A Feast of Scraps - A Captain America Fanfiction

Ch 3 - Dreams

The nightmares started that first night. Our bedrooms were upstairs, across the hall from each other and I was awake at the first sound he made. He thrashed and I heard the sheet tear as I slid out of bed. He was muttering, "Yes, yes, yes," as I assessed the security of the room and cautiously approached the bed.

"Buck, you're dreaming. Wake up."

His eyes flew open and he looked at me.

"You were having a nightmare. It's ok." I wanted to sit down on the bed but held back, giving him some space.

He shook his head wildly and his hair hung over his eyes. "No!" he shouted. He leapt up so fast into a crouch on the mattress that I barely had time to brace myself. He didn't fly at me though, but at the wall on the other side of the room, punching holes in the gyprock and growling like an animal. Next came the bedside table. It hit the wall beside me, splintering into chunks and then he hefted the lamp above his head.

I couldn't think what to do. His enhanced body wasn't taking any damage really. He could turn the rage on me, of course and that would hurt, but that wasn't my biggest concern. When he snapped out of this temper tantrum, he was going to feel like shit. The more damage he did, the worse he would feel. Besides, it was damn hard to get building supplies when you were trying to stay hidden in the middle of nowhere.

I jumped on his back, putting my arms under his and wrapping them up around his shoulders. I took out his knee with a swift kick and we fell heavily onto the mattress. "Hey," I shouted in his ear as he got ready to flip me off. "Don't you like the colour?"

He hesitated and I curled my legs around his, further immobilizing him. "I thought you liked green," I whispered. His body quivered as the spring loaded tension rippled out of him. "Your room is going to be a mess in the morning."

"Fuck," he muttered.

"I know," I whispered. "It was a really nice green."

"What the fuck are you talking about, Rogers?"

"Just normal life stuff. That lamp cost forty five dollars. Can you believe that? I still can't get used to how much things cost."

Bucky went completely limp under me. "If I stop being a lunatic, will you stop talking nonsense and get the hell off me?"

"Calmed you down, didn't it? I don't think either of us has had much normal in our lives for a long time."

"Well maybe you could have had some of that. Lived somewhere normal. Found some girl to go on dates with. But no, you had to let the freak out to ruin your life all over again."

"I hate to break it to you, but my life has never been about doing the normal thing. That's just not how I work."

Bucky rolled slowly to one side and I let him, loosening my hold ever so slightly. He curled up in a ball which meant I curled around him. "Oh no, you always have to do the right thing. Not the normal thing. I remember that damn well."

I sighed. The other guys bugged me about that too. As if having a set of morals was too old fashioned for them. God, that pissed me off. But with Bucky, it was more than that. In his eyes, he was the dark and I was the light. If there was a way to make him see that we weren't that different, well maybe he'd feel less alone. Less alone, that could mean less angry, less crazy.

"I'm going to tell you a secret," I said really softly. He didn't move but my forearm was across his chest and I felt him stop moving with each breath, waiting. "It was mostly selfish. Getting you out." I closed my eyes. "I mean yes, I wanted you to be free to get to live your life, and I didn't want the world to suffer if you fell into the wrong hands, but... mostly... it was for me."

He was silent for a long time and I wondered if he wasn't going to respond at all. I slowly loosened my grip on him. Should I leave him now? I wanted to. I didn't like this naked feeling of having him see me and my high moral ground slip. Would he think less of me? Maybe he should.

"Why?" he whispered.

I pressed my forehead into the back of his skull. "Buck, I'm alone. I'm so bloody alone here. But I don't just need someone I can trust. I need someone who can understand how damn complicated it can get for me. Not just being woken up in a whole new futuristic world, but what it means to have power that other people don't have. And then if I can find someone who could understand all of that, they also need to be able to survive me and all the violence that comes with the job."

Natasha kept telling me to live a little. All those dates she'd tried to set me up on? And even when the loneliness was awful, I was never tempted enough to pursue it. I couldn't share my life with someone who would undoubtedly get injured or killed at any moment. Sure, it wasn't fair to put anyone in that kind of danger. But the secret truth of it was that it wasn't fair to me either. I didn't want to live in that kind of fear. I'd already lost everyone once. I didn't want to do it again. If that meant living like a monk and devoting myself to my work, then that's what I would do.

But then work had gotten complicated. If I couldn't be sure that the missions I was sent on were legit or that I was being told the truth about what our mission was even about, well it meant that I couldn't be sure that my work actually made a difference. Alexander Pierce had gotten one thing right. If you want to build a new life, you have to be willing to tear the old one down. I was willing to do that, to go against SHIELD, even to go against my team for what was right, but I didn't want to live with the weight of the world all by myself anymore.

Bucky rolled in my arms until he was facing me. His eyes shone and I wondered if he could see as well in the dark as I could. "What about Natasha? What about the others?"

"They're good friends." Was it weird that I still had my hands on him?

"You trust them?"

I nodded. I should pull my hands off him. But he was warm and real and here, and it was so rare to have anyone touching me without trying to hurt me.

"But?" he said.

"But it's not enough. I need... someone who's on my side because of me, not just because I'm doing the right thing."

He frowned, "You want to know what my dream was about?" His face suddenly looked so lost, so defeated.

I nodded.

He rolled his head on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling. "It's like, I see the math. The trajectories. When I'm fighting, I just see exactly how one thing will rebound off another, exactly how far away something is. It's something they did to my brain."

I nodded once. "Ok, I have something like that too."

"My dream was about killing. It was about jumping and swinging and taking out a whole crowd of people. Every movement perfect. Like a dance."

I was glad I had my arms around him now. I held still, just listening.

"And I loved it. The efficiency, the power, the... grace. I felt so alive." He shuddered.

I pulled him closer, snugging the curve of his head under my chin and holding him hard. I knew that he had survived more horror and trauma than anyone I'd ever encountered before. I knew it haunted him, but did I really understand how deep that darkness ran?

"How can I live with that?" he whispered. "How can you?" He slid an arm around me and returned the embrace. "I'm sorry, Steve. I have to go back. I can't... be... enough for you."

"Bullshit," I said. "I don't need anything else."

He sighed. "You need everything else."

***

I hope you liked this chapter! 

Some love and hope, that's what these lost boys need. :)

<3 Michele