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There’s a chill to the air and he can’t seem to pinpoint if it’s the wind or something else entirely.
He wanders the streets, hiding in plain sight like he was trained to do.
The place is familiar enough. His muscle memory is taking him somewhere. His brain just hasn’t caught up yet. He saw he’s from New York, the museum told him so. But he’s still figuring out what’s a lie and what’s the truth.
He knows it’s a risk to be out here. The anxiety builds with every passing face, every glance that lingers too long, and threatens to topple him.
His eyes dart between the people on the street. He should run. He should find a handler - no, he should find a safe house. He should disappear. He needs -
Sanctuary.
The light shining through the stained glass glittered across the street, almost like a beacon. His hand hesitates on the door for just a moment before opening it just enough to slip inside.
The sanctuary is dimly lit, candles flickering and casting long shadows over the walls. He gravitates toward those shadows, sitting on one of the pews, muscles still coiled tight with anxiety. Maybe he should bow his head, try to pray, see if some higher power can fix him.
“You’re early.”
The voice came from behind the pulpit, easy and familiar. Bucky’s head shoots up and makes eye contact with the priest.
“Oh. I’m sorry, I was expecting another parishioner. But, welcome.”
Bucky stands to leave, but the priest keeps walking toward him and something in Bucky’s mind eases. The priest sits down on a pew a few rows in front of him, like he knows if he gets too close, Bucky would run. He still might. But he’s just so tired and he just wants to sit for a while.
“I can go,” Bucky finally says, but he sits back down. The priest waves the thought off.
“I’m Father Lantom. Paul, if you’d prefer.” He looks at Bucky expectantly. Bucky only nods in acknowledgement. A flicker of amusement and patient understanding crosses over the Father’s face. Bucky’s jaw clenches as a memory stirs within him. It’s just out of reach. Maybe if he sits here for another moment it’ll come back.
“Do you want anything to eat? I have some leftover takeout.”
“I’m not here to steal your food, Father.”
“It’s not stealing if I offer it to you.”
He’s not sure why he trusts this priest. Nothing’s felt trustworthy since he dragged Steve from the river, not even that decision. Breaking eye contact with Lantom, he stares up at one of the stained glass windows, the colors reflecting across the church pews.
The men sit in silence for a moment. It’s not uncomfortable, at least, it doesn’t register on Bucky’s uncomfortable scale.
“Are you Catholic?” Father Lantom asks, no judgment in his voice. Bucky rubs the heel of his gloved hand against his left eye.
“You’ll think I’m crazy if I answer that,” Bucky replies dryly. Father Lantom chuckles.
“Wouldn’t be the first crazy person in that pew. Or the first Protestant. Or atheist. All are welcome.”
The itch behind Bucky’s eye grows. He scrubs at it, even when the pulling at the sensitive skin starts to hurt. He’s used to pain.
“Maybe I used to be?” Bucky finally says. Lantom takes the answer in stride and just nods.
“It doesn’t matter much, anyway. Sometimes this place just calls to people. I know that makes me sound like a sap, but I’ve seen it. It pulls in the people that need it most.”
“What do they need?”
“Different things. Comfort. Community. But more often than not, forgiveness. Especially when they can’t forgive themselves.”
Father Lantom tilts his head to catch Bucky’s eye.
“Would you like for me to take your confession?” he asks softly. Bucky huffs a dark, humorless laugh.
“We’d be here a while, Father. I don’t even know how to do it. Or if I ever knew how to do it.”
To Lantom’s credit, he laughs with Bucky. Bucky hasn’t felt this at ease with another human in, well, he’s not quite sure. Before Bucky can spin out in his own thoughts, the priest interrupts him.
“That doesn’t matter as much as you might think. A little ritual, a little ancient wisdom, someone to listen, sometimes that’s what a troubled soul needs. Even a soul that isn’t sure if he’s religious. I promise no angel will come and smite you down if you want to try.”
Bucky chews his bottom lip. Maybe someone should smite him. Maybe God brought him here to be taken care of. His ma always said that God had a plan.
Ma.
Eyes closed, gripping the seat of the pew hard enough to hear it creak, Bucky remembers a flash.
His mother ushered him into the church and pushed him toward the confessional booth.
“Father Bonner is waiting,” she scolded him.
Bucky couldn’t have been more than fifteen, he thinks. He settled into the booth, glancing at the shadowy figure of the priest through the lattice.
