Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: желание (Longing)

я не знаю.

It was the one sentence that had never crossed his thoughts or had ever been uttered from his lips.

He always knew, always had orders.

Mission parameters were always подтверждаю.

Never не знаю or не понимаю.

It told his handlers that he was defective, he was not--

It was a death sentence.

Until that day, that damn dirty, filth-covered day where he couldn't see anything other than the mission – the Order. Couldn't see anything other than Steven 'Captain America' Rogers. And the mission destroyed him—no, destroyed the Order, and partially destroyed that souless monster who had taken over his life--

я не знаю.

It was true now. He didn't know why he was worth it, why the skinny kid from Brooklyn who sometimes skirted his jumbled memories, had defended him. He didn't know why, when he felt, deep within his bones, that it should have been him, who should have always defended Steven Rogers. That... that was something he was certain of – a feeling long buried under the convoluted layers of whatever he was now. Something that the monster within him could not take away from him.

Until the end of the line.

я не знаю.

Your mother's name is Sarah.

я не знаю.

The year was 2016, that he was sure of. Each and every time they had woken him up from the cold, reconditioned him with the words and the device, they had always provided him with the barest of relevant information needed for the mission. One thing was constant – the year. 1955, 1964, 1971, 1991... They always told him what year it was. Sometimes, the year wasn't even relevant for his mission or for the operation, but they always told him.

While he knew that a more saner man would have derived the knowledge of the passage of time as something relevant, he kept it as a tool to tuck away for later usage. For what, he didn't know, but since that day – the day when not-so-skinny Steven Rogers had broken through his conditioning--

ненавижу это...

But what was... это? What was he now, with all that had happened? It was still hazy, still unclear, but he clung onto the fragments of the memories that had surfaced. His journal of those fragments was lost – gone and most likely destroyed when Interpol had come after him – and by extension, Rogers. Nothing in the fragments that he had salvaged over the course of his hiding in Romania had prepared him for the fact that Captain America was breaking international law by helping him escape.

...with you, until the end of the line...

It was a promise kept, a fragment from what little source he could remember, even when things went sideways at the holding facility in Berlin. It drove him to escape, even if it meant knocking out Rogers during that escape – that he himself was the one causing Rogers undue distress. Well... it was supposed to be an escape hounded by the Order, until a rather liberal application of cranial percussive maintenance via helicopter into the river, snapped him out of the fugue.

ненавижу это...

The shit list – the list of people that caused Rogers distress? He was on it, and tried to remove himself from the list by hiding away in eastern Europe. Sure, Stark had been on the top of his shit list for causing Rogers undue distress, until it became clear that Zemo only used that shit list to play all of them for fools.

ты упрямый.

Well... it seemed that they both were. That, and the super-soldier serum both of them had coursing through their veins gave them an advantage over Stark and his tech – but only just so. He clung to the pain – the sensation of fire crawling up his torn metal arm – as he felt Rogers shift slightly. His good hand – his flesh arm which was dislocated, fractured, and pulsating in so much pain – clung onto the rough fabric of Rogers' uniform as they supported each other. They had to keep standing – to put one foot in front of the other. It was agonizingly slow, the steps they were taking as the two of them limped and shuffled out of the bottom of the silo.

Why was he worth it?

я не знаю any James Buchanan Barnes. Not right now; not when he only had fragments that kept spilling out of his hands, no matter how hard he tried to cling onto those slippery memories.

“Yes you do,” he heard Rogers softly state, as he blinked and realized he had just said that last thought out loud. Before Rogers could continue, a violent shudder rumbled through the silos. A light avalanche of debris started to rain down, but it was the humming noise, the prickled at his ears and seemed to worm into his chest that caused him to look up. Far be it that hardy, nearly indestructible Soviet-era construction decimated by two super-soldiers and Iron Man, was about to crash upon them, it was something else about to fall on top of them.

“Oh shit,” he managed to bite out just as the ball of crackling light overwhelmed his eyes--

что?

It wasn't soft, it wasn't hard – he knew what hard combat landings were, even with his fragments of memories – but it did hurt like hell decided to plunge a hand into his stomach, when he and Rogers landed. He was sure they landed... or in a more rational line of thought, fell over in a collapsing heap of aggravated injuries that both of their serum-enhanced bodies were trying to repair. But it was the smell – the lack of a sharpness that he had continuously breathed in – the bunker's familiar scent and the flames that had surrounded it – that alerted him to something wrong.

He snapped his eyes open.

There was no twisted metal debris, burning sections of the bunker consuming the oxygen, or even the familiar grounds of the silo they had been fighting in. A dimly lit, sea-foam green painted walls that was full of upturned metal desks, tall metal bookcases, pieces of paper and folders, along with broken machinery littered the area. The buzz-hum of the light flickered a bit, but provided no stronger source than it initially had. Violently shoving his pain, his fatigue, and every little confusing thought that had clung onto him like burrs, he rolled up from where he had been lying, and into a crouch. Rogers was lying in a heap next to him, but was stirring, and a moment later, had opened his eyes.

“Bucky--”

“Shh!” he hissed, as he strained to listen, noting out of the corner of his eyes, Rogers getting up as soundlessly as he had done. Neither of them had to say it – it was obvious, looking from the scattered, rusted, and seemingly long abandoned office space that they were unexpectedly somewhere else. Finally, after a couple of minutes, he heard it – the faint, almost imagined shouts, followed by the even softer, barely audible crunch of boots on linoleum floor.

Ботфорты.

“Two teams, six each, coming around a bend, one hundred meters away. Third team on stairwell at far end of hall, five hundred meters,” he whispered, before quickly getting up and pressing himself against a really musty-smelling metal book casing lying against the wall that nearly reached the ceiling. Said bookcase was also covered in at least five centimeters of dust on each shelf, but he wasn't about to sneeze.

Rogers had wisely not questioned his not-quite orders and scrambled behind an equally dusty, old, enormous desk that oddly reminded him of Karpov's desk. He saw him press himself up against the desk, turtled as he remembered seeing him turtled behind his shield many times before. Rogers glanced up at him, eyes full of concern and something else that he could not identify, but it was not pity. Even with his fragments, he got a feeling that Rogers had never looked at him with pity.

ненавижу это...

The wait... the patience, the even breaths... all for the perfect kill shot. Even with what the pamphlets and internet articles about James Barnes said that he supported every action taken against HYDRA during the war, he knew on some intrinsic level that he was usually able to do this. He was able to exert a tremendous amount of patience for that one perfect opportunity – Winter Soldier or not. With no weapons upon him at the moment, and knowing that it was only because of adrenaline that he remained standing where he was, he did indeed, ненавижу это. That was going on the new shit list, though at the top spot was whatever the hell had transported them to... here...

The sound of boots on the floor grew ever so slowly, as the pattern of their footsteps indicated that these teams were sweeping the rooms. However, twenty meters before either team made it to the room the footsteps abruptly turned and headed down what sounded like a parallel set of hall. Except for one pair, which continued down the last twenty meters with a lot of caution.

Смирно.

He sucked in his breath, holding it as he usually did when preparing for the kill shot. Through the thin slats in the bookcase, he saw someone dressed in dark fatigues enter the room. Shallowly exhaling as quietly as he could, he blinked and narrowed his eyes just a fraction – the person in the dark fatigues and helmet was carrying an overly bright, silvery shield. It looked every inch of Rogers' former shield, except as he moved ever so slightly, he could see a giant red star branded on the center of the shield – much like his own red star on his metal arm.

“You can come out now. I'm not here to arrest or hurt either of you.”

The voice was feminine, surprisingly warm and gentle, but with a hint of authority behind it. He glanced over at Rogers, seeing him frown, but remain where he was. Turning back to try to get a better angle to see the person's face, without moving or making any noise, he heard the woman say, “I can smell blood... and that usually doesn't belong in an abandoned building... both of you are injured.”

Still, he and Rogers remained where they were, but those words did send chills down his spine, despite the pain that was creeping back up and past his adrenaline-fueled actions. He knew what fresh blood smelled like, what three-days-old murder scene blood smelled like, what dried and crusted blood over rapidly healing wounds smelled like. He also knew that most normal people, including soldiers, couldn't smell blood.

“Here...” the woman continued, as he saw out of the slat, the shield move to the side. Moments later, he heard a thunk against the floor. “I don't have my shield on me, and I just removed my helmet. I'm just going to leave some medical supplies. You're safe now.”

He couldn't see clearly, but there was some movement from the woman before he heard the sounds of something being placed on the ground. He glanced over to Rogers, catching his questioning look towards him. He could only indicate with a very slight tilt of his head that he didn't know what he hell the woman was doing.

“Clear out the others soldiers first,” Rogers unexpectedly stated out loud, startling both him and the woman from whatever she was doing.

Идиот.

“Okay, I can do that,” the woman stated after a moment's start. A second later, he heard her say into some com channel, “All teams, this is Rogers. Report back to the Quinjet. The building is clear. Whoever had been here is long gone.”

He frowned, even as he heard the booted footsteps and faint shouts of the teams returning to where they had come from – the far side of the building. The woman had said 'Rogers'... had identified herself to be 'Rogers'. Jumbled memories aside, his sense of danger rose a little more, as the echoes of boots on the ground faded.

“Rogers?” he heard Rogers state, grasping onto the fragment that had clearly stated that sometimes, Rogers had no sense of self preservation, as he saw him cautiously stand up. “Who are-- oh wow.”

“Uh....” was all the woman could answer as he saw shock play all over Rogers' expression. Though his own sense of self preservation was definitely greater than Rogers', there was no gunshot, no jackbooted soldiers jumping out from beyond the door and into the room. At least not in the few milliseconds that passed between Rogers standing up, and the complete loss of coherent vocal capabilities from both of them.

He stepped out from behind the bookcase, and stopped, blinking in utter confusion. The woman who stood before the two of them, with a small medical kit by her feet, helmet set next to the circular silver shield with the bright red star in the center, looked quite related to Rogers. Her sandy blonde hair was cropped short with a tapered fringe that draped to her right. One side of her haircut was buzzed almost to her scalp, while the other looked like the same haircut that Rogers had himself. She was suited in all black fatigues that was not quite reminiscent of Rogers' outfit, but it was close. Height wise, she was just as tall as Rogers, though her smaller frame within the fatigues seemed to play an illusion on that by making her slightly shorter.

“Bucky?!” she managed to say, regaining a semblance of words and how to form them.

The way she said it socked him with the memory of fighting on the streets of DC, of the pounding Order within his mind to kill Rogers. He had had lost his glasses to Romanov, and his mask to Rogers. The same exclamation, said in a breathless, disbelieving tone that was filled with both despair and joy at the same time--

нет.

He was not the Winter Soldier anymore. He did not need those last vivid, non-fragmented memories of what he had done – tried to do. He only needed the results from those, to try to regain a sense of identity; to try to collect the slippery fragments. Adamantly refusing to look at Rogers was helping... somewhat. That and the pain from his wounds that was nearing a critical level in which he could tolerate without giving away to anyone that he was about to collapse.

ненавижу это...

Another thing to add on the new shit list, though before his thoughts could go any further, he heard the woman say, “No... you're not... no, you're not my Bucky...” It was not surprising that her eyes, the same vivid blue-green color as Rogers, had traveled to the stump of his mechanical arm. “Oh God, I don't have a medical kit for that...”

“We'll manage,” Rogers answered. “Thank you... for not shooting us... I think.”

He heard the faint crackle on the radio that seemed to be tied to the woman's helmet. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it was most likely someone from one of the teams inquiring after her. It made him nervous and uneasy that she was not calling in the other teams, especially with her earlier comment about arresting people. “I'll be fine,” he said. “Team's looking for you.”

It was her turn to frown slightly before she retrieved the shield and hooked it to her back. Turning back to them she asked, “Think you guys can make it to New York, and meet me at the end of Grace Court Alley in Brooklyn?”

“What's there?” Rogers asked, cautious and suspicious.

“Safe haven,” she said. “A shield against the world for those who seek shelter.”

змея.

She abruptly turned, plucked up her helmet and jammed it back on her head before leaving, saying into the coms, “I'm returning. Just had to make one last sweep.”

Neither he nor Rogers moved until both of them were sure that the woman's footsteps had completely faded. Even then, he had to strain to try to hear the sound of a quinjet firing its engines to VTOL out of the area. “She's HYDRA,” he stated, just as Rogers took a step forward.

