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He disobeys a direct order to go looking for Steve. All the Commandos volunteer to help, but he only takes Dum Dum with him. He’s not so blinded by loss (and love, don’t forget love, that’s why he’s here in the first place) as to neglect the mission. So the rest of the Commandos take Zola back to London, and he and Dum Dum look for Steve.
Steve has to be alive.
He remembers the story in the papers about the airman who fell without a parachute from a bomber into a snowfield and lived. And he wasn’t Captain America.
So Steve has to be alive.
He has to be. Bucky knows that God works in mysterious ways, but he refuses to believe that He would allow someone like Steve to die so pointlessly, and especially while they still needed him. Bucky has seen many pointless deaths, but Steve is special; he believes that to the core of his soul. Steve is destined either to die in his bed at a great age, or to die saving hundreds of people. Not in a fall, not knocked out of a train car almost accidentally.
They are behind enemy lines and have to work fast, but they are thorough. There is nothing but a few scraps of wreckage at the bottom of the ravine, fresh snow covering everything. They dig into the snow in all the places where parts of the train fell, and find nothing.
Steve has to be alive.
If Steve had walked away from the fall, he would have followed the valley down, so they do that too. There are no signs anyone else has been down this way recently, and when they get to the first village, they are told that no one else has come down from the mountains in weeks.
Bucky heads back to London convincing himself that Steve has been captured by Hydra, but he doesn’t say this. Officially, Steve is Missing In Action, but everyone is acting as if he’s dead, and Bucky doesn’t want to look delusional. But that’s what’s at the forefront of his mind when he proposes the full-frontal attack on the Hydra base.
He doesn’t cry. He’s angry. That anger fuels him through the Hydra base, until he realises that Steve isn’t there; Steve was never captured.
Steve might be dead, but Bucky has a gun in his hand and people to blame for it. His anger pitches up into rage, and he cuts a swathe through the Hydra troops. Just before he jumps from the car onto the plane, Agent Carter says to him, “For Steve.”
He grins at her and says, “Ain’t nobody else I’d do something this stupid for,” then jumps.
Agent Carter—Peggy—is on the other end of the radio as he points the nose of the plane into the Arctic. He knows that he should have felt jealous of Peggy, the way Steve looked at her. But he’s a realist. Steve has always deserved better than Bucky, and once he grew into Captain America, he certainly didn’t need Bucky anymore. Peggy’s a beautiful dame Steve can walk down the street with, and not just beautiful but a match with him on every level. He loves Steve, and Bucky had promised himself that he could keep him until the end of the war, though he knew it was selfish. But just that, no longer, then Peggy would have her dance partner. He didn’t know what he had been intending to do with himself after that. It didn’t matter now.
“You gotta keep looking for Steve. I reckon he’s hit his head, forgotten who he is. You go find him, Peggy. Take him dancing. Uh, actually, teach him to dance, he doesn’t know how.”
He can hear that Peggy is crying, and knows she’s crying for Steve and not for him. “I will. I can stand having my toes stood on.”
The ice is close, coming closer faster and faster. “I can’t look after him anymore, so you gotta, you promise me.”
“I promise.”
It gives him the strength he needs to do this, because he knows that she loves Steve too, and she will look for him just as hard as Bucky would. All he can see is blinding white, and the words come into his head without thought: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum—
---
light bright light noise light
name rank and serial
no name no rank no serial
faces looking can’t move tied down get out
noises words no meaning what are they saying
where am I who am I so bright
noise I am making that noise I am shouting why are they not doing anything who am I where am I
machines people pain pain stop stop avemariagratiaplena—
---
He opens his eyes a second time.
Name, rank and serial, but he can’t remember them—
A face appears in front of him. “How are you feeling?”
He understands the words now, and replies in that language. “Fine?”
He is tied down, but not uncomfortable. Fine seems to cover it.
The face beams at him. “There are great things ahead of you, great things.”
“Who—who am I?”
“You do not remember?”
“Nothing.”
“You are a soldier, Styopa. We are making you the best soldier. You will do great things for the motherland.”
“Styopa?”
The man smiles at him, and there is an edge of pity in it. “You do not even remember your name, do you? You are Captain Stepan Ivanovich Rogov. Perhaps I should not have been so familiar as to call you Styopa. I should have called you Captain, but we have spent much time together, even though you have not been awake.”
Captain. Soldier. Stepan. Maybe, yes, perhaps, but there is so much empty space. The man is smiling and certain. He must be Styopa. “I don’t mind. But I still don’t remember.”
“This is why you have been chosen. You were hit in the head with some shrapnel, and we knew you had suffered memory loss, though we had not realised quite how much. We believe we can fill the gaps with our machines, in a few days give you the training that it would take months or years for others to perfect. We have already taught you English.”
“Do I—do I have a family?”
The man shakes his head. “You are an orphan. No wife, no fiance or girlfriend.”
There is a feeling, deep in his chest, I loved and I was loved. Something else comes up, a fleeting thing, a circle of faces around him, but it’s gone in an instant. “If—I am a Captain. I have—my men?”
The man pats his hand. “You were the only survivor, Styopa. I am sorry.”
Why did he think that he could not understand Russian before? Both Russian and English are completely natural to him, as if he has been speaking them all his life. He doesn’t know anything about their machines. Perhaps temporarily losing his Russian was something that could happen.
There is pain each time he goes into the machines, and each time he knows more, can do more. He is incredibly fast and strong to start with (was he like that before, or was that the machines as well?), but his skills are honed and developed. He knows that he is loyal to the state, so loyal that he would give his life for it in a minute. Sometimes he feels that he glows with it, with pride and love for his country, for Communism.
Every time he is woken in the morning, there is a moment when he thinks there is someone else in his head, kicking and trying to get out. It passes as soon as he fully wakes, and he does not mention it to anyone. He does not mention the prayers that come into his head, unbidden and unlooked for. Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
There is another thing he keeps to himself. He has dreams, dreams that he can never fully remember when he wakes. But they are about a man, a beautiful man, a man he kisses and makes love to, a man whose face he cannot quite picture when he wakes. Dreams that either wake him hard and aching, or with sticky sheets. He was (he is) goluboi, a pervert. That is a weakness, and all weaknesses are to be conquered in service of the state. Perhaps the machines could burn it out of him, but he cannot ask, in case the machines cannot. So he suppresses it, does not let his eyes linger on the handsome men who he spars with, works out which of the female agents he should appear interested in.
They send him out on missions. Each target has threatened the state. Each target dies. Sometimes he is a sniper, but most often he chooses to be close with his kills. It feels more natural to him. He can snap a neck with one hand, and while he is big, he can move silently.
They are pleased with him, but there is something else: they are afraid of him. It is understandable. He could be very dangerous, if he was not so loyal.
Then they send him to the USA. He can tell they are not sure if this is a good idea, and his briefing is very thorough. His hair is dyed, and he grows a moustache that he dyes too. They say that they are concerned that US operatives may have a verbal description of him.
He has a headache almost from the moment the plane touches down. There is a hammering behind his eyes, a sense of wrongness, of displacement. He is very good at what he does, though, and doesn’t show any of this, smoothly smiling as he’s waved through passport control (his passport says he is an American; his accent and his clothes say he is an American).
It slowly gets worse, though he can keep on top of things enough to successfully eliminate the target. But he doesn’t go to the rendezvous. Instead he walks to the station, feeling like he’s sleepwalking, and buys a ticket to New York.
Why is he going to New York? What is there for Captain Stepan Ivanovich Rogov, born in Podolsk, who has never set foot in the USA before this mission? Why does he have a headache, when he never has headaches unless he has just been in one of the scientists’ machines?
At the next station two girls take the seats opposite him. They are dressed fashionably in big skirts and bobby socks, frivolous capitalist excesses, and seem to him flighty and shallow. He smiles politely at them, then continues looking out of the window.
After a couple of minutes, one of the girls says, “Sorry, this is kinda rude, but you seem real familiar. Are you on TV?”
He smiles at her, surprised by the question. “No. Guess I must just have a familiar face.”
“You sure? The movies, then.”
“No, I’m sure I’ve never been in the movies, or TV, or even the theatre.”
She cocks her head and looks flirtatiously at him. “You should be. You’re a real swell-looking guy.” Her friend, who hasn’t said anything yet, lightly smacks her on the arm. This is obviously too forward of her, even for a decadent country such as this.
He is not used to women like this. “Uh, thanks?”
The girl who had been silent says, “Sorry, we’re on our way to our cousin’s wedding and she’s just sore she hasn’t got a guy to bring with her. I’m Lou-Anne, and this is my sister Betty.”
