onlyforthedream | The Truth Hurts.

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The Truth Hurts.

It's been three days since I've seen Bucky, and that's enough. I leave the house with the sole intention of finding him, preferably without bringing Natalia or Jason into it- what's about to happen is between the two of us, and I don't want to answer questions, nor do I want to set him up to be asked any. By all accounts, the influence that caused people to speak out against their will should have passed, and I find myself somehow disinclined to wait around for Bucky to come to me. I find Virginia in her stall, which is all the evidence I need of his return, and set off for the house, hoping to find it empty of anyone but him, for convenience's sake. When I don't find him there I strike out for the beach. Bucky's not an easy man to track, and I'm more counting on the general region, knowing his schedule, and the size of the island than anything so obvious as a telling trail of partial footprints and snapped palm fronds.

I can hear the ocean through the trees though I can't see it yet, and it's pushing through some low hanging vines and stepping onto a relatively clear swath of dirt that I find him.

"Bucky."

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"By mine," Bucky snaps, though he doesn't move an inch. He doesn't dare do something as aggressive as take a step forward, not yet, though he knows, deep down, that that's the only road for this to take. His breath feels tight in his throat, the anger barely kept at bay, already spilling over the edges, and still he's as stationary as any statue.

"By standards I learned from you... Fighting at your side, as your partner. And maybe you're too blind to see it, but I'm not."

"You were a child," I snap back, voice raising, "and I was struggling every step of the way to grapple with what I had signed up to become, doing the best I could and acting as much on blind instinct as training. Even by the end of the war, when I thought we'd gone through everything a man could- compared to what we've seen and done since? My God, Bucky, you can't expect me to look at you and see a bad person, and look at myself and see any different. I have made my share of mistakes, I have done my share of wrongs, but I know, as surely as I know anything, that you are as a good a man as any. Sure as hell as good a man as me."

The response shocks Bucky into laughter, the sound of it harsh even to his own ears. Of all the things Steve might've said to him, it's one of the worst, and so Bucky finds himself shaking his head, rocking back on one foot, as he folds his arms over his chest. He takes only a moment to collect himself, casting the briefest of glances skywards before he fixes Steve with a glare.

"How many children do you know who kept plastic explosives in their arm, Steve?" Bucky retorts. "How many children do you know who could throw a knife with my accuracy? Could shoot a gun like me? How many children could stand alongside the Invaders, utterly powerless, and not just be a liability? I was as much a child as you were just a soldier."

Edited 2011-06-13 04:51 (UTC)

"I was just a soldier, just one of what should have been many. The fact that you were the most dangerous person I'd ever met didn't make you an adult, Bucky, and the army should never have-" I bite the sentence off.

"I shouldn't have- This isn't the point." To say my hackles are raised would be a dire understatement. I can hear my pulse in my ears. The knowledge that the anger has more to do with my own failings than anything Bucky is saying doesn't make it any more manageable.

"The point is that up until the day that drone plane exploded I had never seen you do a single thing that made you a bad person, just like I haven't since the day you got your memory back. So what information am I missing, Buck, that's got you so damn convinced?"

His life as the Winter Soldier is a free-for-all, one whose criticisms often have Bucky quietly nodding along in agreement, but his life as Captain America's partner is another matter entirely. He's proud of the work he did for his country, misses the war more than he does his own damn limb, and Steve's words come like a slap to the face, leaving him hot and angrier than he can remember being in a while (which, given his history, isn't as impressive as it could imply).

There's color high on his cheeks, his eyes bright with rage, and finally he takes that all-too important first step forward, though he doesn't go any further than that, his body coming to an abrupt halt, even as he swings an arm outwards in a wild gesture.

"How about everything in between and not a few things afterward?" he yells. "Do you really need a $*%&ing list, Steve?"

Edited 2011-06-13 05:17 (UTC)

"You seem to think so," I reply, not quite shouting but close, closer than I would let myself if I could just get a grip on this.

"Because apparently I'm not capable of understanding with my limited knowledge."

"I'm not doing this," says Bucky, suddenly, throwing up his hands, but in spite of the connotations of surrender that accompany such a motion, he walks forwards instead of backwards, closing the distance between them rather than opening it. Regardless of what he says, he knows, now, that the only way out of here is through Steve, because there's a not single doubt in Bucky's mind that he'll be followed.

He stops short of his friend by a few feet, not close enough to throw a punch from a standstill, though the threat is undeniably there, just as it's been all along.

"The only person who wants to talk here is you."

"I'm not the only one who needs to, though," I say, holding my ground if my head tilts tellingly, slightly down, eyes never leaving Bucky's.

"You can't keep running."

"Never said anything about running," Bucky points out, jerking his chin upwards, defiance written into every line of his body. "Mostly because I didn't figure you'd offer to get out of my way."

"Damn it, Bucky," I say quietly, disappointment coloring more, I'm sure, than my words. I don't want this. As keyed up as I am, as primed for the fight- which is inevitable- as I may be, I don't want it to go this way.

That he trusts me so little, that he would rather fight his way out of talking to me than forfeit anything... I know it's selfish, but I need to know why.

I do not offer to get out of his way.

