Flickers | Bucky Barnes

Friends

3 Weeks Later

Karina learned very quickly that James 40s morals were still instilled in him, even if he was not aware of it. He always held any door open for her, and then again, it wasn't as if he ever let her walk ahead of him. On the street he never ever let her walk near the curb. She thought he was going to have a coronary episode when he saw a bunch of men allow women near them. At first, she thought it was just his paranoia and an assassin habit, but he said passingly that it wasn't chivalrous to not walk between the curb and woman. Additionally, after he ate at her house he always insisted on washing the dishes.

He then went out of his way walking her to and from work. James being an overall gentleman was just something she wasn't used to from any man, especially him considering all that he went through. But she wasn't complaining.

She could say that her offer of dinner seemed to open a door of friendship between the two as she found herself having dinner with him almost daily. She was slightly beginning to worry about how she was going to keep up with his increasing appetite as he ate for a family of four. She knew on that Saturday, when she offered him steak that was the first time in a long time he had real meat. It wasn't as if he wasn't paying for his portion of the food she ended up cooking. In fact, after the first week of cooking for him they got in a slight disagreement about him contributing. It didn't take long to deduce that he really was working under the table and he needed funds more than her. She was fortunate to know how to make a fake identity supplied with the necessary items. James knew how to hide, but he didn't have the necessary skills to forge documents to a point. Also she wanted to point out his homeless look wasn't exactly a great cover, but she kept that nugget to herself. When she did bring up this topic he uncomfortably pointed out that he was an assassin not a spy. He rarely did spy things or perform espionage. He just sanctioned and extracted - killed - from a distance – shadow. He wasn't meant to be seen.

Besides that awkward conversation they didn't talk much. She would talk mostly about mundane things while being cautious of his gradually returning memories. She would get him up to speed on some things that he missed as the decades passed. She wasn't exactly a history buff. So it wasn't as if she could properly teach him about the things he missed. She knew she hadn't seen most of the things that were considered classic in pop culture.

But she was familiar with technology. She learned very quickly that he understood basic functions of certain electronics to a point like how to use them. She concluded on certain missions he needed to retrieve things using computers or phones. He just didn't understand the why they needed them. Then there was the issue of him knowing what a cell phone essentially was, but then there was the other part of him that only remembered rotary phones and marveled at how far technology had come in his stoic mannerisms.

Part of it was very confusing to her because he knew partially what the item was but didn't have idea what he was exactly looking at. She could only imagine how overwhelmed he would have been if she would have had all her former possessions, like her smartphone and laptop, which weren't found in a dumpster that she repaired. She suspected he knew somewhat how advanced the world had come since he remembered the high tech Hydra weapons he used.

Yet, the only thing that she could ever really see completely dumbfounded him were the new social customs and attire. She remembered when he was sitting at the bar how he looked slightly mortified at the suggestive public display of affections from intoxicated couples.

She never asked him directly what he remembered. It wasn't as if he was all keen on sharing. But she knew he was remembering more and more every day. One day he was incredibly baffled at how expensive things were but other than the economic changes, she suspected it was more of the 70 years of abuse that seemed to hit him than his life before then. On those days, he was more withdrawn. But it wasn't as if he was exactly a Chatty Cathy. He still held the mechanical mannerisms that were conditioned into him.