[Bucky Barnes, Cast; R] In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine Character/Series: Bucky Barnes, Cast; Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: R Notes: Yes, Nebraska is cold enough that I have had to bump my heat up that high just to stop feeling numb. Aaaah, winter on the Great Plains. Title: In Derelict Sidings The Poppies Entwine: Chapter 11 Author:yuuo Word Count: 3918 Summary:The weather was cold.
The weather was cold. That wasn't a cause for a front page headline, it was the day after Thanksgiving, it tended to be cold in the northern latitudes around that time of year. But there was something special about the Nebraska cold. It sucked into the lungs and exhaled in frozen puffs of ice. The wind bit into the skin like needles, making the cheeks sting and the eyes water. Hell, even the inside of his nose felt cold and dry.
He tugged his hood up, trying to retreat into his coat's depths in an attempt to keep warm. He was still shaking, though how much of that was from the cold now, and how much was from the anxiety attack that wasn't abating, he couldn't tell. Everything about the attack was made that much worse by the cold. He couldn't breathe, his stomach muscles clenched, both from cold and the desire to upend his breakfast, and his hands were shaking. Even the metal one.
Bucky could hear and see sounds of life off to the east, cars lined up on a street just a couple blocks away. The sidewalks were crowded. He shied away from that part of the Haymarket, finding some back ways closer to the apartment where there didn't seem to be any businesses. There were back alleys, alleys with dumpsters to hide behind, where he wouldn't be seen by the general populace a few blocks away. He huddled down behind one, grateful for the way it blocked the wind.
"Fucking cold," he whispered to himself, just barely remembering to pull on his other glove before slipping his hands under his hood to cover his ears. It wasn't even to warm them, it was to try to stop the sounds of screaming in his head. It wasn't a phsyical sensation, just a buzz in his mind that made everything tilt at funny angles, but the activity helped him slowly block out the excess noise to find where his thoughts had gone.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw motion on his right, coming from the direction of the rest of downtown. He curled up tighter, glancing around the edge of his hood to see what the movement was caused by. At that exact moment, making himself seem small and harmless felt like a better defense than to brace himself for an encounter to fight back in. With as tight as his nerves were pulled, trying to fight back would result in someone or something being very dead.
"Easy, buddy," the man who'd approached said. He was wearing a thick, beat up old Army coat, not entirely unlike Bucky's, with a threadbare stocking cap, and a scarf around his neck, partially hiding his face. He looked like he needed a shower and a shave. "We don't hurt each other around here. Mind if I sit here?"
Bucky wasn't entirely sure who 'we' were in this particular context, but the man was being non-threatening, and just distracting enough that Bucky's stomach had stopped trying to heave. He shrugged, motioning with his elbow to the spot next to him, and huddled down closer to the dumpster on his left.
The man sat down. "You must be new here," he said. "I haven't seen you around."
Bucky studied the ground in front of him. "Do you make a point of knowing everyone who comes here?"
"No," the man said. "Just those of us who hide in the alleys. Name's Derrick." He held out his hand.
Seeing no reason to ignore the man- he was being kind, so far, and was offering something to focus on besides his own internal issues -Bucky took his hand. "James."
The man made a noise of acknowledgement, huddling down near Bucky, but leaving a courteous distance. He studied Bucky. "So tell me, James. That jacket the real thing, or did you scrounge it at Goodwill?"
Bucky studied the coat. "Technically, it's from Goodwill," he admitted. "I lost mine some years back." He looked at Derrick. "You?"
"It's the original," he said with what looked like a thoroughly ironic smile. "What unit you with?"
"The one-oh-seventh," Bucky said. "Served a few years. Just got home a couple years ago."
"You been out here that whole time?" Derrick asked.
Bucky frowned slightly. "Out here? You mean in Lincoln?"
"No, on the streets, like most of us poor dumb bastards who the government tricked into joining." Derrick sighed, resting his head against the brick wall behind them. "Sorry, man. I tried working with the VA when I first got back from Iraq. They couldn't do shit. Lost my wife and little girl in the divorce, couldn't hold down a job. No one would hire someone who's only real skill was to shoot to kill." His face twisted into a bitter smile. "Except the cops, but they don't want a black man doing that."
Bucky decided to not comment on the racial politics; his agreement aside, it was something that had Derrick upset, and not something Bucky wanted to listen to. He had enough of his own problems right then. "Didn't go to college or work before joining?"
"Dropped out of high school a month before graduation to take care of my girl and our baby," he said. "Got my GED while I was working Subway, pulling in enough hours to make being home for her hard, but not enough to be considered full-time and get benefits. Pretty common ploy for those bastards. Army got ahold of me, told me I could have a stable income, a place for my wife and little girl to live, food to eat, if I just signed up and served a few years, hunt down Saddam Hussein for them." He snorted. "Biggest bunch of shit."
