Work Text:
Now:
Steve picks up the little boy and carries him down the dark hallway toward the living room. Little legs wrap around his waist and the fur of a plush wolf is tickling his neck as he moves.
"You"re safe, Bucky; l"ve got you. It was just a nightmare. Go back to sleep," he whispers as he rubs his little back.
The little boy"s metal arm clenches around Steve"s neck and Steve is glad it"s him doing this and not someone else. That arm is stronger than it looks.
"I"ve got you," he assures. Steve walks with the boy into the den and settles him down on the sofa. He grabs the afghan off the back of the nearby chair and the little boy lies down without being asked. His eyes are heavy and he watches Steve unfold the blanket. Steve tucks it around him and brushes the strands of long, dark hair from the child"s face.
"I"ll be right there," Steve says pointing to where he always is this time of night- sitting in front of his easel by the window. "Go back to sleep, Buck."
The little boy"s eyes close back immediately and Steve sighes.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
Only the most elite of the government knew about Project Rebirth. Most of them would just hear about it after. There were people looking for Dr. Erskine and everyone in the war was looking for a way to build super soldiers. At least Steve Rogers wasn"t a popular name. They didn"t whisper about him, only the serum. The world all wanted the super soldier serum.
A few weeks after the whispers started, George Barnes had returned from a covert mission in Russia insistent that someone had his son. Five-year-old Bucky Barnes had grown up his father"s constant shadow even following him on a business trip to Russia. George had lost his wife and daughter together a few years before and had watched Bucky with eagle-eyes ever since. How he could end up in the hands of anyone in Russia was a mystery to everyone who knew him.
However, they understood why he did what he could to figure out which soldier was getting the serum first.
"When you"re indestructible, you have to find my son," he begged once he had tracked down Steve. "The men who have him- Hydra- they"re dangerous. It has to be you."
Those over Steve and the project had brushed him aside, saying other various agencies would handle it, but Steve couldn"t shake the memories of the man pleading with him to find his son.
Steve wasn"t indestructible after the project"s success. However, he was the strongest soldier the world had to offer. But some things had gone wrong. Erskine had been shot and they hadn"t been able to make anymore super soldiers.
Without Erskine, they didn"t have the knowledge to recreate the serum. So Steve hadn"t been sent to the battlefield; he had been sent to a lab. Any hope they had at reproducing the serum was hidden in Steve"s new genetic code and they were determined to break the mystery.
He spent days, then weeks, and then months being the military"s personal lab rat. They took vial after vial of blood. They studied his brain patterns, his muscle reflexes, and his heightened senses. He had begun to think that that would be his life, but then something unexpected happened.
He was in an office waiting to check up with one of the doctors when he picked up a paper from the desk in front of him and found out that George Barnes had been killed in a suspicious automobile accident.
"Did anyone ever locate his kid?" Steve asked when he was caught reading the page.
"Barnes"s story is shrouded in mystery right now, Rogers," the doctor said. "The more evidence we find, the more we come to the conclusion that he was working for this Hydra he seemed so afraid of. There"s a great chance that wherever James Barnes- "Bucky" is, he"s perfectly safe. Going after him was most likely a pre-planned trap to get their hands on someone with the serum.”
"You have proof of that?" Steve asked. "You know there"s not a kid in danger out there?"
"Steve," the man replied more sternly. "Why do you think Barnes was so eager to have you go rescue his son?"
"He assumed that with the serum, I would be the most qualified to take them on."
"Don"t flatter yourself. George Barnes probably left his kid in very safe hands. And had every intention of getting him back once they got their hands on you and the serum. His untimely death was probably a happy accident on our part."
"So where is Bucky?" Steve asked. "Is someone trying to retrieve him?"
"I"m sure he"ll surface in time," the doctor replied, taking the file from Steve’s hands. "He"s not a concern until the war is won."
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
Bucky never gets up without being told. Steve still hasn"t decided how to handle that. On one hand, there’s one fewer deadly assassins walking about unsupervised. On the other hand, Bucky is six and half-years-old and should be able to get up and get his own juice box.
