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1.
After the first few times, Bucky'd promised himself he wouldn't talk about it, not with anyone. Talking about it would only lead to terrible things. Clinical sofas were the first thing that came to mind, that and memories of that godawful bamboo wallpaper, those stupid blinds Raynor kept half-open at all times. He'd clawed his way out of that hellhole not too long ago; there was no way he was going to crawl his way back. Besides, what was he supposed to say?
Sometimes, I dream about Wanda Maximoff.
Sometimes, I even see her when I'm awake.
No. Not a chance. No good could come from admitting a thing like that.
The only silver lining was the Wanda that haunted him during his waking hours didn't seem capable of actually talking. She could only scowl and tilt her head at him sternly, popping up behind him in mirrors or glaring at him from the foot of his bed, there one second, gone in the blink of the next.
The Wanda that haunted his nightmares, on the other hand—Bucky could never get that Wanda to shut up.
"I don't get it," she'd grumble, sinking into whatever chair was available. "Your target was the doctor."
"Yes," Bucky would manage, teeth grit. "And?"
"Did you really have to kill his wife?"
Her incessant commentary always brought his nightmares to a screeching halt. Strangely, they also gave Bucky some newfound dreamland agency. Rather than having to simply relive some of the worst moments of his life, he could now debate them, too.
He glared at Wanda, holstering his gun. "No witnesses. What's so hard to understand about that?"
Wanda made a face. "Look," she began, "all I'm saying is if I were the best of the best at doing what you do, I'd make it a priority to make sure there were no witnesses around before any of the actual killing." She gestured at the dead body between them, clearly unimpressed. "This is just wasteful."
Bucky brought a hand up to ease some of growing tension in his jaw. Arguing with Wanda Maximoff required the kind of patience he'd never been known to have. It was all pointless, he kept telling himself. You couldn't argue with the dead.
"I don't remember you being this annoying when you were alive," he muttered, plopping onto the sofa next to her.
Wanda frowned and Bucky looked away. She didn't do it too often, the frowning—but Bucky quickly learned he hated whenever she did. He also hated the stab of guilt he felt from saying what he'd said.
"No offense," he added, a beat too late.
Wanda made a sound that caught in her throat. It sounded half-way between a laugh and a cough. "None taken," she replied, and pressed one hand against his lap, using him to leverage herself up. Her touch felt solid. Warm.
"So," she said, turning to face him again, "who are we killing next?"
2.
When it all first began, Bucky ignored her. It was the logical route: blame her appearance on the lonely days spent moping about old friends, those bleak nights spent obsessing over all his past sins. It didn't matter that out of all the people they'd lost, Wanda Maximoff had been the one he'd known the least. If spending a few days a week haunted and taunted by her face was his punishment for everything he'd done in his long, long life, as far as punishments went, it was nothing to complain about.
In Bucky's book, he was getting off light.
But once it became increasingly clear that Wanda Maximoff was going to be the recurring star of his nightmares, and that he could actually talk to her and have her talk back, he started asking questions.
"Am I going crazy?" had been his first one; he asked her that right off the bat. In response, she cackled.
"Relax," Wanda told him after, cheeks tainted pink with shame. "I assure you, we're all sane here," and Bucky didn't have the heart to point out everything he'd heard about her in the last six months.
"So what exactly are you supposed to be? A ghost?" he asked her, trying it another way, and Wanda shot him a look of disgust. She looked downright insulted to hear him call her that.
"Are you my conscience?" That earned him another cackle.
"I said sane," Wanda told him, eyes twinkling. "Not good," and okay, Bucky thought, fighting the urge to smile back: he had to give her that.
3.
On good nights, she entertained some of his bigger questions.
"What's dying like?" he asked her once, shot to guilt. The rubber ducks that lined this particular bedroom of his mark's house stared back at him, wrathful and accusing, their yellow feathers tainted with splatter.
Wanda was fucking right; what a fucking waste.
Almost on cue, his favorite witch slid into view, covering up the stained wallpaper so that Bucky found himself staring at the red in her eyes instead.
"You've died once before," she pointed out. "You should already know the answer to that."
"That wasn't..." Bucky shook his head, turning away. "That wasn't the same. I only thought I was going to die."
"I know. But humor me," Wanda said. "How did it feel?"
Bucky hesitated. He remembered feeling terrified, he thought to himself.
And angry. So angry he was sure his rage could burn the whole world.
And—
"Lonely," he said finally, tasting the bitter memory of it on his tongue. "I remember feeling completely alone."
He felt her hand on his face, guiding him to look at her again. "That's how I felt," she revealed. "One moment, I was staring at Stephen Strange's decomposing corpse, the next I was looking into the void. And I realized I was staring at nothing—there was nothing there," and her brow furrowed, and she reached one hand out, slowly grasping at something in the air. "I was completely alone. And then...and then suddenly, I wasn't." Wanda looked up. "I was with you."
Bucky swallowed hard, focusing on the flecks of red in Wanda's green eyes. He anchored himself in them out of necessity; staring at Wanda for too long always left him feeling lightheaded. It wasn't just her eyes, the red in them like blazing embers—it was the whole of her, as though she were burning from within. The way she looked at him as if she could see right through him, as if, if she wanted, she could burn him, too.
