Grounded

Doc asked about writing, I said it's going good, she said can I see, I said no it’s a journal it’s private, she said so you haven’t been writing, I said I’ve been writing, she said okay I don’t have to read it just flip through the pages, I didn't say anything, she said that’s what I thought James.

A sporadically maintained journal of wanting to die and not dying anyway, and also how hot it is to move to Louisiana in the summer.

Notes:

A note about tone and the content: This is a story that more or less wallows in depression and suicidality. There's other stuff too! Jokes even! And a hopeful trajectory! But it's the journal of someone struggling a lot with wanting to die and thinking about it with varying levels of explicitness, so please keep that in mind if that's something you don't want to read.

Chapter 1: February, March, April, May

Chapter Text

feb

Therapy journal

Met with doc. Got journal. Here. Writing.

Doc asked about writing, I said it's going good, she said can I see, I said no it’s a journal it’s private, she said so you haven’t been writing, I said I’ve been writing, she said okay I don’t have to read it just flip through the pages, I didn't say anything, she said that’s what I thought James.

Grounding Exercises for Times of Crisis

5-4-3-2-1 method. Use senses to list things around you. Five sounds, four sights, three touches, two smells, one taste.
Use an anchoring phrase. “I’m Full Name. I’m X years old. I live in Y. Today is Z. I am at This Location.” Add details until you feel calm.
Take a walk
hold a piece of ice
practice self kindness
are you fucking kidding me

march

april

Sam

I got your letter in the mail. Ha funny. I know what texting is. I’m just

Dear Sam,

Thank you for the letter and the invitation. For the time being, I am going to stay in Brookl

Wilson—

you’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m going to that fucking museum & walking thru that fucking exhibit & what? & pose next to the blurb about me dying while you give away Steve’s shield?

another eulogy

you’re not the man I thought you

Wilson,

I thought you’d appreciate that I’m writing this in my court mandated therapy journal or maybe you won’t because the reason I’m using it is that it’s empty. Doc gave up on it quickly, she’s more interested in what I’ve got in the other one. She says hold onto this tho because I might need it someday. And I think maam I can get a notebook if I need a notebook and these days you don’t need notebooks. Thanks for helping me set up my phone a while back. I know I didn’t say it at the time but it’s been a help. Google. Lot of that. Urban dictionary. Food delivery which is a fuckin racket let me tell you that but hey it comes right to the door and you don’t need to track down a passing kid.

Is that a weird thing to say? I meant that when I was a kid I made pocket money running errands for the shut ins in our building. Invalids some of them, some weird and scared shitless of the outside world. Probably agoraphobic, according to google. I’m not trying to be mean about them. I liked them a lot, even when I was a kid. I mean I liked some of them, just cuz they’re weird doesn’t mean they’re not people & people are what they are. Mrs. O’Conner, mean as a snake and you never did anything right for her, you’d bring back her groceries and she’d snap at you “oh where’s the eggs where’s the bread did you get this from the foreign market” and you’d snap back “maam if you haven’t noticed there’s a depression going on and you gave me two wooden nickels and a list as long as noah’s beard.” She never liked me. Steve tho

I’m never gonna send these, who am I kidding

sound: traffic outside window, rain, wind, sirens somewhere, pipes in apartment

sight: tv off, dead spider in corner, jacket, walls

touch: floor, feet hurt, where arm meets flesh

smell: dust, sweat

taste: bile

Thought -> Feeling -> Behavior

Change thought to change feeling to change behavior

INSTEAD OF

Thought: I am a killer

Feeling: Bad

Behavior

THINK

Thought: I killed under duress

Feeling: weak powerless stupid culpable tired

Behavior: continue to be in therapy

I feel better already.

Either it is my fault & I should be punished or it isn’t my fault & there’s nothing I can do.

Thought: Life at this point is not worth it and I am not interested in making it worth it

Feeling: calm, guilty

Behavior: I “fail to cultivate a meaningful life” so the thought continues to be true

Thought: If I am honest in therapy they’re going to lock me away again and I’ll slit my fucking throat before I go that. If I don’t talk I’m combative, if I do talk I’m crazy, I’m dangerous, my continued freedom is conditional upon therapy aka therapeutic sign off that I’m a-ok no danger here pal and they’ve already talked to me about coming back for a job, quote “taking advantage of my unique skill set” unquote, and if I say no, what then? Free as long as I do what they want? Same as before. Different room that’s all. That’s not all, I’m being stupid, I have an apartment, I have clothes and books and food delivery apps, this isn’t anything like H----. Sane enough to stay free, crazy enough to stay unemployed, just do that for the next 80-90 years or however fucking long it takes me to die of old age. I’ll ask Steve haha he’d know wouldn’t he. They conditioned me so I couldn’t do It, but the conditioning is supposedly gone, Ayo told me it was gone and she’s right, I know she is, because my first thought when the words didn’t work was “I can finally kill myself” and I can. I know I can now. Find a nice field somewhere so my neighbors don’t have to smell anything and then I’m the thing they’re talking about in therapy. “O doc I can still smell that rotting body up above my bedroom, I still hear the gunshot.”

“Does it help to know it’s better that he’s dead?” the doc says back.

“O yes doctor yes that’s the only silver lining.”

Other people don’t even seem real anymore. I am not convinced I ever woke up. When I was in the ice I used to dream and wouldn’t know they were dreams until they thawed me out. I know I’m still in there I know I know I know I know

god I’m so bored of my own head

They gave me a number to call in crisis, except if I call they’ll tell doc I called or they’ll tell the government and that’s that. I’m paranoid, I’m crazy, I know but I’m right, I know I’m right.

I could call Sam. He said I could call. I could call Sam. He’d ask how I’m doing and I’d tell him. I could call Sam and he’d say “o so you can call when you need something but when I need something you’re nowhere to be found. Can’t text, can’t call until it’s Bucky’s breakdown time again.” He wouldn’t say that, I know, but he’d probably think it. Think it and say things to me like “your pain is valid” or “recovering isn’t a linear process” or another bullshit psych doc thing to say, and all the time he’s thinking “Steve left me two things I don’t want around.”

I want to rip my skin off I want to break every one of my bones

may

Sam said I should move in with him.

how did I pack this notebook but forget socks

Chapter 2: June

Chapter Text

June—

“You should keep this notebook for when you need it,” Doc said and I thought “sure that’ll happen” and then I made this big symbolic gesture leaving her Steve’s notebook and now I don’t have any fucking thing to write on except this. Doc wins in the end.

In Delacroix now. I don’t need to write it out, I know what happened. Flag smashers, Karli, Walker. Yori. Ayo. All that. Sam’s Cap now. I was a dick. Am a dick, I’m sure he’d say but hopefully less of a dick than I was before.

Didn’t actually plan on writing in this. Just need a place to make lists.

TO DO

contact Sam’s friend for therapy intake again jesus christ

apartment listings

pension form

cake

google:

EDMR

have to think about stuff ugh

Hypnosis

no fuckin way

CBT

hahaha holy shit
o also “cognitive behavioral therapy” less interesting I already knew about that

Asked Sarah about good places around here to live, she said “you mean better than the couch?”

--“I’m hoping for something half as good.”

--“You can keep sleeping there until you find it.”

Sam says what’s with the sour face, I tell him I’m thinking about him, he says nah that’s not right when you’re thinking about me you get all dreamy.

Nightmarey, I reply. It isn’t even that funny but he laughs.

Lunch again with Sam today. Everyone knows who he is and every step of his life. Reminds me of the block, way the fuck back when.

Thinking about Doc again. “Breathe, breathe, breathe,” she said, and showed me how to breathe like I haven’t been doing it all my fucking life, but sometimes I do actually forget to breathe and I remember how broken my brain is.

Therapy. Sam asked what I thought of new guy. He’s fine, I say.

What’s fine mean? he asks.

Talked about it way fuckin longer than I meant to, and now Sam thinks I should try with someone I’m “more comfortable with”. Who the fuck is comfortable in therapy? That’s the point of therapy.

TO DO

porch steps

bathroom grout

backsplash tiling

think about logistics of tree house shack thing that AJ & Cass have commissioned (ie they asked nicely and then showed me a pic they drew of their plan) (have to tell them I don’t think I can do electric wiring)

ask Sarah what else

Another afternoon with Sam working with the shield. He asked if I’d ever wanted it, I said no way, not even way back when. A sniper is about as far from a shield as you can get. You’re good with it, Sam says. I tell him about practicing with Steve in Europe. Took him forever to master the thing. Everyone laughing as Steve jogged off to pick it up from wherever it flew off to.

Sam’s gonna break his wrist if he doesn’t tighten up his form. I told him that, he asked what “tighten up” means here, and he can’t quite copy me, so we end up sorta spooning in the yard so I can place his hands right. Thought about couples therapy in prison. Sam made the joke before I could.

It’s funny yeah (and other things, I mean I’m not sweet on Sam but I’m unfortunately not dead either) but I got sorta emotional thinking about our fight then versus us today. I wanted to tell Sam that maybe Steve was wrong about Sam but not in a bad way, just that me and him didn’t have the, I don’t know, life experience or imagination or something to get the measure of Sam. Like the actual measure. I don’t know what I’m saying.

I didn’t end up saying anything because I knew the words wouldn’t come out right. Sam’s form is better but he still missed a few catches. Called me his ball boy when I went off to get the shield for him. Ungrateful bastard I swear.

It’s embarrassing as hell I moved here. Stole their living room. Need to find my own apartment. In a different state.

I thought I’d miss Brooklyn more. I miss it but the same amount as I missed it living there. I don’t know that place anymore. I don’t like it. It’s like a foreign country planted right on top of the places I should know. I don’t know shit about Louisiana. Turns out that’s better.

It is fucking HOT.

Nightmare. Not a memory. All the memories at once. There’s men

I’m on

I pick up the

There’s a pile of blood a pile stupid I mean a puddle a puddle of blood and a pile of flesh there’s a puddle

Someone told me you can’t remember pain, you just remember being hurt and how you felt. How the fuck that isn’t pain I don’t know. Never had phantom limb pain until Wakanda. Don’t know why I didn’t before, god knows it took em a while to figure out how to make an arm to graft onto me but I don’t remember the armlessness being anything bad. Then, woke up one day & there it was, the new one. Woke up & they were putting it onto me, into me. The memory of the memory of the pain. Go to sleep one way, wake up unrecognizable to yourself. A handler once said I was too stupid to recognize myself in a mirror. Yeah yes true true true

fine

25 good things

blue sky
big water
sam’s teeth gap like how it shows up when he bites apples
fried food
coffee fresh hot
aj explaining the games to me
diana ross
lizzo
cher
mashed potatoes the way they make em up the street
beer these days
sam complaining about beer these days
sarah yellow sweater looks like sunlight
sprinkler hot day running watching the boys laugh
butterflies
tupperware
sarah saying “you can keep sleeping there until you find it”
youtube videos of animals like cats etc
trees I guess I don’t know
couches this couch this living room I can see a wooden table in front of me, I hear insects chirping, I smell lavender like she sprays sometimes, I touch pen paper notebook, I can’t taste anything I never taste anything why do I always have to say what I fucking taste
water
sam
cushion
light bulbs
quilt

It’s later.

Don’t think I woke anyone. Almost forgot I have to worry about that now.

Outside. Went for a run. Miss smoking. Turns out it’s bad for you. About 80 years since my last cigarette. By the time of the commandos, Steve had healthy lungs so I didn’t need to worry about choking him, but he still didn’t like the smell. Super nose. Thought about taking smoking up again lately, I mean what’s it gonna do to my lungs? But secondhand smoke. AJ and Cass just for one. Sarah told me she finally quit three years back which means she managed to quit during the blip what the fuck. We were talking about smoke breaks while we were cleaning the grills (god willing I’ll start having nightmares about grease instead soon). She was saying how much she missed them. Five minutes to duck outside and be alone. Blow smoke into the wind, watch it drift away. I told her about how when I was younger (what a long stretch of time that it) that smoking was pretty much the only good thing in my day—or not good thing, life was hard in the 30s but there was a lot of good, but the only—

“Indulgence?” she said.

Yeah, that’s it.

Waste of money to get smokes but sometimes you need to waste something. I’d climb up to the roof so it wouldn’t bother Steve, but the smoke got into my clothes (I never noticed, Steve always did, he said everyone reeked all the time, god we did smoke like chimneys back then) so I started taking my shirt off out there, even in winter. Bare chested, freezing to death. Made me laugh every time I did it, the stupid shit you do for a little something something after a hard day. Summers were better tho. Alone up there, the heat, the wind, the smoke, I thought I was at the top of the world.

Tired. Might try to sleep again.

Asked Sam what was vaping was, he just said “no.”

Chapter 3: July

Chapter Text

July—

Dodged the fourth of July celebrations as best I could. Sam asked how I was with fireworks. Don’t know, I said. Turns out I’m fine. The sound isn’t great, but it doesn’t make me feel like dropping and running the way Sam said they used to make him do. Everyone got a sparkler except AJ who gets freaked out by holding them. I got a metal arm so he said I could hold his for him. Cass kept showing me how to spell in the air with it. “Wait I don’t get it,” I’d say and he’d groan like how stupid can this guy be, and he’d say “like THIS” and spell something in the air again. I spelled “butt.” AJ cracked up like crazy. For the record so did Sam.

Happy birthday, Steve.

Early morning. Thought I’d write. Sarah asked if I wanna come run errands, I say I’m happy to, she says “good, that’s the kind of attitude we need around here,” and she says that to the boys who are slinking away from the kitchen table with the plates still out. They clean up the plates. Sarah smiles at them all soft when they aren’t looking.

Sam’s off somewhere on a job. Left two days back, following up a lead on flag smashers. He said he was gonna take Torres for training while he was at it, get him used to the wings. Asked if he wanted backup, he said nah. Truth is (he said) I’m scared about leaving Sarah and the boys alone right now.

