Chapter Text
Steve doesn't really understand what's happening in the moment, but he trusts that the doctors and therapists put in place are genuinely looking out for Bucky, at least at first.
Dr Lysse Grant is not Steve's psychiatrist, nor is she his psychologist. She is both, for Bucky, and as of four days ago, Steve is Bucky's legal conservator for a further 26 days. She is supposed to be equipping him to deal with Bucky's moods and needs and making sure he's up to the job.
“The nightmares, I'm afraid, are to be expected, and it's no real surprise he doesn't want help with them given what “going to sleep” has entailed these past few decades. What's important is that we reinforce James' sense of identity,” She says, shuffling her handwritten notes, manilla paper crinkling in a way that should be calming but instead seems urgent. “Make sure he has access to all of his medals, uniform, that sort of thing.”
Steve's mind lags behind the conversation, caught on the idea that James might be an identity at all. He supposes James is a person that Bucky has been. Sergeant James Barnes. But Steve has never even said the name in reference to Bucky, aside from as an introduction in their younger years. He wonders if the two of them had actually spoken at all whilst he'd been waiting outside for the previous hour, because surely the mismatch between James Barnes on paper and Bucky Barnes in real life is hard to miss.
"Did he have any hobbies before the war broke out? It would help him to get back some of his civilian self, rather than be sent straight back to his army life."
“Before the war, Bucky had some... I'm not sure...” He fumbles, but it feels important to continue, and he's seen enough of the twenty-first century to know that Bucky is not the only one, so he presses on. “...That Bucky was really a man.”
The sentence sounds clumsy out loud and he wants to rephrase it, take it back. But Dr Grant is a therapist, and a woman, and she's from this century – she looks young enough that even her degree must be from this century, and so far she's been kind and amicable. Steve would never have told anyone that about Bucky in the '40s, but he knows about gay rights and he saw Eurovision and he thinks they must be ready for this kind of thing right now.
But she just looks at him with a confused smile. “I've seen his file, two testicles present and correct.”
Steve shakes his head. “Not... Not that kind of man. I mean, I think Bucky might have wanted to be a da- a girl. A woman, or something.”
“Like a transsexual?” She asks, and he gives her a blank look because although he's heard the word he doesn't actually know what it means. She takes it as confirmation, though. “I wouldn't want to be too hasty with a diagnosis of Gender Identity Disord-"
“–There's nothing wrong with Bucky!” He insists, frustration rising. She isn't the first therapist to annoy him, he thinks it's probably part of their job, but he's not having Bucky's - Bucky dragged into it. The last thing Bucky needs is something else wrong to compete with half a century of trauma.
Steve is also not the first patient to have reacted to something a psychologist has said with anger, however.
“Steve.” Dr Grant puts her palms out flat, obviously telling him to calm down, and he does so with considerable effort. “Steve,” She says again once his breathing has returned to normal. “I know that you want the best for – for "Bucky," but what you need to remember is that he has been through some extremely traumatic events.”
Steve nods slowly, expecting her to continue, and expecting her to say something he doesn't want to hear.
“The kind of brainwashing that "Bucky" has been through was strong enough to erase his entire sense of self. It's very important that we help with the reformation of his identity as he is acclimatizing to living in the twenty-first century and without the threat of harm for the first time in seventy years.” It all sounds very reasonable, and Steve has to accept that she knows more about this stuff than him. “Now, what we do not want to do, is to make that process any more confusing or isolating than it has to be. So, what I as a doctor, and as a psychologist think we should do is to get him used to the idea of being James Barnes again, and if, if the feelings of gender dysphoria do come back with his memories, I will personally assess him and refer him to a gender specialist. Does that sound reasonable?”
Steve swallows, because it does, but – “So that's a disorder now? It's like a... A treatable condition?”
Grant smiles at him, the tight psychiatrist smile that he knows from his own therapist. “Yes. If in, say, a year's time, James comes to me and says he feels this way for himself, I can refer him to someone who will prescribe him female hormones and who can in turn refer him to a surgeon.”
