Chapter Text
The fourth time, Bucky isn’t even expecting anyone other than Sam anymore. Somehow, it isn’t until he’s already undone his straps that he notices the 240 pounds of grumpy blond super soldier looming over the side of his pod, arms crossed menacingly over his chest. Sam is standing on the other side of him, looking slightly less pissed off, but no less stubborn. Anyone other than Bucky would probably find the sight intimidating. As it is, he mostly feels amused.
“Mornin’, fellas,” Bucky drawls, cutting through the tension. He slaps Steve’s shoulder amicably – would do the same for Sam, had he had a second limb to do it with on his side. “You look chipper.”
“Sam wants to move you.” Steve’s voice could not be more sour if he was salivating lemon juice.
“Steve thinks you shouldn’t have a say in whether or not we wake you any longer.”
“Sam thinks you haven’t already had your say. Such as for example when you asked to be put in cryo in the first place.”
“Steve thinks we should leave you here to rot.”
“Sam thinks—!”
“Bucky thinks you two should really shut the hell up, because he’s only just awake and is not a marriage counsellor.”
Steve shoots Bucky his puppy eyes. Bucky is very familiar with Steve’s puppy eyes. Groaning, he walks over to the table, where he’s spotted a bottle of water and a plate of food, presumably waiting for him. He’s not very hungry, given that he ate just a couple of hours ago – or, however long it has really been since Sam woke him to play Battleship.
Annoyingly, the cap is still screwed on the bottle this time, so he has to use his teeth to get it off. He can see Steve stepping closer, hands outstretched to help. Bucky ignores him and spits the bottle cap onto the floor, after which he gulps down the water. Cryo isn’t exactly gentle on his body’s moisture levels. Not that he’s about to complain about dry skin or anything.
“Buck, you chose this for your own safety,” Steve pleads with him, stepping forward, away from Sam. “That was a good choice! I’ve been searching for a way to help you for the last half year. You can’t just give up on that. I know I can find something to take Hydra out of your head, I’m sure of it.”
Sam steps closer too, glaring at Steve. Bucky watches in amusement as the man tries to catch Steve’s stubborn eyes. “Come on, Steve, why can’t he have some fun while we search? He doesn’t need to be frozen. He can just… stay somewhere safe.”
“He was staying somewhere safe! And the UN took him prisoner!”
“And ‘he’ is still right here.” Bucky hops onto the edge of the table, feeling slightly airheaded from having just woken up. He swings his legs back and forth to help his quickly warming blood circulate. “Has anyone thought of asking ‘him’ what he thinks? Just, you know, a friendly suggestion.”
“That’s why I’m here!” Sam grumbles under his breath.
Steve crosses his arms once more, defiantly puffing up his chest. “I was trying to respect your wishes of being left in cryo.”
“I know,” Bucky says, holding up his hand in a universal request for silence, before Sam can retort with another argument. “And thank you for that, but I don’t know if I still feel that way.” He runs his hand through his hair. “Anyone care to update me on the timeline here? I’m not sure if you realise, but for all I know Sam and I were playing Battleship a few hours ago.”
“Sam helped me suss out some worrying Hydra activity in South America. It’s all been taken care of now.” Steve shifts on his feet, seeming nervous. “He told me he’d woken you up again—” A glare at Sam, which Sam bravely doesn’t shrink back from. “—and that he thinks it best we move you somewhere different.”
“I believe the word I used was ‘nicer’.”
“Somewhere…” Steve sounds like the words are being pulled out along with his teeth. “Nicer. Because clearly the palace of the Wakandan king is beneath us.” This time, Sam does cringe under the weight of Steve’s glare. It brings a small smile to Bucky’s face.
“Steve,” Bucky starts, but then sighs, shaking his head. He waves for his friend to come closer. “Come here, you punk.” Steve marches to him, and Bucky unapologetically punches him in his upper arm.
“Hey!” Steve rubs at the spot indignantly. “What was that for?”
“For being a little shit.” Bucky briefly grins at him, but then his expression turns more serious. “This is something Sam and I discussed. I told him I'd be okay to move somewhere else if he could guarantee it'd be safe.”
“Which I can,” Sam chimes in from behind Steve. He steps closer to the table to look both of them in the eyes. “T’Challa agreed to personally oversee the whole process, as well as create several diversions on the day we move you.” He nods at Bucky. “Can’t get much better than the king helping you out.”
