narrative; bucky barnes WHO: Bucky Barnes WHEN: Tuesday, April 21st, afternoon WHERE: The bathroom attached to his apartment WHAT: Bucky makes a couple personal changes. It goes well. WARNING(S): None! Unless you've got a thing about haircuts. (No judgement, I also have a thing about haircuts.)
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Bucky wasn't usually one to dwell, but when there weren't many thoughts to move onto, dwelling was inevitable.
The things that bald man (Solas) had said about his hair had taken up residence in the back of Bucky's brain. It nagged at him anytime he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. HYDRA had kept him blank, sheltered, but not stupid; he knew that personal expression was, he knew it was something meant for other people. They kept his mind so busy, so full of what they wanted, that he'd never had the chance to think on it.
He didn't recognize the person who looked back at him in the mirror, but he never did. Before now, Bucky remembered glimpses of his own face in the reflection of a tank, but nothing more than that. Things came back every day, but they were always clips of memories, they came in with one or two senses but not for all five. He'd remember the way his sisters laughed and the feeling of their small hands in his, but not the way they looked that day. He'd remember Steve's hand moving over a paper in an art class, but not the sound of the pencil scraping.
(There was a smell, unconnected to everything else, distinctly feminine and accompanied by the sound of sheets sliding over a comforter -- the only memory with smell and sound and sight, and all he remembered was red hair, tucked behind an ear, sticking to sweaty skin in strands. It was all too intimate for words, so he didn't try to use any.)
The name Bucky Barnes tasted wrong, but he was forcing himself to use it. He didn't remember a name, barely connected with the codename they'd given him, and he knew he needed something to hang onto to keep him from floating away. Bucky Bucky Bucky. On days like today, he'd linger in the bathroom, leaning against the sink and glaring at himself in the mirror and trying to will himself into familiarity. Once he tried to smile, and it was even weirder.
James Buchanan Barnes. James "Bucky" Barnes. Sergeant James Barnes. Bucky Bucky Bucky.
He tried writing it down, and he still had trouble. Maybe that even made it worse; writing it down seemed to take the words out of his mouth and his brain and keep them separate, so he stopped trying that, too.
Today he was doing it again, staring into his own eyes, his ragged hair hanging in scraggly strands and framing his face. It occurred to him that Bucky Barnes hadn't looked so strung out. He'd seen the photographs in the memorial; Sergeant Barnes had been clean-shaven. He'd had short hair, his back had been straight. He chewed the inside of his cheek -- one of the only fidgets he could get away with, it was nearly imperceptible -- and gave it another moment of thought before reaching for his knife, tugging it out of his boot.
With one hand fisted in his hair, wrapping it up in a messy ponytail, Bucky reached behind himself and sawed the knife through the hair at the nape of his neck. For a second he smelled perfume, heard the quiet clip of scissors, recognized a childhood trim while chunks of his hair fell past his skin and onot the floor.
He hacked at it until he resembled the Bucky in the museum, and each section that came free was another moment of deja vu. Another sound. Another smell.