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It takes a long time. He knows recovery doesn't happen overnight; Steve and Sam both tell him that every day, backed up by Natasha, who knows, he thinks, better than most. The Soviets are more thorough than Hydra; they were the ones to carve James Barnes out of him with training and missions; Hydra were fortunate enough to have the martial power to 'borrow' him and then turn him to their own uses. James Barnes remembers more and more of those uses every day; or, more accurately, every night, when he wakes up in cold sweats and fighting the Winter Soldier's instant deadly reflexes to grab for a knife or a gun and shoot intruders - even Steve Rogers, with his hands raised and his hair ruffled and his eyes sleepy but concerned - on sight. The Winter Soldier was merciless, pitiless, and fearless; James Barnes is now so terrified of being in the dark - of being in confined spaces - of being cold - of being, that he can't stand being awake, being aware. Being alive feels like a trap closed tight around him, until he gasps for breath and his head aches and his lungs, his lungs are vice-tight and his heart thuds against his chest and he collapses against walls and chairs and Steve.
The panic attacks are regular occurrences. The tiniest of things set them off - Steve approaching from behind a little too quietly, the sight of unsheathed knives in the kitchen, the sound of gunfire on television or in movies, the touch of something cold against his skin; it felt like there was no corner of the Avengers tower that was safe. It is a new kind of living in fear. No longer afraid of Hydra, or even of Steve's God; but of the small things - the sensations that prompt the whirling maelstroms in his mind - that cause the Soldier to take over, the sudden jerk of disconnecting synapses, James Barnes thrown back into his prison as the Soldier grabs the nearest weapon - lamps, books, letter openers, anything heavy or pointed enough to cause an injury, or else his bare hands, often more lethal - and sets all systems on high alert, focusing on the threat and kicks into mindless combat mode. Several times he has attacked Steve when he came in to check on him after James suffered a nightmare; he would wake up in a cold sweat, scream still ringing in his ears, and the sight of the shadow outside the glass door - the silhouette - would flick that switch and James Barnes would not come back until the threat had been neutralised - either him coming back to himself, or Steve beating an often bloody retreat.
He expresses the desire, at some point, to stop keeping knives in the bedroom. Steve looks conflicted; partly relieved by the idea of not being jumped in a burst of flashing steel and razor-sharp blades every night, and partly wanting to allow James his own agency and sense of security. Steve makes the compromise that perhaps JARVIS could keep a watch on James whilst he slept and notify Steve of any panic symptoms in his bodily functions when they arise, to prepare him. James agrees; Tony, unsurprisingly, had had those settings implemented the moment James moved into the Avengers tower - along with multiple defensive mechanisms. Steve had been fuming; James, secretly relieved. He doesn't need any more blood on his hands.
This time, he is holding Steve against the wall with his left hand locked tight around the blond's neck, Steve's feet dangling centimetres above the floor, face reddened with the blood rush and panic, when James' eyes widen and he drops him like he's been burned, retreating behind the bed, placing it between himself and Steve. His chest is constricting, head echoing with the millions of screams he's inflicted and created over the years, his hands - dripping red (a hallucination, the tiny, sensible voice at the back of his mind says) - raised in front of his eyes. He can't breathe; his head is splitting, there's an agonising scream like the shriek of rending metal hanging in the air, and his whole body is shaking. The Soldier is fighting to take over again - to numb all this pain, to fight it back the only way he knows how, with violent fists - but James Barnes struggles, terrified of what his body - the other half of his mind - will do without his consent.
Steve's voice reaches him, distant and low-pitched, a rumble, through the high-pitched metallic screams. He realises they are coming from him as Steve draws him, slowly, tenderly, out of the pitch-blackness of terror and into his bedroom in the Avengers tower. Steve is knelt a metre away, hands on his own knees - never touch James after a panic attack, not until given express consent, in case of a relapse; never get within arm's reach until given express consent, for the same reason - and he's speaking, James' name, gentle and patient. It's costing him to stay calm (any fear of James' is amplified a thousand times in Steve), and his voice is raw - James' hands drip, and the blackness pulls at him again, the pounding of his pulse distracting in his neck, the fluttering of a moth's wings before it burns to death on the fire - it pulls, it drags, but Steve pulls back. James tries to follow the voice, tries to leave the sucking mire of the blackness.
