looked over, seeing a beautiful girl with red hair and pale skin flaked with a few freckles over her cheekbones, barely visible. She grinned and said with a dramatically hushed voice, “Come with me if you want to live.”

She dragged him away and pulled in into a room in under twenty seconds. He doesn’t know where Rumlow is, but he clearly didn’t spot anything unusual, because he wasn't hauling ass after them. The girl sat him on a comfortable and worn couch. He looked around, confused by the brightness of the room and the posters. It was… a lot to look at. Stuff jammed all over the place, enough to make a house out of the cavernous space.

The room looked lived in, like, really lived in. Like it was tailored to fit the person who existed in it and pamper them by providing all the comforts anyone could need. A mini-fridge, a comfortable looking bed, a desk. There was marker all over the walls, and lights and a TV and a cool stereo system and guns and stuff hung on the wall in various places. The window was mostly boarded up and has a poster of Justin Bieber with throwing knives sticking out of his face.

“So,” the red-headed girl said. “I’m Natasha. You’re going to be my friend now.”

That… really wasn’t what he was expecting out of this. Bucky blinked at her, feeling unsteady. “Okay,” is what he settled on. “My friends call me Bucky,” he added.

“Bucky it is,” she replied and stared at him for a while, but not right at his eyes, mostly at his head. Bucky stared back. “I have only one friend, but we met in a different way. I don’t know what comes next now,” she reported.

“I- um. I don’t know, we could, uh, play video games,” Bucky tried, and then grimaced. “Wait, no- I can’t play anything with one arm.”

“I-” she says with an air of grandeur. “Have a Wii.”

Bucky considers that. “That might work.”

Natasha takes a few moments to set up a video game, Mario Party 8 and hands him a remote. Bucky sits back and plays for a little while, not really sure if what was happening was real, feeling confused and like reality could drop away in a second. “So… what’s this place?”

“This is the Red Room,” Natasha explained. “It’s a Russian KGB sleeper cell. They train female assassins to serve the Russian government.”

Bucky stared at her. This girl in front of him has probably killed people and that thought is so surreal. “And what about me?”

“You’re a special case. Your organization is paying for my mentors to train you as well, despite the fact that you’re a boy,” she reported.

Bucky slumped back in his seat. He should have known. It sort of made sense. He, of course, he didn’t like that, who the hell would? But he just felt resigned. Bucky looked back at her, really looked at her. There were a few things about her, how she spoke, how she reacted to things, her blank eyes. “Do you like what they’re making you out to be?”

She blinks slowly. “No.” She doesn’t elaborate, but when her eyes actually meet his, they’re full of a certain brand of emotion Bucky knows intimately and Bucky understands.

“Yeah…” Bucky paused, considering her words. “So why are you still here?”

“If I leave, they’ll track me down and execute me,” Natasha replied promptly. “They hate me enough that they’d see it as an excuse.”

“They hate you?” Bucky says, confused. “Why would they keep you around then?”

“Because I’m the best they have.” She says it with such malice that Bucky doesn’t doubt it. She's like a knife, sharp, poised, precise, cold. “They don’t like how I- I’m a person. They try to make me a shape they can mold into anything that suits them, but I don’t budge, and they don’t like that.”

“Well,” Bucky said slowly, pausing before he continued. “We can be people together. Right?”

Natasha looks at him again and nods once, firmly. Bucky gives her a smile, and it feels weak and brittle on his face, like he forgot how to smile.

Natasha, it turns out, is a lot of fun. She has awesome taste in music and cool props for singing along to the music. She’s so… fancy, yet not. She’s got energy and this specific take-no-shit attitude for miles and is one hell of a singer, a good set of pipes. They talk and rock out and dress up and dance for ages.

It feels good. Bucky doesn’t feel like he’s a step away from being locking into his own body to wake up in an unfamiliar place at an unfamiliar time.

But it feels like no time at all before it comes to an end as they shout out the lyrics to 'I Don’t Care.' Bucky’s wearing a feather boa and a fedora, singing into a comb with little care and the door opens with a bang. Natasha whirls around, pointing a gun at the door like she wasn’t even dancing in the first place, just waiting for arrivals to come, and Bucky cut off halfway through a word, smile dropping off his face like it was made of lead.

“Natalia Alianovna Romanova!” a woman shouts over the music, and Natasha lowers it with a remote casually, keeping the gun up. Rumlow is standing behind the woman, looking around with wide eyes at the room.

“Yeah, what?” Natasha says, putting her glasses up on her head.

“James, we’re leaving,” Rumlow says, catching his gaze.

“Rumlow-” Bucky started, wanting to ask for more time or something, he isn’t even sure.

“Now.” His tone brooked no argument, icy and harsh, and Bucky bets he’s got a nice list in Russian waiting if Bucky refuses.

Bucky starts shucking off Natasha’s things, dropping them on the bed and feeling weight settle on his shoulders again and Natasha frowns. “Hey, dude-bro.”

Rumlow scowls at her.

“Don’t you think it would be easier to get Bucky places if he wanted to go? If you keep coming here and let us mess around after training, I bet he’ll be less depressed about having to do shit while brainwashed,” she offers. “Might even come willingly.”

Bucky looks at her, because that ain’t really true, but she had a sort of point there, and then at Rumlow who’s crossed his arms and is scratching at his stubble considerately. There wasn’t a lot of resisting Bucky could do realistically, he can’t actually block out the words or fight his way out of the black spot in his mind, but clearly Rumlow isn’t happy with the transition.

“James, that true?”

Bucky looks at Natasha, who stares at him. He races to try to figure out what to say. “Can- can’t I just have this one thing? If nothing else?” he manages. “Please. I don’t-” he falters, his voice cracking and stops talking.

Rumlow watches him and then sighs. “Fine. Fine, whatever, just get your ass to the car.”

Bucky isn’t actually sure where the car is, so he follows Rumlow out, catching Rumlow shooting daggers at Nat.

Being able to hang out with Natasha eases the darkness that hangs over his head like an anvil. It’s nice to be able to talk to someone about this stuff, someone who understands the abuse and inability to escape the reality they’re put in, the world of child soldiers and pain and brutal training and blood that could be their own or that of innocent people. She also doesn’t act weird about his missing arm. She just... acknowledges it and moves past it, making the tiny but meaningful changes to what she does.

For example, they play Twister. She does not give him any ‘left-hand blank’ commands, and, when they finish with the game, she paints his toenails.

“Have you seen the new Annie?” Bucky says conversationally. He had. It was really good and he liked the soundtrack, how they made it more modern, more… more relatable, more now, more relevant.

“It’s the hard knock life, for us,” Natasha mumbles. “It’s the hard knock life~ for us! No one cares for you a bit~ when you’re a foster kid! It’s a hard knock life!”

“That’s actually my favorite song,” Bucky mentions.

“I actually went to the theater with my friend Sam to see it,” she adds. “It was good.”

Sam. Bucky wonders who this mysterious other friend is. Someone who clearly knows about the grenade launcher on the wall and the guns hidden in every crevice. This other kid clearly understands and decided to remain friends with someone he knew had probably killed another human being on orders. It made Bucky hope Sam would be his friend too.

It was maybe a little stupid, that bit of desperation, but he couldn’t help shake the idea of someone on the outside, someone safe, who cared for people who were trapped in shitty situations and didn’t make it worse.

“I like the original Dumb Dog too. I don’t know, I just feel like Hard Knock Life fits, well, our lives the best,” Bucky trails off. Didn’t it though? Jesus. Everything. The expectations, the situation, the words that revealed the truth of their lives in every line.

“I get that,” Natasha said, backing off to let his nails dry. They’re light blue at the moment, the color of the sky. “I’ll buy it so we can watch it here,” she adds. “They give us a twenty every week.”

“That explains-” Bucky gestured with his hand. “Your room.” She clearly had to buy this all herself, so it made sense that she got some sort of allowance.

“Yeah. I think the other girls stock it up for when they graduate,” Natasha adds. “I steal from them sometimes.”

“Graduate?” Bucky wasn’t familiar with what that meant in a place like this. It doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing you leave at all. Sure, sleeper cell, they leave as spies ready to report to the KGB, but like… other than that.

“Yeah. When they turn twenty and get the surgery, have to pass a skills assessment, and then they’re let loose on the world. Taking assassination jobs, spying for the KGB, government infiltration.”

Bucky considered and understood most of that except… “Surgery?”

“We’re not supposed to have kids,” Natasha explained.

“Jesus Christ. That sucks.” They just… do whatever to the girls' uterus or ovaries and send them on their way? What happens if they get pregnant before that? Well, based on what Natasha told him, nobody else is even friends with a boy, so maybe the chance of that happening is actually nonexistent.

There’s a strange pause between them, and they both know there are no more words to be said on the subject, so Bucky tries to fish for a new one. “Hey, your last name is Romanova, right?”

“Yeah,” she confirms, shaking the yellow nail polish and focusing back on his feet.

“Is that Russian?”

“Yep,” she says. “The Red Room is a Russian organization. It would be weird if we were all American.

“Oh,” Bucky says, feeling a bit stupid. “Well, anyway, I think I know Russian, but I can’t tell,” he says. “They… taught me? Or downloaded it?” He’s just had… a greater understanding of some of the things spoke. He’ll recognize words and then wonder why he knows what they mean. Like he’ll hear gibberish and something about it will be familiar and then his mental voice goes ‘cool, I like plums too’ and Bucky is like ‘what’ and then the mental voice is like ‘what?’ It’s a mess.

“Oh, that’s fun,” she says. “We’re gonna turn you into a real Red, I’m guessing.”

“My communist agenda is nobody’s business but my own,” Bucky says immediately and Natasha laughs. It’s a delightful sound, like a little burst of sunlight. Bucky likes it. Makes him feel a bit warmer.

“Same,” she says.

