I had four dreams in a row where you were burned, about to burn, or still on fire.
---
i.
The sounds of the explosion — all your objectives, everything you knew — are dulled by the water. This is not what the Winter Soldier should do, you know. Your mission has been compromised. If there's anyone left to order one, there'll be a kill order on you by the end of the day.
You're not sure there is anyone left.
You're not sure whether you should be glad about that or not.
It's been a long time since you were last awake for more than a few weeks. At first, you know, they kept you off ice for long stretches, gave you ops that ran for months, whole new personal histories. You were the best kind of undercover agent: the kind that doesn't know the truth themselves.
But the longer they kept you awake, the harder you were to scrub clean. You know this because they'd tell you, voices hard with anger, as though it was your fault. As though you were choosing to fight the washes.
(You couldn't. You wouldn't. There was blood caked so deep under your fingernails that you skin felt red, constantly. The things in your head scared you as much as they exhausted you, and for a beat or two after each mission, between the wash and the freezing, you'd get peace. Complete emptiness. There's nothing to regret when there's nothing to remember, nothing to know.)
Eventually they were keeping you under more often than not. By the 21st century, you were rarely kept off ice for more than a week at a time, because if you were awake for much longer your brain started breaking down, memories slipping in and confusing you. It's hard to follow orders when there's a whole other mind inside your brain.
You've been awake for fourteen hours. You don't have long before you become muddled. Less than a week, probably, because the target — Steve — the target has sparked things that aren't usually touched. Your brain is catching on words, on blue eyes full of sincerity — I'm your friend — to the end of the line —and you can already feel some of your certainties melting away.
That's why you're in the water. That's why your fingers are closing around a wrist, a shoulder. That's why you drag the target's body with you when you kick back to the surface. That's why you tow him to the bank and pull him out onto the dirt.
You don't look back as you walk off.
---
Clothes, first. Then a safe place to hide.
You don't know what your superiors were planning, but you're guessing it failed — because of you, because of Steve. That doesn't guarantee your safety — far from it; you're probably at a higher risk because of your own part in the failure — but it does buy you some time. Enough time to steal a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt from two different washing lines strung up in gardens. Enough time to find a shady motel that doesn't ask for ID when you ask for a room.
You pull all your funds out at a cashpoint on the other side of the city. You take your guns apart to find the trackers on them, and then burn your clothes with the guns you couldn't clean in an abandoned house a few miles away. When you walk out you smell of smoke and you have seven weapons still on you, but there is nothing linking you to the Winter Soldier.
It's not safety, not exactly, but it's anonymity, and that's as close as you'll get, you think.
---
The museum is on the way back to the motel. The signs catch your eye — because there he is, Captain America in all his glory, and you think, Steve, you think, I knew him.
You think, Who the hell is Bucky?
You're inside before you can double-think it. You keep the hood of your sweatshirt pulled up, snatch a cap off a kid's head, tug your zip to your chin. You tell yourself it's for security, in case there are people here, in case they'd know you'd come here and they're waiting for you, but really— really there's a part of you that thinks maybe Steve had been right, and you don't want anyone to see you and make the same mistake. And then —
Oh, and then your face is there. On the wall. James Buchanan Barnes.
Captain America's right hand man, Steve Rogers' best friend, American soldier. Brooklyn boy.
Born 1917.
Died 1945.
(Falling, icy wind whipping through your hair, your clothes — eyes wide, mouth stretched into a shout no one can hear, hands reaching up for a— friend, for help, for a miracle — one thought, one last thought — g'bye Steve.)
It doesn't feel like the truth, not in the way the other personas you've been given did, not concrete and real and solid. You roll the information around your brain, trying to find something to match it, or prove it wrong, but you've got nothing that does either.
They called Bucky a hero, after his death.
You don't feel like a hero.
You don't know what you feel like anymore.
---
You go to New York.
It's— a bad decision, it's an awful decision, but you go anyway. Hotwire a car, drive until you're in Brooklyn, because Brooklyn—
Well, Brooklyn's where Steve's from. Brooklyn's where Bucky's from.
Maybe if you go, you'll find your answers.
---
ii.
The cafe smells like coffee, but good coffee, not the shit you've been living off while laying low. Like coffee and hazelnuts and chocolate and vanilla and a hundred other scents, and you think you shouldn't be able to pick them all out but you can't help it. Parts of your brain are still wired like a predator's — sometimes all of it — and you can't— you don't know how to shake that.
