I Know What You Did In the Dark ch 3
Bucky
One week before Steve and Sam begin looking for him
I followed the father and child towards the Smithsonian building at a discrete distance. Keeping my head low and hands in my hoodie pockets, I blended in with the sparse crowds who walked the National Mall. There were snips of conversations I caught, such as people in fear of the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. or who was HYDRA and what was going to happen next to America.
The father-daughter pair turned toward the Museum of American History, a branch of the Smithsonian. Behind the darkened glass of the post-modern building was a security check. I could hear the beeping of the metal detector. Today, would be a day of particularly high security after the events at the river. Knowing now where I was going, I stepped aside and found a place to hide my paltry collection of knives and my gun. Doing so made me feel naked to the skin.
Joining the line again, I prepared to enter the building just like everyone else. As expected, my arm set off the detector. A burly guard in a dark blue uniform gave me a distrustful look and gestured to an adjacent area," Sir, please come over here."
I stepped aside quietly, and he wanded me with a hand held unit producing a loud squawk that split the air. People began to look at us. "Sir, can you take off your jacket?"
"I'd rather not." I said in a low tone. More people were beginning to stare, exactly what I didn't want.
"And why not?" the guard queried, looking me over. In my mind, I had already killed him multiple times, which disturbed me. Would my training come back unexpectedly?
Summoning my best sad expression, or what I considered sad, I replied in a near whisper, "I have a prosthesis. I'm a bit sensitive about it."
"A pros- what?" the guard said quizzically. Now his friend was leaning in to see if he needed some help.
" A metal arm. I lost it in … Afghanistan." I lied, throwing in a moist eye and gently rubbing my metal arm for effect. When did I ever become an actor?
"Oh. Oh!" the guard exclaimed as if he has just insulted my mother. "I am so sorry. Excuse me." He moved aside and almost bowed, such was his embarrassment.
I inclined my head briefly in thanks and walked on thinking to myself when did people get so stupid?
The crowds giving us the eye dispersed thinking that security had done their job and all was ok. Little did they know who I was and I could annihilate all of them without breaking a sweat. Stop thinking like that, I reprimanded myself. A shadow of doubt clouded my vision: did I know who I am? The large grey stone lobby was not overly crowded and the first thing I saw was the Star Spangled Banner exhibit. A huge metal representation of the flag of the United States hung before me in stainless steel. Behind the wall, the sign said, was the flag that Francis Scott Key saw when he composed the poem that became the national anthem of America. Curious, I joined the line of people filing slowly past the flag in the darkened exhibit. It was not much to look at, rather raggedy and patched, faded and holey in some places. My mind began to twist in different directions suggesting I should be greatly humbled by this symbol. This washed-out red, white and blue flag, the size of a ballroom-sized rug began to tug at my thoughts. I slowly realized the song playing, sung by a military choir, their baritone and tenor voices carrying above the solemn, whispered voices of the people assembled. "Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light…"
My hands shot out of my pockets and gripped the handrail like a vise as if I were hanging on for my life. A vision of a baseball field leaped before my eyes. I heard his laugh, Steve, his blonde hair flipping over his eyes as he belted out the tune. The New York Yankees were playing the Boston Red Sox, a classic tilt. I was singing too at the top of my lungs, "Oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave! O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!" The stadium erupted in a thunderous cheer. The smell of cigars and popcorn filled the air and food hawkers yelled out their wares. The room suddenly felt hot and the darkness was engulfing me. Steve's boyish laugh echoed in my ears.
"Bucky?" the man Steve said in the street.
"Who the Hell is 'Bucky'?" I had replied, before I tried to kill him.
I'm right here! I shouted in my head.
I disentangled my fingers from the rail not seeing the dent my metal hand had made and left quickly before something else happened.
The lobby's light and air was welcome to me and I sat heavily on a bench just outside the flag exhibit. I barely remembered to shove my hands in my pockets again before someone noticed my hand. Breathe, I commanded myself, breathe.
Sucking air for nothing, Asset, that voice came back.
Go away, I ordered the voice, almost on the verge of giving in.
No. You failed. Disgrace. Commander will be very displeased, it said.
Commander is dead, I shot back.
