Sideblog for: Fanfics/Drabble/Headcanons. 18+ Fics (Not all but assume they are & not just because of smut).
If it's here it's finished. I have a terrible tendency to not finish things...so this is me trying to change that.
Enjoy me forcing myself to finish what I start. I've been writing for over 15 years and it's time I learn to finish things.
Summary: To the intelligence community the Winter Soldier is a ghost, but to HYDRA the Howling Witch is a harbinger of doom that will stop at nothing to get at their prized asset. A phantom that leaves swathes of destruction in her wake. She is the biggest mistake they ever made.
Chapter Summary: Bucky learns more about Essie's time in Ulfhrafn and they discuss a few things concerning rain.
Word Count: 5.3K
Warnings: Language, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, Gun Violence, Shifting Character POVs, Frustrated & Aggravated Superheroes, HYDRA ( legitimate warning on their own), Light Angst, Self-Loathing, Mentions of worry of self-harm, Flashbacks, Recovering Winter Bucky's broken logic, Blood, Mentions of human experimentation, mentions of torture, Wolf shifters (the good kind and the bad kind. This is a warning in and of itself this time.), Questionable Alpha Challenge Rituals (I do not want to give more away than that). (I really need to just do a separate post for these)
A/N: Bit late, but it is here. Editing may be a bit spotty. Chapter summary is...spoiler free. Enjoy.
NOTE: I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING COPIED OR PUT INTO ANY FORM OF AI. (Also if there are typos it's likely my old keyboard. I will fix as I find them, because no matter how many times I proofread there's always at least one).
Weather had a way of disrupting their plans. Days they would plan to head out were routinely interrupted by rain. The days it didn’t rain she had work to do that took her elsewhere.
Bucky did venture into the town, however. On his own while she had been called to The Eye on an important matter. He had spent a couple of hours just looking at it from the balcony of what had now become their bedroom, even if they still largely slept anywhere but the bed.
He could see people milling about, small and distant, around a market set up in it. It was half an hour after that that he found himself walking out the door, Alpine stowed away in his jacket, and getting on one of the motorcycles there to head into town. For the first time in he didn’t know how long, Bucky had given himself his own mission.
One he wasn’t prepared to fail no matter how scared he was of it.
To his surprise they all knew who he was, and to his great amusement they found Alpine’s head sticking out of his jacket to be stranger than the fact he had a metal arm. They were wolf people to the core and that continued to amuse him once he pushed past his nervousness to explain why he was there in town on his own.
As much as he hated to burst their bubbles that it had been solely to finally meet them all it wasn’t. They took it in stride. They were more than happy to when he explained his real reason.
“Essie’s in The Eye on…some important business…and she’s going to get back late, be hungry…and…she’s always cooking for me. I appreciate it and…yeah it’s…what I grew up used to but…I wanna do something for her. I don’t know anything about how to make something more than a sandwich…but I can learn. As long as it’s easy…and won’t blow up. I really don’t want to blow anything up. She’ll never let me do anything on my own again if I do that.” he had explained to a group of older females gathered around one of the food stalls.
He'd gone to them with the hope that they’d be the best informed of the bunch present to teach him the basics of cooking something without setting it aflame. Bucky was good at setting things on fire, HYDRA made sure he was, but he didn’t want to set anything on fire in this instance so he swallowed every urge he had to avoid people to ask a whole group of what appeared to be little old ladies how to not set something on fire. He knew they were much more than that, but it was that they visually looked about as threatening as a tuft of dandelions that actually pushed him over the last hurdle.
That and Alpine purring contently. If she was purring she didn’t hate them. If she didn’t hate them then they were relatively safe.
They didn’t hesitate to help. If anything they seemed to love it and he spent the next couple of hours with them learning how to do the most basic thing they could teach him: cook a steak and boil potatoes. They even begrudgingly taught him how to boil green beans…though they all did it with a look of utter abhorrence for them before they sent him off back home with everything he needed.
It wasn’t perfect, far from it, but he enjoyed the act of making something instead of destroying it and the look on Essie’s face when she walked in exhausted was the absolute best reward. She was so happy. Not just because of the food but because he had gone out on his own to do something for her.
The only thing she didn’t like that he’d done that day was the laundry.
He didn’t turn anything pink.
Instead he washed everything together. Including the blanket the kittens used. There was cat hair on everything.
“You tried. I’m proud of you for trying…but…just…no cat stuff with people stuff.” She said while shaking out a shirt before grumbling about how she didn’t understand why there was so much hair when they groomed themselves.
Still, it was a start and he found other ways to help more until they could go on their planned tour of the country. He was excited for it when it finally happened a couple of weeks past their original plans and he enjoyed every moment of it. Even if it left him stupefied at times.
Ulfhrafn was, to Bucky, far more than just a small country. He had seen the maps of it, but he hadn’t really correlated its true size to that map in his mind. Then again they usually didn’t have a scale on them so he really couldn’t.
So heading out with Essie to see more of it, Bucky found himself in far more than just the city-state sized thing he originally imagined. He also encountered things he had only seen skeletons of in museums as far as the animals went. It amazed him and the more he saw the more he understood what Ruun had meant.
Ulfhrafn was unified into one country and one Pack. It hadn’t always been that way. Essie hadn’t been the one to start the process, but she was the one that finished it.
The former Alpha was the one to start it, but not through the act of Challenging the Alphas of the other regions. He wasn’t strong enough to defeat several of them in fair combat. Instead he used various means to take them out of the game and out of his way, yet he refused to fully integrate the regions into his Pack properly. It took one of the elders of those regions explaining it to Bucky for him to understand what that meant, and he understood more fully why the old Alpha was referred to as Low.
“Alpha Essie explained to you that an Alpha is responsible for the protection wards around the towns and hunting regions, the safe places. There are places here that no one goes because to walk into them…is inviting misfortune and woe. As great and strong as we are, there are things beyond our wards that scare even us…because they are worthy of being frightened of. We call them Terrors..
“The old Alpha…what he would do…village by village, Pack by Pack, destroyed those wards. There was no Alpha to take up the mantle for the wards so they would fizzle out and break. It forced people to seek out safety from Alphas with intact borders, but eventually the only one was him and his protection came at the cost of invisible bars.
“He took over the regions, but he would never extend his borders around them. He would never perform the rites to make them truly safe. He would only do it for the villages, no more beyond the last row of houses of any town.”
He explained to Bucky that the Terrors grew so great in number outside the wards that travel was impossible unless the old Alpha agreed to put up temporary wards along roads with fake stones made in The Eye that were not exactly efffective, but better than nothing. It always came at a price, though. People, food, silver, medicinal herbs, whatever resources a region had specifically or that a village had just enough of to get by.
“We had no choice sometimes but to pay. None of us that tried to assume the title of Alpha of the region ever survived the process. We have proof it was him interfering but we never needed it to know it was. Before the end…it was so bad…the Terrors would come in the day and lick the standing stones to see how much charge they had. If they were low…they’d come in and tear through town until morning. Many were lost…which only made more Terrors. We even resorted to begging for full Pack membership. He always pretended to think about it if we did one more thing. That never came until the night he fell.”
The elder explained while gesturing at the tall standing stones in the distance that all of them had activated at once. Bucky understood then that was the magic she had worked with the Alpha’s blood. That was the protection she had triggered, they however didn’t know that at the time.
Instead they thought it was a trick. They thought the news of the old Alpha’s defeat was a lie. Even when she showed up they didn’t believe it until Ruun confirmed it. Ruun had been of that region originally one of the ones that tried to assume Alpha status until he was ambushed and hauled to The Eye.
Even still they didn’t welcome her with open arms. She was foreign, unknown, strange, and they made the mistake of thinking she cheated somehow and had enthralled Ruun into service. Several Challenged her outright. They all lost, yet unlike what she had done in The Eye, she let them live.
“We then mistakenly thought she was too soft and would wear down with time. So more tried. Then one behaved dishonorably and tried again as she was being Challenged by another. We learned then she wasn’t soft, she wasn’t weak, and she wasn’t using her full strength in any of the challenges. She was just giving us a chance to get it out of our systems because she knew we were angry.” He said and sighed, shaking his head, “Still she didn’t execute him for it. Instead…she kept to the Old Way. Something we know Ritva taught her in preparation for the visit…that was when we stopped.”
The Old Way meant a series of things depending on what context it was said in or what event was occurring. In this case it meant Essie had banished the male from the Pack, casting him out into the wilderness with enough provisions to last him a week to seek forgiveness from the ancestors and The Mothers at two of the farthest shrines in the region.
He was the first she did it to, but not the last as village by village, region by region, she repeated the same steps. Each region reacted in its own way, some welcoming her openly even though others protested with Challenge. Not every Challenger was shown mercy and with Essie’s arrival to the regions so too came Essie’s personal brand of justice that left a definitive mark upon people.
“We love her far more than we fear her, but anyone that’s not a little afraid of her is an idiot.” A village’s council member said as they sat watching Essie explain something to a group of the school aged children there, “One of the old Alpha’s loyalists retreated here after her ascension. We’re the farthest region out from The Eye and back in those days it took much longer to travel between the regions than it does now. He came and took up residence in what used to be the region’s Alpha’s residence, that big castle up there on the hill.
“It now serves as a hospital where our doctors go to learn, but back then it was impregnable and we had never met anyone that could get into it if the gates were closed. Then we met her…and she made her own door straight into the side of it. That’s why the stone looks different in that spot there in the middle. That was her. BOOM. It caused me many issues as a father afterwards…because both my pups thought it was the most amazing, epic, and stupendous thing they had ever seen.”
Bucky had tried not to laugh at that, but the male’s flat and exasperated facial expression made that impossible. Especially when he continued that thought. Or rather when he told Bucky what his kids did now.
His daughter was the mind that made several features of the Amarok possible. His son’s career didn’t seem connected to the incident at first until he pointed out a restaurant on the edge of the village and Bucky read the name.
Boom Burgers. Their specialty was a massive flame grilled elk burger with cheese stuffed in the middle all encapsulated within a toasted roll. When it was bit into it would ooze out.
Essie loved them and Bucky had to agree. They tasted good and were quite filling. For him.
Essie ate two and washed them down with a skyr smoothie from one of the other restaurants. Ultimately it was that which brought the tour to its end and they returned home. It heralded a Feeding Day on the horizon.
The people understood and accepted it. Each one told packed her off with at least a small bag of something to eat and as they rode side by side down the paved trail that connected the villages together, Bucky found a sense of peace as he thought about all he had seen and learned.
Not once did any of them make him feel unwelcome. Not one was afraid of him. Not one questioned why, of all the males she could have had that he clearly saw admired her as far more than their leader, she chose Bucky.
To them it had been simple. Even to her admirers. They accepted it almost solely on the basis that she had spent so long hunting him. To them, if she had hunted him for so long, then he had to be worthy of her.
It helped Bucky understand what Essie meant when she said they didn’t think the same way other people did. Yet, it also lightened something inside of him that had been weighing on him. It all did and he could see it did the same for her, not their acceptance of him…but of her.
They had both started therapy a couple of weeks prior. A few days after the thunderstorm. Essie had meticulously selected the doctor he’d be working with and arranged for him to come to the house initially while she went into The Eye to see hers as hers had to be outsourced. No one in Ulfhrafn was really prepared or able to take on their Alpha as a patient so she had contacted someone that came highly recommended by a close ally.
She got along better with hers than he did initially until his got rid of the notebook and just used a tablet instead once Tanis explained why Bucky was being so difficult and verbally hostile.
Tanis had been surprised to be the one asked to be there with him as he expected it to be Maggie, Ruun, or Ritva. He understood when Bucky explained that Ruun and Ritva hadn’t seen him as The Winter Soldier. Then he found it hilarious when Bucky explained he’d never had nightmares of Tanis flying a helicopter.
His therapist was named Doctor Tad Clawson and, once they got past the initial hurdle of the notebook, he explained he went into his field after Essie had become Alpha as a way of helping others in the Pack process everything that had happened during the old Alpha’s rule. He explained that he specialized in helping those that had been captured, imprisoned, and forced into certain situations that left them with similar symptoms as Bucky had.
It was then Bucky learned that Tanis had been one of his first patients due to everything that had happened with his sister. The Gamma served as something of a bridge between the two until Bucky relaxed enough to open up. Relax and remind himself why he even agreed to it in the first place.
Alpine helped. The other cats went about their usual business. Willow on her perch surveying her children and the world outside for feline intruders. Aspen doing her best to sucker Tanis into giving her a treat. Knox doing his best to knock the notebook off the end table it had been tossed on while Pine sat looking up at the doctor like he was the one there psychoanalyzing someone.
Alpine had hopped up beside Bucky and sat there with him, providing a calm, serene, and warm presence that soothed him. The doctor had looked at her and nodded. He never questioned why she was there just how she got to be there, what prompted Bucky to extend help to her and her family, how it made him feel to care for them, and a number of other questions before the end of the session.
Doctor Clawson had left him with several suggestions, ones Bucky was initially skeptical about. Ones it turned out Essie’s had recommended as well. They helped.
Bucky had to admit he liked his doctor. He had asked and suggested instead of told. That was the main reason he agreed to see the doctor on a twice weekly basis due to the level of PTSD he had, among other things.
For Essie it was more complicated. She agreed to twice weekly when possible. Her duties as Alpha wouldn’t always allow her to make time for it. So far they had.
It was a good start and though they were a long way from finished, some things had improved for them both. Individually and together. Namely his actions he’d taken towards becoming more independent and self-sufficient.
It took a lot of weight off of her shoulders and made him feel more in control. His cooking wasn’t fancy, but it meant the world to her that he did it and had done so without making a mountain of mess. She particularly loved the lunches he’d send her off to The Eye with on days she had to head there.
Arriving back at the house Bucky smiled as they went in and were greeted by the cats. Essie went straight into the kitchen to set down the snack bags she’d been given. When she returned he smiled lightly at her, at least until he saw she was lost in thought with a small frown.
“What is it?” he asked and she blinked and looked at him, thinking for a few moments before speaking again.
“Tomorrow…it’s gonna be bad.” She admitted with a particular look he had learned meant she was pushing herself to not hide an aspect of what she was now from him, so he waited for the rest of what she had to say about it, “It’s going to be a Feeding Day…and you know what those are, but sometimes they coincide with what they think should have been my first shift day. That’s the best they can figure out here. I’m going to be in pain, miserable, and…honestly I don’t really know what’s going to happen with you here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve hallucinated you on those days. Not just you from the war…”
“The Winter Soldier.” He said and she nodded.
“Not…doing anything. Just…sitting. Silently, head tilted, watching me…but honestly I prefer him to her.” Essie said and he frowned as he went over to her, knowing who she meant.
She had explained to him that the ghosts that haunted her when sleep deprived included not only him but also her family. All of them except for one. Emmaline.
She relaxed into him as his arms wrapped around her, her head on his shoulder as she took a deep breath in and calmed herself. Her doctor had urged her to stop avoiding certain things as, while he understood that Essie didn’t want to overwhelm or hurt Bucky, not telling him in advance could do just that and worse. It wasn’t healthy for her either and neither was isolating herself in times of need or stressful situations.
He approved of the cats, saying something about how taking care of animals was shown to help those with PTSD. She had expressed her concerns over their presence as small animals being trapped in a house with someone that had a history of eating anything. He pointed out that those instances were under conditions that were not the same as the ones now as she regularly fed herself and took steps to not repeat those conditions. Then he doubled down on the cats being a good thing once he asked several more questions about them and received her answers.
Other topics had come up, including her care for Bucky’s condition having acted as a trigger yet he understood it was a difficult and complex situation she hadn’t intended to go about the way it had. He had given recommendations on how to proceed forward with it. All while stressing that she remember she was not alone, didn’t have to do it on her own, and that she needed to do things for herself as well. The main one being not isolating herself off from help by hiding things.
“He doesn’t talk. He just sits.” She said as he held her close and ran his hand up and down her back gently making her smile a bit even as her stomach grumbled, “There was…one time…I didn’t mind seeing her there. She came when he was sitting there. I think it was because it was…it was also that time of the month so I was…really out of it from pain, eating, nausea, and just being exhausted. He’s sitting in the corner chair staring, I was annoyed at him just…staring and not doing anything…feeling like absolute…shit. Physically, mentally, emotionally…and usually when I get to a low enough point Eddie comes and tells me stories. I don’t…know why, but anyway, this time it wasn’t him. It was Emmie and when I tell you I was completely out of it, I mean it, and I’m sorry…”
Essie heard the footsteps before she saw her, but then there she was. Green dress with white flowers, hair braided in two pigtails, flowers in her hair, a light jacket and brown boots. Just like always.
Emmaline.
The Soldier didn’t care as the little girl stared at him. Grey eyes blinking. Rocking back and forth on her feet as she smiled.
“You have pretty hair.”
He looked at her, blinking. Emmaline smiled more and giggled. Essie reached for her phone and dialed. It picked up on the second ring.
“Tanis…I need you to get me out of this house…and take me to Ritva. She’s in the grove…right?”
Tanis’s voice was quick to answer, concerned, and she heard him moving already, “Yeah. She’s in the grove. I’ll be right there…what’s…are you alright?”
Emmaline was sitting on the back of the chair, braiding the Soldier’s hair while he stared at Essie again. Silent. Absurd.
“No. I need…I need to get out…Emmie’s braiding his hair.”
“I was waiting on the steps for him when he got here. He took me straight to Ritva and she gave me some of the berries while listening to me. Admittedly the sight of you as the Winter Soldier with pink ribboned braids sticking out from your head is hilarious…and it also prompted me to seek help for the first time on one of those days…but it was a lot at the time.” Essie finished and Bucky huffed softly as he stood there holding her close, smile playing at his lips, “She never…says anything horrible. She just plays, asks questions, asks for stories, and…is my little sister. It just hurts to see her. More than it ever hurt to see him…”
He nodded, wondering about his own little sister, his family, and understood. The Winter Soldier wasn’t beyond Essie’s reach. Emmaline was.
“Well…if you see either of them tomorrow…you’ll tell me. Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She nodded while nuzzling into him more, calm, “You smell good.”
“I’m not dinner.” Bucky replied, light and easy, teasing her a bit and smiled gently when she chuckled.
“At least you didn’t try to tell me you don’t taste good. I’d argue.” She teased back and Bucky smiled at the memory it triggered, holding her closer as he remembered it.
“Then I’d argue it mustn’t have been that good. You haven’t kissed me like that since the 40s.” he replied and she smiled warmly.
“Oh no…no no no. We are not leaving it up to me to do that again. No. It’s not raining and interrupting you trying to kiss me again. Besides…I’m the one that got turned into some supernatural thing by some other evil thing.” Essie retorted as she knew what he was referring to.
Bucky groaned as he took a deep breath in while they sat on her couch in her flat, leaned in halfway as the rain began to hit the windowpanes, “Every time…I swear I’m cursed.”
Essie smiled and laughed lightly while shaking her head as he scowled at the dark skies outside the windows, “Well…then I better do it.”
“Huh?” he asked as he felt her pull on his tie and turned his head to face her, instead finding her lips pressing against his.
“And I didn’t? I’ve got a metal arm.” He retorted and held it up, “Courtesy of evil thing.”
“Knights have metal arms. Yours is just permanently attached.” Essie countered as she looked at him and he shook his head.
“I’m not a knight in shining armor with a mustache and a goatee like Robin Hood.”
“I don’t know if I’d laugh if you did have that or if I’d like it. I can never decide if I like the stubble, clean shave, or when it gets longer…they’re all equally nice…but Robin Hood combo…not sure.” she replied as she gently scratched his jaw, “But I’m not doing it this time. Last time we established you’re not cursed and you didn’t turn into anything else.”
“Mh…good…” Essie purred against his lips smiling against hers, his arms pulling her against him to take her lips in his sweetly and swiftly, “Hmm…you didn’t turn into a prince.”
“Why is that good?” Bucky asked.
“Because most of the princes in the fairytales are either boring, stupid, or treat their princesses horribly. I’d much rather have you.” She answered.
“I thought you were happy I didn’t turn into anything else.” He said before kissing her cheek softly, smiling as he felt it light up beneath his lips.
“I was, yes, very. I still am because I’d still rather have you.” She answered while wrapping her arms around his neck as she looked at him, “You’re better.”
“How? They’re literally Prince Charming.” Bucky asked playfully and raised his eyebrows when she just looked at him flatly.
“I am not giving you a dissertation on fairytale princes to prove my point. They were creepy, boring, or stupid…or worse if you want to get into the true depths and origins of some of them, which I’m not.” Essie answered while looking at him, “You were always better. You still are. I mean…really, Bucky…can you imagine me now with some Prince Charming like from the stories? Me? Madam Alpha? Can you imagine someone like that walking in here and trying to do anything like that?”
He smiled and shook his head while laughing lightly, “No…well…yeah, but after today I just imagine everyone tryin’ to get rid of him. ‘Who the hell are you? You see that building over there with the different stonework? That was unassailable. She blew that up and just walked in. She fought every warrior we had the day she got here and even showed mercy. She made us magical cookies after punching the town bully in the face. She gave us all a new catchphrase.’”
Essie laughed and dropped her head on his shoulder. She had forgotten to tell him before they left that he’d likely hear Steve’s name at some point. Her people had followed her example and elevated it. Anyone, usually children, that said they were going to do some grandiose thing much larger than they were capable of physically doing or announced they were going to something recklessly stupid, or were in the process of doing it, were responded to with two words: “Okay, Steve.”
He had heard it halfway through their day when a kid climbing the side of a building to get his sister’s toy was called out by his mother.
“Okay, Steve, get your little rear down here this instant! You could have just come inside and gone out the window to the flower box, not scale the building!”
Bucky had looked at Essie immediately as she started laughing while explaining she had inadvertently caused them to adopt her habit of naming people Steve. He just shook his head laughing. It wasn’t the last time it happened.
“I didn’t make magical cookies.” Essie countered as she laughed while looking back at him and smiled when he pressed his forehead to hers.
“I know, but they’d tell some prince walking in that they were and then ask if he could make magical cookies. If I hadn’t gone down to the village here already I’d have been worried about today more than I was. Your people love you, are proud of you, and…if anyone ever…took you or tried to take you…not only would I lose my damn mind completely…but they’d all be there helping me rip things apart.” He said and she ran her fingers through his hair tenderly.
“They definitely wouldn’t let you do it alone. You’re part of the Pack. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Wolf or not.” She said as she looked into his eyes before kissing his cheek, “I told you…I’m not doing it this time, no matter how much you try to distract me from that and flatter me. I’m not doing it this time . I want you to make the decision to take that step forward. I’m not gonna make it for you no matter how much I want it. It needs to be your choice. It doesn’t have to happen now. Or ever. We can continue as we are. Whatever you want, whenever you’re ready.”
Her stomach grumbled. They both glanced down and Essie sighed, yet she smiled at the sensation of his hand tilting her head back up to look at him, thumb gently running over her lips, remembering them.
She watched him swallow as he thought about it. Longing yet…unsure. There was something there holding him back.
“What if it’s not what you remember?” He asked and she smiled.
“Nothing has been like what I remember, Bucky, but that doesn’t make it worse or bad. Maybe it’ll be better.” She answered and shrugged her eyebrows up, “I mean…you cook now. That’s better.”
He smiled before pressing his lips to hers softly, pulling her closer as hers pressed back. It ended must as softly as it had begun, his nose lightly running against hers as he caressed her face with a smile. Then her stomach grumbled again.
“Let’s get you some food.” Bucky smiled and she nodded with smile before pressing a soft kiss to his lips he happily returned, “You want me to cook?”
“Please.”
A/N: Progress. Yes. Mentally and romantically. Next chapter sees more of the changes to the MCU canon I have made.
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Summary: To the intelligence community the Winter Soldier is a ghost, but to HYDRA the Howling Witch is a harbinger of doom that will stop at nothing to get at their prized asset. A phantom that leaves swathes of destruction in her wake. She is the biggest mistake they ever made.
Chapter Summary: Essie and Bucky continue their discussion and Essie explains how she came to be Alpha.
Word Count: ~7K
Warnings: Language, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, Gun Violence, Shifting Character POVs, Frustrated & Aggravated Superheroes, HYDRA ( legitimate warning on their own), Light Angst, Self-Loathing, Mentions of worry of self-harm, Flashbacks, Recovering Winter Bucky's broken logic, Blood, Mentions of human experimentation, mentions of torture, Wolf shifters (the good kind and the bad kind. This is a warning in and of itself this time.), Questionable Alpha Challenge Rituals (I do not want to give more away than that). (I really need to just do a separate post for these)
A/N: Very late, well not very for me, but late. This touchpad is annoying. It hates dragging, it works fine then flies all over the screen, and I have also been otherwise preoccupied with things. The gif does not fully fit the chapter, but close enough. Um...read warnings. This one gets...well a bit fucked up, but not too bad? It covers an event mentioned in the Prologues but a little more in depth.
NOTE: I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING COPIED OR PUT INTO ANY FORM OF AI. (Also if there are typos it's likely my old keyboard. I will fix as I find them, because no matter how many times I proofread there's always at least one).
