Bucky’s head was buzzing, screaming, twisting pain. He clung to himself like a life raft in the sea of the blackness left in his head. He was awake, but he couldn’t see through the pain, couldn’t hear or feel through it’s absolute curtain.
James Buchanan Barnes.
James Buchanan Barnes.
James Buchanan Barnes.
Steven Grant Rogers.
Natasha-no, Natalia-no, Natasha. Natasha Romanoff.
Natalia-Natasha?
James Buchanan Barnes.
Bucky repeated names to himself, trying to drown out the pain. He didn’t know how much of himself was left, he was confused, he was hurting, he was guilty.
Then, the pain began to slip away slowly, slowly, and he could process what he was seeing, even though it didn’t make sense.
“Steve,” Bucky muttered and Steve looked up and over at Bucky. Steve was saying things, he was cupping Bucky’s face and pain shot up from Bucky’s chin and he jerked back. Steve pulled his hands away apologetically and the pain dragged Bucky under again.
But he knew him. He still knew him and that relief was everything to Bucky.
Bucky woke up in his apartment. Steve was holding him, his entire face was numb. Natasha was trying to set up his bed for him. Bucky’s head pounded. He groaned and sunk into blackness.
When he woke up for the third time, he knew things were missing. He could feel them, holes in his memory, as glaring to him as missing teeth. Or maybe he actually was just missing teeth, he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t remember, why was he missing teeth? There was a coldness in his jaw, he ran his tongue over it. Some sort of staples, he decided. Why did he need staples in his mouth? He didn’t know, he couldn’t remember, he didn’t know.
Someone was saying his name. Bucky yelled.
He was in his apartment. Steve and Natasha were with him. Bucky closed his eyes. He wanted to be alone.
Get out, get out, get out!!
“What’s he saying??” Steve cried.
“He wants us to leave,” Natasha translated.
“Get out!!” Bucky screamed again until he heard doors closing and he pressed his face into his pillow, rough on his staples, and screamed more. He couldn’t remember why he felt such anguish.
Later on, (he wasn’t sure what day it was, after two days, three of lying in bed, inconsolable? It all blended together.) Bucky found his journal and looked through it. He read every entry over and over and over. Some of them were gone, he realized. Some of those precious memories were gone now. Bucky took a pen and marked each one that felt new to him and came up with seven memories out of many more completely vanished.
One memory was about Steve. One of the times he was sick, apparently Bucky had been thirteen and trying to help, but couldn’t pay for the medicine himself and had cried outside of the Rogers’ home for ten minutes until Sarah Rogers managed to convince him that Steve wasn’t going to die.
Another memory was small, just a picture of the front of his own house. He couldn’t remember the front of his own house now.
A third memory had been a memory of recent times, a day he had catalogued. Natasha had apparently kissed him a lot and he had been delighted.
A fourth memory gone was about trenches during the war, and the way Hydra’s weapons had gleamed.
A fifth memory was another catalogued day. He was in the hospital and Steve showed him his favorite drawings from his notepad. Bucky hadn’t recorded what those favorite drawings were and now he was angry, he wanted to know. Even though it felt like a first time, he would have to ask again.
The sixth memory was of Hydra. A mission. All he had written was that he had left a man face down in a swimming pool and the man’s children were there. Bucky shuddered.
The seventh memory was only a picture, a distinct, frozen image of Steve, skinny and smiling and bruised, looking up at Bucky. There had been apparently cobblestone in the background, but Bucky didn’t know now.
Bucky realized he also didn’t know why he couldn’t remember. Everything was a painful blur. There had been… What? He remembered panic in the way adrenaline seized his heart as he tried to think. He remembered screaming and some sort of plan gone wrong. But he had lost that, too. He had lost at least up to five days preceding waking up with Steve and the pain. He was confused, and lost. Hydra had had him, he knew that, but once, during the blur of days, he tried to think about it, he tried to remember, and it had hurt so bad that he puked into the toilet for thirty minutes afterwards. Remembering just wasn’t an option right now.
Bucky was looking in the mirror. His face was dripping wet, he had been splashing his face, scrubbing until he was red. His dead brown eyes stared back at him blankly as he dripped onto the counter.
Pieces of his identity were gone. Pieces of who he was, up in smoke, dark like a broken bulb in an empty house. Pieces that belonged to him, that built his own personal make-up, pieces he needed; lost.
He needed to feel a rage red hot, but he could only feel numb, blank and empty like the missing pieces. He needed to feel something and all he felt was dead.
Hydra, they did this to him. Again and again and again and again. Burnt him out like a cigarette butt, blew him out like a candle. It devastated him and he didn’t know how to stop them anymore. He was so broken, he couldn’t begin to tape his shards back together.
And Steve… It hurt to think about Steve because Bucky felt as though he had let him down. If Bucky were to keep losing memories, if he were to become hollowed out again, scraped clean, what was to keep Steve with him? If everything Steve loved was gone, why wouldn’t he just go? And Bucky could see it, he could feel his insides being scooped out, bit by bit. More and more of the person Steve loved was being lost but Bucky couldn’t see Steve leave him. He couldn’t bare it. Even if he was so empty that nothing was left but a blank space for Hydra to pour hate into, he knew he couldn’t watch Steve walk away. But Bucky didn’t know how to make him stay. He couldn’t expect Steve to love a shell. Bucky was so scared that he was losing his purpose to Steve and the thought kept Bucky awake at night.
And he couldn’t bare to be hollow. Not again. He couldn’t stand it. He would die first.