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The true tragedy of The Winter Soldier was the milk. And nobody knows that better than Bucky
It had been three months since Bucky had started living with the other Avengers. He'd fit in fairly well, and Sam was certain they'd found most of the triggers. But nobody knew how deeply the programming ran.
Bucky walked into the store casually. It was his first time grocery shopping in the modern world, so he was fairly excited about seeing what kind of things people ate now. He knew of Pizza Rolls and Pop Tarts thanks to Thor, and this had only made him more curious about what was on offer.
He was by himself, although Steve had offered to come with him. Walking down the aisles, he picked up a few random items that caught his eye, not really knowing what he was looking for.
And then he walked into the dairy aisle. Bucky dropped to his knees, hyperventilating. The people around him looked at him with concern, alarm clear in their expressions. Memories were flooding back, terrible memories that he'd somehow pushed to the back of his mind. Then he started screaming.
"NO. NO! PIERCE YOU SICK FUCK, THE MILK....THE MIIIIILK"
He started grabbing bottles of milk and crushing them, rubbing the milk all over his body like Coulson with his Captain America cards. He was howling now, the painful memories flooding his mind. And then it went black, his last memories being security dragging him outside as he screamed about the milk, and how he was going to murder every last member of HYDRA.
He woke up in Avengers Tower, Steve at his side with anxiety plastered all over his face. Bucky looked at him in panic, pulling him closer.
"Steve. Steve, we have to stop him. We have to stop Pierce!"
Steve looked even more concerned, his expression twisting into one reminiscent of Peppers whenever she was around Tony.
"Pierce is dead, Buck. It's okay, he can't hurt you anymore."
"Steve...I'm sorry. That dairy aisle, it just triggered me, made me remember all the torture HYDRA put me through. HYDRA did terrible things to me - tortured me, wiped my memory, made me kill all those people...nearly kill you....but Steve, Pierce was the worst."
Steve choked back a sob, condemning Pierce to the depths of hell mentally.
"One day, I went to his apartment, to get a new mission, you know? He offered me milk, and Steve, you know how I hate milk. But this guy, this SICK FUCKING MONSTER, pulled out a glass and started pouring some for himself"
"Um, Buck, I don't see the issue here...I mean, isn't forcing you to kill children a little worse?" Bucky swallowed back bile, forcing himself to tell Steve the rest of the story.
"No, Steve, you don't get it. He pulled out this glass, this empty glass...oh god...and HE POURED AN INCH OF MILK. AN INCH OF MILK IN A FULL GLASS. And then...he only drank half of it, only half..."
Steve's eyes were wide open, horror obvious on his face. He turned away from Bucky and vomited violently, tears streaming from his eye. Bucky just stared straight forward, PTSD seemed to have rendered him motionless, unable to deal with the horror he had just recalled.
"Oh my god, oh god Bucky...I'm so sorry...I didn't know..."
"The glass Steve, he wasted it. He could have used a smaller cup, even drank straight from the carton...but no, he was too fucked up to consider it. THEN HE KILLED THE CLEANER STEVE. HE KILLED HER, AFTER USING A GLASS FOR AN INCH OF MILK. WHOS GONNA CLEAN IT NOW? BECAUSE I'M DAMN SURE PIERCE WASN'T GOING TO"
The next day, Steve and Bucky took a helicopter to an undisclosed location. They walked over to the unmarked grave and started digging. When they finally pulled Pierce out of the plain coffin, they pulled out the bottles of milk they'd brought and poured them all over the decaying corpse.
"Kiss my dairy-air, Pierce. It was udderly wrong to waste a glass like that."
Steve and Bucky made out over the body of Pierce and the stinking puddles of milk. Finally, Bucky was free.
