[ WWII AU ] a ghost story

[from_the_outside]

It's been almost two years since she's been home, and little by little, the grief has gotten easier to live with.

It hasn't gone away. But she's able to focus on her job, watch movies, chat with friends, sleep most nights. She still dreams about him, but the dreams are tinged with wistful longing and only sometimes does she wake up with tears on her cheeks. She can't have his picture out in this apartment, Kate's apartment, but it's safe in the mountain house, along with his last letter to her, and she has a scan on her phone to look at when the long day is over and she's in bed, the stars from the lamp he'd given her filling her dark room.

Steve has helped, more than she could ever explain, and she hopes she's helped him in return. Aside from a few deeply classified missions here and there, they haven't worked together all that much, but she still sees him almost every day. In the halls, she's undercover as his mild-mannered neighbor, Kate, but in her secure apartment they can talk over anything, everything.

And it works. Every day is a little easier. They lean on each other when they need to, and they spend hours remembering and reminiscing about Bucky, talking shop, chatting about how Steve's fitting into the future. It's nice. She still misses Bucky, an ache that never really goes away, but they can both breathe through it, work through it, live through it.

She's on her way up from the basement laundry machines when she hears a familiar step in the hall, and has to smile to herself – first her own, then Kate's sweeter, more open one. "Hey, neighbor."

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[nerves_of_ice]

He struggles while the cannonade continues, while beyond them in the sky the other two helicarriers crash into each other and break apart midair, but he can't get leverage to shift the wreckage. He braces himself to try again, then his eyes widen as Rogers staggers over to help.

None of this makes sense. His mind is chaos, all his thoughts whirling and shrieking madness at him. Why won't this man give up? Why is he risking his own life here, now, to try to save him?

(but I knew him)

He twists on his side as the metal shifts and crawls out from under, then shoves himself to his feet and turns slowly to stare at Rogers.

[marvel_npc]

Steve lets the girder down with crash, then turns to face Bucky. Both of them are panting for breath; both injured, both hurting.

He can't take it anymore. "You know me," he insists, weary but stubborn.

[nerves_of_ice]

Gasping for air, he listens in utter shock as the other man insists that he's familiar, that he should recognize him.

Nausea wrenches at him, and as everything in his body revolts, the Winter Soldier strikes out at him with his left fist and his voice both.

"No I don't!"

[marvel_npc]

Just as he gains his feet, Bucky smashes him off them again. His voice is as raw and rough now as it had been when he and Sharon were desperately trying to get him to remember, before.

It's only the two of them now. But it's been only the two of them plenty enough times before. "Bucky."

He pushes back to his feet, breathing hard. "You've known me your whole life."

[nerves_of_ice]

Why won't he stop?

(I can do this all day)

This time he backhands Rogers as hard as he can, a raw, wordless howl escaping him as he does. The force of the blow drags him around as well and sends him sprawling sideways against the girder.

[marvel_npc]

He goes sprawling. It's harder to get up this time, but he does it.

And he doesn't stop. Each word is slow, but stubbornly clear. "Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Shut up!"

He slams into him again, crashing against the shield, and goes to his knees with the strength of the blow. He can't catch his breath, he can't keep his balance; the entire world is shifting around him, unsteady and unknowable as he staggers back to his feet and turns to face Rogers.

He's not aware of the desperation in his eyes, nor of the way his expression is drawn and strained.

[marvel_npc]

He staggers to his feet, again. Again, again.

("I had him on the ropes."
"I know you did.")

As he stands, Steve rips the helmet from off his head and lets it drop, falling between the smashed glass panes to the Potomac. When he looks back at Bucky, his face – battered, bruised, and weary – is visible. "I'm not gonna fight you."

What's the point, now? Bucky can't stop what's happening to Insight, what's happening to HYDRA, and Steve can't take a single more hit from his own hands to Bucky's body.

He opens his hand and lets the shield drop. It plummets along with his helmet to the water below. "You're my friend."

[nerves_of_ice]

You're my friend.

(you know us)

There's something about the angle of the other man's jaw, something about the shade of his hair, the quiet, steady determination in his eyes. The Winter Soldier stares back at him.

(You're from Brooklyn. And Steve Rogers is your best friend.)

