A crowd had formed in front of the building to his left, eagerly waiting to pay their fare to get in to the site. They were congregated in front of the set of stairs, sturdy metal replacing the wooden stairs and landing he'd once known. It wasn't every day, after all, that they had a chance to get into Captain America's old home in Brooklyn. The marker out front, shining in the sunlight, listed some factoids, such as his birth, how the neighborhood had been in his day, and how he'd come to spend his hours playing in the streets with his childhood friend. However, he was not captivated as the crowd was, and he certainly was not in the line to get inside the old apartment building.
It would be a cold day in hell before Steve Rogers paid money to get into his old home, for any reason. Instead, he stood a little off to the side, resting against the brick wall of the next-door apartment complex. Hair tucked under a ball cap, and a set of aviator shades covering his eyes, he also sported a jacket despite the early June weather. It was easier to hide his shield harness underneath with it. His shield, resting on the ground beside him, the inner half facing out so that it resembled something like a trash can lid. Half in the shadows, nobody really looked at him twice while he pretended to be fiddling with his phone, like so many other young men nowadays. In reality, he was observing both the crowd and the inaction across the street, waiting for an opportunity.
As he and Sam had discussed, they had agreed Brooklyn would be the starting point in their pursuit of Bucky. And to that end, they'd gotten themselves a flight under the guise of personal recreation (after landing, he sent a text to Holly, letting her know they landed safely and to give the house a once-over while they were out. She would get back to him eventually well after the day's discoveries. Thus far, all was quiet; she and her bat had made the rounds as asked. He'd snorted at that and commended her bat's abilities). On the off-chance that Bucky's building had been purchased and renovated, he would have to secure permission from the current tenants to enter, or at least ask them about anyone unusual coming or going. As such, it was still deserted, the current property owner having jettisoned off to Florida as far as anyone knew.
The old tenement sagged, a boarded eyesore in the midst of the otherwise maintained neighborhood. Spray-paint tags littered the brick, some posted bills were ripped and tattered on the locked doors. It didn't surprise him that the old building was condemned; there never was an outcry to "save the James Buchanan Barnes house." It still made him feel sad, though. A lot of good times had happened there...some were awful, but this still was an integral part of his childhood. Bucky's home was his, too, in a way. He took in a deep breath, closing his eyes as the memories washed over him.
"Come on, Stevie! Stop flinching when I throw the ball!" a boy hollered, swiping the dark hair out of his eyes and laughing as he did so.
Another boy, blonde and skinny, squared his shoulders and shot back, "The last time it almost hit me in the face, Bucky!"
It was near dark, though the streetlights were not on yet. They were playing catch, tossing the ball back and forth, the mitts on their hands worn hand-me-downs from Bucky's older brothers. Occasionally a car needed to get by, and they'd abandon the street to let it pass. Soon enough, they would be back in the road, too far from the park and too little daylight left for them to make the trek to play there. Besides which, both of their mothers would have their heads if they wandered too far.
"Keep your mitt up and it won't get near your face. It ain't a bean bag, buddy," Bucky countered, pointedly tossing the ball gently into his friend's waiting glove. "Just showing you how it's done!"
"I'll show you how it's done," Stevie muttered grumpily, though it was belied by the amused expression. Rolling it his hand for a moment, he drew back his arm and, with all his eight-year-old strength, winged the ball back at him. It arched high, traveling farther than any of the others he'd made before. As Bucky ran hard to catch it, Stevie felt himself smile broadly.
"My best throw," he murmured, just as Bucky caught it and whooped. And it was; he'd never thrown it that far before. Granted, it wasn't like he'd become Lou Gehrig or something in that moment, but he was proud. And Bucky was right there with him. His friend, beaming so bright one would've thought he'd made the throw.
"Yes! That's what I'm talking about, Stevie!"
"We going in?" Sam's voice cut through the memory, banishing it back to the corners of Steve's mind. He was dressed down as well, a t-shirt and jeans combination with an old backpack hanging from his shoulders. The other man had been waiting slightly behind him, watching for any activity in the road or from the tenants next door. So far nothing. Opening his eyes, he cut his gaze to his companion.
"Hold on," he replied, discreetly pulling up the digital face and watch it switch to two o'clock. Right on the dot, the front door opened, allowing the gathered group of families, couples, and the occasional teenager skipping school to slip into the Captain America house. As they filed in one by one, it was only a short time later that the tour guide firmly shut the door. The passersby, the few that were out, were more absorbed in their own pursuits, barely tossing a glance at either man. Pocketing his phone, he grabbed his shield and stepped out of the shadows.
"Okay, let's go."
