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Steve normally remembers everything, but he doesn't know exactly what he said to Sam and the others before he left the kitchen. Something about how he was planning on going to the gym, probably. He knows the other four Avengers are going to see James later.
Steve doesn't want to go back to the floor he and Bucky share, but he needs workout clothes and he knows there's no good reason to avoid his home, even if Bucky could've died there. Sam assured him the blood is gone, even. So it'll look just the same.
It doesn't feel the same. It feels empty. Emptier even than Steve's first apartment in New York, after he woke up from the ice but before the Avengers. He'd been so lonely and hopeless and lost. An old, brittle thing in a world he didn't want and that had no place for him.
Steve only stays for as long as it takes to get into sweats and a tee-shirt and grab a change of clothing.
He's back in the elevator when on a sudden thought, he says, "J.A.R.V.I.S., are there any stuffed animals in the tower?"
"I believe that Agent Barton has all eight 'Avengers Bears', including several rare variants, Captain," J.A.R.V.I.S. answers.
"Could you ask him if he'd be willing to bring one to James?"
There's a tiny pause, then the A.I. says, "Agent Barton wants to know if James would prefer the 'Classic Uniform Captain Bearmerica', the 'Iron Bear' or 'Bear Widow'.
Steve smiles at the kindness. "Thank him for me, please. Tell Clint that I'm sure whatever bear he chooses would be fine."
"Of course, Captain," J.A.R.V.I.S. says.
"Thanks," Steve murmurs. And then he's alone.
He's already planned to go back to see James himself in a little while, but he's happy that James won't be bored. Despite what he said to Clint, Steve isn't completely certain that James wouldn't just leave. Bucky has never been particularly patient. He's glad that J.A.R.V.I.S. will alert them if James manages to sneak away. The last thing Steve wants is James wandering around the tower by himself. Barnes might take control again and kill himself.
"I was supposed to protect you, Bucky," Steve says. He's inside the elevator, no one to answer him but his own raging thoughts. "I was supposed to protect you." But he failed. All the times it mattered, Steve's failed him.
He wants to fight, but with Thor gone and Bucky…unwell, there's no one for Steve to spar with who won't need him to pull his blows. Which means Steve's only options are the heavy bags or to run himself to exhaustion. Tony designed the bags so they won't break, but it's hard to get out of his head when all he has to think about is placing his fists. And Steve really doesn't want to be in his head right now.
He wants to be in Brooklyn, in 1941. When he was still small and weak and sickly and the war was still far away and it was just him and Bucky against the world.
Except, it was never just him and Bucky. It was him and Bucky and James. There was a scared, miserable little kid lurking behind Bucky's eyes the whole time, and Steve didn't know. He didn't have a clue, and now he's trying to remember all the times Bucky got hurt, and all the times Bucky got hurt because of Steve, and he has no idea if James was there for all of them.
Does James get everything? Or only the most excruciating pain?
Did it hurt?
The gym's running track is two levels connected by a ramp, each one circling the entire perimeter of the floor. On an ordinary day Steve would use the track, race Natasha or Bucky and say 'on your left' to Sam until Sam threatens him with bodily harm. Today he goes for the treadmills.
Tony designed them too, and they can go as fast as Steve needs for as long as he can keep moving. If he's lucky, it'll be fast enough and long enough to let him outrace everything in his head. So he runs. And he runs.
He runs until his heart's thumping like a piston in his chest and his lungs are moving air like bellows and he keeps blinking because he can't keep up with the sweat running into his eyes. It doesn't help. He still has he almost died he wasn't Bucky he's James he's nine pounding a litany in his head the way his feet are pounding in rhythm on the treadmill. He can't stop it so he goes faster, and then his leg violently reminds him that he just got out of surgery in the middle of the night when it seizes up on him.
"Whoa!"
Bruce grabs Steve's arm when he stumbles so the treadmill doesn't shoot him into orbit, steadying him long enough to let Steve get his feet on the machine's housing and shut it off.
"Are you all right?"
Steve nods mutely as he catches his breath, swiping sweat off his face with the hem of his sodden tee-shirt. He climbs off the treadmill, careful of his leg. "Might've overdone it a bit."
"A bit, yeah," Bruce says, eyebrows raised behind his glasses. He's wearing sweats and sneakers, and quietly hands Steve the towel that was hanging around his neck. "Didn't you get out of surgery last night?
