Chapter Text
1996
Darcy sees him for the first time when she gets in trouble for stealing. Again.
It was just food, she was just hungry but you have to pay to eat; you have to pay to live.
Darcy doesn’t have money. She doesn’t have parents. Parents have money but Darcy has neither. She has foster parents but that’s different because they get money for keeping Darcy; they’re not going to spend the money on Darcy.
He’s standing there, looking really angry about something—and from the way he keeps looking at Darcy’s current foster mom, it’s probably her—while Darcy gets chewed out by the latest in a long string of foster parents. She’s fat and lazy and makes Darcy and the other five kids she ‘takes care of’ stay in their single room unless they’re at school. She sometimes forgets to feed them like she imagines one would forget to feed a fish and doesn’t waste money to get them any clothes.
In between yelling at Darcy, she’s apologizing to the store clerk, who looks at Darcy angrily and calls her an ‘urchin’ which Darcy thought people only said in books and stuff. He doesn’t notice her hungrily eyeing the chips she’d tried to take, her sallow cheeks, or the way her clothes hang off her much too small frame.
When they get back to the foster parent’s house, the woman angrily calls the People who move Darcy from place to place and tells them that she’s not going to raise a thief. Darcy adds the woman’s name to her ‘list’ and goes to pack her few belongings. At least the People will get her something to eat.
He’s there in the room when she walks in and he smiles kindly at her even though she knows he’s not supposed to be here. Darcy doesn’t call for help. The other kids are all asleep nearby anyway and they seem unharmed so she leaves it.
“Who are you,” she whispers and he looks surprised, turning his head to look around the room and see if she’s talking to someone else.
“Yeah, I’m talking to you.” She’s still whispering but now she has her hands on her hips and a challenging look on her face.
“You can see me?” He asks, and yeah. She can see him. She can see his white tank-top smeared with oil, tucked into khakis that look almost as bad as her own pants. His shoes are worn and heavy-looking boots and he’s got worker’s gloves on his hands. His hair looks black in the dark room but Darcy thinks it’s probably brown and his eyes are almost a transparent gray. There’s a dip in his chin and his lips are almost as big as Darcy’s. One of her foster parents had said her lips were ‘plush’. Darcy tried to get kicked out of that house as soon as she could manage.
“Yeah, idiot, of course I can see you. You’re not invisible, stupid,” she tells him with narrowed eyes. He chuckles and holds up his hands in a placating manner. Darcy hates it.
“Actually, I kind of am?” He informs her, except he says it like a question so Darcy thinks he’s not really sure he’s invisible.
“No one else has been able to see me—so far,” he amends quickly.
“But I can,” Darcy states and scrunches up her nose.
“Apparently,” he sighs, “My name is Bucky, by the way.”
“That’s a stupid name,” Darcy tells him because she’s only seven and she can get away with it. And because it is a stupid name. He narrows his eyes.
“It is not.”
“It is too.”
“Is not!”
“Is too!” Darcy accidentally yells and the other kids start from their sleep. She and Bucky both clap a hand over their mouths while the others grumble and try to go back to bed. Once they’re asleep again Bucky looks at her with amusement.
“Yeah? And what’s your name then?” He asks with a tilt of his chin.
“It’s Darcy,” she crosses her arms, holding her head high, “Darcy Lewis.”
He smirks and Darcy thinks that he might call her name stupid as well, just because, but he doesn’t.
“Well, Miss Lewis, it’s a pleasure to meet—“
“LEWIS!” The foster mom shouts from the other room and Darcy jumps, running to pack the things she’d forgotten about when she was talking to Bucky. The other kids are awake as well, now but they obviously can’t see him.
“YOU BETTER BE READY TO GO, YOU LITTLE SHIT, CUZ CHILD SERVICES IS COMIN’ TO GET YOUR ASS IN TWENTY MINUTES AND I AIN’T WANT YOU IN MY HOUSE ONE SECOND LONGER THAN YOU NEED TA BE!”
Bucky looks really angry again but Darcy knows better than to talk to him with all of the other kids up because one time she was made fun of for talking to her imaginary friend. And she wasn’t even real.
“Darcy, what’d you do,” Benny asks her from his place in the corner of the room. He always takes the corner in whatever house, he says. He’s rubbing sleep from his eyes and looks irritated at having been woken up.
“I tried to steal a bag of chips.”
Benny scoffs and Maria rolls her pretty doe eyes. She’s the oldest of them at twelve. She behaves the best as well, saying she didn’t want to get sent away because she might end up at some creepy old man’s house; even if she’s starving here.
“So they saw you do it?” She asks Darcy, “That’s stupid, you’re not supposed to get caught.”
“I know that!” Darcy says angrily stomping her foot. The foster mom yells for her from the other room again and they all gasp. Emmaline, who’s only four, whimpers by her place curled up with Maria. She’s the youngest and, because she doesn’t know how to steal yet, the other kids usually make sure she’s fed first when what’s-her-face does feed them.