Bucky hesitates. He'd been so ready to throw the first punch -- every inch of his body yearning for it, wanting that sick satisfaction of being proven right -- but Steve's tone stops him cold. Three simple words make the difference between a fight and detente, though there's no telling how long the latter will actually last. The part of Bucky still raring to go doesn't have high hopes.

He sucks in a sharp breath that might've been a laugh in another life, but comes across only as desperate now. Since taking over the mantle of Captain America, he's done his best to do right by Steve's legacy while still striving to carve out his own identity under the flag, and in this much he's been successful. But at the end of the day, what Bucky wants most is to make the man proud; the disappointment cuts him down faster than any knife, and for a moment, he feels no older than the child Steve accused of him being. Even so, he doesn't avert his gaze, too afraid he might miss some subtle change of expression, some change of heart, though in this, too, he's not hopeful.

Edited 2011-06-13 06:24 (UTC)

"I accepted who and what you were," I say, taking advantage of the silence, however taut it may be, the words coming out metered and careful for all that they feel like they're pouring out in a stream beyond my control, "from the moment we were introduced and I never looked back. Not until the world finally beat it into me that you were gone."

I lift my gaze from where it had been hovering about three feet off the ground to Bucky's face.

"You can call me blind, but I know you, Bucky. I knew you then and I knew you when you came back. The last good thing I did before I came here, the last good thing, was asking Tony Stark to save you the way I couldn't," I say, the memory bitter for the knowledge that it was the right call to make, that I had to turn to Tony, of all people, to reach out to Bucky. I reach out to him now, to catch his shoulder, hoping that we can find a way to talk instead of following our natures and training to a foregone conclusion.

"The good old days are gone, Bucky, and if all that's left is you then the rest of them can go hang, because I'm glad."

"You're... glad," echoes Bucky, quietly, the word awkward in his mouth. He understands, on an intellectual level, that Steve means that he's happy Bucky's alive, of course, but in context, it has a slightly different meaning. Because what Steve isn't saying is too important to ignore; Bucky jerks back from under the weight of Steve's hand, the movement almost skittish, like a feral cat cornered in an alley. His gaze turns uncertain.

"The last time you saw me before you showed up here, I tried to kill you. And I'm not flattering myself when I say I nearly did."

This is not the first moment it's occurred to me that I'm screwing this up spectacularly.

"Bucky-" I start, knowing as I do that I've already lost this round, in the ways that count. I didn't say what I meant to, what I needed to. It's like watching an iron door slam shut and searching desperately for anything to keep it wedged open.

"The fact that you were alive meant there was a chance where there hadn't been one, before."

"A chance for what?" Bucky asks, confusion plain on his face, though he doesn't raise his voice again. He imagines he'll get there soon enough, with the way Steve's carrying on.

"If the Cube hadn't been there--"

"If that plane hadn't exploded," I counter, cutting him off.

"The plane did explode," shouts Bucky, not caring if he's just invalidated his own argument in the process. Having so recently relived the aftermath of his death in full technicolor, having so recently been strapped to another plane that might have seen him die again, his temper easily finds its second wind, just as he expected.

"And the Cube was there," I say.

"It was all I could think of to do."

"Bring back the kid you knew?" says Bucky, brows shooting upwards.

"No," I say, my own voice raising, angry that even if it isn't true, I can understand why he said it.

"To make you remember who that was, so that you could look at who you'd been turned into and decide for yourself if that was who you wanted to be."

"Except what I'd been turned into wasn't just erased," Bucky says, Steve's anger only fueling his own. It had taken him a long while to not just view the life Steve had returned to him as a burden, and about as long to not simply wish himself dead rather than be forced to reconcile his own beliefs with his actions as the Winter Solder. His memories of being a Soviet operative are fragmented, splintered, but they're still there, just under the surface, haunting his nightmares like his own personal ghost.

"I still did those things, Steve."

I don't know what to say. I don't know how to tell him that using the Cube to make him into the Bucky I knew would have been tantamount to what the Russians did. Making him over in an image I wanted, discounting the changes, however painful, he'd gone through.

The life he'd lived, if it could be called that. But I have to believe, have to, that it's worth it. He's still alive, and he has the chance to be whole, however long and hard a road it'll be to get there.

"Bucky, those weren't your choices. That wasn't you."

Bucky could scream. It bubbles in his throat, but he bites it back; his hands curl into fists at his sides, and he takes a step forward, close enough, now, to be within striking distance. Steve's spitting back his own arguments, but coming from someone else just drives home how foolish they are, how hopelessly naive.

"I was only a passenger in my own mind," Bucky says in a low growl, "but they were my hands. And that is what you don't understand."

The guilt could crush me if I let it, I swear to God. The look on his face alone is so ragged and raw I can barely stand it- but this is about Bucky running, not me standing still.

"No," I agree, "how could I? But I do know something about blaming yourself for what's past, and all of it was out of your control. You have to square with it, Bucky? I understand that. But you cannot keep blaming yourself, or you'll drown in it!"

"You think I don't know that?" Bucky retorts, taking another step forward. There's not much room left to move; either one of them will need to back off, or their detente will have come to a very decisive end.

"I'm not blaming myself. I'm not blaming anyone!"

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