Chapter Text
Bucky made sure to hold Jez close as they walked together out of the mall. After her panic attack, he made sure to look everywhere. Something had spooked her, and even if it wasn’t Hydra it could be something else. Many people desired super soldiers of their own.
Jez gripped his shirt tightly again, leaning into him as they walked together. Bucky glanced down at her, smiling. His cap was completely shading her face again, except for the little tip of her nose. It was adorable, even if she wasn’t nine anymore but eighty-three. Her body was a teenager’s, however. That counted.
Bucky knew the directions to the garden, but while going he realised that today was a Monday. These gardens, which weren’t very popular, opened much later in the day on Mondays for some reason. Bucky guided the two of them towards the wall of a building so they wouldn’t be a block in the foot traffic.
“I completely forgot, Jez, but the garden’s closed today. I’m sorry.”
Jez looked up at him, the cap falling on top of her face because it was too big for her. She pushed it back up and gave a tiny little shrug. Was she really just doing whatever he said? Now that he noticed, she was.
“We can go on Tuesday, it’ll be open much earlier then,” continued Bucky. He usually went to the gardens on Monday after therapy, when they—
“Shit,” he whispered.
A little kid beside him said, “Mommy, that man said a bad word!” Jez, meanwhile, looked up at Bucky and cocked her head. Like she was asking, what is it?
“Kiddo, I’m so sorry, I have therapy today, I have to go. I’ll take you back to the compound, you can stay with Bruce and Sam until I’m done.”
Jez tilted her head down, and gave a small nod. She seemed… disappointed. “I’m really sorry, Jez. You wanted to spend more time with me.”
She shook her head, then her eyes widened and she nodded quickly. Was she scared of voicing her opinion? “You can say whatever you want. I’m not going to get mad at you. If you want to stay with me you can come.”
Jez looked up at him, her grey eyes looking like clouds right before a storm. She nodded, carefully again.
“Good,” Bucky replied. “You can follow me, then. We have to be there in about twenty minutes”—he had really lost track of time—“so we can just walk there.”
Jez nodded, grabbing his shirt again. That seemed to be symbolic with “let’s go.”
They walked again, for about ten minutes until Jez whimpered. Bucky looked down, about to ask what was going on when she let go of her grip and hurried back in the crowd. Has she seen another person?
No, it was just that she dropped Bucky’s cap. She kneeled down to get it, people muttering things as they were forced to move around. She stuck it back over her head and tilted it down. Goofy. “Let me fix it,” he said, tightening the strap behind it so it wouldn’t fall off again.
They continued walking together to the building, Jez now holding on with one hand to Bucky’s shirt and one on top of her hat. Bucky and Jez arrived early, five minutes to spare.
“Up the stairs,” he said, putting his hand on her back as they went up the stairs. Her foot, the metal one, made clicking sounds every time she put it down. Her metal fingers were gloved, cushioned, even if they only slightly dug into Bucky’s side.
It was because of him that she had to have all of the prosthetics. And he was too horrified to imagine the punishments she would have gone through back at Hydra. She hadn’t been active after it for months.
They reached the top, and once again Jez adjusted her hat again to completely shade her face. Bucky knocked at the door and Raynor opened it.
Jez made a sound—like a growl, but softer. She moved behind Bucky and adjusted herself so Raynor wouldn’t see her. Raynor looked at Bucky, cocking her eyebrow.
“What’d you tell her?”
“Nothing,” grunted Bucky.
Jez tilted her head to the side, behind Bucky. Bucky glanced back at her and saw how her nose was wrinkled and scrunched up. “What is it?” he asked her softly.
She bit her lip, taking the mini whiteboard and marker and writing down, я думала, она тебе не нравится? Зачем ты тогда к ней пошёл? [I thought you didn’t like her? Then why did you go to her?]
“I don’t like her, kiddo, but I still need to go,” explained Bucky. “She’s here to help me. Like she wants to help you.”
Jez shook her head insistently. Raynor looked at the two of them, then gestured for Bucky to get in. He looked over his shoulder as he did so, and saw that Jez was following after him quickly. “I’ll get some fidgets for her while we talk,” Raynor said, going to a little box in the corner. Bucky had always wondered what was in it, he had just assumed it was notebooks for the other patients.
