Names on Paper.
Two days have passed since James and Warren spent the night in that motel, and they haven't heard a thing about it. Nothing about thieves in the clothing section at the store or book bandits at the library, either. James has been half expecting to hear his name on the radio, alerting everyone to keep an eye out for the Winter Soldier and his child assassin son as they have been blowing through remote towns with sticky hands and even stickier histories. But he hasn't heard a thing.
It's always a relief when they get away without any suspicion from anyone. James is exceedingly grateful for Warren to have those books, too. They have been keeping him so intensely preoccupied that he hasn't been complaining of boredom or about how badly he wants a pack of Mini Muffins. He's been too busy practicing naming each letter on each page of each book.
James taught Warren the alphabet the night after they left the library. Warren wrote it all down in his notebook, and he's been practicing writing the letters over and over again. He's learned all the letters in order, even after just two days of practice. He's writing the letters up his right arm, at the moment, and James keeps looking over at him to make sure he hasn't started writing it on his jeans or his T-shirt. They are trying to blend in, after all, and a kid covered in the alphabet isn't exactly normal.
Next, James promised Warren to teach him how to write his name. Warren is very much anticipating this. He's been trying to sound it out with each letter in the alphabet, but he hasn't quite figured out. In his notebook, in chicken-scratch handwriting, he has written out WRN BRNS. He hasn't yet worked out his vowels.
"Papa?" Warren's curious voice chimes.
"Warren?" James echoes in the same tone.
"What letter says aye?" He has a pencil in his hand, the full alphabet written twice on his arm, his notebook open on his lap, and an expectant look on his face.
"Well, what're you trying to spell?" James is met with silence. No response from Warren whatsoever. He glances over at the boy and sees his face scrunched up with focus. It's how he looks when he's trying to read or struggling to get the wrapping off of a snack they picked up from some gas station. "Renny?" James hums, trying to regain his attention.
Warren doesn't look up at the sound of his name. "Never mind," is all he says, but not in a grumbly sort of voice or with an attitude. He says it more with satisfaction as he pulls away from the notebook. James glances over at him once more and sees the letters JMS BRNS written on the notebook paper, right next to what is supposed to be Warren's own name. "James Barnes," Warren says aloud. He looks over at James with a proud smile. "Did I get it?"
And although Warren has spelled it wrong, his letters are all over the lines, and he has written it in all capital letters, James' chest fills up with a warm, fluttery feeling. His son has just written out their names on paper. His son, who he never thought would have the privilege of getting any sort of education. His son, who he never thought would be free. His son, who he once feared would never make it past five years old. Writing out their names with pride.
"Close. Very close. Just missing a few letters," James tells Warren, reaching across the center console to ruffle his hair. Warren's smile grows larger and he kicks his feet against the dash. "We'll work on it more next time we stop. Sound good?" James asks.
Warren nods adamantly. At this rate, he'll be able to read and write stories in no time. Maybe, he thinks, he can learn to draw, too, so his stories can have pictures like Frog and Toad and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Maybe, someday, Warren's books will be in a library, too, and other kids will read them and want to write stories, just like him. The idea of it is exhilarating. Warren wishes that he could go back in time and tell himself, just one year ago, that he was going to learn how to read and write soon. He wouldn't believe himself. Not in a million years. But here he is.
But the best part about all of this happening, in Warren's opinion, at least, are the things he has stuffed in the bottom of his backpack. Papa hasn't found out yet. Warren knows he will soon. He's not sure if he's dreading it or not. Maybe Papa will be angry, or maybe he will actually talk about it for once.
Warren just wants to hear about it.
James doesn't even want to think about it.
✮
When the sun fully sets itself below the horizon and the stars blink on in the night sky, James finally decides that it's time to stop driving.
They're in the Midwest now—probably somewhere in Illinois or Indiana—and James is thinking of really stopping somewhere in North Dakota or Montana. Somewhere close to the border where they can settle down for a little while. A place where James can get a job and make a little bit of money, where Warren can get a tiny bit of a taste of what life is like for most kids his age, and where they aren't expected to be. And when either shit hits the fan or when James is satisfied with the amount of money he's saved up, they will pack their bags and find a way to Europe.