A loud clap of thunder jolted them all awake. Essie and Bucky were both sat upright in a second. Both were looking back and forth, on edge, assessing the room for damage, threats, and the source of the bang until they heard the rain start pelting down. Only then did they slowly relax.
“The Blitz?” he asked and she shook her head after running her fingers through her hair a bit, calming down.
“No. The HYDRA facility in England. They’d bang on the bars whenever I’d go to sleep too long.” She said while running her fingers through her hair and he frowned, “You?”
“Azzano.” He answered and she nodded, “Are these storms usually like this?”
“Once in a while in spring. Are you alright?” Essie asked and he nodded as he looked at her, searching her face, relaxing as he did.
“Yeah. You?” he asked and she nodded as she searched his and relaxed a bit, “I hate what happened to you…but I’m happy you’re here.”
“It makes you feel conflicted about it…doesn’t it?” she asked and he nodded after a moment, “Selfish.”
“Yeah.” Bucky answered as he looked at her, shaking his head, “I don’t…understand how…after everything I did…I still get to have you…but…you’re only here because of what they did to you.”
“Like you are? Bucky…it’s not your fault. What they did to me is not your fault. I chose to go out into the field when they asked for people to help through the forest. I always told you one more thing and I’d go out myself. I meant it. That’s on me…not you.” She said while cuddling back into him as the thunder cracked overhead again, “You’re here…with me. Alive. I’ve done…things I don’t want to remember…but…even though I feel selfish for being happy that you’re here…I know that what they did to you isn’t my fault. It’s not your fault either. HYDRA did this to us. Past and present. HYDRA stole so much from us. Don’t give them more. We’re not here because of them. We’re here in spite of them.”
“Was this how you felt…when you realized I was alive? After the facility.” He asked and she nodded.
“I refused to give them you. I felt conflicted at first. Torn. Selfish about being happy that you weren’t gone yet were being held captive like I was. I can’t take full credit for the epiphany I had. Most of it has to go to Eric. I think he got tired of my sulking and talking in circles about it because he just sat his sword down, looked at me and said: ‘Did you do it? Were you the one that sawed his arm off, gave him a metal arm, and then put him in a freezer? No? Then stop feeling guilty about something you didn’t do.’ Then he accused me of not feeling bad about almost eating him, which was a lie. I still feel bad about that.” she answered and looked at him, “Point being…he was right. We didn’t do this to each other. HYDRA did this to us. We are here now, as we are, in spite of them not because of them. As we should have been…just with…some extra flavoring.”
“We’re not a cake.”
“No. We’re cookies. Hard and crusty on the outside but still sweet and delicious in the middle.” She said and he paused to think about it, and to argue, “I have proof you’re sweet in the middle.”
He sighed. Yet even though he did, and even though he fought it, the corners of his mouth tilted upwards. So did hers even as the thunder cracked again and he held her closer.
“I guess my tour will have to wait…” he said and she nodded while watching the rain pour outside before getting up with a soft sigh, “What is it?”
Bucky watched her go over to the corner where he saw Willow hunkered down and hiding with her kittens. Essie just put her arms out for them and scooped them up when they went into them, all of them. It just made him smile. As much as she grumped about them she loved them just as much as he did.
“C’mere.” He said and held his arms out and pulled her down into his lap to lay back down with her and the cats, letting them curl up on his stomach and under her arm and then the blanket she pulled over them, petting Willow’s head gently while she peered out from under it, “You don’t like these either, do you?”
“Mao.” She meowed softly and licked Knox’s head when he snuggled into her side nervously, Aspen tucked up against Alpine under Essie’s arm, Pitch stuffed down between them, his head picking up and looking around whenever the thunder clapped.
“It’s okay…just thunder. You’re safe.” Essie cooed while relaxing against Bucky again, “We’re all safe.”
“Safe…warm…home.” Bucky nodded and listened to the rain fall outside, “Essie?”
“Hm?”
“Why…I mean…I’m probably remembering it…I dunno…biased right now…but why’s it feel like whenever we wanna go out it…it rains?” he asked as he looked up at the large rough hewn timbers above him and she let out a short laugh.
“Because we were in London when we were first together and had days to do that. I remember every single time it started raining just as you were about to kiss me. Every-”
“Single time. Yeah.” He laughed softly, shaking his head, “It drove me crazy.”
“Mhmm…” she hummed warmly while nuzzling into his shoulder contently, her hand resting on his chest idly as his rested on her side, “It was funny for me. You were so…overwhelmed by how much it rained there. I was used to it. You were the only person that could get me to laugh like that…to smile and mean it. Everyone thought you were crazy. I even did. Plenty of girls to choose. Ones that didn’t hit you in the head with their notepads, argue with you, snap at you, and…that would have been more than happy to go dancing and letting you pull them off anywhere you wanted. Instead…you picked me and I never felt like you were doing it because I was a challenge.”
“You weren’t. I…I still don’t remember everything, lately a lot of it’s from before you, my family, rescuing Steve from being beaten up in alleys, things you don’t want me to talk about to you, and stuff like that…but I remember why it was you. Steve brought me down to the war room, where you were workin’ after I agreed to follow him and help him. He thinks it was because I saw you goin’ a mile a minute waving papers in your hand and beating someone in the head with a big rolled up map calling him an illiterate moron.”
“If it was that then you were, and likely still are, crazy.”
“Well, yeah I am, but no. That wasn’t it. You were gorgeous…feisty…and so smart…but it was when you smiled. Later, when it was just the two of us going over the map, me trying to remember what Steve pointed out better, and I said something about him that made you smile and chuckle. That did it. No goin’ back from that.”
Essie smiled gently as she looked at his face and he turned it to look at her. There was a small smile playing at his lips. Gentle. Tentatively grateful. Hers.
It felt good to see it. It eased the vice grip doubt had around her hope that he would stay when it was all out in the open and he really understood what it was she was now. Yet as she looked at him, she couldn’t help thinking about what Ritva had said earlier as she reached up and gently caressed his cheek.
“Is that what you told Ritva about me?” she asked and he smiled a bit more.
“I told her I missed it…and I wish you’d stop actin’ like I’m afraid of what you are, because I’m not. I told her about us, what I remembered, not all of it, but enough she’d understand. I told her I wish I still deserved you like that…and she told me that…I was just like you and that I couldn’t decide I wasn’t.” Bucky answered and watched her face as he waited for the reaction.
“There’s never been a male anything that deserves me more than you. Not once did you ever question why I was the one you were told to listen to. You only ever asked why I did what I did. Not because you saw me as strange to be throwing myself into a world of men like that but because you wanted to know what my motivation was for doing it…because you knew there was one. Even now. You don’t question that I’m the Alpha here, you don’t challenge my ability to lead, you just ask how I became Alpha in a technical sense to understand how it came about.”
“Which you won’t tell me because you think it’ll be too much and that I’ll leave because of it.” He said and she looked at him making him shake his head as he took her hand in his and kissed it softly, “No one here that I’ve talked to about it will tell me, but…not because they’re afraid of you or disturbed by it. They want you to be proud of yourself for it. How bad can it be if they look at it as a good thing?”
“Bucky, they’re Wolf people. They don’t think the same way humans do.” She said and he looked at her more pointedly, silently trying to tell her he wanted to know, and she took a deep breath in, thinking, “What have they told you about it?”
“Not a lot. They said the old Alpha here was a Low tyrant, which I know means they hate his guts. Tanis told me that a lot of them wanted to get rid of him, they just weren’t strong enough to, and that he did horrible things to the women here. That he’d tried and failed and was about to be punished for it when you came. The females. Still getting’ used to that. Ruun told me that even though you don’t look it…you’re stronger than he is and made sure he understood that without putting him down for it…which Ritva explained was because he hid her away for her own safety. Maggie just says you were magnificent and wishes you’d stop arguing with them all about being a Wolf or not and that…she was proud to be your Delta and to be part of what brought you here even if it meant knowing what chains had felt like and what it felt like to smell like an Italian restaurant. She said you rescued her and Tilda from some sort of…blood auction the old Alpha sold them to. Other than that…nothing else.”
Essie nodded and thought about it for a moment, “Eric and I were following a lead I’d picked up from a vampire infested HYDRA base in Madrid about what the vampires called an auction for ‘rare vintages’. Vampires occasionally work with HYDRA on a small scale, and they both have tendencies to take over each other’s bases when they don’t.”
“I remember an incident of that from the war…that was…something else.” He said with a sigh and she nodded before continuing.
“You were in cryo at the time and HYDRA was being unusually quiet with things, so I had the extra time to help track this auction down. It took a while to get an actual pinpointed location for it and then to prepare for it so we wouldn’t miss it, be overwhelmed, and could get anyone there that was to be auctioned off out without hurting them. That was the difficult part. Usually on big gatherings like that, if we knew in advance, well…HYDRA made a mistake with me they didn’t quite make the same way with you that they learned to regret very quickly. Had Steve ever jumped on something I made he wouldn’t have gotten back up. However…with this auction…we couldn’t exactly do that. We had to think of alternative means. One that involved garlic concentrate. Garlic and vampires don’t mix just as much as fire and vampires don’t mix. Any large gathering they have nowadays they’ll have a fire sprinkler system in it. Sometimes they load them with blood for blood raves which is disgusting, but this particular one had water in it that I replaced with as much garlic concentrate as I could get my hands on.”
“Which explains why she said she smelled like an Italian restaurant.” He said and Essie nodded, “It’d take the vamps out without hurting people that weren’t vampires.”
“Exactly, and while this was our goal…it still meant we had plenty of other people to worry about. Vampires employ human guards, either through just straight up employment or because the humans worship them on some level. Blade, what Eric usually prefers to be called I just usually don’t, he has a harder time than I do telling the difference. It’s gotten him in trouble before and when we’re on a hunt together, despite him being the senior partner, he’ll defer to me to tell the difference because of my sense of smell. Anyway, that wasn’t really an issue in this case as much as it was something to figure out what they meant by ‘rare vintages’. Once they were all gathered and the auction started…we locked the place down and hit the sprinkler system. It was an absolute disgusting mess, and it pissed off the human fanboys. There’s these two terrified, women on the auction stage, wearing only underwear…and it’s the most denigrating underwear available at the time, in chains…with collars…”
“You saw red again. Didn’t you?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Instantly, but I wasn’t Hungry at this time, so it was very controlled rage. The two women, were female Lycans, and you can already guess that they were Tilda and Maggie.” Essie continued and he nodded, listening even though his insides twisted at the thought of what they’d gone through, the humiliation they were subjected to, and the terror they had to have felt, “Once I was done dispatching the people that were keeping them in chains they were just staring at me, not afraid, but…in just utter awe. There were others, just humans with special blood types, ethnicities, and particular genetics. Some we still talk to today, because their particular genetics were of the mutant variety and we took them somewhere where they could be safe. That’s a whole different story from this one and even if it’s short…we’re doing this one.”
“Yeah. You could smell the difference?” he asked and she nodded, “What do I smell like to you?”
“Not now. Let me finish and ask that later. It’s a more complicated answer than you’d think.” She said and he nodded, “Well, I knew they smelled different, but I didn’t really understand what they were until they explained and said that they could smell me the same way I could smell them and asked what Pack I was from. I had always known from what files I’d looked at that the main ingredient in their concoction for me was Lycan, but I’d never met any that were willing to actually talk to me…or any that were female. They’d talk to Eric if we encountered them. Never me even if I asked them a direct question. I didn’t take that well, but it quickly became too much of a hassle to deal with them so whenever we’d encountered them I’d just walk off and let him talk to them. It wasn’t worth the energy to go through the posturing and dominance jockeying every single time we encountered one. So…when I met Maggie and Tilda…it was a whole new world of information for me.”
“I know the feeling.” Bucky said and she nodded.
“I know you do, which helps in telling this because you’ll understand that it was overwhelming for me yet also…absolutely enrapturing. It made things I’d do make sense and made me feel less insane and less…less alone. They were completely mystified that I was a combat trained female and had no Pack. They rationalized me not being insane from isolation as me having made Eric my Pack.”
“Is that why they never just…leave us alone for more than a day?” he asked and she nodded.
“Yes. Wolves are highly social. When I’m in The Eye or out in town or anywhere…they all ask about you. Every single time. They all know who you are, what you are to me, and are legitimately worried about you being isolated or are isolating yourself. I have to repeatedly tell them that Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, and Maggie visit you frequently. That placates them to an extent but they’re all getting itchy to welcome you into the fold.” She said and he blinked a bit, not sure how to feel about it.
On one hand it made him happy. He knew how important she was to them and that they accepted him, even being near her was something he recognized as significant. On the other hand…there was The Winter Soldier.
“Do they know what…what I did?” he asked and she looked at him pointedly, “As The Winter Soldier?”
“Mm…I’ll take it…and yes. They know…and believe me that only makes them more eager. I told you that they’re good people and they understand a lot more than one would think but believe me they know what it’s like to be made to do things beyond their control.” Essie said as she held his hand, “Maggie and Tilda taught me what it was to be a Wolf as they understood it, which…was skewed by what their Alpha was like. I taught them…everything that I could that he was wrong and trained them both to fight, like I do. They asked me to, so I did…and as I did they told me more about Ulfhrafn and what it was and how it was and what their Alpha was doing and…it made me mad. Then there was the fact that, not only was he was selling his own people to vampires for profit, but he was also ultimately the one that gave HYDRA the information that led to what happened to my family.”
Bucky’s eyes widened, his stomach sank and twisted as it burned. He had figured HYDRA got the information about Lycans and Wolves from folktales and myth, but he’d questioned how they got the biological and genetic resources to try and change people. It made sickening sense…but…
“Why?”
“To save himself and make money. They didn’t know he was the Alpha…and they didn’t question how he knew where a supply of fresh Lycan blood was. I only found out because…HYDRA was being quiet…and I wanted to know why so…went digging and found a base near the Baltic. Maggie and Tilda were with me. It wasn’t vampire-related and Eric had somewhere else to be, so it was just us. Tearing through it with two extra people that could do most of what I can do made it a lot faster, so they didn’t have as much time to destroy information as they previously did.” She began to explain while toying with his metal fingers lightly and idly, “I had stacks and stacks of papers to go through that dated back to the war. There was information on you, which I went through first, but it wasn’t anything new, so I went through the rest of it and found the name of the supplier they had for the Lycan blood. Maggie was the one that pointed out it was the same name as the then Alpha, which I will not repeat nor will anyone here. No name means no memory and no memory means he’s truly gone and can never live again ever in any capacity. It’s the ultimate dishonor for them. Anyway, Tilda said the same thing and there was a picture included and it was him.”
“So, you saw red.”
“No. I didn’t see red.” Essie said and he looked at her and waited for her to continue as she thought of how to best word it, “I was…upset and angry and…and all of that. Yet it…it was…it wasn’t raw, triggered, rage. It was…deeper, harder, and…it felt like the ultimate betrayal. Now…Maggie and Tilda had floated the idea of going to Ulfhrafn to me and ‘teaching them all a lesson’ a few times prior to then, but I’ll be honest with you…I didn’t take them seriously. They were barely out of their teenaged years at this point. Did I trust them in a fight? Yes. Did I see them as fully formed adults capable of making their own decisions? Yes. Absolutely. Did I see them as a bit overeager and ‘Steve-like’? One hundred percent. Yes.”
Bucky snickered. He didn’t mean to. He just couldn’t help it, and he knew she wasn’t mad by the way she smiled and nodded.
“Really?” he asked and she nodded, “Steve-like?”
“Yes. I didn’t know he was alive and just a star-spangled popsicle at the time, but I never forgot him and would rate people’s…overeagerness to jump into situations beyond their physical limitations by him. People I met that were like he was in that sense…I named them all Steve.” She said and he shook with barely restrained laughter she smiled at while cuddling into him, “When they started on their ideas to do it…they were two Steves…but then we found those files and I…I realized in that moment that…they weren’t Steves…they were me when I was young. My family was taken away. My country was taken over by a tyrant that sacrificed his own people. I was kept as a special prize to be traded away at the earliest chance to make significant profit. They were me…and…I put my hunt for you aside for the first time…because…I couldn’t watch anyone else become me. So…I contacted Eric…and told him what I was going to do. He didn’t like it…not one bit…but he agreed to help.”
“How? Wait…never mind.” Bucky said, shaking his head, “You’d need him to get you in even if Maggie and Tilda brought you to the entrance…because you aren’t a male.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t just waltz in and there was no way to secretly sneak in. So…over the course of several months I trained with Maggie in her shift forms. The full quadrupedal one and the bipedal one. She’s bigger than Tilda in shift and I don’t shift so I had to learn how to deal with someone that could. She got me a couple of times pretty good until I grew to learn how to deal with the two forms. Then we worked on getting Blade, notorious vampire hunter, an invitation in to buy some more upgraded weaponry. Lycans are in the business of managing other supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves and such things. Other societies do this, but Lycans are a large one. Took a bit to get him one, but then we did and we timed it so it would coincide with a Feeding Day.”
He looked at her silently and unmoving. Bucky had learned early on that Feeding Day meant a day, roughly once every week, where Essie did little more than eat. It was one of the first things he had asked Ruun about.
Ruun’s answer had been that, as far as they could figure, it was due entirely to her inability to shift. He explained that teenagers often went through periods of intense hunger before shifting for the first time. Like their bodies were building up the energy for the event which he described as intense. The best theory they had for why Essie ate like that was that it was like her body was on a constant loop of that. It was a sound theory as it was also capable of explaining her shortened temper when Hungry.
The Beta had also said they learned early on to take Feeding Days seriously.
Now Bucky knew why.
“Then…because I knew what I had to do to win…I stopped eating.” She continued and he looked at her with a frown while squeezing her hand and she nodded, “Yes. I purposely starved myself and when the time came to go…I let Eric put a collar and leash on because we had to sell it…and we sold it. He brought me up to The Eye, where the Alpha was, and offered me to him as a gift in return for their services and goods. Tanis was there to receive punishment, so was Ruun, but my presentation took precedence. The Alpha took one look at me, licked his lips, and accepted…then…I issued the Challenge. He laughed and thanked Eric for bringing him something entertaining…until the chains dropped off and Eric told him I wasn’t joking…and that it was Feeding Day. That was the hardest, most brutal, and bloodiest battle I’ve ever been in. He sent in others to stop me, Eric took some of them on, I took on the rest…Tanis and Ruun helped and I went after the Alpha. He was strong…I have a scar down my side where your fingers are from one of his claws. That it scarred at all should tell you how deep it went.”
Bucky gently felt for it through her shirt. It was there, faint, but long and jagged. He didn’t want to say anything. Not yet.
“To…assume the position of Alpha…you have to do more than just win a Challenge and…I did, and I didn’t hesitate to do it. I ripped his heart out…and then I ate it…and then I used every last drop of blood in his body to force his Beta and Gamma to release the files of his wrong doing to the Pack, cast a series of protective wards around all of those innocent of what had been done wrong…and…let the Challengers come. I had won, but they had a right to Challenge back and several did. The ones Eric and I had been dealing with for decades. One by one they Challenged me. One by one they failed. By the time it was over…I was drenched in so much blood that it was like I bathed in it.” Essie said while watching his face and then waited.
It was a lot to process and a lot to imagine. It should have been hard. It would have been if he didn’t know her as well as he did.
She wasn’t the same as she was during the war, but Steve said she wasn’t that different from that Essie when you got right down to it and he was right. This one was just physically stronger and more physically capable of things. If Bucky hadn’t known that he’d have found it harder to imagine. If he didn’t have several memories of her ruthlessly interfering in several of his missions through the decades he’d have found it harder to imagine. If several of those memories didn’t involve her mercilessly taking out members of the squads they sent him with he’d have found it harder to imagine.
Yet, as he looked at her face and studied it, knowing she was waiting for him to see the monster she imagined herself to be…he didn’t and couldn’t. What she had done was disgusting but he didn’t think for a moment that she had enjoyed it and, as a memory floated through his mind of something Monty had said, it wasn’t exactly something beyond the point of something he’d never thought she would do. Granted Monty had said it as a joke, but it was only funny because it had been true.
One question did come to his mind, though, well…two…but he didn’t think one was appropriate.
“Was he in full shift or…the big..hulking wolf person kind?” he asked and she answered.
“He was in the big, hulking, wolf person shift. He shifted several times in and out of full fur and bipedal thing and his skin form to try and dodge me, but I’m fast and was faster than he was.” She answered and he nodded, “He tasted terrible. I’d eaten cow ones…granted they were cooked…and I’d cooked them myself…but…no. Ritva tried to tell me it was because he was corrupted and evil…I didn’t agree. He smelled horrible, too…but he tasted worse…the worst thing I’ve ever eaten…and that includes HYDRA’s prisoner food.”
“Ugh…” he replied and she nodded, “Well you answered the question I didn’t think was right to ask.”
“What he tasted like?” she asked and he nodded, “I mean…I’d ask why you wanted to know but it’s not everyday you hear your girlfriend kind of….literally ate a guy’s heart.”
“I’m confused about why that’s a thing you had to do to become Alpha. Is it…a tradition, a cultural thing, or…is there more to it?” he asked and she answered, knowing he was simply trying to understand if he should be disturbed by it or not and to what degree.
“It’s a magic thing. The title can be passed peacefully, but there’s a blood rite involved because every village and town and safe area in Ulfhrafn is warded and made safe against things in the forests that would eat people. Those wards are tied to the Alpha. They are emitted by the large standing stones you see everywhere in the towns and outskirts or near the Timbers. That’s the easy to understand and explain part of it. It’s been…25 years about…from then…and I’m still learning everything it means to be Alpha and Wolf.” She explained while looking at him, waiting for more of a reaction, and when she didn’t get one, seeing he was rather calm about it, she spoke again, “Why are you so calm about this?”
Bucky knew he had to answer this carefully. He also knew he had to frame this in a way she wouldn’t get upset at him. That meant he’d have to blame Monty, and though he had been Bucky’s friend…he was willing to do that.
“Well…one day…while we were goin’ through one of the bases…we got to talkin’ about things and…eventually they started doin’ their usual thing picking on me for bein’ so crazy about you. Now…Monty eventually said something along the lines of: ‘Barnes…if she were ever given the chance to sit down and carve out Schmidt’s heart and eat it…she would do so with a side of spaetzle and wash it down with a glass of peach schnapps’. I’ll admit that I laughed…but only because I knew you would, but one part would be completely different and I told him that. ‘Wouldn’t be peach schnapps, it’d be apple. Apple goes better with pig’.” He said and she thought while licking her lips for a moment.
“I want to agree with him, but at the same time I don’t know if I would have. Not because I’d have been unwilling to eat it, but I’d have been concerned about it due to what he became after injecting himself with the serum. You’re right about the schnapps.” She said and cuddled him, kissing his cheek, “I am stupidly proud of you for remembering that then and now that apple goes with pork better.”
He smiled at the sensation of her lips against his cheek. Soft, warm, sweet. Just as he remembered them to be.
Yet the memories of things he’d done filed in one after the other next. They weighed his joy back down with ice cold metal. The pit in his stomach twisted as he let them, guilt churning in it until it spread from there and out and despite Ritva’s words he couldn’t help feeling as if he didn’t deserve the warmth and tenderness she showed him or the comfort she gave him.
“We’re both stained with our pasts, Bucky…but…maybe together…we can find a way to…move forward with our lives. Ritva said…that…I focus too much on what they made me into instead of what I want to be…and that I spent seventy years defining myself by that and by the hunt for you.” Essie said as she toyed with his metal fingers and he looked at her, “She’s right. She usually is when she says things. Including when she said that…it’s time for us to get some help. I don’t know how to help you understand that what you did as The Winter Soldier wasn’t your fault any more than I know how to stop seeing myself as a monster in the mirror. Part of me knows I’m not…but…the rest doesn’t listen.
“I want to be…I just want to be good, healthy, happy, safe, and…I don’t want to feel like a monster that HYDRA created anymore. I’ve given them seventy years of my life and attention and…I know I’ll have to give more of my attention to them, but I’m tired of giving them my self-worth, my mind, and I’m not letting them have my man back. Ever. Even if he decides he doesn’t want to be mine, they can’t have him.”
Bucky didn’t answer at first. He knew she was right. They both needed help. As much as he didn’t want to admit that he needed help beyond the people he was talking to currently, he knew he did if for one reason only: It was hurting her.
She held up the façade of strength around her people, her subordinates, and even to her officials to a point. Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, Maggie…they all knew she was struggling but they didn’t know how much. They didn’t see what Bucky did every day, even when she didn’t think he was paying attention or even mentally there.
He hated it. The early days he just shut down when the memories became too much and she had to push him through the act of even functioning. The nights he knew he held her too hard just out of fear she wasn’t real and would be gone in the morning. Days and nights she hid every weapon and sharp object in the house somewhere he couldn’t find them because she knew. She knew without him having to say a word that the thought had crossed his mind to just…end it. Even if that thought was always followed immediately by the refusal to put her, and Steve, through that…it was that she had seen the initial thought.
As strong as she was, as much of a front as she put up even with him at times, Bucky knew her well enough to see that she was wearing down. He’d seen it plenty of times in the war when she’d run herself ragged and he’d have to make her rest. It was just worse now and he was the cause.
