ready to comply

[semi_stable]

[cw: descriptions of a panic attack, mentions of PTSD]


Things have been going very well for Bucky as of late, so it's no real surprise when he's suddenly knocked on his ass again. That's how it goes, after all. That's his story. That's how it always goes.

This time, all he's doing is walking down the street. He's smiling, almost even laughing, sipping at an iced coffee. He's talking with a friend, gesturing with his prosthetic hand, ungloved and visible to anyone who looks at him, and anyone who did wouldn't even be able to tell how broken he is.

Because he is broken. He always will be in some way or another. His brain was taken apart and put back together over and over again, scrambled and reformed, and he'll never be healed from that, not completely. Not to mention all the trauma and abuse, decades of it, and he can have a few good months but he'll never be totally free.

This is proven to him as he's walking past some sort of street fair out in front of his building. It's noisy, with people milling about and several different radios tuned to different stations drowning each other out. They suddenly all go quiet, music and talking replaced with an eerie, quiet static.

Longing.

The word makes Bucky go still, face draining of color. It's a low, commanding male voice speaking in Russian, and Bucky feels a little like he might throw up.

Rusted.

It's coming from every radio, even one from a car passing by, windows rolled down to take advantage of the nice day. It's coming from everywhere and Bucky's coffee falls from his hand, plastic cracking as it breaks against the pavement. "No."

Furnace.

"No, no, no, please," Bucky pleads in Russian, reaching up to put his hands over his ears. It's so unexpected to hear his trigger words that he forgets for a moment that he's supposed to have been cured of them, rewired during his time in Wakanda. But then he remembers, and it doesn't help. Whoever is behind this place has proven how powerful they are, and who's to say that they didn't undo that, too?

Daybreak.

It's getting louder now, more forceful, and Bucky lets out a panicked shout as he stumbles backwards, breathing heavily and shaking his head. He's flooded so suddenly with adrenaline, like ice water being dumped over his head, and he can hear his heart beating. Air gets stuck in his chest and he can't breathe, and while he recognizes the signs of a panic attack, he can't seem to make it stop. He's too terrified of what might be about to happen to do anything but panic.

Seventeen.

"No, no, not again," he chokes out, turning to run into the lobby of his building to try and get away from it, only to find that they're playing in there too, pumping tinnily out of a speaker in the corner. He chokes out a sob and sinks to the floor, pushing himself back into a corner and covering his ears. Someone follows after him and Bucky holds out his hand. "Stop! Stay back."

Benign.

There are four more. Only four more words until Bucky finds out of the switch in his brain will be flipped, if he'll climb to his feet and stand at attention. Four more words until this city finds out if the Winter Soldier is ready to comply.





[Help him. Have your pup be the person he was walking with and/or the one who finds him in the lobby. Despite his fears, the trigger words will not do anything because he's still cured, but he's still going through one hell of a PTSD episode.]

Comments

[thewrongpath]

"I'll stay," Loki decided, slipping his hands through Bucky's hair, reluctant to leave him but also reluctant to leave this bed.

"I'll tidy up, don't you worry," he teased, feeling pleasantly exhausted himself. If not for the dog, he imagined they might have curled up and gone to sleep right there, Bucky's head in his lap, bellies full and hearts content. It was the type of moment he might've once sneered at himself for, but now, he honestly couldn't remember why. The vulnerability of opening himself up to the possibility of this was terrifying, but had been worth it so far.

Perhaps that would all change. It might all come crashing down around them. But for now, Loki simply didn't care.

[semi_stable]

"Solid plan," Bucky sighs out, but he doesn't move. For a long moment, he just lays there, relaxing with his head in Loki's lap. He feels warm and safe and full, and he doesn't want to leave this spot. But Bopp is more important than his comfort, so he gets up with a groan and rolls off of the bed, leaning over to press a kiss to Loki's cheek.

"Time for a walk," Bucky calls out, and Bopp pops up onto her feet and dances in a few excited circles before taking off down the hallway. Bucky chuckles and pulls on a t-shirt and some sneakers before looking over at Loki. It all seems ridiculously domestic, and he likes it. More surprisingly, Loki seems to like it, too. "Be right back, honey."

He winks and leaves the room, gathering Bopp's leash and hooking it to her collar before leaving the apartment. As much as he wants to rush back, he spends some time with her in the park, tossing a ball across the length of it a few times to burn off some of her energy. Things with Loki and Sylvie are exciting and new, taking up a lot of his time, but he doesn't ever want to neglect Bopp.