"Thanks." Steve wipes his face and scrubs his hair with the towel, then gratefully takes the water bottle Bruce offers. Steve was so eager to get out of his apartment that he hadn't brought either with him. There's water everywhere in the gym, thanks to Tony, but Bruce's bottle is right there. Steve takes a long drink then smiles sheepishly. "Definitely might've overdone it."
"Definitely might've," Bruce agrees with a wan smile of his own. He looks at the readout on the treadmill's dash board. "You did make it roughly halfway to Washington D.C., however."
"What?" Steve looks, then blinks when he realizes he's been running flat-out for almost two hours. He winces. "Lost track of time."
"I gather," Bruce says. "Oh--I ran into Tony in the elevator, by the way. He said he was going to visit Bucky." He looks mildly puzzled. "He kept calling him James. I thought Bucky didn't like his given name?"
"Yeah," Steve says roughly. He lifts the half-full water bottle, wordlessly asking if he can have more. Bruce nods, then waits patiently as Steve finishes it then wipes his mouth with the side of his hand. "How much do you know about Bucky?" Steve asks him.
Bruce shrugs easily. "Less than some of you." His mouth tilts in one of his wan, uncertain smiles again. "I know he was injured last night, along with Tony." He gives Steve a quick appraisal with his eyes. "I thought you were worse off than he was, though." He makes a vague gesture with his fingers near his head. "Then again, I could be wrong about that part. I'm fuzzy on the details. And, uh, everyone let me sleep in this morning."
"You needed it," Steve says. "But you got most of it anyway. It's just, Bucky…he, uh…" He looks down at the floor and scrapes his fingers through his hair, scattering droplets.
"You don't have to tell me," Bruce says.
"Thanks," Steve says, though he barely glances up. "But at this point you're the only one on the team who doesn't know." He takes a breath and lifts his head, ready to tell Bruce everything, but what comes out of his mouth instead is, "How…What's it like, sharing your body with the Hulk?"
"…Okay," Bruce says a moment later. "Maybe we should be sitting down for this."
"I didn't mean to interrupt your workout."
Bruce shakes his head. "I can always do it later." He smirks. "Besides, it keeps me from having to trace gamma radiation for a few more minutes. That got old when we were trying to find the Tesseract."
"I didn't know you were doing that," Steve says. He follows him over to the small lounge area with its neutral-colored rug and overstuffed chairs. He sits down, grimacing at the way the cool material of the chair seeps through the wet back of his tee-shirt.
"Tony brought me some of samples from the centipede soldiers," Bruce explains. "The gamma radiation in the serum is far more common than in the Tesseract, but we might be able to find its source."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome." Bruce's smile is kind. "I think you'll find that a lot of people have a vested interest in keeping you alive, Captain." He leans forward in his chair. "But, you asked me about what it's like to live with the Other Guy." He frowns. "Bucky wasn't exposed to gamma radiation last night, was he?"
"Not that," Steve says, shaking his head.
"That doesn't sound much less ominous," Bruce murmurs. He sighs. "Okay, what's it like with the Other Guy. It's like, how you feel when you're angry, but not furious yet. But you know that you could be. Like, if one more person says the wrong thing or someone else cuts in front of you in line, that'll be it. You'll blow. So, it's like being almost at the point of rage but trying to never cross over, all the time." He looks up at Steve with his incongruously gentle brown eyes. "Does that help?"
"That sounds awful," Steve says.
Bruce shrugs. "I've gotten used to it. I don't blow nearly as much as I used to." He smiles distantly. "And obviously it takes a lot more than insults, or I would've thrown Tony through a wall by now."
"I think we all would've." Steve answers Bruce's smile with a small one of his own. "But, are you aware of him, when you're not angry? Like right now." Steve gestures in between them. "Is he in there with you?"
Bruce blinks, but then he sits back and rubs his mouth, obviously thinking about it. "No, not as such. It's more like, I'm constantly aware he could be there, instead of me. But it's not like I have a sense of…sharing space in my head or anything." He makes a face. "More like I always know he's waiting. Does that help?"
Steve shakes his head. He's sitting with his forearms on his knees, looking down at his clasped hands. "Not, really. Thanks anyway, though."
"It's no problem," Bruce says. "But, if you don't mind my asking, what does that have to do with Bucky?"
Steve swallows. "You never really told me what you know about him."
