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One by one the controls in the Winter Soldier’s mind came down, until one day he looked in the mirror ,and for the first time in decades, Bucky Barnes stared back at him.

“Bucky?”The voice was soft-fragile-and laced with so much hope. He looked over, and instead of Captain America, there was Steve.The bony little arms and the light wheeze that seemed to accompany his every breath were gone, but the eyes were still the same.

“Hey,Steve,”The hug that followed the simple statement was so familiar yet so foreign.The strength behind it(from both of them) was new,but somehow,it felt like they were back to being kids again, no war, no government experiments, just two pals trying to survive back in Brooklyn.

“I’ve missed you so much pal,”He could feel Steve’s tears on his shirt, and though his own eyes stung,there was still too much of the Winter Soldier in him for him to let his own tears fall.

***

He moved into the apartment right above Steve’s and a few months later when memories of a secret money stash resurfaced(he remembered where he’d hidden the money, not how he’d got it-he wasn’t sure he wanted to know), he bought out the entire floor.Making sure the only person he ever truly had to worry about knocking on his door was Steve.

They didn’t really say much to each other-what was there to say.Talking about the past only brought back all that they’d lost.Steve had no memories from when he was in the ice.Bucky had lived a lifetime as a murderer, and the memories of that life had only recently started coming to the surface.He saw the way Steve looked at him in the mornings when the other woke him up, and forced him to go running.Steve definitely heard his screams at night, but even in the new world,both of them were men from a different time.

“Maybe you should talk to someone”Maybe you should talk to me.His eyes  said, Bucky  studiously ignored him,focusing all his attention into putting on his shoes on-still getting used to his new arm.They hadn’t brought the issue up again, but Bucky still felt the lingering worried stares.

***

Bucky’s dreams followed a pretty set pattern.

Blood,screams, bones breaking,pleas,brains splattering,cries, burning flesh,wailing children,muffled gunshots…The list went on and on, but that was usually how it went,which was why he noticed immediately when a new element was added to them.

***

He stood over the body of a man, for all intends and purposes,it looked as though he’d shot himself in the head.Soft footsteps approached him and he straightened, his mechanical arm letting out a low hiss.

“Report,”He ordered without looking back, and a voice spoke up.

“Three children and a woman upstairs-they’ve been taken care of, they all stopped breathing at the same time.I ensured that they never woke up,”A small hand settle briefly on his shoulder before retreating-she was too kind-too soft for the work they did, he should mention it in the report, but somehow, he already knew he wasn’t going to be able to.He turned to look at his companion’s face, but the moment he did,she bled away,and he was left facing a bloody old woman.

“You will never get anything from me Hydra scum!”He raised his hand to strike her again,then he stopped.The mission objective was to acquire the location of an alien weapon.To do that they needed the target’s input.Judging by the level of damage her body had already taken, one more hit from him and the mission would end in failure.Initiating interrogation sequence number two, Winter Soldier pressed a button,calling in reinforcements.

From the shadows, a figure approached.

“Good evening ma’am,”The voice was polite, and had it not been for the golden fire flowing beneath the visible dark skin, the young man could have been anyone.

“Please tell us the exact location of the weapon you and your fellow SHIELD operatives discovered a few months ago,”She opened her mouth to hurl more insults, but by the time she closed it, she’d already told them what they needed.

“What are you-you piec-”A bullet was lodged between her eyes before she could finish.Winter Soldier left the warehouse with the boy by his side.

“Thank you for not prolonging her suffering,”

When he turned to look at the teen,the surroundings faded away,replaced by bloody walls and the screams of dying men.A sect within the organization had gone rogue, and he’d been sent to neutralize them.They knew him, knew what he was,and knew what hurt him, and they used it to their advantage.Bullets had been lodged into his abdomen-adamantium- his mind supplied, and the pain was beyond the threshold that he was able to ignore and keep functioning at an optimal level-something they capitalized on.

He ducked into the jet he’d flown in on, trying to slow the bleeding with his human hand, the mechanical one still firing shots and taking off heads.A few men made it onto the ramp, and Winter Soldier’s calculations showed he wouldn’t be able to successfully take them all without one of them landing a hit on a vital organ-but his mission did not have a clause for retreat in it, so he simply held his gun tighter,letting his stomach bleed as he propped himself up,and prepared to shoot.

He only managed to shoot one assailant before the rest fell like puppets without strings,and the ramp pulled up a bit-temporarily cutting off access.The inner doors of the jet slid open, and  a wheelchair came into focus, just as the pain that had been weighing Winter Soldier down lifted.