Bucky chuckles and then is silent for a second. “I mean, communism could work, but only in a society with no money. And where people weren't greedy as shit. Like, I got it all figured out in my head. Basically, you have a working class that gets assigned jobs based on their skill sets and personal preferences and you’ve got a committee of experts in all the fields of work that manage that shit. Their job is to manage that shit. Nobody gets paid though, only provided a house. Like, nice apartments, kind of houses. Of course, the size is based on how many family members you have so there are different buildings with certain amounts of rooms, right?”

“I’m into this, go on,” she confirms, still working.

“Right. So, school is free but they pay more attention to your skills and interests so they can put you in certain classes to kinda groom you for a job. By the time you graduate, you’ve got a career and all the knowledge you need to begin. You learn more on the job, but yeah. Oh, and people can put in requests for new jobs after a certain amount of time, so they don’t get mad stuck doing the same thing. And there are research teams too, of course, because they wouldn’t be all knowing.”

“What people work for is their homes, kinda. See you gotta contribute to get back, right? But of course, you gotta consider the disabled, mentally and otherwise. People who are mentally disabled can still do things, but if they can’t, they’re still respected and cared for by people who have the job to take care of those people. Compassionate types, you know? And a lot of people who are physically disabled can do stuff and if they physically can’t they can probably have assistants or assistive technology provided by the research teams, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not perfect, but it sounds efficient at least,” Natasha said. She finishes yellow suns on his toes and grabs some black nail polish from her line up.

“So there are elections, sort of, where the people put in suggestions but the council makes the final decision based off how suited for the job each candidate is,” Bucky says. “Because people are fucking stupid and make bad decisions all the time.”

“Amen.”

“So like the council is made of like, people who are experts in a subject, like agriculture manages the crops and farms and stuff, and the economist keeps an eye on things economically and so on and so forth and these people talk to each other all the time. If the food and wellness expert sees a rise in some vitamin deficiency, they’ll tell the guy managing food production and they’ll work it out, right?”

“Nice.”

“Like, and they all work for the betterment of the human race,” Bucky finishes. “Or, I don’t know, in practice, it might be more complicated than that, but I think I have some basics.

“It’s a solid plan,” Natasha agrees. “Too bad people suck.”

Bucky sighs. “Yeah.”

Natasha starts on his toes again. “Hey, do you know how to skateboard or anything?”

Bucky was thrown by the non-sequitur. “I, uh, can, but I don’t have a board and that was before I lost my arm, so I don’t know-”

“How’d you lose your arm anyway?”

It used to bother him more, talking about it, but now it just seems distant and meaningless facing all the other bullshit of his life. “Got fuckin’ crunched in a train accident.”

“Dude.”

“It’s actually kinda funny now. Along with all sorts of lacerations and metal embedded in my arm, my upper arm was broken backward, my elbow was shattered, my radius and ulna were broken twice, backward and forwards, like a fuckin’ staircase, my wrist was fine, and my hand was mostly mangled. I’m pretty sure my thumb was torn off, metal went through my palm, almost fully severed, and that all sounds gross, but here’s the funny part. All my fingers but one were pushed down into my palm."

“No,” Natasha said, stunned.

“That’s right, I was flipping off everybody with my fucked up mangle arm. It sucked to lose it, but now everything sucks, so I’m gonna find what little joy I can in the last hour I had that stupid arm. I was the one guy who flipped everybody off.”

“That’s incredible,” Natasha said.

“God damn right,” Bucky agrees. “Well, I mean, it was in Italy, so like, nobody actually understood that was what was up, but I heard about it after.”

Natasha continues working on his nails. “So, up for skating next time? You can use my board,” she offers. “I’ll invite my friend. He’ll like you. And you’ll like him. He is… like a sunflower. Very bright, open.”

“Okay,” Bucky agrees.

“And… done. You like them?” Natasha climbed up to sit next to Bucky, pressing her side into his and then throwing her arm around his shoulders. He… it had been a while since anyone had touched him so casually, he could feel the pressure on his skin and it made him feel a bit better, a bit dizzy on it.

Bucky sits up, not dislodging her in the least, and wiggles his toes. Adorable little crooked suns with cool guy sunglasses on them. “I love ‘em.”

Later, when Zola is forcing him to hold his fingers against a chunk of dry ice, covered with a thin piece of something that prevents his skin from freezing to it, but doing nothing to ease the cold, blood stopping in his veins, his cells screaming at him, he thinks of the suns on his toes, Natasha practically sitting on him, her body warm against his own, full of comfort and safety and protection, and tries to remember what real warmth feels like, not the fire in his hand. Eventually, Zola takes the ice out of his palm with tongs and watches his hand, ignoring Bucky’s tear stained face, the gag strapped to his head, his body secured to a seat bolted to the floor.

“No signs of frostbite. No cell damage from extreme cold at all. This is promising!”

Zola brings over a pot of steaming water and puts Bucky’s hand in it.

Bucky screams through the gag, spit spilling where it can.

Later, he’s playing with his fingers, tapping each to his thumb and seeing how they move after all the pain they went through. They all work perfectly. So fucking weird. His bones ache. Maybe that pain isn’t real, he can’t always tell.

Bucky wakes up naked in a metal tube three days later. He’s not sure what’s happening, but he’s finally gotten used to waking up somewhere he’s not supposed to be and doesn’t that say something special. He’s a bit scared, he hasn’t lost all emotion, but he can push past it some to get a bit of a look around. He’s mostly upright, strapped to some sort of brace covered in fabric. His arm is free and in front of him is a small glass window. Outside he can see Zola and some techies surrounded by medical equipment and strange machinery.

He watches as Zola signals for something to happen and the temperature plummets. His ears pop as the pressure changes suddenly as well and ice starts forming all around him, frost bleeding over the metal, on Bucky’s skin.

He takes a small breath in panic and his lungs freeze halfway through the exhale. He can’t breathe, it hurts, his vision is swimming as his skin starts to harden and ache. He tries to reach for the window, but his body stops working and gets stiff in instants. He blinks and he can’t open his eyes again. He’s frozen still. He tries to move, but nothing works. There's just pain and more pain, and he can’t breathe, and then everything stops.

He doesn’t feel time pass. He’s barely even conscious if he could call it that.

But later, he stumbles out of the chamber with no support, falling on the floor as his numb feet fail to support him. His skin feels hot and his ears hurt from yet another pressure change and everything is fuzzy at best.

“Three days in cryostasis and he still lives!” Zola marvels. “This could be a huge advantage!”

Bucky’s ear ducks are frozen, a cold ache in his face, so he’s silent as the guards bodily haul him up and take him away.

The next day Natasha and he sneak out and walk through town after training. Natasha leads him, of course, because he doesn’t know where anything is or what anything is except the stuff close to the park.

“You sparred today,” she tells him as they walk.

“Yeah? How was I?”

“You fight… big,” she explains. “You take up a lot of space, use your size to overpower your opponent, and hit hard. You don’t pull any punches and your eyes never leave your target. It’s like watching a lioness hunt.”

“Not a lion?”

“Lions don’t usually hunt. They defend. Lionesses are in charge of hunting in a pride,” Natasha responds. “You fight like a predator. You actually walk like you’re there to murder someone. Head down, eyes up, wide stance, firm certain walk. It’s fascinating.”

She leads him into a little shop and then back into this big old warehouse looking thing in the back. A dozen or so people are already boarding around and Natasha pushes at him until he gets on her board and goes through so basic motions, getting used to what to expect without his arm. He goes forward, turns, does a jump, an ollie or two.

It’s then that she decides to put him on the biggest ramp there is with that little preparedness and by god, Bucky can’t say no to a lady, especially not Natasha. So there he is, looking down the ramp that is getting taller and longer the more he stares at it when someone huffing and puffing makes it up the ladder of the ramp. He’s got a scooter over his shoulder and a helmet and pads stuck to his elbows and knees. Sam, it turns out, is a black boy their age and, as Bucky was unaware, good at trick scootering. Bucky absently notices a green wristband, but doesn't comment.

“Oh, hey Sam,” Natasha says.

“Yo,” Sam replies as he puffs for air. “This the new guy?”

“Yep. Bucky, meet Sam. Sam, Bucky. Bucky’s messed up like me too.”

“What, the murder people stuff?”

“Not yet,” Bucky says immediately. “Right now, my life's a different kind of fucked up.”

“Do- do you wanna talk about it, man?” Sam asks, and there's something about his demeanor, his eyes, his genuine concern directed at him that makes Bucky wanna spill every secret he has. He is exactly like a sunflower, he realizes. Natasha was right. He’s got a nice kind face, bright and worried, with deep brown eyes that linger on them as he seems to check for injury.

“I- I’m not going to tell you everything,” Bucky says, running his hand through his hair, pushing it back and refusing to make eye contact. “But I was frozen alive like four days ago.”

Sam looks very concerned. “Shit.”

Bucky nods dumbly. “Yeah, so that’s where I’m at. Got defrosted yesterday. Sucked.” Sam pats his shoulder, telegraphing his move very slowly. Bucky appreciates it. Sam is warm and Bucky wants to lean into the touch, but he doesn’t.

“So yes,” Natasha says. “But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to push Bucky down this ramp. It will be hilarious,” Natasha says.

“For you,” Bucky says, without any heat. He hands her his lucky top. “Good thing I’m not scared of death, though. If I die, bury me with my that top and Star of David.”

“I got you,” Natasha says, but is interrupted by another skateboarder, an adult man with tattoos, showing up with a confused smile.

“Hey, Natasha, who’s your new friend?” He peers at Bucky, still smiling. Bucky gives a little wave.

“Bucky. He hadn’t been on a board in-”

“Almost two years,” Bucky says.

“And I’m making him go down this.” Natasha grabs the helmet and puts it on Bucky’s head, buckling it under his chin.

“That’s a horrible idea,” the man says meaningfully. He now looks really concerned for Bucky's well being and he appreciates that.

“Oh, I know.” Natasha waves a hand at Bucky. “Go.”

