Running To You

9. Pariah

It was a nightmare. An exhausting, perpetual, relentless hell. Doctor Zola refused to leave Bucky alone. When he woke up in the morning, Zola was there. When he went for breakfast, Zola nagged him about the nutritional deficiencies of his choices. At the garage, the doctor talked ceaselessly about Hydra, about how the organisation was going to make the world great. At night, he fell asleep to the sound of Zola's insidious voice. For once, he welcomed the accusations of the dead. They were a blessed break from the pug-like face of the evil scientist.

Tommy and Grant thought he was crazy. He could tell by the way they went quiet whenever he looked at them. It was a wonder he still had a job, but Tommy had a lot of work that needed doing, and Bucky was a good mechanic and an efficient worker even when he was being haunted by the ghost of Zola past.

A few days after the church, he discovered a reprieve. Fed up of being constantly harassed, and mentally exhausted from trying to ignore the grating voice, he got out of bed during the early hours of the morning, opened the door of the closet, stepped inside, and shut the door behind him. It was like the confessional box all over again. He felt an immediate relief. Though Zola's voice still filtered in through the wood of the door, at least Bucky didn't have to look at the face and see those horrible bug-eyes. The closet was barely big enough for him to stand in, and so far Zola, like Bingo before him, seemed to conform to the laws of physics even though he wasn't actually real. Whilst Bucky was in the closest, there was no room for Zola.

It wasn't merely relief from the mad scientist that the large cupboard brought; it was a feeling of familiarity and safety. When he realised Zola couldn't get in, Bucky didn't even bother with the bed anymore. He merely sank down in the closet, sitting on the floor with his knees raised almost to chin-height, and managed to grab enough sleep in the awkward position to satisfy both his body and mind.

To try and further distract himself from the eternal haunting of Zola, Bucky put his enhanced physiology to use. He could survive on a few hours' sleep per week, so he settled for just a couple each night, during the early hours of the morning. The rest of the time, he walked. He didn't walk anywhere in particular, he merely walked for the sake of giving his body something to do, and to give his mind something other than Zola's face, the motel room and the garage to look at. Every night brought a different street, a different neighbourhood, a different area.

He learnt that New York wasn't really one city. It was a die, with multiple faces, each side showing a different city-face depending on how you rolled it. There were the bright cities: the stately homes, the sweeping drives, the parks, the fountains, the ornately-fronted theatres, the huge billboards and flashy signs, the erudite museums and art galleries. There were the ordinary cities: the seaside rides, the schools, the taxis and the buses, the nightclubs pumping out loud noise that people had been fooled into thinking was music, the men and women in their suave shirts and high heels. And there were the dark cities: the litter-strewn alleys, the unclean takeaways, the gaudy neon signs, the hungry men who begged for food, the twitchy men who begged for money, the women in short skirts and plunging shirts who smiled as they approached until they saw the cold glare of warning in his eyes and backed away, the drunks and the addicts who stumbled in a haze, the youngsters who smashed car windows because they were bored 'or whatevah.'

He saw it all, and everywhere he went, Zola was along for the ride, keeping up a running commentary of how things would be different when Hydra took control. How things would be better. Safer. Happier. How nobody would want for anything, and everybody would know their place. Bucky had heard it so often that it became a drone, like the annoying hum of a wasp that just wouldn't leave him alone.

The world would be a better place if I wasn't in it.

The thought came to him as he walked his usual route to work one Tuesday morning. He was very, very tired. Of everything. The fear of death had been replaced by the fear of continuing each day on a long, slow side into insanity. If all that awaited him was his inevitable return to Hydra's control, what was the point in trying to move forward? It would be better to stop now, and find some way to disappear quietly, forever. Before he could hurt anybody else.

As if hearing his thought—which, if he was merely a figment of Bucky's imagination, he probably was doing—Zola immediately tried to put him off the idea of ending his life.

"You cannot die. You have come too far and done too much for that. Your death would be a terrible waste, even if you could manage it."

