Homeless shelters are always good places to hide. As long as you get there before they reach maximum capacity, you're always guaranteed a bed, a hot meal, and the anonymity of a large crowd of people as bedraggled and filthy as any other fugitive. There's also the added benefit of free clothes, and no questions asked.
The Soldier couldn't explain why he kept coming back to the District's largest shelter; he should have moved on long ago. He'd arrived in the middle of a chaotic afternoon, dressed in the sloppiest, wettest, dirtiest clothes he'd stolen straight from the garbage. He'd expected… the Soldier hadn't expected much. Instead, they greeted him with a temperate smile and a welcoming arm.
"Do you want any more soup, dear?" The world's littlest old lady approached the Soldier's cot, hands trembling from age alone as she offered him another portion of dinner. Joy, the Soldier remembered. She'd introduced herself as Joy.
The Soldier shook his head gently and she nodded cheerily. "Alright dear, just come up if you change your mind." She shuffled along, her voice barely carrying beyond arm's reach as she looked to endlessly fill hungry bellies.
The Soldier used the large communal locker rooms to scrub clean as infrequently as possible, and usually in the dead of night to avoid stares at his metal arm. The harsh soap stung at the cuts on his face and the hot water soothed the deep bruises that were still working their way towards being fully healed. The sensation of beating water fought against the confusion milling in his head, still growing, still twisting his thoughts until he didn't know which way was up.
Breathe, the voice commanded, clearly audible in his head even through the weedy uncertainty and the high pressure showerhead.
His face stung from the cuts as he scrubbed harder, as if that would strip away the flesh that was becoming so unbearably uncomfortable.
Plantain, the voice recommended more gently than usual, chew and apply to cuts to prevent infection.
That was new.
But everything was new.
The sensation of bleached, over-dried towels on his skin as he dried off felt sharper than sensation should be; more real than before. The act of living in his skin seemed louder every day, and every time the Soldier felt he had a handle on the level of confusion and sensation and mismatched memories that erupted from seemingly nowhere, even more would appear.
The act of drinking coffee triggered a memory of laughter, cold feet, and a cold nose.
Pulling on his boots in the morning made his fingers itch like touching old wool, even though the Soldier wore white cotton socks the shelter had provided.
Stepping out into the sunshine every morning left him sniffing at the air for some floral scent that never appeared.
The minefield of being outside in the world – free – had grown nearly unbearable.
The voice whispered to him in the dark; the dark when he pressed his palms to his eyes to try to keep the sensations and memories from overwhelming him, the dark when the shelter turned all the lights off and the Soldier stayed awake so his screaming wouldn't disturb the other homeless, the dark when he screwed his eyes shut and tried to force a memory to make sense. Breathe.
The voice's whispers kept the weeds of memories and uncoordinated sensations from growing so high he could no longer see the horizon. But the voice had not whispered when he passed the poster on the wall. The voice had not commanded or warned or chuckled. When he passed the poster with the American flag and the man who had been his Mission standing on a ridge, and The Living Legendprinted there, the voice screamed.
It screamed without words, like the voice had never done before. The sound hurt his insides and made his eyes feel like they were bleeding. The voice screamed something about importance and feeling and memory and promises. To the end of the Line.
The poster led him to the building, a large white rectangular building with more posters outside. The voice wanted him to go inside immediately, but the Soldier couldn't stomach it. He needed to be sure it was safe, sure he wouldn't be seen. The voice grumbled darkly about the delay.
The Soldier surveilled the building for days, watching the comings and goings, and only a few faces repeated.
One – an old man who fed the pigeons even after the park rangers asked him to stop.
Two – an art student, approximately twenty years old, who seemed repeatedly frustrated by his inability to draw the carousel.
And three – a small, blonde woman who sat on the bench across from the main entrance from sunup to sundown every day, doing nothing but staring at the Soldier thought she must be some mentally ill homeless person – she wouldn't have been alone in the District – but her clothes and hair were too clean.
