#campcouncelorsteve

It was the same every time.

Except, it wasn't anymore.

The echos had finally ceased. The screams. The flickers of suppressed memory. The shock of adrenaline that shook James Barnes' system and sent wracking headaches splitting through his skull and right to the backs of his eyeballs upon waking each and every morning.

No, now when he slept every image was crystal clear and poured into his consciousness like thick caramel; coating every surface that they touched.  They belonged to him, again.

He was whole, again.

But that didn't mean they were kind to him. The mornings he woke up after watching his brothers-in-arms die, or re-lived one of Winter's missions, or the day he hunted Natalia down and pumped rounds deep into Steve's chest were anything but good mornings. And just because he didn't wake up with a splitting migraine any more didn't mean he didn't jump awake some mornings, breathing heavily, in a cold sweat. The worst mornings he woke up shaking and had to slip out of bed quickly to the bathroom in case he threw up.

“Good afternoon." That fluid form of Russian purred, as rich as molasses running thick down an icy spoon. And just as cold.

Natasha knew what he was going through.  Naturally.  She didn't bother him over it the days he woke up in that shock, gasping shortly or bolting upright and throwing the sheets off himself and doubled on her.  They had that understanding.  Something he was grateful for down into the marrow in his bones.  And to think...she was the one he was woken up to eliminate on that fateful day.

“Think of it more as…poetic.”

365 days later and there was a new 'usual'. The world had turned 180 degrees. Literally in some spots.

“New York. In the morning. Do svidaniya, Soldier.”

James breathed deeply as his consciousness drew open and aware of the press of his pillow against his cheek, the last dregs of memory sliding away from his senses with the sound of Aleksander Lukin's voice in his ear.  A dead man, speaking to him from beyond the grave.  A man he murdered.  A man whose consciousness was now stuck into the mind of a fifteen year old currently locked in his old makeshift prison.  Ian.

James stretched his legs and did not find Natasha's toes or the vague press of her back against his.  She was already up.  That gave him time to lay there a while and wait for the voice to fade before he opened his eyes and tried to start the day. Recalling the way that Lukin's beady-eyed face would twist and contort, comparing it to the twisted way Ian's youthful features screwed themselves up, applying lines that hadn't yet etched themselves permanently into his skin, but seemed to belong there.  Like an echo falling backward through time.

"What is your /name/?'

James rubbed a hand over his face and let his eyes open up, staring at the wall through a dark veil of short lashes in an attempt to brush away the crawling feeling that had started its way up his spine.

One year.

He was hoping that the anniversary would pass him by. That he'd be too busy to notice when the day flipped over, but it had been seared into his mind due to the fact that the first thing he did when he woke up for a mission was check the date and calculate how long it had been.  How long he would be out.  When he would return.  A mental timeline of sorts.  June 23rd would forever be burned into his mind as the day he received his last mission from Aleksander Lukin. The day he would be sent to his destiny. The trouble was, he had done so much and so little with it.

He had been a criminal, an assassin, a mercenary, a theater owner.  He had been a lover to a god, the murderer of the same god. A companion, a minion, a tool, an obsession.  Best friends had become enemies and enemies had become friends. He had rekindled relationships lost to the sands of time and made new ones. A savior. A devil. A soldier. A partner. An asshole. A masochist. He had broken hearts and mended others.

And through it all, he had made a spectacular mess of everything.

So it seemed.

Minutes ticked away as his feet lead him into the shower.  There was no singing today. No songs ferreted away in his heart while he counted off the minutes to correlate back to what he was doing exactly a year ago. 

Counting down to the first shot he took at Natasha and /missed/, inexplicably.

Counting down to the moment he first saw Steve again and saw white hot pain flash before his eyes.

Counting down to when he filled his best friend with hot lead and was smashed unrelentingly into the marble flooring by his best friend's fiance.

Counting down to the first time he woke and tried to escape.

Counting down to the first time he laid eyes on Loki...

A whole time line. The longest period of time he'd been awake in decades. And it felt heavy on his shoulders as the shower tried to beat the tension out of his muscles.

It wasn't just memories he retained.  They were haunting enough, but Winter had been wise enough to stash some equipment. Things that hadn't been confiscated by Stark when he failed in his assassination attempt of Natasha and Steve.  Not the safety deposit box he kept under his dead gang-banger's name.  No.  The locker key still stayed with him, though.  He hadn't been back to it since they went after Lukin. And he put a bullet through his throat.

