b

He woke to the alarm clock's continuous beeping. Why he even had an alarm clock still bewildered him. (And why Janice decided he needed one out of the blue was an even greater mystery. He turned up to the office on time, didn't he? Or did he?)

He sat up and the bed groaned. Two legs swung over the side. One met and overturned a whiskey bottle. It landed on its side with a dull clunk. He looked at the empty brown glass, puzzled. Did he drink it all last night?

It wasn't a habit, but he did it from time to time; when sleep refused to come and the silence formed faces and voices that accused and reminded, it helped. (Sometimes.) Running a hand over his unshaved chin, he stood up, ignoring the bottle.

At least he had slept last night; he must have done. And better – he couldn't remember dreaming. He glanced at the wall. Its dent was larger. A glance at his fist.

Metal? Undamaged.

Flesh and bone? Crusted blood sprinkled with a spattering of plaster.

Bucky told himself that it didn't matter. He couldn't remember the dream. 'Count your blessings,' said a chaplain. (He couldn't remember his face, or even where or when he met the man. He only recalled the voice, which was cold, and the words, which were warm.)

The alarm clock was still belting out its tune and Bucky had to force himself not to slam a metal fist down on it. It would stop then. Never sound again.

But he didn't like ending things, these days. The concept of 'this has ended and there will never be anything more' disturbed him. He didn't end. Though everyone else did, of course. (He didn't like to think of that. Ignorance was bliss. Bliss in its falsest form, true, but even that was better than nothing at all.)

With a single push of a button, the alarm clock was silenced. His jeans and t-shirt (stinking worse than a frightened skunk; he needed to do laundry) were pulled on.

Jacket – check. Shoes – check. Breakfast … he'd get something somewhere. Hunger was a state he was familiar with. He never seemed to notice it these days.

Bucky frowned as he flung the door open, shutting it behind him. Perhaps he should be bothered by hunger. Perhaps he ought to fetch that stale bagel from the cupboard and wash it down with coffee. (And whiskey. Did he even have any of that left?) Perhaps that was what an ordinary person would do. And by 'ordinary' he meant someone who wasn't him.

Fine.

He'd get something on the way to the office.

Y'know, Bucky, sometimes you overthink things.

Shut up, Steve.

Eat. Don't eat. The choice is yours.

He stalked down the hall, passed doors more battered than his own. Then out into the street. A blast of polluted air hit his lungs. Beside a lamp post, a figure looking worse for wear puffed on a cigarette as if he were the last steam train and this was his final hurrah.

Personally, said Steve with irritating cheerfulness, I'd eat. Keep up strength to track down last night's bad guy.

Bucky buried his hands in his jacket pockets. No one calls them bad guys, he muttered to Steve's ghost as he strode down the street. He had a motorbike last month. Crashed it because he was a wuss and couldn't stop his flashbacks. Now he was forced to use public transport or his own legs.

Five years. You'd think someone would improve a little after five years.

Did he?

No. He didn't.

He wouldn't drive again. Promised himself right then and there whilst the blood dripped from his forehead and he extracted himself from the crumpled trash can.

A jogger whisked by, ear plugs in, fancy gear on, sweat glistening. Bucky reckoned that he could run three times as fast.

No.

Four.

Run so swiftly that these grim apartment blocks would leak into the inner city's grim skyscrapers in no time. He chose this grim place, where dirt and hardship and attempts at forgetting mixed together in a dull, mouldering soup.

If he had wanted to withdraw from the world, a log cabin would have been better. He'd tried it too: a year or two out in the wilderness where only God could see him. What did he accomplish? Sanity? Nope. Far be it from him to do something sensible.

He'd gone a little overboard on the 'insanity thing'. He couldn't remember half the time he spent up in the Rockies. He did wrestle with the wildlife though – he remembered that. Seemed kinda ridiculous when he thought about it. He'd woken up coated in blood and had actually wept like a little kid because it wasn't someone he'd killed but something.

After that, he'd moved about. Drifted about. Found a place. This non-descript city in America suited him. It was interchangeable with a hundred others – and better, he had no history here.