Gesturing, he let Sam precede him across the street. Blinking, he exhaled and followed, shaking his head as he glimpsed the surrounding buildings and cars again. Nobody remarked on them going by.
Yes, the neighborhood had changed, even further from where it was two years ago. It was one of the first places he visited after waking up; he had to see what had happened to his home. It was something of a shock for his apartment to have become a national landmark, and he was overwhelmed by the people who had recognized him that day, taking him room by room as though he'd never been there before.
Maybe they saw it as a great publicity stunt, or even a kindness to him, but Steve was not pleased with that attention and so had not returned since. Not even after the attack on the city; if it had collapsed in a pile of rubble after the Chitauri stormed through, then it was rubble, and there wasn't much he would be able to do about it. It had survived, becoming a sort of shrine to the returned hero in the days that followed, and he definitely steered clear of it afterward. It was unnerving, having all his personal items on display and treated like relics of a bygone era. The fact that they were, in a way, was even more unsettling. For unlike the spectators, the bygone era for him had only felt like it was yesterday. So he tamped down the memories and stayed away.
Things were different today. The objective to return to the old neighborhood was different.
It was the stepping stone, two years ago, to bridging the gap between the years and understanding how the world had viewed him after his actions, and how it had changed in his absence.
For Bucky, it could be seen as the first step in the path to piecing together the truth. Granted, it was only strong suspicion (and intuition, if he were being honest) that brought him and Sam to the neighborhood, but it stood to reason to at least investigate. If he were to have been there, he might successfully gauge the path of his past friend, catch him before he got too many steps ahead.
Or at least, before the inevitable fall-out happened. Having no personal experience, he could imagine the psychological damage that would occur when his old pal discovered the truth about his brainwashing and how many innocent people died by his unknowing hand. He shouldn't have to go through that alone.
As they could not be seen entering a condemned building in broad daylight, Steve and Sam had to find an alternative route into Bucky's old home. Night investigation had been discussed, but was ultimately rejected for the fact that two men lurking around a building at night would draw more attention to what they were doing. Skirting around the corner, they darted down the alley to get to the back of the tenement.
"He lived on the second floor, right?" Sam asked, looking at the smashed glass dubiously.
"Towards the front," Steve confirmed, scanning for an decent entrance point. There were a few planked windows on the ground level, a couple panes broken out by vandals in the past. It would be a gamble treading up to the apartment on the main entrance's rickety staircase, but the odds were against them scaling the building elsewhere. It had to be quick, otherwise the neighbors would suspect something. One of the windows down the row had three boards across it, but it looked like the glass beneath it had been completely obliterated. He nodded to it. "That one."
Without needing to be told, Sam led the way, helping Steve pry off each board and laying them gently on the ground. The last hanging shards crashed at their feet as they did so, glass specks bouncing harmlessly off their boots. Taking the backpack off, Sam dug into it and removed two face masks, reminiscent of gas masks. When Steve had illustrated the plan to him some days ago, he'd spoken with an old buddy who worked on restoring aged buildings who could help him procure the proper equipment. Scoring the masks was necessary, especially for a building of pre-1970's construction ("It's definitely an asbestos trap. No thanks," Sam had groused). Once they were secured over their noses and mouths, the two men went in. Climbing through first, the younger man began to fish his phone out of his pocket.
"Little dark in here," he supplied needlessly, as Steve had been right on his heels and was submerged in the hazy afternoon darkness as well. His voice was muffled a little by the mask, and his breathing was much more obvious. Pulling it out, the screen bathed his face in an unnatural glow as he tapped through the apps. The front-facing light disappeared soon enough, replaced by a solitary beam. "Better."
Slinging his shield onto his back, removing his jacket to have better access to the harness, Steve began to move in the light's path. "Careful, the floor looks rotten."
Slowly, they moved through the abandoned space, which had once been a kitchen (going off the dirty fridge and the busted stove pushed in a corner). Eventually, they found the hall door, going single file down towards the front lobby and the landing. It all looked untouched, save for whatever had fallen from the floors above over the last several years. There were no shoe prints in the dust, none that weren't buried in the decay for some time. The old staircase looming before them was warped with age, the steps either rotted or missing. It could collapse any second; it was a miracle it was still standing to begin with.
Sam coughed. "So who's going first?"
Steve looked at him, the light in the hall a little better. The lower half of his partner's face was obscured, but he could tell that he was pulling a frown behind it. Turning back to look at the staircase, he shrugged.
"Well, I could pull rank and seniority..."
"You know what they say: age before beauty," Sam riposted, his eyes creasing at the corners in amusement. Steve, despite the seriousness of the situation, felt his shoulders shake as he suppressed self-deprecating laughter.
