Chapter Text
He stands under the bridge and the target says Bucky.
He stands under the bridge and the target says Bucky, with a stupidly shocked expression on his face.
He stands under the bridge and the target says Bucky, with a stupidly shocked expression on his perfect fucking face, and suddenly the soldier doubts.
Doubting is dangerous.
It’s a lesson he learned long ago. Even if the details of that lesson are gone, the fear remains, the pain an echo of an echo. Doubting hurts. He is not in the business of doubting. He is in the business of compliance, of loyalty, of obedience and efficiency. The business of blood.
His handlers tell him that a target is a danger to their higher mission, that it’s the soldier’s duty to exterminate the threat, for the good of humanity, for world peace, and he believes them willingly, because he is also not in the business of choosing. He hasn’t doubted their mission in decades.
Until the target says Bucky.
The target says Bucky and the soldier doesn’t just doubt this mission, he doubts everything they told him, all the lessons he learned through pain and torment, all the purpose they poured into massive, empty spaces left in his head with wipe, after wipe, after wipe, after wipe.
The target says Bucky and he doesn’t want to be the Fist of Hydra. The target says Bucky and he remembers what it means to want.
He wants to steal his target away, to lock them both up somewhere safe – no place safe exists for him, that’s another lesson – and demand that the target keep saying Bucky. He wants to run his thumbs over the target’s cheekbones and stare. He wants the target to have a less dumb looking haircut.
He wants the target to go away, to never come back, to stop making him doubt. He wants the target to stay where the soldier can protect him, somewhere that won’t put that horrified expression on his irritatingly perfect face.
He wants to drop his gun and falls to his knees.
Instead he says, “Who the hell is Bucky?”
And the mission falls apart around him. (Maybe it was always supposed to.) His handler slaps his face and then takes away his doubt, takes the memory of the man on the bridge, takes everything, with rubber between his teeth and electric shocks lighting up his every nerve.
The bank vault is nearly empty. This is not the extraction point. He was never supposed to come back here.
(He was never supposed to survive Hydra’s glorious rise.)
There are three agents huddled together, watching footage of the helicarriers falling on a small television in an office down the hall from the chair. They are young scientists, panicking over what they see on screen.
The one who last put the bit in his mouth dies first. A second goes before the third can scream.
The final one lives long enough to stitch up a deep gash on his side that he can’t get a good angle on himself. He holds a gun to her head and she also removes the tracker from his shoulder and another from his lower back. They both get crushed in his metal hand.
It’s good work, even with her hands shaking.
He doesn’t want to kill her.
It makes him remember wanting again, and remember when he first remembered wanting, just a day ago.
He doesn’t want to kill her, even though she’ll have valuable intel on him to pass on to her masters when the chaos settles and someone decides to come looking for him. Killing her is the smart thing, the strategic thing, the thing he’s been taught to do over and over.
“You should quit your job,” he tells her.
Sobbing, she nods at him. “I will! I quit. I promise. I promise. I’m so sorry. Please, don’t, don’t, don’t--”
He doesn’t want to kill her, so he smacks her in the temple with the butt of his P220 with only enough force to knock her out and goes about his business.
He digs the trackers out of his metal arm and chest, then pulls on a bulletproof vest under a hooded sweatshirt and jacket he pilfers from a locker. He stuffs a backpack full of weapons, and gets out. And all in under twenty minutes.
He doesn’t let himself think about the man he pulled out of the water, the man on the bridge, Captain fucking America, until he’s tucked away in attic of an empty condo. It’s right there, on the edge of his mind, a memory, a connection, or at least a name. He thinks harder.
Thinking does not go well.
The resulting headache is so severe, he immediately blacks out.
Still, he can’t resist the temptation of thinking when he wakes, half a day later. He wants to know more. He wants back what they wiped, and wiped, and wiped.
Even if it hurts.
Memory comes in strange drips and sudden bursts, when he closes his eyes.
He lets himself sleep for exactly an hour and when he wakes again he remembers Brooklyn and an apartment and two small beds pushed together to make one big bed.
He remembers a lump, buried under a pile of blankets, a little blond head sticking out where it rested on a thin pillow.
Chasing down memories of that blond lump sears his skull, but this time he doesn’t pass out.
He does, however, throw up.
Pushing and pushing, trying to figure out why Captain America said Bucky: that also makes him throw up.
He does a lot of throwing up for a fella who hasn’t eaten anything other than grey nutrient shakes for half a goddamn century.
It takes him five days to it figure out.
The pushing is what kills him. He’ll have a blip, an incomplete memory, the flash of a girl’s smile or his mother’s name - Winnie - or a vision of a sketchbook filled with a young version of the face the soldier wears. A younger version of his face.
If he lets it be, lets the memory sit, it’s just a nudge at his temple, a headache so minimal it barely even registers as pain when compared to every torture this body’s endured. But when he goes digging, when he struggles to find out more, that’s when his head hurts so bad he can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t think.
There is an advertisement on a bus stop near the condo where he’s camped out, for a Captain America exhibit at the museum. The man on the bridge - Captain America - there’s more lurking in his head about him, too, but he can’t fucking access it.
He could learn more about Captain America in that exhibit, but visiting it might be pushing. He might end up keeled over and clutching his head right there in the middle of Smithsonian, surrounded by tourists and Captain America fans.
Or it could bring him more fragments, enough puzzle pieces of memory to put together something, a history, an identity, the story of why Captain America is important, anything at all, without passing out or throwing up.
He drinks a grey nutrition shake and thinks too hard about how the captain said Bucky, and the near-memory of that same voice saying that same name, over and over and over. The resulting headache leaves him blind, leaves him vulnerable.
Best not to risk the museum.
The memories of doling out death come back quicker, smoother. His masters were less interested in wiping all the missions, only took those from him because it was necessary to keep him from remembering anything else, too.
The faces of his victims are right there, a gruesome, ghastly parade of ghosts, and so are the details of exactly how he killed them; bones snapping under his hands, the gurgle of a slit throat, and endless pleas for mercy. The deep satisfaction of a perfectly calculated angle on a 1000-meter shot.
He has no memories of why his masters needed them dead. They never told why, and he did it just because they told him.
He does not chase those memories.
The tiny, blond lump in the bed, his name is Steve Rogers. It comes back to him while he sleeps. He closes his eyes thinking about the lump (but not thinking too hard) and he wakes up with a name, like he’d never lost it.
