Chapter 2 - 1933

The years passed. Bucky Barnes was now teenaged and tall, with eyes the color of a tropical ocean and a sweet smile that belied his reputation for trouble. These days, he could be spotted smoking on street corners and dancing in jazz clubs with older women. Stevie Rogers, on the other hand, didn't grow much taller and didn't fill out at all. She lacked what her homeroom teacher would call "the feminine graces," and seemed to be composed entirely of elbows and knees, wrapped up in oversized sweaters and topped with messy blonde braids. Stevie was not the kind of girl Bucky Barnes would flirt with, smoke with, or dance with - and yet they seemed to be together nine days out of every ten. When it was sunny they'd sit on the steps of the tenements and Bucky would smoke while Stevie drew or read aloud - Julius Caesar, Herodotus, Machiavelli. When it rained, and Stevie got one of her bad chest colds, Bucky would read to her - comics, mostly.

"You shouldn't stay here all day, Buck," Stevie said hoarsely from under a mound of blankets.

"Well, your pa sure can't," Bucky replied. "He's at the shop."

"Yeah, but…" Stevie interrupted herself with an alarming bout of coughing that left Bucky scrambling for a glass of water. "Thanks. Anyway, Buck, you have school. You can't afford to miss so many days."

Bucky took the empty glass and straightened the blankets around Stevie as she lay back. "Come on. You know Miss Jenkins loves you - I'll just tell her I was helping you and all will be forgiven." He raised his voice in a quavering falsetto. "For my favorite student? The incomparable Miss Rogers?" He widened his eyes and clasped his hands melodramatically over his chest. "Anything, anything at all! Take a week off! Buy a Butterfinger, on me!"

Stevie laughed at the impression, which made her cough again. Bucky hid a worried frown behind his comic book. "Now," he said, doing his best to imitate the dramatic tones of the narrator from The Shadow, "Lean back and listen to the continuing adventures of...Doc Savage...the Man of Bronze. When we last left our hero, he was trapped in the Bermuda Triangle...will he be able to fight his way free?"

If people wondered why Bucky hang around Stevie - "an asthmatic egghead with the figure of a hat rack" as one of her schoolmates aptly described her - they learned to keep both their wonder and their apt descriptions to themselves. Bucky was hot-tempered and quick with his fists. As for Stevie herself, she never wondered about it. Bucky was her friend and she was his, and that was all there was to it. Being Bucky Barnes' friend has its advantages - the girls in school didn't take Stevie's glasses anymore - but she still sometimes found herself on the wrong side of a fight. Normally, because she put herself there.

"Hey, Stevie...What's this?" Bucky took hold of her chin and tipped her face up to the thin light coming through the autumn clouds. There was a bruise on her right cheek. He glowered. "Stevie."

"Bucky," she replied, in her best imitation of his stern voice. She tried to stare him down, but looked away after a few moments. "It was Mark Kessel. I saw him in an alley with Johnny Shotsman and his goons. They were hitting him...calling him a fag."

"And you just had to step in?" Bucky glared at her. "Was it any of your business?"

"Why are you angry at me?" Stevie held her books to her chest defensively. "Johnny Shotsman is the thug who was beating up a guy in an alley."

"And now," Bucky rolled his eyes, "I have to beat up Johnny Shotsman. Again. As if I didn't have enough to do this weekend."

"It wasn't him," Stevie looked down at her shoes. "It was Mark."

"What?"

She had stepped into the mouth of the alley and called out as loudly as she could - quickly, so she wouldn't have time to chicken out. When everyone stopped and stared at her like a pack wolves eyeing a toy poodle, she felt like her teeth were going to chatter right out of her head. But she looked Johnny square in his pig eyes and told him she had seen him stealing cigarettes from the corner store, and wouldn't Mr. DiTomasso like to know? Stevie hated resorting to tattling, but what else was she going to do - wrestle him into submission? Not likely. Johnny had called her fucking snitch and tried to tower over her menacingly; but she didn't flinch, so he spat on the ground and left with his friends. Stevie was so relieved she thought she might pass out.

When she held out a hand to help Mark up, however, he had shouted that he didn't need her and pushed her, hard.

"So I slipped on something and got this," Stevie finished, pointing to her bruise. "I just can't understand why Mark would do that. I was trying to help."

Bucky pinched his nose as if she was giving him a headache. "That's why you should stay out of other people's fights, Stevie, I told you…"

Stevie looked up at him, her eyes wide, sincere and sky blue behind her thick lenses. "I can't, Buck. I can't see someone being hurt and just...walk on by. Sorry."

"You see what I have to deal with?" Bucky asked no one in particular. "There's a reason knights in shining armor are men, you know - and don't go telling me about Queen Whatshername who could lift camels and beheaded a thousand guys, ok?" He took her by the shoulders and bent down to look her in the face. "Just tell me you'll be careful. I don't want anything to happen to you."

Stevie wasn't accustomed to seeing Bucky so serious. "I'll try."

He nodded. "I'll take it." He straightened and patted her on the back, hard enough to make her cough. "Let's go; you wouldn't want to be tardy and disappoint Miss Jenkins."

They walked along in silence...for a moment. "Ugh. Mark Kessel." Bucky said, twisting his face like he just ate a lemon. "I can't hit Mark Kessel - he weighs less than you. Why couldn't it have been Johnny Shotsman? I love punching that creep."

Notes: Thank you to everyone who has read and followed! I hope to continue updating every week - until I catch up with myself (working on Chapter 11 currently). Please forgive any irregularities of formatting - I'm still getting used to working with FFN's document uploader thingy.