Captain America’s new identity is secretish but not secret secret. I’m scared about the same thing truth be told. I don’t know what the long term plan is, neither does Sam, but it’s better for me to be here for now. We weren’t going to tell that to Sarah and then she asked “how exactly is it you’re planning to keep me and your nephews safe from space nazis or whatever.” Then she yelled at us for keeping her out of the loop. Sam tried saying it was to keep her from worrying and she said “yeah because I’ll be so damn chill if I don’t know what’s coming or what to do about it.”

She was mad at both of us for a few days. Sam more than me, him being her brother. Feel bad that I’m grateful for that. I remember when my sis would

Anyway. She’s still mad at us but mostly Sam so it was a fun errand trip. We ended up last at the grocery store, Sarah staring down the cuts of meat, weighing the produce in her hands like it insulted her. She’s doing that thing where you hold something in the store and think about all the money you have. So I tell her that I’ll pay. She says, like hell you will.

I should, I press. We’ve had this discussion before. I’ve been chipping into groceries and all that since I’ve been here, but Sarah keeps saying I’m a guest, I’m a guest, and sure, I get that, but I’ve also taken up her living room for the last month.

I say, they (the govt) gave me a living stipend plus furnishing money when I first moved into the apartment they paid for. Never used the furnishing money and I don’t spend much of the stipend. Mostly I just take it out once a month and sock it away. Brought most of it out here with me, left another good chunk deposited. (“Deposited” meaning I buried it in the park, didn’t mention that.) I’ve got more money than I can use.

She says, firstly that’s gonna be your rent and savings, I don’t trust that someone from nineteen forty whatever to knows the cost of goods. Secondly, you seriously keep all your money under the mattress?

I say, in the walls actually, back at when I had an apartment. Walls are more secure.

--In my walls?

--no I wouldn’t install anything in your walls without asking.

--so how much do you have?

--about $8000 in my travel bag.

She says WHAT THE FUCK very loudly in the store, and I say “okay so that’s still a lot then?” because it does sound like a lot but coffee is like eight bucks so Sarah’s not wrong, I do not know the current value of a dollar.

“Back in your day, a loaf of bread was a nickel, I know, I know,” she says, because that’s what we do when we go shopping together, she points at something and asks how much it’d cost in my day, and I tell her, and she says “crazy.” She looks shocked. She says, “you’re saying you have $8000 loose in a bag in my living room.”

$7500 actually, I say, pat my jacket pocket because I know it’ll make her roll her eyes and she does.

--why are you bringing money on my errands?

--I’m sleeping on your couch.

--So?

--I don’t know what to say here. I have money, I don’t spend it, they keep giving it to me, I don’t need it.

(I’m trying to be understanding and everything, because I know stubborn pride, good god every person I’ve ever liked in my life has been nothing but stubborn pride, but I want to just be like “take my money please Sarah cmon” I know it’s hard accepting help but I’d like to give it if she’d take it, and it’s kinda frustrating she wouldn’t. No, Doc, I will not “reflect on myself”.)

“It’s your tax money,” I say.

She laughs, says “fine”, shakes her head, says “Sam told me you were broke, by the way, we’ll figure out, I don’t know, like a lease or something. You’re part of the household.”

Which is a hell of a thing to hear but whatever, doesn’t matter. I think we both look pretty embarrassed there in the produce section between the peppers and the onions. We finish shopping, we check out, I buy the stuff (which costs WAY too much money, I won’t say that to Sarah of course, and I know inflation and all that but cmon what the hell, is this baguette made of gold?)

She says, for real tho you can’t carry that much money on you, and I ask, why, is someone going to mug me? Wilson siblings have good laughs.

Came home. She made me show her the money and yeah, it’s just in a bag on her floor, and she stares down at it for a moment before saying “we didn’t lock the door when we left, what the hell.” Shows me the crawl space and tells me I can shove it into the insulation for now. We can skip the bank, she gets that, but I need at least a safe or something. Lunch. Kids are still out, doing whatever it is kids do on summer days in the future. She’s working on some accounting for the restaurant. I’m at Sam’s desk writing this. Don’t know why, just had some time to kill and thought I should write. Probably stupid to read over but it was a nice morning.

Headache. Started crying, couldn’t stop, had to run the shower so no one’d hear. AJ knocking on door saying he needs to get in there. Don’t know what I said back. I need to move out.

Nightmare

Sometimes can’t tell the difference between what was done to me and what I did. Can’t look the dead in the eye and say that but it’s true. I’ll shoot, feel like I was shot.

Almost forgot about this—or hadn’t thought about it in a while, same thing. 1970s, somewhere in there. Bolivia. 5 week mission. Longest continuous time out of the ice. Towards the end—

I don’t get it. I told Ayo, 5 weeks out of the ice was enough for me to make a run for it, nearly get away. But YEARS on my own, I still had those fucking words in my head. Dog can run free all it wants right to the end of its leash.

She said to think of it like this: You’ve broke their control once, twice, a dozen times. You’ll do it again.

--Or I won’t.

--You will.

Someone says like that the way that she did, you’d be tricked into believing her too. And she was right. So come to think of it, words still rearrange my brain. Maybe all you can hope for is different words and different people saying them for different reasons.

Sam’s still away.

AJ is currently interested in a “you gee oh” themed electronic card game. He talked about it to me for an hour and showed me on his screen how it works and what it is, and when he’s done I say, wow buddy, you must be smart as hell to figure all that out. He says “not really” but he looks, I don’t know, kinda happy to hear that (if that isn’t egotistical to say). He runs off to do whatever mysterious thing happy kids do, and when he’s gone, Sarah comes into the kitchen and tells me, “I don’t understand any of that either.”

--Thank god. I understand sorta the phone he showed it to me on.

--It’s just lights and colors. I don’t get it. Mom didn’t get why I was crazy about nintendo tho. Guess I finally understand her confusion. Thanks for talking to him about it.

--I’m glad he wants to talk.

--Me too (she says fretting). Soon he’s gonna grow up and he won’t want to spend time talking to any of us anymore.

“Us?” I want to ask because she says it like there’s a team and I’m a member. “Adults” is probably what she means. Maybe “old people.” Shit yeah I’m as old as they come.

google:

nintendo

~~yougeo~~ yu gi oh

Watched the boys again tonight. Sarah at movies with friends. Supervised elaborate construction of sprawling blanket fort. Didn’t think till too late if this is what Sarah would define as mess.

Sometimes I want to die but I don't want to kill myself, and sometimes I want to kill myself but I don't want to die. And sometimes I'm glad I don't want both of those things at once, and sometimes I think "the moment I do, buddy, that's a hole in the fence and I'm diving through, I'm breaking out, I'm free." Doc told me to remember in crisis that crisis doesn't last, & I said yeah that's the problem. You're in hell and you think "oh can't do anything self-destructive in hell because I'll be real sad in ten minutes when I'm not currently burning alive." It's horrible knowing you'll feel better if you wait this out. If I didn't know I could still be fine sometimes I woulda just killed myself already cuz what's the point.

Another week away but it might be longer, Sam told me when he called. Sounded tired.

Can I help, I ask.

He says I’m helping just being there. Tells me not to flirt with Sarah, but his heart doesn’t seem in it. He doesn’t want to talk about his mission because we’re not on a secure line and he says there’s nothing else for him to talk about so I explain the “Yu-Gi-Oh!” lore that I’ve been studying today. Or I talk about it. I don’t understand any of it. Cass and AJ want me to watch it with them, but also something called Dragon Ball. It occurred to me today that they probably think I’m not any stupider than any other adult when it comes to their interests. They don’t give a shit what I don’t know about from the 90s or the 70s or whatever. I asked them if kids still liked “Fortnight” because I saw a youtube about it, and they told me that no one cares about “Fortnight” anymore. Pity in their voices.

Tell this to Sam. Think he’ll laugh. Instead he says, “that’s great, man,” all tired. “I gotta go. Can you pass the phone to the boys real quick so I can say goodnight?”

I tell him, Sam, it’s midnight, and he’s groans “fuck.” He’s passed through five time zones this week.

Call back in eight hours, I say, they’ll love to hear from you.

I can’t, he says, I’m doing something.

Is it dangerous? Course it is. I should be there. I don’t want to be. Continuing to be a shitty friend to Sam Wilson. What else is new. But he told me look after his family while he goes on missions, and I knew I should have said “you look after your family, I’ll go on missions, think of my special skill set” but I didn’t. So he’s there, I’m here.

I tried to say something. He said “goodnight.”

Boys wanted to go out on the water today so we got some kayaks. My memories still swiss cheese but sometimes I’ll do something and I’ll know I’ve never done this before.

Boys were more interested in trying to tip each other into the water than anything else, but AJ’s also got that kid thing where they know the exact scientific name of every bird so we looked out for those too. They told me Sam likes to go birding. I am delighted to know this. They said he is so good and finding birds that the joke in the family is that he can talk to them.

O you haven’t heard? I said.

And the boys asked what, and I said, well if Sam hasn’t told you then I shouldn’t be the one to do it. I just think maybe there’s a reason he was called the falcon.

The wings? Cass said.

Not just the wings, I said.

Whipped the boys into a fever pitch with that. Now I think about it, not sure if that’s good or not. I didn’t think they’d believe me so much but I got a metal arm. Why can’t their uncle talk to birds?

Hope they ask Sam all about it next time he calls.

Bad night.

Hiding in the kitchen. I’m writing this here so I don’t say it to AJ and Cass: all their tv is fuckin terrible. Unwatchable. But god they’re so excited by it. They’re happy. And at the rate they keep explaining the later seasons to me while I’m trying to make sense of episode one, maybe I’ll never actually have to keep watching them.

I’m being called, god help me. Back to watching.

There’s not enough room in this house to lock myself away for long. I’ll get an apartment & never leave again. I could sit so still the dust gathers on me. Museum relic.

Another bad night.

Arm hurts like crazy today. I mean the arm that isn’t there. Don’t get how I can have a fully nerved up prosthetics and phantom pains at the same kind. I can pick up a cup with my fake arm and still feel the missing arm spasming. Holed up in Sam’s bedroom, which I usually try stay out of. Don’t want to give him the impression I’m sniffing his pillowcase or whatever when he’s gone. (Just smells like detergent anyway which I only know because I laid down for a minute.)

Wanted some privacy to take the arm off. Sometimes fiddling around with the wiring in the stump makes the phantom pains stop. So I fiddle and I try to remember what it was like to lose it, to tell my brain “hey remember that thing that’s hurting? we haven’t had it for about 80 years.” I can’t actually remember what it felt when it came off. Maybe it’s come off too many times since. I remember the sound. Never heard anything else like it. Don’t know how to describe it. (Despite all the writing I’ve been doing for some reason, I’m not a writer.) Sorta a ripping bedsheet except you are the bedsheet. Dunno. I heard so deep in me my ears were in my teeth.

I think it was when I tried to catch myself. Mostly I remember I was falling then I wasn’t then I was then I wasn’t.

Some H---- files on me said they found me with the stump, but others say that they removed my arm themselves a week after they captured me. Someone else says I had an arm till 1958. Maybe I lost it in parts, maybe they’re all lying. Everyone writing that they’re the one who gave the WS his famous arm. Haven’t done the research myself. Shuri looked up the files Natasha leaked when she was trying to figure out the “docking port” of my shoulder. Apparently the existing tech in there is worse than if there was nothing at all, some jerry-rigged mess of cold war tech that was buried too deep in me to just remove. It’s crazy, but I felt a little hurt when she insulted it like that. Bit of misplaced pride.

Shit, it hurts. Trying to distract myself, but it fucking hurts so bad. Took the fake arm off, it’s resting like a crown on Sam’s pillow. Doesn’t help the pain but it makes the input less confusing. Just deal with two arms instead of three. Can’t hide out in here forever. Told Sarah I’d take the boys to the mall in a bit for some clothes shopping, Cass is a damn weed. I’ve been trying to knock the pain out before I have to put the arm back on. Mostly that means I’m slapping the stump a lot. Don’t know why it works, maybe it reminds my brain “hey dumbass there’s no fucking arm here.” It’s not

(later)

Got interrupted by Cass. He had many questions about the arm on the pillow. Let him pick it up. He went “whoa you must be strong” and I probably should have told him, hey kid, all arms are about that heavy, you just don’t notice cuz they’re attached to you. He was disappointed when I put it back on. Eagerly volunteered for stump slapping duty.

Back from the mall. New pants for both the boys.

Weird day.

Sam’s back.

His wrist is shot to shit. Banged it up on his mission, thought he could work through it found out he couldn’t. He says the mission is done for now anyway, unless Torres calls back and says “actually one more thing.”

Got so annoyed at him about that, chucked the frozen peas at his chest, he says “what the hell man.” Minor argument about exact definition of medical leave. He told me he wasn’t on medical leave. I told him that highly recommended break from work by some shield doctor is the same thing. I’m a dick again but he’s a stubborn ass. He keeps saying that he’ll be fine, it’s just his wrist. I say hey dipshit that’s your shield arm wrist, and if it’ll be fine in a week like he says, then why not wait a week for it to be fine. And he says he will, unless something comes up, and I say that something will always come up, and it’s too early for him to wear himself down to dust for Captain America.

Minor argument goes on longer. Risks becoming major argument, ends up being, I don’t know, a squabble. Kerfuffle. Sarah asks if our snit is done. Sam says, very ominously, for now.

We talk about work. Classified stuff, not going to write about it in a spiral bound notebook. (Although christ the thought of someone reading the rest of this…)

Sarah told him about the money so I had to explain why I don’t trust banks (he points out great depression was 100 years ago, and I point out not for me, and Sarah asks who even trusts banks, and Sam says please I can only handle a war on one front). He says it’s a lot of loose cash. I don’t want my own bank account where someone will know every time I buy something and where and why. Offer to just donate it to the restaurant, they can say they made as a tip or something. Sam says “so money laundering, you want to launder your money” like I’m Al Capone. He asked me about taxes. I said obviously I haven’t paid taxes, when would I have paid taxes, and he said, “I’m Captain America, you can’t just be admitting crimes to me.”

