#and by “feeding” it he would be succumbing to a reality that doesn't exist.

[reapersmarch]

remember what the dormouse said.

[bubbletimestories]

Like a balm on frozen wounds (Bucky x Hydra nurse reader)

First of all, thank you @harlekin6 for the original idea. I'm sure it doesn't suits what you had in mind but I loved the idea of an HYDRA nurse taking care of Bucky so...thank you and lot of kisses.

Summary : What if you were an HYDRA nurse, taking care of Bucky as they try to turn him into a weapon ? What if you were his only spark of light and warmth in the painful darkness ?

Warning : maybe blood, pain, mention of torture, manipulation

Themes : hurt Bucky, HYDRA, healing, torture, comfort, love

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The ambient humidity makes the walls ooze, giving the impression that they are dripping with black, foul-smelling blood. The hour of glory is far away, the Führer is dead and they had to flee, hide far away in the mountains while waiting for less gloomy hours. In the stench of failed machinations and scientific manipulations, HYDRA continues its experiments in the hope of being ready for a new golden age. Screams tear the silence, an agony that never seems to end even though the person strapped to the table is more dead than alive. His forehead is dripping with sweat, his bones are burning, and his gaze is veiled and haggard like that of an ox at the slaughterhouse. Around him, men in soiled blouses talk, put away their instruments. It is still a failure, it will be necessary to do it again. The same scene seems to repeat itself over and over again and the progress is so slight ... With a weary gesture, a man asks guards to transport the patient to his room, they clean the fluids on the icy tiles, they drag the young man in his dark cell, the rusty door of which is slammed, not without a frail figure having slipped inside. The prisoner must be treated well or there will be no other experience.

The spectacle is more heartbreaking with each visit, the once-vigorous body slumped against the wall, silent and listless. Gently, you wipe the wet forehead, the drool on his chin and above all, you speak to him in a low voice, almost caressing like a lullaby. At first, he refused your presence, being cold and ironic in front of a HYDRA nurse. It took a while for him to accept that you were a prisoner too, refusing your attempts at treatment even though he had never gone too, never violent. You remain a woman and he a gentleman. At least he was. Now the electroshock has burned his humanity, destroyed his sanity even though he still happens to be himself again when calm returns, which he can think a bit. At such times, he repeats his registration number, random words or even first names: Steve, Rebecca... These moments are shorter and shorter, more and more rare but still present. You are now the only one who can hear James B. Barnes and not an empty shell.

"... er ... newspapers ... shoes ... shoes ..."

The prisoner rolls his eyes and mumbles in a broken voice, gradually regaining his foothold in reality after locking himself in to avoid the pain. You suppress a painful sigh as you help him change position. As delicately as possible, you heal his wounds, your eyes moist as every time you see him in this state. A gleam passes through the tired blue eyes and James waves his one arm, too weak to touch you.

- Y/N... Y/N...

- Yes, it's me, Mr. Barnes, it's me. Don't worry, you are safe for now.

A shiver runs through the young man as his face seems to express a little relief, he lets himself go against your hand as you heal his temples. You are not allowed to call him by his real name, you are forbidden to speak to him but whatever, you are not afraid of dying. All that matters to you is to stay close to him, to comfort him. You are the only glimmer of hope and life in the perpetual fog of his existence. Your hand stops for a moment on his unshaven cheek, under your fingers you can feel his face, emaciated by hunger and suffering.

"I'm gonna take care of you, James, I'm there. Don't worry, rest if you can. I won't leave."

No one will be looking for you for hours, you can stay hiding here with the patient, speak quietly to him to chase away the darkness a little. But first, he has to eat, even if it's an infamous cold porridge. With any luck, no rat will have had time to taste it. Making sure James is seated, you pick up the spoon and help him bring it to his mouth, guiding his heavy, aching hand. If they continue to be so violent, he will soon no longer be able to feed himself, you will have to help him. HYDRA doesn’t understand anything, it is just a bunch of brutal and cruel animals. Slowly, very slowly, Bucky comes to his senses a little, eats with more ease even if he remains leaning against you to enjoy your warmth. The idea of ​​kissing you crosses his mind but he still feels too weak right now. His stump hurts, it took all your energy to keep him from succumbing to the fever caused by the infection. You know the doctors have plans, they want to put a prosthesis on him, but as long as he's not a little more docile, it's impossible. One day he will crush them all under his fist.

- Dance... me...

- Promise, when you'll feel better. We'll go to dance.

