Chapter 7: Road Trip
"You look like hell."
"Thanks." Steve tugs at the sleeves of his jacket, which got pulled up slightly on the ride over. "You don't. Did you shave?"
Sam rubs at his chin. "You noticed? Yeah, it was getting a bit too scratchy. Think I may've gone too short, though."
"It looks almost exactly the same."
"Almost." He gives Steve a once-over. "How're you feeling? You ready for this?"
How does he feel? He feels like a spring toy wound up too tight. He feels like he didn't get a wink of sleep the previous two nights, like he could barely keep his food down, like he's about to go talk to a friend he'd lost, nearly killed, and then lost again. There's no being ready for that. "I'm fine."
"Uh-huh. Well, since you're fine, it's about time for you to head in. I'll loop around and settle somewhere nearby where I can keep an eye on you."
"Sounds good."
"Good luck, and, uh. I hope he's back."
"Yeah," he swallows, "me too."
He's hoping it so hard it's left a minor headache pounding between his temples. Or maybe that's just the lack of sleep; serum or no serum, two days without any rest at all take their toll. While Sam leaves to find another ingress to the park, Steve takes a deep breath and heads in under the main archway.
The park is pretty simple; small open areas scattered between stands of forest. Steve inhales the refreshing scent of birch mixed in with the rest, only to wrinkle his nose when he catches an undertone of fish too faint for anyone else to notice. Must be the creek running through the place. And with those trees, anyone watching—or laying in wait—has plenty of places to hide.
A handful of paved paths meander through the open areas, occasionally marked by benches. Seems a very select few vendors have gotten permits to operate within the park. He wishes Bucky had been a bit more specific in his letter. This park isn't big like Rock Creek, but it's a fair amount of ground to cover nonetheless. Lacking a better option, Steve follows the path he's already on and keeps an eye out.
It's the middle of the day in the middle of the week, so most of the people in the park are either seniors or parents with very young children. There are a handful of groups between those ranges, some playing frisbee, six playing some game involving a ball and tiny trampoline that Steve doesn't recognize, and four working together to try to get one of their number across a line pulled taut between two trees. None of them are Bucky.
What should he even be looking for? The Bucky of his memories, the Bucky from the war, or…or some new version of the Winter Soldier? One who has Bucky's memories, but little else?
He starts to probe the shadows a bit more deeply. Someone's doing yoga deep in there, someone else is reading, but there are no looming HYDRA assassins.
He wrote to the Howlies' kids, he reminds himself. He called you 'pal.' Have some faith.
Faith. Staring up into Bucky's desperate eyes, seeing through the pain and rage to the frightened and confused man beneath. I'm with you to the end of the line.
The way Bucky's expression had changed. Familiarity? Realization? Just more confusion? He's replayed that moment time and again and gotten no closer to an answer. If he'd remembered, why had he just…left? And why stay gone?
A man jogs past. Distracted by his thoughts, Steve catalogues long brown hair, pale skin, and vaguely Bucky-like features and lets him get several yards away before it clicks and he whips around, mouth open to call out—
But one look at the man's back, his stride, the actual color of his too-light hair has that call retreating. Not Bucky.
Get it together, he chides.
He wanders for a while longer, a small sliver of worry working its way into his stomach the third time he catches Sam out of the corner of his eye. The man looks perfectly natural; this time, he's in line for a coffee. He doesn't make eye contact with Steve, but he doesn't have to. Steve already knows what he's thinking: is Bucky even here?
Past the coffee cart, the path splits in two. Steve picks the left-hand fork and tries not to think about how this is the last real area of the park he can walk through and still pretend this is just a casual stroll. After this, it's going to fall into canvassing. And it's hard to canvas without looking a bit unnatural.
The benches along the path have, to this point, rarely been occupied. A person or two waiting for a friend, one old woman reading a newspaper, and once a particularly fat squirrel. The man on the bench some thirty yards away is, at first glance, just as unremarkable as the rest. He's lounging on the uncomfortable wood and sipping a coffee while he flicks sunflower seeds with impressive precision at some pigeons across the path. He doesn't hit them, but he gets the seeds almost exactly to where they can just bob down and snatch them up in their beaks.
In a black leather jacket, red henley, blue jeans, and black boots, he looks like any other guy walking around. But no one else has Bucky's face.
