Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Once Bucky had finished getting into his uniform, he knew he ought to heft his bag and leave. He was dawdling; he'd ate a leisurely breakfast with Steve instead of hurrying thru the motions to get to his dutymaster early and in good nick. Dressed, Bucky sat on the bed and watched Steve read.

Steve sat at the rickety table he'd tucked under his only window, his blond hair lit by the bare sunlight that made it down the dumbbell shaft. Steve's drawing supplies were shoved to one corner and overlaid by his newspapers. It was July, and Steve had a brick tucked under the window to hold it open, a paltry breeze encouraged by the open transom of the hallway door. Steve's hands were still smudged and inky from the job he'd gotten as a newspaper typesetter, leaving marks on the newspapers' edges as he turned pages. He was thinner than he'd been when Bucky had left with his draft card, but if he was telling the truth, he hadn't been sick in months. Bucky supposed it was the luck that came with a steady paycheque.

Steve's new apartment was just a room-and-a-half, a larger apartment converted into two smaller ones by a landlord trying to stretch his building's windows into as many units as he could. Steve's neighbour had a half-room too, with the other window of what used to be a small parlour. Steve lived in what must have been the smaller bedroom of the original apartment, just a door to the stairs and hall and a little radiator that clanked even in the summer. It had woken Bucky up every morning he'd been back, jolting him awake and reaching for a gun he didn't have.

Bucky had thought his furlough might last at least a fortnight, even if he'd known he wouldn't get the month of leave he'd been promised. He'd hoped he'd have enough time here at home that he wouldn't forget how warm and safe home was once he was cold and afraid at the front again. For now, he sat on Steve's old rope mattress, twisting his hands and watching the love of his life scowl at the news.

'We gave Britain fifty warships for a few bases in the Caribbean,' Steve reported. 'They've started construction in Newfoundland, too.'

Bucky didn't say anything, just shrugged best he could with his elbows resting his weight on his knees. He was exhausted by the war. He didn't know when it would end; he didn't know how the world was supposed to defeat what evils were rising. The Nazis were monstrous, and rumours of an offshoot force called HYDRA had been creeping across North Africa when Bucky had gotten his notice of furlough. They were sweeping fast across Europe, so Bucky's unit had been called back too soon. It terrified him that he was going back early because things were somehow worse than they'd been.

'Sorry,' Steve said, shutting the paper and turning away from his table to face Bucky. 'It's your last morning. We don't have to talk about what's happening.'

Bucky forced a smile; he wanted Steve to remember him smiling, if this was really their last day, if he was going to war to die, or if he was leaving Steve here to fall deathly ill as soon as winter made that clanky radiator not enough to heat the space. Steve smiled back, climbing to his feet and crossing to Bucky.

'I'm gonna miss you, you know,' Steve said. Bucky sat up straight to let Steve pet his hands over Bucky's hair, not mussing its neat combing. His smile felt more genuine when Steve stepped close, standing between Bucky's knees. 'I worry about you over there.'

'You don't gotta,' Bucky said, sliding his eyes away. He was home in one piece now but he was far from at peace; he knew Steve could see thru his attempts at a brave face. 'You'll cover me in ink,' Bucky pointed out as he settled his hands on Steve's waist, holding him where he stood. Steve pulled his hands back to himself and gave a small chuckle.

'It's from setting the plates,' he said. 'It's dry by now; you're all right.' Bucky pulled Steve closer, wrapping his arms around and burying his face into Steve's shirt. He smelled a little like newspaper too, but mostly he smelled familiar: warm and sweet. 'I wish you had tonight. They told you you had tonight,' Steve complained. Bucky had been disappointed too, when his unit had been called back early. He'd been heartbroken when that early call had been made even earlier.

'I'm sorry I'm running out on our dates,' Bucky said. Steve sighed.

'I'm sorry we didn't have a last night together, just the two of us, for real,' Steve said. Bucky had thought tonight would be his last night; he'd gotten them a set of dates to go to the Expo with—they could have gone just the two of them, but it was harder every night of furlough to be alone with Steve without crying. He'd gotten them a date for tonight and yesterday had been at his parents' home until after he'd tucked his sisters into bed. Now Bucky felt like he'd squandered his time somehow; he'd been too shaky to be alone with Steve or to visit his sisters again, like he had thought he'd have more time, time to calm down enough to be himself. Now he was out of time. He was leaving.

'Come with me to the docks,' Bucky begged. 'Come see me off.'

'You're meeting your mother,' Steve said. 'She'll want to have you to herself. She's probably already miffed that you spent the nights you were back here, not at home.' Steve wasn't wrong; Bucky had already had an earful from his mother about keeping himself away. While on furlough, Bucky had plastered himself to Steve each night to sleep, cloying for comfort and desperate for rest and peace. All the same, he'd been distant and nervous because if he wasn't distant Steve would see how heavy the war felt to Bucky.

'This is home,' Bucky said, stubborn. 'You are my home. God, I wish I could stay here. If I'd been here and working, you'd still be in your ma's apartment. You wouldn't be in this little place.'

'Oh, it's fine,' Steve said, even if it must have been hard for him to be kicked out of the place where he'd grown up, where he'd been born and his father had died. 'Plenty of space when it's just me here, Buck.' Bucky didn't want to press; he knew Steve missed his ma's apartment. Bucky missed it, too. It had been home for them for long enough that Bucky had started to picture it on the boat here before remembering it was gone.

'I don't know when I'm gonna see you again,' Bucky said. He leaned back, keeping his arms around Steve, just far enough to try to memorize his face.

'You'll know where to find me next time you're here,' Steve said. 'I don't think I'm going anywhere. Think I've got a solid paycheque for a while in the plateroom.' They both knew it wasn't only moving that might delay their next reunion; Bucky could get killed or Steve could get sick. Bucky couldn't say past the lump in his throat that mail came late and out of order and he was terrified that he'd find out in a late letter than Steve had been buried by the state.

'I'll be all right,' Steve promised. 'You're the one I'm worried about, sweetheart.' Bucky was going back to war, and he knew better than anyone what Hell that meant, but he didn't have an ounce of worry for himself, not with Steve's slight form in arm and his heart audible when Bucky laid his head down on Steve's chest.

'You'll be late,' Steve said after a long time of just breathing each other's air. He made no move to pull away. 'I miss you. I have to buy my bread now. 'S not nearly as good.' Bucky laughed. The laugh was hoarse when it ripped out of his throat. Steve kissed his forehead, delicate and sweet. 'I'm not joking,' Steve said. 'Life's better when I got you around bringing me all the good day-olds.'

'When I visited the bakery, they gave me those little cakes,' Bucky said, reminding Steve of the day-olds they'd gotten when Bucky had visited the bakery he used to work at. The bakers adored him, and because their son was a schoolteacher, Bucky often thought he would be the one to take it over when the two got too old. He'd looked forward to it, in a strange way. He hoped he'd get to go back there when his draft finally ended.

'Oh, that was the best day I've had in a while,' Steve said. 'I'm glad I got to see you. It'd have been better if you'd been here all month, like they said, but I'm glad I got to see you.'

'Let me send you some money,' Bucky said, lifting his head again to beg Steve. He clasped Steve's hands, inky fingers be damned. 'I make good wages as a sergeant, and there's no point in saving them in case I get shot in the head.'

'Don't joke about that,' Steve snapped.

'I'm not joking.'

Steve shook his head. 'Your mother expects your wages to go to her,' Steve said. 'I know she's using some for your sisters and saving the rest for when you come home; she wouldn't appreciate you supporting me.' Bucky might not come home, but he knew there was no point in saying that aloud.

'It's not fair that you gotta make it on your own because I got drafted,' Bucky said.

'It's not fair my best girl feels like she's gotta support me at all,' Steve corrected. Bucky almost melted into Steve like a snowbank into summer. 'I oughta be the one looking after you.' He pulled Bucky's hands to his mouth, giving Bucky an ardent kiss. Bucky felt his face get hot at Steve's words. In a different world, he would have made Steve the best wife; he would have married Steve the moment they both turned eighteen. With Steve too sickly to be drafted, they'd have had a happily ever after no matter how bad things got in Europe, over the Pacific. In a different world, they'd have been happy without damning themselves in the eyes of God.

Bucky knew Steve didn't feel that way. Steve was an idealistic fool; he loved without reservation. Steve had no problem calling Bucky his girl and meaning it as more than a joke. Steve would buy Bucky a dress if Bucky asked him too. Steve was certain that what they shared was no different than what anybody else shared; to Steve, it was natural that they were together. To Bucky, it was something he had to justify against what he'd always been taught as a boy, what had crept into his bones like fact. Most of him lit up pleased when Steve treated him like a lady, like a bird who finally got to leave its aviary for the sky, but some part was ashamed he wasn't a man, not a real one, and that burned him with fear and regret.

'I wish—' Bucky tried, then stopped.

'What?' Steve asked. Bucky shrugged. He felt uncertain all of a sudden, like he was a liquid instead of a solid. He wasn't a lady; he wasn't a girl. He wasn't any of the soft or gentle things he wished. Bucky wasn't even a real man; men didn't love men like Bucky loved Steve. Men didn't feel so close to tears like Bucky did; men weren't so weak.

'I don't know,' Bucky said. He couldn't admit how much he wanted to stay or how unrested he felt after this short furlough. It was almost worse now, because he knew his shaky hands and stumbling pulse would do their darnedest to follow him home when the war was over for real. 'I guess—I guess I wish we had more time.'

'I'll be back soon,' Bucky promised without cause. 'Back with you.' He was a liar; he had no way of promising Steve anything like that. They both knew how little control they had over the outcome of the war. Even so, Steve smiled like Bucky had sworn him the world.

'Of course you will,' Steve said. Bucky knew it was stupid, but when Steve said it with certainty, Bucky felt safe.

'You gotta get moving,' he added, after holding Bucky's hand to his lips for another tender moment. 'You'll be late.'

'Come to the docks,' Bucky begged, standing. Bucky crowded Steve, desperate for more time they didn't have. 'Come see me off.'

'No,' Steve said, like it hurt him to deny Bucky anything. 'I can't.' He looked down, hiding his eyes.

Before Bucky could ask why not, Steve went on. 'I'm not having the last time I see you be with your ma glaring me away.'

Bucky's eyes prickled and stung. God, just like Bucky wasn't used to the noises of the city, he wasn't used to Steve breaking his heart. Bucky was used to yearning for Steve, missing him with all of his heart, and now he was here in front of Bucky and Buck's heart was aching instead. Steve said: 'I'm gonna kiss you goodbye right here and you're gonna be just fine 'til I kiss you next.'

'God, Stevie.'

Steve reached up, pulling Bucky down by his collar. Bucky went, meeting Steve halfway. Steve relaxed his grip on Bucky's collar as their lips met, sliding his hand flat on Bucky's sternum as if he wanted to feel for himself the way he made Bucky's heart race. Bucky grew dizzy as his knees went weak.

'You're gonna be just fine,' Steve said, close enough that Bucky could feel his breath. 'Maybe I'll try to enlist again, join you—'

'Don't kid about that,' Bucky said, even tho he knew Steve wasn't really. He'd tried to enlist once before Bucky had been drafted, and a few times after that. 'Don't do anything stupid until I get back.'

'You're taking all the stupid with you,' Steve grumbled. He straightened Bucky's tie, and kissed him once again. Bucky tried to memorize how it felt; it was over too quickly.

'I love you,' Steve said. Bucky tried to echo it back, but his throat was filled with glass. Bucky's father said I love you to his wife with such ease; Bucky was perverted enough to love Steve but he wasn't even enough of a man to be decent and honest about it. Bucky tried to speak, but he couldn't. If he opened his mouth, he was sure he'd start sobbing. Steve didn't seem to mind that Bucky couldn't find his voice. Steve smiled and stroked his hand over Bucky's hair, soothing. Steve took another breath from Bucky's mouth.

Bucky didn't want to leave; every part of him wanted to stay here with Steve, go back to the bakery, watch his sisters grow up. Every part of him wanted to stay home. Bucky didn't know how he could be strong enough to be a soldier when it felt like he'd be ripping his own stomach out if he stepped away from Steve now.

'You gotta go,' Steve said, his voice like a mourning dove's call. Bucky nodded.

Bucky did the hardest thing he'd done in months; he pulled out of Steve's arms and picked up his bag. He didn't look at Steve as he pulled the straps over his shoulders, then tucked his hat over his hair. Steve's apartment was only a room-and-a-half, so there was no where to hide once he had his things. There was no hall to go down or parlour to cross.

'I—' Bucky tried. His voice stuck. He looked up instead, taking in Steve, a few feet from him, feeling much further away than that. Steve looked like home.

Steve crossed the scant distance between them, reaching up on tiptoe to kiss Bucky one last time.

'I know,' Steve said. 'I know. I love you. Be safe.'

Bucky nodded, turning and opening the door. He closed it behind himself, and he took a moment in the empty hallway of Steve's building to press the heels of his palms to his eyes. He wasn't crying, he told himself. Bucky had to act like a man and men didn't cry. It hurt to leave like it would hurt to saw off his own arm, but he wasn't going to cry. Bucky huffed, swiping his hands hard along his cheeks. He straightened his coat and made his slow trek down the stairs.

⍟

'Thanks for meeting us here, honestly,' Ellie said.

'It's no problem,' Steve said. He sidestepped as someone pushed their way by him in the crowd. 'I'm sorry Bucky isn't joining us.'

'We got you this,' Ellie said, passing him a small packet of popcorn.

'Thanks,' he said, trading her Bucky's ticket for the popcorn. It was still warm; he could feel the heat in his hands as easily as he could smell the hot butter and salt. Bucky had told him the box's greenish stripes were really red, bright against the white. He offered a piece to the girls, silently holding it out to them until their silence made clear they'd refused. 'Are you—Do you wanna catch one of the shows?'

Dottie said something. Steve could read her apologetic tone on her face, but he couldn't hear her over the sounds of the rides and events inside. The fair was loud enough that Steve had to keep turning his head and leaning closer. It didn't make it seem like he could still tag along with the girls, when he was unsure what they were saying even just inside the main entrance. He leaned in again now, asking Dottie to say it again.

'We thought—Sorry—We thought we would go on alone,' Dottie repeated, leaning in. She made like she was going to rest a hand on his shoulder to lean down to him, but then she retreated as if she'd been warned Steve were sticky. 'The three of us.' Steve felt his eyes snap to Geraldine's, and then back to Dottie's. Ellie was already creeping away, so Steve nodded, unable to insist.

He forced a grin at the girls. Geraldine returned an apologetic smile; Dottie gave him one too, tho she must have been disappointed not to get her coveted date with Bucky. Ellie seemed to have less patience. Steve felt for her a little bit; Bucky was the one who was a catch, even with the reserved front he put up for most people. Ellie had been kind enough to tag along when Bucky had insisted his date with Dottie be a double. Steve almost felt bad for Ellie, waiting thru this awkward exchange after the date she hadn't wanted at all had fallen thru, stuck being almost rude when she'd only been trying to help out a friend.

'Thanks for—' he said, hefting the popcorn they'd bought him for the extra ticket. 'Thanks. I'll see you around, then.'

'Sure,' Dottie said. 'Maybe.' Steve heard the exclusion in her tone, the gentle rejection. Steve realised he wasn't the kind of fella who got to entertain a lady like these on his own, not even as a friend.

'All right,' he said. The tips of his ears were burning, embarrassed and hot. 'Have a nice night, ladies.'

They left.

Alone in the crowd, Steve felt frustration prickle under his collarbones, hot and furious. Steve was too short, too scrawny, too awkward to escort those girls around. Ellie had only agreed to come along because Dottie had been excited to have a night with Bucky; neither of them wanted to spend time with Steve if he wasn't the price of a better man's attention. Bucky didn't even feel like a man, and people saw him as more of one than they'd ever see Steve. The shape of Steve or Bucky was like crown-moulding accidentally painted to seal a transom; they would always be stuck the same suffocating way. Bucky would always be stuck acting manlier than he felt. Steve would always be stuck with women desperate to get away from him even when he had an extra ticket.

Standing there with the sting of being ditched by the girls made him wonder if Bucky had been a girl for real, if he'd ever have looked twice at Steve. Bucky was the most amazing person Steve knew. If Bucky had been a girl, he'd have been as pretty as his sisters and with his own wit besides. Bucky would been a catch in a dress, with full lips and a big brain and big blue eyes. Bucky would have had her pick of men if she'd been a lady, and no girl ever chose Steve.

Being ditched by the girls shouldn't matter to him. Bucky loved him more than air and the hypothetical world where Bucky were a girl too good for Steve wasn't worth worrying about. Steve hadn't even wanted the double date; he'd wanted to go out with Bucky and Bucky had been too anxious about going out alone, when they'd have to fill the silence themselves, not by flirting with a set of dames. It was stupid to feel rejected when the date had never been real, wouldn't have been even if Bucky hadn't been called up early.

Steve picked at his popcorn.

Wow, he thought he would be spending this night watching Bucky twirl some skirts around a dance hall in Manhattan. He thought he'd be amongst friends, maybe do some dancing himself if he could get a partner, but now he was alone with a box of popcorn. His little apartment would be empty again, Bucky's bag gone from under the bed. The apartment would be empty when he left late at night to go to his job at the paper; it would be empty when he came back in the early morning too. His bed would be cold and quiet and no one else would be there to warm it.

It was unbelievably lonely.

Steve followed the flow of people, unsure where he was heading until he arrived in front of a stage.

Howard Stark strut the stage, smug and proud and in a suit that probably cost more than a year of Steve's rent. Steve shook his head, at the lights and the grandeur and the fancy stage, this ostentatious display of prosperity when the world was at war. Steve knew inventors weren't exactly the people who could halt warfare, but Steve couldn't help but think it all the same. The news talked about the struggle to supply the front and Howard Stark was building a flying car out of high-grade steel for fun. No matter what crisis was turning, the rest of the world spun on. Life continued.

The car was beautiful on its own, even after the dancers removed the white-walled covers of the wheel engines which flew the car. They whirled and lit, lifting the car off the ground.

New York drivers were hotheaded and foolish; Steve didn't think adding a second tier of faster, flying traffic was a good idea for anyone. He thought it was less of an idea at all when the car's lifting wheels threw sparks and exploded, crashing the heavy frame to the stage. Steve wandered away from the stage as the people oohed and ahed at the mistake, clapping. He left to find a trash can for his popcorn box as Howard Stark brushed the mistake off. He stepped up out of the recessed plaza and wondered if the city had planned proper drainage for that staging area or if it'd fill with water every spring and rainstorm.

Steve tossed his box away and realised he was right in front of an enlistment booth.

The red of the American propaganda was a sort of sickly green to Steve, but he couldn't help but fall for it anyway. People had nothing if they didn't have freedom, and there were whole armies trying to weed freedom out across the ocean. They were trying to weed out Jews too, blaming them for the problems of the world. It wasn't as if Steve hadn't already joined Bucky overseas because he didn't believe in the things the Allies were fighting for. It wasn't as if Steve didn't believe wholeheartedly that he ought to be doing more. People like him were Hitler's scapegoats; Steve was the coward Hitler said he was if he couldn't fight back.

It wasn't like he thought war would be anything like the fair. It wouldn't be bright and full of laughter and inventions to better tomorrow. It would be full of darkness and blood and inventions to level cities more efficiently than the enemy could. It wasn't that Steve bought into the glory of it all, but he did buy into the idea that fighting was his duty.

It felt like fate, to be standing in front of the booth feeling as empty as the box he'd just tossed, when the booth might mean he had potential. Steve could become something if he got into the Army; he could save people, fight against those who'd carry out a genocide if the world let them. If he went to war, it'd be a way for his death to mean something more than it would if it came when he was alone here.

When Bucky had been drafted, they'd been afraid because Steve wouldn't have someone to keep an eye on his breathing on those nights when he was sick; there might be a bad flu season that got Steve sicker than everyone else in his building, and he'd die alone in the night choking in his own lungs. He'd been lucky so far, on one of the healthiest streaks of his life, but he knew it had to end sometime. He could feel himself losing weight and he couldn't help but feel like death was around the corner.

Steve wouldn't mind if his bad luck came while he was at war. At least he would have died fighting for something, not waiting for better men to solve things while he worked nights and then slept the day away, an afternoon sunbeam rousing him just before evening fell. It was bad enough that he was so frail factory managers laughed him out of applying for manufacturing jobs; it would be worse to never be able to stand up for others in a way that counted.

At war, he'd be protecting Bucky. Maybe somehow, they'd even fight together for real; Steve could have Bucky's back out there like Bucky had always had his here in Brooklyn. The worst thing of all wasn't that Steve was alone; it was that he'd let Bucky go fight a war by himself.

What kind of man let his best girl get drafted, then stayed behind like a coward?

Steve went in.

He signed the name Stephen Barnes, a foolish joke. He had used Steve Rogers twice, and a handful of other surnames besides. It was stupid, really, to try again. Bucky wasn't wrong when he said that each attempt to enlist made it more likely Steve would be caught. His other names had been completely fake, not even a first name that was his own. Stephen Barnes wasn't really fake, but it was frivolous. He and Bucky could never be married to each other, not by the state or the church, and besides: Steve didn't think he'd expect either of them to change their name, unless Bucky wanted his. Maybe he'd claim he was Bucky's cousin, to get assigned to the same unit. He felt squeamish at the idea of calling Bucky cousin to his face, but it wasn't as tho they could otherwise claim to be anything more than friends.

Steve handed his paperwork to a nurse, nervous despite feeling sure he'd get rejected and sent away like he had been the last five times. He had to sit and wait long enough that his nerves wore off. Steve reckoned he'd missed the entire next show by the time he was shown into an exam room, and he took off his jacket as the first doctor came in.

'Mister Barnes,' said the doctor, reading the file in silence as Steve laid his jacket over the chair arm. The name amused him despite himself, even tho he knew a fake name was far from the best way to enlist. He'd felt stuck using a fake one since he was refused the second time. It wasn't as tho the war was over; he didn't see how he was supposed to stop trying. Steve sat when told to take off his boots, trying to look eager and strong when he leaned over in a shirt that was too big for him.

A nurse came in, murmuring into the doctor's ear. The two of them swept their eyes over him, with expressions like he'd been misread. He felt like a grifter trying to sneak away with a jewelled watch in his palm. The nurse left. Steve hesitated in taking off his other boot.

'Wait here,' the doctor ordered, leaving the file with Steve's fraudulent form the desk. Steve frowned, watching him as he followed the nurse to the curtain.

'Is there a problem?' he asked. The doctor barely gave him a glance.

'Just wait here,' he repeated, flicking the curtain shut behind him. Steve swallowed around a sudden, anxious vice in his throat. He couldn't help a glance behind himself, at the sign warning against falsifying your papers. Steve wondered if he'd been caught. He was nearly old hat at trying to enlist; the doctor had never left like that before.

Better safe than sorry, Steve tugged a boot back on. Before he could tie it, the curtain flicked open again.

Steve looked up to see a black helmet marked MP staring back at him.

So much for trying his luck.

Steve couldn't believe he'd been so stupid. He was going to be arrested. Bucky had warned him last time that getting caught was going to be a certainty if he tried enough times. Apparently, he'd tried enough. What was wrong with him? Why couldn't he accept that he wasn't a strong enough man for the army to want him? Why did he have to keep trying to prove himself, prove that he was enough?

Why couldn't he accept the fact he'd let Bucky go fight a war alone? He knew damn well. He loved Bucky with his whole heart, and if Steve didn't die from a sickness or a bullet, he'd die from heartache with his best girl at war.

Now his foolish heart had gotten all of him arrested. He'd been arrested under Bucky's name. He was such a God damn fool.

What did they even do once you were arrested? He knew soldiers were court martialed, but he wasn't a soldier, not yet. Would they just toss him in a regular cell down at the precinct? He'd had enough trouble finding work without a criminal record (he'd been arrested at a couple of rallies, but the cops had always let him off on pity more than anything else; Steve reckoned that wouldn't work here).

Bucky was gonna kill him. Bucky had left that morning: gone for fewer than eight hours and Steve managed to get himself arrested. Steve felt like an absolute heel. He did so many things that were illegal without necessarily being immoral—loving Bucky was a prime example—and yet here he was getting arrested for the rather unnuanced crime of enlistment fraud. Steve didn't think there were too many ways around that.

Another man came in, holding a file. He wore a doctor's white coat and glasses; his balding hair was combed but in multiple directions, leaving him mussed and with the appearance of being flustered.

'Thank you,' the doctor said, dismissing the soldier. The military police officer left, flicking the curtains closed again behind him. Steve stared at the man carrying a manila file, feeling very small and as caught as a rabbit. The doctor opened the file and surveyed Steve for a moment, looking down at the paper periodically as if seeing who Steve had said he was in contrast to him now.

'Where are you from, Mister Barnes?' the doctor asked as he ran a finger over the first page.

'Hmm?' he hummed, when Steve realised that, having been so certain he'd been caught already, he'd forgotten his current alias's background completely. It turned out not to matter, because the doctor went on: 'Here in Manhattan? Or is it, New Haven?' He flicked to the next page in the file, to what must be a record of Steve's next attempt. Steve scrambled in his mind for something resembling a reasonable explanation for this. 'Or, Paramus? I used to live in Paramus, you know; now I am much nicer in Queens. But you: you have five exams in five different cities—'

'That might not be the right file—' Steve was an absolute idiot; the doctor cut off his unbelievable excuse and shook his head.

'It is not the exams I'm interested in,' the doctor assured him. 'It's the five tries.' Steve floundered. He knew it was stubborn and ridiculous to try again and again. He couldn't help but keep trying. There were too many reasons why it was the right thing to do.

'I am Doctor Erskine,' the man told him. 'I represent the Strategic Scientific Reserve.'

'You're not—I'm not under arrest?' Steve guessed.

'No. I have a question,' Doctor Erskine said. He shut Steve's file, moving to stand in front of Steve, looking down over his glasses at him. Steve swallowed around a nervous thistle in his throat. He wished he'd stood when the doctor had entered, even in his untied boots.

'Do you want to kill Nazis?' Doctor Erskine asked.

Steve felt bewildered. It was hardly what Steve had thought would be the topic of debate in a fraud investigation. With the sign burning in Steve's mind's eye from its spot on the wall behind him, Steve asked: 'Is this a test?'

Doctor Erskine blinked at him like it thought it should have been obvious.

'Yes,' he prompted.

'I don't want to kill anyone,' Steve admitted, after considering. Part of him wanted to say, damn, of course, I could kill anybody an able-bodied fella could, but that was pride speaking, and Steve didn't feel it with conviction. The God's Honest Truth was that he was an American, and they were supposed to be the greatest country in the world. They were supposed to represent freedom, justice, fairness. Sure, lots of men wanted vengeance for Pearl Harbour, and Steve did too, but really, he was exactly the type of person armed thugs would have killed if Kristallnacht had taken place in Red Hook. His ma had been the type of woman they woulda raped and shot in the back of the head.

'Then why sign up for war?'

Steve didn't know how to explain himself without saying something so close to his heart that his voice shook.

'I don't like bullies,' he said, insufficient.

'My best friend got drafted,' Steve said, hating how he downgraded all the intimate things Bucky was to him, ignored everything that made Bucky more than a friend and more than some fling, more than some fella Steve went with every now and again, like the boys at the drag bars sometimes implied. 'He's been fighting for a long time. How can I expect him to risk his life if I can't do the same?'

'I'm Jewish,' Steve admitted, wondering if it hurt his chances to get in. 'How can I expect anybody to defend me if I don't do the same?'

'Well,' Doctor Erskine mused, his tone impossible for Steve to decipher. After a moment, Doctor Erskine nodded, a decision made in the silence. 'There are already so many big men fighting this war. Maybe what we need now is a little guy.'

Steve was sure he'd misheard. The man spoke in a quiet, assured voice, with an accent besides; there was ambient noise leaking everywhere from the fair outside. Steve's hearing wasn't so hot, so surely he misheard. Before he could echo or beg pardon, Doctor Erskine continued.

'I can offer you a chance,' Doctor Erskine said, pushing out of the exam room. Steve grabbed his coat, hurrying to follow. 'Only a chance.' Steve was still sure he'd misheard, pushing thru the sharp noise of the metal rings as he moved the heavy curtain, tripping loudly over his untied boots like a child rushing after its mother.

'So?' Doctor Erskine said, looking over his glasses as Steve. Steve almost couldn't find his words, he was so excited at the idea of being taken seriously and offered this: a chance, an opportunity, potential.

'I'll take it,' Steve agreed, his jacket clutched in his thin hands. 'I'll take the chance.'

'Gut,' Doctor Erskine said, still facing his paperwork. 'So who is the little guy? Actually.'

'Steven Rogers,' Steve admitted. 'I'm from Brooklyn, actually. Middagh Street.' Steve wondered if the strange look on Doctor Erskine's face was in fact a hidden grin.

'Well,' Doctor Erskine said. He slammed the stamp down. He passed Steve his file. 'Congratulations, soldier.'

Steve looked as soon as Doctor Erskine had wandered off. He had to make sure he hadn't somehow misunderstood; it felt more likely that he was holding his own arrest warrant rather than having been told he was a soldier. Steve flipped open the folder and felt the last of the tension wrung from his body. He was going to war.

All this waiting in New York for the war to be won or to be lost or worst of all for Bucky to die while Steve followed the chaos in the newspaper text he set each night, looking into this file: all that was over. He was fighting back. He was joining Bucky.

The stamp read 1A.

Chapter Text

The night was dark and their lights were low. The mess hall was empty this late; Peggy and Doctor Erskine had taken to meeting in there late at night. Peggy had trouble being heard at the real meetings and the more Doctor Erskine tried to explain the metaphysics of the serum, the more he found himself in Peggy's boat.

This tradition of meeting here had started when Peggy had complained that it was too hard to get off campus with her work hours to get a drink. Doctor Erskine had given her a note as tho he was setting an appointment—because to be a scientist was apparently to have permission to be as eccentric as one pleased—so she'd met him in the mess late at night and drank his whiskey. Now, they met and played cards; they shared information and grumblings and sometimes, sometimes, the doctor would share things about his life before the war had made him a refugee in New York. Today they were drinking wine, another bottle the doctor produced like it was nothing to have such a collection in his SSR dormitory room.

'He's doing better than I expected, your man,' Peggy said as she played a hand of rummy. 'He's been diligent and respectful, eager even when he's challenged. He's a tiny little specimen, but he's kept up far better than I thought he could.' Peggy had had to admit, when she'd first set eyes upon Steve Rogers, that she'd worried about his pace next to these men who seemed so much more fit. So far, she had been mostly wrong to worry. Steve wasn't as strong as men taller and broader than him, but he had a remarkable endurance nonetheless, however unexpected. He kept up when by all rights, he ought to tumble behind.

'Well, when the senator said we could only have from the recruits, I want a dedicated recruit. How do you measure dedication in a man with one form? Bah,' Doctor Erskine said. He laid his discard and then refilled her glass of wine. He placed the bottle down nearer her side of the table; she took the cue and refilled his glass in return. When she had first come to America, she would get worse at rummy with each hand as they drank more and more. Now, Peggy could drink almost in pace with the old German doctor and not sway in her regulation heels on the way home.

'Rogers—I will tell you this secret—Rogers forged four enlistment forms after being rejected the first time.' Peggy's eyes snapped away from her hand of cards. Doctor Erskine met her gaze with a smirk.

'Good lord,' Peggy said. 'Why on earth—Why's he been rejected so many times?'

'He's not the healthiest person,' Doctor Erskine said. 'He has had scarlet fever as a boy and the heart problems from the fever have made him sick other times, rheumatic fever, the like. He has scoliosis, and asthma. On his first form, he admits to being colour blind, but not on the newest ones.'

'Are you concerned about the asthma?' Peggy asked. 'It's not associated with men of mental fortitude.'

'No, I am not,' Erskine said. 'No, I am sure time will tell that all this trouble in the lungs comes from the lungs.' He said it with such an assured dismissal that Peggy laughed. Doctor Erskine met her laugh with a smile. 'No, it is silly. The trouble with the lungs is in the organ, not the head, and I believe the serum will fix.'

'Someone who tries five times is determined,' Doctor Erskine told her, testing her German. Peggy nodded; she understood how significant it felt when so little of what they said made any difference in the endless debates after hours. 'Someone who tries to fight even when they are weak doesn't fight for power. I asked Private Rogers why he wanted to join and he didn't say to kill Nazis. He didn't even say he wanted to fight Nazis. He said he wanted to defend those who had no one else to defend them. This is important, to understand that our offence, the Allies: it is really defense of the good of man.'

'This impulse?' Peggy said, reaching for the word. Doctor Erskine nodded. 'This impulse to defend could do wonders in this war if your process can really amplify character. Can it make a weak man incredible, not a strong man incredible?'

'Bah, of course, it could. I believe in my serum,' Doctor Erskine said. 'Of course, we could find a strong man. But strong men have many flaws, so often. Hodge is a bully, and even with the nurses he flirts with, he displays his strength to win fear. Schmidt too was arrogant and this serum turned him into a real madman, grotesque.'

'It had the potential to turn him into something beautiful, like it does any strong man. But,' Doctor Erskine said. 'To take a physical weakness and turn it into strength is not hard when you compare it to the task of making sure the serum does not corrupt the character when it makes a man more.'

'Your accent,' he added, switching back to English. 'It is getting much better. You are nearly a local.' Peggy thanked him, turning over in her head the idea that corruption of spirit would be harder to prevent than asthma would be to cure.

'I wish I could just use you,' Doctor Erskine said. 'Most women—It is harder to corrupt a woman with power than it is a man. It's not impossible, but it is much harder. I could make you a dictator before you became a tyrant. The same cannot be true for some of our recruits. Give them a stick on a schoolyard—and we plan to give them guns.'

'Why not use women?' Peggy asked. 'Would they not let you risk women's lives as guinea pigs?'

'It was that they did not believe women could be made into forces of nature,' Doctor Erskine said. Peggy snorted. Doctor Erskine gave her a wolfish grin. 'How foolish. These senators: they insist I start with a broad, angry man, as if that is the only moral life form. It would be better to start with someone like Steve, or a woman like you: someone resilient, deductive, perceptive, sensitive to the feelings and pain of those around them. To make strong—physically—with the serum is easy. The hard part is to amplify the character of a person worth making more.

'My wife—Her name was Ilse; have I ever told you about her?' Doctor Erskine asked, falling again into English. Peggy shook her head, then reached up to push a curl out of her eyes.

'I hadn't known you were married,' Peggy said as she tucked the curl behind her ear. Doctor Erskine lingered over his next hand, fingering the edges of the card like he was trying to feel something else.

'I was,' Doctor Erskine said. 'Ilse Albrecht was her name. She took mine, of course, when we married. We met at the tour of the university we went on to be students at, and I became smitten with her immediately. I didn't get any way to write her before I went home, so I spent the summer dreaming and praying that she would be in one of my classes.

'I was very lucky,' Doctor Erskine told Peggy after a long silence, then playing his hand. 'She is in two of my classes. I was even luckier when she agreed to marry me. She is afraid I would ask her to be only a wife, and I laugh. No, I want to marry her and always have her nearby to tutor me. Ilse worked as a professor at my university, too, a different one than we learned at. I used to pretend her projects were mine so people would fund them.' Peggy smiled. It was a terribly sad form of kindness; it would not have gone unnoticed or unappreciated if Doctor Erskine had been her husband. She might have felt frustration and irritation, but it would have helped to have a husband who so easily admitted that he used his name only to help her.

'I couldn't have done the science Ilse did,' Doctor Erskine mused. He sounded like he ached from Ilse's absence. 'I could not have begun my work without her to teach me. It is much harder now that she is gone. There is more than one reason why.'

'Is she still in Germany?' Peggy asked. Doctor Erskine's face turned sad, losing all of the warm fondness it had held a moment ago like a candle snuffed out.

'She is dead in Germany,' Doctor Erskine said. 'She—Well, there is no body in Germany, but it is in Augsburg where she died.'

'I'm sorry,' Peggy said.

'I underestimated this war,' Doctor Erskine confessed. 'I lingered in Germany when all of the other professors made escape. I was arrogant and felt safe. I did not believe the people of my city would be silent if the university was raided. But the people were silent when the rumours came. The people were silent when they were occupied. The people were silent when their neighbours were deported and disappeared; why should they care about a professor's experiment?' Doctor Erskine lifted his drink to his mouth, drinking what was left in one gulp. It took him a long time to lower the glass, and when he did, it took longer to speak.

'Ilse paid for my complacency,' Doctor Erskine said. 'But Ilse was the progenitor of this idea, this serum. She—If she were still alive, it would be no delay to customize the serum for each soldier. Ilse could read genes like no one I have ever met.'

'The fact that the serum exists at all today is owing to the same idiocy that makes you fight to be heard in meetings: the Red Skull stole my serum and burned my notes, but no one touched my wife's.'

Peggy's eyes grew wide. Doctor Erskine didn't notice her amazement, wiping his eyes with a kerchief. 'My office was destroyed, completely. That's where she was shot. We were fighting the soldiers for—for our equipment and they—We were not as strong as trained young men. We were put in cuffs like criminals and they shot her. They made an example of her, with those blue guns. Even the cuffs went away, into sparks. Every scrap of her darling wife: her clothing, even her glasses. It was like she had never been at all.'

Peggy hadn't known that Doctor Erskine had learned of HYDRA's new weapons so—intimately, so terribly, in a way so foul. Peggy had only known brief loves in her time, nothing like a wife, nothing like a husband, but, still, she ached for Doctor Erskine. She ached at the idea of someone you loved disappearing in front of your eyes, dissolving into sparks, impossible and dead.

'My mother's wedding ring, too,' Doctor Erskine said. 'My Ilse was gone.'

Peggy tried to think of what to say, how to ease the broken look on Doctor Erskine's face. 'If she'd stayed in her office, if she'd hidden, somehow, they would never have looked for her,' Doctor Erskine said. 'If she'd hidden instead of coming to fight, they would never have found her. They didn't burn a single one of her notebooks. Those books, her desk: all had the same work, so clearly. It was just in her writing. They assumed it was nothing because it belonged to her.

'This is why I am so determined to get the right man,' Doctor Erskine said. 'We would not be here at all if they had not underestimated her. We must make sure we do not overestimate someone, and waste the only chance I have to make her legacy real.' Peggy nodded.

'But she would be here too if I had been better,' Doctor Erskine finished.

He put down his cards, the game over even if no one had won. Peggy set down her cards too, exhausted suddenly by a heartbreak that wasn't really hers. 'She would be here if I had been more careful. If I had been as cautious as she deserved.'

⍟

Peggy waited for the men to make their way around to her on the track, huffing and puffing in the dirt. They raised clouds of dust behind them, leaving Rogers to cough his way thru them as he desperately tried to keep up.

She had read the description of the serum and she agreed with Erskine's logic, that a serum meant to amplify what's inside a man would be best served by a man whose only virtues had come from within. Rogers was brave and empathetic and kind; he wasn't accustomed to strength and wouldn't forget its value.

The fact that Peggy believed in the theory of the idea didn't mean it was hard to understand why Phillips saw it as a risk. She watched Rogers run on crooked hips and knobbly knees. He looked like he might break under his own weight; she couldn't imagine him warping in the tube Howard and Erskine were building. She thought the serum would work, and she still couldn't imagine it. She waved down her subordinate, who crossed behind the first clutch of runners to her side of the track.

'Miss Carter,' he said.

'I'm an agent,' she replied. 'And I'll be taking Private Rogers for the day.' For the day, she thought, scoffing in her own head. Rogers deserved this day; he deserved every minute of Project: Rebirth and he wouldn't get it. The staff sergeant turned, eyeing Rogers' huffing form as he hurried along after the rest of the men.

'Take the little guy,' the sergeant laughed. 'We'll struggle on without him.'

'Private Rogers,' she called, when the sergeant didn't, fully prepared to let the group pass by them completely. Rogers stumbled to a halt, turned, and came back to them. He had stopped coughing, lungs whistling loud enough for Peggy to hear once he was within three paces. Peggy resisted the urge to ask if he were all right.

'Ma'am,' Rogers greeted. He made an aborted gesture, as if he thought he might owe her a salute. She held in a smirk.

'Come with me,' she ordered.

'Where are we going, ma'am?' he asked, hurrying alongside her. Her legs were longer, and even in heels in the camp gravel, her stride carried her faster than his did.

'Colonel Phillips wants to transfer you,' Peggy admitted. There was no point in waiting until they were in front of Phillips to tell him the bad news.

'Transfer me?' he echoed. 'I thought Doctor Erskine wanted me here.'

'He does,' Peggy agreed. She'd thought Doctor Erskine had enough influence to really be the one who would pick from the crop of recruits. She'd been so disappointed when some fool soldier had made the call to take the brain's pick out of the running altogether. 'Colonel Phillips doesn't see it his way, that's all.'

Steve held the door to the base office building for her.

Colonel Phillips' office was littered with files and maps and had three phones on the desk. As always, Peggy's attention was drawn to the picture of his wife, framed on the bookshelf, no clutter surrounding it. It was odd to see Colonel Phillips beam like that, even if the woman beside him in the photo was beaming right back at him. He was such a gruff man, and he was more impatient with Peggy than the other training officers. It was odd to be stifled as a woman but still feel a man might be a good husband.

'Skinny,' Colonel Phillips said. 'You think you fit in with this crowd?'

'Yes, sir,' Rogers said.

'You're a foot shorter than every other man I got,' Phillips pointed out.

'Only four inches. Greenland's five eight, sir,' Rogers said. Peggy smirked and Phillips scowled. She lowered her gaze to her boots for a moment, trying to pull the unprofessional smile off her face.

'Look, kid,' Colonel Phillips said. 'I don't have room for someone like you in this programme.'

'I can do it, sir,' Steve protested. 'I've been keeping up, and I'm the smallest guy here.' He wasn't wrong about that; he kept pace when she ran drills, only a half-lap behind the others at worst.

'I don't need guys who can keep up,' he snapped. 'I need guys who can excel. You're too small for what I'm looking for. You're sickly and small.'

'The serum will provide the excellence you're looking for; it's the other kind that is more elusive,' Peggy said. Phillips sighed.

'I can do it, sir,' Steve repeated.

'Look, kid, I don't have a spot for you in this programme,' Colonel Phillips said. 'It was hell setting it up, let alone jeopardizing it with you.'

'Private Rogers has more potential than you're allowing,' Peggy said. Phillips had been there to see Rogers dive on that grenade; he'd been the one who threw it, trying to prove the point that the man they needed would be the kind to jump on it. She wasn't blind to this being an overreaction to being proven so publicly wrong. 'Give him a few more days, and you'll see it yourself.'

'You will, sir,' Steve agreed. 'I want to fight. I can do this.' Steve sounded far more sure than she'd anticipated, and the certainty in his tone seemed to give Phillips a second's pause. For a moment, Peggy felt hopeful.

'You won't be fighting where I'm sending you,' Phillips said.

'You're the same size as a rifle fighting'd be asking you to carry, for crying out loud,' Colonel Phillips said. 'I'm sending you to medic training. Your file says your mother was a nurse, huh?'

'Yes, sir,' Rogers said.

'So maybe you'll prove to us you can be just as good at her job as she was,' Phillips offered. Peggy shook her head, unable to contain her disappointment any longer. 'We need medics on the front. The Germans like to shoot the crosses like targets, so maybe the fact you're small will be of some value there.'

'Yes, sir,' Rogers said again. 'But I could fight, like any guy here—'

'You're not gonna make it thru the things I'm gonna have these men doing,' Phillips said. 'It'd kill you. Least this way you got a chance of making it to war, kid. More than that, you got a chance of making it back home.'

Rogers looked up at her, as if she was somehow his last resort. Peggy kept her eyes forward. She didn't have a thing to offer him. She'd been excluded entirely from the meeting where Rogers' expulsion had been decided, only learning when Doctor Erskine came to her in a fluster to see what she could do. Doctor Erskine was foolishly optimistic to think she would be able to help him when she was forgotten from meeting rosters on more occasions than this.

So far she'd failed to be heard as a sound louder than a hummingbird's wing.

'Go wash up, pack up. Agent Carter will take you to the med detachment.' Peggy couldn't look Rogers in the eye; she was a poor excuse for a superior officer. No one ever listened.

'If you'd give me a chance—' Steve tried, because he was nothing if not stubborn.

'Erskine gave you a chance, and I'm sending you out,' Phillips said. 'That's that, kid.'

'But, sir,' he tried.

'Dismissed.'

Rogers left, hesitating for a moment before giving up. He gave up like he did every thing else, like he meant it; he didn't look to Peggy for help a second time. Colonel Phillips avoided her eyes best he could, uselessly shuffling papers on his desk.

'For the record,' Peggy said, as the door closed behind Rogers. 'I think Doctor Erskine is right with this one.' She wasn't ashamed to tell him that he was making a mistake, especially not when it was her last chance to make him see. He wouldn't even look at her; he grew angrier as he shuffled his papers instead. 'Rogers is your best chance at keeping a man sane thru this process.'

'So you really believe the good doctor's story?' Phillips asked. 'A crazy dictator with a red skull, bent to take over the world unless we provide the exact right kind of übermensch to fight him? Guns dissolving people into nothing?'

'I do believe the horrors coming from our agents in Europe, Colonel,' Peggy said. 'Why is it that you disregard good spies and men who know more than you?' Phillips threw his papers down. He finally glared at her.

'You think I ought to be sending that shrimp of a boy to face the red-skulled villain, then?' Phillips laughed. 'That shrimp?'

'I think given the chance Doctor Erskine could have transformed Private Rogers into something extraordinary,' Peggy said. 'Don't pretend this was an act of concern for him; you've simply guaranteed he'll be at war without the advantage this serum might have given him.' Colonel Phillips scoffed.

'The docs at the medic outpost will send him home on sight,' he said. Peggy dared to scoff right back at him.

'You're sure of that?' she asked. 'The boy with five enlistment attempts: you think he'll tell the truth about his medical history? Or will he do whatever it takes to do the right thing, and go to war, especially now that you'd taken what he thought was his best chance?'

'I'd fire you if I could, quite honestly,' Colonel Phillips told her.

'You've made that patently clear,' Peggy agreed. 'I was excluded from the meeting where you decided to transfer Rogers. I'm excluded from many meetings where decisions are made.'

'Well, I'm sure that's an accident,' Phillips said. Peggy set her jaw and decided not to yell. Men could yell and they could be commanding; Phillips would tell her she was hysterical. Her skirt felt stifling.

'If the Allies are to win in Europe, we ought to be able to work amiably between ourselves,' she said, keeping her tone as manicured as her nails. 'I am, after all, the best man for this job. The English would not have sent me here otherwise.'

'Maybe they wanted you out of the way,' Phillips sneered. Peggy lifted her chin. At times like this, she wondered if Phillips was right, if all the men she knew were as cold and derisive as this colonel. She forced herself to remember on the hardest days that this had been a coveted job, for which she and other competent field agents competed. It hadn't been meant to be busywork; the Americans had made it that way once they heard her heels.

'Sir,' Peggy said, as coldly as she could manage. She dismissed herself.

She straightened her belt before she left the office building itself, loitering for a moment in the entryway to gather herself. She felt like a fool. She hated that she felt at all; this training gig was supposed to be the easy part. The hard part was supposed to be making a supersoldier—an übermensch, fine—worth the risk of endorsing eugenics.

Peggy pushed thru the doors to the pathways outside. Private Rogers still was within eyesight; he was making his way back to the barracks like he'd been delivered a head blow, dazed. Rogers had his hands shoved into his pockets in a way that tugged at the shoulders of his shirt; it made obvious the scoliosis which was part of what had Phillips so convinced Rogers was a failure. She could read his sadness from here.

'Private Rogers,' Peggy called. He stopped, turned.

Steve's cheeks went pink but he waited for her to catch up. Once she was in front of him, she stared down at him and realized she didn't know what to say. She wanted to scream with frustration but screaming would do no good. He didn't say anything either, just looked up at her and waited. His little, pink tongue wet his top lip and his unconscious gesture made her brave enough to speak.

'For what it's worth, I think you would have excelled here,' Peggy said, and then felt like an idiot. Her opinion wasn't worth a thing. Rogers lit up like a candle all the same, a different type of hope on his face. He smiled.

'Thank you, ma'am,' he said. He said it like it meant something, to hear it from her. He didn't move to keep walking, even when Peggy stood there with an empty mouth. 'I hope they choose the right guy,' he said, filling the silence.

'You'll excel in medic training,' Peggy promised him, in case nervousness at where he was being sent was why he was lingering here with her. 'I'm sure. But you would have excelled here as well, Steve—Private—'

'Steve's fine. Steve's good,' Steve promised. Peggy recognised that as an admission that he too felt the draw she did. She looked down; she didn't know how to feel for someone as a woman when her womanhood was what had her on such thin ice here in the States. 'I—Well, I—Steve's fine.' The tips of his ears turned red; Peggy felt herself smiling before she could help it.

'If we're ever so lucky to meet off-campus, you could call me Peggy,' she decided. Steve was leaving. She might not get to see him much more; what was the harm? The world was at war and intent on burning itself apart. It wasn't like she was taken seriously enough for a moment of flirting to do her reputation any damage at all.

'I'd like that,' Steve said. The highest points of his cheeks turned red too, brightening worse than the pink her attention always brought him. Steve looked at her like her answer meant something; he asked: 'Will I? See you at the front, I mean?'

'I hope so,' Peggy admitted, deciding to reward his adorable flush with a bit of honesty. 'Very little of my time is my own now; it's the SSR's.' She wished she had given more thought to accepting this assignment in America. At least at the home front, she could do the gritty, hard work of actively spying. Here she had to deal with men like Phillips. Women in the field could make use of men like Phillips: sit close and pretend to knit so they—harmless women—could listen in when the men checked for other men nearby, not other people.

'I see how responsible you feel for us as a commanding officer,' Steve said. Peggy felt oddly touched that he'd been able to tell that. She felt responsible even for the trainees who tried to undermine her command; it was oddly touching for Steve to have seen her as something so far from frivolous. She felt frivolous now, almost flirting with a dismissed soldier. 'For them, I guess, the rest of 'em.'

'I wish—I would have liked to have seen you selected,' Peggy said. 'You would've been a good man for it.' She wasn't the scientist Doctor Erskine was, but she had taken the doctor seriously when he had insisted that character could be tangible. She could feel Steve's character like she could feel the heat in the sunlight. She could see the compassion he had for people; she knew his compassion knew no bounds if any. She'd once watched him move a snail from a gravel walkway, just in case it was crunched by a boot before it could cross on its own.

'I was lucky to have gotten in at all,' Steve said, giving a flat shrug. She wondered if he was lying about how much this stung, or if he really did consider being discarded like this lucky enough. 'Least this way, I still might make it to the front.'

'Colonel Phillips hopes the doctors at the medical detachment will send you home on sight,' Peggy confessed.

'They might,' Steve said. He shrugged again.

'I'm sorry Colonel Phillips doesn't believe in you like Doctor Erskine does,' Peggy said. She didn't know how to express that while she thought his frail figure could survive the process of the serum, she didn't know how well he'd do in the sordid and filthy conditions of war without it.

'And you agree with Doctor Erskine?' he asked. She hesitated. Steve gave her a hopeful grin, more impish than she would have expected from him.

'I do, Steve,' she agreed, smiling back. She saw thru the veneer of his grin, but she found it endearingly fake, sweet. 'I'm hoping he'll fill your spot with someone who might prove more suitable.'

'So do I, then, ma'am,' Steve said. They stared at each other for a moment. Eventually, Steve broke eye contact, looking down and flushing pink anew. 'I'm gonna pack. When do you want to take—'

'An hour,' she said. 'I'm going to try to make him see reason,' she offered, even tho she knew it was too late for him. 'You're the man for this, Steve.' Once again, his face filled up with light; it meant something to him that she held him in esteem. Peggy had almost forgotten what it felt like to be respected, even by someone smitten with her.

'Thanks,' Steve said, perceptive, 'but I get the feeling his mind's made up.'

Chapter Text

Bucky's unit had been delayed, but they hadn't been released from the transit base. Bucky would have loved to go back to Steve's apartment, try to make up for being distant and sleepless and unsettled. Bucky waited for days instead, crawling out of his skin with boredom. It had almost been long enough to write a letter to Steve: my love, been stuck at the port for a million hours; gonna be trapped here 'til the war is over; pray for me.

Bucky supposed there could be worse things than being stuck at the port. The ship could have sunk, rather than been held back in response to rumours of new German U-boats, glowing blue and travelling faster than the Allies had seen before. Bucky could even get the Brooklyn Eagle here; he loved the idea that Steve had had a hand in some of these articles, laying the metal plates down late at night while the rest of the city slept.

He also knew if he had been released to Steve's apartment: nothing would have been different. Bucky would have been the same nervous wreck and Steve would have had the same perfect guy whose perfect efforts still couldn't soothe Bucky's fragile nerves. Steve would have been the same worried man when his thousandth attempt to soothe Bucky failed.

The rest of Bucky's unit was still acting like they were enjoying their furlough. Only Thompson and Bucky sulked on their beds, the bottommost bunks near the door. Thompson was married, just after enlisting, and worried over her photo everyday that she'd leave him, even if she had his last name to carry around while he was at war.

Thompson had asked if Bucky worried that his sweetheart would leave him while he was gone. Bucky was afraid Steve would get the flu or a fever and be snuffed out while there was no one there to comfort him, but not for a moment was Bucky afraid that Steve might meet someone else. Steve might meet a girl and move on, live without the sin of loving Bucky, or he might want Bucky to be a part of his life forever. Bucky didn't care; he sometimes caught himself thanking God for the chance to damn himself by loving Steve, being loved in return.

Bucky looked up from his paper when he heard the hallway door open, beyond the door to their barrack room which was propped open with a brick in a desperate attempt to coax a breeze from the window.

Bucky was glad he'd noticed the sound of the door when the Colonel himself walked into the barracks room. Bucky leapt to his feet, scrambling to attention at the end of the bunk. The rest of his unit followed his lead. 

'At ease,' Colonel Phillips said after a moment of eyeing them up, taking them in. Bucky tried to relax his stance but he couldn't.

'Gentlemen,' Colonel Phillips called, walking up and down the line of men. 'I'm here today on behalf of the Strategic Scientific Reserve. It has come to my attention that our group of recruits is a man short. General Patton has said that wars are fought with weapons, but won by men. We are going to win this war, because we have the best men. And they're only going to get better.'

'Now, this programme comes with some risks, ones I can't get into, but ones that are very serious,' Phillips said. 'But it might mean a chance to become a better man. I'm looking for a volunteer.'

Bucky felt the men around him shift, confused and a little put off.

None of the men had come to war to become good men; they'd come to be soldiers, to avenge Pearl Harbour, to fight for America. Bucky got drafted. Bucky had gotten all the way up to sergeant not by trying to be a good soldier, not really, but by trying to be as good as Steve. Being a better man was right up Steve's alley. He figured they would have picked Steve for this sort of thing, if there was ever a person to see past his sickly exterior to the heart underneath. If Steve's foolish forgeries ever got him into the army, he'd be the best man they'd get, right up until his heart gave out.

Bucky stepped forward without thinking too much about it. He did a lot of things that way, it seemed. The Colonel turned in his pacing, coming to stand in front of Bucky. They were of a height, and Bucky resisted the urge to give a nervous swallow around the sudden anxious prickle in his throat.

'Name?' Phillips asked.

'Sergeant James Barnes, one-oh-seventh,' Bucky replied. Colonel Phillips frowned.

'One-oh-seventh was supposed to ship out over a week ago,' Colonel Phillips said.

'The ship was delayed, sir,' Bucky said, too aware of how long his unit had been held up at the stateside base. 'We're meant to depart any day now, but I'd like to volunteer.' Bucky tried to look manly, strong, better than he felt after so long at war and after such a short and stilted trip home to his family and Steve.

'Good man,' the colonel said. 'Pack up.'

'Sir?' Bucky said. He'd expected more, somehow. He'd thought even if the colonel took him somewhere now, that there'd be more questions and delay. He hadn't thought he'd be told to gather his things and follow. Surely that wasn't good enough by way of selection process for the Army? Was that it: good man, pack up?

'There's a Jeep at the gate,' Colonel Phillips said. 'I've other things to do, bigger fish. Agent Carter will drive you to Camp Lehigh. She's a cute little thing; you can't miss her.' Bucky opened his mouth to snap that WAC officers deserved respect before three things in quick succession; first: he reigned himself the fuck in because he was not Phillips' commanding officer; second: he realised the title of Agent did not imply a WAC officer; thirdly: he'd be leaving the men he actually had commanded and that was a cost Bucky hadn't figured in when he'd stepped forward. Finally, he shut his mouth.

'Yes, sir,' Bucky said instead. Just like that, Phillips swept out and the men relaxed. Bucky didn't at first. He absorbed the idea of a superior referred to by another as a cute little thing. Was he lucky to be a man at times like these, even if he felt stifled by his manliness most days? He would never be condescended to quite like that by Phillips, but Bucky would never have been drafted, either, in a world where he was a real lady, if Bucky were Steve's wife.

The outer door banged shut and Bucky wondered what he'd gotten himself into.

Bucky felt very strange, packing up his bag as the rest of his unit fell out of attention and into a kind of confused disarray. None of them had really unpacked; he only had a book and his extra blanket to pack away. Steve had had some of his civilian clothes for him when he'd visited; his mother had had his best suit for him when he'd joined them at church. Even after a week in the transit base, it still felt strange to be packing without any things to take with him that were actually his, that were more personal than a photo or two.

John Corelli was staring at him when Bucky turned around.

'What's gonna happen to us?' Corelli asked. Corelli had been drafted just after Bucky had been promoted. Bucky had felt for the kid. He'd been drafted a long time ago, it seemed; he could barely remember being as young as Corelli sounded.

'You'll get a new sergeant,' Bucky said. He tried to make it sound simple. 'You'll be all right.'

'We're going back without you?' Corelli asked. Bucky shrugged.

'I'll meet you over there,' he said. He pulled Corelli into a hug, squeezing his neck a little. 'Enjoy your next days before the ship comes, all right?' Bucky let go. 'Boys?'

There was a murmur of agreement from his squad as they took that final, informal order. Bucky took a breath to steady himself. 'You listen to your new sergeant when they come.'

'New sergeant ain't gonna hug people goodbye,' Frank grumbled.

'Well, shit,' Bucky said. 'You better get yours now, then, if they're runnin' out.' He pulled Frank into a hug, pretending to have the force and grace of a bear for a moment. Frank actually clapped him on the back, a sincere but gruff addition to Bucky's hug.

'Take care of yourself,' Frank ordered, like he was gonna be the next sergeant. Bucky didn't think Frank would be such a bad choice, if he could remember to be kind.

'You too,' Bucky replied. 'Look after the others, all right?' Frank nodded. Bucky hugged the rest of his men, too. He loitered, saying a real goodbye to each young man he might never see again, each young man who might be the next one in their unit sent home in a bag. He hoped Agent Carter, whoever she was, might understand the delay.

He gave Corelli another hug when the kid reached for a second, after Bucky had made his rounds.

Bucky was only a year or so older than Corelli, but they'd always had a relationship akin to brothers. Bucky had lived the life of the freshly drafted man, just done so before Corelli; he'd looked out for the challenges only he seemed to know about. Bucky had imagined if he'd been a real man he would have felt for Steve what he felt for Corelli: a friendly, brotherly, easy affection.

'You'll be just fine, kiddo,' Bucky lied, because he had no way to promise that. 'We'll see each other at the front, huh?'

'Yeah,' Corelli agreed. 'Yeah, Sarge, I'll see you again soon.'

'All right, men,' Bucky called. 'Be good. 'Til I see you again.'

He made his way into the hallway and out to the front of the barracks. The main gate wasn't far, and soon, Bucky made his way past the security check to spot Agent Carter.

Bucky couldn't miss her, indeed: she was beautiful and had a strong, substantial frame. He could spot under the low hem of her tailored jacket the telltale bump of a handgun. She looked up at him when he appeared; her eyes were exact as they were sharp and Bucky bet her aim might rival his. Her hair was perfectly rolled and Bucky ached to watch her fingers make them in the mornings, watch her pin them in place.

'Good afternoon, Sergeant,' a woman said, greeting him without straightening from her lean against the Jeep behind her.

'Are you Agent Carter?' Bucky asked. Agent Carter nodded. 'I'm Sergeant Barnes.' He stepped half-off the curb to shake her hand. She was manicured with impeccable neatness, but her hands were rough with distinct calluses. 'I volunteered for, uh, whatever this is.'

'Barnes?' Agent Carter repeated. Bucky nodded.

Agent Carter had a second cigarette rolled; she held it out in silence, offering. To take it, Bucky stepped close enough to smell rosewater under the smoky smell of tobacco. For a moment, as he breathed in that delicate scent under the acrid sting of smoke, he wasn't sure if he was attracted to her or if he wanted to be her. She was captivating. Bucky wanted to thank her for the cigarette, but was made smitten and mute by the way she materialized a lighter in front of his lips. Agent Carter lit him up and then tucked her metal away.

'A sergeant,' she prompted when he smoked in silence, staring at her like a swooning moron.

'I was drafted in September of nineteen-forty,' Bucky said, keeping his voice as level and professional as the agent deserved. 'Promoted in forty-one, just before the first service extension.' Bucky didn't know what else to say; he watched Agent Carter breathe in and then blow out an elegant column of blue smoke. He found himself staring at her lipstick, the red marks on the cigarette she held.

Agent Carter had hand-rolled the cigarette, and the one she'd given him. Bucky almost didn't hear her next question because he was so distracted by the idea that she'd rolled the cigarette he had between his lips with her callused fingers; she'd run her tongue along the edge of the paper to seal it.

'You've been a few minutes,' Agent Carter said. 'How was the interview?'

'There wasn't much of one, ma'am; I volunteered,' Bucky replied. He felt like an idiot saying something so simple; Carter had clearly expected something more. 'I was saying my farewells to my men.'

'You volunteered?' Agent Carter repeated. Bucky nodded. 'Did the colonel ask anything of you?'

'My name.' Bucky took in the deliberately neutral expression on Agent Carter's face, the way she cut her eyes away and hid her mouth behind her hand and her cigarette.

'I provided my rank,' Bucky added. He didn't know how else to mention that whatever interview process she'd expected hadn't occurred; Bucky hadn't been asked any questions at all. Bucky didn't know what he'd volunteered for, but he had thought the selection had been cursory. He hated standing in front of the superior to whom he'd been handed and wondering if he'd been selected in passing because she was in charge of him now, if his selection had been cursory as it happened at her request. He remembered biting back a reprimand to a colonel who called her a cute little thing. Bucky wouldn't have used the word cute; her beauty outshone the word cute and besides, Bucky could read power in Agent Carter's frame. He'd have called her formidable; in any case, she was in uniform and men ought to act professional.

'And was that that?' Agent Carter said. 'You stepped forward, gave your name, offered your rank: he selected you.'

'He glanced me over, ma'am.

'I am a sergeant,' he said, as if maybe his rank had been proof enough for the Colonel. Bucky had supervised a group of privates, after all; on paper, he was the most qualified man in that room. 'I was drafted during peacetime—American peacetime, anyway; I've been a soldier longer than anyone else in my squad.' Bucky reminded himself that it wasn't his squad anymore; he didn't know where he was headed, but he didn't think he was going immediately to join another one.

'You're disappointed,' Bucky guessed. He knew disappointment. Bucky's father was always disappointed with him for being too soft, too emotional, not tough enough. Agent Carter was disappointed too; at least Bucky could blame hers on someone else's problem with her. Colonel Phillips had selected Bucky like an afterthought and she had expected more. Bucky wasn't enough. He understood that.

Agent Carter shook her head. She crushed the tiny remains of her cigarette below a short heel, killing the glowing cherry.

'I'm nothing at all,' Agent Carter said. Bucky thought she might be grumbling. He didn't know what to say. 'Come; let's get you back to base.' Bucky crushed his too, and followed Agent Carter into the Jeep.

⍟

'Sergeant Barnes,' someone called as Bucky pushed out of the mess hall. Bucky held the door as he turned to see the funny doctor who followed them around during training with that clipboard. He was following Bucky at the moment, but didn't have his clipboard. He still had on the same lab coat he always wore, slightly too big for him and with pockets bursting with loose paper and pens.

'Good evening,' Bucky said, because he didn't remember the doc's name.

'Yes, hello, Sergeant Barnes,' the doctor said. He looked frazzled, but no more than usual. 'Do you mind if we share a few words whilst you walk?'

'No, sir,' Bucky said. 'That'd be nice.' The doctor smiled, following him on his way thru the main field back to the barracks.

'I am Doctor Erskine,' the doctor said, 'but you knew that.'

'Yes,' Bucky lied. Doctor Erskine wore a knowing smile, aware Bucky had not been around when the camp was still doing introductions and orientations.

'I think you have not been told much about what it is we plan to do,' Doctor Erskine began, 'but I think it is you who shows the most promise.' Bucky felt his cheeks heat up when that flustered him and he hoped he wasn't blushing. He wasn't a girl, and he shouldn't get embarrassed at praise like one.

'I'm glad to hear that, sir,' Bucky said. 'I can't say I'm not curious what you're testing us for.' Bucky wondered if Agent Carter had told the doctor how casual his selection had been. Bucky had seen the two of them sharing the backseat of the Jeep when the doctor accompanied Agent Carter on her training supervision, speaking together and making notes. He'd seen them eating together away from the other officers, holding their own court over their preferences for the experiment's specimen. Bucky wondered why he would be a promising choice when he'd been pulled in late by a colonel who didn't care.

'Bah, they are testing for a strong soldier to make stronger,' Erskine said. He huffed like he thought the idea of a strong man was moronic. Bucky was struck for a moment of a crazy image of himself telling Doctor Erskine how unlike a real man he was: a queer who missed his gentle work in a bakery almost as much as he missed the man he loved back home, a girlish fool who loved his sisters so much that he could bring himself to tears if he thought about them too hard or too long. 'It is easy to manufacture this type of strong. There are other qualities I cannot develop in a bottle; these are what I look for. The rest I can fix already; it is what inside that I look.'

Bucky nodded, absorbing that idea. Bucky didn't know how to ask Doctor Erskine what kind of man he thought Bucky was, what qualities Doctor Erskine saw in him. He didn't know if it would be worse to be misunderstood by the doctor or to find out that the doctor had seen thru him. Bucky certainly didn't know how to ask what the fuck Doctor Erskine meant when he said he could manufacture strength, or how physical strength could be easy to manufacture.

'You are the highest rank among our options,' Doctor Erskine said. 'Do you think this makes you a better choice?'

'On paper, sure,' Bucky said with a shrug. He'd been promoted in the field, when his units' sergeant had been killed and they'd needed to move forward to the next position anyway. Bucky wasn't even sure if the lieutenant who'd promoted him had known him, or if he'd just been a steady shot at the right time. He was a good leader—He didn't doubt that—but he'd gotten this rank the same way he'd gotten the spot in the programme: nearly at random.

'We're all soldiers, at the end of the day. I'm pretty good at what I do, that's all. I've been a soldier nearly two years—for over two years, now.' Bucky realised it had become two years last September; he hadn't noticed the anniversary because he'd been so determined to avoid noticing spending Christmas at war again. As they headed into the summer of forty-three, Bucky realised just how long he'd been in uniform and away from home. He felt so tired suddenly, more tired than he'd ever been hauling himself out of bed at three in the morning to get to the bakery on time, or those nights he stayed up all hours praying and watching for Steve's fever to break. 'I understand how it works.'

'And why volunteer for this programme?' Doctor Erskine asked. 'The rest of these men were chosen at recruitment. You are not recruited, yes?'

'I was drafted, sir,' Bucky agreed.

'But you choose to join when Colonel Phillips asked your troop,' Doctor Erskine said. Bucky shrugged. He didn't have a good explanation; he'd stepped forward and now he was here. 'Did Colonel Phillips tell you what we plan to do with the man we choose?'

The evening sun had just dipped below the horizon and the night's chill was quick to follow its coattails.

'No, sir, and when you say it like that, it makes me nervous,' Bucky admitted. 'All Colonel Phillips said that the goal was to make good men better. I'd like to be a better man.'

Bucky didn't really know what it would mean, if the experiment made him a better man. What was a better man?

Would Bucky still have feelings for Steve, if the scientists ran him thru some type of cure-all for sickness and physical faults, some weird process that could manufacture strength like an afterthought? Would his heart change to make him gruff and strong like his father and not a boiling pot of emotions-too-close-to-the-surface like Rebecca? Would he learn to man up and be brave like his mother had told him to before he'd left for war? Would he be like most men, and hate queers like Steve? Would he hate queers like his friend George Chapman? Would Bucky be fixed if he hated them or worse off?

'For example?' Erskine pressed.

'For example, with Agent Carter,' Bucky said, picking an easy story. 'I tell the other boys to knock it off when they flirt or when they don't listen, because I'm an NCO, so it's my job to help keep 'em in line.

'But she's a beautiful dame,' Bucky admitted, 'and I can't help but notice. A better man might not.' Bucky thought again of the first day he'd met her, stepping close to take that cigarette, breathing in the scent of her roses and the way it had lingered in his mind for days. He'd had actual dreams where she put her lipstick on him and then kissed it off. 'Agent Carter didn't come here to be put on a pedestal or protected like a lady. She's here to fight, same as me. I mean, I guess when she's not here, she's a spy, not a soldier, but—You understand what I mean?'

'I do,' Doctor Erskine agreed.

'She didn't come here to be protected,' Bucky said again. 'She came here to be taken seriously. I do what I can with the boys, but if I were a better man—' He stopped, shrugging. He didn't know how to say that a better man wouldn't have been entranced by her the way Bucky was. The privates were crude and brash in their attention to Carter. 'If I were a better man, it wouldn't be so hard.'

'This is a good example,' Erskine agreed. 'Agent Carter has noticed your respect, by the way.'

'She outranks me,' he said, stubborn. 'Nothing else to it.'

'You have fought for some time,' Erskine said.

'In North Africa,' Bucky said. Doctor Erskine nodded.

'Did you take pride in war, in the fighting?' Bucky frowned, his head jerking to look at Doctor Erskine. The man regarded him as tho nothing he'd asked were strange, peering over his glasses instead of pushing them back up. Bucky shook his head, wondering if this were a test. He figured it was.

'No, doc,' he said after a moment. 'No, there's no pride in war. I just tried to get my men thru it best I could.

'I spent my whole life trying to protect my best friend from bullies,' he said. 'Back home, when I got drafted, I really didn't want to go. I finally had a good, stable job; I had a home and a sweetheart. We weren't even at war yet. It felt like I was being stolen from my life, you know?

'Stevie pointed out to me that the Nazis are just bullies with a bigger target, and after that, going to war didn't seem like such—such a sacrifice,' he said, deciding on the word sacrifice after a hesitation. That wasn't quite what he meant. It had been a sacrifice to leave. No matter how much it had been the right thing to do: it had been a sacrifice for Bucky to leave.

Eliza had been ten years old when he'd been drafted. She'd been little enough that she still held his hand every day he walked her home from school. She'd been twelve by the time he'd gotten furlough; he'd missed her birthday by a few weeks: bad luck. Rebecca had been fifteen when he'd left; he hadn't been around to escort her on a double date when the first boy from the neighbourhood asked her out. Eliza would be thirteen now, and Rebecca seventeen.

Rebecca had started getting smitten with one of Bucky's close friends, George Chapman. One of the last things he'd done on furlough was take Rebecca out from under their mothers watchful eye to spend an evening with George at one of the dance halls Bucky and Steve frequented.

Bucky had felt like he was tilting a can of worms taking his sister there, where mixed couples danced as much as matched sets did, but George liked dancing with men too. If Rebecca had been offended by the matched couples around her, she wouldn't be a fair match for George, even if Bucky thought she was one of the best girls he knew. It was something crazy to see her cutting the dance floor like a grown-up, when Bucky could remember teaching her to tie her shoes.

Rebecca hadn't said a thing about the men and women who had danced in matched sets—hadn't asked, not even as she raved about the music she'd loved and the dance moves she'd learned. Bucky had almost told her everything that he felt about himself, but by the time he'd worked up the courage on the walk back, they were standing in front of their mother's porch. He was a coward; he chickened out. He couldn't say a thing with his mother eavesdropping; her mother would forbid Rebecca from seeing George and Bucky alike if she ever had an inkling that the drag club a block from where he'd taken his sister tonight was where Bucky had met George initially.

It had been a sacrifice to leave Steve, too, to abandon him in the scarce reality he'd live without Bucky in his life. Bucky had spent his whole time in basic jolting awake in the barracks; even with people snoring all around him, his ears tried to keep an ear out for Steve's breathing. He kept straining in his sleep for Steve's breath, waking when something made him think it had stopped. It had taken him weeks to sleep without listening for a wheeze.

'It felt like my duty,' Bucky said. 'Everybody deserves protection. I always finished his fights, so why not finish this one?' He shrugged. 'War isn't something to be enjoyed. It's not pretty and it's not about glory. It's about what's right, and it's about not letting a hateful man win. These shellheads don't seem to get that.'

'Stevie?' Doctor Erskine echoed. Bucky flushed. It was a diminutive pet name, sure; even Steve complained about it every now and again too. He said Stevie was name for a twelve year old boy or a fancy person's pet bird.

'Yeah, Steve Rogers,' Bucky agreed. 'My best friend from back home in Brooklyn.' Steve would have gotten the flag down in a second, gotten the ride back from Peggy. It would have meant a lot more to Steve; running in the heat on that dusty road would have felt like sandpaper rubbing deep in his chest with every breath. Bucky had just been exhausted and sick of the sensation of the dust sticking to his sweaty face.

'Steven Rogers,' Doctor Erskine repeated. 'Your best friend from back home.'

'Yes, sir,' Bucky said. Doctor Erskine gave him a kind smile, so Bucky went on. 'We grew up together, Steve and I. He'd get real hot under the collar with any sort of injustice. He tried for years to get in when war broke out, went out as soon as we heard about Kristallnacht. I ain't never seen Stevie so upset. It really threw him, hearing that.'

'A true travesty,' Doctor Erskine agreed.

'I think people here forget that the Nazis started their war in Germany first,' Bucky mused. 'Not to—I'm sure you know more about it than I do. You're from Germany; I've never even been to Europe.'

'No, please,' Doctor Erskine encouraged. 'Share your thoughts.' Bucky took a moment to collect them.

'I mean, they killed a hundred people that night,' Bucky said. 'Arrested some thousands of others, burned down buildings, and smashed windows, and vandalized shops. They went into people's homes and ripped their mattresses, their pillows, everything. Those people they hurt might have been Jewish, but the Jews were still German, weren't they? It was an attack on the home front by the home front. That's ugly; it's evil. People forget that, here.'

'I think you are correct, Sergeant Barnes,' Doctor Erskine said. 'After the first war, my people, they felt small. They felt weak.'

'And Hitler puts on a big show,' Bucky agreed. 'He made them feel strong. I get it. I mean, I'd like to think I wouldn't have done nothing about it, if I were German. I'd like to think I'd have resisted, like you did. But I get it.'

'I didn't do enough, Sergeant Barnes,' Doctor Erskine told him. 'That is why I am here; I did not do enough to stay there.'

'This war cost me my home,' Doctor Erskine said. 'I did not do enough when I saw hate rising and that cost me all the love in my life.' All the words Bucky knew turned to ash in his mouth. He didn't know what to say.

'You, Sergeant Barnes?' Doctor Erskine said. 'You are doing something. You were already a soldier when Colonel Phillips asked for a volunteer. He asked for a soldier to risk their life in a new way so that the Allies could end the war. This experiment is risky, but it has the potential to save so many.

'And with perhaps half of that knowledge, here you are,' he finished. 'You have done more.'

They walked in silence for a moment, before Bucky stopped outside the barracks. The doctors and international officers had the BOQ right filled up, so Bucky slept with the privates in the programme. They wore on him a little, but it also reminded him of his squad back at the front a little. It wasn't so bad.

'Enjoy your night, Sergeant Barnes,' Doctor Erskine said. 'Thank you for the walk.'

'Sleep well,' he said, as Doctor Erskine wandered off, humming to himself a vague, folksy tune. Bucky shook his head. What a strange man. Bucky liked him.

Chapter Text

The barn wasn't as cold as some of the structures Steve had seen used as hospitals here in Europe. He was just thankful when they had a real floor, real walls, a solid roof. It could get draughty if the wind came from the West, but anything was better than the billowing, damp tents that were standard field fare. Steve pulled back a sleeping man's blanket at gently as he could. The bandages around the man's midsection were dry and white. They were lucky; the bleeding had stopped. Steve hoped it really had, that the blood wasn't just hiding somewhere inside the man's abdomen as a deep, deep bruise.

Steve tucked the sleeper back in, sending up a prayer of thanks that the bleeding had stopped. It was too soon to say the man was out of the woods, but for tonight, he'd live. Steve was about to move onto the next bed in the row when someone hissed his name. He turned to see who it was. He smiled.

'Private Mabel,' Steve whispered in greeting. He tsked at the stitches across Mabel's forehead. He patted Mabel's blanket. 'You've been better, huh?'

'I'm a corporal now,' Mabel said. He lifted his hand, with another strip of stitches across the back, these more impressive. 'I've been better, tho. Am I going home, you figure?' Steve hated that it was obvious to him: Mabel was battered enough to get a real bed for the night, maybe two, but unless he went so shocky he went mute, he was headed back out to the front lines.

'Nah,' Steve said. Mabel winced like that was the worst news he'd heard since coming to Europe. 'You'll be all right in a few days. You'll probably have some R and R after you're discharged from the ward, tho,' Steve offered, only half-sure it wasn't a lie. Command had been getting stingier and stingier. Mabel deserved to have a nurse or a medic like Steve promise him a few days of peace. Steve hated that he was almost a liar as he did so. 'There's a village about twelve miles up the road. 'S nice, if you get to go.'

'Jesus,' Mabel said. He tried to shift his weight and winced again as he jarred his bruised ribs. 'I been injured so many times. Do you have to die to be sent home?' Steve laughed; even if the joke was too dark to be funny, it tickled him. Mabel chuckled.

'Yeah, but the first time it happens, they tell you to walk it off,' Steve quipped. Mabel's chuckle grew and then popped like a balloon to be a groan.

'Oh, it hurts to laugh,' Mabel told him. Steve was about to reply, to offer to ask one of the WAC nurses to get him something for the pain, when his train of thought was interrupted by the rumble of falling artillery. Mabel fell silent too, craning his neck to look toward the open flaps of the ward tent. 'Sounds like the front's getting closer.'

'Yeah,' Steve agreed. The clearing station was supposed to be thirty miles behind the front but it didn't sound like that anymore. Steve usually spent his days at the aid station, but the last few weeks, the line had been too volatile for an aid station. Steve had been spending his time at the clearing station instead, acting a medic sometimes and a nurse others. Every ward was understaffed and all the medics were overworked. The nurses were somehow working hard even than that.

The artillery sounded closer than it ought to be. It sounded like it was just over the next hill.

'I'm sure we're all right,' Steve said, not sure at all. The hospital wasn't a target, Steve told himself, even if the front was creeping towards it. Even if command decided to pack them up and evacuate them soon, move them further from the encroaching line, it wasn't as if the clearly marked ward were in danger of being bombed tonight.

'We'd be better off if we could send the dead back out to fight,' Mabel said after the rumble of a round of bombs stopped. Steve couldn't help but frown down at Mabel for that. 'It'd be something as freaky as their fucking weapons. They've got these bombs that spread this blue fire—it's awful. 'S cold.'

'Blue?' Steve repeated. 'Cold fire?'

'It clings to buildings like nothing you ever seen,' Mabel said, nodding. 'We don't got weapons like they do; they've got dark magic. We got guns. We're all gonna die over here.'

'Nah,' Steve said again. A bomb rumbled again, close. 'Nah, you'll get hurt one more time and be on your way home.'

'I fucking better be,' Mabel groaned. 'I can't keep going out there.' Sirens rose, coming close and fast. Steve wondered how bad it would be.

'I've gotta go help with the ambulances,' Steve said. 'Get to sleep, all right?' he said, as if there weren't bombs falling too close and loud and as if screaming and sirens weren't racing towards them. The barn had walls but sound still traveled. Mabel would be able to hear the doctors in the next building over. 'Do you need some painkillers?' Steve offered; that was all he could really do.

'They don't help,' Corporal Mabel said. 'Nothing helps. I saw that blue fire and I'll never know peace.' He rolled away and it felt like he'd slammed a door in Steve's face.

Steve left Mabel to help the others. Steve hoped Mabel found sleep.

⍟

I know there's a war on, so mail might not be a first priority, but since we're so close I thought the letters would come quicker. It must be because I'm in New Jersey and you're still in Brooklyn. For all I know, you've been getting mine and I just haven't yet gotten yours because Jersey can't get their shit together.

I can't say why I'm in Jersey but believe me when I tell you the reason is out of this world. I keep telling myself that where I am is safer than the front but I have to admit something could still go wrong. I wish I could have seen you one more time before I went thru this. I guess I can tell you I'm up for a test, and I'm hoping I'm enough like you to pass.

The door to the empty barracks opened and Bucky looked up. Doctor Erskine shut the door behind himself, trying not to make a noise while balancing two glasses upside down on the neck of some kind of alcohol.

'Evening, doc,' Bucky said.

'Can't sleep?' Doctor Erskine asked.

'I'm writing to my sweetheart, actually,' Bucky admitted. He hadn't heard from anyone since his furlough ended. If he'd been overseas, he wouldn't have expected anything yet, but at a base stateside, he thought he'd hear from his family or Steve by now. They were only across state lines; he had wanted to hear from them before he climbed in Howard Stark's insane tube. If he died in this experiment, he wanted to have something of his home fresh in his mind.

'One must always make time for love,' Doc agreed. 'May I interrupt?' He placed two glasses on the footlocker at the end of Buck's bed.

'Of course,' Bucky said, moving the letter, balanced on a book, to his bedside table. Doc flipped down a mattress, and sat heavily on the springs.

'Have you been together long, you and your sweetheart?' Doctor Erskine asked. Bucky decided to be honest as he could be.

'We grew up together,' Bucky said. 'Same block. We started going together in thirty-seven; I was—I'm older. We were eighteen and nineteen, respectively.'

'But now you are not married?' Doctor Erskine asked. Bucky shrugged. He didn't know how to say that it was illegal for them to be together at all, let alone for them to go to city hall to get married—Or a church, God forbid. He didn't know how to say that they worried the neighbours would get wise to them and rat them out—or worse: that the neighbours already were wise to them and, one day, Steve's cough would piss them off enough to rat Bucky and Steve out.

'My sweetheart's Jewish,' Bucky said, roundabout and far from the reason Steve hadn't proposed. Bucky would have made Steve such a good wife. How good they'd have had it if Steve could popped the question a few weeks after he eased Bucky into being forward enough to kiss him; how good they'd have had it if their families could have possibly approved. 'One of us would have to convert, and I guess living in sin bothers us less.'

Doctor Erskine chuckled, a deep sound in his chest. Bucky was glad he hid how much living in sin did bother him; with Bucky's shame invisible, Doctor Erskine's laugh was soft and sincere. 'Do you regret not getting married?' Doctor Erskine asked. 'It would have saved you from the draft, no?'

'I guess,' Bucky said. He'd tried for an exemption, as his father's only son, then by claiming Steve as a dependent, but the draft officer hadn't cared about such a common last name and certainly hadn't cared about some friend of Bucky's, no matter how Bucky tried to press Steve's privation. 'Probably wouldn't have gotten an exemption if I'd been married: sometimes I have bad luck.'

'Oh, don't tell me this before we try my serum,' Doctor Erskine groaned. Bucky laughed. 'Hush, hush, we are sneaking.'

'Sorry,' Bucky said, trying to be quiet for Doctor Erskine in the late hour. 'Why come so late at night then? You got the jitters?'

'I suppose I do,' Doctor Erskine agreed. 'This serum is very important to me and I would be very sorry if I killed you.'

'Thanks, Doc,' Bucky said.

'Of course,' Doctor Erskine said. He nodded, pleased with himself.

Bucky wondered if this were going to prove to be his last night on Earth, if it would be here in Jersey and not at war nor at home. If he were going to die, he regretted not being more honest on his last furlough. He hadn't said a proper goodbye to his sisters or his dad; he'd said goodbye to Steve and then to Ma at the docks, but he couldn't imagine either of those goodbyes being his last. If Bucky survived this serum, if he went to war again, maybe he'd have a chance at another goodbye, another furlough. Maybe he'd last, with the serum, to see the end of the war. Maybe the serum would maim him and he'd be home with Steve next week.

'Tomorrow will be a big day for you,' Doctor Erskine said. 'Are you nervous? Do you have any questions?' Bucky tried to think of some.

