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He needs a new start.
That’s what he tells himself, anyway, when he returns to New York. Nothing looks the same—everything is brighter and louder and… different. He isn’t sure if he likes it, but he figures it will grow on him.
And good thing, too, because he’s stuck here for the time being. Two miles in Manhattan is all he has to explore for now.
If he isn’t at the FBI office, he is usually walking around Manhattan, hands in his pockets and head on a swivel as he searches for anything familiar. For all New York has changed, it has also stayed the same. He and Steve hadn’t ventured into Manhattan a lot, but they did occasionally find themselves in the city when they had the money for the train fare. Neal had found a pizzeria on the Upper West Side that he and Steve used to frequent, and a theater that they’d visited before the war.
Mostly, though, he just tries to find his way around this strange version of his home. He spends a good amount of time in the Burke’s townhouse, though being in Brooklyn makes his heart ache.
The Burkes live in Clinton Hill, which isn’t too far from where his parents used to live in Red Hook, but Neal still hasn’t been back home since he returned to New York. He honestly isn’t sure if he can take it, knowing everyone that he used to know is gone. His sisters had grown up and lived lives of their own, completely unaware of the fact that Neal hadn’t died when he fell from the train. They had careers and heartbreaks, hopes and dreams and he hadn’t been there for any of it.
Truth be told, he doesn’t know if his sisters are alive. He supposes it’s possible, but longevity hadn’t been one of his family traits. The Barnes family tree is full of branches cut short. He’s a perfect example of that; meeting his supposed end before the age of thirty. If it hadn’t been for Zola’s experiments, anyway.
He tries not to think about it. Tries not to think about the fact that he is wholly and truly alone.
Sure, there’s Peter and El, but they think he’s a thirty-something criminal. The only part of Neal that’s truly him is the shady past, but for entirely different reasons. Peter thinks Neal is being coy about his past out of some ridiculous need for mystery. Peter suspects Neal Caffrey is fabricated, but he can’t imagine how much of Neal he actually made up.
And, yeah, he has people at the FBI that care about him, but only in that detached, obligatory way that comes with him being a ward of the state.
Then there is Steve. Steve is the only person who knows what it’s like to be taken from your own time and thrown violently and headfirst into the future. But still, Steve had had a choice. Steve had been granted the luxury of autonomy.
It’s that very reason that keeps Neal from running back to him. If Steve finds out the full extent of what he’d done, Neal doesn’t think his body could bear the weight of his disappointment. Steve won’t understand that he didn’t have a choice. There had been an external force moving his arms, controlling his legs, compelling him to pull the trigger.
So he wakes up each morning, the same steel ball of loneliness settled in his chest that had been there for decades, and he stands up like it doesn’t weigh a ton.
By the time June had been born, Neal had been in Dallas, carrying out a high-profile hit that arguably changed America. The murder had been blamed on an innocent man—though Oswald had been glad to take the credit—who, in turn, had taken a bullet to the gut two days later.
Neal’s seen the footage of Kennedy’s murder once. After the grainy video cut off, Neal had turned and vomited everywhere.
June, despite being born in the sixties, exudes an old-world elegance that Neal hadn’t known he had missed until he met her.
Her living room has relics from the past—some may call them antiques, but both June and Neal think that is too reductive—including records and posters. June’s piano had been built in the forties, but repaired enough that it is basically a new piano. All the original parts have been swapped out for new, and the result is something sleek and beautiful. Still, though, the spirit is still there.
June herself can’t play, but the sight of the thing when he walks into the mansion is enough to remind him of home.
Neal walks into his apartment one night with his head hanging. As a rule, he’s always aware of his surroundings. There’s just too much to be wary of in this unfamiliar new world, combined with the ghosts of his past, that he can’t afford to be caught off guard.
He realizes his mistake when he lifts his head and it isn’t Mozzie sitting at his dining room table.
“Hey, Buck,” Steve Rogers says, sitting there in his sensible khaki pants and button up shirt like the last time he’d seen Neal hadn’t been in a burning helicarrier.
