Work Text:
No one's out here and I was not followed
Love, love...you're already home
Party's over and you don't look so good.
-
Bucky is teetering on an edge, high in the sky.
He's filled with the courage only drunk men know, tongue loose and lashing wounds even Bucky flinches from, spilling forth truth into riverbanks filled to the brim with blood.
Bucky is silent, bottle falling and rolling off to a side, clattering like the final tolls for the gallows. They call to him, slip over shoulders ready to fracture, knees just a hairs breadth away from buckling but always just managing to creak on, bones hollow and waiting to crash against concrete.
He stands, a silent shadow in an abandoned life, moving fluid like a horror from the deepest recesses of the world. A monster come back to life, drowned in his own sorrows and sins, choking on a noose that won't let up until it finally kills him. Snuffing his insignificant life out like a candle, wax melted and burning soft flesh, wick barely a speck before being blown into the wind, travelling the world to sing a forgotten man's song.
He shuffles, boots rough and heavy, carrying a soul that is like sludge, caked with the insides and fears of those he has delivered to the other side. However, he moves soundlessly to the door, limbs as smooth as a velvet interior of a coffin, luxurious when all it will hold is bones and ashes.
Long tendrils of hair, matted and frenzied, caress his neck, feeling like a knife and he spins. He is quick and lightning flashes in his eyes, a knife lodged firmly into the throat of a nearby mirror.
The glass splinters.
It's a beautiful web, filled with misfortune and reflecting a ghost back at him, pale blue eyes soulless, waiting. He thinks he catches sight of hair like burnt embers, melting and singing his skin in a past no longer belonging to him.
He moves once more.
Leaving the apartment in tatters, reeking of the stench of corpses that are already weeks old, more tombstones, more lives lost. The walls have seen horrors, the strength and fragility of a beast reborn, unchained and free to roam. Foaming, more like, with nothing but screaming and ripping in it's veins, the only options he can choose from, what he will ever have when faced with this life of his.
He must go.
Bucky slithers up the fire escape, as quiet as death but all the more frightening. Wearing the face of man, skin looking as if it was painted on by the very snow that drops quietly from the darkness above. Soft flakes pressing into flesh that doesn't react, scars that can't be erased, blood that will never stop gushing, and eyes that only want to see the end.
His grave is empty and is calling for him.
As he approaches the top of his most recent dwelling his back twitches.
He ignores it, convincing himself it is a sniper, ready to take him out with a single placed bullet to his head, brain frying and eager for the reprieve, practically crying, begging, for the forgiving taste of death.
He doesn't care anymore.
His back groans, like an unstable structure, a warning written in his muscles, a plead from his own soul perhaps? Bucky chuckles, sounding more like it was summoned from a place no man comes back from alive. He is living proof of that.
The open air greets him at the top of his mission.
His last mission.
The sky sings it's assent with more scattered white, blanketing a bustling city, covering it's life, hiding it from the legend, the man who calls this chill home.
Bucky crosses the rooftop, easy and breaths coming out spoiled and polluted. He feels nothing, despite him being in a state of alarming undress. Only a pair of pants, too big and flaked with blood, held up by a belt done so tight it bites into his skeletal like form, devouring him.
He surveys this city, a place colored home in sepia like tones, foggy and glassed, protected from the scum he has become and will never cease to be until his blood paints the very streets that helped raise him. It comforts him in the most distant of ways, a glimmer of warmth that he won't be alive long enough to possibly explore.
The ledge feels familiar, like a knife with a perfect balance of weight in his palm or a gun, rounds lending an intoxicating weight to his being, body only operational when being a weapon, treated like a weapon, handled like a weapon, weapon, wea-
Bucky thinks maybe, once upon a time, in a far off place where things were still abysmal, death a common neighbor to see coming and going through the streets, starving people with desperate gazes and desperate hearts, he was still able to be happy. If he had more time, borrowed time, he might have contemplated meaningless questions like his mother's perfume, his father's hands, possible siblings whose smiles might have given him insight into his own, what that facial tick would feel like when brought about naturally.