Steve wanders barefoot into the den where he had left Bucky to sleep last night. The sun is coming in through the closed blinds and birds can be heard outside.
"Good morning," Steve tells the little boy who"s contently lying there, eyes open and looking with only his eyes, hands folded back behind his head. It"s obvious he waits on Steve each morning.
Bucky looks up at him pleasantly.
"Come on," Steve says, reaching down and holding out his hand to the boy. Bucky reaches both of his hands up and pulls himself up with Steve"s arm. Then he sits there, brushing his hair back behind him and stretching for a minute as Steve folds the blanket.
"Bathroom," Steve instructs, "And then meet me for breakfast."
Bucky nods and ambles off down the hallway, barefoot and in dinosaur pajamas. Steve watches him go before going to start his coffee.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
Steve couldn"t sleep. He couldn"t shake the idea that somewhere out there Bucky Barnes wasn"t in safe hands. They had said the accident that killed George Barnes was suspicious. Why? What had made it important enough to tell Steve"s doctors?
Was something to do with Steve? Was it something to do with George wanting Steve to rescue his son?
Maybe it was a trap. Maybe it was that they wanted their hands on someone with the serum in their veins. But what if it wasn"t? What if there really was a little boy in need of help out there and no one was going to save him?
"That sounds like the beginning of a supervillain origin story," Steve told himself before looking in the mirror. He stared at himself a moment and then laughed and shook his head. "You read too many comic books. And the kid is five-years-old."
Nevertheless after a few days of not being able to sleep, Steve hatched a plan.
"I can"t work it alone, Peggy. You have clearance to get us out of here, to get us a plane."
"They"ll catch us," Peggy argued. She was one of the top agents on Project Rebirth and she had been one of the few agents to repeatedly come visit Steve as he trained pointlessly and did various tests for months on end. "I know you and I both like doing the unexpected, but this idea might damn well get us both killed, Steve."
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
Bucky is on Steve"s back, holding around his neck with his flesh hand, and holding onto his rocketship plastic cup with the metal one.
"We"ve got eggs,” Steve offers. We can have omelettes or scrambled eggs or I could make you eggs and bacon or sausage. There"s those little scones from the bakery and some jam. Or toast. There"s-"
"I just want cereal," Bucky says, letting go of Steve"s neck and dropping to the floor. He pads over to the other side of the counter and pulls himself up onto a chair.
Steve grimaces. "You ate all of your cereal," he reminds him. "Yesterday. And we didn"t go to the store. You can have some of my cereal or you can pick something else and I"ll make it. You decide."
Bucky"s whole body slumps. He drops his head until his forehead rests on the countertop and he"s left staring straight at the linoleum.
Steve supposes it is hard to be a six-year-old super soldier.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
"I"m going in with you," Peggy said on the flight.
She strapped herself with ammo and leaned forward to say something to their pilot. It had taken her a few weeks to get it all in motion, but she had recruited a team of former army friends of George Barnes. They were all people who remembered when Bucky was born or when Winifred and Rebecca Barnes had died and they wanted to help bring Bucky home. They all were prepared to do what it took to see the child back to New York safely.
"Your boyfriend going too?" Steve asked, nodding toward the pilot.
"Howard is not my boyfriend. But he"s a good friend and you"ll do best to be thankful he"s crazy enough to brave this mission. We"ll be lucky if we even make it over mainland Russia before we"re shot down and we don"t even have an extraction plan."
"If we can land the plane, we"ve got Hydra"s bases mapped," one of the soldiers said.
Another one spoke up. "We know how to run this. Let"s focus on landing unseen and making it to the base. Once we get him, it should be easy."
A third one laughed. "How hard can bringing in a five-year-old be?"
"He turned six in March," Peggy corrected and then looked back at Steve. "Howard also got you the locations of the Hydra bases. Seriously, consider some gratitude. Besides he"s not coming on the base with us. He"s guarding the plane so we can get back out of there."