Neal feels something burning in his chest. Ever since he’s escaped Hydra’s clutches—which he partially owes to Steve—he’s been feeling things. Most of the time, he can’t identify exactly what , but it usually ends either with his fist through a wall or with tears and sleepless nights.
Neal doesn’t offer Steve any greeting. It’s not out of malice, it’s just that he’s so deep in his own head that he misses his cue to speak. Steve’s face falls momentarily, but it’s enough to make Neal feel like he’s taken a fist to the gut.
Steve shuffles a bit, a movement that is so out of place for him that Neal nearly smiles. In all the time they’ve known each other, Neal has never known Steve to be unsure of himself.
Some part of himself, old and long-forgotten, is telling him to go to Steve, wrap his arms around him and let Steve welcome him home. Neal would bet his remaining arm that Steve still smells like apples.
He doesn’t move though. His feet are glued to the floor beside the door and Steve is standing beside the table. There’s a few feet and several lifetimes separating them and Neal doesn’t know how well he would even fit into Steve’s new world. The one where he moved on, where Neal fell from a train into a chasm and the world kept turning without him.
Steve studies Neal. He takes in the suit and the new (yet old), short hair. His eyes dance over Neal’s left arm, where he knows there is a metal arm covered by his sleeve, but he only sees synthetic flesh. Then his eyes find Neal’s, and Neal nearly gives.
He’s been through almost seventy years of torture and Steve Rogers’ earnest gaze is still the one thing that makes him want to fall to his knees and break.
“Do you… remember anything?” Steve asks. What he means, though, is do you remember me?
There’s a kid inside Neal, dark hair and bright, hopeful eyes that knows the meaning of every tell, every mannerism, every movement Steve makes. He used to know Steve better than he knew himself and he hopes that’s still true. He hopes he knows Steve better than anyone Steve knows in this new world, but he doubts it. So he shoves his hope down to his feet and locks away the kid that he used to be. Most painful of all, he prepares to push Steve away.
Because the answer to Steve’s question is yes. Yes, Steve, when I woke up from the hazy state I’ve lived in for the past seventy years, yours was the first face I remembered. Yours was the first name to leave my mouth. I remember summer afternoons spent at Coney Island and autumn nights spent on Brooklyn rooftops. I remember you like I remember how to breathe.
But he can’t say any of that because Steve expects too much from him. Steve can’t see past his rose-tinted glasses and realize that Neal isn’t Bucky. He isn’t… he doesn’t deserve Steve’s easy grins and his willingness to fight for the little guy. Steve is too good for him. Neal has spent the last seven decades causing pain while Steve has spent the last few years doing more good than Neal could ever hope to. He can’t be the man Steve remembers. That man died when his body impacted cold, knee-deep snow. Probably before, if he’s honest with himself.
So Neal shakes his head and pretends it doesn’t kill him to see Steve’s hopeful expression fade. He pretends it doesn’t feel like his insides are being shred to pieces when Steve leaves.
Neal loses himself sometimes.
White collar crime isn’t supposed to get violent; at least it hadn’t been when he’d been the one committing it.
Money is a powerful motivator. He hadn’t forgotten that. Still, it’s jarring to walk into an upscale apartment and find the three day old corpse of a woman who had too much money for her own good. That kind of wealth creates enemies, something he knows all too well, but homicide hadn’t been something he expected to be faced with when he signed on for art theft and forgery.
To Peter, it probably seems like Neal is simply reacting to the violent scene as would be expected from a man who’d presumably never experienced it first-hand.
Peter leans over, his suit rustling in just the right way to cause a spike of anger to shoot through Neal. “It isn’t like the movies, Neal. You can step out if you need to.”
The woman’s throat had been slit, leaving blood pooled around her head like a halo. After she’d bled out--or even while she’d bled out--she’d been bludgeoned, leaving a gory, gruesome mess in the area that used to be her face.
He can imagine vividly how she got the wounds. He knows what a person’s final, gasping breath sounds like. His hands have always been wrapped around the hilt of a blade or the handle of a gun but he’s never been at peace with it. He’s never really had a choice. No one has ever asked him.
