Chapter Text
You stand in the line just to hit a new low
You're faking a smile with the coffee you go
You tell me your life's been way off line
You're falling to pieces everytime
And I don't need no carryin' on
Cause you had a bad day
You're taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around
You say you don't know
You tell me don't lie
You work at a smile and you go for a ride
You had a bad day
The camera don't lie
You're coming back down and you really don't mind
You had a bad day
You had a bad day
Daniel Powter, Bad Day
The familiarity of Steve’s small apartment brought him finally some comfort. At least one thing was as it was supposed to be. All the items just like he left them. Natasha offered to stay overnight, but he declined. He had overused her generosity more than enough already. It was high time for him to take the wheel.
‘’Natasha? Thank you. For everything,’’ he spoke quietly.
She nodded.
‘’You’re welcome, Steve. At least this I can do.’’ She paused, as if considering whether she should add something, but the answer was apparently yes. ‘’And Steve? Everything will be all right. Not tomorrow, not next week, not even next month, but he’ll be all right.’’
He certainly hoped so, because Natasha wasn’t the one to offer useless platitudes to make others feel better. Plus, she was the living, walking proof that conditioning could be successfully broken, like some evil spell. With considerably much work than just finding a counterspell and waving a wand, but still. It was doable.
She left, leaving the three of them to figure this new arrangement out. Outside, the night was transforming into the greyness of the early morning hours. None of them got a wink of sleep on their way home. Whatever they needed to do next, it could wait until they got some rest. At least Bucky and Loki, because Steve knew that, no matter how tired he was, he wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.
He retreated to the living room. Bucky stood exactly where they left him, in that very same spot in the middle of the room. Loki was sitting on the couch, both of them clearly waiting for further instructions.
Steve stepped closer to Bucky.
“Buck… you should get some sleep,” he said, even if he knew that this name most probably meant temporarily nothing to his old friend. He just couldn’t force himself to address Bucky as Asset. That would be dehumanizing. “You can take my bedroom,’’ he offered. ‘’It’s more comfortable.”
Bucky didn’t react. Not a blink. Not a twitch. Just that awful stillness.
It was just so incredibly hard to believe that this man with empty eyes used to be a confident, smooth-talking Bucky, the subject of general adoration, the breaker of so many women’s hearts. It hurt so much that Captain was absolutely convinced this pain was physical.
Bucky could have been friends with pretty much everybody, but for years he chose to stick with Steve, who was neither popular nor rich nor well‑born, and not even a good companion, being bed‑bound far too often to be considered normal.
Cap’s voice softened even further. “It’s yours for as long as you need it.”
Talking wasn’t working. Perhaps showing would be easier. Steve pushed the bedroom door open. The small space was dim, lit only by the faint glow of the streetlamp outside.
“This is… it’s a safe place,” he murmured, stepping aside so Bucky could enter. “You can rest here. You don’t have to do anything. Just… be. You had a long journey today. A long day.”
Bucky stepped inside, and for a moment Steve felt a flicker of hope. But then Bucky’s gaze landed on the bed and everything in him changed, as if a switch had been flipped. His posture straightened. His breathing slowed. His eyes sharpened with a terrible, hollow focus.
Steve looked at him, puzzled and confused. That was the closest to resistance he had seen in Bucky so far. Maybe he should have been glad about this proof that something had been left after conditioning and was resurfacing, but in this particular situation, it wasn’t making anything any easier.
‘’Buck? What’s wrong?’’
Loki, watching them from the living room, decided it would be advisable to speak up.
‘’Please, don’t do that. I’m more than sure he associates bed with being used only.’’
‘’By being used you mean….?’’ Steve didn’t finish, his eyes wide and brim with horror.
‘’Yes,’’ Loki shortly confirmed his worst suspicions.
