What the Water Gave Me

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I said I don’t care about who I was before,” Bucky wrote one day.

“Yeah,” Steve said, studying Bucky’s face. His eyes were unreadable. “So?”

“So I’ve thought about it a little,” Bucky continued. Steve waited for him and he didn’t go on.

“Yeah?” Steve said again, prodding him. Bucky's shoulder's came in further anxiously.

"It's scary," he wrote. "That's all. That's all I was thinking about it."

"What's so scary?" Steve asked and Bucky looked at him for a minute before writing more.

“It makes things more complicated,” he wrote. “Harder, somehow.”

“Okay,” Steve said.

“How would you feel?” Bucky wrote more, going faster, starting to scrawl his letters together. “If someone came up to you and told you they knew you but you were a whole different person and you don’t even remember the person you used to be? Or what if someone came up to you and said you used to be a salmon?”

“Hey,” Steve said. “You said people aren’t salmon.” Bucky rolled his eyes and rubbed his forearm across his board, bracing it against his tail.

“They aren’t,” he continued with something of a grin. “It’s an imperfect metaphor, work with me.” Steve laughed.

“Yeah, I guess that’d be a little strange,” he said.

“And I just keep thinking, like I owe something to human me,” Bucky wrote. “There’s all these unanswered questions and weird moral grounds and I just-” He stopped. Steve waited patiently for him. “You know,” he finally continued. “Ever since I found you and everything turned on it’s head, I’ve been trying to figure out why I am the way I am and if that's okay and if it's my fault and how I can live with myself. It's hard enough without thinking that I might have been someone in a past life who would be afraid of me now. It’s like thinking I’ve become something bad. Like I used to be better and then something happened and now I’m different in a bad way.”

“I understand,” Steve said and Bucky shook his head.

“Do you?” He wrote in small letters in the margin. “Do you though? Because it’s okay if you don’t. I don’t think you do.

“I don’t want it to be my fault. I can’t see how it would be but it’s easy to blame myself. It’s somehow easier to hope I can change if I just stop doing the things I’m supposed to do, like eating and swimming and singing, but I can’t. I’ll die if I do and I can’t let myself die because it’s not my fault, right? I didn’t do anything to deserve death, I just did what I had to do. Right? Can I be blamed for being something that has to do those things? I didn’t choose it.

“Even if I was a human, I have to come to terms with what I am now. Gills and claws and all. Cause I can’t change that.”

Bucky wrote with a certain franticness, like he couldn’t write down every thought that passed through his head in time. Steve read over his shoulder and when Bucky ran out of room, he’d wipe a line or two away from the top and start there again and keep moving down until the entire board was full again. When he was finished, he threw down his marker and hid his face in the crook of his arm and Steve knelt down and wrapped him up, pulling him close.

“Hey, Buck, come on, shh,” he said quietly. “You’re right, you can’t change that. It’s not your fault and look, it’s not even a bad thing. You’re you and that means you sing and you swim and you breathe water and,” he laughed a little. “Eat people. You can’t help that. You’ve tried.” Bucky let out a breath and leaned his head against Steve and Steve squeezed him reassuringly. “I like you like this, Bucky,” he said. “You’re not different in a bad way. You’re just different.” Bucky pulled away a little, just enough to reach his marker again.

“Would you have said that when you first met me?” He asked.

“Doesn’t matter what I would have said then,” Steve said. “Because this is what I’m saying now. You don’t owe human you a single damn thought if you don’t want to and personally, I think you’re perfect. I know that doesn’t make everything all better,” Steve added. “But I hope it helps a little. Cause honestly, Buck, even if you’re not the James Buchanan Barnes I thought you were and everyone was right about you being a completely different person,” he shrugged. “I wouldn’t care.”

Bucky looked over and studied his eyes for a minute, swallowing. He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth thoughtfully.

“Thanks,” he wrote.

“Do you, uh, want to know anything about human you?” Steve asked gingerly. “Or, uh, human-maybe-you?” Bucky nodded slowly.

“I want to know how I became who I am and what happened to me,” he wrote and Steve nodded a little.

“Well,” he said. “The legends all sort of vary, but I’ll tell you what I know.” Bucky listened to him raptly and Steve resituated himself, sitting next to Bucky and keeping one arm around his shoulder. “They say the ocean is magic and that when people die there, the ocean takes them in and saves them. A few legends say it gives you a choice to live or to die, but if you live, you’re tethered to the ocean forever and it gives you gills and fins and everything. Like a trade. Your humanity or your life.” Bucky nodded a little silently, deep in thought. “The ocean must have wanted to keep you, Buck,” Steve said quietly. “Wanted you so bad it even made you a new arm.”

Steve found he was jealous of the ocean. It had claimed Bucky and now no one else could be with him, and especially not Steve. It wasn’t fair.

I understand why it loves you so much, Steve thought.