Chapter Text
—Avengers Compound, Upstate New York, December 2014—
Steve isn’t sure what he expected when the garland and other Christmas decorations started going up all over this sprawling compound in Upstate New York.
To be sure, he wasn’t expecting for Bucky to embrace the holiday spirit and drag himself out of the Winter Soldier shell he’s been firmly wedged inside of for months. And he wasn’t expecting any mistletoe adventures—or misadventures, as they’d be in these circumstances—as a result of Tony not quite getting how inappropriate it would be to set people up for ambush-kissing when there’s a severely traumatized POW slinking around the compound looking hunted on a good day.
But he was expecting… something. A reaction, maybe, to the bright spots of color that steadily encroached on every corridor and room.
Maybe Bucky would reach out and rub some garland between his fingers, or maybe Bucky would tap a fingertip against a glittering metallic sphere hanging from that garland. Maybe Bucky would pause while walking down a hallway to appreciate the delicate snowflake ornaments, or maybe Bucky would admire one of the brightly lit and tinsel-strewn trees that seem to be popping up daily in various rooms around the compound.
Or, if the Soviet mindset won out—which it increasingly seems to do as Bucky slowly regains memories—maybe there’d be a derisive sneer at all of this opulent American holiday cheer and excess. Maybe he’d even go so far as to make a comment about the mess all of the shedding tinsel created, or a complaint about the pervasive pine scent surrounding all of the trees. Maybe a snide remark about leaving some of the forest in the forest for the squirrels to live in.
But for all the possible reactions his friend could have had, Steve just never expected these ones. Never expected the covert attention, the furtive glances and subsequent guilty avoidance that every decoration seems to get.
Oh, there’s no overt study of the garland, the trees, the carefully piled empty packages. No, nothing obvious to someone who wasn’t studying Bucky’s every move as closely as Steve has been.
But Steve has been studying Bucky’s every move. And there’s been plenty of covert attention. Every single new decorative element—starting with the very first strand of garland—has been observed carefully when no one has been in the area to watch him do it.
The only reason Steve knows this is because he’s gotten JARVIS to show him after the fact… and because he’s been so desperate to see some reaction—any reaction—that he’s searching for these moments of seemingly unobserved time. JARVIS won’t always offer up the surveillance footage, of course. There’s some kind of mutual understanding between JARVIS and Bucky, some agreement that Steve isn’t in on. But Steve’s seen the process on camera enough to know how it goes.
First, Bucky will be confronted with the new, unexpected decoration. He’ll glance at it the way he glances at all of the elements of his surroundings, as if sussing out hidden dangers, keeping track of every little change in the features that make up his environment. And then, after this observation is concluded and the decoration is found to be benign, Bucky will proceed to ignore it utterly.
It gets even less of an inspection on subsequent encounters than the rest of the surrounds. It’s not so obvious if you’re not studying him, but Steve is studying him, and… There’s avoidance there. Bucky is carefully not interacting with the garland, the trees, the stacks of fake presents, the occasional styrofoam snowman in a corner.
It’s not fear. Steve has seen fear written across his friend’s face often enough—painfully often of late—to know that Bucky is not afraid of the Christmas decorations. But there is caution. There’s some danger or other that is involved here that Steve can’t fathom.
Why or how would there be danger in garland? In trees brought in and set up with a whole host of glittering objects hanging from their boughs? In empty boxes wrapped in shining paper and festooned with curly ribbons?
But there’s danger, somehow, in paying too much attention to these things, and so Bucky isn’t paying them any attention after the first investigation.
And it’s not like Bucky used to particularly love Christmas—either the holiday itself or the decorations. He’d been kind of apathetic about it back in Brooklyn, mostly because he saw the people struggling to afford to participate, the people who tried to participate in the gift-giving and only ended up in a worse situation for the splurging. Bucky had seen the inequality, above and beyond the joy.
But even that isn’t quite what’s happening here, and Steve knows it.
No, somehow, HYDRA has played a role in sabotaging Christmas for his friend, and Steve can do nothing about it but watch the footage of Bucky’s investigations, and wish that those weren’t followed by almost skittish avoidance.
It’s just another late afternoon in the sprawling mansion that Tony has allowed them to hide out in, lest the various dangers out there come and try to “collect” Bucky again. There’s nothing out of the ordinary that Steve can see, but somehow, the whole room is filled with Bucky’s invisible uncertainty.
They’re in one of the sitting rooms—because of course Tony’s compound has a sitting room for each suite of living areas and a few more besides—just watching some mindless television and spending a quiet afternoon together.
