As Fate Would Have It (Part 22)
Paring: WinterSoldier!Bucky x Spy!Reader
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Warnings: PTSD.
Note: And the fic has been REVIVED! We've moved onto post-Civil-War era! Yay! Let me know if you want to be taken off the taglist!
~WAKANDA, 2018
“Take it slow,” Bucky read Shuri’s lips from the other side of the glass wall. She was speaking to Y/N, the data pad in her hand screening several diagnostics.
Steve stood beside him, an unreadable expression weighing on his face, hands placed on his hips. Could be disappointment, but Bucky couldn’t face that right now, not while staring at the scars and track marks lining Y/N’s back like a fucked-up star chart.
It was his fault. And it made breathing impossible; to see her so broken.
“Do you know where you are?” he read Shuri ask Y/N.
Y/N stuttered for a moment, her gaze trailing from her hands to her reflection in the glass. Her expression was that of confusion, as though it were a stranger looking back at her. She was practically a stranger to Bucky’s eyes too.
“What about your name?” he read Shuri say, a knot forming at her temples. “Can you tell me that?”
Y/N shook her head, her frame shaking.
At that moment, Shuri looked towards the observation window, meeting Bucky’s eyes with concern. Bucky’s heart nearly stopped at the implication. Something was wrong.
Steve sighed, running his hand through his hair. Not as blonde as it used to be, and uncharacteristically shaggy ever since he’d been on the run.
It was still a shock sometimes, seeing his best friend as this bastion of justice—a larger-than-life symbol of endurance. And yet, here he was, stripped of his stars and stripes, looking every bit as human as any man in a hospital waiting room.
“I still can’t believe it,” Steve said, pacing the room. “Elle… or Y/N… she’s—she’s alive.”
Bucky instinctively reached for his stump, remembering all the times he’d lunged at her with his metal arm with the intent to kill… the time he’d slipped his blade between her ribs.
Fuck! he balled his fist. What kind of monster tries to kill someone who loved him?
Now he was struck by memories of Steve on the airship. His friend's face bloodied, and so terribly close to mortality. To the end of the line.
“Buck?” Steve’s hand was on his shoulder, worry present in the tension of his jaw.
“What?” Bucky blinked several times, shaking his head clear of the past.
“Are you okay?” Steve asked. “Ever since we found her… you—well… I guess there’s no right way to take all this in, is there?”
“I did this, Steve,” Bucky’s voice cracked. “I did this to her.”
“Buck, you weren’t yourself. You can’t—”
“No! Not this time,” Bucky shrugged off Steve’s hand. “You can’t make excuses for me this time.”
“I’m not making excuses,” Steve’s jaw clamped up, then released in a controlled manner, as if gathering himself. “What Hydra did to you, what you’re going through… it’s not black and white. It’s not easy. And Elle… Y/N, whatever her story is, there’s no good to be found in blaming anyone here.”
“I know…” Bucky nodded, believing none of what his oldest friend was saying. “I know. Doesn’t make this any easier. Seeing her like this.”
“Do you know who did this to her?” Steve hesitated. “Was it Hydra too?”
“N-no… I-I don’t think so,” Bucky stammered. “I never saw her when they’d take me out of the tank. Hydra could have done this but… No. No, I don’t think it was us.”
Steve's brow arched, “Us?”
Bucky froze. “Them,” he corrected. “I never saw them experimenting on her.”
“But you have an idea who did?” Steve saw something in Bucky’s eyes, recognition perhaps.
He remembered seeing blood in the snow through the Winter Soldier’s eyes. Remembered catching a glimpse of white hair over the tundra through his scope. He never pulled the trigger though. He wished he could say it was because some part of him knew it was her, even through the brainwashing. In truth, she wasn’t a kill worth his time. She wasn’t his target that day. Instead, he’d cleared an entire encampment of mercenaries hired by Yelena Belova, the Winter Soldier’s actual target. The little rabbit. Down the rabbit hole.
“47. One of my first missions after the… conditioning. My orders were to destabilise the black widow operation in Russia. Yelena Belova. Handler of the Western Front Operatives. One of my main targets. During the…” Bucky took a deep breath, fighting the pain knocking around in his reprogrammed brain. He cleared his throat, unwilling to relive the flames and tortured cries. “In the confusion, Yelena got away. I tracked her movements throughout Russia, and she nearly got away, until I came upon an ambush.”
Steve stopped pacing and sat down on one of the chairs, “An ambush? For you?”
“No. There was a convoy transporting prisoners from some facility in the north. It had been hit by mercenaries. They made camp a few clicks west. Then I…” a dry lump fixed itself in his throat, and he almost failed to finish his sentence; Then I found Yelena Belova and ended her life with my boot on her neck.
Steve’s eyes roamed Bucky’s form, taking in his shrunken stature, “Y/N was on that convoy, wasn’t she?”
“I think so… I think I saw her then. Through the scope. White hair in the snow.”
A mechanical hiss sounded out behind them, a pair of footsteps making their way closer, but they both ignored it—or rather, they were both too shell-shocked to respond immediately. Bucky from the memories, Steve from hearing his best friend tell him he killed an entire mercenary group that rescued POWs.
