I Am

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“Sometimes when you’re doin’ simple things around the house

Maybe you’ll think of me and smile

You’ll know I’m tied to you like the buttons on your blouse

Keep me in your heart for a while”

 - Keep Me In Your Heart, Warren Zevon

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Footsteps scampered on the rooftops overhead. Bucky’s ears pricked up as his hand drifted to his hip. Four, he counted. Five? Four. One’s crawling. Gently, ever so gently, he flicked off the safety. And then he waited.

It wasn’t the first time Bucky had been ambushed on the moon-blighted streets. He’d been set upon maybe a half-dozen times, each attempt weaker than the last. They were like rats, he had realised. They were cowardly alone, running the moment he locked eyes with them - but in packs, they grew bolder. And hungrier.

As if on cue, the footsteps ceased, replaced by a scraping and clattering as they descended the brick wall. There was something spider-like in the way they hugged the surface as they climbed. A flowerpot fell from a windowsill, unceremoniously kicked aside to shatter on the pavement. Four, as he had guessed; three male, one female. They hissed at him through rows of pointed teeth. The sight was an unpleasant mixture of unnerving and repulsive. 

One of the males pounced off. In a single smooth motion, Bucky drew his handgun, aimed, and fired. The crack echoed down the streets, mingled with the vampire’s agonised screams from the fresh hole in its neck. He sidestepped as it crashed ignobly into the ground, and raised his eyes back in an unspoken challenge. 

They didn’t disappoint. The second attacker leapt down, claws extended, teeth bared in ravenous fury. He raised his handgun once again, and once again it blasted a simple retort. Pieces of skull and brain spattered the brick as the vampire’s head exploded outwards. Bucky made to sidestep again - but a cold, dying hand hooked onto his ankle as he pivoted, fouling his balance, and driving him down to a knee.

Screeching victory, the remaining vampires launched at him. The ear-tearing pitch of their screams drew a white-hot line down the healing crack in his skull, and Bucky’s teeth gritted at the pain. Thump, thump came the impacts as they landed in front of him.

You stay away from him! Don’t you touch him! 

The vermin circled him, claws twitching, eyes watching his hand warily. Bucky pushed himself back to his feet, and they took a step back in parallel. 

Don’t think about it, huh? Just a scratch.

“Shut up,” Bucky muttered. The gunmetal shined as he raised it again. The vampires shrieked, and closed for the kill, mouths slavering. 

There was no time to aim. He flipped the weapon in his hand, grabbing it by the barrel, and swung it like a club. The female was the closest, and he felt her jaw splinter under the unyielding steel. The scream of victory became a yelp of pain. The male shouldered past her as she retreated, lips peeled back in animal snarl. Bucky swiped a second time, testing. The vampire leaned back in a clean dodge.

Oh, he’s good. Bucky feinted another swing, and as it dodged this time, he planted a foot firmly in its stomach, sending it sprawling into the dirt. 

Stay with me, okay?

“Shut up,” he repeated.

A faint growl between his shoulder blades gave Bucky a second’s warning. He spun, bringing his elbow up in a brutal arc. He felt flesh yield under its momentum. The female staggered back, making a choking noise that was almost comical. He flipped the handgun back the right direction and sent her brains to kingdom come. The third vampire was still pushing itself up to its feet when a hole blossomed in its forehead. It fell, lifeless, a puppet with cut strings. 

Bucky tucked his sidearm away in the holster as he caught his breath. His fingers clasped around a cylindrical water bottle tucked into his belt, and he took a few sips through the sports cap. This lot is small fry, Buck, he admonished himself. Come on now.

He was nestling it back into his belt when he heard the rattling breath from beside his foot. The first vampire, the one whose vile hand had clung to his ankle and ruined his dodge, was now clinging just as desperately to its last few scraps of life. Rotten blood trickled from its ruined throat like spoiled milk. Its dying body reeked of decay and corruption.