“What?!”

He tried to answer, tried to open his mouth to say something, but the sweeping tsunami of fiery pain cascaded over him. He gasped for air, only to find himself drowning, before his vision tipped sideways. Blessed darkness and something cold and comforting pressed up against his side, as he heard someone shouting his name, sweeping away the pain. He never thought he would like the cold again--

что?

Until the end of the line...

It was the scent of blood, dried and crusted, with some of it still oozing out of a wound that woke him up. Cotton fog seemed to have been spread all over his senses, as the fire that had crawled over and under his skin felt muted... almost as if he were just standing next to it, feeling the heat. He blinked, feeling heavy eyelids rub against his rough, dry eyes, as the world slowly came back into focus. Breathing in, the scent of a burning silo, wasn't there. It was just... blood, and a faint, but almost indiscernible smell of mold and mildew. The screech of twisted metal falling didn't ring in his ears, and the ceiling above him was pockmarked with holes and what looked like lichen growth.

So it wasn't a dream – they truly were in another reality or world, or both.

He turned his head slightly, and it caught Rogers' attention as he blinked and looked slightly up to see him move from where he had been sitting near the door, on watch. Rogers' eyes widened slightly and he heard him exclaim, “Bucky!”

Despite his slight irritation at Rogers for abandoning watch so easily, a part of him grasped onto the fragment that gave him the fleeting memory of the one rare time when he had been sick in bed at home. Rogers had come by to visit, and sat with him all day, watching over him, sketching some beautiful drawings – and a few funny ones – until his sisters had returned from their garment factory work. It was a happy memory, one that left him slightly out of sorts, as he knew that no one should have been happy about getting sick, not especially he remembered from another fragment that Rogers had been frail and weak before he had been injected with the super-soldier serum.

“Still... here?” he asked, as he made to get up before Rogers crouched and helped him sit up. Despite the pressure on his back and good arm, no burst and crawling sensation of pain emerged from it, which surprised him.

“Yep,” Rogers answered, nodding slightly. “No one for a good mile perimeter, last I checked about ten minutes ago. Managed to scrounge some edible berries.”

Blinking some more, he saw that Rogers clearly had some bits and bramble that had gotten stuck to his hair. However, it seemed that many of the cuts and scrapes he had received during the fight against Stark were still bleeding, though it was clear they were healing. No bandages covered the still bleeding scrapes. “Med kit?” he asked. As much as he wanted to ask how long he had been passed out, it was quite irrelevant to how they would find a way to get out of 'here'.

“There,” Rogers stated, nodding over to a corner where it was only the husk of the medical kit that the woman had set down. It looked like it had been stuffed with wild berries. He frowned, and looked back at Rogers.

“I had to use it all on you,” Rogers stated, tone thick with an emotion that he could not identify just yet.

There were no fragments to help him process the gratitude, but something told him that he should have been admonishing Rogers for doing something so foolish to waste an entire emergency medical kit on one person when they were clearly both injured. However, the words that he wanted to say wouldn't come out, so he settled for glaring at Rogers.

Идиот.

That only spurred Rogers to say, “I heal faster than you, Buck. You needed the kit more than I did. I... I didn't want to lose you again.”

“Спасибо,” he grudgingly stated after a few moments, eyes unable to maintain contact with Rogers' own – so full of relief, happiness, and care that still bewildered him. He still didn't know why he was worth it, but for now, he would accept it and the fragment that whispered 'I'm with you until the end of the line'. It was the one fragment said on that burning Helicarrier that partially destroyed the monster within him, and told him a little of their friendship through apparent thick and thin. He would accept it, so long as Rogers was not going to be reckless with his own life.

“пожалуйста.”

He blinked in surprise, asking, “When did you learn Russian?”

“When I was looking for you after SHIELD fell,” Rogers stated after a few moments, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Nat... Romanov, called in some contacts from Kiev and gave me a file on you... it was all in Russian, so I had to learn it to read it.”

Rogers abruptly fell silent, and he didn't push to ask what exactly was in the file. He didn't need to know – didn't want to know, but he had more than enough of his memories as the Winter Soldier, and anonymous internet searches to know what could have been done to him to make him the way he was... had been... still partially was. He was also grateful that Rogers was not pushing him any further than questioning him about 1991 mission report and the bare basics of the Winter Soldier project.

“Your accent sucks. You sound like some Moscow-raised and bred oligarch with too much time on his hands,” he stated instead, though he didn't know why he had said that – why he felt the need for some levity.

Rogers chuckled at that, shaking his head slightly before looking at him with a small smile on his face. However relieved he felt about seeing that smile that was somewhat familiar and comforting to him, it was gone with another passing second as Rogers asked, “What made you say that that woman was HYDRA, Bucky?”

“змея>. It just popped into head,” he answered. “The shield, the outfit... everything screamed opposite of you”

“Her words?” Rogers questioned. “You think we shouldn't believe her? I mean, the med kit wasn't contaminated, and I couldn't find any tracking devices on it.”

He shook his head. As grateful as he was to have something new to concentrate on, he couldn't shake the deep feeling that they being 'here' was wrong. It didn't feel like the dangerous atmosphere he had had when entering the silo to make sure that Zemo did not release the other Winter Soldier operatives. It just felt...suffocating...

“So you think she's HYDRA, yet she called off the teams. Why tell us to go to New York?” Rogers mused. “She said 'a shield against the world for those who seek shelter.' What do you think that means? Could she be a double agent? Working with SHIELD, spying on HYDRA?”

“HYDRA and SHIELD fell,” he pointed out. “If her words are to be believed, HYDRA has taken over the world... this world.”

“Then how do we get back?” Rogers asked, frowning, though it sounded more like a rhetorical question than an actual one.

He remained silent at that, even though it was clear that Rogers was expecting him to answer or at least throw ideas and theories with him. He had no memories of that, and didn't know how to proceed with such an unstated request. He didn't feel comfortable interjecting too much of his own opinions, other than that statement of fact from just the woman's words alone. It was clear from the time Rogers had shown up in his apartment, to even now that he had expected him to be the same 'Bucky' from long ago. He knew he clearly wasn't, at least not with his jumbled, unsorted memories, and couldn't be – not until he was able to quietly work through it.

All of his journals were gone now – he would have to start from scratch, especially after the brutal code words that had seared into his mind, without the aid of the electroshock. He didn't want to be Steven Rogers' 'Bucky', but yet here Rogers was, clearly not about to leave him be, and he found himself strangely immensely grateful – 'until the end of the line'. Both of them had said those words to each other, even if they had been far apart in time.

“Where do you think we should go, Buck? You think you can stand and walk? It's near sundown, so I think it might be safe enough for us to move and find somewhere else that's safer to spend the night.”

He almost shrugged – he was not one to go running into insane situations, unless it really mattered. Rogers did have a point though – they couldn't linger here, and even his instincts as the Winter Soldier was telling him to not remain here overnight. He found himself saying, “Let's jack a ride and at least get past the Krauts first, I guess.”

что?

He blinked, frowning to himself as he saw that Rogers was also wearing a slight frown before nodding. The words had come first, unbidden, before the fragment that accompanied it was that of Rogers and him in what looked like World War Two German uniforms. They were in disguise and stuck way behind enemy lines for the night. Nothing came after that small fragment, so he had to assume that they had successfully stolen a vehicle and made it back to friendly territory.

He silently nodded in return, and with assistance from Rogers, slowly stood up. The pain crawling throughout his body had been deadened quite a bit, but there was no fuzziness associated with his mind that told him painkillers were swimming in his bloodstream. Only a fog that cleared as soon as he took a couple of steps forward, feeling the bandages that had been wrapped and stuck on him pull slightly. Rogers went over to pick up the med kit of berries, handed him a handful, and he followed him out, absently swallowing the berries whole.

Together, the two of them made their way down the hall, passing by many rooms that looked exactly like the one they had emerged out of. Sections of the building seemed to have been blasted apart by something, letting the noise of sunset and into night stream in. Hall after hall, they made their way to the far side, where there was fading evidence that a quinjet had been there. As they made their way down the steps, careful to keep their footsteps as quiet as possible, he narrowed his eyes slightly as he thought he heard something.

“Bucky?” he heard Rogers question in a whisper, as he realized that he had stopped at the second landing from the ground, and was pressed against what remained of the wall that had been blown in, in this stairwell.

Raising a finger to his lips for silence, he looked out into the fading light, still seeing everything as if it was clear as day. He did not have absolutely clear night vision, and could only see fairly well in the dark, but his own senses had been enhanced enough that dusk and dawn were like a light switch that simply got turned on and off with the sun. Soon, he heard it – the far away sound of a train horn.

“Freight train,” he said. “Five kilometers from here.”

“Guess that's going to be our ride for now,” Rogers stated before peering up at him with open concern etched upon his face. “You going to be okay, Buck?”

He silently nodded and joined Rogers down on the ground. Together, the two of them took off at a sprinting pace, hearing the horn of the freight train get louder as they crashed through the woods that surrounded the area. Leaping over fallen branches and dashing around large boulders, he clamped down on the pain that was shooting all over his body from his still healing wounds. Birds and other small creatures were startled from their nighttime nests and took to the air and ground. As the dark forest gradually cleared out, they saw that the train was already passing them by, headed north, and was nearly gone.

There was at least one more cargo car that was attached to the meters of gas cars that the train was hauling. It was that, that both he and Rogers raced parallel to it for a few moments before Rogers leapt up, grabbing the locked handholds that would allow the doors to slide open if it were unlocked and not bound by two wrapped chains. As soon as Rogers had hooked his feet into the lower hand holds and turned back with an outstretched hands, that was when he leapt, reaching out with his good arm.

The pull and jerk of his running momentum being momentarily arrested sent a lighting shot of pain through his arm, but then he was slammed more or less against Rogers for a moment. Hooking his legs into hand holds next to where Rogers was, he leaned his body into the cargo door and wrapped his good hand inside-out against one of the hand holds that Rogers was holding. The wind whipped at his back, but despite the loss of his metal arm, he kept his balance – he had to. Despite his disgust and unease, he drew on the memories he had of the Winter Soldier to keep himself from toppling or losing his grip on an 88 kph train.

Seeing that he was secured for the moment, Rogers started to move upwards, to most likely break into the cargo car from one of the vents on the top. He couldn't really see what Rogers was doing, but a few moments later, he felt one of Rogers' hands wrap around his wrist and looked up. “Got you!” he heard Rogers shout, before beginning to haul him up. He immediately released his foot lock on the hand holds. For one brief, oddly terrifying moment, he was hanging in the air, with only Rogers' one hand wrapped out his wrist.

That was abated not a second later when Rogers wrapped both hands around his arm, hauling him up. Both of them collapsed on the top of the cargo car, where there was a clear hole made in the vent next to them, catching their breaths for a moment. “It's clear!” Rogers said, gesturing for him to go in first.

He obliged him, not really wanting to stay out where the cold wind was whipping at him, aggravating his wounds even further. Grabbing the lip, with Rogers' assistance, he hauled himself over and dropped into the cargo hold. It smelled... rank... but nothing too offensive. Stepping out of the way as Rogers hauled himself in, he bumped into wooden boxes, and felt his way around. It looked like there were some cargo netting that secured the boxes on either side, possibly creating a long corridor from end to end. However, he didn't stray far from the hole they Rogers made, and instead sat down. It wouldn't do him or Rogers good to go feeling their way up or down the cargo hold – especially since they couldn't tell what was being stored here.

Rogers sat down a moment later, on the side where his good arm was, affectionately nudging him. “Get some rest, Bucky. I'll take watch.”

“Wake me up in two,” he stated, setting his own internal clock as well, again, drawing on the Winter Soldier's memories on how to do such a thing. He was not going to let Rogers stay up the entire night – not if he could help it. They were both injured, and they needed some rest. Wherever the freight train was going, it would at least provide them with a few hours of safe shelter.

“Will do, Buck. Will do.”

* * *

Exhaustion was pulling at him, as Steve blinked and opened his eyes, slowly letting it adjust to the darkness within the hold until he could see the faint outlines of the crates and netting. It had been the screech of brakes being applied to the freight train that had woken him up, not the tap on the shoulder that he had expected to happen. As he rolled his neck around, feeling a couple of pops, he noted that there was no pain running through him – his wounds must have healed enough over night. He looked over to his left to see that Bucky wasn't leaning against him or the crates that they had been leaning against. The space was empty, and it was what was a little further down that caught his attention. Two crates had been pulled out from behind the cargo netting, and had been stacked one on top of each other.