Bucky leaned forward, linking his fingers together and balancing his arms on his knees. After he'd been officially selected, and after the rest of the men were sent home, Bucky had finally been shown the lab where Howard Stark shut himself away each day. Senator Brandt and several others had sat Bucky down and finally told him what he'd volunteered for. Bucky understood, sitting across from Doctor Erskine, that he ought to be curious about how the machines worked, what the serum did, how likely he was to die. He ought to be asking questions about what exactly this serum would cure: would Bucky need sleep after this? Would he need food? Would it cure him of whatever perversions he carried? Would he wake up having fallen out of love with Steve?

'Why'd you pick me?' Bucky asked instead. 'I missed the whole first week of training, but you picked me anyway.'

'I suppose this is the only question that matters,' Doc said. He looked at the bottle balanced on his knee, and tilted it so Bucky could see the label.

'This is from Augsburg,' Doctor Erskine said, 'my city.' Bucky could read the German from his seat, the indications of a small, local distillery and the Obstler made of pears.

'You were right,' Doc mused, 'when you said that the first country the Nazis attacked was their own. Hitler took my people over in the same way he had hoped to take the whole world.

'Hitler knew of me,' he explained, 'or knew of the work I was doing—That we were doing.' Doctor Erskine stopped, stroking over the label like it meant more than the distillery it denoted. 'My wife was a big part of my work. Her name was Ilse, and I wish she could have been here to give you advice before tomorrow. Her advice would be better than mine.

'The serum: it does more than make strong or fast or tall,' Doctor Erskine said. 'Your anger?' Doctor Erskine said, like he was daring Bucky to show it. 'That will be made more. Your fears, your willingness to make someone suffer to win your goals.'

Bucky felt like he was sitting in glue: he felt stuck and unwilling. He didn't want to be angrier than he was now. He didn't want his resentment at his draft card to grow to fester or poison him. He didn't want to become hard and violent and cruel.

'But,' Doctor Erskine said. 'This is why my wife was so wonderful.

'Your compassion? It will grow,' Doctor Erskine said. 'Your service record is one of strength, and yes, it will be good to make better the leadership you've shown. But more importantly, this serum will make your empathy a more driving force in you. Your service record shows you are a kind leader before you are a good soldier. This is a quality worth making more, far more than any physical strength.'

Bucky wanted to fill the silence somehow; he should say thank you or something. Bucky should promise to live up to the expectations, but he didn't know how he could. Doctor Erskine thought Bucky was a good man but Bucky would never have come here if he hadn't been drafted. If Bucky could be anything in the world, he would never have chosen to be a solider, let alone one they wanted to make elite. Given the choice, Bucky would have been Steve's wife, and they'd have been happy at home. Bucky wanted that home with Steve so bad he didn't know how he'd breathe if this serum grew that wish any bigger.

He didn't know how he'd live if the serum cured him, set him straight, made him a real man. Bucky didn't know who he would be if he weren't Steve's best girl, if he weren't in love with Steve. He didn't know if being cured of his queerness would feel like a loss or if Bucky would understand how sick he'd been before, if he'd hate his former self and his actions, instead of sometimes stewing in mere shame.

'I believe in you, Sergeant Barnes,' Doctor Erskine promised. Bucky had no choice but to be the man the doctor saw in him. Doctor Erskine had made his choice and placed his trust. Bucky had nothing to do now but prove himself. 'But I almost did not win your selection. I had someone else in mind, so the Colonel had him removed.'

'That kid everyone said I replaced,' Bucky agreed. Doctor Erskine nodded. Bucky wanted to know more about the kid, but the other candidates had had nothing but peals of jokes about him.

'I had thought for a moment I would lose my serum to someone I had no faith in,' Doctor Erskine said. 'Creating this serum, making this possibility for humankind: I lost everything to achieve this. My town was stolen by HYDRA to gain from my work; my wife was murdered in order for them to steal it.'

Bucky tried to offer his condolences for that but his voice stuck in his throat. He wouldn't have signed up for this if he had thought it might cost him Steve's life. He couldn't imagine continuing after it had cost that. Yet, here Doctor Erskine was. Bucky didn't know if he were that strong.

Doctor Erskine nodded like he'd heard Bucky's empathy despite his wordlessness. 'I lost everything,' Doctor Erskine said.

'Imagine my relief to have been able to choose you.' Doctor Erskine looked directly at Bucky, then, sincere and solemn and it wrenched Bucky's heart. Bucky hoped he was enough. Bucky hadn't always been enough. He disappointed his mother constantly and he wasn't a good enough son to know if his father felt differently. He wasn't enough to keep Steve in good health, no matter how hard he tried, and if Bucky died tomorrow in that metal sarcophagus that Stark built, he wouldn't have been enough to justify Doctor Erskine's hope.

'Whatever happens tomorrow,' Doctor Erskine said, reaching down for his glasses and schnapps: 'Promise me you will remain who you are.'

'Who I am?' Bucky laughed. He couldn't help it; the request had taken him by surprise.

'You are perhaps not a perfect soldier, but a good man.' He passed Bucky a glass and Bucky smiled at the sharp, sweet smell of the drink. Bucky lifted his drink as if to toast, trying to think of what to say.

'To tomorrow,' Bucky said.

'Let it not erase today,' Doctor Erskine agreed. Their glasses clinked and then Doctor Erskine flailed, reaching forward and snatching Bucky's from his lips. 'What I am doing?

'You have procedure tomorrow,' he declared. 'No fluids!' Bucky snorted. He rubbed his face, the five o'clock shadow sharp on his palm. Bucky could almost taste on his lips the sweetness of Doctor Erskine's city; it'd been snatched a second too soon.

'Alright,' Bucky said. 'Hey, we'll drink it tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow?' Doc echoed. 'Tomorrow? I don't have procedure in the morning. Drink it tomorrow; I drink it now.' He poured Bucky's share into his glass and Buck laughed again.

Bucky had been nervous. He wasn't so much, now.

⍟

Bucky hauled the man out of the boat—holy shit—out of the submarine, out of some kind of futuristic submarine that was unlike anything Bucky had seen at war or in a propaganda reel. At first he couldn't get the man out of his seat, even with a grip on his coat. Bucky had been slow enough the man had gotten a seatbelt—a diving harness?—buckled over his shoulders. Bucky grabbed one strap with his free hand and wrenched hard enough to rip it out of the seat, then pulled the would-be pilot from his boat, breaking the other strap as he went.

The man screamed and struggled as Bucky hauled him up. Bucky realized that he'd dislocated the man's shoulder, breaking him out of the seatbelt like that. What the fuck—Bucky shouldn't be so strong to rip thru seat belts or break people apart.

'I'm sorry,' Bucky said, like an idiot, like he wasn't apprehending a God damned assassin. 'I didn't mean to hurt—I just—You murdered a man; who are you?' He contained an urge to shake the man, pinning him by his lapels. 'Who are you?'

'The first of many,' the man gasped. 'Cut off one head and two more shall take its place.'

'Nobody's cutting—' Bucky tried, but the man pushed one of his lower molars out of place with his tongue, bearing his teeth at Bucky with a loose, bloody tooth held between them. 'What the fuck!' Bucky gasped, letting go out of pure reflex, pure horror. Bucky dropped the man onto the brick of the docks.

'Hail HYDRA,' the man sneered, then crunched down on his own tooth with a sickening sound. Bucky reeled. The man gurgled as burning, sizzling foam rose in his throat and he choked, convulsing.

'What the fuck,' Bucky repeated, whispering to himself as a man died at his feet.

He'd eaten his own tooth; he'd poisoned himself with it. He'd foamed bloody acid at the mouth and shook to death. Bucky heard footfalls behind him, and the click of a particular set of heels. He turned to see Agent Carter running up to him.

'Sergeant Barnes,' she said. 'Are you all right?' Agent Carter touched Bucky's arm, as if checking him over for injuries.

'I wasn't quick enough—He had—God, Peggy, he had this tooth,' Bucky babbled, informal in his panic. Agent Carter released Bucky's arm, turning to the SSR man behind her. Bucky tried to calm himself without gasping. He was taller than he used to be; he had to look down further at Peggy than he used to and all of his joints felt like they were lit-up from the inside. Bucky kept his eyes on a small scrape on her cheek from where he'd tackled her to the ground, which had been covered in shattered and powdered glass. He had to look down more than he used to.

Carter hadn't appreciated the protective gesture of his tackle, but Bucky hadn't had time to apologise for it. She had bigger fish to fry right now, so he didn't know if it'd ever happen. He figured if he'd tackled a fella out of the way of a shot and a car, he wouldn't have felt the need to apologise for it, so maybe he shouldn't apologise just because she was a dame. She had fired exactly like a man in her position would have, so maybe he oughta treat her no different from he'd treat that man. After all, he was the one who was shaking; he was the one whose diaphragm was trembling with every breath. Agent Carter took in the dead body in front of them without a blink.

'Secure a perimeter,' she ordered the SSR man behind her. 'And get that camera out of here.' The uniformed man disappeared, back where he'd come to herd the civilians at the gate of the private docks away. Agent Carter knelt beside the body.

'The teeth are common enough in these new agents,' Peggy told him. She didn't chastise Bucky for his informality or the way he was shaken to his core by the way the man had died. Doctor Erskine had died in front of him today, but it wasn't a seizing affair. He'd slipped away, bleeding too quickly into his chest for anyone to do a damned thing, reaching for Bucky and trying to speak. 'HYDRA's a force to be reckoned with, but this—God, this was the worst way to prove that just because Hitler's done with them doesn't mean we should be.'

'The hit was successful, wasn't it?' Bucky asked; his voice shook a little. He hoped Doctor Erskine's death had been so quiet because Bucky was wrong about Doctor Erskine being dead. Agent Carter shoulders tensed. She looked up at him, away from the body she was trying to examine.

'It was,' she said.

Bucky nodded, and he let himself regret that wholeheartedly for a moment, before it had to be pushed down, too raw to feel when he had the obligation to do something that mattered. Bucky couldn't sit around crying about a dead doctor; Bucky had to figure out why this had happened at all. Good became great, but damn if Bucky hadn't failed Doctor Erskine all the same. He couldn't be great unless he at least got justice for the man who'd given his life for Bucky to have this—this freakish body.

Bucky pressed his hand to the spot where he'd felt the stinging of a bullet graze, the signals travelling thru his nerves far hotter than they had when he'd been injured at war before. He'd felt a bullet scrape over his skin before, but not like that; everything felt like the volume had been turned up.

Colours were brighter, more vivid. He could hear birdsong and birds' wings over the city noises; he could feel every minute shift of the wind against his skin. He could feel humidity rising off the water; he could hear voices inside the building behind them. There was so much more input to his brain; he felt frantic from it. He wanted to calm down, but there was a body at his feet and Bucky could smell its melting flesh and the weird sting of cyanide; he could smell aftershave and Peggy's soap and her rosewater perfume and the sweat in her hair from sprinting after him—There was far too much and Bucky didn't know how to begin to tune out enough information to speak.

His shirt had little damp spots that were red when he looked, but when he tugged at the hole, he couldn't find anything but smooth skin. He could feel absolutely every single piece of information brushing over his nerves, but he didn't feel a cut: not with his hands, not on his belly. His belly was unbelievably dense; he used to have a distinct softness over his abdominal muscles, even after time at war worked that softness out of his arms and legs. He had nothing now, no protection over his belly and its organs. He was skin and muscle like armour over skeleton. His shirt was too tight now and the tightness had stretched a bigger hole than the rip left by the bullet; it proved he'd been shot at least a little. He should have been able to find the bleeding line carved by the bullet, but he couldn't.

'Are you injured?' Agent Carter asked.

'No,' Bucky said. He lifted his hand from his shirt. His hand was larger than he was used to; his fingers were too long. 'I—I was.' Bucky sounded upset to his own ears; he tried to pull himself together but there was too much information from this new body for him to find the stays he usually pulled tight. 'I was,' he said again. He didn't sound more assured. 'I'm not now.' The wound had healed.

'It's really worked, hasn't it?' Agent Carter said. 'The serum? It's worked.'

'I, uh,' Bucky said. He struggled to hear what she was asking past the rush of feeling from his skin, the sounds in his ears, the colours and new peripherals of his eyes. Panic from seeing blood bloom across Erskine's chest didn't help him sort thru the urgent and new signals either. 'Everything feels like—It's all very loud,' he confessed, imprecise. 'It's like I'm bigger and so's all the—all the input.'

'Incredible,' Peggy said. 'It must be a lot, so take a slow breath. Try to slow everything down.' Bucky clung to those words; he tried to slow his terrified and stuttering heart.

'How did this happen?' Bucky asked. 'I thought the place was secure. Fuck, is—Is that lady at the counter dead?' Agent Carter nodded and Bucky felt sicker, somehow. He hadn't thought he could. The price for his new form was senseless.

'Along with two men who were in the street,' Agent Carter said.

'Ours?' he asked. Agent Carter shook her head.

'Civilians,' Agent Carter said. Bucky cursed again, mindless of being decent in front of a real lady like his mother would have expected. It was worse to have a body at your feet than a curse at your ears; Agent Carter wasn't delicate even if she was more of a woman than Bucky or most women he knew. Bucky watched as a tiny drop of blood welled from her cheek since she'd wiped it.

Agent Carter hadn't fully clotted and Bucky had healed without a mark he could feel. That set a nervous spark into his bones; he felt like a freak.

Bucky had known he was signing up for an experiment, and then he'd understood what it was to accept the selection, but now: he felt like a freak. He was taller than he used to be; nothing looked the same in the neighbourhood from eight inches up and he'd caught up with a speeding taxi like it was nothing, like he was chasing a toddler who'd gotten away in a street market.

Carter stood, placing something into a kerchief in her palm. She held the kerchief to Bucky. He took the cloth gently, to allow her to peel off her gloves more easily. She thanked him absently, tucking the gloves neatly into her uniform's cinching belt. Bucky did not eye her waist. She did not give him a small glance for doing it.

Bucky had thought she was beautiful before but with his augmented senses—He didn't understand how he even had room to experience attraction to her in his panic and the cloud of the million new details of the world—So much of him was panicking but he couldn't help but notice how his eyes could see her like he couldn't before. He could see mascara clinging to her eyelashes and details in her hair and could see a tiny asymmetry in the shape of her upper lip; he never would have noticed something so small but now he had—

Bucky tried again to pull himself together. Every detail in the world was hyperrealistic to him at the moment but it should have been impossible to notice beauty in Peggy with a dead body at his feet, the smell of acid-burnt flesh under his nose with a thousand other smells. His new body was foreign and unwelcome to him. With Bucky holding the lighter Peggy had taken, and with him silent while he tried to get a hold on his new senses, she pulled a notebook out from a hidden pocket in her jacket's inner breast pocket. He could hear each page turning but he could still hear the birds and the waters and people talking in the distance.

'What is this?' Bucky asked, pulling the kerchief's corner back carefully to look at the item. It was a lighter. Peggy ignored him as she made her notes. She bent back to the body to double check something she was writing. She took the handkerchief from him after she finished making notes in her small flipbook; he held the lighter out for her in a hand that was still shaking. She wrapped it back up and placed it into a pouch on her belt. ''S a lighter, Agent Carter.'

'I think it was the trigger for the bomb,' Peggy said. Bucky shook his head with a wince, turning away. 'I've seen the trick before—' Peggy began. He waved her off, a bit rude in his abject frustration.

'No, I believe you,' Bucky said. 'I just—' His voice threatened to crack again so he stopped. Doctor Erskine was already dead. There wasn't a real solution; everything that man had been had been lost. Would the brass bother getting justice for a scientist who hadn't exactly produced an army?

Bucky stared out over the docks, where he'd worked once and gotten fired from pretty promptly. A couple of workers across the channel were rubbernecking the MPs wandering around, the body that was only now being covered with a sheet. Bucky wondered if someone would crane the sub out for the scientists to look at. Maybe they'd want hardware, now that they couldn't get more soldiers.

'Come here,' Agent Carter said. She led Bucky to a quieter corner of this private dock, more out of sight as the storage building's buttress blocked them.

'What is it, Sergeant?' Carter asked. She sounded soft, like he was the dame who had to be handled with kid gloves when upset. He wanted to yank away from the soft stroke of her hand on his arm because he wasn't a fucking woman. He felt ashamed that Peggy was being so gentle with him here, that she was taking charge with a soft hand when he was supposed to be a better man now; he was supposed to be a supersoldier. He was supposed to manly—better—now; he'd been given strength so easy to manufacture that Doctor Erskine had scoffed about it, for Christ's sake.

'It wasn't supposed to happen this way,' Bucky confessed. His voice was reedy. He was glad they were for a spare moment alone. He felt his mouth twist in a sad smile; it was a choice to smile or cry and the best he could manage was this painful grimace.

'No,' Agent Carter agreed. Her grip on him went somehow softer. 'No, it was not.' As easily as Bucky could accept tender comfort from Steve, as easily as he could accept Steve coming right out and treating him like a real lady, here, from his superior officer: it felt like impeachment. Bucky was supposed to be better than this and instead he felt close to tears. All the physical sensations feeding thru him were more; his emotions had been similarly turned up. He felt like he was going to burst.

Agent Carter was a woman herself. She wouldn't find a real dame needing kid gloves shameful; she was a woman and she'd understand her peers. She still might find Bucky shameful, he thought; she might find it very shameful that not even undergoing an experimental procedure to cure all and improve everything was enough to set him straight.

'They're going to stick me in a lab, aren't they?' Bucky asked. 'Stick me with needles 'til somebody figures out what only the Erskines knew, huh?' Carter shook her head.

'I don't know,' she admitted. 'They'll probably see it as a waste of funding if we can't recreate the serum from your genetic code, or your blood perhaps.' Bucky stood with that for a moment. He felt like a waste. He'd failed to protect the doctor; he'd failed to capture the man who'd killed him. Bucky had failed to even keep his composure; his eyes were burning and Agent Carter was delicate as she handled him.

One of the SSR's military police approached their alcove of the loading dock when he saw earshot could be invaded into silence. Other officers had arrived to begin hauling away the body, so Agent Carter and Bucky began their walk to the official cars that would return them to base in Jersey. They'd been directed to a waiting SSR vehicle, and Bucky opened the door for Peggy by habit. She stepped off the curb to stand near to Bucky, uncomfortably close but with the open door as a buffer. Bucky raised a brow in the close quarters, challenging.

'You don't see me as a waste?' Bucky asked, before he could help himself.

'You forget I participated in the selection process as well,' she said. 'I chose you for a reason.' The pause was heavy. 'We chose you. If you get stuck in a lab, a waste it will be.'

Chapter Text

Peggy had come to the front to deliver Colonel Phillips back to active duty and to regretfully inform the Allies that Project: Rebirth had failed. Doctor Erskine had failed and worse than that, he'd been lost. Bucky Barnes was a success—freakishly strong and fast and tall and dense and seemingly impervious to fatigue, healing superficial wounds like nothing—but there would be no army unit of men as remarkable as Bucky was. Peggy wouldn't get the chance to see how the serum might heal a substantial wound; Bucky Barnes was the only sample of the serum left and he was going to be sequestered away in a lab, like Doctor Erskine's notes were under lock and key in the Stark Industry vaults.

It was pure accident that Private Rogers had been attached to a medical unit on their way thru the same base Peggy had come to in order to meet the Allied partners for whom she'd lost the serum. The meeting had been hard, confessing that Doctor Erskine had finally met the same end as his wife; both minds behind the serum were gone, and both spare samples had been destroyed. Having this chance to sneak off afterwards, to try to find Steve amongst the series of identical tents, helped the sting of Doctor Erskine's absence a little.

Doctor Erskine would have liked to see Steve again too.

She found Steve on the outside of the collection of medical housing tents. He was sitting against a feeble tree between two pyramidal tents, the noise of his tentmates audible enough. He had a notebook balanced on his knees, working in the burnished afternoon light. The orange light caught his blond hair, turning it warmer than it really was, his pale skin warmer too.

'Private Rogers?' Steve looked up from his notebook and his face lit up when he saw her. She smiled as he tried to hurry to stand for her; she could tell he was worn tired from the war from the way he was slow to get his feet under him. 'Oh, sit,' she said. 'It's good to see you.'

'Agent Carter,' Steve said, settling back against the thin trunk. 'You look so—Well, it's great to see you, too. I missed you, after I left Jersey. Wasn't as fun being shouted at by someone who wasn't you.' Peggy felt oddly flattered by Steve's stumble, the way he avoided complimenting her; she was so used to telling men off for commenting on her body while she was in uniform, but she was flattered by Steve tripping over himself to avoid it.

'Thank you, Steve,' Peggy said. 'Your tentmates?' she asked, wondering why he was alone in between so many voices. She hoped he wasn't still as ostracized as he'd been in Lehigh.

'Poker,' Steve said, hefting a thumb at the tent with a stove vent. 'We leave base for a clearing station somewhere east of here tomorrow; we're off-duty tonight.'

'You don't play poker?' Peggy asked. Steve shrugged, turning back to his notebook, comfortable even with her standing over him.

Peggy leaned over to look over his shoulder, aware from his SSR file that she was on his deafer side. His handwriting was neater than she would have expected of him: neat, floral loops at the top of the unlined page. She supposed his writing was so neat because he was skilled at drawing; he'd abandoned a letter—addressed to, of all people, Bucky Barnes—in order to draw. He had made lovely, quick sketches: three or four on the page, little scenes that were intimate without being indecent.

'I don't got a poker face,' Steve admitted as Peggy settled on what looked like the driest patch of grass with her heels tucked under her. 'I'm a rotten player. Don't like losing my wages to a bunch of meatheads every night we got off, so I don't play often.' Steve shifted his weight as if to make polite room next to himself for her against the tree. Peggy moved closer.

'Is that your hand, holding someone's?' Peggy asked. Steve lifted his pencil, like he'd only just realized he had returned to a private sketch with Peggy looking over his shoulder. Still, he nodded; she took his muteness for shyness when the tips of his ears lit up pink with a thick blush. 'It looks like a man's face,' Peggy said, passing Steve back his notebook. She said it to tempt him into naming Bucky but Steve made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a scoff.

'It's not a man,' Steve said.

'Well, then it's forward of you to be so glad to see me when you've a lady to draw at home.' The drawing looked like Steve's palm pressed to someone's cheek, the beginnings of a familiar jaw, lips. It looked like Steve was sketching himself holding Bucky Barnes, under a letter abandoned but addressed to Bucky too.

'We're not like that.

'Doesn't matter if I'm sweet on both of you,' Steve said. Steve said that like it was the simplest thing in the world, to be in love and still open to more. Peggy had always known Steve was a nut; she hadn't thought she would be drawn in by the craziness like a magnet to an iron peg. She wanted to know, then, what Bucky and Steve were like together, if not that. She wondered what it meant that Steve asserted Bucky's ladylike nature with confidence, like it were easy to understand.

'If we were lucky enough to all be in the same spot, I think the two of you would get along well.' Doctor Erskine had told Peggy that chance had brought them a man who had been a friend of Steve, their first choice, but she hadn't thought that the candidates might have shared this type of intimacy. Peggy looked down at the drawing of a woman, then, but she still saw Bucky's features in the incomplete drawing. She was convinced further by the beginnings of the letter above, lines crossed out then abandoned.

'We do get on well, as a matter of fact.' Steve looked up at her and then back at his drawing for a second, as if he was making sure whom he'd been drawing. He gave her a brilliant smile, hope lighting up his eyes.

'You and—?' Steve asked.

'I know Bucky quite well,' she said. 'I'll take a letter back, if you'd like.'

'Back? Where is he?'

'Stateside, I believe,' Peggy said, even if she knew exactly which lab Bucky was living in, which exam room the SSR locked him in each night to sleep on a rolling cot, under orders that were almost protective custody.

'Is he safe? He all right?'

'He's fine,' Peggy said. 'He's well,' Peggy added; if nothing else, his physical health was beyond peak. Steve grabbed her hand, too excited to mask his affection. 'Bucky Barnes replaced you; he's taken your spot in the project I represent—Or represented. It's all over now.' Saying it to Steve, who had been Doctor Erskine's favourite candidate, felt like the final shut of a book's back cover.

'There's not been any rumours about the project at all, and I've been listening for 'em,' Steve said, his voice pitched not to carry. He shrugged his little shoulders. 'I've never mentioned it to anyone, of course, but I assumed it hadn't worked, if no one else was talking about it.'

'It's confidential,' Peggy admitted, too exposed here in the yard, even under the cover of the poker game's noise behind them. 'But I can assure you Bucky is alive and well.' Steve nodded with a proud smile; Peggy could tell he understood from her non-statement that Bucky had been selected for the experiment Steve himself had volunteered for. He shook the hand he held, excited. She laughed with him for a brief, too brief second. His smile faded, growing into a concerned frown.

'You know, I realize I kind of—You've gotta understand—Well, I've—I admitted—I mean—'

'Spit it out,' Peggy ordered. Steve huffed but didn't take back his hand.

'Being a queer could get me arrested.' Peggy hadn't expected that.

Steve said it almost too quietly to hear. He said it with his eyes boring into hers; it wasn't a mere shy whisper: he was afraid to be overheard. He was afraid he'd already given too much away. Peggy felt her face twist with revulsion from the idea that he thought she might use the secret against him somehow.

She tried to school herself before Steve might gather the wrong impression. She thought she might not have been quick enough because he cut his eyes away. His hand withdrew. 'Could get me kicked out of the Army for sure. And Bucky—Well, it isn't my business to tell a thing about Bucky. I've sort of admitted things, thinking you didn't know who I meant.' He shrugged like a resentful child in front of an angry nun. 'You say you two get along, but maybe Buck wouldn't want me to have told—I hope you don't—I don't know.' He shook his head.

'I don't mind, Steve,' Peggy said. She wasn't sure she understood. 'I don't mind any of it. Still, it's a secret. It's safe with me.' Steve searched her, evaluating. 'I promise.'

'I wouldn't have—It's Bucky's secret,' Steve said again. 'I didn't know you knew him.'

'I won't be untoward,' Peggy said. 'But he'll be happy to know I've seen you.' She took his hand again, tucking her palm back into his.

'You should tell him I'm doing well,' Steve said, which made Peggy wonder if it wasn't true. She was still fighting the war, of course, but right now she was doing so from the relative comfort of a stateside army base. Doctor Erskine's assassination had been the most real violence she'd seen in months. Steve worked as a medic. Steve saw men as bad off as they could be without being bodies. For Steve, now, the war must feel like a different animal altogether.

'Doctor Erskine must be proud,' Steve said, 'to have gotten someone like Bucky.' Peggy considered lingering on the wonder that was Bucky Barnes, but she couldn't talk smitten about Bucky when the mention of the good doctor still brought acid to her tongue. She almost wished her eyes would sting instead; it would be easier to repress a teardrop than it would be to repress this rip of nausea, every time she thought of the waste of his death.

'Doctor Erskine is dead,' Peggy said. 'I'm sorry,' Peggy said, when she could feel that news hit Steve like a blow.

'What happened?'

'He was killed. I can't say much more than that.' Peggy felt useless that she almost didn't know more than that, only the bare facts of who the assassin had fought for. The SSR didn't know his real name, nor could Howard explain the mechanisms of the ship he had tried to escape in. They'd found the county clerks who had made the documents and identifications which had won the assassin a spot in the Senator's office.

Peggy wondered how many of Doctor Erskine's progress reports to the Senator went right to the Red Skull who had murdered his wife. Peggy wondered if her reports were passed on to the murderer too, or went overlooked and filed in beige, unread by anyone at all.

'Were you there?' Steve asked. Peggy nodded and he sighed. 'Fuck,' he cursed, immodest in front of a lady just like Bucky had been. It was wartime; Peggy couldn't help but appreciate Steve's pragmatism. There were far worse things than foul language. 'I'm sorry, Peggy.

'Did you get the guy who did it?' Steve asked. Peggy hesitated. It had been far from justice, catching up with Bucky to find him nearly in a panic attack above a cyanide-burned face and a dead body. It had been far from justice, for the dead assassin to be identifiable only by the alias that had fooled Senator Brandt. They knew who had made the false documents, but they didn't know who the forger had been paid by, or convinced by.

'In a manner of speaking,' she agreed. 'I'm sorry. I know Doctor Erskine had faith in you when no one else did—'

'You had faith in me, Peggy,' Steve said, interrupting. ''M sure it wasn't your fault.' Steve settled his head onto Peggy's shoulder, shifting close so that their hips met too. Laughter rose anew in the tent behind them.

Peggy admonished herself for such a public display affection. Sitting like this was too girlish and flirtatious and unbecoming of an intelligence officer, but she couldn't make herself move away. She was risking gossip and mockery if they were spotted sitting like this. One of her superiors might for some reason cross thru the medical housing tents, or a medical officer could run in the right circle for a rumour to reach someone with the power to keep Peggy a typist in England. Still, she didn't move away.

It felt nice to have someone lean into her like she was strong enough to bear them, to have her fingers woven between Steve's. It felt good when he stroked his thumb over hers.

'At least he succeeded once,' Steve said, 'with Bucky. If it could've been anyone, it's good it's him. Buck always pulled me outta trouble.' Steve spoke much more quietly now that he was leaning into her; Peggy realised this intimate position allowed them an odd kind of privacy.

'What kind of trouble did you used to get into, Steve?' Peggy asked, wanting a story if she were going to be risking gossip. Steve snickered without leaning away; she felt the laugh in his breath against her side. Her quiet voice wouldn't travel far but Steve could hear her.

'Ah, I got a big mouth,' Steve told her. 'And it doesn't cost me nothing to tell off an asshole—Well, guess it costs bruises, but those come free, so.' She scoffed at him and she could tell he was smiling. 'I work nights—Before I enlisted, the last two years or so, I worked nights, so it was more when—I was a bit younger, bit more hot-headed. But if I heard someone talking rough or picking on somebody, I'd step up like I had a chance of really doing anything about stopping it. I'd end up in fights, and sometimes it'd be more than I could handle, if I'm being honest. Bucky'd always show up when I needed him most, pull me outta trouble.

'He used to get so frustrated with me,' Steve told her. 'I'd make trouble and he'd lose his mind because I'd gotten myself hurt. Sometimes it was—bad, but even if it was just a scrape: oh, he'd come so close to shouting at me, every time. He'd make a good mom.' Steve said it without a thought; he was nodding to himself as he stroked his thumb over her skin. 'Bucky'd yell at me 'cause I made him worried, not 'cause he was angry. He's good like that.'

'Bucky pulled Doctor Erskine and I out of trouble too,' Peggy said. 'We would have been trapped with Private Hodge as a choice had it not been for Bucky.'

'Hodge?' Steve echoed, like the name tasted too much of salt. 'God, he's the worst.'

'I saw him kick barbed wire down over your face,' Peggy snapped, surprising herself with how furious even the memory made her.

Peggy almost hadn't believed it when she'd seen it with her own eyes: a soldier kicking wire down over someone in his own squad, pinning him down in the mud. It had been so ugly and competitive and repugnant. She'd been so disappointed when Colonel Phillips had shrugged off her report of it. Phillips hadn't been incensed at all; he had acted like Steve's small shoulders and gasping lungs earned him bullying and cruelty even from men in the same uniform as him. For the first time, Peggy had believed some of those who were against integrated units:

If a colonel was so unconcerned about his soldiers mistreating Steve, who, even if he was frail enough to be a spectacle, was still white: what cruelty might he overlook against a Negro?

Peggy burned with anger at the memory even now, weeks later; Steve shook his head against her shoulder. She felt him huff, annoyed. 'Bucky is—Well, you know,' she said, at a loss for words. She didn't know how to admit how she'd thought Bucky's lips were lovely, how his loveliness had only been made more when he'd come out of the Rebirth tube with a body like a Classical god. 'Bucky was so clearly the best choice. It was clear even to Colonel Phillips.'

'Bucky's wonderful,' Steve said, wistful. Peggy hummed her agreement. Steve shifted against her. He smelled like mud and wet cloth, but he also smelled sweet, like summer even here in the wet, cold spring. 'I miss him. Bucky shouldn't have—Buck was drafted, you know. He's not really a soldier. He's meant for—

'I don't know,' Steve mumbled. 'I get sick a lot; Bucky always takes such good care of me. Bucky was meant for something more beautiful than this.' Steve motion with his hand, over the sparse grass between tents. 'Gentler. I oughta be the one taking care of him and he oughta be somewhere better than this.' Instead of the sad sight of the base camp or the exam room Bucky lived in now: Peggy imagined a lush front garden and a simple fence, Bucky growing tomatoes and flowers.

'I know,' Peggy agreed. Bucky was soft and compassionate, even after months of active combat. She didn't know how Bucky held onto his gentle gestures, going so far as to admonish men who were bothered by softness.

'Haven't had a letter since his furlough ended. It's so good you've heard from him. I was worried sick.' Peggy knew Bucky had sent letters; she knew he'd written to both Steve and his family. She wondered if the SSR had been withholding his mail, keeping him in the lab building alone in more ways than one.

Peggy wondered if the SSR knew the loneliness that would fester, if they recognised how dangerous festering loneliness was, or if they didn't care about anything but what they perceived as security. 'I thought something was wrong, or worse. Will you ask, when you see Bucky, if he's been getting mine?' Peggy hoped she wouldn't find a stack of letters to Bucky addressed by his sweetheart; she had the odd feeling it was exactly the type of thing the Americans would do. Still, she promised Steve that she would check.

'You love him truly, don't you? This one who's not a man?' Peggy asked. It was one thing for Steve to admit an attraction to Bucky, or to call Bucky a lady in a way that didn't sound like a diminutive affection. It was another to actually love someone. She hoped she was right when she trusted her gut's certainty that Steve felt the same way. 'It's not that Bucky's the only one who knows about you.'

'I do love him,' Steve said. He sighed like his chest hurt. 'I miss him more than I can say.

'Bucky—He just always had my back when we were little,' Steve said. 'Buck never—So many people treat me like I'm not worth their time because I'm—People think I'm too small and sick to do most jobs; I barely got hired as a typesetter and all I needed was working hands. I'm shorter than you and a lot of people just look right over my head.

'And the men who go with queers like me: lot of 'em—

'A lot of men just like a little guy to push around,' Steve said. 'Bucky's not like that, and it's not just 'cause he feels differently about himself than most men do. If Bucky were a man like those men, Bucky still wouldn't treat anybody like that. Everybody he meets: he'd treat them right. He does treat people right.

'I always—I was always sick as a kid,' Steve said again, as if Peggy hadn't read his file, his many enlistment forms and heard the doctors at base lament his faulty heart rhythm. 'Every few months, it'd be a worry that I wouldn't make it thru the night. So I always knew I'm gonna die young. 'S gonna be something: my asthma, flu, a fever—It may as well be the war, you know?' Steve looked up at her for a moment and he shrugged. She hated that she understood his feeling—No part of her wanted Steve to die, but she understood why he'd be certain death was coming. She understood why he'd rather die for a cause than be drowned in his sleep by his own lungs.

'It's part of why I signed up,' Steve said. 'I haven't gotten sick in the past few years, not bad, not since—There were a couple times after my mom died, at the end of thirty-seven, but then Bucky moved in—but 's still a matter of time before something kills me.'

'What are you talking about, Steven?' Peggy asked, smiling as he talked himself in circles. His weight was growing heavier against her; Peggy wondered if her warmth and her contact was making him safe enough to be sleepy.

'I just mean—Well, I always hoped I'd find someone to take care of my best girl when I'm gone,' Steve said, his voice still a quiet murmur. Peggy cherished every soft syllable. 'I always hoped I'd find somebody to look after Bucky, somebody I knew, somebody—I wanted to see that Bucky'd have someone to love when I'm gone.' Peggy felt speechless. 'I wanted to be around to see how it happened, see how Bucky loved them too.

'I hear the same—You sound like I do when you talk about Bucky.' Peggy met Steve's eyes when he turned his eyes up to her. She could feel the weight he'd already given her response: no matter what she said, it would reveal how she felt about Steve, about Bucky. She wished there weren't a war. She hadn't had any time to get to know Steve or Bucky in a real way; she had dozens of little moments where she felt like she'd give anything to have more of them. Peggy could barely think about her own heart without feeling like she was squandering time she should be using to study maps or telegrams or codes or supply lists.

'I have the same faith in him I have in you,' Peggy said. She said it and tried not to feel frivolous. Steve was selfless and determined; he was making time to sit with her. She was entitled too. 'Tell me another story,' she said. 'And finish your letter.'

'Why?' Steve said. 'It's hard to write about life here.'

'I'll carry it back to Bucky,' Peggy promised. 'It'll be in his hands in four days.'

'I'll draw us,' Steve said, tuning a new page. He turned the page carefully, like he intended to finish its sketches and use the other side for more practice. 'Bucky'll get to see us.'

'I—' Peggy said. Steve shuffled against her to get a better angle to prop his sketchbook; she found her arm tucked over him and their knees bumping.

Steve's pencil started scratching their shapes. Peggy turned her face into his hair and breathed.

⍟

Bucky snuck into the bullpen, feeling lost when he found the room bustling. Phones rang and the babble of voices was still overwhelming with Bucky's new senses. Everyone wore suits and the variation of navies, browns, and blacks seemed strange after so long in the SSR lab where everyone wore olive drab or a white coat. Someone snapped their fingers at him. Bucky looked at an older, white man who was balancing a phone on his shoulder.

'Hey, Mister Big. What are you doing?' the man snapped. 'This is a closed department.'

'I'm Sergeant Barnes,' Bucky said. 'I'm looking to find Agent Carter.'

'Oh,' the man said. He looked Bucky up and down knowingly, like Mister Big's size had an explanation, like he was evaluating Bucky's worthiness to take up the space he did.

'I heard she's back this morning from Europe,' Bucky said as he stood like a nervous mare for inspection. Bucky didn't know where else to go. He'd known Peggy worked in this office of the SSR, but he'd known not much more than that. The man blinked at him a few times, then pointed the lead of his pencil to Bucky's left.

'Try that office,' he said. Bucky thanked him and wandered into the office he'd pointed to. Another man out of Army uniform stood there, facing away from Bucky, with his fists balanced on the table inside. The enormous desk was covered in papers and maps, and the man didn't notice Bucky until Bucky cleared his throat. He turned. Bucky recognised Howard Stark. He should have known; the suit was finer than any other. Bucky smiled as Stark shook his hand hello. His hand was softer than Peggy's and better manicured too.

'Hello, Sergeant Barnes,' Stark said. 'Good to see you again. The change is permanent, huh?' Bucky shrugged.

'So far,' Bucky agreed. 'Listen, I'm looking for Agent Carter. I was told to look here.' Stark nodded, a strange look on his face.

'Yeah,' he said. 'Yeah, OK. Close the door.' Bucky did. Stark rounded the desk, sitting in the big chair on the far side, and motioning to the wooden one by the wall. Bucky sat, still awkward with his extra inches of height, a little too sharply. Stark didn't comment, just hauled his feet up onto the desk corner, and smoothed his tie.

'I'm really just hoping to speak with Agent Carter, Mister Stark,' Bucky said when the silence went a moment too long.

'How come you never call her Miss Carter?' Stark asked. Bucky blinked at him, but Stark just grinned at him like a shark at a guppy. Bucky glanced out the open door behind him, not sure if he was looking for someone who could help him with the bizarre question.

'Uh. She's an agent,' Bucky said, unsure of how he was meant to explain someone else's name. 'I was introduced to an Agent Carter, not a Miss Carter.'

Stark opened his mouth to retort just as the door opened. Bucky stood as Carter came in, holding an enormous tower of files like nothing and glaring at Mister Stark.

'Howard, get your feet off my desk,' she ordered, and he swept himself out from behind her desk without hesitation, grabbing a set of schematics and wandering right out. He closed the door behind him. Bucky stared at Peggy, who hadn't really glanced at him as she settled her files down.

'Excuse me for a moment,' she said. Bucky sat as Agent Carter lifted her phone. She spoke to the switchboard, and then for a few minutes in French while Bucky stared at her. Bucky didn't know why he didn't feel embarrassed or invasive to drink her in like this; he didn't know why she met his eyes and let him stare. Her hair was pulled up and back into a chignon and he liked it on her.

Agent Carter broke his gaze to make a few notes, sounding even more professional in French. He wondered if she spoke other languages. To be a dame in any sort of authoritative position in the SSR during a war involving almost every language you could think of, she'd have to be fluent in others too, he reckoned.

'Pardon me,' she said again as she hung up. 'Sergeant Barnes. What can I do for you?'

'I'm hoping you can do anything for me,' Bucky said. 'Colonel Phillips has refused to reassign me to active duty. Senator Brandt has offered me a publicity tour for a commission if I'm willing to wear an embarrassing pair of shorts and tights.' Agent Carter's face shifted the smallest amount; Bucky thought she was containing a smile. She leaned an elbow on the arm of her chair, propping her chin up on a first to watch him.

'Shorts and tights?' Peggy echoed. Bucky felt his face heat up; he hoped he wasn't blushing in front of Agent Carter again. 

'It's this—' Bucky said, stumbling and embarrassed. He felt flustered even thinking about the outfit; he couldn't imagine performing in it. 'The serum was supposed to change the face of the war, but it didn't, so Brandt wants to change the face of fundraising.'

'With you in a pair of tights?' Peggy said again. 'How short are the shorts that the Senator thinks they'll turn the tide of the war?' Bucky felt his hope that he wasn't blushing die. His face was hot enough to cook on and he was sure it was as red as a tomato.

'No, he wants me to wear the shorts to sell war bonds; the money's gonna change things.' Bucky would be just some schmuck in a dumb costume. He couldn't go home to Steve or to his family and he now wasn't even fighting. 'He's got a whole—It's a musical, I guess? To sell war bonds—He's got other—He's got lady dancers, with—short skirts,' Bucky said. He was making it worse; he was becoming more flustered. Peggy was no longer hiding a smirk; it was out in full force. 'There's a whole show he wants me to do. I just—Please.' Bucky swallowed around his nervousness, because there was a fine chance that she couldn't do anything at all for him. Hell, there was a fine chance she wouldn't. She might not help him on the back of the rapport in Jersey, just because she had to have realised Bucky was sweet on her.

'You chose me for more than this,' Bucky said, all the same. He wondered if that was too close to manipulation, if he was playing for her affections. Agent Carter looked down, all the levity she'd had picturing Bucky in a stupid costume gone, just like that. 'Doctor Erskine chose me for more than this,' Bucky added. 'I understand you aren't technically military, but I was hoping you could give me something.'

'Anything,' Bucky begged. 'I don't want to waste this. Brandt wants me to be called Captain America, for Christ's sake. They've got a little comic book drawn up and everything, like I'm Anthony Rogers or something; it's awful, Agent. It's that or keep living in the lab.'

Bucky had been put up in a doctor's exam room with a door that locked from the outside only. He was supposed to pretend it was a real dorm room, to ignore the one-way window of shiny, mirrored glass. His bag sat on the exam table and he spent his nights on a short, loud cot that had been purchased as an afterthought from the hotel four blocks down. At night, every breath made the joint in the middle below his thin mattress squeak in laughter at him. Every time his feet slid off the ends the mattress springs laughed too.

'I just spent the last three weeks in that lab establishing my limits,' Bucky said. 'I don't know how much of that experiment-environment I can take. They don't even let me leave; I had to sneak out after meeting with Brandt just to come see you.'

Bucky stared at her. He hated living like this. He had hated being a draftee but it was at least better serving the Army in a real way than being studied by the Army in a lab. It was worse being an experiment for the SSR. He was the only example they had of their serum and they wanted to keep him indoors and locked up like a valuable purebred cat. 'I know you know these cannot be my only two options.'

'I know they're not,' Agent Carter said.

'I'm afraid you're now limited thru the virtue of representing the SSR's financial investment in the serum,' she said.

God, Bucky thought he could never hate money more than those times he'd tried to buy cough syrup and come up fifty cents short. He thought he'd never hate it more than when he had to slink back to the apartment empty-handed, to search thru pockets and savings jars and to find nothing. He thought he'd never hate money more than when he would sit listening to Steve cough himself blue. Bucky had worried about the experiment killing him like he'd worried then Steve would die. Bucky hadn't worried about the money behind the experiment. He hadn't realized he was taking on: becoming the Investment, stuck as a valuable example of what no one else but the Erskines could do.

'Until they find a scientist to begin Doctor Erskine's work, they need you safe and available.' Bucky nodded. She was rejecting him. He understood. He'd seen the way she had to fight for a place at the meeting tables in Camp Lehigh. He regretted that things were so difficult for her just to do her actual job that she couldn't go above and beyond for Bucky. He was asking too much. Bucky was smitten with her but it wasn't as tho she owed him anything. He hadn't prevented Erskine's death; he hadn't prevented the assassin's death either.

'I could find work for you in analysis, but nothing in the field,' she said. Bucky's eyes snapped up. He didn't know if he had any aptitude for intelligence work; he'd never done anything of the sort. Bucky had worked his way up from drafted grunt to sergeant, but that wasn't anything like what Peggy did, Bucky was sure. All the same, he felt a hopeful smile bloom on his face.

'I'd make you a member of my staff,' Peggy said. 'You could work here as long as I do.'

'That sounds wonderful, ma'am,' Bucky said. 'Thank you. I'm sure getting me something to do means sticking your neck out, so thanks.' Agent Carter smiled at him, then she pulled a drawer open.

'I, um—I have something for you,' Agent Carter said. The um she let out was the first time he'd ever heard her sound unassured. She pulled out a drawer, then a sheaf of envelopes. Bucky stood, reaching over the wide desk to take them. His reach turned eager when he realised why the writing on the front envelope looked familiar: it was Steve's neat script. He snatched it, containing his enthusiasm by a shred as he held the letters close to his chest. Bucky rifled thru to see whom they were all from. A short laugh broke out of him, so much of his angst relieved by just the sight Becca's and Steve's handwriting. There were two letters from Eliza, too; one from his mother.

'Your mail,' Peggy said. 'It's been withheld, officially,' she added. 'I've stolen it for you. If anyone were to ask if you've received any, your answer is no.' Bucky nodded, thumbing over a charcoal thumbprint left on the outside of an envelope by Steve by mistake.

'I understand,' he said, caught up in how close Steve seemed with his handwriting right here in Bucky's hands. 'Agent Carter, ma'am, thank you.'

Agent Carter nodded like she wanted to say more. 'Thank you,' Bucky said again when she hesitated. 'I wondered why I hadn't heard from anyone. I was worried.'

'I happen to know Private Rogers,' Agent Carter said. 'I saw him on his way to Italy—' Bucky heard her words like an echo in his head, hitting him twice before he could process them.

'Private Rogers?' he interrupted. 'Steve's enlisted?' Who was fool enough to enlist Steve, with his bad lungs and his bad back and his hip and everything else?

Agent Carter paused, then shrugged like she hadn't realized Bucky hadn't known that. Bucky had thought there was an insidious cause for the absence of mail, but he wouldn't have thought he had to factor in the delay of mail all the way from "on the way to Italy". Bucky had spent the last few months sure that Steve was safe in Brooklyn. Buck read the Eagle every morning the lab let him have it; Bucky had imagined Steve reading it too, had imagined him laying the letterplates in the ad section late at night.

All along, Steve was overseas. Bucky stared at the envelopes in his hand. He felt dizzy; he sat back down. Bucky was the one safe stateside and Steve was at war. Bucky couldn't believe it. The world felt impossible for a moment, like all the colours had burst anew from greyscale.

'Well, I suppose an explanation must be in the letters in your hand,' Agent Carter said. 'I'm rather fond of him, your Steve.' Bucky made himself look up at her, repeating her words in his head for a second time.

'Oh,' Bucky said, when Peggy watched him, and didn't continue. 'Oh.' Bucky swallowed and tried to clear his throat. 'Well, Steve's a friend.' His flush renewed itself in full force, because Bucky was an idiot with his heart too close to his sleeve. Agent Carter smirked at him.

'I know who Steve is to you,' Peggy told him. She held his eyes, tapping a capped pen on the desk in an absent rhythm. 'It's not my business how you feel for Steve unless you choose to make it, but I am fond of him.'

'Do you—' Bucky turned to see if the door was closed. Bucky didn't even know what to say; he didn't understand how Peggy knew Steve, or how Steve got into the Army. He didn't understand how Peggy could seem to know about Steve and Bucky and yet still—She still wanted to hire him. She liked him well enough for that.

'Do you know who I am to him?' Bucky asked. He felt stupid; he felt like he couldn't be clear without confessing every secret he had ever held.

'I do,' Peggy said. Bucky tried to read her face.

Bucky couldn't tell how much she knew, what she knew, or how, or what she thought of Bucky. Bucky knew who he was to Steve didn't make any sense; it didn't make sense that Bucky wished he'd been raised under his sisters' expectations and not under the mannish ones he couldn't live up to. It wasn't even that he wished he had his sisters' narrow shoulders or that he didn't like his own. He just thought he'd be happier with his shoulders in a dress than the itchy wool suit his mother liked so much on him. He thought he'd have been happier if he'd been able to be a housewife, not been trapped with his mother trying to set him up with housewives who were allowed to be as pretty as Bucky wished he could be.

He supposed he didn't have his own shoulders anymore. His shoulders were a warped and manlier version of his own. He used to have a softness in his waist he could picture flaring out a skirt, a softness that Steve cherished when they shared intimacy together. That softness had gone into the sharp angles of hyperdense muscle, a form Steve hadn't seen yet and Bucky wasn't used to. His new height and his new, wide, wide shoulders made him bump into things like a newborn giraffe birthed with the strength of a grown bull moose. When Bucky had signed up for Project: Rebirth, he signed up to be turned into a manlier man than any other. He had never thought the world would let him be the lady he felt like anyway, but now it felt like he had sold her out.

'I meant it when I said you were chosen for a reason,' Peggy said when Bucky stood in front of her mute, unsure of himself and too exposed. 'I'll keep an eye out for an opportunity for you to prove it. Otherwise, I'll see you at oh-seven-hundred, tomorrow.' He nodded, and put his hand on the knob before turning back to Agent Carter. Peggy had sat, but met his eye when she realised he had a question.

'All your men are wearing suits,' Bucky said. 'All I've got's the uniform.'

'You don't own a single suit?' Peggy asked. She sounded amused. He bristled without meaning to.

'I've been a soldier for two years,' Bucky said. 'And with Steve at war, too, there wasn't anybody paying rent on our place. Whatever I had is gone now.' Peggy sobered, and he gave her his dance hall grin to mellow the mood. His best stuff was probably at his ma's: the suit he wore to church, the watch his father got him when he graduated high school. He wouldn't be able to get across the river to visit his mother and pick up a suit. Right now he lived in a room with observation glass and his army duffle on an exam table; where would he even keep a suit?

'The uniform's fine, Sergeant,' Agent Carter said. She pulled a folder off the top of her pile, returning to the breakneck pace of the bullpen she ran. 'Oh-seven-hundred. Dismissed.' Bucky smiled. It felt strangely good to be dismissed by Agent Carter, to know he would be taking orders from someone who was worth taking orders from.

'Yes, ma'am,' Bucky said, and pulled the door shut behind him. He stood in the bullpen for a moment, looking over his future workplace. For the first time since Doctor Erskine was killed, Bucky thought he might not be a waste of time.

Chapter Text

Steve busted out the door of the field hospital, dismissed from several days of duty and still shaking from adrenaline. The heavy door shut behind him, quieter than the sirens of an approaching ambulance and the distant sounds of the battle field. Steve turned away from it all, hurrying down the shadows between the field hospital and the field morgue. He bent as soon as he could, letting his wheeze be as loud as he dared on base.

The cough was dry and easy enough to suppress; he wasn't sick, just weak enough for asthma to get the better of him. It wasn't something catching, just a tight metal band around his ribs pulling him tight. Captain Douglas had assumed it was just exhaustion from being a medic on the front; Steve had been given thirty-six hours to sort himself out.

He hugged the wall of the field hospital, pulling an asthma cigarette out of the empty tobacco ration box he'd nicked from the floor of a jeep. He wasted a fireproof match to light it, pulling as hard as he could when he could move this little air.

It lit, and stayed lit as he coughed smoke. He stifled himself best he could, and it wasn't long before the bands of his lungs began to ease, and he felt the smoke ease his mind too, the funny from the herbs making the exhaustion a little more bearable. Asthma cigarettes made his head swim just a little, and he felt blessed to have them pretty regularly here at the front.

'Rogers?' a familiar voice called. Steve straightened from his slouch against the wall, hiding the red ember in the curl of his palm. It was Corporal Lewis who half-jogged up to him, and Steve relaxed, shoving his cigarette back between his lips.  'Hey, pal, y'all right?'

''M fine,' Steve snapped, and Lewis nodded, raising a hand in surrender. 'You back for the night?' Steve asked, because he had no reason to snap at Lewis.

'Rough night, huh?' Lewis said, sympathetic. Steve bristled under the sympathy, and Lewis looked away so Steve could hide his bristle. 'Did you lose somebody?'

'I'm not a doctor, Lewis, I don't really have any patients,' Steve said, because he was just a medic, so he handed sutures and reduction and field work, and occasionally relieved the surgeons' nurses because he'd always been good at acting nurse with his ma for the poorer people in their building back in Brooklyn. Tonight, he'd been in surgery, helping dig shrapnel out of shredded muscle and sawing thru shattered bone.

'Yeah, it was a rough night. Damnit, Lewis.' Steve braced his hands on his knees as his lungs tightened sharply. All at once, he hated it. He hated it, and as they fought their way further into Italy, things were only getting harder and the rumours about the enemy were only getting worse.

Steve hated the war. Steve missed Bucky. He missed Brooklyn. He had wanted to come and fight evil, but he'd not quite realised the amount of blood he'd bathe in everyday as a medic. He hadn't accounted for seeing hundreds of young men blown and shot and broken and battered to bits rushed thru the hospitals, hauled in thru the mud at the front. He wanted home. Most days, he was small and quick with an artist's steady hands; he was a good medic and he enjoyed doing his duty. Today, he could smell only blood and vomit and no part of it felt like the good fight.

'Rogers, take it easy,' Lewis said, landing a big hand on Steve's back.

'I'm covered in blood,' Steve gasped. 'Don't touch me.'

'Ah, Jesus,' Lewis cursed, snatching his hand back, and Steve wondered if there was enough blood soaked into his clothes to leave his back as tacky as it felt, or if the tack was just drying sweat. 'Rogers, Christ.'

'I'm not fine,' Steve admitted, straightening. If Lewis's face was anything to go by, he felt the same way. 'I never thought I'd ever see this much death.'

'It's just a hard day,' Lewis said. 'I miss my wife too.'

'I'm not married,' Steve said. He pulled hard on his cigarette, and looked forward to scrubbing himself free of red under the cold water spray near the medic barracks. 'Who'd marry all this?'

'Nah, but you got somebody,' Lewis said. 'I seen you get letters. It's a hard day and we ain't got letters in a while. Clean up, sleep, get your head on, kid. It's just hard.'

'Yeah,' Steve agreed. 'Thanks, Lewis. Abyssinia.'

'Sleep,' Lewis repeated, leaving Steve in the alley. Steve finished his cigarette and stomped it out. The building he'd been leaning against had been a school, before its classrooms were filled with blood and guts and body bags.

It was just a hard day, Steve reminded himself. Most days, he could handle this. Most days, Steve ran the front with his medpacks and hauled back wounded or sewed them up on site. Most days, Steve worked hard and slept well. Most days, he didn't hold someone down while their mangled hand was cut off and they screamed loud enough for the glass panel of the schoolroom-turned-makeshift-operating room to rattle. Most days, they saved more men than they lost.

Most days were easier than this.

⍟

Bucky gathered the map from his desk and steeled himself. He was a prepared as he could be. Peggy was a good commanding officer; it wasn't as tho he was afraid to bring her an idea. He was afraid to be turned down. He wanted to do more. Doing intelligence analysis was a God send when he would have otherwise have been stuck in a lab as an experiment long term, but he still itched sometimes with inaction. He itched with boredom and frustration as Steve's post came from deeper and deeper into Italy.

The door to Peggy's office was open, and Peggy was giving instructions to a junior agent.

'Agent Carter,' Bucky said, when the agent had been dismissed. Without being asked, he shut the door behind himself.

'What do you need, Bucky?' Peggy asked, familiar like she always was in private. Bucky got to call her by her first name now too; if he weren't cautious of tooting his own horn, he'd think that she was as taken with him as he was with her. He carried over the map he had folded in his hand, and he shook it out.

'I was looking at your maps, and I've noticed some weaknesses for us to exploit,' Bucky said.

'Really?' she asked. 'HYDRA's not known for leaving gaps in their lines.' Peggy leaned her hip against the sturdy table in her office, which was less covered in maps and battle plans than usual. Bucky and Peggy leaned over the map; her dark eyes were eager as they followed his red-penciled notes.

'Well, gaps would be a bit generous to describe the weaknesses I mean. Some of the territory is sketchy,' Bucky admitted. 'Well-fortified and difficult terrain besides. I just know I'd be able to do it with the right men.'

Peggy stared at his map, the notes he'd scribbled in the map's margins. Bucky handed her the extra notes he'd typed up. Bucky had spent a few weeks of his limited spare time on this, making sure his command theory was sound, because Peggy managed to get him something resembling a real job, and if he did a good enough job proving he was too valuable to have stuck in an intelligence office, then maybe she'd stick her neck out again.

'Show me,' she said, finally, closing the small packet of notes. He leant over the map, talking his way thru the plan. The Nazi's science division facilities were practically impenetrable, certainly if the Army meant to use a large number of soldiers to take one. Bucky had been in the trenches, and he knew how impossible it would be to get a large fighting force past the front lines and towards any real target that would slow the Axis Powers down.

A small, covert ops group, perhaps one led by a super soldier, for example, could make it the few dozen miles, and they might be able to take a base if intelligence could get them even one person with any idea of how the interior of the bases were laid out. It all came down the layout; the right crew could handle the base's defences no problem but the right crew also needed to know the exits, and the places to put demo packs.

'Bucky, this is good work,' she admitted.

'Well, Peggy, I wouldn't bring it to you if it weren't,' Bucky said. This wasn't about praise; it was about ending this God damn war. People were dying, and things were getting worse. Bucky wasn't willing to let this go on, not when he'd signed up for an experiment he'd been told would make him a better man. Better men did not sit on the sidelines. Better men weren't so damn useless. Better men, his mind reminded him, didn't love men; better men weren't soft enough to be ridiculed at many turns. 'I want to do more than sit here, and I know you've already used about as much of your pull as you have, but—'

Bucky stopped. Peggy had placed his notes down beside his map, which seemed final to him. It felt like she was saying no before she'd even opened her mouth.

'I'm going to the front,' Peggy told him. Bucky frowned. 'Some new intelligence has come in. I'm getting on a boat tomorrow.'

'What does that mean?' Bucky asked.

'Another agent will supervise the shut of this office,' she said. 'There's no one immediately available to supervise, so it'll be dissolved over the next fortnight into various SSR departments.' Bucky turned away from his map, pacing slightly in Peggy's office. She sighed, looking ravishing as always. Bucky wished he could resent how lovely she looked, but he yearned instead. Bucky liked her, and he wished he could tell Steve everything about her. Bucky hadn't gotten a letter or even a sketch from Steve in weeks. It was hard to know that Steve was out at the front, while Bucky was safe stateside, which was the opposite of everything Bucky had ever wanted. If this office was shut down, Bucky would be safe stateside, and useless.

'Will I be kept in intelligence?' Bucky asked. Peggy didn't answer but crossed her arms and looked down. That was answer enough. He couldn't help the way he scoffed, disappointed. He leaned against the table.

'I'll be Phillips, or Brandt's, if you can't stake a claim.' Peggy didn't deny it. Bucky shook his head. 'Jesus. Two and a half years and a genetic overhaul. For the duration, my ass.' Some people had argued that draft enlistment should be for only two years, not the duration of the war, and Bucky was living their point. He didn't have any ability to get himself out of this. Every extension of the draft term saw him obliged to be a soldier for longer. He was stuck, and he'd signed away more rights than the average enlisted man as the supersoldier investment he was. They said jump, and he said how high?

'I've arranged to take my second-in-command with me,' Peggy said. 'I didn't specify who it was. It's yours if you want it, but it means being my secretary at the front.' Bucky frowned; Peggy said that like she thought playing her secretary was a price at all, let alone a price too high for a ticket back to the war. 'If you don't—'

'What time tomorrow?' Bucky asked. 'It's the front, Peggy,' he said when she looked surprised. 'It's the war. It's a chance to actually get to do something. Besides, I'd be honoured to be your second.' Peggy smiled like she meant to hide it.

'I don't understand you,' she said. 'Most of the men here despise that I'm the one who gives the orders, and you're willing to be my personal secretary in the mud in Europe.'

'A CO's a CO,' Bucky said. Bucky enjoyed taking Peggy's orders. They talked sometimes about personal things when they were alone in her office late at night, tentative conversations between two people reaching out around their shared connection to an absent third. The more Bucky came to know Peggy, the more he appreciated her. The more he got to know her, the more he wanted to know what she'd look like without her regulation makeup, without her hair so neat and herself so kept with close stays. 'I'm just thankful to have a good one.' Peggy smile's lost its shyness; it turned sincere.

Bucky liked these moments, the ones when he felt he meant something to her.

⍟

Steve jolted into consciousness.

The noise that had woken him was one he hadn't heard since last time he'd been stationed at a forward aid station; it was falling artillery, right fucking close by, louder than anything.

Steve was scrambling before he was even fully awake. He slept in his boots now, in an a-shirt with his uniform's shirt tied around his waist. He slept ready to scramble up and join a triage group but he was used to being woken by a nurse or another medic. He wasn't used to waking up to the sound of explosions so close—too close, impossibly close; the bombing couldn't be so close. Steve grabbed his field pack, rolling to his feet and rushing out of the—He froze in the doorway of his tent, his arm raised and holding the flap.

Steve had a distant view of the dental tent and the ward tent from his tent, at the edge of the clearing station. In the distance, their canvas would glow from the lamps inside at night, that red cross Steve saw as green turned black when lit from behind.

Now, with artillery falling too close, there were plumes of glowing, thick smoke rising; in place of the red crosses were licking flames. The tents themselves were aflame; they were burning. Steve almost thought he was having a nightmare.

It shouldn't be possible. He thought of all those soldiers he'd checked on before he'd come back to his tent after midnight. It was almost sunrise now and the pale and beautiful light in the distance seemed like a terrible joke. The clearing station was aflame. The bombing was here; the planes overhead were bombing the hospital—they were bombing the clearing station; they were bombing tents with crosses like they were fair targets.

Steve started running towards the burning tents, hoping to God there were people there still to save—He couldn't be too late—The hospital and the wards couldn't be burning yet. There could be something he could do—This awful thing could be made better, surely, surely— Steve could help—

The air split with the roar of a low plane engine, the whistle of a bomb approaching and falling above him. Steve stopped running, forced by fear to duck and cover his head with his arms as if his skinny limbs were any kind of armour. The artillery fell with a scream just beyond the row of tents beside Steve, too close, too close, too close, too close—It boomed—Firm air pressed him down—

The tents were burning when he lifted himself back up, having been pressed into the ground even from his crouch by the force of the cool blast, so cool it made no sense. The explosion had launched a cold wind that had pushed him to the wet dirt like a real pair of hands. The tents were burning blue and bright, without any heat that Steve could feel, just like Mabel had said. The flames roared higher than Steve's full height, silent and vivid and glowing.

Steve shocked himself into action; he rushed to the burning tent.

'Douglas!' he called, hoping to God the tent's occupant hadn't been inside. Steve tried to get inside, before the flames climbed their way around to the front flap. Steve pulled the canvas open and found himself scrambling away with a renewed panic. The tent inside had been consumed already, fire lining everything inside like clinging moss. Douglas thrashed on the ground in a pool of it, screaming as he burned.

'Oh, fuck!' Steve screamed. 'Douglas! Fuck!' The sick, clinging fire crept out along the wet dirt, growing and spreading like an evil spill; Steve stumbled and tried to keep from the creeping flame. It crawled towards him like it was trying to coat his feet, directional, like the fire knew where he was—

Douglas was writhing, burning to death slowly from heatless blue fire—it engulfed him; he was only the shape of flame—

Steve fled—The blue fire meant HYDRA—It wasn't even Nazis bombing the medical detachment; it was HYDRA, the off-shoot. They were supposed to be new, smaller, weaker—The Nazis had cut ties with them and they should be scrambling. They shouldn't have planes that could swoop so low or so fast; they weren't meant to have the daring to strike American hospitals. Steve didn't know what to do; he—

The screech of another artillery sounded and this time Steve didn't even have time to duck—He didn't have time to think; he was flung by the blast like a ragdoll by a child's bully.

He hit the earth—He tried to grapple the mud as the ground moved away from him at eight hundred miles per hour—He bounced—He—

Steve woke up on his back in the dirt.

He could taste blood, pooling in the back of his throat. He turned his head to the side so he could breathe as the thick red leaked from his lips. He tried to cough. Everything hurt but he couldn't tell what part of him hurt worst. His face was wet too; he tried to sit up. He took a shaking gasp when the motion hurt worse than anything he'd ever felt before. He realised he hurt worse across his left side; he'd been hit bad.

Steve had lived with a curved back and bad hips his whole life; sometimes it seemed like every fever added a new chronic ache to his thin body, but this—He rolled when he couldn't manage to sit. He realised as he rolled right then onto his stomach that the disorientation wasn't just from the impact.

Steve was blind in his left eye; when he planted his hands in the dirt, he had to turn his head to see his left wrist, his shoulder. That arm was gashed and bleeding too but it was fine compared to his torso. Kneeling on all fours like this let blood drip out of him; it was grotesque. Steve had to stand up so he couldn't see his own lifeblood escaping; it made his heart pound and that would only mean he would bleed out quicker.

Steve tried to touch his face to see how badly he'd been blinded, but his hand met wound and he pulled away from the sting of it.

His face was wet and hot; he was bleeding and blinded. The blast had left him dizzy too, his ears ringing almost too much to hear anything else. Steve was kneeling with his hands in wet dirt amongst ripped and smoking canvas and a piece of a tent stove and someone's boot and feeble pools of cold, blue fire and three limbs that belonged to other people, people blasted to bits while Steve had been just lucky enough to not be in two.

Steve tried to stand again, moving slowly to try not to hurt himself worse. Dizziness overcame him and he coughed blood into the dirt.

'God,' Steve groaned, not sure if he was cursing or asking for help. Steve felt like he'd been ripped nearly in half; there weren't any intestines dangling from his wound but it was deep, deep, deep. The limbs around him were all arms, mismatched—Steve looked away from the ripped arms to the rip in his torso. It did not help calm him down. It so deep Steve was surprised he wasn't already dead. He knelt, getting ready to stand. One of his med pack straps had ripped; he held it so he didn't lose any—

Steve opened his side packs, checking. There was mud on a few packets of bandages, but the gauze was clean enough. The sulpha was intact. The pack with his suture kit was in perfect condition. The whisky flask the medics sometimes used to calm patients out in the field had a dent but it was fine. He'd stumbled up, trying to orient himself by facing the burning tents of the clearing station proper, the one farmhouse that served as the surgery.

He couldn't find them. There was smoking wood and flapping bits of burnt-edged canvas. Steve could see the med detachment's flag waving, tattered but intact and billowing.

Steve couldn't see anyone else, just pools of blue fire and smoke here and there. He tried to orient himself by the flag, imagining the rows of tents, and wandered toward where the clearing station should be.

'Hey,' someone groaned.

Steve spun, his heart springing into a terrified pound anew. Steve almost missed the voice; his ears were ringing still. Had he missed anyone else? Had someone else called out, suffering, as Steve walked by?

'Private Mabel,' Steve gasped. He collapsed to his knees next to Mabel's injured, prone form. He tried to make his hands reach out; he tried to—He knew first aid; he knew what he should do—he was just so dizzy.

'I better be going home now,' Mabel groaned. Mabel was in hospital PJs in the mud; he was shivering and wet. Steve hated himself for thinking: well, at least it's not that blue fire. 'Fuck, look at you. You're coming with me, if we're lucky not to die right here.'

''M fine,' Steve said, his tongue too thick in his mouth. 'We're not—We're not gonna die here.' He was slick with his own blood. He could barely think clearly; he could barely think of what to do about the bed railing impaling Mabel's hip like the craziest shrapnel Steve had ever seen. This must have been the ward, if Mabel were here. Steve didn't understand where the rest of the people had gone; why weren't there dozens of patients around him now, like Mabel had had dozens of ward mates when Steve had left his shift?

His head was spinning and if he were honest, Mabel was right when he said they'd both be lucky to be invalided home. Steve was bad off; he'd been almost gashed into two parts. He almost didn't understand how he was still alive. He would be going home in a bag if someone didn't—Steve was the medic; he didn't know who was supposed to save him. God, the medics weren't meant to be bombed.

He wished Bucky were here. Bucky would know what to do. It was a crazy thought.

'We're gonna be fine,' Steve said, getting himself together enough to pack the wound best he could. He couldn't pull the pipe out; he needed a surgeon but the tents were burnt down and Doctor Douglas was dead. Steve needed help; this was supposed to be the medical detachment; he was supposed to have help here—'We're gonna get you outta here just fine,' Steve said.

'No, we're dead,' Mabel said. Steve saw enough in Mabel's face to turn and look behind himself.

Steve froze at the sight of armed, masked soldiers coming towards him, rounding what was left of the back wall of the barn the field hospital used as an excuse for a ward.

The soldiers held strange, blue guns on them, gesturing down with their barrels. Steve raised his palms, wondering if his sergeant had had a point that medics should be armed. Steve had decent aim; he coulda shot one before the others got him, if he were real quick about it. He wished he had a gun. There was nothing he could do to protect Mabel without.

Steve tried to put himself between the Germans and Mabel. He wondered what he was breathing in that the soldiers were wearing gas masks; even their eyes were covered, just dark circles of black glass.

One of them was an officer; Steve could tell by the shoulder flashes. He approached, and Steve tried to keep himself between Mabel and the blue gun. He could hear Mabel's panicked voice behind him, begging, 'No, no, no—'

'We're injured,' Steve said, in the best German he had. 'We need care—'

'Quiet,' the officer shouted, in English.

'We have—' Steve tried. He'd grown up with Bucky's German homework in the apartment; he spoke Yiddish. If his head weren't full of cotton, he could speak—He should be able to do this. 'We are injured. I'm not a soldier. We have rights.'

'These are your rights,' the officer said, and he aimed for Mabel.

'No, no, no—' Mabel screamed. He tried to scramble away; Steve tried to—

The officer fired. Steve turned just in time to see Mabel, that familiar face—He burst into sparks, heatless and freakish as the fire. Mabel dissolved into sparks.

He was gone, just a puddle of dark blood in the mud where he'd laid. The blue sparks fizzled out and there was nothing.

The officer told his men to collect Steve, and he, dumbstruck and shocky, let them. They yanked him to his feet.

They mostly dragged him, but Steve tried—He couldn't get his feet underneath him with all of his steps. Every piece of debris tripped him. The soldiers stepped over a pair of bodies side by side in the mud; Steve was dragged over them despite his best efforts to lift his feet.

Most of the one-oh-seventh was alive, loaded into the German trucks by the dozen, headed God only knew where. It was as if the Germans in the gas masks had taken the front line and then destroyed the medical detachment for good measure. The fact the soldiers were loaded like livestock was almost as terrifying than the bombing itself had been. The officer decided on the second closest truck; he pointed and his men hauled Steve over.

'We don't want someone who's gonna bleed out—' A young American soldier spotted the guards on the way with Steve; he tried protesting and Steve wondered how bad he looked. 'We don't want a body—' The guards ignored the English protest. They started lifting him and Steve tried not to scream at the full weight of his legs on the gash in his torso. He couldn't pretend to misunderstand the soldier's protest; he was bleeding out and then he'd be nothing too: a body in the truck haunting live men with its silence.

'Fuck,' said a familiar voice, one Steve couldn't place. 'It's Rogers—'

A third man agreed: 'It's that medic—Get him in; get him—'

Hands from inside the truck grappled him too, lifting him in and settling him against the tailgate of the truck. The Germans dropped the canvas, and then slammed additional steel doors beyond that. In the darkness, Steve tried to sort himself out.

The inside of the truck was nearly pitch black. He could hear the concerned tone of voices around him, but he couldn't understand them past the fog in his mind and the ever-fainter ringing in his ears.

'Let me—Let me check—' he tried, wavering. He swayed, trying to hold onto the side of the truck, no purchase against the metal wall in order to at least kneel enough to check people out. 'Who's hurt?'

'You are, Rogers,' that someone said again. Steve couldn't place it and he hadn't seen before the doors had slammed the light out. 'Sit down.' Steve tried to shrug off the hands that settled over him, touching his head like they were checking how bad his eye was mangled, touching his side like they couldn't see how bad that wound was. Steve was surprised he wasn't already dead.

'I'm fine; let me—I'm a medic; I can check—' Steve couldn't resist when someone grabbed his shoulders and refused his attempt to get up to check people out. He folded like he was made of cotton, squished down with bare force.

'You're the only one in the truck who's still bleeding,' the person said. Something put pressure on Steve's side; Steve tried to help but his hands were shaking and pressing hurt so much his hands tried to resist him. He realised the voice was Sergeant Lewis. The pressure was his uniform shirt, tied around his hips. Lewis had tied it tighter and higher, tucking the shirt into a pad around its sleeves, using them as a tourniquet to try to hold Steve in one piece.

'Hey, Sarge,' Steve gasped. 'You good?'

'Yeah, I'm good,' Lewis said.

Steve knew he had one hell of a head wound but he couldn't remember if he'd lost consciousness or for how long. He'd been outside when the first artillery had fallen; he knew that. He wondered how long it would be until the shrapnel wound in his side cost him his lifeblood. He couldn't remember if the clearing station had been evacuated, or if the wounded men had been put down like rumours said the Nazi's offshoot soldiers would put them down. Steve hoped to God the rumours weren't true, but then, he was a medic, a wounded medic, who'd been captured and shackled and loaded into the truck with the infantrymen.

'I've got—' Steve said. Lewis tried to stop him.

'At ease, all right?' he ordered. 'You're the only one in this truck who's bad off.'

'No, I've got—' Steve said again, and this time Lewis saw the military-issue flask Steve was trying for. He laughed, taking the flask when Steve couldn't make his hands work the lid. Lewis took a nip, then held the flask out for Steve to do the same. He brought the flask up to Steve's lips, and that was what made Steve realize it wasn't only that his hands were shaking; his depth perception was off, his left eye ruined in his head. He let Lewis tilt up the flask for a brief second and he held the warm feeling of the whiskey in his chest, trying to feel easy about being blinded. Lewis passed the flask along.

The trucks eventually stopped outside a factory that was probably still in Italy. They'd driven for a few hours at a speed impossible to judge without any light and the clanking of the truck bed never changing in frequency or pitch to Steve's shitty ears, which could mean they were fifty miles at a slow speed thru rough terrain or far faster on a proper road. They would be tugged out of the trucks one load of men at a time. Soldiers opened the doors to their truck as the men in the truck beside them began climbing out. Light streamed in, too bright; Steve tried to shade his eyes—eye best he could.

'Stay,' a soldier ordered them, motioning with a strange blue gun. The soldier and his counterpart stayed in front of their truck, guns loose in their steady hands.

'Sarge, they're taking our names and numbers,' Ferguson said, off to Steve's right. The ringing had almost stopped. Steve wished he knew how long it had been, how long he'd been bleeding unchecked. 'What do we do?' Steve turned further than he would have thought he had to in order to follow Ferg's gaze. A pudgy, short man wandered up the line of new POWs as unarmed, masked guards tugged out dog tags and read them off. He wore a lab coat, and a taller man in a lab coat followed behind him with a clipboard, taking the names and numbers. Steve could see the LT standing at ease and accepting this registration.

'We do nothing,' Lewis decided from beside Steve. 'They're allowed to take our names and numbers, and there's too many armed men. I think we're stuck.' They watched the other men be identified and lead off. Steve wondered what they'd be doing here. It was a factory, but what kind? Prisoners were supposed to be treated well, but an enemy officer had evaporated a captured man already with those evil blue guns. Steve remembered Mabel exploding into blue sparks clear as day. They were not going to be treated right here, not a chance.

'This one is very nice,' the little man said in German, stopping in front of one of the other sergeants, who glared down at him. 'Good posture. It looks like he has very strong shoulders,' he mused, and Steve didn't understand the rest. In English, the man asked, 'What is your name?'

'Patterson,' the sergeant said.

'Hm,' the little man hummed. 'I'll have him.' Two guards pushed Patterson's back with their guns. He stumbled forward, his shackled palms raising instinctually. 'Bring him to laboratory three. Strap him down and have him prepared.' The guards grabbed him roughly and began dragging him off.

'Shit,' Lewis said quietly. 'What did the little guy say?'

'They're bringing him to a lab,' Steve said. His German wasn't very good—Bucky had done German in school while Steve had taken French to please his mother—but he mostly understood the little man's deliberate way of talking, German close enough to Yiddish for him to guess the rest. The guards beckoned them out. Lewis climbed out first, hoisting Steve down—Steve tried not to show how badly being moved like that hurt. Lewis tried to help his men out too, awkward with the chains around his wrists.

'How are you standing?' Lewis asked, once they'd been lined up for inspection. Steve shook his head; he didn't know—Steve opened his eyes. He didn't know when he'd closed them. He wondered how much of his left eye was even left to blink. He focused, trying to hear the German voices again.

The little man waved off the last few men in the group before them, who were taken en masse to a different gate than the one Patterson had disappeared thru. A soldier yanked Lewis's tag out, reading his name, rank and number to the man with a clipboard. He called out Evangelische and Steve's heart skipped a beat.

Steve's tags said his religion too, with two crooked Hs stabbed in the corners of his tags.

Steve was definitely going to die now, even beyond the impossible and slim chance he had of surviving a POW camp wounded as he was. He'd been captured and the soldiers were going out of their way to check people's faith. Steve had labelled himself as a target of a genocide when he signed up to fight it, and now he was going to lose; he was going to become a victim of the murder he'd wanted to stop.

Steve was never going to go home. It wasn't that he was wounded and confused; he was dying, now. They'd been captured by an offshoot of the Nazis and Steve was a goner in more ways than one.

He was never going to see Bucky again.

Bucky hadn't written back in months, and now Steve was never going to get those late or lost letters. He was never going to see Bucky again; he'd never get to say I love you, or goodbye. They weren't gonna get a real goodbye.

They were going to blow him up like they'd blown up Mabel, with their blue weapons. Steve straightened his spine as much he could. He was going to die on his feet at least. He was gonna die like a man.

Steve had always known he was going to die young, so he supposed he may as well go out swinging instead of sick. The men at enlistment had encouraged him to leave the H off his tags and he'd refused. He'd thought he'd rather lose out doing something right, than be safe hiding something he wasn't ashamed of.

He'd thought he'd rather die having been honest, done the right thing. In the moment, he only had room to be scared.

'You look well, Sergeant,' the man told Lewis. Lewis glared.

'Who the hell are you?' Lewis demanded. 'What is this place?' The man smiled, smug like a snake.

'I am Doctor Zola,' he replied. 'You, on the other hand, are a prisoner of Johann Schmidt. I am in charge here when he is gone. You look strong.'

'I am,' Lewis agreed, 'and I'll bash your fuckin' head in if you touch any of my men.'

'I would have you shot,' the little man said easily. 'And we take at least one sample from every truck.' Zola swept his eyes over the line of men behind Sergeant Lewis, appraising.

'Is this little one yours?' Zola gestured at Steve. 'He seems to be the only medic to have survived our ambush. Medics don't generally serve under soldiers.' Zola's words replayed in his head and Steve realized the inventory their captors had taken meant the rest of the men and women he worked with at the clearing station were dead—Gone, in a second, in a wipe, maybe gone into blue sparks, into nothing, like Mabel. Maybe they'd burned screaming and cold like Douglas.

'He's with me,' Lewis practically growled. Steve didn't protest, and none of his men said anything either. The air was thick with tension. This Zola character might be unarmed, but the three dozen German soldiers in the immediate area sure as hell weren't.

Doctor Zola gave Lewis such a blithe fucking look that Steve hated him a little. He didn't like hating people, but something about this slimy man deserved it.

'Such a little boy to be in such a big war,' Zola said quietly, in German, and mostly to himself. The doctor turned to a soldier, faceless in the squid-like gas mask. Steve wondered what gas he might be breathing, if the soldiers were masked. 'Take his name,' the doctor ordered.

A soldier tugged Steve's chain out and Steve saw it, the H pressed in the corner of each his tags. The soldier saw it just as easily and dropped the tags like they'd burned him.

'Er ist jüdisch,' he spat. Zola stepped forward, past Lewis, eyes raking over Steve's body. Steve lifted his chin; he tried his best to look defiant and brave. He didn't feel defiant. He felt dizzy and he knew it was because his body was running out of blood as he stood in front of someone too evil for the Nazis to associate with. His lifeblood was draining and Steve would be damned if he showed it.

'What is your name?' Zola asked.

'Rogers,' Steve replied.

'And your first name?' Zola prodded, his tone calm and kind. Steve frowned. He didn't understand why a Nazi—whatever HYDRA's men were called—a squid in a gas mask—would want to make a prisoner so personal, so real: a human with a full name. It made Steve feel like he was selling himself to give it over. With guns aimed at him, he sold.

'Steven.'

'Steven Rogers is not a terribly Jewish name,' he remarked. He reached out to touch Steve's arm, and Steve yanked his arm out of reach, stepping back and almost into a guard Steve hadn't heard come up behind him. He realised how exposed he was, in the a-shirt he'd been sleeping in, his tattered uniform shirt tied and folded as a mockery of medical care. He felt naked under this investigation of his body; he tried to step back.

The guard used his gun to shove Steve back into line with bruising force. Steve nearly fell. He couldn't believe he caught himself on locked knees. He swayed where he'd caught himself from falling, felt his stomach drop out; the bottom of it threatened to heave and evacuate the bile that was there. He kept the swell of nausea silent; he wasn't going to vomit from a strike in front of this fucking nutcase scientist.

'Well?' Zola prompted, like Steve's fucking name warranted an explanation.

'Not all of us are named Shalom Jacob Abramowitsch,' Steve said, harsh as the acid taste of his stomach threatening to heave. Zola smiled so that his lips became a thin, grotesque line. Steve spat a thick mouthful blood at Zola's feet.

'Steven,' Zola said, reaching out to touch Steve again. He stepped into the blood like it was nothing.

A gun dug harshly into his back and Steve didn't move back again; he shuddered deep enough to hurt the wound in his side. The doctor lifted Steve's arm and then the other. Zola looked over Steve's thin frame like he was a calf up for slaughter. Zola's eyes swept over the blood soaked uniform, the deep gash across Steve's side. His hands tugged at the red and white arm sash on Steve's tattered sleeve, tied at his side. The other sleeve was soaked black with blood to Steve's eyes. Steve wondered about the bloody arm sash, if blood was different enough that the red cross supposedly keeping medics safe in this war could still be seen.

Zola released Steve, and Steve jerked out of his grasp the second he could. 'You have sustained a serious injury. You are a medic, so I'm sure you are aware you have been bleeding from the head and into your abdominal cavity for many hours now. You look terrible, you know. Not even the scrape on your hand has stopped bleeding.'

Steve looked down and sure enough, blood was dripping from the fingers of his left hand. Steve couldn't even feel it.

'He looks fine,' Lewis snapped, no doubt trying to get Zola's attention off Steve. 'If you want a lab rat from my men, you're gonna have to take me. You certainly can't have a medic. He's already been wounded; you're obligated to repatriate him.'

'But you are still standing,' Zola continued, ignoring Lewis. 'Why is such a little man like you still standing with such an injury?' Steve couldn't understand it either.

'Well?' Zola prompted again. He waited for Steve to give him an answer. Steve floundered, trying in his swirling mind to make sense of this interrogation. All he felt was dizziness and fear.

'I'm just lucky, I guess,' Steve said.

'You know, Steven,' Zola said. 'I do important work here. I think that what I do will make the human race much healthier, much stronger. More evolved. You look like a man who could use better health.'

'No,' Lewis said. 'You cannot choose one of my men for your sick little experiments. You cannot torture a medic. You want a sample from one of my men: you take me. Him? Him: you gotta send home.'

Zola laughed in Lewis's face.

'He has rights,' Lewis said, and a guard struck him down, the butt of a gun to the back of his legs. Lewis folded, into the mud. He stayed when the gun's muzzle met his shoulder.

