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They're grappling for it, for the tesseract, Steve and the Winter Soldier, Bucky, and even as he focuses on the fight a part of Steve is screaming, crying, begging, because this can't be how this ends. With Bucky lost to him completely once and for all, one way or another, and yet he can't let him have the tesseract either, and the Winter Solider doesn't give up, doesn't give in. There is nothing Steve wants more but for him to remember, remember.
Then it happens. The Winter Soldier pulls at the tesseract Steve is gripping, and Steve pushes with it just to throw him off for a moment in the hopes of ripping the thing away from him. Suddenly the tesseract flashes a bright, bright light, like a camera going off, and the next thing Steve knows is that the Winter Soldier freezes above him. Just goes completely still and stares down at Steve, who goes still himself in reaction, anticipation for the next move.
Except there is no next move; the Winter Soldier is staring down at him, eyes wide and face pale, panting harshly where he had barely even been breathing heavily before. His knee is digging into Steve's belly, made heavier with more than just his bodyweight by his other foot, pushing against the ground. His metal arm is crammed painfully in Steve's shoulder, and his human hand is still clenched around the tesseract. "Steve?" he whispers, shocky and pale, eyes glassy chasms in his face surrounded by shadow.
It's like the ground is pulled away from Steve all over again, like that moment he first saw the Winter Soldier's face, and he swallows audibly. "Bucky?"
Bucky flinches and the next moment he bodily throws himself off Steve, scrambles backwards on his back, still staring at Steve like he can't physically make himself look away, like Steve is salvation and damnation in one. It's a notion Steve certainly can relate to; he hasn't been able to take his eyes off Bucky since recognizing him for the first time. It makes him an awful leader because around them his teammates are still fighting (except the sound of fighting has lessened significantly, a part of his brain notes) but he cannot focus on anything but Bucky.
"Bucky," Steve says and sits up, reaches out for him.
"No," Bucky whispers, nearly inaudibly. He shakes his head, looks around, and flinches again. "No. No, nonononono."
He's falling apart right in front of Steve's eyes, and he called Steve by his name when before he didn't even seem to recognize him. Combined with the flash of light, it's not a hard leap to make to figure out that the tesseract helped him remember somehow, shake the brainwashing off. Strange, considering what it's done to Eric and Clint. If he were willing to spend a moment to think about it he'd be grateful, but he isn't, because Bucky is falling apart. It's all Steve can do not to simply drop the tesseract and focus fully on him. He barely has the wherewithal to toss the cube to Tony, a blur of red and gold standing somewhere off in his field of vision. Then he focuses wholly on Bucky, crawls over to where he's sitting, staring at his hands with wide, horrified eyes like he doesn't recognize them, doesn't want to. It doesn't appear to be about the metal arm, though.
"Bucky," Steve says, and it feels like that's the only word his mouth knows to say, will know to say for quite a while.
But Bucky doesn't appear to hear him, is staring at his hands and breathing so heavily he's almost hyperventilating, and his tongue learns to say other things again, if only to help Bucky.
"Look at me," he says, softly at first. Bucky doesn't react so he repeats it, sharper this time. "Bucky. Look at me."
Bucky flinches and looks up, but he doesn't look like he's wholly in the present, gaze distant. "The things I did," he rasps. "Oh god..." He wrenches himself to the side, whole body convulsing, but all that comes up is bile. Maybe it's unwise, but Steve cannot physically stop himself from reaching out, putting a hand on Bucky's shoulder first, then the back of his neck, holding his hair out of he way. Bucky shudders and spits and gasps, and somebody steps up to Steve – Tony.
"Steve," he says, and Steve's world might be falling apart but he still knows what has to happen, as reluctant as he is to allow it. All his senses and thoughts are primed on Bucky now, but he can't blind himself to what Bucky was forced to do – what the Winter Soldier did. Through wholly different lenses, he remembers SHIELD's very thin file on the Winter Soldier and Natasha's very private speculations, and it makes him sick, makes a sour taste well up in his throat, but he has to keep it together now.
"Bucky," he says, voice hoarse, and pulls Bucky away from where he's only coughing anymore. "Look at me." When Bucky doesn't comply, appears lost in thought and maybe memories, he puts one hand on his face and turns it towards him. "Look at me. We're going to get out of here, okay?"
Bucky shudders, eyes fluttering shut for a moment, expression pained. "Please don't let them have me again."
It's like a punch to the gut. The best Steve can do is cup Bucky's face in both hands and look him straight in the eyes as he says, "I promise they won't." It'll happen over his dead body, but he doesn't say that.