So many things fill his head, clogging and saturated with either ruby toned gunk, drying and painting everything with a horrid smell, or lost in black and white, yellowed with a life lived.
Stolen.
Lost.
He wishes for sincerity in his death, for the splattering of his skull against the sweetness of the ground to spell his regret, for his bones to scatter and shove through his skin in eagerness to prove they were used against their will, his skin splitting and mottled with stomach emptying honesty when he cries, from every pore, dead and unfeeling:
I am sorry.
Cheap words, barely worth the air they are taken and molded from but that is all he can offer to the world he helped scare. Creating and acting out the terrors of the night like a puppet, soul lost to the shocks of machines and the scorching heat of blank slates he would become time and again. He can never atone but he can prevent, bite his own tail, swallow himself whole until he ceases to exist. Never let himself revert, to relive, to be sharpened again and used to take thousands of lives without a single spare glance, a minute twitch or human like autonomy.
He will steal this mercy, unfortunately unable to repay the people, the victims, he has effected with his own corpse, but Bucky hopes this can stop that number from rising, from becoming any higher.
His back aches and he releases a scream unlike anything known, from the center of his being and pitched to bleed, spine shivering and ringing like an agony let loose onto the world only to be dragged back to the pit of tar it was forged, only this time to be destroyed.
Bucky has regrets and guilt that should have suffocated him the moment he could even begin to question his programming, the code, the numbers running in his head, the glitches of memories bubbling up. Like liquid lava exploding in plumes of flowers, heat burning anything it touched, pain unrivaled and fitting for an Asset attempting to become a human once more, even if not his choice at the start, triggered by someone else.
A catalyst.
Blonde hair.
Blue eyes.
Wings the color of translucent starlight.
Galaxies enveloped in those crystal mirrors.
His spine tingles, his own appendages giving a faint creak before slowly shuffling out.
Bucky feels his left, the one stolen and crafted in a lab filled with poison, glinting with chrome like detail, sharp and chilling like the future it holds. It is a symbol along with his left arm, matching sets of seamless technology, swift and making death have no sound, untouchable in its electronic brilliance.
His right wing, however, makes Bucky pause only for a moment.
He was once convinced his wings were both like steel, gleaming expanses of a quiet winter, reflecting the killing machine within.
Instead when ripped back, the sleek claws of his right had fallen away to reveal war weary cogs, glinting with dings and scrapes. Battle worn and stilling something within Bucky at the sight. Fingers that have gouged out countless souls pausing to stop and stare at the physical reminder, the glaring proof that he was once a man of his own will.
But it doesn't matter.
It can't matter.
Tears are hot and new to Bucky again, not being able to recall ever leaking them because they were taken from him, these blatant displays of human emotion, things he shouldn't be allowed to feel anymore.
Bucky takes a breath. It's stifling and freeing all at once, tasting of countries bathed in ice and mountains swallowing his body whole only to spit back out a demon, built from his skills, his hands, his heart.
He can't take another breath, he just can't.
Bucky shuffles forward, boots a stark contrast to the blankets of pure white dusting this city, his cradle and soon to be tomb. Bucky doesn't care as long as he will be put down, not even wasting bullets or energy, the world taking his life quietly and effectively. He shouldn't be so lucky but this is the only way for him to leave, to be snuffed out like a dream forgotten in the bleary minutes after awakening.
He can do this.
Bucky's wings, corporeal blessings that were twisted by filthy hands, are dimming, he can feel it. They are shrouded in a slight shadow now, he can feel the weight physically, growing slowly. His body is weak, pushing past what a average human should be able to sustain, however the lack of care is shading him with death. His parlor is like frost on a window, he knows, but now he's actually feeling his bones rattle, organs being devoured for a remainder of strength to stand, to try and keep living.
Bucky will end that.
It's all over now.
