Through a Soldier's Eyes | ꜱᴛᴜᴄᴋʏ
Pairing; Stucky
Word Count; 1.1k
Warnings; hurt/comfort, implied major character death (IT DOESN'T ACTUALLY HAPPEN), graphic description of injury and blood, nightmares, reference to WS!Bucky, flashbacks, pet names
A/N; as my best friend said - WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?
Look it's not my fault Bucky is my favourite glow stick. Leave me be.
WHUMPTOBER MASTERLIST
The wicked and blackened hand of cruel delusions wound its way through his dreams like it was on a mission - to pull him under, and drown him. But a Soldier did not go down without a fight.
There was a girl - a woman, on his arm and another just a few steps ahead. They laughed gleefully as the sound of their heels clicked against the pavement towards the blinding lights of the future - a coveted convention that Bucky had been so damn excited to see. But only if Steve came along.
So, naturally, Steve trailed along behind them, just out of reach as he always had been - small, and ever so stubborn.
“Bucky!” One of the women cried happily when they reached the stage, looking up at him as though he hung the moon in the night sky - God, he wanted Steve to look at him like that. Bucky only smiled his signature smile, the one he used to get these women in the first place, and moved to stand just behind her shoulder.
A sudden flash of white obscured his vision, and he was in a room on his own, the walls a solid concrete grey that spanned all of what he could see. His arm, it was heavy, and he could feel his shoulder slowly lowering under the weight. The sleek look of shining metal was startling, and Bucky let out a shout of surprise that echoed off the walls.
Another flash and he was back at the stage of the World Expo, a woman still on his arm, and Steve still right behind him.
Bucky blinked furiously and stared up to the stage where Howard Stark was talking to the crowd, gesturing to the car just behind him - well, Bucky thought it was a car, it had no wheels.
“Buck?” Steve asked quietly, his hand reaching for Bucky’s elbow.
Another sudden flash of white made Bucky flinch and step to the side, a poor attempt to shy away from the blinding light that gave way to another vision, one where the moon was the only source of light.
He was perched on the edge of a building, a rifle with a scope in his hands and it was trained on a window of an apartment.
There was nothing he could do as his finger squeezed the trigger, and the slight jolt of recoil jammed against his shoulder. It was silent until the concussive sound of a bullet slicing its way through plywood echoed from a block away, almost inaudible to everyone else, but like an explosion in his ears.
Target hit, he thought and watched his own hands pull the rifle from its cradle to sling it over his back, the strap tight across his chest. It was an unfamiliar weight and Bucky did not like it.
“Bucky?” Steve tried again, and Bucky stared down at Steve’s hand, his once olive green uniform morphing to be sleek metal, and then back again. “What’s wrong?”
They were standing on the steps to the enlistment building, and Bucky had no idea how they had even gotten there in the first place. The women that had been hanging off him were nowhere to be seen.
Over Steve’s shoulder Bucky could see men standing on a platform, the light framing their face so it would reflect onto the faceless soldier before them.
The horrors of war were only appealing until blood stained their hands.
“Bucky, what’s wrong?” Steve tried again, his voice firm but gentle, soft but demanding.
Bucky smiled, hiding the fact he knew it came across as more of a grimace. “I’m fine, Stevie.”
Instead of white, his vision clouded to black in the blink of an eye. He could not see where he was, he could not hear where he was.
There was a sudden pressure against his hand, it was as though he had punched through a wall and couldn’t pull his fist back out again, but it was wet. He couldn’t understand - why was his hand wet?
Bucky wrenched his eyes open and gasped, the sound muffled behind a black muzzle that was tight against his nose and cheekbones. His arm was stretched outwards, the handle of a blade tight in the grip of his right hand while his left was pushed against Steve’s considerably larger shoulder.
Steve, who had been small only a second ago, had become built just like Bucky was - the expanse of his muscles covered by a blue armour Bucky could not recognise through his haze of horror.
The knife was jammed into Steve’s lung, between the delicate bones of his ribs that had withstood bouts of pneumonia and asthma that should have killed him. Steve only frowned, confusion evident in the pinch of his brow and slackening of his jaw. Both of them looked down to where Bucky’s hand was connected to Steve’s body.
Blood was blooming faster than their eyes could track over the white and red of Steve’s armour, and over Bucky’s hand.
“No,” Bucky breathed, his voice still muffled by the mask of the Asset. “No, no, no, I’m-”
“Buck?” Steve wheezed, his raspy voice louder than a gunshot and it forced Bucky to stop his tirade of guilt, shock, and confusion. “Bucky?”
“I didn’t-” Bucky tried but was interrupted by a wet cough from Steve. “No!”
Steve’s knees gave out and he crashed to the floor, taking Bucky with him. The wet cough turned into a fit that stained Steve’s teeth crimson while a rivulet of blood bubbled at the corner of his lips when he tilted his head.
It was unlike anything Bucky had seen, and he would give the world for it to not be real.
“Steve!”
“You know, I do-” Another cough interrupted Steve and he hawked up a glob of blood and spit. Bucky could feel the tears burn his waterline and fall down his grease-stained face. “I don’t know how I was such a fool.”
“What?” Bucky almost shouted, the panic of losing Steve contracted like a wicked and evil hand around his already broken and shattered heart. “Please, Stevie, I-”
“‘Till the end of the line, right?”
Black.
It was all black, and Bucky’s chest constricted against nothing, the lung he had pierced with his blade had somehow made its home in his own body.
“Bucky! Wake up!”
There were hands on his shoulders, and they were shaking him. “Bucky!”
His eyes snapped open, and his vision was crowded with a figure, the broad shoulders and bearded face of Steve. Steve.
Steve was alive!
Bucky launched forward and wrapped his arms around Steve’s shoulders - his muscles covered by a cotton shirt, the navy colour too much like his nightmare. “Stevie,” Bucky sobbed, and Steve brought his arms around Bucky’s waist, his grip tight and reassuring.
“I’m here, sweetheart,” Steve murmured into Bucky’s hair, his warm breath fanning over his ear as a renewed bout of sobbing rattled Bucky to his core. “I’m here.”
It had been so real. A cruel and wicked reality that lived only in the depths of his mind, a real nightmare that grated against the last dregs of his sanity. But as Steve held him tightly against his rising and falling chest, the demons of Bucky’s mind shrunk back into the shadows - where they belonged.
Graphics & Header made by yours truly.
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