Essie did everything for him and he hated it. She ran a whole country and group of people while taking care of him, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, going to the market, seeing him through the night, reminding him how to use the technology, and doing everything she could to pick up the pieces of him while she slowly fell apart.
Bucky did as much as he could in return, that he could get to before she did, but that only triggered her to start doing it before she’d do anything else. The only thing he could manage to do without her getting to it first was cleaning up after the cats. He thanked her sensitive sense of smell for that one.
He’d voiced his frustrations to Ruun earlier. That had been what prompted the Beta to urge him to speak with Essie. They saw the cracks, but they knew very well they couldn’t make her do anything unless she wanted to.
“I don’t want to talk to a shrink. I don’t want someone else tryin’ to get into my head. I do not like the idea of being alone with someone that I don’t know with a notepad in their hand writin’ down all my feelings and telling me how to live my life. It’s…it’s too much like HYDRA. Alone. Sitting. Notebooks. Telling me what to do.” He said as he looked at her and moved his hand from hers to gently caress her face with it, being extra careful with the metal, “You tell me what to do but that’s different. You’re…you’re mine. That’s not changin’ as long as you don’t want it to, and I’d love for you to stop thinkin’ that I see what you do in the mirror. I don’t. You’re not the same girl I fell in love with back then…no…but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the same way for the one you are now. That being said and because I do feel that same way…I’ll try. With a shrink…but I want someone else there with me that I know and trust…and I want it clear that the only reason I’m agreeing to do it is because…even though all I see in the mirror is either the Winter Soldier or a broken man, you don’t see that and…I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I want…what you do. I wanna be good, healthy, not broken, and free from HYDRA. I don’t wanna be what they made anymore. I mean…the arm isn’t goin’ anywhere…but…y’know.”
“Mmm…about the words…you remember I told you I was talking to one of my allies about the deprogramming?” she asked and he nodded slowly.
“Yeah…they finally get back to you on that?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Well, they did a while ago, but you weren’t in a state to even start doing anything they recommended, which I told them and they understood. I have arranged for…a visit from a couple of them. It is a…tenuous alliance. One forged through…admittedly through diplomacy alone and not personal affection of any kind. That being said the ones I’ll be allowing a visit are the ones I like and get along with more. The heir, his sister, a few of their guards. I’m hoping that visit doesn’t coincide with when everyone else shows up or there will be a discussion about the shield.” Essie said and he blinked at her in confusion, “I’ll tell you about it more another day. For now…I really want to move but…uh…”
She glanced down at the cats, all of them asleep, contently curled up as the rain slowly dissipated outside. Bucky just smiled and looked at her. For all her complaining about them…and teasing of him…she loved them just as much.
A/N: Yes, that happened. Yes, they were still cuddling on the couch the whole time. Next chapter should be up on schedule. Hopefully.
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Summary: To the intelligence community the Winter Soldier is a ghost, but to HYDRA the Howling Witch is a harbinger of doom that will stop at nothing to get at their prized asset. A phantom that leaves swathes of destruction in her wake. She is the biggest mistake they ever made.
Chapter Summary: Essie and Bucky continue their discussion and Essie explains how she came to be Alpha.
Word Count: ~7K
Warnings: Language, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, Gun Violence, Shifting Character POVs, Frustrated & Aggravated Superheroes, HYDRA ( legitimate warning on their own), Light Angst, Self-Loathing, Mentions of worry of self-harm, Flashbacks, Recovering Winter Bucky's broken logic, Blood, Mentions of human experimentation, mentions of torture, Wolf shifters (the good kind and the bad kind. This is a warning in and of itself this time.), Questionable Alpha Challenge Rituals (I do not want to give more away than that). (I really need to just do a separate post for these)
A/N: Very late, well not very for me, but late. This touchpad is annoying. It hates dragging, it works fine then flies all over the screen, and I have also been otherwise preoccupied with things. The gif does not fully fit the chapter, but close enough. Um...read warnings. This one gets...well a bit fucked up, but not too bad? It covers an event mentioned in the Prologues but a little more in depth.
NOTE: I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING COPIED OR PUT INTO ANY FORM OF AI. (Also if there are typos it's likely my old keyboard. I will fix as I find them, because no matter how many times I proofread there's always at least one).
A loud clap of thunder jolted them all awake. Essie and Bucky were both sat upright in a second. Both were looking back and forth, on edge, assessing the room for damage, threats, and the source of the bang until they heard the rain start pelting down. Only then did they slowly relax.
“The Blitz?” he asked and she shook her head after running her fingers through her hair a bit, calming down.
“No. The HYDRA facility in England. They’d bang on the bars whenever I’d go to sleep too long.” She said while running her fingers through her hair and he frowned, “You?”
“Azzano.” He answered and she nodded, “Are these storms usually like this?”
“Once in a while in spring. Are you alright?” Essie asked and he nodded as he looked at her, searching her face, relaxing as he did.
“Yeah. You?” he asked and she nodded as she searched his and relaxed a bit, “I hate what happened to you…but I’m happy you’re here.”
“It makes you feel conflicted about it…doesn’t it?” she asked and he nodded after a moment, “Selfish.”
“Yeah.” Bucky answered as he looked at her, shaking his head, “I don’t…understand how…after everything I did…I still get to have you…but…you’re only here because of what they did to you.”
“Like you are? Bucky…it’s not your fault. What they did to me is not your fault. I chose to go out into the field when they asked for people to help through the forest. I always told you one more thing and I’d go out myself. I meant it. That’s on me…not you.” She said while cuddling back into him as the thunder cracked overhead again, “You’re here…with me. Alive. I’ve done…things I don’t want to remember…but…even though I feel selfish for being happy that you’re here…I know that what they did to you isn’t my fault. It’s not your fault either. HYDRA did this to us. Past and present. HYDRA stole so much from us. Don’t give them more. We’re not here because of them. We’re here in spite of them.”
“Was this how you felt…when you realized I was alive? After the facility.” He asked and she nodded.
“I refused to give them you. I felt conflicted at first. Torn. Selfish about being happy that you weren’t gone yet were being held captive like I was. I can’t take full credit for the epiphany I had. Most of it has to go to Eric. I think he got tired of my sulking and talking in circles about it because he just sat his sword down, looked at me and said: ‘Did you do it? Were you the one that sawed his arm off, gave him a metal arm, and then put him in a freezer? No? Then stop feeling guilty about something you didn’t do.’ Then he accused me of not feeling bad about almost eating him, which was a lie. I still feel bad about that.” she answered and looked at him, “Point being…he was right. We didn’t do this to each other. HYDRA did this to us. We are here now, as we are, in spite of them not because of them. As we should have been…just with…some extra flavoring.”
“We’re not a cake.”
“No. We’re cookies. Hard and crusty on the outside but still sweet and delicious in the middle.” She said and he paused to think about it, and to argue, “I have proof you’re sweet in the middle.”
He sighed. Yet even though he did, and even though he fought it, the corners of his mouth tilted upwards. So did hers even as the thunder cracked again and he held her closer.
“I guess my tour will have to wait…” he said and she nodded while watching the rain pour outside before getting up with a soft sigh, “What is it?”
Bucky watched her go over to the corner where he saw Willow hunkered down and hiding with her kittens. Essie just put her arms out for them and scooped them up when they went into them, all of them. It just made him smile. As much as she grumped about them she loved them just as much as he did.
“C’mere.” He said and held his arms out and pulled her down into his lap to lay back down with her and the cats, letting them curl up on his stomach and under her arm and then the blanket she pulled over them, petting Willow’s head gently while she peered out from under it, “You don’t like these either, do you?”
“Mao.” She meowed softly and licked Knox’s head when he snuggled into her side nervously, Aspen tucked up against Alpine under Essie’s arm, Pitch stuffed down between them, his head picking up and looking around whenever the thunder clapped.
“It’s okay…just thunder. You’re safe.” Essie cooed while relaxing against Bucky again, “We’re all safe.”
“Safe…warm…home.” Bucky nodded and listened to the rain fall outside, “Essie?”
“Hm?”
“Why…I mean…I’m probably remembering it…I dunno…biased right now…but why’s it feel like whenever we wanna go out it…it rains?” he asked as he looked up at the large rough hewn timbers above him and she let out a short laugh.
“Because we were in London when we were first together and had days to do that. I remember every single time it started raining just as you were about to kiss me. Every-”
“Single time. Yeah.” He laughed softly, shaking his head, “It drove me crazy.”
“Mhmm…” she hummed warmly while nuzzling into his shoulder contently, her hand resting on his chest idly as his rested on her side, “It was funny for me. You were so…overwhelmed by how much it rained there. I was used to it. You were the only person that could get me to laugh like that…to smile and mean it. Everyone thought you were crazy. I even did. Plenty of girls to choose. Ones that didn’t hit you in the head with their notepads, argue with you, snap at you, and…that would have been more than happy to go dancing and letting you pull them off anywhere you wanted. Instead…you picked me and I never felt like you were doing it because I was a challenge.”
“You weren’t. I…I still don’t remember everything, lately a lot of it’s from before you, my family, rescuing Steve from being beaten up in alleys, things you don’t want me to talk about to you, and stuff like that…but I remember why it was you. Steve brought me down to the war room, where you were workin’ after I agreed to follow him and help him. He thinks it was because I saw you goin’ a mile a minute waving papers in your hand and beating someone in the head with a big rolled up map calling him an illiterate moron.”
“If it was that then you were, and likely still are, crazy.”
“Well, yeah I am, but no. That wasn’t it. You were gorgeous…feisty…and so smart…but it was when you smiled. Later, when it was just the two of us going over the map, me trying to remember what Steve pointed out better, and I said something about him that made you smile and chuckle. That did it. No goin’ back from that.”
Essie smiled gently as she looked at his face and he turned it to look at her. There was a small smile playing at his lips. Gentle. Tentatively grateful. Hers.
It felt good to see it. It eased the vice grip doubt had around her hope that he would stay when it was all out in the open and he really understood what it was she was now. Yet as she looked at him, she couldn’t help thinking about what Ritva had said earlier as she reached up and gently caressed his cheek.
“Is that what you told Ritva about me?” she asked and he smiled a bit more.
“I told her I missed it…and I wish you’d stop actin’ like I’m afraid of what you are, because I’m not. I told her about us, what I remembered, not all of it, but enough she’d understand. I told her I wish I still deserved you like that…and she told me that…I was just like you and that I couldn’t decide I wasn’t.” Bucky answered and watched her face as he waited for the reaction.
“There’s never been a male anything that deserves me more than you. Not once did you ever question why I was the one you were told to listen to. You only ever asked why I did what I did. Not because you saw me as strange to be throwing myself into a world of men like that but because you wanted to know what my motivation was for doing it…because you knew there was one. Even now. You don’t question that I’m the Alpha here, you don’t challenge my ability to lead, you just ask how I became Alpha in a technical sense to understand how it came about.”
“Which you won’t tell me because you think it’ll be too much and that I’ll leave because of it.” He said and she looked at him making him shake his head as he took her hand in his and kissed it softly, “No one here that I’ve talked to about it will tell me, but…not because they’re afraid of you or disturbed by it. They want you to be proud of yourself for it. How bad can it be if they look at it as a good thing?”
“Bucky, they’re Wolf people. They don’t think the same way humans do.” She said and he looked at her more pointedly, silently trying to tell her he wanted to know, and she took a deep breath in, thinking, “What have they told you about it?”
“Not a lot. They said the old Alpha here was a Low tyrant, which I know means they hate his guts. Tanis told me that a lot of them wanted to get rid of him, they just weren’t strong enough to, and that he did horrible things to the women here. That he’d tried and failed and was about to be punished for it when you came. The females. Still getting’ used to that. Ruun told me that even though you don’t look it…you’re stronger than he is and made sure he understood that without putting him down for it…which Ritva explained was because he hid her away for her own safety. Maggie just says you were magnificent and wishes you’d stop arguing with them all about being a Wolf or not and that…she was proud to be your Delta and to be part of what brought you here even if it meant knowing what chains had felt like and what it felt like to smell like an Italian restaurant. She said you rescued her and Tilda from some sort of…blood auction the old Alpha sold them to. Other than that…nothing else.”
Essie nodded and thought about it for a moment, “Eric and I were following a lead I’d picked up from a vampire infested HYDRA base in Madrid about what the vampires called an auction for ‘rare vintages’. Vampires occasionally work with HYDRA on a small scale, and they both have tendencies to take over each other’s bases when they don’t.”
“I remember an incident of that from the war…that was…something else.” He said with a sigh and she nodded before continuing.
“You were in cryo at the time and HYDRA was being unusually quiet with things, so I had the extra time to help track this auction down. It took a while to get an actual pinpointed location for it and then to prepare for it so we wouldn’t miss it, be overwhelmed, and could get anyone there that was to be auctioned off out without hurting them. That was the difficult part. Usually on big gatherings like that, if we knew in advance, well…HYDRA made a mistake with me they didn’t quite make the same way with you that they learned to regret very quickly. Had Steve ever jumped on something I made he wouldn’t have gotten back up. However…with this auction…we couldn’t exactly do that. We had to think of alternative means. One that involved garlic concentrate. Garlic and vampires don’t mix just as much as fire and vampires don’t mix. Any large gathering they have nowadays they’ll have a fire sprinkler system in it. Sometimes they load them with blood for blood raves which is disgusting, but this particular one had water in it that I replaced with as much garlic concentrate as I could get my hands on.”
“Which explains why she said she smelled like an Italian restaurant.” He said and Essie nodded, “It’d take the vamps out without hurting people that weren’t vampires.”
“Exactly, and while this was our goal…it still meant we had plenty of other people to worry about. Vampires employ human guards, either through just straight up employment or because the humans worship them on some level. Blade, what Eric usually prefers to be called I just usually don’t, he has a harder time than I do telling the difference. It’s gotten him in trouble before and when we’re on a hunt together, despite him being the senior partner, he’ll defer to me to tell the difference because of my sense of smell. Anyway, that wasn’t really an issue in this case as much as it was something to figure out what they meant by ‘rare vintages’. Once they were all gathered and the auction started…we locked the place down and hit the sprinkler system. It was an absolute disgusting mess, and it pissed off the human fanboys. There’s these two terrified, women on the auction stage, wearing only underwear…and it’s the most denigrating underwear available at the time, in chains…with collars…”
“You saw red again. Didn’t you?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Instantly, but I wasn’t Hungry at this time, so it was very controlled rage. The two women, were female Lycans, and you can already guess that they were Tilda and Maggie.” Essie continued and he nodded, listening even though his insides twisted at the thought of what they’d gone through, the humiliation they were subjected to, and the terror they had to have felt, “Once I was done dispatching the people that were keeping them in chains they were just staring at me, not afraid, but…in just utter awe. There were others, just humans with special blood types, ethnicities, and particular genetics. Some we still talk to today, because their particular genetics were of the mutant variety and we took them somewhere where they could be safe. That’s a whole different story from this one and even if it’s short…we’re doing this one.”
“Yeah. You could smell the difference?” he asked and she nodded, “What do I smell like to you?”
“Not now. Let me finish and ask that later. It’s a more complicated answer than you’d think.” She said and he nodded, “Well, I knew they smelled different, but I didn’t really understand what they were until they explained and said that they could smell me the same way I could smell them and asked what Pack I was from. I had always known from what files I’d looked at that the main ingredient in their concoction for me was Lycan, but I’d never met any that were willing to actually talk to me…or any that were female. They’d talk to Eric if we encountered them. Never me even if I asked them a direct question. I didn’t take that well, but it quickly became too much of a hassle to deal with them so whenever we’d encountered them I’d just walk off and let him talk to them. It wasn’t worth the energy to go through the posturing and dominance jockeying every single time we encountered one. So…when I met Maggie and Tilda…it was a whole new world of information for me.”
“I know the feeling.” Bucky said and she nodded.
“I know you do, which helps in telling this because you’ll understand that it was overwhelming for me yet also…absolutely enrapturing. It made things I’d do make sense and made me feel less insane and less…less alone. They were completely mystified that I was a combat trained female and had no Pack. They rationalized me not being insane from isolation as me having made Eric my Pack.”
“Is that why they never just…leave us alone for more than a day?” he asked and she nodded.
“Yes. Wolves are highly social. When I’m in The Eye or out in town or anywhere…they all ask about you. Every single time. They all know who you are, what you are to me, and are legitimately worried about you being isolated or are isolating yourself. I have to repeatedly tell them that Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, and Maggie visit you frequently. That placates them to an extent but they’re all getting itchy to welcome you into the fold.” She said and he blinked a bit, not sure how to feel about it.
On one hand it made him happy. He knew how important she was to them and that they accepted him, even being near her was something he recognized as significant. On the other hand…there was The Winter Soldier.
“Do they know what…what I did?” he asked and she looked at him pointedly, “As The Winter Soldier?”
“Mm…I’ll take it…and yes. They know…and believe me that only makes them more eager. I told you that they’re good people and they understand a lot more than one would think but believe me they know what it’s like to be made to do things beyond their control.” Essie said as she held his hand, “Maggie and Tilda taught me what it was to be a Wolf as they understood it, which…was skewed by what their Alpha was like. I taught them…everything that I could that he was wrong and trained them both to fight, like I do. They asked me to, so I did…and as I did they told me more about Ulfhrafn and what it was and how it was and what their Alpha was doing and…it made me mad. Then there was the fact that, not only was he was selling his own people to vampires for profit, but he was also ultimately the one that gave HYDRA the information that led to what happened to my family.”
Bucky’s eyes widened, his stomach sank and twisted as it burned. He had figured HYDRA got the information about Lycans and Wolves from folktales and myth, but he’d questioned how they got the biological and genetic resources to try and change people. It made sickening sense…but…
“Why?”
“To save himself and make money. They didn’t know he was the Alpha…and they didn’t question how he knew where a supply of fresh Lycan blood was. I only found out because…HYDRA was being quiet…and I wanted to know why so…went digging and found a base near the Baltic. Maggie and Tilda were with me. It wasn’t vampire-related and Eric had somewhere else to be, so it was just us. Tearing through it with two extra people that could do most of what I can do made it a lot faster, so they didn’t have as much time to destroy information as they previously did.” She began to explain while toying with his metal fingers lightly and idly, “I had stacks and stacks of papers to go through that dated back to the war. There was information on you, which I went through first, but it wasn’t anything new, so I went through the rest of it and found the name of the supplier they had for the Lycan blood. Maggie was the one that pointed out it was the same name as the then Alpha, which I will not repeat nor will anyone here. No name means no memory and no memory means he’s truly gone and can never live again ever in any capacity. It’s the ultimate dishonor for them. Anyway, Tilda said the same thing and there was a picture included and it was him.”
“So, you saw red.”
“No. I didn’t see red.” Essie said and he looked at her and waited for her to continue as she thought of how to best word it, “I was…upset and angry and…and all of that. Yet it…it was…it wasn’t raw, triggered, rage. It was…deeper, harder, and…it felt like the ultimate betrayal. Now…Maggie and Tilda had floated the idea of going to Ulfhrafn to me and ‘teaching them all a lesson’ a few times prior to then, but I’ll be honest with you…I didn’t take them seriously. They were barely out of their teenaged years at this point. Did I trust them in a fight? Yes. Did I see them as fully formed adults capable of making their own decisions? Yes. Absolutely. Did I see them as a bit overeager and ‘Steve-like’? One hundred percent. Yes.”
Bucky snickered. He didn’t mean to. He just couldn’t help it, and he knew she wasn’t mad by the way she smiled and nodded.
“Really?” he asked and she nodded, “Steve-like?”
“Yes. I didn’t know he was alive and just a star-spangled popsicle at the time, but I never forgot him and would rate people’s…overeagerness to jump into situations beyond their physical limitations by him. People I met that were like he was in that sense…I named them all Steve.” She said and he shook with barely restrained laughter she smiled at while cuddling into him, “When they started on their ideas to do it…they were two Steves…but then we found those files and I…I realized in that moment that…they weren’t Steves…they were me when I was young. My family was taken away. My country was taken over by a tyrant that sacrificed his own people. I was kept as a special prize to be traded away at the earliest chance to make significant profit. They were me…and…I put my hunt for you aside for the first time…because…I couldn’t watch anyone else become me. So…I contacted Eric…and told him what I was going to do. He didn’t like it…not one bit…but he agreed to help.”
“How? Wait…never mind.” Bucky said, shaking his head, “You’d need him to get you in even if Maggie and Tilda brought you to the entrance…because you aren’t a male.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t just waltz in and there was no way to secretly sneak in. So…over the course of several months I trained with Maggie in her shift forms. The full quadrupedal one and the bipedal one. She’s bigger than Tilda in shift and I don’t shift so I had to learn how to deal with someone that could. She got me a couple of times pretty good until I grew to learn how to deal with the two forms. Then we worked on getting Blade, notorious vampire hunter, an invitation in to buy some more upgraded weaponry. Lycans are in the business of managing other supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves and such things. Other societies do this, but Lycans are a large one. Took a bit to get him one, but then we did and we timed it so it would coincide with a Feeding Day.”
He looked at her silently and unmoving. Bucky had learned early on that Feeding Day meant a day, roughly once every week, where Essie did little more than eat. It was one of the first things he had asked Ruun about.
Ruun’s answer had been that, as far as they could figure, it was due entirely to her inability to shift. He explained that teenagers often went through periods of intense hunger before shifting for the first time. Like their bodies were building up the energy for the event which he described as intense. The best theory they had for why Essie ate like that was that it was like her body was on a constant loop of that. It was a sound theory as it was also capable of explaining her shortened temper when Hungry.
The Beta had also said they learned early on to take Feeding Days seriously.
Now Bucky knew why.
“Then…because I knew what I had to do to win…I stopped eating.” She continued and he looked at her with a frown while squeezing her hand and she nodded, “Yes. I purposely starved myself and when the time came to go…I let Eric put a collar and leash on because we had to sell it…and we sold it. He brought me up to The Eye, where the Alpha was, and offered me to him as a gift in return for their services and goods. Tanis was there to receive punishment, so was Ruun, but my presentation took precedence. The Alpha took one look at me, licked his lips, and accepted…then…I issued the Challenge. He laughed and thanked Eric for bringing him something entertaining…until the chains dropped off and Eric told him I wasn’t joking…and that it was Feeding Day. That was the hardest, most brutal, and bloodiest battle I’ve ever been in. He sent in others to stop me, Eric took some of them on, I took on the rest…Tanis and Ruun helped and I went after the Alpha. He was strong…I have a scar down my side where your fingers are from one of his claws. That it scarred at all should tell you how deep it went.”
Bucky gently felt for it through her shirt. It was there, faint, but long and jagged. He didn’t want to say anything. Not yet.
“To…assume the position of Alpha…you have to do more than just win a Challenge and…I did, and I didn’t hesitate to do it. I ripped his heart out…and then I ate it…and then I used every last drop of blood in his body to force his Beta and Gamma to release the files of his wrong doing to the Pack, cast a series of protective wards around all of those innocent of what had been done wrong…and…let the Challengers come. I had won, but they had a right to Challenge back and several did. The ones Eric and I had been dealing with for decades. One by one they Challenged me. One by one they failed. By the time it was over…I was drenched in so much blood that it was like I bathed in it.” Essie said while watching his face and then waited.
It was a lot to process and a lot to imagine. It should have been hard. It would have been if he didn’t know her as well as he did.
She wasn’t the same as she was during the war, but Steve said she wasn’t that different from that Essie when you got right down to it and he was right. This one was just physically stronger and more physically capable of things. If Bucky hadn’t known that he’d have found it harder to imagine. If he didn’t have several memories of her ruthlessly interfering in several of his missions through the decades he’d have found it harder to imagine. If several of those memories didn’t involve her mercilessly taking out members of the squads they sent him with he’d have found it harder to imagine.
Yet, as he looked at her face and studied it, knowing she was waiting for him to see the monster she imagined herself to be…he didn’t and couldn’t. What she had done was disgusting but he didn’t think for a moment that she had enjoyed it and, as a memory floated through his mind of something Monty had said, it wasn’t exactly something beyond the point of something he’d never thought she would do. Granted Monty had said it as a joke, but it was only funny because it had been true.
One question did come to his mind, though, well…two…but he didn’t think one was appropriate.
“Was he in full shift or…the big..hulking wolf person kind?” he asked and she answered.
“He was in the big, hulking, wolf person shift. He shifted several times in and out of full fur and bipedal thing and his skin form to try and dodge me, but I’m fast and was faster than he was.” She answered and he nodded, “He tasted terrible. I’d eaten cow ones…granted they were cooked…and I’d cooked them myself…but…no. Ritva tried to tell me it was because he was corrupted and evil…I didn’t agree. He smelled horrible, too…but he tasted worse…the worst thing I’ve ever eaten…and that includes HYDRA’s prisoner food.”
“Ugh…” he replied and she nodded, “Well you answered the question I didn’t think was right to ask.”
“What he tasted like?” she asked and he nodded, “I mean…I’d ask why you wanted to know but it’s not everyday you hear your girlfriend kind of….literally ate a guy’s heart.”
