sakura_no_miko

Fandom: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Steve/Bucky

Warnings: PTSD, violence, child endangerment/injury/illness, angst, some homophobia (historical context)

Other notes: de-age fic, child care, boys who cannot communicate

Length: 79k

Summary: Steve’s unending faith in his best friend was beginning to look less like hope and more like fantasy. When they’d caught the Soldier – in a fire fight that still gave Sam nightmares – the only thing the man seemed to recall was how to hit exactly where it hurt.

Four months later, Barnes still refused to speak English. Refused to heed anything but Steve’s voice.

So, all in all, it was not a great time for Hydra to attack New York. All in all, Sam really wished they’d just killed him, instead of turning Captain America into a baby.

Ah, this was supposed to go after Resisting The Wind. Gotta try and get back to my schedule.

Now, this is a more traditional de-age/kid fic, I think–one where the focus is on the caretakers. This one is pretty hard on poor Bucky. I should probably rec some of the happier Bucky recovery fics at some point.

This fic is just really lush with detail. Even the first few chapters present us with so much information–Bucky’s PTSD and inability to speak throwing the entire Avengers tower off base; the way the whole team rallies around baby!Steve, only to wonder how in the world he survived in the first place with a million different sicknesses; and, in the middle, them just completely flummoxed with how Bucky and Steve bond together again.

Shoot, everyone is in terrible pain in this fic–everyone had terrible childhoods and traumas. And just to cap it all off, Steve gloms onto Bucky, and only Bucky. It sets off a whole mess of trauma, because Bucky did grow up with Steve, and knows how to keep him safe and happy–even when he’s dealing with his own PTSD, and feels like a danger to himself and others. It’s a juxtaposition you see in a lot of fics–that there’s some element of the relationship forcing two people closer together, when all they want is to be apart. There’s some part of a person’s personality that makes it obvious to everyone else in the room that they have good inside them–except the person himself. It’s that delicious, ironic juxtaposition.

The ending–shoot, there is great prose, great character moments throughout, but the ending:

“I miss Stepushka,” he managed to say, after Steve had fallen through and practically collapsed into Bucky’s arms, enveloping him with an embrace that Bucky had thought he’d lost forever in 1944. “He was lighter.” He was simpler; Steve’s love without the damning knowledge of all Bucky had been.
…
Maybe they were both selfish, in the end. Bucky couldn’t hurt Steve, couldn’t push him away now that he had him in his arms – so he leaned forward and kissed him, instead.

I love these sentences. “The damning knowledge of all Bucky had been,” that is excellent, and that’s a common theme in a lot of post-Winter Soldier fics. If Bucky and the Winter Soldier are the same person, or not; if Steve loves one of them or the other; if Bucky can accept both parts of himself. It might almost be easier for neither of them to remember.

Anyway, excellent fic, even if you’re not into kid fic.

(Looking for more fic recs?)
Originally posted on tumblr on 02/04/15