Title: What Once was Mine
Series: Witch Bucky
Rating: PG
Genre: Alternate Canon, Divergent Post-CAWS
Warning: Witch Bucky, Bucky Recovering, Memory Recovery, Magic, Angst, Not Ultron or Civil War Compliant
Summary: For the first time in over a century, the Winter Soldier wasn't following a directive given to him by Hydra. No, he was following something else. Not that he knew what that something was. All he knew was that the instinct driving him was far older than even his deepest programming and stronger than any leash his masters had ever held.
A/N: I got the Romanian translations from Google Translate, so their accuracy might be suspect. Bucky's memory spell was rewritten from Rapunzel's song in Tangled (2010).
The soldier wasn't sure where the knowledge, the compulsion was coming from. He just knew that he had to follow it. He'd dragged Captain America out of the Potomac and made sure he would live. He'd slipped the remainder of his masters. He'd run and hid from pursuers, government agents, and the dregs of Hydra. And now he was trying his best to complete the mission set by something unnamable inside him.
First thing he did when he'd gotten enough distance between him and the destruction of his previous life was break into a kitchenware store. He stole a solid copper pot, a marble mortar and pestle, a wooden stirring spoon, an assortment of kitchen knives, and a bottle of every single spice they had in the place.
He didn't know what he was going to do with these things. He just knew that he needed them. It was something deeper than instinct guiding him and he was lost in the world now so he wasn't inclined to buck the one thing giving him direction.
The same night he stashed his new acquisitions in his bolt hole he found the nearest hospital. He didn't have to break in this time, but the real trick was navigating the building without getting caught and possibly having to fight his way out through hospital security.
The hardest retrieval first, he thought.
It was too easy gaining access to the maternity ward. The only bit of trouble he had was the wait for the neo-natal nurses to leave the nursery empty before he could sneak in.
The nursery felt like hope, new beginnings, and unconditional love. So unused to having his own awareness he didn't even think to question how he could sense those things. Down the aisle of little plastic cribs he walked on utterly silent feet. A few of the newborns were awake, some were crying, most were sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. The soldier sympathized; waking to a new world was overwhelming.
Finally he stopped at a little bassinet holding a newborn swaddled in blue. The child was sleeping peacefully, his little hands curled by his cheeks and his head covered in a small blue cap. He was the newest arrival, no more than a couple hours old. As he stood over the infant the soldier could feel deep inside him that this was the one he needed.
He pulled his black leather gloves off his hands and shoved them in his jacket pocket. As gently as possible he removed the little blue cap from the baby's head with his left hand and with his right he drew a razor sharp knife from its sheath at his lower back. His cold shiny metal fingers grasped a small lock of the child's wispy cloud soft brown hair and lightly twisted the strands between his fingers. With barely a whisper, he sliced with the knife and the lock of a newborn's hair came away from the child's head.
He sheathed the knife, pulled a zip-lock bag from his pocket and dropped the hair inside. He tenderly replaced the cap on the sleeping baby boy's head and ghosted from the nursery on silent feet. The nurses, new parents, and the innocent infants were left none the wiser.
The hospice wing of the hospital was just as easy to infiltrate, but the nurses were harder to get past. The patients in this ward needed twenty-four hour care and there were three vigilant nurses manning the front desk. Still the Winter Soldier was the most feared assassin in the last seventy years and slipping by them was as easy as breathing.
There were no convenient tags on the doors of the rooms for him so he just let the tugging in his chest guide him. The door he stopped in front of was open a crack and the soldier slipped inside like a phantom.
On the bed was a man barely out of his fifties, if that. He was gaunt and pale and watching the soldier with resigned, expectant eyes. The soldier stopped at the foot of the man's bed and held his gaze waiting.
"Have you come to take me, then?" the man asked, his breath rattling from his lungs like gravel.
The soldier said nothing.
"I think I'm ready," the man rasped. "I've been waiting for a sign." He let out sigh and his stiff posture relaxed. "What better sign than the Angel of Death himself coming to my bedside?"
Still the soldier said nothing. He stepped to the man's bedside and withdrew his knife. All the while the man's eyes never left his.
In the bed the man lied back against his pillows and closed his eyes, his face softening into an expression of peace, of relief.
"I'm ready," he whispered. "I'm ready to go."
The solder grasped a lock of lank sickly brown hair and sliced the lock free. The man took his last breath, his face and body going completely slack.
For a long moment the soldier stood in the dead man's room and just stared at his empty body. He'd seen hundreds of deaths in his time; he knew that even if he couldn't remember it. But never before had he seen a person just slip away, accept their fate and welcome it.
Turning away from the body on the hospital bed, the soldier dropped the lock of a dying man's hair into another zip-lock and put it away next to the bag of newborn's hair in his jacket pocket. He slipped out of the room and slipped out of the hospital without a single living person seeing him go.
