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He will do anything you want.
The smoothly-spoken cruel words rang through Bucky’s mind as he, Sam, and Zemo drove with Sharon back to her place in Madripoor. They wound through his mind as the car wound through the streets, ensnaring each thought in poison until he felt he had to be bleeding from his ears with the pain throbbing through his skull, spearing through his flesh nearly driving him mad.
The moment he was able to, he slipped off down a hallway of Sharon’s penthouse, wandering aimlessly and bleakly through the halls of paintings and richness — Sharon had done well for herself, he could tell, not that he had enough wherewithal to care about that right now, or even give it a passing thought.
Catching sight of himself in a mirror through an open bathroom door, Bucky stumbled into the small room, slamming the door shut behind him and lifting his gaze up to his reflection.
He looked fine. He looked fine, and he was fine.
His eyes were a little crazed, flint-sharp and steely blue, and his chest was heaving with ragged breaths — but his shoulders were steady, jaw hard and set, overall appearance put-together with his slicked-back hair and the dark leather that was clad over his body, the heavyset bulletproof harness weighing him down, nearly making him slump —
The harness. The leather.
(In the beginning, he had staggered under the weight of the gear they had loaded onto him, until he had taken enough punishments — and then, enough experimentation, enough pumping his veins with new and improved super-serum — to understand that weakness was not an option.
He never even stumbled, after that. He couldn’t.)
He needed it off. The weight was too heavy, he was going to collapse under the weight of it.
He needed it off, needed it gone — he wasn’t supposed to carry this anymore, wasn’t supposed to be — to be —
Bucky panted with desperation as he tore the gear away from himself, throwing the harness to the floor with vigor and tearing the dark leather jacket off his shoulders until he was left in a black undershirt. The physical weight was gone, but his shoulders still felt heavy. His whole body did; he found himself unable to lift his head, and he stared down at his vibranium hand for a long moment, then lifted his gaze back up to the mirror with a great amount of effort, hunched shoulders trembling.
He looked fully crazed, now, hair sticking up in the back, sweat beading along his pale brow, eyes blown huge in his fear that he couldn’t shake.
He will do anything you want.
“Fuck, no, I won’t,” Bucky snarled out aloud, hitting himself furiously on the forehead with his flesh hand and hunching over the bathroom sink, a full-body shudder wracking his bulky frame.
His face was burning. The spot on his chin where Zemo touched him felt like it had been branded. His ears were ringing, his thoughts a scrambled mix of Russian and English and God knew what else as memories from years ago of Hydra and from just hours ago, of Selby’s gaze that could only be described as predatory, as hungry, molded together in his mind until he could barely discern the two.
He felt as if his mind was tearing itself to pieces — not for the first time, and not for the last. It was just as painful, as agonizing, as being right back there in the chair.
That thought — just the thought of it, of being back there, back in the dark and the cold where every face was a cruel one, every smile meant pain, every touch meant punishment — made him choke, and he fell to his knees on the tile bathroom floor, fingers digging into the edge of the toilet and making the porcelain crack as he heaved, gagging and choking.
He vomited, painful and violent, and then sagged, shuddering, down to the tile floor, resting his sweat-soaked forehead on the edge of the cracked porcelain like the disgusting, pathetic creature he was.
Bucky dug his fingers into his short hair, squeezing his eyes shut. He scratched at the back of his neck until it was red, rubbed raw, and he trembled, jerking backward and smacking his head against the toilet twice in succession, trying to get Zemo’s voice out, trying to stop his words from mingling with Hydra’s — with Zola’s, with Pierce’s, with Rumlow’s and —
“I — I am James Bucky Barnes,” Bucky gasped out in desperation, and he couldn’t have said what language he was speaking as the words tumbled from his mouth, mumbling into his palms and shaking violently, “I am no longer the Winter Soldier, I —,”
Anything you want —
Anything —
Bucky scrambled back up, knees sliding against the tile, and vomited again.
