TALES FROM FALLEN WARRIORS ─ marvel

I. Making Amends

Chapter One
Bucky

Rule number one: don't do anything illegal. Rule number two: don't hurt anyone. Rule number three: say the words 'I am no longer the Winter Soldier, I am James Buchanan Barnes, and you are part of my efforts to make amends' whenever I arrest whatever criminal the US government is sending me after.

Six months ago, Lena took a leap of faith with her friend Everett Ross and told him about me. This leap paid off in the form of a full pardon for me, but that pardon came with conditions. For the foreseeable future, I am to live in New York under government supervision as I attend two therapy sessions a week and go after all the criminals I enabled as the Winter Soldier, as well as any other people that have gotten on the government's radar in a bad way. My two sessions are on Wednesdays and Fridays and my missions happen sporadically throughout the week, sometimes lasting hours, sometimes days.

The first day I saw my therapist she told me the three rules, the rules I would be forced to live by as long as I'm 'making amends'. She told me these rules will make it so the world will no longer see me as a threat, but an upstanding citizen just like everyone else. She told me that once this is over, once the conditions of my pardon are done, the Winter Soldier will be just a thing of the past, both for me and for everyone else.

I don't believe her.

Every time I have to go on these missions I don't feel like I'm making amends, I feel like I'm working as another government's puppet. Every time I say those goddamn words I feel like a mechanical machine reading a script. Every time I am told the Winter Soldier is gone, I feel like he haunts me more and more.

Lena agrees with me that the rules are stupid. She believes that I'm just cleaning up the government's messes, not making amends. She believes I don't have to make amends, that I am innocent and didn't do anything wrong, that HYDRA are the only ones who need to atone for their sins. Maybe she's right, maybe she's wrong. She always tells me I'm a victim, she always tells me that soon I'll see myself as one too. But I don't think I ever will. I'll always blame myself for what the Winter Soldier did in HYDRA, I'll always feel like I'm atoning for the sins of my past. I just wish I could make amends and atone for real, on my own terms, in ways that truly matter. In my free time I try to, but with the therapy sessions and the missions it can be difficult. I barely have any free time as it is, and any free time I do have I try to spend it with Lena, who has been living with me in New York the past six months.

With my most recent mission over, I'm free to go home, which is where I'm heading now. I'm picking up dinner on my way there. It's Tuesday, which Lena and I have made pizza night. There's a great place a block away from our apartment and we've been eating there every week since we first discovered it our second week in Brooklyn. We had dedicated a whole day to finding the best pizza place in Brooklyn, and after trying about ten, we decided on this one. When I walk inside and order, the woman behind the register smiles at me and says: "Your order is ready, Mr. Barnes. Have a great afternoon!"

I wish her the same and walk the short distance to our apartment. It's on the third floor, has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. The second bedroom is only used when Alex and Khari come to visit, which is at least once a month, Alex sometimes more than that. When we got the place, it was empty apart from two beds and a couch, but Shuri threw them out the moment she saw them and had T'Challa pay for completely new furniture for every room. Lena and I had objected to that, but he insisted, saying it's our engagement present. We also objected to all the tech Shuri left with us, but she insisted. What she gave us included several tv's, holograms, Kimoyo Beads, and other gadgets like the one I used today to arrest Senator Atwood.