The Curse of Dr. Zola

Chapter 28

After Steve got settled back in from the flight, he spoke to Bucky alone.

Bucky paled at seeing the old photograph. He remembered her, and his stomach churned with acid. He remembered the day he'd met her, and the summer they'd dated. He remembered a lot about those dates, and the frantic gropings at the rear of the cinema. She hadn't gone all the way, but they came close once before they'd gotten caught. It made him feel sick to his stomach now.

He closed his eyes, as he began remembering in detail the capture of his unit, and subsequent mistreatment in the factory. Memories he'd buried about how they beat him, and tortured him surfaced painfully.

He was glad he'd been sitting during this because he felt his knees go weak. He was afraid they would fail him. He remembered the sleep deprivation. He remembered the hunger as they denied him food and water for days. He remembered the desperation he'd felt as they spun him around and he remembered how he'd begged them to stop.

Mary had gone to the market with Kate and Bucky was glad of it. He had time to compose himself before the women returned. He didn't want Mary to see him like this. It was bad enough that Steve saw; he was mortified over it. He wondered if Mary was seeing his past in her dreams. God, I hope not!

The terror when he'd been whisked away, the helplessness, he didn't want her to see that.

He suggested they go out back and run the obstacle course, and Steve knew he needed this, so he agreed. Bucky pushed Steve to an all-time record. The completed the course with the fastest time ever. Bucky insisted they run it again.

All total, they ran the course 6 times before Bucky felt in control of himself enough to face Mary. Of course, he saw Mary's truck in the yard as they approached the house. He knew they'd be back, but he still kind of hoped they wouldn't have been just yet.

Suddenly, Bucky panicked. "Where did you leave the journal?" He bolted before Steve had a chance to answer.

As he swung open the front door, the women turned around. Bucky's face fell when he saw the book in Mary's hands.

He rushed in and tried to take it from her. She turned away. He made another grab for it, as Steve swooped in behind him.

"Bucky! Bucky stop!"

Bucky pushed Steve away and grabbed Mary's arms with enough force to make her cry out. The book fell from her hands.

Kate stepped back and pulled her gun. "Let her go!"

Bucky let go and his face crumpled into pain. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mary. Please forgive me."

Mary had a look of fear on her face and it stabbed Bucky in his heart. He fell to his knees in front of her. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

Mary began to cry, and she stepped towards Bucky. She wrapped her arms around his head and pulled him to her. He wrapped his arms around her legs and held her tight.

Steve waved Kate off, and she put her gun away.

"I think we all need to have a conversation here."

"I didn't realize how much I had repressed." Bucky admitted later that evening.

"It's called PTSD, and it's not uncommon with war veterans. Back in the days of WWII, I think they called it 'battle fatigue', if I'm remembering correctly." Kate informed him.

"Don't feel bad, Buck, Peggy's journal brought back a lot of memories for me too."

"What we need to do now is figure out how to go forward." Mary reached out to take his hand in hers.

"I do remember being in several battle situations. The Army was training me to be a sniper. I was pretty good too, too good." He sniffed at another memory, and shook his head to clear it away.

"I think we should find you both a good counselor. We have several at SHIELD you can talk to."

Bucky nodded, but he wasn't sure he was ready. Maybe by the time he picked one, he'd be ready then.

"Who is this woman?" Mary asked. "Could she have been the one, no, she couldn't have been the one asking about gram's obit." She looked at Steve. "Could she? Was she trying to kill my mother?"

"If HYDRA had the serum back then, I suppose anything is possible."

"If I was given the serum, was…." Bucky couldn't finish the sentence.

"Are you implying my grandmother was a HYDRA agent?" Mary voice rose in pitch. "Didn't you read the composition book with me? Didn't it say she had saved you? Didn't she tell you that she needed you to protect her daughter? My mother?"

"You're right. But why force the serum into my body? Do you know how much pain that caused me?'

Mary started crying. This was tearing her apart.

"Can I tell you my theory here?" Kate offered.

Steve nodded. "Let's hear it."

"You said that her grandmother saved you. If you were to survive being frozen in the capsule, you'd need to be enhanced like Steve. I think Mary's mother was supposed to revive you, but for some reason, she didn't. There has to be a link we're missing here. Are you sure this is the only book? Maybe there's more?"

"I don't know, there might be."

"OK, say there is and we just haven't found it yet, so going with that, what if Bucky is or was supposed to be trained by your mother to fight HYDRA?"

"Her grandmother was training me, and she said she needed to keep me hidden long enough to train her daughter."

"Ok, so something happened and plans didn't work out, so your mother kept Bucky hidden."

"But why didn't she tell me?"

"Maybe you weren't ready?"

Steve hated to bring it up but he did. "Didn't you tell us that there was a rift between you?"

"Yes, but it, she claimed it was her fault in the letter she wrote me."

"The letter you found after she had died?"

"Yes."

"Can we see it?"

Mary nodded and went to her bedroom to retrieve it. Since she kept it with the copy of her will, she brought that out too. She handed them both to Steve. "My mother hand wrote this and her will. She always had some sort of hidden agenda when she wrote things. Even her lawyer admitted that."

Steve and Kate spread out the papers and looked them over.

"In the CIA, one of the things we studied was code breaking, and I was really good at that; family tradition."

After studying it, Kate pointed out incongruities with the rest of the wording in Mary's letter and the will.

"Does this mean anything to you? Now think hard."

"Well, here in the letter it mentions the secret door. I found it by accident."

"Did you?"

"I….I thought so, but now I'm not so sure. When I looked in the dresser I found men's clothes, but at the time I didn't know that they were for Bucky. The closet was empty and I wondered why. I saw the bar to hang the clothes on was crooked and when I went to straighten it….Oh my goodness, it was the clue! She was trying to tell me to look for the bar. The bar opened the secret door!"

"Ok, we have a start. Let's continue."

"What about this?" Mary pointed out. "She says I picked out each piece with love especially for you. I never had a fetish for the furniture of the 40's, so why did she…." Mary trailed off.

"Maybe those words weren't meant for you." Kate suggested.

Mary started crying again. "She meant those words for you Bucky. Maybe she loved you more than she did me."

"Don't be ridiculous! She loved you enough to keep you out of my mess until she couldn't put it off any longer."

'OK, so why wouldn't my mother give me the directions on how to find you? Why did she make it a game?"

"In the CIA, if you wanted to leave a message you'd put it in code, so it wouldn't make sense to anyone but the person you were leaving it for."

"Are you telling me my mother and grandmother were both CIA agents?"

"It does kind of make sense."

"There wasn't any agency called the CIA in the 1940's." Steve pointed out.

"But there was the OSS, and that started around 1942." Kate counter-pointed. "Office of Strategic Services would have been the intelligence agency for the war department."

"I'm seeing a pattern here." Bucky added. "Office of Strategic Services, Strategic Scientific Reserve, SHIELD, Strategic something or other."

"My grandmother was a spy. How do you like that?"

"And she went to school in Brooklyn. Brooklyn had a hidden SSR facility there. I know, because I was there. It's where I was injected with the serum by Dr. Erskine."

"It's a small world after all." Kate threw in.

"It seems every time we answer a question, we find out we have another question."

The next question was the one no one wanted to ask. How many more questions would they find?