Archive of Our Own

Steve asked me to.

The phrase, short and simple, has become a sort of mantra for me, each word a rosary bead. Steve is never without his, these days, rubbing it between his fingers over and over, so much so I’m surprised it hasn’t crumbled to dust. He’s said so many Ave Marias I’m surprised the words don’t make him sick.

Steve asked me to, and that’s why I’m striding through the halls of a max security government prison, shivering as the heavy metal doors close behind me.

The man himself is waiting deep in the heart of the concrete building, clutching his aforementioned rosary to his lips, whispering prayers as though they could infuse into the polished stone. He smiles when he sees me, and I give the approximation of one back. It feels more like a grimace.

“Thank you again,” he whispers as he pulls me into a bone crushing hug.

“Of course,” I answer automatically, already regretting it, “Anything for you.”

It’s true. 

Steve’s decision to let a poor grad student interview him has completely changed my life. Apparently getting an exclusive interview with an Avenger was quite an impressive feat, so my email was soon filled to bursting with job offers and requests for articles. I’ve interviewed dozens of people since then, but Steve’s still the only one I keep in touch with. I’m happy to say he’s one of my best friends, and he even stood as my best man at my wedding.

The triskelion incident happened only a month after I got back from my honeymoon. I haven’t seen a whole lot of him since then.

“How are you holding up?” I ask pointlessly.

“I’m okay.”

We pull apart and I politely don’t call him out for blatantly lying.

“How is he?” I ask instead, “Are you sure he’s up for this?”

Steve gives a shaky smile.

“Yeah, he’s doing good today. I’m…” he rubs the back of his neck, bashful “I’m sorry about canceling so many times.”

Giving a shrug, I choose not to tell him I’ve been glued to my phone all morning, praying for him to cancel today too. 

Steve asked me to, I say again in my head, and try not to look at the rosary still clutched in his hand. 

Steve clears his throat awkwardly. 

“Um, like I said, it’s a good day today, but the guards will be right outside the door if you need anything. The security cameras stream the footage live, and, obviously, he’s heavily monitored. He wouldn’t have the chance to hurt you even if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t, of course.”

Seeing as the Winter Soldier has been indicted for 3 counts of treason, 24 counts of first degree murder, and 12 counts of second degree murder, I’m not exactly comforted by Steve’s promise. I feel a little bit like I’m going to throw up. 

“I know it’s… I know I’m already asking a lot, but could I get one more favor?”

I sigh.

“Steve, I know we’re friends, but I’m not going to leave out anything he says, I’m-”

“What? No, nothing like that.”

I’m immediately embarrassed that I expected the worst from him. He is, after all, Steve Rogers. 

“It’s just… He always used to chain smoke when he did those Howlie interviews for the papers. I’ve pulled a hell of a lot of strings, but if you’re not comfortable with him having a lighter I understand, I just thought it would make him a little calmer.”

This is, no doubt, a terrible idea. However, I find my head nodding without my permission. It’s worth it to see Steve’s face light up. He doesn’t smile much anymore.

Armed only with a recorder, a cheap bic lighter, and a frankly monstrous carton of Marlboros, I walk in to meet the Winter Soldier. 

When Steve had given his impassioned speech about James Buchanan Barnes being a decades long prisoner of war, I thought, along with everyone else watching the press conference, that he had completely and totally lost his mind. Then, files started being uploaded to the internet, separate from the HYDRA leak, and sure enough, there was Bucky Barnes staring straight into the camera, looking lifeless behind the eyes. 

Even after that, after all the files and videos had been uploaded, I still had a lot of skepticism. Videos can be manipulated, and Steve can be convinced to do just about anything when Bucky Barnes is involved. Who’s to say that a convincing lookalike and some CGI skills couldn’t be behind the resurrection of this great American hero? 

As soon as I walk in the room, I know it’s simply not the case. 

Though haggard, long-haired, and sporting a metal left arm, the man in front of me is clearly none other than James Buchanan Barnes. It’s jarring to see him like this, unexpected. There’s not a single pre-war photo of Barnes looking anything less than his best, so I’m used to seeing him spiffed up, hair carefully styled with pomade. 

He’s in a prison uniform now, light gray to match the walls, and his hair is hanging freely, so long that it comes down to his shoulders. He’s clearly underfed, cheeks sunken slightly in, but despite that he’s massive, not quite as tall as Steve but still built like a tank. His face is blank, but his eyes are bright as they track me across the room. I take a seat in the chair on the other side of the bars, and lean forward to offer the carton, the lighter carefully balanced on top. 

He doesn’t move to take them.

“Steve got them for you,” I say, and those seem to be the magic words. 

He accepts the carton much gentler than I thought he would, a faint ghost of a smile haunting his mouth as he sits in his chair. When he starts to talk his voice seems to fill up the whole room.

“God she’s sweet. Sugar sweet. Cotton fuckin candy sweet. Best gal in Brooklyn, in all of fuckin New York, and she hangs her hat on me. I’m seventh fuckin circle, kiddo, goddamn fuckin Tantalus, but Stevie? She feeds me grapes.”

He opens the carton.

 “Give me a minute, would ya? I wanna savor the first one. First fuckin cigarette in goddamn near a hundred years.”

He lights the first cigarette and closes his eyes without waiting for my answer, which is good, because I’m so gobsmacked I don’t think I can form any words. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t references to Dante’s Inferno and Greek mythology wrapped up in language that would make a sailor blush.      

  His voice is deep, a little raspy, and his heavy Brooklyn accent is a surprise. Whenever he spoke in the uploaded HYDRA videos he sounded generically American, or ever so faintly Russian. Of course, in most of those videos, all he ever does is scream.