The sky was just beginning to lighten and the soldier walked 'til he found a park in the middle of the city. He chose a grassy patch near a copse of trees across from the play-scape and bent down. Tugging a small glass vial with a screw top from his pocket he brushed his fingers over damp blades of grass. The gathering of dew in the predawn was more intricate than his other acquisitions, but the soldier worked on unfamiliar muscle memory and before too long he had a quarter of the vial filled.
Sky bright with early morning light, the soldier walked down the street and found a plant nursery. It took him a longer while to find what he needed, but like with all his tasks so far he let his instincts guide him. The packets of seeds were the first things he grabbed and the potted plants were the second. It was business hours so he walked to the register and paid for his things with purloined Hydra funds.
When he made it back to his bolt hole, he placed the pots of sunflower, moonflower, dog rose, Aaron's rod, and sage along with the seed packets on the table next to the baggies of hair and the vial of morning dew.
He could only finish what he'd started at midnight that coming night so he had the rest of the day to prepare.
It took most of that time to find the perfect place in the wild greenbelt in the middle of residential neighborhood. The little patch of cleared ground he picked as the spot was in the center of a small nearly round clearing. The trees were old and wizened and the view of the sky was wide and completely unobstructed.
On the way back to the bolt hole he stopped at a farmers market for just one last thing. When he found the right stall he stopped in front of the three wooden boxes of plums. The box on the left held bright green plums, the one on the right dark purple plums, and in the middle box, where he was drawn, were plums the color of a deep royal blue. He let his hand guide him and he bought two.
The sun was setting and he went back to the bolt hole to pack up his supplies, ready himself, and then move out on his mission.
Standing in the bathroom of his decrepit abandoned little sanctuary, the soldier stared at the face of a stranger in the mirror. The angles and contours of his face were at once familiar and not. Hydra hadn't been eager to let him examine himself in a mirror, but he could recognize himself from the few times he'd caught a glimpse in the reflection of something while out of cryo.
He could have spent a long time staring in the mirror trying to find reconcile recognition the face he saw and the name the Captain called him, but he had a mission to finish.
Flipping the switch on the electric razor he liberated from a barber shop a loud buzzing filled the small cramped space. It took him a matter of minutes to shave all the hair below his crown until his scalp was bare and smooth. He brushed the shorn clumps off his shoulders and twisted his remaining long hair into a tight knot on the top of his head to keep it out of his face. Pulling his shirt back on, the soldier was finally ready. It was time to go.
Carrying two boxes, one heavy with kitchen things, and one unwieldy with live plants, was cumbersome, but the soldier had the strength of ten men and he made the trek to his spot without breaking a sweat.
He arranged his items around him in a specific order, though he didn't know what that order was, and went about getting the clearing ready for the start of his instinct driven mission.
An hour before the moon was highest in the sky, the soldier began.
He shed his clothes and knelt in the grass feeling no shame or embarrassment in his nakedness. As he'd been doing for the past couple of days he let his hands do what they will, let the tug in his chest guide him.
Pulling out a knife, the same one he'd harvested the infant's and the dying man's hair with, the soldier cut a leaf from the fresh sage plant arrayed in front of him. Then he cut off a leaf of Aaron's rod, and a dog rose blossom as well. One by one he dropped them into the marble mortar he'd stolen.
"Viață care a crescut în patria mea." A life that grew from my homeland. The words, Romanian he recognized, came to his lips of their own volition. He dropped the dog rose blossom into the mortar.
"Pentru a ajuta ușura povara greutăților." To help ease the burden of hardships. The leaf of Aaron's rod joined the dog rose blossom.
"Acest lucru începe amintirea." This begins the recollection. Sage was added to the bowl.
He grabbed the seed packets and ripped them open. Shaking three sunflower seeds into his hand, the soldier dropped them in one by one.
"La începutul vieții în ziua." Beginning of life in the day. He cut the most mature, wilting blossom off the potted sunflower plant and put it on top of the seeds. "Sfârșitul duratei de viață în ziua." End of life in the day.
The seeds of the moonflower were next. "La începutul vieții în noapte." Beginning of life in the night. His knife sliced through the stem of the last of the blossoms to bloom when the sun set. "La sfârșitul vieții în noapte." End of life in the night.
He opened the baggies with the locks of hair and upended them over the ingredients in the mortar. "Suviță de păr a nou-născutului, nașterea minții." Lock of hair of the newborn, the birth of the mind. "Suviță de păr de moarte, moartea minții." Lock of hair of the dying, the death of the mind.
The last of the ingredients to go into the mortar was the skin and seed of a plum. The soldier peeled the royal blue skin of the plum in one smooth practiced movement. His knife so sharp there was no resistance from the fruit and he dropped a perfect spiral of peel into the mortar. Bringing the naked plum to his mouth he took a bite of the juicy flesh. He ate the fruit until he got to the seed and sucked any remaining traces from the creviced surface.
