*Author Note: This is my first time back to fanfiction writing in, oh, about 8 years and my first time in this fandom. Be merciful, but if you notice any problems do please point them out so I can fix them - this is unbeta'd and barely proofread, so... (and the choppyness of writing is on purpose. Since it's his perspective, it's kind of how I would expect his thoughts to be)
This is set sometime about 6 months after CA:TWS, so before CA:CW. Bucky is still stateside and still trying to figure himself out. I write him with little bits of PTSD and Depression as a guide for mental structure, although it's not tooo emotion-heavy. More contemplative.
Italics are his thoughts.
I pictured the old man as Stan Lee, because I feel he should have a cameo in this.
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The small diner was quiet and nearly empty. The only people in it were a waitress, a young couple, and an elderly man. And James Buchanan Barnes, if he counted himself as a person. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky, he thought to himself periodically as though he were afraid he might forget it if he didn't. He sat in the back corner, nursing his coffee and peering out from under the bill of his baseball cap at the other patrons of the diner.
He observed, catalogued little details about each. The waitress was cheerful with her customers, but looked tired when they were no longer looking at her. Deception? The elderly gentleman sat by himself in a booth, staring out the window. He wore a WWII hat. Military man, war veteran; perhaps he killed too. Not as many as me. His fighting days were over, though, as evidenced by the cane leaning against his table. Nonthreat. The young couple sat near the door. Best location for a quick escape; tactical advantage compromised by the poor visibility of anyone entering. The female was small and seemed nervous and kept giggling at little things. Is there a threat? The male too seemed nervous, but he continued to smile and talk and his body language did not show any sign of immediate threat. Perhaps a non-present threat? Scenarios played out quickly about what could happen given each of the individuals in the diner and how he would react. None of them were pretty.
Habit.
Stop.
He forced himself to close his eyes. That wasn't him anymore. This wasn't war. He was no longer an assassin. He didn't kill people. Unless I have to, He added internally. Because self-defense wasn't wrong, was it? He didn't dwell on it. I'm not a weapon, I'm a person. With this conviction, he set about finding human reasons for each of their behaviors.
He looked closely at the waitress; it was true that she was being deceptive about her tiredness, but now that he was thinking as a person and not as a weapon he had memories of doing that himself. Nothing solid, just flashes of Steve's worried face and a feeling that he needed to look strong and carefree so that the worried look would go away. Although Steve had looked up to him since he was older and stronger, Bucky had also looked up to Steve in a way and always wanted to make him proud.
He looked back to the young couple and saw the girl ducking her head and biting her lip nervously as the man barely intertwined their fingers on the top of the table and… oh. He suddenly understood. Had he been more accustomed to emotional expression, he might have smiled. But that part of him had fallen with him from the train and unlike him hadn't been recovered. Probably sitting in the bottom of the gorge with my arm, he thought wryly. He smiled a little on the inside at his little joke (was that a joke?), although the signal didn't quite make it to his face. Maybe those days weren't completely gone. As he watched the young couple on what he now guessed was a first date, he was hit by another memory, this time a full one.
***Flashback***
1932, age 16 on a quiet street outside of a nice little house***
The girl stood in front of him, all golden curls and dimples, her hazel eyes sparkling at him, her voice ringing out in laughter at something he must have said. After a pause, she blushed and looked down, then glancing up at him through her eyelashes she said,
"you may kiss me goodnight if you like, James".
His stomach hatched a swarm of butterflies.
***End Flashback***
The waitress was at his table offering a refill of coffee. He set his cup down to let her do so while carefully avoiding letting her see his face. He didn't think there had been any release of his face on the news, but if someone was tracking him he didn't want anyone to be able to identify him.
He had come to Jersey, somewhere Steve wouldn't think to look. He wasn't quite sure why he thought it was safe, but he had glimpses of memory and a strong feeling that James Barnes hadn't been a fan. Hopefully that was true, or true enough to throw Steve off the scent. He couldn't say for certain, but he knew Steve well enough to expect him to look for him. Had known, he corrected. He couldn't remember fully, yet, only bits and pieces. But he remembered Steve's persistence, his stubbornness and his loyalty. Everyone loved him for his strength. It was his heart that made him good, made him a hero, he thought somewhat sadly. There were a lot of good men in the war, but Steve had been the best of all of them long before the injections changed him.
Had Sgt. Barnes been a good man? He couldn't remember, but it hardly seemed to matter after all he had done in the past 70 years. The museum had called him a hero, but it also said he had died. Perhaps he had died, even if his body continued on. Whatever Sgt. Barnes had been he was no longer. He refused to be the Winter Soldier anymore, but he saw little hope of returning to being the same person he had been.