“Go get’em,”A young voice said.

His partner had broken protocol, his duty was to observe, and in case of Winter Soldier’s failure,he was to bomb the facility,regardless of whether or not Winter Soldier was still in there or not.There had been nothing about helping out Winter Soldier.

Protocol was to be obeyed-always-to do so was an offense.Winter Soldier could not let it stand, a hand on the area where his skin met metal had the buzz in his mind going away,and he focused on the situation at hand.He could still hear commotion outside,standing with ease,he grabbed hand grenades and reloaded his gun.

“Take cover,”He instructed,making his way to the ramp.

He jumped right off the jet, but instead of landing amongst enemies, he woke up when his body hit the floor in a quiet New York apartment.The dream was already fading, but his heart hurt at the snippets that danced at the edges of his mind.Curling up on the carpet, Bucky Barnes found himself crying for the first time in decades, below him Steve Rogers turned on the radio, playing soothing music with the volume up-comfort offered on instinct.

Chapter Text

Steve often dragged him along when he went to meet up with his friends…awkward didn’t even begin to cover it.

Logically Howard’s son knew  Bucky wasn’t responsible for the deaths of his parents, but in his heart, Bucky knew Tony couldn’t quite bring himself to forgive him.Whether he’d meant to or not,their blood was still on his hands, and Bucky found that he too had trouble forgiving himself.

To top it all off, no matter what Steve said, Bucky was an outsider.Back in the day it had been Steve and Bucky till the end of the line.That was still true,but Steve had new friends now, and even though he was trying hard to bridge the gap, there was no erasing the things Bucky had done, the things he was capable.

Someone in the little group laughed, the sound catching Bucky off guard, and making him tense-his new arm  twitching as he got ready to defend himself.He’d kept quiet through his little panic attack, but by the time he pulled himself out of it, all eyes were on him.

On the plus side, no one had pulled a weapon-a definite improvement-but it was pretty clear to Bucky that he was ruining the mood.

“It’s okay, I’m just going for a walk,”No one commented, but they let him pass,and pretty soon Bucky was standing outside the building.A gust of wind hit him just as he began walking and the former assassin froze.He turned around slowly, his heart clawing its way up his chest, but there was no one there…why would there be? Shrugging off the strange feeling, he broke into a run, not stopping until he reached his apartment building.

That night his nightmares were filled with a screaming girl being swallowed up by a ball of fire.Music drifted up to him from Steve’s apartment again that night, but it did nothing to stop his tears.

***

Bucky remembered the other Winter Soldiers, he remembered working with them, and the beatings they used to give him. But no matter how far back he tried to go, his memories came up short when he tried to look for the faceless kids he saw in his dreams.And none of the information that the Avengers had managed to salvage from his Hydra files said anything about there having been other soldiers besides the ones Zemo had killed.

Had he made them up?Were they just something his mind had come up with to replace what he’d had with the Howling Commandos?But even as he thought it, he knew that wasn’t true, he was having memories of things that definitely happened.It all felt too real to have been anything else.

Who were they?Why was there no information on them?Had he killed them?

The questions went round and round in his head, chasing away any thoughts of sleep.Steve was getting worried( more worried than usual), it showed in the way he literally tried to shove food down Bucky’s throat, and how the music in his apartment was now on 24/7.

“I’m fine Steve,”The dark circles under his eyes said otherwise-but Bucky stuck to his statement, hating himself a little more when he saw the wounded look in Steve’s eyes.

Chapter Text

Watching Steve and Bucky dance around each other,was one of the most painful things Tony had ever experienced-not even being nearly blown to bits could compare.

Sometimes he just wanted to grab both of them by their ears and just scream

“YOU IDIOTS LOVE EACH OTHER-DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!”But Pepper had sat him down and explained in a calm gentle tone.

“Tony, if you ruin this for them,I’ll have Nat kill you, bury you in the ocean, and give all your tech to Hammer-you don’t want that now do you?”She’d given him a pat on the head afterwards, moving on to discuss the company like nothing had ever happened-that woman was scary.

But still, even if Pepper had said to let them figure things out on their own, Tony had to intervene.Something between them had changed.They were more tense around each other, like they’d run across a hurdle they couldn’t jump over-enhanced bodies and all.

