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The body is weak.
The body is weak and he—
the Soldier—
the Asset—
Bucky your name is Bucky—
he thinks it’s because the body hurts. Pain reduces effectiveness. Where necessary allow the body to heal. The body is a weapon that requires maintenance. The body is an asset that must be kept at optimum condition so far as possible under mission circumstances. He is the Asset but the body is an asset and pain reduces efficiency, allow the body to heal, allow yourself to heal, soldier, sit down and rest, sit down and—
He sets the shoulder. Stops the bleeding. Pain pain pain and then the body heals, knits itself closed, but the body is still weak, the body is still—
He walks past a cart the memories tell him are for selling food and the body smells the smells and the body screams and he thinks, oh.
The body is hungry.
The cart is abandoned. Scavenging is acceptable. Hot dogs, the memories tell him, and the cart has been abandoned for hours, the food is lukewarm, put the meat in the bun with onions and mustard, yeah, just like that.
The— Bucky eats five of them. He throws them all up ten minutes later. Wipes his mouth, and eats a plain roll. The bread is soft under his metal fingers. He can pinch it flat like puffs of cotton wool. It tastes sweet. Americans, he thinks, put more sugar in things than they used to.
He does not know how he knows this. Takes a bottle of water from the cart, and fills his pockets with a bag of rolls, and starts walking.
He has eaten all of the rolls and he has drunk all of the water and he has stolen new things. Cash. Clothes. A sweatshirt. It is thin and soft like the bread, cotton fleece combed out on the underside. It offers no tactical protection.
It is blue. Bucky feels good about the color blue.
He washes the dirt off his face and his hands in a public bathroom. Pulls on the sweatshirt and the baseball cap. He looks like a civilian and the body is weak again, the body is hungry. He doesn’t remember being hungry like this before this time, before this reset.
Hunger is unsettling. It gnaws at his stomach the way the memories are beginning to do with his mind. He does not like being hungry.
He liked the rolls.
He goes into a diner, cap pulled low. Left hand in his pocket.
Mac and cheese, he says, words he doesn’t know he knows. Creamed spinach. A cup of coffee.
Sure thing, the waitress says, and when the food arrives, it is soft and easy to eat, the same way the bread was soft under his fingers. His mind taking care of his body even as he doesn’t know how it knows to.
God. He likes mac and cheese. Sharp cheddar and creamy sauce and breadcrumbs on top broiled until it’s crispy. He likes it a lot. Creamed spinach is merely acceptable. Vitamins, he thinks, and eats it dutifully before turning his attention back to the clearly superior item.
More? the body says, questioning, when his spoon scrapes against the empty plate.
Pal, you eat any more and you’ll make yourself sick, his head offers up, and for a moment he’s tempted anyway. The mac and cheese is very good. He doesn’t remember anything so good.
He drinks his coffee instead. Gets a refill. Sure you don’t want pie? the waitress asks, it’s strawberry, and he does, he does want pie. Bucky wants all these things.
Strawberry pie is even better than mac and cheese. Bucky wonders if he could learn to make it. If the head could hold that knowledge inside.
When he goes to the museum it makes him sick in a way he doesn’t expect. The head remembers and the body rejects. The body remembers—you slung your arm around his shoulders, easy, he was little and then he was big and you had to stretch up to reach—and the head thinks mission, and the head thinks but I knew him, and the head thinks he was my friend.
The head is right. Friends since childhood, the museum says, and he knows about propaganda, he knows enemies lie, he knows they lie and they lie to get into your head, you shaped the century—
The body takes a breath. Bucky takes a breath.
He can’t eat anything except plain bread and water for days, after. Gets sick whenever another memory slots into place. He’s tired, he’s so tired, he wants to fill himself up with good things like mac and cheese, strawberry pie, cake his ma made cake the night before he shipped out and she musta saved up the sugar rations for weeks, Becca peeled apples careful not to break the peel and let it twist out fortune-telling, who is my true love, her face laughing and sweet, she’s dead they’re all dead he misses—
He misses—
He goes to another diner. The pie there is blueberry. And then the next is peach, and the next, apple, and then pumpkin, the air is getting cold, it’s time to leave, he’s stayed too long in this place where he used to be a person such a long time ago.
