Chapter Text
The next morning Steve woke from the kind of thorough, sated sleep that only came after he’d been spectacularly laid. Of course the moment he sat up his back gave a painful spasm, pointing out just how shoddy the quality of the motel mattress was. The shower was running, and Bucky was toweling off as he stepped out of the bathroom and saw Steve stretching gingerly.
“Water’s still hot,” he offered.
It was true, and Steve was unutterably thankful for it as he stepped under the spray and let the water roll over him from his neck to his sacram. The shower curtain rustled and Bucky, still naked, stepped in behind him and began to run the knuckles of his metal hand down Steve’s lumbar curve.
They paid and Bucky warmed the car up while Steve made a quick run to Dunkins. The rain had frozen overnight, leaving the roads slick and the day miserably cold, and Steve was antsy and impatient as he waited for the woman in the purple peacoat to finish her complicated order. He let Bucky drive the few hours remaining to Jim Morita’s single-level ranch. It was just before noon when they arrived. Bucky cut the engine and sat, staring at the nondescript house like it was an alien spacecraft.
“Should I go in first?” Steve asked, “Maybe give him some warning?”
“Yes. No,” Bucky was shaking hard, “If I don't go in with you now, I don’t think I’ll be able to do it. But I shouldn’t— Morita, I don't want to scare him.”
They could have sat there all day, forever maybe, by the look on Bucky’s face. “C’mon,” Steve said, making an executive decision.
The door was opened by an adolescent girl dressed in what were probably the warmest indoor clothes she owned. “Can I help you?” she asked, eyeing them curiously.
“I’m Steve Rogers, I’m here to speak to James Morita.” From inside the house someone shouted “Zoe shut the door, it’s freakin’ freezing!” and the girl ushered them inside.
“Grandad’s watching the game, but it’s sucking pretty hard so far so I guess it’s okay to interrupt,” she said retreating down a hall towards the sound of a television.
“Thanks,” said Steve, “Could my friend use your bathroom first?” She pointed to a door halfway along the hallway and Steve gave Bucky’s hand a quick squeeze before leaving him to follow Zoe into the living room.
Jim Morita was ninety-four years old, but he had the spare sturdiness of a ninety-year-old marathon runner and shrewd eyes. Steve was relieved that the man still had the awareness to possibly be helpful— hell the guy might even be in better shape than Steve was. He sat enthroned in a leather Lazy Boy while Zoe joined two other girls of indeterminate teenage or adolescent age sprawled out on the sofa.
“So,” Morita said, muting the commercials, “You’re Steve Rogers you said? You're writing a book—truth or fiction?”
“Ah, truth,” Steve stammered, “Actually—” he was interrupted by Morita berating the girls for not making room for their guest to sit and the three stalked off truculently to make coffee and hot cocoa.
“Truth, heh. What more is there to write about the war that’s true? Take my advice, ask me your questions but then use it as wallpaper, make up something different. Something with wizards or- wait has that already been done?”
In the corner of his eye, Steve could make out Bucky shifting uneasily in the shadowy hall. “I want to ask you about James Buchanan Barnes.”
Morita’s face jerked briefly, “Captain America. He was a decent man. Not good like a saint, but decent. Bravest guy I ever met, stubborn, co*cky as sh*t although that was mostly for show.”
“This is going to sound crazy, but would you know him? If you saw him again?”
The man gave Steve a hard stare, “Son, I know those men from that time better than I know my own grandkids.”
“It’s true,” a girl’s voice hollered, “He never calls us the right name, sometimes he calls us by the dog’s name and she’s been dead since we were babies.”
“Don’t be so rude!” Jim shouted back, “Mr. Rogers is going to think your parents are raising a pack of Nosey Nancys.” From the kitchen someone muttered something about nobody using that phrase anymore and Morita turned back to Steve.
