Chapter Text
You still having those nightmares?
All the time.
Raynor liked to keep him writing. Finishing his list of amends had earned Bucky a gold star in her book, a brand new assignment—dream journaling, she called it, mouth pursed around the word in a way that told him what she really thought.
"It's good mental exercise, anyway," Raynor said, with a small shrug. "Get you out of your head for a change. And who knows—you might even learn a thing or two about yourself along the way."
Bucky glared at her.
Begrudgingly, he agreed to try it out for a week.
But then a week turned into two, then three, a month, then a year, and the next thing he knew it was 2025 and he had nothing to show for this new project except a growing pile of notebooks stacked on his apartment floor. He still dreamt of his time as the Winter Soldier. He still woke up sobbing about his life before the war. Nothing had changed.
And then, in the spring of 2025, something did.
For seven days straight, Bucky Barnes dreamt of Wanda Maximoff.
"Wanda Maximoff," Raynor said, eyebrow arched. "Again?"
Bucky stared grimly at her and jut a nod. His knee had begun jiggling; he slid a hand over it to still it.
"Right," Raynor sighed. She rubbed between her eyes like she was already anticipating a headache, then held his notebook up, where a single page marked the last week's entries.
Wanda Maximoff, it said, scratched and slashed onto the page seven times.
"You're going to have to give me more than just her name, James," Raynor said.
She was trying so hard to be patient today, and that only irritated him even more. "What do you want me to say, doc? It was the same dream—almost. Always the same dream, almost."
In his mind's eye, he could see them, seven Wandas at once, each one more peculiar than the last. Last night's Wanda had been the strangest of the bunch; she looked like she'd crawled right out of a picture from the 40s, dress, pearls, the whole nine yards. Bucky closed his eyes, hoping to get the image of her out of his head, the memory of her desolate eyes.
That was the one thing they all had in common—all the Wandas looked at him with the same set of desolate eyes.
"And when she spoke to you, was it still the same words?" Raynor asked.
"Bucky," he said, echoing last night's Wanda, echoing all of them: "Bucky, please—you have to help me."
Raynor considered this for a moment. "I didn't know you and Wanda Maximoff were..." She broke off then, giving him a look.
Bucky glared at her, hard-jawed.
"Close," Raynor said finally. "I didn't know you were close."
"We're not," Bucky growled, then winced, hearing how that made it sound. "I mean, we're—" He waved a hand: "Wanda and I are..."
"Friends?" Raynor suggested.
"We didn't know each other that well," Bucky said, crossing his arms. Raynor's eyebrows shot up, clearly surprised. Bucky rolled his eyes. "Don't get me wrong, doc, I would trust Wanda Maximoff with my life. But there wasn't much time to get acquainted, what with the world going to hell every single time we met."
"And after?" Raynor asked.
Bucky opened his mouth to answer, then stopped himself at the sight of her pen. She'd uncapped it at some point in all this and had it hovering at the ready over his file.
"You and I both know what happened after," he said finally. She'd received the same heavily-redacted report they all had. "She was cleared off all charges," he felt the need to add.
"And you really don't know where she is?" Raynor pressed.
"Gee, doc, here I thought you wanted to talk about my nightmares, not interrogate me about my missing friend."
Raynor pursed her lips, studying him now. "You know, James," she began, "if you knew where Wanda Maximoff was—"
"I don't," Bucky snapped.
"But if you did—"
"I don't—"
"—then now might be the time to consider going to see her."
That stopped him.
"You think I should look for Wanda?" Bucky asked.
"I think it wouldn't hurt to try."
Bucky frowned. "And then what? I just walk up to her and ask her why she's in my head?"
"Well, maybe not in those exact words," Raynor said. She put her pen away and handed him his notebook back. "But your subconscious is clearly trying to tell you something. Something that has to do with Miss Maximoff, don't you think?"
Bucky looked down at his latest page, still frowning. It was hard to argue when the proof was right there, in his own handwriting: Wanda Maximoff, again and again.
"Do you know anyone who might know where she is?" Raynor asked, and no, he didn't. No one did, not even Sam, and he was about to tell Raynor as much when—when it suddenly hit him.
There was one other person he could try.
It took Barton six rings to pick up, which, in hindsight, should have been the first sign. The second came a moment later: "Hello?"
Bucky pulled the phone away to check if he'd dialed the right number, saw that he had. But—was that a child?
"Hello?"
It was. Clint's son—and Bucky recalled a little boy, no older than five or six, with Clint's arm around him during Stark's memorial. What was his name? Clint had told him, mentioned the boy was named after—
"Nate?" Bucky said. He cleared his throat. "Is this Nate? Hey, buddy, I'm—I'm looking for your dad. Is he around?"