Steve wasn"t sure what he was feeling toward the pilot, but it might have been jealousy and he wasn"t entirely sure why. He’d never met the man and he didn’t have any desire for a pilot’s license himself so it felt misplaced. Either way, he shelved it as he prepared for the rescue operation.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
"Do we have to watch this?" Steve asks as Bucky stares straight ahead at the television playing Scooby-Doo.
Bucky ignores him and keeps right on staring.
"We could watch a movie," Steve offers. "I bought Peter Pan like you wanted."
Bucky looks away from the TV and up at Steve.
His pajamas are still on and his hair still has a messy, bed-head appearance that makes him look rather innocent.
"Could we..." Bucky trails off and runs his human hand down the edge of the sofa. "Go to the park?"
Steve watches him a second before saying.
"Maybe after you do a lesson. After lunch."
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
Steve, Peggy, and their reconnaissance team crept through the facility with guns raised. They hadn"t fired them yet. They didn"t want to draw attention to themselves. They had taken out the two guards they had encountered so far with simple knives and well-trained hand-to-hand fighting skills. Luckily, the place didn"t seem to be heavily guarded.
This was the second base they had hit. The first base they had gotten into with only one death- a stupid guard who had almost sounded an alarm before Steve grabbed him by his throat and crushed his windpipe. A second hit was a quick punch to his chest that broke ribs and stopped his heart.
Otherwise, the base hadn"t been heavily guarded and so they had been lucky. They stole paperwork and hightailed it out of there before they were noticed by anyone else. They had even dragged the dead guard"s body after them to cover their footprints and then left him at a spot where the snow was thin over rocks and their shallow footprints would be covered after only a few minutes of snowfall.
It was a cruel decision, but then again, so was the decision to work for Hydra. (Whether they had Bucky Barnes or not, Steve had learned enough about Hydra to know they were bad news.)
"I don"t think they were expecting you to show up like this," Peggy whispered as the ambled almost silently down the hallway of the second base.
"Diplomacy was probably expected. Or a prisoner exchange."
"What kind of prisoner exchange could we do with the Russians? They"re on our side," another soldier whispered back.
Peggy shot him a look that seemed to say he was being a complete idiot considering their current situation.
A Hydra soldier rounded the corner completely unaware and Peggy took him out almost silently. Someone in the room he had just come from called out something else to the man as Peggy placed his body on the ground barely a sound.
Whatever he said must have been a question because he repeated himself a second later and then they heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor and someone walking toward the door. Steve grabbed the man immediately as he stepped out the door and punched his throat. He followed it with a punch to the man"s chest. He wouldn"t be doing anymore yelling if he couldn"t breathe. Peggy reached and snapped his neck before giving Steve a look as he dropped the body.
They all crept into the office the men had just come from. They knew from the information they had gathered at the last base that this one was hiding something.
"Pull the bodies in here. Close the door," Peggy instructed and the soldiers did as told. They slumped both bodies in the corner as Peggy and a soldier named Jones poured over the files.
"My Russian is horrendous, but this has George Barnes"s name on it. I"m going to take them all back with us if I can," she informed quickly. She pulled out papers that didn"t make any sense.
They had sketches of robotic arms on them and various notations on each.
"We need to see if he"s here." They both dug around a few minutes longer before Jones found what they were looking for.
"Are they keeping him sedated?" Steve asked, trying to make sense of the papers in front of him.
"That"s part of it," Jones replied.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
Steve holds up the first flash card. "Please."
"Te rog," Bucky replies, almost no thought needed.
"I understand." Steve holds up another flash card.
"Inteleg," Bucky says flatly. He"s bored. It"s obvious. Steve flips over the flash card to see the correct answer and sets it aside.
"Bad."
Bucky sighs. "Rău."
"Thank you."
"Multumesc," Bucky answers. He"s slumped over with his cheek rested on his metal palm.
"There”
"Acolo." His voice gets flatter with every answer.
"Hello."
"Bună. This one is a lot like Spanish." The child doesn"t seem impressed.
"So was Italian," Steve says.
