104HZ

The apartment was a white box. White walls, white ceiling, white trim. It smelled of fresh paint and disinfectant—the scent of a place scrubbed clean of any history. It was exactly what Bucky Barnes had been promised: a blank slate. He stood in the middle of the living room, the silence humming louder than the traffic on the Brooklyn street below.

A heavy thud echoed from the hallway.

“Last one,” Steve Rogers grunted, nudging a cardboard box over the threshold with his boot. He straightened up, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He was wearing a plain grey t-shirt and jeans, trying so hard to look like just a guy, just a friend helping a buddy move in. The effort was a physical thing, a tension in his shoulders that Bucky could feel from across the room.

“You didn’t have to carry them all, Steve.” Bucky’s voice was rough, rusted from disuse.

“What, and let you strain yourself?” Steve flashed a grin, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “C’mon, Buck. It’s what I’m for.” He gestured around the empty space. “SHIELD did a decent job. Clean, at least. Good light.”

Bucky didn’t answer. He walked to the window and looked down. It wasn’t his Brooklyn, not really. The cars were too sleek, the buildings too tall, the noise a different frequency. But the air—the air still carried a faint, briny scent from the East River, a ghost of a memory he couldn’t quite hold.

“Alright, let’s get this last one unpacked,” Steve said, his voice too cheerful. He pulled a boxcutter from his pocket and sliced through the tape of the box he’d just brought in. This one was different from the others, which were filled with new, sterile essentials provided by the government. This box was old, the cardboard softened with age, marked with a single word in faded ink: Mine. It held the few fragments of his pre-War life that had been recovered from old SSR archives and forgotten storage lockers.

Steve started pulling things out. A worn baseball glove, a handful of dog-eared comics, a small, dented tin soldier. Relics. He handled them with a reverence that made Bucky’s teeth ache.

“Hey, look at this,” Steve said, holding up a small, leather-bound journal. “Remember this? You tried to teach yourself how to sketch in here. Drew nothing but stupid-looking birds.”

Bucky’s gaze remained fixed on the window. “Leave it, Steve.”

Steve’s smile faltered. He placed the journal gently on the floor. He kept unpacking, his movements quieter now. Then his hands stilled. “Oh.”

Bucky didn’t have to turn to know what he’d found. He felt the shift in the room, the sudden drop in temperature.

It was a photograph, sepia-toned and creased at the corners. Three kids on a rooftop, the skeleton of the Brooklyn Bridge rising behind them. A scrawny, grinning Steve. A cocky, dark-haired Bucky with his arm slung around Steve’s shoulders. And between them, a girl.

Or, what was left of her.

Her form was there, her dress, the way she leaned into Bucky’s side. But her face had been violently scratched away, a frantic crosshatch of deep gouges that had torn through the photographic paper, leaving a void where a person should be.

“I’d forgotten about this one,” Steve said, his voice barely a whisper.

The hum in Bucky’s ears intensified, turning into a low, piercing static. The white walls seemed to press inward. He turned, his movements stiff, robotic.

“Put it back.”

“Buck, maybe we should talk about—”

“I said put it back.” The voice wasn’t his. It was a Winter Soldier command, flat and cold and final.

Steve flinched. He looked from Bucky’s blank face to the mangled photo in his hand. For a second, a flicker of hurt crossed his expression, but it was quickly replaced by a weary resignation. He carefully slid the photograph back into the bottom of the box, underneath the journal and the glove.

Don’t look at her.

Bucky’s fists clenched at his sides, the knuckles of his vibranium hand clicking softly. The static in his head sharpened into a single, needle-thin spike of sound.

Then, a voice, a girl’s whisper coiling through the noise.

“Bucky, you promised…”

He gasped, a ragged tear of sound in the silent room. He stumbled back, away from Steve, away from the box, until his back hit the cold, unforgiving wall. He slid down to the floor, his head in his hands, trying to squeeze the voice out.

“Bucky?” Steve was at his side in an instant, his hand hovering over Bucky’s shoulder, afraid to touch. “Bucky, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Bucky didn’t answer. He fumbled in his pocket, his flesh-and-blood hand trembling, and pulled out a small, unlabeled prescription bottle. He shook two small white pills into his palm and dry-swallowed them, the bitter chalk coating his tongue.

He closed his eyes and waited.

Slowly, the static receded. The voice faded, leaving only a hollow echo. His breathing evened out, but the trembling didn’t stop.

He didn’t look at Steve. He didn’t have to. He could feel his friend’s worry, his guilt, radiating off him like heat. It was suffocating.

Just before Bucky left the room, his gaze fell on the hallway across from his own. The door to the adjacent apartment, 7B, was open a crack. A dark eye peered out, wide with alarm, before the door clicked silently shut.

A neighbor. Great. Another person to be afraid of him.

He pushed himself to his feet and walked into the sterile white bedroom, shutting the door behind him without a word. He left Steve alone in the living room with the ghosts in the box.