[ 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."

Comments

[nerves_of_ice]

Ah. So that's where he should begin.

"Pierce is gone," he agrees, and finally looks up at them. "But there are others still out there. Any one of them could activate me, if they know the controls."

[from_the_outside]

Both of them frown at him, bemused and unsettled.

"What do you mean, controls?" Steve asks. He already looks sick to his stomach.

[nerves_of_ice]

He looks back and forth between them. "You said you knew about the bank," he says, finally, looking at Sharon."

It has the tone of a question, as if he's not certain he's remembering correctly.

[from_the_outside]

"Yeah, but..."

What had Sitwell said? Something about wiping him. "Where they... where they wiped your memories."

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods. "Yes. But it was more of a ... temporary station," he decides on, after struggling to come up with the right words. "No cryo chamber. Deviation from the usual procedure to allow field reset when required."

[from_the_outside]

Natasha had said something about that. Cryo, in between missions.

She does her best not to visibly shiver. "If there's anyone else out there who can control you, we'll just need to find them, first. Before they try."

[nerves_of_ice]

She doesn't understand. Looking at Steve, he sees that he doesn't, either. Then again, how could they?

"I don't know who's left with existing command access," he says, finally. "But anyone with the activation sequence could control the Winter Soldier. Anyone."

[from_the_outside]

"Activation sequence?" She stares at him, startled, and Steve frowns, hard.

"What, like a program?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods at Steve. It's as good an explanation as any. Maybe if he describes the process, that'll help them understand.

"The asset is best maintained in cryostasis for extended periods of inactivation," he recites, his tone cool, neutral, and empty. "For stability. Electrical craniotemporal neurostimulation ensures programming receptiveness without interference from prior periods of activation. Administration of activation codes readies the asset to receive mission parameters."

[from_the_outside]

He speaks, flat and emotionless, as if reporting on nothing more concerning than the weather, and her stomach churns at what he says.

Electrical shocks. Cryo for years at a time. Scrambling his brain over and over again. Her voice is tight when she finally finds words. "Activation codes," she says. "Words? Words they use to... reset you?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He nods again, this time at her. "A sequence of ten."

[from_the_outside]

It's beyond horrifying. It's the worst thing she's ever heard, it's the most horrible torture she could imagine.

Steve takes a shaky breath and focuses on Bucky. "If it's a program," he says. "Maybe we can remove it."

[nerves_of_ice]

"It's in my head, Steve." He says it as gently as he can, watching his best friend's face. "There's nothing to be done."

[from_the_outside]

"You don't know that," Steve says, desperate. "You don't know that. Tony can do amazing things. Sharon, tell him."

"It's true," Sharon confirms. "I mean... maybe it's possible."

[nerves_of_ice]

Tony Stark. He'd been in the target brief the Winter Soldier had been given; Howard's son. Howard, who had been working with Project Rebirth, trying to perfect the serum.

Howard, who he'd killed.

He's never met Tony. He doesn't think he has, anyway. He'd never been an active target, he's sure of that much, although something teasing at the back of his mind suggests that he might have been evaluated as a potential one at some point, he's not sure exactly when. Either way, he can't imagine that it would be a good idea for him to allow the younger man to get his hands on him. Especially if--

"You said he... theorized," he says, finally. "About - is he trying to, to develop - like Erskine?"

Like his father?

[from_the_outside]

"No, nothing like that," she promises.

"It was when I had just come back. He was scanning me, to make sure I was okay. I told him a little about... about the experiments Howard was running. About the resonance and how it was fading more slowly than you."

[nerves_of_ice]

That's something, anyway. He's not sure exactly what, but it's something.

He finds that he can't wrap his mind around the idea, much less what it'll require of him. To be back on a table, with another scientist rummaging around in his mind, more straps and restraints and all the rest but for this purpose - he can't calculate whether it's worth trying or not. Can't even hold the possibility in his broken mess of a brain.

He realizes he's been quiet for too long and looks back and forth between them again. "Does it need to be now?" The faintest hint of a desperate plea leaks through.

[from_the_outside]

The faint distress in his voice arrows straight to her heart. And, she's sure, to Steve's. "No," she promises, before Steve can say anything. "It doesn't need to be now."

Steve nods agreement, though she can tell the only thing holding him back from placing a call to Tony is his desire to stay next to Bucky. "Not now," he agrees. "But an option. Maybe."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I don't," he manages, through the tightness in his throat that's currently rising to choke him. Shudders wrack his body as he fights to get the words out, trying to explain what he's unable even to fully understand, fear and despair and other more complex emotions that he hasn't felt in years twisting together in a tangle within him.

"I can't, I-- he. You-- please. Please."

[from_the_outside]

"Bucky!"

She pushes off the chair and comes to kneel in front of him, as Steve puts a concerned hand on his friend's shoulder. "What's wrong?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Can't," he pants through clenched teeth, the cords in his neck standing out as the whiplash of remembered pain rips through him anew, over and over, trying to force his back to arch in a futile attempt to escape, trying to tear him apart. Each word is a thready, ragged whisper. "Can't. I can't - can't choose. Can't. Please. Please. Please don't. Don't ask--"

But that's too close to a personal demand, he realizes too late, and the white fire of agony takes him, robbing him of speech entirely, along with breath and sight.

[from_the_outside]

She has no idea what's happening, only that Bucky seems to be in the middle of something almost like a seizure. Alarmed, Steve grips him with both hands, trying to keep him from shaking so hard. "Buck? Bucky!"

"We won't," Sharon says, desperately, latching onto the one thing she can parse. "We're not asking, Bucky. I'm sorry."

[nerves_of_ice]

Somehow he manages to keep the howl locked behind his teeth as his head falls back, as the conditioned response races along muscle and bone and nerve in familar lines of suffering. He can hear Steve calling his name, can hear Sharon's frantic reassurance, but he can't answer either of them. Not at first.

Not until the punishing wave rolls through him and fades into the ache of aftermath can he even try to do anything at all other than endure. His head is resting against the back of the couch, he finds. He rolls it to the side so that he can see them.

"I'm okay," he whispers, throat dry with the effort of not screaming. "It's okay."

[from_the_outside]

"None of that is okay!" Steve says, his voice hard in his worry and fear. Sharon gets up and goes to the kitchen, coming back with a glass of water, which she hands to Bucky.

"Drink," she tells him. "What was that?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He glances down at the floor and away from Steve, unable to bear the concern at first, but is able to distract himself with the water Sharon gives him. Obediently, he drinks, finishing half the glass in just a few swallows before he lowers it. He cradles it loosely between his hands, considering it for a second, then looks back up at them.

"Maybe not okay, but not unexpected," he says, quietly. He already knows they're going to ask him to explain that, and tries to get ahead of it by treating it as necessary intelligence.

"The Winter Soldier is a weapon. I'm a weapon. Weapons don't have needs. Or wants. Personal choices. That kind of thing. Those interfere with the mission. So I was ... conditioned... not to have them either."