When the Lights Go on Again by @spacecasewriter13
Summary: It is May of 1946, over a year after his fall from the Hydra train and losing his left arm, and James "Bucky" Barnes is struggling to adjust. Working as an analyst at the New York City SSR branch, Bucky tries to put the war and all of its sorted memories behind him. However, try as he might he is plagued by thoughts of Magdalene "Maggie" Ramirez, a Women's Army Corps (WAC) Corporal he met in London and hasn't spoken to since before his fall in January of 1945. Little does he know that Maggie, in her struggle to put the war behind her, has moved to the city and looking for a job with the New York Bell Telephone Company as a switchboard operator. Now, by sheer dumb luck, they are reunited as they both fight come to terms with what they were to one another during the war, and work to figure out how to move forward in a world that was unprepared to deal with the consequences of war in the unsteady peace.
Chapter 36: Strictly Confidential
After Christmas Bucky and Maggie bump into one another at work with disastrous consequences. Forced to navigate new, difficult territory, Bucky looks ahead and thinks about what sort of future he and Maggie might share…if the SSR will let them get that far.
Christmas, for Bucky, came and went without too much fuss. He, his mother, and Becca attended mass at St. Patrick's, and then Steve and Carter joined them for Christmas dinner. The tree was trimmed. Presents were exchanged. Much merriment was enjoyed by all.
Bucky returned to work promptly on December 26th, unwilling to let the guys with families get forced into shit shifts just after the holidays. It was quiet. Steve and Carter managed to snag enough time to take a train to Vermont for some skiing until the new year, for which he was very glad. Bucky was glad that they could get out of the office. It was good to see Steve and his wife get to spend time away from the station and enjoy married life.
Fortunately, it seemed that their timing was impeccable. The whole world slowed to a crawl, and it seemed that even the villains and scumbags of the world had taken time off to visit their mothers and at least contemplate peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
Through it all, Bucky's mind returned time and time again to Mags. He hoped she was having a good Christmas with her family. He hadn't heard anything—not that he'd expected to. Still, he wondered what she was up to and selfishly hoped she was thinking of him, too.
Only now it was December 30th, the anniversary of his amputation was fast approaching, it was cold and quiet in the office, and he had more than ample time to think about it all. The changing of the year, taking them further away from the war, the ways the world was moving so fast yet so slow…the uncertainty of the future…especially the nagging knowledge that the US Government had recruited Zola through Operation Paperclip.
There had to be something linking Zola to Leviathan. There had to be something that could get Zola chucked into a deep, dark pit for the rest of his miserable life rather than poisoning whatever agency he would be attached to.
'Dig. Dig in. Dig. There has to be something.' His mind hummed, scratch, scratch, scratching at the inside of his skull.
Then, a quarter after two, Bucky rose from his desk and walked down to cold storage, where the files were all tucked away, waiting for someone to poke at them. He dug indiscriminately through a few boxes, trying (as he had back in June) to make sense of the internal filing system of the SSR. The entire time, he kept his ear bent for anyone coming down the hall toward the storage room door.
It wasn't so much that he wasn't allowed down here. It was that he shouldn't be down here trying to dig up dirt on someone the US government had recruited. He shouldn't be looking for information related to a former enemy combatant. He shouldn't be looking for information about the Hydra Scientist that had experimented on him. It would look suspicious at best if he were caught; if not, reason to open an investigation into his activities and bring up questions about his loyalty.
They can't court-martial me. I'm a civilian. I'd face civilian justice.
You're Captain America's best friend and a former Hydra lab rat. You'll be lucky to escape the firing squad if they find out.
Bucky knew that all this was futile. This was the NY branch of the SSR, not DC. He wasn't going to find anything. Still, it felt better than doing nothing, damn the risks.
Who's going to be down here right now anyway?
No sooner had the thought crossed his mind that the door to the cold storage creaked open.
Bucky froze, tensing, ears straining to hear if he could identify the person standing in the open doorway. There was the rattle of a document cart, and the person pushing it adjusted their weight slightly as if looking around. "Hello?"
But she's in Taunton! How? How could she be here?
This is some sort of nightmare. I went looking for Zola, and now I'm going to find him.
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