He sighed and momentarily pulled his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. Being a weapon and all of the things that came with it was horrific, but a small part of his mind longed for this simplicity of it. Sudden reintroduction to emotion was uncomfortable to say the least. While most of his emotions still felt blunted, he felt some far more strongly than he thought he ever had. Anger, for one, would sometimes flare strongly. It was mostly directed at Hydra, but sometimes when he was burning hot it would generalize to any easy target. During these times he would try to isolate himself to avoid being triggered into going off on someone. Fear, too, was stronger. A weapon has no need for fear. But when he was trapped, helpless in the heli-carrier expecting to die – and then not, thanks to Steve, he had felt fear. He had felt it again, maybe even stronger when Steve had fallen, and it was this visceral reaction which had prompted him to pull him from the water without understanding fully why. He had been confused why the death of his enemy, his mission would create more fear than that of his own. Now that he was regaining his memory, he was beginning to understand.
Another gift and nuisance was free will. When he had been in the army, he'd had no concerns except taking care of himself and keeping him and his fellow soldiers alive; no bills, no girl, no worrying about money, or little decisions like what to have for dinner or where to go. Then he had been a weapon for Hydra and didn't even have to worry about anything except for completing missions. There were no choices remaining to be made except those which were tactical and relevant to his specific mission. Now, for the first time since before the War, he had no one telling him what to do. He knew he would survive, but it was proving tiresome, the constant decision-making.
It didn't help that the world had changed so drastically and seemed almost a foreign place. He stared down at the baseball cap. It had a logo for a team, but it wasn't the Dodgers because the Dodgers were no longer in New York. He thought vaguely that he should have felt more strongly about this, but struggled to even care.
His returned his hat to his head and his gaze to people watching. His eyes followed the waitress to where the Veteran was sitting and was startled to find the man staring at him intently. No, intensely. His heart skipped a beat. Had he made a mistake? Was he recognized? Was the old man a threat? With Hydra, assumptions were dangerous; old men could be dangerous too. However, he also knew that assumptions in the opposite direction could prove dangerous as well; no sense in making a scene if there is a simple explana… his train of thought derailed as the old man stood up and made his way toward him.
Bucky partially regretted the corner booth, considering it left him somewhat trapped. However, unless the man had a bomb he doubted that he could pose a true threat so he would wait calmly and watch how it played out. Perhaps the man thought he was someone else.
The oldtimer reached his booth and stared at him with strangely shining eyes. After a moments pause during which Bucky studiously avoided eye contact, the old man spoke.
"I don't understand. I don't know how it's possible, but I… I know it's true. You're him, aren't you"
Bucky looked up at him then, and carefully selecting his words, he replied, "I'm sorry, I think you have me mistaken for someone else".
The hesitance in the man's eyes disappeared. And was replaced by a new look: confidence. Uh-oh.
"Now I'm sure, you have the same voice. You are Sgt. Barnes. I don't know how you're still young while I've grown old and weak, but I always said that I never forget a face, and I could never forget yours."
Bucky stiffened upon hearing his name, but tried to maintain his outward calm. His mind, though, was racing. How did the man know him? He considered Hydra, then dismissed it. It was unlikely that they would have referred to him as Sgt. Barnes. Someone with Shield? Unlikely, he was pretty confident that they wouldn't have been able to track him this quickly. The final option occurred to him and just as quickly he realized it was the most likely. The answer was staring him in the face; or rather, was emblazoned on the man's hat. He was a veteran. He had been a soldier and had likely encountered him at some point.
The man had taken advantage of Bucky's confused pause and had sat down across from him. Not good.
"I don't know if you would remember me, but I'm Michael Griffin. When we knew each other I was Private Griffin. Some of the guys called me Mikey. I was one of the youngest, you know. Seventeen."
Bucky straightened up. He had to turn this around, convince the guy he was mistaken.
"You're mistaken", he said eloquently.
Well, he used to be good with words. Hadn't had much need for them in the past 70 years though, so he could hardly be blamed for having a shortage.
The old man looked skeptical and replied, "I guess I could be. My mind isn't what it once was these days. Some days are clearer than others. But this I wouldn't forget. You want to know why?"
Bucky didn't.
"Because you saved my life." He waited for a response, but none came. Bucky was no longer there, his mind was back in the war.