Standing on the top most crate was Bucky, though all Steve could see were the lower half of his kevlar vest-protected torso that still had some bandages peeking out from underneath it, combat trouser covered legs, and booted feet. It then hit him that Bucky had not woken him up after he had gone to sleep for an anticipated two hours. That thought immediately soured his somewhat restful and good mood, though it was only slightly.

He could never stay angry at Bucky, no matter what happened.

Even though he had no good sense of time, he estimated sunset and sunrise based upon the date in which they had left their 'world', so to speak. The ambient temperature was a little on the chilly side, and thus he had adjusted his assumption of time based upon what he had seen thus far. He had promised Bucky to wake him up after two hours, debated with himself as he watched his best friend sleep for those two hours, to let him sleep longer than two hours. Unfortunately, it seemed that even as grievously injured as he had been, Bucky had an uncanny amount of accuracy in setting his own internal clock – his friend had woken up exactly at the two hour mark.

Steve had reluctantly fallen asleep after that, asking Bucky to wake him up. While he was annoyed at Bucky, he really couldn't be – as he had an inkling of what his best friend was going through. During their hunt for Bucky, Sam had explained to him about the various mental states that POWs who had suffered at the hands of their captors gone through. It gave him a newfound clarity of what the Howling Commandos had gone through before he had freed them.

It also made him more aware and guilty that he hadn't done enough for any of them during the war to help them recover – especially Bucky. He now had a greater understanding of just how much Bucky had hid his internal turmoil from him after being rescued from that HYDRA facility. He wished he could take all of his mistakes during the war back – to go back in time and berate himself for leaving Bucky alone when he should clearly not have been left completely alone.

At the present though, it was now all the more aware of the space and room he needed to give Bucky. Sam had read through the files that Natasha had given him, after he had translated as much as he could. As much as Steve wanted to rectify his mistakes from the war, Sam had warned him about 'smothering' tendencies that people tended to do when a close friend or loved one was suffering from 'battle fatigue' or PTSD, as the modern terminology called it.

Steve had been explicitly warned – almost ordered by Sam – to never cross into that territory. He, Steve, needed to give Bucky room to breathe and sort out his thoughts and actions, but also be there as a reminder of the good in his life. What Bucky had gone through in the hands of Zola and HYDRA was something that Steve knew he could never relate to, and knew that Bucky would most likely never want to talk about – even if he ever regained a portion of his memories.

Even however brief he had taken a peek in one of Bucky's journals – Steve was sure Bucky had had a lot of journals – the short lines of memories he had read about were heartbreaking. When they returned to their reality... their world, he knew that somehow, once they got to safe haven, he would have to go track down the backpack that Bucky had had with him when he had escaped that apartment. He was pretty certain that there were more journals within that backpack, and that they were going to help Bucky recover.

But they needed to find a way home, to their world where HYDRA was not in control. He didn't see any markings or logos on the woman who looked like relative of his that indicated HYDRA, but he had heard the conviction within Bucky's tone. He had to trust his friend on this, and the brutally short analysis that Bucky had provided was enough for him to discern that there was a high probability that HYDRA was in control of this world. That was going to make it dangerous to sneak around, since there were no protocols or precedence to how HYDRA would operate on a global scale. If what Alexander Pierce had attempted with the Helicarriers were anything to go by, then getting to a relatively safe and secured place to peruse the internet would be a priority.

He knew of a few dingy internet cafes scattered in DC and in New York. He had done brief searches on what files had been dumped on the internet to cross-correlate with the Winter Soldier when he had been searching for Bucky. He had not wanted to do the searches on Stark's properties, understanding more and more on how the internet was monitored since the collapse of SHIELD. That and the fact that there had HYDRA had traced his location on two occasions when he and Natasha had been on the run for three days. That world was still dangerous, but he still called it home – even if he knew he would still be a fugitive from the law.

It was worth it though, everything he had done to ensure that whatever demons haunted Bucky would be put to rest. So long as the world didn't believe that Bucky was innocent, then he would continue to protect him, and if even after, he would still continue to do so--

A small growl from his stomach interrupted his brief musing as he glanced down to see that the med kit turned berry carrier was still next to him, but was less full than it had been last night. He smiled slightly; at least he didn't have to nag Bucky to feed himself. Scooping up a handful of berries, he at them and secured the small satchel to one of his shoulder straps.

While not quite a thirst quencher, the berries were enough to sate his thirst for a little while, but he knew that soon, both of them would need to concern themselves with water, rather than food. By his count, it had been a little under twenty-four hours since either of them had anything proper to drink. That and combined with their mostly healed injuries required a lot more fluid intake than either of them had been getting.

“We just passed Newark Airport,” he heard Bucky say as he got up, just as his friend crouched down again. With his hair windblown whichever way, Bucky looked a little more wild, but Steve couldn't help but smile, as an unbidden memory of a younger Bucky running up and down as fast as he could on the boardwalk in Coney Island popped into his thoughts.

He dashed that pleasant memory away, asking, “So we're running parallel to the Jersey Turnpike?”

Bucky didn't answer him and merely stared for a moment before lifting his shoulders up in an almost imperceptible manner. Steve bit back the regret that surfaced as he realized that Bucky would most likely have absolutely no memory of the modern major highway routes that crisscrossed the United States. He didn't know what HYDRA did whenever they 'conditioned' Bucky for a mission, but whatever it was, it was probably like bare bones enough to complete a mission. It was most likely similar to the absolute necessary information he had been given on each mission he had undertaken for SHIELD.

“I guess this is our stop then. We'll get off, hopefully find some jackets or something to put over our clothes, and find some way to get to Brooklyn. Let's see if that woman was telling the truth,” he said. “You okay with that?”

Bucky had stated that 'snake' had popped up in his thoughts upon hearing the woman's words, and despite the first connotation to that word, Steve had thought about it some more. The words that the woman had said were cryptic, that was for sure. However, considering that she did not shoot at them, called off the teams, and left without a fuss told him that perhaps this woman was not HYDRA. Perhaps she was disguised as a snake – a double agent.

It was a far fetched hope, but he had heard enough of Stark and Banner talking about alternate universes and the like in the aftermath of the Chitauri attack, that he was willing to put forth the notion that the woman was a counterpart of him... of sorts. Of course, he kept it to himself, but he was not naive anymore to know that appearances did not equate to trustworthiness. It made him disappointed to see just how paranoid the world had become, but he was here and in the now, and still willing to do whatever he needed to ensure that people were protected. Still willing to put forth a little trust and faith in people to do the right thing.

Again, Bucky had responded with a barely perceptible shrug, except that he followed up with that action by standing back up, and hauled himself one-armed over the lip of the vent. Steve was already scrambling towards the crates and managed to climb them fast, but not fast enough to help Bucky. Hauling himself up, he saw that Bucky was crouched and looking towards the stacks of shipping containers that they were passing on the east side of the tracks.

It was still dark, with the cargo drop off station they were pulling into, and the shipping container area was illuminated by scattered poles of lights. A few hundred yards to the left of where they were, was the New Jersey Turnpike, with its exit signs barely lit up. He returned his attention to the cargo container side of the trains. As much as he wanted to say to Bucky that he should have waited for him to help, he didn't. Sam's warning about smothering Bucky was still at the forefront of his thoughts.

Instead, as the train continued to slow, he glanced over for a moment and wordlessly, both of them jumped off the train and onto the gravel-covered embankment. Rolling forward and up, the two of them zigzagged their way through the tracks and knots of parked cargo trains without engines attached to them. The air was cool, and as they approached the fence that would lead them into the area where the shipping containers were kept, he knew that that would be their best chance at finding something to disguise themselves.

Pressing himself up against a rusted boxcar, he took a quick peek up and around the immediate area. “Cameras at two and nine. Five hundred meters apart, two hundred meters up,” he heard Bucky state. “Rotor platform. Easily knocked to the side.”

“Guess its time to throw some rocks like we used to, trying to peg those seagulls that seemed to love to harass Nathan's stand,” he answered, crouching down to pick up two good-sized piece of gravel, tossing one to Bucky. “I'll take nine, you take two.”

They stepped out of the shadows of the boxcar at the same time, and Steve threw his stone precisely at the camera that was at their former nine-o-clock position. At nearly the same time, the faint ding of the rocks striking their targets was heard, and the whir of them forcibly rotating away confirmed that the cameras were no longer watching the area for the moment. Steve quickly sprinted to the fence and scrambled up. Leaping up and over, he landed on the other side with a crouch and immediately ran to the nearest cargo container for shelter.

Security response to the dinged cameras was faster than he anticipated as he heard the sounds of at least two booted feet crunching on the gravel-covered ground approaching. He turned to his right to wave Bucky back, further towards the end of one of the containers, when he realized that Bucky was no where near or next to him. In fact, even with the poor lighting conditions of the night and container pen, he couldn't see any sign of Bucky anywhere.

Clamping down on the brief momentary panic, he slipped back further down the cargo container until he heard the footsteps almost turn the corner. Sliding into the opposite end of the container, he heard the murmurs of two security guards conversing with each other and through the radio about what could have caused the cameras to be knocked out of alignment. Glancing up, there was just barely enough room for him to at least climb and hang onto the ledge to skirt—his eyes widened in pure surprise.

Bucky was already putting into motion the plan that he had just thought of. He had believed Natasha when she had stated that the Winter Soldier was a ghost in the Intelligence community, but had not truly believed the actual application of the word until now. How Bucky had managed to climb and shimmy across a container with one hand without even him hearing it was... baffling. It also filled him with despair as he realized that his best friend was utilizing the memories he had of as the Winter Soldier to do such a thing. The Bucky he had known had never been or acted in such a stealthy manner.

However, this was the now, and not the past, and Steve managed to focus himself on the present, just as he heard the faint click of the radio conversation being silenced for the moment. That was also when Bucky acted.

Just as his friend dropped right in between the two guards, Steve sprang into action himself. Dashing in from the side, just as he saw Bucky kick the legs out from one of the guards, he curled his right hand into a fist and punched the other guard in the gut. The guard folded in half, with the wind knocked out of him, just as the other guard fell to the ground hard, knocked out by the impact. Steve followed up with a strike to the back of the folded guard's head, hard enough to merely knock him out.

It had not even taken three seconds for them to subdue the two guards, though Bucky immediately plucked one of the radios from the guards and fiddled with it for a moment before speaking into it saying in a perfectly normal tone, “Maybe send someone from maintenance down to have a look. Possible owl strike for at least one of them.”

“Copy. We'll have someone there in a few,” someone answered before the crackle of the radio being silenced was heard again.

“Bucky...” he began, as he knelt down and began to strip the gut-punched guard of his weaponry.

“целеустремленность.”

Steve blinked, pausing for a moment as he looked up sharply. There was absolutely no context to that word, but even so, the intent behind it was clear. “Purpose? This--” he gestured to the guards and around them “--it gives you a sense of purpose?” he asked.

Bucky nodded once and continued to strip the other guard of his weaponry.

As much as Steve tried to suppress the frown from appearing on his face, he couldn't. Yet he did keep his opinions on the matter from spilling out, as he knew that it was not something Bucky did not need to hear. During the drive to the Berlin airport, he had noticed that Bucky seemed a lot more focused, though he had chalked that up to the fact that their initial mission was to stop Zemo from reactivating the other Winter Soldiers. Now though, looking back on those memories, it was clear that because they had been focused on something that needed to be stopped, Bucky's actions during the fight at the airport and flying to Siberia, had been clear, not muddled, sharp... focused.

This... the New York rendezvous request, the disabling of the guards, even calling in maintenance for some reason, was... helping? He wasn't sure, but now was not the time to ask. Whatever this was to Bucky, it was clear that it was aiding him in some capacity. Steve wouldn't call it a benefit or a negative, but he would call it something other than possibly seeing his best friend lost and bewildered. He just didn't like the fact that Bucky was most likely utilizing his memories of the Winter Soldier to aid him in this 'sense of purpose', but it was not his place to admonish him.

All Steve could do was watch, wait, and be there to catch him if he fell... to be there, until the end of the line.

