Chapter 2
vi. around, 1945-1991
The first thing you notice is that it’s cold. It’s so damn cold, and everything is white, except for the part that’s red, and the red is coming from you, oh G-d, oh G-d, your arm, where’s your arm, shit, shit, Steve, where is he, what happened, oh G-d your arm, what’s going on, it’s so cold –
Bucky Barnes wakes up on a steel table for the second time in his life.
“Welcome back, Sergeant Barnes,” he says, shit, shit, he’s here, shit, Steve, what happened to Steve, where’s Steve, what happened, where’s Steve, where’s your arm – what the fuck happened to your arm –
“I suggest you stop panicking,” Zola says with no small amount of glee in his voice. “Heightened heart rate may cause…adverse reactions to the formula I have prepared. Luckily for you, not much can kill you anymore, but the effects would still not be pleasant. Of course, that’s an experiment for another time…” He moves out of sight – you hear him scratching something down, a pen on paper, and then pain explodes in your chest, moving outwards, throughout your body, and you scream, you scream for Steve, for the Howlies, for your Ma, for your sisters, Colonel Phillips, anyone, to come find you, to get you out, to rescue you from Hell, but no golden angel comes to save you this time.
Bucky Barnes wakes up on a steel table for the third time in his life.
You can taste your own vomit again, and smell piss in the air – G-d, did you piss yourself from the pain? Jesus – and you can’t see much of anything through your closed eyelids, but you hear him, doing…something, and then you feel it, oh G-d, and you promptly pass out again.
Bucky Barnes wakes up in a cell, and in a tiny dark room, and on a steel table, and in a cell, and upside down in a tank full of water, and on a steel table, and in a room so hot he’s sweating buckets by the time he’s fully conscious, and on a steel table, and in a cell, and on a steel table, and in a snowbank (did he try to escape? How far did he get?) and in a cell, and on a steel table, and on a steel table, and in a cell, and on a steel table, and on a steel table, and on a steel table…
You ask about Steve, every time.
Eventually, they give you the newspaper with the headline splashed across the front – CAPTAIN AMERICA KILLED IN ACTION! – and you finds yourself in a cell, and on a steel table, and back in the tiny dark room, and on a steel table, but you never really quite wake up again after that.
***
The Soldier wakes up on a steel table.
He is led to a crying man wearing a blindfold. His handler takes the blindfold off. The man’s eyes are very blue. The Soldier hesitates. He is taken away. Distantly, as he walks to the recalibration room, he hears the sound of a gunshot.
The Soldier wakes up on a steel table. He is lead to a stoic man wearing a blindfold. His handler takes the blindfold off. The man’s eyes are brown. The Soldier hesitates anyways. He is taken away to be recalibrated.
The Soldier wakes up on a steel table. He is lead to a woman tied to a chair. The woman has red hair and green eyes. She stares him down defiantly. The Soldier shoots the woman between her green eyes. He is rewarded with a pat on the cheek.
The Soldier wakes up on a steel table. He is ordered to kill three American GIs stationed in West Berlin. The Soldier infiltrates a nightclub where the GIs are spending a night out. He doesn’t know how his body knows how to dance, to smile, to flirt, but it does, so he lets it. Later, he shoots out the soldiers’ tires as they return to their base. Their Jeep crashes. The Soldier strangles each GI. The Soldier returns to his handlers. He is rewarded with a half-hour of being allowed to look out the window at the snow.
The Soldier wakes up in pain.
The Soldier wakes up in pain.
The Soldier wakes up in pain.
The Soldier wakes up in the chair. He has pissed himself again. This is usual for maintenance procedures. The technicians giggle nervously. The Soldier is given orders to kill a diplomatic team.
The Soldier is given orders to kill a general.
The Soldier is given orders to kill an ambassador.
The Soldier is given orders to kill a President.
The Soldier is given orders to kill a senator. He is deployed to a city with very tall buildings (too tall) and many people (wrong clothes, wrong walks, wrong accents). Despite all this wrongness, he knows this city. It is in his bones, the same way the cold and the electricity and the pain are in his bones. The Soldier kills the senator. He does not return to his handlers. He does not return to the designated extraction point. He does not return to any known safehouse. Instead, he wanders the city, looking for – something – someone – he does not know. He buys a pack of cigarettes at a convenience store, using a fake ID and paying in cash. He smokes the cigarettes as he walks. He ends up standing in front of a building with a sheet of paper stuck on the door. The paper says “CONDEMNED”. The building is run-down, falling apart. He thinks it should not be like this, it’s a dump, sure, but not like this – he shakes himself. He does not know why he is here (sitting on the fire escape with a pack of Luckies and a sunshine boy by his side, laughter, banter) – the fire escape – he does not know – who is he – who is the sunshine boy –
James is found two weeks later. He puts up a good fight, but his handlers subdue him. He is punished thoroughly for his disobedience, and recalibrated, and recalibrated, and recalibrated.
