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“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just… thought you might like to. And I know she’d enjoy seeing you.”
Steve stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and looked down at the kitchen counter. He was trying so hard to be casual, non-confrontational, but Bucky could see the hope in every line of his body. It only made him feel worse.
“It’s not—I—“ Bucky hunched his shoulders. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he finally finished, quietly.
“Even if it’s not—one of her good days,” Steve’s expression flickered momentarily, the words seeming to bring him physical pain, “she still remembers people from back then. You’d be a familiar face.”
“That—” He broke off. That’s what I’m afraid of.
He didn’t want to do this. Didn’t want to hurt Steve even more. Steve knew—well, he didn’t know everything, not even Bucky knew that. (He was remembering more all the time, reclaiming his past one fragment at a time, with no saying whether the next piece would bring with it a smile or a nightmare.) But Steve knew so much about what he had done, what he had been, yet offered nothing but forgiveness, absolution, unwavering acceptance even during the times when Bucky had tried his hardest to push him away.
But he didn’t know about this.
It was one thing to offer forgiveness when the wrongs were relatively distant. He wouldn’t say that what he had done was theoretical, not quite real, to Steve, but it was different when things hit close to home.
And Steve… Steve had always found it easier to forgive the people who hurt him than the ones who hurt those he loved. With his big heart, there were a lot of people he cared about, deeply. (Even if Steve hadn’t dramatically proved it time and again, he would have known without being told that the name Bucky Barnes had a unique place on that list.)
They hadn’t talked about Howard’s death directly, but Bucky had gathered enough to be aware that Steve suspected, though he didn’t know, that the Winter Soldier had had an active part in the “accident” that HYDRA had arranged.
Howard had been a friend, and even where he was concerned Steve didn’t seem to waver from his conviction that what Bucky had done wasn’t his fault. But he wasn’t… This was Peggy. She was special. Whether or not what she and Steve had was anything more than infatuation (or could have been, given time and opportunity), the important thing was what Steve thought it was.
Steve was the kind to take a relationship seriously. He didn’t do commitment halfway. Bucky hadn’t been there to see how he had reacted when he’d first learned that he’d lost any chance of a life with Peggy, but he’d seen enough since Steve found him to know that the loss had hit him hard.
Steve was still waiting, patiently, for Bucky to find some way to express his tangled-up thoughts. He was always patient, these days, when Bucky struggled to verbalize things. Sometimes it just made him more frustrated, all that limitless patience.
“What have you told her, about me? About what happened?” he asked, finally.
“Nothing yet. At first it didn’t seem fair, not until I was sure we could get you back. And then—you remember I told you she was sick, for a while. Wasn’t up to a lot of visitors or surprises, so I thought it’d be best to wait.”
“So now that she’s doing better you thought you’d just spring me on her without any warning and hope the surprise didn’t give her a heart attack or something?”
Didn’t think that one through, did ya Stevie? You gotta learn to look before you leap… The familiar refrain drifted unbidden into his mind, dragging with it fractured memories of the many times he’d begged Steve not to let his enthusiasm get away with him, to stop and consider instead of being so sure that good intentions would result in a good outcome.
Steve looked chagrined, now. He still didn’t really think of Peggy as old, Bucky thought. He forgot that she was frail and needed protection now. She always used to fight her own battles.
“Tell her. After that, if she wants me to come… I’ll come.”
He didn’t expect she would. But if she did… He owed her that much.
-0-0-0-
When he returned from his visit with Peggy, Steve had looked thoroughly confused. Peggy had said that she would, in fact, very much like to see Bucky. She asked him to come by the next day. And then she had gently but firmly informed Steve that, while she would appreciate a return visit from him as well, she wanted to speak with Bucky alone first.
Steve’s feelings were nothing compared to the roiling conflict the news set off inside Bucky.
He knew the old him would have deflected with some cocky remark about Steve’s girl finally seeing the light and realizing which of them was the better looking. His mouth was too dry to force the words out, so he settled for shrugging.
-0-0-0-
It was one of her good days, the nurses informed him, the best she’d had in quite some time. With that assurance went his last shred of hope for reprieve. Still… better to get it over with than to delay, he supposed.
“Sergeant James Barnes. It has been a while.”