"Steve," Tony says again, and the fighting has stopped completely now. A small part in Steve's mind wriggles for attention – the knowledge that they're going to have to leave, that any moment HYDRA reinforcements could arrive, and no matter what, he can't risk his team like that.
It almost physically hurts, but Steve forces his eyes away from Bucky's and turns his head towards Tony. "Is the quinjet ready?"
In front of him Bucky makes a tiny noise and sags in on himself, forehead bumping gently against Steve's collarbone as he folds up. Almost automatically, Steve wraps one arm around the back of his neck, partly to support him, partly to let him know it's okay, he's there, he'll protect Bucky. Steve has failed him enough for two lifetimes already; he won't ever fail him again, he silently vows to himself.
Tony, mask lifted up which must mean it really is safe right now, is looking at him with for him unnatural seriousness. "Are you sure?" His eyes flicker towards Bucky, just a brief moment but making sure to get his point across as to what – who – he's referring to.
"Yes," Steve replies very firmly. He's not entirely clear on what Tony means – is he sure what he's doing? That this is Bucky? That he wants to bring him onto the quinjet and back home? – but the answer to all these is yes anyway, so it doesn't matter much.
Bucky shudders against him, fingers of his human hand curling into a fist around the belt of Steve's uniform. It feels like he's never going to let go and Steve hopes to god that doesn't happen. He's honestly not sure he'd survive it a second time, not after everything.
Shortly afterwards Natasha brings the quinjet around. Normally Clint at least would have gone with her in case she were to encounter difficulties on the way to getting to the jet, but this time everybody has stayed. Steve has no illusions as to why. They're all of them staring at where Steve and Bucky are kneeling, wearing varying expressions. Steve looks around to assess the situation and while he trusts his team, it makes him anxious, the way they're looking. Tony and Clint wear very similar expressions of deep skepticism, like they're wondering if Steve once and for all lost it, the Hulk, notably still there even though the danger has passed looks angry and expectant, and Thor... Thor looks sympathetic and maybe even jealous.
That last one is what makes something clench in Steve's belly, and he focuses back on Bucky, who is breathing raggedly. "Bucky?" he says, and receives no reaction. "We're going to get on the jet, and I'm going to take you home, okay?"
Bucky shudders. Otherwise he doesn't react, but when Steve shifts a little the hand gripping Steve's belt, physically incapable of holding on any tighter, spasms. "Come on," Steve says very gently, puts both hands on Bucky's waist and helps him up. Barely standing, Bucky staggers into him, either incapable or just unwilling to lift his head from Steve's collarbone. Even if it makes walking awkward, Steve has no intention of making him let go.
The door to the cockpit of the jet is open. Natasha remains in the pilot's seat as usual, but she has turned around and is looking at Bucky with wide eyes, dark against the pallor of her skin. Steve remembers her saying that she has history with the Winter Soldier, and in other ways too this must hit pretty close to home for her. For Clint probably as well.
Steve settles him and Bucky on the bench towards the back, and the others settle wordlessly on the other bench. Hulk, by necessity, shrinks back to Bruce, whom Thor carries into the jet with care. Once they're all inside Natasha shuts the automatic door and lifts off.
Bucky's breath is getting ragged, clearly audible in the dead silence of the quinjet; despite the fact that a talk is probably necessary, nobody says a word.
Except Steve, whose brain can't stop repeating Bucky's name as if he's trying to make up for all the times he choked on it, grief and regret and guilt stealing his voice. "Bucky," he gives voice to it, but it's not enough to capture Bucky's attention for more than a few seconds before he drifts off again into what's clearly memory, and not the good kind. The only thing Steve can think of to counteract is with memory of the better kind. "Remember that time we were stuck behind enemy lines? We hadn't eaten for days and we came upon this house, a single house in the middle of nowhere."
It takes Bucky a few seconds, but he allows the memory to draw him in, latches on to it. "It was dark and the lights were on. It looked like..."
"Heaven," Steve finishes for him. "There was this woman inside. She made us pancakes even though she was alone and didn't have much food on rations to begin with."
"With chocolate," Bucky whispers shakily. "Real chocolate. She didn't have much but she melted it in milk so there'd be enough for all of us. She said we looked like we needed it more than she."
Steve nods, careful not to dislodge Bucky's forehead with the motion where it's resting against his. He stares into Bucky's eyes, slightly blurry with the closeness, and continues with the story that is a memory. "After we had eaten and gotten clean she looked at me and said she had a bed for me, if I didn't mind sharing."
"She winked at you," Bucky says, sounding almost sulky, and Steve huffs a breath that could almost be a laugh if it weren't so pained. Happy, but pained.
