Run (A Bucky Barnes Recovery Story)

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They landed in Russia at night and found their hotel and Steve let Bucky and Natasha have the bigger room and sat by himself on his bed across the hall from them, feeling more than a little alone. And of course, as he watched the way Natasha pulled Bucky’s hand out of his pocket and laced their fingers together and the way she teased him and made him smile, he thought of Peggy and his heart hurt. He was just beginning to get over the way she’d had a future without him, but now it was the past and his future had to be without her too, but thinking about her sometimes late at night still took his breath away from him. And he’d talked to Sharon, he’d taken her out a few times like Natasha had begged him to do, but he still wasn’t sure if he was ready. He didn’t know if he’d ever be ready.

He did know this, however, that the loneliness only seemed unbearable when he was in the thick of it, but that now, it was his new normal and he could live with it if he had to.

Tonight, however, he had more to dwell on than just his tragic romance with Peggy and he turned on the lamp by his bed and took Bucky’s journal out of his bag and opened it up, still cautiously, to the first page.

And it was a mess of ink. Steve gasped at the blackness. There were smudges where Bucky’s hand had accidentally, or purposefully, smeared it across the page, and it was thick, block lettering, hastily scrawled as though he couldn’t quite see while he was writing it and there was no heading or date, just words, words all over the page, spilling over the lines and into the margins and everywhere. Steve squinted to make it out.

It hurts to remember but I try and and

Oh it hurts my head is is like a thousand people screaming and they’re screaming things I need to know things I need to remember but

Steve DAMN HIM--

Steve stopped here for a moment, at the first mention of his name, feeling jarred right out of the page and had to remind himself that this was the very beginning for Bucky. This was the fear and the confusion, that animal in the headlights look that Steve had seen in his eyes then and still saw shadows of sometimes on bad days. This was when Bucky didn’t know Steve. Steve tried to keep this in mind as he continued.

--why why why does he

keep talking to me he keeps contacting me but i cant i cant talk to him

why does he love me

Steve felt indescribable sadness grip him, as it had the entire time he read, as Bucky’s thoughts on paper were a mess, were scrambled and panicked and heartbreaking. Just in case, because Steve was scared, he flipped to some page nearer to the back and glanced at an entry there, just to make sure.

November fifth (Wow, Steve thought. Improvement already. There’s even a heading.)

Steve’s looking a lot better today, but we’re going to have to buy more cereal, the way he’s eating it like it’s going out of style. Natasha tells me to stop fussing over him, but I can’t just leave him. He is my best friend, after all, and what kind of a friend would I be if I tried to kill him and then wouldn’t even help him after he’d been shot.

That was supposed to be a joke. It’s probably not funny, Natasha made me promise the other day to stop making self-deprecating jokes, but I’m trying to make light of the situation here. I guess I promised though. I’ll scribble it out later.

Steve felt himself relax a little because this was so much better than the beginning of the journal, where everything was chaos. The end represented such a calmer mind that Steve couldn’t help but smile a little bit in relief. Bucky was okay. He was going to be okay.

And with that in mind, Steve put the journal back in a safe place in his bag and shut off his light and stared at the ceiling and attempted sleep.