Poppies in the War Zone
Rose spent the next hour tiptoeing around her own apartment. Under the eagle eye of one incredibly silent James “Bucky” Barnes she dug a set of spare sheets out of the hallway closet, made up a spot on the couch, refilled his water glass a third time, and microwaved a massive plate of leftovers, which she set down on the coffee table.
“Um,” she shuffled on her feet. “Eat as much as you want. There’s more in the fridge too.”
Rose snuck glances at him between sentences. Bucky still hovered at the edge of the living room. He was staring at her. It was a dark, unblinking stare that crawled up her spine and make her skin itch.
“Bathroom is the first door on the right.” She pointed down the short hallway that held her bedroom, a linen closet, and the aforementioned bathroom. “I set out a couple towels for you in case you want to shower.”
She wouldn’t say it outright, but she hoped he would shower. He’d been in her studio for days without a bath. And Rose had no idea what he’d been up to before he got to the studio—for all seventy-something years before he got there—but he was covered in grime, blood, and smelled like he’d just finished a triathlon.
Rose started edging towards the hall. Bucky tracked her movement with an eagle eye.
“I’ll go try to find you a some clean clothes.”
She escaped down the hall and into her bedroom as quickly as she could without actually sprinting. Judging by Bucky’s general state, Rose didn’t think that sudden movements would go over well.
The bedroom door clicked shut. She sagged against it and took her first full breath of the night.
“Get your shit together, Rose,” she mumbled to herself. “He’s just a jumpy, smelly, potentially deadly soldier that died decades ago. Nothing you haven’t dealt with before…sort of.”
A pale blue robe peeking out of the closet stole the single breath Rose had waited all night to take. She knew that a similar robe in baby pink was stuffed deeper in the closet. Neither one had been worn in nearly two years.
Rose swallowed down an onslaught of grief and yanked open the closet door. There was a couple old shirts of her grandpa’s that might fit Bucky and a pair of sweats that were stretched from years of wearing and washing. Rose folded and refolded the clothes until every crease was needlessly sharp and she had no excuse left to keep hiding in her room.
Her hand rested on the doorknob until the metal grew warm. Finally, Rose yanked the door open, darted across the hall, dumped the clothes on the bathroom counter beside the towels, and sprinted back to her room. Once her door was closed she took a few steadying breaths and mentally patted herself on the back for running around with a surprising amount of stealth.
Rose didn’t bother brushing her teeth or showering that night. She mustered enough energy to pull on some pajamas—ignoring the soft blue robe that taunted her from the closet—and fell into bed.
She wouldn’t admit it to herself yet but tiptoeing around Bucky was painfully, exhaustingly familiar.
“I’ll go try to find you a some clean clothes.”
Rosemary had disappeared after that. He stood alone for the next half hour and listened to her shuffle around in another room. She mumbled to herself.
“Get your shit together, Rose. He’s just a jumpy, smelly—” His brows scrunched together.
Did he smell? He hadn’t noticed. It wasn’t something he had been allowed to think about for as long as he could remember. He tried to reach further back into his memory but found only pain.
“—potentially deadly soldier that died decades ago.” She was wrong in one respect: he was not potentially deadly.
“Nothing you haven’t dealt with before…sort of.” Had she dealt with the other Winter Soldiers? No—they would not have left her alive.
So why was he?
A door down the hall clicked open and closed in the span of a few seconds. The door Rosemary hid behind muffled her shaky sigh. He suspected he would not see her again tonight.
The smell of garlic and something sweet drifted past his nose. The plate of sauce-covered noodles and vegetables she had left out for him sat on the coffee table. Thin wisps of heat rose from the bowl and melted into the air.
His mouth watered even as his mind rebelled. He left the plate where it was and marched into the kitchen. He needed to eat, his stomach groaned at just the thought of food, but he would have to be careful.
