makinglies | Two ancient losers

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Two ancient losers

To anyone else, he'd look like some homeless person camping out in front of the World War II memorial, he certainly looked the part. He wore torn jeans, dirty shoes, a t-shirt that only had the virtue of being somewhat clean because he'd 'obtained' it recently and a faded hoodie he wore to cover the arm he couldn't stand to look at. He'd shaved all of twice in the last two months and only because he was aware it was getting too long--something that had always been taken care of for him--but now it was grown in again, a steady layer of scruff that couldn't be called a beard but was no where near simple fuzz. He looked like he wasn't taking care of himself...mostly because he wasn't, he only half remembered how. It didn't seem important compared to everything else that consisted of the static in his head.

It had been two months since he'd first noticed someone was trying to track him down. He assumed the reason he hadn't been found before that was because the person doing the tracking hadn't expected him to stick around D.C. initially. But he'd needed answers.

Unfortunately, those answers weren't too quick in coming. There were flashes--there had always been flashes--whispers of color strung through a black and white existence that had no context, made no sense and had no place in a world full of orders and pain, so they'd been discarded. At least until one man had claimed to know him and he knew the man back, or rather he felt he knew him. It was the strongest flash of color yet and it had given context to some of those whispers.

They had tried to kill those colors, to wipe them clean of his mind and they'd succeeded for a time. But now that he was looking for them they easily came back, never truly wiped, just buried. There were so many of them now, flashes of things he thought maybe he remembered but were still out of place, feelings he could name and knew he felt at one time but now couldn't tell if he was truly feeling them or if he was simply remembering.

There were too many holes. His mind was a wreck, a patchwork that had come undone and he couldn't find the needle and thread to sew it back together. He was confused, frustrated and lost. There was a disconnect between the man known as The Winter Soldier, the unfeeling, remorseless assassin and the man he'd read about, Bucky Barnes. He knew them both and could remember enough of each to know he wasn't either of them anymore. He didn't know who he was.

But maybe there was someone who did, someone who knew both and could take all of those patches, line them up for him, and hand him the means to fix what wasn't permanently broken. And if they couldn't, he at least knew Captain America would be strong enough to eliminate the threat he knew he still posed. Just as in some ways there was some Bucky Barnes still in him, there was some Winter Soldier as well; he was still at fault for all that he'd done and he was still a weapon--a tool-- that could be picked up by someone else and used again if he couldn't find his own way.

And standing here in front of this memorial, staring at a name that deserved to be up there with all of those other heroes--those other sacrifices--while he was left forgotten in the shadows, he didn't know that he could. So he waited.

He waited because he'd made certain he'd been spotted so there was a thread to follow, something for Steve Rogers to pick up and maybe lead him to the ghost he'd been chasing for who knew how long. He didn't know how long it would need to wait, but it didn't really matter when he had nowhere else to go.

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He follows along obediently, keeping his silence, though he's sorely tempted to tell Steve not to smile if he doesn't actually want to. He knows what a fake smile looks like, even one made with the best of intentions. The problem is that he can't quite bring himself to speak up, which just makes him wonder if Steve knows better in this case and he might need even that forced smile for right now. At least until the dust settles a little more and things don't feel so fragile.

He tries to keep the conversation going as best he can, though he still carries himself with the tension of a strung wire about to snap, as though the smallest thing could have him jolting. He didn't mean to, it was habit and the feeling that something right couldn't actually be happening because it was happening to him and that just made him feel like it could vanish with just a well-placed volt of electricity.

But he does stick to Steve's side, watchful and weary, less of the man next to him and more of everything else. If looked at closely, his body language said he still expected danger, some threat or something that would need to be eliminated by the assassin part of him, but he wasn't expecting it from the blond at his shoulder.

Not anymore.

Steve's non-answer--while not entirely thrilling for the fact the Bucky part of him knew he was still a danger to Steve and everyone else--had told him that despite 'Captain America' Steve didn't feel he could kill him; not as the Winter Soldier and certainly not as some confused, bedraggled, guy with only half his brain cells currently functioning.