“A surgeon?” Steve swallows again, throat dry now, head full of images of electrodes and lobotomies and chemical castration –
“It's now possible to surgically create a vagina, out of the skin from the penis, I think, but I'm not a surgeon. There's also breast enhancement, it's possible to shave down the Adam's apple, and a number of other treatments are available.” Dr Grant smiles as though reading from a spa brochure.
“Oh.” The thought of Bucky changing yet again terrifies him, but he's not about to stand in the way of anything Bucky needs to be happy, not any more. “Okay.”
“Okay. Well, I'm glad we've cleared that up.” Grant shuffles her notes demonstratively and stands to shake his hand. “I'm due to see James again on the sixth, and then on the ninth, same time and place. Will you be bringing him?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. See you then.”
Steve lets her herd him out of her consulting room and into the waiting room for what remains of SHIELD's continuing medical services to former agents and staff. Bucky is sitting staring straight ahead in one of the chairs, Steve's presence barely even registering.
He sits in the next chair along. “You ready to go, Buck?”
Bucky shrugs and returns to fiddling with the lock of the thick ankle monitor that was one of the conditions for being allowed to leave the secure containment unit that Steve was sure had been designed with Banner in mind.
“You can't take that off, Buck, I'm sorry,” Steve feels genuinely guilty. He takes Bucky gently by the elbow, grateful when his touch isn't rejected. “That ankle bracelet means you can't go outside this building. If you do, we'll know where you are and we'll come get you, okay?” He doesn't mean it to sound like a threat, but Bucky seems to change imperceptibly, fixating on some implications or fuzzy memory that Steve has no access to. “No one's gonna hurt you," He adds quickly, "But you've got to stay inside. And if you try to take it off they'll know too.”
He leads Bucky into the elevator, which takes them straight to the floor they've been assigned by Pepper.
It has everything in it. A bedroom each as well as a spare, more than triple the size of the apartment they'd shared after Steve's mom died. His stuff has been moved in, along with some basic clothes for Bucky. Blue jeans and a rainbow of t-shirts as though the purchaser was attempting to deviate as far from a plain black uniform as possible.
At first Steve can't see a TV, but it hadn't taken too long to work out that practically every flat surface in the whole apartment is a screen.
Not that this matters to Bucky, who spends a great deal of time watching blank stretches of wall.
Steve does as the doctor ordered. Well, mostly. He doesn't call Bucky “James” or a "man" or any of those other casual malenesses, telling himself that either Bucky knows already or it isn't really true.
Bucky attends all Dr Grant's appointments and listens carefully whilst Steve describes their old apartment and their lives, but otherwise gets frustrated with everything; confinement, amnesia, the existence of the full height freezer, which Steve is eventually forced to remove after Bucky rips it out of its fittings in protest. A lot of Bucky's time is spent reading histories with an attention to detail that Steve has only ever seen in Natasha on information gathering missions. It's unnerving, but it doesn't feel like he has the right to tell Bucky to stop it, either.
In an attempt to make some sense of it all for Bucky, Steve retrieves the tiny treasure troves of their remaining possessions that he has managed to regain from private collections and museum exhibits since he awoke.
“What is this?” Bucky shouts at him, holding a flat, hinged tin, whose cracked enamel showed it to be rusting merrily beneath the paint. Bucky's face furrowed in a frown that has yet to break into tears since moving into the new apartment.
“It's your old watercolour set, you used--” Steve begins, but cuts off with a cry of dismay as it crumples in Bucky's metal hand. Used to paint me pictures of the front and send them back. And I used to send you pictures of home because I missed you so much and I wanted you to have something of mine. He'd taken the paintbox out purposefully, already decided exactly what he would say to Bucky when asked, scripted this conversation like a hundred others. Bucky isn't sticking to the carefully planned lines. “Let it go Buck!”
