'When Bucky Barnes first met Steve Rogers…'
Steve. The name was a punch to the chest, stealing his breath and banging inside his skull like a caged beast. The man on the bridge. On the helicarrier. The one who should have killed him, but instead saved him. The man with the eyes and the voice that shook something loose inside him.
'…on the playgrounds of Brooklyn,'
Humid nights. Sweat-soaked sheets. The scratch of a pencil against paper.
A voice. "Hey, Buck…" That voice.
That name.
Buck. Bucky Barnes. James Buchanan.
'…little did he know that he was forging a bond that would take him to the battlefields of Europe and beyond.'
Forging a bond.
"Then finish it…'cause I'm with you 'til the end of the line."
His feet carried him down streets that tickled something in his brain. His cap provided little protection from the rain. He kept his hands in his jacket pocket and his head low, shifting his shoulders to adjust the backpack. He didn't know where he was, or even how he'd gotten there. Something called to him. This place. The bridge in the distance. The brownstone buildings.
It was dark, and the rain pelted the ground. Few people were on the streets except for those who, like him, had no place to go.
No safe place to go.
A song of church bells wafted through the patter of rain. He shivered, cold suddenly all the way to his bones. A headache blossomed at the base of his skull.
That sound…. Why did it make his chest tight and his eyes sting?
A moment sprang to his mind. He wasn't sure whether it was a memory or a dream. A small man was walking in front of him, up the stairs, hands in his pockets. Bells rang, distant but steady. Solemn.
"We looked for you after. My folks wanted to give you a ride to the cemetery."
"I know." The small man continued up the stairs without looking back. "I'm sorry. It's…kind of wanted to be alone."
"How was it?"
"It's okay. She's next to Dad."
He followed the sound of the bells to a modest church. It was a single-story structure with an arched entryway beneath a gable roof. People who appeared to be of the streets—with worn clothes and scruffy faces much like himself—entered. Bucky stayed in the shadows, letting the rain continue to pelt him, and watched. Water snaked down his collar, slithering along his back down to his pants. He was soaked from his head to his socks, and although the night was chilly, he'd known cold much deeper.
Over the course of two hours, the visitors filtered back out, some with warm paper cups in their hands with steam rising toward their faces as the raindrops pelted the hot contents. The storm was passing, and the rain faded to a drizzle. Bucky waited until the place appeared quiet and glanced around to make sure he'd remain unnoticed.
He slid from the shadows and crossed the street, but a feeling— distant and vague—made him hesitate. There was something about the church that evoked a pressure build behind his eyes.
"It's okay. She's next to Dad."
That man from the helicarrier and the museum….
Who was he?
"Bucky…you've known me your whole life."
The museum confirmed it. But it made no sense. Yet, he knew the man. Steve Rogers. Captain America.
He knew him, as though he'd always known him, and yet he couldn't remember. It was an ache that he couldn't pinpoint, a splinter somewhere deep inside that was finally making itself known.
It was pain—different than the chair or the cattle prods or the fists, but inside, a fire scorching through his veins, his skull, his chest.
The church…It was different in his mind. It was day. There were people in suits, dressed in black or gray with hats. The bells rang then, the same as they had a couple of hours ago.
He was standing too long, in the open, vulnerable. He looked around, cataloguing, listening, but no threat was apparent. He moved forward, and when he got to the door and put his hand on the knob, it opened.
It was softly lit inside, a yellow glow cast over wooden bench seats and an empty pulpit. A rich aroma filled the room. It reminded him of…of… something. Something warm. Something good. The pangs in his empty stomach grumbled angrily in response.
A statue of a man on a cross hung from the back wall. He wore thorns on his head that pierced his skin. Blood dripped from his head and from a wound in his side. His hands and feet were nailed, with blood trailing from the wounds.
He'd seen much more gruesome images—had been the cause of them—and yet he couldn't look away from the statue. It made the darkness and anger that was always inside him swell. It reeked of betrayal. Deceit.
He had an image of himself—a hazy memory, more of a feeling than anything else. He was on his knees. His fingers were splayed on the floor, bloody. His insides were a mass of hunger that overshadowed even the pain from his wounds.
He was talking to someone. Not a person. He was pleading. Begging. Negotiating.
Prayer. It was called prayer. It was what some of the people he killed had done.
"Dear God…" or sometimes "Lord, please…" or "O Allah…"
What was it he'd prayed for? He couldn't remember exactly, but he knew whoever or whatever he was praying to did not answer him. It never answered. Something inside him died. Something he had once held close.
This church. The statue. It was a lie. He didn't know how he knew, but he did. The targets that prayed all died.
He turned to leave.
"Fashionably late, just like my dear mother used to be."
He stopped. Even without looking, he knew the voice belonged to an older man, twenty feet behind him, near the right of the stage. His right hand went to the hilt of his blade. One flick. He wouldn't even have to look.
"I think I have some hot cocoa left," the man said.
He turned to look at the man who was dressed in black, with a neat collar dipping to a white square in front. A priest. He knew that. He dropped his hand away from the knife. There'd been a priest before, when the bells had rung. Steve Rogers was there, smaller, with sad eyes and a stoic face, as though he had nothing left in the world.
The ache inside twisted, once again stealing his breath, and his vision went blurry.
