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nightowlwriting · 1 year

Text

summary: be flexible, be unreplaceable

in a world of heavy footprints, be untraceable

you're activated. bucky, steve, and tony each have regrets. someone stalks the city at night. your cell is very nice, and so is bruce. his tests are easy and he's amiable to be around. bucky watches from the sidelines until he's at your door, telling you about the next test.

word count: 5.1k

reader specifics: no race/gender/sexuality/body type mentioned, no pronouns for reader used, enhanced!reader, traumatized!reader

warnings: self-loathing, brief descriptions of torture, mentions of imprisonment, lapse of reality, paranoia, brief mentions of forced food/water restriction, flashbacks, ptsd, trauma responses

note: this is the part three of an ongoing series, find the series masterlist here. also sorry this is kind of a filler chapter? i can't put everything i want in it without it being too long and cutting it off makes it short. sorry!

title & summary credit: the mountain goats

mobile masterlist - request - support my work? - ao3

Steve takes a deep breath, inching closer and closer. He's not registering as a threat to you but your eyes are still flickering between his looming frame and the visibly frightened woman. At the same time that he says your name, low and calm, Bucky says your name in a tone that's achingly familiar. You hazard a glance over your shoulder and see him shielding Wanda, Tony, and Bruce much the way that Steve is shielding the woman who had been wearing the jacket. His face is hard, lined with stress, and his jaw moves like he’s chewing his next words carefully. Your gaze slides back to Steve, furniture and faces leaving trails like you’d only ever experienced when they first injected you with the serum.

Time is getting weird, and it probably has something to do with the way your chest is heaving or how thin the oxygen is around you because of the dancing flames on your arms. Your heart is still racing in your chest and now it’s almost starting to ache. How long has it been since the woman - Helen - walked off the elevator? How long had you and Wanda been in your memories? Natasha has moved from the doorway to standing at your flank, finger still on the trigger.

Steve is looking over your shoulder now, heartbreak on his face. You watch his head shift left and then right, minuscule movement that’s telegraphing something to someone behind you. Conflict crosses his face and then he looks back to you and the dying fire dancing across your skin. The expression looks wrong on Steve’s face and he shakes his head at you, hands lowering slowly but surely. “I’m sorry.” His voice is low and strangled and the fire on your body surges. What does that mean? The heat in your stomach, anger and resentment and revenge, fuels the oxygen suck weighing your shoulders down.

Seconds later, Steve’s mouth not even shut into a thin line yet, Bucky speaks up again. “Serdtse,” His voice is low and sharp, cutting through the air between you like a knife. It slides between your ribs and cuts into your lungs. The fire goes out even before he continues, “Potushit ogon.” Your hands shake worse than your knees as a high buzzing begins in the back of your mind. Eyes locked on Steve, you’re far, far away in a microsecond. The words are familiar but it’s in Bucky’s voice. For a brief second, you see him, laying bloodied and barely alive on the metal table. You hear the plans for the Program, for a new test to see if they could meld metal to flesh, you feel his blood flexing underneath your power. Gasping shallow breaths, the room spins around you. Steve smiles, small and sad, and approaches you faster - but not fast. Just faster than before. Bucky gives another order, “Uspokoit’sya.”

Steve wraps his long fingers around the wrist shaking in front of you as the weight of the order presses you down. Your breathing slows even though your mind is spinning out at thousands of miles per hour, and your stance relaxes. Steve smiles again, his other hand smoothing over your shoulder. “Helen is a friend,” He says, ducking his head so that he can keep eye contact with you as he says your name, “We just have to make sure that you’re healthy.”

For what? For battle? You know about the tests that doctors run - stress tests, blood pressure, cognitive tests. You know that they run all of that and more, sometimes through the excruciating pain of electricity in places that it shouldn’t be. Still, you can’t freak out because your mind is still stuck between this place is not that place, these people are not those people and uspokoit’sya. It leaves you in a strange fugue state that makes you incredibly malleable for Steve to steer you toward a chair. Your mind struggles to protect itself and it’s like you’re watching what’s happening through a dirty window - there, but not. Steve doesn’t seem to notice.

