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"Soldier?"
The voice had cruel undertones, and Bucky felt his memories disintegrate behind closed eyes. He forced himself towards consciousness, knowing that if he stayed asleep, he wouldn't be able to stop what came next. The restraints get tighter as he tries to push away from the dream, and then he feels a gap in the holdings, rushes for it so that he can wake up.
He misses his window of opportunity, and his eyes force themselves open in the dream, revealing a HYDRA compound, the wipe chair, and his handlers. He groans, feeling the pain of a wipe catch up with him, and then those terrible words exit his mouth, and he knows he's lost control.
"Ready to comply".
Bucky starts to yell, starts to scream, and he knows it won't do any good, but he refuses to kill any more people. The Asset doesn't care, however, and right now, the Asset is in control, and for as much as Bucky is fighting to get control, nothing is working, and he's yelling himself hoarse, but he can't do anything about it. He withdraws, shivering in the back of his own mind as someone else begs for mercy, begs to be set free. Then the gun goes off, and they stop begging.
His target stops begging, and he starts.
"Please." He says in his mind. "Please, you don't have to do this. You don't have to go back to them. You can run, you can be free! Please!"
But the Asset still returns to base, and is pushed into a cryotube, exhaling into the cold as sleep drags him down. The Asset goes to sleep, and Bucky Barnes wakes up, confused, terrified, praying for the cycle to end.
Except it won't, because this dream is one of the ones where he doesn't wake up, he can't wake up, he won't wake up until-
"Bucky?"
That. Bucky looks up, and it's Steve, he's right there, and the Asset has paused just enough for him to regain control, but he didn't move fast enough, and he's rushing for the closing gap, and he misses the moment, and now he's raising the weapon, saying "Who the hell is Bucky?", and he won't shoot Steve, he won't shoot Steve, he won't-
The gun goes off, and Steve crumples. Bucky finally breaks through, a shout on his lips as Nat fires at him, hitting him, but it's too late, the damage has been done.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
His eyes snap open, tears dampening his cheeks as he lays in bed, completely silent. He could swear the nightmares are getting worse, and he knows he's not going back to sleep, so he quietly slips from the room and boxes in the gym, unable to close his eyes for seeing his boyfriend lying dead in the street, for seeing those things that HYDRA made him do. He can't stop seeing it, so he just doesn't let his dreams gain control.
It's a horrible pattern to be stuck in; refusing to sleep, passing out from exhaustion and then getting such horrible nightmares that the cycle repeats. He's too scared to close his eyes, too tired to keep them open. He exists in this lucid fever state, always tired but never sleeping, always awake but never present. During these cycles, it's hard for him to look in the mirror, to come face to face with the bags under his eyes and the fear in his gaze. But he can't stop, he can't sleep, he can't close his eyes...
His eyes snap open. They're at the Tower, Steve poking fun at various teammates as Bucky struggles to keep his eyes open. It's been about three days since he last slept, and it's wearing him down faster than it normally would. He's so tired, but he can't sleep, because he has no control when he's asleep, so he's just going to close his eyes for a minute...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are scientists surrounding him, yelling things, yelling orders. He must have done something wrong, because not a single person is addressing him directly, or in a language he understands. Every once in a while, somebody says something in Russian on accident, and the other scientists glare at that person until he stops. From those snatches of Russian, Bucky gathers that he's failed a mission, and he's being decommissioned.
Decommissioned. They might as well say "terminated", for the meaning of the word. He's finally outlived his usefulness, and they're going to kill him, and he praises God for small mercies, until one of the handlers turns around and Bucky realizes he's going to be terminated in the most painful way possible.
"Full shock, no buffers. Wipe him." The voice snaps, and Bucky flinches. They've only ever done that once before, when he first failed a mission, and it nearly killed him. He suspects that's why they're doing it. It must have been an extremely important target for them to skip the bullet.