It went well. He’s fine minus the wrist. I’m glad. (I won’t say I missed him, just in case someone does read this.) He looks tired. I told him that. He said he still looks better than me. Asks why I was still sleeping on the couch when Sam’s bed was empty. I told him Sarah said I wasn’t in the way. He says that’s not the point, sleep in my damn bed. I said what right now? He said yeah sure hop in.

Slept on the couch obviously. Don’t know why I wrote that, doesn’t need to be said.

Sam told the boys he can definitely talk to birds.

Sam in the kitchen to me after the boys went to bed: Said I could talk to birds. Didn’t say they understood what I said.

(we were making popcorn, Sam says we gotta do movie nights, he heard the boys were making me watch animay so he said we should watch a movie Cowboy Bebop and at first I said “please no Sam please” but he said “it’s different than Dragon Ball” and he was right.)

Actually yeah I’ll write more about movie night. Sam said that he’d been thinking about while he was away and he had a list. I asked him if it was longer or shorter than the list of music he assigned me to listen to, he asked if I’d listened to the music yet, I told him that wasn’t the question. He was surprised (disappointed?) by how many I had already seen. I told him Sam, I locked myself in my apartment for months except for therapy and like one lunch out a week, what else do you think I was doing. He says, I don’t know but I guess I hoped it was better than watching Shrek alone.

Shrek was pretty good, I told him.

--Insane

--you wanted to watch Shrek with me

--so you could experience culture! not because you have to watch Shrek

--Shrek was pretty good tho

--I’ll kill you

--Shrek 2 was better

--So you were depressed, alone, in dark unlit and unfurnished apartment, watching Shrek.

--And Shrek 2.

Talked about Shrek longer than I expected. Ended up telling him how weird it was to watch them cuz there’s so many pop culture references that I didn’t even know were references. He said yeah you’re kinda watching it the way kids do, like they don’t know what “like a virgin” is but it’s funny Fiona sings it.

Yeah, I said. Sometimes you laugh at something cuz you know it’s a joke, it sounds like a joke, even tho you don’t know what the joke is.

Or you could just say you don’t get it, he said, & I had to tell him, no no, it’ll still be funny is the thing, I just don’t know why. It’s like there’s the cadence of a joke and sometimes that’s enough.

Sam nodded and said “like how the birds don’t know exactly that I’m saying but they love it anyway” & I told him to shut the fuck up & we watched a nature documentary about birds. It's fucked up the way they look when they're flirting. (Sam says it's weird I call birds trying to mate "flirting")

Bad night. Not mine. Edge of Sam’s bed when he woke. He said “why are you here,” I said “shut up” and gave him a glass of water, we both pretend he isn’t crying. Hard mission. Anniversary of some other hard missions. Ended up on the couch together. Watched long commercials about knives. I kept waiting for the commercial to end and the show to start, Sam said the commercial was the show. “Ain’t that just the modern world” I said to make him laugh and he did, called me old. Shoulder against mine. Thought he’d fall asleep there, but he stayed up. Went for a run together. Louisiana almost temperate if you’re outside at 5.

I’m never sure if I’m supposed to crowd or give space. Even with Steve, back when he always sick but sometimes sick sick, I’d hear him hacking and retching and I never knew—privacy or company? I guessed this way and that, and sometimes I got it right. Don’t know which Sam prefers, but I heard him down the hall and I thought it’d be worse to pretend I hadn’t than to let him know I had.

I wish it was easier with him. Sometimes it is, and it feels like we fit together great. I don’t even need to think about it, and I think about everything these days. Other times, I’m all left feet. Insult him when I don’t mean to be insulting, thoughtless when I’m trying to think about him, I don’t know. It’d be easy if I wasn’t just taking up space in his home. I gotta find my own place.

sound: windchimes. wind. fan blowing. kids playing down the street. clock ticking in the kitchen.

sight: kitchen tile floor. baseboards need painting. blue mat you stand on by the sink when you do dishes. fallen, forgotten cheerio.

touch: cabinet at my back. sitting on tile. sweat rolling down back, almost ticklish.

smell: cumin and lysol.

taste: nothing so I got up and had a glass of orange juice so I could write orange juice.

good things:

orange juice

2) -25) seriously, orange juice

Sam took the boys out this morning, Sarah’s working. First time I’ve been really alone in a while. Tidied up the house and thought, really thought, about killing myself. Didn’t, obviously. Not any strong moral stance, just didn’t want them to find me like that. Need to move out. I’m getting too used to living here, now what I can't function if I'm alone? Fucking pathetic.

Late breakfast (“Brunch” like breakfast and lunch) with Sam. Trained in afternoon. Should have reversed order—do backflips, then waffles. We called it a day early (I’m gonna get him killed if I don’t pick up the training pace but also still resting his wrist) & Sam worked w Torres on the phone about a new super group, no one’s sure if they’re good or bad or what yet, and if they did know, I couldn’t know about it because it’s all classified. No one knows exactly what my security clearance is. Torres looked it up and said there’s a chance that my existence is more classified than my ability to know about it. Anyway for legal reasons I’ll write that no one tells me anything at all, no sir, especially not Captain America.

(Almost forgot: Torres actually said that I’m “not qualified to know myself” and I asked him if he’d write that on a note to my therapist. He started doing that before Sam told him I’m capable of joking. Unfortunately I think this reminded Sam that I don’t currently have a therapist.)

Lying out on the porch. Did some of my reading. Book on history of warfare in Afghanistan in the 20^th century. Haven’t hit any chapter yet where I go “yup that’s me” but seems like just a matter of time. Selfish way to learn history, I know, I know. Everything’s either “I did that” or “did I do that?” since there’s still so many holes in my memories. (Been informed that it’s from trauma, not brain damage. This was announced to me as a good thing.) I’ll learn some new part of the 20^th century and think, shit, maybe I was a part of the national guard during the Kent State shooting.

Only the atrocities of course. Never been paranoid I attended Woodstock and forgot.

Sam asked what I was reading, I showed him, he says “heavy stuff,” I say “heavier not knowing.” Sam said he was in Afghanistan.

Sorry, he adds, points at the back of the book. I guess that’s a spoiler.

I say fuck you and also is that where he got his wings. Yeah, he says.

Govt gave me this packet when I got pardoned. World history from 1945 to present. Guy said it was the same one they gave to Steve, but with some new pages in the back. Woulda liked to talk about it with Steve but you know. 20 pages long. Some countries formed and dissolved in the course of a sentence, and I remember thinking “you can’t be wordy but damn.” Entire wars in a paragraph. And the stuff that wasn’t there. Nothing about Wakanda until page 19, same page as Sokovia’s first appearance. More places never mentioned at all.

Had American history in more detail, but specific kind of detail. “This was bad but now it’s better.” Negatives only in the past tense. I showed it to Sam--this was after Stark’s funeral, before our ride back to the city together. The next day I had to take something like a citizenship test on the info in the packet as part of being allowed back out into society. I was stupid stressed about it, didn’t have to be cuz it turned out to be insultingly easy, but I didn’t know that at the time. Anyway Sam and I sorta talking to each other, I mean talking to each other more than we were talking to anyone else. I wasn’t all that sure Stark would want me at his funeral at all, Sam was still kinda mad at Stark over the accords but couldn’t tell that to anyone and I think he felt bad about it. Like he wasn’t gonna spit on the coffin or anything, but the accords argument ruined his life. (I told him, I thought that was me, and he said “you didn’t ruin my life, Bucky,” which wasn’t what I expected or what I wanted, I didn’t know what to do with that, & what, a year later? I still don’t. Reading too much into it) The first time he missed out on his nephews, he told me.

Anyway (keep getting off track) we were walking around the lake. He kept bumping into me as we walked cuz we were sticking together so close. I showed him the packet, told him about my test.

He said I shouldn’t have to take it, that’s crazy. I don’t think I said anything, I don’t know, I was so in my head I can barely remember anything I did or thought. A lot of my memories are like that, I’ve been realizing. It’s like I’m a camera just recording what’s around me. It’s good sometimes, I know that, hey Doc maybe I don’t wanna feel all the emotions I coulda felt. Other times. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m feeling most of the times. Writing it out does help. I don’t understand it more but I have to think about it.

ANYWAY thinking about it now, I think Sam was right. I shouldn’t have had to take that test especially since it was only 20 something questions and they were all like “who won the vietnam war” & yeah I got that one wrong but cmon I WAS there for a lot of that one, America didn’t fucking win.

(Didn’t use that as my excuse. Thought they wouldn’t be very sympathetic to it, I guess. Wasn’t useful to remind them of all the stuff I’d done when they thought I’d already done more. Like CIA man who kept asking me about my participation in the Bay of Pigs. He didn’t believe that I wasn’t there. I think I really disappointed him.)

It doesn’t matter, I guess. Sam quizzed me on the stuff in the packet, & when I got it right, he said “you know this isn’t the full story right” & he was really pressing me on that. He was sorta laughing at the packet and sorta angry, the less he laughed the angrier he was.

Buy war bonds. Shouldn’t write any of this. Conditional pardon. Unsure about my stability and loyalty, etc. Wonder if it helps that I’m under the personal supervision of Captain America. Probably not. They don’t like the new one that much. Steve arranged my pardon before he yknow, and there were all those interviews asking again and again was I mad at America, did I understand America won the cold war, would I vow to honor and obey the statue of liberty.

Pardoned and pensioned. Still not cleared to know about myself. Worked with Sam on flag smashers, but the permission I got in that case came from Walker. Great. Am I a soldier again? No one will say.

Sam says his uncle died in Afghanistan, then a decade later Sam was there, then a decade later Torres. Thinking about the history packet. Afghanistan summed up in two paragraph, here's what America did. Remember Brigette, from the resistance in Paris? Hosted us at her apartment. Made eyes at Morita all night. Her whole family wiped out in World War I, and there she was in World War 2. Shot as a spy. Thinking about my special skillset. Plus ca change, Brigette.

Shit I don’t think I ever thanked Sam for helping me get a suit for the funeral. Fuck, hold on.

Okay I just thanked him for the suit way back then and he said “I shoulda made you get a hair cut too.”

I told Sam the new therapist didn’t seem like a good fit either. There’s too much I can’t talk about & I don’t know, she’s a very nice lady, very supportive and stuff, gentle hmms when I speak, but all that sets my teeth on edge.

The problem is, Sam tells me, the problem is that Doc might be the only shrink in the world with the security clearance for me to talk about anything specific from my past.

Not a problem, I say, I didn’t even talk about my past with her. He looked too thoughtful about that.

Sometimes I’ll say a joke to him because he’s a soldier & I think he’ll get it, & then I’ll remember aw fuck he’s also a counselor.

Chapter 4: August

Chapter Text

August—

Sam’s back out in DC. Not a mission, some kinda senator meeting. There’s another push to raise the refugee cap, he’s there to talk some senators into doing the right thing (good luck). Told me to look after his family. I asked what, he didn’t want me there glowering in the back at elected officials? He said we’d call that plan B.

He tells me his bed is wide open. Too soft, I tell him. It’s progress I’m not sleeping on the floor.

Sam says it is, but maybe give it a shot. I say sure, & also he better head out.

Writing in his room now. Night time. Should be asleep. Looked at the bed, thought about it, even pulled the covers back. I don’t know. Don’t ask me why. So I got down on the floor beside it and you know what? It hurt my back.

Going back out to the couch. Got a better view of everything from out there anyway.

Boys informed me Sam was trending on twitter. They asked if I knew what that meant. I explained to them that I am one hundred years old. Then they started to explain twitter. I clarified: I am one hundred years old, please don’t make me learn this new thing.

Sarah came home from her girls night after the boys were already asleep. Kinda drunk acting but in that way when you had a lotta fun, not a lotta drink. She went to the kitchen, came back out, shook her pipe at me, asked, how you feel about marihuana? (she said the full name like that)

Reefer? Neutral I guess. Indian cigarettes never did anything for Steve’s asthma, but it was nice on a night out and ma swore by it for her bunions. Pain in the ass when they made it illegal. More a pain in Harlem than Brooklyn. Sarah said of fucking course it was and also I had better tell her about old Harlem sometime and also what was that about bunions? Said she was gonna smoke out on the porch, and I had to come sit with her unless I didn’t want to. I said sure and we sat outside.

She offered me some. I said “better not” because it’s probably a waste and won’t do anything to me anyway (need to figure out if all the heroin & meth & whatever (at a point of trying shit that should kill you, dealers just say “uhhh you want this?” and you reply “fuck yeah let's go”) I did when I was on the run is a funny story or a sad one. I personally think it’s funny how much money I wasted and couldn’t even get a little buzzed, but I don’t know, it might be one of those ones where people start looking at you weird two sentences in. I think if I start saying “look Sam I just wanted to get outta my head and it didn’t even work,” he wouldn’t consider that a great argument).

Anyway I figured it wouldn’t do anything but I didn’t want to find out with just her around. Hard to know what chemicals or conditioning or whatever H---- put in my brain. I know there was some LSD shit they tried.

Sarah said, “I haven’t gone out so much in years. It’s hard to make time when it’s just me and the boys. And after the blip, I couldn’t let them outta my sight. Kept thinking if I looked away, I’d turn back and they’d be dust. Still think that. Go into their room at night, watch em breathe. Grab em as they go by, make sure they solid. I get so scared sometimes I can’t breathe thinking about it. Sometimes I still can’t believe Sam’s back. He was my big brother you know. Now I’m older than him. Think about that. And he tries to pull age like he’s still the big brother, but nuh uh because some of us didn’t get to skip five years. Some of us took the long way round. When he goes away on trips, it’s like he’s dead again. That almost feels more normal.

“I don’t mean I want him to be dead, it’s just was easier, no not easier, fuck I don’t know what I’m saying. Half the damn world left, Bucky. And the only way you get through that is going okay okay it’s gone. I got my kids. I got my community, what’s left of it. We work with what we’ve got, that’s always what we do, that’s the only thing you can do. But then the world changes back. Your brother’s here again and hey he fought an evil space god, how about that? He’s looking at you like you must be a million years old now. Looking at the boys like if he lets himself start, he won’t stop crying. But he’s back, everyone’s back except the ones who died anyway. When everyone came back, I looked for my husband. Like sure he died in a car crash, they found his body, they made me come look at it. But maybe. But no. He’s dead.

