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For Bucky, home was a concept with which his familiarity had long been forgotten.
Over years of abuse and fear, the word itself was foreign on his tongue.
The idea-
Once a man with sharp edges, soft smiles and even softer hands for holding
Before that a woman with a tongue that dripped of venom,
A mouth that spat words that stung
-Hadn't lasted more than a decade or so.
And then?
Then it was ripped away in a flurry of snow and screams and pain-
Terrible, awful pain.
-
Before his hands moved with delight,
Like a angel's wings they flapped, propelling him towards a happiness unknown and warding away the tightness in his chest.
Now they were locked down- one metal, one flesh but both trapped from their silent songs of glee.
Perhaps it was a good thing?
When they did untie him, he held those hands tightly at his sides.
Even the rocking they made sure to stop.
Anything for the perfect weapon, he whispered to himself over and over again.
Soon, even his words were forgotten.
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She was his first.
His first home, his first hug, his first love.
It was a family love that harbored him from the storms of the outside world, that created a shelter over him from danger.
She was the first person he was taught that mattered, the only person who he felt he had to please.
Anything for the perfect son.
But he wasn't her son
And try as he might he could never be perfect for her.
She blocked twisters from his path, sent Mother Nature's fury fleeing,
But her shelter was poison to touch,
It was gas to smell,
It wrapped around him under the guise of safety, but its vines were Ivy and Oak and Sumac.
She was a willow, sobbing of her disparities and offering false sympathies.
He was a child, sleeping on her branches every night though her vines yanked him to the ground by each morning.
She was like stinging nettle shoved down his throat.
And soon enough he was numb to it all.
But at least she was home.
-
He was sunshine in a man.
He was the brightest star,
Both Apollo made mortal and surely God's finest masterpiece of a human being.
He burned so bright and hot,
Bucky's shelter built around himself was ash in the wind.
With anger and noise, the man set the willow aflaim,
He touched not a soul,
His hands met no flesh nor bone,
But the tree came down and down and down.
-
Bucky had a heart of petals and steel,
Soft but hard,
The oddest mixture of love and fear.
His touch was careful,
Lips never bruised and words never harmed.
But his body was a temple crumbling,
Over time touch made him pull away,
Of every hand he was afraid
For grazing fingers can cause an avalanche of dust and clay,
Can conquer walls already weak from decay.
-
Steve was fire and anger and light.
Before his hands were questions,
A lover's embrace was preluded with an inquiry of consent.
A fighter's punch thrown only after a chance given for a show of remorse.
His body was small,
Bones frail as a bird's,
Lungs unreliable as the sea,
But his heart was the waves on a stormy night.
It defied,
It forced itself onward,
It broke walls slowly but surely.
Steve was fire and anger and light
But that could only go so far,
And fire can only melt so much ice.
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