Chapter Text
There was nothing here but pure darkness and the echo of Bucky's screams filling the void, though they didn't feel like his—screams not of pain that made breathing feel like a punch to his chest, but of sheer desperate, of the last wall about to crumble. This was no longer a nightmare he could wake from—it was a reality that had swallowed him whole. the darkness was a hungry creature; eating him alive and all he could do was watch until the last piece of himself.
"You don't deserve this much pain or regret, Bucky."
The whispers, the cries, and the agony—each layered over the other—merged into the mountain cold that seeped into his shattered body. The snow, once a soft, absolute white, now bled into a faint red like a sharp dagger digging into his injuries. Making each breath a torment.
I don't want to die here. If i die here, will anyone find me? The thought was a desperate plea in the silent expanse.
Whispers again, and then… Suddenly, everything went quiet, leaving only the rasp of his chest struggling for air. He'd hear the crunch of snow under heavy boots—soft at first, then growing sharper with every step. Or maybe it wasn't the footsteps getting closer at all. Maybe it was him, slowly clawing his way back to consciousness, and his mind taking in everything faster than his body could keep up with.
"Sir—Barnes! Do you hear me?"
He felt the coldness of a man's fingers on his neck's pulse, searching for the faint rhythm of a pulse. He wanted to respond but lacked the strength to react, or even to open his eyes. In that moment, The world had narrowed to a suffocating echo chamber, They weren't mere sounds of those soldiers talking or demanding but relentless shouts that echoed in the empty space of his mind. he would've begged for silence If he'd the strength.
"His pulse is weak—barely there!"
He managed to stir his eyes, though his lashes were caked in frost—a soft halo over his lashes and hair and his cheeks had turned from red to a bruised purple.
"come over here–be careful, soldiers. he's injured badly." the man commanded. "on my count, one... Two..."
His eyelids lifted faintly, and through blurred vision he saw a blanket thrown over him and a dark patch of blood spreading across it, right where the pain had begun. His eyes closed once more and when they opened again, the ghost of a face hovered above him. He couldn't tell who—his vision was fogged and thin. His eyelids fluttered weakly, resisting the pull of unconsciousness until exhaustion won.
"please…" he whispered Just before fading. And the world fell back into the same darkness he had clawed his way out.
During the time Bucky was hospitalized, Rebecca often came after her nursing shifts. Or when Sam wasn't caught up in duty, he'd come straight from base and stay for a while.
Even though he spent most of those days unconscious, there were moments when he'd stir, murmur something and then drift away again.
In the brief but brutal weeks that followed, his condition began to improve—thanks to Howard Stark's plan, which was nothing short of a miracle. Because no one could've survived two days in that ravine with injuries like his. But somehow, Bucky always found a way to live.
It was a quiet autumn afternoon when Rebecca finally found a spare moment to visit Bucky. She hadn't even changed out of her uniform; she’d just thrown on her raincoat and cinched the belt tight so it hid most of the underneath. She'd barely begun to sink into the chair beside his bed when she saw it—a subtle tremor that was more than just a random eyelid flutter.
She stopped mid-movement, breath held as her gaze locking onto his face, searching for confirmation. Then it happened again. His eyelashes trembled. Then, slowly, his eyelids began to lift, and stopped at a soft half‑lidded squint.
A faint crease formed between his brows, the kind that said the room's light was too bright for someone who hadn't seen anything in a while. Rebecca noticed how blue his eyes looked—brighter than she remembered, almost unsettling against the pale, worn-out face that she hadn't pay attention too closely until now.
She expected—as he always did—that he'd shut his eyes again. Instead, they wandered over the ceiling–his gaze unfocused as if his mind was still struggling with the new place–while his dry lips parted and released a small breath that sounded almost like relief.
I'm alive.
He repeated it inwardly, again and again, trying to believe it. That single phrase was his only defense against the shadow that haunted the edges of his mind—a nightmare lying in wait to drag him back into that ravine. He feared that if he blinked, the damp ceiling and the rattling fan above would vanish any moment.
The memory of the crash was so horrifyingly real that it didn't matter how childish the thought felt–still, It felt impossibly real. A relentless voice in his head screamed that it was all a hallucination, that he was still alone in that ravine, left to die. The phantom chill of that place returned to his shoulders and he shivered, a genuine tremor running through him as if the icy air had truly reclaimed him.
his attention was somewhere beyond the cream-colored ceiling, lost in thought and memory. That thin line between reality and trauma was tearing him apart; he'd never reached such a level of distrust in his own senses–unable to believe what his eyes saw or what his mind tried to make real.