“I’m coming!” Darcy yells back, and Emmaline sniffles.
“Are you going, D?” She asks, her eyes sad and shiny in the dark light. Darcy’s brow furrows and she looks away when she starts tearing up as well. She’d actually liked these guys. Emmaline was her favorite because she had big, poufy black hair that Darcy liked to comb back into braids and pigtails.
“I kinda hafta, Em,” Darcy replies quietly and even from across the room she can see Em’s lip start to quiver. Darcy watches as Maria pulls Emmaline closer and wraps her up in her arms, whispering quiet, kind things like she does for all of them when they’re hungry or in trouble or just out of a nightmare.
When she turns to Bucky, he looks like he might cry as well and that’s when Darcy really starts to lose it because Bucky is an adult and adults aren’t supposed to cry.
She’s crying and Emmaline’s crying and the others are crying as she pulls her trash-bag of clothes to the door. Benny looks like he’s trying not to cry because “he’s a man and men don’t cry like girls” so Darcy pinches him really hard on his arm and he starts bawling like a baby and angrily yelling at her. She doesn’t really care because she’s already crying so what more damage could he do.
The foster lady pushes Darcy out the front door and puts her bag out next to her.
“Now, you wait here,” she says sternly, “they’re gonna be here soon so don’t go runnin’ off.”
With that, she retreats inside, slamming the door and locking the deadbolt loudly.
Darcy sniffles as she tries to get her tears under control before the People come and she wonders, not for the first time, if her parents were actually alive and didn’t want her or if they were both dead. Neither option really sits well with her but she thinks for a split second that she would prefer it if they were dead. Then she takes it back because she feels really guilty for wishing someone was dead instead of alive.
“Hey, kid,” Bucky says softly as he sits down next to her and Darcy startles before nodding at him. He tries to put his arm around her but it just goes right through her. Darcy figured it would but he looks so distraught about it that she leans into him as much as she can anyway.
“So, what are you, anyway?” She asks after the silence goes on too long between them, “Are you a ghost?”
Bucky lets out a strangled laugh and runs his other hand through his hair. “I don’t—I don’t know,” he admits with a sad smile, “Possibly, but if I am dead—if I’m a ghost—I don’t remember dying. I don’t—I don’t remember anything.”
They’re both silent for a bit after that until Darcy speaks again.
“You remember your name,” she reassures him and he chuckles. “Yeah, kid. I remember my name.”
She stares at him for a moment before pulling her legs up to wrap her arms around her knees. She shivers against the chill in the autumn air and Bucky looks helpless again, like he wants to warm her up but he can’t.
“If you’re not a ghost, maybe you’re a figment of my imagination,” she says suddenly and Bucky squawks indignantly.
“I am not a figment of some kid’s imagination, thank you very much,” he scoffs and she narrows her eyes at him.
“Yeah? How would you know? You don’t remember anything, remember?”
“I’m just not, alright!”
“Prove it!”
“What? How?” and he runs his hand through his hair again. Darcy thinks for a moment before grinning.
“Tell me something there’s no way I’d know,” she says, “that way I know you’re not something I made up. ‘Cause you’ll know stuff I don’t.”
“Alright,” he decides and then thinks for a bit before his eyes widen and he smirks, “Benny has a crush on you.”
“He does not.”
“He does too.”
“He does not and besides that doesn’t count.”
“What? Why not?” He asks her, looking offended.
“Because maybe I just wanted Benny to like me so I projected that onto you so you would tell me what my brain wants to hear,” she tells him matter-of-factly and Bucky looks shocked but also amused.
“Okay, slow down there, Sigmund Freud, you’re five.”
“I’m seven. And who’s Sigmund Freud?” She wonders and Bucky crows in triumph.
“Ha,” he says pointing at her, “there’s something I know that you don’t know! I’m not a figment of your imagination!”
Darcy grudgingly concedes this point.
“Yeah, okay, but who’s Sigmund Freud?” “He’s, uh, he’s a-a…um,” Bucky frowns and then looks defeated, pulling his own legs up and mirroring her position. “I don’t remember,” he mumbles and Darcy sighs.
“That’s okay,” she says, not looking him in the eye, “It doesn’t really matter if you’re imaginary or not. I’m just glad you’re here.”
Just then, a black car pulled up in front of the house and a couple people in suits with sympathetic looks stepped out of the car. The woman was the one to approach her but Darcy still shrunk back into Bucky. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t because that meant another house with another stranger and more kids she doesn’t know.
But she had to.
Bucky, seeing her curl into herself and try to hold back tears again, starts petting her hair as best he can (so what if it was more like hovering his hand over her head).
“Hey, I’ll go with you, okay? I won’t leave you alone, alright?” He tells her as the woman draws nearer, “You won’t be alone.”
“Promise?” She whispers.
“Promise,” he whispers back and Darcy stands and follows the lady back to the car. Bucky follows after.