Run (A Bucky Barnes Recovery Story)

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Bucky was all alone when realized that those seven memories and a week was not all he was missing. He had begun to think himself almost lucky that he had gotten out with the greater portion of his identity intact, but it was clear to him now that this wasn’t over.

He realized it, this downhill slide, when he woke up the next morning and his nightmares had been torturous like they hadn’t been in a long time. He felt a dread deep inside of him and he could feel the holes again.

James Buchanan Barnes

James Buchanan Barnes

James… James...

More things out of his journal were going, disappearing like lost data, gone without a trace like the rooms hadn’t even been there to be dark in his head in the first place. He didn’t understand, what was going wrong?! Why was he losing more now, so suddenly? His panic rose when he had no one to go to. He couldn’t bare to see Natasha and Steve again, he couldn’t forgive them just yet, but he needed them so badly. He at least needed someone to tell him that he was going to be okay because he couldn’t tell himself. Unfortunately, he knew better than that.

A memory about Steve and the darkness before him and a sunrise behind him-gone.

A memory about Natasha cutting his hair in her apartment-gone.

A memory about a cryo-stasis tube in a storage room-gone.

James James JAMES

It must be his fault, he was doing something wrong and he didn’t know what it was.

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He was going to become hollow and then he would never have a chance to see Steve again, to forgive Natasha.

Winter Soldier James Bucky Bucky Bucky

He was losing himself deep in the recesses of his mind. He wondered how it would happen. He would lose his past, and then his present. He would forget loving Natasha and becoming comfortable with Steve. He would forget how to laugh again, he would lose the ability to joke and tease. Then, his humanity would be gone and then his freedom and then his life. Bucky sat on his bed, thinking hard, staring at the floor and shaking violently with fear, trying to just breathe. His journal sat beside him, open, scribbled in. The pages were becoming worn. He had flipped through them all again and again and again that morning, reading, frantic. More memories were circled in red now. His identity was slipping through his fingers like smoke. And it was different now, because it wasn’t a wipe that had done this to him now. He didn’t know what it was. They were just… Gone. Bucky grit his teeth as he thought this and squeezed his eyes shut, taking a deep breath. Then, he called Steve because he absolutely had to.

“Hello? Bucky? Is something wrong?” Steve answered the phone on the first ring, hastily, as though he knew that for Bucky to contact him right now, something must be so wrong. Bucky swallowed and stared at the wall.

“I’m losing it all,” he said, very slowly and very quietly. He closed his eyes again. He wondered if he was looking for comfort or he simply wanted Steve to know. His stomach felt that feeling of falling and it made him sick. Queasiness raised goosebumps on his arm. “I’m losing everything now.” There was a silence on the other end.

“I’m coming over right now,” Steve said.

“Please don’t,” Bucky replied, but he was answered with beeping tones of an already closed call. After everything, Bucky realized he hadn’t gotten anywhere at all. He’d thought he had been getting better, but now, just like before, he felt a panic rising in his throat and he did not want to see Steve.

He decided then, why he had called. It had been a goodbye, hadn’t it? He was without an identity and without friends and even without a limb and he didn’t want to die, but he didn’t quite want to go on, either. It was just so hard. He couldn’t believe that there was more laboring heaviness to feel on his heart, more for him to lose. There was always another step lower than the one he was on and although it sounded like an inspiring thought to one who might be an optimist, to Bucky, it was only exhausting. He always had further to fall, even when he thought he had hit the rocks at the bottom.

But Bucky remembered how he had felt the first few weeks away from Hydra and he didn’t want to see Steve. He would lock the doors, he would leave his apartment, he would throw Steve out if he had to. The bottom line was that Bucky wasn’t okay and he needed to be alone and Steve had lied to him and betrayed his trust. If anything, Bucky avoided him for that reason.

So when Steve arrived minutes later, pounding on the door Bucky had locked, Bucky was silent, leaning on the wall all the way across the room, keeping his distance and wetting his lips and watching the door bend under the strength of Steve’s blows. He wasn’t quite sure how he was standing up straight. His legs were weak. He was so scared of what he would be if he lost everything again.

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The Winter Soldier had killed so many people. So many. He couldn’t remember them all, not their names or their faces, but he could feel in his head the shadows of kills he couldn’t even number. He was so sorry. He didn’t want to be that again.

Steve was shouting, and now he could hear Natasha’s voice joining him. Bucky tried to remember to breathe so the fear didn’t bring him to vomiting. Suddenly, there was just too much, too much of everything. The world felt muted, but his thoughts were loud and raucous.

“Stop!!” Bucky yelled, grabbing his head, his voice escalating. “Stop it!!” In the real world, the pounding and shouting outside quieted. Bucky looked up and realized that he had been talking both to Steve and to himself. Now, all was quiet, but he was sure Steve and Natasha weren’t gone. Bucky staggered over to the door and leaned himself against it now. The metal edges under his shirt dug into the wood and he could feel it pressing in on him.

“James, what’s wrong?” He heard Natasha say.

“I told you, it’s all going,” he said back through the door, and then tried to elaborate. “I can feel it going. I feel like there’s less of me.” He turned now and pressed his back to the door. He wanted to sit, but he wouldn’t allow himself. Instead, he took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. Behind his eyes, there was nothing. No memories, no images, just black and for some reason, that scared him so much he opened his eyes again quickly. He could hear Natasha and Steve muttering to each other. He heard the words repression and defense mechanism and mental block and he reminded himself again to breathe.

“Buck, can you let us in?” Steve asked gently and Bucky remembered his promise to Steve, to not cut him out. But how could he keep that promise now? Everything was so complicated. There was no trust anymore. He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Don’t even try, I’ll stop you.” Steve seemed to stop and consider this.

“Okay,” he replied. And he kept talking, he and Natasha, they were both saying things, but Bucky pushed himself off the door and walked back to his bedroom and shut the door behind him so he couldn’t hear them and lay down on his bed and tried not to think too hard about any one thing. But no matter how hard he tried, he could still hear it, constant like drums beating out of the dark spots in his head, a tune he couldn’t forget among the throngs of memories that he could.

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