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“I can’t have a baby,” she says, and the last thing Bucky thinks, before the Soldier takes over, is Funny you should say, doll, because neither can I.
And then his brain just… stops. Short-circuits, on the spot, and it’s the Soldier who walks Bucky out of the Med Unit, down the stairs to the gym, where there’s angry music playing (why is there always angry music playing in the gym?), but it’s otherwise empty except for himself.
Bucky’s only dimly aware of the journey, of the double-time beat of his heart in his chest, until he finds himself standing in front of the mirrors that line one wall, staring at his reflection.
Staring at the Soldier, staring back.
He stares for a long time.
He’s not exactly a looker right now. He’d say he’s a downright eyesore, if it comes to that. Still grungy after the mission, still stinking to high-heaven of blood and sweat and smoke. There’s dark circles under his reddened eyes, and his skin is splotchy and looks like he’s been sweating out dirt for the last thousand years. He hasn’t shaved in… God, he doesn’t even know how long. At least a day and a half. His hair’s getting that dull, greasy sort of look it does when he ignores it for too long. Just looking at his reflection makes his jaw go tight.
The Winter Soldier, looking back.
One scary, determined fucker. Bucky can’t even blame her for screaming.
I never knew the Winter Soldier, but I know you.
He’d liked that, at the beginning. That she could look at him and grin so easily, trust him so completely, joke and tease and yell without the flicker of worry in the back of her eyes, the slight hesitation that everyone else tends to have that they might say or do the wrong thing to set him off, to send Bucky down below and bring the Soldier to the surface.
The rest of them, they’re either real good at pretending that the Soldier doesn’t still live under his skin, doesn’t inform his every decision in the field, or they forget that he and the Soldier are technically the same person. There’s this idea that the Soldier was not, never had been, of the same mind as Bucky Barnes.
That’s not precisely true. Bucky knows: the Soldier was himself, stripped of his memory, his morals, his affiliations. He was the pure essence of Bucky’s determination, loyalty, perseverance, and intelligence.
Bucky stares at the Soldier’s reflection in the mirror; there’s a tick in his jaw now. He can feel it pulsing in time with his heart.
He’s killed her. Just as surely as he killed the others, even if he didn’t know it. Even if he hadn’t meant it.
And the Soldier… brought him down here, out of the Med Unit, barely aware of the door slamming behind him.
Like keeping him safe is a kindness.
The laughter bubbles out of him, wry and ironic and painful. Why does laughing hurt. His entirely body aches with it, and it’s enough to send the Soldier back to where he lives, rent-free as the kids say, in the back of his mind. Bucky laughs until the tears are streaming from his eyes, hot and sizzling, until he’s choking on it.
Maybe it’s not laughter at all.
Bucky’s right hand is in a fist before he realizes.
Punch
It’s his fault, all of it.
Punch
What the hell was he thinking?
Punch
That he could have this one thing?
Punch
What’s the modern world ever given him but headaches and heartaches? Why would he expect its fucking birth control to actually work, either?
Punch
What business does he have, thinking he gets absolution or a happy ending?
Punch
There’s still too much of Hydra running through his veins, embedded in his DNA, to ever make him safe for anyone again.
Punch
And now… that she’s going to be the one to pay the price for his selfishness…
Punch
Punch
Punch
There’s no way she’ll want anything with him now. Even if he’d kissed her that morning… maybe it’s just as well he didn’t. It would have been worse, if they’d started something. Had six weeks of being together, of being a them, before this came down on their heads.
Punch
Punch
Punch
He’s killed every chance he had with her. He’s as good as killed her. And if by some chance she lives…
Well. She’s not going to forgive him. He’s not too likely to forgive himself, for that matter.
The anger surges again, and this time, the mirror breaks into a thousand pieces.
Seven years bad luck, comes the bright, childish voice in the back of his head. Becca, he thinks. Yeah, well, Bucky’s had seventy years of bad luck, he figures he’s owed a mirror or two. But he goes and picks up the glass shards anyway, not even caring about the cuts on his fingers. They barely hurt.
“Glad to see you cleaning up your own mess,” says a flat voice behind him, and Bucky stiffens.
“Stark,” he says, picking up another large piece of mirror and setting it in the trash can he dragged over. “I’ll pay for it.”
“Yeah, you can do that,” says Stark, uncaring. “You can also, I don’t know, stop the fucking bullet next time, before you get my lab assistant shot.”
Crash.
Bucky blinks, staring at his fist, which is dead center in the crater of one of the mirrors on the wall, the cracks radiating out.
There’s blood dripping.
But Stark, behind him, says nothing. Self-preservation, maybe.
Bucky pulls his hand away; cuts cover his knuckles and fingers; even the back of his hand has a few marks, and there’s small bits of glass that catch the light. He should pick them out; he should head straight back to medical to have it cleaned and bandaged.
But she’s in medical, and he doesn’t trust himself anywhere near her. Look what he’s done already.
He pulls off his t-shirt and wraps his bleeding hand with it.