Zola had been more annoying than usual over the past day or two, and had taken to reminding Bucky of the 'glorious' missions he'd undertaken for Hydra. But Bucky didn't need to be reminded about the women in Paris, or the man in Cologne who had zero taste in coffee. He remembered them just fine, and they remembered him, too. They still watched him. Waited for him to complete the task they had set for him. Waiting for him to learn the names of everyone he had killed. He just hadn't had much motivation for it, of late, and they had one irritating Nazi scientist to blame for that.

A bus came around the corner of the street and picked up speed. Bucky watched it approach, trying to determine how fast a bus would have to be going to injure him enough to kill him. Not fast enough. Broken legs. Broken arms… or, well, arm. Broken back. They were all a too-real possibility. He was tough. Very tough. He'd survived a fall down the Alps and a battle with Captain America, although the latter didn't really count because mountains hit harder than old childhood friends. No, a bus was no good. They stopped too often. Couldn't pick up speed. He'd need something bigger. Something faster. Possibly something driven by Sandra Bullock.

He reached work and changed into his overalls whilst contemplating alternative large road vehicles. Zola was still nagging in the background, about how he couldn't die, about how difficult it would be to end his life, about how much danger he would be in if he only wounded himself and ended up in a hospital, about how the authorities would come swooping down on him at the first sight of a metal arm, and they'd lock him away forever, and Zola would be there for every single minute of that forever until Bucky finally gave up and became the Winter Soldier again.

Much as he hated to admit it, the doctor had a point. He'd already had to get treatment from a vet because he couldn't go to a hospital, and nothing about that had changed. If he wanted to not be in the world anymore, he had to die quickly, before his body could even think about mending itself. Overdosing on anything was out of the question. He'd already tried alcohol, to drown out Zola's voice, but his enhanced physiology had cursed him with an immunity to liquor, as well as to sedatives. What did that leave? Guns? Knives? Starbucks coffee?

As he dropped the hood of the car he'd just replaced the battery on, he eyed up the spare wall socket, into which the power tools were usually plugged. It gave him an idea.

"Hey, Grant." The blond head bobbed up from the hood of a Chevy. "How much juice do you think runs through those things?" he asked, pointing at the sockets.

"Uh, I dunno. A lot?"

"Enough to kill a person?"

A very worried frown appeared on Grant's face. "A kid, maybe. You or me? Well, I dunno. I'm sure it would hurt like hell, though. Why?"

"Just curious."

"You're not planning on sticking your finger in and finding out, are you?"

"No, of course not," he scoffed. Zola had just reminded him that Captain America's red-headed S.H.I.E.L.D. agent friend had tried to zap him with some sort of electrical taser disc, and failed. He was pretty sure his arm would absorb or maybe redirect a certain amount of electrical discharge. Even if the power from a socket blew the arm out, the best he could probably hope for was a trip to the hospital and a hair style that hadn't been in fashion since the '70s.

After work, he went to the harbour, to the spot where he'd sat decades ago with Steve on the day he'd lost Bingo the first time. Zola droned on about how much easier it would be if Bucky just went back to Siberia, back to his family, and let them wipe all this confusion from his poor, broken mind. Bucky ignored him, and looked down into the inky blackness of the water. Then he shook his head, dismissing his latest musing. It wouldn't work. He was too good at floating. Instead, he sat and watched the boats coming up the Hudson.

Night crept in. Out across the bay, he saw pale diamonds in the sky. The stars seemed to secretly wink at him as they slowly rose, before disappearing into the ambient haze of New York's nocturnal brightness. The people in the city didn't know what they were missing. Or maybe they did, and they just preferred to imagine the stars, rather than see them. Either way, it was a shame. It was like New York was disconnected from the world, not really a part of it. Strange, how he could feel empathy for a city.

"You know, if you go back to Siberia, you can see the stars every single night it isn't cloudy," Zola pointed out.

