We Were Soldiers
160. We All Break In Different Ways
At the sound of the Fiddle's door being opened to admit new patrons, Bucky glanced over his shoulder. It was only a pair of locals come for their after-work drinks, so he turned back to his own glass of ale and took a hasty sip. Sitting opposite him, Wells watched, one corner of his mouth rising up into a half-smile.
"You're particularly jumpy tonight."
Bucky glanced down at his watch. "It's four-fifteen. I was just expecting Steve to be here by now."
"And that's makin' you nervous?"
"I'm not nervous."
"You've just checked your watch for the eighth time in five minutes."
"What are you, my mom?" he scowled half-heartedly.
"Of course not. If I were your mom I'd've taken your watch off you five checks ago so you couldn't keep looking at it." He leant back in his chair, laughter in his blue eyes. "C'mon pal, relax. I promise I'll be on my best behaviour."
"It's not you I'm worried about," he lied.
"You're a terrible liar, Barnes."
Bucky offered his friend a weak smile. Wells, by his own admission, wasn't always easy to get along with. Around strangers he tended to be aloof, sarcastic and, on occasion, arrogant. His supercilious exterior hid a loyal and caring interior, but he sure did like to make people work hard to see that side of him. It took a lot of persistence before Wells would open up to someone, and Bucky very much wanted his best friend from childhood and his best friend from the 107th to get along with each other.
"You look tired," Wells observed a few minutes later. "What'd you do after pool last night, throw a party in your hotel?"
"I guess I just didn't sleep well."
At the start of the day, Bucky's intentions had been to have lunch, procure a cake for the welcome-back party, then be back at the hotel before Steve and the rest of the team started to wonder where he'd gone. Even with the best of intentions, his plan had gone awry. After they'd managed to find the cake shop—and it had not been the simple journey on the Tube that Wells had claimed—it had taken them over an hour to actually pick out which cake Morita might like. There was too much variety on display, and Bucky couldn't remember if he'd ever had the your favourite flavour of cake conversation with Morita. In the end he picked out a triple-tiered chocolate cake, because it was hard to go wrong with death by chocolate.
By the time he'd picked the cake, paid for the cake, and told the cake lady where to deliver it to the next day, it was dinner time, and by happy coincidence they were near a pool hall that Wells had visited once. The food in the pool hall was actually pretty good by English standards, so they had a huge dinner and then for dessert they each ordered something called 'knickerbocker glory,' which turned out to be a large, tall glass filled with layers of icecream and fruit, topped with whipped cream, crushed nuts and a fan-shaped wafer. It had taken them nearly a half-hour to eat the things and avoid brain-freeze, and they were determined to eat every last bit because even though the food was good, it was over-priced thanks to the rationing system.
After that they'd shot a few friendly games of pool as a warm-up, because it had been years since Bucky had played eight-ball, and because Wells' shoulder was stiff and ached where he'd been shot and he was still trying to work his arm back up to full strength after months of barely using it. There had been more beer, but not very much of it. Bucky told his friend about how he'd promised Steve he'd lay off the heavy scotch drinking, so the couple of beers they had were mostly just social drinks, to fit in with the heavily drinking crowd.
Pool turned out to be more difficult than darts. Once they'd warmed up they played a few doubles matches, winning two, losing three, and drawing on one. And somewhere between sitting down to dinner and playing their last game of pool, some bastard had snuck into the hall and changed the time on every clock so that when the manager came 'round and told them it was closing time, and Bucky actually looked at the clock, he saw that it said 3am. When he looked at his watch, he found the same bastard had changed that, too.
London's streets had been pretty damn silent at 3am, and the Underground did not run at that time, so they had to walk. On their way back across the river they'd played a few games of 'see how far up the Thames you can throw a stone.' At first, Bucky won that game. Then Wells pointed out that he still didn't have the full range of motion in his right arm, so they'd switched to left-hand throwing, and Bucky hadn't won again after that. He'd reached his hotel and fallen straight into bed, and that had been twelve hours ago. Now he felt like he'd only had twelve minutes' sleep.
"Bad dreams keeping you awake?" Wells guessed.
"I dunno. Sometimes they do. Sometimes I just wake up feeling like I haven't rested. Maybe I have nightmares but don't remember them. Do you ever have nightmares?"