"You weigh less. It's less likely to break under you," the captain shot back. That was true, as the elder soldier outweighed his compatriot by forty pounds, give or take a few. "Better to have at least one of us up there without too much difficulty."
Sam sighed inaudibly; what was said was true. Arguing would do them no good. Hesitantly, he placed his right foot on the first step. Over his shoulder, he muttered, "Well, if I don't make it, tell my mom I loved her."
Steve rolled his eyes, and watched warily as Sam edged ever-so-slowly up the second and third steps. "Plant your feet on the outer edges. They might be a little more stable than the center."
"Gotcha, Cap." He moved like a turtle covered in molasses, but he did follow the advice given. A hand was firmly planted on the flaking inner wall, steadying him as he climbed. With every creak and groan causing a fresh wave of alarm to speed through his veins, he at length reached the upstairs landing. Both he and Steve breathed a sigh of relief.
If Sam moved like a molasses-covered turtle, then Steve was more akin to a sloth in January as he made his way up. Bracing himself, the stairs creaked even louder under his weight. In fact, he felt a few boards splinter, causing him to push his shoulder into the wall to take some of the pressure off. With hindsight, it might have been better to find an alternate route upstairs, but he'd already committed to this course, and he was going to see it through.
Four stairs away from the landing, his entire leg went through the step. Flailing, he grabbed onto the deteriorating banister as Sam clattered down to catch him. Grabbing him under the arms, the younger man helped pull his leg out of the hole, the staircase swaying. Unspoken agreement led the two men to charge up the last steps haphazardly, feet becoming lighter than air as the boards snapped and cracked. They both hit the deck on the landing as the top half of the stairwell broke away from its supports, the wood clattering down to the floor. Dust shot up in the air, stinging their eyes, but both men were otherwise unharmed.
"Not getting out that way," Steve muttered, unconsciously borrowing the words from something. Sam shook his head in agreement. After a moment or two spent listening to see if any of the neighbors or pedestrians had heard the noise and called the police, they took the silence as reassurance to continue. Leading the way, the captain kept getting more flashes of memory. One was of taking Bucky's skates for a test run down the hall, and incidentally tumbling down the same stairs. Another was him having an asthma attack, Bucky staying by his side and keeping him calm while he rode it out. Many, however, coalesced into a single remembrance: walking through the door, Bucky at his side, the entire Barnes family greeting him as he came in. The sense of family and love flooded into him as he turned the knob gently, easing the door back and revealing just what had happened to his second home.
Shock had hit him hard; it was a disaster. It was one thing to expect decay and mess, but another to physically see it in front of you. Everything that had made it familiar, made it a home, was gone. All the furniture, the belongings...the people, they had disappeared. Numbly, he moved to one side, side-stepping out of habit to avoid an ottoman that was no longer there.
"There was a couch there," he said, as Sam walked into the space. "Used to bunk down, make a fort out of it sometimes. The radio was over there."
Bucky's brothers had always elbowed them away from the knobs, in the nature of all older brothers. However, they got their own back when Mrs. Barnes would swat the backs of their head, telling them to be nicer to the boys lest they incur her wrath. A lump formed in Steve's throat; Mrs. Barnes had always been a warm, caring woman. It was too bad she was gone. Her, her boys, her little girl...Swallowing past it, Steve cast his eye around the living room. Swirling motes were caught in the light coming through the grimy windows. At least those weren't boarded up, and Sam was able to save his phone's battery without using the light.
"Are we looking for anything specific?" Sam wondered, putting the aforementioned phone away. Steve nodded, clearing his throat and pointing at the backpack.
"We need to see if we've been the only ones here. Check the front pocket, you'll find something that will help."
Delving into the bag again, Sam withdrew a pair of sunglasses, with red lenses and a remote touch pad accompanying it. Staring at the objects for a few seconds, he put the shades on. Instantly they reacted, turning on and providing a structural scan of the room. "Woah."
"When I started with SHIELD, they gave me a pair. Every agent had one for processing data overseas. I sent it off to Stark, thought he might be interested in it, or at least he'd get the bugs out. He sent them back, with a lot of extra tweaks. Said they should work better."
Sam grinned, cautiously tapping along the touch pad. The computer links showed up on the glasses, and he gasped, "This is hooked up to the international criminal database."
Steve smirked. "Among other things. I think Stark was hoping I would wear them on assignment, so he could see what SHIELD was up to. Any recorded data is backed up on its own hard drive, I think he said. Too bad for him I hated the damn things. Gave me headaches."
"This is some Heavy Rain stuff, man," his companion remarked. Off the captain's confused look, he waved a free hand dismissively. "Video game reference, sorry. More like an interactive movie, depending on how you look at it. Holly hasn't told you about that one?"