Steve crosses his arms over his chest again (Bucky is sensing a theme), and looks thoroughly displeased. “Are you sure this is what you want, Buck? Not that I think you shouldn’t, but you said it yourself: everything they put inside your head is still there.”
Bucky combs a hand through his hair, pushing the locks away from his forehead. “You’re right, I did say that, but… Sam here made me realise something.” He shoots Sam a small, almost bashful smile. “I, eh… Hydra messed with my memories. To get me under control, they manipulated everything I thought I knew. Except the new memories.” He swallows and lets his eyes fall to the floor. “The Winter Soldier’s memories. I have all of them. They’re the only ones I know are real. Everything else… I will probably never know for sure.”
Steve makes a nondescript pained noise from where he’s standing next to him. From the corner of his eyes, Bucky sees him unfold his arms and make an aborted move towards him, reaching out, but then freezing mid-air. Bucky looks up, and Steve retracts his hand, fingers slowly curling into a fist.
“But now I’m making new memories,” Bucky continues. “Good ones. For the last two years, the only thing I could do was survive, but now I think I have the option to live, even if it’s only a little bit.” He licks his lips nervously. “I don’t want to throw away that opportunity. And I’m not giving up! I still want my head fixed, but if I can be awake and still be safe… I think I should do it.” He hesitates, then adds, “For myself.”
Steve looks away abruptly, and Bucky can tell from the set of his shoulders as he curls in on himself that he is trying to hold back tears. “I can’t lose you, Buck,” he says, his voice right on the edge of cracking. “Not again.”
Before Bucky can react, Sam has stepped forward and put an arm around Steve’s shoulders. “Steve,” he says softly. Bucky can see Sam’s fingers tighten as he squeezes Steve’s upper arm.
“‘M good, Sam.” Steve’s voice sounds strained, and it brings back a foggy memory of times when they were younger and Steve had had the flu. The corners of Bucky’s mouth quirk up just a little, even as there’s a twinge of pain in his chest. The memory feels real enough, however, to quickly replace the slight ache with a warmth he’d forgotten it was possible to feel. He gets to his feet and joins Sam, wrapping his arm around Steve’s shoulders from the other side. He nudges at Steve’s leg with his knee.
“Hey,” Bucky says gently, once he’s gotten Steve’s attention. He smiles as he looks into his friend’s slightly reddened eyes. “This is a good thing. You won’t lose me. I’m gonna stay in Wakanda, where it’s safe. I’m still gonna wait until we’ve figured out how to get this crap out of my brain. That part of the plan hasn’t changed. I just don’t want to stay in cryo all the time anymore.”
Steve nods bravely and slowly pulls away from both of their embraces. Bucky takes the opportunity to ruffle his hand through Steve’s hair. A watery laugh bubbles up from Steve’s chest. “Bucky! Quit it!” he protests with a smile, batting his hand away. “I’m not 5’4” anymore.”
Sam is laughing quietly beside Bucky, visibly relieved at the break in tension, and no doubt taking great enjoyment in watching them interact.
Bucky smirks. “Thank God for that.”
Steve huffs and ducks his head for a moment, reaching up to stealthily dry his eyes. Bucky turns back to the table to give Steve some privacy, and sits down on the edge of it again. Sam follows him and does the same, hopping onto the tabletop right next to him.
“So do you want me to tell you the plan?” Sam asks, once Steve has collected himself and turned back to face them.
Bucky nods. “Go right ahead.”
As it is, their plan for moving him is fairly simple. T’Challa has paid regular visits to Sam’s Wakandan apartment over the previous weeks, setting up a precedent. Of course, he is always accompanied by his guards. Bucky is to masquerade as a guard to enter Sam’s home, and then stay behind while another guard, who lives in the same apartment building Sam does, takes his place on T’Challa’s return trip to the palace.
Bucky will have to pretend to be female, which turns out to be much less of a hassle than he’d expected. T’Challa is an expert engineer, and has created a mirage-like second skin that Bucky can put on to bend the light around him in such a way as to make him appear however he wants. As a member of the Dora Milaje, in this case, the Black Panther’s group of female personal bodyguards.
Bucky doesn’t entirely understand the science behind it, but he trusts he’ll be able to get into Sam’s apartment unnoticed. What he doesn’t yet trust, however, is how Sam plans to guarantee his safety once they’re there. Sam is being uncharacteristically squirrely about the subject, so he decides to ask about it directly.
