Wow, it's been two months and now I'm awake at 4:30 am editing this. Let's just say I've been super stressed recently (I've read tons of fics where characters have panic attacks, but never had them myself until a month or two ago), but I also have a new job for next year, and a summer job, both in the special education setting. Hopefully they'll be a bit less stress than the job I just finished, but we'll see.
Whenever Steve had imagined the future, Bucky had always been a part of it. When Bucky fell, Steve found himself unable to conceive of a future without him.
Now, Steve's further in the future than he ever though he'd be, and it's nothing like he imagined.
The technology is way beyond flying cars, even if those still don't exist. There are handheld video cameras that the students used to make an amateur film- in color- about Captain America, Bucky and Logan's roles in the war, as if it's ancient history.
Children had always been an abstract, unlikely possibility in Steve's mind, but he's currently surrounded by them, and Bucky has taken the role of a father. Not only that, Bucky had been forced into a role so horrific during the time Steve had been frozen that he hardly seems like Bucky anymore.
One thing Steve had thought was certain about the future- as he'd dived the plane into the Arctic- was that the war would be over. He'd never imagined waking up to find out that HYDRA had been lurking and torturing his best friend for over half a century.
Yet instead of fighting, Steve is currently sitting in an ornate office, having tea with Bucky, Harry and the professor, who is some sort of mind reader.
"I like tea," Harry says, as if it's a novelty. Steve has to mentally remind himself that it's been decades since America or Britain rationed supplies, even if that era of history is a not-so-distant memory for Steve. Besides, Harry had mentioned Dudley getting tea, biscuits and more in an amount that made it clear his home had never seen a rationing or depression, even if Harry himself had been deprived them.
Steve's realizing that Harry's relatives were worse than bullies, and one look at Bucky- Steve still has a hard time thinking of him as James, as he now prefers- confirms this.
"I took care of them," Bucky James tells him.
Steve reminisces of how Bucky would join any fight Steve found himself in, but the Bucky in front of him, with his dark clothes and dour expression, looks like he would have just shot them. He had been the sniper of the Howling Commandoes, after all, and those photos of the Winter Soldier are already etched in Steve's mind.
"They sound like bad people." Steve remarks.
"Not all of them," Bucky James intones.
Harry sips tea from a plastic cup. "They were normal."
"The way you were treated is not normal, although it is unfortunately common among my students." the Professor looks from Harry to Bucky James. "What is normal is how James treats you. Feeding you, tending to your wounds, keeping you safe and playing with you."
"Bucky doesn't do that." Harry says.
Steve glances at Bucky James, whose jaw is tight. He doesn't repeat the thing about Bucky's voice in his head. Steve hadn't been privy to the conversation between Bucky James and Harry after the boy ran out of the kitchen earlier, but hadn't the Bucky part of Bucky James been the one insisting he help Harry?
Harry's already moved on. "Fighting bad guys is normal." the boy says, and Steve finds himself nodding in agreement. After all, countless fathers had left their wives and children when they enlisted. "Mr. Moody said my mummy an' my other James dad fighted bad wizards."
"Fought." the professor corrects gently. "Your parents fought bad witches and wizards."
"Was my mummy like Ms. Jean?" Harry asks in a hushed tone.
"Your mum, Lily, was an extraordinarily kind and skilled witch." the Professor says. "She loved you very much. At the risk of sounding cliché, your parents loved you more than life itself."
"Would mummy have showed me to shoot magic baskets?"
"I'm sure she would have." Professor X says. "She'd be proud to see what a brave, kind boy you've grown to be."
Harry beams, then turns to Bucky James. "Can Ms. Jean be my new mummy? Like you're my other James dad?"
Steve sputters, his sip of tea going down the wrong way. The Professor gives Steve a knowing look and explains to Harry that Jean and Scott are a couple.
"Oh." Harry says. "Is Mr. Stark my other other dad?"
Steve gapes at how casual Harry is about it, but the Professor seems similarly unconcerned about the taboo topic.
"You and Stark aren't..." Steve glances at Bucky James and trails off. Harry had mentioned being at Stark's house, and Bucky James sometimes seems more comfortable with Stark than with Steve, which stings. But Bucky had always slung his arm around Steve's skinny shoulders, and Steve hasn't seen him do that with Stark. He hasn't seen his friend show affection toward anyone except Harry.
