[buckysleftbicep]

𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐭 ✶⋆.˚

— if a man talks shit, then i owe him nothing

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⋆☀︎. 𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐬 ⋆☀︎. request guidelines

[buckysleftbicep]

hi my loves 🥰 i’m so sorry for having disappeared for a week 😭💓

it’s been mad, with school and so much coming up for me, my internship, research paper, assignments, it’s all been getting out of hand for me 😭

fortunately i have found time to complete chapter 6 of bent and bruised and it will be up soon! 🥰 thank you guys for the love and support 🥰💓 <3333

[buckysleftbicep]

hi my loves, unfortunately the final chapter of bent and bruised won't be coming today because i am not feeling really good, both mentally and physically, i will have it up by thursday latest! i am genuinely sorry ❤️

[buckysleftbicep]

bent and bruised (5) 𐙚 b.b

pairing: new avenger!bucky barnes x fem!ex-hydra!reader

warnings: nsfw, 18+, minors dni, dub-con (flashbacks), unprotected sex, creampie, mentions of ptsd, hydra related trauma and abuse, very heavy angst, emotional breakdowns, bucky's guilt, memory suppression

summary: you were built by HYDRA to please the soldier—then left for dead. years later, bucky sees your face again. but no amount of time can erase the way you once whispered his name through tears. inspired by this request

word count: 6.5k

author's note: hi my loves, we are nearing the end for this series and i am genuinely beyond grateful for the support i have received 💓. you guys are really sweet and it motivates me to write 🥰. thank you so much ❤️ love ya guys and please stay safe out there!

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The ache was the first thing you noticed when you woke up.

It bloomed low in your abdomen, hot and sore and undeniable, it throbbed beneath your skin like an old wound newly split open, pulsing with the memory of hands, of breath, of weight.

Your body stirred against the sheets, every shift tugging at the tender places he’d touched, reminding you of the way he had held you there like letting go would’ve shattered him. 

Your thighs ached. Your hips were sore. There were fingerprints on your skin that no one had left—but your body knew. 

Your body remembered.

You dragged in a breath and it caught halfway, shallow in your throat. Not because of pain. But because of everything else.

Because now… you remembered too.

Not all of it. Not clearly. Not in the way you’d hoped. But enough.

Enough to know that the man who’d held you against that door like he needed your breath just to breathe—he wasn’t a stranger. 

He hadn’t been that night, and he hadn’t been all those years ago. Even if HYDRA had scrubbed his name from your lips, wiped him clean from the seams of your memory, your body had clung to him like a lifeline. Still did.

You could feel him in your chest. In the burn behind your ribs, in the hollow ache of wanting something you didn’t understand until now.

It lived in the spaces between your breaths, in the ghost of his mouth on your skin, in the way your fingers curled into the sheets like they were reaching for someone they’d never stopped needing.

His voice lived in the quiet of your room. That low, breathless groan when he’d finally slid into you. The desperate way he’d whispered you don’t remember me. And that look in his eyes when you told you felt him still. 

That look had hollowed you out, filled you up, left you raw in the aftermath.

You hadn’t spoken to him since the storage room, since the door closed behind him and you slid to the floor, legs shaking, heart splintering under the weight of truth. 

You couldn’t. You wouldn’t know what to say. 

Words felt too small, too sharp. Like they might snap in your mouth before they could ever reach him.

The whole compound felt wrong now—like someone had shifted the axis of gravity just slightly, pulled the air too tight. The walls felt closer, the hallways longer

You’d started avoiding Bucky.

You took the longer route through the east hallway to avoid passing his room. You skipped the gym entirely, even when your body begged for a distraction.

You couldn’t risk seeing him.

Not when the only thing standing between you and another collapse was distance. Not when the silence between you was already unbearable.

You stopped showing up for team lunch, lingering in your room instead with the door locked and your back pressed to the wall, trying to stitch the fragments of your memories into something coherent. 

It didn’t work. They stayed jagged, bleeding at the edges. You’d remember the curve of his shoulder, the sound of your name in his mouth, the taste of tears between kisses, and then—nothing.

A void stood in its place instead.

And every time you close your eyes, you see him. That look on his face in the storage room, when he’d said yes, it was me with a voice soaked in guilt.

You saw the way his shoulders had sagged, the way his hands had trembled at his sides, almost like the confession had carved him open from the inside.

His eyes had been oceans. Blue like grief. Deep and devastating.

There was nothing blank about them. No coldness. Just sorrow so profound it looked like it had lived there for years. And that was the worst part. Because you didn’t want to ask him for anything else. Didn’t want to tear another piece of truth from his mouth. 

Everything he had given you had gutted him. And you couldn’t do that again.

So you stayed quiet. You thought maybe silence would be enough.

Until it wasn’t.

You’d managed to avoid him for nearly four days. Four days of holding your breath. Four days of pretending your body didn’t still hum with the imprint of his touch. Four days of pretending the space between you wasn’t killing you both.

But the fifth day, Val called a full team briefing.

You tried to arrive late—slipping in just as she began speaking, eyes fixed to the floor. You felt his gaze the second you stepped inside. You didn’t dare look up.

Not until halfway through the meeting, when Val turned to speak about training reassignments. Your name fell from her mouth, and you turned your head instinctively. And there he was.

Bucky. Watching you.

His expression didn’t shift. His posture didn’t flinch. But his eyes— They were fucking desperate. Desperate in the way a drowning man looks at the surface.

His jaw was tense, his brows furrowed, faintly drawn like he was holding himself still with a kind of pain he couldn’t voice. And all at once, your breath caught. Your chest stuttered. Because the ache in his gaze—it wasn’t just guilt. 

It was longing.

The meeting ended and conversations began, but you didn’t stay. You made a beeline for the lift, footsteps sharp and unrelenting. You didn’t care who saw, you didn’t look back, you couldn’t bring yourself to. 

But just as the lift doors began to close—you heard it.

“Wait—”

Frantic. His voice.

But you didn’t stop. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t breathe again until the doors sealed shut between you.

Later that night, you sat alone in the main hall, knees curled beneath you, a blanket draped across your legs like armor. 

10 Things I Hate About You flickered on the screen ahead, but you weren’t watching. Not really. Just letting the noise fill the space where silence had begun to fill up.

You told yourself it was an attempt at catching up, at somehow feeling normal. At living the life you were supposed to have once they’d pulled you out of cryo and dropped you into this compound. 

But it was anything but normal. 

Until Yelena dropped beside you. 

You startled slightly. She didn’t comment on it, just leaned back, stealing the other half of your blanket like it was hers by right, and well, it was. 

“Hey,” she said simply, tone soft.

You didn’t answer.

A long moment passed. The movie kept playing. Someone laughed on screen.

Then she said, “You’ve been quiet, honey.” You bit your lip. Looked down. “I’m right here,” she added, gently. “It’s okay.”

You didn’t mean to cry. But you did.

Quiet at first, just a hitch in your breath, a tremble in your chest. But when you turned to her—eyes already glassy—it broke loose. “I… I knew him,” you whispered, voice cracking mid-syllable. “James. I knew him when I was captured by HYDRA. They made me for him, to control him. I didn’t remember, but now, I think it’s all coming back.”

The words caught. Your throat closed. Tears spilled down your cheeks like you were made of them.

“I loved him,” you said, voice small. 

Yelena didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. She just nodded, eyes warm.

“And you still do,” she said softly.

You nodded, curling your arms tighter around your knees. “But what if it’s not real?” Your voice broke again. “What if it’s all just—what they did to us? What they wanted us to feel?”

Yelena didn’t answer right away.

She sat in silence for a long moment, watching the flickering screen with her jaw set, her brows furrowed faintly. Then she turned. 

“They could modify your body,” she said slowly. “They could rewire your mind, twist it, maybe bend it until you don’t even recognise your own reflection.”

She reached out and gently touched your hand.

“But they can’t make you feel what you felt. Not like that, not real love, not whatever's behind after your memories are gone.”

You swallowed hard.

“Whatever happened between you and Barnes,” she continued, “that belonged to you. To both of you. And no one can take that away.”

You didn’t respond. You couldn’t.

You just nodded, breath trembling, eyes red.

You’d spent so long trying to outrun what you couldn’t remember.

And now… it was running toward you faster than you knew how to hold.

You didn’t say anything else. But the words remained with you, sharp and certain as they carved themselves into the walls of your chest:

They couldn’t take what you felt.

Even if they tried. Even if they almost did.

You shifted on the couch, you turned your eyes to the screen.

But the movie had long since faded into background noise.

Inside you, everything was still burning, still breaking, still remembering.

And you— You didn’t feel like yourself.

You felt like a stranger with your own hands. A house that had been broken into and never quite put back together.

You’d been haunting the gym like a ghost in the wee hours of the night, where you were nobody else would see you.

You pushed your body to its edge—ran on the treadmill until your lungs ached and your vision blurred, hit the punching bag until your knuckles throbbed beneath the wraps, again and again until your muscles screamed louder than your thoughts. 

You kept going long after your body begged you to stop, until you could collapse in the shower, water scalding your back, and fall into bed so wrung out you didn’t have the strength to dream.

It was easier that way. Exhaustion didn’t ask questions after all.

That night was no different. You were halfway through tearing the wraps from your wrists, sweat cooling on your spine, shirt clinging to your frame like a second skin, when you felt him.

You didn’t hear the door, didn’t hear his footsteps. But you felt him, the shift in the air, the gravity that came with him, low and steady and unbearably quiet.

He didn’t say a word. Just crossed the room and sank to the mat beside you, not close enough to touch, but close enough that you could feel the heat of him, the weight of his presence.

You didn’t look at him.

You focused on your hands, unspooling the wrap from your left wrist with fingers that trembled more than they should have. Your breath came shallow.

Stuttered.

Not from the workout. From him. From the silence he carried.

And still, he said nothing.

You unwrapped the second hand slower. Deliberate. Anything to give your eyes something to focus on that wasn’t the burn of his gaze. But you felt it, like it was burrowing into your skin. Like it was trying to hold you without moving at all.

There was a pause. A silence so thick it rang in your ears, it pressed in around your shoulders like the weight of all the things neither of you had said. All the nights spent drowning in memory. All the truth that had been ripped from you too suddenly, too violently, to make any room for peace.

And then—you moved to stand.

You shifted forward, bracing your palm on the mat, starting to rise to your feet, when his hand reached out.

Fingers curled gently around your wrist.

Not harsh. Not desperate. Just firm—enough to stop you. Enough to say please, not this time.

You froze.

Your heart cracked against your ribs, a soundless fracture that echoed louder in your chest than anything he could have said.

And then—

“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you,” he said.

The words were soft. Quiet. Like they weren’t meant for the air at all, like they were a confession he’d only ever let himself whisper in dreams, like they had been tearing him apart from the inside out for years.

And they shattered something in you.

You spun, your wrist slipping from his grip as you rose fully to your feet, chest heaving. His words echoed in your skull, bouncing off the walls of your ribs, cracking through the carefully built armor you’d spent days reforging.

You laughed.

But it was a broken sound. A gasp of disbelief. A wound torn open.

“You weren’t supposed to?” Your voice shook. The words came out raw, splintered. “Do you think I was?”

Bucky flinched. Just barely. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His eyes—god, those eyes—were already shining.

You took a step toward him. Another.

“I didn’t get a choice,” you said, voice rising. “We both didn’t, James. I didn't ask to feel like this. To remember this way, to fucking ache every time I think about you.”

He said nothing. Just sat there, spine straight, shoulders tense, like the guilt had already crawled its way beneath his skin and made a home.

You were trembling, every nerve ending lit with something you couldn’t name—grief, fury, longing, all knotted together into something sharp.

“I hate this,” you snapped. “I hate that I still feel it. That even after everything—after what they did to us—after what they made me forget—I still…”

Your voice broke. You swallowed the cry, hard and bitter.

“I still want you,” you said. “I still feel it. In my chest, in my fucking bones. And I don’t know what that means, because HYDRA erased you, until you were just this—this thing in the dark.”

There was silence. Heavy and brutal.

Bucky didn’t defend himself. He didn’t try to interrupt. He just looked up at you, eyes wide and full of pain, and said softly—

“I need to tell you what happened, that last night. Before they took you from me.”

You didn’t stop him. You couldn’t.

“I knew something was coming,” he began. “They had been watching us more closely, sending guards more often. I thought we had time, I thought if I followed orders—if I didn’t fight back—they would leave you alone.”

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. Like even now, the memory was too much.

“They didn’t.”

You sank back to the mat, knees folding beneath you as the world tilted around the edges. You didn’t trust yourself to speak.

“They came in while we were sleeping,” he said. “Dragged you out, fuck, I tried to stop them. I tried. But they put a gun to your head and I couldn’t move.”

Your breath caught. You could see it now, in pieces, in flashes.

“You looked at me,” he said, his voice cracking. “Even though you were scared, even when they were strapping you down. You looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered. Like you weren’t afraid, like you were trying to be brave—for me.”

He swallowed hard. His knuckles whitened.

“They shocked you once, and you still screamed my name, you still begged them to let me go. You still knew me, So they did it again and again, until—until you stopped screaming for me.”

You felt your stomach twist, your fingers clenched into fists so tight your nails bit through skin.

“They made me watch,” Bucky whispered. “They said this was the price of obedience, that if I wanted you, I had to watch them erase every part of you that remembered me, every part of you that—that ever loved me.”

He looked up. And his eyes were drowning, grief poured from him in waves.

“I begged them,” he said. “god, I begged them to stop. I wanted them to take me instead, I wanted them to kill me. But they didn’t, because they wanted me to see it. They wanted me to know that no matter how much I obeyed, they’d always have you. That they could break you just to break me.”

You couldn’t breathe. Your chest was tight, burning. Your body remembered what your mind had fought to forget.

“And then,” he said, softer now. “Your eyes were blank, hollow. Like there was nothing left of you, of me.”

Your throat tightened. A sob crawled up your spine, clamped behind your teeth.

“I fought, they dragged you away and I knew—you were gone.”

He stared at the floor. Voice shaking.

"I was next.” he said.

“James…”

“And I didn’t fight back. Because if you were dead…”

He paused. Swallowed.

“…then there was nothing left for me to fight for.”

You were silent for a long moment. Long enough that the room itself seemed to bend around the quiet.

Then, softly—so softly Bucky almost didn’t hear it—you whispered, “You told me to not forget you.”

You swallowed hard. “And they made sure I did.”

Bucky didn’t speak. He just nodded. Once. Slow. A flicker of something broken passing across his face.

The memory hit him like a wave. It had been the night before everything ended.

He’d known. There were hushed conversations outside the steel walls. The way the scientists looked at you had changed—like they were on a very tight schedule.

That one night, they shoved you inside his cell, the door slammed shut, and the footsteps echoed away.

And then—stillness.

You stood there, trembling just barely, your eyes already glassy. Bucky had known you well enough by then to see the signs. 

You’d been pulled from your cell and returned again, Your wrists were red where the restraints had bitten into them. There was a shallow scrape along your collarbone.

Another test, another goddamn experiment, another attempt to strip you down to bone.

But your eyes still found him. Still knew him.

You crossed the space in two short steps and wrapped your arms around his neck like it was the only thing anchoring you to the world.

He held you, not like a prisoner, but like a man. Like a man who knew something was about to be stolen from him and was utterly powerless to stop it.

There weren’t any words. There never had to be.

You kissed him like you were memorising him, like you didn’t trust your own memory to hold on.

Your mouth was soft at first—like you were afraid he’d pull away. But he didn’t. He never did. He kissed you back with a hunger that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the ache in his chest that had never stopped since the day they brought you to him.

Your fingers slid beneath the hem of his flimsy shirt, dragging the fabric up and over his head with trembling hands. You pressed your palms flat to his chest, scars and all, and he saw the way your breath hitched when your thumbs brushed over the rough patches.

He cupped your jaw, tilting your head just slightly to kiss you deeper. Your lips parted willingly. Hungry now. His mouth moved over yours like he was writing a letter he’d never be able to send.

Clothes came off slowly, each layer peeled back like a prayer, he touched you with careful hands, dragging his fingertips down the slope of your spine, the curve of your ribs, the soft skin beneath your navel.

When he laid you down on the table, the frame creaked beneath your weight, but neither of you moved to hide. You curled beneath him like you belonged there, like you’d always belonged there. 

The way you looked at him—god, it made him feel like a person again.

His mouth found your neck, your collarbone, the swell of your breast. You sighed, threading your fingers through his hair as his lips moved lower, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses down your stomach. You arched into him, breath trembling, thighs parting to welcome him between them.

He looked up at you then. Searching. Asking.

And you nodded.

He slid into you slowly, inch by inch, his hands braced on either side of your face. Your breath hitched, your back arched, your legs wrapped around his waist like you needed him closer. Like you wanted to fuse yourself to him and never let go.

You were so warm. So soft. So real.

The movement was slow. Measured. Every roll of his hips was deliberate, like he was carving the moment into memory, like if he went too fast, it would slip through his fingers.

