Archive of Our Own ^beta

***
“Two trains are moving towards each other from the stations; they are 239 miles apart. One train left the station two hours earlier at a speed of 33 mph. The trains meet three hours after the other train’s departure. What is the other train’s speed?”

“I hate these problems.” Steve jerked his leg angrily.

The cast iron bathtub that replaced a dinner table boomed. Steve squealed and started to jump on one leg around the kitchen, nursing his bruised toe with both hands.

“Come on,” Bucky teased good-naturedly. “Break your foot on top of it. The head cold passed a whole week ago, high time to rest from the classes.”

“While they’re solvin’ these problems? With great pleasure.” Steve straddled the chair and drew his bony knees to his chin – there was a cold draft on the floor.

“But it’s really easy. First off, you should find out how far the first train went…”

“This problem doesn't have enough facts.” Steve said.

“How come?” Bucky inquired.

“It doesn’t say when it happened…”

“Rogers, stop getting distracted, ok?”

“It doesn’t say when and where it happened. In late autumn of ‘44 in the Alps, right?”

“Steve, what’re you talking about?”

“Then again, what color were the trains--actually it was only one train, dull black streamlined like a huge predatory fish--because it’s also important, isn’t it? Or a venomous snake. Miss Braun always says that when you read a problem you should imagine it properly.”

There was a cold draft on the floor. An ice-cold draft.

“Two trains are moving towards each other from the stations; they are 239 miles apart--you were right, Doctor Zola is on the train. One train left the station two hours earlier at a speed of 33 mph--wherever he's going, they must need him bad ”
“Steve, are you delirious? Stop scaring me, Steve.”

 “The trains met three hours after the other train’s departure…”

“Steve, why is it so cold here?”

“Come on, asset, stop this shivering and use your brains.”

Why is it so cold here?

“How can we speak about practical ballistics if you’re not even able to solve an elementary school level arithmetic problem? Turn your mind to the task, or I’ll be under the necessity of taking measures. Two trains are moving towards each other…”

Why.

“…from the stations, and they are 239 miles apart. One train left the station two hours earlier…”

So cold.

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“How can you be so sure that it’s really him? That he’s remembered everything?”

Tony repeated the questions for the fifteenth time, give or take – that’s probably why he was furious – ran around the metal table Bucky was sitting at, and slowed down only to fling up his hands. In one corner, Sam and Natasha stood quietly, in the other corner were guards. Steve sat at the same table but on the opposite side. Bucky, as far as hard metal back and armrests let him, sprawled on his chair and occasionally, when Tony was behind his back, took the opportunity to meet Steve’s gaze and roll his eyes expressively.

“Even if he passed a duck-test it still doesn’t mean…”

“Sorry, what test?” Steve and Bucky asked at the same time.

“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s really a duck, you heathens.” Tony stopped and thrust his finger at Bucky. “Only alas, Cap, in our case it doesn’t work. If he looks like James Barnes and talks like James Barnes, it doesn’t mean at all…”

“Steve’s mom’s name was Sarah,” Bucky broke on.

“Too obvious, dude.” Tony didn’t look impressed. “You can read Wikipedia in any library now.”

“He used to wear newspapers in his shoes.”

“I suspect in those cruel days he wasn’t the only one doing this, but point for logic though.” Tony made two more circles. “No dice. You must tell us something personal, something that only you two would know.”

Bucky rolled his eyes so intensely that Steve remembered that childhood saying about one’s face getting stuck like that.
“Come on,” Tony came to halt in front of the table. “Blow our minds.”

“All right. I really didn’t want to say it…”

Steve understood that it was high time to start being afraid.

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“So, let’s start from the very beginning. Who are you?”

“Barnes. James Buchanan. Sergeant. Three two five five…”

“That’s clear, enough. What should you say?”

“Three two five five…”

“Enough. Unfortunately, that answer is wrong.”

***
The prosthetic was brand new; smooth, shiny. The prosthetic felt like dead weight, dragging his upper body down to the left, and it itched like hell at the joint. Now that he was awake, he was able to have some control over his body. He woke up from his restless sleep on a stained mattress with streaks of dried blood on his chest and dark red grime under his fingernails.

“I am sorry, but if this incident occurs again, you will sleep on the floor.”

“Screw you…” he hissed angrily, narrowing his eyes at a dark silhouette at the entrance of his cell, as he lurched, trying to support the artificial limb (which felt like a couple of tons’ weight) with his remaining hand. “You attached this lump of iron to me…”

“This is your arm, asset.”

“What to hell is…” Damn no, he wasn’t going to let them knock him off topic. “This lump of iron which doesn’t fucking work at all and is as cold as an iceberg.”

“When you broke Doctor Krampe’s neck, this – as you put it – lump of iron was working perfectly fine.”

A wave of shame hit him. He didn’t want to kill anyone. He looked down and saw two hands before his eyes – one was his own, pale and thin, but the other looked like something out of that robot movie he had watched with Steve… And then the idiot in a white lab coat leaned too close and… that all happened somewhat on its own, really.

“We arrived at the conclusion that the problem is entirely psychosomatic.”

He restrained himself from dropping to his knees and settling the unyielding prosthetic on the concrete floor, and muttered tiredly, “Again, but in English.”

The silhouette at the entrance chuckled under his breath. In the passage someone else giggled, too, perhaps one of those men with rifles. He caught a glimpse of them; there were so many of them, all treating him as though he was some...dangerous wild animal. Bastards. Cowardly arrogant bastards.
 “The ‘English’ is if you genuinely want it, everything will start working perfectly well,” the silhouette explained. “And you know, for our mutual benefit, it should happen as soon as possible.”

“We haven’t and can’t have any mutual benefit, you piece of…!”

The mattress disappeared from his cell. That night he slept on the floor, and next night, and the one after that, and again. The metal arm was freezing on the concrete and burning his side with cold. He feebly hoped to catch a pneumonic fever and kick the bucket, but they probably wouldn’t let it happen. They didn’t give him food anymore, though he always had plenty of water.

The prosthetic still didn’t work.

Naturally, there wasn’t a clock, so he didn’t know how much time had passed before the door opened again to show the familiar silhouette appeared at the entrance and armed people in black uniforms rushing to him from behind the man. He was on his knees, wobbling and stooping his shoulders. The prosthetic weighted his weary body down to the floor like an anchor. He didn’t try to fight when his right arm was put behind his back and tied to his torso with leather straps. And, just as suddenly, everybody disappeared and a bowl emitting a wonderful smell was left on the floor in front of him. There were mashed potatoes in the bowl. With real butter. He could even see grains of salt in it. On top of the potatoes there was a spoon.

“You force me to take measures, asset. Either you use your arm and…”

“My arm is bounded, jackass.”

“You understand what I mean. So, either you use your arm, or you eat off the floor. Enjoy your meal.”

Eat off the floor. Scary for a motherfucker, oh yeah. Horrible like Hell.

“I’m not some dog.”

“That is not the point, asset. That is not the point at all.”

He even forgot to lash back at “asset.” Saliva suddenly flooded his dry mouth. He tried to swallow, choked, and spat it aside.

The mashed potatoes were steaming.
The prosthetic wasn’t working.

He sat over the bowl, devoured it with his eyes and felt his face flush red. Why? It really wasn’t a big deal to…

“The utensils will be cleared in two minutes,” the silhouette said calmly.

He was really glad he couldn’t see himself or his spectators at this moment. He tentatively bent over, sniffed the steam and then it was like someone else was controlling his body. When he came out of it, his stomach felt heavy, and the bowl was licked almost spotlessly clean. Several little lumps were scattered on the floor, but honestly, he hasn’t yet regressed to…

“When your right hand is free again, tidy yourself,” the silhouette suggested. “It looks like you did not eat your potatoes but slept in them.”

For some reason, although the prosthetic didn’t start working, the man’s voice seemed quite satisfied.
*
He soon realized he was an idiot, a blithering idiot. He was at war, he knew what happened with people who had gone without food for a few days and then quickly stuffed themselves with inappropriate foods. Well, it’s not like any terrible things happened to him, he didn’t get end up soiling himself. However, after a couple of hours of severe stomach pains and several agonizing, but blissfully short, minutes of misery over the hole in the floor they called a bathroom, he burst into tears. Because what was the use of licking these slimeballs’ feet when all that beautiful food ended up in…

The door cracked open. He stooped his shoulders and didn’t look up.

“Don’t be so upset. Next time just take a spoon and eat more carefully.”
He couldn’t even hear any mockery in that hateworthy calm voice.

Asshole, he thought, nasty Nazi sonofabitch.

The door banged shut, but the room didn’t remain empty for long. Soon everything returned – straps, a bowl on the floor. Clear broth with tiny golden globules of fat that smelled even more magnificent than the potatoes.

“The utensils will be cleared in five minutes,” the silhouette pointed out. “Enjoy your meal.”

The damned arm didn’t work, and it got in the way when he tried to hunker down to reach the bowl. How the hell did he manage to do it last time?

Time passed.

When the bowl was carefully but insistently removed from under his nose, he, lying on his stomach and lifting his head and shoulders awkwardly off the floor, was licking last drops from the warm aluminum walls.

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Bucky scraped the tabletop with a metal finger, producing a horrible sound, and looked at Tony with the slight interest of a budgie that plucked its owner’s scalp one hair after another – how was he going to react? Tony winced. Bucky, clearly satisfied with the response, slid lower in his chair and spread his legs wide, kicking Steve in the knee.

“In a nutshell, we were about seventeen at that time. I was datin’ Dorothy Hughes but really got tired of her. But she really stuck to me like a leech. So I decided…”

“Buck,” Steve said warningly.
“…decided to tell her that I was dating another girl. I didn’t really have another one as ill luck’d have it, perhaps only my sis, but Becca and this Dorothy were actually friends, so…”

“Bucky, don’t,” Steve made a move to leave the table.

“I managed to get my hands on some of my sister’s stuff,” Bucky started pattering. “I-looked-at-Steve-and-saw-how-slender-and-fragile-he-was-in-short-we-disguised-him-and-introduced-to-Dorothy-but-she-didn’t-believe-that-he-really-was-my-dame-and-insisted-that-we-should-kiss-plus-not-higgledy-piggledy-but-how-they-do-it-in-those-French-movies-and-then…”

“Shut up!” Steve got to him in one jump and put his hand over his friend’s mouth. “Tony, can you see now that he really remembers everything? You definitely won’t be able to read anything like that on Wikipedia!”

