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quarantined-with-bucky · 4 years

Text

Dichotomy

Bucky x Reader

Words: ~ 3,500

Summary: Bucky’s in the poetry feels. And his own feels.

Warnings: Mentions of abuse

Dedication: I’ve had a couple readers express their interest in mythology and the like, either in reblogs, replies, or private messages, so this is dedicated to them (you know who you are) Thanks! :)

A/N: This was taken from my mythology cultivation (I mentioned it in Poetry (this is kinda a part II to that?)), so I have no author credits to the poem :( please let me know if anyone does! This one is also more of Bucky’s view on his relationship with the reader. Sorry it took me so long to write, I wasn’t sure where to take this for a while!

...

You were a myth.

You had to be. Bucky was convinced.

You were beautiful. But he would never mistake your beauty for stupidity – not for naivety, vulnerability, or even weakness.

And They Said Aphrodite Was Soft: Smear your lips in blood, dust your eyelids with stars. Hang rubies around your neck, wear a nude leather dress. Kiss him hard, make him groan. Rip him apart, muscle from bone. Breath in, breath out. Begin step one.

Such a beautiful creature could never be so cruel. He saw the way you moved so gracefully on the battlefield and the way just a single touch from you could melt the heart of any man. You had no tolerance for the men that talked down to you and, sure, you were an exquisite creature, but your prowess that lied beneath the surface – that could tear any unassuming man limb from limb – was what drew him to you.

You were resilient. Despite what anyone may think, you were one of the strongest on the team.

I have wondered what it was like for Aphrodite. For Hera, Medusa, Artemis, Athena. For them to be worshiped, feared, sung of and powerful. What did it feel like to fall into myth and legend? To be remembered mostly for the men they loved, or the ones who fought for them when they didn’t need it, didn’t ask. To be pushed into the corner of the bar, to only be talked about when someone else decided, and to watch their daughters, their children of the earth, fall to the same fate.

Despite your effort to write your own story, to be the best damn Avenger you could be, there would always be hurtles in your way, whether that be the media shoving you into the shadows of Captain America and Iron Man, your inherent lack of any sort of super-ability, or you almost too innocent-looking appearance: how could you hold your own when you look like you can’t even open a jar by yourself? It was the same for those before you, women being washed away in history as lab assistants or had their valor just plain stolen from them. It couldn’t be you and you wouldn’t let it.

You were hurt. Years of physical pain, emotional torment, and past abuse took its toll on you. After all, you were only human.

Dearest Medusa I am so sorry no one told you that the Gods could be so cruel. You had beauty so unlike the rest. Your mother deemed it a blessing. A blessing that would one day deal your curse. Dearest Medusa I am so sorry that no one told you the love of a god is as good as the hatred from a god. Dearest Medusa I am so sorry that he pillaged your body in the temple of goddess meant to shelter you. Dearest Medusa I am so sorry that Athena in all of her wisdom turned blind eye to your pain. Dearest Medusa I am so sorry that no one ever told you the gods could be so cruel.

You’d known what it’s like to have been cast away in your time of need. Your strength somehow came around to backfire on you. You’d been so strong your whole life, there’s no way you could be upset – especially about something so small. You’d been discredited to your own feelings. When you cried out for help, you never received, instead met with neglect and following misfortune. And that’s what built you, but that’s also what broke you.

It was only through poetry that Bucky realized there were two sides to your story – every story, he’d supposed.

And goddamn, there were two sides to his story.

He’d wondered if one day, such myths will be written about him. Would he be seen as the monster: a harsh, unforgiving, unrelenting man – whose true tragedy is unbeknownst to most? Only after years of examination and internal debate could change anyone’s perspective on him.

But he knew they’d be writing about you someday. Hell, it seems like they already had been. The most celestial being in the universe and he just happens to be lucky enough to share a bed with you. He’s the one who knows your backstory, knows your own tragedy, knows the strength that its built. It’s almost like he’s been studying you – and he would if he could. He applies every beautiful book or poem he’s read to you: to your grace, your poise, your struggles.

