He was sure of very little.
He's a ghost, they had said. You'll never find him.
A ghost, yes. But not an avenging spirit. Not anymore. Now he was just a lost soul.
He had tried a homeless shelter once, early on, his silver arm covered by a ratty jacket. But he could not stay. Sleep—not cryosleep but real sleep—was an unfamiliar ordeal, and it was impossible with other people around him. Every cough was a grenade, every sigh an enemy's stealthy footfalls, every drowsy murmur the buzz of some terrible machine. Time after time he woke to find himself already on his feet and poised to spring at some shadow in the corner. The people frightened him, and he frightened them.
A man at a soup kitchen asked him who he was once.
What's your name, son?
He paused for a moment, not understanding that the man was talking to him. Then
Bucky
he had said, speaking the name as if it were a scrap of a language that he no longer knew. There was something at the back of his mind, and the name was part of it. Some awful mental itch that was like a word dancing mockingly on the tip of his tongue. But it was so much more than a word, and it was driving him mad. He was torn between pursuing that itch and smothering it with alcohol and fear. Thinking about it felt like twisting his finger into a wound, but ignoring it felt like a living death.
Still, there was one thing that he was sure of. One thing that had solidified in the muddled fog of his brain and now hung there like a bright banner, almost as bright as the physical one that hung above the door of the museum he stood in front of. The one with the star-spangled man.
He took a step forward then, pulled towards the image of the "Living Legend and Symbol of Courage" by that single thought:
I knew him.