While he smokes I take the opportunity to look around. The room that we’re in is divided neatly down the middle by a wall of thick metal bars, much thicker than the average prison cell. On my side of the room is nothing but the chair I’m sitting in and a row of security cameras on the wall. On his side he has nothing but a bed, a toilet, and the chair that he’s sitting in, but his walls are covered with sketches. Some of the drawings are of places, the inside of an apartment or the streets of New York, but most of them are portraits. I recognize a fair few of the faces, the Howling Commandos and Peggy Carter, Steve both pre and post-serum, and even a few of Barnes himself, but half of the faces I can’t place, though a good many share the bridge of Barnes’ nose or the shape of his jaw. 

I’ve seen enough of Steve’s art to know that every single one was drawn by him.  

Finally, when the cigarette is smoked down to the filter, Barnes opens his eyes. He puts the cigarette out on his metal arm and then tosses it to the floor. He takes another out of the carton and lights it. I can’t help but be reminded of my interview with Steve. 

“How long have you smoked?” I ask, nearly jumping out of my chair when he laughs. 

It’s loud and harsh, almost a bark. I get the impression that he’s forcing himself, as though he’s forgotten how to do it naturally. 

“You’re a one track record, aren’t ya kiddo?”

I feel my eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“You read my interview with Steve?”

He takes another drag and nods.

“A few days after I pulled him out of the water. It’s one of the first things that come up when ya google his name.”

“So you did pull him out of the river after the helicarrier went down.”

He nods, looking a little green around the gills.  

“But I was also the one who put him there. Damn near killed him. She’s too fuckin good to me, you know. All Steve wants to talk about is how I pulled her out, not how I put her there to begin with.”

I stay silent, feeling a little whiplashed. Steve’s told me before how Barnes would use both male and female pronouns for him, but in this new century, everyone only calls Steve ‘he.’ Barnes, who doesn’t notice or care about my discomfort, keeps talking. 

“I went to the Smithsonian after I made sure Steve had been taken to a hospital. I had seen the ads for the exhibit around the city. Walked all through that fuckin museum and it didn’t mean a damn thing to me. Your article though? That was Stevie. That was my girl. It helped me remember-”

He shakes his head and taps his forehead with his metal hand.

“-Helped me start to remember. I’m still not all there. I’ve got swiss fuckin cheese for a brain.”

He jerks his head twice to the left, his face contorting. He stops a moment, and then does it three more times. The movement is so violent and sudden it hurts my neck just watching it. 

He puts out his cigarette on his metal arm and lights another.

“Not as bad as it used to be,” he tells me quietly, avoiding my eyes, “They’ve got me on pills for the tics. I’m on so many fuckin pills you could cut me open and a start a pharmacy.”

He huffs, lip pulled up into an almost smile.

“Guess I know what Steve felt like.” 

“You were Steve’s caretaker, right? Before the war.”

Barnes barks another of those horrible laughs, but when he meets my gaze again he’s got rage glinting in his eyes.

“ Caretaker-” 

He tics again and then spits onto the floor near my feet.

“ Caretaker, caretaker, caretaker, I’m his husband! He’s my wife! I’m not the goddamn Mother Teresa, I’m a man in love! Fuck you, or better yet go fuck yourself, kadokhes . Do you charge your wife a nurse’s wage when she gets sick? Do you make her buy her own medicine ? Do you not know love ? Would you not bleed yourself dry if she needed the blood? I wasn’t her caretaker, she wasn’t my patient. A caretaker- As though it wasn’t a privilege, as though I was just some hired hand. In sickness or in health. In sickness or in health and if it were sickness all her life I would take that. I would take whatever I could from her and be glad.” 

  He’s breathing heavily by the end of his outburst, and I’m mortified to find that I’m shaking like a leaf. He tics a few more times and then narrows his eyes, sweeping his gaze across my face. 

Suddenly he deflates, giving a sigh and leaning back in his chair. The hard lines of anger melt away into something like shame.

“Oh, don’t listen to a thing I say, kiddo. I shouldn’t have gotten nasty. Ya touched a nerve ya didn’t know I had. Not your fault.” 

“One hell of a nerve,” I say more confidently than I feel.

He laughs again, and this time it’s a little more natural, a little less of a bark. 

“And you’re one hell of a broad, ain’t you sweetheart? Most take to the fuckin’ hills when I start yellin’, and here you are still. I’ve been tasered for less.”

“Do they taze you here?” I ask, so surprised I forget to be frightened.

He shakes his head quickly and waves his hand.

“Don’t put that in, don’t tell Steve that. I don’t want to talk about that stuff, she worries about me too much as it is.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Yeah, it’s almost like he’s in love with you or something.”

That gets me a small smile, more genuine than his last one, and Barnes ducks his head like a smitten schoolgirl. 

“We take care of each other,” he says with a shrug, “It’s what we’ve always done.”

He puts out his cigarette and then taps his forehead.

“Even with the… the surgeries and the electrocutions and the… machine, even with all that I couldn’t kill him. I got… I got close, too close, but, barux Hashem, I could not kill him. Even fucked up as I was, as I am, I just knew. Like I said, we take care of each other.”

“Must be hard to take care of Steve,” I sympathize, “He’s stubborn as a mule.”

He widens his eyes and gestures emphatically.

“Absolutely, he’s a little shit. Steve’s got so much fuckin chutzpah I’d have an easier time wrangling wild horses. Goddamn miracle my hair ain’t gray.”

The more he talks about Steve the more he moves his hands around, big and expressive like any good New York Italian. Steve’s faded Brooklyn accent comes back to me and all of a sudden I’m sitting in that vinyl booth at the deli down the street from my apartment: “ He used to talk real big with his hands, you know.”

“What’s got ya grinnin’, sweetheart?” Barnes asks me as he lights another cigarette.

“Just thinking about Steve. Do you remember when you yelled at him in Italy?”

He scoffs.

“Gonna hafta be way more specific than that, kiddo.”

“When you found out he was putting his rations in your bag.”