Having Montana in mind still leaves James with a good fifteen to twenty hours of driving, though, and he is in desperate need of some sleep. So, he continues driving down the highway until he spots a bright green sign that says "rest area" in big, white letters. With a sigh of both relief and exhaustion, James follows the signs to an exit and parks the car as far from any other vehicles as he can.
His first instinct is to lay back, shut his eyes, and let himself immediately fall asleep, but he knows how his mind keeps him up. He needs to breathe for a bit. To feel the air in his lungs as he inhales and exhales, alive. To just think through everything. Make sure things are okay. Or else he will keep himself up all night, worrying about even the most improbable scenarios. Most of those scenarios revolve around something happening to Warren. The thought alone of losing him after just barely getting him back makes James feel physically sick. He wouldn't be able to bear it if something happened to Warren.
James looks over to the passenger seat. Warren is curled up into a ball on top of it, his eyes shut and brows furrowed. He's still, aside from the steady rise and fall of his chest with each and every breath. If he's having nightmares, which James prays he isn't, they're not bad enough to make him stir just yet.
With a gentle hand and a buzzing brain, James reaches across the center console and brushes hair from Warren's forehead. Sometimes he has to make sure that this is all still real. With the soft, thick texture of Warren's brown hair against his flesh fingertips, James knows it's real. It's all real. Looking at him, James wants to hold Warren the same way he did when he was only a baby. Of course, James seldom saw Warren when he was a baby, considering HYDRA liked to keep every little thing that made him feel even the least bit happy far away from him. At times, though, baby Warren was used as motivation. Thinking about it sends a jolt of pain through James' chest. Turning something as sweet as a baby—his baby—into some cruel tool to get him to do as he was told.
This all goes to say that James didn't get to hold Warren much when he was a baby. Maybe that's why he feels the urge to now. Or maybe it's just a human, parenting type of thing. Chemicals in the brain or pheromones in the air. James doesn't know. He just knows that he can't pick up Warren, no matter how badly he might want to right now, because it might wake him up and interrupt the little untainted sleep he's getting.
To distract himself, James focuses more on the cramping in his gut. Hunger has been ripping through him for hours now, really, but he's been too focused on driving to pay any attention to it. Now, though, there is nothing left but the hunger.
So, James grabs Warren's backpack out from beneath the passenger seat and sets it in his lap. The zipper is louder than James would prefer for it to be, so he makes sure to pull it slowly and with care so as not to wake Warren. It's always when he is trying to be quiet that it seems everything becomes so loud.
Inside the backpack, at the very top, is Warren's notebook. It's closed nicely and was clearly set on top with care. James thinks about his and Warren's names—or what are supposed to be their names—written inside, and he decides he wants to see them one more time. When he flips open the book, James sees that the entirety of the first page is covered with the alphabet. Over and over until Warren had run out of room. James stifles a laugh before flipping to the next page.
And there, right at the top, are their names again. WRN BRNS. JMS BRNS. James runs his fingers over the letters as if he could somehow feel the ink, but he can't. He'll have to teach Warren their names in the morning, he supposes. The rest of the page will probably be filled with the names by noon, just like the one of the alphabet.
As James stares at the letters, imagining the entire page covered with them, something else catches his eye. At the very bottom of the page, written a bit smaller than James' and Warren's names, as if he was writing it in secret, are two more names. STEV RGRS and CPTN AMRICA.
James can't stop the scoff that escapes his lips. Luckily, Warren still doesn't stir.
The first thing James thinks of doing is tearing the page out and tossing it out the window, but he doesn't. He doesn't because it has his and Warren's names, too. He doesn't because he knows Warren will wake up to see it gone and be disappointed, maybe even throw a fit. He doesn't because—well, because he just doesn't. With something squeezing his chest tight, James instead slams the notebook shut and hurriedly tucks it back into the bag. It's not what he was looking for, anyway. It doesn't matter. Warren will get over everything with Steve Rogers and his friends soon enough, and then all of this will be over, and the sick feeling James always gets when Steve is brought up will be gone for good.
