James "Bucky" Barnes (who_is_bucky) wrote in chances_rpg, @ 2021-12-20 11:49:00 |
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Entry tags: | mcu: bucky barnes, umbrella academy: ben hargreeves |
Who: Ben Hargreeves/Bucky Barnes
What: An Interview
When: Tuesday Morning, early December
Where: Starbucks
Status: Complete
Warnings: Probably none
Bucky wasn’t really sure why Ben needed to interview anyone, or what convinced him to agree to the kid when he asked him after class the other day, but here they were. The ex-soldier sat with a tea, waiting at the location as promised as he stared out the window at people passing by. It wasn’t as if he had anywhere else to be- in fact, this was actually a common hobby for Bucky when he found himself without any other obligations and alone. People watching was relaxing. It reminded him of what normal could look like.
He was just a little nervous about what his student might ask. Even if he told himself it was probably nothing- Ben Hargreeves didn’t know his past, right? He’d just be honest and maybe avoid certain details.
No big deal.
Seeing as how this was basically his first time ever with multiple teachers and multiple classes, Ben thought maybe he was doing better than he'd first feared. Granted, this was after a couple of days off and a fun party in-between, so it was possible he was riding high on endorphins. Either way, he wasn't quaking in his sneakers when he strode into the Starbucks near the apartment complex, which was a vast improvement to the anxious wreck he'd been when he asked Mr. Barnes about doing this interview.
"Hi, Mr. Barnes!" The greeting was bright and possibly a little too loud, but at least it wasn't from all the way across the coffee shop. He'd spotted his history teacher right away and wound through the tables to get to him first. "I see you have a drink. Do you want a pastry or a bagel or a cookie or anything? Klaus gave me some money to get a hot chocolate, but it's enough to get a treat too."
“I’m okay, but thanks,” Bucky nodded for the kid to set his stuff down, at least giving him a half-smile as he did so. Honestly, he liked Ben. He was an eager student, but he did pretty good in class and at least paid attention. Not that Bucky had many students he didn’t like- most of them were pretty good in general. Maybe chatty sometimes (Dee), but good.
He’d given the kid some time to order before starting in, waiting for Ben to sit down before asking the first question. “So, before we get started, I gotta ask: what exactly are we doing here? I mean, I know you’re interviewing me and all, but most people would ask Steve first.”
The first thing Ben did when he finally sat down was pull the plastic lid off his small (tall??) hot chocolate, which was heaped with whipped cream and chocolate curls. It was better than Mr. Barnes had declined his offer of one of the baked goods, because it meant Ben could collect more change for getting presents for the upcoming holiday season. Maybe he couldn't get Allison and Klaus anything fancy or expensive, but he wanted to do something. They basically had to take care of him now, which had to be hard on top of everything else.
He had this whole massive story about overhearing his teacher muttering under his breath in particularly filthy Russian over some homework grading when Ben had chanced by the room after ducking out of lunch early. Okay, so maybe it wasn't all that long, but it probably sounded way more stalker-y, so instead he sipped his hot chocolate and then said, "It's for extra credit in my social studies class. Mrs. Allen wanted us to find someone who spoke a non-English second language and ask how they came to know it or why they chose to learn it. Is that okay?"
Shit. Bucky made a face at the realization about what this assignment was, and realized this kid didn’t know his background. He let out a sigh, trying not to appear panicked as he thought of the best way of turning the poor student down. “Are you talking about Russian? Not sure you wanna ask me that.”
Or if the other Social Studies teacher would find it appropriate.
Then again. “Unless you want to know how I know German. I guess that’s not a bad story.” He wasn’t sure if the kids were aware he could speak that language. And Romanian. Mandarin. Italian. Wakandan. “I learned German in the war. Not much of a unique story there- a lot of us guys did.”
Whatever was going through Mr. Barnes's mind right at that moment reminded him of the kinds of looks that Klaus and Allison got every once in a while, usually after he'd said or asked or done something. Like they were afraid. Of him? Of what they sometimes left out? Of things they didn't want to remember or talk about themselves? Ben had gotten very good at seeing those looks and then wisely not asking. Even though his curiosity burned even brighter to know his teacher's history, he didn't ask.
He scrambled a little to get out a pen and a pad of paper when Mr. Barnes offered him a conversational olive branch. Yes, he had his phone, but he hadn't exactly grown up with the thing, so it wasn't the first thing he reached for most of the time. "The war? Are you fluent? Can you read it, too? Is it mostly slang and curse words? When did you realize you could actually speak it or understand it? How often do you use it now?"
The kid seemed eager to know a lot at once and Bucky frowned as he considered how to answer. But he did his best, sitting back and unpacking each question carefully. “World War 2.” And when he realized the kid didn’t know his story, he sighed and explained. “So….you know Steve? Rogers? Captain America. Where we come from- well, here, we’re both older than we look. We were born at the start of the 20th century, and we both fought on the European front in the war. A lot of us G.I.’s learned some German to help us along the way.” He paused, letting that sink in for a moment. He knew with a lot of the people around here, that part wasn’t so hard to believe.
