Fic: Process of Elimination
Title: Process of Elimination
Author: brightly_lit
Fandom: MCU
Rating: PG-13 for movie-style violence and disturbing concepts
Word Count: 3,700
Genre: gen, bromance, intense angst, hurt/comfort, abandonment, suicidal ideation, homelessness, remorse, badassery
Characters: Bucky, Steve Rogers (Captain America), Sam Wilson, OCs
Summary: At the end of Winter Soldier, Steve said he was going to look for Bucky, and that's what he's doing. Little does he know, Bucky also went looking for Steve.
As I mentioned in the comments of my first Bucky fic, I feel like I have to write all the Bucky fic I've long been wanting to write now, before Civil War comes out, in case it spoils my whole headcanon for my dearest post-Winter Soldier Bucky. So excited for Civil War, but nervous, too!
“Maybe he went back to New York, you know? It would make sense if he went back to what’s familiar to ’im.”
“No. There’s no evidence he ever left the D.C. area. We don’t have access to all the SHIELD databases anymore, but I’ve got pretty a good video surveillance shot that ... it has to be him.”
“I don’t know.” It was the man who could fly, bending over the photograph, looking closely. “Doesn’t look like the same guy.”
“It isn’t the same guy. He remembered me, Sam. He’s the one who pulled me out, I know it was. He’s different now, out of Hydra’s clutches. He’s got to be.”
“Still, an Army jacket and hat? Where’s the badass, like, all-black supervillain suit with a different kind of gun in every pocket?”
“Under the jacket.”
Sam whistled, looking. “You’re right.”
“So tomorrow, I think we should start there, at 44th and Felter Ave. Work out from there. If he’s wearing Army surplus clothes, if his hair and beard are growing out, if he’s out there on the streets with almost no memories, he’s probably homeless, vulnerable. Cold, hungry.”
“‘Vulnerable’?” Sam demanded, outraged. “Did you just call the guy who ripped off my wing and kicked me off a helicarrier in five seconds flat ‘vulnerable’??”
“There haven’t been any reports of assaults in the area, have there? Beyond the usual? I mean, that sound like his style?”
“Yeah, no one’s gotten blown up lately, I guess.”
“If he’s remembering, if he’s becoming the Bucky I know again, then he doesn’t want to hurt anybody. Hydra’s probably still after him. We have to get to him before they do.”
Bucky turned away and stepped silently to the edge of the balcony where he’d stood, hearing every word. Steve was wrong. There were people he did still want to hurt. Lots of people.
He saw them creeping through the bushes, all in black, night-vision goggles. Based on the fact that their point was carrying a stun weapon and the others were carrying semiautomatic rifles, it was a kill-and-capture mission: probably kill Sam, capture Steve. There were only three of them, two fewer than last night.
He vaulted the balcony railing and landed on the one taking up the rear, all but breaking him in two before he could so much as let out a sound. Bucky took that one’s gun and shot the next closest one, then the guy on point, before four more suddenly emerged from all sides. For the first time, Bucky felt his heartrate increase, a little, as he picked up one dead body to use as a shield, then as a weapon, throwing it hard at the two standing foolishly close together to distract them as he killed the other two. He then returned to shoot each of them point-blank as they still struggled to get the body of their comrade, heavy with weaponry and armor, off themselves.
He dragged their bodies into the alley, finishing off the one that groaned a little. He felt a flash of ... anger, he supposed it must be, as he stripped the second four of their stun weapons and put the weapons behind a dumpster to add to his stockpile. The first three were a decoy. This wasn’t a kill-and-capture mission; they were after Bucky. After Bucky, after Steve, after Sam, after everyone who mattered. He couldn’t let his rage overtake him again, though. It accomplished nothing. It had only hurt Steve. He wasn’t sure yet what did accomplish something. For now trying to figure that out would simply have to be a process of elimination.
The next feeling that spiked in him wasn’t anger, he realized dimly; it was irritation that Hydra had sent so many this time, Steve’s words echoing in his mind: “... that sound like his style?” So many bodies to dispose of so Steve wouldn’t find out.
It was gladness that flooded him then, that Steve’s new apartment was close to the river. Bodies sank at first, then rose to the surface before sinking again, once the gases they emitted while decomposing found a reliable outlet. Bucky had used a floating body once to keep him close to the surface and hide him before suddenly bursting out of the river and shooting-- Bucky had to stop and drop both bodies he was dragging, holding his head, pressing at his eyes, wishing he could stop seeing the horror on the man’s face, the man ... who was he? Bucky would never know, just one of hundreds of executions he’d performed with admirable success. He’d been praised when he returned from that mission, thanked for his service. He’d felt ... pride, he supposed. Just pride, satisfaction with a job well done, a mission completed thoroughly. He’d left no witnesses.
