𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓;
In a brief reprieve from the pelting European rain, the Howling Commando's sat collected around a small campfire. The blaze illuminated exhausted faces, skin pelted with bruises and abrasions, splattered with mud, each one tiredly chewing at his rations.
The circular cans, all filled with an unappetising slop of meat and vegetables, had to sustain the soldiers through the darkest days. Rationing their portions down from six cans a day, to two, was taking it's toll on the worn men. Glancing around the soft glow of the fire, Barnes could see the hollows in his brothers' cheeks, the bags beneath their eyes, the way their hands shook between each mouthful of the turgid meal. No amount of ambiguous brown slurry would mend the things they'd seen and done.
Barnes' own body was covered in the signs of his sins. Bruises, welts, lacerations patched up on the battlefield. His forearms bore the deep scratches of clawing fingernails, his stomach, the slices of a bayonet, almighty purplish bruises spattered his flesh, but the worst wounds of all, were the ones 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘨 his mind.
Since his rescue, Barnes had barely slept a wink. A thousand slaughtered soldiers populated his dreams, screaming for revenge on blood-soaked battlefields, an eternal hellscape of fire and violence razing Bucky from the inside out.
Yet, there was a far more pressing fear awaiting him.
When his eyes snapped open, when his body convulsed back into the land of the living, Bucky found himself resting beside a 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫. He'd stare, wide-eyed at the blue eyes and blonde hair, the straight nose and the strong jaw, and he 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘩𝘪𝘮. He'd meet the concerned gaze and flinch as a strong hand reached to hold his arm, he'd recoil and push back against the 𝘶𝘯𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘯 in his bedroll.
Even when a soft Brooklyn accent dropped into the shadows between them, a voice he'd heard almost every day since he was a boy, Bucky 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵.
"Buck--? It-it's me... It's 𝙎𝙩𝙚𝙫𝙚."
Originally written and shared as part of Verbuary 2020: https://tinyurl.com/3zatuk8v
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