In Thessaloniki he eats spanakopita and bougatsa and the plates of his metal fingers are filled with crackling flakes of filo pastry for hours. His shirt is dusted with powdered sugar, and he thinks, I definitely had a sweet tooth. That much is true, still. He and Bucky, they share this truth deep in the body. He brushes the sugar away. His fingertips leave ghost traces.
In Sofia, he goes to sleep and wakes up three hours later with bile under his tongue and memories so bad he wishes he could spit them out the way he spits and spits into the sink. He killed—
He—
They were children and he killed them, he’s sick to his stomach, he spent three hours making apple cake trying to get the spices right until everything was soft and fragrant, cinnamon-sweet, like he’s someone who deserves to eat cake when they were children and he killed them.
He retches and retches. Rinses his mouth with water so cold it makes his head ache. The next day, and the next, he doesn’t eat, and the hunger gnaws at him like the guilt gnaws at him everything is hollow everything hurts he’s sick and he doesn’t deserve—
The body is weak. The body is hungry and soft and human. He looks at himself in the mirror, the bones of his shoulders, his cheeks hollowed out from hunger, and he thinks, gentle, you didn’t deserve this.
He makes eggs scrambled in butter. Eats slowly. Lets himself taste it. You did what they made you do, he thinks, you did it, it was you, but the body wants. The body wants to live. The body wants soft things and nourishment and the joy of butter and herbs.
They were children, and he killed them, and he makes the apple cake again three times until he gets it right.
In Lviv, he learns what it is to have a preference. That he can dislike something. The cabbage soup is thick with pork fat and his body says, no.
I changed my mind, he says in fluent Ukrainian, and eats potato varenyky instead, careful not to grease-smudge the files he’s reading.
In Kraków, he gets sick. The kind of sick he didn’t think he could get, anymore. Chills so bad his teeth chatter and his body aches, and he piles on every sweater he owns, wraps his sleeping bag around himself. Wakes in the night to a fever breaking, leaving him dripping with sweat.
This is awful, he thinks, I swear I’m dying.
You’re not dying. Stop being so goddamn overdramatic and eat your fucking soup, I didn’t buy a whole chicken for you to up and die on me before you could even eat it.
As soon as he’s strong enough to walk, he goes to the market. A whole chicken. Celery and carrots and onions. Boil the chicken with the vegetables, slow and careful so the broth is strong and rich and yellow with fat. His windows steam up and this little room smells warm for the first time in months. Take the chicken out of the broth. Strip the meat off the bones. His metal hand can do it without waiting for it to cool. Discard the bones and the broth vegetables. All their goodness is boiled out of them. Bucky knows how that feels.
His metal hand is less good at making dumplings. Rolls them too hard. They turn out tough. He works with his right hand instead, touches them gently. Slides them into the soup, waits for them to cook. His nose is running again and he wipes it on his sleeve.
Stevie, that’s disgusting, pal, you got a handkerchief for a reason.
The soup is done. The carrots are very small. Bucky chose them because they were very small. He likes how tender they look. He ladles out a bowl, sits down cross-legged on the floor. Tries a mouthful.
It’s too hot. It’s too hot and it burns his mouth and his eyes tear up, he’s crying, it’s too hot but it’s, it’s, his ma made this soup and he made this soup, watched her make it a hundred times until he knew every step by heart, they tried to strip him clean like meat from bones but this is in his heart and they can’t boil it out.
His nose is running. He wipes it on his sleeve again, and eats his soup.