I expect Barnes to smile fondly like Steve did when he told the story, but instead he tics violently three or four times. When he gets himself back under control he takes a long, slow drag from the cigarette held in his shaking hand. 

“I had- had- had- had been experimented on in Azzano. They… they injected me with somethin’, I don’t know what. Felt like fire, like fire in my veins. It must have been… somethin’ like what they gave Steve, otherwise I wouldn’t have survived when I… died. I was always hungry after that. I don’t think I’ve ever… I’ve never stopped being hungry. But Steve’s the same. He’s the exact same. He was feeding me but he wasn’t eating. I’m his husband, I’m supposed to take care of him, and I didn’t even know he was starvin’. What kind of man am I, if I didn’t even know my gal was starvin’?”

He takes another drag and looks past my shoulder, as though he can see the hills of Italy behind me.

“Are you still hungry?” I ask, and I can’t help but notice his sunken cheeks, how quick to attack he is when Steve had always described him as slow to anger. I can’t help but think of Steve, ordering enough food for four grown men, and I can’t help but think of my wife, working on her masters in food science, telling me over chinese takeout that starvation can lead to brain damage. I wonder how many calories James Barnes is getting in his prison cell. 

He takes a long drag of his cigarette and breathes out harshly. 

“I’m not talkin’ about my time here,” he snaps, “and I’m not fuckin’ talkin’ about the goddamn Winter Soldier. I’m not talkin’ about it.”

He ticks violently seven times.

“Do ya know what it’s like-”

He breaks himself off with another of those horrible barking laughs.

“Do ya know what it’s like to eat human flesh? I- I -I - I do. They used to tear off my skin. Used to cut off my skin to see how fast it would grow back. And then one day… One day they made me eat it.”

He looks at me, right in the eyes, but it’s hard to see a man there. The terror in his gaze is almost inhuman. He puts out the cigarette on his metal arm harshly, as though he’s trying to stab himself.  

“My wife doesn’t need to know that. My wife never needs to know that. They don’t feed me my own skin here. That’s enough, that’s enough.”

He tics some more, his hair flying as he jerks his head, and I swallow down the vomit that’s climbed up my throat. 

As a journalist, I should be disappointed that he won’t talk more about his time with HYDRA, but as a human? I can’t be more relieved. 

To be honest, I haven’t watched most of the uploaded videos on the Winter Soldier. That probably makes me bad at my job, but I simply don’t have the stomach for it. 

“Tell me about your wife,” I plead instead, wanting nothing more than to forget what he’s just told me, “Tell me about Steve. When did you decide to get married?”

That gets another small smile from him, but his gaze is still distant. 

“Musta been grade school,” he answers. 

I feel a little shocked, as I was expecting Steve’s answer, when Barnes dropped out of high school.

“Yeah, grade school. Steve was… spittin’ mad about somethin’, can’t fuckin’ remember what- no, I do. Rosie Conners wanted me to be her husband. We were in… second grade? She ran up to me and kissed me right on the mouth. Put her hand in mine and said I was gonna be her husband one day. And Stevie-”

He breaks off to whistle.

“Stevie was so goddamn mad I thought steam was gonna come out of his ears. I looked at him, saw how mad he was, and pushed Rosie away as hard as I could. Didn’t even know what he was mad about but I’ve never… I can’t stand it when my baby’s not smilin’. Rosie fell down and skinned her leg; the teacher took the paddle to me for that.”

I try not to jolt at the mention of corporal punishment; it wasn’t banned in New York public schools until 1985, but there’s no point spending precious time letting Barnes know about the update. 

“Why was Steve mad?” I ask instead. 

“I asked when we got back to his apartment. I remember I was layin’ on my stomach ‘cause my ass hurt so damn bad. We were looking at a Superman comic I had filched from another kid; Steve thought they were aces, loved the art, though… I had to describe the colors.”

He looks at me finally, back in the present. 

“Why did-did-did-did I have to describe the colors?”

“Steve was colorblind,” I answer, nonplussed. It feels wildly absurd to tell this to Bucky Barnes of all people. “He could only see in black and white until he got the serum.”

Barnes nods absentmindedly.

“Congenital cone monochromacy,” he murmurs, eyes far away again, “He needed glasses too, but I couldn’t ever afford them. He coulda held a job if he had glasses, but with his pills and rent and fuck sometimes you just wanna have a beer. I made a little money, but I was hardly a butter and egg man, I-”

He breaks off suddenly and waves a hand dismissively.

“Ya don’t wanna hear me kvetch. What was I talking about?”

“Superman comics.”

He stares at me blankly, so I continue.

“After you pushed Rosie Conners?”

He snaps and points a finger at me.

“And I was layin’ on my stomach ‘cause Mrs. Richards beat the fuckin’ shit outta me. I asked Stevie why he was mad at Rosie, and he..” 

He trails off, a soft smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“He told me that if anyone was gonna be my wife, it’d be him. Let me tell you, I could’ve died right there and been happy. Couldn’t take the idea outta my mind for even a second after. When Sarah passed-” he crosses himself, a strange action for a Jewish man. I can’t help but be reminded of Steve, how he crosses himself every time he mentions his mother. How he had says the traditional Jewish blessing when he talks about Barnes’ sister dying.

 “-I couldn’t stop thinkin’ about it. We hadn’t talked about it since we were kids, we knew that we were… wrong, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. My wife. She was all alone, wouldn’t even think about takin’ charity, and she was my wife. There was no question. No question. I started lookin’ for work before they even put Steve’s ma in the ground. I asked my father for a loan, just enough for first month’s rent, and as soon as I got a job I pulled outta school. Made sure everything was right before I showed up on the doorstep, but I was still so scared I could hardly knock on her door.”

 “You were scared?”

