A gust of wind hits you in the face, and you force yourself to open your heavy eyelids. It’s dark and the cold sidewalk presses into your skull. Maybe it would be easier to fall asleep again, but something primal inside you screams that you shouldn’t. Slowly, you pull yourself up to a sitting position.
“Where am I?” you wonder, and then the more pressing question. “Who am I?”
You’re on the street; that much is clear, but where? And why?
A stabbing headache is settling and your hand goes to the bridge of your nose, as if pinching it could squeeze answers out of your brain. Of course it doesn’t work. You try to remember anything- a name or a face- but nothing comes. Your mind is like a blank canvas. Except for these three letters: JBB.
The far memory of running from something, from someone, lingers somewhere in your mind but you don’t know what or who.
There’s a backpack on the ground beneath you and you assume it’s yours. Or it is now if it wasn’t. You spill its contents on the ground: some ratty* clothes, water, cigarettes. Oh yeah, and a gun.
Some passersby are starting to notice you but you don’t really care, since panic is starting to set in on your troubled eyes. Hastily you put the gun and the clothes back in the backpack.
Your legs can barely hold you being so stiff from the cold, but you stand anyway.
“Where am I?” you ask to whoever listens.
You’re met with frowns and squinted eyes. You try again, but this time the words that come out aren’t English.
Care este orașul?
Bucureşti- someone answers, stepping away from you. Bucharest…
You walk for a long time, the jacket around your shoulders barely keeping the wind at bay, but your legs carry you as if they know their destination better than your brain. You’re too tired to argue with yourself so you let go.
The streets are still busy even though it’s late, judging by the dark shop windows. One catches your attention in particular. It’s not empty like the others as someone watches you from inside. It’s a girl, she looks tired and sad with her clothes a ragged mess and sunken eyes. You shiver at the sight.
Then it dawns on you.
No one is standing behind the glass of the storefront. That tired girl is your own reflection.
“What a mess,” you mumble to yourself as you keep on, your tired legs carrying you further and further away from the heart of the strange* city and into side streets.
They land you in front of an old stone building that you think must have been beautiful a long time ago, and your heart tells you that this is the place you’ve been looking for.
You inspect the door, but it doesn’t have a doorbell or a buzzer (or any kind of lock, really) so you just push it open. The stairwell is silent and dark so you’re not too worried about spying eyes when you try the handle on the apartment door. It’s locked of course, but you find a forgotten bobby pin on the pocket of your jacket and in a matter of minutes you’re in.
The apartment is small: one sole room serves as kitchen, living room, and bedroom. The bed is twin size, with some worn blankets haphazardly thrown on top and behind it sits a single green couch that matches with the lateral walls. The kitchen is barely a sink, a fridge, and an old stove, but there are utensils and even a flowery towel hanging from the sink cabinet, so someone actually does live here. A few of the windows have curtains, but all of them have dilapidated newspapers taped to the glass.
You look around and even though it’s not much, you feel safe here. It’s familiar, but you don’t really know why. There are no paintings on the walls and no framed pictures, but it feels lived-in anyway. Warm.
There’s a small bathroom too, and you go in. The splash of cool water clears your thoughts a little. A semi-dirty mirror greets you with your reflection again, this time clearer.
“Who are you?” you ask to the reflection, not that you’ve lost it enough to expect an answer. You know the face. You know it’s you. You just can’t put a name to your own face.
“Fuck,” you mumble as you bump your knee on your way out of the bathroom, but you don’t dare turn the lights on. “I’ll figure it out tomorrow,” you tell yourself as you drop your tired frame on the floor.
The bed feels a bit too personal you think, a strange notion considering you just forced your way inside someone else’s home. You consider leaving, who knows when the owner of the apartment might come back. But there’s a reason your legs brought you here and you need answers.
Besides, there’s something that tells you that you’re safe here, at least for now, and you have no strength left. So you stay.
And there, curled up on the wooden floor, sleep takes you though you try to resist. But your bones are too tired and your mind is a mess.
Then you dream.
The soldier takes your hands in his, rugged and warm
“Doll…” he starts, shooting you the most intense glance ever, ocean blue and crystalline.
You hold your breath at the sound of the nickname, like you always do, melting at the honey in his voice.
“Bucky… no… don’t say it. I hate goodbyes,” you beg, and he answers only by removing a strand of hair from your face.
He sighs deeply and the shadow of a smile fails to lighten his face. “You only call me Bucky when you’re really mad. Or really sad.”
“I know.”
He bites his lips and looks down, and you know he wants to say something, to find the words that could ease the pain, but there are none. So he just wraps his arms around you. He’s warm and sweet and smells like home, and you wish with all your heart that he didn’t have to leave. But he does, and all you can do is squeeze tighter. One last time.
