Well, one second I'm opening my suite refrigerator to grab a bottle of water. The next second I'm closing it again to find Barnes standing in the kitchen doorway, staring at me. If I hadn't been sure before how hard my heart could pound without making me pass out, I was sure then.
I had to swallow a few times; 1) to get my heart back where it belonged and 2) to give myself time to not sound as suddenly, utterly, panicked as I felt.
"So, what - they don't let you shave in the hospital?" I asked when I finally could. Barnes frowned, at me, at the concept of humor, at nothing. I don't know. He frowned.
He was dressed, sort of, jeans, a jacket that I'm pretty sure was Steve's over his hospital t-shirt. His boots, which also looked suspiciously like Steve's, were tied in square knots with the ends of the laces tucked inside. That seemed like it was probably a one-handed job.
"I'm guessing you didn't tell Cap you were coming here," I said. "How long you figure before he comes crashing through the wall to rescue you?"
The question in no way fazed him. "Is he all right?"
"He? You mean Steve? You're asking me about Steve? You think I've got him stashed around here somewhere? He isn't at the hospital?"
"He's there. He was down the hall with T'Challa when I – "
"Went AWOL?"
That question didn't faze him either.
"I need to know if he's all right."
"What makes you think he's not?"
"I don't think he's not. I just – I ask him how he's doing and he says he's fine and I should only be worried about me. And that tells me nothing. I've been reading about him these past two years and everything he's been involved in and – is he all right? I know if he gets hurt, he heals fast. But – does he take care of himself? Does get enough to eat? Is he – does he have decent place to live?"
He was serious. He was deadly serious. The Winter Soldier was completely, deadly, serious about Captain America's dietary habits and living arrangements.
No, not the Winter Soldier. Not Captain America. As much as I wanted to nurse my animus toward him, I knew this wasn't the Winter Soldier asking about Captain America. This was Bucky Barnes asking about Steve Rogers's health and well-being. He was worried about the best friend he hadn't been able to look after for seventy years.
"You want to sit?" I offered. I gestured to the clean, simple, and I'm sure massively expensive, dinette table in my kitchen. Maybe if we acted civilized things would stay civilized.
"I just need to know about Steve."
"Well, explaining 'all things Steve' might take more than a minute. Sit."
He got a pinched expression and he pulled an answer out like he had to scrounge for each word. "I don't want to make you have to put up with me longer than you want to."
"Okay. Thank you. So, sit. You want some water? Orange juice? They let you have coffee?"
"They let me have anything I want. They're very –" he stopped and scrounged out another word. " – understanding."
The implications of that one word And my own memories of captivity, added to the things I'd read in Barnes's notebooks coupled with the visceral memory of that dark, cold, torture hole in Siberia, all combined to make me want to lose every last lunch I'd ever eaten.
"Yeah. Yeah, I've had some experience with – yeah, it's good that they do that," I managed to splutter out. He still wasn't sitting and I gestured to the table again. "So – sitting or not sitting? Because I can do either."
He frowned again, or still. Kinda hard to tell.
"I killed – " he started to say and in the split second between that half of his sentence and the next I inwardly cringed and outwardly sighed and desperately wondered how I could make Barnes shut up without getting myself obliterated by the Winter Soldier.
Then, that split second later he finished, " – Steve's friend."
Well, that threw me for a loop. Did he mean that he killed someone on his way from hospital to palace? Did he mean he'd be killing someone momentarily? As in me? As in now? "I beg your pardon?"
"Howard was Steve's friend, and I killed him."
"He was my father. They were my Mom and Dad and you killed them."
"I know. I know it now. But before I only knew that I killed Steve's friend."
I hadn't thought of it that way. Not that I was required to, of course. And not that it lessened the enormity of him killing my parents, but, yeah, when I was learning that Barnes had killed my parents, Steve was learning that Barnes had killed his friend.
I'd never thought of it that way.
"Yeah, okay. You came all this way just to point that out to me?"
"I thought you'd understand."
"Understand what?"
"Every time I try to talk to Steve about what I did, he tells me it wasn't me, it's not my fault, I was controlled, brain-washed. I killed his friend and he won't talk to me about it."
"You think I'm going to talk to you about it?"
"I think you won't completely dismiss the idea that no matter who might've had control of me, I still did it. Everything they made me do, I did it. I want – I just want someone to acknowledge that. If I can't acknowledge that, how can I deal with it?"
Then he shook his head like he'd said too much, or too much of what he hadn't meant to say.
"I'm sorry. That's not why I'm here. I need to know about Steve. I need to know how long it'll take to get the trigger words out of me."