There are people on the television trying to renovate their house on a budget that makes Steve’s mind boggle, and they’re upset they can’t afford things like an indoor pool and heated tile flooring throughout their living area. Steve likes watching shows like this, because he feels a connection with Bucky when they’re watching the excess and privilege and occasionally shaking their heads at it all.
Of course, Bucky isn’t looking at it from the viewpoint of someone who grew up in the Great Depression and knew more people who struggled to put food on the table than who didn’t. Before, he would have. Now, it’s that Soviet mindset that creeps in, thinking about Americans as a whole instead of a select few who go on television for unreasonable home remodeling trends.
But Steve will take what he can get. He’s learned enough in the last two or so months to cast pickiness aside and embrace any similarities he can find between himself and Bucky.
Steve is watching the television from the sofa, wishing Bucky was likewise sitting on the sofa and watching the screen. But his friend is sitting on the floor several feet away, leaning back against the front of one of the chairs in the sitting room. It’s something, that he’s leaning back. Usually he’d be sitting ramrod straight, as though being at ease wasn’t an option he could take without it being an order.
And Sam is on the sofa with Steve, though he’s flipping through a recipe magazine more than watching the home renovation show. Sam has taken up stress-cooking since they relocated to the compound, and every couple of days sees a new recipe tried in the residential kitchen—not the compound’s main kitchen, which Sam says is too industrial and which is usually bustling with cooks, anyway.
It’s just the three of them, in part because the others are busy elsewhere anyway, and in part because Bucky doesn’t always do well with too many people in one area. He tends to withdraw until he fades from people’s attention when there are more than five or so people in a room, like he thinks there’s safety in the wallpaper and he’d better become a part of the wallpaper or else.
This way, with just the three of them, there’s less chance that Bucky will feel the need to hide in plain sight, and more chance that he’ll actually be able to pay attention to whatever it is they’re watching.
But while Steve knows better than to study Bucky directly—lest he become the dreaded Captain in Bucky’s mind and somehow warrant a fear response—he can see from the corner of his eye that Bucky is not, in fact, paying much attention to the show.
The thing is, Bucky’s not paying attention to anything else, either. He’s paying a sort of non-attention to the short Christmas tree that’s set up on a side table to the right of the television.
This is one of the rooms with new decorations in it, so Steve isn’t entirely surprised to find that his friend’s attention is taken by the tree. He saw the covert glance and assessment when they first entered the room, after all, and took note of Bucky’s avoidance afterward. That’s the pattern. Look at the decoration, see that there is no danger there, pointedly do not look at the decoration lest some kind of danger grow.
But now there’s non-attention being paid to the decoration. That’s a first. It’s as though a magnet were attracting Bucky’s eyes to the tree every so often before he wrenches his eyes away—back to the television on its wall-mount, or out the window to where the landscaping is covered in old snow, or to the carpet just in front of himself. Once or twice, over to Steve and Sam, as though checking to see whether they noticed that he spent any time at all looking at the tree.
Steve very carefully does not allow his confusion to take the form of a frown. That’s how to bring the Captain out, he knows. If Steve frowns, he goes from being “Steve Rogers, the man who thinks of him as an old friend despite him not remembering friendship” to being “the Captain, the man who looks just like Steve Rogers but who is responsible for a sizable chunk of Bucky’s trauma.”
And Steve will do a good number of things to avoid becoming the Captain, in Bucky’s eyes.
So no furrowed brow as he tries to place what could be different about this little Christmas tree compared to any of the other trees around the compound. It’s not the only tree on a table. It’s not the only short tree. It’s not the only tree without tinsel or lights. It’s not the only tree that has a smattering of ornaments instead of a horde of them. It’s not the only tree with a few fake gifts underneath it.
Steve can’t quite figure out what it is about the tree that is drawing Bucky’s attention, but it’s undeniable that the tree—or maybe something on it—is doing that.
There are snowman ornaments, stacked glass globes with fake white snow inside them. There are snowflakes, in several subtly different six-sided foam and glitter shapes. There are also random shapes and ornaments, including a bright green pickle with warts, a little boy on a sled, a reindeer with a red nose, a polar bear in a Santa hat, a little red bird made of sequins and feathers, a moose with a knitted scarf…
Except for the illogical red nose, the reindeer and bird are the most realistic of the animal ornaments. The reindeer seems to be coated in brown flocking, and the bird has a bit of beading for eyes and beak, with its legs tucked up so there’s no need to depict them on the ornament. The polar bear and moose, though, are a bit cartoonish, made more so by their winter wear.
And the pickle… Steve doesn’t understand it, but every room with decorations has a single pickle nestled somewhere in the decorations. Tony insists that it’s “a thing,” but won’t explain what that thing is. Steve isn’t sure he cares enough to look it up.