"E noioso," Bucky complains. "Muy aburrido. Rastochka. Ennuyeuse. Langweilig. Tylsä. It"s boring in this language too."
"Bucky." It"s Steve"s turn to sigh. He doesn"t know what to do about the lessons anymore.
The government had decided it wasn"t a good idea to send Bucky to school with the other kids.
Too many risks involved. But Steve knows Bucky needs more than this.
They do the same things every day. And every few months when he masters another language at unbelievably, lightning speed, they started a new one. Some new language to keep Bucky"s mind occupied is always their answer.
"They said we have to," Steve explains. "We have to do this or they"re going to take you away."
"Hydra?" Bucky asks quietly.
"No, no," Steve assures and reaches out to pull the little boy close to him. "I"ve got you; you"re safe from Hydra."
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
They had had to fight through a number of guards before they made it to where they were keeping George Barnes"s son. None of it made any sense to either Steve or Peggy. He was glassed in inside a chamber and in some kind of stasis. He looked sound asleep with ice holding onto his hair and lips and eyelashes. There was a thin layer of ice covering his skin and clothes. His lips were blue. He looked so cold it made their hearts ache to look at him.
"Yeah, that"s him," one of the older soldiers spoke with resignation in his voice.
"What have they done to you?" Peggy asked, looking through the glass.
"We have to get him out of there," Steve said in a panic. He looked around the space they were in. “Help me find a way to break it open.
Jones reached forward and pressed a button.
"It says ‘defrost,’" he said with a shrug.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
"You understand why, right?" Steve asks Bucky as they sit at a picnic table in the park.
"Same reason I can"t go to school?" Bucky asks.
Some children at the park hadn"t wanted to play with him because his metal arm had frightened them and Bucky had come to Steve upset about it.
"I"m dangerous.”
"Yeah, that"s what they think."
"Am I?" Bucky asks. It"s obvious he"s frustrated with everything he doesn"t understand and Steve can"t even begin to figure out how to explain it. He isn"t even sure what he is allowed to explain to the little boy. This parenting thing didn’t come with a manual for anyone, but especially not for the accidental parent of a tiny, sad super soldier.
"Am I dangerous? Tell me the truth."
Steve reaches out and taps on Bucky"s balled up metal fist. "There"s a lot of power in this, isn"t there? Sometimes you break things."
"Not on purpose," Bucky argues as he stretches out the fingers. "Just on purpose when I"m mad."
Steve smiles ruefully. "That scares them. Most kids can"t break things with their hands when they"re upset. Not like you can. They can"t completely crush them like you do."
"But I"m not crushing things and they"re still not playing with me. I didn"t even do anything. I"m being nice."
He huffs and Steve pulls out their lunch cooler.
"It just looks different from them. Sometimes people are scared of people who are different."
Bucky"s steam seems to leave his body and he"s left with the saddest expression Steve has ever seen.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
When the chamber finished its process, it opened automatically.
Bucky’s skin was still pale and his lips and eyelids were still tinted blue. His hair was wet and he shivered from head to toe.
Steve reached forward and Bucky immediately cowered back from him.
He tried to duck down and hide as small as he could in the back of the chamber, but the chamber was small and Steve reached right in and grabbed Bucky up.
On contact, Bucky started screaming. His voice sounded strained, probably from the ice, but he didn’t stop. He kicked and screamed as his metal arm came out to grab at Steve"s throat.
Steve knocked it off.
"You"re safe! You"re safe!" Steve yelled over the screams. "We"re not gonna hurt you!"
The boy kept screaming and then suddenly more Hydra agents were rushing in from around the base. The soldiers from the entourage began to yell instructions. As Hydra agents entered the room, the soldiers quickly took on the fight. Everything happened so quickly, Steve couldn’t keep up. He just focused on holding on to a fighting Bucky.
"I"ve got you! We"re taking you home!" Steve yelled at the boy. "Bucky! You"re safe!"
"Get him out of here!" someone yelled and suddenly Steve was running. Bucky seemed to sense what was happening as Steve dodged bullets and men reaching for him.
