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This time it's pictures on the news: little girl's dead body with as little blurred as the fucking vultures can get away with. An explosion, a bomb somewhere, he didn't even wait to make sense of where before he managed to turn it off, except he could have let it play on and on for all the good it does.
And it's not even fragments. It's not pieces, it's not shreds, it's not mixed up, there's no mess.
He can smell the room. He can smell the fires, streets away, he can smell the dust from shattered stone, the dead, the smells of the house, food, the humidity in the air and the faecal smell of the dead body of the child on the floor, mixed with the blood-iron from her slashed throat.
He can see the handprint he leaves on the doorframe. The light of the fires in the dark, the -
All of it.
Steve finds him on the floor. His head is full of the girl and the smells and the light from the fires with no stars because of the smoke, Steve finds him on the floor because he can't move. When he turns the TV off he tries to go to the kitchen; ended up sitting down against the wall instead because he can't, can't stay up anymore, ends up curled around himself with his head in his hands because, because, for stupid reasons, because, like his body's trying to hide from what he knows, and he can't, he knows he can't, and Steve finds him on the floor.
And fuck, Christ, Mary Mother of God he should not be here.
Steve finds him on the floor and sits down beside him, picks up the kitten who's been walking around him and wailing, puts her to the side. Steve's voice sounds like he's coming from a hundred fucking miles away.
"Bucky." Steve's pulling his hands away from his face, for once more concerned with the right and Bucky can't think why, can't think, until Steve says, "Bucky, you made yourself bleed. Please, stop."
And there is. There. There is blood on his hand. Again. His mouth almost twists up. Blood on his fingers again. Except wrong hand. Except.
Steve reaches up and Bucky jerks his head away, away from Steve's hand reaching to touch the crescents in the skin that he cut with his own nails; says, "No, don't. Don't get it on you."
And there's no good reason, no . . . no thing to start it no cause but in the back of his head in the echo of his ears there's screaming and it might, might be his? He doesn't, he can't, it might be his. Steve's frowning at him and one line turns to two, two furrows, wrinkles in skin, faint worry to concern.
Steve touches his face, left hand now, the side where there's no blood. He says, "Bucky, you're bleeding - "
And for some reason it's funny, it's funny except it . . . isn't? shouldn't be? but it's funny and Bucky can hear the scratch of laughing in his own voice when he says, "It'll stop." And then it's not funny. Not funny. Then it's not funny and he wants to take it back, take it back because Steve flinches, Steve's face, expression flinches so he wants to take it back.
But Steve says, "You're right. It will. Because you're gonna come with me and I'm gonna do something about it, okay?" His thumb strokes Bucky's cheek, then fingers comb back Bucky's hair, he says, "You're not in your head right now, Buck, you know that."
Funny, funny, maybe funny and Bucky manages to say, "That's the only place I am," and Steve's mouth maybe quirks up a bit.
"Okay, maybe," he says. "You still need to let me fix this."
And Steve was small once, small, tiny, doll-like like a doll like the girl on the floor in her blood and Bucky says, "You can't fix this," shaking his head. His own voice sounds strange, sounds far away; the trickle of something down his cheek and he reaches up to touch it. Sees blood on his fingers again.
"I mean this," Steve says, touches the same place, light fingers, before Bucky can pull away this time. Sees his blood on Steve's fingers and throat closes; sees blood on Steve's fingers and his stomach turns. "And yeah, that I can fix. C'mere."
The nausea washes back, like dirty liquid in a rocking tub, and Bucky shakes his head. Says, "Just leave it. Steve, it's, I don't, just leave it," but now Steve's shaking his head this time.
"Bucky," he says, and he touches the left side of Bucky's face again, "there's stuff I can't do and letting you sit here and bleed without doing anything's one of'em. Please. C'mere."
Maybe there's help getting to his feet. He doesn't know, he just, he isn't on the floor now, Steve's hand pulling him gently, right hand to right hand like Steve doesn't care about the blood.
Then the stool in the bathroom. Steve's hands on his face, the side of his head, gentle, tilting to the left. The bathroom is copper and brown-red and the colour of white sand and things that are alive and he shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be.