Steve might have been idealistic, but he wasn’t sheltered or naïve. He had heard enough about what sometimes happened to slaves behind the closed doors. Sexual contacts between slaves and their owners remained a bit of the legal grey area. They weren’t exactly legal, but they weren’t illegal as well. Since owner’s power extended to every area of slave’s life, why not this one? For sure it had never been a subject of prosecution.
If someone was to ask Steve, it was rape, plain and simple, and there was no excuse for it, even if the law might have claimed otherwise.
‘’I would never,’’ he protested vehemently, more appalled than angry. ‘’Bucky is like a brother to me.’’
‘’Steve…,’’ Loki spoke again, looking carefully for the right words, but Captain interrupted him with a tired sigh.
‘’He doesn’t know that, I know.’’ He took a deep breath and moved closer to Loki. ‘’So, Bucky had been hurt this way as well?’’
It was better to know. Steve could take it. He had no other choice than to take it.
‘’Not necessarily. Pretty much no owner lets the slave use the bed just for sleeping. The association with sexual activities is very strong for every slave, including the ones that have never been used this way,’’ Loki explained.
Steve nodded. It was a small relief, but a relief nevertheless. Perhaps Bucky had been spared at least that, given that his owners had different types of uses for him.
‘’Okay,’’ he replied, trying to remain calm. ‘’The floor would be okay? For the time being?’’
‘’I believe it would. Certainly better than a bed. Should be much less distressing, unless there are specific triggers we remain unaware of.’’ Loki paused. ‘’He should be better off staying in the living room. Bedroom itself might be a strong trigger.’’
Heavens above.
“All right,” Steve murmured, still shell-shocked. “Let’s… let’s try to make it work.” He raised his eyes at Bucky. ‘’Come here,’’ he ordered. He pointed to the space in the middle of the room. ‘’You’ll sleep here, starting now.’’
Bucky, to Captain’s immense relief, actually obeyed this one.
Steve looked at Loki. ‘’You should get some sleep too. It’s late. Or maybe early, depending on how you put it. Either way, you should go to bed. Take mine. I’ll stay here with Bucky.’’
‘’Are you certain, Steve?’’
Captain forced a tired half-smile, too exhausted to care that the way Loki was speaking his name usually sounded just like another word for Master. That was definitely a problem for another time.
‘’Yes, it’s okay. I’ll wake you up if something happens.’’
It was an obvious lie and they both knew it, but it served its purpose. Loki didn’t insist further. Most probably he asked only because he was trained that it would be something that a good slave should do. Cap couldn’t blame him for that.
The moment Loki disappeared behind the bedroom closed doors, Steve lowered himself onto the floor near Bucky. He drew his knees up and rested his arms on them, staring at the dim outline of Bucky’s form. Bucky, thankfully, seemed to fall asleep on command now and slept through the rest of the night peacefully enough, opposite to Steve. Every time the blond man’s eyes drifted shut, something jerked him awake again, as if sleep was the luxury he couldn’t currently afford.
When the morning came, Bucky was still asleep. Steve quietly rose to his feet and went to the bathroom to grab a shower. After that, he put another toothbrush in the tumbler, next to his own red one and Loki’s green, and for the moment he stared numbly at this display. It was pretty much the metaphor of how much had changed in his life. No longer than two weeks ago he was on his own.
When he walked into the kitchen, Loki was already there, sipping coffee. He almost jumped when Captain put a hand on his arm.
‘’Sorry,’’ Steve said sheepishly, sending Loki a tired smile. ‘’I didn’t mean to startle you.’’
He took a seat on the opposite side of the table and looked out of the window, trying to gather his thoughts and formulate them into something that actually made at least some sense.
‘’When we were looking for Bucky, I knew that Bucky we could find wouldn’t most probably be Bucky I remembered, especially not after we visited Hydra, but this… Loki, how come you’re in much better state of mind?’’ He finally asked, without much preamble.
‘’Are you complaining, Steve?’’ Loki folded his arms. He knew he was crossing the line, but Steve didn’t seem to mind this blatant display of disrespect.
