Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4293240.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      Gen, M/M
  Fandom:
      Captain_America_(Movies)
  Relationship:
      James_"Bucky"_Barnes/Steve_Rogers
  Character:
      James_"Bucky"_Barnes, Steve_Rogers, Natasha_Romanov, Tony_Stark, Nick
      Fury, Sam_Wilson_(Marvel)
  Additional Tags:
      Action/Adventure, Telepathy, Retcon, Soulmates
  Series:
      Part 1 of Remote
  Collections:
      Captain_America_Kink_Meme_Collection
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-07-07 Completed: 2015-07-12 Chapters: 13/13 Words: 17788
****** Remote ******
by ewinfic
Summary
     For a prompt:
     "A world where, when you meet your soulmate, you begin to share a
     mind. So, reading each other's thoughts, feeling what the other
     feels, etc. Bucky and Steve have been soulmates almost their entire
     lives...."
     (Causes changes to the plot of Winter Soldier.)
***** Chapter 1 *****
He could handle the cold. He'd spent years frozen, and anyway his body didn't
really feel the cold; he could tell the cold was there, but noticing it and
feeling it were two different things.
What he had a hard time with was the solitude. Wherever Bucky was, he was
alone. Had been alone, for what seemed ages now. It was an entirely different
kind of cold. Steve knew, because Bucky knew, that when he emerged from the
freezer, he would be among people again, and yet alone.
I am changed; I am not what I was. There is nothing on Earth like me.
Steve woke in the night with these thoughts in his mind, reaching out to
nothing in the darkness. Bucky, I know exactly how you feel. You are not alone.
I'm like you. I'm here for you. Not that being here did either of them any
good; Steve needed to be wherever Bucky was. Please God let me find him. He'd
said the short prayer so many times that it came to mind every few minutes now.
Let me find him. If only there were more information to go on... most of the
time, Steve knew that Bucky was frozen in a chamber, and nothing more.
Steve also woke in the night with sharp pains running through his arm, pain
like lightning that sped up and down and never localized, so you could never
get used to it. That was worse, because then he knew that Bucky was awake.
Awake, and doing terrible things somewhere. Somewhere.
The touch of his mind was so different, since Hydra had changed him. Steve
would have thought that nothing in existence could change Bucky's essential
nature; he had relied upon that nature all his life. Of the two of them, Bucky
was more solidly himself. Steve was more adaptable. It had it's benefits; he
had reconciled himself to his new body within minutes, and the new age he lived
in had taken all of his adaptability to face. But for Bucky, having his body
changed meant a feeling of alien distance from himself at all times. That
helped him in his current work, but it was hell for Steve to experience his
friend changing without the resources for tolerating that change. All Bucky
ever felt (when he was awake) was that he wasn't supposed to be whatever he
was, and there was no way to fix it.
Steve felt Bucky's frozen prison. He felt Bucky's torture. He felt the way his
mind was reworked and rewritten, again and again until neither of them felt at
home inside a brain that had once been as pure and solid and beautiful as a
diamond. He felt Bucky shattered and broken and glued back together.
Steve felt Bucky kill, and that was the worst thing of all.
He was never sure who the victims were. Sometimes the news told him, the timing
too close to be coincidence, the methodology too familiar. After several years,
he had stopped obsessing over stopping the killings; there was no way to do so
until he found Bucky.
One thing that was reassuring and maddening at once: he could feel Bucky's
sense of the wrongness of what he was doing. No matter how Hydra warped and
molded him, they couldn't change him completely. But they could change him
enough to force him to act the way they wanted him to. Deep inside Bucky's
mind, a shadow of his old self was screaming in agony at the things he saw
himself doing. Steve could feel it, could feel the way Bucky's two selves
refused to reconcile, could feel the way it caused a poisonous ingrowth of hate
and fear that grew and grew. Steve sensed that Bucky would not survive for much
longer like this. The frozen periods were all that had kept him alive. Before
long, even that wouldn't work anymore. Bucky's mind would destroy itself. If
that happened, Steve knew that it would destroy his own mind... that was almost
reassuring, to know that if Bucky descended into madness, so would he.
Let me find him. Please let me find him. Every cell in Steve's body was bent to
the task, every atom of his soul. Loki had been a distraction; once he was
finished, Steve pursued his search with renewed urgency.
Half his soul was locked in ice, and when it wasn't, it was tainted by an utter
repugnance for its own existence. Bucky hated himself. He hated himself.
Steve lay awake in the night, feeling either ice surrounding him, or far far
worse, feeling air and light and the requirement to kill, and Steve called out
to Bucky. I love you. Don't hate yourself; I love you, I have always loved you,
I will always love you. You are my heart. Please, please don't destroy
yourself. Someone loves you, no matter what you have become, no matter what you
have done. He would repeat it in a whisper hoarse with tears: I love you. I
love you. I love you.
I WILL find you.
***** Chapter 2 *****
I love you.
Blood as cold and thick as a bog morass began to churn its way through the
soldier's veins, pumped slowly by a heart that burned and ached and struggled
against its frozen confinement. In a few minutes, he would be able to open his
eyes. For now, he was in the dark, still cold, barely aware. It was the closest
he ever came to REM sleep.
Someone was with him.
It was only ever during this in-between period that the soldier could feel the
presence of the Other. He desperately wished that he could open his eyes and
look at whoever it was, but he knew that once his eyes opened, he would be too
awake; the Other would disappear. The Other was the only company he ever had.
Not a scientist who worked him like a machine, nor a giver of orders to be
obeyed, nor a mission target, but some kind of friend. Once upon a time, he had
known what a friend was.
The Other was speaking. It always said something like this:
"I love you, Bucky. I miss you... you are my soul. You always were."
The soldier didn't know who Bucky was, but he had the vague sense that the
Other was speaking to him, so he listened as though that were the truth. There
was hope in the words, and faith, and trust, and so many things that the
soldier could only barely recognize as things that he had once known. The Other
made him feel safe and loved and warm even in the cold thaw of waking.
This was the only happiness the soldier now knew.
But now he was waking up.
His heart was revving up like an engine, from a mutter to a roar. When it was
near the breaking point, his blood finally began to warm and the rest of his
body was slowly soaked in a paralyzing agony of pins and needles as his nerves
were tormented to life. He laid there, waiting to be able to move. The more he
could move, the quicker the pain would dissipate... he waited, and inside of
his mind he screamed, a sound that escaped his mouth as the slightest of sighs.
His lungs were not yet able to hold the air to support his voice.
By the time he had a voice, the pain was edging away. He began to flex his arms
and legs. The initial pain of it burned through him like a current, and then
eased as he continued to move.
By the time he sat up, his eyes and ears and nose were online, registering
everything around him. The light was too bright; his overly acute eyes
preferred the dark now. Sounds clashed against his eardrums in a chaos until he
began to weed through the noise to determine what was happening... men around
him were murmuring, there was the clink of hardware and the humming of
machines. Smell was the worst of all. Some remnant of the self he once was
remarked to his own mind, Gee, a super-sensitive nose, what a GREAT gift for
someone who's gonna be around dead people and firearms most of the time.
Lightning shot up and down his left arm as he flexed the metal plates. He could
tell by the sound that there was still ice in the circuits, condensed from the
moisture of the remnants of his old arm, still buried beneath the hard surface.
There was a brief juxtaposition in his mind of the feeling of his old arm,
phantomlike and strange, and the feeling of his metal arm, which was painful
but satisfyingly real. He clung to it. The skin around the shoulder joint where
the metal joined flesh was raw and flaking. He could smell the drugs they
smeared on him to keep his skin from rotting around the metal, the greasy film
they sprayed on him to keep him from getting frostbite, and his own skin. He
stank.
They would let him take a shower soon, but it wouldn't stop them from smearing
the drugs on his shoulder again. His body always stank. Bile rose briefly in
the back of his throat; he swallowed it down. There was nothing to vomit up,
anyway. His stomach would soon start to grind and gnaw on itself until they
gave him his food; hard bricks of vitamin and protein meal that grated against
his teeth and felt like greasy sawdust going down. Nothing here smelled or
tasted good. Nothing here was good, including him.
Don't hate yourself. I love you.
The thought rang out in his head like a siren, causing him to jerk in his seat
and look around wildly. Who said that? Nobody around him noticed, they were too
busy attaching electrodes to him and reading the results.
Where are you? I have to find you.
His breath whistled harshly through his nose, and he could smell fear wafting
off his own skin. Vaguely, he remembered his dream, the Other person. It
sounded like the same voice. But he had never heard it before while awake.
Bucky, I'm coming to find you. Just hang on, okay?
A tiny, venomous sting lit at the base of his thoughts and crawled out into the
light. It was hope. He squashed it almost violently inside his head. There was
no place for hope here. Hope had died long ago in him.
Don't say that! Don't give up!
He was panting now, and the technicians were beginning to notice, giving him
quick covert glances, bright with fear. They knew his history. Amid his long
list of designated assassinations he had also killed five techs, usually while
thrashing himself awake, or during surgery because they could never completely
anesthetize him. He felt his own unhinged sense of time and space threaten to
engulf him, and he wanted to lash out. He was unhinged; unsteady. He was
broken.
No. I'm going to find you and we're going to fix you. I swear to you, Bucky,
we're going to fix you.
The soldier looked around him at the technicians, the lab-coated doctors, the
men in suits at the other end of the room who were in charge of it all and who
would soon tell him who and where to kill, and he thought, Who the hell is
Bucky?
You're my friend, Bucky. I love you. I remember who you are. You will, too.
Something about the insistence of the voice in his mind triggered a feeling
somewhat like hysteria. He began to do something that he hadn't done in seventy
years, something that nobody in the room could possibly have expected;
something utterly bizarre.
He began to laugh.
The technicians immediately backed away, and the doctors exchanged alarmed
glances. The men in suits looked at him with critical puzzlement. Something
about the looks on their faces made him laugh harder. Soon he was curled up,
pressing his arms into his belly and howling with laughter, unable to stop...
He felt the plunge of a needle into his right shoulder, and everything went
black.
* * *
They wiped him, and wiped him again, and nothing seemed to help. In fact, his
symptoms worsened every time his brain heard the voice from a dead silence;
twitches, laughter, a constant panic level of emotion, even occasional tears.
Finally, the doctors simply let him be for a little while. They set him loose
in the training tank and kept tabs on his behavior. The twitches seemed to
slowly go away.
The soldier simply needed time to grow accustomed to the constant voice in his
mind. In a way, the constancy of it helped. It seemed that no person could keep
up such a steady barrage of hopeful positivity; after a while he could mentally
tune it down to a senseless hum and go about his business of efficient murder.
But then the voice would quiet for a moment and it broke the rhythm. He heard
it freshly when it started up again.
Bucky, where are you? Come back to me...