“Pleasure to meet you. Dan Adams.”
“Where are you headed?”
“New York.” They could be agents, and there could be people listening in, but it’s a reasonable double-blind to tell the truth about his destination.
“I’ve always wanted to go to New York. See the Empire State. You been before?”
“Yeah.” Why did he say that? They will ask more questions now.
Betty says, “Course he’s been before, can’t you hear him? That’s where he’s from.”
They had told him that his accent was northeastern US, and perhaps it does sound like he could be from New York. “Haven’t been back in years, though.”
“Bet you’ve been to Coney Island, then.”
“Yeah, I have.” I threw up on the Cyclone, we held hands on the ferris wheel where no one would see—
The thought hits so intrusively that it’s painful, and he can’t hide his wince from the girls.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just getting headaches a lot recently.”
Where had that thought come from? Who had he been holding hands with? When had he been to New York? He hadn’t left Russia until he joined the army.
What they told you is not who you are.
Another thought that hits with pain, and he staggers to the bathroom, makes it just in time to throw up. He retches until there is nothing left, then stands shakily and rests his forehead against the cool wall.
There is a tentative knock on the door, and Lou-Anne says, “Mr. Adams? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, guess I was sicker than I thought.”
“You want us to call the conductor? I know they can get a doctor to meet the train—”
“Not that sick. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
“Ok.” There’s a pause. “I’ll come check back in five minutes.”
He had misjudged the girls. Lou-Anne is capable and clear-headed, which makes her more of a potential threat, especially as he is unintentionally drawing attention to himself.
What they told you is not who you are.
Then who is he? Why does he remember Coney Island? Why is he, the most loyal of the loyal, disobeying a direct order and heading to New York? What is he going to do when he gets there? His thoughts are a swirl, and he can’t focus, his head aches and his stomach churns. He retches a few more times, but there is nothing more to throw up.
He walks shakily back to his seat. Surrendering himself to Lou-Anne’s concern will get him less attention than trying to get away.
Both of the girls look worried. He smiles sheepishly at them. “Sorry, not much of a travelling companion. I’d find someplace else to sit; I’ve no idea if this is catching.”
“Don’t be silly. You need someone to keep an eye on you, at least till we have to get off. You sure we shouldn’t get you a doctor? You really don’t look so good.”
“I’ll be fine.”
The girls fuss over him, bring him soda to try and settle his stomach, and generally are excellent nurses until they reach their stop. He wishes them well, and it is completely genuine. He still hurts, everything is still churning, but no more memories, no more clues have come to him. He still doesn’t know what he is doing. He does know that he will soon be missed—that is, if he wasn’t spotted getting on the train in the first place. But he can’t turn back. He has to keep going. He just hopes that things will make more sense when he gets to New York.
He never gets there. Two men get on the train in Washington DC, and he knows they are there to intercept him. He dodges them, gets off the train just as it’s pulling out of the station, but he can’t focus properly, can’t concentrate, and is effectively hunted down by four other operatives.
They hold him in a safe house in DC. They ask him what he was doing. He tells them he doesn’t know. They hurt him. They ask him where he was going. He tells them New York. They ask him why. He tells them he doesn’t know. They hurt him.
They ask him if he has remembered anything, and all that does is confirm: What they told you is not who you are. He lies and says he remembers nothing. They hurt him.
He is taken back and given to the scientists, back into the machines—
---
“Captain Rogov?”
He blinks, still in the restraints after another session in the machines. “Sir?”
“I wish to test your recall after the latest input. Please tell me the last five countries you have eliminated a target in.”
“Israel. USSR. Poland. Czechoslovakia. DDR.”
“That list is correct?”
He is confused. Of course it is correct. His last target was in Jerusalem. “Yes, sir. Do you think I have forgotten something, sir?”
“Not at all. Merely a double-check.”
They send him on more missions. He mainly operates in Europe, sometimes in the Middle East and Asia, and very occasionally in Africa. He has never been to America, north or south. He will admit to himself that he is curious, and would like to go. He thinks that the agents who are sent on missions to the USA gain a greater understanding of their enemy and are better agents for it.
They often put him in cryostasis between missions, reserving him for the most difficult cases. It makes keeping track of time difficult. They put him in the machines sporadically. Sometimes he is told why (such as when they need him to know another language), sometimes he is not. Sometimes he realises what he has learned when he leaves the machine, sometimes he does not. There is no point asking questions if he has not been told.
A few years later he is assigned an agent to train. “She has the greatest potential of any recruit in the past ten years. We think you can bring out even more of that potential than our standard training.”
Her name is Natasha Romanova, and she is already deadly. She is naturally far more skilled than he is at interrogations and deceptions, so he concentrates on honing her combat skills.
He realises that the other agents are expecting him to take her to bed, and he knows that he must do this. He has to keep his weakness hidden. She is beautiful, but he doesn’t really appreciate it—not in the same way as the other male agents do. He sees them watching her, even as they pretend not to. He also sees the way that she manipulates their attention, uses them, and is impressed. She has made her beauty into as finely honed a weapon as any he has seen.
They are lying naked together in the bed of a safe house when she says, “Who do you think of, when we fuck?”
He considers a pat lie, to say that it is her. But there is no point. She knows he doesn’t want her. He thinks she is playing a similar, though slightly different, game with him; there is power and prestige in being his lover, and it makes her off-limits to any other man. She has also very effectively taught him how to please her, and she herself has been well taught in how to please men. While they are neither of them each other’s first choice to take to bed, there are many worse choices.
“I don’t know.” It is true. He thinks of the man from his dreams, but that man is indistinct, and he has no idea who he is or was. The emotions are the clearest part—the desire, the love he felt. Sometimes he wonders if he had ever actually fucked the man, or had just wanted to.
She looks at him for a moment, and sees that it isn’t a lie. She raises an eyebrow, offering him the option of continuing or staying silent.
“I know there was someone. From before, from when I lost my memories. I think I’m chasing a memory.”
He likes being with Natasha, likes working with her. But she seems to be stirring something inside of him. He questions his orders more; not directly, not openly, but thinks them over more. Do these people really need to die? Are their crimes so great that this is the only answer? Are they really so dangerous? He knows that Natasha thinks the same way.
Together their loyalty is cracking. They try and complete their missions with as few casualties as possible, even if it makes it much more dangerous for them. He does not say anything aloud, but he wonders what they could do if they ran. If they could hide. If they could build a life together away from this. He entertains fantasies of running deep into the wilds in Africa or South America, somewhere where they would never see another human being. But he doesn't think even that would be safe. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, because there is no way he can think of that he can get the both of them out of the life they have. Or even just Natasha. She deserves more than this, and if he could guarantee her safety, he would sacrifice his own.
He should have known that this would be noticed, that their behavior would show it, however well they thought they were hiding it. He is interrogated, accused of intending to defect, to betray the state. He denies everything, defends Natasha to the hilt.
He is taken back and given to the scientists, back into the machines—
---
“Captain Rogov?”
He blinks, still in the restraints after another session in the machines. “Sir?”
“I am going to test your recall after the latest input. Please tell me the names of the last three agents you worked with.”
“Ivan Petrov. Anna Alekseeva. Nikolai Ivchenko.” He understands why they ask; the machines work with your memories, so there is always a danger they may erase something unintentionally, but it still is disconcerting to be asked every time.
“Very good.”
He walks out of the room, and there is a female agent being escorted along the corridor by two other agents. She steps in front of him, says, “Styopa?”
“Sorry, do I know you?” She is striking, and he would remember if he had met her before.
One of the other agents pulls her back and smiles at him. “Sorry, Captain, Romanova is new, and too easily impressed with our living legend.”
That is not what her face says. Her face is covered in grief and pain. But he cannot ask anything here and now.
He does not see her again, though he remembers the encounter, wonders what was behind it.
The years slip by him, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep. He learns the new capabilities of the world, from computers to satellites.
And suddenly, there is no more USSR to be loyal to.
He is awake when the state falls, and it is the greatest shock of his life. He had seen the need for Perestroika; the world was changing, and the state had to change to survive. But then it all crumbles, even the foundations of the communist state removed and replaced with capitalism. He has no anchor, no guide. His handlers see this, and put him into cryostasis.
The next time he is woken, General Lukin himself is standing by him. “There is still work to be done for Communism, Captain. I no longer work for the state, but my organisation is working for the death of capitalism. You work for us now. We will restore everything that was good. This, I promise.”
He spends all his time between missions in cryostasis now. He needs at least twenty-four hours after each time he is woken to re-orientate himself to all the changes in the world. But beyond that, the work is much the same.