The Soldier is given orders to kill a diplomat.
The Soldier is given orders to kill a scientist.
The Soldier is given orders to kill an inventor. It shoots out the man’s tire on a secluded stretch of road at night. The man is older than he should be. The man says – a name – its name – his name – The Soldier beats the man’s face in. His wife is hyperventilating. The Soldier strangles his wife. The Soldier takes the five samples of the serum from the trunk of the inventor’s car, climbs back on the motorcycle, and returns to its handlers. It is not rewarded.
vii. odessa, 2009
The Soldier is given orders to kill a scientist. It is a trickier op than expected. The scientist is well-guarded, by an operative who was not in the briefing. (Never in the g-ddamn briefing, I swear, there’s always ten times more Krauts than they tell us there’ll be-) The Soldier shoots the scientist through the operative. The scientist dies. The operative is bleeding heavily. The Soldier can see her intestines from where he stands. He does not wait to find out if she is dead. (Later, he thinks this is when his programming really started to fail. The escape in New York was more of a situational thing, but this – letting an enemy operative live, even if it wasn’t a conscious choice at the time – this would have been unacceptable, and yet he did it anyway.)
viii. washington, d.c., 2014
The Soldier is –
The Soldier is –
The golden man is falling. The Soldier, without thinking of anything except steve steve CAPTAIN AMERICA enemy combatant steve STEVE, dives after him.
It does not kill him. It does not return to its handlers.
It – it is a he – your name is James Buchanan Barnes – you’re my friend –
Barnes ends up at a museum staring at a man wearing his face and his name.
ix. bucharest, 2015-2016
Eventually, you end up in Romania.
You’re not really sure why. You guess it’s close enough to being Russian to remind you of your Soldier days and close enough to being Polish to remind you of your Ma and enough of its own thing to let you be someone else entirely, so for whatever reason, you stay. It’s nice here. You don’t remember when or how you learned the language, but it’s there, so you use it.
You heal. You go to farmer’s markets and pet stray cats and write down everything you remember, the good and the bad, and still wake up screaming more often than not, but you learn to carry fewer guns (not none, you’re not stupid) and smile at people who smile back and laugh and cry and feel too many feelings rather than feeling nothing at all, and you heal.
Up until it all goes to shit and Steve shows up in your apartment and then you’re fighting again and he says the G-ddamn words and he asks you about the other soldiers and then you don’t remember much of anything for a little while and oh look, Steve’s there again, and then you’re on your way back to fucking Siberia for hopefully the last time in your life, but it’s okay because Steve is here this time, and everything is falling apart but Steve’s here and that makes it better.
x. in transit, 2016
“Why did you kiss Carter?”
“Which one?” Steve says, distracted. He’s too focused on flying the stolen jet – he doesn’t much trust autopilot; after finding out how he “died”, you can sympathize with his need for some semblance of control over planes – but you can’t focus, because holy shit, that implies he’s kissed both. You say as much.
“I kissed Peggy once – right before the, uh, Valkyrie. That was because…well, I guess it was goodbye, even though I didn’t yet know it, and anyways it didn’t end up being goodbye for very long, at least not for me, although it was long for her, I guess. And you saw me kiss Sharon.”
“Yeah, I know. Why?”
“I dunno, Buck. Because I wanted to? Why do you ask, anyways?”
“Can’t a guy want to know what his best pal is getting up to?” The comment falls flat when Steve raises an eyebrow at you, clearly not buying your bullshit.
“Yeah, okay. I asked because I care, okay? I…I just want to make sure that whoever you’re kissing, they deserve you. That they’re ready for Steve Rogers, not just Captain America.”
Steve swallows. Abruptly, you remember another, older conversation, one spoken into the dark the night before everything changed.
“Steve –“
“Thanks, Buck,” he says. “But I can handle my love life on my own.”
“Thing is, you don’t have to,” you say automatically. He pauses now, then finally switches the jet’s controls to autopilot before looking you dead in the eye.