“Terrified,” he answers with a laugh, “Steve’s always been… like you said, stubborn as a mule. And I was…” he breaks off, lights another cigarette, “Steve could’ve been… I’m the deviant . I’ve never… Steve could’ve married, had a family, but I’ve never… It’s only men. Really, it’s only Steve. Anyway, I was terrified he’d turn me away. I was terrified I’d- ...What if it was only me, that kept thinking? What if I had read it all fuckin’ wrong? And he was mad. I thought he’d fuckin knock my teeth out when I said I’d dropped out of school. But I… I kissed him. I thought, maybe I’ll be sent back home, maybe he’ll never want to see me again, but… I just wanted to kiss him.”

He says the last sentence quietly, head down as though ashamed. It must be hard, to talk about your love after it was illegal for so long.

“And Steve kissed me back and I was a goddamn gonner. Absolutely dizzy for her. ‘Till death do us part and everythin’ that came with it. Break the damn glass and say mazel tov, I was all in. Still am. Always will be. To the end of the fuckin line.” 

“Was it strange to be married so young? Was that young for the time?”

He nods as he smokes.

“People married in their twenties, mostly. I don’t know how long people wait to be married now. But I had a guideline, my father was a good man. It was hard, really hard, to do what he did; coming over from Italy with fuckin’ nothin’ and startin’ a business. And gentiles didn’t like Jews, everythin’ was harder for us.”

He pauses for a moment, seeming to turn something over in his mind.

“Us. ...It’s been a long time since I said that. We had communities, and that helped, but New York? America? They didn’t like us. Didn’t much care for Irish, either, though Steve had it better than me.”

He gives a shit-eating grin.

“He has an accent, you know. Sure, he speaks English just fine, but when you get him drunk? My baby’s got the prettiest voice in the world, just flows all smooth together. I learned Irish just to know what she was sayin’. Is breá liom tú, is breá liom tú m'fhear céile. Prettiest thing in the world when it comes from her lips. Don’t need to know a goddamn word of English when she’s talking to me like that.”

“Do you know Italian as well?”

He scoffs and looks at me like I’m insane.

“Conosco l'italiano? Non farmi ridere. My mother was not full-”

He cuts himself off and huffs.

“That’s not fair to her. My mother was a good woman, a Jewish woman. Her father was a gentile, is what I mean to say. She would speak Yiddish with my father but Italian to me and my sisters; she didn’t grow up speakin’ the holy tongue. My father grew up Orthodox, so it was natural for him. He wasn’t as strict with us as his parents were with him, but he had rules. We didn’t speak anythin’ but Yiddish in the house when he was there. That’s how Steve learned, it was sink or swim.”  

“How did they feel about you moving in with Steve?”

He blinks, and takes a long moment to think about it. After jerking his head to the left a few times, he shrugs. 

“I can’t remember. Probably relieved. My sister had just been born, Emma, and she didn’t have her own bedroom, she slept with them. Me leavin’ meant more space in the house and less money to spend. Becca was old enough to help out at the store, and I likely woulda moved out after high school anyway, so I doubt it woulda been a big deal.”  

“What would you have done after high school? Go to college?”

He gives another one of those barking laughs.

“With what fuckin money? Thems dreams, sweetheart. No use dreamin’ when you’re poor. No, all I wanted was to be Steve’s man, nothin’ else in my cards. Get work, put food on the table, and make my girl smile, that’s all that matters. The rest is just an afterthought.”

“Would you mind talking a little more about that? About your relationship, I mean, and what it was like back then. Did you know a lot about homosexuals?”

He shrugs. 

“When I was little it didn’t fuckin’ matta, Steve was Steve and I was in love with him. When we grew up it was sorta…”

He frowns and waves his hands.

“We were too close, I guess, too touchy. We never gave girls the time of day, always looking at each other. That stuff’s fine and dandy when you’re seven, but when you’re twelve? Fifteen? Seventeen? People started pullin’ me aside, teachers, other kids, whoever, and told me if I didn’t stop hangin’ round Steve people might think I was unnatural. It rocked my fuckin’ world. In telling me I didn’t want to seem like one of those men, they told me there were other men like me. Sure, it wasn’t fuckin ideal, nobody wants to be a freak, but if there were other men like me then maybe Steve was one of them. That was all that mattered. Nothin’s unnatural about lovin’ Steve.”

“How did Steve’s gender play into all this? Did you have any frame of reference for that?”

He thinks for a long while, putting out his cigarette and lighting another one. 

“It made it easier... and it made it harder. It made it easier cause I was the man. I know how to be a man, I know how to treat a dame. Only, Steve’s not really a dame-”

He cuts himself off and twists his mouth, like he’s eaten something sour.

“That’s not right, she’s a dame, one hell of a gal, but she wasn’t born that way. And sometimes she’s a man. And even if she weren’t a man she wouldn’t be just any woman. You know her, goddamn spitfire. So, we knew how to act from the greens, but we’re belles, so it didn’t fit right.”

“Belles? Greens?”

He shrugs.

“Us and them. Queer and straight.”  

“When did you get into the club scene?”

He furrows his brow and tics a few more times. 

“I can’t remember.”

The admission is quiet, and he turns his face away as though ashamed. 

“Tell me something you do, then,” I prompt, uncomfortable in the face of his embarrassment.

He looks back at me, confused.

“Anythin’?”

I shrug.

“It’s your interview, talk about whatever you like.”

He pauses a moment, looking a bit like he’s amping himself up for something. 

“I remember… I remember we never let anyone take a picture of us. We didn’t even… Steve wouldn’t even draw himself in a dress because someone could find it. There’s no fuckin’ way we’d let anyone take our picture in a club. Where the fuck’d ya get that picture?”

I blink, surprised. It takes a second for me to realize he’s talking about the picture in my article for the Advocate.  

