Winter of the White Wolf

Chapter 7 - Steep Slopes

Bucky hadn't been kidding about Symkaria not being the sort of spot you travel to for a vacation. Even though it was broad daylight out, the country had all the surface-level appeal of Madripoor, only without any of the bright neon lights, drugs, loud music, piercings, or guns. Actually, on second thought, the only thing it really had in common with Madripoor was the idea that he was glad he wasn't carrying anything valuable, because he was pretty sure one of the petty thieves tucked around the corners would have been able to sniff it out from a mile away.

Ego be damned: he was terrible at this undercover stuff.

The streets of Aniana, the capitol city, felt decidedly European, with the sort of crumbling grace that comes when a place has spent more time than not trying to figure out who it wants to be in the face of repeated attempts at occupation and the push and pull of one too many wars. The streets were busy with the sort of people that knew where they were going and had no interest in exchanging pleasantries with two individuals who, Sam admitted, clearly looked like out-of-place tourists. Well, he did at least. Bucky could probably pass if he needed to since he spoke not only the regional dialect, but Hungarian as well. Watching him flip it on and off like that was something. It was like seeing him become a different person for a sentence or two, and then boom: back to that old man who accidentally slipped into a hint of his Brooklyn drawl when he wasn't paying attention.

That being as it was: he was still damn glad to have Bucky there playing a guide of sorts rather than being forced to wander through Aniana as someone who stood out like a cicada on a wedding cake. Better they assumed he was a tourist than Captain America: incognito edition, too. He took a sip of his drink – which was not nearly as fancy as he'd hoped – and tilted his head to regard an aged bronze statue that dominated an intersection of the town's central hub. A stalwart figure of a man holding Symkaria's flag was poised with his chin up and hand-to-breast beside a regal lion with a broken tail that had clearly seen better days. One of the rulers of the old monarchy, perhaps? "Anyone you knew?" he asked man beside him, whose eyes were presently searching the nearby crowds for potential threats.

Bucky looked first at Sam, then at the statue and back, as if trying to figure out if the remark was meant as a joke or not. He clearly wasn't certain one way or the other, and eventually offered only a passive, "Not sure. Hard to tell by the likeness."

There was something in his tone and posture that Sam immediately caught wind of: the decided "I'm over here in my private world brooding about things"-Bucky that used to be the norm rather than the exception, complete with his penchant for that stare. Sam quickly pivoted, hoping to avoid dredging up anything further, "Hey man. I was mostly kidding."

Bucky glanced back his way with a small shrug and a lot less emotion on his face than Sam would have liked. It was like over the past hour, all the joy had been sucked right out of it, leaving his expression empty and unreadable. "Come on," he offered as his way of telling Sam he was fine even though Sam damn well knew better.

Sam managed his best You okay? expression with his face, and apparently that was just enough to draw the smallest bit of the White Wolf out of his self-imposed personal cave of horrors.

"All good," Bucky said in a tone that was meant to reassure. It wasn't entirely convincing, but it was close enough. Self-awareness was half the battle after all, right? "Just feeling bad I told Cass and AJ we'd be there when they got back from school."

Sam raised an eyebrow at the deflection. Even if somewhere in that man's brain he was feeling like he'd issued some grand betrayal for missing dinner, he had no right to make it sound so damn dire. "They're kids, man. They get it. They just like havin' you around."

Bucky didn't say anything to that, but Sam felt certain he saw his shoulder relax, if just a little so he continued, "You should hear the two of them askin' about you when you're back in Brooklyn." He did his best impression of AJ, complete with his signature pleading eyes, "Uncle Sam, where's Bucky? When's he gonna be back? I remembered somethin' I wanted to show him."

This got the smallest pull of humanity out of those cold blue eyes of his, "Fine fine. I just don't like lying to your nephews."

"You weren't lying." Sam emphasized, "And you didn't break no promises neither. The moment we're headed back, there's bound to be cornbread, slaw, and a load of dishes waiting for us back home like no time's passed at all."

Bucky turned to meet his eyes then, and regarded him with that intense, soul-gazing stare of his. His eyes were focused on Sam's as if he was trying to piece apart what parts Sam was saying only to be nice, versus what were the real bits. He coulda' stared all day for as much as Sam cared, because he was speaking his truth, and he hoped maybe one day Bucky would realize that deep down, he wasn't a damn burden to any of them.

The old man squinted his face, grumbling something to himself as he broke away from the stare. Good. Hopefully he got the message.

They'd taken the long way around the government building the murders were said to had taken place. The local paper they'd picked up at the coffee shop held a bit more information on the killings, assuming the news was to be believed. Bucky'd quietly translated and summarized the reports, clarifying that three members of the royal family as well as some of their staff and security guards had been killed the day before by one or more unknown assailants. The local military police were still looking for leads as well as anyone who had information on the case. The papers said nothing about that mysterious figure Torres had gotten reports on nearby.

As they walked, Sam let Bucky have his silence and shifted his gaze to the tops of the nearby buildings which maxed-out at about five stories tall and had the steeply-sloped rooves of a place that braced itself each year for many months of heavy snows. Whoever or whatever had managed to run across them must have by his account a damn good sense of balance. The buildings were a far-cry from somewhere like the flat-topped structures of New York, that was for sure.

Bucky was apparently not far enough gone in his own world to miss what Sam was looking up at, "Those are… steep," he observed.

"Doable?" Sam asked, trying to keep the specifics of the question between the two of them all-the-while resisting the urge to make a cyborg quip while Bucky visually calculated the distance.

"Not exactly my specialty, but yeah," he admitted. His voice was even, attentive, but Sam couldn't help but feel there was a whole hell of a lot more going on that brain of his.

