Summary: Life with Bucky Barnes had already been something you never thought you'd have: coffee in the mornings, quiet nights at the Tower, the steady warmth of being loved. But when the two of you adopt a golden retriever, domesticity deepens into something softer, brighter...something good.
Content Warnings: Fluff, domesticity, dog adoption, hints of intimacy/slow-burn heat, established relationship
It starts at the shelter.
You were supposed to be “just looking.” (Famous last words.) Sam had mentioned a fundraiser event, Steve offered to drive, and somehow you and Bucky ended up wandering the aisles of kennels with the smell of sawdust and sanitizer clinging to the air.
That’s when you saw him.
A golden retriever, older, his fur a little patchy and his left eye clouded with a pale scar. He wagged his tail like he didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to have the energy of a puppy.
You crouched, grinning. “Hi, handsome.”
The dog shoved his nose through the bars, tail sweeping so hard his whole body wiggled.
Bucky came up behind you, metal hand resting on your shoulder. His voice was low, soft in a way you’d learned he reserved for you. “Looks like he found his person.”
You glanced up at him. “You mean us.”
His mouth twitched, the smallest smile ghosting across it. “Yeah. Us.”
And just like that, Chance was yours.
The first week was chaos in the way all good things are.
Chance followed Bucky everywhere, padding after him like a shadow. Bucky pretended to grumble, muttering about “clingy mutts,” but you caught him sneaking scraps of chicken under the table and tucking a blanket around Chance when he snored on the couch.
One night you came home late and found them both asleep on the floor, Bucky stretched on his side and Chance curled tight with his nose pressed against Bucky’s chest. Your heart nearly combusted on the spot. You took a picture before slipping quietly into your room, smiling like an idiot.
Domestic life bloomed around the three of you. Evening walks with Chance padding between you, stopping to bark at squirrels he’d never catch. Lazy mornings where Bucky brewed coffee, Chance snoring at his fee, you shuffling in with messy hair to steal his hoodie. Saturday afternoons were spent with the three of you squished on the couch, your knees tangled with Bucky’s while Chance sprawled across both your laps like he thought he weighed five pounds instead of seventy.
Bucky softened too. The man who once lived out of go-bags and safe houses now spent afternoons researching the best dog shampoo, evenings clipping Chance’s leash with gentle precision. You caught him once, forehead pressed to Chance’s head as he whispered something you couldn’t hear. When he noticed you watching, he just shrugged, cheeks faintly pink.
“He’s good,” Bucky said, scratching behind Chance’s ear. “Better than I deserve.”
You crossed the room and slid your arms around his shoulders, pressing your lips into his hair. “You deserve good things, Buck. You’ve got them. You’ve got us.”
That earned you a smile, small but soft, the kind that tugged at the corner of his mouth and made your chest feel warm all the way through. He kissed the inside of your wrist, slow and lingering, before letting his lips trail down to lace your fingers with his.
The first time Chance caught you making out on the couch, he barked once, loud and indignant, before flopping down right between you with a huff.
“You’re cockblocking me, pal.”
You laughed into Bucky’s shoulder, half-smothered, as Chance shoved his big head into your lap like nothing was out of the ordinary.
“Guess we’ll have to keep it PG around him,” you teased, though your hand stayed tangled in Bucky's shirt anyway.
His eyes flicked down at you, heat sparking under the fondness this time. “No way.”
And he kissed you again anyway, with Chance wedged firmly between you like he was a part of the deal.
a/n: okayyyy!! i'm back and i'm going to be (maybe) posting a schedule for my fics soon so keep an eye out on that!! i'm moving soon so i probably won't update quite as much. happy reading!!!
Summary: Bucky thought he could stop the bleeding. He was wrong. Survival doesn’t come without a cost.
A/N: Okay, this one is rough to say the least... Hold onto your butts!
CW: Graphic Injury and medical details. Hospital/ICU setting. SEIZURE depiction. Post-surgical trauma. Themes of grief, loss, and helplessness. Amputation. Intense Emotional Distress.
It wasn’t just the bullet.