It was like going insane, except that the soldier knew perfectly well he wasn't
sane to begin with. Perhaps he was going sane. He didn't try to remember what
being sane felt like; whenever he tried to remember his past, he would suffer a
sudden feeling of vertigo, a spike of nausea and the sensation of falling. It
was fatal to his work, and in his line fatal often meant actual fatalities.
Hydra didn't care about collateral casualties, but he did. He didn't know why
he did. Perhaps it was an obsession with efficiency. In any case, memory was a
luxury he did not permit himself to indulge in.
The voice was just a distraction, along with the sound of the wind or the smell
of traffic, or the arcs of pain in his arm and shoulder. He could use it to
help him focus.
Except...
I love you.
It was like a mental hiccup, every time the voice said that one; it caught at
him like a snag in fabric. Where are you, he was very familiar with; he asked
it of his victims every mission. Come back to me, likewise easy to parse out
and ignore. Even Bucky, you are my friend could be safely catalogued; he didn't
know who Bucky was, but presumably Bucky was capable of friendship without it
having anything to do with the soldier. But I love you caused the soldier
problems. It made no sense. He couldn't remember what love was anymore, could
not even try. He only knew that it did not, could not apply to him. And yet the
voice kept saying it. He estimated that 10% of the messages he received had
something to do with love. It outweighed every other piece of information.
Always, always it tripped him up. Sometimes the voice said it repeatedly like a
mantra or a spell; when that happened, the soldier felt like he was drowning.
He hid it from the technicians as well as he could.
Months passed; he went back into the freezer and came out again, and the voice
was still there. It became background noise.
But I love you... it made his insides churn when he heard it. He couldn't get
used to it. Always, always he heard those particular words and had to puzzle
about what they meant. They made no sense. But the voice was insistent that it
loved him. It loved him. The stone-cold killer, the tool, the object, the
asset, the predator. It loved him.
It began to frustrate him. One day, he found himself even mentally arguing with
it.
I love you.
No, you don't. Stop saying that.
Yes, I do. I love you.
You love someone else. Not me. I don't exist.
Yes, you do.
Who is it that you think I am?
The voice gave him a mental image of a man who just barely resembled him in the
face.
Bucky, it said.
That's not me. You don't know me.
I will when I find you. And I'll love you then, too.
No, you won't. If you ever meet me, it will be because I'm there to kill you.
Then I will die loving you.
The soldier blinked; his eyes were wet. He quickly brushed the back of his hand
across his face, scrubbing the tears off. The voice made him feel angry,
helpless, vulnerable... it made him feel human, and that was another
unaffordable luxury, just like memory.
No human could do what he did and be what he was. The voice had to be mistaken.
It had to be.
But it sounded so sure of itself.
He put the rifle to his shoulder, sighted, and fired. For a moment, his soul
was numb, and he felt normal again. Then he noticed it; a feeling of pain. Not
just pain, but grief. An enormous well of grief and frustration and love bent
him to his knees. He huddled over, shaking, waiting for it to pass. He knew it
wasn't his own emotion he was feeling, but that didn't make it any easier.
He knew that Pierce only had one response to anything that went wrong with the
soldier, and that was to wipe his mind, which was unpleasant. The soldier was
determined to keep his distress to himself.
Then one day he realized it wasn't the fear of pain that kept him quiet. He was
keeping his secret because, deep down, he wanted to know who it was that was
talking to him.
I need to find you.
I think I need to find you, too. And possibly kill you. But at least find you.
The image of Washington D.C. floated in his mind, and then an apartment
building, and then a face. Something about the face made him tremble slightly,
it made him feel sick. He knew that whoever it was, it was someone who he
couldn't remember.
Which could only mean that it was someone he knew.
***** Chapter 3 *****
"I must say I'm surprised at you, Rogers, keeping a secret like this for so
long from so many people."
"What can I say? I guess you've been a terrible influence on me."
"Or a good one. Time was when you would have put it out on the loudspeaker that
Hydra was still in existence and activating assassins. I keep disabling the
intercom switch every time I know you're coming to my office."
"Maybe I should. I just..."
"I would suggest not doing that."
"I know you would, Nick."
"I'd like to think that the situation can be contained. But not until we find
him. Any luck on that?"
"He's on ice right now, so I can't tell, but he's been very active over the
past few months."
"So I've heard. Rogers, you do know it's not going to be easy to protect him,
right? Even if we do find him. Keeping him a secret will only work for so long,
and if I'm saying that, you know it must be true. You may find that you've
compromised your sterling honesty for nothing."
"I understand. It's worth trying. He's not... what he is... on purpose. We're
linked. I know what's been done to him. Do you have an Other?"
"Never been that lucky. I've heard only three percent of people find their
Other during their lives."
"Then it's not something you would understand."
"What wouldn't I understand? You think I keep secrets because of my enemies.
You're wrong. I keep secrets because of my friends."
* * *
Bucky was awake. Steve had been able to feel it all day long, like a dagger in
his mind, shining and sharp. More than that, Bucky was close by. Maddeningly
close. Steve could smell Washington, the humid southern air warm and heavy in
Bucky's nostrils. He could hear the sounds of the city. He'd felt Bucky since
that morning, and it had caused the usual restlessness in him. He had wandered
around the city like a vagrant. Come on, Bucky, where are you? Give me a hint.
Lately, Bucky had even been answering his call, conversing with him the way
that they used to do, mind to mind for endless hours when they were young. He
was different, now. Colder. But it was unmistakably his mental voice.
Bucky had said that he might kill him. Steve had to acknowledge it as a
possibility. Hydra had done a fair job of wrecking him. The idea that Bucky
might kill Steve before Steve had a chance to help him was what frightened
Steve the most.
Or someone else might kill Bucky, but that seemed a dim possibility given the
machine they had turned him into. Whatever else Bucky was now, he was
effective.
But something had just gone wrong. Steve could feel it; the unmistakable tang
of surprised disappointment. Bucky had just failed to kill someone. Who was it?
Who was your target?
And for the first time, Bucky told him. The face of Nick Fury flashed through
Steve's mind like a meteor, burning and then gone.
Steve felt his blood chill. The one other person in SHIELD who knew that Hydra
was still active was Fury. Steve realized that he had made a deadly mistake,
letting Bucky know where he was. It was unforgivable. Now Fury was in Hydra's
crosshairs, and the only possible source of information was Steve's link to
Bucky. Blinded by love, he had been feeding information to the enemy.
Steve wandered the streets looking for Fury. It didn't take him long to find
where Fury had escaped. The streets were blocked off (but never to Captain
America, law enforcement knew him on sight and gave him access) for miles in
every direction, traffic ensnared in a gridlock by the wrecks of police
cruisers and then there it was, a black SUV. Steve looked inside and saw Fury's
escape route. Clever. But of course Fury was nowhere nearby. Where would he go?
Who would he trust?
Nobody. Fury never trusted anybody. But he and Steve were the only ones who
knew why the hit had been put out, so that meant that he would try to find...
Oh, no. He couldn't have been stupid enough to... please, no.
Steve ran at top speed back to his apartment, the same place he had practically
given Bucky directions to, weeks ago. Maybe they had wiped him; maybe Bucky had
forgotten.
Maybe pigs would fly. Steve could always hope.
He made it to the apartment and practically flew up the stairs, going so fast
that he actually felt winded. He passed the pretty blonde girl next door, but
didn't have time to chat; he touched his door. There was the sound of music on
the other side of it. Fury was there. Steve unlocked and opened the door,
cautiously moving into the apartment, afraid to turn on any lights. He didn't
know where Bucky might be, but Bucky was definitely still awake. Steve did his
best to keep his mind closed.
"I don't remember giving you a key." He tried to keep his voice normal.
"You really think I'd need one?" Fury looked battered and exhausted. "My wife
kicked me out."
Steve paused. He knew it was a lie, but he didn't know why. "I didn't know you
were married."
"There's a lot you don't know about me." Fury flashed the face of his phone at
Steve. EARS EVERYWHERE, it said, and Steve realized that his place was bugged.
He mentally cursed Fury, wondering whether his whispers at night had been loud
enough to be captured by the bugs, wondering just how much of his devotion to
Bucky was under scrutiny by various SHIELD members in sound-proofed kiosks
downtown.
He didn't have time to realize much else, though, because he suddenly felt
Bucky so close by that it felt like the force of a battering ram against his
mind. Steve dropped to one knee, holding his head in his hands. He had been
reaching out so hard and for so long that the sound of Bucky's awareness in his
mind was overwhelming. Thunderclaps of thought clashed against his own
thoughts, making a chaos.
Too late, he thought about pulling Fury to a better covered position; there was
a bang as several shots were fired through the wall. Bucky had known exactly
where to shoot, because Steve had been looking right at Fury.
Steve pulled Fury into the next room... Fury was trying to tell him something,
but he couldn't pay attention...
"Captain Rogers? I'm Agent 13, SHIELD Special Service."
"Kate?" Steve shook his head, desperately trying to think. The girl rounded the
corner with practiced care, keeping her weapon lifted slightly, but ready to
use.
"I'm assigned to protect you."
"On whose order?" Steve demanded.
She looked in shock down at the floor. "His." She dropped to Fury's side and
pulled out a COM unit. "Foxtrot is down, he's unresponsive, I need EMTs!"
The reply snapped back, "And the shooter?"
"Tell him I'm in pursuit," Steve said, hoping Kate or whoever she was could
handle the situation, but knowing he'd never get a better chance. He grabbed
his shield and jumped through the window to the next building. He could see
Bucky running along the roof; he catapulted himself through the office hallways
and finally through another window and then...
BUCKY, STOP! IT'S ME! He threw his mind at Bucky like a fist.
Bucky stopped in the darkness, turned halfway and fell to his knees, holding
his head. Steve knew he was feeling the same thing that Steve had felt back at
the apartment; the full force of their connection snapping into place.
Steve stumbled, trying not to fall. He looked at Bucky for the first time in
seventy years. Black outfit, face mask, shaggy hair. And there was the metal
arm, shining and dangerous. But it was him. It was him. Steve staggered
forward, trying to get to him.
WHO ARE YOU
The thought was a roar, and Steve had to close his eyes momentarily, but he
didn't stop moving forward. "You're about to find out." He reached Bucky,
touched him on the shoulder...
DON'T TOUCH ME
"Bucky, look at me! You know me!"
NO I DON'T
"Bucky, you've known me your whole life." Steve reached forward and pulled off
Bucky's mask, and saw his face. Bucky's eyes were shadowed with grease paint,
but it was him. Steve forgot everything else, forgot Fury back at the
apartment, forgot the way Bucky was changed, forgot everything. All he could
think about was how whole he suddenly felt. He grabbed Bucky with both hands
and pulled him into a rough embrace.
Who are you? This time, Bucky's mental voice sounded weak and bewildered.
Steve Rogers. Your friend, your soul mate, and you are my everything and you're
HERE, you're finally HERE and we can be together again and...
