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prodaegu · 3 days ago

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refraction

bucky barnes 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬 / 𝐭𝐰 – dark themes, Winter Soldier x Reader x Bucky Barnes, Emotional obsession and stalking, Emotional breakdowns and identity crisis, Mutual grief and loss, Mild sexual tension, no explicit sex scenes in the canon arc (i have plans), hurt/comfort, angst and romance, maybe sci-fi thriller elements? Idk this was a new attempt 4 me

word count: 11k

Summary: When an interdimensional rift tears open mid-mission, you and Bucky Barnes are pulled into a brutalist pocket reality—a decaying world with no sky, no time, and one impossible constant: him. The Winter Soldier lives here. An alternate Bucky who was never freed. Still weaponized. Still watching. And somehow—obsessed with you.

As you and your Bucky search for a way out, the Soldier follows—not to kill, but to learn. He mimics. He lingers. Because in all his fractured code, you are the anomaly.

notes – not proofread. taglist: @its-in-the-woods @crdgn

— reblogs comments & likes are appreciated.

The mission was supposed to be simple.

Not easy, not safe—but simple. In and out. Survey, recover, extract. Standard intel sweep on a collapsed HYDRA research cell buried beneath five stories of concrete and steel on the outskirts of Riga. The site had been flagged by a Stark-tech satellite scan—flashes of unstable energy readings, data loops that didn’t belong to this decade. The higher-ups sent the New Avengers team to investigate.

But only two of you were cleared for stealth recon: you, and Bucky Barnes.

The briefing had lasted longer than the flight. You were boots-on-ground before sunrise, armed with nothing more than a hardlight map, a comm relay, and the kind of trust that came from too many near-death experiences with the same man.

You didn’t need to speak much– the rhythm had settled between you a long time ago. You led. He covered. You scanned. He watched your six. The terrain was brutal—charred out buildings, rusted barricades, dead zones that scrambled your comms—but Bucky moved like he belonged in places like this. His boots never made a sound on broken glass.

“Ten meters up,” you murmured into the comm clipped to your jaw. “Reading a core spike.”

Behind you, a rustle. “How big?”

“Too high for something that’s been offline since 2014. Could be residual, could be—”

“Trap,” Bucky said, quietly.

You turned your head. He wasn’t looking at the scan. He was looking at the walls.

They were humming. Not a sound you could hear. But a sound you could feel. Like pressure against the backs of your eyes. Like static climbing the inside of your skin. Bucky’s jaw flexed. He rolled his shoulder again. The left one. His metal hand twitched.

You frowned. “What?”

He didn’t answer right away. “Feels like it did in Siberia. Before the vault.”

That made your stomach tighten. You took the next flight of stairs carefully, weapon drawn, bootfall muted. Bucky didn’t follow. He flanked. He moved opposite—never a shadow, never behind. Beside you. A wall.

You reached the core room three minutes later. Or—what was left of it.

Scattered around the chamber were shattered glass panels, wires thick as your forearm, and a circular platform that pulsed faintly with blue light. It looked like a teleportation pad, if one had been built by someone who hated physics. At the center of it: a suspended pod. Empty. Cracked. Data cables still feeding into it, despite the power to the rest of the complex being fried.

You pulled out your scanner.

Bucky stood at the door. Arm braced against the frame. His fingers kept flexing, clenching and unclenching like he could feel something in his bones. “I don’t like this,” he said. Not a whisper. A warning.

“Readings are off the charts,” you muttered, adjusting the sensitivity of the device. “Temporal interference. Oscillating pulses in the 90 terahertz range. This thing wasn’t just active. It’s still trying to open.”

Bucky was quiet.

You turned, about to call to him—

And that’s when the world folded.

It didn’t explode.

It split.

The sound was wrong. Not thunder. Not a scream. It was like being snapped through the eye of a needle—a high-pitched tearing inside your skull, followed by a weightless drop that didn't feel like falling. You felt Bucky’s hand grab your arm—

Felt the snap of metal fingers locking tight around your suit—

And then light hit.

Too white. Too wide.

You couldn’t hear yourself scream.

Couldn’t feel the ground.

The last thing you saw was Bucky’s face—eyes wide, mouth open, the fear there not for himself, but for you.

Then everything shattered.

You woke gasping. The air hit your lungs like plastic—cold and thin, sharp with chemical tang. Not fresh. Not natural. It smelled like recycled oxygen, like filtration systems that hadn’t been cleaned in decades. Like breathing inside an old machine.

You coughed hard, the sound echoing too long.

You reached for your side. Your scanner was gone. So was your rifle. The weight of your gear felt… off. Lighter. Stripped. The emergency beacon at your wrist blinked red, a silent, pulsing failure. Your comm crackled once—a faint burst of static. Then nothing.

“Bucky?” you rasped, your voice hoarse from disuse or travel—or both.

No reply.

Just your heartbeat ticking loud in your ears.

You staggered to your feet, boots crunching against shattered glass. Or maybe bone. The ground beneath you wasn’t pavement—it was steel. Corrugated, industrial, but ancient, like someone had welded cities together and then abandoned them. You turned in a slow, panicked circle.

And froze.

You were in a city. But not your city. Not any city you’d ever known.

The buildings rose like teeth from the ground—brutalist towers, monolithic and jagged, some leaning at impossible angles, others perfectly symmetrical in ways that felt unnatural. There were no lights in the windows. No signage. No movement. Just black glass and dull concrete, stretched high into a sky that wasn’t really a sky at all.

Above you, the cloud cover was low and strange, tinged with violet and yellow-gray—like bruises left on the atmosphere. The light that filtered down wasn’t sunlight. It was mechanical. And flickering. A faint electrical hum lingered in the air. The kind that made your teeth ache. It sounded like dying neon. Like the world itself was powered by something that should’ve been shut off a long time ago.

You turned again, heart hammering harder—

And this time, you saw him.

Bucky.

Crouched on one knee just down the corridor—if it could be called that—braced against a low rail, his head down, his left arm hanging heavy. That arm. His metal hand flexed once. Then again. Like he didn’t quite trust it.

You moved before thinking.

“Bucky!”

He looked up sharply. His face was pale under the film of sweat. Not hurt—but wrong. His pupils were too wide. His chest heaved with shallow, fast breaths. He looked like a man who’d just swum through something deep and unclean.

But when he saw you—

His jaw slackened. His eyes locked on yours. He stood too fast and stumbled. You were there before he could fall, hands on his chest, steadying.

“I had you,” he said, voice rough. “I didn’t let go.”

“You didn’t,” you whispered, brushing back a piece of hair that had fallen over his brow. “You held on.”

He stared at you, wild-eyed, as if needing confirmation that you were really here. Then his gaze swept the skyline—what passed for it—and his body tensed like he was expecting the world to attack at any second.

“What the hell is this place?”

You turned, scanning again. You felt like your bones could feel the distance from home. The air tasted like metal.

Like memory.

You swallowed hard. “I think…” You turned slowly, taking in the buildings again. The wrongness. The silence. “I think we’re not on our Earth anymore. Or maybe not in the right time. I’m not sure which exactly.”

Bucky didn’t respond. His left hand rose again—fingers twitching, curling into a fist. He rubbed his shoulder, like something was crawling under the plates. “Something’s off,” he muttered. “Everything’s too clean.”

Too symmetrical. Too curated.

Like someone had built a city out of half-remembered data.

And then—just at the edge of hearing—you both stilled.

The hum came again. Not electrical this time. Biological. Mechanical. Familiar. It wasn’t just in the air.

It was in you. And Bucky, already reaching for a weapon he didn’t have, said softly, “…We’re not alone.”