And everything has more glitter than is strictly needed.
None of that explains Bucky’s unwilling fascination with the tree on the table, though.
Eventually, after an entire episode in which the home renovators end up selling their newly perfect dream home after the renovations—which doesn’t make any sense to Steve—Bucky seems to come to a decision.
His shoulders go from a semi-relaxed position against the chair to a more at-attention position, and then he stands up.
Steve isn’t sure what to expect at first, but he’s relieved when Bucky merely goes to the small kitchenette in the back corner of the sitting room and gets himself a small bottle of water without asking for permission or needing someone to suggest that he do so.
Sam smiles into his magazine and turns the page, and Steve can’t help but smile as well. It’s definitely a result they’ve been working on for a while now. Bucky doesn’t often take such initiative for himself, but when he does, the team does what it can to encourage it by not appearing to notice it—when they tried praising such behavior, the behavior itself had mysteriously stopped.
When Bucky returns to the sitting area of the room, he keeps a very close watch on Steve, who it seems has been relegated to the position of “Captain, and therefore someone to be obeyed but not trusted,” after all. And he doesn’t sit back where he was, but instead chooses to sit on the floor in front of a different chair, one closer to the tree on the side table.
There’s almost a hint of defiance in the way he sits, and Steve has to school his face into a neutral expression to avoid frowning in confusion—something that will probably result in fear and fawning behavior that Steve wants to avoid.
Bucky holds the water bottle—but does not drink from it—for the better part of an episode in which the renovators seek to focus their efforts and their astronomically large budget on adding a tennis court to their backyard alongside the grill, separate fire pit, and gazebo.
Steve is wondering why he got the water at all if he wasn’t going to drink it, when Bucky gets up again.
Leaving his water where he was sitting, Bucky goes to the back of the sofa—his eyes trained on Steve the entire time like Steve is a snake that will strike him if he takes his eyes away for a second—and picks up a blanket from the stack of them on the bottom shelf of the console table behind the sofa.
That’s another step in the right direction, getting a blanket for himself if he feels cold, as he so often does. But the way he’s looking at Steve the whole time is just baffling. Also baffling is the way he goes to sit directly beside the side table with the short Christmas tree on it, instead of sitting where he’s left the unopened bottle of water.
It’s as if the water wasn’t for him, but was an excuse to get up and choose somewhere else to sit. And the blanket doesn’t get unfolded and wrapped around Bucky’s shoulders, or even sat on as a sort of cushion. It’s just there in his arms as he sits on the floor again.
Steve tries to share a confused glance with Sam, but Sam is looking at his magazine with an intensity that says that he isn’t paying a scrap of attention to the magazine but is studying Bucky’s actions without looking directly at him.
Well, that makes two of them who aren’t sure what’s going on.
Steve very, very carefully refrains from reaction, actively pretending not to notice Bucky’s eyes on him. It’s hard. For one thing, Bucky is acting even more strangely than usual. For another, now that he’s sitting beside the side table, he’s along the same wall as the television, and is therefore facing Steve and Sam rather than joining them in facing the television.
In the last few minutes of the episode, when the renovation team is doing the big reveal of this fantasy backyard landscape plus getaway, Bucky sets the blanket aside and stands up again.
At first, Steve thinks it’s because he wants to turn around and look at the results of the episode’s renovations, and then, when Bucky simply stands there facing him, Steve wonders what it is he’ll go get next. And why.
There’s that defiance in Bucky’s eyes, a testing, searching gleam, like he’s almost daring Steve to respond to his bizarre behavior. And there’s a tenseness to his shoulders—to his whole stance—like he’s also terrified that Steve will respond.
And then, as the credits roll, Bucky slowly, slowly, slowly reaches out toward the tree with his right hand.
Steve swallows and watches him right back. He’s not sure what’s going on in Bucky’s head, but he’s sure that his friend will spook if he asks. Sam is carefully not paying attention, his eyes focused on his magazine, but it’s too late for Steve to not pay any attention, so he just keeps watching what’s happening to the side of the television.
It’s not the tree Bucky is reaching toward, it turns out, but one of the ornaments on the tree.
Steve watches as Bucky blindly unhooks the red bird ornament from its ornament hanger without even a tiny fumble of fingers, clearly having exactly placed the bird’s location in his mind and studied how it was attached to the tree. The bird comes loose into Bucky’s hand, cradled in his palm.
And Bucky freezes with the bird in his hand, his eyes wide, his breathing stalled, his expression one of satisfied terror. He looks like he’s expecting to be tased into unconsciousness for the crime of taking the bird, and also like this is the pinnacle of his life’s achievements.