He’d just leave out the Soldier stuff.
“I’m pretty fluent. I can read it, I know slang and curse words were usually the first thing that sticks in your head,” he smirked at the thought. “I figured I could speak it a few months in. I’ve always been good with languages- my grandma was Romanian so I picked that up as a kid.”
That was enough, right? He hoped the kid didn’t delve much farther.
Ben got as far as writing down "WWII" before his brain caught up to the words and what they meant. Coupled with Mr. Barnes additional explanation, he was left staring with eyes the rough size and shape of dinner plates. His mouth may have been hanging open a little too, but Ben was too stunned for it to really register. A moment later, he was writing furiously, trying to catch up with what he'd been told, but still completely reeling. "Wait, so—so does everyone from your world age at a really slow rate? Does that mean Dr. Banner and both Mr. Starks were born in the 1700s or something? I don't know if my teacher is going to believe me if I write about this."
“What? No!” Bucky made a face and realized where the kid was getting this stuff. Though it was funny that Ben thought the other two men were that much older than him. He’d dwell on that one later. “No, Steve and I were artificially kept alive under ice for a few decades. Different reasons.”
He paused and looked out the window. “So…yeah, we’re older than we look. But it’s definitely not a normal thing in our world.”
For a second, Ben went stock still. He half-expected the yelling to start, but had to tell himself that was ridiculous. Mr. Barnes was a little grouchy, but he'd never, ever heard his teacher yell at anyone. The fact that his mind had even gone there in the first place said a lot about the things he didn't like to think about.
His shoulders had bunched up reflexively, but with every breath, they eased by a degree or two. "I'm still not sure if I can include the stuff about the war, unless it's something you want people around here to know about? With everything else going on, I'm never sure what I can and can't talk about at school. Like, 'Hi, I'm Ben Hargreeves, and I used to be a superhero called The Horror on my world' or 'Hi, I'm Ben Hargreeves, and I just transferred from another place, but I can't really tell you about it because it's top secret, and I don't want either of us to get in trouble because I told you.' So instead I'm just the weird, quiet kid, and everyone assumes I'm good at math and science."
He nodded a little and turned to look back at the poor kid, feeling bad about acting angry at all- he wasn’t mad. He was just tired and it was a lot to remember. Rubbing his eyes, he forced a smile and shook his head. “I can’t imagine being your age and dealing with all this shit. I’m sorry, Ben.”
Taking a breath, he started again. “How about we just mention the Romanian, then? I learned it from my grandmother. She used to come over for dinner every Sunday, and she made the whole family learn it.” There. That was safe, right? Bucky figured it was safe, anyway. As long as he didn’t mention anything putting them in Brooklyn in the 1920s.
Hearing his teacher curse was almost funny enough to make him laugh. Instead, Ben hid his quavering smile behind his hot chocolate as he took another sip. He was more than grateful to Mr. Barnes for giving him an alternate story, and he wrote things down quickly. "I'm assuming she immigrated from Romania? Did she ever talk about life back home and how it compared to here in the States? Did you do a lot of Romanian cooking for dinner? While you were… in Europe, did you ever get to go there, visit the place she came from?"
The kid was full of questions, but at least Bucky felt safer answering these ones. He nodded at first, smiling at the memory. “Yeah. Grew up with her cooking, actually. She was my mom’s mom. She talked about home, but it wasn’t great- she was the daughter of a farmer, and she had very little growing up. She came to America to find work when she was still a teenager. That’s how she met my grandfather.”
He paused there, thinking back to his childhood. Then the war. “Never made it that far. I was taken as a POW.” He didn’t want to talk about that part. “Then after I got out, I worked with Steve- pretty specific missions run through SHIELD, then…” He really wished he had something stronger than coffee. “Anyway, no. Never got to see it.”
There was that look again. All the noisiest parts of Ben's brain wanted to ask about it, wanted to know. Those were the parts that made him sneak books at the dinner table when his dad was away on some trip he never told him or his siblings about, or made him break into the local library on more than one occasion. But he stowed his questions by sheer force of will and nodded. Some of the last bits that Mr. Barnes had said, Ben knew he couldn't include—not without it sounding like time travel science fiction. "If you could go now, would you? Or do you think this world is too different from the one you came from?"
He set his pen and notebook down; it was scribbled with all kinds of notes, more than the small amount they'd already discussed. His chest moved in a quiet sigh as he pulled his cooling drink toward himself and wrapped his hands around it. "I think about that sometimes, wondering if anything is the same as I remember it. My siblings and I used to sneak out and go to a donut shop. I keep wondering if it's there, but I'm too scared to look it up. And I don't know if it's because I don't know what it means if it's there—like, if there might be another boy running around out there with the life I could have had if I hadn't been born Ben Hargreeves—or how I'm going to feel if it's not there. Do you ever get like that?"