Bucky sighs, curses lowly, and then says, loudly because he needs the confidence right now, “I can do it, yes I can, ‘cause I’m a Jewish American! ” and he leans forward.

The wind makes his eyes water and by the time he’s over that first large bump, the board shoots out from under his feet despite trying to stay on it, sending him into a tumbling free fall. He’s lucky he has the helmet because as he tumbled across the floor, he hit his head twice and then rolled into a stop. He lays there for a second, spread eagle on the ramp and feeling like he just went through a dryer on tumble.

That’s when he notices everybody looking his way, he impassively says, “Not dead,” and puts a thumb up for good measure.

“Whoo!” Natasha shouts from the top of the ramp clapping loudly. “That’s my boy!”

She sounds really proud, actually, and her tone almost sets him off. He has to put his hand in front of his mouth to stop himself from grinning too hard. Sam cackles, finding the whole thing hysterical. It’s a good sound too, with a few strange noises mixed in, like snorts and cut off snickers that sound like gasps for air, like he can’t keep it contained.

Bucky can’t help but chuckle too, a bit embarrassed, but a good embarrassed, because that was probably really funny to watch.

Summer is infinitely better with Natasha and Sam. It’s unbelievably relieving to be able to go somewhere other than the HYDRA facility and feel safe in the presence of someone else. Bucky discovers that telling them about what he dealt with did wonders, even if it made them look at him in worry. It was nice to have people who knew and understood. It just solidifies his decision to actually talk with Steve when he got out of juvie.

But, being that intimate with them, that free with the reality of the world and the secrets that they hold, brings them together like they’re stuck in a twisted cat’s cradle, all tangled up and knotted together with no chance of the bond ever being undone. The level of comfort Bucky feels with Sam and Natasha is as comfortable as he feels with himself. He shares everything. Every nightmare, every memory, every horror show and every shitty meme that made him laugh. He tells them about Steve, the little punk asshole that he is, and what happened to him too.

But… even shitty things can ruin the good ones.

The day he first wakes up with blood on his hand, on his arm and body, sticking in his hair and tangling in it is horrifying. Bone-chilling and the feeling of slick blood running down his skin makes his skin crawl. He feels so disconnected, despite feeling nauseous, like he was stuck in a dream that wasn’t even his own. Like he was asleep and imagining what horrible things he might be forced to do one day, what he’d have to be prepared for when they make him kill somebody.

Rumlow is standing near the kitchen area, watching him passively. When he sees that Bucky is back in control, Rumlow nods to himself, turning to leave. “Wakey wakey, eggs and go take a fucking shower.”

Bucky doesn’t feel awake. The way Rumlow said that just makes him feel like he’s losing it.

He drifts into the bathroom in a daze, looking at himself in the mirror. His face is red with sticky cool blood, his hair plastered to his head, and his uniform- when did he get a uniform? - is completely drenched, to the point where the black leather and cloth looks red. He suddenly realizes that there's no way that the owner of all that blood is still alive, not missing this much from their veins.

He stares. And stares. And stares until he feels the blood dry up on his skin and realizes this is real. And he needs to really wash that off because he’s starting to feel rotten and dead and the blood weighs like an anvil on his body. His stomach rolls in horror and he feels bile start to come up his throat. He drops to his knees and throws up into the toilet, leaving sticky red hand prints on the sides of the bowl, the acid taste in his throat and mouth. Whatever amount of protein shake that he wasn’t done digesting was coming out alongside the burning feeling of stomach acid and hot tears on his face.

He does that until he’s dry heaving and tries to breathe to control it, in and out and in and out and-

He’s hyperventilating. That’s worse.

He shakily fumbles for the handle, flushing his vomit away and resting his forehead against the seat as he tries to regulate his breathing. He closes his eyes and pretends he doesn’t feel feverish and pretends it’s not real, just some horrifying nightmare.

When he can breathe in and out without feeling panic and horror to his bone, just a degree of numbness, he pulls himself off the seat with a sickening sticky sound and stumbles into the shower, falling as he trips over the outer rim of the tub.

He flails a bit and lands hard, pulling himself into a kneeling position and shakily pulling the lever so the shower turns on. It’s ice cold, but he just sits there in the spray.

He sits in a cold spray watching the red water swirl down the drain and wash from his hand. He feels like a shell, utterly helpless and sick. He feels like the world spins without his command and his voice is nothing but a whisper in an earthquake. After a while, he starts feeling cold and stands on unbalanced legs. He strips out of his wet bloodstained clothes and drops them on the floor with a wet smack. Bucky rinses off with his eyes closed, not wanting to see any more red as he tries to clean off.

After he feels like he’s finally not plastered in blood, he shambles out of the bathroom, grabs a handful of clothes and throws them on, face planting on the bed, exhausted from everything. He’s almost grateful, the next morning, when Rumlow comes in and says those magic words.

He comes back to himself walking to Nat’s room, lost hours forgotten as he seeks his only refuge. She clearly sees something wrong in his expression and she seems so distant, looking at him like he was far away, like moving the body wouldn’t move the soul from wherever it was. Natasha put him in her bed, the one he knows she never uses, the bed that smells like dust and unwashed store merchandise tucked him under a blanket, and sat with him, braiding his hair with deadly intent until his lips could work again.

“I’m used to missin’ time” Bucky manages, his voice hoarse and lost, even to his own ears. “But yesterday, after I got back, they used the words and shit got fuzzy and next thing I know I’m covered and blood and Rumlow is just waitin’ for me to snap out of it.”

Bucky curls in on himself, the pain of realization stabbing into his heart as he realizes to his core that he took someone's life, a person who didn’t deserve it, a person who was once a child and probably laughed in delight as they begged their mom or dad to pick them up. A person who went to school and studied for years. A person who had friends that cared about them and wanted them to be okay. All of that life, compiled to thousands of experiences and meaningful moments just to end up being some sort of cattle at the slaughter for Bucky and HYDRA.

“I think they made me kill a guy. They made me kill someone.” He whispers. “I’m scared, Nat.”

Natasha pets his head calmly. She doesn’t say anything and it kind of makes Bucky glad. He doesn’t need to hear the lies that will make him feel better. He doesn't need false reassurances. Natasha knows this because she knows this situation like the back of her hand.

But she also knows he doesn’t need to hear the words that will tell him that he’ll do it again.

Instead, she sings softly to inaudible music and he closes his eyes to the words coming from her lips and the truth behind them.

“The sun’ll come out~ tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomo~rrow~ there’ll be sun. Just thinkin’ about~ tomorrow~ clears away the cobwebs and sorrow~ till there's none. When I’m stuck with a day~ that’s gray~ and lone~ly, I just stick out my chin, and grin, and sa~ay: oo~oh, the sun’ll come out~ tomorrow. So you gotta hang on till tomor~row, come what may…”

Steve finally gets out of juvie, nearly two months of being in prison.

Bucky sets up a Skype account and anxiously waits to receive a request from Steve. Of course, he’s at the Red Room facility at night. He snuck out to do this because he didn’t dare try to talk to Steve where Hydra was. Natasha was busy, out on a mission, but she told him how to get in and out of her room without springing any of the traps. He was sat next to no less than three guns in case someone tried to break in, and had raided her candy stash. He didn’t dare touch anything blueberry flavored, fearing the wrath of a woman scorned.

When the video request finally arrives, he accepts it immediately and starts a video call. What he sees, after years of not knowing what Steve looked like nowadays, is not what he’s expecting.

Steve is dressed in a black tank top, bold black tattoos displayed over his arms and chest and neck, and a nasty scar over his eyebrow. His hair isn’t dyed, it’s regular ol’ golden blonde, and a bit shaggy for Steve’s usual standards, though he still pushes his bangs to the side instead of back or anything else. Prisoners probably can’t dye their hair, so that explains that, but the tattoos... Definitely a surprise. And the piercings. His ears are decked out and he’s got one on his eyebrow.

It’s shocking, seeing him so changed after so long. In Bucky’s mind, he’s still the scrawny stick-like punk that tried to punch out fells twice his size, begging his grandma to let him dye his hair, skin free from any covering, any major scar or mark. Now he looks like he walked out a tattoo parlor and into a piercing studio before raiding a Hot Topic or Spencer's. It’s not a half-bad look on him, but Bucky was a bit surprised.

Steve immediately frowns, looking at Bucky closely, bright blue eyes focused on him intensely. Bucky can see him trying to put something together, reading Bucky’s every motion and feature for a clue. Nobody ever accused Steve of being stupid, that’s for sure. He’s real keen, real clever, great planner, always spotting little details.

“Hey, punk,” Bucky says, cracking a grin he knows looks worn thin, a rubber band about to snap. “How have you been?”

“Just got out of juvie,” Steve explained, raising an eyebrow. Bucky notes a flash of silver in his mouth. Tongue piercing. Good god, the little guy went all out. “Not too bad, kinda fun in some ways. Got some tattoos and battle scars. How ‘bout you?”

The grin drops off Bucky’s face and he rubs his forehead. “Pretty shit, actually.”

“Yeah? Why come?” Steve sounds so damn earnest that it’s all Bucky can do to blurt it all out there.

“Listen,” Bucky said tiredly, knowing this is going to be draining because it already is. “It’s kind of a long story and it ain’t a pretty one. The gist of it is that I’m fucked up now and what I tell you, you need to never say to another living soul. I am not fucking around here Steve. What I tell you, you keep your gob shut about.”

“I won’t say a word, Bucky. Scouts honor,” Steve says immediately, frowning. He glances around and then pulls over some headphones, plugging them in and putting the headphones on. “I’ll help if I can.”

Then Bucky tells him everything, all of the pain and neglect and the bone-deep desire to be free of it all. He tells him about being stabbed, about living on the streets, about how Hydra picked him up and twisted him inside out to make him the perfect puppet for their cause, about the blood and what he knows happened even though he can’t remember a damn thing.