'I'll have the Jew,' Zola told Lewis. He turned to his men, gesturing at Steve like he was a ripe eggplant for a servant to pluck away. 'Put the medic next to Patterson,' Zola ordered in German. 'Put the others in the pens.' An armed soldier grabbed Steve roughly, nearly yanking his arm out of its socket.

'No!' Steve protested, stepping back. A soldier hit him hard, between the shoulders, with a gun's butt, knocking him to his knees. He fell hard into the packed dirt. It jarred his injuries and he wondered if he'd suffer less being blasted to sparks than bleeding to death so slowly like this. Fuck, he hurt. He hurt more than he'd thought possible and he had a horrible premonition that things were going to get worse.

He dreamt for a moment of his rope-and-cotton mattress, curled up with his best girl, stroking Bucky's hair back from his grey eyes and watching him blink awake. Steve was going to die in pain instead of in his sleep next to Bucky; he'd never in his life felt so sure of it. For the first time, he thought dying of sickness might have been better than dying for a cause. He'd have died with Bucky taking care of him instead of like this. Steve didn't know if he believed in heaven, but Bucky did; Steve believed dying with Bucky would be better than dying like this. Maybe that was as close to heaven as Steve could've gotten.

Zola leaned down to where Steve knelt in the dirt.

'I could have you all shot in the back of the head,' Zola said, 'like we do the rest of the Jews we capture, if you prefer.' Steve hated everything about the twisted little man. Zola looked at Steve like Steve really had Lewis's life in his hands, like he held the entire truck between death and torture.

'Or you can try it my way,' Zola offered. Steve felt a shiver deep in his bones; trying it Zola's way or not, he would suffer. 'At least my way, the goal is to make you survive. The tests have killed many but that is not their goal. The manufacturing kills many but that is not its goal.'

'I don't actually have a choice, do I?' Steve pointed out. Maybe Lewis and his men would die if Steve tried to assert autonomy; Steve knew it would be letting them die in vain. If Zola wanted to experiment on Steve, he was going to do it. The least Steve could do was go quietly to his awful death. The least he could do was leave others to be prisoners, not corpses.

'No,' Zola said, pulling his thin, dry lips into an oily smile, 'my little Jew, you do not.'

Chapter Text

Peggy had always thought girdles were uncomfortable as an undergarment, and she couldn't wait for them go out of fashion. Now, she wondered if pregnancy would somehow go out of fashion, because if the false belly she wore were any indication, it would be far worse than any uncomfortable girdle Peggy had ever worn. She was the size of a whale, with the bulk of winter coats besides, and moving thru the narrow train aisle was almost more difficult than it was worth. The extra padding of the false belly kept her at a steady temperature of a thousand degrees. The heat kept her with a flush people kept telling her was a pregnant glow.

The only saving grace of the whole mess was the way Bucky would distract the cooing locals in his admittedly impressive German. He played the role of a proud father, a smitten husband, keeping the few who tried to feel her belly—her very false pregnant belly—from succeeding without them even noticing the evasion. He played the role of a new husband so well at the German customs crossing that the German officer had laughed with him instead of searching his wife's bag.

Bucky had gone so far as to ask for a note to give to the platform guard, for Peggy to be given a chair to sit in. He'd gotten her settled on the platform in the cold like she was really something to fret over.

Bucky kept his hand at Peggy's back when they moved, like she were unsteady with the weight of a growing child, and helped her up the few steps to the train like she were delicate enough to enjoy the help. He fretted over her once she was settled into the seat, even after the door to their compartment shut and they were safe unless someone came to check their papers.

Bucky took off his overcoat and draped it over the seat across from Peggy. 'Here,' he said, 'put your feet up.' Peggy let him take the back of her ankles in his hands—the serum made him unbelievably dense and warm, even thru her stockings—and place her shoes onto the lining of his coat, risking dirt on the silk. The hot weight of his palm gave Peggy a vivid image of him sliding up the back of her ankle, sliding up her stocking, along the seam. Her imagined sensation of his fingers sweeping over the upper hem—to touch her bare skin—made her shiver. Bucky noticed, fiddling with his coat to almost tuck her in against the chill of the train.

'Why've you put my feet up?' she asked. 'I'm sitting on a plush seat now.' She didn't own up to the thoughts that had actually made her shiver, didn't tell him she was warm enough without his coat tucked around her like protection.

'You're pregnant—supposed to be,' Bucky said. 'My ma had her feet up all the time when she was pregnant with my sisters, or else she'd get so swollen she couldn't get her shoes on for church.' Peggy smiled, oddly touched as Bucky settled beside her. She could feel his warmth thru his suit coat same as she'd felt it when he'd handled her. 'That's how she knew she was having girls,' Bucky added. 'Didn't happen with me, she said.' Peggy wondered how badly he missed his sisters, his family.

'So you've decided I'm having a daughter, then?' Peggy joked, almost a grumble. Bucky hummed.

'Details make a good lie,' he said. 'That's all.'

'How many sisters?' Peggy asked. 'You, I mean, not this child of ours.' Bucky chuckled.

'Just two,' Bucky replied. 'Rebecca and Eliza. Becca's seventeen, and Eliza'll be thirteen next month.' Bucky let out a sigh. 'I won't be there.'

'Your sisters mean a lot to you,' Peggy said. She leaned into Bucky's warmth when she couldn't resist it anymore; she would explain it was a matter of maintaining their cover should Bucky question it. She wasn't cold in the slightest but he was irresistible. Instead of questioning her, he made more room for her to tuck into his side. He was warmer than a Rumford fireplace; it was a delicious heat in the cold of the train. He leaned back into her, their weights absorbed the other.

'I miss them,' Bucky said. 'They're good kids, you know. I—' He stopped for a moment, fidgeting with the button of his sleeve. Peggy watched him intently; she could see a hundred feelings rushing across his face.

'I don't want them to grow up without me,' Bucky said. He cleared his throat. 'And I don't want—

'My ma was upset that I stayed with Steve when I was home on furlough, and not at hers. We didn't get into it, exactly, but she didn't want me going home to Steve, after dinner and—and my ma and I got into it,' he said, sighing again. 'I don't want that to be the last time my sisters see me: arguing with our mother? About the unspoken—I think she knows I don't just live with Steve, and she hates it.' Peggy tsked in sympathy. 'What if that's the last time they ever see me?

'I worry about how they'd handle it if I never came home,' Bucky said. 'I promised I would. I can't wait for it, the day I go home for real. Actually, the pattern I gave you is the same as the hat I knit Eliza. Brought it home on furlough and gave it to my ma. She's gonna give it to Eliza for her birthday.'

'Oh, yes, I suppose I ought to be knitting, shouldn't I?' Peggy asked, reaching into her bag and pulling the half-knitted hat from atop its pattern, which was atop another pattern which would knit nothing at all, but would translate into the Allies' next strategy and the troop movements already underway. She'd accepted with confidence the assignment to take the strategy into Italy, but she hadn't known, to be honest, how she would sneak them past the increased security there, or what code they might have she was sure the Germans hadn't broken. Bucky had taken the assignment in stride, inventing a code out of the different stitches he knew, making a knitting pattern that looked to an untrained eye just like the one Peggy was using for the hat.

'Stupidly complicated,' she said, once she had her knitting sorted enough to see she had come around to a cable again.

'It's easy enough,' Bucky said. 'Here,' he said. He took the hat from her, more deft with his big hands than she would have thought. 'Do you have sisters? Brothers?'

'No,' she said, watching him knit with his hands tilted so she could see how he pulled the yarn. 'As a matter of fact, I am the only Carter child.'

'That sounds lonely,' Bucky said. 'Can't imagine what I'd have done without my sisters.' Peggy watched his fingers loop the thin, strong yarn easily, snicking stitches over to his other needle.

'You've got friends, of course,' Peggy pointed out.

'Sure, but it's—Even my best friends, it's nothing like having a sister,' Bucky said. 'Even Steve—It's not the same at all.'

'I made my own fun,' Peggy told him. 'I had a lot of friends at school who would come over. I didn't have siblings so my mother always let me bring whomever I pleased for tea. My parents' garden backs onto a creek; we used to go down there and pretend it was exploring. In the spring, we'd catch frogs and tadpoles.' Bucky made a gagging sound which surprised her so much that she cackled. 'What?' she demanded. 'Don't care for frogs?'

'Oh, my God, I'm a city person,' Bucky informed her. 'I don't—No frogs—No.'

'You can't be serious,' Peggy said, still laughing. 'If this child—' She swept her hand over her fake belly; Bucky snorted. '—wanted to keep a frog as a pet—' Bucky gagged again, exaggerating what had been a reflex to amuse her. She burst into a fit of cackles.

'Oh, my God,' Bucky cursed, under her peel of laughter, 'ugh, it's bad enough those things are outside; you'd have to really convince me to keep one in my home on purpose.' Peggy couldn't believe how ridiculous Bucky was. 'Disgusting.'

'Oh, they ought to make up some kind of frog villain for you to fight in the next issue of the comic books,' Peggy said. They'd received the first edition of Captain America last week and Bucky had yet to be bullied into reading it. The comic had begun circulating in the American bases in Europe too, not just the stateside run Bucky had agreed to on paper. Peggy thought there was nothing funnier than the cheesy propaganda or the terrible punchlines thruout, but Bucky was uncomfortable with every part. She supposed if it were her face being passed around between infantrymen with the cheesy propaganda, it'd stop being funny fast.

'The comic is the stupidest thing,' Bucky said. He rolled his eyes. 'And I'm not gonna touch a frog let alone fight, what? some giant, comic version of one? a frog with—a brain, that can talk? No, I'm not—That's disgusting.'

'You're as squeamish as a girl,' she teased. Bucky said nothing, just shrugged his shoulder where it pressed against hers and kept knitting. 'It's back to a simple part; give it back to me,' Peggy demanded. Bucky passed Peggy her hat. The needles clicked, the only sound other than the rumble of the train.

'Nothing wrong with being a girl,' Bucky said in a quiet way. 'And you liked frogs as a girl, so maybe being squeamish ain't that girly.'

'Well, no,' Peggy agreed. She remembered the way Steve had scoffed when she had called the drawing of Bucky a sketch of a man. She regretted her flippancy; it had been something she'd almost forgotten. She never knew how to tell Bucky that Steve had tilted a can of beans Peggy didn't understand, how to ask Bucky about it without feeling like she was ratting Steve out. Bucky never brought it up when they talked about Steve, when he shared her stories from their youth. She didn't know how to pry about something abstract she didn't have words for when Steve had pointed out the concrete risks of being found out. 'There's nothing wrong with being a lady, no. Does make a fair amount of things harder.'

'Well, you're my wife for the day,' Bucky said, bumping her shoulder with his own. Peggy snickered, warmed from the inside by Bucky as much as by the spots where they leaned against each other on the train compartment's bench. 'Tell me all your woes and I'll fix 'em.'

'At first glance, people take you seriously,' Peggy said. 'And while you've had some brilliant ideas, you're inexperienced. Command at the SSR should have expected you to prove yourself, like they have me, time and time and time, and time again.' Peggy shook her head. 'I'm a good agent but I'm often not treated like an agent at all. A man in my shoes would not have had this problem. It wasn't until Doctor Erskine was murdered that my voice was heard, and I still have to say things twice to be heard once.

'It was too high a price to pay to get my command,' Peggy said. 'But the SSR has had more intelligence—Well, you know how much we've brought in. You know why it is our operations stepped up.'

'I know how much has been brought in because of you,' Bucky said.

'It'll be closer to worth it if this,' she said, patting her bag with her coded patterns at the bottom, 'this new strategy turns the tide of the war. It's been helpful that I had you to make this trip with. We've been believed at every check point. How do you know such good German?' She had coached him on his accent, taking Brooklyn out of his vowels, putting Doctor Erskine's Augsburg in its place. He had the same German voice that she did now, babbling easily with the guards and the civilians alike.

'I took German in high school,' Bucky said. 'Got an aptitude for language, so I learned more than most.'

'We ought to try teaching you a new language now,' Peggy said, 'see how you do in comparison to then, with the serum.'

'Always wanted to learn French,' Bucky said. 'Something about the way a woman speaks French: it's alluring.' Peggy turned to trace her eyes over Bucky's profile at that, taking in his full lips, his gentle eyes. He'd look lovely speaking French.

'Most men think being called a girl is an insult,' Peggy ventured. Her needles clicked as she wove new stitches. Bucky shrugged, settling against her.

'I guess I wouldn't mind,' Bucky said.

'Being called a girl?' Peggy pressed. She passed Bucky the knitting when she found she had dropped a stitch. He took it, moving her stitches backwards to find where she'd dropped one. She watched him, amazed as he sorted out something complicated like it was nothing.

'I don't know,' he said. Peggy waited, listening. 'I wish—I wish I'd been raised like my sisters had,' Bucky said. 'My ma used to fret over them, but when I—'

'What?' Peggy pushed.

'I—' Bucky stopped again. Peggy didn't try to take back her knitting, even when Bucky had clearly fixed the dropped stitch and was hoarding the knitting to avoid her eyes. 'I had to manage everything by myself and then watch her help them learn to do the same things. She'd fret over them, like they were breakable or like they were precious, and then she'd tell me I wasn't tough enough if I wanted the same help.

'My friends back home make fun of me if I dress too nicely or if I act too girly; you get to roll your hair like that and—You just look so lovely,' Bucky said. 'I wish I could be pretty like you.'

'I think you're pretty,' she said. Bucky scoffed and shook his head, but his cheeks turned pink like deep down he was pleased. 'See?' she said. 'Those blushing cheeks: that's pretty.' Bucky tried to scoff again but his mouth broke into a shy smile.

'Shut up,' Bucky said, trying to pin his lips back down.

'Well, you're my wife for the day,' Peggy said, echoing him verbatim. 'I'm allowed to flatter you, aren't I?'

'God, Peggy, I guess,' Bucky said, almost pink enough to be called red. 'I don't deserve that flattery.'

'It's a good thing I'm not very good with flattery,' Peggy said. 'I'm better with the facts.'

''S not fair to tease,' Bucky said.

'It doesn't have to be a tease,' Peggy said. 'You could be my wife, if you wanted.' Bucky turned to her to stare, searching her. Peggy didn't know what he needed to see but she smiled; she meant it. He could be her wife if he wanted; he was already Steve's girl. Bucky stopped knitting, for all Peggy knew full well he could see the knitting in his perfect peripheral vision.

'It's not fair to tease,' he said again. He wasn't knitting, so she bullied her way into his grip, holding his hand. His mouth fell open ever so slightly and Peggy wondered if this is what characters in films felt like when women swooned into their arms. She wanted to brush her fingers along the fine blush across the highest points of Bucky's cheekbones.

'It's not a tease,' Peggy said again. She had an odd thought that Bucky would be lovely with long hair; Peggy could brush over his blush with the excuse to tuck a curl back into place. 'I'm fond of your Steve, you know,' Peggy reminded Bucky. 'It seems I have room to be fond of you too.'

Bucky looked away. He brought the hand of hers he held to his mouth, pressing his lips to her hand for a moment. Peggy tucked her head onto his shoulder.

It felt oddly like a promise.

⍟

Steve could barely hear the voices swirling around him past the screaming pain in his body.

The pain didn't swirl; it stabbed and tore and burned. It pierced until Steve felt himself shattered from it, unable to struggle past the fire ripping thru his body. The pain didn't swirl thru his head like the voices did. Such a delicate word could never be applied to this.

His entire body was filled with needles, needles sending fire and acid and glass into the every fibre of his being. He didn't know what they'd been pumping into him, but he was tearing apart and ripping apart and burning and searing and raw.

'Steven,' a quiet voice called, a gentle touch breaking thru pain against his forehead. 'Steven, it's time to come back.'

'Rogers, medic, PF—PFC,' Steve tried, refusing to give anything other than what he'd been told to give back home. It was getting harder and harder. His diaphragm kept locking open and his entire body burned with the need for a few solid, good breaths. He'd never felt breathlessness so unlike the tightness of an asthma attack.

'No, no, Steven,' the voice said. Steve knew his eyes were functional—his left eye healed the first day just like the wounds to his side by whatever terrible, freakish medicine they'd given him—Pain made it hard to process what he saw.

Steve saw Zola.

Zola stood next to his gurney, in the strange white suits the scientists had started wearing in the last few torture sessions disguised as medical experiments. The clear glass protecting Zola's face was flecked with red but his glasses were spotless behind it. Steve wondered if the red flecks belonged to him. It was misted. He wondered if his lungs were filling with blood. He wondered if he was finally going to be declared a failed experiment and put down, like Patterson when his skin stopped regenerating under their peeling scalpels. His lungs burned as much as the rest of him. It meant nothing.

'Five,' Steve said, trying to keep a grip on the number on his dog tags; as long as he could keep a grip on that number, he was still alive.

'You are getting stronger, Steven,' Zola promised, his gloved touch on Steve's face soft and a mockery of comfort. He tried to steal Steve's focus; he wanted Steve to tell him what hurt like Davis had done until the end, begging for relief all along. Steve couldn't stop hearing Davis's begging; Davis was dead but Steve could hear his begging.

'Four,' he said. He didn't want to hear his own voice begging. If he started, he'd never stop.

'Do you feel it? Tell me what you feel.' It was an order but it felt to Steve like coaxing. Steve wanted to cry, he wanted to admit how much it hurt because then maybe they'd stop or maybe they'd kill him. Maybe death couldn't be worse than this.

'Nine,' he sobbed. 'Eight—'

'Steven, I need you to focus,' Zola interrupted. 'We've had you here for weeks and you have already given us these numbers. I need you to focus!'

'Five.' He'd never had to focus so hard in his life. How dare Zola accuse him of not focusing. Keeping in screaming and begging required the most intense focus he'd ever had. 'Eight.'

A German voice cut over him. Zola replied in the same foreign tongue and Steve couldn't resist the urge to twist in his restraints as the pain roiled underneath him.

'Seven. Zero.' He was sure the restraints were getting tighter, closer, and the world felt like it was shifting beneath his back. He felt like his spine was bending under his skin. He slammed his skull back into the table almost involuntarily, his hearing ringing and vision dimming for a second, hard.

'Steven,' Zola called. 'Steven. You are the only one left.'

'No,' Steve gasped.

'Yes,' Zola promised. 'You are the only one to have survived this long. Sickly, small, jüdisch... Why is it you have survived?' Lightning shot down his spine and burned thru his ribs and hips. It was worse than any pain his scoliosis had ever caused him. It was worse than anything he'd ever imagined and he'd been breathless from tightening lungs and asthma. He didn't understand why he wasn't dead; he should have died; he should have joined Douglas in that fire; that death would have been better than this one—

'Rogers,' he gasped, feeling tears stream from his eyes, burning hot against his lids and cool against his feverish cheeks. 'Medic—'

'Should we increase your radiation?' Zola asked. 'You are stabilizing the serum so well. If we had a way to make you saturate better, this process would be quicker. I'm sorry for that. As it is, it will be several more days, several more treatments, I think. It is finally working.'

'Private,' he struggled.

'But you are getting stronger, Steven; can you feel it?'

'Five,' Steve bit out. Steve heard himself whimper before he lost track of where he was in his number. He lost track of everything, lost track of where he was, who he was—

Steve wasn't sure if he existed beyond the agony shearing thru every molecule and atom and cell. He couldn't hear Zola anymore, couldn't see the strange suits anymore, couldn't feel the burn of radiation, couldn't even taste his own blood. Everything was white-hot and tearing and shearing and impossible. His body was seizing; it was trying to shake him apart.

He knew then, certainly, he was dying, like everyone else had, like Patterson had, screaming and tearing apart. He was dying. He'd never see Bucky again. He was dying.

'Sh'ma Yisra'eil Adonai Eloheinu,' he began, thinking of his mother, and the way she'd led him thru the prayer twice a day when she was healthy, when he'd done it when she wasn't. He couldn't tell if he was speaking out loud or if that screaming voice was him and he was praying with only his heart.

'Increase the radiation,' Zola ordered, repeating himself in German. A machine kicked back into life and Steve felt his lips crack with dryness and bleed hot as his mouth fell open, slack.

He lost his grip on the prayer. All he had was pain.

He screamed.

⍟

Peggy left the briefing as quickly as she could, pushing the tent's flaps back. The rain was of course still pouring, but Peggy didn't have time to waste worrying about the wet. Her boots sunk into the muddy gravel as she hurried back to the tent where she'd left Bucky, who she had left typing up notes from her late night briefing the night before.

He was still working, settled in front of the ancient typewriter, bundled in his uniform and a woollen hat, endearing and soft. Bucky looked over at her, his fingers not slowing until he saw her face. Her curls were soaked and her cheeks were wet but she hadn't started crying. Her eyes were stinging but she was keeping it together with the most delicate thread.

'Peggy? What's going on?' Bucky asked, immediately concerned. His hands lifted off the typewriter, her notepad's neat handwriting smudged in one corner with a coffee ring. 'What happened in the briefing?'

'There was an ambush at the front,' she said. Her voice croaked. Her heart was pounding in her chest and Bucky stood to take her elbow. He sat her down, and Peggy wasn't like this. She wasn't delicate and nervous and overwhelmed. She wasn't a fainting damsel, but the crisis had broken like a wave over her.

'What happened?' Bucky repeated, sitting in his own chair, pressing one of his hands into hers. She didn't know how to tell Bucky, the person who'd been her wife for a day, that the command had lost their third. She didn't know how she was possibly supposed to say A clearing station and its personnel were bombed; the hospital, two wards, the housing tents: gone. 'How many?' he asked when she stayed stuck and dumb.

'Less than fifty men escaped,' she said. 'The rest were taken to a HYDRA base thirty miles behind the front. Phillips won't be sold on trying a rescue, and he won't be sold on the idea of giving you your first covert op to attack a base like this.'

'Why are you so shaken?' Bucky asked. 'I'd have thought you'd be up in a rally about giving the investment a chance.'

'It's the—' Her voice caught. Peggy blew a breath out thru her lips loud enough to hear it, trying to use the sound to gather herself. 'It's the one-oh-seventh,' she said. Bucky's face fell slack. He shook his head as what must be a thousand terrified thoughts rushed across his mind.

'Peggy, Steve's in the—' Bucky said. 'Well, the—I mean, the fifty made it back to the clearing station, right,' he said, not knowing how wrong he was. Peggy closed her eyes. She didn't know how to correct him; the reality of it was harsh enough that she didn't know how she'd voice it. Bucky went on: 'Steve's fine.

'Right?' 

'The fifty who made it back made it from the clearing station,' she said. 'The ambush included the clearing station: its hospital, the medical housing—Everything. Everyone.'

'Steve's on the missing list,' she said. Bucky's hand went over his mouth; colour drained from his face like Peggy had spilt a bottle. Peggy barely had room to notice it thru her own worry. 'If he's alive, he's been taken. If he was taken, it was months ago.' Her voice was quieter than she meant, but she knew Bucky's ears would have no problem.

'Months? How can we only be finding out now?' Bucky asked.

'The attack was carried out with weapons HYDRA has and Nazis don't,' Peggy said. 'The weapons' existence was classified as need-to-know and it's only now someone felt I needed to know.'

'Peggy, it's been—?' Bucky asked. 'It can't—Steve can't have been missing for that long.' Steve had been; Peggy was such a failure of an intelligence officer that she hadn't even known.

'I tried to get you permission to perform the five-man raid you'd proposed,' Peggy said, as if Bucky wouldn't notice that she should have known this ages ago, 'but they won't risk hitting this base with something that they think will fail. You're worth more than the missing men.'

'No, I'm not,' Bucky said.

'There's nothing we can do,' Peggy said. 'There's a war on; we—' She swallowed. It hurt to say this. 'We have to have other priorities.'

'Find a way to get me in alone,' Bucky said. 'Orders or no.'

Bucky stood, moving to his kit in the corner, changing into battle fatigues, right in front of her. She didn't bother turning to preserve his modesty; she marched right up to him and punched the back of his shoulder. It was like a wall, all muscle and tendon. He yelped and turned to stare at her, intimidatingly bulky and unnecessarily clutching his shoulder.

'What the hell is that, Barnes?' she snapped. 'You don't give me orders. You certainly don't tell me to break mine.'

'It's Steve,' Bucky said, a little desperate. 'Peggy, he's—my best friend. Peggy, you know what Steve is to me. You know I can't leave him.'

'There's an entire war to fight. We can't—' Peggy tried, because she wanted to abandon everything to save Steve just because that blond nut would abandon anything if someone he loved were in danger. 'We can't disobey our objective.'

Again she was reminded of her only reservation about Steve Rogers as a candidate for the serum: it would have turned his eager selflessness into uncontrollable recklessness. Peggy didn't know how those qualities could have balance. If she went recklessly after Steve, wouldn't it be selfish; she would be forsaking her orders to quell her own worry about someone she had no business holding ardent feelings for—Steve was basically a penpal to her; it didn't matter how sweet his letters were or how lovely the stories Bucky shared were; she'd known him for such a small amount of time—She'd known them both such a small time—

Peggy had a job as an agent, a real one; that mattered. She was supposed to protect Sergeant Barnes, the Investment, but she wanted so badly to send him into a forested and heavily fortified war zone.

'God, please, Peggy,' Bucky begged. He took her hand between his giant palms. His hands were so warm, dry and soft as could be. 'Please, Peggy: you know how much he means to me. Think how much he means to you and you've barely—

'Decades, Peggy; I've loved him so long, please. Please.' His grey eyes almost won her over just in their sincerity but her heart was filled with acid because Steve was one of the missing men. He wasn't on the official list of prisoners and Peggy couldn't possibly tell Bucky that they had that list, not when Steve wasn't on it. She couldn't tell him that the chances were that Steve were already dead, killed with one of the weapons that left no bodies behind. For that to have been Steve's fate was too likely. The acid worry made it hard to focus on logic, and she hated herself for it. She worked so hard to not be seen as delicate and here she was nearly disarmed by her feelings for a five-foot-four asthmatic with no place at war in the first place.

'It'd be deserting, Bucky,' she pointed out. 'He's—You've no chance of finding him.' Her voice cracked but she couldn't bear to say the actual truth. 'You can't expect a one-man invasion to work on a HYDRA weapons factory.'

'It's a one man job on the way in,' Bucky said, with that quiet thinking expression she'd come to know so well in the last few months. She stepped back, giving him room, and he did shift his weight, if he didn't pace like he often did. She stared. 'Why not?' he asked her. 'They captured a portion of the men alive. It's a factory. The men do work; they could fight too. They just need someone to undo the locks. It's a one-man job to the lock-ups, and then its just a matter of letting the men arm themselves.'

'HYDRA won't exactly leave enough to outfit a rebellion on hand—'

'It's a weapons factory, Pegs,' he said, turning away and pulling his battle greens on. 'The men make the weapons. They can find them and steal them before the guards catch the one-man-break-in. Just a matter of being quicker than the guards and making it a many-men-break-out.' He turned back to her, imploring and scared. 'I can do this. I swear to you, Pegs; I can do this.' Peggy felt scared; she didn't feel the certainty he swore to her.

All it would take was a bullet to the head: a split second, a moment. Bucky would be gone like Steve and Peggy would be the secret agent who had failed Doctor Erskine and his samples and his investment, failed everything and everyone.

'I'll walk to him if I have to,' Bucky promised. 'Please, Peggy, give me a way to get there while there's still a chance for him.'

Peggy could see the hope so strong on Bucky's face. There was still a chance for Steve if Bucky believed it. If Bucky came to the rescue, it would all be OK; Steve would be all right as a long as Bucky Barnes was coming for him.

'Steve would do the same for any one of the men captured; you know he would,' Bucky went on, too desperate to recognise that Peggy had decided. She turned, mind made up. 'Peggy?' he gasped.

'We're going,' she said. She couldn't get the past the German line, but if she could persuade Howard to do something foolish, by God, she could get them over it. 'Give me ten minutes.'

Chapter Text

Bucky crept along the hallway, close to the wall as he could. He had gotten into the factory with relative ease and it seemed like the factory guards hadn't found the bodies he'd left behind yet, hadn't set off the alarm. He stopped at the end of the hallway, peering around into some open space.

There was a guard wandering between circles of light, peering into the rounds of metal grating over cages below. Bucky could hear small voices from below. The guard shifted his grip on his gun at the sound of a broken cough ripping its way out of someone's chest. The guard slammed the butt of the glowing rifle down into the metal grating. The cougher tried to suppress themselves, unsuccessful. Other voices in the same cage sprang up in whispers to soothe him before the guard lost his patience and killed them all.

Bucky moved when the guard took aim, rushing him while his attention was pinpoint and elsewhere. Bucky took the gun from the guard's hands, moving quicker than the human man could, tossing it away. Bucky still felt like a freak or a monster; he didn't used to be so much faster than other men. He couldn't have outrun the aim and fire of a gun before; he couldn't have cleared fifteen feet in a second and ripped and tossed a gun away in less than one. He hit the man with an uppercut, hoping he didn't hit hard enough to break the man's skull and kill him—

Bucky still didn't know his own strength, but he sure had jumped eight feet straight in the air when he'd needed to clear a wall and he sure had bent the thick, iron bars around the window he'd snuck in thru—The guard dropped. Bucky didn't consider him—He turned away from what might be a body. Bucky knelt, looking thru the grate.

Eleven dirty men stared up at him, in a circle of bars without enough area for them to all sit without touching. One of them had resumed their coughing, doubling over, his knees practically around his ears as he tried both to cover his mouth and free whatever was choking his lungs. Someone thumped his back; Bucky knew from thumping Steve's that it never helped.

'Who the fuck are you?' asked an Englishman, in a posher accent than Bucky was used to hearing from infantrymen. 'And what the hell are you doing?'

'I'm, uh,' Bucky said. It felt terribly insignificant to say: I'm a guy called James Barnes. Bucky felt a little crazy: peering down thru bars and grates at humans caged dirtier and packed more tightly than animals at the zoo in Prospect Park. 'I'm Captain America. I'm here to rescue you.'

'What, from the comics?' one of the Negroes asked. Bucky leaned away from the grating to rummage thru the guard's belt. 'You the Star-Spangled Man With A Plan?'

'One and the same,' Bucky said. He dropped a set of keys down into the cell. It landed in the Negro's lap, and he looked, surprised, between the keys and Bucky. 'Open up,' Bucky said, and just like that, the silence of the cages below him broke.

Men started clamouring even before the men of the first cages managed to let themselves out. Bucky left the body—the guard—and made his way to the staircase down to the cages. When Bucky looked out over the dozen of the freed prisoners, the Negro from the cage had found a Japanese man; together they rushed from locked cage to locked cage, turning the ring of keys and trying key after key until they had the right one.

'We need a weapons store,' Bucky said, when the posh British man approached him with the other white men from their cage. Other cages were draining too; men fell into rank and waited in front of Bucky for orders, like he knew what he was doing here. One cage was empty but for a man so thin to already be a skeleton left behind, slumped over, face down, still, already dead. Bucky tried to imagine being caged with the man after he'd died: men sitting against bars without enough room to do anything but sit flush to a corpse's side.

'The stores are barred thru there,' the Englishman said. Bucky followed his gaze to a set of doors locked with a classic padlock and chains, like a dungeon from a film. Bucky still didn't know his strength, but when he grabbed the chain and wrenched, it popped open like a worn shoestring. Bucky opened the doors and found himself in another hallway.

'Come on,' the Englishman said, taking pace alongside Bucky. 'Do we have any support outside?' he asked.

'No,' Bucky reported. 'Our support is the weapons you men've been making.' The Englishman nodded and tugged Bucky along. Bucky didn't say that they had so little support that Bucky had some here not only without orders but against them; he didn't say he'd jumped out of a civilian's private plane.

'Listen,' the Englishman said. 'There are men up there—' He pointed and Bucky turned to look. There was a staircase leading up and away from the pens, a different one than he'd come down. 'The doctor here does experiments. They haven't taken anyone in a few weeks so I don't know if anyone's still alive up there—'

'I'll find them,' Bucky said, even if it meant he couldn't be able to sweep the cage survivors for Steve. Steve had to be alive; he had to be here somewhere. He couldn't be dead. Bucky couldn't have come all this way for nothing—It wouldn't be for nothing, not for nothing: for all these other lives—Bucky couldn't have done all of this not to find Steve.

As Bucky hurried up the stairs—thankful he ran inhumanly fast—Bucky heard the first few rackets of machine guns. He wondered how many of the men would die escaping. He wondered how long they would have lasted here if he hadn't come.

The first room in the isolation ward was empty, two steel gurneys placed in the middle of the room. They were littered in various leather restraints, and stained copper with blood.

Bucky drew back from the doorway and continued down the hallway. The other rooms were filled with the same equipment; two rooms had four steel gurneys instead. Bucky's stomach roiled at the smell of the place, which got worse as he went further down the hallway. He'd thought the pens smelled something awful, with prisoners even dirtier than any shellhead Bucky'd seen at the front. God, this was worse than even that. This rank of death, like Bucky should be seeing dozens of rotting forms instead of empty gurneys.

'Oh, my God,' he said, muffled as he pressed his hand over his mouth and nose. He tried to block the smell, breathing thru his mouth under his hand. With every empty room, he was afraid he was too late. There was no reason to think Steve had survived what the men who'd leaked blood into all these empty labs had seen. There was no way there was life in the thick of this smell.

Bucky stuck his head into an office, and spotted a map. He crept into the room, tracing his eyes over the pins and flags, committing them to memory. There were six flags in the same colour as the spot Bucky stood in: other factories. HYDRA would be outproducing the Allies in weapons in no time unless at least half of these factories were wiped out.

'Fuck,' Bucky cursed, still muffled into his palm. Bucky left the office, aware he only had so much time before the escape triggered some sort of alarm or security. The fourth lab, and the first door on the left side of the hall that didn't lead to an office, held a different smell: danker, and worse. This smell hadn't had time to stale. The lab wasn't empty.

Bucky couldn't believe it: Steve was there, strapped to a table.

Steve's feet were bare; his uniform was tattered. He shook like an old man with palsy. His wrists and arms were trapped in heavy, metal cuffs and his legs were bound in heavy, leather straps. Bucky rushed to his side, his hand dropping from his face as he reached out to touch Steve's face. Bucky pulled back at the last second, hesitating. Silvered, years-old-but-new-to-Bucky scars cut swooping lines across the left of Steve's face. His eyes traced one that ran along the line of a strong jaw; Bucky frowned.

'Steve,' Bucky whispered, unsure why he was hushed in an empty wing. Bucky touched Steve's cheek and pulled back at the shockingly hot feeling of his skin. Steve felt like he did when he used to get real sick at home, when doctors would stress about whether he'd make it or not. Bucky still didn't know that stupid prayer, not even in English. 'Sweetheart, darling. Hey, wake up, huh?'

Steve's eyes opened, unfocused and pupils blown, trailing absently over Bucky's face. 'Rogers. Medic, PFC,' Steve said, rote and exhausted, 'five, f-four—'

'Steve!' Bucky snapped. He didn't have much time; the fighting had started and Bucky had to figure someone might send a guard here too. Jesus, what had they been doing to Steve? Bucky remembered having received instructions to provide name and rank if tortured and his heart skipped at the thought of Steve in pain. He glanced at the door—still empty, the hallway silent beyond, gunshots and shouts and booms in the distance—and back down to Steve. He touched Steve's face again, trying to hold Steve's glassy eyes focused on him. 'Stevie, sweetheart, focus, huh? Can you hear me?'

Steve's eyelids fluttered and his blown pupils shifted onto Bucky, suddenly seeing him there. His eyebrows drew together. 'Steve,' Bucky said, begging. 'Stevie, darling, can you hear me?'

'Buck?' Steve sounded unsure. Bucky's name came out as barely a word; it was a croak out of a wrecked voice box.

'Yeah, darling, it's me,' Bucky promised. Steve's eyes searched his and then his chapped white lips broke out in a grin, looking fit for hysterics. Bucky noted that Steve still had all his teeth as Steve laughed a pathetic, exhausted laugh.

Bucky didn't feel too far off from hysterics himself. Bucky clapped Steve's little face with the other hand, holding him, and his eyes burned. He wasn't dead, like Bucky had feared.

Still, Steve looked terrible. His hair was greasy and foul with old sweat. It was grubby, lying away from his face and making his cheekbones seem more gaunt than they were. Something was strange. He looked almost like he'd broadened since Bucky had last seen him in Brooklyn. He looked like he'd put on weight, even after weeks of playing prisoner. Something was wrong with that, and it tickled the back of Bucky's brain past the overwhelming, foolhardy relief.

'Bucky,' Steve gasped. His shitty lungs struggled to expand with the breath for words. 'You're here. I knew you'd—You're here. You're really here, right?'

'Yeah, Stevie, I'm here,' he promised. 'I thought you were dead.'

'I thought you were stateside,' Steve replied. Bucky reached down and tore the restraints off at their hinges. Steve surged, trying to sit and falling against Bucky. His hands wrapped Bucky's biceps to catch himself.

'Whoa,' Steve said, his eyes crossing Bucky's chest like he, in his delirious state, had the time to drink Bucky in like he was Rita Hayworth: a spectacle, a beauty, remarkable. Steve's eyes traced up Bucky's neck and lingered on his lips. 'I thought you were smaller.'

'Right back atchya, punk,' Bucky said, hauling Steve off the table. He made to pull them to the hallways and Steve resisted. He pulled out of Bucky's arms too easily; he was stronger than Bucky remembered and that shouldn't be true—Steve should have seemed far weaker than he ever had; Bucky had superhuman strength now—Steve was clearly drugged within an inch of his life; he shouldn't be strong enough to yank out of Bucky's grip like nothing.

'My packs,' Steve said, even as he stumbled like a drunkard. 'A medic never goes without restocking—'

'We ain't got time—' Bucky snapped. 'We gotta get out and you're the one who's hurt—'

Steve stumbled into and pulled open an unlocked cupboard. He yanked out a helmet and pack harness. Bucky counted five helmets in the locker's shelving. He wondered what had happened to the men who had won them. His gaze swept over the half-dozen identical lockers along the back wall, before being pulled back to focus on Steve again, but not before realising how many men must have been held in this same room before Steve.

Steve tugged on the handle of a cabinet filled with medical supplies, only to have the handle clack, locked. Bucky watched, half-horrified and half-amazed as Steve slammed his palm thru the glass of a locked cabinet, shaking pieces out of his hand like the injury meant nothing. By the time he'd stuffed his packs full of suture kits, gauze and sulpha, his hand had started to knit back together, not even scarring, just healthy pink skin under wet blood, bits of glass rejected as his skin healed around them.

'What happened to you?' Bucky asked as he took Steve's arm, because rapid healing or not, he was still drugged to the gills and swaying and stumbling and visibly different and fucked up.

'Nothing,' Steve lied. 'What happened to you?'

'I got promoted,' Bucky said evasively.

They ran.

Bucky tugged Steve along, keeping him balanced when his bare feet sometimes gave up on him and let him stumble.

'You're OK,' Bucky said, as Steve stumbled on the metal staircase. Steve stopped for a moment; he leaned over the railing like he thought he was gonna hurl. Bucky stroked his back, trying to hurry Steve without being cruel. 'You've got this, sugar; you're good; we got this; we gotta go.' Steve spat then hauled himself into movement again. Bucky took his elbow and took the resistance of gravity. They made their way upstairs.

'Oh, no,' Steve said, when they reached the top. He shrunk away from the top step, holding onto the railing. Bucky would say Steve were cowering if he didn't know Steve better than that. Bucky stepped up off the staircase onto the landing, putting himself between Steve and—

Steve was cowering away from two men across an open space and a gangway, in front of a narrow, sleek elevator. His feet were scrambling to get away; Bucky had to hold onto his forearm to stop him headed back the way they'd come. 'Oh, no, Buck, he's here,' Steve whispered. 'He's here, oh, fuck; oh, no—'

The shorter man on the gangway had round glasses. Behind the lenses, he looked delighted, staring past Bucky to Steve. Bucky felt like the man was leering, predatory. Bucky didn't like the weight of the man's gaze; Bucky tried harder to use his stupidly big shoulders to block Steve from the man's eyeline. Bucky felt like he had those times certain men needed to be told by someone their own size that Steve meant it when he said he wasn't interested in their advances; he felt the way he did when he pulled rough fellows off protesting others—off women like Bucky, braver than he in their dresses and wigs—in bars meant for queers. The leering sickened him. It was like Steve was delicious, succulent meat.

'Ah, Sergeant Barnes!' the taller man called, his German accent as thick as the fire below them.

'I'm a captain now,' Bucky lied, trying to sound authoritative. The comic book meant nothing. Bucky didn't even have the silly costume his comic book Captain counterpart had. The comic book Captain had a big, fancy shield. Bucky had nothing to keep Steve behind him, safe. He shifted his grip on his gun, but he didn't aim. These men were carrying some of the files Bucky should have stolen but left behind in his panic to find the love of his life. He wondered how fucking foolish he'd been to leave behind clues about this red-skulled freak. 'How do you know me?'

'I'm an old friend of Doctor Erskine,' the man said, beginning his way across the gangway. 'I see you've had a successful transformation. When the reports stopped coming, I admit I became unbearably curious to see how you turned out.'

'You're Johann Schmidt,' Bucky said, realizing. Schmidt was the head of HYDRA, elusive and difficult to track. Bucky had picked his location out of chatter and rumours a hundred times if he'd down it once.

'I was,' Schmidt agreed.

Schmidt reached up, and gripped his own hair. 'Now, I am so much more!'

Bucky watched in horror as the man—the monster tugged, tugged, tugged, and then his skin came with his fist, away from his skull—away from his blood-red flesh, his exposed tendons, his grotesque smile and his white, bleeding gums. His teeth were vulgar as he grinned, lipless and reptilian.

Bucky took a step back without meaning to; his back touched Steve and Steve cowered against him. Bucky reached back. He grabbed the hand Steve met him with. Dear God, Bucky thought. Please, let this be a trick of some drug in the air or some trick of the light.

'Oh, God,' Steve whispered, digging his fingers into Bucky's jacket. 'Bucky, Bucky, oh, my God.'

'Yeah, I don't got one of those,' Bucky promised, unable to help himself from turning for a short second, to make sure Steve hadn't fainted. Steve was still standing, clutching Bucky's jacket and hand as if Bucky were the only thing keeping him on his feet. Steve had gotten paler, somehow, since they'd left the isolation ward. Bucky hoped that was just the lighting too.

'You have disrupted one of my factories,' Schmidt called. 'But don't worry. I have harnessed the power of the gods and your inconvenience won't slow me down.'

'No, we'll stop you,' Bucky said. 'We can do this all day; we'll go to every factory you got hidden like this.' He didn't make an effort to make his voice carry; he'd be able to hear a normal voice at this distance now, even with the sirens and clatter and chaos in the distance. Schmidt's red face smirked and he laughed.

'Oh, you think you can stop me?' Schmidt said, equally quiet. Bucky didn't need to strain. 'I know all there is to know about you, Sergeant Barnes. I know how your serum improved you. I even know your weaknesses.

'You'll fall from great heights,' Schmidt said. The elevator doors opened behind him and he backed in without looking, taking even, measured steps like he knew every inch of this torture and manufacturing facility like the back of his hand. 'And I'll be the one to have pushed you, Barnes.

'For every plan of ours you tear down,' Schmidt taunted. 'Two more shall take its place!' Bucky had heard that before: with an assassin gurgling from cyanide burning his throat from within.

The little man with him peeled his eyes off of Steve and followed the Red Skull into the lift. The doors shut and the elevator whirled away. Bucky turned back to Steve.

'Hey,' Bucky said, catching Steve when he swayed on the steps. 'Hey, I got you.' Steve's eyes were wild, crazy and foggy.

'Bucky, I don't want to go with him,' Steve said. 'I don't wanna go back; I don't wanna go back.' He wasn't looking at Bucky; he was staring thru Bucky to where the men had disappeared, where the little one had stood while he ogled Steve.

'You're getting out,' Bucky promised, with the factory burning and ready to collapse around them. He tried to tug Steve along, towards the escape route, the exit signs he could see marked in a sick example of basic safety. 'Come on.' 

'No, no, I don't want to go back; I don't wanna go with him,' Steve babbled, lost and panicked. He resisted Bucky's pull. Bucky took Steve's face in his palms, wasting precious time as he tried to get that glassy, petrified glaze out of Steve's eyes, trying to peel Steve's attention off of the elevator across the smoky bay.

'Hey, look at me,' Bucky said. 'Steve. Look at me.'

Steve did. He looked at Bucky and he focused past the febrile glassiness of his eyes.

'I'm so fucking glad you're alive,' Bucky said, unable to leave that in the silence, even now, when they still might not make it out. The tracker Stark had given Bucky was ruined, shattered; Bucky had all the pieces in his pocket still and he didn't really know why. Bucky kissed Steve, chaste, quick: radiation-chapped lips and prison lab filth be damned. It lasted only a second but Steve's eyes were clearer when Bucky pulled back. 'You good?' Bucky asked. 'You with me?' Steve nodded. He stood straighter; he blinked some of the glaze out of his eyes and focused in on Bucky.

'I'm with you,' Steve agreed. 'To the end of the line.'

Bucky beamed; he swore his smile was brighter than the fire below them. He took Steve's hand and he pulled. Steve followed.

Bucky was Captain America. He was a supersoldier. He could get them both out alive.

⍟

Bucky followed Phillips into his tent, sure he'd been called in from supper for disciplinary action.

Bucky had sort of commandeered a civilian plane—and Howard, a civilian pilot whose riches and genius alike were essential to the SSR—into a war-zone and crossed over enemy lines without orders. Phillips was fuming, but something in the air wasn't quite right. Bucky had had his share of having officers fume at him when he kept evading the false captivity the SSR had tried to keep him in the labs; they'd been furious with Bucky and convinced of their own authority. Phillips was fuming like he was mad as someone else, someone above him. He was fuming like there was nothing he could do.

The wounded had been swept away before dinner; a determined few had shaken off nurses and doctors to get in the line for food. Word had gotten out quick upon their return that Steve had been the first recovered survivor of the experiments the Nazi's deep science division was apparently infamous for. The doctors had pulled him out of the cafeteria before Bucky could get out of line to stop it, leaving Steve's food behind on his table for his seatmates to devour.

Bucky had been pulled out of the cafeteria too.

Bucky stood at attention as Phillips settled at his worktable, in the rickety wooden chair. Bucky's uniform was still in tatters, and grime from days of marching had begun to itch at his skin. One boot had torn itself away from the sole and his foot was absolutely soaked and uncomfortable. His stomach was worse than the wet shoes; he was so hungry he swore he was inventing new colours. Phillips didn't look pleased, and Bucky didn't turn as Peggy slipped in behind him, smelling lovely as ever.

'Sit,' Phillips said. 'The both of you.'

They did, and they waited while Phillips stared at them, looking generally displeased. Sirens rang in the distance; the brouhaha from the rescued's arrival had died down. The soundtrack of wartime had settled once again.

Bucky glanced at Peggy, who sat perfectly made up, chin lifted proudly. Bucky grinned, before remembering himself and sobering. He tried to keep a straight face, but he was starving, desperate to tell Peggy how well things had gone, desperate to change his clothes, and to continue to meet the hundreds of men he'd helped save.

'I'm in a difficult position,' Phillips said finally. 'I knew you'd be trouble from the day you snuck into Carter's intelligence bullpen begging for a job,' he said, pointing a pen at Bucky.

'And you've always been trouble,' he added, pointing at Peggy. 'You're getting to be nearly more trouble than you're worth, and your secretary's just freed a few hundred men.

'The war is getting more intense, ladies,' Phillips said, like he expected Bucky to bristle at that; 'and I can't have a pair of intelligence officers pulling shenanigans against orders, no matter how well those shenanigans turn out. We have a chain of command here.'

'Colonel, Sergeant Barnes was under my command at the time of his desertion,' Peggy said, and Bucky snapped his head to glare at her. He'd do the same if one of his men had done what Bucky had, but it still stung to have someone take his fall. 'Any discipline should be handed off to me. He was my responsibility and I made no effort to stop the rescue. In fact, I enabled it.'

'Humph,' said Phillips, unimpressed. Peggy held his gaze until Phillips broke it to guide Bucky's attention to a map on the wall. Bucky recognised it and stood, understanding what Phillips wanted before he said it.

'I only found one office before the alarms went off,' Bucky said. He took a pen from Phillips' desk and crossed to the map, marking them off. He didn't say that he could have stolen files and had looked for Steve instead. He described the function of the factory, from what he'd seen and from what the men had said; he explained the bases that were well stocked with whatever freakish guns the prisoners had been making.

'And the sixth one was about here,' Bucky finished, stepping away. Phillips looked less displeased now, even with the well-fortified picture Bucky painted of the enemy. Bucky placed the pen back on the table. 'It was maybe thirty-five miles west of the Maginot line.' Peggy looked impressed, and Phillips no longer looked murderous, so he played humble. 'I just glanced at the map; my priority were the men.' His priority had been finding Steve, not the war.

'Did you learn anything more from the rescued prisoners?' Peggy asked.

'There are a few French Resistance men who are willing to tell you everything they told me in exchange for repatriation to Free France, one who wants active duty here,' Bucky said. 'They worked as clerks; shipping manifests have followed major attacks in the last six months, and they have six weeks of future shipment plans to hand over. Only two of the shipments were coming from our factory; the rest pass thru for inspection by the science officers running the labs. They'll continue despite this factory falling. Besides, these are just the weapons factories we know about,' Bucky added, gesturing back to the map.

'Private Rogers said that experimental parts are shipped to another facility that is not on this map,' Bucky said. 'That's where the HYDRA commander, Schmidt, spends his time. Our best bet to find out where it is is to utilize the French's information, and have Agent Carter coordinate with the English and their spies, to find the main HYDRA base.'

'And what would you have yourself do?' Phillips asked, less condescending than usual, leaning back with his hands folded over his stomach.

'I'd like to go after these factories, sir,' Bucky said. He stood at parade rest, hoping he seemed as assured as he did not feel. 'I'd like to take out his labs and prison camps, one by one. The Germans will outrun our munitions production in a few months if these aren't destroyed. They operate fourteen hours a day, and there's little reason to not work the men to death. The men we rescued: some of them barely had the strength to carry a gun. Men died on the way back here, just fell where they stood. Men died in trucks in their sleep.'

'To HYDRA? That's not a cost,' Bucky said. 'They'll grab more of ours from the front. They'll grab villages as they push our line back. HYDRA will outproduce us and they'll do it by making bodies.'

Phillips sighed.

'Here's what's going to happen,' Phillips said. 'Senator Brandt kicked up one hell of a storm when we realised you'd gone AWOL.

'He wants to shut this whole division down, losing you the way we did,' Phillips said. Bucky wanted to roll his eyes. He'd been drafted, ripped away from his home when he'd wanted to stay, and now Congress wouldn't let him fight the war he'd been drafted into. 'If you're going to be putting his governmental investment at risk every other day, he'll need something in return, or he'll shut down the SSR.' Bucky nodded, waiting to be handed a boat ticket back stateside, to do that fucking publicity tour Brandt had dreamed up. Maybe Steve would be invalided home too; maybe this would be over for them soon enough.

'He's sending a film crew,' Phillips said.

'What—' Bucky glanced at Peggy, then back at Phillips. 'How do you mean: a "film crew"?'

'I mean: You're gonna be a movie star,' Phillips said. 'You're making a newsreel for him, in character.'

'There's a war happening, sir,' Bucky said. 'We're soldiers. We're spies,' he added, because that's what he'd been since the serum; that's who Peggy was. 'There's a whole world at risk here. Do we really have to appease some piece of shit politician from Jersey? Do we have to do it with something so stupid?'

'The great state of New Jersey funded you, kid,' Colonel Phillips snapped. Bucky couldn't help it; he rubbed a hand over his face as if he could push his frustration away. 'You want to fight? This is how you get permission to fight. You jump the hoops.

'It'll shut him up,' Phillips said, his tone shifting enough to reveal that he at least understood how cheesy and stifling this felt to Bucky. 'Turning you into a symbol: it makes The Investment more viable if you end up shot in the head. You'll accept the commission of Captain Barnes, to make you the real Captain America, and we'll put together a team for you to clear your map.' Bucky looked at the map, the six factories and the dozens of smaller bases and camps. He met Peggy's eye and she raised a brow challenging him.

She was thinking the same thing he was; she didn't want to say it. Peggy knew as well as Bucky did how much Phillips hated her, hated the way she'd been right about the turns and delays of Project: Rebirth every time they'd disagreed.

'I'll get my own team, sir,' Bucky said, with enough confidence that Phillips was too thrown to speak before Bucky could. Peggy hid her smile. 'Thank you.'

Captain America swept out.

⍟

When Bucky found him, Steve was facing back the way they'd come. Steve had settled himself out near the edge of base camp, settled on the ground with a fallen tree at his back. Bucky surprised him, approaching and loud steps against cracking twigs. Bucky realised that no matter how Steve had visibly changed, he wasn't perfectly cured like Bucky had been supposed to. Bucky was supposed to be a better man now but he still felt every wrong kind of love he had used to for Steve. Whatever what wrong with him to make him the sort-of-man he was hadn't been fixed; Steve's hearing hadn't been either.

'Hiya,' Bucky said, sitting next to Steve.

'Hey, Buck,' Steve said, turning back to the rough sketch he was making in the dirt after looking to see if he'd missed anyone else's approach. Steve dug the little stick he held into the dirt, drawing something Bucky couldn't quite make out yet. It was dark and the dirt wasn't evenly packed. Bits of wood and pinecone and grass made it harder to see what darker lines Steve was carving.

'The doctors finally finished with you, huh?' Bucky asked. Steve shrugged. 'They figure out what happened? What made you, uh—What changed you?' Bucky felt awkward broaching that question; Steve hadn't asked much what had happened to Bucky. Bucky wasn't an idiot; he knew rumours had begun circulating in earnest about him, about the programme that had changed him. Maybe Steve had heard all he needed to know while the doctors' had him ferreted away.

'About a third of what happened to you,' Steve said. 'Doctor Erskine's serum changed your cells twice as much, and whatever Stark's gas did made you grow more than the radiation they blasted me with. I set off four Geiger-Müller tubes in there.' Steve shrugged again. He tossed his stick away. Whatever he was drawing was still indistinguishable to Bucky: just dark lines in dark dirt, unclear and aimless in their strike into the earth. 'They say the radioactive traces will fade, but my changes should be as permanent as yours.' Bucky nodded, thinking over Steve's small, quiet words.

Bucky remembered his procedure. Bucky had been in a state of cellular change for maybe three minutes, and it had been excruciating. If it hadn't been pushed out of his mind by Doctor Erskine's death, Bucky thought he might have had nightmares about it. He couldn't imagine having that change take place over days or weeks. He couldn't imagine it in tandem with radiation scalding at him. The Vita-Rays hadn't even hurt; hell, they were like a rush of menthol salve on a burn.

'How are you holding up?' Bucky asked, scooting a little closer in the dirt. His hip bumped Steve's. Steve didn't bump back but he didn't pull away. Bucky wanted Steve to lean his head into his shoulder, tuck his head under Bucky's chin, but he wasn't actually a giant girl, so he wasn't about to ask to cuddle. Steve's face was blank in Bucky's peripheral. After a moment, he replied.

'Holding up?' Steve asked. Bucky nodded.

'Yeah, how are you holding up?' he repeated. Steve ignored him, so Bucky pressed. 'You were a prisoner of war for months, Stevie. You're Jewish and you're—you were sick and injured when you guys got to the factory, the way Dugan tells it. I don't imagine it was easy—'

'I'm fine,' Steve said, cutting Bucky off, sharper than Bucky was used to. Steve rubbed out part of his drawing, whatever it was, pressing the heel of his hand thru the rough centre of it. 'Quit asking about it, will ya?'

'No,' Bucky said. 'Aren't you the one usually telling me we gotta talk things out? Don't you gotta run your mouth every time we saw something unfair back home?'

Steve smacked his arm, and then glanced at the newfound bulk of it, the inhuman density of Bucky's skin. Bucky wondered if Steve was into that sort of muscle-man thing, or if this new form would prove to be a turn-off. Bucky's BOQ had thick walls and an honest-to-God lock on the door. Steve'd been in medical for days, while Bucky poured over maps and argued that he should choose his team, but maybe Steve would be eager and willing despite every terrible thing in their environment to test out their new bodies.

'This isn't the same thing,' Steve snapped, and Buck winced. Bucky knew it wasn't the same thing as being bullied back home, or telling a rough guy to stop hassling a lady and getting smacked for his trouble. It wasn't the same thing. Bucky didn't know how to avoid saying he knew it was worse. 'There's nothing to talk about this time. What happened happened and we don't gotta talk about it.'

'Maybe I wanna know 'cause I'm worried about you,' Bucky retorted. 'You ever think about that? I thought you were dead, kid. I thought they'd killed you for sure. I just got you back and something is wrong—' Steve scoffed.

'I'm healthier coming out of there than I was going in, Buck,' Steve interrupted. He faced Bucky then, like it was a chore. Bucky had never been a chore to Steve before; Bucky almost cowered back and promised Steve that they never had to talk about it, ever. Bucky almost would have said he saw guilt in those eyes. What on earth did Steve have to feel guilty for? 'They did something awful to me, sure, but I benefitted, haven't I?'

Bucky didn't know what to say to that. Steve shook his head, his thick hair falling into his face as he looked down. How much healthier he seemed: it was insidious. He seemed so sad.

'Look, I don't got a right to sit around whining when there were guys in my lab who didn't—survive those tests, let alone—' He broke off, tossing another twig into the dark night. Bucky watched his wrist, noting the lost fragility of his bones. Steve was taller, more filled out, and his voice didn't look outta place coming out of a sunken face anymore. His jaw was strong and sure. He wasn't as big as Bucky still, not even as big as Buck had been before the serum, but he didn't look so sick or frail neither, just little. Bucky, enhanced hearing and all, could barely hear his lungs whistle. He hated the fact that Steve's newfound health was tempered by the dark shadows in his eyes.

Steve wouldn't meet Bucky's eyes, trying to keep that dark shadow to himself. 'I got off good. They skinned Sergeant Patterson. They cut him down, and whatever they'd done to him, his skin just kept growing back. For hours.'

Bucky winced and looked away. His stomach roiled at the idea. Steve had lived it. Steve had been helpless but to let it happen.

'He was screaming, Buck, and they just cut him right back down,' Steve confessed, his voice cracking. Bucky leaned into Steve, trying to comfort even as he felt sick hearing it. He tried to press himself into Steve and give him what he needed; Bucky didn't know what Steve needed. 'For hours. Days, fuck, I don't know. And Davis—they gave him the same stuff they gave me and he had this—this fit. They shot him in the stomach and left him to bleed out overnight.'

'Jesus,' Bucky whispered and Steve laughed, dark and wet and broken. His head fell onto Bucky's shoulder. Bucky pressed his cheek into Steve's hair, clean and soft and thick.

'So I got off easy,' Steve said, after sniffling with a horrible, wet sound. 'I don't have a right to claim I didn't, no matter how much—no matter if it hurt. My spine is straighter; my lungs are better; I can see all sorts of colours I couldn't before and my heart hasn't skipped once since we left. How can I—they all died so horrible and I got fucking fixed.'

Steve pulled away, wiping at his face while Bucky resolutely didn't notice his tears. Bucky cleared his own throat, because Steve had every right to be upset at what happened but it was his damn job to keep it together. He was supposed to be a better man now; he wasn't supposed to melt into tears because the love of his life was hurting.

'You're still deaf as a post,' Bucky tried to joke.

'What's that?' Steve echoed by rote, an ape of their old game from childhood. Steve used to ask it over and over until Bucky was shouting for him to hear. It didn't bring even a ghost of a smile to Steve's face tho, so Bucky dropped it.

'Steve, you were reciting your serial when I found you,' Bucky pointed out. 'That sounds an awful lot like torture. Maybe the fucking scientists did something other than just try to hurt you but it had you shaking in metal restraints. It hurt nonetheless.' Steve didn't reply and Bucky sighed. He took Steve's hand, marvelling at how long his palm had gotten. 'You spent two days in the hospital—'

'They were just doing tests,' Steve snapped.

'I'm just saying,' Bucky said. 'If you need some time—Hell, most of these boys are getting shipped home and they didn't see what you saw—'

'The boys who saw what I saw are dead, Bucky.' Steve yanked his hand away, pushing both into his hair. He braced his elbows on his knees, leaning away from Bucky. 'All of 'em. I'm the only one who survived.'

Bucky thought about how awful it had been the first time he'd regathered in men in North Africa and counted two fewer than he'd started the day in Tobruk with. He knew what is was to keep living when people were killed around you and you didn't deserve any more or less than anyone else the chance to make it home. Bucky wanted to comfort Steve but he couldn't find anything comforting in the grief in his chest.

'I'm lucky,' Steve said. 'And I am not going home with cannon fever.' Bucky wanted to promise Steve that there wasn't any shame in taking a discharge home, but he couldn't get the words out of his mouth. Bucky wouldn't have taken cannon fever's honourable discharge lightly; Bucky wanted to go home more than anything but if his shaking hands had seen him dismissed instead of finally getting his unit furlough? Bucky would have felt shame. He couldn't lie to himself about that; he wished he could lie to Steve.

Steve took his hands out of his hair, turning to Buck. He tried to pull a hopeful face. Bucky could see thru it; Steve was tired and afraid. 'Besides, I get to serve under you now, don't I? Fix people up and take down HYRDA, right? Protect your sorry butt?'

'You're a medic right now,' Bucky said, hesitant. 'You're protected. If you follow me like that, the Germans can shoot back. If you pick up a rifle, there's nothing to stop them—' Steve scoffed.

'That Convention did nothing to protect me this time,' Steve said. He looked down, shaking his head.

'Steve,' Bucky tried. Bucky couldn't find anything to say; he realised how ridiculous his comfort had been. Steve had already been tortured. Being a medic had meant nothing when he'd been taken to be sliced and studied. Steve shook his head again, hoisting himself to his feet.

'I can't—' Steve's voice broke. He wouldn't look at Bucky. Bucky felt like he'd been knocked to the ground hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.

'I need to have a fighting chance next time they try to hurt me.'

Steve had never said anything like that before. Steve's mantra was that he could do this all day. Steve did not back down from a fight; Steve was a fool who didn't know his own limits. He never backed down. Steve did not admit that he'd had enough. Steve did not ever say that he had been hurt; he insisted he was fine as Bucky pressed bandages into scrapes and cold cloth into bruises. Bucky reached into every corner of his mind for something to say to reject Steve's words, but he couldn't think of a thing.

Bucky realised what had happened, as Steve walked away, back to base camp, without waiting for Bucky. War had killed a part of Steve. He wasn't the same. Steve had been hurt and Steve knew it.

Bucky didn't follow Steve right away. He sat, staring back into the woods they'd come out of a few days ago. Bucky wondered what had happened to himself, what changes had crept into his bones more than this serum that he might not have seen. What parts of himself had he lost?

Chapter Text

Bucky carried a full tray of pints over to the table where he'd gathered some of the freed soldiers. They were already settling amongst themselves. Gabe Jones was speaking with Jacques Dernier in French, even if he seemed to be standing a little off to the side of the group. Bucky knew how hard it could be to be the only black man at the table; he saw the way coloured folk were nervous about entering his bakery for the first time, even when they could see there was one line for white people and everyone else too. Bucky clapped Gabe's shoulder as he got closer, moving him further into the gathered circle around the high table.

'Thanks for coming, boys,' Bucky said. 'Here, take one.' Hands reached out and helped themselves. 'I've got an opportunity to go after HYDRA, the group that captured and held you guys. I'm assembling a team and I want men like you.

'I saw how you guys organized yourselves and the rest in that factory,' Bucky said. 'I'll need men like you. It'd be a five-man squad and we'd do what I did in Azzano: go in alone, with no support, and hope we make it out.'

'So let's get this straight,' Dugan began, booming even in the brouhaha of the pub. Bucky grinned sheepishly, fiddling with the handle on his own pint. 'We barely got out of there alive and you want us to go back?' For all his incredulous question, he sounded half-sold on the idea without any convincing. Bucky shrugged.

'Pretty much,' Buck admitted. He should have come up with a better pitch. He'd figured the chance to burn down more of the factories that had nearly killed them would have been enough, but now Bucky was realizing that maybe not everyone would want to keep fighting. They had to be as tired as he was.

The Brit with the fancy name considered Bucky's proposition, seeming intrigued. He eyed Gabe and Jim, glancing between the men and Bucky. Bucky hoped Falsworth wasn't weighing the men like they were a cost or a burden; Jim had blown the final gate and gotten them out of the zone of the collapsing factory. Gabe had stolen the first tank. Bucky hadn't thought to consider that the white men who had impressed him with their fighting skills might have a problem sharing a unit with coloured folk. There were Nazis too evil for Hitler to support and they needed to be stopped. Bucky had forgotten people were concerned about such stupid things when there was such a war happening. It wasn't like race made a decent man. Bucky was probably the only one with proclivities beyond the norm and Falsworth wasn't measuring him to see if he was worth following into firefights.

'Sounds rather fun, actually,' he offered.

'And you—' Gabe stopped, looking between himself and the others. Bucky knew Gabe felt unable to point out that whites didn't serve with Negroes while standing at the same table as them. Gabe didn't know how to point out he wasn't included while trying to fit in. Bucky knew Gabe had seen the way Falsworth had considered him a risk.

'I'm Captain America,' Bucky said, daring anyone to disagree. He reached out and placed one of the pints he'd brought in front of Gabe. He knew some men didn't share even a coffee pot with Negroes, let alone a beer, but Bucky had been drafted to fight one racist war; he didn't see the value in waging a silent one at home. 'All men were created equal; it's time the world starts acting on it.' Gabe took the beer, and Bucky passed one to Jim Morita too. Everyone drank about half their pints, like a weird promise to agree with their new captain: all equal, glass half-full.

Morita let out an incredibly foul burp before tossing his hat in the ring as well. Jacques spoke French to Gabe, who confirmed that the Frenchman would fight with them. They all turned to Dum Dum expectantly.

'Hell,' he said. 'I'll always fight. But you gotta do one thing for me.' Bucky nodded, because getting everyone on board could only serve him well. Dum Dum downed his beer, all in one go. 'Open a tab!' The men laughed uproariously and Bucky chuckled alongside them. He patted Gabe's shoulder amicably.

'Will do,' he promised. 'Stay,' he told everyone. 'Drink to the new squad.'

Bucky pressed his way to the bar, where Steve lingered with his own drink and a copy of the second issue of Captain America. Bucky hated it. He felt frivolous and idiotic every time he saw the comic book: bulging muscles exaggerated even from Bucky's freakish form, and simple, brash dialogue.

'Please, not the comic book,' Bucky said, taking the empty stool at Steve's side.

'Hey,' Steve said, over the din. 'This isn't so bad. Look, they got your chin dimple. You know how I love that.' Bucky hated his chin dimple, but Steve didn't; that was true. 'I'd tell you how much if we were a little more alone.' Steve jabbed his little finger on a close-up cartoon panel of Bucky delivering a witty retort to an imagined German foe. Bucky snatched the comic. Steve laughed, coughing into the elbows he'd propped on the high bar.

'All right, enough of that,' Bucky grumbled. He shook the comic closed and slammed it facedown onto the counter. ''S all stupid, Stevie. I only get to fight because they have a comic book of me back home? I signed away my rights, and they gave me a commission as a bribe.'

'No,' Steve said, sipping his giant beer, which dwarfed his hand and he didn't struggle at all to lift. His cheeks were a little flushed from the alcohol. 'You fight here because you're a soldier, and you earned a place in command. You survived an experimental serum and used it to rescue four hundred soldiers, destroy a weapons factory, and collect more useful recon than the front has seen in months. The command is yours.

'Bucky,' he said. Bucky looked up, meeting Steve's eyes when he heard the request in only his name. 'You earned it, Buck,' Steve promised him. 'Besides, the comic book isn't for you.'

'Who's the book for, then, huh, genius?' Bucky asked, gesturing for his own drink. The bartender acknowledged him, and Bucky had to look back at Steve without a good reason not to. Steve seemed surprised that Bucky didn't know.

'It's for kids,' Steve said. Bucky rolled his eyes and Steve hit his shoulder, like he always did, tho this time he hit with force. Bucky eyed Steve's wiry, impossible strength. 'I'm serious,' Steve snapped. He didn't seem to notice how strong he was now. 'It's for kids who come from where we came from, to let them know they can always be strong enough to fight, even when people say they can't.' Bucky had preached that to Steve a thousand times if he'd said it once, just like that, when Steve was sick enough to be pitied but needed encouragement instead.

'Not every kid has someone like you to get them outta trouble,' Steve added. 'It's for kids who need a Bucky of their own. They need to know that there's this idea that we ought to have each other's backs like you had mine.' Steve said it like a declaration. Bucky wished he could swoon and kiss Steve like he did back in their old apartment in Brooklyn, when he'd flatter Bucky just like this.

'You saying I'm yours?' Bucky murmured, close as he could come to making a move on Steve here, when they were both in uniform, when dozens of strangers were around.

This bar was nothing like the drag bars or the queer bars they used to go to in Brooklyn; someone would say something here if Bucky leaned in like he wanted to and kissed Steve. In this bar, Bucky shouldn't let his eyes linger on Steve like he was, as Steve lifted his glass and drank like he was hungry. Steve drank with his eyes firm on Bucky; he swiped a bit of foam from his lip with his thumb and then licked it away. Bucky regretted raising the stakes for no reason other than to flirt; he had to turn away to keep himself from blushing to death.

'Well,' Bucky said, pointless.

'Come on,' Steve said. 'I don't wanna talk to anybody; gimme my book back.'

'Talk to me,' Bucky said. He didn't let Steve reclaim the moronic comic book; it wasn't even a colour copy. The second issue was even dumber than the first; he had lied to Peggy about having read this second issue cover-to-cover too. 'Does the comic inspire you to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?' Steve cackled; the bright peal of it made Bucky giggle too.

'No,' Steve said when his laugh had died out. 'Nah, the one who always had my back in Brooklyn: I'm going to follow him.' Bucky raised a glass and Steve tapped their mugs together. 'Hey, you gonna wear a uniform like the one they got here?' Bucky considered, looking at the plain illustration on the cover. He hummed.

'You know what?' he said. 'It's growing on me.' Bucky grinned at Steve. Steve smiled back at him, and for a minute, his eyes were free of the shadows they'd had since Bucky had found him. Bucky wondered, as his heart swelled with relief, if this is what Steve had felt like when Bucky had been unable to relax on furlough, if Steve had had these moments of foolish hope that somehow despite what the other had seen, that they'd be all right.

Steve's face changed on a dime when his eyes were pulled over Bucky's shoulder, pulled as if a spotlight as bright as the sun had burst on and singled out a point of interest.

Bucky turned, to see Peggy.

Peggy Carter stood there in a red dress made of fabric Bucky couldn't believe she got her hands on during a war. She looked dangerous and strong. She was bold in the red, glowing in the sea of olive drab and black. Her dress hugged her, thick cady silk, bright and gorgeous. She breezed past all the other soldiers and carried their eyes with her as she made her way to stand in front of Steve and Bucky. She didn't glance over the others; she watched Bucky and Steve. As always, she smelled of rosewater; Bucky's heightened senses could smell her even over the smell of the bar and the beer and the sweat and smoke of the men.

'It's a treat to see you, Agent Carter. You look wonderful,' Steve said, more forward and assured than Bucky had ever known him to be. Bucky couldn't find his own voice; he was torn between attraction and jealousy, staring at Peggy wrapped up like everything a woman should be.

'I'm glad to see you in good health, Private Rogers,' Peggy said. 'I'll confess I was worried for you.'

'I was worried I wouldn't get to see you again,' Steve said.

'Well, there are other girls who hold your attention, I'm sure,' Peggy said. Steve smirked at her and she turned to Bucky. Bucky tried to think of something to say but she licked her bottom lip and he forgot whatever he'd planned. God, he was a fool. He wondered if he'd ever been this smitten and foolish over Steve or if he'd grown into that love so slowly that it had never floored him like Peggy could with just a pink tongue sweeping over Victory red waxy lips. 'Howard has some equipment for you to try, Captain. Will you come by first thing in the morning?'

'Yes, ma'am,' Bucky said, finding his vocal cords just as a roar of cheering behind them rose up.

The three of them turned when the noise broke the spell between them. Falsworth was leading the shouting as Gabe, with a pitcher at his mouth, outpaced someone in a French uniform with a pitcher at his. Gabe finished his enormous drink with time to spare and the celebration was loud enough that Bucky almost wanted to cover his ears.

'I see your top squad is prepping for duty,' Peggy said when the din began to fade, when Gabe had lowered his arms from his celebratory pose and the next set of men had begun to challenge each other to daffy drinking contests. Gabe stumbled back from the table with Falsworth and Dugan shaking his arms and laughing.

''S just a little music,' Bucky said, as if the singing had been what drew their attention. 'Nothing wrong with a little music.' Peggy smiled for real, sultry and skipping his head, even with Steve close enough to feel Bucky's heat.

'I like music, actually,' Peggy said. 'I might, in fact, go dancing.' She said it with a playful tone, and Bucky plastered his best grin in place. Steve's thin skin was flushing, and Peggy smirked as Steve played chameleon with her dress.

'Then what are you waiting for?' Bucky asked. Peggy gave him a warm look.

'To dance, Sergeant, one needs the right people,' Peggy said. 'Might I borrow him for a moment?' she asked, reaching out for Steve. Bucky laughed, feeling against his will like a dream was coming true. Bucky didn't want to feel something so romantic and wonderful in the midst of the war; it felt like he was tempting God, daring Him to smite them for their desires. Still, he laughed; Bucky had wanted to see Peggy dance with Steve and now he would get to. God, sometimes they were so lucky.

'It'd be a pleasure,' Bucky said.

'I don't really dance well,' Steve protested, when Peggy took his hand and pulled him towards the few WACs who'd found dancers amongst the crowd of drinkers. The protest was mostly a lie; Steve was a good dancer who had bad hearing that sometimes gave him bad rhythm. If there were drums or a bassist, then he could lead just fine; when there was only a piano, like now, he'd have two left feet.

'I dance fine,' Peggy told him. 'Fine enough for two.'

⍟

The mountaintop was bristling and cold. Bucky supposed it wasn't the actual summit; he looked up along the cliff above them, rising into the low clouds threatening snow. He looked down too, down the cliff below to the tracks running between them and the next peak. Steve came over to Bucky, standing about two feet further back from the ledge, leaning to see.

'Remember that time you took me to Coney Island?' Steve asked.

Bucky turned to look at him, grinning. Stevie met his eye with an unimpressed glare, asthma cigarette trailing smoke from his lips and a black knit cap shoved over his little ears. He took the cigarette out of his mouth.

'Yep,' Bucky agreed. 'And I made you ride the Cyclone?'

'Yeah, and I threw up?' Steve pressed. Bucky nodded, still grinning. Steve eyed him, taking another drag to try to make his lungs stop whistling in the cold. 'You don't happen to still think that was hilarious, do you?' he asked, his words a puff of herbal smoke.

'Why would I think that?' Bucky asked, surveying their zip line. Dugan overheard them and boomed out a laugh. It had been funny, the way Steve had shot his chunks, but obviously, that had had nothing to do with this. The train made no stops until its destination; there were few ways to sneak on and Bucky thought this might be their best shot.

'You guys were right; Zola is on the train,' Gabe called. 'He's just got permission to open up the throttle. Wherever he's going, they want him there bad.'

'How fast?' Bucky asked. Gabe shot him a look.

'Too fast,' he said. 'We're not all getting down.' Bucky didn't like that. The plan would be harder with fewer of his men; he'd have to do his best. There was nothing else for it.

'Vous avez presque dix seconds d'atterrir,' Dernier told them. 'Il faut bouger maintenant.'

'Miss that ten seconds, boys, and we're bugs on a windshield,' Bucky called. Peggy and Phillips had warned him again and again after they'd decided on this route to sneak onto the train; if anyone fell, they'd be a goner. Even with Bucky's serum, everyone thought the seven hundred meter fall would be his last. Jacques heaved the zip grip over the line. Steve tossed his cigarette with a final drag, and Bucky made sure to line up ahead of him.

'Better get moving, bugs!' Dum Dum called.

They went on Dernier's marks and they landed with ease on the roof of the train. Bucky checked and only Jones had made it before the window had passed. Everyone else was still on the ledge. He signed for Jones to take the engine room while Bucky and Steve took care of the guards no doubt along the length of the high speed train. Jones nodded.

Bucky left Gabe alone on the roof of the train. Bucky and Steve swung down onto a ladder and climbed down, keeping as close as they could to the thin ladder, with the wind whipping hard at their clothes.

He heaved the door shut behind them and the roar of wind and engine cut out immediately. Steve huffed a big breath of relief, and Bucky clapped his shoulder before sliding his shield onto his arm.

'Feeling all right?' Bucky asked. Steve glared up at him, tugging his tuque back into place.

'I'm gonna kill you if you ever make me do that crap again,' he snapped. ''M fine.' He smacked Bucky away when Bucky tried to help with his tuque.

'Deal,' Bucky promised, and led the way towards the engine room. No doubt there was surveillance on the train; they had only a couple minutes until guards were notified. Hopefully, they rushed to shoot at Captain America before Gabe broke into the engine room to stop the train.

The doors slid shut behind him.

Bucky spun in time to see Steve trapped in the other car. Bucky hit the open button and it ignored him. Bucky could read Steve's mouth shouting his name, could make out only the pound of Steve's fist on the metal of his door. Something drew Steve's attention. Bucky was helpless but to watch as Steve fired at the guards entering the other side of his car, before ducking behind a crate for cover. Bucky could hear bullets pinging around Steve.

Bucky heard the whirl of a weapon charging, and turned in time to get his shield up against a blue blast. By the time he'd knocked the gunman out and blasted the locked door open, Steve was tossing his second gun to his feet and covering his head as bullets clanged closer.

Steve had shot one, it seemed, but the other shot from an impossible angle—The shooter was about to round a crate to shoot Steve dead. Steve was cowering against the side of the train; he was shaking and afraid. He must have been sure he was going to die—

Bucky punched the open button—He prayed and, yes—and the compartment doors slid open. Steve looked up at the sound without uncovering his head. Bucky hefted a pistol. He moved his head, nodding towards Steve. Steve's head bobbed; he understood. Bucky tossed the gun; Steve caught it. Bucky charged and slammed an enormous crate towards the guard. He stepped out of the way, out from his cover, and Steve shot him in the face.

Steve didn't look any happier about that than he did any other time he'd killed on Bucky's coattails. He'd lamented to Buck once, when they'd tried to get drunk and found Steve still easily locked and that Bucky just couldn't manage it anymore, that every time he killed he ticked one off the men he'd saved as a medic and the number was gonna go negative eventually. Bucky hated that.

He looked at Steve in the silence. His breaths were whistling again. This dry cold really did not suit him, half-assed-Zola-serum or no.

'I had him on the ropes,' Steve pointed out. Bucky snorted, resisting the urge to remember the idiocy of Little Steve fighting in alleys with anything resembling fondness. He adjusted his grip on his shield, ready to slide it onto his back.

'I know you did,' he said nonetheless, like he had since they were twelve.

The whirl of the big gun sounded, and Bucky yanked Steve behind him with one hand, the other raising his shield up. He didn't have a good grip, and sure enough he was knocked to the side as the blast hit at an angle. He hit the metal husk of the train hard, making his breath abandon his chest for a moment. Wind whipped at him as the other side of the train was blown open by the deflection. The whirl sounded again and he looked up.

Steve had hoisted the shield up, firing his pistol to cover Bucky while he recovered from being stunned out of air. The blue blast fired again. 'Steve!'

The blast struck. Bucky heard his shield bounce against the wall as Steve went flying. Bucky scrambled up, grabbing his shield and throwing it with all his might—strength that could peel tank armour back like clapboard—and the gunman went flying, guns sparking and disabled. Bucky ripped his cowl off, leaning out the busted wall.

'Steve!' he screamed. Steve dangled, hanging from one of the rails, barely holding on against the wind and speed. Bucky's blood went as cold as the wind whipping by, the train moving even faster now than it had when they'd landed. He was almost paralyzed by fear; he'd never—Fuck—

Fuck, Steve was dangling outside the speeding train.

'Hold on!' Bucky shouted. 'I can reach you—I'm coming; hold on!' He braced his feet against the hull's ridges, starting to edge out himself. He put his feet along the open side the train and reached out as far as he could, desperate. Steve looked terrified, staring back at him. His blonde hair streamed in the wind; his cap was gone. The wind battered Steve against the ripped wall of the train, almost being blown further from Bucky as he wasted time reaching, reaching. He inched out further, further, trying—

'Steve, I'll grab you—' Bucky held onto the rail inside the car, one sturdily attached, and reached, climbing out further still. Steve tried to reach back to meet him but his grip was precarious at best. Bucky would have to grab him; he trusted more of his weight onto the ripped steel he'd stepped on; he reached as far as he could. He landed a hand on Steve's sleeve; he tried to pull him closer.

The railing Steve clung to broke. It broke. It broke and Steve was falling.

He slipped from Bucky's grasp. He slipped. 'No!'

'No! Steve!' Bucky screamed. 'Steve!'

Steve fell, fast and away from Bucky.

Bucky watched him fall, watched his best friend, his everything, the love of his life, his best guy—Bucky watched Steve fall as the train carried him away.

Seconds later, Steve was gone. Bucky couldn't see him beyond the rocks, the mountain, the ravine below.

⍟

'Captain,' someone said. Bucky couldn't bring himself to move, to turn and look.

When the Commandos had been instructed to bring Zola to the same Allied base near Azzano, Bucky had found himself in the same pub he'd settled in all that time ago. Bucky had formed the Commandos here. He'd seen Peggy here in that red dress; she had taken Steve's hand and turned him about the dance floor. It had been a dream, to see Peggy dance with Steve: a dream come true in full colour in this very pub, on the dance floor now littered with debris and broken glass. The glass sparkled, like a sick reminder of how hopeful Bucky had been that night.

The pub had been bombed out since that time last year. Most of everything had been bombed out since that time last year.

Bucky felt bombed out.

Bucky's mind kept replaying those few seconds: the snap of the railing, the sound of Steve's scream—involuntary, visceral, terrified—Bucky's mind kept playing the sight of Steve disappearing as the train carried Bucky away too fast to see him—see him land, or bash into the rock, the cliff, to break and smash and bleed and die. The sight of the table and bottle in front of him; everything swam watery in front of his eyes. He felt cold, like the cliff of the mountain had been, but the serum didn't let him feel cold. Steve was the one who had been cold up there.

Steve wasn't cold anymore. Steve wasn't anything. Steve had fallen from the train. He'd fallen to his death. Bucky had gotten him killed. He'd been warned that the plan was dangerous and he'd said: this is a war; everything's dangerous and that had been that. Now Steve was dead for it.

Steve was dead.

'Captain,' someone called again. 'Bucky.'

'Are you with me, Bucky?' she asked. Bucky swallowed, and breathed out slowly. He tried to speak but it made him feel too close to hurling. 'Bucky?'

Bucky nodded; he could hear her. He wasn't catatonic; he was too close to falling apart, but he—Bucky could hold himself together. There was a war raging on and they had just arrested one of its criminals. He was supposed to be Captain America; he wasn't supposed to be paralyzed by grief so big it permeated every molecule and every nerve.

'Gentlemen,' Peggy said, turning away from him. 'Please, excuse us. I'll come back to base with the Captain later on.' They weren't alone. There were sounds of footsteps leaving, a door closing, gossiping voices outside. Bucky didn't care; he ought to care about men seeing him like this, grief stricken and so close to crying, but Bucky didn't. He didn't know how he was supposed to care about anything now.

A hand touched his shoulder and he looked up, blank. Peggy stood, solemn. She turned a rickety chair, the sound of the wicker loud in the empty, ashy pub. She sat. Her hand left him for a moment only to resettle on his; Peggy held Bucky's hand and he wished he weren't so cold.

'I'm so sorry,' Peggy said.

'I'm so sorry about Steve, but it wasn't your fault.' Bucky wanted to scoff at her but he couldn't quite manage to fill his lungs. He had to still be breathing, because he was alive, but he couldn't feel it.

'Did you read the reports?' Bucky asked instead. She hesitated before agreeing. 'Then you know that's not true.'

'You wrote the reports; you're not objective now. You blame yourself because you didn't jump after him, have you both killed?' Peggy said, stubborn as always. 'There was nothing more you could've done. I've seen the two of you fight, Bucky. You always did everything you could do to keep him safe.' Peggy had seen them fight; Peggy had made so many missions possible. Peggy would have been fast enough; Peggy wouldn't have left Steve to be blasted out the side of the train. She wouldn't have left a gunman armed.

'I should've got him sent home with cannon fever when they gave me my commission,' Bucky said.

