thecapitol | Our colors run then leave a stain

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Our colors run then leave a stain

Who| Peggy and MCU Bucky
What| Steve is gone, probably dead. Peggy's done this before, Bucky hasn't, and they're both upset. When two people are upset, they beat the shit out of each other in the gym.
Where| Training Center
When| Soon after the Binding
Warnings| Violence and grief and just general sad things.

Bucky loves Steve and Steve loves Bucky. That seems to be a universal constant. She knows that Bucky will take Steve being gone harder than she is, and she already feels like her heart has been ripped out of her chest. There's only one way she knows how to cope with this kind of pain, and it's not breaking down and crying.

She comes down to District One and sticks her head in. She is wearing minimal makeup, just enough to cover up the hollows in her cheeks and under her eyes, and she's dressed in exercise clothes with a black scarf hiding the scar on her neck. As soon as she sees Bucky, she says, "We should spar."

It's not a question. It's a statement. It's something they should both do. She doesn't care if she comes out of it bleeding everywhere.

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Since the news, since the alleyway Bucky feels like he's existed in a bubble, separate and broken from the rest of the world. Maybe he's never been part of that world, maybe he's always been the outside, only connecting when there was another hand to reach out to his.

Logically he knows that's not true. Logically he knows this is his anxiety, his paranoia, his trauma in all the forms that Sam has given him words for playing up on him because his best friend is locked away somewhere and Bucky doesn't know if he's coming back. Or if he does come back what state he'll be in...

It's tripping him up, pulling back some of the worst coping mechanisms he'd had since the beginning, withdrawing into himself whenever there's no one there to keep him engaged. It's better, really, because if he didn't Bucky is sure he'll wind up hurting someone or trying something foolish. Things will just get worse.

Peggy Carter seems to come out of nowhere. It's like he blinks one moment and then there she is, filling up the empty space in front of him. Her words are an order and some part of Bucky gratefully thinks finally as he stands up, nodding wordlessly to show that he's in agreement.

Good. He listens to her. Many people tend to listen to her because she has a commanding presence, but now would have been a bad time to need to convince him.

She waits until they're down at the gym and on the mat before she kicks off her shoes and takes off her scarf, bearing her scar without even caring that it's visible. "No strikes to the eyes. Let's avoid needing to go to the hospital." No other limits. She doesn't want any other limits. She barely wants to put those limits on, like going blind and shattered ribs would make the pain go away.

She sinks down in a proper defensive stance. "Let's begin."

He has no reason to want to disobey now, in fact he every reason to want to, as Carter offers him at least a temporary escape from his feelings of helplessness. No, not helpless, useless. Bucky is useless when his friend needs him most.

All he gives Carter is a nod to show he understands and is in agreement with the rules. No broken bones, no cracked ribs, no dislocations... maybe. He'll try not to at any rate. There'd still be time for him to heal before the next arena, not that he is thinking of that right now.

No, Bucky doesn't even bother with a stance. Carter says begin and he just launches himself forwards, striking out with his fists for her face and her shoulder, drops down and kicks his leg out at her ankle.

She doesn't fight like she did before, which was light and calculated. Now, she fights like a woman possessed.

He clips her shoulder and he hits like a brick--it puts her momentarily off balance, pain bursts from the point of contact, but it feels good in its intensity--but she ducks the strike to the face and only just pulls her ankle away from his kick, and she uses the opportunity to move to knee him in the stomach. She moves to punch him in the face with the arm his fist had clipped previously, deliberately picking the motion that would hurt her and perhaps catch him off guard since he would expect her to favor the other arm.

The message that this isn't going to to be a healthy fight is driven home when he doesn't move to block her fist. Bucky let's the blow hit him, let's the pain bloom across his cheek and in his stomach as he snatches for Carter, using all his strength to hurl across the mat.

This is how the Soldier fought, with no concern for his own wellbeing beyond being able to complete the mission. It still takes him a moment to recover from the stomach blow but then he's striding after Peggy once again.

She's thrown, and it hurts, but she's quick about getting back on her feet. Getting back on her feet will prolong the fight, and it's all that's keeping the feelings out of her head right now.

