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He’s not entirely sure what he’s looking at. He’s not entirely sure what had just happened, either. Valentina, after her gracious announcement, had flocked off. If she’d been frazzled, he could barely tell. Not that he was trying, off course, in between processing what the fuck had happened. A member of the press, ever enthusiastic, shoves a microphone at his face.
“Congressman Barnes,” says the reporter. “Do you understand that your involvement with the New Avengers vacates your seat in Congress? Although, you are the first Avenger to be concurrently elected into government, which is unprecedented. Do you have any thoughts on this?”
“–do you plan on handing in your resignation?”
“–did you know you would be an Avenger when you ran your campaign–”
“–will Captain America join your–
“No comment,” he replies. He waves his hand at the second reporter, and then the third. Their shouts jumble into a stream. “No comment.”
“Excuse me,” Yelena says. “Excuse me! Alexei, come here. Talk to these people.” She shoves Alexei, who’s somehow beaming, at the reporters, and then grabs his metal arm, dragging him off to the side. They stand like that for a moment, silent.
“Are you okay?”
She laughs thinly. “Yes.”
“Yelena,” he says, because he has nothing else he can.
Something in her softens. “I am fine, James. Are you?”
“I’m fine.”
He’d seen her, in the void. Only barely a teenager with neatly braided blonde hair. He’d seen them all: the girls, lined up, with vacant eyes and straight set mouths. He’d tried to stop himself from killing the weak ones. He’d tried.
“I didn’t remember it,” he says. “They had mindwiped me.”
Yelena shakes her head. “Our brains were not with us, Yasha,” she says. “You should not blame yourself.”
“Did you know?”
She swallows. “I remember, yes. But I don’t think of that. I do not blame you. God, I need a drink. That was crazy.”
He concurs quietly, weariness growing taut in his chest.
The next couple hours are a blur. Walker suggests the Avengers Tower, now that, well. It’s theirs, in namesake. And so the Thunderbolts , which he still thinks is a better name than the New Avengers, end up back into a stripped common room of once was.
“JARVIS?”
There’s no reply. Of course there isn’t. It was a long time ago that Steve had told him about Tony Stark’s talking walls, who was named after Howard Stark’s butler. Walker looks at him funny, but Alexei, ever so jovial, turns to the walls.
“Ah! Yes, I have heard about Ironman’s great technologies.”
“What was it like?” It’s Walker. “Fighting Thanos?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
Walker rolls his eyes. “You were there, weren’t you?” He pauses and then scowls. “I saw that one clip on the news, where Sam– dare I say Captain America– talked about it. He said Rogers was about to take Thanos on alone.”
Something must show on Bucky’s face. Yelena says, “Not now, John.”
Walker glances at him. He shakes his head, laughing bitterly. “Look. I mean… I don’t– Well, I don’t mean it like that. I just mean that I don’t know why I ever thought I could be Captain America. I’d never be able to do that.”
“You never know,” Alexei replies, “until it is the right moment.”
He excuses himself from the conversation and wanders off in search of a shower. Though Valentina had renovated a lot of the place, the levels with private quarters remain untouched - there are folded towels sitting in guest bedrooms, there’s hot water, and there’s the same futuristic style Stark had always displayed. He leaves his arm on– thank you Wakandians for the waterproofed vibranium– and stands under the hot water for a while. He grabs the half empty body wash sitting there, which is supposedly marketed as Cedar and Sandalwood, and scrubs it into his skin. The grime washes off, but the unease doesn’t.
He sometimes considers himself lucky at the fact that he was mindwiped. Some of the worst things he did, gone. Though being freed from HYDRA’s control had been brought back a lot, there were still gaps – he knew of what he had done, but he had barely any tangible memory of the moments.
The Red Room girls. Sparring them. If they could last less than two minutes against him, he would snap their necks. Filter out the strongest girls, they had said. He did not remember until seeing it in the Void.
The drawer has boxers, sweatpants, and a loosely fitted grey tank top. They look like things Steve would wear. The body wash was what Steve often smelled like. This is Steve’s room. This was Steve’s room.
He sits on the neatly made bed for a while, head in his hands. He sees it, again and again. Steve and the train. The Red Room girls. Zola and that damned chair. The black. The void. The empty dull ache. There is a knock on the door, and when Bucky drags his head up, the room has darkened past sunset.
It’s Yelena at the doorway. “Yasha,” she says. “There is someone who wants to talk to you.”
A man steps into the doorframe. It’s Sam.
“Hey, man,” he says.
“Wilson,” he replies.
“I have a friend in New York,” Yelena says. Her words jilt just barely at friend . “She said she will pick up food on her way here. I didn’t know that she even remembered me until she called my phone to ask if I was okay. I will say, you Americans are very intuitive in these things.”
Sam laughs, “Glad to hear it.”
“My point is that we will have food if either one of you is hungry.”
“Thank you, Yelena.”
She turns, just about to leave. Bucky clears his throat. “Natalia lived here. Her room might be somewhere.”
Her expression falls. She glances at what he’s wearing and seems to understand. “I will look.”
Sam nudges the door shut, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve gotta say. You supersoldiers and those damn tank tops. No wonder Cap would wear them. You look good .”