How could he have felt pride, when now there was only horror and disbelief, an overpowering sense of the wrongness of the act, the evil of it? Why was Steve searching for him when he knew all too much already of what he’d done? He wasn’t Steve’s old friend Bucky. He was a monster. Steve had to know that. Steve and Sam were probably hunting him to put him down.
That brought up a feeling that lightened the agony enough that he could resume dragging the bodies to the river. What was this feeling? ... Relief, maybe? Curiosity? Purpose, definitely. It would make sense for that to be Steve’s plan. Bucky thought he might even be able to make himself surrender and not fight when the time came, though so much training and muscle memory was ever itching to take over. But he couldn’t let Steve kill him yet. Hydra kept coming for Steve, and as long as they kept coming, Bucky had to protect him.
Bucky dumped the last body in the Potomac and watched it sink, carried away by the quick current. From this pier, where the river was so deep, the bodies would almost certainly make it to the ocean before rising again, and the water would wash away most of the evidence of what had happened to them. He washed the evidence off himself while there, the familiar stink of the dirty water lingering in his hair even as it instantly rolled off the black suit Sam had called ... what had he called it? His supervillain suit.
He returned to his makeshift shelter, on the rooftop of the building opposite Steve’s apartment, from which he could see into two of Steve’s windows, as well as having an excellent vantage on every entrance point, including the front door. Winter was coming, and with his wet hair, he was cold. He donned the Army jacket and hat Steve now knew about, making a note to discard them as soon as he could get something else. He carefully placed all the weapons and some of the most useful armor he’d pilfered from the Hydra operatives in his stockpile, then he made his way downtown.
He stepped into the alley of the Italian restaurant, and flinched as the smell brought back memories, of Europe, of the war, of candlelight in some restaurant and pretty girls smiling and why were they smiling in the midst of all that carnage? Why was Steve? The Howling Commandos were always smiling, proud. Always killing. Why was that good when what Bucky did for Hydra was bad? It was all bad. All killing was bad ... unless it was to protect Steve, and that must have been why. They’d all had Steves to protect, and that was what made it good. Or maybe it was that people smiled and they screamed and they wept, they loved and they worked and they killed, and that was what it meant to be human. Not enough data to know for certain yet. Process of elimination.
He saw the white styrofoam container on top of the lid of the dumpster. He stepped forward to take it, then stopped when he saw the girl who always left it for him still out there in the alley, smoking. She eyed him, just like she did the first time she saw him out there digging through the trash, and smiled. “It’s okay,” she said, nodding to it. “Go ahead.”
Shame. That was what he felt as he hesitated before stepping forward to take it, nodding thanks at her. Why shame?
“Hey,” she said as he was about to slip away, back into the darkness. “What do you do for breakfast?”
He turned back reluctantly, trying to make his expression more neutral when he saw her flinch back briefly. He knew he looked scary. He lifted the container in answer. She stuffed the containers so full, there was usually a little left over by morning.
“Oh, jeez,” she sighed. She glanced back in the open doorway, and Bucky recognized her posture, the way she peered in every direction, casing doorways, counting employees: recon. “Wait here.”
She slipped in. There was some clanging, the squeak of styrofoam. Someone came into the kitchen unexpectedly. Surprised, she covered it well, making some friendly conversation with them. Disarming. She was gone a full five minutes before she reemerged, handing him another container roughly, then dashing back in, donning the apron she’d had slung over her shoulder, calling to her coworker.
Bucky opened the container. It was just like all the others: stuffed full of a random assortment of Italian food: half-eaten rolls, a smattering of salad, a variety of sauces and pastas, sometimes meat. He stood there silent, trying to identify this feeling, one he hadn’t felt in years, in decades. Gratitude? But bigger, more painful.
It plagued him all the way back to his shelter on the roof, plagued him as he ate, watching Steve engage in his usual bedtime routine, plagued him as he lay down to sleep under the ducts where it was warmest. It was a bad feeling. His anger spiked ... he quelled it. Why should someone’s kindness make him angry? It made no sense. Reaching for his favorite gun in his stockpile, hoping that might make him feel safe enough to sleep, he touched a bead bracelet he’d found, which he’d also added to the stockpile. Anything interesting or unusual, or anything that made him feel something he didn’t understand, he kept. Looking at the bracelet, he suddenly knew how to make this terrible feeling go away.
Following Steve and Sam at a distance, Bucky ducked into the Italian restaurant’s alley and left the bracelet on top of the dumpster where she always left his food. The painful gratitude eased immediately, but it wasn’t gone. He’d bring her something else tonight.