Once he has you sat in the chair, everyone else moves. Bruce and Tony escort Wanda out the door, holding her up as she sags under her body weight. Or, maybe, the weight of your memories. Natasha lowers her gun but doesn’t take her finger off the trigger, even as Bucky works his way around to face you in an arc until he’s standing next to her. There’s a small trickle of blood over his forehead, following the slant of his eyebrow around his eye. It’s probably already healed, you think blithely as you watch Steve present your arm to Helen. She’s talking to you but her voice isn’t anything but a hum of syllables and incoherent sounds. She takes a lot of blood, more than a normal human could stand having drained at once, but you don’t even flinch.

You’re waiting for your next order. There has to be more - Bucky had activated you. They were going to use you for something, right? Maybe they’d just wanted you docile for the tests, or maybe they were going to trick you into agreeing to what Wanda had seen you in your mind. It doesn’t matter because your thoughts come and go like an even breeze. You barely remember them once they’re gone, despite being very quick-witted usually. They’re an afterthought to you - they have to be if you want to survive. If you rely on your own thoughts they will punish you when you tell them no. If you fall away, watch your life trapped in your own body as if You is different from the you that your body is, it hurts much less. So you let Helen run her tests and take her blood; you answer her questions in a flat and quiet voice. Almost fully opposite of you, the You inside of your body is screaming. Every answer burns like fire as it comes out of your body; every test, blood draw, and reflex check is a reminder of what you and You actually are. Sure, you can look like a person and act like a person and even fucking think and feel and love and cry like a person but nobody in those jackets sees you (or You, for that matter) as a person.

You are an experiment. A tool. A weapon. An asset.

You are Serdtse.

You are the Heart, the beginning, the end, the middle, the catalyst, the deterrent. You are all of these things in one and Bucky must see it.

He has made his way from being all of those things, but he must see it in you. He watches you as Helen continues for another hour, two, three - you’re not sure. There’s no time where You are and it’s hard enough to watch everything happening, let alone know how long you’ve been stuck inside of your own body like this. The weight of your title doesn’t even seem to impact his shoulders, or the way he sends Natasha away with the strangle tile she’d dropped. When Steve escorts Helen back to the elevator, Bucky approaches less cautiously than his friend had. He says a name but you stare blankly back at him. Inside, behind the glass, You scream. That’s Your name, that’s who You are. He’s saying Your name and You desperately want to react but you can’t, you won’t. Bucky sighs and finally the weight settles over him.

Through a frown, he says, “Serdtse, poydem.”

“Gde?” Your voice is hollow and Bucky flinches.

“V svoyu komnatu. Tebe nuzhno pospat’ seychas.”

You nod but it feels heavy. On numb legs you stand, eyes rolling toward Bucky as he watches you, analyzing how you’re reacting - or not reacting because you’re still stuck, trapped, reliving your life in brief flashes and phantom pains. The phrase they always expected falls out of your mouth before you can stop it and, for a moment, you’re afraid you’re going to vomit. “Ya ponimayu.” He turns to lead you to your room and you follow, gait strong and flawless. It’s unlike any way that you’ve carried your body since you’ve unthawed and if you had more control, if you were closer to the surface of the fugue state, you might clench your jaw and crack your neck to relieve the stress compressing your spine. As it is, you just follow Bucky’s broad back to your room and follow your orders, laying back down in your bedding and falling asleep before you can become You again.

When Bucky gets back to the apartment he shares with Steve, the first thing he does is empty his dinner into the toilet. The second thing he does is get into the shower fully clothed, turning the water as hot as Friday will let him. The third is cry.

The city skyline is dark, a storm having just passed over the heart of New York. The rolling of thunder still echoes from where the cluster of clouds has moved on, but the figure clad in all black, shapeless clothing doesn’t care. As long as the storm doesn’t come back for seconds, everything will fall into place today.

They’re on a mission.

They have to find the perfect place - it has to be perfect. If it’s not perfect there’s a good chance they’ll lose their life. There’s a good chance their family will die, too. The video had gone viral. The headlines had conspired that it was a movie shoot.

But they know better. Their bosses know better. The day after the video was posted, the plan was in place. It just has to be perfect.

