Chapter Text
PRELUDE, “ BUCHANAN BARNES ”
Brooklyn Heights, January 1924 . The first time Buchanan was left to watch his siblings he was close enough to seven to feel important and adult but close enough to six to feel some deep wrong had been inflicted on him. He sulked, did not let the others out of the house, and watched the screaming twins in their terrible twos with an abject horror and the distant, unavoidable truth that this had become his reality, this was not a one-off punishment by his Ma.
Dorothy was mulish, unlikely to say please, unlikely to say thank you, likely to argue and likely to disagree. She was only three and well on her way to being a cynic. Buchanan didn’t like her. Margaret was flappy, likely to have a tantrum about the smallest issue and unlikely to tell you what the issue was . She was only two and well on her way to being fussy. Buchanan didn’t like her. George was likely to be overenthusiastic and overexcitable and unlikely to calm down, he was quiet but closer to stealthy , a surprise attack of jittery energy. He was only two and well on his way to being incredibly annoying. Buchanan didn’t like him.
They were left more and more often. His Ma got a job waitressing, his dad stumbled around between jobs, losing them and gaining them quicker than Buchanan could keep up.
So it was the apartment he was left to, the apartment and the three kids. The apartment was small, grimy. Nicotine stained and paint peeling. There was the main room which served as kitchen, dining room, and living room; the master bedroom, an untouchable entity he never entered; and two matchbox rooms that had been split with an unwieldy paper thin wall after building, he shared one with George who refused to sleep without having worn himself out all day long running Buchanan’s nerves, and the other shared by the girls. No solace there, blank walls filled with the undeniable presence of his siblings, all who clamoured for his attention and his resources and his help.
School was good, school was somewhere to escape to, and school was easy. School meant easy smiles from his parents, maybe even a well done or congratulatory hug, and school meant people other than his siblings. He never made many friends though, not with Dorothy hanging off his arm and his constant worries about the twins at home with the upstairs neighbour. He watched people mostly, the skinny kid who got in fights all the time, the girl with the pretty hair, the kid who wore glasses and was always trying to beat him on test scores.
He would go home then, save the twins from the upstairs neighbour who smelt unsavoury and didn’t understand that Margaret sometimes needed a minute to make a decision, or you needed to explicitly ask what was bothering her, didn’t understand that you needed to ask George to take a breather when he ran around too much, or that you needed to sit back and ask Margaret to take a breather when she had a tantrum rather than try and argue it with her. They would go out onto the street and play hopscotch, avoid the block’s bullies, Big John and Tony, watch little Steve Rogers try and fight someone ten times the size and swoon after Dorothy, rough house with their cousins Laurie and Rob Barnes.
And Dorothy would ask for help with her homework, and George would ask him to do big brother things like climb up onto the roof and intimidate Will from a few doors down to be George’s friend, and Margaret would sit next to him and ask him to read to her. And he would, he would do all those things and more.
So maybe he didn’t hate them at all.
Brooklyn was a harsh place; shattered windows, crumbling brick, sallow faces. It was home though, and Buchanan learnt how to walk in those grimy alleys, up those iron stairs. The block, as they called it, was a rough area of unloved buildings in Brooklyn Heights mostly owned by the unforgiving landlord, Ned Jackson. He learnt how to hide behind his mother’s skirts when Jackson came knocking for the rent.
And maybe he punched Tony on the nose when he tried to steal George’s hat, so maybe he loved his siblings a lot.