The sound wasn’t coming from the buildings. It was coming from below. A deep vibration, so low it barely registered as sound—more like something shifting in the bones of the city. Like the place was alive in the wrong way. A hum beneath the surface, mechanical and primal. Bucky’s jaw locked as it moved through his boots.

You looked at him. He was staring at the ground, head cocked slightly. Listening. Tensing. He always knew before you did when something was about to go wrong.

“We need to move,” he said.

You nodded, hand instinctively going to your thigh—only to remember your sidearm was gone. You cursed under your breath. Bucky had his knife. Just one. The grip glinted under his sleeve when he adjusted it, eyes sweeping the skyline.

“Do you see any doors? Stairs? Anything?” you asked, already scanning.

“Not yet,” he muttered. “But I can feel them.” He started walking, slow and deliberate. You followed. The street stretched too long in either direction—perfectly straight, too wide, too symmetrical. No cracks in the concrete. No signs of life. Just that constant electrical thrum in the air, and the burn of recycled oxygen in your lungs.

As you passed the first building, you noticed the walls.

Black glass.

Reflective, but not exactly.

You turned your head and saw your reflection in the mirrored panels—except it wasn’t quite your reflection. The image lagged. Off by a fraction of a second. When you raised your hand to your face, the image stared back a beat too long before mimicking you.

You blinked hard and stepped away from the glass. “Something’s wrong with the mirrors.”

Bucky didn’t look. “Don’t touch them.”

He veered left, toward what looked like a gap between two towers. It wasn’t an alley. It was too narrow, too smooth. Like a cut in a model. But there was an indentation in the wall just ahead—metal, oval-shaped, like a service panel or maintenance port.

He ran his metal hand over it, hovering for only a moment. And then, the wall opened with a hiss.

Inside were stairs.

Leading down.

Cold air drifted up from the dark.

You exchanged a glance. “I hate basements,” you muttered.

“Me too,” Bucky said. Then he stepped inside first.

The descent felt endless. The walls closed in the further you went—tight black metal, no lights, no textures. Just steps. Precise. Uniform. Like the rest of the city had been copied and pasted from someone’s memory.

You didn’t speak but the hum grew louder. And lower.

Until it stopped.

Dead silence.

Bucky held up a hand. You both froze. Then—just ahead—a pulse of faint blue light. Like something low-tech. Not power. Signal.

You crept closer.

The stairway opened into a chamber. Round. Industrial. A kind of data center, maybe, though half the screens were blank and the rest were flickering with ancient code you didn’t recognize. The air was frigid here, but dry. And in the center of the room—beneath hanging wires and blinking half-buried panels—sat a single thing.

A chair.

Surgical. Restraints on the arms. Straps at the ankles. Headpiece missing.

You stepped forward slowly, but Bucky didn’t move. You turned back to find that he was staring at it like he’d seen a ghost. “Bucky?”

He didn’t speak.

You followed his gaze and that’s when you saw it– a number etched into the side of the chair base.

WS.08.021

“Is that…”

He nodded once. Eyes fixed.

“It’s one of mine.”

Your throat went dry. You took a step back from it, suddenly aware of how much this place looked like a memory turned physical. A chamber built not just to restrain—but to replay. You looked at Bucky but his face had gone tight, unreadable.

He turned and walked toward one of the walls, hand trailing along the consoles. “This isn’t a city,” he said. “It’s a loop. They built it out of data. Places we were. Places I was. But not all of it’s real.”

You swallowed. “So what is it?”

His hand paused on a panel.

Then—

A sound.

Not from the walls this time. From the ceiling.

You both looked up. A small hatch opened with a hiss. Dust fell in slow spirals. Footsteps echoed overhead.

Then a voice.

Low. Steady. Crackled through a speaker system neither of you could see.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Your heart jumped. It wasn’t Bucky. But it sounded just like him.

The voice continued. “She doesn’t belong here.”

Bucky reached for his knife.

Too late.

The door slammed shut behind you.

You knew you were being watched before you heard him.

There was no sound. No footstep. No breath. But the hair on the back of your neck stood up like you’d stepped into static. Like something ancient had clocked your heartbeat from a mile away and started walking toward it.

You froze.

Bucky stopped beside you, body going still in that practiced, predator way of his.

You were in the narrow corridor just outside the data chamber. The lights were low, flickering with dull blue electricity. You hadn’t spoken since the door behind you slammed shut. Since the voice in the ceiling whispered like something that shouldn’t have existed anymore. “She doesn’t belong here.”

You’d started to turn back toward the stairs, instincts flaring. Bucky’s metal hand found your waist.

“Wait.”

You looked up and there he was. Emerging from the shadows at the far end of the corridor. Broad shoulders. Dark tactical gear.

The muzzle wrapped tight around his face like a cruel artifact, a final echo of restraint. Not just a weapon’s sheath, but a warning label. Matte-black leather strapped around his jaw and mouth, sealed with reinforced steel hooks. You could almost hear the phantom creak of it every time he moved. It had no function now—he didn’t need it to silence himself. But it was still there. A leftover instinct. A vestigial threat.

His titanium arm caught the light next. Not worn, not softened. It gleamed—bright and surgical. Not the deep matte finish of your Bucky’s vibranium, which absorbed light like it belonged in shadow.

No, this arm was polished and unfinished all at once, the kind of clean that came from maintenance, not wear. The plates were sharper, angular, deliberately hostile. They hadn’t been designed for him. They’d been designed to hold him. To slow him. To weigh him down.

You could see it in the way he carried it—how it pulled at his shoulder even as he moved with lethal precision. The bulk of it wasn’t fluid. It was oppressive. It didn’t extend from his body so much as anchor it. A metal leash from a master long dead.

Your Bucky’s vibranium was different. Still heavy, yes, but there was intention in every motion. Craftsmanship, not control. That arm was a bridge—not a chain. It flexed with him. Cradled your body when he held you. Could tear through steel, but had learned softness. Learned warmth. It had been reforged in Wakanda, not HYDRA. Made to protect. To steady. To heal.

But this one…

The Soldier’s arm made no effort to belong to him. It was a harness. A trap. A gleaming echo of purpose with no soul underneath.

And still—he moved like it was a part of him. Not out of comfort, but out of surrender. The way a caged thing stops noticing its own collar.

You watched it flex as he shifted his stance. Every joint rotated silently. The hum of it was clinical, like bone saws in a sealed room. Not a single scratch marked its surface.

Because it had never been tested for mercy.

Only obedience.

And his eyes—

Ringed in charcoal like bruises. Pale. Focused. Empty.

Your chest seized.

It was Bucky’s face.

But it wasn’t him.

It was wrong.

Subtle differences: the way he held his head—more rigid, like a soldier at parade rest. The too-wide stance. The way his eyes didn’t flinch when they landed on you.

He was looking through you, not at you.

And still—your body reacted.

Your Bucky stepped in front of you, just slightly, one hand raising slow and deliberate. “Stay behind me.”

The muzzle-wearing Bucky didn’t blink. He didn’t shift. He took a step forward. Not fast. Not threatening.

But inevitable.

Your hand went to your side out of instinct. No weapon. No comm. The air buzzed between the two men like a tripwire pulled too tight. “Who are you?” Bucky asked, voice low.

The Soldier cocked his head. The same way your Bucky does when he’s thinking. But it was colder. Analytical. Wrong.

His voice crackled out from beneath the muzzle—distorted, mechanical. “You smell different.”

Your blood went cold.

He was talking to you.

Your Bucky took a step forward. “Back off.”

The Soldier stopped. His gaze didn’t leave yours.“She shouldn’t be here.” He repeated.

“She’s with me,” Bucky said, louder now.

Silence.

Then—another step forward. Deliberate. Stalking. The way a wolf paces just out of reach. Not striking. Not yet. “Mine,” the Soldier said, voice flat. Inevitable. Like gravity. “She is mine.”