Every alley that they pass is inspected, but those are too hidden. The parks are too filled with people walking dogs or gathering after the raucous storm in the fresh post-rain smell. The figure huffs, pulling a dark hood tighter to obscure their face from security cameras or appearing in the background of smartphone photographs.

Grinding their teeth, they search well into the night. Finally, finally, they find it. Hidden enough to be discovered long after they’re gone, but in plain enough sight that it will be discovered.

The paint runs like blood and the artist disappears like a ghost.

Steve presses his forehead against the elevator doors after he sends Helen off. There’s a bad feeling growing like a parasite in his spine. He’s almost afraid to go back to his apartment, to see what’s happening to Bucky now, but he has to. He wants to, more importantly.

When he said I’m with you ‘till the end of the line what he really meant was I love you, I have always and will always love you, and I will be here through everything.

Tony sits on his balcony, an untouched glass of whiskey in his right hand. Every so often, he smells it. He does not take a drink, but his throat stings like he does. The skin around his arc reactor burns. It’s a phantom ache. He knows that.

You’re a phantom ache to him, too.

If he closes his eyes, he can still feel the heat of the fire on your skin pressing against his face. If he closes his eyes, he wonders if that’s what it feels like to die.

If he closes his eyes, he wonders if that’s the last thing his parents felt.

Tony doesn’t close his eyes. Instead, he pours the whiskey over the balcony, thinking about every Yahrzeit he’s missed, every kaddish.

A storm rolls in.

When you wake up the next morning you feel like shit. There’s residual heaviness in your head, a fog you can’t break through. There’s also shame. When Natasha comes to get you, laptop and gun in hand, you straighten your shoulders and decide that you’re going to be the best fucking prisoner these people have ever had. You pick out your clothes on the laptop, keeping an eye out for what Natasha likes, and then you go for more blood tests.

It continues like that for the next month. Sometimes Steve comes to get you in the mornings, sometimes it’s Natasha. It’s never Bucky, never Wanda, never Tony. It makes bile rise in your throat but you press on. You have to.

When Bruce comes to get you in the mornings, it means he’s running tests, too. You remember these tests from your time with the Handlers so it’s easy. It’s like breathing. Sometimes the Avengers - though you’d learned that they don’t really call themselves that anymore - come to watch. Bruce doesn’t make you run mazes, but he hooks new tech up to you and monitors your reactions to running at a flat-out sprint for as fast and as long as possible, or jogging for as long as you can stand the boredom that comes with your endurance. He told you once everything that he monitors like it matters to you, or you’re going to do anything with that information. You know your place - you’re nothing more than a shiny new lab rat, another super-soldier with a serum that they can study. Still, there’s something about the look on Bucky’s face when he’s watching you deadlift or catch softballs barehanded from a machine that pitches them to you at superhuman speeds. It reminds you of you when you were watching him die.

But you’re not dying. You’re getting stronger throughout the tests. The Handlers ran tests, sure, but they never kept you fed well enough to gain any muscle. The Avengers give you three protein shakes a day, still unbearably sweet, and after a few weeks you end up eating breakfasts and lunches of solid foods with just a shake for dinner. You bulk up, but not visibly. It’s just noticeable on your tests and it becomes another variable that Bruce measures. He’s the nicest of the bunch - the most prone to trust you. Maybe it’s naivete, maybe it’s because there’s something lurking under the surface that you can see. He’s repressing something and you wonder if, like you, he’ll explode one day.

You also take to writing in the month since you nearly lit poor Helen on fire. It’s easy enough to request a pen and journal from The Voice That Lives In Your Ceiling, something that’s never really explained to you. Every night after your tests are done and you’ve drank your dinner shake, you find yourself at the desk in your cell writing. You’ve filled four journals with just what you remember from your childhood so far, and there’s still so much more information that you have left to give. The finished journals are all in a pile next to where you sleep, new crisp journals appearing outside your door after you add another thick, written in journal to the pile. You’re not sure who’s buying them for you, but you figure they’ll be repaid tenfold when they get their hands on everything you know.

The Handlers were never worried about what they said to you, or around you, because they thought they had your undying loyalty. They programmed you with a near-perfect memory which, now, is both a blessing and a curse. Their plans, their thoughts, their names - you write them all down because you can remember them.

