Bucky Barnes hasn’t cut off his hair yet bc he’s growing it out long enough so that he can donate it to little kids w/ cancer
Okay wait, Bucky Barnes is growing out his hair for one specific kid that he met one day when he was out buying more milk for Steve (the asshole gets through the stuff like he’s trying to fuckin’ drown himself in it), and who he caught staring at him whilst he was lining up to check all his stuff out.
She was a little girl- and when he said little, he meant tiny– and her face was pale, features a little sunken. She was bald, and had a little tube that peaked up from her Tshirt and then went up her nose. It was clear, even to him, a stranger, that this kid was very ill.
But she was staring at him as if he was some sort’a celebrity, and her bloodshot eyes were sparkling with something like awe, and so he smiled at her and told her that her bracelets were real pretty.
She gasped and then looked up to her mom, who was standing behind her and putting her items up onto the till. “Mommy, mommy, did you hear that? Bucky Barnes thinks my bracelets are pretty!!!”
He paused, surprise flitting over his features. Out of all the team, he was the one who went most unnoticed. it was fine by him, but it just meant that hearing this kid talk about him with such excitement was a little… unusual.
The mom smiled at him, and then looked down to her little girl. “Well, he’s not wrong.”
Bucky grinned, and then got down on one knee so that he was at her level. He knew he was big, and scruffy, and most people still avoided him on the streets. They all knew of him- they knew what he’d done. He wasn’t exactly popular for it. But this kid- she seemed not to mind. “I’m Bucky,” he said with a smile, sticking out his hand, “what’s your name?”
The girl seemed ready to faint as she gripped his hand with her bony fingers. “Ebony Cartwright,” she told him, before taking a deep breath and then looking up at him in awe, “you’re my favourite ever Avenger Mr. Barnes, I got all of your action figures and posters and I know everything about what you did in the war! You’re so brave and strong and I remember how in the interviews Iron Man and Cap said that you were sick, maybe a bit like me, but you were going to get better and you have! And I want to be just like you when I grow up! You’re my favourite ever hero!”
Bucky just knelt there, slightly stunned as the little kid continued to ramble at him with giddy excitement, bouncing up and down on her toes as she gripped her mother’s hand tight. He didn’t even know how to respond- he’d never had a kid tell him that he was their favourite Avenger. That was Steve or Tony’s role. Bucky was… he was just in the background, really.
“What were you sick with?” She asked quietly, and he blinked in surprise. From behind her, the girl’s mother gasped in distress.
“Ebony!” She whispered, “it’s not polite to ask questions like that!”
“Hey, no, it’s okay,” Bucky looked up at her and waved a hand, before turning back to Ebony with a small smile. “I… I had something wrong up in my head. It made me… not quite myself.”
To his surprise, he found that Ebony was staring at him with her mouth wide open as she nodded. “Me too,” she said quietly, “there’s a tumor in my brain and it makes me not myself too.” She looked down at the floor, embarrassed when she whispered, “people look at me because I’m bald. My hair used to be down to my shoulders, and it was nice and dark and curly. But then I got sick, and it all fell out. Now I’m ugly.”
“What?” Bucky’s eyes widened in horror, and he shook his head, “Ebony, le’mme tell ya one thing right now, you are the farthest from ugly I have ever seen. You’re a fighter! You’ve got proof that you’re strong and brave and tough, and that’s the prettiest thing I could think of.” He grinned as he leaned forward and whispered, “just ask Natasha Romanov. She’s got a hell’u’va lotta battle scars, and I still think she’s pretty as a picture.”
Ebony smiled, but it didn’t really look real, and Bucky felt a pang deep in his heart at the sight of this little girl, so strong and so lovely, and yet so convinced that she was exactly the opposite. It made him want to hit something.
He talked with her for another few minutes, until her mother said they had to go and they left Bucky behind in the store, cartons of milk still clutched in his hand as he waved goodbye to the smiling little girl.
However, that was not the last time he thought about her. Not by a long shot.
“Buck,” Steve poked him in the back one evening a few weeks later, whilst Bucky was busy making himself some stew on the stove in the tower, “when you gonna get this thing cut? Surely it must be annoying you.”
Bucky just shrugged, sweeping a strand that wasn’t quite long enough to fit into his ponytail behind his ear. “I like it,” he said simply, “looks cooler than your boring trim anyway.”
Steve shoulder-barged him fondly and shook his head, but didn’t bring it up again.
Sam did though, two months later, once his hair had started going past his shoulders and he could successfully braid it down his head. He kept having to sweep the spare strands out of his eyes when he was training, and after the third time in a row, his friend ended up picking up on it.
“You might wanna get it cut, man,” he said through a huff of air as he wiped the sweat off his brow. “Be a bit inconvenient in the field if you get blinded by your own hair.”