He is woken again.
“It is 2012, Captain. The situation is still fluid, but I wished to wake you so you may be prepared to move at any time.”
“The situation, sir?”
“You were briefed on the rumours of the Avenger Initiative last time you woke, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They are no longer rumours. The Avengers exist, and they and SHIELD are in possession of an item which would be of great use to our organisation. We do not have the full intelligence, so there is no plan as of yet. Prepare yourself, Captain. They are formidable. But nothing you cannot handle.”
---
Bucky opens his eyes, and he immediately knows that something is wrong. Not just that the last he remembers he was crashing into an ice floe, but this room is all slightly off, and when he clicks that the baseball game is years old, he knows that Hydra have captured him. Who else would make such a dumb mistake about baseball?
He smiles at the woman who walks in, plays along for a few moments. He’s unarmed, there’s nothing good in the room to use as a weapon, and he’s probably deep in a Hydra facility. He doesn’t believe in taking hostages, but the bitch is working for Hydra; he can make exceptions.
“So when do I get outta here?”
He stands up and stretches, and as she starts to say, “I need to talk to the doctors—” he grabs her, pins her arms, and gets a hand around her neck. She nearly succeeds in throwing him off, but he’d expected any Hydra agent to be a decent fighter and had known that was coming.
“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. We’re gonna walk out of here, nice and calm, and if I get out without any problems, you don’t get your neck broken. Understand?”
“Sergeant—”
He tightens his grip. “I said, understand?”
“Yes.”
They walk out of the room and into a large, bright corridor. It doesn’t look much like any Hydra base he’s been in so far. They’re partway down the corridor when the men with guns turn up. Not dressed as Hydra goons normally are, these guys (and girls, when did Hydra start using so many female agents?) are wearing suits. He switches position so that the guys he can hear coming up behind him can’t get a clear shot either. Shit, this is bad.
A tall black man with an eyepatch is striding towards them, and at that moment Bucky realises he has no idea what is going on. It’s obvious he is in charge, and there is no way that Hydra would have a black guy in authority. So who the hell has captured him? And where have they taken him? And more importantly, how the hell is he going to get out of this?
“Sergeant Barnes, I would appreciate it if you get go of my agent.”
“And I would appreciate it if you would tell me who the fuck you are.”
“Director Fury of SHIELD. I’m sorry about that little show. The idea was to break it to you gently—”
“Break what to me gently?”
“You’ve been asleep, Sergeant. For nearly seventy years.” He nods towards the window. “Take a look.”
Bucky can’t see a way of getting to the window without opening himself up to be shot, and even if he did, they might just be lining him up for a sniper outside. “How about you let me walk out, take a look at the future that way?”
“Very well.” The agents behind Fury stand aside.
Shit, this is just leading him into someplace else he can be shot in the head. Or perhaps it really is the truth. He decides to push his luck. “A little protection would be nice. Like the gun your agent is holding.”
Fury considers this for a moment, then nods to the agent next to him. The man walks forwards slowly, holds his gun out at arm’s length. Bucky is watching every moment for the kick, the punch, the takedown, but it never comes. He takes the gun, without loosening his hold on the woman’s neck, and the other agent retreats.
The gun is strange, not quite like any he’s used before. He thinks the safety is off, but he’s not sure. It stands to test it. “Anyone behind this wall?”
Fury seems to be listening to something for a moment, before shaking his head. Bucky fires the gun into the wall, and it seems to work like any other handgun. He keeps one hand around the woman’s neck and says to her, “Head for the door, doll.”
It must be a weird scene, he and his hostage hugging the wall, followed by dozens of armed men and women in suits. They make it to a door, one that looks like a fire exit. He could be about to be shot in the head, but five minutes ago he was about to die in in a plane crash, so he should be resigned to his death by now.
“Open the door.”
They come out into an alleyway, which looks and smells like any alleyway. There’s a suspicious silence at the street end, but the other end is blocked. He nudges her towards the street, still hugging the wall. The gang of agents is still following them, and this is looking increasingly ridiculous.
There’s something familiar about this place, something nagging at him as he can see more and more of the street as they get to the entrance of the alley. But it’s only when they get to the sidewalk that he realises it. “Shit, this is New York.”
Fury is a few paces behind him. “New York, October 2nd, 2011, Sergeant. The Germans surrendered on May 8th, 1945, the Japanese on August 15th, 1945. ”
He just stands there for a moment, completely stunned. He just about registers that they must have cleared the street before he got out. Then he realises that if this is New York, and they won the war, the woman he’s got a hand around the neck of is not a Hydra agent. He lets go of her, and says, “Real sorry for threatening to break your neck.”
She smiles brightly at him. “It’s what I’m trained for, sir. And it’s a privilege to meet you.”
He actually looks at her, and she’s not bad-looking, so the old autopilot kicks in. “Wanna let me buy you a drink?”
Her smile doesn’t waver. “No, thank you.”
He gives her the gun. She’s nearest, and he’s not going to shoot anyone in New York. He looks at Fury. “So, who are you guys anyway?”
“The successors to the SSR. We deal with the more... interesting problems the world throws at us.”
“What about Steve?” And he wants, he wants so badly for the answer to be that Peggy found Steve, they got married, they grew old together, and he doesn’t mind if Steve’s alive or dead if he’s had the seventy years of happiness he deserved.
“Captain Rogers has never been found. Missing, presumed dead.”
His anger bubbles up again. “How the hell can you presume he’s dead? Did they look?”
“Sergeant, everyone was looking for Captain Rogers. That valley system is probably the most extensively surveyed in the entire world. No trace of him has ever been found—”
“So he ain’t dead, because dead men don’t just disappear. If he got captured—”
“That was a possibility that was considered, and Hydra facilities were cleared and searched, and operatives interrogated. We’re as certain as can be that he wasn’t captured by Hydra.”
“What if he lost his memory—”
“Sergeant, if Captain Rogers lost his memory and spent the last seventy years as an Alpine goatherd, that is not my concern, because geriatric goatherds are not of use to my organisation. However, world-class snipers who have been enhanced to the point they can withstand being frozen for seventy years are definitely of interest to me.”
“You’re drafting me.”
“When you put it like that, yes, I am. I want you to be Captain America.”
“Fuck you.” It’s out of his mouth before he thinks. If SHIELD is the SSR then he’s just told a senior officer to fuck himself, but he can’t regret it. There is one Captain America, and it’s not him.
Fury doesn’t react. “You may reconsider when we have fully updated you. But Captain America or not, I am drafting you.”
Bucky sighs. What else can he do? “Hope the damn pay’s better.”
“Better pay, medical and dental insurance, a comprehensive pension plan. And you get your army pension as well.”
“Guess that’s something.”
It takes a few days for the reality of “just about everyone I’ve ever known is dead” to really hit him. He still can’t accept that Steve is dead. Steve’s too tough, and there was no body, even with a clear place where it should have been. So he mourns for his friends, but he doesn’t mourn for Steve. If he survived seventy years frozen, then Steve could too. SHIELD keeps him busy most of his days, but at night he uses his new computer, finds out all the places that people have looked for Steve. He intends to work out all the places they haven’t looked and go out there and find Steve. But it turns out that seventy years is a long time for people to go looking, and it seems like most of the Alps have been scoured looking for the guy. When bodies turn up even hundreds of miles away from where Steve disappeared, they’re touted as possibly being Captain America, until they obviously are not him (in one case, a few thousand years too old, which Bucky reckons Steve should take offence at).
But as soon as he works out any place Steve could be that no one has checked, he’s going looking.
He knows an intensive training program when he’s in one, and he knows that SHIELD are trying to turn him into Captain America. He still doesn’t like the idea, but he understands the reasoning. They have a group of misfits lined up to save the world, and there’s no glue to hold them together. Bucky doesn’t doubt that Steve could be that glue, but he’s not sure he can do it.
Somewhere along the way, he gets told about gay rights. The agent who gives him the briefing has been tasked with updating him on every social change of the past seventy years and obviously expects him to be horrified with them. He wants to smack her, remind her that it’s in his file that he was a member of the first desegregated unit in the US army, that he happily took orders from Agent Carter, and frankly, it all sounds fucking great. Well, great as soon as Bucky can remember to stop calling women ‘dames’. He can’t tell the agent that the reason he’s gone quiet when she tells him that two guys can get married is because there’s a lump in his throat and he can barely breathe because the future is wonderful.
He can’t tell her, or anyone, because if he comes out, he outs Steve in the process. He’s not outing Steve without his permission. So he needs to find Steve first.
