open post (steve rogers)

[assembles]

steve rogers / captain america open post.

※ looking for a thread with an all-american super soldier?
※ respond with any character, canonmate or otherwise, and a prompt.
※ open to any format (prose, brackets, commentspam).
※ open to any canonpoint (within marvel cinematic universe).
※ if you don't have any prompt ideas, feel free to throw the ball into my court!
※ you can always refer to the random scenario meme for inspiration.

Comments

[assembles]

[Steve can't say he entirely understands why it's the ocean that Bucky so desperately needs to reach. Maybe it's because the shoreline can feel something like the end of the world, and he expects to find answers there. Maybe there's some half-formed memory that he wants to place into the correct slot in his mind. The ocean didn't play a huge part in their lives, but there had been a few trips there, not to mention Coney Island.

Granted, the reason that Bucky wants to go doesn't matter so much. The point is that he's expressing some kind of desire, and Steve would do just about anything to give him what he wants. He enjoys the ride, the ease of it and the fact that they don't have to worry about talking. He enjoys just having Bucky with him, and now that Steve's found him he doesn't want to let go.

The moment that the bike comes to a stop, Bucky's up and off, and Steve scrambles to get everything locked up so that he can follow him down to the water. He doesn't actually step in, but lingers at the edge of the water line.

Steve startles just slightly when Bucky speaks up, but nods slowly as he processes those words.] We lived near the ocean. We didn't get to go all the time, but we went as much as we could. [Visiting the ocean didn't cost anything, after all -- just the price of transport, really.]

Sometimes you went swimming. Usually I sat a little further up on the sand and sketched. [Steve can remember it still -- the sun beating down on him and warming the sand, his pencil forming the lines of the muscles in Bucky's back as he watched him wade into the water. The flow and ebb of the waves, which he tried to match his breathing to. It feels like another life, or a dream, but it had been real.

It would feel more real if Bucky could remember too, but Steve will just have to hold onto it until that time comes. If it ever does.]

[bondorblood]

[ He seems to take in the information, though all he offers in that brief moment is silence; he isn't actively ignoring Steve. Isn't shoving the words back or denying them. They feel heavy in his chest, the weight of things he's lost, that he does not entirely remember. The crackle of memories locked away just a bit in the distance. The cold of the water doesn't do as much to revive them as he had hoped, mostly the smell beginning to stick to him is all he's going to take home from it. He remembers the water, but looking at it doesn't make him remember any better than he had before.

It's like being defeated in a fight he had no real chance to win; seeing afterward that the struggle was nothing more than biding time til he realized he was on the losing end of things. Pulling back he sinks down to his knees, sitting on his heels and staring into the water. He had come so far in hopes of putting more together than the crooked memories and the vague sense of losing a piece of him. Losing most of him.

Even the memories he has don't fit together right, they look distorted, everyone looks wrong and he knows he knew Steve but the face in his memories isn't right either. He isn't sure if that's him, but feels like it is, and it makes his head ache because just trying to sort it out hurts. ]

I don't remember.

[assembles]

[Steve watches as Bucky falls to the ground, apparently uncaring that his pants and boots are getting soaked. He must have expected to find something here, some answer or some sliver of understanding. Something that would help everything jumbling around in his head make sense. He hasn't found it, but it's not going to be as simple as going to the right place or hearing the right words. This is going to take time, and chances are that when those memories return, it will be piecemeal and hit Bucky when he least expects it.

At this point, Steve doesn't really care if he gets wet. He goes to take a seat next to Bucky, with a few inches between them just in case. Granted, Bucky already held onto him when they rode on his bike, but chances are he'll still want to keep physical contact to a minimum.

Steve doesn't care. He'd take ten more punches, a hundred more, if that helped somehow.

When Bucky speaks, Steve nods slowly as a small wave slides up and over his shoes and ankles.] It's all right. [Bucky doesn't need to view it as some kind of failure.] I think it might take a while before stuff really comes back to you. [It might never happen, and as much as that thought hurts, Steve has to be okay with it. This isn't something Bucky has any control over, unfortunately.]

[bondorblood]

[ For a while he's silent, but it's almost companionable, just resting beside Steve and watching the ocean. He had hoped it would be enough to dislodge whatever had clouded his brain, to pull the sheets off of the memories; but instead it's that same sense of familiarity he gets with most things that he doesn't actually remember. The knowing without knowing. His throat works for a moment, swallowing down words and sounds till he can pick the right one.

When he speaks he doesn't change his tone, doesn't turn to look at Steve, instead watches the break of the waves. ] I always remember you wrong. [ It's a bit confessional in a sense; the memories of Steve he has are distorted; and while he knows he is not the same as he had been (for as much as he remembers himself, which is barely), but that is not nearly enough to account for the differences he sees in Steve.

He knows it's him, yet he feels that it must be wrong, must be different. ] Stained hands, colored, but it's not... not blood. Not like it should be. [ He looks to his own hands, but they don't lift from their position near his knees, curling in the fabric. ] Everything is all wrong.

[assembles]

[He remembers him wrong? Steve frowns to himself as he turns those words over in his mind. It sounds more like a riddle than a real statement at first, but the silver lining is that Bucky remembers him at all. That's one step in the right direction, even if these memories are supposedly wrong.

It might just be that they're confusing memories, as opposed to plain wrong, but when Bucky starts in about blood splattered on hands, Steve's frown deepens. He never had TB, even if his mother did, so it's not like he'd been coughing up blood all the time. What else would have stained his hands?