“It seems like a dream, like I’ll wake up someday and everyone will be gone again, or I’ll wake up someday and no one will be gone in the first place.”

(She said it a lot like that & I did my best.)

Sarah was quiet a real long time, so I said, “I used to think that in the ice. They’d put me under and it would feel like dying. Exactly like dying. Everything slows until it stops. But then it stops feeling like dying and starts feeling like falling asleep. Or maybe that’s what dying feels like. There’d be a moment before I went away again where I remembered everything, who I was, what was happening, what I’d been doing. And I’d be so so sure that it was gonna be over when I woke up.”

Then I was quiet a real long time.

I thought o shit, does she know what the fuck I’m talking about. Because obviously I’ve never talked to her about it, never gone “gather close Sarah, AJ, Cass, lemme tell you about the murders I did and why I did em. How’s your grasp of evil cryogenics?” Then I remembered Sam filled her in. Never asked him what she thought of all that. Didn’t want to know. Kinda wished I knew now. And then I thought o shit, I’m making it about me.

“Sorry,” I say. “Off topic.”

She said

(embarrassing just writing this, just wanting to write this, but fuck it)

Sarah said, “I’m glad you’re here with us.”

I told her I was glad to be here. Said I’d find a new place soon before I wear out my welcome. Can’t believe I’ve been here 2 months.

She said “listen to me. Sam asked me to let you stay with us as a favor. For a week. I love my brother, but there’s no damn way in hell you’d have been here this long if I didn’t also like you.”

Didn’t know what to say to that.

She poked me in the chest and said “write that in your dang journal.”

I said “what journal.”

She laughs at me. “I see you scribbling away day and night, day and night.”

Face got real hot. “It’s just lists and stuff.”

“Uh huh” she says.

I say (don’t know why, there’s something about a dark night and bright stars that makes you say shit) “I can’t write with my fake arm. Not that good anyway, guess I could if I practice. Holding a pen and making it make words is about the only thing my real arm’s better at.”

Sarah asks “Is that true?” She says “hold out your hands.” I hold out my hands. She puts her hands in mine. “Both feel the same?”

“No,” I tell her. Fake arm whispers. Real arm sings.

“There you go.”

We don’t let go. Look into each other’s ears. Night’s loud with insects screaming as always, frogs bellowing, distant water. Quiet on the porch with her. I think. I don’t know. There’s something. Not sure what. Seems crazy to say there’s anything. But I don’t know. She’s looking at me and I’m looking at her. I remember this dance. I did it plenty, back when I was a different man.

And I hear in my head Sam say, “don’t flirt with my sister.” It’s not the words I’m thinking about so much. More like. Thinking about the color of the words the way he says em. His lips when he says em. His arm around me like it was nothing. Thoughtless touch the way I—who knows what the fuck I’m saying. Sometimes he pulls me towards him and I think I could just keep going, fall right into him forever.

I say to Sarah, “your brother would kill me if he saw us now.”

Sarah looks at my face like she knows something I don’t. Wanna ask her what it is but no I fucking don’t. She leans forward and I think YES and NO and YES and NO, can’t hardly think at all. Then she kisses my cheek high up. Way she kisses Sam sometimes. And it’s like. I don’t know. Like a door shut. Or like the door’s still open but we’re not gonna walk through it.

She says “I’m glad you’re here.”

I know it’s admitting too much but I say “me too.”

Nightmare. I’ll try.

Back on the helicarrier. My hands around Steve’s throat. And I’m choking him, I’m choking him, his face is turning red and purple, he’s trying to say something, but he can’t because I’m choking him and I won’t let go. And I know who he is. I know who he is and who I am, but still I won’t let go, still I’m choking him, and I’m choking him but also watching myself choking him and I can’t move and he’s not fighting back. His hands are curled around my wrists almost gentle. He’s got faith in me. Faith I’ll remember who I am and who he is and I’ll stop. But he doesn’t know I already remember and it won’t help him and I’m choking him.

Blood vessels burst in his eyes. They’re bright red looking up at me. And he’s skinny, scrawny, wheezing and I’m holding him up thru another asthma attack. Don’t know what to do. He’s dying and there’s nothing I can do. It’s asthma, no, it’s my hands on his throat, no it’s I don’t know. I wish he’d hit back. He could stop this if he just tried. Why can’t he just breathe? Everyone else can breathe, why can’t he? And his lips keep trying to form my name.

He won’t die and I won’t stop killing him.

Woke up.

Did some breathing exercises Doc told me about at some point. They didn’t work, but trying to remember what the hell they were distracted me long enough to calm down anyway. My hand hurts, the flesh and blood one I mean. It makes me sick to know how hard I was clenching it in my sleep.

Came to Sam’s room since he's not here. Writing’s easier sometimes behind a closed door. Had to change outta my pjs, too sweaty, so I’m sitting on top of the sheets in just some fresh boxers. Won’t sleep on his bed tonight. But I’m not gonna sleep on the couch either so here I am. Trying to get used to a mattress. I’ll move out soon, I gotta, and maybe I’ll get a bed someday. Oughta practice on them. Work myself up to lying down.

When I close my eyes, I just see his face again.

Sure fuck it I’ll write about Steve.

You know what actually, never mind.

Sam’s back from Washington. I came home from back to school shopping with the boys and he was there on the couch. What’s the opposite of a trigger? Like a trigger but it’s good? I smelled his cologne from around the corner and knew he’d be there. I dap him up, he hugs me a bit as I’m pulling back. The boys start showing him their new clothes (we were supposed to just be getting school supplies, but we passed the clothes, the boys looked at me with their eyes, and you try telling them no after that). Cass has decided this is the year he starts wearing yellow. Didn’t know that was the kind of thing you had to decide, but he’s put in the thought & we tracked down the goods. AJ’s obsessed with these plasticky holographic tees that look different in different lights—they feel uncomfortable as hell to me but he says it doesn’t bother him and hey if it does, he can decide if he think it’s worth it.

Sam says they look good and also that they’re getting spoiled rotten by Uncle Buck. Cass points out I can’t be spoiling them cuz I still won’t build a fully wired tree house. I tell em I’m not sure how they got the idea I could do that, but they’re right, I can & I’m choosing not to, and they holler and groan at me like I’m the worst person they know. Sam’s watching the noise, smiling a little but not smiling, I don’t know. Mouth smile not eye smile. I look at him like “you good?” and he says “alright boys put your stuff away then we’ll go meet mom at work.”

The boys go. Sam looks at me. “Bed was made up,” he said.

“Maybe I’m tidy.”

He says, “Just take my goddamn bed, Bucky,” and before I can ask him what the hell that’s about, he leaves.

Went to ask Sarah if she knows what’s up with Sam, but before I could she came and asked me if I knew what was up with Sam.

Weird day. (how often do I say that? life’s weird lately what can I say)

Another afternoon working on Paul & Darlene with Sam. We thought the boat was ready to take out, but the engine’s started making this “reeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” sound when you turn it on and rumbles like it wants to shake the nails out the wood. So we’re trying to make it not do that. Limited progress.

Sam seemed like he wanted to work and not talk. I figured this out cuz I asked “you wanna talk?” and he said “no.” So we work. It’s quiet. I like the boat. Maybe I’ll try to sleep out here sometime.

We take a break when the afternoon sun gets too high cuz in Louisiana god didn’t intend you to do stuff from the hours of 2 to 5. I’m over on the dock, sitting with my feet dangling. Sam comes over, sits down, then asks if he can sit.

You’re already sitting, I tell him, and he says yeah but then I thought I might be interrupting your brooding.

--If I was brooding would you leave me alone?

--No, I’d bother you more.

I tell him Fuck You, and he says yeah yeah okay big mean winter soldier. Then he’s quiet so I’m quiet. Looking out at the water thinking. Water’s good for that.

I figure he’s been thinking about DC. It went better than he expected and worse than he hoped. We stayed up late talking about it, there’s not much I can say because hey I’ve never exactly been the war bond selling side of Captain America and nowadays I’m pretty sure I’m barred from voting for life. But I can let Sam tell me stuff. Bit like when he throws the shield and misses the catch. He needs someone to go get it and throw it back to him.

Sam says, “The boys really like you" which wasn't what I was expecting.

Can’t say that didn’t make me feel good, but he said it like it’s a sad thing, like it’s a real sad sad thing. I say, sorry, I guess, and he says no no, it’s not like that, and I ask well what’s it like then? Trying not to be mad but I am. What’s so tragic if two kids like me? Why’s Sam gotta say it like that?

He says, “I think they like you more than they like me.”

I tell him don’t be stupid. He says shut up.

Then he says that the boys don’t remember him before the blip. He was already on the run because of the whole accords fiasco. Couldn’t exactly come home for Christmas. Then he was just gone, just dust. Sarah couldn’t talk about him. He says he gets it: there was too much grief. 50 percent of the world gone, & her husband dead in the mundane way. AJ and Cass learned about their uncle from youtube. Now he is in their living room. He sleeps down the hall. No wonder he doesn’t seem fully real to them.

They love you, I tell Sam. Seems strange I even need to say it.

--Sure yeah sure.

--They talk about you all the time.

Silence from Sam.

--Seriously, they’re always asking about you. Always. Stories or what you’d think about stuff, whatever.

Sam looks at me like I’m lying. I tell him he’s being paranoid.

You calling me paranoid, he says, I’ve hit rock bottom. Then he asks, they ask about me?

He’s staring at the water so I’m staring at the water. I say yeah and they’re shit out of luck because I don’t have that many stories about him.

--I’m offended by that. Bucky, I am offended. All we’ve been through and you’re saying you don’t have stories.

--Fine I have stories, which one you want me telling them? Which work story?

--Tell them how we met.

We both crack up at that. “I’ll tell em it was love at first steering wheel rip,” I say. “Or like you know—hate or you know.” It’s worse that I try to backpedal so I stop before it sounds like I’m denying something (I’m not, I am, who can fucking say, no one better ask). “Mostly I just let them tell me stories about you,” I say.

He says, “they got stories about me?” like it’s impossible

--just embarrassing ones. You in high school looking all gangly and weird, you know, something about a whole saga with this guy Ben, something about nearly flunking band class.

--whatever, 17 year old you probably had polio

--polio is a serious disease, Sam. And no at 17 I was so handsome and dashing you wouldn’t believe it.

--I do not believe it. So they don’t tell any cool stories about me?

--They’re about you, how cool can they be?

And Sam laughs, but then I think o fuck Bucky, come on, and I say, “they’re cool stories because you’re cool. The stories, I mean. Or they’re funny, but it’s a good funny. I like hearing them.” He’s staring at me. I’m still looking at the water like there’s no reason I’d be looking anywhere else. Don’t backpedal, I think, it’s worse when you backpedal, and then I backpedal and say, “It’s cuz the boys are so good at telling them. That’s all.”

“Thanks to the boys then,” Sam says.

There’s this

Maybe

Looking back on it I’m thinking about the sunset on the water and

He was already sitting close but I swear he started sitting closer

I don’t know what to say. Nothing happened. We watched the water together. I told him about their anime and he said it didn’t sound that bad and I said sure because I’m just telling you the fights, you wouldn’t believe how long it took for it to actually happen. Talk to them about the anime, I tell him. Or tell them cooler stories about yourself, if you’ve even got them.

Oh I’ve GOT stories, Sam says.

I think about—stupid whatever but I was tired, I think about putting my head on his shoulder. I don’t do it. Keep thinking about it. Still thinking about it.

Sam says, after a long time, after a lot of thinking quiet between us, “there’s a difference tho. Between being loved by someone and being real to them. I know they love me. But.”

”I know,” I say.

Nothing else to say about that.

When I came in from yard work today, there’s a sandwich melt from Milo’s down the street which is the best news I’ve ever heard. Food is so fucking good these days. It used to be so bad and I never had any of it, and now it’s so good and it’s everywhere, at least for me. Not just restaurants, Brooklyn had restaurants, I barely went into any of them but yknow they were there, lotta food, whatever, the point is I had to buy it all. Basically all I spent money on, and felt like such a waste each time. Good though. I don’t know, thing is Delacroix started this food rotation during the blip. Like people suddenly in households with no one who could cook, or no one over 18, or no one under 90, or you could cook good but didn’t have anyone left to cook for. Anyway, there’s this weekly rotation they’ve still got going on. It’s like a community potluck all the time. Sarah’s constantly cooking for it, I’ve been allowed to help with the nonessential tasks that play to my skills (knives, touching hot stuff with my bare robot hand).

It’s my order, the sandwich I mean, which Milo says he’ll name after me because no one else wants onions & anchovy the way I want them, so I assume the sandwich is for me. Doesn’t occur to me I should make sure until Sam walks in and half the sandwich is already in my mouth.

I musta had some panic on my face because he goes “who the hell else would that nasty melt be for.”

Sam’s palate isn’t as refined as mine.

I go “wow never let it be said you don’t do nothing for me,” which I don’t know, is one of those things I mean sincerely but you can’t say it sincerely.

He goes “it’s an apology sandwich. For like, having uncle jealousy.”

I tell him that’s the grossest phrase I’ve ever heard and to never say it again and also that he’s stupid for being jealous cuz I’m at best an indulgent babysitter, and he tells me to shut up, I can say positive things about Sam without talking down about myself, and I say I’m not talking down about myself, I’m a kickass indulgent babysitter and I AM spoiling the children rotten.

He says thanks for looking after my family when he can’t.

I tell him to not tell Sarah I’m looking after her. And I tell him we should talk about the future and missions and what we’re gonna do about his family when we’re both out in the field, cuz we both will have to be out in the field, I’m qualified for nothing except being out in the field. I’m strong and good at fighting and sorta bulletproof (I mean I can get shot no problem but I have to keep going unfortunately), and I tell Sam if there’s anyone I should be looking after it’s him.