“I am going to miss you,” you sob in his arms. “Write to me sometime, if you don’t kick the bucket, that is… You asshole.” You whisper the last part, trying to lighten the mood but your broken voice betrays you.
“Always so sweet, doll. Gonna miss that,” he plays along, but the ocean in his eyes is about to spill so he places a kiss on the top of your head.
“You know I am joking right? Please don’t die,” A large teardrop falls down your cheek and he wipes it softly before it touches your trembling lip.
“I know,” he says, forcing a smile. “I promise not to die.”
You wake gasping for air; the dream still fresh in your mind, clear as day. You remember saying goodbye to the soldier: James Buchanan Barnes. That was his name. You were there: you remember his blue eyes, and the warmth of his arms around you, but nothing more.
Light tells you it must be the afternoon already, so you just slept for over 14 hours. Suddenly you remember your situation. You’re basically squatting in someone else’s house. The floor is cold and your back hurts from spending the night on the floor. In the light of day it seems stupid to refuse the bed. You prop yourself up from the floor, determined to inspect every inch of the apartment, looking for answers, and maybe the identity of the owner.
Fortunately, the tiny apartment is easy to examine. There are shelves right across the bed, full with newspapers and other stuff. Nothing special, you think as you go over them, until you find a box in the bottom shelf. You reach for it, its small and it contains a yellowing photo album and a journal. It feels wrong to open them, an unwanted eye prying into someone’s mind…
The album is full of photographs. So many. Most of the faces say nothing to you, until one awakens something inside your head, like a switch.
I know them, you think.
There are three people standing in front of a ferris wheel: two guys and a girl, young and smiling. In the far right there’s the soldier from your dream.
“James,” you mutter in the void.
In the far left, a smaller man stands with a small smirk and his hands glued to the pockets of his pants. He seems frail, but there’s courage in his stare.
In the middle a young woman stares back at you. She looks the happiest of the three, her arm entwined with the soldier next to her. You know her, you know her because you’ve seen her before, in the store window and in the bathroom mirror.
It’s you.
You feel a pang of pain and pity for yourself because you want to- you need to- remember but nothing comes other than the vague recollection that you were there, that you know those faces. You search for anything that might give you a clue. There’s a year on the back of the picture but nothing more.
1940.
None of the other pictures tell you anything so you move on to the journal. It’s black leather, worn but sturdy. You like it and you look at it for a while before daring to open it. Whomever it belongs to wouldn’t like the intrusion, you think, but you’re way passed that by now. The first page has the same 3 letters “JBB”, which now you recognize as James Buchanan Barnes. He’s the one in your dreams, and probably the sole inhabitant of this apartment.
There are bookmarks on some pages and you open it to the first, a red one. There’s a picture and it takes you awhile to recognize the face, but it’s him, the frail guy from the ferris wheel photo. Only he’s not frail now, he’s quite the opposite. Blue eyed and strong jawed, picture perfect. “Captain America” the picture says, but underneath, you find something. A name: Steve Rogers, written in pen. There’s more stuff written but you’re already turning the pages.
The next bookmark is blue and it also has a picture. A picture of you, you recognize immediately this time. It’s old and it looks like it’s been folded over and over through the years. There’s a name written in ink too, and it’s like someone hits you in the head. Flashes of memories come rushing through your head and most of them go as fast as they came, too quick to catch, but some stay.
A brunette soldier, the one from your dream, looks into your eyes as he softly grazes the skin of your cheek.
And then you’re fighting with him, and there’s anger and screaming, and he’s leaving.
You’re falling, and falling, and it’s cold and then dark.
Then you’re in a cell and a dim light comes from outside. You want to run but heavy chains hang from your arms.
There’s more- so many more- you remember, but it’s fractured, pieces of images playing in your head at the speed of light, like seeing someone else’s life unfold before you. And yet, it’s yours, your life, flashing before your eyes.
It’s all too much and your head aches, like it’s forcing itself to vomit all the years of memories that refuse to comeback but to no avail. So your hands act for you, closing the journal hard, as if the action* could kill whatever motion sickness is going through your head.
You hear the sounds of your own heavy breathing, fast and labored. You lean on the wall, slowly sliding down. The cold floor feels familiar, it grounds you to this otherwise spinning reality.
Is it possible to forget so thoroughly who you are?
But you didn’t have the mind to answer that.
So you cry, head between your knees. You cry until there are no more tears left and your breathing slows down. Only then, you dare to open the black book again. The bookmark calls to her, blue, like the eyes of the soldier.
