Chapter 4: The Cat
Three of the remaining Howling Commandos decided to visit Hudson Creek the weekend after the funeral, hoping that returning to a place which held so many memories of their friend might make them feel better. School was still in session, but it was a weekend, so the building was locked. Instead of sitting in their old spot by the window to the courtyard, they resigned themselves to touring from the outside.
"There's Mrs. Dormer's classroom," Jim pointed out. They recognized her decorations on the wall through the window. As soon as possible after it happened, Steve gave them a grand retelling of Bucky's reaction to her accusing him of hiding his arm in his shirt. Gabe didn't think he'd ever seen the boy laugh so hard.
He missed Steve's laugh.
They passed the spot by the front of the school where they often encountered Alex and his posse, the windows into the gym where several Steve-planned homecomings had taken place, and finished on the field where they'd watched Bucky's triumphant return to soccer senior year. Gabe still had the gold laces he'd put in his cleats. They sat down on the bleachers and gazed out at the field. Timmy pulled three bottles of Sam Adams seemingly out of nowhere. He got the top off and held his beer out towards both of them. "To Steve?"
"To Steve," they echoed.
A single beer wasn't nearly enough to get them drunk, but between the nostalgia of being back here and the very fresh grief, they found themselves growing sentimental. "I used to be terrified of Steve," Gabe admitted.
Timmy nearly did a spit take. "No way. When?"
"When I was, like, six."
"Why?" Jim asked with a chuckle.
"I met Bucky at a summer soccer camp. I wanted to be friends with him, but he was always talking about his best friend Steve and how awesome he was. I remember crying to my dad that there was no way I'd ever get to be friends with Bucky if he already had a friend as cool as Steve," Gabe explained, laughing at his younger self's juvenile conception of friendship. He continued, "When Bucky told me he went to the same school as us, I thought I was done for. He wanted to introduce us so we could all be friends, and I just knew that if Steve didn't like me I'd never hang out with Bucky again. I don't think I've ever tried so hard to impress a person, not in the twenty years since," he finished.
Jim and Timmy both gasped for air from laughing so hard. "You're lucky he liked you," Jim said.
"Yeah, I am. Then again, I can only think of one or two people that Steve Rogers ever really disliked."
"That's true. But everyone liked him too."
"God, if that man could hear even half the shit we overheard when he wasn't in school," Timmy chortled. "He'd blush so hard he popped."
"The number of times I heard people comparing him to Cole Sprouse after that damn CF movie came out…" Gabe shook his head. It had annoyed him to no end, hearing so many girls (and boys) at their school sing the praises of his friend, especially when Gabe knew Steve would never return any of their advances if they ever worked up the courage to actually make them.
"People joined SGA just to spend time with him," Jim added.
"Glad I didn't have to do that," Timmy said mirthfully.
"Yeah, we really lucked out," Gabe sighed. "We met him before he was famous."
"Yep." Jim downed the last of his beer and set the empty bottle aside. "Twenty years is a long time to know a person."
Silence descended for a few moments. Both Timmy and Gabe finished their drinks. "How do you think Bucky's doing?" Gabe dared ask.
"As good as anyone could ever hope to, I think," Jim said. "He's got so many people to hold him up."
"Yeah," Timmy agreed. "He's one of the strongest guys I know. He'll be okay. It'll take a long time, but he'll be okay."
"I just wish there was something we could do," Gabe sighed.
Jim proposed, "We could take him to a shelter."
"Wait, what?!" Timmy asked, clearly misunderstanding the statement.
"An animal shelter, dumbass," Jim continued. "I haven't been to one since we got Hiro, but I know he loves cats. I think he and Steve had an agreement that he'd get one."
"That sounds really nice," Gabe agreed. He told Jim to text Bucky the proposition and ask when would be a good time.
"He says Tuesday."
"Wow, that's soon."
Jim read another text. "He says Steve wrote him a posthumous note telling him not to wait."
"Yep, sounds like Steve," Timmy remarked.
"I guess we're going to the animal shelter."
~0~
Tony awoke bright and early Monday morning to "Good luck, I wish you well" texts from Bruce, Natasha, Nick, Thor, Wanda, MJ, Bucky, Princess Shuri of Wakanda, and his college roommate Harley. The latter two he knew were invested both in Tony's health and in the performance of the device itself. The outpouring of love and support, even in the wake of such devastation, brought a smile to Tony's face. The only person he'd hoped to hear from but didn't: Parker.