“It was taken by an art school student. He had a series called ‘Forbidden Places’. It was really interesting actually, strip clubs and mob haunts and gambling dens, all sorts of things. He rigged up a camera to sit underneath his suit jacket, the lens replaced one of the buttons. When he died his son sold his collection to NYU’s art department; I dug it out of an old box.”

Barnes’s face screws up into a snarl.

“Goddamn dirty rotten son of a bitch.”

I flinch back a little at the vehemence in his tone. It’s clear that he’s furious. Even though he’s on the other side of thick metal bars, even though he’s my friend’s husband, it is very, very clear that Bucky Barnes is dangerous. The muscles in his flesh arm flex, and while his metal arm is still, it’s menacing; a weapon grafted right onto his body. 

“Did you know the artist?” I ask, trying my best to swallow down the fear in the back of my throat. 

“Who fuckin knows,” Barnes spits, “but you wanna know what woulda happened if that picture got out? We coulda been fuckin’ lynched. My wife coulda gotten lynched. All because some fuckin shmendrik decides we’re nothin’ but a goddamn art project. Do you have any fuckin idea what they did to us back then? We got killed, we got jailed, we got beat, and we got shot in the street like goddamn dogs. So forgive me if I don’t find his fuckin art project compellin’. He put every single person in that picture in danger.’ 

He jams his cigarette against his metal arm and throws the butt to the floor, chest heaving. It’s clear that he’s furious about the picture, even though it was taken over fifty years ago. 

I’m quiet for a while, struck silent by my indecision. A part of me wants to defend myself, and defend the artist. That photo was a look into a world that mainstream America did its best not to think about. Without that photo the club it was taken in would never have been documented, my article would never have happened, and Steve never would have trusted a poor grad student to share his story.

Suddenly, I feel embarrassed that I’ve never asked Steve about it. Does he hate that photo too? Does he also feel violated?

“I’m sorry,” I say, for the lack of any higher cognitive thought, “When I used it I thought everyone was dead.”

I half expect Barnes to start yelling again, or crack some sardonic joke about supersoldiers, but he smiles, soft and a little bit surprised, as though he also wasn’t expecting the reaction.

“Don’t ya know kiddo? We don’t ever die. The last day on earth will have a man holdin’ hands with another man. We’ve been here a long time, and we won’t ever go away.”

The words strike me hard, like the crack of a whip, and I feel tears start to pool in the corners of my eyes. I blink them away the best I can, and Barnes goes about lighting another cigarette. 

“How does it feel to know that it’s legal in America? That homosexuality isn’t classified as an illness anymore?”

He shrugs.

“It’s good. I’m glad we don’t have to hide as much, but… well… for me and Steve it doesn’t make much difference. Not much you can do from a prison cell.”

“Can we talk about that? Your decision to turn yourself in shocked a lot of people.”

He brings the hand not holding the cigarette up to pinch the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a moment before dropping the hand back down.

“It was the only thing I could do. Steve would’ve-”

He ticks a few times, violently.

“Steve would’ve been on the lamb with me forever, but… my gal don't deserve to live like that. He’s got friends, you know, and money, not that he needs it for medicine anymore, but still. I’m a terrorist, a murderer. They’ve got me on trial for treason. If Steve got caught harborin’ the most wanted man in America, in the world even, they’d get him right between the eyes. That or lock him up the rest of his fuckin’ life. I can’t let that happen.”

“That’s very brave of you.”

He snorts.

“It’s selfish, that’s what it is. If I did the right thing I’d put a goddamn bullet in my brain; make sure Steve wouldn’t be… stained with me. She deserves better.”

“You might have a second chance still. The trial isn’t until two weeks from now. You could be found innocent.”

“Sweetheart, I did a lot of bad things-”

“You were also a prisoner of war. You were tortured.”

He flinches and rounds his shoulders forward, protecting vital organs. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I was.”

Silence follows the proclamation, and I can’t bring myself to break it. There’s something fully and viscerally horrifying about the quiet, casual way that he confirms the decades of abuse. I can’t stop looking at the gauntness in his cheeks, the metal of his arm, the long, greasy hair. He looks dangerous, sure, is dangerous, but more than anything he looks like a zoo animal. He looks like a caged predator, malnourished and hopeless. 

    It’s a while before I can bring myself to speak. 

“What would you like to happen? Do you think you’re going to be found innocent?”

He laughs again, another one of those horrid barks, but his gaze stays far away, as though he’s looking right through me. 

“What I want to happen and what I think will happen are two entirely different things.”

I wait a few moments for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t.

“What do you think will happen, then?”

“Easy. I’ll be put to death. I hear they do it with a needle now, so it won’t be so bad. I’ve had enough of electric chairs.”

I shudder at the casual way he describes his own death, and at the reminder of the torture and memory distortion that he’s suffered. It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s much more upset at the idea something will happen to Steve. He seems resigned to his own fate.

“What would you like to happen? What’s the best case scenario?”

He snorts.

“Kiddo, best case scenario woulda been me skippin’ on my draft. I lost best case scenario the second I joined the fuckin’ army.”

“Best case scenario for the trial then,” I correct, “and for what happens after.”

He takes a moment to think, bringing the cigarette up to smoke absentmindedly. 

“I think… I think best case scenario is bein’ found not guilty, I know it won’t happen, and I know the people I hurt and their families deserve the peace of mind, not me, but…. Steve keeps tellin’ me it’s not my fault, that I was brainwashed, but Steve’s my wife so she doesn’t really think straight when it comes to me.”

“You’d like external validation.”

He nods.

“Then I’d take my wife and go. We never wanted… we never wanted any of this. We just wanted to be good people, and live a good life. I liked being a mechanic- I could maybe do that again- and Steve could go to art school, get her a fancy degree and some pieces in a gallery. Best case scenario is that the whole world forgets about us, and we can go back to bein’ just a couple of schmucks from Brooklyn.”