“Listen, I think that’s something I’d rather show you than tell you,” Sam says, wringing his hands together nervously. Bucky shoots him a suspicious look, and notices Steve do the same. Strange. Does Steve not know of the contingency plan yet either?
Bucky nods tersely at Sam and smoothly slides off the edge of the table onto his feet. “Show me.”
For the first time since he’s gone into cryo, Bucky leaves the room. More accurately, he follows Sam out. Steve follows the both of them, exuding a menacing air of protective instinct. Bucky shoots him an amused look over his shoulder, but Steve simply sets his jaw in return.
Sam leads them to a workshop on the floor below the one Bucky had been staying on, where they are greeted by T’Challa and two members of his guard, who stay away from them, in the back of the room. Bucky and Steve shake hands with him, and Bucky looks around nervously once he steps away. The workshop is a large, open room, filled with a myriad of robotics. He’s glad that the majority of it looks to be made of brushed steel, clean and surgical, rather than the black metal Hydra had favoured. Nevertheless, being amidst all the unknown appliances makes his skin prickle uncomfortably.
Besides the robotics, there’s also a nearly overwhelming amount of holograms floating around the room, displaying all kinds of information in a language Bucky doesn’t recognise. It must be T’Challa’s native language, or otherwise perhaps a code known only to the Black Panther.
“It is good to see you awake and well, Bucky,” T’Challa says, drawing Bucky out of his head and back into the room. He notices that both Steve and Sam are looking at him with varying degrees of nervousness in their eyes. Sam, strangely, even more so than Steve.
“It’s good to be awake,” Bucky responds almost automatically. His voice sounds like pure gravel laced with doubt. Steve shoots Sam a look Bucky can’t quite read. It feels accusatory. Bucky squares his shoulders and clears his throat. “Thank you for the hospitality, and helping Sam plan my…” The word ‘release’ lingers on his tongue and he swallows it down forcefully. “...move.”
“I could hardly stand by and watch your government do you such an injustice,” T’Challa responds, his eyes speaking sympathy.
The corners of Bucky’s lips quirk up into a humourless smile. “Not like it’d be the first time.” Bitterly, he thinks back to SHIELD, to Hydra using him. To his missions and his wipes, indirectly funded by the government. He shakes his head lightly. “But thank you. For protecting Steve, too, and Sam.”
T’Challa nods at him, and then turns around to a nearby table. “I’ve made something for you.” Bucky follows him anxiously. He already has a pretty good idea of what to expect. No doubt, he’s in need of a new arm, and the workshop has made it pretty clear T’Challa has the engineering skills to provide him with one. He notices that Steve, too, follows them to the table, his brow furrowed into an expression of worry. Clearly, Sam is the only one who knows about this part of the plan. Bucky wonders why.
“I’ve made you a new prosthetic. It’s different from your old arm, lighter, for one, and more durable.” T’Challa holds the arm out on both his palms. It glints in the bright light of the room, the metal polished to perfection. It looks similar in design to Bucky’s old arm, with almost the same creases and curves, but the material is slightly darker and the star is missing from its shoulder.
“Is it… vibranium?” Bucky asks as he hesitantly reaches out to hold the prosthetic. His fingers stop dead an inch above the surface. He can’t bring himself to touch it. Not yet. Distantly, he wonders how much attaching it will hurt.
T’Challa chuckles softly and pulls the arm back. “No, we from Wakanda don’t just give vibranium out to anyone.” He sounds slightly amused, but also reproachful. Bucky realises he is being given the courtesy or someone ignorant of customs, or even good manners. He ducks his head.
“Of course. It’d be dangerous anyway. No stopping me if I’m one-fifth vibranium,” he apologises wistfully.
Sam clears his throat behind him, and both Bucky and Steve turn to face him. Sam’s arms are crossed in front of his chest almost defensively. There’s a nervousness in his eyes that sends a spark of nausea through Bucky. “About that…” Sam says cautiously. “We had to think of something that would stop you.”
Bucky freezes. Then he steels himself and nods, because Sam is right, and he had asked Sam to do this. Demanded it, even, if Sam wanted him to leave cryo at all. He didn’t just want to protect himself from Hydra, he also wanted to make sure everyone else was protected from him.
“Hold on a second,” Steve interrupts his thoughts, stepping forward towards Sam, his hands outstretched. He looks around the room from Sam, to T’Challa, to Bucky. His eyes are like burning ice. Cold, but furious. “What the hell do you think you’re talking about, Sam? Stop him?”