"She watches actual movies. So surprisingly enough, no."
"If she goes through my collection at home, she'll find it," he remarked. "Anyway, to explain: one of the characters in the game worked for the FBI. He had glasses and a glove that worked to read prints and process crime scenes."
"Probably where SHIELD got the inspiration to make them." Steve raised an eyebrow to himself. "They've borrowed ideas before."
"And I assume you want me to use them like they did."
"...Yes. I want you to see if you can spot anything out of the ordinary."
"And what will you be doing?"
Steve grimaced. "I'm going to see if anything's missing. Call out what you find."
"But how would you know..." Sam trailed off as his friend walked away, moving determinedly towards the back rooms. Letting it go, he focused on his brand-new equipment. "Okay, let's see..."
The words bounced around Steve's head as Sam made his observations, the well of hope rising with each. Forced entry, back window in the kitchen. Had to have scaled the building, puncture points where a grappling hook latched onto the brick. Disturbed dust and scrapes across the floor indicated that it had been pushed out of the way recently. Drop of blood on the sill, must have pierced a hand on the glass. It looks relatively new, probably a few weeks old...any prints left behind were not a match in the database. Not a shock, since he was thought to be a ghost story for so long. Scanned for future analysis and tracking. Hey, it was possible to check email at the same time as reconstructing the scene, did he know that? He said nothing to all this, choosing instead to tread lightly down to the back bedroom.
Once Bucky had shared it with his brother Bram, the two brothers desperate to keep their separate spaces. There was always some inadvertent mix-up of toys or books, or trading cards, and both of them would be at each others' necks. One day, he resolved to keep his best hidden away from Bram, in an old tin.
"Bring your best stuff too, Steve. Like our Gehrig and Ruth cards, and anything else. We'll keep them safe." The twelve-year-old was tickled pink by the idea, and wanted his friend to share in it, too.
"Like a time capsule?" Steve had read about some professors at universities doing something like that, preserving things from their time to be found and looked at a hundred years from then. It seemed so grown-up to do that sort of thing.
Bucky's eyes lit up. "Exactly! We'll put it here in the floor, come back for it when we're old, fat, married guys and Bram can't get his hands on it."
Steve laughed, "I don't think I'll ever be fat; nothing I eat ever sticks to me, Mom says. You might be, though."
Buck shoved him playfully on the shoulder. "Shut up! You watch, you'll be the fattest guy ever! You'll see. Anyway, you in?"
Steve thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, okay. Let's do it".
"Tracks lead from the window to the living room. They stop...where you did, before heading down the hall."
Steve knelt on the floor in the old bedroom, the possessions gone and the floor warped and bitten up, dirt encrusted in the boards.
"I'm adding to the box before I go. My papers. So I can show them to my grandkids. Or at least for you to show to yours, in case I..."
"Don't talk like that, Buck. You'll show them yourself."
All except for one board, cleaner than the rest. He lifted it easily, the nails already pried away. And below...
The tin was gone. The trading cards, the old photos, Bucky's papers, everything they'd pooled together taken away. He reached in, combing his fingers over lower board and the muck gathered there. Brushing against a thick wad of what he could only assume was a rat's nest, a yellow edge appeared.
"They came through here, stopped where you are and then..." Sam paused, staring into the hole that Steve was transfixed on, before continuing, "they went out that window behind you. The boot prints are approximately about his size, but for all we know it could have just been some punk kid way too into Parkour."
"It was him."
Sam lifted the glasses off his face, concerned. "And you know this how?"
Steve withdrew his hand from the hole, a weathered piece of paper in it. Upon closer inspection, it had a design of a three of clubs, and Lou Gehrig's picture. A baseball card. One that should never have left the tin, and hadn't since the day Steve and Bucky put it there.
"Because of this."
And he knows he's being followed. Or expects to be followed. But whether it's a taunt or encouragement, I can't tell, he mused, rising slowly to look out the shattered window, the sun sliding lower in the sky. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.
A/N: Long chapter is long. And hopefully not too boring.
I personally have not played Heavy Rain, but I have seen walkthroughs where the FBI character has a device like that. And yeah, in the Marvel universe, a pair of glasses like that does not seem like a stretch. We need to give Sam something to do instead of just being the backup. (Tony has improved them, for sure. Just FYI.)
No Holly (save by brief mention) this time around, but I'm sure you aren't objecting too heavily. We'll see her next time.
By the way: you all came out in force last time, with your reviews and your kind words/follow/favorites of encouragement. It really warmed my heart, and makes me so glad that you all are keeping up with this story. Thank you all so much.
So, anyway, thanks for reading, please review, and I'll see you next time!