Memories layered over one another. Her face and voice now, as she had been during the war, during those more recent, now-hazy, frenzied minutes when—when…
His stomach lurched and his head spun dizzyingly for a moment before he wrestled his reactions back under control. He stepped forward to stand stiffly by the side of her bed, right hand grasping his left wrist tightly as if to hold himself there.
“Yes.” He replied quietly. “It has.”
“Steve tells me that’s a prosthetic, not body armor. I had wondered.”
So, straight to the point. It certainly answered the question of whether she remembered their last meeting—whether she realized now that it had been him behind that mask. He swallowed, his gaze sliding away to the far wall.
He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He had braced himself to take whatever she threw at him, had been prepared for anger, betrayal… ready for anything, he thought. But now he found himself wavering under that calm, thoughtful look.
“I’d say I was sorry, but that seems pretty weak, considering.” There. Leave himself open, let her take what shot she would, get it over with.
“It does, rather,” she agreed, still unruffled.
He couldn’t seem to get a read on her. It was… disorienting. It would probably help if he could stand to look at her for more than a second at a time.
“I am, though. Sorry. I don’t—“ He broke off, floundering.
“Have you seen the cards they sell these days?” The non sequitur was enough to surprise him into staring, but she carried on, apparently unaware of his bewilderment. “There’s one for any occasion you could possibly think of, I’m told. My niece once sent me one for ‘penguin awareness day’ as a joke, so perhaps it’s true. There’s hardly a need to find our own words for anything anymore. But I think even Hallmark might come up blank as regards appropriate sentiments for ‘I’m sorry I tried to kill you while I was a brainwashed assassin.’”
Was she teasing him? The words were right, and the tone… maybe was. He didn’t know. People—the few who knew him well enough to even consider it—didn’t needle him these days, except very carefully. Mostly because he’d had a hard time following it until lately.
Logically, it seemed more likely to be a test. Whether his guilt, and shame, were genuine or a mere formality. Whether he could even feel things like that anymore. (People thought that, sometimes. That he was both unreadable and unfeeling. Little did they know that some days it was all he could do not to choke on the emotions flooding him, like blood rushing painfully back into a deadened limb.)
“I don’t think it’s a joke.”
If it had been a test, he couldn’t tell if he’d passed or failed. She just looked…serious.
“No,” she agreed, at last. “It hasn’t been a joke for you. The truth is, you have more right to resent me than I ever had to be angry with you.”
That… made no sense at all. The most coherent response he could manage was a weak, “…what?” It sounded small and confused even to his own ears.
“They took away your mind and your will, and if you ever showed the slightest sign of wavering they wiped away your ability to so much as remember that you ever had doubts.” Peggy sighed, looking weary. “Meanwhile I, with my wits intact, celebrated the downfall of Hydra while blindly allowing them to infect and use the very organization I founded.”
It hadn’t occurred to him before, to think of it in those terms. He wasn’t sure it changed anything. He only realized that he hadn’t replied aloud when she shook herself, seeming to dismiss the train of thought.
“We all have things that we regret, and I won’t pretend you were ever some helpless, naive innocent,” she said firmly. “I know you, Bucky Barnes, and you are a good man. You’re also willing to do what needs to be done—and some of those things, however necessary they may have seemed at the time, we carry with us for a long time afterward. But what Hydra did to you… You didn’t have a choice. I won’t be another burden for you to carry. We both survived. Let that be enough.”
He would have expected forgiveness to be a relief. Wasn’t it what he wanted, more than anything? But it wasn’t what he had come for, and somehow in that moment it hurt more than any anger. He didn’t deserve it—he didn’t. After the things he had done, to be welcomed back with open arms. He wasn’t the person they’d known. She wanted him to let the past lie, but she didn’t know. She didn’t know a fraction of it.
“I killed Howard, and his wife.”
He only half-intended to say it, and somehow it didn’t come out nearly as harshly as he thought he had meant it to. She didn’t seem disturbed by the abrupt revelation.
“I thought as much.” Her gaze turned distant, remembering. “Not at first. Initially I was angry at Howard. It was his own business if he wanted to drink so much, but it wasn’t right for him to take Maria with him. To take both of Anthony’s parents from him. After the attempt on my life… I suspected, though I was never able to find any proof.”
