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In Memoriam
Sep. 28th, 2014 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
allofthefandomsTITLE: In Memoriam
SHIP: Bucky/Natasha/Sam/Steve
RATING: T
CHARACTERS: Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers
SIDE PAIRINGS: None
MAJOR TAGS: Red Room, Brainwashed Bucky and Natasha, Age Difference
ADDITIONAL TAGS: Pre-Serum Steve, Food mention
WORDS: 2585
SUMMARY: Bucky struggles with the memories of his past relationships with Steve and Natasha
( In Memoriam )
There are only two bedrooms between the four of them and Bucky knows they let him have one to himself for more reason than just giving him space and time; Steve, Natasha, and Sam were already sharing a room before Bucky put an end to their search by showing up at their front door. Mostly he appreciates their patience but sometimes sleeping alone feels wrong.
Sam and Natasha are at the kitchen table, dissecting the newspaper. Natasha scans through for anything that might be important and then they wordlessly exchange sections: Natasha hands Sam the sports section and then the comics, Sam tears out the crossword for Natasha.
“Morning,” Sam greets as Bucky walks past them to the coffee machine. Natasha offers him a soft smile and he nods at them both in return before pouring himself a mug.
“Where’s Steve?” Bucky asks.
“Still out on his morning run,” Natasha answers.
Bucky frowns, gazing out the window above the kitchen sink. It’s been raining off and on all week and the temperature has been dropping steadily as the winter season approaches. “In this weather? Stubborn punk is going to catch pneumonia.”
As soon as the uncharacteristic yet familiar words are out, Bucky stills in surprise. He thinks he hears either Natasha or Sam say his name behind him but his mind is too far away to register their words.
They’re walking home from art class when thunder cracks above them. It’s the only warning they get before the skies open up and a torrential downpour soaks them to the bone in a matter of seconds.
“Figures the storm would start during the walk home,” Steve says and wraps his arms protectively around his bag, as if that’ll be enough to shield the sketchbooks inside from the rain.
“Here,” Bucky says, immediately shouldering out of his jacket and wrapping it around Steve’s small frame from the front so it gives both his bag and his arms extra cover. The rain doesn’t bother him much and he knows exactly how easily Steve can catch a cold.
“Buck, no, it’s fine—”
“Relax, we’re almost home,” Bucky insists with a smile before Steve can protest further and try to give the jacket back. “Gotta protect the masterpiece.” When Steve shoots him a look, Bucky winks and grins suggestively.
Even with the extra coat, Steve is shivering by the time they make it home and Bucky tries not to succumb to worry when he hears Steve’s teeth chatter. After the years they’ve known each other, Bucky has perfected the art of taking care of Steve.
They put away their things and change into dry clothes, and then Bucky makes soup with whatever he can scrounge up in the kitchen. It’s nothing like the soup Steve’s mom used to make on damp, cold, winter nights, but it’s the best Bucky can manage. They eat together and then play cards by candlelight on the living room floor, wrapped up in blankets and listening to the rain pound against the side of the building.
The rain is still coming down hours later when Bucky wakes up to Steve coughing beside him in bed. There’s an underlying wheezing sound that lets Bucky know Steve is having trouble getting enough air.
“Hey, pal, c’mere,” he whispers reassuringly, sitting up and helping Steve move with him. Steve leans back against his shoulder like he’s done many times in the past, tipping his head to straighten his airways as much as possible. They stay like that until they’re breathing in time with each other, slow and measured, and Steve’s coughing subsides.
“Sorry,” Steve mutters, sagging tiredly into Bucky’s chest.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” Bucky replies. He pulls the blankets up higher to accommodate their new position and they fall back to sleep that way, with Steve’s back flush against Bucky’s chest and arms entwined. The shared body heat keeps them warm and Steve keeps breathing regularly through the night.
“Buck?”
Bucky looks up from the kitchen counter to see that Steve has returned from his run. In the wake of the memory, Steve’s taller, stronger body looks alien. “Everything’s different,” he says, more to himself than to Steve. “We’re too different.”
Steve doesn’t need protecting anymore and even if he did, Bucky isn’t sure he’s in any condition to protect anyone. He isn’t the same person as he was back then, and neither is Steve, even if his heart hasn’t changed.
