CHAPTER VIII
Alvie was getting nowhere with her designs in her thought room, so while Bucky was out she pushed all the furniture to the edges of her open plan living area, rummaged through her cupboards until she found a pack of chalk sticks and began to write, scribbling formulae and measurements and designs over her varnished floorboards. This sort of thing happened every couple of months, usually when she hit a brick wall; seeing everything tangibly laid out helped her to think.
She mumbled things to herself as she worked, often things that had no bearing to what she was writing- while the chalk marks were all to do with her own project, since being reminded of JARVIS she had been doing some recreational research on AI developments. Her own knowledge of them apart from Stark's butler was based on fictional concepts, so she was going through what she already knew to triple-check, once again, that she had been right and Stark had been wrong.
"Get the god damn imprint off of someone who wasn't a humungous jerk and maybe the AI fragments wouldn't have gone murderous," she muttered, then looked up as the door opened. "Good morning."
"Afternoon," Bucky corrected her, eyes sweeping around the mess of the apartment. "What are you doing?"
"Brainstorming. I think I might be done now, anyways." She pulled her out her phone, which had been tucked into the strap of her bra, hopped across the floor on the few blanks spaces to the kitchen side, scrambled up onto it and took a picture of all her notes. "And, now I just have to mop all this up. Joy."
"Why'd you -" Bucky began, then hesitated. "Never mind."
She directed him to sit in the kitchen before grabbing a mop and a bucket full of soapy water. He watched her as she worked her way around the room in a gradually diminishing spiral, humming something that didn't even vaguely resemble a tune as she went.
"You are a very strange person," he observed.
"That's not how the psychiatrists put it," she told him, pausing in her work.
"How did they put it?"
"Since when were you so nosy?" she asked testily, dipping the mop into the bucket. "And for the record, I never stayed long enough to be diagnosed. Soon as they confirmed I wasn't schizophrenic, I figured there was no point in staying."
"Why would you -"
"My dad was," she interrupted before he said the word again, squelching around in socks sodden with chalky water. "Really didn't want to follow in his footsteps."
"Why not?"
"Seriously dude, what's with the probing?"
"I… I'm used to having to get information out of people. Sorry."
"At least you apologized," she shrugged. "You should be sorry you're stuck here with me at all, instead of a normal engineer."
"Believe me," he said, "if I went with normal, I probably would've been arrested by now."
"Fair enough." She twisted the broom handle in her hands. "D'you really think I'm strange?"
He nodded. "Not dangerous, but…"
"Gee, Mr Barnes," she pouted, "ya do know how to make a girl feel special."
He smiled. "You're about the only person I can trust right now."
"What about Captain Capitalism?" she asked, raising a dubious eyebrow.
"I don't even know him, whatever he says. Maybe I did, once, but I can't remember. You, however, would be very difficult to forget."
"Just keep the compliments coming, Bucky, you're making me feel real great right now."
"What more d'you want? I don't have to like you, I only have to tolerate y- are you laughing at me?"
"No," she said, attempting to straighten her grin. "Bucky, it's fine. I'm flattered that you don't even want to kill me." She walked forward, patted his knee with a soapy hand. "I know I'm weird." More than you know, Bucky Barnes. More than even you could guess. "And now, I'm gonna teach you how to cook."
"No, you're not," he said immediately.
"Yeah," she said, "I am. Because you don't pay rent, James Buchanan Barnes, and so I expect to have my graciousness towards you repaid in cooked breakfasts."
"I've only got one arm," he reminded her.
"Stop making excuses. Bucky Barnes, the right hand man of the star spangled man with a plan, is not going to be bested by a frying pan." That took a lot of concentration to say. "No arguing."
He glared at her, but followed her into the kitchen area nonetheless.
"See this?" she told him, pointing. "We call this an oven."
"Al, I swear to fucking-"
"Kidding! I was kidding!"
She was making Cajun chicken pasta that night, so set him chopping up stuff while she cooked.
"I saw someone shot in a kitchen," said Bucky in a neutral tone, sat on the counter and using his knee to stop the tomato sliding around as he chopped it.
"That's… nice. And I would've assumed you'd seen a lot of people shot," she replied. At least he's making conversation.
"I mean, I didn't shoot her. And she was a civilian, too," he said, pushing his hair back from his face for the twenty-seventh time. "Wrong place wrong time."
Alvie pulled a hairband off her wrist and walked up to him. He seems bothered about it, too. I reckon this guy might be two steps closer to human. "Who did shoot her?" she asked, "and hold still."
"Pierce. Try to tie my hair back and I break your neck."
"The HYDRA-slash-SHIELD guy?" she said, backing away and returning the band to her wrist.
"Yeah."
"What a dick," she said, and the corner of Bucky's lip twitched.