After a deep and shaky breath, James keeps looking through the bag. He has to pull Warren's books out of the bag and set them on the dash in order to easily access the snacks buried at the bottom beneath some of the clothes they had stolen—the ones that aren't scattered throughout the car itself, at least.
"Jesus," James mutters to himself as he continues to dig through the bag. How could Warren have been complaining so much about being hungry, and then when he actually gets the food he begged for, he just stuffs it in the bottom of his backpack?
No. No, no, no. James crams that frustration back down his throat. It's misdirected. It has nothing to do with Warren, James thinks to himself. It has nothing to do with Warren because it has everything to do with Steve fucking Rogers and his indelible presence in James' life. James just can't seem to get rid of him, whether it's his own faintly returning memories of Steve plaguing his mind or it's Warren's perpetual insisting that Steve is oh-so-important. He won't go away.
Biting down on the inside of his cheek, James keeps searching through the bag. He pulls out a T-shirt. It's got some cartoon character on it that James doubts Warren even knows of. He drops it beside him on the seat and keeps digging. He pulls out another T-shirt, another, and then two more. Five T-shirts belonging to Warren.
Five?
James had only let Warren pick out four, and they got rid of the one with blood stains and dirt. Where has the fifth one come from? Warren must have taken it without him seeing, James supposes. But why? Why wouldn't he just ask for another? James wouldn't have told him no without reason. It doesn't make any sense. And on top of that, now knowing that Warren took it upon himself to steal an extra shirt, James finally notices that there are six books sitting on the dashboard. He had helped Warren pick out five of them.
Out of plain curiosity, James sorts through the T-shirts, checking which ones he has seen before and which one is the one that Warren had smuggled into his bag. The very last one James checks happens to be blue, which isn't anything odd or out of the ordinary because James has already noticed that Warren seems to really like the color blue. Half of the shirts he picked out were blue, his notebook was blue, and whenever they played I-Spy to pass the time, Warren almost always picked out something blue. It's only when James holds the T-shirt up to look at the design that he sees the circular symbol on the front of it. Red, white, and blue with a simple star in the center. A Captain America symbol.
"Ren," James breathes out in a whisper as he drops the shirt and rubs his hand over his face.
Why won't Steve go away? James has driven hundreds of goddamn miles away, day and night, for hours on end, and Steve still lingers in his mind. He wants to be left alone. He wants to be able to move on. He wants to make a new life for himself and Warren in Europe, and he wants nothing to do with any of the bullshit that supposedly happened in his past. He doesn't want HYDRA to find him, and he doesn't want Steve or his friends to find him, and the only way to prevent that is to forget about it all. But Steve won't let him.
Warren won't let him either.
James' face feels hot and it's beginning to make him dizzy. Warren is still lying in the passenger seat, unmoving and peaceful, and it kills James to be angry with him, but he is. He can't help it.
And as he tears his eyes from Warren, he spots what he can easily assume is the sixth stolen book on the dashboard. Steve Rogers' face is the focal point of the cover, and above it, in some childish font is the title; Who Is Captain America?
All of a sudden, breathing becomes a chore. James' head starts to ache like a tight band is squeezing his skull, just seconds away from shattering it under the pressure. Time contracts. His eyes burn and his chest throbs. The worst part is that sick feeling, though. It's worse than ever before. So bad that James is worried he might actually throw up, although he doubts it.
Air. James needs air. He needs to breathe.
Without another thought, James lets the contents of the backpack fall from his lap and gets out of the car, slamming the door shut behind him.
✮
Half an hour passes before James manages to put himself back together. The nighttime air was quick to cool him off, but it was the nausea that took time to get rid of. Now the only thing that is churning in his gut is his guilt and regret. He already knows his slamming the door woke Warren up. He saw him through the window, watching him with wide, blue eyes. Part of James wants to wait outside until Warren eventually lulls himself back to sleep, but he knows that the chances of Warren going back to sleep now are astonishingly low. So James has to face him.
