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*
This is his homeground. And he knows none of it. Nothing resonates. It gives him the appearance of the most lost kind of tourist, try as he might to hide it. Oh, he's got no guidebook in hand….but it's so clear he's wandering aimlessly, hands in the pockets of his newly stolen overcoat.
It's been months since the one who promised to make her his apprentice has been around. No sign of him, no traces in his old haunts. And yet…..here he is, rambling. He looks different, somehow. The way he walks, hunched, tense, without any of that old deadly confidence.
*
Brooklyn changes with the seasons, new waves of immigrants settling in where Dutch become Irish and Scots, who gave way to Italians, who have cleared out for Poles, Ukrainians, and a wave of Eastern Europeans displaced by the inevitable boundary redrawing throughout the depths of Slavic lands. Accents might change, the faces shifting, but in some ways the neighbourhood remains the same. The residential sections are stuffed cheek by jowl together. Businesses under awnings cater to the tastes of the residents and damn everyone else. It's one of those reasons which draws a redheaded bohemienne into their mix, the young woman likely Irish rather than Russian, though it's a toss up. Flowers in her hair might be the thing to spur memory, white snowdrops and carnations a tumble of snow. Their first encounter as the flower girl in a riot and the assassin made for an interesting turn of events, hiding out in a tenement apartment not so different from these.
Not so different from many things. She slips out with all the carefree ease of a monster behind a pretty mask, a paper bag with a book over her wrist. Scarlett's habitual grace is with her, and so too the way she never seems to run into anyone.
*
He's found his old address - the tenement he used to live in, a few doors down from Steve's old address. God only knows where Steve dwells now, the old relic….but the odds are good it's a lot nicer than the squats and attics the Soldier's been trying to hide in. Den up in, truth be told, it's as much animal instinct as conscious choice these days. He consults a piece of paper, standing on the cracked sidewalk before it. The building's bustling, the residents coming and going, a few even sitting out on the stoop. The man searches their faces each in turn, as if he could divine something. His posture's increasingly eloquent of frustration, the lines around his mouth and between his eyes increasingly deeply etched, until he crumples the scrap of paper in that gloved hand, and turns away.
*
The scent of neroli mingles with snowdrops and the bakery down the street, pumping out yeasty memories to all unfortunate souls caught in the mouthwatering miasma. They who take to the streets risk their own lives, becoming distracted and stepping out into traffic at the worst possible times. Brooklyn's residents pay little heed to the general pedestrians around them unless given reason to, thus Scarlett receives precious little notice. No more than a man clutching a piece of paper in search of direction. Elsewhere they might ask if he needs help. Elsewhere they might summon up the doorman to oust an unfamiliar sort. Instead, the Winter Soldier might make the mistake of turning at a critical moment where he crosses the viridian gaze of the redhead. Her brows arch higher, and frozen in her gait on the sidewalk, whatever destination hearkened to her calls no longer. Her hand rises in a greeting, fingers curled in a wordless wave.
*
He nearly turns past….but then he catches it, out of the corner of his eye, and turns back. There's a polite, wary blankness where recognition should be. Is this really Jack? He doesn't raise a hand in return, but raises his brows at her, inquiringly. Indeed, there's no one else paying particular attention to him, the flow of human traffic passing him. Not grubby enough to be homeless, not quite, not sharp enough to stand out…..and with none of that old air of icy competence. The near-bewilderment makes him look younger, somehow. He watches her, neither fading into the crowd nor approaching. Merely waiting.
*
Call her a break in the pattern, disruption in the steady flow of humanity hither and fro. Her hand shades her eyes against the low spring light, a glitter of movement in the bangles around Scarlett's fine-boned wrist. Prepared perhaps to carry upon her merry way, something hitches her intention in place. An inquiring look meets with the uplift of her smile, hands clasping instead around the modest handles of the paper bag. "Pardon me. I thought you might be seeking something." No mistaking the lilting flow of her voice, cultivated somewhere far more sophisticated in its diction than here. English, most mistake it; some would claim a resonance with the lovely accents of Savannah. A nod at the building barely disrupts the threaded spill of her braids. "It's been forever and a day, hasn't it?" Hesitation to the last hitches a role they might have played a dozen times over, practiced until she can pass by a man she knows well enough as any, acting as though they know one another not at all.
*
"Yeah, it's been a long time." The accent's Brooklyn, not hint at all of Russia. "And, uh, no. Just visiting a place I used to live," he allows. There's that gravel there. He's looking her over, brow furrowed, still trying to divine her intention. Redheads have just become something of a pattern in the confused swirl of his recent days. It's odd - down to the hairline scars on his neck, it's Jack. But….it isn't. Something or someone elseis wearing his body, and doing it with clear discomfort. He doesn't seem to be in pain, precisely, but sick, perhaps? Or carrying some unseen wound.