“Well, we never even got chance to hear what ‘that’ is.”

Steve could hear the smile in Tony’s voice and considered it a good sign.

Bucky licked his hand, and Steve quickly withdrew it and wiped it on his pant leg.

“Fine,” Tony gave in. “Let’s give him a probation for, say… a half-year. Under the condition that he wears a tether and armed guards follow him everywhere. Can you hear me, Barnes? Everywhere.”

“To the shower, too?” Bucky asked innocently.

“No. This duty will be dumped on Cap.” Tony gave a wink to Steve. “You two seem to be…um…close enough.”

Steve blushed as red as the outer stripe on his shield. Bucky flashed a huge catlike grin.

“So far all tests show he’s OK.” Tony looked serious again. “However, we could do with a more in-depth evaluation.”

“From where I stand, your probes were in-depth enough as it is.” Bucky sighed heavily. “Every time I sit on a toilet, I’m scared I’ll see ‘em in there.”

“Jesus,” Tony shook his head. “This guy jokes even worse than me. Cap, was he always like this?”

“Yeah,” Steve looked at Bucky and couldn’t suppress a dopey smile. “Always.”

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“Well. Who are you?”

“Barnes. Sergeant. Three two five five…”

“That is obvious, thank you. What should you say?”

“ Three two five five…”

“Enough. The answer is wrong again. ‘I fully place myself under your orders.’ That is what your answer should be.”

***

The prosthetic didn’t work. They had to, as the silhouette said, take measures.

At first they tied him to a chair (the prosthetic was left free) and repeatedly slapped him in the face. It didn’t hurt at all, but he felt deeply humiliated. He boiled with anger, sputtered and spat, in several languages, the dirtiest obscenities he had caught at docks and in trenches.

“Speak foreign languages?” the silhouette noticed tranquilly (in the room well-lit with lamps the man, of course, wasn’t a silhouette any more, but he already got accustomed to calling his captor so). “Not bad. We will certainly work on it. Later, when you become more cooperative.”

The prosthetic remained potentially deadly, but a for now absolutely useless limp weight. He would wring all these freaks’ necks with such a great pleasure if he could! He had only to reach out his hand… Well, not a hand but this frigging piece of metal.

After they returned him to the cell, he was overcome with a bad feeling. He could guess what exactly was going to happen next. First the slaps, then wakeners, then a swagger cane, and then…

But nobody never laid a finger on him again.

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A thin rivulet of water snaked on the tiles near his tennis shoes, and Steve vaguely wished he’d taken them off. But then again, it’d be unsanitary. On the other hand, Steve, afraid of some fungus after several gunshot wounds? Hilarious! Also, there could be no fungus here. The tiles were scoured clean enough to drink of.

“My mom’s name was Sarah, and your mom’s Winifred. We lived in Brooklyn; we studied at the same school. After my mom’s death, we started living together. You worked at the docks, and I took commissions. You worked a lot, but we still had some free time. We often went to the cinema. Also you dragged me on double dates… totally disastrous ones actually. Once we went to Coney Island. Heh, Bucky, those hotdogs! Yellow mustard and a load of white onion… One of the greatest pleasures in life, but you could forget about your fresh breath for long time after.”

Steve cast occasional looks at Bucky, but out of courtesy didn’t glance above his friend’s knees. Bucky was subtly shifting from one foot to the other. Despite the hot water, he was curling his toes.

“By the way, speaking of toes. Well, actually not by the way, but… sorry, I have absolutely no idea what to talk about. My thoughts are all jumbled together. Ok, toes then. I remember, one day we were doing our homework at my place. We didn’t have a real table; we had to put a plank on an old bathtub. So I was sitting and dangling my legs, dangling and dangling and then suddenly I slammed my big toe slap bang into the tub. It was cast-iron after all. You could hear it booming all around the place, but I guess, my yells were louder…”

All his thoughts disappeared suddenly. His mind became totally empty, just like that cast-iron bathtub from his childhood. Splashing water diluted the quietness, but didn’t make silence less oppressive.

“Buck,” Steve said quietly. “Do you remember at least something? Talk to me.”

For several seconds everything remained as before, but then splashing abruptly stopped. Bucky’s feet started paddling on the wet tiles. His left ankle was clasped with a massive black ankle monitor. Bucky crossed the little bathroom with several steps, long and unswerving like an impending enemy tank. It seemed like he wasn’t going to stop. Steve stood up fast and fluidly, with his back pressed against the steam-dewy wall.
“Bucky?”

Long hair plastered his pale unshaved face. His eyes resembled blue marbles. Bucky took Steve’s head in his hands and moved up to him impossibly close. His breath smelled like acetone mixed with mint.

“Hail HYDRA,” Bucky said.

And planted Steve’s nape on a thin metal towel hook.

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The boy looked about sixteen years old, and he was an American soldier, too. The boy had tearful eyes, and those eyes were gazing at him with admiration.

“James Barnes? Real? You’re alive?”

“I…” he forced, feeling shabby for some reason. “I…”

Obeying some invisible sign, a man in black uniform put a sack on the boy’s head and whipped out a gun.

He was tied to a chair again, the chair screwed to the floor. He couldn’t move his arms or his legs. More specifically, he couldn’t move his right arm. The damned prosthetic remained absolutely free.

The Black Uniform planted himself just a short distance away, roughly two feet or so.
“Well, asset,” the silhouette said. “Do you want to save the boy? You do not even need to strain yourself, just swing your hand and knock the firearm out.”

“My hand,” he said through his teeth, straining his every nerve to revive his incompliant muscles and make the metal move. “My hand is tied down.”

“Just a little effort,” the silhouette ignored his words. “As a reward, I will even give the order to set this boy free. Until then his destiny is in your… Hmm, pardon the pun. In your hand.”

“Please,” he said. “I can’t. Please.”

The boom of the shot seemed too soft; he only now noticed the silencer. When he shifted his gaze, the boy was lying on the floor and a dark smudge was spreading over the gray cloth.

“As I said, it was up to you,” the silhouette sighed.

He threw his head back and released a furious scream into the high white ceiling. The frigging prosthetic didn’t even stir.

This time there was a cut piece of steak in the bowl on the floor. The medium cooked meat was gleaming with its pink edges. He looked into the bowl and tasted bile in the back of his throat. They couldn’t… Or?

 “The utensils will be cleared in two minutes,” the silhouette pointed out as usual.

He didn’t touch the meat.

“I think, we spoiled you,” the silhouette remarked. “Would you like to stay hungry for a couple of days? Or… Oh.”

That damned bastard seemed to read thoughts. Otherwise, the man couldn’t realize what exactly got stuck in his head.

“If I correctly guess what you are thinking about,” the silhouette said slowly. “We should fix an appointment with a psychiatrist for you. Did you really decide that we planned to serve that poor boy, the boy you did not want to save, for your dinner?”
He didn’t answer.

“I was right,” the silhouette confirmed. “Your medical record reported you had no mental health problems, though. Honestly, I did not expect anything like this of you.”

He didn’t expect anything like this of himself, either. He had no idea where such thoughts came from. It was total crap. Probably he went off the hooks in the end, after all.

“I will tell somebody to bring you a helping of potato salad,” the silhouette concluded. “But keep in mind, asset, that such thoughts are really unhealthy. Take care to keep them out in future.”

“Otherwise, you’ll have to take measures?” he snapped, though quite halfheartedly.

“If your state of health requires it,” the silhouette answered. “Sure.”

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A handful of cold water hit him from above. Steve bolted to his feet and clutched his head. His short hair was wet with water, not with blood. His skull was intact. Steve glanced at the wall and didn’t find a hook there. Sure thing. Nobody would fit the bathroom with such dangerous objects.

“Stop yelling,” Bucky said angrily from under a towel. “They’re going to think that I’m killing you here and rush to your rescue. And I’m bare-assed like a precious fool.”

The wide towel around his waist was marked with pseudo-Egyptian patterns. With the other towel, little and dark, he was rubbing his hair.

“Let’s make a wig of this one,” Steve suggested absently. “If you lean against the wall, you’ll pass for Egyptian wall-painting.”

“Rogers, have you woken up yet?” Bucky asked with care. “If not, I can provide one more cold shower for you. There’s plenty of water here.”

 “I…”

“Fell asleep. Exactly. Tumbled down from that bench right on your belfry. Good thing you don’t have any brains otherwise you could get a concussion. What on earth do you do at night? Jog?”

Without thinking Steve rubbed the back of his head, which had already almost stopped aching. Bucky, casting a suspicious looks at the door, threw the towels to the corner and put on his clothes hastily. His left ankle was clasped with a massive black ankle monitor.

“Nothing in particular, just think.”

“So? Came up with something useful? Because if you didn’t, you’d better talk to your superiors so that they allow me to take showers on my own. Do they really think I’m going to concoct a Molotov cocktail out of toothpaste and shampoo? Or trickle down into the drain and set off on an exciting journey through a sewer?”

“I’ll try. Sorry if my presence…”

“Your presence has nothing to do with it, Rogers. But the very notion preys on my mind.”

“I’m sorry it turned out that way,” Steve apologized again and asked in an intentionally playful manner, “What can I do for you to be forgiven?”

“Hmm…” Bucky scratched his shaggy head. “Perhaps you can take me to that loft near the East River for some smoked salmon in goat cheese.”

“Whisk&Ladle? But folks have to wait half a year for their turn …”

Bucky raised his eyebrows and gave a very doleful look. The corners of his lips were trembling.

“Ok, fine,” Steve capitulated. “I’ll reach out to Stark.”
Unshed tears in Bucky’s light blue eyes quickly transformed into a mischievous twinkle. He grinned and headed for the door.

“Wait.” It hit Steve suddenly. “You’ve already been there, haven’t you?”

“Yep,” Bucky answered.

“But how?”

“Somehow. I really didn’t know about waiting six months for a turn for a go. Just broke into their kitchen and ate a bellyful of everything. Salmon in cheese was a success.”

“Jeeerk,” Steve drawled.

“Punk,” Bucky shot back casually. “Don’t bother Stark. They’ll be proud of the national symbol…”

“Breaking into their kitchen and stealing a kilo of smoked salmon?” Steve asked in terror. “Oh, Buck, I’ve already grown unaccustomed of your bright ideas.”

Bucky nodded pleasantly to the guards behind the door. The youngest kid turned pale and staggered back.

