He remained still once the projection vanished, eyes lingering on the place it had occupied as though the image had left a residue he could still feel. The sedative dulled his usual precision, leaving his thoughts slower to arrange themselves, his emotions closer than he preferred. For a long time, HYDRA had insisted Bucky Barnes was dead, repeating it often enough to make it feel inevitable, yet never providing proof. That absence had mattered. It had festered. ( It was the lack of confirmation that had finally broken something open inside him, the space where certainty should have been turning into pressure instead. ) When he spoke, his voice was quiet, careful, shaped by exhaustion rather than fear.
‘They told me he was dead, but they never showed me anything. No body. No records I could verify. That inconsistency is what made me react. I couldn’t reconcile it. It was the first time I stopped complying. I left because the data didn’t align, and because I realised they were using the uncertainty to control me.’
His gaze lowered, fixing on the floor beneath them as though it could give him coordinates his body understood. His fingers curled faintly into his sleeve, a small motion, almost hidden. He swallowed, breath measured and controlled. The admission came without drama, simply stated, as though he were still cataloguing cause and effect. ( Violence had followed, not as intent, but as consequence. ) He listened to Steve speak of Bucky’s good days and bad days with focused attention, relief and anxiety existing side by side without cancelling each other out. After a moment, he looked up again, searching Steve’s face not for comfort, but for something consistent.
‘I care about him, I always did. That’s why the lie mattered. Knowing he’s alive doesn’t undo what I believed. It means I have to adjust what I built around that belief. I’m trying to trust you because he does. That isn’t instinctive for me, but it is deliberate.’
He shifted slightly, enough to test his own body rather than retreat from it. His shoulders eased by fractions. Not comfort, exactly. Not trust in any easy sense. It was a decision to remain present while every trained part of him continued to calculate threat, access, consequence, escape. Steve did not become safe simply because Bucky trusted him. Valentin’s mind was not built to accept that fact. But Bucky’s trust mattered. ( It had to matter, or none of the data meant anything at all. ) He met Steve’s gaze again, tired but composed, and continued in the same low voice.
‘I know I’m not entirely stable right now. The sedative makes it harder to regulate, and there are still conditioned responses I have to monitor. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to become another variable he has to account for. If you have questions, I’ll answer them. If you need boundaries, I’ll respect them.’
He stayed there after that, anxious but controlled, choosing trust with the grim care of someone handling a weapon that might still go off in his hands. ( It was not easy. Ease had nothing to do with it. ) Bucky had trusted Steve first, and Valentin, exhausted and frightened and still fighting the ghost of HYDRA in his blood, was trying to follow that example.