"And forget what they are again?" Bucky sighed. Now that he'd seen the stars, he didn't want to forget them. He didn't want to forget Bingo, or Mary-Ann, or Steve. He didn't want to add to the list of faces that visited him each night, and if he went back now, it was a list that would surely grow.

"Everything dies, Sergeant."

"Yes. Yes it does."

He stood and stretched his legs, then set out in a random direction. A nearby clock tower told him it wasn't even midnight; he could get a few hours of walking done, before heading back to his cubbyhole in the motel room.

His legs took him out to Industry City, along the bare banks of the river. Out here it was all shipping and manufacturing and storage, largely quiet at this time of night, though like the rest of New York, never entirely peaceful. Some of the building signs bore names in Chinese as well as English, whilst others were adorned with Polish or Russian lettering. Graffiti was commonplace: on the buildings, on shipping containers and rusted old caravans. Tram lines, sunk into the floor, had been partially paved over in places, their rusted metal bones slowly giving in to the decay of time.

Trains. Yes, trains were big, and fast, and they couldn't stop like trucks could. They probably hit harder than mountains, too. He'd have to avoid commuter trains. No point inconveniencing people on their way to work. And besides, he didn't like crowds. But freight trains probably came into and out of the city all the time. Tomorrow, he would consult his city map, see where the train lines ran to and from. Yes. Tomorrow was soon enough for him not to be in the world anymore.

For now, with no clear destination in mind, he stepped into an alley between a Chinese-signed building and a store selling safety equipment and apparel. Halfway down the alley, a very small, very familiar sound stopped Bucky in his tracks. It had been months since he'd heard the sound of a pistol being cocked. Quite a feat, for America.

Very slowly, he turned on the spot, his hands raised to show they were empty. His eyes adapted to the darkness, making use of every tiny scrap of light. A twitchy-looking man, with a scraggly moustache and a pronounced widow's peak at the front of his mousy-brown hair, held a Colt in spidery hands, the muzzle pointed at Bucky's chest. Within him, he felt the Soldier, who had stirred at the sound of the gun being cocked, settle back down. One twitchy man was not worth waking for.

"Kill him quickly and be gone before anybody notices," Zola instructed him imperiously. Bucky ignored the figment of his imagination.

"Gimme your phone, your wallet and your keys!" the man barked.

"You're mugging me?" Bucky asked.

"That's right."

This was unprecedented. Nobody had ever mugged him before. Nobody had ever tried to. Of course, that sort of thing had happened back in the twenties and thirties, but it wasn't the same. Those had been simpler times. For example, nobody ever got mugged for phones. Nobody had phones. And nobody had ever done it to him. Then, Hydra had come with their 'improvements.' On occasion, people had shot at him with a revolver, or a pistol. It usually didn't end well for them.

"What are you waiting for?!" his assailant demanded, looking twitchier by the minute. "Hand everything over, now."

"Oh, sorry. I was just… I mean… wow." It was hard to define his feelings, new and unexpected as they were, but he tried anyway. "I'm being mugged. I feel like… jeez, I dunno… a real person?"

"Hand over your fucking stuff or I swear I'll drop you right here," the mugger warned, his voice a raspy growl.

"Well, I don't have a phone. The only keys I have are for my motel room, and the manager's wife will kill me if I lose those. I think I have ten bucks, though."

"Gimme your whole wallet!" The gun was waved a little, possibly to make him move faster.

Bucky felt his heart sink. He didn't have a wallet. Should he have one? Did he need one? Should he go out and buy one? Maybe a nice leather one. He liked the smell of leather.

Instead of arguing with his assailant, he reached around to the back pocket of his jeans, where he kept what little money he actually carried. Rarely more than enough to buy a pizza, but maybe it would satisfy the twitchy man. Then, mid pocket-grope, he froze. An idea was forming. It didn't feel like total clarity, but it was probably the next best thing.

"Are you my epiphany?" he asked.

