Disclaimer: Entertainment purposes only. More feels explosions. ;D

A/n: I'm still drowning in Winter Soldier feels, so naturally, here's more fic! If you can, listen to the song "This Is Not The End" by Fieldworks when reading (also just listen in general and think of those "You're my friend" / "You're my mission" / "End of the line" bits with Steve and Bucky and yep, cry yourself to sleep. XD)

WARNING: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR WINTER SOLDIER.

Prompt: Bucky/WS really actually isn't the kind of person you can save anymore (from stars-inthe-sky)

This Is Not The End

The only noise is the distant hum of the vent system in the bunker. Natasha finds Steve on a chilly stone bench set into an alcove and wordlessly seats herself beside him. They are together, but alone with their thoughts.

"There's more to the story," he finally asks without turning to her. "Isn't there?"

Whether he figured it out on his own or it'd been implied from something Fury said, she couldn't say. Only that she supposed she owed him the truth. If their plan succeeded, he'd find out anyways, and it was certainly better that he heard it from her.

So she tells him about the Red Room. Not every detail, because it would be too much and too terrible, and there are so many things she couldn't, wouldn't, tell anyone. Not Steve, not Fury, not even Clint. These are things she carries but does not share. Some of it may have been made up anyways, false memories and broken thoughts tangled and twisted together. Sometimes she can sort them out, sometimes she can't.

She leaves out the part where she and James became lovers. The part where they tried to kill each other. The part where she believed she succeeded, only for him to reappear years later to rip a hole through her guts with that slug. The basics are already overwhelming for Steve; she can see him buckling under the weight of it.

She wishes there was a way to spare him, wishes there was a way to turn back the clock so he never had to discover his best friend is an assassin, a ruthless killing machine.

Natasha explains haltingly what they did to James – to Bucky – and to her. The brainwashing, the missions, the manipulation, the training. Steve can't fathom the depth of that kind of horror – a lot of the pieces that make up Natasha make more sense to him now.

As he listens, his insides curling in on themselves, he doesn't know how to feel. He can't settle on an emotion. Rage and fury seem too small to cover the injustice inflicted on Natasha and Bucky and all the others in their program. Deep, soul-wrecking sadness? Ice-cold numbness? Irrational guilt?

He thinks of his friend when they were young and carefree, and of Bucky falling into that snowy canyon, and of the mind-blowingly lethal man with the metal arm Steve fought on the bridge. Something that is less than a shadow of what he should be, something that is a shell, something mechanical. Something that is not Bucky.

Who the hell is Bucky?

Steve clenches his fists so tight his nails cut crescents into his skin.

"I can save him," he whispers, and the overriding emotion inside now is determination. He will not lose Bucky again. He is ready to give everything he has and more to get through to his friend buried inside the dangerous killer. In that moment, everything else – SHIELD, Project Insight, everything – becomes so very distant and secondary.

"But, Steve…" Natasha says, soft and slow. She's trying to choose the right words and it's off-putting to see her hesitate, because Natasha always knows which words she wants. "What they did to him… there's no coming back from that."

"You did," he counters swiftly. She has her secrets and her scars and her demons, but she's a functioning human with control and emotion. Bucky can be too, he's sure. He won't give up on him.

She shakes her head, hair swishing slightly against her cheeks. "It was different for me. I got out a long time ago. They'd already had him for years before me and years after."

"He's still in there, Natasha," Steve insists. Because it's Bucky, and Bucky was always a fighter and a force of a nature and his closest friend. There's no way this empty, ice-cold solider is all that is left. Steve cannot accept that. "I can save him. I can."

He's a fighter too, and he's never been one to give up on anything.

Natasha sighs and curls her hand around Steve's tight fist. "There might not be anything left to save. You know that… right?"

A number of responses bubble up to his lips, but he doesn't voice them, because they're lies and he knows she can tell when he is lying. So instead he keeps his eyes forward, staring at nothing, and he doesn't say a word. Instead, he tries to breathe.

He thinks of all the times over the years that he and Buck promised to be there for each other, no matter what, to the end of the line. He's already broken that promise once, not being strong enough and fast enough to stop Bucky from falling from the train, and the guilt has never left him. Now is his chance to fulfill that promise.