You touched his face the whole time. Fingers trembling, lips parted, eyes never leaving his. Every moan, every gasp, every whispered yes felt like absolution.

He could’ve cried. Might’ve, when you whispered his name so tenderly it didn’t sound like a name at all—more like a promise.

Your rhythm faltered near the end. You clenched around him, eyes fluttering closed, mouth falling open as you came. He followed moments later, groaning low against your throat, burying his face in your shoulder as he spilled inside you like it was the last thing he’d ever give.

Afterward, you didn’t speak.

You just laid there, curled into each other, your hand stroking slowly down his spine. Breathing together. Hearts beating out of sync.

Then—

“I love you,” you said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it.

It knocked the breath from his lungs.

You had never said it before. Not once.

But that night—you said it.

And for the first time since he’d woken up in a cell with your name burned into the back of his skull, Bucky said it back.

“I love you,” he breathed, forehead pressing to yours, voice thick with everything he couldn’t say.

He had thought—naively, stupidly—that there would be more time. That maybe they’d keep you together. That maybe if he was obedient, if he didn’t fight, he’d be rewarded with a little more of you.

But god, he was wrong.

So, so fucking wrong.

And now you were sitting beside him on the mat again, your shoulders trembling, your eyes rimmed with red, your whole body wrapped in the echo of a memory they had tried to burn.

He could still feel your breath against his lips.

“Don’t forget me,” you had said, fingers brushing his cheek.

And he had promised. But, instead HYDRA made sure you forgot everything about him.

You didn’t hear your feet carry you out of the gym.

You didn’t register the mat shifting beneath you, didn’t feel the soft drag of sweat-damp fabric against your skin or the way the air seemed to thin the moment you stepped beyond the doorway. 

You just moved, a ghost dragged forward by the sheer force of memory and breathless ache. Your legs carried you blindly into the corridor, each step louder than the last, like echoes of a life you hadn’t yet figured out how to live.

You couldn’t breathe.

The air in the hall hit your lungs like knives—sharp and thick, you staggered forward, your vision blurring at the edges, your pulse pounding like war drums in your ears. 

The wall caught your shoulder hard, a dull shock of pain blooming down your side, but you barely flinched. You didn’t care, instead, you welcomed the sensation, at least it reminded you that you still had a body, that you still existed.

Your palms flattened against the concrete as your shoulders shook, muscles twitching beneath your skin like you were holding back a scream. 

The sob that climbed your throat was raw and ragged, scratching at your insides like it had claws. You sucked in a breath, then another, both stuttering, like your lungs were trying to remember how to be lungs at all. Your knees buckled slightly beneath you.

But you didn’t fall. You wouldn’t let yourself.

Because you knew if you crumpled now—if you gave in to the gravity inside your chest—you wouldn’t get back up again. You’d stay down, stay broken, stay shattered on the cold floor while the pieces of who you were scattered out of reach, unrecognisable.

Behind you, Bucky hadn’t moved.

He stood alone in the gym, fists clenched so tightly at his sides his knuckles had gone white, then bloodless.

He hadn’t called your name. Hadn’t chased after you. Not because he didn’t want to—god, he did—but because he knew.

This pain wasn’t his to touch, this unraveling—it was yours. And he knew the difference between love and possession, between reaching and taking.

But that didn’t stop him from breaking with every step you took away.

It didn’t stop him from standing there with his heart in his throat, begging silently—for forgiveness, for understanding, for the right to hold you again.

You pressed your forehead to the wall, your breath coming faster now, shallower. Your whole body trembled, your spine buzzing with something too big for your bones. And then, without warning, the memories struck.

They didn’t unfold. They didn’t ease in like a tide. They hit. Like a crash. 

You gasped. Because it was all there. Suddenly, violently, all there.

The cell. The cold. The hard metal table under your back and the soft, steady weight of him curled around you like shelter. 

The buzz of the overhead light, flickering in time with your breath. The hum of the air vent rattling faintly above. The smell, iron and salt and sweat and something warmer, something human—him.

You remembered the feel of his chest against your spine, the solid press of muscle and warmth and safety, his breath ghosting across your neck like a vow.

His hand had curled protectively around your middle, fingers splayed over your stomach like he could hold you together from the outside, like he could keep the pain out if he just held tight enough.

You remembered the way he buried his face in the crook of your neck, lips pressing soft, gentle kisses that weren’t hurried, weren’t hungry, just full—of want and sorrow and something like fear.

“Don’t forget me, please” he’d murmured, almost begged.

And you remembered the way your breath had caught. The way your body had curled tighter against him. His hands had found your skin like they always did—carefully, tenderly, even when his own trembled. 

His touch mapped every scar like a prayer, his lips trailing behind like shadows that only bloomed in moonlight.

You remembered the way he undressed you, not with urgency but devotion. His fingers shook slightly as he slid your shirt over your head, his palms lingering over every inch of exposed skin as though this might be the last time he ever got to see it.

You remembered the moment he hovered above you, eyes locked on yours, lips parted like he was about to say something but couldn’t quite find the words. 

You remembered how you reached for him first. How your hands found his jaw, his neck, the planes of his back, anchoring him to you like gravity.

Your legs wrapped around his waist. And when he finally, finally pressed inside you—

—everything stopped.

It was just him. You. Breath and memory, stitched together with the soft, fragile thread of a love that had never needed language to be known.

You moved together slowly, like the world had shrunk to a pinpoint. Like nothing existed beyond that cell, those trembling hands, those whispered gasps in the dark.

And then—

You had said it.

“James.”

His name had fallen from your lips like breath, like benediction, you remembered the way he’d stilled, just for a moment. The way his eyes had widened, filling with tears so fast it had stolen the air from the room.

The look on his face—

Like he’d been waiting his whole life just to hear it.

Blue. So blue. Glassy and broken and open wide, like someone had cracked him down the middle and let the light in. You’d never forget that look. Not now. Not ever. Because it had been love. 

Love, plain and bare and unguarded.

And he had broken.

You watched him come undone in your arms, just from those words. His mouth had found yours in a kiss that was desperate, terrified. 

And still—you held him.

You held him until the world faded, until the fear slipped into something else. Until your bodies moved like you were one, like the line between you had disappeared entirely.

And then, as the night faded—

You remembered what you said.

“If there’s another life after this one… I’ll wait for you there.”

And his reply had been a whisper soaked in agony. His lips brushing yours as he breathed it against your skin:

“Don't leave me. Please.”

You collapsed.

Right there in the corridor. Your back slid down the wall, too slow to stop it, too hollow to care. Your arms wrapped around yourself like maybe you could hold your heart together with the pressure alone. 

But it didn’t help, nothing could, because it hurt. Everything hurt. You were drowning in it.

The sob tore free from your throat before you could stop it, guttural and low, the kind of sound you only make when something in you finally, fully breaks.

Because it wasn’t just a memory. It wasn’t a hallucination.

It was truth.

That love had been real.

Everything they did to you—every wipe, every shock, every attempt to strip him from your soul—it hadn’t worked. 

Because he had never been something they implanted. He was something you chose. Even when you didn’t know you were choosing. Even when there was nothing left.

And now, you knew why. Now, you remembered.

You had never stopped loving him.

It was late when you finally made it back to your room.

The compound had quieted to a stillness so complete it felt almost unnatural. The night cycle had long since kicked in, dimming the overhead lights into a low, artificial twilight. 

The halls were hushed, the hum of life receding behind layers of silence, just the distant echo of your own breathing and the steady noises of the air vents overhead, soft and mechanical. 

Your hands trembled as you pushed the door open.

Inside, your room felt like a damn museum exhibit—like no one had lived there in weeks. The sheets were tangled from nights of restless turning, the blankets shoved halfway down the bed in a heap. 

The air smelled faintly of detergent, or sorrow perhaps, the kind that soaked into fabric and never quite left. Your pillows were damp in patches, dried tears marking time like a clock you couldn’t stop.

You didn’t bother with the light. The faint blue glow from the corridor spilled in through the crack behind you, mingling with the moonlight—if it was even the moon at all—filtering through the narrow window.  

And there it was, the file, still sitting there, just where you’d left it, the one you’d taken from the restricted archive.

Your fingers moved, brushing across the surface, tracing the slightly warped corners that had softened from being turned over again and again. The edges were worn now, dog-eared. As if your desperation had seeped into the paper itself. 

You had read it so many times it no longer registered as information, it had become scripture.

A text you recited silently in the dark, searching the blacked-out lines for meaning, reading between the redactions, trying to breathe life into the man hidden beneath the ink.

You had memorised him by nothing at all. No photo but designation.

Subject B. That’s all they had called him.

But now you knew what they had tried to erase. What they had buried. 

You knew now that Subject B was the man who had carried you through hell with his arms around your shaking body. 

The man who had held you together when you couldn’t speak.

He was the man who had memorised the shape of your mouth, not out of hunger—but hope. The man who whispered don’t forget me like a dying man’s final prayer.

He was Bucky. James.

The name still felt electric on your tongue, you set the file down slowly, smoothing the cover with your palm before stepping away like it might burn you. 

You didn’t need to look anymore. The truth wasn’t on the pages—it was in your chest, raw and pulsing. And it hurt in ways no data ever could.

You lay down, the sheets were cold. You curled into them anyway, staring at the ceiling like it might split open and hand you peace. 

But sleep didn’t come. Not even close. 

You turned onto your side, then your back, then your other side.

Your mind thrummed like a wire stretched too tight. Your body was exhausted—screaming for some sort of rest—but your mind was awake. 

Too awake. 

You could feel it behind your eyes. Replaying everything. Every kiss, every cry, every time he had whispered your name like it was something he wasn’t supposed to want.

And then—just as you turned onto your back again, dragging in another shallow breath—a knock.

Soft. So soft it barely registered.

A single thump against your door, tentative and quiet. Like whoever was on the other side wasn’t sure they had the right to be there. Like maybe they were second-guessing even as their knuckles hit wood.

Your breath caught mid-inhale, your fingers curled slightly in the blanket. Your heart was hammering so loud it almost drowned out the silence that followed. For a moment, you thought you imagined it

But then—another knock. Quieter. Like he already knew you were awake.

You rose slowly, the blanket sliding off your body in one heavy motion. You moved, barefoot, breathless—across the cold floor. Every step made your chest tighter, your hand wrapped around the doorknob and paused.

You didn’t open it right away. Not because you were afraid it wasn’t him. But because you were terrified it was.

Because some part of you had already broken open with the hope of seeing his face. Of hearing his voice. And if it wasn’t him—you weren’t sure you’d survive it. But your fingers moved anyway. 

You turned the knob. And opened the door.

And there he was.

He stood in the hallway like a man caught between past and present, the blue wash of the compound lights painting his skin in soft, cold hues.

There were faint creases on his face—like maybe he’d laid down and never managed to sleep. His jaw was tight, his shoulders set like stone.

But his eyes—

They were always the kind that held too much. The kind that didn’t just look at you—they saw you. And there was no restraint left in them , just grief, and longing so thick it could’ve drowned you.

There was exhaustion too. Deep. Carved-in. But beneath it—beneath the guilt, the fear, the years of silence—was something softer. 

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. Because his eyes said everything.

I remember all of it. I never stopped looking for you. I don’t know what this is anymore, but I still want it. I still want you.

You stood there for a long moment. And then—you stepped aside.

You didn’t say a word. Didn’t ask why he came. Didn’t demand an explanation. You didn’t need one. 

Your arm lifted slowly, fingers brushing the edge of the door, and you pushed it open wider. Your chest rose and fell in one long, trembling breath. 

Your heart thundered beneath your ribs, but it didn’t stop you. Your hand hovered at your side—shaking slightly—but you didn’t falter.

Because you wanted him inside. Because you needed him to come in.

Because even if you didn’t have the words for what this was now, even if everything between you had been broken and buried, he was still the only thing that had ever made you feel whole.

He stepped inside.

And for the first time in days—maybe weeks, maybe years—the door shut behind him. And it didn’t feel like a goodbye.

There’s no whispered invitation hovering in the space between you, nothing to fill the silence.

You sit side by side on the floor, backs pressed to the cool wall, bodies close. The room is shrouded in half-darkness—only the faintest spill of compound light leaks in from the corridor through the narrow sliver beneath your door. 

He doesn’t speak. Neither do you.

The quiet between you isn’t uncomfortable—not really. It’s something heavier, like the quiet of a church after a funeral. Fragile. 

His presence fills the space without forcing it, your shoulders barely graze.

You’re aware of every inch between you, of the warmth that radiates off his skin in soft waves, of the heat that settles in the pit of your stomach. 

Your fingers lie a breath away from his, resting on the floor, unmoving—like they’re waiting for a signal neither of you is ready to give.

You don’t reach for him.

Not because you don’t want to—but because you do. Too much.

You keep your eyes on the opposite wall, unfocused, watching the faint shadowplay from the window. The lines don’t mean anything. Not really. But they give you something to look at. Something to pretend to study so you don’t have to turn and see the truth in his eyes.

Because you already know what’s there.

You can feel it radiating off him, the unbearable sorrow tied with the love he doesn’t know how to offer anymore—not without guilt.

And then, slowly—he moves.

Not abruptly. Not purposefully, just slightly. Like some part of him was drawn toward you by gravity, his shoulder brushes yours more firmly this time.

You feel his head shift, a subtle tilt, and then—

He leans in. So slowly. So gently. Like he’s afraid the moment might shatter.

His forehead presses to yours. Soft and steady.

Your eyes close before you even think to command them to. The heat of him seeps into your skin, grounding you. His breath mingles with yours in the narrow space between, and something deep in your chest unknots just slightly.

Neither of you says anything for a long time.

There’s no need.

Because this silence isn’t empty, it’s full. It’s full of pain and hope and a thousand unspoken things. It’s full of memories, of things you didn’t choose, of things stolen, ripped away from both of you.

The breath you let out shakes. Because no matter what they did to you—no matter how many times they wiped you clean, rewrote you, stole your memories and carved their version of you—it wasn’t enough.

They couldn’t take this.

They couldn’t take what was yours.

You didn’t fall in love the way others did, there were no casual glances across a room, no shared coffees. 

You fell in love in the dark, you fell in love in silence, in pain, in stolen moments when you helped each other forget what its like to be afraid. Where you helped each other feel what love is. 

And now—somehow, impossibly—it’s still here.

His forehead stays pressed to yours, when his voice trembles just a little as he breathes your name, you let it thread its way through you. 

You let it tether you. To him. To yourself. To everything they tried to take.

The night stays quiet.

Because for the first time in a long time—

You aren’t quiet in it alone.

a/n: and that's chapter 5! i have no idea how i would end this series just yet...i have half of chapter 6 written and the ending is still kinda vague for me at least, so here's to hoping i finish in time to have it posted up according to schedule!

taglist: @poisntree @moth-maam56 @ravenswritingroom @heymydearheart @secretdiaryofzai @whitelaxe @ficmeiguess @its-in-the-woods @chronicallybubbly @stell404 @overwintering-soldier @emilyswortwellen @vampirehimejoshi @chimmysoftpaws @herejustforbuckybarnes @s0urw00lf @cheeseman @onlyforyuto @hibiscy @quinquinquincy @wickedfun9 @bugs-n-roses @alicetesser @hibiscy @onlyforyuto @chimchoom

[buckysleftbicep]

chapter 6 coming up tomorrow!!

[buckysleftbicep]

can i have some asmr recommendations please 💓

i’m gonna make a youtube playlist in hopes i’ll sleep better at night! 💓

would love to know what you guys listen to that helps you, it may work its magic on me too

[buckysleftbicep]

:( i hope you feel better please take care of yourself 💞

thank you so much sweetheart, i feel so exhausted and i ended up on tiktok instead of sleeping 😭 at least it’s somehow relaxing after a long day! 🫶🏻

[buckysleftbicep]

goodnight my loves 💓 i had an extremely exhausting today, between running errands and school, it's been tough as heck. it's made worse because my mental health is genuinely down the drain.

i was supposed to post a fic up but i couldn't finish it in time, and i'm really sorry about that. i'll have it up as soon as i find the time, and energy to finish it up! 🥰

[buckysleftbicep]

i was gonna sleep but guess who decided to doom scroll on tiktok

yes me

[buckysleftbicep]

omg thank you for responding for my take on bent and bruised!! you saying “she was meant to control him” i wonder if there would be an alternative version of this story where they made reader so powerful and took her humanity away and just made her a honeytrap for him, like she has all this power to manipulate him and that’s her only goal and nothing else. like fully evil and taunting him for catching feelings for her

hi lovely! of course! at the moment no 😭 i don’t think i would be able to bring myself to write that :”) but thank you for sending me your ideas!! 🥰

[buckysleftbicep]

goodnight my loves 💓 i had an extremely exhausting today, between running errands and school, it's been tough as heck. it's made worse because my mental health is genuinely down the drain.

i was supposed to post a fic up but i couldn't finish it in time, and i'm really sorry about that. i'll have it up as soon as i find the time, and energy to finish it up! 🥰

[buckysleftbicep]

not so much as a request (do whatever u want with this ask is what i mean, bcs i love whatever you write anyway <3!!) but how do you think steve and bucky would share reader ? apologies if you've written something like this before and i missed itt !!

hi sweetie! i took a while to get back to this and i'm so sorry, and i hope you enjoy it still!

warnings: nsfw, 18+, minors dni, threesome (the men do not do anything to each other), unprotected sex, creampie, overstimulation, p in v, anal, oral (m rec), deepthroating (please read the warnings)

god between the two of them, you don’t stand a chance.

