thecapitol | just need a place to breathe

"It appears secure." Bucky reports, before shoving his hands in his pockets and looking at Sam.

He sniffs because of the cold air and huddles down in his jacket as he sinks into the reality of why Sam has brought him here. So he can talk, so he can talk without being overheard. Bucky looks down at the ground, trying to think of all the things that have been locked in his head for months, ever since he was allowed to start remembering them. All the things he's seen, experienced and recalled since escaping HYDRA.

"You really want to hear me talk?" he hesitates.

Sam hooks his thumbs through the beltloops of his jeans, settling himself more comfortably against the wall. Settling in to listen, as much as Bucky want him to.

"I really do," he says, quiet but firm. Even more now than when he'd first offered, though he meant it plenty back then. "You need somewhere to start, or you want me just to be quiet and listen, I can do either. But whatever you want to tell me, man, I want to hear it."

His mouth opens, closes.

There's so many things lodged inside his head and now in his throat. It feels like they're caught on the ghosts of old orders, demands to keep silent because he was a weapon and weapons didn't get to have thoughts or feeling and they certainly didn't have the right to voice them.

It's his minds attempt at self-preservation, Bucky thinks and wonders if in the past they'd tried to trick him into talking, searching for any last traces of humanity that they could eradicate in their Soldier. This spurs the tight ball of anger that had reared its head over Rumlow back into being but the words stay locked in his throat.

"Ask me something." he says finally, aware that time is ticking by on every moment he dallies.

A question could be something like an order and orders he's good at following. Something has to give, even if he needs a push to make it happen.

Usually, Sam can roll with the punches, can just about always figure out something to say or do. But when Bucky tells him to ask him something, even though Sam'd just offered to give him a place to start - well. It's been a long time since Sam's frozen this bad.

He doesn't know what to ask him. There's a lot he could think of, but he doesn't know which one of them to go with. Sam doesn't want this to be about what he wants to know about Bucky - because honestly, the answer's everything. He wants this to be about what Bucky's willing to talk about, and everything that flashes through his mind might be somewhere that Bucky isn't willing to go yet.

This is what he gets, for blurring the lines.

But Sam doesn't make offers that he isn't prepared to follow through on, and after a moment, he goes with what they'd been talking about when Sam first thought of bringing Bucky to a blindspot. The first thing he saw Bucky show real anger over, that's got to be as good a place as any.

"Rumlow," he says. "What'd you two talk about, what'd that bring up for you?"

It's a good question to open with in terms of getting an actual emotional response out of Bucky, a good one to open the floodgates as the saying went. His eyes darken immediately, fill with anger mixed in with uncertainly and perhaps a touch of fear as he thinks back to that conversation. It was far less satisfying encounter than the one they'd had in the arena.

"He told me the wipes were for my own good and they were the only thing keeping me stable" he says, slowly, grinding the words out. "He said without them I'll... become psychotic, or a vegetable." his hands are curling to fists. "The first time I went functional I almost killed a doctor."

The thing he's afraid of is that Rumlow is right and it's only the Capitol resets that are keeping him together. "I can remember doing that."

There they go, that was definitely a good start. The fear and uncertainty aren't nearly as good to see as the anger, but given what they're talking about, it’s not unexpected. Sam leans back a little, preparing to settle in and listen.

Right up until he hears what Rumlow actually said.

Anger simmers under Sam's skin, and he twists his fingers into the fabric of his coat, clenching it hard. "Rumlow’s full of shit," he says flatly. "Brains heal, shit, with your healing wiping was probably the only way they could stop you from getting better. You might not remember everything, but you're not gonna be a vegetable. And if he was talking about you not being able to handle what you do remember, he's still full of shit."

He exhales, reminds himself again that this is supposed to be about Bucky talking, and shakes his hands loose, pulling on his coat to straighten it. "Sorry," he murmurs. "You remember attacking a doctor?"

Bucky stares at the show of anger, before clenching his jaw and looking aside. "I don't remember, he could know more about me than I do. He's HYDRA." the one's who'd modified, tortured and enslaved him for several decades. "I don't know how many times I could have worked with him."

Rumlow wasn't a handler, he knows that and is immensely grateful for it. A handler would be far more trouble to deal with than a simple commander.

The topic of Bucky's brain healing is one he's had a rather horrible realisation about lately, one that will probably come up here soon but for now is put on the back burner in favour of answering the question.

