Work Text:
When the lights are faded to black
Only stars are guiding me back
I'll keep running
To the place where I belong
When you think you're on your own
I'm still coming home
He’s sitting at a dinner table. He’s wearing one of his usual suits, the ones he wears to school not the ones he uses when he goes out with a dame and definitely not the one he uses when he meets that nice fella at the bar, but one of the ones his parents would approve. His brother Robert was sitting to his right, talking animatedly about the upcoming try outs at his school. His father and Mama were making conversation about an upcoming dinner with some of their friends. Johnny (who was called that by James only and only in secret) was messing around with his food, making airplane noises that made James smile. Charlie was the one that was worrying James at the moment, he was staring listlessly at his plate, his fringe hiding his face.
Robert jostled James out of his reverie in his enthusiastic story telling. James murmured something in assent then went back to staring at his littlest brother. There was definitely something wrong, James decided it was enough. His heart was pounding, and he didn’t know why, he looked around the room. Robert and Johnny were now looking like Charlie, completely engrossed in their food which… wait, what? When had it become dry meat? And, yeah, that was definitely canned soup. He didn’t know how he knew that, just that he’d had the taste before. He looked at his father, but his chair was suddenly empty. He looked at his mother, and had to swallow down the bile that rose to his throat. Where his beautiful, healthy mother had sat only moments before was an emaciated body. She was wearing a striped shirt that looked incredibly out of place with her, her dark hair lay limp around her face; her once vibrant eyes looked almost dead.
And when she smiled at him, the skin around her mouth and cheekbones became almost translucent against her bones. “Mama?” his voice shook. He knew, he knew he’d seen her before, not his Mama but someone like her. A lot of someones like her.
“what is it, darling?” her hands shook as she brought the spoon to her mouth. “Your soup is getting cold.”
“Yeah, James,” Robert’s voice called out from his side. When he turned, his brother looked like his mother. His eyes were hollow. “You gotta eat it fast, rememba’? or they’ll take it an’ then what’ll you do, huh?”
“Mama! If James doesn’t want his soup, can I eat it? I’m still hungry!” Johnny wailed from the other side. He looked far worse than Robert.
“Mama, what’s happening?” James asked shakily. He might be the oldest, a man already, but he was scared. Scared for his little brothers who looked one step away from death. Scared for his mother who had once bene vibrant and bright. Scared for his father who was no longer around.
“What do you mean, darling?” she raised a shaking hand to push back her greasy hair. James caught a glimpse of smudged numbers on her arm. He pushed back from the chair with as much force as he possessed, his stomach churning, and his mind a mess. Those numbers were bad. That ink on her wrist was bad news. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did. Those numbers were death. “Sit down, James!” her voice was shrill. It scared him even more. Her voice was never shrill, not like that, she sounded terrified. “Sit down this instant! One was enough!”
“One what?!” James almost shouted.
“One of my children was enough, James! One was enough!” she wailed.
He didn’t know what she meant, and something told him that he didn’t want to know. Then Johnny started crying, and Robert started chanting Charlie’s name as though his heart was breaking, and when he looked at him. His baby brother. His one strength other than Steve. When he looked at him, the boy had raised his head, and James lost it. He took one look at him, and he ran.
He ran ran ran ran ran until everything went black, and he welcomed it. He welcomed the oblivion because his once bubbly baby brother had a hole on his forehead caked with blood and a pair of eyes gray as death.
***
“BUCKY!” Strong arms grabbed his wrists and pinned them about his head. James lashed out with his legs instead, but then someone was straddling him to the bed. There was breath on his neck, and James couldn’t understand what was happening. He felt as though he had to fight, but didn’t want to. And it wasn’t the sense of giving up that he’d had for a long while now, no, this was different. This was feeling as though he didn’t have to fight because for the first time in forever, he was safe.
He just didn’t know how to stop running.
“You’re all right, Buck,” the voice said and, oh, Stevie. It was Stevie. He slumped back on the bed with a sob, and Steve let him go. The other man got off him but didn’t go far; he sat the end of his bed and took hold of his hand. His eyes were bruised and blood shot, and there was a gentle trembling on his hands. If James hadn’t been having his own crisis, he’d have asked what was wrong. “That went better than last time,” Steve said lightly.
James scowled at his ill-timed humor. Last time he’d well damn almost knocked the idiot unconscious when he’d tried the same damn thing. They were getting worse, the nightmares, at the beginning they’d been about the people he’d killed. The ones that must have made an impression on the Winter Soldier because they’d survived the wiping. They had unsettled him, but they hadn’t affected him as much. He didn’t tell Steve, but those nightmares didn’t hurt because he didn’t care about the people dying. He didn’t consider them his family.
The ones that had come after that, once James began to gain his memory, those were infinitely worse. It had started with the Commandos. Saw each and every one fall in the battle field, even the ones who’d come home, and had always been just a hair’s breadth away from saving them. Then it was the dames, the one’s James had thought himself in love with, and the fella at the bar. Bleeding out on the alley with moonshine running down his leg and ruining his pants. Then, fuck, then it had been her. The red head. The assassin meant to take him down whom he’d encountered time and time again, had been enchanted by time and time again, only to try to kill her and then lose her. She’d died in his arms, each and every time, and he’d been the reason why. Then it had been Steve. Just DEAR GOD, it had been Stevie in so many ways. Bleeding out, beaten to a pulp, broken beyond belief, hung for going after fellas, then later after the serum, dying in the pod, getting shot instead of Erskine, blowing up when they got on the beach, getting shot down with Howard… and then, after, James pulling the trigger. James plunging the knife. James watching him drown. James watching him slowly wilt away after Tony has been shot from the hellicarriers. James losing his brother in a million different ways.
And now, losing his family all over again.
He was so damn tired. He was so fucking tired of running away from everything. From his past, from the war, from the torture… It felt as though all he’d done for a very long time was to run. And now, dear God now that he was supposed to be free of, now he had to keep on running. Steve had talked about wondering just how out of time he was. He’d said he worried that there was no place for him anymore, but then he’d found them. More importantly he’d found him, and that had made all the difference in the world. He’d been given a new purpose, a new reason to keep holding on.
James, though? What was there left for James?
“Bucky?” Steve said softly. He was still holding on to his hand, and he gave it a firm squeeze. “Are you still with me?”
This is why, he thought. Maybe he should… stop. Stop running. Maybe there was an outcome to the shit storm where he didn’t have to keep running anymore. An outcome where he got to keep the only family he had left. Where he got to feel like he was home again. He could almost see it. Steve with a brunette attached to his side and smiling up at him, no more blood shot eyes with bags under them. Where James himself could look up and find a red head smirking down at him. Maybe, he thought.
“Till the end of the line, punk,” he replied, and Steve gave him a smile that made it much simpler to believe.
Yeah, maybe he could stop running.