“Too different?” Steve looks so earnestly concerned, standing there in his running clothes and drenched from the rain but only focused on Bucky.
“Nevermind, don’t worry about it,” Bucky forces out. He glances around the kitchen and notices that Sam and Natasha have disappeared, giving him and Steve a private moment. He almost wishes they’d stayed so he had an excuse to cut the conversation short. “Just remembering how things used to be so different and wondering how you can still—” Want me around, care about me, love me.
Steve opens his mouth to reply, but Bucky holds up a hand to stop him. “I just need some more time, okay? Please.”
“Of course,” Steve tells him, sounding crestfallen despite his words. “Whatever you need.”
“Thanks,” Bucky says and then he escapes back to the bedroom to be alone with his thoughts.
***
It takes him a long time, with Natasha. He thinks, after, that this is because he usually spars with Steve. But Steve is out.
Natasha finds him throwing up into the toilet. This is not an unusual sight. Sometimes his ghosts are too much. Often, actually. She crouches down beside him, runs her fingers through his hair.
“You need to focus on something else,” she says. “Come on.”
They go outside, and she hits first.
The group of them, they rush him. They aren’t bad, these children, but they aren’t nearly good enough. He doesn’t use his left arm--he’s not supposed to damage them permanently--but he doesn’t need it. They’re thrown against the wall, slammed into the ground, kicked in the back, and punched in the face. They’re all cowering, whimpering, within minutes.
“Come on,” he says. “Get up.”
Of course, they don’t.
Here are the parameters: Nothing that would leave a scar. Nothing that won’t heal. Nothing that might heal wrong.
The doctors they have on hand are very good, though. They are able to heal more than he would have thought possible.
The Winter Soldier feels no pity.
He walks over to the nearest girl, and she stares up at him, nursing an injured leg, mouth open and eyes wide. He looks down at her, and her eyes go wider. She tries to scoot away, crying softly.
He’s about to kick when something hits him in the side. He stumbles, and the girl manages to get on her feet and hobble away.
He turns. Not a thing, of course not a thing, there’s nothing in the room but people.
The girl has red hair and hard eyes. He doesn’t remember what he did to her in the fight, but her right arm is hanging limply by her side.
He gestures at her, an invitation for her to attack.
She runs at him, pulling back her left arm. He raises his arm to deflect her punch, but the punch never comes. Her arm hooks around his, and she’s swung herself onto his back before he knows it. From there, she hooks a leg around his neck and squeezes against his windpipe.
He tries to dislodge her with his right arm, but she has her hands knotted in his hair, and she is holding on for dear life.
He’s starting to feel the urgency, his lungs straining.
He reaches up with his left arm and throws her off.
Her fragile frame crumples upon impact with the wall, and she shrinks into a corner, but there is triumph in her eyes.
Natalia Romanova is ten years old.
The next time they wake him up, he is instructed to give Natalia private lessons. She is fourteen now.
They spar. She is fast. She is strong. She is smart.
She learns quickly.
They are teaching her other things he is not made aware of. They wouldn’t make him aware, of course. He is their instrument; he has a function, and outside of that function, he is meaningless.
But she starts talking to him.
They are taking a break to rehydrate. He’s gulping down water, and she is sitting next to him, taking careful sips from her canteen, watching him all the while.
If he were disposed to feel such things, he would be uncomfortable right about now.
“I’m Natalia,” she says, eventually.
He stares at her, perplexed. “Yes, I know.”
“Who are you?”
He has no idea what to say to that, so he smacks the back of her head. He doesn’t want to encourage this conversationalist streak.
They put him back to sleep, not long after that.
The third and final time he is awoken for Natalia Romanova, she is seventeen.
She had been given the serum a couple of months prior. They had run any number of tests, and declared her ready for work.
They still want someone keeping an eye on her, however, at least this first time, so he is woken up. It seems, for some reason, they have deemed all of their other operatives unequal to the task.
She works differently than he does. Where he is strong, she is sleek. Where he is forceful, she is graceful.
If he were asked to evaluate their performance together, he would say they make a good team.
“We did well,” she says, in the car, on the way back to the facility.
He grunts. Again with the talking.
“We could, you know, celebrate. It’s my first mission, after all. And we were brilliant, if I do say so myself.”