“You remember that?” He whispers, hoarse.
“Yeah,” you breathe. You clear your throat. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Do you remember what you said after?”
“Shit, Rogers, don’t make me say it.”
“Say it,” he says, and now he’s quiet enough that you wouldn’t hear him without your serum-enhanced ears. “Please.”
“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, Steve,” you say.
“I’m with you too. ‘Til the end of the line,” he echoes.
You’re very close to him now. His lips are very pink, you notice.
“Do you still feel the same way about me?” He murmurs.
You nod. You feel like if you spoke now, you’d shatter into a million pieces, so you keep silent, but you nod; you can’t lie now, you’re in too deep, too fuckin’ deep for this one damn punk, your best fuckin’ guy.
He touches you, just a brief brush of fingers over your shoulder, but it’s enough to make you go boneless under his hand. You bring your forehead to meet his, and he grins.
“I’ve had a lot of time in the future to think, you know,” he says, his breath brushing over your cheek. “I realized – hell, Buck, I can’t do this – I realized that all I ever wanted was to be near you. You’re my center, you know that? You’re in my fucking soul. I loved Peggy, sure, as much as any two people shoved together by war could love each other. But it’s you. I thought I could get by without you, but it was like living in black-and-white again. Then – then I found out you were alive, and damn it you didn’t recognize me, you didn’t even know your own name, they did horrible things to you and I wanted – I still want – to make them pay, but you were alive and that was something, at least. But then you ran, and I chased you, and eventually I had to admit that you didn’t want to be found. Then this whole shitshow happened, and – you’re here now, and you remember me, and shit, Bucky, you wanted to know why I kissed Sharon? It’s because I was scared, scared out of my g-ddamn mind, of what would happen if you left again. I thought I could kiss her and settle for someone else, but I can’t. I can’t, Bucky, I can’t lose you again, and I was too dumb to know the first time around just in what way I love you, but G-d willing I have a second chance with you, and I’m sure as hell not gonna throw it away again.”
He takes a long, deep breath.
“Shit, Stevie, you write that down first?” You joke, but your voice trembles, and your eyes are shining, because he loves you. He loves you.
“Nah, that was just off the top of my head,” he says with a wet laugh, and then his mouth is on yours, you’re kissing, Steve is kissing you, and it’s everything you’ve wanted since you were thirteen years old, just a fucking kid, a baby really, and you stop thinking for a little while, but in the good way, the way that makes your eyes go a little cross-eyed from the pleasure, his hands on your skin, his mouth on your mouth, and thank G-d the plane is on autopilot and you still have a little while until your destination because he’s touching you now, you’re falling apart and the best part is that he’s falling apart too, both of you clutching each other tight, and it’s messy and clumsy and too much and too little and it’s perfect.
ix. wakanda, 2016
Of course, it doesn’t turn out all sunshine and rainbows. Steve dropped his shield, and left Stark (the younger one, you remind yourself), and you lost your arm again, and the trigger words are still all in your head, and you’re going back into cryo tomorrow, and that terrifies the shit out of you, but what’s even more terrifying is the thought of staying out in the world where anyone with ten words could make you a weapon again, just like that. So no, not everything is wonderful. It’s fuckin’ FUBAR, as a matter of fact. But you’ve got a night left until cryo, and hopefully while you’re in stasis the Wakandan scientists, and that genius princess, will be able to sort out some of the mess in your minefield of a brain. Until tomorrow, Steve holds you tight, both together in the dark, talking until your throats go hoarse, then lying in the comfortable silence as he runs his hand through your hair and plants kisses on the side of your head. You pretend not to notice him crying; he gives you the same courtesy. He holds your hand on the way to the lab tomorrow – it’s still a shock, that you can have this, that you can be this public about each other without something bad happening – and you smile at him before going back under, closing your eyes as the familiar frost fogs up the glass.
x. wakanda, 2018
Steve’s visiting again. He still has his beard, which you love, and which you never fail to give him shit about. There’s something brewing on the horizon – something big, you think – but you never ask, and Steve never says. In the meantime, you soak up all the time with him that you can get, hidden snatches of moments in between his world-saving and your therapy. You’re seeing a therapist, now; you’d never have thought it would help before, but now you can grudgingly admit that you’re doing…better. You still have your bad days, and your really bad days, but there are good days mixed in, and that’s all you can really ask for, right? So you treasure your spellbound time here and you don’t think about the future as you trade lazy kisses with Steve and it’s enough.