"- James, James, it's Steve. You're in the Avengers tower, in your bedroom on floor 42 -"
"I know you," James says, barely even breathing the words, and Steve waits. This is part of his recovery, every time. He knows Steve Rogers. He has been James - Bucky - Barnes. He can be, again, some day. Maybe. "Steve Rogers. The man from the bridge. Captain America. You were his - my friend." He repeats the things Steve said to him in the helicarrier. "You're with me, to the end of the line."
Steve breathes out slowly. "Yes." He gestures at his chest, and James focuses on the rise and fall of his ribs, tries to copy them in his own breathing. This takes several minutes. Eventually his pulse is under control and the screaming in his head is dulled to a quiet whine. He has to wash his hands.
He doesn't look at them - at the stained red fingers, the metalwork, the murder weapons - until he is in the bathroom, scrubbing with a nail brush, water hot enough to turn his skin pink. The steam soothes his lungs like a child with croup, and he breathes deep as he scrubs and scrubs, until he's raw and all the blood is gone, even from under his nails. The skin burns, rubbed raw by stiff bristles, but it's a good pain. He feels cleaner. He can look down and see his flushed, angry hand and think, clean. This is James Barnes' hand, not the Winter Soldier's.
Steve worries about how often he washes, he knows. It's not normal to take eight showers a day - more if there are other attacks, or nightmares - but he can't stop himself, can't stand to be dirty a second longer. All he sees is red light, dripping from him, matted in his hair and trailing down his forehead in streams, dripping from his fingers and staining his clothes, his demon's eyes burning and the Winter Soldier staring blankly back, a completed mission. James Barnes is not - will not - allow himself to be bathed in all that blood again. Never. So he scrubs and scrubs, scalded pink by the water, skin protesting, mind tranquil. Tony had made a Lady Macbeth reference, his first night, and Steve had hit the roof metaphorically shortly before Tony did, literally.
Steve is knelt, still, on his carpet when he gets back. Watching him with those expressive blue eyes, all worry and fear and pain. He is not physically hurt anymore - accelerated healing working to his advantage, and the bruised throat will only last another day or so, his voice even less time - but he is hurt by knowledge, by memories, by everything about James that James himself cannot save him from. He settles close to Steve, watching him carefully, judging himself - still twitching in his left arm, still slight mechanical whirrings, still flashing memories in his head, still beating heart -and slowly extends his right arm, touch feather-light against Steve's left hand. Steve gives him a moment and verbally checks - "I'm going to touch your hand. Say no or stop me physically if you don't want me to. Is this okay?" - before he painfully slowly links their fingers, eyes on James' face the whole time.
James exhales a deep breath with Steve, closes his eyes, and lets the peace wash over him.
James occasionally sits in the back of Sam's VA sessions. He hides his face with a low-pulled cap, and his hands with his newly-omnipresent gloves - partially to hide the metal arm in particular, and partially just to hide - and he listens. Steve was wary about it at first, and would stay with him, partly to protect him from any relapses and partly to protect everyone else from the consequences of any relapse; but eventually, as James showed him that he could at least remove himself from the room if things got too much for him (too many close calls, too many, but he hasn't hurt anyone - yet), Steve began to leave him to it. Sam always keeps an especially close eye on him, though, probably at Steve's request.
He's getting ready at the moment, in the bathroom. He does this for hours every morning; stands in front of the mirror and stares at himself, trying to see if James Barnes is coming back and the Soldier is retreating. Often washing his hands as he does so. He can look at himself and see a picture of James Barnes; a still, silent mirage; but the image is shattered when he moves, his arm twitches, his eyes harden for a second in concentration. Then James Barnes is lost, and the strange halfway between creature he is appears again, with the tired eyes and the five o'clock shadow and the fear etched deep in his face where he can't wash it away.
Steve asks if he wants breakfast. James says no, and goes back to staring, trying to adopt that stillness again, to welcome James back. But he's gone; the illusion has disappeared, smoke and mirrors and lies he's trying to convince everyone - himself predominantly - are truths; lies Steve has fed him, like every other lie, that he is real, that he is still human, that he is still good, that it was not his fault -
The Soldier lashes out, shattering the mirror with his fist. Too late, he realises it was his right; glass is embedded in his knuckles, redness swilling away with the water from the tap, and he watches it go, head cocked in curiosity. He's numb; he walks out of the bathroom, sits nonchalantly at the table for breakfast, and Steve, back turned, says, "I thought you didn't want-" before turning around and seeing his fractured, studded knuckles.