He was sobbing, now, pathetically; he could feel it, the tears burning down his cheeks as he choked up bile, stomach twisting with disgust and sick fear. He was sobbing, and he was shaking, violent shudders wracking his body.
Faces, names, ran through his mind, and he swore his grip on the cracked porcelain slipped a little with the blood that was surely staining his hands — his own, and that of all the innocent people whose lives he wrung out. Blew out, like a candle that had already been faint, barely flickering, then gone in a wisp of smoke underneath a cruel breath.
Bucky jerked, suddenly, at a sharp rapping sound at the bathroom door, and his mind flashed into white blankness, familiar hollowness swallowing him whole.
He stood, suddenly eerily still, his face a mask of indifference, his eyes dull and dead. He turned, catching sight of himself in the mirror, and saw only the Soldier, and he knew that there must be a handler at the door.
Someone was speaking, but it was muffled. An order broke through the roaring buzz of the Soldier’s head — “Bucky, come on, open the door, man” — and he complied swiftly. His fingers fumbled at the lock, with enough clumsiness that it would surely deem appropriate for a punishment, if the tear tracks on his cheeks weren’t already enough to warrant one.
He opened the door, and the blankness expanse of his mind seemed to convulse.
He shuddered with a breath, and then he did breathe, some weight lifting from his shoulders, because it was Sam who was standing there.
Sam. Not a handler. It was just Sam, and he was not the Soldier. He was James Bucky Barnes, and he was no longer the Winter Soldier.
It was just Sam, who was staring at him, and Bucky looked away, practically shrinking under his scrutiny. He couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes right now, couldn’t let anyone see the hollowness there, the hint of the Soldier that had seeped back in (that had never left) and dug its metal fingers into him as Zemo’s had touched him with the cruelty of false gentleness, his smoothly-spoken words making up for the lack of physical pain.
(He will do anything you want, anything —)
“Christ, Bucky. You look terrible.”
Sam’s words broke mercifully through the chanting mantra. Bucky flinched a little, swallowing hard, mouth dry. His mind was still confused, jumbled. “I feel fantastic,” he croaked out.
The words felt strange on his tongue, and it took him a moment to realize he had spoken in Russian. He corrected himself quickly, face burning as he jerked his gaze up to meet Sam’s for a moment. But the other man was already looking at him with pity in his eyes, pity that Bucky hated.
“I knew that that would be too much,” Sam said, before Bucky could speak again. “I’m sorry I let Zemo convince us to do that.”
“It wasn’t on you,” Bucky responded flatly, taking great mental care to speak in English. It was strange, thinking of Russian as his primary language, but he had spoken it for seventy years and English for only twenty, give or take, so it made sense, even if it was sickening to ponder on it too hard. Just as it was with most of his memories — the ones he had, anyway. “And it got us to Selby.”
“And that barely got us anywhere,” Sam countered. “We would’ve found Sharon in the end, either way, and she’s the one really helping us, not Zemo.” His eyes searched Bucky’s expression closely, and Bucky dropped his gaze back to the ground.
“I should’ve known it would be too much.” Sam’s voice was painfully soft, and Bucky almost flinched as he continued. “Slipping back into that — that mindset.”
“That wasn’t an issue,” Bucky deflected. It was a half-truth. “That happens — all the damn time, Sam. Every nightmare I wake up from, I’m back there. I didn’t care about that.” That was a full truth, or nearly one; even when Zemo had ordered him to attack — Зимний солдат, атака — those were words Bucky heard every night, ringing through his mind when he shot up from the hardwood floor, and the blood on his hands from the people he had hurt was an all too familiar pain. At least this time, the people he had harmed were actual scum, and not innocent collateral damage in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Confusion was flickering over Sam’s face, when Bucky looked up at his silence. He spoke, finally, when their eyes met — soft brown, meeting flinty blue. “Was it what Zemo said?” He asked, so fucking gentle.
Bucky opened his mouth to respond, but Sam’s expression was too much — the softness, the gentleness. The pity.
“I —,”
He choked.
