[age plot: for bucky]

[onlyforthedream]

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.

Comments

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

Bucky sounds sort of down about it, and I feel a real strong urge to make him feel anything but. I won't lie to him, though. Luckily, I don't have to.

"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."

[onlyapassenger]

"I guess," says Bucky, scratching the back of his head. He's not quite convinced, much as he'd like to be. The way Natalia was going on earlier, though, he's not sure serious begins to cover it; the future doesn't sound all that promising to him, and given that he apparently loses an arm, he can't imagine that his older self has much to smile about on a regular basis.

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."

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

"That wouldn't make any sense," I point out.

"I'd be older, and I'd have gone through the war with you, too."

[onlyapassenger]

"Yeah, but you're..." starts Bucky, trying to come up with an adequate adjective for Steve Rogers, and failing entirely. "I don't know, you're Cap, Steve. Even older and battle weary, you'd probably still keep everything together. Or..."

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."

[onlyforthedream.livejournal.com]

I close the sketchbook, then move to the bed and lift the photograph of mother. I run my fingers across it before very carefully slipping it back into the book.

"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.

[onlyapassenger]

"I don't think you know how," Bucky replies, his brief foray into seriousness utterly forgotten when the corners of his mouth hitch upwards into an earnestly crooked grin, pride reading clear on his face. "You're the best friend a guy could hope for!"