“What can I tell you, Rogers. Get accustomed again. You’re in for the long haul now.”

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In the bright-lit room he was tied to a chair again. A man in black uniform stood in front of him and aimed at his forehead.

“Well, asset,” the silhouette said. “I would be really sorry to stop our collaboration so soon, but if you are not able to call your own limb to order, I consider our further work meaningless.”

It’s not my limb! he wanted to shout. You cut off my arm and attached a dead, cold and totally useless lump of iron instead!

But he was too busy thinking, Finally.
He shifted his gaze from the dark gunpoint to the finger on the trigger. An ordinary finger, short-nailed, with a small scratch. The finger twitched and slowly squeezed the trigger.

That's it.

At the instant of firing he snapped his eyes shut.

And realized he was still alive.

He opened his eyes and his gaze fell on some metal surface shimmering with bright changeable flecks under the lamps.

His own metal forearm.

He lowered the arm, and it moved smoothly and obediently like his own. He clenched and unclenched the fingers. Twisted the wrist. And only then he realized there hadn’t been any gunshot – just the dry click of misfire.

“Excuse us for this little trick,” the silhouette explained. “You are too valuable an asset for us to put a hole in your head.”

He wanted to die, but his body made its own decision. Fine, but where had that frigging arm been when that poor kid died because of him?!

“You turned out to be selfish, asset,” the silhouette remarked, in tune with his thoughts. “But that is perfectly natural. Every man for himself and so on, right?”

He felt a wave of murky sludge rising inside – guilt, despair, anger. It was okay, though. Now he had a metal arm. Operational. Left loose. He wondered if the crunch of a broken spine was more similar to a muffled shot or a click of misfire.

Something pricked the back of his neck.

“Don’t even think about it,” the silhouette said gently.

And the lamps went down, all at once.

*
When he came to, on the floor there was a bowl of thick pea soup with croutons. His right arm was tied to his torso. He felt a bit giddy, and really hungry.

As usually, he lay down on his stomach and began to fish up bits of the fried bread. Only after the last one did he realize he was acting like an idiot.

His arm was working. The left one, sure, but who cared.

“You get it, don’t you?” the silhouette commented good-naturedly, staying at the entrance. “Take it easy. Man is always quite slow on the uptake after a sedative.”

Sedatives had nothing to do with it. The truth was that he’d gotten used to it. He was used to slurping his food down at those bastards’ feet – not even like a dog, but like a…he couldn’t find any suitable comparison. The soup suddenly slopped over the wall, then he crumpled up the bowl in his metal fist, as if the vessel was made of cardboard, and threw it under the silhouette’s shiny boots.

“Impressive,” None of the good nature remained in that voice. “But I cannot possibly approve of such behavior. I have to take measures.”

His entire body shuttered involuntarily. Men in black were aiming at him from outside. Now that he knew that their rifles were most certainly loaded with tranq darts, looking for shots was pointless.

“Let us start with things every five-year-old kid can do.” The silhouette nodded at the wall. “Clean up your own mess.”

He looked around – there nothing that he could use as a floor rag. They were unlikely to give him a bucket and a mop, either. All he could do was use his own pants. Or probably tear his bedding? Sure, it’d be uncomfortable, but after that he could perhaps rinse it, although it’d take a long time to dry…

“With your tongue,” the silhouette clarified calmly and only shrugged in response to a resentful glare. “What can I tell you, you should have thought about it earlier. I think I will leave you to this task. Take my advice – do not wait. Trust me, when the soup goes bad, its taste will seriously get worse.”

“Bitch,” he called hopelessly after the man.
The silhouette looked over his shoulder and added, “For this, both your arms will be immobilized before meals. I take it that you prefer to eat from the floor.”

He spent several minutes pounding at the door with his metal fist just to blow off steam. When he got tired, he headed for the wall. On the second thought, the soup probably hadn’t even got cold yet.

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The smoked salmon was pink and sufficiently savory, and the white cheese melted in their mouths. They were sitting in a dark hall similar to a cave, lit with several candles, and digging in pieces of toasted bread covered with soft cheese and thin slices of fish.

“I’ve already forgotten how you can convince me to do all kinds of illegal, dumb things,” Steve said with a guilty sigh.

“I guess, in this story it’s me who forgets things,” Bucky objected. “And stop grumbling. You forked up so much moolah for them that they can buy three more shops for it. And anyway, we should’ve made Stark pay because he didn’t manage to make a reservation for us.”

“He did,” Steve corrected him.
“For two of us – yeah, he did, but perhaps not for ten guards.” Bucky licked his fingers and snorted. “I can understand the owners. Just try to feed at least two supersoldiers… By the way, do you want a dessert? Someone hoarded a couple of coconut muffins. They’re a wee bit stale, but we’re not squeamish here, right?”

“No,” Steve sighed, “I’m full at this point.”

“Some wine?” Bucky conjured a long-necked bottle from under the table.

They felt too lazy to go and retrieve glasses. For a few minutes they were silent, watching candle lights and passing the bottle to each other. The wine teased their tongues and didn’t besot them at all.

“It looks just as if we’re dating,” Bucky said with a sated sigh. “And just like stupid folks do on their stupid sappy dates, I want to propose.”

“What?” Steve didn’t drop the bottle only thanks to his superhuman reflexes.

“It’s not about marriage, you perv.” Bucky gave a laugh. “I just wanted to propose an escape. Let’s break away.”

“Haven’t we…” Steve made an impressive gesture referring to being outside the base and the absence of guards. “Already? Look, the Stark phone’s bursting with messages. Soon Tony himself is going to fly in here and bring a couple of strike teams with him.”

“It’s not serious.” Bucky shrugged him off and reached into his pocket. “Before being trapped in Stark’s warmly welcoming grip, I came up with a couple of things I want to have time to do.”

“Before what?” Steve put the almost empty bottle on the table.

“Meaning?”

“Have time to do before what?”

“Just to do.” Bucky shrugged. “As that Russ* with strange visuals put it, mortality can come to a man quite suddenly. You and I are rather lucky in this regard, but… who knows if we’re going to be this lucky next time.”

“Oh.” That was all Steve could think to say.

“Come on, Rogers, don’t you fall in a funk. Better try to guess what’s on my list.”

“Okay.” Steve shook off a twinge of worry. “Just a sec. To see the sea?”

“You’re obvious,” Bucky smirked. “By the way, I’ve seen this movie** back with HYDRA.”

“Did they show you movies?” Steve was surprised.

“Well, actually, not exactly to me. There was that really long and boring test full of I don’t remember what. Everyone sat and waited for something. To pass the time, they watched movies on a laptop. Believe it or not, half of staff sobbed their socks off.”

 “Oh,” Steve repeated.

It looked like he knew little about HYDRA.

“You should’ve seen what watching Hachi: A Dog's Tale did to them…” Bucky added dreamily.

Steve’s brain short-circuited and felt like it died completely.

“But let’s keep to the subject,” Bucky proceeded. “Keep on guessing, and use your imagination.”

“The Grand Canyon?”

“You really call that imagination?”

“Okay-okay.” Steve threw up his hands. “Ermmm… Visit Australia?”

“I went there a few years ago.” Bucky shrugged. “With Rumlow. I dived in Crocosaurus Cove.”

“Did Rumlow really let you swim with crocs?”

“Not really, but he was too busy to intervene.”

“Busy doing what?” Steve felt some catch here.

“Drawing away crocs.”

A roar of laughter almost extinguished candle lights. The bottle slipped out of Steve’s hands after all, and now it was Bucky’s turn to demonstrate his superhuman reflexes.

“I think you just made up everything,” Steve said wiping away tears of laughter.

“No such thing,” Bucky objected. “I tried to look for bright spots. But stick to business, take a guess.”

“I don’t even know. Visit all the countries in the world?”

“I believe I’ve visited all the countries,” Bucky said thoughtfully. “But business trips are another story. More ideas?”

“I don’t know,” Steve capitulated. “Spit it out.”

“Nope.” Bucky began to fish out a bright yellow sticky note, but then changed his mind and put it back into his pocket. “I’m going to give it to you point by point. It’s more interesting. So? Let’s break away?”

“First, we’re going to go back and apologize to Tony.” Steve left the table. “We’re going to lay low for a week, pack up and take off their guard. And then we’ll break free.”

“That’s my boy,” Bucky praised him. “Stark’s going to think we’re off to some restaurant again, and he won’t miss us until it’s too late. By that time we’ll already be in the Philippines.”

“The first point?” Steve figured out.

“Yep. But we should come up with something to do about the arm and this thing.” Bucky pulled up his loose pant leg slightly, exposing the ankle monitor. “I’m afraid a dive skin won’t fit it.”

vorwärts
“Who are you?”

“Three two five…”

“Enough. What should you say?”

“ Three…”

“Let me give you a clue. ‘I fully place myself …’”

“Fuck you.”

“Rude. I wanted to remind that you and I are intelligent people, but now it seems to me, there is only one intelligent person here. And you have forced this person to take measures.”
* 

After his arm started working again, his routine changed a lot. Now he came back to his cell only to eat and sleep, and the rest of his time was spent in the gym, at the shooting range, in the classroom, in medical – endless hours of physical exercises, weapon training and ballistic tables, medical examinations, and tests. He was supposed to sleep and eat according to some puzzling schedule, which he still didn’t manage to understand. Sometimes he had about two hours of sleep, sometimes almost twenty-four. At least that's what his body told him. There were no clocks, calendars, or even windows anywhere. They didn’t let him go outside. Instead of sunlight, there was a closed vertical tube with round lamps glaring from its floor and ceiling.

There were times when he got up and then suddenly he was supposed to go to bed again.

“But I just woke up,” he protested.

“Do not be silly,” the silhouette answered. “Concentrate on your sensations. You are sleepy, aren’t you?”

He concentrated. His eyelids drooped, his body grew weary and heavy.

“It’s impossible,” he muttered. “I… I’m losing time.”
“You are having those unhealthy thoughts again,” the silhouette said with a sigh.

He fell silent very fast. Unhealthy thoughts weren’t encouraged. Voicing such thoughts could easily force them to take measures.

Them. They. The silhouette.

“When you get tired of calling me jackass and all kinds of other unlikeable names, asset,” the silhouette said at once with a faint smile, “you may address me as handler or sir. As for my name, it is not necessary for you to know it.”

