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Steve kicked some leaves on the ground and sighed. The October breeze made him shiver a bit, and he adjusted the collar of his coat while walked toward the benches and sagged down on one of them. Another month of fruitless searching for his lost best friend, or the remnants of him. Another attempt without result. Another failed lead, another chasing of shadows.
Steve was so tired of it. He remembered the warning Natasha said to him in the beginning: that he will only find the Winter Soldier when the Winter Soldier will decide he wants to be found. He knew from the first minute the truth of this sentence, yet he hoped he will succeed. He longed for Bucky and wished the feeling to be mutual, but more than a year passed and that hope felt silly and Steve was so tired.
The park was quiet and peaceful. A few people nearby, some with kids, some with dogs, enjoyed the sunlight. Steve didn’t care. He stared at the little pond.
There was a statue in the middle of it. The white marble seemed almost luminescent, showing the form of a man, but his face was hidden behind palms that didn’t belong to him. It was like someone grabbed him by his head and dragged him out of the water, the man’s posture twisted, stone muscles tense, arms reached up in desperation. Steve stared and the more he looked, the more his stomach sank and his chest tightened.
He didn’t want to see the statue, but he wasn’t able to tear his gaze from it either, no matter how much it hurt to look at it. Art had the power to make things worse or better, and it usually did it in this order. But at that moment Steve didn’t feel any sign of things getting better ever.
“’T’s nice, doncha think?” a joyful voice asked next to him.
Steve turned. A little girl sat on the bench, a box in her lap, and she watched the statue too.
Steve nodded, unable to speak. He didn’t hear the kid approaching, neither the noise she must’ve made while sitting down. She had bright white hair, and her grin was radiant as she turned to Steve too. “Like the way he’s dancing?”
Steve looked back to the figure. All he saw earlier was pain and fight, but the girl was right: it could be interpreted other ways. Maybe the hands on the man’s face weren’t dragging him, but guiding him, and maybe he wasn’t struggling against the hold, but for following it.
“Maybe,” he said out loud, but he still was dubious. The owner of the hands was not part of the statue, and why would a benevolent power remain hidden? Someone pulling the strings from the shadows was more likely to work for their own good and not for others, right?
“You worry too much,” the girl stated and swung her legs that were too short to reach the ground from the bench. She seemed sweet and sincere, and Steve sighed again.
“Where are your parents, little one?” he asked because he was Captain America and he should be more responsible than wailing in his own pain and grief when a white-haired mystery girl without a guardian started a conversation with him.
“I’m with daddy,” she said and pointed somewhere east. A few people indeed stood there, good thirty feets away, and she didn’t elaborate her answer further. “Do you want some chocolate?” She lifted her box a bit, and let Steve peek into it. There were chocolate bars in it, wrapped in fancy red and gold foil. “But you have to buy it,” she added with sudden seriousness.
Steve, despite his best effort, had to smile a bit. “How much does one cost?” he asked as he reached for his wallet.
“Oh, it’s not for money!” little girl shook her head, and her mischievous grin reappeared. “I give them for a secret. If you tell me a secret that makes you sad then I’ll give you the chocolate.”
Steve straightened up a bit and glanced at the group of people again, this time more suspicious. The girl seemed innocent, but she wanted a secret, and maybe Steve was paranoid, but he had a good reason for it. One of the men looked at them like he checked on the girl but then turned away, like everything was normal with his kid talking to a total stranger. Or maybe it wasn’t the father and he thought the girl belonged to Steve, who knows.
Still, Steve didn’t trust anybody nowadays, not even seemingly innocent children.
“Why do you need a secret?” he asked instead. “And why should I tell you one of mine?”
“I collect them. And Daddy says it’s good to tell them to someone who will keep them safe, because if you let them out they can’t hurt you anymore. So I decided to keep secrets!” she explains, her voice radiating with pride and joy. Then she became more serious again. “You have wrinkles on your forehead. You seem to have a secret that hurts you.”
Steve tried to make his smile honest, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded. “I have many secrets, young ma’am.”
The girl giggled. She took a chocolate bar out of the box and offered to Steve.
Steve tried to take it. The kid didn’t let go, she held it with surprising vehemence. “For a secret,” she repeated.
Steve almost let it go, but the girl’s eyes were bright and kind and honest as she looked at him almost pleading. “Please?”
“Okay,” Steve heard himself. “Okay, I’ll tell you a secret. I’m sad because of my friend.”
The girl still clutched to the chocolate, pale fingers wrapping the tin foil and she pouted. “That’s not a secret. If we’re sad it’s always because of someone else. Why are you sad for your friend?”
Steve didn’t plan to spill his guts to a little kid, at least not in details, but this white-haired little one didn’t seem like a threat. She probably was a troublemaker but in a good way of kids. Still, Steve hesitated.
“Come on, I won’t tell anyone,” she promised in a hasty whisper. “Just tell me.”
“I let bad things happen to my friend.” Again, Steve wasn’t sure when he made the decision to tell the truth, but out it was. “I’m sad because my friend suffered and because I didn’t prevent it.”
“Did you want your friend to suffer?”
“No! Of course not!” His blood boiled to the mere assumption.
“Did you know it will happen before it happened?”
“I don’t see the future, but I should’ve noticed the signs tha—”
“So you didn’t want and didn’t know? Sounds like it wasn’t your fault, then,” the girl butted in before Steve was able to finish his sentence. She tossed the chocolate bar in his hand. “Eat it, it will make you happier!”
His smile was half-hearted. “I doubt it’s that easy.”
“Chocolate even helps after dementor attacks, silly. Daddy has read Harry Potter to me yesterday!”
Steve was the first to admit his pop culture knowledge was incomplete, but even he suspected Harry Potter is not the appropriate story for a kid circa four years old. But he bit onto the sweet and strangely enough, he really felt better after the first mouthful. Said kid looked down at her lap and the box of chocolate in it, and chewed on her lips for a few seconds, deep in her thoughts.
Steve looked at the statue again. He still saw it as a figure in pain, but at the same time, he was able to see the dancer moving in harmony with his partner too. Maybe the truth was somewhere in the middle, like so many times in this century where nothing seemed to be black and white and easy anymore.
“You want to help your friend now?”
“Of course,” Steve shrugged, eyes still on the marble. Maybe he should draw it sometimes. It was almost three months since he didn’t touch a pencil. The statue with its duality would be a good restart. “That’s what friends are for.”
“I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that.”
Steve looked at the girl again, stomach clenched and suspicion raised again. “I didn’t say he.”
The girl smiled at him. “Don’t worry,” she said, and the tension dropped out of his muscles a bit without any particular reason. Which was even more worrisome. The girl suddenly moved her box and put it on Steve’s lap. “And forgive yourself eventually. Eat a chocolate when you feel sad. It’ll help.”
The girl winked and jumped to her feet. “It was nice to meet you, Steve.”
Steve choked on his tongue and watched in shock as the girl capered away. He wanted to jump to his feet and stop her, to ask questions… but all he was able is to shout after her. “Little girl, what’s your name?”
She grabbed the hand of a man from the gathered people, whose face was hidden under a baseball cap and a hoodie, yet he was achingly familiar. Steve’s chest hurt as he looked at the duo, but the girl turned back, and her toothy grin was visible even from this distance.
“I’m Kobik!” she shouted before she disappeared with the man.