"You have no idea. Thanks, by the way."
"What for?"
"Earlier, when you talked about me as Bucky and not me."
"You are Bucky," she told him, "not the Winter Soldier, not anymore. You stopped being him when you saved Steve Rogers' life."
His head shot up. "How did you know about that?" he asked sharply, all traces of relaxation gone from his voice and posture.
Uh oh. "Hacked his cell, remember?" she said, backing away from the assassin and his stormy expression.
Bucky stabbed the knife into the chopping board and left it there to quiver. "Right," he said, "I'm going out."
"Bucky, wait, I didn't-" the door slammed behind him, and Alvie swore. "You coulda least stayed for dinner."
However, she had only just turned back to the stove when the door was flung open again.
"You'll wear the hinges out if you're not careful," she said.
"How long've you known?" he asked fiercely.
"Since you first turned up. Why are you overreacting so much?"
"Because it's none of your damn business!"
"Everything's my business," she said, as calmly as she could manage. "I'm a hacker. I'm guessing you saving his life is a bit of a touchy subject."
He glared at her, and she took the knife out of the chopping board, out of his reach. Just a precaution, she thought; she wasn't scared of him, but she didn't much want a stab wound, either.
"Wanna talk about it?" she asked him. "All the therapists say it's good to talk about it."
"Well you would know a lot about therapists, wouldn't you?"
She rolled the knife handle in her fingers as her cheeks flushed. "That was mean," she told him, "I just want to help you, Bucky."
"Don't call me that! I'm not him, I'm not- I'm a fucking monster, Alvie, pulling him out of the water was just a fucking mistake and now look at me, I'm hiding from him and HYDRA both and it was a stupid damn idea, I tried to be someone I'm not, something I'm not."
She set the knife down on the side behind her, took the pot off the boil and sat on the counter so that she was at eye-level with him. "Mon cher," she said, taking his odd shoulders in her hands, "it really isn't that complicated. When they found Bucky, they didn't take out his brain and replace it with a machine, they didn't just leave him in a ravine to die and make a robot to do their dirty work instead, they took Bucky Barnes and they gave him a new arm and wiped his memories so he wouldn't fight back. But that didn't make him any less of who he was- you are not your memories, Bucky, you are flesh and blood and scars, and no creepy cult is gonna take that away from you."
His jaw was clenched along with his working fist, but something in his eyes softened. "They weren't a cult."
"Debatable." She smiled at him and squeezed his shoulders. "We're going to finish cooking dinner, and then watch crappy reality television, and then I'm gonna figure out what to do next with your arm while you sleep, 'kay?"
She expected him to argue, to ignore what she had said; Alvie had never told people what to do and he seemed averse to taking orders now, after what had happened to him. But he just nodded, pulled her arms gently off of him and walked round into the kitchen.
You are a curiosity, Bucky Barnes. You and me both.
I should tell him. Not that, but the other thing.
"I, um," she said. "I have a confession to make."
He looked at her, waiting for her to continue.
"When I said I turned SHIELD down I, uh, I may have been lying slightly," she elaborated, "it was actually kind of the other way round."
Bucky cocked his head to one side. "What're you saying?"
"Not that I sought them out and they told me no straight away!" she said hastily. "They found me and everything was going great, and just before you start training they do a psych assessment of you, to make sure you don't throw a crazy in the field. And I failed it," she added, somewhat unnecessarily.
"How?"
"I… don't know," she admitted. "Like I told you before- I asked if I was schizophrenic, they said no. Then I told them to stick their job up the proverbial, walked out and erased all the data they had on me from their records. I'm not mad," she said defensively. "They were wrong, I'm not. I- I'm not gonna work with people who make mistakes like that about a person's head, their, their person. So here I am," she finished, "here we are. Two rejects, cooking Cajun pasta."
Bucky gave her a funny look, then held out his hand. "Gimme."
"What?"
"The hairband, idiot."
"Oh." With slightly shaking fingers, she handed it to him and he tied his hair back with a resigned expression. "I feel like there was more to that gesture than meets the eye."
"I'll leave that for you to decide," he said, not looking at her as he dropped the pot back onto the boil. "What do I do now?"
"Just... let it sit for a while. Bucky, why - why d'you trust me?"
"You're not threatening," he answered, "and you're not what I'm used to. I like it. It's not that big a deal."
But it was - he liked her. Someone in the world actually enjoyed her presence, and it made Alvie feel quite upset to think about it. I'm not threatening. I'm not what he's used to. He likes me. It's not that big a deal. He likes me. I have a friend. She felt her eyes prickling, and wiped them hastily before he noticed anything. "Here," she said, "I'll show you what to do. You're good with knives, right?" she asked.
He gave her a look and half a smirk. "What d'you think?" he said, and she giggled.