Steve's sitting on the edge of the tub, and there's the slightest pull at Bucky's scalp that comes with cuts glued closed.
And Steve's asking, "Bucky, what happened?" and it's his name, over and over his name, since he was little, since he was a kid: too many Jameses too many everything, so just that one his. Except only with Steve, now. Only Steve's name. Only Steve's.
Only Steve asking Bucky, tell me, so he tries but before it was all one piece, before it was clear and now, now not really anymore. But he tries.
"Dead kid," he says, "on the TV, and then . . .in my head. Not now, not - back then," he says, shaking his head, trying to remember how this fits into words when there's too many words now and they all have different fucking shapes and sounds and it's like someone dumped too many fucking jigsaw puzzles into one pile and he has to find the right pieces. "Kid, dead girl. I cut her throat."
He has to look at the floor, can't look at Steve's face anymore. "She fought, didn't matter, I cut her throat and dropped her body and her blood went everywhere. Don't know her name," and he stumbles, in his head he stumbles, and remembers, and says, "I killed her brother in the other room. Maybe it was his blood on the door. And I didn't - "
He stops. Has to stop. Steve touches two fingers to his mouth, they get in the way but that, that, that doesn't matter, you do that to say stop you do that to say quiet and Steve's waiting for him to look up, anyway.
When he does Steve's voice is quiet. Quiet when he says, "That's over, Bucky. It's done. It's finished, it's over, and it wasn't your fault." And then, "Argue with me later, okay? Argue with me when you can think. For now just let me be right for a bit. Just. Do me a favour, and pretend I'm right."
Bucky says okay, maybe because he has to. It shouldn't get better, he shouldn't be able to think, he shouldn't . . . fuck, shouldn't fucking anything, but he can't . . . argue when Steve asks him not to. Can't fight when Steve pulls him to his feet with one hand, can't and doesn't -
Doesn't want to. Doesn't want to fight, oh, God, Christ, can he just not, not fight. Can he give up, please. Can he give up.
There's a girl in his head lying in blood and he can't claw her out and if he were better than he is, better person than he is maybe he'd get the knife, the gun, something to really try. There's one under the pillows, three beside the bed, so many in reach he could, he could, and he won't, he doesn't want to, just wants to stop. To stop. Just wants all of it to stop.
He lies down when Steve tells him to and the bed smells like them. And there's a thought, a thought that tries to be words and the words drip with the blood except Steve says Shhh and lies down beside him, kisses his forehead.
Says, "It's okay. Promise. Your head's just messed up, it'll stop, it'll come back, it always does. You don't need to do anything. Everything's okay. Promise." And there are -
- thoughts -
- words, so many of them, selfish, shameless, poisonous piece of shit, and weak and coward and so much disgust, and Steve says, "Don't."
Takes Bucky's hands away from his face. Traces the lines of the bones under his face, instead, temple and cheek and jaw. Cradles the side of Bucky's head and strokes his thumb over the cartilage of his ear, the shell; runs fingers over the space behind, underneath.
And he shouldn't let Steve do this and there are reasons, so many reasons he shouldn't and he does because it's fucking air in suffocation, he can breathe and he wants this and he'll pay for it some day but not now.
Not right now.
Right now Steve strokes the backs of curled fingers down the side of his neck and across his throat. Runs fingertips over his collar-bone and the curve of the notch, presses the flat of them into his sternum. Smooths his hand back around to cradle Bucky's head again and kiss his forehead.
And he'll pay for it someday but not right now; something will come, something will come, rip it out of his skin, his head, his mind, he'll deserve it but fuck, Christ, not now.
Steve's hand presses light, palm-flat against Bucky's stomach, marking out a spiral until he slides fingers and palm over Bucky's waist and hip to his lower back. He turns his hand, runs the tips of his fingers up Bucky's spine, tail-bone to cervical spine and then he flattens his hand out again over one shoulder and the other, skin and metal and the space between and back down. Fingers are warm, hand is warm and it feels good. Steve touches Bucky's hip-bones, his ribs. Touches his jaw, his cheekbones, circles the bone around his eyes.
Says, "It's okay. Promise."
And it isn't. And he'll pay for it.
Just.
Not now. Not yet. Pay for it later, but now is safe.
Not now.
Not yet.