His therapist uses the word ‘denial’ a lot. He’s not in denial. He denies that Steve is dead because no one has shown him any evidence that he is.
When Fury comes to find him, to tell him they have a situation that needs Captain America, he agrees to do it because he can’t see a better solution.
He doesn’t think that he does too badly. Steve would have had it sewn up, everyone playing nicely, but he thinks he handles it better than most could have done. Sure, he ended up brawling on the floor of the helicarrier with Tony just before it was attacked, but that counted as working out the kinks in a team. The team had walked out the other side intact, New York not nuked, and they’d done their best to reduce civilian casualties. Pretty much the best they could hope for in the circumstances.
They’re all tired when they walk into their debriefing, and Clint looks more than a little haunted. Bucky’s team leader, so he needs to rebuild some bridges, starting with apologising for trying to break Tony’s face. “Yeah, so, Tony, sorry for trying to punch you. Steve’s, eh, not a good subject.”
Tony shrugs. “Blame the cosmic argument doohickey if you want.”
Natasha says, “Steve was the original Captain America, right?”
Clint looks at her, “How can you not know that?”
She shoots him a look, “The ‘America’ part, Clint. The part where I’m not American. I can tell you a lot about the Battle of Stalingrad, not so much about Captain America.”
“Steve is Captain America. I’m just filling in till he comes back.”
Bruce looks at him, surprised. “You think he’s still alive?”
“I’m alive, and he’s always been tough. Tougher than me. So yeah, I do.”
Tony smirks at Natasha, “Every summer the Alps fill up with women who think they can find the perfect 1940s gentleman just waiting to be defrosted. The muscles help too.”
She looks speculative. “So he was cute?”
Bucky manages to bite his tongue and not say just how cute Steve was (always was, even before the serum), instead saying, “Very popular with the ladies.”
Tony pulls out a StarkPad, saying, “You need a picture.”
Clint says, “Should I feel threatened?”
Tony hands the pad to Natasha. “There you go, Captain America in all his glory.”
Thor looks at the picture over her shoulder and says, “He seems a most impressive warrior.”
But Natasha is staring, eyes wide. Then she looks straight at Bucky and says, “He’s alive. Or at least he was five years ago.”
“What?”
She’s almost talking to herself when she says, “Stepan Rogov, they weren’t even trying to be subtle.” She looks at him again. “You read the briefing on my background.” Bucky nods and she continues. “He was part of the same program. I knew he’d lost his memory, but I thought—he thought he was Russian, even down to the names of his parents and the town he came from. They can take memories from you, and I don’t know how much they’ve wiped from him. We were—together. For a while. They took his memories of me. He didn’t know who I was when I next saw him. Bucky, I don’t know if there’s anything left of the man you know.”
Tony said, “Wait, Captain America is some former Soviet spy?”
“No, Tony, Captain America is the Winter Soldier.”
Clint says, “Holy shit,” but that had meant nothing to Bucky, and obviously hadn’t to Tony, Bruce or Thor either. Natasha catches their confusion, and brings up the SHIELD data for them.
Bucky reads, feeling increasingly sick. “Steve wouldn’t do this.”
“He’s not Steve. He’s what they created, taking out memories and putting in what they need.”
“I need to get him back.”
“He’s a weapon, Bucky. He exists to kill. He won’t remember you, but he will kill you.”
“That doesn’t change anything.”
“It’s suicide.”
He smiles tightly at her. “So’s a solo rescue mission twenty miles into enemy territory. I owe him. Even if I die trying.”
She considers him for a moment, and he wonders what she sees, because he’s learnt enough to know that she’s halfway to being a mind reader. “There’s no way anyone can talk you out of this, is there?”
“Nope.”
“Do you even have a plan? What are you going to do? Turn up and hope?”
“You tell me everything there is to know about the Winter Soldier, and I’ll work on a plan.”
“I have a plan.” Bucky had not expected Thor to contribute to this, and it looked like the others hadn’t either. “The tesseract is not merely a weapon; it is a great restorative. It will be able to bring him back to himself. And I have sworn to assist my shield-brothers here on earth. This man Steve, he is your shield-brother, Bucky? Then he is my shield-brother also.”
Bucky couldn’t help but grin. “I reckon you’re one of only two people I’ve met who might be stronger than he is, so that is good to hear, pal.”
That’s the point that Fury sweeps into the room. “You are not going after the Winter Soldier, Barnes. That’s an order.”
“Did you know?” He stands up, squares off against Fury, because Fury’s lied to him too many times today already.
“We had no data on the identity of the Winter Soldier.”
“So you thought it could be him, you lying motherfucker, you knew it could be him and you didn’t tell me.”
“Captain—”
He steps right up to Fury, almost nose to nose with him. “Do. Not. Fucking. Call. Me. Captain. Because he’s the Captain, and you let me think there was no place else to look for him.”
“We had no solid data, merely a suspicion. We did have solid data that you would most likely set off on a stupid-ass rescue plan on the basis of a suspicion.”
“And what did you do? File it, ignore it, he’s been a fucking brainwashed prisoner for seventy years and you didn’t even bother to show Natasha a picture and find out if it was actually him.”
“You have no idea of the intelligence considerations—”
“I don’t fucking care! I’m going to find him.”
“The world would be better off without the Winter Soldier, but all this will do is kill one of my Avengers.”
“You can either risk losing me this way, or you can lock me up forever, because that’s the only way you’re going to stop me doing this.”
“You’re emotionally compromised, Barnes.”
“Doesn’t change a damn thing.”
“It means you’re more likely to get your dumb ass killed.”
“Still the same deal, Fury. Let me go or lock me up.”
They’re still staring each other down when Natasha says, very quietly, “I always wanted to get him out of there. I just never knew how.” She looks sharply at Bucky when he looks at her. “I still think we’re all going to get ourselves killed. But I do owe him. I’ve still got things to atone for.”
Clint says, “You are not going hunting one of your exes without me.”
Natasha smiles, “It’s not like that, Clint.” She leans in, whispers into Clint’s ear, and Bucky would guess that she isn’t speaking English either.
Clint says, “Huh. Well, I’m still in.”
“Me too.” Tony obviously sees everyone’s surprise. “Dad spent years looking for Cap. If I can actually find him, well, another point proven.”
Bruce smiles. “I’m feeling peer pressure here.”
Tony slaps him on the back. “You and the big green are always welcome, but you want to babysit some lab space for me instead, we’re good with that.”
Bruce nods towards the display, where the Winter Soldier’s file is still up. “If he is everything that says he is, I think you need the Other Guy along for the ride.”
Fury looks at them all incredulously. “You’re all going along with his dumbass plan.”
Bucky puts a finger up. “Anyone want to suggest a less stupid plan for getting Steve back, I’ll go with it.”
Clint says, “Do we even have a plan? I think we have underpants gnomes. Step one, we have the tesseract; no step two; step three, profit. A dumb plan would be an improvement right now.”
That leads them all to sitting down, reviewing the intelligence, arguing, deciding that the helicarrier does not have good enough coffee for good plans, relocating to a relatively undamaged part of Stark Tower, arguing a lot more but this time with better caffeine, crashing asleep on various couches and beds, and starting again the next morning with even more coffee.
Eventually, they decide to go for simplicity. The power demands of the cryostasis units are large, which means there are only two facilities owned by the organisation which could house them. They pick the most likely one. They’d break in, and if Steve was there, great, if not, interrogate some people until they found out where he was.
Of course, this was all highly illegal. SHIELD officially knew nothing about it, and would not be stepping in if they were caught, though they would be stepping in to retrieve the tesseract if that became necessary. Fury’s expression when he said this had made it absolutely clear that if any of them came back alive, they had better be carrying the tesseract, or they were going to wish they hadn’t survived.
Bucky says, “This ain’t your fight, none of you. You don’t have to do this.”
“Oh, it is my fight. For different reasons,” says Natasha.
“She’s in, I’m in,” says Clint.
“I stand by my shield-brother,” says Thor.
“I think you’ll be less grumpy if we get your boyfriend back,” says Tony. Bucky stares at him. “What? We were all thinking it, I’m just the only one who’s saying it.”
Bucky’s spent too much of his life denying everything, and he can’t actually make his mouth work.
Natasha smiles and says, “Passing for straight in the army is probably easier than passing for straight in an intelligence organisation. Styopa—Steve’s—a lot better at it than you, but still, I knew.”
Bucky looks down and mumbles, “Yeah, well, wasn’t very good at it in the army either. So, now you know, this really isn’t your problem, you don’t have to—”
“As if the fact that you were boyfriends rather than BFFs changes anything.” says Clint.
