#and i hate the 207 words i have written for the next chapter

[rottmnt-honeybea]

The urge to just...skip to the next chapter

Leave things a mystery

Unsaid

So

SO tempting

[your-modern-shakespeare]

Just Like You (24)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23

Summary: You are an experiment, the first of its kind. One day you escape and are living a normal life when you run into a perfect stranger or was he?

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 5365

A/N: Well...it’s my birthday today so I decided to post a birthday chapter. I originally wanted to post this on March 10th but realized right as I was about to post, the first half of the chapter had already been posted so...I’m dumb. But it’s up for today even thought being quarantined has sucked the life out of me and will do the same for me today. I hope someone enjoys this but I don’t know. Enjoy. 

Warnings: angst, non-cannon info (?), kissing, some fluff, google translate, flashback, POV switching, a little bit of a cliff hanger

Tags: @thisisthelilith, @thesalsafic, @fangirl1802, @lust-for-pan, @iamwarrenspeace, @the-red-world-of-jess-chibi, @ssweet-empowerment​

BUCKY’S POV

1 Month Later

I walked into the hospital room and sat down on the bed next to her, like I did every day since we got here. She was still asleep, no surprise there.

So I pulled out the next letter, an identical match to the other ones I had written to her every day since we got here, and sat on the bed beside her. I looked over at the ever growing stack of them, sitting beside her bed, all 207 of them, and opened the newest one. I grabbed her hand, moved real close to her, and began the next letter.

.

Dear Y/N,

It’s been 6 months, 3 weeks, and 6 days since everything was normal. But it’s also been, officially, 1 year since we left Bucharest. Happy 116th Birthday.

Steve wanted to come in and throw some kind of party for my 100th birthday but it feels wrong to celebrate today without you. I thought we would both make it to this day and even though you’re physically here, it’s not the same. I wanted to take you out to dinner and I wanted to bake you cupcakes and everything else I had planned for us last year. I want to do these things because you’re here and you deserve it, I don’t want to do anything without you.

Bruce and Tony have been working really hard to figure this out and everyone else has been looking for new HYDRA information everytime they go out on a mission. They said that they had an idea, they’ve been working on it for a while though so I don’t know if it’ll work. They came to your room a couple of days ago to explain this idea and I want to say that I understood everything they said but I would be lying…

I wanted to wait until I understood everything to write it down but maybe when you’re reading these it’ll make sense to you. They couldn’t stop talking about trying to control the serum, that they thought that there was a harmless way to move the serum from all over your body to just a part of your body. The serum would be concentrated enough for you to control but they couldn’t tell me what the after effects would be to do something like this. Would you be in pain as the serum moved? Would you feel the serum once it was concentrated? What would move it and what would make it stay once it was moved?

Unfortunately I didn’t get those answers and probably because I am being hard on them. I hate to admit it but the things I’ve learned about what HYDRA did to you, about all the things you’ve endured, it’s made it hard for me to accept these experiments. I don’t want you to go through any more pain, I don’t want you to have to deal with this. God if there was a way I could take away your pain, I would in a heartbeat. But it doesn't work that way.

So instead I’m just waiting for some kind of miracle to happen and maybe next year we’ll get to celebrate our birthdays together.

Love,

Me

.

STEVE’S POV

The three of us stood outside of the hospital room, looking in through the glass window, watching as bucky sat there reading another letter to a sleeping Y/N. The last six months have been nothing but a huge search for answers. If we weren’t in Wakanda sleeping or resting from a mission, we were on a mission. It kept us busy but it also didn’t yield many results which was the most frustrating part of it all. That and the fact that we still had you in a coma.

I had wanted so badly to have you awake for Bucky’s birthday...and yours too I guess. Which is why I was hoping to anyone listening that Tony was right in this experiment.

“Tony, how sure are you about this?”

“I’m at like...98%?”

“Well I need you to be at 198%. We didn’t tell Bucky we were doing this so it has to work.”