So she keeps doing it. No matter how many times he hits her, even when bruises bloom and her mouth starts to bleed, she keeps going at him again, lashing out with fists and nails and yanking his hair and punching at his throat.

Now there's blood on her chin and a bruise on her cheek and her muscles are beginning to shake with the abuse, but she still runs at him again, aiming another fist at his face.

It hurts, it hurts and that's good. He has rules to follow and a goal to attain and maybe for a blessed time he can just not think. His body takes control, with moves that have been ingrained by years of use into the very fibres of his being.

Sometimes, though he'd never say it, never really think it beyond a small wish when he's at his worst with the emotions and memories of becoming a person again, Bucky misses the Asset's certainty of purpose. He never had to question, never had to worry except to obey. It was simple as much as it was horrifying. It's a terrible thought to even briefly entertain.

He doesn't think about it, that's the point of this. Bucky fights Carter until he's panting for breath, bruises blooming across his body and blood tracking down from his mouth over his chin the same as it is on hers. He can taste the familiar metallic tang of it in his mouth. This is almost over, any further and they will do each other serious injury.

Bucky grab the wrist of the hand she throws at him, twists it at the same time as he knocks Carter's feet from under her. He means to go down and pin her but as he does his knee flares up with pain from she struck him earlier and what Bucky actually ends up doing is an awkward slip to side, ending with him landing heavily on the mat.

Peggy goes down. Barnes immediately goes down after her with a thud that shakes the mat. She tries to force herself to stand, tries to keep going, because it's never enough and she has to keep fighting or the memories will rush back and she'll think of the off-world Steve and then her Steve and how much she misses him and there never seems to be a chance to say goodbye to the people she loves--

She tries to push herself to her hands and knees, but her elbows won't support her weight. She slams down on the mat, her arms too numb from exhaustion to really cushion her fall. The plastic sticks uncomfortably to her sweaty skin, and for a moment, she just pants, her throat raw from fighting and the bottled up screams she can never release.

"I think..." It hurts to talk. It hurts to breathe. It burns her throat when the air rushes through, and she can't help but love how the pain keeps the memories away. "I think we'll call this one a draw."

She weakly nudges one hand (absolutely raw and torn apart, knuckles skinned and bleeding) forward and pats his bicep, probably mottled with bruises under his clothes. "Good show." Maybe an avox can be convinced to roll them somewhere out of the way. She's not sure how else they're leaving the mat.

He bites back any sound he wants to make, unable to trust what that sound will be. Steve, Steve in a cage, Steve being tortured, Steve being executed while he's forced to sit uselessly on his hands. Bucky's not convinced it wouldn't be a sob if he let it out.

His metal is underneath him when he lands and that hurts too, a final burst of pain as vulnerable flesh crushes against unyielding metal. Without his enhancements it hurts and will continue to hurt him as much as it would anyone else. Bucky can't even try to get up or maybe he doesn't want to, maybe he just wants to bleed out here on the mat and disappear into his own head, far away from the pain of his existence.

It feels pathetic, he feels pathetic. Bucky's mind wanders to what his handlers would have said to him -- they would have hurt him worse before they dragged him back to the chair to be reset.

"Agreed." he manages to say once the words filter in. Everything aches in pleasant way and he focuses on that pain, feels every inch of his beaten body the way he never did before. Relishing pain is new.

It takes him a few more minutes before he can even make a start at raising himself up on his elbow, the servos in the arm whirring tirelessly.

She could feel his misery radiating from him. She's been through this before--the pain of losing someone you love, of not knowing what fate awaits them beyond that it was bad, of feeling like you should have been able to save them... but she's had a lot of time to cover her heart in layers upon layers of ice and calluses. She will have nightmares and it will hurt, but she will carry it on with a smile, and no one will be the wiser. His heart's still raw and vulnerable to pain like this. He doesn't know how to stand on his own two feet yet.

Perhaps he'll have to learn the way she did the day she lost everyone who ever supported her. The thought makes her unexpectedly sympathetic.