He's wearing a pensive expression that's dug furrows in his brow. His eyes are distant and cold, lips downturned. It's the kind of look Steve only saw on him when he thought Steve wasn't looking, the kind of look that said he wasn't thinking anything he wanted to share. Always liked to keep his pain to himself until it boiled over and he lashed out.
'Course, the lashing out really only started after he went to war.
Expression and all, it's like he's stepped straight out of 1944. Gone is the Winter Soldier; his hair is short again, his face clean-shaven, his clothes casual instead of tactical. Well, maybe the clothes aren't 1944, but the rest? It's enough to make Steve dizzy. If there had been any doubt in his mind that he's going to find Bucky and not the Winter Soldier, the sight of his friend sweeps it away.
And now he's close enough that Bucky's noticed him. Their eyes meet. Bucky's widen and Steve's grateful he already took a breath because otherwise he's not sure he'd have the air to speak.
"Buck."
Packet of sunflower seeds he picked up from a nearby corner store in hand, Bucky walks through the park and sidesteps the third jogger in as many minutes. For a small park, it's got a decent crowd. Mostly in his age bracket—there's a retirement home bus in the lot—but some of the younger generations, too. Doing things like…tightrope walking? They've strung up a line between two trees. Sure, whatever makes them happy. Is climbing the things out of fashion now?
Walking around, at least, is easy. Walking keeps his body moving so his mind doesn't have to, but he can't walk forever. Either he sits or he runs, and he didn't write that letter just to run.
He stops for some coffee first. Gotta blend in, and a hot drink isn't a bad idea with the cool breeze seeming to pick up whenever an errant cloud passes in front of the sun.
Even though the thought of sitting and waiting makes him feel like he's lashing himself to some train tracks, he picks the nearest bench and lowers himself into it. The wood creaks under his weight but settles when he does. Across the path, a few pigeons have flocked around someone's discarded wrapper.
"That's not food," he tells them, absently flicking one of his sunflower seeds at them so they'll give up on the wrapper. It becomes a bit of a game: how close he can let them get to the wrapper before a well-placed seed pulls them away.
It's a distraction but a meager one. Any minute now, Steve's gonna find him. Bucky's externally presentable, he knows that, but inside? On a bright and cheery day like this it's even more obvious there's something wrong with him. It's like the sunlight dims ever so slightly around him. It's his imagination, he knows that, but it's not hard to imagine everyone else can pick up on whatever's off about him. He can style his hair and shave his beard and clean his clothes, but that doesn't change the darkness at his core. Doesn't change him knowing exactly what happens when it decides to take hold.
One pigeon ignores the seed and picks at the wrapper. Bucky shifts his aim and hits the bird in the foot, earning a surprised coo and flutter of wings. The whole flock startles but none of them take flight, too accustomed to the reward of sticking around to do the smart thing and run.
He wasn't strong enough to fight and he wasn't strong enough to run. Instead, he betrayed everything, betrayed Steve. Seventy fucking years to get out and at the end of it he still hurt his best friend. Steve's a good guy, way too good of a guy, but even he's gotta have limits. Maybe he only comes here to tell Bucky he can't do this anymore. Bucky wouldn't be able to blame him. He'd abandon this wreck he's become too.
Or maybe Steve'll be angry. Bucky almost killed him, after all. Or maybe he'll be hurt, ask Bucky why and how and get frustrated when Bucky doesn't give the right answer. What good is any I'm sorry in the face of what he's done?
Even that dream now feels like his own mind warning him against being this reckless. He should've listened. Should've torn up that letter and burned it, then set off for Europe to disappear, just like he'd planned way back then.
There's still time. I can go. I can—
Someone's watching me.
He looks right, and there he is. Steve, exactly how he looks in Bucky's old memories. Dressed in civilian duds and, as far as Bucky can see, fully recovered from how he looked in the more recent ones. Of course he is. It's been a year. It's been a year.
There's a world and a half of relief in the single syllable that falls outta Steve's lips: "Buck."
Clarity hits him like a bullet. No one listening? Of course someone was listening. Just outta range, but hunting for the day he'd make it. Steven Grant Rogers, tossing his stupid shield aside, letting his stupid face get pounded into mush, flapping his stupid gums because he knows, he knows Bucky's never gonna give up, he's still fighting somewhere in those mental trenches.
