Run (A Bucky Barnes Recovery Story)

60 Betrayal

Bucky went to Steve’s apartment sometime later, how much later he couldn’t be sure, but Steve didn’t answer the door, so Bucky sat down on the floor beside it and rested his head against the wall until he saw Steve round the corner in the hall and stop.

Hi Steve, Bucky wanted to say, but he couldn’t gather the courage, so he only let out a breath and turned his head back and stared up at the ceiling. He let Steve grab him and haul him to his feet, one hand hooking Bucky’s metal socket, but he didn’t even care anymore. Steve embraced him like another seventy years had gone by and Bucky could only offer him a weak hug back.

“Are you okay?” Steve was saying and Bucky was shaking his head. Steve unlocked his apartment and ushered Bucky inside, sitting him down like Natasha had and seating himself across from him. Bucky leaned over and ran his hand through his hair.

“I lost an entire week,” Bucky admitted to Steve. His voice was breaking. “Last week, it’s almost all gone. And then other things as well. From my journal. I don’t recognize them anymore.” Steve took a deep breath.

“I am so sorry, Bucky,” Steve said. “This was my fault. I had such a bad feeling about all of it, I was apprehensive, I thought something would go wrong. I couldn’t save you.” Steve looked up at Bucky and it occurred to Bucky that he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “You… You would have come through for me. I know I can’t make this up to you.” Bucky looked down and closed his eyes. The weight of the way Steve blamed himself was heavy on both of them. Bucky didn’t know what to say. He knew what he wanted to say, that it wasn’t Steve’s fault, Steve had been there for him, Steve had always been there for him and he had no reason to feel bad or guilty because Bucky didn’t blame him and he shouldn’t blame himself. This was the fault of Hydra. Bucky couldn’t go so far as to say it wasn’t the fault of himself, because on the inside, deep inside, he still had difficulty believing that, but if he knew anything at all, if he remembered anything, it was that Steve wasn’t to blame. Steve was only pure good and he shouldn’t have to feel guilt over Bucky. But Bucky also knew that saying these things, as he had been saying these things, as they had been saying them to each other for months, wouldn’t help at all. Because they never helped. Bucky’s stuttered, broken words couldn’t help Steve, couldn’t make him believe them to be true. Because that’s all they were in the end, to the both of them. Words, not beliefs.

But there was more Bucky did want to say, more he had to talk about.

“Natasha talked to me,” Bucky said.

“What did she say?” Steve asked and Bucky swallowed.

“She told me I knew her, once. And she kept it from me,” Bucky said and Steve was silent. “I knew her,” Bucky said and suddenly, he was wiping tears away from his eyes. “I knew her. I trained her. And I forgot her. But then…” And this was the worst part. “But she let me believe we had just met. She let me go on not knowing, not telling me.” Bucky wasn’t quite done, but then Steve spoke up and Bucky felt everything he was about to say, and he had been doing good, too, die in his throat.

“I know,” Steve said. “I know, she told me a while ago.” Bucky stood abruptly. He jumped to his feet. He didn’t let it sink in, he didn’t try to take it slowly, he just stood, shocked, alarmed. Hurt, too, but suddenly there were so many emotions in him, he couldn’t quite name them all. He thought maybe it didn’t have to sink in because inside, he’d already suspected it and that was pain, too.

There was a second of silence while Bucky stared at Steve and all the trust he had built in him shattered.

“What do you mean you know?” Bucky said, even though he knew exactly what Steve had meant. “You know, too? The both of you knew?!”

“Bucky,” Steve said, looking up at him. Bucky felt everything crumble inside him. He had been lied to.

“How could you do this to me,” Bucky gasped, escalating, growing until his voice was a roar. How could you break my trust, how could you keep secrets from me. “After everything, after everything, Steve!” I thought we were friends, I thought you would be there for me, I thought you would understand.

Why why why

“Bucky, you have to speak English!” Steve replied frantically. “I can’t understand you!” Bucky stared at Steve, feeling everything fall. Bucky didn’t want to translate himself. He didn’t care, he was too hurt. He was too betrayed.

Bucky left quickly.

He deserved to know. He wanted to know. It was his head, they were his memories, his experiences and if anything at all, wasn’t he at least entitled to that? Bucky had thought Natasha understood. He thought Steve wouldn’t keep things from him. He thought there were at least two people in this hell his life had become that he could trust fully and completely.

Bucky no longer felt the numbness he had felt as he left Natasha, crying in her apartment. Steve’s reveal had destroyed that. He was assaulted with emotion, like a tidal wave and he couldn’t get a breath. He felt like he was drowning. He wanted to run away from it all.

It was a deadly cocktail of betrayal and mistrust and a very, very broken heart that Bucky Barnes stewed over now. He had thought he was done being lied to, having his past erased and stolen from him. He had thought he had found people who loved him enough to understand that, to understand that he wanted all of it, he needed all of it because it was a part of him and he couldn’t stand any more dark rooms in his head. They were his rooms, his memories, his dam!! He deserved it all!

Bucky had always known Natasha was secretive. There were mysteries in her that he had always known he wouldn’t understand and he had been relatively okay with that. He had never dreamed this, however. Even in his nightmares, he couldn’t have imagined this.

And it had hurt when Hydra had done this to him, when they lied to him and manipulated him and took away his identity because they carved something out of him then. But it hurt like hell to look back and realize that Natasha was doing it too, all along. And Steve, also. It was a knife he hadn’t even known existed in his back. It was a stab where he thought there wasn’t even a place to have a wound. But then, he guessed, that was the nature of betrayal. It hurt more than anything else in the world and it never came from your enemies.