In Košice and Szeged, Zagreb, Duvrovnik, he learns and learns. Buys flour and spices. Meat, vegetables, fruit he selects just for the color and the smell of them. His body changes in ways he doesn’t expect. He’s still strong, he’s always strong, his muscles are solid and reassuring, he doesn’t want it to end in a fight but he knows it will and he knows he’ll win.
He looks down at himself one day and his body isn’t the lean frame it’d been before. No ribs standing out like bones of a shipwreck. His clothes are tighter. We made you into a knife to slide between ribs sharp and deadly, we made you into a ghost to go unseen and unheard, we made you into the empty space you leave behind. The body takes up space. The body has dimension. The body is solid and real and alive.
The body wants, he thinks, and he’s giving it things like gifts. Living in it like a home instead of a passing-through point. He slides his palm down his chest, down his hip. Feels the warmth of his palm and the soft curve of his stomach over the hard bulk of muscle. Trails fingertips up the inside of his thigh, and this is a gift too, this pleasure given just for the sake of it, for living, and he bites his lip, imagines someone else touching him the way he’s touching himself, imagines their mouth on him, swallowing him whole like wine.
He’s just buying plums, that’s all, he’s buying plums because they look ripe and rich and dark and he wants to taste their juice on his tongue. To cook them until they’re soft and eat them for breakfast spooned over the top of his oatmeal, maybe, stones lined up along the side of the bowl. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor.
Soldier , always, soldier soldier soldier. He lives with it. He doesn’t do that anymore.
Should have known, though. It always ends in a fight.
Steve’s body and Sam’s demand things just like his, it turns out. Hunger is universal even when you’re about to fight. They eat burgers, steaming the windows of this stupidly small car, and the grease sits on Bucky’s tongue. He curls his lip, scornful, and Sam Wilson makes eye contact in the rear-view mirror. Looks briefly surprised.
“What’s your deal?” he asks, and Bucky frowns.
“Nothing,” he says, “no deal, it’s just—”
His first meal with Steve, with Sam, with people who think they might know him at all, and it’s mass-produced, oversalted and bland all at the same time. It’s a disappointment, is all. Sam’s still watching him, eyes sharp, and Bucky frowns again. Feels his lips twitch. “It’s nothing,” he says again. “We get out of this, I’ll make you my pot roast.”
“Pot roast,” Sam says, like that’s a surprise, and Bucky raises one shoulder in a shrug, very deliberate. Screws up the paper bag into a ball. Resists the urge to throw it at Sam’s head. He’s made pot roast every Sunday for the last three months. Meat so tender you can eat it with a spoon, stewed sticky-dark and redolent with thyme and bay leaves. Tiny pearl onions. Bucky likes small vegetables.
The sundae is good, at least. Warm chocolate and cold soft serve. They got this down pat, Bucky thinks, and wishes he’d ordered two.
After the Raft Sam is bruised and wary, eyes tired the way Bucky remembers being tired. He screams in the night and Bucky brings him milk whisked with nutmeg and vanilla and honey, sweet and warm, and Sam’s eyes widen and widen like this is nothing he expected.
“What—” he says, and Sam doesn’t trust him, Sam shouldn’t trust him, that’s okay. But Sam’s body deserves soft things, Sam’s body deserves comfort, Sam deserves comfort.
“It’ll help,” Bucky says, and hopes it’s true.
He makes pot roast. He makes varenyky. He makes coq au vin and mac and cheese and honey-roasted beets with goat cheese and greens. He gets a new arm. He gets the words out of his head. He gets to live without running. So many gifts, and the way Sam never stops being surprised when he eats something good, something Bucky made just for him, it’s a gift too. Bucky hopes it feels like a gift for Sam too, maybe, but he’s not sure—
“Oh, fuck,” Sam says, and it’s wet, his eyes closed, “I always hated collards when I was a kid. We ate ‘em like four times a week, and I hated them.”
“I can make something else,” Bucky offers, and Sam smiles at him, pulls his plate closer.
“Don’t you dare,” he mutters, and cries as he eats, and after, Bucky hears him calling his mom.