He was back on their tail in moments. He saw a big metal bin that read “Clothing Donations” and stared at it, bewildered, as he passed. He’d return tonight to rip it open and see what he might find.
Steve and Sam went to the soup kitchen where Bucky had been given the jacket and hat. They asked questions of the people who worked there and who frequented the place, showing them photos. Bucky pulled the bill of his hat lower over his face, lurking around the corner, listening. A guy stared at him, mouth opening in recognition, looking toward Steve and Sam, where they’d gone inside. Bucky thought the look he gave the guy would be sufficient to quell him. He certainly recoiled and looked terrified. But then he was going in, pointing in Bucky’s direction, calling out, “Hey! Guys! You two! He’s right--”
Before he even finished the sentence, Bucky was gone.
Back on the rooftop, Bucky grabbed the remaining styrofoam container where it sat in the shade on the coldest part of the roof and ate gratefully with one of the plastic forks she sometimes included. Two containers in a day would be well enough to sustain him. He watched Steve’s apartment as he ate, saw when he came home alone. He tried to catch what Steve said on his cellphone as he went inside, but it was incomprehensible out of context.
Steve opened his balcony door, looking out at the bright chill autumn afternoon, and emerged in that way he did, like he still felt a little too big for his new body. He spied a chair and sat on it gingerly, aware, as Bucky also always had to be, that if he was careless, he might just flatten it. Steve smiled, looking out at the sunlit trees. Bucky smiled, too, feeling as though he were sitting right there beside him. After all, they had enough times, sitting together on a stoop or a rickety metal chair, watching the sunset, or what they could see of it behind the ubiquitous Brooklyn buildings, talking, teasing, joking, laughing. Steve looked just like this, only smaller, which was how Bucky would always remember him. He recognized that now he was big and formidable, a dangerous opponent, but it seemed like an unremovable suit and stilts over the old Steve, just as he had always been inside there, brave and foolish and good.
The expression on Steve’s face was as familiar as the sky: This was how Steve looked when things were looking up, when he was filled with that unsinkable optimism that made Steve Steve. Steve never took the simple pleasures for granted. Even when they were in the war, even in some cold, desolate European forest, Steve might see a shiny rock or a perfect spiderweb or a baby bird that tickled him, and he would light up just the way he did when he was a kid.
... As now, when he spied something on his balcony, with that curiosity, leaning over to get a closer look. The smile fell from his face, he looked closer intently, then looked directly up at the rooftop. Right at Bucky.
Bucky froze. Steve was looking westward in late-afternoon light. He wouldn’t be able to see anything that didn’t move. Right?
Sure enough, Steve looked down at his balcony again, got up, and looked over the edge down into the bushes below. At the same time, Bucky got behind a tall duct, stood up, and looked just as intently, breath quickening. What would Steve see? Booted footprints in the grass, flattened sections in the shapes of bodies, scorch marks? Blood? Bucky’s eyes darted to one side, trying to remember every detail of last night’s near-silent scuffle on the grass. Steve never went to that side of the building, because there was nothing there except grass and bushes and it led nowhere except the alley. No one ever went there, so Bucky hadn’t bothered to clean up carefully.
Steve went inside, then sure enough emerged from the front door and went to that side of the building, peering closely at the ground. He touched the side of the building, looking it up and down, troubled.
Bucky stood on the rooftop, glancing wildly from his styrofoam container to his weapons stockpile to his blankets. What was this feeling? It was panic. Where was the weapon that would solve this? Who could he kill to prevent Steve from knowing where he was and finding him, or at least driving him away from the rooftop, from being able to protect him from Hydra, from being able to watch him every day and feel like they were together even though they weren’t and couldn’t be?
And then Steve was there, right there on the rooftop next to him. How did he get there so fast?! Oh, right: big Steve was as fast as Bucky. Steve saw the stockpile of weapons at the same time Bucky’s eyes darted to it, but oh right, no, he couldn’t fight, he had to surrender and let Steve kill him.
Tears filled his eyes, bafflingly. To get put down by Steve of all people was ideal. He felt fortunate. So why these tears? He’d shed them at times, on missions, usually standing over some woman or child begging for their lives, and he’d never understood the tears or their function; they only made it hard to see to aim.
“Wait!” Bucky said as Steve took a step toward him. Steve stopped. “First, I have something for you. Some things.” When Steve didn’t look like he intended to move right away, Bucky edged over to the stockpile, and saw Steve’s position become defensive, like he thought Bucky might use the weapons to attack him.
Irritation pricked Bucky again, to have to die with the person he loved most believing he meant to hurt him. Everything was a ruin. Every relationship and plan, every hope and dream, and every memory, was a wrecked wasteland. That was his legacy. He looked forward to its coming to an end, but there were things he very much wanted to do first, if Steve would let him.