Because when Bucky and Steve share you, it’s raw. Unrelenting. Filthy.

They don’t just take turns. They take ownership. Trade you off like you’re something they’ve earned.

It’s all about you. Your body. Your moans. Your soaked, trembling cunt split open between them like something to be worshipped and fucked until it’s used-up and aching.

They’re so goddamn hungry for you. So fucking possessive. And the way they look at you when you’re down on your knees, tits slick with spit and sweat, thighs trembling and already sore? It’s like you’re the only thing on earth they want. The only thing they need.

Steve starts slow—just to tease. He pushes in deep, thick cock stretching your pussy wide as you gasp beneath him, and he smiles. That all-american smile, too pretty for what he’s doing to you.

Then his hand finds your throat and he starts whispering filth with a voice made for pulpits and sin.

Nobody ever thinks that these words could come from sweet, polite, innocent Steve. “So fuckin’ tight for me, baby. Made to take it. You gonna let me fill this sweet little cunt up?”

And Bucky? Bucky’s already behind you, already got his hand in your hair, curling tight until your neck arches perfectly. Until your lips part with a whimper and he shoves his cock into your mouth like he’s starving for it.

“Open up, sweetheart,” he growls, eyes dark, jaw clenched like he’s barely holding on. “That’s it. Deeper. You can take it. I know you can.”

You gag once, maybe twice—and they both moan. Like it’s music to their fucking ears. Like you choking on Bucky’s cock while Steve fucks you from underneath is their idea of heaven.

Your body jolts with every thrust, Steve’s pace brutal now, slamming into you so hard your tits bounce and your throat’s full of Bucky again before you can even catch a breath.

You’re crying before the first orgasm hits—tears sliding down your cheeks, drool leaking from the corners of your mouth, and neither of them let up.

They use you.

Like a fantasy they’ve been keeping secret for too long. And now that they’ve got you—naked, soaked, stretched out and dripping between them—they’re not holding anything back.

You’re bent, folded, flipped over and filled, one cock always inside you.

When Steve finishes, he stays inside—keeps you plugged up while Bucky moves in behind you, spreading your ass open with a growl and shoving in with no hesitation, letting your own slick and Steve’s cum coat his cock as he fucks into you like he owns it.

And they don’t stop.

Their stamina is inhuman. Bucky’s still hard while Steve recovers. Steve’s hard again before Bucky even finishes.

You don’t get breaks. Don’t get to breathe. You’re crying again before you realise you never stopped.

Bucky’s fucking you from behind now, rough and fast, one hand wrapped around your waist while the other slides between your thighs to slap your clit, growling filth into your ear while Steve cups your jaw and slides his cock back between your lips.

“Use your mouth, baby,” Steve groans. “You know how much I love that throat.”

You can’t even form words anymore. Just messy, gurgled little whines as they wreck you.

Steve makes you gag on him while Bucky fucks you through another orgasm, this one brutal—your cunt clenching around him so tight it punches the air from his lungs.

“You feel that?” Bucky snarls. “So fuckin’ wet for us. Drippin’ down your thighs and you’re still fucking hungry for more.”

He slaps your ass, hard enough to make you jolt, and your pussy pulses around him.

They fuck you like it’s a competition—like they’re trying to see who can break you first.

Steve makes you cum until you’re sobbing into Bucky’s lap. Bucky fucks you until your voice is gone and your legs don’t work and your throat is raw.

One of them’s always touching you—gripping your hips, holding your jaw, keeping your mouth and your pussy full like it’s their job.

“You’re our fuckin’ dream,” Steve moans, fucking up into you harder, your body wrecked and bouncing with every snap of his hips. “Look at you—fuck—look at how wet you are.”

“Made for us,” Bucky spits, fucking your throat slow and deep, groaning as your mouth stretches wide around him, spit and cum coating your lips. “This pussy, this mouth—ours. You were made to be used, angel. And we’re not fuckin’ done.”

You lose track of how many times they make you cum.

It’s too much. You’re too full. Your body can’t take it, and still—still—they push you further.

Bucky finishes deep, grunting as he floods your cunt with cum, and before he even pulls out, Steve’s behind you again, fingers spreading you open so he can slide into the mess and fuck you through it all over again.

They don't stop, even when you’re limp and shaking, drooling on the sheets, begging in broken sobs for mercy—you don’t get mercy.

You get Steve’s hand around your throat and Bucky’s cock in your mouth and a voice growling, “Just one more, baby. Be good for us. Let us have you.”

And you do.

Because when Bucky and Steve have you between them, passing you back and forth, making you take it in every way they want—there’s no room for shame. Only sweat and tears and slick and the stretch of two cocks and the weight of two men who don’t just want you.

They own you.

And you love every filthy fucking second of it.

a/n: i have no idea where this filth came from

[thenameswintergifs]

SEBASTIAN STAN as JAMES "BUCKY" BARNES ↳ THUNDERBOLTS* (2025), dir. JAKE SCHREIER

[buckysleftbicep]

bucky in the great gastby era would have been absolutely stunning, i just have so many ideas

[buckysleftbicep]

bent and bruised (5) 𐙚 b.b

pairing: new avenger!bucky barnes x fem!ex-hydra!reader

warnings: nsfw, 18+, minors dni, dub-con (flashbacks), unprotected sex, creampie, mentions of ptsd, hydra related trauma and abuse, very heavy angst, emotional breakdowns, bucky's guilt, memory suppression

summary: you were built by HYDRA to please the soldier—then left for dead. years later, bucky sees your face again. but no amount of time can erase the way you once whispered his name through tears. inspired by this request

word count: 6.5k

author's note: hi my loves, we are nearing the end for this series and i am genuinely beyond grateful for the support i have received 💓. you guys are really sweet and it motivates me to write 🥰. thank you so much ❤️ love ya guys and please stay safe out there!

series masterlist

The ache was the first thing you noticed when you woke up.

It bloomed low in your abdomen, hot and sore and undeniable, it throbbed beneath your skin like an old wound newly split open, pulsing with the memory of hands, of breath, of weight.

Your body stirred against the sheets, every shift tugging at the tender places he’d touched, reminding you of the way he had held you there like letting go would’ve shattered him. 

Your thighs ached. Your hips were sore. There were fingerprints on your skin that no one had left—but your body knew. 

Your body remembered.

You dragged in a breath and it caught halfway, shallow in your throat. Not because of pain. But because of everything else.

Because now… you remembered too.

Not all of it. Not clearly. Not in the way you’d hoped. But enough.

Enough to know that the man who’d held you against that door like he needed your breath just to breathe—he wasn’t a stranger. 

He hadn’t been that night, and he hadn’t been all those years ago. Even if HYDRA had scrubbed his name from your lips, wiped him clean from the seams of your memory, your body had clung to him like a lifeline. Still did.

You could feel him in your chest. In the burn behind your ribs, in the hollow ache of wanting something you didn’t understand until now.

It lived in the spaces between your breaths, in the ghost of his mouth on your skin, in the way your fingers curled into the sheets like they were reaching for someone they’d never stopped needing.

His voice lived in the quiet of your room. That low, breathless groan when he’d finally slid into you. The desperate way he’d whispered you don’t remember me. And that look in his eyes when you told you felt him still. 

That look had hollowed you out, filled you up, left you raw in the aftermath.

You hadn’t spoken to him since the storage room, since the door closed behind him and you slid to the floor, legs shaking, heart splintering under the weight of truth. 

You couldn’t. You wouldn’t know what to say. 

Words felt too small, too sharp. Like they might snap in your mouth before they could ever reach him.

The whole compound felt wrong now—like someone had shifted the axis of gravity just slightly, pulled the air too tight. The walls felt closer, the hallways longer

You’d started avoiding Bucky.

You took the longer route through the east hallway to avoid passing his room. You skipped the gym entirely, even when your body begged for a distraction.

You couldn’t risk seeing him.

Not when the only thing standing between you and another collapse was distance. Not when the silence between you was already unbearable.

You stopped showing up for team lunch, lingering in your room instead with the door locked and your back pressed to the wall, trying to stitch the fragments of your memories into something coherent. 

It didn’t work. They stayed jagged, bleeding at the edges. You’d remember the curve of his shoulder, the sound of your name in his mouth, the taste of tears between kisses, and then—nothing.

A void stood in its place instead.

And every time you close your eyes, you see him. That look on his face in the storage room, when he’d said yes, it was me with a voice soaked in guilt.

You saw the way his shoulders had sagged, the way his hands had trembled at his sides, almost like the confession had carved him open from the inside.

His eyes had been oceans. Blue like grief. Deep and devastating.

There was nothing blank about them. No coldness. Just sorrow so profound it looked like it had lived there for years. And that was the worst part. Because you didn’t want to ask him for anything else. Didn’t want to tear another piece of truth from his mouth. 

Everything he had given you had gutted him. And you couldn’t do that again.

So you stayed quiet. You thought maybe silence would be enough.

Until it wasn’t.

You’d managed to avoid him for nearly four days. Four days of holding your breath. Four days of pretending your body didn’t still hum with the imprint of his touch. Four days of pretending the space between you wasn’t killing you both.

But the fifth day, Val called a full team briefing.

You tried to arrive late—slipping in just as she began speaking, eyes fixed to the floor. You felt his gaze the second you stepped inside. You didn’t dare look up.

Not until halfway through the meeting, when Val turned to speak about training reassignments. Your name fell from her mouth, and you turned your head instinctively. And there he was.

Bucky. Watching you.

His expression didn’t shift. His posture didn’t flinch. But his eyes— They were fucking desperate. Desperate in the way a drowning man looks at the surface.

His jaw was tense, his brows furrowed, faintly drawn like he was holding himself still with a kind of pain he couldn’t voice. And all at once, your breath caught. Your chest stuttered. Because the ache in his gaze—it wasn’t just guilt. 

It was longing.

The meeting ended and conversations began, but you didn’t stay. You made a beeline for the lift, footsteps sharp and unrelenting. You didn’t care who saw, you didn’t look back, you couldn’t bring yourself to. 

But just as the lift doors began to close—you heard it.

“Wait—”

Frantic. His voice.

But you didn’t stop. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t breathe again until the doors sealed shut between you.

Later that night, you sat alone in the main hall, knees curled beneath you, a blanket draped across your legs like armor. 

10 Things I Hate About You flickered on the screen ahead, but you weren’t watching. Not really. Just letting the noise fill the space where silence had begun to fill up.

You told yourself it was an attempt at catching up, at somehow feeling normal. At living the life you were supposed to have once they’d pulled you out of cryo and dropped you into this compound. 

But it was anything but normal. 

Until Yelena dropped beside you. 

You startled slightly. She didn’t comment on it, just leaned back, stealing the other half of your blanket like it was hers by right, and well, it was. 

“Hey,” she said simply, tone soft.

You didn’t answer.

A long moment passed. The movie kept playing. Someone laughed on screen.

Then she said, “You’ve been quiet, honey.” You bit your lip. Looked down. “I’m right here,” she added, gently. “It’s okay.”

You didn’t mean to cry. But you did.

Quiet at first, just a hitch in your breath, a tremble in your chest. But when you turned to her—eyes already glassy—it broke loose. “I… I knew him,” you whispered, voice cracking mid-syllable. “James. I knew him when I was captured by HYDRA. They made me for him, to control him. I didn’t remember, but now, I think it’s all coming back.”

The words caught. Your throat closed. Tears spilled down your cheeks like you were made of them.

“I loved him,” you said, voice small. 

Yelena didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. She just nodded, eyes warm.

“And you still do,” she said softly.

You nodded, curling your arms tighter around your knees. “But what if it’s not real?” Your voice broke again. “What if it’s all just—what they did to us? What they wanted us to feel?”

Yelena didn’t answer right away.

She sat in silence for a long moment, watching the flickering screen with her jaw set, her brows furrowed faintly. Then she turned. 

“They could modify your body,” she said slowly. “They could rewire your mind, twist it, maybe bend it until you don’t even recognise your own reflection.”

She reached out and gently touched your hand.

“But they can’t make you feel what you felt. Not like that, not real love, not whatever's behind after your memories are gone.”

You swallowed hard.

“Whatever happened between you and Barnes,” she continued, “that belonged to you. To both of you. And no one can take that away.”

You didn’t respond. You couldn’t.

You just nodded, breath trembling, eyes red.

You’d spent so long trying to outrun what you couldn’t remember.

And now… it was running toward you faster than you knew how to hold.

You didn’t say anything else. But the words remained with you, sharp and certain as they carved themselves into the walls of your chest:

They couldn’t take what you felt.

Even if they tried. Even if they almost did.

You shifted on the couch, you turned your eyes to the screen.

But the movie had long since faded into background noise.

Inside you, everything was still burning, still breaking, still remembering.

And you— You didn’t feel like yourself.

You felt like a stranger with your own hands. A house that had been broken into and never quite put back together.

You’d been haunting the gym like a ghost in the wee hours of the night, where you were nobody else would see you.

You pushed your body to its edge—ran on the treadmill until your lungs ached and your vision blurred, hit the punching bag until your knuckles throbbed beneath the wraps, again and again until your muscles screamed louder than your thoughts. 

You kept going long after your body begged you to stop, until you could collapse in the shower, water scalding your back, and fall into bed so wrung out you didn’t have the strength to dream.

It was easier that way. Exhaustion didn’t ask questions after all.

That night was no different. You were halfway through tearing the wraps from your wrists, sweat cooling on your spine, shirt clinging to your frame like a second skin, when you felt him.

You didn’t hear the door, didn’t hear his footsteps. But you felt him, the shift in the air, the gravity that came with him, low and steady and unbearably quiet.

He didn’t say a word. Just crossed the room and sank to the mat beside you, not close enough to touch, but close enough that you could feel the heat of him, the weight of his presence.

You didn’t look at him.

You focused on your hands, unspooling the wrap from your left wrist with fingers that trembled more than they should have. Your breath came shallow.

Stuttered.

Not from the workout. From him. From the silence he carried.

And still, he said nothing.

You unwrapped the second hand slower. Deliberate. Anything to give your eyes something to focus on that wasn’t the burn of his gaze. But you felt it, like it was burrowing into your skin. Like it was trying to hold you without moving at all.

There was a pause. A silence so thick it rang in your ears, it pressed in around your shoulders like the weight of all the things neither of you had said. All the nights spent drowning in memory. All the truth that had been ripped from you too suddenly, too violently, to make any room for peace.

And then—you moved to stand.

You shifted forward, bracing your palm on the mat, starting to rise to your feet, when his hand reached out.

Fingers curled gently around your wrist.

Not harsh. Not desperate. Just firm—enough to stop you. Enough to say please, not this time.

You froze.

Your heart cracked against your ribs, a soundless fracture that echoed louder in your chest than anything he could have said.

And then—

“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you,” he said.

The words were soft. Quiet. Like they weren’t meant for the air at all, like they were a confession he’d only ever let himself whisper in dreams, like they had been tearing him apart from the inside out for years.

And they shattered something in you.

You spun, your wrist slipping from his grip as you rose fully to your feet, chest heaving. His words echoed in your skull, bouncing off the walls of your ribs, cracking through the carefully built armor you’d spent days reforging.

You laughed.

But it was a broken sound. A gasp of disbelief. A wound torn open.

“You weren’t supposed to?” Your voice shook. The words came out raw, splintered. “Do you think I was?”

Bucky flinched. Just barely. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His eyes—god, those eyes—were already shining.

You took a step toward him. Another.

“I didn’t get a choice,” you said, voice rising. “We both didn’t, James. I didn't ask to feel like this. To remember this way, to fucking ache every time I think about you.”

He said nothing. Just sat there, spine straight, shoulders tense, like the guilt had already crawled its way beneath his skin and made a home.

You were trembling, every nerve ending lit with something you couldn’t name—grief, fury, longing, all knotted together into something sharp.

“I hate this,” you snapped. “I hate that I still feel it. That even after everything—after what they did to us—after what they made me forget—I still…”

Your voice broke. You swallowed the cry, hard and bitter.

“I still want you,” you said. “I still feel it. In my chest, in my fucking bones. And I don’t know what that means, because HYDRA erased you, until you were just this—this thing in the dark.”

There was silence. Heavy and brutal.

Bucky didn’t defend himself. He didn’t try to interrupt. He just looked up at you, eyes wide and full of pain, and said softly—

“I need to tell you what happened, that last night. Before they took you from me.”

