3Author's Note: The title is taken from Bon Jovi's song "Always," which I own just as much as I own anything Marvel-related – that is to say, not at all.
Warnings: self-harm and attempted suicide; mutilation of stuffed toys; brief mention of Christian afterlife.
Thanks in advance for reviewing. I can't wait to hear what your thoughts are!
"Where are you putting all these Bucky Bears?" Steve asks, his face open and earnest. Bucky doesn't answer. He only clutches the stuffed bear toy that Steve just bought for him closer to his chest.
Steve doesn't try to take the Bucky Bear away. He didn't try to step closer. He just asked again, "What are you doing with all of them?"
Bucky can't stand the kindness that is being shown to him. He never can. So he retreats into "his" bedroom (he knows it's really the guest bedroom, meant for any guests, not just him) and slams the door shut.
Once he is safely ensconced behind a stack of boxes in the closet, Bucky inspects the newest Bucky Bear with a skeptical eye. Then he holds it up to compare it to his collection. Yes, this Bucky Bear seems suitable enough for its purpose.
His collection features ten Bucky Bears in all, not counting the newest one. This one will be added after Bucky is satisfied with it.
The first Bucky Bear that Bucky received was a gag gift from Tony Stark (the son of Howard Stark, an associate from the war and . . . Bucky can't afford to think about what he had done to Howard and his wife. That is one of the reasons why he has to be punished. He has to concentrate.) Bucky simply used his metal arm to strangle that one. Its head is half ripped off, but other than that, the damage is minimal.
The second one is more extreme. He took a knife to that one. It was more satisfying than the first Bucky Bear. The fur is barely there anymore, the stuffing oozing out from the wounds. Bucky wanted to do more like it, but he made the tactical mistake of turning the knife on himself next, so Steve hid all the knives. Bucky hasn't been able to find them yet. (He doesn't quite want to admit that he may not have looked for them as hard as he could.) But when he does, he knows the first thing that he'll do.
The third one he simply ripped apart with his bare hands. This almost satisfied the frustration of not having knives – almost.
Bucky set fire to the fourth, fifth, eighth, and tenth Bucky Bears. He smokes, and so he constantly has access to a cigarette lighter. Alcohol is another thing easily acquired, but he only used that on the fourth bear. It's too fast. Bucky prefers the burn to be slower, for it to be more tortuous and painful.
Bucky still thinks about the way that one alcohol-soaked Bucky Bear went up in flames. It just exploded like those houses, those cars, all those people that the Winter Soldier killed had.
The thing is, Bucky doesn't want to just explode and have all of it over within seconds. He deserves a slow, painful death, and so does Bucky Bear. For all those people (innocent or not, it doesn't matter) that Bucky blew up, there were more that he burned slowly and painfully. So now that he is in control of himself, he makes sure that all those people he killed are avenged.
Also, Steve got suspicious almost immediately after the alcohol-fueled fire incident, when he came into the guest bedroom. He asked if Bucky had been smoking in the house, and when Bucky lied and said he had, Steve pinched the bridge of his nose and pointed him outside. It's only one part of a long-standing argument.
Steve is so hypocritical. He used to smoke all the time in the 1930s and 1940s, because everybody said it would help with his asthma. (It didn't.)
But today, Steve is all about the health stuff. Bucky picked up smoking (he doesn't remember where or when) as the Winter Soldier and maybe now it's all he likes to do. But does Steve think of that? No. No, instead he limits the number of cigarettes that Bucky is allowed to smoke in a day, and that number is going down rapidly. He gives Bucky articles about "the danger of smoking." (As if Bucky's life isn't dangerous enough already; like he's going to live long enough to care about lung cancer.)
The Bucky Bears that Bucky puts in his own place don't have to worry about the health hazards of smoking. They don't live long enough for that.
Bucky brought the sixth Bucky Bear to a park in the middle of the night, along with a pistol and a number of bullets. He fastened the silencer onto the gun and shot Bucky Bear five times: through the heart, the gut, and the head. He also shot the left arm clean off. Then he took it home to keep it with its mangled comrades.
Bucky took a break after he killed Bucky Bear number six. Steve decided to start bringing Bucky outside the house. These activities out in the sun distracted him from those he was completing in secret.
They went to the zoo for about five minutes, until Bucky realized the similarities between the caged animals and himself. He stormed out of the zoo, but not before trying to set free a gorilla family.
They went out to a restaurant, but Bucky refused to eat anything. He couldn't talk to the waiter, who kept looking at him expectantly. All the other diners seemed to be staring at him. Bucky thought he saw hostility and maybe even murder in their eyes. Steve ushered him out when he had a panic attack and started throwing bread rolls and ice cubes.
When it was over, Bucky tried to go back, insisting he could do it. He knew Steve was disappointed at his failure. He didn't want to disappoint Steve – he couldn't. But Steve just hugged him and told him it was alright and took him back home.
Bucky used a pair of scissors against the seventh Bucky Bear after the incident in the restaurant. He focused especially on utterly destroying the left arm. He had asked Steve to buy that one for him (which unfortunately couldn't be helped – he had no money of his own at the moment).