Bucky feels something, a crack of a mask, muscles trying to lift his lips and Bucky thinks he can truly die in peace now.
He takes a step forward and-
Like a flash, a clap of thunder is echoing in his ears with a metallic cry and feet with the power to fly travel to him faster than even he can register. They are painted with pure terror, distraught things like a rabbit's heart and a newly born calf's footing, skittering and frantic. Then warmth envelops him, he's wrapped in something that can be defined as a cage built from fire, or a grip tinged with steel and underlying softness wrapping around his waist, bones greeting the bars with a biting welcome.
Only it's skin.
Unlike Bucky's own, splitting and barely clinging to bone, carved by countless encounters with scalpels and manic grins, even his own knives have tasted his flesh, this person's skin is smooth and beautiful. It slides past Bucky's rib cage like forgiveness, softly pressing against bones that relish and screech for more. A solid mass of a body pressed to his back, arms carefully slipped under his wings, a face buried between his shoulder blades, as if bowed in prayer.
But in this split second of being anchored back to this life, he realizes.
Bucky knows this person.
Would know them every century and through any world. Drag him through hell and brimstone, paint him in black and give him razor blades for a soul and he will still know who this being is. This soft and resilient force, this stubborn and persistent existence.
"Bucky."
And that punches air from his body, barely audible but sounding like a scream to Bucky's own ears.
Steve's voice burns like nothing he's ever felt, rings throughout every fiber of his being. That deep voice is saturated with terror, weighed down with sadness so bottomless it's made his own ghost of a heart drop. A voice he's heard and has engraved itself into his very bones, knows the timbre and bass of this voice, the scratchiness of allergies and wet globs of sickness. The crack of a whip when fueled with anger and the empty echoes of resounding loneliness, matching graves lining the tone and swelling the normally sharp tongue.
But what truly gets Bucky is the feeling of desperation.
The desperation shining through everything, grabbing and clutching and clinging to Bucky like a dying breath. Desperation so monumental it's pouring out and congesting the air, snow appearing like small pleas brushing past his lashes, grazing his cheeks and crying out for him. It's the desperation that is bursting forth, as if flowing from a bottle finally cracked and helpless to any repairs that the owner might attempt. This desperation is so thick that it could be considered suffocating in it's potency, making his throat close and eyes blur even further with tears being pulled from somewhere hidden to Bucky. They continue to stream while wind, reprimanding and lashing, whip at his face.
"No, no, no. God no, please." It sounds like he's bargaining, but Bucky can't possibly- "Not without me."
That stills everything.
Bucky's vision blurs and his lungs choke before he can even take his next breath. A moment later his voice comes out snarled and with an unholy fury no human should be able to fully comprehend. His throat rubs raw with the pure, unaltered rage that flies from the pit of his stomach, acidic and ready to burn.
"What...?"
But not even his tone, singeing the flurries of soft white floating nearby, can cut through what Steve says next.
"I'm coming with you," Breathed out evenly, controlled, calm. Tasting like defeat only the owner is content to lie down and cease to exist. "I didn't get you back, get the chance to see you again, only for you to leave alone."
Then those arms are slipping out from around Bucky, the temporary blanket of safety and the sweetness of the familiar being ripped away, his entire being frothing with outrage and simpering with pain.
But that body, tall and broad, healthy and strong, is next to him now. Taking a hand of metal with so much care and looking...
Looking so much like him.
The eyes that were the first to cut through the slush of Bucky's brain are now washed out by something tired and akin to a parasite, robbing the sky of it's hue. They are the eyes of a man who has nothing left to keep him attached to this world and those who inhabit it, hard as they may try. His face is sunken in it's own right, not being able to physically show the wear and tear like Bucky's own but looking aged beyond millenniums instead of decades. Lines invisible and covered by serum enhanced perfection are practically highlighted to Bucky in the slight draw of a brow, the quiet hush of whispered agony falling from lashes, and the broken turn of his lips.