Bucky pulled away hard, stumbling back from Steve's grip, and pulled out a
knife. "I don't know you," he rasped harshly. And he lunged at Steve. They
grappled, and Steve was finally given the chance to feel just how strong Bucky
had become; it was all he could do to fend off the tip of the knife, even with
his shield. Steve knew that fighting Bucky was not a good idea. Steve had to be
careful not to hurt Bucky. Bucky had no such compunction. Their feet scraped
the concrete dangerously close to the edge... then Bucky pulled out a gun.
Steve put all of the force of his mind behind the order. STOP IT RIGHT THE FUCK
NOW.
Bucky stopped dead, staring. He dropped the gun.
He said, "I've never heard you use that word in your entire life."
Then he fainted.
***** Chapter 4 *****
"Why was Fury in your apartment?"
"I don't know."
"You're a terrible liar, even over the phone."
"Just tell me what happened."
"What's to tell? He died on the operating table. You weren't here."
"... I think I need your help."
"Rogers, why weren't you here?"
"I couldn't be."
"I'm going to need a better answer than that."
"I'll give you one, if you'll meet me."
"Rogers..."
"Just meet me. Please. My apartment, one hour. Can you do that?"
"... Sure."
* * *
The soldier woke. It was a normal waking, he wasn't frozen. But he was naked.
It was dark, and he was in the back of a car; he was being transported
somewhere.
Steve was in the front seat. Steve. The soldier knew the man's name, now. He
could feel that name echo through him like the shock wave of a bullet. Steve
was his friend. The word made no sense, the phrase made no sense, but it was
true, somehow. He knew Steve. That also made no sense.
What made the least sense was the fact that he wasn't afraid. And he realized
that he had been trapped in fear for so long that he had forgotten what the
absence of it felt like. It was like a surcease from pain. He could breathe
again. How long had it been? And why wasn't he afraid?
Because you're with me, that's why. "Rise and shine, buddy." Steve's voice bore
the artificial calm of someone trying to soothe someone else.
There was another person in the car, in the front passenger seat, a woman. The
soldier sat up abruptly, some of the fear returning. He didn't know her.
The woman turned in her seat, a sleek curtain of dark red hair shifting around
her face. "You have no weapons. I do. Try anything and I'll prove it."
"Hey, easy. We're all friends here." Steve's voice held a note of strain.
"I'm not sure we are."
The soldier calculated how much force it would take to snap her neck and get
the gun from her.
Bucky, no. The thought was steely enough to hurt.
The soldier winced. He decided to bide his time for now. Steve had some way of
controlling his thoughts... then, like a puzzle piece falling into place, he
made the connection between Steve and the Other. This was the man, then. The
one who said he loved him. The one who was capable of sending such a constant
stream of encouraging messages through whatever connection it was they
mysteriously had... his head began to swim as memories tried to surface. He
shook himself to full awareness. "Why... where are my clothes?"
Steve said, "We figured they probably contained a tracer of some kind, so we
stripped you. There are some fresh clothes beside you, on the floor board.
Sorry, it's just surprisingly hard to dress someone in a comatose state."
"Don't worry, we didn't molest you." There was a sly note in the woman's voice.
"... much."
The soldier studied her for a moment. Evidently she was in the habit of
covering her fear with humor, but she was definitely afraid; he could smell it
on her. Then the analytical side of him gave way to something else. It had been
years since he had been this close to a woman without immediately killing her.
She smelled like... he was intensely aware of his nudity for a moment, and
hastily reached into the floorboard for the clothing there. Jeans and a shirt,
boxers. They were all soft, obviously worn in by someone else, and somewhat
loose, fitted for comfort rather than armament. The fabric felt strange on his
skin. It snagged here and there on the metal plates of his arm.
It smelled like Steve. These were some of Steve's clothes. They gave him a
ticklish feeling, like the touch of a stranger. Almost, it made him feel like
another person. Hadn't he once worn...? The memory wouldn't surface. More
nausea. He would have to wait.
Had Hydra bugged his suit? Most likely. But more likely than that...
"Stop the car."
"What? Why?" Steve glanced back at him.
"Stop the car," the soldier repeated. "You missed something."
Steve and the woman exchanged worried glances, and Steve slowed the car,
pulling it over to the shoulder of the highway.
The soldier said, "I need a tool. A screwdriver, a knife, something."
Steve handed him a pocket knife. The soldier could feel the the woman's
surprise; he was a little surprised himself, that Steve would trust him not
to... not to what? Not to kill them both?
Could he even do that? He wasn't sure he could kill Steve.
He knew he didn't want to. And it wasn't his mission, anyway. He had completed
that already. He didn't have a new one. He always returned to the lab after a
mission because that was his home; because there was nowhere else to go for a
creature like him. Because he had no other purpose. Because only they knew how
to take care of him. Out here, his body would begin to reject his arm soon, and
some of his strength and acuity would fade as he sweated out the steroids and
serums. Not all of it, but some. Out here, it was likely that he would die. But
until then...
Until then, he could do as he wished.
He unfolded the knife and pried open the tenth and eleventh side plate of his
arm. The pain was acute, but nothing he hadn't felt before. He held the knife
in place with his teeth, keeping the plates separated, and dug into the opening
with his fingers... there.
He yanked out the tracking chip and put it into his metal hand, then slowly and
deliberately crushed it.
He looked up to see two faces looking at him in surprise. He quietly folded the
knife and handed it back to Steve.
The woman blinked, and then glared at Steve. "I told you it was probably in his
arm."
"Well, what were we supposed to do? It was attached to him, we couldn't exactly
leave without it."
The soldier tapped his window button and tossed the crushed chip out the open
window. He tapped it closed again. "Were we going somewhere in particular?" He
looked into Steve's eyes, but he had to look away. Something about it made him
dizzy.
"Yes."
"Well, I suggest you change your route, because they've tracked you this far."
Steve nodded. "Good idea." He looked at the woman. "Oh, and this is Natasha, by
the way. Natasha, this is my friend, Bucky."
The soldier shook his head. "That's not my name."
"Yes, it is."
"No--"
"We can argue about it later. Is there something else you'd prefer to be
called?"
The soldier thought about it for a moment. "I guess... I guess Bucky is better
than nothing. I don't have a name."
Natasha smiled. "Welcome to the club. We're all a little identity-challenged
around here." Her smile was tense.
The soldier... no, Bucky... studied her for a moment. "Do you have some
particular reason for disliking me?" He could imagine a few of them, but he
didn't recognize her, so he didn't know which one it might be.
Her smile faded. "You shot me once. Don't you remember?"
"I'm re-programmed after each mission," he said softly. He winced as he was
nearly knocked back in his seat by a wave of emotion from Steve; rage,
protectiveness. Could you maybe not do that?
Sorry, buddy. I don't like what they did to you.
I wasn't too keen on it either. But why should Steve care so much?
"So, Bucky," Natasha said calmly, "Why did Hydra put a hit out on Nick Fury?"
"Because he threatened the Order."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"I don't know."
"Who told you to do it?" asked Steve.
"Alexander Pierce."
Steve and Natasha stared at him in shock, and then at each other.
"You're sure about that?" Steve asked.
"It can't be the same Alexander Pierce."
Bucky shifted in his seat. "Late fifties or early sixties, blond, regular
features, blue eyes, gray suit, in love with the sound of his own voice."
"No, that's him alright."
"You believe him?" Natasha asked Steve, her eyes intent.
Steve nodded toward Bucky. "He and I are connected the same way you are with
Banner. We can't lie to each other."
She seemed to accept that explanation, though it baffled Bucky. Natasha turned
to him. "Is he the head of Hydra now?"
"I don't know. But he issues kill orders and wears a suit. That usually means a
good amount of authority."
Natasha said, "That means..."
Steve said, "It means we've been infiltrated. It means that SHIELD is being
directed by Hydra. They didn't just stay alive; they were among us all the
time."
"Nick must have found out."
Steve's face turned cold and remote. "And I think I know what they're going to
do. Remember the heli-carriers I told you about?"
Bucky said, "They're going to cleanse the world."
Steve looked at him. "You can't apply that word to people without killing a lot
of them."
Bucky gave him a small, cold smile. "Hydra has no problem with killing a lot of
people."
"Do you?" Natasha asked pointedly.
"Yes. It seems wasteful."
Steve paused uncertainly. "Well, okay. That's a start."
***** Chapter 5 *****
Chapter Notes
     In which I hand-wave a certain amount of Science; and in which I
     can't seem to refer to Natasha by anything other than her first name.
"He's asleep again."
"What?" Steve jerked himself back to awareness from a combination of road fugue
and obsessive contemplation of Bucky's current status.
"Bucky," Natasha said. "He's asleep again. Third time in four hours."
"Oh. I noticed that. I'm not sure what's going on with him. You would think
seventy years would be enough."
"He was asleep that whole time? I thought he was in cryo-freeze."
"Yeah, that." Steve remembered the cold. "He's away from his usual environment.
Do you think he's sick?"
"He may be, but I don't think it's that." She had a distant look in her eyes.
"I'm trying to imagine the way he lived all that time, and I think they must
have woken him up for missions only, just a few days at a time. During those
times, he was running on adrenaline. Probably only slept an hour or two, here
and there. Then he would go back, they would repair any injuries and put him
back under. But cryo-freeze isn't sleep. Not really. The body and mind can't
repair themselves the way they would naturally during a deep sleep. I bet he
hasn't had regular sleep for the equivalent of months, maybe years. There's no
telling how much damage that did to his brain. It's the most effective way to
brainwash someone."
Steve glanced at her. He had seldom if ever heard Natasha say so many words at
one time. "How do you know all this?"
"You should know a little bit about it, I know you've been through BCT. Basic
physiology. You can't test the body's limits without knowing what they are.
Bruce could give you a much more thorough explanation."
"I'm counting on it."
"He won't be in New York when we get there, you know. He has a longer drive
than we do."
"Why does he refuse to fly?"
Natasha lifted an eyebrow. "Would you seal yourself in a tin can 40,000 feet in
the air with a hundred other people for four hours if you were him?"
"I guess not. Anyway, it's really Stark I want to see. I always feel a little
funny asking Banner for favors."
"You take into account what it costs him to grant them. That's one of the
things I like about you. Are we sure we can trust Stark?"
"All I know is, he was willing to give his life once to save people. That
doesn't sound very Hydra to me." He felt Bucky nearly wake up in the back seat,
but it only lasted for a moment before his breathing evened out again. "You're
right, though. If Hydra made it all the way to the top of SHIELD, who knows how
many people are on the other side."
"Fury wasn't."
"Which is why they shot him. I just realized something."
"Do tell."
"Bucky... he's been worried that he's going to die."
"Die? Of what?" Natasha glanced back at him, her forehead creased.
"Of basic physiology. He knows he's been declining in health for years, but he
doesn't know that it might just be lack of sleep. And he's afraid his body will
reject that arm, but I seriously doubt Zola would have missed that. Surely he
would have done something to Bucky to keep it from happening."