"Seriously, I'm going to count to five, and if everything you own isn't on the ground by the time I reach one, I'm shooting you. Five—"

"Can I make a suggestion?" Bucky didn't wait to be invited. "Don't aim for my chest. Aim here," he said, pointing to his forehead. "I don't know if a shot to the chest will kill me."

"Four—"

"I really don't think you should shoot me in the chest. If you hit a rib or just pierce a lung, I'll be pretty annoyed."

"Three—"

"Have you ever even shot anybody before?"

"What the fuck? Of course I've shot someone before. Two—"

"I don't believe you."

The man took a step forward and waved the gun in Bucky's face. "You don't believe me? You hear about that girl they found down by the corner of 23rd and 5th two weeks ago?"

"No."

"Well, that was me. She thought she could give me her purse and I'd let her go with her phone. You don't wanna wind up like her?" The pistol was re-aimed at Bucky's head. "Put your shit on the ground."

Faces danced through Bucky's mind; Mary-Ann, grinning at him on the playground. His mom, poised over the stove as she made her famous casserole. Summer-fling Jane, smiling at him from behind her desk. The girl he'd danced with before shipping out to England, the sparkle in her eyes as infectious as the music in the dance hall. The two women, in Paris. Reality came crashing into the warm, Disney-like haze of feeling like a real person just because he was being mugged, and with it came a grim revelation. Real people got mugged. Got hurt. With that thought, a switch flipped inside his head.

He combined a step forward with a rib-crushing shove from the flat of his cybernetic hand. The man went flying backwards and hit the wall of the Chinese building with such force that he dropped the gun and crumpled to the ground. Bucky didn't even bother kicking the gun away; he merely reached down and wrapped his gloved, metal fingers around the throat of his assailant, lifting the man up the wall and pinning him high enough that his feet dangled above the ground.

"Wrong answer," he growled. The man's eyes were wide, bug-eyed as Zola's. "I had a family, once. A mother. Two sisters. Probably a bunch of cousins I don't remember. I danced with girls, probably more than my fair share. And if anybody did to them what you did to that girl down on the corner of 23rd and 5th, I would do to them what I am going to do to you now."

"I was lying, I was lying!" the man gasped through the slowly narrowing passage of his windpipe.

Bucky let his fingers tighten. His motor control was so fine that he could crush a man's windpipe in seconds, or pin a man beneath the jaw without causing damage at all. Right now, he was going for slow. Hydra was all about speed. Efficiency. He'd never watched the life drain from a man's eyes before, never stopped to savour the moment of what had always been 'just a mission', and this one certainly deserved it. Right now, all Bucky saw were delicate, smiling faces swimming in a red mist.

"Yes, yes, good, Soldier," Zola observed happily, as the man frantically scrabbled at Bucky's arm. It was in vain; he was too strong. Much too strong. "This man deserves to die. Exactly the sort of work we made you for."

The doctor's words trickled into his mind, forcing his upper lip back into a snarl. He wanted more than anything to put an end to the man, to see the lights in his bulging eyes dim, but nothing Zola encouraged could possibly be good. The doctor's approval was a stain he knew could never be removed; it would sit there forever, tarnishing his already-blackened soul. He released the pressure in his hand, then lowered the man to the ground. But he did not let go. Not yet. He'd given in to anger, let the Soldier wake for long enough to taste violence, and now it was all he could do to hold that part of himself back. The anger was still there. Raw. A beast ready to be released. Already he could feel his right hand trembling with the effort of keeping that beast in check. His right hand wanted to finish what his left hand had started.

"What are you doing?" The Nazi doctor's voice came out as an angry trill. "He is a criminal! He deserves to be punished."

"Yes, he does," Bucky agreed. "But not by me. That's what the police are for. It's what the courts are for. After everything I've done, all the lives I've taken, I deserve to be punished, too. If I kill him, I'm a hypocrite."

"I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry," the pinned man babbled. Tears streamed like rivers down puffy purple cheeks. "Pleasedon'tkillme."

"Shut up," Bucky hissed, and the man let out a terrified sob. "I'm not talking to you."