Bucky looks at him, indifferent to destruction, and Steve is submerged beneath the first of many waves of panic. It isn't this Bucky's paint tin, it's the old Bucky's and how else is Steve to remember these things? Without thinking, he jerks it out of Bucky's hand hard enough for Bucky to topple sideways with a clatter of metal prosthesis against the tiled kitchen floor that leaves Steve's ears ringing.
Steve's heart hammers in his chest as he tries to control the cocktail of alarm and anger so strong it's giving him vertigo. He forces his breathing to slow, not to wrack his chest. Then he leans back against the wall and squeezes his eyes shut. He can feel his pulse, see it in the red flashes behind his eyelids. He hasn't ever had a panic attack, but maybe this is what it's like.
When he opens them again, Bucky just looks up at him with a lack of fear that could very well be rebellion. Or sadism, or perhaps a simple emptiness.
“Why did you do that?” Steve asks as quietly as he can, shaken both by Bucky's act and his own display of violence. It still sounds like an accusation. Loss throbs somewhere in his throat.
Bucky shrugs and meets his eyes until Steve has to look away, back down at the twisted metal of the tin.
“It was important to me,” Steve whispers shakily, turning away. He knows it's stupid, that he holds Bucky with him wherever he goes even without the paint tin. But no one is allowed to crush that memory, not even Bucky Barnes.
Bucky might not cry, never cries, but Steve can feel the tears burning behind his eyes. He leaves Bucky sitting on the floor and locks himself into his own room, slamming his face down into a pillow to muffle his own groan.
It's amazing, really, how ill prepared he is for losing somebody who he's already lost once, but he clutches the water colour set, all bent out of shape, and tries not to choke or scream or shout as it hits him all over again that Bucky's body is in the next room, but that his Bucky was dead the moment James Buchanan Barnes stepped onto the battlefield. Bucky never was the same on the front, and now, now Steve isn't so sure that there's any of the old Bucky left at all.
It's wrong to be angry with whoever is left, but he can't help it. The growling in his throat turns to bitter sobs and loss and he's temporarily furious that this – this imposter could come in wearing Bucky's body to break Steve's heart all over again, like some kind of cruel joke.
His anger dies down as he exhausts himself, no longer directed at the confused, damaged person still sitting on the floor outside. Why does this have to happen to me? He demands silently of God, his first prayer, if it could be called such, since his rude and icy reawakening. Because I was the one who brought Bucky back there. If hadn't asked, Bucky would never have fallen.
He makes up his mind, for the hundredth time since he ripped the Winter Soldier's mask away, to do his best by Bucky, and let this new version live a new life and not the one Steve is desperately holding on to. Dr Grant was right, it isn't fair of him to confuse Bucky when Bucky is barely even a person at the moment.
He follows her instructions with renewed vigour, and Bucky doesn't ask any more questions or touch any of Steve or the old Bucky's things again, because Steve puts them back away in his own bedroom, where they can be safe from further harm.
Bucky doesn't make any progress. Sits in Dr Lysse Grant's sessions and says as little as possible, glaring at her to shut up but not daring to act on the urge to do it for her under the strict surveillance obvious throughout the building. Steve worries that maybe Bucky hates her, but Bucky doesn't seem to like very much. Bucky lives in a world of fright and frustration, getting more bitter by the second. Bucky hates 21st century fruit, but doesn't compare it to the more flavourful fruits Steve remembers. Doesn't like TV, or laugh at any jokes, doesn't thank Steve for any of his help, not that Steve expects it. Doesn't reminisce about the pictures they used to see together or tell old jokes; Bucky is simply dissatisfied with the present with no standard to compare it to, and apparently no need for one.
Steve answers Bucky's questions but tries to leave them open for Bucky to provide the real answers, and is usually met with disappointment. An hour of careful bending sets the tin back in order, but the paints themselves – the odd scraps of red and black and the crumbly blocks of unpopular colours – all cracked under the initial pressure, and Steve can neither bear to look at them nor to replace them or chuck them out. They represent something real that Bucky, his Bucky had touched and loved and carried around just to send him those little paintings.