Your stomach dropped.

You didn’t know how he meant it. Possession? Recognition? Or something darker—something written into the marrow of him, something programmed.

Bucky stepped forward without hesitation, arm out like a wall. “Fuck no,” he growled. “Not in any fucking reality.”

The Soldier didn’t flinch.

He didn’t bristle or reach for a weapon. He just… watched.

Watched you.

And somehow, that was worse.

You couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. Every instinct in your body told you to run, to disappear, to get as far as you could from the thing in front of you that looked like your Bucky—but wasn't. Not in his eyes. Not in the stillness. Not in the way he never once blinked.

But you didn’t run.

Because Bucky was in front of you. Because the Soldier hadn’t attacked. Because something in his stare wasn’t just threat.

It was calculation.

Like he was trying to place you.

The Soldier tilted his head slowly. Just a few degrees to the right. Not a tick of curiosity.

A test. A read. You were being assessed. Measured. Classified.

He took one step forward.

Bucky’s arm lifted, instinctively protective—but the Soldier didn’t care. His eyes didn’t leave yours. “I’ve seen you,” he said. Quiet now. Slower. Like every word had to pass through something fractured. “In dreams. In recall breaks.”

You blinked. “What?”

His head shifted again. “When the noise goes quiet,” he said, voice low. “You come in.”

Your Bucky didn’t move. But his entire body locked up. You could feel it in the way his fingers twitched near your hip. In the way his breath slowed. He was tracking every muscle in the Soldier’s body.

And still—the Soldier didn’t look at him.

Only you.

“You touch him,” the Soldier said. “Like he matters.”

Your lips parted. You didn’t speak.

He took another step forward. Deliberate. Measured. Not to Bucky.

To you.

Bucky’s arm rose slightly. Ready. Waiting.

But the Soldier stopped just short of striking distance.

Close enough to see the edges of your expression. Close enough that you could see the faintest pulse in his throat. He looked at you like a man seeing fire for the first time. Not just afraid of it—entranced by it.

His chest rose slowly. Fell again.

A machine pretending to breathe.

“I’ve killed everyone who looked at me like that.” His voice was quieter now. Almost like a confession.

You swallowed. “Like what?” you whispered.

The Soldier’s gaze flicked over your face—searching, cataloging. “Like I’m not a ghost.”

Bucky’s hand was a vise around your arm now. Protective. Fierce. The Soldier noticed. His eyes tracked it. The contact. And his expression shifted. Just slightly.

He furrowed his brow. “I remember that touch,” he said. “Somewhere. Someone.”

There was no recognition in his voice. Just… confusion. The way a child might frown at a word they almost know but can’t quite place.

Then—he reached out.

Just an inch. Just one hand. A slow raise of gloved fingers, coming toward your face like he was trying to confirm something. Like your skin might hold the answer to a riddle he didn’t remember asking.

Bucky lunged.

You barely had time to react.

But it didn’t matter.

The Soldier was gone before contact.

A blur of motion. No sound. No breath. No warning. Just vanished—back into the dark, into the bones of this city that felt like a memory made of glass.

You stood frozen.

The air still hummed faintly. The echo of him lingered—like static under your skin. The ghost of his breath still on your cheek.

Bucky lowered his arm slowly. His voice, when it came, was tight. “He’s me.”

But he didn’t say it like a truth.

He said it like a wound.

The tunnels beneath the city were colder than the streets above.

You’d found them by accident—an access hatch hidden beneath the skeleton of what looked like a train platform, though no trains ever came. It had taken both you and Bucky to force the rusted panel open, metal creaking like a dying thing. The stairs beneath were narrow, steep, too smooth to be natural.

You hadn’t spoken much since the Soldier vanished into the shadows. Bucky hadn’t said a word at all.

The quiet pressed against your skin. The city above had been empty. Dead. But this place—this place remembered things. It felt like walking through someone’s trauma turned tangible.

The walls flickered with power at uneven intervals—long corridors lit by strips of broken LED, pale blue and humming like a dying heart. You passed windows with no view. Doors with no handles. Spaces too symmetrical to be real. They were sets, not structures. Fragments.

The first one you recognized was Siberia.

You’d never been there yourself.

But you’d seen it in the files. In the shadows behind Bucky’s eyes. You knew it by the slab of concrete with the chains embedded in the floor. The table with the metal clamps.

Bucky froze at the threshold. He didn’t go in. You didn’t ask him to.

The next one was harder.

A room designed like a motel. Cheap bed. Ashtray. A sink in the corner with no plumbing. You didn’t know what it meant. But Bucky’s shoulders rose slightly—then fell.

“It’s not real,” he murmured.

You turned to him.

“What?”

“This whole place. It’s not real. It’s a patch job. A loop.”

“A loop of what?”

His voice was hollow.

“Me.”

You didn’t reach for his hand. You wanted to. But he was too far away in his own head. Instead, you walked.

Deeper.

Past a long hallway with mirrored walls. Past a control room that flickered with code you couldn’t read. Past another chamber where restraints dangled from the ceiling like vines.

And then—

you felt it.

Not a sound.

Not a footstep.

But presence.

You turned sharply. Nothing. Just empty corridor. Just the hum.

But you knew.

You weren’t alone.

You walked faster.

You and Bucky ducked into a maintenance alcove—a dead-end room, long-abandoned. No power. No screens. It felt safe only because it was small. Trapped air. Cold. Bucky checked the corners with the knife still sheathed in his palm. Then he slumped down, back against the wall.

You sat opposite him.

“I think he’s following us,” you said quietly.

He didn’t look at you. “He is.”

The answer didn’t come with surprise. Just… acceptance.

You were quiet for a long time. You counted the seconds by the drip of condensation from the pipe overhead. The smell of rust filled your lungs.

Then Bucky said, without looking at you, “I think he’s… studying you.”

You blinked. “Me?”

Bucky nodded slowly. “I know what it feels like. When someone watches you like you’re a tool. A puzzle. A threat.”

You swallowed.

“But this isn’t that.” His voice was quieter now. “He looks at you like you’re a glitch in the code. Something soft in a world that was built to hurt.”

You didn’t know what to say to that. So you just said, “Are you okay?”

Bucky glanced up at you then. The kind of look that was half apology, half armor. “I don’t know.”

Then he leaned his head back against the wall.

And you both sat in silence.

Until—

A flicker.

A shadow in the hallway.

You turned fast—but again, nothing. Just stillness. But when you looked back at the open doorway, you could feel it.

He had been there.

Watching.

Listening.

You felt him before you saw him.

The Soldier. Always just out of sight. No footsteps. No sound. But the air would shift. The lights would flicker, and a pressure would bloom at the base of your spine, like something just behind you had taken a breath. He never came close enough to touch. Never spoke again.

He just watched.

Sometimes from the end of a hall, motionless in the dark. Sometimes reflected in glass, too far away to be a threat, too close to dismiss. He never advanced. Never chased. He only lingered—like smoke in your lungs.

And somehow, that was worse.

You and Bucky had been underground for days.

Moving from zone to zone. The map on your wrist barely worked—glitching every time you crossed into a new district. The geography shifted. No streets repeated. No corners turned the same way twice. The world bent around you like it didn’t know how to stay consistent. A synthetic mind trying to dream a city.

But it wasn’t a memory loop.

Not like Bucky had first guessed.

You’d both thought, at the beginning, that this was a constructed echo—HYDRA’s doing, some leftover failsafe. A fractured re-creation of the Soldier’s psyche, made of half-remembered mission rooms and reconstructed pain.

But that theory fell apart when the sun came up.

You hadn’t realized until then that the place even had a sun. It rose sideways—low and colorless, hovering like a spotlight behind clouds of artificial haze. The shadows it cast were wrong. Not elongated, but doubled. Like you were being observed by two sources at once.

And then you found the control room. Deep below the city, past the replica bunker of a HYDRA lab, you opened a rusted steel door and found something that didn’t belong.

A breach reader.

A real one.

Multiverse tech. Quantum anchors. A fraying pocket of space stitched shut with decaying energy signatures.

“This isn’t your memory,” you whispered, staring at the console.

Bucky’s jaw was locked. His expression unreadable. “It’s not mine at all.” He turned away. Hand braced against the metal wall. You saw the tension in his shoulders—how it rode the length of his spine like a pulse. He didn't speak again for a long time.

And then, very quietly—

“That makes it worse.”

You blinked. “Why?”

“Because it means… he’s real.”

Not a remnant. Not a file. Not a hallucination.

A version of him that survived in this pocket. Lived here. Stayed here. Still dangerous. Still weaponized.

Still alone.

And that—that haunted Bucky in a way the Soldier’s presence never could.

That night, you made camp in the husk of a library.

Shelves half-collapsed. Book spines crumbled to dust. The building smelled of ozone and time. You found two blankets, a makeshift cot, and a glass panel that opened into a view of the hollow city below. Quiet. Empty.

You took first watch.

But when Bucky finally slept, body curled on his side facing the door, his metal hand resting near the knife on the floor—you felt it again.

That prickling heat at the base of your skull. The breath of something near.

You turned.

Nothing.

But you knew he was there. Just out of reach. Somewhere in the library’s bones.

Watching you.

Watching him.

Bucky hadn’t spoken about the Soldier since the console.

But he’d gotten quieter. More distant.

You’d catch him staring at the space just behind you, like he expected to see his own face in the dark. Like he could feel his own past circling you both like a vulture.

“Do you think he hates me?” he asked you once, voice barely audible in the half-light.

You looked over. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Blank. “Why would he hate you?”

“Because I got out.”

He didn’t say anything else. Didn’t need to.

The Soldier came closer the next night.

You didn’t see him—not at first. But when you shifted beneath your blanket, something creaked. A soft sound from the corridor. You rose quietly, knife in hand, breath shallow.

You stepped into the hall. He was standing at the far end.

Half in shadow.

Unmoving.

Muzzle still strapped tight. The gleam of his titanium arm catching the light from a nearby emergency fixture. His chest rose, fell. Slower than normal. Too measured. Like he was breathing the scent of you in.

You didn’t move. He didn’t speak. But he didn’t turn away, either.

Just looked at you. Not with rage. Or confusion. Or want. With something else.

Study.

As if he was trying to figure out how you worked. As if you were a code he’d been forced to memorize but never allowed to feel.

And then—he tilted his head. The movement was slight. Offbeat.

Wrong.

Like he was trying to remember how curiosity worked.

You didn’t speak.

You stepped back once.

And then closed the door between you.

You didn’t tell Bucky. Not yet. Because you didn’t have words for what the Soldier was doing.

He wasn’t stalking. He wasn’t hunting. He was… haunting.

Like a memory waiting for permission to become real.

It started with a gesture.

You didn’t notice at first—not exactly. You were sitting beside Bucky, shoulder to shoulder, your legs stretched out against the cold floor of your makeshift shelter. His left arm brushed yours now and then as he shifted, fiddling with the busted transmitter you’d found three corridors back. He was talking softly, something technical about signal delay and cross-dimensional interference, but your eyes were on his hands.

It was a comfort. Familiar. You’d always found safety in the way he moved—intentional, careful, his.

So when the Soldier appeared across the corridor again, half-lit by the blue-white hum of a nearby console bank, you nearly missed it. But there it was. He was standing the same way.

Not exactly. But close enough. Left arm slightly bent. Shoulder cocked at the same angle. Feet positioned not for balance, but to mirror.

Your breath caught.

You turned your head, heart tapping once against your ribs. Bucky hadn’t noticed. He was still focused, talking under his breath. But the Soldier was still watching. Still… waiting.

Not moving. Not blinking.

Not copying. Studying.

And it only got worse.

You started to see it in small ways after that.

He began appearing more frequently—always hovering at the edges of wherever you camped. Not quite hiding, but not announcing himself either. Like a wolf that had learned not to spook the prey.

He never approached.

Never spoke.

But you saw it.

In the way he tilted his head when Bucky made a joke. In the way he reached out once—bare fingers brushing the corner of a chair Bucky had just vacated.

Not to sit. Just… to touch.

To understand.

Bucky noticed on the fourth day.

You were walking ahead, tracing the echo of a signal pulse on your handheld when he stopped in the middle of a hall. He stared behind you.

Silent.

You turned.

The Soldier stood at the end of the passage. His hair was down. Tied back in the same low knot Bucky wore. Loose strands falling around his face like a shadow-version of familiarity.

He’d never worn it like that before.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky muttered.

You stepped closer. “He’s… copying you.”

“No.” Bucky’s voice was sharp. Quiet. Tight. “He’s trying to replace me.”

That night, the mimicry became personal.

You were half-asleep beside Bucky, your body wrapped in your only thermal blanket. He’d been trying to keep you warm with shared heat, his arm around your waist, breath slow and steady behind your ear.

You’d just begun to drift when a shift in the room woke you. Not noise. Presence. That electric ache again. The weight of attention.

You sat up, heart suddenly pounding, eyes adjusting fast in the dark. There—across the room, just within the pale wash of flickering light—

The Soldier.

Standing still. Hair tied back. Chest rising. Falling.

Watching you.

But not like before. Not like a threat. Like a mirror.

Like he was trying to memorize this. The way you curled into Bucky’s side. The shape of your hand over his heart.

What did it mean?What did it feel like?

Was it warmth?

Was it love?

Was it freedom?

He didn’t step forward but he didn’t leave, either. Not until Bucky stirred and turned in his sleep, pulling you closer.

Only then did the Soldier vanish, shadow swallowed by deeper shadow.

Later, in the quiet hours before morning, Bucky whispered, “I don’t think he understands what he’s doing.”

You were still pressed into his side, fingers tracing slow circles into the skin just above his hip.

“He’s not trying to hurt us, I don’t think. Not really,” Bucky murmured. “He’s trying to figure out what it means to be wanted.”

You looked up at him.

He wasn’t looking back. He was staring at the ceiling. At nothing. And for the first time, you saw it in his expression—not fear. Not jealousy.

Grief.

For a version of himself that had no one. No freedom. No hand to hold. Only orders. Only metal. Only memory.

It was late.The kind of late where time stopped counting forward. Where even machines slept. The cold was thinner underground, filtered by miles of concrete and quiet, but it was still present—coiled in the corners of the floor, clinging to exposed steel like breath on glass.

Bucky had fallen asleep at last. His arm was around you, loose but firm, vibranium fingers curved gently at your waist like muscle memory.

You should have slept too, but something kept your eyes open. You didn’t know what held you so tightly to the waking world. Not at first.

There was no sound, no flickering light. Just a feeling. A silence that pressed in around you like a held breath.

You turned your head slowly, a sense of knowing washing over you– and there he was.

The Soldier.

Sitting on the ground just beside you.

Too close.

Still.

Watching you.

Not from the shadows. Not from a hallway. Not at a distance.

Right here. Kneeling beside your bedroll.Between you and the door. Unarmed.

He hadn’t made a sound. Not a single one. You hadn’t even felt the air shift.

His metal arm rested over his bent knee. His other hand was braced against the floor. That black muzzle was still in place. But it didn’t look like armor anymore. It looked like habit. Like resignation.

You froze. Your breath stuck in your throat. Not from fear, but from the weight of his gaze.

He wasn’t glaring.

He wasn’t hunting.

He was looking. Really looking.

