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Everything seemed to be alright.
He was sending those cocky smiles whenever Steve dared to say something stupid. He was using sarcasm and shooting sassily back when situation required those. It was really easy to read the mood and adjust your own voice, facial expression and body language. They wanted him to act as everything was okay? Okay. Then he was. On the outside he looked fine, maybe even more than that.
Nothing was alright.
Mischievous smile on Natasha’s face. Poorly hidden laugh inside Clint’s throat. Meaningful looks between Bruce and Tony. Passionate discussion between Sam and Steve. All of those were real, not faked. Not an ounce of false tone or cracks showing what’s beneath. There was nothing under their masks as there were no masks at all. The only person in the room who dared to pretend was him.
If Steve wasn’t up here, he would just leave or try less. But. His presence made him behave as nothing inside him was broken. As if there was anything left underneath a shell shaped to resemble a human body. He doubted that theory. It’d been so long since he actually didn’t feel hollow. Void. Completely numb and empty. Only years spent under Hydra’s control let him appear as if nothing was missing. Pretending he wasn’t as brittle and crippled as he knew he was.
Playing dashing Bucky Barnes was tiresome. Pointless. Temporary.
Nothing good lasts forever and his “good” ended in ’45. If he could quit playing his old self, he would do it in a heartbeat. But.
There was Steve.
This goddamn punk who seemed to see and understand everything despite his best friend being dead. Not in biological matter because from that point of view this body was fulfilling all criteria for alive state. His internal light was gone and even Rogers didn’t see that. Or pretended not to. Either way his attitude was not helpful.
He used to take care of him, protecting him and making sure his best friend didn’t end up in dark alley beaten up. Then war came and this whole fucking mess with Captain America, Howling Commandos, Hydra… So many months of gruesome views, charming smiles, bloody hands, precious laughs, smell of gunpowder and death alongside with tightening bonds with friends. Chaos. Mess. Death.
War took carefree sparks in his eyes away but it was Hydra which ripped remaining of humanity right off his chest. Memories of his torture, faces of people he had killed, all this blood and screams and agonizing pain were haunting him whenever he dared to close his eyes. Sometimes he didn’t know what was worse, slipping into dark abyss of his sins at night or wearing a wiped halo around his head in the light of a day.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. So he did. He washed his broken wings out of dried blood with his own tears. He stitched up burning wounds with strands made of pretty lies. He put on human mask to cover twisted features. He was balancing on a thin rope, praying to no one in particular for everyone to stop looking at him for just a few seconds so that he could finally fall.
“So how about a movie night, everybody?” Tony raised his voice, trying to make the rest of Avengers focus on him. It took them a while but eventually everyone nodded more or less convinced, starting to discuss which movies should appear.
“You comin’?” a gentle voice spoke right to his ear, baby blues looking with tenderness at his lifeless irises without a color.
He didn’t want to. He would rather drink an acid. Swallow a pieces of glass. Exscind his intestines with a kitchen knife. Hang himself in a Central Park. Drown in a bathtub. Fall from Stark’s Tower right onto unfortunate passerby.
“Maybe” blank voice of his responded instead, not wanting to make Steve worried.
It was literally the last thing his entire existence wanted to do right now, to worry that precious boy out of time.
Eventually he convinced Steve to let him work out alone since it was much more productive and fun than watching some silly movies with people he couldn’t even consider friends. Such words never occurred of course but meaning was basically the same. A quick kiss to a forehead and smiling sunshine was heading back to the tower, leaving him in an empty apartment.
No matter how he looked at his situation, he couldn’t say he was entirely alone. He never was. There had always been ghosts of the past and the more he tried to ignore them during the day, the more strident they were when he was pretending to be asleep.
Insomnia was no fun itself but when combined with constant nightmares it really made him wonder why he bothered to close his eyes at all. Maybe it was a punishment? Not from above, not from society but from his own damn self. For being… just for it. Nothing more to be added, his existence itself earned him that hell.
Sleep was something essential to function properly, everyone knows that. Some people needed less of it that the others but lack of sleep leaded to health problems and eventually death. What was funny to him though, that there were people who considered it as an escape. From reality, from pain. Depression was a common thing as far as he knew but what was hilarious? The simple irony in his case. He couldn’t just. Go to bed and run away. Hell was everywhere no matter if he was asleep or not.
He had a theory that he actually had died back then in Europe, when he had fallen from that train. The weight of his sins – the number of innocent people he had murdered and hadn’t even bat an eyelid, the inappropriate feelings for his best friend he had been hiding deep inside his soul – made his soul fell into hell. There were many theories how that place looked like and one of them claimed it was impossible to verify since pain is a very individual experience and therefore it probably looked different to everyone. He liked that idea because his personal hell wasn’t filled with fire and boilers and red-skinned devils with hay forks.