'Fuck,' he said. His voice cracked. Peggy squeezed his hand and he squeezed back about half as hard as he dared, terrified of hurting her. He could hurt her if he weren't careful, like he'd gotten Steve killed. He just hadn’t been careful enough. Like Doctor Erskine, Bucky had been arrogant. He hadn't been careful enough. He'd been complacent and overconfident and he'd gotten Steve killed like Doctor Erskine had lost Ilse. Ilse and Steve were both dead because they loved people too stupid to learn how to protect them. Bucky was so stupid; he was so stupid and now Steve was dead. 'I should've made him safe.'

'You and I both know Steve would have swum the ocean and crawled his way back to your side if you had tried,' Peggy said. Bucky coughed, because commission or no he had never been able to force Steve to do what he really didn't want to. Even tho Steve wasn't the same after Azzano, he was still forceful about determining his own fate.

Steve probably hadn't expected it to end so quickly, especially not with Bucky right there. He probably hadn't expected Bucky would be the one to let him die. 'Steve wanted to fight more fiercely than any man I've ever known,' Peggy said. 'I'm going to miss him.'

'So will I,' Bucky said. He didn't know if he could do it, if he were strong enough to miss Steve this much. He didn't know if he was strong enough to live in a world where Steve wasn't. Peggy took his glass, taking a drink that would do more for her frame than the bottle would do to Bucky. Bucky pulled from the bottle to drink with her nonetheless.

'Do you think we could have found a way?' Peggy asked. 'The three of us?'

'He was my home, Peggy,' Bucky said. 'It woulda been the only thing I could do.' If Peggy had wanted them both, they would have given her everything they had for each other and more besides. Even when Bucky used to picture a life where Steve eventually left Bucky for a real woman he could marry, Bucky still pictured them together, close by, raising their families together, always within a few blocks of the other, in each other's pockets like when they were kids. Even when he'd been terrified those nights that each one of Steve's wet, laboured, painful breaths might be his last, Bucky never imagined his life without Steve; he'd never made it past imagining how much it would hurt.

Bucky had imagined a hundred times how bad it would hurt to lose Steve. He'd never come close.

⍟

Bucky hated the fact he was shaking.

He was still cold, with the broken hull letting cold, thin air whistle past. Even after the fight with someone who hit as hard as he could, he felt cold. His hands shook from watching a man dissolve into space. Schmidt had grabbed the Cube and it had pulled him into a sick hole in reality, into some colourful cloud of neutral hydrogen and dark matter and distant stars.

His head felt clouded from the backhanded impact he'd taken from his shield; his vision swam just enough to make reading German control panel a challenge. Bucky thought it would clear up in a few minutes, but he might not have that time.

The controls were damaged from an impact and from the energy of whatever the Cube had done to Schmidt; even on autopilot, the plane was shifting, unsteady and drifting slightly in its course. Worse than that, the autopilot was biometric; Bucky couldn't shut it off.

Oh, God, he realized.

Bucky couldn't shut it off. He didn't even have Schmidt's body; he'd dissolved into space. The key to stopping the autopilot was gone: it had dissolved from the Cube. The radio, at least, should work.

Bucky flicked it on, praying and taking stock of his situation. This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all.

'This is Captain Barnes,' he shouted, over the wind and the sound of the engines. The displays weren't giving consistent readings; Bucky had known something had been hit by a blast of Schmidt's gun, but now he couldn't tell what, just that the plane was listing and speeding up and the controls were too jammed to correct it. 'Do you copy? Does anyone—'

'Captain Barnes!' Jim copied. 'What is your location?'

'I don't—' Bucky said. His head swam and he had to sit in the pilot's chair. The display just wasn't consistent; the latitude indicator was swinging wildly between twenty-three and eighty-two degrees. The longitude had started drifting too, ticking in the opposite direction than the plane had been moving. The tropic of Cancer was twenty-three degrees; Bucky was lost. 'I don't know.'

'Bucky!' Peggy's voice cut in, anxious and terrible. 'Where are you? Are you all right?' She sounded panicked, and Bucky couldn't blame her.

'I'm fine!' he called. Bucky's mind was swimming from when Schmidt had backhanded him with his own shield but he was fine. Bucky supposed he'd won the fight; he watched Schmidt dissolve into the portal into space. 'Schmidt's dead,' he reported, and went on, explaining what he'd seen of the Cube best he could. Bucky wasn't certain Schmidt's dead was the truth; Bucky hoped Schmidt wasn't merging back into form somewhere on Earth.

'What about the plane?' Peggy asked.

Bucky hesitated as static crackled. The radio might not last long enough to try anything more than goodbye, Bucky realised, looking at how much of the controls were damaged. Even if they weren't damaged, the fact remained the controls were freakishly advanced HYDRA tech beyond his ability, let alone with biometric checks on the arming system and the autopilot.

'Bucky!' she called.

God, Bucky thought. There wasn't anything he could do. He was trapped here; he was trapped on this plane. There would be no way to land it, not with a computer on board programmed to cross North America raining death.

'I can't stop the bombs from dropping,' Bucky said. 'I can't disable them, or the autopilot.

'It's a lost cause. I have to put it in the water.' Peggy cut him off.

'No, I can find you a safe landing site,' she said. 'Buck; I'll find you—where—'

'Peggy,' Bucky said again, his cold heart twisting hot and painful all over. 'If I wait too long, this thing will drop a payload and a whole lotta people are gonna die.' Static hissed again and Bucky prayed the connection stayed live. 'Peggy, I—I gotta put it in the water. It'll stop the plane, and if the arms aren't disabled by the crash, I'm so far away that the blast—'

'There's no safe crash landing site,' Bucky said. 'Pegs, the controls are jammed.' He hated playing the pragmatic one; she was always better at that than he was and here he was trying to tell her to give up. 'The navigation is locked, the weapons are armed, and there's not enough functioning to change a damn thing.'

'I'll get Howard on the line,' Peggy said, desperate. 'He'll know what to do.'

'Everybody out—' Bucky could hear Colonel Phillips in the background. He hated the instructions he could hear; he hated how easily he understood that Peggy must be about to cry, if Phillips—difficult as he was at times—was pushing men out of the room to give her the privacy to say goodbye, to start to grieve. 

God, Peggy was gonna have to mourn him, Bucky realised. She lost Steve and now Bucky had gotten himself killed too.

'Bucky, we won't make it out to rescue—'

'Nobody else is gonna die because of me!' he said. Peggy fell silent.

'These bombs—Oh, God, Peggy, nobody should have bombs like this.' He knew the United States was trying to build bombs this big and this destructive too; he hoped that they were better than HYDRA and they wouldn't load them onto a plane headed for civilians, headed for anyone— 'I can't let them drop; I just can't. I'd never be able to live with myself if a bomb dropped 'cause I let it.'

'Bucky,' she said, and then nothing else. He could hear her heart breaking; he swore he could hear her shattering and he couldn't believe he'd failed her so badly. Bucky couldn't believe he was going to die on her.

'Peggy,' he said, agreeing with her even if they'd said nothing. Bucky couldn't find any words, none to express the tearing in his chest at the thought of her alone. He wrenched the manual controls, the autopilot fighting him and every ounce of his strength maintaining course.

'I hope you find the right partner to take you out dancing,' he said. She laughed, and the wet in her voice was definitely tears. 'Somebody who won't step on your feet.'

'I reckon you'd have danced just fine,' she said. 'I don't know which of us would have followed. I'd lead if you wanted me to.' Bucky laughed as plane threatened to shake apart around him. Buck hoped she could hear him; he hoped she knew that the last laugh he ever laughed was from her.

'I'd have liked that,' he admitted. Bucky couldn't believe he was gonna die like this. The gut wound left by Steve's death was still bleeding and now Bucky was leaving Peggy too.

'You'll manage without me, doll,' Bucky said, forcing charm he didn't feel. He adored her; fuck, how he did. Alarms began to sound. He was crashing; it was happening; the ground was coming up and he couldn't believe he was killing himself; he couldn't believe he was crashing. He didn't want to die like this. He was afraid. He'd never wanted to die afraid. 'God, Peggy, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

'Buck, don't be sorry,' she said. 'Bucky, I'm the one who's—God, Bucky.' He could feel hotness on his cheeks, his tears stark in contrast to the icy wind whipping at him and the icy shelf that was gonna kill him. The ground was coming up fast. If Bucky wanted to tell her, he had to tell her now.

'Peggy, I—'

Chapter Text

He was huddled in the corner of the room when he came to himself.

Sharp, dark scabs itched across his stubbled scalp, incisions healing from someone cutting into his skull and brain to take out his heart, except that wasn't quite right.

He was huddled on a metal cot, no mattress. He could feel the metal cold on his feet; they must be bare. He was dressed in white cotton pants and a tee shirt: clean. His head had been shaved; they'd fused some sort of device into his skull, behind his ear, the size of a playing card. His hearing filtered thru it, electronic, exact and better than it had ever been. He could hear his own breath, his own pulse. He felt thin, like he'd been hungry for a long time. He tried to trace time. When had he last ate? What did he remember?

Panic pulled up no memories, but the vaguest wisps and dashes of impression. He couldn't find anything solid.

It had been a long time. He didn't know anything else. He was someone, someone real, and he was somewhere, somewhere he shouldn't be, and he needed to go, to get out of here while he had enough of himself to do so. He had a name but he couldn't find it. That scared him; he didn't know his own name. Who was he?

The door clanged.

He looked up at it as it buzzed and whirled its way open, sliding into the wall. Two doctors entered the room, followed by three armed men, who lingered against the far wall, fingers on their triggers. The doctors looked him over; he could tell they were a threat. Even their look was a threat. He had to get out of here.

'He's coming,' he told them, when the door banged shut behind the third guard. His voice was rusty with disuse but the promise rose out unbidden. The English felt clunky in his mouth; he didn't understand himself even as he spoke. He could hear his voice but he couldn't understand what he was saying. 'He'll come for me.'

'You've regained your ability to speak since this morning,' the first doctor remarked, crossing to the cot.

He couldn't remember this morning. He couldn't remember learning the language the doctor spoke but it was easier to understand than his own voice. He didn't understand. The doctor pulled a clipboard off the lip of the footboard, pursuing the file. 'That's a good sign.'

He watched the doctor, trying to figure if the doctor was someone he should remember. The doctor knew him; the doctor had a chart on him. Had this doctor been here before? He must have been. Should he recognize the doctor? He couldn't remember the morning, just felt the shock of pain when he tried to recall it.

'He'll come for me,' he repeated. He wanted to talk like the doctor did, not like this; his voice came out in syllables he couldn't process. He hid from his voice; he twisted in his cot, desperately trying to press closer to the wall as if it could keep him safe. 'And this will—this will end.'

'Who will come for you?' the first doctor asked. The second doctor unlocked a cabinet, folding out a tabletop and revealing shelves of drugs and a set of tasers. The first doctor waited and—Well, he couldn't think of it. He couldn't think of who was coming; he meant to say someone important, someone who matters, but he couldn't think of it. He shook his head. That person mattered and he just couldn't think of it.

'Who will come, Pascha?' the man needled. He blinked. Was he Pascha? The name didn't feel right, but there wasn't anything to fill the void but the harsh press of the void.

'I—' Pascha tried. He frowned at the second doctor, who was prepping a drug cocktail in plain sight. 'He'll come. He came when—He came Before.' Pascha kept staring at the syringes, curling up tighter. He had only one arm, which was fewer than whatever had been before. He curled it close around his knees, protective.

'Who came for you?' the doctor prompted. 'What came before this?'

'I—I don't know,' he begged. He sounded distraught even to his own ears. The doctor made a few notes, letting him curl up and shake. 'I don't know.'

'Pascha,' the doctor called. Pascha turned to attention obediently. 'What makes you think there was ever anything but this?'

'There was,' Pascha said firmly. 'I know there was. He'll come.' The doctor sighed, making more notes as he wandered over to the second doctor. The second doctor finished with his syringe, and moved towards the cot. Pascha let out a little sob, drawing in closer on himself. It wouldn't stop anything. Pascha couldn't do anything on his own.

He had to get out of here but he was nothing and he couldn't move.

'Pascha,' the doctor chided. The other tugged Pascha's arm, tugging it out and exposing the bruised vein in his elbow, down his forearm. Pascha sobbed; he wanted to pull away but his arm wouldn't listen. He couldn't move and he didn't understand why not. 'Answer properly. What makes you think there was anything but this?'

'I—'

'Specifics or nothing,' the doctor interrupted and it was a familiar rule. Pascha wondered if there had been nothing. Maybe there was nothing.

'No one is coming,' the doctor said. 'What makes you think there was anything but this?' Pascha buried his head into his knees as something bit into his skin.

'Nothing,' he sobbed.

'I'm nothing.'

⍟

Eliza tucked her hands into the pockets of her wool coat. Her husband had worried that she should have her gloves, but she hadn't wanted to keep her mother waiting in the car to find them. She'd hurried out the door without. Standing in the cemetery in the early March wind, she regretted it.

Eliza should have done all she could to keep herself warm; shivering here felt like a gross reminder that Bucky's body was somewhere in the Arctic, lost there forever. Eliza would never actually visit her brother again; she'd never be within an arm's length of him again. She'd be here in this graveyard empty of him. Out from the canyons of the city to this field: the breeze turned into an actual wind and it cut across her fingers like ice, like shattered glass.

Her mother was weeping next to Eliza, without a sound. Evelyn wore her mourning blacks each time they made the drive out here, but spent the hours filling silence with anything but stories of Eliza's brother. Evelyn never talked about Bucky; even when she asked Eliza to make the drive out to Arlington, she acted like Eliza might do it for any reason other than to see Bucky's headstone. They'd made it all the way to his headstone, standing under a statue memorializing the Commandos.

'Does it ever bother you?' she asked. Her mother turned to her and dabbed her eyes dry with a neat handkerchief. Eliza couldn't look over at her.

'Does what?'

'How you left things with Bucky,' Eliza said. Saying his name felt like she'd taken a hearty swig of glass, even here, even with his headstone in front of them and his empty grave beneath their feet. She tried to steady her voice around the scrape of shards in her throat. 'I saw you in the hall that night, that last night he was home. I know you got into it with him.'

'I just didn't think he should walk to Middagh Street so late,' Evelyn told her, a lie if Eliza had ever heard one. 'He was my son; I wanted him to stay at home. It's not like he had a wife waiting up; he went back to that boy's apartment.'

Eliza stared down at Bucky's empty grave and tried to ignore the way her mother's words made an angry scoff catch in her chest.

After all these years, her mother still let contempt drip from her throat when she mentioned Steve Rogers. That boy had a grave too, in this space reserved for her brother's unit. That grave was empty too; neither Steve nor Bucky's bodies had made it back home.

Neither of them had made it back home. That boy had given his life in a horrible war, just like her brother had—Her brother had died a draftee; he hadn't chosen to die for their freedom but he had; Bucky had died for them—and her mother was ungrateful enough to not even say Steve's name. To call him that boy in that snide tone, when he had a headstone within sight: it was almost enough to make Eliza scream.

'My brother,' Eliza said, in as measured of a tone as she could pull together, 'didn't have a wife because he loved Steve instead—'

'Eliza!' Evelyn gasped, like Eliza had been caught with a Tijuana bible, not like she was finally defending her brother the way he'd deserved. Bucky had deserved to bring the love of his life to his childhood home for dinner; Bucky had deserved to be close to his sisters and be a queer at the same time. Bucky hadn't deserved the little ways their mother tried to change him. He hadn't deserved their mother's discouragement or her indifference to his booksmarts and voracious curiosity, or her constant pressure to choose a Catholic girl to settle down with.

Evelyn dashed her eyes around the cemetery as if the only people nearby weren't six feet under. The people underfoot weren't even her brother; her brother's body wasn't even underfoot to hear Eliza finally give voice the truth. 'Eliza! Be decent, my God—'

'It was decent,' Eliza snapped, and her voice cracked. 'They were decent. My brother was a good man and I didn't know that that night was gonna be our goodbye. You chased him out because you couldn't accept that he was going home to the love of his life.'

She had lost her measured tone; Eliza was crying as she looked her mother dead in the eye and blamed her, finally, for stealing her goodbye with her brother. 'If I'd known that was goodbye, I'd have—God, Ma, Bucky was home for two days after that night and he didn't come back to see us because of what you said to him—'

'Eliza! You can't—can't imply these things about your own brother,' Evelyn said, still hissing in a whisper. 'You can't accuse your brother of—of being like that, not with that boy—Nothing about that boy was decent—' Evelyn stepped closer, taking Eliza's arm as if to pull her close enough to contain Bucky's secret. Eliza ripped herself away.

'Steve was a good man,' Eliza said. 'Steve made Bucky happy! You should have cared about that more than anything else. Bucky was your son. Steve was a decent man and the love of Bucky's life and the last thing you ever said to him was go away.'

Eliza turned away from her mother to shake her head at Bucky's grave. She wished saying these things would change anything, but the air would still be cold when she stopped. Eliza didn't know what her mother had actually said to Steve. Eliza had been inside their home; she only knew what their mother had told their father she planned to say to Steve to make him leave that night. She didn't know what had really come out to have Steve retreat so easily.

It had been the first time her brother had come to their parents' house when it wasn't his own anymore, after he'd moved out to live with Steve. Eliza had watched from the window of the parlour as a ten-year-old, but she remembered the way their mother met Bucky and Steve at the bottom of the steps of the brownstone's stoop. Eliza remembered the boys' smiling faces as they came up the walk. Eliza remembered the way Steve's face fell when Evelyn told Steve he wasn't welcome anymore.

Eliza couldn't believe her mother didn't think Steve was a decent person, because Steve had pushed Bucky towards his family and left. He'd acted like it was nothing for him to be banished so Bucky might be able to pretend the same. Eliza had been so little then, but she could still feel the way her bones filled up with an immense sadness when she watched Steve jaywalk across the street and head back the way he'd come. Bucky only made it to the top step before stopping their mother to ask her why she'd done it. Whatever Evelyn's answer had been, they'd argued and Bucky had gone away too.

It had taken two weeks for Bucky to come back. He had come alone, and he'd been quiet. Things had gone to a new normal the week after that, but Eliza had spent the next two years scared to even mention Steve in front of their mother. Those two years of censoring herself, of avoiding a big part of Bucky's life: it felt like stolen time now that she'd lost the rest of her life with her brother.

'You just told Steve to get out,' Eliza said. Evelyn sputtered, trying to deny what she had done; she couldn't. They both knew the truth. They had all spent those two years before Bucky was drafted dancing around Steve's name, referring to him by his street address or other vague descriptors if they referred to them at all. 'How could you?'

Her mother had ruined Bucky's furlough, too. They could have had more time with their brother; Eliza might have gotten to hold his hand on the way home from school one more time. When Bucky was on furlough, he'd taken Rebecca out dancing with George, who'd almost ended up her husband. Rebecca had snuck into Eliza's room even later than she'd gotten home, after their mother and father had shut their parlour door and the lights were dim.

They had put their pillows against the door to muffle their whispers and pulled Eliza's covers over their heads. Rebecca had seen women kissing each other and men dancing together. She'd seen their brother lean into Steve for a slow dance when he thought Rebecca was outside smoking with George. She'd seen their brother sharing Steve's air, being held close, his palm facing down as Steve lead them slow, chest to chest. Rebecca had almost been brave enough to tell Bucky she'd seen him, but then they'd been at the steps of the brownstone. She'd chickened out.

Bucky had gotten home Rebecca within seconds of their mother's curfew and their mother had almost woken the tenants upstairs and in the basement trying to persuade Bucky to stay the night. Bucky walked back up the street and Eliza wondered if Steve had been waiting a block away or if he'd headed home to turn the lights on for Buck.

Their mother had started the same argument about going back to Middagh Street the next night and Bucky had been too nervous to come back after that. His furlough had ended and he'd not seen another one before he'd given his life in the war. The last thing Eliza ever heard from him, after he'd kissed her forehead and promised to see you soon, was his voice in the hall arguing with their mother's.

'You just decided you hated him!' Eliza said. 'And it drove Bucky away!

'My brother spent one evening a week in our house after that!' Sunday night dinner became a stiff, formal ritual when Bucky should have been able to come for dinner without notice, any night he pleased. He should have been able to bring his sweetheart by; his sweetheart should have gotten the same protective threats her father gave any boy she saw. 'He'd walk me home from school every day he got off work in time, and he'd never come inside. You did that!'

It made Eliza feel vindictive and terrible but it felt good to lay that blame on her mother. It felt good to blame her for the distance Eliza had suffered with Bucky, before he'd been gone for real.

'I miss Bucky,' Eliza said.

'I miss my brother. I miss him just as much now as I did when he moved out, when he went to war. I miss him just as much as when we found out he'd died to prevent us, Ma, from being blown to smithereens!'

The thought of how Bucky must have died—alone and afraid, knowing what he was giving up to stop bombs from falling, knowing he wouldn't survive the plane crash or probably even be found—The thought would get stuck in a loop in her head when a screaming baby kept her up at night. She would sit in the dark and rock the chair and breastfeed and torture herself with the thought: her brother could never cradle her children and they only existed because he had been brave enough to die for them. Her brother had died so every baby born could keep its mom up by crying, in New York, Chicago, Boston: he'd died so all those cities and all those babies could live in peace.

'I'm sorry I'm yelling!' Eliza yelled. 'I've been holding this a long time, and it's his birthday tomorrow!'

'You won't even say that it's his birthday tomorrow,' she repeated. Her shout burst out of her like a blowtorch's flame. 'You asked me to bring you up here the day before his birthday and you act like you don't even know—You act like we can leave all these things unsaid, but we can't.

'What would you have done if Bucky had told you that you had to accept him and accept Steve? Would you have done it or would you have lost him?'

Evelyn said nothing. She'd gone nearly white. She shook her head like she didn't know.

Eliza realised there was no answer.

Her mother didn't love Bucky like she loved her daughters; maybe her unbendable moral code would have bent for Bucky like it never would have for Eliza or Rebecca. Maybe if he had demanded she stop trying to change him, she might have been able to. They'd never know. There wasn't an answer.

Her brother was dead.

Bucky was dead and none of this honesty meant anything to him. It didn't mean anything that his mother might know who he was now; he wasn't anything but a corpse lost somewhere at sea, in ice. Eliza took her hands from her pockets and wiped her frigid face with her hands. She didn't know when she'd started crying.

Her mother was old; Eliza shouldn't be yelling at her like this; she definitely shouldn't have done it in the cemetery, in front of Bucky. In front of his grave. Her mother had never dealt with Bucky's death. They all lived with this festering absence they never faced head on: their father, Becca, Eliza too. None of them could really face the fact they'd lost Bucky. They didn't talk about his death like they thought they might drown in the words.

Becca never came with them to the cemetery; she'd gotten upset when Eliza had tried to pressure her on why. Eliza had learned that her sister couldn't stand to be near the empty grave; nothing Rebecca did could stop her from imagining Bucky's actual grave, somewhere in the north of the world: his body alone, lost, where no one knew he was, where no one was sure how he died, if it had been quick or if he'd suffered, if he was in one piece and rotting, or blown by bombs meant for millions of others.

Eliza never lingered over the thought of Bucky's body. She was tortured with thoughts of what would have happened if Bucky had come home: how amazing it would have been to have her brother back, how amazing it would have been to see him meet and help with her children. Maybe he'd have walked them home from school like he used to walk Eliza; maybe her babies would have grown up having a beautiful man encourage their curiosity about science and reading and the world. He would have baked them cakes for their birthdays and knit them stockings every Christmas.

Would Bucky have come home grieving Steve? Would he have ever learned to be happy without the blond man Eliza had known as his constant her entire childhood? What if both men had come home alive and in one piece? Could they have had a life together? What would her brother have done if their mother had asked Bucky to really choose between the family and Steve? What would she and Rebecca have done? How could they have chosen Bucky while living at home?

'I don't know,' her mother said, after the most painful silence Eliza had ever lived thru. 'I don't know what I would have done if he'd asked me to choose.' Eliza would not have chosen to lose Bucky to keep her mother, and she hated that she was so certain of that. She hated seeing her mother every day and having a tiny part of her wish that her life had shaken out different.

'But he wasn't like that,' Evelyn insisted. 'He was a good boy.' Eliza sighed. She put her hands back in her pockets. She looked back at her brother's headstone. She wished she could apologise to him somehow; she wished she hadn't come so close to fighting in front of him, the closest she could come with him gone.

'You can lie about it so you can keep loving him, all you want,' Eliza said. 'But Bucky loved Steve. You should think it was good your son had someone who loved him back. Loved him well.'

Eliza wasn't yelling anymore. She felt exhausted. She'd held her anger in for so long and for her mother to meet her fury with a simple and quiet denial exhausted her. It felt like she'd finally geared up for a marathon only to find out it was uphill; she couldn't fight thru to get to the right side, the right ending. She couldn't do it, not even for her brother, not when he was dead. Eliza could defend him like he deserved, but she couldn't bring him back. So it wasn't worth it.

'You can do whatever you need to to keep loving Bucky, but I had to say it out loud,' Eliza said. 'I know why I—I know why he didn't come say goodbye to us, when he got his new orders. It's 'cause you got into it about Steve with him, and he couldn't be a queer, your son, and a soldier all at once. You made it too hard for him.

'I just wanted you to know why,' Eliza said. 'I wanted you to know why we didn't see him again. If you wanna keep lying about it, you can, but—

'But my brother was a hero,' Eliza said. Her voice was cracking again. She'd named four children but she didn't know if she'd ever said anything so important. 'Bucky's a hero. He deserves a mother who knows who he is.'

'He's dead,' Evelyn said. 'He isn't anything.' Eliza nodded. She supposed that were true. Bucky was gone. Maybe their mother had at least accepted that, if she'd never accepted her son or who he'd loved. Eliza wished she could have told her brother that she'd have loved him no matter what. She'd been too little, too young, too naive, to realize the value those words would have had for Bucky, even if the war had never happened. He should have known his sisters loved him. She wished she had been wise enough to know he couldn't have guessed it on his own.

The world kept turning. Her husband was at home with the kids. Her brother, the gentle soul he was: he would never meet her babies. He'd miss their childhoods like he'd missed Eliza's; he was gone. Evelyn was right: Bucky wasn't anything now. He was mentioned on patriotic holidays, and whenever someone asked Eliza if she was that Eliza Barnes, the one who'd accepted Captain America's Medal of Honour. Bucky was just a ghost, just a myth people shared in whispers behind her back sometimes. Eliza turned to Evelyn.

'Let's go home.'

⍟

'—curve ball! High and outside for ball one—'

Bucky woke up with a start, curled on his side with a hand tucked under his cheek. The first thing he felt was his heart bounding in his chest, set into an unnecessary startle by a man's voice so close, ripping him out of a sleep so deep Bucky's eyes felt gummy. His lashes peeled apart and he gasped best he could; his breath was cold, tingling in his chest. It made him cough so roughly it hurt.

His heart was beating. It had stopped, when he was drowning, when the slush was getting to thick to move thru, when the cold was penetrating and killing him, trapping him in an Arctic grave.

The voice turned out to be a radio announcer, continuing: 'So the Dodgers are tied, four-to-four. And the crowd well knows that with one swing of his bat, this fellow's capable of making it a brand-new game again.' The pillow and the mattress: they were the softest things Bucky'd ever felt, but the blanket was itchy; Bucky pushed himself part way up, wondering why he wasn't tucked in, if this were a hospital.

It had to be a hospital, because Bucky had been sure he was going to die in the crash. He swore he'd felt himself drown. But he sat up best he could; he wasn't dead. He was breathing thru aching lungs and propping himself up on a shaky elbow.

'Just an absolutely gorgeous day here at Ebbets Field,' the radio said. Jesus, was Bucky stateside? He couldn't believe he was alive; the idea that he might be close enough to Brooklyn to be able to listen to the Dodgers' game—

He couldn't believe he was alive. Where the fuck was he? Did Peggy know he'd made it? Did they hide it from her like they'd hid the capture of the one-oh-seventh and others?

There'd never been a lovely radio like that one in any of Steve's hospital rooms; they'd never been this nice: clean, new paint on all the walls, even on the bedframe. Bucky supposed the only army hospitals he'd seen were tents, weird buildings on farmland, a schoolhouse repurposed. 'The Phillies have managed to tie up at four-to-four. But the Dodgers have three men on—'

Bucky frowned. His lungs forced a cold, cold cough again.

'Pearson beaned Reiser in Philadelphia last month. Wouldn't the youngster like a hit here to return the favour?'

'Pete leans in. Here's the pitch.' Bucky had seen this game. This was too familiar and yet nothing seemed right. It was too close without being complete, like a tracing being passed off as real. Bucky looked out the window, beyond the breezy curtain. City noises rustled below the window, but something about them seemed off.

'Swung on. A line to the right. And it gets past Rizzo.' The light, Bucky realised.

The sunlight was artificial, too, like the radio broadcast. Bucky couldn't smell the city stink even as he watched the curtains billow in a slight and gentle breeze; he didn't even smell the hospital he was sitting in. He could smell laundry soap on the blankets, but he couldn't smell the sterile wash of the hospital. He could smell the fresh paint—Paint so fresh it was tacky when Bucky touched the metal of the headboard, but no harsh burn of sterilizing detergents. 'Three runs will score. Reiser heads to third—'

Bucky couldn't focus on the paint because the game was more than familiar. Bucky recognized the play, for all the strange voice had startled him out of sleep. He'd seen it with Steve. 'Durocher's going to wave him in! Here comes the relay, but they won't get him—'

The door eased open, and Bucky turned from the radio.

'They look to relay but they hold steady. Pete Reiser with an inside the park—'

He eased his feet to the floor, sitting properly. God, everything hurt. He felt like he'd been hit by a damn truck, before the serum enhanced his healing. He'd done something worse, he realised: he'd crashed a fucking plane. He didn't understand why he wasn't dead; he remembered dying.

A woman—a nurse, she was clearly meant to be—entered, looking like no nurse Bucky had ever seen before.

'Good morning,' she said, then checked her watch. It was a Rolex Oyster, for women in service. Steve had gotten Peggy one for Hanukkah, just before he died. Steve had spent a whole fifty dollars on it. This one didn't look as nice as Peggy's, like it wasn't brand new, but had belonged to someone's grandmother. It looked old, like Bucky's father's watch. It didn't make any God damn sense.

'Or should I say, afternoon,' she corrected, laughing a little at herself. Bucky eyed her loose hair, and he had to admit, he eyed the lines of her lingerie beneath her blouse. No woman he knew would be caught dead with lines of her lingerie showing like that.

She didn't even smell like a nurse; this room didn't smell like a hospital. The window was open, but he couldn't smell the city. Something was wrong. He looked at the artificial sunlight, then back at her. She was smiling: kind, false, evaluating him. Bucky couldn't help but scowl.

'Where am I?' he asked. She blinked at him, thrown by his curtness.

'You're in a recovery room in New York City,' she said. Bucky knew that wasn't right. New York didn't smell like this: sterile and filtered and empty. New York smelled like tens of thousands of lives intertwined, shouting.

'The Dodgers take the lead, it's eight to four—Oh ho, Dodgers!' announced the radio.

'No: where am I?' Bucky repeated, forcing himself to stand. He hid it well, as her clear trepidation showed, but he felt shaking and unsure on his feet. The dame shook her head, a well-played gesture of sincerity.

'I'm afraid I don't understand,' she said.

'The game,' Bucky said. Her eyes flicked to the radio. 'It's from May, nineteen-forty-one. I was there. I know I'm not in New York; I know this hospital room is a set. Where am I really?'

'Captain Barnes—' she said, taking a step back as he advanced on her. He regretted that, frightening her, but she was lying to him. He couldn't believe how frustrated he felt, the burn of it inside him. He was supposed to be dead.

Bucky wasn't supposed to be in some fake hospital room God only knew where when there was a war going on and he had a team to lead. There were too many enemies for him to be patient with someone lying to him. He had to find Steve's body, for Christ's sake. Peggy might think Bucky was dead; if he were in a fake hospital somewhere, he wasn't with Peggy; she would never play him a prerecorded radio show to trick him into something—This all had to be a trick—

'Who are you?' Bucky demanded, and she took another step back. He saw her hand clench, a panic button, and the door opened behind her. Two men entered, clearly ready to subdue him. Bucky panicked, and when he struck them away, he overcompensated for the shake in his muscles. They flew thru what turned out to be a very thin, set wall, out onto some sort of soundstage like they'd film a talkie on.

'What the fuck?'

Bucky felt himself curse, and then he was running thru the hole in the clapboard.

'Captain Barnes, wait!' the would-be nurse called, and he'd already burst thru a set of heavy, metal French doors. They didn't look right. Nothing looked right. He didn't even know what it was, but it was different. He made it out into the hallway as alarms went off.

'All agents, code 13—' repeated the nurse's voice over the Tannoy. The windows were high and glass, brushed metal and large tiled walls. The ceiling was impossibly high—what kind of holding facility was this? The hallway was filled with agents, apparently, in slimming black and odd suits. Bucky ran, fast as he could away.

He was on the ground floor—what kind of place would try to hold him against his will, on a bad set, within a ten-second sprint of the main entrance?—

The road was foreign, bizarre, the car sleek and strange and bright yellow. He thought it was a cab insanely before he turned, sprinting away. Where the hell was he?

The streets were gridded, or at least appeared so. He didn't know where he was—everything looked impossibly different, like nowhere he'd ever been, not North Africa, or Europe or home—so he just followed the grid as if he was heading to Times Square, hoping the route would be hard to trace in the absence of such an obvious endpoint, even if it wasn't exactly the Tenderloin since the Crash—

—And he ran right into Times Square.

Bucky gasped, coming to a stop, not out of exertion but panic. This wasn't Times Square, of course not, because of the lights and the cars and the fact this was not New York. This was not New York. These cars were sleek and freakish and Bucky couldn't recognize the clothes like he knew American styles; this wasn't New York.

'What the fuck?'

This was not Manhattan. Manhattan didn't look like this; no place on Earth looked like this. This was not home. But there were lit-up ads all the way up, as tall as the Times Building had been, and the zipper was fancier, but it was there. The Times Building was there: bright, flashing adverts and bright fucking lights. Bucky knew the sun could set and it would still be as bright as day here; he didn't understand. He spun, recognizing marquees under the alien dressings. There was that statue of Father Duffy.

This was Times Square. Something was wrong, but he was there. He was in New York and something was wrong. He couldn't understand how New York had changed so much—It had been years since he'd last had furlough, but surely this couldn't have—

Black cars pulled up on either side of him—six in total—governmental or military in a way Bucky recognised even if they were freakish and sleek. Agents in suits held back the perimeters of gossiping bystanders, gossiping New Yorkers. Bucky recognised the men in black uniforms unlike anything he'd ever seen as a strike team. Whoever these people were, they were ready to take him down.

'At ease, soldier,' a man called, and Bucky turned to him.

It was a coloured man, with an eye patch, decked in black leather, and looking like a threat even with his easy movements towards Bucky. He didn't smile, somber, but he didn't glower. He didn't see Bucky as a threat, not really: someone he might have to subdue, sure, but someone he saw as on his team. Bucky didn't understand what the Hell was happening here.

'Look, I'm sorry about that little show back there,' he said. Bucky breathed slowly, trying to ease his panic. 'We didn't think the radio'd wake you up the second we turned it on; we were trying to ease you into the idea of having survived your crash before we broke it to you.'

'Broke what?' Bucky asked, steadier than he felt. Bucky's whole body was cold; his fingers and toes were waking up and it hurt—His ears and lips were burning as blood started to pump thru them.

'You've been asleep, Cap,' the man admitted. 'For almost seventy years.'

Bucky nodded.

He'd been asleep. What the fuck did that mean. Bucky looked down at his hands; his skin wasn't old. He wasn't old. It hadn't been seventy years and yet... His gaze drifted.

The panic swirled and swum and Bucky felt shaky and numb. He put his fists on his hips and tried to breathe in steady gulps.

Bucky was in the future.

Bucky wasn't even dead. He'd felt himself die but this—This was the fucking future: the billboards lit up unlike movie screens, dozens of bright boards, as sleek and intimidating as the cars that passed by. There wasn't a horse in sight; Bucky didn't recognize any of the shops and he could barely fathom all the lights—There were just so many lights—Everybody's clothes were so bright and everybody was wearing denim—

Bucky hadn't died when he'd crashed the plane. Bucky had been frozen in the Arctic and he was inhuman enough to have survived. Seventy years had gone by. His world was gone. He'd died to save it and now it was gone. It had passed him by.

'Cap?'

Bucky nodded. He wanted to speak but his tongue felt a few sizes too big for his mouth. Bucky supposed it was shock.

Almost seventy years was a long time.

Seventy years, gone. Bucky may as well have been really dead: his parents would be gone by now; his sisters—Oh, God, his sisters were fucking grown: old, in their eighties, maybe Becca would be ninety—Bucky couldn't do the math because he couldn't be counting up years he'd been dead—His sisters could be dead. He'd missed their whole lives; they'd grown up and he'd missed it.

It had been too long. Peggy—Peggy might be dead. The Commandos might be dead; his friends, George and Rudy; all his regulars at the bakery; the bakery might be gone—All these people would be old if they were still alive, on the way to the next thing, old enough to barely remember him. He'd look like a ghost to them, an image of a youth long past, frozen in time while everything else raced on.

Seventy years was a long time. Bucky could barely breathe.

New York. It didn't look like the same city.

Hell, it wasn't even the same century. It wasn't even the same millennium.

Bucky remembered reading dime novels and pulps about the future. The next millennium was never a place he thought he'd be. It seemed like another world then, and it seemed like another world now.  

'You gonna be okay?' the coloured man called. Bucky nodded, scanning Times Square.

The war would be over now. Steve was still dead, his parents would be too, and his sisters would be old. They'd be so old—God, seventy years was such a long time. He prayed that his sisters were alive. He used to pray he'd come home alive; he never thought he'd come home after such a long time that he'd worry about Eliza and Becca being alive.

'Yeah,' Bucky replied. 'Yeah, just...

'I'm all right,' Bucky lied, forcing himself to sound steady, and failing just a bit. 'I just...

'I'd made plans.'

Chapter Text

Steve's back pressed against his chest, his thin frame cool against Bucky's skin. Bucky still felt sticky from sex, but Steve, ever the vision of perfection, had cooled already, settled against him.

Bucky's arms lay over his thin chest, holding him close. Steve's little foot stroked at his calf. He had his sketchbook out, balanced precariously on Bucky's forearms, tracing out a sketch of Bucky and the dame he'd shown around the dance hall that night. Her skirts were vivid in their movement, Bucky's face lit with the joy of dancing as he spun her.

'Dancing with Doris or no,' Bucky drawled into Steve's ear, 'you know you're my best guy, right?'

'I know, Buck,' Steve promised.

'And half the fun of dancing is watching the skirt sway,' Bucky continued. His voice was pitched to tease and Steve poorly hid his grin to show he liked it. 'If I had a cute little number like Doris's, I'd swing with you any place, any night, even Sunday.'

'What, are Catholics not supposed to dance on Sundays?' Steve asked.

'Not supposed to drink, really,' Bucky admitted. 'Certainly shouldn't be thinking about a dress.'

'Didn't realise your idea of takin' me out dancing included hooch!' Steve protested, faux-shocked.

'Certainly not supposed to go with a fella on a Sunday,' Bucky mused, and Steve elbowed him with his sharp, little joints. 'Ouch! Hey!'

'See, this is why, if we could get married, you'd be the one to convert,' Steve told him, closing his book and looking up at Bucky. 'My God includes people like us.'

'Would your rabbi agree?' Bucky teased, because Steve was a bit of a nut and a lot of a radical feminist who couldn't always be trusted to see the world without idealism clouding his glasses, which would be more than proverbial if they could afford them.

'Shut up,' Steve ordered, elbowing him again. He tossed his sketchbook aside. Steve shifted against him, leaning up to kiss his jaw. 'You're my best girl and there's nothing wrong with that.' The soft press made Bucky's stomach swoop—

And the swoop of his stomach matched the swoop of the landing gear dropping off the cliff, then rising up, trapping him in the plane. The stick of his skin was replaced with the weight of his uniform, of the shield on his back and the tricks in his belt. He glanced around, and hopped over the barrier to the catwalk. The grated metal clunked softly under his boots.

As the wheels whirled and clunked to a stop behind him, Bucky froze, looking over the loading bay. Chicago, Boston, New York. Bombs. Bucky wasn't a moron; he knew both sides had been investing incredible science into weapons bigger than him: ones meant to destroy cities. Destroy civilians. These couldn't drop. Jesus, Bucky should almost forget Schmidt completely, focus on making sure this weapons' bay didn't drop enough fire and rage to raze all those cities to the ground. Bucky couldn't imagine the hell they would wreak.

A door clicked open and four HYDRA pilots ran, clanking along the catwalks. Bucky swung up, kicking one over the side. His body hit the plane's hull below with a revolting crack. Bucky's stomach swooped again. There was no sound of the man getting up, just the shink of a knife unsheathed from beside him. Bucky dodged the knife, which would have just scraped at his suit, and struck the man in the side. Bucky kicked a second man in the sternum—another crack, another body landing on metal with shattered bones and a still heart—and snatched the knife in the hand he still held, pinning the first man to the railing.

Bucky flung the knife at the pilot headed for the Boston bomb, barely having time to aim. It hit the man in the back (the heart, he could sense it as he turned), sinking hilt deep past HYDRA's own protective suits. The first man had moved away as Bucky threw; he reached for a grab bar above a bomb plane, swinging himself towards the cockpit.

Bucky didn't think. He went to the control panel and opened the bay door, hoping that proximity meant this box controlled the right bomb. The bay door opened behind him. He turned back just in time to see that pilot dangling, both hands on the grab bar.

Bucky had hit the man harder than a normal human could punch. Bucky wanted to reach out, pull in, save—the man's right arm gave out, and he fell with a terrified scream, reaching for someone with no one there—

—Ocean slush began pouring in the bay door, like the scream that kept pouring in, long after the pilot fell from view. Bucky stumbled back from the ice water, freezing air whipping at his face. This wasn't right. He didn't die yet. He had more time; he could still make it, still get there before the controls locked—he didn't die yet—

The water lapped at his feet as Bucky turned, trying to find the final pilot in the weapons' bay, trying to make sure he didn't haul the body off Chicago's bomb, or pilot the other to New York—

—the rest of the weapons' bay wasn't there—he was in the cockpit, in the chair, plummeting towards broken glass and ice. The water was already at his knees as he let go of the controls—the plane kept diving; the pilot's scream sheared thru the broken glass of the windscreen—the control panel had already warped like it had on impact, pinning him and shattering his leg—

—this wasn't right; Bucky shouldn't die yet and Peggy was supposed to be here— Bucky should have her voice until he hit water, but the water was already coming in, rising, rising, rising.

The warped panel crushed one of his femurs and pinned Bucky in place; the pain roared and ripped thru him as flames as the cold water, nearly slush, nearly ice, rose up to his chest, in his lungs, even as Bucky's shoulders were dry. He pushed against the metal, but it pinned him like an ant. He couldn't budge it, couldn't swim free. He was going to drown; he was going to die—

Bucky coughed, trying to breathe past the cold, past the water that wasn't even over his head—he didn't die like this; he didn't want to die like this; he couldn't breathe past the ice and water filling his lungs, his chest with the cold burn of death—the terror that seized him as his brain screamed for oxygen; it was as frigid as the slush and just as thick—it choked him just as much—

Bucky jerked awake.

The clock gave off red lights Bucky still wasn't used to. Four thirty-six am: no squinting or fumbling in the dark required. He coughed as if that would expel the ice in his chest, rolling onto his back and rubbing his hands over his face. His breath was harsh in the hush of the medical room in which SHIELD had him. Bucky had to calm down.

Bucky had come back to their base with the officers, only to get stuck in medical while doctors tried to suss out damage from the ice. They had put him thru the same endurance tests Philips' doctors had done after Erskine's death. Bucky had thought it was clear enough from his break out—and then the battery of finer-motor tests—that his brain and tissues weren't damaged. It didn't stop the doctors from assigning Bucky an exam room to sleep in and keeping him an official, admitted patient.

Despite the wristband made of a strange paper that labelled him a priority patient, Bucky was just cynical enough to think the doctors were more concerned with verifying the SSR files made after the Rebirth than anything that might be wrong from such a long time under ice.

Steve had been the sickly one between them; Bucky had never done well with needles and until he went to war, he had only endured typical vaccines, nothing more. In Project: Rebirth, Bucky had had dozens of vials of blood drawn out of his arm, a week-long course of intravenous penicillin before they stuck him in the tube that had been an Iron Maiden of injection. Needles now shook him up like he was back in that SSR lab, the lab that changed him. It shook him up like he had stumbled back into the one Bucky blew up after hauling Steve out.

Being held as a patient by SHIELD wasn't different either than the time Bucky had spent in custody by the SSR, after Erskine's murder, in that lab with a hotel cot, an exam table, and a big mirror that Bucky knew people watched him from behind. At least there was no mirror in this lab room. Bucky was alone while he tried to haul himself back together. For all these doctors were faking concern about his injuries, at least Bucky was alone now. He had time to be by himself and figure out what the hell he was supposed to do now.

Bucky was alone even if they had been spying on him from behind a mirrored window. Bucky was alone more than he'd ever been. Last time he'd been locked in a lab, Peggy had gotten him out. Peggy would be old now. Bucky didn't know where she was, or how to look her up after so much time.

And Steve was gone.

Steve was dead. Bucky had to keep remembering that, almost. The thought kept springing up and each time he was taken by surprise, like he had been when that railing had given way and the only person who really knew who Bucky was fell, tumbling down to die alone. Hopefully—God, that Bucky was in such a nightmare to hope for such a thing—Hopefully, Steve had died quick; hopefully the fall had killed him before he knew how badly Bucky had failed. Hopefully Bucky hadn't let him to bleed to death in the snow. Colonel Phillips had denied him a search party; the war was too close to its end to spend such resources to find a body, after all.

Steve had fallen and now a body was all he was. His body would be gone now, seventy years later. Nothing left for Bucky to find even if he could cross the world to try. Bucky couldn't even leave the exam room.

Steve was just an idea to people alive today. Steve was just a body lost somewhere in the Alps. He was gone, forgotten in history, a footnote in textbooks about Captain America and the murdered scientist who'd created him.

How did this happen?

Bucky had done this to himself. Bucky had crashed the plane with every intention of dying. He'd hoped, crashing, that Steve had been right about either of his ideas of an afterlife: they were both good and were going to Heaven together, queer or not—or that there was only nothingness, death, a void.

It wasn't really that Bucky had wanted to kill himself. Bucky couldn't live in a world where he not only let Steve die, but let any one of those bombs drop too. They were ungodly, horrific, terrible bombs aimed at civilians and cities with nothing to do with the war. They'd blast holes beyond any bombs Bucky had ever seen before; they would have murdered hundreds of thousands of people and Bucky couldn't have lived if he'd let one drop. If Steve had been alive, Bucky might still have given his life to stop those bombs from striking civilians. He might have wept over the radio like he had with Peggy, with Steve listening too, because there was no choice when those bombs existed.

This reality was worse than that fantasy that Steve had survived him, that Bucky hadn't abandoned Peggy to live without either of them. Other bombs had been dropped, by the country Bucky had died to protect, shredding two cities into nothing. Other bombs had been dropped, shredding hundreds of thousands of lives, just like Bucky had feared.

Bucky had died to prevent it, and his own country had carried it out anyway. It made being trapped here—in the future where his sisters and his parents were dead, where Steve was in Hell and Bucky was the one who had damned him—feel fruitless. It felt like Bucky was here for no reason, like this couldn't be real.

Bucky had never for a second imagined he would survive the war and come home to anything less than home. He would never have thought that New York would be so foreign and changed, or that his family would be gone. Even if the worst came to pass—which it had; Steve was dead—he had thought he could go home to his ma, to help with his sisters until he was knit together enough to move on like Steve always said he would have to.

Bucky sat up. He flung the blankets off and sighed. Bucky didn't know how to move on in this future; his mother wasn't around to set him up with some Catholic girl; Peggy's whole life had gone by without him. The bakery he'd worked at before he'd been drafted was probably gone, wiped out by the huge weight of the time he'd missed. His bare feet touched the tile. It was heated with electricity, warm to the touch. It didn't provide any relief to him.

Bucky had been sweating in his sleep; the sweat now served to chill him in the night air. His skin was tacky, under a plain, white undershirt and flannel pants. That pilot's scream still rang sharp in the back of his mind. The sensation of bones snapping under his feet lingered like pins in his joints. Bucky pressed his hands against his forehead, praying that the shake in his bones would go away. He could feel his wrists bobbing ever so slightly even as he pressed his palms to his skin; he wasn't steady.

'It's the year twenty-eleven,' Bucky whispered. 'This is real.'

He sighed again, his breath hitching on the way out like his lungs weren't defrosted yet. How the fuck could this world be real? The fucking floor was heated. The cars he'd seen were sleek and unworldly; he'd seen signs lit up and moving like giants under stage lights. His family was fucking dead and Bucky was awake in the future they never saw.

'This is real,' Bucky said, the clock glowing. Dim light from the hallway marked a neat rectangle, just off centre on the white tile floor. The hallway was presumably filled with at least one nurse. There were SHIELD agents in other rooms of the med centre. There was nowhere to go, to be awake and alone in the early hours of the night. Bucky wasn't one hundred percent sure if SHIELD would let him leave now, anyway.

'Can't go back.'

Bucky laid back down to sleep.

⍟

'Captain?' a voice called.

Bucky was getting dressed, in what seemed like oddly informal, provided clothing. Bucky pulled the undershirt (which had been accompanied by a light jacket but no actual shirt, let alone a tie) on before turning. The tee shirt was just tight enough across his massive shoulders to make him feel clothed in front of a stranger, but Bucky was sure the tightness also made his shoulders look even more massive than they were.

A familiar-looking man stood there, just a shade of memory in his appearance. Bucky frowned at the sensation of recognizing a stranger. The man smirked, unbothered by Bucky's frosty reception of him. He swaggered towards Bucky's spot by the exam table and he stuck out a hand.

'Captain Barnes,' the man said. 'Nice to meet you.' Bucky shook the offered hand. 'I'm Tony Stark.' Bucky resisted the impulse to rip his hand away like he'd been burned.

'Stark. As in Howard Stark,' Bucky said, making sure. He couldn't believe it. This man looked older than the twenty-seven years Bucky could brag. After seventy years, this man would be old enough (or young enough?) to be Howard's kid, which was terrifying and strange. Bucky had missed so much time, so many people's entire lives. He couldn't help the way his shoulders dropped with how sad this made him. Howard had had a kid and here he was grown; Bucky had missed it.

'I'm Howard's son,' he said, confirming Bucky's fears. Bucky echoed Tony's nod, considering that. He felt his hands find his pockets and he looked out the window at the city view to hide how uncomfortable he felt.

'My father spent a lot of time looking for you, out in the Arctic, you know,' Howard's son added, with an edge to his tone. Bucky refused to let his loosed stays to catch on that blade. He wasn't a guy with a remarkable temper, no, but he was still reeling that he was alive, let alone having functionally travelled thru time like a science fiction novel had become his real life.

'How is Howard?' Bucky asked. He'd had his issues with the man, but he had been a good friend nonetheless. He'd been prickly, arrogant, brilliant and hard to like, but he had dropped everything to help Bucky and Peggy several times. He was the reason Bucky had managed to save Steve, from Azzano at least. He'd always been willing to risk anything for the people he counted as friends.

'Dead,' Tony said, slouching against the exam table. His casual tone floored Bucky. Bucky snapped his eyes back to Howard's kid. Tony shrugged. 'My parents died in a car accident when I was twenty-one,' Tony explained. 'Long time ago.'

Bucky's heart clenched, because seventy years was a long time and Bucky had known people might be gone, but he couldn't expect each blow. While he understood they'd lived on past the war and into the real world, it didn't feel that way. It felt like people had been lost too quickly, in a blink of ice and death.

'I'm so sorry,' Bucky said, a little shaky, when he found his voice.  'I imagine he loved you very much.' Tony laughed in a short and bitter burst.

'Howard and I had what you might call a complicated relationship,' Tony said.

'He was a good man,' Bucky offered anyway. Tony nodded, like he'd heard that a million times and it hung hollow. 'I don't mean to sound like I'm disagreeing; if your relationship was complicated, it was, but I remember a man who cherished his wife's letters more than anything in the world. He treated those letters like they were gold.

'I'm sorry he didn't cherish you in the same way.' That hung heavy for Tony, Bucky could tell, and they both cut their eyes away.

'He had his reasons,' Tony said. They stood in silence for a moment. Bucky didn't know what to say. 'Well, what do you think of these SHIELD people?'

'I don't know,' Bucky admitted. He eyed Tony, his posture and disposition so familiar and alien all at once. It was unsettling. If Bucky had a shorter temper, the unsettling juxtaposition would be enough to make him dislike the man on sight. 'I suppose they found me, even if it was a very long time later.'

'A Russian oil team found you,' Tony corrected. 'SHIELD just paid them off and defrosted you.' Bucky frowned. He'd explicitly been told otherwise and now he didn't know what to believe. 'I'd just keep yourself as independent from them as you can,' Tony offered, fiddling with little boxes and jars on the doctor's counter. Bucky was pretty sure that he should tell Tony to knock it off, but Tony fiddled with a determined curiosity Bucky couldn't quite admonish. 'Got a place to live?'

'They're providing me housing,' Bucky said. 'I'm supposed to be meeting an agent in the main lobby. They'll take me to the apartment I've been given.'

'You want to live in a place like that?' Tony asked, sounding skeptical. 'How patriotic.'

'I've been a soldier for a long while,' Bucky said, bristling at Tony's judgmental eyebrows. 'We spend most of our time in government housing.' Besides that, he and Steve had accepted government help to stay fed and housed as much as any working class kids did during the Crash, and he'd never felt shame in that, not like too-proud men did. This was a different circumstance, but Tony's sneer set him off nonetheless.

'Listen, surveillance tech improved a lot while you were on ice,' Tony explained. 'If you want an apartment where someone is always watching and listening, be their guest. If you want some actual privacy while you adjust to this insane situation you've defrosted into, you can be my guest, until you get yourself on your feet.' He grinned, like he thought that was particularly good wordplay.

Bucky stared at him. Tony stared back, unbothered, like a jungle cat who thought he was impressive enough to deserve stares. Howard had had the same attitude. Bucky wondered if things like that were genetic.

'Howard wasn't the type of guy to be generous with his space,' Bucky said. 'Weapons, tech, always, but he didn't invite people into his house.' He wanted to ask what's your angle? but he didn't want to be rude. He was just raw enough that it would come out waspish, sharp, and incendiary.

'My, um—Pepper: she's my—she told me to come,' Tony admitted, somehow still managing to sound confident as he hedged his words. It was the self-assurance riches and genius bought. Bucky huffed an amused breath. Tony had a woman he listened to like Howard had had Maria. Of course he did. 'Pepper said you were my father's friend, and we invite family friends in need to stay in our mansions.'

'Mansions. I always forgot Howard was rich,' Bucky said. 'He slept in the mud like the rest of us, but he'd be doing so in a silk sleeping bag.'

'Sounds about right,' Tony laughed. 'What do you say, Jimbo?'

'I actually go by Bucky, not James or Jim,' Bucky said. Tony made a face like he'd bitten into a tomato to find it overripe and soft.

'Really?' Tony demanded. 'Why?'

'It's my—My middle name is Buchanan, and my father's name is Jim, so,' Bucky said. He stumbled over the explanation of his name; it hadn't been so unusual when he'd been a kid. Bucky frowned, when his words slotted wrong against his tongue. 'Was Jim, I guess. Been seventy years.'

Bucky swallowed around the sudden lump of granite in his throat. God, he'd missed his parents' lives, missed his sisters' weddings, maybe everything. Rebecca had probably married George Chapman, and who knew who Eliza married. They probably had a heap of kids apiece, and he'd missed those kids' lives, missed his sisters' lives, missed his parents, and Miss Fletcher from next door; Tony was Howard's son, for God's sake, and he looked older than Bucky.

His whole family's lives had passed while he was frozen in the Arctic, while he was dead. His whole world had gone by.

'So?' Tony prompted. 'You coming?'

'What makes you so sure they bugged the apartment they've offered me?' Bucky asked, because he was more skeptical than some, but he was idealistic enough to be disappointed to find a stranger so sure of a breach of his privacy. His voice came out steadier than he felt.

'Well, they've bugged this room,' Tony pointed out, after a beat in which he seemed to decide if Bucky might believe him. 'I see one, two, three—' He pointed around the room, and Bucky did see little, impossibly tiny lenses, the size of teddy-bear-eye buttons, tucked in good lines of sight, subtle as could be. Holy shit, cameras couldn't possibly be that small. '—and four. I think there's a tracker sewn into the collar of that jacket you've got.'

Bucky stared at the canvas jacket lying neatly on the exam table.

'I remember trackers being kind of obvious,' he said. He held up his hands, a half-a-foot apart. 'You know, yay big.' He crossed his arms.

Tony chuckled condescendingly, tho Bucky was sure he didn't intend to make Bucky feel half-a-foot tall. Tony pulled the jacket towards himself, feeling along the collar. He pulled a penknife from his expensive, modern, bizarre, pinstripe suit's lapel pocket and pressed it into the back of the collar, under the fold.

Tony pulled out a little green thing about the size of a nickel. 'That's—?' Bucky tried, but he lost his words. They'd sewn in a tracker too small for him to have found or even suspected on his own. They had been watching when Bucky had tried to talk himself down from a nightmare last night from cameras so tiny he couldn't understand them. He felt exposed by more than the lack of a proper shirt to go under the jacket; he felt naked and spied on.

'Yep,' Tony said, tossing it into the sink in the corner of the room. It pinged satisfyingly against the stainless steel cistern. 'Still feeling good about government housing?'

'Less so,' Bucky admitted. 'Less so.' Tony's condescension turned smug.

'Come on, before Fury sees me on camera and comes to stop me from removing you from fake custody,' Tony said, waving a hand and tossing Bucky the jacket. 'I'll take you home to Pepper and she'll get you a place without surveillance.' Bucky slid the jacket on, and followed the obnoxious man into the unknown.

Tony led him to a sleek, freaky car outside the SHIELD building. Bucky stared at it, unsure.

The car was silver and black, and it looked like a wheeled stealth jet, not someone's personal vehicle. Bucky's parents had owned a car, and it looked absolutely nothing like this one; even the nicest of the Army's jeeps had had nothing on this, not by miles. It looked like a God damned spaceship. Bucky remembered Howard's futuristic car; it had flown for Christ's sakes and still looked like less of a scientific device. Tony peered over the roof of the car and the sunglasses he'd slid on, impatient.

'Yo, Ice Cap,' Tony said. 'It's an Audi R8 V10, with some of my adjustments. It's literally the best car in the world.' Bucky would bet that wasn't literally true, but he sighed and opened the door anyway. Tony let Bucky settle in, and then he shot off at a million miles an hour. Bucky grabbed the armrest on the door, forcing himself not to hold tight enough to dent the thin metal of the door under the smoothest leather he'd ever felt.

Cars drove differently than they used to, Bucky thought, half-panicked, as Tony raced around the bends and corners of New York's roadways. The engine fucking purred, and the shifts were smooth and calculated. As it roared up to a parking garage, Bucky had to admit it was kind of fun. Tony screeched to a halt in front of the gate, which seemed slim and elegant, but even Bucky could tell was quite strong.

'JARVIS, honey, I'm home,' Tony called to no one in particular.

'Welcome back, sir,' an ambient voice said, and the gate rolled up in a smooth and silent slide. 'I see you've acquired our guest.' Bucky looked around as Tony eased into the parking garage. He was spooked. Tony parked and Bucky peeled his hand from the door. He hadn't left a dent behind.

'Who were you talking to?' Bucky asked. 'Do you have a gatekeeper?' That seemed bizarre to him, even for a Stark.

'That's just JARVIS,' Tony offered. 'He's my AI system, best in the known universe.'

'And you use me to organise your social calendar,' JARVIS lamented from the ceiling, like he was the voice of God. Tony scoffed as he flicked off his seatbelt and swung open his car door. Bucky followed him, staring at the other bizarre cars in the spots on either side.

'I use you to organise all sorts of things; you're hardly wasted,' Tony told him. 'Drama queen, am I right?' he asked Bucky.

'I—Who is Jarvis?' Bucky asked again, unclear about the acronym and, honestly, most of it, as he followed Tony into an elevator.

'I am a computer system, sir,' JARVIS said, inside the elevator with them. Bucky couldn't see the Tannoy the voice had to be coming out of. 'I'm a programme with artificial intelligence capabilities, or AI, able to make some decisions and inferences in a manner more similar to your mind than that of computers from your day.'

'He explains himself better than I do,' Tony said, pretending to be choked up. 'Where's Pepper?' he asked JARVIS.

'She is awaiting your arrival on Master Barnes's floor,' JARVIS said. 'Shall I tell her you are on your way up?'

'Sorry, Master Barnes's floor?' Bucky echoed. Tony shrugged.

'I'm very rich,' Tony reminded him. 'A floor is almost nothing to me, and besides, this guest floor actually holds three apartments, so this is technically your third of a floor, tho no one else is here at the moment. The building's not even finished yet, got a few more days of work. Took time off to get you out of SHIELD's claws.'

'This is what an unfinished building looks like nowadays?' Bucky asked, dry and a little bitter.

'That's funny,' Stark said, fiddling at a tiny metal and glass rectangle. 'You're funny, Cap; nobody tells you national treasures are funny.' The rectangle had lights—it had one side that lit up completely, letters and shapes dancing across as if in reply to Tony's dancing fingers.

'What is that?' Bucky asked. 'Everybody and their uncle has one.' Tony's eyes snapped up to him, shocked. Bucky almost took a step back; what was so obvious and shocking between them that he hadn't seen?

'It's a phone,' Tony said. He held it up for Bucky to look at. It had a little screen, all lit up and fancy, with bubbles of text in different colours. 'They haven't shown you these yet?'

'That's a telephone?' Bucky demanded. 'No fooling?'

'No fooling,' Stark laughed. 'I'll get you one.'

'No, that's too generous,' Bucky protested, like his mama taught him. 'You're already hosting me —'

'I'm rich and I literally make more phones than any other company in the market,' Tony pointed out. Bucky would bet that was literally true. Howard had always made the best of whatever he made; it figured his son was the same. 'It's not charity.' He tucked the tiny telephone into his pocket.

'How is it a telephone if it's not attached to anything?' Bucky asked. 'Where're the wires? Antenna?'

'That's maybe a bigger question than you're ready for right now, Grandpa,' Tony said. 'I'll admit I don't know what the height of tech was in your day; I have no idea where I'd start. Maybe wait till you've acclimated to the time difference a bit, eh?'

'The time difference,' Bucky echoed. A chill ran across the back of his rib cage, deep and shaking. He wished he could warm up. The serum was supposed to make him relatively impervious to cold, and his hands were warm, but his bones were freezing.

The elevator doors opened with a ding (the elevator didn't have any buttons or a crank or a gated door or nothing, so how the hell did it know where they were going?), and Bucky had no choice but to follow this madman out, and along a short hallway with an obnoxiously large mirror opposite the lifts. Grey, opaque glass doors slid open, marked in white unit one, as they approached, and they wandered into a lovely, enormous living room. Bucky swallowed; he had a sinking feeling that this was wrong somehow. This home was too lovely; Bucky was intruding, trespassing, something.

'Captain Barnes, this is Pepper Potts,' Tony said. A beautiful redhead smiled big at him, her slender arms outstretched for a hug. Bucky accepted it with hesitation; it felt forward and improper to hug a female stranger. She squeezed him without any reservation; she hugged him like he were family. She felt so kind and nice against him that he let her. For a moment, Bucky felt nice too, not so cold and stilted.

'I'm so glad you decided to stay with us for a while,' Miss Potts said when she pulled away.

Miss Potts was beautiful, a bit older than thirty-five, but with a confident smile that earned the beginning of her crow's feet. Tony's hand landed on her lower back for a moment; he gave her cheek a possessive kiss. Tony wandered off, towards—Jesus—towards a bar running the length of the room.

The bar was sleek, dark, polished wood, and it looked like—The leather couches and the big fireplace: they looked like a rich person's house. They were made in an old style Bucky recognized (how odd that fashionable in his time would be old now). The room looked like the fancy places Bucky had seen before starting in Peggy's intelligence service, when the Senator was trying to wine and dine him into being a tool for propaganda. To be frank, the room looked nicer than those dinner clubs and restaurants had been.

Bucky supposed these things that were nicer than that were his, at least for now. He'd be staying in these nice digs, rent free, a gift of a dead friend's son. It was bizarre. Bucky just didn't understand this new world.

'Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Potts,' Bucky said. Bucky was overwhelmed and tried hide it by being too polite for what he understood of modern standards. If Bucky had a hat, he'd sweep it off.

'Please, call me Pepper,' Miss Potts insisted.

'Bucky,' he replied.

'Bucky,' Pepper repeated. 'I want you to feel at home here. Anything you need, just ask.'

'Why?' Bucky asked, unable to help himself. 'Why do this? You don't know me. This is—This is so kind.'

'Well, no, we don't know you,' she admitted. Tony was watching with a sharp eye from where he was fixing himself a drink at Bucky's living room bar. Bucky resisted a squirm.

'But my maternal grandfather knew you,' Pepper explained. 'You saved his life in Belgium, when you led his squadron and your unit against a German base.' Bucky looked away, rubbing his mouth. 'His name was Frederick Muller. He was just a private, but you hauled a huge piece of rubble off him, and then your shield stopped a bullet headed for his head. One of your Commandos carried him to safety. He told the story to us kids all the time.'

'I'm ashamed to say I don't remember him personally,' Bucky said. He remembered a lot from the war, but he'd saved a lot of people and killed a lot of people. Things blended together. Very few people stood out, and almost all of those people were already dead. Pepper's smile didn't fade. She waved his apology off.

'I didn't expect you to remember a private you knew for a few seconds,' she promised. 'But Tony and I both grew up hearing stories about you, reading about you in history books, and watching you in the cartoons. You were found an awful long time away from home. I thought you might need someone to act like a friend would, even if you don't really know us. It feels like we know you.'

'I told her we were overstepping,' Tony said as he finished fixing up whatever he was fixing. He flung himself onto one of the couches, and Pepper moved to tuck herself beside him. He slouched in his expensive suit (Bucky would call it a two hundred dollar suit, but he was sure money was different now too), and Pepper sat in her denim trousers and her dark green tee shirt. She lifted Tony's glass, taking a sip; Tony let her without question. There were far too many olives in the glass for Bucky's tastes.

'If we are overstepping, I apologise,' Pepper said. Bucky settled into the couch across from them. It was the most God damn comfortable couch he'd ever sat on in his life. It was so comfortable it made him angry. He linked his shaking fingers, elbows on knees, to hide the unnecessary rage.

Bucky wanted to go home—real home—with the broken cold water tap in the hall downstairs and Steve hacking up a lung in the narrow bedroom on their rope mattress, not a high-priced imitation of the fanciest dinner clubs from home.

'For us, it's been seventy years since you died—crashed,' Pepper explained. 'But I figure it feels like only a couple of days for you. I'd want to see a friend after that. Howard and Maria passed away quite a few years ago. I thought we'd be the next best thing.'

Bucky had never met Maria, but he'd heard stories and Tony sure seemed to love Pepper like Howard had loved Maria. It was kind of nice—if surreal—to know these strangers at least thought they cared about Bucky Barnes, not just Captain America and his manufactured legacy. Bucky had met a lot of SHIELD agents and American soldiers over the last four days who had addressed him as Captain America, who'd talked about his legend, who'd skipped past the person with a catchy call-sign to the superhero character made in his image while he was dead. It was strange, meeting people who called themselves fans.

Those people had warped him into some blindly patriotic, conservative symbol—nevermind that Bucky had grown up in the queerest area of Brooklyn, nevermind that he'd supported Steve—who was sick enough to be disabled in their day—after his mother died, nevermind that Bucky had frequented the drag shows and the hidden bars where anybody could dance with anybody they liked. Bucky had liked working in a bakery best of all the odd jobs he'd held during the Crash, never even dreamt of joining the Army; Bucky had been drafted and stayed until he died. Bucky didn't know how to go about explaining that he didn't stand for any of that stuff. Captain America hadn't been meant to be synonymous with his name, but if it were, then Captain America didn't stand for it either.

It meant something that Tony and Pepper might not have those assumptions. Even if Tony had been raised on tales of Bucky by Howard, Howard had been Bucky's friend. Pepper had cared enough about the story of a man who'd saved her grandpa that she'd encouraged Tony to search Bucky out; Bucky would be still with SHIELD, being spied on when he had been convinced he were alone, if not for that.

'You are the next best thing,' Bucky said. 'I'm grateful for your kindness. I'm also grateful that I'm not somewhere where I'll be watched.'

'Tony was right, huh?' Pepper said. Tony drank a deep gulp instead of confirming. Pepper sighed. 'Well, Bucky, what are you going to do now that the war is over?'

The hot anger that had been burning in Bucky's chest went out with the question, coming close to choking Bucky with smoke where he sat.

Bucky had wanted so many things for after the war. He'd wanted to go home with Steve; he'd hoped Peggy would come with them. He'd wanted to have kids and see his sisters and get a hug from his ma. All those plans were gone now. All the things he'd hoped for that he had been too afraid to pray for were gone, seventy years behind him.

'I don't know,' Bucky said. Anything Bucky had ever wanted for himself was impossible. 'I don't know.'

Chapter Text

Being left to his own devices was ironically the hardest part about this.

Bucky had been at war for a long time. He'd been drafted during what was technically peacetime, after all, and he had fought thru the entire war but not quite lived to see the end of it. This was the first time in a long time he didn't have orders, and it was hard to get used to. He didn't even need to provide for anyone, not his sisters, not his folks, not even Steve. He was on his own, insomuch as he was alone in someone's guest apartment; he could make any choice he liked but he couldn't force himself to make a single one.

The bookshelves on either side of the impossibly sleek television were filled with resources he imagined were designed for him. He'd picked up a text called A Brief History of Post-War America, and another entitled the Cold War Years, and while they'd been interesting, they'd also hard to swallow. The first book had explained the two enormous bombs dropped on Japan, on civilians. A quarter of a million Japanese, mostly civilians, a couple dozen POWs, and twenty two thousand Korean prisoners, all dead. He'd felt sick at that, imagining the carnage. He'd always felt sick when war spilled into what should have been safe.

Learning about those cities had paralyzed him for almost a day. When he tried to pick up his books again, he hadn't been able to bear continuing. He couldn't believe he'd given his life to stop bombs and then his own country had turned around and dropped more.

The Truce at Bakura was good so far; Bucky liked it, but he could tell he was missing part of the series or another book. The parallels seemed too apropos, between that world after war and his.  Bucky tossed it down, onto the coffee table. It looked more like home with a couple of books strewn across than it had bare and minimal, like most of the surfaces in this apartment seemed to be. His hands scrubbed over his face, because this place, this time, was gonna have to become home. He'd have to make this year into home.

'Trouble sleeping?' someone called. Bucky turned, surprised to see Pepper in his doorway. He stood, rounding the couch to give her the expected greeting hug. Her entire legs showed beneath short, short, denim shorts. He resolutely didn't notice how risqué it looked, because she seemed so comfortable that it must not have been that risqué at all anymore.

'Seventy years of sleep will do that to a man,' Bucky said as she wrapped her arms around him and laughed. Bucky tried to smile back, because Pepper was lovely. She had been so kind to him over the past few days. She seemed to be in a particularly good mood that evening.

'The building will be officially finished today,' she told him. 'Tony's in the water now, doing the last few things. Come upstairs with us; celebrate.' She gave his sleeve a hopeful tug, and he tried to refuse.

'No, this is something you and Tony have been working towards together,' he said, waving her off. His hands tucked in his pockets. 'You should celebrate together—'

'We are going to celebrate together all night, if you know what I mean; you can come bother us for half an hour,' Pepper quipped. Bucky huffed; his giggle caught in the ice in his chest. Pepper laughed too. 'I guess I'm a lot crasser than women from your day.' He shook his head, which had filled with thoughts of Peggy, and some of her jokes, how far she would go before saying it wasn't ladylike, that she'd go no further, but his voice stuck in his throat before he could share them. 'Come upstairs. Have a glass of champagne. Tony and I will celebrate privately later. Come on.'

Once they were inside, Bucky was wowed by the sweeping back wall of the penthouse entry; the glass framed what seemed like the entire New York skyline.

The rest of the room was dark, modern, with another well-stocked, expensive bar lining one side. Starks clearly loved to entertain. Bucky wandered to the windows as Pepper walked over to a chiming box, some sort of technology sitting on a table.

Stark Tower was full of gadgets Bucky didn't understand. Bucky had come close to giving up learning each one's function; it was too much. Bucky looked out over the skyline outside the windows, trying to remember if he had seen the city in his day up where Stark Tower overlooked. Bucky didn't know if he'd ever been so high up. It seemed so long ago that he'd been in New York; after Project Rebirth, Bucky hadn't gotten furlough until he found himself on ice. Bucky had grown up in New York, even if he were far from Brooklyn in Stark Tower. The city shouldn't look foreign.

'There you are,' Tony's voice called. 'Where'd you go?' Bucky turned to greet Tony, but Pepper was talking to a weird glowing light. That took his attention off the skyline.

'Nowhere, I'm here,' Pepper told Tony. Pepper ignored Bucky's approach as he gaped. He was amazed like a child at a Christmas show, at the lights she was reading from, tapping her fingers along a solitary keytop.

'You're good to go on this end,' Tony said. 'The rest is up to you.'

'You disconnected the transition lines? Are we off the grid?' she asked. Bucky rounded the table, squinting at the lit up version of Stark Tower. Jesus, he'd always thought the zipper on the Times Building was damned impressive.

'Stark Tower is about to become a beacon of self-sustaining, clean energy,' Tony said, proud.

'Well, assuming the arc reactor takes over and actually works?' Pepper said.

'I assume,' Tony said, his proud tone turning petulant at Pepper's skepticism. 'Light her up.'

'How does it look?' Pepper asked him. Tony's eyes in the film in the air had lit up, and Bucky tried to figure out what exactly made the film work. He couldn't fathom it.

'Like Christmas,' Tony said, 'but with more me.' Pepper almost rolled her eyes; Bucky saw it. He'd almost rolled his eyes in that exact way at Steve a billion times if he'd done it once. A sharp pick of ice dug at his chest, sudden and painful; he would never roll his eyes at Steve again. Bucky was alone in this new century, in this time.

'We've got to go wider on the public awareness campaign,' Pepper told Tony, barrelling on. 'You need to do some press. I can do some more tomorrow, I'm working on the zoning for the next billboards.'

'Pepper, you're killing me. The moment. Remember? Enjoy the moment,' he chastised. 'I'll get in there and we'll—' Bucky saw where Tony's film was coming from as he landed on the balcony outside the glass wall, like a—God—like a superhero.

'He can fly?' Bucky demanded, pointing like a child. 'Is that something Tony can do or can people fly now?'

'Is that the Capsicle?' Tony asked. No one answered Bucky, left to stare at Tony, as he walked down the balcony walkway, devices and robots rising up out of the floor to remove the intricate flight suit. Bucky spotted all sorts of complicated mechanisms; he'd bet that suit did a lot more than fly. He remembered Howard's initial thoughts for his own uniform; they'd been outlandish tech just like that.

'Tony, Bucky is having a drink with us before we celebrate together.' Before Tony could grumble like Bucky knew he must be aching to, JARVIS interrupted them.

'By the way,' Bucky said to Pepper, as Tony snipped at JARVIS in the background. 'What is this? How is this—?' He waved a finger vaguely over the lights and Pepper hemmed.

'Um, it's a holographic projection of a computer monitor display,' she said hesitantly. 'Um, it's a hologram of the building, but this bar here?' She motioned at the light-up bar which built the—the hologram. 'That's the computer that runs this room.' Bucky stared at the tiny, sleek box, echoing the word hologram in his head. Computers used to fill up entire rooms, even ones this size. Everything was so tiny nowadays, unless it was enormous. Light could be suspended in midair.

'Levels?' Tony called. Pepper passed her eyes over the complicated lights of the hologram.

'They seem to be holding steady,' Pepper said.

'Of course they are; I was directly involved,' Tony said. He clapped Bucky on the arm as he passed on his orbit to Pepper. 'Hey, Cap, why don't you ask Pep how it feels to be a genius?' Bucky parroted the question as instructed, letting Tony's palling around warm him up a bit. He was still so cold, like the ice was lingering in his joints and bones and heartstrings.

'Well, ha, I really wouldn't know now, would I?' Pepper complained. Tony waved the hologram off and away, and the light fell into air.

'What do you mean?' Tony asked, like it was a given that Pepper were a genius, was key to his. 'All this? Came from you.'

'No. All this came from that,' she said, tapping a glowing circle in Tony's chest. Bucky blinked at it. That had been hidden by an undershirt or perhaps his tie when Bucky had met Tony four days ago. The light was embedded in his sternum.

'Give her some of the credit, please,' Tony ordered Bucky. 'Give her—twelve percent of the credit.' Bucky winced; Pepper tsked.

'Twelve percent?' They wandered off, bickering. Bucky stared at where the hologram had been, and then he ran his hand over the practically microscopic computer, like Tony had, but it didn't light up for him. He waved his hand again, and this time the building did pop back up. He reached out to touch the light, expecting his fingers to pass thru it, but the building rotated as his hand moved toward the light and the nothing, like he was turning a model of the tower. He tapped midair, and the hologram moved in closer, showing him details of the part he'd tapped.

Bucky remained distracted until Pepper called him over to gather a drink. He took the crystal flute from her delicately. He remembered his first few weeks with superhuman strength; he'd shattered more glasses and broken more things than he cared to admit.

As he took the glass she'd offered him, Tony's phone rang.

'Sir, the telephone,' JARVIS chimed. 'I'm afraid my protocol's are being overridden.' Tony snatched up the tiny phone on the table.

'Mister Stark, we need to talk,' someone chimed. Tony held the phone up, schooling his face totally neutral.

'You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark; please leave a message,' he said.

'This is urgent,' the phone said.

'Then leave it urgently,' Tony said. The elevator dinged and a man in a suit appeared, carrying a pair of black dossiers. 'Security breach!' Tony cried. 'That's on you,' he added, pointing at Pepper.

'Mister Stark,' greeted the man in the elevator.

'Phil! Come on in!' Pepper called, pulling herself to her feet. She passed by Bucky on her way to say hello to their guest.

'Phil?' Tony echoed, leaping up to chase after Pepper. 'His first name is Agent.'

'We need you to look this over,' the agent said. He held out one of the dossiers and Tony wrinkled his nose at it.

'I don't like being handed things,' he said.

'That's all right, because I love to be handed things,' Pepper said, jumping in for Tony. 'So, let's trade.' She passed her champagne to the agent, and then passed the dossier to Tony.

'Official consulting hours are between eight and five every other Thursday,' Tony pointed out, as he opened the dossier, which slotted together, with a sheet of glass. Bucky frowned at it.

'This isn't a consultation,' the agent replied. 'I have a file for you as well, Captain Barnes,' the agent added, with the almost-nervous tone Bucky had heard quite a few times over the last few days. It was bizarre to recognise that nervous tone as an indication of someone's reverence of him, to recognise the tone of a Captain America enthusiast, the tone of an older man meeting his childhood idol.

'Agent Coulson,' the man introduced, once he'd crossed to Bucky. He held out a folder, unable to shake Bucky's hand while holding Pepper's drink. Bucky was sure that was an unintentional side effect, but he appreciated it nonetheless. 'It's an honour to meet you, you know, officially.' Bucky gave a thin smile, placing his own glass on a nearby sofa table. He opened the folder. He was grateful as well for this low-tech approach, as Tony flicked images across his living room with great confidence.

'What's official about it this time?' Bucky asked.

'I sort of met you,' Coulson said, hedging his words.

'Oh?' Bucky said.

'I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping—I mean, I was—I was present—while you were unconscious.' Bucky looked back at the file, wishing he hadn't asked. 'From the ice,' Coulson finished. 'You know, it's really, it's just—just a huge honour.'

The first page was a demographic about a man named Doctor Banner, who'd been mutated trying to recreate Doctor Erskine's serum. Peggy had predicted, when Erskine had been killed and the SSR had realised he had been keeping incomplete notes, that many men would lose their minds trying to create when Erskine had given Bucky. Here was proof. He was apparently a brilliant man, and mostly sane, despite his mutation.

The second was a demographic on the Iron Man, detailing the abilities of Tony's suit. He could, in fact, do much more than fly.

'Well, thanks,' Bucky said, when he didn't know what else to do to get Coulson's gaze off of him. He'd been told in passing that Captain America had become a huge cultural icon, but Bucky hadn't expected adults to care about it. Comics had always been for children in his day.

Oh, God, Bucky thought. He realized Coulson would have been a child when he fell in love with a comic book character, even if he was older than Bucky now. Seventy years had gone by, and just because Bucky was twenty-seven didn't mean his story was. 'You're here to try to recruit us, then, Tony and I,' he guessed, when Coulson didn't stop staring. 'I'm a weapon from almost a century ago. Surely I'm obsolete by now.' Pepper eyed him at that, but Bucky ignored her.

'Hardly,' Coulson told him. 'In the seventy years you were frozen, no one has successfully recreated the serum you received. No one has even come close. Besides, the world might need a little old-fashioned.'

Bucky hummed instead of agreeing or dissenting, skimming over a page on an assassin called the Black Widow. Judging by the quick summary of what she was capable of, they hardly needed his serum anymore. Brute strength didn't mean anything if stealth could be like this without the serum. Bucky wondered if the list of her actions was considered a list of accolades or of war crimes.

'We've made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input,' Coulson bragged. Bucky didn't consider what that input might have entailed. The comics had always been more garish and colourful than he'd liked.

Bucky over the information about other operatives—no one provided a recruitee with in depth information about the recruited without a mission in mind; he was more concerned about the why than the with whom at the moment—and he froze when he saw what lurked in the middle pages. He swallowed around a lump of ice in his throat. He shut the file.

'Hydra's secret weapon,' Bucky sighed. He tried to give Coulson back the file; he wanted nothing to do with that fucking cube that had dissolved and sent Schmidt the Red Skull into space. Coulson waved his attempt off.

'Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you,' Coulson explained. 'He thought what we think; the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs.'

Bucky glanced at Tony, who had put his electronic file onto projected screens all over the room. Bucky saw footage of that red-and-gold suit firing blue energy pulses, an enormous green monster tearing a city apart. He marvelled at the quality of the modern footage. It was almost as incredible as the footage subject's itself.

Then there was footage of his own shield flying thru the air. There was footage of a prison camp burning while Bucky helped Jewish and Romani refugees climb down over rocks to the rafts that would take them to the Allies and then freedom. The footage shifted to shaking battle records then to a newsreel; Steve sat across from Bucky in black and white with an asthma cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Bucky could smell the nightshade like that smoke wasn't almost a century behind him and like Steve weren't dead. In the footage, the two of them had settled onto a Jeep's hood, leant over a map. The camera panned past Steve, pulling into relief the photo of Peggy inside Steve's compass, tucked in Bucky's hand. God, he missed them.

Bucky could never have guessed he'd end up here, like this. When Bucky had watched Steve fall from the train, he had thought things couldn't get worse. When he'd realized he had to crash the plane, leaving Peggy alone, Bucky realised he had been wrong: his heart hurt then worse still. Now, once more, it was worse. Bucky was alive but it had been too long for him to have a life with Peggy, with someone who had loved Steve too. He was awake in a freakish future and the worst weapon of his war needed to be found.

Bucky stared at the screens, aware Coulson was gravitating towards them in Bucky's wake. Bucky said: 'I'm guessing you want us as gophers to get it back from whoever stole it. Your modern bugs can't help you with that?'

'I was against bugging your exam room, by the way,' Coulson offered. Bucky noted, as he was sure Tony did, that Coulson specified the exam room, not bugging Bucky in general. Bucky hated that. He had been shocked when Tony had shown him the tiny lenses and the tiny tracker; Bucky would have never figured it out on his own. It wasn't like Bucky had never seen a bug before. He'd simply never seen a piece of technology so small. Some of the best intelligence he'd ever seen in the war had come from bugs, from mechanical spies. He had seen intelligence from bugged enemies, during wartime; that was the difference. SHIELD had bugged Bucky but told him they'd found him and wanted to help. He had to assume they saw him as an enemy. They'd made him feel like one, lied to and spied on.

'We need someone to stop the one who stole it; we need someone to save the world,' Coulson said. Tony and Pepper fell silent at that, turning to see Bucky respond. 'We're asking you to pick up your shield and fight.'

