just tea
You walk into the glass conference room, mentally paralyzed by shock. Your physical body goes into auto-pilot, taking a seat at the furthest chair from the Winter Soldier as possible. You look down into your hands, staring at a spot between your pointer finger and thumb with a dark blade indent. Even though the scar was ten years old, it still pinged with pain whenever you think too long about what caused it. But now, it was throbbing as if it was telling you something. You looked up to see the sight. The Soldat was greeting everyone with firm handshakes with his human hand. Even though so many things had changed about him, some stayed the same. His nervous tick when he itches at his right thigh. His jaw clenching subconsciously when something pisses him off. That rare smile when he felt vulnerable enough to show emotion. You observed him from afar, comparing him to the version of the Winter Soldier you once knew. Steve’s commanding voice pulled you out of your trance.
“Alright, guys. Settle down.” Everyone took their seats except for the Captain and the Soldat. “I know some of you have met my friend here, but for those unfamiliar, this is Bucky,” Steve gestured for the Soldat to replace Steve’s spot in the front of the room.
“I’ve been tracking Nova’s movement for the past few months, and they’re moving fast. Which means we have to act fast. I want to thank you guys and Steve for bringing me on board this mission and trusting me. I am excited to be of help.” A small burst of applause emerged from the seats in the room. You scoffed.
Steve was naive and delusional. You remember him telling you about his closest friend in the 1940s. He was letting the old version of the Soldat cloud his judgment. Does he really think the person he knew 80 years ago was the same person standing beside him right now? No matter how much the Captain can convince himself that he has changed, you knew the Soldat. Or Bucky, whatever his name is. Whatever Hydra had put into him, it was probably still in there. The Winter Soldier, Hydra’s most successful experiment, was what's hiding behind the mask that Bucky so lazily put on.
“Why the scoffing?” the Soldat looked into your eyes curiously. The whole room then turned their heads to look at you.
“Well, it's just surprising to me that Cap would recruit the fist of Hydra to take down an organization that has the same agenda. He also talked about how closely you worked with Hydra when, in reality, you were just their puppet in the grand scheme of things,” you spoke matter of factly. The room managed to get more silent than it was before. You didn’t notice how you were silently seething, and everyone saw it. It was apparent you had a grudge against him, but no one knew you well enough to understand why. You can see Steve turning towards Bucky and squeezing his arm in an attempt to calm him down. To keep the Soldat at bay, surely.
“Actually, I was closer to the officials of Hydra than you expec-”
“That's enough,” Steve interrupted his best buddy. “He doesn’t need to explain himself. Everyone is dismissed. Except for you, Shadow,” Steve sends an icy glare in your direction. As everyone leaves the room, you walk towards Steve. His annoyed expression is plastered across his face like he was planning what to say to you.
“Spit it out, Rogers,” you bluntly say to him. What is going on? You never spoke to anyone on the team like this, so your tone of talking to the Captain also surprised you.
“Listen, I don’t know what Bucky ever did to you to act so rude, but if it has to do with his past, know that he’s changed,” Steve sighed, understanding where you came from. “I warned you that he had a complicated past.”
“Complicated means both of your parents die or something. It does not mean being the most prolific assassin in Hydra history!” you exclaimed, clearly frustrated with Steve’s decision to bring the Soldat on the team.
“Are you suggesting that people can’t change from their past? Because we took a chance with you, too, Shadow. You weren’t exactly a saint when you joined the team,” Steve remarked. Ugh. You hated it when he had a point.
“Fine. I’ll give him a chance. But he better not fuck up because this Nova situation is critical to me, and I’m not interested in playing friends with the guy,” you remarked as you turned on your heels to leave.
“How do you know Bucky anyway?” Steve asked.
“Association, Cap.”
—-
Your head rests heavily on your satin pillow. You had no thoughts and every thought at the same time. Your head was running at 300 miles per hour with no emergency brake.
Does he remember his past life?
Does he remember me?
You’ve been lying down with those same questions running through your head for hours. In that time, the sun went down, the lights automatically came on, and the angry adrenaline of seeing the Soldat again turned into reminiscing and sadness. Feeling like you needed a fresh brew of Chinese herbal tea to calm whatever you felt inside— Confusion, hurt, pain, sorrow, anger— you decide to get off your ass and go into the kitchen cabinets for a fresh brew. You heard a door down the hall creak open as you dropped the teabag into the cup of boiling water.
“Hey,” the Soldat said.
You whip your head around to find the man you once knew standing at the hilt of the kitchen island. His eyes met yours, and for a second, you couldn’t breathe. His baby blues met your dark brown eyes like he was searching your soul. You felt like you knew everything and nothing about him just by looking into his eyes. His eyes were your favorite feature of his. His unwavering eye contact reminded you of the version of him that Steve claimed was gone.
“So your name is Bucky?” you asked, eyes returning to your tea, which was now a reddish brown shade.
“Yes. And you?”
“I’m Shadow.”
“Wait, like your legal name is Shadow?”
“To you, it is.”
“Hm. What tea are you brewing there?”
“None of your business.”
“It's just tea.”
“And still, it's not your tea. So don’t worry about it.” You took your mug and went straight into your room, swiftly slamming the door behind you. Well, that went worse than you expected, you cursed at yourself. You placed the mug at your bedside table and reached for your headphones, searching for solace in sad, sad, depressing music.
—-
Bucky couldn't shake the feeling that he somehow knew you. How you acted towards him seemed like he personally wronged you somehow. When he met your eyes earlier, he searched for his answer, your words written in your irises. Bucky knew in his gut that you were in his deep sea of rotten memories. Then he saw it. The scar that lingered between your pointer finger and thumb caught his attention as you reached for your mug to walk away from him. He knew that scar because he had seen it before.