Haunted By Him

Chapter Twenty

“Wait!!” The Winter Soldier cries and he leaps out of his chair and makes a grab for Steve, nearly tripping over the table. “Wait, wait, Steve, please! Wait!” Rogers whirls on him, furious.

“Go back to where ever you came from,” he hisses. “You’re not Bucky and I never want to hear from either of you again.”

“Please, we’ve come so far,” the Soldier pleads.

“But you’re not Bucky,” Steve growls and the Soldier looks at his face and realizes that this is a man he can’t lie to. His shoulders sink and he lets out a shaking breath.

“I don’t know who I am,” he says weakly. “You wanna know the truth, cause that’s it. My memory starts about eight years ago and I was never given a name. I’ve been living in Russia that whole time and, and look-” With this, he tears his gloves off and he hears Natalia behind him gasp. He holds both of his hands out for Steve to see. The left one glitters in the light. “I lost my arm, but I don’t know how. They replaced it for me, but they made me do horrible things with it, Steve, horrible things. I’m a bad person, Steve.” He blinks hard. He’s starting to cry. He’s getting worked up. “They kept me all that time and forced me to do things for them.”

“They?” Steve asks and the Winter Soldier shakes. He trembles from his head to his feet.

“They’re called Hydra,” he breathes. “And they kept me in chains. For years.” He rubs his eyes and takes a deep breath in and out. “But I didn’t want it anymore and I figured I’d rather try to be free and die than keep living like I had been because that was no life and I couldn’t do it anymore! So I ran away and Natalia found me and she said I looked like this friend of yours and she needs your money, so we came here to show you!

“And I thought, damn I was a fool, I thought that whole time that maybe someone would love me one day! Maybe I’d found myself a better life and I could have the things this Bucky guy had, like people who love him and miss him, thinking maybe I’d been loved and missed!” He turns around and throws his hands up and looks from Natalia to Steve. “For a while, I even thought I might be Bucky! Because I have his face and my life begins where his ended, I thought maybe his love could be my love, too! I just wanted someone to love me to the end of the line and back and I don’t know if I deserve it or not but all I know is that I came all this way with Hydra on my heels and I just want to know if you can love me!”

There is another silence. He can’t see Natalia’s face, but Steve looks stunned. The entire restaurant has gone quiet in fact, and Steve’s face is going white.

“What did you say?” He whispers. The Winter Soldier looks at him and swallows.

“I-I said a lot of things,” he says.

“The part,” Steve says. “At the end.”

“I, uh,” the Winter Soldier says. “I want to know if you can love me?”

“Before that,” Steve says.

“I want s-someone to love me to the end of the line?” He says and Steve reaches up with both hands to scrub his face and he keeps looking at the Soldier.

“Where did you hear that?” Steve whispers.

“I don’t know,” the Winter Soldier replies quietly. “I don’t remember.”

Steve steps forward and, uncomfortable, the Winter Soldier steps back.

“Do you remember me?” Steve asks and the Winter Soldier blinks fast.

“No?” He says. “Yes? Sort of?”

“We never told anyone else those words,” Steve says. “They were ours.”

“After your parents died,” the Winter Soldiers says and he doesn’t know how he knows it. He just does.

Steve’s eyes fill with tears and he reaches forward and grabs up the Soldier before he can say ‘no hugs’ and he’s holding on to him for dear life. Carefully, the Winter Soldier wraps his arms around his back gently and then realizes how nice it feels to be held. He sinks into the embrace after a few stiff seconds and rests his face on Rogers’s shoulder and starts to squeeze back.

“I’ve missed you so much,” Steve sobs and the Soldier feels a lump grow in his throat.