He makes a noise, a choke-whistle of breath, and fetches the first aid box. Apologises for hurting him as he picks the glass out of the Soldier's hand, and again when he wraps the bandages, tight, around his fist. The Soldier feels none of it, completely shut down, watching him with blank eyes. Steve asks if he is alright; he doesn't respond, silent and stoic. He just watches, head cocked like a spaniel, calculating the level of comfort Steve is feeling and the likely speed of his responses. The Soldier could probably get in one good punch before Steve realises and begins to fight back; could easily snatch up the knife from the counter and use it, too easily in fact. Steve is too settled, easy pickings, a sitting duck.
Steve is growing more aware as he sits quietly. Learning the tells of James-to-Soldier; he glances at the knife, the Soldier's eyes following his, and his body tenses, preparing himself.
It happens in a burst of motion; a blur. The Soldier is out of his chair, knife in his hand, and Steve Rogers is blocking the thrusts and cuts with his forearms against the Soldier's, hands out of the way of the blade, eyes focused. The Soldier has to work harder; his last mission has not yet been a success, because Steve Rogers is still in front of him; he is distracted momentarily by the thought, and a hard, heavy blow to the centre of his chest knocks James Barnes flat on his back on the table, Steve's arm pinning him to the wood and knife wrenched out of his hand.
Steve is breathing hard; James is near tears. He is never safe, anywhere, for anyone. His hand is stinging, hot, the cuts finally beginning to pain him. His face must betray him, because Steve lowers his arm, allows him to shift slightly, and even to get up as Natasha and Barton, drawn by the noise, enter the kitchen, poised and ready.
"Under control," Steve grits out, and James swallows, stepping away. He shoulders his way out, heading for his bedroom, for his ensuite; steps under the shower, lets the water beat down over him, and scrubs, the guilt and the anger and the self-loathing coating his skin. Water drips into his open eyes, sightless beyond his own body, ugly, scarred, but human; a skin, a disguise, over the thing beneath. He is not human.
Steve takes him to Brooklyn sometimes. He hates to go anywhere by himself, without guard dogs - without protection, bodyguards for the public, without his handlers (you are an animal, a tool, not a human - the new arm of Hydra) - and Steve knows the place best. He shows him the tattooists and the flower shops and the dentists' offices that were barbershops, candy stores and grocers' when they were growing up in the neighbourhood; dilapidated buildings that tug at loose, foggy threads of memory, sometimes prompting something, sometimes not. Steve is patient; tells him the stories behind every one, laughing at something Steve's James - Steve's Bucky - said when he was a child, or did, or thought. James listens to the stories as what they are - stories. Experiences he is not part of, will never fully connect to. A disconnect in the phone line, a vital link missing in the chain. The James Barnes of then is not the James Barnes of now.
Sometimes people stop them in the street - tell them that this is where Steve Rogers, Captain America, grew up, and Bucky Barnes, the hero from the Smithsonian exhibit, one of Captain Rogers' Howling Commandos - Brooklyn boys done good, don't that make you proud, fellas? And Steve nods, and smiles, and James says nothing and does nothing and sees nothing because he is not James or Bucky or even the Soldier at that moment; he is empty space, wrapped in human skin and held up by interlinking fragments of metal and bones, a gap in history and the fabric of the place. Steve hurries them on after a friendly goodbye and polite cursory interest in his and James' own shared history, and they continue to walk, the human and the ghost.
James watches red brick buildings glide past as his feet eat the distance of the sidewalk, mechanical, one foot in front of the other. Steve keeps pace beside him, slower than his usual strides, kind to his core. James goes slower, just to test if he will continue; Steve slows with him, asks if he is alright, gets no response. Steve looks, almost, hurt; but also, resigned. He is used to the stoicism and silence of this James.
James understands why he is angry. He wants his friend back; wants to know what they have done to James Barnes to tear the convivial, flirtatious, charming Bucky out of him so thoroughly. He wants to know, and James wants to tell him. But he can't. So he keeps quiet, eyes on lockdown, mental walls thrown up sky-high and empty space in his ribcage. Breathing is easy without a heart; nothing but fear and anger has any effect. Love, heartbreak, joy, pain - all are the same, numbness and apathy. Heartless.
Steve, on the other hand, feels too much. His heart is on his sleeve, ten sizes too big and every step bleeding with the need to make James be okay. Confusion, frustration, caring too much; the opposite of James, as he has always been. That tiny splinter of familiarity niggles under his skin; he can't decide whether he wants it removed or pushed deeper, to puncture the dark and let it all seep out, to let Steve's Bucky Barnes fill the space it leaves.
