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You’re twenty years old, and the moment that he’s in your arms and he looks into your eyes, you know that he’s going to break your heart. He waves his tiny fists, and opens his tiny mouth in a yawn, and when he closes it again it looks like a tiny, pink, pale rosebud, the same color that graced the roses that his father left on your bedroom sidetable. You don’t know where your husband got them, or how they got in here, because he’s not allowed in the room yet – the midwife is terrifying, apparently. It’s just you and your little man, who has your heart in his miniature fist, and you can feel it tug every time he waves it.
You kiss the top of his head and breathe in his milky smell, all cleaned up, and you smile, even though you know it’s true: James Buchanan Barnes is going to break your heart into smithereens one day.
~~~~
He’s five, suddenly; it’s like you blinked and that precious, sweet time when you are his whole world is suddenly gone, melted away in a haze of games and stories and mealtimes. His father tries, but his father works like a maniac to support the three of you, and you sometimes get annoyed at it. But then Bucky – he doesn’t like to be called James, he started with Bucky and even now, right at the cusp of some childhood independence, he still prefers it – doesn’t seem to mind. Sure he loves his daddy. But he loves you more.
But then he starts to grow up, the cord around your heart winding around the neighborhood as he takes it with him, coming home with a dirty nose and filthy knees and his hat never on straight. “Mama,” he’ll say while you’re trying to convince him to wash up for supper, “do you want to hear what I did today?”
You do. You always do, while you rinse Brooklyn right off of him, the entire borough rinsing down the drain. You don’t mind washing him in the tub, right in the kitchen, but he does, he always fights the bath, so today it’s not a bath but just a good scrubbing, until his face and hands sparkle even as dust covers every other part of him. “Tell me,” you say, as you brush his hair back, to look him in the eye.
“I made a new friend, he’s a swell fella, his name is Steven Grant Rogers, but I think I’m gonna call him Steve,” Bucky announces. You think for a second – you know a Sarah Rogers, from church, she lives a couple of streets down, but you haven’t ever spoken to her. You think about her little boy, a tiny skinny thing, with big blue eyes and floppy blonde hair and ears like an elephants that you hope he’ll grow into. “I think he’s gonna be my best friend,” Bucky announces.
“Good for him,” you think. If you knew, if you knew more, if you could see into the future by some miracle, you might wonder if this was always what God intended. Good for Steve, to have a friend like Bucky. You never really consider it the other way around.
Steve Rogers shows up at your apartment a few days later, lanky and tiny all at once, his breathing rattling in his chest. “Thank you for having me over,” he says, politely, and Bucky laughs at that. His laugh is infectious, and it breaks even Steve’s sort of serious air.
You notice he has a split lip.
“Did you fall over?” you ask, getting something sweet from a cupboard, some forbidden treat. Bucky is already making a beeline for the table – he knows what comes when you go to that corner of the kitchen – and Steve looks a little surprised. “Um,” he starts, like maybe he didn’t expect this line of questioning.
“No,” Bucky says, swinging his legs. “He saw Elliott Spencer pulling on a cat’s tail and he told him to stop, and when Elliott Spencer told him to make him, he pushes him, and then-“
You look over at Steve, whose face is bright red, now. “You should have seen that cat, Mrs. Barnes,” he says, and you put a slice of apple cake in front of him. Little boys and cake. “Anyway, it’s Bucky who really saved the day.”
You smile and ruffle Bucky’s hair, but he’s looking at Steve as though the other boy hung the moon.
~~~~~
Sarah Rogers is so grateful that Steve has a friend, that she sits with you at church every Sunday, your husband on the other side of you. The boys are giggling, two giggling boys in altar boy robes, trying to stay quiet. You don’t know what they’re giggling over, but you watch the priest shush them and they giggle harder. They’re seven. Everything makes them act like this, but you have to admit that this makes you smile.