He resumed stripping the guard before him of his weapons, arming himself with knives and at least the handgun and clips. Wherever they were, he no longer carried the shield, and knew that it was idiotic to not arm himself. As soon as he plucked the last knife from the guard, he heard Bucky shift before hefting the other guard up as if the guard were just a sack of grain. Bucky headed towards the other end of the container they were hidden behind. He followed suit, and both of them dropped the guards on the ground within the shadow of the shipping container. It was not a moment too soon as Steve heard the footsteps of two maintenance workers approaching.

“Hey, where--”

Neither of the maintenance workers got to say anything else as both he and Bucky sprang forth from the shadows and quickly subdued the maintenance workers, just as quickly as they had the guards. Steve didn't even have to signal for the action – it was as if instinct had overtaken him the second that the workers had entered 'optimal' range.

“Coveralls,” he heard Bucky say as they dragged the bodies a little further behind the container. Steve went back for the ladder and dropped tool box and placed them next to the bodies, as Bucky started to strip the first worker of his coveralls and cap. He did the same to the other maintenance worker and soon, both of them were dressed in the maintenance coveralls that covered their torn uniforms.

With their coveralls' pockets discreetly filled with the various weapons collected, he saw Bucky pick up the radio again and say, “Yep, looks like a bird strike. It's going to take a while to get these operational again. They gotta clean the guts and feathers out.”

“Aw gross, man,” was the reply over the radio, followed by some retching sound. “Dude, don't do that again... not while I'm eating. I'll let Paul and Greg know about the patrol there when they come in.”

Dropping the radio on the ground, Steve gave Bucky a mild look, curious as to what exactly was prompting the improvisation. Considering the folder that Natasha had given him, he didn't think that HYDRA would allow for such improvisation. The words spoken through the radio seemed more towards Natasha's infiltration and 'on-the-run' domain of blending in than what he thought HYDRA would do. He had thought that the Winter Soldier project produced the perfect soldier – the perfect ghost of an assassin.

However, as he thought back to what Bucky had described about the other five Winter Soldiers created, he realized that it was not far-fetched to think that HYDRA made sure there was some leeway in what their operatives were able to do during a mission. He shuddered at the thought of what he had seen in the video footage of that December 16th, 1991 mission – the deliberate positioning of Howard and Maria Stark in their car crash. It had been made to look exactly like an accident.

Bucky's rather loud crunch of him taking a step away on the somewhat gravel covered ground startled Steve from his reverie. He blinked, working the frown that had appeared back up into a neutral look. “Bucky,” he began, “wait.”

Bucky stopped, half turned towards where he hoped the direction of the entrance to the shipping container lot. Steve approached, but didn't say anything as he took up the loose sleeve on his friend's coveralls and tied it into a knot. After a few moments, he reached out and briefly slung his arm over his friend's shoulder, saying, “Let's get going before they wise up.”

* * *

под сапогом.

The sullen faces were familiar to him as he had seen more than one fragment of memory bearing such a look. It was hard to discern at the moment which memories were belonging to James Barnes, and the other to the Winter Soldier, especially since most of the fragments that he had caught a glimpse of were of suffering, carrying out a mission, the bloody aftermath of missions, and of despair in general. The very few happy ones that he had were easily classified as the Barnes memories, but they were too far and too few in between.

Even at this ungodly hour in the night, there were at least five other souls on the dirty, rank-smelling subway carriage that he and Rogers were riding in. All were sitting or standing scattered up and down the length. Every single one of them exuded a wary, hostile atmosphere, even the fifteen others in the five carriages that made up this short subway. Even if it was not showing or plainly visible, he could easily see that some were carrying knives and shivs of sorts. No one had a handgun on them, but they all knew how to handle themselves – including the one tiny Indo-European-looking girl at the front most carriage, who looked drunk off her feet.

It also did not escape his notice that they were clothed in shoddy, old, worn pieces. Even the coveralls he and Rogers were wearing looked and smelled like it had seen much better days. No one was wearing anything new or well cared-for, or expensive things.

As the subway shifted and the high-pitched squeal of brakes being applied he slipped his hand into the pocket that contained the identification that he had taken from the maintenance worker. They hadn't encountered any checkpoints thus far in their crisscrossed rides across the various subway routes to get to Brooklyn, but this was their final stop. From what he remembered of HYDRA and of what he had read they had done during their growth in SHIELD, he anticipated that there would be checkpoints set up.

As the doors opened, letting stale, humid, and warm air in, the passengers shuffled out. Across the platform, another set of carriages opened, and he took a quick glimpse of the passengers spilling out of it. Passengers dressed in opulent, clean clothing were emerging from the carriages, and as soon as their feet touched the platform, a semi-transparent wall that crackled slightly with energy shot up the center of the platform. It was a clear divisor between the well-heeled passengers and those who looked to have emerged from the slums.

под сапогом.

That was also when the first of the many policemen emerged from above ground; their boots rumbling down the stairs as they began to order and push the sullen passengers into a line. He averted his eyes to the ground, following the actions of those around him as he caught a glimpse of the police not even bothering to harass the well-off passengers. Behind him, he could only imagine Rogers tensing up in anger – he had enough fragments to put together that what was happening at the moment was most likely making Rogers angry. A part of him instinctively knew that he should be angry as well, but he somehow couldn't bring himself to care. After the two years he had spent in hiding, only to be flushed out by Rogers himself and Interpol, the atmosphere he felt around him felt... familiar.

The police were only marked with the New York City sigil and colors, but he was sure that they were most likely HYDRA affiliated. It seemed that the thought had crossed Rogers' mind as well, as he felt him back off just a hair away from almost stepping forward to confront the police. The gruff and demanding tone that they used with the passengers in front of him added to the familiarity, and a few moments later, as he took a shuffled step forward, he realized why.

It was not the potential HYDRA affiliation that was causing the familiarity, but rather the fact that he had passed through such a checkpoint before. 1971, crossing back and forth from East to West Germany and back for a mission. He didn't remember the mission, only that the fearful and nervous atmosphere that surrounded those at a particular checkpoint was quite palatable. He himself had no issue crossing, but he remembered that more than a few had attempted to turn tail and run... and had been shot dead.

By his internal clock estimate, at least an hour had passed by, by the time the checkpoint guard had roughly taken his ID away from him. Each person before him had been interrogated for at least a few minutes. The guard gruffly asked, “Name?”

“Peter Gregory,” he stated, keeping his eyes down.

“Job?” the officer continued, slotting his stolen ID into a device that beeped.

“Roxxon Shipping, 2nd shift maintenance crew,” he answered. There had been nothing on that ID that stated anything of the sort except for the maintenance worker's name and the company's name.

It was always a gamble when he had little go on, but considering what had happened, he had to spin and lie his way through, hoping that the lies he told were the truth according to that device. While a part of him considered bolting and running should the worse come to head, he ruthlessly quashed that part. He would not leave Rogers to fend for himself.

“You're off a little early,” the guard stated, though his tone was nowhere near conversational.

“My pal here came down with laryngitis or something,” he said, gesturing to Rogers. “Chief thought it was contagious and sent him home. Since he can't talk, gotta have someone interpreting for him.”

“Let me see your face,” the guard said after a moment, though the clear side-eye that the policeman gave Rogers indicated that he was not happy about potentially dealing with someone who was contagious. “Bell, get me some gloves. I don't wanna have to get these fucking sewer rats' germs on me.”

As another officer went to fetch the items, he lifted his head slightly, but did not push his cap up from where he had worn it low. Nor did he push his hair away. He was quite sure that the ID picture did not match him, and he needed to be as unassuming as possible – to look as vulnerable as possible. A part of him was seething with the fact that he had to look weak. The same part that kept droning: ненавижу это... The one that decided to start writing that new shit list.

In the hour that the guard had taken to get to him he had already found seventy-three points of weaknesses on the guard that were exploitable from where he was standing. Ten of them were immediately in front of him, easily done with a simple raising of his good arm. He needed to resist the urge of the Winter Soldier to lash out and kill all of the policemen in the area.

“So you're going to escort him home and then what?” the guard asked after a few tense moments that was broken only by the other policeman coming back with a pair of blue vinyl gloves.

“Sleep, eat, go to my next scheduled shift,” he answered. He jerked a thumb over towards Rogers, saying, “I'm not this dumbass' guardian. I ain't taking care of him. Just need to get him home per Chief's orders, that's all.”

Surprisingly, the guard snorted before shaking his head. After slipping on the gloves, the guard then said to Rogers, “All right, lets see your ID.”

He saw Rogers out his ID, just as the guard returned the other ID to him. He had caught a glimpse of the name on Rogers' ID before they had donned the coveralls. It was a most ridiculous name, in his opinion. One that he didn't even wish upon his worst enemy. “Mortimer Cartwright,” he supplied, as the guard placed the ID into the slot.

“Yeah, yeah,” the guard said, shaking his head slightly before yanking the ID back out and handing it to Rogers without asking another question. “Geez... you're free to go.”

He blinked once, and turned to leave without another word. It was better not to linger and display any sort of surprise at the lack of interrogation, but it was also clear that the guard wanted any potentially sick person to go as far away and as fast as possible. Rogers hovered close behind him, but didn't say a word as they heard the parting mutterings of the guard calling Rogers a 'sick bag of flea-infested germ incubator'.

“Well, I got called worse after I had an asthma attack in Mr. Carrington's class,” he heard Rogers murmur from beside him as they finally emerged out of the foul-smelling subway station and into the relatively cool and polluted air of Brooklyn. “Thanks for the help, Bucky. Wasn't always good at this whole hiding and blending in thing, even though Natasha tried to teach me.”

“You didn't stop coughing for days, Steve,” he answered as an unexpected, unbidden, and one of the very few sad fragments of his life before war, was called up by Rogers' initial statement. “Becca was crying because she thought that you would die. Mom couldn't console her.”

“You remember that?” Rogers asked in wonderment.

“Some,” he answered, looking away. “отрывок... like an incomplete книга.”

Silence fell between them before he heard Rogers hesitatingly ask, “Do you remember anything else?”

я не знаю.

“No,” he managed to answer instead of answering in Russian. It was difficult for him to control his thoughts and words after Zemo had tried to activate the Winter Soldier program within him without wiping away his memories. The two years he had lived quietly in eastern Europe had allowed him to compartmentalize and sort through many of the fragments. Now, though, they were all scattered again, swirling and threatening to overtake him at times. He had told Rogers the truth – this 'mission' of sorts – trying to find a way back to their reality – was helping him focus. It was the only way he could exert some control over his convoluted thoughts and potential actions.

“It's all right, Bucky. We'll get though this together. You're not alone,” he heard Rogers say, though he could hear a trace of hurt in his tone.

He knew his answer was caustically blunt, but there was nothing that he could do to curb it. Words that he wanted to say from what the fragments told him wouldn't emerge from his lips. Instead, all he could offer in a way of an apology was to say, “'til the end of the line?”

“Yeah,” Rogers answered, nodding as a small smile quirked up the edge of his lips. “Until the end of the line.”

* * *

Dawn was fast approaching by the time they made it down the alleyway to the designated area. Steve had slowed down considerably as Bucky had stopped every so often with a keen gaze on the various buildings that surrounded them. Their darkened windows, the general unsettled stillness, and the heightened sense of danger from the checkpoint guards made him extremely wary.

However, around five hundred feet away from the end of the alleyway that led into an empty lot, a small, rectangular slot no bigger than a doorway, and embedded in the ground slid open. Steve immediately stepped slightly to the side, withdrawing the handgun he had stolen from the shipping container guard, while he heard Bucky do the same. He was not quite standing in front of Bucky, and as much as he wanted to completely shield his best friend with his body, he clamped down on that urge. There was Bucky's pride he dared not trample on, there was purpose in Bucky's actions, and Sam's warning was still ringing in his ears.

Light spilled out as a feminine figure emerged, stopping before them with a satisfied smirk upon her face. “You made it,” the woman stated.

“Who are you and what do you want?” he asked, not lowering his gun, even though she looked like she was unarmed.

“Stefanie Rogers,” the woman said. “Everyone calls me Stevie. I'm with the Resistance. You?”

“Steve Rogers. What Resistance?” he asked, frowning slightly as he knitted his eyebrows slightly together in puzzlement.

“Against HYDRA,” she answered.