"About the war?" Wells shrugged. "Sometimes. Sometimes I wake up seeing Hawkins, and Jones, and Martland, just lying there, not moving. Sometimes I wake up and my shoulder feels like it's burning all over again, like it's only just happened. Mostly, my bad dreams are about the Monty, or being back in that mine."
"Do you think they'll ever stop?"
"I hope so." His friend gave him a small smile. "I think nightmares are a little like loss. I think the pain of it dulls over time, but I don't think it ever truly leaves you for good. And maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe you just need to find enough happiness to balance out the darker memories."
"Yeah, maybe." But he wasn't so sure. And right then, he would have given anything to be rid of his memories of that table in Austria.
"Anyway, enough grimness for now." Wells flashed a grin at him. "How will your friend react if I hit on his girl?"
"I'd be more worried about how Carter will react. You know she's not above punching guys, right?"
"Don't I know it. Sometimes my cheek still smarts from that time she socked me one below the eye. I wouldn't have minded half as much if I'd actually done anything to deserve it! All I did was write a letter for a friend."
"I remember." He smiled warmly at the memory. It was one of the better ones. "You're the reason why Gusty and Audrey were able to find happiness with each other."
Wells scoffed quietly. "Yeah, I'm just waiting for that sainthood to come through. Saint Danny. Though, he did pay me for my services. And I'm glad someone got a happy ending. There's a shortage of those in this war, I reckon."
"What would yours be? If you could pick your own happy ending, I mean." Part of him didn't want to know. Part of him suspected he already knew the answer. But trying to figure out what was going through Wells' mind was a complex puzzle even at the best of times. There was no doubt he'd changed over the past few months. Sometimes he came out with some really deep stuff, and seemed to know exactly what to say to make Bucky feel better about the shit-show that was his life—and said it whilst sounding a hundred percent genuine, too. And at other times, he seemed to be totally oblivious to his own feelings. As if he was torn between wanting to admit that he cared, and pretending that he didn't. And Bucky never knew which side of his friend he was gonna get at any given moment.
"You mean you don't remember? I laid it all out for you during a mission last year!"
He thought back to all the missions they'd been on. Tried to recall when they'd talked about the future. But all he could pull from the cobwebs of his mind was some BS about Mary-Ann having a crush on him. "You're gonna have to help me out, pal," he said at last. "My memory has been through the wringer."
"So you don't recall my plan to go AWOL and start a coconut plantation on some desert island?" Wells grinned.
"I didn't want a BS answer, Wells. It was a genuine question."
The grin slipped, replaced by the I'm not playing games mask, and he held up a finger. "Good weather." A second finger joined it. "Good company." A third followed. "Moonshine." The last finger rose to join them. "And a wide blue sky as far as the eye can see. To be honest, I could probably live without the moonshine. That's just a bonus."
Oh. Sometimes it was really hard to tell when Wells was being genuine. But if it involved a wide blue sky, the exact antithesis of claustrophobia, then it had to be real no matter how ridiculous it sounded. "Wouldn't you miss the city? New York, I mean."
"No." There was not even an ounce of hesitation before he spoke. "Where I lived in Italy for six months… it was a rustic house in an open field on the edge of a mountain range, a mile's walk from the nearest town. And do you know what I learned?" Bucky shook his head. "That I don't miss anything of New York. It has nothing that I want and nothing that I need. Home isn't the place where you are, it's the people you're with. Home isn't things. Maybe that doesn't make sense to you, because you have a nice family who love you, but if they were here now, if they decided to move to London, wouldn't that be your home?"
"I guess." After all, he didn't have his job in New York anymore; that had gone when his number came up. There were places he liked, and some places that held good memories for him… but even some of those were in his past. He had to go home to see his family again, but if his family were here… he wouldn't have to go home, would he? He'd already be home, even if it was in a different country.
"What about you?" Wells asked. "What's your happy ending look like?"