Neal hears him, but only distantly. He nods minutely and tries to keep himself under control. His hands are shaking in his pockets. The lights are too bright. He needs… he needs…
He blinks and there is someone else in the woman’s place; a communist general, a United States senator, a French Defense Minister, three faceless American soldiers lying bloody and lifeless in a heap of twisted metal. Steve. Peter. Himself.
Neal’s head feels heavy and his vision is fuzzy. He feels like he’s underwater. His lungs are too small.
“Neal!” Peter says. Neal’s head breaks the surface and they’re back in the hallway of a too-modern apartment building. He’s in the 21st century and he is no one’s weapon, no one’s tool. He belongs to no one.
Well, except for the FBI.
Neal’s left arm is covered in senselessly expensive fabric and he only has one blade on his person. He has a job—one not shrouded in secrecy—and his only objective is to figure out who stole the victim’s diamond sculpture, who killed her to obtain it. He doesn’t have to hurt anyone.
No more blood will stain his hands.
Peter is still in front of him, face looking grave as he tries to capture Neal’s attention. Neal tries not to let his irritation show. “What?”
Peter’s eyes flicker between the hands buried in his pockets and his face. Neal knows there is nothing to find. He can see how his expressionless gaze is affecting Peter. Peter steps back. After a second, he stands up straight, trying to give off the impression that Neal isn’t unnerving him more and more the longer they stand in silence. “You just… seemed like you were losing it in there.”
No. No, he hadn’t been losing it. If he had, there would be a pile of fresh corpses in there. He’d have to run again, he’d disappoint Steve again, he’d disappoint himself–
Neal scoffs. Peter tilts his head, but Neal doesn’t elaborate. “I’m fine, Peter.”
For as naive as Peter can be at times, he’s not an idiot, especially when it comes to Neal Caffrey. Even if, technically, Neal Caffrey doesn’t exist.
“I don’t think you are. You were as white as a sheet in there. You looked like you were seconds away from losing your lunch. That’s why I pulled you away when I did.”
“It’s only ten. I haven’t had lunch yet.”
It’s a stupid thing to say, it’s irrelevant, but it’s easier to focus on the things that don’t matter. Because Peter is right, he had been seconds away from losing it. Peter’s intuition had saved him once again, even if Peter himself didn’t know what he had saved him from .
The scent of blood hits him when the apartment door opens and he nearly vomits right then. Maybe Peter is right. “Alright, maybe I should sit this one out.”
Peter nods. The unease slips from his face as something more familiar takes over. Though it’s gone now, Neal doesn’t think he’ll ever forget that look. Peter is unsettled by him and he doesn’t even know that it’s a perfectly logical response. He doesn’t know why he should feel that way, and that Neal doesn’t blame him for it. “Take the day. I’ll have Jones drive you.”
Neal does a decent job of keeping it together, but the tape he slapped over his cracking resolve is giving out.
The car ride flies by while he’s stuck in his memories. Jones doesn’t try to make conversation. Peter hadn’t given him any details, he simply muttered something about a stomach bug and had sent them in their way. Thankfully, the mansion appears and he’s quick to exit the car. He thanks Jones for the ride and makes it two steps into his apartment before the tension building in his chest finally snaps.
Something to his left splinters, a loud, jarring sound that’s sure to attract attention. He’s not sure what it is, but he knows he had done it. He’s the only thing that can cause damage like that without even trying.
Neal’s stomach lurches and he’s damn near diving through the bathroom door, his shoulder slamming into it and sending it slamming into the wall. A distant part of his brain scolds him for destroying someone else’s property, but his disgust for himself beats out the instinctual regret.
Neal hadn’t been lying earlier when he told Peter he hadn’t had lunch. He just decided not to mention that he hadn’t eaten anything in almost four days. His stomach had protested, but the thought of eating anything made him nauseous. The serum will stave off any serious effects anyway, so that isn’t of much concern.
He flushes the toilet, watching the stomach acid swirl before disappearing. Suddenly, all his strength is gone and he falls back against the wall. His mind struggles to reel him into the past, and he fights to keep that chained beast restrained.
