cry baby
They went to the market together. Though neither of them wanted to.
“Want” didn’t matter, had never actually been asked of them. It was always about survival.
They spent their money wisely, both knowing the bare minimum that the human body needed to sustain itself. Jaina, on the other hand, could survive longer than the average human without food. And though uncomfortable, part of her was willing to burrow the pain within herself so her mission partner could feed himself.
What they were willing to do for each other was always a curiosity, Jaina mused.
Willing to train together, to train others together, to trade techniques and strategies, weapons. Willing to cover each other under fire, willing to find a rhythm in the bloodshed they sowed. Sometimes even willing to patch each other's wounds under fire. Yet it was all robotic, numb, and unfeeling. How could it be anything else?
She had seen how they unmade him. The water, the ice, the electricity that danced across his skull. His screams- the most agonizing she’d ever heard, the ones where he so desperately tried to hold onto his identity- haunted her. The only thing she could ever do was watch.
And watch.
And watch.
It tore her to shreds to see him slowly submit, to slowly want stop fighting, just as she did.
Suddenly, they were no longer humans or living. Just weapons.
And to constantly sharpen a sword was to condemn it to breaking.
So they broke. But they broke together.
That had to mean something, right?
Jaina liked to think so.
[***]
There was only one real mattress in their safe house. It lay in the farthest corner from the door, to the left of the window. However, neither Jaina or Bucky had attempted to sleep.
Sleep, something so comforting to most, was dreaded to them.
They both stared at the mattress in silence.
Once upon a time, they had both shared spaces together, without shame, because that’s what the mission required of them. There couldn’t be any discomfort- because they did not feel at all.
They were weapons. Weapons did not feel.
Once upon a time, she had felt the leather constriction on his back press against her own. That feeling was always a luxury, because it meant she wasn’t in containment- wasn’t a shadow in that claustrophobic jar that her captors enjoyed seeing her struggle against.
Yet now, it didn’t feel right at all.
Jaina shivered.
“I’ll stay on the couch,” Bucky said quietly, already turning his back.
“No, I’m…smaller.” Her voice nearly faltered at the excuse, Bucky only beat her by two or three inches. “And I’m keeping first watch anyways.”
That was their habit. She would always keep first watch.
He stared at her then, those icy blue eyes analyzing every breath she took, every twitch of her fingers, the gentle sway of her torso. Exhaustion emanated thickly from her body, clinging to the oversized clothing she wore, and the look in her eyes suggested that it wasn’t just the desire to not fight, but to care. Worry.
Something foreign, something from a very long time ago, rose within his chest. And perhaps for the first time, Bucky saw the woman underneath the layers Hydra cast onto her. Could he peel back his own, shed the skin he’d worn for so long as well?
No… she should be able to rest comfortably. Something in the back of his skull whispered to him, urged him to do something right. Decorate this muddy safe house, buy flowers, make it feel like a home.
No.
He blinked.
“No, just…sit.” He motioned with his metal arm. “It’s fine.”
Jaina could’ve felt like a dog then, but she didn’t. Not when she saw the tight emotions etched into Bucky’s face- a movie of thoughts and questions. Gently, she moved back and squashed herself on the old mattress, tugging her knees up as shadows began to curl around her.
Shadows- they held her, hugged her, comforted her. It seemed as if she was never alone when they were there with her.
Sit down next to her. Ask her to dance. Sit.
Again, that voice. Like from a distant dream, a distant life long-gone, slowly creeping back into frame. It grazed his bionic arm, almost seeming to shudder at its foreign feel. His hair felt too long, his body too… thin? Large? He wasn’t quite sure. But it was as if a stranger had just snuck its way into his soul.
My name is James Buchanan Barnes. 32557038.
Jaina’s gentle voice weaved its way into his psyche. “Are you alright?”
They both knew the answer- of course not.
“Can I,” he swallowed, “sit?”
She nodded.
