1964-04-07 - Ancient History
Summary: Log Summary
Related: More memory stuff
Theme Song: None
kai bucky 


He seems to feel safer higher up….a better vantage point, easier to control entrances and exits. So it's a safe bet that's the most likely place to find him, that makeshift aerie atop one ruined building. Only good for a few weeks more, before it's all taken down and something shinier, taller, newer rises in its place.
And that is where Kai finds him - sitting on a crate in the shadow of the dovecote, face in his hands. He's silent, rigidly so, barely breathing….but every line of him is eloquent of misery.

*

Kai has made this dovecote part of his rounds, just in case. He's been out being a superhero tonight, and so who steps out of the stairwell onto the roof is a figure in grey. Grey hood, a grey coat altered into a cloak, grey clothes, grey mask. He's got his apple with him, the tool of his trade.
When he sees Bucky is in evidence tonight, he approaches with care. "Jack?" he says as he pulls back his hood and curls spring forth, and he draws the mask down so it hangs at his neck, just a strip of cloth, really. He's not foolhardy enough to approach Bucky in disguise.

*

Wise of him, because he's succeeded in startling the Winter Soldier. For an instant he's all coiled tension, ready to attack….and then it's Kai, and he unwinds. His eyes are red-rimmed, but he hurries to reassume that bland, inexpressive mask he usually wears. "Hey," he says, a little hoarsely.

*

Kai hurries over, and he says, "Jack, hey, man…" He clasps Bucky on the shoulder. "Or James, I guess? What do you prefer to be called?" He sits beside his friend, not at all shy about proximity or touch, though there's something guileless about it. There are no intentions here, Mister Person. "What's up, cat?"

*

How could there be? He's apparently as sexless as a plaster saint, not flinching from the touch. "James," he says, softly. Then he looks at the cloak. "What's that about?" he asks, lifting the hem with a hand. "I….uh. Just sitting trying to remember. Not getting very far."

*

Kai smiles softly. "James," he says. He glances at the cloak. He's done good stitchwork in the altering of it. "I don't need the rest of the world knowing Kai Alfsson's off helping the helpless, yeah? So this is Hjuki." He half-smiles. "Healer of Hell's Kitchen." He says it lightly, without any seriousness to it. He leans lightly against Bucky's leg, like a loyal hound. "Does it ever come and go?" he asks quietly. "You've got a name, that's a start."

*

"It's walled off," he says, tightly. "It physically hurts to even try and think about it. To try and look at the black spaces. I only know my name now because a woman told it to me….and the records agreed, so I don't think she made it up. But this was my whole life!" His voice is ragged with the strain. "I'm James Barnes, I was a sergeant in the US Army, I was a commando. I fought all across Europe, I was a prisoner of war….I'm from Brooklyn, my friend's a guy who ended up being Captain America…" he recites the facts carefully. As if handing them off to Kai. "And….none of it feels real to me. Shadows and glimpses."

*

Kai's eyes widen. "That's the Steve you're friends with?" Kai says. "Wow, man, that's far out." Then he gives a sympathetic wince. "I can't imagine how rough that's got to be, mate. Maybe if it's all walled off, there's a reason. You might be protecting yourself." He looks up at Bucky. "What are you going to do?"

*

He shakes his head. "It isn't. I mean….I don't think I did it. I think it was done to me. I've got twenty years of blankness, and images that don't make sense. Yeah. Steve Rogers. I have one memory of him now, that that other woman jarred loose. I don't know. I'm out here floating, Kai. I have to choose. Even if it's just to wait and let myself be taken. Better the guys here than the guys I came from."

*

"Are you going to turn yourself in, James?" Kai says. "To who? Not the pigs." He thinks, then eyes Bucky speculatively. "Do you have a backup plan if whoever it is doesn't have your best interests in mind? You can't trust the suits, doesn't matter who they say they're with."

*

"I don't," he admits. "I can try and run off to some third world shithole and make a living with the gun….but I'm not even really sure who I'm running from. It sounds like a paranoid fantasy, but it's my life." He eyes Kai sidelong. "I'm tired, Kai. So tired. This has to be over with - I can't spend the next however many years haunted by my own ghost. I have a gravestone in fucking Arlington - they thought both Steve and I died on a mission."

*

Kai clasps Bucky's shoulder, the fleshy one. "What does Steve think you should do? I mean he's Captain America. And you're his best friend! If you can't trust him, there's no hope for any of us." He smiles a little, though the expression dims into sympathetic sadness. "Whatever happens, don't let them turn you into anything you don't want to be."

*

"Steve thinks I should turn myself in - he knows some people, apparently," he says, quietly. "I was his best friend. I don't know him now, beyond that one memory. I think he's still the same guy he was." At that, he looks at Kai fully and says, "….it's kind of late for that, I think. But….maybe they can offer a way out. And even if they can't….they can keep the Russians away from me."

*

"It's like we talked about," Kai says. "You told me who you want to be, and that's…" He frowns. "After all the shit you've been through, you should get to be that guy. The one who doesn't kill people." He sighs, and he leans shoulder-to-shoulder against Bucky. "If he's really your best friend, he'll do whatever it takes to look out for you. I would. Hell, James, I would straighten it all out in a heartbeat if I could. I don't want you turning yourself in to any suits, but if it's Cap saying so…"

*

People keep touching him. Rogue, Kai….and he doesn't lash out. "I don't want to, either," he says, quietly. "But ….I can't fix myself. I hoped that learning things about who I used to be….all I got was a headache. I damn near passed out in a public library. Anyway. You've been good to me. So I'll say thank you now….because I can't say I'll never forget it. I'm probably going to."

