Chapter 5
I’ve been thinking about you a lot recently. So much has happened and I feel like I’ve started back at square one. I’ve killed and hurt so many people recently; I don’t like to think about it. Steve tells me constantly that it wasn’t all on me – that he had a part in it, and I want to believe him so much. But he doesn’t know the speech you would give me when I was feeling down; how could he? I don’t even know it word for word and I’ve listened to it so many times.
Steve found his friend – the one with the metal arm who killed as many people as I have. But he didn’t have control over himself, they were brainwashing him. I did; I knew what I was doing. His name is Bucky, Steve tells me, and he’s in cryofreeze now because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone else. Sometimes I wish to ask T’Challa if he would put me in a cryochamber – so I could sleep for months, years. But he’s already keeping us hidden from the rest of the world and I could never ask, for fear of it adding another burden on his weighed down shoulders.
I want to do something nice for Steve, to repay some of the kindness he’s shown me and help remove some of the worry from his mind. I’ve been thinking about how he’s been searching for a cure to his friend’s years of brainwashing and I think it’s me. I’ve found that I can reach into people’s minds and change things. I don’t like to practice but I can do it. I wish I could reach into my own mind and pull up the memories of you – burn them into my brain so I never forget any of the words you ever said to me, but I can’t, I’ve tried; it only works on other people.
If you were here, you would try to stop me from even offering and I’m sure Steve or someone else has thought about it but doesn’t want to ask because they’re too nice, or too scared. But now I’m walking to Steve’s room, where he spends most of his time when he’s here and not out hunting down some remote island to get some strange wisdom that will probably end up being another wild goose-chase, and it’s too late to back down.
I knock on his door, and then wait. I can’t hear anything through the door; all the walls and doors in this place are so thick. But then the door opens to reveal a particularly haggard looking Steve Rogers. Even though it’s five in the morning, he doesn’t look like he’s just woken up; he appears to have more recently crawled out of a hole than out of bed.
“Hi,” I say, trying to sound brave and casual.
“Hey,” he says in return, a ghost of a smile on his lips. He doesn’t smile a lot anymore and the halls are quiet when he walks them. T’Challa tries to engage him in conversation but the only time Steve will talk to him is when it’s about Bucky. Sam has only a little more luck but it’s still mostly clipped sentences and small talk.
“Can we talk?” I ask, my heavy accent reminds me of you.
Steve nods and motions me in. His room is scarily clean except for the desk, which has stacks of books and scattered pieces of paper everywhere. The only light on is the desk lamp and I wonder how long he’s been up; perhaps all night going on the military-made bed. And perhaps more than one night given the slow movement his making.
I sit on the bed as he turns on the main light. His room is big, larger than mine even and I’m still not used to having all that space to call my own. I can’t imagine how he must feel about it, having grown up in the twenties and thirties.
He joins me on the bed, not sitting as close as you would have. “What’d you want to talk about?” he prompts gently, like I might change my mind if he speaks any louder.
But this is something I feel too strongly toward to back out now. So I tell him my idea, all of it. I explain how I think I can help Bucky, but leave out how scared I am. I’ve gotten better at hiding my emotions since you left; I don’t think it’s a good thing.
Steve tells me all the things that could go wrong; I insist. He tells me he can’t ask me to do such a thing; I press on. He says I could get hurt; I tell him he’s hurting more. I don’t get back to my room until hours later and he still hasn’t told me that it’s okay yet.
I am adamant every day, not backing down until he finally agrees. Then we have to tell T’Challa and although he is slightly easier to persuade, I still have to insist that it is what I want. We don’t tell Sam.
Then the day is here and I wake up in a cold sweat, nervous from head to toe. Steve has insisted that I practice memory altering on him and so far nothing has gone wrong but that doesn’t mean that I might not mess up today.
I go to Steve’s room; I think it’s the only place Bucky feels comfortable in this situation, by Steve’s side. Sort of like us, I think. They woke Bucky up yesterday and explained to him what we were doing. He didn’t want to at first; he wanted to go back in the cryochamber, not risk it. But I think he changed his mind when Steve’s eyes got red. Even then, Bucky would only do it if no one but he and I were in the room and he was strapped down. Steve insisted that he wouldn’t hurt anyone but Bucky wasn’t having any of it.
I knock on the door and Bucky opens it immediately. He’s dressed in one of Steve’s shirts, a blue-gray one, and the white pants the med bay gave him. The left sleeve is empty, hanging down and hiding the small black cover where his metal arm was attached. I heard T’Challa talking with Steve last week about replacing it; if Bucky want’s another arm.
Bucky’s eyes gaze down at me, “Ready?” he asks, pushing some hair out of his face. I have to assume Steve is still asleep since he isn’t in Bucky’s shadow. The man in front of me looks menacing but I think he’s just as scared.
“Do you want me to put it up?” I offer, holding out my wrist full of hairbands, not answering his question. I somehow feel almost comfortable with him, despite not really knowing him.
He gives me a strange look, hesitation; I’m a new person in his life, he’s seen what I have done, I could easily be a threat. Maybe it’s because Steve has told him about me, or maybe it’s because he feels the same weird comfort I feel with him, but he turns around with a nod.
I’m gentle, scooping all his hair up and wrapping a yellow band around it; he needs more color. He’s tense the whole time but I finish quickly and he turns back around as soon as I let go. I would be scared of me too. I used to be; I still am a little. But I’m getting better.
His eyes meet mine and I think we come to a silent agreement; what we’re agreeing on is a little fuzzy but I’m certain we both feel it. Then he turns away, “Let’s go,” he says gruffly.
We make it to the med bay and T’Challa is there waiting for us. “Are you certain about this?” he asks me one more time.
“I’m sure,” I maintain, more confident than I feel.
He lets us into the room, its empty and sterile white save for two chairs, one is plain and the other has straps all over. Bucky blanches next to me when he sees it but immediately clears his face of emotion and walks in. The nurse following close behind asks what straps he wants put on when he sits down.
Bucky doesn’t answer until I’m sat across from him. I hope he doesn’t realize that I’m already pushing my magic on him, trying to get him to relax. His chair has a head-rest and there’s a strap on that too; it’s the only one he doesn’t was put on.
The nurse and T’Challa leave the room, I watch as he glances up at the corner over my left shoulder. There’s a camera there, I can tell by the expression on his face, or sudden lack-there-of. He looks back at me and nods, so I begin.
I hold my hands toward him, a safe distance away, and just let my visible magic reach him. He tenses even more the closer the red tendrils get. Then they touch his temples and he sucks in a breath. Steve said it doesn’t hurt, it just feels strange, but I still wait for him to nod again before going deeper.
I start pulling down wall after metaphorical wall, it’s hard, and they’re so thick. Bucky has started sweating and is clenching his teeth and I don’t want to look so I close my eyes. It feels like hours of me trudging through his mind, checking memories, looking for the words, erasing the stimuli behind them, before I feel him relax.
I’m there; I’m at the center of his mind. It’s surprisingly quite peaceful. At least, it is now, it wasn’t before. I can feel my physical body panting with the strain of my mental effort but I stay. I can speak to Bucky this way, silently. Only we can hear. And for the first time since I’ve heard the speech I remember every word that you said to me. So I tell him.
With shortness of breath, I’ll explain the infinite
I tell him what you always told me so long ago.
How rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist