Chapter Text
The mask comes off in Steve's hand, dropping to the ground, and when the Winter Soldier turns around, Steve's mouth falls open.
He sees the man who died falling, died screaming - he sees the childhood boy who always fought at his side, always slung an arm around his shoulders and called him Stevie, rubbed his back to help him breathe, wrapped warm arms around him when it was too cold at night.
He sees the heavily raised scars around Bucky's eyes, and the way Bucky's eyes see nothing at all, clouded white and sliding from side to side without any purpose to them.
The Winter Soldier is blind. This whole time, this whole fight, Bucky.
"Bucky?" he asks weakly, lost.
"Who the hell is Bucky?" snarls the man, and moves towards him.
They find Bucky again three weeks after he pulls Steve from the water, and his head twitches back and forth between Steve, Sam, and Natasha as they come towards him, his body held as tight as an arrow as he backs into the corner.
"Bucky," Steve pleads. "Please come with us. We're trying to help you. I just -" His voice feels so small. He hangs his shield limply at his side, tired of the fight. He doesn't want to force Bucky to do anything, but the Avengers have all agreed: he must be brought in for his and everyone else's safety. Even Sam had agreed. Steve had complied only if he were the one to bring Bucky in.
But now he's here and he can't do it. The way Bucky's shoulders hunch in, the way his cheeks are so hollowed like he's been living off garbage. His hair is limp and greasy in his face. There's an exhausted, hunted air about him, as though he hasn't rested once since the helicarriers fell.
"I don't know you," rasps Bucky. His voice sounds like it hasn't been used once in the last three weeks, or any time before that.
"It's me," he says. "It's Steve. We were -" He chokes. He can't get the words out, his throat feels so tight. "We were friends."
Bucky turns his face towards Steve, his eyes staring blankly. He used to have such expressive eyes - bright with mischief, narrowed with anger, crinkling at the corners with fondness, growing soft when Steve was sick, fearful when Steve grew sicker - now they're empty.
Then, slowly, he lifts his right hand in the air, reaching out to Steve like he knows exactly where he is.
Steve looks back to Sam and Natasha, hesitating only for a moment. Sam purses his lips; Natasha doesn't move. He looks back to Bucky and then moves forward until Bucky's hand touches his chest. It's positioned right to where his head would have been before the serum, but now - his breath catches as Bucky slides his hand up, firmly pressing against his uniform. He measures out Steve's chest, feels out the roundness of his shoulders, then lets his fingers rest on Steve's neck for a moment. He stays there for a heartbeat, touching Steve's pulse, then goes up to his face.
Steve closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath. Bucky slides his fingers over his nose, his closed eyes, his forehead, his mouth. He presses his thumb against Steve's lower lip hard enough that Steve opens up for him and for a second he wonders if Bucky's going to check his teeth before Bucky quietly says, "Steve was smaller," and then tries to snap his neck.
It's only by a miracle that Steve avoids it; he'd been lulled almost into a trance at the feel of Bucky's hand on him and he barely ducks out of the neck-snapping hold, getting a punch to the face a moment later and then Sam's throwing Bucky onto the ground and Natasha is tying his hands up with super-soldier-strength metal handcuffs.
"Don't hurt him," says Steve, still trying to catch his breath. "He didn't mean to."
Bucky spits and snarls like a wild animal, thrashing about like he might still be able to defeat all three of them with his weakened state and his hands handcuffed behind his back. His eyes are wide open, unblinking and ferocious, rolling in his head.
"We have to take him in, Steve," says Natasha.
Steve closes his eyes again. He's just as blind as Bucky is.
"I know," he says. "I know."
They keep the Asset in a decently sized room with a soft bed, a private bathroom, and books written in braille. There's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Gone with the Wind and The Invisible Man. They come in to speak to him, especially the man who calls himself Steve and a soft-spoken woman who calls herself his therapist. They come at separate times. They like to ask him questions.
"Are you comfortable here?" Dr. Gonzalez asks him. "Is there something you want that you don't have?"
"When did they blind you?" Rogers asks.
"Do you have dreams at night?" Dr. Gonzalez asks.