Your voice shakes a bit, as always when he says he would like to dance with you. When he'll be free, he's gonna thank you, be a charming man like he used to be. Obviously, his thoughts are not that clear but it doesn't matter. Feelings remain. Exhausted, his eyes closed and he slowly falls on your lap to enjoy a little bit of peace, a few hours of rest. As always, you walk with the movement, a cool hand on his forehead as you part the long brown brands to clear his face. Sometimes you happen to hum to help him fall asleep, you love more than anything to see James's face relax as he sinks into unconsciousness and oblivion. In your arms he can taste a little peace and that's all that matters.

"Sleep, sweet soldier. You are safe with me."

He looks much younger when he is enveloped in sleep, sometimes you forget he's only in his twenties. All these tortures, these sessions of electroshock to break, it will end up killing him or turning him into a powerless vegetable. HYDRA scientists are fools, as if sheer violence can produce a result. You know that human beings need comfort, to feel safe. You have to be able to tame an animal other than with a whip. Governing by fear leads to rebellion sooner or later. But ruling from the heart is a more subtle game that pays bigger dividends.

"I'm gonna take care of you, don't worry ..."

Admittedly, James' enslavement produces faster results now that he is only a shadow of himself than if he had had all of his mental and physical faculties. The poor man is in so much pain that he is no longer able to think, not really. Slipping you next to him, caressing his bruised soul is extremely easy, your gentleness creates a flagrant contrast with the tortures of HYDRA, like a balm on burns. He may already whisper your name in his sleep, immediately relaxing upon contact with you. They want to break the soldier, you have already figured out how to reshape him into a more submissive being.

Footsteps are being heard outside, it is time for you to slip away so as not to arouse suspicion. You kiss tenderly the dry mouth of the young man and you feel him respond to your kiss, weakly but with a sigh of pleasure. Whatever they do with him, you know that what you have implanted is deeper, more undetectable. No violence, no key words or manual of instructions. So you come out of the cell with a smile, knowing full well that you will see him again soon. Day after day, you are there to comfort him, to rock him with sweet words by telling him that he is safe with you, that you are going to take care of him. Gratitude mixes with docile love, how could it be otherwise? You are his whole universe, his light in the frozen darkness.

As time goes by, HYDRA's haphazard method begins to bear fruit and they finally get the weapon they dreamed of. Of course, the Winter Soldier still gets startled, wants to attack his masters but he is gentle as a lamb under your hand, hugging you, kissing your lips devoutly, visiting your body like a sacred temple. It doesn't matter if they put him in a box while waiting for him to serve the interests of some madman, you know he will wake up just as amorous and docile and that you will be there to welcome him, whatever the time.

[slingsendarrows]

My First Drake Album

Nicholas Rodney Drake was born June 19, 1948, and died 26 years later after ingesting approximately 30 amitriptyline pills. It was ruled a suicide. Nick Drake was an English singer-songwriter whose acoustic guitar songs navigated the tumultuous and oft-misunderstood travails of living with depression. His music was not popular while he lived but has since garnered worldwide recognition and critical acclaim in the years since. 

I discovered Nick Drake and his music after a traumatic experience. Those around me, charged with my care, my built-in support system (or so I thought), did not see it that way, so I was forced to seek other ways to trek along this new, unfamiliar, and terrifying path. 

Music allows me to understand complicated things, and in turn, I recognize myself. It has been that way for as long as I can remember. It was the same the instant I discovered Nick Drake, Cat Power, and the Elliot Smith types of the world, delving into and exploring the deep well of my sorrow. There is something incredibly self-indulgent about pain and suffering. It is fundamentally personal, subjective, and selfish, but surrounded by an entitled sense of affecting a world larger than ourselves; it embodies all our pain, even if that particular experience is uniquely our own. And so it is with Nick. He gave my experience words I could not articulate to myself, let alone others.

I was recently having coffee with a friend and at one point explained how living with depression has required I disengage with some people in my life. His first question, "What are you depressed about?" I hate this question. I hate it because it requires a definite answer as if I can carefully and comprehensively explain what it means to live with depression in a few short sentences encompassing the reality of it, all while holding my breath hoping what I say is clearly understood. I hate it because it is all too common. I know why it is common--because depression is difficult to explain; it is personal and universal. Personal because it happens to the individual; universal in that it happens to many individuals, more than 300 million of us according to the World Health Organization. So, is it naive to desire a succinct, identifiable, and generalizable reason? Maybe not. But I don't have one.

All I can do is borrow the words of a poet whose art helps me understand my depression, at least in part. 

Nick Drake was signed to a record deal at 20 and released three albums, Five Leaves Left (1969), Byter Layter and Pink Moon (1972), and the posthumous box-set Fruit Tree (1979).  While living, Nick did not promote his music and was reluctant to give interviews. Neither of his albums sold more than 5,000 copies upon initial release, and all we have of the artist are his music and still photographs. These sparse facts make me both sad and content. Part of me feels he never wanted to give us more than his music, and for me, it's enough. It has to be enough. It is more than enough. 