Steven Grant Rogers.
He was important, once. The soldier can’t figure out why.
On the twelfth day without Hydra, he remembers a girl.
Thinking about her is much easier than thinking about the lump or Captain America, less dangerous, less overwhelming, less fucking painful.
The girl comes back to him without even the assistance of sleep. Her face just drifts back into his mind, red lips, dark eyes, big smile. In his memory – useless, patchy fucking thing that it is – her Yiddish leaks into her accent when she’s upset or excited.
He feels like the girl’s connect to Captain America. In his gut, he thinks she knew Captain America. The lump - Steven Grant Rogers - might’ve known Captain America, too.
In his gut, he thinks the girl belongs in the museum, and the lump, too.
It’s a calculated risk but he visits the exhibit.
He visits the exhibit, and learns that Captain America is Steve Rogers. Captain America is also the lump, thanks to a wacky science experiment and some super soldier serum.
He visits the exhibit, and learns that Captain America is the lump is Steve Rogers, and his whole universe shifts around his ears again, just like it did on that bridge with the name Bucky.
He sits on a bench for a full thirty minutes, thinking of nothing but dragging deep breaths into his lungs, and pushing slow breaths out, before the nausea passes. He does not chase all the memories.
And then, only a few minutes after finally standing up from the bench, he sees his own face connected to a name. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky to his friends. His mother accidentally named him after the worst president in US history.
He’s back on the bench, breathing deep and desperately trying to not fucking think about it when a voice comes on over the loudspeaker, informing them that the museum is scheduled to close in ten minutes.
It’s the girl that gets him up, gets him moving through the exhibit, looking for a familiar name or a picture of the face in his memory. Red lips, dark eyes, big smile, Yiddish.
He scours the exhibit, but finds not a goddamn thing.
She does not exist in the museum, the exhibit proving to be an incomplete record of Steve Rogers’ life, of James Buchanan Barnes’ life. There is a section with the heading Before the War, but the girl’s face is missing from it and he is absolutely fucking positive she belongs right here.
The incomplete intel here is infuriating.
But at least he doesn’t throw up.
Sleep can bring more memories, but it doesn’t give him the girl’s name. He wakes up, drinks a shake, and then pushes his mind for her name so hard that he’s passing out from the pain, again. He’s only out for three hours this time.
It’s a big improvement.
He tries a library next. Libraries, he decides, are a goddamn disappointment.
Like her face did not appear in the Smithsonian, the books are also lacking. All the ones he plows through are focused on politics and history, things that happened after 1943, but the girl in his memory has a pre-war face. She's before, tangled up with the lump, with his blond bangs, always being pushed to the side and scrawny limbs, flailed at awkward angles.
He scans the glossaries of a dozen books, hoping his mind will get stuck on a familiar name.
Steve Rogers - the lump who turned into the Captain - is impossible to pick apart in his head, but the girl feels more manageable. She might even still be around, if only he could find her name. If only libraries weren’t such a goddamn disappointment.
And then one book, an old one, written in 1948, has a name and a page number in the index: Rachel Rosenbaum, page 239. He flips through the thick, musty pages, and reads.
Although Steve Rogers had no living family when he took that fateful plunge into the Arctic, he was survived by his beneficiary, one Rachel Rosenbaum of Brooklyn. As for her relationship to the Captain, the official paperwork, as filled out by the Captain himself, described her as his fiancé. The existence of a fiancé back home, given the Captain's very public affair with Miss Carter, certainly called into question the morality of Captain America. Often touted as a beacon faithfulness, purity, and the glory of the American Dream, consorting publicly with Miss Carter while Miss Rosenbaum (a Jew) was left at home to read about the relationship in the press, greatly diminishes the Captain's position as a heroic symbol. Miss Rosenbaum refused to offer comment for this work, indicating that she too has not forgiven the Captain for his indiscretion. Miss Carter remained silent on this matter.
"It's Agent Carter," he tells the book, hands digging into it spine. It creaks under his fingers.
Again, he can’t fathom how he knows these things, but he does. He knows this like he knows how to breathe. It’s Agent Carter. No freaky super solider serum was able to change the lump’s hands and voice because they were just the same on the bridge. A girl named Rachel Rosenbaum is missing from the Life Before the War section of the Smithsonian exhibit.
Rachel. The rightness of it reverberates in his head. Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.
If the Smithsonian and The Worst Book Ever Fucking Written tell him anything, it’s that his patchwork memory is somehow more reliable than the public record.
He rips the book to shreds, hiding bits and pieces of it throughout the stacks, and goes to find a computer.
The internet takes Rachel Rosenbaum and turns her into Rachel Barnes (1923 - present). World-renowned designer. Fashion icon. LGBT Rights Activist.
Rachel Barnes has the same face as the girl in his memories, painted red lips with a slight smirk peeking out at the corner of her mouth. Mischievous eyes and a stubborn chin, raised high and defiant. Like Steve.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he fights off a headache and refuses to think about the man on the goddamn bridge. Rachel first. The man on the bridge… someday.
There’s so much information on Rachel Barnes that he goes cross-eyed with it. The light from the screen makes his eyes water. There’s sweat on his forehead. He hasn’t slept for more than an hour here or there since they last took him out of cyro (all the passing out hardly counts as rest). His human hand’s shaking, reminding him that nearly everything he's tried to eat since it all fell apart – his mission, his handlers, his programming – has come back up.
He needs maintenance. He needs care. He needs answers from a more reliable source than The Worst Book Ever Fucking Written and less overwhelming than Google.
The internet takes Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes and leads him to a website for The Barnes House: A Shelter for LGBT youth. A safe space. And the place has an address.
In Brooklyn.
He meanders north, taking extra precautions to ensure he isn’t being followed. He’s not. The Winter Solider is not a priority, not when Hydra had an unprecedented number of heads cut off in one afternoon just a couple of weeks ago.
On the fourteenth day without Hydra, he wakes up from an hour of sleep, feeling like a Bucky. He tries it out in his head. I am Bucky. My mother accidentally named me after the worst president in US history. James Buchanan Barnes. But really, call me Bucky.
He doesn’t overthink it. Now is not the time for passing out or throwing up. He’s got to get to Brooklyn.