No. No, wai-

Some deep-seated, simple offence began to boil inside of Bucky as he looked down at it. That agonising pain was splitting his skull once more as the adrenaline faded, returning like an old friend. And it was back because of this… this thing. This thing, that had somehow got one over on him. It wasn’t like he’d never dropped the ball before, but…

I really need your help, Buck.

And then it bubbled over, that simple childish fury, and his foot was moving on its own, and it slammed into that red rip in the vampire’s neck, and it was mewling through contaminated blood as he kicked it again and again until he was kicking a corpse, and it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. Half of his brain was ashamed and the other was revelling in vindication as he sat down hard on the cold asphalt, his ragged breaths flaying his lungs. Half of him was weeping and half was cheering. And both halves were hurting. 

Central Park, he told himself. Focus. He saw it in his mind’s eye, just as he had seen it a few days ago. He had been wandering, trying to find some lead on how to end Dracula’s reign of terror, when he had seen it through the skyline - a vast Victorian castle, square in the middle of the park. A flock of bats fluttered between its great spires as he watched. The sheer ridiculousness, the sheer arrogance of it, had rendered Bucky speechless. But where else would a being as self-obsessed as the Emperor of the Eternal Night place his monument to ego and luxury? Only where the plebeians could see it, and envy.

Bucky had studied it from the rooftop of a multi-storey parking garage a few days ago. Even from a distance he knew it was impenetrable. The castle was hidden behind some kind of magical barrier, somewhere between glass and mist, with stains of deepest crimson. The shifting colours inside it reminded him of clouds of blood spreading through water. 

He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t care. There has to be a way to get rid of it. Then I’ll kill him.

His breath had steadied. Bucky climbed to his feet, dusted himself off, and set to walking once more. 

Bucky’s routine for travelling through Manhattan was, in theory, very simple. He walked until his legs were burning, and then he walked a little more. Then he broke into a shop or house, found something edible, downed it, and slept. And when he awoke, he would keep walking. There were no mornings in the Eternal Night, no sunrise and sunset. It was only him and his feet.

In practice, it was a little more complicated than that. Sometimes the whole street would be ransacked of supplies, and he would lie in his makeshift shelter as his weary bones wrestled his growling stomach for rest. Other times he would go for (what felt like) days without sleep, the scent of his blood drawing the night’s vermin to his heels. 

And it was lonely, too. Bucky had learned the hard way how to be a solo operative, but having no one to talk to except the reminders grated on him sometimes. Sai’s laughter floated through his mind. Steve’s smile when he ‘won’ the arm-wrestle. It’s only been a week, some part of him insisted as he walked, not for the first time. Go back to them. 

But ah, that question again. That question that had been answered a thousand times yet continued to hound him. Those three evil words that haunted his mind. That question that banished their faces to the recesses of his mind and replaced them with another face, one he missed even more dearly. 

The hours trickled past as he walked. Something about the eerie stillness of it all drew Bucky’s nerves tight and played them like guitar strings. New York’s noisy, he reflected. Car honks. Flashing screens. People talking. Where’s it all gone? He knew, of course. It was easy to picture the evacuation buses taking crowds of terrified citizens across the congested bridges, bringing them to the safety of Anywhere Else, USA. He wondered how many families had been separated by Dracula’s little power play. And how many’ll never see each other again?

Something poked at Bucky’s ears as he rounded the corner. It was faint, the sound of words whispered in hushed voices. His eyes narrowed as he tracked it in his mind. Something in his decades of training screamed at him to be cautious, but there was a lead here. He could feel it.

He slipped down the back alley and beheld the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The walls of scuffed paint and worn brick rose high above his head, towering over him like neglected monoliths, adorned by the occasional utility box and graffiti tag. They met the cracked stone ground in wet, mossy corners. Heaps of rubbish squatted beside steel doors. 

Staring him dead in the face was a mural. STOP HATE, it read in a bouncy, energetic font, coloured all the hues of the rainbow. Behind the words, Cupid’s bow fired an arrow through a heart.