She drew more of his attention on the third day of his surveillance when she stood up and walked a few steps away from the bench towards the museum, then seemed to remember she'd forgotten her purse. She returned to the bench double-time, but sat down again instead of resuming her approach to the building.
The Soldier had followed a few paces, but froze as she jogged back. The slightly closer proximity gave him a slightly better look at her face.
Even twisted in frustration, her face seemed familiar.
Like the man from the battle; his Mission.
Painfully familiar.
She looked like… Zhelaniye.
Longing.
She stood from the bench as the guards locked the doors, casting one last long look before she followed the departing tourist groups out of the lawn.
The Soldier thought about her face, but could generate no further memories from the weedy undergrowth that night. The voice offered no support. He had a headache the next morning from the intensity of his frown.
She seemed so familiar. Zhelaniye. The Soldier grew ever-more certain that, if he got a closer look at her face, he would remember more. The real question that made him feel a little ill kept coming back around in the dark; did he want to? What if the woman was an old handler, come to retrieve him? What if the woman was dangerous?
Breathe, the voice's only contribution bordered on unhelpful. The stress of the passing days ate at him, along with the prolonged period without sleep. He didn't dare sleep for more than a few minutes, and generally holed up in the far shower stall of the locker room with a knife clutched in his hand to get any real rest. Any time spent on a cot in the shelter's open room was entirely a ruse, and a tedious one at that.
The Longing woman returned the next day; day four of surveillance. She sat on the same bench, watching children file through the doors surrounded by a chorus of incessant chatter. The Soldier glanced around the crowd, confirming that she was the only repeat presence save for the guards and other employees of the area.
She seemed tenser today; sitting up with a ramrod-straight spine that didn't rest against the back of the bench. She stood not long after the building opened for the day, this time remembering her purse and took slow steps to cross the lawn.
She stopped to cross the street and clutched the little purse like she feared it would fly away. She vanished into a crowd as she joined the throng headed for the metal detectors at the main entrance.
The Soldier had no intention of following her that way.
He had seen enough of the comings and goings of the staff to know that the back door was likely left propped open for the smokers around the break for the first shift. It took only a few minutes to find the door, indeed propped open with a taped lock, and slip into the museum.
If he had been concerned that he might lose the little woman in the crowd, he followed a feeling that she hadn't gone far at all, and found her just inside the doors of the museum. She stood underneath a collection of planes suspended in the main hall, though her gaze didn't settle on any particular one.
She stuttered into motion when a tourist bumped her shoulder, stumbling forward and nearly falling. The appropriate exchange of apologies followed, and the woman stepped out of the immediate path of the flow of traffic into the building.
The Soldier followed her as she meandered through the building, keeping his head low and the cap firmly tilted down whenever the proximity got a little too close. Her unpredictable motions – breezing through entire exhibits, but stopping at every placard in a select few – made it difficult to keep a consistent distance.
He just needed to see her face, dammit. Tantalizingly close, glancing flashes from glass and mirrored surfaces distorted her features beyond anything helpful.
She took a hesitant side-step to avoid getting run over by a toddler, then took a hard right into an exhibit at the end of the hall. The Soldier kept his head low, avoiding making eye contact with the gathering crowd. Patriotic music and narration rattled his head, interrupting his internal checklist for ensuring concealment.
Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes and Shaw are the only Howling Commandoes to give their lives in service of their country.
There was that name again. The Soldier followed the narration and lifted his head as he read the bottom of a sign that read Bucky Barnes, 1917-1944.
He saw his face.
He'd only seen his reflection a few times, in cold glass before he dropped into the voice, but there could be no mistake.
That was his face.
"Bucky?" an oddly familiar voice trembled with hesitation. He thought for a moment that the voice had returned, would remind him to breathe, but this wasn't in his head.
He had nearly forgotten about the woman he'd followed into the exhibit in his moment of shock. Much closer now, he could see the surprise in her eyes. She stood on the other side of the glass, her face framed by text and decoration.
He hadn't been expecting to see double.
Behind her hung a photo of her face, grainy and colorless. The Angel of Azzano: History's Lost Howling Commando.
