Run (A Bucky Barnes Recovery Story)

85 Loving

Natasha grabbed James’ arm, kneeling next to him in the water, and he looked at her slowly, blinking, but his eyes were blank and she could tell he was registering nothing.

“James, don’t do this to me, come on, talk to me,” Natasha begged him, pushing dripping hair off of his forehead, but James remained unresponsive. Natasha was at a loss. She didn’t know what had happened, what she was supposed to do. Blinking away tears of fear, Natasha stood and hauled James to his feet. He complied slowly, standing and using the back wall to balance himself while Natasha wrapped a towel around his shoulders. She watched his lips part, his eyes moving back and forth rapidly, as though he were examining something, but she couldn’t see anything. She tried Russian now, hoping to get some response out of him.

“Come on, James, Bucky, please,” Natasha said. He wasn’t looking at her and Natasha squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and took a breath and tried to tell herself that he was going to be okay. She could help him.

James was easily led back to the bedroom, taking small steps, with his hand in one of hers and her other hand on his back, and he seemed to be able to hear her and understand her enough to dress himself when she asked him to. Then, Natasha called Steve, standing outside of the room and cupping her hand around her mouth in order to be quiet.

“Steve, how fast do you think you could get down here?” She asked and she realized that her voice was shaking, warbling and before she knew it, hot tears were streaking her face.

“Natasha, what’s wrong?” Steve asked urgently. She could hear him sit up, she felt the fear in his voice.

“It’s James,” she said, her voice breaking. “There’s something… Wrong, he’s not responding to me.”

“Is he hurt?” Steve asked. She could hear him throwing on clothes, grabbing his keys, heard his door slam.

“I think so,” she replied. “He got that damn arm wet, I think he got electrocuted and now he’s just staring. He seems to be okay, he can walk, he’s not burned, but… There’s just something wrong.”

Steve stayed on the phone with Natasha until he was at their door and he burst in, frantic. He wasted no time in finding James sitting on their bed, leaning over his knees, covering his eyes with his hand. Water ran in rivulets down his face, his hair still sopping and his clothes sticking to him because he hadn’t taken the time to dry himself. Steve grabbed his shoulder and however much he could of James’ now-empty left socket while Natasha stood behind them and watched. James looked up slowly.

“Buck, are you okay? What is it?” Steve cried and they both watched as James didn’t even stop to register Steve’s face. He was a million miles away, silent.

Steve and Natasha did everything they could to draw a rise out of James throughout the day. They talked to him, tried to show him things, tried to touch him and see if he responded. He would stand sometimes and then sit back down, as though he had forgotten what he had stood to do. He tried to close his eyes, tried to cover them, tried to keep the lights off, despite how often Natasha turned them back on. Sometimes, seemingly randomly, tears ran down his face and he made little effort to dry his cheeks until either Natasha or Steve held him long enough to settle him down. All the while, he was silent.

And the thing was, it was scarier that way. It almost more unpredictable that way. Natasha didn’t know what was wrong, if this had something to do with his programming, if they should get him to a hospital. She just didn’t know.

If he talked, things would have been better.

If he made eye contact with her, things would have been better.

If he’d screamed and ranted or shook violently. If he’d hit things or broke things. If he had physical burns, she would have known what to do and she could have helped him and things would have been better.

But this way, it was like he was gone. There was no light in his eyes, like a switch had gone down inside him and turned off James Barnes. His gone-ness scared her so much, chilled her to her inside, and she thought for a while that it reminded her of when she had first met him and his emptiness was like a cavern, a dark and unending pit that scared her in it’s deepness, but she knew thinking about it that it wasn’t exactly like that. It wasn’t just the emptiness in itself. It was the absence of James. It was loving the person that was there and then seeing it wiped away, and that was scarier. And still, still horrifyingly familiar.

She couldn’t help him.

His ruined cyberarm stayed on the bathroom floor, irreparable, until Steve managed to scrape the melted plastic off the floor and throw it away.

When night came, none of them wanted to sleep, but Steve was tired and Natasha knew he must be sore, so she had him sit on the couch and tried to get James to lay down, maybe sleep. He shook her off persistently until finally, Natasha just sat next to him and let him stay there. She curled up on the end of the bed near him, half-asleep, just awake enough to listen to him and be aware of his presence next to her.

She knew they both felt it, her and Steve, this constant fear that came with loving Bucky Barnes. He was fragile, like porcelain, and precious because neither of them thought they’d ever see him again. He must be handled with care at all times, and reminded, for the sake of his sense of self-worth and happiness, that he was loved and really, truly treasured.

But when things like this happened, Natasha realized that she could never fully understand James and in that way, she had already failed him and was preparing herself to fail him more in the future. She and Steve, they were failing him. Maybe their love wasn’t enough to heal him.

Natasha laid there, sleepily thinking these things until she thought she heard something from James, something intelligible and she shot up again, awake, ready to listen to him.

“James, did you say something?” Natasha asked, using one arm to prop herself up and look him in the face and the other to rub her eyes and she watched him look at her now, focus on her face, and his eyes were unreadable. He swallowed and his breathing sounded forced and he tried to speak again several times. He was speaking English.

“I just said…,” he whispered to her, taking a breath and swallowing. “I just thought… I dunno… I don’t want it, I-I don’t… It was a mistake, I don’t… I want it gone, I can’t… live like this, I can’t go on knowing this, what I’ve done, what I am-”

“James, what are you talking about?” Natasha asked desperately.

“I remembered,” he replied slowly. “Not… Everything. There are holes… Where things are just gone… Burned out, but I know… I know things now. And I can’t live with it.” Natasha pushed herself up entirely until she was facing him, but when she tried to take his hand, he took it back. Natasha felt that poignant fear, that fear that came with loving him.

“What do you mean?” She whispered back to him. “What do you remember?”

“Everything I can, I think,” he said. “I got shocked and then… It was like I couldn’t notremember anymore. But I don’t want it, it’s too… Too much...” Natasha didn’t know what to say.

“I am so sorry,” she finally said to him but he didn’t respond.