Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;

[grimvisaged]

The hotel, he finds, is home to an inordinate number of mirrors. This was not something he had taken particular note of before unless it helped in surveillance, but now they seem inescapable, tacked upon every wall and rising up to assault him around every corner. He has changed, and now he cannot get away from himself.

It is not Barnes nor the Winter Soldier who stares back at him now, but a grim and sleek hybrid, the place where light and dark meet. He has no opinion on his newly-clipped hair, apart from acknowledging that the style is sufficiently enough removed from both of the people he used to be. Falling in a dark sheet to skim his freshly-shaved cheeks, it would make him look like a wayward college student were it not for the hard line of his mouth which serves as accompaniment.

There's an odd sort of freedom which comes with looking different, however—A feeling of having firmly planted his flag in a place of his own choosing, of asserting that he need not be one or the other. This third option is a buoy, a brace, and it pulls him away from his reflection to find Rogers again.

He's stopped looking for Barnes, but he cannot stay away from the man who was his best friend. The thread which connects them is an invisible but unrelenting tug at his heart.

Comments

[grimvisaged]

The few exchanges he's had with Rogers have all been surreal, but this may be the most dreamlike of all, the two of them discussing Barnes as a third party while the images being described look exactly like the man holding the sketchbook, apart from the smile. There is a gulf of distance in that easy curve of lips.

Rogers' assertion he can easily believe; Barnes was always smiling. He himself,

(arm slung across skinny shoulders, head thrown back, laughing at the blue blue sky above sharp-edged buildings)

he cannot remember ever having smiled.

Gently, he flips another page. Barnes could never hold still, and yet Rogers sketched more of him than anything else.

Sometimes, he feels Barnes' legacy so acutely he thinks he could actually be physically bowed by it, as if it were a tangible weight upon his otherwise strong shoulders. There are things which he remembers and things which he knows, and he will never be able to live up to that legacy, not for as long as he lives. When he realized that he wanted to, it surprised him a little.

Closing the book, he carefully passes it back with a nod.

[captain_rogers]

Steve remembered the scribbles of stick figures throughout Bucky's notebooks while they had still been studying in art school together, of his insistence that they were high art all without losing the grin on his face or the air of suggestion that had colored his scribbles each time they had gotten a seat in classes sketching or painting from live models. Just as he remembered the other man's insistence that no, Steve Rogers was going to be the best thing since Picasso and anyone who didn't see that was blind. Or how he'd tell girls exactly that in what little Steve had overheard of his buddy's habit of talking him up to girls who hadn't given him a second look once they'd been presented with him live and in the flesh.

It was hard not to remember how easy it had always been between them, even when they'd been quarreling over one thing or another (usually over how Steve himself threw himself into the fray before thinking). Not when he stood facing a man who was equal parts his best friend and someone else entirely. Not when he could remember so well who it had been who had insisted on scrounging him up soup from somewhere on those long, bitter winters when Steve had doubted in some moments that he'd make it through.

Bucky had never given up on him, and he would not, could not give up on Barnes.

He wanted to ask what the other man thought when he was handed back the notebook, but felt frozen, half-buckled under the weight of wanting to keep from pushing too hard and scaring the man off. As he wanted to apologize for what he was sure was his part in what had happened to his brother in all but blood, but bit his tongue hard to keep the words at bay.

Instead he chose a line of conversation one more neutral, "Hey, you wouldn't happen to be hungry, would you? Because I could use a bite."

[grimvisaged]

It's a normal sort of suggestion; this he understands. Natasha suggests the same to him as well, some innate human pull toward the common ritual of sustenance when commonalities are so difficult to find. What Rogers is after is clear enough in the hopeful sheen of his eyes: More time, always more time, and some small thing to share, to build upon.

When he eats, it is cursory and alone. It isn't that he doesn't understand the enjoyment of food, but that he's never had the room for it before now. The cafe or bar, he can at least assent, are less volatile spaces than the close walls of Rogers' room.

And he supposes that perhaps he wants a little more time, too.

"Sure," he replies, more gruffly than he intends, perpetually unsteadied around this man.