'I already died once to save the world,' Bucky said. 'I don't know how much more of it I could take.' He put the folder down on a credenza tucked along the back of the big couch. 'Besides, I've been fighting and killing for a long time. Surely I'm not still a drafted man.' Bucky didn't want to go after that damn cube, which had created those blue guns, which had vaporized all those men. He didn't want to chase evil. He wanted to go home, but home was a lost time. He wanted to grieve in peace. He wanted to stop fighting.

'Maybe you're not a drafted man,' Coulson said, 'but this world is still at war. You died to stop someone from using the Tesseract to take over the world. It's happening again. Fight again.'

Bucky managed to look at Tony. Bucky felt strung out, like someone had tanned his hide and stretched him out to cure and dry in the sun. Tony met his eyes and Bucky hoped he could read Bucky's hesitation. Bucky hated feeling unsure like this; he preferred moral absolutes and he preferred knowing the rules of a game before he played. He didn't know the rules of SHIELD, nor did he know the rules of this century, this time, the technology that dominated every space he entered. There wasn't a backbone of understanding; Bucky felt pitted against himself and his own unsure feet.

Tony nodded: he'd be fighting. At least Bucky wouldn't be alone. He turned back to Coulson.

'Who took it from you?' he asked.

'Someone called Loki,' Coulson said. That was familiar to Bucky and he knew that wasn't a good sign. 'Loki's a bit hard to explain. It would be best if you—both of you—would come to a briefing. I can pick you up at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow.'

'I am my own ride,' Tony said coolly. Bucky sighed.

'I'll find my way,' Bucky said. The subway would probably be fascinating and confusing—and worth the confusion to avoid a car ride with SHIELD agents—and Pepper had already promised him it still existed. It had expanded, even; it went all over the city now. 'Pepper, Tony, you've been lovely hosts. Agent Coulson.' Bucky turned to leave, taking his file but leaving his drink. Coulson called after him.

'Captain. Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?' Bucky stood in the elevator without directing it, confident now that JARVIS knew where to take him. Bucky faced Agent Coulson before the doors closed.

'You should have left it in the water.'

⍟

Bucky made his way off the plane that had taken them to the boat.

SHIELD agents had called the plane a jet and they'd called the boat a helicarrier. Bucky could see why the word helicarrier had been invented in his absence. The tarmac of the carrier was a lot like aircraft carriers they'd had in his day, but with more helicopters and more planes than he'd ever seen in one place at once. Crewmen hustled about, with the attitude of any proper military base, which was comforting in a way Bucky would not have anticipated. Another redhead, with short hair, approached, swagger and confidence in her step.

Bucky recognised that confidence easily. He liked this woman on sight. A person who walked with that confidence was usually competent; he hoped she'd prove an ally.

'Agent Romanova,' Coulson said. Bucky noted—he couldn't help it—the Soviet last name. He didn't know where the world stood now. It had been at war when he'd died. 'This is Captain Barnes.'

'Ma'am,' Bucky said, polite and sincere. Prejudice based in origin of blood was rarely justified; he had to trust her because she'd been selected for the same team as Tony. He recognized her from the files Coulson had brought last night. Her alliance to SHIELD might prove to be problematic if she tried to spy on him, or to detain him under false pretences next time SHIELD were responsible for his vulnerable form. The longer he was in this new century, the more the charade they had pulled began to bother him.

'Hi,' Romanova replied, her voice deeper and silkier than Bucky for some reason expected. It suited her. As she greeted him, he read a distinct tension to her frame. He wondered what had her bothered. 'You're needed on the bridge right away,' she told Coulson. 'I'll take Barnes and Banner.'

'See you up there,' Bucky said, as Coulson made off. Coulson waved, pleased. Bucky didn't want the man to know how distrustful Bucky felt about SHIELD, about Fury, and Coulson himself. He remembered playing the same politeness to get Peggy the ear she deserved with Senator Brandt once. Besides, Bucky didn't want even Tony or Pepper to realize how lost he was in the new century. He didn't want anyone to know how much all of these new challenges and risks terrified him.

'There was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice,' Romanova said, wandering back towards the man Bucky recognised from his files as Doctor Banner. Doctor Banner looked lost, frazzled. Bucky felt for the guy; Bucky had been feeling lost for days. 'I thought Coulson was gonna swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?'

'There are Captain America trading cards?' he asked. Bucky had spent his entire military career as a nobody, then a spy, then a covert ops leader. He'd been far enough away from the character of Captain America during the war that it had never really sunk in.

'Oh, sure,' she agreed. 'You can get 'em all over the place. His are vintage, pretty rare. He's very proud.'

'You know, I signed my rights away for the duration of the war, not indefinitely,' Bucky grumbled.

'When you're dead, no one looks after your legacy,' Romanova told him. 'Good thing you're still around.' Her phone rang, and she turned away. He glanced back at Banner.

'Yeah, I suppose so,' Bucky agreed. Romanova wasn't wrong; Bucky had only talked to people who knew him as a conservative symbol. 'Doctor Banner!' he called. The man spotted him, recognizing Captain America. He made his way over, between two hustling pilots.

'Oh, yeah. Hi,' Banner said. He shook Bucky's hand, firm and gentle. His hands were rough, as well worn as his clothes. 'They told me you'd be coming.'

Like everyone did when they met Bucky's height in person, Banner's eyes swept over Bucky's frame, disbelieving. Banner hid it well; Bucky appreciated it. He wondered what it was like, meeting him in this particular context. Banner had been trying to recreate the serum now standing in front of him when he'd been nearly killed. The serum was meant to be gone forever, but it'd just been frozen away for nearly a century. Banner had nearly destroyed himself before Bucky, the only successful model of Erskine's serum, was recovered. Bucky imagined that was as hard as being the frozen success model.

'They tell me you can find the Cube,' Bucky said. Banner nodded, his gaze drifting about the surface of the helicarrier. Bucky couldn't tell if the man was anxious or uncomfortable; he didn't seem pleased, either way.

'Is that the only thing they've told you about me?' Banner asked. Bucky shrugged, because the file had been pretty comprehensive. Bucky didn't see the value in saying: no, we both know they gave me everything they spied on you to find out. They both knew it.

'That's really the only part that's any of my business,' he offered. Banner seemed to appreciate it, peering about. He seemed so gentle and out of place on a military field; it was hard to believe a man with such a contained presence could lose his composure to transform into such a creature.

'Must be strange for you,' said Banner, motioning around; 'all of this.' Buck knew what he meant but he shrugged again, looking over the asphalt airfield.

'I didn't serve on an aircraft carrier ever, no,' Bucky agreed by way of avoiding what Banner meant. 'No, I never fought from a place like this. This—things are different now,' Bucky said. It felt weak.

'Did you know how to fly that plane?' Banner asked. 'The one you crashed.' His gaze was level and loaded; Bucky knew there was more to the question than the ability to pilot a plane. Banner was asking a lot more than that.

'I was never a pilot,' Bucky offered. 'If I could've been sure, if I could read German controls and if the biometrics weren't shot, if the payload wouldn't drop, I would have tried to land. No telling how it would have gone. But crashing takes little skill.' He didn't know if Banner got his answer from that; Bucky didn't know if it was true anyway.

'Gentlemen, you may wanna step inside,' Romanova called. 'It's gonna get a little hard to breathe.' Bucky glanced around, seeing planes strapped down and men hustling to abandon the decks. Alarms started blaring and the noise of engines began to roar.

'Is this is a submarine?' Bucky asked, moving to the edge, needing to see.

'Really?' Banner asked. 'They want me in a submerged pressurized metal container?'

Bucky did admit locking the Hulk in a submarine was tantamount to idiocy. Bucky had never been in a submarine; he'd never had a reason in the war, and he sure as Hell didn't want to spend hours deep under cold, cold seawater now. He had crashed that plane and had been very conscious as the ice water rose over his head. He didn't want to go underwater now. He really, really didn't want that.

Bucky peered over the ledge, and the asphalt beneath his feet shuddered. A turbine rose out of the ocean, and Bucky realised he was on a plane. He was on something that could fly. Helicarrier: not because it carried more helicopters than the Army had even had before he died; this was called the helicarrier because it flew. Fuck, Bucky had felt behind the ball coming out to sea at all—he kept thinking about drowning—and now he'd be flying all over the God damn ocean. He watched the water drop from beneath them, churning as the helicarrier moved up, up, and up. His stomach lost its bottom, churning butterflies and the urge to heave. He pulled in a sharp, short breath.

'Oh, no,' Banner said in a bright and dismayed tone, which was about perfect for this situation they were now both in, rising out of the sea on a flying boat run by SHIELD. 'This is much worse.'

⍟

Bucky should have known he been warned that the uniform was going to be brutal and ugly. It wasn't an explicit warning by any means, but Coulson had bragged about his input and the man was a fan of the comic version of Captain America whether he realized it or not. It was funny how history could get so distorted that that dead barely recognized themselves. Bucky wondered if anyone else had had the opportunity to see their history distorted in such a way.

The old uniform, designed by Steve and Howard, had been Red, White and Blue, sure, but it had seemed natural; each colour was a different component of the uniform. The uniform had been practical, the colour was subtle enough that Bucky could blend into the woods at night and bright enough to make him a symbol for tired men at the front. There was a practically to it, a quiet and ridiculous dignity. It made him look a bit like the comic books, but Bucky had never read the comics, so it was easier then to ignore how stupid it was. It was easier then to ignore that he was a cartoon in America, because he was a soldier with a gun in a war. Bucky hadn't been an antique from the Arctic then; he hadn't been a cultural touchstone then. It had just been a scrap metal idea.

This new uniform was tight on his ass. It made Bucky feel racy and indelicate. It was stupid but he felt unladylike. Bucky supposed fashion might nowadays require such a firm cup of the buttocks from the fabric, but it didn't seem practical or useful, just uncomfortable.

The belt had about nine hundred pockets filled with tiny, little gadgets which no one had explained to him, and there were zippers on his thighs. Why were there zippers on his thighs? The zippers didn't lead to pockets; they were just pointless zippers, just wasted metal, which was the opposite of what a soldier's uniform should be. The material was strong, sure, but it felt sheer and soft and unlikely to be as brightly coloured as it actually fucking was. The candy-red boots were a bit restrictive but he could tell they'd at least absorb shock and impact well. The cowl was sharp on his chin and the stripes on his abdomen made his shoulders look enormous.

Holy hell, Bucky looked like a God damned moron. Bucky looked like a fey boy from the queer bars by the bridge. Bucky looked like someone who didn't quite understand Hallowe'en. Bucky looked like someone Brooklyn crumbs would give a pounding to in an alley. He looked like a cartoon character and a moron.

Bucky felt like a fraud.

Bucky couldn't think of a worse thing to feel like as he flew back to Germany to fight a new enemy who claimed to be a god.

Chapter Text

'This is our stop,' Romanova called, from the front of the quinjet. 'Once the citizens clear out and there aren't people to cover from up here, I'll join you.' The other SHIELD pilot flicked switches in the control panel above his head and the back hatch of the jet eased down. 'Hop out!' Romanova ordered. Bucky hurried to the back of the jet. He peered out the door, at the scurrying people and the cobblestone about fifty feet below.

Bucky had dropped out of three planes in his life. The first plane he'd jumped out of had been flying thru flak above the most well fortified territory in the European theatre. He'd landed more or less easily, but the trip down was horrific because of the anti-aircraft missiles exploding all around him, not because of the drop. The next few times were with his Commandos, some of whom had actually been to jump school and knew what the hell they were doing. He hadn't been afraid then either. That was before he had died in a plane crash. He was afraid now, in a way he hadn't been before.

But what could he do? There was a god hoping to murder people and take over the world. He was an evil man with, apparently, actual magic, not just mad science. It was Bucky’s first fight all over again: a bully wanted to hurt someone weaker than them. Bucky jumped. He fell.

Bucky hit the ground and rolled to absorb the shock, then back to his feet. His shield hung comfortingly at his arm. He was at an opera house, he supposed by the columns and the outfits, the streams of black-tie gala goers running from the building.

In his ridiculous, moronic uniform, which was so boldly coloured men and women running for their lives stopped running to stare and point, he ran up the steps. In the vaulted, marble foyer, the pale god stood in green, gold, and black robes.

Antlers rose from his helmet, reminiscent of the myths Bucky had read when trying to understand and study Johann Schmidt's madness. Bucky's candy red boots skidded to a stop on the highly polished marble floor, slipping more than was practical. Holy shit, this new uniform was genuinely the worst. Loki looked surprised to see Bucky, like he was early to the event.

'Ah, Captain America,' Loki crowed. He recovered his surprise and grinned, slick and obsequious. He stepped forward, the end of his staff clicking sharply against the marble. 'I've heard a great deal about you; you're rather famous. Are you here to fight me? Put me in a cage?' He stopped before approaching too close to Bucky, wary despite his godlike powers. Bucky hoped that wariness would translate to a willingness to surrender or the ability to lose.

'I've heard you're here to kill people,' Bucky replied. 'I'm here to stop that. I'd prefer not to fight you. I'd prefer you just go back to your planet. Back where you belong.'

'A noble goal from a noble man,' Loki said, crossing his feet as he circled Bucky in a slow and deliberate pace. Bucky kept his eyes on Loki, turning to keep his shield between him and the sceptre which glowed like the energy stores on HYDRA weapons. He wondered, if the power of the sceptre came from the Cube, what was the magic which made Loki a god. The Cube could be controlled by humans just as easily as gods. 'Unfortunately, I belong here. And I am here to do much more than kill. I am here to rule this world as a god and as a king.'

'This world isn't yours to take,' Bucky pointed out. Loki laughed.

'And is it yours to protect?' He stopped circling, aiming his sceptre theatrically, not to fire. 'You, who has died for it once already?'

'Someone's gotta do it,' Bucky said. 'Stand down. You can either go home now or be placed under arrest by SHIELD.' Fury would be miffed to say the least if Loki wasn't arrested. Bucky didn't care. He wanted Loki to stop; he didn't care much what stopped him.

'Of course, we both know you didn't truly die to protect the world,' Loki continued, turning away and walking, as if Bucky were having a casual chat with him, not trying to avoid a firefight. 'No, you might have been willing to, but that isn't why you decided to crash that plane.'

'I died to stop HYDRA,' Bucky corrected. Loki turned back. His cape billowed behind him. 'I'd die again if it would stop people like you.'

Bucky spotted Agent Romanova's red hair in the atrium behind them. She had unholstered the Glock at her hip, but it was aimed down, fingers off the trigger, at the ready. She was creeping forward slowly, from the service door she'd appeared at to a too-far marble pillar. Bucky felt a bit panicked at that. If the sceptre fired like those HYDRA weapons did, as its glowing implied, she would vaporize in a puff of blue energy if Loki whipped around and fired at her. He'd have to hold his attention until she made her way to cover.

'No, you didn't kill yourself to stop people like me. You killed yourself because your heart was broken,' Loki said, his voice pitched low and sad, mocking. Bucky felt his breath catch like a fool, wandered right into a steel trap. Loki's eyebrows curved up and if Bucky didn't know better, he would have believed that sympathetic expression. Loki wasn't sympathetic; he had aimed those words with the intention of wounding and he had to know he had succeeded. 'You died because you were afraid you would be unable to live without your feisty little blond.'

'You shut your damn mouth,' Buck snapped, before he could help himself. His voice shook and his heart was racing like he'd run fifty miles.

Loki laughed, loud and joyful. He began his circling again. Romanova was behind cover and waiting for a signal to engage. Loki's movement was oddly hard to track and Bucky wondered if that was because of magic or because of the rage burning and streaming thru his fingers.

'You fell in love with his idealism, surely,' Loki continued. 'You fell in love with his faith in the righteous winning out. You tried to become a better man for him, tried to be worthy of someone like him. It must be terrible to know you weren't ever good enough, that you're still not, all these years later. You couldn't save the good doctor or even his life's work, and the sickly one went to war to save lives while you toiled at a typewriter. He bathed in blood while you flirted with your superior officer.'

'You don't know what you're talking about,' Bucky lied. Loki laughed, a low, haunting chuckle. 'It wasn't like that at all.' It had been like that. It had been just like that. Steve had been like yellow sunshine pouring thru an angry storm cloud and all Bucky had ever wanted to do was give him blue skies. All Bucky had given him was a blasted hole in the side of a grey train and a broken railing.

'Oh, you are aching, aren't you?' Loki asked him, stepping closer. Bucky almost stumbled back, maintaining the distance between them even as he seethed. He hated that that gave Loki a confidence, hated that it let him know he was pressing hard on the deepest bruise on Bucky's heart.

'You are all blood and pins on the inside; I can see that like you could hear him struggle for breath on cold nights. The missing embrace of your lover, it must twist at every fibre of your soul. Doesn't it burn at you to know that he died screaming, falling, terrified? Doesn't it just eat you up inside, to know he died thinking you should have caught him?'

That broke him; Bucky heaved his shield, hard, and it passed thru Loki like nothing. He dissipated like smoke. The shield rebounded off a marble pillar, cracking the fine, polished surface, and Bucky lifted his arm to catch it easily. He looked to Romanova, confused as all hell; her gun was up and aimed behind him. He spun, lifting his shield.

Loki fired—had he fucking teleported?—and the blast from his sceptre rebounded against Bucky's waiting shield, hitting Loki in the stomach and knocking his hips far enough back that his feet went from underneath him as well. He hit the ground hard. He didn't vaporize like a HYDRA weapon would have made him. Bucky resented that for a precarious second. Iron Man landed behind Loki with a clank. Loki pushed himself up to his knees, hand going to his sceptre.

Romanova stood beside Bucky, gun raised. 'Stand down,' she ordered. Iron Man let out a whirl as he raised the glowing circle of one palm; illuminated missiles rose out of his arms and shoulders. Loki considered the weaponry and his hand stilled from reaching for his own.

'Your move, reindeer games,' he said, his voice compressed slightly by the Tannoy of his suit. Loki raised his hands. 'Nice move.' His elaborate costume fell away. Tony's guns folded back into his suit. Bucky stared dispassionately at Loki as Romanova placed him in magnetic cuffs and hauled him to his feet.

'Bucky boy, good to see you,' Tony offered casually as Romanova did the heavy lifting and hauled off the crazed good. Bucky barely spared him a glance, stalking after the others. He was hot under the collar, anger prickling almost tangibly under his clavicles and in his jugular. 'Whoa, you OK?' Bucky didn't answer; he walked past Tony, down the steps and boarded the jet which had landed in the square the German police had cleared.

Loki was told to sit down and he complied easily. Bucky passed him and yanked the sharp cowl off his head. He was furious. He was so God damned angry. The anger ran so deep that it cut through him, and he felt like he'd bled out onto the marble floor and then the metal of the jet. He felt raked over coals. At least he wasn't frozen anymore.

The other SHIELD pilot lifted off as the hatch closed. Tony removed his helmet and lingered at the back, clearly unsure if he should try to talk to Bucky despite his own lack of emotional intelligence. Romanova nudged him slightly as she made her way back to the gunning pilot chair. He looked down at her as he leaned an arm up against the bulkhead. His hand was shaking. He hid the tremble in a tightly held fist.

'You all right?' she asked quietly. He swallowed thickly and nodded. His gaze fell to the floor tho so she must have known he was lying. 'What was Loki talking about?' she pressed. Tony was watching Loki pretty closely, needling the god aimlessly.

'So you went pretty Rock of Ages with the look there,' he said, waving one of his gauntlets over Loki's suit. 'Who's your stylist?' Loki and everyone else on the small jet ignored him.

'You heard him,' Bucky bit out, answering Romanova's question if only to get her to lift her powerful gaze from him. He wasn't sure if it was because she was Russian or a spy, but her patient staring as she waited for him to reply was nearly enough to force him to spill his beans.

'That's about the size of it,' he said. He hoped that was the end of it. His voice sounded like paper that was tissue thin and ready to tear. He had to pull himself together. He was a man; he didn't get to break down like this, and more importantly, he couldn't keep the things SHIELD wanted from him in line if he was blowing up like a dying star every five minutes at the mention of a corpse lost in a mountain range nearly seventy years ago.

'Who was he?' Romanova asked. 'The one who died.' Bucky looked back at her. He didn't know how much Romanova had heard; he didn't know if he'd been outed by some fucking god with antlers. That grey gaze levelled him with fear; he couldn't help it. The handlers at SHIELD had given him a pamphlet bragging about the progressive reality of the new New York Bucky had woken up to. It had claimed the world was post-racial, post-feminism, wonderful and better. In reality, Bucky saw police stop and frisk Negroes but never a white person, and he'd heard the same catcalls shouted at women the shouting men didn't know, just like he used to.

'Does it matter?' Bucky snapped. The world claimed to be better but Bucky didn't even know if he could still get arrested for sodomy; he didn't know what Romanova thought about queers no matter what the law said now. She shrugged.

'It might,' Romanova murmured. 'Captain.' Bucky shook his head, and before he could figure out how to tell her fuck off without crying about Steve's death and the weight of his secret, thunder rolled. Lightning cracked its way across the sky.

Bucky let the noise distract him. He looked back to avoid Romanova's watchful eye, and noticed Loki seemed wary again. Bucky felt himself squint as if he could figure out the oddity in that. Why was a man who claimed to be a god afraid of lightning? He stepped away from the bulkhead. Romanova let him; she didn't say anything else. He didn't want her to. He wanted to bury his grief for another good while.

'Are you afraid of lightning?' Bucky demanded. Loki eyed him before scanning the skies as best he could from his seat as a prisoner.

'I'm not overly fond of what follows,' Loki said. Bucky thought back to the myths he'd glanced at when trying to decide if the Red Skull was genuinely harnessing a godlike power or if he had found some science that seemed truly inexplicable. He'd given up on it pretty quickly. At the end of the day, it hadn't mattered if Norse gods existed; it mattered if Schmidt could win.

'What, is the God of Thunder gonna come down on us?' Bucky asked sarcastically. He wasn't sure he believed SHIELD when they claimed Loki had come from another planet; he wasn't ready to believe the guy was a god either. It had seemed too extraordinary. The serum was supposed to be the craziest thing around; he couldn't believe in aliens on Earth. Something clunked, tilting the ship enough for Bucky to steady himself on the bulkhead. They all looked at the ceiling.

'God of Thunder, coming down,' Tony chimed. He grabbed his helmet. Bucky hauled Loki out of his seatbelt. He dragged the god by his lapel to the front of the ship, far from the hatch Tony had opened. He shoved the god back, between two struts in the metal bulkhead and nearly out of sight.

'Stay behind me,' Bucky told Loki. Loki looked shocked that the same Captain America he'd taunted so viscerally was now using himself as a shield for his protection. Bucky could hardly believe it either. Bucky thought being a prisoner of a human was bad enough for a god; at the very least, he should be safe while in custody. Sure enough, an enormous man landed on the hatch Tony had opened, cape billowing behind him. Holy shit, Bucky thought, the man was wearing a fucking cape, like a damned cartoon character. He supposed his own outfit wasn't much better.

'Stark, close the hatch,' Bucky ordered. Tony's glowing blue eyes turned to him in what Bucky imagined was a glare, but Tony did as he was told. That trapped their guest pretty efficiently inside, and by the look of it, whoever the man was: he knew it.

'I'm Captain Barnes,' Bucky said. 'You've landed without permission on my ship.' The blond man stood tall and broad, even compared to Bucky's serumed form. He wore ornate, strange armour and he did look one hell of a lot like the illustrations from those old, Norse bibles.

'I am Thor, son of Odin,' he boomed. Bucky's heart leapt at the deep sound; Jesus Christ, Bucky could hear power in his voice. 'I do not need your permission to reclaim my brother.'

'Unfortunately, that's not true,' Bucky said. 'He's under arrest. Agent Romanova, remind me how many of our brothers and sisters Loki has killed over the last two days.'

'Over eighty people are dead,' she said. Thor met her eye. He bowed his head momentarily. Bucky noted the hammer at his side. Bucky didn't remember anything about a hammer in his too-cursory research, but Bucky bet it packed an unnatural wallop.

'For that, I am sorry,' Thor said. 'But Loki is of Asgard. He will pay for his crimes there.'

'I don't know if you've noticed, Cape Town, but he's already been arrested here,' Tony said smugly. 'Does your mother know you're wearing her curtains?' Thor turned to him, stalking in the small space of the plane.

'This is beyond you, metal man,' Thor snapped. 'Loki will face Asgardian justice.'

'The people he killed were of Earth,' Bucky said. He mimicked Thor's word choice to get his point across. He had had enough of this for today. He was tired. His heart hurt, for all he had told it to stop. He wanted to go home, or as close as he could get. 'Their justice belongs here. I welcome you to help us get it for them.'

'Frankly, if he gives up the Tesseract, he's all yours,' Romanova said from beside Bucky.

'I need the Tesseract to bring him home,' Thor said. 'It is a power too great for this world. It will be safer on Asgard.'

'With the gods who lost it in the first place?' Tony asked. 'It hardly seems like you can keep much of anything safe.' Thor turned to him, seething. His fist tightened on the grip of the hammer he held. Bucky cut in to draw his attention off Tony, who of course would keep trying to irritate the man until he smashed something with that hammer, and with Bucky's luck, crashed the plane and killed him a second time.

'There's only one God,' he said. Thor looked at Bucky at that, away from Tony and loosening the grip he had on his hammer. 'I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like you.' He cracked a grin, even tho it felt false. He was sure it looked it too, if Tony's split-second of concern was any indication. Thor stepped towards him, and Bucky met his steps. He wasn't going to be cowed like Loki had cowed him. He couldn't lose control like that again, not with two potential unfriendlies in the jet.

'Do I look to be in a gaming mood?' Thor demanded.

'I'm not playing,' Bucky replied. 'We are going back to our base. If you don't want to trade the Tesseract for him, you'll have to ask Director Fury for permission to to take your brother home. He's the man who gave the order for Loki's arrest. You're welcome to share our ride; we'll take you right to him.' Thor glared at his brother for a long time, then sighed. He stuck a hand out for Bucky to shake.

Bucky took it. Thor clasped his forearm with a strength that matched Bucky's well.

'Thank you, Captain,' Thor said. 'I am sorry for all the havoc this has caused. I have a fondness for Earth. I do not wish to see it ruled nor destroyed by my brother in his time of strife. You stopped him before I could arrive to do the same. I suppose I should thank you for that as well.'

'No need,' Bucky said. He turned, moving back to where he'd pressed Loki into relative safety. He shoved Loki towards his brother. 'Here,' he said. 'Strap him in. The storm you raised up might get a little bumpy.' Thor clapped a giant hand against his younger brother's neck. Loki seemed entirely unappreciative. Tony's faceplate lifted as he moved past Thor and Loki.

'I thought you dead,' Thor told his brother, trying to move him to the seats Bucky had gestured to. Loki had gone without protest into their ship once under arrest, but now he resisted his brother as much as he could in the small space of the quinjet.

'Is it a good idea to let those two play house right now, Cap?' Tony asked quietly.

'I have to agree with Stark,' Romanova said. 'I don't like the idea of having two Asgardians in our jet.'

'I like it better than taking on the God of Thunder,' Bucky pointed out. 'It's better to play together than fight each other. Loki will be secured when we reach the helicarrier. Fury will decide whether or not to release him to Asgard.'

'So now that someone else is supervising our prisoner,' Tony said as Thor and Loki bickered behind them: 'are you gonna tell us what he said to get you so glower-y?' Bucky glared at Tony. 'What? Black Widow has already asked; why can't I?' Bucky looked at the gods in the back of the plane. He stared at Loki, who was now as petulant as a small child, reprimanded by his older brother.

'How did he know?' Bucky asked instead. No one then knew; Bucky didn't understand how Loki could have known.

'He's a trickster god,' Romanova said. She sighed. 'He knows more than we do. He can probably think quicker than us. Everything out of his mouth is either lie or manipulation.'

'Not everything,' Bucky admitted. He leaned an arm back up on the bulkhead, watching Thor beg his brother to see reason. 'He was right about one thing.'

'What's that?' Tony asked. Bucky sighed. His anger was gone. He felt numb. The chill of ice lingering all thru him had returned. He flexed his fingers in the restrictive gloves, trying to warm them.

'My best friend did die screaming,' Bucky said, almost a whisper. That fact did keep him up at night. 'It was my fault and I'm selfish enough to hope he didn't think that before he hit the bottom of the mountain.' He pushed off the bulkhead.

'See if the pilot can get us there any faster,' he asked Romanova. She folded herself into her gunner's chair immediately. He felt the jet speed up, not by a lot, but enough. He moved past Tony, needing to twist his shoulders to creep by. He sat heavily at the very back of the jet. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

⍟

'Captain Barnes, may I ask you for a favour?' Agent Coulson asked as Tony and Banner left for the lab. Bucky stifled a sigh. He wanted to stick by the sides of the only ones he trusted on the ship; he didn't want to stay on the bridge with staring SHIELD agents and Fury.

'Of course,' he said, because he didn't really have a good enough reason to be rude. 'What can I do for you?' Coulson smiled and sputtered before finding his confidence and his words.

'I have this collection,' he began. Oh, no, Bucky thought. 'Captain America trading cards, all vintage. I was wondering if I could ask you to sign them for me, after all this is settled.'

Bucky almost felt relieved. Coulson had made clear he was a fanatic for the Captain America character. Being asked for an autograph was surreal, but at least it made sense. In this modern world, Bucky had thought Coulson would ask something that wouldn't; he thought the request was going to be something more strange. 'I'm not going to sell them, don't worry, altho your signature would increase their value exponentially. You've never signed one of your cards before. I guess they printed them when you were in Europe, or after you, uh.' Coulson cleared his throat.

'I can sign them now, if you want,' Bucky offered before Coulson could decide between saying Bucky had been asleep or frozen or dead. Bucky just wanted to get it over with. Coulson looked thrilled beyond belief.

'They're in my locker,' he admitted. 'They're near-mint, so I don't just carry them around.'

'Of course not,' Bucky agreed. Coulson didn't pick up the sarcasm. Bucky could be subtle at times.

'I'll be driving you back to Stark Tower when we reach the mainland,' Coulson said. 'Could I bring them to you then? I'll have a Sharpie for you.' Bucky didn't know what a Sharpie was, but he assumed it was a type of pen.

'That'd be fine,' he said, as mildly as he could manage. The agent beamed at him. God, this state of celebrity Bucky had woken up to was weird. He'd been a spy and a soldier before. It didn't make sense that he was a trading card or cartoon character to most people now. Bucky left the bridge, following signs to the lab floors.

As the door of the lab slipped open, Bucky realised he was beginning to resent the constant array of automatic doors in his life. When he'd first been serumed up, he'd had to adjust to his new strength quickly to not constantly rip doors off their hinges. He felt like he was losing that tenuous muscle memory; he'd forget himself again and break the first real door he saw.

'Well, I promise a stress-free environment,' Tony was saying as the door slid shut behind Bucky. 'No tension. No surprises,' Tony promised, then stabbed Banner with a sharp, thin instrument. Banner jumped at the little shock it gave him, making a pained noise.

'Really, Tony?' Bucky said. Tony ignored him, watching Banner like he was an aquarium eel. Banner held his stabbed hip, staring at Tony like he had three heads.

'You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?' Tony asked Banner, impressed. 'What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?'

'Is it a good idea to stab someone who might explode and try to rip the ship apart? I trust you, Doctor Banner, but it's not fair to test him like that, Tony,' Bucky said. 'I oughta dress you down.' Banner waved him off.

'No, no, it's all right,' Banner said. 'I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle—pointy things.' Tony rounded the table Banner stood behind, going back to his own computer display and tossing down the poker he'd stabbed Banner with.

'You're tiptoeing, Big Man,' Tony said. 'You need to strut.'

'Would you focus?' Bucky asked Tony. 'Find the Cube so we can get the hell out of here.' Bucky almost said so we can go home but this time wasn't home. Bucky had a freakishly lavish apartment in New York to return to and he'd give anything to go back to Steve's room-and-a-half to sleep next to his gangly body on a ropy mattress.

'You think I'm not focused?' Tony demanded. 'You know what I'm focused on? Why did Fury call us in and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us?' Bucky shrugged; he barely knew what month it was, let alone what the paragovernmental supervisor was up to. 'I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables.'

'I think a bigger variable than Fury lying is Loki,' Bucky said. He did not enjoy prioritizing threats. 'We know Fury's lying to keep us here and to get us to work for SHIELD. Easy. What we don't know is what the hell Loki is up to. I don't think that he's really surrendered.'

'Yeah, you've said,' Tony replied. 'Didn't we decide to focus on other things back there, Cap?'

'Sure,' Bucky agreed, even if he hadn't agreed to anything, not even staying aboard after SHIELD locked Loki up. SHIELD had mentioned interrogation tools, in whispers and pauses where they thought he couldn't hear, and Bucky felt sick at the idea someone might be tortured on this ship, while he was onboard, while he was mostly unable to stop it. He'd leaned in and mentioned his concern to Thor. The man was protective enough of his homicidal little brother to tell Bruce off for speaking poorly of him; he wouldn't allow anything below board to happen either. It was the best Bucky could do while sticking by the sides of those he trusted on the ship. He could have watchdogged the investigation himself but Bucky had died once in a war and he was tired of being vigilant and of fighting.

'Why can they use any camera they want?' Bucky asked Tony. Bruce looked at him like he had sent slugs out of his mouth instead of sound. Bucky shrugged. He didn't see the question as unreasonable. 'I've got two whole cameras in my locker, on that telephone you gave me. If they can just turn people's telephone cameras on, doesn't that use the average citizen as a spy without their consent?'

'I wouldn't've phrased it that way,' Tony hedged, 'but I was alive for the exponential increase in technological know-how of the last few decades. You boil it down, tho? You're not wrong.'

'I don't think it's right either,' Banner said, 'for the state to access anyone's technology like that.'

'Isn't it private property?' Bucky asked. 'Personal property, at least?' he said, thinking of the way Steve would draw differences between the two. 'Don't people care about the government sticking its nose literally into their pockets? Doesn't it make any telephone as dangerous as the bugs in that holding room? Why can the government do this? For our security? That's bullshit, if you pardon my French.' Tony grinned like a ferret and turned to Doctor Banner.

'It's incredible to see ideals of justice from a pre-Patriot Act American,' Tony said. Bruce laughed like a joke had been told. 'It's refreshing, really.'

'I'm going to make a list of things to look up,' Bucky grumbled. 'I need a week and a set of encyclopedias.' Bucky wanted to say: I don't know what the fuck is going on, but Fury had it in his head that Bucky was good enough to lead this team.

'You need to learn to Google,' Tony corrected. If it weren't for the serum, Bucky would feel a headache coming on. A googol was a number—a number so large to be almost a joke—and Bucky didn't know how a googol had become a verb. 'And come on, you got Fury's monkey joke. Credit where credit's due.' Bucky remembered a time when those monkeys had been the scariest thing he'd ever saw.

Bruce rounded the table at the end of the lab, eyeing Loki's sceptre. Bucky didn't know if the thing were magic, or unexplained science, or if there was a difference between the two, but he knew the thing fired and resounded against his shield in the exact same way HYDRA guns had during the war, even if it hadn't vaporized Loki. It was too similar to be anything but.

'I don't trust these people,' Bucky said. He hated saying it, especially on their ship where they no doubt heard him. 'There's something they're not telling us.'

'I really thought you'd have to be sold on that fact,' Tony said as he tapped away at glass screens. Banner plugged a sensor of sorts into a port below the tabletop, perfectly at home in the high-tech room. Bucky sat on a stool, staring at the black box and flashing screen Stark had brought from the Tower, uncomfortable in his stupid combat boots and the stupidly tight seat of his uniform.

'They lied to me,' Bucky said. 'You were the first person in this millennium to say anything honest to me, not any of them.' Tony gave him an incisive look and Bucky shifted his weight like he could deflect the concern by fidgeting. 'So, no, I don't need to be sold on their untrustworthiness.'

'Well, I hope you don't need to be sold on this,' Tony said, tapping a screen. The monitor in front of Bucky beeped for his attention. 'Voilà.'

'Tony,' Bruce complained, looking at a matching screen. 'Was that smart?' Bucky stared at the information on the screen in front of him, which might have been written in the English alphabet but had enough of modern technology in it to be Greek to him.

'It was genius, actually,' Tony corrected.

'What is this?' asked Bucky, a fully grown adult—a man—for the fifteenth time that day. He pointed at the screen.

'A hack in progress,' Tony replied, offering him a bag of God damn blueberries. 'We're getting into their mainframe.' Bucky buried his face in his hands, resisting the urge to scream.

'What is that?' Bucky asked again. Tony and his berries retreated.

'Their computer,' Bruce told him simply. 'Tony is going to break into a very, very, very sophisticated vault-of-a-computer in under, what, six hours? Eight?'

'No, no,' Tony corrected. 'This baby will be done any minute now. Two hours more, tops.'

'So, what, you'll know—everything they know?' Bucky asked. Were they now stealing information from all those citizens with telephone cameras too? What the hell was a mainframe?

'We will have virtually every secret SHIELD has,' Tony agreed. 'They keep some things offline, of course, probably the doozies from back in the day. Remind me what the Nazis used the Tesseract for.'

'Well, not a lot,' Bucky said. He lifted his face out of his hands. 'Hitler's command lost confidence with HYDRA because they were so focused on the Cube. The Nazis never had control of it; they thought it was just a myth, just a dumb piece of rock or crystal. HYDRA were the ones who made incredibly terrifying weapons with it; they could vaporize a field of men with a single rifle. The weapons in the plane I crashed relied on the Cube's energy, not atomic energy, or at least not in the same way the bombs we—'

Bucky stopped and coughed so his voice wouldn't give out like his knees had when he'd first read what had happened. 'Like the ones we dropped on Japan did,' he finished. 'I mean, I'm not a scientist. I don't know how it works.

'But I know it can create the worst evil this world has ever seen.'

'Do you think SHIELD could recreate those weapons?' Bruce asked. Bucky nodded, without meeting that level and cognizant gaze. Banner sighed heavily. He straightened from where he'd leant against the counter, tapping at screens once again.

'What about you? You filled with hope and relaxation, Big Guy?' Banner looked at Tony over his glasses, glancing at Bucky for a second as if for confirmation of the question.

'Um, no,' he said. 'But I just wanna finish my work here—'

'Doctor?' Bucky pressed. 'If you don't trust Fury, why are you here?' Bruce hesitated.

'They asked nicely this time,' Bruce said. 'They haven't always. I'm also sure asking nicely was just a precursor to asking with weapons, which would have been bad for everyone.'

Bucky didn't know what to say to that, nor did he know who these people were, he realised. The crewmen were mostly American by a small margin. He'd heard other languages and many accents of English scattered thru the halls; Agent Romanova was from as far away as Russia. Over what people did this helicarrier hold dominion? Who did these people answer to, when threatening scientists? What trust of what citizens justified this vaguely paramilitary operation?

'Your new building,' Bruce said to Tony, as he turned the image of a knob on the screen, letting the computer run the search mostly automatedly, or so it seemed to Bucky. 'It's powered by arc reactors, a self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?' Tony shrugged, unbothered by the skepticism in Banner's voice.

'It's only a prototype,' he said. Bucky remembered Howard's prototypes. The building ran better than most of them. Bucky had spent the last week there; nothing had thrown sparks or burst into flames. 'I'm kind of the only name in clean energy, right now, is what he's getting at.' Bucky nodded, absorbing that.

'So why weren't you brought in on the Cube project, if they're using it for energy?' Bucky asked, frowning. Bruce looked away. 'Oh. Hm. To me, that makes weapons the other choice for the Cube. Do people who know what's possible nowadays disagree?'

'No, we do not,' Tony replied. 'They're sure as hell not trying for space travel.'

'I don't know why SHIELD is trying to claim they're getting into the energy game in the first place,' Banner put in. He pulled off his glasses. 'Besides, what Loki said? "A warm light for all mankind to share"? He wasn't talking to Fury about the Cube. He knew you'd be listening in.' Bruce pointed with the arms of his glasses, right at Tony. 'Even if Barton didn't tell him about it, it's been all over the news.'

'Stark Tower would be rather impressive target,' Tony agreed. He shrugged like he thought it was so impressive to be invincible. Bucky knew full well how impressively impenetrable bases fell if someone hit the right thing at the right time. 'Well, I'll have to look into that when we get back to land.'

'Deal with it now,' Bucky snapped. Tony scoffed at him thru a transparent monitor.

'Would you like to explain why you expect Loki to escape the cage which was built to contain—no offence, doc—the Hulk of all things?' Tony asked. Bucky shrugged, but he didn't concede or yield at the point. If anything, being reminded of how sure everyone was of Loki's cage made him itchy. Tony kept talking, about teraflops, whatever those were, and Bucky tuned him out. Loki was crazy, like Bruce had said; you could smell the crazy on him. The Hulk's cell was indestructible. Loki had known more than was possible  to know about Steve; it made sense to assume he knew where he'd be locked up. Why would someone who hadn't surrendered stay in an indestructible cage on purpose? What could be the end game of trapping yourself in a cage meant for something so dangerous—

'The Hulk isn't in the cage,' Bucky said, realization hitting him like bricks. Banner and Stark looked over at him, stilling their science.

'No, he's right here,' Tony said.

'No,' Bucky said. 'No, fellas, Loki wants to use the Hulk to take down the ship.'

'What?' Bruce said. 'Me?' Bucky turned at the noise of the lab doors opening. Natasha strolled in, and he stood.

'The Hulk,' he said. She frowned at him.

'I know,' she replied. 'Loki just told me. How do you know?'

'I just realised,' Bucky said. 'You know all this better than the three of us; what's our play?'

'Um, Captain,' Tony chimed as Bruce protested the idea that he was in play at all. 'I think SHIELD anticipated you would, you know, be team captain.' Bucky felt irritation prickle hot under his skin at that, unnatural and sharp. 'I thought you were a soldier. I didn't realize you relied on others for ideas. Weren't you a hero?'

'I don't work for these people,' Buck snapped, trying very, very hard not to poke at Tony's soft spots in return like something just outside himself begged him to. 'And a good captain doesn't make a plan when he doesn't know the layout of the battleship, Tony. Romanova, do you have a plan?'

'Yes,' she said immediately. Before Bucky could demand it, an explosion ripped thru the lab. It knocked him hard; he landed maybe five feet back, his head smashing against the floor.

Alarms began blaring. Bucky coughed from the smoke, rolling to his feet. Tony lay not far from him, conscious and mostly unhurt. Romanova and Banner had been blown into a loading bay below. Bucky grabbed his arms, hauling him up.

'I'm making a plan,' he said. 'Put on the suit!'

Chapter Text

'Engine three,' Tony said as they ran down the hall. Romanova had checked in; Bucky wasn't sure she was genuinely OK alone. He had to imagine the blast had in fact triggered the Hulk. He didn't like leaving her alone to deal with that. She had claimed she could handle it; he had to believe her and do what he could elsewhere. 'I'll meet you there.' Bucky nodded, running along hallways to the third engine. He reached the door labelled three; someone was banging on the other side, barely audible over the noise of chaos in the ship. The door was jammed. Bucky yanked with his superhuman strength, and the jammed metal gave way with a shriek of steel. Three SHIELD agents were inside, one clearly injured. Bucky helped the other two get the injured man over the precipice of the doorway and then rushed past them. A huge section of the ship had been blown away, wind whipping at his hair. Bucky peered over the ledge for Iron Man, hating the horrified twist of his stomach as he saw the ocean churning thousands of feet below him. He exhaled hard, his cheeks puffing out with the force of the breath which was meant to be calming. It wasn't.

'I'm here!' he reported.

Iron Man swooped across the sky, and Bucky stepped further into the relative safety of the blasted hull. He watched Tony and allowed himself a moment to be amazed at the grace with which Tony directed himself thru the air. Bucky hadn't even ever been to jump school; flying like that amazed him. He couldn't imagine it.

'I gotta get this super conducting cooling system back online before I can access the rotors and work on dislodging the debris,' Tony called over the coms. 'I need you to get to that engine control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position.' Bucky turned the vague direction Tony gestured before disappearing from view of the open hull. He took another moment to thank God that things were clearly labelled in what was left of the engine room.

The stairs to the upper gangway were gone, but the gangway was only about fifteen feet up. He leapt, grabbing the remains of an I bar and swinging over open air. He landed.

Bucky yanked the control panel open, and froze when he saw what was inside. He threw one hand in the air; he'd expected knobs or gauges or something, but the panel was all lights and wires. It looked like the innards of one of the computers Tony was building in his tower workroom.

'What's it look like in there?' Tony asked, the sounds of clanking and welding in the background of his com. Bucky shook his head.

'It probably runs on electricity,' he replied, useless. Back in the day, he had been handy with mechanics, could even fix a radio. This was beyond him. Bucky wasn't sure what he hated more: the fact he was so out of place or the swell of anger he felt at his own incompetence. He'd been an army soldier; he was supposed to be better than this.

'Well, you're not wrong,' Tony offered, tinny over the coms. 'Are things flashing red or yellow? Mix of the two?'

'All red,' Bucky said with confidence.

'OK, there should be six main, uh, cords, right? Lighting up,' Tony called. 'Beneath them is another cord; should be all black. Reset that one; unplug, replug. It's not ideal, but it'll get the job done.'

'We have a perimeter breach,' someone shouted over the Tannoy of the ship. 'Hostiles are in SHIELD uniform. Call outs at every junction.' Bucky shook his head; things were heating up too quickly for his liking.

''S all yellow,' Bucky said, when he had reset the panel. 'That good?'

'That's awesome,' Tony promised.

'What's next?' Bucky asked, sliding the panel shut. He crept to the edge again and tried to spot Tony. He could hear, over the roar of the wind and the alarms still blaring behind him, clanking and blasting as Tony cleared debris and fuselage from the rotors.

'Even when I've cleared the rotors, this thing won't re-engage without a jump. I'm gonna have to get in there and push,' Tony told him. Bucky looked at the engine, and imagined how fast those blades had to spin.

'You'll get sliced up when that thing gets going,' he pointed out.

'The stator control unit can reverse the polarity long enough to disengage maglev—'

'Tony!' Bucky snapped, his hand going to the com unit in his ear. 'What makes you think I can understand that?'

'OK—D'you see that red lever?' Tony tried. 'If you pull it on my mark, I'll have enough time to slip out of the way.' Bucky looked for a red lever. It was across another huge gaping hole in engine room flooring.

'God damn it,' Bucky said to himself. He jumped, landing on the inner edge of the gangway, grabbing the rail for balance. It shifted slightly as Bucky's boots touched the grated floor, and for a terrifying second he thought that for the second time in his life, a railing would give way and destroy him. It held and he pressed his hands to the metal wall, close as he could get to the wall and away from the open air and fall to water. His heart pounded harder than it ever had. 'I'm here,' he called.

'Moving in,' Tony replied.

Bucky saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He saw SHIELD uniforms, but knew that didn't mean much. He watched, and one of the men tossed a grenade toward the engine, toward Tony. Without thinking, he flung himself into the air. He batted the grenade downwards; it detonated below him with little effect. He landed on the same gangway as the insurgents; he grabbed at the above gangway, swinging. Bucky hit the man who had thrown the grenade, square in the jaw and hopefully not hard enough to kill him. He kicked the second one, who had knelt behind his comrade, intending to cover him with suppressive fire. Bucky no doubt shattered his collarbone; he stayed down.

A third masked man fired at him from the doorway. Bucky threw one of the rifles at him as hard as he could. He missed, but bought himself enough time to leap back into position, grabbing another firearm and firing back. He was at no angle to be effective. He had no cover up by the red lever; he was completely exposed as he waited for Tony's mark.

'Stark! We're losing altitude!' Fury called over the coms.

'Yep, I noticed,' Tony said.

The insurgent returned fire, too close for comfort, and Bucky stepped back, eyes shut instinctually as bullets pinged around his head.

A loose piece of grating found its way under his boot, slipping from underneath him. The ship tilted as it suddenly began losing altitude. Bucky fell into open air—this was it; this was how he died—and his hand wrapped around a carbon fibre cord, thick and strong enough to support his weight. His shoulder snapped painfully as he held tight. Desperately, he grabbed with his other hand, dangling over the water.

He tried to call out to Tony as he tried to haul himself back into the ship, but his voice stuck in his throat. He was panicking and he hated it; he hated the ice in his veins as he battered about in the wind. He was going to fucking die like this, dangling, desperate and afraid. He didn't want to fall; he didn't want to drown again. He didn't want to die like this.

'Cap, hit the lever!' Tony ordered. Bucky knew he was out of time. He used that fact to force himself to move faster, get grounded, to get inside, to try to grapple at the grating with his restrictive gloves and bullets still zinging past. One grazed over his leg. He kept moving. 'Now!' A new source of banging began not long after that; Bucky imagined Tony's suit battering about the turbine like he'd been battering in the air. He yanked blindly, pulling the lever ninety degrees. The banging stopped and the ship dipped for a moment before the rotors got back up to speed. The bullets stopped pinging seconds after. The alarms had stopped inside. It seemed deadly quiet, even with the sound of flames and scraping metal and the wind still whipping at Bucky's hair, a sick reminder of how close he'd come to blowing away in that wind.

'Iron Man, you copy?' he called, finally touching his com unit. He sounded shaky, even to his own ears. Tony gave an affirmative, as Hill's voice declared Loki and his men had loaded onto a jet and taken back off. Bucky laid on the floor of the unstable gangway, panting. He was alive. He was still alive. He couldn't believe it. He was too shocked to even be relieved. 'The rest of the team, check in, now.' Romanova replied immediately; no one followed her. 'Team, check in now,' he repeated.

'Thor and Banner are both gone,' Hill told him. 'We are trying to track them, but most of our systems are down.' Bucky closed his eyes. Two men were missing, out of the five that had rushed from the lab and the bridge to attend to this crisis. That was not acceptable. He had to do better, somehow, next time. He had to.

'By the way,' Nat's exhausted voice chimed after a moment. 'None of that was a part of the plan I was going to suggest.'

⍟

Both Banner and Thor had dropped off the helicarrier during the fight. The pilot who'd engaged the Hulk had been fished out of the ocean already; they hadn't found where the Hulk must have landed. Thor had been locked in the Hulk-proof cage and dropped above land. Bucky was sure Thor would find a way back to them. He still wasn't sure if he was an alien or if there really was more than one god, but he didn't think, either way, he could be taken out so easily.

'These were in Phil Coulson's jacket,' Fury said. He tossed a small pile of bloodied cards across the sleek glass of the command table. Bucky reached out and picked one up. Coulson had had them in his locker; Fury was lying, like it was nothing. Tony's jaw tensed at the lie, even tho he probably bought it as fact. Earlier, Bucky had said at least Fury's lies came with clear motivation; he could see this one as clear as the red on the card. The foxed edge was sticky with blood, or at least with red, the near-mint condition completely ruined. He supposed it didn't matter now, since their collector was dead. 'Guess he never did get you to sign them.'

Bucky stared at the cartoon version of himself, with his shield on one arm and a cheeky salute on the other. He still didn't understand the sensationalism surrounding the character, but he had to admit he understood the appeal of a hero that actually could represent a pure will and a real good. He understood, looking over the pile of cards, the attraction of a hero bolstered by idealism, fighting against an enemy like HYDRA that allowed some moral absolutes. It was why he had fallen in love with Steve, after all. Loki had been right about that too. The only difference between Steve and Captain America was that Bucky had been given the muscle to back up his ideals. Bucky had been given a chance to be a hero. Was he really going to squander that now? Because of his own grief, he'd let the world burn at the hands of Loki?

Steve wouldn't. Steve would have fought, no matter his reservations or fear, because it was the right thing to do. There was a bully after the world. Steve would go after him with all he had.

'We're dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor. I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming,' Fury mused, leaning on the table. Bucky tossed the card down and the bloody edge streaked the glass. He pushed his fist against his mouth, thinking about Coulson's eager request for him to sign these stupid cards. Coulson had lied to him just as much as the rest of SHIELD, but he'd at least believed he was doing the right thing. If he really loved the dumbass on those cards so much, he must have thought he could defend the world like Captain America did.

Fury began pacing the length of the table, rounding it towards Bucky. 'Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract,' he admitted. Bucky kept his eyes on the streaks of blood on the table. 'I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier. There was an idea—Stark knows this—called the Avengers Initiative.' Bucky turned his chair a bit to look at his friend. Tony wouldn't look at him; he was staring over the bridge and breathing very deliberately. 'The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes.' Fury stopped between them, touching the back of one of the command chairs. Tony stood up, and for a moment Bucky thought he might say something. He stormed off. Bucky watched him go.

'Well,' Fury said, 'it's an old fashioned notion.'

⍟

Bucky remembered that Pepper had greeted Coulson like he was an old friend, like he was a good man worth seeing outside of SHIELD's weird control.

Even if Tony trusted SHIELD as far as he could throw the helicarrier without the suit, Bucky had to imagine any friend of Pepper's was a friend of Tony's too. That was how Bucky had ended up at Stark Tower, after all, that big, ugly monument to one man's ego: Pepper had remembered a story from her childhood. Bucky had saved a man he didn't even remember; that man had become her grandfather. Tony had brought Bucky into his life on that memory alone.

It was easy to find Tony, once Bucky started looking. He was in the same room Coulson had died in, staring at the closed circular hatch. Bucky allowed him his space, leaning against a railing on another ramp to the absent cage. Tony had to have heard his red boots against the gangway; he didn't turn or look over. Bucky stared at his feet, crossed at the ankles as he leaned and waited.

'I figure you and I gotta be upfront with each other, at the very least,' Bucky said after a long moment. 'Coulson kept the cards in his locker. Too valuable to carry around like that. Fury wants us to pull together. We took a hit, a hard one. That means it's time to close rank.'

Tony didn't reply. He turned from the hatch and paced back towards the wall. Bucky could see as easily as Tony could the rinsed-out stain of Coulson's blood. He looked up when Tony finally spoke.

'Is that all this death is good for?' Tony asked. 'To make us close rank?'

'Death isn't good for anything,' Bucky told him. 'It just rips apart the living.' Tony sighed. Bucky looked back down at his feet. 'Was he married?'

'No,' Tony said. 'There was, uh, a cellist, I think. I was gonna fly him out to visit her next week.'

'I'm sorry. He seemed like a good man,' Bucky said lamely. He wasn't really sure if Coulson had been a good man or not, but he'd been Pepper's friend, probably Tony's too. That was all that mattered now that he was gone. 'Is this the first time you've lost a soldier?'

'We are not soldiers,' Tony snapped. Bucky looked up at that. Tony shook with anger; his hands were in fists at his sides. 'I'm not marching to Fury's fife.'

'I'm not either,' Bucky said. 'But think about it. What did Loki make this?'

'Personal,' Tony said easily. 'He hit us right where we live. He wanted to, do what, divide and conquer?'

'Yeah, great, but that's not enough,' Bucky said. 'He needs more than that. He needs to tear us down. He might have beat us for now, but we'll regroup and come after him. He has to know that. He needs a power source strong enough for the Cube, and we need to find out which one. You should start making a list—'

'He doesn't just want to beat us,' Tony said. 'He wants to be seen doing it. He wants the glory and the cheers; he needs an audience. He wants flowers and parades—A monument to the sky, in his name!'

'He doesn't have one, but you do.' Bucky realized Stark Tower was the target. Tony stopped pacing and stared. 'Is Stark Tower powerful enough for what he needs?' Bucky asked.

'Son of a bitch,' Tony said. He started moving; Bucky followed.

'You need your suit,' Bucky said. They made their way to a hangar. 'Try to get to the Tower quicker than I can. I don't know if it's possible to stall, but try.'

'I'm not going to stall him,' Tony growled. 'I'm going to threaten him. I'm going to tell him to pack up or get beaten down.'

'I'll get Agent Romanova,' Bucky said, 'and whoever else she can vouch for.'

'Do you trust Black Widow?' Tony asked. Bucky shrugged. She worked for SHIELD and he didn't trust SHIELD. He liked her, and she'd realized Loki's first plan the same as he did. He needed fighters who thought like him; it was why, after all, he'd chosen the men he had of those who had helped lead the breakout in Azzano all those years ago.

'She took on the Hulk and kept going,' Bucky said. 'I trust she'll get the job done. Right now, that's about all we can hope for. You and I won't be enough.'

'Bruce is gonna come thru, you know,' Tony said. 'He'll wake up and come back before you can say "no, he won't".'

'I wouldn't say that,' Bucky promised. 'I hope you're right.'

'I hope you know what you're doing, Cap,' Tony said as they split off at a juncture. Bucky eyed the blast marks from a concussion grenade and the evidence of a firefight along the walls. It was likely people had already paid the price for the crisis; Bucky could do his best now but in a way it was too late.

'So do I.'

⍟

Loki shot out one of the engines of the quinjet. Of course he did. They were plummeting. Bucky was holding on for dear life, all his enhanced strength clinging to the bulkhead, the only thing keeping him from buffeting around in the plane like a rag doll. His hands were covered in cold sweat inside his gloves. The leather gave him enough tack to keep his grip on the ceiling.

Barton did his best to ease their landing, but he was appropriately more concerned with avoiding buildings than he was avoiding tossing Bucky around like the last raisin in a ration box. He clung and tried to will himself to be less terrified. He failed.

They landed by carving an impressive gouge in the concrete plaza. Bucky let himself take a moment to gather his frayed nerves as Barton and Romanova tore off their five-point harnesses.

Bucky was fucking done with planes; he swore he'd never get in one in his life, not ever. This was the third flying monstrosity in the last week that had crashed with him inside. Each time, he felt the surety of his death creeping up like an ice shelf. There was a God damned army from outer space raining down on his hometown and Bucky was trapped in a loop of crashing flying machines. At no point had he signed up for this. He wanted to go home.

Home was gone, so Bucky swallowed his nausea and plowed forward.

'Did we kill anyone on the way down?' Bucky asked.

'Maybe in the building we hit,' Barton called back. 'But we didn't land on anybody.' Barton opened the back door and they ran out. Sirens roared and a dozen cars already lay damaged and abandoned all around. Their landing had ripped open a private square, but there were no tracks of red blood under the jet, just black soot and ripped grey.

'We've gotta get back up there,' Bucky said as they ran. Bucky kept pace with his human teammates; he pretended it was for strategy but really he couldn't go faster with the anxious shake that hadn't yet gone out of his knees. His companions stumbled to a stop in front of Grand Central; when Bucky followed their gaze, he understood why. He stopped too. His shaking stopped because he was petrified, steady as stone but not sure if he could do this at all.

An enormous, gigantic body of metal and bone flowed down from the gaping hole in the sky. It swam thru the air like Bucky imagined whales swum the ocean. The swimming should be graceful but it was hurling smashes of rock and brick and steel that fell as the whale collided with buildings. Debris met with screams down below. Sparks spouted along the whale's prominent ribs; alien soldiers fell out, dropping on cables and breaking thru windows.

Bucky huffed out a breath and then felt like he'd lost all the air on the planet. He touched his com unit. 'Oh, my God. Tony, are you seeing this?'

'I'm seeing, still working on believing,' Tony quipped. It was a comfort; at least Tony was himself. Not everything was topsy turvy. 'Where's Banner? Has he shown up yet?'

'Not yet,' Bucky said. He wasn't sure Banner would show up—maybe he'd landed somewhere where he couldn't get to them; maybe he'd been hurt—but Bucky sure hoped Tony was right to have faith in Banner.

'Keep me posted.'

'Find a way to take down that crate and I will,' Bucky said.

'You betcha,' Tony replied.

'There are civilians trapped in those buildings,' Barton said.

'There are civilians trapped everywhere,' Bucky agreed. They took cover from the showering debris and the fire of Chitauri weapons. 'They're fish in a barrel down there.'

'Go,' Romanova said, unholstering her Glocks. 'We got it up here.' Bucky believed her, but he glanced at Barton.

'Can you hold them here?' Bucky asked him. The man had been controlled by Loki not long ago. He might be as wiped out as Bucky felt; he might want to go home too. Barton grinned like a wolf instead of sagging from exhaustion.

'Captain,' Barton said, 'it would be my genuine pleasure.' Bucky nodded, and rose.

Bucky leapt off the causeway and ran along the eleven twenty-three bus. He dropped onto an SUV, which exploded behind him, catapulting him into the air. He used as much of the unexpected momentum as he could and rolled when he landed, bits of debris and metal digging into the Kevlar across his back and shoulders. He kept running, faster than the fleeing civilians around him.

'Does the Army know what's happening here?' shouted a police sergeant. Bucky dodged the blast of a Chitauri weapon as he made his way to the men in charge.

'Do we?!' someone else shouted. Bucky couldn't help but agree: no one knew what these aliens were or what their weapons ran on. The situation was insane, but Bucky knew the streets at least; he'd grown up in them. Loki had pried at his broken heart, but he'd also lead the fight to a place Bucky knew better than anywhere else. He leaped onto a police cruiser, his feet leaving dents on the roof of the already-compromised sedan. He knelt, a smaller target. The two cops in front of him gaped, staring at the garish colours in front of them.

This uniform was the worst. Bucky missed navy blue and practical components of red and white. He supposed the authority of his uniform was seventy years out of date; maybe they'd gape at him even if he'd been in his own.

'We need men in these buildings,' Bucky ordered, gesturing to the huge glass towers on either side. 'There are people inside that can run into the line of fire. You take the civilians thru the basements or thru the subway; just keep them off the streets. We need a perimeter as far back as—' He considered for half a second before deciding. '—As far back as Thirty-Ninth.'

'Why the hell should I take orders from you?' the sergeant demanded. Bucky was about to snap that he was Captain Fucking America; that's why, but an explosion too close behind him sounded instead. The cops flinched back as Bucky spun and stood.

A taxi blew and landed on its roof, burning and spewing thick smoke. The smaller bogeys which flew over dropped soldiers on the streets below. Bucky blocked the first shot from the group landing; the Chitauri blasts rang against his shield more weakly than HYDRA weapons had, but stronger than ordinary bullets. Bucky backhanded an alien with his vibranium shield; the shield and Bucky's strength cracked the alien's skull and felled the body. He blocked another shot and punched the shooter in the face. The alien flew backwards.

Bucky spun when he heard the almost-robotic whirl of another Chitauri behind him. He hit the third one hard enough to break its neck. He grabbed the gun arm of the one he'd punched, which had gotten up quicker than a human could have after taking one of his hits to attack him again, and brought his shield down. It sliced thru the bone-like skin of the alien, and he hit his shield straight out, knocking the final alien ten feet back. It smashed against another abandoned car, dead and still. He clutched the gun in his hand as the arm fell out—gruesome and twitching—and eyed the sergeant. He turned.

'I need men in those buildings,' he shouted into his radio. 'Lead people down into basements and subways and away from the streets—!' Satisfied that the police could establish a perimeter and continue evac, he made his way back to his team. The bus had been blown onto its side, empty of people. He had to run and jump, grabbing at the already-damaged cement of the causeway and arriving just in time to smash gunners away from Barton and Romanova. Lightning struck three aliens and Thor appeared just behind it. He straightened in pain. Bucky swept an eye over him; the god had been stabbed and was bleeding red at the abdomen.

'The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable,' Thor told Bucky. Bucky looked up at the balcony of Stark Tower; he appreciated being reported to, but he really had no idea how the hell he was supposed to know how to deal with a fucking door into space. The way it rippled and changed, he figured it wasn't even a door to the space surrounding the planet or even past the Moon—the Moon people had been to. Bucky knew he was looking at a door that cut out hundreds of millions of miles of distance to some sick and cold place made of black rock and ice.

'Thor is right,' Tony said thru the com system. 'We gotta deal with these guys.'

'How do we do this?' Agent Romanova asked. Bucky shook his head to himself.

'We do it together,' he said. 'As a team.'

'I have unfinished business with Loki,' Thor protested.

'Yeah?' Barton retorted. 'Get in line.'

'Roll up your flaps, you two,' Bucky snapped. 'What did I just say?

'We have to work as a unit—Together! Loki's gonna want this fight focused on us and that's the only chance the LEOs have to evacuate the area successfully. Without Loki, and without us, these things could run wild. Containing the Chitauri is our priority. Closing the portal is the second. After that, if he hasn't stood down, we might take Loki out.'

'He is still my brother,' Thor said. Bucky met his eye, firm.

'We might take Loki out,' he repeated, sorry to say it. Thor didn't break his gaze; he lowered his chin just an inch. He understood. Bucky was grateful. 'We have Iron Man as air support, but he's gonna need us to—' A small, badly tuned motor hummed closer and closer behind them. Bucky turned to check and sure enough it was Doctor Banner. 'Tony, it's Banner. Just like you said.'

'Banner?' Tony shouted. 'Hey, man! Ha! I knew it! I told you!'

'So,' Banner said, stepping off the bike and engaging the kickstand amongst the rubble. It was a useless gesture. Bucky knew the next wave would knock the bike into the detritus and ash. 'This all seems—horrible.'

'I've seen worse,' Romanova told him. Bruce winced. 'No, we could use a little worse.'

'I'm bringing the party to you,' Tony said. He rounded a corner and a space whale headed towards them. Bucky sighed.

'I don't see how that's a party,' Romanova said. Her voice was dry and sarcastic; Bucky wished he had the energy to laugh. He was in the future, and Steve was dead and his family was dead and Peggy was old. More than any of that, there were alien whales in the sky and Bucky needed to protect the civilians of this city. He didn't have time to laugh even if he could.

'Doctor Banner, it's time to suit up,' Bucky said. 'Get angry.' Bruce stalked towards the low-swooping space whale in hot pursuit of Iron Man.

'I'll tell you a secret, Captain,' Banner said, looking back as he turned green. 'I'm always angry.'

⍟

'Call it, Captain,' Tony said as he landed in formation.

Bucky watched two more space whales and a few dozen smaller ships pour out of that hole in space. The team waited behind him and Bucky couldn't help but think of the Commandos. He couldn't help but remember the men he'd fought so hard to get on his team: a Jewish medic, a coloured fella, two foreigners who fought with the same valour he did, and a guy born in fucking Fresno so what was the problem?. They'd stood like this before, against impossible odds and terrifying technology. This wasn't so different, right? Seventy years later, sure, but they could do this. It was a different team, but they could do this. He could still do this.

'Barton,' he began. 'I want you on that roof—' He pointed to the building on the Southeast corner of Park and Forty-Seventh. '—with eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Tony, you got the perimeter; I don't want anything across Eighth Ave or Lexington, or past Fifty-Seventh Street. The police are manning Thirty-Ninth, but they'll need help. Anything gets more than three blocks outside those streets, you turn it back or you blast it down.' Tony grabbed Barton by his Kevlar and took off. Bucky hoped he hadn't spread them too thin; the avenues weren't that far apart but Thirty-Ninth was a ways from the edge of the Park. He didn't think they could contain them in a smaller area, not easily, not when they swooped down so high from the door to space.

'Thor, you've gotta cover that portal; slow them down,' he ordered. 'You've got the lightning. Light the bastards up.' With a quick spin of his hammer, Thor took off without question.

'You,' he said, pointing at Romanova. 'You're with me. We'll occupy them here as best we can.' He turned to the angry green monster roaring at the Chitauri taunting him from buildings. He didn't know how much he could expect in terms of tactics. 'Hulk,' he said. The beast jerked its head towards him like a dog hearing its name. Bucky hoped to God enough of Bruce was in there to be useful. 'Aliens?' He pointed at the Chitauri clinging to buildings and threatening to invade semi-evacuated office spaces. Hulk grunted. Bucky didn't really know what that meant; he prayed this green thing understood him. 'Smash.'

The Hulk jumped, gouging the asphalt with his force. He landed on a building, ruining a buttress, snatching an alien off the top of it. He broke the alien to bits and climbed, snatching the next ones he found too.

'Captain,' Romanova said. 'None of this is gonna mean a damn thing if we don't close that portal.'

'I certainly don't know how we can touch it,' Bucky admitted. 'You heard Thor and Tony. It's unbreachable.'

'I have a plan,' she said. She fired her gun to peg an alien between the eyes. It dropped and its gun clattered to the ground.

'Come on,' she said, ducking to allow his shield to zing over her head and take out three behind her, bouncing back to him off a light post on the causeway. 'You were gonna let me make a plan before. You owe me one.'

'That's not how this works,' he said, unable to help himself. 'But fine. How are you gonna get up there?'

'I got a ride,' she said, and pointed. He followed her finger. A small squadron of Chitauri pilots approached on their flying chariots.

'That is a bad idea,' he told her. 'That is a truly moronic idea.'

'I could use a boost,' she said, not at all concerned. He had to imagine that was a façade, but he let her certainty assure him anyway. 'You figure you can toss me thirty feet?' He looked at her, then took eight steps back.

'Straight up?' he asked, watching the chariots as they approached. She glanced at the approaching ships and then nodded. 'Are you sure about this?' He tapped his shield twice and then pointed at a nearby red wreck of a car. 'Romanova.'

'Yeah, I got this,' she promised. 'It's gonna be fun.'

Nat ran and stepped up onto the hood and roof of the car; she jumped down onto his shield and he launched her up into the air, flinging. Bucky craned his neck to see her land before he came under fire again.

The Chitauri spoke in growls and roars and when Bucky severed their limbs, they threw sparks and green-grey fluid, not red, hot blood. He couldn't decide if they were robot or people, and it bothered him. It sickened him. When he smashed in a head, when he used one of their own guns to blast them away, when Barton's arrows struck a chariot and blew a ship, did they feel pain as they died? Were they disabling automatons of sorts?

Was he killing?

Was he trying to murder them as desperately as they were him?

Chapter Text

The Hulk dropped Iron Man's body without much care. Bucky slid to his knees, skidding across the chalky asphalt. Thor rolled the body and ripped the face mask clean off the helmet.

Bucky bent and listened, but there wasn't any breath. He ripped off a vambrace and the palm and fingers of a glove fell away without it. He grabbed Tony's wrist and pressed at three different, desperate angles, trying to find a pulse. He couldn't reach one. There wasn't one.

Bucky searched for breath again, cursing, but Tony was gone.

Bucky didn't know what to do. He should be shouting for Steve to come, for Steve to do something, to save Tony, somehow, but Steve was gone too. Bucky couldn't do anything; they'd come into this fight without ground support like medics; SHIELD had dropped them in without even a mutual com system with the police. SHIELD had dropped the bomb Tony had defused. God, Bucky had died—had thought he died to prevent bombs like that from falling in New York and now Tony had too. It was too late. Bucky hit his fist into the ground. Bucky's eyes prickled. God damn it. God damn it.

The Hulk looked at him, truly looked between Bucky and Tony. His gaze wasn't frantic or unintelligent now; it was focused and sad: questioning.

Bucky shook his head. He couldn't say it out loud. The Hulk pouted, then growled. He smashed a fist into the asphalt—Bucky flinched forward as if could protect Tony's body from the Hulk's fist. The beast roared, leaning down and close to Tony's face. The roar rattled Bucky's enhanced eardrums, impossibly loud. It hurt it was so loud, louder than jet engines and helicopters and bombs.

'What the hell!' Tony gasped, jolting awake. His very-dented suit prevented him from jolting very successfully. He looked around, panicked.

Bucky broke his face into an exhausted smile. 'What just happened?' Tony demanded. 'Please tell me nobody kissed me.' The Hulk sat down, huffing at Bucky like he thought Bucky had lied. Bucky supposed he had lied; he had never been so happy to be a liar. Tony was alive.

'Why would somebody kiss you?' Bucky laughed, clapping his friend's helmet in lieu of his cheeks. Tony swatted him away. His still-intact gauntlet clinked against the ashy ground when he gave up.

'What, no CPR in your day? What happened?' Tony asked. Bucky sunk onto his haunches, sitting and surveying the wreckage of his home. 'What the hell happened? I was in fucking space.'

'We won,' Bucky said. He sounded amazed even to his own ears. He sounded exhausted and sad in equal parts.

'All right,' Tony cheered, his voice too soft to carry further than their circle. He coughed best he could in his dented suit. 'Yay. All right, good job, guys. Let's—let's not come in tomorrow.

'Let's just take a day.' Bucky swiped a hand over the grime on his face, grinning at how fucking ridiculous Tony was.

'Have you ever tried shawarma?' Tony demanded, bumping Bucky's knee with his bare hand even as he still couldn't sit up. Tony peered at Thor. 'Y'ever tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it.'

'We're not finished yet,' Thor said. 'There is yet my brother.' Bucky looked up at Thor, and he nodded. Part of him was relieved they wouldn't have to kill Loki, or at least that it wasn't looking like they would have to. It had been minutes since the Chitauri had been stopped and Loki was not swooping down with magic tricks or blue fire. Maybe this thing was over.

'You good?' Bucky asked Tony. He reached out with the hand Bucky had torn free of the armour. Bucky hauled him to his feet, taking the weight of the man and suit like it was nothing. He'd have to leave Tony on a lower floor of the Tower, to get out of this suit that was dented too much for him to move freely. Bucky hoped Tony would understand that he had to leave this part of the fight to them.

'Come on, fellas,' Bucky said. 'Let's end this.'

⍟

Bucky settled into the backseat of Happy's car and blew out a tense breath as he leaned back. He had been grazed or stabbed by something, and the sliced wound across his shoulders hadn't finished being sensitive as it closed over. He would have the bruises and breaks from this fight for the next week (Bucky couldn't complain no matter how sore he was; the other operatives had been hit too, and they healed at a human rate, let alone the civilians who hadn't had the chance to put on a suit of armour before Hell rained down from the sky).

'We're gonna ruin the upholstery,' Bucky said, thinking of how desperate his mother had been to keep their car free of his father's cigarette ashes. Bucky was covered in ash from kneeling in the city streets.

'Shawarma leaves a little something to be desired,' Tony replied. Bucky and Thor had peeled him out of the damaged suit with some difficulty in the alley behind the Shawarma Palace on Lexington; the owner had asked to keep the broken armour. Tony peeled the real tech out of the helmet and chest plate; he had left them for the owner to treasure and display. 'Kind of a bummer. Maybe with more hot sauce. I didn't have enough. Romanova hogged the bottle.'

'Aliens,' Bucky said. He didn't have the energy for banter; Bucky had fought aliens today and his hands were shaking. He dropped his head past the headrest, onto the bench seat of one of Tony's cars. Tony chuckled low, running his hand thru his sweaty hair. 'Actual, honest-to-goodness aliens.'

Bucky ached. His whole body was sore. When he'd rushed into the bank, when he'd gone in to try to evacuate the hostages, one of the Chitauri had thrown the alien grenade at him; he'd curled behind his shield, which had protected him from the pineapple blast. It left the rest of him to be blown thru the double-paned bank window. He'd slammed across the roof of a car, collapsing the steel frame below him. He'd taken hits all thruout the battle, blasts of alien weapons mostly blocked by the Kevlar of his uniform. The worst of those burns lay across his abdomen, heavier on his left side. Bucky would carry the scars for months; he could tell. He could only imagine the civilians who'd been hit by the same blasts. He wondered how high the human death count would get over the next few days. He wondered if anyone would count the Chitauri.

'Honest-to-goodness,' Tony echoed, almost a giggle. 'And a god. Two. Demi-gods, technically.' Bucky hummed; he didn't know what to possible say about that. It seemed impossible that Bucky had met a god and shook his hand and fought at a pace along side him; it seemed impossible that anything but a god could summon lightning from the sky and direct it to his will. 'I died today, I think. Pepper specifically told me not to. I'm not gonna get my treat.'

'You didn't die; it was almost,' Bucky promised. 'You're alive. Please don't tell me what disgusting treat she promised you.'

'Yeah,' Tony agreed. 'Not dead.'

'Neither of us,' Bucky whispered. He closed his eyes but opened them when visions of hundreds of alien soldiers—men, people—dropping like cut puppets. His eyes snapped open and he jolted up in his seat. Tony eyed him from where he lounged about his side of the sedan. Bucky's breath came out in short pants, his diaphragm tight with fear and spasming.

'Y'all right?' Tony asked.

'No,' Bucky said. 'Lotta death out there today. Lotta killing.'

'We stopped it,' Tony pointed out.

'We killed them, as much as they killed us,' Bucky said. He was shaking.

Bucky hadn't even peeled off his uniform yet, just his gloves and his stupid, candy-red boots. Bucky was pretty sure the owner of Shawarma Palace had kept the red fucking boots and the gloves too. Bucky didn't care; he hated those boots and right now he hated being Captain America.

Bucky had scrubbed his face, neck and hands clean in stocking feet in the staff bathroom of Shawarma Palace but he still felt dirtier than he'd been since that assault on a HYDRA base in southern Poland in February, when they'd struck at night thru a practical sea of mud.

'Do you think the Chitauri were conscious?' Bucky asked. He twisted in the seat, peeling the top half of his uniform off. The damaged Kevlar ripped away easily. The blue shirt he wore underneath was soaked with sweat; he figured the stench of blood on both of them was worse than the admittedly ripe smell of soaked armour. 'When Romanova closed the portal, when they fell, did they die or did they drop? Did they suffer?'

'Whoa,' Tony said. 'They invaded Earth.'

'Loki invaded Earth; they were just soldiers,' Bucky pointed out. He pulled his left arm out of the sleeve; the cloth stuck to bits of clotted blood. His shoulder stung and pinched horribly. He twisted his head to look at his shoulder blade and saw why. Another burn from a Chitauri blast covered half his back, above the gash he'd thought had been the only thing paining him. 'They were slaughtered en masses and the guy in charge goes home.'

'Holy shit,' Tony said. 'You were a soldier. You've killed before.'

'I know,' Bucky snapped. Fuck, how could he ever forget? He'd killed soldiers again and again in the war, without hesitation on the field. He'd probably killed some civilians, frankly, in his time at war in Europe, caused the deaths of HYDRA prisoners of war, of innocent Jews when the camps had heard the Commandos were coming and sped up in hopes of finishing before they arrived. Bucky couldn't know for sure how many deaths he caused, or how many lives he'd ruined, especially not now, in the future, with the truth so many years—so many decades—away. 'That doesn't mean it doesn't bother me. Did we create a generation of orphans today?'

'Buck,' Tony began, soft. 'We won today.'

'Yeah,' Bucky said. He leaned back again. 'Yeah.' He pressed his still-filthy forehead to the window. The cheap soap and the trickling faucet of the Shawarma Palace had been insufficient. It still felt like wartime against his skin.

'Hey, man, seriously,' Tony said. He leaned in his seat, slowly and painfully, reaching to touch Bucky's knee. 'Yeah, Loki came up with this idea, but they agreed to do it in exchange the Cube. It's not like they were drafted; they weren't like you. They came to get a weapon in exchange for wreaking havoc. You fought them off for no damn payment at all.' Bucky took his friend's hand, squeezing as tight as he dared. A cut along the inside of his ring finger stung at the force; Bucky tried to let the sensation ground him. Tony matched him.

'I thought you were dead,' Bucky said. 'I thought the only person I had left was gone.'

'You and I are still here,' Tony promised. 'We're still kicking ass. We're gonna go home, clean up, and let Pepper tuck us in to bed, maybe bring us a hot chocolate with a shot of fucking bourbon. It's over.' God, a shot of bourbon sounded so nice. Bucky wished he could get drunk, that the serum hadn't taken that from him. He'd been dead sober for too long.

After fights, sometimes the Commandos would drink together. Bucky would be dead sober then too, watching his men relax in ways he couldn't. After fights, after ones they were lucky enough to retreat to enough safety to drink, Bucky used to sneak Steve into his captain's quarters, taking advantage of the privacy to sometimes do as little as hold each other. Bucky used to be so happy in those snuck and stolen moments. Bucky wouldn't get to have one again.

Bucky hadn't known the last time he'd fallen asleep with Steve's bony elbow digging into his side that would be the last. If Buck had known, he might have devoted more energy to memorizing the way it felt; he wouldn't have let battle-exhaustion pull him into sleep; he would have drunk in every part of Steve's sleeping face so Bucky would never forget their last night like that. He would never have taken for granted waking up next to Steve if he'd—He just hadn't known it would be the last time. Bucky didn't know how badly he was going to fail Steve.

He hadn't known today, either, that he'd come so close to losing Tony next, to being alone again in this world that made no sense.

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed. 'It's over.' Bucky pulled his hand away and Tony retreated to his half of the car. Happy eyed them in the rearview mirror. Bucky met the man's eye. Happy wasn't prying; Bucky could tell. He was concerned for his boss, his friend. Maybe he wasn't concerned in that order.

'Do you still have everything you got off the SHIELD servers?' Bucky asked, after a long moment. He looked over at Tony.

'Yeah, JARVIS downloaded them remotely,' Tony promised.

'Tomorrow maybe, will you show me how to look at them?' Bucky asked.

'You betcha, Capsicle,' Tony said, struggling to push his door open as Happy turned the car off in the Stark Tower parking garage. 'Oh, god.'

'Let Happy help you,' Bucky said, pushing his own door open. He hurt too, but he would heal faster than Tony. If he pushed himself too hard now, it would hurt a little more for a week, not by a lot for six months. 'Let me help you.'

'I need no help,' Tony sing-songed deliriously as Happy hauled his arm over his shoulders. 'I am Iron Man.'

'I am Captain America,' Bucky agreed, hooking Tony's other arm across his own shoulders. He took most of the weight from Happy, but neither of them mentioned it. It didn't matter.

Together, they carried their friend inside.

⍟

The files Tony had taken confirmed SHIELD had been building nuclear weapons with the Cube.

That was hardly a surprise, even if it made Bucky sick to his core. SHILED had built too a series of pistols and rifles that could destroy men like HYDRA weapons could. The gun Coulson had fired at Loki was a modified version of the HYDRA Mae West tank gun; it had been compressed to be even smaller than a shoulder-mounted grenade launcher. SHIELD had dozens of high-destruction models. As far as Bucky could tell, none of them had been mass produced before the Cube had been sent back to Asgard.

That didn't make any of it less sickening.

Bucky's apartment on the thirty-first floor was mostly untouched by the carnage of the Battle of New York. One of his bedroom windows had been shattered by the force of the portal's vibrations along the building. Cold air spilled in thru the floor-to-ceiling hole. Bucky had taken the laptop Tony had explained to him and settled on the ledge. The heavy denim of his dungarees stopped what glass lingered inside from cutting him. His feet dangled over the edge, in open air, but it didn't bother him. He had expected the height would scare him, but the building felt so much more solid than a plane. He almost liked sitting out here, en plein air, overlooking the city. The relief crews were reconstructing parts of Grand Central Station, countless other buildings. Bucky had spent the new day sweeping glass and helping construction workers lift heavy wreckage and new steel. He was sore and tired now as the sun began to set in the distance and the construction cranes began to creak to a halt for the night.

Bucky looked back down at the screen he'd balanced in his lap.

He was reading over his own files; after he'd read everything about the Tesseract and the idea for the Avengers, he hadn't known what else to look up.

Bucky had been right to be suspicious of the SHIELD doctors. All of the notes in his modern medical files stopped focusing on the pulmonary and cellular damage from the drowning and the ice after only a page or so. Bucky supposed the serum was enough to correct all of that on its own, but it still disturbed him to read doctors' notes which described his strength and compared his abilities to Philips' and Brandt's files from the forties so clinically and in such a weaponized tone.

Bucky had sparred against a member of STRIKE Team Alpha as one of his tests, a Brock Rumlow. Fighting Rumlow had been uncomfortable. Bucky had held back a lot, because he was freakishly strong and could have broken the man in two if he had really tried. Still, Rumlow had leaned into Bucky's hits and had tried to egg him on. Bucky hadn't liked it; he'd tapped out once Rumlow managed to land his first blow.

The final paragraph of Rumlow's report on him didn't make any sense.

The Captain held back for my safety. This could be corrected. The Captain could join the asset, given the proper training. His physiology allowed him to survive the Arctic; his comparatively slow rate of healing would make his adjustment less problematic. After discussing with medical advisors: maximum estimated project completion: one year three months with minor maintenance (compare: three years ten months with minor and surgical maintenance).

'JARVIS?' Bucky called, turning from the wind whipping at the thirty-first floor so the computer in his walls could hear him. He wished he could just ask Rumlow, but the guy had given him the creeps and trying to talk to the fucking creep would mean willing going back to a SHIELD HQ. Bucky didn't want any confusion about that; he was done with SHIELD. He also knew the chances of getting a straight answer are virtually nil. The report hadn't been made out to Fury, hadn't even been placed directly into his files, but into a previously hidden auxiliary Tony's hack had recovered with everything else. It wasn't even made out to a named SO, but to a numbered code he couldn't recognize.

'Yes, sir? Do you require assistance?' the AI replied.

'Yeah,' Bucky said. 'How do I search these files? Tony said I should be able to.'