He all but crashed to his knees, scrabbling for the edge of the toilet — fucking pathetically. But even as he gagged, there was nothing left for him to cough up. He shuddered, shaking and hacking, and realized somewhere in the back of his mind that Sam had dropped down beside him and was rubbing his back, murmuring softly as Bucky shook.
When he could hear Sam through the blood roaring in his ears, he focused on his voice — and on his hand on his back, steady and reassuring — like desperate lifelines.
“I was Googling more of those paintings of Sharon’s — I never realized how much of the Louvre really is fake, you know? Do you think that the people who bought those even know? Or do you think they —,”
“What the fuck,” Bucky croaked out, spitting the last of the bile in his mouth into the toilet and raising his head to glare at Sam at his shoulder, “are you talking about?”
Sam paused, his gaze still too soft. “After I came back from Afghanistan, I was staying with my sister,” he explained. “Whenever I would get freaked out, she would do that. Talk about random shit. It would help. I started doing it sometimes with vets when I worked at the VA, and it helped them, too. Figured it could work now.”
Bucky nodded heavily. He sat back after flushing the toilet shamefully, shrugging off Sam’s hand and immediately regretting it. He leaned against the wall opposite Sam, tipping his head back until it hit the drywall with a heavy thunk.
“I hate Zemo,” he said with sincerity, swallowing harshly at the bitter taste of bile in his mouth.
Sam chuckled, but it was weary, and almost sad — as if he knew that what Bucky really wanted to say was, he made me remember, and I can’t stand it, and it hurts so bad, and I hate him.
“Everything he did was fine,” Bucky continued — he didn’t know why, why he kept speaking, but something about Sam made him feel like he could. The gentleness, maybe, as he sought out the unfamiliar. “Everything I did — I do it every night, Sam. But he — he touched me.”
His vibranium hand came up subconsciously to gingerly press against his chin, and the skin seemed to throb with pain even though Zemo’s touch had been gentle — gentle, but agonizing.
(He will do anything . . .)
“Oh,” Sam said. Then, quieter: “Oh. Oh, Bucky.”
(. . . anything you want.)
“Look, you’ve — you’ve read the files,” Bucky grated out, staring at the floor, where pieces of cracked porcelain were scattered across the tile. “The files they recovered about me, from Hydra. Steve told me. I know you know — things. The things. That they did. To me. But, I.” He exhaled. The breath rattled in his lungs.
“I. I didn’t think — it would make me remember, like that.” He felt cold, freezing to his core, like he always was when they dragged his catatonic body from cryo. “The look on that woman’s face . . . well.” Bucky’s face twitched, mouth flattening into a grim line. “She might as well have been a handler.”
He spat out the word — hating himself, hating Zemo, hating everyone and everything, except for the man sitting across from him.
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Sam said, soft and gentle but with an edge of righteous fury that could’ve rivaled Steve’s. “Fuck, man. I’m so sorry.” And then, with a more therapizing edge, because that was who Sam was: “Thank you for opening up like that. It’s damn hard, I know. And I am sorry, that you went through that — that you went through any of it, especially earlier. Zemo shouldn’t have done that.”
Bucky shrugged, lifting his gaze for a moment. Sam’s expression was open; there wasn’t quite pity there, more of a painful empathy, compassion, shining in his eyes.
“Not your fault,” Bucky said simply, voice a near-whisper, as he looked back down at the ground. “Just . . .” He thudded his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. “It’s — it’s not on you.”
Sam was quiet for a moment. “It’s not on you, either,” he said at last, painfully soft, and Bucky flinched a little.
“I know,” he muttered.
“Do you?” Sam asked.
Bucky shrugged again, helpless. “What do you want me to say, Sam?” He growled out, gnashing his teeth together until they hurt, clenching his vibranium hand into a tight fist. “That I don’t have any guilt? That I don’t hate myself for everything I did as the Soldier, everything they did to me? That I don’t blame myself? That I don’t wish all the fuckin’ time that I had just died when I had fallen off that train?” He glared, jaw clenched so tight he felt like it might crack.
