fossilised | It's AU time

Honestly, Bruce was more worried about what this would do to Tony than to Thor. He had treated the man a lot over the years, and it had only been since he started his relationship with this man that he had seemed to start to come through the demons of his childhood.

"Well, the good news is that his vitals have all stabilised so, barring any unforeseen circumstances, the prognosis for survival is excellent. However, there was extensive internal injury, and we believe the spinal column was damaged. We won't know the extent of the damage until he wakes up and we can test his reflexes, but it's entirely possible he may require a wheelchair or, at the least, walking aids for the rest of his life."

But, really, compared to how bad it could have been...?

"Tony, you saved his life. You probably don't know this, Mr. Odinson, but Tony helped perform field surgery on your brother, and he definitely wouldn't have survived the night otherwise."

Tony was grim, though there was relief in his eyes to hear that, yes, thankfully, Loren would pull through. If he was in a wheelchair, if he needed walking aids, Tony could manage. He was pretty sure he could manage. Their lifestyle would change a great deal and Loren would likely become pretty nasty over having to be helped on a constant basis, but Tony wasn’t going to leave him just because of either of those. He wasn’t worried for himself. It was Loren’s life that bothered him.

It wasn’t like they both didn’t have money though. Loren’s selling of his place had actually brought in a lot of income. His shop did well. And Tony’s business was about to be booming once all of these cars were claimed and brought in for repairs. He could afford the best doctors and the best care. But Loren… Loren wouldn’t take it well.

“Stark, you are a good man. I am pleased more now than ever that my brother met you,” Thor said truthfully after Bruce had finished speaking of Stark’s heroics.

“I just did what anyone would,” he said, finally. “It was lucky that Banner was at the same book convention your brother was at, that’s all. I wouldn’t have known what to do. People aren’t like cars.”

It was true that Loren was not graceful in weakness, as long as he had his mind then he may well get through it without completely ruining the relationships that he had now. Not that he knew what was coming in his future, blissfully ignorant as he slept under the strong influence of the drugs.

"Now, what I want both of you to do is go home. Thor, you look exhausted and you've clearly come from helping out. You need rest. Tony, you've been here this whole time, and you're hardly without injuries yourself, so you need rest too. He's not going to wake up for at least another day, so please go home and take care of yourselves."

Someone else who was heading towards home was Bucky, confused and numb, feeling oddly detached from everything. He barely even flinched when people brushed by him in the street, the noises from the traffic faded in and out as memory kept brushing up inside him. He had shot people, innocent people, he thinks he might have shot Steve. But if he had then surely Steve wouldn't have told him to come home? He was scared to see fear in Steve's eyes, and judgement, not when he had finally found someone who looked at him like a person.

He slipped into the building and then into Steve's apartment, only coming to a halt beside Natalia as she slept in a chair by Steve's bedside.

"Steve?"

"Home? It's going to take hours to get back to Brooklyn. Just get me a cot and I'll sleep here," Tony said. He didn't know that some progress had been made clearing the streets. There was still no unauthorized travel, but cars had been cleared enough to allow one lane to be bypassed for emergency and military vehicles. "So nice try Banner. I've been relaxing. You've been working. You go sleep. How's that?" They could argue for awhile but Thor at least agreed to leave. He needed to check in on Natalia and then sleep and shower and return to work. He left Tony guard his brother for him. It was good to know he had that.

Steve had been in and out of consciousness for a little while. He slept away the pain and Nat had helped to wipe away some of the dirt and the blood, but he looked a fright, curled up on one arm, blankets just under his chin.

The sound of his name did make him stir, however, and he swallowed twice to coat his throat with saliva before he turned his head towards Bucky. Seeing him made Steve sit up just a little too quickly, the blanket pooling around his thighs and exposing his sling, but he looked nothing but relieved.

"Buck! You're home!"

