Chapter Text
Teaching through The Blip was traumatizing; students fading away in the blink of an eye, coworkers mid-announcement, cut off as someone screams for help. The city - and the rest of the world - was thrown into chaos. In the world of teaching, it was just another nightmare to adapt to. Nothing new, nothing that allowed time to decompress, but just the ability to package it and move on.
Five years later, that trauma is back once more, as students reappear years after they would have graduated, coworkers confused as to why someone else was in their classroom. There’s more people in the building, in the classroom and it’s overwhelming. But, as anything else that has happened, one has to simply adapt.
Part of the adaptation to traumatic events brings routine.
Or… that’s what the therapist says.
Let’s rephrase: the “therapist” that is the cashier at Boulevard Books.
He greets Laura with a wave. Every Monday and Thursday, she slips through the door within a ten minute window of 3:45.
Today’s arrival time was 3:48.
Her lanyard tinkles - keys and ID bang together - as she shimmies around the aisle. She’s on the hunt, looking to piecemeal a class set of books together. Sometimes she’s looking for herself - odd books here and there added to the stack next to her bed - but on days like today, she’s on a mission.
Jakub knows to leave her alone.
Just as she rounds the corner to the fantasy section, eyeing yet another copy of The Hobbit, someone plucks it from the shelf.
She follows the fingers with her gaze, up the arm and —
Oh.
The protest dies in her throat.
She coughs awkwardly to stop whatever she was going to say from coming out.
“Oh - I’m sorry, were you going to grab this?” Bucky Barnes - the Bucky Barnes - asks, holding up the gently used copy in his hand. He looks at the cover before looking over the woman in front of him.
“Yes,” comes out a bit more agitated and flustered than she planned. Laura fidgets before clearing her throat. “Yes, I was.”
“My apologies. I’ve been wanting another copy —“
Laura blinks, almost wanting to ask the stupid question to confirm she was actually seeing what was in front of her before he continued.
“There’s one up here if you’d like me to grab it.” He points with his free hand, eyebrow raised.
Her mouth opens and closes awkwardly, words stuck in her throat. “It’s fine,” she shakes her head, finally making eye contact after her gaze was locked on a vague space between them.
“Really, it’s no big deal, I can just reach -”
“Nope, I’m okay. Thanks,” Laura says quickly, spinning on her heels. She rushes towards the door, her routine and hopes broken. There was no way that he just… grabbed the book she had her eye on, then offered to get one off the top shelf. Yes, she was short, but she could have managed — but also she wanted that book, specifically —
Bucky stands still, hand still reaching towards the shelf.
Jakub distracts her briefly, calling out as she pushes open the door. There’s a confused look on his face as this is very much not normal behavior from the teacher. “Leaving already?”
“I’ll be back Thursday,” she says quickly, wanting to leave the bookstore behind. Her anxiety is spiking and she really, really just wanted this moment of solace. Unfortunately, it was ruined by a super soldier of all people. Laura huffs, frustrated as the door closes behind her.
“What’s her deal?” Bucky asks as he approaches the counter.
Jakub jumps, not expecting - or remembering - the other customers that were present. “Oh, her?” There’s a nervous laugh as Bucky holds out the copy of The Hobbit he was buying. “She’s a teacher. Probably a bad day.”
Bucky’s brow furrows, a line present in his forehead as he turns to watch the woman walk across the street. She’s easy to track with her vibrant purple hair - something he’s still not quite used to seeing. “Her?”
“Yeah, she’s in here all the time buying books. I think she’s trying to get a class set of these, actually,” Jakub explains, holding up the paperback as he scans it.
“She’s a teacher?” His doubt is palpable as he follows the top of her head further down the block. Sure, he could see maybe someone… artsy. Young. Free. But a teacher? Shaper of young minds? Likely high-strung and strict? Professional through and through?
The setting sun hits her hair for a second and Bucky swears it’s like the color of the pansies and hydrangeas that were sold on 28th Street a lifetime ago.
“What, did you think she was a student? She does complain about that all the time, but I thought it’d been happening less this past school year,” Jakub muses, pressing a few buttons on the register. “She teaches high school English. Does a fun genre literature class over at Beacon. Her kids come in all the time for books.”
“She’s got purple hair…” Bucky mutters, finally looking back at the man in front of him.
“Yup, I think it goes over well with the kids. Though I don’t think she’s done any other color. Not that I think she would, I think purple is her thing, but -- anyway, your total is $9.26.”
“Thanks man,” he mumbles, pulling out his wallet with a shake of his head.
Bucky is quick to finish the transaction, wanting to move past the odd exchange with the purple-haired woman. It leaves a funny taste in his mouth as he heads back to his threadbare apartment, the paperback in his hands a lead weight.
--
<< SEARCH HISTORY >>
>> how many books is a class set
>> do I buy all of the same edition for a class set
>> beacon school
>> beacon high school staff listing
>> beacon school purple hair teacher
--
Bucky’s search for the name of the purple-haired teacher is fruitless. He’s frustrated, having wasted the better part of his evening and the next morning trying to find the mystery woman. The school website - which he did find! - doesn’t have photos posted with the staff directory, and no amount of searching even brings him to a hint of her name online.
Not like he knows what to look for.
Even his search for what was considered a class set of books is without results. With a begrudging sigh, he unlocks his phone and presses ‘CALL.’
“Hey — Kira —“ Bucky starts, “any luck?” He knows better than to just start asking for help, especially on something like this. He hates the fact that he’s even doing this.
“She’s so far off the radar,” Kira says on the other end, and Bucky can hear some rustling in the background. “What’s up?”
“Let me — uh — let me ask you a hypothetical question,” he frowns, rubbing at his jaw with his hand. It deepens as he hears Kira laugh, and now he’s pacing the dim apartment.
