Chapter Text
At 5:57 AM on a Tuesday, you slip out of the apartment via a window on the second floor. You know that it’s been left openable in case you need to do just this, in case the people get too much, Sam’s raspy breathing and Steve’s quiet footfalls, Natasha’s sparkling laugh that comes more and more frequently as days pass all crowd down in on you and beat their way through the fragile membrane of your skull, through the precarious you to the rock solid not-you that lurks below it.
You don’t particularly need this right now, could easily handle another ten, fifteen days without so much as a twitch, but Sam and Steve and Natasha are one and all working on teaching you that you are allowed to rectify situations that are bothering you before they would impede your functionality. Are working on teaching you to recognize what bothered feels like, what distaste is and how to air it. So you slip out of the flat via the second floor window that is high enough off the ground that Steve and Sam and Natasha can pretend that they simply didn’t think it a security risk and you can pretend to believe them if anyone asks and your boots hit the ground with a dull thud.
You remembered your boots this time.
You’ve made a point of remembering your boots ever since you landed on a beer bottle, as much because you know your functionality must be safeguarded as because it upsets Steve and Sam and Natasha.
You didn’t remember your jacket, but it’s not too cold, and you have long sleeves on anyway, and with your metal hand curled into a fist you find (startlingly still, even after all this time) that you do not want your arm obscured. It is yours, yours, and you will not let that be ignored, you don’t think. Or you won’t, unless someone mentions it.
It’s easy to muster determination in the face of hypotheticals, but when Steve or Sam or Natasha or (anyone, anyone, anyone) someone else speaks with that air of command you still find yourself twitching to before you’ve even had the chance to process their words.
(Steve and Sam are bad at hiding their regret, their disappointment their angersadnessguilt whenever this happens. Natasha is better, but you do not think it is because it bothers her any less. You think instead it is simply because she is better at hiding, period. She is accustomed to subterfuge. So, once, were you. Now though, now you twitch away from lies when you're put to question, bite back heavy honesty on a bitter tongue because once what made you James Buchanan Barnes was stolen from you, and now what made the new you you has also been taken; it’s not fair to blame Steve or Sam or Natasha but sometimes you think you do anyway. You learned early on that you are not, were not, will never be a good person. You’ll live. It’s what you do.)
Minutes have passed while you’ve been lost chasing your thoughts, and your lips thin out into a firm line at the realization. You twitch your hood up around your ears and head towards the street, falling into an easy and powerful saunter that makes people get out of your way instinctively. You’d asked Steve if that should bother you, the way a path is always clear for you, and he’d looked at you for a long moment before Sam had told you not to look a gift horse in the mouth and you’d forced yourself to turn away, to pretend you’d not seen the thinning of his lips as he struggled with which answer to present you with.
You’d had enough of people trying to figure out how best to handle you to last you a lifetime. English is a stranger on your tongue, your mother tongue a tourist in your mouth, but you remember well enough what resentment tastes like, and it tastes like this.
The streets fall away in front of your feet, and it’s clear enough that you don’t have to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze on your way to the run-down park you’ve made your haunt for the past six months. Your bench is clear of everything saving a light frost, and with your breath puffing into clouds about your lips you decide you do not mind the cool and sit without hesitation. The cat who lives under the bushes sixteen feet to the left of you is curled up there, waiting for the sun to warm the day before she sets about it, though the squirrels rushing through the trees have no such compunctions about the cold.
You lean your head back, tilt your eyes closed, and allow yourself to fall into the closest thing to a doze that you can manage in a public place. It is somehow more restful even than the sleep you can sometimes achieve in the comfortable bed in the spacious room that you have been allocated. For a while, your mind can simply float.
In a few hours, Steve or Sam or Natasha or some combination thereof will come and find you, because they still don’t like you to be on your own, or because you are dangerous, or because the world is dangerous, or perhaps because they are dangerous and only less so with you around; you’ve not yet worked out their motivations to your satisfaction - but the fact remains: they will be here. The fact remains, they will be here.
For now, though, it’s just you. Just you and the cat and the squirrels and the few birds who have yet to migrate south for more hospitable climates out of some defunct preservation instinct; with the wind blowing the faint city-smell into your nose and the skittering of animals the only things your ears can hear over the incessant ringing, you are as close as you can come to at peace.