“I can’t say any of those things. I’m not a liar, on top of everything else."
Sam’s eyes were the only things betraying his emotions. He kept his face neutral, as any good therapist would. “Those are all understandable things to feel, given what you’ve been through, Buck,” he said evenly. “Everything you’ve endured. But none of it — none of it — was on you. And I know, I know, me saying that doesn’t do much. Might do nothin’ at all, if I’m being honest with myself. But if anything, I hope it’s a reminder.”
Bucky huffed, shoulders sagging. “Didn’t mean to say all that, anyway,” he muttered, a biting edge to his words. “Everything is — a lot. I can’t focus.” Can’t think of anything but his hand on my face, he thought, insides squirming with discomfort as the poisonous memories seeped through every corner of his mind. His hand, on my face.
Their hands. On me.
My hands. The blood on them.
“Can I put my hand on your shoulder?”
(Sam’s hands. Gentle.)
“Yeah.”
Sam’s palm, warm and steady, came to rest on Bucky’s shoulder as he wrapped his arm around him, scooting back to sit beside him. Gentle, like he always was.
(He was like Steve, in that way. Steve, who, in all the time Bucky had known him, had only given up one fight, because his hands would never be cruel towards him, even if Bucky hadn’t been able to do the same.
Steve, who, when he had cradled the Soldier in his arms even as he had forced him into unconsciousness, had held him gently — the first touch Bucky had felt that hadn’t been pain in seventy-odd years, even if he was, by all means, hurting him. Because he wasn’t, not really, and he never had.
And, so it seemed, neither would Sam.)
“For the record,” Sam said quietly, “I don’t hate you.”
Bucky snorted at that. “I thought after this shit we wanted to go on long, separate vacations and never see each other again,” he drawled out.
“You’re a dick,” Sam said flatly, and Bucky laughed in earnest at that, the feeling of it aching in his chest. “But I don’t hate you, Buck,” he added on, sounding happy to have made him laugh, at least. “You just piss me off sometimes.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” Bucky grunted. Sam smiled at him.
“You think you’re okay?” He asked, voice soft. Bucky regarded him for a moment, and then nodded. Sam squeezed his shoulder lightly, and then stood, holding out a hand. A gentle hand.
“C’mon, then, get off the bathroom floor. It’s gross, man.”
“Can’t a guy have a moment of peace to be gross?” Bucky complained. But he took Sam’s hand anyway, and held on for longer than necessary, because he knew it would not hurt him. He would not hurt him.
(What a thought.)
“Just think,” Sam said to him suddenly, with a grin on his face. “Once we get this all sorted, Zemo’ll rot. For good. I’d love to see him get shipped off to the Raft, wouldn’t you?”
Bucky snorted. “Might be sooner rather than later,” he remarked, with a wince. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dora Milaje show up soon.” He gave Sam a rueful smile. “They’re gonna be pissed at me.”
“I, for once, would love to see you get lectured by Okoye,” Sam responded smugly, and Bucky rolled his eyes. He was still holding Sam’s hand.
“You’re laughing, but they’d be lecturing you, too, you’re my accomplice.”
“I didn’t break Zemo out of prison, man, that was all you.”
“Technically, he broke himself out, I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
“Thought you said you weren’t a liar.”
When Bucky finally let go of Sam’s hand, they were both laughing as they walked alongside each other back into Sharon’s living space. They were surrounded by precious, priceless artwork, but Bucky had eyes only for Sam.
There had been no judgment to anything Bucky had confessed or alluded to, nor to anything Sam had already known. Hell — Bucky thought that if his hair had still been long, Sam would’ve held it back as he vomited, still with hands too gentle for Bucky to fully understand, because the feeling was foreign.
It was foreign, but it was nice.
And it served — even if just for a little while — to push the words Zemo had said, and the feeling of his fingers touching him, and the look in Selby’s eyes, to the back of his mind, and to bring Sam’s shining smile and soft brown eyes and gentle hands to the forefront instead.