"Bringing some of the rain inside with you, huh? A little sugary warmth should make you feel better." The priest took a step forward.
The promity made him uneasy. He turned away from the priest, toward the door.
"The cocoa's fresh. I make it myself, believe it or not. My grandma's recipe. I think I even have a couple of marshmallows left over."
There was a woman's face in his mind. She wore a yellow dress and stood over a stove, stirring something in a pot. It smelled much like this. The ache in his chest changed. It was heavier, warmer, softer, and it swelled with a heat that rose to his eyes.
"You're welcome to sit down wherever you like, or you can go. But I'm going to grab a cup of hot cocoa, and if you're here when I come back, it's yours."
The priest left. The church was silent, the benches empty. This place made him feel uneasy. He glanced again at the statue of the dead man who was cut, nailed to a piece of a wood, put on display, tortured….
The figure wasn't real. Maybe he'd been real once, but now he was just a facsimile. A reminder of a person who used to exist but was now just a memory, a thing carved out of something that was once alive to resemble a man who no longer existed.
The bench was there suddenly, in front of him. He dropped down, sitting stiff and straight, close to the door, the pack preventing him from leaning back. There was a window to his right, and another ten feet ahead to his left. If he needed to make a quick escape, he had several options.
The patter of footsteps signaled the arrival of the priest. The man held a steaming cup in his hands-two paper cups stacked together as protection against the contents.
"This is the last of it, I'm afraid." The priest stopped a foot away and held out the cup. "You're welcome to stay and dry out a bit. We have a donation bin of new socks and underwear. I'll get you a few things."
The man's eyes were soft. His face was wrinkled and weathered much like his hands, but there was something genuine in his eyes.
The aroma of the cocoa beckoned. Reaching out, his right hand wrapped around the cup as he took it from the priest, giving a nod.
"I'll be back in a moment with a couple of things for you." The priest smiled and left.
The cup was warm, the steam wafting upward. It made him once again think of the woman in the yellow dress. His eyes stung, and his vision swam. Wet drops fell from his cheeks and plopped into the hot cocoa. Small blobs of melting marshmallows floated at the surface of the liquid.
He brought the cup to his lips and sipped. The heat tingled as it slid down his throat and into his belly. In the silence, the only thing he heard was the drumming static of delicate raindrops against the windows.
He looked around the church. It was different at one time. The benches had been worn and the lights different. The pulpit was a light oak instead of the mahogany. People filled half the space, looking solemn. At the front, the man sat-thin, narrow shoulders, his head bowed.
Footsteps preceded the priest. He arrived with plastic packages and a folded blanket in his hand and, slowly, set them on the seat. "You look like you haven't slept in a while." The priest took a few steps back. "Lay down when you've finished that and take a nap. I'll be here all night." He pointed to the back right corner of the church. "In there. A few stragglers might come and go to get out of the rain, but the ones who come here know me. They behave themselves. You just have to be out when the sun rises to give me time to clean up for the next service. I'm father Proctor, by the way, and of course you are welcome back for service anytime."
The priest retreated, disappearing through the small door he'd pointed out. The rain stopped, bathing the church in an even deeper silence. The lights dimmed, casting a minimal glow over the room and enveloping the statue of the dead man with shadows.
His limbs were heavy, his eyelids even more so. He knew what sleep was, but he could not remember the last time he'd succumbed to it. It wasn't a thing for something like him. He was either active on a mission or deactivated in a chamber.
In cold.
He remembered that. It was a coffin of metal and glass. The hiss of gas. The smell of sweat beading down his neck before the chamber flooded, offering him a deathless death.
He wasn't sure he was capable of sleep. Since walking away from the river, there were periods when he lost time, a scream caught in his throat. He'd come to disoriented, panicked. Those episodes made him vulnerable.
He needed rest, even though rest meant weakness. Potential exposure. Vulnerability. But without it, he had no chance of evading capture.
He finished the drink, slid out of the pack, and tilted onto his left side, setting the bag and empty cup on the floor in front of him. His right arm was still aching, though it had healed enough to be functional. He stuffed the packs of socks and underwear beneath his head for safekeeping.
It stirred something in his mind.
A cold night. A starry sky. Bodies huddled. A rifle within reach. A pack beneath his head.
He brought the blanket over his shoulder and closed his eyes, reaching for the memory while another part of his brain cataloged the silence, searching for any noise out of place. The slide of a foot, the click of a knob, a hushed voice….
He drifted into another world of tanks, wet terrain, and men with tired faces who called him "Sarge." The golden-haired man was in that world. Steve. He carried a shield at his back and a hardness in his eyes that faded when they shifted his way.
The hollow ache in his chest followed him to that place, stirring something inside him that ventured closer but stayed just out of reach.
He opened his eyes. A hint of light streamed through the windows. The church and the world outside were quiet, with only the gentle hum of cars on the roads breaking the silence.
Once again, he'd lost time. Too much of it. He stuffed the socks and underwear into his backpack and left before the priest awoke.
Author's Note
This was posted a couple weeks ago on AO3, where you can also find an artwork I did to go with this. Special shoutout to an AO3 reader who shared her headcannon about the priest. I incorporated a slight change to pay homage to her wonderful comment. FYI, search by title on AO3 if you want to find me. I have a different username.