He tried to stretch his mind that far. Closed his eyes and tried to imagine the future. The war over. The world free from tyranny. But he struggled to picture himself in it. He didn't truly know what he wanted. And that wasn't a new problem; he'd dropped into his job straight out of college because it came along at the right moment. It paid a decent wage. He'd courted the girls who'd been conveniently there, because it was easy. He'd kept a protective eye on his brother and sisters because that was his duty. He'd thought he'd been happy, but six months in the field had taught him that he'd merely been comfortable. In many ways, Dugan was right. He'd said that Bucky had lived a life of ease, and that ease had translated into convenience. There were some things he liked, sure, but he just didn't know what made him happy. All he had to do was imagine being happy, and he couldn't even manage that.
Maybe, for me, a happy ending is just something that hurts less.
"I don't know," he said, because to give voice to that sentiment was to sound like some pathetic, broken thing. And he might be some pathetic, broken thing thanks to all he'd been through in Austria, but he didn't have to put it out there in the world. "Is it bad that I can't imagine it?"
"Honestly, I have no idea. But I don't think it's anything you need to figure out right away." He pushed Bucky's glass of ale forward; it was still almost full. "For now, drink up. Be merry. And if you can't be merry, at least pretend to be merry, because right now you have a friend who needs you."
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"I can't believe we had to go out and buy a new chair," Steve said, as he helped Dugan hump the damn thing to the cellar doors out back of the Fiddle.
"You shouldn't have sat on it, Cap. It was built for mortal men."
"It was built by someone who had no right wielding a hammer and nails," he countered.
"Maybe if certain someones had been there to help, instead of being too busy smooching in the cellar, this wouldn't have happened."
"Dugan," said Peggy, as she assisted Monty in carrying the banner they'd made together, "nothing in the world was saving that chair from collapsing. Trust me, it was already long gone by the time we reached it."
Besides, they hadn't been smooching for that long. Only a few minutes, before they'd been rudely interrupted by Monty. Granted, the few minutes had felt like a whole hour of exquisite torture every time Peggy touched him, but it hadn't actually been all that long, really. Definitely not as long as he would have liked.
When they arrived at the cellar doors, Steve put his side of the chair down so that he could open the doors to the steps. The throne that Dugan had created, complete with fake gold foil and fancy bits Steve didn't know the names of, was too wide to fit through the front door of the pub, so the cellar was the only option. Which was handy, because it gave them the opportunity to pick up some of the boxes of nibbles to carry up on their way.
The inside of the Fiddle was warm and cheerful, and Lizzie gave them a congenial wave when she spotted them emerge from below. She pulled one final pint for a customer, then led them to their usual table spot, which was now a cluster of several tables that she'd pulled together.
"Damnit," Peggy swore. Steve followed her gaze to the cake that had already been placed as the centre-piece. It consisted of three tiers, and was coated in more chocolate than Steve knew existed. "I should've known he wouldn't be frugal with the cake. How are we going to eat all of this and the food?"
Steve kept his mouth shut. His best friend had bought a cake worthy of an important celebration, but his best girl had bought enough food to feed a small nation. Maybe Liechtenstein, or Belgium. And as much as he wanted to defend his friend's choice of cake, Peggy was the one who might be kissing him at the end of the night. It was kind of a no-brainer.
He helped Dugan to deposit the throne right in front of the fireplace, then stepped back to admire what they'd done so far. Cake in place. Peggy organising the mountain of food she'd purchased. Monty fixing the welcome back bunting to the wall, and Dugan helping him. With their task underway, he made his way over to the bar,
"How did the PB&J sandwiches go?" he asked Lizzie. "No pressure. I mean, if you haven't had time to make them, I think Peggy has brought enough to feed us all for the next week."
She merely chuckled, and said, "I've got a whole tray of those peanut butter and jam sandwiches you like so much out back. I'll bring them through once you've got the rest of the food in place."
"Great, thanks." He nodded towards the tables. "Cake looks great. Is Bucky here already?"
The expression she returned was unreadable. "Yep, in the back room. But I wouldn't disturb him just yet. I was back there clearing empty glasses not long before you arrived, and it sounded like some heavy meaning of life type conversation going on."
"Right." What did that mean? "Thanks."
On his way back to the table, he peeped his head around the corner to the back room. Bucky was indeed there, talking to another sergeant Steve hadn't seen before. Lizzie was right; judging by the way they were completely ignorant of everything going on around them, they must've been talking about some pretty heavy stuff. There was a glass of beer on the table in front of Bucky, but it was largely untouched. And that was odd.