Bucky raids two recently abandoned Hydra bases on his way. He collects weapons and the nutrient shakes. Those are staying down better than anything else. They taste like chalk.
He rummages through files and finds none about himself, but that’s for the best. Given the fragile mess that is currently his brain, it’s been not to know the details of how and where he was stored and maintained.
He ends up with a large top load duffle along with his backpack, stuffed full of knives, new tac gear, and civilian clothes. The tiny Beretta he unearths is the perfect size for the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt.
The third safe house is not as abandoned. He kills eight people in under a minute and then throws up in the fucking bushes.
He does not like killing people. And ain’t that something. Bucky does not like killing people. Bucky actively dislikes killing people. In the future, he’ll avoid it as best he can.
Still, inside he finds a Nano mask to change his face and a synthetic skin sleeve to cover his arm.
He dons both immediately and resolves to make no stops till New York.
By the time he makes it to Brooklyn, hazy memories have solidified into details, dates and names, conversations and facts, how it felt to be touched gently, how it felt to have a family.
He remembers this street and all the nights spent in the building that was not The Barnes House: A Shelter for LGBT Youth back then. It was a shelter of sorts in his time too, but mostly it was a bar, one of the only places where he was allowed to be in love with his best friend.
Fuck, he thought the pain in his head would really kill him that time. After he remembered that detail and then allowed himself to think about it too hard. He had curled up in a shed, next to a toolbox and three bicycles with five flat tires, and weathered the pain. There was nothing in his stomach to throw up, but he heaved and heaved anyway.
More than any goddamn thing, he wants to just sit down and think it out. He almost remembers being in love, but these memories are so far removed from everything he's experienced in the last seventy years that it’ll take some serious consideration to puzzle it all out. It’s another fact about the person he used to be - James Buchanan Barnes, born in 1917, from Brooklyn, Dodgers fan, in love with Steve Rogers - while the emotions, how it actually felt, remain a mystery. He can feel the answers, right there on the edge of his mind, and he wants to chase the memory down harder than he’s chased down a single memory so far. Thinking any more intensely than he searched for Rachel’s name might actually kill him.
Wouldn’t it be a goddamn pity if thinking about Steve Rogers popped something in his head and killed him dead before he even made it to Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes and her shelter?
But now that he’s back in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood that he still can navigate easily, and he doesn’t know how to reach out and talk to her.
Lurking in the shadows across the street, he watches someone who's not Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes speak to a grubby teenager on the front steps of the old building that was once a bar. She’s young, mid thirties maybe, and her hair is dark brown, nearly the same shade as her skin. If this were decades ago, he’d assume that she’s Puerto Rican. There were a lot of Puerto Ricans around here, decades ago.
What a fucking nonsensical thing to remember, but at least it doesn’t make him throw up.
The woman opens the door wide and speaks too softly for his enhanced hearing to pick up on, but eventually the teenager nods and walks through the door. The woman who is not Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes pulls the door closed behind her and throws the lock.
Knocking on that closed door is a terrible option, so he climbs the fire escape on the building across the street from The Barnes House: A Shelter for LGBT Youth, and settles on the roof for surveillance.
The next morning, Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes takes her coffee on the balcony of the fifth floor apartment, in the next door building that’s now connected to Sully’s old bar. She sets the mug down on the table, hooks her cane over the edge, and then lowers herself into a chair, moving like her whole body aches. She spreads out a paper in front of her, using what appears to be a magnifying glass to read the small print.
He will scale the building, access the roof, and then drop down on the balcony. He will ask Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes if this can be a shelter for him, too, and he will request soup. Matzo ball soup. He can almost taste it on his tongue, the memory is so strong. It makes his stomach lurch.
He will do all these things, as soon as he can coax his stubborn limbs into moving. They are malfunctioning on him for no goddamn reason. His current state of frozenness appears to be psychosomatic.
In the end his delay works in his favor. At 9:00 AM, the elevator brings the same woman he saw yesterday to the fifth floor. Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes turns to smile at her when she steps onto the balcony, but she does not get up. The two converse briefly, before the woman goes back inside. She then cleans and cooks, delivering Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes breakfast at 9:30 AM exactly. There are pills on the tray. Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes takes all three after she eats.
After breakfast, both women get on the elevator together and eventually exit the building through the back door. There are two teenagers with them, and he scrambles down to follow when it becomes clear that the four of them will be going somewhere on foot.
They've gotten less than a block by the time he catches up, taking care to follow unobtrusively. The Nano mask itches, but changing his face is well worth it. He hides his hand in his pocket.
Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes moves slowly. One of the teenagers – a skinny boy with black hair, thirteen years old, low threat level – takes her arm and she leans on him instead of her cane. Another drags along a wheelchair.
They spend the afternoon at a familiar park that he's lost the name of. Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes sits on a bench with the other woman. The teenagers throw around a baseball and wander along the waterfront before returning to the bench.
All four make their way back when the sun gets unbearably hot, the teenagers taking turns pushing Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes in the wheelchair.
Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes returns to the fifth floor alone. He could either go back to the roof of the building across the street to continue his surveillance or follow her.
Following her is a truly terrifying prospect, but Bucky wants someone to say his name, the way he hears it in his head, the way the captain said it on the helicarrier.
And it can’t be Steve Rogers, not when simply thinking about him hurts so goddamn much.
So it’s gotta be Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes.
Bucky takes off the mask. The face he wears is his own.
She's sitting in a rocking chair in the living room when he drops silently onto the balcony. In her lap she's got yarn and knitting needles.
His mind conjures another image, of Rachel unwrapping yarn for Chanukah that year they could afford to give it to her. She had squealed with joy, pulled them both into a tight hug, and then two weeks later, the lump had a new scarf. "This yarn was a gift, Rach," said Steve, begrudgingly taking the scarf. "You weren't supposed to turn around and give it back to me!" Rachel had patted Steve's cheek and wrapped the scarf a little tighter around his neck.
The memory has his face pulling up into a smile but he doesn’t go searching for more of it. He reaches up to feel his cheeks with his right hand, not used to his mouth moving in such a way. These muscles creak with disuse.
He watches Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes knit and does not know what to do next.
On the missions given to him, he’d either break in quietly or smash through a window but this is his own mission. Finding Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes is the second choice he's made in seventy years, after pulling the Captain from the water, and neither option for entering the apartment seems right.