“Whenever you’re ready, my child.” Bucky resisted the temptation to roll his eyes while he crossed himself across his chest. The formalness of this whole thing irked him.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was two weeks ago.”
Bucky picked at his nails, already thinking ahead to when he was supposed to meet Steve after this.
“I punched a kid last week. Hand still smarts, actually. But I don’t think I need forgiveness for that. He started it. He pushed Steve down first.”
He heard the priest sigh. He grinned. He loved pushing Father Bonner’s buttons.
“Also, I hid Becca’s doll. But, Father, she was being annoying. She kept interrupting when I was trying to read.”
“Confession isn’t a time for you to make excuses. The Lord teaches us that we are to withstand the temptation of this world.”
“But she’s SO annoying. He can’t expect me to withstand a little sister,” Bucky argued. He saw Father Bonner pinch the bridge of his nose through the lattice.
“1 Corinthians 10:13. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.”
Bucky sat still for a moment. An unusual action for him at that age.
“Father, I pinched a penny from the grocery money Ma gave me. I bought me and Steve a piece of candy to split. I didn’t tell her.” Bucky’s shoulders drooped down, shame across his face. “I know it was wrong. I don’t have an excuse for that one. For this and all my sins, I am sorry.”
“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” Bucky mumbles, back in the church in New York, still clinging on to the new memory.
Father Lantom draws the cross across his own chest and closes his eyes in a silent, swift prayer.
“How long has it been since your last confession?”
“I…I don’t know. What year is it? Decades, at least.”
Lantom’s eyebrow raises for a fraction of a second, trying to reconcile that with the apparent age of the man in front of him.
“Whenever you’re ready, my child.” Bucky lets out a breath and rolls his shoulders, trying to relieve even a fraction of the tension.
“It’s better if I don’t tell you everything. Safer. But I’ve been violent. I haven’t shown mercy. I’ve…”
Father Lantom doesn’t flinch, doesn’t press, doesn’t run away horrified. Bucky thinks maybe he should.
“Son, I’ve been taking confession in Hell’s Kitchen for a while. Violence doesn’t scare me. Tell me what you need to confess.”
“But I can’t remember everything,” Bucky whispers.
“Do you want to continue down this path of violence?”
“No, God no,” Bucky sputters out, the rims around his eyes reddening with emotion. “But I don’t know if I have a choice.”
“We all have choices - “
“I didn’t,” Bucky cuts him off sharply. Lantom merely nods.
“If you truly didn’t have a choice, then these sins are not yours alone to bear. If you were robbed of your autonomy, those that did that are culpable.”
“But I pulled the trigger. I did those things. It’s not an excuse. I deserve the punishment.” Lantom’s hand rises, as if he wants to reach out and pat Bucky’s arm. Bucky preemptively flinches and Lantom’s hand rests back on the pew.
“I think someone told me once, a priest, told me that God doesn’t give us more than we can bear. That there’s always a way out. I’m not sure I believe that.”
Lantom hummed in acknowledgment.
“That verse is about resisting temptation, not enduring suffering. For suffering, we turn to Job.”
Bucky’s hand runs down his face. He thinks maybe he remembers this story.
“Job lost everything,” Lantom continues gently. “His family, his health, his livelihood. He sat in ashes, scraping his sores with broken pottery. Everyone around him told him that he must have sinned to find himself like that, to have deserved all that suffering. But Job hadn’t sinned. Sometimes suffering isn’t divine punishment or a lesson. Sometimes, it just is. The world doesn’t have neat and tidy endings. We don’t get to know the whole plan.”
Bucky keeps his eyes on the floor as Lantom continues.
“Whatever was done to you, whatever robbed you of your choices, your memories, that wasn’t a test. That was the evil that’s infiltrated the world.” Lantom pauses. “But you’re here now, enduring, confessing these sins that you claim you had no power over, that you don’t even remember. That shows me that there’s something to be redeemed in your soul. Guilt is the soul’s call to action, to change. That’s what matters. The desire to be better. That’s what confession is for. We can’t move forward without dealing with our past.”
Bucky’s mouth opens to explain or to argue or continue listing sins or to cry. He’s not sure what his next move would have been if they weren’t interrupted.