“I’m confused about why that’s a thing you had to do to become Alpha. Is it…a tradition, a cultural thing, or…is there more to it?” he asked and she answered, knowing he was simply trying to understand if he should be disturbed by it or not and to what degree.
“It’s a magic thing. The title can be passed peacefully, but there’s a blood rite involved because every village and town and safe area in Ulfhrafn is warded and made safe against things in the forests that would eat people. Those wards are tied to the Alpha. They are emitted by the large standing stones you see everywhere in the towns and outskirts or near the Timbers. That’s the easy to understand and explain part of it. It’s been…25 years about…from then…and I’m still learning everything it means to be Alpha and Wolf.” She explained while looking at him, waiting for more of a reaction, and when she didn’t get one, seeing he was rather calm about it, she spoke again, “Why are you so calm about this?”
Bucky knew he had to answer this carefully. He also knew he had to frame this in a way she wouldn’t get upset at him. That meant he’d have to blame Monty, and though he had been Bucky’s friend…he was willing to do that.
“Well…one day…while we were goin’ through one of the bases…we got to talkin’ about things and…eventually they started doin’ their usual thing picking on me for bein’ so crazy about you. Now…Monty eventually said something along the lines of: ‘Barnes…if she were ever given the chance to sit down and carve out Schmidt’s heart and eat it…she would do so with a side of spaetzle and wash it down with a glass of peach schnapps’. I’ll admit that I laughed…but only because I knew you would, but one part would be completely different and I told him that. ‘Wouldn’t be peach schnapps, it’d be apple. Apple goes better with pig’.” He said and she thought while licking her lips for a moment.
“I want to agree with him, but at the same time I don’t know if I would have. Not because I’d have been unwilling to eat it, but I’d have been concerned about it due to what he became after injecting himself with the serum. You’re right about the schnapps.” She said and cuddled him, kissing his cheek, “I am stupidly proud of you for remembering that then and now that apple goes with pork better.”
He smiled at the sensation of her lips against his cheek. Soft, warm, sweet. Just as he remembered them to be.
Yet the memories of things he’d done filed in one after the other next. They weighed his joy back down with ice cold metal. The pit in his stomach twisted as he let them, guilt churning in it until it spread from there and out and despite Ritva’s words he couldn’t help feeling as if he didn’t deserve the warmth and tenderness she showed him or the comfort she gave him.
“We’re both stained with our pasts, Bucky…but…maybe together…we can find a way to…move forward with our lives. Ritva said…that…I focus too much on what they made me into instead of what I want to be…and that I spent seventy years defining myself by that and by the hunt for you.” Essie said as she toyed with his metal fingers and he looked at her, “She’s right. She usually is when she says things. Including when she said that…it’s time for us to get some help. I don’t know how to help you understand that what you did as The Winter Soldier wasn’t your fault any more than I know how to stop seeing myself as a monster in the mirror. Part of me knows I’m not…but…the rest doesn’t listen.
“I want to be…I just want to be good, healthy, happy, safe, and…I don’t want to feel like a monster that HYDRA created anymore. I’ve given them seventy years of my life and attention and…I know I’ll have to give more of my attention to them, but I’m tired of giving them my self-worth, my mind, and I’m not letting them have my man back. Ever. Even if he decides he doesn’t want to be mine, they can’t have him.”
Bucky didn’t answer at first. He knew she was right. They both needed help. As much as he didn’t want to admit that he needed help beyond the people he was talking to currently, he knew he did if for one reason only: It was hurting her.
She held up the façade of strength around her people, her subordinates, and even to her officials to a point. Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, Maggie…they all knew she was struggling but they didn’t know how much. They didn’t see what Bucky did every day, even when she didn’t think he was paying attention or even mentally there.
He hated it. The early days he just shut down when the memories became too much and she had to push him through the act of even functioning. The nights he knew he held her too hard just out of fear she wasn’t real and would be gone in the morning. Days and nights she hid every weapon and sharp object in the house somewhere he couldn’t find them because she knew. She knew without him having to say a word that the thought had crossed his mind to just…end it. Even if that thought was always followed immediately by the refusal to put her, and Steve, through that…it was that she had seen the initial thought.
As strong as she was, as much of a front as she put up even with him at times, Bucky knew her well enough to see that she was wearing down. He’d seen it plenty of times in the war when she’d run herself ragged and he’d have to make her rest. It was just worse now and he was the cause.
Essie did everything for him and he hated it. She ran a whole country and group of people while taking care of him, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, going to the market, seeing him through the night, reminding him how to use the technology, and doing everything she could to pick up the pieces of him while she slowly fell apart.
Bucky did as much as he could in return, that he could get to before she did, but that only triggered her to start doing it before she’d do anything else. The only thing he could manage to do without her getting to it first was cleaning up after the cats. He thanked her sensitive sense of smell for that one.
He’d voiced his frustrations to Ruun earlier. That had been what prompted the Beta to urge him to speak with Essie. They saw the cracks, but they knew very well they couldn’t make her do anything unless she wanted to.
“I don’t want to talk to a shrink. I don’t want someone else tryin’ to get into my head. I do not like the idea of being alone with someone that I don’t know with a notepad in their hand writin’ down all my feelings and telling me how to live my life. It’s…it’s too much like HYDRA. Alone. Sitting. Notebooks. Telling me what to do.” He said as he looked at her and moved his hand from hers to gently caress her face with it, being extra careful with the metal, “You tell me what to do but that’s different. You’re…you’re mine. That’s not changin’ as long as you don’t want it to, and I’d love for you to stop thinkin’ that I see what you do in the mirror. I don’t. You’re not the same girl I fell in love with back then…no…but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the same way for the one you are now. That being said and because I do feel that same way…I’ll try. With a shrink…but I want someone else there with me that I know and trust…and I want it clear that the only reason I’m agreeing to do it is because…even though all I see in the mirror is either the Winter Soldier or a broken man, you don’t see that and…I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I want…what you do. I wanna be good, healthy, not broken, and free from HYDRA. I don’t wanna be what they made anymore. I mean…the arm isn’t goin’ anywhere…but…y’know.”
“Mmm…about the words…you remember I told you I was talking to one of my allies about the deprogramming?” she asked and he nodded slowly.
“Yeah…they finally get back to you on that?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Well, they did a while ago, but you weren’t in a state to even start doing anything they recommended, which I told them and they understood. I have arranged for…a visit from a couple of them. It is a…tenuous alliance. One forged through…admittedly through diplomacy alone and not personal affection of any kind. That being said the ones I’ll be allowing a visit are the ones I like and get along with more. The heir, his sister, a few of their guards. I’m hoping that visit doesn’t coincide with when everyone else shows up or there will be a discussion about the shield.” Essie said and he blinked at her in confusion, “I’ll tell you about it more another day. For now…I really want to move but…uh…”
She glanced down at the cats, all of them asleep, contently curled up as the rain slowly dissipated outside. Bucky just smiled and looked at her. For all her complaining about them…and teasing of him…she loved them just as much.
A/N: Yes, that happened. Yes, they were still cuddling on the couch the whole time. Next chapter should be up on schedule. Hopefully.
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Summary: To the intelligence community the Winter Soldier is a ghost, but to HYDRA the Howling Witch is a harbinger of doom that will stop at nothing to get at their prized asset. A phantom that leaves swathes of destruction in her wake. She is the biggest mistake they ever made.
Chapter Summary: Bucky learns more about Essie's time in Ulfhrafn and they discuss a few things concerning rain.
Word Count: 5.3K
Warnings: Language, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, Gun Violence, Shifting Character POVs, Frustrated & Aggravated Superheroes, HYDRA ( legitimate warning on their own), Light Angst, Self-Loathing, Mentions of worry of self-harm, Flashbacks, Recovering Winter Bucky's broken logic, Blood, Mentions of human experimentation, mentions of torture, Wolf shifters (the good kind and the bad kind. This is a warning in and of itself this time.), Questionable Alpha Challenge Rituals (I do not want to give more away than that). (I really need to just do a separate post for these)
A/N: Bit late, but it is here. Editing may be a bit spotty. Chapter summary is...spoiler free. Enjoy.
NOTE: I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING COPIED OR PUT INTO ANY FORM OF AI. (Also if there are typos it's likely my old keyboard. I will fix as I find them, because no matter how many times I proofread there's always at least one).
Weather had a way of disrupting their plans. Days they would plan to head out were routinely interrupted by rain. The days it didn’t rain she had work to do that took her elsewhere.
Bucky did venture into the town, however. On his own while she had been called to The Eye on an important matter. He had spent a couple of hours just looking at it from the balcony of what had now become their bedroom, even if they still largely slept anywhere but the bed.
He could see people milling about, small and distant, around a market set up in it. It was half an hour after that that he found himself walking out the door, Alpine stowed away in his jacket, and getting on one of the motorcycles there to head into town. For the first time in he didn’t know how long, Bucky had given himself his own mission.
One he wasn’t prepared to fail no matter how scared he was of it.
To his surprise they all knew who he was, and to his great amusement they found Alpine’s head sticking out of his jacket to be stranger than the fact he had a metal arm. They were wolf people to the core and that continued to amuse him once he pushed past his nervousness to explain why he was there in town on his own.
As much as he hated to burst their bubbles that it had been solely to finally meet them all it wasn’t. They took it in stride. They were more than happy to when he explained his real reason.
“Essie’s in The Eye on…some important business…and she’s going to get back late, be hungry…and…she’s always cooking for me. I appreciate it and…yeah it’s…what I grew up used to but…I wanna do something for her. I don’t know anything about how to make something more than a sandwich…but I can learn. As long as it’s easy…and won’t blow up. I really don’t want to blow anything up. She’ll never let me do anything on my own again if I do that.” he had explained to a group of older females gathered around one of the food stalls.
He'd gone to them with the hope that they’d be the best informed of the bunch present to teach him the basics of cooking something without setting it aflame. Bucky was good at setting things on fire, HYDRA made sure he was, but he didn’t want to set anything on fire in this instance so he swallowed every urge he had to avoid people to ask a whole group of what appeared to be little old ladies how to not set something on fire. He knew they were much more than that, but it was that they visually looked about as threatening as a tuft of dandelions that actually pushed him over the last hurdle.
That and Alpine purring contently. If she was purring she didn’t hate them. If she didn’t hate them then they were relatively safe.
They didn’t hesitate to help. If anything they seemed to love it and he spent the next couple of hours with them learning how to do the most basic thing they could teach him: cook a steak and boil potatoes. They even begrudgingly taught him how to boil green beans…though they all did it with a look of utter abhorrence for them before they sent him off back home with everything he needed.
It wasn’t perfect, far from it, but he enjoyed the act of making something instead of destroying it and the look on Essie’s face when she walked in exhausted was the absolute best reward. She was so happy. Not just because of the food but because he had gone out on his own to do something for her.
The only thing she didn’t like that he’d done that day was the laundry.
He didn’t turn anything pink.
Instead he washed everything together. Including the blanket the kittens used. There was cat hair on everything.
“You tried. I’m proud of you for trying…but…just…no cat stuff with people stuff.” She said while shaking out a shirt before grumbling about how she didn’t understand why there was so much hair when they groomed themselves.
Still, it was a start and he found other ways to help more until they could go on their planned tour of the country. He was excited for it when it finally happened a couple of weeks past their original plans and he enjoyed every moment of it. Even if it left him stupefied at times.
Ulfhrafn was, to Bucky, far more than just a small country. He had seen the maps of it, but he hadn’t really correlated its true size to that map in his mind. Then again they usually didn’t have a scale on them so he really couldn’t.
So heading out with Essie to see more of it, Bucky found himself in far more than just the city-state sized thing he originally imagined. He also encountered things he had only seen skeletons of in museums as far as the animals went. It amazed him and the more he saw the more he understood what Ruun had meant.
Ulfhrafn was unified into one country and one Pack. It hadn’t always been that way. Essie hadn’t been the one to start the process, but she was the one that finished it.
The former Alpha was the one to start it, but not through the act of Challenging the Alphas of the other regions. He wasn’t strong enough to defeat several of them in fair combat. Instead he used various means to take them out of the game and out of his way, yet he refused to fully integrate the regions into his Pack properly. It took one of the elders of those regions explaining it to Bucky for him to understand what that meant, and he understood more fully why the old Alpha was referred to as Low.
“Alpha Essie explained to you that an Alpha is responsible for the protection wards around the towns and hunting regions, the safe places. There are places here that no one goes because to walk into them…is inviting misfortune and woe. As great and strong as we are, there are things beyond our wards that scare even us…because they are worthy of being frightened of. We call them Terrors..
“The old Alpha…what he would do…village by village, Pack by Pack, destroyed those wards. There was no Alpha to take up the mantle for the wards so they would fizzle out and break. It forced people to seek out safety from Alphas with intact borders, but eventually the only one was him and his protection came at the cost of invisible bars.
“He took over the regions, but he would never extend his borders around them. He would never perform the rites to make them truly safe. He would only do it for the villages, no more beyond the last row of houses of any town.”
He explained to Bucky that the Terrors grew so great in number outside the wards that travel was impossible unless the old Alpha agreed to put up temporary wards along roads with fake stones made in The Eye that were not exactly efffective, but better than nothing. It always came at a price, though. People, food, silver, medicinal herbs, whatever resources a region had specifically or that a village had just enough of to get by.
“We had no choice sometimes but to pay. None of us that tried to assume the title of Alpha of the region ever survived the process. We have proof it was him interfering but we never needed it to know it was. Before the end…it was so bad…the Terrors would come in the day and lick the standing stones to see how much charge they had. If they were low…they’d come in and tear through town until morning. Many were lost…which only made more Terrors. We even resorted to begging for full Pack membership. He always pretended to think about it if we did one more thing. That never came until the night he fell.”
The elder explained while gesturing at the tall standing stones in the distance that all of them had activated at once. Bucky understood then that was the magic she had worked with the Alpha’s blood. That was the protection she had triggered, they however didn’t know that at the time.
Instead they thought it was a trick. They thought the news of the old Alpha’s defeat was a lie. Even when she showed up they didn’t believe it until Ruun confirmed it. Ruun had been of that region originally one of the ones that tried to assume Alpha status until he was ambushed and hauled to The Eye.
Even still they didn’t welcome her with open arms. She was foreign, unknown, strange, and they made the mistake of thinking she cheated somehow and had enthralled Ruun into service. Several Challenged her outright. They all lost, yet unlike what she had done in The Eye, she let them live.
“We then mistakenly thought she was too soft and would wear down with time. So more tried. Then one behaved dishonorably and tried again as she was being Challenged by another. We learned then she wasn’t soft, she wasn’t weak, and she wasn’t using her full strength in any of the challenges. She was just giving us a chance to get it out of our systems because she knew we were angry.” He said and sighed, shaking his head, “Still she didn’t execute him for it. Instead…she kept to the Old Way. Something we know Ritva taught her in preparation for the visit…that was when we stopped.”
The Old Way meant a series of things depending on what context it was said in or what event was occurring. In this case it meant Essie had banished the male from the Pack, casting him out into the wilderness with enough provisions to last him a week to seek forgiveness from the ancestors and The Mothers at two of the farthest shrines in the region.
He was the first she did it to, but not the last as village by village, region by region, she repeated the same steps. Each region reacted in its own way, some welcoming her openly even though others protested with Challenge. Not every Challenger was shown mercy and with Essie’s arrival to the regions so too came Essie’s personal brand of justice that left a definitive mark upon people.
“We love her far more than we fear her, but anyone that’s not a little afraid of her is an idiot.” A village’s council member said as they sat watching Essie explain something to a group of the school aged children there, “One of the old Alpha’s loyalists retreated here after her ascension. We’re the farthest region out from The Eye and back in those days it took much longer to travel between the regions than it does now. He came and took up residence in what used to be the region’s Alpha’s residence, that big castle up there on the hill.
“It now serves as a hospital where our doctors go to learn, but back then it was impregnable and we had never met anyone that could get into it if the gates were closed. Then we met her…and she made her own door straight into the side of it. That’s why the stone looks different in that spot there in the middle. That was her. BOOM. It caused me many issues as a father afterwards…because both my pups thought it was the most amazing, epic, and stupendous thing they had ever seen.”
Bucky had tried not to laugh at that, but the male’s flat and exasperated facial expression made that impossible. Especially when he continued that thought. Or rather when he told Bucky what his kids did now.
His daughter was the mind that made several features of the Amarok possible. His son’s career didn’t seem connected to the incident at first until he pointed out a restaurant on the edge of the village and Bucky read the name.
Boom Burgers. Their specialty was a massive flame grilled elk burger with cheese stuffed in the middle all encapsulated within a toasted roll. When it was bit into it would ooze out.
Essie loved them and Bucky had to agree. They tasted good and were quite filling. For him.
Essie ate two and washed them down with a skyr smoothie from one of the other restaurants. Ultimately it was that which brought the tour to its end and they returned home. It heralded a Feeding Day on the horizon.
The people understood and accepted it. Each one told packed her off with at least a small bag of something to eat and as they rode side by side down the paved trail that connected the villages together, Bucky found a sense of peace as he thought about all he had seen and learned.
Not once did any of them make him feel unwelcome. Not one was afraid of him. Not one questioned why, of all the males she could have had that he clearly saw admired her as far more than their leader, she chose Bucky.
To them it had been simple. Even to her admirers. They accepted it almost solely on the basis that she had spent so long hunting him. To them, if she had hunted him for so long, then he had to be worthy of her.
It helped Bucky understand what Essie meant when she said they didn’t think the same way other people did. Yet, it also lightened something inside of him that had been weighing on him. It all did and he could see it did the same for her, not their acceptance of him…but of her.
They had both started therapy a couple of weeks prior. A few days after the thunderstorm. Essie had meticulously selected the doctor he’d be working with and arranged for him to come to the house initially while she went into The Eye to see hers as hers had to be outsourced. No one in Ulfhrafn was really prepared or able to take on their Alpha as a patient so she had contacted someone that came highly recommended by a close ally.
She got along better with hers than he did initially until his got rid of the notebook and just used a tablet instead once Tanis explained why Bucky was being so difficult and verbally hostile.
Tanis had been surprised to be the one asked to be there with him as he expected it to be Maggie, Ruun, or Ritva. He understood when Bucky explained that Ruun and Ritva hadn’t seen him as The Winter Soldier. Then he found it hilarious when Bucky explained he’d never had nightmares of Tanis flying a helicopter.
His therapist was named Doctor Tad Clawson and, once they got past the initial hurdle of the notebook, he explained he went into his field after Essie had become Alpha as a way of helping others in the Pack process everything that had happened during the old Alpha’s rule. He explained that he specialized in helping those that had been captured, imprisoned, and forced into certain situations that left them with similar symptoms as Bucky had.
It was then Bucky learned that Tanis had been one of his first patients due to everything that had happened with his sister. The Gamma served as something of a bridge between the two until Bucky relaxed enough to open up. Relax and remind himself why he even agreed to it in the first place.
Alpine helped. The other cats went about their usual business. Willow on her perch surveying her children and the world outside for feline intruders. Aspen doing her best to sucker Tanis into giving her a treat. Knox doing his best to knock the notebook off the end table it had been tossed on while Pine sat looking up at the doctor like he was the one there psychoanalyzing someone.
Alpine had hopped up beside Bucky and sat there with him, providing a calm, serene, and warm presence that soothed him. The doctor had looked at her and nodded. He never questioned why she was there just how she got to be there, what prompted Bucky to extend help to her and her family, how it made him feel to care for them, and a number of other questions before the end of the session.
Doctor Clawson had left him with several suggestions, ones Bucky was initially skeptical about. Ones it turned out Essie’s had recommended as well. They helped.
Bucky had to admit he liked his doctor. He had asked and suggested instead of told. That was the main reason he agreed to see the doctor on a twice weekly basis due to the level of PTSD he had, among other things.
For Essie it was more complicated. She agreed to twice weekly when possible. Her duties as Alpha wouldn’t always allow her to make time for it. So far they had.
It was a good start and though they were a long way from finished, some things had improved for them both. Individually and together. Namely his actions he’d taken towards becoming more independent and self-sufficient.
It took a lot of weight off of her shoulders and made him feel more in control. His cooking wasn’t fancy, but it meant the world to her that he did it and had done so without making a mountain of mess. She particularly loved the lunches he’d send her off to The Eye with on days she had to head there.
Arriving back at the house Bucky smiled as they went in and were greeted by the cats. Essie went straight into the kitchen to set down the snack bags she’d been given. When she returned he smiled lightly at her, at least until he saw she was lost in thought with a small frown.
“What is it?” he asked and she blinked and looked at him, thinking for a few moments before speaking again.
“Tomorrow…it’s gonna be bad.” She admitted with a particular look he had learned meant she was pushing herself to not hide an aspect of what she was now from him, so he waited for the rest of what she had to say about it, “It’s going to be a Feeding Day…and you know what those are, but sometimes they coincide with what they think should have been my first shift day. That’s the best they can figure out here. I’m going to be in pain, miserable, and…honestly I don’t really know what’s going to happen with you here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve hallucinated you on those days. Not just you from the war…”
“The Winter Soldier.” He said and she nodded.
“Not…doing anything. Just…sitting. Silently, head tilted, watching me…but honestly I prefer him to her.” Essie said and he frowned as he went over to her, knowing who she meant.
She had explained to him that the ghosts that haunted her when sleep deprived included not only him but also her family. All of them except for one. Emmaline.
She relaxed into him as his arms wrapped around her, her head on his shoulder as she took a deep breath in and calmed herself. Her doctor had urged her to stop avoiding certain things as, while he understood that Essie didn’t want to overwhelm or hurt Bucky, not telling him in advance could do just that and worse. It wasn’t healthy for her either and neither was isolating herself in times of need or stressful situations.
He approved of the cats, saying something about how taking care of animals was shown to help those with PTSD. She had expressed her concerns over their presence as small animals being trapped in a house with someone that had a history of eating anything. He pointed out that those instances were under conditions that were not the same as the ones now as she regularly fed herself and took steps to not repeat those conditions. Then he doubled down on the cats being a good thing once he asked several more questions about them and received her answers.
Other topics had come up, including her care for Bucky’s condition having acted as a trigger yet he understood it was a difficult and complex situation she hadn’t intended to go about the way it had. He had given recommendations on how to proceed forward with it. All while stressing that she remember she was not alone, didn’t have to do it on her own, and that she needed to do things for herself as well. The main one being not isolating herself off from help by hiding things.
“He doesn’t talk. He just sits.” She said as he held her close and ran his hand up and down her back gently making her smile a bit even as her stomach grumbled, “There was…one time…I didn’t mind seeing her there. She came when he was sitting there. I think it was because it was…it was also that time of the month so I was…really out of it from pain, eating, nausea, and just being exhausted. He’s sitting in the corner chair staring, I was annoyed at him just…staring and not doing anything…feeling like absolute…shit. Physically, mentally, emotionally…and usually when I get to a low enough point Eddie comes and tells me stories. I don’t…know why, but anyway, this time it wasn’t him. It was Emmie and when I tell you I was completely out of it, I mean it, and I’m sorry…”
Essie heard the footsteps before she saw her, but then there she was. Green dress with white flowers, hair braided in two pigtails, flowers in her hair, a light jacket and brown boots. Just like always.
Emmaline.
The Soldier didn’t care as the little girl stared at him. Grey eyes blinking. Rocking back and forth on her feet as she smiled.
“You have pretty hair.”
He looked at her, blinking. Emmaline smiled more and giggled. Essie reached for her phone and dialed. It picked up on the second ring.
“Tanis…I need you to get me out of this house…and take me to Ritva. She’s in the grove…right?”
Tanis’s voice was quick to answer, concerned, and she heard him moving already, “Yeah. She’s in the grove. I’ll be right there…what’s…are you alright?”
Emmaline was sitting on the back of the chair, braiding the Soldier’s hair while he stared at Essie again. Silent. Absurd.
“No. I need…I need to get out…Emmie’s braiding his hair.”
“I was waiting on the steps for him when he got here. He took me straight to Ritva and she gave me some of the berries while listening to me. Admittedly the sight of you as the Winter Soldier with pink ribboned braids sticking out from your head is hilarious…and it also prompted me to seek help for the first time on one of those days…but it was a lot at the time.” Essie finished and Bucky huffed softly as he stood there holding her close, smile playing at his lips, “She never…says anything horrible. She just plays, asks questions, asks for stories, and…is my little sister. It just hurts to see her. More than it ever hurt to see him…”
He nodded, wondering about his own little sister, his family, and understood. The Winter Soldier wasn’t beyond Essie’s reach. Emmaline was.
“Well…if you see either of them tomorrow…you’ll tell me. Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She nodded while nuzzling into him more, calm, “You smell good.”
“I’m not dinner.” Bucky replied, light and easy, teasing her a bit and smiled gently when she chuckled.
“At least you didn’t try to tell me you don’t taste good. I’d argue.” She teased back and Bucky smiled at the memory it triggered, holding her closer as he remembered it.
“Then I’d argue it mustn’t have been that good. You haven’t kissed me like that since the 40s.” he replied and she smiled warmly.
“Oh no…no no no. We are not leaving it up to me to do that again. No. It’s not raining and interrupting you trying to kiss me again. Besides…I’m the one that got turned into some supernatural thing by some other evil thing.” Essie retorted as she knew what he was referring to.