"Why didn't the serum heal it?" Rogers asks.
"Do you want to self-harm or injure anyone around you?" Dr. Gonzalez asks.
"Do you remember me?" Rogers asks.
He always asks that, and if he doesn't, the Asset can tell that he wants to, can almost hear it perched on the back of his tongue. It's me, it's Steve. We grew up together. It's Steve. Do you remember?
There's something about his voice - something that reminds the Asset of injustice and sorrow, anger and grief so deep that it threatens to overwhelm him. It doesn't make sense. Of the fractured memories he has, very few and so fragile that pulling them up threatens to break them, he only remembers a small Steve, with bird bones and huge eyes. Nothing like the powerful man that fought him and held his ground.
"I think I understand it," says Rogers quietly one day. He sits in a little wooden chair a few feet away from the Asset, careful to never get too close. "Bruce says it was a chemical burn, too deep for the serum to repair. He says your other senses probably got boosted instead, and that's how you can still fight. Is that it? You can do everything else better now?"
The Asset doesn't respond, like he hasn't responded to any of the questions posed to him before now. He stands against the wall in the back of the room, farthest from the door, hands to his sides. There's a small part of him that regrets attacking this Steve, this Rogers - but every time he hears that voice, he gets the same helpless rage, tidal wave of despair. He hates the way this voice makes him feel, but he's decided not to hurt anyone anymore. He is own handler now. He must keep himself leashed.
"You can, can't you? So, so just," Rogers stands, taking a step towards him, and the Asset flinches away. Rogers stops. His voice comes out even more quietly, pulled out of him. "Smell me."
This, out of all things, makes the Asset lift his head. His eyebrows draw together just barely, a minute reaction that he knows Rogers sees. He can feel Rogers' eyes on him every second that they're together, boring into him like a physical weight. He thinks if Rogers could, he would peel the Asset open so he could look at every part of him, every bone and muscle, examining him all over. He doesn't know what Rogers is searching for.
"Smells don't change, do they? Even if I look different, I should still smell like who you remember. So," it sounds like Rogers is lifting his chin, his voice taking on a defiant edge. "Smell me, Buck."
For a second the Asset does nothing, and then he turns his head to the side and inhales. The smell hits him hard, like a punch to the stomach, and his useless eyes blink rapidly before he stills again.
"Doesn't smell like anything," he says.
Rogers starts towards him again and then seems to restrain himself. The Asset knows his hands are clenched. He wonders if Rogers is about to hit him. "You're lying."
The man smells like something both known and unknown - something clean, something strong, sweat layered under musk. He thinks Rogers must have withheld from showering for a few days to get it to smell like this. Maybe he went to the gym right before this. It makes the Asset's mouth water, and he has to swallow.
"What do you want from me?" he finally says.
"I just want," says Rogers, sounding frustrated. "I want - it's me, it's your - I'm not trying to hurt you. I don't want to force you to do anything."
The Asset reaches out behind him and lays a hand on the back wall, on his cage.
"That's different," insists Steve. "We're just keeping you here to protect you."
"To protect others."
"You tried to snap my neck coming here."
The Asset turns away and puts his back to Rogers. He doesn't like the smell. He doesn't like the voice. He doesn't like any of it.
"If I could shrink down again, I would," says Rogers. "I'd be defenseless for you. You'd see that I haven't changed, not really. I'm still me under this - under what they made me. I'm still your best friend, Bucky, I'm still yours."
He stays in the room with the Asset for another ten minutes, both of them waiting in silence before Rogers finally turns and leaves, taking his damned smell with him. The scent lingers afterward for hours until the Asset wants to claw his own nose off, burn it out with bleach, forget that it ever existed at all.
Steve gets an idea. He goes to the craft store with Natasha trailing behind him.
"He can shoot," she says, her fingers trailing over the wood he's choosing from. "How do you think they got him to do that? He hits the target every time."
"I don't know," he says. "It doesn't make any sense." Steve's hearing is excellent - he can hear a woman on the phone right now three aisles over, can hear the person on the other end as well, can hear that there's a cat next to the person on the other end of the phone meowing for attention. Sometimes he hears so much his head throbs with it; if Bucky's new hearing is even more improved than this, he must be able to hear for a mile long. "Maybe he can hear their heartbeat."