In the other building, the one with the paintings, he had eaten her food only because he was certain she was going to eat it herself. She would not poison herself. But she did have that jar of foul-tasting jelly, so maybe she would.
One by one, he sifted through the cabinets. There was not much to be found. She had a lot of dried foods: pasta, beans, grains, along with a cabinet stuffed full of tea containers. He opened a few of those to see if she was hiding something there, but it was just dried tea leaves. Did she have any food that wasn’t dry?
“Man, I can’t wait for this war to be over,” the soldier to Bucky’s left spoke up.
A group of them were crouched in the muddy trench, leaning against the wall and pouring hot water into their dehydrated meal packets.
“I’d kill for one of my momma’s roast dinners right about now.” Another soldier grimaced and stabbed a fork into the mushy rations.
“I’d take anything that don’t come in foil,” the first soldier replied. “If we’re talking ’bout killin’ I’d only do it for a big fat slice of chocolate cake.”
The group let out a collective groan.
Bucky threw his head back. His helmet squelched against the mud wall.
War sucked. This food sucked. Being away from home sucked.
Bucky took another reluctant bite and closed his eyes. He’d eat foil dinners forever if it meant he could go home. ’Course he’d make sure Steve had something more nutritious than this garbage—
Steve.
He snapped out of the memory, his head ached worse than before. He doubled over from the pressure in his skull. A metal hand clutched the counter. The stone groaned.
Pain radiated from his skull, down his spine, and into his limbs—one limb. He could’ve sworn his left arm was a million degrees, hot enough to melt flesh, but when he touched it with shaking fingers, it was cold.
Eventually the pain dimmed. Not fully, but enough.
He pried his fingers away from the counter. Flakes of granite came away with his hand. He brushed it off against his pant leg.
Food. He needed to eat.
Bucky pulled open the icebox and squinted from the bright light that shone out of it. Blinking away the spots in his vision, he spotted a large plate sitting on the middle shelf. On the plate, covered in cellophane, was a large, partly eaten chocolate cake.
Rose slept like the dead. Despite there being a strange man in her house and despite the anxiety coiled in her lungs, the moment her head hit the pillow she was out.
The next morning was a different story.
She woke to the first rays of sunlight shining through the window and hitting her right in the face. Rose turned away from the window and closed her eyes. But sleep refused to come again.
She couldn’t stop thinking. Worries churned around her brain, staining the edges of her mind with fear. Every other thought centered on the man sleeping in her living room.
Rose yanked the sheets over her head in frustration. What the hell had she been thinking last night?
When you find a person in crisis, you call for help, Rose, you don’t bring them home with you. You never learn.
She stared at the magenta bed sheet tented an inch above her face. The air around her grew thick and warm in a way that made her skin crawl. A stray thread dangled from the sheet, swaying with each breath she let out.
Rose threw off the blankets. Cool air hit her skin as she kicked free of the sheets and lay sprawled on her back. Her mind was racing and her mouth was dry. And as much as she would love to forget her bad decisions, the most recent of them was in her living room and she wouldn’t sleep again until the issue was addressed.
With great reluctance, Rose forced herself out of bed, into a fresh set of clothes, and past the bedroom door.
The hallway was dark, as was the living room. Rose tiptoed into the room, stepping carefully over the spots that she knew would creak underfoot. The couch was empty. Rose couldn’t bring herself to be relieved.
Barely-there slivers of light shone through the blinds and fell in long, narrow strands across the carpet. One yellow beam was bent at an angle, having reflected off something. Rose squinted at the spot where the light bent against itself. A glimmer of silver.
Rose stifled her gasp. He hadn’t left.
Bucky Barnes sat tucked into a narrow corner between the wall and the couch. The shadows hid him so well that it was nearly impossible to tell he was even there. But as Rose’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see that his eyes were closed.
He looked so small sitting there, hiding in the corner of her living room. The blanket she’d given him sat untouched on the couch and the bowl of leftovers, still full, was cold on the coffee table.