She picked out a few—a ball you were meant to squeeze, another of the same type with a sort of fishnet over it, a cube with little things on the sides and a circle thing with little bubbles you could pop in. Raynor set them in front of Jez, and she cocked her head as she looked at them.
“Let her get distracted by that, while we talk,” Raynor said. Jez had already picked out the ball with the fishnet and was squeezing it curiously, watching as it attempted to spill out of the mesh. “I will still have to continue through this as normal, it doesn’t matter if she’s here or not.”
“Mhm. Understood.”
“Good. Now, have you had any nightmares?” asked Raynor, already knowing which response to expect.
“No.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“No.”
“James, what was your nightmare about?”
It was about her. That was what it was about, that was what all of his nightmares were about now. Not killing Howard, not falling from the train, not being wiped or his experiences with Zemo but it was about Jez. How she was scared. How she was trapped and kept on screaming and begging and crying. The nightmares were never about him anymore, all of it was filled with broken, shattered images of Jez.
He glanced at Jez as she continued to squeeze the stress ball. Her head was cocked to the side, and she was leaned in a bit as she looked at how the colour would change when it got pressed on. Letting her guard down she was so much more… authentic than when she had been scared. Bucky knew that the moment she noticed him looking at her she would snap back into her old stiff self. Bucky would prefer it to stay like this, always. She was so small, so innocent right now. Even if she was older than most people and the definition of not innocent in what she had experienced. In what Jez projected, with her age and fears and everything else that came with the bundle, she was the embodiment of innocence.
Innocence was such a loose term. Anyone could be classified as innocent in one way or another. Bucky was ‘innocent’, not guilty of his crimes but that was still him, he still did it even if he wasn’t the Winter Soldier anymore. Jez was innocent. Of what she had done and her mannerisms and her naïveness. She was innocent.
“It was about her, then?” guessed Raynor.
Bucky was quick to reply. “No.”
“What was it about and what had happened? Was she hurt in your nightmare? Was she the one hurting you, perha—”
“Stop it,” Bucky hissed. Jez stopped playing with the fidget and snapped her head up to look at both Raynor and Bucky. Just as he had predicted, Jez’s back was now straight, and she held herself like a girl who had manners drilled into her from a young age. That’s probably what had happened, with the Red Room.
The Red Room was what Bucky didn’t know a thing about. Sure, he had been forced to be a trainer of the girls there. He hadn’t been the one going through the pain, he had been the one inflicting it. How many girls there hated him for it? He remembered nothing about his short time there except for Natasha and glimpses of Dreykov. Natasha had been his best student. Bucky knew for sure he had never taught Jez. He would’ve remembered.
Enough about the Red Room and Hydra, focus. Raynor was talking. “You do know we need to talk about this and her, James. It’s important.”
“Not here, not now, not ever,” Bucky managed through gritted teeth.
Jez stood up, letting the ball fall to the ground with a splat. She sidestepped towards Bucky, crossing her legs one over the other. Jez was staring hard at Raynor, like she had just gotten forceful with her and not with Bucky.
“Jez? Jez, stand down.”
She glanced at Bucky then back at Jez, legs open and in a fighting stance. Her left hand was curled into a fist, the glove’s fabric stretching over her knuckles.
“Jez, stop it. Get back,” Bucky said again, more forcefully. She glanced back at him, eyes wide again. And surprisingly, she stepped back and stood rigidly to the right of Bucky.
“End session,” stated Raynor. Thank you, Bucky sighed in his mind. “I want us to have a little tête-à-tête together,” Raynor said to Bucky.
He nodded. It seemed like every time Jez was here they would have a private conversation. About her. And she knew, he could tell from the way she was looking at him right now. Bucky reached down and gave her the little cube with things on the side, pressing it into her hand as she looked at him surprised. “See what you can do with that,” he suggested.
Raynor nodded, then walked out into the waiting room. Bucky followed after her, and once they went outside the room and closed the door Bucky leaned against the wall and asked, “What?”
“What were you two doing together this early in the morning?”