His body, though towering over a shadowy and memory tasting haze of a smaller figure, looks for all intents and purposes, ready to fall apart at the brush of the snow falling. Barely kept together by threads of pure determination are now worn thin, ready to snap and betray the person they should be protecting, holding strong. His hair has lost its golden shine, sun once able to reflect amber waves of grain, now being swamped in bitter cold and sprayed with white flecks of chill.
But it's his wings that freeze Bucky's blood.
Those diamond colored wings that turned to the softest texture as soon as your fingertips brushed it, flooding you with warmth unlike anything known. Those tall and burdensome looking appendages that looked as if to be weighing down a smaller man at the time with their sheer girth and mass. Those beautiful blessings that flushed the sweetest pink and reflected roses in it's encased beauty when embarrassed, Bucky just knows, and reflected like gold when truly happy. Those wings sparkling and catching the night sky and giving you the moon for a night, letting you bury your face in them and sleep among the stars.
It all bleeds out when he sees them.
Cracked.
Broken.
Chipped.
Gaping with holes smashed in anger and spite, hands ripping through those wings, Steve's soul, and throwing their shining essence to the ground to die. The length has been reduced by pieces falling, Bucky watching with a surreal sort of anguish as diamonds fall before him, disintegrating into the snow covered roof. Steve doesn't move, doesn't react to a literal piece of his very existence falling off, no pain crossing his face or recognition. His wings are dull in luster that makes Bucky tremble and sagging, reflecting the cracked asphalt of the building and the abundant white that is slowly smothering everything.
Bucky lets out a noise, shattered and strangled.
What happened?
Who did this?
His answer is instantaneous and doesn't lessen the bile trying to climb up his throat.
HYDRA.
SHIELD.
The world.
He knows his face, bone thin, is now dripping with hate.
This fucking world.
The people who had him ripped apart and designed into a monster, setting him loose on those who opposed them are one thing. The lust for power that slithered through the minds of the men who gave him his part, as if in a play, Bucky executing it perfectly because he was truly made into the perfect marionette. The horrifying beings whose eyes bulged with glee and delight at his pain, relished his sorrow, built upon his anger and turned him into a gun. Pointing him at everyone for the sole purpose of forwarding the goals of hungry individuals, endlessly hollow beings. They took away everything about him and the strange thing is Bucky could stomach it. He knew all the reasons why because at the base of it all he knew who they were, what they were. What they did was textbook villain, their actions, motives, and everything about them never let Bucky delude himself to thinking they might've felt some sort of guilt or regret.
But Steve.
Steve always fighting for those who couldn't.
Always standing up for what he believed in.
Always trying to do what was right for everyone.
Always taking on the weight of the world even if he didn't have to.
Bucky's eyes swell and the wetness overflowing from his eyes that had slowed to a drop or two is back to gushing forth. They're heavy, unstoppable and he must look like he's mourning.
He is.
For the world to do what it did to him? Fine. He'll pay the price with his life and the endless torture he should endure in an afterlife that could only be filled with fire and the souls of the damned.
But to do this to Steve?
The world deserves to burn.
Bucky is breathing heavy and Steve must mistake it for a different emotion because he lets go of Bucky's hand quickly, eyes big and filled with so much fear Bucky could almost choke. His hand acts on it's own accord, the mere moments lying empty is already too much and it snatches at that wide palm and holds it firmly in his own. Steve looks shocked and is all too suddenly radiating happiness from every pore, a tired shine lighting up his wings, damaged but still giving it their all.
Bucky pauses.
For a moment, a brief and insidious moment, he actually entertains them both stepping off. Being freed from this world that only seeks to use them for their own gain, not sparing a shred of concern for the disaster they leave, the trauma they will have to handle in the nights to come. How nice it'd be to take Steve away from this and they can both be together for this fall, until Bucky is pried away and dragged by chains to where he belongs in hell.
But the very next minute he is discarding that idea, sparing nothing to keep it around.