The mission had been chaotic from the first moment boots hit the ground, smoke curling up from half-burnt vehicles, glass crunching under every step, firelight painting jagged shadows against half-standing walls. Bucky had learned to move in chaos. He’d learned to breathe in it, fight in it, survive in it. But that night carved itself into his bones differently.
Because through the haze and the gunfire, he saw you drop.
The shot was sharp, mean, the kind that echoed wrong. He knew before he even heard you gasp that it had landed somewhere it shouldn’t. One second you were there, eyes narrowed and focused, signaling left with two fingers, and the next your knees buckled, your hand clutching at your stomach. He watched your face crumple, lips forming his name before you hit the ground.
The blood came fast, hot, seeping through your shirt, soaking into your fingers. He barely got to you in time to see the light leave your eyes for just a second. That second would replay behind his lids every time he closed them for the rest of his life.
He dropped to his knees, both hands clamping down over the hole in your side. “No, no no no, stay with me—” His gloves were slick in an instant, warmth pumping between his palms. “You’re alright, doll, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” Lies. All of them lies.
And then the world doubled down.
When you fell, the ground hadn’t been kind. Shattered concrete and steel littered the street like teeth. A jagged piece of rebar, black with rust and ash, jutted up at an angle, waiting. Your thigh met it on the way down.
The sound it made when it tore through you was something he’d never forget. Wet. Final. Wrong.
Your scream split the air, shrill and raw, and then darkness yanked it away. Your head lolled, your eyes rolled, your hand slipped from his.
“(Y/N)!” His own voice was hoarse, desperate. He pressed harder against your stomach with one hand and clamped his other arm under your shoulders, dragging you close. “Don’t—don’t close your eyes, doll, don’t you dare.”
But you were limp in his arms, the blood soaking into his shirt in twin rivers, one hot gush from your abdomen, another seeping down his arm from your thigh. He shifted you against him, his elbow trying to press against your leg wound while his palm held your side, but it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t enough.
Gunfire cracked overhead. Someone shouted in the comms. He didn’t hear it. He only heard your ragged breaths stuttering shorter, quieter.
He picked you up like you weighed nothing. Like you were nothing but blood and silence and slipping time.
Red drenched him as he ran. It smeared hot against his neck where your head rested, spread cold under his arm where it dripped freely from your thigh. His boots slid on gravel made slick with you. He adjusted his grip, pressed his face into your hair, whispering, “I’ve got you. I swear it. Just hold on, baby, please—” His voice cracked and broke against your temple.
The quinjet’s ramp opened with a mechanical groan, the wash of its lights spilling across the ruined street. Natasha’s gunfire barked sharp cover. Sam shouted something he didn’t process.
He barreled inside, knees slamming the deck as he lowered you onto the med bench. His shirt clung to him, stiff with blood, hands still pressing wherever they could.
“Two wounds,” Natasha snapped, eyes scanning. “Stomach’s priority. Christ, look at her leg—”
The sight of it nearly buckled him. The gash across your thigh was jagged, raw, muscle split wide where the rebar had gone straight through. It was wrong, it was all wrong, and there was nothing in the kit that could undo it.
“Stomach first,” the medic barked, already shoving pads and IVs into place. “That leg can wait. It’s secondary.”
Secondary.
The word sank like a stone in his gut. He wanted to scream at them that nothing about you was secondary, that every drop of blood was the most important thing in the goddamn world. But the monitor was already shrieking, your pulse already faltering, and all he could do was keep pressing and whispering broken things into your hair as the quinjet swallowed you whole.
Abdomen. That’s where the surgeons went first.
Your leg was washed, sutured, bandaged. Good enough. Something to deal with later, when you weren’t already teetering on the knife’s edge.
“Secondary,” they called it, like the word meant safe. Like it meant solved.
Bucky sat outside the operating room, soaked in you, his hands shaking, and only heard half of what the doctors said. The only words that mattered seared into his brain like iron:
She might not make it.
But somehow, you did.
Somehow, you did.
The first days in ICU were hell.
Machines hummed and beeped in rhythms that made no sense until Bucky memorized them, until he knew which tone meant good and which meant death creeping closer. The hiss of the ventilator became his breath, the drip of the IV his heartbeat. He sat hunched in the hard chair, body folded forward, fingers laced with yours, afraid that if he let go for even a second you’d slip away into silence.