In the end he knocks on the door, even though the thing’s unlocked and he could just stroll right in. No break in required. Knocking is just the polite thing to do.
It takes Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes a long time to stand and shuffle towards the back door. She stops abruptly, dropping her cane when she sees him. Her eyes are wide, her mouth hangs open, but this is not fear that has her staring.
He is well acquainted with fear. This is shock.
He could not say why, but he gives in to the urge to lift his non-weaponized hand to wave. He even attempts a small smile.
It's enough to startle Rachel Rosenbaum/Barnes into action and she shuffles closer, leaving the cane abandoned on the floor where she dropped it. She does not hesitate to slide the door open for him.
"Bucky?" she whispers and something in his chest unspools. The name makes breathing easier, makes his hand tremble.
"Why are you called Rachel Barnes on the internet?" he blurts out.
That was not what he intended to say. Actually, he’s got no goddamn clue what he intended to say. He didn’t plan this far ahead. That was a mistake.
Rachel barks out a laugh. "At first, I was pretending to be Beck’s cousin. And then I used that name for work. You know, back in 1950 there were still people who didn't want a Jew designing their clothes?"
He shakes his head and Rachel's smile falters a little.
"I married your sister," she says. "That’s the reason I kept it. I always felt so married to your sister, even before it was legal. Beck and I got hitched the moment we could, in Massachusetts."
He nods. "She's gone, isn't she? Just like everyone else."
Once he had a mother who accidentally named him after the worst president ever and a sister who scowled a lot and read everything she could get her hands on. He had a father who came back from a war quiet and a blond lump in his bed every night.
Bucky will not chase the memories. He just breathes and watches Rachel Barnes. She’s got tears in her eyes.
"Yeah," she replies. "Beck’s been gone for about a year now."
"A year ago I was in storage, in cryo," he says without thought. "Or maybe I was assassinating a diplomat in Ukraine. I'm not sure. Depends on the month."
Rachel Barnes' sharp little intake of breath and her increased heart rate indicate that this was not the right thing to say. Before, she was shocked. This is fear now and he takes a step back, gives her space, hunches his shoulders and tries to appear smaller.
“Sorry,” he whispers.
Rachel opens her mouth and he braces himself, ready to flee when she tells him to leave or calls the police. Instead she says, "Would you like to come in and stay for dinner?"
Cocking his head to the side, he studies her, old and infirm and still the girl in his memories, with red lips and big eyes. She married his sister and built somewhere safe for kids to go, kids like they were once kids. Queer kids.
Her face is missing from the Smithsonian but not from his memory. She is safe.
He is not safe. Now that he's got assassinations on the brain, all he can see is blood and death. He can't go into Rachel Barnes' safe home, bringing blood and death with him.
Bucky shakes his head and takes another step back. Rachel shuffles forward, reaching out but not touching him.
"Hey, now," she says. Her voice is raspier than in his memories, but it’s undeniably hers. The Yiddish is still there, like his bubbe. "Not everyone is gone. I'm here. You're here, somehow. And Steve, too. Have you seen Steve?"
He braces himself to that familiar head-splitting pain, but it’s not so bad, just a little throbbing around his temple. Uncomfortable, but far from unbearable. Really, it’s a goddamn vacation compared to everything else.
Swallowing against the lump in his throat is difficult. So is nodding his reply. His cheeks burn red hot and he can't look at Rachel Barnes. He stares down at his dirty boots for a long time before he identifies this emotion.
Guilt. Shame.
Oh, he's seen Steve all right. He bashed his face in with a metal fist and pumped him full of bullets. He was a whisper away from leaving him in the river to drown. He's seen Steve and he's so fucking ashamed.
"Bucky," Rachel says. She's so soft and so gentle, that he actually manages to look at her again. Her eyes are sad, her expression earnest. "It’s so good to see you. I missed you so much. Please come in. Will you have dinner with me?"
She's pleading with him, begging. She doesn't want him to disappear into this familiar city, the one superimposed over the map in his memory. She doesn't even want him to stay on her balcony. She's asking a question, giving him a choice even as she makes her own desire clear.
She's asking a question, not giving a command, so Bucky replies with a question of his own.
"Can we have soup?"
The answer is yes, but Rachel Barnes is too tired and her arthritic hands are worn out from the knitting, so Bucky will have to do most of the work. She gently suggests he shower first and Bucky flinches, remembers freezing pinpricks on his skin and too much pressure.
"I don't like to be cold," he says.
"Well, crank that thing hot as it’ll go. It's a good shower. A modern shower. Nothing like what we grew up with."
Bucky wants to chase that memory, to figure out what the showers they grew up with were like, but Rachel would probably be a bit alarmed if he collapsed, clutching his head and moaning out his pain.
He leaves the near-memories of old showers in the past, and regards this modern one warily.
Rachel rummages through a dresser, pulling out soft sweat pants and an even softer t-shirt. She offers no explanation on why she has clothes that will probably fit him, but Bucky can guess who they belong to.
"We can throw what you're wearing now in the wash,” she says. “Towels are under the sink. You take as long as you need and then we'll get started on dinner."
Bucky nods, turning away and moving towards the shower. He pauses before entering the bathroom.
"You can’t tell him," Bucky says.
"Why not?" Rachel asks. She might be old, her face lined with wrinkles for every year she's lived, but she's still sharp. She doesn't have to ask tell what to who?
"Have you seen him?" Bucky asks, pressing his luck. The Potomac memories seem safe enough for now. He can discuss them with no pain.
Well, no pain in his head anyway. His heart is another goddamn matter entirely.
"Yes," says Rachel. "Less, since he moved to DC. But I've seen him plenty. He didn't mention that he'd seen you."
"He wouldn't," Bucky says, flexing his metal fingers.
"Oh." Rachel stares at the hand like she's just now noticing it's a weapon. "Oh. That was you, wasn't it? Fighting him in DC? On that highway and then on that flying monstrosity before it crashed with the others."
The shame is back, and the guilt. Bucky can't look at her, but he nods.
“Did you choose to fight him? On your own, did you make that choice?”
Bucky laughs and then bites back the sound when it comes out painfully hysterical. “I haven’t chosen anything on my own in years, Rach.”
Except to pull Steve from the water. Except to come here.
