Apologies for the looooong wait while I had other writing/critique responsibilities. Chapters should come faster now! Thank you for your patience and as always for all the guest reviews!
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Bucky wanted to write down all those good things that had happened this morning, so after he hit the shower, he sat at the desk in his bedroom, opened one of the new notebooks Steve had given him and wrote down every last detail, even adding in a half-assed sketch of the monkey. He was terrible at art, nothing like Steve. It looked like a rabbit with no ears and a long tail. Oh well. Maybe he could ask Steve to sketch a scene commemorating the first silly and truly fun time they'd had together in 70 years. They could hang it on their wall.
He stopped. Stared into the middle distance.
Their wall…
"Damn it," he said softly. They didn't have a wall. This one wasn't theirs and God knows when Bucky might be able to leave Wakanda. When he did, chances were pretty damn good the only walls he'd have around him were the ones in a prison cell. Bunking with Steve like they'd done in the old days was a pipe dream.
He shut the notebook.
Maybe this was all… a mistake. Thinking the Wakandans could help. Relying on their kindness. Taking advantage of their kindness.
He didn't deserve any of it. It always came back to that.
How many people had he murdered? Twenty? Fifty?
He had told Tony he remembered all of them. He wished he did, but he knew he didn't. He remembered a lot of them, but how many more had been wiped from his memory? How many more might suddenly burst into remembrance in his nightmares?
How could he ever know? Really, really know?
The dumped SHIELD files might tell him, but he'd never looked through them. He didn't have much access to computers in those early days, and once he started getting a sense of himself, he didn't have the courage to see all his crimes laid out in cold black and white. There was a chance the files didn't contain all his missions, anyway. They were ostensibly SHIELD files, after all, not HYDRA's. He doubted the embedded HYDRA agents would have put any information about him on SHIELD servers. There might not even be anything about him on HYDRA servers. Make a lot more sense to keep Winter Soldier files completely on paper that couldn't be hacked by some teenager in his mom's basement in Paramus.
So. Chances were excellent that there were more assassinations and murders and hit jobs that he didn't remember and wasn't that a barrel of laughs to think about? Probably one of the biggest serial killers on the planet was lollygagging around Wakanda chasing a damn monkey and yukking it up with his best buddy.
His stomach cramped.
Steve's voice from the doorway made him jump. "Hey, Buck, you ready for soup?"
He put the pen inside the spiral of the notebook. "Uh, yeah. Lemme go wash my hands. Um, hand." He jumped up and disappeared into his bathroom before Steve could see what was probably a look of total self-revulsion on his face. He ran the faucet until it turned hot, but even with the tool Dr. Ifede had given him, he couldn't scrub his hand as hard as he needed, hard enough to feel like he was washing off even a little bit of the blood.
Even if I had two hands, no way to get rid of all that red…
He turned off the tap. Looked in the mirror at his eyes, really looked.
Steel blue. The same color he remembered from so many hours staring at his reflection when he was a teenager, wondering if the girls would think he was handsome or ugly or if that pimple in the middle of his forehead would make him forever anathema to every girl everywhere.
It hadn't. He remembered lots of girls, lots of dates.
The band was small, just a combo in the corner, but really jumping, playing all the good songs. He grinned down at Louise Swanson as he grabbed her waist and lifted her up. She grinned back and he was in love…
Bucky smiled a little. How many times had he fallen in love in the middle of twirling a gal around the dance floor? More times than he could count.
"So who you marryin' this week, Buck?" Steve asked, giving him a sideways look.
"Mary Ann Parker. That gal has some dreamy moves, Steve. You wouldn't believe your eyes even if you saw her. Ginger Rogers can't hold a candle to her."
Steve coughed. "Yeah, well, I'll take your word for it."
Bucky carefully hid any sympathy. Steve hated pity, made him mad as a hornet. Even if his asthma hadn't kept him out of smoky dance clubs, being shorter than most girls kept him from ever wanting to try. "Nobody wants a partner they'll step on, Buck," was his favorite response any time Bucky tried to talk him into going dancing.
"Yeah, but one of these days the right partner will come along, you just wait and see."
"Sure, Bucky. Whatever you say."