"Hey..." Steve doesn't interrupt so much as slip the word into an awkward silence where he can tell Bucky is groping for words, trying so hard to find something to keep up the tenuous bond they've reformed. It's good to know that Bucky actually wants to try - why else would he be struggling to talk when he could just as easily fight instead? Or flee? - but it hurts too, hurts to watch his best friend blindly stumble for things to say, it hurts to watch him struggle so hard to find things that Steve will recognize as Bucky Barnes from the 1940's.

They've changed. They've both changed.

"Hey," he repeats. "It's me, Buck. You don't have to try so hard."

He stops on the curb, his motorcycle sitting there with his shield strapped to the handlebars, a silent sign from Sam that he's still watching. That Steve should still be careful.

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to. You can relax."

Maybe he didn't, but he felt like he did. Like some part of him believed that if he stopped talking or said the wrong thing then Steve would give up and leave. But things made more sense with Steve around, he could hear past the static and the screams in his head with that achingly familiar presence nearby.

But he didn't want to tell Steve that yet without it coming out wrong, so he didn't. He nodded and tried to relax a little more--though if he succeeded, it wasn't very apparent.

He gestured to the bike. "Guess I've got shotgun."

"Yeah." It's a lame response, but whereas once upon a time he might have took a shot about Bucky falling off behind him, he feels incredibly guilty for the thought even crossing his mind. He'd woken up from nightmares of Bucky falling from the train multiple times. How could he even think of making a stupid joke about it now?

Jaw clenching a bit, Steve swings himself onto the bike and waits for Bucky to climb on behind him. He's sure he doesn't have to explain the travel time to his friend but with all the emotions and thoughts running through his head, his mouth decides it needs to run too, maybe just to break up the tension. "It'll take awhile to get there, my apartment's in New York. You'll like it, I think. It's bigger."

"Okay." He knew the distance, but the thought that anything was better than the nothing he was currently inhabiting wasn't something he wanted leaving his lips.

Instead, he climbed on behind Steve and hesitated only a second before wrapping his arms around the teller man's waist. Luckily, the trip made talking fairly difficult, so he didn't bother trying, choosing instead to watch as one city morphed into another with only small strips of nature to break them up.

At some point along the line, he could feel his eyes drooping a little and try as he might to resist, he found his forehead resting against Steve's back and his eyes drifting closed as he dozed, though his grip never once slackened.

Four hours later Steve pulls into the alley behind his building, cutting the engine to his bike and planting his foot to keep from toppling over. The building is an old factory, empty of all machines now and cordoned into empty retail space below and what Steve has adopted as an overlarge studio apartment above. Fury had helped him set it up, something he'd insisted on after the small fiasco with the D.C. apartment S.H.I.E.L.D. had originally furnished him with. At least now he knows he's not being spied on by agents masquerading as neighbors. He has no neighbors to speak of.

He moves to put a hand carefully over Bucky's, still tight around his stomach, but the glint of light off of metal gives him pause. He knew Bucky had a metal arm, how could he miss it when they'd fought? But this is his first time seeing it up close and not about to cave his face in. He examines the fingers, metal panels fitted together, putting him in mind of the back of a pill bug dipped in chrome. They're the right shape but that's it. Those fingers are cold, a reflection of what Hydra had turned Bucky into.

Attempted to turn Bucky into, his mind supplies stubbornly, and Steve shoves his thoughts away, brushing that hand with his in a gentle effort to wake his friend without startling him. "Hey, we're here."

He didn't startle, but he did wake up almost immediately, fully alert and listening for a moment before remembering he didn't really have to.

Quietly, he let go and dismounted, standing sort of awkwardly by the side for a moment before his eyes traveled to the building itself.

"Nice place. Seems a little big for one guy." But he wasn't really complaining. Really, some part of him kind of liked it and he didn't know why.

