Find Me / Save Me (Bucky x Reader)

Thirty-Nine

Bucky's POV

It's been a month. An agonizing month. I left thinking I was making the right decision, but the moment the jet landed in Wakanda I wasn't so sure. Leaving (Y/N) was the hardest thing I could have ever done. Sam couldn't look at me when we arrived, I know he resented my decision which had pulled him away from the rest of the team. He kept his distance for a while, but eventually he started to talk to me again. I could see why Steve liked him, although I would never admit it. Sam was a good man, and I appreciated what he was doing for me.

My days have been consumed with deep therapy sessions with Princess Shuri. While she was impressed Tony was able to remove my trigger words correctly, she deduced that my issue was no longer the words. It was going through all the trauma I had lived through for so many years. It was proving to be a difficult task, talking about it all. It took practically three days just for me to open up about something as small as how I became the Winter Soldier in the first place.

Eventually I got comfortable talking to Shuri and T'Challa as well. I grew a friendship with them. Our sessions eventually moved away from Shuri's lab, and we would talk as we wondered the city. Slowly we talked about my whole life, the past I endured and crimes I had committed. Our sessions had finally reached the present day.

"Now Sargent Barnes..." Shuri started.

"Shuri please, call me Bucky." I smile at her.

She chuckles, knowing we were all past formalities at this point. "Bucky... tell me what happened before you decided to come to us for help." She let out a deep sigh, knowing this conversation had been avoided long enough.

We walked over to a lake, the bright Wakandan sun shining on its surface. "God this place is gorgeous." I say as we take a seat by a nearby tree.

"Yes. Yes, it is. But you're stalling Bucky." She looks at me, her eyebrow raised with an annoyed sisterly look to it.

My heart felt heavy, I closed my eyes as a small breeze blew past us trying to steady my mind and steel myself for the following conversation. "I broke. I let my mind be taken over again. I hurt the love of my life, I almost killed her..."

Shuri let out a small sigh but stayed quiet as if waiting for me to continue. I glanced at her, she nodded and urged me to keep going. Starting down at my hands I took in another breath before continuing. "That wasn't the worst part. The worse thing is she looked at me like I wasn't a monster, like I hadn't just hurt her. She looked at me with love... And I don't deserve that..."

When I spoke those last words, tears were falling down my cheeks freely. Glancing back up to Shuri I continued. "I don't deserve her. I've done so much wrong in this world. I've hurt her one too many times. And yet she still looks at me with love. When I left, I know I broke her. How can I fix this? How can I even go back to her? I don't deserve her forgiveness or her love." My words were coming out broken and in sobs. I didn't allow myself to consider this a weakness. To able to say these words, to allow myself to cry; it was a strength.

"So much has happened to you, my friend. Life has been cruel to you. To her as well. You are not the man you once were. But she is not the woman she once was either. Life may have delt you both difficult hands, but it has brought you back to one another. You need to forgive yourself Bucky for what happened, your mind was not your own. You say yourself she had already forgiven you by the time you realized what happened..."

"But then I left. It broke her. I saw that. She'll never forgive me for that." I interrupt Shuri.

She reaches out and takes my hand reassuringly. "There's only one way to know. I think it is time."