Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today

He sat in front of her, much closer than he was before, watching. The woman, Rosemary, had asked if he was hungry. He did not understand why she asked that. 

Slowly, Rosemary picked herself up off the floor. She slid her back up the wall. Her clothing scraped against the bricks. The sound crawled down his spine and scrambled his brain. 

“I…don’t think there’s any food left here. But I’ve got some at home.” Rosemary’s face scrunched in on itself and her lip wobbled. Her fingers curled against the wall behind her.  

He dug around in his mind to find a word for what emotion that might be and came up short. The word was absent, but the feeling was clear. He had felt it before…but he wasn’t sure when or why. 

“Would—would you like some food?” she asked. 

His brows drew together. He could not recall ever being asked about what he would like. He was asked about mission reports, kill confirmation, and nothing else. 

Rosemary fidgeted where she stood. The knit of her cardigan snagged on the rough texture of the brick. A thread clung to the wall and pulled free of her sleeve, ruining the neat row it once belonged to. 

Her eyes darted to the side, to the ceiling, to the pulled thread in her cardigan, anywhere but to him. The men in white coats never looked at him either. They looked at the monitors that tracked his vitals and at the vials of colored liquids that they prepared to inject into him, but never at him. It was…irritating. 

Metal grated together quietly as his fist squeezed shut. His fingers—flesh and metal alike—itched to grip her chin and make her face him. The looming threat of the chair deterred him. 

Her tongue darted out to wet her trembling lips. A small breath whistled out of her mouth. “Are you hungry?” she asked again. 

It took them an hour and twenty two minutes to walk to Rosemary’s apartment building. He counted. He could have run that same distance in ten minutes. She could not. So they walked. 

Rosemary seemed to be moving as quickly as she could. Her stride sometimes faltered or her toe caught on the pavement, which slowed her down. And her steps were loud, like she did not care if they were heard. 

He walked silently. Heavy boots and a tactical jacket weighed him down somewhat but he matched her pace without effort. 

When she had first asked him if he was hungry he did not answer. But when she finally met his eye—for a fraction of a second—tentative curiosity lingered behind her unshed tears, and he understood that she wanted an answer. 

He was not used to answering questions about himself. His handler never asked. His handler did not care. The Asset did not feel cold, heat, hunger, fatigue—the mission took priority over everything. But he did not have a mission anymore, no orders to carry out. 

He followed Rosemary down the darkened streets of DC. His eyes remained sharp, he remained alert. 

A clang rang out from the alley Rosemary was passing. The world slowed around him, as it always did in the heat of the mission. His gun was out before she could react. 

His metal fingers twitched against the trigger. He scanned the alleyway, assessing the threat. The world snapped out of slow motion. 

An overflowing trashcan lay tipped over on its side. A cat scrambled away into the shadows. Rosemary squeaked and slapped a hand over her mouth. There was no threat. 

The mission was gone, but the instinct was not. 

Rosemary shuffled two steps closer to him, close enough to touch. Foolish. The crease between her brows deepened. Her gaze darted around the empty street as he tucked the gun back into the holster at his thigh. She reached both her hands out as if to touch him, but thought better of it, and clutched her trembling fists to her chest. 

“Please,” her tongue skimmed across her lips again, “please let’s just get home without shooting anyone.” 

He blinked. The way she spoke made the phrase sound like a question, but he did not understand what she was asking. He waited for an order.  

She swung her head around, looking back and forth along the dim street, but said nothing. Rosemary turned and started walking, throwing glances over her shoulder to check that he was following. He was. 

Rosemary’s building was old. Rust covered the edges of the fire escapes and the front door refused to budge at first. She threw her shoulder against it a couple times before it scraped open. 

She ushered him in and shoved the door closed, locking it swiftly behind them. He scanned the interior. A small lobby, metal mailboxes on the left wall, two doors, the smell of rot—a garbage room—and an elevator at the far end of the room. 

Rosemary ignored the elevator entirely and yanked open the door next to the mailboxes. A stairwell. She held the door long enough for him to slip in behind her then darted up the steps. 

They climbed to the third floor. Her breath was short when she stepped onto the landing. She pulled a lanyard laden with charms from her bag. They clinked together from the quivering of her hand. She found a single key among the mess and shoved it into the lock of a door at the end of the hall. 

The key stuck in the lock, as it always did, and Rose wiggled it loose, as she always did, though this time the task was made all the more difficult by the trembling of her hands. 