He has one still; recovered it with some of his stuff sent to him by a museum in London after he woke up. It shows boys, barely men at all really, marching on the front, their muddy features and gaunt expressions warped by the bright red Bucky had used to paint their lips. It seems morbid given the context. It's a postcard, just a square of thin card with a few cramped lines of handwritten text on the back, the only thing Steve still has in Bucky's handwriting. He doubt's it's the same now, hasn't seen Bucky holding a pen at all.
June 10th, 1944
Dear Steve,
We lost Marlon today. I know you didn't know him, but pray for him will you? He was a good kid and I was never the religious type. I wrote you about him a couple of months ago. He got hit by shrapnel and we were so busy trying to stop his leg bleeding that none of us noticed the gash in his arm till it was too late.
Miss you buddy, I really do. I'd say "wish you were here," but you know how I feel about that. Wish I was with you instead.
Bucky.
Beneath Bucky's name is a kiss, not an X, but the kind Bucky would've given Steve had they both been at home together; aquamarine paint – one of the few left in abundance in Bucky's palette – painted onto lips and kissed onto the page.
It's unbearable to mourn Bucky without a single friend in common to share it with. Steve grieves Peggy's kind words and her hand on his shoulder almost as deeply as he grieves for Bucky's firm slaps on the back and rough hugs, misses Peggy's red lipstick against her brown hair, and Bucky's darker red brushing on Steve's jaw. It used to stain his skin, he remembers. He'd wash it off, but the next morning the other guys at the store would laugh and joke about the kind of girl Steve must've found to get her to kiss a guy with a crooked spine and a chest that rattled like a broken motor before it backfires.
It had been Bucky's bruised knuckles that fought their jibes back.
For months after the museum had sent it to him, Steve couldn't even look at the card, let alone read it. Now, he clutches Bucky's kiss to his chest when he goes to bed, and cries, not the numb, dignified tears he'd cried after Bucky had fallen, but something raw and more terrible that makes him retch, like he had as a child after his mom passed, when he could barely breathe for tears. The person who used to be Bucky doesn't come and comfort him in the night like the old Bucky would have.
Steve steps back from Bucky, and Bucky doesn't seem to notice. Seem, because Bucky notices everything: The food Steve cooks, the clothes Steve orders online to replace the ragged leather scraps remaining of Bucky's uniform and the weirdly bright rainbow shirts picked out by whoever Pepper had delegated the job to. Dr Grant ending an appointment three minutes early; Bucky gets the full hour, even if those last three minutes are spent sitting in silence. Steve holds out a little hope that if the Depression has survived within Bucky, something else might have too. .
Despite not being alone a single minute of the day – except by self imposed isolation in his room – Steve feels lonelier than he ever has.
A knock on the door startles him, and seeing Sam's face when he opens it surprises him further, because Steve seems to have forgotten that he has friends.
“Long time no see,” Sam says, and Steve can see that he's not impressed. But Sam isn't there to admonish him, or to respect the time honoured custom of being invited in, and simply steps round him holding a stack of large square boxes. “I bought pizza, but I only brought raspberries for dessert since I haven't seen you running lately. Not that you probably need it to keep in shape, damn super soldiers. ”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” Steve shakes his head. “I've, uh, been a little overwhelmed.”
His admission seems to appease Sam and they settle into the living room; Bucky isn't there, not that Bucky stays confined to any particular room in the daytime.
“So... Tell me a little more about this overwhelming.”
Steve shrugs, grabbing a slice from the pizza at the top of the pile and burning his mouth on it. “I dunno,” He says when he's done sucking air. "Bucky... I just don't know that there's any of the old Bucky in there.”
Sam nods. “I know we talked about it as a possibility, but that's gotta be tough.”
“Yeah,” Steve sniffs, putting his pizza down. He doesn't feel so hungry any more, and the fact that the food attacked him just compounds the sick feeling in his stomach. “I... Don't know if I can do it. I mean, I have to do it,” He says, gesturing at Sam to not interrupt. “I need to do it for myself and for the old Bucky, and I know I couldn't live with myself if I gave up on Buck, but... It's... It's really hard, Sam.”