He says how come I can say I’m looking after Sam but not that I’m looking after Sarah.

I tell him in both cases I’d mean it in a condescending way.

He says my breath smells bad.

I realize we’re standing close. I blow in his face just to watch him wince (coward).

Me, Sam, & Sarah played a board game with the Washingtons, the neighbors on the left. It was like charades but you draw pictures instead. Some of the questions were pop culture and I was informed I was a terrible weight dragging down my entire team, but there was also a moment of great triumph when I successfully drew something well enough for Sarah to get “Ghost Busters.” Since I don’t drink, or I do but it doesn’t do anything so it doesn’t count, I got to be designated fully sober adult at the end of the night when we were all headed home. Mostly consisted of telling the boys to get to bed, seriously, they gotta get used to a school schedule again, and giving Sarah and Sam glasses of water that they were too busy talking to drink. They kept trying to tell me about some town gossip, but it’s the kind where they know all the backstories so well they don’t bother to explain, and I’ll be listening not sure why it matters that Mary got together with John or whatever. Got the adults to bed eventually too. Don’t think either of them drank any water. In the morning, I’ll tell them I did my best.

Dream

Not a nightmare while I slept. Fucking nightmare waking up. Don’t even want to write about it, I really shouldn’t good god, but I mean.

One of “those dreams” you know, the kind I haven’t said since it was about 1928 and I was palling around with Mark—geeze Mark, forgot all about him, god I had it bad.

Anyway yeah. That type of dream. Spunk on the nice family quilt like I’m 13 again and GOD in the living room??? Hope “those dreams” are as quiet as my nightmares are. Was gonna rub out (ha) the stain but then thought, hold up, I don’t know how to wash this quilt. Can I spot clean it? Am I supposed to use hot water or cold? Then I think, okay, I’ll put it all into the washer, but that’s even less of an option because there’s no innocent way to run a washing machine at 2 in the morning and also I don’t know how to use the washer. I know, I know, it’s just after I shrank that sweater so bad I’m still gun-shy. And this is a nice quilt. It seems old. Like old as in my age. I don’t know if you have to do something special with it. I can’t just toss it into the machine and hope.

So I’m back to spot cleaning it, except I’m paranoid that I’ll miss some of it somehow, and what if it gets crusty and one of the boys sits on the couch and uses the blanket and says “o what’s this weird crusty patch” and then a Wilson sibling kills me, as would be their right. So I’m trying to figure out how to clean it (for the record I KNOW how to clean up after myself, I was just panicking in the living room) and I’m wondering if I google “how to clean cum stains old quilt” on my phone, will that be automatically sent to the govt who’ll forward it to Sam, or should I just ask someone. I can’t help laughing at that, the thought, tiptoeing into Sam’s room and tapping his shoulder, “Sorry to wake you but I just came like a fire hydrant, I mean like a geyser, I mean I scared myself when I woke up, and unfortunately the quilt your grandmother handmade caught some damage, and I’m not sure if I need water alone or vinegar or what because it has been a WHILE since I’ve had to deal with this. Anyway, you won’t believe who the dream was about.”

Had a fit of laughter you could call hysterical at that, then calmed down. Looked at the quilt again. Really not that much mess. It’s just. I mean god it’s not the first time I’ve come since 40s but it about feels like it. First time it felt good.

In the fucking living room.

A little cold water seems to have done the trick. (Cold water on blanket and me) I think I gotta move out off the couch.

Sam asked why I was being weird. I told him I thought I was always weird and he said “that’s very true” so I think I’ve successfully covered up my tracks. Quilt seems fine. Jesus fucking christ.

Alone in the house. It's the last weekend before the boys are back in school. They’re not looking forward to it. I told them to take advantage of school, I stopped going when I was 14, and they seemed too interested in that. Sarah and Sam are taking them to a water park. Asked if I wanted to come, I told them to go have fun. Seems like it'd be hard to have fun at a water park and also hide an entire metal arm. Also, wanted to give the family time to themselves. I know I gotta move out and give them their space, I just— I’m dragging my feet, that’s all.

Aren’t that many local properties renting right now. I’m thinking of looking off the island. But it’s already such a pain to cross over the bridge whenever you gotta go to a store larger than one room, which I guess I wouldn’t have to if I lived on the mainland, and I guess I wouldn’t necessarily be driving over here all that often anyway. Guess there’s no reason to stick that close by then at all, I mean.

I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Sometimes I think about all the life I’ve lost and I can’t move. Easier (“easier”) in a way to feel guilty about what I’ve done than to think about the other stuff. There’s this sorta I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m saying. Like I'm being indulgent. Soft. Who cares what happened to me? All the things I did. But.

Read about the GI Bill after WW2 and I thought “I could do that” but I didn’t think it like I should have thought it, I thought it like—I was thinking like it was 1945 and when all this was over I could go to college.

Bad night.

Okay. Okay okay okay okay okay. Fine. Okay.

Steve’s gone. Back in the past. Or I guess he came back from being back in the past, it’s all already happened. Puzzling out the language with Sam, he said I should watch Back To The Future (movie). It’s about time travel and it doesn’t make any sense.

--why would that help, I asked

--you’re looking for help? he said

He said if I watch it I have to watch it with him so he can explain why the race and gender stuff didn’t age well. He said I’d know something about not aging well right.

Anyway. Steve. Doc said I don’t like talking about him, that’s not right. Or it is. I like talking about him but I can’t. There’s stuff you can’t say. You can’t tell the truth and you can’t lie either so you just don’t talk. Before he left he said he’d try to find me in the past, bust me out sooner. Winter Soldier’s short career in some other timeline, I don’t know, I don’t get it. It all still happened to me so maybe he forgot. Or there’s some other Bucky, getting his life together in the 1950s, going to college, palling around with Steve on the weekends.

I’m here. And I can’t say this but sometimes I think hey, buddy, I was already here. Was I as fucked up as all that, so you had to go find an earlier copy? Go back further then, stop me from getting made POW at all. Maybe I was mopey after that. Maybe too much work. Got a little tortured and was never as fun again.

I’m being unfair, I know I know, that’s why I don’t say it, he deserves his happy ending & also fuck him & I miss him & he said “you’re going to be fine, Buck” & don’t tell the US govt but I thought about killing him right then, I did, I really did, I thought about it so hard for a second you should have locked me up again. In my nightmares, I’m so mad at him. I’m the Winter Soldier and I’m Bucky and I’m both and I’m watching from across the room and I’m so so so so so fucking mad at him.

I don’t know what happened in those five years, and the years before that and the years before that. Cass is best friends with this girl Nicki. They gonna be best friends in ten years? There’s lotsa people I used to know I don’t anymore. That’s all everyone is eventually. You knew them then you don’t. I didn’t think Steve was gonna be one of those people, but people aren’t made of concrete. I mean, they change. Serum made him big, but responsibility changed him. You make calls, who lives, who dies, your fault half of existence ends, or not your fault which is worse because then you’re helpless. Nothing worse. Nothing worse than things just happening to you. So he ran support groups, did Sam’s old job, tried to help in small ways because that’s always what he did. You gotta do something. You always gotta do something. Do something till you burn yourself up. What the hell am I saying. We got too used to being apart. It was all practice for the biggest break of all.

Before he left, I wanted to ask him “do you still love me?” I didn’t. Yes or no would have both been equally a fuck you. If you have to ask, you’ll never know.

God I just want to be fair to him

It’s his life, it’s his choice, god knows what he

But here’s what I don’t get. He hated his life so he left it entirely and he didn’t care about anyone else (I’m being unfair but fucking whatever it’s my journal). He gets to do that. He gets to go. But he says to me, before he does, he says to me

so mad, my hand is shaking fuck

He says to me I gotta live. In Wakanda, phone call, that night, only time we talked about it, I told him, I mean I begged him to tell me it would be okay if I needed to, and he said Bucky no, you can’t. You gotta live. Life is good. Life can be good. Can’t you believe how good life is? And I’m shaking, alone in my hut, phantom pains in my missing fucking arm like I’ve never had before, and I’m saying no no Steve it’s not good at all, it’s not, what the fuck are you talking about? You can ruin a life, I know you can. You can do damage beyond the point of repair. I try to tell him this, I tell him about the nightmares, the shaking, the anger, the sadness, I don’t know my own body, I don’t know this body, it doesn’t do the right things, it doesn’t look the right way, I want to rip it off and start over, but I’ll settle for just ripping it off. Shouldn’t he understand? I was a scrawny kid from Brooklyn too and they injected me and nothing has felt right since. My body is not my body, it is meat and machinery that’s all. I can’t close my eyes without seeing someone I killed. They tied me to a chair to see how long it’d take for me to starve almost all the way to death, & they did it again to make sure their numbers were correct.

He listens, he listens to me, I’m crying like I haven’t in years, and Steve’s listening and he’s crying too, and he says “I can’t imagine. Bucky, I can’t imagine.”

I tell him that as long as the words are still in my head, I can’t kill myself without an order, but maybe he, my friend, my oldest friend, my brother—

Steve tells me no. He says I deserve a better life than I’ve had so far. And he says he’d miss me too much.

So clearly Steve wouldn’t actually miss me all that fucking much. And the question I can’t stop thinking about is was he wrong or was he lying. Did he think he’d miss me but then I was gone again and it wasn’t that bad? Or I came back and he wasn’t relieved? We all came back and he goes to himself “I thought this would make me happy but I guess not.” Or was it never true. Was he a good man saying what he needed to so he could save the life of this hysterical loser choking on his own snot. I think about it sometimes, I could just hear his voice over the phone, and he tells me he’d miss me too much, and I picture him wincing. Thinking “what have I signed up for?” He stayed with that plane the whole time it dove into the sea, but it wasn’t cuz he cared about the plane.

I don’t want to be unfair to Steve. He is a good man, was a good man, I know that, I know, I know. But he told me I could build a new life just like him. And I guess he did. Built a new life, then left it for a newer older one. I know why I’d make that choice. Don’t know why he would. So I don’t know him as well as I thought. It’s funny, of the two of us, I really thought I was the one who had changed.

When we were young yeah I thought I was the hero and he was the sidekick. Then we switched, or I thought we did. But maybe I kept thinking it was my story. I don’t know. Like I thought he was a good guy who did good things and that was what mattered the most-. I don’t think I bought into the myth of Captain America, but maybe that’s cuz for years and years earlier I’d already been sold on the myth of Steve Rogers. I’m so tired. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I hope he’s happy. I hope he was happy.

“Build a life.” Doc told me that once. “You have to build a life in the 21^st century.” And I thought (didn’t say) you don’t actually. There’re alternatives. “You just have to muddle thru” but you really don’t. You can just stop.

I didn’t beg him to stay. When Steve told me he was going, I didn’t beg him to stay. I gave him the permission I wanted him to give me. Told him to do what makes him happy. I didn’t say “you can’t do this” cuz he could and I didn’t say “please don’t do this” cuz it didn’t occur to me I could. I thought if I asked him to stay, he would & he’d resent me forever. Steve asked me to stay & yeah, I fucking resent him for it. I shoulda said “I’ll miss you too much.” Come be miserable with me. Isn’t that what our friendship was? We suffered together and it wasn’t like suffering at all?

I told him to do what he’s gotta do, so I basically told him to kill himself, and Steve said “don’t mind if I do” and he did. Slower suicide than I would have opted for but to each their own. If Steve had called me crying, begging for a reason to live (cuz I know why I really called him that night, I know, I know) I’d probably have just been mad at him that the answer wasn’t obvious.

I’m tired. God I’m tired. Was talking to Sam about Steve, that’s what started it, could barely get a sentence out. Took me 20 mins to not say anything. Like I was wearing a muzzle. Asked Sam if I could use his room to write, he said of course, so here I am. He made me take a cup of water with me. He said if I got tired, I could sleep in his bed afterwards. I asked what the hell was his obsession with me sleeping in his bed and he said sorry asshole I care about your back.

Shit, it’s later than I thought. I locked him out of his own room for hours.

Just checked the living room. He’s asleep on the couch. I tried waking him but he refused, pulled the quilt over his head, kept on snoring. Shoulda tried harder. I don’t know. How do you find the heart to wake that sleeping baby?

I feel like I’ve been checkmated in the stupidest game of chess.

So I’m in his bed now. Under the covers and everything. It’s too big and I wish Sam was here. Why shouldn’t I say it? You can’t ask for stuff like that but maybe you can write it. When I was there squatting next to him on the couch, trying to wake him up with gentle little shoulder taps and stuff, I got this idea. Embarrassing but I did it. Leaned over and whispered in his ear, “I miss you when you aren’t here.” He snored some more. Maybe next time I’ll tell him, he’ll be awake. Maybe someday he’ll ask me where he should be, if he should be here or there or somewhere else, and this time I’ll say here, here, stay here. I’d miss you too much if you were gone.

You know what’s really crazy? What really confuses me is how Steve could leave behind Sam too. Like that’s the mystery I can’t answer.

I love you, Steve. Fuck you. Goodnight.

Chapter 5: September

Chapter Text

--September

There’s not a you know technically nothing is fucking hmmmmm yeah um hmmm yeah fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Something happened.

Let me back up.

I don’t know, something about a mixing of worlds or roles or whatever

It isn’t

I feel

Here’s what happened

Fuck.

What happened, what matters is that Sam got called away this morning. Torres got a lead on the classified stuff. I offered to come and Sam said I better not on account of other classified stuff. There’re not unreasonable concerns about Sarah and the boys as possible targets—probably not but yeah it makes sense for one of us to hang around here. And he said it should be me, then he told me it should be me, then he asked me to please just do it so yeah, I’m here. It’s fine, it makes sense. It makes sense. He’s there, I’m here, what the fuck else is there to say, nothing, nothing at all holy shit what the fuck.

Sam’s gone, day two. I’m thinking about that a normal amount.

Just write it out, you coward.

