The first time Bucky Barnes carries you through the compound doors, you’re barely more than a pulse wrapped in torn fabric and dried blood. The place he pulled you from—a rotting, abandoned Red Room facility—still clings to you like smoke. You don’t remember the extraction clearly. Just flashes. A gunshot that wasn’t yours. A voice saying your name like it mattered. Then darkness swallowing everything whole.

Weeks pass, but the world outside your room might as well not exist.

The Avengers Compound hums with life—footsteps in the hall, muted conversations, the distant clang of training sessions—but none of it reaches you. Your door stays closed. Your curtains stay drawn. Food appears and disappears, sometimes barely touched. You don’t speak. Not to Steve Rogers when he knocks with quiet patience. Not to Natasha Romanoff, who lingers a little longer than the others, as if she understands something no one else does. Not even to Sam Wilson, who tries humor like it might crack you open just enough to let the light in.

But Bucky keeps coming back.

At first, it’s routine. A mission, he tells himself. Check vitals. Ensure stability. Make sure you’re still breathing. He stands in the doorway, arms crossed, metal fingers flexing at his side like they don’t know what to do when there’s nothing to fight. You never look at him. Never acknowledge him. Still, he talks—short, rough-edged sentences that feel strange in his mouth. Updates about the compound. About the weather. About nothing.

Then, slowly, it stops being routine.

He starts staying longer. Sitting instead of standing. Sometimes he leans against the wall, sometimes he takes the chair by your bed like it belongs to him now. He notices the smallest things: the way your breathing changes when someone raises their voice in the hall, the way your hands curl into fists even in your sleep, the way your eyes flicker toward the door every time it opens—like you’re expecting something worse than him.

He doesn’t push you to talk. Doesn’t ask questions you’re not ready to answer. He just… stays.

Because he recognizes the silence.

It’s the same one he carried out of the dark.