There was a long pause on the other end. Then: "Dad can't come to the phone right now," the boy said.
"He can't?" Bucky furrowed his brow. "Is he busy?"
"He's in the barn," Nate informed him dutifully. "Mama says we can't disturb him." Then: "Who's this?"
"Bucky."
"Bucky?" and Bucky could picture him scrunching his eyebrows at the name.
"I—uh, I work with your dad." When Nate didn't say anything, he went on: "It's why I'm calling, actually. I really need to talk to him. It's important. Can you go get him for me?"
Another pause, longer this time, like Nate was really thinking it over this time, weighing what he knew about his father's work versus his mother's request. Bucky turned on his heel, pacing back towards his kitchen counter. He'd made it there and back to the window again before Nate finally spoke again.
"Dad can't come to the phone right now," he said, this time with a tone of finality. He sounded sad to say it, almost; worried and unsure. Bucky let out the breath he hadn't noticed he was holding, resigned.
"Alright. I'll just try and catch him later—" He broke off then, listening. A woman was speaking, soft and far away: "Nate? I thought I asked you to pick up your—is that dad's phone?"
"Uh-huh," Nate said, and then his voice grew further away, too, like he was holding it out: "I thought it was Katie. But it's not."
"Oh, honey. You're not supposed to answer dad's phone, remember?" There was a muffled sound as the phone switched hands, then: "Hello?"
"Laura," Bucky said immediately. "Laura, hey, it's me—"
"Bucky?" Laura said.
"He says he works with dad," Nate piped up. "I told him dad was in the barn."
"Ah," Laura said, and then she put her hand over the receiver, though Bucky could hear her still, calling out for Nate's siblings, sending him into the kitchen to get a snack with his sister. "Bucky, are you still there? Hold on a sec, okay..."
A door creaked; Laura went outside. He could hear her walking, putting distance between herself and the house.
"You're calling about Wanda, aren't you," Laura said.
"Yeah," Bucky said, relieved. How did she know? How could she possibly know?
But Laura only sighed, the sound low and heavy. "Yeah, Strange said he was heading to Sam's next," she said.
Bucky frowned then. He was clearly missing something. What was Laura talking about?
"We haven't told the kids yet. Clint locked himself inside the barn the second he found out. He's still—" She hesitated, "—processing."
"Laura," Bucky said. Something inside of him was stirring, some inexplicable sense of dread. Something had happened; something was wrong.
"I can tell him you called," Laura offered. "But right now, I don't think he's ready to discuss plans."
"Plans?" Bucky echoed.
"For the funeral," Laura said—and everything in Bucky went cold and still.
"What? Laura, what are you talking about? What's going on?" Something had happened; something was wrong. The pieces were clicking, falling into place: Laura had known why he'd called; Laura had been expecting his call. "Who...who died?"
And even as he said it, a part of him already knew.
It was as if some part of him had known all along.
"Wanda died," Laura said. "I'm so sorry, Bucky. She's gone."
He dreamt of her again that night, Wanda as he'd first met her, standing in the parking garage of the Leipzig-Halle Airport. It was dream folding out of a memory, and Bucky'd had enough of those to know how they usually played out.
"Bucky," Wanda said—dead; gone—and Bucky flinched. "Bucky, please—"
He shook his head, keeping his eyes on the ground. There was a joke in this, he was sure, a cruel and ugly joke; someone out there had to be laughing at him.
"You have to help me," Wanda said.
He woke up screaming. He always did when he dreamed of her.
Panting, he reached for his notebook, then brushed crumpled cigarette cartons and empty take-out boxes off his coffee table, looking for a pen.
Wanda, he wrote, fast and quick, pen dragging down at the last letter due to his trembling hand. He'd pressed down so hard that the ink had bled onto the next page, and the next, and the next.
His mouth quivered just looking at it.
Snarling, Bucky snatched the notebook up and threw it at the wall.
"I think I'm going insane," he said, curling forward to put his face in his hands.
He couldn't care less that he could feel Raynor's eyes burning a hole in his head, that he could practically hear the gears that were turning in her own. Eight days of nightmares were all it took to break him, who would have thought?
"You're grieving, James," Raynor said, not unsympathetically.
She'd been more than happy to write him off that way the second he told her Wanda was dead. Relieved even, Bucky thought. Grief made it all make sense; grief made what was happening to him less strange. It didn't even matter that he'd started having nightmares long before he'd found out.
