Chapter 8
(December 2024)
The beauty of December in New York was one of the few things that never waned for Bucky. As a kid, he’d nick the lids off his neighbor’s garbage cans and go sledding with Steve down Clark Street, sporting the heaviest coats they owned. Though the old streets they used to fly down were now lined with artisanal donut shops and stalls for something called “bubble tea,” the silver glow of shop windows reflecting the fresh powdery snow stayed the same.
Bucky carried an armful of groceries as he walked down one of those familiar streets on his way home, one of the few that remained virtually untouched from before the war. In one arm was a sack of russet potatoes, some onions, and a carton of eggs, and in the other, a box of sufganiyot and some net pouches of chocolate gelt.
This year was one of those miraculous years where Chanukah and Christmas overlapped, which meant it was a full house in Bucky and Sam’s small walk-up. They had taken Lena with them back to Louisiana for Thanksgiving at Chateau Wilson, and now Sarah and the boys were in town, freezing their behinds off for the Holiday festivities.
It wasn’t lost on Bucky that this would be his first Chanukah in decades, just as it wasn’t lost on him during the high holidays or Sukkot. Lately he’d been feeling the fuzzy shapes of memories tickling the back of his head at random moments. His mother in the kitchen with an apron tied tight around her waist, him peeling potatoes at her side. Him and his sisters all gathered around a match, lit in his father’s hands, as he recited a prayer with a cantoral voice. Racing to the table at the smell of a brisket. The last one he knew had to be when he was a young boy, before his sisters and the depression, when they could afford a small brisket for every sabbath, but the other memories could have been any time of year, any celebration or observance. Usually, this kind of haziness would leave him frustrated, but it only made Bucky smile. There must have been so much joy in their home for him to be unable to place those exact moments. He was content to let the feeling alone satisfy him.
There was only one specific memory dislodged by the winter tidings, and unsurprisingly it involved Rebecca. The memory played out like this: Rebecca, all of five years old, with Bucky not yet having graduated high school and off for winter break. All the siblings in the living room, lying on their stomachs, playing a game of dreidel. It was Rebecca’s first time playing with the others, and Bucky would place his hand over hers to help her position her fingers to spin the top, until she decided she wanted to try on her own. She picked up the old wooden thing with clumsy fingers, and gave the top a twist. It landed on gimmel on the first spin, and she screamed so loud their mother burned her hand on frying oil in the other room.
Bucky smiled as he thought of that memory, and then of the wooden dreidel waiting back home, and the boys who he would get to teach, who would play the game for their first time. He thought of Lena, too. How could he not?
It was her first Chanukah since the blip. Her first Chanukah since she lost her grandmother, and she was spending it as part of his family.
Things had cooled down a bit since the Power Broker mess, and they’d been increasingly spending more time together. They’d meet up at Zaddie’s every Sunday and split a sampler like they did that first time. They’d talk about everything and nothing going on with them, from Lena’s new job at the public library to the spicy noodles in Chelsea Sam made Bucky try that made him lose his sense of taste for two days.
Some days, they’d take their black and white cookies to go, sit out at a park Rebecca loved, and eat in silence. Some days they’d forgo the food altogether and instead take a trip to the family plot. It's never as bad as that first time, but it is nice to know that they can both let go like that, and still find their footing with each other after the fact.
Grief, Bucky was learning, was just something he had to live with, but he was living with it. A second lesson he’d learned was that grief, like living, was done easiest with other people.
As he finally rounded the corner of his street, took the stairs of the walk-up two by two, and put his hand on the handle of his front door, Bucky could think of nothing else but the people who would greet him. He pushed his way inside, and was not disappointed. Cass and AJ sprinted to him from where they were watching a movie on the couch, arms outstretched in warning of their intent to tackle him to the ground.
“Woah,” Bucky said as he instinctually raised the plastic bags above his head, “let me put the groceries down first before you defeat me or there will be no latkes.”
The boys vibrated as they trailed behind him, waiting only until the second the very bottom of the bags hit the kitchen counter before launching their attack.
It was then that Sam approached, bending over where the boys had each latched onto a respective super-soldier leg, to capture Bucky’s lips in a hello kiss, complete with cartoonish lovey-dovey noises that had their nephews running for the hills, screaming “gross” and “blegh” over their shoulders.
Bucky huffed a laugh as he wrapped his arms more fully around Sam. “Hey sweetheart.”
“Blegh!” and “gross!” were once again thrown their way, but this time by Lena and Sarah, who were still sitting on the couch as the movie continued to play, wrinkling their noses in mock disgust at the saccharine display.
“Go be in love where we can’t see it,” Lena called over the back of the sectional.
“Or hear it,” Sarah added.
“You’re just jealous because you’re both single,” Sam called back.
“Don’t talk to your big sister that way Samuel!” Sarah jibed at him, laughter barely concealed in her voice.
“Blip rules do not apply in this house!” Sam countered.
Bucky only held on tighter. He catalogued the feel of Sam’s soft knit sweater under his fingers, the sound of the boys playing, Sam and Sarah bickering, and Lena laughing, the smell of the miraculously still warm sufganiyot wafting in from the kitchen, the way the sunlight bent in from the window, and the movie in the background he now identified as Elf. He took a thousand pictures in his mind, one from every angle he could, and prayed it would be enough to keep it. He wanted nothing more than to hold onto this moment.
“You ok?” Sam asked, a lilt of concern soft and easy in his voice.
Bucky turned to face him, and planted a kiss to his cheek. He didn’t have to think to respond. “Yeah.” He smiled. “I’m wonderful.”
And he meant it.
(Meanwhile, in Washington DC)
“I’m going to have to lay low for a little while, shuffle the deck of our usual suspects, but I think our boys took the bait.”
Sharon Carter sat at a table of a chain coffee shop outside Capitol Hill’s Eastern Market, a mediocre cappuccino gone cold to her left.
“I’ve gotten pretty comfortable working under the radar, and with Stivak out of the way, and Barnes still an active player in this game, the serum is still up for grabs.” Sharon absent-mindedly picked up a wooden stirrer and began to mix the stale coffee in with the foam.
“Forget about Barnes,” a voice on the other end replied, “he’s the old model. I’ve got some new merchandise I’d love to demonstrate for you.”
“Oh Val.” Sharon smirked. “Don’t tell me you’ve got your own boy band now.”
“Barnes isn’t the only one with the serum in his system,” Val purred down the line, “I’ve got some new flavors for you to choose from”–Sharon could practically hear her cheeky grin–“Power Broker.”