Sunlight Off Snow
A/N: Beta'd by the lovely Esther Huffleclaw (who beta's like 99% of my stuff and I usually forget to say!).
Steve and Sam were looking for a dead man, but the Soldier found them first. He'd been watching them for a while, following them, listening, so he knew that Steve was sometimes called 'Captain' or 'Cap' or even 'Rogers' and Sam was sometimes called 'Wilson' or 'Falcon.' They were both good at what they did, but finding phantoms wasn't it. If he was to be found by these two, it would be the Soldier's doing.
He wasn't sure if he wanted to be found.
He wasn't used to wanting things. He wasn't used to the idea that it might matter.
But when Steve stood on a small hotel balcony in the cool air one evening, strong hands gripping the railing, staring out at the spray of city lights that eclipsed the stars, and whispered, "Bucky, where are you?" the Soldier suddenly wanted to say, 'Here,' because he wasn't Bucky, but he wanted to be. Bucky was a hero. Bucky was remembered and revered, because Bucky had laid down his life for his friends.
He dropped softly down onto the concrete behind Steve, but his words jammed in his throat like bullets in a malfunctioning gun. Steve stood very still then turned around; the Soldier had allowed Steve to hear him, but he still couldn't say anything, and he couldn't help flinching—if only slightly—as those earnest, unnerving eyes took him in.
"Bucky." That name again, the dead man's name. What Steve always called him. Not that he could blame Steve; the dead man in the museum had his face. Or he had the dead man's face. One of the two.
He wanted to nod, wanted to say, 'Yes,' wanted to tell Steve it was okay, because it hurt to see all of that in Steve's eyes. What he said instead was, "I knew you."
And Steve smiled, all bright and damp like one of those times when the sky can't decide. Steve's hope was like a blade, but the Soldier couldn't make himself turn away, just stayed a willing target and let it pierce him. "Yeah, Buck." Steve's voice was unrelenting gentleness. "You did."
"They took you away." It seemed that always hurt the worst. But he'd let them. Not that he'd ever had a choice. He didn't know what he would have chosen if he could. He just needed someone to tell him... "What do you want?"
"I want to help," Steve replied, spreading his hands as if that could make him less of a threat. "I want you to be okay." He swallowed, then added quietly, "I just want my friend back."
The Soldier didn't know how to be helped. He didn't know how to be 'okay.' And he didn't know how to be anyone's 'friend,' but maybe he could try. He didn't have anything else to do. He managed to make his head nod. "Okay." He took a breath, dust-laced air catching on the ragged bits in his throat. "Okay."
o0o
Sam was wise enough not to trust him—though even Sam believed the dead man's face made him Bucky—but after a few sharp glares in his direction and a few harsh whispers to Steve just low and far enough for the sounds but not the words, Sam just watched and waited.
Pulling a drowning man from the water meant little if you'd thrown him in there yourself. After beating him bloody while he refused to fight back, refused even to defend himself. After leaving him half unconscious, so he drifted down in muted acceptance, too dazed to struggle towards the surface. After he'd risked his own life to save yours. After you'd tried to kill him a dozen times.
No, Sam was right not to trust the man who wore Bucky's face.
Sam's wary observation was easier than Steve's...whatever the hell the way Steve looked at him was. Because whatever the hell that was, it hurt. He'd get used to it, though, in time. If he had to. No pain he'd felt was as bad once he got used to it.
But Steve was still his mission, though the parameters had changed. Now, he was to be Steve's friend rather than killing him. He knew how to kill...but he'd found he didn't know how to kill Steve—should have known, and yet didn't.
"You're Steve's friend?" the Soldier asked. Steve had gone out to get food, so Sam was watching him with even more obvious distrust but less urgent attention.
"I am." Sam nodded, dark eyes assessing.
"How—" The water Steve had made him drink had washed the dust from his throat, but words sometimes still jammed against the rough edges. He looked at Sam's hands to avoid his gaze. "Steve wants me to be his friend."
"And what do you want?" Sam's voice was even.
He wanted...it was hard to order things in his head—new scraps and old fragments rattling around like the tang of rust and the prick of glass in the dark, musty bottom of a barrel. He wanted to help Steve. He wanted Steve to be okay. But under all that, he wanted to keep Steve this time: the one person he knew, the one person he always knew and then they'd take him away. "Tell me how to be his friend."
Friends, of course, didn't try to kill each other. That part he'd gathered on his own—or maybe Steve had managed to teach him that on the helicarrier—but he tried not to begrudge Sam's saying it, considering. He sat still and gripped his flesh hand with his metal one so they would both obey. Friends talked and spent time together—perhaps not difficult objectives, if a bit vague.
"Steve's hoping you'll get your memories back," Sam said, rubbing one hand over the close-cropped hair on his chin. He shrugged. "I suppose that would make this easier for everyone."
