He was quiet since his arrival. It wasn’t terribly hard to find him, not with the skills the Soldier had. His search for himself brought him to New York, to Brooklyn. From there it wasn’t hard. Pieces came back, flickers of memory like sunlight pouring through the blinds, like an old movie reel. He knew his name was James Buchanan Barnes, called Bucky by friends. He knew he served in the war, he read so very much about the man he used to be, but it still didn’t feel like his past.
Arriving on Steve’s doorstep he felt like a ghost stepping into another’s life. There was just something so familiar about him… It was more than pictures in the museum and captions in books that told him he knew Steve. They’d been friends, brothers before and something of that lingered. How else could such a brief meeting in the midst of fighting trigger the breakdown of decades of brainwashing?
It was hard to go from being a thing to being a person. It was hard to make decisions on his own after being at the whim of others for so long. It left him quiet, unsure what to expect when he showed up at Steve’s apartment. He’d been staying in shelters, in houses left empty by people on holiday or away for work. He stole some clothes that fit and enough money to eat for a few days at a time, nothing significant. He was still lost, toiling with his own mind and forging his own identity. He’d not yet reached the point where he wanted to reach out with both hands and take back the life Hydra took from him.
That made him easy to wrangle, easy to usher to the bathroom and strip of his foul-smelling clothes. Not a word of question or protest came when he was guided to the shower nor when Steve stepped in behind him and began to peel the dirt and grime away layer by layer as if he might find the old Bucky hiding underneath.
no subject
Arriving on Steve’s doorstep he felt like a ghost stepping into another’s life. There was just something so familiar about him… It was more than pictures in the museum and captions in books that told him he knew Steve. They’d been friends, brothers before and something of that lingered. How else could such a brief meeting in the midst of fighting trigger the breakdown of decades of brainwashing?
It was hard to go from being a thing to being a person. It was hard to make decisions on his own after being at the whim of others for so long. It left him quiet, unsure what to expect when he showed up at Steve’s apartment. He’d been staying in shelters, in houses left empty by people on holiday or away for work. He stole some clothes that fit and enough money to eat for a few days at a time, nothing significant. He was still lost, toiling with his own mind and forging his own identity. He’d not yet reached the point where he wanted to reach out with both hands and take back the life Hydra took from him.
That made him easy to wrangle, easy to usher to the bathroom and strip of his foul-smelling clothes. Not a word of question or protest came when he was guided to the shower nor when Steve stepped in behind him and began to peel the dirt and grime away layer by layer as if he might find the old Bucky hiding underneath.
“Okay,” he answered, voice flat and distant.