It can't be true. It can't. He doesn't have friends. He's the Winter Soldier. He's a weapon. And the man in front of him, no matter what he says, he's--

His expression twists in rage, and he slams into the other man, who doesn't resist as he's knocked off his feet and flat against the surface of the dome. The Winter Soldier pins him there with the weight of his body. "You're my mission," he snarls, and slams his left fist into Rogers' face over and over, trying to obliterate the haunting, sickening familiarity of his features with each blow as he screams the only truth he knows.

"You're! My! Mission!"

[marvel_npc]

Each blow hits with the force of a truck. His head snaps back again and again, lights flashing in his vision as pain explodes.

But he doesn't fight back. He doesn't even put his hands up to protect himself. And when Bucky pauses, his chest heaving and his eyes wild and desperate and agonizingly confused, he does his best to speak through the blood in his mouth. "Then finish it."

He's already been in a world without Bucky. He can't do it again, not knowing it doesn't have to be that way. "'Cause I'm with you... 'til the end of the line."

[nerves_of_ice]

He's letting it happen, he realizes, even though he doesn't understand why. Beaten, battered, unresisting, Rogers doesn't move to even try to stop him as he raises his fist for the blow that'll silence his claims for once and for all. There's acceptance in the clear blue of his eyes, and he thinks he sees something like the tiniest of smiles at the corner of his mouth as he speaks - and when he does, the simple words destroy everything.

He stares down at Steve Rogers as his face shifts in some impossible way, becoming familiar. He's seen this kind of damage before, usually after another back-alley knock-down-go-round when he'd be helping Steve clean up in their little apartment, but this time it's worse, because he did this, he did this with his own hands. He's seen the trust and certainty and confidence that Steve's had in him all his life, and he sees it again now, and can't fathom how it's even possible.

Bucky stares at his best friend, the man he'd been ordered to kill, while the world falls apart around them, and hasn't the faintest idea what to do next.

[marvel_npc]

One eye has swollen shut, but the other stays steadfastly on Bucky, whose fist is still raised and whose expression has cracked wide open. Steve can't quite tell – his vision is blurry, fading in and out – but it looks like there are tears glossing over Bucky's familiar eyes.

A shadow falls and he feels a lurch, as a section of the platform comes crashing down and smashes through what's left of the dome, shattering the glass and metal that are supporting Steve's body and sending him plummeting down towards the gleaming water below.

[nerves_of_ice]

He grabs automatically for the girder with his left hand as the dome smashes apart and hangs there above the Potomac, watching in horror as Steve falls, the same way Steve had watched while he himself had fallen into an abyss of snow and pain and darkness so long ago.

He won't let it end the same way. He waits only long enough to see where Steve's body hits the water before he lets go, plunging deep into the river before he jackknifes into a dive and swims down after Steve.

Even this deep, light gleams from the metal of his arm as he reaches for him.

[marvel_npc]

Things come in flashes:

Water, that he smacks into like a block hitting concrete before it enfolds him, dark and silent. Drifting down, down, down. A jerk and pull at his harness, and then air, and cool water rushing over his injured body, washing away the blood even as more seeps from bullet wounds.

Someone drags him to the bank, pulls him up onto the ground by the strap of his harness. He can't focus, keeps drifting in and out of consciousness, but among it all is a feeling he hasn't had in over seventy years.

Safety. Because Bucky's here with him. And Bucky's taking care of him.

[nerves_of_ice]

He doesn't know what he'll do if Steve isn't breathing. With his right shoulder still dislocated and not yet healed, he's only got one arm to work with, and if he tries chest compressions with his left hand he'll shatter Steve's ribs--

Trying not to panic, Bucky carefully tips Steve onto his side, facing away from him, and is relieved beyond words when he coughs out the water in his lungs and draws a harsh breath. He lets him lie back flat on the shore and looks down at him.

He can't stay. Not with what he's done, what he's become. He knows that. But he can't leave Steve like this. A shudder rips through him at the thought.

Clumsily, he paws at his pockets, coming up with the phone he'd taken from Sharon. Sharon. Another shudder tears through him, a worse one. What he'd done to her, too-- there's no forgiveness. There can't be.

