𝗙𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗗 | bucky barnes

1: Bucky

[November 2015]

The Winter Soldier had been running for almost a year now. He didn't remember much, but he knew one thing: he didn't want anyone to find him.  He wanted to find himself, first.

Running made anyone tired.  And though James Barnes had done some bad things, he was still a person.  And he was tired.

So he went to Bucharest, Romania. He found a small apartment somewhere in the city, across from which was a market on the side of the street. Cars passed quickly in two lanes between the buildings and the market stalls.

He didn't know the life that he had before. And he wouldn't call what he had now a life. James Barnes just didn't want to be confused anymore. He wanted his memories back.

He knew the person he pulled from the lake. They were friends in whatever life he had before. Barnes used to be a good person, a war hero, a soldier. Steve Rogers was a good person. James wished he could call himself a good person.

Bucky. That's what Steve had called him. But who was Bucky?

That's what the Winter Soldier hoped to find out.

——— ✪ ⍟ ✪———

Walking in the crowded streets of Bucharest made you use your eyes too much. Everything was everywhere. He felt surrounded. Of course, these people didn't know who Bucky was. They didn't care to ask. They just went about their day, shopping and navigating around the other people.

But Bucky was distracted easily. The places he had hidden before were not crowded at all. They were secluded and quiet. But found easily. Bucky soon came to the idea that hiding in a city would be much less suspected. And in the month he had been there, nothing had happened.

He looked through libraries for books on World War II. Read articles on Steve Rogers. Read paragraphs on himself. He saved them all and put them on a corkboard in his apartment. Read them every once in a while. Sometimes memories came to him. Sometimes they didn't.

Anything Bucky remembered, he wrote down in a notebook. He didn't want to forget again. He didn't want to be the Winter Soldier anymore. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He didn't want to be found. He just wanted to remember.

——— ✪ ⍟ ✪———

"Multumesc," said Bucky to a fruit seller with a nod. He half-smiled and walked away with a bag of apples and pears. He walked back down the sidewalk to where the crosswalk was so he could go back home. But before he got there, he bumped into someone, hard.

He went rigid for a second, old instincts trying to kick in. But when he saw the girl he had bumped into bend down to pick up his fruit, he was almost confused.

"I am so, so sorry," she said. "I'm all over the place today, and I wasn't looking where I was going."

Bucky was quiet for another second before he bent down to help her pick up their things.

"That's, um, it's okay."

"Oh, thank — hey, you don't sound Romanian."

"I... well, neither do you," he said.

The girl smiled. "I'm not," she said. "I'm from America, but I go to university here." She went quiet for a moment and stopped smiling. "Well, went to university here. I, um, kind of got kicked out."

Bucky didn't know how to reply. The girl seemed to realize that, too, when she looked up to see his face. She had chestnut-colored hair and light brown eyes that stood out from her skin. Her face was a friendly one. A pretty one.

She looked back down, rather embarrassed.

"Sorry," she said quickly. "Oversharing. I don't know why I said that."

"That's fine," said Barnes.

It was awkwardly quiet while the two picked up their things. Sometimes, they looked up at each other, but they didn't catch each other's eye at all.

"I'm Catarina, by the way," she said, just as they finished.

"Um," started the Winter Soldier. "I'm... Bucky."

"Well, it was nice to meet you, Bucky. And sorry again," she said.

"Oh, um, it's fine," said Bucky, watching as she waved at him. She walked further in the direction Bucky had come from.

Bucky watched her go, even after she had turned around. He didn't know why. Maybe because it was the first real interaction he'd had in a long time, where the person wasn't fighting him or threatening him or hurting him. It was just... talking.

He shook himself out of the daze and continued on his way back to his apartment.

Bucky told himself not to think anything of the interaction. He bumped into a person on the street. They were nice to him. Then it was over. It was a normal thing, right? Nothing special.

But even if he kept reminding himself of the facts, Catarina wouldn't get out of his head as he walked back to his apartment.

The whole place was crappy. It was messy, the walls were all painted different colors, and the wallpaper was peeling. Barely anything worked. Bucky had covered up the windows with newspaper so no one could see inside. He guessed having to run away from a Nazi organization for almost a year had made him paranoid like that.

The newspapers covering the windows allowed very little light to come in. Any lights that did exist there had lightbulbs out, or something else was wrong with them. There were shelves on one side of the room, but they were cheaply made from planks of wood and cinder blocks just stacked on top of one another.

Bucky's numerous notebooks and newspaper pages sat scattered on the wooden shelves. On the wall perpendicular to them was the tiny kitchen. It had shelves nailed to the wall, but just barely. Snacking foods sat on top of the fridge and in any other free counter space, and the sink was empty. Bucky always did dishes. It distracted him.

A couch sat against the kitchen table, but the springs inside were broken, and any place you sat sank very low. A mattress sat on the floor near it, and parallel to that was a radiator and a lamp. They were one of the few things that worked fine.

Bucky wouldn't call it home.

a.n.:

hello! the first chapter is finally out and i am so excited. I'll be publishing it on mondays as a treat, bc i know I'd need a good bucky barnes fan fiction after a hard monday.

hmm someone's got a crush *cough* bucky *cough*

don't forget to vote!!

molly