Chapter 1
Brooklyn, 1945
Bucky returned to Brooklyn with an empty sleeve, a fractured heart, and not much idea of what he would do with himself. With Hitler dead, Berlin occupied by the Allies, and the war officially over on the Western Front, the Howling Commandos had been disbanded, left to return to their original units and possible redeployment in the Pacific or their countries and life as a civilian. After proving he could, in fact, serve admirably without his left arm, Colonel Philips had offered him a post in the occupation. He’d been happy to decline, ready now to accept the honorable discharge and trip home the Colonel had tried to give him just after he’d fallen from the train.
He stood now across the street from his family’s apartment. He wondered if he’d made the right choice. I don’t know how to face them. Was he the same son Winnie Barnes had sent off to war? He didn’t feel like that man much anymore. Instead, he felt like he’d been broken down on a cellular level and crudely reassembled with all his bits and bobs just slightly out of place. Did they even know about his arm? I’m pretty sure I wrote them about it…He vaguely remembered penning a letter shortly after Steve died that laid out everything from his fall to getting the news about Steve. He hoped he’d actually done that because the last thing he wanted to do was show up in this state with no warning at all.
For a while, Bucky just stood on the sidewalk. Pedestrians bustled past him but nobody gave him a dirty look. His uniform with the pinned-up sleeve told them all they needed to know, so they gave him respectful glances and a wide berth. He thought that some folks maybe even saluted and uttered their thanks; he wasn’t paying much attention though. The June day was hot and muggy, but it felt oddly good. It was Brooklyn heat, and that was something he had been sorely deprived of for too long. A thought flashed through his mind of Stevie, lost to the frigid water, and a shudder rippled down his spine. Hot and muggy was just fine with him.
Eventually, he forced himself into motion. Like the Tin Man with too little oil, the joints in his legs felt creaky and resistant to the forward momentum, but his feet plodded him along anyway. It wasn’t his body that was broken, not really. A bit missing in action, but what was left was in top form. If only the serum (he admitted to himself now that he’d truly been given a version of it in Azzano) could heal his heart and mind the way it did the physical pieces of himself. If only it could soothe the jagged edges of his grief.
The steps of the apartment building were worn with age and traffic, the building itself long past its prime. Inside, the plaster walls were chipped and gouged from clumsily-moved furniture and rough behavior. The Barnes family had always scraped by but never comfortably. Never well enough to move out of a dump like this. The smells were familiar as Bucky climbed the interior stairs, trekking up and up the floors. A myriad of different foods cooking, mildew, and the general grime every building like this accumulated in public areas. The muted sounds of people in their homes came to him less muted now than before. Now that he was around familiar sounds and scents, he realized just how his senses had grown more acute. Rather than indistinct murmurs, whole conversations, spoken only at conversational level, floated out to him as he passed doors. Had he not noticed how acute his hearing had become back in camp or had he just not wanted to notice it? Probably the latter. Smells reached him, too, pungent and aromatic. Someone was cooking liver and onions on the fourth floor which made both floors surrounding it reek.
At last, he reached the apartment he’d grown up in. It would be exactly the same inside, he knew. A time capsule of the family he loved and no longer knew if he belonged to. His mouth went dry, fight or flight response urging him to flee back down the many stairs, past the smells and conversations, back into the muggy afternoon. Maybe run back all the way to Germany.
Put on your big boy britches, Barnes.
He knocked on the door.
When the weathered panel opened, the face on the other side broke his heart again but in a good way for once. His baby sister, Becca, with her wide blue eyes so like his own and her softly curling brown hair, stared up at him, surprise and then delight lighting her face. “Bucky!”
A real, genuine smile split his face. He’d been so afraid that he wouldn’t feel the same bond once he got there, but, oh, there it was. His kid sister, a little older but just as lovely as she’d always been. “Miss me?”
Becca threw herself against his chest, slung her arms around his neck, and held on for dear life. “Yes,” she sobbed. “Oh, Bucky.”
If you start crying, I’ll start, too, and never stop. He put his arm around her back and squeezed her tight—careful not to clasp her too tight. “Don’t you even think about crying, alright?”
She sniffled and left her face pressed into his chest for a few heartbeats. When she pulled back, her eyes were clear, smile dazzling. “Get in here.” She backed into the apartment. “Ma! Ma! Bucky’s home!”