“But--”

“We need to get the two of you below ground before the sun rises,” she said, her friendly tone changing to a no nonsense one. “HYDRA has patrols everywhere. They're mostly plainclothes, but even this part of town is not safe from them.” She gestured with her arm, saying, “Come on, follow me.”

With all things considered, Steve wouldn't have followed her after such a short introduction, but considering her actions at the abandoned building, the checkpoint guards they had encountered, and what she had just stated, he decided to trust her. Sheathing his gun back into the pocket it came from, he heard Bucky do the same a moment later. Together, they approached and followed the woman down the steep stairs, with the slot closing above their heads.

There was illumination lining the walls as they descended, and after a few minutes, they encountered a rather thick metal wall with a single door in the center of it. The woman—Stevie—quickly punched in a long string of code at the keypad and it hissed open. It looked like an elevator of sorts, as she stepped in. He followed her in, and finally Bucky did as well, though Steve noticed that there was some lingering wariness and hesitation in his best friend's movements and steps.

The doors closed, but instead of the flip-flop he expected in his stomach with the descent of the elevator, he instead, felt a tug forward. Puzzled, he glanced over towards Stevie who answered his unasked question with, “It's an elevator of sorts, but more of a people mover to where the Resistance's base is. The sequence I typed out has two triggers – one is for clear, the other is if I'm compromised.”

“So if HYDRA found you before we came, you would've typed in the compromised code and...?” he asked.

“The tunnel would've flooded, drowning me with the other HYDRA agents. The base wouldn't been compromised or found.”

“So we're traveling under water?”

“Under the East River.”

Steve frowned slightly before asking in a more hesitant tone, “How do you know--”

“That you and Bucky,” she began, before glancing over towards Bucky, “I'm going to assume that you have the same name as my reality's James Buchanan Barnes.” Steve saw Bucky give a barely perceptible nod, still wary and tense. Stevie returned her attention to him, saying, “How did I know that you and him weren't HYDRA agents?”

“Yeah...”

“The two of you aren't the first inter-dimensional travelers that we've encountered before. I'm going to assume someone at SHIELD, possibly the Director, managed to secure a certain 0-8-4 that activated a dimensional gateway. That gateway managed to snag you here, which could mean that the Director may have coded it to answer to my signature, hence why you're here. Though if he did... that means things are worse in the outside than I anticipated... Bringing other versions of me or other powered people through usually makes the fabric stitching the 0-8-4 unstable--”

“Wait, SHIELD is still active? Signature? Outside? I don't understand--”

“It's better if I have you guys sitting down before explaining it. The last time I tried to, you... or a version of you just kind of passed out in the elevator,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed and sheepish at the same time. “You... or the other version of you was a little heavy to drag out... Didn't have a Bucky or Falcon counterpart to help me. I'm assuming you have a superhero named Falcon in your reality?”

“Yeah. Sam Wilson,” he said, nodding. “Former Air Force Pararescue.”

“As for your first question,” she said, composing herself, “Well, you aren't ripping your face off to reveal a twisted red skull, and you're not speaking German to me. You're not attacking or railing against the democracy of the world, or spitting epitaphs against my name after learning it. So apart from the fact that your Bucky looks like he's a coiled cat about to hiss at me or spring away, I'm thinking you're not HYDRA. They may have successfully hidden in the shadows, but once they've emerged, its a little hard to hide that arrogance.”

“You got that right,” he couldn't help but mutter, remembering just how openly arrogant many of the agents who were with HYDRA had been during the attack on the Helicarriers and the Triskelion. He turned slightly towards Bucky, seeing that his friend was still warily looking at Stevie. He still wanted to believe in the good hearts of people, but considering what Bucky had gone through, he knew that he shouldn't brush those instincts of his off too easily. The one word description of 'snake' that Bucky had given about Stephanie Rogers was one that he knew he could not dismiss.

Returning his attention to Stevie, he asked, “So you're a double agent? A mole for the Resistance in HYDRA?”

“Yes,” she answered, meeting his gaze with an unflinching look. “I take the world as it is, not as I'd like it to be. If I have to compromise myself to save the lives of many, then I'll gladly do so.”

It was a slap in his face as Steve flinched at those words. It was similar to what Fury had stated to him on the reveal of the Project Insight, and the price paid for such a weapon was the collapse of SHIELD and HYDRA with it. He didn't need to ask any further questions about what exactly had been compromised, what had been done, as it seemed that HYDRA had instead, won. He couldn't bring himself to ask either way, knowing that he had done some hypocritical things himself in recent days.

Tony was right – he wasn't worthy of the shield, worthy of protecting what was just and right anymore. He had chosen his side, and right or wrong, he would stick by and defend Bucky with his life. He had no right to question Stevie, his own counterpart, on what she had done.

“I'm sorry,” he apologized after a few uncomfortable moments of silence.

“Don't be,” she answered, gesturing to Bucky with a slight smile on her face. “It looks like the truth was enough to calm your Bucky down.” Steve glanced over and there was indeed, a much calmer look and air surrounding his best friend. He saw Stevie take a step over and extend out a hand in greeting. After a moment's hesitation, he saw Bucky take the offered hand and shake it before letting go. Stevie stepped back, just as Steve felt the elevator-transport slow down.

His counterpart blew out her breath before saying, “Okay... there's been a recent spate of attacks above ground by HYDRA, so there's quite a few twitchy people. Let me go first. They know me, but they're always wary of new folks, even though those in the command circle have always vetted new folks before bringing them to the base.”

“After you then,” he said, as the elevator-transport doors slid open and she walked out into the seemingly empty corridor. Steve followed a few steps behind her, with Bucky shadowing his side. When they finally turned the corner in the corridor and went through the double doors, it was a rather expansive hall that greeted them. Not only were there many people – civilians and those in the familiar-looking SHIELD uniforms – milling about, but there was a lot of computers, workstations, and even sectioned off areas that looked like labs.

All movement ceased as soon as Steve and Bucky walked through those doors. One could hear a pin drop in the silence that followed, as many pairs of eyes were rivited to them. That silence was punctuated not a moment later with someone saying, “Holy shit! What the hell is he doing here--”

“Calm down peoples, he's not who you think he is,” he heard Stevie interrupt, her tone hard and commanding. In just those few words, Steve could feel a frown work its way through his lips. Something about the tone, about the people and where they were exactly staring at was not right. Surely, in this reality--

“Prove it!” another person shouted from somewhere within the crowd. “You know that murderous son of a bitch--”

“You know that I would never--” Stevie raised her voice in protest, as the murmurs from the crowd started to grow. “I found both of them--”

“Oh for God's sake, would you all please shut up and let Captain Rogers explain?!” an unexpected voice pipped up from further away and into the hall, carrying over the din with enough authority to quell most of the murmurs back down to a more manageable level.

“Tony,” Steve couldn't help but let slip as he saw Tony Stark, dressed in his usual civilian clothing wind his way through the crowd before stopping at the edge of the circle that had formed around the three of them. He looked the same, albeit there almost seemed to be a lighter expression in his eyes – as if he were not burdened with the problems that he had seen in his former friend's eyes the last time they had talked.

“I knew it,” he heard Tony state with an equally familiar smirk upon his face. “Didn't want to believe you at first, Stevie, but they passed through processing at that checkpoint with the info you gave me.”

“Thank you, Tony,” Stevie answered, as Steve took a quick glance over to see her nod once with a small smile on her face. Though he was slightly confused at what had just been exchanged, especially with the term 'checkpoint processing', he didn't get to further puzzle it out as his counterpart addressed the crowd, saying, “Look, a 0-8-4 brought them here. They're not of this world at all.”

“Transport scans prove it,” Tony pipped up again, holding up a small semi-transparent tablet in his hand while waving it almost carelessly around.

“And those scans have been independently verified,” another unexpected voice spoke up from the back.

The crowd parted slightly as Steve could not help but openly grin at seeing the last person he had expected to see in this reality. “Sam,” he greeted, managing to stop himself from stepping forward and giving him a hearty embrace.

“Hello, person I don't know but looks like Captain Rogers here,” Sam answered, giving him a slightly bemused yet amused look before looking over to Bucky. “And other person whom I don't exactly know but maybe I should? In whatever reality you guys are from?”

“Director Wilson,” Stevie greeted in a professional tone.

“Captain Rogers,” Sam answered in kind. Steve saw him turn towards the crowd, saying, “All right everyone, back to work. Nothing to see here – these two are cleared, same as everyone else we've taken in.”

Reluctantly and with many still murmuring to their friends, the crowd dispersed and went back to their work. “All right. We'll debrief in my office.”

Seeing that they really had no other choice, Steve followed Sam, with Bucky immediately shadowing him, walking a little closer to him than he normally did. Whether that was a reaction to the unspoken accusations from the crowd he was sure that were directed at Bucky, or otherwise, he didn't confront it yet. He was sure that a few things were going to be explained, and so he would have some patience to wait and listen. However, it did not escape his notice that both Stevie and Tony had taken up the rear, and were bent slightly towards each other, whispering and murmuring about something. Pushing aside the heavy regret that had suddenly settled in his chest for what had happened in that silo, he focused himself on the present. It was clear that this reality's Tony was in lighter spirits and working with the Resistance... or SHIELD, without issue.

They entered Sam's office, which was modest in size, but not so spartan enough that there was at least a worn couch and a couple of chairs sitting in front of Sam's desk. However, there was already an occupant half-lounging on one-half of the couch; a man with light brown, close-cropped hair and dark-colored eyes. It wasn't the fact that the man had a hard light projection of his, Stevie, and Bucky's images from the elevator-transport in front of him with a bunch of scrolling data next to it, that made Steve start. It was the fact that there was a prosthetic leg in the man's hands, and he was fiddling with something inside the prosthetic leg.

“Oh hey, looks like the mob didn't kill them,” the man casually stated, tossing a nearly careless wave at them.

“Something wrong with the leg I made you, Riley?” Tony asked, as they all entered and he closed the door behind him.

“Nah,” the man answered, grinning. “Just wondering how big of a bottle I can carry in the hollow. Or gun size.”

He heard Tony huff and saw him stroll forward, catching just a glimpse of him rolling his eyes in annoyance and irritation. “All right, give me the leg. I'll see what I can do to carve you a little place for whatever booze you want to store. Don't come running to me if the liquid breaks and shorts out the leg though.”

“Guys, this is Riley McIntosh, SHIELD, or what's left of SHIELD's Strike Pararescue leader. Also, he's the second best hacker we have here,” Sam introduced, as Steve saw him gesture for both him and Bucky to take the chairs, while he went around his desk to drag his desk chair to form a small semi-circle in front of the couch. Stevie had taken a seat next to Riley, while Tony absently took the other end of the couch, strangely immersed in fiddling with the leg.

“Second?” Steve heard Riley protest, though there was no malice in his tone. “Seriously? I can beat Agent Johnson any time of the day. Hell, you didn't even ask her to verify the scans.”

“That's because she's occupied with something else,” Tony spoke up, still poking the insides of the leg. “I've asked her to do me a favor, and the Director has kindly allowed me to borrow her skills.”

“And what might that--”

“Okay,” Stevie intervened, spreading her hands and arms out slightly, “Enough. I'm sure our travelers didn't come here to listen to you two bicker and argue.” She gave them both a stern look before returning her attention back onto him and Bucky, saying, “Might as well get introductions started. Captain Stefanie Rogers, Air Force Intelligence, call sign: Captain America. I'm attached to HYDRA, but you two know that I'm just spying on them for SHIELD. You can call me Stevie.”

“Tony Stark,” he heard Tony speak up, still occupied with the leg, “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. CEO of Stark Industries. Used to dabble in defense tech, now I'm doing medical tech, because its so much better than outfitting HYDRA with my tech.”

“So,” Sam began, reaching over to what looked like a mini refrigerator and opened it. Steve saw him reach in and pull out three water bottles, tossing one to him, another to Bucky, and the third one to Stevie. Two more were tossed to Tony, who somehow caught it without looking up, and the other to Riley. Grateful for the water, Steve nodded his thanks, as Sam continued to say, “I'm Sam Wilson, Director of SHIELD.”

“You guys already know me,” Riley stated, grinning as he batted at the hard light projections to stop the scrolling of data.

“Steve Rogers,” Steve introduced himself, deliberately leaving off his former rank and call sign. “I used to be with SHIELD.”

“Used to be?” Stevie asked, just as it looked as if Sam was going to ask the same question.