Steve's head jerks up slightly when it clicks, and he glances over with both eyebrows raised.] Was it paint? I used to... [He practically trips over himself trying to get the words out.] Before we joined the army, my plan was to go to art school. I sketched and painted a lot. Maybe that's what you're seeing. [If it's something as tame as that, then Steve's actually relieved. Better Bucky remembers his artistic habits than his illnesses, or even worse -- all of the horrible things Bucky was no doubt made to do over the years.]

But what you do mean, you remember me wrong? [Steve would like a little clarification on that, since something about it's nagging at him.]

[bondorblood]

Paint. [ The word rolls off of his lips slowly, but there's a dawning of realization there. He hadn't thought about paint; he had been so sure all he could remember was blood and bruises. But the red wasn't right, too light, too thick; paint made sense. It isn't a connection he would have made on his own, strange as it might seem. An artist, something other than a tool and a fighter; not the same thing for SHIELD that he had been for Hydra.

The question draws him out of trying to sort the memories-- they were different, less horrific; when paint was just paint and not blood. Not another brutality misremembered. ] You're always... [ He tries to find the right word, but it doesn't work and it makes him frown. ] Small. [ He glances over, because Steve is anything but now, but in his mind, he was small. Up to his shoulder perhaps, frail and thin, easy to break. ]

It-- I don't know why. It's like I remember someone else with your face. I don't understand. [ His palm grinds against his eye socket, frustration rising. All of his memories are a mess, and he wonders if they've screwed up his brain so bad that he can't make sense of things anymore. Was Steve even Steve? How many of the snippets were just someone else, somewhere else, with his mind too fried to parse the difference? ]

[assembles]

Paint. [Steve echoes and the word and nods firmly. Since Bucky doesn't argue with him on that, maybe that really is the answer to what he's remembered. At least they were able to solve one little snag in Bucky's memory, though there are probably a hundred more where that came from.

Thankfully, Steve happens to have the answer key. At least for most of it. He won't necessarily be able to help with memories that he wasn't a part of, but thankfully those are few and far between. The biggest gap would be during the time when Bucky went off to war without him.

When Bucky explains, suddenly it all falls into place. Of course the majority of his memories would be from before Steve had the serum, all those years they'd spent growing up in Brooklyn. If Bucky hasn't been allowed to learn anything about Captain America (and HYDRA no doubt was very careful about that, so that they didn't accidentally break his programming), then it's no surprise that he's confused.]

That's because I was small, back then. I was the first person to successfully take the super soldier serum, so that's what made me... like this. [He gestures down at himself.] I was damned and determined to go to war, and the serum was my ticket in. [Though he did have to suffer through those USO shows first.]

[bondorblood]

[ He frowns, super soldier, things like that-- words he knows, even if he doesn't remember. He's heard them at some point; and it offers some sort of explanation. It was Steve, same as he'd always been, in a new package of sorts. Body different, face and mind the same. He knows him as being so small, thin bones and artists fingers, but here he was different. It was hard to parse the two-- what Steve was and what his mind reminded him he should be. He remembers someone who laughs and painted; and sense tells him it was Steve, but it feels like someone else's memory of another person, another time.

Steve was something important, though, he knew that then and knows it now. Knows that Steve means something to him; no matter the other puzzle pieces that did not fit right. ]

I have so many thoughts of you. [ So many memories, all jumbled, not quite making any sense yet. But he was there, so often, so frequently. Like some sort of beacon he had no right to get close to-- it didn't make sense, but he couldn't avoid it either. Steve was just so much of who he had been, what he could scrape together in broken moments. ]

[assembles]

[While there may be a huge discrepancy between what Steve looks like in the present day versus what Bucky remembers, his personality has stayed more or less the same. There have been changes, of course. He got his eyes opened and he grew up a lot during the war. It became about more than just putting bullies in their place. He's killed enough that he's lost count by now, and while Steve did it all for a cause he believed in, there's no denying that he's not quite the same kid he'd been when he picked fights in back alleys.

When Bucky speaks up again, Steve nods slowly and then sinks his hands back into the sand behind him. He has no idea where they'll go after this, if Bucky will come with him or if he'll drift into the darkness only for this game of hide and seek to continue. Steve wants to ask him to stay, but he's not sure if that's fair.]

I know. I -- we spent a lot of time together. [Steve glances over and smiles sheepishly. With Bucky as pretty much his only friend before the serum came along, is it any surprise that he spent most of his free time with him?] If there's anything you want to know, anything at all, just ask.

[bondorblood]

Why? Why did we? [ It seems so strange, like watching a film, but the screen is too far away to make out the details. Emotions are there, but there aren't any he knows-- not enough anger, not absence, not even the sliver of hate that occasionally sparked below the surface. Instead it's all a mystery, a loss to him and he can't make sense of it. Can't make it all come together in some sort of context that he can understand. Simply that Steve was there, was always there, and the person he had been had been fine with that.

He didn't understand why they had been close, or even now why Steve followed him so far; gave him so much, when he knew there was nothing he could offer. He wasn't the man who went missing, he was barely a man at all, and didn't know if having a memory or two would ever change that. ]

[assembles]

[That isn't the kind of question that most people would have to ask. It's a given, something that's simply understood, because friendship is a concept that even a child can grasp. It's yet another indication of just how much HYDRA has taken from Bucky, that he can't even wrap his head around the simple idea of two people enjoying each other enough to spend time together.]

Because we were friends. That's kind of the definition. We liked to be around each other, we liked each other's company. We got into trouble together. [Steve smiles around that last statement, because while Bucky has little to go on, Steve has a flood of memories that can filter in at any given moment. If only he could lend some of them to him, but the best he can do is talk about them.

He's not sure how else to explain it, but hopefully Bucky can comprehend that much. Bucky hasn't had a friend in over seventy years, but Steve's ready to pick up where they left off, if he can.]