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Learning how to live normally is the only impossible mission for James.
He decided so for himself and is not going to give up this opinion. After all, it is impossible to live normally when ghosts of the past haunt you every second of your life. These ghosts have faces and names, which makes it thousand times more shitty. These faces poison his existence every second, which makes him grit his teeth every time they appear before his eyes. Most of the time he sees Rogers, Bucky regrets not being able to go up and knock out all of his perfect teeth. Steve is forever buzzing in his ear like a pesky mosquito in a room on a summer night, admonishing and watching with stinging disappointment in his eyes as James once again goes down the drain and another attempt at acceptable social contact fails.
"Then what the hell did you put in the past, smartass?" - shouts Bucky, throwing an innocent cup at the wall, but it is worth only blinking once, as the familiar figure is gone as if it was not there at all. And James, with trembling hands, collects debris all over the kitchen for five minutes and tries to wipe off the traces of coffee on the wall.
He is not forgotten by the others, Brock appears like the devil from a snuffbox, but less often, he is the only one of all that Barnes does not mind seeing. Rumlow was fucked over the head by a Hydra mercenary, but somehow in his ghostly form, he wasn't nearly as terrifying. Maybe Bucky's sick brain is just trying to find the best of the Hydra days in the memories and make it even better. Well, in his mind, it works out great, because if Brock starts eating his brains, it's only for some real mess, sometimes giving relatively sound advice.
There are many other ghosts, some of whom have to make up names because the brain refuses to remember the name of yet another victim from the Hydra times. Not to say that James deeply regrets this omission, but it is easier not to remember it at least. Such people are most often silent and do not stay for a long time, they simply appear from nowhere, ask something like "Why?", and then disappear. Barnes learned to ignore them the fastest.
Bucky never filled out the list, but he's pretty sure there are more than a hundred ghosts. He doesn't want to know the exact number, to be honest.
Literally stolen from prison, Zemo sometimes also seems like a ghost, because until he begins to speak, he is almost invisible in the room, only intuition and instincts tell Barnes that he is not alone in the room, just like intuition informs about the rest of his "guests" ".
Sometimes James wants to kill Helmut, but only the understanding that he will return to him as another ghost stops him because even the chatter of a living Zemo makes his head split, and a ghost cannot be silenced as easily as a person. However, James finds at least some plus in this, because every time he seals Helmut against the wall, he feels the jump of the pulse under the warm skin and how the clear rhythm of breathing goes astray.
Well, Zemo is material at such moments and Barnes quickly cools down, restores the distance, calms his own paranoid opinion that Helmut is another ghost, a new character of his sick fantasy, and he himself has not completely lost his mind.
Now touching Zemo becomes something similar to the idée fixe for back to reality. Every time one of the images comes to Bucky’s mind, with fucking Steve Rogers standing in front of his eyes, it helps and the ghosts disappear for a while.
James never explains these touches, sometimes as if accidental, sometimes as if he is drowning and Helmut is a lifeline, too obvious. He is glad that Zemo never asks, but for some reason, a shadow of understanding sometimes flashes in his brown eyes, and it makes Barnes feel awkward, hide his eyes, and walk away, so as not to let him, Helmut, get into his crippled soul.
It's just that the nerves still can't stand it when Steve appears again, who somehow seems a hundred times more intolerable than before. Bucky endures almost the whole day, grits his teeth, and constantly tries to find Helmut with his eyes, although he perfectly understands that he has remained in the apartment, after an aimed shield throw from Walker. When he and Sam return to the apartment, sparks are almost flying from Barnes, if a match is lit next to him and there will definitely be an explosion, Wilson reports that Zemo is in the bedroom, and disappears from the apartment all night like he always used to do.
It seems even Sam senses the storm coming and decides to get away. At some point, James gets impatient and yells at the ephemeral Rogers, swears at him at the top of his voice, and just can't stop. He doesn't even notice that he's not alone in the living room, because Helmut appears there like a fucking ghost, and Barnes is clearly too busy taking out all his anger on another game of his sick subconscious and throwing into ghost a couple, or maybe a dozen plates.
Bucky screams until he's out of breath, Steve doesn't disappear, and all Barnes has to do is crawl on his back against the wall, gasping for air and closing his eyes as if that will help rid the ghost. In vain, because Rogers' voice is in his head, and Bucky still can't figure out this shit. He is drawn into this vortex of complete impotence and hysteria because he can no longer keep it all inside.
James flinches like a frightened animal when he feels warm fingers brush against his face, trying to clean up moisture across his cheeks. He has to open his eyes, the image blurred cause of tear-filled eyes, but Barnes realizes it's Helmut, clinging to him like it's his last chance not to go insane, even though he still can't even breathe. He tries to convince himself that Steve isn't real, as always, that the only real thing is real fucking Zemo, who he's currently holding by the forearm, but nothing works until Bucky feels that Helmut kissing him, forcing him to hold his breath. Only after a quiet "Breathe" does James try to inhale.