Besides the burned ones, the remnants of Bucky Bear number seven are the worst off. Bucky could not believe how badly he had behaved in that restaurant that day, so he took his disappointment at himself and the fear that Steve would send him away for being bad out on the toy effigy of himself.
Bucky drowned the ninth Bucky Bear in bleach. It was worth the burns it caused on his hand and wrist. The fur all fell out and the stuffing clumped together into one huge mess inside. Bucky left his hand in the bleach the whole time to make sure the Bucky Bear stayed submerged and so that it didn't escape or something.
Steve was so disappointed when he saw Bucky's bleach-burned flesh hand. It seemed like that was Steve's default feeling around Bucky. Bucky doesn't know what to do about that, or even what to feel about it, so he just keeps murdering Bucky Bears.
He knows that none of the Bucky Bears are actually alive. He knows they don't feel pain. It's getting worse, though, this instinct to harm himself. He wants to talk to Steve about it. Steve makes everything better. Bucky doesn't want to bother him, though. He's already letting Bucky stay with him. Bucky doesn't need to cause any more trouble.
The eleventh Bucky Bear is special. It has to be. Bucky doesn't want to do this anymore. He hopes he won't need it soon, after what he's planning to do.
In the middle of the night, Bucky returns to the park where he shot the sixth Bucky Bear. He doesn't bring any weapons, just a trowel that Steve uses for houseplants and his ridiculous little potted tomatoes. He has a plan for that.
When Bucky gets to the park, he gently lays Bucky Bear on the ground. He carefully arranges its limbs so it looks more comfortable, until he realizes he's stalling and gets to it.
He already found a nice spot under a tree, just the kind of spot where he would want his own body to be buried. Now he digs a grave for the last Bucky Bear. It's just the right size.
Bucky lowers Bucky Bear inside the grave and covers it up again with dirt. He finds a few wilted dandelions to put on top of the mound. He half-heartedly mutters a prayer. Then he leaves.
Bucky goes back to Steve's house and hopes that he can be better for Steve, instead of just a useless burden. He tries. He really does. It's just that he can't seem to get the Winter Soldier out of his head.
They go running together the next morning. After an incident with a pigeon, a squirrel, and a small child who witnesses the whole thing, Steve decides they're not going running again anytime soon. Bucky wants to tell him to just not let him go outside again. He saves his breath. He knows that being restricted to inside only isn't going to change anything.
Bucky is right. Being confined inside doesn't do anything at all for his bad behavior. All in one day, he manages to snap at Steve a total of four times and (as if that isn't bad enough), he spills grape juice on Steve's open sketchbook.
Right after it happens, Steve just stares down at it like he can't believe what just happened. Maybe he can't. That is almost a year's worth of hard work, after all. He tries to turn the pages and can't. They're all stuck together – sticky and purple and utterly non-salvageable.
Bucky can't breathe. He can't move; he can't force his feet to make his escape for him. Steve is going to be so much more than disappointed. He's going to be furious. He's going to hate Bucky forever.
Bucky feels faint. He sways on his feet and has to grab the edge of the table in order to stay upright. Usually Steve would be all over him when something like this happens, asking if he's alright, if he needs to lie down, but this time he doesn't. He doesn't even seem to notice Bucky anymore, and Bucky knows exactly what that means.
Bucky finally get his legs to cooperate, and he stumbles out of the room. When he reaches the doorway of the guest bedroom, he looks back. Steve hasn't even noticed that Bucky walked away.
Bucky really screwed up this time. That sketchbook is the one thing here in the future that Steve really holds precious. Bucky can never do enough to atone for that. Making Bucky Bears pay for it instead isn't going to do it this time. Bucky will have to do something more drastic.
Steve is nowhere to be found when Bucky emerges from the guest bedroom again. That's a good thing, he tells himself. He doesn't want to be stopped, he tries to convince his heart. It isn't like Steve would care anymore, anyway.
It takes him a little while to find what he's looking for. Steve has gotten better at hiding things than he was before the war, but Bucky still has the instincts of the Winter Soldier. Soon one of Steve's knives is in Bucky's hand.
He goes into the bathroom next. There is little preparation he needs to do – he has no possession to call his own, nor any pets or dependents he needs to write a passionate letter asking somebody responsible to take care of. He needs to just. . . stop his existence.
Bucky starts the water. He knows that the water should be warm for this sort of application, so he turns the heat of the water up as high as he can physically stand it.
His actions are purely mechanical by this point. He sees nothing but the red water that washes over his mangled body. He feels nothing. He thought there would be pain but it turns out that at this point there just isn't any sensation at all. It's all that Bucky ever wanted, to not be able to feel anything that happens to him. Too bad it came too late.
His metal hand drops the knife. It disappears. Bucky gasps for breath, each one coming slower and more difficult than the last. Finally everything goes dark.