"I'm with you to the end of the line."
And because Bucky hadn't broken, not completely, and because Steve was listening, Bucky got out. He woke up.
He's still here.
He stands. Takes a few steps close the gap but Steve's not going anywhere. Steve's grunt of surprise passes over his shoulder as Bucky yanks him into a hug tight enough to break anyone else's ribs.
Attack, the Soldier notes, rising up like the tide.
No. Bucky shoves it down, but that's not enough to stop the adrenaline making his heart pound, the sweat turning his skin clammy, or the flashes of not-quite-memory churning up powerful headache. He grits his teeth through it. He can be here and still spare Steve the dark. Steve got him out of it; Steve's the lighthouse in the storm. That's what he didn't realize during the war—he needed Steve, needed that light, desperately. He's a monster without it.
Seventy years of absolute hell leave him shaking, but Steve's here, Steve's standing tall and steady, and Steve's practically holding him up now. So much for the unspoken three-second rule.
Bucky curls his fingers. Only five of them can feel Steve's jacket folding from the pressure. He drags in a breath so he can force out, "I missed you, pal."
Steve shudders. "I'm sorry, Buck. I'm so, so sorry. I shoulda—"
Bucky freezes and then pulls back with a scowl. Guilt? Really? A reunion for the goddamn history books and he's saying he's sorry? Memory flies in on wings of indignant anger and words are falling out of his mouth before they make it all the way through his brain. "Shoulda what? Killed yourself jumping after me? Abandoned the Commandos, the army, Peggy? I've done enough beating myself up for the both of us. Don't even start."
"But—"
"If anyone should apologize, it's me."
Steve's eyes flash. "Buck—"
"Steve. Look at me. I'm here. I'm alive. I don't blame you. And now that I'm back, I'm sure as hell not gonna sit on the sidelines and watch you blame yourself because you've decided all my problems are yours to fix."
Caught between shock and offense, Steve's mouth opens but Bucky beats him to the punch.
"Remember after Azzano? I do." Mostly, he admits to himself. "Trying to drown my problems in enough whiskey to float a whale. You did the same thing then. And I told you the same thing too. You really gonna make me repeat myself a third time? C'mon. Anyone else would've died from that fall. Zola was on that train. It wasn't a choice. I don't blame you for not finding me, but if you'd abandoned the mission and jumped out after me, I would've killed you myself."
Reeling, Steve stumbles back and sits hard on the park bench Bucky'd been waiting on. "Jeez, Buck. You don't pull your punches."
Bucky sits next to him. "You always asked me not to."
"I did." Steve draws a hand over his face and takes another shuddering breath. "You're right. You're here. You're alive. And I'm never gonna stop being grateful for that." He glances over, a helpless little smile on his lips. "I don't think telling me a dozen times would stop the guilt, though."
Bucky puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes. Getting told a thousand times that what he did as the Soldier isn't his fault wouldn't erase his own guilt, so he doesn't bother pushing Steve any harder. "Guess you'll just have to content yourself with knowing that believing I was dead meant you saving the world and time traveling to the future as a popsicle to stop an alien invasion and put HYDRA in the ground for good."
Steve snorts. "They do have actual popsicles of me. Or, Captain America, I guess."
"Seriously?"
"Check the side of an ice cream truck sometime. All the Avengers have them. Stark's called me 'Capsicle' more than once."
"Huh. Tony, right? He as talkative as his old man?"
"Worse."
Bucky sucks in a sympathetic breath. His interactions with the SSR's eccentric head scientist had been few and far between based on the two snippets of conversation he's managed to recall having about the guy, but even so, his reputation preceded him.
An uneasy feeling blooms in his stomach and firefly memories flicker at the edges of his awareness: a dark night, a lonely road, a single car. Mission successful.
Oh. Oh fuck.
He comes back to himself to see Steve waiting and hunts for something to say to cover his lapse, something that isn't just an apology for the blood on his hands. Can't start that ride, it'll never stop. Can't let Steve know how deep the damage goes when this is supposed to be a happy moment for the guy. "And the rest of this…Avengers team. What are they like?"
"Oh, you know." Steve leans back. "They're no Howling Commandos."
