Winter of the White Wolf (Post Season 1 of "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier")

Chapter 6 - Tsunami

Roughly a day earlier...

In his dream, he was running for his life.

His feet hit the pavement in a stumble of motion as he propelled himself forward. He didn't know where he was running to, but his heart was pounding and every instinct in him told him he had to keep moving.

His free hand clutched his empty shoulder socket and chanced a glance behind him at a wall of water that towered over the nearest buildings and stretched over the horizon. Where was he? Did he recognize these streets? He felt like he should have, but it didn't matter because that surreal tsunami was bearing down on him, casting horrific shadows over everything in its path. He knew it was coming, and when it did, it'd consume everything it touched.

The busy street around him was full of people milling about their daily business, but their faces were blank. Not simply lacking expression: truly, eerily, blank – with no eyes, noses, or mouths to lay the cornerstones for familiarity no less emotion. Some turned his way as he ran, but most of them simply ignored him as if he didn't exist. He opened his mouth to cry out, to warn them of what was coming, but no sound came. His free hand went to his throat, as if somehow the act of touching it might allow him to scream for their attention, but still: nothing came. Didn't they see it? Why weren't they running? They should be running.

He tripped and fell to one knee, chancing a glance behind him as his head snapped up to see that the wall of stormy water was already swallowing the block behind him. His eyes widened in horror as cars, people, everything the liquid touched was snapped up and pulled in like some unfathomable tornado of vengeful water, yet only a few feet in front of the nearest wave: people walked about as if nothing was wrong. How could they not see it? It was right there!

He tried to push himself up to his feet, and fumbled for a moment when he remembered he only had one arm for leverage. What had happened to the other one? A bellow of guttural fury behind him urged him to his feet and he stumbled forward again. The crowds of faceless people seemed to be thicker now as they lumbered in tightly-knit groups. He did what he could to weave his way through them, but hands grabbed for his wrists, his ankles, as their looming forms turned towards him and tried to slow his progress. He spun, trying to dislodge them, but the firm fingers crept back over his skin. All the while, the wall of water was gaining on him. He could feel the sharp spray of the water on his back, and the wail of its cry ringing in his ears. The sounds of the destruction it brought were getting closer, yet no one around him was acting as if they saw it at all, even though the shadows loomed over them.

When he opened his mouth to cry out, he felt the waves overtake him, sending him end-over-end into the murky abyss. He choked on water, flailing in a blind panic as he spiraled into the shadows, his vision fading into darkness as it did.

Bucky bolted upright.

Sweat beaded his forehead, and his eyes flashed around him in a panic before recognition began to ebb into him. He gulped down a few breaths of air and tried to focus in what was in front of him, just like he'd been told to do.

He swung his legs over the side of the grey couch and put his good hand on the cushions beside him, grounding himself: He was at the Wilson's. In Louisiana. He was James Buchanan Barnes. It was 2024. He was safe. It'd just been a dream. A nightmare, but a dream.

He rubbed his fingers together as his good hand went to his left shoulder, assuring himself the other arm was still in fact there, right where it should be. It was. He kept his eyes open but downcast as he tried to focus on his senses: the quiet ticking of the clock in the front room. The smell of yesterday's bar-b-q and the waft of cornbread somewhere off in the kitchen. He was safe.

He wasn't sure what time it was, but he was relieved that the household didn't seem to be up yet. By his estimations, that made it a perfectly acceptable time to get up and go on a run before breakfast so he could clear his head. He wasn't sure what any of that'd been about, but he told himself it was better than most of his nightmares, so that was saying something. Not reliving dreams about the atrocities he'd committed as the Winter Soldier was progress, right?

No one was around to see the face he made as he looked down at his hands and flexed each of them experimentally. He used to journal. Back then. Back when he was on the run from Hydra and was trying to work things out. He'd written down everything he could think of in what must've been a dozen mismatched notebooks. Just a hodge-podge of scattered bits and pieces of anything and everything he could remember. It felt like trying to piece together a cryptic puzzle without a guide and with too many pieces that never quite fit together as they should. He'd been certain, so certain, that Hydra was bound to find him again and that he'd lose every memory he'd earned back that he poured himself into those damn journals with everything he had, sometimes going so far as to rip pages out and tape them in place to make the order of them make even a drop more sense, but even still: it was a mess. You couldn't make sense of a life like that. Couldn't understand what it was like, which was precisely why he'd never told anyone about the journals. Not Steve. Not Doctor Raynor. Not Sam.

While he still had a deep well of only marginally-resolved feelings over Zemo and that book he'd drummed up, literally the only thing positive he could say about the entire situation was that at least he hadn't fallen back into Hydra's hands again, only have his mind scrambled and wiped to an obedient blank once more.

He wanted to think that after Wakanda, everything was better, but somewhere deep down: part of him remained terrified of the idea of losing his memory again. He'd poured himself into those journals because they were supposed to be there to help him remember if worst came to worst, and he had no idea where that rag-tag backpack and everything in it had ever ended up since Bucharest. By now, it'd been what? Seven years and change? He felt certain he'd never know. He told himself they didn't matter, but the not knowing part still bothered him, like maybe there was something in them he'd missed.

That felt like a lifetime ago. But he'd be lying to himself if he didn't wonder what those precious pages had in them. Had there been more dreams like this? Had he forgotten things when Zemo had said the trigger words or when he'd worked with Ayo and Shuri to get the twisted wiring in his brain sorted out? He couldn't be sure, but there was an unsettling familiarity in even dreams like this that he couldn't place, and the not-knowing bothered him in a completely different way from the decidedly more pointed and violent nightmares that were a direct mirror to his troubled and complicated past.

He told himself he'd feel better after that run. So without any further delay, he stood up, adjusted his dog tags, folded and put away the sheets, blankets, and pillows, put on his shoes, and headed out into the arms of another misty Delacroix morning.

Author's Remarks:

So I actually debated starting this story with Bucky's dream sequence here, but I'm still not sure where it would fit best in the story: as an introduction, "in the moment" thing, or more of a flashback. In the meantime though, I wanted to make sure it went in here *somewhere* as I think it will be important to show that his dreams have begun to shift, and they aren't all simply 1:1 nightmares of past events. I'm sure he has a hell of a lot of those, but there's more nuance I want to push that will feed into this particular story.

Written to "Pluck Up the Nerve," by Henry Jackman on "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier": Vol. 1 Soundtrack.