Lost + Found [Bucky Barnes] ✓

Chapter 33

After a week inside the tiny apartment in Patras, I've realized that I'm getting a little bit stir crazy. Bucky just left for a shopping trip, probably to get us enough groceries to get us through the weekend, and I've been counting down the minutes until he returns.

The circles under his eyes are more prominent than ever, and he refuses to sleep more than a few hours every day. Each night I offer the tiny twin bed to him, but each night he declines. Instead, he sits in the kitchen doing God knows what while I try to sleep.

Three days passed before I finally convinced him to get some sleep, but even then he only agreed to a two-hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. I had to promise to stay awake, sitting on the balcony watching the street below, with a cheap pre-paid cell phone at the ready should I spot something out of the ordinary.

Which I didn't, of course, because no one knows where we are. I don't even know where we are. If you told me to look up Patras on a map, I couldn't even point to it, and I haven't seen anything of the city besides the brief cab ride from the bus station to this flat. Bucky leaves every day, sometimes for thirty minutes and sometimes for a few hours, and he refuses to take me with him no matter how much I beg.

He was kind enough to bring me a worn paperback copy of Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which I've now read three times in the past week. Aside from that, I've been watching a lot of shitty TV on the tiny box television in the bedroom that looks like it came out of 1995, and I've been trying to teach myself Greek from it. One of the channels airs a lot of American shows dubbed over in Greek, so I've been trying to make the best out of a bad situation. Aside from the basic pleasantries, all I've learned how to say is, "How you doin'" a la Joey from Friends.

Bucky tells me that Greek is definitely not my language.

Flicking off the television, I stand up from the bed and stretch my limbs carefully. Between my bruises, healing bullet wound, and being cooped up inside, my body groans from the slightest movement. Heading toward the bathroom, I run my fingers through my black and purple hair, the weave knotted and tangled from the lack of proper care. My curls hang limp, and I've been pulling them up into a ponytail more often than not, so I stand in front of the bathroom sink with a pair of scissors in my hand.

Carefully sectioning off my hair, I snip through the thread securing the weave to the braid underneath and begin pulling it away from my head. It's a long and tedious process, one Artemis usually does for me if I don't feel like paying a salon, but it gives me something to focus on while Bucky is gone. Soon, all of the silky black and purple hair is removed to reveal tight braids covering my head, and I make quick work of undoing them.

My head feels weird when it's all over, finally free from the tight braids that normally cover it 90% of the time, and I massage my scalp before turning on the water to the rusty shower. Once it's hot, I shed my clothes and take a long shower, savoring the feeling of my natural hair loose from its bonds, and smile into the stream of water.

The door to the apartment opens and shuts, the noise echoing through the small safe house, and I turn off the water before wrapping a towel around myself.

"Bucky?" I call out tentatively, chiding myself internally as soon as his name slips through my lips. Who else would it be?

Pulling on a men's t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, I stick my head out of the bathroom door to see the brown-haired man sticking a few items in the refrigerator. We've been washing our clothes in the sink, trying to stay somewhat normal, so my jeans and t-shirt are currently drying on the balcony outside the bedroom. He didn't exactly expect to bring a woman to the safehouse, so I've been making do with the few items Bucky left for himself in case he visited.

"You're back," I say, quickly cleaning up my mess and toweling off the ends of my hair before hanging the towel to dry. "Any news?"

He shakes his head without looking at me, "Nothing."

"Great," I mumble, plopping down on the chair to watch him as he starts to cook us a simple meal. "How much longer do we have to stay here, then?"

Bucky sighs, probably annoyed that we're having this conversation yet again, "Until it's safe to leave."

"And if it's never safe? If we never hear from Steve or T'Challa?" I ask, raising my voice as I rub my temples. Taking a deep breath, I exhale slowly, "I'm sorry."

He turns to face me, and his blue eyes look sad. I shouldn't have mentioned Steve, not when he's been worried all week that his best friend was taken by the men who wanted him. By that man, Magnus, and what might have been Hydra.

"Is this our life now?" I ask, biting the corner of my lip. "Hiding from the police, hiding from the world? If it is, that's...that's fine," my voice cracks, "but I want to know so I can prepare myself. I've lost everything in the past month. My sister, my father, my life in D.C. I just...I feel like my identity is being ripped away from me as well."

Bucky nods, "I get it."

"I'm sorry," I whisper, embarrassed to bring up identity issues in front of him.

He waves away my apology, leaning back against the kitchen counter and gives me a weak smile. His blue eyes look distant, that familiar look of when he gets caught in a memory, and he falls silent for a moment.

"After Hydra took me," Bucky says, "the first time. After Zola experimented on me, I felt different. I didn't know what he did to me - hell, no one did - but I didn't feel like myself anymore. I didn't feel like Bucky Barnes. Not really. I pretended that everything was okay, and that worked. Eventually it became easier to fake it, easier to fool everyone, easier to be that laid-back kid from Brooklyn who seemed to have it all."

He sucks in a deep breath, "But Bucky Barnes died the day I fell off that train, Chloe. I don't want it to be true, but it is. I'm not him. I'm just...I'm not. No matter how much Steve wishes it isn't true, no matter how much I try to be him...I can't go back to that."

"Bucky," I begin to say, standing up and taking a step toward him.

He lifts a hand, his face contorted with pain from his invisible demons, and interrupts me, "Let me finish."

I nod, remaining silent, and he continues, "When I was the Winter Soldier, I didn't know anything about who I was. What I was. All I knew was the mission. I wasn't a man, I wasn't a soldier, I was a weapon. A machine. When I....after I got out, it felt like I had these voices in my head screaming at me. At each other. I didn't know what was real. Sometimes I still don't. I have all of these memories of my life as Bucky Barnes, and all of these nightmares of my time as the Winter Soldier, and....they're part of me, but I'm not them. I'm someone else."

Bucky hesitates, clenching and unclenching his metal fist, before he sighs and runs a hand over the back of his neck. His hair is longer now, reaching just past his shoulders, and he keeps it tucked under a baseball cap most of the time. I stare up at him, feeling myself drowning in the sea of his blue eyes, and he gives me a sheepish look.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is you get to decide who you are," he tells me firmly. "No one else."

*****
AUTHOR'S NOTE

*smashes horrible writer's block into bits with a baseball bat* AND STAY DOWN!

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