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The bar wasn’t crowded – Steve, Bucky and a dozen of guards, who kept well back and did their best to disguise themselves as civilians going out for a couple of cocktails, were the only ones there. The bartender strategically holed up in the corner at the opposite end of the counter, sweated and flinched at every sound while he polished glasses nervously.

“I have an idea,” Steve said sipping his beer.

“Me, too.” Bucky casted a sidelong look at their escort and leaned closer. “I solved our vehicle problem.”

“I solved an ankle monitor problem. See, things’re made well,” Steve brightened up. “Do you remember Scott Lang?”

“Oh, the Flea-Man?”

“Actually, the Ant-Man,” Steve snorted. “You shouldn’t offend people who’re going to help you.”

“I didn’t offend him, I got names mixed up,” Bucky began to excuse himself with a very honest face. “Spiders, ants, moths… Go figure.”

“Okay, never mind. I got it arranged. He’s going to take off your monitor and return it to your room. Gain a little time for us.”

“Cool. What do you own him?”
“Why are you thinking…” Under Bucky’s skeptical look Steve gave in really quickly. “Okay, I promised to be Santa Claus at Cassie’s school Christmas Party. By the way, it was my idea. He was ready to help just for the sake of our friendship. You know how he… he’s…”

“Swooning over you? I do know it.” Bucky smirked. “I hope he won’t slobber over your biceps too loudly or I’m going to break off his horns in no time.”

“Stop being jealous.” Steve smacked him on the metal shoulder. “Better tell me what’s up with our vehicle.”

“That is also a surprise,” Bucky bared his teeth in a grin. “First thing tomorrow morning we take our things, meet that Scott of yours and then fly away.”

“So we’re going to fly after all?”

“Don’t spoil a surprise, Rogers,” Bucky hissed.

He caught a sunbeam from the window with his metal palm and reflected it flat into the bartender’s eye.

“Buddy, may I have another drink?”

The man flinched and dropped a glass. The other “visitors” started instantly, and the atmosphere in the bar tensed. Bucky raised a sigh and rolled his eyes up once again.

*
“I wonder how often we’ll have to run away from guards until they hit upon the idea of the mission impossible and leave of their own accord?” Bucky thought aloud.

Steve didn’t even think that their promised craft was hidden here, in the Adirondack Park alive with tourists all year round. But Bucky very soon stepped off a hiking trail and had been leading Steve through the mixed forest for about an hour. On the way he chattered incessantly, skipping from one topic to another, from advantages of the recently purchased shampoo to weak points of the experimental light armor vest, from the skinny jeans he’d put on to celebrate getting rid of the ankle monitor to yesterday’s assault course and back. Considering their bags, walking rhythm, and uneven ground, if he wasn’t a supersoldier, he’d have been out of breath long ago. Steve jumped over a root and shook his head with a smile: in their old neighborhood everyone knew for sure – James Buchanan Barnes was able to talk anybody’s ear off. Even if that ear belonged to ancient Miss Righton who’d gone hopelessly deaf twenty years ago.

“Have I chewed your ear off ?” Bucky asked as if he could read Steve’s thoughts.

“Nope. To be honest, I’m realizing more and more that I missed you terribly,” Steve admitted. “I’m ready to listen to you talking round the clock.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Bucky chuckled.

He jumped over a narrow stream and stopped dead.

“Have we lost our way?” Steve asked.

“Bah!” Bucky huffed. “This is the place.”

“I can’t see anything.”

“There isn’t anything here yet, but there’ll be something soon. So, if you want to get there in one piece, follow me and imitate all my movements.”

*
The dull glistening metal dome was covered with a radar-scattering net. Bucky began to pull it off only after pressing his palm to a scanner at the door.

“Killed a security system,” he explained.

Steve helped him, but rather distractedly. One thought haunted him.

“Tell me,” he began, “we duck walked, crawled on our stomachs, jumped…this I can understand. But why were we to glide crabwise, pointing toes and waving arms?”

Bucky dropped the net and jack-knifed with laughter.

“So. Bucky.”

“Come on, Rogers. Where else could I see Captain America doing la glissade? Quite clumsily, in fact.”

“It’s something from ballet, isn’t it?” Steve remembered vaguely that Natasha had mentioned something like this once. “When did you learn to dance ballet?”

“Not in Brooklyn of course.” Bucky snorted and took the net again. “Guys at the docks would misunderstand me.”

“In HYDRA?” Steve asked incredulously. “But why…” He faltered and frowned.

“Whoa there!” Bucky shook his head. “You’re thinking wrong. If right now you’re picturing some pervs forcing me into a tutu and toeshoes and watching the show, it wasn’t like that. Some elements were included in gymnastic training, that’s why I watched a good deal of ballets and memorized a few different leaps and steps.”

He pressed on something else and the door slid open. Behind it there was a hangar in the middle of which sat a small predatory-looking jet.

“Here’s our craft.” Bucky stroked the dark side of the jet as if it was a horse. “Basin, meet Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers, meet Basin.”

“Basin?” Steve repeated. “BSN? How do you decode it?”

“Stop offending him.” Bucky was bustling near the jet and checking something. “What on earth is BSN? Business Service Network? You’re network. And he’s Basin.”

“Basin,” Steve repeated dubiously. “Do you mean a round tub?”

“Yep.” Bucky disappeared inside.

“Why did you call a jet “Basin”? I hope not by reference to its flying quality parameters? Or everyone gets air-sick aboard?”

“All his parameters are just fine.” Bucky jumped down on the floor about five minutes later wiping his hands with a small towel. “Passenger capacity: six persons, cruising speed: 1800 mph, visibility’s reduced to practically nothing, vertical takeoff and landing. Fuel will last the whole trip, too. And if you get air-sick, you’ll have only yourself to thank for it.”

“A plane will fly the way you name it,” Steve paraphrased the saying and helped Bucky load their luggage into the passenger cabin. “Have you ever seen how basins fly?”

“Even a basin will fly if you kick it hard enough,” Bucky promised and took a pilot’s seat.

The dome over their heads opened and the roaring jet rocketed into the pale morning sky.

vorwärts
“Do you see these blocks? Your task is to make a pyramid of them. All of them. If the pyramid collapses, you will have to start from the very beginning.”

The concrete blocks scattered in the corner of a vast empty gym were of different sizes, so it wasn’t actually difficult to pile one block upon another, but it was quite physically exhausting. When he completed the task, he was covered in sweat, his right arm quaking with effort.

“Perfect.” The silhouette nodded in approval, then gestured to a dozen of soldiers in black uniforms.

Three minutes later, the blocks were scattered over the cold plank floor once again.
“It did collapse after all.” The silhouette shook his head. “How vexing. You have to start from the very beginning, asset.”

“Go to hell,” he said, flaring his nostrils. “I built this fucking pyramid. It was your sidekicks who ruined it, so let them bring it up again.”

He said it and tensed immediately, because he knew to wait for consequences. But there weren’t any. They even didn’t tie his arms during the meal as they usually did when he didn’t behave.

The thin strips of pickled herring were delicious, more importantly there were a lot of them – usually he couldn’t complain about quality of food, but he wasn’t pampered with its amount.
He realized the extent of the catastrophe only after decided to wash down that surprisingly hearty lunch (dinner? Breakfast?) and saw that a tin basin, which was constantly refilled with fresh water in his absence, was empty. Clearly for a reason. They never do anything without a reason.

They didn’t let him out of his cell anymore. In his food one day hot spices, another day too much salt was found. Soon he stopped eating. His tongue swelled in his mouth like a cotton wad, he felt as if his throat was crawling with ants; his head was aching and his heart was pounding wildly. He lay on the floor, pressing his feverish forehead to the cool wall and sucked the fingers of his metal hand. He almost couldn’t salivate, but at least the fingers were cold.

He had already considered drinking his own piss while he was still able to urinate when the door opened and, instead of a guard with a bowl, the silhouette appeared at the door.

“Stop slobbering on your fingers, asset. You are acting like a child.”

He didn’t hear the words. He couldn’t look away from a frosty glass pitcher in the silhouette’s hand.

“Yes, it is for you,” the silhouette confirmed. “But at first tell me what you got out of this incident.”

“I…” He felt as if a thousand of cats were scratching his throat. “I…”

His only answer was a fit of dry coughing, and suddenly he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to say anything and consequently wouldn’t be given any water. That the silhouette would just turn the pitcher upside down and empty it. If only here, not in the hallway. Please. After that he could lick it off the floor.

“All right. As far as I can see, we have to wait a bit before we can have a conversation. Let us do this – I will say everything for you and you will show that you agree, okay?”

He nodded.

“I sincerely hope that of this incident you got out following.” The silhouette’s flat voice grew sterner. “Orders must be carried out without question. If you are told to build that pyramid for the second time, you do it. For the tenth time – you also do it. For the twenty fifth time – in an analogous way. Is this clear?”

He nodded again, watching the hazy-white side of the pitcher on which a drop had left a dark trail.

“If you need to specify mission parameters, specify them. If you have any ideas about optimization of ways to perform your task, speak out. Your suggestion will be heard and considered. But do not you dare to question necessity of fulfilling the order. Is it clear?”

He nodded. Such attitude wasn’t something new, he was at war after all. He knew how to carry out his orders.

“Okay,” the silhouette chuckled a bit more softly, “I see, you are excited to proceed with the second part of our conversation.”

The man dropped on his knee, but instead of putting the pitcher on the floor, dipped his fingers in the water and put his hand out.

And then suddenly he remembered a small village trapped in snow, and skinny half-feral dogs sneaky and wicked like jackals. One dog ran round the chow wagon, yelled with hunger, but as soon as someone raised their hand with a piece of bread, it darted away as if a stone was hurled at it. Without listening to graphic stories about rabies and a horse-load of painful shots, he stepped aside, crouched down and offered a bone on his open palm. The dog, setting back its ears and squirming obsequiously, crawled to him on its belly and scowled murderously.

He…forgot what had happened after.

Clear drops gathered on tips of those long leather-clad fingers and were ready to fall down. He didn’t understand why those drops and those fingers suddenly were so close since the silhouette hadn’t moved.

“You are looking at me like you want to bite me to death,” the silhouette said. “Stop it, asset. Or I will get angry.”

Hastily, he cast his eyes down and caught water drops on his tongue carefully, barely touching the leather. The silhouette chuckled again, got to his feet and dusted off his perfectly ironed trouser leg. The pitcher remained on the floor.