He hopes he hadn’t been too loud. The last thing he needs is someone coming in here, concerned by the loud noise the table had made when he put his fist through it. Neal’s not sure if June is home, but her staff most certainly is, and he isn’t sure how he’d be able to live with himself if he hurt one of them. He isn’t sure how he can live with himself now, as the faces of all the people he’s killed flip through his vision like a morbid scrapbook.
Even if they’d deserved it (though he isn’t completely certain they had) he used to believe in the justice system. He used to believe—rather naively—that bad people would get what was coming to them. Always. No civilian was in a position to punish.
Not that what he’d been doing for the past seventy-some years could be considered vigilantism. Hydra had their own interests, and none of them included the betterment of society. The people he killed were merely obstacles. Nothing more, nothing less.
Neal pulls his knees up to his chest and crosses his arms over them. He presses his mouth against his arms as he glares at his warped reflection in the porcelain toilet.
His racing thoughts are exhausting. His eyes are heavy and he turns his head, resting his cheek against his forearm. He hadn’t realized how much his lack of sleep has been affecting him.
The bed is a little too soft for his tastes. He figures he’ll rest his eyes here, then get up and go back to pretending nothing is wrong.
Well, that and replace June’s table before she notices.
Their case takes them to the Upper East Side. Mozzie had tracked their fence to an affluent neighborhood a few blocks from Central Park.
The woman they’re meeting with is the owner of half a dozen priceless paintings from the Romantic period and a few priceless gems like the one they are looking for. Her eagerness to speak to them has Neal doubting that she knowingly bought a stolen diamond sculpture, but it’s possible that she could be overconfident.
When the woman opens her front door, though, any doubts about her innocence disappear. His body stiffens like she had just muttered eleven words in Russian that have him fall to his knees in total submission.
It’s a total coincidence. Even in a city of eight million, it can’t be anything other than chance. But the first things his eyes land on are steel blue eyes and all he can smell is peaches and he feels homesick like he hasn’t since he landed in England.
Then she introduces herself as Rebecca Barnes and his heart nearly gives out on the spot. He nearly dies on his younger sister’s doorstep in front of her Upper East Side mansion.
They step inside but Neal hangs back, partially in shame and partially in shock. Becca hasn’t noticed him yet. She’s speaking to Peter as she leads him through the foyer and into what he assumes is the living room. Neal sticks close to the threshold, one foot in the foyer and the other on the dark oak floor of the living room.
Neal doesn’t pay much attention to the conversation; he’s too preoccupied studying his sister’s foreign features. It’s her, Neal knows. But her hair is a stark white now, a contrast to the dark brown that he remembers. There are permanent crows feet around her eyes, evidence of a life lived and loved. His baby sister had grown up, and she’d done it without him.
Neal notices the lack of a wedding ring on her finger and wonders whether she is a widow or had never married at all. The thin gold chain around her neck is simplistic, a simple design that doesn’t seem to hold much significance. Becca had been sentimental in her youth, so Neal can’t imagine that she would have been close with someone and not have photos or jewelery to remember them by. She’d always liked to advertise her love. She’d had so much to share.
Sometime in the last few minutes, Becca had noticed him. She is looking at him now, patiently and warmly, but also expectantly. Peter isn’t as subtle, his expression one of pointed disapproval.
Neal finds his voice, but it comes out lower and softer than he’d intended. “Um… what?”
Becca doesn’t mind repeating herself. “I asked what your name is.”
He can tell her. Just spit the name out and then wrap his arms around the one of the last vestiges of his past. The forties are long gone, but his memories of those times live on in her. He doesn’t feel at home in these in New York these days, but she’s a window to a warmer time.
The sound of his name is stuck on his tongue, his lips keeping it trapped. He starts to form the B, but his eyes find Peter. Peter can’t know. So instead of telling his long lost sister the truth, he says, “Neal.”
And she believes him. Because her brother died in the war, and Neal is just a young man who resembles him.
“This is my brother, Bucky. He died in the war,” she says as she points to a yellowed photo on the mantel.
The coldness that seeps into his bones rivals cryofreeze. His metal arm twinges.
The case leads them nowhere. Becca doesn’t own any stolen gems, and the trail of the sculpture hits a dead end. Peter and Neal might have one of the highest closure rates in the FBI, but even they can’t win them all.