"It's hard to get privacy nowadays." He swings off the bike, moving to the corrugated metal door in the shadow of the alley. He digs out a key to an old fashioned padlock and soon it's rumbling open and Steve waits for Bucky to enter before wheeling his motorcycle in behind his friend.

The first floor is dark even when Steve clicks on the aging overhead lighting to reveal the expanse of empty concrete, spotted here and there with red brick supports. A line of heavy punching bags leans against a far window and across the way a steel stairwell winds up in a spiral to an unseen second floor.

The blond props the bike up near the door they'd come through then perches his hands on his waist, surveying the room. "The real apartment's upstairs." It's not defensive, but there's a small note the betrays Steve wanting to put his best foot forward to Bucky, maybe not impress him but at least get his approval.

There's nothing much remarkable about the first floor space, other than how much space there was. Other than storage for his bike and working out, it didn't seem like the place was being used for much else. But then, Steve had always been a more simple guy with simple needs...at least that was what one twisted fragment of a memory combined with a feeling told him. It might be a big space, bigger than either of them had ever lived in, but it was still very Steve.

He moved to the stairs and carefully made his way up, his left hand grazing along the railing as he went. Once on the landing, he stopped and took in the apartment, a very small but not forced smile touching his face.

He waited until the other man was up there with him before finally passing his verdict.

"I like it."

Upstairs is more homey than downstairs. The second floor only covers a quarter of the building's space with the rest being open to the floor below down one side. Each wall has giant windows, yellowed with age higher up but replaced with modern safety glass where the light would be needed to see by. Like the floor below, there are no walls up here aside from those that make up the perimeter of the building and the little bathroom and so through the use of creatively placed furniture, Steve has divided up the cozy space into compartments.

The kitchen has modern fixtures and an island in the middle, open to the living area and a curtained off nook made of bookshelves along the back wall houses a bed, made up all neatly with military precision. Some habits die hard. The living area has a couch and a bench under the gigantic window that takes up the opposite wall and overlooks the Hudson river. A few books and sketchbooks are scattered around across surfaces, coffee table and kitchen island alike, and though the lamps that Steve flick on as he moves into the space don't throw much light, they cast a homey glow over the quarters.

Bucky's assessment makes him smile even as he tries to hide it by moving to the kitchen. "Make yourself at home. Are you hungry?"

"A bit." More like he was ravenous and would likely gulp down whatever Steve made in a heartbeat, but again that particular sentiment didn't escape. He wondered if he'd always been this way or if he'd been more open before. He couldn't fully remember.

He also couldn't fully remember what 'make yourself at home' meant, but he thought he had an idea from back when he had a home to relax in. The worn hat came off his head, allowing his long hair to fall around his face, and the jacket he'd had wound up folded up underneath it on one of the chairs. His arms felt exposed after being covered for so long, but he let the feeling go. His shoes, habitually, stayed on.

A thought occurred to him that ran in that same familiar yet alien vein some other thoughts from earlier ran, but he decided to try it out loud instead of ignore it and see how it felt.

"Are you going to make something or do places deliver to random warehouse apartments?" Inconclusive, but it didn't necessarily feel wrong so that was an improvement.

"I'm gonna make something, but places deliver anywhere nowadays. You don't even have to call most of them anymore, you can just order on the internet." He gestures in the general direction of a laptop on the modest coffee table. "'Course I don't get take out much. People tend to recognize me."

It had been nice for a little while, being a nobody again and having what he'd been duped into believing was privacy, but after the Chitauri invasion it had been like the USO all over again. Steve Rogers, Captain America, National Hero. He feels like a museum exhibit. Hell, he is a museum exhibit.

So is Bucky.

A bit sobered, Steve pulls out a pan and some ingredients from the fridge and from cabinets. Rationing may have been long over and meat and other things readily available, but for his limited experience in the kitchen, Steve has stuck to that familiar. Spam hash it is.