Once she seems drained, they head back home and Bucky lets her off the leash once they're back inside. He locks the door behind him and smiles at their trash from dinner before shoving it down into the can and washing his hands. He gives Bopp a treat and she crunches on it as they walk down the hallway, turning off the lights.

"We're back," Bucky says as he enters the bedroom, leaving the door open for Bopp. As he strips back down to his sweats, Bopp goes over to Loki to demand some pets. "Did you miss us terribly?"

[thewrongpath]

As promised, Loki did a bit of tidying. Aided by magic, of course. Still, he searched out a set of clean sheets, because surprisingly, using magic to switch one for the other was a simpler, more efficient spell than trying to clean the others.

Most assumed that the magic cost him nothing, but it did require quite a lot of energy, along with the skill and will to wield it. He would admit fully that it wasn't the same type of labor as doing it all by hand, but he expended more to take care of himself now than he ever had in the palace, with its endless parade of staff.

By the time Bucky and Bopp returned, he was sitting atop clean sheets, flipping idly through a book he'd found on the shelf in Bucky's living room. "Oh, you know me. I soldiered on," Loki drawled, scratching behind Bopp's ears as she'd commanded.

"How did the two of you fair? Were you bereft without me?"

[semi_stable]

"Completely," Bucky replies easily, smirking over at him as he pauses in the bathroom door, doing a bit of a double take. Loki is sitting up in his bed, long legs stretched out across navy blue sheets, head bowed as he reads a book. The sight makes him feel-- well, the only word that comes to mind is cozy. It's unfamiliar and warm and Bucky smiles to himself as he heads into the bathroom.

He relieves himself and then washes his hands, quickly brushing his teeth before heading back into the bedroom. With an exhausted huff, he falls forward onto his stomach next to Loki, pulling himself forward with his elbows before going limp. "I see you made yourself at home."

[thewrongpath]

"Would you rather I not?" Loki murmured with a faint smirk, turning a page of the book, which he was quite obviously no longer paying attention to. It was a dog-eared, paperback copy of Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely, most likely purchased secondhand.

He cut Bucky a look, eyes bright but desperately soft, his bare toes nudging against Bucky's ankle. "Drifting off already?"

[semi_stable]

"No, I don't mind," Bucky says easily, which means a lot coming from him. He went so long without any privacy at all and now he's very protective of it, but certain people are allowed some wiggle room. This apartment might not feel like home, not even to him, but he wants Loki to feel comfortable there.

"What can I say? You wore me out," Bucky drawls, teasingly stroking Loki's ego as he shifts to lay on his side, eyes half-lidded as he smiles up at Loki. "Shop's closed for the night, pal."

He laughs a little and tucks a pillow under his head, letting himself take advantage of the calm that was rubbed into him by Loki's hand, fucked into him by his cock. He feels pampered, safe, and he knows it can't last, but he's happy to have felt it for a little while.

[thewrongpath]

"The shop?" Loki laughed, setting the book aside on the bedside table and slumping lower on the pillows, his hands laced casually atop his own belly.

He stifled a yawn of his own, his own lids drooping as Bucky looked up at him with that sleepy, contented smile.

"It's been a long day," Loki acknowledged, knuckles brushing the curve of Bucky's shoulder. "You ought to get some sleep."

[semi_stable]

"If you say so," Bucky murmurs, as if it's entirely Loki's idea to have him in bed right now. He smiles s little at the touch to his shoulder and then closes his eyes, taking a deep breath and relaxing. He falls asleep almost immediately, which is a testament to just how worn out he is.

For a couple hours, he sleeps uninterrupted and doesn't dream at all, but then somewhere in the distance a car backfires and the sound of it worms its way into Bucky's subconscious. Maybe that's what triggers the nightmare, or maybe it's nothing but his own mind turning on him.

Bucky had known that the peace wouldn't last, but the darkness comes for him so swiftly, almost as if it's enraged to have been kept at bay. The dream changes from Bucky being woken up, to that bone deep, icy chill, to Bucky being tortured, being brainwashed, having his life zapped away. And over all of it are those words.

And then the dream changes and Bucky, no-- the Winter Soldier, is walking through a ballroom, glittering glass crunching under his feet as he sweeps his weapon back and forth. He's checking for survivors, for witnesses, and even though he's supposed to be a blank slate, emotionless, he finds himself hoping that there aren't any.

No such luck. There's a girl in a green dress cowering under a table, and he can't tell if she's someone's daughter or someone's too-young date, but it doesn't matter. She's seen him, so she has to be eliminated.

"Please! Please, no. I'm not even supposed to be here. I won't say any--"

He pulls the trigger. It isn't a dream but a memory, a new one, and Bucky stiffens in his sleep, brow drenched with sweat. "No, no, no."

