Shorter chapter. Sorry not sorry.
He stands at the end of the street, taking in the neighborhood. It's both familiar and completely foreign to him, and that disorients him quite a bit. He knows for a fact that the Winter Soldier has never come within 50 miles of this place. But at the same time he knows that James Buchanan Barnes grew up playing in these streets. He may have only remembered small things, but he remembers Bucky wandering these places in his youth.
He figured Brooklyn was a good place to start looking for clues as to who he was as any. Bucky Barnes's story started here, so he had hoped just seeing the place would jog his memory. So far nothing had happened, but on impulse he decided to find Amelia's old house. Something inside him has an insistent need to find out what happened to her, and it takes him by surprise every time it flares to life.
He's remembered a few more things; she appears in his dreams often and when he wakes he expects to see her next to him. She's the first thing he remembers ever wanting for himself. Before it was other people telling him what he wanted. As the asset, the Winter Soldier or whatever he was, everyone controlled everything for him. Amelia was different. No one's telling him to find her, no one's controlling him this time.
Making sure his metal arm isn't visible, he climbs the steps to a house halfway down the street and knocks before he has a chance to chicken out. He raises his eyebrows in surprise. He didn't know it was possible for him to chicken out of something. Before he has time to analyze that, though, he hears someone unlock the door and it swings open.
"Can I help you?" The man standing there asks.
"I'm looking for someone who used to live here." He grimaces inwardly; he'll work on his people skills later.
"Okay?" the man says hesitantly. He gestures for him to continue.
"Do you know anyone named Amelia Fowler?" The man's eyebrows furrow.
"Man, you got the wrong address," he says. "I don't know anyone named Amelia or Fowler."
"I know they used to live here-"
"Did you hear me? I don't know them. Sorry I can't help you." The man steps back inside the house and closes the door. He feels his temper rise inside him, but figures it won't do any good to rip the door off its hinges. The police would be called and, seeing as he's still a fugitive on the run, it could only end badly for him.
"Why are you looking for the Fowlers?" He hears someone ask. He looks to the house on the right and sees a withered, old man standing there, eyeing him suspiciously.
"It's important. I need to get in contact with them."
"Nobody's asked around for them in decades," the old man tells him. "Not since the 1970s, when they sold that house."
"You knew them?" the soldier asks, turning toward him fully.
"Not well," the old man admits. "I don't know of any Amelia Fowler, but I did know a Joseph Miller. He was my best friend growing up. He lived with his mother and grandparents in the house, but I think he had an aunt named Amelia. She might be the one you're looking for."
"Do you know where they've gone?" he demands, running down the steps of Amelia's house and stopping in front of the old man's house.
The old man scrunches up his face, thinking. "I don't remember where Joseph's mother went, she moved out a few years before they sold their house. I think his grandfather, Albert, was going to a nursing home."
"Which one?"
"I don't remember, son. It was a long time ago, over forty years."
"Thank you," he says gruffly. He stalks off down the road, not entirely sure where he's headed.
Albert Fowler.
He fingers the dagger in his pocket.
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