Steve was here. Bucky had been right, it wasn't just something he was seeing in his head. Steve was too big and he was out of place, but not in the same way Bucky was. Steve probably still fit into the District somewhere, like keys in locks and arms in sockets. Bucky was out of step and missing pieces. He didn't lock in the right way. Steve shouldn't be here, though. Bucky knew there was a reason why, it was just hard to dredge up the right shape of it it immediately.
His hand flexed again, looking away toward Erskine's house, and then back at Steve. "I heard you," he said. He'd heard before he'd seen. Bucky probably could have killed him a month ago if he'd done that, but Steve didn't need to know that.
No. Wait. Steve already knew that. It'd been on the big screens in the middle of the District. They replayed all the kills in slow motion, Bucky remembered that from Games he hadn't been in. Steve had seen him kill people in slow motion. He'd seen Bucky covered in blood and screaming in the dark. Bucky forgot, sometimes, that it wasn't just the Capitol and strangers who had watched him get stripped away. The Capitol asked him to tell the story, or to reenact it. Once a tall man with bright blue hair had asked him how HARD he'd had to press with the knife to split someone open, then sounded sad when he'd said it was too bad they hadn't let Bucky come without the prosthetic arm, so everyone could get a real sense of the action. It was the only thing Bucky remembered from that party. On the Victory Tour, it was different. The Districts hadn't had the same kind of bloodthirsty interest in the death. It hadn't made them any better. If he'd been aware enough, he'd spent every stop knowing he was there because two people who'd lived there were dead. Some of them he'd killed.
"Why?" he asked Steve. Steve had seen, and Steve hated the Games. Why had he even come? He looked Steve over again. In the back of Bucky's mind he heard his escort's voice. Smile, smile, is that really so hard to remember? Bucky dredged up the smile that would make them shut up, even if it didn't feel like it worked right. "You look bigger."