His metal arm could shatter concrete, bend steel, and punch craters into the hard ground. It was no piece of work to crush the plum pit to fine granules between his forefinger and thumb.
"Hrana pe care o vindecă mintea; trecutul de memorie, și viitor de memorie." Nourishment that heals the mind; memory past, and memory future.
The motion of grinding and blending the ingredients together with the mortar and pestle felt so familiar. His mind was clear and quiet as he worked the tools until everything was a smooth, deep blue paste in the bottom of the mortar. The paste was scraped into the copper pot with the wooden stirring spoon.
He unscrewed the vial of morning dew and poured it in the pot. "Dimineață rouă, deoarece nu există nici o viață fără apă." Morning dew, because there is no life without water. It pooled in a low dip in the center of the paste and was absorbed unnaturally quickly.
The soldier was starting to feel it. He was starting to sense the buzzing in the air around him, feel the minute vibrations in the ground beneath him. His heart was beating louder in his chest and the air he breathed had a taste to it, a flavor of anticipation.
There was no hesitation when he held his right hand over the copper pot and sliced deep into his wrist. Immediately his blood began to drip down mixing with the rest of the ingredients, soaking into them, turning them from paste to viscus fluid filling the bottom of the pot.
"Am adăuga sangele meu, astfel încât corpul meu acceptă magia și direcția de câștiguri vraja." I add my blood, so that my body accepts the magic and the spell gains direction.
Stirring the thick concoction in the copper pot, he didn't stop until it was a rich red color and consistent like paint.
A warm breeze swept through the clearing and the soldier looked up into the sky, near pitch black in the shadow of a new moon. It was midnight, the moon was at its highest, and the potion was ready. It was time to cast the spell.
The soldier dipped the fingers of his flesh hand into the pot and began by painting a thick warm stripe from his hairline, down his nose, over his lips, to the bottom of his chin.
"Simboluri sclipire și strălucire, să lumineze magie." Symbols gleam and glow, let your magic shine.
When he started to sing his voice came out rusty with dissuse, but deep and enchanting in its own right.
"Inversa ce rău a fost făcut." Reverse what harm was done.
The characters and symbols he painted down his face, along his forehead, over his eyelids and cheek bones began to glow a warm bright gold in the dark.
"Aduce înapoi o dată ce a fost a mea." Bring back what once was mine.
"Vindeca ceea ce a fost rănit." Heal what has been hurt. He glided his fingers over his pale bare scalp drawing out intricate patterns, that same mysterious instinct guiding his hand."Ștergerea urmelor de timp." Erase the scars of time.
Dipping his fingers in the pot again he withdrew them and traced a blood red symbol on the back of his neck. "Găsi ceea ce a fost pierdut." Find what has been lost. On the joint of each shoulder, metal and flesh. In the hollow of his clavicle.
"Aduce înapoi o dată ce a fost a mea." Bring back what once was mine.
And one last delicate, tangled design directly over his heart.
"Ceea ce odată era a mea." What once was mine.
The paintings on his skin flared a blinding gold like the sun and the soldier arched his back in agony as the magic soaked inside him and began laboriously repairing the damage done to him over seventy years by countless evil men.
A short eternity passed where the soldier melted into Bucky and everything that was stolen was returned. This new awareness of what he'd forgotten, what he'd been made to forget was possibly the most painful thing he'd ever felt in his terrible long life. And almost none of the pain it was physical.
Finally the magic finished its work and faded into the night, back to the earth and the sky where it came from.
Bucky was left shivering in the aftermath, his naked skin soaked with sweat, tendrils of his long hair escaped from his bun and plastered to his face with tears and sweat. He was once again whole and for a long harsh moment, when he remembered the look on Steve's face moments before he'd been about to kill him, Bucky wished he wasn't.
No matter what kind of turmoil he was in, there was no denying the habits ingrained from childhood. He grabbed his jacket and shakily dragged it toward him digging around in the pockets 'til he found a clean empty vial.
It was amazing. Even coming down from over a half a century of brainwashing and mind wipes, the subconscious fear his mother scolding him for not following the rules still influenced his actions. Never leave the house without a clean empty vial. You never know when you might need to collect some tears.
And it was only ever tears.
Bucky unscrewed the vial with numb fingers and pressed it to the skin beneath the corner of one eye. Drop by drop he shed his tears into the vial and quickly screwed the cap back on. He tossed the thing back at his jacket and all the strength went out of him.
Curling over his thighs, he wrapped his arms around his stomach, pressed his face in the cool grass and just breathed. He just breathed and breathed and didn't come back to himself until the birds in the trees started singing and sun began lightening the sky.
End.