“After you satisfy your thirst, I wait for you in the gym.” The silhouette paused at the door. “You should understand that the pyramid is not going to built itself.”

He looked at the pitcher, drops of moisture and tiny scarce bubbles.

The silhouette kept silent meaningfully.

“Yes,” he croaked.

The silhouette was still silent.

“Affirmative… sir.”

The door closed. He remembered that first bad experience with mashed potatoes, so he drank slowly and carefully.

Nobody rushed him.

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“I did tell you we should have checked weather forecast on the Internet,” Steve announced.

They arrived in the Philippines without incident and fell right into the monsoon. The sky was overcast, the rain was beating, and there were sloping waves rumbling below them.

The jet was hovering in midair, and they, squinting against pebble-hard drops, came to the edge of the platform which had lowered under its belly.

The shore was looming at a distance of only about a hundred yards. Steve took a better look at waves and frowned – he thought he saw vague shadows flashing under the water surface. 

“Nevermind.” Bucky shrugged carelessly. “We didn’t come here to bake in the sun after all.”

“By the way, why did we come here?”

“Snorkeling,” Bucky answered laconically.

“Buck, we could swim with a mask and a tube in Miami.”

“But without sharks.”

“Without wha…”

With these words and a powerful shove at his back, Steve fell down. He doused deep into rough troubled water, but immediately shot to the surface. And then came up out of water almost to his waist, when six feet away from him on the right something giant and seemingly endless began to swim smoothly.

Next to him Bucky gracefully dived headfirst into the waves and emerged snorting on the surface a moment later.

“Here.” He unhooked goggles from his belt and thrust them to Steve.

“Gosh! There are some monsters here!” nearly squeaked Steve.

“This is told by a man who fought a gigantic leviathan in New York.” Bucky shook his head. “Honestly, Rogers, I expected better of you.”

“It’s not funny.” Steve drew his legs up involuntarily, afraid for their safety for good reason: serum is serum, but even it wouldn’t be able to grow back a half of his body after having it bitten off. “You better explain what’s swimming below us.”

“I’ve told you. Sharks.” Bucky put on his own goggles and gathered up his wet hair into a bun.

“You’re saying it a bit too calmly.”

“But they’re whale sharks.”

“I kinda can see it.”

In another vague form which was unhurriedly passing them, according to the most modest estimates, there were at least fifty feet.

“I’ll draw consolation from the fact that it’s going not to tear me to shreds, but swallow me whole. Your idea of fun is really odd.”

“Ah, Steve,” Bucky said with a sigh, “Stark was right, you are a heathen. Whale sharks eat shrimp and other plankton. Diving with them is the most well-known entertainment in Philippines. People feed them. Poor little sharks didn’t realize they would be left without their breakfast in this weather. We should’ve grabbed some shrimp before coming here.”

“You really couldn’t tell me all this before you shoved me out of the jet?” Steve breathed a sigh of relief and started peering into the water even with some kind of interest. “Can we dive with them?”

“We can even touch them.” Bucky smirked. “But if that tail smacks you on the head, it won’t be a picnic, so be careful.”

Steve completely appreciated advantages of his lungs and blood circulation, which let him hold his breath much longer than an average human could. Rain and waves didn’t disturb them under water at all. Unlike clothes and boots. Bucky, in spite of his metal hand, swam deftly, like a dolphin. For some time they were sticking to three of huge spotted fish that were circling slowly just under water surface. Over and over again on the sharks’ flat heads enormous mouths opened up, a man could perfectly fit into them. Then one of the sharks decided to go on its way. Steve and Bucky exchanged looks, took a breath of air mixed with rainwater, dived again and grabbed the V-shaped dorsal fin. The shark reacted to the unexpected riders with total indifference, characteristic of many giants. So they rode it until realized that if the shark got them into the mid-ocean, it would be quite difficult to find their jet in this weather. 
But suddenly the rain subsided and the sky began to brighten.

“The sky’s clearing,” Bucky regretted. “The weather’s treacherous here. Time to zoom off before tourists are all over the place.”

He left a rope hanging from the jet, so fifteen minutes later they were already changing their clothes in the cabin.

“Whale sharks are much better than leviathans,” Steve had to admit.

“Freilich.” Bucky turned on a hairdryer and started drying his hair and his metal arm.

“Sorry?”

“I say, sure. You’ll be surprised, but the next point also includes riding big animals.”

“I’m absolutely not going to swim with blue whales, don’t even ask.”

Bucky was furiously grooming himself, trying to use a hairdryer, a comb, a hair tie and a surprisingly dainty pink pocket mirror at the same time. The mirror clearly was borrowed from a clerk girl for some indefinite time. By the way, those girls adored Bucky, despite his announced potential danger to society. Bucky had complained that after all those cups of tea, candy, and homemade pies his face just would stop fitting into that very pocket mirror.

“Don’t be afraid, little Stevie,” Bucky said gibingly, putting his hairdressing supplies aside and clapping Steve on the shoulder. “Just elephants. We’re going to Thailand to ride elephants there.”

“Well, fine. But… Bucky?” He also put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Do me a favor. Don’t shove me on an elephant right from the jet, all right?”

“Sure,” Bucky agreed easily. “You do not want to break a spine. The poor elephant doesn’t deserve it.”

vorwärts

When he was still able to do it, he noticed that they were impeccably polite. Not only the handler, but also others worked with him. All of them wore the same neat clothes, the same black leather gloves. All of them spoke to him with the same flat soft voices. He didn’t identify their faces. They all were “the silhouette” – a tall sharp figure at the door upon whom everything was dependent.
He was never punished: punishments were for children and animals. But sometimes they had to take measures, and he was doing his best to keep those cases to a minimum, though he did not always manage. They fed him very tasty but too meager meals. After a few dozens tries of building the same concrete pyramid in different corners of the gym, after cross racings and assault courses, after shooting and cramming, a bowl of beer soup or a small praline cake only increased his appetite and didn’t sate his hunger. 

Later he found out that he could have seconds. If he wasn’t given enough for the first time, he could try asking again. Soon he learnt that some definite time had to pass between attempts, but he never figured out what amount of time exactly. He also learned that asking for the third time was a big mistake.

He had to ask permission to use the restroom. They might not let him go on the first or the second try, but in the end always did. An incident happened only once when he delayed his request for too long and didn’t manage to hold it until the next try. They let him change his clothes, called it a regrettable accident, and didn’t take any measures.   

Before meals he had to show his hands. He rubbed them with basic soap for a long time, washed off powder and gun oil, cleaned his nails, and shook sand and pebbles from under the metal plates of his fingers. If his hands turned out not to be clean enough, he had to go and wash them again. That mishap didn’t have any negative consequences, but every time he didn’t manage to pass the test from the first attempt he felt deeply ashamed.

“Discipline,” the handler told him. “Discipline, asset, and personal hygiene. By the way, when was the last time you washed your hair?”

His hair grew longer, below his ears. He had never worn his hair so long. During shooting practice sometimes it got into his eyes, and he had to gather it into a bun. When he asked for a haircut, they rejected his request. By that time he already knew very well that trying to find out the reason wasn’t a good idea.

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“Buck! Bucky!”

Bucky was lying on a narrow folding seat, stretching out and throwing his head back. Some quite almost animal-like sounds were breaking through his clenched teeth. Steve called him by name one more time, then finally gave him a shake on the shoulder and sprang back out of fear of a possible punch. But Bucky didn’t try to fight back – he just opened his eyes and looked at Steve inquiringly like he hadn’t been asleep at all.

“What’s wrong?” Steve was scared. It would be much more natural if Bucky started to struggle and look around. “You said you didn’t have nightmares.”

“I don’t.” Bucky sat and reached out for a small digital camera.

“Then what was it a moment ago?”

“How can I know? I was asleep, after all. And here you’re screaming and pulling my shoulder. You’ve almost torn my arm off.” Bucky pointedly rolled his right shoulder. “I hope you turned the autopilot on? Or are we going to repeat Ride Of The Valkyrie together and by the coast of Spain for the sake of variety?”

“What do you take me for?” Steve was offended.

“Stop pouting, Rogers.” Bucky sat down and patted on the seat beside. “Let’s take a better look through pics from Thailand.”

“You’ve already seen them,” Steve muttered for order's sake. “Does it still have enough storage for Spain?”
“One can’t grudge storage for memory,” Bucky retorted. “I wish we had a waterproof case. I might’ve shot a photo of those sharks, too… No, you just look at this… sieh nur! That elephant got into your pants!”

Steve covered his face with his palms. It was at least the tenth time Bucky had shown him this picture. Plus every time he rehearsed that event in details, as if Steve weren’t there. In the photo a flower-dotted elephant did put its trunk where it shouldn’t. Shorts that were too loose and bought in a hurry and a peanut stuck under the waistband were to blame for that. Steve himself hadn’t noticed it, but an elephant had smelled it instantly. Steve hadn’t recovered after the transvestite show where Bucky had dragged him on the sly, so he had almost thought that even elephants were…ehm… a bit strange there. Fortunately, he hadn’t shared his bright insights, or Bucky would surely die with laughter.  

“Now you can tell everyone that you have an entire trunk in your pants,” Bucky added dreamily. “Had. Once.”

“Buck.” Steve flushed.

“I’ll buy speedos for you.” Bucky was flicking through a jillion photos at a furious pace. “I mean, you know, with elephant ears and…”

“I’m going to punch you,” Steve warned.

“Try it.” Bucky shook his fist at him. “However, you can bombard me with tomatoes. Buñol's below us.”
*

They were almost late for La Tomatina, the all-out tomato battle at the central square, but they had a blast there. Steve didn’t manage to pelt Bucky with tomatoes – Bucky defeated everyone. His metal arm, strategically covered with a turtleneck sleeve and a glove, acted as a small springal. If Bucky didn’t meticulously squish tomatoes before throwing them, as rules required, there would be casualties. Steve used only one of his arms – under the other one he held a huge ham which was triumphantly won by Bucky who, to applause, had literally rocketed on top of a high pole smeared with soap. To lose the trophy was against Steve’s conscience and respect for food, a habit left over from the days of the Great Depression. However, for some reason this respect didn’t apply to hundreds of tons of tomatoes. Probably, it just was too much fun.