Bucky nearly stepped back into the wall at the sight of how bad Steve looked. The sling drew his eyes and even if Steve didn't look horrified, Bucky certainly did, guilt and disgust at himself flickering across his face.

"Did I do that?"

The question was quiet and insistent.

He knew that Steve was a good guy, maybe he'd even try to downplay it, but Bucky couldn't let him. He really cared about this man, loved him, and if he had hurt him then that was unforgivable. It didn't matter the circumstances, because that was all excuses and if he did it once then he could do it again.

"God-- damnit, why aren't you in the hospital?"

"I was in the hospital," Steve jumped on. He couldn't answer the first question. "I didn't need to be taking up a bad... She's finally asleep. Let's go to the living room." And because Bucky needed to know that Steve wasn't afraid of him, he asked him for a hand up.

Even if Bucjy didn't take it, Steve would eventually get to the couch, his boyfriend hopefully in tow so that they could continue their conversation more quietly.

"What happened? I can't get any straight answers. I was on the subway, it shut down and as we were all walking along the rail, part of the station collapsed right when he hit the platform. And that's all I remember until you saved me." And after that... After that he remembered a whole lot of killing. And Bucky flying into rages-- the man was dangerous, Steve knew that. But he wanted to help him, not lock him away.

"I don't know," said Bucky, at least having been willing to help Steve to the couch and then sit opposite him so that they could talk for a while. He didn't really know how this would all work out, but he knew that things wouldn't be the same again. "Nobody seems to know, but whatever it was is gone now."

He spread his fingers, looking down as if he expected to see blood when there wasn't any, Dugan had made damn sure that he got cleaned off in the safe house before he sent him on his way.

"You know what's fucked up? I killed people, I kind of remember it, and I don't know how I feel about it. Why is it being heroic to shoot a man and kill him to defend yourself or others in Iraq or Afghanistan, but if you do it here then it's murder?"

"Because it's war," Steve said softly. The people that Bucky had killed had been doing wrong things like stealing or trying to force themselves on one of the teenage girls that had been with them. Had a situation like this never come up, maybe they would have been good men and never tipped the edge into an uneasy life departure of the evil way of life. Or, perhaps they were always bad men. It was so hard to tell in the moment. "You had orders. Here... You had a choice to ask questions."

Bucky could have done anything. He could have intimidated or threatened but he shot first and never bothered to talk. That was why this was murder. It had been unsanctioned.

Steve knew that it was wrong to do anything other than turn Bucky in, but he wasn't going to turn anyone in. Whatever had knocked out all of the power and phone reception in the city made it possible for Bucky's crimes to go unseen. And Steve wanted to keep it that way.

"But Manhattan was like war. For at least that day. And you kept me and all of those kids safe."

At least Steve wasn't denying that what he had done was murder. That was a relief in its own way, it would make it easier to cut ties and do what he had to do. Because there was no way in hell that he could just pretend to live a normal life after that, not knowing that he could snap again and kill more people. Kill Steve.

"I didn't know where I was," mumbled Bucky, though it sounded like an excuse to his own ears. "Everything was sand, and I just knew if they got hold of us... where we'd end up, and I couldn't go back there again. Steve, I fucked up, I hurt people. I didn't want to be that guy, I've never wanted to be that guy."

He scrubbed a hand over his face.

"I can't risk it happening again, especially not to you. You understand that, don't you? I'm like a fucking rabid dog, it's just a matter of when not if."

"You have only ever protected me," Steve said, gritting his teeth. If Bucky left, he would likely end up in jail or in a hospital or group home where he could be monitored and everyone else would feel safe. Only Steve, and perhaps that kind young soldier that served with Bucky, could protect him. Steve was sure of that. It had nothing to do with ego.

With the hand of his uninjured arm, Steve lightly placed his fingers against Bucky's knee.

"That I was hurt wasn't on you. It was on that kid that tackled you. Your finger slipped. If I know that, then you can at least do me the courtesy of knowing that yourself."

