[The concession does a lot to ease him. It gives him room to breathe, gives him sense this isn't all entirely hopeless. And so breathe he does, exhaling heavy.]
...I know. I ain't wasn't going to ask you to turn it back. It's done. I just wrote to make sure you were alive.
[He doesn't regret that. Not yet. Even if this has fucking sucked.]
If it could go both ways, I'd do it. I try to show myself for as much as possible to make even, but such things, it don't make a difference. There's only one means of easing fear and it's not one what anyone likes to do.
[He's silent a moment, before going on.]
Bucky, if what I tell you I know is more than you can take, I am sorry... but I won't be able to let you kill me.
[He doesn't know if that's what Bucky had in mind. Bucky doesn't want to be like that, not any more than he does, but he'd rather say it now in case worst comes to worst.]
[It says enough that Izzy already knows that there are things he'd kill to keep secret, even despite his wish to not be a killer any more, and he's completely tense as they finally get to his front door. It takes a while to unlock because of all the different locks but that's good, it gives him a few moments of silence to gather himself.]
What would be the point in killing you, anyway? Nobody stays dead here.
[That's not a good thing.]
Tell me what the method is for easing that, keeping you out without changes from Zephyr.
[The door opens and Bucky steps aside to let Izzy into his house.]
[It's a fair point, but it's not much of a consolation prize.
Bucky's hive is not something he'd call a hive from the outside. It makes him falter, looking petrified for a moment. It only helps that it looks far more like thirteen than it does the Capitol, but on the other hand, avox quarters weren't exactly stunning.
Inside is... better. It's lived in, shows signs of Bucky's time, little traces of him here and there. He takes it all in, trying to grasp what good he can.
It doesn't take him long for his eye to fall upon that poster of Steve, pulling his breath. The newly gained memories flash on through. For the most part, hindsight has done good for him. Not for memory of Steve.]
The only way to ease fear, brother, is to face it. I ain't got the power to take it away, only help them better understand. And I can only try and help if motherfuckers is being to let me.
[They both know that's not going to happen. He pulls his eyes from that poster, looking down.]
There's two options otherwise for what I already know.
[He watches Izzy carefully when he moves inside. Sometimes he'd like to take those posters down, they're reminders of someone who almost doesn't exist any more, but-- he never seems to get round to it. It's unusual, though, that Izzy's focus is arrested by Steve, most people seem to stare at the poster of what he used to look like.]
You know him?
[Or knew him.
The other options can wait for the moment, this all has to be taken at the right pace to keep it from exploding in ways neither of them want.]
[Does he know him? Now there's a motherfucking question. Had he been asked all the while ago, he might've said that he knew Steve was a punk what took risks unnecessary and it cost people. Now?]
...The world I was at, I'd set a rebellion in motion. I was leading it, meaning to take the Capitol down and let us free. A threat arose. Always knew at some point or other, I'd need to give something up if I was to keep them around me safe. I'd already set in motion the fail-safes for when that was to be. Mission came and we got the fuck to work, whole damn lot of us. Even the you I used to know got on being to help.
There was a warehouse. We were dismantling weaponry theirs, preventing annihilation. Time ran out, the Capitol came down on us. Most of our lot got out. Steve and I stayed behind for them, seeing what we could do for them, for us, but I think even he knew there wasn't really no out for us. We fought together until the very fucking end. I was sword and he was shield, but we couldn't kill them without bringing the Capitol down harder on us and we couldn't win fighting like that forever. They took us down.
[There's a distance in his eyes as he speaks, like he's seeing right through everything.]
That motherfucker got my very last spoken words. We lived, but they destroyed us. Was the second time they took my tongue and will. He kept the former, but they took his power away, and after that, they broke him. We understood each other like that, but it wasn't long before he was gone for good anyway. [He remembers the way it felt when Tony snapped on him. He hadn't been able to fight back. He wouldn't have wanted to.] I had promised. He wasn't supposed to get hurt. It was supposed to me.
[He shakes his head.]
I got all this memory back recent. Didn't have it before, when at you first showed up. I'm not sure if all such things count as knowing him.