"His skin around the arm didn't look very healthy."
"No, but it's possible they never gave him time to completely heal." He tapped
his upper thigh. "I have the frags of two hollowpoint bullets in this leg."
"Why didn't they extract the petals?"
"At the time, surgery was a little more primitive than it is now, and they
would have had to tear my leg apart. Even I would have had trouble healing from
that. But it's okay, because I was... am... in no danger of lead poisoning. My
body adapts to metal and it resists toxins. Dr. Erskine had plans to, well,
upgrade me. Steel bones, stuff like that. Not sure I would have agreed to it,
but it would have been interesting."
"And you think Zola's work on Bucky was similar?" He could see Natasha turning
the idea around in her head.
"Judging by how it felt to fight him, yeah, I do."
"Which brings me to another interesting point. Rogers, why hasn't he tried to
kill us yet?"
"Because he wasn't ordered to kill us. Just Fury."
"Is he that... robotic?"
"He's..." Steve paused. "If you had known Bucky before... if you had... it's
difficult to explain. I can see what's going on in his head, and sort of know
what he'll do next, but then some strange kind of shadow will come up and I
think that's the brainwashing." He firmed his jaw. "The important thing to
remember is that if he was trained to be this way, he can be trained out of it,
too."
Natasha was silent for a long moment. "Rogers, you and I both know it doesn't
work that way. Once a killer, always a killer."
"But you of all people know that it's possible to make choices; to use those
skills for the right cause instead of the wrong one."
"Turns out I was using them for Hydra's cause when I thought I was doing the
right thing. And that can happen to the best of us. Including..." she gestured
behind her.
"Unlike you, Bucky knew he was never doing the right thing, only what he had to
do."
"How did they motivate him, then? Fear of death only goes so far."
"They convinced him that the world was even worse than he was."
"And if I know you, you think you can convince him that the world is a good
place."
Steve nodded tightly.
Natasha smirked. "Better you than me."
Steve was about to reply when the world erupted into flames.
***** Chapter 6 *****
Bucky, are you okay?
Bucky opened his eyes and glanced to his left, where Steve was sitting. "How
did we get here?"
"Are you okay?"
"I'm in one piece." Bucky sat up. He was in a room quietly decorated in blues
and grays, but the furnishings were expensive; he guessed that it was a spare
room in the home of someone wealthy.
"We got here by, uh... well, we were carried." Steve grimaced. "Rather
flamboyantly."
"By who?"
"Tony Stark came by to pick us up after Hydra... or SHIELD, who knows at this
point, blew up the road in front of us. I figured the risk of them tracing a
call was pretty much moot after that."
"Good thinking," Bucky said, scratching his head. It was strange; he could feel
the impact of the crash, he had a few bruises that hadn't been there before,
but all in all, he felt better than he had the day before. Why would he feel
better?
Because you got some sleep. Natasha could explain it to you better than me.
"Stop that."
"Why?"
Bucky shook his head. "Just... I don't like you in my head."
Steve looked hurt. "I'm... sorry. But Bucky, me staying quiet isn't going to
get me out of there. You and I have a connection. That's not my fault." He
paused. "Is it really so bad?"
Bucky looked at him, trying hard this time. He managed to maintain eye contact
for a few seconds before he had to look away, his stomach churning. "Why do
I... almost remember you?"
"We've been friends since we were little kids. We fought together in the war.
You were captured, they erased your memories, but if you still had them...
you'd remember all about me."
Bucky's mind felt like it was twisting itself into pieces as he tried to
remember.
"It hurts you when you try to remember, doesn't it?"
Bucky winced. "It feels... it makes me sick."
"That means they didn't erase your memories after all. They just made it
impossible for you to access them."
Bucky looked at Steve again, and then away. He didn't like not being able to do
something.
You've always been able to do everything, that's why. The original Superman,
long before I was even invented.
I told you, get out of my head.
What if I could help you remember?
... I want to remember. I want to remember you. I want to remember myself.
Let me help you. I know your mind almost as well as you do.
Bucky felt something like a gentle, seeking hand, right at the center of his
mind. He tried to keep still, but couldn't stop his breath from rising a
little.
Calm down.
The hand seemed to browse through his thoughts, touching here, touching there,
pushing things gently aside to get at other things. Suddenly, it hit upon a
memory. It pulled, pulled...
... Momsaidyoucoulds tayfordinnerbutwhatdidwedoaboutthew
indowI'lltrytobegoodBuckywhereareyouitwasasum
merdayandhazystainsoflightagainstthewallinthemorningpleasestopitIca
ndoitonmyownI'myourfriendthoug
handit'sgoingtobeokayit'sgoingtobeokayit'sgoingtobeokay--
Bucky fell forward off the bed, onto all fours and dry-heaved on the carpet,
his guts twisting as though his own body were trying to escape itself. He fell
to his side and curled up, sucking air into his lungs, unable to stabilize
himself, still retching, the sour taste of bile burning the back of his throat.
He felt hands on his shoulders, helping him sit up. He kept his eyes closed,
his stomach still jumping. The remembered images were already fading.
Lay down.
Steve helped him back into the bed, and Bucky felt darkness close over him
again. Why does sleep have to be dark?
Don't worry about it, I'm not leaving you. I can see for both of us. I can
remember for both of us, too.
If it were only just pain, I could...
I know, Bucky, I know. They made it worse than pain.
Don't give up on me.
"Never. I'm with you til the end of the line, remember?" Bucky heard Steve take
a breath, and then say it out loud for the first time... "I love you." His
voice shook.
Bucky reached for Steve's hand. He couldn't say it back. He didn't know what
love was.
I can love enough for both of us, too. Forever if that's what it takes. Steve
took both of Bucky's hands in his own, the flesh and the metal, gripping them
hard as though he would never let go.
Steve deserved love. Bucky wished he were capable of it.
***** Chapter 7 *****
Chapter Notes
     In Captain America Civil War, Stark will have an entirely different
     relationship with Bucky, but I thought it best to keep things simple
     for now.
"You know, I'm about to be irritated by the fact that everybody and their
brother wants to use my technology to destroy the planet."
"If you would stop making things that were capable of destroying the planet in
the first place, Stark..."
"... Then none of us would be here to listen to me bitch about it. Which I
intend to do. At length."
"Can you finish doing it after we work out the plan?"
"There is no plan until we track down Nick Fury."
"Nick Fury is six feet underground."
"Tell you what. If Nick Fury is actually dead, I'll buy you and your little
friend a honeymoon cottage."
"... I can't talk to you sometimes."
"Well, then, let me put a bandaid on you and make you all better: I bet I can
fix the join on his arm. Whoever installed it knew exactly dick about
mechanics, and dickless about biotech."
"And yet he's used that arm to kill dozens of extremely well-protected people."
"Is your pet domesticated enough that I can take a look at him without him
killing me?"
"Is your mouth capable of shutting up?"
"No."
"Then I make no promises."
* * *
Steve rubbed his forehead, thinking he could probably use some sleep himself.
He wondered if they had been right to leave Washington. There wasn't a lot they
could do from New York if the heli-carriers were launched. All that they knew
was that it was going to be soon, because Stark's satellite reads were showing
a ton of activity beneath the river.
Stark was working on Bucky's arm and Banner was carefully analyzing what had
been done to his body. Bucky could tell them where home base was, along with
the machinery used to program him, but there was no time to get there. The only
reason they were taking this short break to work on him was because Stark
seemed to intuit that Steve wasn't going anywhere without Bucky, and a broken
Bucky would render both of them dead weight. Steve gave Stark credit for not
giving him too much grief over it. Banner was helping because he was simply
moved to help. They had attempted to sedate Bucky, when that failed they had
attempted local anesthetic, and then Jarvis had suggested hypnosis. Natasha
tried, but Bucky couldn't seem to let go. She had grimaced at him, dug into one
of her pockets and said, "Here, drink this." He took a cautious sip from the
vial she handed him, and almost immediately fell backwards onto the operating
table.
"What the hell was that?" Steve asked as they all stared at her.
"Something I designed to take out elephants."
Steve stood up. "What!?"
"Where were you dealing with elephants?" Stark asked.
"Never mind. Steve, he's fine."
In any case, Bucky was quiet and relaxed as Stark poked at his arm. Which was
good, because Steve didn't think he could handle Bucky being tortured right in
front of him.
"What's wrong?" Natasha sat beside him.
"Stark thinks that Fury isn't dead."
"Stark has been known to be wrong. I was there, he wasn't."
"Still, he's got me thinking about it now. You know who is really responsible
for Fury's death? Me."
"There's that God complex again."
"I'm not kidding," Steve said, mildly irritated. "Bucky wouldn't have known
where to go and where to shoot if I hadn't been there, feeding him the
information." He paused. "I was looking right at Fury when he was shot. Right
at him. I could have stopped it."
"You don't know that. Bucky has been an expert killing machine for decades now
without your assistance, and how hard is it really to guess that Fury would
come to you if he felt he couldn't trust anyone? Everybody trusts you. It's
annoying at times." She smiled gently.
"Do you trust me?"
She hesitated.
"That's all the answer I need."
"It's not what you're thinking," Natasha said. "It's just that you're a little
different when you're with him," she nodded toward Bucky. "I'm not sure I trust
you to think clearly where he's concerned."
Steve struggled with that for a moment. "I'm not sure I trust myself, either."
He looked up as Banner came toward them. "What's the word?"
"This much I can figure out without taking the necessary weeks to really dive
into his DNA: his genes have been resequenced. Everything down to the
mitochondria in his cells has been altered. This isn't 1940's technology, so
I'm guessing that they continued to work on him over the years. Which may not
actually bode well. Too many cooks in the kitchen."
"Is he going to be alright?" Steve tried to keep the tremor from his voice. To
find Bucky and then lose him again...
"I don't know yet, but he's stable now, everything but the shoulder, and Stark
should be able to reduce that inflammation. People grafting metal parts onto
their bodies," he said with a dry smile. "It's completely unnatural if you ask
me."
Bucky grunted and shifted a little on the operating table; Stark immediately
backed away. "Whoa there." He looked at Natasha. "I thought you said that stuff
could take out elephants!"
"It can. Our boy Bucky appears to be a little overly alert for his own good."
Banner nodded. "They wouldn't want him to be easy to drug."
"Then how did they do so many operations on him over the ye-- oh," said Stark.
"Yeah," Steve said, grimly. "They basically just strapped him down." The
question hung in the air, unasked, but he answered it anyway: "And yes, I could
feel it too. I was lucky to be frozen for most of it." He felt Bucky waking up.
"Better finish fast, Stark."
"That's what she said, and we'll call that close enough for government work."
Stark delicately replaced the last metal panel just as Steve felt Bucky waking
up.
Steve said, "Get away from him." Stark backed away, curiosity in his eyes.
Bucky twitched a little. He moaned, and then he jumped off the table wildly,
swinging his arms. He knocked over two trays of equipment before he even opened
his eyes.