The voice was silent for a second and then replied, doesn't matter. They didn't forget about you. And when they find you, they will freeze you again for your failures. The word 'failures' rang like clanging bell in my skull.
A wave of revulsion passed through me and I gripped my head again in my hands, not caring if someone saw my silver hand. No. No. No, I chanted softly to myself.
"Mister, who you talking to?" a boy's voice interrupted my psychological warfare.
Looking up quickly, I stuffed my left hand in my pocket, but not before the quick blue eyes of the boy saw it. "Uh, nobody. Just me." The kid looked uncannily like the Steve in my flashbacks, "Where's your folks?"
"Over there. Staring at their smartphones. Like everybody else does these days." The kid replied with an exasperated sigh and eye roll, then looked eagerly at me like he finally had someone to listen to him. "Why is your hand metal? Are you like a robot or something? Are you an Avenger?" He said 'Avenger' with whispered reverence and wide eyes, leaning toward me like I'd tell him my secret.
I had forgotten how to smile a long time ago, as if I was born without the ability to make the corners of my mouth go north. But this boy, so much like Steve, triggered some basic human instinct and I found myself remembering how to, slightly. "No. I'm a veteran. I lost my arm in combat. It's fake." I took my right hand and rapped my left shoulder. It made a dull metallic clank.
The boy's eyes were still voluminous with curiosity, and a hint of disappointment that I was not an Avenger, shrugged, "I gotcha. My friend's dad was in the Army and has a fake leg. Looks like a robot. It's cool. Except that time we used it for a hockey stick. His dad didn't like that much." A look of regret swept his face briefly then he asked boldly, "Did it hurt? Y'know. To lose your arm?"
Leaning back from the boy, I inhaled sharply as the space between us became unbearably heavy. Somewhere, I dug down and found the barest shred of grace to answer him, "A little, kid. Just a little."
He smiled at me and ran a hand through his blonde coif, "Good." he affirmed with what I am sure he thought was a manly expression.
"Jimmy? Where are you?" a woman's voice came to us and the boy turned his head, showing me how scrawny his neck was, just like Steve's.
"Here, Mom." he called back cheerfully. The woman approached, a worried look on her face that her son was talking to a complete stranger who probably looked a bit unhinged. "Hey, Mom! He's got a –"
"Jimmy! We don't talk rudely like that to people. Or people we don't know. Sorry, sir." She cut her son off and corralled his skinny shoulders with a protective arm leading him away. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed I was not some psycho who was going to stalk them.
Watching her pull her son away, felt a little like I was dying again, losing Steve. That picture they said was him… the chair. Electricity.
Get up, my brain ordered me sharply. Get up. Get your information and get out of here.
Stiffly I rose, found the location of the exhibit on the map and moved towards it.
I don't recall ever being in a museum, except for a few missions I prefer not to think about, but they did Captain America in style. The enormous mural of Captain America and the Howling Commandos in the center the room was almost overwhelming. I saw Steve looking sternly at me, as if he could pierce my heart and see the darkness inside. And there I was to his left; two flesh arms, brave, resolved, ready to follow that skinny boy from Brooklyn who never walked away from a fight into any peril.
An overhead voice calmly narrated some text from a panel and I heard my name. Turning towards it, my face was enlarged on a plate of glass. Scanning the text as the narrator read it, "Captured by Hydra, Barnes endured long periods of isolation, depravation and torture." It detailed how Steve had saved me and we both went on to work in the Howling Commandos against HYDRA.
My mind grew numb and disconnected because it didn't believe the kind words on the glass. I grew up in Brooklyn; I had a mother and father? When did I do these amazing feats of honor and bravery? I saw the date of my death. An icy hand gripped my heart: dead. "The only Commando to give his life in the service of his country." The voice murmured on. The room began to heat up like an inferno. The pleasant drone of the narrators' voice was starting to sound like nails down a chalkboard.
Asset, the voice hissed in my ear.
No. Not here. Not now, I reprimanded it still glued to my past life on glass. People moved around me like buoys in an ocean, soundless with no direction.
Cut off one head, two more take it's place, the voice whispered again.
I had to leave. Now. Before I killed someone, if not myself.