Steve doesn't know how to articulate why. He doesn't have the words to express why saving Bucky means everything to him, why it is so damn important, why he is more willing to die for that belief than anything else in his entire life. Why he cannot kill the soldier with Bucky's face, why he can barely fight him. He wants someone to understand the depth of what he is feeling, but how can anyone possibly know? Steve's situation is wholly unique from beginning to end. He is a man displaced in time, struggling to find his way, faced with his closest friend, who was supposed to be long dead, and is instead a soulless killer. The only person who maybe could have an inkling of the confusing blender of emotion crashing through Steve is Buck, because he always knew how Steve was feeling, because they were brothers. Except Buck is dead and something else has taken his place.

"I can save him," Steve whispers.

It kills Steve to lock Bucky up, but he doesn't have much of choice right now. After what he went through to track him down and capture the man, he's not taking any chances.

After a few days of debriefing (and trying to marshal his thoughts, contain his overwhelming and conflicted emotions), Steve goes to visit Bucky. His hands only shake a little as he walks down the featureless corridor, his footsteps echoing under the sound of his heartbeat. He takes a deep breath and then stops before the cell. Bucky is laying on the thinly padded bed inside, idly tracing patterns on the wall with his non-metallic fingers.

"Bucky..."

Steve has no idea what the hell to say. Are you okay? How are you? How about those Dodgers?

There is an ache in his chest caused by the distance between them, and between their experiences, and he at a complete loss as to how to close it. His friend is in there - he pulled Steve from the water, he didn't shoot him in Barcelona, he ran when he could have finished Steve off in Argentina, and he called him "pal" in New York last week, even if it seemed like an accident and he'd looked completely startled by the word tumbling past his lips - but Steve has no idea how to reach him that he hasn't tried before.

Steve takes a seat on the floor, leaning against the wall opposite the cell. There is a lot of heavy silence as Steve tries to decide what to do next, and wonders what Bucky is thinking, what is he is feeling, if anything at all. Eventually, it is Bucky who speaks first, to Steve's surprise.

He sits up, long hair falling into his eyes. "I am not Bucky," he whispers. A tear slides out and makes a track down his cheek. "I am a monster."

Steve can't take the look on Bucky's face: the guilt, emptiness, self-loathing, deep sadness, pain. It's too much and Steve feels his shoulders collapsing under the weight of that look, under the weight of everything. He wants to sink into the concrete underneath him so he doesn't have to feel it anymore.

"No," says Steve, his voice cracking with barely contained emotion. "You're not."

"Stop trying to save me," Bucky snaps, his features twisting in a furious snarl. "I'm not worth it. Just kill me so I can..." He trails off and buries his face in his hands. He adds in a hoarse whisper, "I don't understand."

The cell blurs in Steve's vision. How can someone be so very broken? He struggles to his feet and approaches the cell, though he still stays out of arm's reach in case the soldier inside wins the war going on in Bucky and tries to kill Steve again. He wants nothing more to embrace his friend, his brother, and tell him it'll be okay, but he can't and it's killing him.

"I'll help you," Steve says, blinking back the tears in his eyes. "I'm with you, 'till the end of the line."

"Stop saying that," Bucky replies, but without heat. He sounds exhausted and hollow. Then he raises his tortured gaze to Steve, and asks, "Why? Why do you keep trying?"

This, at least, is easy to answer.

"Because if roles were reversed, you would never give up me." His voice is steadier this time, sure, solid.

Even with all the uncertainty and confusion surrounding Bucky, and who he is and isn't, and what he did and didn't do, this he knows without a shadow of doubt, without a second thought. Bucky wouldn't care how long it took, how many people doubted him, how impossible it was to get Steve back. He would never stop trying to get his brother back, and so Steve won't either.

Bucky watches Steve for a moment, holds his gaze, trying to sort out his thoughts and all the shattered pieces inside. When he smiles a few moments later, it's small and unsure and crooked and pained, but it's still a smile, and most of all, it's Bucky's smile - not the killer, not the weapon, not the soldier or the empty shell or anything other than the brother he knew and loved.

And Steve can see the light at the end of this very, very dark tunnel.

-end-

A/n: I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS! (Thank you for reading, feedback is love!)