“Yeah...” he answered, looking down at his water bottle before looking back up. “SHIELD fell when we exposed HYDRA. They're both gone now in our reality.” It wasn't the whole truth, as he suspected that some element of both were still in a power struggle, but those elements had not shaken the world since the collapse.

“Huh, I'd thought you'd be a military man, Rogers,” Tony spoke up, looking up and pausing in his fiddling with the prosthetic leg. “You kind of got that bearing on you.”

Steve could not help but flinch at those words. His fight with Tony was still raw, still hurting like an open wound that stubbornly refused to close. Swallowing, he said, “I... was a captain in the Army. Led the Howling Commandos during the war... and transferred to SHIELD. After SHIELD's collapse... there were some other circumstances that... necessitated me resigning... from another group that defended the Earth that I had ties to. My former call sign was Captain America.”

“Huh... sort of a counterpart then,” Riley spoke up.

“So how about you?” Tony asked, waving the prosthetic in Bucky's general direction.

Before Steve could intervene and speak up for Bucky, Bucky quietly said, “James Buchanan Barnes. Army Sergeant, Howling Commandos. HYDRA captured me, turned me into an agent. The Winter Soldier.”

The silence that fell after that declaration was enough to anger Steve as he saw blank expressions on the others' faces. Riley's expression was the only one to show a little bit of concern, and in response, he said, “Which he is not anymore. He's not HYDRA, and he's not the Winter Soldier. He's Bucky Barnes, my best friend. Everything that he had done as a HYDRA agent was not of his own volition. If you--”

“We're not,” Stevie interrupted him. “I believe you. I believe both of you.”

“It's just that this reality's James Barnes is still a HYDRA agent... and one with an extremely dangerous, and deadly reputation,” Tony spoke up, absently handing back the prosthetic leg to its owner before leaning forward, tenting his hands together. “I'm not sure what this Winter Soldier call sign means in your reality, but this reality's James Buchanan Barnes is known as the Widowmaker. He and the Black Widow are HYDRA's top operatives. Both have killed more SHIELD agents in the past three months than in the years since HYDRA's emergence. Alone, the Widowmaker is credited with at least two dozen assassinations, some with collateral damage up in the hundreds. Combined, the Widowmaker and Black Widow have... well...those two are the reason why SHIELD has been decimated and can't really do anything big to fight back.”

Steve openly frowned as he glanced over towards Stevie, saying, “When you first met us you said that--”

“You must have misheard me, Rogers,” she cut him off, and Steve did not miss the brief warning look that passed through her eyes.

“Sorry,” he apologized, though he set his suspicions aside for the moment, along with the nausea he felt at hearing what this reality's Bucky had done. Focusing back on the subject at hand, he said, “Black Widow. Natasha Romanov?”

“Natalia Alianovna Romanova,” Riley spoke up, poking on something within the tablet to allow the image of Natasha to pop up on the hard light projection. She looked the same as Steve remembered her, though instead of the signature red hair he remembered, her hair was blonde in color. “We know that Natasha Romanov is one of her many aliases. And that she's a product of HYDRA's Black Widow program. Other than that, nothing else really.”

“She was a SHIELD agent in our reality,” he couldn't help but mutter. “Same call sign... helped me adjust to life in SHIELD after the military.”

“If you're thinking that she can be turned, she can't,” Stevie quietly spoke up. “She's...” she began, but shuddered slightly as if overcome by an awful memory. Steve saw Tony place a comforting hand on her shoulder, holding it there as she continued to say, “She's not someone you save, Rogers. She's someone you stop...someone you kill, and make sure they're dead with three bullets in the head before walking away.”

He had heard fear in peoples' voices before, had experienced fear himself, but the raw, open, unabashed fear within Stevie's tone was absolutely chilling to hear. Before he could inquire further, Sam spoke up, saying, “Back to the elephant in the room: the big question that we can't answer yet is, how the hell to get you back. We've dealt with 0-8-4s before, but nothing that brought two of the same occupants or counterparts to this world. Most of the 0-8-4s also usually manifest at HYDRA's headquarters, not in the middle of podunk nowhere.”

“So we're stuck here?”

“Yes and no,” Stevie spoke up, sitting up a little straighter and more composed than she had been earlier, nodding her thanks to Tony who removed his hand from her shoulder. “Considering that a 0-8-4 has been activated, HYDRA monitors for stuff like that. They will have already known that something happened and go looking for the results of that activation.”

“Most of what we do at the moment is send in pararescue teams to act as medics and get civilians and Inhumans out from the line of fire,” Sam spoke up, taking over from Stevie.

“Inhumans are being hunted here?” he asked. “In our reality, I didn't get much of a briefing on them. Only heard about them in passing.”

“They're powered individuals with all sorts of abilities,” Sam briefly stated. “Terragen crystals are used to transform them from their inert state to Inhuman status. HYDRA's been hunting them for study, control, and possibly army-building purposes. The general theory is that they're attempting building an army of super-soldiers from whatever they extract from captured Inhumans, without resorting to Terragen crystals. We haven't been able to get a lot of details, but we do know that Dr. Leopold Fitz, second-in-command of HYDRA, is in charge of the Inhuman Project.”

“So what's that got to do with the 'yes and no' of Bucky and I being stuck here?” he asked as Sam paused for a moment.

“Well, we're hoping to use at least you, Rogers, as a distraction,” Sam stated before glancing over towards Bucky. “No offense, Barnes, but you running around in the open is going to cause more chaos than we need.”

Sam returned his attention to the group in general, saying, “We know that there's an enclave about fifty miles west of Columbia, Maryland, that has a group of Inhumans there. We settled them there about two years ago, in the hopes that they would be able to live normal lives. HYDRA hasn't had a need to raid to that enclave, but recent Intel points to the fact that one of the Inhumans has woken up from his or her inert state. How, we don't know, but if we don't get them out of there--”

“You want to use the 0-8-4 that brought us here to divert HYDRA's attention?” he asked.

“Exactly,” Sam answered. “Have them trace the 0-8-4 and send out their best to find the anomaly, while SHIELD relocates the Inhuman group. We also need to try to figure out how an Inhuman woke up when all the Terragen crystals are kept under lock and key in HYDRA's R&D labs.”

“How is that going to help us get back to our reality?” Steve hated asking such a selfish question, but being asked to be dangled as bait, especially in front of HYDRA was not appealing. He also did not want to be separated from Bucky, not when he had just been reunited with him. Bucky was his priority at the moment, even though the situation in this reality was dire.

“I'll be with you every step of the way,” Stevie spoke up. “I'll make sure of it. You're not going to get sent back without your Bucky. If they find the 0-8-4, we'll steal it. If they get a lead on it, we'll get there first.”

Steve sighed and glanced over at Bucky who had an imperceptible look upon his face. Returning his attention to the rest of them, he asked, “What was your alternate plan, if we hadn't shown up?”

“I was going to distract HYDRA,” his counterpart answered. Steve frowned at that statement, but received his answer after a moment, with her saying, “I'm an Inhuman.”

He blinked in surprise, staring at her. Of what little he had heard about Inhumans in passing, he had heard that they didn't look human. Perhaps his assumption was wrong and he needed to update that, though this was another reality, so he wasn't confident in his assessment. It was only Riley's quip, “Well, guess that's a major difference between the realities. Our Captain Rogers is Inhuman, this 0-8-4 Captain Rogers is not Inhuman,” that shook him out of his shock.

“Specifically, my abilities give me enhanced strength, speed, vision, hearing... basically a cocktail that HYDRA thinks should be the baseline for a super-soldier,” Stevie said.

“I still don't know how you know all that, Stevie,” Sam said, shaking his head slightly. “Considering that you had to doctor your blood work with HYDRA, I don't even know how you've discovered all that without being caught.”

“Blood work?” Steve asked, concerned.

“HYDRA has the blood work of all of their personnel and those they considered 'subversives'. Thank God for slow processing, but its also how they discover who is Inhuman and who is not,” Sam answered.

“There might be a problem,” he said after a few moments, shifting his water bottle from hand to hand for a brief moment, before looking back up. “I was injected with a super-soldier serum. It's changed me... so I don't know how that is going to look on this HYDRA blood work.” He saw their gazes slide slightly over to Bucky and appended his statement with, “I think Bucky has a variant of the serum as well.”

There was no indication of any answer from his best friend, nor did Steve expect there to be any sign given. While he was glad that Bucky seemed less nervous and more calm, the quietness that he exuded worried Steve. The short introduction Bucky had provided gave Steve hope that perhaps he remembered some things from their days in the Howling Commandos, but also seemed to dash that hope at the same time. He didn't want to leave Bucky alone, yet he couldn't see a way out of the current situation without stepping in and trying to help make it right.

“I think...” Tony spoke up, “I think I might have a solution to that problem... but its going to take me the weekend to work it up. You haven't committed to the plan yet, but I'm going to assume you want time to think about it, right?”

Steve was again, surprised by just how different Tony behaved in this reality when compared to the Tony he knew. While he knew that assumptions were a terrible way to label people, it was difficult for him to shake and start anew with regards to Tony. What had happened in the silo was less than twenty-four hours old – still an open, festering wound. That aside, he also felt like he was missing something incredibly important, but considering what had just been discussed, he knew that he needed the time to process everything. While not as bad as waking up sixty or seventy years into the future, it was still disconcerting.

“Uh, yeah,” he managed to answer. “Please.”

“You have until 18:00 Sunday, Rogers,” Sam stated.

“Thank you,” Steve said, though he belatedly tacked on a ”sir.”

“Guess I wasn't in charge of SHIELD when it went down, in your reality, huh?” Sam said, the familiar grin spreading across his face.

“No,” Steve answered, shaking his head slightly, “but you were present, and survived the fallout.”

“Stevie and I will take them upstairs, away from the mob here,” Tony began, as they all sensed that the briefing was over for now and stood up. “I got a company to tend to anyways. Eight-o-clock meetings aren't going away just because visitors are here.”

“That's fine,” Sam answered, before gesturing to Steve and Bucky, saying, “Might be better to keep the two of you away from down here, even though we've thoroughly vetted you.”

“I understand,” Steve said, stepping forward and shaking Sam's hand before turning to follow his counterpart and Tony out.

“Oh, Stevie, before I forget,” Sam said, causing the four of them to pause, half-way out of the door. “Got some strange comm chatter on subchannel twenty-nine for the past few days. Nothing's big happened since we began to intercept it, but the eggheads can't make heads of tails out of it. Please take a look at it.”

“On it, sir,” Stevie answered, nodding curtly.

As they left Sam's office, Steve couldn't help but notice that the SHIELD security were looking a little more than warily at both him and Bucky, but especially at Bucky. He also caught out of the corner of his eyes, a few personnel peeking down the hall, staring at them. It wasn't the same kind of looks he remembered receiving upon his entrance and acclimation to SHIELD, but it wasn't friendly either. The stares were not overtly hostile, but they were kind of edging into that territory. Bucky was still walking a half-step behind him, but not as close as he initially had been. Still, a protective feeling swooped over Steve as he deliberately shifted over a half-step, shielding Bucky slightly with his body.

He stayed in that formation as their feet carried them through the twists and turns of the halls in this subterranean base. Very few they passed in the halls ignored them, with those who did being scientists buried in their tablets. Thankfully, neither Stevie, who was walking in front of him with a clear military bearing about her, and Tony who was leading them somewhere, tried to engage in any sort of conversation.

Soon, they finally arrived at an elevator that looked so pristine and clean that it looked out of place in the brick-walled underground bunker. Tony stepped up to the panel and tapped a series of numbers before sliding a card into the side of the panel. It dinged opened and he stepped in. Stevie followed him in, standing to the side, and seeing that there was no where else to go, Steve stepped in, followed by Bucky.

It was only after the elevator doors closed and the elevator started to move that an unexpected sound started to softly issue from some speaker hidden somewhere. Steve couldn't help but chuckle as he heard the soft strings of the melody. The tension that had lingered over them during their walk from Sam's office to the elevator had been seemingly swept away with the closure of the doors and start of the tune.

“Beethoven,” he said, smiling slightly. “Never thought I'd hear elevator music ever again.”

“It's about a five minute ride up to where we're going,” Tony stated.

“Five minutes?” he asked, baffled. “Where are we going?”

“You're in Stark Tower, Rogers,” Tony answered. “The Resistance made their base about 100 feet below my basement. I'm dropping you off at the penthouse levels before I have to go ask people why the hell they like to hold meetings so goddamn early in the morning.”