He rummaged in his stockpile and drew out the things that made him feel the most. “I don’t know what these are,” he said, “but I want you to have them. Maybe you know what they mean. I feel like--in some cases, I’m sure you do.” Delicately, he laid them at Steve’s feet, then quickly backed away again, also standing defensively. Steve’s bewildered expression threw him, but like everything else, he didn’t know what it meant, so he disregarded it.
“There’s more,” Bucky went on. “There’s things--there’s--a thing I’d like to keep doing, if you let me. I have a function I can still perform. But you’ll have to let me stay here. It has the best vantage.” He nodded toward the adjacent buildings. Bucky had examined them all carefully and found them all wanting. This was the best and only rooftop for his purpose.
“You mean killing people,” Steve said, his beloved low voice. Bucky blinked to hear it again, speaking directly to himself. It seemed impossible that someone so good and human like Steve would deign to utter words to something like Bucky, but here he was. “Lots of people. Am I right?”
Bucky nodded once.
“Bucky, you don’t have to do that.” His tone was pleading, like it was when Bucky was trying his hardest to kill him. “You’re not a part of Hydra anymore. It’s over. Hydra’s gone.”
Bucky said nothing, only staring at him, remembering his face, remembering all the times he looked at it in their shared past, all the feelings welling up in him and threatening to overwhelm him again. He would run if they did, jump to the roof of the garage and then to the ground, as he had dozens of times before, but at least if he lost control, Steve would probably survive it.
Steve glanced down, eyed the small pile of objects at his feet, and picked them up. He actually chuckled slightly, seeing the first one. He held it up; it dangled from his fingers. “A Christmas ornament?” He examined it. “This looks as old as we are.” He looked at another item in his hands, his smile relaxing, deepening. “Your mom had a necklace ... just like this.” He looked up at Bucky, his smile fading to agonized concern. “Bucky, come on. End this.”
Bucky looked down. It wasn’t as hard as he’d feared, to surrender and let Steve destroy him. He had seventy years of experience, surrendering to whatever Hydra wanted to do to him, after all. He’d died a hundred times already, strapped in a chair, or freezing into oblivion. He only hoped this would really be the very last time. “Yes,” he said, and dropped to his knees, head down. He wanted the last thing he saw to be Steve, but not looking coldly down the barrel of a gun at him.
He saw Steve’s feet, though, taking a hesitant step toward him, then another, then Steve dropped to his knees before him. “They come, every night,” Bucky said softly, wondering how many words Steve would let him get out. “They come for you and your friends, they come for me, now that they know I’m here. Hydra is predictable; tonight it’ll be two a.m., then four, one, three, midnight, then it begins again, always the same. Set your clocks. If you move, they’ll find you. You can set up a perimeter, but they’ll figure it out before long and account for it. You have to stay one step ahead.”
“Wait a minute--are you saying it was Hydra you killed? Last night, right?” Steve sounded shocked.
“Every night,” Bucky said in monotone.
“For how long?” Steve demanded.
“A week. It only took them a month to regroup and locate you. Oh, but--tonight there’ll be more of them, because now they know about me. I forgot. Tonight there’ll be seven, maybe ten. If you leave my body on the grass, it’ll send a message. You can write a note.” He tapped his own chest.
“What do you mean ... body?”
“After you put me down. It’s a good plan. It eliminates a lot of potential leverage for Hydra, obviously eliminates countless threats if they did get ahold of me. Rights a lot of wrongs, or at least, less-lessens--”
“I’m not--Bucky! I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to save you.”
“But I--I’m the one who saves you.”
Steve smiled, right into his face. “We save each other,” Steve suggested. Bucky could only stare.
“You’re still alive.” Steve sounded so relieved. Steve turned his eyes toward his styrofoam container, his little blanket pile, his face full of agony. “Thank God. Come on, Bucky. Let’s go home.” He was on his feet, pulling Bucky up with him. Bucky flinched, but there was no pain, no violence, nothing. For the first time in weeks, he was completely at a loss. Not only was the data insufficient to decide how to react, there was zero data, nothing in his scattered, damaged memory banks about home, joy in his continued existence, welcome, an embrace.
Steve put all the trinkets Bucky gave him in his pocket, tossed the blankets over his shoulder, and eyed the weapons pile uneasily. “We’ll come back for those later,” he decided. “For now, let’s just get you someplace safe.” He helped Bucky along, toward the fire escape. “I can’t believe it. I finally found you,” Steve said, his voice soft and warm, grinning at Bucky, the grin hiding so much pain.
This feeling. It must be joy. “But you didn’t. I found you.”