“I see,” she whispers but Bucky very much doubts that she does see. How could she see? How could he explain? It’s all beyond even the worst nightmares of someone like Rachel, who lived a nice, long life. “Well, you’re here now. Was that a choice?”
Bucky stares and stares at his feet. “I can go. I hurt him and I should go."
"No!" Rachel says. Her panic startles him, leaves him confused. "Please don't leave. Please. Just shower and we'll make matzo ball soup. Please sleep here tonight, too, and maybe between all that we can talk a little? Just a little?"
Bucky stares at Rachel for a long moment. Her face is familiar, even aged as it is. She is safe.
"Okay," he agrees.
Rachel makes her matzo meal from scratch. She keeps a jar in the cupboard, and Bucky's just gotta add eggs and water to once the broth is going, rolling the balls following Rachel's instructions for size and shape. They cheat on the broth as Rachel apparently stopped boiling up her own stock years ago. He doesn't use his metal hand, except to slice vegetables.
It’s nice, holding a knife for reasons other than stabbing.
The matzo balls cook up and expand in the soup. He stares down as they grow, remembering a different kitchen and a beat up cast iron pot. The smell is the same and Bucky breathes deep. He does not chase the memory.
Well, it’s actually a lot of separate memories. They ate a lot of goddamn soup.
He starts with only the broth, a few bits of soft onion and carrot and celery. Rachel raises an eyebrow at his bowl but says nothing as she blows on a spoonful. The broth stays down for half an hour, so he has another bowl, adding a matzo ball this time. That works out, too, and Bucky works his way through the rest of the pot, eating in increments.
Matzo ball soup is far superior to those fucking nutrient shakes. They’re all getting dumped in the trash, as soon as he’s done eating.
When he's finished, Bucky leans back in his chair, warm and full for the first time in memory. He searches for a word to match the feeling.
Content. He settles on content and the memory of feeling this way in the past is an echo. He lets it sit.
"Okay," Rachel says. Her voice is croaky and Bucky's kept her up too late, later than she went to sleep last night. "Now it’s time to find a compromise."
"Compromise," he repeats. He knows this word, understands its dictionary definition, but has no context for what it actually means.
"You don't want me to tell Steve you’re here," she says. The name makes Bucky flinch, but Rachel keeps talking. "I want to tell Steve you’re here, because I’m positive that he's out there looking for you as we speak, worrying himself sick."
Bucky filches again. Steve shouldn't be sick. Every instinct he's got, buried deep under layers of programming and muscle memory and every lesson he ever learned at the hands of every handler that taught him that the only way to stop hurting was to comply, does not want Steve to be sick.
"We both want you to stay here tonight," she says. "We both want you to stay here indefinitely?" she asks.
Bucky stares at the tabletop as he considers, before nodding. This is a good place. Rachel is safe. Her food stays in his stomach, makes him warm and full and content. He would very much like to stay here indefinitely.
"Okay," Rachel says. "So we mostly want the same thing. Here's my proposal for a compromise. And if you don't like it, we'll come up with something that works for you, too. We’ll negotiate."
Another foreign concept, but Bucky nods anyway and listens.
"I'm gonna call Steve," Rachel says and Bucky panics, rearing back and almost toppling out of his chair.
He cannot see Steve. He very recently almost killed Steve, hit him and hit him and hit him. In his face, right in his perfect, treasured, sacred face.
He’ll see Steve and he’ll give into the temptation to chase down all those memories. It’ll be impossible to resist pushing, digging around in his own head even if the pain kills him. Steve’s important and Bucky hasn’t quite figured out why yet, but he can’t see him or he’ll really do something stupid.
On top of the fear that seeing Steve will have him destroying what’s left of his own head as he digs around for memories, there’s still the possibility that it will trigger something in him again. He could complete the last mission Hydra gave him, and without anyone to put him in the chair, he’ll become himself again later, surrounded by blood, Steve dead and maybe Rachel, too.
On top of that, he’s not ready. He can’t bear to see him, not while he’s still spread so thin and vulnerable. Just the few memories of Steve, fragmented and dusty as they are, overwhelm him. Everything he remembers about Steve Rogers is nothing compared to the sheer breadth and scope of what he can’t remember about the life they had together and how much Bucky felt for him. It is enough to blow him over and he can’t yet. He just can’t.
Steve isn’t supposed to see Bucky when he’s hurting this much. He’s supposed to wait until Steve’s back is turned. Then he can grimace and flinch and hurt, without the risk of his pain spilling over onto Steve, too.
“Hold your horses,” Rachel says, palms up. The command in her voice is the only thing that keeps him in the chair and not fleeing out the window. “I’ve gotta call Steve,” she says again. “But I'll make him promise to come nowhere near here, alright? You won’t have to see him yet, but he’ll be so relieved to know that you’re safe.”
“You think Steve’s worried?” Bucky whispers, rocking a little in his seat. That’s unacceptable. Even more unacceptable than seeing Steve.
“I do,” Rachel says, nodding.
“And he’ll be less worried, if he knows I’m here?”
“He will.”
“And you’ll be able to get him to stay away?”
All smirking and confident, Rachel looks decades younger. “Sure will.”
Bucky’s silent for a very long time. Rachel does not press him to answer before he can remember how to make a decision for himself.
Eventually, he says, “Okay.”
Rachel turns on the speaker, setting her cellphone on the tabletop as it dials. After two rings, Bucky decides that he needs to be under the table for this conversation so he crawls down on the floor, crouching close to Rachel’s feet. Rachel doesn’t even flinch.
The phone rings twice more.
"Rachel?" says Steve.
His voice echoes in Bucky’s head, a memory of a memory. Like funhouse mirrors, it reverberates around and multiplies. In his head, Steve’s said Rachel’s name so many times it makes Bucky dizzy.
Bucky breathes deep and focuses on this conversation and nothing else. No memories, just this moment. He does not dig deeper. He does not push. He will not chase the memory.
"You alright?” Steve presses on, before Rachel can reply. “What's going on?"
"Where are you right now?" Rachel asks. She's speaking slowly and carefully, like she's still figuring out a problem.
Bucky’s the problem. Getting Steve to agree not to come rushing back here, guns blazing, heroic music playing in the background, American flag rippling majestically behind him, ready to save the goddamn day – that’s the problem.
Who’s strong and brave, here to save the American Way? Who vows to fight like a man for what’s right, night and day?
