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two-hearts-one-love · 3 years

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Bambi's Mother - Oneshot

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 2.6k

Summary: Bucky had promised he'd come home to his mother, no matter what.

Warnings: angst, like a smidgen of fluff, me being mean to Bucky, 40s!Bucky, hallucinations, descriptions of violence (not too graphic), war, some anti-patriotic things are said, probably some historical inaccuracies

A/N: This was partly inspired by @softlybarnes's series called Blue. I really like how Becca divided up Bucky's characterization into two parts, before his first capture and after. I wanted to write a little something about the time before.

To see if there’s a happy ending, click here.

Copyright Notice: I do not own any of the images or dividers used in this post, credit to their original owners. I do not own any of the Marvel characters, they belong to Marvel. This is my own creative piece of writing, you do not have permission to repost it as yours on any other sites and/or translate it (without my written permission). That counts as plagiarism, which is illegal. Reblogs are fine, and encouraged!

“Ya know,” he said suddenly, a thin sheen of sweat covering his back, his breath still laboring to find a steady rhythm. “My mother died just six years after Steve’s.”

Her hands stilled suddenly, the intricate, nonsensical shapes she’d been tracing on her back leaving goosebumps behind. She was lying naked underneath him, legs wrapped around his waist. Usually, afterwards, he’d pull out, clean the two of them up and in a haze they would fall asleep. Now, she stood put.

Swallowing thickly, he continued, burying his head in her collarbone and kissing over a bruise he’d left there, “Found out right before Steve came over, right before they got a hold’a me the first time…”

It was a tale as old as time. The brand-spanking new olive green uniform, its owner grinning from ear-to-ear simply because he was finally wearing a piece of clothing that wasn’t a hand-me-down and still had all of its buttons intact. A head proudly held high, the extremely real fears inside of it hidden underneath the cockily-tilted hat.

Then, the boat ride over. The constant nausea, the sickness that spread through the soldiers like wildfire, the stench of the corpses wafting up from below them, since it was too rough to venture outside to toss them into the sea.

Usually, it was then, that he realized that maybe, just maybe, those posters and the patriotic shorts before the pictures were lies.

But, then, it was London, with its hustle and bustle, the rumbles of the ruined houses falling on deaf eyes. For a brief minute, lockets were bought, cheerful letters sent home and it felt like they were living on top of the world.

The first shell. The shock toppled all of them off of their high chairs and knocked their head back into the right place. With the dirt flying miles high above them in the trenches, the night lighting up so that the moon and stars weren’t seen anymore, they realized that they weren’t sitting on top of the world...they were knee-deep in corpses and blood and dirt at the very bottom of it. How they’d survive the rest of their active duty, was up to them.

That was when a lot of them would haul themself over the trenches and start screaming for the enemy lines to fire.

Bucky was different, but in only that regard.

Whatever you do, James, you come home to me, alright? No matter what this damned country says about you. It won’t matter a thing, not when you’re home and healthy and with me.

A promise made like that, over her famous pound cake, which Lord knew how many coffee and meat rations she had to trade in to make, was one that was supposed to be kept. So, when he curled up his legs into his chest in the mud and dirt as the guns fired and the planes swooped and dived above him, he pretended he was in her arms, safe and warm again, hiding away from the thunder and lightning that had roused him.

And that promise held him over for a long time, for close to a year. Marching from one side of occupied France to the other, he willed his feet to fall one after the other only with the hope that he’d eventually get home, and would fall into his mother’s arms again and cry.

That was the only thing he wanted as much as his mother. He wanted to cry. To really let it out until his eyes were burning raw and his throat clogged up with blood. Sure, there were the dry sobs he let out at the dead of night, muffling them into his sleeve, so that the soldiers of his unit sleeping around him wouldn’t wake up and see their fearless leader scared shitless.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he was going to be able to take it. The few calm nights they had to sleep, Bucky spent crying, and it showed. The next morning, eyes bloodshot and bruised, he started fumbling around dangerously with his gun which, had it not been for the safety still intact, would have shot clean through the forehead of one of their own.