It's a good day. The sky is clear-blue and Brooklyn feels like Brooklyn. A little cleaner, sure, a little sharper, more modern, but underneath it's still— not home, not quite, but something close to a memory.
You know — sort of — that Brooklyn was your home. At least, Brooklyn was Bucky's home. You know because you've been to that exhibit a dozen times already, and you've read his backstory — yours? It doesn't feel like yours, or, it didn't, but now— not you're not so sure, you're starting to think maybe it is. Maybe it was you, Bucky, James Buchanan Barnes, maybe Steve — the target — Steve was right.
But then, you've had experience with brainwashing. You know how right the wrong memories can feel. You once spent five months thinking you were a Spanish assassin, thinking your name was Rafa, thinking you'd watched your mama murdered by men in heavy black boots, your sister married in a church in a small town to a boy you'd known your whole life.
Rafa felt real. Bucky feels real.
The memories are the only difference. Rafa had a whole background, years and years of truths, they all did, Nate and Guillaume and Erik, a whole list of other people you've slipped into, but those lives were laid out for you, always. You could look back and see everything.
With Bucky, the memories snap into your brain like bullets. Sometimes you expect to find blood, after, they come so sharply.
Steve laughing, you laughing, and Dum Dum and Morita and all the others. Arms heavy on your shoulders, whiskey on your breath, some half-forgotten song in the background. A girl catching your eye and smiling. Steve's body a steady warmth against your side.
A bridge. A man with a red face. Fire licking hot at your heels. Not without you.
Cushions a mess on the floor. Steve's face, wet with tears. Your hand on his shoulder, bones delicate under your palm. Muttered apologies, muttered curses, muttered comforts. Curling yourself around Steve as he shakes through bad dreams, wishing you could keep the monsters at bay. The memories. The grief.
More faces than you can keep track of — soldiers, commanders, enemies, girls, guys, friends, foes — but always, always, Steve.
It always comes back to Steve.
In the end, so do you.
You go to Brooklyn, at least, which you think is good enough, but then you recognise the street, and another wall in your mind crumbles down. (Bruises. A black eye, a busted lip, the taste of blood in Steve's mouth. The skin over your knuckles split. Worry.)
Bucky feels more real with every step you take. You don't know whether to be scared or angry or — no. You won't let yourself believe. You've seen people die for smaller mistakes.
You've pulled the trigger on smaller mistakes.
Finding Steve is — it figures, really, when you think about it — an accident. You pause outside the cafe because you catch the smell of cinnamon —
(A blonde woman leaning over a bowl, your knees on a chair beside her, propping yourself up to watch her stir, reaching in to steal some batter. The woman — Steve's mom — swatting at your hand with a wooden spoon. Steve laughing and laughing and laughing, until your sides ache from laughing along.)
— and there he is. Sat by the window, but in the corner, almost tucked out of sight. He's not watching the street. He's looking down at a— a sketchpad, you think, and it would be so easy to kill him. There's a gun in the waistband of these jeans. A knife strapped to your arm. He'd be dead before he even saw you.
You walk into the shop, instead. Hunch your shoulders and duck your head, though no one's looking, not even the girl at the counter. The smells get stronger — (dark, bitter coffee, mostly dirt, you used to say, the boys laughing with you, but enough to keep us awake) — and the chatter is almost too much. Your body tenses, the fingers of your left hand curling into a fist before you register the movement. You can't quite unclench them so you shove both hands into the pocket of your hoodie.
You don't have to see yourself to know unconvincing you must look, how far from casual, with your jaw clenched into a scowl barely hidden by your hood, and the lines of your body tight with adrenaline — this could be it, you know, could be your last fight, could be what gets you killed, or handed over to whoever it is Steve's working for now. This could be the end of the line.
Your mouth floods with the taste of copper as you bite down hard on the inside of your cheek — (and, oh, the same sourmetal taste on your tongue each time you caught yourself looking at Steve the wrong way, until one day you caught him looking back, and— and— oh) — and it's enough to spur you forward.
As long as you can bleed, you can fight.
Steve still doesn't look up as you make your way over to him, weaving between chairs and tables and people who don't so much as glance at you twice. He doesn't look up when you're stood by the chair opposite him, hovering, unsure of what to do, where to start.
He startles when you clear your throat and say, soft, rough, "Can I sit down?"