"If you don't kill him now, he will only go on to hurt more people," Zola said. "What is the life of one criminal? You would be doing humanity a favour."

As he stood there, trying to control his anger, trying not to admit that Zola had a point, trying not to let the Soldier squeeze his assailant's throat just to get him to shut the hell up, he found his epiphany. The little seed of greatness inside his heart, or his soul, or wherever the hell it was, suddenly sprouted, sending out a tiny green shoot. The priest's voice echoed around his head, temporarily drowning out the doctor's petulant mewling. 'Each of us is capable of great things, but how you get there, how you grow that tiny seed into a tree which reaches Heaven, is up to you.'

"I have a choice," Bucky said at last. He clung to the words, a drowning man clinging to a single lifeline. He turned his head to look at Zola, and finally saw the man for what he truly was: nothing. "The life of one criminal is the cost of my soul. Maybe you're right. Maybe it is my destiny to be the Winter Soldier. But if that's so, then it won't be a destiny of my choosing. I never asked for this. I never wanted it. And I'm certainly not going to start now. If Hydra find me, I'll fight them. To the death, if necessary. I won't let them use me again. I don't care if God has a plan for me. I have a plan for myself, and that involves ending the bloodshed. Forever. And it starts right here. No more killing. I won't add more names to my list, more faces to my nightmares, and I don't care how much somebody might 'deserve' it.

"I've finally got your number, doctor. You can't do anything to me. Not one damn thing. You can't command me. You can't instruct me. You can't control me. You're just a voice in my head. All you can do is talk, and hope that I'll listen. But I can choose not to do that, too. Maybe you're a part of my fractured mind, or maybe you're something Hydra programmed in to distract me from taking back control of my life. Either way, that's all you are. A distraction. I'm done with you."

"You are making a terrible mis—"

"And you," said Bucky, turning back to the man, granting Zola not another moment of his time. The man gave a snotty whimper. "I can count on one hand the number of people who've pulled a gun on me and survived. I don't know why you go around mugging people, and I don't care. Drugs, prostitutes, starving kids, whatever. If I can stop killing people, you can stop threatening and hurting and stealing from them. There is always another way. Always a third path to take. I learnt that from Robert Frost."

"Yes, yes, I swear I'll change," the man snivelled. "I—I promise I won't mug anybody ever again!"

"I'm glad to hear it." Not that he believed a word the man said. Only God knew how many times he'd lied tonight. "Now. When I was talking to myself just then, you might have heard some things which are very bad for your health—"

"No, I didn't hear anything, I swear!"

"Good. Because if you did…"

"I didn't!"

"Alright." Another memory flashed across his vision, brief as a bird in flight; a pale, slender hand reaching out and grasping a brown, slender neck. A body crumpling to the floor. "Keep still," he told the runny-nosed man. "I've seen this technique demonstrated before, but I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to try it out."

"What tec—"

The man's voice immediately cut off as Bucky adjusted his grip and gave a constant, gentle squeeze with his fingers. Eyes rolled back into his head as the one-handed strangulation hold interrupted the blood supply to his brain. When Bucky let go, the man crumpled, just like the body in his memory. An effective technique, but he wouldn't be out for more than a minute.

When Bucky stepped back and took a deep breath, for the first time in decades he felt like he was actually breathing. Sure, he was breathing the stale, briny air of dockside New York City, but compared to the years of suffocation beneath Hydra's control, it was a drop of cool water on the tongue of a parched mouth.

Probably shouldn't have said all that stuff in front of that guy.

Before the crumpled man could begin stirring, Bucky reached down and picked up the Colt. The Soldier within him told him to cover his tracks, but he was more than the Soldier, now. For too long he had lived as a marionette, his strings tugged over the decades by men who chose power over compassion, control over freedom, death over peace… now they would tug his strings no more. He'd made a choice to be better than that. To be more than somebody else's weapon. Today was the first day that he could stand up and say that he truly was a real person.