She turns her head when she finally hears the metal whir. It's really fascinating to see how the plates move to allow his 'skin' to expand and contract. "It must come in quite handy to have a limb that never tires. Must be difficult to maintain, though." She breathes, then tucks her elbows beneath her, propping herself up without straining her fatigued muscles.

"You have a little..." She touches her chin to indicate that he has blood on his own, but when her fingers come away red, she lets out a soft, humorless bark. "Oh. I do too." She gently wipes the blood on the back of her hand, not quite getting it all. "We're quite the sight."

It's easier to drown out the memories when there are pain and noise. So she speaks, and she rubs her chin clean a little more forcefully than necessary.

"Yes..." Bucky made it up onto his knees, leaning heavily on his metal limb for support. "It is." he stares down at it for a long moment. "But it hurts without my enhancements." to say nothing of the maintenance needed on the arm. Stark helped him a little but Bucky was certain that if not for his captors resets on him it would have suffered more by now.

With a slow blink he touches his chin with his fingers, staring down as they come away red, he just nods and let's the rest of it sit on his face as he wipes his hand clean upon the mat. He can clean up properly later, right now he doesn't really care to make himself presentable.

Bucky watches though and as he does it occurs to him that the timing of this bout, the ferocity of Carter's own attack... it seems more than just offering him an outlet for his emotions. It seems like there's something upsetting her too.

"Yeah, we are." his hair is half-tumble loose around his face. "Why'd you ask me for this, Peggy?" it slips, Carter to Peggy, formal to familiar with unconscious ease.

"Yes, I suppose having a metal weight attached to one's shoulder would make it a touch sore after a while."

She looks at his face, getting ready to brush him off, to lie, to do what she does best--but her first name rolls off his tongue easily, and he's there with bright blue eyes on her and suddenly she's sixteen again, collapsed on the floor of her own gym in her basement with Bucky sitting next to her, asking her what made her tear her body apart that night.

"I had a friend once." The truth flows out of her for him just as easily as it would have for that concerned boy from so long ago. "His name was Steve. He was a skinny, sickly boy who liked to get into fights with people twice his size. He was an idiot, but he was my idiot, and I cared for him very much. One day, he was gone, and I didn't have a chance to say goodbye."

It hurts to speak. It hurts more than just her throat--it hurts her chest as well. Her eyes remain dry as bone. These wounds have callused over too.

"Then years later, I look at the network, and the exact same face and voice with an entirely wrong body is saying goodbye, and it feels like I've lost him all over again. Utterly irrational, but there you are." The present filters back to her. The Training Center. The occasional tribute cycling through stations. The fact that this isn't the concerned boy from years ago, but a grown man and an utter stranger to her. She wants to tuck herself under his arm and huddle for comfort like she had years ago with a boy who looked like him, but she also wants to punch him again for making her feel safe and honest where there’s no safety to be had and honesty can get her killed.

She looks away from his face and down at her hands, red from her blood and his. "I knew you were very close to him. I thought we could help each other."

A touch sore is one way to put it. Strenuous use aggravates the mangled scar tissue around the prosthesis fiercely and then there's the strain on his muscles as he tries to compensate for extra weight on one side. It's a weakness he tries hard not to telegraph to anyone. Strange then that he just told Peggy about it so easily.

Peggy starts to talk and it only takes a few moments for Bucky to become enraptured. The pain dissolves for a moment, cut out of awareness as he stares at her intently, hanging on every word. He knows this story, it's almost his story in different words.

"He used to be smaller." he mumbles, mostly to himself.

"I thought you were dead."

"I thought you were smaller."

Bucky suddenly feels stupid, "There was... in District 10." there was a Steve Rogers born in this world, just as there was a Bucky Barnes and why did he ever think that wouldn't be? Peggy Carter though, he bites his lip, tears the wound anew just for a fresh burst of grounding pain before he can run too far into his own thoughts. Who is she? "He's my best friend."

He thinks he sounds like a child, small and unlike himself. Bucky can't use the past-tense to talk about Steve, he won't admit there's no chance of Steve coming back. It's Steve, he has to. He always fights through.