Can a soul, crushed beneath the weight of its own sorrows, finally yield to the very thing it fears?
His gaze dropped from the ceiling to the olive-green shirt he wore (which soldiers usually wear) and the brown blanket over his legs. Rebecca hadn't looked away. She sat slowly and leaned forward as her eyes trailing the faint pink scars on his cheek–A reminder of what he'd survived. Her fingers were knotted together in her lap, tension whitening her knuckles so hard until she heard the slight crack of her knuckles.
At last, she spoke softly. "Hey, Jamie jam…"
Bucky turned his head almost at once and his eyes found her–as if he startled at first–Then he felt the air catch in his throat, not because he was afraid. But because he knew her. She wasn't the sister he remembered from five months ago–Not exactly. Her face had more lines now and her hair was pulled back in a messy bun with a few loose strands framing her face. But the shape of her eyes, the way she tilted her head when she cared—they were the same. And that was enough.
With a hoarse voice that even himself could barely recognize, he muttered: "Becca..." the name felt warm on his tongue. And relief broke across his face—it was subtle but unmistakable, like sunlight glancing off water. Rebecca was the door out of the nightmare, the proof that it was over, at least for now.
he cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly on the bed, Only then did he realized the full weight of exhaustion pressing down on him–the weakness in every limb.
He winced in response to it that sounded more frustrated than pain. Rebecca rose from her chair instantly. One hand slid to his shoulder and the other hovered at his back before settling there, guiding him with practiced gentleness. "Easy, bucky. You're still injured," she murmured, her voice steady despite the crack of emotion beneath it.
He clenched his jaw as pain crawled through his ribs and up his back. "Tell me about it," he muttered through gritted teeth. the worst of it wasn't the soreness—it was the numb emptiness stretching down his left side. He glanced toward it… and froze.
For a moment, he forgot how to breathe. The memory sharpened; the scattered puzzle pieces came together. He'd thought he'd been shot—thought something had pierced through his arm—but now he understood: just above the elbow the limb was gone and wrapped in layers of gauze.
Rebecca inhaled sharply but breath catched in her throat—not from shock, but from a well of helpless ache she'd been holding at bay for days. She steadied her palm on his shoulder to grounding both him and herself. " 'S gonna be okay," she whispered. Her voice wasn't soft for comfort—it was soft like a promise. Those words—fragile as it was—briefly quieted the panic that burning his chest like an acid.
He remembered how fear had always vanished when he spoke to Rebecca—how she carried that strange certainty that made everything seem fixable. All she'd to say was: Nothing's going ta happen, bucky. You're just overthinking again. And somehow, that was enough. For an instant, He allowed himself to become that boy again—the one who could accept such promises without hesitation.
Hope, however, felt distant now–unreachable, for he was still wrestling with that memory, despite its stark reality, refused to feel like it truly belonged to him. Her hand drifted slowly from his shoulder to the back of his neck, and he turned his head toward her, his attention settling entirely on his sister standing at his bedside once again. "I'm gonna call the doctor," she said after a few moments of silence. Then she ran her hand through his hair and messed it up the way only an annoying sister can. "I'll be right back." She smiled. A small, crooked thing that only he'd recognize.
The door clicked shut behind her with a soft, final sound that felt nothing like a door should feel like barrier nor privacy, but Just… weight. Another weight on top of all the others balanced on her chest these past weeks.
She pressed her back to the cool wall of the hallway, the scent of antiseptic suddenly too sharp. She tried to breathe like she'd been teaching her patients for years—steady inhale, slow release. But It didn't help. Each attempt to draw a centering breath was brutally interrupted by a fresh image of Bucky–looking down at his arm. Or rather, where his arm used to be.
The way the color drained from his face. The way he swallowed like he was forcing down a scream. And the worst part; the way he looked at her—as if she could save him from something no one could save him from–searing himself into her memory.
The air refused to fill his lungs; instead, each gasp hitched and curled into a silent sob that tightened its grip around her throat. Her hand flew to her mouth before she even realized she'd moved. The tremor hit her whole body at once—the kind that comes when a person has held themselves together for too long. "Just breathe," she whispered into her palm. "Just… breathe." But she couldn't.
