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Love Among the Ruins

Summary:

"I want you to sleep, James,” comes the man’s unexpected reply. “I want you to drift. I want to make your mind beautiful, in the way it used to be.”

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Forced insulin coma was a real psychiatric therapy … and now Hydra aren’t the only ones using it.

Steve knows about the Chair. He doesn’t know about the Needle.
 

Notes:

(I was daphneblithe; new name :D ). Thank you dearest @nonymos, wordsmith extraordinaire and Beta-of-Darkness. With regard to the archive warning: Chapters 11 & 12 contain 4 scenes of non-consensual touch but I make it easy for people to avoid it, by linking to lighter versions of each of those chapters with those scenes omitted. There is none anywhere else in the fic. Don’t hesitate to ask me questions in comments or at Twitter, or discord (Carelica#2354). This fic is NOT whump. It is eerie romance and tenderness.

     

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Prologue, 1926: Thorns and Barbed Wire

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text


 

 

Sarah’s tired, a bone-deep weariness that started when Joseph left for the Front and worsened when he never came back. In those long years since, the world has become a thing behind glass. The only thing reliably vivid is Steve, her astonishing, sunlit son.

She pushes open the door to Winifred’s tenement and hears the boys scuffling, Becca’s high voice. Winnie’s by the stove and smiles at her. George isn’t here tonight, so everyone's more relaxed. Steve and Bucky are wrestling on the floor, Steve’s laughing and Bucky shouting, ‘I don’t need rescuing!’ 

Steve’s giggling. “It’s Sleeping Beauty, Buck, but don’t worry, I’ll get you out.”  He flourishes like he’s wielding a sword, clips Bucky’s ear and Bucky unceremoniously shoves Steve's face into the rug.  

Winnie meets Sarah’s gaze, grins, beckons her into the kitchen with a tilt of her head. Sarah follows, frowning. It should be funny, tiny eight year old Steve being the prince to rescue Bucky, a year older and nearly a foot taller, but nothing about that particular story makes her smile. She’s owned that book for years. Joseph gave it her because he thought she’d like Rackham’s illustrations. She thought she did like them, at first — because it was from Joseph, because she was happy, because she was in love — but since then the empty spaces where people should be just became too true to bear.

 

 

She picks up a knife, starts peeling potatoes. The kids are whispering under the table. It’s all warm, sweet and ordinary, but Sarah’s chest is tight, long years of grief packed down below her ribs. 

Don't think of it. The cursed forest of the Western Front, blood and barbed wire. Don't think of strange sleep either, the hospital, the new sleep therapies, those people silent, suffocating, half-dead. Her history and her working day tangle with the fairytale and a line from the story keeps running through her mind.

“The briers held firmly together, as though they had hands, and the young men became stuck in them, could not free themselves, and met their death in the thorns.” 

 

 

 

Notes:

This fic is 100% accurate about twentieth century psychiatry. The title comes from Edward Burne Jones’ Pre-Raphaelite painting Love Among the Ruins. The fic includes numerous artworks, and AO3 have advised that Kindle .MOBI is only displaying a few pieces of the artwork. If you are using kindle and wish to see all the art (there is a lot), then you may wish to download azw format and load it directly into the kindle using a cable connected to your pc. That will keep the images. AO3 also suggest trying Calibre, or downloading it in .EPUB or .PDF form instead of .MOBI.
There are two playlists! I made one on Spotify and YouTube, AND! reader Northwolvess made a glorious instrumental playlist! Thank you also to @pale_anactoria for psychiatric research, @vextant who understands the appeal of industrial ruin, and @seapigeon for dry humor and medical acumen. STUCKY FANDOM IS *AMAZING*. I love all of you – and especially anyone reading this!