 “Why does this stuff last for only an hour?” Bucky complained turning his sides to the water sprays (pretty young town girls kindly agreed to hose them down). “I haven’t had enough. Let’s buy a truck of tomatoes and keep this party going, shall we?”

They did. They weren’t arrested only thanks to Captain America’s recognizable face and a dozen of autographs and selfies. On the plus side, on the camera, which Bucky had protected with his own body from water, tomato juice and local policías’ prehensile mitts, appeared a hundred more photos, and in some homey café they even had that very ham cooked for their dinner.

Yes, with tomatoes.

vorwärts
“Who are you?”

“…”

“What should you say?”

“…”

* 

He took plenty of pills – small and white, big and multicolored. Pills were brought to him in a paper cup, and after swallowing them he had to show that there was nothing left in his mouth.

“Vitamins.” The handler frowned, but answered his question. “And other medicines which are extremely necessary for your optimal functioning. You take them for your own health, asset. I recommend not neglecting these.”

Several times he emptied a cup into a john all the same, but after that they took him to a dark screening room and showed slides with close-ups of aftermath of organ and tissue rejection. After that sight, he swallowed his meds without question and for some time glanced at his left arm anxiously. Tendrils of scar tissue snaked from the metal junction, the shoulder ached constantly, and lingering pain spread to his collarbone, ribs, and shoulder blade.  

“It’s just your imagination,” the doctor explained when he complained of it during another physical. “Phantom pains. Very frequent phenomenon after amputation. I’ll prescribe you a massage if you want. Do you take your medicines regularly?”

“Sure.”

“Keep it up, or this situation may get worse.” The doctor stared at a sheet of paper covered with some diagrams and lost interest in him.

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“You do have nightmares, after all, right?”

Bucky did the thing he could do best (well, besides shooting all kinds of firearm and practicing a dozen of martial arts) – he rolled his eyes.

They sat on the shore of an artificial lake in the Bosques de Palermo. They could hear soft music from a nearby pavilion. With one hand Bucky threw shortcake crumbs to ducks, with the other he stroked a big white puppy with a pink snout and a bloated pink belly. The pup was happily gnawing the metal fingers while its owner – a raven-haired girl in red – was watching this sight in awe and apparently didn’t understand a word in English.

“I had that dream about rivers of blood tonight,” Bucky said crossly. “I dipped my finger in it, licked, and it turned to be tomato juice. And I had neither salt nor mustard. Isn’t it a nightmare?”

“You only want to make fun of everything,” Steve sighed.

“Nothing was fun for seventy years,” Bucky snapped. “At least I have some time to laugh here.”

“Till what?” Steve asked really calmly.

“Sorry?”

“You have some time till what?”

“Till my quiet death at the age of one hundred…eh… one hundred and seventy surrounded by my great-great-grandchildren and Stark’s guards, of course.” Bucky picked up the puppy and got up. “Seriously, you’re a bore, Rogers. And pouncing on my words. You better ask the girl to take a picture of us with the pup, and then we’ll find a choreographer.”

“For whom?”

“You, of course.” Bucky patted him on the back. “We’re in Argentina, Steve. I’ll teach you to tango even if it’s the last thing I’ll do in my life.”

“Buck…”

“Shut up.” Bucky turned and put his metal finger on Steve’s lips.

Probably, that would feel a bit too romantic if the finger weren’t covered in the white pup’s drool.
*

A week later Steve had to admit that if it went on like this, Bucky would have to live more than one hundred and seventy years.

“I no oonderstand,” Federico said mournfully.

Federico was their dance instructor. The man had olive skin and long legs and his waist was so thin that when he and Bucky tried to show necessary moves, Steve, instead watching their steps, worried that Bucky’s hands on Federico were going to break the man in half unexpectedly.

“I no oonderstand, señor Rogers. You ev all qwalities, boot you doonce like…like ombu.”
“What’s an ombu?” Steve inquired suspiciously.

“This is un tree.” Federico drew something bulky and rigid in the air. “Perdone, señor. Boot if you no doonce at all, I will ev to take measures…”

Federico had hardly closed his mouth before a dark blue streak rushed to him and banged him against the wall. Now he truly didn’t break only by some miracle.

“No!” Bucky growled, and Steve was the only one who knew all his intonations and was able to recognize a tinge of panic in this angry growl. “He didn’t do anything! Why?” The metal fist crushed into the wall just to the left of the poor instructor’s temple. “Mistkerl! Son of a bitch, you have nothing to puni…”

“Bucky,” Steve took him by the collar and pulled. “Let him go.”

Bucky obeyed immediately and recoiled gasping for breath. He could circle all over the hall for hours without breaking a sweat, but now dark stains were spreading on his tight-fitted shirt. Steve could smell that sour unhealthy sweat on him, the kind usually caused not by physical exertion, but by illness or horror.

“Sorry,” Steve said quickly to the still breathless Federico. “Could you leave us for a minute?”

Federico disappeared with an impressive speed, and Steve began to suspect that they were going to never see him again. Especially since they’d already paid him.

Bucky was averting his eyes, shivering, blinking, and licking his lips quickly.

“Let’s get some fresh air.” Steve walked him out of the hall into a little patio.

It was already dark. The air smelled of heated dust and unfamiliar flowers.

“Did he say anything?”

Bucky swallowed and lifted his face to the sky.

“Remember, once you said that from the bottom of a well it’s possible to see stars even if the day’s really bright?” he asked not to the point.

Steve looked into the sky, too. The sky was clear, but even if there were some stars, city lights damped them completely.

“No,” he admitted.

“Nevermind. It’s enough that I remember it. So. When… after I fell, I was lying there and thinking that probably you can see stars from the bottom of a ravine, too.”

“But?”

“But there was only the gray sky and snowflakes above me,” Bucky shook his head. “And then it got so dark that starlight probably just couldn’t break through this darkness, you know?”

“No.”

Bucky smiled.

“Well, at least it was a fair answer,” he sighed. “Let’s go home, Steve. I’m kind of tired.”

“No wonder.” Steve struggled as hard as he could to hide quiver in his voice. “You’ve been trying to teach me Tango Argentino for a week. Anyone would be exhausted.”

“Yeah,” Bucky looked around worriedly looking for the camera. “You did ask Federico to take pics while we were dancing, didn’t you?”
“Oh yeah,” Steve muttered. “My shame’s captured in at least five dozens of photos.”

Bucky leaned against the railing and squinted at the little screen. Under the faint glimmering light his face once again looked calm and relaxed.

“Have you visited all places you wanted yet?” Steve asked.

“Uh-hu,” Bucky answered absently and lifted the corner of his lips – some moment must have seemed especially funny to him. “There’s one more point, but I wanted to figure it out at home. Why?”

“Don’t you mind if we go somewhere of my choosing?”

Bucky looked at him with interest, then turned the camera off and smiled as lively as before.

“Surprise me.”

vorwärts

“The train’s moving at a speed of 37 mph…”

Blindfolded, he got into a car and later was let out in a vast clearing surrounded by woods from all sides. It was winter. The sun in the pale blue sky was hanging low above trees. He wore track bottoms, boots, gloves and a balaclava, with only his eyes and nose uncovered. He did the instructors’ various tasks in shallow snow. His left arm burnt his side like a brand, and he tried to keep it away from the rest of his body. The last time he breathed dry winter air was a long time ago, and now it made his nose bleed. Blood was slowly oozing from his nostrils and soaking into the woolen fabric. 

When he got into the car again, he started shivering violently. It was warmer here than outside, but only barely. He took off his gloves, boots and balaclava, and covered his cold feet with a thick rough blanket given to him. Then sipped some lukewarm water. The shivering didn’t stop.

More training must have been planned because they didn’t head back but proceeded with theoretical training on the spot.

“…over the bridge of 524 feet high.”

A train on a bridge. A dark viaduct against mountain slopes covered with snow-dusty firs.
He remembered how he’d been lying on his back on hard snow and, just like now, blood had been oozing from his nostrils and mouth slowly, as if reluctantly. He heard somewhere that if the day was really bright, it was possible to see stars from the bottom of a well. It might be possible to see stars from the bottom of a ravine, too, if it was deep enough, of course. For some reason he was sure that he had a chance to see the stars. But all he could see was scarce white snowflakes in the pale sky.

He was shivering – with cold or maybe with memories. The problem refused to sink in.

“Come on, asset, stop this shivering and use your brains,” the instructor reproached him. “Concentrate.”

He couldn’t. He saw that train from the problem like it was real – black matte and predatory-looking like a huge snake. The train shook him off its smooth side casually, as if he was nothing, and disappeared in a tunnel, and he was falling screaming down, down…

“Let’s take a break,” the instructor said petulantly. “You aren’t able to concentrate at all. I hope, after some rest you’ll start working properly, otherwise you do understand, I have to report this to your handlers.”

And they’ll take measures. He pressed his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes. It was right. He just needed to concentrate. Under his closed eyelids the stars were flashing above white mountain peaks.

He grumbled testily and let his gaze wander about the interior of the car, hoping to clear his head. The instructor in the driver’s seat was rustling with his notes without looking at him.

He noticed a yellowish edge of some paper between the seat and the door. He took a better look and froze.

A newspaper.

No fresh periodicals were ever given to him. In his foreign language classes he read only educational texts and old newspapers, exclusively for educational purposes.

The instructor was flipping through the textbook and writing something on a stack of paper on the clipboard.

Hardly breathing, he reached for the sheet of paper and to the sound of a page turning quickly pulled a frayed sheet out.

COUNTRY STILL GRIEVES AT CAPTAIN AMERICA’S DEATH

The headline caught his eye immediately. He forgot how to breathe.

COUNTRY STILL GRIEVES…

Steve. Steve’s dead.
To his shame, he rarely thought about Steve. At first, he still hoped that Steve would suddenly appear and save him, like that time in Azzano, but not for too long. Miracles rarely happen twice. Then he had other things to worry about. Later everything faded, became hazy, came back like an old picture or a nice, but almost forgotten dream.

Only then he looked at the date.

It’s been how long since he got here?!

Everything went dark. He squeezed a newspaper sheet in his right hand and knocked out the car door with one blow of his left fist. After that he shook the blanket off his lap and broke into a run to the woods, zigzagging to avoid shots in the back.

No one tried to shoot him.

No one tried to chase him.

zurück
“You know, Steve, I’m an open-minded guy and always open for suggestions, but sensory deprivation…”

“Shut up.” Steve stopped him and held his shoulders. “What do you think, where are we?”