The first thing James sees when he gets back in the car is Warren sitting up in his seat, his backpack, which is now refilled with all of Warren's stuff, tucked tightly against his chest. He's guarding it. He thinks James is going to take it. And it would be a lie for James to say that he hasn't considered it. He's still considering it, honestly.
"Papa," Warren says carefully. James looks at him but says nothing. "Why did you go outside?"
"You know damn well why, Warren," James utters in response. He doesn't want to be too harsh. It wouldn't be fair to. But James is angry and what Warren did is the reason why. What is he supposed to do? Pretend it's all fine? Surely not, right? God, James doesn't know. He doesn't know how to be a person right now, let alone a parent. But he doesn't have any choice in the matter.
The only response he gets to his anger is more anger from Warren's end. The boy's paranoid sort of look drops away and morphs into an indignant look. "Why do you hate Captain America, Papa? Why?!" he asks, his voice getting louder with each word. James doesn't answer. He can't. He doesn't know the answer. Not really. And his silence only fuels Warren's fire. "Papa! Answer me! Why do you hate him?!"
"Warren-"
"He is a good person! He helped me! It's not fair that you hate him! He loves you, Papa! And-!"
"I don't even know him, Warren!" James cuts in. His voice is loud, almost like he's yelling. Warren looks at him like he is, anyway. James never yells at Warren. He's always been calm and gentle; the only form of comfort Warren ever got inside the walls of the prisons they have been kept in throughout the years. He's not used to his papa's voice being loud, and when he hears it, he jumps back and presses himself against the passenger side door, flinching with both his eyes and his body. He disappears, just for a second, before reappearing in front of his papa's eyes. It's quick, but not too quick for James to notice. Guilt forms a lump in James' throat, and he just swallows it back. "Maybe I knew him seventy years ago, but I don't know him, now, and he doesn't know me either. You need to understand that," James explains, his voice stiff.
Warren's pout looks almost cartoonish. Tears are welling up in his eyes and he squeezes his backpack tighter. "You're Bucky. He's Steve. And you don't remember him because you do not want to remember," he pushes with choppy sentences, albeit hesitantly.
"You need to drop it," James says very sternly.
But Warren doesn't listen, now that he's not being yelled at. "You are not the Winter Soldier anymore, Papa! You're Bucky. Just like you were before! I learned it in a museum. You're Bucky, and you're Steve's best friend!"
James' head gets that squeezing, headache-y feeling again, and the nausea is creeping its way back up his spine. He'll never become accustomed to this feeling. It's too sickening to get used to.
"You have to remember, Papa, and you will never remember if no one makes you," Warren tells him matter-of-factly. He has this look on his face as if he's almost challenging James to disagree with him.
Truthfully, James doesn't even know why he neglects to try to return to who he was before the Winter Soldier came along and HYDRA tore his brain to shreds, aside from the false shred of hope that pushing it all away will increase his and Warren's likelihood of happiness. That hope is really just a cover-up. Really, something in the back of James' mind tells him that, deep inside Bucky Barnes, there is poison. There is something there that is wrong, and James can't return to it. He needs to craft a new person out of himself. One that's clean. Clean of the Winter Soldier and clean of the infection Steve Rogers seems to embody.
Warren, however, heavily disagrees. He's seen his papa's ups and downs. He's seen him as the Winter Soldier, he's seen him as the shell of a person HYDRA turned him into, he's seen who he is now. And, through stories and facts listed off in a museum, Warren has seen what he can of Bucky Barnes. And for a reason James can't place, Warren seems to have fallen in love with the idea of Bucky. Who he was, what he stood for, and apparently, his relationship with the one and only Captain America. Bucky Barnes stood for good, as far as Warren can tell, and so does Steve Rogers. So what is it about that past version of himself that Papa doesn't want to return to?
"What do you want from me? What do you want me to do? I'm sorry, buddy, but I'm not the same person I was back then."
"You could be, but you don't know how because you won't learn!" Warren shouts.