But that means you can remember what those people became. The monsters that humans can turn into when corrupted by greed, or power, or the ideologies that led to the second war.

It also means you can remember being outside, no matter how much you don’t want to. Asking to go outside seems like it’s breaking some unspoken rule about what you can and can’t have, so you don’t even risk it. You just think about asking; remembering the sun on your face, the ground beneath your feet. You just look longingly out the window when it rains or when the stars come out.

Nobody notices.

Still, they are eons nicer than the Handlers. You learn about them over mealtimes when they all come together to laugh, catch up, and break bread. You’re only there because Steve makes sure to come to get you so that you can eat with them. Sometimes, he drags you into the conversations like he wants to get to know you.

(“What about your favorite book? It has to be one that Buck and I have actually read.” Steve says one day when the rain has lulled you into a small appetite. You’re already done with lunch, listening to the team describe the bare-bones plots of their favorite novels. His direct question startles you so badly a heat you can feel crawling up your neck.

“Yeah,” Wanda says, still not able to look you full in the eyes after what she’d seen in your head, “I’m sure yours are more interesting than ours.” You blink slowly, trying to think about the ten or eleven books you’d read in your life.

“Oh,” You say to fill the silence, shifting awkwardly when you realize that even Bucky is watching, waiting for your answer, “There was a book I stole when I was out once,” You cough awkwardly when you realize what you’ve revealed, “It was in Paris - in the late thirties. Just a few years, uh, before I was frozen.” Not a few years ago - decades. Lifetimes. “The Handlers weren’t too keen when they found it, but it was a good book. Nightwood was the title, but I’m not sure of the author. Djuana? Something.”

“Djuna Barnes,” Bucky says, “My cousin. I remember hearin’ Ma talk about the book when it came out in ‘36. She didn’t like how it talked about different groups like they weren’t all people, and I have to agree. Really sent the neighborhood into a tizzy when she published that, but she was a good journalist in Greenwich ‘fore she went off to travel.” He shares a fond look with Steve, “Gave us our first smokes too - nearly killed Stevie with his lungs back then.” You don’t understand the look on his face.

“It’s a good book,” You offer, wilting under the unreadable look on everyone’s faces, “I read almost the entire thing before it was taken away from me. I didn’t appreciate how she played into stereotypes, either, though.”

“What was your favorite quote?” Bucky leans forward, commanding the conversation as he watches you think. “What?” “From the book - your favorite quote.”

You think, running back the parts of the book you’d read over and over in your head. There were a few lines that had stayed with you, sure, but only one that had brought you to tears when you first read it in the moonlight at the Underground. “But death is intimacy walking backward. We are crazed with grief when she, who once permitted us, leaves to us the only recollection.” Bucky leans back, satisfied.

“We have to get you some new books.” Tony cuts in, grumbling into his coffee cup and never looking at you. The next day there is a stack of books in front of your door when Bruce comes to get you for breakfast and testing. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, and a thick book with all seven books in a series called The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S Lewis. You have a sneaking suspicion that Tony sent them, but don’t know why.)

Exactly a month after you’ve woken up from the ice is the second time that Bucky Barnes shows up at your door to fetch you. He knocks as they all do, but then he opens the door before you can even stand from your makeshift studying nook. “Today is goin’ to be different,” He says. Something about the way his voice is flat and grave makes your stomach twist. “We need to see how powerful you are.” You turn to look at him but he won’t look at you. “I don’t know - did they ever make you fight other people?”

“Sometimes,” You answer, but your voice doesn’t sound like yours. It sounds like theirs- every person you fought, every person you killed. Thankfully, it does not sound like Bucky’s. “I don’t have to kill anyone, do I?”

“No!” He looks at you now, pale. So he knows, then. That part of the Program wasn’t written down anywhere except in the notes you stole, but it was always the Handler’s favorite part. They loved to take bets but it was a lost cause and mostly for fun. You never lost. “No,” Bucky repeats, calmer, “We just want to see how much you can manipulate. You’ll be fighting us.”

