copperbadge:

Title: Day Of Atonement
Rating: PG
Summary: Bucky thinks he’s got a lot to atone for. Fortunately, there’s a holy day for that.
Notes: Thanks to arsenicjade for checking this one over for me. 😀 

When Steve was little, he didn’t comprehend or even notice that good boys from his building didn’t play with the Jewish boys one block over. When he got older he understood it, but ignored it; after all, his mom didn’t care, so why should he?

Sarah Rogers didn’t give an Irish damn what the biddies in the parish thought of her or her son, as few of them had raised much of a hand to help her when Joseph was alive, and anyone she chose to associate with didn’t give a damn either. On the few occasions someone pointed out Steve’s choice in friends, she said, with an affectionate smile, “Well, Steve’s never been good at idiot rules.”

Steve ran about for most of his childhood in short pants with Bucky Barnes (Lefty Commie Jewish ma, Lefty Commie Convert dad) and Arnie Roth (orthodox, kind-hearted father, dead mother), who lived on the border between the Jewish neighborhood and the Irish one, an invisible but very tough membrane. Arnie drifted off eventually, too scared of seeming any kind of different to play with goyim, but Bucky and Steve battled angry Irish boys in Steve’s half of the street and (less often) tough Jewish boys in Bucky’s half, and soon enough most people who knew them left them alone. Sarah kept a jar of kosher pickles and a special plate for Bucky when he visited, and while she couldn’t send food over to the Barnes family, she did look after Bucky and Becca when the Barnes parents needed to go to a rally or a protest, and the time the strikebreakers put Bucky’s dad in a bad way because he was trying to Unionize.

If Steve ate a lot more matzoh growing up than most Irish, Bucky and Becca occasionally got a meal that might not strictly speaking be entirely kosher.

“Do you remember Yom Kippur back in ‘35, the year after my mom died?” Steve asked. He tried not to ask do you remember too often, but Erev Yom Kippur was in two days, and he didn’t know if Bucky would want to remember, or to participate.

“You wanted to fast with us,” Bucky said, sitting at Sam’s kitchen bar. “Mom wouldn’t let you. She had the Rabbi in to tell you the sick didn’t have to fast.”

“He boxed my ears when I lipped off to him, too.”

“He said that you were a gentile anyway, which was punishment enough.”

“Never lipped off to the Rabbi again,” Steve said ruefully, and Bucky smiled. “It’s comin’ up, you know.”

The smile dropped off his face. “I know.”

“Sam would drive you to Temple if you wanted. We could both fast with you,” Steve ventured. Bucky hadn’t left the house since they’d brought him here.

“Don’t remember much — ” Bucky’s lips twisted. “Bet I could still make kreplach, all the times we watched Mom do it, but the prayers, the words, it’s all…”

He made a faint gesture, fingers fluttering away from his head. Lost to the Winter Soldier.

“They got me,” he said bitterly. “They didn’t put me in a camp but they got me just the same.”

“Hey, no, it’ll come back,” Steve said. “It will. If you can still make kreplach you can still pray. That kinda stuff doesn’t leave you, Buck.”

“It’s Yom Kippur. I got a lot to atone for. There’s too much — “

"I don’t believe that, and I don’t think you do either, not deep down. Anyway, your dad always said the best thing about bein’ a Jew was wholesale one-day forgiveness,” Steve said. Bucky’s mom had always swatted him for that.

Bucky looked at him, head bent, only his eyes moving. “What if I can’t remember?”

“Well, then you’ll have to go back to Hebrew school,” Steve said with a grin. “I hear the Rabbis don’t box ears anymore.”

“Bet they would if you lipped off to them, you were the worst at lipping off,” Bucky replied.

"So you’ll go? Sam and I will come if you want, at least, you know — ”

“Yeah, fine,” Bucky sighed. “I don’t know, dragging you two goyim around with me, G-d better send me patience for the pair of you…”