Again, though, Bucky simply shook his head and shrugged. “S’only getting in my face ‘cause this is the first time I tried braiding it on my own. Usually Tony does it for me.”
Sam raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything- just dived in for another swing and tried to catch Bucky off guard, which he failed at. Bucky was the far superior fighter, obviously, no matter what the Bird said.
The weeks turned into months, the seasons changed, and Bucky never once cut his hair off. People asked him why- interviewers speculated whether it was him trying to adjust to the culture shock of the 21st century, blogs discussed his sexuality and whether this was his way of trying to let go of the tight gender-roles that he’d had to deal with back in the forties, and some people even tried to suggest that it was because he was still unstable and couldn’t even be around razors or scissors.
Bucky just got on with it, tying his hair into a neat little bun or getting Tony to braid it down his back when they were relaxing on the couch together. It was just hair, to him. Protein that grew on top of his head. He didn’t care for it, and he didn’t care what people said about it. He just ignored it until there was some gala to attend in which Tony would encourage (force) him to do something all fancy with it.
It was seven months, in total, when Bucky finally thought it was at just the right length. By that time, it had grown just about down to his hips, and he’d made sure to keep it in perfect condition, so it shone with a healthy glow that many people would probably die for. To be fair, Bucky had come to quite like the length of it, and he’d probably miss it when it went, but at the end of the day, he knew there was someone who needed it more.
That night, he went quietly into Tony’s workshop, and asked whether he’d be able to get Bucky in touch with someone who could turn his hair into the best quality wig they could get. He kept the details to the minimum- he didn’t want to make a fuss- just said there was a little girl somewhere out there who missed her hair, and he wanted to try and help.
Tony nodded, and got on the phone. By the end of the night, it was all gone- right down to a buzzcut again, and bunches of his hair hung in ponytails between the hairdressers fists.
It took a day, for the wig to be made. Bucky went and picked it up himself, and when he saw it, he couldn’t help but smile in pride. It was a mighty fine looking wig, if you asked him.
Of course, because he was the Winter Soldier, it really didn’t take long to track the little girl down. She was a regular at hospitals, and the records held her address, and after that it was just a simple question of catching the subway down to Queens. He had the present in a parcel, with a small note written inside it, and when he finally arrived at her small apartment on the rougher side off the borough, he quietly placed the package at the foot of her door before ringing the bell and then walking off.
This wasn’t about him, after all. This was about a girl and her fight- and Bucky might not be able to cure her, but hell- he’d do his damn best to make her feel as beautiful as she deserved to be.
Dear Ebony,
I didn’t forget you. And I still think you’re the prettiest little girl in all of New York. But in case you don’t believe me, here’s a little something to make you feel a little more like the girl you used to be. You haven’t changed. You’re still that girl. But this is just your reminder.
Keep fighting, Miss Cartwright. You’re my favorite hero ever.
Saturday morning, on the 26th of October, a Nazi walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue, shouting “All Jews must die!” and opened fire. He killed eleven Jewish people, including grandparents, husbands, wives, and a doctor remembered for his compassionate care of his patients during the AIDs crisis. Several of them were there celebrating a baby-welcoming ceremony for a gay couple’s newly adopted twins.
This was the deadliest antisemitic attack in all 364 years of American Jewish history. Jews all over the world are shaken, upset, and scared. We know that this could have been any of us, but beyond that, this attack struck at the heart of our people. We were attacked in a place of safety and sanctity. We were reminded that as Jews, we are not safe in America. And we lost eleven Jewish souls.
Some of us are grieving, some of us are angry, some of us are devastated, some of us are numb, some of us are crying, some of us are terrified, some of us are anxious, and some of us can barely walk up the stairs because this doesn’t make any sense and yet it makes so much sense because we all, on some level, imagined this was coming. Our history has taught us that our safety is never guaranteed, and over the past two years we have watched the sickening rise of Nazism and antisemitism all over the world, including in America, where, despite our history, many of us had been lulled into believing it could never happen here.
We lost a third of the world’s Jewish population within living memory. So many Jewish families, in every country, fled antisemitic violence within the past few generations. The tragedy we just experienced is visceral, it’s terrifying, it’s devastating.
So please, check in on your Jewish friends and ask how they are doing. Please, take a moment to understand and absorb this tragedy. Please, understand how this is not just yet another mass shooting (that while theoretically tragic, you don’t really have the space for another one, what with compassion fatigue), but rather an attack that pierced the heart of a group of people already carrying centuries of pain and trauma. Please, make space for this one. Please, when you talk about this, don’t use generalized language about hate and about how no one should be killed for their religion. Please speak the words: Jewish. Antisemitic. Say this was an antisemitic attack, on Jewish people. And please, keep us in your thoughts today.
Folks who aren’t Jewish, you can reblog this. In fact I’d be grateful if you did.
avenger-nerd-mom 