He asks, occasionally, for elaboration. Steve will offer tidbits at first, snippets, tasters. To see if he bites, takes the lure. Another lie. James is always hungry, when it comes to Steve - wanting above anything to please him, to bring Steve's Bucky back. His own lack of progress frustrates him beyond belief, on his more lucid days. He bites every time, and so Steve will tell him all about the day Bucky brought him a handful of bedraggled flowers when he was sick, or the day they rode the rollercoasters at Coney Island and then threw up all over the park. He smiles when he tells these stories, stories with slices of sunlight, and James always wants to know more before his brain shuts him down and reminds him that these are not your stories. You have no right to these. His memories - fuzzy and muddled, viewed through scratched, smudged lenses - are locked away tight, behind a door he no longer knows how to open.
The nightmares are perhaps the worst thing. Every night, lying awake in the burning brightness - he won't turn out the lights, afraid of the dark like a child - waiting for exhaustion to weaken his iron will, make his eyelids droop, and sink him, deceptively calm, into sleep. Every night, waking up screaming, throat raw, wild with panic and struggling against the Soldier and his competence and efficiency at dealing with fear and threats - waking up to Steve Rogers pinned by his own hands, voice still soft and gentle in his ears even as his hands, still not fully under his control, try to choke it out of him.
The dreams are the same every night. Hydra, the lab, the wiping. Alexander Pierce. Arnim Zola. The needles, the buzzsaw, the chair. He burns. He freezes. He is electrocuted. He is wiped, again and again, until he is wiped away like a smudge of dirt on the face of the universe, evaporated, disappeared. A strange sense of relief when that happens; those are his good dreams.
Missions. Alexander Pierce sits him down, still bound by the chair - still fighting the control of Bucky Barnes, who wants to lash out, to kick and spit and claw like a cornered wildcat, because he is not free and James Barnes is not free and even the Soldier is not free, and Bucky Barnes believes as passionately in freedom as he does in Steve Rogers. The name on the director's lips is never Steve Rogers, and he says his prayers to whoever will listen to thank them for small mercies, and goes out, armed, armoured, deadly. The streets are different every time. Paris, Moscow, Berlin. New York, Boston, Chicago. They all bleed into one: the pounding of his boots over the sidewalks, moving with the shadows, a ghost, invisible. A silent killer, armed with Soviet training and war-criminal Americans' guns.
The body count rises. He completes mission after mission, and Pierce is pleased. Uncovers the bodies, removes the linen shrouds - and shows him the body of Steve Rogers, every time.
M. Zolinsky - Steve.
J. Gordon - Steve.
A. Guillaume-Lefavre - Steve.
Time and time again, the still, pale face of Steve Rogers is uncovered, blond hair loose and trickling over his forehead. Eyes closed, mouth slightly open, still caught in accepting death's cold kisses. He doesn't sit up when the Soldier screams his name. Body flopping limply when he tries to shake him awake. Cold lungs don't breathe, still heart doesn't beat. Dead eyes do not see.
He wakes, screaming Steve's name, tears streaming down his face - he gasps, ribcage tight, head tighter, the bands of iron around him constricting until he will break apart. Steve is forced, now, to keep his distance. Too many accidents - too many relapses - Jarvis has locked down Steve's door, and will not open it until the other Avengers deem James safe. James' door is also locked down, but there are ways of getting out, like there are ways of getting around everything, that he will not tell Tony Stark, and he sits outside Steve's door, watching through the glass panel. Steve sleeps without a blanket, body running too hot to allow for an extra layer; James sits, he watches the strong chest rise and fall, listens despite the soundproofing for the soft snores, and allows himself to be at peace.
Steve Rogers is unhurt. His hands are unbloodied. He cannot hurt him, and he will not. Hydra have taken everything from him, including Steve, but he is slowly regaining what he has lost. Beginning with James' best friend.
Sometimes, leaning against that door, he will see Steve's body move a particular way - see a hitch in his chest, or a twitch of his thigh, or a toss of his golden head on the pillow - and remember. A snapshot, a moment, an insignificant nothing in the grand scheme of things; but a treasure, carefully packaged and to be slowly unwrapped, like fine bone china, to him. Steve attempting to ride a bicycle as a child, wind blowing his straw-coloured hair out behind him; Bucky, chasing behind, joy in his blue eyes and laughter bright as the sun. Brooklyn streets warm around them, the taste of expensive strawberries, a treat, on his tongue. Innocence, so sharp in his chest it pains him. Those children died a long time ago.
