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“You tell me if this hurts and we stop, yes?” She’s said that three times now, and fear buoys the piercing question. Bucky’s not sure who Wanda’s more afraid of in this situation. It should be him, all things considered.
It’d be the understatement of the century to say he doesn’t react well to the poking and prodding of his mind… but Wanda doesn’t know that yet, and the thought makes the skittering feeling melt into tension dripping down his back.
He nods, bracing himself. She sighs, placing a cold hand on his flesh shoulder.
“The Wakandan doctors said they’ve found a way to clear the codes from your mind,” Steve said carefully to his lap, as if the words would shatter into false hope if he spoke too fast. “But it won’t be quick or easy.”
“Gee, Steve,” Bucky rolled his eyes, “You would’a think I’ve learned a little patience by now.”
Steve’s jaw clenched, throat working, and Bucky immediately wanted to take it back. “No, you’re right-”
“It’s the end times.” Bucky couldn’t seem to stop his motormouth around Steve. As though half a century’s worth of snark and Steve Rogers-induced headaches decided to release themselves in the last couple of weeks.
The unamused look Steve sent him had relief bleeding through the edges, and Bucky resolved to censor himself less. He wasn’t safe; far from it, but with Steve… well, they both knew how that sentence ended.
“Can you blame me for being concerned? This isn’t gonna be weekly talk therapy, Buck. It’s drills and psychics and- and invasive. They’ll have to trigger you with the code words, probably multiple times, to see if they still work. There’s a theory, but it’s never been tested.” Steve’s voice rose higher and higher, tapering into sheer incredulity, as if to ask remind me why is putting you through your trauma a good idea?
“S’not like they have a bunch of brainwashed assassins lying around. I’m okay with being their guinea pig, for now,” Bucky shrugged. Not because he was in the vicinity of being remotely okay with invasive psychic procedures, but what choice did they have? It was this, or putting him back in cryo. Playing the waiting game for a better option that might never surface.
And he didn’t think he could stand to see the quiet agony in Steve’s eyes as they prepped him to go under again, anyways.
Steve turned to face Bucky, a furrow forming between his brows. “You’re not, and you don’t have to be… but I have an idea.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“It is,” Steve confessed, frowning. He had his ‘strategist’ face on, from when he’d weigh the pros and cons of a tactical decision. Bucky remembered seeing it a lot in the war, the streak of Steve’s mouth and lowered eyes as he re-checked the maps and formed a plan that wouldn’t get the Commandos blown to kingdom come. Or worse, taken prisoner. “Have you met Wanda?”
“The girl from the airport. I remember.”
“Yeah. Her powers… I’ve been on the receiving end, back when we weren’t on the same side.” Bucky opened his mouth and Steve hastily answered his wordless question, “I’ll tell you that story later. She, uh. Messed with my head. Implanted these nightmarish memories. Shook up the whole team.”
So right up my alley, Bucky wanted to say, but bit his tongue. Steve looked remarkably close to crumpling right now and Bucky had no desire to push him off that ledge.
“When she joined the team we decided she wouldn’t use her psych powers in battle unless it was an absolute emergency, but we learned that she can also use them to heal. Used to do it for her brother, so we were thinking…”
“She could help unscramble my brains,” Bucky supplied, a drop of hope in the waterfall of dread pooling in his stomach.
Bucky’s phrasing made Steve look away again. “You’d have to talk to her about it. Build some trust, I think. That’s the only way something like this could work.”
“You trust her now, right?” Bucky thought this way was easier, because he was quite simply too fucked up in the head. He knew he didn’t have it in him to ever trust a stranger again.
“Of course.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
“This won’t work well if you’re tense. Take deep breaths. Don’t sit so straight,” Wanda advises. It’s remarkably easy to obey and sag under bone-deep exhaustion. He’d almost forgotten how cryo made him bleary for the next few days, as if being awake was like donning an ill-fitting skin. Without any Winter Soldier adrenaline or being constantly on the move, his skin feels clammy. Craving the drugged sleep.
Even in the safest of spaces, Bucky thinks bitterly, his body still betrays him.
He fills his lungs with as much air as they can hold and exhales. Wispy red sparks surround him. He closes his eyes.
There’s the familiar press of a presence in his mind beside his own. Although he rationally knows it’s not manipulative or malicious, Bucky’s eyes squeeze tight and his fist clenches his knee. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he grits out. His mind can’t do anything about the fact that it has company, so his body itches to lash out, to scream-
“I can defend myself.” There’s a tiny smile in her voice. He forces himself to inhale deep and focus on that feeling of expanding, of her mental presence soothing his. It’s easier than it should be for him to relax into that feeling - whether it’s an ingrained reaction or she’s that good at making her intentions clear, Bucky’s not sure.
“Wow,” she murmurs under her breath, and Bucky’s eyes slit open. There are impressions, now, vaguely familiar. His fractured memories. She’s sifting through them. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
He breathes through it, with a methodical ‘managing-an-oncoming-breakdown’ focus. She seems to be trying to put things in order, dwelling only on the happier times of his overstayed life. Buying flowers for a beautiful gal he just met. Getting his first steadily paying gig at the presses, age thirteen. Dancing until sweat tacked shirt to skin and he could barely walk straight, nevermind the drinks he’d downed. Bodies pressed against his, trusting, willing, strangers. Having so much blind faith as to feel at home in a crowd.
All fragments that had come to him over the last two years, treasured, and inevitably forgotten. The moments bubble, breaking the surface and reminding him just because these things are out of reach most days, doesn’t mean they’re gone forever. They happened, they’re happening right now in his mind, and they always will happen.
Only a few mundane memories of his family, or Steve, percolate. Bucky supposes he was especially happy watching his Pa read the paper one day, or going to that one picture with Steve. But even his electrocuted brain normally knew these people weren’t allowed to be forgotten.
The constant swell of fear and rage surrenders to old peace. A part of him needs to scramble for something to write with. An ingrained habit formed while on the run; there’s terror in remembering, because each time could be his last moment knowing who he is.
Was. Is. It matters less and less, he’s realizing. Past and present will always be, but the future is an entirely different animal. His throat sours with almost overwhelming gratitude. If he still could, Bucky thinks he would cry.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
Wanda’s voice is thick with his emotion. “Doesn’t change anything. You were abused,” and she trembles with anger at that, “but you have a beautiful mind, Bucky.”
He thinks that must be an exaggeration - if she’s really seen the filthy hands stuck in him playing ventriloquist, how easily he gave into his handler’s demands, she wouldn’t be saying that.
Yet he adds it to the list of lies he tells himself. The parts of him worth saving survived, too, and there’s something kind of beautiful about that.