Neal, however, finds that he doesn’t really care. He is focused on other matters and a simple diamond sculpture doesn’t really make his list of priorities.
Becca had recognized him. Neal saw the glint in her eye, the hope that she wouldn’t dare voice. Like she thought his presence was paper thin and speaking a dead man’s name might erase all memory of him.
Still, she didn’t say anything. Why didn’t she say anything?
She might’ve thought that Neal is just an eerie look-alike. Neal doubts that she would’ve thought he survived the fall. Regardless, stranger things had happened. Hell, look at Steve.
Peter walks up to his desk one afternoon and stands there until Neal pulls his attention away from the half-hearted sketches he’d been drawing on a piece of copy paper.
When Neal finally looks up, Peter is staring at him. One eyebrow is raised as he glances at the sketch and back at Neal. “El and I have tickets to the Met. There’s a new exhibit opening tomorrow, which I’m sure you knew, and she told me to invite you.”
“You never invite me to things other than dinner,” Neal says, watching him with suspicion.
“We had an extra ticket. El planned a wedding for the son of one of the artists and he gave her tickets to his exhibit, but he accidentally gave us three.”
Neal nods. “That makes sense,” he says. “What time?”
Peter pulls his suit jacket on, preparing to leave for the day. Most of the office is gone, with only a few remaining to finish up some paperwork. Neal hadn’t even noticed. His sense are lacking recently. “El wants to take the subway, so we’ll meet you at ten.”
It will be nice to have a distraction from the thoughts he can’t escape through other means. Plus, Peter doesn’t normally allow him outside of his radius, so he will gladly take an opportunity to leave his bubble.
The day had been going so well. Too well, in hindsight.
Peter and El had decided to head to lunch before going home, and Neal had been glad to tag along.
Now they stand side-by-side on the subway platform, waiting for the train and talking amongst themselves. Neal pulls away from the conversation, content to listen as he basks in the moment.
He can hear the train pulling into the station, wheels squealing along the metal. It’s still in the tunnel, but it is approaching quickly. Neal tries to estimate the distance, but that’s when the man brushes by him. He stiffens, but doesn’t outwardly react. New York is crowded after all. He hasn’t forgotten that.
The man hadn’t been paying attention, juggling a messenger bag, coffee cup, phone and headphones. He’s clearly running late for something, as Neal had noticed him glancing frantically at his watch as he surreptitiously scanned the crowd around him a few minutes ago. Neal is willing to write it off as an accident.
But then he bumps into Elizabeth.
He’s been in some terrifying situations before, moments where he had been sure he wouldn’t make it out alive. Still, nothing is quite as heart-stopping as watching one of his only friends fall onto a subway track with the train seconds away.
Beside him, Peter drops to his knees on the platform, arms outstretched. Elizabeth is climbing to her feet, but she won’t make it to safety in time. In seconds, the train will speed into the station and Elizabeth will be no match for hundreds of tons of steel.
It’s too late. There’s nothing they can do to stop it.
But… there is something he can do.
He’s never been impulsive. That had been Steve’s area of expertise. Neal had always been chasing him out of back alleys and away from men twice his size. Steve had never been one to run away from a fight out of concern for his own well being, so Neal had acted as his external self-preservation instinct. Neal himself had always been rather cerebral, and considerate of the consequences of his actions to the point of taking a few fists to the face as he weighed his options.
Anyway, that had been then. Now, he doesn’t care less about consequences.
There is an awful screech as the subway car collides with his left side. Glass shatters, exploding and landing in people’s hair, on the platform and covering Neal. He hears people scream, but he’s only focused on Elizabeth, who was gripping Peter’s hand tightly. Her eyes are closed, and she’s braced for her own brutal end.
He can picture it vividly. Streaks of blood and body parts splattered around, stuck under the wheels of an unforgiving subway car. One of his closest friend snuffed out before his eyes.
But she isn’t dead. He repeats that simple fact in his head until his heartbeat slows.
Despite the deafening clash of metal on metal, it takes Peter and Elizabeth a second to realize that she isn’t dead. Their breaths are ear-piercing in the silence of the subway station.