Bucky quieted down, clinging to Steve, and hiding part of his face in Steve"s neck and shoulder. Steve wrapped his arms around the small frame and ran with everything in him.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
Bucky falls asleep on the train on the way home. He and Steve made quite a day of it despite the playground situation. They ate lunch and got to swing and played frisbee. Also Bucky had gotten to pet eleven dogs and feed the edges of his bread to some squirrels so he was fairly happy. Steve is thankful he"s worn out and napping.
Steve glances around the subway car at the various people around him. They"re all difference races and speak different languages. So much has changed in Brooklyn over the years, but at least that has remained the same. The cultures mixing everywhere, the noisy, busy rush of the city. He glances out the window as the train comes above ground. At least the streets are familiar even if they"re noisier and busier too.
He looks at Bucky asleep against his shoulder and smiles and wonders if Bucky remembers Brooklyn before.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
They all made it back to the plane. Miraculously.
Steve strapped the terrified child into the seat next to him. For his part, Bucky seemed to stunned to do much more fighting, but Steve kept repeating, "I"ve got you. You"re safe now. We"re not going to hurt you" just in case. They strapped in as Howard started them down the field to take off. Propellers spinning and engine thrumming, they all found their seats as the plane took off.
Peggy locked the files they had stolen into a case and looked across at Steve with a slight smile.
For a moment they all held their breath, looking at one another and stealing glances at Bucky. They all had so many questions. Where had the metal arm come from? Why was he in cryofreeze? And what did George Barnes have to do with it?
They would wait and decide what to do with him once they got back stateside.
Peggy reached out and wiped a hand over Bucky"s cheek. He looked up at her with wide eyes and a frightened expression.
"You"re going home," she told him.
Those were the last words she ever said. Seconds later, their plane was shot from the sky and they spiraled into the frigid waters of the Gulf of Finland.
And there they stayed for seventy years.
Now:
Bucky wakes up when Steve nudges him. He blinks a few times and looked around.
"Cereal?" he asks as he notices they aren"t near their usual stop for home.
"You need cereal. And we need milk for that cereal. We might go crazy and grab something fun for dinner," Steve tells him.
Bucky seems to take a few seconds to collect himself, but then reaches and pushes himself up from the seat.
"Pancakes?" Bucky asks as the train comes to a stop and the doors slide open.
"For dinner?" Steve laughs as he takes Bucky hand and leads him away from the platform.
"Why didn"t you ask for pancakes for breakfast this morning?"
Bucky shrugs and Steve crouches down on the sidewalk.
Bucky climbs onto his back the same way he did this morning. It"s so much easier to keep up with a child in public if they are on you backpack-style. It’s easier to keep up with a small assassin that way too. Besides, Bucky thinks it"s cooler to be up there than walking anyway.
Steve reaches up and grabs onto Bucky"s hands that are on his shoulders, one warm and soft under Steve"s hand, the other cold and metal.
"Am I gonna get too big for piggyback rides one day?" Bucky asks as Steve stands up and begins to go down the platform stairs to the street level.
Steve lets go of him with one hand and grabs his phone in his pocket to check that he hasn"t missed anything on train. "I don"t know, Buck. I think we have to wait and see."
Bucky sighs. "I want to get bigger like everyone else."
Steve looks sideways to where Bucky"s head is hovering above his shoulder.
"I know you do, pal."
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
They fished the wreckage from an area of the Gulf that usually stayed frozen. They hadn"t expected to find anyone inside, but they certainly hadn"t expected to find a whole team of people inside.
The mission hadn"t been sanctioned so no one had ever known where to look for their bodies although conclusions had been drawn at the time as to what had happened to Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, Howard Stark, and a team of military men all with backgrounds linking them to George Barnes. Assumptions were that they had died at the hands and Hydra and well, that was partially true.
Scientists certainly didn"t know what to make of finding Steve and Bucky still alive.
"He was a super soldier. Must make it damn hard to die," one doctor had commented. "But that doesn"t explain the kid."