*
Patterns of redheads: murderous ones, amorous ones, and bellweather diplomatic ones, perhaps. They cause no little suffering for the average denizen of the universe. A plague of redheads upon the man might be the nastiest curse someone could procure.
This one in particular remains still on the sidewalk, mindful enough to extricate herself from the general current by moving to the outside and one step closer, no more and no less. Her swingy blood-orange dress helps set her apart and provides an exquisite mark to any would be sniper. Whether Scarlett identifies Jack's unfamiliarity with her, she turns a blind eye to the possible sin of failing to notice her. "Here? Has it changed substantially from when you were last here, or has it remained the same?" she asks, tone light as a pour of champagne bubbles.
*
Jack takes an unthinking step back, but also closer to the wall. He hesitates a beat, lips parted. "I…..honestly don't remember," he confesses, turning his hands palm up and shrugging, both of them gloved, at the moment. There's the faintest of metallic whispers to the motion - no matter how he tries to tend the arm, something's out of place and grating when he makes certain movements. His tone is rueful. "Nothing ever looks the way you remember it looking as a kid, you know?" Assuming you remember it at all…
*
The slightest arch of her copper brows might go unnoticed. Scarlett pauses for a moment and stares off at the building in question, gauging it against the vault of bittersweet memories imprisoned within her mind. A slow process, that, but some things can never be forgotten in a labyrinthine weave of screams and sorrows, exultation and euphoria. "Not really, given everything," she replies slowly, a gauge. The litmus test of whether he recalls. Slowly edging along thin ice, the young woman's expression carries that faintest tincture of worry painted over it, blended with the effervescent sunniness bystanders expert. Masks within masks. "Would you like a coffee? No help being bewildered and turned about, and maybe I can help you make sense of it."
*
The smile's unfamiliar, too. A curling, uneven thing, uncertain. He doesn't seem to. No flare of recognition dawning. "That's kind of you," he replies, after a beat of mute confusion. But beyond that…..no idea where to go. The smile flickers out like a blown candleflame, and he's looking at her with the same little furrow in his brow present when he was looking at the apartment building. Waiting for some signal, something that might guide him out of his fog of confusion. Is she…..who's she working for?
*
"You are not required to." A pause follows, gauging like for like, two verbal fencers testing the uncertain footing around them. Eventually someone has to make the inevitable sacrifice. Once, it may have been him. She breaches the void by stepping over the proverbial distance, still otherwise in physical terms. Drawing in a deep breath, she jettisons any pretense of normal ignorance. "Jack Frost." Pause. "Bucky." Pause.
There are others in the arsenal of memory, ones she would rather not use. "It's Scarlett. Though sometimes you insist on calling me Rogue." A faint hint of tolerant amusement bleeds out around the edges of her neutral tone. "I am… or have been, more appropriately, your partner."
*
Those names are familiar enough that his throat works, and he blinks at her - going even blanker, somehow, close to expressionless. "You do know me," Not really a question, more a kind of resigned confirmation; what the face refuses to reveal comes out in the voice. Of course. Every redheaded woman in New York knows him. "I don't know you." It's a flat admission, no apology, no embarassment. "My partner, eh? In what?"
*
"I know you," agrees the girl, and she inclines her head towards the far end of the road. "We should not talk about these things in public. You taught me that, better to have important conversations without an audience of everyone and everything." If her instincts are good, Scarlett might recognize any threats pointed at her or, more nebulously, if he intends to bolt. Not that she may pursue, avoiding a risk of sending a predator in sheep's clothing to ground. Calculating the distance, she starts walking somewhat there. "We worked together. You are the best at you do, and I wanted to learn from the best. Then you took a job at a large corporation and I thought it best to give you room to live your life and pursue a lovely young lady, rather than her mistaking me for that kind of partner."
*
He surveys her for a long moment, hands in his pockets. Watching her go as if he intended to let her just walk away. But of course, he doesn't. A few steps and then he's following, catching up to her with long strides. A sidelong glance, a mute challenge in itself. "Yeah?" he asks. Here's someone else handing him another piece of the puzzle, another shard he can try to use to reassemble the wreckage of his memories. This doesn't make sense. But then, none of it has thus far, in this cavalcade of confusion.
*
Oh, would that her curse ran oppositional to its natural current, and allowed her to impart what she knows. Yet they lack any sort of uplink. The only means available she will not tap, denying that succor to a man desperately feeling about for a spar to float in a restless sea. "Yeah. What part would you like, that you went off to work for Stark Industries as a janitor or something, chasing after the executive secretary, assistant, whatever they title her? A very nice young lady you had feelings for who ended up in a fair bit of hot water, as I recall." Memory is her damnation. She is memory, the scripture of another's experience, devoid of her own.
