AN: Okay, so I didn't realize this until the wonderfully talented Shadows of a Dream (whose work you should all check out, because greatness) pointed it out to me, but it is possible to sort fics in a category by number of reviews, and this fic is currently second in the Captain America section. Which is the greatest thing ever and you people are the best. I cannot describe how happy your reviews and views make me, and how great it is to know that you all like this story. You guys make my day and I love you.
Also, remember my Archive of Our Own account where I posted the soul-scarring stories I didn't think I could post on this site without violating content guidelines? Yesterday I posted a slightly less soul-scarring sequel to one of those stories, which may become a slightly less soul-scarring series, if anyone's interested.
"Run that by me again," Stark says.
After the Soldier asked to learn the thing Steve calls knitting, they took the elevator to Stark's laboratory. They are there now, seated at one of the work benches. The Soldier has hold of Steve's right hand, bandaging his knuckles with the supplies from a medical kit he'd asked Dum-E to retrieve upon entering.
Dum-E is trying to do the same to Steve's left hand, and is mostly succeeding in sticking adhesive bandages to himself. The bandages are decorated with images of Stark's armor.
"Do you have any knitting needles?" Steve repeats. He had protested when the Soldier began disinfecting his scraped skin, arguing that it would be healed in a matter of hours. The Soldier was not dissuaded. He is used to people protesting his actions and is used to ignoring those pleas. That those people were being killed rather than aided is not a meaningful distinction in his mind.
Stark is wiping grease from his hands. "Much as I'm all up for smashing heteronormativity with a big pink repulsor blast, can't say that I do. I might have some crochet hooks lying around, if that'd help?"
Steve gives him a look, and the Soldier is too immersed in first aid to decipher it.
"They're Pepper's," Stark says. "And they can do things pliers can't."
Satisfied that his right hand is properly repaired, the Soldier shifts in his seat to help Dum-E with the left. The robot abandons his post in favor of sticking the bandages to the Soldier's metal hand, and Steve sighs.
"JARVIS, where's the nearest yarn shop?" he asks. "I can take my bike—I should grab a shower first, but I can—"
"I'll go," Stark says, before the Soldier can begin preventative measures to keep Steve seated. "If I stare at my blueprints much longer they'll burn into my retinas. Besides, looks like you haven't been cleared for service."
"Bucky." Steve says it as a protest but he is smiling when the Soldier looks up. "I still need a shower."
"Counterproductive." Metal fingers tap against the dressing. "This stays dry."
Steve's hand slips around his, then into it. "I'm fine, really."
Dum-E swings over them, affixing to the Soldier's forearm. He cannot tell if it is the robot's usual fascination with the limb or an attempt to imitate the contact between Steve and the Soldier. "Counterproductive," he repeats.
The smile on Steve's face is tired but still gleaming. "I can put a pair of latex gloves on before I get wet?"
The Soldier debates it internally for a moment, watching as Dum-E's claws trace the red star on his shoulder, before he slowly nods.
He was wrong about the ability of knitting to cause harm, the Soldier decides. He is holding a pair of knitting needles, aluminum, nearly five millimeters in circumference. They are slender and long, pointed at one end. Off hand, the Soldier can think of over fifty maneuvers to utilize the needles as lethal weapons.
Steve does none of those maneuvers, pulling a length of yarn loose from the ball. The yarn is mostly red but there are strands of gold swirled throughout it. Stark said, upon returning, that it was something called alpaca and hand-dyed and that the colors reminded him of himself, so of course he had to get it.
"Here." Steve wraps the yarn around two of the Soldier's left fingers. The glove is back on for this task and he can feel the material rub against him before Steve is guiding the right hand through the yarn, making a slip knot and sliding it onto a needle. He sits beside the Soldier, tilting his wrists and fingers through the motions that create stitches, a method he calls "casting on." Once there are twenty five stitches, he places the needle in the Soldier's left hand, arranging his fingers the way one holds a knife.
"You'll mostly just keep that hand still," he explains. "It's the right one that makes and moves stitches."
The loose yarn winds through the right fingers. The empty needle is then placed in that hand, again as he would hold a knife.
