Breaking the Ice

All characters belong to Marvel Comics

I own nothing

"Do you mind if I sit down?" Bucky asks, his face being concealed with a hood. His steely blue eyes glisten in the afternoon light. He pulls out the chair and slowly sits down before scanning his sharp and calculating gaze over the bustling main street.

Steve instantly lowers his sketch book and looks gently at the ghost of his best friend.

A whirlwind of emotions hit him as he stares intently into the depth of haunted and severe blue embers of the Winter Soldier, he parts his smooth pastel lips and releases a deep, abysmal sigh, his burning heart drums against his ribs.

There are so many words he wants to say, but he freezes and asks a simple question that rolls off the tip of his tongue. "Do you want a coffee?"

Bucky stares at him with a vacant and darkened gaze. The fiery blue has faded into dark, old and haunted eyes. The hollowness of a looming ghost. He shifts uneasy against the chair. He shakes his head, and timidly narrows his face. Dark, limp tresses of his shoulder length hair swath over his unshaven jaw as he fastens his full lips into a neutral line, and his voice remains lock as he searches for recollection of truth.

He blinks, and refuses to take his daunting glare off of Steve. "Why did you call me Bucky?" he intones a raspy growl and borrows his glower. He doesn't wear the appearance of the suave, confident and hard-headed Bucky Barnes. There were collections of scars and scrapes viable on his ashen skin, the dusting of an unkempt stubble covering the thick line of his jaw. His face becomes timid and still, almost like his untamed stallion urging to embrace his freedom. His glare of ice buries deep into Steve's skull.

Steve heaves out a dismal breath, "That's your name. James Buchanan Barnes. You always preferred to have people call you Bucky."

His lips hold the essence of a frown and he creases his eyebrows. "I do not..." He swallows, biting his lower lip. "I do not have a name."

Hearing those heart-wrenching words, Steve drops his head. "Yes, you do, Buck. HYDRA stole it from you."

Bucky's face becomes frozen, his breath uneven. "I'm not Bucky..." He snarls, his face darkens and twists into a villainous expression. "Stop calling me by that damn name." He lashes out like a vicious animal, his blue eyes grow owlish, and lips quiver as he struggles to speak. "I'm nobody."

Steve shakes his head disdainfully, "I won't because to me you're somebody who I would gladly take a bullet for. You're my friend."

"No, I'm not." Bucky replies in a harsh whisper. His thoughts become spastic and unstable. He closes his eyes, grimacing and thrashing, flashes of red consume his mind, becoming clear, longer and numbing. It's not vague images anymore he sees, but pieces of shattered memories. Each one overlaps, untamed and hard to control. He swallows down the acidic taste of rising bile. He feels sick.

His mind is static, he searches for his identity in the jolts of electric shock waves still lingering in the anatomy. He feels inorganic, a corrupted machine without a conscience and a reason to move forward. He feels the ice floating the surface of his blood, an erratic pulse steadying in his veins. It becomes unnatural to grasp."I'm not your friend." he storms, grinding his back teeth.

He sees dark faces of demons emerging from the red, murky haze of light. He hears cryptic and nefarious voices luring him to obey their words of spite.

Torturous screams echo through the sound waves, explosions and morbid chaos. He feels the old, condemning phantoms of his dark sins pulling him into the void of a long past of darkness and ice. There was no escape from that world, just confusion and terror that scraped his existence clean off and recreated a new one with no thought of control. Just pure and relentless hatred.

"There is no Bucky Barnes, or whatever you call your friend. He died." Bucky speaks with a long strain of uncertainty in his menacing and rocky voice. "I had probably killed him, but I don't remember." he says with coldness erupts from his core and escapes from his quivering lips.

He focuses his eyes on the other man with cautious scrutiny. Everything feels like a lure of a dream, and he falls into a trance of recollection. Steve reminds silent, he knows the assassin is trying to gather broken shards of memory, but he decides not to interrupt, not when tension builds in the space between them.

Looking, his half gloved fingers caress over the alloy plates of his metal arm and brushed over the crimson star with shakiness in their wake. Steve can't restrain himself from leaking out the moisture building in his eyes; his breath hitches and rippling muscles tense under his leather jacket. Everything hurts. Bucky blue eyes settle on his chiseled face, the displaced assassin is searching for answers of the false lies of HYDRA's deception buried into him. "I almost killed you," he whispers with fiery self-conviction riding up his raw throat.

Steve gives him a curtsied nod. "You almost did. Something prevented you, Buck." He presses his lips into a firm line of anguish, trying to regard his friend with assuring eyes. "You've known me your whole life. A part of the good man who kept me standing on my own two feet, even though I was battered up all the time. He's still in you. I know he is, pal."

