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To the family of Annalisa May Porter,
I'm not sure if this letter will ever reach you, but I can try.
Getting closure for Annalisa's death did not come from the HYDRA files that were leaked in 2014 that stated she had been a successful target of an assassination by The Winter Soldier. And maybe this letter will not bring closure either, but I still need to apologise.
I've gotten all the files of everybody I hurt, and I promised myself and the families and friends of my victims I will try to right the wrongs I have done.
I'm so sorry for what I did to Annalisa. For what I took from you. She was a brilliant mind with an incredibly vibrant smile that flashes in my vision when I think of her.
If there is anything I can do to help your family, please let me know. I need to atone for what I did.
Thank you for reading.
James "Bucky" Barnes.
The front door of the apartment opened as he folded the letter and put it in the envelope.
"Hey." Sam greeted as he stepped through the threshold, throwing his keys haphazardly on the kitchen counter as he shrugged his jacket off.
"Hey." Bucky responded without looking up at his roommate, instead focusing on putting a stamp on the already addressed envelope.
"Who are you writing to?" Sam asked as he noticed the letter.
"Doesn't matter." Just as Sam put his jacket on the coat hanger by the door, Bucky grabbed his off of it. "I'm gonna put this in the mailbox down the street."
Sam didn't stop him, or ask any further questions. He just said "Be careful, it's late."
And with that, Bucky left.
It was cold in the November air, but he didn't bother actually putting his jacket on. He just held it awkwardly under his shoulder as he walked down the largely vacant sidewalk. It was 9pm on a Thursday night, the only people on the street were those either returning from work or going to work.
Bucky slid the letter down the mailbox slot.
Then he turned the corner to walk down to the nearest convenience store.
The little bell on the door rang out loud when he entered. Besides the clerk, the only other person in the store was an older man looking through the magazines on the rack for sale.
Bucky laughs a little in his mind. He's referring to the other guy who's maybe 60, 70 tops as an "older man", when Bucky's 106th birthday was last March.
He goes to the shelf in the back of the store where the larger bags of candy are. He finds the bright orange bag filled with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and heads for the register.
Shelling out three dollars for a bag of twenty is never too bad.
By the time he's paid, the other guy had left without buying anything, leaving the store empty and quiet.
The perfect resting place he needs right now.
He finds a nice spot in the corner, next to the shelf full of chips and sunflower seeds and the fridge filled with bags of ice, and sits down.
The clerk doesn't question him. She looks at him for a moment, remembers he paid for the bag of candy he's about to devour in the corner of a convenience store, and then goes back to playing on her phone.
He tears the bag open and pulls out a cup.
-Mission Report: November 23rd, 1995-
He pulls the wrapper off and takes a bite.
-she was a scientist she was finding a cure they didn't want her to so he shot her in cold blood-
The flavor of peanut butter and chocolate explodes in his mouth. There's a reason he had gone for this specific type of candy.
-they shocked him afterwards for hours because he left a trace of blood-
After a long Saturday of work at the docks, he'd go down to the store and buy a Reese's cup to celebrate a job well done. They were carried in Brooklyn stores back in 1935, and the flavor is one of the only things he can remember from before the war.
-no evidence must be left behind after fifty years he still hadn't learned and that's why he was punished so harshly-
A few others come into the store as Bucky gets lost in his own thoughts. A woman in scrubs came in and buys a bag of potato chips. A man with long, blond hair came in and bought a candy bar, stating that it was for his girlfriend because she had a bad day.
-he cried and cried and they just turned the electricity up until he was in too much pain to do anything but try to endure it-
The bell rang again as another person entered.
-he cried and that just made them more and more upset with him-
He sunk into the floor, a half-full bag of Reese's Cups and wrappers discarded on the linoleum tile.
-he didn't fight but he should've and now his pain is all his fault-
"Buck?"
He blinked his eyes open, ignoring the tears gathering in the corners, and finds Sam kneeling next to him.
"Wilson?" He questioned, unsure if the man was really here.
"Yeah. C'mon, let's get home. It's late." Sam reaches down to grab the bag and wrappers, before standing up and holding his hand out for Bucky to take.
He hesitates for a moment. The voice in his head starts screaming unintelligible things to him, and every muscle in his body is aching from the position he'd shoved himself into.
After a minute goes by in tense silence, Bucky reaches up to grab Sam's hand with his own flesh one, and allows Sam to pull him up from the floor and back onto his feet.
Sam wraps his arm around Bucky's right shoulder, keeping him close as they walked together out of the store. Sam shot a quick thank you to the clerk, and then they were out in the chill of the night, the stars twinkling as they made their way down the sidewalk and back to their apartment complex.
They don't talk on the way there. The next time either of them speak is when they're safety back in the apartment, and Sam is putting the bag of candy away and throwing an apple in Bucky's direction.
He catches it, of course, but doesn't make a move to do anything else.
"So." Sam says then. "Are we going to talk about how I thought you'd been kidnapped but I found you on the floor of a convenience store dissociated out of your mind?"
"I'd rather not." Bucky replies as he goes over to the kitchen sink to wash the outside skin of the apple.