“Look...I know that everyone wants answers to whatever is happening but I don’t know them, I act like I have them but I don’t. What I do know 100%, is that Y/N will know something that we don’t know. She knows a lot more about everything, HYDRA or otherwise. My goal isn’t to fix her right now, I just need to plug the hole so that I can wake her up. We have to stabilize her and I think that pushing as much of the serum as possible away from her brain and her arm would give her the control that she needs to wake up and give us some of the answers we’re looking for.”

“And what about these robots?”

“Well, when we x-rayed Bucky we noticed a strange reaction happening in the shoulder joint near his arm. Because his arm was amputated and healed before putting the arm on, there’s no real connection between the flesh of his shoulder and the vibranium of the arm, that we can see anyway. And yet the serum is still drawn to the vibranium, it’s why we think the arm was used as an additional way of controlling him. We think that when Bucky is activated the combination of the serum and mind control is what makes him obedient to whoever controls him and the metal would essentially behave in the same manner because not only is it attached to him but it can mimic the same reaction as the serum.” Bruce said.

“Mimic?”

“There’s some kind of connection between the two that we don’t understand. We did tests on the serum and the vibranium and the results were always the exact same. Ther serum was made with basic chemistry, there’s not much in there that we couldn’t find in labs today but vibranium...there’s a reason it’s locked up here in Wakanda. They know how powerful it is, they know the strength behind their technology that uses it. HYDRA found out what it could do and they connected the two together and somehow it works. So we wanted to use the same methods against them, to save her.” Tony said

“The vibranium microbots that we injected into her IV a couple of days ago, will essentially connect with the serum and will slowly push the serum down to her legs. This will give us the time that we need to wake her up and figure out how to fix this for good.” Bruce finished.

“I really hope so.” I said.

.

BUCKY’S POV

I was sitting in the chair, feet propped up on the side of her bed, holding her hand and watching some TV show that I couldn't understand. I was going in and out of consciousness pretty frequently, but it wasn’t sticking and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because every time I opened my eyes I was waiting for some kind of birthday miracle. I just wanted to see her eyes again maybe even her smile, but I could settle for one.

I must have finally given up because the next time I woke up the sun was starting to set and Steve was now sitting in the room.

“How’s it going?” He asked.

“The same as it has been for the last 200 days.”

“Well I know that you didn’t want to do anything for your birthday but I thought it would be nice to do a little something to hopefully bring up your spirits.” He pulled out a box and opened the lid, pulling out one of two cupcakes. He reached out to hand me one of them and I couldn’t help but think about the moment that we met two years ago.

.

Bucharest, Romania

March 10, 2015

BUCKY’S POV

Keep your eyes on the ground, hat pulled down low, don’t look suspicious. Be aware but don’t look paranoid. Don’t give anyone a reason to believe that you don’t belong there.

I kept these thoughts as a constant reminder, kept them right at the forefront of my mind. I escaped. I escaped and I’m okay.

I just had to keep moving, I had to find somewhere safe to live, somewhere where no one could find me. Was Bucharest far enough away from them? Could they find me here or do I need to keep moving?

I’m so tired of running. I’m tired. And hungry.

Just keep moving.

Just keep moving...right into someone.

I ran right into someone, the only downside to keeping your head down was that sometimes you couldn’t see who was right in front of you, especially if they’re not looking either. She had been holding something in her hands, a cupcake, I think, and it was now smothered between the two of us.

“Imi pare foarte rau.” (I’m really sorry.) She says first.

“Este bine.” (It’s good.) I didn’t want to make too much of a fuss about it but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel bad about ruining her pastry. I looked up at her to apologize as well, but couldn’t get the words out when I saw her face. She was beautiful, simple as that, easily someone that I would have dated back when I was normal. And yet at the same time she was somehow familiar which was strange and I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I didn’t want to perceive her as a threat but I could have taken her down if needed. I really didn’t want to though...

“Apartamentul meu e chiar acolo, dacă doriți să curețe.” (My apartment is right there if you want to clean up.) The gesture was nice and under different circumstances I wouldn’t hesitate to take her up on her offer, not only because I was covered in frosting, but because I felt like I wanted to spend more time with her.