Now, there was a dangerous question for the man. Would he do it differently? The obvious answer would be yes- but then, Steve would have still gone to war without him. He’d probably still have gone into the ice. Sure, Bucky would see his family grow old, maybe have one of his own, but he would always feel guilty about that. And about not serving the country.
No. No use dwelling on that. “I don’t like thinking that way,” he muttered. “I can’t go back in time and fix things.” That wasn’t entirely true. It was possible but not for Bucky. Not like Steve had done…
Huh. This was getting too deep.
He was happy to change the subject, nodding a little as he watched the kid and understood. “I get it. You want to know and you don’t, right? But if it helps, I’m pretty sure this world isn’t like yours. It’s more like mine. I know there’s another me running around here….which is weird enough.”
The answer that came was incongruous to the question Ben had asked, but when he cast back to it, he could see where maybe it had been misconstrued. And then he felt bad, because he'd never meant to stir up whatever was causing the dark cloud to pass over his teacher's face. Maybe this was all a mistake, maybe he should have never asked Mr. Barnes to meet him, not if he kept making him uneasy or sad. It's not like the other had left in a huff, however. He seemed to be trying, which was what counted.
"What's that like?" Ben's head tilted quizzically. "Have you met him? Have you looked him up? Does he know you exist? Do you want him to know you exist?"
“Nope, nope, and nope,” Bucky shook his head. “I think the government is keeping close tabs on us here and I’m okay with him not knowing. It’s better that way. HE can live his life, I can live mine.” Bucky actually smiled.
“Honestly? It’s nice having a chance to start over. Considering I spent so much of my life doing what I did- I don’t have the best reputation in the world. So this? This isn't a bad thing for me. I like teaching. Kids aren’t all bad.” He nodded to Ben for example.
This wasn't the first time Ben had heard mutterings about government things. It felt like way too much for him to tackle on top of all the other things he had to worry about. Besides, he had a feeling that Allison and Klaus wouldn't be very happy about him turning into a conspiracy theorist at the tender age of fifteen. He nodded slowly at the second sentiment however, and then laughed at the backhanded compliment. "I like being taught by someone who isn't my dad, Pogo, or Grace, if I'm honest." His smile tilted and turned rueful, his gaze dropping down to his cup where he fiddled with the lid. "And it's nice to think I might live to see eighteen, if we're really stuck here."
Bucky looked up at Ben when he mentioned the living to eighteen comment, frowning and narrowing his eyes. That was definitely off. “What do you mean?” He was almost afraid to ask. But he knew a thing or two about dying young, and he really hoped that the kid wasn’t implying anything like that. “Everything okay, kid?”
For the space of collecting his thoughts, Ben pressed his lips together. Most days he couldn't wrap his head around it. "In the future Klaus and Allison are from, I didn't make it. I died on a mission. And then Klaus pulled me back as a ghost, and I guess I lived with him for a long time. Or ghost-lived, I guess. He didn't tell anyone else about me, though. They said I saved the world or something, but I think I would've rather just lived in it."
A moment passed before Bucky dared speak. He was just staring at the kid, thinking about what to say. What did you say? That he could kind of relate? That it was bullshit. The kid had a future, and he shouldn’t…
“I died. But I was 28,” he watched Ben and then went on. “I fell from a train during the war. That’s how I lost my arm. But uh…someone found me. Brought me back to life. Gave me this.” He clenched his left hand. “They didn’t do it out of the goodness of their heart, though. And I couldn’t remember who I was for a long time.” Bucky sighed. “I guess what I’m saying is….this place gives us second chances. I think maybe it’s best not to dwell on what could be and take the future you make.”
Ben stared at the metal hand for a very long time while he wrestled with something enormous in his chest. Actual tears burned his eyes as he considered the parallels of their sad stories, but he scrubbed his arm across them before any could fall. He didn't want to start crying in the middle of a coffee shop while he sat with his teacher. Sitting through Mr. Barnes's class was sometimes awkward enough, knowing the handful of things he gleaned from the boards before now; having an emotional breakdown would have absolutely tipped him into begging his siblings to let him transfer schools.
He nodded and sniffed quietly. "I'm sorry. For what happened to you. And to me. But you're right. It's what we've gotta do to get through this, right? Forward and through."
He could tell he’d upset the kid, and he felt bad. Sitting back, Bucky shook his head and offered a faint smile. “No shame in crying. The strongest man I ever met would break down in tears around me from time to time. He was a scrawny thing, though, much smaller than you. Sensitive. But that was his strength.” Bucky shrugged.
“Sorry if I made this awkward.”
Giving a somewhat wet laugh, Ben shook his head and swiped at his nose this time. "Nah, I'm pretty sure I did that when I asked you to meet me in the first place. But this really did help. I think I've got what I need to write my paper now, so I really appreciate your time. Спасибо, Mr. Barnes. Я пришлю вам копию, когда закончу.."
That last part actually surprised the man and he stared at Ben for a moment before slowly smiling. “Пожалуйста.” You’re welcome. He would happily answer Ben’s questions any time, just as long as the kid didn’t pry too much.
Somehow, Bucky didn’t think that would ever be a problem.