Chapter Text
The train is quiet for a couple seconds, and it’s almost as if it shakes in anticipation, little quivers and creaking sounds shooting through the metal frame.
Bucky realises too late that it’s because a zombie hopped in the back wagon.
He hears Sharon scream, and runs. He runs to the start of the shivers, runs until he can see a backlit zombie standing over a body.
He knows, he knows who the zombie is before it even turns around.
Looking it into its eyes, he refuses to believe what his eyes and gut instincts are telling him, because it’s too bad to be true.
When Bucky heard the news of Steve being turned, he locked the information in the very corner of his mind, the same place where he kept all of Hydra. The emotions got locked too.
But now, standing in front of a zombie with the same suit and shield as Steve? The lock shatters into a million pieces, and so does his heart.
He realises that yes, finding that cure is the most important thing in the world right now, and he latches onto that thought when it lets out a soft gurgling noise.
They make eye contact, and Bucky wants nothing more than to disappear.
Yet, something in the empty eyes makes him think that maybe, he doesn’t have to wait for the cure. Maybe there’s enough Steve in there to stop the poison.
How rude of the zombie to shatter that dream. It lurches forward, roaring loudly and making Bucky take a step back.
“I don’t wanna fight you.” Bucky mumbles, tears forming in his eyes as he looks at the bloodstained, ripped skin showing under the uniform. (He ignores the voice in his head telling him Steve will recognise what he’s saying)
The zombie doesn’t care. It keeps lunging forward, clawing, biting and growling. Bucky can’t bring himself to do anything other than dodge and keep his distance.
He faintly hears Janet say something about Sharon behind him, but there’s a loud ringing in his ears that fogs up his brain. He doesn’t hear what she says.
Somewhere in his fuzzy brain his training and conditioning are yelling at him to kill the zombie, but the lovesick part of his mind is stopping him, and making him do the stupidest shit he could’ve ever pulled.
He uses the pairs of vibranium handcuffs Okoye gave him to restrain it, arms and legs.
And miraculously? It works. Even zombie Steve isn’t strong enough, nor does his poisoned brain give him the option to rip his own limbs off.
It’s not quiet anymore. Muffled voices are yelling words at him, words he can’t understand because his thoughts are too busy with Steve.
Sometimes he thinks he’s the zombie, and Steve is his obsession. He’s all Bucky can think about.
He sits down, knees drawn up to his chest and resting his chin on them. He’s barely out of the zombie’s reach, and he watches as Okoye uses another pair of handcuffs to cuff him to a metal pole.
There’s not a thing in the world, not a person in the universe, not a memory in his head, that ever hurt him as much as seeing the zombie, Steve, his Steve , lose everything that made him himself, and go crazy.
Everything is fucked up, so Bucky does what he does best. Look at Steve. He scans over every inch of sickly blue skin, seeing the bloody wounds and even holes he can look through, and once again he wants to disappear.
Nothing should ever hurt his Stevie like that.
But when Vision uses the stone to turn the world back to normal? He expects relief, happiness and seeing Steve whole and normal again.
Instead he gets a panicked person, with the same gaping wounds as earlier, now without the sick skin color.
A zombie without the undeadness.
Bucky almost passes out.