It’s a tragic admission. James Barnes is undeniably one of the most famous servicemen this country has ever seen, perhaps only second to Captain America himself. He’s inspired countless documentaries, biographies, and even comic books, but he’s also inspired people to join the military themselves. He was a propaganda favorite for posters and ad campaigns, a paragon of loyalty and unwavering faith, and now he wishes he’d never joined the army at all. 

“Were you scared when you got drafted?”

“Terrified,” he answers, quickly enough that he almost cuts me off, “There was Steve, of course, he needed takin’ care of, but I’d also heard about all the things that Hitler was doin’. I’m a Jew; what if they sent me to Germany and I ended up in one of those camps?

 On the other hand, everyone saw what America was doing to the Japs, roundin’ them up- maybe not as bad as the Nazis, but still- and what if something like that happened to me? To my family? We’re from Italy, and sure, we didn’t support Mussolini; but plenty of Japanese didn’t support Hideki and were still being put in camps. I was hated for being Jewish, being Italian, being a queer, being an American, being the son of an immigrant, the list goes on and on. There was no certainty. No fuckin’ certainty at all.” 

“That sounds scary,” I reply, unsure what else I could say, “How did you deal with it? Did you ever consider skipping the draft?”

He shakes his head, stubbing out his filter-low cigarette on his metal arm and lighting another. He’s about a quarter of the way through the carton already.

“I’d like to say no, but I can’t remember. I think… I think I wanted to fight, but I’m not sure.”

He shakes his head again and taps his forehead.

“Sorry. Lights are on but no one’s home.” 

He says the words with a small smile, but the conviction in his voice makes it clear he believes it. I can’t help but think that it’s patently untrue; he’s more cognizant than I ever thought he could be. I feel like arguing with him, but that’s not what I’m here for. 

“Do you remember anything about the army?”

He jerks his chin in a sharp nod.

“More than I’d fuckin’ like. Sometimes I swear I can still feel the goddamn mud in my boots. Trainin’ wasn’t… terrible. I could shoot well. I used to… I used to always win the shootin’ games on Coney Island; give the tchotchkes I won to Becca-”

He breaks off and turns to stare at one of the many drawings on his wall. I can only guess that the young woman with the mischievous smile is Rebecca Barnes. He takes a drag of his cigarette as we both contemplate Steve’s drawing.

“She died, ya know,” he tells me quietly. He tics a few times, and then turns back to the portrait. 

“Doesn’t seem real. All the crazy things about the future and that’s what I can’t wrap my head around. She was just… She was…”

He swallows hard.

“She was just a baby. My baby. My parents were always busy with the shop, so I changed her and fed her and sang her to sleep. Always made sure her grades were up, took her to school every single day ‘til I moved out. She wasn’t gonna be like me, ya know? She was gonna get an education, really do somethin’ with her life.”

“She did,” I tell him softly, almost afraid to intrude on the moment, “She got a masters degree in English, became an award winning journalist…. She lived a good life.”

“But I shoulda been there,” he snaps, teeth bared in a snarl “I shoulda been there to see her graduate, to be a groomsman at her wedding, to be a good uncle to her kids. I shoulda been clippin’ every article she ever wrote out of every fuckin’ paper she ever made it in, and lettin’ her know how proud I was, and been there when she died . I should have held her hand-”  

He jams his cigarette into his arm and then throws it to the ground. He’s put his Marboros out on his arm so many times that I don’t think twice until I smell meat burning. With utter horror, I realize he’s put the cigarette out on his real arm, not the metal one. 

I’m frozen, so much so that I can’t even gasp. After a moment or two he looks up from the ground and furrows his brow when he sees my face.

“What? Did I do somethin’?”

I struggle to speak as I realize he genuinely does not seem to know. 

“Y- You… You just burned yourself.”

He looks down at himself in surprise, his metal hand ghosting along the raw, angry circle on his forearm.

“I’m sorry,” he tells me, voice quiet and scared, “I didn’t mean to.”

I lean forward, trying to see his arm, and he flinches violently, eyes wide and wild.

“Пожалуйста, нет,” he begs, holding his hands above his head. 

I quickly lean back, holding my hands to mirror his, palms wide. He’s the most notorious assassin in the world, I’ve never even thrown a punch, and there’s thick metal bars between us, but despite it all he’s terrified, practically shaking. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I tell him, the words sounding surreal as they leave my lips.

He stays how he is, if anything only shrinking in on himself. 

“Do you want me to go get Steve?” I ask softly.

It’s likely the interview will end as soon as Steve gets involved, but at this point I’ll do anything to make Barnes stop looking at me that way. 

As with the cigarettes before, ‘Steve’ seems to be the magic word. 

Barnes blinks a few times, and the haze of fear that glazed his eyes retreats. He looks at me as though seeing me for the first time, and quickly lowers his hands.

I lower mine much more slowly. 

“Sorry,” he tells me again, more ashamed than scared this time. 

“It’s okay. Do you want me to go get Steve? He said he’d be right outside the-”

“No,” Barnes interrupts, “Steve worries about me enough. I’m fine.”

 I nod and stay silent, wondering if I should go get Steve anyway. 

“I would hurt myself at first,” he says quietly after a moment, “Anythin’ to damage their precious asset. But if I did… they would hurt me worse.”

“Does Steve know?”

He nods.

“I think so. He told me he was the one that leaked the documents. There’s no way he didn’t read them.”

“How do you feel about that? About the documents.”

He shrugs. 

“I haven’t read them, don’t wanna. I wish Steve hadn’t but… I’d do the same.”

“Why do you wish Steve hadn’t?”

He chews his lip, fingering the carton of cigarettes in his lap.  

“My wife…”

He focuses back on the carton.

“Do ya mind? I’ll put them out with my boot this time. No more arms.”