"Like anyone else could be. Tell me about 'em. Actually, wait. Tell me about your new friend."
Steve's brow furrows. Bucky points to the black guy sitting on the lip of a fountain across the park doing a pretty good job of looking distracted by his phone, a coffee long past steaming resting on his knee. "Him."
If he smiles when Steve's face reddens in embarrassment at getting caught, well. It's what he deserves for thinking Bucky wouldn't notice. He's a sniper; he knows what it looks like to watch a guy's back.
"Sam's not listening," Steve says. "Just—"
"Watching your back. I know. I get it." Seeing them both looking, Sam hesitates. His gaze goes to Steve, who shrugs a little. Wary, Sam raises his cup in a questioning salute. Bucky grins and snaps an actual, if lazy, salute in return. "I'd do the same thing if you decided to meet unarmed with a guy who tried to kill you."
Steve sputters. "I'm not lugging the shield around everywhere I go. It's not like you're carrying—"
Bucky's quite suddenly very interested in figuring out exactly what model Sam's phone is.
"Buck."
"Hey. Always be prepared, right?"
"You were never a Boy Scout."
"But I was in the army. Just tell me about the guy. You clearly trust him." And, more props to Sam, he's staying put exactly where he is despite his cover being blown. That's some serious trust in the other direction, too. Bucky isn't sure he'd be that relaxed in the same vicinity as someone who kicked him off a helicarrier.
His boot connects with the pilot hard enough to break ribs on impact. The rest of his ribs—and his body—are ripped apart in the turbine of the quinjet he's launched into.
"Sam's a good guy," Steve says while Bucky focuses on not throwing up. "We met on my morning run."
Still half preoccupied with nausea, Bucky eyes Steve with healthy skepticism. "Sorry, did you just say you met the guy you pulled into the helicarrier fight while jogging?"
"Hey, he accepted."
"You're both crazy."
"You met me when I was getting my ass kicked on the front steps of the school."
"It was the path leading up to the steps, and there were a few other things between that and following you into battle. Jeez, no wonder you two get along so well." He bites his tongue as soon as he says it but it's too late. Steve shifts.
"Buck."
"Mhm." Wow, a column of ants trying to find their way around his boot. Fascinating.
"Have you been spying on him?"
"No."
"Have you been spying on me?"
"…No." It was more like watching. No spy equipment or scopes involved. "Maybe."
Steve sighs. "You didn't have to do that."
"And you didn't have to bring your buddy to the park. Guess we're both doing a little too much. Hindsight's twenty-twenty."
"I suppose."
Conversation subsides. Bucky continues to watch the ants forge a new path taking his boots into account while his nausea subsides. Steve fidgets, then fidgets some more, until Bucky takes pity on him and leans back in a clear invitation for whatever question is buzzing around Steve's brain.
"What have you been doing the past year? I couldn't find you anywhere."
"You went looking. I heard."
"You heard?"
"Stopped to talk with Peggy. I can call her 'Peggy' now. Feels weird. She said you had my tags."
Steve grapples with that for a moment. Settles on: "How was she?"
"Good, I caught her on a good day. Still the sharpest person in any room she's in." She'd had him figured out from the moment she laid eyes on him. "Did you know she has a gun?"
"Yeah, the nurses confiscated it a few months ago."
Bucky chooses not to inform him she's acquired another. "So, my tags?"
Steve reaches for his shirt and Bucky's eyebrows lift at the sight of his friend taking the tags out from around his own neck.
The tips of Steve's ears have gone pink. "It felt right," he explains awkwardly. "A reminder that you were still out there."
"Aw, pal, keeping me close to your heart? I'm touched." His embarrassment reaches new heights while Bucky settles the tags around his own neck. "I'm teasin' ya. Relax." In Steve's shoes, he probably woulda done the same.
In Steve's shoes…his head spins thinking about Steve being the one to fall, Steve getting tortured, Steve becoming the Winter Soldier—
No. No, he doesn't want to think about that. Better that it was Bucky. Steve's been through enough.
The time it takes Steve to recover is plenty for Bucky to toy with his tags. They're beaten up and obviously old, but Steve must've taken the time to clean them as best he could. They catch the light as he angles them back and forth. He runs his thumb over the stamped characters: James B Barnes, 32557038 T41 42 O, R. Barnes, 3092 Stockton Rd, Shelbyville IN P.