But you woke up.
It was clumsy, ugly, the kind of waking that clawed its way through pain and sedation. Your lashes fluttered, your lips parted around a dry rasp. He nearly choked on his own breath when your eyes cracked open, unfocused but searching. They landed on him, watery, weak, but him.
“Buck…”
His name, broken in half, nearly broke him in half too. He caught your hand in both of his, kissed the back of it, his tears wetting your skin. “I’m here. I’m right here, doll. Don’t you worry about a thing.”
Your voice was ragged, your body weak, but your eyes found him. That was enough. That was more than enough.
The abdominal wound hurt like fire. He could see it in the way you winced every time you shifted, in the way your breath hitched when you tried to cough. But you expected that. You’d been cut open, gutted, stitched back together. Everything hurts.
When he asked about your leg, you just shrugged faintly. “Feels like the rest of me. Broken.”
He frowned, but you brushed it off, too tired to explain. He pulled the blanket gently back and rubbed your calf through the fabric, careful not to jostle the bandages. To him it felt like stiffness. Healing. He didn’t see what was festering underneath. Not yet.
By day three, you were more awake, your voice hoarse but sharp enough to cut again. He held a spoon to your lips and you rolled your eyes.
“Barnes, if you feed me another spoonful of applesauce, I swear I’ll crawl out of this bed and kick your ass.”
He laughed, really laughed, the sound startling in his own chest after so many days of silence. His shoulders shook with it, his eyes damp as though laughter was too close to crying.
The door opened and Natasha leaned against the frame, smirking. “She looks better than you, Barnes.”
You grinned faintly, weak but alive. “Told him that days ago.”
For a moment, it felt like old times. Like family.
By day four, you were well enough to tease him for falling asleep in the chair with his arms folded. “You look like a grumpy grandpa,” you rasped, voice still sandpaper.
“Grandpa?” He lifted a brow, smirking. “Doll, if I’m old, what’s that make you?”
“Long-suffering,” you whispered, and your lips twitched with a ghost of a smile.
The fear in his chest eased for the first time since he’d carried you bleeding through fire and smoke.
By day five, you were able to sit upright with enough pillows behind you. He coaxed you carefully, his hands firm and steady at your back, his voice low in your ear: “Easy. I’ve got you.” You hissed when the stitches pulled, but you didn’t stop. You made it upright, trembling but proud.
The tray of hospital food was beige, shapeless. You poked at it with your fork and grimaced. “If this is my last meal, I’ll haunt you harder than ever.”
Bucky bent, pressed a kiss to your temple, and teased, “Pretty sure you’ve been haunting me for years.”
For the first time in weeks, you smiled and didn’t look like it hurt.
That night, when the lights dimmed and the room sank into the hush of machines, you whispered: “If you love me, you’ll sneak me real food. Pork and chive dumplings. Extra chili oil.”
His hand squeezed yours, and he smiled, soft and wrecked. “Done.”
It was the first time he left your side without fear.
He walked the hall with the bag in his hands, warm and fragrant, the smell curling around him like a promise of normal. He pictured your eyes lighting up, the way you’d groan at his smug grin, the way you’d mutter about rules and then devour them anyway.
For a moment, he believed in tomorrow.
And then he opened the door.
The world shattered.
Nurses were already inside, voices sharp, movements frantic. The monitor screamed a flat, endless note. Your body convulsed on the bed, back arched, eyes rolled white, foam pink spilling from your lips. A nurse pinned your shoulders while another scrambled with the crash cart.
“Seizure! She’s seizing!”
The bag slipped from his hands. Dumplings scattered across the tile, chili oil spreading like blood under his boots.
“(Y/N)!” His voice tore itself raw as he lunged forward. “Not again—don’t you dare—”
Your body jerked once, twice, then collapsed. Limp.
Flatline.
The sound broke him. He roared, throwing himself at your chest, slamming his palms down, his tears dripping into your gown. “Stay with me! Don’t you leave me, doll! Don’t you leave me again!”