A simple yes or no, or perhaps a small anecdote if he really had known him well in some other place, but not-- not this. He doesn't want to think of Steve taking a last stand that he knows he can't win, he doesn't want to think of him being bruised and bloodied and beaten, getting up each time and forcing himself on.
I can do this all day.
It makes him feel sick, and it only gets worse when Izzy goes on and describes what happened to them. Steve with his will taken away, that's pretty much his worst nightmare. He swallows hard, voice rough.]
[He grins then, and not happily. It's pained and it's furious and it's the sort what makes him taste blood in his teeth, burning his throat. It's the exact thing that got him willing to be a rebel, and make the sort of promises to surrender his soul in the first place. The sort of rage the comes when you've lost and all that's left is an itch in the digits for carnage.]
You bet your ass I did.
[He hadn't crushed them entirely. But he'd been on the track for ripping away all they knew. They weren't going to lose.
Not that it matters here. The grin twists into a grimace and he looks away again.]
You kept him strong. We both had our messages last to our allies before the end. I won't say much more if as you don't want. But you kept him strong, even when they made him weak.
[His eyes close.]
So, I'll say again, there's options twofold. You can try and trust me with all what I know. That's the first choice... or I can use voodoo upon myself. It'll put a hole in this thinkpan mine, or soul to be more apt, but as long as I keep note to myself not to heal it, I can block the memory in my mind.
[The word is quiet before Izzy moves on to the other options, swallowed up in the way the troll keeps talking. It's too much. Steve can't have lost his will, he can't have been tortured that way, and to hear that it was him that kept him strong until the end--
It's too much.
Something breaks in his chest and he can't seem to fight back the tears that slide down his face, looking open and stricken in a way he never usually does.]
[If Bucky had spoken more than mouthed the word, the conversation would have come abrupt and immediate end. Stop, being such a vague order (even when not really an order) it can mean any manner of thing.
But even missing that, he doesn't miss the sounds that follow or the way Bucky doesn't answer. His breath catches when he opens his eyes, and those eyes widen in turn.]
I... I'm sorry.
[His hands hover but he doesn't dare try and reach out or touch.]
[This is vulnerable in a way that he's been very careful not to be, not even around people that he actually trusts, and yet he can't seem to stop. His entire body is tensed up with the effort of attempting to control himself and he just... can't.
All he can see is Steve on the helicarrier, Steve bloodied and beaten and nearly dead, but refusing to give up. He can see the reprogramming machine and the impersonal faces of HYDRA, and now he can hear Steve's voice overlayed with his own, their screams the same. Is that what they did to his friend? They took away everything that made him Steve Rogers?]
He got his will back.
[It's half statement, half question, and wholly a plea. Please tell him that Steve recovered who he was.]
[There's a whole lot of ill making the haps in Bucky's head. Visions he no longer sees, panic he no longer feels, but it's not that hard to read without. It ain't a goddamn thing to guess.
Especially not with what Bucky speaks. He's not sure how to answer. It's a complicated motherfucking question with an answer all the more so.
But he doesn't want to see Bucky beg.]
Yes. [It's not a lie. It's not a lie, he tells himself] Yes, he... he fought hard. And he wasn't alone. He had you and Tony and Sam and... and everyone. He was still in there, more so than me. [He just needed more time than he got.
He doesn't say that.
He doesn't mention how the scars don't ever truly go away. They of all people know that. His arms fold over his chest, hugging as though to hold himself back.]
Truth told, Bucky, when I saw him, he mostly just worried about me.
[The damn fool. Saying, I don't want to get you into any more trouble, like it wasn't his own fault.]
He's never going to forget that somewhere out there, there's a Steve that's suffered through something he should never have experience with. He knows about the scars, he knows that Steve would never be the same even if he recovered his will, he knows all of this and it's why it's dug under his skin like steel hooks.]
Sounds... sounds like him.
[Of course he was worried about someone else, when was he not? That's what made Steve a superhero, it's what always had, even before the serum gave him the muscles to match his stupid outsized heart.