Guilt, again. She felt guilty. That was the last thing he’d intended. “Hydra is very good at what they do. So was I. I didn’t have many failures. I think you may have been the only one, until Steve. No one expected you to be able to evade me.”
And there, perhaps, he had succeeded. The words brought a smile to her lips and a spark to her eyes that were startlingly reminiscent of the fierce, beautiful young woman he had first met.
“When you’re a woman playing by rough rules in a man’s game it always pays to keep a few tricks all to yourself. You know from the start that you can’t always be stronger, however hard you try, so you have to be smarter and more prepared.”
His lips twitched into a half-smile at the memories those words stirred up. “You always were good at holding your own. If they’d let me remember that, I might not have failed. You were supposed to be an easy target. Particularly—“
“—At that age?”
He nodded, acknowledging the truth of it. She’d been sturdier than most, even then, but she was far from a young woman. “They were… not happy. I don’t know why they didn’t send me out again. Did they try some other way?”
She shook her head. “I was more careful after that. And… I was on my way out of SHIELD, at that point. I suppose they didn’t think it was worth pushing too hard and drawing unnecessary attention to themselves.”
“Good.” He nodded. If it had put them off further attempts on her life, perhaps it had been worth it in the end.
She tilted her head. Something in his expression must have given him away. “Did they hurt you? Punish you, for failing the mission?”
“No.” He shook his head, a single sharp jerk to the left. “I was too valuable. They just put me back on ice for a while. Until they needed me again.”
If she saw through the lie she didn’t say anything.
“It took me a long time to remember. Killing Howard.” Somehow, now that it was out in the open, he couldn’t seem to keep from blurting out things that had been bottled up. He’d thought that refusing to speak about them would keep them from causing any more pain. Maybe he’d been wrong. “It’s still hard for me to believe I could do that and—and not remember. I still don’t know why. I don’t think I ever did. They didn’t—I never needed to know why.”
“I think he suspected… something. He told me, just the day before, that there was something he needed to speak with me about, in person. At the time there were a dozen things I thought might have been on his mind, but in retrospect…” She sighed. “You said it yourself—Hydra is good at what they do. And the mind’s a strange thing, particularly when it comes to things we’d rather not remember.”
“I want—“ No, not quite. ”I need to remember. You say that I should let it be, that trying to kill you didn’t matter, because I failed. But I didn’t always fail. I succeeded, so many times…”
He had to stop, drawing in a shuddering breath and blinking quickly to drive away the tears that wanted to come. Not now.
When he could bring himself to face her again, Peggy looked sad.
“I assume Steve has told you that none of it was your fault. I told him the same, after you fell. He didn’t believe me. I’ve learned a few things, since then, about guilt. About things you can’t change, and things you’re sure you could have—should have. It’s never easy to learn to set those things to rest, but if you don’t they’ll eat you alive.”
He jumped when he felt the brush of her hand against his. He let her take his fingers—so big and hard against hers, turned soft and delicate with age.
“You don’t need my forgiveness, Bucky, or Steve’s, or anyone else’s. You need to forgive yourself. ”
He nodded, still not trusting himself to speak.
She seemed to sense his acceptance, even if it might take a while to learn how to follow that advice. Releasing his hands with a final warm squeeze, she shifted against the pillows propping her up.
“I take it Steve is pacing the hall?” she asked, her tone lighter with the change of subject.
“Driving himself crazy by now, probably.” He pulled in another deep breath and with it regained his composure.
She chuckled. ”Better tell him he can come in before he wears a hole in the floor.”
She must have caught some change in his expression, because her look sharpened.
“Does he know? That Hydra sent you after me?”
“I haven’t told him.”
The look she gave him was filled with a sad kind of amusement. “That man not only would go to the ends of the earth for you, he has. Do you really think that this would be too much for him?”
“No.” He looked down at his hands. “Not… when I’m thinking.”
“Alright, I suppose it’s only fair to let you handle it in your own time. So long as you know that.” She patted his arm. “If you don’t want to tell him now, we can tell him that I just wanted to give you a talking to about looking after him. Always so reckless about his own safety… He tells me he’s matured, but I don’t think that’s changed, whatever else has. You keep an eye on him, hmm?”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it.
“Yes ma’am.”
It was funny, he thought, that he had ever considered her frail. As if she needed anyone’s protection.