Rebecca. Oh, god, Rebecca. He can't even remember putting her as next of kin.
Seeing Steve watching with an odd look on his face, he asks, "What?"
"It's just…I didn't think, well." He works his jaw. "I mean, Peggy, Sam, and Natasha all warned me how this could go. What kind of state you'd be in. I believed in you, Buck, I always do, but I didn't want to get my hopes up after what you went through. It'd be enough for me if you just knew you weren't what HYDRA made you." Bucky's chest does a fun little twist and tear that leaves him blinking a bit more than necessary. Steve's got some mist of his own building in his eyes. "But you're here, teasing me, reminiscing. I—"
"I'm gonna stop you there." Bucky lets his tags fall, spares a second to relish their weight against his chest, and continues. "I'm not at one hundred percent. Not even close. That guy that fell—I'm picking up the pieces best I can, but I'll never find them all. The pieces HYDRA put in me aren't going away, either. They buried me deep, Steve. I don't know if I'll ever get all of me out." The Soldier, at the barest brush of his focus, decides to grace him with the notion that he could and probably should still kill Steven Grant Rogers. Mission failed doesn't mean mission over. Bucky grits his teeth.
"Buck?"
"I'm fine. Just—fine." Mission's over. Mission's been over for months. He repeats that until the Soldier retreats, leaving him once more in the chilling embrace of a cold sweat. And it'd been so long since his last attack, too. "Comes and goes. I'm fine, honest."
Doubt plain on his face, Steve opens his mouth to push. Then stops. "If you say so, Buck."
His agreement throws Bucky for a loop, since in all his memories post-Azzano, Steve had been nothing if not determined to help—the kind of determined that created friction between them day-to-day until something else inevitably became more important.
He peers more closely at Steve, who shifts under his look. "What?"
"Just wondering if you hit your head when the plane crashed, is all. Or if an alien stole your face."
"I have no idea what you're trying to say with that, but I'm not an alien and my head is fine."
Bucky's lips twitch through his poker face. "If you say so, Steve. You know, the teachers used to say I was always 'exceeding expectations'—guess some things never change."
Steve bumps him on the shoulder. "Braggart."
"Jerk." But Steve's smile doesn't last as long as it should. Bucky frowns and glances around like he'll see an errant cloud or perhaps crazy Nazi scientist bringing down the mood. "What's wrong?"
"It's nothing."
He rolls his eyes. "I'm amnesic, not stupid. Something's clearly bugging you."
At least he doesn't try to deflect a second time. Instead, he heaves a sigh that could've easily blown in a birdhouse. Then he ponders for another several seconds before coming out with, "What's the plan, Buck?"
Bucky's eyebrows shoot up. "The plan?"
"After this. You're back, but…"
"But I'm wanted all over the world and particularly here for the Insight disaster. Yeah, I know." He crosses his arms and stares off into the distance like a silver bullet will come racing over the horizon. "I've never been on the run before, but I gotta say, it's not as bad as I thought it'd be."
Steve straightens in his seat with steel flashing in his eyes. Bucky's seen that look before. He doesn't remember every time it's come out, but he doesn't need to. The thought comes on reflex: oh boy, here we go.
"It's not right, Buck. You're not a criminal. You were a prisoner of war."
"Name another POW used in an international assassination and terror spree for decades."
Steve's eyes, somehow, shine with even more stubbornness. "That wasn't you. You weren't in control."
The guy'd go to bat against the entire country for him. Humbling. But stupid. Bucky sighs. "Look. Maybe one day the world agrees with you. Maybe one day I can open a bank account under my own name and get a job and live the American dream. You and I both know that'll be a long, long road. If I don't get assassinated while they're holding me."
Steve goes rigid, jaw flexing.
"I'm just saying what could happen," Bucky placates. "It's not what I need right now, pal. Maybe down the line. Let me have my freedom for a little longer until I got my head on straight." He reconsiders. "Straighter, at least."
His careful words poke holes in Steve's indignation and Steve deflates. "If it's what you want."
"It is."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"I could use twenty bucks for gas."
