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The ice saves your life, they tell him. He is a soldier, and he believes them.
Before he is a soldier, James Barnes understands that there is one truth: ice kills. He knows it in the marrow of his bones, the unsettling brutality of it rumbling in the pit of his stomach. He is strong, and he can work and breathe and live, can earn a living and afford the heating, even in the heart of the depression. He knows, however, with bile rising in his throat, that Steve can’t. He’s weak, and the ice is harsh.
Ice is death, and Steve is its victim.
His fever is deadly, burning his face and his throat, body shaking with strong shivers. His forehead is covered with a shining layer of sweat, and Bucky lays a damp cloth over his hairline. His fingers smooth over it, light as feathers, and he finds that his heart is breaking with every stuttering breath that Steve takes.
The doctor said that he probably wouldn’t make it to sunrise, and Bucky is desperate for him to be proven wrong.
Steve’s eyes are quick under his eyelids. He makes small, pained noises, and even when he is too weak to move, he flings half of his body off of the bed as he coughs. There is nothing left in his stomach but water, and yet the mixture in the bucket is dark pink. Bucky lays him back down, a hand pressing against his chest, wiping blood and spit off of his lips with a napkin.
He strokes Steve’s face, and can’t help it when his eyes blur with hot, salty tears. He is young and he is strong, and he would give his life for Steve to be well again, would suffer for years and years if God would give him this. He knows that he is nothing without Steve, only a boy who works at the docks and has a different woman on his arm every Friday night. Even when his women are dolled up, with red lipstick and curls flowing down their backs, he always looks behind his shoulder for Steve.
Bucky grips Steve’s hand, tight and desperate, his thumbs rubbing over the center of his palm, the way they did when they were kids. He lets his forehead rest against the curl of his fingers, and the sound that comes out of his mouth is a mix of a whine and a sob. His breaths come out in puffs, catching against the line of his throat.
“Don’t you dare go,” he whispers against Steve’s skin. “You fucking idiot, don’t you dare—” Steve’s fingers flex in his hand, weak but there, and Bucky looks to his face. His eyes are open just the slightest bit, and he gives a soft smile.
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.” It’s a whisper, voice cracking halfway through, but it’s a start. The sun starts to rise, but they don’t see it for another hour.
Bucky will never let him go into the snow again.
They press something cold to his skin and Bucky realizes, moments too late, that it is a block of ice. He thrashes, but the leather straps around his wrists and middle restrain him. He yells, but gives away nothing, only his name, rank, and ID number. He is a soldier. He is strong.
The small blocks they torture him with is nothing compared to the pain of the slow cold, seeping in through the mountains. The walls around him protect him from the wind, but at night, when the temperatures drop, it doesn’t matter. His toes are still in his boots, stuck together in his socks, a thin material that does nothing. He flexes his fingers, tries to keep blood pumping through them.
No one lives past this. Zola injects something into his arm that makes him burn, and he thinks, in the deepest part of his thoughts, that the heat in his veins isn’t worth it. He keeps his toes but loses his mind.
After, when he has days to settle after the experiments, they press another block of ice to his skin. This time, he doesn’t scream.
The Howling Commandos have a mission in Norway. Howard Stark sends them in on a fancy plane and gives them gear and guns. The Colonel gives them his best wishes with a set jaw and a grimace on his face. “Hope you don’t mind the cold,” he tells them. The others grin; Bucky adjusts the straps on his coat.
They sit in the belly of a plane that Bucky knows the public doesn’t have access to yet. The men eat dried meat and beans, cold but cooked just enough, and Steve is warm at his side. The others sit across from them, chatting, not noticing the way Bucky’s eyes are blue like the snow they fly across.
A hand on his shoulder makes him cough in surprise. It moves to his back, patting, and he clears his throat, “Jesus, Steve, way to scare a guy.”
Steve gives him a small laugh, the smile on his face bright and worry-free, “Sorry, Buck. You looked worried. Everything all right?” And can he ever find the words to explain?
“I’m fine.” He bumps him with his shoulder, and Steve has never sat up so straight before. “Just thinking about the mission.”
