The Truth Will Out.

[onlyforthedream]

I don't find Bucky at his place, but I find him near enough. In my brief morning sojourn to the Compound, I couldn't help but notice a kind of tension. I was planning to come by anyway, but now I have a specific question in mind, when I do. Maybe Bucky knows what's going on.

It's not the strangest thing, perhaps, that Bucky owns a horse. It certainly isn't something I would have pictured him doing back home, though, even in a world where we weren't- well. Who we were. I've ridden enough to know Virginia is a fine mare, but taking care of a horse is an entirely different matter than riding one.

"Bucky." I lift a one hand briefly in greeting as I walk up to the single wooden stall.

"How are you?"

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[onlyapassenger]

The morning's been an adventure. It figures that the day after Natalia arrives, the damn island would be up to its old tricks again; every good thing that's ever happened to Bucky's always been followed by something to cut it down, and it's no surprise to him that it's happened again. He's already told both her and Jason that he's going to lay low for the next few days, that he's not about to let himself be made a puppet, that he's not going to spout out secrets against his will, that he won't be manipulated, but he's in the middle of packing up Virginia to leave when a familiar voice stops him dead in his tracks.

Bucky Barnes is not a man who panics, too arrogant to ever truly count himself out for the count, but on the list of people he doesn't want to see right now, Steve Rogers is at the very top. The secrets he's kept from the man are as many as they are varied, and biting back a frustrated grunt, Bucky forces himself to pick up where he left off, an artless, desperate edge to his every move as he starts to finish up.

"Angry," he blurts out after a long moment's silence, despite his best efforts to say fine. Not for the first time, he's only a passenger in his own mind. "I don't want to talk to you."