Untangling a Memory

What does he know?

Bucky quickly hopped out of bed and over to his chair, throwing on a sweatshirt as his went. Tonight was particularly breezy, but he didn't want to waste any time before getting his thoughts down on paper. There was too much to write, to remember, and to process. He began to scribble as quickly as he could.

He wrote furiously in erratic notations. To anyone else, nothing on the pages would have made sense, but it was enough for him. Once he'd gotten the basic details and as much of the new information as he could pull from his memory, Bucky got to parsing it out.

His dream of falling was still there, but he was thankful that it barely had any of the detail of last time. He felt that he had barely survived the other night and if he had to continue reliving that memory, he would have to visit Shuri to see what she could do about such a painful memory. He wasn't sure whether it would be better to be wiped of the memory again or have to relive it constantly.

James. His name existed within a dream. He couldn't see or even really hear who had said it, but there it was. He couldn't remember the last time someone had called him that. Well, except...

Bucky pushed the thought from his mind, knowing that when she had said it, she was heavily medicated and it had been some sort of accident. It was weird to have her elsewhere in that same dream though. Presumably her at least. As Steve had said, bright green eyes sure sounded like Natasha. Bucky wondered whether he could have linked her using his name to those green eyes already in that dream. None of it made sense to him, but he just wrote every question and consideration in his notebook anyway..

Shooting Natasha in Washington- that was completely new. While he had never dreamt about that before, it was clearly on his mind after she had shown him the scars. He closed his eyes unconsciously as he reminisced about sitting on the edge of the pool, running his fingertips lightly over the edges of the circular ripple in her skin that he had caused. But something stuck out to Bucky, now that he had dreamt about it. He had shot Natasha, yes, but in the shoulder and only in the shoulder. The same was true of when he shot her in Odessa. He'd shot her in the hip. And when he considered it, it didn't make any sense.

Bucky was an excellent shot. Actually, excellent didn't even cover it. He was exceptional. He'd been a sniper in the army and his skills had only been refined after becoming the Winter Soldier. Even in the heat of fighting, he shot his targets to kill with superior accuracy. He was made to execute his missions and kills were the requirement. So, why would he shoot her, not once, but twice, in non-lethal places on her body?

Bucky spent nearly a quarter hour writing scenarios and hypothesis', over and over again, but he always came back to the same thing- he had shot her intentionally not to kill her. Even as the Winter Soldier, even before he knew her, he had avoided taking her life. It made no sense, but he knew it was true.

The chair where he was wiped was becoming a clearer memory. Bucky felt the anxiety swell in his chest as he thought about it. It was the same kind of ill feeling he got when he thought about the triggering words that Zemo had used and he wasn't sure he was ready to deal with this. But he didn't really have control to prevent the dream from continuing. He would have to grit and bare it.

The shoulder. He always came back to the shoulder. He had started to wonder more and more if it was a particular shoulder. Again, like the other parts of his sleep, the bright green eyes were popping up throughout. But it still was unclear whether it was the same pair of bright green eyes he saw daily while awake. He wrote down in his notebook to try to look for scarring on the shoulder next time, if he was able to focus his mind enough.