I give a startled laugh, it’s strange to hear him joke about something that was so horrifying only a moment before. 

He smiles at my reaction, soft, like something about me makes him sad. 

“What?” I ask, suddenly feeling shy. He looks, for the first time, like he really sees me. 

“Don’t know how long it’s been since I heard someone laugh. I… well hell, sweetheart, that was the prettiest thing I’ve heard in a long while.”

“You haven’t heard Steve laugh?” 

He shakes his head, pulls another cigarette out of the carton. 

“Go ahead,” I tell him, when he raises an eyebrow. 

He lights it, takes a long drag. I notice his lips are cracked and dry when he wraps them around the filter.

“My baby ain’t…” he trails off, searching for the words. It takes a moment to find them.

“Stevie doesn’t hide. One of the things I’ve always loved about her. When he’s angry he spits fire, when he’s happy he shines, when she’s in love? Ain’t nothin’ like that. But when she’s sad? No covering that up either.”

“And he’s sad about all you’ve been put through.”

Barnes nods.

“Seems like all I can do is make her cry nowadays. I don’t-” 

He ticks a few times, then taps his head.

“I’m the goddamned Scarecrow, I don’t- don’t- don’t- don’t have a brain. Can’t remember half the things she tells me. The way Steve looks at me… you’d think I’ve died.” 

“Do you feel alive?”

I cringe as the words come out of my mouth, but there’s no stopping Barnes from hearing them. He doesn’t look offended though, simply tilts his head and thinks. It’s quiet for a minute or two, too long to be comfortable, but then he seems to make up his mind. When his eyes flick back to mine there’s nothing dead about them. 

“I do. Right now I do. It’s… hard sometimes, especially at night. They bring my dinner in at seven, and after that I don’t see anyone for twelve, sometimes thirteen hours. My brains get- get- get- get scrambled up when I’m alone. I get confused more. Sometimes it’s hard to remember where I am.”

“Do they not have a way you can call someone?”

He snorts.

“I’m no Al Capone sweetheart, I don’t got armchairs and telephones in my prison cell.”

“So what do you do? Just wait?”

He shrugs, putting out his cigarette and lighting another. 

“It depends. Like I said I- I- I- I get confused. Sometimes I can sleep, but other times I think I’m waiting for my handler, and I just stand at attention all night. Or I think I’m back in Azzano, and I try to escape. No worries though, kiddo-” he interjects when my eyes slide back to the bars between us, “-I’m locked up tight.”

I want to defend myself, tell him that I wasn’t worried, but it’s not quite true. I’m talking to James Barnes, sure, but the shadow of the Winter Soldier lingers in the cell. 

I move my eyes back to the artwork hung on the walls to avoid his gaze. 

“Is that why Steve drew these? To try and help you remember?”

“Yeah. It helps sometimes, other times it just hurts my head.”

“What do you do all day?” I ask as I look around the room again. Besides the artwork, the bed, the toilet, and the chair, there’s absolutely nothing in his cell. 

He shrugs, the movement bringing my eyes back toward him. 

“Depends. Most of the time I just gab. They bring in a lot of doctors, my lawyers come every day, and Steve spends every moment he can with me. Even when they leave me alone I spend my time prayin’. It’s a miracle my voice hasn’t given out.”

“Praying?”

My voice is a little more incredulous than I’d like, but when he’d said he was Jewish, I assumed he’d meant culturally. As someone who doesn’t believe in God, I can’t imagine going through all Barnes’s trauma and still keeping the faith. 

He shrugs, nonchalant.

“Prayin’, talkin’, kvetchin’, whatever you wanna call it.”

“You still believe God’s real? Even after all you’ve been through?”

He scoffs. 

“Believe? Kiddo, I know God’s real.”

I find myself baffled by the certainty in his voice. 

“How do you know?”

He raises up his metal arm to bring it to my attention.

“If God wasn’t real, I would have lost my right.”

“Oh, you’re right handed?”

He shakes his head, clearly a little frustrated. As he does, I notice his hair is greasy and knotted, as if he hasn’t washed or brushed it. I wonder if that’s his personal preference, or if they haven’t let him. 

“I am, but that’s-”

He ticks a few times.

“Not-not-not-not it. When I was in Azzano…” 

He looks down at his arm, traces his fingers across his forearm. 

“It wasn’t one of the camps, but they still had to keep… inventory.”

I swallow back bile. 

“You were tattooed.”

He nods. 

“I tried to scratch it off, cut it off even, after I got out, but Steve always stopped me. Didn’t want me to hurt myself; didn’t understand it was the- the numbers hurting me. Fuck, I just couldn’t stop fuckin’ lookin’ at them. Then I woke up after I… fell, and my- my- my- my arm was gone. There is no surer sign of God. All I prayed for, all I prayed for was Steve to survive the war, and for those numbers to be gone. And God gave me both; I won’t ask for nothin’ else.”

“I would if I were you,” I say, stupidly. 

You’d think being a professional interviewer would give me more of a filter between my brain and my mouth… and you’d be wrong.

Barnes laughs though, the sound punching out of him like a beam of sunlight through dark clouds. 

“You’re right, I should!” 

He turns his face to the sky and shakes his fist.

“Give me a beer you old miser!”

I burst into laughter at his antics, giggling like a kid. 

He smiles at me, eyes brighter than I’ve seen them all afternoon. He looks younger when he smiles, and I can’t help but think that this is James Barnes.

“You laugh just like her, you know,” he tells me, something sad slipping through his smile. 

“Who?”

“Becca. She squinted that same way, like whatever she was laughin’ at was so funny she couldn’t keep her eyes open.”

I feel like Rebecca. Or at least, what I imagine she must have felt, waiting for her brother to win her prizes on the Coney Island boardwalk. 

 I’m older than Barnes, likely by a few years, depending on how long he spent out of cryostasis, but I feel like a kid when I’m talking to him.