"After..." he has to think, "I think it was after they put the arm on." that metal fist tightens as he speaks. "I woke up, there was doctor leaning over me, I tried to choke him." The memory is hazy, with a dreamlike quality about it. He'd been drugged, probably, or it's just his mind making it that way.

He winces a little, when Bucky stares at him. "He's Hydra," he agrees. "He wouldn't know a damn thing about recovery if it bit him in the ass."

There's more he wants to say to that, so damn much more, but he needs to do a better job remembering that this is about Bucky talking. Bucky didn't ask for Sam to try to reassure him or get angry about any of that, and just because Sam doesn't want to treat this too much like one of his sessions back home doesn't mean he can forget that.

"Why'd you try to choke him?" Sam can guess, the answer's probably obvious, but he wants to get Bucky talking. To see if Bucky can put it into words, see what his perceptions of his actions, of what'd happened to him then, are.

"Maybe." he glances down at the dirty alley ground. Much of the Capitol is kept conspicuously clean, coming somewhere that actually looks less than pristine is a good change. Bucky speaks with bitterness seeping into his voice, "I don't think I'll be able to find out the truth."

The question... the question is something he hasn't thought of in-depth before. The memory plays out like a movie with Bucky along for the ride, helpless to do anything but watch his past torture over and over again.

He swallows before admitting, "I was... angry. Scared. I didn't want it."

“No, probably not,” he admits reluctantly. Rumlow sure as hell isn’t going to tell them the truth, and even if Sam doesn’t believe that the wipes were the only thing keeping Bucky sane, he doesn’t have anything more to go on than instinct.

He’s quiet as he watches Bucky, waiting for him to come out of the memory and answer the question before he does anything. Then Sam shoves a hand into his pocket, pulls out the closest he’d been able to find to the Capitol version of a stress ball. It’s rainbow colored and sparkles, but it seems tough enough that it should be able to withstand a lot of pressure, and he offers it to Bucky.

“If you need to take a step back, if something I ask you isn’t somewhere you’re ready to go, you let me know, okay? If you start getting caught up in things and I need to do something to remind you that you’re here with me, I can. Don’t feel like you need to get everything out all at once, ‘cause we can do this again.”

He waits again, for a long moment, then says, “You didn’t want it, you didn’t want any of it?” He knows Bucky didn’t, but he asks anyway.

Bucky naturally reaches out to take the stress ball from Sam, too absorbed in examining his memory to immediately question why he was being handed such a thing. He turns it over in his hand until he finally asks, "What's this for?"

He's already holding onto it pretty tight, as a result of the thoughts running through his head. Bucky's trying to keep it together and pay attention to what Sam says, nodding along even though he's only half-registering what's being said. He just... he has to talk, he has to let at least some of it out before something bad happens.

It's been building and building inside him even when he hasn't registered it, all the bad memories and anger that makes him even more afraid Rumlow isn't lying. One day he's just going to snap from it all and do something he'll regret.

"No!" he says, a little wide-eyed. "They... my arm wasn't all gone. They cut off the rest to give me this," he stares at the metal one and though he's usually accepting of its presence there's an edge of revulsion in his eyes now at the alien metal construction that's attached to him. "They didn't care what I wanted, they never did."

"For that," he says, nodding at the way Bucky's squeezing it. "You remember I said I used to keep a stress ball in my pocket? You get pissed, you focus on that."

Sam's got a backup in his other pocket, in case Bucky breaks that one. He's not sure how much of that super soldier strength Bucky's still got in the Capitol, but better safe than sorry. For the moment, though - Sam's using for himself. He's not stupid enough to think he can get through this without any of what Bucky says affecting him, and it won't do either of them any good if they just end up feeding off each other's anger.

So he curls his fingers around the other ball, pulls it out and tightens his hand, running his thumb over the smooth surface. Lets the image of Hydra soldiers cutting off Bucky's arm take form, but doesn't let it linger.

"Keep going," he murmurs. "What do you mean when you say they never did?"

"Oh." he understands now, tightening his fingers around the ball as if to test it. Or maybe he just needs it.

Bucky struggles hard to vocalise this next part, watching as Sam takes out another stress ball and holds onto it himself. The things that Bucky is saying must be distressing for him to hear and Bucky doesn't blame him for that, his own story drives a sickening sensation deep into the pit of his stomach, threatening to leave.

"I am not -- was not a person." he ventures finally. "I am -- was," it shouldn't be so easy to trip back into the mindset Hydra cultivated in him. "a weapon. They do not have wants or desires."