He unloaded the ammo clip and let the bullets spill out onto the ground like magic beans. Transferring the gun into his left hand, he closed his eyes and squeezed with every ounce of strength Hydra had given him. Metal complained angrily as it twisted in his grip, shrieking its death song as it gave way to the power in his arm; it was music to the ears.

The river front wasn't far away. Bucky left the crumpled man and, reaching the end of the dock, pulled back his arm and threw the twisted metal as far as it would go. It went a very long way. And now, he had to do the same. He'd been in the city too long; it wasn't his skill that had kept him safe, but sheer dumb luck. It was luck that could not hold forever. Sooner or later, friend or foe would find him. Now he had to go somewhere to figure out who, exactly, those friends and foes were.

o - o - o - o - o

Join the army. Serve your country. See the world!

Bucky didn't remember very much about his adult life before the war, but for some reason, the call-to-arms slogans played over and over on his mind in the hours following his misadventures in Industry City. According to Google, the Smithsonian, and a few patchy memories of strong coffee, annoying mosquitoes and long walks through dangerous territory, he'd joined the army. He'd served his country. The history books were very specific about that. Served and died, then come back again. As for seeing the world… he'd served in Europe. Been captured there. Freed. Captured again. The sad fact was, he'd seen more of the world as the Winter Soldier than he had as Bucky Barnes.

It was time to rectify that.

But first, he had responsibilities. Sure, he could just pick up and run. He wasn't a tree; he hadn't put down roots. But one day, he might be a tree. After all, he had a seed now, and he was keeping it very close. He wasn't too sure who'd put it there—the priest, God, Steve, maybe even Bucky himself—but there it was, right in the middle of his chest, where he could take it with him, and nurture it, and maybe one day grow it to Heaven. Hopefully he would do a better job with his seed than he had with his dog. Hopefully he wouldn't run into any hungry giants on the climb. But if he did… he wasn't some wimpy English-man, a tasty morsel whose bones were easily crunched for a quick meal. He'd make sure any giant who tried to swallow him would choke for the attempt.

He packed his bag. Into it went a pair of pants. Couple of shirts. Socks, underwear, a bag of toiletries and his toothbrush, along with all the money he had, which amounted to $25.17. He also packed everything left over from his time as the Winter Soldier. A knife, his protective vest, utility belt, a small grenade that he'd somehow forgotten about when stealing for the first time back in Great Falls…

Finally prepared for his new life, he looked around the room and found it as empty as when he had arrived. With a self-satisfied nod, he stepped out the door.

A few seconds later he went back through the door, into the room, and put down his backpack while he quickly straightened the sheets on the bed. Maybe it was silly, but the last time he could actually recall having slept in a bed was over seventy years ago. Just the opportunity to make one up was a welcome gift, even if he'd not actually slept in it since discovering the catharsis of the closet.

In the motel reception, he dropped the keys onto the desk and pulled on his jacket. The owner's wife glared up at him through narrowed eyes. "I'm leaving," he told her, slipping fluently into Russian.

"So. You have finally decided to become a respectable man?"

"Respectable?" He rubbed his chin as he considered the word. It sounded arbitrary. "I don't know about that. I'm going to start with 'a man' and work my way up from there."

The dragon of a woman harrumphed and took back the keys. "Well then. Do svidaniya. Do not let me keep you from becoming a man. I hope that the next time I see you, it won't be for a room."

"Don't worry. The walls of your rooms are thin, the ceilings are thinner, and the air conditioning is still garbage. I won't be back. Do svidaniya."

There was, he felt, something to be said for brutal honesty. Stepping out into the street, it was as if another weight had been lifted from his shoulders, another breath of fresh air taken into his lungs. Since coming to New York he'd done nothing but shroud himself in lies. He'd tiptoed around people because he didn't want to rock the boat or draw attention, never realising that the lies were burying him alive. From now on, the lying would be minimal. He might tell the lies, but he wouldn't live them. He had seventy years' worth of forgotten truths to explore; now was not the time to become invested in his own webs of deception.