Bucky, calm down. I'm here. We're your friends.
Bucky hesitated, his chest heaving in panic. "Don't do that again," he said
roughly.
"We won't. Will we?" Steve asked Stark.
"We will not. No refunds or exchanges for perfection the first time."
Bucky staggered and fell to one knee, still obviously drugged. "My arm," he
said, flexing it and extending it slowly.
"Doesn't hurt anymore, does it?" Stark said softly.
"No, it doesn't hurt. It's never not hurt." Bucky stared at his arm in
wonderment. He looked up at Steve with tears in his eyes. "Can you feel that?"
Steve nodded, not trusting himself to speak. The lightning flashes that always
traveled up and down Bucky's arm were gone.
Bucky stood up again, his arms crossed over his chest as though he were holding
himself together. He looked around at the others. "Stark is right, Fury
shouldn't be dead. I didn't shoot him anywhere that would have killed him
within the hour."
"You could hear us talking?" Natasha said, staring.
"Why not?" Steve asked.
"Because you were there," Bucky nodded toward Steve. "Because he was your
friend."
Natasha bit her lip. "There are drugs that can reduce a person's life signs to
a minimum. They could have faked his death."
"If that's the case, then there are people who know he's alive, because he
couldn't have done it on his own," Steve said.
"Then we have a plan," said Stark. "Let's go harass some nurses, shall we? Food
first, though. They're not launching those carriers for at least another twelve
hours."
***** Chapter 8 *****
"About damn time," drawled Fury.
Natasha and Steve walked into the makeshift hospital room in a shocked silence,
and Steve could swear that Natasha's eyes were wet. Stark and Banner seemed
unaffected. Maria Hill waved them inside with a composed smile; Steve suspected
she would usher in the apocalypse with the same exact smile.
Bucky went dead still, pale and silent as a corpse.
My mission.
Steve looked at him curiously, and then felt a hard clench of fear in his gut.
"Bucky." Bucky kept staring at Fury. "BUCKY!"
My mission isn't finished. Slowly, Bucky moved into a fighting stance.
"Bucky, look at me." Steve moved in front of Bucky, breaking his line of sight
to Fury. Look at me. Come on.
Bucky looked at Steve, calmly, with eyes that didn't know him at all.
"What's going on, Rogers?" Natasha's voice was tight with strain, and Steve
heard her trying to gauge the situation. Which meant Banner was as well.
No. Please, no. Bucky! He held his hands out, but instinct told him not to make
physical contact. "Everything's okay, Banner. Natasha, be cool," he said,
watching her slowly ease her way behind Bucky, reaching into her left sleeve
pocket. "We're all friends here. Right?" Bucky's eyes remained glassy.
Bucky, please don't make us do this.
I didn't complete my mission.
Natasha pulled out a small pistol just as Banner took a step forward,
unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt. Bucky glanced from one to the other and
Steve could see him calculating. He heard a soft noise behind him as Hill rose
from her seat. Steve didn't know whether Bucky could disable all of them before
Banner could pull a Code Green, and he didn't want to find out.
Steve made his internal voice hard as flint and tried to dig into Bucky's mind.
You don't have to complete your mission! You don't work for Hydra anymore!
I have never not completed a mission.
Bucky!
Who the hell is Bucky? A dim light of curiosity showed in Bucky's eyes.
Steve tried to do what he had done before, digging for memories in Bucky's
mind. Suddenly, it was a cold, remote, feral place, unfamiliar to him. He
stumbled around, knocking against thoughts and impulses, and finally found
something that might be a memory, that might just--
... whatiftheyfindout--
NO!! Bucky's face suddenly changed, breaking into a horrified expression that
quickly turned to agony. He fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. Not that
one! No!
Steve knelt down and took Bucky by the shoulders. "Bucky, it's me! Tell me you
know me!"
"I... I know you," Bucky gasped. He shook his head, his face dead white. "Don't
ever... please don't ever do that again..."
"I won't," Steve said. "Hey. Look at me."
I can't.
I'm sorry... okay, just, don't kill anybody, okay?
There was something about... I thought I had...
There is no mission, Bucky. You're free.
"Rogers," Hill said, her voice sharp.
"It's okay. Just a flashback." The lie left his mouth before he could even
think, and Steve wondered again just how much of his character was compromised
now.
"Unless I'm very much mistaken, you have just brought into the room the person
who blew up my car and then shot me," said Fury, with surprising equanimity.
"Now before I get really pissed off, may I ask you why?"
Steve sighed. "It's a long story."
"Then make it shorter, because we don't have time, but I'm still dying to
know."
Steve scrambled to his feet, helping Bucky up. "Bucky, this is Nick Fury. My
friend," he said, firmly. "Nick, this is Bucky. Who is also my friend, in the
process of rehabilitation."
"Can he rehabilitate in the next room?" Fury's voice was still quite calm.
"Not without a babysitter," said Stark. "Captain, you've just been reassigned."
Steve looked at Stark, whose eyes were blazing with rage. The others didn't
look much calmer than he did. They had all guessed more than he had said.
Steve felt his face redden in utter shame. He knew there was no time for
apologies, and no apology would be good enough anyway. He had lost their trust,
putting Fury in danger again. It felt like a kick to the stomach.
"Bucky, come with me."
He led Bucky out of the room and into a room with a table and chairs. They sat.
Even Bucky seemed to realize some inkling of what had just happened. He looked
at Steve with something that in more human eyes might have been construed as
concern.
Steve's mind was strangely blank. He caught at the only thing he could think
of, "Bucky, what was that memory you hated so much?"
"What memory?"
Steve gently touched it in Bucky's mind. Bucky turned pale again. "Don't.
Please don't."
"Why?"
Bucky just shook his head.
"Bucky, why? We were kids together. We never had any secrets. We've wiped
boogers on each other, worn the same clothes. We fought together, we killed men
together. I felt you get captured and tortured. I've felt you murder. What
could you possibly need to hide from me so badly?" He felt a surge of anger,
and knew that it was his own fault, but couldn't seem to stop. "I've felt you
blow families up with bombs and I've felt you shoot people in the head who were
begging you for mercy. None of it mattered, because you were my friend. I found
you. I didn't kill you, even though I know Nick would have advised me to. I
didn't even fight you. I've been trying to help you. Everything I have done for
the past few years has been about you, you, YOU." He took a deep breath. "I
don't even know who I am anymore! My friends don't know me either! Did you even
see what happened in there?" He grabbed Bucky by the shoulders and shook him.
"Did you?!"
Bucky was staring at Steve with wide, horrified eyes.
"Tell me that you at least understand what happened." Steve waited. "Bucky. You
nearly killed someone again. Without even wanting to, just because you had been
programmed to do it."
Bucky slowly shook his head, mute.
Answer me!
But I don't understand. I don't understand what happened at all.
How can you not?
Because my brain is no longer mine. Bucky's eyes fell. Feel it?
Steve touched Bucky's mind again. It was still shadowed with the remnants of
conditioning. Steve tried to remember Basic Training, the way they drilled the
moves into you, again and again and again because there was no time to think
when you were in battle. You had to rely on conditioning to keep your body
moving, your gun handy, your life going. If you betrayed your training, you
died. Or worse, you failed at your mission.
I failed, he thought. I used to be a leader.
Bucky's eyes were sad. I'm not worth this. You know that, don't you?
"No, I don't. I don't know that at all." Steve took Bucky's hands in his own.
"We're going to figure this out."
They looked at each other for a moment.
Bucky said, "I can look into your eyes now. I couldn't, before. I don't know
why."
Steve held Bucky's gaze as he held his hands, and decided to reverse the feed.
He gave Bucky a memory instead of trying to take one.
waitholdupica n'tmom'sgonnabe ican'tthough... I can't, though. I can't.
running up the hill together trying to make it home before dark and before they
would get into trouble and Bucky was pushing Steve and Steve's lungs were
laboring so hard
it felt like they were burning, burning
and they ran up the hill they ran up the hill
Steve fell and Bucky looked in his eyes and that was the first time the first
time ever
joining together, the same mind and then
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry Steve... is that what it feels like I'm sorry I'm sorry
I'm sorry it hurts I'm so sorry
and they were late but it didn't matter it didn't matter because
Steve opened his eyes. Bucky's eyes were full of tears. "It hurt you so badly,
and I never knew until that day."
"But you stopped pushing me after that. You always slowed down for me. Do you
know why?"
"No, I don't."
"Because you're a good person, Bucky," Steve said intently. "I've never met
anyone better than you. I know you, inside and out. And I know you're still in
there somewhere."
"What if I'm not?" Bucky whispered.
"Not an option," Steve said.
Bucky tried to lift his hands to his face, but Steve was still holding them.
Steve loosened his grip. Bucky stared down at their loosely conjoined hands for
a moment, and then he brought Steve's hands up to his fallen face, and covered
his eyes with them. He started to cry, almost silently.
Steve sat very still and caught Bucky's tears in the palms of his hands,
letting the minutes pass.
***** Chapter 9 *****
"Are we sure this is necessary? Can't Stark just... destroy them with something
big and technical?"
"Unfortunately, I helped design those heli-carriers. Generally anything made by
Stark is also Stark-proof, but these even more so. They've got enough fire
power to do a ton of damage unless we stop them fast and hard. No, Fury has the
right idea; let them tear each other apart. It's the fastest way to get them
out of the sky. Of course, that means they have to be IN the sky."
"There's no way around it, Banner. We need to use the chips. Ideally we would
need one flier per carrier. Romanov, you already have your orders, so you're
out. Hill, I need you to coordinate. Who are our fliers?"
"Okay, so we have Stark..."
"Correct. What about Rhodes?"
"He's in Australia at the moment, I haven't been able to contact him."
"Shit."
"What about me?"
"Banner, you're our ace in the hole, per usual. I don't want to play you unless
we have to, and anyway, someone probably needs to be on the ground outside."
"Meaning we need two more people who are comfortable working in the air."
"We happen to have exactly two other people in the next room, you know."
"I reiterate: shit."
* * *
Bucky shook his head. "No."
Steve said, "I agree, not a good idea. And not just because none of you trust
him. Or me, right now, by association." The others exchanged glances, but
nobody bothered to argue. "I think I can take one down, but Bucky needs to stay
on the ground. So that leaves one." He pondered for a moment. "I might have
someone who can help us."
"Who?" asked Hill.
"Just a pilot I met recently. Non-affiliated with SHIELD. Seems trustworthy,
but uh..." Steve looked down. "I won't ask you guys to believe me on that."
"Steve, shut up," Natasha said. "One screw up doesn't keep you from being the
planet's most trustworthy living thing."
"Um, I say it does."
"You can shut up too, Stark. Where is this pilot?"
"I think I can get in touch with him through the VA."
"There's a phone right here."
"What about Hydra?" Bucky said, quietly.
"The man raises a good point," said Fury. "If Pierce is corrupt, then anybody
could be. We have no way of telling who."