At first, he figured Carol May probably had a rough morning and he'd been too busy with her to pick up his phone long enough to send a text, but MJ found the time, which meant it couldn't possibly be that bad. The second explanation Tony's brain put together, and the one he stuck with, was that Parker didn't send him any well wishes because he didn't want to. After all, Parker was one of the least selfish people Tony knew, and this device was the fruit of years of selfish labor on Tony's part. Maybe he wouldn't be raising a newborn while grieving a dear friend if Tony hadn't devoted his life to such a selfish project.
"I'm so proud of you," his father told him right before they took him back. "I'll see you when you wake up." Not even the genuine smile and pride on his father's face, something Tony had yearned for ever since he was a little kid and still couldn't quite believe he actually had, could overtake the crushing guilt that followed him to the OR. Parker was clever. If he figured out that Tony wasn't worth checking in with, the others wouldn't be far behind. Tony hoped the anesthesia gave him some retrograde amnesia and he could forget about Parker's lack of communication entirely.
~0~
"This is going to work. I can feel it." Those were the first words out of his mouth when he was extubated just a few hours after surgery. His parents kept him company during the blurry, in-between hours as the drugs wore off. Tony's wishes for retrograde amnesia, however, were not granted. He imagined the muted pain throbbing through his chest as a physical manifestation of his shame. Tony thought it ought to hurt worse, and turned down the PCA they'd given him access to.
They hadn't yet programmed the device's controls to a smart watch, so all of his vitals and settings were displayed on a series of monitors. To distract himself, Tony focused on them and tried to troubleshoot any hiccups that arose. The trouble was, his design was so flawless that there were no hiccups to correct. He quickly grew bored and annoyed at being cooped up with his own emotions. For an entire seven days after surgery, they kept him and the device under close observation, which meant that nurses took a particular fascination to his case and pretty much every drop of fluid to come out of his body got tested for something or other.
Bruce visited him briefly during that week, but he was so obviously preoccupied worrying about Betty that Tony sent him home before he had a panic attack. Natasha came by twice, and both times they played poker. He jokingly offered to make it strip poker, but she didn't take the bait. Bucky didn't make an appearance, for obvious reasons, but he texted to ask how Tony was doing more often than Tony expected. Neither Parker nor MJ could make the trip, but MJ managed to text a few times. Harley came over to spend a few hours raving about the tech aspect, enough that it exhausted Tony. But most of Tony's time was spent in the company of nurses, doctors, and his parents.
The instant his team cleared him and not a moment later, he broke out of that god-forsaken place. Hospitals only reminded him of his time at Gravesen, of Steve, and that was not a place he wanted his head to visit at this particular moment. As promised, Mom assumed the role of at-home nurse, and Tony found himself fighting to avoid her attention. He did, however, appreciate her cooking three meals a day for him. That was one habit Tony never managed to master, and at least one of those three meals usually ended up being either a smoothie or coffee. Especially on busy lab days.
He'd spent so many busy lab days leading up to this that the new lack of tasks might just drive him crazy. The week after losing a friend was not the ideal week to suddenly change his schedule from six full lab days a week to full-time sitting around doing nothing, but he didn't have any choice. Tony didn't realize until now just how much he'd relied on that distraction to keep a maelstrom of feelings at bay. Now, with nothing to do but sleep and watch TV until his team cleared him to go back to work, he felt all of them more constantly and more powerfully than ever before.
His first open heart surgery, everyone had been in lockdown because of a fight he and Steve started, so he'd spent the first days of recovery with no one but his mother for company. This time, he spent the first days of recovery with no one but his parents for company because his friends all had more important things to do. Bruce had Betty to worry about, Thor flew back to Norway, Nick, Wanda, and Natasha had to go back to work after taking a week off to support Bucky, and Parker had a newborn and a wife still recovering from childbirth at home. Tony knew he couldn't hope to compare to those important responsibilities, but when his mom left him alone long enough that he could cry, he couldn't help but wish one of them were there to cry with him.
~0~
Tuesday couldn't come soon enough. The funeral was Saturday, and he still had lots of visitors on Sunday, but on Monday everyone went back to work and he was alone in an empty house for the first time ever. It was crippling. The silence and the stillness. He understood why solitary confinement was such a severe punishment. To keep himself from going crazy, he deep cleaned the house.
For so long, weekly cleaning had been a necessity. Bucky hadn't done it himself in over a month, since the soccer team had been doing it every weekend since Steve's hospitalization. He definitely didn't need to keep every surface so sanitized now, but it was a hard habit to break after five years. Plus, at least today, it gave him something to do in the face of crushing loneliness. A perk of having one arm was that it took him nearly twice as long as it would've taken an abled person.