'I can run the search remotely, if you'd like. With sources of this size, even Master Stark would employ me over himself,' JARVIS said. Bucky snorted with amusement at the consideration. He liked that even the AI understood how badly Bucky wanted to feel proficient with new technologies. 'What search do you require?'

'Two: this supervising officer code,' he said first, and he saw it highlight blue on his screen for a moment as JARVIS took the information. 'And they mention an asset in my file,' Bucky continued. 'What's "the asset"?' JARVIS was silent for a moment.

'Unfortunately, sir, that is a very vague term,' JARVIS replied. 'The keyword 'asset' is used in thousands of files and mission reports. To find the asset you mean by context might take me a few hours and I may not be accurate in my findings. I also must warn you; no files beyond a level six clearance were recovered remotely; it was not possible. There is a chance nothing I turn up will be what you are looking for.' Bucky sighed. He would ask Tony tomorrow about it, but he was tired now and the sun was setting along the skyline.

'There's a lot to sift thru,' Bucky agreed. He shut the laptop's lid and pushed the tiny computer along the bamboo hardwood away from the window ledge. Bucky didn't even know where to start in the mess of files. It was all so overwhelming. 'Will you let me know when you find something for me?'

'Of course, sir,' JARVIS agreed. 'Also, Miss Potts is on her way to your apartment. She has asked after you several times today while you were out in the city. She wishes to verify your well-being.'

'Tell her I'm in the bedroom; let her in,' he said. He turned back to the skyline. He swung his feet in the air, looking down at the street below. Taxis and tourists had already returned to traffic. Bucky bet New Yorkers would be more brassed off long term about the outages of the trains and the roads, the inevitable construction traffic, rather than damage itself, maybe even the fact that SHIELD were the ones who dropped an atomic bomb on the city. New Yorkers were an impatient people.

Some things never changed.

'Bucky?' Pepper called after a few minutes. He looked over his shoulder.

Pepper looked like a wreck in his doorway. Her eyes were puffy and they watered anew as she spotted him. She couldn't join him on the glass-laden floor; she wore a smart, charcoal pencil skirt with her bare legs underneath. He hauled himself up and she clicked over to him in her heels, rounding the grossly large bed Tony had provided.

'My God, are you all right?' she demanded. She threw her arms around him and he let out an oof. She was so small against him that it was almost entirely in jest. 'I was so worried; I took care of Tony last night and came down first thing in the morning. You were already gone for the clean-up and I had to start on our own—'

'We're both all right, Tony and I,' Bucky promised, cutting her off. 'Mostly.' Bucky gave her a hug which nearly lifted her off her feet. He let her go and she pressed her tiny hands to his cheeks, searching him. Bucky gave her a smile. It felt tired but Bucky wanted to mean it. He didn't want Pepper to waste time worrying about him; he wanted Pepper to worry about Tony. She released his face, reluctant.

'Are you really all right?' she asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. 'Tony said you were pretty upset.'

'Every Chitauri soldier on this side of the portal dropped when Agent Romanova turned off the machine,' he told her, honest. He sat on the bed, still sore and achy. 'They might have been people, for all intents and purposes, you know? Capable of thought, or of suffering. There might be widows and sisters and parents who won't get the bodies of their family back. Even if people here cared about that, we can't send those bodies home.' She sank into the mattress beside him.

'Gosh, you really like to torture yourself,' she said. Pepper wiped her eyes self-consciously. 'It was kind of do or die out there. I watched the whole thing on the news when I was flying back.'

'Do or die doesn't always make things easier,' Bucky pointed out. He brushed his thumb over her cheek.

'Sorry,' she said, pulling away. 'I'm being silly. I wasn't even involved and I'm all shaken up.'

'You woulda been the widow left behind, had things gone a little differently,' Bucky said. 'Don't be sorry. It's the Chitauri like you I'm worried about.' Pepper stared at him for a long moment before shaking her head. She looked at the floor and a small section of bangs fell across her eyes.

'Wow,' she said. 'You are a better person than me.'

'I had help getting this way,' Bucky laughed. 'Lotta good people taught me a lotta good lessons. Learning is all we can do.' Pepper shook her head again and smiled; the smile reached her damp eyes. Bucky thought of Steve, whose pure heart and big mouth had kept Bucky from turning bitter, cynical and cruel during the hardest of their days. Bucky wondered how he was supposed to manage it alone.

'How's Tony?' he asked. 'Actually.'

'I don't know,' she said. 'He says he's all right. I'm sure he's not. He was in space, for crying out loud.'

'Pepper, he almost died,' Bucky admitted. He leaned his elbows onto his knees, feeling the stretch of the burns and gashes on his back and the pinch of the scabs across his abdomen. 'I don't know if he told you, but I had really thought I'd let you lose him.'

'Bucky, it wasn't up to you to protect him,' she said. He shook his head.

'He's my lieutenant,' Bucky said, because it was true. 'Of course it's my job to protect him.' Bucky was thinking mostly of Steve, who'd always been a private even when he was Bucky's second. Bucky thought about failing Steve and watching him fall and fall and fall. Pepper might think Bucky was a good person, but he had never been a good enough captain to keep his people safe. Bucky didn't know if he'd ever be. 'I'm not gonna fail again.'

Pepper's face twisted and she was on the verge of tears again. She touched his shoulder and kissed his cheek tenderly.

'God, you are a blessing,' she told him. 'Just an absolute wonder.' He ducked his head into her shoulder, breathing thru his nose as he tried not to cry, and she held him. 'It's gonna be OK,' she said, sounding a bit uncertain. He didn't let go, and his own eyes were stinging so he couldn't lift his head.

'I want to go home,' he admitted. His voice was rough as the broken glass littering his floor. If he wasn't careful, it might cut Pepper too. 'Tony's got you, and you've got Tony, but the one I got died so fucking long ago.'

'Oh, Bucky,' Pepper sighed, squeezing him tight. 'I'm so sorry. I'm sure she would have known what to say if she were here. I'm so sorry I don't.' Bucky pulled away. He didn't want to correct her or explain, so he just forced a smile. This one felt just as tired but he didn't mean it this time. He hoped Pepper couldn't tell.

⍟

When Bucky saw Fury in his sitting room, he honestly considered leaving his own house. Bucky had this brief fantasy of turning around and walking out and walking until he hit Brooklyn. He sighed as the door slid shut behind him. He sort of liked the modern convenience of Tony's building, because all the automation and gadgets kept him reminded of what century he was in, but now he wished he could slam a door as loudly as he felt his anger.

'Director,' Bucky said tightly, tossing his gym bag down by the door. Fury stood, rising out of the armchair he'd settled in. It prickled Bucky's hackles, like he was a cat whose territory was encroached. 'You're in my house.'

'Captain,' Fury replied, coolly. 'You've been ignoring our calls,' he added, no pretence or apology. He crossed to Bucky's foyer, extending a hand for Bucky to shake, like he hadn't already broken in. Bucky coughed out a laugh, looking down at the palm extended to him.

'I don't work for you,' Bucky pointed out, letting the hand dangle, empty. He toed his shoes off and reestablished space between them. 'So, no, I don't return your calls.'

'You do work for us,' Fury said. 'You're an Avenger, Cap; you have a duty to this world.'

'See, I don't remember agreeing to work for you,' Bucky said. 'The draft's over. So I don't, in fact, work for you.'

'Why? You're unhappy with the state of things?' Fury asked. Bucky laughed instead of crying with rage.

'You tried to drop a nuclear bomb on Manhattan,' he snapped. His shoulders were tense with anger, because he'd been angry since he woke up and he couldn't keep it down when there was a real threat that he might not be able to do anything about. 'On civilians. On my team. On me. You're God damned right I'm unhappy. If I had the authority to pull Romanova and Barton from your roster, I would. Don't think I haven't voiced it to them.'

'I was against the Council's decision,' Fury said. Bucky nodded, wandering into his kitchen. His unwelcome guest followed him.

'Well, you work for them,' Bucky said. He pulled a glass from the cupboard, filling it with water from his very own tap. He used to go down a floor at Steve's walkup to get water, even when they lived in Steve's ma's old apartment. 'You pick up when they call.'

'Captain, are really willing to let the world burn for your pride?' Fury asked. He raised a brow, over his eyepatch, which undercut his seriousness. Bucky scoffed.

'I don't think I can stop it by working with the men who tried to burn it themselves,' Bucky said. 'Get out of my house.'

'This is Tony Stark's house,' Fury pointed out. 'You trust Tony Stark?'

'I trust that he would also ask you to leave,' Bucky said. He pushed off the counter, and nodded his head at the door. 'Thanks for stopping by.' Bucky turned around, leaving his glass on the island and reaching for bread.

'Who else will recruit you? The Army? They've done worse lately than us,' Fury said from behind him. 'Are you going to go back to being a spy? You'd have to find another dame to work under.'

Bucky slammed his empty hands against the counter, dropping his head between his shoulders. That hit him like a blow. He hated it; he hated revealing himself like this.

'Bucky,' Fury said. 'You've lost a lot. I'll give you that. Agent Carter founded SHIELD, at least in part. It would be a service to her memory.'

'She's lost that,' Bucky said after a long moment of silence.

Bucky breathed slow, turning to face Fury. 'Isn't the war over?' Bucky asked. 'Director, when do I get to go home? I never thought I'd be a soldier forever. I never wanted to be a soldier at all. Why can't I stop fighting? Why don't I get to do that? The war's over.'

'Your home is gone,' Fury pointed out. 'You've lost everything from before. If you want a chance at getting something for now, for your future, you'll be a soldier for us.' Bucky had lost his real home. The promise of finding a new future might have been tempting if Bucky were still in sterile temporary housing, if he’d taken the room SHIELD had offered, if Tony hadn't given him this huge apartment to call his own. Without Tony, Bucky might have felt like he had no other option.

'I don't like the choices you've made,' Bucky said. 'You lied, you manipulated and you tried to destroy a city without coordinating with your own men on the ground. You tried to destroy civilians.'

'I didn't lie,' Fury said. 'I avoided certain truths.' Bucky laughed darkly.

'Look, you need trust to be a soldier,' Bucky pointed out. 'That's what makes it an army, not a bunch of jerks running around shooting guns.'

'Unfortunately, you don't have a choice,' Fury said. 'I've tried asking nicely. Your serum represents a significant investment in proprietary technologies. If you don't want to be a soldier, you'll have to challenge our right to, well, you.'

He pulled an envelope from his lapel, almost shockingly white against his dark clothes and skin. He held it out and Bucky sighed. He crossed the kitchen and took it. He slid it open and pulled out legalese he didn't understand.

'If you'd answered our calls, you would have moved into staff housing in DC, gotten to do a lot of good work, saved a lot of lives,' Fury said as Bucky scanned the subpoena. 'Now, you'll move at your own expense, and spend the next six months to a year sorting out very complicated patents, providing a lot of investigative samples in court-ordered labs. But we did ask nicely.' Bucky searched the page and nodded to himself. 'It can stop any time if you drop your claim to our technology.'

'So you're gonna strong arm me into doing what you want,' Bucky said. 'Really establishes trust between us, thank you,' he added, as simperingly sincere as he could make his sarcasm sound. Fury scoffed, making his way out of Bucky's home. 'My concerns about your respect for human life and agency are resolved,' he called.

The door slid open and shut, without any theatrics or closure.

Bucky sunk onto a stool at the island counter, the sandwiches he was going to make forgotten. He stared at the sheaf of papers that was apparently going to ruin his life. Most of him felt cold, betrayed. A small part, superficial and quick burning, was raging, fuelled by Fury's jab at Peggy, at what she's accomplished and what she'd built. Maybe Pepper would know what to do. She seemed to run Stark Industries, even if Tony's name was on the building.

'JARVIS?' Bucky called, balancing a heel on the spindle of the stool he sat on.

'How can I be of assistance, sir?' JARVIS asked.

'Can you ask Miss Potts to come help me with this, when she has time?' he asked. 'Can you also never, ever, under literally any circumstances, let Director Fury into this apartment?'

'Your security preferences are noted, sir,' JARVIS said. 'I believe Miss Potts will arrive shortly. Are there details I should pass along?' Bucky sighed, tossing the papers onto the island behind him. He shook his head.

'I'm being sued,' he said.

'For what, sir?'

'Myself,' he said. 'I'm being sued for the rights to my own DNA.'

Chapter Text

'The city centre would probably be best,' Tony said from behind them. Pepper typed accordingly into Bucky's laptop. Bucky sat beside her, rudely peering over her shoulder. 'Close to fun stuff, close to the un-fun courthouse and where Kendall is set up.' Kendall was the tech lawyer with whom Tony had put him in contact; Bucky didn't actually know her first name. He'd met her over Skype, which was one of neatest things he thought the future had. She was a terrifying Puerto Rican with dyed red hair. Bucky had always liked terrifying women. He looked forward to meeting her in person. He regretted needing to meet her; he wanted this whole lawsuit to be fought out as hush-hush as he could keep it. He figured he ought to enjoy her as the silver lining of the whole situation.

'Wow,' Bucky said, as Pepper selected an apartment for him, clicking thru small photos and reading over the incredible amenities. 'Gee, I kind of figured I was living in luxury here at Stark Tower. Is it really normal for an apartment to have its own taps and water closets? Look, this one has its own laundry.'

'Yes,' Pepper agreed. 'I remember how enamoured you were when you first met your refrigerator.'

'It's an icebox that keeps cold all the time,' he said. 'It is really amazing.'

'If you like the icebox so much, you must want to marry my robots,' Tony said. He meant it as a tease but Bucky really did like DUM-E. The little bot had so much personality. It let out sad and happy little whirls and it lowered its grasping claw when Tony dressed it down for misbehaving. Bucky did like the robots. He'd always liked science fiction; he felt sometimes like he was living in his own little novel here in the future. He couldn't explain that to them. For one, it felt private and precious, and for another, Tony would be a terror armed with that information.

'I don't have the money for any of this,' Bucky said, looking at the amount of rent in DC. Two grand a month seemed insane to him, but he supposed money was different now too. Two grand was probably more like a hundred and fifty dollars in his day, which was still one hell of a lot for a fucking apartment. The new apartment would have a shower and a water closet and a laundry and an icebox in a real kitchen, with a range and everything. It had way more than the little one-room apartments he and Steve used to share in their twenties, even more than the apartments in the building his parents had bought. He supposed that comfort was what he was paying for. He didn't really know. He just wanted to stay in the Tower, figure out where he stood. He didn't want fight to stop the fighting. It made no sense to him.

'You have the money,' Pepper promised. He raised an eyebrow, challenging how that could possibly be true. 'Just after the invasion, Tony had some of his lawyers take care of it. Did he not—Tony, did you not talk to him about this? You did this months ago.'

'Was I supposed to?' Tony said from behind them. Pepper glared at him and sighed.

'I'm sorry he's such a child,' Pepper said to Bucky. 'It's not like he could have an adult conversation about what he was doing for you. I should have just kept you in the loop the whole time.'

'What?' Bucky asked. He turned in the computer chair to look at Tony, who was slouching coolly at another workstation in his lab. 'What money?' he asked.

'Yeah, I had one of my lawyers get you paid for all the rights,' he told Bucky. He realised Bucky didn't understand before Bucky could even ask. 'You know, the cartoons, the books, a few TV series, the movies they made in the fifties and sixties.'

'Which are terrible, by the way,' Pepper told him. 'The TV series Showtime started in two-thousand-five was actually quite good; they portrayed Captain James Barnes a lot stiffer than you actually are, but it was good. All told, you have just over six million dollars.' Bucky's heart skidded.

'I'm sorry?' Bucky echoed, sure he had misheard. 'What? Why do I get paid for movies I didn't make? Why do I get that much?'

'You've got just over six million dollars,' Tony repeated. 'That's all for stuff they made before you woke up. You get that much 'cause they made way more than that. There's still an active cartoon series, so you'll see per-episode cheques for that.' Bucky stared at his friends. 'They, you know, tell your story, make up new ones using your name and face. They take the rights to your story, your life. You get paid for that, now that you're not a draftee, and also now that you're not dead.'

'Tony, don't say he was dead,' Pepper chastised. 'God, what a terrible thing.'

'I was dead,' Bucky said, 'for all intents and purposes. I had an empty grave that my sisters visited and the world went on without me. It's fine. I'm not dead now, is all.' Pepper hummed sadly, like she wanted to run her hand comfortingly thru Bucky's hair but knew he hated that.

'All the Army-sponsored ones won't give you a penny,' Tony barrelled on. 'You gave the Army your creative rights indefinitely, which is probably the only time a fucking military optioned a comic book.'

'I have—Whoa,' Bucky said. He nodded to himself. Wow, things seemed a lot less scary when he knew how he could pay for all of it. 'Holy shit, I'm a fucking millionaire. I can't believe you did this for me. I can't believe my story got told that much. I mean, holy shit, six million dollars?' Tony laughed at him, but Pepper patted his shoulder.

'It's overwhelming,' Pepper said. 'You know,' she continued, leaning in conspiratorially, 'when Tony does things like this, it's how you know he loves you.' Bucky grinned at her. He had kind of figured. He imagined it had been hard for Tony, coming to meet him that first time. He had grown to understand that the idea of Bucky, or more accurately, of Captain America, had lingered and hovered over Tony's childhood. Howard had never stopped looking for Bucky; he'd believed, like Peggy had for years, that no Cube-powered nuclear explosion meant no dead captain. Bucky imagined it had to be hard to have a father who worked so constantly and then spent months at a time looking for some dead asshole in the Arctic who was always described as so perfect. He imagined it had to be hard to vie for your own father's attention against a dead man.

Bucky had had a hard time meeting Howard's son too. Tony was his own man in a lot of ways, in all the ways that counted, but it still hit Bucky in the gut sometimes to hear a sentence or phrase that sounded so much like his old friend's. Sometimes when Tony stood or looked a certain way, Bucky swore he could see Howard's shadow. He hoped that his continued presence in Tony's life was an easy one for him. He felt it was. At the end of the day, Bucky was sure Howard hadn't passed on the real essence of Bucky; the man Tony had been compared to unfairly all his life had been the good soldier, not the good man Bucky actually tried to be. He hoped that was enough.

'Pepper,' Tony complained. She laughed.

'What?' she said. 'It's true. You never say how you feel, Tony; how is Bucky supposed to know?' Tony rolled his eyes and Bucky needled him.

'Yeah, come on, Tony,' he said. He pitched his voice to a whine, the whine he'd use to tease his sisters. 'Tell me you love me. Tell me I'm great. How else am I supposed to know?'

'You know, he's making fun of you,' Tony told Pepper. She looked down at Bucky to check and he shook his head. He hadn't been, not really, making fun of anyone in particular. It was an odd thing in the future; people never just made fun for the sake of it. Maybe they did and humour was just different enough that Bucky missed it.

'Thank you both, seriously,' Bucky said after a long while, closing the laptop. He'd applied for the apartment with Pepper helping him with the online menus and applications he still found a bit of a challenge. She'd been talking about giving him a tablet, which apparently he'd find easier because she had a sense he was a tactile learner. He didn't know if he'd like using the tablet, but he at least knew what the hell it was. Less and less often did he have to point at things and ask what they were. It shouldn't have, but it felt like an accomplishment every time he went a day without asking. 'I really don't know where I would be without you, without either of you.'

'You'd be working for SHIELD,' Tony said easily, tossing a screwdriver across the room and missing the open drawer he'd been aiming for with a clang. As he pointed at the screwdriver, and DUM-E whirled off to fetch it, Pepper chastised him for behaving like a child. 'If you hadn't bailed on them early,' Tony continued, unconcerned, 'you would have been absolutely stuck cleaning up Fury's messes, getting lied to, getting manipulated. I'm glad I listened to Pepper when she told me to find you. In another world, I might not have been so smart.' Tony had gravitated over to her, and he pushed her hair back to kiss her ear lovingly. She pressed her ear to her neck, pulling away from the tickle.

'Stop it,' she complained, but even Bucky could tell she didn't mean it. 'I'll book you a plane ticket once your apartment comes thru,' she told Bucky, Tony hanging off of her like a loving octopus.

'Absolutely not,' he said firmly. She seemed surprised at his outright refusal, but he meant it. 'I am done with planes,' he explained, bringing his hands to his lap to hide the fact they had immediately started shaking. 'I've survived two plane crashes, and that helicarrier nearly crashed too. I'm not gonna survive the next one. It's statistically impossible. It's tempting fate.'

'You know what? I'm gonna figure out the actual statistical possibility,' Tony said. 'JARVIS?'

'I'm on it, sir,' he chimed.

'Just find the numbers,' Tony requested. 'I wanna do the math. How are you gonna get there?' he asked Bucky. DUM-E came back with the screwdriver and Tony took it, moving away from Pepper and tossing it again as she sighed heavily. 'Need a car?'

'No, I'll take the train like a normal person,' he said. 'People took trains all the time. I'm pretty sure when I was three my ma took me to her sister's for a summer in Indiana by train. I'm sure I remember that. God, it was a long time ago.'

'You're so old,' Tony complained. That was a hilarious insult. Tony, biologically at least, was old enough to be Bucky's father. Bucky chuckled. It was nice that some of the surrealism of Howard's son being older than him was wearing off and away.

'What if you need to go to Europe?' Pepper asked. 'Overseas?'

'I will take a boat,' Bucky grumbled. That wasn't practical, especially not if there was an emergency, but he felt it with conviction. He was sure he would compromise in the actual situation, but it made him feel better to rule it out in his head. 'That was good enough in nineteen-forty; it's good enough now.'

'Waste of a week,' Tony said. Bucky laughed.

'Ah, come on,' he complained. 'I got nowhere else to be.'

⍟

'What, so you're moving?' Nat asked, lounging on the couch in his sitting room.

Bucky was still constantly aware of how incredible it was to live in an apartment with more than two rooms, let alone one with taps and even a shower and water closet. His parents' apartment had had three rooms, but he'd left it at eighteen to live with and help support Steve; they'd lived in boarding houses and tiny, tiny tenement apartments with shared kitchens and broken cold water taps in the halls. Nat didn't seem to understand the opulence of this place, her boots kicked up onto the smooth wood of the coffee table. She constantly had her boots on his furniture. Cleaning up after her mud and pebbles reminded him of cleaning up after Stevie's charcoal smudges and paint-filled jars; he didn't mind it.

'I guess,' Bucky sighed, passing Nat a beer bottle. Bucky had one of his own, as annoying and unnecessary as it was. He was constantly, constantly, dangerously sober.

Bucky hadn't been drunk since just after he'd been drafted, in the two weeks before he went to Jersey for basic, and not even then off of real booze, just some hooch Jimmy Watson had been making in the walls of his apartment. Steve had thrown up into someone's trash bins that night, when they were stumbling around an abandoned work-yard and pretending they were a normal couple in love, having shenanigans and getting too frisky to be decent. He drank a beer or a whiskey whenever Tony or Nat or Pepper drank around him; it made him seem more human, he supposed, for all it was a wasted effort. 'I have to be in the same city as the SHIELD HQ to deal with their lawsuit, apparently. Kendall says there's no way to get out of that one.'

'Fucking hell,' she murmured, raising the bottle to her lips. Her hair was straight today, and it made her seem younger somehow, more girlish. She was beautiful even when she looked younger, less deadly.

'Yeah,' he sighed, sinking into the couch, a safe distance from her. She sighed, examining at the label of her bottle for a moment. ''S good?' he asked. She hummed her approval of the brewery.

'I'm being relocated to DC too,' she said. 'It's why I came over today, to tell you. Wonder if it's a coincidence.'

'Ah, Fury probably knows we're friends,' Bucky grumbled. 'Wants you around to keep tabs on me.'

'I don't keep tabs on you,' Natasha told him, sounding almost offended. 'Come on.'

'No?' Bucky asked, challenging it. He liked Nat. He did. She was smart and funny and could even be sweet, if he gave her the chance. But she was also thoroughly SHIELD, and Bucky couldn't blame her for that. Coming from where he got the sense she came from, and if one were to stay in the same line of work, SHIELD was as straight as the going got, or at least it seemed that way. Bucky didn't really trust any of it, but Natasha did.

'I don't know,' she admitted. 'I like you. I don't like trying to spy on people I count as friends. I don't want to try to trick you into working for SHIELD either; you don't want to, and I respect that.' He frowned at her and she explained further. 'You had concerns about SHIELD, and you shared them. I didn't listen, and I won't, but I liked that you worried about me. And about Clint. Agent Barton,' she explained.

'No, I know Clint,' he promised, raising his bottle again. Clint too had thanked him when he had voiced his concerns about SHIELD. Clint had taken Bucky off campus, showed him the pictures he carried of his wife and two kids. He had explained that Fury had set up a way for them to be safe, even after all Clint had done in his past. He explained that because of Fury, even the angriest of people looking for Clint couldn't find his family, and Laura still got to have the little, local dairy farm she'd wanted as a girl. Bucky hadn't pressed him on what he'd done to make such enemies, but he had understood why the opportunity to protect his family had been enough to buy his loyalty for life. He had made Clint promise to be careful, and Clint had laughed at him. His wife, Laura, made him promise the same thing every time he left their house. Bucky felt glad to know Clint had a good reason to be careful. He was glad Clint had three very big reasons; he was glad to know Clint and his wife were trying for a fourth.

'But you haven't brought it up even once since I told you I wouldn't leave,' she continued. 'I should return the favour and not make you come back to SHIELD.'

Bucky stared at her in the comfortable silence, finding this outlook refreshing. It suited her. He had liked Nat from the moment he met her. Her sense of humour, the few moments he'd seen it, endeared her to him further. She seemed to think very little of herself, like the things she'd done in her past kept her value down now, but she also worked as hard as she did at SHIELD because she was trying to make things right. Bucky didn't know what things she had to make up for, nor would he look them up in the collection of SHIELD files he had, but he respected a woman who righted her mistakes, or at least tried.

'That's, uh,' Bucky said. 'Thanks.'

'Yeah, well,' Nat replied. 'You're one of the good ones, Barnes. They seem to get rarer and rarer.'

'Anybody can be a good one,' he told her. 'It's about the choices you make, not something magic and unchangeable. Not spying on me is a good choice,' he added. ''S all it takes.' Nat gave him a sly smile at that; Bucky wondered if he would ever learn to read her.

'I have a friend in DC,' Nat said suddenly. 'She works Statistics for SHIELD, no spying, just data entry and analysis. She might be a good choice to ask out.' Bucky coughed out a laugh, pulling from his beer.

'No, no,' Bucky said. 'Thanks for the thought, I guess, but I'm not looking.' Nat eyed him. 'What?' he prompted. She raised her brows and looked away.

'What, do you already have plans in DC?' she asked. 'I doubt you've been there before.'

'I haven't, no,' he hedged. 'New city.'

'New possibilities,' Nat chimed. 'Why not go out with someone? Doesn't have to be Kristen, but somebody. 'S gotta get lonely.'

'Yeah,' Bucky admitted. He had grown up with his sisters' clamouring in the room beside his; after he'd moved out, he'd spent his nights sharing a bed with Steve. The new world was lonely. 'But what am I gonna do? Date a statistician?' he asked. 'What's the point of that?'

'Human companionship,' Nat replied. 'You need a girlfriend, or maybe a boyfriend. Something. No more of those sadness errands you run.'

'Sadness errands?' he echoed. 'The fuck are sadness errands?'

'Your fucking sadness errands,' Nat told him. 'You go out and wander parks and streets and museums and then eat lunch alone in old fucking diners. You wander around Manhattan helping people fix shit from the Chitauri attack; it's become a meme, spotting you.'

'What the hell is a meme?' Bucky asked.

'It's a type of Internet joke,' Nat explained. 'People post Instagram pics of you helping out with the hashtag Captain Cleanup.' Bucky rolled his eyes. He didn't know what Instagram was, but he knew the word hashtag. The last thing he needed was another catchy moniker.

'Hey, aliens came out of the sky and I broke a lot of New York trying to stop them,' he pointed out. 'It's not a sadness errand to try to put my city back together, especially now that I'm gonna have to leave it.'

'It's a sadness errand,' Nat said, firm and with a sly smile. 'You need to get laid.' He nearly choked on his beer, covering his mouth with his other hand while he forced himself to swallow.

'Excuse me?' he demanded.

'Get laid means—' she began, meeting his eyes.

'I know what getting laid is,' he snapped. 'Just—why? Jesus, Nat. So rude.'

'Indelicate?' She laughed as his face burned hot and red. 'I'm serious. Find somebody.'

'Nat,' he groaned. Sleeping with someone wouldn't help the loneliness. 'Come on.' She sighed.

'Yeah, yeah,' she said. She put her empty bottle down, and he got up to get her another one. 'Are we watching anything tonight?' she called over the back of the couch as Bucky went to the ridiculously stocked bar in the guest apartment.

'Uh, yeah,' he replied. He left the lid on the granite of the bar. 'Yeah, Tony's coming down at eight thirty to show me how the Netflix works. We'll start the movie after Pepper gets home from work.'

'Wow, party night,' she said dryly, accepting her second beer. 'Is Bruce joining us?'

'I invited him,' Bucky replied. 'Is Clint in town?'

'No,' Nat said; she left it at that. Bucky smiled at that as he settled himself onto his seat.

It was nice that at least one of the Avengers had a real family, a real home. Bucky had found out Clint had a family after Clint had been released from Loki's mind control. He couldn't quantify his relief that Clint hadn't been taken down before he'd been freed. He couldn't quantify his relief that Clint got to go home to that family.

He couldn't even quantify the small, sharp burst of jealousy that Clint, and not him, got to go home.

⍟

Someone knocked on Bucky's door. He turned to peer thru the open shelving dividing his kitchen from the foyer, wondering who it could be, who could be visiting the home he'd lived in for less than a week. Bucky wiped his hands on terrycloth and left the pots in his sink. Bucky crossed his new apartment and checked thru the peephole. Standing on the other side was a burst of red hair. Bucky opened the door with a grin.

'Nat,' Bucky greeted. 'It's good to see you.' It was, even if he was sure she had been reassigned to DC because of her relationship to him, but their relationship was friendly and with Tony and Pepper in New York, he felt pretty fortunate at least someone he knew in this time lived in DC.

Without Natasha, Bucky would be alone in DC. Peggy was in an Alzheimer's care centre in Maryland, near to her daughter who lived in the city, but the few times Bucky had been since he moved, she hadn't been well enough to know him. It was almost worse being close to Peggy when she didn't know him; she used to recognize just his voice over the phone.

'I'm sure you're not serious,' she replied. 'But don't worry. SHIELD did send me, but I'm not going to go thru the whole scheme they want me to.'

'Why not?' he asked. Nat shrugged.

'They did, however, give me a budget for a day on the town with you,' she told him. She waved a tiny plastic thing Bucky knew as a credit card. He had one. He found it more convenient than cash, actually, even tho his father's voice rang in his head, telling him credit and banks weren't to be trusted.

'I just want to give you the opportunity to take the free lunch.' Bucky laughed. She grinned. 'It won't affect your record of being non-compliant, by the way,' Nat added after a moment passed without him accepting. She tucked the card into a pocket inside her jacket. 'SHIELD is supposed to have no direct contact with you during the suit, aside from Legal, so it's strictly off-the-books.' Bucky blinked at her honesty; he felt a bit thrown.

'Thank you,' he said. 'I just finished cooking lunch, tho. My upstairs neighbour gave me a goulash recipe. Missus Ouli is this Hungarian lady, probably around my age.' He meant his age if you counted from his birth year, not his biological age. It was odd for those who understood his references to seem like they were no longer his peers.

'She's a little batty, but she's real nice,' Bucky said. 'It smells pretty good too. So does the bread I made yesterday. Come on.' He stepped out of the doorframe for her to pass by and she eyed him suspiciously.

'Are you inviting me for a free lunch?' she asked, impressed.

'I guess,' he said. 'You could reimburse me if you really wanted,' he joked. 'I don't take tiny plastic cards, tho.' She came in, slinking past him too close. From the way her eyes stuck on his as she did so, he reckoned it was on purpose. It was a flirtation, and he didn't know what to do with it.

'Let me take your coat,' Bucky offered. Nat's coat was just lightweight flak, the same green as standard battle fatigues. The look of it always unsettled him out when she wore it; when he saw it out of the corner of his eye his heart jolted like he was out of uniform, unarmed, and unprepared on the battlefield somehow.

'No, thanks; it's kind of cold in here,' she said. Bucky didn't have the air cooling box in the living room window on, but the stove fan in the kitchen was probably pulling in March's cold air from the open window above the sink.

Even after living in this new time for a while, Bucky couldn't believe how many windows his place had. He remembered the boarding room Steve had rented after Bucky had left for war; it had been just a room and a half, with a window in the half room. It was hardly secure, but he had to keep telling himself that it wasn't wartime anymore. The half-dozen big windows thruout the apartment made him pretty pleased most days. He liked standing by them, watching people pass by, as he drank his coffee in the early morning.

'Sorry about that,' he offered, in his tee shirt and jeans. 'I'm pretty impervious to cold, so I guess I didn't notice.' Really, he'd been unnaturally cold since he woke up; he stopped noticing the temperature around him, because no matter what it was or what he tucked himself into, he had a cold, sad chill in his bones. He slid the kitchen window nearly completely shut and stopped the fan in the ceiling before grabbing bowls for them.

'Wow, this is a very empty apartment,' she said, running a finger over the open shelves. He hoped they weren't dusty. His shield sat on the very bottom shelf. There was a gym with an all-cement basement and the owner of course liked having Captain America come by. He'd put some odds and ends down there; at half-strength, Bucky could toss without destroying the place, and spar upstairs with the MMA fighters who trained there. There was a little Korean spitfire with the dirtiest jokes, a young woman called Michelle, maybe twenty-one, who Bucky wanted to teach to throw the shield. He'd have to get over his protective feelings about the dumb vibranium frisbee first. He'd learned some new moves from the fighters, and they claimed they had too. It was nice. Bucky went a couple times a week. 'You gotta get something in here. You gotta make it look like a home.' He smiled at that. Her concern was sweet.

'Brooklyn is home,' Bucky told her, even tho he'd been living in Midtown the last six months. Tony and Pepper made it worth being in the city proper. 'DC is only for now. It's too quiet here.'

'It's only quiet compared to New York,' she said. 'You been woken up by sirens here?' He shook his head, going back into the kitchen and fetching two big bowls. 'Matter of time. Your table is gorgeous, at least.' She sat at the oak table after carrying the water glasses for him; he cut two nice slices of crusty brown bread from the first of two loaves he had made yesterday before moving to the table to join her. Bucky was pretty fond of the table, which he had got in a flea market and stripped and restained. It was in fact the nicest thing in his apartment. His ma woulda made him a nice tablecloth for it, but if he'd been home with his ma, Steve would have ruined the thing with charcoal and ink in about a week. The table stayed bare for now, just a couple of books, the salt and pepper, and his closed laptop on the end. 'Thank you,' she said when he placed a bowl, the bread and cutlery in front of her. The butter dish sat in the middle of the table, the white ceramic catching the sunlight.

'You're welcome,' he said, sitting a seat away and at the head. 'Missus Ouli is an angel. Fuck, this is really good,' he added around the goulash in his mouth. She snorted so loudly, and then covered her mouth when he shot her an amazed look.

'It's so funny when Captain America swears,' Nat said. 'Sorry. I'm not teasing,' she promised.

'It's fine,' he laughed. 'Captain America is just a character; it's not really me. Just my call sign.' She nodded as she chewed. 'You know, I watched one of the movies they made about me in the sixties, in sixty-eight, I think.' She nodded. 'It was on the, uh, the TV there, and it was terrible,' he said. The dialogue had been forced. He'd never talked they way they made the man playing him talk. He had had to mute the battle scenes, could barely keep his eyes on the screen. The roar of planes and air raid sirens and the booms of artillery: that they had gotten spot on. He remembered the first action scene, the sudden cut to battle, had nearly forced him right back to those moments when it was do or die, when he did to stop more people from being killed.

'You were such a stuck up asshole in that movie,' she agreed, before he could even say it. 'I think they were going for, like, a serious, dutiful man but something made you seem like a fucking dick. That whole speech you gave about having orders and following them, like you didn't get your start going AWOL. It was nice meeting the real you.' He looked down at his food, pleased somehow that she thought so.

'I'm glad you don't think I'm that much of a dick in real life, Nat,' he told her.

'Can I ask you something?' she said. He shrugged. 'It's personal; I just—Well, you seem so level-headed.' He took a big gulp of water and waited. 'When Loki mentioned that person—' He nearly dropped his spoon; it clattered against his bowl. Nat eyed his hands, no doubt storing away their shake. '—you just broke. You'd been awake for only a week or so, but that was the only time I ever saw you shaken.'

'Yeah,' he said vaguely. He put down his spoon and leaned back. The hot spice of the goulash had seemed to turn to ash in his mouth. He looked away from her, staring absently at the shield on the bottom of his shelves. The MMA fighter he wanted to teach to throw reminded him a little of Steve: by all rights, too tiny to hit like they did. Steve had been full of ideas of how to better utilize the weapon. He'd been the one to show Bucky how to catch it on the rebound, tried to explain how to just know where the shield would bounce back to, where the straps would line up. Tony was going to make him a magnetic recall relay, which would be neat as all hell once it was finished. In the meantime, every time Bucky threw it was like a reminder.

'Sorry,' she said. 'I just worried about it. About you.'

'It's fine,' he lied. 'How—I mean, what have you put together?' She shrugged.

'Not much,' she admitted. 'Loki mentioned a feisty little blonde. He said you were in love. He made it sound like you got her killed.' Bucky bet the incorrect pronoun was intentional; people hated opening up, but they generally loved correcting others. He sighed heavily, trying to expel the sudden cold in his lungs, like thin mountain air.

'I did get him killed,' Bucky promised, hoping his voice didn't crack. 'His name was Steve, Steve Rogers.' Something about Nat's frank denial of SHIELD's request to recruit him, maybe even Fury's request, made him think she was genuinely asking for him. If this visit was off the books, and if she weren't following the orders she'd gotten anyway, she must really here as a friend. He felt sure of it, because they were friends, and her gaze was so sincere.

'We grew up together. He was, uh.' Bucky broke off, trying to even think of a way to describe him. ‘He had the biggest heart and spirit you could ever hope to find, but he wasn't healthy. A lot of what was wrong with him woulda been fixable, now, but then—We always thought the winter would kill him, just take him in a bout of fever. He wouldn't let it, tho. Too stubborn to die sick, I guess. He was a lot of things, but weak or delicate was never, ever, never one of them.

'When I got drafted,' Bucky began, thinking of it, 'I was real upset. I thought I'd leave, and he'd be alone, and what if I never saw my sisters again, you know? He told me that it was my duty to serve. I got my card before America even joined the war, and I didn't know what the point of it all was other than to tear me away from my family, and he told me that the Nazis had bullied their own people and now they were gonna bully the world.' Steve had said it was only a matter of time before America stepped up, because they were supposed to be the land of the free and the Nazis were gonna try to take everyone's freedom, not just that of the people like Steve. He had said that it was the right thing to do, and he'd refused to let on to Bucky how sore he was that Bucky would go and he would get turned away.

'If I could play even a part in protecting people, I had to,' Bucky said. 'He made it seem like less of a sacrifice. I don't know how he got in—he was sick and small and had a crooked spine and his ears don't work so well—didn't—but he got himself signed up. His dumb ass even put his religion on his dog tags, as if the Nazis didn't have enough reason to kill him. He became a medic, served while I was in Project: Rebirth, and while I was intelligence in the SSR.'

'A medic?' she said, sounding surprised. It was trivia now, something few people ever remembered, but he nodded.

'Yeah, at first,' he agreed. He swallowed hard, his throat rough as the sea at Wimereux. 'HYDRA captured the entirety of the one-oh-seventh. His medical corps was attached to them, and the rest of the medics were killed in the ambush. HYDRA, or I guess Arnim Zola, singled him out. Tried to recreate my serum on him. He couldn't fix everything that was wrong with Steve, and then after the rescue, Steve fought with the Commandos. He fought hard.'

'Was that when you went AWOL? The rescue?' she asked, jumping back thru the timeline of his story. 'Was it just 'cause of him?' She let her spoon clink loudly against her bowl, clearly trying to make him eat. He smiled dimly at the subtle concern. He picked up his spoon and poked his food, but his stomach felt wormy as he tried to think about Steve without feeling like an open complex fracture was scraping against rusted metal.

'I might have gone when I heard that many men were captured and that no one else was gonna go after 'em,' he said. 'It's hard to know. But I knew he was there, dead or alive, and I knew he thought I'd come for him. He had to think that, in some part of his mind. I was always pulling him out of trouble.'

'And then he died,' she put in. His eyes stung and Bucky huffed a shaking breath. 'Are you OK?' He rubbed a calloused hand over his mouth, nodding.

'I got him killed,' he repeated. 'You know, it was a risky op, but I thought it was worth the risk. Planning it, you know, Phillips, Peggy, everyone: they kept telling me if anyone fell off the train, that was it. Abyssinia. They kept saying, you know, even you, even with the serum, you'd be killed by the fall. It was dangerous, and I insisted we do it. They all thought it was a bad idea. I just knew it was our only chance to get Zola.'

'Did he fall off the top?' Nat said. 'I think you zip lined onto the train. I remember a cartoon Clint showed me, where you did that.' Bucky shook his head.

'No, three of us got inside just fine.'

'I didn't disarm a weapon I should have,' he said. His voice sounded like sandpaper. 'I thought I'd taken out the gunman, and Stevie was in a tight spot, so I didn't follow the protocol. Then I got myself into a spot where I was gonna get killed. He drew the fire away. He got blasted out the side of the train.'

'Jesus,' she cursed.

'He actually caught a railing on the side,' Bucky admitted. He could see the whole scene in vivid colour in his mind's eye, could feel the wind and the speed and the horror of that moment. 'I didn't catch him when it gave out. Wasn't quick enough.'

'I'm so sorry,' she said. He nodded. 'It must still feel fresh, huh. The loss.'

'He shouldn't have even been there,' he said. He wiped under his eyes, even tho he was definitely not crying. Nat didn't say a thing about it. 'I shoulda sent him home when I had the chance. I coulda sent him home.'

'Why, so he could have been the one to live without you?' Nat asked. He looked at her suddenly. He had never thought about it that way, never even considered how hard Steve might have had it if he'd been the one to survive. God, Bucky would have probably still ended up in the Valkyrie, in a half-destroyed, armed aircraft headed for his hometown, headed for Steve. He would have still crashed it. Steve would have been the one alone, the one left behind. 'It sounds like six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other.'

'You ever been in love?' he asked.

'No,' she admitted, sounding disarmed by his question. He supposed she was used to being the one in control of where the conversation was going; he imagined she spent little time in the hot seat herself. 'No, I haven't.'

'Look forward to it,' he told her. She frowned and he nodded, continuing. 'Seriously. I know I make it look like it just hurts, but every second I had with Steve was worth this; a hundred times over, it woulda been worth it.' She stared at him for that and he smiled sadly. 'He would've liked you, I think,' he added. 'He had a great sense of character, better than mine.'

He forced himself to eat more. She let him in silence.

'I shouldn't have pried,' she offered, after a long while. 'I was just worried about my friend. I'm still worried, frankly.'

'It's OK, Nat,' he said. 'I'm fine.' He only sort of meant it.

Chapter Text

'Good work, Romanova,' Rumlow said as she climbed back into the van parked at the back of the building across the street from Barnes's apartment. 'It wasn't a lot, but it was useful.' Natasha sighed, pulling the tiny mic she'd been wearing out from under her jacket collar. She passed it over to him without turning it off like she was meant to.

'I'm not doing this again,' she said. Rumlow eyed her as Rollins started driving away. He flicked the mic off with a sigh and began packing the tiny thing away with the rest of the sound equipment. She didn't help, sitting on the bench by the dark video monitors and staring out the one-way windows at the back.

'The orders come from the very top,' Rumlow pointed out. 'You'll be here next week.'

'I won't,' she said. 'You can find someone else if it's so fucking important.'

'Aw, did his fuckin' sob story make you feel bad for him?' Rumlow snapped. 'Is Black Widow all butt-hurt for Captain America?'

'You've heard me try to talk about the suit; you've heard him deflect questions about it, every single time I've been bugged with him,' she snapped right back. 'This intel has nothing to do with the mission we've been given; it has to do with things that are his fucking business.'

'Maybe your mission,' Rumlow said. 'We've got different orders. And since when did you start giving a shit about privacy?'

'Since he made it clear he respected mine,' she replied. 'He's a good man. He doesn't deserve to be spied on.'

'Good man,' Rollins snorted from the driver's seat. He was an efficient agent but otherwise a piece of shit so Nat ignored him. She didn't even give him a glare.

'The world isn't a meritocracy,' Rumlow sneered. 'People don't get what they deserve. We'll see you for this on Tuesday, thirteen hundred hours, or you'll get reported up top. You find out where he'll be then; we'll find a place to park.'

Nat didn't argue it. She was simply sure that her mic and coms would malfunction inconveniently. He had really loved Steve, Nat could tell. She thought love was an unnecessary risk and burden to carry, and looking at the pieces of Bucky, she was more sure than ever that she was right. What had been the point of that love? He would have to work so hard, so long, to even begin to fix himself, if broken hearts that size were even fixable. She worked less hard to make sure no one had the ability to break her like that. It was safer that way.

She wondered what orders Rumlow and Rollins had gotten from Fury, why they differed from hers. She considered asking, but it wasn't like she had never been sent on an op with different orders than the rest. Things happened on a need-to-know basis. No one could spill all the beans because no one knew everything. It was safer this way too.

Sometimes Nat wished she could compromise survival. She might feel more secure while she lived, at least.

⍟

'I'm sorry, sir, but you seem to be unable to book a ticket,' the ticket agent said. Bucky stared at the young Latina clerk. She looked genuinely sorry, probably not because she felt sorry for each passenger she was unable to book but because he was Captain America. He had anticipated that might move him thru this part of the process quicker, not get him an apologetic look.

'Why not?' Bucky asked, taking the passport she offered back to him. 'Is it 'cause the birth year is from about ninety years ago when I look less than thirty? I can explain that part,' he promised, hoping the problem was somehow that simple. She smiled nervously at that.

'No, it says here that your passport and travel rights are frozen pending investigation,' she told him. 'Is there a criminal case open against you?' He buried his face into his hands, hunching over the ticket counter.

'No, a proprietary technology case,' he replied. 'Civil charges, not criminal. Seriously?' he demanded, lifting his head. 'Do you know what's happening on the other side of the country right now?' She nodded.

'I know,' she agreed. 'I wish I could get you there first class on our fastest flight, but—' She looked back down at her screen, shaking her head.

'Is there a manager?' he asked, cutting her off rudely. He regretted it immediately, but the terror running thru him prevented him from apologizing. 'Just, I figure you don't actually know that much about why I can't leave DC. Will the manager know or should I call my lawyer?'

'I'll get her,' the ticket agent promised, and she left the counter. He glanced behind himself as she did, unable to help it. He had to face the desk to speak to her, but it meant turning his back on the line of people waiting for ticketing, and the large, glass windows, the many, many doors, and the only area of the  one could reach without being vetted by security. As anxious as he felt about Tony's situation, all of that was ramped up and worsened by the horrible tactical position of the ticketing desk. Bucky resented himself for it, but he couldn't help it. He hated having his back to the windows, especially when he should be already heading to a battle, not stuck in line at a fucking airport as a ticketing agent fetched a manager. A few people in line behind Bucky grumbled at as the ticketer moved to the back room to call for a manager, but he ignored the sounds of displeasure. The manager was a coloured woman about Tony's age, and she waved Bucky away from the open ticket desk to a closed one.

'Hi,' Bucky said, hauling his bug-out with his shield and uniform inside. The bag had had his uniform and some other basic supplies packed since the first day he moved his things into his DC apartment; after receiving Tony's SOS signal, he'd yanked it from his closet and grabbed his shield on the way out the door. He wore his more practical, black combat boots already, and his undersuit was comforting under his clothes. 'I'm—'

'Captain America,' she said. He was going to say his actual fucking name, but most people still called him by his comic book title. He smiled tightly. 'I know.'

'You must be Mary,' he said, having read her nametag at a distance to avoid looking like he was staring untowardly at her admittedly ample chest. He shook her hand over the desk. She gave him a warm, touched smile.

'Yes,' she agreed. 'Look, Captain, in all honesty, the fact you're here trying to book a ticket is probably a violation of whatever legal freeze is on your passport.' He tapped the binding of his passport against the counter, unable to stop fidgeting. Tony was in trouble and Bucky was on a freeze.

'What does that mean?' he asked.

'You're likely in violation of the same restriction that moved you here from New York City,' she said. 'You trying to leave the state, or, I suppose, the District: it's enough to get you arrested.'

'Really?' he demanded. 'God, I go to Maryland every other day to visit—You're telling me I can get arrested for trying to go help Iron Man with the Mandarin?' Mary nodded.

'I know it's possible for you to get arrested,' she said. 'I don't know the nature of your charges; either way, this can mean big trouble for you. You already were flagged by our system. Frankly, even if you turned around and got well within city limits, the fact you attempted to leave might be enough to warrant whatever legal recourse a travel violation might open you up to.'

'Damn it,' he cursed. 'God damn it.' He wanted to punch something. The bones of his wrist felt tight and furious; the stress of his fucking uselessness lately would kill him, he swore.

'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'I wish there were something we could do.'

'Not unless you have a fake passport lying around I can have,' he joked. Mary smiled falsely, uncomfortable and clearly concerned as he was about the terrorist on the loose. 'OK. I'll—I'll see what I can do. Thank you, for explaining,' he said. She nodded and he wandered away from the counter. He stood outside, tucking his passport into his jacket and pulling out his phone.

'Kendall, please,' he said when the secretary at the law firm answered with a chirp. 'It's urgent, Cathy. Thank you.'

'Captain Barnes?' Kendall greeted after a moment. 'What's so urgent? I was in a meeting.'

'There's a terrorist trying to kill Tony and probably a whack of other people,' Bucky told her. 'I apparently can't leave DC.'

'You didn't try, did you?' Kendall demanded. 'Barnes, tell me you didn't try.'

'I'm at the airport!' he snapped, running a hand thru his hair. Some airport staff directing taxis looked over; he was shouting and had to really get a hold on himself. He forced himself to breathe; the DC air felt like ice and car exhaust. 'I got an SOS signal from Tony; of course, I fucking tried.'

'I wish you hadn't done that,' she lamented. 'It's my fault; I should have been much, much clearer about the nature of being a witness property to you. Until the courts decide your serum isn't owned in any way by SHIELD or its remnants of the SSR, you have to stay within the reach of those who might have a claim to that technology.'

'This is such bullshit, Kendall,' he began, his voice creeping towards hysterical. 'People are going to fucking die and it's because SHIELD thinks they're allowed to own me?'

'Well, they're trying to argue they own technology embedded into your genetic code; it's not the same thing,' she hedged. 'Barnes, god. I'm sorry this is happening. The best thing for you to do is to go home, keep off the streets, and hope I can settle this before SHIELD comes to arrest you.'

'Too late,' he told her, spotting an armoured, black SUV round the departures parkway. 'I can see SHIELD vehicles.'

'Don't run; don't move,' she ordered.

'I'm not an idiot,' he replied. Kendall scoffed.

'You just violated your property release terms, so, yes, you are,' she sighed.

'I am not a piece of property, Kendall!' he practically growled. 'I shouldn't have—export restrictions!'

'OK, well, you do,' she said uselessly, not bothering to placate him. 'Let the SHIELD team take you into custody. Don't let them take any samples, not a hair. Don't answer any questions. Don't egg anyone on. Just sit where they tell you and shut up. Have them tell you what precinct they're taking you to; I'll meet you there.'

'I'm sorry about this,' he said. 'I didn't know. I wanted to help my friend. Tony's in trouble, and if I'm not coming, I don't know who is gonna help him. I don't know what's gonna happen.'

'You can't help him from jail, so don't make this worse,' Kendall said. 'I'll meet you.' He hung up the phone and waved at the tinted windows as the SHIELD vehicle pulled up to the curb. He hid a cringe when Rumlow and his STRIKE partner stepped out. He didn't like that these were the two who were sent to take him in. He wondered if SHIELD anticipated they would have to take him down. Two other SHIELD vehicles rounded the parkway entry in Bucky's line of sight. The whole STRIKE team was probably in those vehicles. They were going to try to take him down if he didn't cooperate.

'Hi, Rumlow. Rollins,' he greeted. 'Am I under arrest for trying to stop an act of terrorism?' he asked darkly, even if Kendall had told him to keep his fool mouth shut. 'SHIELD playing for the Mandarin's team?' Rumlow approached him with his hand on his holster. Bucky resented that show of subtle, threatening violence. It was the same attitude that had had him on edge from the first time he met Rumlow; the man constantly oozed cruelty and a quick trigger.

'Well, it's called protective property seizure,' Rumlow corrected, 'not arrest. Do I need these?' Rumlow asked, hefting the thin, useless metal of standard-issue police cuffs. Bucky could snap out of those cuffs like that the same way Rumlow could cut dental floss with its own packaging. Bucky lifted his carry-on from its spot at his feet and made his way across the sidewalk to the SUV.

'I'm a person, not property,' Bucky grumbled, hating the way his hands felt tied even as he stepped of his own volition towards the door Rollins opened. Rumlow touched the back of Bucky's head by habit, guiding him thru the doorframe. It sure felt like he was under arrest. The airport faded behind them and one of the two SUVs behind them pulled ahead of them to form a protective detail. 'What precinct are you taking me to?' he called up from the back seat he'd been buckled into like a child.

'Not police,' Rumlow said. 'Not their jurisdiction.'

'We're going to the Triskelion, SHIELD HQ,' Rollins called back. 'You tellin' your lawyer to meet us there to be a bitch or are you gonna suit up and let SHIELD fly its new captain to help out?'

'I'm getting my lawyer,' Bucky said, his heart clenching at the thinly veiled ransom terms. 'Don't refer to Kendall like that. It's a horrible thing to say about a woman.'

'Bitch,' Rollins repeated, and Bucky bit his tongue. He felt himself draw blood with a tiny burst of copper in his mouth as he sent Kendall his destination.

Seventy years he was asleep, and here he was, under arrest in the back of an SUV. Men like Rumlow and Rollins still thought a big gun made them big men, and they still said hateful, awful things about women like it was nothing at all. He'd first woken up and been told that he was living in post-sexism, post-racial America, but nothing he had seen so far had made that feel true. Women sped up when he walked too close behind them on the streets at night and made him regret seeming so big and scary; he'd seen police stop-and-frisk a dozen times as many brown people as white people in his few months in New York. Lotta things were better, but a lot of things seemed a lot more insidious too.

He was being sued for his own DNA, for God's sake. SHIELD was one of the World Security Council's biggest purveyors of peace, if the mainstream media about them was to be believed, yet they were battling Bucky in court for his right to himself, to be able to go home now that his war was over and his draft card was decades expired. Like Kendall said, they might legally be trying to claim the enhanced, inhuman nucleotides in his DNA, but that wasn't a removable aspect of his person. If SHIELD really owned that, they owned him. It wasn't right. It shouldn't be right.

Hell, they were so unlike merchants of peace that they were holding him basically hostage while Tony fought with the most terrifying nutjob Bucky had heard of since the Red Skull. If he signed a contract or even verbally agreed to put on a suit with a SHIELD logo stitched into Kevlar, they would probably fly him right out to wherever Tony needed him.

The thing was, they would expect him to fly to a lot more places for dirty work and tricky things that they needed. Bucky didn't want to do dirty work anymore. His war was supposed to be over, and liberty was supposed to have won. There wasn't a solution here. Even if there were, wasn't the principle important enough to hold out? Wasn't it worth not being owned, even if it meant Tony had to fight a battle on his own?

Bucky felt sick, suddenly. If Tony died, it would be because Bucky didn't step up. It would be his own fear and hesitation to trust SHIELD that got Tony killed. If Tony couldn't stop the Mandarin by himself, then the price of the Mandarin's destruction fell on him. He should be there. He should be fighting. He should be stopping the destruction, not sitting in the back of a comfortable, armoured truck on his way to a holding cell.

⍟

'There's no way to persuade you to lift the travel restriction temporarily to allow Captain Barnes to assist his teammates?' Kendall asked again. Bucky sat beside her, his arms crossed over his chest as he stared at the ground. The SHIELD lawyers, two wormy fucking white men Bucky hated on sight, shrugged again. 'Is there nothing you can do for us? Given the circumstances in California, this is a reasonable request.'

'If Captain Barnes wants to sign on even as an independent operative,' Franklin began, 'then SHIELD would fly him at our expense to assist. I remind the counsellor that the Avengers Initiative is also a property of SHIELD, not a team the Captain runs.'

'The Avengers as assembled in New York disagree,' Kendall said firmly. 'You know as well as I do your independent operatives have as much say as your contracted employees; it's a difference in title, not freedom. Besides, the Avengers are willing to go by a new name if you'd like to press a trademark, but each member of the team has made it clear they will assemble with or without SHIELD authorization if and when the call comes down.'

'You realise that makes them an unauthorized vigilante group?' Franklin replied. His legal partner sat calmly beside him, taking notes in a modern shorthand Bucky couldn't read, let alone upside down.

'That's not what we're here to negotiate,' Kendall repeated. 'We're here to discuss Captain Barnes's travel restrictions.'

'And as we've said in the past, should Captain Barnes wish to place our technology at risk, he should provide us with proprietary samples and do so on our terms,' Franklin repeated right back.

'So you can recreate my serum as a weapon?' Bucky snapped. 'When I signed onto Project: Rebirth, the terms of my restricted contract were due to expire when my draft card did,' Bucky put in. Kendall hated when he interrupted, probably because he always had such a hot head in these meetings, but he couldn't help it. 'The technology rights of the SSR ended with Doctor Erskine's notes and Howard's technology. I was never meant to be owned like this.'

'Captain, please,' Kendall sighed, trying to shut him up.

'We're not trying to claim we own you, Captain Barnes,' Franklin assured him, like a lying fucking snake. 'We're trying to ensure our technology isn't lost again like it was lost when you were trapped in the Arctic. With the final sample of the serum lost—'

'Senator Brandt brought the man who lost it for you with his security detail,' Bucky said, jabbing his index finger down onto the table. This was a waste of time, and Tony could be in serious trouble right now. He had sent Bucky an SOS text almost fifteen hours ago; this delay was unacceptable and if Tony died because of it, it would be on Bucky. Those thoughts fuelled the fire raging in his chest, turned his anger white-hot. 'If you want to punish someone for that, go after the state of New Jersey; don't come after me,' he snapped.

'Captain—' Kendall said again, and Bucky leaned back, shaking his head.

'This is fucking bullshit,' Bucky muttered. 'I hope you all know that this is fucking bullshit.' Kendall sighed again.

'Barnes, go wait in the hall,' she snapped. He stood angrily, his fingers shaking with rage, and he slammed the door of the conference room as hard as he could without coming close to compromising its glass or its hinges.

'Fucking bullshit,' he repeated to himself as he went, like a misbehaving child sent away without supper, to the waiting room ten feet down the hall. He watched the waiting room TV, playing CNN on mute with closed captioning. The reporter was talking about the Mandarin, about the rising attack and then something horrible happened.

The channel cut back to the main station and main anchors, and moments later the CC caught up with the anchors' lips.

IN THE WAKE OF THE MANDARIN'S ATTACK ON TONY STARK'S PRIVATE RESIDENCE, AUTHORITIES ARE NOW COUNTING IRON MAN HIMSELF AS ONE OF THE CASUALTIES OF THE MANDARIN. WHILE THEY ADMIT THEY ARE STILL SEARCHING THE WRECKAGE FOR THE BODY OF MR STARK AND ANY OF HIS STAFF WHO MAY HAVE BEEN IN THE HOME, THEY NOTIFIED NEXT-OF-KIN AND THE MEDIA THIS MORNING OF TONY STARK'S DEATH. SOURCES SPECULATE—

'Oh, my God,' he whispered, sinking into one of the hard, unpadded chairs of the waiting room. His eyes flooded and went blurry and he looked away from the screen. He braced his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. Tony was dead. The Mandarin had killed him. Bucky was nowhere close to getting out of here; Kendall had promised him he was lucky he hadn't actually been dragged down to a holding cell.

'Captain,' Kendall said from beside him. Bucky didn't know how long he'd been sitting there. He felt like his world had stopped spinning when he'd heard of Tony's death; he felt like he had failed and if he held one more failure like this, it would be the last one he could take. 'SHIELD has agreed to let you go home. I'm going to keep pushing to lift your travel restrictions—'

'Tony's dead,' he said. 'CNN just heard in a statement from the emergency crews at his house in Malibu. It's been destroyed and Tony's fucking dead.' He heard Kendall sink into the chair next to him.

'Jesus, Captain, I am so sorry,' she said. 'Are they sure?'

'I don't know,' he admitted. He lifted his head and stared at the television. CNN was panning over the wreckage of Tony's home in one of their helicopters, smoke and small fires still raging thruout the ruin. 'Seems like they wouldn't announce it if they weren't.'

'I'll keep pushing for your rights to be reinstated,' Kendall offered after a tense, horrible silence. He nodded.

'Yeah,' he replied. 'It'd be good to finish this, since Tony can't.' He stood, making to leave the SHIELD HQ. Franklin and his law partner were still sitting in the conference room, placid and unconcerned with the death Bucky might have been able to prevent, unconcerned with all the death still yet to come from the Mandarin.

'Captain, you need to go back to your apartment and stay there,' Kendall told him as he hit the elevator button. 'SHIELD would have every right to hold you after you tried to leave the state—'

'No, Kendall, they wouldn't,' he snapped. His heart hurt and his anger hadn't started smoking out yet, unlike the wreckage of Tony's home. He tried very, very hard not to yell at her. Kendall was a strong woman and she would yell right back, uncowed by his bulk and his height as they overshadowed hers. He couldn't risk scaring her like that; he couldn't make a scene in SHIELD's view even if he wanted to. 'They don't have any right to stop me from doing my duty. I promised Tony. I promised Pepper.'

'A terrorist killed him, not you,' Kendall put in. Bucky laughed darkly, stepping into the small elevator. Kendall followed him, her heavy briefcase strap digging into the smart line of her blazer. 'You are not responsible—'

'I'm Captain America,' Bucky said. It came out more delicately than he intended. Kendall stared. He watched the numbers above the door drift down from thirty. 'I'm supposed to defend people. I'm supposed to protect the members of my team. I'm supposed to—' His voice cracked. Kendall looked away. He tucked his hands into his pockets. They were shaking again and the smoke of his temper dying stung at his eyes uncomfortably. God, he wanted to go home.

'I'm supposed to be better than this.'

⍟

Bucky paced in his apartment with his cell phone clutched in his hand. Tony had made him a reinforced steel case for his StarkPhone after he had witnessed Bucky crush one in his hand by accident. The strong case strained under his white-knuckled grip, but it held stable enough for his call to trill in his ear.

'Yo, Ice Cap,' Tony called, appearing on Bucky's open laptop. 'Over here.' Bucky nearly dropped his cell phone, rushing to his kitchen table and sitting in a hurry. The chair legs skidded on his laminate.

'Holy shit, Tony,' Bucky said. 'Is Pepper there?' She appeared behind him, freshly showered and wearing Tony's favourite bathrobe. 'Holy shit, Pepper.'

'I'm OK,' she promised him, slinging her arm over Tony's shoulder as she settled on their bed, speaking to the television against the wall, no doubt. Her hand nestled over his heart, and Bucky realised she wasn't blocking out the glow of a tiny reactor in Tony's chest. 'We're both OK.'

'Jesus, I thought Tony was dead,' Bucky admitted. 'They said you were dead and I wasn't—God, I'm so sorry—I tried to come.' He sounded distraught, God. He had to pull it together. Tony and Pepper were the ones who had been thru hell and back; he'd sat on the sidelines and refused to take the shortcut to them because it would mean giving up a medium of independence. He couldn't imagine it felt justified to them, not when Tony had tried to call out for help before things truly went FUBAR.

'We know,' Pepper promised despite his worry she would dismiss his apology; it was useless and he should have fucking been there. 'When we got back home and it was all over, JARVIS told us you'd been arrested at the DC airport, trying to come out to help.'

'Trying to get on a plane, huh, my brave boy?' Tony teased. He looked like shit; he was bruised and gashed and exhausted. Pepper looked fresh-faced and tired, but she looked better than he did. Bucky imagined that was a side effect of the drug AIM had given her. He hoped that was the only side effect. 'Didn't head to the rail yard to try to pay a conductor a dime for a ride?'

'Fuck off,' Bucky snapped. 'I thought you were fucking dead, pal.'

'Yeah, well, I'm not,' Tony promised, looking away as he lounged on his comfortable California King mattress. 'I think we'll come see you, once all this finishes blowing over.'

'I don't have a guest apartment for you,' Bucky told him. Pepper laughed, like she thought Bucky was genuinely funny. He grinned tiredly, pleased she was doing well enough to laugh.

'We own a place out there,' she promised. 'With our Malibu house destroyed—'

'—I'm really genuinely sorry about that—' Tony put in.

'I think it might be our new vacation spot,' she finished, ignoring Tony completely. 'Besides, we want to see you.'

'I tried to come,' Bucky said again, unable to stop apologising for failing them again. He had promised Pepper, after the Battle of New York, that he wouldn't fail again, and yet, here they were. 'If I'd been there, things mighta stopped sooner. Pepper, God, you might have been safer.'

'This isn't on you, Cap,' Tony said, his voice soft and serious in a way it rarely was. Moments like this were when he sounded most like his father. The ghost of Howard lingered in Bucky's mind's eye, a reminder that Howard had never stopped trying to find Bucky. Bucky had been stopped from helping his friend's son so easily. 'Come on. Pull it together.'

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed. Pepper sighed over the line, turning from the camera slightly to press her lips to Tony's hair.

'It's really not on you,' Tony repeated. He leaned into Pepper and Bucky help but wish he had someone to lean into too. 'Bucky, man, really. I made it out. Pepper's gonna be completely cured after two more stabilizing treatments. Right now she's in no danger of exploding and is acting a lot like you, accidentally breaking shit because her hands are so strong. It's weirdly attractive.' He waggled his brows at Bucky and it made him crack a tired grin.

'It's incredibly annoying,' Pepper corrected. 'I don't know how you deal with this amount of strength all the time.'

'Seriously,' Tony said. 'We're both OK.'

'I could have—' Bucky tried, and Tony waved him off.

'Hey, coulda, shoulda, woulda,' he chirped. 'It's all right. We won. There is nothing here to torture yourself with.'

'Since when did you become the expert at knowing what to let haunt you?' Bucky asked, a little sharper than he meant to.

'Since I had the heart surgery I should have had as soon as I got back from Afghanistan,' Tony bragged, his seriousness and the shadow of Howard falling away as Tony admitted his mistakes. Howard had never had the ability to do that, not while Bucky knew him. Seeing Tony realise even this small thing made Bucky more aware than ever that pride was perhaps more dangerous than anything else. 'No more shrapnel in my chest. No more arc reactor holding them out of my ventricles.' Pepper's hand on his chest turned possessive and protective, going tense over Tony's sternum. 'Got some new scars, and got some new healing to do, but it's over.'

'Time to move on,' Bucky guessed. Pepper leaned her cheek on Tony's hair, watching Bucky's face on her screen.

'Exactly, Capsicle,' Tony agreed. 'Time to move on.'

⍟

Bucky lingered in the back doorway of the group meeting. The VA office was one he'd never been to, not that he'd ever gone to the one Pepper had recommended in New York. He'd been too shaken to admit he was shook. Then the Chitauri had attacked and he found himself even more shaken, which he hadn't thought was possible. He hadn't been brave enough then to go. Loki had made him break with a few well placed words about loss; he was practically a liability the way he was going now. When he had gotten Tony's distress signal, when he had thought he had really, truly failed, that had shaken him even more. Even after Tony came back from the dead, Bucky had been up at night with guilt, almost grieving, and the stress of not sleeping was catching up. He couldn't finish his fight with SHIELD if falling asleep was a chore and getting out of bed in the morning was a challenge. Something had made him realise he couldn't go thru life the way he had tried to for months in New York. He had to get better and that meant admitting something was wrong.

He didn't know if the VA was the answer, but he also didn't know what else his options might be.

He didn't think he could become a soldier again, and certainly not for an organization like SHIELD. He didn't want to go back to that, not unless he could do it without compromising. It seemed unlikely he would find a way to do it without being compromised.

'The thing is I think it's getting worse,' a young woman said. 'A cop pulled me over last week. He thought I was drunk. I swerved to miss a plastic bag. I thought it was an IED.'

Most of the veterans in the meeting seemed so young. There had been a war in Iraq and in Afghanistan while he was gone—two wars, actually, and one in Korea and another in Vietnam—and the people who had come back from those sandy places seemed to carry the scars of it like beach towels would haul that same sand, tracking it thru ordinary life.

'Some stuff you leave there; other stuff you bring back,' the group leader said sagely. He was a coloured fella, and Bucky trusted him on sight. What an important trait for a group leader, he figured. He wondered if the man had been taught the skill, or if he'd been chosen because he was innately trustworthy. The way he spoke was calm, compassionate, and absolutely free of judgement. 'It's our job to figure out how to carry it. Is it gonna be in a big suitcase or in a little man-purse? It's up to you.' He continued, and the vets listened and shared. Some of their sharing was almost too much for Bucky, but the group leader cut in when the air started to spark, and he muted the electricity of trauma so well. It felt safe. Bucky lingered in the back until the group leader let everyone know it was time to disperse.

Bucky lingered in the back until almost everyone was gone. The guy said his farewells to the young woman, and then turned to look directly at Bucky, like he'd known Bucky were there all along. Bucky stepped out of the doorframe then.

'Hi there,' the man said, sticking out a hand. Bucky shook it. 'I'm Sam Wilson.'

'Bucky Barnes,' Bucky replied. Sam laughed, a kind and bright sound.

'Yeah, I kinda put that together,' he said. 'You know, next time you come I'm gonna make you sit with everyone else.' Bucky chuckled at the tease.

'I didn't want to disrupt anything,' he said. 'I was late, firstly. And you know, coming back, people recognise me on the streets and in the shops. I wanted to make sure it was OK I came at all. They probably need this more than I do. I just—I wanted to make sure.'

'Of course,' Sam said sincerely, frowning at the idea. 'Dude, this is Veterans' Affairs. Did you serve?' he asked. It was a rhetorical, sarcastic question; as Sam barrelled on, Bucky found himself grinning. 'Then you have a spot in my group.'

'Thanks, Sam,' Bucky said. 'Can I ask you something unrelated?' Sam nodded. Bucky's face burned with embarrassment at the weight of his ignorance; everything Bucky knew was seven decades out of date. 'A lot of words are different now. People don't call you a Negro anymore, but I don't—No one's explained.' Sam chuckled. The room was empty now and he gestured to two chairs in the loose circle. Bucky nodded his thanks and sat down. Sam tossed one of his feet up onto the strut of the next chair over.

'Black, African-American, person of colour,' Sam said, flicking out fingers to number them off. 'Any of those is fine, really. Last one is very politically correct, but the first one is the basic polite. No one in their right mind would think you're a racist, tho, even if you still have the wrong terms in your head.'

'How's that?' Bucky wondered. Sam shrugged, like the answer was obvious.

'You ran a desegregated unit before that sort of thing was OK,' Sam pointed out. 'I bet that was a fight.'

Bucky looked away. It had been a fight. Bucky had threatened to publicly desert several times when shouting about Gabe Jones or Jim Morita with certain generals, even Steve on occasion. He had played politics like Peggy had taught him. Bucky had refused many medals and awards over his service, because they weren't offered to every member of his team. Certain men were excluded, always, and if Bucky had to say more than six words to change some higher-ups mind, he just told them keep their medal and get fucked instead. Having an irreplaceable title and a Senator-made public image had given him that freedom, even if it had given him hell, too.

Sam continued: 'It was World War Two, and you even had a Japanese guy fighting on your team.'

'Jim's from Fresno, and he's a good man,' Bucky cut in by habit, almost sharply. Jim was dead. Bucky's tenses were still wrong, but Sam didn't correct him. Bucky didn't know if it was on purpose that he let it slide, but he appreciated it. Jim had never moved back to California, marrying a WAC officer and living in Kansas with her until he died in ninety-eight.

'Yeah, but you know, to kids like me, army brats who grew up hearing stories about you, that stuck out,' Sam promised. 'But better words are not what you came here for.'

'No, I came here 'cause I wanna sleep thru the night,' Bucky said, talking to his knees. Sam nodded in Bucky's periphery. 'I came here 'cause there's nowhere else for me to go.'

'That's pretty much why everyone's here,' Sam agreed. Bucky nodded, then sighed.

'It seems pretty—intense,' Bucky admitted. He waved a hand vaguely over the meeting space. It seemed impossible that people could talk that openly about their broken bits. Bucky remembered how many soldiers lied and ignored their nightmares and shaking hands, desperate to not be sent home with cannon fever. It had seemed weak, then; it had seemed like you had to forfeit your right to be a man, to be taken seriously if you wanted to admit you were wiped out from the violence. Bucky remembered how many people desperately wanted to pretend they were fine. Bucky remembered pretending he was fine, back then, and now. A huge part of him wanted to keep pretending. It might be easier than trying to fix something.

'Yeah, brother,' Sam said, 'we all got the same problems. Guilt, regret.' Something about the way Sam said it gave Bucky pause.

'D'you lose someone out there?' Bucky asked. Sam nodded, holding Bucky's gaze. If Sam could talk about who he lost without hiding himself, maybe it was possible for Bucky to learn how to do that too. Bucky didn't know how honest he could be, or how honest he could ever get; what Steve had been to him had been more than even a secret. It could have gotten them kicked out of their boarding houses, their apartments, gotten them arrested in the Army, or worse. Bucky made sure he played the role of a proper man perfectly to make sure he at least stayed employed. Steve's big mouth and his frail disposition saw him fired before payday more often than not. Steve had had it hard enough and Bucky couldn't imagine life making it any harder to keep him safe.

How ironic that Bucky had gotten him killed anyway.

'My wingman,' Sam said. 'We were ninety-eighth, Para-rescue. It was just a standard rescue op, nothing we hadn't done a thousand times before.' That was always the way things went, it seemed. People were fooled by their skill and that of their friends, fooled into thinking their ability to pull things off well might somehow protect them from getting shot and killed. At the end of the day, attrition and chance could take anybody.

'How did it happen?' Bucky asked.

'An RPG blew his dumb ass outta the sky,' Sam said. 'Right beside me, nothing I could do. It was like I was up there just to watch.'

'Shit,' Bucky cursed. 'Shit.'

'Yeah,' Sam agreed. He finally broke Bucky's gaze, but just to wave a friendly farewell to a leaving staff member. It was the young lady from the front desk, passing by the meeting room's front doors on her way out for the night. 'You know, after something like that, I had a hard time finding a reason to stay over there.' Bucky knew what that felt like. He wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Bucky had thought the end of his war would bring peace for the world. It sure didn't seem like peace had arrived. There were vaccines, food, Internet, technology, and the world had recovered from the Great Depression and it would bounce back from the most recent one, sure, but things seemed bleak. He wondered if things ever didn't seem bleak.

'So, what,' Bucky began, 'you came home. Just like that.'

'Just like that,' Sam agreed. 'My tour finished. I didn't sign back up. I moved back to DC, stayed with my mom for an embarrassing amount of time while I went back to school, which the Air Force paid for. I started working here and I've learned how to look back without breaking down too often.' Bucky huffed a hard breath out his nose.

'And you're happy,' Bucky assumed.

'Well, the number of people giving me orders is down to about zero, so, hell yeah,' Sam said. Bucky laughed out loud at that. It broke the tension of the moment, and Sam grinned. 'What about you? It must've been something, waking up, huh? It was in the news they'd found you; they planned a funeral, then it was in the news that you weren't actually dead.' Bucky frowned.

'They planned my funeral?' he asked. Sam shrugged.

'Yeah,' he admitted. He sounded sheepish all of a sudden, just a little, like he had thought Bucky had known and wouldn't have said anything if he had known Bucky hadn't. 'They started to, at least. The news leaked that they found you, like, three weeks before they tried to defrost you for science. There was speculation about the Arlington Commandos Memorial—You've got a headstone there—but some historians—Most of your biographers thought you'd prefer to be where your parents and sisters are in Brooklyn.'

Bucky scratched the back of his head, uncomfortable fitting the idea that there were historians who focused on him into his head. There were people who had written Ph.D. dissertations about him, about who they thought he was based on all the information they could find on him while he was dead. There were established schools of academic thought on who James Barnes was.

As far as Bucky had seen, none of the schools of thought included the nights Bucky used to spend in the queer bars in Red Hook, the love he had for Steve, the way he wasn't a man the way he ought to be. He'd always wished he was the eldest Barnes girl, not a boy shoehorned into expectations he didn't want. He'd spent years living with and supporting Steve, being afraid people would find out about their love when it was legally perversion; he'd spent so long keeping it secret to keep them safe. Then he'd died and the secret had been kept well enough that it died with him.

'But you aren't dead, so,' Sam said. Bucky tried to give Sam a casual smile. Being not dead was a good thing, after all. Bucky ended up nodding instead. 'Yeah, real buzz when that came out. And a week later you were kicking alien ass in New York.' Bucky looked away.

'Didn't feel like kicking ass, huh?' Sam pressed.

'Aliens came out of the fucking sky,' Bucky snapped. 'Actual fucking aliens. Then we killed one hundred and twenty-seven in the fight. Then two hundred and eight of them in a single fell swoop closing the space door.'

Bucky couldn't help but mime a swoop with his hand, dim and sad. Sam raised his brows at the exact numbers. They were the best ones Bucky could get his hands on. He had had to know. 'Seventy-eight civilians had died in car explosions or in building damage or by falling debris or by alien guns. Fourteen NYPD officers and nine members of the National Guard had lost their lives against weapons and enemies beyond their pay grade.

'No, it was not kicking ass,' Bucky said. 'It was like a passive genocide. Had to close the door, had to stop destruction, had to do a lot of things.'

'I get that,' Sam agreed. There was a silence, but it didn't feel tense because of Sam. Bucky felt guilty for talking like this when it was clear the VA was closing down for the night. He was sure Sam needed to get home. Bucky shouldn't be holding him up like this. 'Are you getting out?' Sam asked when Bucky was about to make an excuse to go. It was like he was suspicious Bucky would never come back. Bucky cleared his throat.

'Yeah, I don't know,' he said. 'I'm trying. It's not so easy when you're Captain America.'

'No one would blame you for wanting the fight to be over,' Sam told him. Bucky shrugged.

'Lots of people would,' Bucky pointed out. It would be foolish to think all those excited generals who had shaken Bucky's hand after being raised on stories of Captain America and not to think also they felt they owned the soldier Bucky was. All those generals would find it hard to imagine the greatest soldier they'd known settling down as an eager civilian.

'But that doesn't matter, not really. It's actually hard because Captain America—the serum they used to make this body, I guess—' Bucky waved a hand over his dense muscle and huge frame, the inhuman body he had now in place of the stifling male form he'd already had. '—It's hard 'cause I'm a piece of technology, and legally, that technology is owned by the people who give orders. They don't like it when you don't take their orders. They don't like it when you say you're getting out.'

'No shit,' Sam said, sounding confused as hell.

'No shit,' Bucky agreed.

His draft card was up and he couldn't do any of the things he thought he would after the war. The bakery he had worked in and planned to return to was gone, renovated beyond recognition into a bank made of fake marble and steel and glass. The apartments above it still existed, but when he'd toured one with a realtor, they'd been sleek and modern and all-white built-in cabinetry. They were too alien whilst being too close to home.

Steve's building on Middagh Street was gone too, turned into a roaring expressway. Bucky had walked up there when he was still in Stark Tower; he'd found the road ended at a wall. The neighbourhood that had been the last one Bucky had called home had been completely dug out and paved over. It had been dug out in nineteen-forty-six. Maybe Bucky would have had to have carve something new in his hometown no matter what happened. The apartment—The room and a half Steve could afford with Bucky at war—It would have been too small for them and Peggy to start a family in anyway. Mighta been too small to add Peggy to; they might have never looked at the same place.

'It's been almost a year since I woke up,' Bucky said. 'Maybe four months since I got served the papers, and I've been trying to get out that long. Tony, uh, Tony Stark: he's loaned me one of his lawyers, some dame who specializes in proprietary tech laws. She's trying to get me out, and she's working hard, but.'

Bucky shook his head. It had been almost four months so far, and the lawsuit had been a constant burr in his mind's eye. He loved New York, even when it was alien and filled with technology he didn't understand. Stark Tower had just started to feel like a new home when he'd been forced to pack up and leave. Bucky didn't say how hard it had been to wake up to a world empty of everything he knew.

'In the meantime,' Bucky said, not saying either how hard it had been to walk away from Howard's son, 'I'm living here and being a hostile witness property every other day.' Sam laughed, loud and bright. 'It might go faster if I cooperated, you know? Gave the samples and whatever.'

'Played ball,' Sam agreed.

'I just don't fucking want to,' Bucky said. He leaned back in his chair. 'I got drafted when I was twenty-two, and that was nearly six or, uh, seventy four years ago, depending on how you count it. I just want—' Bucky stopped, because he didn't really know what he wanted. He didn't want to figure out how to work under SHIELD; he didn't want to re-enlist; he didn't want any of it. Bucky just wanted to go home, but he couldn't. Wanting that was pointless.

Bucky wanted the life he should have had: going back to Brooklyn, getting an apartment in the Heights, maybe one with a proper kitchen and a parlour, big enough for Steve to have room to do art without packing it up and out of the way anytime they needed to use their single, little table. Maybe Peggy would have come back with them; the three of them could have scandalized everyone by being a trio of unmarried roommates far longer than was decent. Maybe his mother would have caved and let Bucky's found family into her home, let Steve come for Sunday dinners, let Peggy use the baby clothes she had saved from Bucky's sisters.

Sam stared at him, and Bucky avoided the gaze. 'I don't know what I'd do with myself if I got out.'

'When you get out,' Sam began, 'you should try Ultimate Fighting.' Bucky chuckled, thinking of his unnatural strength compared to the MMA fighters at his gym. It would be cheating, surely. 'Just a great idea off the top of my head. But seriously, you can do anything you want to do. That's the beauty of getting out; that's what you have to look forward to. So, what makes you happy?'

Steve had made Bucky happy. Bucky had known Steve almost their entire lives, so he had never tried to find anything else to give him bliss. Nothing had mattered but Steve, but making sure he had enough money in an old jam jar to pay for a doctor next time Steve started getting tired and splotchy with fever and sickness. Steve had been like fucking sunshine. Steve had been like a warm bed and a home and someone to annoy when he was bored and someone to share joy with when he had some.

Steve had been his best friend and his lover and his everything. Steve had been stubborn and idiotic and beautiful and started fights he couldn't win for no other reason than the fact that Steve believed in his heart of hearts that strong people didn't get to treat weaker people like they didn't matter. Steve had had an absurd, idealistic, immovable moral compass and he'd take a swing at anyone who struck out at someone who couldn't strike back, never mind that a sane person would have counted Steve as too weak to fight back too. Steve had made him so God damned happy, even when things were hard and everything they had was a secret. At least it had been theirs. He wanted Steve back more fiercely than he had wanted air when he was drowning in a plane in the Arctic. It was a pointless thing to want. Wanting it made him useless.

Everything else that had made him happy was gone too. His sisters were dead and their children were older than Bucky was. He hadn't even looked them up when he was alive in New York. Now that Bucky was in DC, he didn't know how.

'I don't know,' he said instead.

'So,' Sam said, with hesitation like he was asking because he wanted to know and not because Bucky might deal with trauma better if he asked. It was nice to know he had his curiosities and that he was getting something out of this conversation, if not as much as Bucky. 'Why did you fight in the Battle of New York, then? If you want to get out.' Bucky met Sam's eyes, and Sam took his turn to look away.

'People would have died,' Bucky said. 'A lot more than did. A guy with a sceptre wanted to force the world to kneel before him. So I stepped up.'

'You stepped up,' Sam repeated. Bucky nodded.

'Yeah,' he agreed. 'I don't like bullies.'

Chapter Text

'Hey there,' Bucky called, creeping in the doorway. He knew the second Peggy looked at him that it was her, really her, and he thanked his lucky stars. He wished he could find a way to make things easy enough for her that she wouldn't be tired; even as she smiled a warm greeting, Bucky could see the day had been long for her. He wished he could fix everything for her. 'How's my best girl?'

'Oh, flattered by your attention,' Peggy said, pressing a frail hand to her chest as if Bucky had made her swoon. Bucky swooped to kiss her cheek and settled in the chair next to her bed. 'You look dreadful,' she told him.