He walked. Then for quite some time, he stood around the corner of Tommy's place, watching Grant roll a car out and bring another in, watching Tommy try to tune the radio back to that classic rock station he loved so much. A few weeks ago, the garage had seemed a mountain. A strenuous climb. A considerable hurdle to be overcome. Looking back across the weeks, across his own memories and experiences… it changed his perception. The garage wasn't a mountain; it was a stepping stone. Perhaps the first one in a string of many. Little challenges to be met head on, to enable him to find a way back to himself.

Shouldering his bag, he crossed the road and stepped into the garage just as Tommy thumped the top of the radio. "Piece of crap," the middle-aged man grumbled.

"Hey," Bucky said, making Tommy jump, just like he had that first day in New York. Grant peered out from behind a pickup truck, both light brown eyebrows rising as he took in Bucky's jacket and bag.

"There you are!" grumbled Tommy. "Do you know what time it is? And have you been jerking around with the radio tuner again?"

"Ten twenty-six, and no, sorry." He stuck his hands in his pockets and tried to figure out the best way to quit his job. It was like figuring out how to turn down a woman all over again, but this time he couldn't ask for help. He had to do it on his own, with minimal lying. "Look, Tommy, I'm really sorry to have to do this to you, but I have to go. I got a call, last night." Maybe it had a been a call from God, or maybe a call from his own conscience. Either way, the result was the same. "I have to go home." Had to figure out where home was. All he knew was that it wasn't here. "It's my sister… she's dying." Technically true. Everybody was dying, from the moment they were born, and his sister was in the late stages of dementia, so she was probably dying faster than most.

"Jeez, Alex, I'm sorry." Tommy took a deep breath that filled his chest, and ran a dirty hand through his peppered hair. "Of course, you gotta do right by your family."

"Thank you for understanding. I'd like to be able to say that I might come back some day, but you know how it is… nothing is certain, and I don't want to make promises I can't keep."

Tommy nodded, offering his hand. "I'm gonna have to break in a brand new grease-monkey, but we'll manage. You need a reference or anything, just gimme a hollar."

"Thanks."

Grant approached a little more furtively, his blue eyes full of unfeigned concern. It made him look younger. Much younger. He, too, shook Bucky's hand.

"I'm sorry to hear about your sister, man. I hope… well… let me know if you need anything. And if you're ever back this way in the future, feel free to look me up. Maybe we could take a trip over to Fifth Avenue, do a little window shopping."

Bucky gave his first new friend in seventy years the best smile he could muster. "That would be nice. But before I go, there's something I want you to know."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Penny. She likes cats. Identifies with their independence. Also, she doesn't drink coffee. I figure between that, and the Offspring, you have enough to at least get a toe in the door."

"Cats, huh? I guess I can work with that." Grant returned his smile. "Maybe I'll check up on when the Offspring are back in town again, see if I can get my hands on tickets. Thanks, man."

When Bucky left the garage, he didn't look back. Almost every chapter of his life was unfinished. Half-written. In some cases, barely started. It felt freeing, to be able to draw a line beneath one. To leave knowing that he'd done his best and had nothing to regret. Now it was time to read some of the other chapters. To fill his empty photo album with pictures. To put the little seed in the sunlight and see if he could get it to grow.

Time and time again, Hydra had tried to erase who he was, to destroy the man he had been. And each time, they had failed. They hadn't erased his memories, merely suppressed them. Bucky Barnes, best friend to Captain America, soldier in the US army, role-model to children across the nation, might have been put on ice for seventy years, sent into a dark and dreamless slumber, but finally he was beginner to stir. The season was changing. It wasn't Winter anymore. Now, it was Spring.


Author's Note: If I was writing this story as a trilogy, this would be the end of the first book. Thank you so much to everyone who's read, reviewed and cried so far. Join Bucky for 'book two'; a roller-coaster ride which sees him looking for himself in the present whilst finding himself in his past. Chapter 10 will be up soon.