Something seemed to fall into place as his eyes drank in the paint. Images flashed through his mind. Like string joining a corkboard, they were disconnected, yet forming a greater picture.

He wouldn’t let me go alone–

‘You’re not in this conversation, Buckeroonie.’

No, he insisted, even when he knew I wasn’t alone. And–

‘There you go, gorgeous. Give it a few, and you’ll be fine.’

He gave me the meds. When I was drunk. Bucky’s chest began to tighten. The pain was back, that red-hot brand that seared a line in his skull. Because I couldn’t take them myself-

‘Sai could kill the thing, we could’ve sat at home and played cards…’

‘But you’re hurting.’

‘Buck, you can… you can cry off, if you need to.’

He wanted to keep me safe. 

‘They’re doing a 9-millimetre special. Come get your juice.’

Finding me ammo– and the wink at me when he hit that arrow–

‘I’m so sorry, Buck. I know he was special to you.’

Steve knew.

‘You’ve got him, and he’s got you–;’

Even Sai saw it. And the way he blushed. Clint…

Through the maelstrom of emotions, through the adrenaline wracking his system, he heard the siren’s song that had drawn him here reach a crescendo. It was coming from a CD radio, propped up on the wall next to the mural, and what was it playing but Elton John’s story of lost love, Someone Saved My Life Tonight.

‘You stay away from him! Don’t you touch him!’

It was all too much. His legs were water. The faded brick spun around him as he staggered, hand stretched behind him for support. He caught a chunk of metal and pulled it, realising too late it was a door handle. His stomach twisted with vertigo as he fell through the doorway–

And landed in a dim room, looking up at a grandfather clock.

Bucky braced his arm and pushed himself up into a sitting position. He scanned his environment with increasing confusion as he fought to steady his breath. A single, yellow lightbulb cast a pallid light over his surroundings. The room was stuffed full of curios and antiques, unceremoniously - yet carefully - stacked against one another. He saw a chandelier sitting on an old oak table, its golden arms reflected in a row of ornate table clocks. A thick layer of dust lay over them like a shroud. Opposite him, an ancient wooden door barred the way to the connecting rooms. He turned back to the doorway he had entered - and he felt his eyes widen in shock.

The doorframe he had stumbled through was varnished wood. Through the doorway, he could see the dismal alley - but it seemed to shimmer, as if he were looking at it through a sheet of water. The radio’s lights still blazed, but no sounds reached Bucky’s ears. He leaned forward, panic briefly forgotten in baffled curiosity, and pushed his hand through the gap. Ripples formed in the very air around his fingers as they passed through. Unreality washed over him as he snatched them back.

Bucky’s head whipped round as the other doorknob began to rattle. He pushed himself to his feet, and drew his sidearm, off-balance but ready for anything. 

The woman who stepped through the doorway was quite unlike anyone Bucky had ever met. A red-and-black bodice covered her torso, meeting purple tights at her waist. Red thigh-high boots gave way at her thighs in an intricate pattern of flame. A golden necklace patterned the bodice’s split. Her gloves started as a deep red on her upper arm, fading to a deep black as they approached her hands, before coating her fingers in a striking red. Even her hair sported its own gradient; a long mane of black hair spilled from her scalp down to her waist, the curled tips reaching a deep red as they passed her shoulder blades.

None of these reasons were why Bucky had never seen anyone like her. That was because she was floating six inches off the ground.

The woman’s eyes - bottle-green, and intelligent - widened as they saw him, her black-painted lips rising in a smile. “Right on time,” she declared as she eased the door shut. Her voice carried the faintest remnants of a foreign accent. European, maybe. “Hello, James.”

Bucky struggled to focus his mind. In the last couple of minutes, he had battled through a hurricane of emotions, and now it seemed he was expected. “Where am I?” he demanded.

The red woman raised an eyebrow. “You can put that away.” She gestured to his sidearm. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

Yeah, right. He adjusted his grip on the weapon. “Answer the question.”

