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“That didn’t used to be there,” Bucky wants to tell the older woman walking briskly to his right, but he refrains.
He’s trying not to match her pace, but every time he slows down, she for some reason elects to do the same. His muscles ache from the strain of keeping himself steady, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s chattering away on the phone, her voice aged in a way Bucky doesn’t recall hearing his parents’ ever become. They were young when he left them, or so he remembers. The woman has to be in her late 50s or early 60s. If he had to guess, he would say maybe 61. Her gaze flickers in his direction briefly and her pace picks up, leaving him in the dust.
It’s the highway that didn’t used to be there. The one that runs right through the street he used to live on—
No, not him. Someone else. The Captain, he thinks it might be. Rogers. But something at the back of his mind insists he maybe did too. Bucky elects not to pick at it. Whenever he does, he just ends up spiraling so far down that by the time he comes back to himself, he’s got two knees bracketing his big head and a tightness in his chest that refuses to dissipate for the rest of the day.
It’s not the memories he holds in his mind taking the reins today. It’s those held in his feet. His hands, his nose. The grit of the uneven sidewalk beneath his worn soles and the stink of garbage left out too long in the sun, just barely overpowered by the savory scents wafting out from an Italian restaurant with some ridiculous name and a storefront of grey and white that contrasts that of the old brick on either side of it. They’ve led him to what his map says is Carroll Gardens, though that doesn’t sound right. Beneath it is Red Hook, and even after everything, that one he knows quite well. The highway is new, though. New to him, at least. Clearly not the neighborhood, considering how worn down it is.
His legs carry him down Court Street, the act essentially muscle memory. Home, his body screams. Home awaits him down by where the sun is slowly sinking below the bay, painting the neighborhood in brilliant oranges and the sky a most delicate pink. Bucky’s soul aches to return, but his mind knows there’s nothing left for him there. No family nor any of the familiar landmarks that characterized the block he’d once claimed as his own. According to Google, the tenement he’d grown up in was torn down in the 80s. All that remains is an empty lot, prime real estate on the waterfront that has gone undeveloped since the turn of the century. At least that’s what the internet said.
Instead, Bucky turns back around, thoughts racing and palms sweating. He swallows down the bile rising in his throat, unsure of why his stomach has all of a sudden gone wonky. His heart rate is steadily picking up, though he’d long since adapted to a normal diet. Bucky still isn’t used to not having all the answers. Before, the doctors always had an explanation for why his body did certain things— whether they did anything about it was another matter entirely. On his own, he feels unmoored. Adrift.
The further he gets from Red Hook, though, the easier it is to breathe. Soon enough, his stomach settles, and he’s back by the highway as the streets come back to life around him, the pleasant evening summoning the afternoon dwellers from their homes. Unbidden, his legs lead him through the underpass before taking a sharp turn right down 9th Street. The subway station just past Smith Street is exactly where he left it in the 40s and Bucky can’t help the flicker of anticipation that sparks in his chest at the sight of it. The ticket box is void of life, replaced by the ticket machines that he only used to see in the city back in his youth but now can’t escape. When he gets onto the platform, it’s as packed as he remembers.
The excitement builds as Bucky realizes it’s just the same as it used to be. His body is leading him where his mind has long forgotten, the sounds of the train remarkably familiar to what they used to be some eighty years prior. When the F train arrives fifteen minutes late, he nearly laughs out loud. This he knows. The familiarity is foreign after so long without any sense of self. And while his mind is still slow on the come up, his body is happy to take the brunt of the burden. Changed as it is, it still holds some of what he used to be while still taking in the man he is today. On the train, he gives up his seat to a young woman and her infant child, though he doesn’t make conversation like he would have before. He just stares out the window as they fly through Brooklyn, cataloguing all that has changed in his absence as the conductor drones unintelligibly over the intercom. The old Bucky would have been delighted by all the technological advancements, like something out of one of his many books.
He will never be that person again, though. Chewed up and spit out, stripped bare and haphazardly reassembled into what is just passingly human, Bucky has only recently come to terms with the fact that he is even real. That he has a name. Although his memory has slowly returned, he feels little connection with the man who once roamed these streets with a dance in each step and a million dollar smile for whoever he managed to catch in his charming snare. The Bucky of now, of today, doesn’t smile. His steps are calculated, every move with just enough laxity to pass as comfortable but never letting his guard down. He has little interest in kicking balls back and forth in empty lots and dancing in dank backroom clubs with men twice his age and smeared rouge on his lips.
Has little interest in anything, really.
He gets off at York Street along with practically everyone else on the train. The chattering reaches a peak, children babbling on their parents’ hips and teenagers excitedly laying out their plans for the evening. DUMBO is what the area is called now. Despite himself, Bucky’s lips quirk at the name. He thinks he saw a movie called Dumbo once. With Rogers— the small one, way back when. He also thinks he cried.
At first, he follows the crowd. Jay Street is both unfamiliar and flooded with people, though he’s sure he’s going the right direction. A memory attacks him then, so vivid he nearly doubles over right there in the middle of the sidewalk. He’s young—he feels it in the way he carries himself—and he’s with four men. One of them is Rogers, and he’s smiling up at Bucky. Then there’s a big hand on his shoulder and he’s being yanked backward, the sound of boyish laughter echoing in his mind. Friends, his brain supplies, though the label doesn’t quite fit Rogers. He knows they were companions from what he learned in the museum and online, but he can’t reconcile such a title with him. It feels much too casual, and while Bucky is well aware of his attraction to men, he isn’t sure whether or not he and Rogers were ever anything more. It’s one of those things he can’t think about for too long without panicking.
He’s grateful when his body presents him with a welcome distraction. It’s a quick turn onto Plymouth Street and down under the bridge—his sister’s favorite one, though he can’t recall her name—before he finally reaches the park. It’s new, but the rest of the pier remains the same. Bucky allows his legs to take him through the grass, through the throngs of families and couples and parties, to reach the waterfront. When the grass turns to pebbles beneath his feet, something in his soul lightens.
He pulls out a cigarette from the crumpled box in his back pocket, pulling down his hood. A young man beside him offers him a light, and he nods in thanks, letting his eyes flutter shut as he takes a long drag. The rocks are cold and uncomfortable beneath him, but the soothing sounds of the waves lapping gently against the shore lull him into a daze. Whether it’s peaceful, he can’t quite say. He just allows it to wash over him until the sky is dark blue, the last dregs of sunlight having long since disappeared by the time he opens his eyes.
Bucky looks out across the river, the glittering modernized skyline of Manhattan setting the water aglow with thousands of counterfeit stars mirroring those just barely visible shining down from the heavens above, and finally inhales deeply. His world has changed in ways he is yet to understand, but there above the Brooklyn Bridge, the timeless moon winks at him in all her marvelous grandeur, unchanged from the last time they made acquaintance with one another on the very same pier in a bygone era.
He exhales.