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“I can’t come back.”
“Why not?” Sam made sure to keep his voice calm, neither pushing nor talking down to Barnes. They were at Leipzig Airport where they had met up with the rest of Steve’s team and Scott and planning their next move when they noticed that Barnes had slipped out. He’d offered to go look for him, to let Steve keep working out their plan of attack.
Barnes hadn’t gone far. He was leaning against the wall of another warehouse near the one they were hiding in. What struck Sam was how pale he was and how the wall seemed to be all keeping him upright. He looked to be just one step away from a panic attack or just coming down from one.
“I can’t come back,” he’d said as soon as he noticed Sam.
Sam wondered what would affect Barnes, the Winter Soldier like this, so he asked.
“I can’t work with her. I can’t – I won’t work with HYDRA.”
HYDRA? “What do you mean?” Sam asked. ‘Her’, so he was likely talking about Wanda. Steve hadn’t been exactly forthcoming about who she was when she joined the Avengers, just that she’d been misguided, but surely she couldn’t have been HYDRA. Perhaps Barnes was confusing her with someone. His memory had been badly affected by his captivity, they knew.
“The Witch. She’s HYDRA. I remember her. She has these...” He waved his hand. “...this red... stuff. She used it to... to control and torture prisoners.” He shuttered. “Make you see things. Kill some of fright.”
Sam stared at him, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. He wanted to deny it, deny Steve, that Captain America, would work with an HYDRA or ex-HYDRA agent but, looking at Barnes, at the certainty and fear in his eyes, he found that he couldn’t. But what should he do now? “I’m not going to make you go back,” he told him. He paced up and down. “You’re certain it’s her?”
Barnes just nodded.
“Fuck!” He stopped, looked back to the warehouse where the others were. “We can’t tell if the others are being controlled or at least influenced, can we?”
Barnes shrugged. “I don’t know. I only know what...”
“What it’s like to when she uses her powers?” Sam asked gently.
“And there’s still that fake doctor who knows the words to control me,” Barnes said, bluntly changing the subject.
Sam played along. Now wasn’t the time to pursue the matter. “Any idea what he wants?”
Barnes shook his head. “He asked questions. About the other Soldiers. About a past mission. About -” His eyes widened suddenly. “Stark. Iron Man is Tony Stark. Isn’t he?”
Sam frowned, confused by the new change of topic. “Yes, why?”
“The mission he asked about. December 16, 1991.”
Sam was getting a bad feeling. The date seemed familiar.
“I... I killed Howard and Maria Stark.”
Oh shit. Just when Sam had thought it couldn’t get worse. What could they do now? Steve and the others were potentially, likely, compromised. Stark wasn’t bound by the Accords and, if he knew or found out about what really happened to his parents, definitely compromised. The same went for Prince T’Challa. “I’m calling Hill,” he finally decided. They might have some way to free people from mind control, right? At least they must have found a way to free the ones controlled by Loki. They could use that for Steve and the others.
~*~
Not even an hour later and Sam found himself with Barnes in what was officially the Avengers’ custody, though was effectively Hill’s. As expected, Tony had been compromised when they had informed him about the actual fate of his parents, so he had withdrawn from the mission, something that had surprised Sam. He hadn’t expected that to be possible under the Accords or that Rhodes had been able to take a backseat as well to be there for his friend. Which brought them back to Hill.
Sam’s ears were still ringing from the talking to she’d given him. She’d been very frank about what she thought about their decision not to sign, about Bucharest, about their decision not to involve the other Avengers. The only saving grace, as far as she was concerned, was that they had been bright enough to call them in.
At least she had agreed to let him stay with Barnes, keep him company while they waited for the others to be brought in. A number of ex-SHIELD agents had volunteered to do that. There would be an investigation, Hill had told them, not because of the Accords but because they could not ignore the suspicion that members of the Avengers might be controlled by a HYDRA agent. Sam could not argue with that. And perhaps he should take a closer look at the Accords after all. There seemed to be a lot going on that he hadn’t been aware of and he had enough of being ignorant.