Steve Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
onlyforthedream) wrote2011-08-01 01:45 am
onlyforthedream) wrote2011-08-01 01:45 am
[age plot: for bucky]
As frightening as it had been to wake up in the strange house, and venture out into the bizarre and exotic island, it's almost as unnerving to return to it now. I want to say sorry to whoever's it is, to explain to them that I didn't mean to wake up there, or knock that table over, but no one's inside. After standing around for a good while knocking, I push the door open and move through the cool dark rooms. It's clean but it doesn't look really lived in, like it's kind of new. The only sign anyone's been here recently is the canvas sack of what I guess are dirty clothes, and the empty- now broken- glass and book with the pencil sticking out of it that were on the night stand I ran into in my hurry to get out of the place. Feeling bad about it, I crouch down and take a while to pick up all the little pieces of glass I can find against the wood floors. There are a few big ones, and their edges look almost smooth but I know they'll cut if I don't handle them right. I layer them onto each other so each curved piece cradles the next, but they don't fit quite right, and the sound they make when they scrape together sort of bothers my ears. Then I pick up all the littler pieces and put them on top, but I probably missed some. Righting the table, I put the glass on it. I'll find a broom, I promise silently, but I guess I don't know who it is I'm promising. I pick up the notebook and carefully brush at it with my fingertips to make sure there's no glass fragments on it. I can't help but notice the little piece sticking out, paper that's a different type than the pages.
Instinctively, I know I shouldn't. It's been rude enough, gawking at all the pictures that are up in the house, pictures of soldiers and heroes. Some of them are photographs, some of them are drawn, so I don't know which one the person who lives here is, an artist or a photographer or a soldier. I like the drawings a lot- I like to draw, myself. I hope I can get that good some time, but paper is kind of expensive. Usually I just use the backs of other things, but the teachers at school and the administrators at the orphanage say I shouldn't. They don't ever seem mad about it, they just seem a little disapproving, so I try not to, but.
But there isn't an orphanage, here. Or my school. There's no buildings or streets, it's all like something out of an adventure story. Like The Swiss Family Robinson, or Treasure Island. Anyway, everyone's been very kind, and I haven't met any pirates, but I haven't met any big families or anything, so I guess it's just an island. It'd be swell to see a pirate, but to be honest, I bet that pirates in real life are more dangerous and cruel than exciting.
I pull the photograph paper out from the sketching book and drop it again, but I don't notice. The picture's of a pretty woman with her hair done up real nice, looking sort of embarrassed but smiling. I don't think anyone else would think she looks embarrassed, I just do because I know what that look means. Her mouth is doing a little thing on its side. Mine would do it too sometimes, and she would put her thumb into the one dimple in my cheek and tell me it was and that I shouldn't feel shy about things. I almost think I can smell her, while I'm looking at the picture, even though I know that can't be true.
It's not that I mean to, I really don't, but I start crying. I miss her, every day. Sometimes I think I'm used to them both being gone, and it's been so many years since father died, but mom...
I end up sitting on the floor of the house near the open front door with my back pressed against the wall. The picture's on the floor and I'm looking at it from over the tops of my knees, where I've got my nose and mouth pressed against the boney part, although the other fellas say all of me is bones. I can feel the ones in my back against the wood and the ones in my elbows digging into my palms, maybe hard enough to leave bruises, I dunno. I don't understand why there's a picture of her here. I don't understand where here is. I don't understand why I'm alone.
Even if it's been that way for long enough now that I should be used to it.
Instinctively, I know I shouldn't. It's been rude enough, gawking at all the pictures that are up in the house, pictures of soldiers and heroes. Some of them are photographs, some of them are drawn, so I don't know which one the person who lives here is, an artist or a photographer or a soldier. I like the drawings a lot- I like to draw, myself. I hope I can get that good some time, but paper is kind of expensive. Usually I just use the backs of other things, but the teachers at school and the administrators at the orphanage say I shouldn't. They don't ever seem mad about it, they just seem a little disapproving, so I try not to, but.
But there isn't an orphanage, here. Or my school. There's no buildings or streets, it's all like something out of an adventure story. Like The Swiss Family Robinson, or Treasure Island. Anyway, everyone's been very kind, and I haven't met any pirates, but I haven't met any big families or anything, so I guess it's just an island. It'd be swell to see a pirate, but to be honest, I bet that pirates in real life are more dangerous and cruel than exciting.
I pull the photograph paper out from the sketching book and drop it again, but I don't notice. The picture's of a pretty woman with her hair done up real nice, looking sort of embarrassed but smiling. I don't think anyone else would think she looks embarrassed, I just do because I know what that look means. Her mouth is doing a little thing on its side. Mine would do it too sometimes, and she would put her thumb into the one dimple in my cheek and tell me it was and that I shouldn't feel shy about things. I almost think I can smell her, while I'm looking at the picture, even though I know that can't be true.
It's not that I mean to, I really don't, but I start crying. I miss her, every day. Sometimes I think I'm used to them both being gone, and it's been so many years since father died, but mom...
I end up sitting on the floor of the house near the open front door with my back pressed against the wall. The picture's on the floor and I'm looking at it from over the tops of my knees, where I've got my nose and mouth pressed against the boney part, although the other fellas say all of me is bones. I can feel the ones in my back against the wood and the ones in my elbows digging into my palms, maybe hard enough to leave bruises, I dunno. I don't understand why there's a picture of her here. I don't understand where here is. I don't understand why I'm alone.