“You guys doing alright in here?” Shuri asked, her accent sounding more and more familiar to Bucky’s ears. Hell, Wakanda’s accent sounded less alien than Brooklyn’s would right now. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Never mind that, I got the diagnostics from the tests.”
Bucky opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He was too distracted by the scars on Y/N’s back.
“And?” Steve asked, standing from his chair.
“She’s fine, relatively speaking,” Shuri said, placing one of her Kimoyo Beads on an incave near a panel by the windows. The glass instantly turned opaque, blotting out the light with a matted effect, and then a hologram of Y/N’s body scans brightened the room blue. “Her electrolyte count is low, which is to be expected considering the cryostasis chamber she was in was ancient, possibly a fault with the defrost sequence. Left a lot of water to absorb into her system. A few vitamin deficiencies too, but we can treat those with supplements and diet.”
Shuri waved her hand over her Kimoyo Bead, bringing up an x-ray that showed multiple bone resets and mended fissures. One of them stood out to Bucky. Left ribcage, between the last two bones, a chip made from his military-grade issue knife.
“Looks like I’m staring at a veteran's x-ray,” Steve noted, his eyes filled with compassion. “Never would have thought… she was so… I don’t know. It’s hard to believe the woman who served us cobbler and coffee had broken so many bones.”
“She’s seen a lot of action,” Shuri nodded, “but these old breaks aren’t what’s troubling me. It's the oedema,” she waved her hand again, this time showing a brain x-ray with one part swirling and grey in a way the rest of the scan wasn’t.
“There’s swelling in her brain,” Bucky heard himself say the words like a man under some spell, never having intended to speak at all.
“It sounds worse than it is,” Shuri held her hands up to stop the both of them from freaking out, “But…”
“But?” Bucky pressed, not at all prepared for what he might hear.
“It’s causing memory loss,” she said carefully.
There it was. The other shoe finally dropped. And so did Bucky, nearly. He pivoted his weight onto his good hand to lean against the window overlooking the city, sagging onto the cool glass. His eyes focused on Y/N’s blurred figure behind the observation room’s glass, seated still on the medical bed, fidgeting with her hands.
Maybe this was a good thing, he thought. Maybe she can be spared the pain of remembering.
The image of him standing in front of the cryo-chamber, unfettered as it sealed Y/N inside with an air-sucking sound, was so jarring to relive. Then it all came flooding back: seeing cold mist fall over Y/N’s unconscious face; the name Elle leaving his unfamiliar lips; the bruising on his back taking the shape of a butterfly from caved in; the tingling in his spine as he remembered what the rubber cushioning of the mouth guard felt like as they strapped him back in his chair and made him forget.
“Is it… permanent?” Bucky asked.
“It’s too soon to tell,” Shuri worked a tense muscle in her neck, sighing. “She doesn’t remember her name, or what year it is… her memory could return once the swelling reduces, or it might take a little longer after the treatments, or…”
“Or it might not return at all,” Steve finished.
“For now, all we can do is wait,” Shuri plucked her Kimoyo Bead off the cupped indent and reattached it to the rest on her wrist. The window looking into the observation room became transparent again, startling Y/N from her thoughts.
Bucky met her eyes then, so familiar and so distant all at once. Those very same eyes had been filled with sadness the last time he saw her. A type of quiet acceptance of defeat. Now they were hollow—not in an emotionless way, just not holding any emotion towards him. And that hurt worse than any stray bullet he’d ever caught as the Winter Soldier.
“There is one more thing I have to look into,” Shuri said. “Her blood work shows a strange synthesised compound localised around both kidneys, its chemical markup shows similarities to yours, Bucky. I think she may have traces of supersoldier serum in her system, but it's not an exact match for either sample in our records. More derivative, from the compound structure. I'd need to run some more bloodwork to be sure, and maybe monitor her body's homeostatic imbalance when stressed, but for now, I think she's calm enough to receive visitors.”
Steve’s hand was on Bucky’s bad shoulder, ushering him to stand stronger, take a step forward. “You should go speak with her,” Steve said softly. “It might help.”
Bucky’s boots scuffed the floor, his footing unsure as he almost followed Steve’s advice. Then this clawing feeling of guilt ripped at him from the inside, tore him apart like delicate paper, and Bucky found it difficult to breathe.
“No… I… I can’t,” he pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting off a worse headache between the eyes. “I need a minute,” he shambled towards the door, forgetting words on his tongue, names of things, colours.
“Buck, wait!” Steve almost went after him.
Shuri stepped in his path, hand out as if she possessed telekinesis strong enough to hold Steve in place, “He needs time, too. We can’t push him, not when his mind’s still… confused.”
Bucky reflexively recoiled, feeling cornered, uncertain of everything. Suddenly, the room was too crowded, lights too bright. He had to get out.
Bucky looked to Y/N again, remembering her bittersweet promise as Elle, I can promise that my heart will always belong to you, Bucky, remembering her frightening conviction as she pressed the detonator in the cryo-storage basement, If I can’t save you, we’ll just have to burn together, and saw neither of those women in her.
He’d destroyed her. But he’d be damned if he’d be responsible for hurting her again. Without her memories, she was safe… from him.
“I have to go,” he said before storming out of the medical building.
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