~The End~
Author: brightly_lit
Fandom: MCU
Rating: PG-13 for movie-style violence and disturbing concepts
Word Count: 3,700
Genre: gen, bromance, intense angst, hurt/comfort, abandonment, suicidal ideation, homelessness, remorse, badassery
Characters: Bucky, Steve Rogers (Captain America), Sam Wilson, OCs
Summary: At the end of Winter Soldier, Steve said he was going to look for Bucky, and that's what he's doing. Little does he know, Bucky also went looking for Steve.
As I mentioned in the comments of my first Bucky fic, I feel like I have to write all the Bucky fic I've long been wanting to write now, before Civil War comes out, in case it spoils my whole headcanon for my dearest post-Winter Soldier Bucky. So excited for Civil War, but nervous, too!
“Maybe he went back to New York, you know? It would make sense if he went back to what’s familiar to ’im.”
“No. There’s no evidence he ever left the D.C. area. We don’t have access to all the SHIELD databases anymore, but I’ve got pretty a good video surveillance shot that ... it has to be him.”
“I don’t know.” It was the man who could fly, bending over the photograph, looking closely. “Doesn’t look like the same guy.”
“It isn’t the same guy. He remembered me, Sam. He’s the one who pulled me out, I know it was. He’s different now, out of Hydra’s clutches. He’s got to be.”
“Still, an Army jacket and hat? Where’s the badass, like, all-black supervillain suit with a different kind of gun in every pocket?”
“Under the jacket.”
Sam whistled, looking. “You’re right.”
“So tomorrow, I think we should start there, at 44th and Felter Ave. Work out from there. If he’s wearing Army surplus clothes, if his hair and beard are growing out, if he’s out there on the streets with almost no memories, he’s probably homeless, vulnerable. Cold, hungry.”
“‘Vulnerable’?” Sam demanded, outraged. “Did you just call the guy who ripped off my wing and kicked me off a helicarrier in five seconds flat ‘vulnerable’??”
“There haven’t been any reports of assaults in the area, have there? Beyond the usual? I mean, that sound like his style?”
“Yeah, no one’s gotten blown up lately, I guess.”
“If he’s remembering, if he’s becoming the Bucky I know again, then he doesn’t want to hurt anybody. Hydra’s probably still after him. We have to get to him before they do.”
Bucky turned away and stepped silently to the edge of the balcony where he’d stood, hearing every word. Steve was wrong. There were people he did still want to hurt. Lots of people.
He saw them creeping through the bushes, all in black, night-vision goggles. Based on the fact that their point was carrying a stun weapon and the others were carrying semiautomatic rifles, it was a kill-and-capture mission: probably kill Sam, capture Steve. There were only three of them, two fewer than last night.
He vaulted the balcony railing and landed on the one taking up the rear, all but breaking him in two before he could so much as let out a sound. Bucky took that one’s gun and shot the next closest one, then the guy on point, before four more suddenly emerged from all sides. For the first time, Bucky felt his heartrate increase, a little, as he picked up one dead body to use as a shield, then as a weapon, throwing it hard at the two standing foolishly close together to distract them as he killed the other two. He then returned to shoot each of them point-blank as they still struggled to get the body of their comrade, heavy with weaponry and armor, off themselves.
He dragged their bodies into the alley, finishing off the one that groaned a little. He felt a flash of ... anger, he supposed it must be, as he stripped the second four of their stun weapons and put the weapons behind a dumpster to add to his stockpile. The first three were a decoy. This wasn’t a kill-and-capture mission; they were after Bucky. After Bucky, after Steve, after Sam, after everyone who mattered. He couldn’t let his rage overtake him again, though. It accomplished nothing. It had only hurt Steve. He wasn’t sure yet what did accomplish something. For now trying to figure that out would simply have to be a process of elimination.
The next feeling that spiked in him wasn’t anger, he realized dimly; it was irritation that Hydra had sent so many this time, Steve’s words echoing in his mind: “... that sound like his style?” So many bodies to dispose of so Steve wouldn’t find out.
It was gladness that flooded him then, that Steve’s new apartment was close to the river. Bodies sank at first, then rose to the surface before sinking again, once the gases they emitted while decomposing found a reliable outlet. Bucky had used a floating body once to keep him close to the surface and hide him before suddenly bursting out of the river and shooting-- Bucky had to stop and drop both bodies he was dragging, holding his head, pressing at his eyes, wishing he could stop seeing the horror on the man’s face, the man ... who was he? Bucky would never know, just one of hundreds of executions he’d performed with admirable success. He’d been praised when he returned from that mission, thanked for his service. He’d felt ... pride, he supposed. Just pride, satisfaction with a job well done, a mission completed thoroughly. He’d left no witnesses.
