02. a heart doesn’t have to stop beating to be dead
pairing: bucky x reader
summary: bucky never became the winter soldier, but the whispers never stopped.
wc: 1.4k
genre: angst
a/n: oof on this one. heavy themes.
swear not by the moon — a series of angst: 01 | 02 | ...
Each breath ached. Your ribs were fractured and cracked in many different places and the cold, white winter air beat down on you. The air you puffed out of your chest changed to white, mixing with the snow and the mountains surrounding you.
He groaned near you and ground his teeth together as he wrenched his body up, legs stumbling and buckling under the strain after falling over 300 feet through the air. “(n-name)?” Bucky trudged over and collapsed in the snow; blood dripped over the corner of his mouth. “Are you-you okay?” Each word strained to exit his mouth as he readjusted.
His hands wrapped around your arm and he gently pulled you up. Every tug on your muscles made you groan and you tried to keep an arm wrapped around your torso to stop some of the muscle movements. “I’ll manage.” You strained.
The whole reason you were with Captain America and the rest of the squadron on the train was that you lied about being a guy on your application and somehow was able to pass through basic training in the guise of a man. Bucky was the first to discover your true identity, but he never mentioned anything. He was the best sidekick, constantly affirming your disguise and assisting you in keeping your secret.
When Bucky and Steve were facing problems on the train, you were right behind them, one of the best at firing pistols on the team. You caught him in the side, but the blast that came afterwards threw you right off the train.
You weren’t sure how long it was until Bucky plummeted down beside you, but his impact woke you up. The wetness of the snow bled into your clothes and by the time Bucky pulled you up, multiple cuts scattered across his face, it exposed your soaked regulated outfit to the wind. You hissed, arching away from the wind and Bucky watched your body react.
He gazes around to your back and notices how dark the material’s turned. “Come on, we need to find a place out of the wind.” You try to stand and nearly cry at the pain spiking through your abdomen. His face contorts uncomfortably for you but he helps pull you along as you trudge through the snow and wind and biting cold surrounding your whole body.
You find a cave and just before you walk inside you feel something.
It’s a warning that’s never been wrong; it’s always kept you alive. It might have been how dark the cave was or the slight breathing you can just barely discern over the rush of air flowing behind you, but you drew the pistol you always kept tucked in a hidden compartment in your pants and fired. The bullet bounced off the walls, but the spark was enough to highlight the silhouettes of three other people with that red insignia that was so familiar to you.
“Bucky!” you pulled him back till he was safely around the corner, warning lacing your words and your ribs protesting against you.
He stumbled back into the rock of the cave’s side. “What’d you see?”
“Three.” You tucked your pistol back away into its hidding spot. “Nazi’s.”
He huffed. You watched his eyes search around for some solution to your predicament, but you knew how this would end. The both of you were in no position to fight them and you wouldn’t be able to run fast enough to escape them. You placed a hand on his shoulder and watched the hope die out of his eyes. “Bucky, we can’t outrun this. Just get ready.”
He still struggled but closed his eyes and accepted, nodding at you.
The men came out of the cave and threw both of you to the ground, your ribs cracking on impact.
You screamed and screamed and screamed.
—-
The screaming never stopped. The screaming was the only way to save yourself from the conditioning or the torture or their attempts on conditioning Bucky.
When you realized that you could hear his screams through the wall, you figured out that whenever the three men came into his cell and tried to get information or say that string of eight words if you screamed loud enough, Bucky would never be able to focus on those words or think hard enough to tell them anything.
Of course, they came in multiple times to shut you up. They beat you till you could barely use your jaw, or move, or breathe, but you kept on screaming to keep him safe. There were a few days you couldn’t speak or talk at all and thankfully they didn’t try to crack you open and get information, but they tried to condition you.
When they came into the cell and tried to speak phrases that you couldn’t understand.
They tried to make you, they tried to make you comply, but you refused. You went so far into your brain that they became nothing but figures in your eye.
You were untouchable there.
They tried to constantly hit or shock you, but you kept retreating, burying further in your mind until you couldn’t feel pain, couldn’t feel the shocks or beatings, you couldn’t feel.
And when you were eventually able to get a message out through to the US Army and they came to get the two of you back, you weren’t the person you used to be.
You picked your way out of your cell at the appropriate time and made your way to Bucky’s, finding him sleeping. The lock came off easy enough and you walked in, slinging his arm over your shoulder and dragging him down the hall. He stirred. “No...no, I don’t want to go.” He slurred and his breathing became irregular.