“Well?” he asked expectantly, but Steve was at a loss for words. He craned his neck to peer down the hall, and shot Bucky a pleading this-is-as-far-as-my-plan-goes look. Perplexed, Morita also leaned to get a look at the stranger lingering just outside the room. Eyes fixed on the carpet, Bucky shuffled in. Jim stared at him. Bucky stared around the room, photos, knickknacks, children’s artwork carefully framed—anywhere but at the man in the recliner. Steve stared back and forth between the two of them like a man at a tennis match.
“Sweet ever-lovin’ sh*tballs,” Morita swore softly, “Are you…. I thought Becca never had any kids.”
Bucky looked at him for the first time, “Jim. It’s me, it’s Bucky.” Morita held up a hand to cut him off. Tension rolled in Steve’s stomach.
“Don’t,” the old man commanded, “Just don’t.”
Bucky looked helplessly at Steve but Steve had no answers for him. He stayed standing awkwardly while Morita took deep, steadying breaths.
“You’re Bucky Barnes. Not his grandkid, not some clone cooked up in a lab— James Barnes, Captain America.” Bucky nodded. “Ok then, let’s see your feet.”
Steve and Bucky glanced at each other in confusion. “Come on now, kick off your shoes and lemme see your feet,” Morita insisted. Dazed, Bucky sat beside Steve on the couch and began unlacing his sneakers. He set his socks inside them and held up his feet for inspection. Steve studied them too, they looked like ordinary feet to him. Normal size for Bucky’s height, normal toes, a few callouses and— Morita was staring, transfixed, at something on the bottom of Bucky’s right foot.
The three granddaughters chose that moment to reappear with coffee. “Uh, gramps, WTF is going on?” asked on of the two who wasn’t Zoe.
“Juliette, Zoe- you girls know where my old foot locker is?” They nodded. “Go on and bring it down here, Rachel find the photo album from your grandma’s wedding.” They went, staring back at the crazy trio in the living room.
When they’d gone Jim looked at Bucky. His gaze was intent but not harsh and he asked, “Can you tell me how you got that scar on your foot?”
Bucky ran his human fingers over the scar. It started on the outside sole of his right foot, a deep indentation that hadn’t completely filled in over time, and emerged on the top of his foot like a small crater. He stared at it like he’d never seen it before. Steve had seen it, but compared with the rest of Bucky’s scars it had faded into invisibility for him.
“It was a garden stake,” Bucky said slowly, “I was climbing out a second-story window, I was carrying my shoes, and I landed on it.”
“Uh-huh, carrying your pants too I recall,” Morita agreed, “Whose window were you climbing out of?”
Bucky shot him an affronted look, “Jim, I ain’t gonna bandy a lady’s name—.” He stopped, shocked. They all looked shocked. Then Jim began to laugh. He laughed until tears rolled down his face and the girls poked their heads back in to see if their grandfather was alright. “That’s just what you told Dum Dum everytime he asked,” he chortled. Morita sighed and wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve.
“So, Captain Barnes, forgive my language sir but where the f*ck have you been?”
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Three hours later all three of them sat around Jim’s polished but seldom used dining room table. The contents of the footlocker lay spread out from end to end— comics, newsreels on 35mm, posters and letters and medals.
“The comics never mentioned the serum, nobody was supposed to know about it without high level clearance,” Jim said, “We knew of course, there’s only so many times you can watch a guy bend a tank cannon ninety degrees without suspecting he's on something more than iron supplements. And you always did run your mouth, Cap.”
Steve had spent most of his time watching Bucky’s face; every so often his mouth almost quirked in a smile, but it never quite stuck. “Did I tell you why they picked me?” he asked.
“You were an army brat, orphaned but still living on base at Camp Lehigh. And you were a clever, ornery little punk. You ran contraband into base for the men, and the officers, but you picked fights with ‘em too. The higher-ups took note, started training you when you were just fifteen.”
Steve did some quick math in his head, “So if they gave you the serum in 1940, you would have been 22, 23 maybe?”