“You think I don’t know I fucked up?” growls Bucky. “You think I don’t know I’m the reason she’s in medical right now?”
“I think you’re down here destroying my gym,” counters Stark after a moment. He pauses again. “She okay?”
Bucky winces. “She’s awake. Doc’s got her for observation.”
“Observation? Shit, Barnes, what did she get doused with this time?” snaps Stark.
“Nothing.” Bucky tucks the end of the shirt under the wrap and bends back over wearily to keep picking up the shards of mirror. “Even if she was, I’m not divulging her medical status to you.”
The glass tinkles as he drops it in the trash, but Stark doesn’t move away.
“No,” Stark says finally. “Right. Fine.”
Stark’s nearly at the door – and Bucky’s nearly done picking up the biggest pieces of broken mirror – when Stark speaks again. “Leave it,” he calls. “The cleaning crew can get the rest.”
“She ain’t your lab assistant in the field,” says Bucky through gritted teeth. “She’s my partner.”
Stark taps his hand against his leg. “Yeah, well,” he says finally, irritation clear. “She’s still shot. So. Do better.”
He leaves, like he doesn’t want to chance losing the last word.
The cleaning crew arrives about twenty minutes later anyway, armed with a vacuum and damp towels, spray bottles and a large sheet of plastic which is undoubtedly meant to help keep the mess in while taking down the broken mirrors still fixed to the wall.
“It’s all right, Sergeant Barnes,” says Carl, the main janitor. “Thanks for getting the big pieces, but we’ve got the rest.”
“Go get that seen to,” adds Juanita, eyeing the shirt still wrapped around his fist.
He watches them for a moment; they ignore him and get to work, murmuring apologies as they work around him, competent and careful as they ease the broken mirrors from the wall.
Tsking when they see the dents in the drywall, eyeing his hand not as a weapon, but as something that undoubtedly needs medical attention.
He goes, leaving them to their work.
Medical is quiet, when he arrives. The door to where he left her is closed tight, the curtains drawn.
Sleeping, probably.
Nurse Amy’s the one to start picking the shards of glass out of his hand. Most are on the surface; some are deep enough that she has to reopen what’s already healed to get them out. The body would push them out eventually, but he doesn’t mind the pain of her digging with the tweezers.
Anyway, he likes Amy. She’s one of the few nurses who was never scared of him. She sized him up the first day in the Tower and just as quickly dismissed him as another superhero with a death wish.
Not entirely inaccurate, either. Those early days, he wasn’t sure he shouldn’t have just died in Siberia or the Alps or hell, Azzano, and saved everyone the trouble of what came after.
(He never told that to Steve, or his therapist. He knows it’d scare them, and rightly so. They’d end up wanting to talk about it, dig into it, make it into more of something than it really is, which is just a stupid morbid joke that made him laugh once in the dark of night, when he was already feeling so low he wasn’t sure he could get lower.
It’d helped. That’s the stupid thing, it’d helped, that damn joke that isn’t a joke. He woke up the next morning and he keeps waking up the next morning because hell, if he didn’t die when he should have, he sure as hell ain’t gonna die now that he’s got a chance to make that non-death worth it. He doesn’t need a therapist or Steve Rogers or anyone else to help him figure that out. It’s probably not entirely healthy, but it works.)
Helen Cho pokes her head in just as Amy’s pulling out the various wrappings and antibacterials. “Amy, did we get those test results back?”
Bucky’s ears perk up.
“They’re in your folder, I haven’t had a chance to put them in the system yet,” says Amy.
“All right, thanks, I’ll look there.”
Cho is about to leave, when Bucky takes a chance. “Is it all right if I sit with her while she’s sleeping?”
But Cho just gives him a confused look. “She’s not here.”
Bucky goes still.
Even Amy pulls her hands back, giving him a wary look. Not worried or fearful, more like she’s watching a teenager about to self-destruct and is waiting for the right moment to hit him with a tranquilizer dart.
“What do you mean, not. Here.”
“I mean,” says Helen, in that familiar clipped tone that brooks no argument, “that she left about two hours ago.”
“You let her—why?” shouts Bucky. “Did you not hear what I was telling you! She’s at risk and you need to—”
“What I need, Sergeant Barnes,” Cho interrupts him, “is to take care of my patient, and you are citing extreme examples that may or may not be relevant to her current medical status!”
Bucky shakes, staring at her. His head is static, a roaring of blood, the hiss of the cryofreeze, the tingly feeling of his skin vibrating.
The Soldier waits, ready.
Is this fear? He’s not sure. It feels a lot like anger. It feels a lot like everything he’s ever wanted is slipping through his fingers, and he can’t even stop it from happening. Again.
Well. He’s going to try, anyway. He’s going to drag her right back down here and save her fucking life, if it’s the last thing she’ll let him do.
He’s going to clean up his own damn mess, even if it means he has to destroy whatever he might have had with her to do it.
“It’s all relevant,” he says, biting out the words with cold fury. “Because it all happened. And if you let her out of your sight again, it won’t me be who’s killed her, it’ll be you!”