#the tears I cried the amount of tooth gnashing

[theawkwardterrier]

things left behind and the things that are ahead, ch. 6

AO3 link here

They take the train up from Washington. They had driven down the first time - though they hadn’t left Howard’s until Bucky was healthy enough to travel, he was still breaking in some ways, wildly fragile. They needed to have no one else around, needed the time and ability to stop on the roadside so Bucky could gasp in fresh air and scream through clenched teeth because just sitting in a car with people he trusted made him feel closed-in and trapped.

Bucky sits between them at first, all of them pretending that it’s simply the order they entered the row rather than a supportive bracketing. He switches seats with Peggy after about an hour, trying to use the scenery rushing past the window as a distraction. His fingers, both sets, curl and uncurl in his lap. He had planned on leaving the arm behind - the one Howard made for him detaches fairly easily, and he figured that seeing him simply missing a limb would in some ways be easier than the blunt, inhuman metal - but changed his mind at the last minute. This is part of him now, whenever he wanted it to be, and he tries to convince himself it will be better for everyone to face that from that start.

Peggy puts her hand over his balled fists before he even registers exactly how tightly they are clenched.

They had tried at first to get him reacclimated in New York. Howard’s large house had been fine when that just meant finding his memories again, when it was only about having a quiet place where everyone understood nightmares and knew to step loudly and never to touch Bucky when he wasn’t ready for it. It had worked well enough when it was just Steve and Bucky, the quiet and caring Jarvises, Peggy on the weekends and Howard dashing in and out. And they all had thought that the city - large and anonymous, the site of so many remarkable things - would be the perfect place to start when it came time to take on somewhere more public; any scene Bucky caused would be forgotten by the time the witnesses reached the next block. But it was all too newly familiar, too overwhelming with strangers and crowded with memories, too much.

They hadn’t had a chance to visit Brooklyn. (If Steve were a bit more selfish, it would hurt that he still hasn’t seen those ever familiar streets, the place he still goes when he dreams. As it is, he doesn't even have time to think about it as more than a hope for his friend.) On Bucky’s hoarse, wild-eyed orders, they hadn’t even mentioned to his family that he had been found.

Peggy and Steve’s neighborhood in DC was easier. In the type of close-knit environment that they had thought best avoided, where everyone knew their names and no one forgot exactly who they had seen shatter one of the cafe’s mugs into an explosion of porcelain dust just from hearing old Mrs. Eissenmann’s accent, they found compassion. Al noticed the way Bucky flinched away from photos of Korea and East Berlin on the newspaper fronts, and tucked them away so that the covers of Life and The Saturday Evening Post were visible instead. Bucky learned to answer questions about his arm from the innocent, interested ones the kids asked before they were hushed by their parents. The ticket taker at the movie house, Eddy Carroll from two streets over, didn’t say anything as Steve and Bucky left in the middle of Annie Get Your Gun twice because the sound of even comical movie gunfire made Bucky flinch and go cold and grasp for a gun of his own.

There were other people in the neighborhood who had served. There was a look that Bucky recognized when they passed each other in the street, a certain shift to alertness at car horns sounded suddenly, and when they asked him to have a beer with them, he said yes. While Steve and Peggy went out on one of their evenings together, he sat on a barstool with these men who would become his friends and talked about favorite books and movies and radio programs, about the best ballgames they’d seen, about the particular, muffled punch of a bullet entering flesh and the strange, grim, necessary realization that you were the one to put it there.

“Why did you invite me tonight?” he asked, walking home with Charlie Gibbs in the place by his side that was usually Steve’s. “You don’t even know me, but you’ve probably guessed that I’m more of a handful than most.”

Charlie chewed his toothpick thoughtfully for a moment. He took it out and held it between his fingers as he said, “We all have brothers who didn’t come back. We have to be there for the ones that did, even if they left a piece of themselves behind. Code of war doesn’t end just because the treaty’s been signed.”

And when the cold came, not as bad there as in New York or the Alps or Russia or places that he can’t quite and might never remember, when the cold came and made Bucky shiver and wish for a hot drink but didn’t leave him paralyzed with the fear of what might come, he said that he was ready to go home.