Not when she'd watched him break in slow motion. Not when she knew all the nights he'd woken up sweating as a kid, terrified of things he'd never say aloud. Not when she remembered the boy who used to climb the kitchen counter to steal cookies for her because "You deserve the good stuff, Becca."
He was alive—miraculously, impossibly alive. And yet, the grief clawing at her felt like mourning. Finally, a shaky sob tore free before she could stop it. And she didn't even try to hold the tears back—or perhaps, she simply no longer had the strength to keep them at bay. The dam finally broke and she let the weight of everything she'd been holding in wash over him in a quiet release.
Rebecca wiped her eyes with her sleeve, but the tears kept falling faster, sizzling with the helplessness she'd swallowed and swallowed and swallowed. She didn’t hear the approaching footsteps at first, she was lost in her own internal storm. she remained unaware of the figure standing just a few steps away For a long while. until a voice cut through the fog, "Rebecca?" and she finally pulled back to reality.
She stiffened and pulled herself upright too fast. And she saw Sam stood there in uniform with fatigue on his face and worry in his eyes, like herself. She struggled to inhale, yet the heaviness in her chest was so suffocating that her hand curled into a rigid fist and her jaw locking tight as though bracing against an unseen storm.
Sam's expression shifted, the hard lines around his eyes softening instantly as he registered the raw emotion radiating from her. "Hey," he murmured, "What happened? Is he—"
"He woke up," she forced out, her voice cracking like a thin sheet of ice ready to shatter. "He's awake."
A wave of pure relief crashed over his features—a fleeting sunrise—but it vanished as quickly as it appeared the moment his gaze fell upon the unshed tears glistening in her black eyes. They were wells of a sorrow that went far beyond simple worry.
"What's wrong?" he asked, the question barely a whisper. Rebecca swallowed, like it was a difficult effort. "He saw it, Sam."
Sam didn't need her to elaborate. The implication hung heavy between them. His jaw tightened and his gaze dropped for a imperceptible moment, as if he were physically absorbing the blow himself. "Damn," he breathed, The curse was barely audible, a raw expletive wrested from the depths of his frustration.
It wasn't just about Rebecca’s pain, or Bucky's trauma; it was the gnawing realization of his own powerlessness. He was built to protect, to solve, to mend. But this? This was a wound too deep for his hands to heal. His thoughts raced, a desperate scramble for a solution, any solution, however impossible. Fix it. Make it right. But the rational part of his mind, the part he desperately tried to cling to, whispered that some things were beyond his control.
The guilt wasn't just about what had happened; it was about his inability to prevent it.
Rebecca could only offer a helpless nod, fresh tears beginning to carve hot paths down her cheeks. "ah couldn't—I didn't know what ta say, Sam. He just... froze. And ah... I told him it was gonna be okay." She choked on the last words. "And ah don't even know if that's true."
Sam closed the distance between them slowly, his movements deliberate and gentle like approaching a startled animal. "You did exactly what he needed," he said, "You were there. That's more than enough." But she shook her head, "It's not enough. Not this time."
"He's alive, Rebecca," Sam reminded her, his hand raised as if to reach for her, then hesitated, unwilling to crowd her. "That's all that matters now."
A disbelieving laugh escaped her lips, a sound devoid of humor. She chewed on her lower lip, the small gesture speaking volumes of her inner turmoil. The air crackled with unspoken fears and the crushing weight of reality. his hand found her shoulder finally, offering a grounding pressure, the familiar weight he'd used to steady countless soldiers on the brink.
She leaned into it for a brief moment before catching herself, her shoulders straightened with a visible effort. Rebecca just breathed–ragged, uneven–gasps that tore through the sterile air of the hospital hallway.
Sam stood beside her, a steady presence in the too-loud space, letting her find her strength. Finally, she found her voice again, still a fragile thread of a whisper. "Can you… can you stay with him?" Her voice cracked on the last word. "I think… I think he needs someone like you right now."
Sam nodded without a flicker of hesitation. "Of course." He glanced towards the door and a heavy sigh escaped him, the sound lost in the hospital's ambient hum.
As Rebecca watched him, a sliver of relief cut through the gnawing ache in her chest. Then she closed her eyes and let herself to cling on that small mercy. Sam gave her shoulder one last firm squeeze–like a silent transmission of shared strength–before turning and stepping towards the door. Her gaze followed him, Then with a deep breath, she turned and walked down the hallway, leaving Sam to enter her brother's room. He walked into that space, now carrying not only her profound worry but also the heavy weight of his own.