Strong hands dragged him back. He fought like a madman, metal arm denting the wall, his throat ripping as he screamed your name. Sam was suddenly there, shouting, “Buck! Let them—let them!”
He could only watch, choking on sobs, as your chest snapped under compressions, as your ribs cracked like branches, as shocks arched your back and blood spewed from your lips.
“Charging! Clear!”
Your body jolted, head snapping sideways, crimson splattering the sheets.
“Again—clear!”
Another convulsion. More blood suctioned from your throat.
“Come on, sweetheart,” a nurse whispered, her voice breaking.
And then, the monitor stuttered.
Beep.
Silence.
Beep.
Weak. Fragile. But there.
Bucky sagged against the wall, trembling so hard his teeth clacked. Tears streamed down his face unchecked.
He barely heard the words as they pumped meds into your IV.
“The source is infection,” one muttered grimly. “Septic shock. It’s the leg.”
“The leg’s gone,” another said, hollow. “If we don’t take it, she dies.”
The dumplings lay forgotten on the floor, their steam fading into cold air while the smell of chili oil and antiseptic mingled into something that would haunt him forever.
They took you from him fast.
The crash team barely gave him a second glance as they pushed your bed out of the room, voices sharp, shoes squealing on the tile. IV bags swayed with the speed, monitors screamed as they wheeled you down the hall. Bucky tried to follow, he always tried to follow, but Sam caught him by the shoulders and held him back with a strength Bucky almost broke in half.
“Buck,” Sam rasped, his voice shaking just as badly as Bucky’s hands, “let them do it. Let them save her.”
He wanted to throw him off. He wanted to tear through every hallway, kick down every door, sit on the edge of the operating table and never let go of your hand. But his legs locked. His chest hollowed out. All he could do was watch your bed disappear around the corner, the voices fading with it.
The silence afterward nearly killed him.
He stumbled into the waiting room like a ghost, soaked in blood that had dried stiff on his clothes, his boots sticky with chili oil and your blood both. The smell clung to him, metallic and hot, salt and spice, a cocktail that would never leave him again.
He sat. He stood. He sat again. Time crawled like broken glass under his skin. Every few minutes he found himself on his feet, pacing trenches into the tile, hands knotted in his hair. He tried to pray, but the words burned his throat on the way up, so he just whispered your name instead.
Every time a nurse walked through the doors he jerked his head up, chest seizing, only to collapse when they walked past without looking at him. Every beep from a distant monitor made him twitch. Every laugh from another waiting family made him want to smash something until his knuckles split.
After an eternity, the surgeon finally walked in.
The man’s face told Bucky everything before his mouth moved. His expression was too careful, too composed. The kind of face people wore when they were about to take the last of someone’s hope away.
“She’s alive,” the surgeon said first, because it was the only thing keeping Bucky standing. “We stabilized her. Got her blood pressure back up, cleared the infection from the abdomen.”
Bucky’s throat worked, but no sound came out.
The surgeon sighed, eyes lowering. “But the infection had already spread through the wound in her leg. Necrosis had set in. If we didn’t act, she would’ve gone septic again within hours. To save her life, we had to amputate above the knee.”
The words didn’t land at first. They slid across Bucky’s brain like oil. His mind refused them. Refused to picture you, vibrant, laughing, alive, without the legs that carried you across rooftops, across battlefields, across life.
“Above the knee?” His voice cracked sharp, like he’d swallowed glass.
The surgeon nodded. “It was the only option. I’m sorry.”
Bucky’s body gave out. He sank into the chair like his bones had dissolved, his hands clawing at his face, his chest heaving with silent sobs. His metal fingers dented the armrest as his flesh ones shook.
Alive. But changed forever.
Hours later, they let him back in.
The room was dim, quiet but not peaceful. Machines hummed their lullabies, the monitor blinked its green heartbeat. You lay pale against the sheets, your body smaller somehow, shrunken by the loss. Bandages wrapped tight where your right leg should have been.
Bucky froze at the door. His chest clenched so violently he almost turned back out again. But then your lashes fluttered. Your lips parted. Your breath rasped in.
You were waking.