Bucky groaned as he took a deep breath in while they sat on her couch in her flat, leaned in halfway as the rain began to hit the windowpanes, “Every time…I swear I’m cursed.”
Essie smiled and laughed lightly while shaking her head as he scowled at the dark skies outside the windows, “Well…then I better do it.”
“Huh?” he asked as he felt her pull on his tie and turned his head to face her, instead finding her lips pressing against his.
“And I didn’t? I’ve got a metal arm.” He retorted and held it up, “Courtesy of evil thing.”
“Knights have metal arms. Yours is just permanently attached.” Essie countered as she looked at him and he shook his head.
“I’m not a knight in shining armor with a mustache and a goatee like Robin Hood.”
“I don’t know if I’d laugh if you did have that or if I’d like it. I can never decide if I like the stubble, clean shave, or when it gets longer…they’re all equally nice…but Robin Hood combo…not sure.” she replied as she gently scratched his jaw, “But I’m not doing it this time. Last time we established you’re not cursed and you didn’t turn into anything else.”
“Mh…good…” Essie purred against his lips smiling against hers, his arms pulling her against him to take her lips in his sweetly and swiftly, “Hmm…you didn’t turn into a prince.”
“Why is that good?” Bucky asked.
“Because most of the princes in the fairytales are either boring, stupid, or treat their princesses horribly. I’d much rather have you.” She answered.
“I thought you were happy I didn’t turn into anything else.” He said before kissing her cheek softly, smiling as he felt it light up beneath his lips.
“I was, yes, very. I still am because I’d still rather have you.” She answered while wrapping her arms around his neck as she looked at him, “You’re better.”
“How? They’re literally Prince Charming.” Bucky asked playfully and raised his eyebrows when she just looked at him flatly.
“I am not giving you a dissertation on fairytale princes to prove my point. They were creepy, boring, or stupid…or worse if you want to get into the true depths and origins of some of them, which I’m not.” Essie answered while looking at him, “You were always better. You still are. I mean…really, Bucky…can you imagine me now with some Prince Charming like from the stories? Me? Madam Alpha? Can you imagine someone like that walking in here and trying to do anything like that?”
He smiled and shook his head while laughing lightly, “No…well…yeah, but after today I just imagine everyone tryin’ to get rid of him. ‘Who the hell are you? You see that building over there with the different stonework? That was unassailable. She blew that up and just walked in. She fought every warrior we had the day she got here and even showed mercy. She made us magical cookies after punching the town bully in the face. She gave us all a new catchphrase.’”
Essie laughed and dropped her head on his shoulder. She had forgotten to tell him before they left that he’d likely hear Steve’s name at some point. Her people had followed her example and elevated it. Anyone, usually children, that said they were going to do some grandiose thing much larger than they were capable of physically doing or announced they were going to something recklessly stupid, or were in the process of doing it, were responded to with two words: “Okay, Steve.”
He had heard it halfway through their day when a kid climbing the side of a building to get his sister’s toy was called out by his mother.
“Okay, Steve, get your little rear down here this instant! You could have just come inside and gone out the window to the flower box, not scale the building!”
Bucky had looked at Essie immediately as she started laughing while explaining she had inadvertently caused them to adopt her habit of naming people Steve. He just shook his head laughing. It wasn’t the last time it happened.
“I didn’t make magical cookies.” Essie countered as she laughed while looking back at him and smiled when he pressed his forehead to hers.
“I know, but they’d tell some prince walking in that they were and then ask if he could make magical cookies. If I hadn’t gone down to the village here already I’d have been worried about today more than I was. Your people love you, are proud of you, and…if anyone ever…took you or tried to take you…not only would I lose my damn mind completely…but they’d all be there helping me rip things apart.” He said and she ran her fingers through his hair tenderly.
“They definitely wouldn’t let you do it alone. You’re part of the Pack. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Wolf or not.” She said as she looked into his eyes before kissing his cheek, “I told you…I’m not doing it this time, no matter how much you try to distract me from that and flatter me. I’m not doing it this time . I want you to make the decision to take that step forward. I’m not gonna make it for you no matter how much I want it. It needs to be your choice. It doesn’t have to happen now. Or ever. We can continue as we are. Whatever you want, whenever you’re ready.”
Her stomach grumbled. They both glanced down and Essie sighed, yet she smiled at the sensation of his hand tilting her head back up to look at him, thumb gently running over her lips, remembering them.
She watched him swallow as he thought about it. Longing yet…unsure. There was something there holding him back.
“What if it’s not what you remember?” He asked and she smiled.
“Nothing has been like what I remember, Bucky, but that doesn’t make it worse or bad. Maybe it’ll be better.” She answered and shrugged her eyebrows up, “I mean…you cook now. That’s better.”
He smiled before pressing his lips to hers softly, pulling her closer as hers pressed back. It ended must as softly as it had begun, his nose lightly running against hers as he caressed her face with a smile. Then her stomach grumbled again.
“Let’s get you some food.” Bucky smiled and she nodded with smile before pressing a soft kiss to his lips he happily returned, “You want me to cook?”
“Please.”
A/N: Progress. Yes. Mentally and romantically. Next chapter sees more of the changes to the MCU canon I have made.
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Summary: To the intelligence community the Winter Soldier is a ghost, but to HYDRA the Howling Witch is a harbinger of doom that will stop at nothing to get at their prized asset. A phantom that leaves swathes of destruction in her wake. She is the biggest mistake they ever made.
Chapter Summary: Essie and Bucky continue their discussion and Essie explains how she came to be Alpha.
Word Count: ~7K
Warnings: Language, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, Gun Violence, Shifting Character POVs, Frustrated & Aggravated Superheroes, HYDRA ( legitimate warning on their own), Light Angst, Self-Loathing, Mentions of worry of self-harm, Flashbacks, Recovering Winter Bucky's broken logic, Blood, Mentions of human experimentation, mentions of torture, Wolf shifters (the good kind and the bad kind. This is a warning in and of itself this time.), Questionable Alpha Challenge Rituals (I do not want to give more away than that). (I really need to just do a separate post for these)
A/N: Very late, well not very for me, but late. This touchpad is annoying. It hates dragging, it works fine then flies all over the screen, and I have also been otherwise preoccupied with things. The gif does not fully fit the chapter, but close enough. Um...read warnings. This one gets...well a bit fucked up, but not too bad? It covers an event mentioned in the Prologues but a little more in depth.
NOTE: I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING COPIED OR PUT INTO ANY FORM OF AI. (Also if there are typos it's likely my old keyboard. I will fix as I find them, because no matter how many times I proofread there's always at least one).
A loud clap of thunder jolted them all awake. Essie and Bucky were both sat upright in a second. Both were looking back and forth, on edge, assessing the room for damage, threats, and the source of the bang until they heard the rain start pelting down. Only then did they slowly relax.
“The Blitz?” he asked and she shook her head after running her fingers through her hair a bit, calming down.
“No. The HYDRA facility in England. They’d bang on the bars whenever I’d go to sleep too long.” She said while running her fingers through her hair and he frowned, “You?”
“Azzano.” He answered and she nodded, “Are these storms usually like this?”
“Once in a while in spring. Are you alright?” Essie asked and he nodded as he looked at her, searching her face, relaxing as he did.
“Yeah. You?” he asked and she nodded as she searched his and relaxed a bit, “I hate what happened to you…but I’m happy you’re here.”
“It makes you feel conflicted about it…doesn’t it?” she asked and he nodded after a moment, “Selfish.”
“Yeah.” Bucky answered as he looked at her, shaking his head, “I don’t…understand how…after everything I did…I still get to have you…but…you’re only here because of what they did to you.”
“Like you are? Bucky…it’s not your fault. What they did to me is not your fault. I chose to go out into the field when they asked for people to help through the forest. I always told you one more thing and I’d go out myself. I meant it. That’s on me…not you.” She said while cuddling back into him as the thunder cracked overhead again, “You’re here…with me. Alive. I’ve done…things I don’t want to remember…but…even though I feel selfish for being happy that you’re here…I know that what they did to you isn’t my fault. It’s not your fault either. HYDRA did this to us. Past and present. HYDRA stole so much from us. Don’t give them more. We’re not here because of them. We’re here in spite of them.”
“Was this how you felt…when you realized I was alive? After the facility.” He asked and she nodded.
“I refused to give them you. I felt conflicted at first. Torn. Selfish about being happy that you weren’t gone yet were being held captive like I was. I can’t take full credit for the epiphany I had. Most of it has to go to Eric. I think he got tired of my sulking and talking in circles about it because he just sat his sword down, looked at me and said: ‘Did you do it? Were you the one that sawed his arm off, gave him a metal arm, and then put him in a freezer? No? Then stop feeling guilty about something you didn’t do.’ Then he accused me of not feeling bad about almost eating him, which was a lie. I still feel bad about that.” she answered and looked at him, “Point being…he was right. We didn’t do this to each other. HYDRA did this to us. We are here now, as we are, in spite of them not because of them. As we should have been…just with…some extra flavoring.”
“We’re not a cake.”
“No. We’re cookies. Hard and crusty on the outside but still sweet and delicious in the middle.” She said and he paused to think about it, and to argue, “I have proof you’re sweet in the middle.”
He sighed. Yet even though he did, and even though he fought it, the corners of his mouth tilted upwards. So did hers even as the thunder cracked again and he held her closer.
“I guess my tour will have to wait…” he said and she nodded while watching the rain pour outside before getting up with a soft sigh, “What is it?”
Bucky watched her go over to the corner where he saw Willow hunkered down and hiding with her kittens. Essie just put her arms out for them and scooped them up when they went into them, all of them. It just made him smile. As much as she grumped about them she loved them just as much as he did.
“C’mere.” He said and held his arms out and pulled her down into his lap to lay back down with her and the cats, letting them curl up on his stomach and under her arm and then the blanket she pulled over them, petting Willow’s head gently while she peered out from under it, “You don’t like these either, do you?”
“Mao.” She meowed softly and licked Knox’s head when he snuggled into her side nervously, Aspen tucked up against Alpine under Essie’s arm, Pitch stuffed down between them, his head picking up and looking around whenever the thunder clapped.
“It’s okay…just thunder. You’re safe.” Essie cooed while relaxing against Bucky again, “We’re all safe.”
“Safe…warm…home.” Bucky nodded and listened to the rain fall outside, “Essie?”
“Hm?”
“Why…I mean…I’m probably remembering it…I dunno…biased right now…but why’s it feel like whenever we wanna go out it…it rains?” he asked as he looked up at the large rough hewn timbers above him and she let out a short laugh.
“Because we were in London when we were first together and had days to do that. I remember every single time it started raining just as you were about to kiss me. Every-”
“Single time. Yeah.” He laughed softly, shaking his head, “It drove me crazy.”
“Mhmm…” she hummed warmly while nuzzling into his shoulder contently, her hand resting on his chest idly as his rested on her side, “It was funny for me. You were so…overwhelmed by how much it rained there. I was used to it. You were the only person that could get me to laugh like that…to smile and mean it. Everyone thought you were crazy. I even did. Plenty of girls to choose. Ones that didn’t hit you in the head with their notepads, argue with you, snap at you, and…that would have been more than happy to go dancing and letting you pull them off anywhere you wanted. Instead…you picked me and I never felt like you were doing it because I was a challenge.”
“You weren’t. I…I still don’t remember everything, lately a lot of it’s from before you, my family, rescuing Steve from being beaten up in alleys, things you don’t want me to talk about to you, and stuff like that…but I remember why it was you. Steve brought me down to the war room, where you were workin’ after I agreed to follow him and help him. He thinks it was because I saw you goin’ a mile a minute waving papers in your hand and beating someone in the head with a big rolled up map calling him an illiterate moron.”
“If it was that then you were, and likely still are, crazy.”
“Well, yeah I am, but no. That wasn’t it. You were gorgeous…feisty…and so smart…but it was when you smiled. Later, when it was just the two of us going over the map, me trying to remember what Steve pointed out better, and I said something about him that made you smile and chuckle. That did it. No goin’ back from that.”
Essie smiled gently as she looked at his face and he turned it to look at her. There was a small smile playing at his lips. Gentle. Tentatively grateful. Hers.
It felt good to see it. It eased the vice grip doubt had around her hope that he would stay when it was all out in the open and he really understood what it was she was now. Yet as she looked at him, she couldn’t help thinking about what Ritva had said earlier as she reached up and gently caressed his cheek.
“Is that what you told Ritva about me?” she asked and he smiled a bit more.
“I told her I missed it…and I wish you’d stop actin’ like I’m afraid of what you are, because I’m not. I told her about us, what I remembered, not all of it, but enough she’d understand. I told her I wish I still deserved you like that…and she told me that…I was just like you and that I couldn’t decide I wasn’t.” Bucky answered and watched her face as he waited for the reaction.
“There’s never been a male anything that deserves me more than you. Not once did you ever question why I was the one you were told to listen to. You only ever asked why I did what I did. Not because you saw me as strange to be throwing myself into a world of men like that but because you wanted to know what my motivation was for doing it…because you knew there was one. Even now. You don’t question that I’m the Alpha here, you don’t challenge my ability to lead, you just ask how I became Alpha in a technical sense to understand how it came about.”
“Which you won’t tell me because you think it’ll be too much and that I’ll leave because of it.” He said and she looked at him making him shake his head as he took her hand in his and kissed it softly, “No one here that I’ve talked to about it will tell me, but…not because they’re afraid of you or disturbed by it. They want you to be proud of yourself for it. How bad can it be if they look at it as a good thing?”
“Bucky, they’re Wolf people. They don’t think the same way humans do.” She said and he looked at her more pointedly, silently trying to tell her he wanted to know, and she took a deep breath in, thinking, “What have they told you about it?”
“Not a lot. They said the old Alpha here was a Low tyrant, which I know means they hate his guts. Tanis told me that a lot of them wanted to get rid of him, they just weren’t strong enough to, and that he did horrible things to the women here. That he’d tried and failed and was about to be punished for it when you came. The females. Still getting’ used to that. Ruun told me that even though you don’t look it…you’re stronger than he is and made sure he understood that without putting him down for it…which Ritva explained was because he hid her away for her own safety. Maggie just says you were magnificent and wishes you’d stop arguing with them all about being a Wolf or not and that…she was proud to be your Delta and to be part of what brought you here even if it meant knowing what chains had felt like and what it felt like to smell like an Italian restaurant. She said you rescued her and Tilda from some sort of…blood auction the old Alpha sold them to. Other than that…nothing else.”
Essie nodded and thought about it for a moment, “Eric and I were following a lead I’d picked up from a vampire infested HYDRA base in Madrid about what the vampires called an auction for ‘rare vintages’. Vampires occasionally work with HYDRA on a small scale, and they both have tendencies to take over each other’s bases when they don’t.”
“I remember an incident of that from the war…that was…something else.” He said with a sigh and she nodded before continuing.
“You were in cryo at the time and HYDRA was being unusually quiet with things, so I had the extra time to help track this auction down. It took a while to get an actual pinpointed location for it and then to prepare for it so we wouldn’t miss it, be overwhelmed, and could get anyone there that was to be auctioned off out without hurting them. That was the difficult part. Usually on big gatherings like that, if we knew in advance, well…HYDRA made a mistake with me they didn’t quite make the same way with you that they learned to regret very quickly. Had Steve ever jumped on something I made he wouldn’t have gotten back up. However…with this auction…we couldn’t exactly do that. We had to think of alternative means. One that involved garlic concentrate. Garlic and vampires don’t mix just as much as fire and vampires don’t mix. Any large gathering they have nowadays they’ll have a fire sprinkler system in it. Sometimes they load them with blood for blood raves which is disgusting, but this particular one had water in it that I replaced with as much garlic concentrate as I could get my hands on.”
“Which explains why she said she smelled like an Italian restaurant.” He said and Essie nodded, “It’d take the vamps out without hurting people that weren’t vampires.”
“Exactly, and while this was our goal…it still meant we had plenty of other people to worry about. Vampires employ human guards, either through just straight up employment or because the humans worship them on some level. Blade, what Eric usually prefers to be called I just usually don’t, he has a harder time than I do telling the difference. It’s gotten him in trouble before and when we’re on a hunt together, despite him being the senior partner, he’ll defer to me to tell the difference because of my sense of smell. Anyway, that wasn’t really an issue in this case as much as it was something to figure out what they meant by ‘rare vintages’. Once they were all gathered and the auction started…we locked the place down and hit the sprinkler system. It was an absolute disgusting mess, and it pissed off the human fanboys. There’s these two terrified, women on the auction stage, wearing only underwear…and it’s the most denigrating underwear available at the time, in chains…with collars…”
“You saw red again. Didn’t you?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Instantly, but I wasn’t Hungry at this time, so it was very controlled rage. The two women, were female Lycans, and you can already guess that they were Tilda and Maggie.” Essie continued and he nodded, listening even though his insides twisted at the thought of what they’d gone through, the humiliation they were subjected to, and the terror they had to have felt, “Once I was done dispatching the people that were keeping them in chains they were just staring at me, not afraid, but…in just utter awe. There were others, just humans with special blood types, ethnicities, and particular genetics. Some we still talk to today, because their particular genetics were of the mutant variety and we took them somewhere where they could be safe. That’s a whole different story from this one and even if it’s short…we’re doing this one.”
“Yeah. You could smell the difference?” he asked and she nodded, “What do I smell like to you?”
“Not now. Let me finish and ask that later. It’s a more complicated answer than you’d think.” She said and he nodded, “Well, I knew they smelled different, but I didn’t really understand what they were until they explained and said that they could smell me the same way I could smell them and asked what Pack I was from. I had always known from what files I’d looked at that the main ingredient in their concoction for me was Lycan, but I’d never met any that were willing to actually talk to me…or any that were female. They’d talk to Eric if we encountered them. Never me even if I asked them a direct question. I didn’t take that well, but it quickly became too much of a hassle to deal with them so whenever we’d encountered them I’d just walk off and let him talk to them. It wasn’t worth the energy to go through the posturing and dominance jockeying every single time we encountered one. So…when I met Maggie and Tilda…it was a whole new world of information for me.”
“I know the feeling.” Bucky said and she nodded.
“I know you do, which helps in telling this because you’ll understand that it was overwhelming for me yet also…absolutely enrapturing. It made things I’d do make sense and made me feel less insane and less…less alone. They were completely mystified that I was a combat trained female and had no Pack. They rationalized me not being insane from isolation as me having made Eric my Pack.”
“Is that why they never just…leave us alone for more than a day?” he asked and she nodded.
“Yes. Wolves are highly social. When I’m in The Eye or out in town or anywhere…they all ask about you. Every single time. They all know who you are, what you are to me, and are legitimately worried about you being isolated or are isolating yourself. I have to repeatedly tell them that Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, and Maggie visit you frequently. That placates them to an extent but they’re all getting itchy to welcome you into the fold.” She said and he blinked a bit, not sure how to feel about it.
On one hand it made him happy. He knew how important she was to them and that they accepted him, even being near her was something he recognized as significant. On the other hand…there was The Winter Soldier.
“Do they know what…what I did?” he asked and she looked at him pointedly, “As The Winter Soldier?”
“Mm…I’ll take it…and yes. They know…and believe me that only makes them more eager. I told you that they’re good people and they understand a lot more than one would think but believe me they know what it’s like to be made to do things beyond their control.” Essie said as she held his hand, “Maggie and Tilda taught me what it was to be a Wolf as they understood it, which…was skewed by what their Alpha was like. I taught them…everything that I could that he was wrong and trained them both to fight, like I do. They asked me to, so I did…and as I did they told me more about Ulfhrafn and what it was and how it was and what their Alpha was doing and…it made me mad. Then there was the fact that, not only was he was selling his own people to vampires for profit, but he was also ultimately the one that gave HYDRA the information that led to what happened to my family.”
Bucky’s eyes widened, his stomach sank and twisted as it burned. He had figured HYDRA got the information about Lycans and Wolves from folktales and myth, but he’d questioned how they got the biological and genetic resources to try and change people. It made sickening sense…but…
“Why?”
“To save himself and make money. They didn’t know he was the Alpha…and they didn’t question how he knew where a supply of fresh Lycan blood was. I only found out because…HYDRA was being quiet…and I wanted to know why so…went digging and found a base near the Baltic. Maggie and Tilda were with me. It wasn’t vampire-related and Eric had somewhere else to be, so it was just us. Tearing through it with two extra people that could do most of what I can do made it a lot faster, so they didn’t have as much time to destroy information as they previously did.” She began to explain while toying with his metal fingers lightly and idly, “I had stacks and stacks of papers to go through that dated back to the war. There was information on you, which I went through first, but it wasn’t anything new, so I went through the rest of it and found the name of the supplier they had for the Lycan blood. Maggie was the one that pointed out it was the same name as the then Alpha, which I will not repeat nor will anyone here. No name means no memory and no memory means he’s truly gone and can never live again ever in any capacity. It’s the ultimate dishonor for them. Anyway, Tilda said the same thing and there was a picture included and it was him.”
“So, you saw red.”
“No. I didn’t see red.” Essie said and he looked at her and waited for her to continue as she thought of how to best word it, “I was…upset and angry and…and all of that. Yet it…it was…it wasn’t raw, triggered, rage. It was…deeper, harder, and…it felt like the ultimate betrayal. Now…Maggie and Tilda had floated the idea of going to Ulfhrafn to me and ‘teaching them all a lesson’ a few times prior to then, but I’ll be honest with you…I didn’t take them seriously. They were barely out of their teenaged years at this point. Did I trust them in a fight? Yes. Did I see them as fully formed adults capable of making their own decisions? Yes. Absolutely. Did I see them as a bit overeager and ‘Steve-like’? One hundred percent. Yes.”
Bucky snickered. He didn’t mean to. He just couldn’t help it, and he knew she wasn’t mad by the way she smiled and nodded.
“Really?” he asked and she nodded, “Steve-like?”
“Yes. I didn’t know he was alive and just a star-spangled popsicle at the time, but I never forgot him and would rate people’s…overeagerness to jump into situations beyond their physical limitations by him. People I met that were like he was in that sense…I named them all Steve.” She said and he shook with barely restrained laughter she smiled at while cuddling into him, “When they started on their ideas to do it…they were two Steves…but then we found those files and I…I realized in that moment that…they weren’t Steves…they were me when I was young. My family was taken away. My country was taken over by a tyrant that sacrificed his own people. I was kept as a special prize to be traded away at the earliest chance to make significant profit. They were me…and…I put my hunt for you aside for the first time…because…I couldn’t watch anyone else become me. So…I contacted Eric…and told him what I was going to do. He didn’t like it…not one bit…but he agreed to help.”
“How? Wait…never mind.” Bucky said, shaking his head, “You’d need him to get you in even if Maggie and Tilda brought you to the entrance…because you aren’t a male.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t just waltz in and there was no way to secretly sneak in. So…over the course of several months I trained with Maggie in her shift forms. The full quadrupedal one and the bipedal one. She’s bigger than Tilda in shift and I don’t shift so I had to learn how to deal with someone that could. She got me a couple of times pretty good until I grew to learn how to deal with the two forms. Then we worked on getting Blade, notorious vampire hunter, an invitation in to buy some more upgraded weaponry. Lycans are in the business of managing other supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves and such things. Other societies do this, but Lycans are a large one. Took a bit to get him one, but then we did and we timed it so it would coincide with a Feeding Day.”
He looked at her silently and unmoving. Bucky had learned early on that Feeding Day meant a day, roughly once every week, where Essie did little more than eat. It was one of the first things he had asked Ruun about.
Ruun’s answer had been that, as far as they could figure, it was due entirely to her inability to shift. He explained that teenagers often went through periods of intense hunger before shifting for the first time. Like their bodies were building up the energy for the event which he described as intense. The best theory they had for why Essie ate like that was that it was like her body was on a constant loop of that. It was a sound theory as it was also capable of explaining her shortened temper when Hungry.
The Beta had also said they learned early on to take Feeding Days seriously.
Now Bucky knew why.
“Then…because I knew what I had to do to win…I stopped eating.” She continued and he looked at her with a frown while squeezing her hand and she nodded, “Yes. I purposely starved myself and when the time came to go…I let Eric put a collar and leash on because we had to sell it…and we sold it. He brought me up to The Eye, where the Alpha was, and offered me to him as a gift in return for their services and goods. Tanis was there to receive punishment, so was Ruun, but my presentation took precedence. The Alpha took one look at me, licked his lips, and accepted…then…I issued the Challenge. He laughed and thanked Eric for bringing him something entertaining…until the chains dropped off and Eric told him I wasn’t joking…and that it was Feeding Day. That was the hardest, most brutal, and bloodiest battle I’ve ever been in. He sent in others to stop me, Eric took some of them on, I took on the rest…Tanis and Ruun helped and I went after the Alpha. He was strong…I have a scar down my side where your fingers are from one of his claws. That it scarred at all should tell you how deep it went.”
Bucky gently felt for it through her shirt. It was there, faint, but long and jagged. He didn’t want to say anything. Not yet.