Bucky could hear pretty well before anyway. He'd hear Steve coughing as he came up the stairs to their apartment and burst in, his expression ablaze. Have you been breathing in dust? he'd demand. Where's your hot tea? Go lie down.
"I never knew he was blind when he taught us in the Red Room," says Natasha. "He's always kept a mask on."
Steve stills. He carefully doesn't look over, tries to keep his voice neutral. Natasha's told him some about their time together and he doesn't resent it, but it makes his stomach tense in an odd way. "What about later? You two were… intimate together."
"We stayed in the dark."
He can't imagine sleeping with someone and not knowing they were blind. How could she not tell? Did her hands never stray to his face to find the raised scars there? "He used to love sitting and watching things. Just on the balcony, smoking, people watching. Or staring at animals, squirrels, birds. He'd rest his chin on his hands and stare, not moving for hours. And going to the pictures -" His voice cracks.
Natasha hands him a tiny paintbrush, questioning. It's small enough to get the details right. He nods. She says, "He's not the same person anymore, Steve. You can't ask him to be."
"I know he's not."
He used to love staring at Steve too. Steve sprawled naked on the bed, eyes heavy lidded as he looked up at Bucky and Bucky looked back. His eyes would trail over Steve, from the top of his corn straw hair to his skinny ribs to his hard cock jutting up. Are you just gonna look or are you gonna do something about it? Bucky's smile would be slow and sure. Don't rush me, Rogers. Just that staring was enough to get a blot of pre-come covering the tip of his cock, heat spreading from his stomach to his head. That gaze, dark blue, blown pupils, made Steve feel like the only thing worth looking at, made him feel like a precious piece of art hung up on a wall. It made him feel like Bucky would want him forever and always, just like this, even as small and skinny as he was.
A vicious part of Steve is glad that Bucky never got to see Natasha naked, that that image was never seared in his brain. Then he feels bad. He reaches back and squeezes her hand to make up for it.
"Tony told me about his idea," she says.
Steve sighs and turns to face her, dropping her hand. "He doesn't know discretion."
Her expression is thoughtful, calculating. "You think he can do it? Create new eyes for him? I've never heard of that before."
"Tony thinks he can turn a camera lens into neural signals to the brain. Tony thinks he can do whatever he wants."
"He'll be half cyborg by the time this is over."
Steve's smile is slanting. "I don't even know if it's possible. It probably isn't."
"Steve," she says as he picks up a tiny wooden block, measuring it with his fingers. "What the hell are you making?"
"You'll see soon," he says, and hopes Bucky will too.
The Asset reads all of Pride and Prejudice, he reads all seven Harry Potter books, he starts to read 100 Years of Solitude and then has to stop. They bring in a CD player and give him a selection of CDs with braille titles: Dean Martin, Dixie Chicks, Mac Miller. He likes the rap music, loud. He asks for more. After the hunger pains disappear, he starts working out, a hundred push-ups, two hundred sit-ups. Sometimes when the room feels too big, he lays on the floor under the bed with his eyes closed, his hands folded on top of his stomach. It makes him feel small and safe.
Rogers comes in when he's like this one day, and from the sound of his feet against the floor, the Asset can tell that Rogers is nervous. He doesn't know how he knows this, except perhaps that all human beings are nervous the same way: fidgeting, restless, twitching. That's probably how he knows.
"What are you doing?" Rogers ask. When the Asset doesn't say anything, he shifts his weight back and forth. "I brought you something."
Maybe another book. The Asset lays his metal hand out from under the bed, palm up.
"You'll have to come out to hold it."
He pulls his arm back in and waits to see if Rogers will leave. It's been almost a month of these visits, of the same meals and the same room, but instead of making him feel trapped, it makes him feel stable. He knows everything that will happen to him, no question. The part of him that's always expecting pain has shrunk just a little, and he makes Rogers wait because he knows Rogers won't leave. Rogers is so predictable. Even though he is not the right Steve, he is still so familiar. Everything he does feels like it's already happened once before.
