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It had been a hard mission, and it was already very late, so Bucky had not expected to hear a knock on his door. But since he was still awake, he went to open up.
Standing there was Walker, and he looked… nervous. Why would he be nervous? “What’s going on, Walker?”
“I… I took a hit in the back, but I can’t reach it, and… Would you help me stitch it up?”
It took Bucky a few seconds to understand what exactly Walker had said – and to wonder why the hell he had not mentioned having gotten injured earlier. Eventually, he decided against saying anything other than: “Of course, yes… Come in.”
Bucky was staring at a canvas of pale-white skin darkened by fresh bruises and marred by a roadmap of scars. Some of them were recent – Bucky even remembered during what missions they had been acquired – but most of them were older. Bucky touched one of them with the tip of his finger and asked, “What happened here?”
Walker told him the story of an explosion in Afghanistan, and Bucky moved on to the next scar. They did this for a while until Bucky began tracing the outline of an extensive scar that looked like old burns. “And this?” he asked.
Walker tensed up a little but stated in a calm voice: “When I was a kid, there was a fire. My brother had to get me out.”
There was something about this that rubbed Bucky the wrong way. “Where were your parents?”
Walker almost imperceptibly shrugged. “They left without me.”
Bucky was itching to comment on that, but he eventually decided to just move on to the last group of scars. As soon as his finger made contact with the raised skin, Walker shuddered, and Bucky thought about leaving it be. But he had come so far already, and he feared that Walker was never going to be as open with him again as he was at that moment. “What are THESE from?”
When Walker did not say anything but kept taking deep breaths, Bucky added, “Because they almost look like evidence of a flogging… Did somebody take a whip to your back, Walker?”
Walker nodded wordlessly.
Letting his fingers trace the canyons of cicatrized skin, Bucky noted, “The burns overlay the scars from the flogging, which means that they were already there when you received the burns… Which means… that you were whipped as a CHILD…” Moving to Walker’s front and gently grabbing his face to force eye contact, Bucky asked him, “John, did your PARENTS whip you?”
When Walker nodded, it was such a rapid motion that it looked more like he was trembling.
But then Walker said, “Don’t tell the others, please.”
And that… “Why not? What is it you think would happen?”
“That they’d approve,” Walker stated as if it were the most natural thing it the world. “That they’d think I deserved it… And I did, it…”
Walker was not able to finish that sentence, for Bucky had slammed his hand over his mouth. Trying to swallow his anger to make sure that Walker was not going to think it was directed at him, Bucky declared, “No, you did NOT, John. You were a KID! Listen to me, what you parents did, it is very fucking far from being okay.”
“But…”
“No ‘but’, John,” Bucky insisted. “Whatever happened that led to this, it was not your fault.”
Walker’s eyes made it quite obvious that he did not believe Bucky, but that was alright. They had time. And Bucky could be stubborn if he needed to be, so he was going to find a way to convince Walker of his innocence.
THE END