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The first time Bucky saw Captain America it was in a picture that Bull's sister had sent from home. The man was holding a motorbike above his head with a chorus girl perched atop it and Bucky thought, 'We could do with a flash new bike like that over here.'
"Wow. Look how strong he is!"
"Don't be an idiot, Rogers," Bucky said. And wasn't that a kick in the teeth. He was fighting beside Private Rogers, but it was the wrong Rogers, and Bucky knew he shouldn't be mean to the kid, but Steve was the good one, not him. "They're using wires or a platform or something. No man's that strong."
"I don't see any wires. Why couldn't he be that strong? He's Captain America."
Bucky opened his mouth again, because the kid's mid-west naivety was just a little too close to the way Steve kept believing in heroes and the good in people, no matter how many times life kicked him to the kerb, but Bull spoke first.
"Well, I know what I'd do if I could lift a girl above me like that." Then he made a crude wriggling motion with his tongue and Tex rolled his eyes and Rogers blushed and Bucky wished his Rogers was there so he could give him a shove and call him punk and get a grin in return.
Instead he said, "Don't you jerks have something you're supposed to be doing?" and there was a chorus of "Yes, Sarge," as everyone went back to digging foxholes.
When they got back behind the lines they discovered life had moved at a fast pace without them. Captain America was everywhere and the photo with the motorcycle was old news. Now there were photos of him lifting a motorbike with three girls and Bucky wondered what the guy was doing running around in blue tights when there was a war to win on two sides of the world.
Steve was possibly the weakest man in the world, physically at least. Some winters he could barely walk the three flights to their apartment without having a rest and catching his breath and there'd been more than one night that Bucky held him and listened to him cough and was too scared to go to sleep in case Steve wasn't there when he woke up. But Steve had been willing to fight, willing to lay down his life with everyone else. And this guy, apparently the strongest man alive, was dancing around America waving for the crowds.
Steve was worth ten of him.
Rogers' mom had sent him Captain America comics and the guys passed them around. There were stories of the fight on the home front, Nazi spies interrupting government experiments and Captain America jumping on a one-man submarine and taking it down with a punch. Bucky didn't buy any of it, and he wrote to Captain America to tell him so.
Dear Captain America,
With all due respect to a superior officer, if you're as great as they say you are, you should be over here with us instead of smiling for the camera. My friend Steve desperately wanted to fight, but couldn't. He'd give anything to be as healthy as you and able to help. It's terrible, and we could use you.
Sgt. James B. Barnes.
He received a signed photo in reply, just like Rogers had. There was a small slip of paper in the envelope, though. I go where the army tells me, in the neat, precise writing of a born army man. I wish I could be there.
Bucky considered throwing both photo and note away, but in the end he stuffed them to the bottom of his duffel and wished again that Steve was there to poke fun at the man. Steve would see the guy as a dancing monkey, he was sure, and Bucky fell asleep that night smiling at the biting commentary that he was sure Steve would have had.
Every morning Bucky sat down to write a few words to Steve. He'd promised to write, but he hated it. Back in Brooklyn he always knew what to say but as they marched across Italy he found himself at a loss for words. Steve would forgive him, of course, for not sending letters but Bucky knew him well enough to know he'd be expecting it. Would think, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Bucky had forgotten about him now that he had army friends when the truth was that Bucky turned to point things out to Steve all the time. Felt like his left arm had been cut off without his best friend at his side.
So he forced himself to write every day and tried to find words that wouldn't hurt. He could mention the dames in England, with their red lips and curled hair. He could comment on Steve's last letters – shorter than he'd been expecting – and ask how things were at art school and in the old neighbourhood.
What he really wanted to write about was the way the cold seeped into his bones every night. The look on Pearce's face when the bullet hit his skull. How he never thought his muscles could ache so much when he was just sitting still for hours on end, but he supposed it was because he stayed tense for every second. How he could barely tell the difference between the screams of his own men and the enemy.