Further research had revealed more than anyone had been expecting. Whatever had Hydra had done to Bucky included a serum to keep his cell regenerating at an alarming speed. He healed exponentially faster than a regular human. This also meant that he aged at an almost undetectable rate. He and Steve had that in common. While everyone around them grew up and older, they stayed the same. Steve forever mid-twenties; Bucky forever six-years-old.
A case found among the wreckage had paperwork in it that revealed even more. Hydra had indeed abducted Bucky Barnes, but it wasn"t so black and white. George Barnes had entered an arrangement with the Nazi division to bring them the first super soldier. They had abducted Bucky to ensure that George didn"t back out of the deal. Paperwork that Peggy had stolen had also revealed that when George Barnes had failed to deliver after multiple chances, Hydra had been the one to end his life. But in the cruelest way.
George Barnes had died in a car wreck in New Jersey. And according to a journal kept by Hydra, Bucky Barnes was there.
The paperwork recounted that Hydra had returned Bucky Barnes to his father just earlier that evening. George Barnes had been driving them along a deserted stretch of road between the point where they had been reunited and their home when the child had calmly extracted a knife from his pocket and drove it into his father"s neck. No hesitation, no theatrics.
The car careened out of control after and went over an embankment down into a small pond. Glass had broken everywhere, cutting George Barnes"s face and neck and obscuring the damage Bucky had done.
Hydra had followed up shortly after to be sure George was dead, expecting to find Bucky dead as well, but instead they had found George Barnes bloodied and drowned and Bucky Barnes sitting on the bank of the pond, shivering, and holding where his shoulder had been deeply lacerated. Upon seeing them, Bucky only stood up, gritted his teeth through the pain, and asked calmly, "What do you want me to do now?"
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
Bucky is catching Pokémon on his tablet as Steve handles some business on his laptop. He"s begun doing freelance art so he can spend as much time as possible at Bucky"s side. He doesn"t trust anyone else with him.
Bucky runs back into the den where Steve is and holds out his tablet. "There was a rattata on your bed!"
"Did you catch him? I don"t want anyone in my bed but me."
"I caught him," Bucky announces gleefully, waving the tablet at Steve some more.
"That"s fantastic. Loosen your grip a little.”
Bucky loosens his grip, but then switches the tablet to his other hand.
“Hey, you wanna go to Maine with me so l can do some work?" Steve asks.
“Maine? Is that the one on the top?”
“That’s the one,” Steve says giving Bucky a thumbs up.
Bucky drops the tablet and shrugs.
"Can I pet a lobster?"
Before languages, they had studied each state individually.
"If we go, I will make sure you see some lobsters. I don’t know about petting them, but you will definitely see some.”
"Are we gonna fly?" Bucky asks, eyes wide.
Steve grimaces. He"s always worried something will trigger Bucky"s memories of the plane crash. He remembers it like it had just happened yesterday. Bucky"s memory seemed much more selective.
"I don"t know yet," Steve answers.
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
"He"s not a child. He"s a weapon. Hydra programmed him with God knows what!" General Ross had argued.
Steve had gotten in his face about it. "He"s a kid!" he had yelled back. "He was used by Hydra. He didn"t choose to do those things!"
"But Hydra is still out there!" General Ross had argued angrily. "They"re not strong, but they"re still out there. Someone gets word that he"s still around and they"ll come for him. We know from the paperwork we have on him that Hydra trained him, brainwashed him, and set him with codewords."
“Potentially. We don’t know have any proof of codewords just lodged in brain somewhere.” Steve reasoned. "Or what language they"re in or if they still work. It"s been decades. And he doesn"t remember anything about any codewords."
"Or so he claims. One slip of the tongue and he could be off to kill someone. It could be me or you!"
"If that"s true," Steve seethed, "Don"t you think I"m the one best fit to stop him?"
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
"I guess we could go to Maine on a bus," Bucky agrees as Steve finishes lathering shampoo into his hair.
