Run (A Bucky Barnes Recovery Story)

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It was weird, suddenly knowing things about a person like suddenly Bucky knew things about Steve. He felt still that level of distance from the person he used to be, the person whose eyes he saw memories out of, that Bucky 1.0 that walked with a confidence and woke up smiling most mornings, even when things were bad. He had done a 180, he wasn’t that person anymore and he couldn’t wake up smiling, but he still saw all of those things and he still knew those things about Steve.

He knew now what kind of things Steve would want for breakfast. (Bacon, or at the very least, pancakes and syrup. Anything but the tasteless oatmeal they used to have.) He knew intimately most details of Steve’s previous disabilities. (Because it got so much worse than the asthma. So much worse.) He knew that Steve colorblindness used to make it so hard for him to do color art and he was often humiliated when he got a color wrong. (And Bucky did remember often pointing out the correct colors and trying to be nonchalant.)

But there was still that distance and that awkwardness and Bucky thought that since he was so different now, maybe he shouldn’t have these memories, but it was still a matter of telling himself that he deserved them and they were his, no matter how difficult it was to believe that.

He wrote more often still, trying to make sense of everything he felt because in words, his conflicted emotions were all so clear and so simple and nearly fixable from the unjudgemental vantage point of the page. It cleared his mind, it calmed him down.

He was writing that day, sitting at his kitchen counter, when Steve knocked at the door and called through to him and Bucky called that he could let himself in and thought to himself that they must be paying that landlord handsomely to encourage him to look over all this noise.

Steve tried to say hello in Russian and Bucky corrected his pronunciation and they practiced a small conversation back and forth as Steve pulled up a chair across the counter from Bucky.

“You’re doing good,” Bucky said.

“Thanks,” Steve replied, probably mostly because there wasn’t much else he knew how to say beyond what they’d practiced.

“You want to do more practice today?” Bucky continued, speaking very slowly and trying to use his hands to make Steve understand. Steve only stared at him. “Practice,” Bucky repeated in Russian and tried to make a motion to his mouth. “Speaking.”

“What,” Steve said. Bucky looked down at his journal then, open on the table, and felt for a moment alarmed that every deep thing he’d ever felt was written there, wide open and mostly in English, and any other time, he would have snapped the book closed and took it to his lap under the table, but instead, he flipped to an empty page in the back and took his pen and turned the book towards Steve.

“You should actually probably practice writing today,” Bucky said in English and began writing out characters. “It’s a different alphabet. It’ll be hard to get used to.”

Bucky remembered translators trying to get him to understand the alphabet. Hardly anyone spoke fluent English. He was surrounded by gibberish, on signs, on packaging, on papers and files. It frustrated them, his handlers and tormentors, because they couldn’t wipe him until he was fluent enough to retain comprehension after being destroyed yet another time. He got a lot of bruises and probably a few broken bones for misunderstanding, but dwelling on it was beginning to make him feel sick, so Bucky tried to put his mind off of it and considered instead how beautiful the language was in Natalia’s mouth and how hard Steve tried to learn, and just for the purpose of becoming closer to Bucky. Those were good things, and Bucky let out a breath and kept writing and pushed the book across the table to Steve. Steve had obviously recognized the book and Bucky remembered his outburst the last time it had been brought up. The red lines down the sides of the pages had mostly rubbed away and Bucky hadn’t done it again, per Steve’s request. And as Steve gingerly picked it up, trying to make sure Bucky was okay with it first, Bucky realized Steve couldn’t have gone through it. He wouldn’t have looked at it. He was his best friend and this was deeply personal and Steve was too honorable. Bucky’s secrets remained, as always, his, and Steve remained, as Bucky trusted him to be, honest.