A lot of good that did.

Bucky walked his way down to the stack of public lockers that his key belonged to. Just one out of about three hundred of the damned things, about as generic and public as you can get.  One of the many places his paranoia demanded he scatter pieces of himself to.  Like fucking Lord Voldemort and his horcruxes.

Jesus, Steve...I just made a Harry Potter reference. You're ruining me.

Pieces of memorabilia inside.  Things he didn't dare keep any closer or any further from himself.  Things he couldn't part with.  The camera he used for scouting that still had shots of Natasha on them.  And the pictures of Steve. Some of Tony, a couple of Barton, but mostly it was Natasha and then Steve. Bruce had been in Mexico at the time. They wouldn't meet until...later, fortunately. Other bits and pieces from his more recent past. His first ticket stub from his theater. The title of the shitty little car he and Loki had bought to get from Virginia back to New York. Darius Jones' credit card. His old com. False passport he'd used to get into the country. Ticket to the ball game he and Steve went to. Receipt from the Good Will Bruce and he patroned.  An old Captain America and Bucky comic.

Amongst it all was the thing he was looking for.

A photograph.

A photograph he'd gotten from Lukin upon waking. Separate from the dossiers he had pored over in preparation.  The first photograph he had been handed of his target.  It wasn't a particularly flattering shot, honestly. There was nothing great about it. The focus was fine, the shot was clear. The subject was cut off to show only from about mid-torso and up and was staring just off camera in a candid moment.  Serious and distracted in that moment. The wind had pulled her hair back from one shoulder and pushed it over another, fanning vibrant strands of red out to light up in an over-exposed flair of red in the sunlight.

He had called it a waste at the time. Killing the woman they had trained. The woman that he didn't remember except by reputation. /The/ Black Widow.  There had been others, but this one...he had heard about her.

Bucky took the photograph, then paused and took another small object from the locker and twisted the key into it again. Turning around for home once more, his pockets feeling that much heavier for the deceptively small objects he carried on his person. Thankfully, he couldn't stay long, staring at the walls in their windowless apartment.  There were things to take care of and try to figure out. The Phoenix to prepare for, talking to Jean, checking on Loki, figuring out what Steve wanted to do with the Commandos, if in fact they were going to try to reform them.  The cartels still after Natasha and Taco-Danny, Stark's bachelor party, and, of course, the joys of figuring out just what the hell he was doing with his own life after his psyche eval he'd been avoiding. If he had time. Speaking of evals, what the hell /was/ going on with Stark, lately?

Oh, right. Don't forget the punk ass cloned kid with Lukin rattling around in his head.

It's a wonder that any of them had social lives.

However, before he left the apartment, there was now a new object on the shelf drawn on his and Natasha's bedroom wall.  Beside the false, poorly drawn photo of the two of them, a staple held a candid photograph of Natasha into the drywall.

A note written on the back.

'Natalia,

A year ago, today, I received this. A photo of my target.

I'm glad it was you.  I'm glad I missed.

James'

    ((My muse demanded that I make him a happy birthday post.  Special thanks goes out to my spectacular RP Group on AIM, who have put up with me for a full year, now.  A full year of screwing with their best laid plans, telling them ICly that they're stupid, emoing rakishly at them, being startlingly cruel and sexy at them and generally just being a pain in their asses and making life harder.  We've had some amazing plots with amazing original NPCs and pulled in all kinds of canon NPCs--a few NPCs have magically turned into PCs because we loved them so much--and I really couldn't imagine life without them.  From streaming stupid movies to watch together to planing cross country trips to see movies to sending care packages to kidnapping for weekends in Vegas...I think you're all the best and I'm so glad to call you my friends.

And thank you to all the people who I have rp'd with in this past year! There haven't been many of you because I am frightfully shy, but I want to say specifically thank you to lostchildoftwoworlds, just--logan and wipemyledgerclean for being incredible players who have tolerated my ability to lose track of...everything. *laughs* But are consistently wonderful people to read as well as play off, whether it's a canon character, an OC or a genderfucked character.  You're all amazing.

Also like to thank inspirations like flewintotheice, campcounselorsteve, mranthonyeffingstark, fictitiouseli and historymiss, who let me stalk them. Creepily.  In the shadows. *looks around* and supply me with wonderful drabbles to read, photomanips to swoon over and history lessons.