Music is "Lovely" by Billie Eilish feat. Khalid.

Picture is Tatiana Maslany as Emma Barnes.

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CHAPTER TEN: Dream Within A Dream

Bucky stands before me in his bloodied Howling Commandos uniform. The smile on his face is unnatural, scarlet covering his teeth. It oozes from his lips as he walks towards me, and no matter how much I want to move, my feet take me nowhere. The nearer he gets, the more my heart hammers in my chest. I've had this dream, or a version of this dream, a thousand times over the past seventy years. I mostly expected them to stop after finding Bucky and getting him back to being himself.

I was wrong.

"You think the dreams will stop because you got him back?" Bucky grins, tilting his head to the side. "That's not how trauma works, dollface."

I close my eyes and focus on breathing. I know the dream will end, I just have to outlast the screaming and laughing.

"You think you'll escape me by becoming mortal? You couldn't be more wrong."

I shake my head, feeling the lump rise in my throat. "Not again. Not you. You're not real."

The nightmare Bucky grabs my face harshly, pulling me up to meet his animalistic gaze. "Oh, I'm real all right. I'm as real as anything else in your head. That's what you deserve, Emma. After all the shit you've done, all the lives you've taken, all the families you've ruined, you deserve to be haunted. If you can't die, this is what you get. So get used to me, dollface! I'm not goin' anywhere! You got me for eternity!"

Tears spill down my cheeks, and I let out a painful scream as the nightmare Bucky laughs evilly. "No! No, leave me alone! Go away, no!"

"Emma! Emma!"

"No! Leave me alone! Why can't you just leave me alone--!"

"--Emma, wake up!"

I open my eyes, and this time, they open in the waking world. I fly out of my sleeping position, feeling the fear and anxiety consume me. My body trembles, but I manage to get to my feet and stumble away from the place where I laid, the place where the nightmare was more real than anything I've dreamt before.

When my tear-filled eyes focus, I see Bucky on the other side of the bed. He's looking at me with worry. Even in the dark, I can see how scared he is.

"Doll, it was just a dream," he attempts to assure me, his voice soft as he scoots to the edge of the bed.

As his arm reaches out for me, I pull away, running my hands frantically through my hair. "N--No, no, it wasn't just a dream. It was real. It was so bloody real and they will never go away! Why won't they go away!"

I grip the roots of my hair tightly as the weight on my chest grows. Unable to breathe, I feel like I'm suffocating. The wall of the bedroom hits my back as I continue to scoot away from Bucky, fearing that this is still my dream. My nightmare. If I let him close, he'll shift into the Bucky I always see. The Bucky covered in blood and gore, the one that shouts about my failures and curses my very existence. The Bucky that makes me want to die.

"That's it. I'm still asleep. I'm still bloody dreaming! Wake up, wake up." I sink to the floor, pulling my knees up to my chest. My hands cover my ears, as if they alone could block out the screams that will come when nightmare Bucky reappears. "Wake up, damn it!"

"Emma!" Bucky exclaims.

I open my eyes, seeing him scooting towards me. He bends down, crouching to my level as he moves closer.

"No!" I scream, voice breaking. "No, stay away! Stay away!"

Bucky stops moving, blue eyes sad. I can't let the nightmare fool me. I can't let him close. This is a dream within a dream. I'm still asleep. I'm still in my own head.

"It's just me, Doll," he whispers, sending me a tiny smile. He sits down on the wooden floors, keeping his distance even though his eyes clearly say he wants to move closer. "It's Bucky."

I shake my head swiftly and curl further away from him. I would sink into the walls of the house if I could. "You're not you. You're a nightmare, a sick new version of my nightmares. You're here, looking like that, in my new home. My new beginning. Why can't you just leave me the hell alone! I've paid for my sins!"

Tears form in Bucky's eyes. "What can I do to prove I'm real? Please, god, Doll. I'll do anything."