"Sure you do," said Bucky. "You have me."
"I beg your pardon?"
Bucky moved forward, feeling a little awkward. Talking to people hadn't been
his speciality for a very long time. "I'm programmed not just to eliminate
targets, but to protect Hydra. I know the face of every agent Hydra has in the
field."
"So make us a list."
Bucky grimaced. "Doesn't work that way unfortunately. I don't have their names
memorized, it's several hundred people. I know them on sight. That means I have
to see them first."
"That's a neat little memory trick," said Banner.
"Faces are about thirty times easier than names for the human brain to
remember. It's useful for missions. It's so I can avoid, well, shooting them...
but also so I can use them."
"Use them?" Fury seemed interested.
"The cops who tried to break into your car? They were under my orders. They
drove you in my direction, I was to take over if they failed. I'm authorized to
organize whole platoons of men if necessary."
Fury sat up straight. "And they just... do what you tell them to do?"
Bucky nodded. "If a Hydra agent sees me, he assumes that I'm under direct
orders from top brass. I'm kind of hard to mistake for anybody else." He flexed
his arm. It was taking him a while to get used to the fact that it didn't hurt,
and it didn't make tiny clockwork squeals every time he moved, either...
"Bucky," Fury said, "You just became extraordinarily useful."
"But you just said you can't hurt them," Stark pointed out. "How useful is
that?"
Bucky smiled. It wasn't a happy smile. "I never said I couldn't hurt them. I
was always authorized to use disciplinary measures..."
"On anybody who didn't comply with your mission," finished Steve.
"Bingo. Up to and including death. After all, that was my main job: killing
anybody who got in Hydra's way, even if they were a Hydra agent." Bucky felt
the old familiar disgust rise in the back of his throat. He felt like he could
smell the lab again.
Steve seemed to sense his distress. "I'm not sure how I feel about giving you a
mission to go and kill more people."
"I feel fine about it," Fury said drily.
"Which is why I think SHIELD needs to go down with Hydra. We have too much in
common," Steve said, firmly. "We may have been doing Hydra's work for years
without knowing it. If we were clean, how could we not know it?"
"Rogers, getting your hands dirty to do the world some good is how everybody in
this room operates."
"Nick, you personally oversaw the invention and construction of three massive
war machines intended for nothing but pre-emptive action. That's not getting
your hands dirty. That's letting the dirt cover everything good."
"After all," said Bucky, "Hydra loves to create machines that can murder."
Steve gave him a sharp look. "Nobody is calling you a machine."
"You should. I'm a weapon that you can use."
"No you're not, Bucky! I didn't save you so that you could do the same work for
us that you do for them!"
"Did you save me?" Bucky asked, sadly. "Nobody else is all that sure of it. Are
you?" He looked around. The others didn't seem to know where to look, except
for Steve who was glaring at him, and Stark who was looking at him
speculatively.
Stark said, "He's right. He was designed for a purpose, and that purpose suits
our needs. Not our wants, Steve. Our needs. This is necessary. We have to root
out Hydra."
"Cut off one head, and two shall take its place," Steve said with quiet anger.
"You're asking him to kill hundreds of people."
There was silence for a moment.
Fury said, "Then what do you suggest, Rogers?"
"Kill the structure supporting Hydra. Which is SHIELD. Rebuild from scratch,
and Bucky can be your recruiter."
"Steve," Bucky said, "Listen. I'm not gonna get out of this without having to
kill people. No, listen to me I said. I agree with you that SHIELD should go
down, it's rotten. Meaning no offense," he said to Fury.
"Oh, none taken. Do go on."
"The fact is, someday I may be something different. Someday I may be a person
again. But right now, I'm a gun. It's what I was built for. For the first time
since that happened, I have a chance of getting pointed at the people who
deserve it." He held Steve's eyes, hoping for him to understand. I don't know
much about redemption, but I know it always involves blood.
Bucky, I don't want you to do this.
And I won't do it if you tell me not to. Please, Steve. Don't tell me not to.
Don't force me to be useless when there's some actual good I could do.
... If I say stop, at any time, would you stop?
If you say stop, at any time, I will stop. But don't say it yet.
Steve took a deep breath, and looked at Fury. "I don't own him. If he wants to
do this... then I have nothing more to say."
Stark was considering. "Do we need to program you, the way you were sent on
missions in the past?"
Bucky shrugged. "Hopefully not. You don't have the equipment here anyway. And
you won't have it in the future, either."
"Why not?"
"Because when we've taken care of the heli-carriers and Hydra and SHIELD and
all the rest of it, I'm going back to the laboratory and I'm gonna tear it to
pieces. This technology dies with me."
***** Chapter 10 *****
Chapter Notes
     PLEASE NOTE THAT THE ARCHIVE WARNINGS HAVE CHANGED, and so has the
     rating.
"I thought you were a pilot."
"I never said pilot."
"Stark's gonna love this."
* * *
It was a subtle calculation; they couldn't use the heli-carriers to destroy
each other until they were in the air and armed. The waiting was the hardest
part, but then, it always was. Fury's contacts told them that they had six
hours to kill before the launch was scheduled. Until then, nothing to do but
sit around.
Steve was already nervous about letting Bucky go it alone. He knew that some
part of what he was feeling was the addictive nature of their connection. Even
though they had been together for only 20 hours or so, it already felt like
physical pain when Bucky even went into an adjoining room. They were sitting
together at the table now, talking in whispers, their knees touching. Nobody
else thought anything of it. They were soul mates, finally reunited. It was
natural. The only problem was that it might turn out to be a deficit during the
coming battle.
"I have an idea."
"What's that?" Bucky seemed eager to be distracted from thoughts of killing.
"You don't have to remember anything you experienced when you were with me. I
can give you the memories, like I did earlier."
Bucky nodded. "Okay, try it."
You ready?
Ready.
Steve sent the thread of a memory toward Bucky... itwasalwayswarmint
hekitchenitwas
blueberry pie it was Steve's favorite he always
"Go ahead, eat up, you're a growing boy."
and Bucky smiled at his mother and she smiled at both of them and they smiled
and
The memory ended. Bucky pulled away, blinking. "That was... I got it. When you
give them to me, I can remember them in my own thoughts. I remember it now." He
smiled. "Blueberry pie. She made it for you as often as she could get fresh
berries."
"I know. Your mother was an incredibly sweet lady."
"It was the only thing we could depend on you eating, Steve. You barely ate
anything because everything made you sick."
"You remember that?"
"I do now. Try another one."
"Okay, let me think of something..." Steve sent another thread of memory.
whatdoyoudowhenitdo esthatidon'tknow
I didn't know who to tell so I told you I thought maybe I was sick or hurt
but it wasn't a place you told mom or dad about you hid and they never talked
Bucky we could always talk about anything
Bucky emerged from the memory, his forehead creased. "Ah. Yes, I remember that.
When you..."
When I showed you my first erection. Steve knew he was blushing. He shrugged.
You reassured me. Your dad had taught you about it; mine hadn't, so I had no
clue.
Your parents didn't tell you about it?
They never told me about anything. Had to figure it all out on my own, or ask
you.
But you were the first one to figure out... Bucky closed his eyes, slowly
curling up over his stomach. He grunted. "Sorry."
"It's okay. And I know what you're talking about." Yeah, I was the first one of
us to figure out what to do with it when it sprang up like that.
Bucky started laughing softly, his head down, hair shadowing his eyes. "Jesus."
He glanced up. "That's why you went for that particular memory. Earlier, when
you were trying to stop me."
"I didn't get it, Buck. Whatever it was."
"But you guessed," Bucky said, intently. "You know."
Steve felt he was at the cusp of something important. "Well, I think I know
now. That's it? That's the one thing that you consider worse than a hundred
murders? ... I may remember it differently from how you remember it." Slowly,
hesitantly, he sent the thread of memory out for Bucky to catch and hold.
don't stop...
Bucky's mind closed like a clamshell, and he curled up again, gasping. No. No,
we didn't.
Bucky, we did. It's okay. We were just kids, we were experimenting. You know
that most people don't find their Other during childhood. We did. Being linked
just leads to... certain things.
It's wrong. The thought had a desperate tinge to it.
Why? We didn't hurt anybody. We didn't hurt each other.
Because... men aren't usually linked to each other...
We were taught that, during that time. But people believe differently now. And
there are too many examples to the contrary.
"What are you trying to sell me, huh?" Bucky half-smiled, but it was a panicked
expression.
"You don't have to be afraid. This is me you're talking to. Remember?"
"Not funny."
"Not meant to be. I asked you and I meant it. Do you remember now?"
Bucky looked around the room, but nobody was paying them any attention. Natasha
and Banner were tucked in a corner, conversing in quiet voices; Hill and Fury
and Stark and Sam were doing something similar, but Steve guessed that their
topic of conversation was probably a little different.
Bucky turned back to Steve, his eyes unsure. "Yeah. I remember now."
"Is it a bad memory?"
Bucky's throat moved. "No." His smile crept back, nervously. "No, it's
actually... I'm glad to have that one back. Before... everything that happened
to me... I used to remember it pretty frequently, I think."
Steve read between the lines. He suppressed the urge to look around the room
himself; he told himself to behave naturally. "Me too."
"You too?"
Steve smiled. Quit making me repeat myself, you dope.
Quit saying things that put me out of my depth!
Out of your depth? But there were girls...
You always thought I was some kind of lady's man, didn't you?
Well, you did better with women than I did...
If I'd had sex with any of them, don't you think you would have sensed it?
You... didn't?
Bucky reached for Steve's hand and gripped it hard. "I think I would remember
that."
"I have to hope so. I mean," Steve started, and then suddenly found himself
giggling. Bucky started laughing too, and it felt like being drunk, it felt
like the first moment had felt in his new body, it felt like the first day of
summer vacation... Steve wanted to tell Bucky that he loved him again, but
somehow, the words meant something else now, and they stuck in his throat. He
tried to say it mentally, but they stuck in his brain. He struggled for a
moment.
It's okay. You've already told me a million times. Like, actually a million I
think. Bucky's eyes twinkled, and for a moment he looked like the old Bucky
again.
Steve sat up straight, pulling away from Bucky and wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand. His head was swimming and his heart was pounding, and this
was absolutely the worst state possible for heading into a strategic
engagement. He had to focus.
Bucky nodded. "You're right." He paused. "Tell me about SHIELD headquarters.
I'll need to know something about the building layout."
Steve nodded, trying to collect himself. After a few moments he succeeded, and
he was able to start making sketches for Bucky.
Their knees never stopped touching.
***** Chapter 11 *****
Chapter Notes
     The timeline is different from the film, accounting for Stark's help
     and Bucky's evident superpowers.
"If Bucky just goes in there like a battering ram, he'll be dead in ten
seconds, probably wiped out by genuine SHIELD agents. I think we should try to
get them on our side. I have an idea..."