It looked innocent, almost like a life he used to live. The only difference was that he knew he was dead and that feeling. That sense of bleakness was driving him crazy. If there only was anything sane left within him, of course.
The line between reality and nightmares didn’t exist in his perception, not anymore. He tried to fool himself, to convince his own mind he could get better but as much as he wanted to believe in that, the truth was reminding of itself each single day until he finally broke.
There was no escape. There was no “better”. Only pointless breathing, feeding his stomach to shut it down for a few hours and faking smiles while each single cell in his body wanted to cry. Sometimes his eyes wanted to cry as well but he didn’t know how. He had already forgotten what feeling it was, to have watery eyes. While being tortured he used to cry a river each single day and then he just. Stopped. Maybe there were no tears left within his body, maybe he just became indifferent to everything. No matter the cause, he could not shed a single tear now.
Everything was grey, insipid and boring.
His metal arm made quiet whirring sound as he opened a can of soda what only reminded him how much had changed since war.
He didn’t value anything anymore.
Maybe Steve. A little bit. But.
That precious punk somehow managed to get his shit together and at least try to adjust, to live a life. He didn’t need Bucky anymore for anything. It looked just as if he was a nice moving decoration, a memento from old times.
Yeah, sure, they technically were in relationship which could be simply described as ‘complicated’ yet his guts were telling him his presence meant as much as New York’s traffics. Common. Annoying at some point. Wished to disappear.
His right hand turned some music on as it was the only form of half-distraction he actually had. He needed that, to busy those leftovers of his mind with something else than killing itself.
“…I don’t know where I’m going but I don’t think I’m coming home” a vocalist sang, making something twist inside his body. Even music was laughing at him now, wasn’t it?
“...I’ll check tomorrow if I don’t wake up dead” ah yes, funny. Really funny. Ha-ha. “This is the road to the ruin” a thing which once could be called his heart stopped once again, making him take a deep breath. Just as if such a thing as breathing could put those broken pieces back into one.
He skipped to the next song, hoping Steve actually had set up a positive-ish playlist.
Song started pretty nice but as soon as “There's no hiding for me, I'm forced to deal with what I feel, there is no distraction to mask what is real” he decided everything was apparently mocking him so he turned music off.
Silence settled over him heavy and dense, filling his lungs slowly enough to cause pain but harmlessly enough to not suffocate him. It was a pity because it would the best goddamned thing right now. To either kill him or let him kill himself.
Neither of those sounded pretty or promising but in the end what was left? His existing was not living, it was constant battle with himself and everybody else to just what? Go throw same shit next day? Over and over again?
He had enough.
Enough of winsome promises, enticing lies. Enough of this dumb penance. Enough of his own thoughts and feelings.
Maybe he had an angel in his life but his blissful light was burning him like a fire, causing more bad than good. There was nothing worth saving within that shell made of flesh and metal. Only darkness, sin and guilt mixed with regret.
Steve was telling him he’s beautiful. Amazing. Dapper, even. But he could not believe those pretty mouths, not anymore. The dreg of his childish faith fell with him from a train and drowned in icy river, unlike the rest of him. Oh, how easier everything would have been, if just they had let him stay in that painfully cold water just a few minutes longer.
Wishful thinking, useless prayer.
Nothing he had ever wished for came easy. Always hard going, always chafing around term ‘impossible’ or ‘miracle’. It will pass, they said. You’ll manage, they said.
No one had mentioned he would eventually end up mentally fucked up, lonely and suicidal.
No fucking one had mentioned his love for Steve would evolve into something sinful, sick and nowhere near term ‘healthy’.
No one had thought him what being alive meant.
He had no intention in learning that one. He was done. Exhausted.
Ready to deliver the coup de grace to his fucking mind.
He had never considered himself good at writing so he didn’t even bother to leave a note or letter. He wasn’t a sap like Steve, there was no inner need to inform him or anyone in particular why he was so desperate. The less they knew, the better they would sleep at night.
He had already eaten bunch of different pills, drink some alcohol with a tiny bit of detergents but he needed to be sure he won’t wake up. So he just went outside and silently waited for his shaking legs to carry him onto Brooklyn Birdge.
It started with falling, it would end with it.
Oh, maybe he was a sap, after all.
As much as Bucky didn’t feel like leaving a good-bye note, he did left something.
After returning to their apartment, baby blues saw a quick doodle of smiling face and a caption:
“Thanks, Stevie”