Sarah even offers to help watch Rebecca, if “you and Mr. Barnes want a night to yourselves,” she says with a smile. Rebecca is a year old, and she’s different than Bucky, more of a handful. You want to say you love her as much, you feel like a terrible mother otherwise, but Bucky has a piece of your heart, he walks around with it every day. You love Rebecca, but she’s your husband’s delight, he’s enamored with her, and maybe that makes you feel better about how much your son absorbs you.
It’s the middle of mass when the boys, giggling, topple a censor and incense spills everywhere. You’re startled, but you’re even more startled when both boys look up, in unison, at the priest, who looks down at them in horror. You’re about to stand up and go over there, you don’t care if it makes you a spectacle, but then both boys are running like a shot down the aisle.
Steve, predictably, trips on the long hem of his robe, but before he can fall, Bucky grabs him and they keep going. Everyone in church is silent for a moment, and Sarah sinks a bit in the pew.
Your husband is the first one to start laughing.
~~~~~
The first time that Steve gets pneumonia, Bucky spends the entire week so worried that he throws up. You spend a night rubbing his back, pressing a hot compress against his head, and feeling a knot swell in your throat. They’re eight. They’re too young for this. Bucky holds onto your skirt and it’s the first time in three years he’s done this, the first time since he left that sweet dream of babyhood for the rough reality of boyhood that he’s whimpered “mama,” like maybe he’s your baby again, like maybe his world has narrowed to the fine point of just you. “What if Steve dies,” he whimpers, then, and he’s crying.
It feels like someone took a pincushion and slammed it against your heart. It’s not that he loves Steve more than you – you know better, maybe, you tell yourself - it’s that he’s too young to know about this, to worry about this, to think that someone he loves is dying. He sobs out, “I don’t want him to die, mama, I don’t want him to die-“ and you think of how broken inside Sarah must feel, to watch her son struggle for each rattling breath.
You take Bucky to church once he’s stopped crying and he lights a candle, clumsily but by himself, and he sits in the pew and clasps his hands together in whispered, soggy prayer. You catch some of it, the last grasping words of it, “God, don’t take him, please, you can have me instead,” and this time it’s not a pincushion but a sure deft blade of a knife against your ribs.
Steve improves.
You thank God for that, because he’s a little boy and he’s sweet, but you immediately book Bucky’s day solid after you’re sure he’s fine. All his days. From dawn until dusk, Bucky is babysitting or cleaning or helping you fix a stubborn clogged sink, and every time you see Steve come by, dirty nose and suspenders crooked, you tell him that sorry, Bucky is busy.
This lasts for a week before Sarah Rogers storms her way to your apartment while the boys are at school (Bucky is a full grade ahead, being a full year older, so that’s not a danger), her nurse’s uniform pristine and hemmed and ironed, smelling of antiseptic. She has the look of a marauding army, and you suddenly understand all the fierce and loyal troublemaking tendencies of her son, not inherited from his long-dead father, but from his staunch and unrelenting mother.
“Do you have a problem with my boy?” she asks, without beating around the bush, without saying hello. She takes a breath that sounds just a touch painful. “Because he came crying to me that you hate him-“
That surprises you into a response. “I don’t hate-“
“He cries himself to sleep, and God knows he needs it after this latest bout with being sick-“
“No, please, I never-“
“And Bucky’s the only dependable friend he has, so if you have a problem with my boy, you need to tell me and we’re going to fix it right now,” she finishes, with a look on her face like she isn’t taking any nonsense over it. You get the sense that no matter what you say, no matter how you word the fear of Steve’s poor health, of his clear inability to live to the age of sixteen, you’ll never convey how much this terrifies you on Bucky’s behalf.
The fact is that you know that the terror for your son probably doesn’t compare to Sarah’s terror for hers, her delicate, sharp, polite, smart-talking little boy, who is so kind and consistent to anyone who he thinks need it and is so quick to fight for them. You manage just not to cry, you manage because you cannot face this woman, who is on her own, who works all hours to support her son when you spend all your time taking care of your children, who are both healthy. “I’m sorry,” you finally manage to whisper, feeling weak and lightheaded about it.