You didn’t stop him. You couldn’t.

“I knew something was coming,” he began. “They had been watching us more closely, sending guards more often. I thought we had time, I thought if I followed orders—if I didn’t fight back—they would leave you alone.”

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. Like even now, the memory was too much.

“They didn’t.”

You sank back to the mat, knees folding beneath you as the world tilted around the edges. You didn’t trust yourself to speak.

“They came in while we were sleeping,” he said. “Dragged you out, fuck, I tried to stop them. I tried. But they put a gun to your head and I couldn’t move.”

Your breath caught. You could see it now, in pieces, in flashes.

“You looked at me,” he said, his voice cracking. “Even though you were scared, even when they were strapping you down. You looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered. Like you weren’t afraid, like you were trying to be brave—for me.”

He swallowed hard. His knuckles whitened.

“They shocked you once, and you still screamed my name, you still begged them to let me go. You still knew me, So they did it again and again, until—until you stopped screaming for me.”

You felt your stomach twist, your fingers clenched into fists so tight your nails bit through skin.

“They made me watch,” Bucky whispered. “They said this was the price of obedience, that if I wanted you, I had to watch them erase every part of you that remembered me, every part of you that—that ever loved me.”

He looked up. And his eyes were drowning, grief poured from him in waves.

“I begged them,” he said. “god, I begged them to stop. I wanted them to take me instead, I wanted them to kill me. But they didn’t, because they wanted me to see it. They wanted me to know that no matter how much I obeyed, they’d always have you. That they could break you just to break me.”

You couldn’t breathe. Your chest was tight, burning. Your body remembered what your mind had fought to forget.

“And then,” he said, softer now. “Your eyes were blank, hollow. Like there was nothing left of you, of me.”

Your throat tightened. A sob crawled up your spine, clamped behind your teeth.

“I fought, they dragged you away and I knew—you were gone.”

He stared at the floor. Voice shaking.

"I was next.” he said.

“James…”

“And I didn’t fight back. Because if you were dead…”

He paused. Swallowed.

“…then there was nothing left for me to fight for.”

You were silent for a long moment. Long enough that the room itself seemed to bend around the quiet.

Then, softly—so softly Bucky almost didn’t hear it—you whispered, “You told me to not forget you.”

You swallowed hard. “And they made sure I did.”

Bucky didn’t speak. He just nodded. Once. Slow. A flicker of something broken passing across his face.

The memory hit him like a wave. It had been the night before everything ended.

He’d known. There were hushed conversations outside the steel walls. The way the scientists looked at you had changed—like they were on a very tight schedule.

That one night, they shoved you inside his cell, the door slammed shut, and the footsteps echoed away.

And then—stillness.

You stood there, trembling just barely, your eyes already glassy. Bucky had known you well enough by then to see the signs. 

You’d been pulled from your cell and returned again, Your wrists were red where the restraints had bitten into them. There was a shallow scrape along your collarbone.

Another test, another goddamn experiment, another attempt to strip you down to bone.

But your eyes still found him. Still knew him.

You crossed the space in two short steps and wrapped your arms around his neck like it was the only thing anchoring you to the world.

He held you, not like a prisoner, but like a man. Like a man who knew something was about to be stolen from him and was utterly powerless to stop it.

There weren’t any words. There never had to be.

You kissed him like you were memorising him, like you didn’t trust your own memory to hold on.

Your mouth was soft at first—like you were afraid he’d pull away. But he didn’t. He never did. He kissed you back with a hunger that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the ache in his chest that had never stopped since the day they brought you to him.

Your fingers slid beneath the hem of his flimsy shirt, dragging the fabric up and over his head with trembling hands. You pressed your palms flat to his chest, scars and all, and he saw the way your breath hitched when your thumbs brushed over the rough patches.

He cupped your jaw, tilting your head just slightly to kiss you deeper. Your lips parted willingly. Hungry now. His mouth moved over yours like he was writing a letter he’d never be able to send.

Clothes came off slowly, each layer peeled back like a prayer, he touched you with careful hands, dragging his fingertips down the slope of your spine, the curve of your ribs, the soft skin beneath your navel.

When he laid you down on the table, the frame creaked beneath your weight, but neither of you moved to hide. You curled beneath him like you belonged there, like you’d always belonged there. 

The way you looked at him—god, it made him feel like a person again.

His mouth found your neck, your collarbone, the swell of your breast. You sighed, threading your fingers through his hair as his lips moved lower, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses down your stomach. You arched into him, breath trembling, thighs parting to welcome him between them.

He looked up at you then. Searching. Asking.

And you nodded.

He slid into you slowly, inch by inch, his hands braced on either side of your face. Your breath hitched, your back arched, your legs wrapped around his waist like you needed him closer. Like you wanted to fuse yourself to him and never let go.

You were so warm. So soft. So real.

The movement was slow. Measured. Every roll of his hips was deliberate, like he was carving the moment into memory, like if he went too fast, it would slip through his fingers.

You touched his face the whole time. Fingers trembling, lips parted, eyes never leaving his. Every moan, every gasp, every whispered yes felt like absolution.

He could’ve cried. Might’ve, when you whispered his name so tenderly it didn’t sound like a name at all—more like a promise.

Your rhythm faltered near the end. You clenched around him, eyes fluttering closed, mouth falling open as you came. He followed moments later, groaning low against your throat, burying his face in your shoulder as he spilled inside you like it was the last thing he’d ever give.

Afterward, you didn’t speak.

You just laid there, curled into each other, your hand stroking slowly down his spine. Breathing together. Hearts beating out of sync.

Then—

“I love you,” you said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it.

It knocked the breath from his lungs.

You had never said it before. Not once.

But that night—you said it.

And for the first time since he’d woken up in a cell with your name burned into the back of his skull, Bucky said it back.

“I love you,” he breathed, forehead pressing to yours, voice thick with everything he couldn’t say.

He had thought—naively, stupidly—that there would be more time. That maybe they’d keep you together. That maybe if he was obedient, if he didn’t fight, he’d be rewarded with a little more of you.

But god, he was wrong.

So, so fucking wrong.

And now you were sitting beside him on the mat again, your shoulders trembling, your eyes rimmed with red, your whole body wrapped in the echo of a memory they had tried to burn.

He could still feel your breath against his lips.

“Don’t forget me,” you had said, fingers brushing his cheek.

And he had promised. But, instead HYDRA made sure you forgot everything about him.

You didn’t hear your feet carry you out of the gym.

You didn’t register the mat shifting beneath you, didn’t feel the soft drag of sweat-damp fabric against your skin or the way the air seemed to thin the moment you stepped beyond the doorway. 

You just moved, a ghost dragged forward by the sheer force of memory and breathless ache. Your legs carried you blindly into the corridor, each step louder than the last, like echoes of a life you hadn’t yet figured out how to live.

You couldn’t breathe.

The air in the hall hit your lungs like knives—sharp and thick, you staggered forward, your vision blurring at the edges, your pulse pounding like war drums in your ears. 

The wall caught your shoulder hard, a dull shock of pain blooming down your side, but you barely flinched. You didn’t care, instead, you welcomed the sensation, at least it reminded you that you still had a body, that you still existed.

Your palms flattened against the concrete as your shoulders shook, muscles twitching beneath your skin like you were holding back a scream. 

The sob that climbed your throat was raw and ragged, scratching at your insides like it had claws. You sucked in a breath, then another, both stuttering, like your lungs were trying to remember how to be lungs at all. Your knees buckled slightly beneath you.

But you didn’t fall. You wouldn’t let yourself.

Because you knew if you crumpled now—if you gave in to the gravity inside your chest—you wouldn’t get back up again. You’d stay down, stay broken, stay shattered on the cold floor while the pieces of who you were scattered out of reach, unrecognisable.

Behind you, Bucky hadn’t moved.

He stood alone in the gym, fists clenched so tightly at his sides his knuckles had gone white, then bloodless.

He hadn’t called your name. Hadn’t chased after you. Not because he didn’t want to—god, he did—but because he knew.

This pain wasn’t his to touch, this unraveling—it was yours. And he knew the difference between love and possession, between reaching and taking.

But that didn’t stop him from breaking with every step you took away.

It didn’t stop him from standing there with his heart in his throat, begging silently—for forgiveness, for understanding, for the right to hold you again.

You pressed your forehead to the wall, your breath coming faster now, shallower. Your whole body trembled, your spine buzzing with something too big for your bones. And then, without warning, the memories struck.

They didn’t unfold. They didn’t ease in like a tide. They hit. Like a crash. 

You gasped. Because it was all there. Suddenly, violently, all there.

The cell. The cold. The hard metal table under your back and the soft, steady weight of him curled around you like shelter. 

The buzz of the overhead light, flickering in time with your breath. The hum of the air vent rattling faintly above. The smell, iron and salt and sweat and something warmer, something human—him.

You remembered the feel of his chest against your spine, the solid press of muscle and warmth and safety, his breath ghosting across your neck like a vow.

His hand had curled protectively around your middle, fingers splayed over your stomach like he could hold you together from the outside, like he could keep the pain out if he just held tight enough.

You remembered the way he buried his face in the crook of your neck, lips pressing soft, gentle kisses that weren’t hurried, weren’t hungry, just full—of want and sorrow and something like fear.

“Don’t forget me, please” he’d murmured, almost begged.

And you remembered the way your breath had caught. The way your body had curled tighter against him. His hands had found your skin like they always did—carefully, tenderly, even when his own trembled. 

His touch mapped every scar like a prayer, his lips trailing behind like shadows that only bloomed in moonlight.

You remembered the way he undressed you, not with urgency but devotion. His fingers shook slightly as he slid your shirt over your head, his palms lingering over every inch of exposed skin as though this might be the last time he ever got to see it.

You remembered the moment he hovered above you, eyes locked on yours, lips parted like he was about to say something but couldn’t quite find the words. 

You remembered how you reached for him first. How your hands found his jaw, his neck, the planes of his back, anchoring him to you like gravity.

Your legs wrapped around his waist. And when he finally, finally pressed inside you—

—everything stopped.

It was just him. You. Breath and memory, stitched together with the soft, fragile thread of a love that had never needed language to be known.

You moved together slowly, like the world had shrunk to a pinpoint. Like nothing existed beyond that cell, those trembling hands, those whispered gasps in the dark.

And then—

You had said it.

“James.”

His name had fallen from your lips like breath, like benediction, you remembered the way he’d stilled, just for a moment. The way his eyes had widened, filling with tears so fast it had stolen the air from the room.

The look on his face—

Like he’d been waiting his whole life just to hear it.

Blue. So blue. Glassy and broken and open wide, like someone had cracked him down the middle and let the light in. You’d never forget that look. Not now. Not ever. Because it had been love. 

Love, plain and bare and unguarded.

And he had broken.

You watched him come undone in your arms, just from those words. His mouth had found yours in a kiss that was desperate, terrified. 

And still—you held him.

You held him until the world faded, until the fear slipped into something else. Until your bodies moved like you were one, like the line between you had disappeared entirely.

And then, as the night faded—

You remembered what you said.

“If there’s another life after this one… I’ll wait for you there.”

And his reply had been a whisper soaked in agony. His lips brushing yours as he breathed it against your skin:

“Don't leave me. Please.”

You collapsed.

Right there in the corridor. Your back slid down the wall, too slow to stop it, too hollow to care. Your arms wrapped around yourself like maybe you could hold your heart together with the pressure alone. 

But it didn’t help, nothing could, because it hurt. Everything hurt. You were drowning in it.

The sob tore free from your throat before you could stop it, guttural and low, the kind of sound you only make when something in you finally, fully breaks.

Because it wasn’t just a memory. It wasn’t a hallucination.

It was truth.

That love had been real.

Everything they did to you—every wipe, every shock, every attempt to strip him from your soul—it hadn’t worked. 

Because he had never been something they implanted. He was something you chose. Even when you didn’t know you were choosing. Even when there was nothing left.

And now, you knew why. Now, you remembered.

You had never stopped loving him.

It was late when you finally made it back to your room.

The compound had quieted to a stillness so complete it felt almost unnatural. The night cycle had long since kicked in, dimming the overhead lights into a low, artificial twilight. 

The halls were hushed, the hum of life receding behind layers of silence, just the distant echo of your own breathing and the steady noises of the air vents overhead, soft and mechanical. 

Your hands trembled as you pushed the door open.

Inside, your room felt like a damn museum exhibit—like no one had lived there in weeks. The sheets were tangled from nights of restless turning, the blankets shoved halfway down the bed in a heap. 

The air smelled faintly of detergent, or sorrow perhaps, the kind that soaked into fabric and never quite left. Your pillows were damp in patches, dried tears marking time like a clock you couldn’t stop.

You didn’t bother with the light. The faint blue glow from the corridor spilled in through the crack behind you, mingling with the moonlight—if it was even the moon at all—filtering through the narrow window.  

And there it was, the file, still sitting there, just where you’d left it, the one you’d taken from the restricted archive.

Your fingers moved, brushing across the surface, tracing the slightly warped corners that had softened from being turned over again and again. The edges were worn now, dog-eared. As if your desperation had seeped into the paper itself. 

You had read it so many times it no longer registered as information, it had become scripture.

A text you recited silently in the dark, searching the blacked-out lines for meaning, reading between the redactions, trying to breathe life into the man hidden beneath the ink.

You had memorised him by nothing at all. No photo but designation.

Subject B. That’s all they had called him.

But now you knew what they had tried to erase. What they had buried. 

You knew now that Subject B was the man who had carried you through hell with his arms around your shaking body. 

The man who had held you together when you couldn’t speak.

He was the man who had memorised the shape of your mouth, not out of hunger—but hope. The man who whispered don’t forget me like a dying man’s final prayer.

He was Bucky. James.

The name still felt electric on your tongue, you set the file down slowly, smoothing the cover with your palm before stepping away like it might burn you. 

You didn’t need to look anymore. The truth wasn’t on the pages—it was in your chest, raw and pulsing. And it hurt in ways no data ever could.

You lay down, the sheets were cold. You curled into them anyway, staring at the ceiling like it might split open and hand you peace. 

But sleep didn’t come. Not even close. 

You turned onto your side, then your back, then your other side.

Your mind thrummed like a wire stretched too tight. Your body was exhausted—screaming for some sort of rest—but your mind was awake. 

Too awake. 

You could feel it behind your eyes. Replaying everything. Every kiss, every cry, every time he had whispered your name like it was something he wasn’t supposed to want.

And then—just as you turned onto your back again, dragging in another shallow breath—a knock.

Soft. So soft it barely registered.

A single thump against your door, tentative and quiet. Like whoever was on the other side wasn’t sure they had the right to be there. Like maybe they were second-guessing even as their knuckles hit wood.

Your breath caught mid-inhale, your fingers curled slightly in the blanket. Your heart was hammering so loud it almost drowned out the silence that followed. For a moment, you thought you imagined it

But then—another knock. Quieter. Like he already knew you were awake.

You rose slowly, the blanket sliding off your body in one heavy motion. You moved, barefoot, breathless—across the cold floor. Every step made your chest tighter, your hand wrapped around the doorknob and paused.

You didn’t open it right away. Not because you were afraid it wasn’t him. But because you were terrified it was.

Because some part of you had already broken open with the hope of seeing his face. Of hearing his voice. And if it wasn’t him—you weren’t sure you’d survive it. But your fingers moved anyway. 

You turned the knob. And opened the door.

And there he was.

He stood in the hallway like a man caught between past and present, the blue wash of the compound lights painting his skin in soft, cold hues.

There were faint creases on his face—like maybe he’d laid down and never managed to sleep. His jaw was tight, his shoulders set like stone.

But his eyes—

They were always the kind that held too much. The kind that didn’t just look at you—they saw you. And there was no restraint left in them , just grief, and longing so thick it could’ve drowned you.

There was exhaustion too. Deep. Carved-in. But beneath it—beneath the guilt, the fear, the years of silence—was something softer. 

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. Because his eyes said everything.

I remember all of it. I never stopped looking for you. I don’t know what this is anymore, but I still want it. I still want you.

You stood there for a long moment. And then—you stepped aside.

You didn’t say a word. Didn’t ask why he came. Didn’t demand an explanation. You didn’t need one. 

Your arm lifted slowly, fingers brushing the edge of the door, and you pushed it open wider. Your chest rose and fell in one long, trembling breath. 

Your heart thundered beneath your ribs, but it didn’t stop you. Your hand hovered at your side—shaking slightly—but you didn’t falter.

Because you wanted him inside. Because you needed him to come in.

Because even if you didn’t have the words for what this was now, even if everything between you had been broken and buried, he was still the only thing that had ever made you feel whole.

He stepped inside.

And for the first time in days—maybe weeks, maybe years—the door shut behind him. And it didn’t feel like a goodbye.

There’s no whispered invitation hovering in the space between you, nothing to fill the silence.