Another voice comes over the line: “I do love your… hypotheticals, James.”
Bucky feels his eye twitch at the sound of Zemo on the other end of the phone. This was a mistake. “Shut up.”
“Let’s hear it, Barnes.” Kira is on the line again and he swears she’s got it on speaker-phone.
“Okay, so,” he starts, hand now at the back of his head. He couldn’t stop thinking about the exchange at the bookstore, to the point where he’s trying to figure out what to do. It’s weighed on his mind for the past twenty-four hours and nothing he thought of would fix the situation. “Hypothetically, say I needed what’s called a class set of books.” Bucky pauses, licking at his lip in thought. Knowing that Zemo was on the line meant he absolutely could not admit his failure at Googling this shit. “How many books is that? What do I need? Like — fifteen? Twenty?”
It sounds like a math problem.
Kira immediately questions the purpose of this query. “Why do you need a class set of books?”
His heart does that funny little thing it did yesterday at the bookstore - the little flip after he watched this woman run off. The dead air is a giveaway, he fears, and his response comes off rushed. “Doesn’t matter. Just tell me.”
“Uh, thirty, probably.” He can hear her working on the other end once more. “You gotta tell me why though. Do you need thirty of the same book? I can buy them —“
“No! No. That’s - they’re not for me,” Bucky sighs. He has to explain now. “I just — yesterday, I accidentally took a book that this - this teacher wanted when I was out yesterday. Apparently she’s in need of a class set - so I guess thirty copies of The Hobbit - she’s been buying up used copies for her students. And I bought the one she had her eye on to add to her collection. Apparently.”
“Okay, that’s actually kind of adorable.”
“A noble cause. Though the execution sounds…predictably clumsy,” Zemo quips, and for a moment Bucky is glad his phone is not in his vibranium hand.
“I didn’t call asking to be dragged over the coals,” Bucky grumbles, “shut up.”
“So,” Kira continues, “What do you know about her? Name? Number? Anything?”
He pauses. More dead air. He doesn’t know anything about her besides that she works at a school nearby, and.. her hair color.
Her bright, vibrant hair color. A shade of purple that took him off his guard upon realizing she was a teacher. Bucky thinks back to his and Steve’s high school teachers and they certainly did not look like that. But that’s what she is, a teacher, and it slips out. “…She works at Beacon. A high school.”
“That’s…vague,” she says.
He can feel the emphasis on vague and it makes him groan. The woman is not vague in his mind. Bucky pictures her clearly, easily. “And… she has purple hair.”
“Purple hair.”
“Ah. A woman of boldness. Already too much for him.”
"It is not too much,” Bucky snaps, defensive because he was adjusting to the modern life, thank you very much. “It was just,” he pauses, taking a breath, “unexpected.”
“You have fought aliens, super soldiers, and HYDRA,” Zemo notes, and Bucky can feel the tone of his voice pierce him, “Yet a woman with purple hair frightens you. Fascinating.”
“It does not frighten me.”
Kira laughs, the sound echoing over the phone. “Buck, half the baristas in New York have purple hair.”
“But she wasn’t a barista!”
“No,” she agrees; he can hear her smirk in her words “She was a sweet, nerdy English teacher trying to get used copies of The Hobbit for her kids. Which, may I remind you, you accidentally sabotaged.”
“It wasn’t on purpose! I didn’t even know that was what she was doing, she never said it was this book specifically she needed, and I pointed out a similar copy on the top shelf —“
“Yes,” Zemo says graciously, “You stole from the poor and then offered compensation. How heroic.”
Bucky practically growls. “Stark, tell him to shut up.”
“Oh no, I’m enjoying this,” she counters cheerfully, snickering. “So let me get this straight,” she continues, and he can picture Kira trying to put the puzzle together with Zemo next to her. “You want to show up at an almost random high school — with a stack of brand-new copies of The Hobbit — for a mystery purple-haired woman whose name you don’t know?”
There’s silence.
A very long, very awkward silence.
Bucky feels the blood pounding in his ears, hears the whir of the mechanical arm before he manages to get words out. “When you say it like that,” Bucky finally mutters, “It sounds weird.”
“It is weird,” Kira affirms.
“Deeply,” Zemo echoes. “Almost alarming, if I did not know your social development is…stunted.”
“Oh my god.” Bucky drags a hand over his face. “This was a mistake.”
“But it’s also very thoughtful. So maybe call the bookstore back, ask who she was, and — oh, I don’t know — get her name before you turn into an anonymous literary cryptid wandering the halls of a high school. They have security protocols, you know. The secretaries don’t just let anyone into the building.”
“I hate this,” Bucky tells her, but he knows Kira is right. He can’t just waltz in with a box of books and an apology to a woman whose name he doesn’t even know.
“You love this,” she counters.
“No, I don’t.” His tone is firm. There is no way he loves this.
Zemo snickers. “You love us, James.”
A suffering exhale. “I’m hanging up now.”
“Before you go,” Kira adds sweetly, “Purple hair isn’t dangerous.”
A beat.
“You didn’t see how bright it was,” he mumbles back, and he’s thinking about the flowers from the market all those years ago. Bucky then realizes how warm his face feels at the thought of seeing that color again and scowls. Less than twenty-four hours of this mystery woman in his life and it’s like he’s a teenager again, dumb and awkward.
Kira snorts. “Have fun with this, Bucky.”
Bucky ends the call with a quick press of a button, putting the device to his forehead. He can do this. He can apologize, hand over a box of books, and move on with his life without the haunting image of a vivid shade of purple.
Right?
He stares over at the copy of The Hobbit he purchased yesterday and exhales sharply.
…right.