“BFFs?”
“Best Friends Forever.”says Clint. “We get out of this alive, I’m getting a matching set of BFF bracelets for Tony and Bruce.”
Tony grins. “Make Bruce’s stretchy, so it doesn’t break when the Other Guy turns up.”
They make it to the facility. They leave Tony on the outside (Iron Man is anything but subtle, but they all know this is likely to get very unsubtle very quickly), and make their way in. SHIELD has a lot of non-lethal ways of disabling the guards, and Bucky is trained in all of them, but he’s angry enough that he wants to be slitting throats.
He thinks he’s prepared to see Steve. He isn’t.
Steve appears silently, out of nowhere, looking exactly like he did when Bucky saw him last, but yet not the same. His eyes are dead, cold, not him at all.
It’s a damn good job that Steve picks Thor as the first one he tries to take down. Any of the rest of them (apart from Bruce), and that move would have snapped their neck. Bruce is already greening up as Thor grapples with Steve, and damn, Steve is a much better fighter than Bucky remembers.
Natasha passes him the tesseract before turning to deal with another guard. Thor has told him that it reacts to the holder’s will. He hopes to hell that it works. He wants Steve’s attention for this, wants to aim it somehow, even though Thor said that was unnecessary and it will know what he wants.
Now the Other Guy has Steve pinned to the floor, and thankfully, Bucky can see that it’s just loose enough for him to still be breathing. Steve has gone still, obviously knowing that he can’t get out of this, but watching and waiting for an opportunity.
Bucky walks over and says, “Steve?” Steve doesn’t react at all. Bucky swallows, and holds the cube up, concentrates everything he has into it, every bit of love and care he’s ever had for Steve, and says, “Remember who you are.”
The effect is instantaneous. He sees the hardness go out of his eyes, the tension go out of his muscles, but there is so much misery in his face. Bucky has enough clarity left to give the cube to Thor before kneeling next to Steve.
“Steve?”
Steve doesn’t look at him, is staring blankly upwards.
Bucky looks up at the Other Guy. “I think—I think you can let him up now. Uh, thanks.”
Steve doesn’t move as the Other Guy snorts and releases his hold. Bucky is dimly aware that some more guards have turned up and there’s fighting around him, but he trusts the others to deal with that.
“Steve?” Bucky puts one hand to Steve’s face, gently turns his head towards him, “Stevie?”
Steve focuses on him, and says very quietly, “You should—you should have killed me.”
It’s like a knife in his heart. He swallows and talks, knowing he’s not making any sense, just desperately trying to be reassuring, “Hey, no, really, no, c’mon Steve, it wasn’t you, I know it wasn’t you, it’s gonna be okay now, I promise—”
He’s babbling, and Steve’s empty, despairing expression hasn’t changed at all.
He hears Tony’s voice in his earpiece. “We need to get moving. We’re getting a lot of interest, and we need to get him back on US soil before everyone knows we’ve got him.”
“Steve? We gotta get going, get outta here.” He hauls Steve up, and there’s a moment when Steve is just a dead weight, before he seems to come to himself, stands up. He can see his training kicking in, overriding whatever Steve might be feeling.
“I know another way out. Come on.”
Clint says, “Can you trust him?”
Natasha drops down from where she’s taken one of the guards out. Steve is obviously taken aback. “Natasha?”
She looks at him, and Bucky can tell she’s assessing him, working out if the tesseract has done its job. The two of them have a short conversation in Russian, and wow, that is seriously weird, to hear that coming out of Steve’s mouth.
She nods. “We can trust him.”
They follow Steve, and it feels so familiar, running through an enemy base, watching Steve’s back. He can pretend to himself for a moment that nothing has changed.
As long as they’re still in mission-mode, getting to the airfield as unobtrusively as possible, where an unmarked Stark Industries jet is waiting, Steve is fine, all cool professionalism. But at the point that Clint announces over the PA system that they’re well into EU airspace and while not exactly home safe, they’re at least able to relax a little, Steve falls apart.
He falls apart very quietly and unobtrusively, just a slump of the shoulders, a droop of the head. But Bucky knows him well enough to know complete defeat when he sees it. He’s been seated next to Steve the whole time, keeping quiet, having no idea what to say, no idea what to do.
Bucky slides to the floor, kneels in front of Steve, puts his hands on Steve’s knees. He still doesn’t know what to say or do, but he has to try something. “Steve?”
Steve says, so softly that Bucky can barely hear him, “Do you know how many people I’ve killed?”
“Yeah, I do. Or at least how many SHIELD thinks you have.”
“Probably more than that.”
“It doesn’t make any difference. It wasn’t you.”
“I don’t deserve to live.”
Something fierce blooms inside Bucky, and he wants to kill every single person that had anything to do with making Steve like this. Then punch everyone at SHIELD who might have known about it and hadn’t told him. He leans close to Steve. “Bullshit. Just—bullshit!”
He’s not good at this and he knows it. He can be charming, he can give orders, but talking someone out of the sort of darkness that Steve’s in, he’s got nothing.
Steve’s looking at him now, looking at him strangely. “How can you even be real?”
Bucky huffs a humorless laugh. “I know that feeling, pal. They reckon that the experiments that Hydra did on me gave me some of the same stuff the serum did. Not the whole deal, but some of it. So I crashed the Skull’s plane in the Arctic, but I didn’t die, just kept frozen till they found me a few weeks ago.”
“They put memories, ideas in my head, Bucky. How do I know they didn’t put you there too?”
“I—I don’t know.” How can he prove it? Any shared memory that he can call on could be a plant.
The unreality of the situation is something he can understand. He doesn’t have nightmares about crashing a plane, or about Steve falling from the train. In every one of his nightmares he wakes up again in Hydra’s labs, and Steve never came, Steve never was Captain America, and everything from the moment that Steve walked into that lab had been one long hallucination.
Hallucinations and dreams never quite felt right, though. The sights and sounds were always more convincing than the sensations. That’s the thought that makes him lean forwards and kiss Steve, chaste and gentle.
Steve’s reaction is the most reassuring thing he’s seen so far—exactly the reaction Bucky would expect if he kissed him in front of a bunch of strangers. He pulls back and in a shocked voice says, “Bucky!” It’s a relief to see his surprise and alarm, to see something he recognises.
Bucky rolls his eyes. “They already knew. I’m stupid, but not that stupid.”
“Steve.” They both turn to look at Natasha. Tony and Clint are in the cockpit, but Natasha, Bruce, and Thor have all been very dedicatedly looking out of the windows while Steve and Bucky have been talking.
Natasha sits in the seat Bucky had been sitting in. “They were always better at taking things out than putting things in. All the planted stuff, it was always vague, never specific, wasn’t it? You only knew the town you were supposed to be from because they told you, not because they planted it in your head. I’m going to bet what you know about him isn’t vague at all.”
Steve looks from her to Bucky and back again. “They could’ve gotten better at it.”
Natasha says, “They could. You could be hallucinating as well. You also could be a brain in a jar on a mad scientist’s shelf. At some point you just have to run with it.”
“I still killed so many people—”
Bucky can’t listen to Steve go through this again. “Yeah, and so did she. Perhaps her body count ain’t quite what yours is, but if you’re gonna sit there and tell me that you deserve to die, you’re telling me she deserves to die as well. You gonna say that?”
It’s a low blow, but Bucky has never particularly played fair. Steve shuts up, but Bucky knows he hasn’t actually convinced him.
Thor seems to have taken Natasha’s intervention as a cue that he can join in as well. Not that Bucky minds. He’s not winning at the moment. “To have your mind overthrown is one of the worst fates for a warrior. But you shall not answer for your actions while you were under the power of another. Of the people on this aircraft, it is only Stark, and Bucky, and I who have not had our actions controlled by another. You are an honorable warrior, Steve. You are not responsible for the dishonorable actions of those who controlled you.”
It’s a good sentiment, but Bucky’s not sure that the Shakespearean pep-talk is actually helping their cause to convince Steve that all this is really happening.
“I don’t—I—”
Bucky holds Steve’s hand. “It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay. You just—you just stop getting into trouble when my back’s turned, okay?”
He’d hoped that would make Steve smile. It doesn’t. Steve does hold Bucky’s hand though, not squeezing it, but not relaxed either. Like perhaps he’s not sure that Bucky’s still going to be there if he lets go.
He spends the rest of the flight talking at Steve, filling him in on what’s happened, who the rest of the team are, anything he might need to know. He can see that Steve is taking on the practical things much better than anything else. Bucky also knows that he’s focussing on the practical things to avoid thinking about just how broken Steve looks right now.
