Things to Remember
post captain america: civil war
bucky barnes, steve rogers
word-count: ~2,600
On AO3
The building has water but no electricity. It's in a downtrodden corner of the city, out of the way, and quiet.
He finds an apartment with a functioning door lock, and clean running water. Yellowing newspapers sit, stacked and forgotten, in a corner of the room; he covers the windows with them.
There's a bed in one of the other apartments, from which he takes the mattress and blanket. The other rooms provide a table and chair, a plate, a fork and knife, and a wooden spoon. He takes those too, finds a can of peaches in the cupboard and eats them, watching the sunlight send blurry projections of the newsprint onto the warped wooden floor.
That night, he sleeps a few hours, dreams of ice and words that override his will. He wakes, stiff with terror, a face and name bubbling to the surface of his mind. "General Karpov," he says the name out loud, without intending to. It hangs in the air, expectant, so he sucks in a wavering breath, holds it, and forces himself to add the other names that follow-"Arnim Zola, Aleksander Lukin, Secretary Pierce." He remembers them, all of them, holding that damned red book, eagerly leering at him with barely veiled bloodlust.
The room seems unnaturally empty now; there should be guards, and men in white or blue, piercing his skin with needles, repairing the damage he's sustained. But the room is silent, filled only with his own breath, and the echoes of what he knows should follow: the chair, the pain, the ice-the empty un-sleep.
He leans against the wall, pulls his knees against his chest, and stays there, awake, until sunrise.
#
It almost looks like a home; shelves he made from cinderblocks and planks of wood hold his few belongings. He's added a pillow to the mattress. With a little effort, he splices wires from the neighboring building and gets the electricity working in the front half of his room-meaning he now has two working lights and a running refrigerator.
Gradually he starts to feel more human, even dares to go outside. The market is a short walk away. He tries his best to be invisible-unremarkable, drab clothing and a cap, gloves to cover his hands. People barely spare him a glance and it's such a relief to see boredom in their eyes instead of fear. He buys fruit, a notebook, a pen and a newspaper. The funds he took from the last Hydra safe-house he picked clean were substantial, but after nearly two years, they're dwindling. They'll last a few more months though-and he can't afford to stay in one place longer than that anyway.
His apartment, when he returns, is as he left it. It strikes him as strange and precious that he has a place for himself.
And more importantly, nobody died, nobody ran, nobody pleaded for their lives and he considers it a win. He has to take those small victories because they're all he has. All he dares hope for. He doesn't deserve much more than that. Doesn't deserve even that much, but he's still pathetically grateful for it.
He locks the door, props the chair against the handle, checks the windows and the spots where he's stashed his weapons.
Part of him wants to go back outside, feel the wind and sun against him again. But privacy is more crucial, it's paramount, if he wants to keep his hard-won freedom. He strips out of his shirt and runs through drills - push-ups, sit-ups, until he's worked up a good sweat. Afterwards, the cool water feels good against his heated skin. He eats one of the apples he bought, relishing the taste.
He sits on his mattress, leaning against the wall and closes his eyes. It's a dangerous thing to do-an invitation to the ghosts of his past.
They come, as they always do, memories-disjointed and blood-covered. An order, a target, a bullet, a knife, the chair, the pain, the ice. He lets them come, lets his limbs shake with fear-adrenaline and cortisol flood his system-a chemical reaction as his body recalls the physical details he's tried so hard to forget.
Sweat slick and nauseous, he steadies himself just enough to crawl to the table and grab the notebook and pen.
My name is Bucky.
He writes it again, and again, and remembers hearing his name-because it is his-spoken by the same voice over and over a hundred different ways-in joy, in anger, in desperation. Steve's voice shines in his mind, a beacon in the dark.
"You're my friend," Steve told him in that flaming inferno above the Triskelion. "I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend."
And they had been friends. He remembers that much, feels the truth of it in his bones. He can't remember it all, but more comes back every day-little innocuous moments that knock something loose.