A sigh escaped her lips. “The Emporium of Wonders,” she answered. “It used to be an antiques shop. I turned it into something a little more… spiritual.” Her accent gave the words a curious undertone. “My name is Wanda Maximoff. In the Avengers, they called me the Scarlet Witch.”

Now it clicked. Clint’s stories of the Maximoff twins resurfaced in his mind, like a bubble rising through a misty lake. She was his friend. He said she was the one who kept them out of trouble.

“Clint told me about you,” he muttered.

“It’s nice to hear he remembers me,” Wanda replied, traces of a fond smile dancing around her mouth. It took on a more sardonic twist. “Now if only he could remember where he put his Avengers badge. It would have saved us all a great deal of headaches.”

The words died in Bucky’s throat before he could even think them. I can’t tell her, he realised. I can’t… say it.

The silence held for a moment. Then she nodded at his sidearm once more. “Does this mean we can talk like adults?” she petitioned once more. Her smile was reasonable, charming. Bucky tucked away the handgun with great reluctance. 

“Thank you.” She pulled two carved wooden chairs out of the corner of the room, and placed them opposite one another. She eased herself into one with a confident, almost regal air. “Please.”

Bucky eyed the chair. His eyes flicked to her face - patient, measured, calm - and back to the chair. He sat down.

“I’m sure you have lots of questions,” Wanda began. “I’ll do my best to answer as many as I can.” She looked at him expectantly.

Bucky considered a moment as he weighed his questions. He was no stranger to interrogations; he knew the interviewee could get as much information as the interviewer if they weren’t careful. And I don’t trust her. Yet.

We’ll start with an easy one. “If you’re an Avenger, why isn’t all of this-” He gestured vaguely to the sky. “-Sorted yet?”

The smile slid from her face, leaving the bones of loss and mourning. “Earth’s mightiest heroes’ve been struggling with Steve Rogers’s death,” she explained. “He was…” She swallowed. “He was a social glue. Holding us together.”

Yeah. Bucky nodded his sympathy. Even the Steve that came with us isn’t the same. He’s not as… magnetic.

“Still, we haven’t been idle.” His mind snapped back to the present as her explanation reached its zenith. “Tony has been working with Reed Richards on a solution. And I converted the Emporium into a shelter for mutants. The ones who wouldn’t be accepted elsewhere.”

Bucky chewed on that for a moment. “We’re doing the best we can without Steve.” Okay. Next. “How did you know I was coming?” he asked.

Wanda accentuated her head in a you got to it eventually gesture. “I saw your arrival in the possible futures,” she replied, as though that explained everything. “I didn’t know that you would come. But I knew that if you would, it would be now. And here you are.”

“And how is that? How did I get here?” He looked at the door. Through its shimmering waves, that stark reminder still sat there on the wall in its vibrant hues. It hurt his soul to see.

As if it heard his thoughts, the door swung closed. “I call it the Last Door,” Wanda responded with a hint of pride. “Part seeking spell. Part portal. It reaches out to people at their lowest point, and guides them here. It’s an improvement on my last design.”

Spell. “Scarlet Witch”. Did she…? “What do you know about dreams?” Bucky asked slowly.

Wanda’s brow furrowed a little. She scratched her cheek as she answered, “Dreams are scraps of thoughts your brain throws together. Some people say dreams are your subconscious speaking, but I don’t believe that.” 

“How about visions?” Careful, Buck, he chided himself.

“Visions are more… pagan concepts. Mostly inaccurate. Foresight happens when one uses their powers intentionally to see the future, and make prophecies.”

She’s not getting it. Bucky had no patience for wordplay mindgames. “I think I saw something,” he confessed. “Something of the future, or… something happening right now… I don’t know. It’s like a riddle.”

Wanda’s face settled. The almost professional brevity was gone; in its place was an expression of deadly seriousness. “Tell me,” she replied. It wasn’t a question.

Two weeks had passed since Bucky had seen the dream, but its vividness had branded itself into his mind. He saw it as clearly as if he had just awoken. He kept the laboratory and the faceless scientists to himself, but he laid plain every other detail. He told of falling upwards through space, and shivered at the memory of the moon enveloping his sight. He spoke of Dracula’s icy touch against his skin. He told her about the amulet that appeared, and he reached out to grasp it–

“Describe it again.”