Logically, Bucky knows there isn't any afterlife. Years in Soviet Russia taught him that. He has seen too much to think there is any higher power. He was raised to believe in Heaven and Hell, though, and even deep in his heart, he believes he will be going below rather than above. So it is a shock to wake up to find himself surrounded by white instead of by fire.
Bucky tries to lift his head but it's really heavy. Someone puts a hand on the back of his neck and he instinctually flinches away. He hears his name being whispered. It sounds a bit like Steve.
Bucky wonders why Steve would be here. Did something else happen? Did Steve somehow die as well and get sent to the afterlife with Bucky? But it can't be. Steve would go straight to Heaven, no questions asked, and Bucky . . . well, Bucky would never be so lucky.
So it must mean that Bucky isn't dead. He shoves back the irrational urge to sob. He can't do this anymore. Bucky doesn't even know why Steve is here. Shouldn't he have given up by now?
Steve finally moves into Bucky's line of sight. He looks almost like he's been crying. Bucky stares at him. Bucky stares up at him. Then he rolls his head around so he can't see Steve anymore.
Steve does not touch him again. Bucky's not sure whether that's a good or a bad thing. He drifts off to sleep again.
The next time Bucky wakes up, Steve is still sitting by his bedside. This time he feeds Bucky an ice chip. This action is so far from what Bucky was expecting he almost chokes on it. Almost, but not quite. Even in a hospital bed, he still has some of the Winter Soldier's reflexes and spits the ice out of his mouth.
Bucky looks at Steve out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't look offended, or angry, or even disappointed, he just looks . . . sad? Bucky digs the fingernails of his right hand, his flesh hand, into his palm. It's not easy, with his right wrist and arm being all slashed up.
Steve sees this. He gently grasps Bucky's hand in his own and unfurls the clenched fingers.
"I found your Bucky Bears," Steve says quietly. He doesn't let go of Bucky's hand. His eyes stay focused on that, instead of Bucky's face. "You've been feeling like this for a long time, haven't you?"
It's only partially a question. Bucky chooses not to answer it.
Bucky's right arm recovers quickly from where he slit open the skin in multiple places in the bath. His left arm, the metal one, is just the same as it always is. As usual, Bucky does his best to ignore it.
Steve keeps asking him how he's feeling. Bucky's not sure how to answer that. Once he says, "What am I supposed to say? I don't know what you want to hear!"
Steve goes quiet. Bucky peeks at his face and tells him, "Don't act so sad. Please." He thinks it's the first genuine thing he's said in a long time.
Steve tries to smile. He almost succeeds. "Right back at you, pal," he says. His voice is hoarse. He clears his throat and the next time he speaks, his voice is clearer. "I want to know what you're really thinking, Bucky. What your feelings are. I don't want you to spout out what you think I want to hear. The only thing I want to hear about is the real you, inside and beneath all those layers and defenses you put up."
He takes Bucky's hand in his again. Bucky's hand spasms around Steve's. He doesn't look at Steve. He can't even open his mouth to say anything.
Steve tells him, "You were drowning and bleeding out. I – " Steve covers his face with his hands. When he looks up again, there are tears in his hands. "I was so afraid you weren't going to make it," he admits.
Bucky stares down at his hands. "I ruined your sketchbook," he drones. It's the only thing he can think about. "I've made so many mistakes. I don't know why you keep me." His hand throbs. He says again, "I killed your sketchbook."
Steve makes some sort of awful choked laugh that doesn't really sound like a laugh at all, but more like a sob. "Who cares about the sketchbook?" he whisper-yells.
Bucky is confused. He says, "But . . . you love your sketchbook. It helps you. It's the one thing you love most." Bucky is getting frustrated now that Steve doesn't seem to understand. Isn't he mad at Bucky?
Steve's face contorts in pain and grief, and Bucky can tell that he's trying not to cry.
Steve lets out a tiny sob and cries out, "That's not true! You're the one thing – the one person, I mean – that I love most!"
Bucky freezes. That can't be right. It can't be. But the look on Steve's face says otherwise.
Steve presses his advantage while Bucky is distracted and keeps on talking. "I love you so much, Bucky, and I couldn't bear it if you died. You are most important to me, much more important than some silly little sketchbook. To the end of the line, remember? You'll never be a burden. You could never make a mistake so big or so bad that I'd give up on you. I'll always be taking care of you. Especially if you don't ever get any better, I'll still take care of you."
To his utter horror, Bucky starts to cry. Steve only holds him tightly and whispers, "Let's go home now, Bucky."
Not everything gets better. Steve and Bucky talk about everything now, from the most mundane sketch that Steve does to Bucky's recurring suicidal feelings. Nothing's perfect.
Bucky goes to therapy more often, and he starts to actually talk to the therapist. It helps. There are still days when Bucky just wants to curl up in a ball and never interact with anybody ever again, though.
However, Bucky doesn't feel like Steve is ignoring him anymore. He knows very well (because Steve reminds him all the time) that Steve will always want him around no matter what. He knows that he is Bucky Barnes and that Steve Rogers is and will always be his best friend.