Bucky/Kitty
“I remember- There were candles.”
Bucky has gotten better at therapy, has come to enjoy the two hours a week where he gets to just sit down and let all of the thoughts out of his head without worrying about what the papers might print. He’d learned his lesson about that after swearing at a dumb ass reporter trying to climb into a combat zone. Never mind how he’d saved the guy’s life, all the headlines were about how Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s sidekick, couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“Morgan was asking what Christmas was like when I was a kid, and I couldn’t remember anything. No Christmas trees, no church singing, none of that.”
Tabitha, she’s great, she just nods along. She’s a friend of Sam’s, and she never once got excited about any of the other Avengers. Not like the last two, and the less he thought about the one World Council asshole, the better.
“But then I remembered lighting candles. A bunch of them, in a golden stand.”
Tabitha writes something down. And then, when Bucky doesn’t continue, when the words have dried up on that thought, she replies, “sounds like Hanukkah.”
“Hanukkah?”
The word rings a bell, the familiar little twinge in his brain that’s a sign of a memory from the before time. But no new memories come forward, beyond just the candles that he has already remembered. Like so many things, still, even after all these years later, all this time of dedicated therapy, and some things still refuse to come forward.
“It’s a Jewish holiday, normally around Christmas time.”
Bucky hasn’t done anything around the fact that he was Jewish. He knew that, from visiting the graveyard where he’d been “buried”, twice, and the neat little star carved into the stone. He knew he was Jewish in the same way that he knew Steve’s Mom was Sarah, that they both had worn newspaper in their shoes, that Peggy Carter was the best thing Steve had ever let into his life. These were cold hard facts, nothing more. He had found the elements and followed them to their natural, uncomplicated conclusions.
But not any amount of emotion.
“Okay.”
“Have you thought about that at all? About religion, and God?”
Like with most questions Tabitha asks, Bucky stops, and thinks about that. And then he shrugs. “Is it important?”
“”Not necessarily. But many people do find it helpful to have a sense of something larger than themselves.”
Bucky doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he doesn’t. Tabitha had been quite clear, he didn’t need to make up words just to try and keep her happy. Sometimes, on his bad days, their sessions were two hours of silence stretched into an infinity.
“Well then,” she looks down at her notes, and then back at him. “How do you feel about some homework?”
“I hope you enjoyed our Shabbat service, Mister Barnes.” The rabbi is shaking his hand, and smiling, and for once, Bucky doesn’t mind that he’s been forced into a little more public interaction. It had been nice. He hadn’t remembered anything about the service, none of it had felt familiar, but it had also been comforting. It was odd, but he was used to experiencing oddly comforting things these days.
Tabitha was right - attaching some more real memories to the cold knowledge of what religion the old Barnes had held was good.
“And perhaps, you will come again?”
“I think so.”
The Rabbi turns to the next person in line, and Bucky starts towards the front doors of the synagogue, thinking of how he was really craving some hot dogs, and that there had to be a street vendor stand nearby, and if he was careful no new photos of him eating them would turn up on the internet-
Someone’s holding a professional camera, aimed at the front door, and that annoyance settles in Bucky’s gut.
The Rabbi is talking to a young woman, shaking her hand like he had Bucky’s, but when he sees Bucky’s face-
“Mister Barnes? Is there-”
“Sorry, do you have a back exit?”
“Yes, what is going on? Do we need to call the police?”
“No, no,” the fear on the Rabbi’s face triggers memories of the attacks on synagogues in the before times, and Bucky is quick to shut the idea down. “I just- I think someone posted to twitter that I’m here?” He puts a finger over his shoulder, where the front doors are still open and there’s cameras pointed at his back.
“Ah. Well, I can show you-”
“Oh don’t worry about it. I can get him out.” The young woman, she’s got a bright smile on her face, her hair is pulled back in a ponytail, she’s wearing a star of david necklace and her eyes light up when she looks at him. “If we go out the south-west corner, we’ll only be half a block from the subway entrance.”
Bucky-
Bucky-
“Hey- Mister- Avenger? Soldier? Mister Barnes man? You okay?”
Bucky comes back to the present, and she’s standing in front of him, but she looks far more concerned, and the Rabbi is a little too nosey, and oh shit! Now the people inside the lobby have their phones out.
He prays she can act. He doesn’t want all of this over the papers. Weird, how it takes meeting his soulmate for him to start praying again.
“Sorry, I don’t like having my private life posted to the internet all of the time.”
Her eyes go wide, and a hand touches her hip, but then she’s grabbing onto his arm- flesh, right, okay that’s fine-
Bucky is aware that they are dropping THROUGH the floor, and he pulls a knife from his pocket even as they drop into the basement hall, and she lets go of him. “Woah! Woah, dude, sorry I just thought- figured I could got us away from the cameras really quickly.”
Bucky holds the knife out, backing away from her slightly, looking around the basement, towards the stairs- “What the fuck?”
Her face twists in several shapes of apologies, and indecisiveness. “Sorry, sorry! I keep acting before I think, it’s a problem, I know!”
Bucky finally puts the knife away, and looks at her sterning.
“Uh.... Hi? I’m Kitty? I’m a mutant? That’s how I did the floor thing? And how I was gonna get you out of here without those weirdos at the front seeing you? It’s my power, I promise I’m not trying to kidnap you or anything.”
Bucky, very slowly, aware of every single weapon he smuggled in here, says, “you said my soulmate words.”
“Yeah, I uh.... I got that. From how you reacted? I didn’t think it was just the cameras, I’m not- Look, I’m sorry, I’ll just- I’ll leave.”
She turns around, starts walking, and then realizes that he’s between her and the stairs, and turns around. She sighs. “If you’d just uh, step aside? I really wasn’t trying to start anything, I swear. And I could phase through you, but that would just be weird for both of us, and really-”
“Kitty, you said?” Her expression goes through another one of those weird, twisting faces. “My therapist says I need to work on not being an asshole to everyone.”
“Oh? That’s good! I mean, that you have a therapist? I’ve dated so many people who didn’t, and one girl too. Illyana, man, she needs THERAPY, I mean real therapy, the kind that costs a lot of money, but she was too stupidly Russian to- I’m talking too much again, aren’t I?”
“Yeah,” he says, laughing. “But it’s nice. You’re nice.”