"Lean back," Steve tells him and Bucky tilts his head back so Steve can pour a cup of water on it and rinse it clean. He does this a few times with Bucky keeping his eyes shut tightly. "I think it might be fun to take a bus. We"ve never done that. And it"s a long trip so we"ll take one at night so we can sleep most of the way."
"How long?"
"About eight hours," Steve replies. "That"s about how long we sleep every night." Truth be told, that is about how long Bucky sleeps on a good night and Steve almost never gets that much, but he isn"t going to bother with details right now.
"Can I take my tablet?" Bucky asks, wiping his eyes and opening them again.
"Of course you can," Steve says and reaches for the conditioner. "You can pack a bag of things to take with you. Like coloring books and crayons. Something to do on the bus and something to do while I"m working."
He squirts some conditioner in his hand and begins to lather it into Bucky"s wet hair until it all feels silky smooth. Then he reaches and turns on the faucet and lets Bucky rinse his hair underneath the running water.
"Are we going tomorrow?" Bucky asks as he finishes rinsing and stands up. Steve had grabbed a towel and has it held out waiting for him. Bucky steps out of the tub and wraps himself up with Steve"s help.
"No, no. It would be in about two weeks," Steve answers. "And I"ll make you a deal," Steve uses the top part of the towel to shimmy over Bucky"s hair quickly until the little boy is giggling. "You want to make a deal?"
"What?" Bucky asks. He drops the towel some on his left side and Steve picks it back up, using it to dry off Bucky"s side and shoulder before grabbing for the prosthetic limb lying on the countertop.
"We won"t study any language lessons the whole time we"re there," Steve tells him.
Bucky"s eyes go wide and he turns so Steve can hook the metal limb back in its socket.
"What would we learn?" Bucky asks excitedly.
"I don"t know. I bet they have things to learn there. We"ll find something. We might study lobsters."
Steve makes sure the metal contacts inside the arm touch and he hears a low whirring sound start up so he knows the arm is fully attached again. Then Bucky takes over drying himself from there. Steve steps over to the counter and extracts a hairbrush from a drawer.
"Maybe they have polar bears," Bucky muses and Steve grins.
"I don"t think we learned about them having any polar bears, but I bet they have seals. And maybe moose."
"Are we gonna see the seals?" Bucky asks as he drops the towel on the floor and starts to get dressed.
"We"re just gonna have to see, pal. I don"t know yet," Steve laughs. When Bucky finishes dressing, Steve runs the brush through his hair.
"My ma used to tell me not to brush wet hair, but my ma never had to brush tangled up Bucky Barnes hair before."
"Did she brush your hair?" Bucky questions as he climbs up onto a stool so he can reach the the sink to brush his teeth.
"She would run her fingers through it when it was still wet and then she would comb it out when it was dry," Steve remembers. "My hair wasn"t as thick as yours and it wasn"t as long either."
"I don"t remember my momma," Bucky says somewhat wistfully and Steve never knows what to say in moments like this, but he settles on,
“Well, she must have been pretty special to have a kid as great as you.”
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
Steve had burst out of the room and away from General Ross. Something told him if he didn"t grab Bucky immediately and get out of there that they would take him away and do God knows what to him. To his surprise, Bucky wasn"t where he left him. Instead, he was waiting right outside the door of the room. Steve grabbed him up, wrapping his arms tightly around him and yelling at Ross who marched to the door in protest.
"He"s a child. And he doesn"t have anyone left," Steve spat. "You won"t touch him."
Bucky had tucked into Steve"s arms almost instinctively.
"He needs to be under some kind of supervision," General Ross was saying, but then two figures walked up from behind Steve and one put her hand on his shoulder.
Steve jerked away.
"He"ll be looked after," the other one said.
Steve had seen this man when he first woke up after they found him and Bucky. A man with an eyepatch and a long black leather coat was hard to forget.
"SHIELD will take it from here, General Ross." Nick Fury was the director of SHIELD.
Steve didn"t know who SHIELD was and he didn"t trust them, but he didn"t trust Ross either. The girl who had put her hand on his shoulder spoke to him instead of the general. "Steve, you know him best. And I"m sure Bucky would feel more comfortable with you." She dropped her gaze to the child in Steve"s arms. "Isn"t that right?"