Steve gave  Bucky puppy-dog eyes from a distance(more than usual), and Bucky didn’t even notice-the guy had retreated deep into himself,giving everything a thousand yard stare and looking like he was about to start breaking necks at the drop of a hat.

It wasn’t exactly qualities Tony thought anyone would find attractive-but cap loved himself a former assassin, and that was that.

The billionaire looked around the entertainment room,everyone’s eyes(Cap included) were fixed on the screen.Bucky had disappeared a few minutes prior-saying he needed to get some water, but FRIDAY had informed him the guy was actually in the room Steve sometimes used-reading a book.

It was now or never.

His AI called him, and Tony pretended it was business as he made his way out of the room and went after Bucky.Less than a minute later the search ended with him staring down the barrel of a gun.

Definitely not good.

***

 “Not that being dark and broody isn’t a good look on you,”Tony spoke like someone who didn’t have a weapon pointed at him, but Bucky caught the way his fingers stopped twitching towards his bracelet the moment Bucky put the gun away.

“You’re worrying Steve, and when Capsicle is worried, puppies die,so spill Manchurian Candidate,”Tony Stark wasn’t Steve, he didn’t know the meaning of giving someone space.He needled and needled until Bucky finally snapped.

“The memories of my past are coming back, and it’s hard to handle,”Tony paused,seeming to buy it,then his eyes sharpened and he shook his head(the gesture reminded Bucky so much of Maria Stark,his heart twinged).

“That’s not the whole truth, you’ve remembered stuff  before and it’s never gotten your panties in a twist this bad,what gives?”The casual tone did nothing to disguise the fact that Tony wouldn’t be leaving without answers.

The part of him that had lived through Hydra wanted to shut down-keep everything to himself- but the part that was Bucky, wanted to share the burden, to tell someone who might be able to make sense of everything.He opened his mouth to do just that, but his words were cut off when Stark’s AI spoke up.

“Boss, Doombots are attacking down south, three fatalities reported,”Tony’s attention was immediately elsewhere, and Bucky shutdown, making himself as unnoticeable as possible until the other forgot he was even there as he rushed out the door-calling for the others.

The moment the door closed, he let out a breath, only to tense again when the door burst open once again.

“You coming?”It was clear the conversation wasn’t over, but it would be set aside for later.

Chapter Text

There was rhythm in the way Bucky and Steve moved around each other in battle,that always made Natasha envious.She and Clint had been working together for years, but the two of them still didn’t have the level of understanding that Steve and Bucky had(despite having been apart for over seven decades did).

Natasha watched from the corner of her eye as they fended off doombots.She felled her own bot with ease,Clint’s arrows covering her blindspots.

She watched as Bucky threw himself off a bridge to bring down a flying bot.He hadn’t even said anything, but somehow through the noise of the fight,and with his back turned to the other,Steve knew exactly what was needed and when.

He threw out his shield,and Bucky grabbed it midair, using its momentum to land back on solid ground.He thre the shield back at Steve using cybernetic arm,neatly slicing a bot that had been trying to sneak up on the Captain in half.

There was a lull after that, and the two of them shared a look.It was warm, lighthearted, but it carried a weight that made Natasha ashamed to have caught it.She looked away, filing away the way everyone else also seemed to have something else to look at in that exact moment(Tony wasn’t even being subtle about it).

The fight picked up again, the doombots rallying(what did Doom say he was fighting for again?Natasha had tuned him out).Soon enough the battle was almost over, with Tony and Doom hurling insults at each other about cheap materials and outdated designs(Natasha was sure that in the engineering community,such things really hurt one’s pride).

Finally realizing he was defeated,Doom made to retreat,but the too slow,too deliberate way he moved instantly put Natasha on edge, and judging from the way everyone tensed,the others had caught the lie too.

***

In the end it didn’t matter that they’d known he was up to something,they still hadn’t known exactly what it was, until it was too late.

Doom reached into his cape, and pulled out something in a move too quick to follow.He lobbed the object right at Peter, and Natasha watched as Tony moved,trying to intercept it-but he was too far away.

Steve came out of nowhere-shield raised and ready.

Doom’s little trinket exploded on contact, and it sent Steve flying, he hit the road, and a loud crack followed. By that time Doom was already gone, and all of them rushed to Steve,with Bucky(unsurprisingly) reaching him first.

***

Stars danced beneath Steve’s eyes for a split second  before he chased them away.When he pried his lids open it was to the sight of a metal arm, and what felt like steel beneath his head.He shifted a bit,and then stopped.