How could he have felt pride, when now there was only horror and disbelief, an overpowering sense of the wrongness of the act, the evil of it? Why was Steve searching for him when he knew all too much already of what he’d done? He wasn’t Steve’s old friend Bucky. He was a monster. Steve had to know that. Steve and Sam were probably hunting him to put him down.
That brought up a feeling that lightened the agony enough that he could resume dragging the bodies to the river. What was this feeling? ... Relief, maybe? Curiosity? Purpose, definitely. It would make sense for that to be Steve’s plan. Bucky thought he might even be able to make himself surrender and not fight when the time came, though so much training and muscle memory was ever itching to take over. But he couldn’t let Steve kill him yet. Hydra kept coming for Steve, and as long as they kept coming, Bucky had to protect him.
Bucky dumped the last body in the Potomac and watched it sink, carried away by the quick current. From this pier, where the river was so deep, the bodies would almost certainly make it to the ocean before rising again, and the water would wash away most of the evidence of what had happened to them. He washed the evidence off himself while there, the familiar stink of the dirty water lingering in his hair even as it instantly rolled off the black suit Sam had called ... what had he called it? His supervillain suit.
He returned to his makeshift shelter, on the rooftop of the building opposite Steve’s apartment, from which he could see into two of Steve’s windows, as well as having an excellent vantage on every entrance point, including the front door. Winter was coming, and with his wet hair, he was cold. He donned the Army jacket and hat Steve now knew about, making a note to discard them as soon as he could get something else. He carefully placed all the weapons and some of the most useful armor he’d pilfered from the Hydra operatives in his stockpile, then he made his way downtown.
He stepped into the alley of the Italian restaurant, and flinched as the smell brought back memories, of Europe, of the war, of candlelight in some restaurant and pretty girls smiling and why were they smiling in the midst of all that carnage? Why was Steve? The Howling Commandos were always smiling, proud. Always killing. Why was that good when what Bucky did for Hydra was bad? It was all bad. All killing was bad ... unless it was to protect Steve, and that must have been why. They’d all had Steves to protect, and that was what made it good. Or maybe it was that people smiled and they screamed and they wept, they loved and they worked and they killed, and that was what it meant to be human. Not enough data to know for certain yet. Process of elimination.
He saw the white styrofoam container on top of the lid of the dumpster. He stepped forward to take it, then stopped when he saw the girl who always left it for him still out there in the alley, smoking. She eyed him, just like she did the first time she saw him out there digging through the trash, and smiled. “It’s okay,” she said, nodding to it. “Go ahead.”
Shame. That was what he felt as he hesitated before stepping forward to take it, nodding thanks at her. Why shame?
“Hey,” she said as he was about to slip away, back into the darkness. “What do you do for breakfast?”
He turned back reluctantly, trying to make his expression more neutral when he saw her flinch back briefly. He knew he looked scary. He lifted the container in answer. She stuffed the containers so full, there was usually a little left over by morning.
“Oh, jeez,” she sighed. She glanced back in the open doorway, and Bucky recognized her posture, the way she peered in every direction, casing doorways, counting employees: recon. “Wait here.”
She slipped in. There was some clanging, the squeak of styrofoam. Someone came into the kitchen unexpectedly. Surprised, she covered it well, making some friendly conversation with them. Disarming. She was gone a full five minutes before she reemerged, handing him another container roughly, then dashing back in, donning the apron she’d had slung over her shoulder, calling to her coworker.
Bucky opened the container. It was just like all the others: stuffed full of a random assortment of Italian food: half-eaten rolls, a smattering of salad, a variety of sauces and pastas, sometimes meat. He stood there silent, trying to identify this feeling, one he hadn’t felt in years, in decades. Gratitude? But bigger, more painful.
It plagued him all the way back to his shelter on the roof, plagued him as he ate, watching Steve engage in his usual bedtime routine, plagued him as he lay down to sleep under the ducts where it was warmest. It was a bad feeling. His anger spiked ... he quelled it. Why should someone’s kindness make him angry? It made no sense. Reaching for his favorite gun in his stockpile, hoping that might make him feel safe enough to sleep, he touched a bead bracelet he’d found, which he’d also added to the stockpile. Anything interesting or unusual, or anything that made him feel something he didn’t understand, he kept. Looking at the bracelet, he suddenly knew how to make this terrible feeling go away.
Following Steve and Sam at a distance, Bucky ducked into the Italian restaurant’s alley and left the bracelet on top of the dumpster where she always left his food. The painful gratitude eased immediately, but it wasn’t gone. He’d bring her something else tonight.