You sit side by side on the floor, backs pressed to the cool wall, bodies close. The room is shrouded in half-darkness—only the faintest spill of compound light leaks in from the corridor through the narrow sliver beneath your door. 

He doesn’t speak. Neither do you.

The quiet between you isn’t uncomfortable—not really. It’s something heavier, like the quiet of a church after a funeral. Fragile. 

His presence fills the space without forcing it, your shoulders barely graze.

You’re aware of every inch between you, of the warmth that radiates off his skin in soft waves, of the heat that settles in the pit of your stomach. 

Your fingers lie a breath away from his, resting on the floor, unmoving—like they’re waiting for a signal neither of you is ready to give.

You don’t reach for him.

Not because you don’t want to—but because you do. Too much.

You keep your eyes on the opposite wall, unfocused, watching the faint shadowplay from the window. The lines don’t mean anything. Not really. But they give you something to look at. Something to pretend to study so you don’t have to turn and see the truth in his eyes.

Because you already know what’s there.

You can feel it radiating off him, the unbearable sorrow tied with the love he doesn’t know how to offer anymore—not without guilt.

And then, slowly—he moves.

Not abruptly. Not purposefully, just slightly. Like some part of him was drawn toward you by gravity, his shoulder brushes yours more firmly this time.

You feel his head shift, a subtle tilt, and then—

He leans in. So slowly. So gently. Like he’s afraid the moment might shatter.

His forehead presses to yours. Soft and steady.

Your eyes close before you even think to command them to. The heat of him seeps into your skin, grounding you. His breath mingles with yours in the narrow space between, and something deep in your chest unknots just slightly.

Neither of you says anything for a long time.

There’s no need.

Because this silence isn’t empty, it’s full. It’s full of pain and hope and a thousand unspoken things. It’s full of memories, of things you didn’t choose, of things stolen, ripped away from both of you.

The breath you let out shakes. Because no matter what they did to you—no matter how many times they wiped you clean, rewrote you, stole your memories and carved their version of you—it wasn’t enough.

They couldn’t take this.

They couldn’t take what was yours.

You didn’t fall in love the way others did, there were no casual glances across a room, no shared coffees. 

You fell in love in the dark, you fell in love in silence, in pain, in stolen moments when you helped each other forget what its like to be afraid. Where you helped each other feel what love is. 

And now—somehow, impossibly—it’s still here.

His forehead stays pressed to yours, when his voice trembles just a little as he breathes your name, you let it thread its way through you. 

You let it tether you. To him. To yourself. To everything they tried to take.

The night stays quiet.

Because for the first time in a long time—

You aren’t quiet in it alone.

a/n: and that's chapter 5! i have no idea how i would end this series just yet...i have half of chapter 6 written and the ending is still kinda vague for me at least, so here's to hoping i finish in time to have it posted up according to schedule!

taglist: @poisntree @moth-maam56 @ravenswritingroom @heymydearheart @secretdiaryofzai @whitelaxe @ficmeiguess @its-in-the-woods @chronicallybubbly @stell404 @overwintering-soldier @emilyswortwellen @vampirehimejoshi @chimmysoftpaws @herejustforbuckybarnes @s0urw00lf @cheeseman @onlyforyuto @hibiscy @quinquinquincy @wickedfun9 @bugs-n-roses @alicetesser @hibiscy @onlyforyuto @chimchoom

[saintserpentine]

[buckysleftbicep]

oh my gosh, i absolutely love lana del rey 😭🥹 and i feel there are so many of her songs that reminds me of bucky

[buckysleftbicep]

Hi! Just wanted to let you know that a lot of your links (masterlist and such) tend to open in browser even though I'm using the app, there is a fix to it so I wanted to let you know:

For example:

Your masterlist for bent and bruised (really into reading it but I have to manually search for it so I can read it on the app)

https://www.tumblr.com/buckysleftbicep/787640465639063552/bent-and-bruised-masterlist-%F0%90%99%9A-bb?source=share

The only thing you have to do is delete all the section from the % and the numbers, so the link should look like this:

https://www.tumblr.com/buckysleftbicep/787640465639063552/bent-and-bruised-masterlist

And that's it! You don't have to answer to this ask or anything, jus wanted to help!

hi there!! oh gosh thank you :") so much 😭🥰❤️ i have been finding ways to fix this issue!

i hope it works now! please let me know if it doesn't!

[buckysleftbicep]

for bent and bruised i can’t help but think that they rewired her to be catnip for bucky, like in the same genre of the sex pollen fic that even if he had a choice- they both won’t be able to stop themselves and also the satisfaction high is so intense that they need and yearn for each other in a way that’s beyond human

i love this take! 💓 i think it makes sense too, given how hydra had her made for him.

the feelings they felt towards each other wasn't just whatever hydra put in them / did to them.

the emotions they felt gradually grew into something that cannot be manipulated despite hydra attempting to do so. hydra never thought bucky capable of feeling anything, until her.

she was meant to control him, and yet she made him feel human emotions—the exact opposite of what hydra wanted. that’s why they kept trying to erase or suppress their memories of each other.

i think my favourite part of writing this series is that, despite everything, they genuinely felt such strong emotions for one another that it became nearly impossible for those memories to be erased permanently.

bent and bruised masterlist

[buckysleftbicep]

bent and bruised (5) 𐙚 b.b

pairing: new avenger!bucky barnes x fem!ex-hydra!reader

warnings: nsfw, 18+, minors dni, dub-con (flashbacks), unprotected sex, creampie, mentions of ptsd, hydra related trauma and abuse, very heavy angst, emotional breakdowns, bucky's guilt, memory suppression

summary: you were built by HYDRA to please the soldier—then left for dead. years later, bucky sees your face again. but no amount of time can erase the way you once whispered his name through tears. inspired by this request

word count: 6.5k

author's note: hi my loves, we are nearing the end for this series and i am genuinely beyond grateful for the support i have received 💓. you guys are really sweet and it motivates me to write 🥰. thank you so much ❤️ love ya guys and please stay safe out there!

series masterlist

The ache was the first thing you noticed when you woke up.

It bloomed low in your abdomen, hot and sore and undeniable, it throbbed beneath your skin like an old wound newly split open, pulsing with the memory of hands, of breath, of weight.

Your body stirred against the sheets, every shift tugging at the tender places he’d touched, reminding you of the way he had held you there like letting go would’ve shattered him. 

Your thighs ached. Your hips were sore. There were fingerprints on your skin that no one had left—but your body knew. 

Your body remembered.

You dragged in a breath and it caught halfway, shallow in your throat. Not because of pain. But because of everything else.

Because now… you remembered too.

Not all of it. Not clearly. Not in the way you’d hoped. But enough.

Enough to know that the man who’d held you against that door like he needed your breath just to breathe—he wasn’t a stranger. 

He hadn’t been that night, and he hadn’t been all those years ago. Even if HYDRA had scrubbed his name from your lips, wiped him clean from the seams of your memory, your body had clung to him like a lifeline. Still did.

You could feel him in your chest. In the burn behind your ribs, in the hollow ache of wanting something you didn’t understand until now.

It lived in the spaces between your breaths, in the ghost of his mouth on your skin, in the way your fingers curled into the sheets like they were reaching for someone they’d never stopped needing.

His voice lived in the quiet of your room. That low, breathless groan when he’d finally slid into you. The desperate way he’d whispered you don’t remember me. And that look in his eyes when you told you felt him still. 

That look had hollowed you out, filled you up, left you raw in the aftermath.

You hadn’t spoken to him since the storage room, since the door closed behind him and you slid to the floor, legs shaking, heart splintering under the weight of truth. 

You couldn’t. You wouldn’t know what to say. 

Words felt too small, too sharp. Like they might snap in your mouth before they could ever reach him.

The whole compound felt wrong now—like someone had shifted the axis of gravity just slightly, pulled the air too tight. The walls felt closer, the hallways longer

You’d started avoiding Bucky.

You took the longer route through the east hallway to avoid passing his room. You skipped the gym entirely, even when your body begged for a distraction.

You couldn’t risk seeing him.

Not when the only thing standing between you and another collapse was distance. Not when the silence between you was already unbearable.

You stopped showing up for team lunch, lingering in your room instead with the door locked and your back pressed to the wall, trying to stitch the fragments of your memories into something coherent. 

It didn’t work. They stayed jagged, bleeding at the edges. You’d remember the curve of his shoulder, the sound of your name in his mouth, the taste of tears between kisses, and then—nothing.

A void stood in its place instead.

And every time you close your eyes, you see him. That look on his face in the storage room, when he’d said yes, it was me with a voice soaked in guilt.

You saw the way his shoulders had sagged, the way his hands had trembled at his sides, almost like the confession had carved him open from the inside.

His eyes had been oceans. Blue like grief. Deep and devastating.

There was nothing blank about them. No coldness. Just sorrow so profound it looked like it had lived there for years. And that was the worst part. Because you didn’t want to ask him for anything else. Didn’t want to tear another piece of truth from his mouth. 

Everything he had given you had gutted him. And you couldn’t do that again.

So you stayed quiet. You thought maybe silence would be enough.

Until it wasn’t.

You’d managed to avoid him for nearly four days. Four days of holding your breath. Four days of pretending your body didn’t still hum with the imprint of his touch. Four days of pretending the space between you wasn’t killing you both.

But the fifth day, Val called a full team briefing.

You tried to arrive late—slipping in just as she began speaking, eyes fixed to the floor. You felt his gaze the second you stepped inside. You didn’t dare look up.

Not until halfway through the meeting, when Val turned to speak about training reassignments. Your name fell from her mouth, and you turned your head instinctively. And there he was.

Bucky. Watching you.

His expression didn’t shift. His posture didn’t flinch. But his eyes— They were fucking desperate. Desperate in the way a drowning man looks at the surface.

His jaw was tense, his brows furrowed, faintly drawn like he was holding himself still with a kind of pain he couldn’t voice. And all at once, your breath caught. Your chest stuttered. Because the ache in his gaze—it wasn’t just guilt. 

It was longing.

The meeting ended and conversations began, but you didn’t stay. You made a beeline for the lift, footsteps sharp and unrelenting. You didn’t care who saw, you didn’t look back, you couldn’t bring yourself to. 

But just as the lift doors began to close—you heard it.

“Wait—”

Frantic. His voice.

But you didn’t stop. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t breathe again until the doors sealed shut between you.

Later that night, you sat alone in the main hall, knees curled beneath you, a blanket draped across your legs like armor. 

10 Things I Hate About You flickered on the screen ahead, but you weren’t watching. Not really. Just letting the noise fill the space where silence had begun to fill up.

You told yourself it was an attempt at catching up, at somehow feeling normal. At living the life you were supposed to have once they’d pulled you out of cryo and dropped you into this compound. 

But it was anything but normal. 

Until Yelena dropped beside you. 

You startled slightly. She didn’t comment on it, just leaned back, stealing the other half of your blanket like it was hers by right, and well, it was. 

“Hey,” she said simply, tone soft.

You didn’t answer.

A long moment passed. The movie kept playing. Someone laughed on screen.

Then she said, “You’ve been quiet, honey.” You bit your lip. Looked down. “I’m right here,” she added, gently. “It’s okay.”

You didn’t mean to cry. But you did.

Quiet at first, just a hitch in your breath, a tremble in your chest. But when you turned to her—eyes already glassy—it broke loose. “I… I knew him,” you whispered, voice cracking mid-syllable. “James. I knew him when I was captured by HYDRA. They made me for him, to control him. I didn’t remember, but now, I think it’s all coming back.”

The words caught. Your throat closed. Tears spilled down your cheeks like you were made of them.

“I loved him,” you said, voice small. 

Yelena didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. She just nodded, eyes warm.

“And you still do,” she said softly.

You nodded, curling your arms tighter around your knees. “But what if it’s not real?” Your voice broke again. “What if it’s all just—what they did to us? What they wanted us to feel?”

Yelena didn’t answer right away.

She sat in silence for a long moment, watching the flickering screen with her jaw set, her brows furrowed faintly. Then she turned. 

“They could modify your body,” she said slowly. “They could rewire your mind, twist it, maybe bend it until you don’t even recognise your own reflection.”

She reached out and gently touched your hand.

“But they can’t make you feel what you felt. Not like that, not real love, not whatever's behind after your memories are gone.”

You swallowed hard.

“Whatever happened between you and Barnes,” she continued, “that belonged to you. To both of you. And no one can take that away.”

You didn’t respond. You couldn’t.

You just nodded, breath trembling, eyes red.

You’d spent so long trying to outrun what you couldn’t remember.

And now… it was running toward you faster than you knew how to hold.

You didn’t say anything else. But the words remained with you, sharp and certain as they carved themselves into the walls of your chest:

They couldn’t take what you felt.

Even if they tried. Even if they almost did.

You shifted on the couch, you turned your eyes to the screen.

But the movie had long since faded into background noise.

Inside you, everything was still burning, still breaking, still remembering.

And you— You didn’t feel like yourself.

You felt like a stranger with your own hands. A house that had been broken into and never quite put back together.

You’d been haunting the gym like a ghost in the wee hours of the night, where you were nobody else would see you.

You pushed your body to its edge—ran on the treadmill until your lungs ached and your vision blurred, hit the punching bag until your knuckles throbbed beneath the wraps, again and again until your muscles screamed louder than your thoughts. 

You kept going long after your body begged you to stop, until you could collapse in the shower, water scalding your back, and fall into bed so wrung out you didn’t have the strength to dream.

It was easier that way. Exhaustion didn’t ask questions after all.

That night was no different. You were halfway through tearing the wraps from your wrists, sweat cooling on your spine, shirt clinging to your frame like a second skin, when you felt him.

You didn’t hear the door, didn’t hear his footsteps. But you felt him, the shift in the air, the gravity that came with him, low and steady and unbearably quiet.

He didn’t say a word. Just crossed the room and sank to the mat beside you, not close enough to touch, but close enough that you could feel the heat of him, the weight of his presence.

You didn’t look at him.

You focused on your hands, unspooling the wrap from your left wrist with fingers that trembled more than they should have. Your breath came shallow.

Stuttered.

Not from the workout. From him. From the silence he carried.

And still, he said nothing.

You unwrapped the second hand slower. Deliberate. Anything to give your eyes something to focus on that wasn’t the burn of his gaze. But you felt it, like it was burrowing into your skin. Like it was trying to hold you without moving at all.

There was a pause. A silence so thick it rang in your ears, it pressed in around your shoulders like the weight of all the things neither of you had said. All the nights spent drowning in memory. All the truth that had been ripped from you too suddenly, too violently, to make any room for peace.

And then—you moved to stand.

You shifted forward, bracing your palm on the mat, starting to rise to your feet, when his hand reached out.

Fingers curled gently around your wrist.

Not harsh. Not desperate. Just firm—enough to stop you. Enough to say please, not this time.

You froze.

Your heart cracked against your ribs, a soundless fracture that echoed louder in your chest than anything he could have said.

And then—

“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you,” he said.

The words were soft. Quiet. Like they weren’t meant for the air at all, like they were a confession he’d only ever let himself whisper in dreams, like they had been tearing him apart from the inside out for years.

And they shattered something in you.

You spun, your wrist slipping from his grip as you rose fully to your feet, chest heaving. His words echoed in your skull, bouncing off the walls of your ribs, cracking through the carefully built armor you’d spent days reforging.

You laughed.

But it was a broken sound. A gasp of disbelief. A wound torn open.

“You weren’t supposed to?” Your voice shook. The words came out raw, splintered. “Do you think I was?”

Bucky flinched. Just barely. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His eyes—god, those eyes—were already shining.

You took a step toward him. Another.

“I didn’t get a choice,” you said, voice rising. “We both didn’t, James. I didn't ask to feel like this. To remember this way, to fucking ache every time I think about you.”

He said nothing. Just sat there, spine straight, shoulders tense, like the guilt had already crawled its way beneath his skin and made a home.

You were trembling, every nerve ending lit with something you couldn’t name—grief, fury, longing, all knotted together into something sharp.

“I hate this,” you snapped. “I hate that I still feel it. That even after everything—after what they did to us—after what they made me forget—I still…”

Your voice broke. You swallowed the cry, hard and bitter.

“I still want you,” you said. “I still feel it. In my chest, in my fucking bones. And I don’t know what that means, because HYDRA erased you, until you were just this—this thing in the dark.”

There was silence. Heavy and brutal.

Bucky didn’t defend himself. He didn’t try to interrupt. He just looked up at you, eyes wide and full of pain, and said softly—

“I need to tell you what happened, that last night. Before they took you from me.”

You didn’t stop him. You couldn’t.

“I knew something was coming,” he began. “They had been watching us more closely, sending guards more often. I thought we had time, I thought if I followed orders—if I didn’t fight back—they would leave you alone.”

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. Like even now, the memory was too much.

“They didn’t.”

You sank back to the mat, knees folding beneath you as the world tilted around the edges. You didn’t trust yourself to speak.