Steve wasn't going to let Bucky leave him. There wasn't a whole lot he could do right now about it but he wasn't standing by to let life happen to him without his say.

"And what about the other people that I shot, Steve? Did my finger slip those times too? How can you be taking this so calmly?"

He had been in the goddamn army and it had still freaked him out when he saw men that he had become friends with kill others, it freaked him out when he killed too, until he got far too used to it. How was Steve sitting there looking like he had been beaten to hell and back, still looking at him as if he was worth protecting.

"I've become a fucking monster. And I don't want to hurt anyone again, I can't do that. Jesus, think of all those people who are never going to go home, or the families waiting for them, and I did that."

Though he completely understood where Bucky was coming from, he absolutely did, this was still maddening. “You need to stop and take a breath.” Steve wasn’t really the tough love sort but he needed to reign in the situation or it was going to get away from him. “Whatever happened two days ago isn’t something that is likely to happen again.” Hopefully. If those objects that the news had been reporting on actually had been hostile, they wouldn’t be home right now and relief efforts would not have started. “You had a moment—“

He put up his hand before Bucky said something else. He wasn’t having it.

“You had an episode triggered by environmental conditions. That isn’t you. That was your training kicking in. Training that saved my life. And those kids’ lives. And who knows how many? I don’t want to hear any more of this self pity, Buck. You have nothing at all to be ashamed of because you had no control. You got me out of there alive. You're not a monster!"

Maybe it was because Steve didn't usually snap in such an authoritative tone, but it sure as hell made Bucky shut up and listen even if just for a few moments. He still couldn't quite get past what he had done, but that Steve was still defending him was utterly amazing.

"...that's what Dum-Dum told me," he said, voice low and eyes suspiciously wet. "He found me in the tunnels, someone I served with. He told me that he'd checked out all the footage they could find, and he'd done background checks and... everything I did was in defence of you and those kids. It wasn't right, but he said that's why he wanted to let me go, because it wasn't wrong either."

Fucking Dugan. Fucking Steve. How was he surrounded by such amazing people.

"So what? I just go back to life as normal and pretend like it didn't happen?"

“Yeah. Well. No, you can’t just-- No one can ever forget that. But yeah, pretty much, we have to go on. We always have to go forward.” Steve learned that after his father and mother each died. Sitting around and wallowing did nothing for a person. He’d had no choice in the matter and this terrible situation that they were both in was absolutely no different.

Steve moved his hand from Bucky’s knee to take his hand.

“You did something good. Your intentions were completely flawless.” If Steve had to hammer that home then he would, until poor Bucky was left emotionally bloody but at least better adjusted than he was when he walked through the door. “We can move on and work on the rest,” Steve said solemnly. He knew what he was talking about here.

Bucky understood what he was saying, Steve was still making statements like 'we' can do this, and 'we' can move on, like he was still going to stick by Bucky even through this. He sure as hell didn't know if he was worth this kind of effort, but he couldn't deny that it was touching.

"I love you."

It just sort of slipped out, fingers twining around Steve's so tightly that it might be a little bit painful.

"I swear I'll help you get back on your feet, look out for you until your arm is all healed up."

“Just until? I thought this was a long term thing,” Steve said, smiling at the easy way that Bucky had said he loved him. The speed of the thing didn’t matter to him. There was a connection between them that had little if anything to do with time as a linear phenomena. They were connected, somehow. He firmly and truly believed that, even if it wasn’t the most Christian of things toe believe in fate the way that he did.

He had Bucky take a shower in his bathroom – it was better to keep together considering New York and all of the surrounded boroughs, Brooklyn included, were under Martial Law – and was just getting back to bed when he heard a crash outside the door.

He moved as quickly as he could to glance through the peephole and let out a breath. It was just Thor, trying to get into Nat’s apartment. He pulled open the door quickly and motioned him over. “Thor, she’s in here.”