He scrubs a hand across his face and crosses to the poster of Steve, taking it down and folding it to give him chance to gather himself again.]
[He watches, an ache settled in him. This wasn't where he thought this wicked shit was going to be at to go. Far from it, really. This ain't much easier.
He winces when Bucky takes the poster down. He looks like he wants to say something, but Bucky beats him to it and whatever words he had are lost in a rush.]
When I see dreams without entering them, I see them through your eyes. I feel how you felt, like it's me. I know the way the cut you up. I know the way they made sure you obeyed and how it didn't stop. The... the electricity... they...
[The more he talks of it, the more he remembers somewhere else, the same damn thing more or less, just different incisions, different orders, and different ability to scream when the shocks began and coursed through like fire. Damn him for bringing that up knowing he'd have to talk about this.
It mutes him. It makes his body shake, but he was asked to keep going and he has to. Hardly louder than a breath, he says:]
Sorry. [And from there he recollects, distances, refocuses. He just needs a moment. His eyes are little more dull when he continues, but he does indeed manage to do so, and it sounds more natural now, less like it's coming out in panic.]
There are words what get spoken sometimes. And there's some motherfucker what looks like John, but... it's not John. [He's not sure what that means.] And then there's killing. Some happenings more abstract. You don't sleep much, but your fears latch to mine and it made them come to me clearer.
He'd been prepared for what he thought was the worst, just some small knowledge about who had done this to him and perhaps what he had been before, but not to know that Izzy had seen through his eyes. He's heard the words and that sets his teeth on edge just as much as it would have if Izzy had drawn a gun on him.]
No.
[Just no.
He's facing Izzy again now and literally every muscle is so tense that he seems brittle instead of strong, like he might snap into a million pieces.]
No! You shouldn't have been in my head, what the hell is wrong with you that you wouldn't tell me?! Are you trying to use it? Were you gathering information?!
No! [He shouts it right back, with a different sort of desperation.] Of course I wasn't planning to use it, Bucky, why would I ever?! I can't stand what they motherfucking did to you! How the fuck would telling you I knew something like that ever do anything but make you scared of me?!
[And he is, right now. He knows it's fear. Turned all against him, ain't that just motherfucking funny.]
Dammit, you were my friend! I don't want to hurt you!
[But he already has, quite obviously. It's what he does.
It would have made me able to protect myself before now, it would have proven you were trying to do the right thing by not hiding inside my head and watching over and over. Did you get everything you needed?
[He can't control what he's saying any more, it's just pouring out of him in a torrent of paranoia and fear so strong that it's nearly paralysing.
He doesn't know what to do. He can't kill Izzy and keep the words secret that way, he can't even remove himself from the equation to make sure everyone stays safe, because they'll both just be brought back. He can't do anything, and now there's a threat right on his doorstep. He wants to flee, he needs to be anywhere but here, but he can't because he's in a goddamn prison with tiny boundary walls and an all-seeing god child.
[All too many times before he's done this, lashed out with accusation out of sheer panic and unknowing what else to do. Fear and rage dance a circle around the root of hurt.]
I ain't seeking to do nothing against you. I'm giving you chance to take from me what you need made gone. And as long as you are in these meadous, I am not going to let anyone motherfucking hurt or use you like that! Neither will I let you hurt no one else! Even if you want me to forget who you are, I'll still motherfucking stop it!
[It ain't a promise of sentimentality. He won't allow this meadous to come to harm if he can help it. Bucky is only one piece of that. But it means it's a promise he can be sure of]
He has enough left about him to tell that Izzy is being genuine about what he'll do to make sure Bucky is comfortable, that he'll rip into his own mind and take out all the pieces that make him a threat. He should take him up on that. He should make sure he surgically removes every single memory that could hurt him, because this-- this is intolerable.
Izzy knows what was done to him in intimate detail, he knows the trigger words, surely it's the only solution to be safe. He can't be safe if he doesn't tell him to take it all out.]
No.
[The word sounds almost broken, ragged and harsh. He looks hunted even as he speaks, unable to go through with it.]
I can't-- I can't be the one to do that to someone else, you can't do that. I can't.