Oh…

His head was pillowed on Bucky’s lap.Instead of getting up,he closed his eyes,enjoying the comfort that Bucky brought, but much too soon he was forced to open his eyes again,the frantic voices around him destroying his peace.

“White-Wolf, calm down,let us have a look at Captain Rogers,he needs medical attention,”T’challa said, an edge of panic creeping into his voice.

“Bucky?Anybody home,come on old-timer,snap out of it,”That was Tony.

He tried to get up, but Bucky was holding him down,whispering frantically, then out of nowhere he began shouting.Barking out commands,it was almost as though he was back in the war, but the names he was shouting were names Steve had never heard before in his life.

“Painkiller!Windfall!Serum!..”

“Man down!Hostiles incoming!Take them down!Take them down now!Windfall,strike!Paink-”Unable to take the pain lacing Bucky’s voice Steve reached up, pinching a never and nerve and knocking him out before the other knew what was happening.Getting up Steve looked over at the huge crack on the road where his head had landed(said head was absolutely fine), but Bucky on the other hand…

“What on Earth was that?!”Tony yelled as he helped move Bucky, and to be fair Steve was thinking the same thing.In the time since Steve had gotten him back, he knew Bucky had nightmares, but he’d never seen Bucky have a flashback,and to be honest-he never wanted to see it again, that had been terrifying.

***

Rather than taking Bucky back to the Avengers tower, Steve took him to their building.

“I think having less people around would be best for him,”

Getting Bucky out of his clothes took a lot of work, and when it came to showering,Steve had to strip down and get in with him.It was a quiet affair,with Bucky’s head against his neck as Steve gently cleaned him.

By the time he finally got the other into his sweat pants and coaxed him into bed,Steve was beginning to feel the effects of the day as well.Pulling the covers up to Bucky’s shoulders,he made to leave, but a hand closed around his wrist.

“Stay,”The plea was almost silent, but it Steve heard it all the same.

He should have been ashamed by how quickly he got into bed,lying next to Bucky and listening to him breath, Steve found he didn’t really care.There was still much to discuss, who were the people Bucky had called out for.Why were they important enough for Bucky to scream their names  in his time of need?

Painkiller,Windfall,Serum…the names went round and round in his head, only quieting when Bucky slipped his hand his-his real one.The weight of it settled Steve,and he scooted closer,matching his breathing to Bucky’s until sleep claimed him.

Chapter Text

Steve shifted his footing,barely managing to dodge an incoming fist, and weaving around the next one before jumping back.He raised his hands, preparing for another attack, but his opponent paused taking off his gloves.

“What was that!”Said gloves were thrown on the mat with more force than necessary and Steve took off his own more sedately.

“What was what Tony?”The engineer raised a brow,scoffing loudly.

“I know you’re older than dirt,but usually your fighting skills don’t show it.You wouldn’t last two seconds with a granny with whatever it is you were doing,”Let it never be said that Tony held back his verbal punches.

A bottle of water was thrown his way and Steve caught it before going to sit on a bench,moving over so that the other could join him.

“So what gives,”

It would’ve been easier to change the topic, but Steve needed to share with someone without making it formal.

“Bucky finally opened up about the people he was calling for during the fight with Doom,”A week after the incident,Bucky had been incredibly tight lipped,staying quiet through all the questions and giving no reaction to being benched for the foreseeable future.

“They were his team,”The news had come just as Steve was drifting off-since the first night,when Bucky had asked him to stay,the two of them hadn’t stopped sleeping together,despite the fact that they never brought it up during the light of day.

“Whoa-you mean team as in an actual squad-let’s work together type of thing?I didn’t know Hydra did that,”

“From what I can gather it was an experiment,”

“So why did he clam up, having a team isn’t that big of a deal,”

“The last thing he remembers of them is being ordered to kill them.He doesn’t recall anything else after  that,”The quiet horror in Bucky’s voice when he’d told him had been heartbreaking.

For all he’d lost when he’d been in the ice.Steve’d at least had closure when he’d woken up.He’d gotten to see Peggy one last time,and had visited the graves of the commandos.Bucky didn’t have that, and he had to live with the knowledge that he might have killed his team.

“Well,that…sucks,”Tony didn’t say anything else after that,his expression shifting into one Steve had come to associate with the billionaire thinking up things Steve couldn’t begin to comprehend,so he kept quiet and focused on finishing his water.

“Can you tell the others, and get Fury to back off?I don’t think Bucky can handle questioning right now,”He received a distracted nod, and the two of them went back to enjoying the post workout silence.