“We went to eat tacos, donuts, and ice cream and then went shopping a bit. You saw the bags I was carrying.”
“Yes, I did,” replied Raynor. “Why did you go this early?”
“She… had a nightmare,” Bucky admitted. “I don’t know what it was about, but she was scared out of her mind. I let her take a shower and gave her clothes that Sam had gotten, and we went out together. I don’t think either of us wanted her to go back to bed.”
“How bad was the nightmare?”
“Bad. Like one of mine. She got scared when I tried to wake her up, I think she thought I was someone else.”
“Did anything happen in the city?”
A lot happened in the city. She had run away from Bucky and gotten scared and was cautious and was concerned for the girl getting her ears pierced. Not everything had gone great at the mall, but Raynor didn’t need to know. And while Bucky was a bad liar about himself, he knew how to lie to protect Jez. Because if Raynor determined it was too bad she might take Jez away from Bucky. “Everything went fine. She liked it.”
“Good,” Raynor said.
The door creaked open, and they both turned to look at it as Jez stepped out slowly. In her hands was the stress ball without the mesh, popped open and spilling out white foam-looking things. She held it in her hands apologetically.
“It’s fine,” smiled Raynor. She cupped her hands out and Jez dumped it all there. “Did any of it get on the couch or floor?”
Jez shook her head, glancing down at her fingers—she had taken off the glove—and trying to get the foam thing from inside the ball off the cracks in the metal. “Are we dismissed?” Bucky asked. “I’ll take her to the bathroom.”
Raynor nodded and gestured for them to go. Bucky went back inside and grabbed the shopping bags, then directed Jez downstairs. She hadn’t put the glove back on but was covering the metal fingers with her other hand.
They went into the men’s bathroom, and washed the white thing out of the cracks in the metal. After they finished, Jez wiped the water off with her pants then got out the whiteboard and marker.
Sorry.
Bucky gave a little smile, a real one for her because Jez was the only person he would smile for right now with Steve gone. “It’s okay, kiddo, it wasn’t your fault. Raynor didn’t get mad at you, see? You’re like me, a bit stronger than normal.”
Jez nodded and put the small whiteboard and marker back in her pockets, and slipped the glove over her left hand again. Bucky let her grip his belt loop on his pants this time, proud that she was slowly grabbing less and less of his clothes.
Bucky and Jez both walked out building, and when he suggested that they walk back to the compound Jez nodded in agreement. It wasn’t long until they reached the smaller road, Jez carrying one of the bags with her.
Jez raised her head to look up, at the sky. Bucky did so too a split second later, already hearing Sam swooping down with his Falcon-wings extended out and thrusters set on low. He landed a few feet before them, face shiny with sweat.
“We thought you were kidnapped!” Sam yelled, rushing towards them.
“Why would we be kidnapped?”
“I’ll explain later,” said Sam, looking at Jez. “Where were you, you scared me and Bruce!”
“She had a nightmare, so we went out together,” explained Bucky.
“Oh, like teenage girls?” Sam asked. Whatever the situation seemed to be he managed to still inject a bit of humor. “Doesn’t matter, we have to lie low.”
“Can you tell me what happened?” asked Bucky again. Something seemed wrong, Sam was so agitated.
“Yeah, I can,” replied Sam. He glanced at Jez.
“What happened?” Bucky asked again, his voice a whisper. Jez had already stepped back. She seemed to know the drill.
“Hydra,” Sam whispered back. “They attacked the compound, we took them out but couldn’t find you two. We thought you had been- we thought you were taken again.
Bucky’s blood ran cold. Hydra. They were everywhere. He had sworn to keep Jez safe but he couldn’t, of course he couldn’t because wherever you went there were there too. It was wrong, it was unfair and Hydra should never have existed, but they did and he couldn’t do anything about it.
They couldn’t stay in the compound anymore, it was compromised. Jez wasn’t safe anymore, neither was Bucky.
“I have a safehouse you can go to,” said Sam, already knowing what Bucky was thinking about. “It’s a secluded cabin in the woods, won’t be too much trouble to stay in. I can get you there but I can't stay with you.
Bucky nodded. “Take us, then.”