Her throat felt full of cotton. Rose wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed tight. She drew a few quivering breaths and tiptoed to the kitchen.
It was harder than she’d expected to make tea in the dark. The kitchen and living room were open-plan and she didn’t want to wake Bucky too suddenly, so the light switch went untouched.
Rose fumbled around the kitchen, being as quiet as she could while putting the kettle on and fixing two mugs of Earl Grey for herself and Bucky. She paused in the middle of scooping sugar into her cup. What if he didn’t like tea?
She shook the silly thought out of her head. If Bucky Barnes didn’t like tea then she’d make him something else. Although…she didn’t really have anything else. In her kitchen Rose had an entire cabinet dedicated to her ever-growing, ever-changing tea stash. She had everything from Lady Grey to roobois to black currant, along with several containers of dried fruits and berries that paired wonderfully with the herbal teas.
A sudden, cold memory swept across the back of her mind. Cold kitchen tile, a half-empty bag of coffee, and soul-wracking sobs.
The kettle crackled gently with electricity. Rose opened the tea cabinet and hiked herself up on the counter. Kneeling there, she started pulling the containers and boxes down from the top shelf. The water in the kettle was hissing quietly, close to boiling but not quite there yet. Rose reached into the cabinet again. And there, behind a large bag of raspberry leaf, was a half-empty bag of coffee.
She picked it up with numb fingers. The kettle was rumbling with a steady boil. It switched off automatically with a dull click. Rose craned her head to the ceiling and took big, gulping breaths, clutching the coffee to her chest. The tip of her nose prickled uncomfortably, the way it always did when she was close to tears.
It was stupid.
Rose felt so stupid and so fucking small, kneeling there on the kitchen counter in the dark, hugging an expired bag of French roast, and fighting back tears. Tara would’ve laughed if she saw Rose right now. She would’ve teased Rose mercilessly. But she also would’ve helped her down off the counter and hugged her.
The water in the kettle had stopped boiling. It sat quietly on the counter beside her.
Rose took a deep, shuddering breath and stuffed the coffee and thoughts of Tara into the back of her tea cabinet.
She clambered off the counter on quivering limbs and turned the kettle on again. Rose was stuffing all the tea containers back into the cabinet when cold fingers wrapped around her neck.
Rose stilled. She hadn’t even heard him move. How—
The metal hand around her neck twitched tighter. She swallowed thickly.
“My name is Rosemary,” she whispered into the dark of the kitchen. “My dad is dead. I didn’t go to his funeral.” The get-to-know-me speech worked the first time, Rose prayed it would work again. “I don’t talk to my mom. I had an older sister, Rebecca, she died before I was born. I’m an art resto—”
His hand squeezed harder. Rose chocked. The metal plates of his hand clicked into their new tightened position. It wasn’t working.
“You’re hurting me,” Rose gasped. The metal hand didn’t care, its grip remained painfully firm. Her head was beginning to swim. She yanked at the metal fingers but they didn’t budge. “Bucky, please—”
His hand vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Rose collapsed against the counter, coughing harshly. Her eyes watered from the sudden pain of having air in her bruised windpipe.
The shuffle of boots made Rose whirl around to face the man who’d just tried to choke her. He loomed in the open walkway between the kitchen and living room, looking so much bigger now than he had when he’d been asleep. In the darkness, Rose could just barely tell that his unblinking eyes were focused on her. She pressed back against the counter. The stone edge dug into her spine. His eyes—wide and wild—darted from her to the ground.
Rose swallowed with difficulty.
“Your name—” she croaked, “is James Buchanan Barnes. But you used to go by Bucky. You’re from New York. You…you had siblings. You were the oldest.” Rose rattled off everything she could remember from the epitaph that she’d spent too many hours staring at in the Air and Space Museum. “Your best friend was Steve Rogers—”
When Bucky spoke to her for the first time his voice was low and gravely. “The bridge.”