"It's not bad, until the country abandons you," Bucky said quietly. He didn't blame anyone for not looking for a body after he fell from the mountain, but he knew that Phillips and the rest of the Army had given up on him and most of his unit when they were captured the first time. He'd thought he'd understood back then, but Steve had been upset by it a few times since. Now he wasn't sure what he thought.
"Preaching to the choir," Derrick said. He glanced towards the busier streets. "You're smart, getting on this side of ninth. All the crazies are over there."
"Hm?" Bucky leaned forward, looking around Derrick to the crowds. "I just picked a place that wasn't crowded and wasn't windy."
"Sometimes, that's the best criteria you need." Derrick looked over at him. "You're new, so I'm going to guess you aren't familiar with the local resources. They don't do much for most of us, but you might get lucky."
It was taking Bucky a much longer time to figure out that Derrick meant resources for the homeless than it should've, but his brain was starting to reset, the little hamster in the wheel coming back to life and running again. "I'm staying on a friend's couch, actually," he said. "It's not for long, but it'll do for now."
Derrick nodded. "Take advantage of that while you can," he said. "Hopefully your friend will let you stay through Christmas. It sucks being on the streets around then. Sure, people will surrender quarters to you easier if you sit with a cardboard sign on the corner around that time, but it's nicer being inside with a good cup of coffee."
Bucky made a faint noise of agreement.
When nothing else was forthcoming, Derrick leaned forward, looking at Bucky around the edge of Bucky's hood. "Stay focused, man. Out here isn't the greatest place to have an episode."
Bucky pulled back his hood a bit, looking at Derrick in alarm. "What the hell do you mean?" he snapped. Had it really been that obvious? He thought he'd been calming down, could finally hear a semblence of coherence behind the panic.
Derrick sat back. "We've all seen it," he said. "We've all been there. You learn to recognize it when others do it. You're still shaking. Thought talking might help you before something got ugly. Keep talking, don't let yourself be alone in there."
Bucky snorted, shaking his head. "You sound like my friend. He's constantly poking at me to talk."
"It helps," Derrick said. "Sometimes it helps more to talk to a stranger than a friend. You don't want them hurt by what's hurting you. So talk to me, man. We've both been out there. Where'd they put you? I was running protection detail on supply runs. Probably safer than some places they could've put me, but still saw plenty of action."
Bucky had to fight with himself to answer, not entirely sure how to answer. He'd done a lot of odd jobs in the Howling Commandos, although the position of sniper was one he was in more than others. And he wasn't about to talk about his time with Hydra. "I was a sniper in a special ops," he finally said. It was truth enough.
Derrick made a sympathetic noise. "That's rough. I've always heard that the snipers have it the hardest." Then he raised an eyebrow. "Thought you said you were in the one-oh-seventh, not a special ops."
Bucky laughed derisively. "I was assigned to the one-oh-seventh when I finished boot camp. After some 'exemplary' service, I got tapped for a special ops group and handed a rifle and told to have fun." He felt himself shrink into his coat a bit more. "Wasn't all that fun."
"It never is," Derrick said, voice quiet. "Unless you like long periods of boredom punctuated by fifteen seconds of sheer terror."
"Only the dangerous ones do," Bucky said. He couldn't say that the Winter Soldier particularly liked the long periods, and he never thought of those fifteen seconds as terror, but neither part bothered him. It was part of the job. It was what he did. What he knew. He frowned. "Worst part is, most of those don't start out that way. Soldiers aren't supposed to become the monsters."
Silence passed for almost a minute, nothing but the noise of the crowds blocks down and the wind whistling through the alley to be heard. Finally, Derrick spoke up. "We were riding supplies through a little village in northern Iraq. Don't remember the name of it. Intel said the village might be housing insurgents, so we were on guard. Woman came out to greet us, waving something. We didn't know if she was signaling enemy fighters or not. We told her to back away, to put the cloth down and walk away. She didn't listen." He turned his head to watch the passing crowds to their right. "We opened fire. Dunno if it was my bullet that got her or not, but someone got her. We investigated. The cloth she was waving was a white flag. She was surrendering for the people in her home."
Bucky couldn't tell if this whole talking to a stranger thing was working. On one hand, it made him feel less alone to hear that other soldiers had taken innocent lives. On the other, it was making his hands shake more, and his throat to try to close. He laughed, a not quite right sound. "It was easy, wasn't it?" he asked. "They make killing easy. It's easy or you die." He nudged the ground in front of him with the back of his heel. "Then you come home and realize it wasn't as easy as you thought."