***

Despite popular belief,Tony was a mature adult-he even had a kid to boot, a good one too.

It had taken time-and a bit (ok a lot) of booze, but he’d finally been able to forgive the man who’d been mind controlled into killing his parents-he just hadn’t worked up the courage to tell him yet.

But there was something he could do to show that there were no hard feelings.

He’d been hounding old Shield files for information-which given the whole ‘Shield is Hydra’ situation was a good place to start.He’d been at it for days, and apart from a few gossamer threads showing that ‘the team’ had actually existed, there was absolutely nothing  else on them.

Somewhere past midnight on his tenth day of searching, he gave up on the pseudo-Shield and went straight for the ‘official’-Hydra files.

He refilled his coffee, noting the way the machine was spitting out sludge, but too far gone to really care.Shaking off a few nasty viruses, he continued opening up the pandora’s box that was Hydra’s files, but still found absolutely nothing.

He made it past a few more files, until he came across a video-and stopped.All the older files he’d come across had been written down-even the ones describing videos(easier to deny things happening that way), but this one was actual footage, and it had been made somewhere in the early nineties.

“Friday?”

“On it boss,”A few seconds later the video started playing and Tony put down his mug to do a fist pump-finally!

“And that Friday, is why I’m the best,”He finished watching the whole thing,and at the end of it he didn’t feel so proud anymore.

***

Of all the things in his life, Tony showing up at his apartment  at three in the morning was only a mild inconvenience. The other didn’t even seem to notice how odd it was that Bucky was there given how early it was.

“Oh, you’ve renovated-when did you install the stairs leading up to Bucky’s apartment, or maybe Bucky installed them leading down to yours?”

“Did you guys meet each other half way-was it like a mind meld thing where y-”

“Tony…”Even Captain America had limits to his patience.

“Right, the reason that I’m here-I  found out what happened to Bucky’s team,”Behind them there was a loud crack and Steve turned to find Bucky’s metal arm sticking right through a wall.

***

It took some coaxing to get Bucky’s hand out of the wall and even more to get him seated so that they could watch the video, and even then he kept a bruising grip on Steve’s hand.

“Ready?”Bucky gave a sharp nod,looking anything but.

Tony tapped his wrist and a screen materialized in front of them.

Two people,dressed in white labcoats were conversing, one a woman with incredibly sharp features, and the other a taller dark skinned woman with short hair“Nothing more can be done, this endeavor, though successful in terms of missions completed,is too risky.Team Blizzard are exhibiting signs of… companionship,”The word was said  as though it were a curse.

“Are you certain there’s nothing more to be done?”The dark skinned woman asked, her hands drumming over the tube closest to her.

“We can’t take the chance, we have to nip this in the bud before it spreads”The  shorter scientist moved towards the three steel containers in the room,eyeing them the way one would bacteria under a microscope.

“Soldat, end them,”The Bucky on the screen was instantly in motion, hands outstretched to rip out the life-support modules to the tanks,but just as swiftly as he’d started-he stopped,his hands hovering over the machines.

“Soldat?I said-end them--”Static scratched out the next few seconds, before the video resumed again.

Bucky still stood where he was, but the two scientists were going at it.The shorter woman tried to pull the plug herself, but the other woman bashed her head against a pod.They tripped each other u,p ending up on the floor.Their scuffle ended a few seconds later,with the dark skinned woman cracking the other’s skull on the  floor.

“Soldat, Awaken!”Bucky finally unfroze at her command.

“Help me load them up,we’re getting out o-”There was a loud crack, and the woman paused.She brought a hand to her abdomen,it came back coated in red,the same red that was rapidly spreading over her once pristine coat.

She fell with the most heartbreaking look on her face-clearly realizing that she was dying, but refusing to give in,she tried to get up…to crawl to the pods.Next to her,the weasel looking woman got up, a cruel smirk on her face and a pistol in her hands.

“You and I were magic together, but I’m afraid our partnership ends here.For old time’s sake I won’t let you die alone”She moved over to the pod ,her hands flying over the keyboard.“I wager you have a few minutes left in you, your precious subjects will run out of oxygen in that time,and you can all die together,”

Bucky twitched, clearly fighting his commands,but the woman whispered something and all the fight went out of him.

“Excellent…at least you’re still salvageable,” She walked right over the dying woman and gestured for Bucky to follow.