"Before that, Mr. Frost, Mr. Barnes, Mr. Doe, Mr. Name of the Week," she murmurs in a lightly conversational tone that would throw off any eavesdropper, "we were running together on different jobs. Hunting terrorists, for one, though if I have to guess, either that got compromised or something happened." Something with a capital S, the subtle stress lies betwixt them implying its significance, a gulf narrowed. "You may well have saved my life, once upon a time. I saved yours more than once. Now you're back to monotone two-word answers. Fate plays a funny game, except I don't know we will spend two days holed up again, being hunted, and learning we aren't one another's enemies."
*
Jack's been afraid of his past. Angered, enraged - the glimpses have not been good. But that's a far cry from the exasperation he feels at that little tidbit of information. "I was a janitor." Back to flat, monotone answers indeed. He's annoyed at this former iteration of himself, insult added to so many injuries….but even the discovery of a professional pride to be stung is something. "Rogue, huh? Or Scarlett? I wasn't training you to be a cleaning lady, then. What did we do on that front?" Someone else to tell him what he hopes is some version of the truth. His expression is more reminiscent of Jack of old - cold, impassive, over that seething icy anger.
*
His exasperation halts her long enough to stifle a laugh, her hand covering her mouth. Scarlett cannot help herself. "Yes, that's my understanding. A rather unusual choice, but I am not one to judge. You decided on a course, and as your friend, I support you rather than discouraging you from a relatively harmless course of action." Albeit a complete waste, but she's far too polite to say it. "Scarlett," she replies. "You taught me a great deal. Thorough education. Disassembly and assembly of weapons, exfil and infiltration, observation, disarming explosives, interpretive driving techniques, electrical rewiring, and about twenty dozen other topics wholly unsuitable for a nice young lady, tolerance for someone with a habit of plowing through dinner mechanically instead of sampling it." The last is meant to be a gentle tease, if the smile isn't enough. "How to sit on a rooftop and overlook a river without tactically breaking down all the varied advantages. Patience. Hope."
*
Each subject in that listed curriculum is like a little blow of its own. The anger damps down like embers dying, leaving only that cold remoteness in its place. James Barnes is a war hero, or so the old newspaper clippings say, dead a martyr at the very end of the conflict. Jack Frost is apparently a terrible piece of work, and every revelation thus far's been the opening yet another part of Pandora's box. The lines of strain are etched ever more deeply, as he looks at her, lips pale. "Why did you want to learn all that?" The 'from me' goes unstated - does it still count as him if he doesn't remember, doesn't want to. Like someone waking after an exorcism to get an account of exactly what his own personal demon was up to while he was out.
*
"Do you really want to know?"
It's a question from Pandora herself. Or perhaps Athena, responsible for guiding Zeus to leave something at the bottom of that accursed box, an end to the age of bronze. Her tone is gentle enough. Scarlett gives him that much.
*
He cants his head at her, that raptorish little gesture. "Want to? No. Feel I'd better find out all I goddamned well can, yeah," Harsh and rasping and a whisper of the old Jack, utterly impatient with any human shortcoming, even his own.
*
"Because you are a good man, and you did terrible things you regret. And someone has to check your balance." Simple as that.
A pause given for a response will eventually lead her in another direction, regardless. Scarlett smiles. "Look at the scope of history and see how many people knew such equivalent talents and could put them to use. Is every soldier to be damned for the lessons he took into battle. Does the battlefield define us all? Or can they be directed in another fashion? I follow a path of non-violence, for the most part. But to understand them, I have to know why they work. And you were honest with me, in your way. Much more so than most."
*
There's that pinched look on his features again. "How philosophical of you," he drawls, and it's dry enough to desiccate, that tone. "So I was some sort of assassin or agent provocateur, and you were just trailing after me like my apprentice? On the job training? How can you say I'm a good man?" They're getting philosophical indeed. Next it'll be how many angels Bucky can snipe off the head of a pin at a thousand meters out.
*
The darkness in him refuses to stick to her, in part because she might well be prepared for it. "What does it matter? I tell you how we evaded men and women out for blood for three days, or that the gauge of a person cannot always be told through what they say, what they do. It reads like a book. Pardon me, I'm not that stupid or naive in the world." Scarlett shakes her head slightly, and the silvery hue of her voice buoys up the statements made. "No, I was working with you. As a point of fact, I had a good idea of what the risk was. How can I say? Because I know how you broke. The fracture lines. The internal holes and pains. None of that means anything either. As I said, I knew when it was smart to stay away. Perhaps you're rueing the day, now."
*
"Find me again, Scarlett," he says. And there's something final in his voice. A dare, perhaps, or a challenge. "But….make it soon." And with that, he's stepping back a pace, two, not looking over his shoulder, but blending as seamlessly into the passing crowd like a fish into its flashing school of companions. Not vanishing like some vaudeville Mephistopheles in a cloud of smoke and mocking laughter, but just gone.