Chapter 9
Now
Bucky checked his reflection in the mirror. He looked tired. He was wearing a dark colored jacket over a white t-shirt, with dark jeans. He hadn’t dressed for a party in something like 75 years, and the fashions had changed a bit. It looked okay to him, but what did he know?
Relax, he told his reflection, unhelpfully.
He was nervous. Why was he nervous about a bunch of Sam’s friends coming over? There was some part of the Winter Soldier that would always be with him. Sometimes it manifested itself in a clear and direct way - the urge to hurt people who wronged him. But more often, it was subtle. A steady distrust of people that he had to actively work to overcome. All his instincts told him that becoming close to another person was an error in judgment, a possibly fatal error. Humans were easily manipulated, and their rapidly shifting emotions made them difficult to predict.
He thought he could see that glint of the Winter Soldier in him. It was beyond strange to stare at his reflection in the mirror. It looked more or less like the same face that he’d had as a young man. But there was something grizzled and weary about the face. And the eyes, in particular.
The longer he stared at his face, the less he felt it belonged to him. It was like when you repeat the same word over and over so many times that it loses its meaning. The face in the mirror felt disconnected from Bucky’s self. That thought alone scared him - if he wasn’t here, in his body, then who was? Would the Winter Soldier take over? Would it take over completely? Hurt people he cared about? Hurt himself? He began to breathe heavily.
Remember the technique, he reminded himself. Something you can see. He stared at the towel rack. Something you can touch. He touched the cool stone countertop. Something you can hear—
The first knock at the door jerked Bucky out of his thoughts and back to the present. He turned the tap off. Sighed heavily. He could ignore it all he wanted, but that wouldn’t make it go away.
—
The first guest to arrive was Natasha Romanov. She’d been surprised when she got the call from Sam—Steve had been her friend, but she and Sam were cordial acquaintances, at best. But of course, she’d agreed to come. Especially when Sam told her a little bit about Bucky. She wasn’t sure if Sam knew that Bucky and Nat—or rather, the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow—had a history together. But they did, and she felt a connection with him that would be hard to explain to an outsider. He was maybe the only person who understood what it felt like to kill people in cold blood, to not be able to trust your own mind.
Now, she shifted awkwardly. She’d brought flowers—she wasn’t sure if this is something people really did, or it was just something from the movies. She wasn’t exactly a social butterfly.
Sam thanked her for the flowers, and gave her a quick hug. “How’ve you been Nat?”
She smiled. “Oh you know. Livin’ the dream.”
She spotted Bucky standing in the corner, his back to the wall. A tactical position. “Hey James,” she said, gently, fondly. The name felt strange on her tongue. But it would have been stranger to call him Bucky. That was Steve’s name for him.
He inclined his head. “Nat,” he said, quietly. Was it just her imagination, or was he looking at her torso, remembering the bullet that had ripped into her flesh? The bullet that he’d fired? She understood why the Wakandans called him White Wolf. His eyes were human, but behind them was something that was definitely animalistic. Predatory, even. He was like a trapped animal in here, in a social situation. Much like her. She missed the way it was in Russia - people didn’t mince words, didn’t trade niceties. They said what they meant and didn’t talk unless they had something to say. In America, everyone was just so relentlessly chatty.
For a dinner party, there were surprisingly few guests. It was her, Scott Lang, Clint Barton, and a couple of Sam’s old war buddies, some of whom looked at her with slack-jawed wonderment. Shortly after everyone arrived, Sam announced that dinner was served. He was wearing a bright red apron emblazoned with “kiss the cook”, to the amusement of his old friends. The food was good — some sort of Cajun food that was almost too spicy for her. Almost, but not quite. After dinner, they all retreated to the living room. She stole a glance at Clint, who nodded back at her with a warm smile. She was glad that whatever had passed between them had not changed their friendship. Sometimes they didn’t talk for weeks or months, but when she saw him, it was like no time at all had passed.
As Sam served after-dinner drinks, Nat wondered again whether the entire party had been an excuse to get her and Bucky in a room together. Scott and Clint were there for appearances, of course. And more of the Avengers would have been there, she imagined, if they weren’t doing whatever hero job they were tasked with this week.
She’d given up the hero business months ago. Now it was time to get on with the business of living.
Scott was telling a long and meandering anecdote involving ice cream and his cousin, and she half-listened, cracking a grin here and there to show her appreciation. But she was watching Bucky out of the corner of her eye. She was also watching Clint. Maybe Clint was one of the other few people in the world who understood what Bucky was going through. His time under the control of Loki and the tesseract had been traumatic for him, she knew. And he blamed himself for the things he’d done, even though none of it had been his fault.
Us three, she thought with a wry smile. We all tell the other that it’s not their fault. But none of us really believe that when it comes to ourselves. She certainly would never forgive herself for everything that she’d done. Maybe forgiveness was just not a luxury that people like them had.
“—and that’s why Captain America will never shop at Baskin Robbins again!” finished Scott, to a chorus of raucous laughter from Sam and his buddies. She hadn’t been listening to the story, but the name felt like a bucket of ice water tossed on her head. The memory of Steve and how they had lost him was too fresh. Glancing at Bucky, she could tell that whatever she was feeling was nothing compared to the pain that name caused for him. His face had gone slightly ashen and there was a darkness in his eyes that had not been there a moment ago.
Bucky excused himself, got up and moved into the kitchen. Nat glanced over at Sam, who gave her a barely perceptible nod.
Nat stood and stretched casually, then followed Bucky into the kitchen. He was rinsing a glass under the tap, but the hand that held the glass was white knuckled and trembling, and the water overflowed from the glass and over his hand.
“Bum a smoke?” she said.
He shook his head, distractedly. “Don’t smoke.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “Want to get some air?”
He nodded gratefully. She reached across his arm and turned off the tap, took the glass from him and set it in the sink, as if guiding the movements of a child.
Wordlessly, they walked to the door. Nat grabbed her coat, and Bucky gallantly moved to help her put it on. She glanced briefly back at the group, but no one seemed to notice their absence. That is, except Sam, who gave her a quick and grateful look. Together, they walked into the hall and down the stairs, and out into the crisp fall air.