“Fucking hell, Bucky,” Steve says softly. “God, if I was there-”

“They’d kill you, Stevie,” Bucky says bluntly. They might even make Bucky kill Steve himself. It really wasn’t worth it. “That’s why I’m not even in that fucking building. I can’t risk your life for this. And calling the cops won’t do anything. They’re too good. You call the cops, next thing we know an entire precinct has been blown up or everybody shot dead and no leads. I just… I need you to know. It helps, if someone knows.”

“Your burden is mine too,” Steve swore. “But, God, I wish alla this never happened.”

“I know. But, y’know, it ain’t all bad.” He’s trying to write it off, but it’s so hard to admit just how horrible it all is, the weight and burden it puts on Bucky’s back, a headcount he can’t remember. “I don’t remember what they make me do, and the place they’re training me has this girl, Natasha, who’s kinda like me. We’re buddies. She’s nice, and dangerous, but talented, and funny, and a hell of a dame.”

“Yeah? I look forward to meetin’ her.” He shifts forward, smiling a bit.

“Told her about you, actually. She likes you already. She’s awesome, Steve. Can fight like hell. She’s a hurricane in a feather boa and jumbo sunglasses. She sings 80’s tunes and rocks karaoke,” he rambles, because Nat really is that great. She’s nothing less than exactly what she is and that honesty of a person is something that Bucky really admires. Sure, she might conceal a lot, but if you were her friend, she’d spill her soul to you.

Steve grins and it’s as familiar as Bucky’s own heartbeat. “Sounds like a hell of a girl.”

One day Sam and Bucky are in Nat’s room, a blistering hot room because the damn AC broke and there is no way they’re going someone else in this heat wave, so they’re clumped together in front of Nat’s fan. Nat was the first to strip to her underpants and bra, and the boys followed her example, trying not to soak up body heat as they squeeze together in front of the artificial breeze. Sam is still wearing that wristband, a medical wristband, and by now Bucky actually knows what it is. Sam's a pre-mute, has an inactive x-gene. Wearing the bad has put him through a hell of a time, but he's required by law to do so and that thing just won't break.

It’s when Natasha looks over and examines him that Bucky remembers the burns and scars littering his body. There are healed cuts over his arm, back, a few on his legs. Some have surgical precision, others are wild and random. Burns littler his back, shoulder, and arms. He suddenly wanted to put his shirt back on, despite it being a thousand degrees.

“Nice cigarette burns,” she says, and Bucky grimaced. “Wanna see mine?”

At that Bucky blinks and watches as she literally pulls off her bra and lays back down, back on display. He blinked at the line of burns on each knob of her spine, a line broken only by a brand between her shoulder blades. Sam doesn’t seem surprised, but he did look startled that Nat just pulled that risque move.

Bucky himself would admit to feeling more put off by seeing Nat’s boobs initially because what why did she do that, but now the scars are his focus.

Sam reaches out and traces a little brand in the center of Nat’s back with his ring ringer, softer than a feather. The brand, because there's nothing else it could be, looks exactly like the mark on the back of a black widow spider.

Feeling emotional and knowing the pain that must have inflicted and how he would have liked for them to be treated, Bucky leaned over and kissed the center of the cigarette scars, which leaving Nat blinking at him and Sam giving him a surprised look.

“To make ‘em feel better.”

“They’re old,” Nat said. “They don't hurt anymore.”

Bucky shrugged, because not all scars hurt on the outside anymore, and said “Penises” into the fan, which distorted his voice and made Natasha laugh, shoulders shaking.

Bucky wakes up on the floor and blearily looks around. Natasha is lying prone next to him, face twisted in a grimace and hand on her side. He can feel blood sliding down the side of his face, and he’s sweaty and panting for breath. His hand hurts and there’s pain ebbing from everywhere. And… He… there is definitely a knife in his leg and he can feel his broken ribs. His wrist feels wrong and he has cuts all along his arm.

“Nat?” Bucky slurs.

She looks over at him. “Hey. It’s you.”

“What-?”

“They made us go one on one, weapons allowed. You chose a gun. I took knives,” she explained. “Sorry for stabbing you multiple times.”

“S’fine,” Bucky mumbles. “You… okay?”

“You shot me. Non-vital area, through and through. But it’s okay. They’ll be here in a second to get us to a recovery bay.”

“I- I shot you?” Fear spikes through Bucky and he tries to look, spotting a spreading red spot on Natasha’s stomach, ice making him freeze, eyes wide. “Nat, I-” he chokes out.

“Shut up, lay down, and hold my fucking hand,” she orders, shifting her arm so it was closer to him. Bucky flopped back down and reached out so their bloody hands joined, the red slick between their palms, laying in silence. He pretends his wrist doesn't hurt.

“I don’t care that you shot me when you literally didn’t even know what was happening or whatever. I couldn't care less. So let’s just wait here and take in that this is what’s happening and we’re both fine and we’ll be fine, and later, when you’re all healed and I’m stuck on bed-rest, you’ll go buy me some blueberries or something to make me feel better and we’ll cuddle, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I like you. I don’t care. Buy me blueberries.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t have complex tastes.”

“Okay.”

“If you start crying, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks,” Bucky said, choked up.

“I lied, I’m telling Sam.”

Bucky feels laughter bubble up into his chest. “Traitor,” he says wetly.

Later, Sam flips his shit. There is some yelling, a lot of expletives, and Natasha starts laughing at some point, which makes her wince in pain and then Bucky starts cracking up, and he’s got a cast on his wrist and he keeps knocking it against shit. But he bought Natasha a thing of blueberries, a big blueberry flavored lollipop, and got some chips, Doritos, for himself. Sam started yelling at how they weren’t taking this seriously and Natasha said if they took it seriously the stress would kill them.

Bucky laughed again, and said, “You are my best friend! If I’m dyin’, you dyin’ with me, ain’t no choice!”

And they set them both off again and Sam kept yelling at them and then angrily pressed himself into Bucky’s side, hands under his armpits, face embedded in Bucky’s shoulder/pec area, knees drawn up to his chest, like a pissed off cuddly kitten and whenever Bucky tried to tell him that they were fine, he hissed like an alley cat and told him to shut his dumbass mouth. Bucky tried to hug him and Sam once again hissed to not touch him because if Bucky tried to comfort Sam after Bucky himself shot Nat and got stabbed and broke bones, he was going to flip the couch.

“If you try to comfort me when you are in need of comfort I will literally lose my god damn mind,” is what he growled at Bucky.

Bucky grinned stupidly at him.

“And wipe that look off your face, I’m mad at you!”

Bucky hazily wakes to burning pain on his back, his arm and legs and feet burning with exertion, and the sound of a crack of a whip. Moments later, ice burns along his lower back a bleeding line and he shouts in pain, hips and torso snapping forward to twist away. Something around his throat tightens as he moves and he struggles to stay upright and keep breathing. He wildly glances around, sees a cuff secured to his wrist, its metal chain fed through a metal pole firmly bolted into the wall, and leading down to a collar wrapped around his neck. If he stops standing on his toes, he’s threatening to strangle himself. If he yanks on his wrist, same thing, only he might dislocate his wrist too.

He can feel hot blood rushing down his spine, a line cut into his skin, several more crisscrossing over his skin sluggishly oozing crimson down his back. He can feel it soaking his boxers and trailing down his legs and puddling under his feet. The wounds itch where they’re starting to heal and Bucky wants it all to stop.

“Whu-?” He slurs, voice muffled by a gag secured to his head. He tries to look around but he’s interrupted by another loud crack and burning pain across his upper back, making his back bleed agony and his shoulder blades feel like they’ve cracked. He screams and chokes out a sob and coughs when his breathing is again restricted.

Someone roughly grabs his shoulder and forces him to turn. Bucky finds himself looking at Rumlow squinting into Bucky’s eyes like he’s looking for gold in a pan. “Shit, it’s the kid. Woke up halfway through. Should I put him under?”

“Yes. This punishment is supposed to be the Soldier’s. He can’t be allowed to believe that leaving witnesses is acceptable.”

Bucky managed to look around and to his shock and dismay he’s- he’s in fucking office. And he can see Pierce at a desk a little over a dozen feet away. There's a bookcase behind him, darkened windows covered with shades, chairs, a conference table. It’s a fucking office, and Pierce is sitting at his fucking desk like it’s nothing that Bucky’s being whipped in front of him. He spares a glance at his computer and clicks on something.

Tears pour down Bucky’s face.

Rumlow leaned in, whispering rough Russian into Bucky’s ear. It sends him falling again, like the floor was dropping out from under him. The pain faded with his awareness, and the darkness was bliss.

Bucky stuck a sucker in his mouth and considered the rooftop. Besides him, Natasha and Sam argued over a bag of Dum-Dums, trying to divide them by favorite flavors and fighting over the root beer ones. Bucky, lips tasting like bubblegum, kicked his feet back and forth over the edge. There was a six or so story drop in front of him, pavement below.

He moved the sucker to the left side of his mouth and grabbed his Pepsi, drinking from the other side and spotting a pair of pigeons fly overhead. It was kinda nice out, sort of overcast but a good temperature and nearly no wind.

“Here are the grape ones,” Sam said, dumping ten or so into Bucky’s lap.

“‘Fanks,” Bucky mumbled past the lollipop and put his soda down.

“No problem, man,” Sam said absently and rummaged around in the bag. “Does anyone even like the apple ones? There's like, fifteen of them in here.”

“Chuck ‘em off the side,” Natasha advised.

“I’ll vote no on that. I’ll just, I don’t know, hand ‘em out to strangers on my way home.”

“Why’d you bring us here, Nat?” Bucky asks.

“It’s a rooftop,” she says, like it explains everything.

“Go on.”

“You can… see everything. And there's no people. I brought candy, Buchanan. I don’t know what else you want out of me.”

“I can’t believe that’s your fucking name,” Sam mentions.