"Stark seems more like an eccentric uncle." Steve decides, and Harry shakes his head vehemently. Steve silently curses himself. He's certainly not gaining any favor in Harry's eyes.
"James is Harry's only parent, even if it often takes a village to raise a child." Professor Xavier smiles. "Or a school."
"You're the best dad." Harry tells Bucky James, as if daring him to argue that Bucky would be better. The boy holds out a fist for Bucky James to bump. "'Cos you're my fist."
"I'd be a better father if-" Bucky James starts. Harry gives a glare that rivals Steve's back when he was as scrawny as the boy.
"Get the words out of my head." Bucky James turns to the professor. "Please. I don't know if I'll ever be Bucky, but the words have to go."
"I'll do everything in my power. I may be able to help you render them ineffective." Professor X promises. "Shall we begin now?"
Bucky James gives a clipped nod, face blank.
"Harry, Captain, I must insist you leave my office." the Professor says. "This may not be pleasant."
Neither Steve nor Harry move an inch.
"Scram." Bucky James tells them both.
Steve and Harry linger outside the doorway, both standing watch until Bucky James calls "Harry, go play. We'll play ball when I'm done here. Steve, keep an eye on him."
Steve was uncomfortable enough with the children who looked at him with hero-worship once he'd become Captain America. What is he supposed to do with a boy who doesn't even like him and views Steve as competition over Bucky James?
Harry runs off, not even calling Steve Captain Turtle. Steve finds the boy in the living room, where a teenaged boy and girl are playing video games, a concept Steve had never imagined in his wildest dreams. A metal drink can- another new invention- is perched precariously on the armrest.
Steve wonders if he can pass nanny duty off to the older children- after all, Steve should be hunting down HYDRA agents- but Harry seems to have some personal grudge with these two. The look on his face is all to familiar to the one Steve had given bullies his whole life.
"Where's Mr. Stark?" Harry asks, almost demands. Steve doesn't even know the boy and he's still surprised at how bold Harry's question comes out.
"He's with Beast in the lab." the older boy replies. "They're probably blowing stuff up. You can't go there."
"Where's Ms. Jean?" Harry asks, and he runs through what seems like the entire roster at the school. Jean Grey, Logan, Kurt. Jarvis, whoever that is.
"You've got Captain America." the girl tells Harry in complete exasperation. "Go play frisbee or something."
Before Steve can say anything, the can on the armrest tips as if pushed by an invisible hand, spilling over the girl's lap and the cushions. The girl swears, and Harry slips away with a surprisingly satisfied expression. He says something about a trench bull, and while Steve is quickly learning about this new time he's in, he still has no idea what Bucky James's son is talking about.
"Ready to comply." the Asset tells its handler, somehow knowing the man speaks English despite the Russian trigger words. The crisp suit is familiar, as is the man's age. Perhaps he has been a handler before, but something is different from the handlers the Asset remembers. It isn't just the man's wheelchair that makes the handler different.
The Soldier has not been put in the chair, but that step in the process is unnecessary. It can feel the handler in its head, performing the maintenance without the need for such equipment. It is accustomed to awaking in cold, concrete bunkers, but it is currently in an ornate office with mahogany furniture and shelves of books. Sunlight streams through a window.
KNEEL the internal voice commands. The Asset levels itself with its handler's seated position, in case the handler sees fit to strike the Soldier across the face for any transgressions.
"I will not hurt you," the handler says, inexplicably, in its mind.
The Soldier awaits a command, a mission. It hears children playing outside. Perhaps one will be the target.
No, says a different voice in the Soldier's head.
It does not know what to expect, with the new handler, and spares a glance upward.
The handler's face looks... kind. It reminds the Asset of Pierce, but the man is not Pierce. There had been another handler with a similarly kind expression. Images flash through the Asset's mind. A small boy with messy black hair peers out from a cupboard, clings to the Asset's chest, points to a photo in color of a mansion.
Harry, says another voice in the Asset-James' mind.
Harry was the youngest handler the Asset remembers serving. Where is Harry? Had the Soldier displeased him. He was Harry's fist. The urge to look for Harry is overwhelming, overshadowing any urge to look for Pierce or other HYDRA handlers.
"James." the handler says in the Soldier's mind. James must be its new codename. The Soldier-James- snaps to attention, ready to report the malfunction, but the name brings up another stream of images.
