The Brooklyn Winters

The rain in Wakanda is different. It’s warmer, for one. It doesn’t bite with the sharp, hurried chill of a Brooklyn winter. It smells of wet earth and jasmine, not exhaust fumes and damp asphalt. I sit on the porch of the small hut they ahem me, my left hand resting on my knee. The metal is cool, a constant, silent companion. It doesn't feel the rain. I do.

Shuri calls it "cognitive recalibration." A fancy term for remembering who the hell I’m supposed to be. Most days, the past is a fog, a collection of fractured images without sound, of sounds without context. It’s a haunted house, and I’m the only resident.

But today, something cuts through the mist. It’s the children, chasing each other through the downpour, their laughter echoing across the fields. One of them, a small, wiry boy, slips and falls in the mud. His bigger, sturdier friend immediately stops, turns back, and pulls him to his feet, dusting him off with a look of stern affection.

The scene hooks into me, pulling a thread. The fog thins, and suddenly, I’m not in Wakanda anymore.

The air is frigid, my breath a white cloud in front of my face. It’s 1938, or maybe ‘39. The alley stinks of garbage and desperation. And there’s Steve. Of course, it’s always Steve.

He’s a scarecrow in a threadbare coat, all sharp angles and defiant chin. He’s just taken a fist to the jaw for refusing to back down from some brute twice his size. He’s spitting blood, but his eyes are blazing. He’s always been more fire than flesh.

“You just don’t know when to give up, do you?” I say, stepping between him and the bruiser. I don’t even have to throw a punch. My reputation is enough. The guy takes one look at me, snorts, and walks away.

I turn back to Steve. He’s leaning against the brick wall, trying to catch his breath.

“I had him on the ropes,” he rasps, and the absurdity of it makes me laugh.

“Sure you did, Stevie. Sure you did.” I sling his arm over my shoulder. He’s so light, a collection of bird bones and stubborn will. I half-carry him back to his shoebox apartment, the one that’s always cold.

He doesn’t complain. He never does. He just looks at me with those eyes, too big and too blue for his pale face, full of a gratitude that feels heavier than he is.

We sit in the flickering light of a single lamp. I’m cleaning the cut on his lip. He flinches but doesn’t pull away. The silence between us is comfortable, worn-in like an old armchair. We’ve been doing this dance our whole lives. Him picking fights he can’t win, me finishing them.

“You don’t have to do this, Bucky,” he says quietly, his voice raw.

“Somebody’s gotta make sure you don’t get yourself killed before you’re twenty.”

He looks down at his hands, then back at me. There’s a seriousness in his gaze now, a weight that belies his years. “No, I mean… you’re always there.”

“Yeah? So?”

“So what happens when you’re not?”

The question hangs in the cold air. I stop dabbing his lip. I look at him, really look at him. This isn’t just about alley fights. It’s about the war brewing overseas, about the enlistment papers he keeps getting rejected, about his desperate, burning need to throw himself at something bigger than himself.

I put the cloth down and grip his shoulder. My hand almost engulfs it.

“That’s not gonna happen,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend. I need him to believe it. I need to believe it. “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal.”

His face softens. The fire in his eyes banks into a warm, steady glow. He gives me a small, lopsided smile, the one that always makes my chest ache.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “The end of the line.”

The memory fades, the cold of the Brooklyn alley replaced by the warm Wakandan air. The rain has stopped. But the chill on my skin remains.

A promise. The first one. The one that started it all.