“It should be easy,” Steve’s tone is low, like he’s sharing secrets, “we just have to storm the base. Entrance through the back, a handful of guards. Our main worry is the bomb they have in the center, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.” He takes a small box out of his pocket, “Howard said this would take care of it.”
“Good thing we have Stark, then,” his tone is dry and Steve has never been stupid. He slowly puts the device away, his expression shifting into something worried and suspicious and confused.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, Steve.” But Steve’s fingers brush over his arm, and the motion is too soft, too gentle. “I just don’t like the snow.” He rises, and ignores the way Steve’s eyes harden, like water when it freezes.
The landing is hard and the snow seeps into his wounds. He can see the trail of blood as they drag him away, can see the way his fingers turn purple on his right hand. When he looks to his left—his left—
The ice saves your life, they tell him. He is a soldier, and he believes them.
The chamber they lock him in is quick, but not instant. He can see as the ice grows, see his reflection in the window, the way his head is forced back and the veins in his neck reflect the color of the frost. There is an instant where this is familiar, but his head is still buzzing with electricity, and he is gone.
The Potomac is warm when he drops into it. The water would be cool if he were not made of winter, but it is hot and suffocating, and he reaches for the target with extended fingers and a dislocated shoulder. He drags him to the shore and drops him against the sand, but he does not breathe. It sparks something in the back of his mind, a hallucination or a memory, where the target is smaller and weaker and has underdeveloped lungs like a child. The Winter Soldier drops to his knees.
His fingers pull at the suit, the leather old and the colors worn, tearing easily between his hands. The target’s heartbeat is fast, and his skin is cold and damp. He presses against his chest, twisting his body in an unfamiliar way, an act to save rather than an act to kill, but it isn’t working, it isn’t—
The target coughs, and the water that filled his lungs dribbles out of his mouth. The tenseness in the Winter Soldier’s shoulders and spine eases, and he moves back, his fingers flexing as though they have been burned. In the center of his chest, it feels as though a small flame has been lit, burning him from the inside-out.
He stumbles backwards, boots pushing against the thick sand. His hair whips around his face, heavy and sticking to his skin, and he looks around, looking for someone to take him or the target or both, but no one comes.
The Winter Soldier’s movements are slow, but he moves, slipping away, far and unseen. He steals clothes and hides his arm, visits the museum where there is a wall with his face plastered across it, and finds nothing, finds everything. James Barnes is dead, lost to the ice, but so was Steve Rogers, who has determination that burns like fire and a smile that is hot like the sun.
The Winter Soldier thinks that Steve Rogers is pure heat, too much to be taken by the ice. It is the first thought he has in years.
Central Park is beautiful in the winter, covered by white and grey. The Winter Soldier likes to walk through it, likes to trek his boots through the snow with an ease that only a man from Siberia could show. He remembers, distantly, that he has walked this path before.
The smell of the forest is fresh in a way that he is not used to. It does not smell of rust and blood, and the silence is different than that of death. He finds peace there, alone, when there is no one to give him orders and no one to take his choices from him.
His hands are covered in gloves, and he is not worried when a man jogs past him. He does not stop to think until a moment too late, because when he realizes that a normal man could not jog so quickly in winter, he has stopped, and asked, "Bucky?"
The Winter Soldier stills.
He turns his head, burying it even further into his navy blue scarf. "No," he says, and the accent of the city comes so naturally to him, "I think you've got me mistaken for someone else."
But the man steps forward, off the sidewalk and into the snow, his expression twisting into something hopeful, something painful, "No, it's you, I'd know you anywhere." The Winter Soldier ignores the twisting of his heart in his chest, pretends that he doesn't have one, that he never had one. The Asset never did, yet he is the Asset no longer.
"Look, man, I have no idea what you're talking about--"
But the man stalks forward, movements quick, even in the snow, and he grabs the Winter Soldier by his metal arm. The second his fingers come into contact with it, the man releases a heavy breath, hot and visible in the air. "Bucky."
The Winter Soldier yanks his arm away, tugging at his sleeve as he moves backwards. "Don't touch me," he hisses, and the man raises his hands in surrender. He could easily kill him, could take the knife from his boot and stab him when he is least expecting it, could pretend to know him and twist his neck when he gets close enough, could choke him in the snow, and leave his body there to freeze. The Winter Soldier thinks he would melt the snow away, dead or not.