[He has to get out of there. It doesn't even matter that this is his house and he'll be leaving Izzy alone in it, he just knows he has to go. He's out of the house and gone in moments, running as fast as he's capable of doing, leaving the door ajar in his wake.]
[He hates this. He hates that he can't feel anything. He hates that whether he could or not, he's motherfucking useless.
He hates that he's the goddamn villain no matter what he does. He hates that he keeps having to go through this shit with people he called friend.
He hates that hearing he ain't got to tear his ownself apart doesn't bring enough relief and a little that it does.]
That's not what-- Bucky!
[Bucky bolts. He could chase after. He could keep up, again one of the few to be able. But instead he stands there, wishing foolish that he could be someone else.
Hours later, a folded paper has been left in Bucky's mailbox.]
i'm sorry.
[He suspects that it's the last he'll be seeing, hearing, or feeling Bucky for a long ass time.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
...I know. I ain't wasn't going to ask you to turn it back. It's done. I just wrote to make sure you were alive.
[He doesn't regret that. Not yet. Even if this has fucking sucked.]
If it could go both ways, I'd do it. I try to show myself for as much as possible to make even, but such things, it don't make a difference. There's only one means of easing fear and it's not one what anyone likes to do.
[He's silent a moment, before going on.]
Bucky, if what I tell you I know is more than you can take, I am sorry... but I won't be able to let you kill me.
[He doesn't know if that's what Bucky had in mind. Bucky doesn't want to be like that, not any more than he does, but he'd rather say it now in case worst comes to worst.]
no subject
What would be the point in killing you, anyway? Nobody stays dead here.
[That's not a good thing.]
Tell me what the method is for easing that, keeping you out without changes from Zephyr.
[The door opens and Bucky steps aside to let Izzy into his house.]
no subject
Bucky's hive is not something he'd call a hive from the outside. It makes him falter, looking petrified for a moment. It only helps that it looks far more like thirteen than it does the Capitol, but on the other hand, avox quarters weren't exactly stunning.
Inside is... better. It's lived in, shows signs of Bucky's time, little traces of him here and there. He takes it all in, trying to grasp what good he can.
It doesn't take him long for his eye to fall upon that poster of Steve, pulling his breath. The newly gained memories flash on through. For the most part, hindsight has done good for him. Not for memory of Steve.]
The only way to ease fear, brother, is to face it. I ain't got the power to take it away, only help them better understand. And I can only try and help if motherfuckers is being to let me.
[They both know that's not going to happen. He pulls his eyes from that poster, looking down.]
There's two options otherwise for what I already know.
no subject
You know him?
[Or knew him.
The other options can wait for the moment, this all has to be taken at the right pace to keep it from exploding in ways neither of them want.]
no subject
...The world I was at, I'd set a rebellion in motion. I was leading it, meaning to take the Capitol down and let us free. A threat arose. Always knew at some point or other, I'd need to give something up if I was to keep them around me safe. I'd already set in motion the fail-safes for when that was to be. Mission came and we got the fuck to work, whole damn lot of us. Even the you I used to know got on being to help.
There was a warehouse. We were dismantling weaponry theirs, preventing annihilation. Time ran out, the Capitol came down on us. Most of our lot got out. Steve and I stayed behind for them, seeing what we could do for them, for us, but I think even he knew there wasn't really no out for us. We fought together until the very fucking end. I was sword and he was shield, but we couldn't kill them without bringing the Capitol down harder on us and we couldn't win fighting like that forever. They took us down.
[There's a distance in his eyes as he speaks, like he's seeing right through everything.]
That motherfucker got my very last spoken words. We lived, but they destroyed us. Was the second time they took my tongue and will. He kept the former, but they took his power away, and after that, they broke him. We understood each other like that, but it wasn't long before he was gone for good anyway. [He remembers the way it felt when Tony snapped on him. He hadn't been able to fight back. He wouldn't have wanted to.] I had promised. He wasn't supposed to get hurt. It was supposed to me.
[He shakes his head.]
