vii. FIGHT
vii. FIGHT
Bucky leaves the Tower alone, without an escort, for the first time on Saturday night. He leaves without anyone’s knowledge or permission (per say), driven by the wild rule of cabin fever. He feels strangely exhilarated to step outside unaccompanied, breathing fresh (maybe illicit) air. The excitement propels him down the road with very little thought to the way the crowds surround him.
He finds a bar in a little side alley, a sad place that doesn’t even ask for IDs. Bucky does not realize that this is a sign of something troubling. The atmosphere is quiet, the patrons look young. He sits at the bar with a Jack and coke, settles in for a quiet night of alcoholic contemplation.
The first hour passes uneventfully.
So does the second.
At midnight, on the bottom of his third drink, Bucky is beginning to think about returning to the Tower. He crunches ice between his teeth, surveying his few fellow drinkers without much interest.
“You’re not being very fun, right now, babe.”
“Leave me alone.”
He catches the tail of the whispered conversation and turns his head honey-slow to the end of the bar counter. The girl is shrugging off the hands of a young man whose rounded head is simian in appearance.
“I don’t want to talk, Alex,” she says, snappish.
“Aw, come on, babe. You can’t stay mad at me forever.”
“Sure I can,” she says and slips off the bar stool. She walks, cool and deliberate, to the empty seat near Bucky.
He slides his eyes toward her. “I could take care of that for you.”
“What?” she says, glancing over.
“The monkeys masquerading as gentleman. Wouldn’t bother you anymore.”
She gives him a thin, almost frightened smile. The edges are held together by bravado and lipstick. “It’s just my boyfriend, Alex. He gets…stupid when he drinks.”
“I know stupid and that don’t look like it.” Bucky finishes his drink and motions for another with his right hand. He keeps his left hand fisted in the pocket of his hoodie. “What are you drinking?”
“Oh.” She ducks her head behind a curtain of blonde hair. “Er. You know, I’m with him, really…I shouldn’t…”
“It’s a drink, not an invitation to bed.”
“Sure. Okay,” she says, smiling a little. “White Russian.”
“Classy lady,” Bucky comments.
She tilts her head to look at him. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because I think maybe Alex should find someone his own size to pick on. Make it a fair fight.”
She looks away, eyes sad. The bartender slides her drink onto a cocktail napkin. She spears a maraschino cherry and chews slowly. Her lips stain a beautiful artificial red.
“What’s your name?”
“J-James,” Bucky says, stuttering over the word.
“I’m Mellie.” She extends her right hand, and Bucky reluctantly drags his left hand out. She glances down at the metal, surprise curling over her features, but grasps it firmly as she shakes. “Cool hand, dude.”
“Thanks,” he says. He likes her even more now. He decides to keep the left hand out, fingers curling over the counter’s edge like the tail of a sleeping cat.
“So what, you just wander into bars, looking for girls to rescue?”
Bucky snorts. “Naw, I’m no white knight. That’s my buddy Steve’s job. He’s got the shield and everything.”
“Steve, huh?” She sips at her tumbler. “What’s he like?”
“Tall, blonde, all-American,” says Bucky, a little resentful. “If he was here, you wouldn’t waste two seconds talking to me.”
A raucous yell of drunken laughter spills over from the next table. Mellie glances over, her face tight, and her shoulders drawn reflexively.
“Why are you with him, anyway?” he says, before he can stop himself.
“What’s it to you?” she snaps. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“That’s true,” Bucky replies, shrugging a little. “Just thought I’d ask.”
“You don’t ask personal questions like that. How would you like it if I asked about your arm?”
“I’d say I lost it in the war,” Bucky says, staring her straight in the eyes. Unflinching. “Along with a whole lot of other things.”
She flushes and looks away, embarrassed. “Sorry. I just. That was rude of me.”
“It’s true; I don’t know you from Adam. But a lady like you deserves a guy who’s gonna treat her right.”
“Not all loves are fairytale,” whispers Mellie. She pats him on the hand. “Thanks for the drink.”
He nods, and watches her slip off toward Alex. He leaves his empty tumbler on the napkin and squeezes his way through the crowd, out into the cold New York night. Bucky flips the hood on over his head, hunches his shoulders and begins walking away from the bar. He makes it five steps in the opposite direction before a shout makes him turn his head.
“Hey! Hey you!” It’s the hulking brute, Alex. He is trailed by his friends. Mellie is a few steps behind him, her face panicked. “Were you hitting on my girlfriend?”
“You followed me outta the bar for that?” Bucky says.