Bucky wiggled his nose funnily and started to grimace, trying to shift his blindfold at least a bit.

“I can hear waves, rustling of palm trees and a horde of drunk Koreans on our three. Hmm… At the seaside?”

“Now I’m going to remove the blindfold and you look down. Guess what you’re going to see?”

“Well… sand. Perhaps some flip flops and a couple of dead jellyfish,” Bucky snorted. “Come on, Steve, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“You guessed wrong.” Steve took an end of a wide ribbon he’d used as a blindfold. “Stars.”

“Unless they’re starfi… Oh.”

For a couple of minutes Bucky was completely still and looked as if he couldn’t believe his own eyes. Then he squatted and scooped some water with his hand – the metal one for some reason: neon blue balls flowed down his fingers. Bucky tentatively laughed and pressed his palm into wet sand leaving a glowing print behind. He looked up, into the star-laden sky, then at the sea, where there were so many lights that fluorescent blue waves were coming on black water to the shore.

“Steve, tell me that’s not because of bad rum cocktails.”

“Actually, that’s because of plankton with some unrepeatable name.” Steve squatted next to him and traced his hand through the water leaving a fading pass. “But Sea of Stars sounds more appealing to me.”

“Oh,” repeated Bucky and sat down on the sand.

The sea was mirroring the sky, the surf was shimmering and it seemed as if the dark shore was covered with either blue cinders or small precious topazes.

“You said you missed stars.” Steve broke the silence finally. “I can’t change the past, but now… this…”

“This is beautiful,” Bucky said simply, then he stood up and began to take his dark blue shirt off.

“What’re you going to do?”

“Are you kidding me, Rogers? I’m going to take a swim of course.”
“You know, they’re quite poisonous,” Steve warned.

“You know, I have that serum, mommy.” Bucky slowly got in the water knee-deep and looked over his left shoulder. “And then again… I have nothing to lose, right?”

“Buck.” Steve, tormented by vague disquiet, half got up, but Bucky made several more long steps and dove in.

Steve could see him glide under water in a bright blue flash as if he was a strange shooting star burning up in the atmosphere. All this looked so surreal, so like a scene from some sci-fi movie, that it started to feel weird to Steve. He imagined that when that glow faded Bucky wouldn’t be there anymore, that he would end up in some different world and never come back.

Steve suddenly found himself waist-deep in the water.

But Bucky came up, his body arched, and shook his head raising a cascade of blue lights.

“Hey, Steve, look!” he called. “I’m swimming in the Milky Way!”

Steve shook his head, too, and returned to the shore.

Bucky frolicked in the waves, threw handfuls of glowing water into the air, spun around drawing quickly fading circles and hearts. Then he got out of the sea and waved to Steve.

“Rogers, try and catch me!”

Hard sand answered with short bright flashes to kicks of their bare feet. Lost in admiration, Steve cannoned into Bucky when his friend stopped suddenly, and they both collapsed in shallow water.

“You’ve got fireflies in your hair,” Steve said.

Bucky flashed a quick smile.

“I’m so glad to come back.” He turned to the sea, stretched out his arm and lazily sifted grains of sand between his fingers. “Thank you for bringing me here. Как бы я хотел запомнить эту ночь навсегда.”***

“What?” Steve frowned.

Bucky looked at him with his eyebrow arched.

“Did you wash your ears with jelly this morning?” He asked cheerfully and winced. “Get off of me. Let’s get dressed and take a couple of photos.”

“Did you mean a couple hundred of photos?” Steve sprang to his feet and offered his hand gallantly.

Bucky accepted Steve’s hand in the same gallant manner, then with a powerful pull threw him into gleaming surf foam and ran to their backpacks laughing.

Off-world constellations flared up and died away immediately under his feet.

vorwärts

For a long time he ran through the yielding snow, tripped over roots, but felt no pain in his bare feet – either he was affected by adrenaline, or his feet just lost all sensation because of the cold. He stopped a few times, listened to any sound (could crunch of snow under heavy boots or German shepherds’ barking be heard?), tried to read the article (didn’t manage to read anything below the headline), then moved on.

Finally, the woods started to thin out.

He picked up his pace, hoping for who-knows-what. Perhaps, there were fields behind the woods. And fields meant farms with civilians. Maybe someone could hide him? Maybe he would be able to contact his fellow soldiers? He wondered where they were now. Where was Steve buried? Or was Steve’s body lying in some nameless ravine, too?

As if they were alive, the woods made noise, swayed with their branches and forced him out onto the woodside.

To a concrete wall, three body lengths tall, with barbed wire on top. He could see mountain peaks above the wall. In front of the wall there was a strip of ground of about four feet width, excavated and powdered with a sprinkle of snow. Every few steps a grey Danger Mines sign stuck out.

He didn’t want to die anymore. He wasn’t allowed to die.

Apparently, he wasn’t allowed to escape, either. What on earth was he thinking?

He sat down into the snow, uncrumpled the newspaper sheet and, struggling against upcoming sleepiness, tried to at least start reading it, until he heard footsteps.

“Went out for a walk, asset?”

There were neither German shepherds nor a team armed with machine guns – there was only the handler, a doctor and half a dozen men with rifles.

He crumpled up the newspaper again and defiantly threw it at the handler’s feet. The paper ball immediately disappeared in fluffy snow.

“Steve’s dead,” he muttered.

“Who is Steve?”

“Steve Rogers!” An outburst of rage made him shake drowsiness off and jerk up his head. “Captain America! That guy who used to blow up your fucking bases all over the world!”

The handler and the doctor looked at each other. Shrugged their shoulders.

“Captain America?” the handler asked politely. “Judging by an extravagant name, it is something from comic books. But you are a bit too old to take interest in comics, asset, right?”

“What the…” he was so indignant he almost choked on his words. “Why are you making things up?”

“I think you are the one who is making things up.”

“Paper! COUNTRY STILL GRIEVES AT CAPTAIN AMERICA’S DEATH.” He grew excited, tried to stand up, but couldn’t feel his feet. “Take the paper! It says everything!”

“Do you mean that sheet of paper you’d handed me so amiably earlier?” the handler asked sardonically.

He felt embarrassed. He shouldn’t have acted like this. It surely will be followed by measures.

But the handler only sighed, pushed flanks of his coat up, got down on one knee and scrabbled around in the snow for a long time. Goddammit, was it so hard to find a crumpled paper in four inches of snow?

“Here,” the handler said with satisfaction.

The man stood up, dusted his trousers off, smoothed the paper out, put on thin-rimmed glasses…

He would have shivered with impatience, but he stopped shivering long ago.  

“I also do not approve inter-ethnic marriages, but I still cannot understand why this article had affected you so much.” The handler took off his glasses. “And what does Steve Rogers have to do with it? The man in this article is called Peter Schultz if I am not mistaken.”

“What?!” he reached out to rip the newspaper sheet out of the handler's fingers, and didn’t fall down only because he managed to catch himself with his metal arm against the ground.

The handler approached and gave him the newspaper.

EVEN HANDSHAKES WERE BANNED – the headline said – LOVE DURING WAR.

“No-no-no…” he mumbled. “I just saw…”

“For obvious reasons, we are not subscribed to American newspapers, asset,” the handler said. “As for Steve Rogers, even if he did not exist purely in your imagination, our country would not mourn him.”

Only then he realized the article was in German. And that… The article he’d seen… In what language the headline was written? Thanks to regular classes, he read freely in German, Russian and French. He didn’t notice the difference any more. In what language…
When the handler wrapped his black leather-clad fingers around his jaw and lifted his head a little, he almost didn’t feel that touch. Also he didn’t feel someone throw the recent blanket over his shoulders.

“You are severely hypothermic,” the handler said gently looking into his eyes. “You are ill. We noticed it from the very beginning, but still hoped that medications would help.”

“I…” He began to get drowsy again. “I’m not sick.”

“Delusions, hallucinations, suicidal intent…”

“I wasn’t trying to die.”

“You ran away into winter woods with almost no clothes on and barefoot. After that you sat to read a newspaper on the edge of a minefield. If it cannot be considered suicidal intent, how else then?”

He couldn’t come up with an answer. He wasn’t able to think. He only managed to object helplessly: “But I took all pills.”

“Doctor Schlag?”

The doctor appeared from behind the handler’s back.

“Unfortunately, mental ailments cannot always be defeated with medication alone.”

“I want to recover,” he said.

“You will,” the doctor promised. “We have at our disposal effective modern procedures…”

“What procedures?” he interrupted.

“General cryotherapy,” the doctor answered. “And ECT.”****

zurück

“Home, sweet home,” Bucky said in a sing-song voice and busily used the Kiss The Cook apron to wipe his hands.

Steve shrugged. Tony didn’t seem seriously angry and was ready to let them back with minimal reprisals, but Bucky wheedled another 24 hours and asked Steve to rent a small apartment in Brooklyn.

“Your list’s quite interesting,” Steve said and sneaked a gob of cream-cheese with his finger. “A trip around the world and a cheesecake?”

“Yep.” Bucky lashed him with the end of a towel, apparently for “subtly” stolen cheese. “I’m so mysterious and so unpredictable, you know.”

“Don’t tell me this cheesecake thing is HYDRA’s lessons, too.”

“I don’t really think my functional responsibilities included delivery of fresh pastries,” Bucky answered a little dryly.

Steve understood that his friend wasn’t in a mood to joke about his time with HYDRA right now, so he was wisely silent while Bucky completed some secret cooking rituals – mixed, beat up, transferred, tasted something. However, it didn’t prevent him from stealing some more cheese, cookies and cream. Bucky was apparently too busy with cooking to whack him with a towel and confined his retaliation to stern looks.
Bucky talked again only after he got a tender light cake with hard brown crust out of the oven and put it on the table.

“I haven’t said thank you yet. These were the best holidays in my life, honestly. Now I can die in peace.”

Steve went cold.

Bucky looked at him awfully seriously for two seconds straight, then burst into laughter and said benignly: “Ah, Steve. You should’ve seen that face of yours. Verstehst du denn gar keinen Spaß?”

“You’re speaking German again.” A lump of ice in Steve’s stomach didn’t melt. “Why are you speaking German?”

“Oh,” Bucky said. “I mean, can’t you even take a joke?”

“Honestly, I don’t like this kind of jokes.” Steve lowered himself on the chair and only then felt his legs quiver nastily.
“Sorry.” Bucky brushed some invisible crumbs away from his apron. “I just wanted to thank you.”