A seed, deep in the soil of the razed earth of his memory, sprouted among the weeds and confusion growing as far as the eye could see. He could hear her voice now that she was standing close to him, and it rang like a bell through his chest. Her voice lilted and rolled in identical waves to that of the voice that always found him in the cold and the dark, reminding him to breathe, reminding him to breathe, reminding him to breathe.
"Bucky," she repeated, walking quickly around the glass to approach him. Closer now, her eyes were shifting from surprised to concerned, and her words rang in his head the same way that the voice did.
But hearing it out loud… it hurt his head, felt like being electrocuted and buried alive. It took only two steps to close the space between them, seize her bare arm with his left, and push her backwards through a door marked staff only.
She gasped in surprise – or pain – at the brutal handling. The flutter of her hair brushed his face and he caught a whiff of her perfume – not really a perfume, but some combination of plants he couldn't identify by smell alone.
He pushed her against the cold wall of the stairwell and she hit the back of her head. Her breath jerked at staccato through her chest, making a funny motion as she tried to swallow air. "I want to help you," she stammered. "I know you must be frightened."
"Shut up," he snarled. It was confusing, hearing the voice coming from her lips while it echoed inside his head. She twisted uncomfortably in his grip as he squeezed her arm tighter, the metal digging into her skin.
"I'm here." She lowered her voice, speaking soothingly. "Please." She touched his metal arm with her free hand, but instead of scratching or clawing or pulling at it her fingers just danced across his knuckles; like soothing a frightened animal. The gentle touch felt wrong; intrusive.
Breathe, the voice commanded. A shuddering ripple worked through his chest, and his grip lessened as the resulting drop in blood pressure forced him to relax.
"One more," the woman in his grip commanded, with the same emphasis as the voice. Reflexively, he complied. Her watery smile nearly glowed. "Good," she praised. "Are you hurt?"
"Who are you?" he snarled. Or at least, he tried to. It came out in a croak that sounded pained even to him.
"Alice," she replied. "And you're Bucky." Her fingers slipped under the metallic grip on her arm, and gently pulled his hand away.
The Soldier stepped back from her like she'd tried to stab him. "That's not my name," he argued.
"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes; Bucky," she insisted, just like the other soldier who'd called hum Bucky, before he fell, before the Soldier pulled him from the river. "I want to help you."
"You're-" he started to contradict her, but couldn't quantify what she was. The little woman wasn't a Mission, and she wasn't carrying a weapon to help identify her as a threat.
"Yeah," she agreed. Her eyes watered and a weird laugh slipped past her lips as her eyes glittered in the harsh fluorescent light. "I can't believe you're really here," she managed to say through a choke of air.
He might have thought her mad from fear – targets sometimes laughed right before he put a bullet between their eyes – but nothing else about her posture indicated she held any fear for him.
Her hands fluttered like she didn't know what to do with them, moving like birds between them. She reached into her purse, and the Soldier struck out instantly, grabbing her wrist. He felt the bones of her wrist grind together but she barely winced. "It's okay," she said. He eased up just enough to let her pull out an envelope.
"What is that?" he demanded. Not dangerous, the voice insisted. He ground his teeth as he tried to sort of what was happening inside and outside of his head, but the voices were too similar.
"Just a letter to a friend I was going to mail." She scribbled out the original mailing address and wrote a new name and address. Quick as lightning, she tugged at a gold chain around her neck and slipped a copper pendant from around her neck and tucked it into the open envelope. "Now it's for you. It's my address and… something to help you remember," she tucked the lid of the envelope into the body and offered him the envelope. "I won't force you, but please, please…" She sucked in a breath. "I have all the answers you could want, but you need to want them."
She appeared to be holding her breath as she waited for him to do something. His metal arm twitched as something shorted in the wiring – residual damage he'd yet to isolate from his combat on the helicarrier, or possibly from dropping into the river. Her eyes flicked to it; following the motion.
Her eyes hurt like his arm – feeling her stare felt like… another sensation that drifted just past comprehension, but tasted like blood again as he bit his tongue. She seemed to sense his confusion – better than Commander ever had; breaking past his iron façade to find the soil and plunge her hands deep in search of seeds.