*

Human contact is healthy, damn it. Kai is a firm believer in this. "I don't want you to go," he says softly. "You're the closest friend I've got, James. I'm going to miss you, and thinking you're not even going to remember me…" He gives Bucky the full brunt of those big puppy eyes. "Promise me you'll try?" Then he pats himself down for… something, anything. From a pocket, he draws out a piece of folded up paper and offers it over. It's just a practice sketch of a hand in repose. "It's not much, but I made it…"

*

He takes it, opens it. "It's good work," he says, looking at it. "That's the other thing I used to know. I was in art school when the war broke out. Steve and me both - training for WPA stuff. I'll try, Kai. I will. But I need to choose, to do something….before it's done to me again."

*

Kai nods, curls bobbing. "I know, James. I'd be the last one to say turn yourself in if it weren't for having Captain America on your side." He winces as he says that. "Listen to me, sounding like a square." Then he flings his arms around Bucky's shoulders. He has no dignity. None. "If they don't take care of you, I'll hunt them down and make them."

*

For a beat, he freezes, clenches up. When was the last time someone….Pepper. Poor Pepper. But he forces himself to relax….and even puts a careful arm around Kai's shoulders for a moment.

*

Kai relaxes, not that he was terribly tense before. Bucky gets hugged. It's one of Kai's key personal skills. "Do you want to crash on the couch tonight?" he asks. "Maybe kills a bottle off with me? We don't even have to talk, man. And I won't lock my windows, because you never know, right?"

*

"No," he says, but his tone's soft enough that it isn't abrupt. "I kind of need to sleep outside tonight, I think. I…don't think I can handle being inside walls. And….I don't think drinking's a good idea. I get really drunk, I….it's like I'm swimming in all this stuff I saw, but I don't understand it. …you hear about guys who take to the bottle after the war, 'cause they can't handle what they saw. The guys who liberated the camps…." He shudders. "I didn't. I'm glad. But what I see is what I did. It's like they made me like them. I went over there to stop them. To be part of making sure that the world was safe from stuff like that….but they got me." He's frowning, looking at the toes of his boots. "That's the worst part of it. It'd've been easier if I had just died, 'cause I died doing something good. Now I have all this blood on my hands. That's what I see when I drink, these faces. I killed a family, once, to get at the mother. I don't remember what she'd done to become a target." He cuffs at his eyes, impatiently. "But I ran the car off the side of a mountain, made it look like an accident. Her kids were in the car. I just left them there." Not weeping, exactly. But his voice is raw, his eyes gone red again.

*

Kai hugs Bucky a little tighter before letting him go. "Okay," he says. Then, with a huff of mirthless laughter, he adds, "Hitting the bottle, the pipe, and the pills is all I can do sometimes to cope, and I didn't see half the stuff those boys did." He continues that human contact, shoulder to shoulder, for various definitions of human. "I know it's not my place," he says, "but I forgive you for what they made you do." He's not quite as staid as Bucky is; tears spring hot and fierce to his eyes, and he blinks them away quickly only to have them slide down his cheeks. "I don't think I can forgive the ones that made you do it, though."

*

"I just don't wanna die like this. It'll be like they really won. I wish that stuff worked. Sometimes the painkillers do….but I've got ….it's like I've got rules in my head. I can't get around them, and some of them have to do with that." His voice has gone dull, flattening out again, as if divorcing himself from how it feels is the only way to make it bearable. "You can have that stuff I took from you back, I can't take it." He takes a deep, shaking breath. "It's important that someone knows I didn't mean it, that that really wasn't who James Barnes was. It'll come out some day, all the things I did. Nothing stays buried forever. And I probably won't be there to defend myself, to say what it really was like. But you'll know. You'll outlive this, outlive this story." His lips pull in one of those mirthless smiles. "You'll remember, when all of this is like ….ancient history. Thermopylae and Hastings and Gaul."

*

Kai says with a small, wistful smile, "I'll remember, and whenever anyone asks who James Barnes was, I'll say he was a dutiful soldier and a good friend." He wipes his eyes on his sleeve and sniffles. "Steve knows," he adds quietly. "I can't believe I'm sitting here calling him Steve like I know him. And if he doesn't understand, I'll kick him." He sniffles. "Right in the shin."

*

Now there's that deadpan humor in his voice. "YOu do that, you're gonna break your foot. I'm serious. Listen….I remember enough of Steve to know that he's a good guy. You need help, find him. He's still gotta be some kinna public figure. He can't help himself, the meathead."

*

"Then I'll give him the apple and make him heal it," Kai grumbles. He sighs shakily, eyes red-rimmed. "But I'll look for him if I need help. Or I need to check up on you." He offers Bucky a brittle smile. "I've got to make sure my James is okay. I'm not as small as I pretend to be, you know?" He sits up a little taller. "And I won't leave it alone til I'm sure you're okay."

*

He's got a ragged bandana in lieu of an actual hankie. Without a word he hands it over to Kai. Because the elf, the elf is verklempt. "Bring a few valkyries if you do," he teases. "I always thought Valhalla sounded more fun than Heaven."

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