***Flashback***
Yet another Hydra base. Why they bothered building so many fancy bases, he didn't know. But they were sure nice to blow up. Or, in his case, watch being blown up while he carefully picked away at the individual enemy soldiers from his sniper's nest. He cracked another shot and watched in satisfaction as one of the good guys leapt over the body and continued on to help the cause. Today was like any other day following "Captain America". Follow the punk into battle, then wait for what would inevitably go wrong, and help clean up the mess. He'd been doing it since they had been little. Well, some littler than others. It still took a lot of getting used to seeing his pal bigger than him. What was less strange was Steve risking his life for the causes he believed in. His strategies avoided placing the others in quite as much danger, but he charged in head-first. This is the main reason that Bucky had agreed to be part of the team, the "Howling Commandos" as they had recently been dubbed. While Steve was busy saving the world, somebody needed to save Steve. That had been his job for a long time and he wasn't going to be forced into retirement just because Steve thought he could go and be a lab-rat to some egghead and become bigger than him. Nope, Steve was still the same stupid punk he'd always been, just now with muscle and more confidence.
Speaking of, the area he had been targeting had all but cleared out of action. Either he'd gotten them all, or they'd noticed the trend of low survival in that vicinity and had found alternative fighting areas. Either way, he was useless here now. He quickly shifted his rifle and grabbed what gear would be relevant in a close-up fight and hurried down to join the fray. Entering through a hole in the wall, he suddenly came face-to-face with a hydra soldier. He took advantage of the element of surprise and threw a punch, thankfully knocking him into the wall and out in one blow. He pried the strange gun from the soldier's hands and threw a mock salute and muttered, "Thanks, just what I was looking for" and rushed off toward the noise of battle.
Turning the corner, he was just in time to see a hydra knock a young soldier to the ground and start to go at him with a knife. Without pause, Bucky fired the gun at the hydra soldier and watched him evaporate in a sickening whoosh. The young soldier who he now recognized as Pvt. Griffin seemed to be in shock, so he grabbed his hand and pulled him up. This seemed to shake the private out of it as he realized what had happened.
He had just about started to rush off again when the young man started stammering out thanks and about how he thought he was a goner. He'd never been particularly good at accepting thanks for saving someone's life. What do you say, "sure, any time"? Because repeating the process wouldn't be pleasant for either party. However, the private seemed to need to address it, so he paused and said, "It's my pleasure. Uncle Sam isn't done with you yet." Then, feeling his duty to the moment was fulfilled, he ran off to find Steve.
***End Flashback***
He blinked as he returned to the present. The same man he had saved was sitting in front of him, covered in wrinkles and sporting white hair and a white mustache. It was surreal. The other man clearly realized he wasn't going to respond, so he continued on.
"I didn't get a really good chance to thank you that day, I was too overwhelmed by what was happening to say it right. So I want to say it now. Thank you. Thank you for saving my life and for everything else you did for all of us."
Bucky didn't know what to do. He was saved from deciding by the door opening and a young woman entering and looking around before spotting him and the old man and rushing up to the table.
"Grandpa! What are you doing here? We've been looking for you everywhere! You know you're not supposed to leave Autumn Oaks like that without telling anyone. We don't want what happened last time happening again."
Her eyes landed on Bucky and she looked back and forth between them, noticing Bucky's tension and her grandfather's emotional state. Lowering her voice, she said, "you haven't been bothering this nice man, have you?" then looking at Bucky she said apologetically, "Sometimes he gets confused is all, I'm sorry if he's been a bother". The older man looked a little sheepish, now less sure of his conviction that the man before him was Sgt. Barnes. He too apologized for bothering him, then mumbled something about being a silly old man and why wouldn't his memory behave. Then in a low whisper, he said, "Everything is getting blurred together. I think I've been around too long."
Bucky realized that his best option was to leave as quickly as possible. He placed a $5 bill next to his mug and stood up to leave. He had walked a few steps when something made him pause. It went against everything that the weapon knew to do, but it felt human – so that is perhaps why he did it. He turned around and placed his hand on the man's shoulder and said quietly to him,
"It was my pleasure. The world isn't done with you yet."
The man's face lit up, and his granddaughter looked confused. Bucky then turned and walked away, feeling that somehow he'd done something right.
He didn't know if Sgt. Barnes had been a good man, and he knew that the Winter soldier was not. He also knew he wasn't Sgt. Barnes, and he also wasn't the Winter Soldier. He couldn't resuscitate the first, and he couldn't wipe away the traces of the second. But he could choose who he would become next. He didn't know who that would be, but he did know one thing: he was going to do his best to be a good man. He was going to make Steve proud.