#i'm sorry whoever i stole the gif from i couldnt find the source to share it

[trashmenofmarvel]

Branded - Chapter 46

Pairing: Demon!Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: You try to find your way back.

(This is a fan AU of Falling’s Just Another Way to Fly by araniaart​ . Please check out this incredible series for all of your demon Bucky needs.)

Chapter Warnings: Angst, anxiety, mild body horror

AO3

You woke up coughing and gagging, pulling your jacket out from under your head to wrap it around your face. For there to be so much dust in the air, another dust storm must have kicked up outside.

Just as predicted, when you looked out one of the air holes of the cave system, you saw the wall of dust that cut off all sight after a few feet.

You sighed and sat back in the deepest part of the cave, making sure to keep the jacket wrapped around your head. It was much different being here as a physical entity instead of just living in someone’s head. You knew which one you preferred.

Still coughing frequently, you picked up a stone tool, no bigger than a piece of chalk, and added another tick to the rows of marks Bucky had started. Tenth day in the demon realm, with no sign of rescue.

It had been sheer luck that you’d woken up in a place with landmarks you actually recognized. You weren’t far from Bucky’s old territory, and after hours of walking barefoot through the sand, socks stuffed into your pockets, you made it to the cave system he’d used as a home base.

Seeing the same walls, the edible fungus, the dried “bamboo” strips as bedding, even the old journal Bucky had left behind, it had been the most relieving and the most painful thing you’d felt in a while. That was saying a lot, considering you’d been murdered just a few hours prior.

Your shelter and source of food and water secured, you’d done nothing but decompress, going over everything that had happened.

Bucky falling into Zemo’s trap. Forced to be a weapon once more and ordered to kill Rogers. He probably would have if you hadn’t managed to pull on the thin thread that had remained of your bond.

The irony wasn’t lost on you. The bond you’d both wanted to get rid of had been the thing to save Bucky’s life. The cursed book had been right; the only thing that could break your bond was Bucky’s death… or yours. It hadn’t said the death would result in you being banished to the demon realm, but it wasn’t like the damn book had been trying to be helpful to begin with.

No, if anything, the ancient sorcerer whose words it had quoted had been more insightful. Especially the part where he’d witnessed a human slave die in his master’s place, and his body had burned to ashes.

Is that what had happened to you? Had Bucky been forced to watch as you’d crumpled to dust in his hands? God, you hoped not.

At least it explained how you ended up here and that corpse you’d seen through Bucky’s eyes. A human with a demon sigil, it could only mean one thing. This was where all human slaves ended up, eventually.

You just hoped you wouldn’t meet the same fate.

Thoughts turned back to Bucky as they usually were, you couldn’t begin to imagine how Bucky was dealing with your death. All you could hope was that he realized it hadn’t been permanent, and that he would find a way to the demon realm without dying himself. Knowing him, Bucky would take that route if he had to.

But here it was, day ten, and you were beginning to have doubts. You knew time flowed differently here and you would have to be patient, but it was impossibly difficult. You just prayed you wouldn’t have to wait another fifty years. Unlike Bucky, you doubted you would remain ageless in this place.

Day ten became day eleven. And then twelve. And then you’d been in the demon realm for two weeks with no sign of Bucky or the wizards.

At day fifteen, you decided it was time to stop waiting, and time to start being proactive. If your rescuers couldn’t come to you, perhaps you could bring yourselves to them. You’d glimpsed the truth in Bucky’s memories after him coming through the portal. Your younger self had practically bragged about opening a portal, and you’d been ten years old.

Surely you could still do it, even if you didn’t remember how… and even though you’d never shown a spark of magic while training under Wong.

But what else was there to do? It wasn’t as if there was anyone else around to embarrass yourself in front of.

Only… that turned out not to be the case.

You had managed to create a spark in the air. It was orange and sputtered after a few seconds, but it was the most you’d ever accomplished before. After a few more hours, you got a glowing circle the size of a hula-hoop.

But it was the wrong color, orange and not blue, and the image you could see through it was just more red sand. You didn’t need to travel across the planet; you needed to get away from it.

Frustrated, you weren’t as aware of your surroundings as you should have been, and that was when the demon attacked. Drooling and growling, it charged at you from over the sands and chased you into the cave system. You recognized it from before; a large beast that looked like it was part-bear, part-bull, and it was pissed.

Terrified and without thought, you made a jerky circular motion just as the demon launched itself at you.

The portal fizzled to life and vanished just as quickly, and the bottom half of a demon body landed on top of you. It was still smoking from where the portal had sliced through it like a hot blade.

It was the first and last time you tried to make a portal.

The days continued to crawl by until a month had passed, or at least, the best you could guess as days and months when the sunlight never changed or faded.