It felt like another person's life, those days. That Bucky's eyes had held a thousand dreams with nothin' to stop him reaching them. This Bucky's eyes were a ghost's, filled with ghosts. They were eyes that didn't know how to fix his life, didn't know how to go forward after seeing a thousand battles and a thousand deaths.
These eyes were a stranger's.
Who the hell is Bucky?
Tears burned and his eyes started to turn red. He turned the tap back on, cooler this time, and splashed himself until the red faded. He sniffed, pressed a towel hard against his face, then turned away from the mirror.
Steve was putting bowls of soup on the table as he came in. "Hope you like, uh…" He picked up the can to read the label. "Okay, no idea how to pronounce it, but from the picture on the label, it's got chicken and a bunch of vegetables in it."
"Sounds fine." Bucky sat down and looked in the bowl, glad to have a legitimate excuse to keep his face hidden behind his hair. He stirred it around with his spoon, not really seeing it at first, but then curiosity got the better of him. It sure didn't look like any chicken and vegetable soup he'd ever had. It was thick and sort of bright brownish yellow, for one thing. There were carrots, so that was good, but there were also pale discs of something that looked carroty but wasn't. He scooped one up and looked it over. Turnips, maybe? Parsnips? Hard to say. There were also dark green things that might be spinach but probably was some esoteric Wakandan leafy vegetable. Or it might be spinach. Who knows. There were…. He squinted. Peanuts? Weird, all of it, but it smelled good. He took a careful bite, blowing on it first so he wouldn't burn his tongue. It tasted… interesting. Very spicy with an unmistakable peanut flavor.
"'S'good," he mumbled. He tucked his hair behind his ears and started eating, enjoying it more with each successive bite, especially after the heat from whatever pepper was in it started to build. He loved spicy food, the hotter the better. Helped him forget he had ever been frozen.
Steve sat down and took a bite. He winced, then grimly shoved it down just like when he was a kid and had to finish all his boiled cabbage before he could leave the table.
"Don't like it?"
Steve shook his head. Bucky wasn't certain, but he thought he saw tears in the corners of Steve's eyes. Steve's nose was definitely getting red.
Bucky got up without a word and poured Steve a glass of milk. He plunked it down by Steve's right hand. "Drink."
Steve chugged the milk like his throat was on fire, which it probably was.
"I take it you don't like spicy food?"
Steve coughed a little and cleared his throat. He swiped his eyes and nose. "Nope. Not like that, anyway. Is that peanut butter?" He looked a little green.
"I think so, yeah. I read somewhere that peanut soup is a thing in Africa. You gonna finish yours?"
Steve shook his head, so Bucky grabbed his bowl and took it to his place. Between bites, he asked, "Will the funeral be televised?"
"Dunno. Might be. Wanna watch? Unless…"
"Unless what?"
Steve rubbed the back of his neck. "It won't stir up any bad memories?"
Bucky stared at him.
"I mean, I know you were innocent of all of it, but I, um, I mean… it kinda started all of the…" He waved toward Bucky's missing left arm.
Bucky resolutely shelved all the guilt he'd been feeling. "You mean it started me down the path toward all of the good things I've got right now? Safety, reunion with my best friend? Good food to eat?"
Steve turned a little red. "Never mind. I just didn't—"
"Look, pal, it's okay. I understand. And I appreciate it. But it's fine, okay? I mean, I gotta start focusing on the positive, right? Ac-cen-tu-ate the positive and all that?"
"You remember that song?"
"Would it be bad if I said I was kinda glad I fell just to get that earworm outta my head?"
Steve's face was a sight. He was caught between mortification and laughing and it was a toss-up over which would win. Finally he just shook his head. "Guess I oughta put away the kid gloves, huh."
"Yeah. Burn 'em. I'm fine." Okay, not really, but at least when it came to Steve finding him and all the events, including Siberia, leading to his arrival here, he actually had no regrets. Nothing Steve could do about the rest of it that wasn't okay. That was what Dr. Lu was for. "Turn on the TV so we can pay our respects the only way we can."
Steve went to the living room and looked around. "I don't guess there's a TV in here."
Bucky looked at the walls and then spotted a remote on a side table. "There's a remote, though."
