so bad guys can't see me bleed

•tape thirty-nine•

"Hey, it's Black Falcon! What's up?" a kid says as the three of us walk down a sidewalk.

"It's just Falcon, kid," Sam says to him.

"No, no," the kid says. "My daddy told me it's Black Falcon."

We stop in front of the two kids. "Is it because I'm Black and I'm the Falcon?" Sam asks.

"Well, technically, I mean, yes," the kid says.

"So, are you, like, black kid?" Sam asks. The older kid next to him laughs and puts his face in his hands as the smaller one looks to the side with an annoyed look. Sam laughs. "I got him, right?" he says, hitting the older kid's knee lightly.

"Whatever, man," the little kid says as we continue walking.

Sam and I follow Bucky up the steps of a house to a door that has a 'no trespassing' sign on it. Sam glances around, then crosses his arms as Bucky knocks on the door.

After a few seconds, the door opens and the kid that opens it slows down, looking between the three of us. "We need to see Isaiah," Bucky says to him.

"Nobody named Isaiah lives here," the kid says.

Bucky sighs. "Look, we just wanna talk to him."

The kid puts his hands together. "You must not hear what I just said," he says. "You ain't getting in the house." He shakes his head. He waves. "Y'all can leave now."

Bucky looks at the ground. "Tell him the guy from the bar in Goyang is here. He's gonna know what that means."

"All right. Wait here," the kid says before closing the door.

"Nice kid," Sam says. "How do you know this guy?"

"I used to," Bucky says. "We had a skirmish during the Korean War."

The door opens again, and the kid pushes the screen door open. "Today's your lucky day," he says to us. "He said he wants to see for himself."

Bucky walks in the house, then I follow after him and Sam follows after me. An older man stands across the room, watching us. "Isaiah?" Bucky asks.

"Look at you," Isaiah says.

Bucky gestures to Sam and me. "This is, uh, Sam, and May—Cher. Cher, Sam, this is Isaiah. He was a hero. One of the ones HYDRA feared the most. Like Steve." He takes a breath in. "We met in '51."

"If by met you mean whopped your ass, then, yeah," Isaiah says.

I like this guy already.

"We heard whispers he was on the peninsula," Isaiah goes on. "But everyone they sent after him, never came back. So the U.S. military dropped me behind the line to go deal with him. I took half that metal arm in that fight in Goyang. But I see he's managed to grow it back." He shakes his head. "I just wanted to see if he got the arm back. Or if he'd come to kill me."

"I'm not a killer anymore," Bucky says.

Isaiah smiles a little. "You think you can wake up one day and decide who you wanna be? It doesn't work like that. Well, maybe it does for folks like you."

Bucky lets his lips part before he looks back at Isaiah. "Isaiah, the reason we're here," he takes a small breath in, "is because there's more of you and me out there."

"You and me," Isaiah says.

"And we need to know how," Bucky goes on.

"I'm not gonna talk about it anymore," Isaiah says, grabbing something metal before throwing it to the side. It launches itself into the wall. Sam looks at Bucky, then to the think in the wall as Isaiah walks over to Bucky. "You know what they did to me for being a hero? They put my ass in jail for 30 years. People running tests, taking my blood, coming into my cell. Even your people weren't done with me."