They called ahead. Of course they did.

“Can you imagine, someone you love and thought was dead just turning up out of the sky as you’re trying to eat your breakfast?” Peggy asked, eyes wide in pretend shock.

“I thought it was a good surprise,” Steve said defensively.

“Oliver in the kitchen has taken a liking to me, as you well know. I think the extra treat I get with my order is all the surprise I need.” She gave his hand a fond touch on the tabletop, regardless of her words or her arch tone.

“Fine, everyone knows you’re adorable, you can quit showing it off,” Bucky said, and it was the joking eyeroll more than anything that convinced them that he was ready.

They can see Mrs. Barnes from down the block. She is wearing a navy dress with creamy lace trim - her church dress, Steve is sure, even if it is not the gray number with the big silver broach that he remembers from his childhood. She stands on her front steps, solid as a lighthouse. Bucky’s father is most likely inside; he had always gotten emotional easily and never liked to show it in public.

It’s a chilly, overcast Tuesday, the middle of a morning that threatens rain or snow or both. The street is empty of the usual schoolkids or housewives chatting to their neighbors with shopping in hand. It makes it easier: no one to double take and recognize them, catch them up in excited conversation. It makes it harder, the overly noticeable sound of their footsteps seeming a driving echo as they move closer.

“You remember back in ‘26, when I was sick from Halloween until New Year’s?” Steve asks, because Bucky is pulling sharp breaths through his nose and his shoulders are set with a statue’s rigidity.

The beginning of the familiar story seems to ease something. “They had the priest in for last rites twice that time, didn’t they?”

“Three times, I think,” Steve says with a casual shrug, at which Peggy looks vaguely horrified. “You kept trying to play truant, coming up the fire escape when no one was looking.”

“And I started getting escorted to school, but my ma couldn’t stay all day, so she told my cousin Frankie to sit on the street corner and scream if he saw me coming.” Bucky leans over and says conspiratorially to Peggy, “I would give Frankie a penny a week to keep his trap shut. He was a soft touch.”

“But then my mother asked Sister Mary Bernardus to sit with me while she went to work, and that nun almost kicked you out the window when she saw your face coming over the sill while she was just trying to pray the Rosary,” Steve finishes with a muted smile. He bumps Bucky’s shoulder with his. “If you could still face your mother after that, you can face her now.”

And then she is coming down to meet them, slow and careful even in her sensible, square-toed shoes. She holds onto the handrail, although there’s no ice on the steps. Bucky has stopped two houses away - the Green’s place, or it had been fifteen years ago. He seems as if he can’t move forward. Any shimmer of ease has gone out of him again.

Mrs. Barnes walks the rest of the way to him herself. Steve had forgotten how small and solid she looks beside her son. She reaches her hands up and holds his face between them, and doesn’t say anything for a long moment.

When she finally speaks, it is in that husky voice with its second-generation Irish tinge. Somewhere inside himself, Steve still expects to hear his mother’s bright call twining with hers, a harmony of care. “James. My boy, come back to me.”

Bucky stays very still. “Hi, Ma,” he manages, and lets her lead him inside.

Bucky’s family had always seemed enormous to Steve, though anything would have when compared with a pair of Rogerses. Winifred Barnes was the youngest of three sisters, George had four brothers, and most of the extended clan lived close enough to take the streetcar if they couldn’t walk. The Barnes place had always been so full.

Without it being mentioned, they haven’t asked anyone over today. George is sitting in his usual chair. Bucky’s sister Josephine stands over his shoulder, her body taut beneath her neat sweater. Rebecca paces the room, a baby in her arms, and Steve’s first thought is that she’s too young for that, just a baby herself, but that isn’t true anymore. The man who must be Becca’s husband sits looking more awkward than anyone - perhaps because he’s entirely a stranger to Bucky, perhaps because he’s all gangly limbs, too tall for the furniture.