Bucky slowly slips the bird into the pocket of his hoodie, still looking at Steve to the exclusion of everything else in the room, and then silently sidles a few steps away from the tree, his movements somehow both graceful and uncertain.
Steve watches as Bucky follows the shape of the room, side stepping until he reaches the corner, and then turning to back out of the room, facing Steve the entire time like his taking his eyes off Steve will be the signal for the attack to be launched against him for his audacity.
When Bucky reaches the door, he slips through it and vanishes around the corner, and Steve slowly turns his head to face front again and then to look at Sam beside him on the sofa.
Steve manages to wait all of half a minute before asking, “What the hell was that?”
Sam shrugs. “Dude likes the bird. JARVIS’ll let us know if there’s an issue.”
“Indeed, sir,” the AI replies.
Steve nods, and tries to focus on the next show coming on—people who are trying to sell their house and buy another rather than merely renovate the house they already have.
The focus isn’t coming to him, though. All his brain can do is turn over the events of the past hour or so, the slow-motion theft of the red bird ornament, and the way Bucky had seemed to tremble with the force of his victory once that bird ornament had been nestled into his palm.
The empty ornament hanger draws his attention almost as thoroughly as the bird ornament itself had seemed to grab Bucky’s.
What does it mean?
It’s the faint murmur of Russian that makes Steve pause by Bucky’s open door and look into the room later that night. Bucky’s room has a door just like the other rooms, and no one has said at any point that he may not close it, but the door is never more than half closed, day or night, whether Bucky’s changing clothes or just sitting on the floor staring at the wall. It’s as if he feels he doesn’t deserve the privacy. And maybe he does feel that way.
Steve and Sam both try to give him privacy anyway, rarely looking in on him without making a lot of noise on their way to the door so that he’ll have time to compose himself before anyone comes too close.
Tonight, Steve’s not trying to sneak up, or anything. But he had thought Bucky was out by the turtle pond like he is many evenings about this time, and he only happened to hear the Russian when he was already close enough—and moving quietly enough—that the eavesdropping is accidental.
Steve’s still working on his Russian—unlike several European languages, he’d never had a need to learn it during the War—but he can pick up the gist of the words being murmured in the semidarkness of the room.
Apologies.
Bucky is apologizing in his room, curled on his side under the writing desk, his knees tucked up tight, something small and red cradled in both hands a few inches from his face. Very, very gently, Bucky strokes the small red object—the bird ornament, Steve realizes—with his fingers, staring wide-eyed and unblinking, his face open and lax, with tears building wetly but not yet spilling out.
Steve can’t make sense of the words that aren’t actual apologies, though he can hear the sorrow and the guilt that shake Bucky’s voice and can piece together that the apologies are sincere, possibly the most heartfelt expression he’s heard since the helicarrier and Bucky’s desperate pleas for him to shut up and stop claiming friendship.
Steve isn’t sure what it is that causes his friend to notice him, but Bucky’s voice cuts off in almost a strangle, and he freezes under the desk, shifting only enough to shield the bird from view. His eyes are every bit as wide and horrified as when Steve finally got through to him—the end of the line—and Steve feels absolutely wretched down to his core.
“I’m sorry,” he says, taking a step back from the door. “I shouldn’t have intruded. Good night, Bucky.”
In his own room, with his door closed against Bucky’s enhanced hearing or Sam’s possible concern, he asks JARVIS for a translation, just a rough summary, just enough that he knows what’s happening in Bucky’s room, what he’s apologizing to a— to a Christmas ornament for.
After an obvious, unmasked hesitation, JARVIS softly explains that it is not his place to share the Soldier’s words with him, but that the Soldier is grieving the loss of other birds.
Steve considers following up—maybe even demanding to know what is going on with the birds since it clearly upsets Bucky so much and has led to some pretty anomalous behavior—but in the end he sighs and nods.
JARVIS is in Bucky’s corner about some things, even if he won’t call him by his name, and Steve does respect that. Lord knows Bucky needs someone in his corner who he actually trusts to be there.
In the morning, when Steve goes in to get Bucky for breakfast, the bird is nowhere to be found. There aren’t many places to hide anything in the sparsely furnished bedroom and bathroom that make up Bucky’s portion of the three-person suite they all share, and Steve doesn’t make any attempts to search with anything but his glancing eyes.
Bucky has so few things—things and memories, both—and if he chooses to hide them from him, Steve won’t pry.
He’ll mourn the distance between himself and Bucky, who used to share all things with him. But he won’t pry.