His eyes are the same shocking blue as the sky outside. Brooklyn summer blue — (lazy afternoons on the fire escape, Steve lying half on your chest, his smile bright bright bright, the sun blinding in your eyes).
"Sure," he says, after a beat. "Sure— yeah, yeah, of course you can, Bucky, God."
You don't correct him, but you flinch at the name, just slightly, and his pretty blue eyes shutter down. He places the pad down, slowly, still watching you, something awed and honoured and— no, just awed, nothing more, in his eyes, like he can't quite believe you're here. You can empathise.
For a moment neither of you moves. You keep your eyes on the coffee in front of him, because it feels safest. He keeps his on your face.
There's still a little of the bloody taste lingering in your mouth. Steve's coffee smells like cinnamon. The sky is blue and the sunlight cuts the table in half.
(Steve's body in your arms, small and impossibly fragile, and then— bigger, stronger, like a tiger or a lion or something from the old legends you used to pick out in the stars. But the same smile. Always the same smile. And the same eyes, blue enough and kind enough to drown in. And love, overwhelming, so much love you're dizzy with it.)
You take a breath. And then another. And then you lean forward, pull your hood back.
"I didn't know where else to go," you tell him.
His face softens. He pushes the coffee across the table to you. He stays leaning in towards you, and says, "That's okay, Buck. You can always come to me, I promise."
A little part of you starts to believe him.
---
iii.
"You're not taking me to SHIELD."
Steve's room is a lot like the room of your motel. The walls are blank — something in you rebels at that, like it's not right, not what Steve's walls are supposed to look like, but you've no idea why — and the bed is a standard single, plain white sheets, hard to sight from the window, easily defensible from the door. It looks more like a safe house than a home.
(Sunlight filtering through the windows, catching on charcoal lines and blonde hair, easy laughter, sheets and clothes a mess on the floor, legs tangled with your own.)
Steve snorts a laugh, bitter. "There is no SHIELD. Not anymore." Maybe it is a safe house, then. Maybe Steve's been on the run since Washington, like you.
You raise an eyebrow and tuck your hands back into your pockets. Steve must notice the way you shift uncomfortably, because he adds, "It's a good thing. We think. I mean — we're not really sure. But SHIELD wasn't safe anymore, so it's for the best that it's gone."
"Oh." You curl in on yourself a little more. "Who are you— what are you doing now, then?"
Steve pauses, and even though he's not facing you, you can read the uncertainty in the line of his shoulders. "I don't know." He shrugs, turning to flash you a sheepish grin. "I was looking for you."
"Oh," you say again, unsure how else to react. Steve's eyes drag over your face, once, and then he exhales quietly and turns back to his computer.
You haven't known what to do since you left him on the bank of the river. You think about telling him that, but you don't know how he'll react. You don't know him, but you found him anyway, went to Brooklyn because you thought maybe he'd be there and stumbled into his coffeeshop and now you're in his apartment.
Because you think maybe he knows you.
The Winter Soldier is the only solid truth you have left, and you only have snatches of memories as him. The scrubbing process was only ever as good as it had to be, wiping your memory almost indiscriminately, leaving you with the knowledge of how to kill and who to obey and not much more. You remember the cafe, you remembering driving to New York, you remember hiding in Washington DC. You remember rescuing Steve, being rescued by Steve, fighting Steve, the ships that crashed. You don't remember much before that.
But Bucky is in your head. You're not sure if he's real, or if he was put there, or if you've created him, like some kind of coping mechanism born of an empty mind and one man's reaction to your face, but he's there.
And Steve knows the answer.
"What were you going to do? Once you found me." Steve looks up at you again, frowning, and turns his whole body, leaning against the desk. His position leaves the screen in your eye line, but you don't look.
You want Steve to trust you. You need him to trust you.
You watch Steve's face, instead. He runs a hand over his jaw, looking lost, and shrugs. You could kill him in any of two dozen ways, give or take. You know you won't. You don't know what that means.
"I don't know." His mouth quirks into a smile. There's humour there, but a sadness, too. His eyes still look like they belong to a kid who's been left behind by his mother. "I hadn't thought that far ahead, really. I just knew I needed you back."
A torn noise makes its way out of your mouth before you can stop it. "Why?"
Steve laughs, meets your gaze. "You're Bucky," he says, like it's an absolute truth. "I'm not leaving you behind again."
Again, you think — and then your brain skips to the falling, the reaching out. The figure in the train. "It was you," you breathe. "It was real."
