Monster

I knew that I had scared Barnes off or maybe he scared himself. There was a possibility that he wouldn’t show himself to me again. Or to Steve. So we decided that if a full month had gone by without his return, we would go with a false breakup plan and I would then have to figure out how to pay my mortgage.

Romanoff said to treat the mission like a vacation, but that wasn’t an easy thing to do. I hated waitressing more than I hated studying medical terms. But I had to keep up with the charade that I was just a simple waitress named Jo with a simple little house and a simple little life, who just happened to spend the night with Captain America a couple times a week.

A few days after Barnes’ visit, Steve left early in the morning and told me he wouldn’t be able to come back. He was heading out of town. My nerves about Barnes coming back had waned. So I didn’t react the same way when I walked into the living room and found him standing by my couch. I just stopped short in my tracks and made my sneakers squeak against the floor.

“You came back,” I said.

“Yes,” he replied simply.

“Can I check your arm?”

“Yes.”

I motioned for him to sit down on the couch and he sat with his spine ramrod straight. I took the seat beside him and pulled the zipper down until I revealed the wound that I had tried to stitch. It was swollen and puffy now, but healing. I had stitched enough of it so that it would heal properly, but it would leave a scar. He had removed the thread and needle with something sharp and blunt. A longer piece was still hanging from the last stitch and loose at the end.

“It looks okay,” I told him. “It would be better if I could have finished it, but it doesn’t look infected. You’ll have to come back in a few days so I can take the stitches out.” Then I pulled his arm all the way out of the sweater to assess the broken wrist. The bandage was already dirty and frayed. I pulled it off and looked at his swollen wrist.

“You should have removed the bandage when it started to swell,” I told him. “Or at least let it breathe. I would have had enough time to tell you that if you weren’t in such a hurry to leave last time.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well lucky for you I got you something.” I stood up and went to the kitchen to get the bag I’d stuck in my first-aid kit. When I came back he was still sitting on the couch, watching me cautiously. I sat down beside him and opened the grocery bag. “I had a wrist brace for carpel tunnel but my wrists are smaller than yours. So I got you a new one.” I ripped the tag off of the brace and pulled his arm onto my lap. Then I wrapped it around his hand and secured it. “If it starts to swell up again I’d advise you to give it some breathing room. Or you can come back here and I can help you put some ice on it.” I let him go and he pulled his arm back through the sweater sleeve.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

I sat up and looked over his face now that I could. He was still wearing the baseball cap and his brown hair was secured at the back of his head by a cheap rubber band, like the kind you peel off newspapers. The room was lit enough for me to see his face though, and I could make out more of his features. He had almost a full beard and he seemed tired and dirty. He kept his eyes away from mine. My guess was that he didn’t like eye contact.

“You’re welcome, Bucky,” I replied. “Now will you tell me what happened?” I knew it was a risk asking him again since that was the conversation that set him off before, but I also knew it was important for me to make sure no one had been killed.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Jo. My name is Johanna. Jo for short. Now will you tell me what happened to you, Bucky?”

“It was him. Captain America. He broke my arm.”

“I figured. Since it happened around the same time. What about the cut?”

“I didn’t kill them,” he said. “I didn’t mean to hurt them. But I didn’t kill them.”

“Well, that’s good then. That’s progress, right?” He turned his dark gaze on me.

“Progress towards what?”

“Do you want to kill people, Bucky?” I decided it was best to keep using his nickname. Maybe it would spark some memories. Maybe it would just help him differentiate between James Barnes and The Winter Soldier.

“I don’t know.” I sighed heavily.

“What do you remember? Do you remember anything from… before HYDRA?”

“Sometimes. Falling. Snow. Faces. Voices.” I nodded slowly.

“Steve told me that you fell from a train.”

“I remember the train.”

“Do you remember anything else? Anything concrete?”

“I remember lying in the snow. Screaming. Alone.” He said it darkly and flatly and without emotion. I didn’t know how to respond. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder and comfort him, but he didn’t seem to like physical contact.

“If you remember that… then you’ll probably remember more. You just have to give it time,” I reassured him.

“He said that we were friends. I saw… at the museum. I saw my name and my face.”

“Yeah, he called you his brother. Not by blood but by everything else. You were all each other had. And you’re still… all each other has.”

“He has you.” I was startled for a moment, having almost forgotten that part. Then I gave a quick nod.

“Yeah, he has me… sometimes. But it’s not the same. I’m not his family. I don’t have any connection to that part of his life. He doesn’t love me like he loves you.” His eyes glanced at mine again.

“Maybe he’s afraid of you,” he offered.