Bucky shifted a moment then decided he'd rather move around a bit more than sit and wait for the food to be made. He wandered around to take in what little was left he hadn't already seen before stopping in front of one of the bookcases to look at what lined them.

After a few minutes his nose caught the scent of whatever Steve was making and sent it to his brain where a memory lay waiting. "Spam hash? Really?" It made him give that sort-of smile again as he looked over at the younger man from where he stood.

"Hey, I learned to cook in an army camp," he says by way of explanation, looking over at Bucky. "Besides, it's quick and easy and I remember you saying you hated it the least."

And doesn't require the microwave, which while Steve had been experimenting with the thing, he still hadn't managed to learn how long things went in for. 2 minutes can't be right.

"You can read anything you want, if you want." He stirs the mess in his pan for a minute, listening for Bucky rifling through his shelves of WWII historical accounts, art collections, and pulp fiction. It's a modest collection but clearly chosen with care, with small pockets of incongruous titles thrown in here and there where he'd gotten books as gifts. Most of those haven't been read. There are even a few DVDs interspersed, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Big Sleep, and a few Disney titles too, Snow White and Bambi bookending more recent films like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. He keeps meaning to get more but it's hard for him to sit through a whole 90 minutes. Steve finds himself restless more often than not.

He couldn't really argue with that, mostly because he didn't remember it. If Steve said he'd hated it the least of his options, he'd have to take his word on it. Besides, it was just food, it wasn't like he was used to fancy dishes.

He turned back to the bookcase instead, eyes roaming the spines of the books. Nearly all of them meant nothing to him, so there wasn't really a strong desire to reach out for one, but the thought of maybe reading a few when he was more settled wasn't unappealing. More settled...that was a new concept. He never settled, yet that was clearly what Steve wanted of him. He still didn't know, it seemed nice enough...but there was still that part of him that was Winter Soldier.

His eyes trailed along the DVDs and caught on the familiar titles. There was a subtle snap in his head and memories rushed forward. The ones he'd had before from Snow White joined with ones from sneaking into Bambie, two boys looking for entertainment and willing to bend the rules to do it, but it wasn't just that. More movies watched with a sliver of a boy at his side, late nights watching the stars, reading together, playing together, sometimes with some other Barnes-child, sometimes not, but always the two of them. Inseparable.

His knees felt weak and he had to rush to sink onto the couch before they gave out. His elbows rested on his knees as he buried his eyes in his hands. There were too many rushing around, images and sounds that didn't stitch together but left him more patches to try and match up later. All because of a Disney movie. No, not just that, it was everything familiar and not familiar. He was relearning while still trying to move forward and learn at the same time and it was impossibly overwhelming to the point that, for just a second, he considered running. Maybe if he ran far enough and hard enough it would all just fall away behind him.

But he stayed still.

It's a quiet sort of breakdown and Steve doesn't even notice until he's turned the stove off and stepped into the threshold of the living room with two plates, but there's Bucky with his head in his hands and his shoulders hunched and tight and Steve has to swallow hard to keep the worry and guilt from choking him.

He sets the plates down on the coffee table, then sets himself down on it too, across from the hunched soldier. "Bucky?"

At first, it seems like he's not going to answer, but his voice makes it out to form quiet, rough, words. "It's all a mess. Just patches out of context, some of them don't even feel like anything and some of them...there's too much feeling. What if it never comes back together? What if I'm never the guy I should be, Stevie?" He's scared. After a world of orders and certainty and 'the asset' now everything was uncertainty and options and what if he chose the wrong ones somehow? There were no guidelines, no structure.

He's not even catching his words anymore, he doesn't bother to try, just lets them go. Once they've stopped, he looks up, that same lost look back on his face. "Tell me what to do." 'Give me orders.' What was a soldier without orders? He was a soldier, wasn't he? If not, then what was he supposed to be?