His eyes flicked over your face with slow precision—like he was memorizing it. Line by line. Scar by scar. The map of someone who lived a life he couldn’t comprehend.

You didn’t speak. Not yet. You didn’t want to wake Bucky.

But something in you couldn’t look away. And then—so gently you almost missed it—he lifted his left hand.

The metal one.

You stiffened. He didn’t reach for your throat. Or your wrist. Or your weapon.

He touched your face.

Just the backs of his fingers. Knuckles cold. Skinless. Perfectly balanced. They dragged once along your cheekbone, almost feather-light. The way someone might test a surface they were afraid to break.

You didn’t flinch. You should have. But you didn’t.

His voice came low. Hoarse. Like something unspooled in his throat had finally let go. “You look at him… like he matters.”

The sound of it was cracked glass. Rough and uncertain. The language was English, but the cadence wasn’t. Something about the phrasing—slow, precise—carried the ghost of another tongue.

Russian.

You swallowed hard. Your lips parted. “He does,” you whispered.

He stared at you like the words had hit something deeper than flesh. His mouth moved once behind the muzzle. As if trying to repeat them silently. To hold them.

He looked down, briefly.

Then back at you.

And breathed—

“Teach me.”

Just those two words.

Not a command. Not a demand.

A request.

Something rawer than begging.

It didn’t sound like hope. Not yet.

But it ached like it wanted to become it.

You opened your mouth, but nothing came out. You couldn’t speak past the weight in your chest. Not when you saw the way his eyes shuddered—just faintly. A flicker. A fracture.

Like he was in pain and didn’t know why. Like he thought this was what pain always felt like.

Behind you, Bucky stirred. Not much. Just a shift in breath. A twitch in his grip at your waist. The Soldier’s attention snapped toward the sound—but he didn’t move. Didn’t vanish like before. He stayed.

Frozen. Caught.

And for the first time… he looked scared.

Not of you. Not of Bucky.

But of the moment breaking.

Of something new trying to start, and not knowing what would happen if it did. You reached out. You didn’t mean to. But your hand moved on instinct, gentle fingers brushing the edge of his gloved wrist—just a moment, just enough.

His eyes closed.

Tightly.

And when they opened, something in him had softened.

Just a little.

Then—wordlessly, soundlessly—he rose. Turned. And disappeared into the dark again.

But not far.

You know that now– that he wasn’t going away.

It started to feel like there were three of you in the room—even when only two were present.

A silence would stretch too long. A shadow would hold just a little too still. You’d turn a corner and sense him before the air shifted, as though the Soldier’s presence had begun to imprint itself on the atmosphere.

He didn’t hide anymore. Not really. He hovered. He watched.

And then he started speaking.

Small things at first. Echoes.

Repeats.

Bucky would say something—dry, sarcastic, soft—and an hour later, the Soldier would murmur it back to himself under his breath. Trying it on like a new weapon. Testing the tone. The rhythm. As if understanding it was the same as owning it.

You caught him once practicing a smile.

Not a smirk. Not a sneer.

A smile.

He was alone. Standing before a fractured reflective panel. Mimicking the curve of his mouth, over and over, his eyes vacant. A ghost trying to wear skin. You didn’t say anything. You just watched. Quiet. Wounded.

Because it wasn’t funny.

It was devastating.

That night, the Soldier came closer than ever.

You and Bucky had camped inside what looked like an abandoned medical bay. Most of the lights were dead, but the climate control still worked, and the walls were thick enough to keep out the electric hum of the city.

You’d just finished eating when you saw the shadow in the doorway. The Soldier didn’t speak. He stepped in, slow, like he was waiting for permission.

Your Bucky stood. Instantly. Not hostile. But tense. Caution in every line of his body. “What do you want?” he asked, voice flat.

The Soldier looked at you. Then at Bucky. Then back again. And—without breaking eye contact—he mimicked Bucky’s stance. Exactly.

Feet set. Shoulder turned slightly. Hands relaxed at his sides. Like a glitch in the system. A mirror reflecting back at full volume.

“Stop it,” Bucky said. But the Soldier didn’t. He stepped forward. You caught the flicker of a furrow in Bucky’s brow. “Stop it.”

Still, the Soldier came closer. You moved to stand beside Bucky, but the Soldier’s eyes snapped to yours—tracking the shift, watching how your body moved in tandem with his.

“Why does he matter to you?” the Soldier asked.His voice was quieter than before. Less robotic. Still wrong—but shaped with more inflection. It wanted to sound like Bucky.

“Because he’s mine,” you said, gently. “Because he chose to be.”

The Soldier blinked. Once. Slowly. “I can choose.”

Bucky bristled beside you. His hand curled into a loose fist. “No. You’re not choosing. You’re copying.”

The Soldier’s expression twitched. “That’s how we learn.”

“That’s how you repeat,” Bucky snapped. “It’s not the same.”

“He touched your hand,” the Soldier said, eyes flicking to your fingers. “And you smiled.” He moved a fraction closer. “I can do that.”

Bucky stepped forward. “Back off.”

The Soldier didn’t move.

You laid a hand on Bucky’s chest. Tried to steady him. But your Bucky was unraveling.

Not out of fear. Not even anger. It was something deeper.

Loss.

He was watching a version of himself that had never been held. Never made a joke that landed. Never learned to smile without being punished. And that version was trying—desperately—to replicate what he thought mattered.

But it wasn’t working.

Because the Soldier wasn’t mimicking out of affection. He was mimicking because he believed affection could be manufactured. He didn’t understand what he was reaching for. But he wanted it so badly he’d rip Bucky apart to get it.

And that was what terrified Bucky most.

Not that the Soldier would hurt you.

But that he wouldn’t know he was doing it.

Later, when the Soldier had finally retreated into the hall again—quiet as breath—you found Bucky sitting on the edge of a cot, head in his hands.

“I keep seeing myself in him,” he muttered. “But it’s not me.”

You sat beside him. Waited. “He’s wearing my face. My voice. My movements.” He looked up. Eyes red-rimmed. Tired. “But he doesn’t have my soul.”

You touched his hand. Laced your fingers through his. “He wants yours,” you said softly. “He thinks that’s how this works.” Bucky’s throat worked as he swallowed. “But he can’t have it,” you finished.

“No,” Bucky agreed.

And then, brokenly—

“But I think he’s going to try.”

It wasn’t until you found the recording room that the truth finally snapped into place.

You’d wandered ahead. The corridor had dipped—spiraled, really—into a sublevel that hadn’t existed on any of the scrambled maps. The air grew colder. The steel walls smoother, more intact. Less like ruin, more like ritual.

Your boots echoed too loud and then you saw it. A door. Clean. Untouched by rust or dust. Not locked.

You pushed it open. Inside you found a chamber. Small. Circular. Lined with projection panels. Smooth black walls and a single console at the center. A pulse hummed beneath your feet, like a heart beating out of time.

Bucky caught up seconds later. His breath caught. “What is this?”

You didn’t answer. You were already walking toward the console.

The logs were encrypted—old HYDRA sigils, fractured into subcode. But Bucky cracked it quickly. His fingers flew across the panel, face set in stone.

One by one, the screens lit up.

The first video began to play and everything stopped. You saw him—the Soldier—strapped to a vertical restraint table. Face slack. Arms pinned. Mouth gagged. A voice spoke from offscreen. Cold. Clinical. Russian-accented English.

“Subject reports null feedback upon exposure to simulation loop. Suggest continued variable.”

Another screen lit up.

The Soldier again. Sitting in a dark room. This time—watching something.

You.

It was footage. Not from here. Not this world. A surveillance recording. You on some rooftop with your Bucky. Laughing. Reaching for his hand.

The Soldier stared at the screen.

Expressionless.

Another log.