“They came in while we were sleeping,” he said. “Dragged you out, fuck, I tried to stop them. I tried. But they put a gun to your head and I couldn’t move.”

Your breath caught. You could see it now, in pieces, in flashes.

“You looked at me,” he said, his voice cracking. “Even though you were scared, even when they were strapping you down. You looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered. Like you weren’t afraid, like you were trying to be brave—for me.”

He swallowed hard. His knuckles whitened.

“They shocked you once, and you still screamed my name, you still begged them to let me go. You still knew me, So they did it again and again, until—until you stopped screaming for me.”

You felt your stomach twist, your fingers clenched into fists so tight your nails bit through skin.

“They made me watch,” Bucky whispered. “They said this was the price of obedience, that if I wanted you, I had to watch them erase every part of you that remembered me, every part of you that—that ever loved me.”

He looked up. And his eyes were drowning, grief poured from him in waves.

“I begged them,” he said. “god, I begged them to stop. I wanted them to take me instead, I wanted them to kill me. But they didn’t, because they wanted me to see it. They wanted me to know that no matter how much I obeyed, they’d always have you. That they could break you just to break me.”

You couldn’t breathe. Your chest was tight, burning. Your body remembered what your mind had fought to forget.

“And then,” he said, softer now. “Your eyes were blank, hollow. Like there was nothing left of you, of me.”

Your throat tightened. A sob crawled up your spine, clamped behind your teeth.

“I fought, they dragged you away and I knew—you were gone.”

He stared at the floor. Voice shaking.

"I was next.” he said.

“James…”

“And I didn’t fight back. Because if you were dead…”

He paused. Swallowed.

“…then there was nothing left for me to fight for.”

You were silent for a long moment. Long enough that the room itself seemed to bend around the quiet.

Then, softly—so softly Bucky almost didn’t hear it—you whispered, “You told me to not forget you.”

You swallowed hard. “And they made sure I did.”

Bucky didn’t speak. He just nodded. Once. Slow. A flicker of something broken passing across his face.

The memory hit him like a wave. It had been the night before everything ended.

He’d known. There were hushed conversations outside the steel walls. The way the scientists looked at you had changed—like they were on a very tight schedule.

That one night, they shoved you inside his cell, the door slammed shut, and the footsteps echoed away.

And then—stillness.

You stood there, trembling just barely, your eyes already glassy. Bucky had known you well enough by then to see the signs. 

You’d been pulled from your cell and returned again, Your wrists were red where the restraints had bitten into them. There was a shallow scrape along your collarbone.

Another test, another goddamn experiment, another attempt to strip you down to bone.

But your eyes still found him. Still knew him.

You crossed the space in two short steps and wrapped your arms around his neck like it was the only thing anchoring you to the world.

He held you, not like a prisoner, but like a man. Like a man who knew something was about to be stolen from him and was utterly powerless to stop it.

There weren’t any words. There never had to be.

You kissed him like you were memorising him, like you didn’t trust your own memory to hold on.

Your mouth was soft at first—like you were afraid he’d pull away. But he didn’t. He never did. He kissed you back with a hunger that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the ache in his chest that had never stopped since the day they brought you to him.

Your fingers slid beneath the hem of his flimsy shirt, dragging the fabric up and over his head with trembling hands. You pressed your palms flat to his chest, scars and all, and he saw the way your breath hitched when your thumbs brushed over the rough patches.

He cupped your jaw, tilting your head just slightly to kiss you deeper. Your lips parted willingly. Hungry now. His mouth moved over yours like he was writing a letter he’d never be able to send.

Clothes came off slowly, each layer peeled back like a prayer, he touched you with careful hands, dragging his fingertips down the slope of your spine, the curve of your ribs, the soft skin beneath your navel.

When he laid you down on the table, the frame creaked beneath your weight, but neither of you moved to hide. You curled beneath him like you belonged there, like you’d always belonged there. 

The way you looked at him—god, it made him feel like a person again.

His mouth found your neck, your collarbone, the swell of your breast. You sighed, threading your fingers through his hair as his lips moved lower, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses down your stomach. You arched into him, breath trembling, thighs parting to welcome him between them.

He looked up at you then. Searching. Asking.

And you nodded.

He slid into you slowly, inch by inch, his hands braced on either side of your face. Your breath hitched, your back arched, your legs wrapped around his waist like you needed him closer. Like you wanted to fuse yourself to him and never let go.

You were so warm. So soft. So real.

The movement was slow. Measured. Every roll of his hips was deliberate, like he was carving the moment into memory, like if he went too fast, it would slip through his fingers.

You touched his face the whole time. Fingers trembling, lips parted, eyes never leaving his. Every moan, every gasp, every whispered yes felt like absolution.

He could’ve cried. Might’ve, when you whispered his name so tenderly it didn’t sound like a name at all—more like a promise.

Your rhythm faltered near the end. You clenched around him, eyes fluttering closed, mouth falling open as you came. He followed moments later, groaning low against your throat, burying his face in your shoulder as he spilled inside you like it was the last thing he’d ever give.

Afterward, you didn’t speak.

You just laid there, curled into each other, your hand stroking slowly down his spine. Breathing together. Hearts beating out of sync.

Then—

“I love you,” you said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it.

It knocked the breath from his lungs.

You had never said it before. Not once.

But that night—you said it.

And for the first time since he’d woken up in a cell with your name burned into the back of his skull, Bucky said it back.

“I love you,” he breathed, forehead pressing to yours, voice thick with everything he couldn’t say.

He had thought—naively, stupidly—that there would be more time. That maybe they’d keep you together. That maybe if he was obedient, if he didn’t fight, he’d be rewarded with a little more of you.

But god, he was wrong.

So, so fucking wrong.

And now you were sitting beside him on the mat again, your shoulders trembling, your eyes rimmed with red, your whole body wrapped in the echo of a memory they had tried to burn.

He could still feel your breath against his lips.

“Don’t forget me,” you had said, fingers brushing his cheek.

And he had promised. But, instead HYDRA made sure you forgot everything about him.

You didn’t hear your feet carry you out of the gym.

You didn’t register the mat shifting beneath you, didn’t feel the soft drag of sweat-damp fabric against your skin or the way the air seemed to thin the moment you stepped beyond the doorway. 

You just moved, a ghost dragged forward by the sheer force of memory and breathless ache. Your legs carried you blindly into the corridor, each step louder than the last, like echoes of a life you hadn’t yet figured out how to live.

You couldn’t breathe.

The air in the hall hit your lungs like knives—sharp and thick, you staggered forward, your vision blurring at the edges, your pulse pounding like war drums in your ears. 

The wall caught your shoulder hard, a dull shock of pain blooming down your side, but you barely flinched. You didn’t care, instead, you welcomed the sensation, at least it reminded you that you still had a body, that you still existed.

Your palms flattened against the concrete as your shoulders shook, muscles twitching beneath your skin like you were holding back a scream. 

The sob that climbed your throat was raw and ragged, scratching at your insides like it had claws. You sucked in a breath, then another, both stuttering, like your lungs were trying to remember how to be lungs at all. Your knees buckled slightly beneath you.

But you didn’t fall. You wouldn’t let yourself.

Because you knew if you crumpled now—if you gave in to the gravity inside your chest—you wouldn’t get back up again. You’d stay down, stay broken, stay shattered on the cold floor while the pieces of who you were scattered out of reach, unrecognisable.

Behind you, Bucky hadn’t moved.

He stood alone in the gym, fists clenched so tightly at his sides his knuckles had gone white, then bloodless.

He hadn’t called your name. Hadn’t chased after you. Not because he didn’t want to—god, he did—but because he knew.

This pain wasn’t his to touch, this unraveling—it was yours. And he knew the difference between love and possession, between reaching and taking.

But that didn’t stop him from breaking with every step you took away.

It didn’t stop him from standing there with his heart in his throat, begging silently—for forgiveness, for understanding, for the right to hold you again.

You pressed your forehead to the wall, your breath coming faster now, shallower. Your whole body trembled, your spine buzzing with something too big for your bones. And then, without warning, the memories struck.

They didn’t unfold. They didn’t ease in like a tide. They hit. Like a crash. 

You gasped. Because it was all there. Suddenly, violently, all there.

The cell. The cold. The hard metal table under your back and the soft, steady weight of him curled around you like shelter. 

The buzz of the overhead light, flickering in time with your breath. The hum of the air vent rattling faintly above. The smell, iron and salt and sweat and something warmer, something human—him.

You remembered the feel of his chest against your spine, the solid press of muscle and warmth and safety, his breath ghosting across your neck like a vow.

His hand had curled protectively around your middle, fingers splayed over your stomach like he could hold you together from the outside, like he could keep the pain out if he just held tight enough.

You remembered the way he buried his face in the crook of your neck, lips pressing soft, gentle kisses that weren’t hurried, weren’t hungry, just full—of want and sorrow and something like fear.

“Don’t forget me, please” he’d murmured, almost begged.

And you remembered the way your breath had caught. The way your body had curled tighter against him. His hands had found your skin like they always did—carefully, tenderly, even when his own trembled. 

His touch mapped every scar like a prayer, his lips trailing behind like shadows that only bloomed in moonlight.

You remembered the way he undressed you, not with urgency but devotion. His fingers shook slightly as he slid your shirt over your head, his palms lingering over every inch of exposed skin as though this might be the last time he ever got to see it.

You remembered the moment he hovered above you, eyes locked on yours, lips parted like he was about to say something but couldn’t quite find the words. 

You remembered how you reached for him first. How your hands found his jaw, his neck, the planes of his back, anchoring him to you like gravity.

Your legs wrapped around his waist. And when he finally, finally pressed inside you—

—everything stopped.

It was just him. You. Breath and memory, stitched together with the soft, fragile thread of a love that had never needed language to be known.

You moved together slowly, like the world had shrunk to a pinpoint. Like nothing existed beyond that cell, those trembling hands, those whispered gasps in the dark.

And then—

You had said it.

“James.”

His name had fallen from your lips like breath, like benediction, you remembered the way he’d stilled, just for a moment. The way his eyes had widened, filling with tears so fast it had stolen the air from the room.

The look on his face—

Like he’d been waiting his whole life just to hear it.

Blue. So blue. Glassy and broken and open wide, like someone had cracked him down the middle and let the light in. You’d never forget that look. Not now. Not ever. Because it had been love. 

Love, plain and bare and unguarded.

And he had broken.

You watched him come undone in your arms, just from those words. His mouth had found yours in a kiss that was desperate, terrified. 

And still—you held him.

You held him until the world faded, until the fear slipped into something else. Until your bodies moved like you were one, like the line between you had disappeared entirely.

And then, as the night faded—

You remembered what you said.

“If there’s another life after this one… I’ll wait for you there.”

And his reply had been a whisper soaked in agony. His lips brushing yours as he breathed it against your skin:

“Don't leave me. Please.”

You collapsed.

Right there in the corridor. Your back slid down the wall, too slow to stop it, too hollow to care. Your arms wrapped around yourself like maybe you could hold your heart together with the pressure alone. 

But it didn’t help, nothing could, because it hurt. Everything hurt. You were drowning in it.

The sob tore free from your throat before you could stop it, guttural and low, the kind of sound you only make when something in you finally, fully breaks.

Because it wasn’t just a memory. It wasn’t a hallucination.

It was truth.

That love had been real.

Everything they did to you—every wipe, every shock, every attempt to strip him from your soul—it hadn’t worked. 

Because he had never been something they implanted. He was something you chose. Even when you didn’t know you were choosing. Even when there was nothing left.

And now, you knew why. Now, you remembered.

You had never stopped loving him.

It was late when you finally made it back to your room.

The compound had quieted to a stillness so complete it felt almost unnatural. The night cycle had long since kicked in, dimming the overhead lights into a low, artificial twilight. 

The halls were hushed, the hum of life receding behind layers of silence, just the distant echo of your own breathing and the steady noises of the air vents overhead, soft and mechanical. 

Your hands trembled as you pushed the door open.

Inside, your room felt like a damn museum exhibit—like no one had lived there in weeks. The sheets were tangled from nights of restless turning, the blankets shoved halfway down the bed in a heap. 

The air smelled faintly of detergent, or sorrow perhaps, the kind that soaked into fabric and never quite left. Your pillows were damp in patches, dried tears marking time like a clock you couldn’t stop.

You didn’t bother with the light. The faint blue glow from the corridor spilled in through the crack behind you, mingling with the moonlight—if it was even the moon at all—filtering through the narrow window.  

And there it was, the file, still sitting there, just where you’d left it, the one you’d taken from the restricted archive.

Your fingers moved, brushing across the surface, tracing the slightly warped corners that had softened from being turned over again and again. The edges were worn now, dog-eared. As if your desperation had seeped into the paper itself. 

You had read it so many times it no longer registered as information, it had become scripture.

A text you recited silently in the dark, searching the blacked-out lines for meaning, reading between the redactions, trying to breathe life into the man hidden beneath the ink.

You had memorised him by nothing at all. No photo but designation.

Subject B. That’s all they had called him.

But now you knew what they had tried to erase. What they had buried. 

You knew now that Subject B was the man who had carried you through hell with his arms around your shaking body. 

The man who had held you together when you couldn’t speak.

He was the man who had memorised the shape of your mouth, not out of hunger—but hope. The man who whispered don’t forget me like a dying man’s final prayer.

He was Bucky. James.

The name still felt electric on your tongue, you set the file down slowly, smoothing the cover with your palm before stepping away like it might burn you. 

You didn’t need to look anymore. The truth wasn’t on the pages—it was in your chest, raw and pulsing. And it hurt in ways no data ever could.

You lay down, the sheets were cold. You curled into them anyway, staring at the ceiling like it might split open and hand you peace. 

But sleep didn’t come. Not even close. 

You turned onto your side, then your back, then your other side.

Your mind thrummed like a wire stretched too tight. Your body was exhausted—screaming for some sort of rest—but your mind was awake. 

Too awake. 

You could feel it behind your eyes. Replaying everything. Every kiss, every cry, every time he had whispered your name like it was something he wasn’t supposed to want.

And then—just as you turned onto your back again, dragging in another shallow breath—a knock.

Soft. So soft it barely registered.

A single thump against your door, tentative and quiet. Like whoever was on the other side wasn’t sure they had the right to be there. Like maybe they were second-guessing even as their knuckles hit wood.

Your breath caught mid-inhale, your fingers curled slightly in the blanket. Your heart was hammering so loud it almost drowned out the silence that followed. For a moment, you thought you imagined it

But then—another knock. Quieter. Like he already knew you were awake.

You rose slowly, the blanket sliding off your body in one heavy motion. You moved, barefoot, breathless—across the cold floor. Every step made your chest tighter, your hand wrapped around the doorknob and paused.

You didn’t open it right away. Not because you were afraid it wasn’t him. But because you were terrified it was.

Because some part of you had already broken open with the hope of seeing his face. Of hearing his voice. And if it wasn’t him—you weren’t sure you’d survive it. But your fingers moved anyway. 

You turned the knob. And opened the door.

And there he was.

He stood in the hallway like a man caught between past and present, the blue wash of the compound lights painting his skin in soft, cold hues.

There were faint creases on his face—like maybe he’d laid down and never managed to sleep. His jaw was tight, his shoulders set like stone.

But his eyes—

They were always the kind that held too much. The kind that didn’t just look at you—they saw you. And there was no restraint left in them , just grief, and longing so thick it could’ve drowned you.

There was exhaustion too. Deep. Carved-in. But beneath it—beneath the guilt, the fear, the years of silence—was something softer. 

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. Because his eyes said everything.

I remember all of it. I never stopped looking for you. I don’t know what this is anymore, but I still want it. I still want you.

You stood there for a long moment. And then—you stepped aside.

You didn’t say a word. Didn’t ask why he came. Didn’t demand an explanation. You didn’t need one. 

Your arm lifted slowly, fingers brushing the edge of the door, and you pushed it open wider. Your chest rose and fell in one long, trembling breath. 

Your heart thundered beneath your ribs, but it didn’t stop you. Your hand hovered at your side—shaking slightly—but you didn’t falter.

Because you wanted him inside. Because you needed him to come in.

Because even if you didn’t have the words for what this was now, even if everything between you had been broken and buried, he was still the only thing that had ever made you feel whole.

He stepped inside.

And for the first time in days—maybe weeks, maybe years—the door shut behind him. And it didn’t feel like a goodbye.

There’s no whispered invitation hovering in the space between you, nothing to fill the silence.

You sit side by side on the floor, backs pressed to the cool wall, bodies close. The room is shrouded in half-darkness—only the faintest spill of compound light leaks in from the corridor through the narrow sliver beneath your door. 

He doesn’t speak. Neither do you.

The quiet between you isn’t uncomfortable—not really. It’s something heavier, like the quiet of a church after a funeral. Fragile. 

His presence fills the space without forcing it, your shoulders barely graze.

You’re aware of every inch between you, of the warmth that radiates off his skin in soft waves, of the heat that settles in the pit of your stomach. 