“You were buying her drinks, dude,” Alex says. He stops just outside of fist’s reach. Up close, Bucky can smell the yeasty undertones of inordinate beer consumption. The gorilla comparison has never been more apt.
“It’s a free country, pal,” Bucky shoots back. His pulse speeds up. He can feel the strange undercurrent of tension that comes from being outnumbered and outgunned. Alex’s friends circle around their leader, loosely. Spoiling for a fight.
“He wasn’t flirting with me,” Mellie insists, pulling at Alex’s sleeve. “Come on, you don’t want to mess with him.”
“What, you don’t want me to bloody up his pretty face?” Alex says, shaking her off. “You gonna go screw him later?”
She pushes him away. “The way you’ve been acting lately, maybe I will.”
Alex backhands her across the face. She drops to her knees with a gasp, pressing a hand to her bloody mouth. “You fucking bitch.”
“I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life,” says Bucky slowly. The rage swells as he looks at Mellie’s prone figure. He forces it to cool to a tempered, controlled action. “But I ain’t never disrespected a lady like that.”
He rolls his shoulders up and down. Unzips his hoodie slowly and tosses it to the ground. His arm glints strangely in the light from the streetlamps.
Alex laughs. “Look at this freak’s robot arm.”
Despite himself, Bucky feels a little stung on behalf of his prosthesis. It’s only okay when Tony says it.
“Any of you boys been in real fight before? Know how to keep yourself alive? I have. And if I’m still standing here….” Bucky grins feral. “You can guess what happened to the other guys.”
Both of the friends shift, exchanging nervous glances. The empowerment of beer hasn’t loosened them up quite enough to dare death.
“You’re talking shit,” says Alex, and lunges for Bucky with a closed right fist.
Bucky dodges the punch easily. Swings his own cross to Alex’s soft midsection, and follows it up with an elbow to the nose. Alex bellows, enraged, and throws an uppercut and subsequent wild left swing. The hook connects with Bucky’s chin, and his teeth click together on the soft flesh of his tongue. He spits blood.
Inspired by this show of humanity, the friends move in for the kill behind Alex, driven on by bloodlust. Bucky eyes each target separately. Alex has rage, but no proper training to back him up. His shorter friend is hanging back, slightly, probably not much of a concern. The lean friend has the rangy build of a fighter.
They all come at once. A lesser man would perhaps be overwhelmed. The story would end with the victim beaten severely into a pulp in a New York City alleyway by a gang of drunk students. They would tend their wounds back at their apartments and talk about what strong men they were. Perhaps assault charges would be pressed. Perhaps not.
But this is three drunk boys against the Winter Solider and there is no competition.
The fight ends swiftly, with Alex and his friends on the ground in front of Bucky. All are groaning, so he assumes that they still possess some measure of consciousness. He backs away from the motionless bodies, coolly assessing the damage. It is then, when he is looking at what he has wrought, that he hears sirens. Dimly he registers this as bad.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” Mellie says, faint.
He turns to see her standing behind him, pressed up against the brick wall. He has nearly forgotten about her.
“Are they dead?”
He cannot tell if she is angry or not with him. He did this for her. (Didn’t he?)
“Probably not,” he says.
“Thank you, thank you,” she murmurs, her fingers fluttering nervously in front of her face. There is dried blood smeared across her chin.
“You okay?”
“God, what a question. Sure…I guess.” Her eyes fill with tears. “Thanks for saving me. Tell your friend Steve to shove it. You’re my knight in shining armour now.”
She flings her arms around his shoulders and this is how the police officers discover them minutes later: hugging bloodily with bodies surrounding them.
“Self-defense?” The detective eyes him sceptically from across the table. “I’ve got three guys in hospital, and you’re telling me it was self-defense?”
“Three against one ain’t fair odds, officer,” says Bucky, pressing an icepack to his lip.
The adrenaline has worn off now, the cool competence has disappeared. It takes all his energy to put on a normal face for the police, to try and charm his way out of this. He is waiting for his phone call, to receive orders to tell him what to do. But the detective had not been impressed by his lack of identification, and was treating him quite hostilely.
It was the right thing to do. (Wasn’t it?)
“No, it isn’t.” The detective squints. “So how come they got the worst of it?”
“None of them knew who they were picking a fight with.”
“And that would be…?”
Bucky grins, despite himself. “Well, you’re looking at him.”
“This is not a joke,” says the detective gravely. “You could be looking at some serious time for assault.”
Bucky drops the smile. “Like I told you before—the guy knocked his girl out cold. He went after me, I defended myself.”
“And you stated that alcohol was a mitigating factor?”
Bucky raises an eyebrow.
