Bucky stood around the entrance, but only because it was mandatory. The teachers, or most of them, seemed to be lingering around the quad or elsewhere. Director Fury and his assistant were at the front handing out folders and welcoming the cast of… characters showing up. Characters indeed, he thought, shielding his blue eyes from what seemed to him to be a star brought alive.
A little unsettling. He frowned and took his relaxed stance up again, shrugging it off. The world was filled with a lot he didn’t understand these days, simple things, to cultural references to… aliens, apparently. It had been a long time for him… he spent so long locked in the shadows, watching and only interacting to fulfill… end, things. His mission, no, the Winter Soldier’s missions.
He scowled at the turn of thought, watching as someone with speed even great than Steve’s appeared. Maybe it was good he was here for ‘initiation’ day. He could see, somewhat, what people were capable of.
The school hadn’t opened until today, but Bucky had been here with Steve for awhile. Mostly, he assumed, because Fury didn’t know where else to put the ex-assassin besides jail. Steve, Bucky knew, was the only reason he wasn’t locked up somewhere.
Steve who he’d run from, when he regained the sudden surge of memories of being the Winter Soldier, and he'd left when he knew Steve wouldn't be able to stop him.
He should have known Steve wouldn't simply let it be. Would he really do so different if the positions were reversed? Bucky wouldn't. But then again, his own grasp on who he was... or who he had been, was so shaky and flawed he was hardly the best judge on the matter. Part of him hadn’t been able to face Steve with the sudden knowledge, and so he’d panicked and ran. Things were… alright, he hoped. Bucky wanted to remember things, act like things were still like they were, back when things were still normal.
But that was a long time ago, for both of them. Bucky raised his metal arm, hidden beneath his jacket and glove and slowly clenched it into a fist. Maybe it was too different, between them two. Too different a world, and far too different experiences they shared now. Steve hadn't changed, really, he was still that same punk doing whatever he thought was right with no remorse, with no regard to himself. Bucky could hardly figure out what he had been, much less what he was now.
He looked on the students arriving, reminding himself to be less negative about it all. Perhaps Steve and he could go back to some resemblance of themselves. To how they'd been... when Bucky's hands were not so stained, his sins sunk through to his bones, unremovable, uncountable.
Hell, he didn't even have the same hands, and wasn't that the truth. James Barnes was probably never going to come back from what the Winter Soldier had done, and he still didn’t know how to face the one person he respected most in the world anymore and pretend everything was the same.
Not when he didn't even have answers for him, when he was hardly more than a ghost of the man Steve remembered so fondly, and not when he wasn't worthy of the friendship they'd had anymore.
He still couldn't shake the sheer, awful horror as he'd looked down at the swollen face of Steve and recognized him... of the guy who never backed out of a fight. The stupid punk who wanted to run into every fight, who wouldn't back down even against the odds of an entire nation of evil, of Hydra, of Nazi's, or Red Skull... certain death or alley way bullies couldn't break that will of his. But Bucky had done that. He'd made Steve, his friend, his brother... back down from a fight. That stupid punk... who'd just sat there and taken a beating from Bucky until he pulled him to the surface.
The miserable dwelling he’d given into was halted, suddenly, at the appearance of her. Natalia. Or… at least that’s what he thought her name was. He didn’t know why she was here, he didn’t even really know who she was. She’d been here before today, and when he first ran into her, at a breakfast they’d put together… he didn’t recognize her. He’d noticed her, like you would any pretty dame… but he didn’t know her. He didn’t… he didn’t think he’d recognized her anyways. It wasn’t until later, when he had a run in with a bunch of thugs from Hydra, when he’d fought half of them and then realized he was becoming more like the Winter Soldier again that he really saw her.
She’d come swooping in, to finish the fight. For him? He did not know. But her name had slipped from his lips so easily, so familiarly, and yet she was entirely foreign to him. But she’d called him Winter, shown up with the Hydra thugs… what else could he have thought except that she was one of them? That she was here to take him back, that she must have been some previous handlers, that they’d found him, that they wanted their soldier back. With the moves and ruthless way she’d killed those thugs.
Bucky had jumped to conclusions, pinned her down and threatened her. But… he should have ended her. Something hesitated him, maybe his conscious. Maybe something else. Maybe it was the way that as he continued to hesitate, to feel like he shouldn’t be doing that… that she said his name.
"You're nothing more than an ungrateful idiot, James. One that breaks his promises!"
She’d called and he’d been taken aback. No one called him James, really. His mother... Rebecca or the twins sometimes but he'd grown a shine to Bucky after he and Steve became fast friends. Also why not Winter Soldier, if she were one of them?
But... his sudden hesitation was from more than simply his name... it was the way she said it. It seemed so familiar. The angry look, covering something else up, some vulnerability, that seemed to sink into his chest, too.
Like it was personal, even if he had nothing to go off of. That feeling from before returned, like he was forgetting something, and he almost decided it had been to do with her. Did he know her in another capacity during his time as the Winter Soldier? He still didn’t know what it had been. She’d thrown him off, in a show of skill, and had run off without a word. He’d called after her, asked how he knew her… and he hadn’t seen her much since.
Once or twice around, and he found himself looking for her… but she dodged or avoided him every time. He looked around at everyone and he wondered if she’d be able to slip off now… was it something he should do?
Yes, he thought, he wanted to know how he knew her. She must know, if he called her by his name. If she spoke so familiarly with him. Jessy753