Finally, his unit was granted a reprieve, a small rest in a little camp right off the edge of the Italian front in the south. He spent the first two days in bed, in an actual bed, twisting and turning and trying to get more than two consecutive hours of sleep. The morning of the third day, a sunny morning where the birds had dared to start singing again, he’d gone on a long walk, trying to summon up the will to leave for the trenches again in a little less than four days.

Hair-ruffled by the breeze, and a rumbling stomach, he’d come back to the mess hall for a cup of coffee and some bread, only a week old, when a small stack of letters were plopped down in front of him. Some of them were addressed in his father’s neat cursive, a sort of restrained compassion and concern within them. He also talked about the firm, how he was keeping an office empty for his son to occupy once he was back home.

Bucky knew not to expect too much from his father. Even as a child, sitting beside him on the couch and sounding out words from the newspaper, the most he would get was a pat on his head, an affectionate, Well done, James. Now, start the next sentence. And so, George Barnes listened to his son’s childlike voice, reading about the state of the economy and the growing tensions in Germany, staring at the grey ashes of the fireplace in front of him.

No, if Bucky wanted sentimentality, he’d have to go to his mother. And he got loads of it in her letters, each and every one telling him how much she missed her sweet boy, that there was a hot pound cake ready for him when he came back, that his room had gone untouched from the moment he’d left it. His heart ran cold however, when he noticed that the letters stopped close to about a month ago. There was no more complaining about the stray cat that hung around the kitchen door, nor were there any demands that he stay safe and out of the line of fire.

They all just stopped.

There was just one letter left, addressed to him in her sister’s looping handwriting. With a pounding heart he opened it and his whole world shattered apart.

Pneumonia.

Winnifred Barnes had spent the coldest night of the year serving soup to the veterans in a makeshift hospital whose heating had been cut out. She had had a dry cough through the rest of the winter and just as the snow melted away, she’d become bed-ridden. According to Rebecca, their mother had been sick for over six months, writing letters to her son as if nothing was wrong.

It was only until she couldn’t write anymore without splattering the ink all over the page from the intensity of her coughs that she conceded to let him know.

It was too damn late then, Bucky thought spitefully, his appetite suddenly ruined.

Numbed, he got up and started to amble around the camp again, watching the men play around in the yard with a baseball, running after each other, oblivious to Bucky’s world at their feet, happy only to be away from all the fighting, to have a small break from the terrifying burden of their guns.

He ended up in a makeshift conference room that had been turned into a makeshift cinema, a few of his own men congregated there, a snoring captain at the back, and stick-thin private setting everything up.

Everyone was there for Casablanca, the promise of Ingrid Bergman’s hooded eyes and smooth skin, so they could pretend, just for an instant, that they were the ones kissing her.

The opening credits started, the flaring trumpets, then, almost heavenly like, the shrill tone of the violins keeping them all suspended in the air. There were some confused grumbles around the room, but Bucky’s ears were deaf to them all.

With some aggravated huffs and shouts the room emptied, and there was only Bucky left, the snoring captain and the skinny private. He’d heard about these kinds of films before, hand-drawn, with only voices to bring the characters to life. He remembered taking Rebecca to see one when they were younger, after spending close to a week saving up all the money. He wanted it to be an experience neither of them would ever forget.

Now, all Bucky wanted was to forget.

He made it through the first few minutes easily enough, his eyes ravaging up all the beauty the cartoon offered. After spending months in the dirt and grime, places that had been torn apart and would be torn apart again so that the grass wouldn’t dare to grow, he drank up the trees, the waterfall, the baby birds in their nest fighting over the berry, letting them act as a balm to his hurting soul.

And...oh.

His heart stopped beating when he heard the sweet mother deer’s voice. He didn’t really hear much after that, waiting with baited breath until the mother was back on the screen, just for an instant’s reprieve of the constant ache in his chest where his heart was supposed to have been.

“Mother, you know what?”

“What?”

“We’re not the only deer in the forest.”

“Where did you hear that?”

Oh, Bucky hadn’t heard such a sweet, motherly voice in so long. Her voice was just shining with joy and love.

“Thumper told me.”

“Well, he’s right. There are many deer in the forest besides us.”

Maybe, if he was in the right headspace, he would have known better than to expect the rest of the movie to be the adventures of Bambi and his mother. Maybe he wouldn’t have let himself blindly hope that it would be.