The glisten of a chip of glass in the asphalt catches his eye, and he remembers the afternoon they spent on Jack Carley's roof after school, the bottle of beer he and Steve shared, giggling as it went straight to their heads. The way Steve's lips pursed when he was sketching, the way he made even ordinary things look like art with nothing more than a pencil and a scrap of paper.
A bird overhead reminds him of hot afternoons at the beach, when Steve was small and his grin was a mile wide, and they rode the Wonder Wheel, ate hot dogs and fries, and buried each others legs in the sand and fell asleep. The sunburn hurt but it was worth it. It was all worth it.
Steve, he writes, Sea Beach Line, Coney Island, his seventeenth birthday we sat on the pier...
#
Months go by.
Some days are better than others. Some are worse.
Days with heavy rain, of which there are many in the Spring, are the worst. The way the rain patters against the tin roof tiles sounds too much like gunfire and it jolts him awake, shaking-sweat beading on his brow. His head is overfull with unwanted thoughts, and he has a report to deliver. Some of the worst memories present themselves that way first-a mission report-sterile, unfeeling, he hears himself rattle off the facts, like that and that alone was left tucked in his brain just in case a superior ever asked him for details of something from long, long ago.
It's after he speaks the words, delivers the reports....-Lithuania, March 4th, 1987. Three targets eliminated, no witnesses.- that the details come: a husband, his wife and son. A message for an enemy. They were unarmed. They were having dinner.
Two targets, fourteen more-collateral damage. One of them survived the explosion. He shot her between the eyes. Her ball gown was green.
The details make the memories more real, harder to stomach.
He doesn't always make it to the bathroom before the sick overtakes him.
It's more than shame, it's the sense memory of what came after-the drugs, the maintenance, the ice.
Once the memories come, they stay-cycling through his head backwards and forwards, stuttering and pausing like a freeze frame on particularly memorable horrors. Targets he remembers, without context-their faces, their last moments, the sound of her gurgling as blood welled up in her mouth, the terror in his eyes as he clawed at Bucky's wrist-useless, pointless, and so desperate to survive.
There are times, when it gets to be too much, when the weakest part of him wants to forget, longs for the emptiness the chair used to give him. But he knows what comes with it. Knows that he doesn't deserve to forget.
So he lets the memories come, and writes them down, documenting decades of blood in his unsteady block print. Names, dates when he knows them, and how they died. He always remembers how they died.
Involuntary, he delivers the reports again and again, and sometimes he can hear Hydra's responses. "Gut, Soldat."
"My name is Bucky," he tells them.
And he writes it again on the page, right below the mission details.
My name is Bucky. An affirmation, a reminder that he's more than endless deaths, commands without context-that he's more than a holstered gun.
He almost believes it.
#
An old love-seat sits in the alley by the garbage. There's nothing wrong with it, and on a whim, Bucky carries it up to his apartment and sets it across from his bed. It's not like he ever has visitors, or even that he wants somewhere else to sit. But it'll come in handy when they come for him and he needs to block the door. Because they will come for him, one of these days. Hydra, or one of any number of governments. And he's not going to let himself be taken. His hard won freedom isn't much, but it's his.
Sometimes, when he can't sleep, he stares at the empty couch. Lets his vision blur until the lumps of the tattered pillow start to look like a person. He molds them into Steve, his mind easily remaking the curve of his lips, the straw shade of his hair. Sometimes he's small, sometimes he isn't, but he's always calm, radiating peace and home and everything Bucky longs for.
He tells Steve what he's remembered. Tells him the worst of it in excruciating detail, but no matter how bad it gets, Steve never gets angry and never judges him. He's a saint, in Bucky's mind, and surely he can't have been that forgiving in reality. Surely now he'd pass judgement. Bucky spent decades committing unforgivable acts-not even Steve would absolve him of those.
Sometimes he can't keep hold of Steve once he's conjured him up-a memory of Steve sketching out on the fire escape skews and he sees the Red Square behind him, lines up a shot carefully, fires the missile through the window. Steve looks up and asks, "what are you doing Buck?" And the orders said no witnesses.