Well that was an hour wasted.

Can’t write about the Thing that I don’t know how to write about, so I haven’t been writing at all, and I’m weirdly antsy, I guess that’s what you’d call it. I write too much. But fine, okay, I’ll talk around it. I’m good at deflection.

Still hot. Scorching actually. Second summer, what we used to call Indian summers. Lazy heat. I sweat less than I used to, but I still sweat. Sarah said I could take my arm off and stick it in the fridge if I needed to cool down. That’s crazy, I said, then did it. God, it feels nice. Cass and AJ are annoying the hell outta us lately, it’s like herding cats to get them to school in the morning and like herding cats to get them back home again. AJ wants to quit his soccer team because he says it’s a stupid sport, he wants to stop going to school because it’s a stupid place, everything he has to do at some is a stupid chore, everything is stupid, except for his computer games. The other day he even called Sam stupid, which got him sent to his room to simmer down, but Sam looked a little pleased. “I want them to think of me as their annoying uncle, not Captain America,” he said, and I called him a sentimental sucker.

Cass is having a better time back in school, but he bounces off his brother’s energy for good and bad, so sometimes they’re egging each other on, sometimes they’re mortal enemies. There was plenty of this during the summer, but the kids would go run off and be kids, and they’d usually come back happy. Maybe the problem is it still feels like summer, but everyone’s getting back to work.

I mean they’re good kids, obviously they’re good. AJ’s been explaining this complicated ranking of esports which is like a soccer team but it’s computer games, anyway it’s very dramatic and of course all the rankings have been totally fucked up by people coming back from the blip because there’s a buncha people who used to be top ranked but then technology changed so much over the five years. They skipped to the future while everyone else was practicing whatever game they do, so like this fighting game they’re talking about making two leagues, blip vs no blip players, but no one’s happy with that. Anyway as long as AJ’s talking all that out he’s happy as a clam. And Cass I think is just bored in school. He’s a smart smart kid.

Still, it’s a bit more peaceful when the day’s over and the kids are asleep (or in bed anyway, they’re not as good at faking being asleep as they think they are). Sarah’s feeling good about the family business at the moment, which she says means she doesn’t think it’s gonna go bankrupt within the next week, that’s pretty much what “good” means for small businesses these days, but hey good is good.

Sam hasn't called. He's busy obviously.

It’s not that what happened is bad, it’s just I don’t want to touch it. I know that means I should, I just—

Here’s what I got. Saw this ice sculpture once. On a mission as the WS. This carved swan with the neck and wings stretched out, it looked like it could fly right off the table, but it was made of ice. As much as I wanted anything those days—which was a hell of a fucking lot now I think about it—I wanted to touch the swan. This insane conviction that somehow it’d be feathers and warm and breathing. It’d take off right before my fingers could reach it. But stupid, there were droplets already rolling down, dripping right off, it was a centerpiece in some corporate bigwig’s punch bowl and my mission was done. If I didn’t touch it, it was a living thing, and if I did touch it, I’d make it melt that much faster.

I know it’s not the same thing with Sam, with the thing that happened, but it’s like why the fuck would I touch it. It’s beautiful until I do, it’s living until I confirm it’s not, if I don’t think about it then it could be anything and it is, and I want it to be anything, and normally I don’t want things to be anything, because I want them to be one thing that I understand and can plan for, but this.

Christ, I sound crazy. I’ll just write. No, I won’t. Fuck it, good night.

I tried writing this in Sam’s room but I couldn’t even walk in. So I’m out on porch. Late night. Still hot. Scorching actually. I’m grateful for it, I am. I’m afraid for summer to end.

I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure how to say it. Saying it seems wrong anyway. Or no, not “saying” because I’m not “saying” anything, but writing is even worse. Hate looking at the words I put down. They’re never the right ones. They’re an inch to the left of the right words or they’re different than I really feel or they’re focusing on stuff I didn’t really focus on. But I put em down and they seem true when I read them back, but while I was writing them they seemed wrong.

I don’t wanna write this down wrong. I don’t wanna remember it the wrong way.

Maybe no emotions. No interpretations. Just the facts maam.

Here are the facts.

I wrote about Steve. So I cried a lot. Sam was on the couch. So I slept in Sam’s bed.

In the morning, I wake. Door is opening. Sam says “sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. I was just grabbing my running clothes.”

I said “it’s fine, it’s your room.” And I gesture at me in the bed and say, “You won.”

“My ultimate victory,” he says. “You on a mattress.”

“What’s your obsession” I ask.

He is going through his closet. Not looking at me. He says “Been thinking about it, is all.”

“About what?”

He doesn’t say anything. He keeps going thru his clothes. I won’t interpret here, but it just seems like he shoulda found what he was looking for by this point.

About what, I ask him again.

He shrugs. “You. Here in my bed when I’m away.”

I say to him “I know. I’m sorry.”

He says “what?” Now he looks at me.

“I’m here when you should be. I know. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not what I mean” he says sorta quiet. But he doesn’t say what he means.

Then what?

He says my name. He’s looking at me. I’m looking at him. I’m in his bed, under his sheets. I see him see me. No emotions, no interpretations. I’ll just say he looked at me and I let him look.

It was like—no, just the facts. What was it. I felt my heart beating in my teeth. It was (one simile, fine) like falling but never hitting the ground. That makes it sound bad. I don’t know, I can’t write this, I don’t have the words. There weren’t words. There was just looking, him at me and me at him, and the air between us was different than the air around us.

I said, “you think about me in your bed.”

He says, “you knew that.”

I say, “what do you think about.”

He says, “dangerous question.”

What am I supposed to say? It’s a week later and I’m out on Sarah’s front porch counting the fireflies. It’s a hot night so there’s plenty of them. Better than starlight, if I’m being honest. Starlight’s so far away. When the fireflies first came out, AJ caught one about every night. Cupped it in his hands so gentle. Cracked them open just enough. Peered in until the bug lit up his face. Then he let it go. I didn’t write about that because I didn’t know how. I still don’t. I see his face lit by a firefly and it makes me want to—it makes me want to kill myself, to be honest. It does, but it feels wrong. It doesn’t normally feel wrong to want to kill myself, it feels like it makes sense. But I picture him those early summer nights, him bringing me fireflies, explaining the lifecycle of beetles in that funny precise little way of his, and I think “put a gun in your mouth, Bucky, right now right now, pull the trigger.” But I don’t mean it! I don’t want to do it. Not right then at least, not because of this, but I still can’t stop thinking about it.

I’ve got this stupid fucking theory that I hate. I think for a long time I never felt anything good. For a while I didn’t really feel anything at all. Part of that was H----, part of that was me. Somethings you can’t feel and still survive. I said to myself (if I said anything at all) “I’ll deal with this later” without ever expecting “later” to come. Then it was later. I felt things and they were all terrible. Everything fucking one of them, I don’t know, there must have been some moments that were something besides—I can’t remember them. Dying on a mission had been the WS’s only escape.

Then I escaped, and sometimes I wanted to die so fucking badly I thought my heart would stop just from the wanting it, and sometimes I didn’t want to die at all because it wouldn’t even inconvenience H---- so what was the fucking point. Everything, everything was “is this fatal? Could it be? Should it be?” The only escape from how I was feeling was killing myself, the only escape from how much I wanted to kill myself was the thought I could kill myself later if I decided to—there might have been some programming left that stopped me from doing it, but I could have worked around it if I put my mind to it, I could have died if I’d put in the elbow grease. Instead I worked so goddamn fucking hard to stay alive, and I was so mad the entire time that I did it.

I’m still mad. I’m still mad, I’m mad all the time, I don’t think I’m sad at all, mostly I’m just pissed off and so angry that sometimes I think it’ll kill me.

That morning, I was sitting up in his bed, Sam’s bed, and he sat down next to me. We didn’t say anything. We talk too much sometimes, just noise, sweet noise, I like that noise but sometimes I think we do it (just admit it) so we don’t kiss, and that morning we stopped talking. I put my hand on his shoulder and he let me. I looked at his lips. I looked at his eyes. He shifted or I did. Now my hand is on the back of his neck. And he’s close. He’s right there and I want to kiss him so bad, and I know he wants to kiss me, and I think “why not” so I kiss him. Mouth closed, just a press. I’m thinking “how am I gonna get outta this” before my lips have even touched his, and I’m planning to pull back but I don’t. He doesn’t either. I kiss him, and he kisses back, and I am kissed.

I’m red in the face right now just writing it. Hands shaking like a nightmare, it wasn’t a nightmare. Early morning light. He put his hand on my waist, pulled me flush against him. I pulled back and took him with me, now he’s lying on top of me and we’re kissing, just kissing, like we got all the time in the world and nothing else we’d rather be doing.

We don’t have all the time in the world. There’s other stuff we should be doing. Sam’s phone rings. I remember it sounded so loud like it was hooked up to a speaker or something. Torres, urgent message, he’s got a lead, but Sam needs to move NOW. Sam’s still on top of me while he talks to Torres. One hand holding the phone. One hand gripping my hair.

The entire time we were kissing, I wanted to die so bad that if there’d been a gun in my hand, I woulda done it. I was so happy it felt like I was chewing glass. I said I should come with him. He said I should look after Sarah and the boys. I shouldn’t have argued against that, but I wanted to. He kissed me. He’s gotta go save the world, and my arms are crossed over him, holding him against me.

It makes me wanna die. That’s all I can think. It makes me want to kill myself and I know how I’d do it and I have a plan and a timetable and everything.

My stupid fucking theory is this: good things, bad things, doesn’t fucking matter anymore. I wired myself wrong. I’ve only got one way I feel. Anything strong is bad, and anything bad makes me want to die.

Wanting to die was easier to deal with when I wanted to die.

To Do

Apartment tours

Install (redacted classified) around house, walk Sarah thru use

Credit union w Sarah

Community meals for Thurs, shopping & cooking

Oil change (truck)

Call Torres about (redacted classified) but specifically ask him about time tables

Call Doc

Jesus, remember that talking raccoon with a machine gun? We don’t talk about that enough. The boys didn’t believe me when I told them. I finally found something they don’t believe and it’s the damn truth. Sam can talk to birds but it’s the raccoon that’s impossible. Doesn’t help that Sam denies it up and down. “Oh that Uncle Buck” he says, “always pulling your legs.”

I actually had to call him back and say “hey. For real. Was there a talking raccoon or am I fucking crazy?” and he went “shit yeah there was a talking raccoon with a gun, there was, sorry man, I wasn’t tryna make you think there wasn’t.” I said it was fine, I was just starting to doubt myself because it’s a fucking insane thing that happened, and he apologized again for “gaslighting” me about “the stupidest thing I could gaslight you about.”

Sam’s still out on the job. Nearly done, for better or worse. Didn’t expect him to call until he was back, but he said he had a quiet hour. We didn’t talk about it, the day he left I mean. The boys were on the call too and then, I don’t know. What are you gonna say over the phone?

Wonder what the others are up to. The Avengers, I mean, Steve’s commandos of the 21^st century. Sam was one of them, right up until I came back around. Stark’s dead, Natasha’s dead, Steve’s gone. Is there a team now? Who’s on it? What’s Lang up to? Remember when he grew and was one hundred feet tall and he threw a plane or whatever at that teenager that nearly beat the shit outta me and Sam? Hey. What the fuck. What was all that.

Sam nearly pissed himself laughing when I reminded him of all that. Then I got started because he was laughing so hard, and then he started laughing at how hard I was laughing. You know, I was so sad when all that was happening. What little peace and space I’d found was all gone, and the bombing and the code words and Steve—and then we had to duke it out in an airport. And there’s this guy in a cat suit and a guy with a bow and a girl with MAGIC and Lang, once again, a hundred fucking feet tall, and also there’s a ROBOT, fucking forgot about the FLYING ROBOT, and it was like—I don’t know. This is one of the worst days of my life. This is one of the worst days of T’Challa’s life. Everyone here is having a miserable fucking time fighting people they know. Also here is spider boy. I was suicidally guilty about being the starting point of this whole fucking fight but also here is a teen boy from Queens in a onesie. And he’s so excited to be involved.

Don’t know why that wasn’t funny to me before. It’s the funniest fucking thing in the world.

Nightmares/insomnia: prazosin (minipress)?
No benzodiazepines/risk of dependence/addiction sure okay

SSRI—selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors
SNRI—serotonin-norepinephron (sp?) reuptake inhibitors

Paroxetine (Paxil)
Fluoxetine (Prozac)
Sertraline (Zoloft)
Venlafaxine (Effexor) (SNRI)

no idea effective dose

continue/start talk therapy w meds?
- “medical curiosity” yeah no shit

“limited imagination”
“what for if not for this?”

Talked to Doc this morning. Raynor I mean, the original doc. Still the only one I think about when I think “doc”. Sam suggested a while ago that she might know a local shrink that she could refer. A “highly classified” therapist, the kind that’s only qualified to treat me and some black ops guys and the talking fucking raccoon.

Now that I’ve remembered the fucking raccoon, I can’t stop thinking about the fucking raccoon.

Anyway, I dragged my feet, then called a couple days ago and left a message. She called back today. Asked how I was doing.

I said that I didn’t have to tell her anymore, and she said yeah James this is what we call small talk.

Talked for a while, longer than I was expecting. She said she knew a few names but no one close at all. Could I do tele-therapy? That’s on the phone or a video call. Sure whatever, I said, if I ever get a room to myself. She asked about my “current living conditions” and I said relax, I’m living with Sam and his family and she doesn’t need to say it, I know I need to move out soon.

She asks why.

I asked why what.

Why do you have to move out?

Here’s what I hate about therapy, it’s all someone sitting there and asking you to state the obvious and being like hmmm interesting what an obvious statement. I tell her that there’s a Ben Franklin quote about house guests and fish, the idea of overstaying your welcome isn’t a new concept. Doc wanted to know if Sam and Sarah had said anything like that to me, or more specifically asked if that was something I thought or something that I thought they thought. “I’m not suggesting you stay with them forever without a conversation about it,” she says, “I’m suggesting you have a conversation.”