“You had all been drinking,” the detective clarifies.
“I had a few drinks, but I was sober.”
“Uh-huh.”
The door opens and a sharply dressed female cop steps in. She slides a sheet of paper over to the detective, who skims the contents and whistles sharply. The female cop sits in the chair, her cool green eyes staring Bucky down.
“You seem to be having all kinds of problems tonight,” says the detective. “First, you don’t have any ID. Then there’s not even any record of you.”
The female cop taps the paper. “We just ran your prints and they match a dozen unsolved homicide cases in the US and abroad. Care to tell us who you really are?”
Panic wells up in his chest. He presses his lips together tightly. “Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know?”
“I recommend you start cooperating with us, or it is going to be a very long night.”
Bucky starts to shake a little. His heart races. He inhales sharply.
A knock on the two-sided glass makes both cops turn. The door opens. A bald-headed man in a suit steps in, followed by Steve, of all people.
“This is Steve Rogers. Captain America,” the older man introduces, quite unnecessarily as both cops are staring open-mouthed at the doorway.
“It’s an honor, sir,” says the male detective breathlessly.
Steve gives a stiff nod in the man’s direction, which for Steve is practically ignoring him. Bucky gets the full weight of Steve’s attention. He thinks that Steve looks tired.
“We’re going to drop the assault charges,” says the older man.
“But Captain—” says the female detective immediately.
“And you’re going to forget about those homicide cases,” the police captain adds.
“For what reason?” the male cop says, belligerent.
“National security,” says Steve. He beckons Bucky over. “Come on. Happy’s got the car outside. We’re gonna take you home.”
Bucky stands, albeit shakily. Steve wraps a protective arm around his shoulders as they walk out. Neither one of them say anything until they are in the backseat of the car.
“Are you okay?” says Steve, his voice clipped.
Bucky scrubs at his face. “Shit, Steve. I don’t know what to say. How’d you find me?”
“Tony keeps electronic flags on all of our names,” says Steve, distant. “I would have thought bar fights were beneath you.”
“He hit a woman. What was I supposed to do, walk away?” Bucky snaps. “I coulda killed all of them. But I didn’t.”
“No, you didn’t.” Steve sighs. “I didn’t know you were protecting someone.”
“What, you thought I snapped?”
Steve looks away, and this is an answer all in itself.
“You did,” Bucky says, soft. He feels gutted.
“Most of the time, you seem like you’re doing better,” says Steve. He still doesn’t meet Bucky’s eyes. “But…things can trigger you. I was worried that the stability might not be permanent.”
And what would you do, if the Winter Solider resurfaced, Steve? Would you put him down like the dog he is? Or would you let him run, again, even though he obliterated your old friend?
“What’d you say to make those charges go away?” Bucky demands. He leans into Steve’s personal space. “You lie to those cops, Steve? Tell them I’m not dangerous?”
“I said it was confidential. A matter of national security,” says Steve waspishly. “I used the shield to get you out of trouble.”
Even when I thought you were crazy again, goes unspoken.
“They had my prints,” says Bucky. “Linking me to dozens of murders.”
“I’ll tell Tony to clear your records,” says Steve. “Natasha can get you some new IDs—birth certificate, social security card, driver’s license.”
“You’re going to erase evidence?” Bucky says flatly.
“That evidence will put you in jail, Bucky,” Steve snaps. “They still execute people in this country.”
“Maybe firing squad’s the best thing for me.”
“Damnit, Bucky!” Steve’s voice rises in a shout. “If you want to go to prison and die, we can turn right around and you can martyr yourself right onto the gallows.”
“I don’t want to die,” Bucky says, painfully. “But I think I deserve to. And if you get rid of that evidence, you’d erasing those people’s chances at justice, Steve!”
“Where is your justice, Bucky?” Steve demands. “Your life and your memories were stolen. Your free will, your freedom to think was ripped away. The very lowest thing they could do to a human being, they did to you. No one is gonna pay for that, now. The very least you could do is live the rest of your life the way you want to live it.”
Bucky’s shoulders convulse. With a vague horror, he realizes that tears are coming down his face.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
He is not sure who he is apologizing to. Or what he is apologizing for—the assassinations or the near surrender. He knows only that Steve has no shame in wrapping his arms around him in a firm embrace, and that the world comes to a grinding halt when he cries on Steve’s shoulder. The guilt recedes to a dim corner of his mind, until it will metastasize back into his waking hours. A patchwork conscience that waves red can never be deleted as neat as a computer file. There will always be some remnant, waiting to ambush, like a particularly malevolent brain tumour.