Notebooks
After two more days, he knew he’d reached peak physical condition. Well, as good as he was going to get as a one-armed, ex-assassin. Maybe if he just didn’t mention the arm, T’Challa would forget about it too? Handlers didn’t usually forget about malfunctions though...
Stop it. Bucky shook his head, running his hand over the stubble on his face, the texture helping to keep him present. T’Challa is not a handler. I don’t have those anymore. I don’t need them anymore, because I don’t do that anymore. T’Challa is not my handler. He’s my friend.
Friends weren’t supposed to do things to hurt each other, so maybe the next time T’Challa brought up making a new arm, Bucky could ask him what exactly that would mean, for him. After everything the king had done for him, Bucky wasn’t sure he could refuse - even if they were friends. Friends sometimes stopped being friends. Tony wasn’t friends with Steve anymore, though he said they used to be.
The Steve he remembered would never have let a friend down... but this Steve, he had, with Tony. Sort of. Tony was his friend... but so was Bucky. And in choosing Bucky, Steve had let down one of his other friends. A lot of his other friends, actually. Hurt them, even. Bucky had tried to tell him that maybe this wasn’t a good idea. Maybe he wasn’t worth that. Worth Steve’s new friends getting hurt. They may have known about the legend of the Winter Soldier, but they didn’t know. He knew.
And maybe, Steve did too. Steve hadn’t disagreed with him when he’d said that maybe Bucky wasn’t worth it. But when Tony had seen the video feed of the mission, Steve had said he already knew. Steve already knew that Bucky had killed Howard. Howard was Steve’s friend too. But Steve had picked Bucky. Again.
Bucky kept making Steve hurt his friends. And maybe Steve did think Bucky was worth it... even if he hadn’t said so. Sometimes words were hard to get out. To know exactly which ones you needed, and what tone to use to make the other person understand what you needed them to. He knew that. Maybe Steve was right. Maybe Bucky really was worth all this.
The only problem was, he wasn’t sure if he really was Bucky anymore.
He wanted to be. God, he wanted to be. So badly. More than anything. He wanted to be tha man with the easy smile and the charm that made people feel comfortable and happy. The man who won stuffed bears for girls called Dot, who took Steve on roller coasters. Who reached out and hugged people, just because he wanted to, and people liked it. The man who was worthy of being Steve’s best friend.
He had all those memories. He knew all the places, the names, the things that were important and the things that weren’t. He was pretty sure he knew who ‘Bucky’ was. And he was pretty sure that ‘Bucky’ wouldn’t have murdered his friends. He was definitely sure that ‘Bucky’ would never have murdered Steve’s friends. Or make Steve almost do the same things.
Sighing heavily, he rubbed his temples to stave off the headache that was forming. He knew ‘Bucky’ wasn’t the Soldier. And that ‘Bucky’ had fought the Soldier, and the programming. That eventually, the soldier had won.
Had he, though? The soldier followed orders. The soldier didn’t want anything for himself, because weapons did not want things. People wanted things, and weapons did not.
Well, he wasn’t a fucking weapon. He wasn’t. He was a person, damn it, even if he was total shit at remembering how to act like one, with real emotions and everything.
He took a deep breath. Except maybe anger. He was pretty good at that emotion.
He knew about therapy. Talking to someone about your feelings. Them helping you figure them out, what they meant, how to process them into something workable. But how could that work on him? He was still having trouble working out which parts of his scrambled brain were feelings at all.
The notebooks had been great. A place where he could put all the garbage in his head out in front of him. If he could see it, he could understand it. If he could understand it, he could work out a strategy on how to beat it. His notebooks were his lifeline. Proof that he was remembering things. He could tear out pages and put the memories in the right order. The ones with Bucky From Before’s memories, and the ones with the Soldier’s. And the ones since the helicarriers, even though sometimes those were the most disjointed of all. They were messy. His handwriting had gotten awful. All of Mrs. Berkowitz’s hard work, teaching him the palmer method in the second grade, and now his letters looked terrible.