I told her she wasn’t my therapist anymore.

She paused, said “you’re right. I’m sorry, I overstepped.”

Said it was fine. Awkward pause.

She said she was glad I was “still pursing therapy.”

I said it all still seemed pointless but I also don’t have any better ideas yet and I still feel fucking crazy so what else am I going to do?

--You’ve never said you felt “crazy” to me before, James

--Don’t tell the govt

She sighed. Said “the circumstances of our therapy weren’t ideal.”

Didn’t know what to say to that.

She said “if I was still your therapist, I might say something like the fact that you’re trying is a very, very good sign just by itself. Even if you don’t feel better.”

I do feel better tho. I didn’t say that to her. I do feel better, not good, not consistently, not sleeping all the way thru every night or whatever, but. Versus where I’ve been.

We talked about medication. She’d wanted to try some with me early on, but no one knew how I metabolized drugs and I wasn’t fucking eager to help them find out. She asked if I was interested in trying meds now, with the caveat that no doc was gonna know what the hell they were doing with me. But that’s “more common than doctors like to admit.”

Said I wasn’t interested then, and I’m still not interested now. H---- did plenty with drugs. They didn’t know how I’d handle it either and they were curious to find out. Doc said it was my choice but did I know my options? I said not really so we talked about them. Insomnia/nightmare med sounds—not promising exactly because I don’t think it’ll actually work, but fuck that’d be nice. We talked about “EMDR” therapy again. She said it might be the best option for me if I want non special ops therapists without the highest security clearance. EMDR seems weird but she says I don’t actually need to talk aloud about any of the stuff.

(“trauma” doc says, and I say “trauma is a subcategory of stuff” and she says EDMR might benefit me but my “pathological aversion to talking specifics or at all” is maybe something to look into. But, she adds, I’m not your therapist.)

Doc said she didn’t know if there was a psychiatrist qualified to handle my “unique biology” (love the way she describes me) but if there was, they were probably with shield at some point. “O so the group that’s mostly H----” I say, and she says “I know, it’s a shitty situation.” Never heard her cuss before. She says she has some names of good people, or ones that were never implicated as being part of H---- and who she personally trusts, but she could see if there were any civilian docs. She’d been looking into that before our therapy ended.

“I’d prefer you pair medication with therapy, but it’ll be up to your psychiatrist if they insist. I can’t tell you what to do. I will strongly encourage however being highly skeptical of a doc who’ll give you meds without some therapy stipulation in my case.”

I ask why, and she says “it’s not best practice for PTSD for anyone, let alone for someone who we don’t even know if we can medicate.” She says I’m “a medical curiosity” and I should “protect myself” from docs who are too interested in that. I said yeah no shit why the fuck do you think I didn’t want to take meds. She said she assumed so. Said meds might still help. I should “take advantage of all resources.”

I said why, because I’m so fucking crazy? Angry all of a sudden, don’t know why.

She calls me James and says “trauma is not quantifiable nor is it competitive. Having said that, you have a good chance of having experienced more of it than almost anyone else while still having your entire long life left to live.”

I say something. I don’t know, something like how a lotta people have it bad, like the people I killed for one.

And she calls me James again. And says when people minimize their trauma, I’m the case they’re comparing themselves to. (I’m just writing what she said.) “I saw combat but I wasn’t a POW.” “I was in firefights but at least I don’t know for sure I killed someone.” “I was tortured but I wasn’t that tortured.” “I got blipped but I only missed five years.” She says those people are wrong and I’m wrong too. It’s horrible for everyone. No one’s suffering has even been less because someone else suffered too.

So you’re saying we’re all fucked, I say.

And she says, listen dipshit (“dipshit” is implied). I’m saying that I mean this is a secular modern cynic kind of way, but it is a fortunately common miracle that people survive their trauma and go on to live good lives. A miracle of hard work and the right circumstances and frankly dumb luck to have the community you need, the brain chemistry you need, the resources you need. All those protective factors we talked about in therapy.

She says, you being here today, alive and talking to me about the phone, asking about therapy and medication, not because you believe it in but because you are still trying to build a meaningful life, despite everything—ask yourself if in 1946 you thought this was possible. Ask yourself in 2008. Ask yourself the day you were arrested for missing therapy if you thought that you would be making this phone call of your own free will because you knew that there was hope for a better life, even if you didn’t know what that was.

She says, you have already proved that your capacity to build a meaningful life is more expansive than your ability to imagine one. Remember that when you think this is the best it’ll ever get. You have no idea how good it’ll get.

She says, choosing to live is a leap of faith that has already been rewarded.

Finally here is something I can respond to, and I say “life could always get worse.”

Sure and it will, she says. Up and down and up and down. But the problems you have right now—did they seem possible a decade ago? You’ll have new struggles with old problems, that’s what life is, but they will be new. You endured hell, Bucky. What for if not for this?

Sam takes sertraline, Sarah takes Paxil and used to take Prozac but it didn’t work for her. Steve never took anything, even during the blip when apparently everyone was taking everything. I’ll probably metabolize whatever they put in me so fast that I might as well not take anything at all. I don’t know.

There was that book of myths Monty was wild about during the war. He’d say some Oxford Cambridge shit like “it’s only a compilation text but rather good for the layperson” but it was still the only book he kept on him. Greek, Roman, and Norse. God I’d die to see Monty meet Thor. Monty’d go about correcting him on his own mythology. He loved myths. Told us all about them when we were captured together. Introduced himself as James Montgomery Falsworth like we were at high tea, and ten minutes later realized that a buncha hostages were literally a captive audience for his interests. Remember him and Dum Dum tearing into each other because Monty was trying to tell us about Perseus and Dum Dum kept asking what the hell kinda hero needs that many gifts from that many gods to kill one lady? Monty shouting “he’s a hero! he’s the hero of Athens!” or something like that, while meanwhile I was facedown on the floor in another cage fresh back from the lab. Whatever they injected me with that first time felt like acid, felt like fire, like I knew where every single vein in my body was because they were all so precisely burning. I said Perseus did sound like a chump and Monty said I was also an uncivilized brute of an American.

Felt like I was making a point when I started this, but now I'm just thinking about Monty. Me and him used to fool around during the war. Nothing too serious. Steve asked me what my intentions were with him and I said we play it by ear. He said he was happy for us. It wasn’t really anything, just habit, familiarity, like having a sparring partner, but it was a fun thing to do with almost nothing was fun. I haven’t thought about him in so long. He’s dead now, of old age which should hurt less but.

Perseus, anyway. I was thinking about him and the mirror shield he’s got. (Always with the fucking shields.) Athena gives it to him, I think. It’s what it says it is, a shield that’s a mirror, and he uses it to look at the gorgons without turning to stone. That’s the secret. You can’t look directly at the stuff, you’ve gotta look at a reflection of it and walk backwards until you can hit it with your sword. Ask the gods for all the gift you can get, and hope you kill the monster before it kills you.

Monty’s book of myths is still in print, google tells me. I should

Sam’s home.

I told him sometimes friends just kiss and he said “uh huh” and I asked what he meant by that and he said “nothing” and I said “no say it” and he said “you’re an idiot” and I said “shut up” and he kissed me, cradled my head like my skull was eggshell. Insanely gentle. I told him he doesn’t have to be so gentle and this time he told me to shut up and I kissed him like he was made of paper. I don’t know why we’re so gentle with each other. He was so banged up from the mission, he was more bruise than not, but still this isn’t how I pictured it. If he’d just grab me I’d know what to do. Instead. His eyelashes against my cheek. If I touch him with more than my fingertips, I’ll die. I want to die, I don’t want to die, I want to kiss him again and harder and deeper and softer and for all night and in the morning too. I want to fuck him and have him fuck me so that we can clean each other up afterwards. Have him call me filthy names because I know he doesn’t mean it. I don’t ever want to be tied up again but if he told me to hold my arms above my head, I’d keep them there no matter what, unless I decided I’d rather be touching him, I wish I was touching him now.

I’m on the couch. Sam said I could sleep in his bed with him. I told him I really couldn’t.

Been a few days since I wrote. Not sure when I started doing it so much. Only noticed after I stopped for a bit. It’s always hard to get the words down, sometimes I’ll spend three days writing about what happened in an hour. Lately tho it’s like I can’t at all. I’m bored of writing about how I want to kill myself and I don’t know how to write about the rest of it.

Here’s something that happened today—Torres came down in his civies, just for a visit. Did some work (classified) then watched some movies (Fast & Furious). Nice kid. Young. Seems younger than he is and he’s pretty fucking young. Big eyes. Less a falcon, more a newborn deer. But smart. Sam likes him. I mean how good a judge of character can Sam actually be, but hey it’s gotta count for something.

Torres asked me about Steve. I told him some. The early stuff mostly. Us in Brooklyn before the war. Listening to baseball games on the radio while he drew. I forgot how much he liked drawing. Crazy right? To forget something like that. Or not forget, I guess. Just to not think about. He taught me how to draw. We had this idea he could maybe teach art or something. If he’d been a little older or a little healthier, I don’t know, maybe he coulda joined the WPA and painted one of them murals everyone was wild about. They’re still around. I hadn’t thought about that, another thing I’d just not thought about, but yeah with everyone building and painting stuff during the 30s and 40s, some of it’s gotta stick around. Went driving with Sam on Tuesday and he showed me one. A mural, I mean, from 1939. On a hotel wall nearish New Orleans. Recently restored, the person at the front desk told us. They cleaned off all the smoke & grime of a century, and “fell in love with it all over again.” That’s what she said.

And I remember Sam looking at me looking at the mural, and me thinking “o shit am I crying? Why?” No, I’m lying, I didn’t wonder why. 1939 all the way up the east coast, me and Steve are in our tenement shootin the shit while this is getting painted down south. Life was hard but life could still be anything. And then it was what it was. And this mural is still here, and it is what it is. There’s a time when this was just a wall. And then it was a mural and then it got dirty so some people cleaned it up. It didn’t have to keep being a mural. People decided it should be. How can I say this? A buncha people decided this wall should be a mural so an artist made it a mural and every day other people decided that it should keep being a mural, that they shouldn’t paint over it or something, that they should clean it when it gets dirty, and here it still is, still a mural, but it doesn’t have to be a mural. It could still be anything. It could just be a wall again.

I don’t know what I’m saying. This all made sense when I was there, thinking, looking at it, crying in this fucking hotel lobby. Sam’s fingertips against the back of my hand. The fake one I mean. The restored one.

I’m not talking about this, I’m talking about Torres. No I’m not. I’m picking up the boys at the bus stop. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m running late. I don’t want to write about this. I’d rather write about torture. I’d honestly rather write about torture. We got a room at the hotel. We didn’t do that much. Basically nothing. I don’t want to talk about this. We kissed mostly. Took turns holding and being held. I cried some more. He kissed me. I made some joke about crying and he kissed me. I called him a sap and he kissed me. He kissed me. We went to sleep in separate beds, I told him I wasn’t ready for whatever, and then an hour later, I woke him up and said scoot over and he scooted and called me a sap and I said shut up and I held him and I didn’t sleep at all because I was too busy holding him.

Torres is staying for dinner. I’m gonna go help Sarah cook.

Sarah’s birthday party. She said it was just gonna be a small neighborhood thing, which of course meant there’s like 50 people coming in and out, music playing, someone grilling. Princess from Sweet Treats made a cake special and it’s a fucking masterpiece. Princess enlisted me to carry it in without Sarah seeing. Her bakery’s recovering, she says, she’s pulling it back together, she was the only member of her immediate family that got blipped and they all got old and forgot how to bake without her. We chatted for a long time while we were getting the tables and plates and everything set up. Princess asked how I was settling into the place. I said I don’t know. She said she hoped I stuck around because I was like the only new person who’d moved here in twenty years and she was tired of flirting with the same people at each cookout.

Surprised how many of the people there that I knew. Still don’t know any of them well. Sarah calls me a hermit. But all the faces sure, and more names than I expected, and most of them knew mine. I’d gone round with Sarah on her community feeds, I’d been in more houses and kitchens around Delacroix than I’d bothered to count up.

Stick around, head out. We feel better about the Wilson family security but not great. There’s a place for me here. Place for me at Sam’s side too. I kinda miss running around with Captain America. I already miss Delacroix. Easier to choose what you hate the least rather than choose what you want the most.

Danced with Sarah. Danced with Sam. Danced with Missus Johnson who is the oldest woman I’ve ever seen. A contemporary of mine. Sarah liked the nintendo box I got her. I had to ask like 6 times “are you sure this is the right one” and she was laughing like “yeah you dummy, yes, it’s good, you’re the cool uncle” and I said no no it was for her, it’s her birthday, I remember she said she liked nintendo, and she was like “okay sorry you’re the brother’s cool boyfriend.” She said if I was off the couch we could have an easier time playing games all together. Then she said “shit are you and Sam there yet” and I said “I don’t know” and Sam came in and asked “are we where yet?” and she told him not to eavesdrop. This evening we set the box up and played mario racing carts and I lost to everyone every time.

Night time now. AJ and Cass are passed out in their beds. Sarah’s showering. Sam came and asked me when I was coming to bed. I said in a few minutes, let me finish writing this down. And I have and I’m done and I’m going to bed.

Got a call from one of Doc’s contacts today. They have an office in New Orleans which they know is a bit of a commute but would I be interested in coming in? I said sure, I’ve wanted to see more of the city. I never made it there as either the WS or original flavor Bucky. Too far to commute multiple times a week (god I don’t want to do therapy 3 fucking times a week anymore) but maybe every 2 weeks, if I like this person. They said doc told em my case was an interesting one. I asked if that’s a good thing, and the new doc was like probably not to be honest, you rarely want to be described as an interesting case by any medical professional. I have to do fuckin therapy intake again. Med consult in two weeks, one of Sam’s avenger contacts. I don’t know. Maybe. Might keep the appointment, might not. Could talk to them at least. I don’t want to talk to anyone at all but yknow, fuck it. Something to try.

