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[b]Washington D.C.
March 26th, 2005
13:59pm[/b]

Barnes, Stevenson, and Fontaine had left for Washington the morning after their inquisition at Smiley's hands. Bucky had spent most of the flight reassuring them they wouldn’t spend the rest of their careers in an even deeper hole than Jakarta. Try though he might to assure them that SHIELD wouldn’t punish them for not rooting out Jackson they seemed unconvinced. He couldn’t blame them. In their position he would have been too. All Bucky could stress was the importance of keeping Jackson’s betrayal secret. If they wanted a future within SHIELD that was absolutely imperative. If they wanted a future [i]anywhere[/i] that was absolutely imperative. That part of the message seemed to sink in. He hoped for their sakes it had done lest he be called into Smiley’s office one day and handed a folder with their names in it. It certainly wasn’t Smiley’s style but Bucky wouldn’t put it past Nick Fury.

Barnes exchanged an awkward goodbye with them though tried as earnestly as he could to express his desire to work with both of them again. After Smiley had finished debriefing Fury, Barnes had stopped by Fury's office for a time. They spoke briefly and Fury made his disappointment at having lost Tiger Shark clear but otherwise congratulated him on a job well done. His first proper outing as Captain America had been a success as far as SHIELD were concerned. So why was Bucky still so downbeat? Was it the boy on the ship? He couldn’t quite work it out but felt some personal time was in order. He felt like he’d been living in the uniform for the past week.

It had taken some convincing but Maria Hill agreed to allow Barnes out of the Triskelion for the afternoon. Bucky had wanted to go to a bar somewhere to get a drink but Maria “suggested” he visit the Captain America Exhibit at the National Museum of American History instead. It was better than prowling the hauls of the Triskelion or sitting alone in his quarters. He had exactly six hours to himself in which he could do that. Hill had offered to send some SHIELD “escorts” with him but Bucky refused her on the spot and told her SHIELD would have to find another Captain America unless they let him go on his own. After several expletives Agent Hill finally agreed.

Feeling the wind on his face on the bike ride there had been freeing. The actual exhibition had been anything but. Bucky stared into a cabinet in which the "actual" shield of Captain America sat. He knew from first experience that it was anything but the real deal and wondered how [i]anyone[/i] believed it. There beside the shield was a mannequin dressed in Bucky's old uniform. He tried his best not to make eye contact with it and instead focused on the shield behind the pane of glass. From beside him the sound of a voice made him jump slightly.

It was a grey-haired lady that looked as old as time. She smiled at him and gestured towards the cabinet. “I met him once.”

Her words listed past Bucky's ears without registering as he stared at her wrinkled skin. She was so frail that she looked like she could barely support her own weight. Yet there she stood on her own, a lilac cardigan draped over her shoulders, staring into the cabinet beside Bucky all the same. Bucky looked at her face, her thinning hair, and wondered whether he'd look that old now were it not for the icy waters of Atlantic.

Suddenly he remembered the old woman had spoken but not what she had said. “I beg your pardon?”

“Captain America’s sidekick,” the old woman grinned. “I met him.”

Bucky strained to find some face amidst the wrinkles that he recognised. After several seconds of trying he found himself disappointment. More likely than not the woman was misremembering things or it was a family story that the details of had been embellished with time. Barnes thought back to the young SHIELD agent on the flight to Germany that claimed his grandfather had fought with Steve. It wasn't uncommon for men to fabricate stories like that. The people waiting at home expected glory or gore when more often than not war was soul-destroying tedium. Perhaps this was another instance of that. 

“I was a child at the time and far too young to understand what was going on. My father was a civil servant in the Vichy regime working as a double agent for the French resistance. One night some men came to our home speaking a language I could not then understand. Tallest amongst them was a man in a blue uniform carrying a shield that I had heard the other children talk about. Captain America. They say he was five times as strong as a normal man and ten times as fast. It wasn’t him that fascinated me but his young friend, Bucky.”

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“Through the eyes of a child I thought he was huge,” the old woman muttered as she pressed her hand against the cabinet. “Now I understand that he was no more than a boy then. I remember thinking how brave he must have been. There amongst all the bullets, all the explosions, all the… killing. He must have been forced to do things that no boy should ever have to do. When I grew older and my family moved to America I read about him. I saw the footage they showed American children of him fighting alongside Captain America. He was always smiling. It was wrong. The young man I met was sad.”

The woman's words cut Bucky deeper than any knife might have. Perhaps she [i]had[/i] seen him. Perhaps not. It made no difference. In a few seconds the woman had shown she'd understood him and the pain he'd felt all those years ago better than anyone since Bucky had woken up. He had bore the responsibility that came with being Captain America's sidekick willingly, he'd done things Steve couldn't bring himself to do, and somewhere along the line he'd lost a part of himself in doing it. If he could go back and change a thing he wouldn't have but there [i]were[/i] times he dreamt of having had a normal childhood. If only all the boys back in America that envied him knew how badly he used to envy them at times.

"I never forgot his eyes," the old woman said as she glanced towards Bucky. "There was [i]so[/i] much sadness in them.”

Suddenly eyes that had been bleary and lifeless came alive as if she recognised something in those eyes that she had recognised once before. She reached a thin, wrinkly hand towards Barnes and placed it against his cheek. Unsure of himself he stood still and allowed the woman's hand to rest against his cheek for a moment before staggering backwards a few paces. The old woman's hand remained in the air and stretched out towards Bucky as he shook his head slightly and began to walk backwards away from the woman. 

Tears began to well in the woman's eyes and Bucky wanted to step towards her and tell her she was right, he wanted to hold her and tell her that [i]he[/i] was alright, but he knew he'd never be able to do that. Instead he tried to swallow away the large knot in his throat, turned his back on the old woman, and made his way towards the exit. As he reached the parking lot and bestrode his bike he stopped for a moment and dipped his head in mourning. Not for Steve or the boy he'd killed in Jakarta but for himself.

Bucky Barnes was dead.