Until it finally did. And that’s when things truly started to take a turn for the worst.

You’d managed to keep your spirits up by reading the journal Bucky had left behind, reliving the time you’d spent together in a weird, symbiotic partnership, but when the rare night came and shrouded everything in cold darkness, you didn’t even have Bucky’s words to comfort you. The jacket was no longer a breathing mask and went back on your shoulders, barely keeping the chill at bay.

Through the dim starlight that came through the overhead holes in the ceiling, you could see your breath fogging up before you. You huddled into a tighter ball, tried to keep your emotions in check, and eventually gave up. You turned your head and sobbed quietly into your arms, letting the despair and fear pour out of you like a flooded dam.

And still it grew colder. You couldn’t remember Bucky being this cold, but then again, he wasn’t fully human. Plus, even though you’d been an observer in his head, you’d been able to raise his body temperature and keep him warm.

Now, all you could do was shiver and stay huddled against the wall that still retained heat from the day. You didn’t want to think about what you’d do when it faded.

Somehow in the night, you’d managed to fall asleep, or maybe fall unconscious. When you stirred, something was… wrong. You shifted your arms and legs and your skin tingled oddly, goosebumps breaking out along your flesh as the sensations felt off, both muffled and heightened at the same time.

You opened your eyes and wished you hadn’t. Instead of the bare skin of your arms… they were covered with grey-blue fur. Smooth, short, and thick, like a cat’s.

The panicked sound you made wasn’t human, and that just made the panic worse. You scrambled across the cave floor and ran to the nearby underground stream. There would be enough light now that the sun had risen for you to see…

Horns.

The face staring back at you was barely your own. Thin fur covered your face entirely, your pupils were no longer round but narrowed into slits, and the horns. They curved from either side of your forehead, several inches in length and grey, like ashy bone.

That wasn’t the only oddity. You turned your head and gasped at the long, pointed ears sticking out from under your hair.

You looked like a strange mixture of part-human, part-demon, part-cat.

This can’t be real. I’m hallucinating. Exposed to the cold, this is just the effect of a dying mind.

Expect, it didn’t go away. Your shock continued to mount as you took stock of the rest of yourself. The same blue-grey fur covered every inch of you. When you flexed your fingers, sharp nails slide outward from the nailbed, strange but natural at the same time.

You weren’t completely cat-like. There were the horns, of course, but when you stretched and felt along the back of your neck, scaly ridges continued all the way down your spine to your—

You jumped when something moved inside your pant leg, and you earned yourself a flare of pain when you slapped it to discover it was a long, puffed up, furry tail.

You startled giggling. The giggling devolved into hysterical laughter, and when that faded, it turned into breathless crying.

Now you knew why you hadn’t frozen to death in the night.

Your curiosity as to what you had become waned along with the days. The anxiety and fear was gone too. Something important had slipped your mind, like a half-forgotten dream, but there was nothing to remember. You had your cave system, your food source, and your territory to defend. There was nothing else you could possibly want.

Even the scorching sunlight no longer bothered you and instead filled you with strength. Your fur protected you from the worse of the sandy wind, and a third eyelid, transparent and able to cover your eye, allowed you to see even in the worst of dust storms. And there was a power that seemed to sustain you, an energy from this place that kept you strong and brimming with a power you didn’t quite understand.

Your body was perfectly suited for this world, and after a while, you couldn’t remember a time when it’d been any different.

Sometimes, you had dreams. Confusing ones, because they were of both a man and a demon. You always woke from these with your chest aching and your vision blurred, but you blinked the moisture away and soon, those were also forgotten.

Most demons knew better than to encroach on your territory, and in turn, you left them to theirs. Any demons foolish enough to ignore your boundaries were easily chased away with your outstretched talons and ripping claws. Once, when a demon that stood twice your size and had the head of a skeletal horse (how did you know that word?) tried to push you out, you conjured a rope of fiery orange. Striking at the beast, you’d left a burn across its back, and it hadn’t returned since.

You were comfortable in your solitude. Barring the strange dreams and the moments when you would wake up, confused into believing something was missing, you were content.

Until the day when a new, strange demon encroached on your territory. Worse than that, he’d wandered into your cave system. You were grooming yourself, tongue licking across the fur on your forearm, when you heard the telltale sounds of feet moving against the stone floor.

You hid in the shadows, eyes narrowed into slits as you waited. It didn’t take long for the intruder to walk directly into your cave, and you were taken aback at its appearance.

It—no, he, the demon was definitely masculine, with broad shoulders and prominent facial features. He seemed human, but the rest of him was not, with a demonic arm, wings, horns, and a tail.

He raised his head and flared his nostrils, testing the air at the same moment you caught a whiff of his scent. It was almost overpowering, heady and male, and your fur puffed up in response. This demon would try to take your home from you, and you wouldn’t allow it. You’d defeated bigger threats than him.