You meant more to him than words could describe; not the likes of Homer, Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, nor even Jane Austen could even capture half your complexity. He didn’t think there were so many layers to life. There was only one way he could see himself: damaged. But from the day he met you, you’d proven quite the opposite. He had depth, substance, an intricacy that only you could unravel. You’d welcomed him into your open arms, taking him under your wing as you showed him the ropes of the twenty-first century. That’s how it started, anyway. You’d shown him the internet, the DVR, how his phone works, plastic Tupperware. The world had become quite a different place, but it wasn’t just the material objects that shifted either.

People seemed to be a bit more complex than Bucky remembered – and he didn’t know whether it was a twenty-first century thing or if he just hadn’t been around people in such a long time. It took a lot of questions, a lot of research, and a lot of late-night discussions before Bucky finally grasped the concept you’d been trying to instill in him. And one night it just made so much sense. It was in everything you read – every novel and poem – everything you wrote, and everything you’d been teaching him.

Bucky’s night of clarity consisted of a nightmare, two giant mugs filled to the brim with hot chocolate, and some frighteningly serious pillowtalk. “You don’t have to let your past define you, Bucky,” you whispered, before taking a sip of your drink. Bucky’s head rested on your chest, the two of you laying in bed, wide awake after having been woken up by Bucky screaming in the middle of the night. Your hand ran through his hair, strands stuck together and tangled up, tacky with sweat. His eyes were shut, his focus being the vibrations of your chest as you spoke. “You aren’t what they made you.”

You’d seen the side of him that nobody else saw; the soft side of him. It was the half of him that the media would never portray, that his closest peers – his housemates, his team members – would never see, the part that even he forgot existed.

Hell, it was hard for him to remember how to be kind – how to be vulnerable. It took years of physical torture and mental torment for Hydra to beat it out of him. The majority of his life, he’d gone without physical affection, a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, any kind of touch that didn’t result in a bloody nose.

That wasn’t the only issue. He had to overcome his own bravado. It took him years of solitude and half-assed coping mechanisms for Bucky to come to terms with it himself. Even after jumping over the first hurdle of undoing Hydra’s psychological damage, he had to rewrite his own programming. He never confided in anyone in the Avengers; not the therapist and psychologist Tony brought in, not Clint – a college familiar with being a victim of mind-control, not Natasha – someone who had understood similar hardships, not even Steve – his childhood best friend. He’d come from a time where you would simply grin and bear it.

Sounds cliché, sure, but he couldn’t help it. It was hard not to act this way when even those closest to him – those who shared similar trauma – acted in the same manner. He’d never seen Clint bring it up. Natasha never spoke of her past, or let it affect her work or well-being – in fact, she made jokes about it. And Steve? Forget it. He was one of those who used his past as motivation and to share to kids for “life lessons” (Bucky could gag just thinking about it). Anyway, where did that leave Bucky? With no options but to suck it up and not let it bother him.

When you started spending multiple nights in a row with him, he knew you’d get him to confess about his past, his feelings. Bucky hated feelings. In the thirties, the only feeling he liked was to have a woman wrapped around his finger. He supposed that’s all he had to worry about, back then, anyway.

Now, he was the one wrapped around his finger. So much so, in fact, that he let you twirl his hair around in your hand, stroke his stubble with the backs of your knuckles, and press your cold feet against his legs while the two of you were sleeping (supposed to be sleeping, at least). “Remember what I told you?” You murmured, pulling him out of his thoughts. He opened his eyes to meet yours peering down over him, as you now sat propped on one elbow to lean your head over his. “About it being okay for you to be upset?”

He rolled his eyes and then quickly shot you a soft apology. Don’t dismiss your emotions, it was what you’d told him numerous times before. He wasn’t supposed to be acting like nothing was bothering him; he promised you that he’d tell you anything on his mind. It was easy when the only thing that was on his mind was you naked in his mind. This was way harder, he mentally groaned.

It was hard for him to come to terms with his past. With all of the terrible things he’d done? There was no way he’d ever be able to accept it, to forget about it, forgive himself for it. There are two sides to every story, you’d reminded him once.

Bucky’s two sides: assassin, murderer, beast; victim, vulnerable, manipulated.