Steve watching him at the dance hall, a beautiful blond with a buxom, shapely figure and wide, falsely guileless blue eyes on his arm. He dances all night with her, pressed up against her warm body, kissing her goodnight at the end of their date and feeling her stroke an interested hand between his legs. Steve blushing at her forwardness; Bucky teasing; Steve giving that wry, self-deprecating shrug, and a phantom ache in Bucky's chest, felt in his broken-off counterpart. This memory tastes like rust, like the catch in his chest when Steve looks at Bucky with those eyes and smiles, really smiles, the starlight smiles in his shy night face. This memory hurts even more. It hints at something he didn't know, never realised - and Steve has never told him. A lie? A lie of his own making, then - a hallucination, a dream.
Steve. Steve, Steve, Steve. Every moment, every captured instant belongs to, and starts with, Steve Rogers. James has always been his satellite, revolving around him but never coming into contact. Brushing close - so close to that luminous brilliance he feels it warming his skin like summer sun, the way Steve and Bucky were as children and then as adults. The before to his now; before Germany, before Hydra, before winter and the Soldier. His satellite moved away from Steve for years, the retreating end of his elliptical orbit; now, being dragged back in, like stretching an elastic band. He's not sure he's resisting; that warmth thawing the ice and lighting the dark. He is so afraid of the dark now.
The corridor outside Steve's apartment is softly lit, but not bright enough. He wants to snap at Jarvis to brighten the place up before he hunts down the master circuit board and forces him to, but he doesn't want the alarm raised. So he forces himself to breathe deep through the unease almost at painful levels, the constant knife-edge he's walking in his mind threatening to tip him off the wrong way; he watches Steve through the panel, tries to match their breathing, and calms as dawn eventually begins to break, lilac and primrose, outside. Steve rolls, stretches, and his eyes open; he sees James huddled by his door, and gets up slowly, still wary of causing another panic attack.
"Come in," he says softly, and James does.
One day, he passes the church, remembering a young boy in white, blond head bowed, Hail Marys and Our Fathers. James Barnes had been raised Catholic in the Irish fashion, he remembers; every Sunday to church, until he stopped going. He doesn't remember why.
Churches are sacred spaces. He knows that. He's defiled them before. Murder has happened in churches. He blinks it away, and studies the worn wooden doors with wary curiosity. An absurd thought that he will burn the moment he steps onto the hallowed ground flickers through his mind, and makes him draw his feet back a little, foolish but superstitious, until he sees a golden head, bowed and respectful, duck through the doors and his feet have taken the decision away from him, carrying him towards the church with a sense of barely-contained urgency.
He does not, in fact, burn.
He enters through the doors, and remembers. The musty, dusty smell of the Sunday school room; the claustrophobic vestibule, the coffin of the confessional. He skulks, trying to make his mind up between staying and going, when he hears a familiar voice murmuring from several pews ahead. There's barely anyone in the church, and it's quiet - too quiet, leaving him too much room to hear - but he pads forward, feet silent on the carpet runner up the aisle, and slips into the pew behind Steve, feeling the weight of his trespass settle heavily on his shoulders.
"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." Steve crosses himself, quick, practised movements; James remembers an altar boy, tiny, angelically blond and beautiful, lighting the candles at the front of the church with slim, careful hands. "Father, Lady, you know why I'm here. I've said it enough; I hope you're listening. Father, thank you. Thank you for bringing him back to me. Thank you for taking care of him when I couldn't. Father, thank you.
"Lady, pray for him. Please. You pray for all of 'us sinners', now and at the hour of our death. I hope he's not going to die anytime soon - I won't let him, no matter how he tells us he deserves it - because you listen, Lady, I know you do. You've always listened to me. My Ma passed peaceful, with your help. I don't like to ask too much of anyone, but if I can't come to you, I can't come to anyone. He needs your help now, too; he won't accept it, because - because he doesn't think he's worth it, but I need your strength to show him. Holy Mary, pray for him, give me your patience and kindness and mercy to help him." Steve chuckles weakly, his voice thick as though on the edge of tears. "And forgive me for repeatin' myself, again. Can't ever get the words out properly, but here's hoping you understand what I mean."