Another version of you. In a hallway. Smiling over your shoulder.

Another.

You.

Always you.

Always with him.

“What the fuck…” you whispered.

Bucky stood frozen beside you. Pale. Rigid. “They were… using you as a stimulus,” he said.

You turned slowly. “Me?”

“Across multiverses. Splice files. Emotional triggers. They fed them to him. Over and over.”

“Why?”

Bucky didn’t answer at first. Then—quietly:

“To make him want.”

–

You collapsed onto the edge of the console.

It all made sense now.

The way the Soldier looked at you. Not with lust. Not even curiosity. With recognition.

You weren’t new. You weren’t foreign. You were the ghost that haunted the loop. The shape of something he’d been conditioned to long for without understanding why.

Your voice. Your face. Your touch. You were the breach.

Every glitch in his system. Every fracture in his focus. Every hesitation in the field. It had always traced back to you.

Even before you’d arrived here, you’d already existed in his world.

As a trigger.

As a dream.

“I don’t think he ever understood the footage,” Bucky said. “Just that it mattered. That you… mattered.”

You stared at the screen as another log loaded. This time, it was current. The Soldier, in the shadows. Watching your last camp. You curled in Bucky’s arms. Unaware.

His breathing stuttered.

His hand trembled.

And he whispered—barely audible—

“Don’t leave.”

You turned off the projection. The silence that followed was deafening. Bucky sat down slowly on the floor, his arms resting on his knees. Head bowed. “I thought I hated him,” he said. “For the way he watches you. Follows you.”

You stayed quiet. “But now I think… he’s not trying to take anything from me.” He looked up. “He’s trying to figure out why I got it. Why I have you. And he doesn’t.”

You sank beside him. “I don’t think he even knows what that ache is,” you murmured.

Bucky nodded once. “Because no one ever let him give it a name.”

It was a quiet night. Not safe. Never safe. But quiet.

You and Bucky had made camp in an old server room deep below the city’s surface. No windows. No lights. Just the distant thrum of residual power lines, and the dull red blink of a backup node that flickered like a dying heartbeat.

Bucky had fallen asleep beside you. It took longer now. His body rested faster than his mind. And lately, his mind had no peace. He’d kept you close, but not too close. Arm draped over your hips, but no weight in it. Like he was bracing himself—for you, or for what haunted you, you weren’t sure.

You thought you’d sleep too. But the hum returned. That ache in the walls. That presence in your spine.

You opened your eyes slowly.

And there he was.

The Soldier.

Standing over you. Not cloaked. Not hiding.

Still. Silent.

Watching.

You didn’t move, let alone breathe, because you knew—somehow—that if you did, he might disappear. Or worse: act.

His body was still—military still. No twitch, no shift. Like he had been carved from the shadows and posed here, silent and waiting.

And his eyes—god, his eyes—

They moved.

They drank in every inch of you, not in hunger, but in calculation. Not like a man undressing you with his stare—but like one memorizing your structure, piece by piece. Trying to map you. Measure you. Understand.

It started at your hairline. Traced slowly over your brow. Down the bridge of your nose. Each lash, each freckle, each flicker of breath like it might mean something he hadn’t been taught to read.

Then lower.

Across the delicate swell of your cheekbone. To the hinge of your jaw. To your mouth.

His gaze stalled there.

Lingered.

You felt the heat of it—not burning, but insistent. Like light through magnifying glass. No physical touch, but still it made your skin pull tight. Like it could feel the tension of being seen too closely.

Too thoroughly.

Then—slower still—his attention drifted further. To the line of your throat. The visible shift of your swallow. To your collarbone, where your shirt had slipped slightly down your shoulder from sleep.

Then lower.

His focus wasn’t sharp or lascivious. It was curious. Detached, yet intimate. Like your body was a code written in warmth and softness—and he had only ever been taught to read cold, hard edges.

He moved no closer.

But somehow, his gaze pressed. Pressed into your skin. Your lungs. Your spine. It cloaked you like a weighted blanket. Like scrutiny dressed in reverence.

And then—at last—

To Bucky’s hand.

Where it lay curled at your side. Fingers barely hooked against the curve of your hip. Familiar. Possessive in a way that required no pressure at all.

The Soldier’s gaze flicked down to it.

And held.

Longer than anything else.

Like that was the part that didn’t make sense. Like that was the piece of the map he couldn’t align.

That someone—he—could be allowed to touch you so easily.

So gently. So freely.

You didn’t move.

Couldn’t.

Because if you did, you feared you might break the spell—or worse, shatter the only stillness this man had ever known.

He crouched slowly. A whisper of motion. His weight shifting carefully beside you. You stared up at him as he stared back.

There was no threat in his gaze but there was something worse.

Wonder.

Raw, unfiltered curiosity. The kind you’d expect from a child—not a killer. Not a ghost. He reached out with his right hand—flesh, not metal. Just two fingers, gloved but trembling.

They touched your mouth.

Barely. As if testing texture. Warmth. Reality.

Your breath stuttered.

He flinched at the sound but didn’t pull back. His gaze dropped to your lips again.

And then—softly, almost reverently—he leaned forward.

And kissed you.

It wasn’t greedy. It wasn’t desperate. It wasn’t even good.

His mouth was still, unfamiliar. Pressed too firmly. Like he didn’t know how. Like he was following an image, not instinct. There was no heat. No need.

Only contact.

Proof.

That you were solid. That you were soft. That he could touch you—and not be burned.

You didn’t kiss back.

But you didn’t pull away.

And that—

That’s when Bucky opened his eyes.

You didn’t feel him move. You only heard the breath leave his lungs. One sharp exhale. Not anger. Not even surprise. Something worse.

Resignation.

You turned instantly. Sat up. “Bucky—”

He didn’t look at you. His gaze was fixed on the Soldier. Who was still close. Still crouched. Head bowed like a man praying to something he didn’t understand. “Why,” Bucky said. Quiet. Hollow. “Why are you doing this?”

The Soldier raised his head. Not defensive. Not mocking. “I wanted to know,” he said simply.

Bucky stared. “Know what?”

The Soldier looked at you. Then at him. “What it means to be… wanted.”

The room held still, like the universe was listening.

And your Bucky—

He broke.

Not loudly. Not violently.

Just… broke.

His mouth opened like he meant to speak. To fight. To scream. But nothing came. Instead, he sat back down. Hard. One hand braced over his face, the other curled tight in his lap.

You moved toward him instinctively—but he shook his head. “I’m not mad,” he whispered. That hurt more than shouting. “I’m not mad.”

He dragged in a breath. Let it out like it cost him. “I just—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Because what could he say? He wasn’t angry that the Soldier kissed you. He was devastated that he understood why.

You sat between them.

One man who wanted to feel.

One who had finally learned how—and didn’t know what to do with it.

And you.

The constant.

The ghost.

The reason the loop had fractured.

You found the Soldier alone.

Not in the dark this time, but in the hollowed-out remnants of what must have once been an observation room. No stars above—only static. A false ceiling flickering with the simulation of dusk, heavy and gray. The city below looked sharpened, cold and orderly. Like the world itself had been left unfinished.

He stood there like he belonged to it. Like a sentry. Like the last piece of something broken, still standing because he hadn’t yet been told to fall.

You stepped forward.

He didn’t turn. But he knew. “I can be him,” he said before you could speak. His voice wasn’t empty. It wasn’t full, either. It wavered somewhere in between—like a machine trying to teach itself hope. “I can be what he is to you.”

You stopped a few feet behind him. “No. You can’t.”

He turned at that. Slowly. His eyes searched yours—not for argument, but for confirmation. As if hearing the truth wasn’t enough unless he saw it written on your skin. “I have his face,” he said. “His voice. His body. I know what you want.”

