Lost + Found [Bucky Barnes] ✓

Chapter 32

It's silent in the apartment, save for the sound of the kettle boiling, and Bucky sits across the table from me. He's been fiddling with my phone for the past half an hour, his eyebrows furrowed, until finally he drops the device on the table with a thud. I glance at him, and his face instantly looks sheepish as he sighs.

"No luck?" I ask, pointing to the phone.

Bucky shakes his head, flipping the phone over so I can see the screen, "It's off."

"Oh," I reply. "How will they reach us then? Do they know about this place?"

He looks up at me, "No. No one does."

My stomach does a flip. Bucky and I are on our own, off the grid, while we're being hunted. Without Steve and T'Challa, it's just us. I trust Bucky. I know he'll do whatever is necessary to keep us safe, but I'm still worried about our friends.

"So, Greece, huh?" I say, breaking the silence. "Do you have safe houses in every country?"

"No," he replies. "But I set up as many as I could, after...."

I inhale deeply. After Hydra. After he escaped their control, after he learned who he really was. No longer a weapon, a toy to be manipulated, Bucky went off to find himself and to stay hidden. He told me about it before, about why he chose to stay underground instead of revealing himself to Steve. He knew enough about S.H.I.E.L.D. to know that Hydra had infiltrated it long ago, and - if they were there - they could certainly be anywhere else. When he was the Winter Soldier, he didn't know all of the secrets of Hydra, just his role in it. They told him only what he needed to know to complete his missions, which - apparently - didn't even include his name.

I speak up, hoping to pull him out of the memories I know must be flashing through his mind, "Why Greece, then? Just a random choice, or...?"

"My grandmother was Greek," he explains, his blue eyes clouded with the past. "She immigrated to the United States with her family when she was a teenager, and she met my grandfather two years later. She used to talk about it all the time when I was a kid. Told me my eyes were as blue as the Ionian."

I smile, "It's true. You've never told me about your family before."

"You never asked," he replies, the corner of his mouth turning up in that signature smirk.

Scoffing, I laugh, "I know. I'm a terrible person. But I'm asking now. Will you tell me about them?"

He smiles back at me, the expression tinged with sadness, as he wrings his hands together. I don't want to press him, so I say nothing, opting to wait for him to talk if he wants to do so. After a few moments, I start to feel guilty about asking - about bring up these memories that are obviously difficult for him - and I open my mouth to speak.

"I was born in Indiana," Bucky says slowly. "Shelbyville. It's just a little town, southeast of Indianapolis. I don't really remember it much - we moved to Brooklyn when I was four."

Reaching across the table, I grab his hand and squeeze it, "What were your parents' names?"

"George and Winnifred. I was named after my grandpa, on my dad's side. James William Barnes," he tells me. "I was the oldest of four."

I don't know why, but I never thought about Bucky having siblings. I can't imagine what that must be like for him, knowing that his family...his whole world...is gone. Everything he knew, everything familiar, washed away by the sands of time.

Except Steve.

I understand why they cling to each other, why their friendship is so important. For Steve, he's been adjusting to this new world on his own - to find out that he's not must've been wonderful. Bucky, on the other hand, is just now coming to terms with everything. As his memory comes back, as glimpses of the man he used to be peak through the cracks in his tough facade, he's realizing how much he needs someone like Steve. Someone who can understand him, at least in the smallest of ways.

"Are they...." my voice cracks

I don't know how to ask if they're alive. It's possible, even if they would be nearly 100, meaning he could reunite with someone from his family. Someone else from his past. He could have more relatives than he's aware of having. Nieces and nephews, several generations of them, all thinking he's dead.

He shakes his head, "I don't know."

But they would know he's alive. The whole world knows who he is now. After what happened in Vienna, Bucky's name and face was plastered on every television screen. James Buchanan Barnes, the Hydra assassin known as the Winter Soldier, alive and on the run. When they finally found him, the news told us that he was captured or killed. No one was really sure, but all mentions of him disappeared.

Until now. People saw us in Athens. People saw me. I know they recognized him, because I saw the fear in their eyes. They don't know him, so how could they know that they don't have to be afraid?

Hell, sometimes I'm not sure if Bucky knows himself.