“I don’t know the logic behind it either,” Bucky admitted, scratching his chin. “Think it was dumb luck. So, what’d you do this week, Sam?”

“Nothing really interesting. Mostly stayed in my room. Read some books. Watched Jumanji. Nat?”

“Training. Movies. I went on a mission Wednesday. They had me assassinate someone's company rival. It was made to look like a suicide. Messy.” She seems unphased, but they know better. They know how she hates to have to kill people. She always tries to make it painless.

Sam offered his hand and she took it. “You do what you have to to survive,” Sam says soothingly. “One day we’ll help you figure something out.”

“Thank you.”

“Yo, Buck, I’m making it venting hour,” Sam said. “What do you have on your chest?”

Bucky hesitated. “I’m getting whipped now, as a punishment. Or the Soldier is. He left witnesses, I heard. I know he’s… not real, not a person, but it’s still kinda fucked up. And it hurts. I can feel the scars catching on my shirt when I put it on, but I don’t want to look to see what it looks like.”

Sam listened intently. “How are you feeling about all this today?”

“Pretty fucked up, but normal. Like, this is just how shit is now. And I want to jump off this rooftop, but I’m not gonna. But- I’m… I don’t like having all these scars. I don’t like how the look. I can’t go without a long sleeve shirt now and that- that sucks. I don’t want people to see what’s on my skin.”

“That’s normal. People usually only show what they have control over. Tattoos, as an example. But people often feel self-conscious over what they can’t control. Birthmarks, scars. It’s okay to not want people to see, but you shouldn't let the way they look to make you feel bad about yourself, right? Your mental health isn’t the best, no shit, right, but don’t let yourself make it worse.”

Bucky nodded. “Got it.”

“Do you want me to look and tell you have they look?”

Bucky cracked his knuckles and stared out into the street before nodding.

Sam moves slowly and kneels behind Bucky, hooking his fingers under Bucky’s shirt and pulling up. He hums at the sight and Bucky feel his finger trace the long broad marks. They’ve healed like ragged messes, torn and frayed skin weaving together without any concern of their appearance, crooked because of how Bucky was held up by one hand when he received them. The scars raised up in jagged scabs on his skin, he could feel it easily enough.

“These aren’t great looking. Do they hurt?”

“Not anymore.”

“That’s good. I’m glad they aren’t hurting you,” Sam says as he sits beside Bucky again. “I wish I could do more.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not. None of this is fine. This is all super fucked up. We all know that. But we’re both here for you during this, so if something like this happens again, tell us.”

“If I can,” Bucky agrees.

“Hey,” Sam says after a second. “If you’re willing to try something, I want you to think about the things you like about your body.”

“Right now, or like…?”

“Whenever.”

Bucky thought about it and looked at his legs. He kicked his feet up and considered his shoes. “I think my feet look nice.”

Natasha hummed. “We’ll see for how long. They’ve started teaching you some ballet.”

“Well, they ain’t half bad right now. And I like…” Bucky blanked. He hated his skin and the way it looked, so he couldn’t say that. He didn’t like his missing arm. “I- I guess it’s cool that… my…” There's a silence.

“You’ve got a great ass,” Natasha says, startling both boys and making them look over. She makes an ass motion with her hands. “Firm and round. Not too big. Shapely.” Sam snorts and coughs as Bucky blinks at Natasha. “It’s like on one of those nude statues.”

Sam starts crackling and almost goes over the edge. Bucky grabs his shirt to make sure he doesn’t fall off. Sam pats Bucky’s knee. “Thick thighs save lives,” he manages, face doing something complicated as he laughs and tries not to.

“You’ve got a pretty face,” Natasha adds. “And nice hair. It’s nice to braid and do things with.”

Bucky is initially flustered, but manages a, “I- I’m really strong. That’s neat, I s’pose.”

“Well there you go,” Sam says with a little grin. “There’s a fine little list. Feel a little better?”

“It’s easier to… not focus on the scars, I guess.”

“Better than nothing,” Sam agrees.

Natasha looks through her candy pile and then very seriously hands Bucky one of her blueberry ones. He takes it, feeling warmth in his chest because only they know what the little honor meant. “Thank you, Nat. I’ll savor it.”

She nods sagely.

Bucky wakes up two more separate times while being whipped, each time forced back under so the Soldier can finish his punishment. When he sees Pierce at his desk, face impassive and uncaring as he works on paperwork, or argues with someone on the phone, like Bucky isn’t being tortured in front of him, Bucky can’t contain his tears. He doesn’t know what it is about looking around and seeing an office that fucks with him, but it makes his heart hurt and his chest ache and he sobs.

Bucky doesn’t tell Sam or Natasha. They just see his tired eyes and understand.

Next week, Zola gets time to play with him and Bucky is awake as Zola cuts him open and roots around inside his torso, a team of fascinated surgeons watching as Zola points out all the little interesting things the serum did as he pokes around.

Bucky stares at the ceiling, blinking away tears of pain and sending little gasps through the gag. He ignores their rambling and tries to fall asleep with tear stains on his cheeks as blades cut into his skin. He doesn't want to watch as they peel him open again and it’s easier to pretend it’s not happening as he closes his eyes and thinks of something else.

Five days later he wakes in his bed with stitches in his hand and all the way up and around his arm. It feels heavier. He takes stock of himself and finds more stitches along his body, his legs, knee, calves, feet, his back, his chest. He later finds out his bones were reinforced with metal mesh-like plates. They don’t make him do anything really strenuous for the rest of the month, no more play time with Zola that is, but he can tell that he gets sent out on missions.

Bucky blinks himself out of a painful haze and coughs, a wet sound in his throat as he blinks and blinks past the pain. He’s… flat on his back, and his body feels heavy, like he’s pressing himself into it. He tries to spit out the blood in his mouth and throat, but finds his mouth blocked by a thin fabric mask, like, a ski-mask or something. He coughs again and feels something loose and hard in his mouth, pushing against his tongue and gums.

Groaning, he scrabbles at the fabric and pushes past the pain to turn his head and weakly spit out everything pooling in his mouth. He blinks and squints at the floor, spotting a bloody tooth in the middle of a splatter of blood.

Where the fuck was he?

What the fuck happened?

Bucky coughs again and it sounds wet and raspy in his chest. He managed to blink tears and blood and sweat out of his eyes and looks around. It’s dark, but there are dim lights set about, bright spots that make his eyes ache, and he can see bodies around him, blood on the floor in splashes and splatters. He’s in some sort of warehouse, or almost outside. He can see an open garage door to his left.

There's a woman standing over him, a metal spear of all things pointed at his throat. He can see that she’s black, but her face is covered, as is her hair, like she’s wearing a niqab. She’s in a skin-tight black outfit, but it isn’t stupidly sexualized like he was used to seeing on TV, it compresses and defends, a sort of chest plate or vest over her torso, holsters on her hips. A good quality armor, with nice little patterns over it. Bucky kinda liked it. 

Bucky coughs again and lets the blood dribble out of the side of his mouth instead of spitting it out. Something shifts in his chest and Bucky looks down to see a short dagger, more like a switchblade, honestly, in his left rib cage, black gleaming metal, slick and red with blood. Bucky sighs and puts his hand against the wound, fingers on either side of the blade. “Okay, that’s fair.”

Bucky coughs and that makes blood in his throat well up faster, so he resists the urge. She hesitates and then narrows her eyes, putting the spear closer to his throat.

Bucky sort of blinks at her impassively, forgetting how he should be reacting. “Nice spear,” he compliments nonsensically. “Woulda preferred you killed me when I wasn’t conscious about it, but whatever, I guess.” He closes his eyes and waits, but nothing happens. He opens them again. She’s moved a bit, the spear no longer so close, and now pointing at his chest. She’s looking at him curiously, confused.

“You gonna stab me or not?”

“What are you talking about? What is this?” She sounds frustrated and confused. She’s African, Bucky notes. That’s neat. Wishes he knew where from, but he guesses that’s not important in the given situation.

“Hey, if a Russian girl with red hair hunts you down, tell her I asked for it, she might not try to kill you that way, and that she’s one of my best friends and I love her. Might, uh, bring another kid along. He’s got a gap between his teeth and a green wristband. Pro’lly be crying, he’s sensitive. Tell him I love him too. She might be cryin’ too, to be honest, I don’t know.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” she tells him angrily. “You are a child!”

He sighs, not surprised but disappointed anyway. “Figures. Okay, well, I’m not getting up by myself, so just do what you’re gonna do, I guess.” Resignation settles in his bones and he mentally prepares himself for being whipped later. He sometimes passes out. It’s kind of hard to force that, you have to be in a lot of pain, but he’s done it.

He coughs and finds that a second tooth was barely hanging in there and after poking at it with his tongue, it comes loose and he spits it out, twisting his head so it’s in the same direction as the other. Same side. He must have gotten hit really hard on the left side of his face. He’s missing his middle two molars now. He’d care more, and he should care more, those are adult teeth, but he knows they’ll just replace them, one way or another.

“They’ll probably just rip out all my fucking teeth and put fake ones in anyway, might as well get a head start,” Bucky mutters to himself.

“They what? Who?”

“Hydra, or whatever. Nazi scientists. Messing around with mind control, got lucky with me.” She doesn’t move and Bucky feels desperation well in his chest along with grief and shame. He sucks in a shuddering wet breath and tries to blink past tears he can’t control. “Please, if you’re not going to kill me, just go. Please,” he asks with a high voice, clearly trying not to cry now. He sobs and tries to disguise it as a cough, looking away and shutting his eyes as tears burn in them. “I’m not crying, I’m just trying not to choke on blood. I’m fine.”

She kind of deflates, he can hear her sigh of defeat, and she crouches next to him. Bucky looks at her as she awkwardly pats him on the head, pushing blood sticky hair off his face. “I can’t help you. I’m on a timetable, you weren’t part of my mission. But next time I see you, or when I find you next, I’ll take you somewhere safe. Okay?”