When he turned toward your makeshift nest and bent down to open the journal you no longer took interest in, you crept from your hidden nook. The demon was still crouched, his tail lying flat against the ground, but the tip flicked back and forth.

You drew closer, closer still, completely silent and pointed teeth bared. Bunching your muscles into a tight coil you leapt, claws outstretched.

The demon turned just before you landed.

He grabbed you around the throat, spun in one fluid motion, and slammed you against the cave wall.

You released a yowl and dug your claws into him, but they merely skidded off the shifting plates of his arm, leaving him unmarked.

Pinned with your back to the wall, you were trapped with his claws around your neck. The demon bared his teeth in his own impressive growl, inches from your face. His eyes were a cold sort of fury that made you doubt your chances of survival.

“Where is she!”

He spoke a language you somehow understood. The words had meaning, but you didn’t know what they were, so you remained silent.

When you didn’t answer he leaned forward, fangs sharp and ready to tear open your throat.

“You reek of her, and these are her clothes. Did you—did you kill her?”

You gave him nothing but a growl in your throat. When he squeezed tighter around your neck, you bared your teeth and snarled in hatred.

Just as quickly as it had arrived, his deadly glare vanished. He blinked rapidly, brows furrowed as if trying to put together a puzzle. And then his grip relaxed as something very different crossed over his face.

“No…”

He was distracted, his mind clearly elsewhere, and you wiggled out of his grip and tried to dart past him. The demon immediately seized you from behind, wrapping his arms tightly around you so you couldn’t escape.

You screamed and fought, your feet shoving against the ground for purchase, but with your arms pinned to your sides you couldn’t even conjure the fiery rope to defend yourself.

“Stop, stop, it’s me!” he cried. “It’s Bucky!”

His words were simply noise, and you swiveled your head to bite into his shoulder, this time making sure it was the fleshy one. But he still wouldn’t release you, even as the coppery taste of blood touched your tongue.

He gripped you tighter, and you let go of his shoulder and continued to struggle. He was much larger and stronger than you, and he didn’t move an inch. Instead, something soft touched your hair, and you realized it was one of his hands.

Gathering your strength for one last attempt, you twisted violently in his arms, pulled back your lips and sank your teeth into the junction between neck and shoulder, biting down. You were about to take out a chunk of his flesh when the concentrated aroma of his scent slammed into you.

You released him, licking the blood off your lips, and carefully sniffed higher up his neck. Something pulled at you, something familiar but lost, and you gave a curious lick just below his jawline.

Pine trees, earth, warm stone. He smelled like…

He smelled like…

Home.

You pulled back, staring in horror as blood continued to trickle down his neck.

You knew him. You knew him, how could you forget him, how could you forget—

You tried to say his name, but no words came out. You couldn’t speak. When had you lost the ability to talk?

When had you forgotten Bucky?

“Sweetheart?”

You whimpered at the cautious hope in his voice, at the pet name, at him being here.

Bucky wrapped his arms tighter around you, and you began to lick at the wound you’d caused, an apology and a way to prove he was real and you weren’t imagining this. To force yourself to remember everything you’d almost lost, even as the pain and grief grew worse every second.

Bucky had finally found you.

“I’m so, so sorry,” he apologized, voice choked with tears. “I came as soon as I could… I thought I was too late.”

But he was too late, wasn’t he?

You stopped mid-lick. Your tongue had done a decent job of cleaning his wound, because it wasn’t a human tongue anymore. It was dry and barbed, like a cat’s.

You buried your face into his shoulder, giving another miserable noise. How could you go back home now? You were a monster. A thing made of the demon realm. How could Bucky stand to even look at you, let alone touch you?

When you tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let you. Even his tail was stubbornly wound around your leg now.

“We’re going home,” he said, pulling back just enough to cup your face in his hands. You tried to jerk away, not wanting him to look at you, but he didn’t let you budge an inch. “We are going home.”

His image blurred as your eyes stung. How could he say that when you were… when you…

“It’s okay,” he said when the tears slipped down your furred cheeks. He brushed them away and pressed his lips against your forehead. You sighed and closed your eyes. “You’re okay. I’m not leaving you. This time, for good.”

You wanted to believe him, but how could you when you had the face of the very thing he hated about himself?

As if knowing your thoughts and afraid you would bolt, Bucky kept one arm firmly around your waist. He turned you toward the cave exit that would lead into the tunnels, but you resisted, pointing down to the nest when he looked at you.

Seeing what you were pointing at, a brief flash of fondness and pain crossed his face. He picked up the book, Bucky’s old journal that had documented his days and adventures with the “mysterious voice,” and you grabbed it and held it to your chest. You’d forgotten before, but now you remembered how this book had been your lifeline, and you couldn’t bear to leave it behind.