Beneath your name there are scribbles.
Germany.
Sokovia.
Siberia.
Austria.
Switzerland.
Bucharest?
They’re all crossed over with red ink, except for the last one.
You toss the journal to the side. It’s been enough for a day, you think, and you allow yourself to worry about more mundane endeavors, like finding food.
There is plenty of instant soups and canned food on the cupboards, but no fresh food other than a bowl of plums next to the sink.
Do I like plums? you wonder, taking a bite out of one.
… I do, you think.
So you throw yourself on the couch with the bowl of plums and you watch the afternoon pass by.
A dim ray of sunlight wakes you, gently this time. You can’t quite remember what you dreamt, but you’re pretty sure it was about him again. The couch was surprisingly comfortable, so much that you dozed off sometime in the night in it instead of the bed. The black journal stares at you from the floor where you left it the previous day, begging to be read.
So you do, over and over. It reads like the demented ramblings of a man who’s lost himself, and now is desperately trying to piece together all the parts of a lifetime. It would be nonsensical if you didn’t understand exactly how it felt. These were the words of someone who was clinging to the very last part of his sanity. Just like you were now, and you devoured every word.
Days go by, and there are very little things to do in an empty apartment with no TV.
But you do find an old radio. It’s pink and it sounds like someone is singing into an empty can, but it’s better than nothing so you sit and sometimes draw in one of the many notebooks you find around.
You don’t really know why you haven’t left yet. You tell yourself that this is shelter, it has food, and it’s warm, but something deep inside is telling you to wait. Wait for him, wait for a sign. So you wait.
The dreams haven’t stopped either. Every night, like clockwork, you dream. It always has to do with him. But sometimes they’re darker than others.
Sometimes you just dream of darkness, deep and insurmountable, and you can’t move. And there are screams, terrible screams, and you know it’s him that screams, and you want to help but you can’t.
Sometimes you’re falling, and when you wake, he’s there, next to you, tied to a metallic table and neither of you can’t talk, but he looks at you with those steely blue eyes, drenched in sweat and despair. And then the men come and put needles in your arms and everything goes black again.
They’re so bad that you sleep with the gun under the pillow now. You grow fond of the green couch, but some days you doze off on the bed.
By the 6th day you’re getting restless. These dreams, or memories, or whatever they are… they’re not enough. You need real answers.
It’s raining; it has for 3 days straight by now. One more day, you think. I’ll wait one more day. Then I move on.
The rain is kind of soothing and you enjoy the sound, even though you can’t really see outside through the papered windows. You lie on the bed, the old journal next to you. By now you could recite its contents by heart. So you decide to add to it instead.
It’s raining. No, it’s hailing. I wonder if he’ll be back. I wonder if he remembers me, if he knows where I’ve been. I dreamt about him again last night. The dreams, they feel so close, and yet so unreachable.
Last night was different
In my dream, it’s dark. Dark and cold and there’s noise, loud, like exploding bombs. There are wounded people everywhere and more corpses than I can count. And then it lights up and he’s there, bruised and damaged, but alive… He sees me and we run to each other… and I could swear there’s nothing sweeter than his arms.
“I sent you letters,” I whisper in his ear.
“I read them all. Everyday,” he says and squeezes me harder.
“You never answered.”
“I didn’t know how. Not after everything I said, not after how I treated you. I must have started 100 letters. Couldn’t finish a single one of them.”
He hands me a bunch of papers he has stacked neatly on the inner pocket of his green jacket.
“You weren’t joking,” I say, because yes, there are like a 100 little papers.
“Never…” He seems so frail, but his eyes are so blue and I can’t think of anything else.
“Doll…” His voice is brittle and his deep blue eyes sear into my soul. The nickname rolls from his mouth and it pours all over me, weakening my knees as always. “I never meant all those things I said… But I had to ruin everything, just so I could keep you safe. Joke’s on me, because you had to end up here anyw-”
A door creaked open and it startled you, but the gun was in your hand and pointing at the intruder 2 seconds later.
He stands under the frame of the door, hands raised in surrender. He wears a red Henley under a worn hoodie and a baseball cap. Black gloves cover his hands, and his hair is long and it falls down his face. You struggle for a moment, but those eyes, blue like no other, they give him away.
“James?” You attempt to sound resolute, but instead it comes out doubtful.
“You were always the only one to call me that,” He takes a step inside the apartment, hands still raised. You respond in kind, taking a step further, making sure to point the gun firmly at him.
“You’re not how I remember,” you said, shaking your head.
“You remember?” His eyes widen as he looks at you.
“That’s a bad choice of words, since I don’t really remember much. But I’ve dreamt about you nearly every night this week.”