“Sure,” Bucky mumbles, doubting it.

“Until then, you need to stay strong. Okay?”

“I literally just invited you to kill me and I still want you too,” Bucky replies.

“Perhaps your god can give you the strength?” she offers.

“That asshole’s never done shit for me,” Bucky responded. “If he exists, he can go bug some other Jew.”

She pauses. “How about mine? Could you put your faith in my goddess?”

“Don’t see why not,” Bucky mumbled.

“Okay. Good. Just… when you feel that way, think ‘Bast, ndikhusele.’"

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to remember that,” Bucky admits. “They… they erase my memory sometimes. I might not even remember you.”

She looks pained, he can see that in her eyes, and she tries to find a solution. She looks at the teeth and grimaces, but reaches over and picks them up. She wipes them booth off with the hem of her shirt and brings up her wrist, which has a beaded bracelet on it. With a motion, a hologram has appeared, and she uses it to scan the tooth or something. She brings the wristband close to the first tooth and Bucky watches in amazement as a stream of nanites or something, neatly carve the words into the tooth. She hands it back and he looks at the etched words, the original and translating in tiny letters. “Can you hide it on yourself?”

“I think so. But- if I don’t know who you are, how will I know to trust you?”

“I’ll have the other tooth.”

“You- you should write something on it too. So I know. Write, uh.” Bucky thinks. He has to know one good enough to pass his own test and licks his split lip. “Ha’yotze mi’pi’chem ta’a’su. It- it means ‘Do what you have promised.”

“That’s in Hebrew.”

“I’m Jewish, I damn well hope it’s Hebrew.”

She nods and does the same to the second tooth, then putting it in her pocket. She gives him a pained look. “Just keep strong. I’ll find you again. I need to go. I’ve already wasted too much time.”

“Okay. Good- good luck,” Bucky managed to offer.

“Do you mind if I knock you unconscious?”

“It's the closest to being dead I’m gonna get here, so just knock me out, please. Wait, let me stick this tooth in my sock.” He did so and got comfortable again. “Okay, go.”

He registers her hitting him in the head, perfectly placed, the right amount of force, and slips into blissful darkness.

Later, Bucky wakes up to find a new scar on his chest and something hard in his sock. He’s initially confused, sitting up in his bed, where he’s been placed on the covers, but then, like being punched, he abruptly remembers the woman from yesterday, their conversation, and how she promised a rescue he doubted. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, feeling sore and exhausted, and pulled the tooth out of his sock, peering at it and mouthing the words again and again. He licked his lips anxiously and repeated the words in his head, the pronunciation was specific and difficult, but he felt that he may be able to manage it.

It was strange, thinking of praying to another god, one he wasn’t even that familiar with, but he liked the sentiment of it better than praying to the one that was supposed to be his own. He wonders if this goddess will actually hear him.

Bucky quickly worries about the integrity of the tooth and gets up to look up ‘tooth preservation techniques.’ It didn’t actually help all that much. He tried a few other searches and decided that he’d just wash it off a bit and then keep it in a little container, the smallest he could manage. It ended up being a pencil sharpener with the shaving compartment, about the size of a C battery. He put it in his desk for safe keeping.

He texts Natasha that he almost died on a mission but he was still alive.

She texts back a flurry of emojis that expressed that she was worried, a little mad, and wanted to see him.

Bucky said that he was missing two teeth.

Natasha expressed shock and fascination.

Bucky sent back confusion and Natasha sent a ttyl, which wasn’t helpful, but she probably was actually busy doing stuff. Bucky’s computer beeped with a notification and Bucky glanced at it as Sam started blowing up his email, which told Bucky that Nat ratted him out.

TEETH?!?!?!?! Sam messages him. WHAT THE FUCK

Bucky sends back a shrug emoji and Sam sends back incomprehensible gibberish.

Later, Bucky found himself very grateful when the scientist or doctor or dentist who was about to yank teeth out of his skull actually drugged him before letting a pair of pillars appear in his vision, Zola watching in fascinated interest a few paces away. Bucky slipped into darkness and woke up feeling terrible, sick and dizzy, to an aching jaw. His teeth all felt… the same, more or less, they had scans of his head, they probably took molds and got like, an actual dentist to replace the teeth, but he knew what they really were. They looked a bit whiter. Not by much, but it was noticeable.

Bucky thinks replacing all of them is a bit overkill.

Rumlow let him look at the x-rays, which showed that all his teeth had been replaced with artificial ones, drill sockets set into his jaw, which had apparently been fractured. It would be a lot easier to replace them now, Rumlow said cheerfully, assuming he got beat up enough for that to happen again. Which wouldn’t occur, because the Soldier was going to be properly disciplined for his failure to eliminate the attacker who ruined the mission.

Bucky feels a twinge of fear, but he knows it won’t be anything he’s not familiar with, which just makes him feel sad and hurt. He goes to lay down and sink into the blankets.

School starts and it pretty much just fails to mark an important turning point for Bucky. He’s been through so much shit that school is a minor thing, really. He’s been stabbed, brainwashed, forced to kill people, doesn’t even have an arm, gets migraines occasionally that make him want to eat a gun, he’s getting whipped almost regularly, and school isn’t really daunting anymore. It's kind of… underwhelming, actually. The people seem so small and petty and trivial.

It's weird to see people worried about assignments and stressing over syllabuses rather than what missions they have, like Nat, or being forced out of their heads at the sound of words. But, after homeroom and arriving in history, he hears a little something that makes him feel surprise, shock, and bone-deep joy.

He had sat in his assigned seat, ready for more syllabus or material stuff when he heard -

“Bucky?!”

That voice makes Bucky’s head whip around so fast he probably gave himself whiplash, but seeing Steve in all his punk ass tattooed pierced glory makes him immediately forget.

“Steve!” Bucky shouts and is out of his seat, slamming into Steve as he grabs him in a big hug and kind of tackles Steve into a desk which makes two others clatter over. Bucky can’t help but pick up the smaller boy in a crushing hug, but when he hears Steve’s back pop in a quick series, he quickly sets him down, letting Steve take a breath, letting him plant one hand on his shoulder for support.

“Think you just cured my fuckin’ scoliosis,” Steve wheezes and Bucky starts laughing, covering his mouth with his hand. “Snap-crackle-popped my spine back inta’ place.”

The teacher shouts at them to get to their assigned seats.

“I’m sittin’ next to him,” Steve says with a voice that could make an unstoppable force falter at the very least. “This is my best pal and I haven’t seen him since I went into foster care.”

Steve was clearly manipulating the teacher into feeling pity, and Bucky anxiously watched to see what would happen. The teacher glares at them and then sighs, defeated. She’s no unmovable object in this scenario, between the guilt trip and the fact that Bucky doesn’t have an arm, Steve is. “Fine, but if you get loud or talk excessively, I will be separating you two,” she says, pointing threateningly.

They sit so close together that they end up tangled just as badly as the cords to Nat’s entertainment system. They’re practically no point where they could say ‘this is where I begin and this is where I end’. As they sit like that, they go over the syllabus and miscellaneous papers they were given. Bucky puts his arm over Steve’s shoulders and tells Steve how to fill out the forms for Bucky, mumbling the answers as Steve scribbles it down, tongue sticking out in concentration.

Bucky notices some of Steve’s smaller tattoos now and pushes the pant leg of Steve’s pants up to see an anchor with a Star of David and his initials in it.

“You-” Bucky floundered.

“Yeah,” Steve answers simply, like he didn’t do something to himself that was permanent in all the ways that counted.

“You’re ridiculous,” Bucky says in an upset manner, but he can’t help the way his eyes water at the thought that this little punk permanently marked Bucky into his skin. That’s so fucking cheesy and sweet and this asshole did it probably without a second thought. It makes Bucky’s heart squeeze so tight he’s afraid it’ll break.

They compare schedule and find that they have English together as well. It’s frankly a relief.

During lunch, Bucky’s phone pings. He’s sitting alone at one of the circular tables as other kids avoid him, avoiding even asking for one of the chairs, instead, they’re just cramming sometimes two to a seat to sit with friends.

After raising an eyebrow at someone staring at his empty sleeve, he checks his phone. He’s eating a bought lunch, so mac and cheese that tastes like cardboard, a bread bun thing, a little cup of green beans that are greasy, and some chocolate milk. Regular cartoned milk tastes… oily. Frankly, it’s hard to eat and text at the same time with one hand, but with some finagling, he puts his fork between his fingers and puts the phone in his palm so he could read, occasionally scooping mac and cheese with the fork and stick it in his mouth.

Birddabbler: so i got called to the office in homeroom to help out a blind kid b/c we’re in the same classes, except for gym and they didn’t want to get him a guide b/c they didn’t want to ‘waste money’ on it. Kk, fuckin rule and ableist but he’s p cool and a foster kid, he’s in the friend group now, kk?

Well, that was blunt.

borkybuns: cool, what’s his name

Birddabbler: Matt Murdock.

Blueberrybabe: nice. I got a buddy too. Remember the archer carnie i told u about? Found him. I ate lunch with him. His names clint barton and he’s got hearing aids now

Birddabbler: y are u responding in class

Blueberrybabe: bc mrs. jules dont give a shit

borkybuns: o yah tru

Bucky had her for third. She truly did not give a shit for anything short of a literal injury or emergency situation. Her philosophy seemed to be if you fail the class because you’re on your phone too much, that’s on you.

With all this talk of friends, Bucky smacks himself in the face with his phone while face palming. Ow. He forgot he only had the one hand and it was holding his phone they for a second. And he almost stabbed his eye out with the fork. Some days Bucky wants three hands instead of one. It would make everything so much easier.

borkybuns: oh, wait, i found my guy too, my steve.

borkybuns: he’s in my history, first period

Blueberrybabe: what kinda fuckery is this. Do ppl just make friends like this willy nilly?

