Prompt Post 1

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At least one of the characters in your prompt must have been in Captain America: The First Avenger or Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

As of May 3, 2014, the spoiler policy is no longer in effect.

Update, April 22, 2014:
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Fill: And I Am Always with You, Part 31

[lauralot]

The room where they say he will see Steve has three doors, each leading into a hallway. Sam assures the Soldier that at least two exits will remain clear at all times should he need to leave. If he becomes overwhelmed, panicked, tired, if he thinks he will become violent, or if he experiences anything else that necessitates assistance or solitude, Sam says all he need do is speak or sign "stop."

The Soldier thinks that he would sign it. It isn't that he has lost his understanding of English, but his body is all misfiring nerves and the words won't travel through his throat.

The room has two chairs, nearly at opposite corners. Sam directs him to one and when he sits, there is a door to his side and a full view of the room before him.

"You sure you feel up to this?" Sam asks. "Steve will understand if you need more time."

"Да." He nods right after the word leaves his mouth, wishing he could take it back. These people aren't Russian. Steve, he thinks, is not happy with the Soldier's previous handlers. Speaking the language he used primarily with HYDRA around Steve and his friends is unwise. They may not punish him for it—though they should; he is programmed to learn through pain—but that doesn't absolve him of such a careless, stupid mistake.

"Okay," Sam says. He has a way of making the word sound as if things are okay, as if the Soldier hasn't been sloppy or inefficient or any of his other many flaws. "I'll go get Steve, all right?"

He just nods this time.

Sam leaves the room and the Soldier reviews the exits. He examines the walls and considers his options for escape should the doors become blocked: the air vent is too narrow, so he would need to break down a door or put his arm through the wall. He begins a mental list of every nonlethal method he has to disable a man, crossing off the items that result in grievous but survivable bodily harm.

"It's good to see you, Bucky."

Steve is sitting down, smiling and tall and

[миссия]

perfect. There is no sign of bruising where the Soldier held his throat. He didn't expect there to be bruising because Steve heals the way the Soldier does, only better, but he stares at the lack of it anyway as it is easier than meeting Steve's eyes. He thinks he should nod, say "You too." He thinks James Buchanan Barnes wouldn't have to think of an answer.

The Soldier offers a small and hesitant wave that halts almost as quickly as it begins because he is using his left hand. He thinks Steve is probably does not like that hand, so he drops it back into his lap and covers it with the other.

You too, he tries, but the words won't come. They might be a lie even if he could speak them, as he is thinking of ways to kill Steve without meaning to and so it is not that good to see him. Even if this is the best thing since soup, and maybe better.

He raises his eyes just long enough to meet Steve's smile before he looks away again, and it is definitely better than soup.

"I'm really happy you decided to come here, Bucky." The words sound genuine, if careful and soft. "I never got a chance to thank you for saving me. I'm proud of you."

His мастера don't require his acknowledgement, even for praise.

[But he's my friend too]

With another nod, the Soldier risks a second glance up.

Steve is somehow both the most familiar face the Soldier knows and the strangest. He has at best a handful of memories, fragments he has yet to order into a coherent picture, and so many of them are the other Steve, the smaller one. His mind still struggles to accept that such a transformation is possible. He thinks of the small Steve, the one who introduced him to water in Brooklyn, and wonders why Steve does not stay that way. It would make it easier to stop thinking of him as the mission.

But it would also leave him more exposed.

Big or small, the Soldier thinks Barnes would be able to read that face and some of that ability remains in him. He thinks Steve is honestly happy to see him, and he thinks that knowledge comes partly from the man's expression and not just the certainty that Steve doesn't lie. But there is more there than just happiness. Caution and maybe worry and other things.

It is safer not to meet his face, so the Soldier drops his gaze again. He finds himself staring at Steve's hands. For a moment he thinks of those hands hitting him, suffocating, but then he remembers pencils. He remembers paper and smudges of graphite and eraser shavings.

"Вы—" He stops, tries again. "You…draw?"