While sweeping the hallway, he stopped in front of the collage of Avengers pictures. Every single one of these people was either dead or grieving. His gaze lingered on Carol, Clint, Scott, and Steve. Bucky really hoped they'd found each other in whatever came after life down here. Only after he finally tore his gaze away did he realize he'd stared into that frame for an entire twenty minutes.
Once he snapped out of that reverie, he entered another one outside the door to the second bedroom. Bucky knew it was empty. He and Josiah had stripped the bed and gotten rid of all the equipment and junk that had accumulated over the several months Steve slept here. There was nothing there but bare furniture. Bucky ought to open the door and clean it like the rest of the house, but he couldn't bring himself to touch the doorknob.
By the time he finished, it was nearly dinnertime. He ate some leftovers from the massive pile of food that still sat in his fridge after all the visitors brought dishes. Bucky should make a list of who he needed to return containers to, but he didn't have the mental capacity to do so at this moment. Even thought it was still ridiculously early, he left the dirty dishes in the sink and got ready for bed.
Bucky lay awake for hours without falling asleep. For the past week, Josiah had stayed upstairs, and he always stayed up later than Bucky. Without the sound of his footsteps, Bucky felt weighed down by loneliness. He and Steve had started sleeping apart months before his death for the very purpose of preparing Bucky to sleep alone, but he didn't feel like it worked. The weight distribution of the mattress was all wrong and everything was cold.
Maybe he could sleep with the cat and it would help keep him warm.
~0~
Jim, Timmy, and Gabe took him to lunch before heading to an animal shelter in the city. It wasn't the same as the one where he'd met Musketeer the three-legged cat all those years ago, the visit that prompted the discussion of adopting a cat after Steve's death in the first place. According to Jim, this one usually received large quantities of new animals over the weekend. Any cats left today were those less likely to get adopted, and that's exactly the kind of animal Bucky wanted to invite into his home.
A mousy-haired man named Terry introduced himself and asked what he probably thought was an innocent question. "What made you decide to look into adopting a cat?"
Bucky debated inventing a non-devastating answer, but when he imagined what the look on Steve's face might be if he told this man the truth it convinced him to go that direction. "Actually, I'm here to fulfill a promise to my dead husband."
Terry did a cartoonish double-take and followed up with the always classy, "Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss."
"Thank you."
Timmy snickered, so Bucky elbowed him in the side.
"Would you like to see some cats now?"
"Yes please."
Bucky and the boys followed Terry past a bunch of barking dogs to a quieter room filled with smaller crates. Jim, Timmy, and Gabe immediately dispersed to look at the various cats. Bucky crouched down by the first crate and found a cat so black he was almost impossible to see in the shadows of the back of his crate. She picked up her head and glared at Bucky before setting it back down and closing her eyes. The tag on her crate read "Esmeralda." Bucky moved on to the next one.
All of the cats showed some mild interest in his existence, which Terry remarked meant he was, "Definitely a cat person." Bucky took pride in that. He'd never been able to interact with cats much, too worried about accidentally contaminating Steve, but he watched videos on the internet all the time. The majority of the accounts he followed on his personal Instagram were internet-famous cats. But only Steve and Josiah knew about that.
He reached the last crate in the row, which didn't even have a name tag on it. Inside sat a brilliant white cat…with its left foreleg missing.
"That's Alpine," Terry said. "Someone actually just brought him in yesterday. Found him in Staten Island. On Alpine Avenue actually, hence the name. He was picking a fight with this other cat."
Bucky stared at the cat in wonder. They just found him yesterday? Picking a fight? A joyous laugh built in his chest and before he knew it, he, Jim, Timmy, and Gabe were all cracking up and confusing the hell out of poor Terry. It was probably a mere coincidence—street cats got into fights all the time—but Bucky couldn't help but see Steve behind the story of this cat's arrival here. He was keeping his promise, the bastard.
Once his laughter died down enough that he could breathe, Bucky knelt down and offered the back of his hand towards the bars of the crate. Alpine hesitantly walked forward to sniff at him, then sat down and gazed up at him. The cat's bright blue eyes reminded him of Steve's. Bucky knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wanted to take this boy home, and soon.
"He's a goner," Jim remarked. All three of them laughed while Bucky remained transfixed by this cat's beautiful eyes.
"I think he's the one," Bucky announced.
"Looks like he likes you," Terry said with a grin. For the first time in over a week, Bucky didn't feel completely hollowed out.
"Yeah, you're coming home with me."
The first thing Alpine did upon entering the house was curl up in Steve's usual spot on the couch. Bucky had been sold on this cat from the second he laid eyes on him, but that only multiplied his love tenfold.