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The one thing the soldier knows after the Smithsonian, when glimpses of the past start slipping into shape, when he begins to get the full grasp of what happened, what has been done to him, is that he needs to get rid of the arm. The arm is a foreign object, and it marks him as Hydra property and it has to go.
He tries several methods and when he finally succeeds, it leaves a stump of blackened, sharp metal edges and loose wires and a lopsided former asset.
That’s how Steve finds him, how he finds Steve, out of balance, one-armed.
“Are you in pain?” is one of the first things Steve asks and the soldier shakes his head. It’s the truth. Pain is not his prime concern, he feels lighter than he did, and tired. Mostly tired.
They are wary, Stark maybe more than any of them. Steve doesn’t blame him, given his personal record with the Winter Soldier’s work.
“He’s still a threat, you know that, right?”, Stark says. “He’s still a weapon.”
Steve nods curtly. He knows the Winter Soldier kills ruthlessly. He also knows he would have drowned in the Potomac, unconscious, and the Winter Soldier was the only one to see him fall. He has his ideas what the Winter Soldier is capable of, both ways.
“You know that if we can’t control him, we’ll have to find other means to stop him”, Stark continues.
Steve nods again.
“I’m going to kill him myself if he harms anyone”, Stark says. “Just so we’re clear.”
Steve swallows the bile rising from his stomach. “I understand”, he says.
“So”, Stark continues, abruptly changing to a light, conversational tone, “the whole… disarming thing. That was your idea, yes?”
“No”, Steve says. “It was his.”
Stark looks surprised, to say the least.
A doctor fixes his stump, the soldier is quiet, his eyes are wide and his pupils are blown by the tranquilizer they administered, just in case. Steve feels sick when he sees the needle enter Bucky’s vein, just one more scar to add to the many that crueller men left with their instruments.
The doctor’s handiwork leaves a round stump where his shoulder used to be, pink skin, irritated scar tissue that runs down his chest, down his back, almost up to his neck. When Stark tries to fit him a prosthetic (a provisional one, he’s got a bionic arm of his own in the making up in the laboratory) the soldier goes rigid, shakes his head and very quietly says, “No.”
Steve, eyes sad, mouth tense, tries to argue, gently, but the soldier insists. No. No one will claim ownership of him with a new spare part. They drive home, the soldier still one-armed but steadier now.
The soldier stays in Steve’s flat like a stray cat, accepting food and shelter, but avoiding him at first, only very slowly, very carefully closing in the circles he draws around Steve. Watching him, mostly. Judging the threat. Steve is very quiet, rolls his shoulders in to look smaller, walks on his toes, silently. After a while, the soldier grows used to him. After a while, he starts to trust.
Steve tries to help, cautiously, but insistent. And the soldier refuses. Fights his way into the strange 21st century clothes, does not brush or braid his hair, washes clumsily sitting down in the bathtub. Eats with one hand, refusing cutlery (why would anyone offer him a knife anyways, him, of all people).
The soldier sleeps very little, but that’s okay. Steve doesn’t either. At first, the soldier only dares to close his eyes when he’s sure Steve is gone, passed out from exhaustion, dreamless. Somewhere along the line he figures out that it feels safer to hear Steve move around the flat quietly, hear him type or rustling in the kitchen. A set of eyes on the watch when his are not. A pair of hands to pull him back when he inevitably drowns in darkness, suffocates, jerks awake.
“Bucky”, Steve says, grasping his hand. “It’s alright. It’s alright. You were dreaming.”
In the morning, the soldier joins him at the kitchen table, pours himself some orange juice, eats his toast dry, without butter. Steve watches him across the table and bites his tongue to not offer him assistance.
The soldier goes back to the Smithsonian. After a while, he knows the explanatory notes by heart and can recite the videos in his sleep. When the pictures start to slip into his dreams, his thoughts, unbidden, like memories of his own, he stops.
Steve has been calling him Bucky from the start, always that glimmer of hope in his eyes, and the soldier feels the need to repay him, to become Bucky as much as he possibly can. He’s going to wear James Buchanan Barnes like a suit, for Steve. Because Steve has been good to him and deserves no less.
When the soldier breaks the bathroom mirror, it is an accident. He feels vulnerable in the shower, stripped down, still a bit out of balance, and there was a sudden movement in the corner of his eye. His reflection, as it turned out, now multiplied by the hundreds in sharp fragments shattered all over the floor.
He tries to flex his hand and lets out a quiet moan at the sight of blood, trickling down his lower arm and dripping off his elbow, leaving red marks on the white tiled floor.
Steve must’ve heard, because Steve is there in an instant, wearing concern on his face and something else, something new. The soldier knows this look on other men’s faces, men who clutch their weapons tighter at the sight of him.
“Bucky”, Steve says. He closes in carefully, his eyes fixed on the soldier’s face, only worry now, nothing of the sharp-edged look the soldier had thought he’d seen there only seconds ago. Glass breaks like ice under Steve’s feet.
“May I?”, he asks, before he reaches out to touch the soldier’s wounded hand. Unlike anyone the soldier has known, Steve never gives him orders. His orders are always a choice and he waits for the soldier to make his.
“Yes”, the soldier says and offers his hand to Steve. Blood is pooling in his palm.
Steve cleans the wound and ties a bandage around it neatly and when he is done, he doesn’t let go of the soldier’s hand right away. Instead he holds it in his own like a fragile thing. The soldier has slipped on the floor, his back leaning to the radiator. He watches Steve under heavy lids and there’s not a single tense muscle in his body. For the first time since he can remember, he doesn’t feel fear.
“Let me help you, Buck”, Steve says quietly, and what from any other man might have sounded like an order is a request for permission from Steve.
“Yes”, Bucky says.
Steve has two good hands, steady, warm hands that wash through his hair, brush and braid it tenderly. Skilled fingers that tie his laces, zip his sweaters. That rest just long enough when Steve can see that he tries, tries and tries, and eventually succeeds. Hands he can’t imagine to ever hold a weapon, and that’s right, they mostly held a shield.
Maybe he’s broken beyond repair, asymmetrical, lopsided still, but his stump has healed and when he brings his bandaged right hand up to Steve’s face, Steve’s eyes go soft and he knows Steve sees something there he himself can never see, not in the pictures in the Smithsonian, and much less in a mirror.
But Steve is a good man and he loves him, and maybe that’s all there is to this. Maybe that’s all he needs to know.