Shoulder to shoulder, they lingered next to each other in the deafening silence that threatened to consume them.
Jaina reached down within herself, looking for that anchor that kept her rooted to Earth, to her body, to reality. She just held onto it, knowing, feeling the safety that spread throughout her soul.
The steady beating of her heart matched the beating of Bucky’s, so audibly in their shared space.
She had practiced this often in captivity, to the point where she could feel him from across the room, in that chair, heaving through the aftershocks of pain.
As if she could feel it again, her shoulder grazed his.
32557038.
“I remember a place like this once,” Jaina said softly. “In Munich. 1957.”
Bucky stirred, his shirt ruffling against her own. In her peripheral vision, she saw him turn his head in her direction.
“We used gas for the, uhm, assassination.” She met his gaze now, and she could see the hunger that lined his eyes. Hunger for the past, for information on his own history, something that he never had. “But there was still a shootout.”
She swallowed. “Shrapnel grazed you. Pierced straight through the leather.”
“You… remember all of it.” Bucky’s voice was near silent, grazing the stone walls.
She did. A cursed thing, a wretched thing, to be burdened with near immortality and a mind to rival it. And it was taken advantage of.
She nodded. “Yeah.”
His throat bobbed. “Where…was it?”
Like dealing with a wounded animal, Jaina’s core clenched as she slowly reached a hand over to his torso. Feather lightly, her calloused finger brushed against his upper obelisk muscle. Underneath the fabric of his shirt, Bucky tensed, the muscles rippling as blood pulsed through his veins. She could feel it, his heartbeat, through her own fingertips.
And though they were both fully clothed, there was a vulnerability between the two of them. The simplicity of touch and feeling, the lack of it for a century, the humanity of it all, caused blood to rush to Jaina’s face.
For the first time in years, she blushed. How ridiculous it seemed.
But she was surprised to hear him speak again. Louder. “Sometimes I’d look at myself and find scars that I didn’t know existed. That I had no memory of receiving. But the faces… I knew the faces.”
His throat bobbed. “And then I start to see the… the missions again.”
Jaina grew consciously aware of her hand, still drifting against his body, yet no longer did she feel the tension of its invitation. Under her touch, Bucky nearly melted into it, just barely leaning against her.
Did he know that?
“I see them too.” She swallowed again, then drew her arm from his side to rest across her knees. But he didn’t move. Still, he leaned against her shoulder- scarcely perceptible. “I feel them too.”
“But the scars you have- we have,” Her sight slid from the floor right into the tundra of the Winter Soldier’s eyes, the sea Bucky’s eyes, “it means we survived, doesn’t it?”
And there was nothing but agony in his face now, the slight crease at the corner of his lips, and clench of his strong jaw that made Jaina’s heart drop.
“I don’t know if I’m worth that. Surviving.”
No, that wasn’t right. Because all those years, when she’d been able to do nothing but watch as they’d attempted to shatter him over and over, cracked him open and reassemble him, she’d witnessed the true strength of mankind.
She had lived hundreds of years, tens of lives, but had never met a human quite like Bucky.
“We didn’t fight for nothing.” She said, “If we did, I would’ve let you die from that shrapnel in 1957.”
Quieter now, her voice carrying all the warmth she could muster, “You would’ve let me die too.”
If Captain America’s love for his best friend could break through 70 years of brainwashing, perhaps she was the constant that Bucky couldn’t bear to lose. Jaina knew that that’s what he was to her. Alone, in the dark, she had his heartbeat, his breathing. Just to know he was alive, that was what kept her fighting. Because he represented the humanity she so yearned to have.
Silence swallowed Jaina and Bucky. Not the honking, the city noises outside could suppress the unspoken questions and answers that they could’ve had for each other. But side by side, pressed together by the shoulder, they breathed together.
After what seemed like hours, bleeding into night, Bucky spoke again.
“Will you tell me everything?”
Jaina answered.
“Yes.”