Lucky
Steve knew winter had finally broken when he noticed a bright Goldfinch perched on the fire escape, apparently unbothered by the blinding beams of light that only early dawn can produce. When he tiptoed barefoot across the apartment and opened the window it flew away, twittering softly into the sweet morning air as if to say ‘There, now you know that spring has come, and now you don’t need me anymore.’ Steve was a little disappointed—he thought he might have liked to draw the harbinger of good news—but then again it had served its purpose.
Seeing a Goldfinch was supposed to be a sign of good luck, of wonderful things to come. Steve couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as he thought about the things to come, and about how such an immense significance was tied to such a little creature. Every path it crossed was a promise of prosperity and yet it flew smoothly and swiftly, unburdened, singing that silly song wherever it went. When they were younger, maybe as young as 11, Bucky had pulled Steve behind a bush in the park and shushed him with an urgency that seemed ridiculous once he simply pointed up to where a small ball of yellow sat preening itself on a tree branch. They knelt there for a few minutes before it finally sang, Bucky immediately dissolving into peals of laughter on the damp ground. When he was together enough to see Steve’s confused look, he sighed like a parent and explained that if Steve had paid attention he would’ve heard that the bird was saying ‘po-ta-to-chip’ over and over. Steve’s delayed laughter felt good when Bucky joined in, more for the sake of laughing with Steve than for remembering the silly birdsong.
“Plus, the lady at the store said that they’re good luck to see.”
“Does it even count if you looked for it, Bucky?”
Steve could still remember the gap-toothed grin that split across Buck’s face, and the earnestness in his eyes when he decided that “I’ll make it count. Ain’t nothing bad happening to you and me, Stevie.”
Some luck, Bucky halfway across the world hopefully not getting shot at, but Steve had been trying not to think about that. Steve leaned over the railing and wondered how the Goldfinch could breathe so easily with so many broken promises on its back.
Breathing. That was a novelty that Steve didn’t think he’d ever get used to. He took a smooth breath, letting the slightly warmed air swirl through his lungs, and marvelled at the level exhale that came after. Did that physical freedom, that light airiness that he could almost feel clear through to the tips of his toes, come with the same burden of broken promises? It wouldn’t, if Steve could help it.
He turned and walked back into the apartment, deciding that he had dallied enough for the morning. Dr. Erskine was expecting him in a little over an hour for the final stage of the process, the one he said would be the most painful and the most essential in stabilizing the serum. Steve had wanted to complete the process altogether, take the three vials and sit through the Vita radiation without looking back, but Erskine had encouraged him to wait as long as was safe. Steve was glad that he had waited now, walking through his apartment in bare feet and noticing with a kind of muted interest just how little he felt. The burning pain that the serum had fed through his veins had been uncomfortable, and for all that Erskine said the Vita radiation would be like nothing he had ever experienced, Steve knew that it wouldn’t compare to the weight all of his physical ailments had been placing on him for years. He hadn’t realized the sheer amount of chronic aches and pains that he walked with everyday until they were suddenly gone. It was strange, and wrong, and he already felt like a completely different person. The pain of the Vita radiation couldn’t be worse than what Steve had dealt with everyday, but if it was as dangerous as Erskine said, then Steve was glad that he had the chance to live even a day like this.
By the time he had finished getting dressed and was headed for the door he was closer to late than early. After a moment of thought he decided to put on Bucky’s old coat—he felt like he needed it, those warm sleeves dripping down over his fingertips. Bucky would never have been happy about Steve rushing into this crazy process, but the coat couldn’t convey secrets across enemy lines, and Steve needed something to tie this new person he didn’t yet know into the world he knew he was going to outgrow in a few short hours. When he opened the door he found a thin brown envelope stuck halfway in the slot and drew it out, ready to fling it inside before moving forward with his plans. He would have if his eyes hadn’t been drawn immediately to the hurriedly scrawled James Buchanan Barnes in the corner.
The act of breathing suddenly became more familiar to Steve, in that his lungs refused to cooperate with his attempts to inhale smoothly and filled in short, jerky bursts. A glance at his watch revealed that he was almost certainly in late territory, and so he clutched the letter in his fist and began walking through the building with an intensity that not even a week ago would have resulted in a dizzy break at the bottom of the stairs. He was halfway to the facility before he broke, ripping open the envelope as he marched on and drawing out the thin slip of paper that seemed fragile enough to breathe into pieces.
Dear Steve.