In your shock, you nearly forget to breathe. Fighting them - fighting the Avengers… Even the Handlers didn't fight you themselves. There are so many things that can go wrong; they know that based on the fact that Bucky has been sent to collect you. He watches you go stock still, chest barely rising with your breath, and wrings his hands. "How hard do I have to fight?" You finally ask, standing from your cramped position over a notebook.

"Just hard enough to not lose," He holds your door for you, "I… I had to do the same thing after I was pardoned. They only had me fight Stevie and Tony, though." You follow three steps behind Bucky as he leads you toward the training gym, "We're goin' to have you switch it up for each person because I don't think anyone could handle takin' you on with all four elements, y'know?"

"Right." You clip off the word before it's fully out of your mouth. You know that nobody could - you're not sure you'd survive that experiment.

"So the plan is one-on-one, one element per combatant." Bucky explains everything tactically, lips pressed into a hard line between each sentence, "It's up to you how you fight and what you fight with. This is a test of your cognitive capabilities when it comes to fighting - and how you strategize."

"And how dangerous I am."

He sighs, "It's not really about that, but it is being measured today." For a brief second his hand ghosts over your elbow before lightly tugging, like a warning he was going to touch you. "We're not goin' to the gym today."

You look blankly at the doors to the gym you're in nearly every day. "Where are we going?"

Bucky furrows his eyebrows, frowning lightly. "Outside, where else?" You hesitate, seeing the door at the end of the hallway. Once you pass that threshold you're not sure what will happen to you. You'll fight, sure, but after? When they see the extent of your power? What will they do to you? "Is everything okay?"

"I just… Haven't been outside in a long time." You finally muster up, "I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to take me out there.” He looks back and forth between you and the door before he takes the few steps to the metal and pushes it open.

“C’mon,” He jerks his head toward the yard - you can feel the breeze pushing past you and the smell of the freshly mowed grass makes your bones sing. You want to be outside so badly it aches, but you know that once you get a taste of that equilibrium, that freedom, it’ll be just that more bitter to go back to you cell. “I won’t let anythin’ happen to you.” Maybe Bucky doesn’t really know why you’re standing with your knees locked, fingernails digging into your palms but maybe he does. Either way, he’s giving you an out to pretend that you’re scared and not already thinking of what you’re losing before you get it.

You follow Bucky outside. The sunshine on your skin makes your breath catch and then your bare feet hit the grass and everything is whole again. The feeling of being perfectly balanced within your body and everything you can do with it sits heavy, but light, on your chest. Your toes spread and your eyes close without your permission - Bucky chuckles softly, barely heard over the wind, when your head tilts and seeks out the sunshine. “It’s been so long,” You whisper back even though he hadn’t really asked a question, voice clogged and choking on emotions you don’t dare let show on your face, “It feels so good.”

“We’ll have to get you outside more often,” Steve’s voice scares you because you hadn’t heard him leave the compound and you’d been so focused on how being outside makes you feel inside that you hadn’t been paying attention to the outside. Your eyes snap open and instinctually you hike your shoulders to your ears. For a second you’d forgotten who you are, what you are; that’s a surprisingly big feat when Bucky is around and he’d been appointed your de facto Handler. (Or, at least, that’s what you assumed when he kept showing up to every test with Steve and Bruce. Plus, he’d been sent to get you today, when there was a higher chance that you’d react poorly.) “Woah, hey, it’s okay,” He’s dressed in a familiar suit and holding his hands up to appease you. Bucky looks concerned, his left hand flexing as he warms his arm up. “I know these few weeks have been a lot, but we’re almost to the end, okay?”

You nod robotically, “Of course,” It’s hard to hold eye contact with either of them, so you settle on watching how their shoulders brush against each other as they stand, “I’m almost done writing down everything I know.” You’ve been working on that for a while and of course they know, but it’s the first time any of you have mentioned it out loud.

“That’s really amazing,” Steve says earnestly. It’s hard not to believe him when his voice is so sure and full, but you have to remember who you are. You have to remember who you’re not. “Well,” He claps once and then looks back at Bucky, sharing nonverbal communication that you’re not equipped to understand, and then back to you, “The others are waiting for you. I’m sure that Tony wants to go first.” He telegraphs his movements so that it’s not a shock when he claps you on the shoulder. You let Steve lead you toward the others - they’re standing in a group on the other side of a large field watching the three of you. Bucky takes up the rear and you try to ignore the tingling down your spine at having such a formidable opponent behind you.

