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Bucky’s dreams used to be about the past—Hydra, Steve, all the things he’s done with his bloodied hands. There’s no shortage of fuel to haunt him, no period of his long and miserable life that cannot come back late at night to keep him up. And these memories still appear from time to time, never completely gone. But now a new problem has begun surfacing in his nightmares: the future. Specifically, losing the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
Yelena.
He’s always concerned about the team, whoever he’s fighting with, wants everyone to come out in one piece. Obviously. But once he started falling for her, once she became his person, he’s half-breathless with fear anytime she’s near danger. When she’s hurt, he has to work hard not to spiral, to take over as team leader and get shit done. On a mission, he trusts her to do her job but never fully relaxes until it’s over and she’s back by his side.
Now that he has her, he’s floored by the terrifying possibility of losing her.
The smoke is so thick he chokes on it, ash burning his eyes, his body tired despite his high threshold for exhaustion. Everything is burning chaos: screams of civilians, crumbling buildings, blood in the streets.
And yet it all falls silent when comms ring out in alarm, with the question:
Does anyone have eyes on Yelena?
He hasn’t seen her since the start of the fight, when she gave him a cheeky grin and told him to ‘keep up, old man’ and he wanted to kiss her in front of everyone but restrained himself. He hasn’t seen her in hours, though he’s always worried, always wondering where she is, compartmentalizing his fear so he can fight with a clear head.
But when the fight winds to a close, the only task remaining is cleanup, and everyone else is checking in on comms except for Yelena…
She’s nowhere to be found. He can’t find her, and she was last seen evacuating civilians near a collapsing building. He’s digging in the rubble for what seems like eons before he finds her, limp and unmoving, broken by the debris as it fell.
And he’s holding her body, cradling her in his arms as she stares up at the sky with glassy, unseeing eyes—the green ones he loves, that he dreams about when she’s away, the ones that look at him like he’s a real human deserving of her love. And now they are empty, sightless, and there’s no pulse beneath her soft skin, and blood on her face that’s no longer flowing because her heart isn’t beating.
He feels his own heart collapse, his chest cave in.
“Lena, come back to me. Please. Don’t leave me, love. Don’t do this.” Pleading, begging to a universe that doesn’t listen, that has always sat indifferently in the face of his pain.
James.
His tears are dripping onto her face, her face that just hours ago smiled at him, that just last night kissed him. He begs, feeling his soul splintering as he does so. It can’t be. It can’t be her, not his Yelena, she cannot be the sacrifice in this war.
James.
Even as he mourns her he cannot unhear the sound of her voice, soft and sweet just for him, in his ears as if she’s still here, and that makes it hurt more.
“James!”
Bucky jerks awake to the familiar darkness of his room, tangled in sheets and sweating. His cheeks are wet, and his heart feels like it’s been ripped out of his chest. He scans the room frantically, the nightmare still too real, too vivid, a sick fear that it was more than simply a dream.
“Hey,” Yelena says softly, her voice clear in the dark as she reaches for the nightstand lamp. “You were dreaming. You’re alright.”
The light illuminates her soft, tired face, taking him in with concern. Her sleep-mussed hair, the oversized T-shirt she stole from him. He drinks in the sight of her like an oasis in the desert, half-afraid she’s still a mirage. Afraid to blink, to get any closer.
“Milyy,” Yelena whispers, her hands reaching out to cup his face, thumbing away his tears with a worried frown between her brows. “What is it?” It’s not often he’s this rattled by a dream; typically, he just tugs her close and stays awake until morning, holding her, quiet.
Bucky wraps his arms around her waist and buries his face in her shirt, inhaling her scent and the warmth of her, the aliveness, the way her heart beats in her chest as she holds him. Her hands trace soothing patterns on his back, murmuring in Russian and English, various comforts that hum through her body. He listens to her breathe, blinks hard, convinces himself it is real.
“You were gone,” he says hoarsely, hating to even say it aloud. “You died.”
Yelena pulls back gently, framing his face in her hands and pressing her forehead to his. “I’m here.”
He traces her arms, her neck, her jaw, outlining her body with his hands as he accepts her presence, breathes her in. She doesn’t say I always will be or nothing will happen, because they both know nothing is guaranteed. But she’s here now, holding him close, and he lets that be enough.