Bucky blinks, not sure where this song’s from, although he is pretty certain he sorta hates Captain America all on his own, not just from his most recent mission directives.
"You know I can't tell you that," Steve says.
"Yes, yes, I know. Your little quest is a secret one and you can’t tell me anything about it, blah, blah, blah.”
Bucky almost laughs. It feels as strange as smiling.
“We tend to call them missions, Rach,” says Steve. He sounds like he’s clenching his jaw and rolling his eyes.
“I don't need to know where you are specifically," Rachel replies. "Just, how far are you from Brooklyn?"
The sound that comes out of the speakerphone might be a laugh. And it might be a sob. It makes Bucky’s chest ache.
"Pretty far from Brooklyn."
"Okay." Rachel takes a deep breath. "When I tell you this, you need to promise to stay out of Brooklyn."
"What? No. Rachel, why?"
There’s a noise, rustling, like Steve’s standing up and ready to sprint back to Brooklyn. Under the table, Bucky rolls his eyes.
"Steve,” Rachel says. She takes a deep breath. “He's here."
Nothing but silence on the other end of the phone. Bucky fists his hands in his lap to prevent himself from punching through Rachel’s nice tile floor with his metal hand.
“Who?” Steve’s voice is a ragged whisper. Bucky works even harder to not destroy the floor.
“What, you think I was born yesterday? I know who you fought on that flying barge thing over the river. Bucky! I’m talking about James Buchanan Barnes. Thanks for telling me he’s still alive and kicking, by the way. We just had matzo ball soup for dinner and now he’s hiding under the table.”
Very gently, Bucky pokes Rachel in the leg. That was uncalled for, telling Steve that he currently feels better sitting at Rachel’s feet than sitting in a chair. She giggles a little and nudges at him playfully.
"Okay,” says Steve, sounding like he’s very much not okay. “Okay. I’ll get on a plane. But to get to a plane I guess we’ll need to get in the car first. We’re kinda in the middle of nowhere. There’s like ten people in this fucking town. Sam! Wake up! Where’re the keys?"
Bucky gently pokes Rachel in the leg again, a silent I told you so even though Bucky never actually told her so, only thought that once Steve knew he was here, he’d come running. Once Rachel admits she was wrong about this whole goddamn compromise he’ll crawl out the window and flee into the night. He’ll work his way to Romania. He’ll get lost in Bucharest.
Also, who is this Sam?
"Steven Grant Rogers!" Rachel yells, making Bucky jump. "Stop right this minute and listen to me."
It gets Steve to shut up. Bucky’s impressed.
Steve breathes deep. "Okay. He's there? With you? At the apartment?"
"Showed up on the balcony this afternoon," Rachel says. She suddenly sounds all of her ninety or so years, tired and thin.
Steve swallows. "And is he..."
"He’s fine," Rachel replies. She bends to look under the table, frowning at him. Bucky’s bites his lip and looks away, looks back and nods, giving her permission to tell Steve whatever she wants. “Well, he’s a bit of a mess.”
Bucky snorts. What an understatement.
“He didn’t…” Steve gulps for air. “He’s been… They hurt him and he didn’t remember, Rach. They made him forget everything and they fucking used him. Didn’t know me or himself, but then he saved me. He pulled me out of the river.”
Bucky shivers and does not say, “Pulled you out only after I put you there, shot you three times and broke your cheekbone and let you fall.”
Rachel straightens back up. Under the table she reaches out towards Bucky, offering a hand. With great caution, he takes it and laces their fingers together.
“Well, I don’t know what all he remembers,” she says, squeezing his hand. “But he knows his name, knows who I am, knows he wanted matzo ball soup.”
"He always loved that soup," Steve says. Through the speaker, he sniffles. "That's good right? That he found you. That he came to you."
"It is," she agrees, sounding weary again. "And he wants to stay here for awhile, but he has a condition and you're not going to like it."
"What?"
Steve’s sounds so broken and so desperate. Bucky closes his eyes.
"At first, he didn't want me to tell you he was here at all,” Rachel continues. “He was very insistent on it, before the soup, but after he was warm and full, he was a bit more open to compromise."
"Compromise?" Steve asks, stunned.
"He didn't want me to tell you at all, but I said no, absolutely not. Told him you were off running yourself ragged, surely taking way too many risks, trying to find him. Because that’s what you’re doing, right? Your secret quest you wouldn’t tell them about?”
“It’s a mission, Rachel.”
“And,” Rachel says like Steve didn’t speak, “when I told him that you were so worried, it would be cruel not to tell you and I wouldn't do it. He agreed to let me call.”
"Okay, good.” Steve huffs out a breath. “Thanks, Rach. So what's the condition?"
"Steve, bubbeleh, he needs some time. You can’t come home right now."
They all sit there in silence for a while. Bucky hiding under the table, pressed up against Rachel’s leg, Rachel holding his hand, Steve somewhere far from Brooklyn, breathing like he’s a hundred pound asthmatic in 1939.
It’s hard work, not chasing down that memory. It’s hard work, just accepting that he knows these things without examining how or why or when or who.
That familiar, terrible breathing is almost enough to make Bucky change his mind about staying away from Steve.
But then Steve sniffles and says, “Okay.”
1935
A month and a half after Sarah Rogers starts coughing up blood, Steve shows up on the doorstep of the Barnes family brownstone. He doesn’t come right in like he usually would. He doesn’t even knock. Bucky only finds him out there because he opens the front door to step out of it, jumping a little in surprise as he pulls his coat on.
“I thought we were meeting at the theater,” he says, frowning down at his watch. “And not for another half hour. Did I get the time wrong?”
Steve stays silent and Bucky’s not paying enough attention to figure out that something’s wrong until he pulls the door shut behind him, steps forward, and Steve still doesn’t move. He’s frozen there, expression far away.
In front of him, he holds a telegram. The paper rustles in Steve’s shaking hands.
Bucky swallows. “Steve?” he whispers.
Steve startles, glancing around like he’s not sure how he got here. Then he stares up at Bucky, lip quivering and eyes wide.
“Steve?” he says again, heart racing, stomach suddenly full of stones.
Steve just clenches his jaw, shakes his head, and presses the telegram into Bucky’s chest. He doesn’t even need to read it, to know what it says. Still, through the haze of his shock he’s having a hard time believing that Sarah’s really gone, so he forces himself to read the words on the page.
He wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his coat, and then reads it again.
“Jesus,” Bucky whispers. He stares at Steve, who’s staring at the ground, and reaches out a hand, aiming for his shoulder.
“Don’t.” Steve takes a step back, nearly losing his balance on the top step. He catches himself on the railing and then digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Don’t,” he says again. And it’s a demand, a command.
Bucky takes a deep breath. If Steve’s holding it together, then Bucky can too. He can keep from sobbing all over the front stoop.
“Come in,” he says, opening the front door and hustling Steve inside. He follows, but gives Bucky a wide berth, like he can’t bear to be touched.
They stand there in the foyer for a few long seconds, Steve still staring at his shoes, Bucky still staring at Steve with the goddamn telegram clutched in his fist.
He’s got absolutely no idea what to do next, what with crying all over each other off the table, so he turns towards the hall, calling out for his mother.
It’s the only thing to do, in times like this. Call out for his mother.
Winnie will know what to do next. She’ll mourn her friend, but first she’ll grind her teeth together and tell them what to do next.
“Ma!”
“Don’t you holler at me, boy!” his ma hollers at him from the kitchen. “Come talk to me using your inside voice!”
Bucky shuffles into the kitchen to find his mother kneading dough at the counter. Beck’s beside her, looking morose as anything with her arms crossed over her chest. She ain’t helping at all. Ma’s got flour in her hair.
“What’s so important that you feel the need to scream at me in my own home?” she asks.
Bucky can’t manage the words. He silently holds the telegram in front of her face, so she can see it without getting dough all over it, and Ma reads it only once, inhaling sharply and blinking back tears. “Oh,” she murmurs.
Beck snatches it out of Bucky’s hands, seems to read it over and over again, her eyes flying across the page.
Ma closes her eyes, tilts her face up towards the ceiling, and murmurs a prayer under her breath. When she looks at Bucky again, there’re no tears in her eyes.
“Where is he?”
“Foyer,” Bucky says.
“Bring him in. Sit him down. I’ll get the whiskey.” She turns away to wash her hands, and then glances over her shoulder at Beck, where she’s still staring at the telegram, sobs wracking her chest.
Bucky’s almost jealous. He wants to cry with everything he’s got, but that’s not what Steve needs right now. Instead he takes a deep breath and sets about following his mother’s instructions to get some whiskey in his best friend.
Except Steve’s made a liar out of him. He’s definitely not in the foyer. He’s not anywhere.
Bucky crawls into bed and can’t sleep. He cries himself dry into his pillow and resists the urge to go searching for Steve. He already looked in all the usual places, only returning home when it got late enough for his parents to worry.
“You can look in the morning,” Ma said, hugging him tight. “Maybe he just needs to grieve alone for tonight.”
Bucky doesn’t want to grieve alone, but it’s not his mother who spent years healing the sick in TB wards only to get it herself and die a month and a half later. So he stays put until sunup, and then sets out, determined to track down his best friend.
Steve’s not at the rear tenement he shared with his mother, the fifth one in the last three years. He's not in any of their favorite drinking spots or the art school or down by the water, where he likes to draw and look at the activity on the river, despite the smell.
The Boyds haven't seen him, but they do give Bucky a couple pork chops to pass on when he does find Steve.
As the sun gets high in the sky, he checks Steve's place once more before giving up and heading home. It's a walk, from Brooklyn Height to Park Slope.
Bucky prefers the old neighborhood, prefers a seat on the floor by Steve, reading while Steve sketches and Sarah cooks.
Except that ain’t gonna happen. Not ever again.
When he gets home he's missed lunch by an hour. His father is in the sitting room with a paper and a cigarette because it’s a Saturday and he does not work on the Sabbath. His glasses are low on his nose, a single dark eyebrow raised when he gets a good look at Bucky.
"Sorry, I missed lunch," Bucky says, taking off his cap and wringing it between his hands.
"You are forgiven. And I think you'll want to get in the kitchen."
Finally, after a whole night worrying about him and half a day searching, he finds Steve. He's seated at the kitchen table, across from Bucky's ma. Rebecca is huddled at his side, her arms laid flat on the tabletop and her head pillowed on them. Not one of them notices Bucky, loitering in the entryway.
"Was there anything else?" asks Ma. She taps a pencil on a piece of paper, where she's written down a list.
Steve shakes his head, his face stony and almost terrifyingly blank.
"I'll take care of everything," she says. Her voice is soft and gentle. In her grief, she's allowing herself to sound more Irish than she normally would. "It’ll be a good service."
"I really should do something."
"What do you want to do?"
Steve shrugs. "I dunno. But she's my mother. I should do something to help."
"She was my friend," Ma says. "And unlike you, son, I actually want to put this together. If you want a task, I'll give you one, but if you don't then you'll let me do this for my friend."
In his chair, Steve slumps over. That's more terrifying than his emotionless expression, watching all the fight drain right out of Steve. Steve, under normal circumstances, is all fight, and Bucky wants to cry all over again.
Seeing his best friend defeated is almost as hard and knowing that Sarah Rogers is never going to hug him or scold him or squeeze his hand and exchange worried looks with him over Steve, as he sleeps off some sickness or another.
"Thanks, Winnie," Steve murmurs.
Beck lifts her head and sets a hand on Steve's shoulder. Everyone stays still like that for a long moment, until Steve stands up abruptly, his chair legs scraping against the floor.
"Thank you," he says again. "I gotta go."
He flees from the kitchen, barely glancing at Bucky as he ducks past him, pulling on his jacket as he goes.
Bucky looks at his ma. "Go," she says, nodding after Steve. “And make sure you bring him back here, James. I mean it. That boy will not be left out in the cold, all on his own.”
He catches up half a block later. Steve walking like he's got the devil on his heels, so fast he's already starting to wheeze. Bucky falls into step at his side easily and has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying anything. The litany of, “Slow down, are you okay, I miss your ma so much breathing hurts,” is all resting right there on his tongue but Bucky knows it won't help.
It would only get Steve defensive and angry or, even worse, defeated and sad.
"You got any money?" Steve asks when they’re halfway back to Steve's place.
"Sure," says Bucky, rummaging around in his pockets and emerging with a couple of bills, his pay for helping out Tateh at the garage last week. "How much do you need? I can get more."