So much can be said about the artist and his art. Five Leaves Later is a deeply personal and raw poetic exercise of a man wrestling with his creation and what it means to hold oneself sacred when the world requires you expose more than you're willing for global recognition of said art. 

Beginning with "Time Has Told Me," he laments, Time has told me/ You're a rare, rare find/ A troubled cure/ For a troubled mind/ And time has told me/ Not to ask for more/ Someday our ocean will find its shore. Drake is deeply self-aware of the struggles within his mind. He succumbs to the reality that while his troubled mind is a gift, it is a "troubled cure." It allows him to see clearly with no indication as to how it can be any different. Depression feels much the same. In the darkest moments, you achieve hopeless clarity. You know what is happening to you. You're viscerally aware of how your mind is attacking the rest of your being and understand the physiological effects manifesting, but you don't stop it, you can't, your mind won't let you. A "troubled cure" indeed! 

Without a definitive answer to proffer, Drake merely suggests we learn to cope in this new reality instead: So leave the ways that are making you be/ What you don't want to be/ Leave the ways that are making you love/ What you really don't want to love. It is unfair to ask more of yourself than that, especially in the midst of a depressive episode (a singular beast unto itself). Talking it out with someone helps, but therapy is a privilege not all of us can afford. The best you can do is decipher how depression ails you in real tangible ways and work towards subverting actions that turn the picnic into a never-ending feast of abundance. 

My depression revels and thrives in isolation and despair. I have lived with it long enough to identify the stages of my Dementor infestation. First I had to give it an identity that is not me. I had to separate Nyasha from what J.K. Rowling describes as "the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places. They glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them[...]Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself--soul-less and evil. You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life."

My descent begins with isolation. I cut myself off from everyone and anything capable of giving me hope. My perfectionist-in-recovery leanings make it challenging to let people close to me know I am struggling so I deflect, I lie, or just disappear. I genuflect to my tormentors, and with that surrender, they infiltrate with the intensity of quelling a resistance that simply doesn't exist. They are here for everything; they will take everything, whether you give in willingly or put up a fight. Before naming my tormentor, throwing in the towel was just part of the deal. Why bother, right Eeyore? 

Next comes, avoidance. I call in sick to work more often than I should and with no strength to do anything about it, I let things fall apart. My apartment looks like a hoarders fantasy, dishes stacked in the sink become science experiments and I grow comfortable with the increasingly pungent reek of my body odour. I take Netflix bingeing to Olympic levels. I eat and eat and eat, to suppress the pain of my trauma, burying myself in pizza boxes, cinnamon rolls, potato chips and pot until all I can feel is my bloated and overly extended stomach. I berate myself for not having self-control, smoke more weed to induce indifference, wake up in regret, promise to do better, rinse and repeat. 

Over time I realized this was a roommate I would have to drag along to all the parties in spite of her feelings. So I made a plan to help me "leave the ways that are making me be who I really don't want to be": a miserable, fat, unhappy, sad person trying and failing to reverse-engineer their past. I cut certain people out of my life, read several self-help and psychology books (with care), started treating my body as if I gave a shit, even when I didn't, stopped chain-smoking pot, and most importantly, discovered CrossFit and the power of endorphins. CrossFit saved my life. At first, it was to quell the hunger to be loved and accepted by a man who did not see past my fatness, but now it is to survive and live to fight another day, hoping "someday our ocean will find its shore." Expecto Patronum!!

Two songs from Five Leaves Later have been constant companions on this journey, "Saturday Sun" and "Fruit Tree.” The oddity of living with my Dementor is how surprised we both are when confronted with a genuinely beautiful day. I mean a gorgeous, sun's bright, trees rustling to the soft breeze, blue skies kind of day. Depending on how long we've been companioning in our misery, we are more likely to close the curtains even harder and shut out the realness of life outside our wretchedness. How dare it shine so unabashedly and affront us with its glory? Doesn't our pain matter? Of course not, you self-indulgent sad person. It's the sun. It rises and sets. Sometimes the days are cloudy, bitter cold with rain and snow, but the sun still rises, as it as done since the dawn of time. It doesn't consider my individual circumstances. For it will be what the sun has always been: burning and shining, bright and perpetual. 

That is the sentiment of "Saturday Sun." Suddenly you're not feeling so bad. There is momentary reprieve; momentary because you've learned it is only a matter of time. You're confused when the Saturday sun [comes] early one morning/ In a sky so clear and blue/ Saturday sun came without warning/ So no-one knew what to do.  After living in the depths of despair for so long, you forget what it feels like to feel good. You are anxious when suddenly your ever-present roommate takes a day, or week, or a month off. She didn't leave a note, but you know she'll be back. Maybe it's when the meds finally kick in and/or your lifestyle changes are starting to take effect, and you can cope with some semblance of normalcy. 