"What is it that you want to do?"
"Something I should have done a long time ago. I finally need to crank up that
intercom you were so nervous about my using."
* * *
The soldier gave up his name, for the time being. He pushed away all of the
recovered memories, swept any emotion out of the corners of his mind.
The order was to wait for the signal, and then to kill as many hydra agents as
he could find. And if it took a year to find them all, so be it. Never before
had a mission spanned so many people. He could count on at least a hundred
Hydra operatives being on the heli-carriers themselves, and perhaps another
eighty out in the field, but the rest he would have to take care of right now.
He could feel Steve worrying about his safety. Worry about your own. We're all
about to do some pretty dangerous stuff. Then, gently, he pushed Steve back out
of his mind. I can't have you there, not with what I'm about to do. He felt a
twinge of deep pain that faded as Steve relinquished his place in the soldier's
thoughts, surrendering it to thoughts of murder. He was still in street
clothing, the long sleeves of his jacket rendering him relatively unobtrusive.
Fury had given him all the equipment he needed. The soldier checked his
weapons. He flexed his arm. And then a strange calm descended upon him.
He went cold; sent his soul to the remote regions inside of himself and locked
it in deep. Then he waited, perfectly still, a shadow just outside the
building.
"Attention all SHIELD agents, this is Steve Rogers. You may have heard a lot
about me over the last few days. Some of you may even have been ordered to hunt
me down. But I think it's time you heard the truth..."
The soldier tuned Steve's voice out and slipped into the garage like a soft
wind. The complex was extraordinarily silent, listening to Steve's message, but
when he was done, it didn't take long for the sounds of chaos to begin to
emerge from the building. He silently left ten agents dead in his wake, lungs
punctured or necks snapped. He didn't bother to confirm all the kills; mortal
injury would have to suffice.
All three fliers were set to go up at the same time and hit their targets at
once. The soldier didn't let himself think about Steve being so far up in the
air without his own wings.
Hill's voice buzzed in his ear as he entered the lobby. "Eight minutes to
armament." The soldier's mission was set, regardless of whether they managed to
take out the heli-carriers; even if Hydra won, they were all on the death list.
He crushed the larynx of another Hydra agent easily with his metal hand.
The presence of the fliers had been noticed; there was flak in the air and the
insect-like buzzing of jets in chase. He didn't permit himself to focus on it.
He noticed a clump of SHIELD agents battling it out with Hydra agents in the
corner. Three well-placed bullets made the fight significantly less balanced,
and SHIELD overcame Hydra easily. He had an array of throwing daggers; he used
ten of them on his way to the inner rooms.
"Seven minutes."
".... Alpha lock."
He checked the archives. All five archivists were Hydra operatives. No need to
be cautious. He wiped them out with two grenades. The sound of the explosion
brought five SHIELD agents running; one of them was bleeding from the shoulder.
They all aimed their side arms at the soldier and called out for him to stop.
"Behind you," he replied calmly.
"What?" One of the agents glanced to the rear, where several Hydra operatives
were advancing with rifles. Bucky casually took each of them out, head-shot,
head-shot, head-shot.
The SHIELD agents turned back to him, stunned. He lowered his gun and slipped
past them, saying, "Don't follow me if you want to live."
They didn't follow him.
He dispatched eighteen people on the ground floor, and then took the stairs to
floor 2. He tossed two Hydra agents over his shoulders and down the stairwell
in passing. Floor 2 held sixteen Hydra agents and seventeen SHIELD agents. He
had to knock one of the SHIELD agents out to complete one Hydra kill. He kept
out of sight as much as possible, still killing with knives and his hands where
he could, quietly and efficiently.
"Charlie lock."
"Bravo flier, are you in position yet? Five minutes."
"Had to take a detour! I'll get there..."
Snap, slash, step, slash, step, snap. With each kill he felt colder, until he
was frozen and locked in ice again, an amphibious sludge running through his
veins instead of warm red blood.
"... Four and a half minutes."
"Bravo lock."
"Okay, get yourselves out of there."
He cleared floor 3 and went to Operations, which was in foment, SHIELD agents
battling with Hydra all over the room. It was time to take the jacket off.
The effect it had was electric; every Hydra agent in the room recognized his
arm, and they all began to scramble to get out of his way. The SHIELD agents
seemed confused, but more than a few pointed their guns at him. He held his
hands up, smirking. "Freeze," he said.
Every Hydra agent froze, even the ones fighting, and they all stared at him.
"Drop your weapons and let them take you." The Hydra agents exchanged confused
looks. "Do not make me repeat myself." The Hydra agents dropped their weapons
and put their hands up.
There was a pause while the SHIELD agents tried to figure out what was going on
and where to point their weapons.
He glanced around the room. "I leave it to you." He was out of the room before
anybody could shift their aim fast enough to follow him. Then yelling and
scuffling broke out behind him. He hoped that at least a few of those guns
would be fired, but at least the room was secured, and that accounted for
twenty more Hydra.
"Alpha flier, are you on the ground yet?"
"... Grounded now. We're headed for the Triskelion."
"Roger that. ... Two minutes."
Floor 4. He ran into isolated, organized packs of Hydra agents, well-armed. He
gunned them down, borrowing new weapons in passing from the dead.
"Mark."
A scream of explosives and rending metal boomed through the sky as the heli-
carriers fired on each other. The soldier estimated that that much hardware
could take as long as three minutes to damage badly enough to fall. Long enough
for a few dozen more hits. He killed his way up.
On the seventh floor, he ran into a tumult of fighting, and in the middle of it
was Steve. They almost ran into each other. The soldier nodded to him in a
businesslike manner, and slashed open the throat of the Hydra agent to his
left. Steve flinched.
Bucky.
No.
Bucky, we've been working our way down from the upper floors. Everything is
secure, Natasha has the chopper in the air. Pierce is dead.
I still see Hydra agents.
And they're going to stay alive. They're going to trial, Bucky. Not all of them
have to die. You can find the rest later.
It's cleaner to--
Bucky, I want you to stop. Now.
The soldier immediately felt a massive weight in his head... the promise he had
made to Steve warring against the incomplete mission. I have to... I have...
No, you don't. It's over. We won.
We won? The words made no sense. There was no such thing as winning. There was
only death.
BUCKY.
Bucky flinched, shaking his head to clear it. "Steve..." he whispered.
"Bucky, stop."
Bucky looked down at the knife in his hand, red with blood. He let it slide
from his fingers, down to the floor. The pressure in his mind was mounting, but
Steve's directive had won. Now all he had to worry about was...
He had just killed ninety-eight people.
At that moment, there was a massive crashing sound, and the building shook.
Steve looked around wildly. "Hill, what was that?"
"One of the heli-carriers just crashed into the west side of the upper floors
of the building, get out STAT!"
Steve grabbed Bucky's hand and they began to sprint toward the exits. They
nearly tripped over an injured agent. Steve grabbed the man and threw him over
his shoulder, and they kept running.
It was the kind of thing only Steve would do, Bucky thought. Something inside
of him was beginning to feel sick.
They shot out of the east side of the building, ushering several SHIELD agents
out with them, and ran out into the sunlight, which was really surprisingly
beautiful considering the massacre happening in the sky above them. Bucky ran
beside Steve, kept running until Steve was shouting for him to stop, kept
running, felt a hand pulling on his shoulder, kept running and looking up into
the blue sky until he felt dizzy and then fell to the ground, shaking.
"Bucky." Steve's voice was broken. "Why did I let you do this." Bucky felt
Steve's arm around his shoulders, helping him to sit up. Behind them, SHIELD
Headquarters fell and died, covering up the trail of corpses Bucky had left in
his wake. Ninety-eight people, killed in cold blood. Dozens more dying in the
wreckage. The sunlight was bright, it hurt his eyes, but he didn't care
anymore.
"I don't want to remember," he gasped out, grabbing Steve's shoulder.
"What? What don't you want to remember?"
"I don't want to remember any of it, any of my past. You can give me the
memories from when we were together. I think... I think those were the only
good times in my entire life. Everything else, just leave it. I don't want to
remember. Today was... I can't do it, Steve, I can't." The air tasted sour and
hot, and he couldn't catch his breath. "Please, I can't..."
"Hush, Bucky, hush. You don't have to. You're right. You don't need any of that
in your head... today was bad enough."
Bucky clung to Steve's shoulder and couldn't stop shaking. Suddenly he felt
cold all over, and things were growing dark. Why does it have to be dark?
"Hill, Bucky's going into shock, we need help!"
It was the last thing Bucky heard for a long time.
***** Chapter 12 *****
Chapter Notes
     Note that the fic rating has been changed again; read with caution.
"Is he okay?"
"Would you be?"
"Probably not, but I'm not him."
"I think Hydra designed themselves a toy just so they could break it. I found
him, or he found me, just in time. Maybe too late."
"Rogers, I assure you his body is healing now, not breaking down."
"Banner, he just went on a murdering rampage after I had spent two days telling
him that life could be different. It's not his body I'm worried about now."
"Do you think I don't understand how it feels to be capable of something like
that?"
"Are you saying he'll get over it?"
"No. But he'll adapt. Human beings are amazingly adaptable."
"He should never have had to adapt to this."
"You have a very large problem accepting things the way that they are rather
than how you want them to be."
"That's what Fury tells me all the time."
"Maybe Fury goes to the opposite extreme. But you need to watch your use of the
word 'should'. Any time you use it, you're delving into fantasy. And fantasy
does not help."
"Then what helps?"
"Acceptance."
"I should accept what they turned him into?"
"If that means accepting him as he is now, not as he was, then yeah. You need
to accept that. Because he needs you. You may be the only person on earth he
even cares about anymore."
* * *
Bucky slept fitfully through the day and then into the night, frequently waking
up from nightmares that Steve only got flickers of in his thoughts: darkness,
blood, and pain.
At around midnight, utterly exhausted, Steve did the only thing he could think
of to calm his friend down. He laid down beside Bucky and spooned him, holding
Bucky tightly. Bucky slowly stopped trembling and muttering. He stilled. Steve
fell asleep with his nose buried in Bucky's hair, the smell bringing back
memories of sleeping next to each other as kids, wrestling for the blanket.
Every time he found a memory, he silently passed it to Bucky.
Steve woke up at 5am the next morning when he felt Bucky move in his arms.
"What is it?"
Bucky gently extricated himself and sat up, turning to look at Steve. His eyes
were calm, but intent. "I have something to do."
Steve shared his gaze for a moment and then nodded. "Then we should go."
They crept away from the cave without alerting any of the others. Steve guessed
that this was something Bucky didn't want to do with too many witnesses; he
wondered what he was about to see.
The laboratory was deep in the ground, not far from the smoking remains of
SHIELD Headquarters. The area was crawling with law enforcement. Steve and
Bucky slipped past them like shadows. There was a garage next to a park two
blocks away. Bucky led Steve inside and down to the bottom level, where he
pressed a disguised panel in the wall. An elevator appeared, and they
descended.