Your fingers lie a breath away from his, resting on the floor, unmoving—like they’re waiting for a signal neither of you is ready to give.

You don’t reach for him.

Not because you don’t want to—but because you do. Too much.

You keep your eyes on the opposite wall, unfocused, watching the faint shadowplay from the window. The lines don’t mean anything. Not really. But they give you something to look at. Something to pretend to study so you don’t have to turn and see the truth in his eyes.

Because you already know what’s there.

You can feel it radiating off him, the unbearable sorrow tied with the love he doesn’t know how to offer anymore—not without guilt.

And then, slowly—he moves.

Not abruptly. Not purposefully, just slightly. Like some part of him was drawn toward you by gravity, his shoulder brushes yours more firmly this time.

You feel his head shift, a subtle tilt, and then—

He leans in. So slowly. So gently. Like he’s afraid the moment might shatter.

His forehead presses to yours. Soft and steady.

Your eyes close before you even think to command them to. The heat of him seeps into your skin, grounding you. His breath mingles with yours in the narrow space between, and something deep in your chest unknots just slightly.

Neither of you says anything for a long time.

There’s no need.

Because this silence isn’t empty, it’s full. It’s full of pain and hope and a thousand unspoken things. It’s full of memories, of things you didn’t choose, of things stolen, ripped away from both of you.

The breath you let out shakes. Because no matter what they did to you—no matter how many times they wiped you clean, rewrote you, stole your memories and carved their version of you—it wasn’t enough.

They couldn’t take this.

They couldn’t take what was yours.

You didn’t fall in love the way others did, there were no casual glances across a room, no shared coffees. 

You fell in love in the dark, you fell in love in silence, in pain, in stolen moments when you helped each other forget what its like to be afraid. Where you helped each other feel what love is. 

And now—somehow, impossibly—it’s still here.

His forehead stays pressed to yours, when his voice trembles just a little as he breathes your name, you let it thread its way through you. 

You let it tether you. To him. To yourself. To everything they tried to take.

The night stays quiet.

Because for the first time in a long time—

You aren’t quiet in it alone.

a/n: and that's chapter 5! i have no idea how i would end this series just yet...i have half of chapter 6 written and the ending is still kinda vague for me at least, so here's to hoping i finish in time to have it posted up according to schedule!

taglist: @poisntree @moth-maam56 @ravenswritingroom @heymydearheart @secretdiaryofzai @whitelaxe @ficmeiguess @its-in-the-woods @chronicallybubbly @stell404 @overwintering-soldier @emilyswortwellen @vampirehimejoshi @chimmysoftpaws @herejustforbuckybarnes @s0urw00lf @cheeseman @onlyforyuto @hibiscy @quinquinquincy @wickedfun9 @bugs-n-roses @alicetesser @hibiscy @onlyforyuto @chimchoom

[buckysleftbicep]

bent and bruised (5) 𐙚 b.b

pairing: new avenger!bucky barnes x fem!ex-hydra!reader

warnings: nsfw, 18+, minors dni, dub-con (flashbacks), unprotected sex, creampie, mentions of ptsd, hydra related trauma and abuse, very heavy angst, emotional breakdowns, bucky's guilt, memory suppression

summary: you were built by HYDRA to please the soldier—then left for dead. years later, bucky sees your face again. but no amount of time can erase the way you once whispered his name through tears. inspired by this request

word count: 6.5k

author's note: hi my loves, we are nearing the end for this series and i am genuinely beyond grateful for the support i have received 💓. you guys are really sweet and it motivates me to write 🥰. thank you so much ❤️ love ya guys and please stay safe out there!

series masterlist

The ache was the first thing you noticed when you woke up.

It bloomed low in your abdomen, hot and sore and undeniable, it throbbed beneath your skin like an old wound newly split open, pulsing with the memory of hands, of breath, of weight.

Your body stirred against the sheets, every shift tugging at the tender places he’d touched, reminding you of the way he had held you there like letting go would’ve shattered him. 

Your thighs ached. Your hips were sore. There were fingerprints on your skin that no one had left—but your body knew. 

Your body remembered.

You dragged in a breath and it caught halfway, shallow in your throat. Not because of pain. But because of everything else.

Because now… you remembered too.

Not all of it. Not clearly. Not in the way you’d hoped. But enough.

Enough to know that the man who’d held you against that door like he needed your breath just to breathe—he wasn’t a stranger. 

He hadn’t been that night, and he hadn’t been all those years ago. Even if HYDRA had scrubbed his name from your lips, wiped him clean from the seams of your memory, your body had clung to him like a lifeline. Still did.

You could feel him in your chest. In the burn behind your ribs, in the hollow ache of wanting something you didn’t understand until now.

It lived in the spaces between your breaths, in the ghost of his mouth on your skin, in the way your fingers curled into the sheets like they were reaching for someone they’d never stopped needing.

His voice lived in the quiet of your room. That low, breathless groan when he’d finally slid into you. The desperate way he’d whispered you don’t remember me. And that look in his eyes when you told you felt him still. 

That look had hollowed you out, filled you up, left you raw in the aftermath.

You hadn’t spoken to him since the storage room, since the door closed behind him and you slid to the floor, legs shaking, heart splintering under the weight of truth. 

You couldn’t. You wouldn’t know what to say. 

Words felt too small, too sharp. Like they might snap in your mouth before they could ever reach him.

The whole compound felt wrong now—like someone had shifted the axis of gravity just slightly, pulled the air too tight. The walls felt closer, the hallways longer

You’d started avoiding Bucky.

You took the longer route through the east hallway to avoid passing his room. You skipped the gym entirely, even when your body begged for a distraction.

You couldn’t risk seeing him.

Not when the only thing standing between you and another collapse was distance. Not when the silence between you was already unbearable.

You stopped showing up for team lunch, lingering in your room instead with the door locked and your back pressed to the wall, trying to stitch the fragments of your memories into something coherent. 

It didn’t work. They stayed jagged, bleeding at the edges. You’d remember the curve of his shoulder, the sound of your name in his mouth, the taste of tears between kisses, and then—nothing.

A void stood in its place instead.

And every time you close your eyes, you see him. That look on his face in the storage room, when he’d said yes, it was me with a voice soaked in guilt.

You saw the way his shoulders had sagged, the way his hands had trembled at his sides, almost like the confession had carved him open from the inside.

His eyes had been oceans. Blue like grief. Deep and devastating.

There was nothing blank about them. No coldness. Just sorrow so profound it looked like it had lived there for years. And that was the worst part. Because you didn’t want to ask him for anything else. Didn’t want to tear another piece of truth from his mouth. 

Everything he had given you had gutted him. And you couldn’t do that again.

So you stayed quiet. You thought maybe silence would be enough.

Until it wasn’t.

You’d managed to avoid him for nearly four days. Four days of holding your breath. Four days of pretending your body didn’t still hum with the imprint of his touch. Four days of pretending the space between you wasn’t killing you both.

But the fifth day, Val called a full team briefing.

You tried to arrive late—slipping in just as she began speaking, eyes fixed to the floor. You felt his gaze the second you stepped inside. You didn’t dare look up.

Not until halfway through the meeting, when Val turned to speak about training reassignments. Your name fell from her mouth, and you turned your head instinctively. And there he was.

Bucky. Watching you.

His expression didn’t shift. His posture didn’t flinch. But his eyes— They were fucking desperate. Desperate in the way a drowning man looks at the surface.

His jaw was tense, his brows furrowed, faintly drawn like he was holding himself still with a kind of pain he couldn’t voice. And all at once, your breath caught. Your chest stuttered. Because the ache in his gaze—it wasn’t just guilt. 

It was longing.

The meeting ended and conversations began, but you didn’t stay. You made a beeline for the lift, footsteps sharp and unrelenting. You didn’t care who saw, you didn’t look back, you couldn’t bring yourself to. 

But just as the lift doors began to close—you heard it.

“Wait—”

Frantic. His voice.

But you didn’t stop. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t breathe again until the doors sealed shut between you.

Later that night, you sat alone in the main hall, knees curled beneath you, a blanket draped across your legs like armor. 

10 Things I Hate About You flickered on the screen ahead, but you weren’t watching. Not really. Just letting the noise fill the space where silence had begun to fill up.

You told yourself it was an attempt at catching up, at somehow feeling normal. At living the life you were supposed to have once they’d pulled you out of cryo and dropped you into this compound. 

But it was anything but normal. 

Until Yelena dropped beside you. 

You startled slightly. She didn’t comment on it, just leaned back, stealing the other half of your blanket like it was hers by right, and well, it was. 

“Hey,” she said simply, tone soft.

You didn’t answer.

A long moment passed. The movie kept playing. Someone laughed on screen.

Then she said, “You’ve been quiet, honey.” You bit your lip. Looked down. “I’m right here,” she added, gently. “It’s okay.”

You didn’t mean to cry. But you did.

Quiet at first, just a hitch in your breath, a tremble in your chest. But when you turned to her—eyes already glassy—it broke loose. “I… I knew him,” you whispered, voice cracking mid-syllable. “James. I knew him when I was captured by HYDRA. They made me for him, to control him. I didn’t remember, but now, I think it’s all coming back.”

The words caught. Your throat closed. Tears spilled down your cheeks like you were made of them.

“I loved him,” you said, voice small. 

Yelena didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. She just nodded, eyes warm.

“And you still do,” she said softly.

You nodded, curling your arms tighter around your knees. “But what if it’s not real?” Your voice broke again. “What if it’s all just—what they did to us? What they wanted us to feel?”

Yelena didn’t answer right away.

She sat in silence for a long moment, watching the flickering screen with her jaw set, her brows furrowed faintly. Then she turned. 

“They could modify your body,” she said slowly. “They could rewire your mind, twist it, maybe bend it until you don’t even recognise your own reflection.”

She reached out and gently touched your hand.

“But they can’t make you feel what you felt. Not like that, not real love, not whatever's behind after your memories are gone.”

You swallowed hard.

“Whatever happened between you and Barnes,” she continued, “that belonged to you. To both of you. And no one can take that away.”

You didn’t respond. You couldn’t.

You just nodded, breath trembling, eyes red.

You’d spent so long trying to outrun what you couldn’t remember.

And now… it was running toward you faster than you knew how to hold.

You didn’t say anything else. But the words remained with you, sharp and certain as they carved themselves into the walls of your chest:

They couldn’t take what you felt.

Even if they tried. Even if they almost did.

You shifted on the couch, you turned your eyes to the screen.

But the movie had long since faded into background noise.

Inside you, everything was still burning, still breaking, still remembering.

And you— You didn’t feel like yourself.

You felt like a stranger with your own hands. A house that had been broken into and never quite put back together.

You’d been haunting the gym like a ghost in the wee hours of the night, where you were nobody else would see you.

You pushed your body to its edge—ran on the treadmill until your lungs ached and your vision blurred, hit the punching bag until your knuckles throbbed beneath the wraps, again and again until your muscles screamed louder than your thoughts. 

You kept going long after your body begged you to stop, until you could collapse in the shower, water scalding your back, and fall into bed so wrung out you didn’t have the strength to dream.

It was easier that way. Exhaustion didn’t ask questions after all.

That night was no different. You were halfway through tearing the wraps from your wrists, sweat cooling on your spine, shirt clinging to your frame like a second skin, when you felt him.

You didn’t hear the door, didn’t hear his footsteps. But you felt him, the shift in the air, the gravity that came with him, low and steady and unbearably quiet.

He didn’t say a word. Just crossed the room and sank to the mat beside you, not close enough to touch, but close enough that you could feel the heat of him, the weight of his presence.

You didn’t look at him.

You focused on your hands, unspooling the wrap from your left wrist with fingers that trembled more than they should have. Your breath came shallow.

Stuttered.

Not from the workout. From him. From the silence he carried.

And still, he said nothing.

You unwrapped the second hand slower. Deliberate. Anything to give your eyes something to focus on that wasn’t the burn of his gaze. But you felt it, like it was burrowing into your skin. Like it was trying to hold you without moving at all.

There was a pause. A silence so thick it rang in your ears, it pressed in around your shoulders like the weight of all the things neither of you had said. All the nights spent drowning in memory. All the truth that had been ripped from you too suddenly, too violently, to make any room for peace.

And then—you moved to stand.

You shifted forward, bracing your palm on the mat, starting to rise to your feet, when his hand reached out.

Fingers curled gently around your wrist.

Not harsh. Not desperate. Just firm—enough to stop you. Enough to say please, not this time.

You froze.

Your heart cracked against your ribs, a soundless fracture that echoed louder in your chest than anything he could have said.

And then—

“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you,” he said.

The words were soft. Quiet. Like they weren’t meant for the air at all, like they were a confession he’d only ever let himself whisper in dreams, like they had been tearing him apart from the inside out for years.

And they shattered something in you.

You spun, your wrist slipping from his grip as you rose fully to your feet, chest heaving. His words echoed in your skull, bouncing off the walls of your ribs, cracking through the carefully built armor you’d spent days reforging.

You laughed.

But it was a broken sound. A gasp of disbelief. A wound torn open.

“You weren’t supposed to?” Your voice shook. The words came out raw, splintered. “Do you think I was?”

Bucky flinched. Just barely. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His eyes—god, those eyes—were already shining.

You took a step toward him. Another.

“I didn’t get a choice,” you said, voice rising. “We both didn’t, James. I didn't ask to feel like this. To remember this way, to fucking ache every time I think about you.”

He said nothing. Just sat there, spine straight, shoulders tense, like the guilt had already crawled its way beneath his skin and made a home.

You were trembling, every nerve ending lit with something you couldn’t name—grief, fury, longing, all knotted together into something sharp.

“I hate this,” you snapped. “I hate that I still feel it. That even after everything—after what they did to us—after what they made me forget—I still…”

Your voice broke. You swallowed the cry, hard and bitter.

“I still want you,” you said. “I still feel it. In my chest, in my fucking bones. And I don’t know what that means, because HYDRA erased you, until you were just this—this thing in the dark.”

There was silence. Heavy and brutal.

Bucky didn’t defend himself. He didn’t try to interrupt. He just looked up at you, eyes wide and full of pain, and said softly—

“I need to tell you what happened, that last night. Before they took you from me.”

You didn’t stop him. You couldn’t.

“I knew something was coming,” he began. “They had been watching us more closely, sending guards more often. I thought we had time, I thought if I followed orders—if I didn’t fight back—they would leave you alone.”

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking. Like even now, the memory was too much.

“They didn’t.”

You sank back to the mat, knees folding beneath you as the world tilted around the edges. You didn’t trust yourself to speak.

“They came in while we were sleeping,” he said. “Dragged you out, fuck, I tried to stop them. I tried. But they put a gun to your head and I couldn’t move.”

Your breath caught. You could see it now, in pieces, in flashes.

“You looked at me,” he said, his voice cracking. “Even though you were scared, even when they were strapping you down. You looked at me like I was the only thing that mattered. Like you weren’t afraid, like you were trying to be brave—for me.”

He swallowed hard. His knuckles whitened.

“They shocked you once, and you still screamed my name, you still begged them to let me go. You still knew me, So they did it again and again, until—until you stopped screaming for me.”

You felt your stomach twist, your fingers clenched into fists so tight your nails bit through skin.

“They made me watch,” Bucky whispered. “They said this was the price of obedience, that if I wanted you, I had to watch them erase every part of you that remembered me, every part of you that—that ever loved me.”

He looked up. And his eyes were drowning, grief poured from him in waves.

“I begged them,” he said. “god, I begged them to stop. I wanted them to take me instead, I wanted them to kill me. But they didn’t, because they wanted me to see it. They wanted me to know that no matter how much I obeyed, they’d always have you. That they could break you just to break me.”

You couldn’t breathe. Your chest was tight, burning. Your body remembered what your mind had fought to forget.

“And then,” he said, softer now. “Your eyes were blank, hollow. Like there was nothing left of you, of me.”

Your throat tightened. A sob crawled up your spine, clamped behind your teeth.

“I fought, they dragged you away and I knew—you were gone.”

He stared at the floor. Voice shaking.

"I was next.” he said.

“James…”

“And I didn’t fight back. Because if you were dead…”

He paused. Swallowed.

“…then there was nothing left for me to fight for.”

You were silent for a long moment. Long enough that the room itself seemed to bend around the quiet.

Then, softly—so softly Bucky almost didn’t hear it—you whispered, “You told me to not forget you.”

You swallowed hard. “And they made sure I did.”

Bucky didn’t speak. He just nodded. Once. Slow. A flicker of something broken passing across his face.

The memory hit him like a wave. It had been the night before everything ended.

He’d known. There were hushed conversations outside the steel walls. The way the scientists looked at you had changed—like they were on a very tight schedule.

That one night, they shoved you inside his cell, the door slammed shut, and the footsteps echoed away.

And then—stillness.

You stood there, trembling just barely, your eyes already glassy. Bucky had known you well enough by then to see the signs. 