“Yup, and don’t think that didn’t cause some hurt feelers in the beginning. Guys who’d been enlisted for years thinkin’ they should’ve been the one given the trial. But from what I heard, mostly from Howard Stark, was that the doc refused all the candidates the army offered ‘cept you, Cap.”
“Do you remember any of that, Buck?” Steve asked. Bucky shook his head no.
“I remember the war some, training. Feels like a movie I know I saw but I can’t think of the title.”
“Stark said that after Erskine’s death there was a bit of a schism— bigwigs who wanted to keep you in the lab to recreate the serum, bigwigs who wanted you out on the front bein’ America’s hero. Guess you know which side won,” Morita continued, “Not that they got to relish the victory since the first thing you did was go AWOL after us boys from the 107th.”
“Yes,” Bucky whispered, almost to himself, “Schmidt had you, and Zola. But we got out that time.”
Jim’s face was a mixture of anger and pity, “They saw what you could do, after that… I think you were a bit of an idée fixe for the both of them. In the end I wasn’t sure if it was us chasing them or them chasing us. Either way, we caught up to each other in Austria. That’s when…” he trailed off. No one spoke for a long time, then Jim slammed a fist down on the table. “Those sons of bitches! We told them and told them, you’d survived gunshots, knifings, shocks, one time a whole damn building collapsed on you- but they said there was no way you could’ve survived the fall. And they didn’t have resources to spare lookin’ for a body.”
He was shaking with long repressed anger, and Steve was grinding his teeth. Only Bucky seemed anywhere near calm. “S’okay, I think…I don't think I was down there very long. I think they wanted you all to see me die. So no one would be lookin’ for me,” he gave a humorless laugh, “Stupid place to fight, really- on a train, speeding over a ravine. Shoulda waited until it was across the bridge. Guess I never was that great at tactics.”
Jim reached over and took Bucky’s smooth, young-looking hand in his papery one, “You were a great commander, and the best friend a guy could ask for.” Bucky ducked his head and gripped Jim’s hand tighter. “Whatever I can do for you now, Cap, you only have to ask.”
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Jim offered to put them up for the night but Steve had to be in the shop the Monday morning to meet with Pepper and Stark, and Bucky, although relieved and warmed by their reception, seemed eager for some solitude. They’d just make it if they spent the night half-way again and left obscenely early the next morning. Jim sent them off with sandwiches and coffee, and the one hard copy he had of the photo of all the Howling Commandos together outside Paris.
They drove in silence, but it was an easy silence now, without the tension of questioning the truth of Bucky’s story. Bucky could have driven all night, but Steve could see the exhaustion in his face that had nothing to do with physical tiredness and they pulled over at an EconoLodge three hours north of the city. The sandwiches were long gone, and they were both hungry and cranky at finding that nothing in the neighborhood stayed open after nine. They checked in and Steve announced that he was going in search of a vending machine, arguing that a dinner of doritos and snickers was better than nothing.
Since he had so brilliantly stepped into an ankle-deep puddle of slush on the way in, he left his sneakers and padded out to the lobby in his socks. Once he found the vending nook he spent nine dollars on junk food and soda. He’d dropped everything once already and was re-gathering it all into his arms when he felt someone behind him. Kneeling to rearrange his purchases he snuck a quick look behind him and saw the same purple-coated woman from the Dunkin’ Donuts that morning. She was ignoring him, tapping at a phone but Steve’s minuscule instinct for self-preservation sat up and started baying at him. He rose to his feet and turned, smiling like a normal, friendly, oblivious guy would and saw the gun.
“Drop everything,” she said without feeling, “Back against the wall.”
Steve let everything slide from his grasp, backing away from her. The last thing in his hands was a can of Pepsi. Without thinking he threw it straight at the woman’s head, there was a deafening noise and the can exploded in fizz as the bullet passed through it. Steve ducked, barreled past her and sprinted back towards the room. The flimsy, faux-wood door stood open. There was no one inside.
