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Letters, Lost and Found

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He crouched on a roof across the street from the Washington Parkway cache site, looking for signs that it had either been cleaned out or was being watched.  He calculated at least an 83% chance that HYDRA's disarray would buy him enough time to pick up the supplies he needed but he felt . . . cautious (afraid? angry?). Feelings were difficult to pin down without the context of memory.  One thing was certain: as the pieces of himself trickled back, he was more and more determined that he was never going back to that (goat-fucking) chair again.  And that made him more wary than he might normally be.  (Not all that wary, in Brooklyn; later, much warier.)  He still wasn't sure how he had any sense of his own typical caution, given that his only clear memories were of the last two days.

When he was satisfied, he made his way to the basement of the parking garage of the cache site and used his strong hand to pull the drywall off the wall in the southwest corner.  The cache held a black duffle bag containing a few thousand dollars in US twenties, a black case of small tools and oil for repairing the arm, three black fixed-blade knives of his preferred type (how did he know his preferred type?), a disassembled PSG1 sniper rifle with a scope, silencer and two boxes of ammo (not his favorite but acceptable), two MK23 pistols with four boxes of ammo and a silencer (better), four sets of US-issued ID with his face on them, two sets of spare clothes (black), a black nylon waterproof jacket (not warm enough), a pair of black leather gloves (expensive/nice), a liter of water, and four units of rations (they taste like cardboard if cardboard was disgusting). The ID was useless (HYDRA would be tracking it); he would dispose of it later (burn it). The black commando clothes wouldn't be inconspicuous but they'd replace his sodden (stinking, ruined) gear until he could purchase something else (less assassin-chic).

He zipped the duffle back up and was about to leave when he stopped (wait – one more thing – something important).  He reached back into the hole in the wall, but this time with his more sensitive hand, feeling around (inside the drywall above the opening). He pulled out a pellet of paper, folded and rolled and attached to the wall with a little bit of chewed gum (Wrigley's spearmint?).  He put slipped the paper into his pants pocket, and grabbed the duffle (get the hell out of there).

He stuck to the shadows until he found an abandoned warehouse where he could hole up in the (windowless) corner of an upper floor. It smelled like rats (you can't leave crumbs laying around, Bucky, how many times do I have to tell you) but that confirmed that no other people were squatting there (was he a person? how could you tell if you were a person?) and he felt safe enough to carefully smooth out the piece of paper in his pocket and try to decipher it.

It was actually several pieces, all odd sizes torn from larger sheets, some written on the back of receipts or business cards (Zemo Printing, For ALL Your Reproduction Needs).  They weren't written in code or anything, just in pencil-scratch so light and tiny that it was hard to make out in the dim light in the warehouse. As his eyes adjusted, though, he recognized his own handwriting (how? he didn't remember ever writing anything). There were no dates at the top of any of the pages and no signatures at the bottom.  The first page said:

They botched the wipe this time, somehow, or maybe they let me go too long out of the cold. They were waiting for me in Brooklyn but I gave them the slip.  I think they're tracking me; I pulled something that looked like a tracker out of the arm. There were weird-smelling syringes in the arm, too, and I pulled them out and broke them.  My head's clearer since but there might be other trackers that I can't get to, other countermeasures, who knows what.  I have flashes of things – memories, I guess, thoughts. A blond kid, skinny little thing as brave as a lion, like a lion made out of spun glass, always coughing, or bleeding, and I wonder if he's bleeding because of me, but I don't think so. 

Steve – he thought.  Stevie. The next page read, in even smaller letters:

Sometimes I see him bigger, in this crazy get-up with a white star, running through smoke. Sometimes I'm falling away from him. At night, if I sleep, I always start to fall.  I don't think I can keep them from getting me back. If I had some help, a group, there used to be some guys who would have helped me, I think, but I don't know where they are or how to find them.  I think they might be dead.  Someone told me they were dead, I think, that my friends were dead but maybe it's not true. Maybe none of this is real and I'm just getting colder but I can't feel it yet.  Even if it isn't real, though, I'm seeing it through. Better to be free for a little while in my head if that's all I can get.

