Chapter Text
Bucky goes on the date with her. He shouldn't but he does.
She leaves him sitting at the counter while she closes the restaurant up and he scrolls through his phone absently. Ten texts from Sam. He should reply, probably. Doc will no doubt give him a bollocking if he doesn't.
The waitress comes back. She's pretty, almost intimidating as her dark eyes sparkle in the dim light. God, how Bucky wishes he could feel something. Anything.
The beer he's swallowing does nothing to numb his senses. When he closes his eyes, he still sees all of the faces of the people he slaughtered. In the quieter moments, he still thinks of Steve walking away.
When the waitress starts talking about Yori, Bucky can't pretend anymore. The flowers he bought her are wilting on the counter. Her dark eyes are almost pitying. Bucky doesn't even know her name.
He leaves, hating himself, feeling as though the ground is crumbling beneath his feet. He goes to Yori's apartment, ever the masochist, and wants to tear his traitorous beating heart right out of his chest. Perhaps that would go some small way to redeeming himself for the horrors he caused while he was Hydra's puppet.
Bucky can't look at Yori. The old man is soft and kind, and desperately, desperately sad.
Bucky wishes he was the one who'd died, instead of Yori's son.
He wishes the fall from the train had killed him.
Mostly, though, he wishes Steve had never left him here alone in this new age, changing more with every passing day.
The sting of Steve's betrayal is perhaps the worst pain of all. He'd always promised he'd stay with Bucky, until the end of the line... but it was a lie. Steve left and Bucky knows it's because of him... because of those terrible, sickening things he did.
This is all Bucky's fault.
If he'd fought harder against Hydra, maybe none of this would have happened. Steve wouldn't have abandoned him and the shield would've stayed with him, and Bucky would still be where he belonged... at Captain America's side... with his very oldest friend.
Now things are twisted beyond belief.
The shield - the shield that Steve entrusted to Sam - has been abandoned, left behind just like Steve left Bucky.
Bucky knows Sam has guessed how he's feeling. Sam texts him nearly every day, asking how he is or if he fancies a trip to Loiusiana. Sometimes it's just jokes or thinly veiled insults, but he always, always messages him.
Bucky knows he doesn't deserve it.
He sits in his court-mandated counselling sessions and lets Doc drill her three rules into his head, trying to re-program him to bury all of the damage Hydra wrought inside his skull.
All the while, Bucky simply exists. He breathes and eats, and has nightmares. He wakes up crying on his bedroom floor, tangled in blankets, choking on sobs as though he's drowning in all the blood he's spilled.
He sits in his empty apartment and hates himself. Sam's messages are the only reprieve... until a new Captain America is announced.
Then Bucky feels that old cold fury overcome him. The Winter Soldier has been dormant for a long time, all but dead now, but sometimes Bucky feels shadows of him in the dark hours. Sometimes he remembers how it feels to crush and maim, and torture.
He doesn't feel like that now.
Looking at a stranger wearing his best friend's costume is an agony he never expected to feel. It's like seeing Steve's ghost before his eyes, if Steve's ghost had a hard smirk and a smugness that left Bucky feeling nauseous.
He sits on the floor of his apartment and stares at the TV screen in dismay, in disbelief, in disgust. There's a sheen of tears in his eyes and the anger is a cold, hard lump in his chest.
His phone vibrates and Bucky stares at it wordlessly. It's his daily text from Sam, this time with a simple message: "Don't do anything stupid".
Bucky stands up, his hands balling into fists.
It's time to pay the Falcon a visit.