There aren’t many people present—most had taken off after Neal jumped off the platform—but the ones remaining have their phones out, pointed at him. Presumably filming. That gets his hearts racing in his chest, anger he hadn’t felt in a while rising and threatening to take over.
“Neal.”
Whatever he might have done to those people, whatever violence he had been imagining enacting on the man in a sweater vest closest to him is gone in the span of a breath.
Neal’s head feels like it weighs a ton as he slowly tears his gaze away from the man and looks Peter in the eye.
Surprisingly, there isn’t much shock to be found. Peter’s eyes hold nothing short of pure gratitude. Elizabeth is staring at him, and she looks like she wants to wrap her arms around him.
He can’t. He can’t. They… they’re all watching and Peter and Elizabeth are there . Elizabeth is alive because of him and he can’t be on the receiving end of their kindness. They don’t know what he’s done. One good thing doesn’t negate decades of evil. Peter and El are good and he isn’t. He has to… he has to runrunrun.
He’s still standing there, crushed metal wrapped around his metal arm. The synthetic flesh that wraps around his prosthetic so he can blend in is gone, along with most of his left sleeve. Everyone can see it, and they’re filming and he can’t breathe.
He yanks his arm out of the metal cocoon and takes a step back, away from Elizabeth and her easy gratitude. Away from Peter and that… that look on his face, one that might make Neal feel like he had never been a weapon, like he had always been that kid from Brooklyn and nothing more. Not the Asset, not a thing to be used and manipulated and shaped to someone else’s standards.
Not Barnes, James Buchanan. Sergeant. 32557038.
Just Bucky.
It warms him.
He’s not used to it. His home is the cold, both physical and emotional. Literal. His arm is frozen, but he knows it isn’t really. It’s just another thing his mind has conjured in an effort to convince him he’s in the wrong place and the wrong time. It doesn’t take much convincing for him to spin, hop onto the platform one-handed and push past the meager crowd.
The Upper East Side is only a few blocks to the east of Central Park. He’s always had a good memory—other than when memories had been externally erased—so he lets his feet move on autopilot as he makes his way towards a house he’d only visited twice.
Neal’s a mess. His hair is hanging in front of his eyes in a way that’s all too familiar. He needs a haircut. He can’t be it again. Rationally, he knows something trivial like a haircut isn’t going to make him more at ease with what he’d done, but he can’t ignore the way the stray curl makes him feel like turning and vomiting in the bush beside the sidewalk.
He stops and breathes. People pass him by, and he’s sure they’re giving him strange looks, but he couldn’t care less. He is half a block away now, and he can see her front door from where he stands.
Neal all but sprints the rest of the way. He skips a few stairs on his way to her door and knocks before he can talk himself out of it.
He counts his heartbeats. Tries to slow his breathing. Tries to ignore the way pedestrians stare at his exposed arm. Anything to distract himself from the instinct to run.
The door opens and he freezes. If he looks up, he’ll be face to face with the last living member of his family. He’d checked after that day he’d unexpectedly come across her in an effort to solve a theft-turned-murder and found that she truly is the last living member of the Barnes family. Excluding himself, of course, but he had been marked as deceased by every government agency and he found himself surprisingly at ease with the idea of being legally dead. It meant that he didn’t have to be himself anymore. Or, at least the person he used to be.
“Yes?” A voice says tentatively and that’s his sister. That’s Becca. He used to braid her hair when their mother didn’t have time and let her sleep on his bedroom floor when thunderstorms frightened her out of her own. He used to leave his school early to pick her up from hers and, later, in her teenage years, he used to keep the rich scumbags from Manhattan away from her after the first one broke her heart.
That brotherly instinct to hold her close hasn’t faded, even after years of torture and brainwashing. Her eyes are still the same, looking down on him from her position inside the doorway. Her right hand is wrapped around the handle of a cane, but if he focuses enough it could easily be a jump rope, and she could easily be grinning at him as she begs him to play.
God, he’s missed her.
“Mr. Caffrey? Are you alright?”
Neal nearly turns and searches for whoever she’s directing such concern at, but stops himself. It’s him. She’s looking at him like that.