He was back on their tail in moments. He saw a big metal bin that read “Clothing Donations” and stared at it, bewildered, as he passed. He’d return tonight to rip it open and see what he might find.
Steve and Sam went to the soup kitchen where Bucky had been given the jacket and hat. They asked questions of the people who worked there and who frequented the place, showing them photos. Bucky pulled the bill of his hat lower over his face, lurking around the corner, listening. A guy stared at him, mouth opening in recognition, looking toward Steve and Sam, where they’d gone inside. Bucky thought the look he gave the guy would be sufficient to quell him. He certainly recoiled and looked terrified. But then he was going in, pointing in Bucky’s direction, calling out, “Hey! Guys! You two! He’s right--”
Before he even finished the sentence, Bucky was gone.
Back on the rooftop, Bucky grabbed the remaining styrofoam container where it sat in the shade on the coldest part of the roof and ate gratefully with one of the plastic forks she sometimes included. Two containers in a day would be well enough to sustain him. He watched Steve’s apartment as he ate, saw when he came home alone. He tried to catch what Steve said on his cellphone as he went inside, but it was incomprehensible out of context.
Steve opened his balcony door, looking out at the bright chill autumn afternoon, and emerged in that way he did, like he still felt a little too big for his new body. He spied a chair and sat on it gingerly, aware, as Bucky also always had to be, that if he was careless, he might just flatten it. Steve smiled, looking out at the sunlit trees. Bucky smiled, too, feeling as though he were sitting right there beside him. After all, they had enough times, sitting together on a stoop or a rickety metal chair, watching the sunset, or what they could see of it behind the ubiquitous Brooklyn buildings, talking, teasing, joking, laughing. Steve looked just like this, only smaller, which was how Bucky would always remember him. He recognized that now he was big and formidable, a dangerous opponent, but it seemed like an unremovable suit and stilts over the old Steve, just as he had always been inside there, brave and foolish and good.
The expression on Steve’s face was as familiar as the sky: This was how Steve looked when things were looking up, when he was filled with that unsinkable optimism that made Steve Steve. Steve never took the simple pleasures for granted. Even when they were in the war, even in some cold, desolate European forest, Steve might see a shiny rock or a perfect spiderweb or a baby bird that tickled him, and he would light up just the way he did when he was a kid.
... As now, when he spied something on his balcony, with that curiosity, leaning over to get a closer look. The smile fell from his face, he looked closer intently, then looked directly up at the rooftop. Right at Bucky.
Bucky froze. Steve was looking westward in late-afternoon light. He wouldn’t be able to see anything that didn’t move. Right?
Sure enough, Steve looked down at his balcony again, got up, and looked over the edge down into the bushes below. At the same time, Bucky got behind a tall duct, stood up, and looked just as intently, breath quickening. What would Steve see? Booted footprints in the grass, flattened sections in the shapes of bodies, scorch marks? Blood? Bucky’s eyes darted to one side, trying to remember every detail of last night’s near-silent scuffle on the grass. Steve never went to that side of the building, because there was nothing there except grass and bushes and it led nowhere except the alley. No one ever went there, so Bucky hadn’t bothered to clean up carefully.
Steve went inside, then sure enough emerged from the front door and went to that side of the building, peering closely at the ground. He touched the side of the building, looking it up and down, troubled.
Bucky stood on the rooftop, glancing wildly from his styrofoam container to his weapons stockpile to his blankets. What was this feeling? It was panic. Where was the weapon that would solve this? Who could he kill to prevent Steve from knowing where he was and finding him, or at least driving him away from the rooftop, from being able to protect him from Hydra, from being able to watch him every day and feel like they were together even though they weren’t and couldn’t be?
And then Steve was there, right there on the rooftop next to him. How did he get there so fast?! Oh, right: big Steve was as fast as Bucky. Steve saw the stockpile of weapons at the same time Bucky’s eyes darted to it, but oh right, no, he couldn’t fight, he had to surrender and let Steve kill him.
Tears filled his eyes, bafflingly. To get put down by Steve of all people was ideal. He felt fortunate. So why these tears? He’d shed them at times, on missions, usually standing over some woman or child begging for their lives, and he’d never understood the tears or their function; they only made it hard to see to aim.
“Wait!” Bucky said as Steve took a step toward him. Steve stopped. “First, I have something for you. Some things.” When Steve didn’t look like he intended to move right away, Bucky edged over to the stockpile, and saw Steve’s position become defensive, like he thought Bucky might use the weapons to attack him.
Irritation pricked Bucky again, to have to die with the person he loved most believing he meant to hurt him. Everything was a ruin. Every relationship and plan, every hope and dream, and every memory, was a wrecked wasteland. That was his legacy. He looked forward to its coming to an end, but there were things he very much wanted to do first, if Steve would let him.