“To…assume the position of Alpha…you have to do more than just win a Challenge and…I did, and I didn’t hesitate to do it. I ripped his heart out…and then I ate it…and then I used every last drop of blood in his body to force his Beta and Gamma to release the files of his wrong doing to the Pack, cast a series of protective wards around all of those innocent of what had been done wrong…and…let the Challengers come. I had won, but they had a right to Challenge back and several did. The ones Eric and I had been dealing with for decades. One by one they Challenged me. One by one they failed. By the time it was over…I was drenched in so much blood that it was like I bathed in it.” Essie said while watching his face and then waited.
It was a lot to process and a lot to imagine. It should have been hard. It would have been if he didn’t know her as well as he did.
She wasn’t the same as she was during the war, but Steve said she wasn’t that different from that Essie when you got right down to it and he was right. This one was just physically stronger and more physically capable of things. If Bucky hadn’t known that he’d have found it harder to imagine. If he didn’t have several memories of her ruthlessly interfering in several of his missions through the decades he’d have found it harder to imagine. If several of those memories didn’t involve her mercilessly taking out members of the squads they sent him with he’d have found it harder to imagine.
Yet, as he looked at her face and studied it, knowing she was waiting for him to see the monster she imagined herself to be…he didn’t and couldn’t. What she had done was disgusting but he didn’t think for a moment that she had enjoyed it and, as a memory floated through his mind of something Monty had said, it wasn’t exactly something beyond the point of something he’d never thought she would do. Granted Monty had said it as a joke, but it was only funny because it had been true.
One question did come to his mind, though, well…two…but he didn’t think one was appropriate.
“Was he in full shift or…the big..hulking wolf person kind?” he asked and she answered.
“He was in the big, hulking, wolf person shift. He shifted several times in and out of full fur and bipedal thing and his skin form to try and dodge me, but I’m fast and was faster than he was.” She answered and he nodded, “He tasted terrible. I’d eaten cow ones…granted they were cooked…and I’d cooked them myself…but…no. Ritva tried to tell me it was because he was corrupted and evil…I didn’t agree. He smelled horrible, too…but he tasted worse…the worst thing I’ve ever eaten…and that includes HYDRA’s prisoner food.”
“Ugh…” he replied and she nodded, “Well you answered the question I didn’t think was right to ask.”
“What he tasted like?” she asked and he nodded, “I mean…I’d ask why you wanted to know but it’s not everyday you hear your girlfriend kind of….literally ate a guy’s heart.”
“I’m confused about why that’s a thing you had to do to become Alpha. Is it…a tradition, a cultural thing, or…is there more to it?” he asked and she answered, knowing he was simply trying to understand if he should be disturbed by it or not and to what degree.
“It’s a magic thing. The title can be passed peacefully, but there’s a blood rite involved because every village and town and safe area in Ulfhrafn is warded and made safe against things in the forests that would eat people. Those wards are tied to the Alpha. They are emitted by the large standing stones you see everywhere in the towns and outskirts or near the Timbers. That’s the easy to understand and explain part of it. It’s been…25 years about…from then…and I’m still learning everything it means to be Alpha and Wolf.” She explained while looking at him, waiting for more of a reaction, and when she didn’t get one, seeing he was rather calm about it, she spoke again, “Why are you so calm about this?”
Bucky knew he had to answer this carefully. He also knew he had to frame this in a way she wouldn’t get upset at him. That meant he’d have to blame Monty, and though he had been Bucky’s friend…he was willing to do that.
“Well…one day…while we were goin’ through one of the bases…we got to talkin’ about things and…eventually they started doin’ their usual thing picking on me for bein’ so crazy about you. Now…Monty eventually said something along the lines of: ‘Barnes…if she were ever given the chance to sit down and carve out Schmidt’s heart and eat it…she would do so with a side of spaetzle and wash it down with a glass of peach schnapps’. I’ll admit that I laughed…but only because I knew you would, but one part would be completely different and I told him that. ‘Wouldn’t be peach schnapps, it’d be apple. Apple goes better with pig’.” He said and she thought while licking her lips for a moment.
“I want to agree with him, but at the same time I don’t know if I would have. Not because I’d have been unwilling to eat it, but I’d have been concerned about it due to what he became after injecting himself with the serum. You’re right about the schnapps.” She said and cuddled him, kissing his cheek, “I am stupidly proud of you for remembering that then and now that apple goes with pork better.”
He smiled at the sensation of her lips against his cheek. Soft, warm, sweet. Just as he remembered them to be.
Yet the memories of things he’d done filed in one after the other next. They weighed his joy back down with ice cold metal. The pit in his stomach twisted as he let them, guilt churning in it until it spread from there and out and despite Ritva’s words he couldn’t help feeling as if he didn’t deserve the warmth and tenderness she showed him or the comfort she gave him.
“We’re both stained with our pasts, Bucky…but…maybe together…we can find a way to…move forward with our lives. Ritva said…that…I focus too much on what they made me into instead of what I want to be…and that I spent seventy years defining myself by that and by the hunt for you.” Essie said as she toyed with his metal fingers and he looked at her, “She’s right. She usually is when she says things. Including when she said that…it’s time for us to get some help. I don’t know how to help you understand that what you did as The Winter Soldier wasn’t your fault any more than I know how to stop seeing myself as a monster in the mirror. Part of me knows I’m not…but…the rest doesn’t listen.
“I want to be…I just want to be good, healthy, happy, safe, and…I don’t want to feel like a monster that HYDRA created anymore. I’ve given them seventy years of my life and attention and…I know I’ll have to give more of my attention to them, but I’m tired of giving them my self-worth, my mind, and I’m not letting them have my man back. Ever. Even if he decides he doesn’t want to be mine, they can’t have him.”
Bucky didn’t answer at first. He knew she was right. They both needed help. As much as he didn’t want to admit that he needed help beyond the people he was talking to currently, he knew he did if for one reason only: It was hurting her.
She held up the façade of strength around her people, her subordinates, and even to her officials to a point. Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, Maggie…they all knew she was struggling but they didn’t know how much. They didn’t see what Bucky did every day, even when she didn’t think he was paying attention or even mentally there.
He hated it. The early days he just shut down when the memories became too much and she had to push him through the act of even functioning. The nights he knew he held her too hard just out of fear she wasn’t real and would be gone in the morning. Days and nights she hid every weapon and sharp object in the house somewhere he couldn’t find them because she knew. She knew without him having to say a word that the thought had crossed his mind to just…end it. Even if that thought was always followed immediately by the refusal to put her, and Steve, through that…it was that she had seen the initial thought.
As strong as she was, as much of a front as she put up even with him at times, Bucky knew her well enough to see that she was wearing down. He’d seen it plenty of times in the war when she’d run herself ragged and he’d have to make her rest. It was just worse now and he was the cause.
Essie did everything for him and he hated it. She ran a whole country and group of people while taking care of him, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, going to the market, seeing him through the night, reminding him how to use the technology, and doing everything she could to pick up the pieces of him while she slowly fell apart.
Bucky did as much as he could in return, that he could get to before she did, but that only triggered her to start doing it before she’d do anything else. The only thing he could manage to do without her getting to it first was cleaning up after the cats. He thanked her sensitive sense of smell for that one.
He’d voiced his frustrations to Ruun earlier. That had been what prompted the Beta to urge him to speak with Essie. They saw the cracks, but they knew very well they couldn’t make her do anything unless she wanted to.
“I don’t want to talk to a shrink. I don’t want someone else tryin’ to get into my head. I do not like the idea of being alone with someone that I don’t know with a notepad in their hand writin’ down all my feelings and telling me how to live my life. It’s…it’s too much like HYDRA. Alone. Sitting. Notebooks. Telling me what to do.” He said as he looked at her and moved his hand from hers to gently caress her face with it, being extra careful with the metal, “You tell me what to do but that’s different. You’re…you’re mine. That’s not changin’ as long as you don’t want it to, and I’d love for you to stop thinkin’ that I see what you do in the mirror. I don’t. You’re not the same girl I fell in love with back then…no…but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the same way for the one you are now. That being said and because I do feel that same way…I’ll try. With a shrink…but I want someone else there with me that I know and trust…and I want it clear that the only reason I’m agreeing to do it is because…even though all I see in the mirror is either the Winter Soldier or a broken man, you don’t see that and…I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I want…what you do. I wanna be good, healthy, not broken, and free from HYDRA. I don’t wanna be what they made anymore. I mean…the arm isn’t goin’ anywhere…but…y’know.”
“Mmm…about the words…you remember I told you I was talking to one of my allies about the deprogramming?” she asked and he nodded slowly.
“Yeah…they finally get back to you on that?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Well, they did a while ago, but you weren’t in a state to even start doing anything they recommended, which I told them and they understood. I have arranged for…a visit from a couple of them. It is a…tenuous alliance. One forged through…admittedly through diplomacy alone and not personal affection of any kind. That being said the ones I’ll be allowing a visit are the ones I like and get along with more. The heir, his sister, a few of their guards. I’m hoping that visit doesn’t coincide with when everyone else shows up or there will be a discussion about the shield.” Essie said and he blinked at her in confusion, “I’ll tell you about it more another day. For now…I really want to move but…uh…”
She glanced down at the cats, all of them asleep, contently curled up as the rain slowly dissipated outside. Bucky just smiled and looked at her. For all her complaining about them…and teasing of him…she loved them just as much.
A/N: Yes, that happened. Yes, they were still cuddling on the couch the whole time. Next chapter should be up on schedule. Hopefully.
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Summary: To the intelligence community the Winter Soldier is a ghost, but to HYDRA the Howling Witch is a harbinger of doom that will stop at nothing to get at their prized asset. A phantom that leaves swathes of destruction in her wake. She is the biggest mistake they ever made.
Chapter Summary: Essie and Bucky continue their discussion and Essie explains how she came to be Alpha.
Word Count: ~7K
Warnings: Language, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, Gun Violence, Shifting Character POVs, Frustrated & Aggravated Superheroes, HYDRA ( legitimate warning on their own), Light Angst, Self-Loathing, Mentions of worry of self-harm, Flashbacks, Recovering Winter Bucky's broken logic, Blood, Mentions of human experimentation, mentions of torture, Wolf shifters (the good kind and the bad kind. This is a warning in and of itself this time.), Questionable Alpha Challenge Rituals (I do not want to give more away than that). (I really need to just do a separate post for these)
A/N: Very late, well not very for me, but late. This touchpad is annoying. It hates dragging, it works fine then flies all over the screen, and I have also been otherwise preoccupied with things. The gif does not fully fit the chapter, but close enough. Um...read warnings. This one gets...well a bit fucked up, but not too bad? It covers an event mentioned in the Prologues but a little more in depth.
NOTE: I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING COPIED OR PUT INTO ANY FORM OF AI. (Also if there are typos it's likely my old keyboard. I will fix as I find them, because no matter how many times I proofread there's always at least one).
A loud clap of thunder jolted them all awake. Essie and Bucky were both sat upright in a second. Both were looking back and forth, on edge, assessing the room for damage, threats, and the source of the bang until they heard the rain start pelting down. Only then did they slowly relax.
“The Blitz?” he asked and she shook her head after running her fingers through her hair a bit, calming down.
“No. The HYDRA facility in England. They’d bang on the bars whenever I’d go to sleep too long.” She said while running her fingers through her hair and he frowned, “You?”
“Azzano.” He answered and she nodded, “Are these storms usually like this?”
“Once in a while in spring. Are you alright?” Essie asked and he nodded as he looked at her, searching her face, relaxing as he did.
“Yeah. You?” he asked and she nodded as she searched his and relaxed a bit, “I hate what happened to you…but I’m happy you’re here.”
“It makes you feel conflicted about it…doesn’t it?” she asked and he nodded after a moment, “Selfish.”
“Yeah.” Bucky answered as he looked at her, shaking his head, “I don’t…understand how…after everything I did…I still get to have you…but…you’re only here because of what they did to you.”
“Like you are? Bucky…it’s not your fault. What they did to me is not your fault. I chose to go out into the field when they asked for people to help through the forest. I always told you one more thing and I’d go out myself. I meant it. That’s on me…not you.” She said while cuddling back into him as the thunder cracked overhead again, “You’re here…with me. Alive. I’ve done…things I don’t want to remember…but…even though I feel selfish for being happy that you’re here…I know that what they did to you isn’t my fault. It’s not your fault either. HYDRA did this to us. Past and present. HYDRA stole so much from us. Don’t give them more. We’re not here because of them. We’re here in spite of them.”
“Was this how you felt…when you realized I was alive? After the facility.” He asked and she nodded.
“I refused to give them you. I felt conflicted at first. Torn. Selfish about being happy that you weren’t gone yet were being held captive like I was. I can’t take full credit for the epiphany I had. Most of it has to go to Eric. I think he got tired of my sulking and talking in circles about it because he just sat his sword down, looked at me and said: ‘Did you do it? Were you the one that sawed his arm off, gave him a metal arm, and then put him in a freezer? No? Then stop feeling guilty about something you didn’t do.’ Then he accused me of not feeling bad about almost eating him, which was a lie. I still feel bad about that.” she answered and looked at him, “Point being…he was right. We didn’t do this to each other. HYDRA did this to us. We are here now, as we are, in spite of them not because of them. As we should have been…just with…some extra flavoring.”
“We’re not a cake.”
“No. We’re cookies. Hard and crusty on the outside but still sweet and delicious in the middle.” She said and he paused to think about it, and to argue, “I have proof you’re sweet in the middle.”
He sighed. Yet even though he did, and even though he fought it, the corners of his mouth tilted upwards. So did hers even as the thunder cracked again and he held her closer.
“I guess my tour will have to wait…” he said and she nodded while watching the rain pour outside before getting up with a soft sigh, “What is it?”
Bucky watched her go over to the corner where he saw Willow hunkered down and hiding with her kittens. Essie just put her arms out for them and scooped them up when they went into them, all of them. It just made him smile. As much as she grumped about them she loved them just as much as he did.
“C’mere.” He said and held his arms out and pulled her down into his lap to lay back down with her and the cats, letting them curl up on his stomach and under her arm and then the blanket she pulled over them, petting Willow’s head gently while she peered out from under it, “You don’t like these either, do you?”
“Mao.” She meowed softly and licked Knox’s head when he snuggled into her side nervously, Aspen tucked up against Alpine under Essie’s arm, Pitch stuffed down between them, his head picking up and looking around whenever the thunder clapped.
“It’s okay…just thunder. You’re safe.” Essie cooed while relaxing against Bucky again, “We’re all safe.”
“Safe…warm…home.” Bucky nodded and listened to the rain fall outside, “Essie?”
“Hm?”
“Why…I mean…I’m probably remembering it…I dunno…biased right now…but why’s it feel like whenever we wanna go out it…it rains?” he asked as he looked up at the large rough hewn timbers above him and she let out a short laugh.
“Because we were in London when we were first together and had days to do that. I remember every single time it started raining just as you were about to kiss me. Every-”
“Single time. Yeah.” He laughed softly, shaking his head, “It drove me crazy.”
“Mhmm…” she hummed warmly while nuzzling into his shoulder contently, her hand resting on his chest idly as his rested on her side, “It was funny for me. You were so…overwhelmed by how much it rained there. I was used to it. You were the only person that could get me to laugh like that…to smile and mean it. Everyone thought you were crazy. I even did. Plenty of girls to choose. Ones that didn’t hit you in the head with their notepads, argue with you, snap at you, and…that would have been more than happy to go dancing and letting you pull them off anywhere you wanted. Instead…you picked me and I never felt like you were doing it because I was a challenge.”
“You weren’t. I…I still don’t remember everything, lately a lot of it’s from before you, my family, rescuing Steve from being beaten up in alleys, things you don’t want me to talk about to you, and stuff like that…but I remember why it was you. Steve brought me down to the war room, where you were workin’ after I agreed to follow him and help him. He thinks it was because I saw you goin’ a mile a minute waving papers in your hand and beating someone in the head with a big rolled up map calling him an illiterate moron.”
“If it was that then you were, and likely still are, crazy.”
“Well, yeah I am, but no. That wasn’t it. You were gorgeous…feisty…and so smart…but it was when you smiled. Later, when it was just the two of us going over the map, me trying to remember what Steve pointed out better, and I said something about him that made you smile and chuckle. That did it. No goin’ back from that.”
Essie smiled gently as she looked at his face and he turned it to look at her. There was a small smile playing at his lips. Gentle. Tentatively grateful. Hers.
It felt good to see it. It eased the vice grip doubt had around her hope that he would stay when it was all out in the open and he really understood what it was she was now. Yet as she looked at him, she couldn’t help thinking about what Ritva had said earlier as she reached up and gently caressed his cheek.
“Is that what you told Ritva about me?” she asked and he smiled a bit more.
“I told her I missed it…and I wish you’d stop actin’ like I’m afraid of what you are, because I’m not. I told her about us, what I remembered, not all of it, but enough she’d understand. I told her I wish I still deserved you like that…and she told me that…I was just like you and that I couldn’t decide I wasn’t.” Bucky answered and watched her face as he waited for the reaction.
“There’s never been a male anything that deserves me more than you. Not once did you ever question why I was the one you were told to listen to. You only ever asked why I did what I did. Not because you saw me as strange to be throwing myself into a world of men like that but because you wanted to know what my motivation was for doing it…because you knew there was one. Even now. You don’t question that I’m the Alpha here, you don’t challenge my ability to lead, you just ask how I became Alpha in a technical sense to understand how it came about.”
“Which you won’t tell me because you think it’ll be too much and that I’ll leave because of it.” He said and she looked at him making him shake his head as he took her hand in his and kissed it softly, “No one here that I’ve talked to about it will tell me, but…not because they’re afraid of you or disturbed by it. They want you to be proud of yourself for it. How bad can it be if they look at it as a good thing?”
“Bucky, they’re Wolf people. They don’t think the same way humans do.” She said and he looked at her more pointedly, silently trying to tell her he wanted to know, and she took a deep breath in, thinking, “What have they told you about it?”
“Not a lot. They said the old Alpha here was a Low tyrant, which I know means they hate his guts. Tanis told me that a lot of them wanted to get rid of him, they just weren’t strong enough to, and that he did horrible things to the women here. That he’d tried and failed and was about to be punished for it when you came. The females. Still getting’ used to that. Ruun told me that even though you don’t look it…you’re stronger than he is and made sure he understood that without putting him down for it…which Ritva explained was because he hid her away for her own safety. Maggie just says you were magnificent and wishes you’d stop arguing with them all about being a Wolf or not and that…she was proud to be your Delta and to be part of what brought you here even if it meant knowing what chains had felt like and what it felt like to smell like an Italian restaurant. She said you rescued her and Tilda from some sort of…blood auction the old Alpha sold them to. Other than that…nothing else.”
Essie nodded and thought about it for a moment, “Eric and I were following a lead I’d picked up from a vampire infested HYDRA base in Madrid about what the vampires called an auction for ‘rare vintages’. Vampires occasionally work with HYDRA on a small scale, and they both have tendencies to take over each other’s bases when they don’t.”
“I remember an incident of that from the war…that was…something else.” He said with a sigh and she nodded before continuing.
“You were in cryo at the time and HYDRA was being unusually quiet with things, so I had the extra time to help track this auction down. It took a while to get an actual pinpointed location for it and then to prepare for it so we wouldn’t miss it, be overwhelmed, and could get anyone there that was to be auctioned off out without hurting them. That was the difficult part. Usually on big gatherings like that, if we knew in advance, well…HYDRA made a mistake with me they didn’t quite make the same way with you that they learned to regret very quickly. Had Steve ever jumped on something I made he wouldn’t have gotten back up. However…with this auction…we couldn’t exactly do that. We had to think of alternative means. One that involved garlic concentrate. Garlic and vampires don’t mix just as much as fire and vampires don’t mix. Any large gathering they have nowadays they’ll have a fire sprinkler system in it. Sometimes they load them with blood for blood raves which is disgusting, but this particular one had water in it that I replaced with as much garlic concentrate as I could get my hands on.”
“Which explains why she said she smelled like an Italian restaurant.” He said and Essie nodded, “It’d take the vamps out without hurting people that weren’t vampires.”
“Exactly, and while this was our goal…it still meant we had plenty of other people to worry about. Vampires employ human guards, either through just straight up employment or because the humans worship them on some level. Blade, what Eric usually prefers to be called I just usually don’t, he has a harder time than I do telling the difference. It’s gotten him in trouble before and when we’re on a hunt together, despite him being the senior partner, he’ll defer to me to tell the difference because of my sense of smell. Anyway, that wasn’t really an issue in this case as much as it was something to figure out what they meant by ‘rare vintages’. Once they were all gathered and the auction started…we locked the place down and hit the sprinkler system. It was an absolute disgusting mess, and it pissed off the human fanboys. There’s these two terrified, women on the auction stage, wearing only underwear…and it’s the most denigrating underwear available at the time, in chains…with collars…”
“You saw red again. Didn’t you?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Instantly, but I wasn’t Hungry at this time, so it was very controlled rage. The two women, were female Lycans, and you can already guess that they were Tilda and Maggie.” Essie continued and he nodded, listening even though his insides twisted at the thought of what they’d gone through, the humiliation they were subjected to, and the terror they had to have felt, “Once I was done dispatching the people that were keeping them in chains they were just staring at me, not afraid, but…in just utter awe. There were others, just humans with special blood types, ethnicities, and particular genetics. Some we still talk to today, because their particular genetics were of the mutant variety and we took them somewhere where they could be safe. That’s a whole different story from this one and even if it’s short…we’re doing this one.”
“Yeah. You could smell the difference?” he asked and she nodded, “What do I smell like to you?”
“Not now. Let me finish and ask that later. It’s a more complicated answer than you’d think.” She said and he nodded, “Well, I knew they smelled different, but I didn’t really understand what they were until they explained and said that they could smell me the same way I could smell them and asked what Pack I was from. I had always known from what files I’d looked at that the main ingredient in their concoction for me was Lycan, but I’d never met any that were willing to actually talk to me…or any that were female. They’d talk to Eric if we encountered them. Never me even if I asked them a direct question. I didn’t take that well, but it quickly became too much of a hassle to deal with them so whenever we’d encountered them I’d just walk off and let him talk to them. It wasn’t worth the energy to go through the posturing and dominance jockeying every single time we encountered one. So…when I met Maggie and Tilda…it was a whole new world of information for me.”
“I know the feeling.” Bucky said and she nodded.
“I know you do, which helps in telling this because you’ll understand that it was overwhelming for me yet also…absolutely enrapturing. It made things I’d do make sense and made me feel less insane and less…less alone. They were completely mystified that I was a combat trained female and had no Pack. They rationalized me not being insane from isolation as me having made Eric my Pack.”
“Is that why they never just…leave us alone for more than a day?” he asked and she nodded.
“Yes. Wolves are highly social. When I’m in The Eye or out in town or anywhere…they all ask about you. Every single time. They all know who you are, what you are to me, and are legitimately worried about you being isolated or are isolating yourself. I have to repeatedly tell them that Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, and Maggie visit you frequently. That placates them to an extent but they’re all getting itchy to welcome you into the fold.” She said and he blinked a bit, not sure how to feel about it.
On one hand it made him happy. He knew how important she was to them and that they accepted him, even being near her was something he recognized as significant. On the other hand…there was The Winter Soldier.
“Do they know what…what I did?” he asked and she looked at him pointedly, “As The Winter Soldier?”
“Mm…I’ll take it…and yes. They know…and believe me that only makes them more eager. I told you that they’re good people and they understand a lot more than one would think but believe me they know what it’s like to be made to do things beyond their control.” Essie said as she held his hand, “Maggie and Tilda taught me what it was to be a Wolf as they understood it, which…was skewed by what their Alpha was like. I taught them…everything that I could that he was wrong and trained them both to fight, like I do. They asked me to, so I did…and as I did they told me more about Ulfhrafn and what it was and how it was and what their Alpha was doing and…it made me mad. Then there was the fact that, not only was he was selling his own people to vampires for profit, but he was also ultimately the one that gave HYDRA the information that led to what happened to my family.”
Bucky’s eyes widened, his stomach sank and twisted as it burned. He had figured HYDRA got the information about Lycans and Wolves from folktales and myth, but he’d questioned how they got the biological and genetic resources to try and change people. It made sickening sense…but…
“Why?”
“To save himself and make money. They didn’t know he was the Alpha…and they didn’t question how he knew where a supply of fresh Lycan blood was. I only found out because…HYDRA was being quiet…and I wanted to know why so…went digging and found a base near the Baltic. Maggie and Tilda were with me. It wasn’t vampire-related and Eric had somewhere else to be, so it was just us. Tearing through it with two extra people that could do most of what I can do made it a lot faster, so they didn’t have as much time to destroy information as they previously did.” She began to explain while toying with his metal fingers lightly and idly, “I had stacks and stacks of papers to go through that dated back to the war. There was information on you, which I went through first, but it wasn’t anything new, so I went through the rest of it and found the name of the supplier they had for the Lycan blood. Maggie was the one that pointed out it was the same name as the then Alpha, which I will not repeat nor will anyone here. No name means no memory and no memory means he’s truly gone and can never live again ever in any capacity. It’s the ultimate dishonor for them. Anyway, Tilda said the same thing and there was a picture included and it was him.”