You’d been pulled from your cell and returned again, Your wrists were red where the restraints had bitten into them. There was a shallow scrape along your collarbone.

Another test, another goddamn experiment, another attempt to strip you down to bone.

But your eyes still found him. Still knew him.

You crossed the space in two short steps and wrapped your arms around his neck like it was the only thing anchoring you to the world.

He held you, not like a prisoner, but like a man. Like a man who knew something was about to be stolen from him and was utterly powerless to stop it.

There weren’t any words. There never had to be.

You kissed him like you were memorising him, like you didn’t trust your own memory to hold on.

Your mouth was soft at first—like you were afraid he’d pull away. But he didn’t. He never did. He kissed you back with a hunger that had nothing to do with lust and everything to do with the ache in his chest that had never stopped since the day they brought you to him.

Your fingers slid beneath the hem of his flimsy shirt, dragging the fabric up and over his head with trembling hands. You pressed your palms flat to his chest, scars and all, and he saw the way your breath hitched when your thumbs brushed over the rough patches.

He cupped your jaw, tilting your head just slightly to kiss you deeper. Your lips parted willingly. Hungry now. His mouth moved over yours like he was writing a letter he’d never be able to send.

Clothes came off slowly, each layer peeled back like a prayer, he touched you with careful hands, dragging his fingertips down the slope of your spine, the curve of your ribs, the soft skin beneath your navel.

When he laid you down on the table, the frame creaked beneath your weight, but neither of you moved to hide. You curled beneath him like you belonged there, like you’d always belonged there. 

The way you looked at him—god, it made him feel like a person again.

His mouth found your neck, your collarbone, the swell of your breast. You sighed, threading your fingers through his hair as his lips moved lower, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses down your stomach. You arched into him, breath trembling, thighs parting to welcome him between them.

He looked up at you then. Searching. Asking.

And you nodded.

He slid into you slowly, inch by inch, his hands braced on either side of your face. Your breath hitched, your back arched, your legs wrapped around his waist like you needed him closer. Like you wanted to fuse yourself to him and never let go.

You were so warm. So soft. So real.

The movement was slow. Measured. Every roll of his hips was deliberate, like he was carving the moment into memory, like if he went too fast, it would slip through his fingers.

You touched his face the whole time. Fingers trembling, lips parted, eyes never leaving his. Every moan, every gasp, every whispered yes felt like absolution.

He could’ve cried. Might’ve, when you whispered his name so tenderly it didn’t sound like a name at all—more like a promise.

Your rhythm faltered near the end. You clenched around him, eyes fluttering closed, mouth falling open as you came. He followed moments later, groaning low against your throat, burying his face in your shoulder as he spilled inside you like it was the last thing he’d ever give.

Afterward, you didn’t speak.

You just laid there, curled into each other, your hand stroking slowly down his spine. Breathing together. Hearts beating out of sync.

Then—

“I love you,” you said, so quietly he almost didn’t hear it.

It knocked the breath from his lungs.

You had never said it before. Not once.

But that night—you said it.

And for the first time since he’d woken up in a cell with your name burned into the back of his skull, Bucky said it back.

“I love you,” he breathed, forehead pressing to yours, voice thick with everything he couldn’t say.

He had thought—naively, stupidly—that there would be more time. That maybe they’d keep you together. That maybe if he was obedient, if he didn’t fight, he’d be rewarded with a little more of you.

But god, he was wrong.

So, so fucking wrong.

And now you were sitting beside him on the mat again, your shoulders trembling, your eyes rimmed with red, your whole body wrapped in the echo of a memory they had tried to burn.

He could still feel your breath against his lips.

“Don’t forget me,” you had said, fingers brushing his cheek.

And he had promised. But, instead HYDRA made sure you forgot everything about him.

You didn’t hear your feet carry you out of the gym.

You didn’t register the mat shifting beneath you, didn’t feel the soft drag of sweat-damp fabric against your skin or the way the air seemed to thin the moment you stepped beyond the doorway. 

You just moved, a ghost dragged forward by the sheer force of memory and breathless ache. Your legs carried you blindly into the corridor, each step louder than the last, like echoes of a life you hadn’t yet figured out how to live.

You couldn’t breathe.

The air in the hall hit your lungs like knives—sharp and thick, you staggered forward, your vision blurring at the edges, your pulse pounding like war drums in your ears. 

The wall caught your shoulder hard, a dull shock of pain blooming down your side, but you barely flinched. You didn’t care, instead, you welcomed the sensation, at least it reminded you that you still had a body, that you still existed.

Your palms flattened against the concrete as your shoulders shook, muscles twitching beneath your skin like you were holding back a scream. 

The sob that climbed your throat was raw and ragged, scratching at your insides like it had claws. You sucked in a breath, then another, both stuttering, like your lungs were trying to remember how to be lungs at all. Your knees buckled slightly beneath you.

But you didn’t fall. You wouldn’t let yourself.

Because you knew if you crumpled now—if you gave in to the gravity inside your chest—you wouldn’t get back up again. You’d stay down, stay broken, stay shattered on the cold floor while the pieces of who you were scattered out of reach, unrecognisable.

Behind you, Bucky hadn’t moved.

He stood alone in the gym, fists clenched so tightly at his sides his knuckles had gone white, then bloodless.

He hadn’t called your name. Hadn’t chased after you. Not because he didn’t want to—god, he did—but because he knew.

This pain wasn’t his to touch, this unraveling—it was yours. And he knew the difference between love and possession, between reaching and taking.

But that didn’t stop him from breaking with every step you took away.

It didn’t stop him from standing there with his heart in his throat, begging silently—for forgiveness, for understanding, for the right to hold you again.

You pressed your forehead to the wall, your breath coming faster now, shallower. Your whole body trembled, your spine buzzing with something too big for your bones. And then, without warning, the memories struck.

They didn’t unfold. They didn’t ease in like a tide. They hit. Like a crash. 

You gasped. Because it was all there. Suddenly, violently, all there.

The cell. The cold. The hard metal table under your back and the soft, steady weight of him curled around you like shelter. 

The buzz of the overhead light, flickering in time with your breath. The hum of the air vent rattling faintly above. The smell, iron and salt and sweat and something warmer, something human—him.

You remembered the feel of his chest against your spine, the solid press of muscle and warmth and safety, his breath ghosting across your neck like a vow.

His hand had curled protectively around your middle, fingers splayed over your stomach like he could hold you together from the outside, like he could keep the pain out if he just held tight enough.

You remembered the way he buried his face in the crook of your neck, lips pressing soft, gentle kisses that weren’t hurried, weren’t hungry, just full—of want and sorrow and something like fear.

“Don’t forget me, please” he’d murmured, almost begged.

And you remembered the way your breath had caught. The way your body had curled tighter against him. His hands had found your skin like they always did—carefully, tenderly, even when his own trembled. 

His touch mapped every scar like a prayer, his lips trailing behind like shadows that only bloomed in moonlight.

You remembered the way he undressed you, not with urgency but devotion. His fingers shook slightly as he slid your shirt over your head, his palms lingering over every inch of exposed skin as though this might be the last time he ever got to see it.

You remembered the moment he hovered above you, eyes locked on yours, lips parted like he was about to say something but couldn’t quite find the words. 

You remembered how you reached for him first. How your hands found his jaw, his neck, the planes of his back, anchoring him to you like gravity.

Your legs wrapped around his waist. And when he finally, finally pressed inside you—

—everything stopped.

It was just him. You. Breath and memory, stitched together with the soft, fragile thread of a love that had never needed language to be known.

You moved together slowly, like the world had shrunk to a pinpoint. Like nothing existed beyond that cell, those trembling hands, those whispered gasps in the dark.

And then—

You had said it.

“James.”

His name had fallen from your lips like breath, like benediction, you remembered the way he’d stilled, just for a moment. The way his eyes had widened, filling with tears so fast it had stolen the air from the room.

The look on his face—

Like he’d been waiting his whole life just to hear it.

Blue. So blue. Glassy and broken and open wide, like someone had cracked him down the middle and let the light in. You’d never forget that look. Not now. Not ever. Because it had been love. 

Love, plain and bare and unguarded.

And he had broken.

You watched him come undone in your arms, just from those words. His mouth had found yours in a kiss that was desperate, terrified. 

And still—you held him.

You held him until the world faded, until the fear slipped into something else. Until your bodies moved like you were one, like the line between you had disappeared entirely.

And then, as the night faded—

You remembered what you said.

“If there’s another life after this one… I’ll wait for you there.”

And his reply had been a whisper soaked in agony. His lips brushing yours as he breathed it against your skin:

“Don't leave me. Please.”

You collapsed.

Right there in the corridor. Your back slid down the wall, too slow to stop it, too hollow to care. Your arms wrapped around yourself like maybe you could hold your heart together with the pressure alone. 

But it didn’t help, nothing could, because it hurt. Everything hurt. You were drowning in it.

The sob tore free from your throat before you could stop it, guttural and low, the kind of sound you only make when something in you finally, fully breaks.

Because it wasn’t just a memory. It wasn’t a hallucination.

It was truth.

That love had been real.

Everything they did to you—every wipe, every shock, every attempt to strip him from your soul—it hadn’t worked. 

Because he had never been something they implanted. He was something you chose. Even when you didn’t know you were choosing. Even when there was nothing left.

And now, you knew why. Now, you remembered.

You had never stopped loving him.

It was late when you finally made it back to your room.

The compound had quieted to a stillness so complete it felt almost unnatural. The night cycle had long since kicked in, dimming the overhead lights into a low, artificial twilight. 

The halls were hushed, the hum of life receding behind layers of silence, just the distant echo of your own breathing and the steady noises of the air vents overhead, soft and mechanical. 

Your hands trembled as you pushed the door open.

Inside, your room felt like a damn museum exhibit—like no one had lived there in weeks. The sheets were tangled from nights of restless turning, the blankets shoved halfway down the bed in a heap. 

The air smelled faintly of detergent, or sorrow perhaps, the kind that soaked into fabric and never quite left. Your pillows were damp in patches, dried tears marking time like a clock you couldn’t stop.

You didn’t bother with the light. The faint blue glow from the corridor spilled in through the crack behind you, mingling with the moonlight—if it was even the moon at all—filtering through the narrow window.  

And there it was, the file, still sitting there, just where you’d left it, the one you’d taken from the restricted archive.

Your fingers moved, brushing across the surface, tracing the slightly warped corners that had softened from being turned over again and again. The edges were worn now, dog-eared. As if your desperation had seeped into the paper itself. 

You had read it so many times it no longer registered as information, it had become scripture.

A text you recited silently in the dark, searching the blacked-out lines for meaning, reading between the redactions, trying to breathe life into the man hidden beneath the ink.

You had memorised him by nothing at all. No photo but designation.

Subject B. That’s all they had called him.

But now you knew what they had tried to erase. What they had buried. 

You knew now that Subject B was the man who had carried you through hell with his arms around your shaking body. 

The man who had held you together when you couldn’t speak.

He was the man who had memorised the shape of your mouth, not out of hunger—but hope. The man who whispered don’t forget me like a dying man’s final prayer.

He was Bucky. James.

The name still felt electric on your tongue, you set the file down slowly, smoothing the cover with your palm before stepping away like it might burn you. 

You didn’t need to look anymore. The truth wasn’t on the pages—it was in your chest, raw and pulsing. And it hurt in ways no data ever could.

You lay down, the sheets were cold. You curled into them anyway, staring at the ceiling like it might split open and hand you peace. 

But sleep didn’t come. Not even close. 

You turned onto your side, then your back, then your other side.

Your mind thrummed like a wire stretched too tight. Your body was exhausted—screaming for some sort of rest—but your mind was awake. 

Too awake. 

You could feel it behind your eyes. Replaying everything. Every kiss, every cry, every time he had whispered your name like it was something he wasn’t supposed to want.

And then—just as you turned onto your back again, dragging in another shallow breath—a knock.

Soft. So soft it barely registered.

A single thump against your door, tentative and quiet. Like whoever was on the other side wasn’t sure they had the right to be there. Like maybe they were second-guessing even as their knuckles hit wood.

Your breath caught mid-inhale, your fingers curled slightly in the blanket. Your heart was hammering so loud it almost drowned out the silence that followed. For a moment, you thought you imagined it

But then—another knock. Quieter. Like he already knew you were awake.

You rose slowly, the blanket sliding off your body in one heavy motion. You moved, barefoot, breathless—across the cold floor. Every step made your chest tighter, your hand wrapped around the doorknob and paused.

You didn’t open it right away. Not because you were afraid it wasn’t him. But because you were terrified it was.

Because some part of you had already broken open with the hope of seeing his face. Of hearing his voice. And if it wasn’t him—you weren’t sure you’d survive it. But your fingers moved anyway. 

You turned the knob. And opened the door.

And there he was.

He stood in the hallway like a man caught between past and present, the blue wash of the compound lights painting his skin in soft, cold hues.

There were faint creases on his face—like maybe he’d laid down and never managed to sleep. His jaw was tight, his shoulders set like stone.

But his eyes—

They were always the kind that held too much. The kind that didn’t just look at you—they saw you. And there was no restraint left in them , just grief, and longing so thick it could’ve drowned you.

There was exhaustion too. Deep. Carved-in. But beneath it—beneath the guilt, the fear, the years of silence—was something softer. 

He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. Because his eyes said everything.

I remember all of it. I never stopped looking for you. I don’t know what this is anymore, but I still want it. I still want you.

You stood there for a long moment. And then—you stepped aside.

You didn’t say a word. Didn’t ask why he came. Didn’t demand an explanation. You didn’t need one. 

Your arm lifted slowly, fingers brushing the edge of the door, and you pushed it open wider. Your chest rose and fell in one long, trembling breath. 

Your heart thundered beneath your ribs, but it didn’t stop you. Your hand hovered at your side—shaking slightly—but you didn’t falter.

Because you wanted him inside. Because you needed him to come in.

Because even if you didn’t have the words for what this was now, even if everything between you had been broken and buried, he was still the only thing that had ever made you feel whole.

He stepped inside.

And for the first time in days—maybe weeks, maybe years—the door shut behind him. And it didn’t feel like a goodbye.

There’s no whispered invitation hovering in the space between you, nothing to fill the silence.

You sit side by side on the floor, backs pressed to the cool wall, bodies close. The room is shrouded in half-darkness—only the faintest spill of compound light leaks in from the corridor through the narrow sliver beneath your door. 

He doesn’t speak. Neither do you.

The quiet between you isn’t uncomfortable—not really. It’s something heavier, like the quiet of a church after a funeral. Fragile. 

His presence fills the space without forcing it, your shoulders barely graze.

You’re aware of every inch between you, of the warmth that radiates off his skin in soft waves, of the heat that settles in the pit of your stomach. 

Your fingers lie a breath away from his, resting on the floor, unmoving—like they’re waiting for a signal neither of you is ready to give.

You don’t reach for him.

Not because you don’t want to—but because you do. Too much.

You keep your eyes on the opposite wall, unfocused, watching the faint shadowplay from the window. The lines don’t mean anything. Not really. But they give you something to look at. Something to pretend to study so you don’t have to turn and see the truth in his eyes.

Because you already know what’s there.

You can feel it radiating off him, the unbearable sorrow tied with the love he doesn’t know how to offer anymore—not without guilt.

And then, slowly—he moves.

Not abruptly. Not purposefully, just slightly. Like some part of him was drawn toward you by gravity, his shoulder brushes yours more firmly this time.

You feel his head shift, a subtle tilt, and then—

He leans in. So slowly. So gently. Like he’s afraid the moment might shatter.

His forehead presses to yours. Soft and steady.

Your eyes close before you even think to command them to. The heat of him seeps into your skin, grounding you. His breath mingles with yours in the narrow space between, and something deep in your chest unknots just slightly.

Neither of you says anything for a long time.

There’s no need.

Because this silence isn’t empty, it’s full. It’s full of pain and hope and a thousand unspoken things. It’s full of memories, of things you didn’t choose, of things stolen, ripped away from both of you.

The breath you let out shakes. Because no matter what they did to you—no matter how many times they wiped you clean, rewrote you, stole your memories and carved their version of you—it wasn’t enough.

They couldn’t take this.

They couldn’t take what was yours.

You didn’t fall in love the way others did, there were no casual glances across a room, no shared coffees. 

You fell in love in the dark, you fell in love in silence, in pain, in stolen moments when you helped each other forget what its like to be afraid. Where you helped each other feel what love is. 

And now—somehow, impossibly—it’s still here.

His forehead stays pressed to yours, when his voice trembles just a little as he breathes your name, you let it thread its way through you. 

You let it tether you. To him. To yourself. To everything they tried to take.

The night stays quiet.

Because for the first time in a long time—

You aren’t quiet in it alone.

a/n: and that's chapter 5! i have no idea how i would end this series just yet...i have half of chapter 6 written and the ending is still kinda vague for me at least, so here's to hoping i finish in time to have it posted up according to schedule!

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