milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"Go. Go! Take this journal and write down everything you can remember. It will help, I promise you."

"Princess--"

"Do not argue. Find somewhere quiet, where you won't be bothered."

"The kids aren't a bother."

"They are also not quiet."

* * * * * * *

It's been a long time since he's been here, enough that if pressed he couldn't actually say how long. He hadn't exactly meant to come, either, but he'd been thinking about finding somewhere out of the way when he walked out of Shuri's lab, and there's no question that Milliways fits that description better than anywhere else.

About ten minutes later, Bucky Barnes is settled in at one of the quieter booths in the back, the journal open in front of him. (A close observer might notice that each page is subtly embossed with the logo of the Wakandan Design Group.)

He's holding a pen in his right hand and tapping it against the blank page. From time to time he sets down the pen and picks up the cup of coffee waiting beside him instead. A swallow or two later, he repeats the process, swapping cup for pen.

His left hand is immaterial to the whole process, as it's entirely absent. A series of gauze bandages are barely visible under the collar of his shirt, and his left sleeve is neatly pinned shut over where his arm used to be.

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"What happened at second?"

"Special ops. The Howling Commandos. Led by my best friend."

John taps the pen against the notebook a few times.

"If it's too soon for this, you don't have to answer.

"How did you get from special ops to HYDRA?"

"No, that part I know. That's clear," Bucky tells him.

"There was a fight on a train. In the mountains. I fell. Landed in a mountain crevasse. Didn't die. The people who found me brought me to the Russian military. Turned me over for experiments."

He makes a face.

"More experiments, I guess. The reason I didn't die was because of some stuff they hit me with in a lab in a factory while I was a prisoner of war. Sick bastard named Arnim Zola."

John bends over the notebook far more than he needs to in order to write.

His eyes are a little red and damp when he looks up again. He clears the gruffness from his throat.

"Let me just get the timeline straight. You joined with the 107th, then was a POW, then you were released and joined the Howling Commandos?"

"Rescued," he corrects, with a small, wistful smile. "Not released. Rescued. By my best friend. Steve Rogers."

"Rescued," John says as he writes the correction. "Was he in the 107th too? Was that how he knew where to find you?"

He shakes his head.

"He was with the USO at the time. At the front. He heard what had happened and decided to run a one-man rescue mission."

Bucky's tone is very fond.

"One-man?" John has a drink of his whiskey. "What is he, some kind of super?"

He also smirks, because he's familiar enough with supers to find them a tad ... tiresome.

"Yeah," Bucky says, evenly, looking at that smirk. "He is."

A beat.

"That a problem?"

"Not at the moment," John says, "and depending on what sort of super he is. Self-righteous and priggish? Melancholy and self-pitying? Fun-loving and chaotic? Most supers that I've met, they mean well, but they aren't any fun."

"Steve wouldn't know how to be self-righteous or priggish if his life depended on it," Bucky says, a little hotly. "He's a good man. The best."

John holds up his hands to calm him down. "All right, luv, all right. If I ever meet him I'll remember to stay respectful."

He positions the pen over the notebook. "Shall we continue? Tell me more about Steve."

Bucky continues to eye him a little suspiciously.

"Like I said. He's my best friend. We grew up together, in Brooklyn."

"Was he a natural leader? Or was it strange to be commanded by a childhood friend?"

Now he grins.

"Not strange at all. He never did know when to quit. I'd've followed him into hell."

And did, he guesses, when you think about it.

John has a similar thought, but leaves it unsaid.

"Did he survive the war?"

"Yeah. And everything since."

"I have to ask... why didn't he try to rescue you, when you were captured by the Russians? Was he wounded in the same attack?"

"He thought I was dead," Bucky tells him. There's not an iota of doubt in his voice when he continues,

"If he'd known there was even the slightest chance I could have survived, he'd have never stopped looking for me."

"I see..."

He writes this down, too, and ponders the pages now covered in notes. "Is he still alive now, seventy years later? If he is, does he know you're still alive too?"

Edited 2021-02-27 22:08 (UTC)

"Yeah. He is. And he does."

He huffs out a breath that's somewhere between wry exasperation and rueful laughter.

"It was... complicated. But we sorted it out."

This may, in fact, be the understatement of the century.

John chuckles, wry himself. "You're not a man of many words. Leaving out the details just makes me more curious."

"The details are why I have that notebook in the first place," Bucky informs him, dryly.

"Remember the assassin part? They called me the Winter Soldier. He was one of my targets. HYDRA sent me to kill him."

"And I'm writing down everything you say."

The smile falls from his face at Bucky's explanation. "And that's where the controls came in, yeah?"