She wants to keep looking at her hands. Wants to avoid eye contact. She finds herself turning her head to look at him anyway, at the sad blue eyes and messy hair and bloodied face.

It was a bad idea to engage with him at all. She should have turned him down for that first sparring match and walked away. Would she ever have been able to, though?

It's hard to do everything alone. After eight years of it, she's tired.

"That seems to be a universal constant." It slips out, but she can't bring herself to care. Bucky and Steve, best friends forever. That would always be true across the worlds, even in death.

She had known her Bucky, too, but she wouldn't say it unless he put it together or asked. Instead, she raised one hand, letting it hover near his back. "May I?"

If he was admitting that something hurt, then it must hurt a lot. She was very familiar with injuries from muscle strain, and she was used to rubbing herself until the pain lessened, but now she wanted to relieve his pain somewhat.

It's more than that, so much more. He can't say express it to her how much Steve has done for him, how much he matters to him. If it weren't for Steve the Winter Soldier would still be the man sitting here now, ready to kill regardless of age, sex or creed the moment the order was given. He's the reason Bucky's not a complete monster still instead of only half of one.

There's something very reassuring about hearing that their friendship is universal, even when its doomed. Morbid but cheering all the same.

He doesn't know what he'll do if the confirmation ever comes that his Steve is dead like the one born in this universe apparently is. Bucky already wanted to turn back and slaughter every Peacekeeper in his way when he knew Steve was captured, if they've killed him... it's better he not think about it.

Bucky has questions he wants to ask, about her, about her Steve, but he's wary in this place where camera's and microphone's watch over their every word and movement. What he says instead harkens back to her words over seeing his Steve say goodbye on the network, "It's not irrational, it's Steve." Steve had an effect on everyone, he was like that, as much a force of nature as he was a man.

He hesitates as Peggy asks, then slowly bows his head in a single nod. His head turns, keeping watch, waiting to see what it is she's planning to do.

"Hmm." It's soft. Sad, but amused. "I suppose I can't argue with that."

Steve had a way of affecting everyone around him. He never saw it, never realized how special he was. She wishes she had thought to tell him before they took him away. Anyone would be irrational for Steve, and it would be entirely rational in consequence. He made people be the best they could be.

But he's gone, and now she expects his counterpart will be gone too. The Capitol does not suffer treason lightly, and he's been giving them trouble consistently for a while. They would have paraded him around if they had avoxed him, so either they're going to brainwash him the way they did with the blond man who killed him in the last arena or they've already killed him.

Or maybe they're just saving him for a show.

She banishes the thoughts from her mind because it makes her think of what they probably did to her Steve. (She likes to think they killed him quickly. It wasn't him they were angry at. It was Bucky. She likes to think they shot him in the head before he had a chance to understand what was happening.)

She ghosts her fingers against his back. She can feel the metal under his shirt, and she can feel the mottled scar tissue where it transitions into skin. She gives that a few cursory strokes. Her scars ache sometimes, and she's sure that his do too, but it's hard to properly massage them with cloth in the way.

Then she moves on to his back, all knotted up with stress and the strain of having a weight on one side of his body. It's clear that she's done this before--she finds the knots and gently kneads them out, meticulously targeting the areas that he would most strain by keeping balance. She keeps an eye on his face, gauging his reaction just in case she should withdraw her hand quickly.

He knows she understands what he means then. Steve Rogers is a man who get through to a brainwashed assassin, someone who had his mind ripped inside out more times than he could count, with just words when everyone else would have failed. Seventy years of HYDRA indoctrination had begun to crumble the moment the Soldier came face to face with him.

It's not surprising that he, still barely remembering his past life, had latched onto him. First as a replacement Handler, then in recognition of as a friend once he understood what it was to have friends. Now he's facing the downside of making connections, the pain that will come with losing them...

Bucky is stiff under her touch as first and when she puts real pressure on his back he audibly hisses before biting down on the sound. Pain should not be acknowledged, pain is nothing. Those lessons are part of what have helped him keep going as the wear on his muscles gets progressively worse in the time after every resurrection.