His hand shakes around the ball. "My only purpose was to obey."

If this was one of his one-on-one sessions, back at the VA, Sam could be as professional as he needed. He’s gotten into the habit, of distancing himself from the actual content of what people tell him, of being a sounding board for people who just need to get it out.

He knows he can’t do that here. Bucky has very quickly become one of the people he cares most about, and that doesn’t surprise him at all, considering how fast Steve became an essential part of his life. Sam’s accepted that it’s either something about the way he makes friendships, after everything, or something about Steve Rogers and those connected to him.

Either way, he needs to keep a handle on himself.

“You remember, some of the times they made you obey?”

There's a look on Bucky's face when Sam asks him that, akin to 'are you serious?' because everything he remembers about HYDRA is when they made him obey until the point came that he no longer remembered how to disobey. After that obedience just became... life, it was his complete existence.

Except no, that's not right, the course of his use by HYDRA hadn't run so smooth, not always. That was why they wiped him as often as they did and put him away except for missions of the utmost importance. The Winter Soldier's was only brought out rarely.

"All I can remember is that." he says finally, "Any problematic behaviour by me led to a wipe. They wiped me everytime before I was put into cryo, there was never any other choice than to obey."

There was never any other choice than to obey. That twists in Sam’s chest a little, he can’t help it. It’s not like he didn’t know that, that he hadn’t seen the evidence of what Hydra had done - but it’s different knowing it and hearing Bucky say it.

But at the same time, it’s good. He doesn’t know how much of that statement that Bucky’s actually internalized, that he didn’t have any choice but to obey and none of what happened to him was his fault, but at least he’s saying it, all of his own volition.

“Do you just want to talk about that? The stuff they did to you, the way they treated you? Or do you want to talk about what you did, when you were obeying?” He pauses, then adds, “There’s no wrong answer to that, Bucky, you can think it over if you need to.”

Bucky hesitates.

"I..." he swallows thickly, the anger dying to be replaced by doubt mixed with pain. "I remember pieces of both." turning he paces back, up and down, away from Sam and back again. "I have dreams, nightmares. What they did to me and the people I killed."

Young, old, men and women and children. There were targets and there was acceptable collateral damage. There was the chair, the beatings, the injections... the whistle of a train and the feeling of falling over and over. "I don't like to sleep." Sam must have noticed that by now, if not in person then by the constant dark circles under Bucky's eyes.

He almost killed Steve because of the nightmares, he can't... he doesn't want to tell him that, maybe Steve will, in which case Bucky won't blame him. He should because Bucky wasn't safe, he was dangerous even when he didn't want to be.

Oh, Sam's definitely noticed that. He's been having trouble there himself lately, but that much is obvious as well, considering he'd showed up at Steve's room in the middle of the night and all but passed out on them. But he hadn't want to jump in with anything until Bucky actually told him about them.

"You might not like hearing this much more than I did, but having nightmares isn't a bad sign. It's your brain's way of trying to cope, means you're trying to process what happened. It's normal."

He rolls his stress ball around in his hands. "I know a couple of things you could try that might help, if you want. It's probably not going to shock you that one of the biggest ones is talking about them."

Sam's right, it's not what Bucky wants to hear. The things he dreams about are things he wouldnever want to talk to about with anyone. Not even Steve, the one who was most often there when Bucky woke from one of those nightmares and would try to ask him about them, questions that Bucky had never been able to bring himself to answer.

"Did it help you?"

He asks, looking away and down at the dirty ground. In his hand his stress ball is being held tight, to the point that were it in his left hand it would have burst by now.

Nightmares were a good sign? That was hard to believe.

He lets out a breath, watching Bucky for a moment before he nods. “Yeah, it helped me. It’s still helping me, it’s not like I’m going to pretend I haven’t slipped back a little, lately.” He’ll pretend as best as he can for strangers, where the cameras are watching him, but not here.

Sam reaches up, tapping the side of his temple with two fingers. “The shit we’ve got going on in here, burying it never does any good. It’s going to come out one way or another, and sometimes, that way is nightmares. So yeah, talking about it helped. There’s a couple of other tips I got just for nightmares, but they’re all tangled up in everything else, it’s hard to get rid of them without working on the other stuff.”

There’s a pause as he swallows, then - finally goes into what he’s been telling himself this whole time, what he probably should have actually said out loud before he got to this point. “I’m not a therapist, Bucky, and even if I was, I couldn’t be yours. I’m too close into all this, and I care about you way too much. But I can listen, I can be here however you want me to, and even if my experiences don’t match up with yours, I can tell you what worked for me, and help you figure out how to modify it for you.”