Breathe, the voice whispered. It sounded like comfort in the darkness.
"Breathe," the woman whispered. It sounded like secrets in the night.
His head ached as the inside and outside world clashed violently. He lashed out, his metal arm striking the wall and punching through the drywall; scattering dust over the woman's shoulder as he barely missed her face. He'd aimed for her face but changed directions as her eyes flashed with fear for the first time.
"Stop," he ordered, or had he begged? His head dropped slightly as he closed his eyes, hoping that by closing off one sensation he might ground himself.
He felt something press against his chest and grabbed at it with his free hand, just grazing her hand as she withdrew it and left the envelope in his reflexive grasp. "If… if you decide not to come – just drop that in the mail and it'll get back to me. Please don't just dump it in the trash – it's all I have."
He lifted his head slightly to look at her – so much smaller, caged between him and the wall but showing remarkably little fear. Her bare arm bore deep purple bruises already from his grip and her shoulders and hair may have been dusted with the light white powder of destroyed drywall, but her eyes only held concern now. Concern and… an emotion he couldn't identify. He'd seen it through scopes and windows as men looked at their wives and wives to their children.
"I'm going," she declared, brushing past him. Her arm brushed his and his head hurt again as he watched the deep purple – no, green; no, yellow; no, gone – bruises of his aggression fade in the span of a few frantic breaths.
She caught him staring as she pulled open the door marked staff only on the other side. "Come back to me, Bucky." The door swung wide as she left him alone in the empty stairwell.
The Soldier stood in the stairwell, alone and irrationally afraid, until a door opening above him reminded him to move. He fled the museum, hand clenched tight around the envelope she'd pressed against his chest. He dipped his hat a little lower as a police car rolled past, and made a turn down a side-street, headed for the homeless shelter.
"More soup, dear?" Joy interrupted the Soldier's repeated twitchy motions as he reached for the envelope concealed in his pocket, thought better of pulling it out with witnesses around, and tried to come up with something else to do with his hands.
The Soldier shook his head gently and she nodded cheerily. "Alright dear, just come up if you change your mind." She paused before shuffling along. "You look a fright, dear; you sure I can't get you some coffee?"
"No," he said brusquely.
Manners, the voice chided.
The Soldier added a softer, "thank you."
Better, the voice added.
Joy nodded, mostly for herself, and muttered something that sounded like a familiar bible quote as she moved on to the next cot, still offering extra soup.
The Soldier lay down on the scratchy cot and waited, arms clenched around his middle. The voice, whispering soothing phrases inside his head, provided little comfort for his growing confusion. Now that he'd heard it on the outside of his body, he was certain that the voice was the same as that woman's.
Alice, she'd called herself.
The Angel of Azzano, the museum had called her.
He felt stuck on the edge of a cliff overlooking some great sea of memories. He could taste the salt of it on his tongue, reached for it, but still couldn't so much as wet his hands in it. Some connection to those memories still lingered out of reach but softly sang in the disturbed and overgrown weeds of his mind.
The upheaval of his comfort hurt both mentally and physically. He had been a good soldier; efficient, lethal, and spectacularly well-trained. Releasing his personal will to that of Commander was the definition of his 'comfort zone'; it removed the need for him to process feelings or even feel such civilian emotions like fear and regret. The ease of accepting command allowed the Soldier to focus on focusing.
Without the certainty of his training, and the stability provided by Commander and his team, the Soldier drifted aimlessly through the weedy confusion that grew untamed in his mind. These memories, sprouting faster and more furious by the day, rose in chaotic motion with no trellis of context to tame them.
The Soldier clutched the still-sealed envelope in his left hand, the paper crinkling softly in protest. He didn't dare open it. He didn't dare leave it sealed. He waited, hoping the voice would tell him what to do but it only maintained that he needed to breathe.
The lights clicked off, and he still waited.
Light snoring started in chorus.