Proud. He used to be proud of his handwriting. He sure as hell couldn’t draw like Stevie, but forming his letters, that was something he could do. The guys at the dock used to tease him for it, but they all let him do the books and fill out the inventory sheets. There were never any complaints or mistakes when Bucky wrote out things, because his writing was beautiful.
This was a new memory.... and a feeling too. It needed to go in a notebook.
He reached around absently for the loose floorboard for a full minute before remembering that he wasn’t in Bucharest anymore. He wasn’t in his apartment. Everything else came rushing back like a ton of bricks. He had been taken. Captured. The notebooks were taken from him, and so was his mind. Again. The notebooks were probably long gone, or worse, being dissected - laughed at - by some government flunkie.
He would have to start from scratch.
No. No no no... he remembered everything... well, maybe not everything, but lots of things. He remembered everyone he killed. That was true. It was part of why remembering the other stuff was so hard. Humans weren’t supposed to have that many memories in their heads at once. Too many. Too much. It hurt.
Everything hurt, why did they have to take the notebooks away? And the red one. The one he - Zemo - had. His handler’s notebook. That was the one that was dangerous, what had they done with that one? What if someone else bad had it? What if it was only a matter of time before - before someone said the words again. Pulled Bucky out and woke up the Soldier.
He could feel his heart beginning to race, the air in the room feeling thin. His chest tightening like the time his handler had wanted to know how much pressure it took to get his ribs to crack. No, he wasn’t there anymore. He was here, with T’Challa. T’Challa was his friend, he would help. Help. Help me. Stupid. You need to say it out loud.
“Help...” he tried, and his voice sounded weak, distant. Fuzzy. What the hell was wrong with him? “T’Challa I- help, please-” and he was saying more things, making more noises, but whether the noises were truly words or not, he didn’t know. Everything hurt and there wasn’t enough goddamn air-
There were hands on his shoulders. His head snapped up, ready to fight, and where was his arm, why wasn’t it doing what he wanted-
“Barnes, you are safe,” the attacker said. Safe. Attackers didn’t say that. Neither did targets. “You are safe, my friend, it’s all right.”
Friend. Steve was a friend, but Steve wasn’t here. Commandos were friends, but they were all dead. Who else was there? Friends who were safe. Who would keep him safe.
T’Challa.
“Yes, it’s me.”
So he’d said that out loud. Bucky finally looked up and met T’Challa’s warm brown eyes. T’Challa was safe, it was okay. “Thanks for coming. I-” but he couldn’t finish the thought, breath stuck in his throat. He knew that he’d been losing it, thoughts and memories whirling around, his body not listening to him. What if- “Did I hurt you?”
“No, you did not. You didn’t hurt anyone,” the king answered the next unspoken question. “The camera you asked for,” he said, and pointed to it in the corner, “the microphone picked up your distress. What is wrong?”
He hadn’t hurt anyone. It was okay. Breathing heavily, he sat back against the wall, thankful that T’Challa stayed close, but still gave him room. Space to think. Slowly, after a couple of false starts and reassurances that he could take as much time as he needed, he explained about his notebooks. How they were important, and what he used them for.
“It. It helped. To take the stuff in my head and put it out where I could see it. Something I could touch.” He looked up, and T’Challa wasn’t laughing at him. So far, so good. “I lost them.” It was true. If he’d fought better, maybe they wouldn’t have captured him, and he could have gotten away. Zemo wouldn’t have found him, and none of the rest of it would have happened. He lost them.
T’Challa was smiling that soft smile again. It was kind of nice, to know that someone could still smile at him. “If I remember correctly Barnes, you did not lose them. They were taken from you.”
“I shouldn’t have let anyone get that far.”
“They got far enough to have them, yes. But they did not get far enough to keep them.”
