the first time

The first time he lets her into his mind, she steps carefully up to him, watches him closely as she take his hands in hers (for her safety as much as his comfort) and asks him one more time. "Are you ready?"

He is shaking so hard and still looks unsure. "You shouldn't... I can't let you. I mean, you-"

She shakes her head at him. "I told you. I can take it." She barely convinced him earlier, it doesn't surprise her he's changing his mind.

He looks doubtful but he also looks in pain and when he doesn't say anything else she eases into his thoughts, light as Natasha's footsteps.

It's a warzone. She knows war and this is it, violent and loud and sharp and for a moment she has to curl up small and hide herself from the chaos. But she is here for him, and that helps her stagger back to her feet to face his pain.

She can feel him trying to hide things from her, the effort in itself helping him order his panicked thoughts. She stays away from the doors he's so hastily locked – she knows she can push past them if she wants, but she won't. That's not what she's here for today.

The ground is all barbed wire, ripping jagged gashes in her feet and calves, and the air wings and shrieks with bullets and shrapnel. She isn't even sure where to begin, but she starts searching.

She tries to keep her eyes straight forward, tries to ignore the writhing images around her in the gloom, but eventually she gives up. She faces the memories with all their depravity and she thanks every deity she's ever heard of that she was not treated like he was. Perhaps she would have been were it not for how volatile her powers are.

He does not want her seeing some of these things, but he purposely lets her (she can feel him, and she knows somewhere in this hell is the Bucky she loves, trying to hang on). Touches that make him sick although at the time he did nothing because he did not care. Touches that claimed ownership perhaps more than the muzzles and masks they put on him. She does not know how to help those images. There is guilt in them, so she tries to assuage that. She tries to tell him he was not responsible. She knows it doesn't help, but at least maybe there will be less guilt, and maybe he will stop feeling so sick when people touch him to comfort. When she is alone, she knows this is going to plague her. She already wants to rip the people who dared hurt him into a thousand bleeding pieces.

It is those memories, and the memories of torture, that plague him today. It would be easier, she thinks, if the memories were not of him torturing people. Those are the sharpest memories, the ones that lodge in her flesh with a copper smell and make the screams deafening. She can hardly stand to see him like this.

She can't find Bucky anywhere in those memories. He's drowning, or dying, and this guilt she cannot even dampen. She knows better how to weather these ones, however; she is no stranger to pain. She fights his guilt and she searches for her Bucky, wading through blood rust-red and thick, ignoring the visceral urge to get out of his mind and run from this as fast as she can.

She told him she could take it. She's beginning to worry she can't.

She forges deeper into the pain, knowing intuitively that that's where he'll be. She is sobbing now and part of her thinks she needs to get out and regroup. She has calmed him at least a little. She can't do this. He is whole lifetimes of hurt and she is no hero, just a girl who may love this agonized mind too much.

She keeps going.

He is also sobbing when she finds him, just a bleeding, ragged mess that barely looks like him but is, the grey eyes focusing on her like he's starving and she's a feast. But then he turns away and she knows he's hiding from what she thinks because she is in his thoughts but he can see nothing of her mind except what she chooses to show him.

"Hey," she says, crouching down and taking him into her arms. He shakes his head and looks away. "It's scary in here."

He chuckles – actually laughs – and the screams quiet a little. "I told you, you should have stayed out."

She wonders if he can see how she's crying. She's not sure. "Well, I guess I don't listen any better than you do." He chuckles again. How he's shaking. "Let's think about something else. Can I give you something else to think about?" That's a more forceful tactic than she'd dared to use previously, but he's so lost she thinks he needs it.

"Please," he says.

So she does. She digs around and pulls out other memories, new ones, of Steve and Tony and Natasha. Tony telling him he forgives him for killing his parents (a grace that took a long time to come but one that was sincerely meant). Natasha forcing him to get a haircut, Steve's many assurances that Bucky was not his past. Things he's done now, wonderful things. She dares to let him see some of her thoughts too, lets her own feelings bleed into his awareness. Maybe some of the love gets through, but right now he needs whatever she can give. She shows him her favorite colors, the way his laugh makes her feel, sunsets she's seen, her favorite cat photos, things she uses to calm her own confused thoughts when she feels alone.

Only when his body stops shaking and bleeding in her arms does she untangle herself and escape.

She hasn't delved so deep into another's mind before, not except for Pietro's years ago, so when she comes back to herself she forgets how it feels and she stumbles and falls to her knees.

She has been crying; the tears have soaked her cheeks and her nose is running like a waterfall. She tries to compose herself because Bucky is staggering a bit and looking at her and he again turns away, also crying, and she knows from his eyes he wants to hide. He thinks he's destroyed her.

Maybe he has, a little bit. But she's put herself back together many times before this.

"Bucky," she stops him.

He's tense and quivering, poised on his toes, and he's waiting. Waiting for her to tell him she's done.

"Can you help me up?" She is perfectly capable of standing on her own. That's not the point, of course. "Please?"

He bows his head and shuffles back, curves his soft fingers around hers, stands her on her tired feet. She is careful to let him see her reaching for him before entwining her arms around his waist. "Let's go sit down. I think we both need a rest."

As if struck, he crumples, almost all his considerable weight falling on her, and heavy sobs shake out of him. She walks him over to the couch in the common room and helps him sit down. She lets herself cry some more, cry for him and his pain and, a little, for her own.

Eventually she stops and gets two glasses of water, and he calms down too. They don't talk. There isn't much to say that isn't dangerous and heavy.

She considers distracting him with an "I love you." And maybe that would help and maybe it would be alright – but she does not want to tell him now. If she tells him, she wants it to be when all is right, when he cannot feel guilty for telling her "no" or taint a moment of joy with these memories.

She is determined to be strong enough to help him again so that she can see this same relieved light in his grey eyes, but maybe eventually without the remorse.

A/N: So I rated this M to be safe because of the implied rape and the other stuff. This is actually my first Winterwitch fic, but I've been fascinated by this pairing for some time. Maybe I'll write something a little more fluffy next time. Idk, this is just a really angsty pairing.