There was one of those awkward silences between them, where Sam wasn't trying to press and Bucky seemed to be waffling on if he wanted to say something. If they hadn't been standing to the side of a street in the middle of foreign soil, he might've pressed him, but it didn't feel like the right thing to do. For someone who'd claimed he'd been here, back then, he was keeping things awfully close to the chest, and Sam had a damn good suspicion why.

It was Bucky that broke the silence first, "I think I might recognize things better…" he gestured up. Up there.

"Oh. Okay let's get going then."

Bucky nodded, but his eyes remained cast up as he scanned the buildings high above them.

Going out onto the slopes of the rooves was definitely not going to be a thing in broad daylight or especially without his wings, but there was a certain renewed intensity in Bucky's gait as they finally navigated their way out to a four story balcony a block away, courtesy of a fire escape whose latch Bucky had made quick and silent work out of.

When they made it as high as they could, Bucky gazed out over the view of the city while Sam took the opportunity to make sure no one was home to see two folks from out of town borrowing their balcony for bit. Convinced they were in the clear, he stepped back to the ledge to Bucky's right where the other man was silently observing things with that vacant stare of his that told him there was a lot more going on. That stuff. Winter Soldier stuff.

He tried the easy approach, "Doesn't seem like the sort of thing we'd see from one of the Flag Smashers."

"Yeah. It doesn't fit their style at all." Bucky said it in a way that told Sam he already had a working theory. Did he really have to pull it out of him?

But before Sam could ask, Bucky found his voice. Tired as it was, there was more emotion in it than Sam would have thought he would have been able to drum up, all things considered. "It feels like there's something I should be able to remember, but it's just out of my periphery. I don't think I was here just once, but I can't even figure out when. Usually I can at least pinpoint the when. Something about the mission. Anything."

The straightforwardness of his admittance was enough to catch Sam's immediate attention, and he leaned forward a little, hoping to catch Bucky's line of sight, but this wasn't one of those sorts of talks.

Sam didn't know if in their entire time of knowing each other if he'd ever heard him use the word "mission," but he respected the very particular, very acute weight it carried. By contrast, Sam used the word liberally. It was just part of his soldier's vocabulary, but it hadn't taken much for him to put together why Bucky found a way to dance around the term in pleasant company like it was a curse word.

He also observed: he could see the way Bucky set his jaw, the way his hands tensed anxiously, like he was trying to remain hypervigilant of his own strength even as his mind wandered over itself trying to sort things out. He had moody moments, certainly: but not like this. Never like this. Bucky had a way of hiding his demons and keeping them locked away. If something was bothering him, he was quick to deflect or change the subject, and in the rare times they spoke about things, it was in the broadest of strokes, in a manner so detached it almost made it sound like he was talking about someone else. He could never quite tell if it was just how Bucky was, or if the only way he'd managed to wrestle with his demons was to keep their names and the power they held over him all to himself for so long. He knew he liked to put up a front that he'd sorted things out and he was okay, but right then, something was obviously twisting and snarling through his mind, and before it risked spiraling further, Sam found himself slipping seamlessly into counselor mode.

"Is it a flashback?" Sam said with what he hoped was the right balance of compassion and sensitivity.

He honestly thought Bucky might shut him out, but instead the man beside him shook his head dismissively as he licked his lips and quickly found his voice, "No it's not that at all. I mean, I'm not exactly new to any of this PTSD stuff. I'm practically an expert in the field, but this isn't that at all. It's like there should be memories there, but there aren't." he emphasized the plural, stopping only momentarily to catch his breath. He still was keeping his eyes locked forward, though his face twisted in frustration, "I used to log this stuff, try to sort out the order and the timing, how it all fit together, but I'm just," he sounded so defeated, and far closer to the edge of real emotion than Sam was used to hearing from his friend. It was damn heartbreaking, "It's just not there."

"It's okay Buck, I'm here." Sam slowly extended a hand and rested it lightly on top Bucky's shoulder. While the man initially flinched at the unexpected contact, he used the moment to take a deep breath and close his eyes as he visibly grounded himself. When his lips moved and no sound came out, and it took a moment for Sam to realize Bucky was silently counting to first ten, then twenty. By thirty, his lips stopped trembling. He wasn't used to seeing his friend like this, and part of him twisted inside to think of some of the off-color "jokes" he'd lobbed at him over the years. Jabs borne out of his own frustrations and misplaced resentment. Man hadn't deserved that.

He wasn't altogether sure what he expected Bucky to say next, but he wasn't prepared for the rapid change of subject, "Anyway. If I had to guess? It's possible Hydra is involved. They're all about power moves on heavy-hitters like this, and if that's the case, this might not just be about Symkaria."

Sam blinked. How on earth was this man able to squash his emotions just like that? It couldn't be healthy. "As good a guess as any," he offered, gesturing his chin up, as if implying their unknown, potential assassin, "but I'm not sure where that puts us."

That very particular tone came back to Bucky's voice as he looked out over the square below, still doing everything he could to avoid Sam's concerned gaze, "There's someone that might. But it's a long shot."

"Who?" Sam asked, genuinely not sure where Bucky's current strange of logic could be leading him.

"Ayo," Bucky concluded aloud.

His voice was void of expression as he said it, but there was a very particular weight in the single syllable that told Sam he was only keeping pace with the smallest fraction of whatever was going on inside Bucky's head, and he wasn't sure if he was going to like it.

Author's Remarks:

Into the weeds we go! I hope you are enjoying this story so far. I'd love to know what your thoughts!

I remember being beside myself when Ayo and the Dora Milaje showed up in the series, and I'm excited to try expanding upon them in my story here. :)

Written to "Home Truths" and "Real Partners," by Henry Jackman on "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier": Vol. 2 Soundtrack.