At least he remembers how to speak. That had never been an issue. “Uh, I’m… I’m fine.”
Rebecca frowns and wow , he remembers that look. Everything about her is so familiar that he feels like he’s melting under the intensity of it.
They aren’t in Brooklyn and there’s seventy-two years between now and the last time they’ve seen each other, but he feels like it wouldn’t be out of place to take the last step forward and wrap her in his arms, tell her he’s sorry for disappearing, sorry for missing out on her life, for not being there for heartbreaks and successes. He would’ve loved to have been there for it all.
Neal doesn’t flinch as a hand touches his shoulder, wraps around his flesh arm and pulls. His feet are heavy, but he lifts them over the threshold and then he’s in her house. Rebecca is standing beside him and, for a moment, it’s like no time has passed at all. She’s seventy years younger and half a foot shorter than she is now and he hasn’t been broken yet, he hasn’t forgotten how to be his own person. They’re just Bucky and Rebecca Barnes, and it’s them against the world.
Rebecca positions herself in front of him. Like Steve had a few weeks prior, she looks over him with the careful sympathy that had always come so easily to her. She notices the arm, of course, but she doesn’t mention it. Her fingers, steady even in their old age, raise in a motion that’s both familiar and distant. She pushes his unruly hair back out of his eyes like she knew it had been bothering him but had understood that he couldn’t make his own hands stop shaking long enough to correct it on his own.
It’s stupid, but he can’t help it. She doesn’t recognize him, she can’t possibly, so a strange man hugging her is likely quite jarring. But the need to feel her in his arms took hold like it’s been planted there by Hydra and he couldn’t stop himself.
Rebecca is a warm and welcome weight against his chest. Almost like he’d been walking around without his other leg for years and hadn’t noticed until now. Her arms wrap around him hesitantly. Neal is almost certain she is seconds away from screaming and pushing him away, from calling the police or pulling out a taser.
Instead, she surprises him by resting her chin in the junction between his neck and shoulder. She doesn’t seem unsettled by the metal limb, but Neal can’t imagine it’s comfortable. Regardless, she doesn’t complain and she doesn’t move, so Neal decides they can stay here forever. Just like this.
“I’ve missed you.”
It takes him a moment to realize that the words hadn’t been his own thoughts, and that he hadn’t been the one to speak them. Slowly, he pulls back.
“Becca?” He all but whispers, like a noise too loud might make the moment disappear like snow in the sunlight.
But then she smiles softly at him and he’s sure she wouldn’t leave him even if her life depended on it.
Her hands frame him, resting on both his flesh shoulder and the metal one. “Hey, idiot. ‘S been a while, huh?”
Neal beams at her. He wants to wrap his arms around her again and squeeze, but then he remembers his own unnatural strength, remembers her cane and her thin, white hair. Remembers that they aren’t kids anymore.
“How’d you know?” He asks. Her hands are grounding, warm against his frigid limb.
“I wasn’t certain until just now,” she says. Her eyes are darting over his face, like he’s something precious. “I thought you were just an eerie look-alike. Then I saw Steve on the television and… well, I didn’t want to hope. But then you showed up here, looking at me like I was a ghost.”
Rebecca’s expression changes into something pained. Her hands leave his shoulders and adjust his tie. It’s strange, considering his left sleeve is shredded. A crooked tie is the least of his concerns. He knows her like the back of his hand, almost as well as he knows Steve, so it’s obvious that she’s avoiding something.
“Becca?” He asks, tentative.
She inhales. She smiles and shakes her head, like she’s trying to brush off his concern, and, god she looks just like their mother. “That’s not important now, Bucky. We have a lot of catching up to do, don’t we? Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. How’d you get this cut on your cheek?”
Now that she mentions it, he can feel the itch of dried blood on his left cheek. There’s only one way he could have obtained it, but he isn’t going to worry her. Like she said, it’s not important right now.
He follows her into the kitchen and tries not to look too ridiculous as his grin nearly splits his face in two.
When he opens his eyes, he doesn’t recognize the portrait above the mantle. What he does, recognize, though, is his mother’s name, etched into a bronze urn that rests on the mantle above the fireplace.