“So, you saw red.”
“No. I didn’t see red.” Essie said and he looked at her and waited for her to continue as she thought of how to best word it, “I was…upset and angry and…and all of that. Yet it…it was…it wasn’t raw, triggered, rage. It was…deeper, harder, and…it felt like the ultimate betrayal. Now…Maggie and Tilda had floated the idea of going to Ulfhrafn to me and ‘teaching them all a lesson’ a few times prior to then, but I’ll be honest with you…I didn’t take them seriously. They were barely out of their teenaged years at this point. Did I trust them in a fight? Yes. Did I see them as fully formed adults capable of making their own decisions? Yes. Absolutely. Did I see them as a bit overeager and ‘Steve-like’? One hundred percent. Yes.”
Bucky snickered. He didn’t mean to. He just couldn’t help it, and he knew she wasn’t mad by the way she smiled and nodded.
“Really?” he asked and she nodded, “Steve-like?”
“Yes. I didn’t know he was alive and just a star-spangled popsicle at the time, but I never forgot him and would rate people’s…overeagerness to jump into situations beyond their physical limitations by him. People I met that were like he was in that sense…I named them all Steve.” She said and he shook with barely restrained laughter she smiled at while cuddling into him, “When they started on their ideas to do it…they were two Steves…but then we found those files and I…I realized in that moment that…they weren’t Steves…they were me when I was young. My family was taken away. My country was taken over by a tyrant that sacrificed his own people. I was kept as a special prize to be traded away at the earliest chance to make significant profit. They were me…and…I put my hunt for you aside for the first time…because…I couldn’t watch anyone else become me. So…I contacted Eric…and told him what I was going to do. He didn’t like it…not one bit…but he agreed to help.”
“How? Wait…never mind.” Bucky said, shaking his head, “You’d need him to get you in even if Maggie and Tilda brought you to the entrance…because you aren’t a male.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t just waltz in and there was no way to secretly sneak in. So…over the course of several months I trained with Maggie in her shift forms. The full quadrupedal one and the bipedal one. She’s bigger than Tilda in shift and I don’t shift so I had to learn how to deal with someone that could. She got me a couple of times pretty good until I grew to learn how to deal with the two forms. Then we worked on getting Blade, notorious vampire hunter, an invitation in to buy some more upgraded weaponry. Lycans are in the business of managing other supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves and such things. Other societies do this, but Lycans are a large one. Took a bit to get him one, but then we did and we timed it so it would coincide with a Feeding Day.”
He looked at her silently and unmoving. Bucky had learned early on that Feeding Day meant a day, roughly once every week, where Essie did little more than eat. It was one of the first things he had asked Ruun about.
Ruun’s answer had been that, as far as they could figure, it was due entirely to her inability to shift. He explained that teenagers often went through periods of intense hunger before shifting for the first time. Like their bodies were building up the energy for the event which he described as intense. The best theory they had for why Essie ate like that was that it was like her body was on a constant loop of that. It was a sound theory as it was also capable of explaining her shortened temper when Hungry.
The Beta had also said they learned early on to take Feeding Days seriously.
Now Bucky knew why.
“Then…because I knew what I had to do to win…I stopped eating.” She continued and he looked at her with a frown while squeezing her hand and she nodded, “Yes. I purposely starved myself and when the time came to go…I let Eric put a collar and leash on because we had to sell it…and we sold it. He brought me up to The Eye, where the Alpha was, and offered me to him as a gift in return for their services and goods. Tanis was there to receive punishment, so was Ruun, but my presentation took precedence. The Alpha took one look at me, licked his lips, and accepted…then…I issued the Challenge. He laughed and thanked Eric for bringing him something entertaining…until the chains dropped off and Eric told him I wasn’t joking…and that it was Feeding Day. That was the hardest, most brutal, and bloodiest battle I’ve ever been in. He sent in others to stop me, Eric took some of them on, I took on the rest…Tanis and Ruun helped and I went after the Alpha. He was strong…I have a scar down my side where your fingers are from one of his claws. That it scarred at all should tell you how deep it went.”
Bucky gently felt for it through her shirt. It was there, faint, but long and jagged. He didn’t want to say anything. Not yet.
“To…assume the position of Alpha…you have to do more than just win a Challenge and…I did, and I didn’t hesitate to do it. I ripped his heart out…and then I ate it…and then I used every last drop of blood in his body to force his Beta and Gamma to release the files of his wrong doing to the Pack, cast a series of protective wards around all of those innocent of what had been done wrong…and…let the Challengers come. I had won, but they had a right to Challenge back and several did. The ones Eric and I had been dealing with for decades. One by one they Challenged me. One by one they failed. By the time it was over…I was drenched in so much blood that it was like I bathed in it.” Essie said while watching his face and then waited.
It was a lot to process and a lot to imagine. It should have been hard. It would have been if he didn’t know her as well as he did.
She wasn’t the same as she was during the war, but Steve said she wasn’t that different from that Essie when you got right down to it and he was right. This one was just physically stronger and more physically capable of things. If Bucky hadn’t known that he’d have found it harder to imagine. If he didn’t have several memories of her ruthlessly interfering in several of his missions through the decades he’d have found it harder to imagine. If several of those memories didn’t involve her mercilessly taking out members of the squads they sent him with he’d have found it harder to imagine.
Yet, as he looked at her face and studied it, knowing she was waiting for him to see the monster she imagined herself to be…he didn’t and couldn’t. What she had done was disgusting but he didn’t think for a moment that she had enjoyed it and, as a memory floated through his mind of something Monty had said, it wasn’t exactly something beyond the point of something he’d never thought she would do. Granted Monty had said it as a joke, but it was only funny because it had been true.
One question did come to his mind, though, well…two…but he didn’t think one was appropriate.
“Was he in full shift or…the big..hulking wolf person kind?” he asked and she answered.
“He was in the big, hulking, wolf person shift. He shifted several times in and out of full fur and bipedal thing and his skin form to try and dodge me, but I’m fast and was faster than he was.” She answered and he nodded, “He tasted terrible. I’d eaten cow ones…granted they were cooked…and I’d cooked them myself…but…no. Ritva tried to tell me it was because he was corrupted and evil…I didn’t agree. He smelled horrible, too…but he tasted worse…the worst thing I’ve ever eaten…and that includes HYDRA’s prisoner food.”
“Ugh…” he replied and she nodded, “Well you answered the question I didn’t think was right to ask.”
“What he tasted like?” she asked and he nodded, “I mean…I’d ask why you wanted to know but it’s not everyday you hear your girlfriend kind of….literally ate a guy’s heart.”
“I’m confused about why that’s a thing you had to do to become Alpha. Is it…a tradition, a cultural thing, or…is there more to it?” he asked and she answered, knowing he was simply trying to understand if he should be disturbed by it or not and to what degree.
“It’s a magic thing. The title can be passed peacefully, but there’s a blood rite involved because every village and town and safe area in Ulfhrafn is warded and made safe against things in the forests that would eat people. Those wards are tied to the Alpha. They are emitted by the large standing stones you see everywhere in the towns and outskirts or near the Timbers. That’s the easy to understand and explain part of it. It’s been…25 years about…from then…and I’m still learning everything it means to be Alpha and Wolf.” She explained while looking at him, waiting for more of a reaction, and when she didn’t get one, seeing he was rather calm about it, she spoke again, “Why are you so calm about this?”
Bucky knew he had to answer this carefully. He also knew he had to frame this in a way she wouldn’t get upset at him. That meant he’d have to blame Monty, and though he had been Bucky’s friend…he was willing to do that.
“Well…one day…while we were goin’ through one of the bases…we got to talkin’ about things and…eventually they started doin’ their usual thing picking on me for bein’ so crazy about you. Now…Monty eventually said something along the lines of: ‘Barnes…if she were ever given the chance to sit down and carve out Schmidt’s heart and eat it…she would do so with a side of spaetzle and wash it down with a glass of peach schnapps’. I’ll admit that I laughed…but only because I knew you would, but one part would be completely different and I told him that. ‘Wouldn’t be peach schnapps, it’d be apple. Apple goes better with pig’.” He said and she thought while licking her lips for a moment.
“I want to agree with him, but at the same time I don’t know if I would have. Not because I’d have been unwilling to eat it, but I’d have been concerned about it due to what he became after injecting himself with the serum. You’re right about the schnapps.” She said and cuddled him, kissing his cheek, “I am stupidly proud of you for remembering that then and now that apple goes with pork better.”
He smiled at the sensation of her lips against his cheek. Soft, warm, sweet. Just as he remembered them to be.
Yet the memories of things he’d done filed in one after the other next. They weighed his joy back down with ice cold metal. The pit in his stomach twisted as he let them, guilt churning in it until it spread from there and out and despite Ritva’s words he couldn’t help feeling as if he didn’t deserve the warmth and tenderness she showed him or the comfort she gave him.
“We’re both stained with our pasts, Bucky…but…maybe together…we can find a way to…move forward with our lives. Ritva said…that…I focus too much on what they made me into instead of what I want to be…and that I spent seventy years defining myself by that and by the hunt for you.” Essie said as she toyed with his metal fingers and he looked at her, “She’s right. She usually is when she says things. Including when she said that…it’s time for us to get some help. I don’t know how to help you understand that what you did as The Winter Soldier wasn’t your fault any more than I know how to stop seeing myself as a monster in the mirror. Part of me knows I’m not…but…the rest doesn’t listen.
“I want to be…I just want to be good, healthy, happy, safe, and…I don’t want to feel like a monster that HYDRA created anymore. I’ve given them seventy years of my life and attention and…I know I’ll have to give more of my attention to them, but I’m tired of giving them my self-worth, my mind, and I’m not letting them have my man back. Ever. Even if he decides he doesn’t want to be mine, they can’t have him.”
Bucky didn’t answer at first. He knew she was right. They both needed help. As much as he didn’t want to admit that he needed help beyond the people he was talking to currently, he knew he did if for one reason only: It was hurting her.
She held up the façade of strength around her people, her subordinates, and even to her officials to a point. Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, Maggie…they all knew she was struggling but they didn’t know how much. They didn’t see what Bucky did every day, even when she didn’t think he was paying attention or even mentally there.
He hated it. The early days he just shut down when the memories became too much and she had to push him through the act of even functioning. The nights he knew he held her too hard just out of fear she wasn’t real and would be gone in the morning. Days and nights she hid every weapon and sharp object in the house somewhere he couldn’t find them because she knew. She knew without him having to say a word that the thought had crossed his mind to just…end it. Even if that thought was always followed immediately by the refusal to put her, and Steve, through that…it was that she had seen the initial thought.
As strong as she was, as much of a front as she put up even with him at times, Bucky knew her well enough to see that she was wearing down. He’d seen it plenty of times in the war when she’d run herself ragged and he’d have to make her rest. It was just worse now and he was the cause.
Essie did everything for him and he hated it. She ran a whole country and group of people while taking care of him, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, going to the market, seeing him through the night, reminding him how to use the technology, and doing everything she could to pick up the pieces of him while she slowly fell apart.
Bucky did as much as he could in return, that he could get to before she did, but that only triggered her to start doing it before she’d do anything else. The only thing he could manage to do without her getting to it first was cleaning up after the cats. He thanked her sensitive sense of smell for that one.
He’d voiced his frustrations to Ruun earlier. That had been what prompted the Beta to urge him to speak with Essie. They saw the cracks, but they knew very well they couldn’t make her do anything unless she wanted to.
“I don’t want to talk to a shrink. I don’t want someone else tryin’ to get into my head. I do not like the idea of being alone with someone that I don’t know with a notepad in their hand writin’ down all my feelings and telling me how to live my life. It’s…it’s too much like HYDRA. Alone. Sitting. Notebooks. Telling me what to do.” He said as he looked at her and moved his hand from hers to gently caress her face with it, being extra careful with the metal, “You tell me what to do but that’s different. You’re…you’re mine. That’s not changin’ as long as you don’t want it to, and I’d love for you to stop thinkin’ that I see what you do in the mirror. I don’t. You’re not the same girl I fell in love with back then…no…but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the same way for the one you are now. That being said and because I do feel that same way…I’ll try. With a shrink…but I want someone else there with me that I know and trust…and I want it clear that the only reason I’m agreeing to do it is because…even though all I see in the mirror is either the Winter Soldier or a broken man, you don’t see that and…I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I want…what you do. I wanna be good, healthy, not broken, and free from HYDRA. I don’t wanna be what they made anymore. I mean…the arm isn’t goin’ anywhere…but…y’know.”
“Mmm…about the words…you remember I told you I was talking to one of my allies about the deprogramming?” she asked and he nodded slowly.
“Yeah…they finally get back to you on that?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Well, they did a while ago, but you weren’t in a state to even start doing anything they recommended, which I told them and they understood. I have arranged for…a visit from a couple of them. It is a…tenuous alliance. One forged through…admittedly through diplomacy alone and not personal affection of any kind. That being said the ones I’ll be allowing a visit are the ones I like and get along with more. The heir, his sister, a few of their guards. I’m hoping that visit doesn’t coincide with when everyone else shows up or there will be a discussion about the shield.” Essie said and he blinked at her in confusion, “I’ll tell you about it more another day. For now…I really want to move but…uh…”
She glanced down at the cats, all of them asleep, contently curled up as the rain slowly dissipated outside. Bucky just smiled and looked at her. For all her complaining about them…and teasing of him…she loved them just as much.
A/N: Yes, that happened. Yes, they were still cuddling on the couch the whole time. Next chapter should be up on schedule. Hopefully.
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A/N: I feel like crap today. I'm better now than I was earlier. I wanted some period care with Bucky and decided to write it myself. I've got other fics to write, but this is the one that came of today. It's not in the Scorpio AU. It's just a standalone.
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x !femReader
POV: 2nd no use of Y/N.
Summary: Bucky comes home and finds you in a state of pain because of your period and takes care of you.
Word Count: 1.4k
Warnings: Strangely enough I don't think there's any LANGUAGE to warn about for once. Fluff. Care. Talk of heavy period pain symptoms (because I'm not in the tribe of periods being unmentionable). Bucky and Alpine being cute. I can't think of anything else. (I'm sure there's more but I can't remember)
My Masterlist
Drabble List
AO3 Link: Care
*******
You were still home when Bucky walked into the house. His brows scrunched together as his blue eyes looked at you as you shuffled back through the doorway from the bathroom, Alpine following you with a worried meow.
Concern bubbled in his stomach at the sight of your pale face and tired, heavy-lidded eyes, sweat soaking through one of his T shirts you were wearing. Then you looked at him as he was looking at the pulled-out drawers, tears pooling in your eyes as he stepped in with a gentle sigh and locked the door as he always did.
He knew what this was. He hated it, but not for most reasons men hated it. Bucky hated what it did to you.
Not every month, but too often for his liking your period put you in a state like this. The last couple of months had been alright, but not this one.
You sniffled, “I can’t find the heating pad anywhere. I’m so hot, though. I’ve already changed my clothes twice. I’m hungry but the thought of food makes me wanna puke. I did puke. It feels like my uterus wants to implode. My head hurts…and I’m so tired!”
You were overwhelmed. It wasn’t the first time.
Pain radiated in your lower back, your lower abdomen felt like it was a hand mercilessly squeezing a tube, your thighs ached and you could feel the start of a migraine coming that was almost guaranteed if you started crying. If you cried you were done for but you were so tired it hurt to hold it together.
He didn’t hesitate another moment.
“Shh…I’m home now, sweetheart. It’s gonna be alright.” Bucky soothed, walking quickly over to you to scoop you up in his arms to carry you to the couch, “The heating pad is in the closet. I’ll go get it. Does it help to sit or help to walk?”
“Sit.”
“Okay. Don’t move. I’ve got you, okay?” he asked and you nodded, wiping your eyes, smiling a bit when he kissed your forehead.
You’d been worried when you first moved in together that he didn’t understand what you meant when you said your periods could get bad. It worried you how he’d react to them and how long it’d take before he got annoyed with them. The first time he saw what happened in its full “glory” Bucky had been intensely worried but had also sprung himself into action to do everything he could to alleviate it.
He had even asked Sarah for help and followed her advice to the letter. Including trying to get you to go to the doctor. You found it ironic with how much he hated going to them himself that he was willingly taking you to one.
The experience didn’t improve his opinion on them. Not that you didn’t warn him what would happen. You’d been through it enough.
Just take Tylenol, Advil, Aleve, Pamprin, Midol, etc. Eye rolls. Ignored.
You were used to it. Bucky didn’t give up. He kept trying and whenever you had a bad month he was always there to take care of you. It helped more than the OTC meds and even though you found a doctor that listened, which you were slightly convinced their fear of your boyfriend played a large factor in, you still had bad months.
In a moment he was there with the large pad, plugging it in and handing you the controls to place it over your front, and he had another one of his shirts. You just raised your arms for him to pull the sweat soaked one off and let him put on the lighter dry one. He put an extra blanket on the couch behind you knowing once the hot flash was over you’d get cold. Bucky didn’t want you to feel cold just in case he wasn’t done before you did.
Next came a large glass of water with a wedge of lemon in it and three different flavors of candy canes or peppermints. He kept them in the house year-round once he figured out that one of them was usually likely to help with your nausea. The next part was the hard part.
“I know you don’t feel good, sweetie, but you really do need to eat. What have you tried?”
“Toast. It didn’t stay down…and I just can’t…think of something that tastes…good.” You answered and he nodded, thinking before carefully suggesting a few things that you usually would eat on days like this until you slowly nodded, “That…that’s not nauseating…”
He nodded and went back into the kitchen, Alpine hot on his tail. Occasionally you’d hear her meow at him and him respond to it. Soft, short, then a bit more accusatory.
“Have you been watching Kitchen Nightmares with her again?”
It made you chuckle sleepily. He brought out your food a few moments later, sitting with you to eat, putting on one of your favorite shows that you knew he secretly liked even if he said he didn’t. Still he mostly kept his eyes on you with soft, caring, and concerned ones.
The food stayed down. You’d love to say it always did when he made it, but sometimes it didn’t want to. You’d love to say the moment he got home that the pain subsided but you both knew that wasn’t how it worked. You’d love to say a lot of things you couldn’t, but you focused on what you could before the heaviness of your thoughts could pull you down too far.
Bucky was a cuddler on regular days but on these ones he took it to the next level whenever you needed it. Sure there were days you didn’t want to be touched, which he respected without question, but those days were far fewer than the ones where you just wanted to be held.
This was one of them and as soon as you were both done with your food and the dishes put away Bucky returned and pulled you into his lap, heating pad and all.
Alpine hopped up into your now vacant seat as she always did, curling herself up where you had been. Like usual she looked at you, then looked at Bucky, and then he nodded. Only then did she either lay her head down or turn it to look at the TV with the two of you.
It depended on what you were watching.
You were still sweating. Bucky noticed this and held out his left hand to you. The metal of it was cool, soothing, and even if it was a strange use for it, in some ways, to him, he was grateful for it. So were you while guiding it where you wanted, usually to your spine which sometimes required you to shift around a bit so he could run his hand up and down it. Sometimes it was just to your face. Sometimes, like today, you just slipped it under his shirt on you and around your side so he’d hold you closer.
He always did and you never failed to doze off, head against his shoulder within the next ten or so minutes. Usually less. Eyelids heavy, head foggy, you’d doze off even if it took you some time.
“Thank you.” You said softly, meekly, and his heart clenched as it always did.
To him it wasn’t something he needed to be thanked for, but, he supposed, he thanked you for things you didn’t think needed thanking for.
So he replied the same way you did, “You don’t need to thank me, but if it makes you feel better, you’re welcome.”
“Hmm.” You hummed, cuddling into him more with a small smile.
“Feelin’ better?”
“Yeah…sleepy…” you answered and he nodded, holding you close, “Sleepy and weird questions. Like: what did women with periods crave before chocolate was a thing?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, I’m not that old.” He retorted lightly, lips curling up softly when you chuckled heavily, drifting off slowly, “Probly some other sweet thing. Like honey.”
“Mh…why?”
“I don’t know. Energy from the sugar?”
“Then why’d I crave chips?” you asked sleepily.
“They’re carbohydrates. Carbs are energy.”
“Then why’m I so sleepy?” you mumbled and he just cuddled you with a small smile.
“Hormones and other things. Get some sleep, baby, I’ve got you.” Bucky said and you smiled while dozing off, knowing you were safe and cared for.
Once he was sure you were asleep, and that Alpine wasn’t watching it, he turned your show off to put something else on. Something he knew you liked even if you teased him for it being old and kind of corny. He wasn’t really watching it; he was typing into his phone.
To your doctor.
*******
A/N: Someone might be in trouble. Slight, teensy weensy itty bitty kinda sorta soft dark Bucky. Maybe. Bascially this is what I'd want from Bucky today for myself so...call it self indulgent. It helped. I feel better now. Sort of. Enough to function on my other fics.
Summary: To the intelligence community the Winter Soldier is a ghost, but to HYDRA the Howling Witch is a harbinger of doom that will stop at nothing to get at their prized asset. A phantom that leaves swathes of destruction in her wake. She is the biggest mistake they ever made.
Chapter Summary: Essie and Bucky continue their discussion and Essie explains how she came to be Alpha.
Word Count: ~7K
Warnings: Language, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, Gun Violence, Shifting Character POVs, Frustrated & Aggravated Superheroes, HYDRA ( legitimate warning on their own), Light Angst, Self-Loathing, Mentions of worry of self-harm, Flashbacks, Recovering Winter Bucky's broken logic, Blood, Mentions of human experimentation, mentions of torture, Wolf shifters (the good kind and the bad kind. This is a warning in and of itself this time.), Questionable Alpha Challenge Rituals (I do not want to give more away than that). (I really need to just do a separate post for these)
A/N: Very late, well not very for me, but late. This touchpad is annoying. It hates dragging, it works fine then flies all over the screen, and I have also been otherwise preoccupied with things. The gif does not fully fit the chapter, but close enough. Um...read warnings. This one gets...well a bit fucked up, but not too bad? It covers an event mentioned in the Prologues but a little more in depth.
NOTE: I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING COPIED OR PUT INTO ANY FORM OF AI. (Also if there are typos it's likely my old keyboard. I will fix as I find them, because no matter how many times I proofread there's always at least one).
A loud clap of thunder jolted them all awake. Essie and Bucky were both sat upright in a second. Both were looking back and forth, on edge, assessing the room for damage, threats, and the source of the bang until they heard the rain start pelting down. Only then did they slowly relax.
“The Blitz?” he asked and she shook her head after running her fingers through her hair a bit, calming down.
“No. The HYDRA facility in England. They’d bang on the bars whenever I’d go to sleep too long.” She said while running her fingers through her hair and he frowned, “You?”
“Azzano.” He answered and she nodded, “Are these storms usually like this?”
“Once in a while in spring. Are you alright?” Essie asked and he nodded as he looked at her, searching her face, relaxing as he did.
“Yeah. You?” he asked and she nodded as she searched his and relaxed a bit, “I hate what happened to you…but I’m happy you’re here.”
“It makes you feel conflicted about it…doesn’t it?” she asked and he nodded after a moment, “Selfish.”
“Yeah.” Bucky answered as he looked at her, shaking his head, “I don’t…understand how…after everything I did…I still get to have you…but…you’re only here because of what they did to you.”
“Like you are? Bucky…it’s not your fault. What they did to me is not your fault. I chose to go out into the field when they asked for people to help through the forest. I always told you one more thing and I’d go out myself. I meant it. That’s on me…not you.” She said while cuddling back into him as the thunder cracked overhead again, “You’re here…with me. Alive. I’ve done…things I don’t want to remember…but…even though I feel selfish for being happy that you’re here…I know that what they did to you isn’t my fault. It’s not your fault either. HYDRA did this to us. Past and present. HYDRA stole so much from us. Don’t give them more. We’re not here because of them. We’re here in spite of them.”
“Was this how you felt…when you realized I was alive? After the facility.” He asked and she nodded.
“I refused to give them you. I felt conflicted at first. Torn. Selfish about being happy that you weren’t gone yet were being held captive like I was. I can’t take full credit for the epiphany I had. Most of it has to go to Eric. I think he got tired of my sulking and talking in circles about it because he just sat his sword down, looked at me and said: ‘Did you do it? Were you the one that sawed his arm off, gave him a metal arm, and then put him in a freezer? No? Then stop feeling guilty about something you didn’t do.’ Then he accused me of not feeling bad about almost eating him, which was a lie. I still feel bad about that.” she answered and looked at him, “Point being…he was right. We didn’t do this to each other. HYDRA did this to us. We are here now, as we are, in spite of them not because of them. As we should have been…just with…some extra flavoring.”
“We’re not a cake.”
“No. We’re cookies. Hard and crusty on the outside but still sweet and delicious in the middle.” She said and he paused to think about it, and to argue, “I have proof you’re sweet in the middle.”
He sighed. Yet even though he did, and even though he fought it, the corners of his mouth tilted upwards. So did hers even as the thunder cracked again and he held her closer.
“I guess my tour will have to wait…” he said and she nodded while watching the rain pour outside before getting up with a soft sigh, “What is it?”