—
Then the team is in Rio, dealing with insurgents bombing a village, and the fighting is so tense that Bucky doesn’t realize Yelena’s out of his sight until later, until no one is sure where she is, and he’s living the nightmare over again. Calling unresponsive comms, thinking the absolute worst as he traces back to her last known location, a faint dot on the map that hasn’t moved in half an hour. The building’s gone up in smoke, close to rubble by now, and the sight pulls him up short. Either her comms are out, stuck at that spot, or she’s still inside.
And if she’s still inside…
No.
If it were any of his other teammates, he could be rational. He would be sick with worry, of course, and search the rubble until he found them, never giving up. But he could be rational, tuck aside his fear of a dead teammate and a lost friend, face it when it actually happened.
Not when it’s Yelena.
When it’s Yelena, he tears through the burning building, scanning bodies and searching wreckage, his heart pounding out of his chest so hard it hurts. It hurts, and he can’t breathe, inhaling the smoke and ignoring the sting. As he searches, as he calls, as he ignores his teammates over comms telling him to get out because the building’s unstable—he can’t stop. He’s picturing Yelena’s body, the way it was in his dreams—eyes open, empty, her body without a pulse, gone forever. Cold. Her battered body, crushed in the rubble, her spirit somewhere he can’t reach her.
I’ll always find you, he whispered one night to her after she had a nightmare, one where she lost him.
But what if he can’t?
“Barnes! We found Yelena, get the fuck out of there!”
Walker’s voice pierces through Bucky’s obsessive haze, through his desperation. He turns on his heel and sprints out of the building, back through rooms with falling debris and scorching temperatures and blinding smoke. Sprints, because Walker has just said found, not she’s okay.
Found could mean anything. It could mean her body.
He emerges from the building to a scene not much improved from the inside of a burning building. It’s still chaos, screaming and explosions, civilians running through the streets and dust in the air, but it all drowns out to nothing but white noise when he sees Yelena across the street, crouched in the alleyway and arguing with Walker about something he can’t hear.
He slumps in relief, ducking gunfire and tearing across the street until he’s in the alley, until he’s next to her and sees she’s breathing, that her eyes are open, that she’s grimy from the fight but she’s alive, perfectly fine.
Yelena frowns, keeping her eyes trained on the street. “Barnes?” Field names only out here, and it always feels stiff compared to how she whispers his name in their bed, in the late hours of the night. But maybe that’s how it should be, an intimacy reserved only for them, not for anyone else to hear. “You good?”
He swallows hard, nods. “Answer your fucking comms next time.”
She blinks, looking at him now and surprised at his tone. Not fazed, not afraid of the harsh desperation it holds, but taken aback. “Building blew them out.” John makes a face at her, as if to say please don’t drag me into this.
Bucky grits his teeth and returns to the chaotic scene the team’s trying to fix, because there are priorities that include the insurgents and civilians and not him and Yelena’s relationship issues, not his crippling insecurity of losing her. The last thing she needs is to be distracted by him and so he falls silent, resuming his part, trying to calm the dull roar in his head that is the adrenaline, the fear of almost losing her again. The fear that he can’t keep going on missions with her if he’s going to act like this.
They’re on the jet, the city disappearing behind them, when he finally closes out the mission tab of his brain and returns his focus to Yelena. Yelena, tired and dirty but sitting in the corner with Ava, talking shit and laughing. She’s utterly capable of anything, yet entirely human all the same. Breakable. And now because of a stupid dream, he’s losing his shit.
He stews the rest of the flight, angry at himself for his reaction and at Yelena for not understanding how serious he takes her life. Angry that he’s having a hard time expressing it. The team’s already filed off the jet by the time Yelena approaches him, the last two still on board, and crosses her arms.
“What’s your problem?” she asks, brow raised. She’s got a cut over her eyebrow that he wants to wipe the blood from, a smear of dirt he wants to clear. Her eyes are red from the sheer amount of smoke and dust kicked up in the village.
Bucky shakes his head, runs a hand through his disheveled hair. God, he needs a shower. Every inch of him is sweaty and dusty. “Not now, Lena.” He needs to be alone, needs to dissect how fractured he’s feeling. He’s going to explode if he stays here, because he is still so bad at actually telling her how he feels, and the leftover fear of losing her is still crushing him.