He goes to take another step but you make a motion to stop him.
“Hey, I am not going to hurt you, you can lower the gun.” He says warily
“How do I know that?”
“Well, for starters, you’re the one breaking and entering into my house.”
“I prefer the term squatting,” you bite back, lowering the gun slowly, still unconvinced, but he only closes the door and goes to sit on the couch.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” you say.
“Yeah, I figured.” he states with certainty
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Would you tell me please? Why can’t I remember things?” Your trembling voice carries despair and you’re sure he can tell, but you don’t care anymore
“It’s hard to explain.” He says biting his lip
“Please.” You plea
“Alright, I can’t tell you. But I can show you.”
“Show me how?”
He stands up extending his arm to you and removes the glove on his right arm. You take a step back, still a little intimidated by the mountain of a man.
He takes notice, and he breathes a deep sigh.
“If I wanted to hurt you, you’d be dead by now.”
“Is that supposed to be reassuring?”
He produces a small laugh and nods a little.
“I used to be good with words you know? I’m sorry I don’t mean to be scary, it’s just… well, I’ve known you for a long time.” he whispers.
“Those dreams I have, you’re in all of them. But… They’re from a long time ago, when there was a war. There’s no war anymore, is there?”
“No. Not that one, anyway. But we were captured, you and me. Experimented on, made into murderers.”
He takes one more step towards you and you don’t flinch this time. He looks nothing like your dreams and exactly the same, if that’s possible. He has bags under his blue eyes and it’s obvious he hasn’t shaven in days. He seems tired and a little sad, and you shouldn’t trust someone who’s saying all this weird stuff, but you can’t help.
You try to swallow the lump in your throat, but your voice comes out croaky anyway.
“So why don’t I remember?”
“Because we tried to escape, so many times. And they wiped our memories.”
“How come you remember?”
“I didn’t, at first. But something happened, and it kind of jump started something inside my head. It’s been slow, but I’ve been putting the pieces together.” he says, motioning to the journal in the bed. “But I think you probably figured that by now.”
Your heart is beating like crazy, and this time you are the one that takes a step closer to him. “So why am I here? How did I know where to find you?”
He takes off the baseball cap and now you can fully see his face. There’s kindness beneath all that weariness.
“That’s the hard part…Those experiments they did on us… they gave us…abilities.”
One more step and he’s close, so close you can feel his breath on your face, his warmth in your body. It feels familiar and right and you don’t know why, but you don’t want to resist it so you don’t. Those damn blue eyes stare back at yours in recognition even if your brain won’t cooperate.
He cups your cheek with his right hand and in that second it all comes back like a flood, like a shock of electricity because you’ve been here before. Not only in this very apartment, but in this exact position with him, before the war when you were young and soft, and during too. Your dreams were not dreams anymore, but real memories.
He catches the glimpse of recognition in your eyes. You want to cry or laugh or scream but he’s faster and before you can do anything his lips meet yours.
The kiss is sweet, sweeter than the plums in the bowl. His lips are soft and he kisses you slow, the way you kiss someone you’ve missed dearly. You kiss him back, hungry for his taste, for him, biting his lips softly, rejoicing on the feeling of his lips on yours. His hands wander to the back of your neck, while yours reciprocate around his shoulders.
But is not just a kiss, it’s all those sweet, sweet memories, because somehow his touch is connected to the part of your brain where picture meets recognition, and you see it all, the good and the bad
How he asked you out on cold autumn day in New York.
How he broke up with you and said terrible things before leaving for the war, how he tried unsuccessfully to apologize on the day you said goodbye.
How you found him again, in the middle of nowhere in Italy, amidst the battleground.
How he fell from a moving train, how you mourned and grieved before being taken captive too, only to find him there, tortured and made into something unspeakable. And oh god, the things they did to you, the things they made you do.
How you stole time between missions to rent this tiny apartment in Bucharest and swore that you’d meet here someday, when you could finally run away from Hydra for good.
And that’s how you knew. Because you were here before.
You feel the tears run down your cheek and only then he steps back again. The flood of images stop but the memories stay. It’s not only that he is connected to them. It’s that you can see into his mind, read it, control it, and also erase it, courtesy of Hydra.
“I am so sorry Bucky. I am so sorry I forgot. And I am so sorry for the things I did.”
He wipes the tear from your cheek and softly replies.
“It’s not your fault, doll.”
Your lips curl up involuntarily in a smile because you know the nickname, and it feels like something warm and soft filling you in all the right places.
“I don’t want to forget you again.”
“You’re with me now. I’ll never let anything bad happen to us again.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”