But Steve and Sam didn't have a machine to do that. Even in 2014, people learned to break things far faster than they learned to fix them. Should memories grow back like fingernails, like hair? It seemed more likely they were severed like his arm, leaving a void of disquiet and phantom pain, and could be replaced, even rebuilt, an artificial approximation of what they had been. Maybe that would be enough.
o0o
He tried to think of himself as Bucky. It was like sand and gravel scrubbed into a wound, but that dulled as Bucky got used to it.
o0o
He wore the clothes and ate the food Steve gave him. He lay down where Steve told him to sleep, and sometimes he even drifted for an hour or two—always jerking awake after, surprised by the warmth, by the softness of the bed, by the memory...by the sheer amount of memories he was allowed. Surprised, irrationally, that the planet had not circled the sun several times while he slumbered.
But Bucky didn't know how to be Steve's friend any more than he'd known how to kill him. He talked to Steve—or, more accurately, let Steve talk to him and tried to listen attentively and give some natural-sounding response. He spent time with Steve, because time passed and he was still there. And he didn't try to kill Steve, didn't even flinch anymore when Steve would touch his shoulder or arm—just made himself carefully still, breathing slowly and quietly through his nose. Somehow, though, he knew it wasn't enough. It seemed he didn't know how to do anything when it came to Steve; Steve was an aberrant gap in his programing, a beacon of impossible hope, drawing Bucky in like a moth to a wildfire. Bucky was Icarus, the wax on his shoulders softening like candles on a child's birthday cake, and all he could do was strain to fly closer.
All of his missions concerning Steve were failures.
Ultimately, he didn't know how to stop trying.
o0o
"I know you're trying." Sam was staring at the TV—some show about birds—but he kept glancing sideways at Bucky. "It's obvious you're trying—that's not the problem. The problem..." Sam turned and looked at him. "It's that you have to try so hard."
Bucky thought, He's my mission. Bucky said, "He's my friend." Maybe they weren't answers, but they were the only answers he had.
o0o
"Bucky?" Steve's voice, though Sam only called him Bucky when talking to Steve; when speaking to Bucky, Sam usually avoided any sort of name. And no one else was ever there.
"Here," Bucky said, voice shockingly neutral for all the word had torn its way from him like a bullet from an exit wound. He was at the sink, splashing cold water on his face, so he pressed the towel to his skin before stepping out of the small bathroom to see Steve smiling at him. The metal fingers of Bucky's hand twitched only slightly. Steve had hundreds of different ways to smile; it would take time to get used to all of them. Did Steve need something? Want something? He carefully kept his eyes on Steve, though they wanted to slide away, to look anywhere else. But if he was looking at Steve, he couldn't forget him, so he made himself look.
Steve sat on the edge of the bed. That meant he wanted to talk, so Bucky sat down carefully beside him without waiting for Steve to tell him to have a seat. Maybe...maybe someday neither of them would need to move as though the other was made of glass—he knew, rationally, how durable Steve was, how tough the serum had made him, but he remembered the blood, how he'd broken under the Soldier's fists. Steve smiled—it was hard sometimes to understand Steve's orders, because he so rarely made them orders, but when Bucky got it right, Steve's approval was clear. After a moment, Steve asked, "Do you remember Peggy?"
Bucky remembered the woman from the film in the museum. That wasn't what Steve meant, but Bucky said, "Peggy Carter; you two were friends."
Steve blushed slightly, folding his arms across his knees and looking down at the carpet. "Yeah." He glanced sideways at Bucky. "Well, while I was...while I was frozen, she—she had a good life: got married, had a family." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "She's still—she's still my friend, but it's different now; she has trouble now...with her memory. And...her health in general."
Peggy Carter would be very old. That was to be expected. No one gave her any serum; she was never frozen, accidentally or otherwise. "But she's had a good life."
"Yeah, she has." Steve looked at him, confusing softness in his eyes. "You could see her, if you want. I could take you to see her."
Bucky understood: they didn't have much time left. Peggy probably couldn't wait for Bucky to get better, because she was never going to get better. If Steve told him to do it, Bucky probably could, but Steve was...offering. A choice. "I don't—I don't know."
"It's all right." Steve squeezed his arm and Bucky didn't flinch. "You don't have to. I just wanted you to know...to have that option."
Bucky looked at his hands then looked back at Steve. "Would she remember?"
"She remembers everything from back then." Steve leaned forward, folding his arms across his knees again. "She always knows me, when I go see her. But..." Steve sighed, shoulders hunching. "She forgets I was there; it's always like the first time—she's so surprised to see me, so surprised I'm alive."
If Peggy wouldn't remember the visit, there wasn't much point, was there? "You could tell her I'm alive, if you want." She'd forget that too, but maybe it would help Steve somehow.
Steve nodded. "Yeah. I'm—" He turned to look at Bucky, radiating sincerity like a halo. "I'm just glad, you know, glad to have you back."
Bucky stared at Steve, trying to understand how 'glad' could look so much like 'terrified'. Bucky didn't think he knew what 'glad' felt like. Maybe he had...once. But he said, "Yeah, me too."
It was the right answer, because Steve smiled, brilliant as sunlight off snow.
o0o