He rummaged in his stockpile and drew out the things that made him feel the most. “I don’t know what these are,” he said, “but I want you to have them. Maybe you know what they mean. I feel like--in some cases, I’m sure you do.” Delicately, he laid them at Steve’s feet, then quickly backed away again, also standing defensively. Steve’s bewildered expression threw him, but like everything else, he didn’t know what it meant, so he disregarded it.
“There’s more,” Bucky went on. “There’s things--there’s--a thing I’d like to keep doing, if you let me. I have a function I can still perform. But you’ll have to let me stay here. It has the best vantage.” He nodded toward the adjacent buildings. Bucky had examined them all carefully and found them all wanting. This was the best and only rooftop for his purpose.
“You mean killing people,” Steve said, his beloved low voice. Bucky blinked to hear it again, speaking directly to himself. It seemed impossible that someone so good and human like Steve would deign to utter words to something like Bucky, but here he was. “Lots of people. Am I right?”
Bucky nodded once.
“Bucky, you don’t have to do that.” His tone was pleading, like it was when Bucky was trying his hardest to kill him. “You’re not a part of Hydra anymore. It’s over. Hydra’s gone.”
Bucky said nothing, only staring at him, remembering his face, remembering all the times he looked at it in their shared past, all the feelings welling up in him and threatening to overwhelm him again. He would run if they did, jump to the roof of the garage and then to the ground, as he had dozens of times before, but at least if he lost control, Steve would probably survive it.
Steve glanced down, eyed the small pile of objects at his feet, and picked them up. He actually chuckled slightly, seeing the first one. He held it up; it dangled from his fingers. “A Christmas ornament?” He examined it. “This looks as old as we are.” He looked at another item in his hands, his smile relaxing, deepening. “Your mom had a necklace ... just like this.” He looked up at Bucky, his smile fading to agonized concern. “Bucky, come on. End this.”
Bucky looked down. It wasn’t as hard as he’d feared, to surrender and let Steve destroy him. He had seventy years of experience, surrendering to whatever Hydra wanted to do to him, after all. He’d died a hundred times already, strapped in a chair, or freezing into oblivion. He only hoped this would really be the very last time. “Yes,” he said, and dropped to his knees, head down. He wanted the last thing he saw to be Steve, but not looking coldly down the barrel of a gun at him.
He saw Steve’s feet, though, taking a hesitant step toward him, then another, then Steve dropped to his knees before him. “They come, every night,” Bucky said softly, wondering how many words Steve would let him get out. “They come for you and your friends, they come for me, now that they know I’m here. Hydra is predictable; tonight it’ll be two a.m., then four, one, three, midnight, then it begins again, always the same. Set your clocks. If you move, they’ll find you. You can set up a perimeter, but they’ll figure it out before long and account for it. You have to stay one step ahead.”
“Wait a minute--are you saying it was Hydra you killed? Last night, right?” Steve sounded shocked.
“Every night,” Bucky said in monotone.
“For how long?” Steve demanded.
“A week. It only took them a month to regroup and locate you. Oh, but--tonight there’ll be more of them, because now they know about me. I forgot. Tonight there’ll be seven, maybe ten. If you leave my body on the grass, it’ll send a message. You can write a note.” He tapped his own chest.
“What do you mean ... body?”
“After you put me down. It’s a good plan. It eliminates a lot of potential leverage for Hydra, obviously eliminates countless threats if they did get ahold of me. Rights a lot of wrongs, or at least, less-lessens--”
“I’m not--Bucky! I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to save you.”
“But I--I’m the one who saves you.”
Steve smiled, right into his face. “We save each other,” Steve suggested. Bucky could only stare.
“You’re still alive.” Steve sounded so relieved. Steve turned his eyes toward his styrofoam container, his little blanket pile, his face full of agony. “Thank God. Come on, Bucky. Let’s go home.” He was on his feet, pulling Bucky up with him. Bucky flinched, but there was no pain, no violence, nothing. For the first time in weeks, he was completely at a loss. Not only was the data insufficient to decide how to react, there was zero data, nothing in his scattered, damaged memory banks about home, joy in his continued existence, welcome, an embrace.
Steve put all the trinkets Bucky gave him in his pocket, tossed the blankets over his shoulder, and eyed the weapons pile uneasily. “We’ll come back for those later,” he decided. “For now, let’s just get you someplace safe.” He helped Bucky along, toward the fire escape. “I can’t believe it. I finally found you,” Steve said, his voice soft and warm, grinning at Bucky, the grin hiding so much pain.
This feeling. It must be joy. “But you didn’t. I found you.”
~The End~