He looks away from the road long enough to shoot her a look that he hopes discourages any more discussion of, well, anything. She smirks at him.
“I prefered you as a ten year old,” he says, gruffly.
She reaches over and puts a hand on his knee. “I can change that.”
He sucks in a breath and stays focused on driving. After a few moments of nothing from him, she sighs and removes the hand.
They get back. The guards let them in. He parks the car. They slide out of their seats and eye each other over the hood of the car.
“Night then, Winter,” she says, and starts to walk away.
“Natalia,” he says.
She turns her head, eyeing him, one eyebrow up in silent inquiry.
He gestures at her. An invitation.
She grins.
He likes the taste of her skin, the feeling of her hands knotted in his hair.
A shock runs through his entire body.
His head is in her lap. She’s looking down at him with concern, but she’s not panicked. It’s not like this has never happened before.
“Natalia,” he rasps.
She goes white.
He sits up. “Sorry. I mean--I mean Natasha.”
“You remember?”
He nods, slowly, guilt simmering in his stomach. “You were just a kid,” he says, slowly. “I’m so sorry, Nat.”
She looks stunned. “You’re sorry?”
“Of course, yeah. I was--”
“It’s fine,” she says in a rush, standing. “You were a different person then. We--we both were.”
***
Sam is the one they send after Bucky when it’s all over. It’s not hard to find him, nor does Bucky really want it to be. He knows he could properly vanish, disappear and they would never find him, but the thought isn’t as appealing as it used to be.
So he sits on the corner 6 blocks from the apartment on a little bench by the park, staring at his hands.
Sam comes and sits silently beside him, and Bucky is grateful for the silence. The best thing about Sam has always been the way he just knows what Bucky needs and how to give it. There’s no expectation, no pressure. As hard as Steve and Tasha try, they can’t erase their shared history. And Bucky isn’t that person anymore. He’s not Steve’s Buck or Natasha’s James and when the press of that becomes too much, it’s Sam who’s there to let Bucky just be as he is, not who he was.
“You okay?” Sam says after a long stretch of silence.
“I guess,” Bucky replies, hands still clasped so tightly in his lap his flesh knuckles are white. Sam can’t quite stifle a sigh, and he gets up and goes to the lemonade vendor and gets two cups of grossly overpriced lemonade for the two of them.
“Here,” he says, before resuming his quiet vigil at Bucky’s side.
Sam wasn’t meant for him. It’s a thought that plagues him when he’s feeling like this, the fact that Sam had fallen in love with Steve and Natasha long before he so much as looked at Bucky. But there is something grounding and solid in the way Sam makes him feel, something warm and hopeful, and maybe it’s selfish, but Bucky can’t give that up.
“So…I know a great pizza place a few blocks from here,” Sam says after another moment. “Shall we?” Bucky nods, still silent as he accepts Sam’s hand up. They walk in silence, but every once in a while, Sam brushes against him, a warm, steady presence at his side. Every step is easier, the ghosts pulling further and further away under Sam’s steady affection.
“Why?” Bucky finally asks, wading through all the confusion still clamoring inside his head.
“Because you’re a good person.” The way Sam says it, final and steady as if it’s something in Bucky’s DNA and not something Bucky thinks is a grey impossibility lost to time. The confidence Sam has in him stops up all his protests, and this time it’s Bucky’s turn to initiate contact.
The smell of pizza wafting out of the little corner dive is mouthwatering, and Bucky suddenly remembers he hasn’t eaten anything all day and his stomach is screaming at him. He demolishes two slices of pizza before he and Sam even sit, and is flooded with guilt.
“Eat as much as you want,” Sam says softly, eyes warm with understanding. It’s things like this that makes Bucky’s head spin, that Sam allows him things like this, things he never had before and didn’t deserve now. So Bucky eats a whole pizza before sprawling back on the fake leather of the booth with a content sigh.
“Man, where do you find places like this?”
Something in Bucky’s expression makes Sam laugh, and it’s warm and slow and uncoils in Bucky’s skin like honey. He leans over, kissing garlic and onion off of Sam’s breath and he knows it should be gross but somehow it’s just the way it should be.
“God I don’t deserve you,” Bucky breathes.
“Nonsense,” Sam says softly. “You deserve all the good things in the world.” And slowly Bucky is starting to believe it.