“What is going on?” Sarah demands, softer now. You think she can sense your sudden pause, the way that your breath is coming faster, that the weakness in you calls to the nurse in her.
You don’t want to admit it, but something about this demands honesty, so finally you do, looking down. “I just don’t want Bucky to suffer, if Steve-“ you begin, but you can’t finish, and when you look up, there is something that is one part sympathetic and one part furious in Sarah’s face.
But she shakes her head a bit, and the anger disappears. “My son is a fighter,” she says, “and yours makes him fight harder. Please don’t take that away from him.”
That plea, as simple as it is, resonates with you in a way you don’t fully understand, so you nod, and that day when Bucky comes home, trudging and looking at you like you’ve taken away sunlight, you set him free.
When he comes back that night he doesn’t fight his bath, and he presses a kiss to your cheek, damp and warm and smelling of clean soap and milky little-boy skin, and he holds your heart even tighter against his own.
~~~~~
They’re almost fourteen, when they get furtive and secretive in ways that your husband assures you is normal for boys that age. Sometimes you see them, when you go shopping, prowling the neighborhood like young tomcats. You’ve seen Steve with more black eyes than you can count, nursed a few when his mother was pulling double duty, pressing cautious fingers against his smooth skin. Bucky always flittered around you, calling him names, muttering, “I swear, you’re the biggest fool in Brooklyn, or maybe I am for sticking with you-“ while you doctor his best friend up.
His best friend who is still small and frail, who didn’t manage to keep up with Bucky’s growth spurts, who doesn’t have his long legs and his ungainly teenage body, who still looks for all the world like a little boy. There is heartbreak in Bucky, though, you can see it in the girls who follow him, even though he’s too young to notice them yet, his eyes on Steve. He doesn’t see them even when they go to hold his hand, clammy and inexperienced.
But still, you feel like there’s something that you’re just not understanding, in the way that they look at each other, in the muttering, snapping replies they occasionally lob, one after the other.
~~~~
You weren’t supposed to be home.
Rebecca wanted you to take her to the picture show, for something or another, and you were going to go right up until Rebecca caught wind of friend, and told you that it was okay, she just didn’t want to go alone.
You understand her better, you think. She’s still a little girl, she’s still only eleven, but she is easy to read, no mystery. Her friend has a big sister with her, so you let them go off, the three of them, and you come home.
When you open the door you can hear something – snuffling, maybe? – and you think it’s Bucky, it must be Bucky, so you set your keys down and put your purse up and call his name.
It’s Steve who tumbles out of Bucky’s room a few minutes later, and you stare at each other. He doesn’t look roughed up, except he does, sort of. Tousled and a bit at odds, confused, his shirt on just a little crooked. It’s not obvious. You actually aren’t sure what’s going on, so you just nod your head. “Steven,” you say, a bit gravely.
“Sorry, I have to go, Mrs. Barnes,” he says back to you, and gets his coat and heads out the door. Bucky pops out a minute later, his mouth red, and he licks his lips.
You stare at him and he looks right back at you. His eyes are so perfectly clear, bottomless, you think, and he smiles at you with all the charm he possesses, and kisses you on the cheek. “Mama,” he says, all smiles. “I didn’t expect you home.”
Those words are trouble, but you’re distracted, maybe, or no, you’re not sure, exactly, but something thrums in your stomach, a deep pit of confusion.
A few days later you catch Bucky down the street with Eleanor Wilson, his face pressed against hers in a kiss, his hat blocking the view from the rest of the street, and you’re not sure if you’re proud or sad, terribly sad, that you aren’t the only girl in his life anymore.
(You realize, though, that you’ve been sharing him with Steve Rogers for 11 years, so maybe it’s about time someone else entered Bucky’s narrow world.)
~~~~~
He comes to see you before he ships out. Of course he does. When he got his papers, it was Steve who came, with a hangdog expression and a betrayal of trust he doesn’t want you to know yet he says. Ever since Sarah died, you’ve felt a little responsible for this slim, fragile young man. No matter how much you feed him, he doesn’t gain any weight, and you’ve sat by his bedside with a rosary more than once, saying prayer after prayer and never thinking of the prayer that Bucky has been uttering since he was seven years old.