When I looked at her, I saw flashes of my past. They weren’t of her, obviously given my age and the fact that she couldn’t be over 25, but she reminded me of that time. How easy it was back then to be attracted to someone, to want to pursue a relationship, to be normal...

“Da te rog.” (Yes please) She shyly smiled back at me and let me follow her back to her apartment. I watched her as we walked and the strange thing I noticed was that she walked exactly the same as I did, eyes to the ground, head down low, trying to make herself as small and as unnoticeable as possible.

I followed her into this building that wasn’t the nicest place in the city but was much nicer than anything I had been staying in since I left them. We walked up flight after flight of stairs, still paying close attention to her and finding it strange that she wasn’t winded at all by the distance we had gone up. Maybe she was used to it? Maybe I’m overthinking everything?

I pushed the thought aside and she unlocked her door letting me into the apartment first. The place was much nicer than the building, she didn't have much but what she did have went together. There were no pictures of anything and no real decorations, just a simple layout, like she hadn’t been there long. I’m overthinking again.

“Do you speak English?” She asked amongst my inspection of her apartment. Her english sounded okay, but the Russian accent was heavy and more alarming than I would have liked.

“Yes.” I replied.

“That’s great. The bathroom is just down the hall, on the right.” She pointed to the hallway to the left of the door where I was standing,

“Thank you.” I quickly disappeared into the restroom, removed my backpack and grabbed a clean shirt to put on. I tried my best to rinse out the dirty shirt and dry it before putting it back in my bag, but it was just going to have to be a little wet. I was about to head out when I looked in the mirror one last time. I took in a deep breath and just reminded myself to remain calm. There was no way that she was HYDRA, they didn’t know where I was. There was no way for them to know.

Eventually I calmed down enough to step outside the restroom and right as I opened the door I saw her coming out of her room, in a new shirt and a bottle of water in her hands, but she seemed a little more nervous now...which made me nervous.

“So, I’m really sorry about the cupcake. The baker down the street had given it to me as a birthday gift.” She said, once again apologizing. She also seemed a lot more shy, having not looked me in the eye since we got into her apartment.

“It’s your birthday?” I asked, surprised.

“Yep.”

“Mine too.” When I said that she finally looked up at me.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“So birthday boy, do you have a name?” She smiled at me but immediately tried to hide it. I just looked at her and I hesitated because I was paranoid and because I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to know my name, but then again HYDRA never called me by my name let alone my nickname.

“Bucky.”

“Y/N.”

“Nice to meet you.” I tried to come off a little less tense but I think she could definitely tell that I was.

“Nice to meet you too. Can I get you anything? Water, food?”

“A water would be nice.” I was starving but I really didn’t want to impose, especially if she was an innocent bystander like I was trying to convince myself she was.

She made her way over to the kitchen and I absentmindedly followed her, just watching her move again. She was so graceful, there was just this sort of ease about the way she moved, almost mesmerizing. She looked back at me briefly to hand me the bottle of water and then grabbed a plum from a bowl on the counter.  

She took a big bite of the fruit, trying her hardest not to look at me as she thought real hard about something, wrinkles forming on her forehead from the effort. I watched her lips move, the act itself being more mesmerizing than her movements; It was such a strange action from me. Keep my eyes on the ground, head down low, easy steps to follow and yet I couldn’t help but look at her.

I had to distract myself so I opened the bottle of water and nearly chugged the whole thing.

“Can I ask you something?” She said, cutting the thick tension in the room as if she had a knife in her hands.

“Sure.”

“Have we met before? I know it’s a weird question and I don’t want to freak you out, but sometimes I have problems with my memory and I just feel like I have seen you before.”

“I don’t think we have but I’m kind of in the same boat as you. My memory is not in the best shape.”

“Then can I ask something else?”

“Okay.” Now she was making me very nervous. She hesitated before asking her next question, obviously just as nervous to ask.

“Do you know what HYDRA is?” I automatically took a few steps back, wanting to get as far away as I could.