He crawls out just enough that he can sit upright, cross-legged, resting his back against the bed. "What is it?" he asks, his voice rusty. It's been almost a full week since he last spoke. He knows Steve is shocked by it, feels him jerk back. The air around him is displaced and then settles back, like a lake going calm.
"Hold out your hands," says Rogers, sitting down across from him.
The Asset takes his time again before obeying. No one seems to really care if he follows orders around here, only that he doesn't hurt anyone. He thinks Rogers wouldn't even care if he hurt someone, as long as that someone was Rogers - Rogers sometimes seems aching to be hurt, like he would take any kind of pain from the Asset, anything at all.
When both his palms are out, Rogers leans in and carefully places something wooden and light in his hands.
He lets it just sit there for a moment to see if Rogers will explain - and then when he doesn't, he shifts his grip to only his metal hand and uses his flesh hand to touch the sides. The top is open, the outsides of the box grainy wood. A rectangle. The inside walls have soft paper. There's metal. His breath catches suddenly and he sets it down on the floor in between him and Rogers.
"It's our apartment," says Rogers, like he needs the explanation. "From before. I made a miniature of it."
"Why," says the Asset, flat.
"I thought it might help…" The wood scraps against the tile floor as Rogers pushes it barely closer. "See, here's our kitchen sink, our toilet. The bed." He's detailing it out like the Asset might be able to see what he's talking about. Then Rogers says, "Touch it, please. I made it so you could run your fingers over it like - like you did my face."
His fingers twitch like he might reach out and touch Rogers' face again. Smooth skin, ready mouth. Rogers' lips had reacted so strongly to his touch, like they were just waiting for him push in and in. Like his sense of smell, his sense of touch had only amplified with the loss of his vision. He can feel the fibers of each piece of cloth. He could feel the blood under Rogers' skin, rising to the surface. He could feel every time something sliced into his skin, split him open. Every bruise. It always feels like too much.
He brushes his fingers over the edge of the miniature and hears the way Rogers' heartbeat kicks into high gear. Everything in Rogers' body always reacts to the Asset just like this - like they're about to fight, or fuck. It makes him pause and cock his head.
Then he reaches in and runs his finger over the scratchy wool covering over the miniature bed. He touches the tiny sink, the fridge, wonders if Rogers filled it with tiny food inside. Rotting bananas, cold bread, glass bottles of milk. He drags his fingers over the couch where the stuffing is spilling out of the crevices and there's a spot on the cushion that feels like it's been burned off by a cigarette. Where did he get these things? He almost expects to touch a miniature version of himself sitting at the table or outside on the balcony, but there's only furniture in here. He can hear Rogers' heartbeat quickening again and abruptly pulls his hand away, as though Rogers is watching him do something unbearably intimate.
"I don't want this," he says.
"That's okay, Buck -"
"No," says the Asset, standing. "No, I don't want this. Take it away."
"I could just leave it here," says Rogers, also standing. He's picked up the model with him, perhaps so that they won't step on it. So the Asset won't step on it. "You could look at it later, privately."
"I won't."
"Buck," says Rogers. He sounds desperate. "It's fine, whatever you feel about it, it's fine -"
"NO," says the Asset, and rips the model out of Rogers' hands. He hurls it against the wall with his metal hand and hears it shatter as it collides, splintering into a hundred pieces. Immediately, he thinks, That's it, he's done, Rogers is finally going to leave, and a panicky, fearful thing claws up his throat. His breathing is fast and shallow, his head swimming, and now the room feels far too small for the first time since he arrived. He stumbles, hand reaching out, and comes in contact with Rogers' shoulder. It's the first time he's touched him since that first meeting, his hand on Rogers' face. He hates how wide this shoulder is.
"Bucky, Buck, it's okay," says Rogers quickly, catching his elbow and coming close to him. "I don't care if you destroy it, it's yours, I made it for you. You can do whatever you like with it."