Bucky had slipped into the storyteller’s trance, but he awoke now to see Wanda’s face a study of alarm.

“Do you know what it is?”

“Maybe. Again, please.”

Now that he was on the spot, Bucky found himself strangely tongue-tied. “It was an oval,” he explained. “About this big. Gold. There was some kind of green light inside–”

“The Eye,” Wanda breathed. She muttered something under her breath that Bucky didn’t hear, and stared at the floor over steepled hands, deep in thought. He caught the word strange. “All right,” she said finally. “Continue.”

Bucky continued his story. He echoed Dracula’s empty promises, silver words of rotten doubt - promises that he had spurned. He talked about how he had fallen. And then…

“Wait a sec.” Bucky rummaged around in his back pocket, and dug out a crumpled scrap of paper, torn and creased. “I wrote them down,” he explained as he unfolded it.

A raven carved of emerald sat on a god's corpse, its head cloaked by Death's hood.

Wanda held up a hand, before resting her head on it in thought. “Ravens…” she whispered to herself. “Messengers. Scavengers. A god’s corpse. Feasting, perhaps? Death’s hood…” A few seconds passed as she considered. Then, again: “Continue.”

A lonely howl echoed across a city's skyline, and the midnight moon was split asunder at its echoes. 

“Wolves. Another animal. I understand now why you called this a riddle.” She gestured at everything and nothing. “New York is under an eternal moon. Perhaps this wolf will be the one to end it? Or perhaps it will only try.” A pause. “Continue.”

An island screamed as a thousand cuts appeared on its body, and from them soared a thousand pink butterflies. 

“Krakoa…” Some colour vanished from Wanda’s cheeks. “Magneto’s island home for mutants. Under attack? Dying? And butterflies…” She shook her head in dismay. “I don’t like it. But continue.”

A circus of freaks sat in a stone tent, their ringmaster bathed in blood.

Wanda sighed. “Unfortunately, James,” she admitted with a hint of exhaustion, “I believe this one is me.”

“You?” She worked in the circus?

“Mutants have always been seen as freaks by the hateful and intolerant. Since I converted the Emporium into a shelter, I’ve been keeping as many of them safe as possible. And a stone tent would be a building.”

Something in Bucky tensed. “And the blood?” 

Wanda searched his face for a moment. Her eyes fell away, as if she could not bear to hold his gaze. “Remind me to tell you about ‘M-Day’,” she murmured. Her voice was utterly flat.

The silence hung heavy in the air. Bucky returned to his notes.

A grand red cloak encompassed the cosmos, and in its folds the stars were joined by golden lines.

“This red cloak… does it have an upturned collar?”

Bucky combed his memory. “Yeah,” he realised. “You know who that is?”

An enigmatic smile touched the corner of Wanda’s mouth. “Someone you’ll meet very soon, I expect,” she answered. “The golden lines…” She shrugged. “No idea.”

From all these scenes extended strings, and to his horror, Bucky found that the strings had replaced his own fingers.

“You have a role to play in all of this,” Wanda concluded. “I don’t know what, or how - but you’ll find it. Especially if your part is as important as I think.”

It never ends. “Thanks for the new riddle,” he sighed.

Wanda gazed at him, sympathy dancing behind her eyes. “I don’t envy your position, James,” she offered quietly. “But we all have to answer to fate.” Her eyes brightened. “I almost forgot,” she admonished herself. “One moment.” Her heels clicked against the wooden floor as she strode back the way she had entered, and slipped out. 

Bucky collected his thoughts as he waited. A shelter for mutants, he reflected. Kinda nice. And she was worried about Krakoa. Clint knew her, and he liked her. She didn’t send me the dreams - unless she’s a master liar - but she can help me unpick them. 

Can I trust her?

The answer seemed to be yes.

I’ll give her a shot. For now.

