Chapter 5
It comes back. Pieces unconnected tumble about slicing, jagged. Dead. There are lots of dead. He's not the Asset, not the Winter Soldier. He's not James. Who is Bucky? He still doesn't know.
He doesn't know who he is, and he doesn't know who she is, to be so sure as to put her shield on her back, and turn the other cheek. She stopped fighting. They were falling, the engines still trying to keep the platform in the air and losing. He would have gone down with it, except she fell when part broke free.
She'd watched him fall. He didn't remember the whole trip down. Train. Ground. The Soviets and the cigarettes. They'd wondered what he'd been doing, but then they had their mission and they were on the same side. He got passed along until he could be repatriated.
He jumped after her, found her in the water, pulled her ashore. He was a cypher, but she knew him. He watched until they found her, watched the basket reeled up. The man, the one with the wings, came for her.
He missed the chair. Now he can remember broken men addicted to horse anesthetic. The killing was bad. The table, the chair, the other chair. Time to time he got a scrap, of her, of a scrawny young man.
It took time to separate memory from longing. He'd never loved the short man, never told him how he'd loved him. Then he hadn't known what to do with it. He wasn't a fairy, he was the furthest thing from a sissy. Didn't keep him from wanting Steve to be his man. He'd still been rolling that in his head when the war came.
He'd remembered following her before he had recalled she and Steve were the same person. She'd planned the mission, the attack on the train. None of them were Buster Keaton. They weren't Zorro. He would follow Steve. He volunteered. Jim was ordered, because he had to stay with the radio, not to come. The rest volunteered. Steve wouldn't order what, even what Steve would do...
He'd been so certain he was hallucinating when the angel took him from the table. Steve was back in Brooklyn. Steve was short and just skin, bone and stubborn. Bucky loved him so much, was thankful Steve was safe from this cesspool.
And then he found out his angel was Steve. Steve, his beautiful, righteously indignant Steve. What had they done to him, giving him everything and taking something so integral?