You wanted to do something to soothe his troubled, likely drugged state, but you couldn’t. You could barely assess how you were feeling, let alone able to help someone else. The only thing you knew how to do was say your name and hope that would pull him out of his horrible dream.
“(name)?” His blurry eyes looked at you. “How?...how did you..”
“Come on.” You pulled him with you and he started to try to walk, slowly gaining function and a determined pinch forming between his eyebrows.
The building shook right on time and you passed Bucky off to the first group of soldiers you could find. “Take him. Make sure he gets rest. He’s drugged.” Bucky was more alert than he was before, but he still slumped against the officer that supported him.
“Wait,” he moaned, trying to reach for you, but it reminded you too much of all you experienced and you flinched away from him. “Where are you going? Aren’t you coming?” Hurt flashed across his face for a second but he recovered, trying to be critical and focused.
Then you watched it, his changing assessment of you. He was starting to figure out that you weren’t the same.
All you did was give him a grim smile and draw your pistol, taking off to find where they were keeping this energy source.
Your shot was still perfect and you eliminated multiple workers until you came across a room filled with cells, a chair in the middle, and a machine arranged around the cell. “Knew that you would eventually find this place.” A man called out behind you and you didn’t look when you shot.
He fell to the ground and you didn’t turn around. “What is this?”
He grunted through clenched teeth and laughed. “It’s where we would bring your friend every once and awhile.” You could hear him stand behind you. “He wasn’t very cooperative y’know.”
“Would you?” You turned and aimed the weapon directly at his forehead, waiting to pull the trigger.
“No need to be hostile.” He walked around to expose a hidden door behind him where many men funneled into the room. “I think you’ll be very comfortable with this room. Who knows? Maybe you’ll enjoy it.”
There were too many of them.
Even though you took out enough to make an escape, the door locked behind you, made of steel and a lock too strong for you to break through.
Your pistol ran out of bullets and you were dragged to the chair, quiet, but retracting on the inside, going away like you used to. But with everything together at once, you couldn’t avoid the words and phrases, the stimulants and the pain.
03. it’s horrible to learn about love from those who never loved you
pairing: sam x reader
summary: you were not his universe and he was not your sun
wc: 1.4k
genre: angst, cheating
a/n: oh Sam, why’d you do it?
swear not by the moon — a series of angst: 02 | 03 | ...
It was his smile.
It was his charm and the way he spoke. The way he laughed.
Everything about him was designed to draw you in, pull you into the pearly whites of his teeth and the tight lines around his smile. He was always different around you. Just a little bit sweeter, smiling a little bit wider, laughing a little bit louder.
And when he asked you to dance, it felt like you were the queen, that you were a star waiting for your moment when you would be the sun to someone else's universe.
The lights of the club swirled around you, dancing across your bodies as you swung around on the floor, lost in the laughs and alcohol. You didn’t drink enough to get drunk, or even enough lose your awareness of what’s going on around you, but the light buzz freed you. Made you want to get lost in the music, the lights, the feeling of being close to him.
Skin touching, electricity sparking with each brush, his eyes only on you drawing out a fire you didn’t know you had.
You felt as if he felt the fire too.
And you didn’t go home with him, you didn’t feel ready for that, but you met up later multiple times. When he eventually asked to be “official”, you agreed with no regrets.
And you didn’t have any. At least, not yet.
He brought you everywhere, made you feel like a star. Like you were the perfect person for him. He’d whisper, arm wrapped around your waist, drawing you into him, “I can barely keep my eyes off you.” A jolt moved through you like always, and like always he always noticed.
He smiled and you stifled a giggle, blushing deeply. “Hey Wilson!” A man with deep raven hair and soft blue eyes laughed at him. “Are you going to introduce us to your prospective love interest?”
Sam laughed under his breath and brought you over. “He’s always on my ass.”
He was kind and the two of you got along fabulously, laughing and smiling. The two of you later became really good friends, but it was because of his close friendship with you and his ties to Wilson that he let it slip.
He laughed into his coffee. After inviting you to one of the nicest spots he could find, he wanted to give you an opportunity to talk without having Sam around. Just get to know you.
But of course you were going to ask about Sam, wanting to know more of what he was like. Sometimes he would blatantly avoid answering some of your questions about his past. You figured he was cagey and that the bubbly smile might be a deflection from some trauma in his past.