“You can’t act like you did today and not tell me why,” she snaps, unyielding. He should know she’s not scared off so easily. “What the fuck is your problem?” She repeats. Their fights—when they do have them—are like this, harsh words and shouting and then a break, a relief, when they finally figure out what the other person is trying to say. He’s still learning to read her, and Yelena him. A lifetime of being erased and brainwashed means that he doesn’t understand himself on some days, and both of them are experts at deception.
He knows her like the back of his hand, but he spent most of his life not recognizing his own hands.
“You weren’t on your comms,” Bucky says through gritted teeth. “You were unresponsive for forty-five minutes, and I thought—”
“What?” Yelena challenges, taking a step into his personal space, standing now between his knees. “That I was just ignoring you? Tech breaks. It doesn’t mean you can snap at me in front of the team. Honestly, James, we can’t afford to be pissed at each other on missions. You have to trust me to do my job.”
“I do,” Bucky says, frustrated. “It’s not that.”
She scoffs. “Then what? You don’t freak out when anyone else’s comms go dead.”
“I am not sleeping with our teammates,” Bucky deadpans, and she laughs dryly.
“Now that we are together, you are going to get mad if I don’t answer my comms right away?” Yelena’s pacing now, confounded. The long day’s wearing on her, the hours of leading the team through ambushes and raids, her shoulders slumping as she pinches the bridge of her nose. “What’s this really about, James?”
And finally he’s forced to articulate his fear, to put speech to the unspeakable possibility. It’s not just his fear that’s hard to admit—it’s the depths of his feelings for her, the way they are rooted deep in his chest, close to his heart, so close to his soul that words don’t quite do it justice. How can his words come to close to how he feels? Maybe if he cared less it would be easier to talk about it, but it’s too raw and deep, too real. She means too much to him for this conversation to be easy.
“I thought I lost you,” Bucky blurts out, hushed, a vulnerable thinness to the words. “I panicked.”
Yelena goes quiet, stops her pacing. “What?”
“It was that dream I had the other night,” he says, the confession drawing out of him like a long exhale. “You were trapped in an explosion, and I…I found your body in the rubble.”
Her expression softens, closing the distance between them. “James.”
“So when that building was coming down today and no one could find you,” Bucky says, swallowing hard, “it was like it was happening in real time. I couldn’t think straight.” He drops his head into his hands, trying to scrub the image from his mind.
Yelena kneels in front of him, untangling his hands from his hair and holding them firmly in her own. “I scared you.”
“You did,” he admits, her green eyes so close to his, a color he sees in his daydreams, one he longs for when she’s not around. He squeezes her hands. “A lot.”
“I didn’t know.” Her brow knits. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
Bucky sighs, stares down at their intertwined hands. “It’s hard to. I’m always worried about you. About what I’d do if something happened to you.”
“Milyy,” Yelena says gently, touching his chin until he looks back at her. My love. A soft and sweet term of endearment she throws out when he’s least expecting it, when he’s not prepared for the weight of the word or whether he deserves it. It makes his heart soar every time. “There’s no guarantees, you know. Anything could happen.”
He nods. “I know.”
“You can’t lose your shit like that again,” Yelena adds, ever the responsible team leader. “Even if I am hurt. The team needs you, and if something happens to me you have to take over. We’re leading it.”
A piece of hair has come out of her braid, and Bucky tucks it behind her ear as she talks. He wipes away the dirt smudged across her cheek and frowns at the cut on her forehead. “I will. But you need to not get your comm signal blown up, Belova. Don’t give me reason to worry if there’s not.”
“Hmm,” Yelena says, smirking. “A compromise.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t clear,” Bucky says firmly. “I shouldn’t have acted like that. But I can’t lose you, and so I need you to not give me heart attacks on missions if you can help it.”
She nods, serious. “Da. I am sorry.”
Yelena leans forward and he tugs her into his chest, wrapping his arms around her and tucking his chin atop her head. He holds her close, reminds himself that her heart is beating.
“Look at us, talking about our feelings,” Yelena teases, her voice muffled against his suit. “You’re going soft, soldat.”
He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “Only for you.”