The Asset closes his eyes, gritting his teeth hard, trying not to grip onto Rogers harder. He is not Bucky Barnes. He is not whole or healed; he's barely even human. He can only manage to exist in a 15x15 room where he's not allowed to leave - the Barnes he remembers in glimpses and flashes is charismatic and handsome, smiling and laughing with his head thrown back. That Barnes took charge, he protected, he served, he saved, he noticed as soon as Steve fell sick and he did everything in his power to bring him back to health. If the Asset had little Steve now, he would most likely succumb to pneumonia.
"I'm - not - him," he says, spitting it out. He pulls back. Turns his head away. "If you come here every day trying to resurrect him, if you think you can be God, if you - if you -"
"I'm here for you," says Rogers.
The Asset says, "Just go. Just go."
Rogers hesitates only a moment and then he goes.
There's something in him like an animal. He rips at his hair, jerking at it until his teeth clench, and when that's not enough he knocks over his bookcase, spilling the books everywhere. A noise of crazed pain leaves his lips and he attacks the CD collection next: He throws open all the cases, he snaps the fragile discs in half. The sound settles in his chest, the cracking of each of his favorite songs. He holds one jagged piece in his metal hand and holds it to his flesh wrist, just holds it there. If anyone's watching him, they'll come in now. They'll stop him now, maybe tie him to the bed to keep him from doing any more damage. Don't hurt the merchandise. That's ours. We paid for this.
But no one comes.
His hand shakes and shakes, bringing a little line of blood up on his forearm. He doesn't know why this is happening, why now. Why after a month in here, it's only after running his fingers along that goddamn tiny bedroom that he wants to tear himself apart.
The CD fragment clatters to the ground.
The Asset stands with his arms limp at his sides, letting the trickle of blood work its way down to his hand, and then gets down to the floor and crawls back under the bed. Under there, he finds a teeny tiny lamp, the paper lampshade so fragile, and he holds it in his human hand. His thumb strokes over the thin paper, up and down. In another world, he might have left this lamp on and Steve would have yelled at him because of the light bill, always running to turn it off behind him. We're not made of money, Bucky! We need this for food! He loved when Steve got angry, when he puffed up like a little alley cat. It made Steve even more mad when he laughed. I got plenty of money for you, Stevie. I've been hiding it all these years, but I'm actually filthy fucking rich. What d'ya want? A boat? A mansion? Steve always said the same thing: For you to turn the god damn light off.
He turns his face to the floor and tries not to cry. James Barnes wouldn't.
Steve comes back the next day and the debris is picked up, cleared away. He doesn't know if Bucky did it or someone else, but he doesn't ask. Instead, he sets a new model on the desk. Bucky hasn't moved from his spot on the bed, his eyes staring blankly. Each time Steve sees that blank stare, he feels a new jolt to his system; he thought he would get used to it eventually, but it feels new every day.
"I made another," he says. "But it's different than last time. Do you want to touch it?"
"I'll break it again," rasps Bucky, his head not shifting. This new speaking - it thrills Steve. Even when the miniature of their apartment was being dashed against the wall, that NO felt like barriers being broken. He loved it.
"Go ahead," says Steve and smiles. "But I'd appreciate if you'd examine it at least a little bit first. I stayed up half the night making it."
"Waste of time."
He shrugs. "I don't sleep much."
"How much?"
"I really only need four hours to function. I can sleep longer if I really try, but most nights…" It's their first real conversation since Bucky was admitted here. It's like lightning bolt to his spine, every word out of Bucky's mouth. "Do you sleep much?"
Bucky's mouth flattens out at the question, and Steve winces. No direct questions about himself then. Check.
"I sleep enough," says Bucky.
Steve picks the model back up, holding it towards Bucky. "Do you want…?" He can't help the hopeful lilt in his voice.
At first Bucky doesn't move, then his hand twitches - and then both hands turn over, palm up on his lap. Steve walks to him, places the model down gently, and steps back again. As soon as he's away, he sees some of the tension drain out of Bucky's shoulders. He takes his time touching the outside of the model just as he did the day before, running his fingers over it like he's expecting a secret message to be on the outside of the box. When he seems satisfied that it's just simple wood, he moves to the inside, dragging his fingers over the contents.