My breathing quickens, and a whimper slips past my lips. Nightmare Bucky has never offered to prove his reality before. It makes me even more terrified to see the length to which this dream is going to prove it is real.

"I--I--"

Bucky moves, slowly, towards the dresser across the room. He doesn't make any sudden movements as he reaches for a pen and paper. He shows it to me, silently telling me not to be afraid. After he sits back down on the ground, he begins to write something on the pad, trying to hold the pad and write with the same hand.

"I remember hearing somewhere that you can't read in dreams," Bucky states. "Even your own head can't change that. So, if I were a nightmare, would you be able to read this?"

He holds up the pad, and I read the familiar, sloppy penmanship.

"Life is infinitely stranger than the mind of man could invent."

I know that line. I'd know it anywhere. Sherlock Holmes. The Case of Identity by Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. That line is one of my favorites from the collection of Sherlock Holmes stories that I received as a gift from my mother before she died. I still have the book to this day, and have read The Case of Identity so many times I could quote it.

"That's your favorite Sherlock Holmes quote," Bucky states, placing the pad on the floor and sliding it over to me. Gingerly, I pick it up and read it again. "If you can read that, then we're not in a dream. This is real, Emma. I'm real."

"I can read it," I mumble to myself, staring at the writing. "This isn't a dream."

I look up at Bucky. He smiles at me and moves closer. This time, I don't flinch away. "Not a dream."

I feel my heart fall out of my chest and into my stomach. This whole time, Bucky has been real. He's not my nightmare trying to hurt me. He's not a shadowy figment of my twisted imagination. He's James Buchanan Barnes, my best friend and husband. This whole time, he's just been trying to help me, and I've done nothing but freak out and push him away.

"Oh my god," I utter, eyes widening as the pad slips from my fingers. "You're real. You're bloody real!" I push myself off the ground and throw my arms around Bucky. He catches me easily, arm tightening around me as soon as I'm near him. "I'm so, so sorry. I didn't know what else to do."

Bucky's hand moves up and down my back, soothing me. He places soft kisses on my shoulder and lets me hold onto him like my life depends on it. I try to fight the tears, but they insist on falling anyways.

"It's okay, Doll," he whispers, kissing my cheek. "Really. We're gonna be okay."

I shake my head and pull back slightly, wiping my eyes. "No, it's not. You were only trying to help, and I treated you like the enemy."

"I know what nightmares are like," Bucky replies, keeping his hand on the small of my back. "They can be more convincing than real life sometimes, especially after what we've been through."

I can't make myself look him in the eye. Ashamed, I let my head fall to his shoulder, resting my forehead against the fabric of his shirt. The first night together in almost two years, the fight night in our new home, and it's going to end with both of us curled up on the hardwood floor. I had to go and ruin it with my nightmares and panic attack.

"I mucked it up," I sigh, shoulders sagging. "We were supposed to sleep soundly tonight. A new home, a new life, and I had to drag in my trauma with me like a dead animal."

"That's not on you," Bucky tells me. "We all have our baggage. I still have mine, even without the Winter Soldier switch in my head. I still feel guilty by the things he did. I still remember all the faces of his victims. The Kingsman agent, Fury, Grant, Howard and Maria Stark...I'll have nightmares one day, and I know you'll do the same for me."

I lift my head and look at him. Bucky offers me a small smile, then presses a kiss to my forehead. "I guess I was hoping it would all go away," I reply softly. "But I was wrong. Things were better before, when I was in France with Grant, but the nightmares didn't go away then, either. Even when Steve came back, they didn't stop. I was stupid to think they'd stop now."

"Maybe not at first," Bucky agrees, "but in time, I think we'll both get a little better. We have each other, Doll. We can get through it all."

There's a long pause, a pause where I sit still and listen to our collective breathing. "You were right."

"I was? There's a surprise."