“Ready?” he asked, voice soft, eyes even softer.

You nodded, leaning into him when he tucked you against his side. Now that you remembered who he was, the thought of not touching him for even a second was unthinkable.

Bucky led you outside, and you spared a single glance backwards at the series of mounds, hills, and boulders that signified there was an underground cave system. It had saved your life, and before that, Bucky’s. It had been your temporary shelter, but it wasn’t where you belonged.

Spreading his wings, Bucky lifted you easily into his arms and leapt into the air. You curled protectively around the journal, but you felt safer now than you had since being captured by Zemo. As the hot, dry air ruffled your hair and fur, a deep rumbling came from inside your chest. It took you a moment to realize you were purring. Indicating he could hear it too, Bucky kissed the top of your head, making your purring even louder.

You kept your eyes closed and pressed to Bucky’s tactical vest until he said, “There it is.”

You turned to look, eyes widening at the sight of a shimmering blue portal near the ground. It looked tiny from this distance, and your stomach churned with nerves.

“Hold on!”

Taking Bucky’s advice, you gripped onto him tightly as he dived. Just before he went through, you shut your eyes tight.

The difference between the demon realm and Earth was a lot more extreme than you remembered filtered through Bucky’s memories. You immediately started shivering, buffeted by the cold air, taking shallow breaths because each one felt like you were breathing ice water.

The colors assaulted your vision—bluebluegreenblue—leaving you whimpering into Bucky’s shoulder, painful after you’d seen nothing but red for so long.

And the smells. No longer diluted with dry air constantly in motion, the salty and perfumed scent of multiple humans, of mildew and stone and ozone that made the tip of your tongue tingle—

It was too much. As soon as Bucky slightly relaxed his hold, you dropped the journal and scrambled behind him, hiding between his wings as you buried your face in the back of his neck.

It was toomuchtoomuchtoomuch—

“Sergeant Barnes, is that… who I think it is?”

The smooth, commanding voice was familiar, but you couldn’t place it. Unlike your recognition of Bucky, everything else was a struggle to recall. You didn’t even know where you were, the domed room unfamiliar and intimidating.

“Yes,” Bucky responded in a low tone.

“Ah, well, that is… unfortunate.” The man who had originally spoken cleared his throat. “We will need to do a thorough examination—“

You had peeked over Bucky’s shoulder to get a better look at the others in the room—they were wizards, weren’t they?—but as soon as one of them drew forward, you gave a spitting snarl.

“Or not,” the man said, raising his hands. He had a goatee and a ridiculous red cape. Your ruffled fur went flat against your skin. Was that… Strange? And next to him, concerned but not without pity, your mentor, Wong.

How could you have forgotten so much? How long had you been gone?

You hid behind Bucky’s shoulder blades, misery forcing your ears to fold back and curl your tail between your legs.

“I’m taking her home,” Bucky said quietly.

“But—“

“No,” he said, more firmly this time. “I’ve been where she is and I know what she needs. She needs to feel safe, somewhere quiet and familiar.”

He waited a beat.

“Are you going to stop me?”

“No.” Strange’s tone was weary but surprisingly relenting. “I’m not. Just make sure you take your next doses with you.”

“I know,” Bucky muttered and then bent down to pick up the journal you’d dropped.

He did it slowly and carefully so as not to dislodge you, because you still half-clung to his back like a lost duckling. It would have been funny if you weren’t already knee-deep in the urge to bolt. Your fur was puffed again, as far as it would go, heart hammering in your chest, and all of your senses were in overdrive as you struggled and failed to adjust to your new environment.

When Bucky straightened up again, you retreated into the sanctum of his folded wings and refused to let go. You couldn’t bear to look around, not when you could sense the wizard’s peering at you, at the freakish thing you’d become. Just the thought of it provoked a whine from your throat.

“One of you mind making a portal?” Bucky said dryly. “The sun’s still up and we’re obviously not taking a cab.”

You heard footsteps shuffling against the stones, and you clung tighter to Bucky. He reached back and put a hand on your leg, reassuring you he wasn’t leaving. Your trembling subsided slightly, but every muscle of your body was still taut enough to snap.

When he stepped forward, you went with him, keeping your eyes shut until you felt the familiar but unsettling shift of space as you stepped through a portal. Only when it fizzled out behind you and you caught the comforting scent of Bucky’s penthouse did you open your eyes.

You thought by “home” he would take you back to your room at the Sanctum. Instead, you were standing in the middle of Bucky’s loft.

Before Bucky could say or do anything, you buried your face in his jacket and released everything you’d kept buried, your soft keening echoing inside the old clock tower.

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