He didn't see Derrick's hand until it was already on his shoulder and he jumped back, smacking into the dumpster, his metal shoulder making a loud clang against it. Derrick held up his hands. "I'm not here to hurt you," he said. Then he offered a knowing smile. "Cold's getting to you. Go back inside."
"What about you?" Bucky asked.
Derrick motioned off towards the crowd. "I'm gonna hit up the Union, see if I can't get me a cup of coffee. If you decide you need something, or you get kicked out, ask around for me. I'll help hook you up."
Bucky couldn't help the grateful smile. "Thanks." He took a deep breath, getting to his feet. "Go get that coffee." He felt Derrick's stare as he walked away and around the corner, as if he were waiting to see if he'd be further needed. Bucky heard footsteps behind him once he was out of the alley.
He wasn't suprised to see that the apartment was still empty when he got there, but he wasn't happy with himself when he realized he'd left the door unlocked. Brilliant, James, he thought, realizing how easy it would've been for someone to find their weapons and uniforms, the money they had stored, Natasha's computer with Homeland intel on it. He got lucky.
Deciding that he'd been stressed enough that morning, he forced that thought out of his mind, shucking out of his coat and boots. He still felt cold, and cold was not making his brain a happy space full of rainbows right then, so hoping that Natasha wouldn't try to beat him senseless for raising her electricity bill, he wandered over to the thermostat and bumped the heat up. The furnace rumbled to life. It'd take a few minutes before that heat circulated enough to warm Bucky up, so he went back over to the bed.
He wasn't sure where his thoughts were as he dug into his night bag, pulling out Hydra's file on the Winter Soldier Project. He'd read it a few times, early on, but he'd mostly avoided it since about the fourth month of living with Steve, when his memories had stabilized enough that reading it just sent him into flashbacks.
Having just had an attack, he probably would've been smart to leave it be, to maybe nap off the crash from the attack, but his thoughts wouldn't let him. They weren't even really thoughts in that they weren't words, they were feelings and impressions and images and the occasional burst of color that meant things to him, but couldn't be put into words.
The first thing in the file were the pictures, two vastly different men, one a young sergeant fresh into the military, ready to fight for his country, and one under ice, an experiment being preserved until the next time it was needed. Thaw, shoot, kill, wipe, freeze, repeat. A weapon, nothing more.
There was far more than that, of course, reports of chemicals doing damage to his brain that was not intended, more chemical warfare against his body's attempt at defying them to fix what they broke. Bucky half-wondered if there wasn't anything permanently damaged in there that he just hadn't stumbled upon yet. He'd mentally argue with himself that the attacks were a result of these botched chemicals, but he knew better. Even Steve had these moments. Tony had had these moments. It wasn't anything abnormal, just very annoying.
Actually, he wondered if Tony had ever figured out those chemicals or not. Tony'd been busy with a lot of his own things, Bucky hadn't been in any hurry to find out how much permanent damage there might be, so he hadn't pushed.
Tony.
Bucky bit back a sigh. He'd probably never know now, and somehow, he wasn't sure how bad he felt about that. He wasn't sure he really wanted to know if his brain and body were a ticking time bomb, ready to go off at just the right time, when casualties would be at the maximum.
He glanced over at the computer that had gone to sleep, considering the very tiny starts of a plan. He needed to talk to Carter, but he didn't know how to contact her. The only one that did was Natasha, and good luck getting Steve away for Bucky to talk her into it. What was forming in the back of his mind wasn't something Steve would approve of. Natasha would understand, would help, but Steve was as overprotective of Bucky as Bucky was of Steve.
Fucking mess, the both of them.
Brr. Why was it still so fucking cold in that apartment?
He crawled under the blanket, propping himself up on his left arm as he flipped through the file, trying and only kind of succeeding to read it objectively, to not let his brain remember what was being written about as something he was part of, but as a story that happened to someone else. Neural scarring fixing itself after coming out of cryo. Need for a wipe before being put back in to keep the subject loyal. Reset process, date 4 March 1947, subject hesitates when going up stairs for less than a second, but does not show this hesitation scaling walls. When working with others, subject stays on the right flank, but stands on the left side of someone speaking to him. Reasons for these aberrations are unknown, but as they do not impeded the subject's ability to follow orders, nor do they seem to be signs of defiance, the reset procedures are declared complete.
Bucky wondered how he'd missed that in his earlier readings. Always let Steve go first up the stairs. Stay on Steve's left side when speaking, he can hear better. When in a potentially dangerous situation, become his ears on his weak side and take the right flank.