They turn on the machine, and the full force of electricity he feels has him blind within seconds, but he's not dying, and the pain just keeps getting worse and worse, but he's not blacking out and he's not dying. They stop the machine, readjust something, and go again, and he's still not dying, and it hurts so bad, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and he can hardly see but it won't stop and-
They pull him from the machine, strap him to a whipping post. They keep muttering about how he won't die, and they start lashing him across the back, but he's too tired to even cry out, and they just keep beating him, drugging him, shocking him, a horrid cycle of torment that eventually leaves him numb.
Then they drag in someone new, a tall, buff blond who's unconscious. Two sets of handlers are yelling at each other, and as Bucky blearily listens to their mistake, the blond looks up, groggy, blinking exhaustion and pain out of his eyes. The familiar face makes Bucky's blood run cold.
They have Steve. Those fuckers have Steve. He didn't just fail, he failed to kill Steve, and now they're going to turn him into weapon, they're going to hurt his Stevie.
"No." Bucky whimpers, pulling at the restraints on the post. "No! No! You can't touch him!"
Steve locks eyes with him, and Bucky sees him say "I'm sorry".
"Don't touch him! Don't fucking touch him, you sick bastard! I will fucking rip out your-"
They whip him, and whatever he was going to say comes out in a strangled cry of pain, and then another as they beat him harder, pouring acid on his back as they tear open his skin. In between cries of pain, he shouts his boyfriend's name, hoping to get him out of this awful place. The torture wouldn't hurt so bad if it was just for him, but he knows that they're trying to break Steve this way, trying to make it so that he will do anything to save Bucky. They're using him, and the worst part is that it's going to work, they're going to turn his Steve into a broken weapon.
Steve starts pleading, and Bucky can't keep his eyes open any longer; he's too tired, trying to escape his reality.
A gun is fired somewhere in the room, and when Bucky looks up, a shocked Steve is gaping at the blood blossoming from his chest. Bucky stares in horror for a short while, the starts writhing as he tries to break his bonds.
"No! NO! HOW DARE YOU!" He feels them slip a needle into his neck, drugging him, and he starts to wish they'd just killed him. "HOW COULD YOU! STEVE! STEVE!"
He feels himself fading from consciousness, and it's all he can do to not give up.
"I'm sorry." He whimpers, and then the gun goes off again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He opens his eyes with a gasp, tears wetting his cheeks as he forces his breathing to slow, and whoever is next to him on the couch scoots away. *I don't blame you* he thinks to himself. *I'd scoot away too*.
Steve taps his shoulder lightly, and he damn near jumps out of his skin, not even bothering to check his flinch as exhaustion sets into his bones. He's so tired, but he can't let himself fall asleep, because his dreams are even worse than the pain he's in right now.
"Babe? Maybe you should go take a nap." Steve says, ad it's the kind of phrase that leaves no room for argument. Bucky stumbles towards their room, his body heavy and unwieldy. Steve manages to catch him as his ankle catches on the back of his foot, and as Steve guides him towards their bed, he starts to cry. Everything hurts, and he's so tired, but he can't stop, he can't sleep.
"You need to get some rest." Steve says, closing the door. Bucky nods, hardly registering what was said. He stumbles towards the bed, collapsing as he reaches it. Steve pets his hair, humming absentmindedly.
"I'm tired." Bucky murmurs, and Steve smiles ruefully at him.
"I know you are." Steve says softly, petting his hair and rubbing his back. "I know you don't sleep".
Those words tear through him like bullets. Actually, bullets would hurt less. Between that and the look Steve is giving him right now, concern and love, with just the smallest bit of disappointment, he's shocked he hasn't started crying. It takes him a second to remember the reason that's the case is because he was already crying.
"No." Bucky affirms, shaking his head as tears fall onto the back of his hand. "I can't. I've tried so hard, and I can't".
"Let me help." Steve lays a hand on his shoulder, and Bucky all but falls against him, sobbing quietly.
"You can't. Not with this".
"Let me try".
"It won't work".
"Have a little faith." Steve smiles again, but the smile is sad, and full of pain. Bucky wishes he could fall asleep, if only to stop hurting his partner. "Please, let me try".
Bucky nods, allowing his boyfriend to lull him to sleep, and when nightmares wake him again, Steve is there, holding him and comforting him and telling him it's ok, he's right there. But Bucky can't close his eyes again, and tears begin to form as he whimpers. There is pain in his soul, and he's exhausted, but he can't sleep.