Steve starts palming for his wallet and Bucky grabs his arm. "Wait, jeez, that was a joke." As much of a joke as gas prices these days. "I have money. Just being around is enough."
Steve slaps a twenty against his chest anyway. "Jerk. Do you have a phone?"
"No. I can write, though. And there are still pay phones around."
"I'll get you a phone—don't look at me like that, it's weirder these days to not have one. I know how to get one you won't be tracked through."
"You mean, you know people who can do that."
"They can also set you up with a card, some—"
"Just the phone, Steve. I won't accept anything else." He doesn't like accepting the phone, either, but Steve has a point about normalcy. Besides, being able to contact him at any point…hard thing to pass up, that. Plus the ability to look up what people tell him he should know on the spot could be nice.
"Where are you staying?" Steve asks while he pulls out a notebook of his own—ha! Bucky thinks, I'm not alone—and starts scrawling.
"Just a hotel. Why?"
"I've gotta get this thing to you somehow."
"Let's just meet here again. I move around a lot."
"It'll take a few days."
"Then we'll meet here every day." Bucky shrugs. "I don't mind." More time to play catch-up. Seeing Steve's hesitation, he sighs. "I'm not gonna disappear on ya, pal. I promise."
The words fall easily off his tongue so he's caught off guard when Steve's eyes water and he swiftly turns away to wipe them with the back of his hand.
"I'm good," Steve mumbles when Bucky inhales. "It's nothing."
"It's clearly not."
"Comes and goes."
"Steve."
He turns to face Bucky again, eyes a little red, otherwise normal. "See? Nothing."
"You're so full of shit, Rogers."
This time, Bucky says exactly what pops into his head. "And," he adds, "lying to a guy who just got his memory back is a real awful thing to do."
Guilt flares in Steve's eyes while Bucky grins. Steve stiffens with indignation.
"You're yanking my chain again," he accuses.
"Maybe. I got seventy years to make up for."
"I was unconscious for nearly all of them!"
"And?"
"Ugh." He rubs at his eyes again. "I missed you too, pal."
"I thought you were unconscious for nearly all of it."
Steve's baleful look wipes the levity clean off Bucky's face and he's abruptly reminded of the stretch between his fall and Steve putting that plane in the ice. Feeling like a jackass, he shifts in his seat, unsure how to walk back what he said. Old Bucky would've known what to say. Old Bucky always knew what to say.
"Sorry."
"No, it's—"
"If you say it's nothing, I'm gonna call you on it. Fair warning."
Steve's whole body shakes. A pained chuckle, but it's something. "You, uh. You want to meet Sam? Properly, I mean. Not through binoculars."
"Hey, just what kind of watching do you think I was doing?"
Ignoring him, Steve waves Sam over. The guy tosses his cold coffee on the way and manages a pretty casual stride, but there's no hiding the wariness he directs at Bucky.
It's deserved. Bucky can easily recall the savage satisfaction of grappling his wing, ripping it off, and then punting the nuisance off the helicarrier.
"Seems like you've got your mind back," Sam says, sticking out his hand. "Sam Wilson."
Bucky stands and shakes. "Getting there. Bucky Barnes. Sorry for…everything."
"Way I see it, it wasn't really your fault, but forgiven. I survived." He glances at Steve. "So, what's the plan? Memories or not, he's still a wanted man."
"I'm not sticking around," Bucky says before Steve can get a word in. "Not for long, anyway. I don't wanna get Steve in trouble."
"Buck, I'm not—"
"Only one of us needs to be a traitor to his country, Steve." Ah, that wounded. He tries not to feel too bad about it. "Like I said, I'll wait until you get that phone, but after that…" he shrugs. "There's a whole world out there. Got a pretty good look at America in the last year, but everything else I've mostly seen through a scope. Think it'd be nice to take another look and get some distance from," he gestures in the general direction of where the helicarriers had crashed into the river, "that."
"You just got back," Steve says, a touch of desperation in his voice.
"And I'm not going anywhere you can't follow. I can't stay here, pal, you know that."
"Especially looking like that," Sam says. "Put on a blue coat and anyone who's glanced at one of the Smithsonian posters or a textbook's gonna take notice. He's right, Steve. He's done alright for himself on his own so far."
Bucky's estimation of Sam goes up another couple notches. "Figured you'd be on the side of keeping me where you can see me."