He hears the door open before Lantom, of course. Enhanced senses and all that. Pulling himself into a defensive position, he turns towards the side door. Taking a protective step between the door and the priest, his hand brushes the knife tucked into the hidden sheath at his side.
A man masked in black steps forward into the low light, his own body language mirroring Bucky’s. Lantom tries to stand, to put himself between the two.
“You need to come back later - “ he tries to start. Bucky uses his hand to shove Lantom back, trying to hide him in the pews. The priest stumbles and falls. The man in black takes it as an attack and moves, leaping over rows of pews toward Bucky, pulling a billy club from his back.
With a regretful look at Father Lantom, Bucky flees. The man in black hesitates and Lantom uses that moment.
“Matthew, stop. He’s no danger to anyone.”
Matt helps Lantom stand, head tilted in that way that lets him listen harder.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Father.”
Matt leaves the church in pursuit. He hears Lantom mutter the end to the confession, “May God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
It had taken him a beat, but he had figured it out. He had sat for far too long as Foggy and Karen watched the news coverage of Captain America fighting the Winter Soldier, James Buchanan Barnes. They had read every article they could get their hands on, desperate to know more. He had tried to ignore them, tried to just keep his mind on things that he could control. But once he was in that church, the pieces fell into place.
He had just been trying to go give his own confession, his own ritual before he went out on patrol. Make sure his slate is wiped clean before, just in case something happens. Father Lantom has told him time and again that the intent of going out to fight is itself a sin, not just the act. But Matt considers it more of a duty.
He had heard muffled conversation from outside the door when he arrived. His intent was to stay silent and wait. Once the heavy door pushed open even the slightest bit, Matt had known something was off.
The smell of metal had hit his nose first. Not the usual tang of a weapon, though that was there, too. But this was something new to Matt.
The thunderous heartbeat that Matt had only heard once before when he had passed Steve Rogers on the street one day. Rogers had been in civilian clothes, a hat tugged down low. Foggy hadn’t even recognized him. But that serum had done something to his body that Matt could feel. Everything was turned up a notch.
It was the slight mechanical whir that really gave it away. The plates shifting over one another as the man that had been confessing his multitude of sins tensed and stood, the creak of his fingers clenching into a fist.
Leaping up onto the roof of the church, Matt focuses his senses. He can’t have gone far, he’d draw too much attention if he used his true speed from the serum.
Sifting through the familiar noise, Matt finds him. His uneven gait, his left side pulling heavier on him, that heartbeat like an elephant’s, the unidentifiable metal. He takes off after the Soldier.
The man leaps up a fire escape of an abandoned building, the metal structure groaning under the man’s frame. Matt scrambles to the top of an adjacent building, silent and swift. He thinks he has that advantage, at least.
Matt flips over to the rooftop and stands ten feet from the man. The smell of sweat, new adrenaline over days of what was likely rough living, fills his nose. He immediately realizes his mistake. The man is already in a defensive stance and positioned between him and the only easy exit. Matt chuckles darkly. He’s really found himself in over his head, but when has that ever stopped him before?
“I know who you are,” he spits, unholstering his clubs mirroring the defensive stance once again.
“You really don’t,” the man scoffs back, words rough but clear. He doesn’t make a move. Matt, usually deadly and patient, fidgets, spinning his club in his hand.
“I know what you’re capable of,” he corrects. He wants the other man to make a move, to give him a reason to explode, to burn off the rage and guilt that lies within him, that he didn’t get off his chest at confession.
“I just want to go…to leave. I don’t do that anymore,” he mutters. Matt hears his heartbeat. It’s impossibly loud, impossibly strong, but it’s steady. If he was a betting man, he’d say the guy was telling the truth. But he continues to push.
“Don’t lie to me!” Matt yells, slamming his club on the water tower next to him. The man doesn’t flinch and that stirs up more inside of Matt. “You think there’s a way to leave this life behind? I know there’s not. It just comes back stronger.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he shoots back.
Matt huffs, takes a step forward and swings. The man catches the club with his left hand and snaps it effortlessly. He tosses it aside and waits for Matt to move again.
It goes like this for a minute. Matt swings low, aiming for the knee. Blocked. Feints left, strikes right. The metal arm catches his fist mid-swing, didn't even seem to register the impact. The man tossed him back, not hard enough to injure, just hard enough to create distance. Matt came out here looking for a fight and, of all people, the HYDRA assassin that almost killed the country’s golden boy isn’t giving it to him.