"How can I be no one and nothing and still be here?" The question comes out simple, idle like a curiosity, like it held no weight. In fact, it held so much weight he didn't know what to do with it, it was the one question he couldn't answer and couldn't set aside because, without it, what was the point in continuing to try?

"It will. You will." Mouth set in a hard line, Steve grabs both of Bucky's hands between his, metal and flesh alike. "We'll make it work and you'll get better. I promise, Buck."

But that question, that little question that he says with no emotion whatsoever after a crack in his composure. The deadpan tone is made all the more jarring for the suddenness with which Bucky fell back into it. This was never how the Bucky Steve remembers was. He was wry, sarcastic, overworked, stony, sometimes tender, protective, funny... frightened. The whole gamut, but never this. Never just... nothing. As if he'd been talking about someone else. As if thinking of himself as 'no one and nothing' doesn't faze him at all.

It makes Steve want to shake him hard, even punch him, as if that would help any damn thing. It's a reaction he'd been having periodically anyway, even before all this Hydra stuff came back up. Certain things - stupid things, far less frustrating and important than this - would make him irrational or shaky. Not being able to get the touch screen on his sleek little S.H.I.E.L.D. issued phone to respond how he wanted, feeling behind just from the sheer breadth of information he still had to catch up on, wanting to talk about world events thirty or more years too late. Milk being over two dollars. The Dodgers gone from Brooklyn.

Nearly all his friends, colleagues, acquaintances dead or dying of old age. That one at least made sense to be frustrated over.

But none of that helps Bucky. Even if he's frustrating it's not his fault and all these feelings do for Steve is make him hurt, and make him angry but mostly just make him guilty. It's not Bucky's fault, but it is Steve's. Steve who failed to protect his best friend, the person most important to him, who's now sitting and wondering if he even is a person in the true meaning of the word.

He'd called him Stevie.

"You're not no one," Steve's voice is strained under the weight of all his guilt and anger and whatever else he can't quite name, but he has to push through it. For Bucky's sake he has to push through it. "You're Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, and that'll mean whatever you decide it means."

Maybe it was the determination in Steve's face or his tone of voice or the words themselves...or maybe it was just Steve, because there was a little blip of hope, a small and fragile light in a sea of nothing that nestled in his core. Steve had always been full of hope and determination. Maybe it was just the proximity, but he felt he remembered more about the man in front of him than the man he was, but for now, that was okay.

Because he knew Steve and his determination and his sincerity and his strength and that was there behind the words, so if he was James Buchanan Barnes in title, then he could take some time to figure out the definition. It was a start.

"Okay." He nodded and looked away, his eyes landing on the food that he'd forgotten about. He almost smiled. "I'm starving, let's just eat something."

He hesitated a moment, then pulled away and stood to go back to the bookcase where he retrieved a DVD and offered it to Steve. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves seemed incongruous with the mood and everything going on in his head, but maybe that's what they needed right now. Something else.

At least starving is a feeling and that almost smile was enough for Steve to relax just a little. It didn't completely banish the swirling ache of anger in his chest, but it took the edge off at least. He gives a small smile of his own as he takes the DVD and goes about putting it on, though he takes a moment to scoot the hash-laden plate towards Bucky before getting to his feet.

And then it registers what movie this is. And maybe why Bucky had chosen it.

Only that can't be why. He doesn't remember, does he? Something like that Bucky would have told him he remembered...

Stop getting bent out of shape, Rogers. You already kissed him at the memorial, he admonishes himself. Steve had mentioned the movie himself, so that must be why...

Well. Maybe it would shake something loose. Steve's just worried about what that might be, and what Bucky's reaction will be to it. It's been 70 years and the world has changed. The definition of what they had, what they were, has changed. Or maybe he just has a name for it now.

But he can't push. That would be the worst thing, taking advantage, even if it's not intentional. If that's not something they have anymore then so be it, as long as it's what Bucky wants.

Steve sits on the couch next to his friend, leaving some room between them, and hits play. He picks up his plate and picks at it as the credits start to roll, eyes trained on his meal.