I miss you, he says, soft, and Bucky thinks, god, ma, do I miss you.
In this new safehouse, there is a balcony that gets sun all day. Sam grows things, green and beautiful, until there’s barely enough space to stand. Bucky has to pick his way carefully through the pots.
He is not allowed to touch any of them.
“You got a black thumb,” Sam tells him, laughing and sunlit. He has dirt on his hands, under his nails, and he’s squatting down on the balcony, repotting a rosemary clipping into a larger container. The air smells fragrant and resinous and Sam is so beautiful that it hurts Bucky, just a little, right in his chest.
“I do not,” he says, wounded, “come on, just lemme water them. Just lemme, okay, you can watch me, tell me I’m doing it right.”
He likes seeing the water on them, is the thing. Dewing their leaves, soft and gentle. Likes the way Sam keeps an eye on him, touches his wrist with earth-stained fingers.
That’s enough, he says, you don’t want to drown it, and Bucky tilts back the jug so the stream of water trickles to a stop. He doesn’t, he doesn’t want to drown it, whatever this is so tenuous and small. A bud unfurling.
“Black thumb,” Bucky mutters, and Sam flicks his left hand with his fingernail, laughs at him until his eyes slide closed.
“You do,” he insists, and okay, it’s true, he does, the new arm is matte black that soaks up the sun until it’s skin-warm to the touch, but Bucky wants to learn how to make things grow the way Sam can make things grow, he wants to be tender and gentle, to touch the earth with hands that aren’t built for killing, he wants—
“Can I cut some herbs for dinner?” he asks instead, and Sam nods, so Bucky clips off basil, oregano, a pinch of thyme. Steals a ripe cherry tomato from one of the vines and pops it in his mouth, smirking at Sam’s outrage.
“You’re pushing it,” Sam says, “I swear to god, Barnes, you’re pushing your luck,” but he’s still smiling, bending over and turning aside leaves, looking at his plants with maybe a little wonder. “Hey, my strawberries are ripe, you wanna do something with ‘em?”
Of course Bucky wants to do something with them. He gets a bowl from the kitchen, watches Sam fill it with strawberries straight off the stem. Strawberry pie, he thinks, but that’s not right, maybe, and anyway, there aren’t enough to fill a whole pie crust.
“You thinking about what to make?” Sam asks, and Bucky nods. Closes his eyes, and opens them again. He’s holding the bowl in front of him, and Sam selects one of the biggest strawberries. Brushes the dirt off, and bites into it, juice running down his chin. He holds Bucky’s gaze the whole time.
“You—” Bucky says, and puts the bowl down, careful, and Sam offers him the rest of the strawberry. He eats it from Sam’s hand. Sun-warm and sweet, and it tastes so good Bucky could cry. Like sunshine in his mouth, the ice melted off his skin and his bones and his memory. His body has lain fallow through winter for so long, his body is coming alive, his body feels warmth and sunlight and wants to bloom beneath someone else’s mouth.
“Good?”
“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, “good,” and when he kisses Sam, Sam’s fingers leave dirt in Bucky’s hair.
Instead of strawberry pie he makes strawberry shortcake. The new hand is better at rolling out dough than the metal one used to be. Built for tenderness, not violence. He splits the cakes, layers them up all clouds of whipped cream and strawberries macerated with sugar and fresh basil. Sam’s eyes go round when he sees them.
“Damn,” he says, and bites into one, cream billowing out and threatening to fall. Smudging his lip. “Damn.”
“Good?” Bucky asks, wiping cream from Sam’s mouth with the pad of his thumb like he’s allowed to touch, and Sam nods. Takes another bite.
The body wants to eat. The body wants whipped cream and strawberries and fresh cake soft from the oven. The body wants to stretch in the sun and kiss Sam Wilson and water plants and dig in the earth. The body wants.
Bucky allows it all these things, and it is a gift, every time.