It kind of relieved him that they hadn't taken everything. Even if they were only little things, they were still there.
There was a scientific description of the wipes, what they were supposed to do, how they did it. He supposed it was interesting on a purely objective level, but he couldn't quite get to that level. Every detail it described, he felt pain in his head. Pain that traveled, stabbed, throbbed, made everything in him hurt until his vision wanted to black out.
Somewhere behind him, he became only vaguely aware of a noise, the tumble of a lock, but he thought it was a neighbor, it seemed far away. A door opening, sounds of sacks rustling.
"Oh my god, why does it feel like an oven in here?"
Natasha's voice.
Bucky snapped awake, not sure when he'd nodded off, but the crick in his neck and the dull ache on the side of his head where he'd been pillowed on his metal arm told him it must've been awhile. "Hm?" He sat up, trying to crack his neck. "Sorry, I was cold."
Steve studied him in concern, probably only not stopping to bug him because he had bags of groceries in his hands. He followed Natasha to the kitchen area. "You could've gotten another blanket," he said.
"I didn't think there were any," Bucky said.
Natasha set her bags down and walked over to the thermostat and stared at it. "James, you set it on seventy-six. It's no wonder it felt like walking into a sauna." She turned down the dial and then looked at him. "You'd think you were cold-blooded, can't function in the cold."
Bucky stared at her distantly. "Cold means total shut down."
Natasha went quiet, looking at him as if for the first time. He wasn't sure what was going through her mind, nor did he care. He was past the point of caring what people thought of him. "I have more blankets in my room that I'm not using," she said, voice soft. "I'll bring them out. I didn't realize what was in the closet wasn't enough."
He waved her off. "It's fine. I could've asked for more."
She didn't answer, just held out a finger at Steve, signaling she'd be with him in a minute, then disappeared into her bedroom. She returned about thirty seconds later with a few afghans folded under her arms. "Steve, you help James set up the bed. I'll put away the food."
Steve took the blankets obediently, walking over to the sofa bed where Bucky was sitting up, but still under the covers. The open Hydra file sat next to him. Steve set the blankets down on the foot of the bed, looking at Bucky. "You slept on your metal arm," he said, pointing vaguely at Bucky. "You have imprints on your face."
Bucky reached up with his right hand and felt his left cheek. "Dunno how you can tell," he said. "I need to shave."
Steve glanced over at the open file, then sighed, looking back at Bucky. "Why are you doing this to yourself? Looking at that has never done you any good."
Bucky grabbed the file and shut it. "Can't run from it forever, Steve," he said, scooting off the bed to sit on the edge and tuck the file back into his overnight bag.
"There's a difference between running away and taking care of your own well-being," Steve said.
Bucky looked up at him. "How long did it take you to contact Peggy? She was the only one of us left alive, did you contact her right away? Or did you avoid it?"
Steve sighed, opened his mouth to speak, pursed his lips in frustration, then tried again. "James, that's different, and you know it."
"You stopped running, though," Bucky said. "You have to face it eventually. What have I told you about you not living in my head? When I'm ready to face these things, I should, before I just start running forever and never stop."
"And what are you going to do now that you're facing them?" Steve asked.
"I don't know," Bucky answered.
He was saved from anything else Steve might've tried to prod out of him by Natasha's voice. "Steve, here," she said, holding out a thick book. "Why don't you give James the gift you got him. Give him something to do that doesn't involve turning my apartment into Satan's personal apartment in hell."
"You think he only has an apartment?" Bucky asked, watching Steve take the book from Natasha, then walk back over to Bucky. He frowned, looking at it. "A Dance With Dragons. Oh, good, I can finish it." He took it, flipping through it idly. "Thank you. It was getting kinda boring here."
"Well, my apartment isn't set up to entertain multiple people," Natasha said as she stuffed food into the freezer and fridge. "So I had to find something. Steve said you liked to read and you were in the middle of that series. Good series, by the way."
Bucky made a noise of agreement, flipping through the early pages and skimming for something familiar. Then he looked up at Steve. "What about you?"
Steve shrugged with a lopsided grin. "We picked up some pencils for me. I have my sketchbooks, and those aren't exactly expensive if I run out of paper."
Bucky looked around him at Natasha. "Careful, you'll have a fridge full of art stuck up with magnets by the end of the second day."
"Oh? Good. It could use some decorating." She didn't turn around or pause in her work to say that.
Steve gave Bucky a weary glare. "I bring you a book and that's how you thank me?"
Bucky gave him a grin best reserved to be given to younger siblings. "You know I've always been the most ungrateful cuss around. Now go get your sketchbooks and start drawing. It shuts you up."