“It looks the same,” Bucky says, taking in the faded wallpaper, once a patterned green now white, the heavy old General Electric wall clock which still has the crack across the face, the good lace cloth dressing up the table. The scent of coffee from the ever-boiling pot fills the place, and it is this that makes Steve remember how long it has truly been since he was last here: growing up, he would never have even noticed it.

Mrs. Barnes has set out a stack of saucers and one of her delectably heavy lemon pound cakes on the tabletop. As she leads Steve, Peggy and Bucky over to sit around it, she still hasn’t let go of her son’s hands.

Becca bursts into tears, which makes the baby start wailing too. George covers his eyes with his palms, the unknown husband looks entirely out of his depth, and Peggy stands again. “Let’s have a seat,” she says, guiding Becca over beside her husband. She gets her settled against the cushions, then passes the baby from his mother’s arms to his startled but silent father. Peggy strokes a soothing hand over the baby’s crown as she completes the transfer; it doesn’t help but does make Becca give a shaky little smile. The radio is over in the corner and Peggy walks over, snaps it on, and tunes it quickly until she finds an afternoon symphony program on WNYC. She adjusts the volume to midlevel and turns back.

“For the neighbors,” she explains as she comes over to rejoin Steve by the table. Once again, as always, Steve is impressed: the Barnes apartment is the entire first floor of the frame house, but that doesn’t entirely mean privacy. He hadn’t even considered that anyone else might be home, but now that he thinks about it, the water rushing through the pipes isn’t coming from anyone in this room.

“How did you get here?” Josie asks suddenly. She hasn’t so much as shifted through the outburst of chaos.

“The subway,” Bucky tells her promptly, and she snaps, “Don’t give me that, James Barnes,” in what must be her schoolteacher voice now. Steve’s already familiar with it: Josie was younger than Bucky by a bit less than a year, but she had always acted the big sister to the both of them. “We got an army notification half a decade ago that you’d been killed. We got a letter from—” She turns on Steve. “And you. What are you doing here looking ten years older than you should instead of dead from saving the world?”

“Josephine,” says Mrs. Barnes, warning in her tone, “they’re back. What does it matter where they’ve been?” But her husband lifts his face and says, mastering himself with clear effort, “No, Winifred, I would also like to know exactly what’s happened.”

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Becca asks, her voice very soft, as if it is being trapped in the needlepoint pillow she has pressed against her chest.

The version they tell is one they've practiced, a snipped and pasted version of the truth, but Steve still isn’t a particularly good liar. It's not that he doesn't trust these people who have been family to him - he knows that they would never go to the police or the press with anything he told them, that they wouldn’t gossip about it in the shops. But they have never seen a person explode in front of them in a blue flash, have known his transformation only as something already completed out of sight. Their lives have been so normal, untouched by direct contact with the strange and wonderful and terrible things with which Steve is familiar.

Unless he misses his guess, the baby Rebecca's husband is currently rocking back to sleep is Jimmy Proctor. Steve has met him as a sixty year old man, a former railroad engineer with a million stories of an entirely typical childhood sparkling with the little memories his mother would recall of her brother. He doesn't want to take that from all of them.

So, knowing his own abilities, he is careful with his contributions, letting Bucky and Peggy tell most of the story: of Steve suspended in the ice, the serum effecting him in unexpected ways, of his being found and coming to Washington, the information slipped to Peggy that made them go looking for Bucky in the first place. Bucky doesn’t remember many of the details of his time in captivity anyway; Peggy glosses over it with quick compassion that brings them past without the rest of the Barnes family asking for more information.

Watching Bucky now, Steve finds himself remembering more than ever his friend as he was. Buck had always been the one to tell the stories, to make excuses and conjure the sweet, sly smiles to get them out of trouble. Bucky now, Bucky as he once would have been, is quieter. Steve doesn't mind it, but it's more noticeable back in this familiar place.

There's a silence when the story has finished.

"And now you're fine?" Josie asks finally. She has begun to lean on the back of her father's chair, not softening as much as weakening when confronted with it all. "Now you're back?"

"For now," Bucky says.

His mother looks up from the hands she has clenched in her lap. "What do you mean by that? We've a room here for you while you get yourself settled. There's no reason to go anywhere. I’m sure your things can be sent up for you."