He couldn't say any of that to Steve. It would only make him feel guiltier for not making it into the army. So he kept his observations light: the weather, the countryside, biting commentary on his commanding officers. It sounded like the sorts of letters other fellas wrote to their gals back home, but Bucky didn't care. It would let Steve think he was safe, even when Bucky was really huddled in makeshift cover hearing the bullets hiss over his head.
No, everything he wanted to talk about - the mud and blood and gut-wrenching fear – that he wrote down in letters and sent to Captain America. Let America's big hero, the Star-Spangled Man, hear what it was like for real heroes. What it was like for his men – the ones that had been there from the start, hardened and cynical, and the reinforcements, who all looked like they weren't old enough to shave, let alone old enough to join up and fight.
He was surprised when Captain America wrote back. He was just a bitter sergeant, taking some of his anger out on a handy target with a star on his chest, but there was always a reply. And sometimes the reply was short – the weather and the scenery of whatever town he was in – and sometimes there was biting commentary on the politicians he dealt with and the way they all treated him like a dancing monkey waiting for money to be thrown into his hat and how even as he was told the money was important he wished he was doing more for the war.
He always finished the same way. I wish I was there, but I have to follow orders. He always signed off Captain America.
Bucky wasn't sure how but he found himself liking the man with his self-deprecating wit (Steve had taught him that one) and the earnestness that always came through. He thought that Steve would have liked him and almost wrote him every day that he had another pen pal called Captain America, but he stopped, not wanting to have something else that Steve couldn't have and he wondered briefly how these secrets would affect their friendship before he remembered how unlikely it was that he'd ever go home.
He had letters for both of them in his pouch on the day he was captured. The pouches were taken off of him before he was locked in a cage. Steve and Captain America: they both wanted to be heroes. Bucky wasn't always sure that heroes existed.
He wondered what he'd write to them if he had paper now. Would he tell the story of the man with the ridiculous bowler hat who wouldn't stop complaining, even to their captors? Of the boy in his cell who confessed he was only sixteen? When he was taken away to the other room he thought he'd write and tell Steve how much he missed him; tell Captain America how he wished they'd met.
Then he couldn't think of anything except leather round his wrists and needles in his arms and pain, always pain.
He had no idea how long he'd been there when the explosions started. Steve was on his papers as his next-of-kin and his beneficiary; the GI insurance would go to him, and it would help. At least there was some good coming out of being tied up in a mad German's lab while it burned around him.
Then a figure was looming in the door and Bucky wondered why he'd suddenly started hallucinating. It looked like Captain America was wearing Steve's face.
"Bucky. Oh, my God." Steve's voice was coming from Captain America's mouth, and it seemed right. Steve had always had a voice too big for his body - too deep and sure and commanding for such a little guy. "It's me. It's Steve."
"Steve?"
The hallucination was pulling the leather straps apart with his bare hands. "I thought you were dead," Captain America said.
"I thought you were smaller," Bucky replied, starting to believe this was actually Steve. He crawled off the table, ready to follow Steve out, make sure he was safe, except Bucky was the one struggling, clutching his side, not able to keep up. He limped behind Captain America, thinking again that he was hallucinating when the Gestapo officer pulled his face off leaving only a red skull behind. But the fire was too hot and Steve's fingers too tight around his arm. His best friend was Captain America.
The colors were too bright and the sounds too loud and watching Steve fly through the air with only fire below him was more terrifying than anything he'd seen on the front. So he blanked it out and just kept running until they were out of there, starting the long march home.
They were cold and miserable and couldn't even light a fire, still thirty miles behind enemy lines and not in any fit state to fight if spotted. Bucky couldn't stop shivering, and it's Steve's arms around him, telling him to sleep and not to worry.
"I'll look after you, Buck. I'll make sure nothing happens."
Bucky almost told him that he couldn't say that; that it was Bucky's line. Instead he said, "I wrote you."
"I know. I kept them all."