"Well," Bucky managed, voice shot to hell, "you know what they say about misery."
Wanda smiled softly. "That I do."
4.
It didn't take much for Bucky to succumb to her everlasting presence during moments like that. There were worse companions to be had, worse shadows looming over his head that the spirit of a dead friend. Wanda by his side for the rest of eternity—in times like these, it just made sense.
And then the phone rang.
"Clint wants a funeral," Sam said, knowing him well enough to bypass the pleasantries.
"Sure, of course he does," Bucky replied blandly. "But I don't see what any of his future funeral plans have to do with us."
Out of the corner of his eye, Wanda arched at eyebrow at him. She still couldn't speak to him in the real world, but a couple of months under their belt and Bucky could read her every expression. He shrugged. Hell if he knew what Sam was going on about.
He put Sam on speakerphone and set the phone on the counter between them. "Not for himself," Sam said. "A funeral for Wanda." Then, for extra measure, he added: "You know, for closure."
Bucky blinked, not knowing what to say. A funeral for Wanda had never crossed his mind. It occurred to him that it should have; they'd had funerals for everybody else.
Across from him, Wanda straightened, looking alarmed. She pressed away from the counter, expression changing. Bucky could see the thought forming right before his eyes, everything about the last few months coming together, clicking.
"We don't have a body," Bucky reminded Sam. He wasn't sure why he said that, but Wanda looked up at him and gave him a pitying look.
"We don't actually need one," Sam replied. Then, when Bucky said nothing, he sighed. "It's next Tuesday, I'll text you the details," and then, when Bucky still said nothing, he added: "Wanda would've wanted you there."
That caught Bucky's attention. He looked at Wanda, surprised.
"She would?"
Sam scoffed. "Nah. Truthfully, you kinda freaked her out," he said, and hung up.
5.
"Have you ever wondered," Wanda told him the next time he saw her, "what would happen if you just let him go?"
The man cowering on his knees paid her no attention. The other people who rounded up the cast of his nightmares never did; only Bucky seemed capable of seeing Wanda, even in his dreams.
"That's not what happened," he reminded her, raising his gun. The man whimpered.
Her hand hovered over his, gently pushing the gun away. "Try," Wanda whispered in his ear.
Bucky turned to her, surprised to see her in her suit, just not the one he recognized. The edges of this particular suit were sharper, the fabric harder, the red bolder. Wanda's hand, the one that had stopped him—her fingers were blackened. Dead in a way that had the rest of her beat.
He holstered his gun, and upon hearing it, his would-be victim dared to look up. A breath later, he scrambled out the door into the corridor. Bucky exhaled as well. He hadn't noticed until then, but he, too, had been holding his breath.
"I like your crown," he told her.
Wanda tipped her head, acknowledging the compliment. "This is who I was when I died," she said, leading the way through the double doors. As they crossed the threshold, the room on the other side transformed, red magic chewing at the corners until the details rearranged themselves, turning what should have been the hotel corridor into Bucky's living room. It was all a perfect match, down to his phone on the counter where he'd left it before dragging himself to bed.
"Are you going?" Wanda asked him, and when Bucky turned around, he saw that the room wasn't the only thing that'd changed. Wanda's battle armor was gone; instead, she stood before him in a dark gray sweater and pants, her hair pushed back behind her ears.
A lump formed in his throat. "Do you want me to?" he asked.
"What I want doesn't really matter here, not anymore," Wanda replied, joining him on the couch.
Bucky stared at her, doing his best to commit her to memory. For the life of him, he couldn't remember ever exchanging a word with Wanda when she was alive, or taking her hand, or offering her his. But here, in this little pocket of a reality that they'd created, he knew her...sometimes more than he knew himself.
That thought he'd witnessed forming in her head, Bucky would be lying if he said he hadn't thought it, too.
"Will you still be here if I do?" he asked.
Wanda looked at him. "I don't know," she said honestly. "When Sam spoke, it was like bells ringing, calling me home."
There was something searching in the way she looked at him, like she had a question of her own that she wanted his honest answer about.
"Will you miss me?"
Bucky didn't even have to think about it. "You're the girl of my dreams, Maximoff," he said, and then, on a whim, took her hand in his. A moment later, Wanda threaded their fingers together. Bucky looked down at their hands, her charred fingers and his vibranium ones. And it struck him then, the inescapable weight of grief, though he wasn't sure what exactly he was grieving about, if it was her, or them, or this great and wonderful What if. "If I had my way, I'd never let you go."
.
.
.
Barton was surprised to see him, but Sam only clapped a knowing hand over Bucky's shoulder, like he'd been expecting him all along. And as soon as he took his seat, the ramp to the quinjet began its ascent, and Bucky realized with a pang that this was it—this was everyone who knew Wanda Maximoff, everyone who cared that she was dead.