The mother and son ventured into the meadow.

Then, the shot.

Just as in the movie, Man came and tore Bucky Barnes’ mother away from him, flinging him to the other side of the world in a war he wanted no business fighting in. Away from everything he knew and held dear to his heart, with a gun forced into his hand.

And Bambi kept running, running and running until his chest hurt with the pain of his laboured breaths, heeding his mother’s advice and not looking back. He may have flinched at every gunshot, but he kept running and didn’t stop until he reached their little home.

Bucky fell out of his chair, whimpering and he crawled underneath the table, clutching on to it like he’d done so many times to his mother’s leg when she was cooking in their small kitchen. With every cry of Bambi’s for his mother, Bucky cowered into himself even further, ripping out handfuls of his hair.

“Mother!”

He had a vision. The hot summer sun was beating down on his forehead, mixing with his tears as he stood whimpering at the back kitchen door, blood rolling down from his knee. Her gentle, rough hands fluttering over his body, examining for any other injuries, her sweet tutting and telling him to be more careful.

“Mother!”

Bucky was standing at the door of his parents’ bedroom, his mother lying pale on their bed, a white bundle clutched strongly to her chest. For the first time in his life, he was scared of her, the colour having faded from her face, dark circles underneath her eyes. He hesitated at the doorway, pushing back against his father’s firm grip on his shoulder. Then she spoke up, and though her voice was gravelly and tired, it was still hers.

“It’s still me, my sweet boy, just me and your sister.”

“Mother! Where are you?”

“You come home to me, James, you hear me? I want my sweet boy back with me the moment they let you go.”

“Mother!”

The door of the room opened and a soft set of footsteps came close to where he was seated. Probably some high-ranking officer telling him to get up so he could be taken to the hospital. Bucky didn’t care where they took him anymore, not when he had nothing to come back to anyways. He winced as another handful of his hair was ripped out.

“Now, baby, leave my best boy alone,” a soft, warm hand came and stopped his fingers from tearing out the rest of his hair.

His mother’s soft brown eyes came into view, a gentle glow around her as she bent down underneath the table, in her everyday, blue dress that Bucky loved so much. Smiling sweetly at him, she started gathering his hair and tenderly placing it in a small pile on her apron.

“Is-” he slowly thickly, watching the figure with apprehension “-is it really you?”

“Of course it’s me,” she smiled, tears gathering in her eyes. “You came back to me, baby, didn’t you?”

His face broke into a frown, the corners of his lips turning down as he gave up trying to hide his tears. Cooing softly, her arms came around him, pressing his head into her chest, “I did, I tried so hard, mother, I came back.”

“Yes you did, baby,” she said, letting him cry it out. “I’m so proud of you, my best boy, always listenin’ to what I tell him to do.”

He could only cry harder, gripping on to her to the point that he was surprised that she didn’t let out a whimper of pain. Her sweet coos were music to his ears, the sounds of the movie and the snoring captain long forgotten.

Starting to feel his breaths calm down, he looked back up at her, expecting to see her sweet smile and kind eyes. Instead, her face had hardened into a firm frown, “It wasn’t enough, James.”

“Mother?” his heart lurched into his throat, chopping up the rhythm of his breaths again.

She took a harsh grip of her shoulders and pushed him backwards, hitting his head on the seat of one of the chairs, but he was numb to all the pain. “I told you to do whatever it takes, didn’t I?”

“But I did, I’m here now-”

Shooting him a glare that was worth more than a dozen bullets in his chest, Bucky cut off his protests immediately. She crawled out from underneath the table and started to stand up, causing Bucky to spring into action.

“No, wait-” he laid down on his stomach, gripping to her calf with all the force he could muster “-don’t leave me! Mother!” His chin hit the ground as she shook him off just like a pesky insect and kept walking towards the door, “Mother, please! It’s not too late and-” she ignored him and he got up briefly just to throw himself in front of her feet, preventing her access to the door. “Don’t go!”

With a scoff, she stepped over him and opened the door to the room, ignoring the way that it dug into Bucky’s lower back.

And then she was gone.

In some ways, Bucky thought he’d already fallen long before he got on that train.

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