Crackers in the shape of anatomically-incorrect animals, a castle, a fight against a bearded giant of a man, wilder than the Asset itself. A man like the Asset in appearance- dark clothes and long, dark hair, face either blank or scowling. The Asset was immobilized, incapacitated.
MISSION FAILURE.
The Asset has failed, is incapable of returning to the handler. Correction is required.
"You have not failed. You are doing admirably." the handler says aloud. "Are you ready, James?"
"Ready to comply." the Asset-James states automatically. It pauses. That is incorrect. "Further maintenance is required."
The handler presses its fingers to the Asset-James' head, much like the chair. There is no all-consuming pain, only more flashes.
Agents claiming the asset, Harry muttering a word. Eliminating the agents to protect Harry, Harry smiling up at him. A vaguely familiar man who does not cease talking as he repairs James's prosthesis. Ridiculous locomotives with facial features and an even more ridiculous black hooded mask with pointed ears and a cape.
An offer of help from the handl-
"Professor." the handler- no, professor- corrects almost gently. "Professor Charles Xavier. You are James, or Bucky, whichever you prefer. You have no handlers now."
James scopes out the room. "Where's Harry?"
Harry's his son, not a handler.
"Harry is playing." Professor Xavier smiles. "You did well, James. You still prefer James?"
James shrugs, his metal shoulder feeling a tad lighter even though its weight is unchanged. Someone called him another name, he's sure.
Bucky, says the voice that's not the professor's. It doesn't sound right.
He remembers a blonde, muscular man laying in a bed, blue eyes a mix of kindness and pity when he awoke.
Punk's a hypocrite, the Bucky voice grouses. Steve hated pity.
Another stream of images flows through James's mind- Steve's eyes stay the same but his body changes, sometimes scrawny like Harry's, at other times as muscular as James' own. They fought in a war, Steve had a costume more ridiculous than Batman's.
Steve calls James Bucky, but it doesn't feel right.
Steve had been drinking tea, before James became the Asset again. Hadn't James sent both Steve and Harry off, so they wouldn't witness it? "Steve's with him?"
"Yes, I'd hoped some time together would help them get along." Professor Xavier says mildly. "Are you ready to try again, James? You did remarkably."
"I wasn't quick enough." James stares at his prosthesis. The professor has been setting him into the Soldier, and then helping him regain his memories as James. Not Bucky, not yet, if it's even possible, but James. It's taking too long. In the time that it took him to snap out of the Soldier's mindset, he could have killed any or all of the kids outside.
"There's no magic cure, even if there is magic." Charles says gently. "That you are recovering so quickly is astonishing, and I promise I will not allow you to hurt anyone on the premises."
James clenches his jaw. The switch to the Soldier takes only ten words. Others, like the one Harry had used, are instantaneous. "Any way I can switch back that quick?" he asks, knowing the man will understand the full thought process. Maybe he can make some new words and-
Professor Xavier gives James a reproachful look. "I'm not going to program you as if you are some sort of robot."
"You just turned me into a killing machine." James counters, his prosthesis whirring. The professor does not rise to the bait, merely waits for James to slow his breathing.
"Sorry," James mutters. "I know you're helping, it's just-"
"It takes time," Professor Xavier says, though not unsympathetically. "I could merely control you to not be the Soldier, but that would require my intervention every time."
James sighs. Professor Xavier had said something about exposure therapy, that with enough trials of regaining these memories, it would be easier to break programming.
"I sensed no allegiance to HYDRA this time." Professor Xavier tells him. "You were rather focused on Harry."
That would change if they stuck him back in the chair, but it's a step in the right direction. This wasn't the first attempt, and each time taken to switch back to himself has been shorter. He's just accomplished in a few minutes what took weeks the first time around. But he could be made to murder in the matter of minutes it took to switch.
James closes his eyes and opens them again. "I'm ready. Say the words again."
I majored in psych, but I don't know how they'd treat the whole trigger words thing. The therapist scene in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was after Shuri had removed them. I figured something like repeated exposure under kinda-controlled conditions could help, or CBT. I didn't want to write magic/mutant powers automatically fixing everything, because that'd be a pretty uninteresting story. Besides, Lockhart was at St. Mungo's years after he got hit by his own memory charm.
Also sorry there was no Tony in this chapter. Or Logan. They should be back next chapter. In unrelated news, I watched Logan again on a library DVD and ended up buying it digitally. And read part of a comic where he was literally treated like the Winter Soldier.