“Who are you?” I asked, every single nerve on high alert and telling me to get away as fast as possible.

“So you do?” She seemed...scared. We couldn’t tear our eyes away from each other, watching each other intently.

“Yes.”

“Can I explain myself?”

“If you try anything, you'll be dead before you know it.”

“I’m a soldier, the very first. I was born on March 10, 1901. My father was in charge of the HYDRA Siberian Facility and he willingly gave me over to be experimented on. I don’t remember much after that, the only thing that keeps running through my head, the only thing that I have never forgotten was putting a bullet in his head. It was August 17, 1963.” She looked upset and I couldn’t help but relax a little at her words. She was like me, she was running from them. And for the first time in a long time I began to trust again.

“You’re a soldier?”

“Yes.”

“I am too. James Buchanan Barnes. I was born March 10, 1917. I fought in World War II with my best friend. I fell off a train and lost my arm. HYDRA found me and made me an arm of metal and then they made me their soldier.”

“I guess we really are in the same boat.” She relaxed too. The tension that had spiked as soon as she mentioned them was gone again and the thing that remained was that feeling from before, the attraction.

“It would appear that way.”

“So why are you in Bucharest?”

“About a year ago I had been on a mission. They sent me after the Avengers and I tried to kill my friend. I don’t want to hurt anyone and I don’t want HYDRA to find me. Anywhere I have gone just didn’t feel right and I was too nervous. Romania is what I thought of, something easy, familiar almost. I just got here but I want to start over really.”

“You can stay here if you want. I know it’s not ideal but I have a pull out couch and you wouldn’t have to pay for anything, at least until you get on your feet. And I’m sure we could help each other.”

“You want to be around someone like me?”

“We’re in the same boat remember?” She smiled at me and I couldn’t help but smile back, relief washing over both of us in waves. We would be okay.

.

God...her smile. It had had a way of lighting up a room. 

I just stared at the cupcake...thinking about her smile. 

Steve had left the room to find a lighter for the candle and I just held the pastry in my hand. 

A vanilla cupcake with white frosting and blue sprinkles. 

Her favorite. 

I laughed, how it was her favorite, I didn’t know. It was the only flavor she had ever tried. 

I don’t know what I was expecting the cupcake to do, but I stared and stared at it hoping it would...do nothing I guess. It’s a cupcake. It wasn’t meant to do anything. 

It made her smile though, so that was something. 

But not now. There was no smile now. Just a cupcake. 

I leaned over, elbows propped up on the side of her bed, my left hand holding up my head and the right holding the cupcake. I stared at the little cake decoration, declaring that it was my 100th birthday. Yippee for me. 

“You better not drop that on me.” I heard, whispered to me. It took me a second to realize what just happened. 

Now...some people would call me crazy for assuming first that it was the cupcake that had said that. Then again lets remember that the only other person who had been in the room had just been in a coma for 6 months and would be unstable and possibly kill us all if awoken from said coma. Also I probably could have allowed myself to leave the hospital every now and then so I wouldn’t go insane but that was a whole other issue. 

But no...it was definitely her who had said it. I don’t know how but she was awake. 

I genuinely smiled for the first time since we put her in a coma, placed the cupcake on the table beside the bed and grabbed her hand in mine. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”  

.

STEVE’S POV

I was really hoping that Tony’s plan worked. I told Bucky that I was leaving the room to get a lighter but I was kind of hoping that Y/N would be awake by now.

Tony said that these robots were in the right place and from what he could tell, she would be safe enough to wake up. So that’s what we did. 

We waned her off the coma medication and with the serum burning off most medications quickly, we thought she would be awake already. It took a little longer than we thought though. 

That was this morning, while Bucky was sleeping, and I had bought two cupcakes in the hope that she would be awake already but I guess we just had to give her more time. 

To make Bucky less suspicious of me, I walked back into the room within a reasonable amount of time and looked over at him. He was on the bed with Y/N, arms wrapped around her, his head resting on her chest and she was awake. She was so calm, just running her fingers through his hair. 

