No. 94

Prompt: Avengers movieverse, Bucky Barnes, (post-WS)
I want someone who knows me just to say my name
To tell me though things are different now somehow I'm still the same
http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/694627.html?thread=91467107#t91467107

He was standing outside the museum when he met her.

She paused beside him, leaning on her walker and panting. Then she peered at him. "You know, you look just like this boy from my neighborhood in Brooklyn."

He stared at her, puzzled by her wrinkled face, her bright smile.

"His name was Bucky Barnes," she continued.

That was the name on the display in the museum, the display full of photos of the man he saw when he looked in the mirror. Except he wasn't that man. He was no friend, no hero.

He was relieved when she didn't ask his name, simply stood there catching her breath. He realized she was trying to walk and carry recyclable grocery bags at the same time.

"Do you need help, ma'am?" He kept his voice low, soft.

She beamed at him. "Just like Bucky, you are. Always so polite and helpful. I could use a hand if you have a moment."

He scooped up the bags with ease, careful to keep his gloves in place so she wouldn't see the truth of his left arm. She chattered about her home and her old neighborhood, her sisters and her friends playing ball in the street, running in their skirts and getting muddy and their mother yelling at them. He followed her down the sidewalk and away from the museum, down a side-alley she shouldn't have been traveling alone, and to an old red-brick building. He held the door open for her and followed her up the stairs, terrified every step of the way that she'd topple backward and fall and die, but she made it up to the fifth floor. He held the door open for her again and then, hesitant, followed her into her apartment. She put on the kettle and then eased herself down at the kitchen table before directing him about where to put the groceries. He felt like an invader, a spy as he poked through her cupboards and drawers and refrigerator.

But in between her directions she told him about the time her childhood hero Bucky rescued her kitten from a tree, and how he'd always pitch soft for her when they played ball in the street.

"You really are just like him," she said wonderingly. "The way you look. Your hands. A bit more quiet, and he was such a charmer. But just as handsome."

When all the groceries were put away, he stood awkwardly beside her refrigerator, hands in his pockets.

"Sit, young man, and have some tea," she said, and because he didn't have anything else to do, he obeyed.

The tea was good. Not like the Rooibos the scientists at the Hydra lab gave him sometimes. The old woman continued to tell him about her life, the deli on the corner where she'd get sandwiches to take to her father at work on summer days. There was a soda parlor on the corner from her house, and she'd help her mother do laundry so she had money to buy a soda or a sundae once a week.

As she talked, his memories began to unspool themselves. He could hear the rapid-fire Italian chatter from the brothers who ran the counter at the deli. He could feel the smooth wooden counter of the soda parlor. And he could smell the steam from the dry-cleaning place two doors down from the soda parlor.

That world was gone, obliterated in the forward march of time, but he'd been there. He could remember tiny arms flung around his waist as he landed in the grass beneath the tree, kitten cradled in the crook of his arm.

He was Bucky Barnes.

"Thank you for the tea," he said.

The woman patted his hand. "Thank you for listening to an old woman ramble." She sighed. "Bucky promised me I'd see him again, right before he enlisted. He was such a good boy, never broke a promise. But some promises can't really be made."

He gazed at her, wondered if she saw beyond his face to the person she'd once known, the hero and friend. "Maybe he did keep his promise, just in a way you didn't expect."

The woman laughed. "That's just the kind of thing Bucky would say." She patted his hand again, then sat back. "Well, I'm sure you have other things you need to be doing. Young people are so busy these days. Your mama raised you right, my boy."

"Thanks, Darlene," he said. He rose up, tugged on his cap. "I'm sure my mama would be flattered to hear that." He started for the door.

"Wait," the woman said. "How did you know my name?"

He'd remembered it, but he couldn't tell her that. The person he needed to speak to next was Steve.