“I asked him to,” Bucky says before anyone else can say a word. He meets Steve’s eyes dead on, knowing nothing short of immovable determination will convince Steve to go along with anything of this nature. “If I’m leaving cryo, I need to know it’s going to be safe. Not just for me, but for everyone.”
Steve’s jaw audibly clicks. Bucky doesn’t even blink, keeping his gaze laser-focussed on Steve as if to instill his own resolve inside him through his eyes alone. Eventually, Steve moves his head to study Sam and jerks his chin up, beckoning him to continue.
Bucky can see a bead of sweat roll down the side of Sam’s neck. He wonders what Sam’s next words will do to him. Sam wets his lips with the tip of his tongue, then shifts his weight and unfolds his arms, squaring his shoulders. “The new arm has a kill switch—”
“A kill switch.” Steve’s voice is like metal grinding against metal. For a second, Bucky thinks he’s going to throw up.
Sam steps forward quickly, his voice hysterically placating. “Not a kill-kill switch.”
“A kill switch,” Steve repeats, his eyes dark and unforgiving.
“Steve—”
Steve grits his teeth together, Bucky winces at the unnatural crunching noise. “You want to give him. A fucking. Kill switch.”
Bucky takes a squeaky, controlled breath. Reminding himself that this is not Hydra performing a new kind of unspeakable torture on him, but rather his friends helping him, is taking up almost all of his concentration. He swallows thickly. “Language, Cap,” he mumbles. Sam doesn’t seem to hear it – doesn’t have the super-hearing required to do so – but Steve is distracted by his words and shoots him a worried glance. The pause in Steve’s glaring gives Sam a chance to talk.
“It doesn’t actually kill him!” Sam explains, his voice high-pitched and desperate.
Steve’s eyes flicker back to him, bloody murder written all over his face. It’s an unnerving look in Steve’s normally gentle eyes. Exasperatedly, he asks, “Then why the hell call it a kill switch?”
“Because a snooze switch sounds really lame?” Sam tries, and for some reason that breaks Bucky’s bubble of pain. He snorts out a laugh, and Steve jumps, looking around wildly until his eyes land on Bucky, who is now grinning with dark amusement.
“He’s got a point,” Bucky weighs in. He knows Steve knows him well enough to understand he’s not just talking about the naming, but also the fact that Bucky does need a way to be stopped.
T’Challa, who’s stayed quiet until now, steps forward into their little circle. “It’s non-lethal, and not harmful in the long term,” he says, his voice patient and grounding as he addresses Steve. “I’ve installed a tranquiliser in the arm. Should the need arise, you and Sam can remotely activate it to render him unconscious. There is also a tracker as well as various other useful systems to find him and protect him until someone can get to him.”
“Only you and I can use it,” Sam adds as he looks at Steve pleadingly. “It’s totally safe. T’Challa encoded it all himself. It’s got some of the same remote access technology he uses for some of his suit’s functions.”
Bucky observes quietly as Steve seems to slowly absorb the information. A tense silence hangs between the four of them (well, three of them, T’Challa seems eerily unconcerned about Steve’s apprehension). It finally dissipates when Steve gives Sam a single brusque nod. Bucky exhales softly, his breath a low hiss as it escapes his clenched teeth. It isn’t until now that he realises he’d been really worried Steve would disapprove, and he wouldn’t have his support to get out of cryo after all.
“So, the arm…” Bucky starts, glancing questioningly at T’Challa. “Is it— how are you gonna attach it?”
“It’s not a difficult procedure. Most of what’s left of your shoulder will have to be removed, and I will have to clean the connectors before I hook the arm up, but it was designed with the current setup in mind, so it should link seamlessly.”
“It won’t hurt,” Sam pipes up, somehow seeming to have guessed Bucky’s unvoiced distress – either that, or it’s just a stab in the dark. “T’Challa came up with a way to turn off the receptors while he works on it.”
“Redirect,” T’Challa corrects. “You won’t be numb, but you also won’t feel any pain. Just pressure.”
“It better not hurt,” Steve grumbles, glaring at the arm from where he’s standing. It’s not angry, however, just defiant. Bucky smiles as he looks at his friend, reminded of just how stubborn Steve can be.
He steps closer to Steve and punches his bicep good-naturedly with his hand. “Says the guy who wouldn’t stop fighting until I dragged him out of the alley, black eye and all.” He’s not sure where the teasing comes from, but the words feel warm as he says them. Familiar. “Suddenly afraid of a little hurt, Rogers?”