Sam swallows and wipes his mouth on a paper towel. “You know you don't have to do this on your own, right? I'll come here every day if you need me to. And I'm not the only one."
“I know,” He says, even though the idea hasn't actually occurred to him. “But why is it Bucky can remember me and not remember Bucky? I mean, only some things about me, like not to kill me, but Bucky hasn't told Dr Grant about remembering anything and barely even talks to me at all, after the paint set.” Steve knows he's gushing and that he's already turned the visit sour, but he's been waiting for someone that isn't paid to hear it for almost three weeks and he's all out of patience.
“What happened with the paint set?”
Steve tells him about it, the whole thing, and how much it hurt that Bucky didn't recognise it and how ashamed he is for pushing Bucky over, and maybe it's his fault that Bucky isn't talking to him, and it was Bucky's after all, so really isn't it Bucky's to destroy?
And then he shows him Bucky's postcard and cries some more of his most toned-down, audience friendly tears, saved up from the night before. Sam doesn't comment on the kiss, but Steve knows he sees it. Whatever he makes of the turquoise pout, he grabs Steve into a rough hug. Which just makes Steve want to cry harder. That was always Bucky's job.
They emerge from Steve's bedroom more than an hour later to find Bucky in the living room, looking pointedly disinterested in a way that suggests the soundproofing in the walls of Starks tower is probably inadequate.
Steve lets out one last sob at the sight of those lips crushing a raspberry softly between them so that the juice runs down and into the cleft of Bucky's chin. He swallows the sound as soon as he's made it, but there's no doubt that Bucky can tell he's crying if Bucky is at all interested.
They turn on the news and eat in silence as Steve tries not to shudder too noticeably with the aftershocks of his second? Third? Fourth breakdown this week.
By the time Sam is packing up to leave, Bucky has eaten most of the raspberries alone, and announces unprompted: “Raspberries are my favorite fruit.”
“Blackberries are your favorite fruit!” Steve corrects before he can stop himself. He catches a worried glance from Sam and swallows his own guilt. It's the only thing Bucky has said all evening, and the only positive thing in possibly decades, and he's already shot it down.
“Not for taste. Only for color,” Bucky says, heedless of Steve's tone of voice, tongue flicking out to smear juice over raspberry tinted lips. And then Bucky stands and goes to bed, leaving Steve more conflicted than he's ever been, even with the paint box.
Steve lies on top of his blankets and tries to figure out what Bucky had meant. For color of what? General aesthetics? Emergency art supplies? Still life?
But he remembers Bucky dragging him miles out of town when they were small to the country when blackberries were in season, skipping school with the promise of a sweet reward and a day of freedom. Crushing fistfuls of berries until they bled black in their hands, Bucky letting it linger on both of their mouths to stain them purple.
Getting home way past dark in snagged, stained clothes to Bucky's irate mother. She'd once threatened to march them back out to Old Westbury and cut them a bramble switch, but like most of her punishments, it was a threat she never made good on, since, "Steve always looks so tired he might die on the return journey." She just had to settle for giving them dirty looks, cuffed ears and blackberry and apple pie instead. The nuns at school were less forgiving, but every year until Bucky was fifteen, Steve had somehow let himself get talked into going; the memory of whatever the punishment had been the year before always seemed to fade over the summer vacation.
Steve desperately needs to know the answer, though he doubts Bucky would even be able to tell him any more information if he asked.
He falls asleep with that image in mind: Bucky young and wicked and beautiful, lips glistening and purple like they've been bitten and the light in Bucky's eyes as that red-black-purple juice runs down out of clenched fists to be licked off of elbows and stain shirt sleeves.
He dreams of young men with blood smiles crossing over trenches from the previous war, of Bucky running a paintbrush over the lacquered surface of the turquoise block of colour, turning it opaque and pale with water, and wakes drenched in a cold sweat, as though from a nightmare.