"Ma," Bucky says gently, "I don't think I'm ready yet."

"And why is that?" She draws herself up straight, some of the strict force coming back into her tone. "You're doing just fine, and what would you do somewhere else anyway?"

Steve opens his mouth, but Bucky says, "One day I might come to stay, but now there's a life I'm trying to make down in Washington. I'd like to see how it turns out."

"So I'm never to see you?" She turns to her husband with a cry. "Listen to this boy of yours, George."

"Mama." Steve knows that it's the way Bucky sighs it that makes the difference, that brings the tension from the room. "Of course you’ll see me. I'm going to come back."

"And when will that be?" George asks.

"It's three weeks until Christmas," Bucky points out. "I think I could use a good Brooklyn Christmas."

"All of you," Winifred commands, standing suddenly and clapping her hands together. She pulls the cake plate toward herself and begins to cut slices. "You'll all come for Christmas. Unless there's some other family I don't know of?" She looks askance at Peggy.

"We shall reserve tickets on our way back," Peggy says with equanimity.

"Home again for Christmas, then," says Winifred, satisfied enough as she begins handing out cake.

Later, Bucky will hold his namesake for the first time and Rebecca will cry again, and so will George. Later, Rebecca’s husband will be introduced and will not wince as his hand is shaken three times with a bit too much force to be strictly comfortable. Later, Mrs. Barnes will try to give her cake recipe to Peggy only to have it intercepted by Steve. Later, Steve will notice Bucky taking himself into the kitchen for a moment alone before they are pressed to stay the night. Later, they will lie in the preserved bedroom with its old Dodgers scorecards peeling from the walls, and Bucky will tease Steve for not daring to mention that there’s really no reason to have him and Peggy in separate rooms based on their sleeping arrangements back home. Later, they will lie awake for a long time before they are finally lulled by the familiar sounds outside the window. But for now:

"Home again," Steve agrees softly, and digs into his piece of cake.

Previous chapters here

[aeon-warden]

Also Sprach Saitama

Hereby I picked some quotes from Thus Spoke Zarathustra,  most of which can describe both Saitama and Garou. They're like the two sides of a same coin, or rather, two polarities of the concept Übermensch. There are also expressions that seem to suit Genos, King and other characters. All these similarities even made me wonder if ONE is or was a fan of Nietzsche, thouth the theme of One-Punch Man appears to be against Nietzschean philosophy – the path of superiority leads to dullness only.

[First Part]

>>Zarathustra's Prologue

"Go away from this town, oh Zarathustra," he said. "Too many here hate you.

The good and the just hate you and they call you their enemy and despiser;

the believers of the true faith hate you and they call you the danger of the multitude."

Saitama.

>> The Speeches of Zarathustra

8.On the Tree on the Mountain

I'm changing too fast. My today contradicts my yesterday. I often skip steps when I climb – no step forgives me that.

If I am at the top then I always find myself alone. No one speaks with me, the frost of loneliness makes me shiver. What do I want in the heights?

How ashamed I am of my climbing and stumbling! How I mock my violent panting!HowI hate the flying one!Howweary I amin the heights!”

Here the young man fell silent. And Zarathustra regarded the tree at which they stood and spoke thus:

"This tree stands here lonely on the mountain; it grew high beyond humans and animals.

And if it wanted to speak, it would have no one who understood it: so high it grew.

Now it waits and waits – but for what does it wait? It lives too near the clouds’ abode: it waits for the first lightning bolt?”

When Zarathustra had said this the young man cried out, gesturing agitatedly: “Yes, Zarathustra, youspeak the truth. I longed for my destruction when I aspired to the heights, and you are the lightning for which I waited! Look, what am I anymore, now that you have appeared among us! It is my envy of you that has destroyed me!” – Thus spoke the young man and he wept bitterly. But Zarathustra put his arm around him and led him away.

And after they had walked together for a while Zarathustra started speaking thus:

"It tears my heart apart. Better than your words can say, your eyes tell me all your danger. You are still not free, you seek freedom. Your seeking made you sleepdeprived and over-awake.