It looked like an apology, and read like an olive branch. When Steve walked into the facility, he demanded a pen and paper before he would even go in to talk to Dr. Erskine.
James,
As long as you don’t ever make me call you that again then I can’t be mad, Buck. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t, but I know you didn’t want this. I’d rather have you here in our apartment too—which by the way is less smelly but more stuffy with you gone, not that I’m saying that’s a cause and effect or anything—and that’s the only ‘I miss you’ you’re going to get this time you sap.
I’m glad the weather’s nice over there, because it definitely hasn’t been a pretty spring so far in New York. You’ll be happy to hear that catching a cold was a whole lot less fun without you there to mother me. It was bad, Buck, but I'm feeling like a whole new person now. And before you go deserting so you can run back here and watch me breathe, I mean it. Oh, and I’ve been wearing the coat. Jerk.
Dugan and Williams sound like good guys, maybe I’ll get to meet them someday. You said Williams is from New York, too, so when you both make it home safe we can have dinner or something. I’m getting pretty good at making a lot out of nothing, actually—soup wasn’t cutting it anymore and so I’ve been practicing. Another reason to come back home.
You said not to worry about you, and not to get my skinny ass into trouble, but if not me then who’s gonna worry about you Buck? I know I can’t do much, but about all I can do is worry, so I’m gonna. I won’t leave you with no one to write, though, long as you promise to do the same.
Now, you said the weather’s nice, but Bucky, you’re in Sicily. If you’re going to wax so poetic about some place I can’t ever see, I need details. I’m itching to draw some brave soldiers camping in the Sicilian countryside, give me something!
And okay, I miss you.
Steve
Steve didn’t even read the letter over before shoving it in the face of the harried secretary, afraid that if he thought too hard about it he would only light that olive branch on fire. There would be no broken promises from Steve, he was no Goldfinch.
When the secretary agreed to have it sent immediately, Steve let himself be guided into the lab. He let Dr. Erskine sit him down, walk him through the facts he already knew by heart, and then everything was a blur until he was blinking down at himself strapped inside a table or pod or whatever Erskine had called it and listening to someone beyond the thick metal doors count down from five.
It’s supposed to hurt, he reminded himself. He wished he could un-remind himself, but he wasn’t exactly sure if there was any way to do that beyond a good knock to the head, and there was nothing he could do with his limbs strapped down, all four.
But he’s hurt before, of course he has. His life has been one long physical hurt, not that he’s been very much aware of it for the last several years except for when it got particularly unbearable during the winter. Well, two horrible winters were enough. There wouldn’t be three.
And all the hurt hasn’t been physical, either. He thought of his mother, with the kindest eyes and sweetest smile and constitution unfortunately similar to Steve’s. He thought of Bucky, half a world away and alone and at war and still fretting over Steve, and wished that he could go back home and eat dinner with him, just them two.
He thought about how Bucky fretted over him without ever telling him he couldn’t do something, whether Steve thought he could or not. Bucky never doubted Steve, never even laughed when he had to stop on his way up the stairs to catch a breath. He just stopped right ahead of him and started talking like he had been the one to stop so he could say something he just realized, instead of making it Steve’s fault. Bucky never doubted Steve. He’s the only one.
They told him later that they were worried when he said to keep going, and that they thought he wouldn’t survive full exposure, but that they only did it because he kept telling them they couldn’t stop. It certainly sounded like him. They also told him that he was a good man, and already a good soldier, for chasing down the man that killed Erskine and stole the last vial of serum. That sounded like him, too. They said that when the man tossed a boy in a river and left him, Steve only made sure that the boy was swimming before turning back to the chase. He wasn’t sure if that sounded like him or not.
He was sure that when he reported the events and his newfound skills to the necessary people—“Welcome to the U.S. Armed Forces,” they said. “Soldier,” they called him—all he could see was a face foaming up at the mouth, wild eyes boring into his own. He was sure that when he went to put on Bucky’s coat his arm couldn’t even fit into the sleeve, and so he walked home with it laid over one wide shoulder, the worn leather brushing up against a bicep that took up more space than it knew how to manage.
He knew that when he crawled into a bed, Bucky’s bed dammit, it didn’t swallow him up like usual, and he didn’t know what to do about that. When he heard a soft ‘po-ta-to-chip’ coming from the direction of the fire escape he couldn’t decide whether it was his enhanced imagination or his enhanced hearing, but the distressing dampness of his pillow was inarguably real.
Some luck.