Bucky's first meal as a free man
He gets hungry so fast he assumes he's always been hungry. That's equilibrium; that's normal. Even when he's alone in the field, he's watching, working. The handlers see to his meals, always what's most useful. He doesn't taste it anymore.
He's been loose for a day and a half now, eighteen hours since the bridge, the end of the line, the riverbank. The hunger is a bruise, a wound, something he can ignore only for so long. What he needs is -- what will keep him fighting --
The smell of cooking oil, this early in the morning. His balance wavers on the inside. Disjunction: a sensation of an ocean breeze, a pier. He flinches away, but there's no one near to jostle him. The hot dog vendor watches him warily, but not with fear.
He's not in uniform. He's shabby, unshaven, ragged, hollow-cheeked. The heat is already rising; beneath the thin jacket, sweat runs along the seam of his arm.
The hot dog vendor avoids eye contact, until he can't anymore, until the soldier hovers at the cart, staring. "Can I get you something?" the vendor asks.
This won't fill him. This won't do anything for him. But he can't shake something, that smell, the noise of a crowd, the cries of gulls, an elbow to the ribs. A hole where there might have been a name.