One large blond half plowed through one much smaller blond, calling Natalia’s name. Steve gritted his teeth. He’d had a nicer time of things before, but he couldn’t blame Thor in this. He was desperate to get to Bucky too.

Bucky spent a long time in the shower, just standing under the almost scorching water thinking. He had killed people, did it make a difference that they were people trying to do bad things? Did it make a difference that he hadn't been fully in control of his own mind at the time? Maybe. But that just made him think with a worm of guilt if he could have avoided this if he had just been less proud.

He wasn't an idiot, of course he knew that he had PTSD and a host of other traumas from what happened to him out there, but he had kept trying to deny it to himself because he didn't want to see himself as broken, let alone the world see him that way. If he hadn't been so determined to prove he was fine, when he blatantly wasn't, would he have already have had the help he needed to make sure that never happened in the first place?

There was no way to know, but he knew the only way that he could live with himself going forwards, if he didn't get punished, was to do this right.

By the time he came out of the shower, towel wrapped around his waist and very deliberately just that as if to display his scars and the stump of his arm, Natalia was wrapped around Thor so tightly that it was hard to see where one began and the other ended. Ignoring his natural urge to hide his deformities, he instead strode straight past them to look for Steve in the living room.

"I need help," he said, without preamble so that he didn't lose his nerve. "I have PTSD and other fucked up things in my head, and I need help for them because I never want to hurt you. You're the best goddamn thing in my life and I want to be worth having you, I want to make it up to the people I hurt the other night by making sure it never happens again."

There was nothing better than to hear Bucky finally acknowledge his problem. His physical disability was not much of one, it was not the problem, but the mental block he had was ruining every other aspect of his social life. Bucky wasn’t a case to be cured. He needed some help dealing with himself, his mental attitudes, and most of all, he needed help dealing with how to see the world now, what he could cut out and what he should focus on.

Only people that were in his shoes could help him. Steve had been a good start, but he wasn’t trained for any of this and he certainly could not relate. That was by far the most glaring difficulty that they had.

Steve stood and headed towards the other man before he wrapped his arms around his waist. His physical deformity, the scars and the missing arm, they weren’t a problem for Steve and had never been. He laid his cheek against the burn marks left over from the healing process on his chest and closed his eyes.

“We’ll call the VA tomorrow,” Steve said. It was their best resource. "And I'll be... I'll be there as much or as little as you want."

Of course he wanted Steve there every step of the way, but he didn't want to drag Steve down. He was a good guy, the last thing he needed was to get pulled into the mire of Bucky's head. But he did deserve to know why he was this messed up, and he was willing to share that much.

"...hey, Steve?"

He wound his arm around him tighter, thankful that his boyfriend had accepted the scarred parts of himself. It made it a lot easier to start trying to accept them himself.

"You, uh, you wanna make some tater tots and play twenty questions? I think I'm ready to answer some more serious ones, but only if I get to ask stuff in return again."

"Yeah I do. Go put some pants on and I'll... I'll scrap Nat and Thor off of each other and get the oven on."

Outside, the world wasn't the same as it had been when Steve and Bucky shared one another in bed. But they weren't the same either anymore and that was just something each would need to prepare themselves for.

After Steve's guests had gone and the door was locked, after the breaded, shredded potatoes were put in to cook and plated when they were finished around a ketchup right, after two full glasses of ice water were set up on the coffee table and a blanket stretched across the couch, their game started. It had been the same one Steve used to get to know Bucky when they had started to become more than acquaintances and he laid down the same ground rules.

"You don't have to answer anything you don't want to. But how about I start with an easy one...? How do you know Tim and why do you call him Dum-Dum?"

Steve was an amazing guy. He would never understand anyone who thought he wasn't strong just because he was small and skinny, he had never met anyone before who had the amount of courage and fortitude that Steve had. He didn't know if he'd be as strong if their positions were reversed and he was dealing with a new boyfriend who had this amount of issues.

But he didn't argue against it for once, he just accepted it and was grateful for it. He got dressed as requested, he helped set up the table with the tots and the drinks, and then he settled down beside Steve under the blanket.

"Uh-- we served together. He was in my unit, special ops type stuff." Bucky's words were still careful, like talking about any of this stuff was unnatural now, but he didn't back down. "Y'know I don't actually know why he's called Dum-Dum, it's a nickname from his childhood, I think. We all just called him that in the unit. He's a good guy, really good."

Okay, a question of his own, and he wanted to know more serious stuff about Steve too.

"Tell me about being a kid, sick a lot. Can't have been fun."

"Mom used to make a game of it sometimes," Steve said, cold hands and cold toes reaching out towards sources of heat. He was still processing follow up questions about Dum-Dum so he was being somewhat more open about how bad his childhood really had not been. "It was only the two of us for most of what I remember. Dad died when I was a toddler and mom worked really hard to give us all of this. The military helped of course. Especially with all of my medicines and my specialists. But there was one two month stretch in second grade where I couldn't get out of bed with pneumonia--"

He shrugged under the blankets as if to detract from how that sounded.

"Truthfully, Buck, I liked my childhood. I really did. Mom and I played games and I took up drawing to pass the time when she had her second job--"

What he wasn't saying was how lonely it was and that was because Steve always felt lonely, even with other people. He had friends and acquaintances, but it hadn't been until he met Natasha three years ago that he had anyone that could understand him. And she didn't really. They were friends because they had no one else but that made it special too.

Bucky was glad that Steve had managed to find some joy out of a shitty situation like being sick all the time. He would have liked to meet Steve's mother, she must have been some woman to have raised a kid as wonderful as Steve, and he really felt for the poor guy for how much he must miss her.

"Of course you liked it. No school a lot of the time, getting to sit around in bed, who wouldn't like that?"

It was a gentle tease, because of course he knew it must have sucked. Steve must have found it hard to make regular friends being so often out of the loop, no wonder his social circle was still so small. He was pretty damn privileged to be a part of it.

He kissed Steve on the head while he waited for the next question about him.

"I'm sorry you got sick so much-- and that you still do."

“I just hope it doesn’t scare you away. I’m a sack of worry.” That’s what one woman he had attempted to date about two years ago told him before she stopped texting him back. He doubted Bucky would be so easily scared off. He’d already been through a lot of what it was like to be with Steve from that first trip to the hospital.

Of course, it could weigh on a person over time. The constant illness, the constant coughing, the constant canceling of plans—

But they would come to that later.

Steve set his jaw after having more ketchup than potato, not chewing for a moment to savor the salty sweetness before he allowed his brain to formulate a question that might be a little more daring. “Special Ops huh? So…that’s what you were doing when you were captured?”

He would never be scared off wanting to date him, though he might buy him so many winter clothes that by the time he left the house he'd look like a giant puffy marshmallow in an attempt to keep him warm and healthy. He wouldn't care about plan cancelling, about any of that, as long as Steve was okay.

He hoped it would always be that way.

"...yeah." He shifted his hand as if to touch his dog tags, but of course he wasn't wearing them any more, so he just looked like an idiot touching fingertips to his chest. "I was specialised as a sniper, we were a special ops unit that went into high risk situations to try and diffuse them before they escalated. We were damn good at what we did. There was me, Dum-Dum, Morita, Gabe, Dernier, and Falsworth. Falsworth and Dernier were killed as we were captured, Gabe died in captivity, Morita got captured and discharged later, and Dum-Dum avoided capture and is still in service."

There was silence for a moment as he remembered good men lost, and good friends he'd likely never see again, before he tried to move on with another question for Steve.

"So, uh-- what're you scared of? Phobias, like-- you don't like spiders or thunderstorms. There's gotta be something, you can't be so brave all the time."

Edited 2017-04-14 12:20 (UTC)

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