Author's Note: I may be a terrible person, doing this to poor Bucky. But I'm gonna do it anyway. I'll make it up to him later on. Promise.

Bucky stares down at his metal fist, still clamped crushingly tight around the man's throat. He can see angry red welts melting into thick black-purple bruises, where his fingers are nearly breaking the skin. The blonde head lolls brokenly as he jerks his hand away. As the corpse flops limply to the ground, he realizes with mounting horror that a steadily growing crimson stain is pooling beneath it. A still-cooling pistol is curled tightly in his right hand. He drops it numbly, backing away.

Steve.

He stares at his own handiwork in disbelief. He had thought it was safe now. That he wasn't a weapon anymore... He doesn't even remember doing it - doesn't remember anything but the fragile flesh, crushed in his hand.

He stumbles, tripping over some unseen obstacle and falls back, hard. Something warm and wet meets his hand as he braces himself to stand. He brings shaking fingers up, finding them slick with blood.

No…. No...

He forces himself to look, then has to look away, stomach turning.

Sam too.

Sam who has been so patient with him. Has helped him calm the rage. Sam who has gently talked him through the horrors he still carries with him, and never loses sight of the wounded soldier inside the hulking, metal-armed man. Sam who went so far as to move into their spare room, just so he could be there whenever Bucky suffers an episode. Sam who knows how to get through to a frightened soldier, when even Steve cannot find the words. And how has he repaid him?

"Your work has been a gift to mankind." The voice echoes all around him.

No… This isn't possible. There is no more Winter Soldier...

He reels, hands to his head, trying to shut it out. He hears Natasha screaming; turns to see her staring up at him in desperate, terrified horror. She is clutching a wounded side and he knows at a glance that she will die. He tries to go to her, but she only drags herself away, sobbing in a way that he can't bear.

"Why would you do this?" She asks him, large eyes fixed on him, pleading and in pain. "We trusted you…"

Bucky shot up in bed, heart hammering in his chest. His eyes skittered nervously across the room as he worked to get his breathing under control; taking in the still, quiet darkness. He needed to see Steve's face, whole and unbroken. Though his head knew it wasn't real, his heart needed proof.

His eyes finally picked out Steve's bed, a plain military-style bunk, pushed up against the other wall. He was unsurprised to see light blue eyes locked on him through the darkness, regarding him with unmasked worry. Steve had never been a particularly heavy sleeper, and he seemed acutely tuned to the sound of Bucky in the throes of a nightmare.

Without a word, Bucky flicked aside the covers of his bed and padded across the room.

Screw this. Screw sleeping. And most of all: screw sleeping alone.