"I'm so tired." Bucky murmurs sadly. "But I can't close my eyes. Not again. Not tonight".
"Well, I was hoping not to use these, but..." Steve crosses the room, pulling a bottle of something that rattles out of the top drawer of their dresser, breaking something small in half as he wanders back. "You're metabolism is about half mine, right?"
Bucky nods, too tired to question any of this.
"Here." Steve presses something small into his hand, and while Bucky can't see it, it feels vaguely like a pill of some kind. He looks at Steve questioningly, but Steve just nods towards his hand in encouragement.
"What is it?" Bucky says thickly as he tilts his head back and pops the small thing into his mouth, swallowing hard as it hits his tongue. It goes down like medicine, sticking in his throat as he shivers with exhaustion and sorrow, falling against Steve as his eyelids start to flutter.
"It's a sleeping pill, kind of." Steve shrugs, then lays Bucky down. "I'll explain more in the morning. Get some rest, ok?"
Bucky reaches out, snagging Steve's hand as he stands. "Stay" is all he says, and Steve nods, sitting down and ruffling his hair, holding his hand. Sleep takes him quickly, and even though he dreams, he does not feel them; even though he sleeps, his body does not trap him. He sleeps dreamlessly, and when he finally does awaken, the sun is well in the sky. He stumbles out to the kitchen where Steve is making hamburgers on the griddle, humming softly and smiling.
"Hey." Bucky manages to say, and Steve turns towards him, his smile widening as he looks at Bucky.
"Good afternoon. Burger?"
Bucky nods, then gazes about the kitchen, which is still messy from breakfast. Steve's humming escalates into singing, but the words that tumble out are in Gaelic, not English. Bucky listens intently, smiling as he remembers how Steve's mom did the same thing whenever the boys came home from a fight.
"How long was I out?" Bucky asks as he picks up an apple and bites into it.
He nearly chokes when JARVIS answers, "36 hours, 17 minutes, and 34 seconds, Sergeant Barnes".
"What?" Bucky looks at Steve, who gives a wry chuckle at Bucky's expression. "What the everloving fuck is in those things?"
"Something to knock you out, and something to keep your dreams from jumping you. Bruce made for me when I first got pulled out of the ice. Probably saved my life." Steve sets down a burger in front of Bucky, who realizes he's finished his apple and is the hungriest he's been in a few months. He tears into the burger and realizes he was probably starving himself a little by not sleeping; he hadn't been eating as much as he should have been because he wasn't hungry, and he wasn't hungry because he was tired.
"Once you start to get back into a normal sleep pattern, we'll have Sam help you work through the nightmares in therapy, but until you start sleeping normally again, you take one of those things every night, ok?" Steve waits until he sees Bucky nod, then continues. "We'll have to get Bruce to make you your own set of pills, because mine are more potent. And I want you to tell me if they stop working, ok? Don't start taking more, that won't help".
Bucky nods as he finishes his burger, eyeing the homemade fries on Steve's plate. Steve follows his line of sight, then chuckles as he pushes the plate towards Bucky.
"I figured you'd be hungry, but if I'd known you were gonna be this hungry, I'd have made more burgers".
"I just got my first decent night's sleep in three months, and you're making cracks about my appetite? Rude".
"First- Three months?" Steve looks at Bucky, shocked. "Jesus, Buck, I didn't... I had no idea it was that bad".
"Well, we're fixing it now." Bucky looks down at the plate, frowning at its emptiness. "Hey, where did all the food go?"
"You ate it, Buck." Steve rolls his eyes, and gets up to make another burger. "You ate my burger, too. Rude".
"Hey!"
Bucky smiles, and it feels real. He feels awake, but definitely still tired. As happy as he is that he's not physically exhausted anymore, he still feels tired, and he makes peace with the fact that recovery won't be easy or quick. He and Steve spend the rest of the day watching movies and talking about what comes next, but Bucky feels better than he has in a long time, and he doesn't mind quite so much. He ends the day much like he started it; tired, but content.