December 2014-January 2015

Copenhagen, Denmark. 

We faced our traumas differently. Bucky's broke through his mind in some of the most terrifying ways. I would watch him caress a knife, run a fingertip down the blade's edge, test the weight as if calculating the most accurate way to throw it. He didn't like crowds or people on balconies. His memories usually came back to him while he slept, and I had woken many a night to find him writing down newly recovered memories in one of his notebooks.

My trauma caught up with me at least twice a year when I was still living in the States, every New Year's and every Fourth of July. Fireworks.

They sounded like hellfire and terror. They flashed like bombs going off, and they sounded like every level of artillery I could think of. Grenades, rifles, missiles, pistols, landmines. Even if I could escape the light, which was hard, I usually had to face the noise. The worst ones shook me to the core when they went off, jackhammering my heart into a new rhythm. All of it reminded me of bombings and explosions and artillery and all the combat wounds that came with.

It was the fireworks that woke me up. Deep down in my brain I knew they were just fireworks, but I couldn't bring that thought to the surface. It was buried.

I rolled away from the window and hit the dirt floor as soon as the first shell hit the ground outside. There was a flash of light and a telltale boom, all in the same second. Checkers was still with me; he had been right next to me. I pushed myself off the floor, adrenaline making the exercise easy. Checkers was still in front of the window.

"Checkers! Get down!" I shouted. There was a faint whistle outside, then another shockwave of light and sound.

He turned to me, looking confused. It wasn't him. It was Bucky. Then it was Checkers again. His eyes were wide, and he seemed frightened.

"Get down!" I repeated. Checkers crept away from the window, his helmet bobbing above the dirt caked windowsill dangerously. He would give away our position without firing a shot. I grabbed him by the sleeve and jerked him closer. "When I say get down, you hit the dirt. Understand?"

"Gail, what are you talking about?" he asked. His gun was gone from his hands and he was gripping my arms.

Checkers was gone. The mud hut in the desert was gone. My gear was gone, the artillery was gone. It was all gone. I was in Denmark. It was New Year's. I was in a grubby apartment with Bucky. I was in a t-shirt and fleece-lined leggings. I had been asleep.

"Gail, talk to me," he ordered.

"No!"

There was another explosion outside, and I pushed him back to the floor. I lifted my weight off his chest and saw the shrapnel buried in his gut. It missed me, it always missed me.

"Damn it, Checkers," I told him. I went to unfasten the sternum strap of my pack but there was nothing but my shirt. I fumbled for my equipment, but it was all gone. "No, no. Where is it? I need it."

"Gail, what do you need?"

I looked back at the boy on the ground, bleeding out while I sat there, useless.

"You don't make anything easy, do you?" I asked him. I pressed my palms into his stomach, putting pressure on whatever vein or artery was trying to bleed out. I had no clue; probably all of them. There was rusty metal protruding from his gut. "I'll get you out of here, Checkers. Don't worry."

He was gone as soon as he came. I was kneeling next to Bucky with my full weight pinning him down at the navel while he was trying to sit up. He started at me like a silent question, and I threw myself away from him as the next firework exploded. My back hit the wall, and I curled into a ball. Bucky was next me in a second, blocking my view out the window.

"What's going on?" he asked again. I met his eyes. It was like staring at a lake while it rained. Ripples were forming everywhere I looked, and as they crisscrossed my memories ran together. Like oil and water. I would see Bucky and our Copenhagen flat one second, and then I'd see Checkers and a mud hut.

"He's still in there," I said. My eyes were blurry. I was crying. "I couldn't get him out. He's too heavy for me to move. Please, go get him."

"Get Checkers?" Bucky asked. I nodded frantically.

There was a boom outside, and I screamed for a half second. I would give us away if anyone heard. I crossed an arm over my face, biting down on my forearm to quiet myself.

Before the next explosion, Bucky had me in his arms. I was completely surrounded by him in time for the finale.

My body shook against his while I bawled into his chest. The sound of the fireworks was muffled but not muted. I couldn't see the lights outside. He whispered in my ear through it all. He told me I was safe. He told me he wouldn't leave. He told me where I was and who he was and what he thought about whoever decided to celebrate New Year's with fireworks.

~

When they were all over, I put on real pants and a jacket and shoes and went up to the roof of our apartment building. Evidence of a party was leftover. Beer bottles, plastic champagne flutes, even a folding lawn chair with cigarette burns on the armrests. I was alone until Bucky came up after me. He took a seat with me on the edge of the roof, but he kept his back to the city. He still trusted me to watch his back.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine now. I'm sorry about that," I said.

"You said you didn't like fireworks back in Aberdeen, but I didn't realize why," he told me. I smiled a little.

"You remember?"

He nodded. "So, who was Checkers?"

I took a deep breath but looked down into the street instead of answering.

"Gail, who was he?" Bucky repeated.

"A kid that died," I said simply. There was a drawn out silence between us. Bucky had pushed the issue, and now it was up to me to say my piece. It took me several minutes to gather my thoughts. "It was a humanitarian mission providing medical supplies to a village. All of our intel said it was perfectly safe to go in, to even spend the night nearby. But as we were leaving the town's main little square, there was an ambush. All of the information we had been given was out of date. Me and this kid everyone called Checkers took cover in an abandoned house. A rusted up plow outside was rigged with an IED, it was triggered, and a chunk of metal the size of your head lodged itself in Checkers gut. It shredded him. There was nothing I could do, but I tried. A couple of the other men in my unit heard me yelling at Checkers over our radio channel, and they found me drenched in his blood."

Bucky was utterly silent as I gave him the story and for several minutes afterwards. I felt the usual call from the nearest bar, but I pushed it down. I wanted to cry again, but not in front of Buck.

"Why'd people call him Checkers?" he asked. "Was that his call sign?"

"Yeah. He always carried around this travel set of checkers. One of those little metal boards with the magnetic pieces, you know? He'd play anyone, anytime. And he never lost," I explained. "So he was christened Checkers."

"What was your call sign?"

"Richmond. Grew up in Virginia, last name Richards," I told him. "Some soldiers just aren't creative at all."

Bucky gave a breathy laugh, and his shoulders slumped. I couldn't tell if he was tired or if it was something else.

"I, uh, I didn't realize you had a little shell-shock too," he admitted. "Or a lot, I guess."

"They call it PTSD now," I told him without looking in his direction. "Post-traumatic stress disorder."

"Sounds a lot fancier than cowardice," Bucky said awkwardly. I didn't know what to say as I processed the tone of his voice.

"They know more about it now. They know how your brain acts and all that, and they've got drugs and therapies to help," I rambled. I had been given that speech after my psychological evaluation for SHIELD. The shrink who interviewed me said I was fit for duty but highly encouraged treatment for my latent stress. I had rolled my eyes and entered the Academy. By the time I wished for therapy, it was too late. I had been sworn to secrecy with a stack of SHIELD files instead of a Bible and couldn't tell a soul about what left me so scarred.

"Does it help?" Buck asked. I shrugged, but I wasn't sure he was looking at me.

"Different things for different people, yeah. Some people get specially trained dogs," I mused. Somewhere out in the streets, a group of people started shouting and blowing air horns excitedly.

"I don't think we can get a dog," Bucky commented. And that one stupid joke made me feel just a little bit better.

*

Author's Note: 

A bit longer than the past couple of chapters, but this is one I've had written since I got the idea for this story.