“You don’t know anything about me,” the man continues to push back. Matt pants and steps back to catch his breath.
“I know you’re the Winter Soldier. I know you’re HYDRA’s dog. I know - “
“Not anymore,” he insists sharply. And then again, almost desperately. “Not anymore.”
Matt’s senses sort through the data. Heartbeat steady. The man’s hand, just the right one, trembled slightly despite his rigid stance. He can’t be lying.
He’d been so sure. There was a threat in his city, something he could physically hit and feel righteous about. But his own senses were telling him that Father Lantom was right.
“How can I believe that?” Matt still asks. The man can only shrug.
“You just have to decide if you do or not.”
Matt doesn’t have much first-hand experience with HYDRA. He studied them in school, he’s listened to the audio books, he’s heard the stories of Captain America and the Howling Commandos. Hell, he’s pretty sure he had a Cap lunchbox in elementary school.
This whole night, this interaction with the fist of HYDRA? It doesn’t feel anything like how he imagined. It doesn’t feel threatening. It doesn’t carry an all-encompassing sense of dread. It…it almost feels pitiful.
Matt relaxes his stance, despite every fighter’s instinct that was ingrained in him screaming at him that it was a stupid thing to do. But his instincts had been leading the charge lately and he had done things that he regretted. Things that took him across lines that he wasn’t sure he could uncross.
“Just stay out of my city,” Matt finally says. The man flinches and Matt’s throat tightens. “Go, now, before I change my mind.”
In a flash, the man pushes past Matt, his metal arm gently brushing Matt’s own shoulder. Matt listens as he disappears into the streets of Hell’s Kitchen. He stands on the rooftop until there is nothing but the city’s noise and his own ragged breathing.
“Goddamnit,” he mutters.
Bucky brushes past the man in black, letting the man feel his departure. He descends from the building, orients himself, and heads out of New York City. There’s nothing left there for him, anyway. He’d met two people tonight who’d shown him mercy. There wasn’t much more he could ask for.
A year later, Matt finds himself in front of the television, fist clenching around his cane as he listens to the news.
“More than 70 people have been injured. At least 12 are dead, including Wakanda's King T'Chaka. Officials have released a video of a suspect who they have identified as James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Soldier. The infamous HYDRA agent, linked to numerous acts of terrorism and political assassinations.”
Matt storms out of his apartment. He finds himself in the garden of Clinton Church, waiting for Lantom to find him. He always finds him.
“Matthew,” Lantom greets. Matt doesn’t have time for niceties.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. We have sinned.”
Lantom’s eyebrows snap together in confusion.
“We let a man escape back into the world and he went on to harm people. So many people,” Matt continues harshly.
“Ah. You mean the man - “
“Not a man, Father. A weapon. An assassin. He tricked us.”
Lantom sits with Matt for a moment to see if he will continue. Matt’s teeth grit together and there are so many things he wants to say that he shouldn’t on holy ground.
“Why did you tell me he wasn’t a threat? Did he tell you the things he had done? The things he had been trained to do?” Matt says, standing to pace as he speaks.
“He did,” Lantom says. There isn’t enough pain or regret in his voice to satisfy Matt.
“Then why, why did you tell me to let him go? That blood is on my hands, Father.”
“Matthew 5:39 instructs ‘But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.’”
“Romans 12:19, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ says the Lord,” Matt counters. Lantom shakes his head in response.
“You’re forgetting the first part, ‘Beloved, do not look for revenge but leave room for the wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ Vengeance is not yours to give out, Matthew.”
“But what about justice? What about protecting others?”
“We’re called to forgive as the Lord forgives us. You cannot be lawyer, judge, and jury. You cannot do what you do and judge this other man for what he does.”
“I’m nothing like him, Father. I help people.”
“That sounds like an excuse for your sins. Confession is not a time for excuses, Matthew.” Lantom’s voice softens as he continues. “Job didn’t choose his suffering, it was inflicted by powers beyond comprehension. But you? You choose yours every night. And now you want absolution for the consequences of someone else’s choices.”
Matt’s jaw tightens. He could’ve stopped it. He should’ve. How many people would be alive today if he had just taken care of this one person? Would taking that life have been worth it? He shakes his head to clear the traitorous thoughts from his mind. He can only worry about his city, his Kitchen.
He drops to his knees in front of the priest.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” he begins anew.