Stranger Who Knows All My Secrets [A Marvel FanFic]

Chapter 1: An Owl Inside A Human-Robot

Had anyone told James Buchanan Barnes when he was a boy that he would die and come back from the dead not once but twice, well... He wouldn't have believed you. Truth is, you could have gone back to 1925 and taken that hard-headed kid from Brooklyn to the future to show him the exact kind of hell he would be put through, and the dumbass boy would have just said cool with a cheeky smile and way more swagger than an eight-year-old should ever have. You could have warned him all you wanted, raised every red flag, and pestered him every second of the day but in the end, he would have probably made all the same choices that led him to where he was today; with one arm and a head full of terrible shit that he didn't like to talk about.

Maybe if he hadn't been such a rambunctious child, if he had been less cocky, or cared more about his grades, he would have gotten a scholarship for college instead of having to work down at the docks. Maybe if he didn't enjoy a good beer or fight every now and then, maybe if he cared more about his own ass than staring at those of all the pretty girls he met, he would have been smart enough to join a union or a church or pretty much anything that would have kept his boneheaded self from enlisting in the army. However, James Buchanan Barnes, or Bucky as his friends liked to call him, was never one for thinking things through, and to be honest, in those days enlisting was the most respectable thing a young man could do.

He finally had the chance to prove his worth, to show his parents and sisters that he could be a provider and not a fuck up. In his mind, he'd go off to war, return a hero, and dance with a few dames before finally settling down with some cute brunette with rosy cheeks and a nice chest. They'd stay in Brooklyn for a while before finally getting hitched and moving out to the suburbs, maybe pop out a few kids, three max and maybe they'd get a dog and a station wagon. Bucky would spend his days working hard at some blue-collar job, come home to find dinner waiting for him on the table, and the kids all greedy for his attention and fighting about who could tell him about their day first. At the end of the night, his old lady would help him unwind before bed with a glass of whiskey and a dance. On the weekends they'd go to the zoo, or Coney Island, visit with his parents and do all that nice domestic shit adults do.

They'd fight about the bills, worry about how they'd afford college for three kids, and debate when they should finally buy a new car. He'd teach his sons to play baseball and fix cars, scare off all his daughters' boyfriends and show them how to throw a mean right hook to protect themselves from unwanted advances. He and his old lady would go out to the diner every Friday, just the two of them, and sit in the same booth, order the same thing and he'd make her laugh and blush like they were still newlyweds. They'd grow old together, watch the seasons change, see their children get married and spoil their grandkids rotten, and then he'd die sometime in his eighties and his widow would joke that it was hamburgers, beer, and boxing that kept him alive so long.

Alas, that never actually happened and the life he lived was far more lonely and painful. As luck would have it, eight-year-old Bucky was never visited by an older version of himself and the kid decided to live his life however he damn well pleased. He met his best friend Steve Rogers that year, the skinny little thing was getting his ass kicked when Bucky stepped in and the rest was history. They did everything together, his parents looked after Stevie, and Stevie's mom looked after Bucky; they went to school together, fought the same fights, worked the same menial jobs, and liked all the same girls though Bucky was way more of a womanizer. After high school Stevie stayed a paperboy, he was always too sick and scrawny to do much else but Bucky went to work down at the docks. When Stevie's mom died, the boys became roommates to prove they could make their own way in the world and nothing could have been better than hanging out with your best friend after work every day, picking up girls at the bar, and partaking in illegal boxing matches. Bucky was in his prime and then Pearl Harbor, he was working when it happened, standing around the small radio smoking a cigarette with the other guys when their foreman came running in and changed the station to a news broadcast.