He feels a split second of grief before he remembers whose house he’s in, and the fact that he’s not as alone as he’d thought. With that knowledge, the evidence that his mother had lived the rest of her life and died thinking her son had fallen from a train to his death stings a little less.
Neal hears footsteps, then a face appears in the doorway that has him smiling gently. “Ah, perfect. You’re awake. Good timing, you have visitors.”
Neal sits up, propping himself up with his left arm. “Visitors?”
Rebecca nods. “A man and a woman. Elizabeth and Peter Burke?” She steps closer, though she doesn’t seem to notice that Neal’s seconds away from fleeing. “I can send them away, if you want.”
Neal bites down on his lower lip. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to see them. He just doesn’t know how to take their inevitable questions. Peter deserves answers, and El deserves an apology. He’d taken up so much of her husband’s time, and though he knew Elizabeth would never actually say anything, he knows she wouldn’t forgive him for it. It makes him feel even more guilty when he thinks about the manhunt that had been caused by what had essentially just been him having a temper tantrum, reacting like a child after he’d broken free from the grips of a clandestine organization and almost killed his best friend.
Even if he speaks to them and finds that he can’t face them after telling them the whole story, they deserve closure.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll talk to them.”
Rebecca shoots him a warm look and disappears back into the foyer.
Neal groans and rubs his hands over his face. The cool metal is soothing as he feels the beginnings of a headache.
Rebecca is out of his sight, but he can hear her speaking softly in the foyer. He hears a voice respond, high pitched and just as gentle. Elizabeth.
He doesn’t think he can do this. He doesn’t know how to be anything other than a soldier. His hands only know how to injure and maim, and his brain commands him to do so even when compliance isn’t justified. To be a friend is unthinkable. To be good is unthinkable.
So, he will politely inform Peter and Elizabeth of his status as a former government-sanctioned assassin, warn them that their continued friendship is not expected (but needed) and at their own detriment, and promptly flee the country. Again. He should’ve known that coming back to New York would end badly. Maybe he can convince Becca to come with him.
All plans to push Peter and Elizabeth away are forgotten as the both of them appear in the doorway. They both look unsure, but Elizabeth takes a few steps into the room, leaving her husband at the entrance.
She doesn’t say anything for a long, painful moment. Neal watches her study him and hopes she’ll say what he doesn’t want to force himself to.
His metal arm is plainly visible. Her eyes catch on it, tracing the metal plates that make up the outer portion. He’s never been more aware of the weight and shape of it, and the way it shines in the sunlight. He hates it.
Elizabeth, however, seems fascinated. Her eyes are wide as she examines it. Finally, she looks him in the eye. Neal can’t decipher the look on her face.
“We never made it to lunch.”
Neal almost wonders if there’s a hidden meaning. Lunch? That’s what she’s worried about? “What?”
“Lunch. We were supposed to go to lunch, remember?” She says. “It’s almost dinner time now, so you owe me. Come on.” She says it so easy, like it’s the most simple thing in the world.
Neal glances at Peter, who steps aside as Elizabeth squeezes by. Peter offers nothing besides a smirk. “You heard her. Oh, and invite your sister.”
Neal watches as he disappears from the doorway, following after Elizabeth. He doesn’t move, though.
How does he know? Had Becca told him? Why are they so nonchalant about it?
Neal looks at his ripped sleeve, at the metal exposed underneath it. It had withstood an impact with a subway train and has nothing to show for it, not a scratch, not a dent, not even a chip.
He used to despise the arm. He would lay in bed at night and fantasize about cutting it off. Not having an arm at all will draw less stares than having a one-hundred and twenty pound piece of titanium attached to him.
But… Elizabeth might be dead if it weren’t for the arm. If it had just been him, an armless former assassin, he might not have been able to stop the train with just the serum.
For that reason, he decides that he doesn’t hate the arm. For today at least.
Neal can hear Peter and Elizabeth talking to Becca in the foyer. They’re waiting on him, Becca explaining some of the photos on the wall while they wait.
Neal smiles. Maybe he’s not so alone anymore.