"I'm on the side of what helps your recovery. As long as you haven't been kicking people off bridges on your road trip, what you're doing now seems fine." His expression darkens. "Tossing a vet in jail just to wash your hands of a problem never ends well."
Vet. Bucky's world tilts. That's what he is now: a veteran. Doesn't feel like it. His war didn't end when everyone else's did, and even after he finally got out, he's fighting every battle all over again in his own head. That's what it means to remember the war—remembering every bit of pain he endured. Sure, he gets some happy memories too, but some days he wakes up from a nightmare he knows is rooted in something real and wishes he could choose ignorance.
Steve straightens up and says, with a heroically stoic look betrayed by the grief in his eyes, "If it's what you need, then I understand."
Well isn't that enough to crack a guy's heart in two. "Come with me." Steve blinks. "I mean it. A backpacking trip, like we talked about on that mission in France." Just a few decades later than planned.
Another blink, a hopeful spark in his eyes. "You remember that?"
"Yeah. I remember a lotta stuff, but I could use someone to fill in the gaps." He tugs out his second notebook from his coat's inner pocket and waves it around. "I'll tell you all about it on the road and you can tell me about everything else. How's that?"
Steve grins. "You're journaling too?"
"It's a good strategy," Sam chimes in. "The real question is if you've got a list like Steve."
"List?"
Steve scratches at his chin. "Well, y'know, there's a lot of stuff people keep telling me to look at. Music, movies, TV, celebrities—"
"You've listened to Trouble Man by now, right?"
"Besides the hospital?"
"Yeah, besides the hospital."
"Uh, it's on the list."
Sam's sigh of disappointment has Steve looking sheepish.
"I have a list," Bucky says to spare him anymore ribbing.
"Yeah? What's on it?"
"Things I've never heard of but people act like I should know. Or things on the news. HYDRA kept me updated with what they decided was relevant to my missions, but nothing else."
Displeasure flashes across both Steve and Sam's faces at his flippant mention of HYDRA's policies. He lets it slide; either he's flippant about it or he doesn't talk about it at all. He's not about to give HYDRA any extra power in his head. They've had more than enough.
"The aliens in New York were a surprise," he finishes before either one of them can comment. "And Steve, when I asked if you were keeping the outfit—maybe the drink slurred my words, but that was supposed to be a joke."
"It was Coulson's idea." Steve's face is thoroughly red now. "He was a bit of a Captain America fan."
"Showing up in those tights woulda snapped me right out of the brainwashing," Bucky tells him sagely. Steve socks him on the shoulder—the left shoulder—and instantly pulls his hand back to shake out his knuckles with a wince. Bucky grins.
"You two are a riot." Sam tips his head toward the nearest park exit. "Who's up for brunch? We can plan your European backpacking adventure over some eggs."
Both he and Bucky look at Steve, who frowns. "What?"
"You in or you out?"
"What? Of course I'm in, Buck, why do you even have to—" he hesitates.
"And there it is," Bucky drawls. "Steve wants to go. What about Captain America?"
"I…can probably talk to Tony. HYDRA's on the ropes, there hasn't been another big threat in a while. They don't need me there all the time."
"You don't sound sure about that."
"They don't." Sam crosses his arms. "Take the trip, Steve. Worst case, they toss a quinjet your way and you get to show up to whatever disaster's striking next fashionably late."
"Very fashionably, if you bring those tights back."
"Ha-ha. You're not funny." He furrows his brow and considers Sam's points.
"Don't listen to him, I'm hilarious," Bucky says to Sam.
"Y'know, I wasn't feeling the humor before, but I'm sure it'll grow on me. One or two more kicks off a helicarrier oughta do the trick."
Guilt threatens to sweep in until he catches the sly grin on Sam's face, which prompts a tentative one of his own in response. Yeah, maybe this'll actually work out.
Sam eyes the last member of their party. "So, Steve?"
He sighs. "I'll make a few calls while we walk. Probably not a good idea to tell them exactly who I'm going with."
A firefly flits across Bucky's vision. Two passengers. Blunt force trauma but not dead. Need to be dead. No witnesses.
"Probably not," he says, falling into step with Steve and Sam. "I got one request before we ship out, though."
"Shoot."
"Ever been to Yemassee?"