The video didn’t cut off immediately.There was  a full minute of the woman’s breathing becoming more labored,her limbs twitching as she tried and failed to get up,then everything just faded to black.

***

Long after Tony had left, Bucky sat on the roof… alone.

It was one thing to know he’d been a puppet,to get flashes of it here and there, but actually seeing himself being ordered about like a dog made it different.

Could he even call himself a man anymore?Was he even human?

The wind ruffled his hair,and for a few shameful seconds,he considered following it over the edge and letting himself fall.Then the sound of Steve singing,horribly off key as he vacuumed reached him and Bucky shut the thought away.

He wouldn’t run…that wasn’t in him.But he also couldn’t leave things the way they were-he needed closure, otherwise he’d be eaten alive from the inside.He’d seen men die from that during the war, and Steve needed him,he couldn’t leave him like that, not again.

***

After a quick shower in his apartment, he made his way downstairs on socked feet.Steve was on his side of the couch,reading a book, and Bucky joined him drawing his knees up to his chest.

“Doing Ok?”Bucky nodded, and the lines on Steve’s forehead immediately smoothed out,his shoulders relaxing.Bucky grabbed his own book and began reading, soft opera playing in the background.

“I’m going to retrieve their remains,”The moment the words are out,Bucky’s chest felt lighter.

Steve nodded, not even needing a reason and for a moment Bucky was overcome by the urge to kiss him.He settled instead for holding his hand,running his thumb over the top.

“I’ll  help you look,I’m sure there must be clues somewhere in the footage to guide us to where the lab was,”He didn’t say anything about their joined hands,but he did move a bit closer.

“There’s no need for that,”

“I know where they are,”His memory was faulty bit for once-it hadn’t failed him.

“The place is no longer on any map, but it was an island nation,and the closest neighbor to Latveria,”

“It was called…Markovia,”

Chapter Text

Once upon a time, Markovia had been a thriving kingdom.All that had ended within a month when a vicious civil war had broken out-at least that was what the official reports said.But according to Bucky, Hydra had dispatched its Winter Soldiers on the nation and they’d culled everything in sight.

Nature had long reclaimed the land, but some of the skeletons of the Markovians were still visible,jutting out like rocks amongst the trees.With vines growing right through their ribcages and binding them together.The wisps of cloth that used to be clothing swaying gently in the breeze.From time to time Steve spotted larger skeletons curled around smaller ones-most of them with bullet  sized holes in their skulls.

At his side Bucky kept moving, not sparring a glance at the corpses-but Steve still found himself struggling –he’d seen the horrors of war, and was intimately familiar with them,but what had happened in Markovia wasn’t war-it was murder.

***

Other than the sound his and Steve’s footsteps,everything was quiet-the ruins of Markovia being unnaturally still-but for Bucky he wasn’t walking amongst ruins.In his mind’s eye children were laughing, men and women battering in the market, and giant bells ringing in the distance.

“The air here is so pure,”Windfall chimed, her hair floating in the breeze.Beside her Painkiller was quiet,looking down at the flowers the local children were attaching to his wheels, a soft smile on his face.Serum, ever the charmer was chatting to a group of old ladies,obviously enjoying the way older generation always blurted out the truth without prompting-the peaches they were plying him with might have also had something to do with it.

‘You shouldn’t be doing this-you completed you mission early-now return to base,a mind wipe is in order.’Looking at the way his team was so at ease, pushing the thought away was as easy as tearing wet paper.

Years later, his team would be gone, and Markovia would be part of the history pages.

***

The royal palace,was the only place still standing.

They ghosted through the hallways, encountering the slumped forms of various servants, in one particular room,they found a group of skeletons.Their fine clothing still relatively intact,with blond and red hair spread at their feet and crowns of different sizes,from a large one,to a tiny one next to a body that had a teddy bear next to it.

“This was the royal family-Hydra had wanted to take the Princess Terra,but she refused and chose to die with her family,”They left without a backward glance,but the image of the small bony digits hanging loosely around a ruined toy was imprinted in Steve’s mind.

The entrance to the secret labyrinth beneath the castle still worked, and with a bit of fiddling they were able to get the lights on.The deeper they went,the surer Bucky’s steps got until he finally stopped in front of two large metal doors…and punched them open.

Steve stepped in after Bucky, instantly recognizing the room as the one that had been in the video clip they had.A thick layer of dust was covering everything(just like with the rest of the castle), but Steve was still able to make out the human remains lying under one of the metal tables.