Clearing customs isn’t any trouble, even with the hastily forged passport. Bucky thinks that he should think it’s funny that they’ve just smuggled Captain America into the US on a fake passport, but he can’t find anything funny just yet.
They take Steve to Stark Tower. Bucky had wanted to take him to his apartment. It wasn’t much like the one they’d shared, the one they’d called home, but it was more homely than the Tower. But it was possible (probable) that someone would come after Steve, and even with big holes in it, the Tower was more secure.
He didn’t have to say that he wasn’t taking Steve anywhere near SHIELD until he could be absolutely sure they weren’t going to put him in a cell. Which might be never.
He shows Steve to his rooms, explains about JARVIS, tells him that they do want to stop him leaving the tower, but only until they know that the Winter Soldier programming really is gone. He explains about everything, to the point that he knows he’s babbling again. Bucky manages to stop himself and says, “What-—what do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Steve always knows what to do. Bucky swallows. “I can stay, if you want. Or I can go. Just—whatever you want.”
Steve doesn’t look at him. “I need—I need to think. Alone.”
“Sure. I’ll come bring you something to eat later, okay?” he tries to sound casual, and knows he fails.
He shuts the door of Steve’s suite when he leaves. Bucky takes three steps away from it, then realises he doesn’t know where he’s going. Tony’s given him a room, but he doesn’t know if he wants to sit there alone. He doesn’t know if he wants to be with other people, either. He knows he doesn’t like leaving Steve alone, even if that is what Steve wants. He leans against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor.
He stares into space for a while, then digs in his pocket until he finds his rosary. He’d made sure he had it with him, going to find Steve; he’d figured he needed all the help he could get. His fingers find the first bead, and he starts silently mouthing the prayers.
---
Steve feels hollow.
He should feel filled up, all the gaps in his memory restored, a full knowledge of his life.
But now he knows everything he has done. Everything that was taken from him. Every person whose death he thought righteous at the time. Some of the deaths were, he thinks, justified. Some of the others, he thinks, probably had good strategic reasons behind them. But others were clearly just intended to create fear.
He remembers people fearing him. He remembers their faces.
That’s what has him running to the bathroom, vomiting until he’s just dry-retching.
He spends some time curled on the floor of the bathroom, shaking, as the images replay in his mind. He’s back in Afghanistan, killing a compound of people. He had been told to kill the children too, but he cannot. He tells a girl who cannot be more than twelve that she is now in charge. She is tall enough to drive a truck. He shows her how. Tells her to take the rest of the children, and drive the main road until there is no fuel, then walk to the next town. That if they are to survive, they must never mention any connection to this place.
The girl nods, blank and wide-eyed and drives the truck away. He had shot her mother in the head as she cowered behind her not more than twenty minutes earlier.
It passes, eventually, and he returns to the present. The images are still there, but not as immediate, not as vivid. He can stand up, leave the bathroom.
The words come into his head again, Pray for us sinners. Is there even a word for the sort of sinner he is now? Sinners are human, and he’s—he thinks he’s almost a demon. He can’t think of any penitence that would fit his crimes.
Suicide is one of the greatest sins. He’s not sure if it’s worse than what he’s already done.
Perhaps... perhaps he brought it on himself. Every man is born a sinner, but he chose to sin, from the first time he kissed Bucky. He justified it, because things were negotiable; if the commandment not to kill was suspended in a just war, then surely loving someone as purely as he did Bucky couldn’t be wrong. He had thought of a loving God, and did everything else as he should. When he’d pulled Bucky out of that Hydra base he’d thought it was sign, a confirmation, that otherwise they would both have died. Perhaps he was wrong, and his punishment just delayed.
But... but Bucky had come back for him. Saved him, again. That didn’t make sense if that was what he was being punished for.
He paces the room, fitting together the fragments of his life, trying to make something whole.
He wants to make amends. He can’t do that if he kills himself. He knows that New York is half in ruins around him, that there are rescue efforts still going on. He could help. He should help. But he can’t go out there, among those good people, and pretend to be a good person. A demon is still a demon even if it pretends to be a person.
Even if he did that, it wouldn’t even be a start on making amends. He can’t think of anything that truly would make amends for what he’s done, anything that would be a fitting penitence. He should walk out of the building and turn himself in, get himself tried as a war criminal, executed for his crimes. Justice, perhaps, for the people he’d killed, even if he didn’t think it was punishment enough.
But he’s not sure that if he turned himself in he’d ever get to trial. Whether he’d be intercepted, taken, wiped in those machines again and turned back into a weapon.
Not turned back into a weapon. He is a weapon. That’s all he’s been, since 1943. There have just been different people with the trigger.
But he has always tried to be a good man. Even when he was Styopa, most of the time he thought he was doing the right thing. Has he always been wrong? All his life?
He can remember all the times he found out that his employers lied to him. He remembers the gulags, remembers prisoners being tortured, remembers the lengths they would go to for ‘security’. But he also remembers running into men working for the American government who were doing exactly the same things as the Soviets were doing. Doing that in the name of the country he grew up loving, the country he happily became a symbol of.
In all that, what is right?
He is aware that it is now dark outside. He’s not sure how long he has been pacing for. He needs some air. He asks the computer if he is allowed outside and is given directions to a balcony.
He doesn’t want to talk to anyone and leaves his room stealthily. It’s a surprise to see Bucky in a crumpled heap in the corridor, and for a half-second he is terrified that he’s dead. But he’s just sleeping. He sees something wrapped around Bucky’s hands and realises it’s a rosary.
Bucky had sat outside his room and prayed.
And then fallen asleep, and Steve’s about to think that’s Bucky all over, but then he remembers what Bucky had told him about the events of the past couple of days. He must have been exhausted, but he still didn’t go to his bed.
Steve doesn’t move, just stares at him.
He doesn’t deserve this. Doesn’t deserve anyone’s prayers.
He kneels by Bucky, gently shakes him by the shoulder. Bucky stirs, looks blearily at him, and Steve says, “You should be in bed.”
“Sorry, ‘din mean to fall asleep.”
Steve wants to hug him, to press his face into Bucky’s neck and cry for everything he’s lost, hold him like he’s never going to let him go. But he can’t. He’s not the man Bucky thinks he is, not a man worth praying for.
Instead he helps Bucky to his feet, and they stand looking at each other for long moments. Eventually Bucky says, “Uh, do you still want to be on your own?”
No. Yes. No. Please stay, don’t leave me. Please leave, and never come back.
“I think I do.”
“Um. The computer knows where I am. If you want company.” Bucky pauses for a moment, then says, “And where Natasha is, if you’d prefer to be with her.” He seems about to turn away when he darts forwards and kisses Steve on the cheek. Then he walks away.
He remembers Bucky kissing him on the cheek when they were kids—only when he was so sick that Bucky thought he might die.
His hand strays to his face to touch the spot where he was kissed.
Then he turns as well and heads towards where he’d been told the balcony was.
---
It’s been over a week since Bucky has laid eyes on Steve. Every morning he tells JARVIS to tell Steve that Bucky will come and see him, but only if Steve wants that. Every morning JARVIS relays the message: no, Captain Rogers does not want him to come, though Captain Rogers thanks him for the offer.
He’s been formally debriefed by SHIELD, formally reprimanded for taking his team on an unsanctioned mission, informally congratulated on a successful retrieval, said goodbye to Thor, got a bunch of advice from SHIELD shrinks about Steve, half of which was probably useless (yeah, he got that Steve was conflicted and guilty and twenty kinds of messed up), and spent a hell of a lot of time pacing around the tower.
His therapist had been right. He had been in denial. Not about Steve; he’d just been right about Steve. But about everything else. His determination to go looking for Steve had let him ignore the reality of everything else. Everyone else he knew was dead, or so old that he couldn’t even imagine talking to them. Friends, family, comrades, enemies. All of them. He thought he’d mourned for them, but he hadn’t. His grief had hit him like a physical punch in the gut.
And the one person Bucky had left, the one person he’d always cared most about in the whole world, had been taken to pieces by the Soviets. He didn’t know if they could put those pieces back together again. And if they did, whether Steve would even want him in his life again. He might want a clean break. Perhaps that was why he didn’t want to talk to him.
He had promised himself that he’d leave Steve to Peggy after the war. But the thing about that was that he’d been leaving Steve to have something better than he could offer, a real future. Right now he needs to stick around, because Steve needs looking after. Because he needs to convince himself that Steve does have a real future before he can leave him.