I crack a small smile at his sarcastic comment. "You were right. We should have told each other what we'd done sooner. Burying it only made it worse. The guilt I feel..." I trail off, looking away from him as butterflies form in my stomach. "You'll be ashamed of me."

Bucky slides away from me for a second, only long enough so he can stand and offer me a hand. "C'mere," he whispers, and I take his hand. He pulls me up and ushers me back towards the bed. I curl up on the mattress, pillows behind my back and covers over my body. Bucky mirrors me, keeping his hand over mine. "Tell me all of it, Doll."

With a large inhale and quivering voice, I do just that. In the darkness of our new Wakandan home--with only the sounds of nature outside, lit by the moonlight streaming through the windows--I tell him everything. I don't leave out a single detail about anything I've been through or done in the past seven decades. As soon as I start sharing, the secrets and lies start pouring from my mouth like water from a cracking dam. It all comes out like a flood, completely consuming me in the idea that another person will know my whole story.

I haven't shared all of my past with anyone since Steve, after he came out of the ice, and even then I left out certain details. These are details that are gory, gruesome, and guilt-ridden. They wake me up at night. They keep me from going to sleep in the first place. They make me do reckless and dangerous thing to earn some kind of redemption. Steve was America's golden boy; he wouldn't have seen what I did as necessity. Even though he'd deny it, I know he'd never look at me the same again.

But Bucky isn't Steve. He was never the perfect American super-soldier that Steve was. Bucky was just Bucky, a sergeant and Howling Commando, a good man who loved his family more than life itself. And after he fell off the train, he became a ghost. The Winter Soldier part of him did horrible things, things at the same level of indecency and villainy as me. Now that Bucky and I aren't those people anymore, we have to live with the consequences of those actions. This is something Bucky and I have compassion about with each other. We know what it's like to cross the line.

What starts as me sharing my life's story turns into a mutual conversation about the past. Bucky and I take turns exchanging pasts, though his are slightly less put together because of the constant brain damage he suffered. Time was never relevant to the Winter Soldier, so he never asked. Even so, most of the things he tells me I already knew about. Having to say them to each other helps nevertheless.

He shot President Kennedy, he helped train Natasha in the Red Room, he tried to kill Princess Diana and Prince Charles, he shot Natasha in Odessa. More personal to me, he killed Zelma, Howard, and Maria. He'd also attempted to kill me a half dozen times, as well as my entire extended family. He's killed politicians, revolutionaries, and activists. He's brought down governments, royal families, and organizations. All of these were enemies of HYDRA.

Bucky tells me the gruesome details of being the Winter Soldier, HYDRA's Asset, the ghost. He recalls having his arm broken in the fall from the train, and how Arnim Zola tore the rest of it off to replace his entire appendage with a superior, metal one. He shares how HYDRA used the memory suppression machine that both wiped him of all Bucky Barnes was and replaced him with HYDRA trigger words. His breathing becomes harder when he tells me how they would send him on missions and have him put on ice until the next one. He can hardly look at me when he explains how he trained the other Winter Soldiers, the ones I could have rescued in Poland, the ones Zemo killed two years prior.

The sun starts to rise and peak through the windows before our conversation ends. We've been up all night, putting everything out in the open. After it's all said and done, I open my arms for him. He wraps me in his, and we hold each other without saying a word. There are no more tears, no more sadness. The guilt is still there, but it's a lightened load after seeing each other react to it. The things we did were horrible, but nothing we could ever do will change the way we feel about one another.

"I forgive you," I whisper, running a hand through his dark hair. "But you need to forgive yourself."

Bucky's grip tightens around me, and he nods into my shoulder. "Have you forgiven yourself?"

I breathe a sigh. "I thought I had. I see now that I still feel responsible, so maybe I haven't forgiven myself completely."

Bucky turns and presses a kiss to the side of my head as his hand rubs up and down my back. "We'll get there together."

I close my eyes and let myself smile. "I can live with that."

END CHAPTER TEN: Dream Within A Dream.