December 19th-Recommended music: I'll be Home for Christmas-Josh Groban
By the next day, Bucky had returned to his normal state once again. The memories of the past had abated and were once more safely in the past, where he preferred them to stay. They couldn't hurt from there.
It was bitterly cold out as he walked down the street. The wind cut through him and the metal arm seemed to absorb the coldness and send it directly into the core of his being. With a grimace, he hunkered down in the thin jacket he was wearing, and when he came to a drug store, he slipped inside and stole a scarf, hat, and a pair of gloves in hopes of warming up.
The coldness of the day and his efforts to warm up helped keep the memories of the previous day at bay. His thoughts wandered to Steve as he ducked into a bookstore that afternoon to try and warm up. He walked over to the history section and explored the rows of books about the Second World War. Americans had such a fascination with that war now, though there was a lot of nostalgia about it. Romanticizing the past was a way of justifying it.
As he took a book out of the shelf and flipped through the pages to glance at the pictures, he wondered if Steve had dealt with this when he'd come back from being frozen. Steve's war experiences, though, had been vastly different from his. Steve's war had been cleaner, clear cut, and heroic. Bucky's war had been bloody, murky, and thankless. The two could hardly be compared. He didn't blame Steve, however. Captain America was a symbol of something greater than either of them. The symbol couldn't get sullied in blood and death, after all. It had to remain above such things, or else it would remind too many people of what America was really doing.
Bucky wondered if the mantle of heroism ever weighed heavily on Steve. Steve hadn't been meant for such greatness. He was small and scrawny. Such importance and responsibility would have broken him before. But Steve wasn't that scrawny, sickly young man anymore. Things had been done to him—to both of them, though voluntarily on Steve's part. They were no longer who they had been. The war and the events that had occurred during and after it had seen to that.
With a shake of his head, and a pang of sadness stabbing inside him, he set the book back on the shelf and began to walk out of the store. It was growing dark and time for him to decide where he would sleep tonight. As he walked towards the nearest shelter he knew of, Bucky wondered what Steve would be doing for Christmas this year. He hoped it would be a nice holiday for his friend.