"Please don't go," the man says, but stays in his spot. He looks desperate, and the Winter Soldier can see goose bumps rise on his arms, can see the way his nose is red and his lips are chapped. "It's me, Steve. Please don't disappear again."
Steve.
Steve Rogers, the voice in the back of his head says, and he isn't sure if it's a memory or his conscience.
He begins to back away again, and Steve's breath catches. He moves forward, but only gets a step in before the Winter Soldier raises a gun to him, pulling it from under his coat. He can see, even as he increases the distance between them, that Steve swallows.
He turns away. "Please help me," Steve begs, and the Winter Soldier freezes. He doesn't help anyone, only follows orders, but, "It's too cold."
But, he thinks, I understand.
He turns towards the man, towards the target, towards Steve. He watches him for a long moment, before sighing. He drops the gun in the snow. Steve dashes forward.
The nightmares are bad most nights, and Bucky is fortunate if he gets more than a few hours of sleep. This particular nightmare is vivid, Steve is in it, and Bucky wakes up when his blood splashes sharply against the snow.
Bucky's breaths are heavy and he panics in the blankets. The air is thick and humid, the large window on the wall wide open, sheer curtains lifted in the breeze. Steve stirs at his side, blinking his eyes slowly, fingers light on his arm. "Buck?"
He looks down at him and swallows. Steve's eyes are wide and worried, eyebrows tight together. He sits up as Bucky puts his head between his knees, blanket scrunched up at his feet. He takes deep breaths, and Steve rubs circles into his back. "Do you want to talk about it?"
A groan comes out of his mouth instead of a reply. He feels very old and very tired, and wonders if there was ever a point to it at all.
"You know," Steve says after a long silence, when he figures out that Bucky isn't going to talk, fingers still slow on his spine, "I have nightmares too." Bucky knows this, knows it by the way Steve leaves the apartment some nights, the way he clenches his fists in his sleep. Sam says it's normal; Bucky doesn't really like normal.
"They didn't start after I woke up, though," he adds, almost like an afterthought, "I got them after the train."
Bucky stops his breathing and looks up, hair falling in front of his eyes. He squints to see Steve in the dark, "What?"
Steve shrugs, "After you fell, they got real bad. Crashing the plane was almost a blessing, seventy years of dreamless sleep was more than I could have asked for."
He rises from the bed, legs shaky and stomach bubbling, "Don't say that," he says, almost begs. He doesn't want to do this, but Steve follows him, keeps going.
"A lot of things got bad after you fell. I got more reckless, the team went on more missions, the war was falling apart." Bucky slips through to the balcony and is thankful for the hot breeze on his sweaty skin.
"We won the war," he argues.
"Doesn't mean it wasn't a mess," Steve pauses again, "doesn't mean I wasn't a mess."
"I'm more than a mess," Bucky tells him, and stares down at the city below. "I should leave, I should get far away from here."
"Don't you dare go," Steve threatens, and the words echo in Bucky's head.
When Steve moves, he isn't quick and hesitant like before, isn't worried Bucky might snap or break or shoot him and run off. Bucky knows who he is, or at least knows enough, and Steve isn't scared by his threats more than he is horrified and angry. He grabs Bucky by his jaw, and presses a hard kiss to his lips.
They share a bed because they help each other with bad dreams, they are nothing more than friends, never were, but Bucky doesn't remember a time when he wouldn't give his life for this man, doesn't remember a time when he didn't make his heart feel tight in his chest. Steve pulls away, and Bucky grabs him by his t-shirt and pulls him back in. His tongue is hot and his hands are cold, but Steve takes them, runs them under the hem of his shirt, and they aren't cold for much longer.
After a few moments, Steve pulls away again, and Bucky lets him. "Do you want to go inside? Is it too hot for you?"
Bucky shakes his head. He pulls a hand away and wraps it around the back of Steve's neck, short hairs brushing his fingers, and pulls him back down, mumbling against his lips, "Hot is good, I hate the cold."