“I don’t think there’s any reason for anyone to be afraid of me.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“No,” I admitted.

“I’m a monster. You should be.”

“You’re not a monster.”

His metal arm reached for me again. I froze, but the hand just gently brushed the cardigan off my shoulder, revealing the black and purple bruises he’d left on my skin.

“I hurt you,” he observed.

“You didn’t mean it,” I replied.

“Yes, I did.”

“You’re hardly the first person to put bruises on my skin.”

“I know,” he said as he looked into my eyes again. His were dark, and sometimes I would see him slide out of focus and his eyes appeared almost empty, but they were focused now. “I can see it,” he said.

I reached up to lift his metal hand from my shoulder. He jerked away but I wrapped my fingers around his and pulled his gloved hand onto my lap, where I enveloped his hand in both of mine. I figured he probably couldn’t feel me. But he could see me, and that was what was important to me.

“Did I hurt you again?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “You just underestimate the strength of your arm. You’ll get used to it. And you won’t hurt me again, right?”

“I meant to hurt you. I wanted to hurt you.”

“But you didn’t want to kill me. You could have.”

“I wasn’t told to kill you. I had no reason to do so.”

“But you were told to kill Steve and you didn’t.” His grip on my hands tightened painfully. I winced but didn’t let go. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

“I failed.”

“You didn’t fail. You did the right thing. That’s called free will. Not killing either of us was free will. That’s progress, Bucky.”

“You know what they did… what they made me. A monster.” I pulled one of my hands free from his tight grip.

“Can I touch your face again?”

He nodded so I reached out and held his cheek against the palm of my hand. Gentleness is what he needed and I doubted he had been this close to another person, who wasn’t hurting him, in a long time. They had been right about him needing gentleness. He couldn’t have talked to Steve because he would either have tried to complete his mission or the information would have overwhelmed him. He would have lashed out. He needed warmth. He needed Jo, and I didn’t want to think of what was going to happen when he found out Jo wasn’t really this warm and soft. Jo was broken too. But maybe he already knew that. Maybe that’s why he came to me.

“You’re not a monster,” I told him as I made him look at me. He searched my eyes with that confused and maybe even pained expression. “What happened to you, what they did to you,” I felt his grip on my hand tighten even more and I took a deep breath before continuing, “That was wrong. And right now, you don’t really know the difference between right and wrong. But your memories will start to make sense. And they’ll start to come back. You can be Bucky again.”

“Who has the right to say what’s right and wrong?” he asked me. “What if I’m not Bucky?”

“Then you learn how to be the man you want to be. Whether it’s Bucky or someone else. You’ll learn how to live again. You’ll learn how to tell the difference and control your arm. You’ll learn how to sort through everything they put in your head.”

“How do you know that?” I sighed heavily and put my hand back down, locking it around his metal one.

“Because I had to do that too. Not exactly the same as you. No one forced my memories from me. No one put anything in my head. But…” I reached up and pulled down the cardigan to reveal the scars on my left side. His right hand moved and cupped my shoulder, his thumb traced over the damaged skin. Call me crazy, but it was nice to be touched. “I didn’t go through what you went through. But I know what it’s like to wake up and not know who you are and wonder if your memories really belong to you. I know what it’s like to detach from yourself. And… things will never be exactly as they were. And maybe you’ll never live a full life. But you’ll live. And that’s what’s important. Do you want to live, Bucky?” He looked directly into my eyes again.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then it’s progress.”

He removed his hand from mine and returned it to his own lap. I saw him flexing his fingers gain, testing them or suppressing something. But he didn’t appear hostile so I kept my distance and waited for him to speak.

“I have to go,” he finally said.

“You can stay here,” I told him. “I have an extra room and you can shower.”

“I can’t.” He stood up and walked toward the hallway. I hurried after him.

“Promise me that you’ll come back?” I asked. He paused by the kitchen archway and turned around to face me, but his eyes were searching the walls again.

“I’ll come back when the stitches heal. I don’t know how to remove them,” he said. I nodded.

“I can work with that.”

“I have to go.” He turned and opened the back door as if he already knew my house front to back. Truth was that he probably did. He disappeared into the yard and left the screen open. I followed him but the yard was dark when I reached it and the neighbor’s porch light wasn’t on. So I shut the door and didn’t bother to lock it.

Notes

And that's the reason why I kept coming back to this title. But I'm actually glad I stuck with this title in the end, because if this sequel plays out then it will work perfectly with the title for that one. And so I no longer have any regrets. Sometimes things happen for reasons, I suppose.

Back to forever crying over Bucky Barnes.


*Edited*