Work Text:
He still retreats to the room with the clear wall, sometimes. Sometimes the wider world is too much. Too much color, too much sound. Too many textures.
But mostly, there are too many words. Everyone talks, until the air is full of words, crowding around him and making it hard to breathe. Words that push and pull and shout and whisper too bright too dark too MUCH.
When the words start to slither down his throat and choke him, he retreats to the white room with the pad to sleep on and one blanket and the floor and the clear wall that keeps him safe from words and where Steve can visit without crowding him.
HIS words, the words he put on the papers and walls, are still there, quietly waiting.
Patient.
He can take the time to watch them, think about them. They don’t fly through the air like bullets and disappear into flesh, taking meaning with them and leaving empty holes behind that he is expected to understand and follow and act upon.
His words let him take all the time he needs. They’re patient and kind and don’t expect a brain that is battered and bruised to turn sounds into denotation and context and connotation and read facial expressions and body language for emotions and…
He pulls the blanket over his head until even the hum of the machinery is dulled.
When he wakes up, he sees the white walls that aren’t white anymore. He’d taken broken crayons and drawn on the walls, trying to see how far Safe and Not Punished would stretch. So far he hasn’t found their limits.
He draws неопределенный Uncertain. He draws смущенный Confused, and испуганный Scared, and he puts them on the wall next to Hope.
The next day Steve draws the small man in bed, obviously ill. The bigger man sits on the bed next to him, reading a book. Below the picture, Steve writes Take your time. Take what you need.
Some parts still tell him not to trust, but it’s hard not to like Steve. Steve takes the time to draw words that move slowly enough for him to understand.
* * *
He wakes up in his room, breathing quickly and feeling the phantom pain of memory/training/punishment. But the walls whisper gently to him with their words
Safe
Courage
Not Punished
Delicious
One wall is full of words that tell him his name:
I am James.
He reads his memories and studies them to learn them anew, and when he leaves he tries to be James.
It seems to work.
He can walk certain hallways, open certain doors. Some rooms have windows that he can sit in front of and watch the city below. It’s pretty, far away, locked safely away. The sounds of the people and the cars and the life and the death can’t reach him.
Sometimes he watches Steve as he draws or paints. The scratching of the pencils on the paper doesn’t bother him. That sound doesn’t pay attention to him, doesn’t demand anything of him. It will show him its meaning in its own time, and he is free to accept that meaning at his own pace.
He likes listening to the rain. The rain existed before him, will rain on after he’s gone. He is meaningless to it, and free to ignore it, and so free to let it wash over him. The sound isn’t one he has to pay attention to, focus on, commit to memory. Understand.
He uses the crayons Steve puts out for him to draw понять Understand. But not the way Steve and his friends say it. He draws it the way his handlers said it. It’s surrounded by sharp and jagged ways to get hurt. Reaching his handlers’ Understand takes a great deal of concentration.
He pushes it away when he finishes, shaking. Steve tries to help, but then other people come. It’s too many.
He leaves, walks the hallways. He finds a door he is not supposed to go through. His hands know how to override the lock and he walks out of the areas where other people keep him safe and talk to him and confuse him and push their sounds on him.
He walks out onto the balcony, his hands over his ears, and lets the uncaring water wash over. He stops the drain with his shirt, crushes the concrete of the wall and lets the water pool and puddle and flow. He leans over the edge to watch the water fall down, unstoppable in its desire to caress the ground.
But then there is yelling and talking and people and Steve
Don’t Bucky
don’t hurt
don’t scare
don’t break
don’t
j
u
m
p
* * *
He goes back to the white room.
Steve brings him a small fountain, pushing water over rocks, endlessly trapped in a loop, sounds and noises just for him. It pushes at him, fills the air with sounds just for him, made for him, focused on him, pushing and clawing, insistent, constant.
He breaks it.
He writes молчание Silence with one of his new markers on a paper, then soaks it in the puddle of water from the fountain he killed. The black runs down the paper, separating into blue and red and yellow across the white.
He smiles.
* * *
He learns when he can walk through the rooms and not expect to see people who will want to talk, push their words into his ears.
* * *
Sometimes his gamble doesn’t work. One night it is the woman in the soft colors and the sharp shoes who speaks words that demand to be obeyed all without ever raising her voice. She sees him and pulls her words back. He likes that she does that. But like a sandstorm she is make of little pieces that seem soft and can wear away stone.
He concedes to her and falls back.
One night it is strangers in black, slinking through a broken window. He breaks them in turn, then sits and looks at the red blood, cooling into brown. He uses it to draw Protect, then goes back to his room and sleeps.
In the morning, the others stand outside the clear wall and yell. Steve stands in front of the wall and doesn’t let their words come in to bother him. Instead, James cleans the brown and red out of the grooves in his arm.
He is beginning to understand what it means that Steve is his friend.
Still another night, he sees light dancing and streaming across a wall. He moves in to listen to it and sees one of the others, quietly watching the screen.
With no sounds to flash at him, blind him, he can watch.
After a while, he sits down. The quiet man just watches the screen, letting the gentle sounds of the lights soothe him.
Before the dawn, before the colors and the sounds and the smells of the day, the quiet man points to himself, then puts two fingers up to his brow in a disobedient salute.
I am James is confused.
Quiet man shows him again, pointing at himself, then giving the salute. He smirks.
I am James points at him, then returns the salute. I am James points to himself, then frowns.
DisobedientSalute uses his hands to write words in the air. I am James doesn’t understand. He pulls his shoulders in tighter, as his breaths become shallow and fast.
DisobedientSalute gently pushes his hands downwards, then takes a deep breath and slowly releases it. He repeats this until I am James is able to breathe normally.
DisobedientSalute takes a candle from a decoration, and uses it to write on the glass table. A series of letters - J and A and M and E and S. He points to each one, then his hands speak.
James repeats them.
DisobedientSalute smiles, then moves his hand from his lips to his other hand, ending with his two palms up, as if he is cradling something delicate, something to be protected.
James smiles in return.
DisobedientSalute smiles at him, then turns back to the screen. They watch until the noisy sun rises and I am Steve comes into the room and starts to ask.talkpushSAY
DisobedientSalute’s hands say Stop. His hands hold up one finger each, and rock back and forth between himself and James.
Steve stops talking and sits down. DisobedientSalute uses his hands to talk to James, who doesn’t understand him yet, but the words are soft.
He glances at Steve. DisobedientSalute spells out the letters. James practices saying Steve the Protector’s name.
Steve the Protector starts to cry. DisobedientSalute brings them both a drink, warm and rich. “Chocolate,” says Steve the Protector. It’s the only word that’s been said out loud for hours, so James the Soldier can take the time to understand it. It helps that he has the chocolate to taste, that he can connect the sound to the taste and the warmth and the way that Steve the Protector gives him a small smile.
* * *
When red haired TARGETassassindanger walks into the room, DisobedientSalute’s hands greet her. She smiles, ruffles DisobedientSalute’s hair, and sits down, joining in their conversation.
As the morning carries on, and others walk or stumble or stride into the room, they are all greeted by name. Pepper and Natasha walk to a corner to whisper bright words that turn muted and dull by the time they reach him, so he can brush them out of the air and watch them fall. SmartBruce and BrightTony get louder and bigger until Steve and Pepper sweep them into the elevator. Pepper follows them, leaving him with dangerous people who speak in soft colors and gentle gestures.
It’s his first conversation.
* * *
The next morning he wakes up in a white room with a clear wall. But the walls whisper gently to him with their words. And someone has put up pictures of hands and bodies and expressive faces, teaching him how to speak words that his whole body can hear.
His name is James.
He steps out into the world.