They sit on the floor like that, and James holds Helmut close to him as the only connection to reality, he himself leans closer to him, listening to the voice and the beating of his heart in his chest. Zemo pats him on the head and back, runs through his hair, and says something over and over that makes Rogers' voice in the background get quieter by the second.
It seems that several hours pass before Steve disappears, Bucky listens to Helmut, really listens to some of the stories, tries to breathe in time with someone else's breathing, and is sincerely glad that Zemo is not trying to sit away, to create distance between them. It is necessary to explain to Helmut everything that is happening, and James understands that Zemo suspected because not even a shadow of surprise on his face, but there is no pity either. Bucky wants to clean up all the mess he made here, but Helmut won't let him go, just drags him along, forcing him to lie down in his bed. Barnes falls asleep and the last thing he feels is feeling of being patted on the head.
It gets a little easier after that evening because if James sees another ghost, and hangs his gaze for a couple of seconds longer than everyone else at the empty room, he feels Helmut's touch. Bucky turns away, catches the calm gaze of the brown eyes, begins to breathe again, and the figures disappear and leave him alone for a while. Things get even better when he and Zemo decide to try to build some kind of relationship, and Barnes goes to see a therapist that Helmut finds for him. Ghosts appear even less often, because Zemo is always around, and the new doctor really wants to help him. Bucky no longer feels suspended in the air, even though sometimes the surface of his life still ripples with the appearance of familiar and long-dead people.
They set out on a mission and everything goes smoothly. It's just that James forgets that normal life is not for him, as the explosion in this fucking house all too clearly reminds him. His whole life flashes before his eyes, and Barnes's voice shakes and breaks as there is only silence on the other side of the comm channel and no response from Zemo, who was in the other part of the building. He is not allowed to sort through the debris, Sam forcibly takes him from there, promising that Helmut will be found. Barnes is willing to kill everyone, even Wilson, because he has to be there, he has to find Zemo, and he has to see him alive. He stops his protest only after being injected with a deadly big dose of the strongest tranquilizers.
Waking up in their apartment with Helmut, Barnes is hysterical, growls and howls like a wounded wolf, because he cannot forgive himself for this mistake. This is where they appear, the ghosts who were just waiting for the moment when he would give the slack. There are a lot of them, there were never more than two before, but now everything is too bad.
James loses himself, he hides in a corner and covers his ears and eyes, only it doesn't help because they are all in his head. Bucky thinks he hears a door slam through the din of all those voices, and it makes his eyes pop open. He sees Helmut appearing from the corridor and rushes to him because Zemo is his salvation, his anchor to the reality that separates him from all these ghosts.
James passes through Helmut but does not believe in it, tries to grab him with his hands again and again, but he just can't. He looks at Zemo and a sad smile on his face, "I'm so sorry, wolf," – says the ephemeral figure of Helmut, and Bucky can only howl because he hoped to never see this ghost.
Sam finds him in a disgusting state and bails him out to the medics because Barnes does not react to stimuli in any way, James has fallen out of reality. Bucky clings even to the ghost of Helmut, who protects him even now, talks about all kinds of nonsense incessantly, just can't touch him, and let James perfectly understand that it is his own consciousness trying to protect him, to keep from falling into the abyss, but to lose Helmut a second time he can't.
A week later, two Helmuts appear in his room and Bucky thinks that he has gone out of mind because his brain is really failing and gives an error. James does not even immediately understand when he feels touch, because the brain is inhibited by a whole cocktail of drugs, where tranquilizers and sedatives make up seventy percent. It is only worth understanding how Barnes pulls Helmut to him, presses him closer, immediately forcing himself to be more gentle and careful when he hears painful sighs and complaints about already broken bones.
“I'm real, wolf. Do you feel it?" -- Zemo asks, gently touching his face with his good hand. And Bucky really feels, looks fascinated, studying all the small and not so injuries on such a living and native Helmut. He kisses thin fingers, every scratch and every millimeter of warm, real skin.
It takes about a month for James to regain consciousness, under the care of doctors and with daily visits from Zemo. Bucky takes all the pills and is finally convinced of the reality of what's going on when he steps outside the hospital in the company of Helmut and Sam, who seems to become good friends lately. Zemo is still limping, because being buried under rubble for several days and many injuries could not pass without a trace, but Barnes tries to hold him.
The ghosts no longer appear, so James allows himself to assume that things are on the mend. Especially when Zemo is so alive and real every morning he wakes up next to him.