It happens, Raynor'd said. Sometimes, your heart knows before you know.
Bucky could have laughed at her.
"I know grief, doc. This isn't grief. This is something else."
Raynor didn't say anything for a while. But she wasn't writing, either, and when Bucky finally looked up, he found her watching him with another one of her careful, thoughtful looks.
"Why don't you tell me about Wanda," she said finally. And, before Bucky could so much as grit his teeth, she added, stern: "And don't tell me you didn't know her very well, James, because that can't be true. You fought on the same side, in the same war—twice, might I add," and there was a hardness to the way she said it, a wisdom; nothing bonded strangers together faster than mutual suffering in the face of war. "You must have known her a little, at least. Talked to her once, or twice."
Bucky stared at her, lips pressed tightly together. He didn't like thinking of Wanda in battle, even if most of his memories of her took place that way. From the first time he'd seen her use her powers—to stop T'Challa from ripping his neck open, no less—to the shock and disbelief he felt every single time he realized she could do more. He'd seen her carry the weight of a collapsing tower; wipe out entire armies; destroy the man she loved, all without breaking so much as a sweat.
"James," Raynor said, calling his attention back. Bucky blinked. She'd set her pen and pad aside and was sitting with her hands folded in her lap. "I can't help you if you don't talk to me. You know that. I am asking you to try."
Bucky swallowed hard.
"We talked once," he said, throat dry.
Raynor nodded encouraging, as if to say: go on.
He sucked air in through his clenched teeth. His knee was jiggling again, but he ignored it, hands clenched inside the pockets of his jacket.
"They didn't offer her a pardon," he said finally. Raynor's brow furrowed, not following. "After the Raft—after Steve and Romanoff broke them out, before they brought me to Wakanda, there was—" He broke off, tried again: "Romanoff managed to pull a few pardons for members of Steve's team: Sam, Clint Barton, Scott Lang and herself. Steve was out of the question, of course, but Wanda—they didn't offer her one, either. They wanted to lock her up. They were afraid of her." He took a breath, exhaling sharp: "Wanda didn't even know me. But she helped me. And in return..." He shook his head. "I told her I owed her a debt for what she did."
Raynor thought about this. "And what did she say?"
"Nothing at the time," He hung his head, then lifted it again wearily. "She wasn't really talking back then. The Raft..."
Raynor nodded a second later. Her mouth thinned knowingly. She let a couple minutes pass while he reigned himself back in. "You mentioned they wouldn't give her a pardon because they were afraid of her," she said finally. "What about you? Were you ever afraid of her?"
"Never," Bucky said. He didn't even have to think about it.
Raynor looked less convinced. "What about when you dream of her?" she asked. "You call them nightmares for a reason, James. You've said you wake up screaming."
"Not because of her," Bucky said.
"Then why?" Raynor asked.
The question stopped him. He'd never really thought about it before, the feeling he got every time he woke up. It was the kind of terror he couldn't put into words. Like a wave washing over him, swallowing him whole; like the ground beneath coming apart, dragging him through. But also, something else. Something he couldn't explain.
He went straight home after, stumbling into his apartment, exhausted and strung out. He was glad to have made it all, and sat himself in front of his TV, turning it on to whatever was on while he checked the dozen or so half-crumpled packs on his coffee table for a cigarette he might have missed. They didn't work to keep him awake anymore, not like they had during the war. But it was like Raynor said: it wouldn't hurt to try, even if he was only delaying the inevitable.
He already knew he was going to dream of Wanda that night.
And he did; he dreamed of her in the quinjet, the day they arrived in Wakanda, her long hair—now dyed red—carefully arranged to hide the bruises the shock-collar had caused around her neck. His heart sank the second he recognized the memory; he'd done this to himself, hadn't he, bringing it up with Raynor.
Wanda turned to him then. "Bucky," she said, and Bucky crumpled immediately and turned away, willing himself to wake up. He stepped out onto the Palace helipad, refusing to look at her.
Wanda trailed after him, relentless. "Please," she said.
Wake up wake up wake up—
"You have to—"
And something in him snapped then: "I can't," he spat, then stopped, shocked to hear his own voice. He'd never spoken to her in a dream before.
Looking at Wanda, he saw his own shock reflected on her face. She turned to look past her shoulder, as though expecting someone to appear.
No one did.
"Bucky," Wanda said then, urgent and low, and when she looked at him again, he steeled himself, holding her gaze and said: "I can't, Wanda."
Out on the helipad, there was nothing to hold onto, nowhere to hide, nothing to stop him from shaking.
