imagine bucky

Revenge - Bucky Barnes

Happy (early) Birthday to dear @xantissa​ !!! The murderhottie is all yours!

Guys guys guys guuuys it was so much fun. I know it’s not quite out yet in the US so lemme just break down my feelings as vaguely as possible:

You’ll see the main arc coming from a mile off, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying to watch it unfold.

How do you feel about redemption arcs? Because hoo boy is there a good one in this movie. I’m still emotional.

The tone and pacing are exactly what you’d expect from the second Guardians movie, in the best way. It flips on and off between laugh-out-loud hilarious and heart-warmingly poignant, and sometimes for good measure it does both at once.

I have descended to a new and disturbing level of trash shipping. I’m selfishly hoping that some of you will be moved to join me once you’ve seen this movie.

has gotten a lot of flack, and I don’t disagree that it could and should have been handled a lot better, but even as it is, I really really like what it says, or rather, confirms about Bucky.

Yelena is taller than the rest, with blonde curls that are always coming out of her otherwise severe bun. Irena is dark and solemn, with delicate hands; Petra still laughs, a bell sound that is bigger than she is. Natalia is a little fox: red, light and nimble, clever.

Collectively, they remind him of a flock of birds. They follow him everywhere, chattering. There are allowances even here, it would seem; even the Red Room is powerless in the face of talkative small girls. Or perhaps no one feels like getting in the way of the Soldier.

Some days he finds that he doesn’t remember their names, but he remembers the other things, the details. How their hair is braided, who sings under their breath when they walk between buildings, which of them is afraid of the dark.

Children are perhaps an anachronism in his life, fragmented as it is. It is disorienting to lay at night and see flashes behind his closed eyes: machine gun fire overlaid with high pitched laughing, dead men in ditches juxtaposed with memories of tending a scraped knee, white silk basting together calico and muslin, black surgical thread in skin.

A guard smacks Petra when she drops her lunch tray, the Soldier crushes his windpipe. Yelena catches a cold, the Soldier shows her how to hold her face over a bowl of warm water. Natalia asks him what his name is. He doesn’t know, not anymore, so he pats her hair instead.

“what’s your status, soldier?”

Steve’s face is pinkwith fury as he flings down his bat just inside the door.

“I don’t get it,” saysBucky. It’s never a good idea to engage Steve when he’s in a mood like this,but he can’t help it. Steve may be small but his temper is hard to ignore. “Whyquit when you were winning?”

Steve rounds on him. “Youwere cheating,” he says. “I saw youfumble that ball. You caught me out fair and square, but you dropped the catchon purpose like you think I’m too stupid to notice.”

“I don’t think you’restupid,” says Bucky. So maybe he did drop the ball on purpose. It wasn’t likeit was going to change the outcome of the game – his team were still a dozen pointsahead. He just didn’t want to see Steve miss out on his chance to score at leasta couple of runs. Typical Steve, to spin that into something bad. “What’s thebig deal? It was just one ball, and I was trying to be nice. You could at leastsay thank you.”

“You don’t get it,”Steve snaps, and flings himself bodily onto his mom’s couch. “I don’t want towin if it means being dishonest. I want to win the right way.”

“But you weren’t goingto win at all, the way things were going.”

“Then I guess I’ll justhave to get better at losing.” Steve’s voice is rising to a high trill. Heflings his arms up to cover his head, burying his face in the couch. “Go away, Bucky.”

Bucky really doesconsider it. He could take his ball and go home, and it would serve Steve rightfor being so stubborn. He doesn’t understand where Steve gets his ideas from.Maybe he’s never going to understand.

Maybe that’s not whatmatters.

“No,” he says, andshoves Steve’s legs off the couch to make room for him. “You want to lose sobad? Then let’s play marbles instead. I’m so great at marbles, you won’t standa chance.”

Steve peeks up fromunder one arm. “I could beat you at marbles in my sleep,” he says. A pause. “Youpromise no cheating?”

They first meet in an alley behind the drug store after Bucky chases off the McCullough crew. Bucky’s a little concerned that the kid’s concussed because the little punk is sitting staring at his blood-spattered shirt and giggling wildly. Steve’s got red, although neither of them realize the significance or even exactly what’s happening - Bucky just thinks the kid’s eyes are weird - until they limp out of the alley and Bucky looks up at the sky and realizes blue.

They don’t know what to do with this information; color transference is an adults-only, whispered conversation; there’s more rumors and misinformation than they can poke a stick at. Still, they make their own way: Steve shyly finds blue things to give Bucky, and Bucky fills his pockets with red things for Steve.

Bucky hoards his money and works his contacts until he can find someone old enough who’s willing to source him three staggeringly-expensive black market colored pencils.

“Holy cow,” Steve whispers, eyes huge. He starts shading immediately; the red, blue, and yellow; then he starts layering them, making colors in front of Bucky’s eyes, and it’s the most obscenely entrancing thing he’s ever seen.

“Which can you see?” Bucky asks. Steve reverently brushes his fingers across the paper.

“All these. You gave me this.” He touches the variations of red, then points further along. “But I don’t think this bit should be gray.”

“It’s dull for me too. Maybe it’s supposed to be like that.” Bucky shrugs. “If you can’t see it either, then I’m not missin’ out on anything, right?”

~*~

Steve can still see red after Bucky falls from the train, and that feels like a cruel joke and a betrayal all at once.

~*~

One of the biggest shocks of the 21st century is the man-made color production. Film is in color, billboards are in color, and Steve spends hours researching, wrapping his head around the culture clashes of the 60s and 70s as the technology was fiercely contested across the country.

The first time Steve goes running in the morning, he notes the guy in the dull shirt running towards him and they greet with a breathless, “Mornin.’” Steve glances back and stumbles into a dead, shocked stop, choking and crying. He wants so desperately to be able to tell Bucky: the color they were missing was purple, and it’s beautiful.

It’s Sam who approaches him the next morning, cautious but open. “I mean, man, it never has to mean a damn thing, and we never have to do anything with it, but I think you gave me blue and thank you for the sky. My god.”

Purple is still laced with too much pain, but Steve can grin and be pleased for Sam.

“Can I buy you breakfast?” Sam asks.

Barnes looks at Clint. He looks down at his new uniform. He looks back at Clint. His expression is deeply mistrustful. 

“The word you’re looking for is ‘thank you’,” Clint tells him. He’s made it look easy - Clint likes to make everything he does look easy, it’s a matter of professional pride - but putting together a functional and distinctive combat uniform for a complete stranger on about five minutes notice was no mean feat. He’s especially proud of the jacket. It’s blocky, squared off and artfully asymmetrical, with enough clever hidden pockets to stash a whole army’s worth of odds and ends.

But Barnes just bites the inside of his cheek and says, “How the hell do you know my shoe size?”

“What, is it classified intel?” Clint says peevishly. It’s not like he was expecting gushing gratitude. A brisk thumbs up would have been fine. “Just get changed, would you? We’re on the clock.”

Barnes picks up the jacket. Those pockets were a good call; Clint can see him mentally mapping his loadout already. He puts it on, flexes his arms, and takes it off again.

“Okay,” he says, and pulls out a pocket knife, “this sleeve is gonna piss me off.”