Steve has to live.
The groggy recollection his mind can attempt has at least offered him more than enough to supply that he has always managed to keep Steve alive. Willing to do absolutely anything to get Steve just another breath, praying and begging for him to stay with Bucky. An overwhelming surge of bubbling emotions are flooding his head and heart the longer he's in Steve's presence, feeling faintly the possible warmth of his hand in his, looking to Bucky and waiting for his decision, and ready to fight if Bucky tries to die alone, Bucky's sure.
Steve cuts through his muddled thoughts with only a whisper, "Wherever we're going Buck, I don't mind," His voice is somehow light despite the ledge's edge under their feet, the wind sliding over them, not swaying but waiting to see where they'll go. "As long you're with me, I'm not scared."
Steve's smile is blinding, eyes wet and spilling over, as those words leave his lips.
Bucky's mind is made, just like that.
He steps down from the ledge, back onto the roof, back into the world, back into the fight. Guilt already swirling and waiting to claw at his body, wishing him death everywhere he goes, if only in the back of his mind, a slow crawl of sorts and regret seeping into his wounds. There's a million ways this could turn horrendous, could end in blood and more suffering for not only himself but those around him, especially Steve. He's an abomination, not the same boy raised by hunger and then given a gun and made into a man by war and death. He is a tragedy and a nightmare rolled into one and the days that will pass, he's sure, will be the hardest trials he'll ever face, even more so than the scrambled remembrance of his struggle to stay human, to not become the Winter Soldier.
But.
But he's also choosing to keep fighting the people who've helped hurt them, to keep seeing another day together, to face this life together.
Bucky is making the choice to try to take another breath, to snatch the choices he can have now, to finally start to possibly repay his debt, as implausible as that sounds. It'll never be enough for Bucky, but he can try to use the remainder of this life for good, a true purpose that doesn't involve him becoming a machine. He can take this life with calloused hands drenched in blood, his body battered and a reminder of his seventy years as a weapon, his wings crooked and mismatching, showing the world the proof that he was punished at the hands of HYDRA, the Russians, so many.
And he can do this.
He can...
Along with Steve.
Steve who is so different and so much the same that it almost physically hurts, more excruciating than anything his body or soul might be suffering from. Steve who will gladly throw away his life, as if it means nothing, just so Bucky won't have to be alone. Steve who has changed and been worn down to barely nothing, only for the serum to gloss it over with a shine and to keep up the charade that he has no lasting scars.
When Bucky steps down, his wings once frozen over, now begin to thaw. Gears that didn't move give a weak hiss as they start to crank, his right wing compressing and hissing out steam once more, just like Bucky thinks it's always sounded. His left shuffles too, panels no longer silent but giving an almost streamline shift, a melodic chime when shifting and re-calibrating. Small breaths of life spreading, already making themselves known and it goes completely ignored by the host.
Because Bucky doesn't even notice.
He's too busy making sure to tug Steve back down with him.
Steve, whose eyes are wide, not shocked or pleased, just wide and desperate and reaching for Bucky as if he was a saint. Whose legs shake and match Bucky's groaning ones and they both finally collapse into one another.
Though breaking down, eyes losing it's color and the shadows encroaching in Bucky's vision, he feels something warm. The frost still falls, covering them in silent prayers, maybe of those they can avenge, Bucky's not sure, too wrapped up in arms that feel like home.
He's tired, years of fatigue and torture making his head swim, barely stay afloat, can only stay somewhat upright. There's so many things he wants to say, wants to do now, can only hope to accomplish and to survive the fear and regret of not falling again, for the last time. Bucky has so much, just so much of everything but right now all he wants to do is...is...
"Steve." He whispers, a corner of his mouth ticking up and he knows Steve feels it by the way he stiffens and melts into a tremble, silent sobs heard despite having no sound. His own cheeks are still wet and renewed tears cascade down and fall into fresh snow clamoring for their futures, their hopes.
"Let's go home."