"Yeah. I was in art school, before we—before everything. I still do. I don't have any sketches from back then, but—"

The Soldier thinks of the Smithsonian and Wikipedia. He thinks of a book of pictures but his mind won't recall the word. "You have phone?"

Steve takes the phone from his pocket. The Soldier doesn't bother to scrutinize his expression this time, preoccupied with the memory. "Do you want to see it? Should I bring it to you or do you want to—"

The Soldier beckons him with the right hand this time, takes the phone. Steve begins to walk away, but the phone switches to the metal hand and the right hand intertwines with the Steve's. "Пожалуйста, оставайтесь." He needs information, and what use is pulling it up on the phone if Steve won't be able to see the screen?

He navigates to Wikipedia, finds the picture of the book—the comic, that's what it is called—with Captain America and the young Bucky Barnes in the outfit that is not regulation on its cover. "You draw?"

Steve leans over to examine the image and laughs. The Soldier likes the sound. "Those? No, I didn't. The USO came up with that. See, they thought if you were depicted as a kid, then the kids back home would be more likely to buy 'em. I knew you'd hate it, so I tried to keep it hushed up, but then Dum-Dum found out and gave you hell for it, and I'd never seen you that mad—"

He is still talking and the Soldier tries to hear the words, both because he is meant to listen when he is spoken to and because he thinks he would like the story, but he can't focus because he is remembering.

He remembers a child on a military base. She couldn't have been older than nine and she was staring at Steve, because everyone did. Lord knows Bucky had done his fair share of staring before his mind had been able to reconcile his scrawny punk of a friend with this chiseled god whom Bucky had to raise his head to look in the eye. She had a magazine or something rolled up in her hands and she'd been staring at Steve for the past five minutes with no sign of approaching.

Steve was as good at recognizing attention from little girls as he was from dames, which was to say, not at all. So Bucky had to take action before some kid felt snubbed by Captain America. It was necessary, really. "Hey, little lady. What's your name?"

"Betty." She twisted the thing in her hands. "What's yours?"

He tipped his hat. "Bucky Barnes, at your service."

If her eyes were big before, now they were the size of saucers. She giggled. "Ooh, Bucky, you're so tall!"

He recognized what she was holding then. One of those damn comic books that had him running around in short pants and hose. As a kid sidekick. One of those rags none of the Commandos were allowed to mention anymore unless they wanted him to stop covering their asses from enemy fire. He would grit his teeth, but it wasn't the kid's fault she had terrible taste. "I drank a lotta milk," he said, and vowed to hit Steve later for the giggling he could hear from behind. "Something we can do for you, Betty?"

She unrolled the comic, held it out. "Could you—could you two sign my book, please?"

"Anything for a pretty lady," he said.

Later, after she was done blurting out thank yous, she lingered, looking them over. "Bucky?"

"Yeah?"

"Where are your tights?"

He managed to stammer out something about laundry, and further managed not to slap the shit out of Steve for his damn chuckling until the kid was well out of earshot.

The Soldier bites his tongue. He sets the phone down on the arm of the chair, untangling his hand from Steve's. He half hears Steve's words—"Bucky, what's wrong, tell me what you need"—but he doesn't answer them. With a mumble of "Мне нужно, чтобы оставить" he is out of the room, running. His chest and throat are burning with sound he won't let slip, hands clamped over his mouth to keep him silent.

It isn't until he is in the room where he sleeps, door closed and face shoved into the blankets, that he allows himself to laugh, to howl with sound until tears are running down his face. It's funny, Bucky Barnes was so, so funny, but HYDRA beat the laughter out of him nearly a century ago and to express it out loud is to earn punishment.

So he stays that way, laughing until his ribs ache and his throat feels raw. He remembers after the computer that can hear his every sound and no doubt reports back to the men, but no one comes to recalibrate or reprimand him. Maybe laughter is allowed here. It wasn't in the book of emotions, but he thinks what he's feeling is hope.

Re: Fill: And I Am Always with You, Part 31

[hawthornsybil]

oh Bucky :(

Re: Fill: And I Am Always with You, Part 31

[lauralot]

Bucky Barnes, Human Disaster.