Bucky digs in after only a moment of taking in the sight and smell, half hoping it would trigger something, but nothing came forward. The taste was fine, he found he didn't have an opinion on it, of course he didn't exactly have a huge frame of reference.

He didn't know what was going through Steve's head, but he did hope watching the film again would give him a few more memories, something more expanded than the few he'd gotten before. As much as he wanted to remember everything, he also wanted it all to tie together again.

He was quiet as he watched, the story itself was fanciful and essentially pointless, but he found himself feeling something for it anyway, a warmth that made him forgive the fact it was pointless.

He didn't speak up until the ending screen had shown with the crescendo of music dying out with stylized 'The End.' There had been a little bit of an expansion, it wasn't anything necessarily new, but it was a new emotion, more feeling attached to the memories that had strengthened when they'd been vague and weak before. "I don't know why you agreed to 'practice' with me. It was kind of a flimsy suggestion."

Flimsy was an interesting word choice, why did he think that? Flimsy for what it was actually covering, for the real reason he'd suggested it. That made sense. What was that emotion though? He couldn't remember how it felt.

"What?" Steve's fork takes a tumble from his fingers, clinking on the edge of his plate, pirouetting off his knee, and disappearing into the crease between the cushions in a perfect swan dive. The bewildered captain doesn't even seem to realize, possibly because the sudden rush of heat to his face momentarily fried his brain. "You remember that?"

"For the most part. Some of it's still...sketchy, but I remember it happening. We were terrible." Two boys fumbling and trying to act like they knew what they were doing when really neither of them did, resulting in sloppy kisses and hesitant movements. He could remember he'd initiated it, but Steve had given as good as he got, at least until they were short of breath and Bucky had felt a little bad for letting it go on that long with Steve's asthma to consider.

But at the same time, he hadn't regretted a second of it. In fact, he'd wanted to continue their 'practice' almost immediately.

"You didn't answer my question." It had been more of a statement, but now it was a question; maybe if he knew why Steve had gone along with it, he could remember why he'd suggested it to begin with.

"You didn't ask a question." He knows what Bucky meant but Steve doesn't feel he can answer, not like this, so he splits hairs and stands to take their empty plates to the kitchen. It takes him an extra minute to retrieve his wayward fork.

He has to change the subject. He can't risk putting the idea in his head and Bucky regretting it later, no matter how lonely he is. "It's good you're remembering things though. Do you remember anything else?"

There's a flash of something he recognizes from the few other times he'd felt it: annoyance, though he's not aware it appears on his face even as Steve stands up to take their dishes. Fine, the question wasn't open for answering, he'd leave it. For now. If it came to be that he couldn't come up with that wayward emotion on his own, then he'd get his answer.

"A little bit more about those times we watched the movie, they're more solid now." Like actual memories instead of stories.

He stayed sitting where he was, tone turning vaguely thoughtful, like whatever controlled his tone was rusty and still needed to warm up to produce the full effect. That probably wasn't too far off from the truth. "Mostly, what I keep remembering are things about you. Flashes of things we did, things you like..." Times when he'd stand there, hovering over the smaller boy as Steve forced his body to find breath, Bucky wishing desperately he could just share his own so that he wouldn't have to wonder if Steve was about to fall over dead.

That memory hurt and it almost made him flinch back from even trying to find others. But it probably wasn't the only one that would feel like that, if he ran now, he'd never find them again. "I remember you being sick and I think...I think I was...scared. For you." He was grasping at a smokey memory whose tendrils kept slipping away. Every time he thought he could feel it, it became just a picture instead of an event.

He shook his head. The Steve here with him now wasn't sick, though, he didn't need that fear anymore. In fact, he could vaguely remember a certain kind of gratitude for that fact, but it was mixed and dunked in other, stronger emotions so he didn't try following that thread just yet. "I'm not making sense."

Edited (Because half of it was written in another tab???) 2014-05-03 14:52 (UTC)

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