You aspire to the free heights, your soul thirsts for the stars. But your wicked instincts also thirst for freedom.

Your wild dogs want to get free; they bark with joy in their cellar when your spirit contrives to liberate all prisons.

To me you are still a prisoner who plots his freedom. Alas, the soul of such prisoners grows clever, but also deceptive and rotten.

The one who is free of spirit must still purify himself. Much prison

and mold is left in him: his eyes must still become pure.

Yes, I know your danger. But by my love and hope I beseech you: do not throw away your love and hope!

Saitama and Genos. They discovered each other, and they saved each other, from their own lasting loneliness and obsession with vengeance. For Genos especially, Saitama is "the lightning for which I waited”.

12.  On the Flies of the Market Place

Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you dazed by the noise of the great men and stung by the stings of the little.

...

Where solitude ends, there begins the market place; and where the market place begins, there begins too the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of poisonous flies.

...

The people little understand what is great, that is: the creator. But they have a sense for all performers and actors of great things.

The world revolves around the inventors of new values: – it revolves invisibly. But the people and fame revolve around actors: thus is the course of the world.

...

Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung by poisonous flies.Flee where raw, strong air blows!

Flee into your solitude! You have lived too long near the small and the pitiful. Flee their invisible revenge! Against you they are nothing but revenge.

Do not raise your arm against them anymore! They are innumerable, and it is not your lot to be a shoo-fly.

Innumerable are these small and pitiful ones; and rain drops and weeds have sufficed to bring down many a proud structure.

You are no stone, but already you have become hollowfrom many drops. You will shatter and burst still from many drops.

I see you weary from poisonous flies, torn bloody in a hundred places, and yet your pride does not even become angered.

They want blood from you in all innocence, their bloodless souls demand blood – and so they sting away in all innocence.

But you, deep one, you suffer too deeply even from small wounds; and before you could even heal yourself, the same poisonous worm crawled across your hand.

You are too proud to slay these sweet-toothed creatures. But beware, or it will become your doom to bear all their poisonous injustice!

They also buzz around you with their praise; importunity is their

praising! They want the closeness of your skin and your blood.

They flatter you like a god or devil; they snivel before you as before a god or devil. What's the use! They are sycophants and snivelers and nothing more.

Often too they give themselves charming airs. But that has always been the cleverness of cowards; yes, cowards are clever!

They think about you much with their narrow souls – you always give them pause! Everything that is thought about much gives pause.

They punish you for all your virtues. What they forgive you thoroughly are only – your mistakes.

Because you are mild and of just temperament, you say: “They are not guilty of their petty existence.” But their narrow souls think: “All great existence is guilty.”

Even when you are mild toward them they still feel despised by you; and they repay your benefaction with hidden malefactions.

Saitama.

17.  On the Way of the Creator

Today you suffer still from the many, you lonely one: for today you still have your courage and your hopes intact.

But one day solitude will make you weary, one day your pride will cringe and your courage will gnash its teeth. One day you will cry "I am alone!"

...

Injustice and filth they throw at the lonely one. But my brother, if you want to be a star then you must shine through for them all the more!

And beware of the good and the just! They like to crucify those who invent their own virtue – they hate the lonely one.

...

But the worst enemy whom you can encounter will always be yourself; you ambush yourself in caves and woods.

Lonely one, you go the way to yourself! And past you yourself leads your way and past your seven devils!

To your own self you will be heretic and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy man and villain.

You must want to burn yourself up in your own flame: how could you become new if you did not first become ashes!

Lonely one, you go the way of the creator: you will create yourself a god out of your seven devils!

The hero for fun has been alone, and so as his only disciple. But they have each other.

Genos was once among the ashes. Through the flame of vegeance, he was born anew.

19. On the Adder's Bite

I do not like your cold justice; and from the eyes of your judges gazes always the executioner and his cold steel.

Tell me, where is the justice found that is love with seeing eyes?

Then invent me the kind of love that not only bears all punishment but also all guilt!

Then invent me the kind of justice that pardons everyone, except the one who judges!

Garou.