By the time you make it to where Sam, Tony, Natasha, Bruce, and Wanda are standing you've already figured out the situation. Automatically you know that you’re not going to be facing off against Wanda or Sam - they're dressed far too comfortably. Bruce is wearing what he always does when he’s observing you which is what he wears all of the time: a nice button up shirt and slacks. You can feel incredibly compressed metal around Tony’s wrists and Natasha is in her tactical suit. Cutting a glance to Bucky lets you know that you missed his tactical suit as well. You immediately begin to strategize even though Tony is definitely speaking to you about what this is for - none of that matters because you understand. They either want to know what you can do so that they can control you better or that want to turn you around and use your powers for themselves.

Bucky knocks you out of it by tapping his fingers against the back of your hand as he passes. “You’ll be fine,” He whispers without really moving his lips or speaking up. The only reason you can hear him is because you’re teeming with serum, “Just show us what you can do, okay?”

He follows the others about forty yards away, leaving you and Steve standing next to each other. Steve says something that you can’t hear over the blood rushing in your ears and then moves to stand across from you maybe ten or so feet away. When you finally meet his eyes he gives you that same smile that he gave you when he was trying to calm you down in the dining area so long ago.

Pity. Uncertainty. Maybe a little bit of fear.

It makes your stomach turn.

Instead of saying anything to Steve you just bounce on the balls of your feet and shake out your hands. “I’m ready,” You announce, trying to keep the shake out of your voice but raising it enough that everyone can hear you. Immediately Steve shifts his center of gravity backward and schools his expression. If you weren’t who you are and you didn’t have the training you do, it would be scary how quickly he could go from open and friendly to locked down and determined. There’s a flicker of confusion on his face when you don’t move, instead opting to let your natural senses take a backseat to your supernatural senses. His face swims behind a fog but you can feel his heartbeat picking up with adrenaline, his muscles coiling as he gets ready to move, his lungs expanding and compressing as he breathes.

Once again, you’re stuck with how easily you could kill Captain Steve Rogers. Every instinct that was shocked, beat, burned into you tells you to - you’re made to kill him, and Bucky, and anyone who gets in your way. But you don’t want to kill him, you don’t even want to hurt him. In fact, you’d be perfectly content if they let you stay in your cell for the rest of your damn life and put food through a doggy door. You begin to float away, waiting on orders, but you can’t. You can’t, you can’t, you can’t. You have to stay tethered to your body, fight the Avengers, and prove that you’re worth it.

(Worth what?)

Bucky’s voice comes back to you in wavy echoes. What had he told you? You’d asked him - something, God you’d asked something - and he’d said… Just hard enough not to lose. What had you asked?

Steve’s muscles tense again and it gives you barely a second for your question to tumble through your mind before you have to do something.

How hard do I have to fight?

Just hard enough not to lose.

Steve, with the shield on his back, kicks up dirt as he sprints toward you. It’s easy to dodge left out of the way and avoid the sweeping leg he tries to take you out with. Everything snaps back into place and then you’re using your natural senses and supernatural senses in tandem, in equilibrium, in synchronicity. It’s been so, so long - like stretching a muscle after they’d kept you in a room that was too cramped for too long. It feels exhilarating.

The adrenaline must show on your face because Steve whirls to attack again and stops, cocking his head. You watch him as he watches you and then he’s grinning. “There you are,” He rumbles, looking almost feral, “There’s the fire you woke up with.”

live once, you get to pay twice

keep your nose clean, keep your wheels nice

Potushit ogon - put the fire out

Uspokoit’sya - calm down

Poydem - let’s go

Gde - where

V svoyu komnatu. Tebe nuzhno pospat’ seychas - to your room. you need to sleep now

Ya ponimayu - i understand

#dark in here #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers/reader #steve rogers x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes/reader #bucky barnes imagine #stucky x reader #stucky/reader #mcu imagine #marvel imagine

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