"Father, I'm not asking for myself this time. Forgive him, Father, for he has - for they have sinned with him. I need -" Steve's voice cracks, and tears well up in his eyes; James fights the urge to say something, or even to just lay a hand on his shoulder in reassurance. "I need you to forgive him, Father. He's frightened of you; he won't listen to me, won't listen to anyone who tells him it's okay, they've forgiven him for everything that happened. Maybe he needs to hear it from higher up. Please, Father, forgive him for what they did to him. Forgive him for what they did with his body when he wasn't in control of it. Forgive him for their crimes. Judge him fairly when he comes to you with me. You can, and you will. Please.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I told a lie in church. I'm asking for myself now -" James' ears, without his consent, prick up. Steve is swallowing hard, fighting harder against the tears that had threatened before but are now on the brink of spilling. "Please, Father, forgive me my selfishness. Forgive me for being so needy and overbearing, for allowing myself to push him too much because I need him to get better. Forgive me for cursing and taking your name in vain. Forgive me my thoughts, for what they did to him -" His fist balls, jaw clenches, and James is seeing Steve truly furious for the first time in years, and the fact that it's over him - barely alive, not even human, a waste of Steve's thoughts and words and prayers, unsaveable, a lost cause - "and forgive me the things I have said I would like to do to them. I'm trying to become less angry about it. But it's hard when he's so - when he's -" Steve, finally, breaks down. "Father, h-help him forgive me. Help him forgive - forgive me for letting him fall - for not saving him - a supersoldier who couldn't even - couldn't even save his best friend - help him forgive me for not getting him back sooner - help him forgive me, Father, I can't live without him -"
James has heard enough. But his feet will not move; he is glued to the pew, to the heartrending prayers of Steve Rogers for his nonexistent soul.
"- Father, please, accept him. Let him in. He says I'm a dead cert for your Kingdom, but he talks about himself like there's only one place he's going and he's wrong. He can't go there, Father, because you can't let him. We've been together our whole lives, Father, apart from the time you saw fit to part us -" There's anger in that, Steve Rogers angry at God, a mystifying event - "I can't go anywhere without him. Went off to war in 1943 because I couldn't let you take him from me, couldn't let him go away without me to watch his back - I was too weak, but you made me brave, you made me believe I could do it, I could help him, and I did, Father, I pulled him off that table when he was too weak to even stand - but he knew me, and he knows me now, Father, and he's a good man. He doesn't belong, Father, not down here - he's already in hell, don't force him into an eternity of it - I trust that you're loving and merciful, Father, and you'll save him - you would never punish him for things he's already atoning for. I can't go to you without him, Father. I won't leave him again, never. You parted us once. Forgive me, but I won't let it happen again. Even if I'm condemning myself with him." His voice rings clear, a promise.
Bucky is in turmoil. Steve on his knees, praying for everything he doesn't deserve - will never deserve - forgiveness and mercy and a place at Steve Rogers' right hand in the forever after. Steve has always been stubborn - the little boy who wouldn't believe Bucky saw what he saw, knew what he knew. Steve is promising things he has no right promising; like hell Bucky would ever let Steve throw himself after him now, after everything. He's greedy, and desperate, and selfish as all seven hells - would love Steve to come, to never leave, to burn with him if that's what is going to happen, just so that he wouldn't have to face that torment alone - but he could never allow Steve to do that. Steve's self-sacrificing streak had driven him mad when they were together in 1943; that factory building, insisting that Bucky leave him there - he remembers the defiant yell of Not without you!, disbelief that Steve would ever ask that of him, for Bucky to accept safety and allow Steve to die - they can't be parted, now or ever.
"I told him, Father, to the end of the line. We made that promise, him to me and me to him. And I swear in your name -"
A kaleidoscope of images whirling through his mind's eye in a too-bright flash of colour, blinding him, filling his head with the roar of rising recognition. The wave is sweeping inexorably towards him; no escape, no refuge, nothing to do but face it and swim or drown. A burning brand in his head, the image of Steve in the helicarrier, those words leaving his bruised lips. Pinned, accepting his fate, and still gazing at Bucky with such love and acceptance in his eyes. Realisation hits; Steve Rogers forgave him his crimes long ago; Bucky's own sort of god, the only forgiveness he wants and needs, leaving the lips of his friend then and now and hopefully forever. Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers, til the end of the line. His mind spins to a dead stop, eyes wide with shock. Trapped in his own thoughts, his own words to himself - was that a Bucky?
"- I'm not going to break it again."
Bucky? That promise will have to be broken eventually. Because Bucky's soul, if he has one, is damned. Bucky? And Steve has been an angel from the moment he touched down on this planet, freed from Sarah Rogers' body. Bucky cannot -
Bucky?
James Barnes. Bucky Barnes. One and the same.