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There are still days when he wasn’t sure what was real, but he thought this might be.
Every day Natasha Romanov made tea. Well, every day that she’s in residence at the Avengers facility. Bucky Barnes carefully memorized the schedules and routines of those around him. It helped to know what to expect, as much as was possible given the lives they lead. This particular habit...or ritual maybe, stuck out at him. It pulled at the edges of his memory, where the threads were frayed and worn. Watching someone, his ma perhaps, filling a kettle with water and placing it on the burner, turning up the flame underneath. The shrill whistle when the water boiled and the steam rising from the spout as she poured the water into a china teapot. They didn’t have a lot of fancy things in the Barnes household, but his mother had managed to hang on to her wedding china. It was strange, the way memory worked. A month ago, Bucky wasn’t sure he could tell you his mother’s name, but now he can recall her pouring tea when people came to visit.
He hesitated in the doorway to the common kitchen. He wanted to go in, but he didn’t want to interrupt her. Natasha must have heard his thoughts because she looked up at him with her glass-green eyes and gave him a tiny smile and a small nod. He felt his shoulders relax at the invitation and he slid onto a stool at the breakfast bar.
“Good afternoon, James. Find yourself craving a cup of tea?”
“I’m not sure I recall the taste, to tell you the truth. But I saw you here, doing this, making tea, and it reminded me of something.” He tried hard not to ramble. Dames never made Bucky nervous, not in known memory, but something about the petite redhead made him clumsy.
Her smile was relaxed now, friendly and open and it dazzled his eyes. As it always did.
He knew that he knew her before now. He remembered training girls in the Red Room of Soviet Russia, though the details still eluded him. He could read the files, if he wanted. But, Bucky was torn between wanting to remember the relationship he once had with Natasha, and being terribly afraid of what that memory might entail. For now, though, he enjoyed her graceful movements; the way she held the simple teapot as she warmed it, how she measured the loose leaf tea into it. She pulled a container of sugar cubes from a cabinet, and milk from the fridge.
“Do you take lemon?” She asked him as she studied the inside of the refrigerator.
“I don’t know. Probably not?” Was lemon a thing with tea? He would never have thought of it.
“Good, because I think we're out of lemons. I blame Steve and his lemonade addiction.”
“Oh God, he used up all the lemons here too? I thought he would stop once he went through the damn bushel in our suite. Punk never learns.” Bucky had an inkling where the “fresh lemonade” thing had started with Steve; Wanda was always dragging him off to farmer’s markets and local festivals, where it was popular.
“He’s so hipster.” She grinned at him when he laughed.
The kettle whistled the same way he remembered and the steam rose the same way it did all those years ago, and he watched Natasha pour the boiling water carefully over the leaves in the teapot. She closed the lid, and set the pot aside.
“Now we wait.”
Bucky fidgeted on the barstool for less than a minute before blurting out the question on his mind.
“So, why tea? I mean, other than you like to drink tea. That contraption of Stark’s could make you any tea you wanted in half the time. So why do it like this?” It all came out in a rush and jumble, and for a moment, he was afraid he had said something to offend her. She looked at him so carefully for a moment.
“I like the ritual of it. It feels...normal. It makes me feel normal as well. People have made tea like this for hundreds of years, possibly thousands, and so I do the same. Because I am a person. I am more than what they tried to make of me.” Her eyes met his over the countertop and for a split second, he couldn’t breathe. He’s wandered around this place for months now, lost in the miasma of his broken memories. Thinking that no one really understood. But Natasha did, of course she did. How could he forget that? He wanted so many things at the moment that he can’t separate them and he just stared at her, dumbstruck.
The moment passed; Natasha poured the tea into cups, and asked him if he took sugar. He said yes to sugar, but no to milk. Like people do. Because he too, was a person. He was more than what they tried to make of him.
This was real.