Steve stares at him for a second, seemingly baffled by Bucky’s change in mood, then he grins sheepishly, a faint blush creeping up his cheeks as he runs a hand through his hair. “I just don’t like my friends hurting. And I always had ‘em, anyway, you never really needed to interfere.”
“Sure, you had ‘em on the ropes, every single time,” Bucky teases with a wink. Then, he sobers up. He places his hand carefully on Steve’s shoulder and squeezes. “Steve, I want to do this. And I really need you to be okay with it.”
Steve is silent for a moment, and Bucky sees him work his jaw as he thinks. “I am okay with it. I want you to be happy. And I know it’s important to have a... “ He glares at the arm again. “Contingency plan. I just don’t like that this is it, but… I don’t think I could come up with something better. I trust Sam, and I know myself. Neither of us would hurt you if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. I just… wish it would never be necessary again.”
“It’s a plan C, Steve,” Sam says, stepping closer. Bucky lets go of Steve’s shoulder and takes a small step back to give Sam space to talk to Steve. “Plan A is we don’t let him get caught. Plan B is we kill whoever has got him before they can trigger him. This is plan C. I don’t intend to let Hydra – or anyone, for that matter – get close enough to make it necessary we use it.”
“Bucky will have our full protection,” T’Challa adds, smiling at Steve. “He will share Sam’s apartment in the same building where you have an apartment, too. As you know, this is where some of my most trusted live, and it’s highly secure.” He looks around the room to meet Sam and Bucky’s eyes in turn. “I invited you into my country to offer my protection. It is my duty to ensure nothing happens to you. I take that responsibility very seriously.”
“You know, for a dude who likes cats, you’re not so bad,” Sam says with a grin, and Bucky almost chokes on his saliva when he bursts out laughing.
T’Challa shoots Sam an unimpressed, but amused look. “Say that again after I fix your bird costume.” Sam quietly zips his lips, and then grins again.
“So, when are we gonna do this?” Bucky interrupts the banter, nodding at his new arm on the table. The joy he’d felt before when he laughed at Sam’s comment quickly melts away as he looks at it. It’s not that he’s ungrateful to T’Challa, he recognises that having four functional limbs will be useful, but seeing the arm lying there is a painful reminder of everything that happened to make him lose his previous ones. Neither memory of that is good.
“I have everything ready. If you want to do it now, I will send up guards to move your cryogenic chamber to Sam’s apartment,” T’Challa explains. “Then while they work on that, I can attach this arm and we can get moving.”
Bucky steels himself, sets his jaw, and nods determinedly. “Let’s do it.”
He gets to his feet and rolls his shoulder experimentally as he walks away from the table. He’d refused to sit in any of the chairs T’Challa had offered him, and insisted to just lean on the edge of a table for the entire procedure. It had helped, at least, because knowing that he was on his feet, free to move at any moment, had given him a peace of mind he hadn’t known for most of the past century.
“How does it feel?” T’Challa asks at the same time Steve blurts out, “Does it hurt?!”
Bucky stares down at his new left hand in amazement as he slowly moves the fingers, curling them inwards to his palm one by one, and then stretching them out again. There is no pain. None. He looks up at Steve, who is standing close to him, his whole body tensed like he’s ready to grab Bucky and run.
Bucky smiles at him, his eyes wide in wonder as he does so. “It feels good, no pain at all.” He looks over to T’Challa, who is still standing by the table, looking at him expectantly. “Thank you so much.” Bucky’s voice breaks halfway through the last word. “And you, too, Sam,” he adds, moving to nod at his newest friend. He glances around the room. It doesn’t seem so frightening anymore, even with all the mysterious technology. “All of you, thank you.”
Steve steps closer and wraps his arms tightly around Bucky, pulling him into a nearly crushing hug. Bucky returns the embrace and pats Steve’s back for a few seconds before they break apart. Steve shoots him a blinding smile. “I’m real happy for you, Buck.”
“I’m happy too,” Bucky says, finding that the words ring surprisingly true. He is happy, happy to be out of cryo, happy to see Steve again, happy to be surrounded by people he can trust.
Sam walks up to the two of them and puts a hand on each of their shoulders. “Ready to move, team Cap?”
“Definitely,” Steve says.
Bucky nods his agreement and looks down at his arm again. “Yeah,” he says softly, “I’m ready.”