Sam came to me this morning and said “we’re going to dinner tonight.” I said fine alright might as well, I do like food. He told me to dress up nice, and I showed him all the clothes I had, and he said “you know they give you money so that you can spend the money” and I said “what’s that mean” and he said “you dress like you’re still on the run from the law” and I said “you said you liked my jackets” and he said “I can like the jackets and also think you look shifty as hell in them. Also stop ripping the sleeves off.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Sam,” I said back. We watched 2001 yesterday, it’s supposedly a classic and it’s definitely boring as hell, but compelling anyway. Sam told me as long as I watched the part that goes dun dun DUN DUNDUN dun dun dun dun then I’ll get basically all the references to 2001 that I need to.

Anyway, he leant me a jacket.

I dined with a general and his staff once in a French chateau. I was Steve’s tag along. I came along for moral support and officer food. I remember the silverware all being made of gold, but looking back I’m not sure if that’s true or something I just told the guys to fuck with them. Dum Dum told me I shoulda stolen a spoon as proof, and I told him I’d do that next time I dine with the brass as Captain America’s trusted right-hand man.

Told this to Captain America, he said, “this will be less fancy than that.” An air force buddy opened up a joint, she told Sam to come on by, she owed him a meal. For what, Sam won’t tell me which means it’s a good embarrassing story. “Candlelight, live music, the whole deal,” he said.

“Wining and dining me?” I asked.

He winked like an asshole.

He’s getting dressed now. I’m just killing time before he comes out. It’s funny, I’m thinking about Doris, that show girl I was going around with so I could slip out with her brother Curt. Good girl, that Doris. Sweeter than her sour brother that’s for damn sure. I remember being there at stage door after the shows with the other fellas waiting for their girls, or waiting for any girl, or waiting for someone anyway, everyone clutching flowers and fixing their hair. Fiddling with their cuffs. Checking their breath. I kept tugging my sleeves down, I remember now, they were too short because I’d been wearing em so long, but somehow I figured they’d look alright if I kept pulling them down every minute. These sleeves are too short. Sam helped me fold them up, said it was fashion. I got my glove on over my metal hand. Sam said I could take it off at the restaurant, he got a booth where no one’d notice.

Jacket smells like Sam’s cologne. I wanna tug the sleeves down so bad. I shoulda got flowers. Come on, Sam. Wish he had a staircase to come down like in the movies. Want to be waiting there at the bottom for him, looking up.

Nightmare. Memory. Prague, late 90s I think. Mission went wrong. Order was for no witnesses. So. No witnesses. Last night one of the boys’ video games used the phrase “throat cutters” so casually I had to leave the room. Did the dishes for a while. No witnesses.

Sam’s fingers on my back. Said I was sorry for waking him. He said he’d already been up. His own nightmare. Riley? I asked, and he said no, Thanos actually. Being snapped. Falling apart like ash. Except in his dreams he doesn’t wake up a minute later. He’s ash for 5 years and watches the world the whole time. Sister aging, boys growing up, friends breaking down. Sees it all and knows he won’t remember it when he gets unsnapped. He’ll just know he missed it and he won’t know what he missed. Said he dreamed about Natasha too. How she died. Also dreamed about Afghanistan. It’s one of those nightmares that’s about everything.

We talked until he fell back asleep. I couldn’t so I’m writing. He’s here on my right, breathing against me. I’m not sleepy. Still can’t get back to sleep after nightmares most of the time. I do my own breathing. Write stuff. It’s not always bad being awake in the middle of the night. I wish I wasn’t, but it’s not always bad.

Sight: Sunset. Blue waters turning orange. Wilsons on the dock. My feet pale in the water. Paul & Darlene in the water, seaworthy.

Sound: Sam announcing repeatedly that Paul & Darlene is seaworthy, Sarah saying “uh huh yeah I’m sure I’m sure” as she keeps pointing at the things still broken. She asks if he’s Navy now and Sam squawks. Yells at me to not laugh at him squawking. AJ & Cass & a couple of their friends laughing at something, not the adults, something on their phone.

Smell: fresh paint. Fry grease. Sweat.

Touch: dock, wood, hard under my ass. Shoulder aches, the arm’s tougher than I am, I keep forgetting that. Pen. Paper.

Taste: Mouth coated in sugar. Sam says it’s tea. He picked up lunch at “Popeyes” and their drinks come in buckets.

Doc once said: Grounding techniques aren’t just for moments of crisis. They can be valuable when you’re feeling good as well. Happiness can be overwhelming.

And I didn’t flat out tell her “that’s not gonna be a problem” but she probably got that I thought that because she talked about the importance of “hope” and “future planning”. I was right for a while there & felt smug about that. Want to get better, didn’t want to get better, didn’t want to think about what better means—it’s different every day. Every hour sometimes. I want to steal this boat & sail off into the sea so no one can ever look at me again but I won’t cuz

because Sarah’s right about the seaworthiness, engine’s doing that rrrrRRRR thing again.
because I want to but I don’t

I’m scared, I’m not scared, I’m mad, I’m not mad, I’m sad, I’m not sad, back and forth. I think I’m always scared & mad & sad except sometimes I don’t realize it. It’s not the same as being happy. Sun’s warm tho. Ground yourself. Plant your feet. My feet are dangling in the water. Cold against my toes. Sam said my bare feet look like the underside of two beached fish. Told me if I wasn’t careful the peepers’ll come nibble my toes off. I’ve tried to entice some small fish (I don’t know what to call them, like sorta minnows I guess) by wiggling my toes but no bites just yet.

Last page of this journal. Wish I still had the journals I kept in Romania. I wanna read over them, see what I sounded like. See what I recognize, what’s a stranger.

No cmon cmon say something worth saying. You made it to the end, that’s something. Made it through the summer. Air’s almost chilled now (not really). I dunno, I can’t think of anything. There was a while there when I was keeping this, I thought it might be just a long long suicide note. Something to explain what I was gonna eventually do. Maybe it is still that. Maybe someone’s reading this a month after I wrote it or a year or a decade or a century, however long I manage to make it before yknow. The last victim of the Winter Soldier.

No that’s not what I want to say. Shit I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry if you loved me and I killed myself. I hope I didn’t. Right now, writing that, I mean it. I wanna keep going. I wanna see what comes next. Can you imagine? If you loved me and you’re reading this—or if you are me, trying to see what you recognize—

I’m trying to picture that. Picture being around long enough for the me who wrote this to become someone else. Unrecognizable to myself again. I’m trying to picture a better life. Doc’s right, I’m pretty bad at it, but I’ve been trying anyway.

Anyway. Whoever you are. Whatever’s happened between me writing and you reading (god I’ve rambled onto the back cover) I am happy right now, right now I am happy. I am happy like I still can’t believe I can be. Despite everything, because of everything, god it’s beautiful right now, god I’m happy to be alive. Out of pages, but not an ending, barely even a pause cuz I’ve already got the next notebook. Maybe I’ll bury this one in the insulation with the money.

Sam’s calling me over. I’m gonna stop writing now.

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Xenerik on Chapter 1 Tue 15 Jun 2021 11:51AM UTC

Oh this is excellent, great innovative medium and the character voice is On 👏 Point 👏

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writerkenna on Chapter 1 Wed 16 Jun 2021 02:33AM UTC

Gorgeous style. Sounds like Bucky’s voice and syntax. The emotions here are very real and complicated. Absolutely wonderful

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smileytiger28 on Chapter 1 Thu 17 Jun 2021 05:25AM UTC

HOLY FUCK this is good. are you planning on writing more? if so, yes please. if not, WOW anyway. I just started writing in a diary and i love how you captured how chaotic one man's thoughts can be (especially bucky's). amazing.
edit: oh wait there are more chapters lol i should read those

Last Edited Thu 17 Jun 2021 05:26AM UTC

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MinaSanDomo on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Jun 2021 01:19AM UTC

Author are you good? Because there is no way you can write Bucky so accurately without being just as sad as Bucky or being Bucky himself ....unless🤨 no but seriously amazing job this was so on point it has to be cannon

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Allstarz on Chapter 1 Thu 08 Jul 2021 05:55PM UTC

I love how this is written, it feels exactly like I'm seeing Bucky’s thought process.

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sufferpuppet on Chapter 1 Fri 09 Jul 2021 06:42AM UTC

Oh my god, this is so good so far! Your Bucky voice in this is great, and I love the way you set the story up, it really sounds like a journal! The paragraph that starts "Thought: If I am honest in therapy they’re going to lock me away again..." was so good that I yelled out loud and started pacing around. I think he's right to be paranoid about being rubberstamped and used again like that. I'm really excited to read the rest of this!

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BellsandMe on Chapter 1 Tue 20 Jul 2021 10:34PM UTC

Chapter 1 and I already know this is going to hurt so good.

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peabeanmilk on Chapter 1 Tue 28 Mar 2023 06:16PM UTC

this is fucking phenomenal

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rosebud (Guest) on Chapter 1 Wed 29 Mar 2023 12:56AM UTC

"how did I pack this notebook but forget socks" so so so good

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Acorn_Squash on Chapter 1 Tue 19 Dec 2023 09:24PM UTC

the last line here killed me

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inscarletsilence on Chapter 1 Thu 31 Oct 2024 11:03AM UTC

i haven’t read an mcu fic in so long, but this one was so good i’m glad i did.

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Acorn_Squash on Chapter 1 Wed 06 Nov 2024 05:00AM UTC

I absolutely love the style you wrote this in. It's angry and intimate and poetic in the best way.
I burst out laughing at the last line. It's such a very Bucky way to say "I moved in with Sam," and it's also extremely relatable, and such a relief after what seems to be a Pretty Bad Time for Bucky and... yeah.

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Redstrawberryglasses on Chapter 1 Tue 21 Oct 2025 08:31PM UTC

I'm reading this for the third time because i can't stop thinking about it. This is like my favorite bucky fic yet. Your writing and understanding of the characters is perfect thank you for sharing your work

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runsinthefamily on Chapter 2 Tue 15 Jun 2021 02:07PM UTC

Holy shit this is so good. I love his shitty resentful slapdash compliance with his court-ordered therapist, like ofc that wasn't going to go anywhere real but she still managed to give him some tools. That actually sort of work. And the way everything changes when he moves into Sarah's house, like hey! human contact! of the supportive, connected, accountable kind! actually makes a difference!
And seeing the black community culture as familiar and comforting bc he grew up poor and (Irish? Jewish?) in Depression era Brooklyn, like yes. Yes! Buck you you need people!

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Chelokay on Chapter 2 Wed 16 Jun 2021 01:19AM UTC

This is brilliant. This is everything that was in the eyes and the silences and the body language, translated into words so good they evoke all of that and more; so the emotions become visible in a different way than the film, visceral. You. Are. Brilliant. Thank you for creating this.

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Lies_Unfurl on Chapter 2 Wed 16 Jun 2021 03:35AM UTC

Oh, I'm enjoying this a lot. Stream-of-consciousness writing is tricky to get right, and you've done a great job. I love how much you imply with these short entries -- it's clear that there are much larger stories with each piece that Bucky writes, and even though we don't get those full stories, what we do get is still really satisfying. I also really love that cat videos get their own special place on Bucky's list of good things.

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Pameluke on Chapter 2 Wed 16 Jun 2021 07:09AM UTC

Ooh boy, I love this a lot so far! I really like how it throws so may different things together from lists to message drafts to actual thoughts. I like that he didn’t like Raynor, but still kind of accidentally uses the notebook for what it was intended.
I’m really exited to see how this continues!

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chinateagarden on Chapter 2 Wed 30 Jun 2021 01:19AM UTC

“so i’ve been seeing vaping as a sub for cigs, thoughs?” “no buck, s’all the same. shut up.”

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rosebud (Guest) on Chapter 2 Wed 29 Mar 2023 01:01AM UTC

This stream-of-consciousness writing style is on point.
I absolutely hate the smell of cigarettes and will never ever smoke but the whole "sitting outside in the quiet with a lit flame" part does sound appealing.

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Acorn_Squash on Chapter 2 Tue 19 Dec 2023 09:27PM UTC

I like Bucky helping Sam practice with the shield! Nice to see some more Sam here

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Grounded

Margo_Kim

Summary:

Notes:

Chapter 1: February, March, April, May

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: June

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: July

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Chapter 4: August

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Chapter 5: September

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Xenerik on Chapter 1 Tue 15 Jun 2021 11:51AM UTC

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writerkenna on Chapter 1 Wed 16 Jun 2021 02:33AM UTC

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smileytiger28 on Chapter 1 Thu 17 Jun 2021 05:25AM UTC

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MinaSanDomo on Chapter 1 Fri 18 Jun 2021 01:19AM UTC

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Allstarz on Chapter 1 Thu 08 Jul 2021 05:55PM UTC

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sufferpuppet on Chapter 1 Fri 09 Jul 2021 06:42AM UTC

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BellsandMe on Chapter 1 Tue 20 Jul 2021 10:34PM UTC

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peabeanmilk on Chapter 1 Tue 28 Mar 2023 06:16PM UTC

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rosebud (Guest) on Chapter 1 Wed 29 Mar 2023 12:56AM UTC

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Acorn_Squash on Chapter 1 Tue 19 Dec 2023 09:24PM UTC

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inscarletsilence on Chapter 1 Thu 31 Oct 2024 11:03AM UTC

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Acorn_Squash on Chapter 1 Wed 06 Nov 2024 05:00AM UTC

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Redstrawberryglasses on Chapter 1 Tue 21 Oct 2025 08:31PM UTC

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runsinthefamily on Chapter 2 Tue 15 Jun 2021 02:07PM UTC

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Chelokay on Chapter 2 Wed 16 Jun 2021 01:19AM UTC

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Lies_Unfurl on Chapter 2 Wed 16 Jun 2021 03:35AM UTC

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Pameluke on Chapter 2 Wed 16 Jun 2021 07:09AM UTC

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chinateagarden on Chapter 2 Wed 30 Jun 2021 01:19AM UTC

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