"I did, actually," Bruce says. "As in, almost nothing, other than that you two grew up together and that he was missing, presumed dead shortly before you downed Red Skull's plane. And then he turned up last year and you rescued him from Hydra."
"Do you know he was an assassin?"
Bruce nods, mouth twitching apologetically. "I didn't think it was pertinent."
"Yeah," Steve says on a breath. "But actually it is." He forces himself to lift his head, look at Bruce's face when he speaks. "I thought, at first, that what they'd done to him had just given him amnesia. Because he didn't remember anything at all. Not me, or his name, or…anything. But there was more to it than that." Steve cards his fingers through his hair again. It's drying in messy little spikes. "What they did, the torture…it split him up. In his mind. Made him into different people."
Bruce blinks. "You mean, different identities?"
"Yeah. That's what I mean," Steve says.
He tells Bruce about Bucky's fall, and fighting Bucky on the bridge, and then Bucky saving him from drowning only to disappear. He tells Bruce about Sam finding Bucky at the Smithsonian, and then Tony and Sam rescuing him, and the slow, terrible discovery that Bucky was in a constant ricochet between psyches, with the youngest, most vulnerable one forced to endure all his pain. And how Steve thought the Asgardians had healed him until he woke up this morning and found out exactly how wrong he'd been.
Steve talks for what feels like a very long time. When he's finished, Bruce takes off his glasses and methodically cleans each lens with his tee-shirt. Steve knows that means he's trying to decide what to say.
"I feel like I should mention I'm not the right kind of doctor for this," he tells Steve.
"I know," Steve says. "I wasn't…I guess I was just hoping that you'd have some insight."
"I wish I did." Bruce slides his glasses back on, smirks wanly. "Believe me, I wish the Other Guy could offer me some kind of insight into anything other than the importance of anger management."
"At least you know who he is," Steve says. He can feel his jaw working, gnawing over the bitterness he's not even sure he has a right to feel. "I thought Bucky was…Bucky. But he wasn't. All those years, there was James, and I didn't even know it. And then, when we were with the Howling Commandos…he was Sergeant Barnes. Bucky wasn't even there."
Bruce hums some kind of noncommittal noise that makes Steve look up at him. "I'm still not the right kind of doctor," he says with a tiny smile. "But from what you told me, Bucky created these different aspects of himself, to help him survive the un-survivable. So they're still him. Aspects of him. I mean, if they weren't, you would've felt something was wrong, wouldn't you?" He leans forward. "Did the other Commandos think there was something wrong?"
"He was…harder," Steve says softly. "More tense. He didn't laugh much anymore. He was angry a lot, too." He grimaces. "He was very good at killing."
"I suspect you were too," Bruce says. "What you describe, though—that doesn't sound like anything unusual for someone who's been in battle, especially if he was also tortured as a prisoner of war."
Steve nods. "That's what I thought. I mean, all the guys were like that. Except me. I'd been touring the U.S. like a dancing monkey. Punching out Hitler and telling people to buy war bonds."
"You were where you needed to be when it counted," Bruce says, like as far as he's concerned that's the only part that's important. "But my point is, what you thought had happened to Bucky—you weren't wrong. He just…found a more extreme method of surviving."
"He didn't survive," Steve says. He grits his teeth, chest suddenly tight. "He didn't survive. I keep going over…everything. Trying to figure out if there was something I should've seen, something he said, or did…If there was any way I could've known it…wasn't Bucky. Maybe if I'd seen that, I would've kept him back from the mission to capture Zola. Taken one of the others instead."
"He was Bucky," Bruce says, not unkindly. "That's the point, Steve. The fact that you couldn't tell the difference only proves that. And he fell because he was trying to protect you, right? That sounds like Bucky to me."
"Me too," Steve says. He leans back and tilts his head to look at the ceiling. "But it's not. It's not Bucky. It's just pieces of him. And we might never be able to put them back." He swallows. "I can't lose him again, Bruce. I lost him before and it…It killed me. I can't…"
"Hey," Bruce says. "Hey. Look at me."
Steve does.
"You got him back then, and you'll get him back now," Bruce says, fierce but still kind. "You're not alone in this, Steve. And neither is he. There's got to be a way to fix this, and we'll help you find it. And Bucky's a survivor, you know that. He'll survive this too."
"Thanks," Steve says, and he tries to believe it.
END