Bucky just clung onto Steve and nodded, but before anyone could say anything else, Bucky looked up at Steve and asked, "Hydra"s gonna come get me?"
Steve somehow managed to pull the boy even tighter against him and he spoke right into Bucky"s hair. "No, no way. You"re safe; I"ve got you."
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
"Pete"s sandwich is all gone. Pete"s friends are full. They liked Pete"s biIiiiiiiig lunch," Steve reads.
Bucky"s head rests against his arm and shoulder, his eyes fixed on the book.
"Thanks for lunch," Pete"s friends say. "Thanks for sharing!" "You"re welcome," Pete says. Sharing is cool."
Bucky looks up at Steve as Steve finishes the book. They"ve read this same book at least six times. He knows Bucky has it memorized. Bucky has the best memorization skills of any kid he"s ever seen and Steve imagines it"s something to do with the serum.
"Turn my nightlight on," Bucky requests and
Steve reaches and flips on the nightlight that"s sitting on the nightstand. Steve then turns and pulls Bucky to him gently.
"I love you soooo much," he tells him before kissing the top of his head. Bucky throws his arms around Steve and squeezes. "And I"ll see you in the morning."
Bucky looks up from where he"s still clinging to Steve"s torso. "Stay with me till I fall asleep."
Steve agrees and climbs out of bed to flip off the light. He comes back and sits on the floor beside the bed instead. That"s where he"s always stayed while Bucky falls asleep.
"I"m not gonna have bad dreams tonight," Bucky tells Steve matter-of-factly. Steve smiles.
"I hope not, pal," Steve returns. "I hope you sleep snug as a bug in a rug."
Bucky grins and pulls the covers up around himself and closes his eyes before sitting back upright. "My Bucky Bear"s in the living room."
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Before:
"He seems to remember his father, but not the murder," Fury said as Steve watched Bucky with the other agent in the next room. There was a glass window between them, but Bucky kept looking up to make sure Steve was still there.
"He hasn"t known any aggression," Steve added, hoping to help his case.
"But General Ross is right," Fury continued. "He has codewords, triggers in his mind that we don"t know anything about. We don"t know how they"re activated. Or what they could cause him to do if they are. He"s dangerous."
"I understand, but he"s also six-years-old."
"And he"ll stay that way," Fury reminded. "His body is changing so slowly that at this rate, he"ll be a child and you"ll be like you are for the of my life and the rest of anyone alive"s lives. And that"s the real reason I"m letting you take him with you. He may be a threat, but you’re the most qualified we’ve got if that threat has to be neutralized. Besides, no one else is going to understand him like you can. He"s not gonna be like the other kids. He"s not gonna be able to go to school with them or play with them because he won"t age with them. And we don"t know yet if it"s just his body or if his mind will stay young. We don"t know how any of this will go so you"re going to have to prepare yourself for any circumstance."
"Yes. Thank you, Sir."
"And Rogers," Fury added. "By "any circumstance" I mean the one where this doesn"t work out and he has to be otherwise dealt with."
Steve had nodded, but said. "That won"t be necessary, Sir. We"re going to be family. He"s going to be fine."
—⍟-⍟-⍟—
Now:
Five years of doing this so far and Bucky knows he isn"t really six-years-old, but he also knows he"s not really changed either. He"ll still tells strangers in line at the store that he"s six when they ask.
Steve returns to the room holding Bucky Bear and places him in Bucky"s outstretched arms.
"Okay, goodnight," Steve tells him.
"G"night," Bucky replies, snuggling back into his covers. It"s a few minutes later before Bucky asks sleepily. "If I accidentally have a nightmare, you"ll still come wake me up, right? Even though I said I"m not gonna have one?"
"Of course. Always," Steve said, sitting down beside the bed. He looks up and makes eye contact with Bucky in the darkened room and promises, "It"s okay. You"re safe. I’ve got you.”