No one has ever done this for him before. He actually doesn't understand exactly what it is Peggy is attempting to do, until her hands press on the right places, knead into sore muscles and miraculously he feels them loosen, the stiffness draining away under her knowing fingers. Bucky bites his lip, stays quite, but turns his head away, lets it drop and his eyes almost close.

It's helping.

She tsks softly under her breath as he hisses and she feels all the knots in his back. "You haven't been taking particularly good care of yourself."

There's no bite in the scolding, however. Peggy can hardly judge anyone for not taking care of themselves, considering how she runs her own body into the ground. She's slow, meticulous, and very careful to find each knot and gently work it out. She's still fatigued from their spar, but she has enough strength to do this much.

Maybe she should refer him to a professional massage therapist. It doesn't seem like her place to do it, considering he's not from her District, and she's not sure if he would be comfortable with a stranger touching him. Considering his reputation within the arena, it's already worthy of note that he allowed her to touch him outside of a spar.

For the moment, she'll just focus on her work. She can almost imagine she's doing it for her Bucky after a long day, except not even days of labor put this kind of muscle strain on one side of the back like this. It's nice to be able to do something nice for someone and not expect to be taken advantage of for it.

"I've managed." he says, in weak defence of the statement.

By all accounts she's right, but he takes better care of himself than he did in the beginning at least, when he wasn't used to the idea of taking care of himself at all. He used to have technicians and doctors to direct him and do all that for him. It was a bite of a sharp shock to suddenly be responsible for his own wellbeing after that.

This though, the mess in his muscles, that is something he's neglected. Bucky is completely unwilling to see doctors, especially the one in the Tribute Tower. That woman looked at him the same way some of the HYDRA doctors did, like she wanted to pull him open to see what was inside. Normal Capitolite's saw them as subhuman, he was fairly sure she didn't see them as human at all.

He had friends with medical experience to be sure, but it seemed an unnecessary thing to add to their concerns when he knew how to bear it himself. Bucky could deal with pain in the face of necessity, after all, he'd had long practice at it. Yet with every loosening muscle in his back, every piece of tension dissolved under her skilled fingers, he is tempted to reconsider that option.

It's strange how quickly he's trusted her to touch him when it had taken others weeks, even months to earn that permission.

"We all manage, darling." The little pet name slips out. She doesn't even notice she says it. All she notices is that he's in good company, full of people who manage but never really manage well.

She can feel it in his back that he's relaxing. She feels like she's back in District 10, tending to cattle and coming across the stray barn cats. Some people of District 10, the ones who weren't lucky enough to have jobs like her family did, would try to grab the cats off the street for their meat, and so they became good at avoiding people. Peggy would always leave a little water out for them, sometimes even scraps of offal from the butchers if they could be spared or were unfit for human consumption. Their reward was to allow her to cautiously pet them, and they would always be tense under her hand until they slowly began to lie down and just purr sleepily while she pet, and it was only because they trusted her not to eat them in desperation. The thought of this grown man as a barn cat makes her smile in amusement.

"There. That feels better, doesn't it?" She still works at his back because there's still more work to be done, but she can already feel that there's a difference.

She rests her cheek on her unused arm. The sweat is drying on her skin, making it briny and her hair frizz. She'll shower later. "Do you think you could teach me how to do some of the things you do on the mat some time?" Maybe it's unfair to ask for training while she's rubbing his back--the average person will agree to murder if you ask while rubbing their back--but it isn't as if she'll stop if he chooses not to teach her, and she might as well ask while she has him sitting still. "I could teach you something in return."

If someone ever told Bucky they thought of him as an oversized barn cat he might have privately come to agree with them. The description was pretty fitting, most anyone who knew him would surely agree.

Bucky's shoulders sink lower and lower, until all the tension bleeds out of him. In the wake of the intense spar and now this he feels tired, ready almost to curl and sleep right where he is, if that were possible. He could never sleeping in the open of course, not surrounded by other people. It isn't helped by the fact that Bucky hasn't slept a wink since Steve was taken, not that his sleeping patterns were great to begin with. The nightmares were always waiting for him, they'd only get worse now.