As if on cue, the door opened once more. Wanda stepped through, closing it behind her once more. In her left hand was a fabric shopping bag that sagged painfully with the weight of its contents. “I don’t know if this is right,” she explained as she dragged a small wooden coffee table over to their makeshift meeting. “I’ve never needed a prosthetic before. But I figured having a hand that is almost right is better than having none.” She placed the bag on the table carefully. Even slowly eased down, the luggage gave a harsh clang as it collided with the wood.

Prosthetic. The word made Bucky’s heart stop.

Wanda reached into the bag, and drew out an artificial arm. 

It wasn’t exactly what leapt to mind when he Bucky envisioned a prosthetic. The bulk of it was a deep crimson. Brilliant gold armour plates protected the arm, while the hand was left mostly free to allow for greater flexibility. A bat’s skull was patterned on the shoulder, all teeth and narrowed eyes. Behind that macabre detail was engraved a crescent moon. It glowed the haunting red of blood. Black leather straps trailed off the shoulder, waiting to attach to a new torso. He fought to suppress a wince at the sheer, grating ostentatiousness of it.

Wanda smiled a little as she saw the less-than-thrilled look on his face. “Pietro recovered it on a supply run,” she explained. “He took it off a corpse. One of Dracula’s lieutenants, he said. I wasn’t sure why I held onto it before, but now I know.” She stepped back. “Take it.”

Bucky ran his fingers along the leather. Some part of him was balking at the idea of it being a dead vampire’s arm. But then again, he pondered, my other arm did have a weird creature from another dimension inside it. Guess this isn’t so bad by comparison. Oh, what the hell.

Wanda turned away politely as he shouldered off his beaten bodywarmer. The bulletproof vest followed. Last off was his sweat-stained t-shirt, leaving his stump of a shoulder bare.He picked up the prosthetic by the forearm, and quickly realised the problem. Right. Straps. His eyes scanned the room for a solution amidst the antiques, and found none. They settled on Wanda, who was fiddling with her necklace.

“Hey. Uh, Wanda?”

She turned.

“I, um…” He swallowed his pride. “Can you give me a hand?”

Wanda snorted. Bucky looked up at her in confusion, clocked what he said, and felt his mouth twist.

“Of course,” she smiled.

He held the arm in place as she wound the leather straps deftly around his chest. Three clasps clicked in sequence. Bucky wiggled his shoulder a little, and felt the connection settle into place. A wave of relief coursed through him. He felt symmetrical again. Whole again. He felt ready to take on the world.

It won’t work.

The sheer certainty behind those three words murdered his joy. Fear coursed through his nerves in its place, a terrible certain fear. She’s given me a dud arm. He clenched his fist against his knee, fighting to control the rush of adrenaline. He could feel the steel weighing him down. It seemed for all the world that he had a heap of bricks strapped to his side.

“James?”

Wanda still stood in front of him. Concern marred her features. “Is there something wrong with it?” she probed.

I know you’re tricking me, he wanted to scream at her. I know it’s not gonna work. You just want me to fail again. Where were you? You’re an AVENGER. Where were the Avengers when Clint needed them?

But he didn’t.Though it took a herculean effort, Bucky pulled himself back into himself. He forced a deep breath down his lungs. Held it. Released it. Unclenched his fist. Just move the fingers, he told himself. Just the fingers. He threw caution to the wind.

Bucky’s new arm clenched its fingers into a fist.

A smile broke out across Wanda’s features. It lit up her face like a sunbeam. “Good,” she proclaimed, as he opened it and closed it, opened and closed. “If the colour starts to bother you, we can repaint it. I’m sure some of the mutants here would be happy to help. The… decoration… is a little more troublesome, but I’m sure we could find an answer–” 

She trailed off. Her voice softened. “James?” she inquired gently. “Are you all right?”

Wanda’s face swam, shifted, doubled. Bucky felt his jaw quiver as he drew in a shaky breath.

For the first time in years uncounting, Bucky Barnes was weeping.