In the dream, another bang. Out loud, he yells, gasping out a sob.

[thewrongpath]

Loki slept, having turned over onto his stomach in the night, the sheets puddled around them both, their bodies curled close to one another without touching. He wasn't certain for how long he'd slept, deep and largely dreamless, when suddenly he was wide awake, staring into the darkness of Bucky's bedroom, his heartbeat lurching in his chest.

At first, he wasn't aware of what had roused him, and sitting upright, he peered into the darkness, moments away from retrieving a knife to defend them both. Then, he heard a low, mournful groan, Bucky's body clammy with sweat and ripcord tense at his side.

Loki startled when Bucky let out another anguished shout, his heart nearly leaping into his throat when the bed suddenly dipped, Bopp jumping softly onto the mattress and shoving herself bodily between them.

"Alright," he murmured to her, the bedside lamp flicking on with a surge of magic. "It's alright."

[semi_stable]

For a long moment, Bucky feels stuck somewhere between asleep and awake, paralyzed and stuck behind the mask, trapped under ice, and he can't move. There's a pressure against his chest, firm and warm, but it's the voice that wakes him up.

Bucky lets out a startled yelp as his eyes open and he suddenly sits up, chest heaving as he sucks in deep, ragged breaths. Bopp is there like she always is when this happens, pressing firmly against him, and he lets out a helpless sob as he curls his good arm around her.

It's only then that he remembers that he wasn't alone and he looks over at Loki with a hitched breath, pushing back to crowd against the headboard like a frightened animal.

[thewrongpath]

"Bucky," Loki murmured, shifting to face the other man, his legs folded up beneath himself and his hands held where Bucky could see them.

"It's only me. You're alright," he murmured, his voice pitched to a low rumble. Judging by the darkness outside, it was late, well past midnight, but still, he heard a car drive past, breaking through the eerie quiet.

Loki reached for him, but hesitated, his palm hovering just inches from Bucky's heaving chest.

[semi_stable]

For a panicked moment, he doesn’t look like Bucky at all. His eyes are wild and blank, the eyes of the Winter Soldier, and he stares at Loki for a bit, almost uncomprehending.

But then everything comes back to him in a rush and, aided by Bopp licking at his hand and pressing her furry body against his side. And also by Loki, voice quiet and hand outstretched. Bucky stares at it, lip quivering, and then squeezes his eyes shut and knocks his head back against the wall a few times, burying his face in his hands.

“Fuck,” he breathes out shakily, keeping his face covered with his metal hand as he reaches out blindly toward Loki with the other.

[thewrongpath]

"Okay," Loki murmured, shuffling closer, palm resting against the furious beating of Bucky's heart while he sought out Bucky's grasping hand with the other.

He felt uncharacteristically clumsy, leaning awkwardly over the dog, who seemed determined to remain wedged between them. She was stubbornly and dutifully doing the job she was trained for, and any implication that Loki might also be needed would've been a grave insult.

Or perhaps he was projecting too much sentience onto a dog.

Drawing Bucky's hand against his chest, Loki pressed it over the slightly calmer beating of his own heart and said, "Just breathe, James. I'm right here."

[semi_stable]

Another time, he might have found watching Loki and Bopp vie for space at his side deeply amusing. Now, he just lifts Bopp easily with his metal arm and sets her down on his other side, where she resumes pressing against him, tail thumping at his thigh as she presses her wet nose behind his ear. He keeps his arm around her and nearly whimpers when Loki lets go of his hand, but then he realizes what he's doing and swallows hard, resting his palm over Loki's heart.

He forces himself to take a slow breath and then another, trying to calm himself rather than give into the burning sort of rage that he feels in his chest, clamoring for top spot alongside crushing despair. He'd known that the peace wouldn't last, but he thought he might at least get a night, just one night. But he didn't, and why should he?

"I remembered something," he pants out, swallowing hard as he meets Loki's eyes. "She was practically a kid. She was innocent."

[thewrongpath]

Loki shifted closer, holding Bucky's hand to his chest, the other sliding up to curve gently along the side of Bucky's neck.

"So were you," Loki said, realizing a bit too late that it might not have been what he'd wanted to hear, even though it was true. Loki was the last person in the world to make value judgments about that sort of thing, but while he wouldn't insult Bucky so far as to take away all his responsibility, he knew the other man was as much a victim as all the people he'd been used to murder.

[semi_stable]

The words make him flinch a little, teeth gritting, and he huffs out a breath as he looks away from Loki. Steve had said something similar once, that he wasn't in control of himself, that it wasn't his fault. Even coming from two people he cares so deeply about, it isn't much of a comfort, and he says now what he said then.