He was at your side in a heartbeat, dropping to his knees, his hands shaking as they closed over yours. “Doll? I’m here. I’m right here.”
Your eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, then finding him. Relief cracked across his face. And then your hand twitched, reaching weakly toward the blanket, and you felt it.
The absence.
Your breath hitched. Your head jerked down, stitches pulling, but you still tried to throw the sheet back.
“Don’t,” Bucky whispered, catching your hand. His eyes were destroyed, his tears spilling freely. “Not yet. Please.”
“Where—” The word was shredded, broken.
He swallowed, voice shaking. “The infection… it spread too far. They had to—” His throat closed, the rest strangled in sobs. “It was the only way to save you.”
Your heart stuttered, the monitor beeping fast, frantic. Tears streaked into your hair, your chest heaving against the stitches. “No. No—Bucky, no—”
“I’m sorry.” His forehead pressed to your hand, voice cracked and ruined. “If I could’ve taken it for you… if it could’ve been me…” His shoulders shook. “I would’ve done it in a second.”
You sobbed, the sound thin, raw, scraping the air. He held your hand tighter, kissed your knuckles until his lips were salt.
The monitor beeped, steady and cruel.
Beep.
Beep.
Alive. But not whole.
Bucky stayed there with you in the dark, holding on like if he let go, he’d lose more than just your leg.
And in that silence, the one he hated more than anything, he made himself a promise:
If there was a way back to normal, no matter how broken, he’d walk it with you.
Every step.
a/n: i told y'all it was a rough one (there's a part 2 in the works) :(
Summary: The hospital was only the first battle. Back at the Tower, survival doesn't feel like victory, and Bucky can't protect you from it.
A/N: Here is part two for A Body In Ruin!!! I had fun writing this. If you want drabbles for these two, please let me know!
CW: Amputation recovery, prosthetic fitting, disability themes, post-surgical trauma, grief/anger/misplaced blame, PTSD undertones, emotional breakdown, angst with fragile hurt/comfort, depiction of physical strain, body image/identity loss
The Tower should have felt like safety.
It should have been a return, a sigh of relief, a soft place to fall. But as soon as the quinjet landed and the ramp lowered, the world felt too large, too sharp, too impossible.
Bucky didn’t ask if you wanted help. He just scooped you into his arms, blanket and all, cradling you against his chest like something he’d die to protect. Your voice rasped, cracked from too many days of tubes and oxygen masks:
“Put me down. I can—”
The word manage dissolved before it was finished. You didn’t have the strength to hold it, let alone your own body. Your head tipped against his shoulder, and he felt the tremor in your breath as clearly as if it were his own.
He didn’t answer. He just carried you, jaw clenched tight, eyes fixed forward.
The Tower lobby was all glass and polished stone, same as always, but it looked different now. The ceilings too high, the doors too heavy, the elevator panel glowing too far away. You felt every inch of it in your chest: the building had not changed, but you had.
Bucky’s boots echoed against the marble. Each step sounded final. He adjusted you in his arms when your head slipped sideways, whispering, “Almost there, doll. I’ve got you.” His voice was steady, but his throat burned.
When he finally laid you down on the leather couch, lowering you with infinite care, the cushions swallowed you whole. Your hands curled in the blanket, pulling it up as if it might shield you from the way he was looking at you. Too gentle. Too worried.
“Home sweet home,” you whispered. The words were paper-thin, bitter at the edges.
He knelt beside you, smoothing a strand of hair away from your face. His thumb brushed your temple, and the softness in his eyes hurt worse than the fire in your wounds. You turned your head away before he could see the tears gathering.
The Tower hummed with life outside the silence between you. Elevators whirred, a voice echoed faintly from the kitchen down the hall, traffic sighed beyond the glass. All of it felt foreign.
You tried, an hour later, to prove something. To prove you still had claim to your body.
You shifted forward, bracing your palms against the couch, dragging yourself upright. For a second, you felt like yourself again — until you swung your left leg down and forgot there was no right to follow.
The sudden imbalance pitched your body sideways. Your vision spun. Your stomach lurched with the movement.