He slipped out from underneath the paper-thin blanket and made his way towards the locker room. The few others still awake in the dark didn't bat an eye; he did this all the time. Everyone kept slightly odd hours.
This time, like all the times before, the Soldier locked the locker room door behind him. He did it to prevent accidental questions about his arm, but tonight he feared for far worse. The Soldier crouched beneath the high window in the room, holding up the envelope in the muted light of the street lamp outside.
He examined it for any evidence of a trigger or tracker, but nothing appeared obvious. He could see the outline of a slip of paper, and whatever pendant hung from the chain slipping around the bottom of the envelope, making one corner bulge and wrinkle.
Fuck it, the Soldier thought, and ripped open the top of the envelope.
Nothing happened.
He let out the breath he'd been holding.
The edge of a piece of paper dangled from the torn side. He withdrew it slowly and opened the letter, a single sheet of paper folded carefully along the middle. A flick of the finger opened it, and the Soldier tilted it towards the light to read the loopy script.
Steve,
Is anyone picking up your mail for you? Tell Sam to stop being mad and answer my texts already. On that note, please get a real cell phone; Sam is a terrible secretary.
-Al.
Mundane, and several thorough readings convinced him the letter wasn't hiding any secret code. He carefully re-folded the letter and set it aside.
He tipped the contents of the envelope into his hand. The woman's pendant clinked against his metal hand; a copper bullet hanging from a gold chain that glowed like warm sunlight. Something to help you remember. He rolled the slug with his hand and found some scratches on the side. Holding it up and tilting it slowly until the crude engraving caught the light.
Alice Shaw
A flood of memories – some warm, some painful – assaulted his brain in the span of a second as they grew violently to fill an empty space.
"It's a bullet with your name on it," he explained. "You know how they say that somewhere, there's a bullet with your name on it?" He pointed at it briefly. "Well, what do you think the odds are of there being two bullets out there?" He tapped his head knowingly. "Gotta think smart out here."
Alice burst out laughing, holding the round in her lithe fingers, still rolling it from end to end. "I'm fairly sure that's not how it works," she chuckled.
The Soldier groaned in pain as a violent stab attacked his gut. It tasted like… fear.
Her eyes weren't all there, and a heavy rock joined the growing pile in his stomach. "Bucky…" she whispered, pressing a hand to her chest. "It-" she coughed, more blood staining her lips. "It didn't work."
"What didn't work, sweetheart?" he asked softly. She pulled at a cord around her neck, tangled around her dog tags. Bucky helped her pull it free, though from the weight of it he knew what it would be before he saw it. The glittering round mocked him in the light, the crudely scratched channels of Alice Shaw filled with blood.
He curled her hands around the bullet, clenching tightly. "No, it worked. You're not gonna die, so the bullet today didn't have your name on it. Right?" he encouraged, trying to convince himself as well.
Where that memory grew, others followed.
Her face as she looked up at snow.
Her face in the warm glow of a fire, her eyes catching the light in a blaze of cinnamon.
A wicked grin as she peered around the side of a horse.
The touch of her hand, soft as soft could be.
Her face.
Her touch.
Her voice.
Breathe.
End of Act I
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A/N: let's ask the question: "will Aria ever leave us without a cliffhanger at the end of a chapter?". It's what keeps you coming back, isn't it?
That's the last of the Three Day Fun-Fest! I hope you enjoyed getting three chapters in three days! Our next Act is: Remembrance. I'm hoping to have something to post around April 12, but don't hold me to that. Act 2 is shaky right now and needs some work.
I can't fucking wait to stop referring to Bucky as "the Soldier" and Alice as "the woman". Blech.
I will admit I'm having some trouble writing because the music playlists that inspired me for WIAS just aren't working for this story. Leave me some music suggestions that you think pair well with RITD in the awesome and super-long review you're about to write!
I LOVE my reviewers: Carolain. Black, Lucy Jacob, TimeLordsRule, AquaBluey, Momochan77, RainbowLabs, Sanguinary Tide, LadyGely92, CullenMia, PistolHattersButtercup, bananaraberrybat, and SomebodyWhoCares!
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