Bucky moved over to the tubes that had the bodies of his teammates,but Steve went over to the woman.

There was a long dead ankle bracelet still stuck to her-so she’d been a prisoner too.With nothing more to be done,Steve pulled out one of the bags they’d bought, and gently gathered her up,placing bone after bone into the bag,as carefully as he could.

To Hydra,she’d been nothing but a number-but Steve recognized a hero when he saw one-she deserved a proper burial.

…If only they knew her name.

Gingerly placing her on one of the tables, Steve went to help Bucky-the other might not have said it,but Steve knew this wasn’t easy for him.

***

Bucky was just standing there, unmoving.

Steve placed a hand on his shoulder, both as a comfort,and as a way to get him to snap out of his stupor .The longer he waited,the harder it would be.

“They’re alive,”The disbelief in Bucky’s tone was mingled with regret and relief.

“They’re alive,”Repeating the words spurred him into action and he went to work on the ancient controls.One by one,the pods lit up,revealing the figures inside and Bucky fell to his knees,crying freely as his hands spread out-trying to encompass the large cylinders in a hug.

Steve for his part, suddenly found that he couldn’t move.

When he’d thought of Bucky’s team,he’d always thought of hardened men and women.

But in front of him were children…teenagers.

They were kids, how-why—It was one thing to torture a grown adult-but children…

 Steve fell to his knees as well,but unlike Bucky he wasn’t crying-he was dry heaving onto the dusty floor, trying his best to reign in his temper.

Chapter Text

Of all the things Tony had expected Steve and Bucky to bring back on their little trip-three kids did not feature anywhere.

He was dying to make comments about honeymoon pregnancies and the like, but Nat was shooting him a look like she knew what he was thinking-and had a bullet for each wrong word that would come out of his mouth,so he kept quiet.

But without his witty humor, he had to dwell on just how many types of wrong the situation was-kids, hydra had been using kids as assassins.

“Their vitals are stable, and despite the length of time they were frozen I don’t foresee any  complications with releasing them,”He looked to Bucky(who had Steve’s hand in a death grip) and the other nodded,letting go of his security blanket to grab actual blankets.

“Can we release them one by one-I don’t want them to panic,”

“Sure thing,”

***

Wendy, Issa and Khalil.

Steve looked over at the sleeping teens, his hands balled into fists as he tried to control his rage.On the other side of the window he watched Bucky flitting amongst the kids.Adjusting Issa’s pillow, helping Wendy drink water and making sure Khalil’s feet were covered.

His gaze lingered on the last child and Steve had to stop himself from punching the glass.Using child soldiers was bad enough, but dragging a disabled child into a battlefield was a new low, even for Hydra.

“Easy there Cap,”Tony’s voice broke through his rage as the billionaire came to stand beside him.

“How’s Bruce?”He asked, and the shorter man shrugged.

“Still hulked out, but the rage shouldn’t last too long,”Steve wasn’t the only one who’d taken the news of kids being used as weapons badly, outside thunder boomed, and both of them pretended not to hear Thor’s murderous screams drowning out the lightning-apparently not even war-gods were alright with children  being used to kill.

“Did Bucky tell you anything else on the way here?”Steve hesitated only for a moment before shaking  his  head.It wasn’t his place to be sharing the information Bucky’d given him, and he  was long  past the phase of blind  loyalty.

“It’s not my place to say,”Tony accepted the answer easily enough-clearly unhappy with being left out  of  the  loop but trusting Steve’s judgement(they’d really come a long way).

“The scans show they’re mutants,”Tony said and Steve nodded,but didn’t say anything more.Both of  them knew of Shield’s  history with mutants-they might have two members of the organization as close friends, but they weren’t stupid enough to trust SHIELD blindly.

***

Bucky’ d just readjusted Wendy’s bed when the shadows in the corner shifted.

“You shouldn’t do that here-they aren’t used to you.Things could get…messy”He said, not looking back at the king of Wakanda.

“At ease White Wolf,”T’challa said stepping into  the light.

“Shuri has finished analyzing  their bios.Wendy and Issa are on the road to recovery…but Khalil…his  paralysis is not  something any of our doctors have ever seen before.We’d thought we could cure it the way we had done for Colonel Rhodes, but that avenue is impossible,”He did not apologise, but Bucky heard the apology in his tone all the same.

“I know, Hydra tried adding an  artificial spine to  him…didn’t  work,”Neither of them said  anything for  a long  while,simply looking at the  sleeping teens.