Even if it's been that way for long enough now that I should be used to it.
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"So you're from... some time in the 40s?" I ask, looking up at Bucky with kind of wide eyes. It's like something out a Jules Verne book, a hero from the future coming to tell someone in the past about their future.
Except there is no way that I can go from what- from who I am now to that man in the photograph, even if I had ten years to do it. I look back at the picture and feel a sort of sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"...I don't think I can be the person you think I am," I tell him. He probably won't like me for saying it, but I can't let him go on thinking something that's plainly impossible. It's dishonest.
"Even if I had twenty years. I'm sorry."
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"Dr. Erskine turns me into that?" I ask, looking back up at the picture. I bet the suit the man is wearing is all red and white and blue, like the flag. With the stripes and the star, it would make sense.
"But... but how?" I know as I ask it how bad I want it to be true. I do. The fellas in the photo look kind tired, like... they're kind of tight around the edges, but they look happy. Like they're doing something important.
"I want to be that," I say quietly.
"If everyone else is fighting, I should be fighting, too."
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I can't tell if I feel angry or embarrassed. It feels like being made fun of, even though I can tell he isn't, he's really not. And I guess it's only embarrassing that I want to believe all the things he says so badly. Either way, my face goes hot. I'm sort of all mixed up about it, but all I can think of to say is, "I've never been farther from Brooklyn than the Bronx."
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I'm wishing I could've shown mom this picture, that she could have known about this when Bucky mentions art, and then my whole body jolts and I turn and run, back to where I left the photo on the ground. How could I have been that careless?
It only takes a moment and I spot it, and crouch down to so so carefully pick it up by its edges, and blow real gentle across its face to make sure no sand or anything got on it to scratch it.
It's fine. She smiles that sort of nervous and half-pleased smile up at me, and it's fine. I look back up at Bucky.
"This fell out of a book. I didn't look in it, but it's like one of those plain art books that I see some college type kids going around with, and also there's a man who's a little older, and he draws the pigeons that hang out on the roof of the bakery by my.... by my old house. He uses a book like that." I stand and nod down the hall toward the bedroom.
"I left it in there."
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"I mean, it's technically yours, right? Whaddaya say?"
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"If it's mine, I guess. And it might be able to tell us something." I start down the real short hallway to the bedroom and pick the book up from where I'd left it.
"I'm not normally- I didn't mean to be disrespectful of it," I explain to Bucky.
"It was just finding a photograph of my mother... I was real startled, and..."
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"You're really good, aren'tcha?" he says, shamelessly pointing to a drawing of himself with unbridled enthusiasm. "Got my smile just right and everything."
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"I get better, looks like," I say, peering at the picture and smiling. The next page, the markings look a little darker, a little fresher. The pencil lead hasn't settled into the page the way it has in the other pictures, and anyway it's not finished. It's mostly done- it's a portrait, a sketch that doesn't have all the contrast filled in, the darker parts and the textures. It's more a line drawing with the beginnings of shading. The man is older, but not old. Maybe like how old I- apparently- am in the photos in the hall. A few years older than that but no more.
The picture sort of makes me sad. The man has a kind of dashing look to him, the way Bucky does, but it's more... worn. There's something in his eyes, which are probably the most finished part, his eyes and his mouth, that's sad, that's held back. Or, the more I look at it, I realize it's the opposite. It's like even though it's just shading on paper, just lines, you can see how tightly reigned in all his muscles are, how carefully controlled and it's his eyes and his mouth where something else comes through a little, something at ease and relaxed and young. But only just.
It's better than any of the other drawings in the book. Apparently, I really do get better.
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"I... I think that's me," he says absently, his voice losing some of its earlier enthusiasm. "I grow up kinda grim lookin', don't I?"
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"Mm-" I start, shifting a little, not nervous exactly but maybe kinda shy (which is dumb, I know it's dumb), "maybe kinda serious. We were both in the war, after all, and you haven't seen the end of it. Who knows how long it goes on." We also don't know what I'm supposed to look like, now. Bucky only knows the me in those pictures, the me from, I guess, back then.
"And look," I add, lifting a finger to point carefully, without smudging anything, at the man in the drawing's eyes and mouth, "it's still you. You can see it, right there."
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Well, except for Natalia, of course, but what kind of guy wouldn't smile around a pretty lady like her?
"I bet you still look the same, though."
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"I'd be older, and I'd have gone through the war with you, too."
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A thought suddenly occurring to him, Bucky shakes his head, waving a hand to dismiss his earlier statement. "No, I know-- It'd be the opposite of me, I think. Your eyes, those'd change, but everything else... The parts that people can see... That'd all the stay the same. 'Cause you'd wanna stay strong for the folks back home and the boys on the field, no matter what. It's just who you are."
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"Well, I guess we'll see, if things ever get back to normal." I walk back over to where Bucky stands and replace the sketchbook where I initially found it, on the bedside table. I don't know anyone in those pages. I don't even really know Bucky, though it feels like I do. I don't know exactly who Captain America is or what he's supposed to be, but I hope that I do a good job of being him, when the time comes. I hope...
"I hope I never let you down," I tell Bucky.
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