"I can't help you," Bucky said, hurt and angry: at her; at himself. "You're dead."
"You look like hell," Sam declared, not at all surprised to see him coming down into the engine room.
"I've been having trouble sleeping," Bucky replied.
He sank down onto the bottom step and lit a cigarette. It took him a couple of tries; his hands were shaking too much. Sam spared him a glance, looking concerned, but refrained from saying anything, and Bucky gladly repaid him in kind by not pointing out that the foundation bolts Sam was tinkering with were perfectly fine.
"So," Sam said, after some time had passed, "Strange came to see you too, huh?"
Bucky'd been about to light his second cigarette; he stopped and pulled his lighter away. "Nope," he said. He pocketed the cigarette and added: "Laura told me."
Sam looked at him then. "Laura?" he repeated, and Bucky scowled: Just how many mutual Lauras did they know? "Laura Barton?"
"I called looking for Clint, ended up talking to her instead," Bucky said.
Sam fell silent, and Bucky watched as it slowly dawned on him that he'd assumed wrong: the strange doctor hadn't visited Bucky; no one had considered to tell him; no one had even called. Sam put his wrench away. "I'm sorry," he said.
Bucky waved him off. "Forget it. You were—" He gestured toward the engine: "—busy," but Sam only shook his head, refusing to take the out. He sighed heavily, swiping the back of his head against his sweating brow.
"I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to tell people." Sam averted his eyes then, ashamed. "I still don't." He sat down, and without his work in front of him, he was already slowly slipping away. Sam hung his head, shoulders slumping under the weight of everything he'd been desperately putting off—grief, Bucky thought; guilt. He kicked Sam's foot lightly with his own, and Sam looked up. His eyes were glassy.
"How—how much did Laura tell you?" he asked.
Bucky shrugged, making a face. "She said there wasn't much to tell," he said. "Just that Strange came by to inform them that Wanda was..." He trailed off, still unable to say it.
Sam's mouth tightened, but he nodded as if to confirm Laura's story. "Strange wouldn't even tell me how she died," he said. "And when I asked about the body—" Sam let out a shuddering breath. He clasped his hands. "I keep thinking, you know, if I'd tried harder..."
"No," Bucky said empathically, "Sam, no, come on—"
Sam ignored him. "If I'd tried just a little harder, if I'd found her, then maybe I could've—"
"Could've what?" Bucky interjected.
"Could've done something," Sam said forcefully. "Anything—" and he took his wrench and threw it hard across the room. It hit the wall with a thud.
They both stared at the dent in the wood, Sam panting, Bucky struggling to find his voice. "Look," he managed. "I'm not happy to admit it, but magic's above our pay grade. We'd have better chances fighting aliens or robots—" and Sam turned on him then, looking betrayed. "I mean it, Sam. A magic multiversal war? How the hell could we have helped with that? Tell me, what would your game plan have—"
"I don't know," Sam snapped. "I don't know—" and then all his grief came pouring out of him all at once, like a tidal wave. "But she was my friend," he said, sobbing. "Wanda was my friend," and Bucky watched, helpless and shocked as Sam began to fall apart, realizing then that that was all that mattered. If Wanda was in trouble, of course Sam was going to help, magic and pay grades be damned. If your friend needed you—and fuck it, Sam was going to think he'd lost his mind.
"Do you—do you dream of her?" Bucky asked. "Sam—do you dream of Wanda?"
Sam looked up, confused, his eyes wet and red. "What?"
"Have you dreamt of her lately? Ever since you found out?" Bucky asked, and now Sam was really looking at him, brow furrowed like he wasn't sure if Bucky was being serious or not. "I'm serious," Bucky said grimly. "Have you dreamt of Wanda?"
"No," Sam said finally. "No, I haven't," and Bucky swallowed hard.
"Well, I have," he said. "I've been dreaming of her for the last nine days," and when Sam gaped at him, looking more confused than ever, Bucky continued: "At first, I thought it was just me; me and my broken brain again. But—but then I called Barton and found out she was—" and he forced himself to say it: "—dead. And I don't know what it means, but—" Bucky looked at him, earnest: "Sam, you gotta believe me." He didn't know what to do otherwise.
Sam continued to stare at him. And then he sat up a little straighter, listening carefully now. "I believe you," Sam said. "Tell me what's going on."
They went back to the house, where Bucky told him everything, describing nightmare after nightmare after nightmare until Sam held a hand up and said: "Hold on, wait a sec—what do you mean?"
"What do you mean what do I mean?" Bucky shot back. "She was in a dress. She had an apron. She looked like she'd crawled right out of a movie from the—"
"Was she in black and white?" Sam interjected.