“You must have been a good big brother.”

He laughs again, though more sadness springs into his eyes.

“Not if you heard her tell it. I never let her skip school, always chaperoned her dates, never told her the answers to her math homework; a real pain in her neck.”

“She knew though,” I tell him, with a certainty there’s no way I could have, “She knew you were trying your best.”

It’s this that springs tears to his eyes. Not the memories of torture, not the loss of his arm, but this. His little sister. 

“I hope so,” he tells me, voice small and vulnerable. It’s strange, coming from such a big man. 

“You know, she’s got a great-grandaughter?” he asks after a moment, a smile slowly reappearing on his face.

He stands up suddenly, the half-empty carton of cigarettes falling carelessly aside as he finds a portrait on the wall and takes it down. He handles it so delicately you’d think it was made of porcelain.

“Her name’s Sarah,” he tells me as he crosses back toward the bars, “She’s twelve.”

I stand as he hands me the portrait, and we huddle close as we look down at her. 

“She’s pretty,” I tell him with a smile, “She’s got your nose.”

He grins and nods, still looking down at the portrait. 

“Steve’s met her. Says she’s got her hair dyed blue.”

He says this with the fascination and bafflement of all old men confronted with dyed hair, and it makes me laugh.   

“What do you think about that?”

He shrugs and throws his hands up. 

“I don’t even know, seems like girls can do anythin’ these days. They’re even throwin’ bar mitzvahs for girls now, well, bat mitzvahs. She’s got hers coming up in a few months. I’d really-” 

He cuts himself off and tics four or five times. Up close as I am now, the way he does it looks even more painful. 

“I’d like-like-like-like to go. If she wouldn’t mind. Not that-” he sighs, a full-bodied release of air- “Not that I’m gonna get out though. I’ll probably… probably be dead by then.”

We both look back down at the gray pencil portrait, and I’m struck with the desire to see her in real life. Does she hold herself the same way Barnes does? Does her nose scrunch up the same way when she laughs? I want to see the blue of her hair, and, more than anything, I want Barnes to see it. 

A teardrop falls onto the edge of the page.

When I look up at Barnes his eyes are dry and full of concern. I realize with a start that I’m the one crying. 

“Oh no, none of that, kiddo,” he soothes, “what’s this all about?”

I shake my head and hike my shoulders, but I can’t give him an answer if I don’t know it myself. 

Gingerly, he takes the portrait from my hand, going to lay it on his bed before walking over to the toilet. He unspools some toilet paper and heads back over, approaching me as one would a frightened animal. 

When he gets back to me he reaches through the bars and takes my face in his left hand, carefully wiping the tears away with his right.

More than anything else today, I’m surprised that the metal’s warm. 

“What’s a matter, sweetheart?” he asks, voice soft yet heavy with his Brooklyn drawl. “I can’t stand to see a pretty girl cry. What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I finally answer. 

“Give me your best guess, kiddo, can’t make it better if I don’t know what’s hurtin.”

He looks so genuinely, honestly concerned that I can’t help but cry a little more. I sniff, and he wipes my nose like I’m a little kid.  

“I don’t know, I’m… I think I’m scared.”

He pulls his hands away quickly, the concern on his face being crowded with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“No, not of you,” I correct quickly. In that moment I mean it. I’m no more scared of Barnes than I would be of Steve. 

“I think I’m scared that… that I won’t do you justice.”

The confession resonates through the iron and concrete like a choir, and as soon as I say the words I know they’re right. This feels like too big a burden to be laid on my shoulders. I hardly know more now about interviewing and writing than I did when I first met Steve, but there's so, so much more at stake now. 

    “Oh, don’t worry about that, kiddo,” he tells me, voice full of the cavalier kindness you use to tell a child there’s no monsters under the bed, “Ain’t such a damn thing as justice. This whole thing? You being here? It’s for Stevie, okay? This is so my wife can have my words even when I’m gone. Won’t be as good as me, won’t keep her warm at night, but it’s somethin’. Somethin’ of mine for her to have. To have and to hold.”

    He takes a shuttering breath, but then he smiles at me, even as tears pool in his own eyes. 

    “No matter how this turns out, ya did a good thing- a good thing for me. Just… make sure ya take care of Steve when I’m gone, okay?”

    I look, really look in his eyes, and for the first time he looks scared. He looks… he looks young. 

    “Can you do that for me?” He asks gently, and I almost laugh. If anything, I should be comforting him. 

Finally I nod. Of course I can. I feel, in this moment, that I would do anything for him.

“Then it’ll be just fine, sweetheart,” he promises, “It’s gonna be okay.”

I try to smile at him, and a buzzer sounds over the intercom.  

Times up.

    He grins again, ruefully this time.

    “Doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, you’re good at your job, kid.”

    I laugh, tears still on my face.

    “I don’t think interviewers are supposed to cry at work.”

    He laughs with me, and even though his skin is dry and cracked, even though his cheeks are sucken in, he looks beautiful. He looks, for a moment, like Bucky.

    A guard opens the door, dour and foreboding in his gray uniform, and he looks a little surprised to see that we’ve both been crying. 

    Over the guards shoulder I can see Steve peering around the door, forever sticking his nose into anything where Bucky Barnes is concerned. 

    I look one last time at Barnes, and stick out my hand.

    “It was nice to meet you, Sergeant Barnes.”

    He smiles and shakes my hand before the guard can protest, his right hand callused and warm.

    “See ya around, kiddo.”

    “Yeah,” I reply, one last smile painting my face, “See you around.”

    I hope that I do. 

—---------

EDITOR’S NOTE 09/23/2015:

The Winter Soldier trial has begun. You can watch the trial on C-SPAN or stream the live trial here.

EDITOR’S NOTE 11/19/2015:

Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes has been found not guilty on all charges. We ask that you respect his privacy at this time.