He couldn’t even come to terms with that. He wasn’t manipulated. Manipulation carries the connotation that he still had control. Bucky wasn’t manipulated into doing any of the things he did – into committing those atrocities. Nobody used their cunning wit and skills to get him to willingly commit such crimes; Bucky wasn’t convinced by someone to go against his free will and better judgement. No, that right was stolen from him – his free will.

He didn’t even have an adjective to describe himself.

But he had others who could describe him on his behalf.

Name one hero who was happy. Was Heracles, remembered in the stars, satisfied with his life? Risen to glory and fame, but at what cost? The memory of his wife and child’s blood on his hands, their cries etched in his head. Ask Daedalus, whose cleverness was no match for his love for Icarus, if he was happy to escape confinement. To soar amongst the heavens only to watch his son plummet to his death, perished by his own creation. And Achilles, what of him, was he happy? The boy with the golden feet and lion-heart, who upheld battle for a decade, to watch his beloved slain? To live out the end of his days grieving, yearning for death, was he truly happy? Once again, I must ask: Name one hero who was happy.

It validated his thoughts, at lease. No matter how much people could grow to love him, how accepted he’d be into society, how much he’d be celebrated, he’d still never forget – never be happy, haunted forever by his past barbarity, the lives he took, his loved ones gone. His own life and power ripped away from him, missing from his life for so long that he didn’t know how to live anymore.

He’d found you, at least. You gave him some semblance of his life and freedom back. But he couldn’t help but think, deep down, so low that he’d never be able to muster up the words to say it aloud, that one day you’d be taken away from him. He didn’t know if it would be on the battlefield or if it would be karma finally coming around – but he was scared.

But, despite you being totally oblivious to Bucky’s deepest thoughts (although, you were fairly intuitive. He assumed you’d already known this was his greatest fear), you’d taught him that it was okay to be scared. It was okay to be scared, vulnerable, and hurting. That must have been more accepted these days. While Bucky was never able to marry back in his original time, he wasn’t even sure if this was something husband and wife talked about. He’d remembered hearing stories of his war-buddies back in the trenches. They wrote home to their wives, telling them everything was okay, nobody was hurting, all was as well as could be a – when the opposite couldn’t be truer. It was his job to make sure everything was okay in the home, and part of that required staying strong; being the immovable force that held the family steady. And he looked up to those men more than anything. Fighting a goddamn war, writing their wives in a matter that wouldn’t make them worry.

Now that wasn’t necessary. Women had embraced their strength and independence. He was relieved, to be honest, he knew he’d never compare to his own father – not after everything he’d endured. But maybe twenty-first century life was where he belonged, anyway. So that he could have you next to him. Outspoken, rowdy, cutthroat, bold, passionate you.

You understood Bucky’s hesitation to open up to you. It took him a long time to get acclimated to his new environment, to people, to having emotions – let alone expressing them. That was okay with you. You had nothing but time. You’d tried early on to express to him the fact that his past is what gave him his strength today. He’s been through so much during the past one hundred years of his life that it would be easy for him to just quit, throw in the towel of life, give up and spend the rest of his days spending his days in Wakanda raising goats. But every day, he found the strength to get up, return to the clutches of Hydra and fight them one by one with the promise of the world one day being free from their grasp.

That resonated with him a bit. To come to terms with his struggles because they made him who he is. Not necessarily in a bad way: in the way that he could realize how much he overcame in his long life. He was a survivor.

“Yes,” he whispered, turning his head to press a kiss to your palm.

He wasn’t sure how you were able to resonate with him on such a level. It was probably the way you talked to him. You treated him like a human. Not that the others didn’t necessarily, but they just treated him differently – like they were afraid of him. Like anything they said might trigger him, they cowered in fear when he walked into a room, they avoided him at all costs. But you, you treated him like he was fragile – like if you held him, he’d crack.

He smiled at the thought, holding back a laugh. That’s the exact same way he held you.

Like you were made of porcelain. And that mutual consideration just drew him to you in awe. There was something so inherently soft about you. You were so genuinely kind to everyone, always lending a helping hand, putting everyone else’s needs above yours. He hadn’t known somebody like that for a long time; since he was a young kid in Brooklyn.

