Battlefield ★ Bucky Barnes

XXVIII. Nostalgia's A Real Bitch

"Guess what came in the mail today?" Connie exclaimed breathlessly as she lugged a cardboard box into the loft where Bucky sat on the couch flicking through the television channels.

He tore his attention away from the plasma screen television and looked over at her, getting up to assist her immediately as he noticed her slight struggle with the box. Connie's wound was almost three weeks old, but she had ripped out one of her stitches by reaching into the cupboard to grab a jar of spice to cook dinner with. Of all the physical exertion she had been doing over the passed couple of weeks, all it had taken to defeat her healing wound was her need for a jar of spice. The fact of it was rather amusing to Bucky, though it was also worrisome for him at the same time. He hated knowing that the wound he had caused refused to heal; it made him feel horrible.

"You've got to stop exerting yourself like this, Connie," Bucky chastised as he plucked the box from her grip. "What's even in this?"

Connie smiled happily and skipped over to him as he sat the box down on the coffee table in front of the couch. She ripped the box open without much thought at all and pulled out its contents, very hastily shoving them into the arms of the confused soldier standing above her.

"They're some of our old photo albums that Peggy recovered from our apartment after you, Steve, and I went missing," Connie informed him. "Peggy made sure I got them back when S.H.I.E.L.D. found me in 2008, and they've been at mine and Steve's apartment since he was pulled from the ice. Phil had them shipped out here a couple days ago, per my request, of course."

Bucky's eyes widened slightly at the information, and he took the albums in his hand and sat back down on the couch, wasting no time at all in flipping through them. Connie smiled at his eagerness and grabbed an album of her own. She sat down beside him and began flipping through the pages, smiling fondly whenever she would come across a picture behind nothing but good memories.

It had been so many years since Connie had seen the contents of the photo albums, seventy or so, give or take. She had been in such a broken emotional state when she was found in 2008 that there was hardly anything anyone could do to help fix her. Phil tried as hard as he possibly could to bring her some sort of happiness, and that included giving her a 1900's inspired apartment filled with all of her old belongings that Peggy had the SSR recover from her previous apartment after Steve had gone missing. Her photo albums had been among those belongings, and they were quite possibly the belongings that held most of what could help brighten her mental state, but they had done the complete opposite.

Connie knew exactly what was inside the photo albums, which was why she refused to open them. In her eyes, the albums served as a look back on the life that had so wrongly been taken away from her; the albums to her were a constant reminder of the life she wanted but couldn't have. Even now she was a bit hesitant about peering into the albums for the first time in over seventy years, but her mental state had improved drastically since 2008, and it had improved drastically since she had found Bucky.

"I think I remember this," Bucky chimed up from his spot beside Connie.

Connie looked over at him. He was looking at her with bright blue eyes, while his index finger rested on an old picture of him, Connie, and a pre-serum Steve in front of the ferris wheel at Coney Island. Bucky's arm was wrapped tightly around Connie's shoulder; Connie was pressed into the side of Bucky's body with a wide smile on her face and a stick of cotton candy in her hand; Steve stood to the opposite side of Bucky with his hands shoved into his pockets and an annoyed expression on his face as he glanced over at the couple beside him. Connie smiled as she remembered the events of that day; Coney Island with the two of them was always a highlight for her.

"Steve was so agitated because you and I had just started dating," Connie giggled. "He was afraid of becoming a third wheel even after we promised him that wouldn't be the case."