He’s drinking more, even though he’s seen too many times the spiral that took men down. So he limits it. After seven in the evening and before midnight, he could drink to forget. If he started drinking outside that, he’d get help.
He’s getting through each day with prayer and whiskey, and by beating the crap out of punching bags.
That, at least, hasn’t changed. Even when he was a kid, Sister Theresa had said, “Your devotion to your prayers is in exact proportion to how much trouble you are in, James. The Lord is still there when things are going well.”
If things actually ever start going well, he’ll try and remember that.
Natasha appears while he’s in the gym wrecking another punchbag. “You should talk to him.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“He doesn’t want to ask for your company.”
Bucky pauses; he’d been stupid. Steve would do his damnedest not to ask for help (for anything personal, at least). And he’d made him ask.
“What do I do?”
“He needs to make peace with himself. To forgive himself for being someone else’s weapon. Do whatever it takes to help him with that.”
“If I had half an idea what that meant, I’d do it.”
“When you were with him, you were instinctively tactile. I’m guessing that’s what you were like before. Probably both of you.”
“If this is your way of saying I should keep my hands to myself—”
“I’m saying, you could start by giving him a hug.”
“Yeah, sure, a hug and it’ll all be better.”
She shoots him a harsh look. “It’s a start. Better than avoiding him and drinking yourself into an early grave.”
Ouch. The woman sure knew how to land her punches.
“And after that?”
She shrugs. “Whatever it takes.”
He showers and goes to Steve’s rooms. His hand hovers over the door for a few long moments before knocking.
Steve says, “Come in.”
He takes a deep breath and goes in.
Steve’s wearing a black t-shirt and pants. He’d never been much for black before. It’s all Bucky’s seen him in since he came back. He looks like he’s just been looking out the window.
“I—er—um—Natasha said I should come see you.”
Steve just nods and turns back to stare out of the window.
Bucky stands next to him. “I still ain’t used to what’s changed. They said they could get me an apartment in Brooklyn. I said no, too strange living somewhere that’s not quite home. A new neighborhood ain’t as strange.”
He’s rambling again, but Steve’s in such a bubble of silence that he keeps feeling he has to fill it up. The shrinks said to give him space to talk. So he shuts up, physically gently bites down on his tongue to remind himself. They’d never had much trouble with silence around each other before.
It feels like an eternity, but eventually Steve does speak. “I tried to come back here. The only time they ever sent me to the US. I didn’t know why—just that I had to come to New York. I never made it. They picked me up before I got here. Made me forget. I couldn’t remember anything, anyone, just that someone had held my hand on the ferris wheel at Coney Island.”
Bucky remembers holding Steve’s hand on the ferris wheel, when they were high enough up that no one could see, whispering in his ear that if he could be sure no one would see that he’d kiss him, so it was a real date.
He takes Steve’s hand in his, squeezes it, then doesn’t let go. Steve holds his hand tight, not enough to be uncomfortable, but enough that Bucky knows he couldn’t get out of the grip if he wanted to. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to let go of Steve ever again.
He doesn’t know how long they stand there. A long time.
Steve says, “What now?”
“I don’t know. My plan sorta ended at ‘get Steve outta there’.”
“You should go.” But Steve doesn’t let go of his hand.
“Why?”
“Because I’m—I’m not the man you knew. I’m- I’m halfway to being a demon.”
Bucky feels nauseous just hearing that. “You’re not—”
“How can you say that, knowing what I’ve done?”
“‘Cause I know Steve Rogers better’n anyone, that’s why. And the only way that you’d do things like that, was if someone screwed with your head. I told you what happened to Clint; I saw it. That wasn’t him. And that wasn’t you. If it was you, you wouldn’t still be here worrying about it, you’d be out there looking for someone to pay you to kill some guy.”
“I should have been able to—”
“Yeah, and I should have been able to fight my way out of that Hydra base on my own, and I damn sure should have been able to stop you falling off a train.” That’s a pair of low blows, and he realises that he should soften it a little. Bucky doesn’t let go of Steve’s hand, but moves to stand in front of him, rests his other hand on Steve’s hip. “The way you talk, seems like the good in you tried to get out a lot. And every time it did, they put you back in some machine and shut it away again. You’re a damn good man, Steve. They had to put a helluva lot of effort into keeping that down.”
Steve isn’t looking at him, but he isn’t moving away either, isn’t loosening his grip on Bucky’s hand. After a few long moments he says, “I wish I could believe that.”
It feels familiar somehow. The stakes are much, much higher, but the flow of the argument is the same. It used to be Bucky trying to persuade Steve that he was beautiful. Now he has to persuade him that he’s not a monster, that he’s a good man. Bucky doesn’t think he ever really convinced Steve that he really did think he was beautiful, which doesn’t make him think much of his chances with this.
He leans in to Steve, hugs him, feels Steve’s arms come around to hug him back. It’s a start.
---
The women are screaming at him, begging for their lives, and he can’t save them, can’t even give them a merciful death because his clip is nearly empty—
“Steve! Steve!”
The dream bleeds into the here and now, and it takes him some moments to even work out where he is. He’s on a couch, there’s a man holding him; it’s Bucky, Bucky is holding him, saying his name over and over.
He looks at Bucky, and Bucky looks terrified, like he always did when he thought Steve was going to die. He orientates himself, remembers that they’d curled up together on the couch, fallen asleep like that.
He should have told Bucky to go away. The nightmares have come every night. He could have saved him that, at least.
Bucky’s stroking his hair and talking nonsense at him. Steve cuts him off, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”
“If you’re gonna say you shouldn’t have let me stay, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”
“I knew I’d have a nightmare—”
“Yeah, ‘cause I’d be sleeping like a fucking baby.”
Steve sits up, but he can’t leave Bucky’s touch, brings him up with him. He doesn’t want to be in the glare of Bucky’s constant concern, but at the same time he doesn’t want him to leave.
They sit in silence for a long time.
But Steve does want to try and make Bucky understand. “I thought most of it was right, you know. When I was the Winter Soldier. I believed. And some of the things I saw, I saw Americans doing horrific things. I—was anything we did right?” He catches Bucky’s expression. “Not—I don’t doubt that coming to find you was right. And Schmidt, we had to stop him. But some of the things, we never even questioned, we just did. That’s exactly what I did when I was the Winter Soldier—”
“That’s most of what all soldiers do, Steve. Just grunts following orders.”
“I thought I was a good man, not just a soldier.”
“You are. Told you, if you weren’t a good man, they wouldn’t have spent so much time frying your brain.”
He wishes that he had Bucky’s certainty.
There’s a long pause, then Bucky speaks again. “I told you about SHIELD, yeah? Who they are and what they do? What I didn’t tell you is that they’ve been lying to me pretty much since I woke up. I get it, Steve, I really do. That’s why you’re holed up in Stark’s spare room, and not in some SHIELD place. ‘Cause I don’t know what they’d do to you. I think—I think that maybe they’re only waiting. See if we can fix you, then they’ll draft you. They watched Bruce. Let him think that he was hiding, when they were just waiting to call him in.”
Bucky always had been a better tactical thinker than anyone credited. It sounded right. Let him heal, let him think he was with friends. Then take him back, draft him (or worse). Whatever Steve was, he was an incredibly effective weapon.
He hadn’t thought he could hide with Natasha, and she had training that Bucky’s never had. He can’t leave Bucky behind either. It’s too dangerous. He doesn’t doubt that there are already people updating their information on the Winter Soldier, noting Bucky as a major weakness.
There were people at SHIELD who would try and counter an order to nuke New York. He’d have to hold on to that. A glimmer that they were the better option, when they inevitably came looking for him.
Bucky squeezes his hand. “Guess I ain’t a knight in shining armor after all.”
“You’re a cocky asshole, is what you are.” It’s an automatic response, no thought behind it. But Bucky beams at him.
“Yeah, and you’re a dumb punk, so we’re even.”
It’s also automatic to lean in and kiss him. Bucky kisses him back enthusiastically, then says, “I say come to bed, you ain’t gonna run a mile, are you?”
“Your friend Stark’s probably watching.”
“Let him watch. Let SHIELD and the damn president watch for all I care. You in?”
“Yeah.” He can’t tell Bucky that he’s wanted this so badly that it’s haunted his dreams for decades.
He lets Bucky lead him to the bedroom, and they kiss and touch and fuck, and maybe he can pretend for a little while that nothing’s changed. He can let sensation override thought.
Lying there with Bucky asleep in his arms, he tries to plan. To think.