"You remember what I said?"
"You said thanks, ma'am, but you couldn't let your men sleep on the ground alone." This is a story lots of people know; it's one of those the surviving members of the Howling Commando liked to bring up, a dash of humor in the midst of the horrors of war.
They never said a word, gave even a hint that there was more to the story, but after a brief pause, Steve asks, voice quieter, "Remember what she said then?"
Bucky swallows and closes his eyes, just for a moment, before opening them again and focusing on Steve. "She looked at me." He swallows again. "She looked at me. She said she lost her husband in one world war and her son in another, and if she learned one thing, it's that you gotta take your comfort where you can. She said it was her son's bed, made for one but could fit two at a squeeze, and that... that your boy looked like he could use a night's sleep in a proper bed."
"And she was right," Steve whispers.
The sound Bucky makes could almost be a laugh, if it didn't sound too much like a sob. "You almost refused again, but Dum Dum- he said you should take the offer, it'd save them all from having to listen to me whine about my back, if only for a day." He swallows.
Bucky didn't have a bad back, never whined about it a day in his life.
"Fuck," somebody mutters, but Steve doesn't pay attention. He's looking at Bucky, who seems lost in the memory, the tightness around his eyes loosening a little as he remembers how well they slept in that bed. And how well they didn't sleep.
"It was the last time I slept in a proper bed until..." Bucky trails off, face going flat and tight again, and this is not where Steve wanted for this to go, so he scrambles for another memory.
"Remember that summer I was sick?"
It takes Bucky a second, two, before he swallows. "Which one?"
"We were living in that tiny place off Bedford Ave," Steve spins the story. It's not a particularly significant memory, not like the other, just something nice, pleasant. "Mrs. Debeukelen from down the hall kept making chicken soup with rice for us."
"You hate rice," Bucky says after a moment, voice rough and a little bleak, but he's not lost in memories anymore – at least not bad ones. "Also it was for you, because you kept carryin' her bags even though you were as likely to keel over as she."
It's probably even true, Steve can admit it now. Had known it even then, but he'd always refused to accept the limits his frail body set for him. "It was for both of us because you kept earning twice as much as me and never said a word about it," he disagrees calmly. Steve hadn't really managed to keep his jobs, everyone who was willing to give him a chance eventually firing him, because he just wasn't physically capable to do most jobs and always got sick. His best gig had been as a teaching assistant at art school, and the occasional portrait, sketch or comic he managed to sell. "And in July she bought us ice cream because she thought it was your birthday."
"It was yours," Bucky says.
"She said I was clearly a winter child, and you were obviously a summer child," Steve informs him, as he had then. Belatedly the irony occurs to him and he has to suppress a wince.
Bucky doesn't have the same restraint; he barks a choked laugh that sounds more like a sob, and then it becomes a sob, and then he's crying. Steve wraps both arms around him and pulls him as close as can be, holds him tight and squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn't lose it as well. He needs to keep it together.
"Steve," Bucky gasps, "Steve, the things I did- you shouldn't, I should be taken around the corner and shot-"
That is seriously painful to hear; the thought alone, not just of it happening but of Bucky honestly believing he deserves it, makes nausea churn in Steve's belly. "What you did, did you do it out of your own free will?"
Bucky's gasping into his neck, eyelashes wet against his skin and fingers curled into a fist around Steve's belt; it takes him a second, another, to react to the question. "I did, I just did what they told me to do. I didn't even question them."
Slowly, Steve exhales. The Bucky he knows never met an order he didn't question, even if he learned to feign obedience well enough until Steve came along and became his CO. "What happened if you disobeyed?"
It's not a question he wants to ask; those are the memories he's been trying to keep Bucky away from but right now it's necessary to draw them up. In his arms Bucky shudders and whispers, very quietly, "Wipe him."
It's clearly a quote, and Steve shudders, tries not to think about it because if he does he'll get furious and Bucky needs him right now to ground him.
So he takes a breath, lets it out slowly, and then says as calmly as he can, "That's not choice. It's the absolute opposite of it. You were a prisoner and they took everything from you. You can't be held accountable for what you did on their orders. You won't." He cups Bucky's head to his neck and presses a kiss to the side of it, and he doesn't look at any member of his team when he says, "If anybody tries, I won't let them," but he knows that they know that this is also for them. He doesn't know if they would but it doesn't matter. This is his line in the sand: he'll always side with Bucky. Always.
Bucky shivers in his arms, still crying, and Steve squeezes him a little, mouth in his hair as he whispers, "I got you" again and again until they both know it.