Bucky looked at him; Sam looked dead serious. "Yeah," he said after a moment, "she was," and then Sam was going over to the drawers behind him, rummaging inside. He pulled a folder out and slapped it on the table, then flipped it open and began scattering papers and photographs around. When he found what he was looking for, he held it up for Bucky to see: it was a photo of Wanda smiling. She had one hand on her hip and the other holding a phone to her ear.
"Did she look like this?" Sam asked.
Bucky took the photo from him, throat going tight. He nodded. It was Wanda exactly as he'd dreamed her. "Where—where did you get this?"
Sam was spreading the rest of the photographs on the table, laying them out like playing cards. "Tictac's friend worked the Westview Anomaly. Scott told him I was looking for Wanda, and he slipped me these." Sam glanced his way: "He mentioned they sent you a file, too—"
Bucky scoffed. "They sent me a piece of paper," he said. "Something about Wanda creating a fake forcefield that ran the perimeter of a town—"
Sam made a face and said, "Yeah, but no. It wasn't a fake forcefield. It was a fake reality. Sitcoms," he said, and Bucky stared at him, not following. Sam sighed and went on: "Multiple sitcoms—there were broadcasts," and then he took the photo from Bucky's hands and added it to the line-up: "50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s—any of these familiar?"
Bucky looked at the other photos: Wanda in a checkered shirt and suspenders; Wanda in a bathrobe, sitting in an armchair; Wanda standing next to a woman wearing a purple turtleneck. Wanda, glowing and pregnant.
Bucky dragged the first three forward. Next to him, Sam inhaled sharply. "Holy shit," he said.
Bucky looked at him. "You don't think—"
Sam was already nodding: "She's alive."
Bucky went to bed that night with a two-part plan he and Sam had devised: figure out where Wanda was and find out how they could help her. Slipping into the dream came effortlessly for him now that he was no longer fighting it, and between one breath and the next he found himself no longer in the Wilson's living room, but transported to a large, sterile hall, instead. There were two empty glass boxes stacked on platforms in the next room, and behind them a row of machines. Bucky didn't recognize any of it.
If this was another memory, it certainly wasn't his.
"Bucky," Wanda said then, and his breath caught at the sight of her covered in blood from head to toe. She limped when she stepped forward, left foot bent at an awkward angle. Snapped, more like it. Bucky went to her immediately; up close, she looked even worse: the cut on her forehead was long and deep, the blood from it trickling down her face, her lips were chapped and deathly pale. She'd lost too much blood.
"Wanda," he said, and without thinking he put his hands on her shoulder to steady her. Wanda flinched at his touch, head turning down. "What happened? Where are you? What is this?" and he couldn't spot any other injuries on her, but there was blood on her hands; Bucky took one of her hands in his own and inspected it. The blood wasn't hers.
"Please," Wanda whimpered. She tried to pull her hand away, but he closed his fingers around it.
"No," he said. "No, I'm not letting you go," and the hand in his was warm; a reminder: Wanda was alive. "Tell me what to do; tell me how to help you."
Wanda looked at him then with big, eyes wide and full of disbelief. She seemed surprised that he believed her; relieved that he finally believed her. "Bucky, please," she said, "you have to help me," and he stared at her for a second, not understanding, until Wanda curled her own fingers and squeezed his hand.
Bucky swallowed hard and squeezed back.
"I'm going to help you, Wanda," he promised.
He woke up flat on his back on the living room floor with his heart pounding in his chest, looking up at Sam; Sam looked horrified. Bucky thought it was because of the screaming; he should have warned Sam about the screaming—but then he heard voices speaking, somewhere from the left.
"Is Uncle Bucky all right?"
"Why were his eyes red?"
"Should we call a doctor?"
Cass and AJ's voices, and then Sarah's, calm and soothing: "Uncle Bucky's okay, babies. Don't worry, he's okay," and Bucky turned and saw the three of them huddled together by the staircase. Sarah had one arm around each boy and was gently trying to herd them back upstairs. Once they were gone, Sam held out an arm and pulled him up.
"Whatever's happening to you, it ain't nightmares," Sam said.
Bucky shivered. He curled his empty hand, the one that had held Wanda's, and looked at it. It had all felt real; too real, even.
"The boys are right," Sam was saying, wary: "you do look like you need a doctor. Do you want me to call Raynor?"
Bucky shook his head. Raynor wouldn't be much help with this; not when his nightmares weren't nightmares and Wanda Maximoff was haunting him in his head.
"I have a different doctor in mind," Bucky said.