Steve picked it up and aimed it vaguely around the room as he pressed the power button. A painting Bucky coulda swore on his Great Aunt Beulah's grave was real faded away and footage of a huge crowd of Wakandans took its place. "Wouldja look at that," Steve said.
"You mean Stark doesn't have one of those?"
"Nope."
Steve turned the volume up, not that it helped since everything was in Wakandan. "Should we keep watching?"
Bucky shrugged. "Maybe leave it on, but mute it. We can at least see what Wakanda looks like while we do… whatever."
"And 'whatever' would be…?"
"I dunno. Read a book?"
"You have one?"
"No. You?"
"There's a few on my tablet, but they're mostly political or military biographies or books on tactics. Art of War, stuff like that. Oh, and Lord of the Rings is on there."
Bucky wrinkled his nose. War damn sure wasn't art and he didn't have the powers of concentration required by Tolkien, though he'd made it through The Hobbit. "Got a deck of cards?"
A head-shake.
"Wanna go find that monkey?"
That earned him a glare.
"Fine. You sketch and I'll watch."
"Sounds kinda boring for you."
"I remember watching you, back then. I liked it. I still like watching people create things, like that lady with her lace in Romania. It… helps." He didn't figure he needed to spell it out in any more detail.
Sure enough, Steve merely nodded as he disappeared down the hallway to retrieve his sketchbook. "I can sketch some of the funeral," he called over his shoulder. "Maybe some of their outfits. It all looks pretty amazing."
It did, at that. Bucky had assumed the service would be in a temple or church or something, but with the thousands of people gathered in a large amphitheater-like stone hollow, he knew there couldn't be anything short of a football stadium big enough to hold everyone. A lot of people wore black, but there was also a lot of yellow, which must be the color of mourning here. Some people wore very elaborate robes and capes, especially the Dora Milaje, who looked stunning and deadly as they stood at attention along each aisle of the seating area and across the back of the platform where T'Challa's throne stood. Above the platform was a huge bas-relief of a panther's head. T'Challa himself was resplendent in all white, the panther claw necklace prominent around his neck. He was speaking, his face animated and his arms waving at times to emphasize a point, but the language wasn't anything Bucky remotely recognized, so he tuned it out in favor of simply watching faces and expressions. There seemed to be a universal sorrow shared by all. T'Chaka must have been a helluva beloved king. He remembered T'Challa's words… very large shoes to fill indeed. Bucky could see that just from the camera panning the crowd.
Steve returned with a pouch full of pencils and a small sketchbook. He plopped himself down on the couch and patted the spot on his left. "Sit here so I don't bump you with my arm."
"Or more like I don't bump you." Bucky settled down beside Steve, far enough from him not to interfere but close enough to watch. "Just don't draw me."
"Audience members can't give orders."
Bucky smiled but didn't argue. He just watched as an image of the grotto on television emerged as Steve's sure hand drew strong and steady lines on the page. Before any time at all had passed, he had put down a highly accurate sketch of the assembly, with the central focus on T'Challa as he stood before everyone, arms raised, looking toward the horizon as though searching for a sign his father's spirit was at rest. Steve added shading and texture to T'Challa's face and soon had a portrait of a man showing strength and peace despite his sorrow. Bucky swallowed and blinked a few times. Steve might be a superhero and a punk, but damn if he still wasn't one of the best artists Bucky had ever seen. "That's really good," he said. "Good doesn't actually cut it, but yeah, it's good."
"You think?" Steve squinted at it. "Not sure I got his nose right."
"It's perfect. You got his expression right and you can tell it's T'Challa, and that's the important part. You should show it to him next time you see him."
Steve's ears started to turn red. "Nah. It's just a work-a-day sketch. He probably has the best artists in the world on retainer, painting his portraits. This is amateur land."
Bucky settled farther back against the couch, sliding down so he could lay his head on the back cushions. He yawned. "Don't care. They're not as good as you."
Steve let out a little huffing noise of mild disagreement, then kept sketching. The soft swish of his pencil against the page worked its usual calming magic and Bucky felt his eyelids drooping. Before much time at all had passed, he fell asleep, but a few hours later, the Winter Soldier woke up.