Just like that, Bucky smiles genuinely for the first time in months. “Gotta honor him somehow.”
“I saw the news,” Sam continues. “I was going to call, but you’re a flaky ass motherfucker, so I caught a flight.”
“Caught a flight as in a plane or as in you flew?”
“I flew,” Sam says. “Duh.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Sam shakes his head. “That was horrifying. Straight out of a horror movie. I wasn’t even there and I got the heebie-jeebies from the footage alone. The black shadows afterward… Jesus.”
“Yeah, well,” Bucky replies. “It was nothing compared to being turned into dust particles and then coming back to fight a purple alien with otherworldly power with the stakes of the entire universe riding on it.”
Sam sends him a look. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or cynical or both. And for the record: I don’t believe you for a second. You look like shit.”
“Wow, thanks.”
Sam sobers, placing his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Seriously, though. Are you okay?”
“I was being serious. It was fine.”
“It didn’t seem fine, Buck.” He lingers for a moment, then comes to sit down on the bed next to him. “It’s okay if it wasn’t.”
“There were rooms,” he says. “Yelena called them Shame Rooms. We… I watched them. The worst moments.”
“Oh,” Sam says.
Bucky shrugs. “I’ll be fine. I am fine. Been through worse.”
They’re silent for a while. Then Sam, placing a hand on his shoulder, asks, “You’ve been through worse, yeah. But you watched that worse, man. Don’t swallow it down.”
Despite himself, Bucky laughs dryly. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was the moral of this entire thing.”
He thinks of their time in Louisiana, at Sarah’s house. He could never sleep. Somehow, sharing that one small guest room bed with Sam, he did. For those couple days, he did.
Now that Sam’s here, and now that his new teammates are gone, and now that the grime is scrubbed off, the tiredness hits. Bucky props his head back so that he’s lying down, turned away from where Sam’s still sitting. The weight of the bed shifts and then there’s a throw blanket draped over him. It’s a Steve sized one, made with thick knitted wool.
“We should go back to Louisiana and visit Sarah,” Bucky says. “I miss the seafood. You can lay down, you know. It’s weird if you’re watching me.”
Sam rolls his eyes but obeys, dipping under the blanket. “Fuck if I agree. I could use some peace.”
They lay like that for a while, Bucky turned away on his side and Sam staring up at the ceiling. It’s completely silent: no laughter flitting through, no booms, no chatter. He wasn’t there, but he can feel it: the Avengers, once, as friends. Family. Steve in this room, on this bed, reading. Sleeping. Catching up on decades worth of movies.
“I don’t think we belong here,” Bucky says. “Stark’s Tower. It should stay with his family– with his wife, Pepper. He had a daughter, too. She deserves this memory of her father more than any of us. Hell, I killed his damn parents. I shouldn’t even be here in the first place.”
“First of all, we’ve established that Stark’s forgiven you.” His tone reads as: get that train of thought out of your brain literally right now. “He sacrificed himself for us all, why wouldn’t he support a new team of Avenger’s? And I’m almost 99% sure Valentina wasn’t thinking or would give a fuck about Tony and his family. Who knows, maybe this place can be a symbol for tomorrow. It housed one set of Avengers, why couldn’t it house another?”
“Sam, we’re nothing like you. Or Steve. Or the Avengers. We’re fucked up people. We’re not superheroes.”
“Sure,” Sam replies. “But you were an Avenger. You fought Thanos. You were part of the team. I don’t see why fucked up people can’t decide to help people, too.”
“It’s different,” he says.
“I don’t really think so. If a cat was stranded on a tree, would you leave it?”
“No.”
Sam laughs, “Well, there you go.” He turns towards Bucky, sheets rustling at the movement. “I’m guessing you didn’t know?”
“No,” Bucky replies. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t have– if it was my choice, I would’ve never agreed.”
“You have a choice, Buck,” Sam offers. “I’m not saying leave. But the times where you had no say over what happened to you are over. It’s up to you.”
“I don’t know. I hated being a Congressman, too. I don’t want to be the Winter Soldier anymore. I just want to make some good change – not the type with fifteen different variables pushing fifteen different agendas at the cost of people.”
“You have a choice,” Sam repeats. “It’s up to you .”
“Let’s go to Louisiana.”
“I agree with that choice.”
“Thank you for coming, Sam.”
“Of course.” Sam reaches out and squeezes his shoulder, and while Bucky cannot see him from where he’s turned on his side, he can imagine the man’s expression: kind, sharp, thoughtful as always. “Although, I have to ask. Walker? Really, Buck?”
Bucky laughs. “Look. I had no idea until I pulled up in that damn motorcycle. He’s not all that bad though, Wilson. Maybe a little misguided– a lot misguided, actually, but he’s just… he’s a man who tried and failed at being what Steve could be. A lot of people would try. And fail, too.”
“Yeah, okay. I believe you, man.”
“You deserve the shield, Sam. I’m glad it finally got nailed into your head. I mean, who else would be able to talk down a US President turned red huge hulk?”
“Shut up.”
“What’s next? For us, I mean. For the world, for the Avengers, for Captain America?”
“That’s a lot of questions I have absolutely no answer to,” Sam replies. “Who knows? We’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah,” says Bucky. “We will.”