Bucky knows it's a warning. Knows the reality of it, even if there's a part of him still childishly clinging to hope. He wants to think he can have that friendship back, wants to believe that he can have Steve in his life again , but he also knows that he'll hurt him again. It's not a matter of if, but when. And Bucky couldn't live with himself if he hurt Steve again. He can barely live with himself now, acutely aware of all the pain he's caused him.
And that's the worst part-knowing that he has to strive to keep Steve out of his life for good.
But Steve has been looking for him, gotten close more than once, and Bucky is so tempted too-to go to him, to fall in his arms and tell him everything, to confess it all again for real. Maybe he'd judge him, maybe he'd turn him away, but sometimes Bucky thinks it'd be worth it just to see him again, just to hear his voice one last time.
#
He can't have Steve again, not in this life, but he can have his memories of Steve. He collects them, one half-recalled dream after another. Writes down the memory of the rooftop and the beer, the days at the beach, the way Steve's coughs in the winter got so bad he thought he'd lose him, the way he wrapped himself around Steve to keep him warm, to steady his breath.
He starts a new notebook, rewriting the memories of Steve and adding new ones as they come to him. He gathers magazines and newspaper articles with his pictures, wishing they were of Steve, not Captain America. But he remembers enough to recall the features beneath the helmet and the photos are worth keeping, just to see his eyes.
The articles have some of the facts wrong, like Steve's favorite kind of ice cream and his favorite song. One of the articles said he was born in Jersey. He fixes the egregious errors, adds other important things he remembers that none of the papers think to mention. The color of his eyes, the sound of his laugh, the way his skin freckled in the summer sun. The way he inspired others-even before the serum.
My name is Bucky, he writes, and I was your friend.
And he wants to be worthy of that again someday.
#
One of the floorboards in his apartment is loose. Underneath, the cement is crumbling and easy to scoop out. He clears a hole and sets a backpack inside. It has extra clothing, knives, guns and one of his notebooks. The one with his dreams and other things to remember.
#
When Steve finds him, Bucky isn't surprised. As soon as he saw his own face in the paper, he knew his time here was up. Steve looks at him and it's unbearable. He feels exposed-like Steve's light is putting all of Bucky's awfulness on full display. He tells Steve he doesn't remember him, that he doesn't know why he pulled him out of the water because he's everything, because he's all that matters.
"This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck," Steve said.
But of course it does. It always does.
#
In the end, he surrenders, because there's nowhere else to run and because he's weak. Steve is by his side and he'd rather let himself be taken again, knowing that Steve is close, than leave him again of his own free will. It's weak and it's stupid and it backfires horribly.
"My name is Bucky," he says, when the doctor tries to provoke him. Tries to get him to talk even though he knows there's not a soul besides Steve that really wants to help him.
And when the doctor pulls out that awful, red notebook and starts reading those words, Bucky tries to fight, knows he'll fail, but he tries nonetheless.
My name is Bucky, he tells himself, even as he feels his mind slipping.
Moments later, he forgets.
#
When he comes back to himself again, Steve is there, and he calls him by name.
"What did I do this time?" he asks, though he dreads the answer.
But Steve doesn't hold it against him. Defends him, even when the ugliness of all he's done is playing out on-screen, courtesy of Zemo, even when Stark is doing his best to beat him to a pulp, full of righteous vengeance. Even then, Steve protects him, and Bucky doesn't deserve it, he knows he doesn't, but it gives him a reason to keep fighting.
#
Steve's lost everything: his friends, the Avengers, the new life he made for himself. Gave it all up for Bucky. It's more terrible than anything Bucky imagined, and worse still, because as long as they're together, Steve isn't safe. He never will be.
T'challa offers refuge-and again Bucky questions why, and how he can be shown such kindness from someone who owes him none. But he accepts it gratefully. Tells Steve it's for the bets, tries to ignore the deep hurt in Steve's eyes. This isn't giving up, he assures him, this is temporary. But I won't be a liability. I won't risk being used again, hurting you again.