"Stop yelling at me." James' voice is authoritative and it makes him feel like a father, but not much of the good kind. As long as he doesn't yell, though, he supposes he'll be good enough. Warren's standards aren't too high when it comes to fathers. So without yelling, James says, "You don't talk to me like that. You understand?"
"No!" Warren spits with a fierce expression on his face. He's being a brat on purpose now and James won't let that get to him. He needs to stay calm, be stern, and try to understand what it is that Warren really wants. He raises his eyebrows somewhat warningly, and when he opens his mouth to say something, Warren finally breaks. "You have to remember Bucky, Papa, because then you won't be the Winter Soldier again! You can be a good person like Captain America! And I can be good, too. But we have to learn it! Please, Papa! Can we please learn it?"
Finally, finally, James realizes what all of this is about. What Warren's obsession with this is for, what he's so afraid of, and why he is so persistent about it. Everything begins to make sense as James puts the puzzle pieces together in his head.
Warren is afraid of the Winter Soldier coming back.
James was Bucky before he was the Winter Soldier. Warren must think that, if James reverts back to the person he was back then, then the Winter Soldier will be gone for good. And with Steve—perfect and pristine Captain America—Warren has seen it; Steve somehow shattering the Winter Soldier despite the serum and despite the mind control. Steve holds Bucky to the ground and shields him from all the dark things that come along with the Soldier. So as Warren sees it, as long as Steve is there, the Winter Soldier isn't. It's just Bucky. So Papa has to remember Steve, and they have to get back to him, eventually, so that they can finally be rid of the Winter Soldier and the terror that follows him like a shadow.
James sighs, the anger and frustration dissipating into growing amounts of sympathy. He tries not to let himself frown—not to let the mask of strength slip—but his face twitches. "The Soldier is gone, now, Warren. It's all me," he says sincerely, forcing a smile that even a blind man could tell is fake.
"But you don't know that!" Warren's eyes are all watery, and they look like the ocean. It drowns the both of them. "Steve could stop the Soldier. You have to remember him, Papa," Warren whispers.
And the reasoning James has had in his head for avoiding anything and everything that has to do with his past is getting weaker with each second. Could learning about his past self pull him further from the Winter Soldier? Maybe if he remembers who he was before all of this, the nightmares might go away. But, then again, there's that nausea. The poison that James is so sure is hidden deep inside of him. What if remembering himself is the key to that? Does he want to find out? Part of him does. The other part is terrified. But what's scarier? The Soldier or the poison?
The Soldier. Why does he even have to ask himself? The Soldier can hurt Warren. He can hurt anyone and everyone. But the poison, whatever it is, can only hurt James himself. That's a sacrifice he has to be willing to make. He has to face it.
"Papa," Warren's voice persists. His papa has gone quiet and he doesn't like that one bit.
"Okay."
Warren's eyebrows shoot up, his eyes wide in disbelief. He didn't expect to get his way. Not so quickly, anyway. Papa must have been thinking about this already. "Okay?" he echoes.
"Sure. We'll learn. Museums, books, whatever. But we can't go back to Steve, Ren. You have to understand that. We can't go back," James explains very seriously. He hates the subtle frown that appears on Warren's lips, but he can't lie to him. "We can't stay in America, either. We'll have to go. It's too dangerous with the government looking for us. We don't know what they'll do when they find us, and we can't risk taking the chance to find out just to see Steve again."
Although Warren despises the idea of never seeing Steve again, he gives a nod. Maybe it's too dangerous to see him face to face, but he'll still see him on the TV and read about him in books. And maybe in twenty years, when Warren is all big and grown up, things will change. And then he'll see Steve again. Natasha and Sam, too. Everyone. Maybe they'll meet again.
After settling the argument, the two of them lie back in their seats and stare up at the roof of the car. James thinks of the poison, of what Steve has to do with it, and of what will happen when he learns what it is. Warren thinks of knowledge, of his friends, and of what life will be like in twenty years time. By midnight, they've both drifted off to their dreams, or their nightmares. Whichever their minds choose tonight.