Whatever he does, he has to keep Bucky safe. He can’t think of a way of doing that which doesn’t mean sticking with him, to watch his back. That means staying alive.
He’s not used to Bucky being vulnerable, but he is. He may have been enhanced, he may have survived seventy years frozen, he may have fought well with the Commandos, but that’s nothing compared to what Steve knows can be unleashed against him. Against them.
He’ll teach Bucky, the way he taught Natasha.
But apart from that, what are their options? Run, and be found. Hide, and be found. Ask SHIELD for work. Stay here and wait for the summons.
He doesn’t like any of them.
None of them go any way to making amends for what he’s done. He doesn’t know what would.
He watches Bucky sleep and offers up silent prayers for him. He may be beyond redemption, but Bucky isn’t.
---
Bucky doesn’t leave Steve’s side for the next few days. They talk (not much, and not about anything important). They screw. Steve teaches him to fight (or rather, fight better). Bucky stops drinking, but he doesn’t stop praying.
They don’t see another soul.
Of course, Bucky knows that the computer is watching, relaying his every move to Stark and probably the rest of the team as well. He suspects that if Natasha didn’t know that Steve was holding up, she’d have visited.
He wonders if Tony’s security is all it’s cracked up to be, how much SHIELD knows.
Steve needs out. He can see that. Being cooped up is just letting him get more morose inside his own head. He doesn’t think that the Winter Soldier is going to come out again, but what does he know about Soviet brainwashing? Last time he checked, they were his damn allies. What he does know is that he didn’t go and find Steve just to have him kept prisoner, even if being a prisoner in Stark’s tower is a helluva lot better than what most prisoners get.
SHIELD haven’t told him he can’t leave. They haven’t told him he can’t take Steve with him.
He has a dumb idea about taking a road trip to the Grand Canyon.
He goes to talk to Natasha (he tells Steve where he’s going, but not what he intends to talk to her about). He finds her in one of the gyms with Clint.
“I’m thinking of leaving. With Steve.”
“SHIELD will find you.”
“Then we won’t try and hide. They can come get us if they want us.”
Clint says, “So you think he’s safe?”
Bucky shrugs. “How the hell should I know?”
Natasha gives him another one of her long, calculating looks. “What’s your plan?”
“Don’t have one. Go see the Grand Canyon. Take Steve to some art museums.” It’s only once he’s said that he realises that he hasn’t seen Steve draw since he came back. Steve always drew, always had at least a tiny sketchpad and a pencil if there was any room for them.
“It’s not just SHIELD who are interested in the Winter Soldier.”
“I reckon Steve can handle that.”
She nods, and looks at Clint, who nods too.
He smiles. “Uh, thanks.”
He’s turned to leave when Natasha says, “Bucky? Go now. Before you change your mind. Or someone changes it for you.”
He goes straight back to Steve, tells him all of this. Steve says, “Are you sure?”
“Course I’m sure. Always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.” That’s not what Steve was asking, but that’s the answer he’s getting.
They throw some clothes into a gym bag. They can get more on the way. Some complex calculations about his back pay and army pension mean that Bucky is, for the first time in his life, not worried about money. He knows they can track his withdrawals, but that’s the point, that he’s not hiding.
If he’s not hiding, then it’s a road trip with his best friend. If he’s hiding, then he’s on the run with a wanted war criminal. It’s a road trip.
Best friend. Boyfriend? Partner? It doesn’t matter what the label is. Bucky’n’Steve, Steve’n’Bucky, they’ve been a single name since they were kids. Steve needs out of here, so Bucky’s getting him out of here. They’ll work the rest out as they go.
Natasha shows up with a backpack. “Supplies for the journey.”
It’s full of weapons, which Steve immediately starts to check over.
She says, “Have a good one. Steve, Bucky’s a better fighter than you think he is. Bucky, Steve needs looking out for more than he thinks he does.” She smiles and leaves.
They head out via the lab where Tony and Bruce are working. They find the two of them bent over something glowing that looks like it’s probably extremely dangerous.
“The Captains squared leave the love nest. Going somewhere?”
“Road trip. I just wanted to say, er, thanks. Both of you. For everything. I couldn’t have, er, without you.” He knows he’s making a hash of this, but it’s the thought that counts.
Tony waves dismissively. “Proved the point that Captain America was easy enough to find if you looked in the right places. And it annoyed the hell out of Fury. So, nothing to thank me for.”
“I’ve a lot to thank you for. It’s...been a long time.” Steve’s quiet, and Bucky realises this is the first time he’s actually spoken directly to either Tony or Bruce.
Both of them look a little uncomfortable. Steve’s straightforward earnestness could do that to you.
Bruce says, “I think if any of us had known, and had thought we could do that earlier, we would.”
Bucky decides to leave before it gets any more awkward. “So, thanks, bye.”
He’s worried that they’ll be stopped the moment they leave the tower. They aren’t.
“I was thinking, we rent a car—”
“I want to take the train. The last time—when I tried to come here, I took the train. Last time I saw you before—before everything, it was at the station.”
Bucky would have thought that Steve would have more negative associations with trains, but he’s not going to argue. “Train, then.”
They buy tickets for the first express heading roughly in the right direction. Bucky writes his resignation from SHIELD and mails it while they wait. He can’t even remember if he’s allowed to resign, but he’s going to try.
He’s still waiting for some SHIELD agent to come and stop them, right up to the point the train pulls out of the station. He tangles his fingers with Steve’s as the city slides past the window.
Steve turns to him and actually smiles. Bucky’s heart leaps. He’d kiss him right there in the train car, except that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to be quite that open about this. He settles for squeezing Steve’s fingers. Steve squeezes back.
This is going to be a long road, but it’s more than a start.
---
Epilogue
Bruce rubs his eyes and looks at Tony, who’s started rambling something about his nanny when he was fourteen. He’s desperately hoping for a distraction—a phone call, a fire alarm, something.
There’s a knock on the door. He’ll take that. He’s about to say come in, when a head sticks round the door, smiles, and it takes Bruce a moment to even recognise the man. It’s Bucky, his hair longer, unshaven, looking relaxed—a complete change from the man he’d met who was all clean-cut quiet desperation in his attempt to be Captain America. It’s not a surprise that Bucky’s not alone, Steve following close behind him. Bruce sees him scan the room, and would guess that he’s checking for threats and exits.
“Uh, in the neighborhood, heard you’d tried to get yourself killed again, thought we’d say hi. So, hi.”
“You’d think the guy who helped you get your boyfriend back would at least get a Christmas card.”
Bucky smirks. “Forgot your address.”
“It was on TV.”
“Don’t watch TV. And even if we did, I’d have given it twenty-four hours before it was a smoking ruin. No point mailing a card.”
“They not have mail forwarding in the Soviet Union?”
Neither Steve nor Bucky reacts to that. Bucky says, “You didn’t send us a card.”
“You disappeared.”
“Nah, we’re easy to find if you try. Even if we don’t stay any place long.”
“So, you working for SHIELD?”
“No.” Steve says it very firmly, obviously intending to shut down the conversation.
Bruce sees Bucky’s fingers stroke over Steve’s wrist as he says, “They asked, we said no. We ain’t working for anyone.” He smiles. “If you ain’t used to having much, it’s easy to live on an army pension.”
Bruce says, “I guess if we get invaded by aliens, it’s all on me, then.”
Bucky looks a little taken aback, and says, “You really need help, we’ll be there—”
Steve says, “Just because we won’t work for SHIELD, it doesn’t mean we won’t stand and fight. But only if it’s necessary.”
Right there, Bruce sees it. The Captain America who was on the newsreels, just for a moment. And he thinks that yes, if there is an alien invasion, they would come, without hesitation.
Steve continues, “We should be going.”
“Yeah, places to be. Good to know you’re both doing okay.”
Tony says, “Don’t wait for an alien invasion to say hi again.”
“You actually mean that?”
“Keep your friends close, your defrosted snipers and ex-brainwashed assassins closer.”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “Goodbye, Tony; good to see you, Bruce.”
As soon as the door is shut behind Bucky and Steve, Tony says, “Now I’m going to have to work out how they broke in.”
No visitor passes, no call to say they were coming—of course they’d broken in.
Tony continues, “So, Doctor, what’s your analysis of our lethal pensioners?”
“I’m not that sort of doctor—” Bruce realises that in the face of Tony’s ramblings, surrender is the best option. “Never mind. They look—better. Not trying to be anyone but themselves.”
“You see, that’s what I was getting at when I was telling you about me being Iron Man. Which reminds me, there’s me, age fourteen—”
Bruce’s head lolled back on the chair. He should have known it was only a brief respite.