A desk, a chair, a private bathroom, a bookshelf - tiny books that had taken Steve moments of deep concentration to fold together - a CD player. Some of it handmade, some of specially ordered off a site JARVIS directed him to for items as small as these. A narrow bed, backed against the wall, and on the bed: A small man with a metal arm, holding a box.
Bucky laughs.
It's an honest to God laugh. A bark, almost, just one sharp noise, but it's a laugh, and then after, a smile. Steve can't help the way his eyes widen in delight, an enormous smile growing on his own face to match Bucky's. He feels like he did just after getting his new body - shock and wonder and awe, like a miracle is in his midst.
"It's me," says Bucky. "It's me touching another me in a tiny box."
"I didn't know if you'd like that," says Steve honestly. "It was just a guess."
Bucky hums, running his fingers again through the box over the objects mirroring the room they're in. That hum, glorious and low, sends Steve rocking back to the past. He heard Bucky humming low as they fell asleep together, Steve's back pressed to Bucky's front, he heard Bucky humming as he washed the dishes, he heard the way his humming sometimes climbed into singing when one of his favorite records was on. Steve blinks hard, his eyes suddenly wet.
"I… will not destroy this one," says Bucky after a long moment, then sets it down on the bed beside him. He angles his face towards Steve. His eyes shine milky, cloudy. "I thought you'd put miniatures of us in the old one."
Steve's smile falters slightly. "No. I couldn't. We're not there any more."
After a moment, Bucky nods. Then he says, "You can make me another."
"Oh, I can?"
Another smile quirks on Bucky's lips, there and then gone. "Of your apartment now."
"Any more requests?"
Bucky tilts his head and opens his mouth. He wets his lips. "More CDs."
It takes Steve longer to do his current apartment than to do their old one or Bucky's holding cell - he realizes how little time he actually spends in it, how little he knows about it. It's easier to just spend time at the Avengers Tower where Bucky is kept, either with Bucky or his teammates in one of the many lounges above. Or working out alone in the gym on the 33rd floor. Or running through the park outside. His apartment feels too empty, too large; he wanders around mapping out all the furniture and finds pieces that he's never actually sat on before. Wasted space. He could have a room smaller than Bucky's now and be fine.
He puts in all the fake plants, positions the tiny picture frames just perfectly on his bedside table of Peggy and Bucky from before the war. He puts a version of himself sitting upright on the couch facing a black TV screen and stares too hard at the expression on mini-Steve's face. He's glad Bucky won't be able to see that part.
Giving it to Bucky the next day, he hesitates longer than he did with the first two. Bucky sits on the bed again with his hands out, waiting, and Steve steels himself after he places it in Bucky's hands.
Bucky does the same thing he did as the first two times. He touches it all with his flesh hand, taking his time, and Steve waits for his judgment, for him to realize what everyone else already has - that Steve hasn't made any effort at all in being a real human. Natasha accused him once of living out of a suitcase, like he might be whisked away to another time at any moment.
But Bucky doesn't say anything about the lack of personality present. Maybe he can't tell from such a small model. He lets his hand rest on the tiny couch where tiny Steve sits. Then he stands, taking the model with him and putting it next to the other one on the desk. He reaches into the one of his room, picks up small Bucky, and puts him directly next to small Steve in his small apartment.
"Oh," says Steve.
Bucky turns to face him, still silent.
"Do you - do you want to visit me?" he asks, trying to clamp down on the bright fluttering thing in his chest. "Or maybe, maybe -"
"I won't hurt anyone," says Bucky.
"I know," says Steve. Tentatively, "Do you… believe it's me now?"
Bucky blinks his white eyes at him. "No. He was different. But I believe you are enough."
Which in the end is all that Steve can really hope for.
He'll be enough to bring color back into the Winter Soldier's life. He'll make a thousand models if he has to -- a million miniatures. He'll carve the world in a way that Bucky can run his fingers over as many times as he likes. As long as he's allowed to try, that's all he can ask for, and Bucky, beautiful Bucky, turns his blank eyes away with a small shy smile that only Steve can see.