Bucky was there instantly, as though he hadn’t taken his eyes off you for even a second. His hands clamped around your arms, firm but careful, steadying you before you could crash to the floor.
“Don’t—” His voice cracked, a flash of panic breaking through. “Don’t push it, doll. Not yet. Please.”
The plea in his tone cut deeper than the stitches lacing your abdomen.
You wanted to scream. To shove him away. To tell him you didn’t need saving, not again, not from this. But your body betrayed you, sagging into the cushions with tears burning behind your eyes.
He adjusted the blanket again, tucking it over you like a shield. You turned your face into it, hiding.
That night, he sat in the chair pulled up beside the couch. His head dipped forward, his body finally yielding to exhaustion, his hands still twitching like they were searching for you even in sleep.
You watched his chest rise and fall in the shadows. You saw the lines carved into his face even at rest. He looked older than you’d ever let yourself admit.
When you were sure he was asleep, you pressed your face into the fabric of the blanket and sobbed. Soft at first, then harder, until your throat ached. You tried to be quiet, but the grief was loud inside you, louder than your own pulse.
Because the Tower wasn’t home anymore.
The hallways were too wide. The kitchen counters were too tall. The rooms were too far. It wasn’t built for you now. It wasn’t built for someone who had to relearn how to stand.
And as the tears wet the blanket, as the machines of the Tower hummed indifferently around you, one truth sat in your chest like a blade:
You were a trespasser in your own life.
It happened three days after you came back to the Tower.
They didn’t ask if you were ready. They just said there was a meeting. They just wheeled you in.
The chair was standard hospital-issue — metal frame, squeaky wheels, armrests that dug into your sides no matter how you shifted. Bucky pushed you down the polished hallway, one hand on the handle, his other hovering at your shoulder like he wanted to steady you even when the chair didn’t need it. You hated the sound of the wheels over Stark’s glossy tile. It made you feel like cargo, not a person.
The conference room was all glass and steel, reflecting you back from every angle. You barely recognized yourself: pale skin, hollow cheeks, blanket draped across your lap where your right leg ended abruptly under the fabric.
Fury was waiting at the head of the table. Natasha leaned against the wall, arms crossed. Sam stood stiff, hands shoved into his pockets. Steve hovered near the door, jaw tight, shoulders squared like he was bracing for a blow.
Bucky wheeled you to the table, locking the brakes before taking the seat at your side. His hand lingered near yours on the armrest, his knee brushing yours under the blanket, but he didn’t touch you. Not until you let him.
Fury didn’t waste time. He never did.
“You’re out of the field.”
The words cut through you faster than any blade.
Your throat closed, breath caught. For a second you thought you’d misheard. That maybe he’d said off the field—temporary, conditional. But then he kept talking.
“You’ll still be part of this team. Strategy. Training. Anything you want to take on. But after what happened…” His gaze flicked down at the chair, just for a second, then back up. “With your injuries, it’s not viable. Not safe.”
Your pulse thundered in your ears. “Safe,” you rasped, voice sharp and bitter. “You mean me. I’m not safe anymore.”
No one moved. Natasha’s face was still as glass. Sam’s eyes dropped to the floor. Steve turned his head, as if staring at the wall might make him disappear.
Bucky’s hand clenched against the armrest, the metal fingers creaking as they dug grooves into the wood. “She’s still—”
“Barnes.” Fury’s voice snapped sharp, final. “We all saw it. Twice. Flatline. You think we can risk that happening in the field again?”
You felt the weight of every eye in the room — some pitying, some avoiding, none of them yours.
Your hands curled into the blanket pooled in your lap. “So that’s it? After everything I’ve given you—every fight, every scar—I’m just done? I’m disposable?”
“No one said disposable.” Fury’s tone softened a fraction, but it didn’t matter. “You’re alive. That’s what matters now. But fieldwork isn’t on the table. Not anymore.”
The silence afterward was a wound all its own.
Your lip trembled, your chest heaving against the bandages. “Then what am I supposed to be now?”
No one answered. Not Natasha, who blinked once and looked away. Not Sam, who swallowed hard and kept his gaze fixed on the floor. Not Steve, who pressed his mouth into a line so tight it looked like pain.