“Y/N?” I asked. 

“Hey Steve.”

“You’re awake.”

“Yeah. I’m not really sure about what happened, but he’s not really in the mood to tell me anything. He seems kind of angry.” She pointed at Bucky who had his eyes closed and had a scowl on his face. 

“Come on Bucky...you should be happy right now.” He sat up and glared at me. 

“I should be happy? I was happy and then realized that there was no natural way for her to be awake right now. All three of you perfectly explained that in order to wake her up we had to do some robot thing and something about moving the serum around. I know for a fact that I didn’t approve of that so then she should be asleep right? Not unless all of you lied to me and did it anyway. So I should be happy? I’ll be happy when you tell me that you didn’t do anything stupid, like expirementing on the one person I told you not to!”

“Bucky—” 

“No! I had one request in all of this. I said no experiments! No guessing, no trials and errors! Nothing but answers!”

“We didn’t have the answers! It’s been six months and we couldn’t keep doing this. There’s only so much failure we can handle before it’s time to try something else. I let Tony do this because you needed her to be awake and frankly, so did we.”

“Okay...I’m thoroughly confused now.” We both looked at Y/N, who was just taking in everything we said. 

So we stopped the argument for the meantime and took some time to catch her up on the last six months. She read all of his letters and Bucky seemed to calm down some, which was good. And while we explained everything it gave Tony and Bruce enough time to come to the room and explain the more scientific things, everything about the robots and the serum. 

She seemed to be following okay but I could see that she seemed a little overwhelmed by everything. 

“Why don’t we give the two of you a moment?” I said when the room was quiet. I ushered Tony and Bruce out of the room and we waited to see what Y/N wanted to do next. Everything was up to her at this point. 

. 

BUCKY’S POV

I was now sitting in the chair beside her bed and staring at the wall because I didn’t want Y/N to think I was mad at her. 

“Bucky…”

“Yeah?”

“Look at me.” I took a deep breath and tried to soften my gaze before looking at her. 

Even after being in a coma for six months, she was the most beautiful woman in the whole world. Seeing her smile, even though it wasn’t a full one, made me soften up; I felt my shoulders relax and my face unscrunched from its glare. 

“Hi.” She said. 

“Hey doll.” 

“There he is.” 

“I really missed you.” I felt my eyes start to tear up.

“Come here.” I climbed back on the bed, sitting right beside her as close as possible, and she grabbed my hands, holding them in hers. I just sat there, looking at her hands, feeling her touch again, but not really having anything to say and yet having so much I should say. “Why are you so upset?” 

“I just...I didn’t want them to do anything that could hurt you. And they went ahead and just did this experiment anyway, knowing that I had already said no and was not okay with trying this on you without more research to back it up. God knows, you’ve been experimented on enough and they couldn’t tell me if this was going to work or what the side effects were going to be and I didn’t want you to be in any pain.” I was like a fountain, just spewing everything I was feeling. I needed her to know everything. I needed her to know how badly I had messed up. 

“But I’m not in any pain.” 

“But you were...and everything was so bad and I didn’t know how to help you.” 

“Bucky…” 

“I hurt you. I had to hurt you to stop you. I had to break your arm so the whole building wouldn’t collapse on us. And then they had to put you under and you were gone...you were gone for six months!” I was sobbing by this point. I had pushed everything so far down that I didn’t realize just how hard I was beating myself up over everything that had happened. “They kept talking about the serum and how they didn’t know how it worked, they didn’t know anything other than what HYDRA had written down about the formula. And they said that they thought the best thing would be to activate you. To just straight up activate you and hope that the serum would burn away like it did the first time and yet they couldn’t even confirm that that would happen. So what, then you just do a quick little mission and all is fine? No! They don’t understand what we went through, they don’t understand what those words do to us or what we have to go through afterwards. I couldn’t put you through that, not after everything you’ve been through! All I ever wanted was for everything to be okay. I wanted you to be awake and I wanted us to move here so that everything could be like it was in Bucharest. I wanted you to be happy.” She just stared at me, knowing that I wasn’t done lifting the weight from my shoulders. “There was so much I couldn’t do. I couldn’t save you, I couldn’t stop Antonoff, I couldn’t find the answers to wake you up and I obviously couldn’t keep them from injecting some weird robots into you. I couldn’t do anything to help you.” 