He hated history. Avoided it.

(He had a long list of things he hated; had started it the moment he realised that Bucky Barnes was someone and worse – it was him. Second thing on the list? Hydra.)

His phone rang and he pulled it out of his pocket.

As always, Janice spoke first: "Where were you?"

(Third? Two words: Mission Report.)

"I'm getting breakfast. Want a bagel?"

"Come on, Bucky. What happened? You didn't give me a debrief or whatever."

A cyclist flashed by and a taxi honked its angry horn. Bucky stepped into a bakery and was met with the smell of freshly made bread. Through the glass counter, he pointed to a bagel coated with cinnamon and slapped the money down without saying a word.

In his ear, however, Janice had plenty to say: "You can't keep going off grid, dude. I needed to know where you were. You weren't answering your phone, you didn't text, you didn't call and you didn't even break into my apartment and leave a box of oddly creepy chocolates."

A business man in cheap suit rushed past him. Bucky bit into his bagel. It was warm. Sweet. He had been used to bland things put into his mouth; full of the necessary nutrients but lacking in taste. Oh, and then there was that none-edible thing placed into his mouth just before they …

No. He swallowed. Took another bite.

Life seemed full of unfinished sentences. Thoughts he couldn't allow himself to complete.

(Fourth: teeth guards, and what they heralded.)

"Not that you've ever given me chocolates." A pause, followed by a rush of words: "In a purely platonic way, mind you. But I've been watching this TV show about stalkers and one of 'em looked so much like you that- wait. What was I asking you?"

Bucky supplied the answer through a mouthful of bagel: "Wanting to know where I was."

(Fifth: a throat – his own - hoarse from screaming.)

"Yeah. That. Did you mention a bagel? No. No. Where were you?"

Bucky made her wait until the bagel was eaten and its paper was tossed into the trash. (Janice complained – loudly. Bucky didn't think she had a drop of patience in her entire body.)

"Following Jessica Albright's lover."

There was a spluttering sound from the other end of the phone. Bucky took the next left and passed down Sunrise Avenue.

"She was … she had … ? Dang it, Bucky – you see, this is the reason I hate this job. Just when your faith in humanity is restored by a Hallmark Channel special, what does our wonderful race do? Nay – change the question – what does the sisterhood do?"

The sun peered through the thick clouds and, bothered by the dismal sight beneath it, retreated into comfortable obscurity. Bucky wished he could do the same. Or perhaps he had.

(The art of remaining invisible, he remembered lecturing himself in one of those first lucid moments, was to live in plain sight, acting as if you belonged there.)

"Maybe Mr Albright beat her? Huh. Maybe this was a marriage she was forced into. Arranged. Like on TV … but worse. Hmm. Do we have a lead here?"

He stepped down a side alley where a lamp hung over a door and flickered in panic.

"He wasn't her lover," he corrected himself, because Janice upset meant her seating her ponderous form on the edge of his desk giving him a lecture on the Woes of Mankind beginning with The Toilet Seat Was Not Down and ending with a financial crisis of some kind. ('Men are greedy,' she'd say in her grating voice. 'And so arrogant I want to skin them and feed them to rabid sharks. Wait. Can sharks become rabid when they're swimming in all that water?')

He held the phone away from his ear as she shrieked and he unlocked the door. It wasn't locked in the conventional sense, but it required a careful push to the left and then a yank upwards. He'd taken it off its hinges four times before he mastered the trick.

Janice didn't use this side door; she used the front and trooped passed the shifty insurance offices where the secretary chewed gum and used paperwork as hamster bedding. Found it amusing, for some reason.

"Why didn't you say so, Bucky? Man alive, I – legit – lost my faith humanity for a moment there. Gosh darn it, don't leave me hanging off a cliff, next time. Mmkay? Spoilers are appreciated in this circumstance."