He retreated to the main room to check on his team's progress. His watch said that Morita would be here in less than twenty minutes, but they still had a little work left to do. Raising of the banner was not going well, and although the throne was in place, it was wonky because the floor wasn't even. Peggy had already run out of tables for the nibbles she'd bought, and Lizzie was trying to find somewhere to fit the world's largest tray of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Complex life-or-death missions were easy compared to this.
"Hello, chaps," said a familiar voice. Captain Stone arrived, looking none the worse for wear after his experimental aircraft testing. Cradled in his arms was a bottle of Scotch that Steve had never heard of, but he couldn't imagine the pilot drinking anything that tasted bad. "Ah, Captain Rogers. You'll be pleased to hear that I now have the use of a plane."
"It's not one of those experimental planes that you went to test, is it?"
"Of course not. Those are highly classified. No, thanks to my efforts, I've been granted the use of a new troop transport, so that I can drop you and your fellow miscreants off on your missions." He looked about the room. "Where are the rest of the miscreants?"
"On their way. Can you give Monty a hand with his banner?"
"Of course." He pressed the bottle of Scotch into Steve's hands, and said, "Guard this with your life."
A moment later, Dugan wandered over and gestured proudly to the chair that he'd turned into a throne. "Ta-daa! Told you I could make it stop wobbling. All it took was two beer mats under the front left leg, six under the front right, and two at the back. We now have a throne that is sturdy enough to be sat on, assuming Morita sits real still."
"I never doubted you," he agreed. "While I've got you here, take a quick peek into the back room. Bucky's talking with someone, but I don't recognise him. Do you?"
Dugan peeped his head around the doorway, then swore quietly under his breath. When he returned to Steve, he said, "Well I'll be damned. Sergeant Bullshit." Steve prompted him with a questioning glance, and Dugan hurried on. "That is to say, the guy looks an awful lot like Sergeant Danny Wells. But Wells was declared KIA on a mission in Italy nearly a year ago."
"He was with the 107th? At Azzano?"
"Not at Azzano. He went missing before that."
"Guess he came back," said Steve.
"Guess so," Dugan agreed. "And I bet this is going to make for one hell of a story. Not every day a guy comes back from the dead. I guess this explains why Barnes hasn't been his usual moping self of late. Back with the SSR last year, they ran a lot of missions together for Phillips, and usually if you saw one of 'em loitering around camp, the other was close by, getting each other into trouble; or pulling each other out of it."
He felt a frown pull at his brows. "Bucky never mentioned him before."
"Has Barnes talked about anyone from the 107th?" Dugan asked pointedly.
"Well… not exactly." The men from the 107th that he knew about were the ones he'd met personally, and he had a sneaking suspicion that if Bucky could've put those guys in a box and kept them from Steve, he would've done it. But why? He posed the question to Dugan.
"We all deal with loss differently, Cap. I think that Barnes, until he got to Europe, never had to lose anyone. You know how it is, in the army. The men you serve with are your friends and your brothers. You get to know them, and then you have to watch them die. Me, I always tried not to get too attached. The way I grew up, moving from place to place, seeing different faces in every town… you learn to adjust to that. But not everyone can. You lose men. You lose friends. And each one breaks you little by little. The 107th lost a lot of good men, and Barnes struggled with that. We all break in different ways."
Now, Bucky's behaviour after coming back from Austria made a lot more sense. Like he'd told Peggy the previous evening, his friend was someone who wanted, maybe even needed, to protect others. Not being able to do that, not being able to keep the men he called friends safe… of course it would hurt him. Each loss would cut like a knife, a deep and lasting wound that no amount of talking could fix. The look of utter defeat in his friend's eyes when he'd pulled him off that cold metal table… maybe it wasn't all because of Zola's torturous treatment.
"Steve, we need your help!" Peggy called. She was balanced precariously on a wobbly bar stool stool, holding the bunting in place. Monty had the other end, and Captain Stone had made the mistake of sitting on the throne-chair, which looked about ready to collapse. Dugan rushed to throne while Steve reached out to take the banner from Peggy. Bucky would have to wait; right now he had a party to fix.