Bucky watched her go over to the corner where he saw Willow hunkered down and hiding with her kittens. Essie just put her arms out for them and scooped them up when they went into them, all of them. It just made him smile. As much as she grumped about them she loved them just as much as he did.
“C’mere.” He said and held his arms out and pulled her down into his lap to lay back down with her and the cats, letting them curl up on his stomach and under her arm and then the blanket she pulled over them, petting Willow’s head gently while she peered out from under it, “You don’t like these either, do you?”
“Mao.” She meowed softly and licked Knox’s head when he snuggled into her side nervously, Aspen tucked up against Alpine under Essie’s arm, Pitch stuffed down between them, his head picking up and looking around whenever the thunder clapped.
“It’s okay…just thunder. You’re safe.” Essie cooed while relaxing against Bucky again, “We’re all safe.”
“Safe…warm…home.” Bucky nodded and listened to the rain fall outside, “Essie?”
“Hm?”
“Why…I mean…I’m probably remembering it…I dunno…biased right now…but why’s it feel like whenever we wanna go out it…it rains?” he asked as he looked up at the large rough hewn timbers above him and she let out a short laugh.
“Because we were in London when we were first together and had days to do that. I remember every single time it started raining just as you were about to kiss me. Every-”
“Single time. Yeah.” He laughed softly, shaking his head, “It drove me crazy.”
“Mhmm…” she hummed warmly while nuzzling into his shoulder contently, her hand resting on his chest idly as his rested on her side, “It was funny for me. You were so…overwhelmed by how much it rained there. I was used to it. You were the only person that could get me to laugh like that…to smile and mean it. Everyone thought you were crazy. I even did. Plenty of girls to choose. Ones that didn’t hit you in the head with their notepads, argue with you, snap at you, and…that would have been more than happy to go dancing and letting you pull them off anywhere you wanted. Instead…you picked me and I never felt like you were doing it because I was a challenge.”
“You weren’t. I…I still don’t remember everything, lately a lot of it’s from before you, my family, rescuing Steve from being beaten up in alleys, things you don’t want me to talk about to you, and stuff like that…but I remember why it was you. Steve brought me down to the war room, where you were workin’ after I agreed to follow him and help him. He thinks it was because I saw you goin’ a mile a minute waving papers in your hand and beating someone in the head with a big rolled up map calling him an illiterate moron.”
“If it was that then you were, and likely still are, crazy.”
“Well, yeah I am, but no. That wasn’t it. You were gorgeous…feisty…and so smart…but it was when you smiled. Later, when it was just the two of us going over the map, me trying to remember what Steve pointed out better, and I said something about him that made you smile and chuckle. That did it. No goin’ back from that.”
Essie smiled gently as she looked at his face and he turned it to look at her. There was a small smile playing at his lips. Gentle. Tentatively grateful. Hers.
It felt good to see it. It eased the vice grip doubt had around her hope that he would stay when it was all out in the open and he really understood what it was she was now. Yet as she looked at him, she couldn’t help thinking about what Ritva had said earlier as she reached up and gently caressed his cheek.
“Is that what you told Ritva about me?” she asked and he smiled a bit more.
“I told her I missed it…and I wish you’d stop actin’ like I’m afraid of what you are, because I’m not. I told her about us, what I remembered, not all of it, but enough she’d understand. I told her I wish I still deserved you like that…and she told me that…I was just like you and that I couldn’t decide I wasn’t.” Bucky answered and watched her face as he waited for the reaction.
“There’s never been a male anything that deserves me more than you. Not once did you ever question why I was the one you were told to listen to. You only ever asked why I did what I did. Not because you saw me as strange to be throwing myself into a world of men like that but because you wanted to know what my motivation was for doing it…because you knew there was one. Even now. You don’t question that I’m the Alpha here, you don’t challenge my ability to lead, you just ask how I became Alpha in a technical sense to understand how it came about.”
“Which you won’t tell me because you think it’ll be too much and that I’ll leave because of it.” He said and she looked at him making him shake his head as he took her hand in his and kissed it softly, “No one here that I’ve talked to about it will tell me, but…not because they’re afraid of you or disturbed by it. They want you to be proud of yourself for it. How bad can it be if they look at it as a good thing?”
“Bucky, they’re Wolf people. They don’t think the same way humans do.” She said and he looked at her more pointedly, silently trying to tell her he wanted to know, and she took a deep breath in, thinking, “What have they told you about it?”
“Not a lot. They said the old Alpha here was a Low tyrant, which I know means they hate his guts. Tanis told me that a lot of them wanted to get rid of him, they just weren’t strong enough to, and that he did horrible things to the women here. That he’d tried and failed and was about to be punished for it when you came. The females. Still getting’ used to that. Ruun told me that even though you don’t look it…you’re stronger than he is and made sure he understood that without putting him down for it…which Ritva explained was because he hid her away for her own safety. Maggie just says you were magnificent and wishes you’d stop arguing with them all about being a Wolf or not and that…she was proud to be your Delta and to be part of what brought you here even if it meant knowing what chains had felt like and what it felt like to smell like an Italian restaurant. She said you rescued her and Tilda from some sort of…blood auction the old Alpha sold them to. Other than that…nothing else.”
Essie nodded and thought about it for a moment, “Eric and I were following a lead I’d picked up from a vampire infested HYDRA base in Madrid about what the vampires called an auction for ‘rare vintages’. Vampires occasionally work with HYDRA on a small scale, and they both have tendencies to take over each other’s bases when they don’t.”
“I remember an incident of that from the war…that was…something else.” He said with a sigh and she nodded before continuing.
“You were in cryo at the time and HYDRA was being unusually quiet with things, so I had the extra time to help track this auction down. It took a while to get an actual pinpointed location for it and then to prepare for it so we wouldn’t miss it, be overwhelmed, and could get anyone there that was to be auctioned off out without hurting them. That was the difficult part. Usually on big gatherings like that, if we knew in advance, well…HYDRA made a mistake with me they didn’t quite make the same way with you that they learned to regret very quickly. Had Steve ever jumped on something I made he wouldn’t have gotten back up. However…with this auction…we couldn’t exactly do that. We had to think of alternative means. One that involved garlic concentrate. Garlic and vampires don’t mix just as much as fire and vampires don’t mix. Any large gathering they have nowadays they’ll have a fire sprinkler system in it. Sometimes they load them with blood for blood raves which is disgusting, but this particular one had water in it that I replaced with as much garlic concentrate as I could get my hands on.”
“Which explains why she said she smelled like an Italian restaurant.” He said and Essie nodded, “It’d take the vamps out without hurting people that weren’t vampires.”
“Exactly, and while this was our goal…it still meant we had plenty of other people to worry about. Vampires employ human guards, either through just straight up employment or because the humans worship them on some level. Blade, what Eric usually prefers to be called I just usually don’t, he has a harder time than I do telling the difference. It’s gotten him in trouble before and when we’re on a hunt together, despite him being the senior partner, he’ll defer to me to tell the difference because of my sense of smell. Anyway, that wasn’t really an issue in this case as much as it was something to figure out what they meant by ‘rare vintages’. Once they were all gathered and the auction started…we locked the place down and hit the sprinkler system. It was an absolute disgusting mess, and it pissed off the human fanboys. There’s these two terrified, women on the auction stage, wearing only underwear…and it’s the most denigrating underwear available at the time, in chains…with collars…”
“You saw red again. Didn’t you?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Instantly, but I wasn’t Hungry at this time, so it was very controlled rage. The two women, were female Lycans, and you can already guess that they were Tilda and Maggie.” Essie continued and he nodded, listening even though his insides twisted at the thought of what they’d gone through, the humiliation they were subjected to, and the terror they had to have felt, “Once I was done dispatching the people that were keeping them in chains they were just staring at me, not afraid, but…in just utter awe. There were others, just humans with special blood types, ethnicities, and particular genetics. Some we still talk to today, because their particular genetics were of the mutant variety and we took them somewhere where they could be safe. That’s a whole different story from this one and even if it’s short…we’re doing this one.”
“Yeah. You could smell the difference?” he asked and she nodded, “What do I smell like to you?”
“Not now. Let me finish and ask that later. It’s a more complicated answer than you’d think.” She said and he nodded, “Well, I knew they smelled different, but I didn’t really understand what they were until they explained and said that they could smell me the same way I could smell them and asked what Pack I was from. I had always known from what files I’d looked at that the main ingredient in their concoction for me was Lycan, but I’d never met any that were willing to actually talk to me…or any that were female. They’d talk to Eric if we encountered them. Never me even if I asked them a direct question. I didn’t take that well, but it quickly became too much of a hassle to deal with them so whenever we’d encountered them I’d just walk off and let him talk to them. It wasn’t worth the energy to go through the posturing and dominance jockeying every single time we encountered one. So…when I met Maggie and Tilda…it was a whole new world of information for me.”
“I know the feeling.” Bucky said and she nodded.
“I know you do, which helps in telling this because you’ll understand that it was overwhelming for me yet also…absolutely enrapturing. It made things I’d do make sense and made me feel less insane and less…less alone. They were completely mystified that I was a combat trained female and had no Pack. They rationalized me not being insane from isolation as me having made Eric my Pack.”
“Is that why they never just…leave us alone for more than a day?” he asked and she nodded.
“Yes. Wolves are highly social. When I’m in The Eye or out in town or anywhere…they all ask about you. Every single time. They all know who you are, what you are to me, and are legitimately worried about you being isolated or are isolating yourself. I have to repeatedly tell them that Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, and Maggie visit you frequently. That placates them to an extent but they’re all getting itchy to welcome you into the fold.” She said and he blinked a bit, not sure how to feel about it.
On one hand it made him happy. He knew how important she was to them and that they accepted him, even being near her was something he recognized as significant. On the other hand…there was The Winter Soldier.
“Do they know what…what I did?” he asked and she looked at him pointedly, “As The Winter Soldier?”
“Mm…I’ll take it…and yes. They know…and believe me that only makes them more eager. I told you that they’re good people and they understand a lot more than one would think but believe me they know what it’s like to be made to do things beyond their control.” Essie said as she held his hand, “Maggie and Tilda taught me what it was to be a Wolf as they understood it, which…was skewed by what their Alpha was like. I taught them…everything that I could that he was wrong and trained them both to fight, like I do. They asked me to, so I did…and as I did they told me more about Ulfhrafn and what it was and how it was and what their Alpha was doing and…it made me mad. Then there was the fact that, not only was he was selling his own people to vampires for profit, but he was also ultimately the one that gave HYDRA the information that led to what happened to my family.”
Bucky’s eyes widened, his stomach sank and twisted as it burned. He had figured HYDRA got the information about Lycans and Wolves from folktales and myth, but he’d questioned how they got the biological and genetic resources to try and change people. It made sickening sense…but…
“Why?”
“To save himself and make money. They didn’t know he was the Alpha…and they didn’t question how he knew where a supply of fresh Lycan blood was. I only found out because…HYDRA was being quiet…and I wanted to know why so…went digging and found a base near the Baltic. Maggie and Tilda were with me. It wasn’t vampire-related and Eric had somewhere else to be, so it was just us. Tearing through it with two extra people that could do most of what I can do made it a lot faster, so they didn’t have as much time to destroy information as they previously did.” She began to explain while toying with his metal fingers lightly and idly, “I had stacks and stacks of papers to go through that dated back to the war. There was information on you, which I went through first, but it wasn’t anything new, so I went through the rest of it and found the name of the supplier they had for the Lycan blood. Maggie was the one that pointed out it was the same name as the then Alpha, which I will not repeat nor will anyone here. No name means no memory and no memory means he’s truly gone and can never live again ever in any capacity. It’s the ultimate dishonor for them. Anyway, Tilda said the same thing and there was a picture included and it was him.”
“So, you saw red.”
“No. I didn’t see red.” Essie said and he looked at her and waited for her to continue as she thought of how to best word it, “I was…upset and angry and…and all of that. Yet it…it was…it wasn’t raw, triggered, rage. It was…deeper, harder, and…it felt like the ultimate betrayal. Now…Maggie and Tilda had floated the idea of going to Ulfhrafn to me and ‘teaching them all a lesson’ a few times prior to then, but I’ll be honest with you…I didn’t take them seriously. They were barely out of their teenaged years at this point. Did I trust them in a fight? Yes. Did I see them as fully formed adults capable of making their own decisions? Yes. Absolutely. Did I see them as a bit overeager and ‘Steve-like’? One hundred percent. Yes.”
Bucky snickered. He didn’t mean to. He just couldn’t help it, and he knew she wasn’t mad by the way she smiled and nodded.
“Really?” he asked and she nodded, “Steve-like?”
“Yes. I didn’t know he was alive and just a star-spangled popsicle at the time, but I never forgot him and would rate people’s…overeagerness to jump into situations beyond their physical limitations by him. People I met that were like he was in that sense…I named them all Steve.” She said and he shook with barely restrained laughter she smiled at while cuddling into him, “When they started on their ideas to do it…they were two Steves…but then we found those files and I…I realized in that moment that…they weren’t Steves…they were me when I was young. My family was taken away. My country was taken over by a tyrant that sacrificed his own people. I was kept as a special prize to be traded away at the earliest chance to make significant profit. They were me…and…I put my hunt for you aside for the first time…because…I couldn’t watch anyone else become me. So…I contacted Eric…and told him what I was going to do. He didn’t like it…not one bit…but he agreed to help.”
“How? Wait…never mind.” Bucky said, shaking his head, “You’d need him to get you in even if Maggie and Tilda brought you to the entrance…because you aren’t a male.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t just waltz in and there was no way to secretly sneak in. So…over the course of several months I trained with Maggie in her shift forms. The full quadrupedal one and the bipedal one. She’s bigger than Tilda in shift and I don’t shift so I had to learn how to deal with someone that could. She got me a couple of times pretty good until I grew to learn how to deal with the two forms. Then we worked on getting Blade, notorious vampire hunter, an invitation in to buy some more upgraded weaponry. Lycans are in the business of managing other supernatural creatures like vampires and werewolves and such things. Other societies do this, but Lycans are a large one. Took a bit to get him one, but then we did and we timed it so it would coincide with a Feeding Day.”
He looked at her silently and unmoving. Bucky had learned early on that Feeding Day meant a day, roughly once every week, where Essie did little more than eat. It was one of the first things he had asked Ruun about.
Ruun’s answer had been that, as far as they could figure, it was due entirely to her inability to shift. He explained that teenagers often went through periods of intense hunger before shifting for the first time. Like their bodies were building up the energy for the event which he described as intense. The best theory they had for why Essie ate like that was that it was like her body was on a constant loop of that. It was a sound theory as it was also capable of explaining her shortened temper when Hungry.
The Beta had also said they learned early on to take Feeding Days seriously.
Now Bucky knew why.
“Then…because I knew what I had to do to win…I stopped eating.” She continued and he looked at her with a frown while squeezing her hand and she nodded, “Yes. I purposely starved myself and when the time came to go…I let Eric put a collar and leash on because we had to sell it…and we sold it. He brought me up to The Eye, where the Alpha was, and offered me to him as a gift in return for their services and goods. Tanis was there to receive punishment, so was Ruun, but my presentation took precedence. The Alpha took one look at me, licked his lips, and accepted…then…I issued the Challenge. He laughed and thanked Eric for bringing him something entertaining…until the chains dropped off and Eric told him I wasn’t joking…and that it was Feeding Day. That was the hardest, most brutal, and bloodiest battle I’ve ever been in. He sent in others to stop me, Eric took some of them on, I took on the rest…Tanis and Ruun helped and I went after the Alpha. He was strong…I have a scar down my side where your fingers are from one of his claws. That it scarred at all should tell you how deep it went.”
Bucky gently felt for it through her shirt. It was there, faint, but long and jagged. He didn’t want to say anything. Not yet.
“To…assume the position of Alpha…you have to do more than just win a Challenge and…I did, and I didn’t hesitate to do it. I ripped his heart out…and then I ate it…and then I used every last drop of blood in his body to force his Beta and Gamma to release the files of his wrong doing to the Pack, cast a series of protective wards around all of those innocent of what had been done wrong…and…let the Challengers come. I had won, but they had a right to Challenge back and several did. The ones Eric and I had been dealing with for decades. One by one they Challenged me. One by one they failed. By the time it was over…I was drenched in so much blood that it was like I bathed in it.” Essie said while watching his face and then waited.
It was a lot to process and a lot to imagine. It should have been hard. It would have been if he didn’t know her as well as he did.
She wasn’t the same as she was during the war, but Steve said she wasn’t that different from that Essie when you got right down to it and he was right. This one was just physically stronger and more physically capable of things. If Bucky hadn’t known that he’d have found it harder to imagine. If he didn’t have several memories of her ruthlessly interfering in several of his missions through the decades he’d have found it harder to imagine. If several of those memories didn’t involve her mercilessly taking out members of the squads they sent him with he’d have found it harder to imagine.
Yet, as he looked at her face and studied it, knowing she was waiting for him to see the monster she imagined herself to be…he didn’t and couldn’t. What she had done was disgusting but he didn’t think for a moment that she had enjoyed it and, as a memory floated through his mind of something Monty had said, it wasn’t exactly something beyond the point of something he’d never thought she would do. Granted Monty had said it as a joke, but it was only funny because it had been true.
One question did come to his mind, though, well…two…but he didn’t think one was appropriate.
“Was he in full shift or…the big..hulking wolf person kind?” he asked and she answered.
“He was in the big, hulking, wolf person shift. He shifted several times in and out of full fur and bipedal thing and his skin form to try and dodge me, but I’m fast and was faster than he was.” She answered and he nodded, “He tasted terrible. I’d eaten cow ones…granted they were cooked…and I’d cooked them myself…but…no. Ritva tried to tell me it was because he was corrupted and evil…I didn’t agree. He smelled horrible, too…but he tasted worse…the worst thing I’ve ever eaten…and that includes HYDRA’s prisoner food.”
“Ugh…” he replied and she nodded, “Well you answered the question I didn’t think was right to ask.”
“What he tasted like?” she asked and he nodded, “I mean…I’d ask why you wanted to know but it’s not everyday you hear your girlfriend kind of….literally ate a guy’s heart.”
“I’m confused about why that’s a thing you had to do to become Alpha. Is it…a tradition, a cultural thing, or…is there more to it?” he asked and she answered, knowing he was simply trying to understand if he should be disturbed by it or not and to what degree.
“It’s a magic thing. The title can be passed peacefully, but there’s a blood rite involved because every village and town and safe area in Ulfhrafn is warded and made safe against things in the forests that would eat people. Those wards are tied to the Alpha. They are emitted by the large standing stones you see everywhere in the towns and outskirts or near the Timbers. That’s the easy to understand and explain part of it. It’s been…25 years about…from then…and I’m still learning everything it means to be Alpha and Wolf.” She explained while looking at him, waiting for more of a reaction, and when she didn’t get one, seeing he was rather calm about it, she spoke again, “Why are you so calm about this?”
Bucky knew he had to answer this carefully. He also knew he had to frame this in a way she wouldn’t get upset at him. That meant he’d have to blame Monty, and though he had been Bucky’s friend…he was willing to do that.
“Well…one day…while we were goin’ through one of the bases…we got to talkin’ about things and…eventually they started doin’ their usual thing picking on me for bein’ so crazy about you. Now…Monty eventually said something along the lines of: ‘Barnes…if she were ever given the chance to sit down and carve out Schmidt’s heart and eat it…she would do so with a side of spaetzle and wash it down with a glass of peach schnapps’. I’ll admit that I laughed…but only because I knew you would, but one part would be completely different and I told him that. ‘Wouldn’t be peach schnapps, it’d be apple. Apple goes better with pig’.” He said and she thought while licking her lips for a moment.
“I want to agree with him, but at the same time I don’t know if I would have. Not because I’d have been unwilling to eat it, but I’d have been concerned about it due to what he became after injecting himself with the serum. You’re right about the schnapps.” She said and cuddled him, kissing his cheek, “I am stupidly proud of you for remembering that then and now that apple goes with pork better.”
He smiled at the sensation of her lips against his cheek. Soft, warm, sweet. Just as he remembered them to be.
Yet the memories of things he’d done filed in one after the other next. They weighed his joy back down with ice cold metal. The pit in his stomach twisted as he let them, guilt churning in it until it spread from there and out and despite Ritva’s words he couldn’t help feeling as if he didn’t deserve the warmth and tenderness she showed him or the comfort she gave him.
“We’re both stained with our pasts, Bucky…but…maybe together…we can find a way to…move forward with our lives. Ritva said…that…I focus too much on what they made me into instead of what I want to be…and that I spent seventy years defining myself by that and by the hunt for you.” Essie said as she toyed with his metal fingers and he looked at her, “She’s right. She usually is when she says things. Including when she said that…it’s time for us to get some help. I don’t know how to help you understand that what you did as The Winter Soldier wasn’t your fault any more than I know how to stop seeing myself as a monster in the mirror. Part of me knows I’m not…but…the rest doesn’t listen.
“I want to be…I just want to be good, healthy, happy, safe, and…I don’t want to feel like a monster that HYDRA created anymore. I’ve given them seventy years of my life and attention and…I know I’ll have to give more of my attention to them, but I’m tired of giving them my self-worth, my mind, and I’m not letting them have my man back. Ever. Even if he decides he doesn’t want to be mine, they can’t have him.”
Bucky didn’t answer at first. He knew she was right. They both needed help. As much as he didn’t want to admit that he needed help beyond the people he was talking to currently, he knew he did if for one reason only: It was hurting her.
She held up the façade of strength around her people, her subordinates, and even to her officials to a point. Ruun, Ritva, Tanis, Maggie…they all knew she was struggling but they didn’t know how much. They didn’t see what Bucky did every day, even when she didn’t think he was paying attention or even mentally there.
He hated it. The early days he just shut down when the memories became too much and she had to push him through the act of even functioning. The nights he knew he held her too hard just out of fear she wasn’t real and would be gone in the morning. Days and nights she hid every weapon and sharp object in the house somewhere he couldn’t find them because she knew. She knew without him having to say a word that the thought had crossed his mind to just…end it. Even if that thought was always followed immediately by the refusal to put her, and Steve, through that…it was that she had seen the initial thought.
As strong as she was, as much of a front as she put up even with him at times, Bucky knew her well enough to see that she was wearing down. He’d seen it plenty of times in the war when she’d run herself ragged and he’d have to make her rest. It was just worse now and he was the cause.
Essie did everything for him and he hated it. She ran a whole country and group of people while taking care of him, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, going to the market, seeing him through the night, reminding him how to use the technology, and doing everything she could to pick up the pieces of him while she slowly fell apart.
Bucky did as much as he could in return, that he could get to before she did, but that only triggered her to start doing it before she’d do anything else. The only thing he could manage to do without her getting to it first was cleaning up after the cats. He thanked her sensitive sense of smell for that one.
He’d voiced his frustrations to Ruun earlier. That had been what prompted the Beta to urge him to speak with Essie. They saw the cracks, but they knew very well they couldn’t make her do anything unless she wanted to.
“I don’t want to talk to a shrink. I don’t want someone else tryin’ to get into my head. I do not like the idea of being alone with someone that I don’t know with a notepad in their hand writin’ down all my feelings and telling me how to live my life. It’s…it’s too much like HYDRA. Alone. Sitting. Notebooks. Telling me what to do.” He said as he looked at her and moved his hand from hers to gently caress her face with it, being extra careful with the metal, “You tell me what to do but that’s different. You’re…you’re mine. That’s not changin’ as long as you don’t want it to, and I’d love for you to stop thinkin’ that I see what you do in the mirror. I don’t. You’re not the same girl I fell in love with back then…no…but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the same way for the one you are now. That being said and because I do feel that same way…I’ll try. With a shrink…but I want someone else there with me that I know and trust…and I want it clear that the only reason I’m agreeing to do it is because…even though all I see in the mirror is either the Winter Soldier or a broken man, you don’t see that and…I don’t want to hurt you anymore. I want…what you do. I wanna be good, healthy, not broken, and free from HYDRA. I don’t wanna be what they made anymore. I mean…the arm isn’t goin’ anywhere…but…y’know.”
“Mmm…about the words…you remember I told you I was talking to one of my allies about the deprogramming?” she asked and he nodded slowly.
“Yeah…they finally get back to you on that?” Bucky asked and she nodded.
“Well, they did a while ago, but you weren’t in a state to even start doing anything they recommended, which I told them and they understood. I have arranged for…a visit from a couple of them. It is a…tenuous alliance. One forged through…admittedly through diplomacy alone and not personal affection of any kind. That being said the ones I’ll be allowing a visit are the ones I like and get along with more. The heir, his sister, a few of their guards. I’m hoping that visit doesn’t coincide with when everyone else shows up or there will be a discussion about the shield.” Essie said and he blinked at her in confusion, “I’ll tell you about it more another day. For now…I really want to move but…uh…”
She glanced down at the cats, all of them asleep, contently curled up as the rain slowly dissipated outside. Bucky just smiled and looked at her. For all her complaining about them…and teasing of him…she loved them just as much.
A/N: Yes, that happened. Yes, they were still cuddling on the couch the whole time. Next chapter should be up on schedule. Hopefully.
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