Bucky stepped inside and pulled his duffel off, letting it thump down to the floor. The smell of home hit him then. Warm and cozy. Apple pie and worn linen and home-cooked meals made part of the very walls after so many years of living. Some of his tension eased out of his shoulders. Maybe he could do this. Maybe he could go home after all.
Winnie Barnes appeared then, the door of her bedroom flinging open wide. His mother looked older than she should’ve, he thought. Her hair had gone almost completely gray, though she was just in her fifties. There hadn’t been nearly so much when he’d shipped out for the 107th. She had two sons to worry about over there, he thought sadly. And only one came back. Just like Sarah Rogers had become a second mother to Bucky, Steve had been a son to Winnie from the day Bucky had dragged the frail little boy back to his place.
“Ma, this is Stevie. He’s my best friend.”
Winnie smiled kindly at the little blond boy with his chin up and shoulders back, like he was just daring her to think he wasn’t good enough to be Bucky’s friend. “It’s nice to meet you, Steve. Would you like to stay for dinner?”
They’d never had a lot, but there had always been enough for Steve, too.
Winnie rushed over to him. She started to reach for him then her eyes were drawn to the pinned sleeve of his uniform jacket. “Oh, James,” she said mournfully, reaching out to touch it with the tips of her fingers. She always used his given name when she was emotional. Or he was in trouble.
“It’s alright, Ma.” He took her hand, pressing her fingers gently. “Really, it’s alright. It hardly bothers me at all.” That was mostly true. He got phantom pains that ranged from mild irritation to almost blinding in their intensity, but he could handle that. “You won’t believe this, but you know Howard Stark?”
She rolled her eyes, expression saying duh thought she would never utter that word aloud. “Who hasn’t heard of Howard Stark? He assisted your unit, too, didn’t he?”
“Yep, he did. And he’s gonna make me a new arm, okay? He promised me, and I’ve seen plans for it, even. He’s gonna make me a new one just as good as the old one. Moving fingers and everything.” Which, he figured, was why he wasn’t all too bothered by his empty sleeve. It was only temporary. He trusted Stark to keep his word.
Becca gasped. “Really? He can do that?”
“He’s positive he can.” Stark had departed Germany well before Bucky, the instant peace in Europe was declared. He’d promised him two things: that he would continue his work on Bucky’s prosthesis once he was back in New York and that he would put together an expedition to search for and recover Steve’s body. Bucky had seen the intensity in his eyes, knew he meant every word. Maybe it’d take a while before either thing could happen, but Bucky trusted that they would happen.
Winnie made a soft, strangled noise and pulled Bucky into her arms. They wrapped tightly around his waist. Tight enough that it was almost uncomfortable, but he didn’t mind that at all. Bucky hugged her hard, dipped his head to rest against her hair. He felt Becca, then, as she leaned into his left side. He couldn’t do anything to hug her close, so he just enjoyed the weight of her arm around him.
Unbidden, words fell from his lips. “I lost Stevie.” He tried to suck the words back, to stop them before they were realized into sound, but it was too late.
The arms around him tightened more. “It’s not your fault,” his mother said in a voice gone thick with emotion. “We know you did everything you could.”
“Everything,” Becca affirmed. “You woulda brought our brother back if it coulda been done.”
Bucky squeezed his eyes shut. Oh, Becs. If you knew the truth. She’d called him “their brother” almost since she’d known him. She’d been only five (she’d been born the same year their Dad had died, something Bucky hadn’t been too unhappy about because George Barnes had never been a loving man) when Bucky had brought Steve around and made him part of the family. She’d grown up with Steve as a fixture of their lives, a permanent attachment to Bucky’s hip. She had no way to know that Bucky only wished he’d been able to see the man as his brother.
In time, they parted. They talked of other things. Or, rather, Bucky got them to talk. He didn’t want to talk about the war or Steve or the Howlies. He just wanted to sit on the faded couch in his mother’s living room and listen while they prattled on about neighbors and the stray cat everyone fed and the ladies at church. Bucky was home, and his mother and sister were safe and happy. If they noticed the darkness in his eyes, they didn’t mention it. They let him have his shadows, but they never stopped shining their light on him. And that was good because he needed that. His sunshine was gone, but Bucky was still there. He wasn’t completely lost, buried in the snow in the Swiss Alps or left bound to a table in Azzano. He could still smile and laugh with his family. He could still come home.