Up a creaky flight of stairs, down the hall, skip through the maintenance closet and out the other side and – there. The door was old and its handle worn, but the lettering on the glass stated clearly, in bold letters:

Barnes & Rogers, Private Investigators

Janice said that it looked tacky and demanded to know why her surname wasn't there. Bucky thought that maybe, once – a very long time ago – a kid dreamt briefly of being a Private Eye; a detective with a fedora hat and a Chicago drawl. He wasn't sure who the kid was (Steve or him), but the lettering stayed as it was. A memorial to a lost friend and an abandoned dream.

It was really crummy memorial – far worse than whatever exhibit they had at the Smithsonian. But he thought that Steve wouldn't mind it; would find it funny.

Sure do, buddy. Sure do.

See? His deceased friend agreed with him.

"So …" drawled out Janice. "When are you coming into work? I want explanations, dude. With appendixes, cross-references and everything."

He opened the door and there she was, her body squeezed into a chair behind a desk that would collapsed if you so much as coughed in its direction.

Closing the door, he leant against it, arms folded.

"Well!" said Janice, eyebrows raised.

Her face always reminded him of a little puppy's, except with more hair on top, less on her cheeks and eyes that could burn with the fiery pits of hell.

"She's writing a biography. He's helping. She doesn't like him. He doesn't like what she writes."

Janice looked nonplussed. "Huh."

"Lots of red on the manuscript," Bucky felt compelled to explain. He really hated this part – the 'talking-over-what-had-happened-on-the-case' part. Reminded him too much of … of …

(Period. Full stop. A sentence was completed when you chose to end it.)

He clenched his jaw and Janice lent forward, plucking up a jar and shoving it over a pile of paperwork and onto the edge of the desk.

"I didn't swear," he muttered, with a wearied glare.

"You were thinking it."

Five dollars were stuffed into the jar. Janice's eyebrows were raised to dizzying heights. "What the heck were you thinking?"

"I'd say it …" said Bucky, walking toward his office. He opened the door, rested a hand on the doorframe. (Did he put his gloves on? A glance. Yes, he did.) "… but it would cost me three more dollars."

Janice followed him, watching him as he seated himself behind his desk and switched his ancient computer on. The monitor flickered and fan whirred in protest.

"So …" she clicked finger nails painted a variety of colours on the door frame. "… who's biography?"

"See, now that's the interesting part." Bucky banged the side of the monitor. Looked up. Allowed a small smile to twitch at his lips. Was about to open his mouth to speak but before he could, Janice happened.

"What? Oh come on. Only talent shows have the silence before so so's announced as the loser."

"You are-"

"Beautiful beyond belief? Incredibly talented? Wonderfully kind to stoop to working for you? Saint-like in my loyalty? All of the above?"

It amazed Bucky that Janice could rattle off so many words in one breath.

"Your silence is telling," she said crisply in that sharp voice of hers, fingers tapping a faster beat. "So … tell me."

Bucky wished he'd taken a cup of coffee before coming in.

"Dude … the suspense is killing me. Woman up and dish."

Make that three cups of coffee.

Bucky looked at the ceiling with its whining fan and cream paintwork. Calming thoughts, he told himself. Just breathe. Leaping out of the window isn't advisable.

Have to agree with you there, Buck.

"He was a prominent CIA agent."

There. The words were out. There was a moment's silence. Disbelief rippled across her face. It didn't last for very long and was replaced with awe that, in turn, collapsed in front of a wave of fear.

She was always a little paranoid. (On good days.) Give her a math test and she'd say the Illuminati were behind it. ('The triangles! I kid you not.') She feared the government which she felt was large and looming and far too Big Brother-ish. ('They could be watching us right now. Quick! Pull a face. Dang it, that will get us all killed.') Bucky was glad he'd kept his arm hidden. What she'd make of that was too terrible to think about.

Janice began to lecture, back straight, arms to the sides, bosom heaving with indignation. Bucky often wondered if she was even aware of where in the conversational map she was headed when she opened her mouth.

He began to assemble the facts from last night. Something was very odd there – he wasn't sure what, but he knew that something was off.

Above him, the ceiling fan whined and his computer announced the need for an update and a restart. And Janice was still talking.

Thoughts?