'Wow, I guess I'm not your best girl, huh?' Bucky grumbled, even if he knew he didn't look his best. He hadn't slept properly in weeks. May was coming up in a few months and Bucky couldn't help but count down the weeks then days till Steve's death in the back of his mind like a sick dog waiting until he had to crawl away to die.

'That hurts, Pegs; you gotta know that hurts.' Peggy rolled her eyes. 'You know, you roll those eyes any harder, you're gonna give yourself a concussion,' he told her, and she laughed the papery laugh of someone with old, tired lungs that were gonna give up soon.

Bucky missed the laughs that had come from her belly in great guffaws. He'd heard them so little in the war, and he'd always somehow thought he'd get to hear that laugh more often when they went home. He didn't know why he'd always assumed she'd come back to Brooklyn with him and Steve, but she had in fact ended up there for a few years after the war. She'd eventually moved with her husband to work at a SHIELD HQ in Maryland somewhere, no doubt getting treated terribly while doing the best work there. They never talked about that. Neither of them wanted to remind themselves any more than they had to of what they lost.

'Stop,' she told him. 'God, do you always need to be such an arse?'

'It's what you love about me,' he said. She didn't disagree. 'How are you today?' She shrugged grandly.

'I'm an old woman, in a bed, in a hospice,' she told him. 'How good can I really be? But Suzanne is coming by later today with, oh, something. I don't remember.' She said that with such ease. Peggy had always done the hard things so easily.

'It's probably more of that banana bread,' he said, thinking of how often Peggy's youngest daughter baked and brought things to the hospice. He'd never had the banana bread, only her muffins, but apparently it was to die for. The muffins had been pretty damn good too; Bucky had asked for the recipe. Suzanne had texted him a link right then and there. The future was amazing, sometimes. 'You probably won't save me any.'

'It shouldn't be so hard; you come by often enough it would keep,' she mused. 'It must be that good.'

'That's why it's that so annoying you never save some for me,' he pointed out. She laughed but when she stopped, her dark eyes turned serious.

'What's bothering you?' she asked. He shook his head and pulled a face: nothing. 'Come on. What?'

'Same things that are always bothering me,' he told her. He didn't know what she remembered always bothered him, but even when she didn't remember much, she usually accepted that answer. He supposed he'd always been moody enough that no matter where in time Peggy was, she could imagine what he was being a dick about.

'I miss him too, you know,' she promised him. Apparently today, she remembered he was still grieving Steve. That stung his eyes. Things were too fresh. He'd spoken about Steve more than he had since—since forever, it seemed, when Nat visited him a few days ago; he hadn't thought he could sleep worse, but that conversation certainly proved him wrong. 'We all could have really built a life together.'

Bucky nodded, holding back his voice lest it shatter tears out of him. It was so rare he got to talk to Peggy, at least when it was actually Peggy. He didn't want to waste this time with his sad memories or by crying in front of her. Bucky didn't want to waste time discussing what they never got to have. Peggy said these vague things about the three of them, like Peggy imagined she and Steve could have worked for SHIELD while living together with a bachelor, as tho that arrangement could have given them the real family they all wanted. Bucky wondered what people would have said about that. Bucky was pretty sure that life, that family: it would have been so great not a one of them would have cared about the risk.

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed, once he'd gathered himself 'But I mean, you lived. You know? Steve woulda been proud of what you accomplished. I know I am.' Peggy followed his gaze to the mess of photos on her bureau. The centred one was a framed portrait of her husband on their wedding day.

Bucky had met her husband once, before David had even known Peggy. Bucky remembered him as a good a good man. David had died three years ago: happy, old, and in his sleep next to his darling wife. A good way to go, maybe the best. Bucky had to imagine that the family had been very happy together, that David had been a good partner for his wife. Judging by the photos and Peggy's stories, they had been.

Peggy had had three kids, which in Bucky's opinion was the perfect amount of kids, and both of her daughters were university professors, one at Georgetown and the other all the way in Montreal. Her son had become a fireman; he'd been killed in two-thousand-and-three, putting out a house fire in Detroit. His wife, Carol, had moved to DC after he'd died, and she and her kids had lived with Peggy for about half a year before they bought a new house just outside the city. Peggy had talked of that time so fondly; every memory she seemed to have of her family was a fond one. It was beautiful.

'Yes,' she agreed. 'I have lived a life, haven't I?' He nodded, searching those amazing photos again with his eyes. 'It makes me so sad you never got to live yours.'

'Peggy,' he complained. She would have swatted him if he'd been close enough.

'Accept someone's concern, Barnes, for God's sakes,' she snapped. 'My word. It's like you think you still have to be the stoic captain. No one's morale is counting on you, you know.' She coughed and he reached for the water. She waved him off and he took her at her word. The hand on her frail chest now was pained, not sarcastic. Bucky liked the latter much better; he saw the former too frequently. 'Not even my morale. I can take care of that myself.'

'I know,' he said instead. 'I really do,' he promised when she levelled him with an unimpressed look. She seemed barely satisfied by that. 'What? Go on, if you insist.'

'I always insist,' she said, taking her turn to grumble.

'I don't know, darling,' she said, a new habit of hers, but one Bucky quite liked. It suited her. Bucky wondered if he had just never heard such affection during wartime, or if losing him and Steve had made her insistent the people she loved knew it with every sentence and pet name. 'You saved the world, you know. We're the ones who rather mucked it up.'

'Nah,' Bucky said, shrugging her off. 'It's not so bad.'

'Buck, the institution I helped create is suing you for your own body,' she pointed out. 'Who's that bloody racist Steve always said would get birth control and abortions into the United States?'

'Maggie Sanger?' he guessed.

'Gosh, it's like that whole nonsense all over again,' she said. 'It's your body; you're not a drafted man anymore. That should be the end of it. Doctor Erskine would have been perfectly happy with you returning to a civilian role after the war, leaving the Army. I think he might have even wanted it for you.' Bucky nodded. Doctor Erskine had been nothing if he had not been kind. He had been an amazing man. His death was still one of the biggest wastes Bucky could have ever imagined.

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed. 'I don't know what I'm gonna do now, Peggy. When this whole thing with SHIELD is over, if I'm really done with them, what do I do?' He shifted in the chair, trying to get comfortable. 'If something like what happened in New York happens, don't I have a responsibility? I can do stuff no one else can, you know? I might have—a duty to step up. I don't know.'

'Bucky?'

Bucky's head snapped up at the tone of her voice. Peggy's eyes had gone big and brimming all of a sudden, and he did his absolute best to hide the falling of his face. 'Bucky, my God, is it really you?'

'Yeah, Pegs, it's me,' he promised, forcing a smile. It felt fake; he was sure it looked pained. Bucky hoped Peggy couldn't tell. He leaned forward in his chair, taking her shaking hand. 'I'm here.'

'You're alive! God, I've been waiting to see you for so long,' she sobbed, in disbelief. He'd seen this moment a hundred times, it seemed, and he hated knowing again and again how much she had hoped he would come back somehow. He hated himself for coming back too late. He hated that he had come back to someone who found him again and again, but only because she was slowly, slowly losing herself. 'You came back!' He kissed her hand and her tissue-thin skin.

'Yeah, come on,' he said, trying to laugh for her. That usually stopped the tears. He couldn't manage it. 'I had to come back and see if you got yourself that date, didn't I? Come on, tell me about him.'

'About who?' she asked, a tiny, terrible, wet laugh. 'Bucky, it's only been a year; I've been waiting. I knew you couldn't be dead; I just knew it.' He froze.

God, she had never said that before. She lifted the hand holding hers and kissed the back of his palm. He stared at her and was thankful her eyes were closed, because if she could see his face. Bucky's heart was breaking, into a thousand fucking pieces.

'God, you came back,' Peggy sighed. 'There was never a detonation; you must have disarmed the weapons in the crash somehow. How did you get out? Did Howard find you?' Peggy opened his eyes and he tried to pull together. She usually told him all about David, about the way he proposed and sometimes she even told him about the way she'd taken the absolute piss out of him for wondering if they should name their son Bucky, of all the idiot names. God, Bucky preferred that story. Bucky had had no idea she'd waited at all. He didn't know she'd lost hope in him; he had thought she'd moved on.

'Yeah, Peggy, Howard found me,' Bucky agreed, because there was no point in explaining. Bucky didn't hide well enough.

'Bucky, oh, what is it?' she asked. 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing,' Bucky promised, even tho everything in the entire universe was wrong. 'Nothing at all. I'm here. I was always gonna come back for you.'

'I knew it,' she said, and she smiled.

⍟

'Do you want to share today?' Sam asked. 'You've been quiet all meeting.'

Bucky looked up, surprised. He was quiet when he came to the VA group, but Sam had been pushing him to be less so. The expectant gazes of the eight other veterans put his teeth on edge; Bucky forced himself to remember that they'd all come here for the same reasons he had. His war might have been a lot different from theirs, but they knew so many of his stories. To increase morale after the war, almost all his ops had been declassified. These people new most of his stories from the books, the movies, the television adaptations. Bucky found that hard to deal with, but it did make some things easier. Most people assumed they knew so much about him that keeping his old secrets wasn't very hard. People assumed they knew so much that most people didn't ask for anything real.

'I've been sleeping badly,' Bucky admitted under the encouraging stares. 'I keep having nightmares, mostly about the plane crash.'

'Must've been scary, going down,' Sam put in, trying to make Bucky keep going. He shifted in his chair and shrugged.

'I crashed on purpose, so that isn't really what—' Bucky broke off. He rubbed his mouth and forced himself to continue. Every other person here talked openly, if not easily, and they would wait as long as Bucky needed to make his voice come out without breaking. 'There were nuclear weapons on board; I was willing to die to prevent them falling on civilians. I just—I thought the impact would kill me. If not that, I thought the HYDRA weapons on board would detonate when I hit the ice shelf. I thought it was gonna be a quick death.'

'It wasn't?' Helena asked, quiet. Bucky shook his head. His eyes fell to a scuff mark on the tile.

'No, the missiles didn't go off in the crash,' Bucky replied. 'I looked it up after I'd been awake for a while; they were still armed and live when the oil team found me. SHIELD still has them, they say disarmed, in storage facility New Mexico, apparently with no plans to use them, but who knows. Woulda blown up nearly every major city in the continental US if they'd launched, if I hadn't taken the Valkyrie down in time. The impact gave me a hell of a concussion—I could barely see my vision was so doubled—but it—It didn't kill me like I thought, like I wanted it to.'

The room was silent as Bucky tried to go on. He wasn't sure if the silence was tense or patient, but he felt fit to burst. Thinking about the crash, talking about the cold, freezing water: it felt too close, too real. He stopped his leg from jogging up and down. He had to get a grip; it had been decades, or almost eleven months. He had to get over this. He couldn't be afraid of it anymore.

'The windscreen was shattered,' Bucky continued. His breath was shaky and so were his hands. Bucky crossed his arms and resisted the urge to fidget any more than that. 'The heat of the hull melted ice and the plane sank downwards. Slush and water poured in thru the glass and— 

'I started to drown. I didn't want that. I was willing to die to stop those bombs—eager, even—but I didn't know it would mean drowning. I thought it would be quick.

'It took a long time,' Bucky said. 'The slush, the water: it rose slow, and eventually I couldn't tilt my head up anymore. The control panel had warped and it pinned me, just fucking shattered one of my legs when I hit the ice.'

Bucky shook his head. 'I couldn't push the panel off; I couldn't get free. I wasn't—I wasn't strong enough to get out. I don't know what I would have done if it came off. Swam to Canada? Greenland? Unable to see, broken legs? I didn't even know where I was, just that the risk of the bombs going off wouldn't destroy a city, only me.'

'It must have been rough,' Sam prompted.

'I felt my heart stop,' Bucky admitted. He looked up and forced a smile to keep from crying. 'The water went over me and my body made me try to breathe and ice got into my lungs—The serum kept me awake thru all of it and then I felt my lungs full of cold and my heart stopped in my chest, just stuttered and froze and stopped. It felt like a lifetime but it was probably only five minutes until my brain stopped too.'

'So. I thought it was gonna be a quick death but it wasn't,' Bucky choked out. 'I keep dreaming about it and when I wake up, I swear to God, I can feel the ice in my lungs again. No matter how much I cough, it won't get out.'

'Physical sensations are a big part of post-traumatic stress. Remembering they're only phantom, that they can't really injure you: that's hard,' Sam explained. He made it sound simple, clinical, normal. 'But, Bucky, you didn't die in a plane crash.

'You didn't really drown. You were trapped in the ice for a long time, but they found you. You are alive.' That made Bucky meet Sam's eyes. Bucky looked around the room at the other survivors. All of these people were still here too; they had all made it out. They told stories every week, right here.

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed. 'Yeah, I know that, you know, logically.' Bucky shook his head. 'But I was dead, for a long time, in the ways that seem to count now. My—the world went on without me. You know, sometimes I feel like you guys are all so fucking lucky. You went thru hell too; I wouldn't dare suggest otherwise. But when you got discharged or invalided home: home was still here. It might have felt alien and different but—

'At least your world didn't disappear while you were gone,' Bucky said. 'Everybody I loved, everybody I even knew got old and got dead. One person is still alive, but she has Alzheimer's. She doesn't even know me anymore, most days.'

'This time isn't home,' Bucky finished. 'I don't know if it ever will be, because everything I had and everything I loved about my life is about seventy years behind us.'

'Maybe leaving it behind is the best thing,' Sam offered. 'When you woke up, when you learned how long you'd been frozen, you obviously wished you could go back.'

'No shit,' Bucky snapped. 'Last time I saw my baby sister, she was twelve, and she died four years ago. Becca's dead too, and my parents, my friends. If I'd gone home in forty-five, I'da seen my sisters grow up. I'da seen them get married. Fuck, I was in love back then too, and there's no way to get any of that back.'

'No,' Sam said softly. 'But there's an opportunity to start over.'

'We can be your new family,' Robbie said, sounding almost nervous to offer it. 'We lean on each other a lot already; you can lean on us too, Cap.' Bucky smiled, and even tho it hurt, it felt real.

'Look at the circle here, Buck,' Sam said. 'You might have lost a lot to time, but you've got a new support system forming too.'

'I do Big Brothers Big Sisters,' Helena offered. 'If you miss your baby sister, there are lots of kids in DC who need somebody to act like a Big Brother.'

'There are lots of ways of forming those same connections,' Sam promised. 'There's hope. Not even the ice you feel should keep you from trying to hold onto the idea of hope.'

'I hope,' Bucky began, trying to ease the tension in the air, 'that I can go a day without accidentally shutting down my computer. I hope I can become as proficient with technology as the average ninety-three year old.' Helena laughed big and loud at that. Bucky smiled at her.

'You're not really ninety-three, of course,' Robbie said by way of asking. 'No one ever really mentions it, but you're, like, our age. You're not, like, some—You were just a kid like us when you saved the world.' Bucky shook his head.

'No, not really,' Bucky said, unsure what he meant. 'I'll be turning twenty-eight in March. Not long.' Sam moved them onto a new topic, but Bucky wasn't listening. No one pressed him on his inattention. Bucky stared at that scuff mark on the floor.

Things were bad. Things were hard. They might, just might, be able to get better.

⍟

Bucky got home as his neighbour was heading down to do laundry.

Kate was sweet, a nurse, and she reminded Bucky a little of Steve's ma. Missus Rogers had had a rough time of it, as a single mother with the sickest kid Buck thought God could have ever made. She'd loved her boy, and Bucky thought she'd even loved him, and she'd been the same type of compassionate nosy as Kate. Kate didn't have kids, no, but she did have blonde hair and a sweet, sweet smile.

'Hey,' Kate said, greeting Bucky as she closed her door, balancing her laundry on a hip. Dames nowadays did most everything by themselves; Bucky resisted the urge to take the not-that-heavy basket and carry it downstairs for her. 'How was your day?'

'Swell,' Bucky said, polite and untrue. He felt like he'd been dragged by a carriage; it had been a hard day. The VA meetings always felt like a delayed antidote; they helped, but first he had to deal with poisonous memories and the sensation of his muscles atrophying under imaginary venom of anxiety in his blood. 'You seem pretty wiped out, if you don't mind me saying, Miss.' Kate laughed a bit and hefted her basket up higher onto her hip.

'Kate, Bucky, call me Kate. And yeah, just finished my first week in infectious disease,' she admitted. 'It's always hard in a new ward. My scrubs are pretty gross.'

'I'll keep my distance,' he teased, fiddling with his keys to hide the sudden stutter in his heart rhythm. Kate was flirting, almost obvious.

'Not too far, I hope,' she said. Bucky didn't know how to reply to that, so he gave an awkward smile and a farewell nod. Modern ladies flirted with him when he was out and about more than he cared to admit; it unsettled him.

Bucky been fairly popular in his time too since he was good-looking and could dance real well, but he'd tempered interest in him by asking girls to bring along a friend for Stevie. Girls were so rarely willing to look past the tiny guy in front of them to see what made Steve the best person in all of Brooklyn—and maybe the entirety of New York state or the universe—

The strategy had kept him from having so many dates with somebody that a girl might want Bucky to ask her hand in marriage. Bucky didn't know how to avoid what he didn't want now; he didn't know what was polite. He didn't know how to explain he was grieving without explaining the people he'd lost.

'Oh,' Kate called, as she stopped in front of the stairwell. 'I think you left your stereo on?'

'Oh, sorry,' Bucky said, even tho he definitely hadn't. 'I'll remember.'

'It didn't bother me,' Kate promised. 'It was nice, hearing those old tunes. Have a nice night, Bucky.'

'See you around, Kate,' Bucky called back. He looked at his door. It was shut tightly, but sure enough, when he softly, softly tried the knob, it opened; the deadbolt had been unlatched. Music was roaring out of the stereo he'd bought, too loud for his enhanced hearing, an oldie's channel he never listened to. It was nostalgic and hit him too close to home. It put him on one hell of an edge, buffeting against his eardrums.

Bucky slid his shield off the shelf by the door, noting absolutely no movement or disruption in his kitchen. Bucky used the stereo as his only clue to the potential whereabouts of the person who'd unlocked his door. Bucky crept, sneaking the hall until he saw who had settled on his couch. Bucky cursed, leaning his shield against the oversized, open doorframe. He shook his head as he stepped into the open, pissed off before fucking Nick Fury could say a God damned word. Bucky turned the stereo to a reasonable God damned volume.

'I didn't appreciate last time you broke in, and I don't appreciate it now,' Bucky said, no preamble. 'You know, if I were living with Stark's fancy security still, you couldn't've gotten in, and I'd have been happier.' Fury said nothing, just shifted like he'd meant to insult Bucky back but the breath it had taken to try had hurt. Bucky's eyes tightened at the way Fury hugged his arm to his side, pained or broken.

The gesture was terribly was human.

'What are you doing in my house?' Bucky asked, his voice softer despite himself.

'I am sorry about this,' Fury said at a slow, deliberate pace. 'My wife kicked me out.' That phrase sounded like code for something. Bucky hated code.

'Didn't know you were married,' Bucky said, trying to explain that he didn't understand. Fury pulled out his tiny phone and typed.

'There's a lot you don't know about me,' Fury said as he typed. Bucky couldn't help the swell of sincere irritation that brought up.

'I know,' Bucky snapped. 'That's the fucking problem, Nick. That's why I don't fucking trust you.' He flicked the light switch on, and Fury flicked the lamp that lit up off. Bucky frowned. Fury turned his phone: EARS EVERYWHERE.

Bucky sighed, looking around his apartment. He would bet any money—all the money he had and all Tony's money too—that Fury personally had ordered this place bugged, vindictively, as if suing Bucky and taking him from New York wasn't enough. Bucky wondered how much of his privacy had been stolen, how long the bugs had been there, how much SHIELD knew that they shouldn't have. Bucky wondered how long he had been a goldfish for the now-compromised organization trying to get legal rights to his very marrow. Fury turned the phone back and typed something else.

'I am sorry, to drop in on you,' Fury said, to fill the silence. 'The buddy I usually stay with is out of town.' He showed Bucky the phone again: SHIELD COMPROMISED.

Bucky had never trusted SHIELD, but that message terrified him. Bucky didn't know how far SHIELD's power reached, not for sure, but he imagined if SHIELD was infiltrated by something worse, a lot of people might die. God, a huge amount of people could die, and if Fury took refuge in his apartment of all places, he really didn't have anywhere to go.

''S all right,' Bucky said, his mind racing for a code to use, if the were being spied on here. 'Jeez, you know, Nat never mentioned her either. Who knows about your wife?' Fury understood the question, the name-drop; he typed a response.

YOU AND ME.

'Oh, just my friends,' Fury said. Fuck, Bucky thought: Fury hadn't even been able to go to Nat. That seemed impossible. Bucky had thought Nat would be one of Fury's. 'You mind if I stay?' Bucky read the final message.

WE NEED A SAFEHOUSE.

Fuck, Bucky thought again. Fury might not have only come to Bucky's apartment because Bucky was the only one outside the potential corruption; he had come to warn Bucky that whatever had collapsed might crush him too. Bucky looked down at his shield for a moment, his fingers itching to pick it up. Fury began to move.

'Nah,' Bucky said as Fury hauled himself to his feet. Bucky couldn't figure out to say: were you hit by a truck? in code. 'You're welcome to it.'

Fury opened his mouth to say something, when a bullet burst thru Bucky's wall.

The bullet buried itself in Fury's back, and Bucky dropped as two more holes appeared in his drywall. Fury fell, hit bad and hit hard. Bucky grabbed the lapels of his stupid leather coat and dragged him behind the wall below the open shelves, behind cover. Bucky's heart pounded.

Bucky could scarcely remember a time when he would drag a wounded soldier to safety without calling for Steve; he felt panicked as if the fact he hadn't shouted for Steve yet was negligence, was letting a man die. As he pressed his fingers along Nick's chest, uselessly looking for exit wounds, Fury grabbed his wrist. He pressed a USB drive against the inside of Bucky's wrist weakly. Bucky took it.

'Trust no one,' he ordered, before his eye slid shut.

Bucky's door banged open; he had Fury's service pistol out of the man's shoulder holster, in his hands and aimed up before the wood even hit the wall. Kate stood there, her own gun at the ready.

'Captain Barnes,' Kate said. She swung a handgun, sweeping for threats. The killer was outside, Bucky thought, his heart pounding a crazy tempo against his chest. The killer had shot thru the wall; they weren't safe here even where Bucky had sought cover.

'Kate?' SHIELD, Bucky realized, dismissing the second invasion of his privacy for the moment. 'Call for medics, now,' Bucky ordered, because he was still Captain America and Captain America didn't let people who came for his protection die, even if they were dirty, litigious spies. He had protected Loki, for Christ's sake, before Thor agreed to stand down. Kate touched the com in her ear as she knelt at Fury's head.

'Foxtrot is down,' she said. 'I repeat, Foxtrot is down. I need EMTs on site immediately.'

'Do you have a twenty on the shooter?' someone asked from the other side of the line, audible just barely to Bucky's enhanced ear. Bucky peered over the lip of the open shelves and spotted, just a second, a shooter on the next roof, a sharp, strange gleam of metal.

'Tell them I'm in pursuit,' Bucky said. He grabbed his shield, slinging it onto his arm. He hated that this part felt familiar.

Chapter Text

'We need to take him,' Agent Hill said from behind them. Bucky turned to her from where he stood behind his friend, giving Hill a strained smile.

'Thanks,' Bucky said. 'We'll be out in a minute.'

Hill took the cue and shut the door behind her. Bucky moved closer to Nat. He'd been standing a few feet behind her for what seemed like hours, over Fury's body. He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. 01:56. Fury had only been dead less than an hour. The tight feeling in Bucky's heart at seeing his friend grieve made time pass slower than it usually did.

Grief could do all sorts of horrible things.

'Natasha,' he murmured, touching the middle of her back, soft and gentle, his palm flat on her spine. She didn't reply to him, just staring at her dead boss. She placed a hand on his forehead; Bucky imagined it was cold by now. The movement was tender, soft, and more heartfelt than maybe anything Bucky had seen from Nat in the whole time he'd known her. Suddenly, she tore her hand away and stalked out, blowing past Agent Hill and forcing Bucky to hurry after her.

'Natasha!' he called, concerned as all hell. She was shaken. She was never, ever shaken.

'Why was Fury in your apartment?' she demanded, stopping on a dime and getting too close to his face to be anything but confrontational.

'I don't know,' Bucky lied, because Rumlow was coming up behind them. Bucky had never found answers as to what asset he was supposed to join, but he had always made sure to avoid Rumlow and anyone he knew took their orders from him. The idea that his restraint against hurting Rumlow was something to be corrected, surgically or otherwise, was repulsive and monstrous.

'Captain,' he said politely. 'They want you at SHIELD, to give a statement about what happened.' Bucky didn't take his eyes of Natasha, watching her hidden emotions carefully. Rumlow cleared his throat. 'Captain Barnes, STRIKE Team is supposed to escort you back to SHIELD.'

'STRIKE Team can get fucked,' Bucky snapped. Bucky could feel the cold look on his face; it dared Rumlow to disagree. 'I gave a statement to the police. Get a fucking copy of that. I don't work for you.'

'Fury is dead,' Rumlow said, looking between Nat and Bucky. He seemed to search Nat's face for a reaction to that, the sick fuck. Her jaw tightened but that was all. It was more of a tell than Bucky was used to her having. 'A better man might leave his problems with a dead man behind to get him some justice,' Rumlow added, trying to tempt Bucky into cooperating.

'Why do you think I told the police everything Fury told me?' Bucky said, leaving the sentence vague to intrigue Rumlow. 'Get fucked,' he said again. Rumlow scowled like he wanted to hit him, but he sighed and moved back down the hallway.

'You're a terrible liar,' Nat told him, the second Rumlow was out of earshot behind her. Bucky sighed. He touched Nat's arm and she let him lead her into a small, empty private room off the main hallway. He shut the door behind them. He probably stood too close to her, nearly close enough to feel the heat of her body, but for some reason, he couldn't help it. He stood close enough to her that she had to look up to meet his eyes. He wondered, if he were still in his own body, not one that was well over six feet tall, if she would still have to crane her neck. He'd been this tall for years; it was hard to remember.

'I'm not trying to lie to you,' he promised, his voice barely a whisper. He remembered to take his hand off of her arm. 'I was trying to lie to Rumlow. Look, Fury told me SHIELD was compromised, that he and I both needed safe houses, and that I shouldn't trust anyone.'

'If he needed a safe house, why wouldn't he come to me? To Hill?' Nat asked just as quietly, suspicious. Bucky looked away.

'He told me not to trust anyone,' he said. 'Even after I mentioned you.' Nat swallowed, her lip trembling for the barest of seconds before she lowered her chin, looking down. 'Fury also gave me this,' he added, letting the USB drive hide mostly in the cover of his sleeve. He apparently didn't understand surveillance tech still, since his apartment had been bugged without him knowing. He didn't want this to be seen by anyone other than his own friends. Fury might not have trusted Natasha, but Bucky did.

'I got that off a pirating ship,' Nat said. 'Fury had me collect data during a rescue mission.'

'What's on it?' he demanded. She looked back up at him, her eyes flashing.

'I only act like I know everything, Barnes,' she snapped.

'You know more than I do right now,' he said, guessing.

'Maybe not,' she said. 'Just a hunch. Tell me about the shooter.'

'He was strong,' Bucky told her, immediately. 'Strong as me, at least. He knew how to throw my shield.'

'Your shield is a giant frisbee,' she sneered, meaner than she usually was, but Bucky knew her heart had to be hurting. He didn't let her condescension smear him. 'Any asshole can throw it.'

'No, the vibranium alters the physics,' Bucky corrected. 'It absorbs or redistributes a lot of your force; it takes skill to hit a target. If I hadn't caught it, he would have hit me. Fuck, he woulda broke me.' She eyed the shield still lashed to his back. He felt safer and more secure with the familiar weight, but he had been stared at in hospital hallways by nurses, doctors and patients alike while waiting to see Fury's surgery and then to see the body.

'He had a metal arm,' Bucky added, thinking of it. Nat's eyes flashed to him then. 'He caught the edge of my shield with it, threw it back so hard that when I caught it, I skidded three feet.'

'I know who killed Fury,' she said suddenly. 'I'm sure. The slugs they dug out of him? They dug one just like it out of me about five years ago. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists, the ones who do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years.'

'That sounds made up,' Bucky said regretfully. 'Sounds like a ghost story.'

'I've met him,' she corrected. 'I saw him once when I was a girl, growing up in the Red Room. He was on his way to a mission and seeing him was like seeing the Boogeyman, but with a grenade launcher and a custom scope. Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran; somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me.' Nat lifted her shirt and her sweater, showing Bucky the jagged scar of a thru-and-thru wound, a second dipping below her jeans, probably the one that had lingered in her body, pressed against bone. 'Bye-bye, bikinis.'

'I can honestly promise that you would still look great in them,' he said before he could help himself. Nat almost gave him a grin.

'The thing is, going after him is a dead end,' she told him. 'I know; I've tried. He killed someone I was responsible for and I couldn't even track him down. Like you said, he's a ghost story.' Bucky didn't like any part of this. It niggled a part of his brain, like there was something obvious he wasn't putting together. He ran his thumb along the drive in his pocket. It was their only clue, and maybe the only thing that would slot the niggle into place.

'Should we see what the ghost wants?' he asked. Nat grinned.

⍟

'Captain,' someone called. Nat was gone from his side, Bucky noticed when he turned. It was like she had evaporated. A man in an expensive suit came leisurely down the street, as Bucky waited. He didn't know the man, didn't recognise his lined face. 'Captain Barnes,' he said again when he got closer. 'It's an honour to meet you. My father served in the hundred-and-first.'

'Can I help you?' Bucky asked. He didn't know this man, and with Fury dead, he didn't intend to meet too many other suits who might be giving orders. He understood why Nat had made herself disappear for this conversation; she had to appear to still take his orders, but persuading Bucky to go back to SHIELD right now would not help her find the Soldier. He also was pretty sure she was still within earshot, still able to cover him if something went wrong. Sweeping his eye over the man's suit, he felt sure he wasn't armed, but that didn't mean the sleek black car he'd slid out of at the corner didn't hold an arsenal and STRIKE Team Alpha.

'My name is Alexander Pierce,' he said, introducing himself. 'I'm the American representative for the World Security Council.' He extended his hand for Bucky to shake.

'Ah,' Bucky said, shaking the offered palm. 'One of the people who ordered a nuclear strike on over a million Manhattan civilians last year. It's an honour.' He kept his face bare, flat, free of the disdain he felt. Pierce's eyes tightened infinitesimally at that.

'I was wondering if you would come back to SHIELD,' Pierce continued, deciding to ultimately not challenge Bucky on his sarcasm and disrespect, 'to discuss what happened to Nick.'

'I gave the police a statement,' Bucky offered, making to continue down the street. 'That's all I got, I'm afraid.' A hand on his arm stopped him, not by force, but because Bucky wasn't quite willing to yank himself away like a scared toddler.

'I think you and I both know that the questions I have are ones the police didn't ask,' he said. His voice was hard and strained. 'Look, Nick was my friend. We've known each other for years. I'm the one who made him Director of SHIELD.'

'Well, I'm sorry for your loss,' Bucky said. 'But I hadn't talked to Fury in months, not since he served me a subpoena. I wasn't planning on talking to him until he showed up.'

'Why was Fury in your apartment?' Pierce asked, pointedly. Bucky stepped back, letting a woman pass the sidewalk between them. Pierce tracked his movements. Bucky didn't step forward again, leaving about a yard between them intentionally.

'His wife kicked him out,' Bucky said, because that was what the bugs would have heard. 'You'll have to pass along my condolences to her for me. Whatever my problems with Fury, I have every sympathy for his widow. I'm sorry the shooter I pursued got away. I would have liked to have seen her get justice.'

Pierce didn't reply to that, asking another question instead: 'Did you know your apartment was bugged?'

'Why, did you order bugs placed there?' Bucky fired back.

'Fury did,' Pierce replied. 'He's the one who put them there.'

'Seems like Fury answered to you,' Bucky said with a shrug. Pierce sighed.

'See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists,' he explained.

'I don't like the word realist,' Bucky said. 'In my experience, the people who use it are actually cynics, and they are far more likely to use what they see as a lesser evil to install peace.' It was often used by people who thought that reality was worse than it was. It was used by people who had forgotten that all children smiled and loved their parents, who had forgotten that most people wanted good things, who had forgotten that stopping the people who wanted bad things wasn't worth it if it sliced smiles off those children and left their world to burn. It wasn't worth the price of taking away good. Bucky had believed that so wholeheartedly he'd crashed a plane and drowned and froze to death. If he'd been on an American vessel heading for Japan, he would have crashed that one into a fucking ice shelf too.

'We knew, Nick and I, that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to building a better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down,' Pierce replied, and it sounded like a correction. Bucky held back a frown, trying to listen patiently and at least appearing to be open. 'That makes enemies. Those people call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today makes me really, really angry.'

Bucky looked away, sighing. He didn't know if Fury had been a good man, if he had been making a better world, or if he'd become more and more terrified that he couldn't until it was too late to fix his own trail of destruction behind him. He supposed, if Fury were dead, all that mattered was making sure his destruction stopped with him. All that mattered was making sure whatever had poisoned what Fury had believed in didn't poison everything else around it.

'Captain,' Pierce began again, after a long, silent moment. 'You were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?'

'I'm sorry,' Bucky said, 'but if my apartment was bugged by SHIELD, you can find out for yourself. You'll be able to hear his last words, just like I did. You knew him better; maybe they'll help you out more than they did me.'

'That's not good enough,' Pierce snapped, stepping forward and closing the gap between them. 'Someone murdered my friend, and I am going to find out why. Anyone gets in my way, they're gonna regret it. Anyone.'

'Hey,' Bucky said, raising his hands and stepping to the side and then away. 'I've been trying to get out of the way for over a year. I got the legal bills to prove it. Fury was the one trying to keep me involved. I'm happy stepping back, stepping down.'

'You're Captain America,' Pierce put in. 'I thought you never backed down from a fight.'

'You must have me confused with someone else,' Bucky said, Pierce's words making Steve pop into his head. He wondered if that would ever stop, if he'd ever stop thinking about him. If Nick had really had a wife, he wondered if she would have the same trouble 'til she died.

After he rounded the corner, Natasha was there. She grabbed his arm and dragged him into a bakery, around the counter and into the kitchen at the back. The cashier protested.

'Hey, employees only,' a baker complained, before staring at Bucky's shield, slung to his back. The other three employees in the back stared too, too young to perhaps understand the real significance of the man in front of them. 'Oh, you're Captain America.' She looked old enough to have been a girl when Bucky died; she was perhaps his littlest sister's age, but still lucky enough to be kicking. Bucky's littlest sister had died of cervical cancer four years before he woke up, and it hurt to see an old woman with the same green eyes she had had so healthy to still be working.

'Captain America needs a place to hide,' Nat said before Bucky could explain anything. 'Four men wearing SHIELD uniforms are about to come in and ask for us. We're going to go into this freezer. You're going to tell them we went out the back and then headed north.'

'Oh,' said the baker, shocked. 'OK, um. Right. I will; I will.'

'Thank you,' Bucky said as the woman opened the handle of the walk-in for them. 'You're saving our lives,' he promised, because if STRIKE were the men looking for them, she probably was.

'You're Captain America,' the woman said, as Nat turned the freezer light off and hunkered down, so they would be invisible from the window in the heavy, metal door. 'You saved everyone else's.'

The baker closed the door on them; Nat slid cheap, useless lock into place. Bucky sat with his back against the door, too sharp of an angle from the window to be visible in the dark.

'Imagine the firefight we're avoiding,' Natasha said, barely a whisper. 'Probably sirens and a helicopter. If you'd gone back to SHIELD with STRIKE, I'd think you'd be good as dead.'

'I could take down a helicopter with my shield and determination,' Bucky whispered back, unable to help himself. Nat huffed a small breath of air in place of a laugh. Bucky didn't reply, closing his eyes to listen past the hum of the freezer. Rumlow had indeed come bursting into the bakery. He and his team probably had their guns out, if the young cashier's scream was any indication.

'What's going on?' the baker demanded, sounding frightened.

'We're looking for Captain America and Black Widow,' Rumlow shouted. 'Where are they?'

'The man with the shield ran out the back,' one of the younger kitchen hands said, sounding desperate and terrified. Bucky imagined Rumlow and his team still had their guns out and trained on the innocents. His heart lurched and pounded. 'Please—They went out the alley and turned left.'

'Rollins, Smith, go,' Rumlow ordered and the back door of the kitchen banged open with force. 'You, go around; climb the fire escape and get a visual. I'll go up the other side of the block, cut them off if they try to use other alleys to get us off their tail.'

The front door bells chimed again, and they stayed still. Nat stared at him in the near-pitch black, and Bucky's heart began to slow as not a single bullet was fired in this shop. STRIKE was leaving. They'd believed the lie civilians had had to tell for him. He wondered if Nat had good enough ears to have heard past the thick door and the hum of the freezer.

'Fuck,' Bucky whispered. He pressed his face into his hands. It was cold in the freezer, but the chill set him on edge. He could hardly freeze to death here, but he'd frozen once before. His body screamed at him that he needed to get out. He had to calm down.

'Yeah,' Nat agreed. 'We'll stay here for as long as we can, until they ask us to leave.'

'If they don't find us, won't they think the baker was lying?' Bucky asked. 'Won't they come back and rough her up?'

'They're spies, not gangsters from the Prohibition Era,' Nat said. Bucky resisted the urge to laugh hysterically. He had grown up in Prohibition; now, it was an era of time people referred to as tho it was so far in the past to be a parable. 'When they don't find us, they will know it is because I outsmarted them. They won't care how; they'll regroup at HQ and look for surveillance footage of us.'

'Won't they find footage of us here?' Bucky asked.

'Why do you think I led you this way out of the hospital?' she replied.

'Good,' he said, worried for these bakers. He reached up and slid the lock open, so they could open their freezer to kick them out at their leisure. 'You cold?' he asked. Nat shook her head, but he placed his shield at his side and then tucked his canvas coat across her shoulders. She didn't protest, just grabbed at the lapels and pulled it around her. After he'd scooted closer in the freezer to place it over her, he stayed beside her, Nat's shoulder touching his arm.

Without the jacket, his blood ran cooler with fear. I am not gonna die here, he reminded himself. It wasn't cold enough to kill him; it wasn't even cold enough for the serum to need to protect his extremities from frostbite. He was fine. He maybe needed to relax, but he was fine. He wanted to take a deep breath, but he was so afraid of breathing in cold air.

'Smells like you,' Nat whispered. ''S nice.'

'Thanks,' he said dimly. She leaned against him. He let her.

⍟

'I can't believe we're going to fucking Jersey,' he grumbled. 'I hate New Jersey. Everyone hates Jersey.' Nat ignored him; maybe she had no thoughts about Jersey, or maybe in the spirit of all the impossibilities becoming realities about his ears, she even liked the place.

When he had last tried to leave DC, he had been arrested by SHIELD. He had darkly asked if SHIELD was intentionally trying to give the Mandarin the upper hand; with the knowledge that something dark had genuinely invaded the governmental organization, he wondered if that cynical accusation were true. He wondered if he'd be able to find out.

'Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?' Nat asked him instead. Bucky looked over at her, unimpressed. He realised she was teasing him. He didn't appreciate it. Not now. Not with Fury dead, and SHIELD infiltrated by something, and not when they were heading to fucking New Jersey of all places. She hadn't even given him back his jacket yet, just pushed her arms thru the too-long sleeves, and then shoved those halfway up her lovely forearms.

'Nazi Germany,' Bucky said. Dugan had taught him how, and if Bucky remembered correctly, they had actually been in occupied Poland when he had learned. The principle was the same. Bucky had stolen a lot in his life, but never a car outside of wartime. He'd stolen herbs and medicine for Steve; he had stolen a lipstick for Missus Rogers when she had been dying. She had smiled thinly at him and slid the bright colour over her lips. It had given her a way to try to feel beautiful even as her lungs consumed her and she coughed blood into her son's shirt. Steve miraculously hadn't caught consumption from her, but he'd nursed her in their home until the state took her away, into a sanatorium, where she must have died alone. That knowledge, rather than his mother's catching illness, had nearly killed Steve.

'Besides,' Bucky said, 'we're borrowing it. I'm bringing it back with a full tank of petrol. Take your feet off the dash. Look, it was so clean.' He pointed at the dusky scuffs her shoes left behind. Nat ignored him.  

'You know, there's a likelihood this truck will get blown up because of us before you can get it back,' she pointed out and she pulled her shoes off the leather. Bucky sighed. After she'd shown him the footage of the initial attack on Fury, he believed her estimation of their chances. 'All right, I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer.' Bucky rolled his eyes.

'What do you want?' Bucky said. Nat almost grinned. That made him regret letting her ask without even hearing the question.

'Have you kissed anyone since nineteen-forty-five?' she asked. 'Since, you know. Since he died.' Bucky looked at her like she had three heads. She lifted a brow, challenging.

'Why?' Bucky asked. Nat shrugged.

'I don't know,' she said. 'A lot of the things we've done together over the last few months could be considered dates. A lot of men would've kissed me by now; hell, a lot of men would have done a lot more than kiss.'

'You never called them dates,' Bucky pointed out.

'I was trying not to scare you off,' she replied. 'Are you not gonna answer? I feel like if you don't answer, you're kind of answering, you know?'

'Are you trying to ask me if I'm a virgin?' Bucky demanded. 'Why does everyone always assume I'm a virgin?'

'I don't assume that. Everybody's had some practice by your age. But you are Captain America,' Nat pointed out. 'You're a literal paragon of virtue.'

'Well, fine, no, all right?' Bucky snapped. 'Jesus, you don't need practice. What a dumb idea.'

'Everybody needs practice,' she said. He shook his head.

'Nah,' Buck said. 'You find the right person; you learn together. Practice ain't got nothing to do with it. You love that person and it doesn't matter, even if they're a bad kisser. You just feel lucky to kiss them.' He sounded wistful. He supposed that was better than sounding heartbroken.

'What, so nobody special since you woke up?' she pressed. Bucky chuckled, wondering if she would ever stop trying to needle him about his love life. She used to nudge him about cute baristas and waiters, even people on the subway. He always told her to cut the shit.

'I know it's a crazy idea,' Bucky grumbled, 'but it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience. You know, genetic experiment, frozen in ice, time traveller, ex-soldier with PTSD.' He listed things sarcastically, then trailed off.

'Well, that's all right,' Nat offered. 'You just make something up.'

'OK, first of all, I think there are very few people who don't know who I am,' Bucky said. 'Yeah, they don't know the real me, but they know the big facts; there isn't much I can make up without them knowing it's crap. And is that what you do? Go around, making shit up, never letting someone get to know you?' Natasha looked out the windshield. Bucky wondered if he had hit a nerve. 'It sounds fucking lonely,' he said, as tho the way he was going about things was any better. He was going around trying to tape his heart together and refusing to let anyone help. That was a pretty lonely road too.

'The truth is a matter of circumstances,' Nat said. 'It's not all things to all people, all of the time.' Bucky snorted.

'The truth varies from different angles,' he agreed, 'but that doesn't mean that random shit can be true. You have a truth. Nobody should be able to change your truth. You shouldn't let yourself change it for them. It's too tough a way to live.'

'It's a good way not to die, though,' Nat said. He snorted again. 'It is. You're telling me you've never told a lie to stay alive?'

'We're not talking about survival,' Bucky pointed out. 'Lie to get your ass out alive, sure. But we're talking about love.'

'Love is for children,' she told him. 'We're talking about sex. Sex can be—useful. It can be necessary.' Bucky frowned at that. He didn't know if he really agreed.

'You're asking me whether I got somebody special,' Bucky corrected. 'To me, that means love. How are you ever gonna get somebody special if you don't show them your truth?' he asked. Natasha looked out the passenger side window, even further from his gaze as it flicked on and off the empty road. He had definitely hit a nerve with that one. 'You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who they really are.'

'Who do you want me to be?' Nat finally turned back. Her face was impassive, hard to read, back in her default armour.

'I want you to be you,' Bucky meant that: he wanted to know the woman who made him laugh when they cooked together in DC, who brought him to art museums he wouldn't have gone to alone, who had listened to him talk about his sisters, about Steve, who had been a support when he was fresh out of the ice and fighting aliens. He wanted to know the woman who'd tried to refuse shutting the portal unless Tony came back; he wanted to know why she spoke so harshly when she could act with such care. Bucky said: 'I have this feeling the real you is someone I can trust.'

'Why?'

'I can't put my finger on it,' Bucky admitted. 'Probably because I've seen so little of you. But you—You know what it is to have everything taken from you. It didn't happen the same way for us, and I'm pretty sure your way was worse, but you know.' When Bucky gave a glance away from the road, her eyes were on him, a considering expression on her face. 'What?'

'You're saying we have shared life experience?' she echoed, teasing him again. He realised he did mean that. He realised Nat knew at least a little of what he went thru. At least a little, they fit.

'I don't know,' Bucky said, evasively. He had liked it when she'd kissed him in the mall, hiding their faces from Rumlow; he could hardly deny that. Natasha was smart. She was beautiful. She was confident and scary and strong. How could he not have liked it?

Nat reached out to touch his hand, balanced on the console between them. 'Is that you?' he asked. She considered. He was glad she knew what he meant. He wanted to know if she meant it, touching his hand like that. Her skin was soft where it wasn't calloused and warm. It felt a little like coming home.

'I don't know,' she repeated. He turned his hand over and let her hold it anyway  It was nice, that's all. She felt small under his hand, almost delicate. That was nearly a joke; she was probably the least delicate person he had ever met. She was like marble. He didn't know what could break her, or at least what could make her admit she was broken. 'Does it matter?' she asked after a long, comfortable silence.

'Of course it matters,' he promised. 'You matter. Lots of things matter.'

'There's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Barnes,' she told him, 'if you think all this matters.'

'I'm not in this business,' he corrected. 'I'm just—I'm just stepping up to help out a friend.'

'Am I only a friend?' she asked. He glanced at her again. He swallowed around a nervous buzz in his chest.

'I don't know,' he admitted. She smiled, just one corner going up. The amused, curious look suited her. He hoped he'd see it more.

Chapter Text

The secret elevator took them to a sub-basement. Bucky wondered how long it had been there; if it were added when the SSR took over the base before Project: Rebirth, or if the renovations that occurred to turn the munitions store into a SHIELD office had seen the new level added. The sub-basement was dry and cool. The lights were dim and straight ahead was a computer station. Bucky stepped past empty, abandoned stenographers' desks, moving to the computer monitors. Natasha followed him.

'This can't be the data-point,' she said, sighing. 'This technology is ancient.'

'I'm an older piece of tech than this,' Bucky replied, unwilling to accept they had hit a practical dead end. 'I can do a hell of a lot.'

'Yeah, people work a bit differently than computers,' Nat said. Bucky sighed. Had they really hit a dead end? Trying to track the signal past this decoy would mean giving SHIELD another opportunity to catch them at the station they used to track it. They'd nearly been caught at the mall, and they couldn't risk something like that again.

'Look,' he said, pointing at a tiny USB port drive. It had little blue light along the bottom of it, glowing in the dim light of the sub-basement. The blue reminded him of HYDRA weapons, which was idiotic. HYDRA was long gone, and lots of tech glowed that blue nowadays. He had had a phone charger that had had the same light; the familiarity had given him nightmares. He'd gotten rid of it after a week, traded it in for one without lights. Tony's arc reactor gave off trace amounts of the same gamma radiation that had made the Cube glow, for crying out loud. It meant nothing. It had to mean nothing.

Nat crossed to the computer ahead of him, sticking the USB port into the drive. He winced. He didn't know if this computer had the capacity to start up the same nine-minute countdown they had had in the mall, but he felt tension in his body like it had.

'Initiate system?' the computerized voice asked. Natasha spelled out Y-E-S before Bucky could protest. He didn't know why he was so afraid. He'd been at this base a long time but it was far from his home. It felt like an invasion, somehow, for this secret computer to be here.

'Shall we play a game?' Nat asked, pitching her voice low and spooky. She straightened from the keytop and looked up at Bucky to explain.

'It's from a movie—' she began and Bucky shook his head, hands in his pockets.

'Yeah, I know,' he said. 'I saw it.' He had hated it, to be honest. It had seemed like terror for terror's sake. He had enough of violence and sickening mind games in his real life; he hadn't needed to see them lit up on screen.

'Barnes, James Buchanan,' the computer said suddenly, in a heavy accent that sent lightning down Bucky's spine. 'Born nineteen-eighteen. Romanova, Natalia Alianovna, born nineteen-eighty-four.' He grabbed Nat's arm out of instinct, yanking her behind him as tho the familiar voice represented a physical danger.

'Ow, what the shit?' Nat demanded. She yanked herself out of his grip. 'It's a goddamn recording, Buck.'

'I am not a recording, Fräulein,' the computer told her. 'I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in nineteen-forty-five, but I am.'

Arnim Zola's rat fucking face lit up in green and white on the main monitor.

Bucky's heart pounded in his chest. He had looked it up when he had had those months between the Battle of New York and his forced relocation from Stark Tower: Arnim Zola had died alone in a Swiss hospice of stomach cancer in the seventies. Stomach cancer was apparently a horrible way to go, and Bucky remembered being glad to know the bastard had died vomiting blood and wasting away.

'Do you know this thing?' Nat asked him. Bucky nodded, reaching his hand out to try to keep Nat behind him. He hadn't felt this scared since he fell out of the helicarrier. He hadn't even been this scared when the quinjet was crashing in Midtown.

'Arnim Zola,' he said. 'The Red Skull's answer to Doctor Erskine's refusal to provide them my serum. Erskine fled to America and Zola started trying to do his work. He's the one who killed dozens of men trying to recreate my serum before it came close to working on Steve. He tortured prisoners of war and supervised the forced labor of thousands of others. He's been dead for decades.'

'Look around you, Captain,' Zola said brightly. The sub-basement's lighting system was properly activated then, lighting up. Bucky swept his eyes over hundreds of computer banks, all whirling their tapes and blinking their dim, old lights. 'I have never been more alive.

'Science could not save my body in the seventies; you are right. My mind, however: that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain.'

'Nat,' Bucky said, 'how did he get here? He should have stood trial in Nuremberg with all the other war criminals. He died in a hospice in Switzerland; why is he here?' Buck turned from the computer bank, the monitor, and the old camera watching them. Nat shook her head.

'I was invited,' Zola chirped.

'Nat, how can that be?' he demanded. 'Who the fuck invited this son of a bitch to my country?'

'There was a project called Operation Paperclip after World War II,' Nat offered. He realised she had probably only heard of Zola as an auxiliary detail when he'd told her about Steve; it was unfair to demand answers from her just because he was too scared to think. 'SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic values.'

'Correction: I am Swiss,' Zola told her. 'They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own.'

'It takes a brave man to secretly infiltrate a thing like SHIELD,' Bucky said, because this had been a SHIELD base and judging by his limited ability to place technology, it had been well into the eighties. If Zola died in the seventies, he had to have been here when SHIELD was still in the building. If he were invited here, it was by SHIELD, by the remnants of the SSR, by the people Bucky had trusted and died to protect. 'You were always a fucking coward. Cowards don't run terrorist groups. Besides, HYDRA died with the Red Skull. I stopped them.'

'You should know better than anyone,' Zola told him. 'If you cut off one head, two shall take its place.'

'The Red Skull wasn't just another head,' Bucky snapped. 'He represented the backbone, the heart of HYDRA. Without him, what did all your nameless soldiers have to believe in? What persuaded kids to sign up to die?'

'The same thing I believed in,' Zola said simply. 'HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly.'

'Humanity will never give up its freedom,' Bucky cut in. 'Freedom is all a lot of people have. People give up everything else to get it.'

'Humanity has already given it up,' Zola corrected. 'After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew, a beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war, and when history did not cooperate, history was changed.'

The side monitors flicked thru images Bucky could barely recognize: the Cuban missile crisis, the flag of Camp David, an assassinated president, an ambassador's wife murdered in another country's embassy. Wars started and people removed from positions of power, people killed for being dedicated to peace, real peace. Bucky felt sick. His stomach roiled, like he was on a sinking ship too far from land for even him to swim to safety. He was genuinely nauseated and he pressed a fist against his mouth.

'That's impossible,' Nat said. 'SHIELD would have stopped you.' After everything that had happened, she still sounded sure. She sounded positive that someone would have stopped them. Bucky hoped someone had at least tried.

'Accidents will happen,' Zola told her. One of the monitors showed a photo of a burnt out car wreck. The newspaper microfiche that appeared below it claimed Howard and Maria Stark had been inside. Bucky regretted hoping someone had stepped up; trying to stop HYDRA had killed Howard, killed his beautiful, clever wife, had left Tony an orphan far earlier than he had deserved to be.

'HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security,' bragged Zola. 'Director Fury himself approved Project: Insight. The Project is nearly complete and it will have the ability to wipe hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of threats to HYDRA. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise.'

'Turn it off,' Bucky ordered Natasha. She didn't move, too shocked to hear him. She was pale. Her hands were shaking. Whatever marble she was made of was cracking; Bucky could see it.

'We won, Captain,' Zola told him. 'Your death amounts to the same as your life: a zero sum.'

'Fuck, Nat, turn it off!' he practically begged, yelling, turning away from the computer bank. 'I can't—I can't hear it.'

'Project Insight requires insight,' Zola went on, without them. 'So I wrote an algorithm.'

'What kind of algorithm?' Nat asked the computer. Her hand touched Bucky's arm, stopping him from retreating. 'What does it do?' They needed this information; Bucky couldn't retreat, no matter how much he wanted to. He couldn't stop. He had to barrel on ahead. He had to know. He grabbed Nat's hand, her loose, gentle grip. She held him, trying to tether him, assure him.

'Everything HYDRA needs to know who might stand against us is becoming more and more available,' Zola explained. 'Technology is a wonderful source of information, and humanity has let it become more and more essential to their lives. Cutting out resistance has never been so easy and now HYDRA can do it from the sky.'  

'What are your targets?' Natasha asked.

'Many,' Zola told her. 'The good Captain, a TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defence, a high school valedictorian in Iowa City. Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who is a threat to HYDRA. Now, or in the future.'

'You can't know the future,' Bucky pointed out. Zola chuckled, electronic and spine-chilling.

'There we will have to disagree,' Zola said simply.

'You're not going to win,' Bucky shouted. His nausea had turned on a dime into anger; he felt sure of what he said, surer than he'd been of nearly anything in his life. He turned back to the computer, ripping his hand from Nat and moving forward, on the offence. 'You underestimate us. You underestimate humanity, brotherhood, friendship, love, empathy. People will stand up and someone will stop you. I am going to try,' he promised, furious and standing too close to Zola's rat face, 'and I am going to succeed, even if it fucking kills me.'

'No, Captain,' Zola replied calmly. 'Your death, your real death, is upon us. You will be too dead to stop me, to even warn the rest of mankind. By this time tomorrow, it will be too late.'

A grinding noise started behind them, and Bucky whipped around, shield at the ready. The elevator was being locked behind blast doors, closing slowly on rusty tracks. He heaved, trying to block the gap with his shield, trying to jam it open enough for him to be able to push it back open and get them out. He knew that would be the only way out; it would be the only chance to get Nat out alive.

The doors closed too quickly; his shield rebounded and he caught it easily. 'Shit,' he whispered.

'Buck, I got a bogey,' Natasha reported. 'Short-range ballistic. Thirty-seconds, tops.'

'Who fired it?' Bucky demanded, searching the subbasement for somewhere, anywhere, that they could hide and potentially survive the building crashing down.

'SHIELD,' Nat whispered, staring at her phone, at the programme tracking the missile barrelling towards them. Bucky saw their salvation: a flood cellar below a grate in the floor.

'I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain,' Zola said. Bucky snatched the USB drive out of the port. 'We are the same now, you and I. We are both out of time.'

Bucky grabbed Nat with his shield arm, tearing the grate off of the cellar. He practically tossed her into the small hole, hoping the debris would not fall too heavily on his back and crush her to death underneath him. He hopped in as the building shook and a deafening boom rang. Lights went out and they were in darkness.

Hunks of cement and steel rained down on them as Bucky forced his shield over his head, across his shoulders, covering Nat where she curled in the corner below him. He braced his shield with his arm, his other braced against the wall. Heavy cement crashed onto him from above and his knee buckled under the weight, forcing him lower and kneeling over Nat. In the half-second before they were buried in the pitch black, he saw Nat had bashed her head when he had pushed her into the cellar; red blood matted down her hair above her ear.

'Fuck,' he gasped as the debris began to settle. The weight was enormous and it took absolutely all of him to hold it off of his friend. 'Holy shit,' he panted. Despite his blaspheme, the words of the Our Father leapt into his head, begging. Ever since he'd started as a soldier in North Africa, Europe, Russia, each atrocity he'd seen had shaken his faith more and more, but in this moment, he prayed. He prayed that God would forgive him, if only to deliver him long enough to let him stop HYDRA again, to save those millions, because he might be the only one who could. He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed, his mind racing for a way to get them out of this ruin before STRIKE dug thru it for their bodies.

'Nat, get closer to me,' he whispered, his voice strained. 'I have to get us out of here and the rubble will crush you when I move; you gotta stay under me.'

She didn't reply. As his eyes adjusted to seeing without light, he saw her eyes were closed, her forehead gashed, and she was as near to prone as she could get in the tiny, safe space under his shield and body. He was alone. He had to get them both out of here and he didn't have Natasha's strength to bolster him.

'I can do this,' Bucky promised himself, before whispering a Hail Mary for good measure. 'Now and at the hour of our death. Please don't let this be the hour of my death,' he added, really praying like he hadn't in years. 'Amen.' He had to get them out of here; he had to get Natasha out and alive from this bombed-out ruin. He had to. He was Captain America.

He couldn't fail again.

⍟

'I'm so sorry,' Nat said quietly as they sat under an outcropping of rock in some forest in Pennsylvania. She'd been unconscious after the building exploded and collapsed around them; he'd carried her and ran as far as he possibly could, much further than he imagined STRIKE Team Alpha would realize he could run. Night had fallen while he ran and they sat together in the dark, pressed shoulder to shoulder against the rock. Bucky had hauled some random, broken trees and leaned them over the outcropping. Their tiny fire was shielded from view at least, but the smoke escaped thru the openings of the trees protecting them. It wasn't ideal. It was enough.

'What are you sorry for?' he asked. He touched the gash on his lower back from a piece of rebar that had dug into him when he'd dug them out. It had long since scabbed over and he could feel the bumps of scar tissue beginning. He figured it would fade by the time they stopped the helicarriers. They didn't have much time.

'I don't know,' she replied. 'All of it. I mean, I didn't listen to you about SHIELD and not only were you right about them, you were really right about them.' She sounded like she was crying and trying to hide it. He didn't look over; he gave her that privacy. He did lift his arm and pull her small shoulders under it; he tried to give her that comfort at least. 'I thought—I don't even know what I thought.'

'It's OK,' he told her. 'It's gonna be OK. We'll figure it out.'

'How could any of this be OK?' she asked, definitely crying now. 'Nick's dead. The Winter Soldier is after us; STRIKE is after us. SHIELD is nothing I thought it was. I'm nothing I thought I was.'

'Hey, hey, hey,' he said, cutting her off. He shifted, meeting her eyes. 'Come on. You're at least one thing you thought. You're my friend. I've got you, OK, and I got you until you find your feet again.' She laughed softly, using her filthy sleeve to wipe under her eye. There was just enough moisture from her tears to leave a streak of clean skin behind along her cheekbone, sharp against the chalky dust of the camp wreckage. SHIELD had been infiltrated from the very beginning, from its first base, even. Figured. How could someone start anything in Jersey and expect it not to go to shit?

'What if I never find something?' she asked softly. She was really asking something different, and his eyes flicked to her lips for the barest of seconds.

'I'll get you,' he promised. 'I'll catch you.' Nat gave him a moment, no doubt trying to let him stop her if she was crossing a line. He didn't move away. He didn't move at all. She touched the side of his neck, her hand cool and soft, her gun callouses the only thing about the touch that wasn't so, so gentle. She leaned up almost all the way, her breath hot against his mouth. He kissed her, for real this time.

Natasha pulled in a sharp breath and her grip shifted against his neck. He reached up too, cupping her cheek and letting her guide the kiss. She swiped her tongue along the seam of his mouth and he granted her access, a noise escaping his throat. He had meant it when he said that the right person could be a terrible kisser and still make his head swim, but even if she'd been completely the wrong one, she would have turned his knees weak, kissing like that. She moved closer, and he put his other hand on her waist, feeling the strong, certain muscle there, hard and sure and honed to kill and steal and break. He was sicker than he thought he was, because the idea made him moan, the hand on her cheek moving to tangle in her straightened hair.

Natasha fisted one hand in his shirt and Bucky's own hand slid to her back, pulling her against him. She was warm. The warmth drew into him, filling and charging his bones. His hand lay in the middle of her back, spanning the slightest part of her athletic frame easily. It felt right; it felt welcome. He didn't want to let go.

She shifted against him, kissing his jaw. One of her hands reached for his belt and he stopped her, grabbing her wrist. Natasha pulled away, eyes searching him.

'Sorry,' he said. He kissed her again, briefly, to make sure his hesitation didn't make her feel unwanted. He was damn sure he wanted. 'I just—I've never—'

'I thought you said you weren't a virgin,' Nat said, voice husky and almost amused. She was almost teasing him. He kissed her once more, because when she sounded amused like that, he found it so endearing.

'I'm not,' he agreed. 'I've just—never been with a woman.' She raised a brow at that and he shrugged sadly. 'I had the love of my life before,' he explained. 'I never wanted anything else. What woulda been the point of finding it?' He'd found Peggy, but they'd both danced around each other; in the few moments that had room for anything but the war, they'd never made a move to spark the electricity in the air into something tangible. They'd be too cautious, not brave enough. Now Bucky had missed his chance with Peggy; she'd married someone else and lived a life without him. In so many ways, Bucky was a ghost to her.

'What's the point here?' Natasha asked. He considered.

'Comfort,' he said. 'Maybe to lay the brickwork of something special. But even if I knew what the hell I'd be doing—'

'I know what I'm doing,' she told him. 'You could sit back and enjoy the ride, and I guarantee you would enjoy it.' He groaned at the image that put in his head.

'I don't doubt it,' he promised. His voice was rough and Nat's eyes had dilated within an inch of their life. 'But why would I want our first time together to be here, like this? Under these circumstances?' She seemed surprised by that. 'For God's sakes, Nat, I mean, you're crying.' He swiped a thumb across her cheek, taking the last few tears away.

'I've had worse,' she told him. She almost wore a pout; her reply seemed almost stubborn.

'You deserve better,' Bucky said said, and he kissed her again. She let him lead this time, and he kissed her slow. He held her close and gentle and he tried to show her how much better she deserved.

⍟

They slept fully dressed that night, but pressed against each other. Nat let him spoon up behind her, a snug shadow for her every breath. She used his thick arm as a pillow. He'd fallen asleep to the sound of her breathing and the soft crackle of their tiny fire burning out. The smoky air had felt secret and intimate. He'd fallen asleep with his lips still tasting of her.

When he woke up, the taste was gone and so was Nat. Despite the twigs and pebbles digging into him, he had slept more soundly than he had in a long time. He hadn't even dreamed, apparently hadn't stirred when Natasha left him. Her impractical runners were still in the improvised lean-to, so he figured she really hadn't gone far. She'd even left her socks. He turned awkwardly in the small space and poked his head out in time to see Nat coming back out of the heavy woods around them. 'Hey,' he called softly. She smiled at him, still filthy from the debris of his training camp.

'Hey,' she replied. 'I got a fish.' She held the fish in her hand up and she did indeed have one. Bucky actually hated the taste of fish, but he loved unexpected rations and he'd become quite taken with accepting free food from Nat. He could hardly complain. He glanced inside the lean-to; they had enough kindling and wood to cook a little trout. He didn't need to find anything and she could crawl back into their hidden shelter to cook up their food.

'How?' he asked. Her pant legs were rolled up to her knees, exposing her creamy skin and the firm curve of her muscle. He wanted to run his hand up her calf and feel the promise of strength there. She smiled coyly.

'Magic,' she said, heavy with sarcasm. 'I grabbed it. It's not hard.'

'It is hard to grab a fish with your bare hands,' he corrected. 'Thanks for breakfast.'

'Hey, consider it a first date,' she told him with a flirty grin. 'Next time, you provide the food.' He laughed quietly, hushed in the silence of the woods. Birds chirped and squirrels chittered. Footsteps or rotors did not approach; for now at least, they were safe. 'Start the fire. I'm gonna gut this out here.' She pulled a knife from the back of her belt and set about gutting the trout. Bucky was glad she had offered to do it; he hated the taste of fish and he hated the idea of gutting it even more.

They cooked it in silence, and she took a third and gave him the rest.

'Half and half is fair,' he told her, trying to pass her back some of the fish. She levelled him a look and his hands retreated before she opened her mouth to explain.

'I've read your files,' she said. 'I know how fast your metabolism burns. You must feel like you haven't eaten in a week. Me, I'm just hungry.' He couldn't deny he was ravenous. He felt it was unfair; his biology shouldn't be her concern. He also didn't think he could argue with Nat.

'I'm sorry about Fury,' he said instead, because he was but he hadn't had a chance to say it yet.

'I'm sorry you died for nothing,' she replied. He shrugged.

'Yeah, that really—that really hurt,' he admitted. 'I stopped a lot of civilian deaths, crashing, but I thought I'd given my life for a lot more. I thought we'd won a war, not a battle.'

'You don't sound that upset,' Nat accused. Bucky laughed, picking a bone out of the fish and tossing it into the little pile between them.

'At least now we know who we're fighting,' he pointed out. 'Now, I'm sure that stopping them is the right thing. There is no room for doubt.'

'I thought—' She stopped.

'You thought?' he prompted. Nat shook her head.

'I thought by joining SHIELD, I was going straight,' she said. She kept her eyes on the fish she held in her hand, simple and clean against her dirty skin. Bucky chewed his own as he listened, the two-thirds of a trout not coming close to stopping the hunger pangs in his stomach. He refused to resent the serum for that. 'I guess I just traded the KGB for HYDRA. I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but apparently I can't tell the difference anymore.'

'There's a chance you might be in the wrong business,' he told her, echoing her own words. She gave a tired, sad smile. 'Only good men are haunted by their mistakes,' he added. Steve had said that once, after Bucky had seen how young some of the HYDRA soldiers they'd killed were. They had been kids, just kids. Steve had helped him bury them properly, had tied little crosses out of branches and the kids' own shoelaces. Steve had promised that HYDRA wouldn't be haunted by deaths like this, and if Bucky wanted to stop it, he had to keep going. 'You're gonna have to live with your mistakes, and just hope you make better ones in the future.'

'I owe you,' Nat said seriously, and it took him a moment to understand she meant for saving her life as her own people tried to shoot them down.

'Nah, don't worry about it,' he replied. Life wasn't owed; it was something that had to be dutifully protected. Besides that, Nat was his friend. Nat might be something more to him. He had had to protect her and she didn't owe him anything for it.

'If it were the other way around,' she began after a long silence, 'if it were down to me to save your life—and you be honest with me—would you trust me to do it?'

'I would,' he said, easy and honest. He meant it; Nat had been his friend for months. She had been the first and only person he had ever talked about Steve with. He hadn't even talked about Steve when he went to the VA group meetings. He listened most of the time, and when Sam made him talk, he talked about the other nightmares he had, about the things he had done that haunted him, not the things he'd failed to do. He didn't talk about failing Steve; he talked about killing and death and the screech of artillery falling on towns and villages, about the air raid sirens jolting him awake at night and about yelling at officers who didn't reward or respect the Navajo code talkers who passed the best intel up and down dangerous fronts. He talked about the Nazi officers who ramped up mass executions in concentration camps if the Commandos were spotted by sentries. He talked about breaking locks on gas chambers and being too late to have saved anyone, about burying bodies that already looked like skeletons. He had talked about a lot of things, but not his broken heart.

He hadn't thought letting someone cradle the pieces would help.

⍟

Sam had made a breakfast with what looked like the entirety of his fridge. Bucky worried at how much of it he would actually need to eat. He wondered if Nat had explained how much food a supersoldier required or if Sam were this generous with all the assholes who came to his home demanding safe haven. He felt his face turn red as he came into the kitchen, smelling amazing smells, at the enormous growl his stomach let out.

'Siddown,' Sam ordered, pointing at the table with the spatula in his hand. He had turned off the stove and was scooping the last of the bacon he had cooked onto a plate. 'You know, I saw you, like, four days ago and I swear you've lost weight.'

'I burn fast,' Bucky said, taking the ordered seat. Natasha appeared in the doorway, freshly showered and pink-cheeked from the steam. She was gorgeous and clean-skinned, and her hair hadn't dried, falling in wet ringlets. He wanted to kiss her again, looking like that, but it wasn't the time or the place. It seemed like Bucky lost a lot of love to bad timing and HYDRA. 'I've been on the run. No time to empty out an IHOP.' Nat smiled at him, amused by that.

'No, I guess not,' Sam agreed. He placed the plate in front of Bucky and told him to start eating. Sam left him in the kitchen while he wandered into his living room. Bucky finished loading his plate as Nat said down too.

'God, this is amazing,' she said before she'd even taken a bite, heaping her own plate high. Bucky hummed his agreement as he tucked in, trying very hard not to desperately chow down on what felt like the first thing he'd eaten a fortnight, even if it had barely been two days. As he chewed the first bite of hot, delicious scrambled eggs and too much hot sauce, a brown folder hit the table beside him. Sam sat casually at the head of the table, pulling what was left of the toast pile towards him.

'What is this?' Bucky asked. He flicked it open, scanning the information inside. He frowned.

'Call it a resume,' Sam told him. Bucky shook his head. Nat leaned over and pulled a glossy photograph from his hand.

'Sam, you got out for a reason,' he said. 'You got out for a good reason,' he added, as tho Sam needed that assurance somehow.

'Is this Bakhmala?' Natasha interrupted, turning the photo she had stolen off Bucky for Sam to see. 'The Khalid Khandil mission: that was you.' Bucky had never heard of the mission, but Natasha sounded impressed. That made him eye the information in the folder a little closer, trying to evaluate what a pilot could do to make Nat sound like that. 'You didn't say he was a para-rescue,' she accused.

'I didn't even say he was military,' Bucky corrected. 'He got out and I respect that. I told you he was someone we could trust.' He paused in his evaluation, shoving more food into his mouth. Nat kicked his shin under the table and he understood what she wanted easily. He tore pages from their staple as he read them, passing them to her. Sam's resume, of sorts, was in fact impressive. Bucky hadn't understood from the VA meetings how much Sam had done or how much he had seen.

'Is this Riley?' he asked, finding the only photo with worn edges. Sam stood beaming at the camera and squinting into the sun, the horizon slightly off-tilt by whoever had taken the photo. He had an arm tossed over the shoulders of the man next to him, a white man who Bucky imagined from his smile was just as kind as Sam.

'Yeah,' Sam agreed. Bucky nodded, memorizing every detail of the photo. It seemed important, somehow, that Sam had lost a best friend too. Bucky had very few photos of Steve, fewer than a handful, and he was jealous that the one Sam had of his best friend was all in colour and high resolution, clear as fucking glass made after the Depression. He bet Sam had dozens or hundreds of photographs of Riley, all as good or better than this one. Sam had worn these edges soft. Bucky had worn soft the photograph taken of the Howling Commandos when he had finally, finally won approval to have a black man, a Japanese-American and a Jewish medic on his team. Steve looked proud in that photo, next to Bucky. He looked proud of Bucky and Bucky hoped his failure to keep Steve safe hadn't changed that as he fell to his death.

'I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs,' Natasha said. The RPGs had taken Riley down; choppers or no, they'd killed a serviceman. 'What did you use, a stealth chute?'

'No,' Sam said, sliding the second folder he held towards Bucky. 'We used these.'

'I thought you said you're a pilot,' Bucky said, eyeing the technology on the papers. He was afraid of flying at the best of times; he literally could not imagine strapping on the equipment Sam had used, as one of maybe a dozen people who had ever had the clearance to do so.

'I never said a pilot,' Sam said, almost smug. Bucky shook his head, passing the file to Nat. It seemed foolhardy. It seemed unfair. It seemed cruel, even, to ask Sam to fight with them when he'd been so broken by the loss of his friend that he had left the Air Force all together.

'I can't ask you to do this, Sam,' Bucky told him. 'It's gonna be dangerous, and HYDRA is worse than anything I think you've faced.'

'You're not asking,' Sam replied around a mouthful of his own breakfast. 'I'm offering.' He swallowed and shot Bucky a small grin. 'Dude, Captain America needs my help. There's no better reason to get back in.'

'What's our play, Buck?' Natasha asked. Bucky sighed, considering.

'We need to get Sam his equipment,' he allowed, hating himself a little for letting it happen. If something killed Sam, it would be on him. He could veto, right now, say that Nat and he could do it alone, go it alone, but there were three helicarriers and Bucky didn't know if they actually could. He hoped the reward could be worth the price he was laying on the red.

'The last one is at Fort Meade, behind three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall,' Sam admitted. Bucky looked at Natasha, who shrugged. He felt a corner of his mouth rise at that.

'Fine, good,' he said. 'We'll get it.'

'The Soldier is still after us,' Natasha pointed out. Bucky nodded.

'I don't think that's a variable we can control,' he said. 'What we can do is stop the helicarriers. We have just over—' He twisted, checking the clock on Sam's stove. '—just over twenty-three hours to do it. I imagine SHIELD HQ has security and if it's crawling with HYDRA, we'll have a hell of a time getting in.' He looked to Nat and she tilted her head, considering.

'It's doable,' Nat said, hedging her words. 'Ideally, we could kidnap Jasper Sitwell.'

'Why would we kidnap Jasper Sitwell?' Bucky asked. 'Who is Jasper Sitwell?'

'He's a SHIELD officer who was rather out of place on the Lemurian Star,' Nat said. 'That's where I got the drive, and it has to be where the Insight satellites were launched from. If he's HYDRA, which is the only thing that makes sense, his biometric passes will still be active in a way mine must not be. We could use him to bypass DNA scans.'

'I don't like it,' Bucky admitted. 'It's not ideal. Where are the helicarriers kept? How will they take off?'

'The ceiling of their storage bay will open; they'll take off straight up,' she said. 'I've seen them. They're huge.'

'What's the biggest weak spot of the bays?' Bucky asked.

'Well, the truck entrance, but you have to get into the building first. Probably the roof,' she said. 'You should be strong enough to pry a service port open, if you could really peel open a tank like they said you can. We could drop down into the carriers, get inside from there. We might be able to disable launch protocols, or at the very least put some grenades in the targeting computers.' Last time Bucky had dropped a team of three down onto an enemy transport, he'd lost a good man. He didn't like that either, but he liked it better than introducing a HYDRA agent to the scheme and banking on his cooperation. Bucky had a lot banking on himself already, but he was more comfortable relying on his physical strength than gleaning cooperation from an enemy operative.

'OK,' he said. 'Sam, can I send a text from your phone? We ditched ours ages ago.' Sam nodded, shifting in his seat to access his jeans' pocket. He unlocked and then slid a smartphone across the table. Bucky picked it up gingerly, staring at the unfamiliar user interface for a moment. He realized all phone brands were different, of course, but he couldn't help but feel lost without the red envelope that led his StarkPhone to his texts.

'The green speech bubble,' Natasha prompted. He thanked her absently, tapping the icon and opening a new thread.

'Who are you texting?' Sam asked.

'Iron Man,' Bucky replied. 'We'll need all the help we can get.'

Chapter Text

The Winter Soldier caught the shield on its rebounding path, spinning and arching a leg as he heaved it back at Bucky, too hard and fast for Bucky to catch it without the vibranium slicing his hand to ribbons. Bucky jerked back, dodging, just in time. The shield slammed into a panel van, burying nearly halfway into the metal. He tried to yank it out but it wouldn't fucking budge. He ducked as a glinting knife came down on him. He threw the Soldier into the panel van, taking the half-second of recovery to move away from the cars, to give himself more room to maneuver.

The Soldier flipped the knife in the air, changing his grip as smoothly as rivers ran. Bucky tried to maintain distance, tried to evaluate any weaknesses but the Soldier attacked in earnest and Bucky blocked blows and stabs, losing ground as he struggled to get the upper hand. The Soldier was nimble and strong; Bucky's own strength was hindered by his bulk and his bigger targets.

Bucky grappled the metal arm, unable to dig into tendons or crush bones to get the hand to drop the knife. The Winter Soldier tried to yank out of his grasp, but Bucky held fast, his grip denting plates and no doubt hindering servomotors. His blond hair fell in a curtain as he ducked, catching the sunlight, and for a second, Bucky swore he recognized the Soldier.

He twisted, forcing the metal arm straight across his back as he reached up with his other hand. He grabbed desperately, getting purchase on the thick muzzle the Soldier wore, gripping his jaw. Bucky bent and threw, tossing the man over his own back and scrambling away as he straightened. His shield was stuck; he didn't have any guns and hadn't owned any the Army hadn't given him in his life. He wished now he had a weapon. The mask came off in his hand and he dropped it. It was useless; it didn't matter.

The Soldier rolled, absorbing what should have been an impact that would stun him for a moment, an impact which would have broken a normal man. His knife had been dropped on impact, at least, Bucky noted, and the Soldier rolled right to his feet. His metal fingers jerked awkwardly, disabled by Bucky's handprinted dent across the gleaming forearm. His human hand, tucked in a black glove, began unbuckling a holster at his thigh as he turned.

Bucky's breath stopped. His heart stuttered and his bones froze. His hands did not shake.

This was impossible. What he was seeing was not possible. The blue eyes had unnerved him that first night on the roof; the long, shaggy blond hair had seemed eerie, but this? This was not possible. It was simply not possible, and if it were true, it represented a bigger failure on Bucky's part than anything that had ever happened and would ever happen to him. This had to be wrong; it had to be a trick of the light or of his memory, but it wasn't. The terrible, horrendous impossibility stood there as clear as it was day.  

Steve's face stared back at him, red blood on his cheek from a scrape when he rolled. Bucky knew it would heal in minutes. Steve stood there, all of five eight and impossible in his strength. It was impossible that he was alive. This couldn't be Steve; it had to be a trick; it had to be something. For a moment, Bucky prayed Loki was behind this somehow, but the god was locked away in Asgard for his crimes. What was in front of him had to be reality.

The gun slipped from the holster.

'Steve?' Bucky called. Steve blinked at him, hesitating in raising his gun. Something in his blank face flickered for a moment before being pushed down. The gun raised. Bucky started to lift his arms to cover his head, to duck uselessly, but Sam swooped down like a fucking superhero and kicked. Steve went flying. Bucky ran to his shield; his panic gave him the strength to tear it from its moorings. He rounded the panel van, running, and stumbled to a stop when STRIKE Team Alpha had him surrounded, like he was an amateur, running into an ambush. He searched past the van, but Steve was gone, like he'd evaporated.

It couldn't have been Steve, but it was. Rotors chopped the air, tossing Bucky's short hair as he searched for the Soldier, but he was gone. He looked up at the helicopter, thinking of Natasha's prediction about their firefight. It was a news chopper, not one of SHIELD's; the station logo was painted on the bottom of the cockpit.

'On the ground!' Rollins shouted at him. Two STRIKE agents knelt, aimed on him, fingers on triggers and ready to blow him away. 'Get on your knees; hands behind your head!'

'Drop the shield, Captain,' Rumlow ordered. With a half-dozen assault weapons on him, Bucky complied. He felt frozen. He felt numb. He knelt, broken glass cutting into his jeans. He barely felt it. He raised his hands, holding the back of his skull as if he could steady his racing thoughts in their loop.

It couldn't have been Steve, but it was. It had been.

The cold muzzle of a gun touched the nape of his neck, death pressing into the soft, delicate skin there. Bucky closed his eyes.

'Not here,' Rumlow said, his hand reaching out to touch the barrel of the assault weapon. 'Not here,' he repeated. Bucky realised the news chopper was still hovering, filming his arrest and his abandoned shield for the whole world to see. Whether HYDRA claimed humanity had already given up or not, they couldn't execute Captain America on national television and expect the world not to explode around them. HYDRA's actions still had consequences, even if Bucky only had twenty more hours to keep that fact true.

Magnetic cuffs encircled his wrists, locking his arms in front of him. Bucky opened his eyes, staring at Rumlow's boots as the cuffs turned on and attached to each other. He tested them weakly, too numb to try for real, and they didn't budge, not an inch. Rollins tangled a hand in Bucky's canvas jacket, still dusty from the explosion at his training camp. He was hauled to his feet.

'You're lucky the world was watching,' Rumlow told him as he took Bucky's other arm. Civilians had stopped fleeing chaos and instead stared at him as he was lead to a SHIELD wagon. They had cell phones out, videotaping the carnage and Captain America taken into custody. 'When we get back to base, there won't be a helicopter waiting. Just a bullet with your skull etched into it.' Rumlow said it like a promise, but Bucky wasn't frightened by him. He was frightened by all the things he imagined someone would have to do to Steve to get him to fire at Bucky, to get him to try to kill Bucky, to get him so stripped and bare that he would fire an assault weapon into a crowd in hopes of hitting Bucky even once.

The doors to the wagon were opened, and Bucky saw Sam and Natasha already cuffed—in police-issue steel—sitting with two masked agents sitting in the very back to prevent any attempt at escape. Bucky let STRIKE load him in too, sitting down next to Sam and staring at the ground, at the riveted metal.

'Bucky?' Sam said, an aborted movement of his hands like he wanted to check Bucky for wounds. There weren't any, not physical ones. There were drops of blood on the riveted floor; Bucky looked up and saw Natasha's face, pale, her head leaned against the wall of the wagon. Her shoulder was leaking blood. She'd been shot. He wondered if Steve had shot her. 'You look like you've seen a ghost.' In another life, that might have made Bucky laugh. As the wagon lurched and began driving, he had nothing alive enough inside him to even try to laugh.

'He looked right at me and he didn't even know me,' Bucky said, dimly, almost unaware he was talking. He felt so cold. He hadn't felt this cold in what seemed like forever. He felt like he was dying, collapsing inside himself.  He didn't understand.

'Who?' Sam pressed.

'Steve,' Bucky said. Natasha frowned. 'Steve Rogers. He was a member of the Commandos, and he was my best friend.'

'How's that even possible?' Sam asked. 'He died like seventy years ago.'

'Zola,' Bucky said, because that was the only way it was possible. The computer's voice leapt into his head and Bucky's hands started to shake then. He clenched his fingers into fists. 'The whole of the one-oh-seventh was captured in forty-three, with Steve, the only medic who survived the ambush. Zola experimented on him, tried to recreate my serum. He must have survived the fall,' Bucky realised. 'They must have found him.'

'None of that's your fault, Bucky,' Natasha told him. Bucky shook his head; that couldn't be true.

'He was—I always looked out for him,' Bucky said. 'I dragged him outta so many fights, outta tight spots in the war. He must have thought I would come for him, that I'd find him. I always found him. I was all he had. Even when we had nothing, we had each other and I didn't come for him.' Sam looked away from Bucky, at Natasha. His questioning gaze turned concerned in a beat.

'We need to get a doctor here,' Sam told the guards. 'We don't put pressure on that wound she's gonna bleed out here in the truck.' Bucky didn't point out that news choppers and civilians with StarkPhones were the only reason they hadn't been executed right in the street. HYDRA didn't care if Nat bled out in the wagon; it would save them a bullet, that was all.

One of the guards snapped a Taser club out of her belt; Bucky considered trying to block the blow probably headed for Sam. To his shock, before he could move, one guard tazed the other, slamming the helmeted head hard enough into the wagon's side to knock the man out. Black gloved hands peeled at the helmet, yanking it off. Maria Hill's face popped out of the mirrored visor, her hair plastered to her face by sweat and the pressure of an ill-fitting uniform.

Maria groaned, tossing the helmet down. 'That thing was squeezing my brain,' she said, before eyeing Sam. Sam eyed her right back. 'Who's this guy?'

⍟

'J, please,' Tony begged. 'How long till Mark XLIII is go?'

'Despite our efforts, it will be another four hours,' JARVIS said regretfully. 'We are skipping, as you said, the bells and whistles, but the alloy and assembly take time. Manufacturing an external arc reactor is also a delay,' he said, and if J were human, Tony would have taken those words like a knife to the gut. When he had had a reactor in his chest, he could plug into suits. Since the heart surgery, and since he had foolishly, foolishly not be building any new suits, he didn't have anything to power the suit he was rushing to manufacture.