Only Bucky.
He leaned forward, finally daring to close his hand over yours where it gripped the blanket. His thumb stroked your knuckles once, his voice breaking on every word.
“You’re everything, doll. You’re still you.”
The words hurt worse than Fury’s.
Because you didn’t feel like you anymore.
You pulled your hand free, staring at the shine of the table, your reflection fractured and foreign.
And the weight of it landed like another bullet:
The Tower had just amputated the rest of you.
That was just the beginning.
Every room in the Tower betrayed you in some small way.
The bathroom mirror sat too high above the sink. You wheeled up close, only to see half your reflection staring back — your chin, your mouth, the bandage peeking from under your shirt. You tilted your chair back, craned your neck, tried to see more. The wheels squeaked and the bandages pulled tight over your abdomen, and you gave up before your body betrayed you again.
The shower was worse. The tile lip at the base might as well have been a mountain. You stared at it from the doorway, steam curling faintly from within, towel in your lap. You could almost feel the water, imagine the heat easing into your sore muscles. But the lip was there, a two-inch reminder that the Tower was built for people who could step.
When Bucky came looking for you, he found you in the doorway, fists clenched against the wheels of your chair, staring into the stall like it had won.
He crouched down, voice gentle, too gentle. “Let me help. I’ll carry you in—”
The words made your skin crawl. “No.”
“Doll—”
“I said no!”
He flinched, hands up, surrender written in his eyes. You wheeled yourself back, too fast, your chest aching with every jerk of the chair. You ended up in your room, slamming the door and pressing your face into your palms until the tears leaked hot between your fingers.
Later, you tried to open the window in your room. Just to breathe. Just to feel the air. The latch was easy enough, but when you pushed upward, the glass barely budged. Your arm shook with the effort, your body straining against the chair. It stayed shut.
You sat there, hand pressed against the cold pane, chest rising and falling too fast. The city moved below, alive and endless, and you couldn’t even open the damn window.
Bucky appeared again, silent in the doorway. His shadow stretched across the floor until it reached your wheels.
“I’ve got it,” you muttered through clenched teeth.
He stepped back without a word.
You pushed harder. Harder. Your arms shook, stitches screaming. The glass didn’t move.
Finally, with a sound somewhere between a sob and a growl, you sagged forward, forehead pressed to the window. The tears came hot and fast, and you hated them, hated yourself for letting them spill.
And you hated him too — for being kind. For being there. For seeing you like this.
The days stacked up, small defeats on top of each other until they pressed into your ribs like stones. The mug. The mirror. The shower. The window.
None of them big enough to break you on their own. But together, they left cracks all through you, hairline fractures waiting for the right pressure to shatter.
And Bucky felt it too. He saw every moment. Heard every sharp breath. Watched every time you swallowed your pride instead of screaming.
He knew.
He just didn’t know when the dam would finally burst.
The clinic smelled like bleach and plastic — cold, hollow, too clean. The kind of clean that made you itch.
The walls mocked you with glossy posters: smiling people running on the beach, fathers lifting kids with metal knees, women jogging down trails with carbon-fiber blades that gleamed in the sun. Perfect. Strong. Whole, in a way you weren’t.
You sat stiff on the exam table, blanket gone, your stump exposed. Pink. Raw. Sutures pulling like threads that didn’t belong to you.
The prosthetist was gentle, almost unbearably so. His voice never rose above polite, his hands steady but clinical as the tape slid around your thigh, numbers scribbled on a clipboard. Residual limb shrinkage. Socket tolerance. Words that made you sound like a specimen.
Bucky stood in the corner, silent, a storm barely contained. His arms were folded, jaw rigid, metal hand clenched. His eyes tracked every touch like he wanted to tear the man’s hands off, but he said nothing. He stayed. For you.
The plaster was cold as it wrapped around you, hardening like stone, sealing you into the shape of your loss. You clenched your jaw until it hurt.
Then came the test socket. Plastic straps, too tight, biting into swollen skin. “Just to see how you tolerate weight,” the tech said.
