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In autumn, Bucky goes running. Says it’s better for everybody if he does it, says he’s only doing it because it’s what they both need. Steve talks him round, but it’s not easy. Disordered thinking, Bruce tells him much, much later, that’s common among head-trauma patients. And suicides. Which is, on reflection, exactly what that was. Suicide by Hydra, suicide by SHIELD, maybe even suicide by Avengers. It’s been almost a year and Steve doesn’t want to have to be a jailer any more. It’s starting to occur to him, and Steve was never the -est of anything even before the serum but he’s a little embarrassed that it’s taken him so long to see that Bucky’s never going to be Bucky again. There’s not much Bucky left at all. The guy in Steve's best friend's body? Well, he’s alright for the most part, sometimes familiar, sometimes achingly so. But he's not the guy Steve set out to rescue.
It sort of hits him all at once, and it’s one too many things just now, so he pushes the thought away, because there is a massive sort of man-tank thing that's rampaging through Manhattan and he’s got other things on his mind. But it sticks under his ribs like a bit of half-chewed food, and even the euphoric glow when they subdue that machine can’t dislodge the discomfort in his chest.
He ignores it, though. Gets back to Doing Things. Remembrance Day, VA stuff, and (of course) superheroing. He finds he’d rather be doing these things than going home when they’re done. One night he looks over at Bucky and thinks, He’s gone, Rogers. He knows it’s true, and it aches like a bone that’s been broken. It aches because it’s the same face, and the same voice. It aches because it would have been easier if he had died, and that’s not the kind of thing Steve ever dreamed he would ever wish and he hates himself for it.
Bucky turns his head and looks at him. Same eyes, Steve thinks. Same, but narrow and wary now, all the devil-may-care scarred over. Jesus his chest hurts. It occurs to him that now all either of them know about James Buchanan Barnes is the history of the man who was. As for this guy, the guy sitting here on the couch watching the Late Show, all either of them know is that he has bad dreams, he sometimes makes coffee in the morning, he doesn’t like white bread, and he prefers to curse in Russian. And what the SHIELD dossiers have had to say. Steve knows this man’s stats like he learned them from the back of a baseball card, but he doesn't know him.
Bucky cants his head just slightly to the side. Eyes narrow a little. “What?”
Same voice, but a different person saying it. There’s something tightening around Steve’s chest, like a band, and it occurs to him that his breathing is all screwed up, and that if he doesn’t breathe better he’s going to faint. He shouldn’t be staring at Bucky - sometimes it sets him off. He looks down at the floor instead.
“Steve?”
He can't shake it because he's been avoiding it for months, for almost a year now, and it's finally got him. He can't go back to not understanding it, to the hopeful outlook, the certainty that with the right brand of cigarettes or taste of Sensen, the Bucky that was will magically reappear.
And that's because Bucky, his Bucky, is gone. Someone else is walking around in his body.
"Steve." Bucky says again, and it's not a question.
He'd say something but he can't figure out his breathing. Why can’t he figure out his breathing? It’s been a million years since he had asthma and even then it was never this hard. Something has happened. Somebody’s done something to him. Slow-release poison or a futuristic device that’s messing with his lungs.
“Hey."
The voice is soft, the person in the shape of Bucky Barnes shifts where he sits, and Steve’s aware that his breathing is ragged and random and that he can’t fix it, is going to faint if he can’t get it together, how hard can it be to breathe? He looks up. “I can’t…” he manages, panting like he's run a million miles.
A pair of mismatched hands frame him suddenly, one on either shoulder. Someone who looks familiar but isn't is kneeling on the floor, looking up at him. That makes it worse. Makes it so much harder not to look at him, so much harder to breathe. Did you do this to me? He wants to know if this is some kind of crazy long game played by Hydra. Give him Bucky because who else could get close enough to poison him? Is that what's going on?
He didn't know there were poisons that could overwhelm the serum. It takes pure alcohol to even get him tipsy. The dose of poison he’s been fed must be enormous. His heart is hammering his pulse inside his head, maybe something’s ramped up the serum. Maybe to drive his body to the brink and kill him that way. Bucky is looking at him, cool, assessing.
“Steve, I think you’re having a panic attack,” he says.
Panic attack? No. Steve knows those things, Bucky has those things. They are part of the spectrum of things that happen to that body but are not the Bucky Barnes that Steve used to know. And besides, this is not in his head, this is in his body. His heart and his chest. This is not a panic attack, this is dying.
“Steve, look at me.”
He does. Oh god, that face. Why did they kill him but keep his face? I want him back. The words seems to contract around him and come out of his throat in a strangled little noise. Bucky’s hands tighten on his shoulders.
“I gotcha buddy, it’s alright.”
Give him back to me. He finds himself gripping Bucky’s mismatched forearms harder than he should. Please give him back to me.
“Good, just keep on breathing like that.” Bucky's mouth curves slightly on one side, but its his eyes, those are soft, and kind, and familiar.
Like Brooklyn in the 30s again. A skinny kid with endless health problems who really didn't want to leave the baseball diamond, and his best pal, who dragged him over to the bleachers when he started to wheeze. Who folded his hands behind his head and lied through his teeth about how he wasn't really interested in playing any more baseball today anyhow.
The metal hand flexes in a careful squeeze. "Good," he murmurs.
"Sorry," Steve says automatically.
It’s getting easier now. The world has ceased contracting and it’s starting to expand again. The tightness in his chest is fading away. He looks at Bucky again. Not him. Not really. Same face and same body, give or take, but a different man.
But so was he, once. Long gone is the sickly kid from who never wanted to leave the game but always had to. And he's hardly given a thought to how jarring it must be, to call up those shared memories of baseball fields full of floating dust, and humid summers, and be wearing this impervious body.
Steve gets his breath. He’s exhausted. Like a whole day training followed by some massive fight. He could lie down on the couch and die.
“Sorry," Steve whispers again.
"It's okay." Bucky rises and drops back into his seat. He stretches his legs out, and puts his hands behind his head. "Wasn't really watching the TV anyway."
"You're a liar, James Barnes, don't think I don't know it," Steve answers.
Bucky smiles, maybe reaching for that devil-may-care mask that used to fit him so well. It doesn’t fit any more. He just looks sad now, and grim and tired. They probably both do. It’s been non-stop, this Getting Things Done and Making Bucky Better. Stupid, pointless work. Busy work. Bucky’s no more coming back than the old Steve is. The world’s not the only thing that’s changed.
Bucky's smile fades. He sighs and looks at Steve again, eyes narrow and tight, the way they always seem to be these days.
“What?” Steve asks.
“He’s not coming back, you know,” Bucky says softly. "This," he gestures at himself. "This is all there is."
Steve nods, slow at first, because his neck feels like a rusted hinge, but he manages it. “Yeah,” he whispers.
Bucky swallows and looks back at the TV. They're silent a moment, then Bucky says, very softly, “I’m sorry.”
Steve nods again, a little easier this time. "Me too.”