Birddabbler: ya, sorta. I’m supposed to take matt from class to class and read him things that are in print and fill stuff in too, so we got friendly quick. Steve was buckys buddy b4 any of us, and reunited ppl make good friends.

Bucky tried to eat as much as possible before his phone pinged again. The mac and cheese, though cardboard flavored, was smothered in gooey delicious cheese that more than made up for the quality of the noodles. When he cleared his plate, he used the bun so sop the cheese up, eating with relish.

Blueberrybabe: now i feel dumb

Birddabbler: u got a messed up notion of how friends work bc u didn’t have any for like 14years, i think its find nat

Birddabbler: fine

Blueberrybabe: i mean ur not wrong, but i feel socially stunted

Birddabbler: u are, but u still are a great friend, so really it isn’t that bad. Except when ur dudes say that they’ll kill me

Birddabbler: ttyl, class.

Blueberrybabe: okay, lets do this: everybody plue new friends meet up at the skateplace k?

The bell rang before Bucky could reply, plus he’d have to ask Steve during English if he could go or wanted to go. He practically stared at the clock until English class finally came and he beelined for Steve and the seat next to him.

“Hey,” Bucky says breathlessly. “I texted my friends and we’re going to this skate park thing after school, you wanna come?”

“Hey, yeah,” Steve replied. “Totally. But I don’t have a skateboard or anything.”

Bucky waved his hand to dismiss the thought. “Nat is bringing a guy who might not know how to and Sam has this blind guy.” Bucky floundered, realizing that that was kinda shitty, to assume. “I mean, he might be able to, don’t wanna be ableist, but again, I dunno. Either way, you won’t be alone, I guess.”

Steve smiles and nods. “Alright, yeah then. I mean, it’s the first day, we won’t have any homework or anything, right?”

“Yeah.” Well, Bucky had something, but it could take like five minutes, so not really.

Steve and Bucky met after school at the flagpoles and Bucky led Steve to his house, telling Steve about everything he could as he texted Nat and Sam that he got Steve and was on his way after he got his board. Bucky tells Steve the truth about the Red Room and how he met Nat. He tells him what she’s like and what to expect of her.

In return, Steve tells him about juvie and the literal gang he joined in there called the Howling Commandos, how he got his scars, how he got his tattoos. How he stopped a terrorist organization from creating crazy energy gun, blew up his juvie, and got juiced up with a super serum. How he was stronger, faster, healthier.

Bucky stopped walking, just staring at his best friend, mind whirling. That- that was a lot to unpack, but... “What?” he finally manages.

“Well, I’m-”

“You’re- you're cured? You don’t get- don’t get sick no more? Your-” Bucky reaches out to hold Steve’s face and turn it so he can see that hearing aid. He pulls it out and holds it to his own, listening to it, listening to sound amplified, or the sound of electricity.

“Hey, grabby,” Steve huffs.

“It’s not on,” Bucky mumbled, shocked, because he can't hear shit from it, it's dead, lifeless. “Jesus Christ.”

Steve snatches it back and Bucky narrows in on Steve's neck, reaching out and putting his fingers right on a pulsepoint, feeling the motion of blood pumping at such a slow even pace, even though it jumped a bit when Bucky moved. “It’s so slow,” he marvels. “And steady.”

“Bucky-”

Bucky moves in to hug him, putting his hand on Steve's back. Steve hugs back automatically, and his shirt drifts up. Bucky slips his hand under the shirt and runs his hand up Steve's spine, which feels so straight and strong, he can feel new muscle under his hand, the strength Steve has hidden under his skin. He stops the motion and puts his head right on Steve's shoulder and neck, listening to Steve breathe. It sounds deep and even and steady, not even the faintest rasp or sign of discomfort. He can hear Steve's heart too and something clicks in his chest. 

“Sorry,” he manages at last through the swell of relief and longing and sorrow and pain and relief. “I was- I was scared it- that maybe one day you would- it would be too much? After all you went through, you were- you were really fucked up, medically." Bucky thinks of days, weeks, he couldn't visit Steve because he caught something that should have been eradicated decades ago. He thinks of the times he and Steve stared at each other through shut and locked windows, Steve covered in mumps or chicken pox and writing messages on notebooks to press against the glass just to talk to each other. He thinks of the times he was able to visit, the horrid struggled rasping of Steve breathing, the pale and sweaty skin of fever, the sometimes delirious mumblings, the way Steve's heart used to jump all over the place unnaturally. He thinks of the time Steve collapsed in the street when Bucky was in the hospital, the fact that Steve's fucking heart stopped in his fucking chest, the heart surrounded by lungs that barely worked at the best of times, in front of the crooked spine, right above the stomach full of ulcers, the blood in his veins anemic, the head that was just as messed up, colorblind, and fucked up vision and the one working ear. That stupid joint that liked to pop out whenever it pleased, the flat feet that made running and everything harder for Steve.

"You used to say you didn’t expect to make it to twenty, so fuck the consequences, but I don’t know if I could live without you anymore," Bucky admitted.

Steve's hug increases in strength, showing Bucky just how much that changed “I’m not plannin’ on goin’ anywhere. Till the end of the line, right?”

“Thought we might be on a short rail line,” Bucky replied quietly.

“Not anymore, you hear? You got me for good. I’m as healthy as a horse. Better, even.” Steve pulls back, looking him in the eye. “Neither of us are goin’ anywhere, you get me? I’m not dying any time soon, and you bet your ass you’re not goin’ anywhere either. We’ll get through this. However long it takes, we’ll figure it out.”

Bucky nods even as his vision blurs with tears, because it- it- “It’s just- so hard,” Bucky manages. “It hurts. Everything does.”

“I know, I know,” Steve agrees. “But you’re stronger than you think. You already deal with all this bullshit just by yourself, but now you have friends all over, and we want to help you, you know that. We’ll help how we can.”

Bucky sniffs, wipes his face off, and nods. He clears his throat. “We should keep goin’,” he says. “We’re almost there.”

“Okay,” Steve agrees. “Lets go.”

When Bucky gets to the place he always wants to avoid, he slips inside and grabs his board, avoiding everyone and everything, quickly fleeing. Steve, who was waiting outside and had this concerned look on his face as he considered the facility, is quick to smile when he sees Bucky again.

Bucky then leads Steve to the skate place. He pushes inside, nods to the cashier, and enters the actual skate area. He quickly spots Nat talking to Sam and another boy, a white kid with sunglasses who’s holding onto Sam’s arm.

Bucky grinned and tugged Steve over. As soon as they were close enough, Bucky introduced everyone. “Steve, this is Sam, Natasha, and Sam’s buddy… Matt, right?”

“Yeah,” Matt confirmed. Matt, as Sam had said and as it was plainly obvious, was blind. He held his folded up cane in hand and seemed calm about the situation and the sudden arrival of newcomers.

“Nice to meet you, Matt,” Steve offers.

“And I already know your dumb ass,” Sam teases Steve, kicking at his shin. “How you been doin’?”

“Just swell, you?”

“Good, actually, I’ve got cool classes,” Sam replied. “Hey, there’s a counter-protest setting up to face off against a Pro-Life protest on a Planned Parenthood if you want to steal a riot shield again,” he added, grinning like a hyena.

Steve rolled his eyes.

“What?” Natasha said, speaking Bucky’s thoughts out loud. Stole a riot shield?

“We met at a protest,” Sam explained. “He stole a riot shield, threw tear gas back at the cops, hit a cop, and stole a shield.”

“What is the matter with you?” Bucky said, aghast, and Steve laughed like the question didn’t need an answer, just a reaction.

Natasha smiled in glee. Bucky could see her mentally evaluating him and deciding him adorable and fun. “I like you,” she said. “Now quick, what’s your opinion of blueberries?”

“Great snack,” Steve replied instantly. “Great with chocolate. Pie ain’t half bad.”

“I love him. He’s my friend now.”

“Sounds good,” Steve agreed. “Hey, uh, thanks for keepin’ an eye on Buck for me. Means the world.”

Natasha nodded. “Somebody has to.”

“Ay, somebody outta keep an eye on you two asshole,” Bucky protests. “Stealin’ a fuckin riot shield, you maniac.”

Steve laughed and then looked at Matt again, who seemed amused. “So, hey, Matt, do you skate or...?”

“No,” Matt replied. “But, Natasha told me that we have a mutual in the rafters and I’ll join him in a minute.”

Steve looked up. Bucky did too, spotting the grinning blonde who seemed all too happy to be sixty or so feet above them. Clint, Bucky remembered. He jumped from rafter to rafter with ease, clearly enjoying himself. “I see him-” Steve started and Natasha looked up too, waving.

“I don’t,” Matt said suddenly and smiled widely at the silence that followed. Bucky did that several-blink-very quickly because what and oh my god are you serious.

“You’re fun,” Natasha said. “I’ll keep you.”

Steve continued after recomposing himself. “But I’m afraid of heights.” Yeah he is, Bucky watched him couple stories down into an alley and break his leg, no kidding the kid’s afraid of heights. “Gotta leave that to you, but good luck with that, yeah?”

Matt nodded and tilted his head up. “Clint, how do I get up there?”

“Go around the edge, to the back right corner, there’s a ladder up the ramp and you can climb into the rafters.”

Matt nodded and flicked open his cane, letting Sam direct him to the wall before following it confidently, head high and certain. He made the turn at the other end of the stretch and headed to the back.

Natasha looked back at the group. “I figured we’d chill here for about forty minutes and then head to the park.”

Steve checked his watch and sighed. “I gotta be back by six. Probably why we never met. Sam says you have whatever until then and that’s my ‘be home’ time.”

“Well, that still leaves us plenty of time,” Natasha assured him. “Come on, boys, let's go shred it.”

And they do. Sam, Nat, and Bucky grind it up, showing off a bit for their respective friends despite Matt not being able to see what Sam, or anyone else, is doing. He does seem to be having fun with Clint up in the rafters, however, so that’s a bonus of whatever that was.