A shroud of confusion darkens the resentment as suspicion etches over his skin. "Do you think I'm this person...Bucky?" he asks faintly, the question lifts weight off his chest. There is still a fierce growl emitting from his throat. He glowers at Steve, and then really looks at him, and his sky blue eyes fill with glistening pools of smoldering water, it makes his vision glossy and unfocused. "Why do I feel that you've always known the truth?" He allows those uneven words to cut through the air and linger.

"You are, Bucky, even if you don't remember. You've always been him and right now..." Steve trains his cool blue eyes on Bucky and really looks at his displaced friend. He's changed so much, his face matured and hardened with a lifetime of torture and pain. His piercing eyes aren't bright and shining, but darkened into a molten color of gun metal gray that shadows over sky blue with glimmers of blue.

His full lips never hold a smile, just a straight line that seems frozen on his transformed face. He looks disheveled and condemned. Steve gulps down, he feels the tense build in the space between them, Bucky could snap any moment and pull a gun on him. He keeps himself calm and says with a gentle tone to ease the angry soldier facing him, "All I see is my friend." He narrows his eyes fighting against the tears stinging. "The one man I thought I had lost."

Bucky's eyes deteriorate and fill with tears as he looks down at his metal hand, but the gravity in Steve's words lull him to answer. He feels the emotional scarring over his heart. It hurts and jostles his bones. He was programmed not to feel, he furrows his eyebrows with a disquieted look and he carefully shakes his head. "I'm not him. I kill people who are targets..." he continues to glare at Steve with a disturbed glower of accusation. "Why didn't I see you as a threat? What stopped me from ending you?" his weakening voice trails.

Steve levels his eyes at his sketch pad and slides it across the table. "Go to the third page, Buck?"

"Why?" Bucky asks, his eyes shifty and voice cracking. He lifts up a hand and grabs the pad, dragging it closer to him. He is afraid to look at the pages, he wants Steve to give him a command to follow. That's how his mind thinks. He can't function without orders.

"Just trust me on this, Bucky."

The word trust makes the assassin finch against the chair, it has always been a poison to him. "I can't..." he breathes out, biting on his lower lip. His metal fingers clench and his eyes become veiled by shadows of his guilt and he takes a sharp and ragged breath. "I don't want you to treat me had your friend. I don't deserve it from you," he pleas, and feels prompting the urge to run. Instead, he takes a chance and flips to the third page; his blue eyes grow wide at the drawing of him wearing his Howling Commando uniform. His shaky fingers absently run over the etching over a symbol of silver wings.

"I..." he begins to choke out his words, unable to finish his sentence as he breaks down. Steve watches streaks of water fall steadily over the rugged skin of his cheeks. "I remember silver wings..." he feels his heart beat against his bruised chest and he looks at the drawing. "Is this me...I am this soldier...Bucky Barnes?" he murmurs with a dimming voice.

Steve nods slight, a small, broken smile graces over his chiseled face. "Yeah, Buck. It's you."

"I had a life...I was a good man..." He speaks with a bewildered tone, gritting his teeth and shifting in his seat. "They told me that I was always alone." He feels like a knife pierced through his heart. "They me I never had a friend that I had nothing."

"They were wrong." Steve reaches out a hand and grips Bucky's tensed shoulder, easing the trembling muscles with the warmth of his skin. "I stood by your side-I'm doing it now, pal."

Bucky chances a soft look at Steve, his eyes coated with fresh tears. He feels the soothing warmth of a brother and the security of a lifetime friendship. It seems like he has awakened out of long dream, he blinks and tries to focus his gaze on the blond haired super-soldier.

There are so many words he wants to stay to Steve, he wants forgiveness and to feel alive instead of a deaden, brainwashed and dehumanized weapon. "I never meant to hurt you."

"I never meant to let you go," Steve sniffles a little, keeping his blue eyes latch on Bucky. He allows guilt to rake over his heart, his face becomes hardened with anguish of grief and regret. He fastens his lips into rigid line, and exhales out a deep sigh, his chest heaves out his pain. "I should have tried a different way, maybe if I had let out the bar, and jumped for you-I could have stopped you from falling. I could have saved you like you did with me."

Bucky nods, and stretches out his metal hand, he uses a gentle touch and wipes away Steve's tears before he replies in a broken voice, "Knowing that you are my friend, Steve Rogers, that is what is saving me now," He gives his friend a watery smile, his blue eyes glistening. He can't stop crying. He needs to feel his heart breaking, it's the only way he can live again.

"I don't know where to start, Buck," Steve says, dropping his eye level to the table. He watches the sketch pad move towards his hand. He looks at his friend with a hope gleam in his eyes, but he can't muster the strength to say what beats against his chest.

Bucky relaxes in the chair, his lips curl up into a tender smirk of trust, "You can buy me a cup of coffee, Steve." he says before he adds, " I remember that I take..."

"I know, Buck." Steve returns his friend with a broad and relieved smile and repeats, "I know."