The stasis-chamber is cushioned and soft, nothing like the hard metal Hydra placed him in for decades. As the ice covers him in cold comfort, he closes his eyes, he's not afraid, and he knows exactly who he is.
bucky barnes, steve rogers
word-count: ~2,600
On AO3
The building has water but no electricity. It's in a downtrodden corner of the city, out of the way, and quiet.
He finds an apartment with a functioning door lock, and clean running water. Yellowing newspapers sit, stacked and forgotten, in a corner of the room; he covers the windows with them.
There's a bed in one of the other apartments, from which he takes the mattress and blanket. The other rooms provide a table and chair, a plate, a fork and knife, and a wooden spoon. He takes those too, finds a can of peaches in the cupboard and eats them, watching the sunlight send blurry projections of the newsprint onto the warped wooden floor.
That night, he sleeps a few hours, dreams of ice and words that override his will. He wakes, stiff with terror, a face and name bubbling to the surface of his mind. "General Karpov," he says the name out loud, without intending to. It hangs in the air, expectant, so he sucks in a wavering breath, holds it, and forces himself to add the other names that follow-"Arnim Zola, Aleksander Lukin, Secretary Pierce." He remembers them, all of them, holding that damned red book, eagerly leering at him with barely veiled bloodlust.
The room seems unnaturally empty now; there should be guards, and men in white or blue, piercing his skin with needles, repairing the damage he's sustained. But the room is silent, filled only with his own breath, and the echoes of what he knows should follow: the chair, the pain, the ice-the empty un-sleep.
He leans against the wall, pulls his knees against his chest, and stays there, awake, until sunrise.
#
It almost looks like a home; shelves he made from cinderblocks and planks of wood hold his few belongings. He's added a pillow to the mattress. With a little effort, he splices wires from the neighboring building and gets the electricity working in the front half of his room-meaning he now has two working lights and a running refrigerator.
Gradually he starts to feel more human, even dares to go outside. The market is a short walk away. He tries his best to be invisible-unremarkable, drab clothing and a cap, gloves to cover his hands. People barely spare him a glance and it's such a relief to see boredom in their eyes instead of fear. He buys fruit, a notebook, a pen and a newspaper. The funds he took from the last Hydra safe-house he picked clean were substantial, but after nearly two years, they're dwindling. They'll last a few more months though-and he can't afford to stay in one place longer than that anyway.
His apartment, when he returns, is as he left it. It strikes him as strange and precious that he has a place for himself.
And more importantly, nobody died, nobody ran, nobody pleaded for their lives and he considers it a win. He has to take those small victories because they're all he has. All he dares hope for. He doesn't deserve much more than that. Doesn't deserve even that much, but he's still pathetically grateful for it.
He locks the door, props the chair against the handle, checks the windows and the spots where he's stashed his weapons.
Part of him wants to go back outside, feel the wind and sun against him again. But privacy is more crucial, it's paramount, if he wants to keep his hard-won freedom. He strips out of his shirt and runs through drills - push-ups, sit-ups, until he's worked up a good sweat. Afterwards, the cool water feels good against his heated skin. He eats one of the apples he bought, relishing the taste.
He sits on his mattress, leaning against the wall and closes his eyes. It's a dangerous thing to do-an invitation to the ghosts of his past.
They come, as they always do, memories-disjointed and blood-covered. An order, a target, a bullet, a knife, the chair, the pain, the ice. He lets them come, lets his limbs shake with fear-adrenaline and cortisol flood his system-a chemical reaction as his body recalls the physical details he's tried so hard to forget.
Sweat slick and nauseous, he steadies himself just enough to crawl to the table and grab the notebook and pen.
My name is Bucky.
He writes it again, and again, and remembers hearing his name-because it is his-spoken by the same voice over and over a hundred different ways-in joy, in anger, in desperation. Steve's voice shines in his mind, a beacon in the dark.
"You're my friend," Steve told him in that flaming inferno above the Triskelion. "I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend."
And they had been friends. He remembers that much, feels the truth of it in his bones. He can't remember it all, but more comes back every day-little innocuous moments that knock something loose.