You shook your head. “No, you know what you think I want.”

His hands stayed at his sides, loose, not threatening. But his shoulders braced—like your words struck deeper than a gunshot ever could. “I’ve seen you with him,” he said. “In the feeds. The loops. I remember the way you looked at him. The way you touch him. I remember your voice.”

He paused. Swallowed. “You said his name like it mattered.”

“It does matter,” you whispered.

His expression twisted. Not in anger. Something rawer. Sadder. A child catching snowflakes in his hands only to find they melt every time. “I can learn it,” he said. “How to be that.”

You stepped forward. “You don’t want to be him.”

His mouth parted—silent. Confused.

“You want to be wanted. That’s not the same.”

Silence.

“You don’t know what it means to be loved,” you continued. “You’ve only ever been watched. Measured. Controlled.”

You took another step forward.

“You saw a pattern and thought it meant you could be part of it.”

His brow furrowed. As if the math didn’t compute. As if he’d memorized every line of code but still couldn’t make it run. You reached out. Slowly. Your fingers brushing the harness across his chest—the cold press of steel and artificial fabric. “Love isn’t obedience. It’s not imitation. It’s not earned through perfect mimicry.”

His voice cracked. “Then what is it?”

You didn’t answer.

Because behind you—

“It’s what’s left after everything else breaks.”

Bucky.

His voice low. Hoarse.

He stepped out of the doorway and into the light. You turned, startled. He’d followed you. Of course he had. You should’ve known.

The Soldier tensed, but didn’t move. Bucky looked tired. Not in body. In soul.

He walked forward, gaze locked with his own. His mirror. His ghost. “You’re not me,” he said. “You’re what they made me to be.” The Soldier didn’t react. But something shifted in his stance. “I broke through,” Bucky continued. “Came out the other side. I got out.” His voice frayed. “You stayed in. Alone.”

“I didn’t know there was a door,” the Soldier murmured.

Bucky nodded once. “I didn’t either. Until someone opened it.”

He looked at you then. Just for a second. And something in his expression cracked. “This isn’t about being loved,” he said. “This is about wanting to be real. And copying me won’t make that happen.”

Silence stretched.

Then—

“If she can love you…” the Soldier whispered, looking at Bucky. “Maybe I’m not beyond it.”

Bucky’s jaw flexed. His throat worked. You saw the war in his chest—pride and grief, entangled like barbed wire. But what he said next wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t even defensive. It was true. “No,” he said. “You’re not beyond it.” He took one breath. Then another. “But you don’t get it by stealing my reflection.”

And with that—quietly, devastatingly—he turned and walked out. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to.

The Soldier stayed frozen.

You stayed behind a moment longer, hand still hovering near the space where your Bucky had stood.

Where the ghost had seen something it could never become.

You’d seen a lot of war.

You’d heard countdowns over comms. Watched buildings fall. Felt the earth quake under you from weapons designed to unmake time. But nothing had ever felt like this.

This quiet. This final.

The chamber at the core of the pocket reality pulsed around you—raw energy like blood in the walls. The hum you’d heard for days, for weeks, now screaming. A beat that hadn’t belonged to the city.

It had belonged to him.

To the Soldier.

The anchor.

A man so broken by programming, by absence, by the fragments of you that had been coded into him—he had become the foundation of this place.

The multiverse didn’t just trap you here.

It built itself around him.

And now you knew what you had to do.

It started two days ago. Or what counted for days here—this place had no sun, no moon. Only flickers of light from above and the deep internal clock in your bones counting time in Bucky’s breathing.

The power grid was fraying. Systems sparking out. Corridors collapsing into static. Still, the world remained stable.

Too stable.

The anomalies had stopped expanding. The landscape—once fracturing, splitting and remerging like glass under pressure—had gone still. Stagnant. Like it had chosen a shape and was holding on.

Bucky had noticed it first. The rhythm. He sat in the dark with his back against the wall and whispered: “It’s breathing.”

You’d paused, halfway through decoding a patch of residual data from a Hydra terminal you’d found. “What?”

He tapped his fingers against the ground. “Listen.”

The hum. The walls. The grid. All of it pulsed.

Not randomly.

Like a pulse. Like a heart.

It was your second night in the collapsed archive when you found the backup neural loop. A terminal still wired into the central power nexus. Old Hydra tech—buried deep, nearly rotted through—but still operational.

And inside?

Memory fragments.

Audio logs. Incomplete flashbacks. Pieces of surveillance replaying moments from your arrival. Your touch. Your voice.

Not from your comms.

From the Soldier’s point of view.

Bucky had watched them in silence, jaw clenched, arms crossed over his chest like armor. “This isn’t just programming,” he’d said, his voice distant. “These aren’t reflexive feeds. They’re… live. Real-time recall.”

You’d looked at him, at the flicker of your own image across the cracked monitor. You brushing Bucky’s hand. Kissing him when you laid together at night. You laughing at something soft and private. And then, over and over, the Soldier’s POV turning—tracking it all.

You’d swallowed hard. “He’s remembering us.”

“No,” Bucky said. “He’s creating us.”

That’s when it clicked. The recordings. The stillness. The humming static growing louder the closer you got to him. This wasn’t just a pocket reality—

It was a contained anomaly. A singularity. And he was at the center. Not just surviving it.

Sustaining it.

When you finally accessed the central file directory—buried beneath a dozen false systems and auto-lock fails—you saw the truth in its most terrifying simplicity.

ANCHOR PROTOCOL: UNIT 316-S.

STATUS: ACTIVE PRIORITY: RETENTION DESTABILIZATION RESULT: TOTAL COLLAPSE

Bucky had stared at the screen for a long time.

Not blinking.

Not breathing.

“He’s the last piece left,” he said. “The last living code. No other minds. No other people. Just… him.”

He turned to you.

“And you.”

Because the only change in the system since the protocol’s activation had been your arrival.

The anomaly hadn’t drawn you in randomly.

It had summoned you. Drawn to the one variable strong enough to pull his focus. The only constant across every fractured loop in his corrupted memory: you.

You were the breach.

But he—

He was the lock.

And he had kept it shut for so long, he didn’t know how to let go.

Now, standing in the pulsing chamber of the anomaly’s core, you could feel it even more clearly. This world didn’t breathe without him.

The wires in the walls mimicked the rhythm of his lungs. The pulse in the floor followed the beat of his heart. The sky outside flickered when his eyes closed. This wasn’t a prison.

It was his body.

And it had to end.

He had to let you go.

The tremors had grown worse by the hour.

By the time you reached the final chamber, you felt them not just in your feet—but in your ribs, in your teeth. A thrum in the air like a world trying to hold its breath.

And failing.

The light grid above had already begun to fall apart. Panels popped and flickered, metal scaffolding moaning under the pressure of its own gravity. Sparks rained like artificial stars.

And in the center of it all—

The Soldier.

Standing beneath it like it didn’t matter. Like he didn’t matter. Back to you. Head bowed. Eyes closed.

He looked… peaceful. Or the closest thing his face could shape into peace. Still. Braced. Waiting for something he knew was coming.

The hum of the collapsing room surged again—then paused. Like it was listening. Bucky’s hand tightened around yours. His vibranium arm buzzed faintly, reacting to the magnetic field warping around you, sensors misfiring in the pressure shift. But he didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

“He knows,” Bucky murmured. “He’s always known.”

The Soldier turned at the sound of his voice. Not sharply. Not like before. Just a slow pivot. Shoulders squared. Face unreadable.

He looked first at Bucky.

And then at you.

“I’m the reason this world still exists,” he said. Not a question. Not a plea. A fact.

He stepped forward. Not threatening—measured. Quiet. Each step reverberated with the tension in the floor, the metal reacting to the shape of him. He didn’t tense. Didn’t posture.

