Ascertainment || Bucky Barnes (2)

Q&A

As I stated. Here's my answers to your questions. Here we go:

"Does Basil ever get stopped in the street by fans?"

At first, after he woke from the ice but before the invasion of New York, he didn't. He got three months of adjustment to the modern world before having to fight off aliens. After the invasion of New York, he doesn't occasionally get stopped by fans. He wore a helmet through most of the battle so there aren't very many modern pictures of him. The best ones are of him in the suit or him in black and white. This means that not many people recognise him.
Those who do recognise him and can manage to gather up the courage to approach him might sometimes have a chance at a autograph. If Basil is in a good mood then he will be nice and reply back, if he's not then he might just walk through him. If he's with Steve and you catch the both of them together, then he plays nice for Steve's sake. If he's by himself then he is a bit more unpredictable. It depends on how his fans approach him. Young lgbt people who see him as a role model are more likely to gain a positive response. Those who just want to see a hero have a fifty/fifty outcome. And those who are brash or rude, will not even gain a response.

If someone is homophobic or insults Steve or Bucky in anyway might have a knife at their throat. So yes, he does get approached by fans but not very often when he's by himself. When he's with Steve through, then they're approached a lot more often.

"How many suspenders does he own?"

Six pairs. One plain black stretchy elastic one and one with grey and black diamond patterns. They were ones he found himself when he was first let out to shop for his own clothes for the first time. He has a leather set, with adjustable buckles very much similar to the ones he wore back in the 40s. They were a gift from Phillip. The rainbow ones were something he had found by chance and had to get for 2013 pride. He also had a Halloween pair with bones on it, a gift from Tony Stark. And his sixth pair is a teal coloured fabric one that he got to match a suit he had to wear for some avengers thing.

So, he owns six pairs. He wears the leather and the black ones the most though. They are his favourites.

"Does Basil ever search or read any fanfics of him and Bucky? (On purpose)".

After the whole fiasco when he discovered tumblr, he doesn't search up any fanfiction of him and Bucky. He knows it's out there and it's quite popular but he'd had enough 'what if' moments and didn't find the appeal of what could have happened. Also, people getting his character wrong, or writing situations they just wouldn't put themselves in didn't make sense to him. People trying to write him and Bucky as if they had known them would have annoyed him pretty quickly. So no, he wasn't ever really interested in fanfiction of him and Bucky. (Fanfiction on other fictional character he does get into later once he is introduced to tv shows).

As for fanart, he does go back and searches some up. He stays clear of some of the smutty ones but he likes some of the cute ones. He makes a tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest account and reboots the ones he loves the most. His favourites, he will contact the artist and buy a print from them. He has only done this three times so far but he might add more soon. He likes the fanart of him and Bucky as characters from other books. Like them redrawn in studio ghibli style, or them in Harry Potter. Only the books he's read before. His current favourite was one of them in Lord of the Rings. Basil as and elf and Bucky has a human, waking hand in hand over the forest path of Mirkwood. It sits on his bedside table.

"Basil owns a unholy amount of doc martens".

He has eight pairs. Four different pairs of boots, two creeper pairs, a pair of sandals and a pair of Mary Jane leather shoes. He has small feet for a man so he easily wears women's sizes. He had a black pair of Docs with laces, the classic boot. Then he had a deep burnished red pair that are slip ons. One of his other set of boots are canvas with blue lacing down to the toe cap. They also have an embroidered patch on the outside of each ankles. And his final pair of boots are laced up ones in a deep dark bottle green.
His creepers are smooth black leather with embroidered pride flags on the ankle, just to match his pride suspenders. While his sandals are the leather strap platform saddles. He likes them when off work as they add at lest and inch taller and make him taller than Tony. (He wears them around the tower in summer just to piss him off). Then there are the Mary Jane shoes, school girl like with one leather buckle. They are black but he likes to wear them when experimenting the new androgyny of modern fashion.

"If Basil does get a job in a hospital, what would his speciality be?"

Basil will have a job in a hospital in the next book. I can spoil this as it's not overly important. His speciality is in trauma. So he would work in the ER room. This is because that is the type of environment where he's had the most training. Medicine as a whole, has changed a lot since 1940s, but basic trauma injuries, how to make a patient stable enough to be moved still shares a lot of basic tricks that haven't changed. Basil would be most comfortable in the ER as he would be able to do the type of work he is used too but in a stable environment where he's not being shot at. He wouldn't just be a trauma surgeon, he would also deal with other emergency injuries that are not life threatening. It would allow him to be as useful as possible but also while retaining a degree of normalcy.
More would be written about this in the next book.

"Why didn't Basil go with Bucky after the destruction of the Helicarriers?"

There are many reasons why I felt that Basil couldn't go with Bucky at the end of The Winter Soldier.
1- Bucky was literally just trying to kill him. He may have had a memory jolt that lead to him saving Basil from drowning, but it doesn't disapprove the fact that he still doesn't fully remember him. His brain is stuck in hydra programming. He might not have killed him on the riverbank, but he could have tried again later. He left Basil there for his own safety.
2- Bucky wasn't Bucky. During this book I referred to him as 'The Soldier', mostly because that is what he is. He is not Bucky. He may be in Bucky's body but he has no memory or emotion. Basil knows this too. That is the winter soldier. Not Bucky. They are separate people. He wouldn't want to go with a stranger he doesn't know, even if the stranger was wearing the face of someone he did know.
3- Basil would have bleed out and died before they got somewhere safe. He needed surgery and Bucky, the 'Soldier', couldn't provide that on the run. He needed to be found by Steve and taken to hospital.
4- Bucky needed time. In the movie Steve was forcing the memories on him to get him to remember. Basil and Steve did the same in the book. It is biased information. Bucky needed time to let his brain heal and repair. He needed to let the memories return so that he could remember without being told a biased version. He also needed time to remember everything Hydra had put him through and that could have turned any relationship toxic easily. They both needed time to change and learn as they are not the same men from ww2.
5-  There is a long period of time between Cap and the Winter Soldier and Civil war. I don't have the time to write a book about that time jump. It would be too long and confusing, also I want to explore Basil's character development a bit without Bucky or his grief.  Now that he knows that Bucky is alive, he can start to live a bit more for himself again. I am excited to explore that.

Thanks you for all your questions. Hope you like my answers. Thank you once again for reading my book.
Please vote, comment, follow for more!