The glisten of a chip of glass in the asphalt catches his eye, and he remembers the afternoon they spent on Jack Carley's roof after school, the bottle of beer he and Steve shared, giggling as it went straight to their heads. The way Steve's lips pursed when he was sketching, the way he made even ordinary things look like art with nothing more than a pencil and a scrap of paper.
A bird overhead reminds him of hot afternoons at the beach, when Steve was small and his grin was a mile wide, and they rode the Wonder Wheel, ate hot dogs and fries, and buried each others legs in the sand and fell asleep. The sunburn hurt but it was worth it. It was all worth it.
Steve, he writes, Sea Beach Line, Coney Island, his seventeenth birthday we sat on the pier...
#
Months go by.
Some days are better than others. Some are worse.
Days with heavy rain, of which there are many in the Spring, are the worst. The way the rain patters against the tin roof tiles sounds too much like gunfire and it jolts him awake, shaking-sweat beading on his brow. His head is overfull with unwanted thoughts, and he has a report to deliver. Some of the worst memories present themselves that way first-a mission report-sterile, unfeeling, he hears himself rattle off the facts, like that and that alone was left tucked in his brain just in case a superior ever asked him for details of something from long, long ago.
It's after he speaks the words, delivers the reports....-Lithuania, March 4th, 1987. Three targets eliminated, no witnesses.- that the details come: a husband, his wife and son. A message for an enemy. They were unarmed. They were having dinner.
Two targets, fourteen more-collateral damage. One of them survived the explosion. He shot her between the eyes. Her ball gown was green.
The details make the memories more real, harder to stomach.
He doesn't always make it to the bathroom before the sick overtakes him.
It's more than shame, it's the sense memory of what came after-the drugs, the maintenance, the ice.
Once the memories come, they stay-cycling through his head backwards and forwards, stuttering and pausing like a freeze frame on particularly memorable horrors. Targets he remembers, without context-their faces, their last moments, the sound of her gurgling as blood welled up in her mouth, the terror in his eyes as he clawed at Bucky's wrist-useless, pointless, and so desperate to survive.
There are times, when it gets to be too much, when the weakest part of him wants to forget, longs for the emptiness the chair used to give him. But he knows what comes with it. Knows that he doesn't deserve to forget.
So he lets the memories come, and writes them down, documenting decades of blood in his unsteady block print. Names, dates when he knows them, and how they died. He always remembers how they died.
Involuntary, he delivers the reports again and again, and sometimes he can hear Hydra's responses. "Gut, Soldat."
"My name is Bucky," he tells them.
And he writes it again on the page, right below the mission details.
My name is Bucky. An affirmation, a reminder that he's more than endless deaths, commands without context-that he's more than a holstered gun.
He almost believes it.
#
An old love-seat sits in the alley by the garbage. There's nothing wrong with it, and on a whim, Bucky carries it up to his apartment and sets it across from his bed. It's not like he ever has visitors, or even that he wants somewhere else to sit. But it'll come in handy when they come for him and he needs to block the door. Because they will come for him, one of these days. Hydra, or one of any number of governments. And he's not going to let himself be taken. His hard won freedom isn't much, but it's his.
Sometimes, when he can't sleep, he stares at the empty couch. Lets his vision blur until the lumps of the tattered pillow start to look like a person. He molds them into Steve, his mind easily remaking the curve of his lips, the straw shade of his hair. Sometimes he's small, sometimes he isn't, but he's always calm, radiating peace and home and everything Bucky longs for.
He tells Steve what he's remembered. Tells him the worst of it in excruciating detail, but no matter how bad it gets, Steve never gets angry and never judges him. He's a saint, in Bucky's mind, and surely he can't have been that forgiving in reality. Surely now he'd pass judgement. Bucky spent decades committing unforgivable acts-not even Steve would absolve him of those.
Sometimes he can't keep hold of Steve once he's conjured him up-a memory of Steve sketching out on the fire escape skews and he sees the Red Square behind him, lines up a shot carefully, fires the missile through the window. Steve looks up and asks, "what are you doing Buck?" And the orders said no witnesses.