“We’ll make more trips,” Steve said with despair he couldn’t exactly determine himself, “to the Maldives again. To Australia. To the Grand Canyon even if it’s clichéd like hell. Why are you thanking me as if…if…”

“As if we didn’t buy any strawberry sauce,” Bucky finished.

“What?”

“Okay. You’ve figured me out. I’m not thanking you out of the goodness of my heart. I’m just sucking up here.” Bucky pointed to the steaming cheesecake. “It must be eaten with strawberry sauce, and I feel too lazy to go shopping.”

“I think I saw it on the conveyor belt when we were standing at the checkout.” Steve opened the fridge and inspected its shelves.

“That means you were hallucinating,” Bucky concluded.

“No, seriously, I remember we’ve bought it.”

“You also have memory problems,” Bucky added. “This is an age thing. Tomorrow you should ask Stark to find a good… Who treats impaired memory? A shrink?”

“But I’m fairly sure…”

“Stop bitching, Rogers. You just don’t want to go to the store. And for the record, a cheesecake with strawberry sauce is totally different from a cheesecake without…”

“Okay, fine! I’m on my way!”

Steve got his jacket on and dashed out the door. When he was outside he turned back and saw Bucky in the window. Bucky flipped him the bird and saluted with a spatula.

vorwärts
They wrapped so many straps around him as if straps were linen bandages and he was a mummy from that history book which he and Ste… Stop, he shouldn’t think. He must behave. He must recover as fast as possible. His metal arm was restrained with additional heavy shackles.

“To avoid injuries,” doctor Schlag explained vaguely.

Even if he wanted to ask what it had to do with injuries, he couldn’t – they put a rubber mouth guard between his teeth. When they started to place gauze-wrapped electrodes on his temples, he felt intense uncontrollable fear which made his chest heave and his eyes water.  
“I am not going to lie and say that the procedure is painless,” said the handler who was also there, among half a dozen people around his cot. “But the session will be completely erased from your memory. You will wake up and you will not remember any pain, and then you will definitely feel much better.”

Doctor Schlag went to a little dark box and turned a knob.

Something blazed up, bright like a thousand stars, and it got very dark. When he woke up – disoriented, shivering, sweaty, messy with saliva and blood from his nose – he really didn’t remember any pain. He didn’t remember the man from the newspaper. He also didn’t remember his own name or his mother’s name or that he should remember something like this at all.

But he managed to remember the handler immediately.

“Who are you?” the handler asked.

“Asset.”

“What should you say?”

“I fully place myself under your orders, sir.”

“Well done.” The handler touched his sweaty hair and said to someone: “My congratulations, colleagues. Now we can get to work for real.”

The Asset failed to understand the meaning of those words, but he didn’t really care.

zurück
There were enormous queues in the supermarket. Steve put a bottle of strawberry sauce on the tape and had a strong sense of déjàvu. He decided to search the kitchen once more. If it turns out that Bucky just stuck the bottle God know where and forgot about it, he’ll regret it.

The kitchen was clean when he returned. The dishes were washed and put into the cupboard, the neatly folded apron hung on the hook, the cheesecake sat in its previous place.

“Hey, I’ve got your sauce!” Steve said loudly and opened the fridge.  

The first thing he saw there was a bottle of strawberry sauce.

His intent to beat Bucky’s pants off went away at once.

Nearly tearing the door off, Steve shut the fridge. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something small on the table, next to the cheesecake. Under the plate he found a pink napkin with a note, scribbled with a felt-pen.

In an hour put the cake into the fridge and leave it here for a night. Tomorrow you already can eat it, don’t forget to eat a bit for your best friend.

Thank you for everything, again. I’m sorry.

Bucky.

“Buck…” The napkin fell out of his fingers and glided down right on the cheesecake. “Bucky!”

Steve rushed to Bucky’s bedroom, but it was empty. Then he burst into his own bedroom. Bucky was there – he lay, prone, in a narrow space between the sofa and the wardrobe, with his face buried in Steve’s balled sweater pulled from the armpad.

***
Two trains are moving towards each other from the stations which stay apart at a distance of 239 miles. One train left the station two hours earlier at a speed of 33 mph…

That skinny Brooklyn boy from the distant 20s was wrong. There are too many facts in this problem.

It doesn't really matter at what speed the trains are moving and what distance they cover. It’s just that one train’s moving vorwärts, forward. And the other – zurück, back. And one day they’ll inevitably meet each other. And when they meet, there will be Entgleisung.

Breakdown.
***

“He saw this coming. Sent me away intentionally. And when I came back… He was just lying…with my sweater…” Steve rubbed his eyes with effort. “You know…how a dog dies…on its owner’s things if he’s not the…ther…”

“Stop it.” Sam touched his shoulder. “And don’t you dare blame yourself. You couldn’t know.”

“But I must’ve stayed there with him at least.” Steve blinked tears away. “He probably felt afraid. Lonely.”

“Or maybe he was thinking what an amazing time you’d had together and he was glad he’d done everything he wanted.” Sam nodded on the mobile Steve kept squeezing in his hand. “You can’t know what he was thinking about, so don’t…”

“Cap, Falcon,” Tony opened the door, “come in.”

“We’ve been waiting for eight hours.” Steve jumped up and Sam took his hand off his friend’s shoulder. “What the hell?”

“Only rabbits breed quickly.” Tony snapped. “By the way, I…”

Without listening to him, Steve pushed into the lab.

Bucky sat at the table – with his back straight, but calm, without restraints. When he saw Steve, he stood up. He didn’t try to attack, but didn’t run to greet Steve, either. He just stood up and waited calmly, with his shoulders relaxed.

“Buddy, sit,” Tony said coming back from the door.

Bucky nodded slightly to show he understood the words, but didn’t rush to obey.

“Cap, tell him to sit down.”

“Ehm…” Steve cleared his throat. “Sit.”

Bucky lowered himself back in the chair.
“Take a seat, too. You may sit next to him, he isn’t going to bite you.” Despite his own words, Tony providently settled on the other side of the table. “Well, Cap, as usual, good news and bad news here. Bad one is big, good one is little. I’m not going to ask which one I should start from and tell it at once. Bad news is that he isn’t James Barnes.”

“You mean… Bucky’s personality’s,” Steve began slowly, “been coming apart for all this time until it crumbled completely?”

“Nope. Bucky’s personality didn’t exist from the very beginning.” Tony tapped his finger on the tabletop. “Metaphorically speaking, at some point they cut out his personality and later pasted it over Winter Soldier’s brand-new personality, like on a blank layer which served as a kind of a throw-away scrim. With self-starting and self-destruction program. When it became necessary, this layer activated and… bang! Here’s Sergeant Barnes himself. The same as you remember him.”

“So, what served as a trigger for self-destruction?” Steve began to search his memory frantically – where did he make a mistake, what did he do or say wrong.

“I can literally see how you’re looking anything to blame yourself for,” Tony snorted. “Don’t bother. There was hardly any trigger. Apparently, his time’s run out. You know, just like a biodegradable shopping bag. A few weeks or months and… whoosh! Like it never happened.”

“So it means…”

“Yes, Cap,” Tony nodded, “sorry, but I’m afraid it’s over.”

Steve felt a lump forming in his throat again, it was hot under his eyelids, but he wasn’t going to cry in public.

“You mentioned little good news?”

“Ah, yeah. Now we’re handlers for him, not targets. What’s more, you’re a boss. A shitty comfort, really, but at least something good.”

“I see.” Steve tousled his hair with both hands. “Thanks, Tony. Thanks, Sam. Could you leave us for a minute?”

“Sure.” Tony stood up. “Take your time.”

When the door closed, Steve picked up from his lap a mobile full of photos and a thermo plate with a piece of cheesecake and put them on the table.

“Well, hello again,” he sighed and forced a smile. “I brought some cheesecake for you. It was really stupid of you to think that I’m going to eat the whole thing on my own without sharing with my best friend.”

Bucky looked at the plate, then at him.
Steve opened the lid.

“It’s for you. Eat.”

“Thank you.” Bucky took a slice of cheesecake and ate it quickly with his cupped hand under his chin. Apparently it was to avoid getting crumbs on the table.

Steve waited till Bucky put crumbs into his mouth, and squatted in front of him.

“I guess, we’ll have to meet each other anew, right? I’m Steve. Who are you?”

“Asset.”

Steve couldn’t handle it anymore, so he hid his face in Bucky’s lap.
***

The Winter Soldier knew everyone could cry. He himself cried sometimes, too, although such behavior usually wasn’t approved and could make his handlers take measures. But in general, this reaction was quite natural for stress, so he didn’t worry, though he had no idea what could be a reason of this stress.

The handler… Steve sobbed with his head on the Soldier’s lap. He had no idea if such a form of interaction between him and a handler was allowed. His handlers never cried in his presence. On the one hand, it was the handler who initiated the contact. On the other hand, the protocol didn’t imply anything like that, so the Soldier didn’t know how to react. However, he had an idea of what people do in such cases.

Carefully, without pushing, the Soldier put his hand on the back of the other man’s blond head and began to stroke that fluffy short hair. His handlers did the same to him at times, and it felt nice, although, to be honest, gentle touches usually made the Soldier cry harder.

Steve shook harder, too, and the Soldier sighed to himself. Then a mobile next to the empty plate got a message and the screen lit. The Soldier’s gaze fell on the screensaver. He recognized Steve and himself in the picture. They were smiling, unshaved, with cheerful blue eyes. Behind their backs the surf was glowing with bright blue lights which looked like stars fallen from the night sky.

The Soldier frowned.

From faraway, as it happened sometimes, appeared a vague image with echoes of feelings – mountain ridges covered with snowy forest and a strange irrational desire to see stars where there was only the gray sky and white powder snow.  
Steve stopped sobbing and said thickly with his face still down, “Come on… Tell me something. Anything.”

The Soldier opened his mouth, but familiar words froze on his lips.

I fully place myself under your orders. That was his presumed answer.

But…

Echoes of voices suddenly resurfaced from the oblivion, fell into emptiness hollowly, one by one, and dispersed with a quickly fading echo like ripples on water.

Look down. Guess what you’re going to see?

You said you’d missed stars.

Hey, Steve, look! I’m swimming in the Milky Way!

“Thank you, sir,” the Soldier said. “For showing me stars.”

THE END