You braced on the parallel bars, arms trembling, stomach screaming as you pushed yourself upright. The socket bit, your balance faltered. Bucky’s hand hovered at your back, steady but not holding. I’ve got you, his silence said.
You hated how foreign your body felt. Wrong. Not yours.
When it was over, when the tech finally excused himself with soft words about trial fittings in a few weeks, the silence left in the room was suffocating.
You stared at the floor. Your throat burned. Bucky stepped closer, crouching, his hand reaching toward yours.
“Doll—”
And then the dam broke.
“Don’t.” Your voice shook, sharp. “Don’t look at me like that.”
His brows furrowed. “Like what?”
“Like I’m broken.” Your voice rose, bitter and hot. “Like I’m not even me anymore. You’re supposed to protect me, Bucky. You’re supposed to save me. And now I’m—” The words tore out of you, jagged. “Now I’m like this!”
The tears spilled, violent and humiliating, streaking your face. “I don’t even know how to live like this. I don’t know how to be. I don’t know who I am anymore!”
And the cruelest thought cut through your rage, twisting the knife: He knows. He knows what this is.
Bucky. With his metal arm, his rebuilt body, his quiet stares at his own reflection when he thought no one was watching. He’d lost pieces of himself too. He’d been forged back together with steel, made to relearn how to move, how to breathe.
You knew it wasn’t fair. You knew screaming at him for not saving you was stupid. He of all people understood.
But grief wasn’t fair. And your anger had nowhere else to go.
Bucky’s eyes filled with tears. He dropped to his knees, metal hand pressed to the floor, his other trembling as it caught yours. His voice rasped, raw:
“I begged them not to. If I could’ve given them mine instead—both of mine, all of me—I would’ve. In a second. I’ll take the blame, doll. Hate me. I’ll carry it. Just—don’t give up. Don’t leave me here without you.”
Your sobs broke free, your shoulders shaking, hands clawing against your face until he pulled them down and pressed his forehead to your knuckles.
You didn’t forgive him. Not yet.
But you let him hold you.
And for him, that was enough to keep breathing.
Weeks later, the clinic floor looked different. Not safe, not welcoming, but less like a battlefield.
The new prosthetic gleamed, a combination of metal and carbon fiber, unfamiliar and heavy. The socket hugged your thigh, snug but not biting this time. You stood between the parallel bars, knuckles white where they gripped, sweat prickling your spine.
"Easy," the tech said softly. "Shift your weight. Trust it."
Trust it. The words sound cruel, but you tried. Your right side trembled, muscles protesting, balance teetering, and then for one brief second: you were upright. Both feet on the ground.
You exhaled, a shaky laugh breaking out of you. "Look at that. Half metal now." You glanced at Bucky where he hovered just a step away. "Guess that makes me like you."
The words were meant as a fragment of a joke, but his face fell, shadows cutting across his features. His jaw tightened, eyes darkening, and the silence that followed was heavier than steel.
Your smile slipped. "Bucky-"
His gaze darted away, shame etched deep. You reached across the small space between you, fingers brushing his, voice breaking with honesty.
"Hey. I didn't mean it like that. I don't... I don't blame you. I was angry, and I took it out on you. But I love you." Your throat closed, but you forced the words through. "I love you, and I don't blame you."
His head turned back, eyes wet, mouth trembling like he didn't know how to hear your words.
"I thought I lost you," he whispered. "Twice. And then I thought maybe I'd lose you anyway, even if you were still here."
You tightened your grip on his hand, letting the prosthetic bear your weight, shaky but holding. "You won't. I'm here. I'm still me."
The tech murmured something about good progress, but it blurred into the background. The only real thing was Bucky's hand if yours, the tears streaking his face, the way he leaned forward until his forehead rested against yours.
"You're everything, doll," he breathed. "Metal or not."
And for the first time since the quinjet, since the blood and the hospital and the grief, you believed it.
Later, in the hall, Fury's voice carried low, half-hidden by the hum of fluorescent lights. "If she takes to training...." A pause, unreadable. "We'll see."
It didn't feel like an end. It didn't feel like a beginning either.
It felt like standing on new legs, trembling but unbroken, and not knowing where the next step would land.