Bucky was confused. “What?”
“Last week, I took a quick trip to Berlin. Early summer there is beautiful,” he said, a bit of humor dancing in his eyes. “Of course, I only left my room at night. It’s always easier to break into government facilities under cover of darkness.” He smiled. “Your notebooks are here, Barnes. All of the notebooks they had. The backpack too,” he added. “I did not read them.”
They weren’t gone. He could have them back. They- “You stole them?”
T’Challa sat down, next to him, but there was space there if Bucky wanted- needed it. “Everyone else was given a receipt for their possessions,” he said, a hint of a smirk on his face. “The task force neglected to give you the same right for your property. If they were unwilling to abide by their own laws on the matter, why should I be?”
Bucky’s lips twitched into a half smile. That backpack was his too. He'd bought it, with real money. He'd thought about stealing it, but he knew that was wrong. There was an old man with a pastry shop- and a delivery truck full of flour and boxes. The driver hadn't helped him. Bucky did, and the man had given him money. He'd bought the backpack that same morning. It was a good backpack, and it was his. And now he had it back. “Thank you. I-” Then he remembered the other problem. “What about the red one?” He winced. T’Challa had broken laws for him. Gone over there and gotten his notebooks back. And the backpack. He should be grateful that he even did that, not asking for more.
But the king didn’t seem upset. “That one may not have belonged to you, but it should not be in the hands of anyone else. The way I see it, everything in that book concerns you. I believe you have a right to know what it says, and to decide it’s fate.”
Bucky nodded. It was better than he could have hoped for. “I’ve never seen what’s written in that one. I know what they used it for. I know the words are in there,” he said. “And I know they used to make notes in it, when they were training me.” Bucky saw T’Challa wince and his eyebrows furrowed at the use of the word ‘training’, but he didn’t comment. “I- I want to read it, I think. But- not yet. I’m not- ready, maybe. But I don’t want anyone else to get their hands on it either.” He sighed. “I’m not making much sense.”
“Would you like me to bring all of the notebooks here?”
Bucky nodded. “Please.” Now that he knew they were safe, he was itching to get his hands - hand - on them, to check. Verify that all of them were here, account for all of his memories. But he didn’t want to ask.
“If you’re feeling better, I can bring them now,” T’Challa said, displaying his uncanny knack for knowing what Bucky seemed reluctant to say. T’Challa was his friend though, and he never used this skill against Bucky. At least he hadn’t so far. But Bucky didn’t want to think about how T’Challa could hurt him. He wanted to trust him. 'Bucky' would have trusted him. Steve trusted him. (But T’Challa lied to Steve. Told Steve that Bucky wasn’t awake. Well, maybe that wasn’t a lie. The Real Bucky wasn’t awake yet. He was still locked away, buried somewhere inside. Almost Bucky. Almost Bucky, but Not Quite. Bucky But Not. That’s who he was. So maybe T’Challa didn’t lie to Steve, and Steve could trust him. If Steve could trust him, then maybe Almost Bucky could too.)
He looked over at the king and nodded. “I’m-” Fine was a lie. Good was too. “Okay. I’m okay.” That was all right. That was true. He was okay. Not great, not good. Passable to be left on his own for a little while. And he did feel better. He could breathe properly.
T’Challa stood, resting a hand on Bucky’s shoulder for a moment. That was nice. Touching without hurting. Touching to let him know that someone else cared what the hell happened to him, how he was feeling. Wanted him to be happy. Happy was maybe a long way off, but at least he wasn’t fucking paranoid here. Well, at least, as paranoid as before. Maybe he really would be okay.
“Hey, um... T’Challa?” The king always looked down and seemed a bit uncomfortable when Bucky had called him ‘sir’ or ‘your highness’. Bucky thought maybe he liked his name better. And they were friends. “Can I have another notebook? An empty one?”
T’Challa smiled. “Of course, my friend. Of course.”