Chapter Text
He was so incredibly suspicious to Zoya. Even though he’d tell her things when she asked questions about where he was from, his family, etc., there was always an air of withholding about him. But there were two things about him she didn’t doubt.
Firstly, he was definitely born in 1917 like he said he was. He talked differently than everyone else. Not strikingly, but enough that she could tell the difference. It seemed normal enough to her, the common phrases and cadences from her youth. But in contrast with how Sam, Tony, Wanda, and everyone else but Steve spoke, there was something distinctly archaic about it. His references didn’t click with everyone else the way they clicked with her and Steve.
Secondly, he was definitely kept in a Hydra facility at some point. The way he trained, ate, talked, reasoned, everything, screamed Hydra. When she first saw his dogtags swing free of their usual spot, tucked beneath his shirt, she thought it was just military muscle memory that made him so precise. But it wasn’t just precision. It was calculation.
Well, that and the hollow look behind his eyes. Her best guess was that he was one of the test experiments for the super soldier serum. That was how she had started out, too, before they noticed her unique level of determination and constitution. Perhaps that was where she recognized him from.
She found it surprisingly easy to get along with him, which was fortunate considering she wasn’t allowed out of his eyesight except for in obvious circumstances of privacy. However, she hesitated to trust him. To trust anything, really. Wanda, Sam, and Nat….she wouldn’t call it trust but there was something there. Maybe it was their overt understanding, their willingness to try to relate. Not trust but comfortability.
With Bucky, that sense of peace wasn’t so easy. Every moment around him felt like a prickle at her spine. It was as if her body couldn’t tell if it was okay with him being near or if she wanted to launch at him and rip out his throat at any moment.
There was one of those moments, where she watched him with scrutiny from the corner of her eye, sizing up whether she wanted to kick him or talk to him. He sat there, lounged on a couch, arms crossed. He looked at her. Really looked at her. His blue eyes traced over her like she didn’t even need to talk and yet he knew what she felt.
“It gets better, you know.” It was gruff, but not as icy as she tended to be with him.
“I didn’t say anything.” she insisted, still watching him like he’d go for the kill at any second.
“You didn’t have to.”
“What is ‘it’?”
“That whole jumpy feeling. It’s like an electric current in your veins, right? You’re looking at me like I’m a squirrel and you’re a hunting dog. It’s that sense that everything’s out to get you and the only way to stop it is by striking first. It gets better. Not easier, at least not for me. But it gets better. Eventually, you’re able to breathe again. They didn’t treat you like a person, did they?”
Damn. She wondered if he had mind reading abilities. She didn’t really seem to mind, though. It was easier for someone to just know how you felt than to have to say it yourself, especially when you didn’t really understand what you felt in the first place.
“Why would they? I’m not.” she responded, taking an uneasy seat on the edge of the couch, as far from him as possible.
He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re free to believe that about yourself if you want. I can’t force you to be human, and I can’t ignore that clearly part of you isn’t. But that’s your decision, not theirs. Besides, if you ask me, you seem pretty human.”
“...I don’t know what it’s like to be treated like a person. Couldn’t tell you either which way if they treated me like one or not.” She was quiet for a moment, picking through her wings with her fingers, though they were already perfectly clean.
“Humans don’t have wings. Humans don’t have altered brains. They don’t view things as predator or prey. And they don’t have to be leashed to someone they barely know because they’re a liability.” She held up her wrist for emphasis, golden bracelet glinting in the light.
Bucky shrugged, clasping his hands together in some imitation of easygoing posture, though Zoya didn’t think she’d seen the tension leave his shoulders once since she met him.
“Sounds like you’re letting who they tried to make you define who you are.”
She scoffed, flaring her wings out. She didn’t extend them to their full length, it felt like overkill, but a decent six feet was enough to make her point. “Do I have a choice?”
Her tone, quickly becoming as ruffled as her feathers, was deflated as his gentle intonation followed up her question with laser precision.
“Yeah.”
She stared at him.
“Well, easy for you to say. You made it out.”
“So did you. Look, I’m not saying the choices are always good, but there’s always some kind of choice. They may have chained you up, but they can’t tell you who you are. You’re the only one who gets to do that.”
She stared harder. He cleared his throat and shuffled slightly in his seat, his uncomfortability showing as her gaze practically bore holes in his skull.
“Whatever.”
Zoya turned her head away, busying herself with picking at a nonexistent dirty spot on her feathers. As if they were ever dirty. It was hard to figure out how to do it, but she managed to take regular dust baths and keep her wings out of water when she showered. She kept them pristine.
Stupid Bucky and his stupid perceptiveness. Wasn’t she like, one of the top assassins in the world at one point? A revolution of science and genetics?
She could hear the scrape of denim against polyester as Bucky scooted a little closer on the couch.
“Zoya.”
Despite her better judgement, she turned back to him. The look he gave her filled her with simultaneous rage and sorrow. Who fits that much compassion in their eyes? For her, of all people? Idiotic Bucky, that’s who.
He sighed, mustering up the ghost of a sympathetic smile. “You don’t owe anything to anyone. I mean that. Not to Hydra, not to Tony, not to Sam, Wanda, Nat, me. I mean, some basic kindness is always good, but you get to choose what side you fight on, or to not fight at all.”
She rolled her eyes. “People like me don’t get to escape the fight. It follows us.”
He set his jaw, a faraway look taking over his eyes. “Yeah. Don’t I know it? Either way, don’t let me tell you who you are, either. That’s up to you.”
She wanted to ignore him, really bad actually. She could lash out, scratch him, scream at him, tell him she didn’t need his pity or his advice.
Unfortunately, she knew damn well he was right. And he knew it too.
She breathed out, took a gulp of air, swallowing her pride with it.
“Okay, and if I choose a side? What then?”
He ran a hand through his hair in contemplation. “Honestly? My approach has just been to fight like hell for it. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Once you believe in something, defending it is second nature. Just gotta hold on.”
“Is that freedom?”
He didn’t answer her as quick, for once. He just looked at her, biting the inside of his cheek, letting the silence draw out before he spoke.
“That’s up to you.”
Now, when was the last time she got to choose? Through the entire rest of the week, those words stuck with her. Up to her. She got to pick. She was stuck here for now but they weren’t making her go back to Hydra, weren’t experimenting on her here. It was up to her.
The more she watched Bucky and the rest of the team train, the deeper her contemplation became. They all had a story, none of them very happy. Yet, here they were. They could have done whatever they want once they got out of their respective cages, real or figurative.
They chose to save people.
Sounded a lot better than having to be saved.