“First of all...all of that is untrue.” She reached out and started to wipe my tears away. “You have helped me more than anyone ever could. You helped bring back all of my memories, you protected me when we left Bucharest, you fought for me when I was activated, but most of all you love me like no one ever has before. There are things that are just out of our control. Antonoff was never going to back down and even though we all knew he outnumbered us you still fought him. With the serum...there’s a lot to still understand and there are reasons that HYDRA never shared or even wrote down the things that were most important to them. And the robots, well I’m not exactly sure about those yet but it sounds like Tony, Bruce and Steve had the right idea. They were thinking of you, thinking about how they were going to get me back to you. So yes we’ve been through a lot, probably more than any one person should ever deserve to go through, but I’m not upset with you or with Steve or Bruce or Tony. What matters to me is that I’m here with you and I’m okay. We can still have that life that we always dreamed of and we’ll figure out a way to permanently fix this serum problem of mine. We just need to take each day a step at a time and we’ll get through this just like we always do.”  

“There’s just—”

“Nope.”

“But I—”

“No.”

“Y/N—”

She pulled me to her and kissed me the way I should have kissed her when I saw that she was awake. 

“This is all I want right now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

“I just—you were gone for so long. And I didn’t know what would be the best thing or the worst thing to do. I didn't want to hurt you and I didn’t want to make it worse. I just got so...scared.”

“You don’t have to shoulder this alone anymore. And you definitely don’t need to be scared, when are you going to learn that I’m always going to come back to you?”

“Maybe you should remind me.”

“You just want me to kiss you again.”

“Can you blame me?”

This time I kissed her, moving on the bed to lay down beside her so that I could feel as much of her as I could.

I pushed everything out of my head and just allowed myself to feel normal again, to love the woman that I loved more than anything in the world. It had been six months since I had kissed her, since I had held her, since I had done anything with her resembling the life we once had. It was this moment where the haze had cleared and for the first time in half a year that everything was okay.

.

Y/N’S POV

We kissed like two people starved. It was a mixture of, for me, not wanting him to feel bad about everything that had happened to me, for him, not having any real connection to me in six months, and genuine need to be close to one another.

We heard the door open and were cut off when Tony, who had his eyes covered, interrupted us.

“Person coming in! I don’t want to see any body parts that are normally hidden!”

“Tony.” Steve said, slapping his arm and making him look at him who wasn’t hiding his eyes.

“We just wanted to make sure everything was okay now.” Bruce said.

“Yeah everything’s good.” Bucky said to me with a smile on his lips.

“Good, we’re very happy that you’re awake Y/N.” Steve said, smiling at me.

“I am too. But I actually would be a lot happier if I could get some coffee.”

“You and your coffee.” Bucky mocked.

“You’re the one who got me hooked on it.”

“I know.”

“Do you mind?”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Thank you.”

“Anything for you.”

He climbed off the bed and put his shoes back on. I grabbed his hand before he was able to get too far and pulled him back to me one more time, giving him a quick kiss.

“Happy Birthday Bucky.”

“Happy Birthday Y/N.”

He gave me one more kiss before leaving me with the other three guys in the room.

“So I just have a couple of questions to ask before Bucky gets back.”

“Yeah?” Tony asked.

“What are the side effects of using these robot things? Or I guess having the serum so concentrated?”

“We actually don’t know, we weren’t able to test this outside of the lab.” Bruce confirmed my worry.

“I was just asking because...I can’t feel my legs.”

They just looked at me with horror in their eyes and fear that maybe they hadn’t been right in doing this experiment so soon.

And yet the most feared question, the one that was most likely in all of our minds: 

What was I going to tell Bucky?

.

Let me know what you think here

PART TWENTY-FIVE