Just walked.

Like a man walking to the edge of a cliff he’d already decided to fall from.

You opened your mouth—reflex. Denial. Panic. But the words died in your throat. Because you already knew. You all knew. This wasn’t just a reality built around him. It was him. The very code, the gravity, the heartbeat of this fractured place. It was all echoing him. Echoing you, through him. A haunted, recursive dream made flesh.

He stopped just feet away. “I can hold it open,” the Soldier said. “Long enough for you to get through.”

You shook your head before you could stop yourself. “No.”

“You have to.”

“I won’t leave you.”

His expression didn’t change. But something in his eyes did. “I’m not afraid,” he said.

“I know,” you whispered. Your voice cracked. “But I am.”

The room pulsed again—louder. Sharper. As if the system had heard your resistance and was already preparing to collapse. He tilted his head. That same subtle angle you’d seen him do a dozen times—trying to parse emotion, to mimic a softness he didn’t quite understand.

“You’ll forget me,” he said, quieter this time. A near-whisper.

Before you could even breathe to reply—

“No.” Bucky stepped forward. Not pulling you with him, but shielding you. His gaze locked onto the man who was him—but wasn’t. “She’ll remember.” His voice was rough. Like it had been scraped through grief. “And I’ll carry it.”

The Soldier blinked.

Once.

And for the first time, he looked… lost.

Not dangerous. Not volatile.

Just—human.

He turned to you.

You saw it all in his eyes now: the ache of not knowing how to want something, only how to claim it. The soft wonder of realizing you were real. That he was real, too, for the brief window your gaze made him feel like something more than a relic.

He reached out.

Not a grab. Not a lunge. Just a single gloved hand, lifted slow. The fingers touched your cheek. Barely there. The leather cold, but his presence somehow warm. The world shivered around it. “I wish I’d met you here,” he said. “In my world.” His voice had frayed. Like something unraveling.

You swallowed. “So do I.”

And there—just for a second—a smile ghosted over his lips.

Small. Uneven.

Earned.

Then he stepped back.

The hum crescendoed. Lights shattered in bursts above him. The floor split in a hairline crack that ran straight through the center of the chamber—right through him. “Go,” he said.

One word.

But it held everything.

Bucky turned, grabbed your hand.

You hesitated.

One last glance.

He stood there—framed in the fractured light like stained glass. A sentinel. A ghost. A man carved from memory and violence and something achingly like hope.

A man who had finally chosen not to chase what could never be, but to hold it steady—for you.

Just for a moment.

And then—

The world folded.

The sound was like wind in reverse. Like steel bending under the weight of longing.

Like goodbye.

Your fingers curled tighter around Bucky’s.

And you fell.

You woke with the world still humming in your blood. But it wasn’t his hum.

It was sterile. Familiar.

Med bay lights flickered overhead—soft, warm. White sheets tucked around your limbs. The gentle beep of diagnostics, the low murmur of filtered air, the faint antiseptic sting in your nose.

You blinked against the brightness. Bucky’s hand was still in yours. And you weren’t falling anymore.

You were back.

Alive.

Your lungs pulled in a breath like it hurt to remember how. You turned your head. Slowly. Carefully. Bucky sat slumped beside the cot, his body tense even in sleep. His right hand clasped around yours like a lifeline. Like he hadn’t let go for hours. Maybe days. The stubble on his jaw had grown in thick. Dark shadows under his eyes. His vibranium arm twitched every so often, as if adjusting to a world that no longer hummed in sync with the anomaly you’d left behind.

You didn’t speak.

Neither did he.

Not then.

He didn’t say much the day after either. Or the one after that.

The others came. Natasha. Sam. Even Bruce, who blinked twice at your vitals and muttered something about quantum stress signatures and multiversal displacement.

You nodded. Smiled. Lied and said you were okay. But Bucky didn’t lie. He just… didn’t speak.

Not about him. Not about what happened in that fractured world of steel and silence and ghosts.

But you saw it in the way his eyes lingered too long on reflective surfaces, in the way he walked slower, heavier, liike the weight of the Soldier had never quite left his spine.

It was four days before you found him on the roof. The city below breathed like a living thing—cars moving, lights flickering, wind sliding soft between the buildings. Stars dotted the sky above in faint clusters, fighting to be seen through city haze.

Bucky didn’t turn when you came up behind him. Didn’t speak. Just stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, eyes trained skyward like he was trying to read a message in the constellations.

You stepped up beside him.

Close.

Close enough that your arm brushed his.

Still, he didn’t look at you.

“He wasn’t just me,” he said finally. Quiet. Raw. “He was something I could’ve become.” A breath. A beat. “And you still looked at him like he mattered.”

The confession didn’t burn.

It just ached.

You stared at the same stars he did. Found the faint curve of Orion’s belt and the soft trail of a satellite blinking through the dark. You said nothing for a moment. “He did.” Bucky’s jaw flexed. “But he wasn’t you.” You turned to him. “He wasn’t you, Bucky.” His gaze dropped to yours at last. Bleak. Searching. “You’re the one I love,” you whispered. “You. Not the version that couldn’t be saved. Not the shadow. You.”

His expression cracked. It wasn’t dramatic. Wasn’t loud. But you saw it in the tightness of his mouth. The tension in his brow. The way his shoulders finally, finally lowered—like he’d been holding a breath since the moment you fell through that rift.

He leaned into you slowly, forehead resting against yours. And for the first time since you came home, he let himself be held.

Not like a weapon.

Not like a soldier.

But like a man who had been seen—all of him—and loved anyway.

You found it days later.

Tucked into the seam of your field jacket—stitched into the lining, like a hidden message in a bottle. You almost missed it. The paper was worn thin, folded sharp like military precision. It crinkled when you shrugged the coat on, and for a moment, you thought it was just a forgotten med tag or mission patch.

But then you saw the edge.

And when you unfolded it—hands suddenly unsteady—it bled him.

The handwriting was jagged, all capital letters. The kind of hand that had never written softness. Parts of it were scorched, like it had passed through a fire. Other lines had been blacked out. Redacted. Interference, maybe. Or someone—something—trying to erase him even now.

But not all of it was gone.

Some words still pulsed between the blanks. You looked at me like I was. I’ll want you forever. I held the door open. You were the only thing I ever—

Your breath caught.

You sat down hard, clutching the slip of paper like it might disappear.

And for a long, long time, you didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

Because somewhere—beneath stars you’ll never see again— a ghost had written you a goodbye.

Somewhere, far beyond this sky— beyond the atmosphere, beyond the seams of reality itself— beneath stars you’ll never see again, a ghost with a metal arm keeps watch.

He doesn’t sleep. He never did, not really. But now there are no commands. No orders. No triggers buried beneath bone and obedience. Just silence. And memory.

It lives in him now. Not as a program. Not as a glitch. But as something closer to holy.

Your laugh, echoing down steel corridors. The way your hand brushed his wrist without fear. How your voice broke when you told him you were afraid—of leaving him behind.

The look in your eyes when you said: So do I.

He doesn’t replay the moment.

He relives it.

Not because he can’t move forward. But because, for once, he doesn’t want to.

The world around him is folding slowly, at the edges. Breaking down in light and noise and static. The kind of end that feels like surrender. And he could let it take him. Could let it all fall.

But not yet.

Not while your shape still lingers in this place. In the echoes. In the hum.

So he watches.

A sentinel without a cause. A remnant of a fractured place. A man who never had the chance to be anything but what they made him.

Until you.

And now—

He holds your memory like a flame in the dark. Flickering. Precious. Real.

A light no one programmed into him. One he chose to keep. Even when everything else is gone.

He closes his eyes. And, for just a moment, he believes he can still feel your hand on his cheek.

#reblogged this with red eyes while sniffling

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