Steve looked around at a room green with lights and studded with equipment. It
was abandoned. He looked at the banks of servers embedded in the wall, and
wondered if they contained copies of Bucky's memories. He felt a sudden urge to
tear them out of the wall and smash them. Then his eyes fell on the chair.
He walked toward it... a chair, fitted with buckles and clamps, clearly
intended to hold a single person in one place. Around it was a black loop of
metal and plastic with two rounded cups, roughly the shape and size of a human
head. Steve tried to imagine how it was used. Then Bucky put a hand on his
shoulder, and gave him a memory.
... screaming...
Steve shuddered hard, and broke away. He turned to look at Bucky, and their
eyes held the same expression.
Bucky reached out with his metal hand and tore off one of the head pieces. His
hand flexed, metal and plastic and wires shrieking as he crushed it. He fell to
one knee, and slammed the remains into the floor until they were nothing but
fragments.
Steve used his shield to knock the other head piece off, catching it and
handing it to Bucky for the same treatment. Bucky pounded it to powder.
They moved through the room slowly and deliberately, first destroying the chair
and its peripheral control units, then handling the servers embedded in the
walls. Steve yanked them out and smashed them with his shield; Bucky used his
hands. It took them over an hour to destroy the entire room.
In the corner was the freezer. It was thick-walled and solid, too heavy and big
to tear up. Steve pried up the lid and gently laid a hand on the cold surface
of the hard plank inside where Bucky had lain as they froze him.
Steve shared a look with Bucky, and their minds met with absolutely no
hesitation or friction, perfectly in harmony with each other. They left the
room. As they walked down the hall, Bucky threw a grenade over his shoulder.
Steve shielded them both from the blast.
They went back out into the sunlight.
Bucky took three steps and went down, falling to his knees in the grass. Steve
knelt beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's over, Bucky."
Bucky breathed in and out, harshly, and tried to speak several times before
words would come out. "That was my home."
"We'll find a new one." Steve sat down in the grass. "Your home is with me,
now."
"Til the end of the line."
"You got it." Steve picked at the grass, tearing up a few blades of it with his
fingertips. "I think I may need a new apartment. We probably need more space,
and anyway there are bullet holes in my wall."
"Sorry about that."
"Where would you like to live, Bucky?"
Bucky considered for a moment. "I honestly don't care. Wherever you live."
"I should probably stick close by here for whatever we decide to build in place
of SHIELD."
"Then here we stay."
"How do you feel, buddy?"
"I'm okay. Better."
Steve tied two of the grass strands together. "How about something to eat? I'm
starving. You?"
Bucky looked at him. "I could eat."
They didn't move.
Steve tore up a few more blades of grass, and started braiding them together.
He could feel Bucky beside him, a solid, warm presence, glowing and alive in
the sunlight that was shining down generously on them. He glanced at Bucky, who
was looking at him steadily. The light turned his blue eyes to the color of the
sky, pale and clear.
Bucky...?
Yes. I want to.
Their first kiss was awkward. It couldn't not be; confusion warring with desire
and hope, lack of practice, an anxiety that was amplified by the fact that they
could feel it in each other. Their lips met and didn't move for a moment,
neither of them quite knowing what to do. No kiss had ever mattered so much.
Then Bucky's lips parted, and he sighed. It was a surrender of sorts. It was
enough. Steve leaned forward and held the back of Bucky's head, running his
fingers up into Bucky's hair and he took what was offered. What he felt was
unfamiliar to him. It wasn't like ordinary lust. It was a taut, dark hunger,
expressing itself in his mouth and tongue. He wanted to taste the man beside
him, wanted him as much as possible, wanted... he felt Bucky respond, and it
was almost too much. He drew back.
Bucky threw back his head and laughed, falling back on the grass, letting his
arms rest easily above his head. The hem of his shirt rose, revealing the lines
of his stomach. Steve let himself truly look for the first time. He smiled.
"Was it that bad?"
"No. No, it wasn't bad." Bucky was still grinning. He seemed a little short of
breath.
Steve fell back on the grass beside him, squinting up at a sky too bright to
look at. He rolled to his side toward Bucky, and ran one fingertip slowly down
the scales of Bucky's arm. They flexed in the wake of his touch, almost like
trembling skin. He felt a sudden helplessness. "Now what?"
Bucky pushed himself up on his elbows. "Now, we make more memories."
Steve realized he was short of breath as well.
Their first time (as adults, at least) was beside a tree in a park meadow,
hidden and shaded from prying eyes but still open enough to give them both a
thrill of dark excitement, the chance of being found out. It was still early in
the morning.
Steve kissed Bucky again and again, getting better at it each time, and then
Bucky pulled off his shirt and Steve followed the path of revealed skin with
his hands before taking off his own.
Show me.
Bucky opened his pants. There was a tiny wet place on his boxers (Steve's
boxers, still), and Steve reached down and traced the outline of Bucky's
erection with his fingers. He felt more than heard Bucky's reaction, and froze
as it echoed through his own body. Show me.
Bucky reached down and pulled himself out, and began to stroke himself, letting
Steve watch him, watching Steve learn how best to touch him.
The first time was only hands, touching themselves and then each other, each
touch amplified by the connection their minds and souls shared.
Steve kissed Bucky again and again, the two of them on their knees now, their
arms tangling together, muscles bunching and releasing and rubbing against each
other as they stroked each other, too hard and too fast because it was too good
to stop. Bucky could only use one hand, so he used his metal arm to hold onto
Steve's shoulders and brace their bodies against each other. Their kisses
became rougher, hungrier, they tried to keep quiet in the stillness of the
morning but it was too good, they couldn't stop, and when a soft sound left
Bucky's mouth, Steve felt his hips begin to thrust into Bucky's hands and they
couldn't stop, they didn't stop until they were both gasping for breath and
Bucky bit Steve's shoulder as he released himself into Steve's waiting hands,
carrying Steve with him. Steve threw his head back, trying not to cry out, a
growling sound emerging from deep in his throat as he came.
It was awkward and messy and perfect, and they collapsed, hot ejaculate smeared
on their bellies, sweat bursting out all over their skin. The morning air
chilled it as they kissed each other again, exhausted and laughing, struggling
to get back into their clothes. They couldn't stop kissing each other. Bucky
had grass tangled in his hair, and his skin was glowing.
Steve fell back onto the grass, panting. He felt completely limp. "Maybe we
should have eaten first."
Bucky gasped a laugh. "What, two supermen like us?"
"I don't feel like Superman, I feel like a string of cooked pasta. I don't
think I can move."
"Come on. On your feet, soldier." Bucky sat up. "They'll all be waking up soon
and wondering where the hell we are."
Steve struggled to sit up. "Carry me."
Bucky started laughing, and then they were both laughing. It didn't matter if
someone heard them. Not anymore.
"Um, Bucky, where did I leave my shield?"
***** Chapter 13 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
"So, you've experienced this sort of thing before."
"You get used to it."
"We've been data-mining Hydra's files. Looks like a lot of rats didn't go down
with the ship. I'm headed to Europe tonight. Wanted to ask if you and Bucky
would join me."
"Maybe someday, Fury. Today is not that day."
* * *
No matter how much good he did in the world, no matter how many people he
saved, Steve couldn't deny the essential truth that his life was violent and
bloody a significant amount of the time. Stark, Natasha, Banner, Fury, all of
them dealt with this every day. Death was a large part of who they were and
what they did. They justified it in the name of saving more lives than they
were destroying. But it was a hard equation to work out, some days. Some days
it didn't work out at all.
But it was different for Bucky. He'd been used, he'd had no choice. He had
killed the good, in service of evil. He had been repeatedly and viciously
broken by it. For him, hero work was forever tainted.
At least, that was what Steve thought. Unaccountably, Bucky fought him on the
issue.
"Steve, look at me. Think about my life. What am I going to be, if not a
killer?" They were sitting on boxes in Steve's new living room, taking a break
from unpacking. Random items were scattered haphazardly through the apartment.
Steve frowned. "You can be anything you want to be."
"Well, back when I was normal, what I wanted to be was a soldier." Bucky gave
Steve his smirking half-smile, the one Steve had seen so many times in the old
days.
"You don't have to be one, though."
"I can give you one very good reason why I have to be. Because you are, and I
refuse to let you go and pick fights with the biggest baddest guys in the
universe without me to watch your back for you. The way we used to be, fighting
side by side."
Steve swallowed hard. "Bucky, I can't... I can't... let you do that."
"Ignoring the fact that you can't stop me, why can't you?"
Steve looked down. "I can't see you, feel you, broken again. I can't do it."
"Then you watch my back, too, and make sure it doesn't happen."
Steve tried to think of a way to argue. The fact was, Bucky had a point, but
Steve didn't know if he could handle Bucky killing anymore.
Bucky touched Steve's shoulder. "I'm getting better every day. You know that. I
don't go into trances anymore, I don't wake up in the night."
"But if you kill again..."
"I may freak out, yeah. That just means I have more of a reason to protect life
than most of you. I don't see how that's a bad thing."
"I guess we could use more heroes who have a problem with killing people."
Steve sat in silence for a moment. "I just can't lose you again. You know, if
we didn't share the link, I could never have found you. I would have thought
that you were dead."
"You would have found me eventually."
"How can you know that?"
Bucky stood up and went to Steve, pulling him to his feet. He held Steve's
hands and looked into his eyes. "What we have is more than telepathy. I'm not
myself without you, and I think it's the same way for you. I think we would
love each other even without the link. I know it's not the link for me. I don't
need the link to tell me who you are... I already know that, because of what
you do and how you live. I don't need the link to love you... I just goddamn
love you."
"I... I love you too. I don't know why it's so much harder to say than it used
to be."
"Because when you were saying it before, it was because I needed to hear it. I
don't anymore. I'm with you. I can feel it. I know. Now is when you need to
hear it from me instead. I love you, Steve. We're gonna be together for a very
long time, and I don't want to miss a second of it by sitting around at home
while you go off and have adventures. I'm with you. That's how I stay." Before
Steve could reply, Bucky put a finger on Steve's lips and shushed him gently.
"I'm with you, pal." Bucky smiled, and pulled Steve close.
Steve felt his body responding, rendering all of his arguments moot. "You know
something? You can be a real jerk sometimes."
"Oh, see, I have to force you to say it now." Bucky grinned. "Let's see... how
can I do that..." He pushed Steve down onto a pile of unpacked blankets and
started kissing him, softly and then harder.
Steve tried to hold back, but Bucky's skills were growing as time went on, and
their link ensured that he knew everything that Steve felt as he worked on
him...
I love you. I love you. I love you.
It's going to be okay, now. Everything is going to be okay.
 
 
 
Fin
Chapter End Notes
     I am crying with gratitude right now. This fic broke a writer's block
     that has lasted for two years. Thank you so much for reading and
     enjoying, and I hope to be writing again very soon!
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