“Stark Tower? But aren't your elevators supposed to be fast? State-of-the-art?”

“It's been deliberately slowed down, to give us time to fill you in on the actual situation,” Stevie spoke up.

Steve remained silent, waiting for either his counterpart or Tony to continue. After a few moments, Stevie took a deliberately deep breath before nosily blowing it out, saying, “You're in the Framework. A simulation. Everything you see around is not real. Just digital simulacrums of the real thing.”

“What?” he asked at the same time Bucky did as well.

Though he had somewhat adjusted to life in the twenty-first century, he knew that he still had a lot to catch up on – the list he had kept not withstanding. He knew of simulations, of how people who were not ready to become full SHIELD agents yet trained – both in a virtual world and in the Training Academy. He had seen the virtual training world once, and found it a poor substitute for the real thing. However, Fury had stated that it helped the younger generation immensely.

“This-” Stevie said, knocking on the back of the elevator's mirror finish “--is not real. It's just digital code.”

Steve couldn't help but reach out and brush his fingers across the mirror before glancing over to his counterpart, saying, “It feels real.” Bucky's thumping of the elevator door with a knuckle briefly diverted his attention as he saw him shrug.

“That's because your mind makes it real.”

Steve frowned at the initial implications of that statement, letting the silence that fell linger as he thought about it a little further. Surprisingly, it was Bucky who spoke up, asking, “If we die here...”

“Yes, you die in the real-world,” Stevie answered, nodding.

Despair suddenly flooded him as Steve thought back to what was said about this reality's Bucky. “HYDRA..” he couldn't help but whisper.

“Is in control of this Framework,” his counterpart answered. “This is how they convert people, make them compliant to HYDRA, harness the once free world under their rule--”

“Because the people were made to be ruled over,” Steve finished up, his jaw set in anger. “That's what Dr. Zola said HYDRA's sole purpose was. To create an order out of the chaos, to give the people a deliberate sense of freedom while deep down, restricting their actual freedom.”

“And they've done so, by catching 'subversives' and implanting them in here. People come out of this Framework different, compliant, and wholly loyal to HYDRA and their New World Order,” Stevie said, nodding. “I was sent in to extract SHIELD Strike Team Bravo. They got captured in the physical world, and placed into the Framework.”

“So this Resistance...?” he began.

“Similar to what we actually face in what's left of SHIELD, except that HYDRA knows that a full brainwashing simulation cannot be forced into peoples' minds. They need a sense of purpose, so they deliberately sprinkled the Framework with pockets of resistance and are slowly eliminating them, using the real-world Inhuman hunt as an excuse. Most of the SHIELD personnel you saw down there are just digital code, characters created from randomness. They don't know that they're not real though.”

If his frown could get any deeper, it tried to, as Steve realized that there was something familiar, similar, and eerie about the pattern. He was no expert, but he had heard enough from his reality's Tony, and read about it enough to take a gander at his theory. “It sounds like there's an AI controlling the Framework.”

“Wow,” Tony spoke up, “I'm actually impressed, Rogers. You're right. There is an AI controlling the Framework. Her name is Ophelia Hydra, though everyone refers to her as Madam Hydra. She's the head of HYDRA within the Framework.”

“SHIELD, real-world SHIELD knows for a fact that a woman named Ophelia is also in charge of HYDRA. There's a strong theory going around that they're one in the same, and that Madam Hydra can travel between both the Framework and the real-world,” Stevie explained. “If that's true, she's the only one who can freely travel of her own will. Anyone who gets placed in the Framework cannot get out without her say so.”

“So we're stuck?” Steve asked.

“Not quite,” she answered, before gesturing to Tony. “Tony and Agent Johnson have been trying to find a way to create a backdoor, an exit, without Madam Hydra detecting it. When I entered the Framework, the exit I came in with was quickly detected by Madam Hydra and deleted. Fortunately, that detection also masked the other bits of code that Director Coulson managed to sneak in.”

“Wait, so Sam isn't Director outside of the Framework?” he asked, gesturing to the elevator.

“No,” she answered, shaking her head slightly as she briefly looked down before looking back up. “Both Sam and Riley died during a mission to extract agents in the Baltic. They're just code here, and they don't know that. I don't think they'd even believe me if I told them that they're not real.”

Steve was silent for a few long moment as he tried to puzzle out what had just been told to him, versus what he had just been debriefed with, within Sam's office. “So,” he began, pausing for a moment to collect his thoughts. “I'm real. Bucky's real.”

“Well, you both are certainly not from this reality. The scans, even in code, don't lie. Neither of you vibrate quite at the frequency even digital code such as I vibrate as,” Tony said, shrugging slightly.

“Wait, digital code such as... you?” he started, gaping slightly at Tony.

“AI,” Tony said in a tone that was tinged with the usual wisecracks Steve had heard countless of times from his reality's Tony. “Tony Stark, AI CEO of Stark Industries of the Framework. I'm the bit of code Director Coulson managed to sneak in when Stevie here jumped in.”

“I'm real, Rogers,” Stevie said before Steve could fully recover from his surprise. “So is Agent Johnson. She's a member of Strike Team Bravo. She was one of the first persons I managed to extract from HYDRA.”

“How many more?” he asked, managing to recover a little by focusing back on his counterpart and her true mission.

“Five total,” Stevie answered. “Johnson, Falsworth, and Morse are clear of HYDRA. Falsworth and Morse are scouting out possible waypoints for exits.”

“The other two? Where within HYDRA are they?”

The silence that followed his question made Steve uneasy, but he didn't get an answer to his question when the elevator dinged, signaling that they had arrived. The doors opened to an opulent and spacious living room that was reminiscent of what he remembered Tony's place to look like – albeit that this did not look like it had gone a few rounds with an Asgardian and Hulk. There was already an occupant in the middle of the room, sitting on the plush-looking leather couches, hunched over a laptop. The woman looked up, her furious typing slowing down to a trickle, as she blinked and stared at them in surprise.

“Captain Barnes?!”

“Not the Captain Barnes you and I know, Agent Johnson,” Stevie said, as Steve saw her turn slightly back and nod towards the elevator. That was when he noticed that Tony had not gotten off the elevator with them. “I'll see you in a few hours, Tony. Have fun yelling at lines of boring corporate code.”

“You know I will, sweetie,” Tony answered in a jovially sarcastic tone as the elevator doors closed.

Before Agent Johnson could say anything else, Stevie returned her attention to them, all traces of levity gone as she said, “The other two of Strike Team Bravo, Rogers, are his counterpart--” she pointed to Bucky “--and Leopold Fitz. The Widowmaker and the Doctor.”

* * *

...который час?

He blinked at the sudden intrusion of the thought as he paused in the middle of writing down a fragment of his memories to look up. Far be it that Agent Daisy Johnson, who had been sitting at the other end of the table for the better part of the last half-hour, had stopped glancing at him every few minutes. She had now stopped typing and had picked up her laptop and was making her way towards him. Just as she sat down, uninvited and across from him, he closed the notebook that he had been writing in.

Rogers had found the notebook in one of the many laboratories that dotted the top ten floors of Stark Tower, after Rogers' counterpart had insisted that they should rest. That not-so-subtle order to 'rest' had been ten and a half-hours ago, giving them time to clean up, shed their dirty coveralls, empty the coveralls of their stolen weapons, find some clean clothes, and get something to eat. The eating part had been a little strange to him, as he couldn't help but wonder what exactly was the equivalent of digital food to the real-world simulated reality he and Rogers had landed in.

The clean clothes had been a welcomed change, even for the various fragments that showed him outfitted in the same combat outfit time and again as the Winter Soldier. He never did recall if his handlers had ever given him a fresh change of clothes, since he had been frozen time and again in the same outfit. The cargo pants he wore were of a dark color, as was the long-sleeved shirt. Where the stump of his arm was, was tied off, done by Rogers again. He had managed to mutter his thanks for the assistance that Rogers had given so that he did not have to try to dress himself with one hand. At the moment though, Rogers was somewhere within the ten floors, most likely getting the rest of his questions answered by his counterpart.

As much as he wanted to hear what Rogers' counterpart was answering of the many question he too had about what the hell was going on, a more pressing matter had arrived in the form of a rather persistent headache. It wasn't until he started to write down the words within the notebook that the headache started to ease. Bit by bit, word by word, the pressure was lessening. It was only after three full pages of words that he realized what he was experiencing was not the scattered shards, but something he had been seeking since the fall of SHIELD and HYDRA – a full, continuous memory.

However, that was being interrupted at the moment by the fairly attractive SHIELD agent with her laptop. “What?” he asked, though it was not his intent for the question to come out as brusquely as it did. He was, however, glad that he managed to hold onto speaking in English instead of Russian that threatened to creep into his vocabulary whenever he opened his mouth to talk.

If Agent Johnson was offended with his rude tone, she didn't show it. Instead she opened her laptop again, but did not start typing. Instead, she stared at him, her eyes searching over him as if she were looking for something or just observing. He did not flinch from it, as he found it annoying to the point where he was about to get up and leave.

“Does it hurt?” she suddenly asked, before he could scoop up his notebook and pen into his hand. Something akin to pity flickered behind her eyes, as he stared at her, wondering what she was trying to get at. “That,” she repeated, gesturing to his stump. “Does it hurt?”

As much as he wanted to tell her off, she immediately followed her question up with, “Sorry, sir... its just I know you... my CO, but I don't know you. I think I can tweak the code in the Framework without Madam Hydra noticing, to lessen the phantom limb pain, if its bothering you.”

He stared at her, surprise filling him from her words. The pain licking up his stump was like an inferno that wouldn't stop. He had managed to shove it to the side and resolutely ignored it to the point where he had almost forgotten it existed. It had only been Johnson's words that brought a trickle of that compartmentalized pain back to the forefront. Instead of directly answering her, he asked, “You've done the same for others down below? The other digital agents?”

“Yeah, but its a little easier when they're just code. Aberrations and evolution of random ANN code is expected to self-tweak so that they can adjust to the ever changing environment of the Framework,” she answered. “It's a little more difficult for real people like you and me, but I think I can do it... only if you want me to, sir.”

“I'm not your CO, Agent Johnson,” he answered.

“I know, but I can't help it,” she said, grinning. “You got a sort of military swagger like Captain Rogers and her counterpart. I don't know the whole story behind the two of you, but I have to bet on the fact that both of you were part of the armed forces. My CO is, but he doesn't have that same swagger – he's just... or was...”

She fell silent, her attempt at some levity dropping like a heavy stone as worry creased her eyebrows and she glanced back down at her laptop for a moment. As much as it intrigued him, it also disturbed him that his counterpart in this reality was a complete mirror of him... before he had been released from his mental prison within HYDRA. What was stated down below in that briefing, was true; it rang true in his heart. He had seen the files dumped on the internet, the number of kills associated with the Winter Soldier – and the collateral damage that had accompanied some of those kills.

ненавижу это...

Another focus point, another thing to add to his shit list. Was it not enough that he had stared at the mirror after cleaning himself up only hours ago, and saw a face that he did not recognize but knew that he should have? It had only been Roger's image reflecting in the mirror a few minutes after that, standing behind him along with Rogers' warm, familiar hand on his shoulder, that had shaken him out of that fugue. Belatedly, he had realized that he had been standing in the bathroom for a little too long that Rogers had gotten worried that he had done something stupid.

Now, Stevie Rogers was facing the same thing that his Steve Rogers had and still was facing.

He didn't want to face another mirror again – look at the same eyes that couldn't tell him anything of his own self; of who he was now. As much as Rogers insisted that he was worth it, he didn't feel so at the moment – not when he wanted to remain where he was, and never come face-to-face with the Widowmaker. He had his memories, even if they were millions of fragments and five pages of written, coherent words thus far. He didn't want to look at the face of a blank slate again--

It was the elevator doors pinging open that thankfully brought him out of his circular thoughts as he saw Rogers and his counterpart walk out, with Rogers asking, “So you're not actually an Inhuman?”

“Nope,” she answered. “It's a little easier for the Resistance to swallow that, rather than say that I'm a super-soldier and that everything that made me special came from a bottle. They'd think I was a product of the Doctor's experiments and not trust me at all.”

“Oh,” Rogers said, looking a little regretful. “Guess I shouldn't have said that to Sam and Riley.”