Sokovia welcomed them with a gentle breeze, rustling fallen leaves across the stone pathway into the cemetery. Barton led the way to a plot with four headstones, three of them chipped and worn, one brand new. Olek, Iryna and Pietro Maximoff, Wanda's parents and twin brother, and then Wanda. Bucky stared at her name, listening while Barton said a few words. Out of the corner of his eye, he could make out the shape of Wanda listening, too, and he shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat to stop himself from reaching out to her.
It was only when Clint finished talking that Bucky forced himself to look up. The late, setting sun was upon them, and its rays graced them with its warmth. Across from him, behind her headstone, Wanda smiled ruefully, and between one blink and the next, it was over.
She was gone.
Back on the jet, Clint punched in the coordinates and let autopilot take them home. Bucky watched him do it reflected in the window, waiting for...
Hoping she would...
"You okay?"
Bucky turned. It took him a second to notice the beer in Sam's hand, and another second to realize that Sam was holding it out for him to take.
"Yeah," Bucky said. "I'm—I..." He looked down at the bottle in his hand. "You know me, I survive."
He could feel Sam's eyes on him, carefully observant. He could tell Sam was about three seconds away from saying something, but then Clint came over, his own beer in hand, and raised it in a toast.
"To Wanda," he said gruffly.
"To Wanda," Bucky and Sam chimed in.
Clint collapsed into the chair in front of them, bogged down by all his collective grief. He raised his bottle to his lips and, before taking a sip, whispered: "Give 'em hell, kid."
Bucky sank back into his own chair. Beside him, Sam looked wistful. "Oh, I guarantee you, she's doing just that," Sam said, and when Clint smiled, he continued, "She scared the crap out of me when we first met. It was the staring," and Sam held up two fingers, pointing them at Bucky, "Your best work could never compare."
Bucky held up his hands. "No argument here."
"The first time I met her, she tried to get me with her whole magic schtick," Clint said, still smiling. "And I electrocuted her. She didn't like that."
"The first time I met her," Bucky said, pitching his own story in, and he paused, thinking back to that first time in Germany, fighting side by side on the tarmac, T'Challa's claws coming for his neck—and then, the freezing mid-air. "The first time I met her, she saved my life."
There was a woman waiting outside his apartment building when he got back, which wouldn't have been strange except that it was the crack of dawn and she was wearing the most obnoxious green suit. She looked like a highlighter in pumps.
"Bucky Barnes?" she said immediately, marching forward as he got out of the cab. "My name is Rio Vidal, I'm here to talk to you about Wanda Maximoff," and Bucky immediately held up his vibranium hand to fend her off. He'd been through this dance before. This wasn't the first time a journalist scrounged up his address.
"I don't do interviews," he told her shortly, and pushed past her to go inside.
A pit was forming in his stomach—had been since he got off the jet. A gnawing realization. He pressed his forehead against the door to his apartment as he slowly worked his key into the lock. I've fallen in love with a dead woman, he thought. It doesn't get any weirder than that.
He was wrong. As far as weird went, this was only the beginning.
"Do I look like the press?" Rio Vidal scoffed, glowering at him from his couch.
.
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1
When Bucky woke up, it was to the sound of music playing softly from a set of speakers propped up on the table next to his bed. Sam was dozing in the chair beside it, head lolled back. "Well, well, well," and Bucky looked to the door. Rio smirked at him and said, "Welcome back to the land of the living, Sergeant Barnes."
"Remind me never to listen to you again," Bucky told her.
"Oh, I could have told you that from the very start," Agatha said, coming in with a tray. She waved the steam from her concoction in his face and Bucky nearly gagged. "Yeah, eye of salamander is a bit of an acquired taste," Agatha said sympathetically. "But it'll do wonders for your spine."
"What's wrong with my spine?" Bucky asked.
"Hush," Jennifer said, "it's nothing a few days won't fix." She looked meaningfully at Rio. "Wanda will want to know he's awake."
"Wanda?" Bucky said, making the mistake of sitting up. Agatha and Jennifer laid a hand each on his shoulders, pushing him back down. He looked between them. "It worked? The spell actually worked?"
The witches exchanged a smirk. "Look at him," Agatha said, pinching his cheek, "he's adorable."
"I could just eat him up," Jennifer concurred.
"Ladies, you're scaring him," a third voice said, and Bucky turned and it was really her—Wanda, standing in the doorway, alive and well. Bucky stared at her, speechless. Wanda smiled back, a wry smile just for him.
Rio coughed. "Yeah. We had to hose the stench of death off her," she said, winking at Bucky, "but she'll pass for new," and with that she and the other witches left the room.
Wanda came to the side of his bed. "How do you feel?" she asked, searching his face for any sign of pain.
"I feel like I'm dreaming," Bucky replied, to which she chuckled. She reached over and took his hand, as if to prove a point. This was no dream.
Wanda leaned forward. "I promise you, this is all real," she said, and Bucky reached up and brushed his thumb against her cheek.
"Good," he said. "Because life just wasn't the same without you, Maximoff."
"It wasn't?" Wanda asked.
Bucky nodded. "Without you around, I was finally getting some sleep," and before Wanda could scoff or hit him, he pulled her close and kissed her, and a moment later, Wanda leaned into it and kissed him back.