"This place is like them." he says suddenly, a thought he's carried since he first arrived. "They're like HYDRA if HYDRA got what they wanted... it would be like this." he settles back against the wall, running his human fingers through his hair. "I thought they were at first."

That was how he arrived, believing he'd been retrieved and was being punished for failing and trying to be anything but what they made him to be. Even when he realised it wasn't them belonging to the Capitol became not so different, still a captive, still a weapon used in a different way. He died instead of being frozen and having his memory wiped.

Bucky listens, his head bowed and arms folded across his chest. Talking is hard, even here where there are no cameras. It remains true that this is the most he's talked since... who knew, maybe since he fell from the train. "I understand."

He might not like it, as Sam said, but he understands. This has already been cathartic.

"Therapist?" Bucky looks up at that. He knows what a therapist is in the most basic terms but he'd never thought of Sam as one, or even that he himself would need such a person. "If..." he can't understand this still, "you've helped me enough, even though you don't need to."

"It is. If Hydra won, they'd be the Capitol." That's exactly what Sam'd thought when he first got here, that the Capitol was everything he'd just fought like hell to make sure didn't happen.

He can only imagine how Bucky must have felt, thinking he was back in with Hydra. Shit, he might as well be, that's one of the reasons why Sam's been working to try to get Bucky out of here and into District 13. As soon as he has that thought, he realizes he's going to have to ask Bucky about that here, while he can. Just in case something does get put into motion, Sam doesn't want it to happen without Bucky knowing about it.

He doesn't want Bucky to feel like he's going behind his back about something like this, making his decisions for him. But he'll wait until they're done here. He's already thrown Bucky off talking enough, bringing up therapists.

"Yeah, a therapist. I had a great one, and one could help you more than I can. But we don't have that option here." Because no way in hell would Sam trust anything that tried to call itself therapy in the Captiol, or in District 13. "I'm gonna keep helping you, though, best I can. If you want awhile to think about talking about your nightmares, you can take it."

He pauses, giving a slightly rueful grin. "Sorry for interrupting you, man. If you still want to talk, I'm here, but if you want to come back later, we can do that, too."

"I... can't, not yet." what he dreamed about... his throat felt like it was locked up by the ice and snow he remembers so clearly, like the nightmares were invading his reality for a moment. Bucky breaths heavily through his nose before shaking his head clear of the echoes. "I'll think about it."

Then hopefully, one day, do more than that. It's all he can offer right now. "I understand." he presses his fingers tighter around the ball in his hand. "I never expected help."

He'd been prepared to go it the moment he cut his leash, when Steve seemed too uncomfortably familiar and the knowledge of what he'd almost done had chased Bucky away. If it wasn't for the Capitol forcing them back together he wasn't sure where he would be now, or more, who he would be now. "I've done bad things."

Horrible things, things that made him wonder why anyone would try so hard to help him.

“Okay. Thinking about it is good. While you do, I got a couple of things you can try on your own, that might help, no talking to other people involved.”

He’s not surprised, to hear that Bucky didn’t expect help. Of course he didn’t. Most of the soldiers Sam’s worked with didn’t even expect anyone to help them. After everything Bucky’d been through, there’s no reason he would have expected anyone to help him.

Sam runs his thumb over his stress ball, nodding a little at that last statement.

"Yeah, you did,” he agrees quietly. None of it was Bucky’s fault, but he still did them, and Sam was front row for a little of it. He’s not going to deny that, but he does add, “You had a lot of bad stuff done to you, too, and you’re going to have to figure out a way to live with both. But you’re not going to have to do it alone. There’s nothing you could tell me about the things you did because of what happened to you that’ll change that.”

"Okay." he almost murmurs, eyes turned down to the alley floor, still locked in his own head.

He acknowledges and he'll listen as well as probably try whatever other suggestions Sam can give him, none of the other techniques his friend has taught him to learn to cope with his issues has steered him wrong so far. They help, some to a greater degree than others, but they do. Bucky at the least trusts that any advice Sam gives him is well meant by now.

"Isn't there?" Bucky says it almost like it's a challenge, lifting his eyes back up to Sam's and searching his face. Like despite everything he's still waiting for the hammer to fall and reality to take its course. He's been abused, used and without the simple decency of human kindness for too long not to feel doubt. "I've killed more people than I know."

just need a place to breathe

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