"Because what asshat steals not only a man’s shoes but also takes a sleeping man’s socks?"
Present Day: 2023
Bucky blinks, because he’s being kicked awake, “Hey dude.” A homeless person kicks him, “Get outta this spot, it’s mine.”
Bucky groans, and cracks open an eyelid, and puts on his most menacing glare, because fuck he’s drunk, and the sun is too bright and there are too many people in the narrow alley way, most of them homeless, a lot of them assholes, someone had stolen his shoes.
“Ya fucking deaf?” The skinny, gaunt man towering over him, in much too many layers yells, and Bucky clenches his jaw, and murmurs a, “sorry”, which isn’t really a sorry at all. Someone had also stolen his pocket of cash-great.
“Yeah, whatever asshole.” The (possible) mean crackhead curses, and he slumps down in Bucky’s spot. Bucky sighs, and with his bare feet, (because what asshat steals not only a man’s shoes but also takes a sleeping man’s socks? Even Zola was more conscientious than that), grumbling and hungry, as he walked down the street.
He walks and he probably looks like hell, because many people give him filthy stares as he enters the more popular and more expensive streets of New York. He can’t blame them though, with his greasy long hair, and unshaven beard, and dog tags, and beer stained shirt, with many other stains he doesn’t want to talk about, and his dirty feet, Bucky from the 40’s would probably cry at the sight of himself, and Bucky’s Ma must be rolling around with despair in heaven.
“James Barnes!” The angel version of her would scream, because of course Winnifred Barnes would become an angel, even with her tendency to smack her children with her cooking spoon. She’s probably waving the damn thing right now, making all the other angels and good spirits cower, and debate whether they should just send her to deal with Satan, given how fierce her glower must look.
“YOU GO AND CLEAN YOURSELF RIGHT THIS INSTANT! Oh, what would my mother say?” She’d wail, and Bucky laughs to himself, and a few bustling civilians give him anxious, petrified looks.
Then his laughter chokes, because he misses his Ma terribly, and wonders how Hydra would even dare take the memory of her away, of her laughter, of her crinkled eyes, and roaring anger.
Of his sisters, who he can now place, but hadn’t been able to before, and he feels sick and wonders how god could have been so cruel to have let this happen to him, yes he was wrong and a killer, even before Hydra. But what did poor Winifred Barnes, or little Becca with her large, too bright blue eyes, plump Daisy with her flowers and bows, Alice with her severe bun and science books, or Mary with her too curious eyes, and wise words, had done, to lose him?
They’d lost their father to war, or as good as, with how violent and drunken he’d get. Then their older brother, their protector, and that grief alone must have torn them apart. Bucky wasn’t self-deprecating enough, to think he hadn’t been loved, the Bucky of before had been, by women and his sisters and Steve and his Ma, by a great deal of many people, even if he had hated himself even then.
Yet now, Bucky thinks perhaps it was for the better, because he was turning wrong even before he fell from the train. The war had twisted him, had made him lose some of that charming swagger, and he’d killed more violently than he should have, perhaps revelled in killing those krauts more than even Steve was comfortable with, and Steve back then would have accepted him for everything he was.
That if Bucky had lived, he may have turned out to be like his father, that maybe that terrible monster in his chest would have won, and he’d be so far gone, in a world without Steve Rogers guiding him to the surface of his own well of self-slaughter, that he’d be better off the Winter Soldier.
Bucky winces, and feels a rush of guilt, and feels too much in general, Jesus he needs to get home.
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At “home”, the apartment is bare and empty. No Stevie on the floor drawing, no Ma in the kitchen roaring her head off, no sisters annoying him to no end, nothing-silence. It reminds him almost of the cells in Hydra, but even then he hadn’t been alone, not with the amount of scientists and pervy guards there were, that took any chance they could to just break him down a bit further.
Yet he was alone now. So utterly, completely alone, and Bucky sighs, a hollow, old sound, and shuts the door, and stares at the space-the yanked down blinds, the dishes in the sink, the filthy state of the apartment complex. Just another cell.
Yet as he yanks off his jeans, and goes to his room, to find his phone filled with messages from a very unhappy Raynor reminding them of their mandated court “therapy session”, he thinks, just another government trying to control him.
Bucky knows logically that this isn’t Hydra, that he’s “free” as Raynor so bluntly puts it, yet he still feels at odds with his mind, Steve is gone and he hates himself, the only difference now, is that he has no mission, no purpose.
His mission as Bucky Barnes had been to protect the people he loved, to protect his Ma and sisters from his Da, and from the world. To protect Steve from himself, and occasionally help him defeat guys worse than Bucky. Now? Now he had no mission, no purpose, and frankly, he doesn’t dislike that.
Because for the first time in a long time, he feels as dead as he’s supposed to be, feels as rotten as he ever had, and that’s the best kind of punishment he deserves for every sin James Barnes has committed in his life.
But that’s too much “thinking”, as sweet Daisy would laugh, with her round cheeks and cherub face. Bucky agrees, and he slumps down on the floor, and sleeps once more.