You think of Rafa's mother. When you remembered her being killed, you could smell the blood, and the leather of the boots the men wore, and the perfume she always dabbed behind her ears. You could recount every word they exchanged. It felt real.
Bucky falling feels real, but less sharp. Like a photo that's faded over the years. You don't know whether that makes it more believable or not.
"What was real?" Steve's trying to hide it, but you hear his voice catch on something raw and hopeful. You close your eyes, and when you open them he's watching you, his eyes not lost anymore, but alive, and warm, and—
You don't trust him. But you want to trust him.
"There was a train," you say. "We were on a train. And I fell. It was real."
Steve takes a step forward, one hand coming up, and you flinch back so hard your hips slam into the wall. Your breath rasps in your throat, suddenly too heavy to exhale properly.
"I couldn't reach you in time." Steve's eyes are sad again, impossibly sad. You wonder if there was a funeral, if Steve looked so sad then, if — if he's lying, if this is just another part of the story, if this is all part of the act.
Your fingers curl against the wall, flaky paint sticking to your skin. "I just want to know the truth," you say, as close to real begging as you can remember being. "I just— I just want the truth."
"Bucky," Steve says, and you shake your head, press your right hand to your face, dig your nails in and focus on the pain. "Bucky, please."
And then he's there, one hand curling around yours to pull it away, the other holding your shoulder back to the wall. "This is true," he tells you, and there's fire in his gaze, in his voice. It triggers another flood, another wall —
(Steve's arms around you, forehead against yours, anger written hot and fierce over his face. You're hurting, your body and your head, you've been hurt, and Steve — Steve saved you, Steve came for you when you thought no one else would, of course he did — Steve's murmuring to you, the words heavy with promise and with rage, the end of the fucking line, Bucks, we promised, remember?)
"This is the truth, Bucky, I swear to you," Steve says. Your fingers clench around his, and he brings his head forward, rests his forehead on yours. Something close to hysteria bubbles up in your chest. "Nobody's fucking lying to you, never again, I won't let them."
---
iv.
You were a sniper, in the army. There was no special training for the role — no time for it, not with the war already raging around the world — but you were good with a gun, the best in your squad at long-distance shots, had the best aim and the most patience, so you became the sniper.
They improved your aim when they made you the Winter Soldier, improved your everything, but the patience, that's yours. You were always a patient child, and then a patient man, and then a patient soldier. The perfect assassin.
It could have been anyone who fell off the train. Could have been anyone they found in the river, mostly dead, one arm too badly infected to keep. Could have been anyone they enhanced and trained and set loose on the world.
It wasn't your fault that it was you. Steve tells you that constantly, his hands curving gentle around your jaw and his voice bleeding the kind of earnest sincerity that wouldn't seem genuine on anyone else.
Sometimes you believe him.
It wasn't his fault, either, and when you tell him that something soft and broken slips into his eyes and you feel like you're falling again, the same sudden sinking drop in your gut.
"I should have caught you," he murmurs one night, his arms tight around your waist, his mouth warm on the back of your neck. "I should have been there."
You roll over and press your right hand, your human hand, over his mouth. "Shut up," you tell him. The words come out in a growl, low and rough and angry, and you feel the Winter Soldier flash through your mind, but Steve doesn't so much as blink. His faith in you hits like a suckerpunch each time he proves it.
"Bucks," he starts, and you snarl, fingers digging into his cheek.
"Shut the fuck up," you repeat, and you don't let him go until the sadness clears from his eyes and he nods slowly, pulling you closer.
He smiles when your hand drops. It's fond and laughing and familiar — like the way he smiled before the war, when you were both— whole and solid and sure. You trace your fingers over it and say, "When you were thirteen I dared you to climb the tree outside the church, and you fell out and broke your arm, and your mom yelled at you for an hour straight, and you never once ratted me out."
"I'd never seen you look so sorry," Steve agrees. "You didn't insult me for a whole week afterwards."
It's tradition now, almost — you recount your memories and Steve tells you they're true, like a game, except for the weight behind each one, another piece of Bucky falling into place in your mind. One day, you think, there might not be space for anything else. Real or not.
The thought would have scared you a month ago. It still scares you, now, but you think it might also be everything you want.
You don't know how long it will take, but you were a sniper —
("Right," Steve says. "You watched my back. I knew I was safe, because I knew you were there, making sure I'd make it back in one piece. You were the best, too, perfect shots each time.")
— and you have always been patient. That much is still true.