I got all this memory back recent. Didn't have it before, when at you first showed up. I'm not sure if all such things count as knowing him.
no subject
A simple yes or no, or perhaps a small anecdote if he really had known him well in some other place, but not-- not this. He doesn't want to think of Steve taking a last stand that he knows he can't win, he doesn't want to think of him being bruised and bloodied and beaten, getting up each time and forcing himself on.
I can do this all day.
It makes him feel sick, and it only gets worse when Izzy goes on and describes what happened to them. Steve with his will taken away, that's pretty much his worst nightmare. He swallows hard, voice rough.]
...I hope you made them pay.
no subject
You bet your ass I did.
[He hadn't crushed them entirely. But he'd been on the track for ripping away all they knew. They weren't going to lose.
Not that it matters here. The grin twists into a grimace and he looks away again.]
You kept him strong. We both had our messages last to our allies before the end. I won't say much more if as you don't want. But you kept him strong, even when they made him weak.
[His eyes close.]
So, I'll say again, there's options twofold. You can try and trust me with all what I know. That's the first choice... or I can use voodoo upon myself. It'll put a hole in this thinkpan mine, or soul to be more apt, but as long as I keep note to myself not to heal it, I can block the memory in my mind.
no subject
[The word is quiet before Izzy moves on to the other options, swallowed up in the way the troll keeps talking. It's too much. Steve can't have lost his will, he can't have been tortured that way, and to hear that it was him that kept him strong until the end--
It's too much.
Something breaks in his chest and he can't seem to fight back the tears that slide down his face, looking open and stricken in a way he never usually does.]
no subject
But even missing that, he doesn't miss the sounds that follow or the way Bucky doesn't answer. His breath catches when he opens his eyes, and those eyes widen in turn.]
I... I'm sorry.
[His hands hover but he doesn't dare try and reach out or touch.]
I didn't mean...
no subject
All he can see is Steve on the helicarrier, Steve bloodied and beaten and nearly dead, but refusing to give up. He can see the reprogramming machine and the impersonal faces of HYDRA, and now he can hear Steve's voice overlayed with his own, their screams the same. Is that what they did to his friend? They took away everything that made him Steve Rogers?]
He got his will back.
[It's half statement, half question, and wholly a plea. Please tell him that Steve recovered who he was.]
no subject
Especially not with what Bucky speaks. He's not sure how to answer. It's a complicated motherfucking question with an answer all the more so.
But he doesn't want to see Bucky beg.]
Yes. [It's not a lie. It's not a lie, he tells himself] Yes, he... he fought hard. And he wasn't alone. He had you and Tony and Sam and... and everyone. He was still in there, more so than me. [He just needed more time than he got.
He doesn't say that.
He doesn't mention how the scars don't ever truly go away. They of all people know that. His arms fold over his chest, hugging as though to hold himself back.]
Truth told, Bucky, when I saw him, he mostly just worried about me.
[The damn fool. Saying, I don't want to get you into any more trouble, like it wasn't his own fault.]
no subject
He's never going to forget that somewhere out there, there's a Steve that's suffered through something he should never have experience with. He knows about the scars, he knows that Steve would never be the same even if he recovered his will, he knows all of this and it's why it's dug under his skin like steel hooks.]
Sounds... sounds like him.
[Of course he was worried about someone else, when was he not? That's what made Steve a superhero, it's what always had, even before the serum gave him the muscles to match his stupid outsized heart.
He scrubs a hand across his face and crosses to the poster of Steve, taking it down and folding it to give him chance to gather himself again.]
Fine. Tell me what you know.
[He needs to move on from this.]
no subject
He winces when Bucky takes the poster down. He looks like he wants to say something, but Bucky beats him to it and whatever words he had are lost in a rush.]
When I see dreams without entering them, I see them through your eyes. I feel how you felt, like it's me. I know the way the cut you up. I know the way they made sure you obeyed and how it didn't stop. The... the electricity... they...
[The more he talks of it, the more he remembers somewhere else, the same damn thing more or less, just different incisions, different orders, and different ability to scream when the shocks began and coursed through like fire. Damn him for bringing that up knowing he'd have to talk about this.