‘’Of course not, Loki. It’s just…I don’t understand.’’
‘’It might have happened if your friend wasn’t the best at pretending. Had he pretended to be sufficiently broken and complaint on the early stage, he would have been most probably left alone.’’
Steve looked two shades paler than usual, making the slave’s annoyance evaporate almost instantly.
‘’That must be it,’’ Steve replied. ‘’Bucky has always been the one to put up the fight. He never knew when to back down. He always accused me of not knowing where to stop, but he was no better. He must have fought the trainers to the point where if they wished for him to be, how you put it, sufficiently broken, they must have basically brainwashed him. I’ve been at war, Loki,’’ he continued, dark note in his voice, his blue eyes going ice-cold. ‘’I thought I’ve seen it all. All kind of horrible, unnatural things the other human could do to another only because they can, but this…’’ Steve paused for the moment, as if in the need of looking for the right words. ’’This is different kind of hell.’’ He glanced at Loki for confirmation, but the other man just stayed silent, so he carried on. ‘’I think this is even worse. A domestic brand of cruelty. No condemnation, not even a reflection, just acceptance.’’
‘’You do reflect, Steve,’’ Loki finally said quietly. He suddenly felt extremely tired and it wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning. He couldn’t help but think about how no one in his life had never put a quarter of effort to fight for him the way Cap fought for Bucky, as if Loki hadn’t been worth saving.
Maybe he wasn’t.
‘’I thought once he’ll be with me the hardest part would be over. Now I see that maybe the hardest part is still before us.’’
Loki watched him for a long moment. Almost reluctantly, but in some odd kind of painful obligation, he decided to speak up.
‘’There might be a possibility that Bucky you knew is gone irreversibly.’’
Steve shook his head fervently.
‘’He’s still there. I know it,’’ he insisted fanatically, eyes filled with haunted determination. ‘’I have been running towards danger, my whole childhood. I had literally no common sense. Apparently, all these years later, I’m no wiser. Maybe that will be the most challenging fight in my life, but I’m not about to start giving up.’’
‘’I think that Bucky, no matter what he told you, would be so disappointed if you grew up to be a quitter.’’ Loki wasn’t used to comforting anybody, let alone his owners. He wasn’t also used to being trusted, listened to or asked for opinion, but it seemed that he couldn’t step away from all this. ‘’The best thing you can do for him now is to give him consistency. What he needs the most are consistent rules. Without them, he’s lost.’’
‘’I can’t be giving him rules. That’s absurd.’’
‘’Is it?’’ Loki asked rationally.
Deep inside Captain knew that Loki was right. All in all, he turned out to be much more level-headed about this whole situation than Steve was, much to the latter silent embarrassment.
‘’Do you think that Bucky might turn out to be violent? To us? Or….,’’ Steve hesitated before continuing. ’’To himself?’’
‘’I wouldn’t worry about that, Steve. Self-harm is treated as destroying owner’s property. I think he’s way too well-trained for that,’’ Loki replied matter-of-factly.
This wasn’t exactly the kind of response that Steve would have preferred to hear, but there wasn’t a better one coming, so he had to take it. He felt as if he entered the world he had no idea how to navigate. He immensely loathed that both Natasha and Loki seemed to know exactly what to do, while he was like a baby in the woods. It felt like failing Bucky, this obliviousness, the possibility that even if Steve did something in his best faith, it could bring the adverse effect and hurt Bucky even more.
He would learn. He would push his sentiments aside and do what was best for Bucky, even if that wasn’t how he imagined it. It wasn’t about what he would be comfortable with. It was about bringing Bucky back, the real Bucky back, and God help him, Steve was doing that, no matter how hard or uncomfortable it might be.
‘’I think Bucky might be awake soon. I’ll fix you both something to eat,’’ Loki offered.
Steve didn’t have enough energy to even consider refusing.