"I don't know. Not instantaneous, I know that's the answer we're all hoping for. The equipment is configured for presenting altered perspectives of memories, not excavating triggers. It'll probably take some trial and error."
"And maybe set me off like a rocket in the process."
"Yeah, there is that, too. We'll take all precautions, of course. You'll be safe."
"Just make sure I can't hurt anybody else. Whatever happens to me…" He shrugged. "I just don't want to hurt anybody else."
"Okay. Yeah. We can make sure of that."
He nodded, "Thank you," and nodded again.
Still hadn't sat down, though.
"So – you want to hear about Steve?"
"Whatever you can tell me," he said, then added like it was a word he'd only just learned, "Please."
"Sit?"
He let out a breath like I was being persistent in something he'd already declined. But he walked to the table. He looked at the table. He looked at each chair. He pulled a chair out. He looked at the chair. He sat down.
I didn't know if I was annoyed or exhausted by how long that took. Then that dark, dank, deadly bomb silo and that cold, clinical, confining chair surrounded by all that vicious pseudo medical equipment intruded on my thoughts again and I was only sad.
"Water?" I offered again. "Orange juice? Pastry? Filet mignon? They've given me quite the set-up here."
He had to think about it and just as I was wondering if I needed to reassure him there'd be no libatious funny business, he said, "Water? Please? That'd be – I'd appreciate it."
"Sure. You got it, water coming up."
I grabbed another bottle from the fridge and set it in front of him then took my own chair across from him, still trying to hide the occasionally nauseating unease I was feeling being alone with him.
"How'd you slip past Steve, anyway? I thought at the very least he'd have some kind of motion sensing alarm on you."
He shrugged and said matter-of-factly, "I wanted to leave unnoticed. So I did."
Oh. "So he really is going to come bursting through my walls anytime now," I said. I opened my water and took a sip. Barnes didn't touch his bottle of water and it took me a few seconds to realize why. I reached over the table and turned the cap for him. "Sorry."
He only shrugged. "No, I'm still getting used to it, too. I reach for things or try to push myself up or catch myself and it still takes me a minute to figure out why nothing's happening. Or why I'm suddenly falling on my face." He set the cap aside and drank some water. "Thank you."
My scientist/inventor/engineer brain immediately began to develop a prototype arm for him until my 'orphaned because of him' brain put a stop to the design.
"So – Steve?" I asked. I answer his questions, I get him out of my suite.
"Yeah, Steve," he said on the end of a sip of water. "Uh – he has friends, that's good. He needs – he's gonna need – "
And it up and jumped me in the face. "You want to go back to cryofreeze." I said.
He shook his head, looking quite definitely not at me. "I'm dangerous to have around," he said, like he was arguing with himself and I just happened to be there to hear it. "I shouldn't even be here. I shouldn't be risking your life. I shouldn't be risking anybody's life."
"But you need to know that Steve'll be okay if you do go back."
"I need to know Steve'll be okay if I don't go back. And if it's gonna be a while until you know you can get these triggers out of me, I have to go back under."
I looked at him. The image I had of the implacable, impenetrable Winter Soldier was crumbling under the reality of the humble man in front of me, concerned for the safety of everyone in general and one person in particular. Especially when I said, "I think that'll break Steve's heart," and tears filled his eyes.
"What's the better answer?"
I didn't have a better answer and I didn't have a chance to say that because farther along in my suite a door banged open and we heard Steve bark out, "Bucky?!"
Barnes stood up fast, too fast. Maybe he overcompensated, maybe he tripped on a shoelace or the chair but he lost his balance and fell to his knees and I automatically went to help him.
Steve, of course, marched into the kitchen at just that moment, and if I'd ever thought the Winter Soldier was intimidating it was nothing compared to the look of utter rage on Cap's face when he saw Barnes on the floor, in tears, and me standing over him.
"Tony, I swear to God –" he was on me in a second, grabbing the front of my dress shirt with both hands and shoving me against the wall. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" And then he slammed me against the wall. "What'd you do to him?!"
"I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. Barnes came here on his own."
I was saved from another slam, and probably a broken rib or three, by Barnes saying, "Steve, don't hurt him. He didn't do anything. I came here to talk to him. Steve, please."
Steve let go of me, not without a final warning scowl of course, and went to help Barnes to his feet. "All right, easy. Come on. Here we go."
"He didn't do anything," Barnes said as Steve helped him up. "I came to talk to him about getting rid of the triggers. I tripped, that's all."
Steve asked, "What about the triggers? Did you change your mind?"
Barnes sighed. He looked at Steve, he looked at me, he looked at Steve.
"We need to go back to the hospital. We need to talk."
##