It mutes him. It makes his body shake, but he was asked to keep going and he has to. Hardly louder than a breath, he says:]
Sorry. [And from there he recollects, distances, refocuses. He just needs a moment. His eyes are little more dull when he continues, but he does indeed manage to do so, and it sounds more natural now, less like it's coming out in panic.]
There are words what get spoken sometimes. And there's some motherfucker what looks like John, but... it's not John. [He's not sure what that means.] And then there's killing. Some happenings more abstract. You don't sleep much, but your fears latch to mine and it made them come to me clearer.
no subject
He'd been prepared for what he thought was the worst, just some small knowledge about who had done this to him and perhaps what he had been before, but not to know that Izzy had seen through his eyes. He's heard the words and that sets his teeth on edge just as much as it would have if Izzy had drawn a gun on him.]
No.
[Just no.
He's facing Izzy again now and literally every muscle is so tense that he seems brittle instead of strong, like he might snap into a million pieces.]
No! You shouldn't have been in my head, what the hell is wrong with you that you wouldn't tell me?! Are you trying to use it? Were you gathering information?!
[He's scared, slipping.]
no subject
[And he is, right now. He knows it's fear. Turned all against him, ain't that just motherfucking funny.]
Dammit, you were my friend! I don't want to hurt you!
[But he already has, quite obviously. It's what he does.
Fuck, he doesn't know how to fix this.]
Please, listen, Bucky.
cw: suicidal ideation
[He can't control what he's saying any more, it's just pouring out of him in a torrent of paranoia and fear so strong that it's nearly paralysing.
He doesn't know what to do. He can't kill Izzy and keep the words secret that way, he can't even remove himself from the equation to make sure everyone stays safe, because they'll both just be brought back. He can't do anything, and now there's a threat right on his doorstep. He wants to flee, he needs to be anywhere but here, but he can't because he's in a goddamn prison with tiny boundary walls and an all-seeing god child.
He can't cope with this, he's about to break.]
cw: suicidal ideation
[All too many times before he's done this, lashed out with accusation out of sheer panic and unknowing what else to do. Fear and rage dance a circle around the root of hurt.]
I ain't seeking to do nothing against you. I'm giving you chance to take from me what you need made gone. And as long as you are in these meadous, I am not going to let anyone motherfucking hurt or use you like that! Neither will I let you hurt no one else! Even if you want me to forget who you are, I'll still motherfucking stop it!
[It ain't a promise of sentimentality. He won't allow this meadous to come to harm if he can help it. Bucky is only one piece of that. But it means it's a promise he can be sure of]
You're still in control here. Just breathe.
cw: suicidal ideation
He has enough left about him to tell that Izzy is being genuine about what he'll do to make sure Bucky is comfortable, that he'll rip into his own mind and take out all the pieces that make him a threat. He should take him up on that. He should make sure he surgically removes every single memory that could hurt him, because this-- this is intolerable.
Izzy knows what was done to him in intimate detail, he knows the trigger words, surely it's the only solution to be safe. He can't be safe if he doesn't tell him to take it all out.]
No.
[The word sounds almost broken, ragged and harsh. He looks hunted even as he speaks, unable to go through with it.]
I can't-- I can't be the one to do that to someone else, you can't do that. I can't.
[He has to get out of there. It doesn't even matter that this is his house and he'll be leaving Izzy alone in it, he just knows he has to go. He's out of the house and gone in moments, running as fast as he's capable of doing, leaving the door ajar in his wake.]
cw: suicidal ideation
He hates that he's the goddamn villain no matter what he does. He hates that he keeps having to go through this shit with people he called friend.
He hates that hearing he ain't got to tear his ownself apart doesn't bring enough relief and a little that it does.]
That's not what-- Bucky!
[Bucky bolts. He could chase after. He could keep up, again one of the few to be able. But instead he stands there, wishing foolish that he could be someone else.
Hours later, a folded paper has been left in Bucky's mailbox.]
i'm sorry.
[He suspects that it's the last he'll be seeing, hearing, or feeling Bucky for a long ass time.]