Author's Note- Of course I leave DC for a semester abroad, and Marvel releases a movie that's basically just DC porn.
This fic is really a love poem to what I think is one of the best movies Marvel's put out recently, and also to a city I kinda miss a lot.
i.
"You know me."
He is a machine. He is a soldier. He has orders. He has a mission. He has no name, no face, no history. There is only Hydra, heil Hydra, and it is Hydra that must prevail.
It is the Captain who stands in his way. It is the Captain who must be stopped. He is strong, but the Winter Soldier is stronger. Hydra is stronger.
He stands in the Virginia freeway, oblivious to the cars around him. He knows no one. He is the Winter Soldier, he is Hydra. He knows nothing but the taste of rubber in his mouth and the pain, the pain that cleanses him.
There are three of them- the Widow, the Falcon, and the Captain. They have brought this upon themselves. They will die, and Hydra will be victorious. This is a given, not just a possibility.
He reaches for his knife.
The Captain can fight. Hydra knew this, he knew this, but something has gone wrong. They are in the air above the river and the Captain is about to destroy all Hydra has worked for. He is pinned beneath the debris. He must not fail. He cannot fail.
The Captain lets him free, but this is mistake. This is a victory. He is the Winter Soldier, he is the man Hydra has given this job to, and he will fight until the Captain is dead. The Captain does not know him, because he is not a mere man. He is something better.
The Captain falls.
Once, he too had fallen. Once, he had reached out for the Captain before he fell.
He pulls the Captain from the river and leaves him on the shore.
ii.
He is a machine. He was a soldier. He has orders and a mission, and he must kill the Captain. Once, when he was a soldier, he reached out for the Captain and the Captain had tried to save him.
The uniform of the Winter Soldier is discarded. Hydra is gone. He is gone. Over and over, he repeats the name James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky.
He crouches underneath a Georgetown bridge. From where he sits, he can see the destroyed S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters.
S.H.I.E.L.D. is no more, Hydra is no more, and Winter Soldier is no more. The Captain survives, because he pulled him from the Potomac, because once, the Captain saved him.
Time becomes meaningless. A day is a week is a month is a week is a day. At night, he walks the city, past clusters of tourists and packs of drunk college students.
He circles the World War II Memorial, one time, three times, a hundred times. Once, this had been his war.
He steals the wallet of an unconscious student in a blue shirt that reads George Washington University.
Once, he bore the name of a president as well.
He walks to the Smithsonian. There are signs all over the city- Captain America, Air and Space Museum. The Story of the Howling Commandos.
Standing beneath a picture of his own face, he finally recognizes himself.
Bucky. He is Bucky.
iii.
For the first time in days, he is hungry. He is exhausted. He walks the city until it grows dark, counting streets, 16-17-18-19-20, E-F-G-H-I-K-L. He buys himself an overpriced crepe because it's the only place open.
Standing in line behind two girls complaining about an adjunct politics professor, he lets himself feel a certain sadness.
He is alone.
He can remember the address. An apartment, in Dupont Circle. He refuses to contemplate what that means.
Beneath a bridge, he closes his eyes. He is in Brooklyn, watching Howard Stark demonstrate a car of the future. He is in training, preparing to ship out to Europe. He is on the front lines, shots fired around him. He is a prisoner in Germany.
He is following his best friend out of a burning building. He is drinking with the Howling Commandos and Captain America.
Captain America is a boy from Brooklyn, and so is he. His best friend is a boy from Brooklyn who once slept on sofa cushions on his floor.
He is Bucky Barnes and his best friend is Steve Rogers, and Steve Rogers is Captain America.
Underneath a bridge, he dreams about fights behind movie theaters and the Stark Expo and military uniforms and cold European winters and showgirls.
iv.
It takes him three days.
On Day One, he walks, down the Potomac and around the cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin and across a bridge to Virginia and then back across another bridge to Georgetown. He walks past ice cream shops and designer stores and people standing in line for cupcakes.
Cap on, he hides his face.
On Day Two, he sits on a bench at the park across from the White House. He watches school groups pose for photos, and foreign tourists with their cameras.
His metal arm feels cold and heavy.
On Day Three, he buys a Metro farecard. He stands in front of the map, memorizes the route Blue and Orange Lines towards Vienna and Franconia, switch at Metro Center, Red Line towards Shady Grove.
He does not get on the train.
On the final day, he uses the farecard. He uses his real right hand to feed a small piece of paper printed with pandas through the machine. It is deliberate. He has a mission. He was a soldier, and he is rejoining his unit.
Released from the subway, he walks, one block, two blocks, to a plain brick building still bearing the scars of the past week. Shame swells inside him, nearly brings him to his knees.
There is a light on in the damaged apartment.
v.
His feet are lead weights, and they will not let him walk up the stairs. He can march into battle against Nazis, but cannot walk up a flight of stairs in an apartment building on a quiet street in the nation's capital.
When they were at bootcamp, Steve jumped on a grenade, he remembers. Steve jumped on a grenade and he would run behind the rest of them, determined, even though he was too slow and too small and too sick.
Shoulders squared, he picks up his foot.
The door is still virtually intact. A slab of wood, that's all that stands between him and the man he tried to kill over and over his best friend the Captain the little guy from Brooklyn that he would follow anywhere.
He raises his hand and knocks on the door.
He counts the seconds onetwothreefourfivesixseven until the door opens and then-
"Bucky?"
The air is gone from his lungs. He swallows, but cannot speak. Coming here, it was wrong, it was a bad idea. He is a villain defeated, and the hero has better things to do than reunite with a wayward friend.
Muscled arms seize him, hold him in an embrace, and he clings on for dear life.
"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You've known me your whole life."
He is home.