Steve huffs. "Just get us a bottle, alright?"
"Yeah, okay."
Bucky lets their arms brush as they walk. Steve doesn’t move away.
"And," says Steve, after they walk another block. He cuts himself off and clears his throat. "And just because I'm an orphan now don't mean I gonna start taking your charity, Buck. I'll pay for my half of the bottle."
"No, you won't," Bucky insists. "You can just get the next one. And you're no orphan."
"Both my parents are dead."
That statement is so blunt and so brutal, it has Bucky flinching. "You've got family, Steve. You're not alone."
“Well, apparently," Steve snaps. At his sides, his hands form fists. "Your ma's planning the whole damn funeral for me."
Bucky gets them a bottle.
Back at the tenement, Steve's got the curtains pulled tight over the window. They’re dingy, an unappealing brown, and when the sun filters through them the room looks even more gloomy, like there are dust storms and thunder clouds outside instead of a perfectly lovely summer day.
Bucky sits next to Steve on the sofa and accepts a drink when Steve hands him a glass.
In the last 24 hours, Steve's been busy. All the little touches that made this place the Rogers' home and not just another dumpy, overcrowded, poorly ventilated tenement are gone.
There are no pictures on the shelf, no crochet doilies on table tops. Steve's art is missing from the walls, and so are Sarah’s landscapes. He’s even put away that fine china vase, the one that made the trip across the Atlantic by some miracle, through Ellis Island, and into Brooklyn. It belonged to Sarah's mother.
Suddenly, this place is so cold. It doesn't smell like Sarah's cooking. It's devoid of her laugh and already Steve's erased every trace of her presence.
Bucky doesn't understand why Steve needs to grieve that way, shutting up every bit of his mother and shutting himself up with it. He doesn't understand why Steve ain’t crying or anywhere close to it, not when Bucky’s been on the verge of breaking down all day.
But Steve's never been able to get away with being vulnerable like that, not when he's got his size and his sickness to make up for. Not if he still wants people to treat him like a man.
Steve drinks steadily, but doesn't speak. Bucky doesn't say anything either. He sat Shiva for his grandfather when he was ten and that's the first rule; don't talk until the grieving do, and then only talk about the dead if the grieving talk about the dead. His bubbe wanted to talk about her husband. Steve does not want to talk about his ma, at least not right now.
"Think I'll take your ma up on that job offer," Steve says abruptly, as he pours himself another glass and tops off Bucky’s, too.
"What job offer?"
"Working in the office. Filing, or whatever she needs me to do. Maybe your pop will teach me to drive. I wouldn't be any good loading up the deliveries, but I could drive a truck. My feet reach the pedals fine enough. It wouldn't be a bad way to make a buck."
Bucky gnaws on the inside of his cheek. By the time they make it to the funeral, his mouth's gonna be a bloody mess if Steve keeps carrying on like such an utter idiot.
"Didn't the exhaust have your asthma acting up last time we caught a ride?" Bucky asks, like the vivid memory of Steve hunched over in the passenger's seat, coughing so hard it even made Bucky's chest hurt, doesn’t make him shiver to this day.
"Right," says Steve, downing the rest of his drink. "Well, guess its work in the office, then. With the women."
"My ma would tan your hide, if she heard you taking that disparaging tone, talking ‘bout her work. You know as well as I do that she basically runs the whole business and that my tateh prefers to get his hands dirty in the shop."
"I know," says Steve, groaning. His head falls back to rest against the couch cushions and Bucky stares at the glass in his hands to prevent himself from staring at the stretch of muscle in his best friend's throat. "I know. I'm awful right now, Buck, just terrible to be around. You should just go."
Bucky doesn't even bother replying to that, just lets out an incensed snort. The noise has Steve almost smiling and he turns his head, looking at Bucky for the first time all day. "My ma wouldn't like the way I said that, either."
"Couple of hard working ladies, the pair of them."
"Yeah."
"So, you'd work part time for my parents? Finish up those art classes?"
Steve shrugs and Bucky is no longer able to just sit here and bite his cheek.
"Steve," he says. “You’re gonna stay in class, right?”
"I'm not in the mood for a lecture."
"Steve--"
"Please," he says, voice small and broken. Steve finally sounds shattered, and Bucky shatters right along with him.
"Okay, pal. Okay. There's no need to get into this now. We'll figure it all out."
Eyes closed, Steve nods and scoots closer, until his face presses into Bucky's neck. Getting his arms around Steve is such a relief. It's all he's wanted to do, since yesterday when Steve showed him that telegram and then fled.
He sighs and holds on tight. Steve presses as close as he can, and when that isn't close enough, he climbs into Bucky's lap, skinny calves bracketing the outside of Bucky's thighs.
This is not the first time Steve's crawled into his lap. It's become a semi regular occurrence since that first time, right after Sarah was diagnosed. Steve actually did cry that afternoon, big, angry tears while he cursed God. And Bucky held him, tried to provide a little comfort. He's not sure who kissed who.
It was probably Bucky. He's been trying not to kiss Steve for years.
Since, Bucky’s made sure Steve starts it. That way, it’s not about Bucky, never about Bucky’s inability to just be normal and go after a girl. Instead, it’s about Steve and whatever he needs from Bucky to make it a little easier. To make him forget for a few hot moments. To make him feel good when everything else is just so damn bad.
Against his chest, Steve is shaking. Bucky holds his breath, ready for Steve to finally cry, ready to cry right along with him. Instead, Steve opens his mouth against Bucky’s throat, drags his teeth against Bucky’s skin and moves Bucky’s collar out of the way with his teeth.
He grinds his hips down into Buck’s lap, and Bucky still doesn’t understand why Steve needs to grieve this way, but he groans anyway. He wraps his arms around Steve’s waist, dragging him closer. They pant and rut and move until they’ve both ruined their pants.
They get changed and pull the cushions off the couch, sleeping in a pile on the floor.
When Bucky asks Steve to come live with his family, he’s not even surprised when Steve says no.
But he keeps asking, keeps pressing, until he’s down right begging after they put Sarah in the ground. Maybe it’s the begging that does it, or maybe Steve’s just too fucking sad to argue anymore, but he finally agrees. He finally believes Bucky when he tells him that he doesn’t have to do it all on his own.