He taps it awake, holding it to his right hand to do so, and clumsily scrolls back through the call log, looking for anything that might help, anyone that he could trust, anyone at all. He can't be sure, so he sets it down on the beach next to Steve's hand and starts searching through his friend's pockets as well.

[marvel_npc]

He drifts back to himself in pieces: there and gone again and back once more. It's not until he feels a hand rummaging in his pockets that he can even crack an eye – one, the other is still swollen shut – to gaze blearily at the shadow looming over him.

His voice is barely a murmur, drunk with pain and shock and the many blows he'd taken to the head. "Bucky."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Shhh." He sounds more frantic than he'd like, but there's not much he can do about that. "It's okay. You're gonna be okay, Steve. I'm gonna call for help. Just hang on. Don't try to move."

Nothing useful in his pockets, goddammit, how had he been staying in touch with his team? Had he? Maybe it was in his helmet, in which case that's not an option, but there has to be something--

He spots a band at Steve's wrist and takes a closer look, realizing it's a comms mic. Very carefully, he lifts Steve's wrist and activates it.

"Rogers is down," he says, clearly. "Medical response needed, this location." Where the hell are they, anyway? He scrambles for Sharon's phone and calls up the coordinates, then gives those as well.

[marvel_npc]

What's Bucky even talking about? Steve manages a smile, despite the pain of his split lip and cracked jaw. "Gonna be fine," he murmurs. "You're here."

And Bucky always, always takes care of him.

[nerves_of_ice]

Guilt rips into him with sharp claws, twisting his gut and leaving him near-breathless with pain.

"That's right." Rough, barely audible, but he manages it. "I'm here. Now lie still, you hear me?"

[marvel_npc]

He's not sure he could move even if he wanted to. His legs and arms all feel impossibly heavy, and his head feels like someone's been taking a baseball bat to it.

Another fight lost, and Bucky here, picking up the pieces, like always. "Had him on the ropes," he mutters, the words drifting along with his mind, before a thought occurs to him, sharp. He reaches for Bucky's arm and grips with surprising strength. "Don't go. Not again."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I know you did," he returns, the response coming as automatically as breathing, without any need for conscious thought. Which is just as well, because he freezes like a wild thing with shock as Steve grabs the metal of his forearm and holds on.

"I'm here," he manages, after a pause that feels too long and a hard swallow to clear the knot in his throat. "Steve. Don't."

[marvel_npc]

Every slight movement of his head makes his brain feel like it's sloshing around, battering against the walls of his skull. But Bucky says don't and he doesn't understand. Not that, not how Bucky's hair is so long, not the feeling of metal beneath his fingers.

Until he remembers. His hand tightens before he lets go, then wavers in the air as he reaches for whatever other part of Bucky he can grab onto.

Bucky's calling him Steve, and taking care of him. He remembers. Steve's fingers grip into fabric. "Don't go," he says, again, but this time it comes out as a plea.

[nerves_of_ice]

Pain hisses through him as Steve gets hold of his other arm instead, and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it's the absolute least fucking thing he deserves, and right now Steve could ask for anything and he'd turn himself inside out to give it. Ignoring the scream of his right shoulder, he manages to pull away long enough to fumble his right hand into Steve's grip instead and hold on.

"I'm here," he says again. Metal whines as he leans forward and reaches to cup the damaged side of Steve's head with his left hand as gently as possible, trying to keep him from moving. "Lie still. I fucked you up pretty badly, Steve. Don't make it worse."

[marvel_npc]

He grips Bucky's hand. There's cool metal against his temple and cheek, and it feels good against his inflamed skin and dizzy head. His chest hitches with a breath of laughter that feels like he's ripping his own lungs and ribs apart. "Don't do anything stupid, right?"

Somewhere, through the ringing in his ears, he thinks he hears the thup-thup-thup of a chopper.

[nerves_of_ice]

He doesn't realize he's crying until he sees tears splash on the star of Steve's uniform.

"That's right," he chokes out, unable to give the response to that call, not this time. "That's exactly right."

There's a helicopter approaching, skimming low over the water. There's nowhere here that's clear enough for it to land, but maybe they've got a team to drop, or a sling to rig, or - or if it's not help, they'll have to get through him first. Bucky keeps his body still and turns his head to assess the potential threat, waiting to find out which it'll be.