No Mortal Words Describe Her: Mortal, on the ground, drenched in sweat and tears: Are you a dream? Are you a nightmare? Aphrodite, baring her teeth, drenched in blood and ash: I am everything in between.

You were a dichotomy. He didn’t understand it. He met you on the battlefield, killing Hydra agents. Your hair was pulled up tight, eyes wide but eyebrows narrowed. You threw your punches with such force; you were kicking men through walls and windows. You’d looked as if you were born and bred to kill – which, in all truth, you were. You’d accepted that fact and you held your head high. He was intimidated by you, and he loved that fact that everyone else was, too. And you were proud of it. There was nothing you cared about in those moments more than making the scum of the earth pay for the atrocities they had committed, for all the years they had Bucky Barnes locked up.

But then it was him laying on your bedroom floor, reading poetry you had scribbled on scraps of paper, littered around the room; some laid out neatly beside you, others crumpled up and tossed in the corner. Bucky liked those ones best – the ones you’d discarded in a frantic, haphazard manner, too busy to even aim for the garbage can. He’d felt that those were the ones that described you best: they were raw, real, undeniable; they came from the deepest depths of your mind, the part that took you hours of searching to even skim the surface. It was the truest form of yourself, and Bucky was lucky enough to have been granted permission to read.

All Antigone wanted was to bury her dead. How many times do women hang themselves in the shadow of their fathers’ sins? I am no exception, I flinch at comparisons, the easiest way to unmake me is to throw his name over me like an old mantle of anger and hate: I’ve worked too hard to be broken down by a story I had no hand in, braced my arms against flood and falling sky and sometimes I get so tired. But I am more than my father’s venom tongue. I am my grandmother’s eyes, my grandfather’s bleeding heart, I am the daughter of women stronger than any Greek playwright could forgive.

Just as it did for Bucky, it took you time to open up. To delve into your past was a process in and of its own. It was when he found this poem crinkled beside your bookshelf that he finally asked about it. This one felt a little too personal to just ignore. He recrumpled the piece of paper and tossed it towards you, landing in your lap. Unfolding it, you skim the words, tossing it beside you once finished, continuing your current work. “Do you want to talk about it?” Bucky asked, breaking the silence that surrounded the two of you.

At first, you’d said no and simply continued writing. How were you supposed to tell him the stories of your so-called family? The pains you’d suffered as a child. You’d continued on your poem about Achilles: the strong, brave, invincible, soldier; the broken, touch starved, damaged man. You huffed to yourself and threw your pen down. What kind of girlfriend would you be to make Bucky relive his own terror without at least reciprocating – especially when you knew it took so much for him to let you in in the first place.

It was a long night after that, setting up the timeline of your life. And everyone had their own right to deal with their past in their own way; each memory hurts in its own particular way, and it is up to you with how to deal with it. But your past is what makes you, and that’s what you’d told Bucky days before. It doesn’t define you, but it gives you something to fight for, something to live for.

It took years of explaining it to him for you to finally find it true for yourself.

…

But he was pulled back into the present once your hands pulled apart an exceptionally tight knot from his hair. He brought his eyes back to meet yours, your face illuminated by the now rising sun shining behind the white shades. Your eyes were half lidded, face completely relaxed, gazing down at Bucky with a sleepy lust. You’d been sitting in silence for hours. It was fine, you had nothing else to do. It was better that Bucky worked it out on his own anyway; you knew how he could get lost in his own thoughts.

All you’d hoped was that he wasn’t beating himself up about it anymore.

“Hey, doll,” he murmured, grabbing your hand in his, turning up to lean against the headboard next to you. And, god, the way you looked at him could make his heart stop; nothing but admiration and affection in those eyes. Your eyebrows were slightly raised, corners of your mouth pulling up slightly.

“Hey, Buck.” You fully smiled at him, offering him a soft, sleepy grin.

“I love you.”

You slid down on the bed, this time resting your head on his chest, wrapping your arms around his large torso, snuggling up into him as the sun rose behind you. “I love you, too.”

#Daedalus giving me Steve vibes in this poem tbh #bucky x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #fanfiction #captain america #angst #poetry #bucky x you #bucky barnes angst #bucky fic #bucky fanfic

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