They headed everyone out the door and started to the park. Feeling lazy, they all sat on the grass under a tree and talked about random things. Things that didn’t really mean anything or funny stories. Bucky and Steve tangled together, enjoying being within touching distance for the first time in years.

The group gets familiar with each other, finding out some simple facts and stories and the kind of character they all possess. Matt seems to bond with Steve quickly, and Natasha just adores Steve because of how rebellious and fluffy he is. Clint and Bucky get friendly too, talking about how Clint was in the circus and how they both knew Nat.

Sam and Matt leave first, then Steve and Bucky, leaving Natasha and Clint to do whatever after Steve regretfully says that he’s had to go home or he’ll get in trouble.

Bucky goes home to find Rumlow with words on his lips. He comes to at night time, hours later, cuffed to the wall with a bloodied back and Rumlow swears walking over to send him down again.

“Forget it Rumlow. Let the boy finish the punishment.”

“Sir?”

“Order comes from pain, Rumlow. Think of it as incentive for the boy to keep in line as well. I’m tired of this pausing to fix the boy.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bucky’s mind goes numb after ten lashes, hot and cold pain making his back feel like he laid down in coals and blades. His legs tremble. He starts slipping away at twenty, the collar choking him as he sways. At thirty, his back is numb and his face is slack and he can’t count anymore and his wrist was dislocated, giving him enough slack to stand flat-footed on the floor and not have problems breathing.

Rumlow stops.

He walks over and unclips something on the collar and Bucky, no longer supported by the line, falls to the ground in a bloody heap. Two men pick him up and as Bucky looks around of office, spotting Pierce frowning at a file and glancing at the computer, he lets out a broken sob.

Turns out Sam and Steve know a guy named Rhodey who they want to invite to their meetups. A nice guy they helped out during the summer. Rhodey, they explained, would probably bring his buddy Tony because they were best friends, maybe together in some way. Instead, Rhodey brought Tony and this guy named Bruce.

Bucky observed the trio as he ate fries at the local shwarma place. Tony was a loud excitable chatterbox, wry and witty and sarcastic. Bruce was the quiet type, murmuring answers, and shying easily. Rhodey seemed glad to be there, and he seemed to enjoy discussing rockets and robot. They were great company, none of them stared, and Tony even offered Natasha blueberries. Tony was… incredibly blunt, but nice to listen and talk to.

Things are going okay, mostly.

Bucky isn’t the kind to just get randomly attached to people; he hates adults more or less, the kids at the high school are annoying as fuck and have no capability to understand any of his friends' lives, and he generally likes having small friend groups. But… this feels like it could turn into something good. Bucky has gotten good at seeing damaged people, he could see the darkness in Tony’s eyes, the wariness in Rhodey’s, and the hesitancy in Bruce’s. It was all familiar, it was in him, and all of them.

Bucky could see a bit of himself in all of them. Steve, Nat, Sam, Matt, Clint, Tony, Rhodey, and Bruce? They were all damaged, and Bucky was free to be damaged with them.

He gets back home and is suddenly covered in blood, it’s dark out and he’s lost time. Again. Rumlow leaves without a word, and Bucky makes it to the bathroom to throw up his lunch. After getting over the nausea and near-hyperventilation, leaving him feeling empty and shaken, Bucky climbs in the shower and turns it on cold, sitting in the darkness as hundreds of little needles bite through his uniform and wash blood away.

He feels exhausted. He feels cold. He just stares at his hand and the wall in turn. He hates this. He hates knowing that somebody is dead or hurt because of him, he hates not knowing what happened.

He hears someone outside the bathroom and tiredly stares at the door.

It opens and the person turns on the light quickly, leaving Bucky blinking in the wake of the flash of light. Natasha looks alarmed, eyes wide, but then she blinks at him and sighs in relief. She’s in some sort of disguise, a neat semi-formal dress, and her hair is tied back in a way that tells bucky she was wearing a wig recently. She’s got blood splatters on her face and neck, staining the dress and her arms. She’s left a smear on the wall where she turned the light on, and he can see that she’s got flecks on her boots.

“Hey,” she says.

“Day’s’it?” Bucky croaks, shivering.

“It’s Sunday,” she replies. “What do you remember last?”

“Friday, after we met up. I went back and now I’m here.”

“Oh,” she responds, then walking over and testing the water. Her nose crinkles and she makes it luke-warm instead. She pulls off her shoes and climbs in with him, sitting in her dress under the spray. She holds her hands out and lets the water wash the blood off them like Bucky had.

They sit under the spray like that for a while. Natasha watches his face, almost unblinkingly. Bucky watches her back. “The hell happened to you?” Bucky asks.

“I had a target, I was undercover, I killed a man and shot the target.”

“Oh. That sucks.”

Natasha nodded. “I… It was fine, I was doing just fine, pretending to be the daughter of some wealthy businesswoman at a party. I had a blonde wig, and I was doing fine, but then. Some guy came up beside me, groped me, squeezed my ass, and his fingers were too close to- you know, and I felt so…. Uncomfortable, and upset, and he was an adult, like, forty, so I felt all sick and my stomach rolled and he was still touching me, and I panicked and stabbed him in the neck to get him to stop. I had to shoot my target point blank and just- run. My Instructors were upset with the failure, so they told me to walk back.”

Bucky didn’t know what to say, so he just grabbed her hand and held her fingers. “I know, sorta, how you feel. It’s- it’s possible that I’ve been- I, uh…” Bucky went quiet. “I don’t like thinkin’ about it. I don’t know, not for certain. But. I know what it’s like to be violated, at least. I don’t have any natural teeth anymore. My bones are metal plated. My head is full of Nazi tech and I’m still mostly Jewish so that really isn’t fuckin’ great. They experiment on me all the time. I’m covered in scars and I can only tell you about a quarter of them. Sometimes, my body doesn’t even feel like my own. I feel like I’m in somebody else's body, or that I’m piloting a body that they own.”

Natasha was quiet. “Are we even people anymore?” she asked him.

Bucky bit his lip. “I… I wanna think so,” Bucky replied. “Fucked up people. They tell us we ain’t, and they make us feel that we aren’t, but with each other, we can pretend to be people.”

“I like that. Pretending to be people. Fake it till you make it.”

“Yeah.”

“Which sort of means that we’re not people.”

“Sort of. I don’t feel real,” Bucky admitted. “This body isn’t mine anymore, remember? But like… I think you’re a person, and you think I’m a person, and we somehow got a bunch of idiot friends that can’t see that we’re barely people, so in the end, we’ve gotta be, right? Cause everybody else says that we are.”

“Okay,” Natasha agrees quietly. “So we’re people by default. I guess. That’s enough to start with.” Natasha stands up, sending a torrent of collected water off of her, and pulls Bucky up too, struggling to get the suit off of him and throw it onto the floor with a wet sticky slap. “If we’re people, we deserve decent hygiene.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, and barely sputters when she takes a soapy washcloth to his face, just keeping his eyes closed tight as she wipes off blood. She pulls off her dress and leggings and drops it next to his uniform, wiping rivets of blood of her shoulders and neck and face. Bucky hands her a bottle of shampoo and she lets him help her wash her hair. It’s stupid, and kind of clumsy, but he feels useful as she scrubs at her skin. When the red was missing from her body, she started at him, scrubbing at his clavicle and doing his hair as he got the rest. When they were both clean, Bucky leaned against the wall and just let the hot spray hit him.

She stepped forward until the water just ran over her hair and then decided that she had enough, squeezing the water from her hair as he climbed out and grabbed a towel, wrapping it around her torso. She looked at him expectantly and Bucky sighed, turning off the faucet and stepping out after her. She threw a towel at him, instructing him to dry off.

Natasha did that twisty towel thing girls do to their hair, and Bucky, having long hair as well but never having learned that, attempts to follow her motion and then looks at her in confusion when he fails miserably. She giggles at him and fixes it. He feels kinda dumb, but it’s nice to have his hair out of the way.

Natasha steals some fresh clothes, wearing Bucky’s jeans and shirt and taking one of his jackets, leaving bundles of clean clothes on the floor, minding the bloody footprints she left. Bucky sits on his bed in a pair of pajama pants, a t-shirt, and a big hoodie with the hood over his head, a nice pressure on his head and neck, blocking some of his peripheral vision, making it all seem less. He watches as she shoves her wet disguise in a spare plastic bag and ties her boots together. Bucky comes to a realization and as she passes him, to exit the same way she came in, through the window, he grabs her wrist.

“Please- please don’t go,” he asks pleadingly. “Please, just stay.”

Natasha pauses and looks at him. He can’t tell what she sees in his expression, but it makes her face drop from calm focus into a broken mix of indecision and misery. At last, she drops the bag and shoes and slips the jacket off. She crawls onto the bed with him, kicking the covers out of the way before flopping down onto her side, yanking the blankets back up, and opening her arms, like an offer. Bucky doesn’t resist the urge as he climbs under the covers, putting himself a bit lower, so he can tuck his head under her chin, nose to her clavicle, wrapping his one arm around her waist, as she holds him, back, hand pushing his hair back.

“Thank you,” Bucky mumbles, and she replies in Russian. He understands it to be something of an ‘of course’ and a ‘there's not a place in the world I’d rather be.’

They don’t speak, both pretending to try to fall asleep, but Natasha’s nails bite into his back as she manages her breathing, he can feel her sort of shiver and shift and can feel the tension in her body from the events of the day. Being sexually harassed by some creep, killing two people, one of who probably deserved it, but beyond that?

His hand is holding so tight to her shirt it’d tear if she tried to move away, pretending he doesn’t feel blood crusting under his fingernails.

Bucky sleeps well for once, and he doesn't know if it’s her doing or just luck, but he knows tomorrow, he’d go to school and his friends will be there, Sam and Steve and everybody else, and things might be mostly okay.

Except… didn’t he have homework? Shit.