In the light of day you remember the things you have neglected: the two Chopin concerts you paid for but didn't attend although you were dying to see Lang Lang, the numerous friend engagements you bailed on at the last minute, the phone calls that went unanswered, the dreams and goals deferred, and the countless failures to rally yourself. This sun has brought people and faces/ That didn't seem much in their day/ But when I remember those people and places/ They were really too good in their way/ In their way/ In their way/ Saturday won't come to see me today. You despair at all the time lost and wonder if you are meant to feel bad always, even on the seemingly good days when the rays of clarity reach your soul to remind you things are not all bad. 

I often gaze at reality through a veneer of misery. Realizing how things weren't as bad as I thought makes me feel sorry for having considered them that bad, to begin with. Am I making up my depression? Am I decadent in my despair? Is this just an act? What is wrong with me? That is the consuming aspect of depression. Reprieve is more work. Trying to hold on to it, knowing its a losing battle, and wondering if your defeatist attitude is the reason it is a losing battle. Maybe you're not trying hard enough. You think about stories with reason and rhyme/ Circling through your brain/ And think about people in their season and time/ Returning again and again/ And again/ And again/ but Saturday sun has turned to Sunday's rain. It is fucking relentless. 

"Fruit Tree" reads like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is an artist's individual understanding of fame and legacy. It is incredibly forward-thinking because Nick Drake died, I believe, understanding the value of his art yet somewhat resigned to the world not catching on until long after he was gone. Fame is but a fruit tree/ So very unsound/ It can never flourish/ 'Till its stock is in the ground/ So men of fame/ Can never find a way/ 'Til time has flown far from their dying day/ Forgotten while you're here/ Remembered for a while/ A much-updated ruin/ From a much-outdated style. Whether we yearn for conventional fame or to simply make our mark upon this world, legacy is a unique desire of the mortal. It is our final stand against death and lets the world know we were here, we mattered, we connected. I once read that immortality is achieved in the memories of those who remember us after we're gone. We are not truly dead until the last person who carries our memory dies with it. There is something both comforting and terrifying about that. We are remembered by our loved ones and the lives we've affected, knowingly and otherwise. But memory is fragile, subjective, and prone to manipulation. So how well is our legacy maintained? Does the remembrance bear a resemblance to who we really were? How we lived, loved, failed, triumphed, survived, endured, or were defeated? How can we ask so much when we begin to understand that to “err is human,” and we are all selective in what we remember, let alone how we remember it. 

"Fruit Tree" is a remarkably well-penned bookend to "Time Has Told Me." We shouldn't ask for more but live in gratitude of what has been given to us, and maybe that will lead us where all our struggling and fighting against the tide has been guiding us--to a place were" our ocean finds its shore." But still, we can't help but wonder what we leave behind, the parts of us that remain beyond the veil and our ability to curate and frame ourselves. When all that is left is what is remembered, how can we not worry about that too? 

Drake's response exposes the futility of these obsessive musings: Life is but a memory/ Happened long ago/ Theatre full of sadness/ For a long forgotten show/ Seems so easy/ Just to let it go on by/ 'Till you stop and wonder/ Why you never wondered why. Will the rooms of despair carry the memory of your trauma the way your body has? Probably not. Another soul will take residence there to tell their own story, cement their own legacy. I'm reminded of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade," Not though the soldier knew/ Someone had blundered/ Theirs not to make reply/ Theirs not to reason why/ Theirs but to do and die/ Into the valley of Death/ Rode the six hundred. Theirs but to do and die.

Worrying about legacy after death seems futile when all we can do is live out our days, and hopefully, past the reeds of selfish thoughts, needs, and desires, we do some good that is not "interred with our bones." Maybe in death, we find an understanding of ourselves, our place, and our experiences. But there is no knowing until we go through it: Safe in the womb of an everlasting night/ You find the darkness can give the brightest light/ Safe in your place deep in the earth/ That's when they'll know what you were really worth. Or not, but what does it matter? You've done your part. You lived. You experienced things that made you, and for better or worse, you were here. 

Fruit tree, fruit tree/ No one knows you but the rain and the air/ Don't you worry/ They'll stand and stare when you're gone

Fruit tree, fruit tree/ Open your eyes to another year/ They'll all know/ That you were here when you're gone

I know you were here Nicholas Rodney Drake. Long before I was born, your ocean was making its way to my shore. I understand my depression better through your music and the intense vulnerability you bared. You bore fruit within my soul and allowed me to realize that while my struggles with mental health aren't unique, it does not make them irrelevant. I remember you. I see you, Fruit Tree. Keep blossoming!