On the back of the receipt, the lines were uneven, in a shaky hand:

They had me tracing accounts on a mission and I bled some money out to a new account. Swiss Banque 9020312773. If you find this, or I find this, or whatever, maybe that will help.  The newspaper says 1998, March 13.  Friday the 13th.  That's supposed to be unlucky but everything is all fucked up so maybe it will be lucky instead.      

That might prove useful.  The next page was a bigger piece and the writing wasn't quite so cramped.  It said:

If you find this, or I find this, whatever, then they must have gotten me back but maybe you're remembering again now.  Maybe you got away again, maybe I keep getting away and just can't remember it.  Maybe if I can just do a little bit more every time I get loose, eventually I'll get away long enough to kill enough of them that they stop coming after me.  Or just hide well enough that they can't find me, but then they'd just find some other poor sucker to do their dirty work, so I figure maybe I ought to make sure that doesn't happen.  But I got to get organized, get my head set right, before I can do that.

Another receipt next -- Gas N Go, March 14, 1998, $15 of unleaded gasoline -- the letters on the back vanishingly tiny:

God, I wish I had some help. I just need a little bit of help here; I'm not even sure where the fuck I am – how's that for fucked up? God help me, they're going to find me and take me back to that fucking chair again and I don't want to go I don't I don't I dont I dont I dont I dont

His hands started shaking too hard to read the chicken-scratch writing in the dim light then.  He had to rest his head on his knees for a while, thinking, the poor bastard, that poor son of a bitch, over and over again until he realized that it was most likely his own self that he was pitying.  Which, he supposed was okay because God knew no one else was going to do it, but he still felt kind of stupid that it took him so long to cotton on.  Once his heart wasn't banging against his sternum like it wanted out anymore, he moved on to the next page.

Listen, you just got to find this blond kid.  If you can find that kid, he'll help even if I'm not sure how some little wisp of a sickly kid is going to help but he will.  He likes the Dodgers and you owe him a coke because you spilled his one time. Don't let him eat too many cracker jacks because it makes him sick and he don't have the sense to stop.

Then, another receipt  -- Lindsey's Lingerie, March 15, 1998, $250 of silk undergarments – where the fuck did that one come from, he wondered.  He supposed even HYDRA goons had girlfriends, or maybe exotic tastes.  That made one corner of his mouth crook up, thinking of Brock Rumlow in a black lace bra and panties.  The note read:

Christ, I don't know why I'm thinking about Stevie eating cracker jacks while I'm sitting in a fucking basement in DC, hiding like a goddamn cockroach, and I don't even know if he's still around or what.  Maybe he is dead.  They said he was dead but they lie like they breathe, constant and noisy.  If he is around, if he is, he's looking for me, I bet. That's one thing. If he knows I’m still alive, if I am still alive and I don’t know if I am or not, but if I am and he is, he's looking for me.  Maybe they got me back by now but if you're reading this, then you just got to hold on until he can find you. 

The last bit was the business card, with rows of numbers on it.  Maybe coordinates?  More Swiss bank accounts?  Measurements for silk stockings for HYDRA's DC personnel?  He'd look into it. 

For now, he was tired and he didn't know what to think of these letters from his past, these messages in a bottle from some lost self, the strangest kind of stranger.  It made him feel (sad) for the dumb schmo who managed to get away once, to stay away for days, evidently, only to be caught again and brutally erased.  Like the one page said, who knew how many times he'd managed to get away?  Maybe some of these pages weren't even from March 1998.  Maybe he'd been caching these here over and over, hoping that the next escape would be the one that stuck.  (I don't want to go I don't I don't I dont I dont I dont I dont)

Jesus Mary and Joseph, what a world.