Bucky knows it's a warning. Knows the reality of it, even if there's a part of him still childishly clinging to hope. He wants to think he can have that friendship back, wants to believe that he can have Steve in his life again , but he also knows that he'll hurt him again. It's not a matter of if, but when. And Bucky couldn't live with himself if he hurt Steve again. He can barely live with himself now, acutely aware of all the pain he's caused him.
And that's the worst part-knowing that he has to strive to keep Steve out of his life for good.
But Steve has been looking for him, gotten close more than once, and Bucky is so tempted too-to go to him, to fall in his arms and tell him everything, to confess it all again for real. Maybe he'd judge him, maybe he'd turn him away, but sometimes Bucky thinks it'd be worth it just to see him again, just to hear his voice one last time.
#
He can't have Steve again, not in this life, but he can have his memories of Steve. He collects them, one half-recalled dream after another. Writes down the memory of the rooftop and the beer, the days at the beach, the way Steve's coughs in the winter got so bad he thought he'd lose him, the way he wrapped himself around Steve to keep him warm, to steady his breath.
He starts a new notebook, rewriting the memories of Steve and adding new ones as they come to him. He gathers magazines and newspaper articles with his pictures, wishing they were of Steve, not Captain America. But he remembers enough to recall the features beneath the helmet and the photos are worth keeping, just to see his eyes.
The articles have some of the facts wrong, like Steve's favorite kind of ice cream and his favorite song. One of the articles said he was born in Jersey. He fixes the egregious errors, adds other important things he remembers that none of the papers think to mention. The color of his eyes, the sound of his laugh, the way his skin freckled in the summer sun. The way he inspired others-even before the serum.
My name is Bucky, he writes, and I was your friend.
And he wants to be worthy of that again someday.
#
One of the floorboards in his apartment is loose. Underneath, the cement is crumbling and easy to scoop out. He clears a hole and sets a backpack inside. It has extra clothing, knives, guns and one of his notebooks. The one with his dreams and other things to remember.
#
When Steve finds him, Bucky isn't surprised. As soon as he saw his own face in the paper, he knew his time here was up. Steve looks at him and it's unbearable. He feels exposed-like Steve's light is putting all of Bucky's awfulness on full display. He tells Steve he doesn't remember him, that he doesn't know why he pulled him out of the water because he's everything, because he's all that matters.
"This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck," Steve said.
But of course it does. It always does.
#
In the end, he surrenders, because there's nowhere else to run and because he's weak. Steve is by his side and he'd rather let himself be taken again, knowing that Steve is close, than leave him again of his own free will. It's weak and it's stupid and it backfires horribly.
"My name is Bucky," he says, when the doctor tries to provoke him. Tries to get him to talk even though he knows there's not a soul besides Steve that really wants to help him.
And when the doctor pulls out that awful, red notebook and starts reading those words, Bucky tries to fight, knows he'll fail, but he tries nonetheless.
My name is Bucky, he tells himself, even as he feels his mind slipping.
Moments later, he forgets.
#
When he comes back to himself again, Steve is there, and he calls him by name.
"What did I do this time?" he asks, though he dreads the answer.
But Steve doesn't hold it against him. Defends him, even when the ugliness of all he's done is playing out on-screen, courtesy of Zemo, even when Stark is doing his best to beat him to a pulp, full of righteous vengeance. Even then, Steve protects him, and Bucky doesn't deserve it, he knows he doesn't, but it gives him a reason to keep fighting.
#
Steve's lost everything: his friends, the Avengers, the new life he made for himself. Gave it all up for Bucky. It's more terrible than anything Bucky imagined, and worse still, because as long as they're together, Steve isn't safe. He never will be.
T'challa offers refuge-and again Bucky questions why, and how he can be shown such kindness from someone who owes him none. But he accepts it gratefully. Tells Steve it's for the bets, tries to ignore the deep hurt in Steve's eyes. This isn't giving up, he assures him, this is temporary. But I won't be a liability. I won't risk being used again, hurting you again.
The stasis-chamber is cushioned and soft, nothing like the hard metal Hydra placed him in for decades. As the ice covers him in cold comfort, he closes his eyes, he's not afraid, and he knows exactly who he is.