“I know you may not see it  now, but this wasn’t your fault.You did not abandon them, and  when your memories of  them  returned,you went back  for them fuelled by nothing but faith.They will not blame you, and you shouldn’t blame  yourself either,”Sometimes Bucky forgot how thoughtful T’challa could be, and he always knew just what to say.

The king disappeared into the shadows when Khalil stirred, but his words had settled something in Bucky and he no longer dreaded his team being coherent enough to start asking questions.

***

Finally meeting the kids,was not  as  much of a disaster as all of  them had secretly thought it would be.Bucky had started off the introductions with…

“This is not an assassination,”Something the avengers had thought was pretty clear seeing how they’d spent weeks nursing the kids back to health, but apparently the baby assassins had not gotten the memo.

“Really?”Issa’d asked and Bucky had nodded before extending his hand, palm up.Wendy had stepped forward, blushing shyly as she deposited a wickedly sharp hair pin that Tony was certain was one  of Peppers, only the last time he’d seen it,it hadn’t looked so lethal.Issa had handed over a shoelaces, and Khalil had given up needles that had clearly been part of syringes at some point.

There’d been an awkward pause,with Clint and Natasha discretely putting away weapons of their own.

Pushing aside just how alarming that was,Tony with his superb people skills took over, breaking  the silence.

“Well now that we’ve got weapons down-literally. It’s only fair you know our names since we know yours,I’m Tony Stark, billionaire, philanthropist, inventor, and also leader of this motley group of friends,”Steve cleared his throat.

“Alright,co-leader then,”

“The gorgeous red head is Natasha Romanoff, shades over there is Clint Barton,to their right is T’challa”

“The skinny dude, is my super awesome science bro Dr Bruce Banner, the blond mountain is Thor, and of course you know Steve”

***

After the first barrage of information, the man, Tony Stark, had been carefully vague, but Wendy had caught it, and Khalil and Issa had caught it too.

She wanted to ask who they really were, ordinary people did not just break into a Hydra base,nor did they act like Bucky’s arm was nothing out of the ordinary.But it felt like a trap, asking for information meant sharing something in turn, and Wendy was pretty sure the adults already had the upper hand, no need to give them more ammunition.

Khalil finished his assessment before she did, an easy smile sliding over his features, his hands loosening over the armrests of his wheelchair“Nice to me you all,”Cool as a cucumber, not trusting, but not at the level of slinging poison yet.

“Hello,”She tucked a strand of hair away,and thumbed her ear lobe.

“Hi,”Issa gave a nonchalant wave, seemingly uncaring, but Wendy knew him too well to be fooled.

There was a beat of silence,the adults finally realizing their tactic hadn’t worked.Then Tony Stark stood suddenly, clapping his hands and hugging Dr Banner, saying something about precious munchkins.

It seemed they’d passed some sort of test because Winter Sol-Bucky-he was Bucky now gave them and approving nod.In this new world he was Bucky, just as  they were Wendy,Issa and Khalil, no more codenames.They were human beings now,not assets.

***

The kids were uneasy.Though they’d been amicable towards the avengers Bucky could tell they weren’t comfortable, and knowing that Tony had them under constant surveillance via Friday wasn’t helping.

With the avengers off doing their thing, and his team was getting reacquainted with the changes in  the outside world via the internet, he decided to broach the subject.

“I have an apartment,not far from here, you guys can come and stay there if you’d like,”He left it there, letting them know it was their decision.

“How long can we stay?”Wendy asked, her fingers clinging to the sleeves of her sweater as she fixed him with a searching look.

“As long as you want,”Issa gave a thoughtful hum, his eyes searching Bucky for any deception.

“What will we owe you?”Khalil asked,wheeling himself closer.

“Nothing-think of it as payback for all the times you guys saved me in the field,”The three of them shared a long look,then turned back to him and nodded in unison.

“Ok,”Wendy said,sounding relieved and Bucky realized he’d probably averted a potential disaster, most likely they’d been planning to run in the near future, but he’d given them a way out of constantly having to watch their every move the way they’d all done back at Hydra.

“Good-that’s uh-good,”It was strange to have people(who weren’t Steve) trust him so blindly, and looking at their earnest faces, a familiar protectiveness swelled in him.

The same one he used to get when Steve’s every breath was a struggle.He didn’t quite understand where it  was coming  from, but in that moment he knew that so long as he  lived,he’d do everything  in his power to protect the trio before him.