22. On the Bestowing Virtue

One repays a teacher badly if one always remains a pupil only. And why would you not want to pluck at my wreath?

You revere me, but what if your reverence falls down some day? Beware that you are not killed by a statue!

You say you believe in Zarathustra? But whatmatters Zarathustra! You are my believers, but what matter all believers!

You had not yet sought yourselves, then you found me. All believers do this; that’s why all faith amounts to so little.

Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have all denied me will I return to you.

Indeed, with different eyes, my brothers, will I then seek my lost ones; with a different love will I love you then.

Like Zarathustra, Saitama does not care too much about believers. He may act a bit jealousy on Genos’s fans, but after all, he's not doing hero’s job for fame.

[Second Part]

34. On Self-Overcoming

And as the smaller gives way to the greater, in order for it to have its pleasure and power over the smallest, so too the greatest gives way, and for the sake of power it risks – life itself.

That is the giving-way of the greatest, that it is a risk and a danger and a tossing of dice unto death.

Mumen Rider, and all the heroes who risk their lives for the people.

[Third Part]

53. The Homecoming

And that among human beings you will always be wild and foreign.

Wild and foreign even when they love you; for what they want above all is to be spared!

……

And when they misjudged me, I, fool, spared them more than myself, since I am accustomed to hardness, and often I even took revenge on myself for being so sparing.

Covered in bites by poisonous flies and hollowed out, like a stone, by many drops of malice, I sat among them and still I told myself: “Everything small is innocent of its smallness!”

Saitama.

[Fourth and Final Part]

65. The Magician

"Who are you!" yelled the old magician at this point, with defiance in his voice. “Who is permitted to speak with me thus, the greatest person living today?” – and an emerald bolt of lightning shot from his eye toward Zarathustra. But then he transformed immediately and said sadly:

"Oh Zarathustra, I am weary of and nauseated by my arts, I am not great, why do I pretend! But, you know it well – I sought greatness! I wanted to represent a great human being and I persuaded many; but this lie was beyond my powers. On it I break down.

Oh Zarathustra, everything about me is a lie; but that I am breaking down – this breaking down is genuine!" –

"It does you honor," spoke Zarathustra somberly and glancing down to the side, "it does you honor that you sought greatness, but it also betrays you. You are not great."

King.

68. The Voluntary Beggar

"What happened to me?" he asked himself,  "something warmand lively refreshes me, something that must be close to me.

Already I am less alone; unknown companions and brothers roam around me, their warm breath touches on my soul."

Genos, Silver Fang, King, Mumen Rider, Fubuki, Tatsumaki... Did those people who appeared in Saitama’s life ever alleviated his boredness and loneliness, even for just a little bit? 

69. The Shadow

But after you, oh Zarathustra, I've flown and followed longest, and even when I concealedmyself from you, I was still your best shadow: wherever you sat, I sat too.

With you I have haunted the remotest, coldest worlds, like a ghost that runs voluntarily over winter rooftops and snow.

With you I strived to enter everything forbidden, worst, remotest; and if anything of mine is a virtue, then it is that I have feared no ban.

With you I smashed anything my heart ever honored, I overthrew all boundary stones and images, I pursued the most dangerous wishes – indeed, I have passed over every crime once.

With you I unlearned my faith in words and values and great names.

When the devil sheds his skin, does his name not fall off too? For it too is skin. Perhaps the devil himself is – skin.

'Nothing is true, all is permitted': thus I persuaded myself. I plunged into the coldest waters, with head and heart.

Genos.

You poor roamer and raver, you weary butterfly! Do you want to have a rest and a home this evening? Then go up to my cave!

There leads the path to my cave. And now I have to run away from you quickly again. Already it's as though I'm covered in shadow.

I want to run alone, so that things clear up around me again. For that I'll yet have to be long on my legs and like it.

Saitama.

73. On the Higher Man

Is this today not of the rabble? But rabble does not know what is great, what is small, what is straight and honest: it is innocently crooked, it always lies.

Tanktop Tiger and Tanktop Black Hole. And all those who questioned Saitama’s integrity.