"In through the door," Steve says, stabbing the empty needle through the first of the stitches before the Soldier can ask what door he is referring to. "Around the back." He manipulates the Soldier's fingers so loose yarn loops around the needle, above where the stitch is impaled. "Out through the window…" Turning the Soldier's wrist, the yarn is pulled through the stitch and then onto the right needle in a single, fluid motion, "and off jumps Jack." Repeating the rhyme, he guides another stitch.
The Soldier's first attempt unassisted misses the yarn entirely. On the second attempt, the yarn slips off before the stitch is formed.
"The tension's the hardest thing." Steve says, adjusting the yarn in the Soldier's grip. "You'll get it."
He does, on the third try. And the fourth. Steve's stitches were more uniform, but the Soldier is designed to learn as quickly as possible. By the twenty-fifth stitch, they are even.
"You're some sort of prodigy," Steve says. "And to think I was the one making socks for you. You want to learn to purl?"
"Pearl?"
"It's basically a knit stitch backward. If you do alternating rows of knits and purls, your fabric's smoother."
The Soldier nods. Steve switches the needles in his hands, teaches him a second stitch and rhyme. "Under the fence, catch the sheep. Back we come, off we leap."
There is a flicker of memory when he reaches the end of the second row, and the Soldier pauses, regarding Steve. "You had more needles." He can't recall if there were three or four, but there were more than two.
"For socks? Yeah, you can go up to five. But you learn on two. Give yourself time." He smiles. "At least half an hour, considering your ridiculous talent."
His own smile is brief, but it fully forms instead of just flickering. HYDRA would praise him when he succeeded at a task, but there is a depth to Steve's words, a connection his handlers lacked. A row knitted, a row purled. And again. The faint tap of the needles against each other, the feel of the yarn as it slides around his fingers, it alters his state of mind. He is still creating stitches, but his thoughts are elsewhere. Another couch, another set of hands holding needles.
"Someone did this," he says, hands stilling. The Soldier stares down at the needles. "A woman."
"A woman knitting in the forties?" He isn't looking at Steve, but he can still hear the grin. "You're gonna have to narrow that down a little, Buck."
"Dark hair."
"Peggy?"
He shakes his head. "Blue eyes. Older." He remembers another motion with the yarn, sets the needles down, and holds his hands out before him. "Did this, she put yarn around my hands, wrapped it back up?"
"Oh, your mom." The way Steve says it, he can almost hear the man remembering. "You hated it when she made you help wind yarn. You could barely sit still for five minutes when you were having fun, let alone—"
"Mom?" he repeats.
"Yeah. She and I would talk about knitting patterns, sometimes. You usually pretended to fall asleep. She made you this sweater once, this—"
The Soldier's face is wet and he wipes at it with his sleeves.
A hand is on his metal shoulder. "Bucky? What's wrong?"
"Nothing." He is still wiping his face, but his mouth is smiling. "I remember my mom." He can see her face, every line, every expression. The Soldier does not have to work to retrieve the images; they are simply there, as if it is something programmed within him. How to load his rifle. How to pick a lock. What his mother looked like. It is innate and it is important, though he can't think of why. "I remember my mom."
The hand on his shoulder pats. Steve is quiet but the Soldier can hear him grinning again. He breathes, deep and shaky and elated, and retrieves the needles, beginning another row.
A/N: I mentioned in the notes for the last chapter that soldiers used to be taught to knit in hospitals, but I neglected to mention the benefits of it. Knitting is repetitive motion, which is said to trigger the brain to release serotonin. It provides you with something to do and create, which can help with depression, chronic pain, stress, or just boredom. It is also said to help improve memory function.
There are two main styles of knitting: English (the style used in this chapter), in which the working yarn is held in the right hand, and Continental, in which the yarn is held in the left. I myself knit Continental, and actually had to teach myself English to write the descriptions in this chapter. Continental style is most popular in Germany and so during the time of the World Wars, it was definitely not something most Americans would want to learn (my grandmother learned it when she was with my grandfather stationed in Germany). Also, given that Winter's right hand is the more precise and perceiving, it seemed better to teach him the right-handed method.
Sometimes when people buy cylindrical skeins of yarn, they then wind them up into balls so it's easier to unroll the yarn during knitting. There are tools to keep it from tangling while you're making the ball, or you can wrap it around a chair or someone's hands for safekeeping.