You cried, a long time, after Steve left that night. You cried until you didn’t think you had tears left. Rebecca was gone and married, and Bucky was long since living out of the house, but still, you cried, and curled around your husband and pretended it was vapors or a gripe, and he pretended to believe you.
But here he is in his very finest uniform, and he’s so handsome, and he looks a little proud when you tell him that. “Make sure you write,” you say, and he nods, and presses a kiss to your head.
“Don’t worry, ma,” he says, having dropped mama a long time ago. “I’ll write, I promise. You’ll, um-“ he starts.
“I’ll look out for Steve until you come back,” you promise, and then you cry a little, and he holds you. You didn’t know that your heart could cross an entire ocean, but when he ships out, there it goes, like the wind.
~~~~~~~
He does write. Steve, too, he writes, once he’s managed to find a way to join – God knows you’ve prayed that he stay behind – but you get letters from the both of them, right up until you don’t, right up until one day you’re coming back from the store, your ration of sugar in your bag, and there’s a dour looking man with a letter.
You don’t want to take it.
You don’t want to take it but you do, anyway.
You read the we regret to inform you and the next thing you know the neighbors are there, pulling you up, they heard you scream, they hear you scream, and you can’t stop. Your hands are shaking, someone is calling for a doctor, and you think, this is it, this is it, my heart has shattered into a million pieces. It’s oddly a calming thing, after the fact, to feel the dull ache where your heart used to be, where there used to be a tiny boy with tiny fists and great clear gray eyes. There’s nothing there anymore.
(You wonder – did he cry for you, when he was dying? You don’t know how it happened, but you wondered if you even entered his mind, if he called out for mama and for the first time in his whole life, you weren’t there to answer.)
You sleep for five days, in a haze of tears. You did not think this could hurt so much, and every time the door opens you immediately think no, there he is, it was a mistake, he’s coming through the door right now, with a cry of mama and a damp, snuffly kiss against your cheek.
~~~~~~
She comes to the door a few weeks later.
She is an elegant woman, with her hair in perfectly done victory rolls, and she speaks in a very soft voice with an accent you know is British, and you’re not sure why she’s here. Bucky’s effects are in a box that you refuse to look at, that your husband has hidden in a closet.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry for your loss,” she says, over tea, that you make because she brings you some real tea and you just can’t bear to let it go to waste. She says her name is Peggy Carter.
Ms. Carter doesn’t stay long. She leaves a letter in your care, and when you look down you see it’s in Steve’s careful, methodical handwriting.
You know that Steve died. You got that letter, too. But after Bucky, you’re ashamed to say, your heart didn’t have the capacity to break any more. You didn’t have the strength for it, so you lit a candle for Sarah’s son because he was Bucky’s best friend, and sat quietly and cried for your own, selfishly.
So it take you a long time to read it. Finally, you manage.
The first part is careful, quiet, like he knows he is going to die soon, too. There’s something about how sorry he is, how he couldn’t save him, and how he knows what this must be doing to you, or he wants to imagine he does. How he thinks, every second, about how he just wanted to save him.
And then the second part.
It’s not a love letter – but it is. It’s a love letter to Bucky. It’s a shock to your system, like a burn chased with cold water, and you can’t sleep after you’ve read it, and you read it again. You son, it says, held a piece of my heart, and I know he had a piece of yours, too. I know because I remember how you looked at him, like he was the only solid thing in the world. I know it because that’s how I looked at him, too. He was the center from the time I was five. And I’m sorry that I took that away from you, I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough to let him go for you. Please find it in your heart to forgive me for my weakness. He was my strength, and you were always his.
You know that last part is a kind of a lie, the kindness of a lie that someone tells another to ease their pain. The ink is smudged, like he cried over it.
You cry over it, too.