She couldn’t be sure what exactly had possessed her to invite home the man squatting in her studio. Maybe it was the messy state of his hair, all long and greasy and tangled like it hadn’t been properly cared for in months. Or maybe it was the fact that, despite clearly being able and equipped to do harm, he didn’t actually hurt her. Surely that had to be a sign of some redeeming quality in him. But if Rose was being honest with herself—and she hardly ever was anymore—it was the look in his eyes, that faraway, haunted look that she had seen only once before and wished to never see again. 

Rose shuffled into her apartment and ushered the man in behind her, nearly reaching out to grab his arm and pull him in faster, but knowing better than to touch him. Sudden touch or movement could be very startling and might set a person off. Rose had learned that the hard way. 

She shut the door behind him, flipping both locks for good measure. Her tote bag and keys went on the hooks by the door. She moved into the kitchen, grabbed a glass out of the cabinet, and filled it at the fridge. The tiny stream of filtered water took far too long to fill the glass. Rose bounced on her toes, trying to ignore the very large, possibly very dangerous man she had willingly—stupidly—brought into her home. 

The glass was full, nearly spilling, when she finally gathered enough guts to turn around. She crossed the kitchen on shaky legs—it was a miracle she hadn’t collapsed on their walk home—and thrust the glass out to him. Some water sloshed onto her hand and dripped to the floor. 

He didn’t move. Rose stared at the glass in her outstretched hand. It was level with his chest, which was covered in a black leather jacket with straps fastened firmly across the front. Her hand shook harder the longer she held the glass up but she couldn’t bring herself to look at his face. 

Metal fingers wrapped around the glass just as Rose was getting wrapped up in her thoughts. 

The cold brush of steel against her hand was a shock to Rose’s system. And before she could think better of it, her eyes snapped up to his face. Up until now she’d only taken glimpses—stubbled chin, blue eyes, tense jaw—but now she saw it all. 

Rose’s legs gave out. 

Her knees cracked against the ground. Throbbing in her ankle started up a moment later. She hardly felt any of it. Her mind was far away, in a crowded museum exhibit, staring up at the portrait of a man long dead. 

No, not dead. 

He was right here. James Buchanan Barnes was standing right here, watching Rose with eyes much colder than she’d seen in that museum. 

A strangled sound escaped her. 

Sergeant James Barnes stared down at her, not an ounce of emotion on his face. This couldn’t be the same man from those old World War II videos. It couldn’t be the best friend that had laughed alongside Captain America, who’d given his life for him. 

But it was. She’d spent far too long staring at his pictures in that museum to not recognize him. 

On trembling limbs, Rose pulled herself upright, clinging to the counter-top for balance. He stood rooted in his spot with the glass of water, still undrunk, in his hand. 

There was a nasty cut below his left eye, surrounded by a large yellowing bruise. A similarly sickly-looking bruise decorated his forehead. A scabbed cut beside his chin was hardly noticeable past the stubble that covered his face. And he kept his right arm bent at the elbow and tucked firmly to his side. The injuries were concerning, but for a guy who died in 1944, he didn’t look too bad. 

“Sergeant Barnes?” she asked. “James? Is that your name?” 

He blinked. No answer. Rose looked helplessly around the kitchen, which felt downright claustrophobic with him looming in front of her. 

Her mind was a mess, switching between disappearing lunches, cold blue eyes, and museum displays—an inscription flashed somewhere at the back of her brain. Rose glanced up at the man in front of her. 

“Bucky?” 

Something flickered across his face, some unreadable emotion. It was gone as quickly as it came, but it had come nonetheless. 

“You must be thirsty. You can drink the water, it’s safe.” 

He looked at the glass in his metal hand—metal hand, Rose would have to compartmentalize that later. 

“It’s okay Bucky,” she said. His eyes twitched with another hint of emotion. “It’s safe.” 

Slowly, he raised the glass to his mouth. Bucky’s eyes remained sharp on her, but finally, he drank. 

“Do you want more?” Rose asked after he drained the glass. 

He looked at the empty glass for a moment too long before he nodded. It was a barely-there twitch of his head but it was the most direct communication he’d had with her up to that point. 

A breath whooshed out of Rose’s lips. She eased the glass from him, being careful not to graze his metal hand. The quiet hum of the refrigerator spout filled the kitchen. Rose could practically feel the eyes glued to her back. 

She turned around to hand the glass back to him and yelped. Water sloshed across the tile. 

He was standing right behind her. 

Rose clutched the glass tighter, her other hand pressed across her chest, trying to squash her racing heartbeat from the outside. Bucky’s eyes darted down to her hand, then back to her face. The metal plates of his arm clinked together as his hand curled into a fist. 

Rose thrust the glass out to him. Her knuckles grazed the leather covering his chest. 

When Bucky took the water glass from her for the second time that night, he did so with his living hand.