"It does. Thank you, I--" his breath hitches a moment when she hits a particular spot, a small flash of pain before relief floods through the spot. "I've never had this done before."

He manages to lift his head to look back at Peggy again, blinking slowly at the question before he finds himself already starting to nod. She's helped him, offered him an out for his pain that no one else would (would maybe even call unhealthy) and more than that he thinks he wants to, without any feeling of obligation. Bucky likes sparring with Peggy, it shouldn't be hard to bring a teaching element to that as well. "What would you teach me?"

"I can tell." It looks like he could just fall asleep right there, curled up with her rubbing his back. The barn cats often looked that way too, with how they relaxed. Like the barn cats, though, she doubts that he would ever let his guard down enough to sleep anywhere a stranger could reach him. "There are professionals who do this. Friends are usually willing to do it too, but the quality can be a little more variable that way."

She supposes that she herself wouldn't really mind doing this again too. There's something very nice about seeing a person usually so tense relax under her hand.

"Well, I could teach you all sorts of things. How to milk a cow, how to ride a horse, how to kiss a woman..." She smiles, amusement in her eyes making it clear that she's just teasing him. "But all that may be rather useless within the Capitol, so why don't I teach you... how does dancing sound?"

It goes without saying he's not about to let a stranger put their hands on him like this either.

"Pretty sure I might remember one of those." he's relaxing and it helps him speak easier, less stilted, with just a trace of Brooklyn colouring his words as he responds to that teasing. "I don't think a city boy would know the other two."

Certainly he can't envision Hydra ever having a need to teach him how to milk a cow or ride a horse. His missions didn't tend to be long term, or involve areas that would require either task. Of course with his memory he couldn't be one hundred percent sure about that.

"Dancing." he repeats after a moment. Bucky knows that he used to dance, that he used to love to dance. He can't remember it. "What kind of dancing?"

"Mmm, I'm sure you would. With a face like that, the girls probably lined up." She instinctively moves her free arm to cover her mouth when she smiles. It's something she tends to do when her smiles aren't fake. The thought of her Bucky in the big city makes her want to snicker and go to D13 to tease him about it, but she can't do that for so many reasons, so she can tease this Bucky instead. "City boys. Always think they're too good for farm life. Typical."

Who is too good to let a cow whip them in the face with a tail while they clean their udders or have a horse surreptitiously try eating their hair while they're distracted?

"Well, I know many kinds. Some come from the Capitol and some come from District 10. I think the Capitol styles would be more useful for you. Maybe you'd stand a chance of getting a friend to dance with you and looking busy during one of those awful parties they love throwing so much. It'd cut down on the random fans trying to talk to you." Can you tell she's used this strategy before? "I'll show you some and then we can pick out the one you'd like to learn first. How does that sound?"

(She remembers dancing with her Bucky. In groups or just the two of them. She remembers bare feet on the grass and his laughter and the music that they both had to hum.)

Now that the knots are as gone as she can make them with her position and current level of post-spar strength, the back rub turns more into lazy strokes with the occasional massage for a particularly fatigued muscle. It really does feel like she's dealing with one of the barn cats.

Maybe, in some future that will or won't exist, he thinks he has a recipe now for how he'd like his life to. No orders, no killing, good food and a back massage every week. It's a dream he doesn't allow himself to think about very much because it's futile (he knows what he's good for after all) but it still grows now and then, small and cautious inside him.

It's human to dream, so that's a nice thought.

He may not have even seen the countryside until basic, if Steve's stories about picnics in graveyards when they were children just to see a bit of greenery are anything to go by don't think about Steve. Not that he remembers basic, only knows it must have happened and it probably wouldn't have happened in the middle of a city. He puts the puzzle together with guesses sometimes, logic, when he doesn't have the facts or the memory.

"You said the magic words." he almost trips, almost says something else on the end of it. Doll except he knows with a certainty that Peggy Carter wouldn't appreciate that, no ma'am. "Dancing it is."

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