“Well... you and Bucky here are 0-8-4's, so you probably will get a pass.”

Just as the two approached the table, the elevator dinged again and when the doors opened, the smell of good food wafted through the air, as Stark stepped out with what looked like a large bag of take out food in one hand, and a large and long briefcase in his other hand. “Dinner is served,” he heard Stark casually state as he walked to the other end of the table, placed both the bag of food and briefcase down. “Hope you guys like Lebanese food.”

“And before you ask, you two,” Stark continued, pointing at both him and Rogers, “yeah, you can refuse to eat, but remember, your mind is translating that to whatever IV nutrition is hooked up into you. You're essentially denying the absorption of saline and other stuff in the real-world.”

“Which is what I wanted to clarify,” he heard Rogers say, as he made to get up, not wanting to stay and be party to a meal with others. Unfortunately, Rogers had taken his standing up as an attempt to help, and eased him back down into his seat with a hand on his shoulder, saying, “Don't worry, Buck, we got this.”

He knew that he could choose to be rude and just leave, but the guilt that swept over him, independent of the fragments of his memories, prevented him from leaving. He had already caused Rogers too many wounds, both emotional and physical – the years that he had spent living in eastern Europe far and away from him – being the biggest cause. He wanted to mentally heal, find out who he now was, but he also did not want to continue to worry Rogers... and thus he stayed, even though he did not want to.

Remaining where he was, he listened as Rogers continued to say to his counterpart, “So you said your theory is that Coulson stole the 0-8-4 from HYDRA and activated it. But instead of bringing an ally that you guys had met before, it brought Bucky and me here. Rather than send us back, he shoved us into this Framework?”

“Yep,” Rogers' counterpart nodded as plates, cutlery, and dishes of food packed in plastic containers were spread out along the table. “We used to be in possession of that 0-8-4 and had a frequency that we could tune to, to bring Ghost Rider to here. He had owed us for something and my guess is that Coulson wanted to cash in on that.”

“So,” Rogers said after a few moments of everyone arranging themselves at the table before sitting down. The large briefcase was still at the other end, and no one had inquired of what it was yet. “Wouldn't announcing that a 0-8-4 brought us here to HYDRA, even in the Framework, alert them to the missing artifact?”

He poked at the food that was on his plate as he listened to the discussion. He wasn't hungry, even after over ten hours of not eating anything, but with what Stark at stated, refusing to eat would just worry Rogers even further. He took a few tentative bites as he heard Stark answer, “That's the beauty of the Framework – its adaptive to the situation. Like we said earlier, HYDRA may have already picked up on a 0-8-4 activation, both within the Framework and outside of it.”

“If they have already picked up an activation, they'll already be looking for traces of it,” Rogers' counterpart stated. “Fortunately, the Zephyr that the two of you, me, my team, and the Director are on, is cloaked and shielded. They won't be able to find us in the real world.”

“Your team?” Rogers asked after a few moments.

“Strike Alpha,” she answered. “None of them are in the Framework. It was too risky to send a full team, not after Strike Bravo got captured. We can't pinpoint where people will end up once they land in the Framework. Besides, someone's got to help Coulson run the Zephyr and monitor the outside situation. Once we get all of Strike Bravo out, we'll hopefully have a pinpoint location of where exactly they are. We fly the Zephyr in and Strike Alpha will go and bust that HYDRA base.”

“We help you get the other two of Strike Bravo out of the Framework, and then we can go back to our reality then?” Rogers asked.

“Its voluntary,” Rogers' counterpart answered. “You don't have to go to HYDRA headquarters with me. You and Bucky can stay here, or help scout out potential exit locations that Agent Johnson needs. Once the exit is built and secured--”

“Getting the hell out of this freaky world,” Johnson spoke up, looking relieved. She grinned as she sipped the glass of water in her hand.

“Hey, remember, you got all weekend to think about it,” Stark reminded them.

He saw Rogers frown, staring at his nearly-finished plate of food before looking back up, asking, “So that story earlier about those Inhumans you settled and are being hunted by HYDRA... its not true?”

“Its all true,” Rogers' counterpart answered. “Specifically, the Inhuman that SHIELD is protecting is little girl named Robin. She's dead in the real-world, but whether it was a quirk of the Framework or something else, she got reincarnated here just as she was in the real-world. She has the ability to catch glimpses into the future. SHIELD lost that edge against HYDRA when Robin died in the real-world. If she is the Inhuman who woke up, then we need to bring her in. If not, we relocate them again.”

“But why--” Rogers began.

“HYDRA has sensors,” Stark answered. “Too many Inhumans or groups of humans in one area, and it sets off an alert. That's why they're scattered everywhere whenever we relocate them. Only immediate family members don't get separated. It's how they're also trying to weed out the Resistance and prevent protests from successfully rising up. We're already monitoring the situation. HYDRA knows that Stevie comes up to New York over the weekends. To preserve her cover, we don't normally make a move during the weekends, unless we need to.”

He caught Rogers' glance over towards him, and knew that look. No memories or their fragments needed to assist him in understanding that look. It was something that felt old and familiar, that he knew the look was something signature to Rogers. Rogers, for all of his bleeding heart and who wore his emotions on his sleeve, wanted to help these people. Yet he knew that Rogers was most likely also feeling guilty about leaving him alone. He knew that he didn't need a babysitter, but he had to admit to himself that Rogers' presence was a source of calm and comfort – not just for his scattered memories.

я не знаю.

He averted his eyes and pushed a couple of pieces of lamb around his plate. A few moments later, Stark spoke up, saying, “We already have an alternate plan, Rogers. You don't—Christ, why do you always look like I punched you whenever I say something to you, Rogers?”

He looked up, seeing that there was a slightly exasperated yet annoyed look on Stark's face, while Rogers had opened his mouth once before closing it, lips thinning slightly. “That's because you tried to kill me, and I tried to kill you... about twenty-four hours ago,” he said, absently pushing a piece of lamb around the plate again. He nodded towards Rogers, saying, “He got tangled up in it. Simple as that.”

“Bucky...” Rogers began, despair coloring his tone.

“Wait... wait, wait, wait, wait,” Stark said at the same time, giving both of them in incredulous look. “What?! What the hell would I... or your reality me do that for?”

“I killed your parents,” he stated, eyes straight on Stark, completely ignoring Rogers' attempt to stop where this was headed towards. “I killed your parents,” he repeated.

“As the Winter Soldier, and not of his own volition,” Rogers immediately followed up, anger clear in his tone.

“And the Winter Soldier is a part of me,” he quietly answered that declaration, finding himself unable to meet Rogers' eyes. “It will always be a part of me.”

The silence that fell was extremely uncomfortable, to the point where he was considering getting up and leaving. It was broken a few minutes later, when he saw Stark fold his hands together, rest his elbows on the table and rest his chin on top of his hands. “HYDRA killed them. It doesn't matter who pulled the trigger, it was HYDRA. They're the ones responsible for every single death. The one who pulled that trigger will always have to live with the consequences, but if the organization behind him or her can be brought down or to justice, then maybe... just maybe the weapons they forged can finally find a small measure of peace.”

He noticed that while Stark was seemingly addressing either him or Rogers, or both, Stark was staring at Rogers' counterpart from across the table while speaking those words. There was no reply, but he saw the minute tightening of Rogers' counterpart's jaw in response to those words. It was only when Rogers broke the silence saying, “You're dead, Tony... in this reality, in the real-world, aren't you?”

“Yes, I am,” Stark answered, giving both of them a plain, open, and frank look. “HYDRA assassinated me, but rather than linger on such things, lets think about some forward action.” He saw him get up and saunter over to the briefcase. Opening it with a slight flourish, Stark then turned the briefcase towards them, displaying the content within.

Nestled within the dark foam cushions was a sleek-looking, black, prosthetic arm. Fibrous-looking, segmented plates representing the deltoid muscle swept down from the shoulder to a nodule. That was wrapped in the biceps muscles, with the triceps and anconeus muscles peeking out on the underside of the arm. These were all connected further into another nodule where the brachialis swept into the elbow. All in all, the arm looked as if it were just an unskinned version of a human arm with musculature showing, except completely shiny black in color.

“That is one sexy looking arm,” Johnson quipped. “Kind of like the Ferrari of arms.”

“It was the only one I could find on short notice,” Stark stated, shaking him out of his staring at the arm. “First and only prototype that I built for the military in the real-world before I went into medical prosthesis. I was surprised that they had made a copy here in the Framework, but its still usable. Should help lessen then phantom limb pain, Sergeant Barnes. If you want it.”

He blinked, staring at Stark in surprise, disbelieving at the sheer generosity that Stark was displaying after what had been said a few minutes ago. A sense of uncertainty, coupled with a heavy dose of guilt followed that disbelief. He had been wrong, so wrong to place assumptions on Stark upon meeting him. All he had for memories and opinions on Stark started from being flushed out of hiding, to the fight they had engaged in, in that silo – his looking up the Avengers on the internet notwithstanding.

“я прошу--” he began, but forcibly corrected himself, saying, “I'm sorry...”

“I can't say that I forgive you, because I'm not your reality's Tony, but right now, the two of you have been forcibly dragged into another war. I'm of the mind to give you guys any advantage to survive until you get home.”

“I'm not going to defend what Coulson did to them is right or wrong, Tony,” he heard Rogers' counterpart say. “But I believe that he has his reasons as to why he didn't just send Steve and Bucky back to their reality.”

“The arm,” he interrupted before either of them, Rogers, or Johnson could say anything else, “what is it made of?”

At this, he saw Stark grin before thumping the arm with a knuckle, saying, “Vibranium. Got a small sample of it from King T'Challa of Wakanda. Was trying to see if I could make a prosthesis without the brittleness of carbon fibre, but still had the light weight strength of titanium.”

“Specs?” he questioned.

“Nanoblade embedded into the forearm portion, so think of it like knife you can retract and extend when needed, if you're ever in CQC. Was going to try to embed an EMP or grappling hook into the arm, but didn't get time to.”

Slowly, he pushed back his chair and stood up, glancing down for a moment to see concern mixed with something else he couldn't identify in Rogers' eyes. To his relief, Rogers did not even utter his name in a plaintive tone for the moment – it always made him feel a small measure of blame that that tone meant that he was causing Rogers to worry. He focused back on the arm and where Stark was and made his way down the table.

Stopping in front of the open briefcase, he stared at the arm, eyes running up and down the smooth edges of the segments that roped and linked the 'muscles' together. Reaching out with his hand, he lightly brushed his fingertips over the surface of it. He knew that if he took this arm, he would be returning to war. What floodgates of the Winter Soldier memories it would open was still unknown, but he also knew that there was a chance that those memories would suppress the memories of who he was before. It was a two-way street, and one that he did not know if he should walk upon.

However, there were options, and thus in past hours since they had been 'resting' up in the penthouse floors, he had not been disturbed except by Agent Johnson's query about his phantom limb pain. Johnson had also not asked him for any help with whatever she was doing, and neither did the digital representations of SHIELD down below had asked either him or Rogers for help. They had allowed them the freedom of choice – to choose to remain passive, active, or a combination in between. All he and Rogers had to really do was make sure that they were in the right place at the right time to get out of the Framework.

я не знаю.

He glanced back down the table, catching a surprisingly soft yet understanding look in Rogers' counterpart's eyes. Rogers, sitting on her right and further down still looked concerned, but whatever else had been there a moment ago was gone now. He didn't know what to do and yet he did. Right now, he knew that in order for him and Rogers to survive what they faced, he needed to plunge back into the memories he wanted yet hated. He was not the Winter Soldier, he was a winter soldier.

“I accept,” he stated, returning his attention to Stark as he felt it most appropriate to extend his hand out, “Thank you.” Stark grasped his hand with a surprisingly firm grip and shook it before letting go.

“And I'll come with you, Stevie, to HYDRA headquarters. I'll help get the rest of Strike Bravo out,” he heard Rogers state after a few moments, as he caught Rogers' eyes on him, with a familiar smile spreading across his lips that looked as if dawn had broken across the night. “We both will.”

In a way dawn had come, as James Buchanan Barnes nodded in return. He was not Rogers' 'Bucky' and knew that he would never fully return to being that man, but yet he also wasn't the Winter Soldier. For now, he was who he was: a man with a million shards of falling memories piecing all of them back together.

~*~*~*~