"You were gone for an hour and a half. I was about to call Sharon and tell her to sound the alarms and set out a search party." Sam leans against the counter, arms crossed, as if trying to make Bucky feel guilty.
Bucky just shrugs and takes a bite out of the apple. "Good thing you found me, then."
Sam's quiet for a few minutes while Bucky continues eating the apple. The tanginess of it is a welcome distraction from this conversation and, frankly, from his whole life.
"This wouldn't have anything to do with it Annalisa Porter, would it?" Sam breaks the silence with, causing Bucky to pause mid-bite.
"Why would you think that?" He questions after he recovered and finished chewing.
"Buck, I'm not playing tonight." Sam's voice raises up an octave on the seriousness scale.
Bucky's expression contorts into a sorrowful kind of smirk. "You don't wanna know what's going on in my mind."
"If you'll share it with me, I'll listen." Sam's eyes catch on his for a brief moment, and the eye contact sends a bolt of fear through his entire body.
He's not scared of Sam, no.
He's scared of other people knowing how broken he is.
Nevertheless, the words fall out of his mouth the second he opens it to decline having any heartfelt conversation.
"What if I told you I wish I never came back?" Bucky blurts out in a soft voice just above a whisper. "What if I told you I wish I had just stayed snapped? Or better yet, what if I actually died in The Alps on that mission? You know how many people would still be alive?"
"Bucky-"
"Annalisa Porter would be." Bucky cuts his roommate off. "And whatever cure she was working on could have been finished, and she could help so many people."
He hears Sam take a long, deep breath as Bucky stops talking. Then, he hears him do another identical breath, as if everything Bucky just said was far too much to process. Bucky wouldn't be surprised if it actually was.
"You don't know this, but…Annalisa was never working on a cure." Sam states, and Bucky's expression shifts from anguish to puzzlement. "And she wasn't just a random scientist working at NYU. She was an undercover SHIELD scientist using an NYU lab. She was studying the Terrigen Mist and Inhumans. HYDRA didn't like her studying it before they could, so they sent The Winter Soldier to assassinate her with the plan of another agent coming in and taking all her research. The plan failed when there were traces of blood left behind, as they couldn't sneak in to steal anything for fear of disturbing the scene and possibility of being caught." Sam explained. "Back in 2015, I found all the files for it and interviewed an agent in prison who was supposed to steal her research."
Bucky holds his head down. "Thanks for the storytime, but I still killed her."
"HYDRA killed her." Sam corrected. "You had no choice in the matter. That guilt that you're feeling should land on HYDRA and HYDRA alone."
Bucky sighed. "I've been given that speech at least fifty times, and everytime I just think it becomes less and less true."
"Do you want to talk about something else?" Sam asks then. "Take your mind off everything?"
Bucky nods. "Yeah. That'd be nice."
"So, why Reese's Cups?" Sam asks as Bucky tosses the now-finished and browning apple in the trash.
"They were around when I was working at the docks. I used to buy a few when I had the money. It's...kinda one of the only things that can remind me of that past, with Steve not here anymore to fill in my memories." He bites the inside of his cheek. The story was kind of nice, in a completely bittersweet way.
Sam sighed. "And we're back to square one. Or should I say, back to square Steve."
"Sorry." Bucky swallows down the knot in his throat from talking about his old friend. "I guess I...I guess I'm still not okay. With him. With my past. With the things I've done. You can say it wasn't me all you want, but it was still my body that committed the crimes."
"What you did isn't what's important." Sam reaches his hand out towards Bucky's right shoulder again, as if wanting to offer a comforting touch but waiting for permission.
Bucky nods, and the hand rests on his shoulder to ground him.
"What's important now is how you deal with it." Sam takes a long pause after each word, dragging out the sentence in an attempt to make it hold the weight and purpose it's meant to. "He may be gone, but that doesn't mean you need to go, too. You've got me. You've got Sharon. If we need to, I can call Rhodes and he's got you too. We've all got you. We want you to be okay."
And Bucky can't help it. The next thing he knows, he's throwing himself into Sam, embracing him in a way he hasn't with anybody in years. It's an embrace where he knows it won't be the last one, an embrace where he knows he's cared for.
Once Sam realizes what's happening, he leans into the hug as well, wrapping his own arms around Bucky.
They stay like that for a while, and it's everything Bucky needed at the moment.
Coincidentally, it was exactly what Sam needed too.
~~~~~~~~~
Dear Mr. Barnes,
Thank you for your letter. It means a lot, considering most people steer clear of me this time of year, expecting me to snap at any moment.
I don't blame you. I don't, and won't claim to, know exactly what was done to you that caused you to take my mother's life. I do know, however, that you had no control over whether you pulled the trigger or not.
From the moment I learned the truth of what happened to my mother, I never placed the fault on you. I placed it on those evil assholes- apologies for my strong language.
In other words, don't feel sorry for us. Don't blame yourself. No atonement necessary. And if there was atonement necessary, your letter would've covered it.
Have a good day, Mr. Barnes. You deserve it.
-Brianna Porter