"But I still did it," he says helplessly, jaw working as he turns his gaze back on Loki. Months of therapy can't erase what it felt like to have the gun in his hands, to watch the life drain out of his target's eyes over and over again. He can't stop thinking that he should have fought harder. He should have been stronger. "They're all still dead because of me."

[thewrongpath]

"I know. You have to live with that, and it's a burden you'll continue to carry, but Bucky, what if it had been the other way around? What if she'd been the one they captured? Tortured. Brainwashed. What if they'd put a gun in her hands? Would she be at fault? Would she be a murderer?"

Bucky looked him dead in the eyes, defiant in the need to shoulder blame for what had been done to him, and Loki looked right back.

"I imagine you'd feel quite differently, then."

[semi_stable]

"She would be a murderer," Bucky tells him, but he goes quiet at the rest of it. He's irritated by Loki's attempt at logic, and he swallows hard as he looks away. He thinks of Natasha, and learning how she'd gone through something similar. They had tried to kill each other at some point, both of them brainwashed and trained to end lives.

She was a murderer, and she sacrificed herself to save the world. He takes a breath and glares at Loki, but there's very little heat in it.

"Logic doesn't always work on emotions," he admits, because no, he wouldn't blame that girl. He shouldn't blame himself either, but he does. He can't seem to help it. "I can't make it go away."

[thewrongpath]

"Well, murder implies conscious intent," Loki countered evenly, brow arched, even in the face of Bucky's obvious irritation. He sighed, carefully studying Bucky's profile, his face pointedly turned away.

"Of course not. My apologies," Loki murmured, his hand sliding from Bucky's neck once again, settling once against to rub gently, soothingly along his sternum. "My only hope was that you could see yourself the way I see you, that's all."

[semi_stable]

"A killer," Bucky says, turning back to face Loki with a glower. They can argue the semantics all day, but Bucky killed those people. Whether he meant to or not, he's the reason that they're dead.

The fight seems to leave him as Loki rubs at his chest, and Bucky sags back against the headboard, jaw working as he swallows hard. There's a part of him that's resigned to this, certain that it will always be a part of him, but he's distracted from that dark train of thought by Loki speaking.

"And what way is that?" Bucky asks in a low, tired voice, because right now he's having a hard time coming up with reasons for Loki to still be here, soothing him like a child.

[thewrongpath]

Sighing, Loki paused a moment, collecting his thoughts.

"Well... I've watched you— the way you were on that island. The way you are with people in need. With children. Simply put, you're one of the good guys, Bucky. And I know it's not because of any need to atone or balance the scales. It's what you've always been. You were made to be a weapon, but that's not what you are," he explained, adding with a rueful smile, "I should know, because you're all the things I'm not. All the things I haven't been."

[semi_stable]

Bucky isn't really expecting such a thoughtful reply, and his lower lip wobbles as he watches Loki speak. It's everything that he wants to believe about himself and he swallows hard, blowing out a breath as he reaches out to put his hand on Loki's shoulder.

"Are you saying that I'm a good example?" He jokes weakly, mostly because he feels like he's about to cry and he really doesn't want to do that. "I guess you'll have to keep me around, then."

[thewrongpath]

"I am. It's awful," Loki teased, lifting his hand briefly from Bucky's chest to thumb gently at his trembling chin. "And yet, I have no intention of letting you go."

Shifting to settle against Bucky's side, Loki slipped an arm around his shoulder, lips pressed to Bucky's brow and a hand resting over the beat of his heart.

"Hearing those words again... I imagine it's going to take a bit of time to shake," Loki acknowledged, his lips pressed into a mournful smile.

[semi_stable]

“Well, I do like rubbing off on you,” Bucky jokes weakly, sniffing a bit as he lets Loki reel him in close. He shifts down a bit and rests his head on Loki’s shoulder, lifting his arm as Bopp moves to lay across their laps, nose tucked between their bodies.

“Good. I’d hate it if you did,” admits quietly, turning to press a kiss to Loki’s jaw as he strokes Bopp between the ears, breathing in deeply and feeling his chest lift under Loki’s palm. “Probably, but I’ve been getting them since I escaped.”

[thewrongpath]

Chuckling softly, Loki returned the kiss with a warm press of lips to Bucky's brow. They both settled against him, Bucky tucked safely against his side and Bopp a warm, unfamiliar weight across his thighs. It was terribly domestic, but he found he didn't mind quite so much.

"Are they always so intense?" Loki murmured, lips pressed into a thin line. "No wonder you don't sleep."