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“Bucky tried to kill himself.”
Silence rang through the interior of the jet, a solid pressure holding everyone still where they were, frozen in place.
Steve had taken the phone call, had greeted Pepper with warmth, had cut off in the middle of asking after her health and collapsed back against the webbed seat that lined the cabin wall. Had shakily asked “what,” and shrank in on himself. For the first time ever Tony could see the scrawny kid Cap had been written on the lines of his body.
Sam had placed his hand on Steve’s shoulder, but other than that, no one had moved while waiting for Steve to finish the call and relay the news.
“Bucky tried to kill himself.”
Steve didn’t follow up the proclamation with anything else, just sat staring into space. They all sat, or in Tony’s case, stood there, reeling. Tony looked around at his team, who were all still damaged after Clint, and saw them struggling to make the words fit. His mind barreled along, trying to make sense of what to do, of how they were all reacting as if this was a shock when he knew for a fact that he hadn’t been the only one to think this was how it would eventually play out.
“Bucky tried to kill himself.” The words replayed in Tony’s mind.
“JARVIS,” Tony said in the low tone that indicated he didn’t want his voice projected outside of the suit. “Show me.”
Tony’s HUD began streaming the sped up images, a small clock to one side highlighting the time lapse and skips. Tony watched as Bucky jolted awake, saw that he spent minutes trying to calm himself instead of the fifteen seconds that played out for Tony. He noted the time stamps as Bucky disappeared into the bathroom and was immediately back in the bedroom.
Tony watched Bucky tear apart the bedroom. Bucky’s frantic movements on the screen overlay the stillness in the jet and the dichotomy gave Tony chills.
Bucky cleared the top of his dresser with one wide sweep of his arm, items scattering silently on the floor of Tony’s video feed. Drawers were ripped out of the dresser and overturned, clothes strewn around the room. The only spot of calm in the bedroom was centered on a nightstand standing against the wall, feet away from the bed — none of the stuff being thrown haphazardly everywhere else went near it. An island oasis in the storm.
Bucky finally found what he was looking for strapped to the bottom of a drawer. Even knowing what was coming, Tony found himself unable to stop the sharp inhale when his entire body stiffened as he watched Bucky pull the wicked looking blade off the board. He knew he couldn’t do anything, that this was already a fixed point in time, but he yearned to be able to reach out and pull the knife out of his hand.
Bucky grabbed a book from under the mattress and disappeared back into the bathroom, carrying the knife and a sudden tranquility with him.
“Where he tried to kill himself,” Tony’s brain shouted at him. “Jesus.” The expletive escaped without volition, but thankfully JARVIS kept that muted from the others.
“I’m changing our coordinates,” Natasha said from the cockpit, breaking the suffocating silence. “We are going home.” No one protested her decision. They were three and half hours out from the tower, twenty minutes from their destination, but no one was going to be able to focus on the mission with Bucky’s suicide attempt hanging over their heads.
“She thinks he’s going to be okay — no. Not okay. She said she thinks he’ll live. He’s not okay. Obviously he’s not okay,” Steve responded, voice initially flat, but it thickened with emotion as the words began to tumble out. “God, oh fuck. Bucky tried to kill himself.”
Sam shifted and pulled Steve into a one armed hug; Tony could see Steve fighting to keep his ‘military bearing,’ or some other macho bullshit. He never wanted to let the team see him as anything other than strong; not that Tony relished displaying weaknesses, so his annoyance was more than a little hypocritical.
“Aside from you, this is probably the first time the Winter Soldier failed to kill his mark.”
“Tony!” Sam, Natasha and Bruce yelled at him, as Steve jerked as if he’d been slapped.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Sam demanded.
Tony replayed the words in his head, and yeah, that had come out pretty insensitive. He stepped out of his suit, no longer needed now that they were aborting the mission and took a second to figure out how to better say what he had meant.
“Just means that there’s hope, right? That he didn’t really mean it? He’s never not succeeded except that one time he didn’t really want to ‘complete the mission.’” He didn’t actually make the finger quotes, but he was sure the others could hear it in his voice. “That’s got to mean something, right?
“Statistics show that most suicide attempts are impulsive, and that even a five minute delay of access to the means required for the attempt can get the person past that moment of crisis and nullify the impulse.
“So there’s hope. That’s what I’m saying.” Tony finished his speech and tried not to feel awkward as they all continued to stare at him.
“He’s not wrong about that part,” Sam finally conceded.
The rest of the ride was conducted mostly in silence, occasionally interspersed with ideas on how to help Bucky.
“It’s the lack of sleep,” Sam offered at one point.
“The pills I made help him get to sleep, but he isn’t staying asleep,” Bruce lamented.
“He said he has nightmares every time he closes his eyes,” Natasha explained. “That’s why he isn’t getting enough sleep.”
“Could, could we sedate him?” Steve asked; he had to clear his throat when his voice cracked. “Would that work?”
“The biological processes that restore homeostasis, including REM, during sleep don’t occur during sedation; he would be no more rested from that than going without,” Bruce told him, voice somber.
They lapsed into silence again. At some point Pep called with an update — they had pumped Barnes’ stomach and given him a unit of blood, but the doctors weren’t willing to say he was out of the woods yet. Nobody had a response to that.
“Is there anyway to, I dunno, turn off dreaming? Stop the nightmares?” Steve asked later, when they were half an hour out from the tower.
“No way with science that I’m familiar with,” Tony answered. “Bruce?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“What about without?” Natasha interjected.