You know, like most people.
But when you made the comment I bet he’s out partying right now, James chuckled and said “no doll, he’s not. He’s with…” His eyes flashed like he’d said something wrong before looking down to take another sip of his coffee.
You frowned. “He’s with who, James?” You set down your mug and watched as his face fell.
“Doll…” He warned and you stood up, throwing your bag over your shoulder, dred pooling in your stomach. “Don’t overreact. I promise she’s just a friend.” He reached out to touch you and you jerked back, stumbling into your seat and taking off.
He was wrong. She wasn’t just a friend.
And what hurt more was that you knew exactly what he was talking about.
You’d seen them together. He’d laugh more around her, smile more, flirt more. You just wrote it off as some friend of his from way back, but there was a spark there. A spark that they both felt. Because you witnessed it with your own eyes.
And you ignored that part of you that said you weren’t worthy of him. You weren’t worthy of his light, his beauty, his charms.
That you weren’t enough.
Because when you met him, you felt it. Of course, he was attracted to you and wanted to keep you around, even the sun needed fuel to keep going; but it was never going to last. You were just a star, a ball of hot air and gas that he needed to restore his energy. You weren’t a galaxy he wanted to provide for, or that he truly cared about.
It crushed you that you even let him drain you like he did.
Angry tears paved rivets down your cheeks as you hoped to God that your doubts were wrong. But even you recognized the truth when you felt.
….
Coming into the apartment and finding them together was almost the end of you. You almost fell onto the floor, collapsing from shock and pain. Your legs nearly buckled, but you gripped the door frame so hard your knuckles turned white and took a few breaths.
You would not break in front of them, not here, not now. Because this wasn’t a devastating blow. It hurt like hell, yes, but you would not die. You would not allow yourself to be crippled because of it.
So you left.
And when you came back to get your things, after ignoring his phone calls and texts, he came barreling through the door, witnessing all the boxes packed around him.
“Where are you going?” He followed you around the apartment as you shoved clothes into your suitcase. Your arms tingled and legs wobbled from the adrenaline pumping through your veins. It took you everything not to turn around and scream and scream and scream until you couldn’t speak anymore.
But this was not the fury you wanted to unleash.
You wanted to leave on your own terms, not provoked to hostility because of the damage he inflicted.
You shoved the last of your clothes in your suitcase and zipped it, forcing the lid down. “Away.”
His face crumpled and he caught your arm as you tried to move around him. “Why? What happened? What did I do?” Desperation creeped into his voice. You wrenched your arm out of his touch.
“I think you made it pretty clear you didn’t want me when you brought your friend over to the apartment.” You rolled your luggage to the door. “And also when you were heavily making out on the sofa.” A friend of yours came up to help you carry the boxes and just when you were about to reach for the last of your things, he caught you, trying to pull you into him.
Electricity jumped from his fingers to your skin, but you steeled your face, not allowing his affect on you to cloud your decision. This wasn’t just a matter of the heart, but it required the head to follow through with it.
Your mind would save you, help you get through this. You ignored the buzz in your veins and waited while he got his final words out. “That...that was complicated. You know how my life is, you know how hard it’s been.”
“And while I’m sure you have your reasons,” You stepped away, severing the connection and the hold he tried to inflict on you, “I have mine.” Dropping the keys on the table, you turned to face him one last time. “I’m not going to wait around and forgive you every time you cheat, every time you go out with this woman. I deserve more. I’m worth more.” His eyes widened at your recognition that this wasn’t the first time. “I tried to ignore the signs before but seeing you together was too much. I’m done making excuses for you and trying to reason with myself that you actually care about me.”
“I do...I—” He tries to touch you again but you put your hand on the door and open it. “I do still care. Don’t leave.”
His eyes well with tears. Not at the thought of having you out of his life, but of having no one constantly at his side. “You like the idea of having someone that you can count on to always be around you. To always stay by your side and support you. But I can’t be that person for you. I cannot sit around while you go out with whoever, whenever you want. I’m more than just a show piece to carry around. I’m a human being.” You're about to pull the door closed when he stops you.
“You’re more than that! I—I love you.” It doesn’t even look real or feel real to you. It breaks your heart even more.
“The only thing you love,” you yank the door out of his grip, “is the idea of having a trophy.”
And when you slam the door, you make it to your car and sob and sob and sob. Till you’re drowning in tears, till you drown out your light.