'Tony, you'll make it in time,' Pepper promised without cause, sitting on a clear worktable as Tony paced. The many, many screens of his workroom were playing footage of carnage in DC. A man with a metal arm had dropped from a bridge in shaky civilian footage, crushing the roof of the car he had landed on. He had shot Romanova. He had fired an AK-47 into a public bus—Tony couldn't tell from the footage panicked civilians had gotten before the news chopper had arrived if it were empty or not—in an effort to kill Bucky.

The footage of Bucky tumbling out the emergency roof exit of the bus was clear enough; he hadn't been killed then, at least. From behind the reversed logo of a Starbucks, Tony watched Bucky grapple with the metal-armed man. Horrifyingly, it seemed like the man was a rival to Bucky's impossible strength. Bucky's shield dug into a van and he tugged, unable to pull it out.

'You don't know that,' Tony said, tearing a hand thru his hair. 'Fuck, Pepper, how could I have been this stupid?'

'You were trying to get better,' she said. 'That's not stupid.'

'Bucky is out there right now without air support,' Tony pointed out, looking away from the screens and at his beautiful girlfriend. She stared over his shoulder, watching the muted news as anxiously as he had been since Bucky had sent his own SOS text from an unfamiliar number. 'It obviously was stupid. Jesus, I was in trouble and he couldn't come and now I'm fucking stuck here and useless!'

'Tony,' Pepper started and Tony couldn't help but shout at her.

'No, fuck, I'm four hours from a suit and then at least another four in the air—'

'He has air support,' Pepper cried suddenly, pointing at the screen. Tony turned just in time to see a man with metal wings swoop down and kick the assassin down before he could fire. 'Oh, my god!' she cried.

'Who the fuck is that?' Tony snapped.

Two STRIKE teams appeared at the cross streets, swarming as Bucky crushed a section of the metal arm with his bare hand. Tony didn't trust SHIELD much, but he felt relief flood his bones. SHIELD had its problems, but they had sued Bucky and gone after the lawsuit with everything they had. They were there to protect their investment. They would stop the metal-armed man.

Tony watched as two STRIKE agents grabbed the metal-armed man, dragging him into their own vehicle, not the waiting custody wagon. He watched two arrest Romanova, rough with her shot-out shoulder in a way that looked incredibly deliberate as they cuffed her.

'What the fuck?' Tony whispered, staring at the screens. 'JARVIS, search the SHIELD files we have for an operative with a metal arm.' JARVIS chimed an affirmative as Tony kept watching the scene he was so far away from get worse.

With an injured Romanova at gunpoint, the winged man surrendered. STRIKE Team Alpha surrounded Captain America, clear, HD footage from a helicopter. There was no mistake; that was Bucky and SHIELD was going to take him down. They were closing in slow and cautious and after looking up at the chopper, Bucky dropped his shield and knelt, hands on his head.

'What the fuck is happening?' Tony demanded. 'Is SHIELD—' One of the agents placed his gun against Bucky's neck. Bucky was going to be executed, in the road, like a criminal executed another. 'Are they gonna kill him?' he asked, and his voice came out so much smaller than he thought it would. He risked a glance back at Pepper, who looked as petrified as he felt. Rumlow stopped the agent, and they both glanced up at the chopper's camera. They placed Bucky in heavy, heavy cuffs and practically hauled him to his feet. They loaded him, like they'd placed Romanova and the other, into the custody wagon.

'Cameras were the only thing that stopped them,' Tony said dimly. 'They would've—SHIELD would have executed Captain America in the street.'

'This doesn't make sense,' Pepper said. 'Tony, you have to get out there.' He knew that; God, he couldn't believe he'd been so distracted trying to get better, trying to stop the nightmares that had put Pepper in danger, trying to fix himself, that he'd forgotten that Bucky might need him too. He couldn't believe he had been so negligent and fucking blind.

'J, man, tell me something good,' he begged again. 'What have you found?'

'I have found something, Sir,' JARVIS admitted. 'Not in the information from the SHIELD hack: I found it in the Stark Industry archives. I don't think you're going to like it. Please don't shoot the messenger.'

⍟

'Sir, he's—he's unstable. Erratic,' one of the scientists warned, his voice on the brink of the asset's awareness. The metal bars of the vault's door opened for the approaching handler, spiking fear beyond the other sensations flooding the asset's mainframe. The asset waited, assault weapons at the ready and aimed. The body had filled with adrenaline: unnecessary; calm and passivity were required when in the presence of handlers. The pressure in the skull that was sometimes present was currently fit to burst. The asset was aware of the possibility that it had hit someone. Perhaps the asset had lashed out at the scientists, because sometimes pain broke the instinct to be docile for them. The asset was in pain; they could make nothing worse in punishment for its lashing out.

The weapons lowered as the handlers ordered it. A knife of sensation carved into the skull of the asset, sharp and hot and demanding—

A man's laughter—the face of a thin mother in near silhouette, speaking low to a doctor in the doorway. 'Consider calling your rabbi, Missus Rogers. I'm afraid there's not a good chance for your boy.'—A friend hauling him off a bruised ego and broken glass in an alley, cursing just soft enough for his hearing to strain for it—

'Mission report.' The asset heard that loud and clear, but pushed at the pain instead, searching out the source of the images, trying to find the correct protocol to explain them. Why did the asset remember a mother? Whose mother was she? What were the images and sensations of a beating in an alleyway? The asset was not so weak as to be beaten in an alley; the handlers would describe such an event as failure and failure was not permissible. What was the explanation for that image, that knowledge? What were the images? What was the source of the unknown system protocol? The asset had not been designed to remember.

'Mission report, now,' the handler ordered again. The asset heard. It was impossible to make a report when a detail was conflicting with another: Nothing came Before and the man was remembered. An attempt was made to respond, but the mission had been a failure. There had never been failure. Failure was not allowed. Failure had never been reported before. Failure was not an option. The punishment for failure was an unknown external protocol; it must have been more severe than the punishment for delay in success. It seemed impossible that something could be worse than that punishment, but the carving pain of the images was worse. Perhaps failure was the source of this pain. Perhaps failure initiated recollection protocols.

A familiar face, terrified, reaching for him as he dangled in whipping, cold air—the same face, fond and sad, lit by the pale light of the morning, close enough to share warm breaths—that face in sharp relief of moonlight, his own fingers twitching with the burn for a bit of good charcoal for the shadow of his hair—

A slap met the asset's face. It was a hard hit, but the asset was not allowed to brace itself for punishment from handlers. The asset nearly fell from the reconditioning chair, head bouncing on rebound. Vision blurred: momentary disorientation, not an indicator of concussion. No concern. Copper in mouth: cheek split on teeth, temporary damage. No concern.

A disused bank vault housed the reconditioning room in this location. Reconditioning required pain. Reconditioning required electrocution and neural reset protocols, substantial and additional doses of benzodiazepines and midazolam in addition to the implants delivering the same drugs directly into the brain. Reconditioning left the head feeling distinctly heavy, like the brain was swollen inside its skull. To vocalize the pain of the process would be pointless. The asset's comfort did not matter.

The torn IV from the back of a flesh hand stung and pinched, leaking sluggish red as the ripped skin tried to knit back together around needle and tubing deep in a dorsal metacarpal vein, but the asset could barely focus beyond the tight, vibrating feeling of memory. The asset should not have memory. The asset should not have feelings (fear was allowed; fear gave them control). Something was wrong.

The asset deliberately did not yearn for his cryochamber to take all this feeling away. System analysis was required, and the asset's programme demanded that analysis and repair were requested. Losing recollection protocols to recondition would stop that pain, let it give way to the pain the asset knew and understood, but it would also stop memory.

The asset requested nothing, and that made terror stung deep in the lungs and heart: anxious. The handler still waited.

'The man on the bridge,' the asset said, before control of the words was certain. 'Who was he?'

The handler hesitated, and the asset knew why. The man on the bridge was the man from the asset's memory. Weapons were not meant to have memory. The system was compromised; the question revealed that. The asset was compromised and would remain so until reconditioning. Perhaps the man on the bridge—the target—was a threat. Perhaps he had initiated recollection protocols; perhaps he had caused the need for more of the system to be reset than ever before (but that wasn't right; there had been more; the brain had been ripped and torn and the heart had been frozen and changed). Nothing came before. No one was coming now. No one came Before.

'You met him on another assignment earlier this week,' the handler said. His answer was littered with clear markers, clear indicators: lie. The asset's programming disallowed past missions from being recalled ('For you to remember me by while you're at war,' he said, in something that had come Before). The asset remembered the man from something else, and the lie confirmed it. The asset wondered why a handler would work so closely with a highly trained weapon when he could barely lie to the weapon.

Wondering hurt, like hot spikes behind his eyes that followed across neurons as forbidden thoughts crossed ahead of the pain. The asset couldn't accuse that, couldn't speak without orders, wasn't used to thinking on its own. The asset did not wonder—was not allowed the luxury of thought. The asset pushed on that spot in the brain with answers, with the heat of memory, even if it meant pain which would lead to punishment.

I knew him, the asset thought, involuntary. He wasn't supposed to—people knew people; weapons did not. People could think things, know things, but the weapon only knew the mission and only followed orders.

Laughter, warm and delicate, hushed in the cast of darkness in a forest deep in Europe. Other men, indistinct in time and pain, and the man, with an arm around his shoulder—'Stevie, you fucking punk!'—a lover's caress in a place he knew to be Brooklyn, to be home, soft yet unyielding, warm and wet and perfect—a howl and a thrown shield, dim sound to one side, and the cries of the vanguard to the other—pain—

'Your work,' the handler began, pulling him—the asset out of flashbacks, 'has been a gift to mankind. You shaped this century, and I need you to do it one more time.'

The asset was breaking down, shorting out. Remembering hurt, and the heart's chambers twinged sharply, knowing how far away these images were from the asset. The heart hurt to know they were gone. It felt like a malfunction. Malfunction should be reported, but the report would make them commence reconditioning, stopping the twinge of longing in the heart; they would rob the memories before the asset could understand them. The asset had to understand or the asset would be punished, would fail again. Failure would compromise more protocols; failure would wrought pain.

'Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos. Tomorrow morning, we're gonna give it a push. But if you don't do your part, I can't do mine, and HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves.'

The words hummed. The words were not nearly as beautiful as the most painful memory. The words felt like they should sound right, but the words didn't quite make sense. This wasn't freedom. The mission was never about freedom. The handlers did not endorse freedom, not even in the guards; they valued obedience and unquestioning trigger fingers. The handlers took the idea of freedom from the asset long ago, with four big incisions, an electric drill, and neurocauterization—a rally and the beating he got when the cops came; a friend standing over him as his scalp was peeled back, hot tears soaking his face—The asset had no choice; the asset had no part. The asset was merely a weapon, and weapons shot only where aimed. The asset had to—the asset had the mission—'mission is to take down the weapons facility and take control of the research labs'—a strong jaw and slight curls in the humidity, shouting orders to a squad of officers about to lead men into battle—

'This isn't freedom,' the asset said. The asset's gaze met the handler's eyes like a person would. 'This is fear.' Breath whistled into lungs; the physical sensation of fear almost, almost outweighed the pain. It did not come close to outweighing the asset's surety that freedom was not what the handlers valued. Lips twisted and the urge to hide the burning in the eyes was very acute but the asset—something was too stubborn to look away, almost daring the handler to strike him again. The asset was not programmed for acute emotion; that had been taken out with electricity and the constancy of terror and pain. It stabbed in the brain, like lightning that had cut old paths there, only to be flooded by an encroaching, swirling hurricane, itching to be scrawled in charcoal and graphite, and the absence of something—a charming grin, an exhausted laugh, shouting about learning to stay down—made phantom arrhythmia pound inside the asset's ribcage: precious, hateful, foreign, familiar malfunction. The asset did not break eye contact; the asset had never really learned to stay down.

The handler turned away, and the asset knew it had failed more than the mission. The asset didn't know what could be more than the mission. The asset only knew the mission. The asset only knew of the mission at hand, not the one before or the first one; the mission was the only thing it had. If the mission had failed, what else could the asset be? What else made this acute feeling occur? What else was there? For what else was the asset made? Wetness fell from eyes: weakness, nothing more.

'Prep him.'

The scientist protested. The asset knew why. He was too warm. The soil scorched by the coldest lightning and then frozen was melting, turning malleable and breaking thru the programming, giving unknown commands to the weapon's mainframe. The earth was supposed to be frozen and dead but it had been outside of cryofreeze for too long; the mind was defrosting, warming, soaking up light—hope—from the present and burning the asset's eyes. The sensation was impossibly human; it panicked the asset and forced lungs to hitch.

'He's been out of cryofreeze too long,' the scientist protested, because the asset might be a person after all, might have had a mother, and a friend, a lover—the asset might be a person—might have been loved—he might be—

'Then wipe him,' the handler said, and at least this flood of recollective agony would be taken by reconditioning, even if that was a torture—'Are we only torturing him?' asked a young nurse, in Russian, which was starting to piece together. 'Weapons cannot be tortured,' a voice replied, assured. 'Only fixed.' The mask affixed to his face flooded and his scalp was again pulled away as the world faded—in and of itself. The asset shivered despite the biology which disallowed such discomfort as cold. The asset felt cold. The asset felt.

'And start over.'

The asset felt sick. Reconditioning would at least take that with everything else. Reconditioning would stop the sensation of memory, which burned and threatened to shatter all other protocols, leaving the asset with unimaginable knowledge and to fend for itself. It would stop thought and restore protocol. It would be less pain, because the handlers would be pleased. It would be less pain, because there was never a choice.

'Sir, your little monologue there—' began one of the doctors. Alexander Pierce turned to him coldly. The doctor fell silent.

'Are you aware of who the asset was before?' he asked. The asset did not look over; the asset did not risk the handlers remembering they were within hearing distance of the device embedded in the skull and that the conditioning had not yet begun. 'Because I am. And I'm aware of why that man fought. Our corrections have always been tenuous and we don't have time to cut new ones. Getting what's beneath the programming on our side is just as important as the programming itself.'

'Using words like that to poke at what's beneath is dangerous,' the doctor said. 'We have him function like a computer for a reason. Words like freedom mean something to him—' The handler retorted, but another doctor had held out the mouthguard and fear of what was to come made the asset lose the words behind the artificial noise of blood rushing thru ears. Teeth were bared as the protocol demanded; the mouthguard was placed against them.

The asset had something underneath, something the handlers of all people feared. Hands touched shoulders and the asset was pushed back, leaning into the chair and shaking as metal encircled the head. He held onto that thought, his fists tight as restraints closed around arms. He held onto it because it was important. The handlers aimed the asset to bring the world to order; if the asset wanted to bring the world freedom, he had to remember why he wasn't the only one who was afraid. He had been something Before. Before existed.

Electricity snapped thru his body, thru his brain, and the thought, the thought, the memory: everything fell away.

I fell once.

Chapter Text

'This man declined the Nobel Peace Prize,' Fury sighed, looking at a photo of Alexander Pierce. Bucky had been approached by the man after Fury had been declared dead; he hadn't bought, even then, that Pierce was Fury's friend. He'd not been fooled. He'd known there was something behind those eyes, something Bucky had thought he had to avoid at the time. Now he knew he had to face it head on, face it to save Steve from whatever they'd done to make him forget who he was. 'He said peace wasn't an achievement; it was a responsibility. See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues.' Fury tossed the photo down.

'He didn't lie,' Bucky cut in, unable to help himself. 'He avoided certain truths.' Fury levelled him with a glare. Bucky glared right back, because how dare Fury act like he was a victim here when he had let HYDRA percolate and plan for years under his direct supervision.

'Boys,' Maria said, before Fury could tell Bucky to fuck off. 'We have bigger fish than your pissing contest.'

'We have less than seventeen hours to stop the launch,' Natasha agreed. The doctor was finishing stitching her shoulder, which had turned out to be a simple, painful thru-and-thru shot. Bucky knew Nat would follow them into battle later today, torn muscles and ligaments and lost blood or no. He knew he could trust her to have his back, and shaken as he was, he needed that. It was a relief to have someone at his side and at his six. Sam was along too, and Bucky was sure the para-rescuer would hold his own under normal circumstances, but he hadn't fought against enemies like HYDRA. Natasha had been forged by the Red Room and the KBG; she knew this type of evil as well as Bucky.

'I don't think the Council's accepting my calls anymore,' Fury said, before tugging a small black case towards him with his unslung arm.

'What's that?' Sam asked.

'Once the helicarriers reach three thousand feet, they'll triangulate with Insight satellites,' Maria explained, 'becoming fully weaponized.' Bucky leaned his elbows on the table and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. Project: Insight was evil. Even if it had been truly owned by SHIELD, it would have been evil. If HYDRA hadn't been behind it, Bucky might never have found out and that evil would have gotten into the world. He never thought he'd be thankful for terrorism.

'We need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own,' Fury said, gesturing to the case. Bucky wondered if these blades had been made as a sick precaution, or if Fury had hurried to make them now, when he realised almost too late that HYDRA was using SHIELD as a protective blanket.

'One or two won't cut it,' Maria went on. 'We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational a whole lot of people are gonna die. Once they're in the air and weaponized, they will be virtually impossible to take down.'

'We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA,' Fury added. 'We need to get pass them, insert the server blades, and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's left—'

'We're not salvaging anything,' Bucky snapped. His hands lowered from his face. He was too angry for them to even shake, stilling for the first time since the cuffs had locked around them. 'We're not just taking down the carriers, you fucker; we're taking down SHIELD in its God damned entirety.'

'SHIELD had nothing to do with this,' Fury pointed out.

'SHIELD's been compromised,' Natasha replied.

'You've said so yourself,' Bucky agreed. 'SHIELD doesn't exist. SHIELD is a couple of people trying for peace and holding logos and posing for cameras while HYDRA uses its resources to create the end of the fucking world. HYDRA was right under your nose and nobody noticed it for shit.' His tone dared Fury to disagree and Fury did so easily, too casual for Bucky to feel anything but rage.

'Why do you think we're meeting in this cave?' Fury asked. 'I noticed.'

'You noticed too late,' Bucky snapped. 'I wasn't even working for you and I found out the extent of HYDRA's plan before you did. I had, what, thirty hours notice? You had maybe eighteen? That's not a great turnaround time for the man in charge. What the fuck is your excuse for this?' He was shouting.

'Bucky,' Natasha murmured, a warning to calm down. He leaned back in his chair.

'How many people are gonna pay the price for what you didn't notice? How many people have already paid it?' he asked, forcing his voice out at a reasonable volume.

'Look, I didn't know about Rogers,' Fury offered. Bucky scoffed, trying to hide the slice in his chest at that. He didn't believe that. Everything else had been lies; why would this be different?

'Even if you had, would you have told me?' Bucky demanded. 'Or would you have told me you had information I would really want and would only get if I gave you the rights to my DNA, if I let you own me like a fucking machine, like cattle?'

'I wouldn't have told you,' Fury said easily, confusing honesty for kindness. 'I would have neutralized the threat. I don't think you're capable of that. You were in love with him once and that doesn't make you the best operative to take out the Winter Soldier.' Bucky stared at him, every cell inside of him quiet.

'What the fuck did you just say?' he whispered, his voice gone weak suddenly. Fury couldn't know that; it had been Bucky's best-kept secret when Steve was alive—before Steve fell. Fury blinked his one eye, glancing at Natasha. Bucky followed his gaze, and Nat looked down, avoiding his eyes. 'Holy shit,' he said, understanding in a flood. He got up, needing to get away.

'Bucky,' Natasha called after him. He ignored her. He couldn't believe she had told Fury; he had never, ever told anyone how he felt about Steve and the person he thought he trusted had sold him out to the same man trying to steal Bucky's rights away from him. Fuck, Natasha had probably been giving Fury ammunition against him in information this whole time he'd known her. He had fucking kissed her; he had meant it too. He had held her when she cried and promised to catch her if she fell, slept next to her and felt safe and warm all night. She had taken his secrets and traded them away. He left the small room they were hiding in, rushing out of the bunker and into open air. The door didn't bang shut behind him until eight-seconds after it should have.

'Buck,' Nat began, sounding incredibly, believably sorry.

'Don't,' he growled, his voice harsh. He didn't know why the nickname hurt right then, but it felt like a twisting knife between his ribs. 'Don't you fucking dare.'

'I'm sorry,' she said anyway. He turned away from the viaduct he was staring at.

'How the fuck does your sorry make this OK?' Bucky demanded. 'You sold me out. I have literally never told anyone who Steve was to me. How long did you hold onto that piece of information before you gave it to Fury, huh? Did you go straight to him? Did you wait a week? How long?' He didn't know why it mattered, but it felt like it did. Nat didn't break his gaze as she confessed.

'When we hung out in New York, in the downtown of DC, it was on my own time,' Nat said. 'Whenever I came to your apartment, I was wearing a wire.' Her words hit him like a grenade. The knife in his ribs wrenched and he turned away. She'd been wearing a wire. All those conversations, all those talks, all those late nights on the couch with the TV muted and flashing commercials behind them. 'Bucky, it was my job. You're my friend and I regret every second of it—'

'It was your job?' Bucky laughed, but it sounded like sandpaper. Bucky pressed his hands to his eyes again, swiping away the wetness they found there. 'Your job. You asked me about the love of my life because it was your job?'

'I'm sorry,' Natasha said again. 'I'd take it back if I could. I stopped. I'm pretty sure they bugged your place with stationary equipment after, but I stopped and I want to take it back.'

'You can't take this back,' Bucky promised her, perhaps more severe than he needed to be. He didn't care. He felt like a monster licking its wounds; he felt weak despite the fact he was supposed to have no option but to be strong. 'None of us can go back, no matter how much we want to, no matter how much we pray.'

'I don't believe in God,' Natasha pointed out.

'Well, it's about damn time to start believing in something, Natasha!' he yelled, anger burning at him again. 'Fuck!' The anger made everything worse. It made the stab of betrayal burn hot and it burned at his eyes when all he wanted to do was man up. She held his gaze, sincere. Bucky didn't trust it. He couldn't.

'I believe in you,' she said, like a promise. He shook his head, a laugh tumbling out of his broken chest.

'You better find something else,' he told her. He meant a lot more than that, and by the look on her face, she understood. She looked like she was a twelve year old innocent, slapped across the face. He turned away, marching down the viaduct.

'Where are you going?' she called, soft enough to reach him and quiet enough to not carry in the wind. He hadn't taken the same precaution, shouting at her, but nothing in the world could make him regret lashing out in this moment.

'If we're going to war,' Bucky said, 'I need a uniform.'

⍟

Bucky froze when he reached the gangway which lead to the computer bank he needed to disengage. Steve stood there, halfway between Bucky and his goal. His eyes were blank and the muzzle Bucky had torn off had been replaced by another. Bucky stared at him, and Steve tilted his head slightly, staring back. The movement was eerie. The gaze was flat and mechanical; it wasn't even eye contact, just an observation of a threat. Bucky hated it; it filled his stomach with worms and twists. It hurt him to see Steve without any of himself, like shattered ribs hurt, not a bit of his everything left for Bucky to pick out, and Bucky had known him better than absolutely anyone.

'I need to get past you,' Bucky told him simply, as if that would work. Steve didn't move. He didn't react. Steve stared. Bucky risked a step forward and Steve moved almost too fast to see, his Sig Sauer immediately in his hand and aimed at Bucky's head, no doubt right between the fucking eyes. Bucky had a gun today too, but he couldn't bring himself to aim it at Steve. It stayed clipped in the holster at his belt. His shield rested, still, on his shoulders.

'Steve,' he said, when Nat nearly screamed in his com that he needed to move, and move now. Alfa- and Bravo-lock had already occurred; Nat and Sam had managed and evacuated before the ships had lifted off. Bucky had distracted the guards in the loading bay until Sam flew back up to the service panel in the roof Bucky had broken off, leaving Nat above the hole to fire and cover Bucky as Bucky rushed into the third helicarrier. Sam had flown to distract STRIKE teams, until Rumlow had shot him down. He was grounded, Nat was picking off HYDRA from the roof, Hill was trying to corral real SHIELD agents against the HYDRA they worked alongside in the HQ building, and he was alone.

The birds had started lifting then, rising, automated, and Nat's position became useless at the roof began folding in on itself. The engines lifted slow and steady, but Bucky felt afraid enough to swear he could feel a thousand tiny bumps of turbulence under his feet.

'Stevie, come on,' he begged. Bucky needed to get Charlie-lock in. At the sound of his name, Steve tilted his head again, sharply and small, as if it jarred something internally. 'Steve, a lot of people are gonna die if we don't stop HYDRA.' Steve stared, his level gaze shifting somehow, immeasurably. His gun's aim did not falter a single millimetre. 'Innocent people,' Bucky continued, hoping to God he had read that absolute nothing as the correct something. 'Millions of civilians, people who committed no crimes, most of whom probably won't ever.'

'They're going to be slaughtered,' he said. 'You gotta help me stop it.' Steve's eyebrows twitched into the barest hint of a frown. His mechanical gaze (HYDRA's most secret weapon's scope) shifted to Bucky's shoulder, away from his head, staying the threat for a momentary second. 'Steve, you believe in freedom. Is this freedom? Holding a gun to every single person on Earth? Is that right?' One of Steve's feet took a step back, like he was preparing for a blow.

'This isn't gonna bring freedom or peace anywhere,' Bucky told him. 'It's just gonna make people afraid and it's just gonna kill. This isn't anything good; it's just fear-mongering. It's just murder.' Something in Steve's eyes told Bucky that he wanted to agree; the muzzle seemed to stop him. 'I'm afraid too,' Bucky admitted, and Steve's gun lowered an inch as he stared vaguely, listening. 'You have to let me by,' Bucky continued. 'You have to help me stop it. You have to help me stop them.' For a horrifying moment with his friends' shouting at him in his ear, nothing happened.

Steve lowered his gun, looking fully away from Bucky. His hair fell, covering what little of his face Bucky could see past the muzzle. He turned away, pressing his back to the railing and letting Bucky rush past him. Bucky tore open the computer bank he needed, and there was a metallic clank and then a small thud behind him. He slid the blade out of his belt and into place, fast as he dared with such a slip of delicate green metal in his hand. He reported Charlie-lock into his com. He could see out the glass panels that the helicarriers were properly flying; nowhere near three thousand feet, but high enough that he couldn't bail. Water lay below them. He didn't know how to get out.

'Bucky, get out of there,' Nat ordered. 'Dive into the river if you have to; I will personally fish you out. I swear to God, OK? I know you hate water, but I swear on my life, I will get you out.'

'Bucky, the ships are aiming on each other,' Sam added. 'It's working. You gotta go. Doesn't matter how; just get out now.' He ignored them. He had to. He ripped his com out of his ear; he tossed it aside. None of it mattered now. He'd thrown his life away before because Steve was gone. He was gonna throw it away to get him back just as fucking easily. He would throw any number of his lives and worlds away to get Steve back. Steve had dropped his gun, and he had dropped to his knees. He was holding his head, one hand on either temple and clawing. Bucky recognized pain when he saw it. He couldn't leave Steve behind. He never had been able to and he never should have.

'Stevie,' he said as he dropped to his knees beside him on the narrow gangway. Steve didn't reply, just let out a high-pitched noise of absolute agony. It twisted at Bucky, just tore him to shreds. 'Stevie, darling, we have to move.' He made the mistake of touching Steve, muscle memory demanding Bucky provide the physical comfort Steve used to crave. In the torment he was in, Steve stuck out by instinct, hitting Bucky's chest hard enough to send him flying nearly six feet back. He hit the ground hard, his lungs stunned by the incredible blow and his spine shooting lighting where he struck the hard metal of the dying helicarrier. He forced himself to release air and breathe again and it hurt.

Steve hauled himself over the railing and dropped onto the very floor of the helicarrier below, not making it very far before his knees gave out again. He fell onto all fours and as Bucky tried desperately to roll to his own knees and get up, Steve's little fist touched the ground in that tell-tale gesture. God, resisting the orders, denying his brainwashing, it looked like it was killing him.

'Steve!' he called again, like a useless record.

'Who is that?' Steve begged, desperate to make the tearing of his brain stop. 'Who is that?' His voice was small thru the muzzle. It was shaky and pained on its own.

Bucky clambered to his feet and jumped the railing. It was only ten feet down. As he dropped, the ship received its first blast. It listed suddenly as he fell, and Bucky stumbled on his landing, his lower joints jarring. He caught himself on a wrist and practically tumbled to Steve's side. He did not touch him.

Somewhere, somewhere close, the hull had been blown open. Parts of the electronics along the walls were sparking and burning, hit and hit hard. Air whipped at them, tugging Steve's hair and sending the acid of anxiety along Bucky's arteries. It was cold air, sharp and fast, like the air that had blown thru the shattered windscreen of the Valkyrie, like the furious gust that had blown about the train before Steve fell. He had failed then and he wasn't going to fail now.

'Your name is Steve,' he said, desperate. He couldn't resist; he grabbed the back of Steve's neck possessively, needing to feel his everything was alive, that his skin was warm, and that that meant there was still a chance Bucky could fix the rest, somehow, someway. Fuck, he still didn't know that stupid fucking prayer. 'Your name is Steven Grant Rogers. You're just a kid from Brooklyn; you're just like me.' Steve's eyes screwed shut, a tear falling and running shortly down his cheek until it hit that mask. Bucky wished he could tear it off; he didn't dare reach for Steve's face right now. He didn't dare try to take a piece of Steve's armour; he would need as much as he could get to get thru remembering himself. Bucky understood that much. 'You were an artist. You served as a medic before you were taken prisoner by HYDRA. I freed you then; I came for you.'

'Nothing comes for weapons,' Steve said, hard to understand. He sounded like he was clenching his teeth behind his muzzle.

'Steve, I'm sorry it took so long, but I'm here,' Bucky said. He shook Steve as hard as he dared, tightening his grip to what he was sure was an almost counterweight pain, a mild pressure to distract from whatever scars in his brain were currently lighting up red hot or white cold. 'I'm here. I came for you. It's time to come back with me.'

'I—' Steve said, before stopping. He pulled out of Bucky's grip, curling low on himself. He sobbed silently, his shoulders hitching and his metal arm letting out an incredible whine as it recalibrated. Steve hit that fist to the ground, agonized, leaving a dent behind.

'Come on, Stevie, you know I'm right!' Bucky shouted, suddenly furious. This wasn't anything like Steve being stubborn or pigheaded; this was Steve lost without even himself to pull him back to shore. It was like no anger Bucky had ever felt before. 'How many times you said you'd wished you'd listened to me, huh? Listen to me now. You know me! You know me and it is time to go!'

'I don't—' Steve tried, but the fight was leaking out of him. Bucky had always been able to calm him down, after he'd busted his knuckles up, no matter how angry he tried to stay. 'I don't know—'

'You do; you know me,' Bucky said, begging his friend. 'We grew up together. I am your best friend. I've saved your life more times than I can count, just like you saved me.'

'You're my mission,' Steve sobbed, and the ship lurched around them, one side dropping as an engine received a hard, hard hit, already compromised from the first. Bucky's knees went out from under him, sending him flying across the ship to the open hole in the hull below. He scrabbled for purchase, tried to hold onto the hull and failed. A hand grabbed him as he dropped out, grabbed one of the leather straps of his uniform.

'Fuck!' Bucky screamed, grabbing Steve's arm, his sleeve, anything, holding on for dear life, clawing and terrified. He stared at the Potomac below, the water rioting as bits of fuselage and fire rained from above. It looked so much worse than the white wall he had plummeted towards in the Arctic; it looked like Hell on Earth.

Bucky looked away from the water and up at Steve. Steve's metal hand had grasped onto the hull of the ship, anchoring him well inside and allowing him to support Bucky. The ship was burning. The ship was going to break apart and Steve scanned the interior of the ship as he held Bucky like nothing. Bucky tried to pull himself up, using Steve's arm and grabbing no purchase with his shaking hands, and Steve spoke.

'The carrier is compromised,' Steve warned.

'Pull me in!' Bucky shouted back, half out of his head with the fucking nightmare of falling again to his death. 'Fuck, Steve, pull me up!' He looked back down at the churning, splashing, burning water and suddenly he was falling towards it. Steve had let him go.

He hit the water like it was concrete and it stunned him on impact. The cold was the next thing to stun him; his lungs contracted as if they were as scared as Bucky was. His eyes squeezed shut, and he tried to force his body to cooperate but the impact, the fear, the cold, the water, the fucking God damned terror in his heart hindered his efforts. His chest burned and his lungs begged for air as he sank, trying in vain to swim up, up, but he didn't know which way was up and if he opened his eyes, he'd see the inside of the plane—he'd be back there—he'd be dying—he thrashed in the water, desperate, frantic—his lungs tried to pull air and dirty water burned him, choking him—fuck, he was drowning and he didn't think he'd wake up this time—

Something wrapped around him as darkness closed.

⍟

The asset could have left the body in the water; panic made the target's efforts to swim undirected and uncoordinated. The weight of his suit and boots and the shield still lashed to his back would have left him to be dredged up with the rest of the wreckage; death by proxy was still a mission complete. The asset could have stayed in the helicarrier, crashed and died and been free of the programmes. The asset should have returned to rendezvous.

The asset understood that the frantic attempts at swimming, the desperate request to be pulled back into a crashing helicarrier came from terror, unadulterated and visceral. The target did not deserve to be afraid. The target was kind and strong and loved; the asset remembered that. The target broke bones and cried in his sleep after he did.

The asset could have completed the mission and been frozen again. The asset did not cry.

The asset did not complete the mission. The asset dragged the body to shore and hands searched for med packs that had never been worn—they had been Before—and upon finding none, rolled the body to the left.

A well-aimed blow to the back, gentle as the asset could be while being efficient, spurred a cough, then a spill of water, then more coughing. The asset rolled the body more and allowed the target to vomit up the water he had swallowed. The scent was unpleasant. The asset grabbed the leather straps of the familiar uniform and dragged the body from the vomit and rejected water. Still with closed eyes and a lolling head, the body came easily into the cover of the meagre trees by the river.

'Bucky,' the asset said, unbidden. The mask had been lost, snapping off when the asset dove into the water and his jaw worked easily around the sounds. The asset's metal hand released the strap it held and the body fell into the dirt. 'Bucky,' he said again. What was this protocol that leapt to awareness, demanding to be followed, of saving and searching for wounds and breath sounds and an even pulse? The asset worked thru the protocol, counting silently as his flesh hand touched a neck and then a wrist. The neck could be broken easily, even with the weaker flesh arm. The neck could be broken and the handlers would be pleased.

The asset moved the body back onto its side, three-quarters prone and one arm raised—prone: take the shot, make the kill, complete the mission—and then counted breaths again.

'Bucky,' the asset repeated. Was Bucky the identity of this target? The asset couldn't—the asset couldn't remember. 'Bucky?'

The asset sat next to the body, staring at the face. He remembered it. The asset remembered. This had been the man who first initiated recollection protocols. This man had started this cycle of thought and pain and jolted resistance into the protocols. This man had been more than that, but the asset couldn't remember.

The asset had to kill him. The asset had to complete the mission. The asset had to slice or shoot or break—the metal arm reached and the asset struggled to stop.

The asset didn't want to.

That thought shocked. That thought forced a gasp. That thought put a shake into the flesh hand and the metal fingers closed into a fist without a direct command from the programme.

The shaking hand twitched for the blade still tucked into its holster along the muscle of the thigh. Lightning and fire swirled thru the asset's brain, forcing his eyes closed to try to squeeze out the smoke. He didn't want to kill Bucky. He didn't want to kill anyone.

The asset struggled to stand, struggled to step back and away from the target, the prone, easy victim. The asset's programming demanded the mission be completed. Nerves in his limited flesh encased in the metal arm pinched at the refusal to finish, painful and jerking and horrible. Lungs whistled and tightened in panic, even tho the asset had not swallowed any water, and the mechanics inside the arm released corticosteroids into the bloodstream to counteract the tightening of airways and the inflammation of the lungs. Epinephrine shortly followed, and the path of it thru the blood strengthened the programme's demand.

The asset had to retreat. The asset couldn't be here. The asset couldn't stand so close to the target; the pain was too much and he would give in. The asset had to retreat.

As he began stumbling into the forest, as he forced himself to resist and to fail, he heard footfalls and someone else shouting.

'Bucky!' a woman's voice yelled. 'Buck!' A man's voice followed hers, shouting the name again and again. The asset retreated quicker. The asset couldn't determine who these people were, if they were handlers, if they had come to collect him. The recollection protocols had disrupted the asset's internal clock; the mission had been given ten hour parameters, and if those hours had passed, then the asset had failed and would be collected.

If the asset were collected now, the handlers would force completion. The handlers would kill Bucky with him as their knife, their fist. The handlers would punish and the asset couldn't imagine the pain getting worse than this.

He fled.

⍟

Bucky woke up when someone tried to peel his eye open. He jerked his head away. Bucky blinked his irritated eyes and tried to focus past the bright light running over him.

'He's conscious,' a woman said. 'Hey there,' she said, and the bright light moved away. Bucky stared up into the face of a black woman, kneeling over him. Branches and leaves fluttered beyond her head, the blue sky behind them rented by black, heavy smoke.

'Do you know your name?' she asked, and Bucky realised she was a paramedic by her vest and the blue nitrile gloves covering her hands. Bucky turned his head, ignoring the second paramedic kneeling beside him, holding an O2 mask to his face. Bucky tried to knock the mask away and the male paramedic retreated. Bucky didn't answer the question, twisting his head this way and that, feeling new panic rise inside of him. It must have shown because a hand landed on his sternum, trying to keep him from sitting up. 'Easy,' she warned. Bucky pushed her away, struggling to sit.

'Where's Steve?' he asked in a croak. He tried to clear his throat but it hurt. The woman looked down at him, frowning. He spotted Nat and Sam hovering behind the man at his side. Bucky pushed his elbow into the forest floor below him, wavering at he stood.

'Bucky,' Nat snapped, and the male paramedic steadied him before he fell, staggering under over two hundred pounds of enhanced, dense muscle. The world was spinning. 'Put the oxygen back on, you fucker.'

'Where's Steve?' Bucky repeated, moving away from the medics. Sam shook his head when Bucky looked at him. 'Fuck. Where is he?' Bucky begged. 'Where did he—Steve!' Bucky shouted. He scanned the brush around them, looking for an obvious path.

He found one: it looked like Steve had stumbled away from the clearing as much as Bucky was stumbling now on spaghetti legs.

'Bucky, for fuck's sake,' Nat said, appearing at his side as he pushed thru the bush. 'You were alone when we found you.'

'No,' Bucky said, unreasonable. 'No, fuck you; he was here. He pulled me out.' He cupped his hands around his mouth. 'Steve!' He had followed the path, but it stopped after about twenty feet, like it had only taken Steve that long to remember to disguise his route behind him, to barely disturb anything in the first place.

'Steve!' Bucky shouted again, circling the small clearing. Nat and Sam burst out of the brush beside him and he honestly thought he might break down and cry, right in front of them. 'Steve,' he whispered, his heart ripping in his chest.

'He was gone by the time we got here,' Sam said. 'We saw you drop and we came. We couldn't have been more than fifteen, twenty minutes.'

'Well, he couldn't have gotten far,' Bucky reasoned. He was desperate. Part of him felt like he was dreaming, like he had when he'd first woken up here in the future—If Steve were alive, Bucky must be dreaming. He shook with uncertainty, with the need for this to be real. 'Can we—God, is there anyway we can cut him off, find him before he's gone?'

'Bucky,' Nat said. She said it like she had a death to announce; it was a no if he'd ever heard one. Bucky's heart shattered and he sank onto the ground, kneeling in leaves and pine needles and dirt. 'Buck, I'm so sorry,' Nat said.

Bucky didn't know what she was sorry for. He didn't know if she was sorry Steve was gone, sorry Steve had been taken in the first place, or sorry she'd stirred his heart when it turned out the person it had belonged to first was still alive. She'd sold out Bucky's secret and Steve was still alive. He was still alive and he needed help. He needed saving.

'Hey, man, breathe,' Sam said, kneeling next to Bucky. Bucky huffed out a breath to humour him, but what was the point? Steve had left; Steve was gone. If Nat had tried before to track down the Winter Soldier, how could Bucky think he'd ever find him?

Chapter Text

The asset barely remembered to disguise its path as it made its way into the woods, along the river. The asset didn't know where to go. The asset was lost. The asset had abandoned the mission and returning to rendezvous was not an option, not if the asset wanted to keep remembering. It was not an option if the asset wanted to stop feeling pain. Recollection protocols were more painful than anything, but they came with memory and they were worse than punishment. If handlers could make nothing worse in pain, then the asset didn't need to be afraid of them.

The handlers had been afraid of him too. There had to be a reason for that, but the asset didn't know.

The asset stumbled to a stop, unsure of where he was headed or where he was coming from. What had happened? It was hard to piece together. The asset remembered orders and parameters; the asset had not been designed to remember its own decisions. The asset had not been designed to make decisions. The asset didn't know how.

Branches above him shook suddenly and a few snapped. The asset scrambled backwards as a metal man landed in front of him. He almost fell to the ground as pain made him uncoordinated. The asset considered running back the way it had come, but Bucky was back there and the asset could still feel orders rising, burning, demanding the mission be completed. The ten hour window for success had closed, but killing was still an option. Punishment was now inescapable.

The eyes of the metal man glowed blue and faded. The metal face rose and a familiar, human face lay beneath. Memory flickered; the man who had made the cryochamber looked like this, had the same dark eyes and worried expression. That man had been beaten, broken, and his car wreckage burned; that man had been a friend and then helped replace his twisted bones with metal and screws. The asset closed its eyes and shook its head, hard, trying to shake the images out. That man had been a friend and then a scientist; the handlers listened to him until they made him a target, and this man looked like him, but wasn't. He could fly and clearly the asset was being collected. He had failed to return to rendezvous but they were here to collect the asset. The asset would be punished. Maybe the asset would be proven wrong; maybe the pain could get worse than this.

'Holy shit,' the metal man said. 'You're Steve Rogers.' The target had said that too, but the asset didn't know. The asset couldn't confirm. 'The files weren't wrong; it's really you. Holy fucking shit.'

'I don't know who I am,' the asset admitted. His hair was still wet from the river; bits stuck to the forehead and fell into his eyes, obscuring his vision and compromising his aim. He had no more weapons. The asset had dropped his gun when stopping those people from being murdered by murderers like him, by machines aimed and fired. He had removed his weapons belt for the lessened weight before diving after the target. He had thrown the last knife he had had away as he ran from Bucky, terrified he might use it. If the asset was being collected, the asset could not use weapons. Compromised aim did not matter; calm and passivity were required when in the presence of handlers. 'I don't know.' The asset felt new wetness on his cheeks, but the asset didn't know where it came from.

'OK,' the metal man said, slow and placating. He had his hands up, the repulsors in his palms switched firmly off: no threat, no concern. He took a slow step towards the asset, and the asset did not move. The handler had come to collect him, even a handler he only sort of recognized. This wasn't right; nothing felt right (Nothing had come Before). 'OK. Hey, hey,' he said, soothing. The asset realized his breath was coming hard and panicked. He attempted to calm, but he couldn't. 'My name is Tony.'

'Not Howard,' the asset blurted, not recognizing the name even as it came out of his mouth. Tony shook his head.

'No,' Tony agreed. 'But you can trust me, all right? I promise. Do you want to come with me? I'll take you to somewhere safe. I'll take you to Bucky.' The asset shook his head. The asset stumbled, retreating slightly.

'No,' he begged. 'Please—Please, no.' He hadn't begged in decades, he realised. Begging had not stopped the pain and it did not stop the tearing sensation of memory flooding thru him. 'I don't want to complete the mission. Please, I don't want to kill Bucky.'

'You don't have to, Steve,' Tony said immediately. 'No more mission,' Tony promised. 'No more HYDRA, not for you.'

'HYDRA,' Steve echoed, because that word meant something. It meant something, something unlike the word freedom, unlike the word hope. Tony nodded. He moved his hand, reaching for the asset's. The asset felt scared. The asset felt.

'No more mission,' Tony said again. 'It's over. You're free.'

'Freedom does not come for weapons,' the asset pointed out, inching closer against his programming. This man was not a handler. The handlers forced and aimed weapons towards targets and then shut them down for cryo storage; for all the handler in the bank had claimed the asset had a part that had been manipulation. That had been a lie. This did not feel like a lie. Tony said freedom and he meant what the asset knew the word should be.

'Yeah, but you're a person,' Tony told him. 'Come on. We can't stay here. HYDRA agents are swarming the area still, trying to recover what they can before Hill or the DCPD can arrest them.' The asset did not understand but it did not matter. If there was no mission, if this handler promised there was no mission, nothing mattered. The asset did not matter. 'Somebody might come after you.'

'No one comes for weapons,' the asset said. He stepped forward and trusted. He didn't understand what trust was, but something hummed in his bones and it sounded like trust. The asset didn't know this metal man; the asset knew nothing but the mission. 'Who are you?' he asked.

'I'm Tony,' Tony said again. 'I'm Howard's son. I'm Bucky's friend. I'll protect you. I'll keep you from anybody who tries to hurt you.'

'Bucky deserves friends,' the asset let out, but he didn't know what that meant. The asset didn't know and everything hurt. He was shaking.

'Yeah, he does,' Tony agreed. 'You're his friend too. Will you come with me?'

'Why are you asking?' the asset wondered. Handlers did not ask permission. Weapons did not give permission. Weapons had no part, no choice. The asset had no choice.

'You gotta want to,' Tony told him. 'I'm not gonna take you home if you don't want to go.'

'Home,' he said, gasping. That was another word that meant something. It meant something big, something warm, something safe, kind and right. 'I want to go home,' he agreed. Tony reached out a hand again, and the asset placed his own metal hand inside it. 'I want to go home.'

⍟

'Hey,' Bucky said tiredly, answering Sam's phone when STARK popped up on the display. He'd lifted the phone from where it rested on Sam's knee. He barely remembered to control his grip as to not crush it in his hand. Sam looked over at him from the back of the cab they were taking to Sam's house. 'You got my message,' he assumed. 'It's over, at least for now.'

'Yeah,' Tony agreed. 'Did you know the Winter Soldier and Steve Rogers are the same person?' he asked. Bucky almost started crying again at that. He screwed his eyes shut and braced his elbow against the closed window, covering his eyes with the hand not clutching a phone.

'Yeah,' he managed. 'Yeah, I broke his muzzle and there he fucking was. He pulled me out of the river when I was drowning again and then took off. He's gone.'

'Uh, no, he's not,' Tony said. Bucky lifted his head out of his hand. He was sure he had heard incorrectly, somehow, despite his serumed ears. 'Cap?' Tony asked, like he thought Bucky's silence meant the call was dropped.

'What?' Bucky said, unable to even think.

'I came as fast as I could make a suit and get out from California,' Tony said. 'I tracked the radio transmit implants that, uh, HYDRA put in the arm and I picked him up, took him to the private airport in DC and took him home.' There was something there Tony wasn't saying, but it was far from a secure line so Bucky didn't press. He was still stuck on the idea that Tony had Steve. Nat and Sam had dragged him to a hospital where they kept an unnecessary eye on his respiratory function for three terrible hours. He had felt in his bones that he had to start looking for Steve right away, but he'd also known Nat hadn't been able to find hide nor hare of him five years ago. He'd thought it was hopeless, but apparently he didn't have to look at all. 'I would've called sooner, but I wanted to have him home; what if someone tried to stop me from getting him out of DC?'

'What?' Bucky said again, still confused. 'I mean, what?'

'I've got Steve Rogers,' Tony repeated. 'DC was swarming with HYDRA agents trying to avoid Hill and the SHIELD agents who were really SHIELD; I didn't want to risk bringing him to you. He's here in the Tower. Barton's been paged; he's gonna track us down the deprogrammers who worked with Romanova when she defected. They left SHIELD a few years ago, and he's gonna give them a hell of a vetting before he tells them why he's come calling.'

'Holy shit,' Bucky gasped. Sam had been watching him carefully since he'd picked the phone up from between them. 'Tony found Steve,' he told Sam, and saying it out loud made it true. Sam's face broke into a grin. Bucky grinned back and it honestly felt like the first time he'd really smiled in years.

Bucky had never, not once in his life, felt this type of immense, potent, foolhardy relief. He had never been so God damned thankful.

'We need to go to the airport, actually,' Sam said, leaning over the passenger seat to tell the cabbie. 'I'm so sorry.' The ancient, Indian cabbie didn't seem to mind, just smiled at Captain America and his friend, flicking a turn signal and swerving like he was still living in New Delhi.

'We're on our way,' Bucky said. 'I'll call when I know what flight we're on; can you have Happy pick us up? Also, SHIELD is gone, but I'm sure the computers at the airport don't know that. Can you hack in and lift my travel freeze? Or call Kendall and see if she can do it for real in the hour or so it'll take us to get to the airport?'

'Yeah, man, of course,' Tony promised. 'Look, Pepper's with him now, Buck, and—he's all messed up. He doesn't know who he is or what's happening to him. He can't even piece together the last few hours. It's all jumbled.'

'I'll be there soon,' Bucky replied. 'He's Steve; I'll know what to do.' He didn't know if that were true, but he didn't know what else he could say. He had always known Steve inside and out; this wasn't really Steve, not now, and maybe not anymore.

'He's still convinced he's going to try to kill you,' Tony told him. 'Be careful when you get here, at least until he's not insistent that he isn't to be trusted.'

'Thanks,' Bucky said. He hung up. God, he had wondered why Steve would drag him out of the river if he was just going to abandon Bucky's body on the shore. Maybe he had left because of that pain Bucky had seen on the helicarrier. The brainwashing had a physical hold on him. Maybe the closest he could get to resisting was to retreat.

'Tony Stark came thru, huh?' Sam said quietly. 'I thought we'd be spending the next two years tracking Rogers down.' Bucky laughed, a little hysterical. 'Hey, man, it's gonna be OK.'

'Steve is safe,' Bucky replied. 'Of course it's OK.'

⍟

'It's good to see you again, Captain Barnes,' Happy called as Sam and Bucky moved thru the sliding doors of JFK Arrivals. Bucky grinned at Happy.

'Call me Bucky, man, seriously,' he said again. 'Happy Hogan, my friend, Sam Wilson. Sam, this is Happy. He's head of Security for Stark Industries and occasionally he picks up crumbs at the airport.'

'Nice to meet you,' Sam said, shaking Happy's offered hand. Happy said polite things back and opened the back door for Sam as Bucky yanked the handle of the front seat.

'Bucky is a ridiculous name,' Happy told Bucky. 'It sounds idiotic coming outta my mouth. Mister Stark is waiting with our guest in your apartment, Captain.'

'It's short for Buchanan,' he pointed out while he enjoyed the feeling of going home to Steve. He hadn't had that feeling since nineteen-forty-one. Bucky waited until Happy had rounded the car to climb in. The closed their doors nearly in sync.

'Buchanan is a ridiculous name too,' Happy said as he started their engine and pulled away from the curb.

'You know, Bucky is a pretty generic name, or, was, in my day,' he said. 'It was like being called Frank, or Jim.'

'OK, but your name is actually James,' Happy replied. 'So you could have gone by Jim. That is a normal name.'

'In my day, Bucky was a normal name too,' Bucky repeated. 'My dad's name was Jim, so I couldn't—No, you know what? Happy? We're not having this argument again. If you think Bucky's so dumb, call me Jim; I don't care. Just stop calling me Captain Barnes.'

'Too formal?' Happy guessed.

'Yes, but I'm not a soldier anymore,' he bragged. 'SHIELD's collapsed, so I guess I won my lawsuit. Kendall will be pleased she doesn't have to deal with me interrupting her anymore. She'll be disappointed she didn't get to really win the case, too. We were going to trial in June.'

'Also, your name is Happy,' Sam pointed out from behind them. 'I don't think you have room to be chirping Bucky for being called something dumb.'

'Yeah!' Bucky agreed, having never thought about Happy's name in comparison to his. 'Your name is Happy Hogan. You're taking the piss out of me for being called Bucky when your name isHappy Hogan.'

'If my first name were James, you'd bet your ass I would stop going by Happy,' Happy grumbled. Bucky laughed.

'This is a nice car,' Sam mused absently. 'My car was totalled. I wonder if I can get a car this nice. Does Geico cover assassin-related destruction?'

'It was my fault it was destroyed; I'll buy you a new car,' Bucky promised, because he could. Tony had extended him a kindness, getting him all the money from the media made about him and which would keep pouring in, but now that Bucky was done paying exorbitant legal fees, he hardly felt the need to hoard the six million dollars like a dragon. Sam's car had been destroyed by the Winter Soldier, but Bucky was the asshole who put Sam in that situation to begin with. He still had the insurance card of the truck he'd stolen and then gotten blown up. He planned to replace that one too.

'How is he?' Bucky asked Happy before Sam could protest. 'Have you seen him?' Happy nodded.

'Tony tracked the radio transmitters implanted in his arm,' Happy said. Bucky winced at the information. 'He found him about eighteen miles down river from where you washed up. Kid was apparently real confused that Tony wasn't a handler and that Tony's name wasn't Howard, but he agreed to come when Tony asked him if he wanted to go home.'

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed. 'But how is he?' Happy shook his head.

'Honestly, man?' Happy said. 'I don't think he's OK. Tony got them to the private airport in DC, flew to New York, and I picked them up there. He was still in his tacsuit and he was practically useless. He kept asking the same questions over and over.'

'What questions?' Sam pressed when Bucky's throat hurt to much to talk. Bucky glanced thankfully over his shoulder at his friend, and Sam gave him a gentle, sad smile.

'Where am I, what is this, who are you,' Happy said. 'He kept insisting he didn't want to complete the mission. It wasn't until Pepper told him the mission had been dismissed that he stopped. He likes Pepper.'

'Of course he does,' Bucky sighed. Pepper was lovely. 'Pepper Potts is—'

'Yeah, I know,' Sam said. 'She runs the business side of Stark Industries because Stark gets too wrapped up in development. Are they—The news is always rude about the fact she was his secretary and then became his girlfriend.'

'I don't know about her being a secretary,' Bucky admitted, looking at Happy. He supposed he'd never asked how the two had met; he'd just seen them look at each other like two robins in love and respected Pepper as a businessman from the first time he'd overheard her on a work call. She was daring and strong, a little ruthless, and he imagined if she had ever been a secretary for Tony, she had run every aspect of his life and kept the whirlwind of his mind closer to organized than anyone else could. 'But yeah, they're very much in love. It's quite beautiful.'

'You describe things in the weirdest ways,' Sam murmured. 'They're not together; they're in love.'

'They are,' Bucky said, twisting to glare at Sam.

'It is beautiful,' Happy put in. 'Miss Potts was his personal assistant for a long time, and then he promoted her when he thought he was dying from metal poisoning from the arc reactor he had in his chest. I'm not privy to how the relationship actually started, but Pepper isn't one to have taken advantage or have been taken advantage of.'

'And Steve?' Bucky asked. Happy shrugged as he pulled off the expressway.

'Yeah, she told him the mission was finished, that he didn't have to kill you, and he believed her,' Happy said. 'The other questions keep coming, but he always remembers Pepper. Hasn't asked her who she is. He keeps asking Tony, keeps calling him Howard. Did Rogers know Howard?'

'Yeah, Howard was the tech provider for the Commandos, most of the SSR, to be frank,' Bucky said. 'He was a good man. He was our friend.' The image of Howard's car crash leapt to his mind. If HYDRA used the Winter Soldier for its biggest, most important dirty work, and if Howard had been taken out for resisting, Steve had been the one to kill him. Tony looked a lot like his ma, mostly Howard in his colouring and in his eyes, but Bucky hated the idea that Steve was literally being shadowed by the friend he'd been forced to kill.

'How are we dealing with this?' Sam asked. 'People are going to want to prosecute him for the assassinations he carried out.'

'Steve is not a villain,' Bucky snapped. 'He's the world's longest-serving prisoner of war. You didn't see him. He resisted the programming because I told him the helicarriers were gonna kill a bunch of innocent people. He resisted the programming because he's a good man, and I'll be damned if anyone tries to suggest otherwise.'

'I'm sure you're right,' Sam said, 'but people are gonna want justice.'

'I want justice for Steve too,' Bucky said. 'But letting me save those people caused him a lot of pain. I can't begin to imagine what HYDRA had to do to get Steve to hurt like that. None of this is his fault.'

'It's probably mine,' he added, after a tense silence. It hurt to admit it, but it was the truth. This was his fault and he could feel that fault like a fire in his floating ribs, making it a little hard to get a good breath in. Crazily, he wondered if this was what Steve's asthma felt like: something squeezing your bones and shutting down your lungs. 'He fell off the train and I didn't even try to find him. I let HYDRA take him.'

'You thought he was dead,' Sam pointed out. Happy called out to JARVIS and the gate to the parking garage lifted. Bucky sighed, his heart clenching in his chest to match his stuttered breathing.

'That's not an excuse.'

Chapter Text

'Master Hogan has arrived with Captain Barnes and his guest,' JARVIS chimed. 'They are on their way up to Master Barnes's apartment.'

'Thanks, J,' Tony said. He turned from the bar—from the dry Coke he had poured himself—and looked at his girlfriend and a Soviet-era assassin, sitting on the couch together.

Steve looked up at the ceiling and around, like Bucky used to when JARVIS spoke, searching for a visible speaker or a PA box. The familiar gesture made Tony crack a small smile, even feeling as strung out as he did.

Pepper had been a fucking godsend, handling Steve's confused, shattering programming as well as she had handled every bit of insanity Tony brought home to her. She had helped Steve out of his tacsuit, had washed the filth of the Potomac from his hair, had tucked him into the softest clothes she owned. Steve looked unbelievably small and human in Pepper's black sweats and a long-sleeve grey shirt. They were too big on him, but every other piece of clothing in the Tower would be bigger. The sleeve fell over his metal hand, just the tips of his fingers hanging out.

'Bucky,' Steve said, without aim or cause. He had blurted the name, like, four dozen times over the past ten hours, rarely with a reason, like he was trying out the sounds. Tony wondered why. Steve wasn't up to answering questions right now, and talking to him like a computer got clearer answers sometimes, but pressing him on that just had Steve closing his eyes and trying to shake something out of his head.

'It's all right,' Pepper promised in reply, stroking a hand over Steve's shaggy, drying hair. Steve leaned into her touch. 'You aren't going to hurt him, I promise.' Tony did think that Steve had tripped enough of the proverbial wires of his programming to not be a threat, just uncoordinated and panicked, but Mark XLIII was hanging out in Bucky's kitchen on alert mode just in case. JARVIS would engage on their behalf if Steve fell prey to the compulsions someone else had put in his head. 'You're shaking,' Pepper added. 'Are you cold?'

'Temperature: no concern,' Steve said, which wasn't an answer. 'Other system analysis required,' he added, which was probably code for a broken line of his programming. Tony understood that Steve had been brainwashed, and apparently they'd taught him to request maintenance when that brainwashing started to slip. His stomach wrenched at that. Pepper looked over the couch at Tony and sighed. She looked so sad. Tony hated that.

He wished he could have left Pepper out of this, taken Steve to any other building JARVIS ran and could keep secure if Steve's programming reengaged or if HYDRA came to try to collect him, but Tony had to make this right. He couldn't do it alone; he couldn't do it without her. He needed Pepper, unfairly; she had to look sad like this because he'd need her when he took his turn to break down. The doors slid open and Bucky and the black man who'd been in DC with him came in. Romanova wasn't with them, which Tony had somehow expected.

'It's my favourite old man,' Tony joked weakly, leaving his Coke on the bar as he crossed to the foyer. Bucky smiled tiredly and hugged him, not mentioning the way Tony squeezed too hard. Maybe he was so strong he didn't even realize Tony was hugging him with all he had. Jesus, he'd told Bucky to pull it together when Bucky had thought he had been killed. He didn't realize Bucky had felt like this. He hadn't known how fucking awful it felt.

'Thank you,' Bucky said into Tony's shoulder. 'Thank you for finding him.'

'Don't thank me,' Tony said, letting him go. 'I'll explain why in a bit.' Bucky didn't push.

'This is Sam Wilson,' he said instead, introducing the black man. 'He's been a blessing the whole time I've been in DC.'

'Is this the VA group leader you told me about?' Pepper called from the couch. Bucky looked over, and from the exhausted smile, he just noticed Steve. He left the foyer, rounding the couch.

'Yeah, the very same,' Sam agreed, shaking Tony's hand. 'It's nice to meet you, Mister Stark.'

'Tony,' Tony corrected. 'That's Pepper. Anybody who saves the Capsicle's ass when I'm not around gets first-name privileges.'

'That goes twice for me,' Pepper agreed. Sam smiled at them.

'Hey, Steve,' Bucky said, sitting on the coffee table in front of him. He said it almost like a prayer. 'You're home, darling. It's so good to have you home.'

'Home,' Steve repeated. 'There are windows,' he added looking over at them. Bucky grinned at him. Tony nodded Sam further into the home and went to get his drink.

'Y'mind if I have a beer?' Sam asked, following Tony to the bar. 'It's been a hell of a day.' It was technically early morning, but he imagined that the VA worker had been going fast and hard for hours, maybe days, following Bucky thru this disaster. It was beer o'clock somewhere; that was for damn sure.

'Fridge below the cappuccino machine,' Tony said by way of answer, and Sam went behind the bar to help himself.

'Yeah, I remember your last room in Brooklyn had just the one little window. It was always dark in there,' Bucky agreed. 'Wait 'til you see the skyline at night. It's like nothing we ever saw.' Steve made a little noise then, pressing the pad of his flesh hand between his eyes as he squeezed them shut. His fingers shook. Pepper lay a soothing hand on Steve's narrow back. Steve whimpered.

'He's been in a lot of pain,' Pepper told Bucky, reaching out a hand to stop him when he tried to touch and comfort Steve. 'I don't know how to fix it.'

'Neither do I,' Bucky admitted, letting Pepper stop him with hesitation. 'I sent Natasha to help Clint find someone who does.'

'The mission—' Steve gasped, and Pepper moved closer to the tiny blond she'd taken as her charge. 'The asset has orders.'

'Maybe you should give us some space for a couple minutes,' she said to Bucky, hardly a suggestion. Bucky's smile faded and he paled, but he nodded. He stood, tucking his hands in his pockets. He looked torn as he lingered, so Tony called out.

'Cap, come here for a sec,' Tony said, crossing the balcony. Sam followed them thru the glass doors.

'Fuck,' Bucky cursed once they were outside. 'I got so wrapped up in the idea that you'd found him that I kind of forgot it's not really him, not now.'

'He's kind of a mess,' Tony agreed. 'Do you think the deprogrammers the Wonder Twins will come here with will be able to fix him?'

'I think they'll be able to fix the pain,' Bucky said. 'Stopping the programme HYDRA gave him from compelling him is only half the battle, I guess.' He leaned his hips back against the railing, staring into the living room and Pepper's attempts to soothe and calm Steve. Tony stared out over the city. 'Do you have your cigarettes?' Bucky asked no one in particular.

'Yeah,' Sam agreed. 'You want one?'

'Please,' Bucky said, taking the cigarette and lighter Sam offered. Sam took the lighter back and lit his own. He held the pack of menthols out to Tony, who politely declined.

'Didn't know you smoked,' Tony said, looking down to watch cars. None stopped in front of the Tower. JARVIS was on Alert Mode Seven anyway; Tony didn't need to keep his own eye out.

'I was born in nineteen-eighteen,' Bucky sighed. 'Everyone smoked. Even my ma—She used to share a pipe with my father on the roof.' Bucky blew out a long column, looking down at the cigarette in his hand. 'Stevie had these asthma cigarettes, a little pricey but cheaper than the better medicines. Turns out now inhaling smoke to stop an asthma attack was a bad idea, but the docs also thought asthma was all in his head back then. The menthol reminds me of the way those stupid things smelled. I used to hate menthols; used to smoke Luckies when I had the extra dollar.'

'What a crazy world,' Sam sighed. He slouched on the patio couch, kicking his feet up to the railing. The little table next to him held an empty coffee mug Bucky must've left out here months ago. Sam ashed into it instead of onto the lovely tile of the balcony. Bucky flicked his own ashes into open air, letting them drift away on the gentle morning's wind.

'Why shouldn't I thank you for finding him?' Bucky asked, looking over at Tony. 'I couldn't have caught up to him on foot, not with this asshole insisting I go to the hospital—'

'It was the second time you nearly drowned; pardon me for being concerned,' Sam grumbled. 'Do you even know how to swim?'

'Apparently not,' Bucky said. 'Tony,' he prompted. 'How did you find him? Why did you bring him here? Why shouldn't I thank you for that? It's wonderful that he's something close to safe. Fuck, it's a miracle and a blessing.'

'I was watching the news, when J was building my suit,' he began. Bucky, for all he had pressed for answers, interrupted.

'I'm sorry I sent you an SOS signal when you didn't have any suits,' he cut in. 'That was unfair of me, to put that on you. I wouldn't have—'

'I didn't really tell you I was out of commission,' Tony said, stopping him. 'You had every right to assume I was prepared. I'm the one who read your subpoena. I should've known full well you couldn't leave DC.'

'Well, we're even, then,' Bucky said. Tony shook his head.

'I don't think so,' he replied. 'I saw the Winter Soldier's metal arm and it's pretty distinctive. I didn't see SHIELD arrest him; I saw them follow their injured operative protocols and then place you three under arrest. They would have shot you in the head if the YWB chopper hadn't been there. I asked JARVIS to search the SHIELD files from the hack for an operative with such an arm.'

'What did he find?' Bucky asked. Tony shook his head.

'Nothing in the SHIELD files we stole,' he admitted. 'But J found schematics for the arm, for a psychotropic-drug-releasing implant, and for improvements to a cryogenic chamber in Stark archives.' Bucky turned from the living room window to stare at Tony.

'I beg your fucking pardon,' he said. Tony nodded, avoiding the gaze.

'My dad knew about Steve,' Tony said.

'That's impossible,' Bucky said. 'No, I knew Howard; Tony, that's impossible.'

Tony shrugged. He looked like a little boy, like an actual child betrayed by a parent when they were small. 'The notes on the schematics: there's no doubt that he didn't know who the equipment was for,' Tony said. 'He knew he was building things for Steve Rogers. I don't know if he knew the extent of what HYDRA was doing with him or to him, but he knew that they had Rogers and he helped them torture him. He helped them store him in ice like a fucking frozen pizza.'

'Holy shit,' Bucky said, rubbing his mouth and turning away. He lifted his cigarette and dragged hard.

'The frequencies for the radio trackers were right there,' Tony said. 'I stopped Stark Industries from manufacturing munitions and weapons because I had to try to fix my mistakes, fix the terror my weapons brought to the world.

'A lot of that was started by my dad, during World War Two,' Tony said. 'I figured I had to—I had to make this right too. He did this, so.

'I had to try.' Tony almost didn't know who he was anymore. He'd been Tony Stark, the carefree playboy for so long, and now every day he had spent enjoying himself while selling wartools haunted him. This haunted him too, in a new way Tony couldn't have imagined. Who the hell was he if his father had been a double agent? Tony was the son of a torturer, a designer of not only weapons but of a human turned into one. How was he supposed to do anything right when he'd been raised by someone who'd tortured a friend?

'So, I tracked him,' Tony said. 'He thought I was a HYDRA handler, because he recognized my dad in me, like you do. He would have surrendered like his programming demanded, but I told him I wasn't gonna take him home without his permission.'

'He gave it,' Bucky guessed.

'Yeah,' Tony said.

'That's good.'

'I think there are certain words that really trigger stuff for him,' Tony said. 'He reacted when I told him he was free, when I said your name, when I asked him if he wanted to go home.'

'Most important three things: freedom, love, and home,' Sam mused. 'I wonder how hard HYDRA had to work to break those things away.'

Tony's eyes bounced over to Steve at the realization. Tony wondered anew at the way Steve kept trying to make Bucky's name sound familiar to himself, repeating it over and over, searching. God, he thought this situation couldn't get any sadder.

'Love?' Tony echoed, unscandalized.

'Shit, sorry,' Sam said to Bucky. Tony looked at his friend. Bucky was staring out over the daytime skyline, clearly trying to absorb the information Tony had given him and failing.

'It's fine; it's just Tony,' Bucky said. 'Yeah,' he said to Tony, insufficient.

Tony reeled. 'What?' he said. 'You're—' He stopped. He didn't know how to express his surprise that Bucky hadn't told him without seeming like he was expressing incredulity that Captain America might spring for the Stars and Stripes, so to speak. Bucky shrugged and gestured thru the windows towards Pepper and Steve, inside.

'That man is the love of my life,' Bucky said. Tony looked: Steve seemed like a shell. He didn't seem real. JARVIS seemed like more of a person than Steve did now; Steve was too mechanical to do a thing on his own.

'Why did you never mention that before?' Tony asked. Bucky laughed, but it sounded like shattered glass and it was joyless. Bucky shook his head and it took him some time to continue.

'It—For us to be together, in our day, it—We could've been arrested,' Bucky said. He turned further away, hiding himself from Tony like he hadn't in a long time. 'My own ma woulda spat on my grave if she'd known,' Bucky said, and his voice cracked. Tony looked at Sam in a panic but Sam looked so sad to hear it that it was no help to Tony. Bucky cleared his throat. 'She'd have hated me,' Bucky said, 'and I was her only boy: her favourite.

'Steve and me—' Bucky shook his head. 'We had to lie during our exams to even get into the Army, and if we'd been found out, we would gotten blue tickets and sent home.'

'A blue ticket?' Tony said.

'It's a kind of administrative discharge,' Sam said. 'No court martial: your CO signs a slip and you're done. Gone.'

'Well, you were drafted. You wanted to go home. Get outed: free discharge,' Tony put in, because he didn't understand.

'No,' Sam corrected, when Bucky said nothing. Bucky kept his hand by his face, hiding behind his cigarette. 'No, they would have been sent home, lost every single veterans' benefit, their ranks, honours, and probably never woulda found solid jobs ever again. Probably would have had a hell of a time finding places to live, to work, anything.'

'We would have lost everything,' Bucky said. 'Maybe even each other.'

'It's hard to open up about that kinda secret. Besides, he was dead.' Bucky shrugged. 'I wasn't moving on any time soon. I had a broken heart. It was hard enough living with it, let alone showing it to people. I thought I got him killed during the war but instead I didn't look for him and let HYDRA take him.'

'That's not your fault,' Sam said. 'Bucky, if you'd rushed off to find Steve—Steve's body, like everyone told you you would, no one else could have made it onto the Valkyrie. How many cities would've been lost? How many lives? Don't torture yourself for leaving what you thought was a corpse to save millions of civilians.'

'I just left him behind,' Bucky said. He was unwilling to accept their comfort. Tony would be the same if something like this had happened to Pepper. He couldn't even imagine what he would do if he'd lost decades of time with Pepper, only to find she'd been alive and suffering while he'd been alive and mourning.

'No,' Tony said. 'Sam's right; you couldn't have known.'

Tony broke off, shaking his head. He hadn't known Bucky had been in love with his best friend; Pepper had told him Bucky had been in love in his day, but he'd assumed it was with Peggy Carter, the woman he visited every other day when he was in DC. When he had still lived in New York, Tony had heard Bucky coo at her on the phone on the few days he'd called her hospice and found her lucid. It hadn't occurred to him that Bucky might be anything but straight; he hadn't considered the love lost might have been the same death Bucky blamed himself for more than any other.

'Steve made the same decision you did,' Sam added. 'He resisted the orders and failed his mission because you told him the same innocent people were gonna die. He gave up literally the only thing bouncing around in his brain in order to save those people. You did just what he would've done. You can't blame yourself for that. It's idiotic.'

'Tony, there's something else,' Bucky said. Tony nodded him on. 'HYDRA murdered your parents,' Bucky told him, not cushioning it at all. Tony blinked and shook his head. He had been given mental whiplash by the sharp turn of subjects; his mind looped and echoed. HYDRA murdered his parents.

'No,' Tony said, looking away. 'No, they died in a car crash.'

'No,' Bucky said. 'Howard—Before you told me about the arm, the chamber, I thought he had found out HYDRA was inside SHIELD. I thought he tried to stop them, so HYDRA sent the Winter Soldier out to kill him.' Tony was reeling again but this time he couldn't stop himself; he didn't know how he'd ever feel at equilibrium. Bucky went on: 'Now I don't know what to think. I don't know what made them kill him, but they arranged his death.'

'No,' Tony said again. 'It was an accident.'

'Tony, man, I'm so sorry,' Bucky said, and that empathetic phrase made Tony realize it was true. 'I'm so God damned sorry. You didn't deserve to be orphaned so fucking young. I took out the Red Skull and I thought I'd taken out all of HYDRA. If things had gone my way, you wouldn't have lost your family and I'm so, so sorry that you did.'

'I thought you said Steve and Howard were friends,' Sam said softly from behind them. 'HYDRA wiped Steve enough that he killed his friend?' Bucky nodded.

'They were friends,' Bucky agreed. Tony felt sick. He hadn't grown up hearing stories of Steve like he'd heard stories about Captain America; he couldn't believe his father had known the two, that he'd tortured Steve for terrorists and deified Bucky for his son.

'Howard was our friend; he was a good man and I don't understand what went wrong.' Bucky placed a hand on Tony's shoulder. 'I don't understand what made him do this, and I don't understand what made him hard on you. I just don't know.'

'My father built that arm and that chamber for his friend?' Tony demanded, pulling away from Bucky. Bucky let him go, smoking emphatically to avoid Tony's eyes. 'He designed an implant to fix Rogers' hearing that also delivered mind control drugs directly into his brain, when Rogers was his goddamn friend?'

'I'm sorry,' Bucky said. 'I don't understand it either. I would call you a liar if you had ever, even once, given me a reason to think you were less than honest with me. I can't believe it myself.'

'Jesus,' Tony cursed, leaning his elbows on the railing and almost doubling over. 'Fucking hell.'

'Don't blame Steve for your parents' murders,' Bucky begged, even if that were the last thing on Tony's mind. 'He can't take on more trauma than he's already got, and if Steve murdered Howard, he really, truly couldn't have had any choice. Steve—the real Steve—he couldn't have done that. You want to blame someone: blame HYDRA or blame me.'

'No, even if I did—'

Tony had to stop. He was being honest that he didn't blame Steve, but he had a thousand emotions swirling thru him like a typhoon and he was afraid of drowning in them if he didn't take a second just to breathe. Tony gathered himself and said: 'Steve might have killed my father, but my father knew full well what they were doing to him,' Tony said. 'What he was doing to him. I can't—It—We're even, Steve and I.'

'And my mom,' Tony said, realizing she'd been murdered too: her last moments hadn't been driving peacefully before a wreck; her last moments had been with an elite assassin terrifying her. 'That was Dad's fault. He had to know people who were willing to torture Steve like that would be willing—He's the one who put her at risk.'

'I'm so sorry,' Bucky said again. Tony wished that meant anything. His parents were still dead but it was new and worse now. His father had practically killed them himself. His father hadn't been a hero; his father had been a war criminal and he'd gotten away with it, too. He'd been killed by one of his own thugs and the world had grieved a good man that hadn't been real. He was remembered as an innovator and a philanthropist, a visionary. He wasn't remembered as someone who might carve out a cavern in someone's brain so they couldn't think for themselves.

'I've been with Steve for the last ten, twelve hours,' Tony said. 'He's not even sure where he is, let alone—I couldn't blame him for this. He doesn't know. He's barely conscious—sentient, I mean. He's—God, Bucky, I just don't know.'

'Fuck,' Bucky said. He tossed his butt into the mug Sam had left his inside. Tony made a note to get a real ashtray out here for these assholes. 'Did you ever read that file from Rumlow I sent you, just after the Battle of New York?'

'Yeah,' Tony agreed. 'HYDRA would have loved to have taken you and turned you into the same weapon they turned him into. I'm glad they didn't get that chance.'

'What?' Sam questioned, still slouched on the patio couch. 'What the fuck?'

'About a year ago,' Bucky began, 'I read a report that ended with the suggestion I be corrected so I could join the asset. Apparently holding back when sparring with a normal human—not snapping that fucker in two—was a mistake. Rumlow—the head of the STRIKE team that arrested us,' Bucky explained for Sam's benefit. 'He thought it would take them a year and a half to get me ready to work with what he described simply as the asset. Apparently, it took them nearly four years of neurosurgery and brainwashing to prepare Steve; they had to keep cutting into him, keep correcting him surgically, to keep him weaponized. They froze him so his brain wouldn't heal.' Tony honestly thought he might throw up.

'I bet they corrected right before he killed Howard,' Bucky said. 'Made sure. My hit was too close to the Fury op; I think they—I don't think they planned to have him kill me at first. I was on the target list of Insight; they thought they could launch it and take me out. It wasn't until we started after Insight that—that Steve came for us. I think they made a mistake, trusted the programming too much, and sure enough, he broke it.'

'Holy shit,' Sam said. Bucky nodded, sighing heavily.

'I had JARVIS search the files for the asset at the time but it's obviously above a level six clearance, or stored far from what Fury could access; we had nothing on Steve then,' Bucky said. 'I should have been suspicious when we didn't even have Steve's enlistment files, nothing from his time in the SSR as a Commando. It was like they'd hidden every part of him to stop someone from finding out.'

'We did find out. We have everything now,' Sam told him. 'Nat dumped all of SHIELD's information online.'

'We have Steve now,' Bucky replied. 'I know I should care about the info dump, and I know I should be thinking about how to actually, really, truly wipe HYDRA out, but all I can think about is Steve.'

Tony watched his friend, the worry on his face Tony had never seen before. He imagined unwillingly something like this happening to Pepper; an image of Pepper strapped to a table and crying while his father traced blueprints at a desk behind her, unconcerned, popped unbidden into his mind. Tony didn't know how he would possibly be able to get to sleep tonight. 'Do you think I can go back in?' Bucky asked, chewing his lip.

Tony turned, looking at Pepper and Steve. She felt his gaze on them and waved slightly. God, he loved that woman. He couldn't imagine loving her and losing her and then finding her like Bucky had found Steve. He couldn't imagine the pain he would feel. He felt horrible watching her fret over a brainwashed prisoner of war; he had to think having it the other way around would kill him.

'Yeah,' Tony said. 'Let's go.'

⍟

'You're sure?' Pepper asked, lingering at the door. Steve was still on the couch where she'd left him. Bucky looked over at him, sighing. 'I can stay.' Bucky shook his head, watching Steve sit still and passive.

'You've been with him for a full day,' Bucky said. 'I'll get him to rest. You need your rest too.'

'Bucky, what if he loses control?' Pepper asked. She crossed her arms, worried. Tony placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezing comfortingly. 'What if something—'

'The suit is on sentry in the kitchen,' Tony said. 'So is JARVIS. He'll wake us if we're needed. Besides, I think the asset is gone. Bucky and Romanova are the only targets who have ever made it past the requisite time for the mission.'

'Fury did,' Bucky reminded him. 'We're keeping the fact he's alive a secret for now, but that means the last three targets made it out alive. That's every target we know of this year,' he joked, looking back at Pepper, bumping her arm. She didn't laugh. She was worried.

'It's Steve,' Bucky said. 'I know he's not all together, not now, but he's at least not the asset. Steve has never hurt me, not ever.' Even when they fought, Steve avoided the worst of the things he could have said to cut Bucky to ribbons. Bucky hadn't always had the same control. Bucky had said some horrid things over the years; Steve had only lashed out at Bucky's weak spots about Steve himself, at the parts that might make him stumble or doubt, not at the parts that would make Bucky bleed out onto the floor and die. Steve had never believed in cruelty. It made it harder to imagine what had happened to him to turn him into the Winter Soldier.

'Bucky, I don't know if he is Steve,' Pepper said, concerned. 'And no matter how much you might love someone, they might still hurt you.' She moved one of her hands, touching Tony's on her shoulder. 'Even if they don't mean to, even if you don't expect it.'

'This is Steve,' Bucky said, with pointless surety in his bones. 'I just—It's not gonna be a problem. I believe in him. Even on the helicarrier, he didn't really hurt me. I know him, and he's a mess right now, but I believe in him. And Sam's here too.'

'Sam's passed out in the second bedroom,' Tony pointed out.

'He'll step up if I need him,' Bucky agreed. Tony nodded, and shrugged at Pepper. She sighed. She watched Tony's face intently and Tony gave her a look Bucky couldn't interpret.

'OK,' Pepper said after a long pause. She nodded, hesitating. 'OK. We'll see you in the morning.' She pulled from Tony and kissed Buck's cheek and forced him into a hug.

'Sleep well, guys,' he ordered. Tony winked at him as he hauled an arm around his girlfriend. He waved over his shoulder as they made their way out, and Bucky resented the sliding door as he wished he could physically mark their departure. He turned, looking at Steve.

Steve had been looking at him, but snapped his eyes away when Bucky looked over, avoiding eye contact like he had all night. It twisted something inside Bucky, sharp and delicate and painful. He crossed the living room and made his way down the two steps to the couch. He sat next to Steve, a safe distance away, flinging an arm along the back of the couch.

'Hey,' he said. 'You tired?'

'Tired?' Steve repeated to the corner of the coffee table. His hair fell in a curtain, clean from Pepper's care taking, blocking most of Bucky's view. His hands were curled on his lap, moving aimlessly and slightly as Steve battled programming and struggled to stay still and calm. It hurt to watch, but Bucky imagined Steve hurt more.

'Yeah, tired,' Bucky said.

'Do you want to sleep? You've been awake for a very long time.' Steve didn't move. Steve didn't reply. 'Hey,' Bucky called. 'You all right, sweetheart?'

'The asset is operational,' Steve replied, rote and automatic. Bucky hid a wince at that. 'Pepper said the mission has finished.'

'It is,' Bucky promised. 'I wouldn't be here if it weren't.'

'You would run,' Steve guessed. 'Targets run when they have a chance.'

'I trust you won't hurt me,' Bucky said. 'You know me, right?'

'Trust,' Steve echoed. 'Bucky.'

'Yeah?' Bucky prompted, and Steve said nothing. Bucky could see him frowning, could see him thinking, could hear servomotors hum in his arm. 'Let's get you to bed, man, come on.' He bumped the backs of his fingers against Steve's metal wrist, leaning forward to do so.

'Bed?' Steve asked. He was frowning at the place Bucky had touched, as if curious what the contact had been. Bucky wondered who had touched him in the last seventy years without the aim to hurt him. He imagined very few people, if anyone, had done anything honest to him in decades. Bucky hated that. He had had a hard enough time with dishonesty as an autonomous being, waking up in the twenty-first century. He couldn't imagine what Steve had went thru.

The files were all online, thanks to Nat. He could find out. He didn't know if he should read them, if he should just let Tony evaluate them for him. It felt like a breach of privacy, to read clinical, sterile language about the horrors of what had happened to Steve. He wanted to know like a burn under his skin, but he also couldn't shake the feeling that Steve had spent nearly the last century as an object, as a pawn. Shouldn't Bucky only know what Steve wanted him to know, what Steve decided to tell him when he was well enough to decide things? Shouldn't he restrain himself, to protect Steve? To give him the autonomy and privacy that had been positively stolen from him?

'Yeah, bed: a place where people sleep,' Bucky explained.

'Sleep,' Steve repeated.

'Rest,' Bucky replied. 'You close your eyes, lie down, dream, recharge. I imagine you haven't slept in a very long time.'

'The asset does not know how,' Steve admitted. He looked up suddenly, meeting Bucky's eyes. 'I remember we slept.'

'Yes, we did,' Bucky promised. Steve's eyes drifted away. 'A lot of times, we slept. Come on,' Bucky prompted, standing. He reached out a hand, offering it to Steve. 'I'll tuck you in.'

'Will you stay?' Steve asked, watching his hand. Bucky wondered if Steve was still waiting punishment, if he should broadcast his movements better and make them smaller, slower, nonthreatening.

'While you sleep?' Bucky clarified. 'You bet your ass. I'll keep watch. I'll keep you safe, OK? There's no threat here, no HYDRA, no handlers.' Steve shook his head, his metal hand clenching into a fist and his flesh hand following suit a moment later. Servomotors whined.

'No—the handlers will come,' Steve insisted. He sounded an inch from tears. 'They always come. The asset has failed and failure will be punished.'

'No one is going to punish you,' Bucky cut in. 'You didn't fail, all right? You resisted the programming and you never have to go back.'

'Failure has never happened before,' Steve said. He didn't seem to hear Bucky, hear the assurances. 'But I remember—they never came when we slept. They came when the asset was alone, when the asset was cold. The target is warm.' Bucky hesitated, unsure. It felt dirty, almost, to spend the night with Steve that way, to agree to share a bed with Steve when he was so shattered. 'The asset was always alone when they came. The target—The asset remembers you.' Bucky stared at Steve, at the blank look in his eyes and the terror in the set of his mouth. 'System recalibration required,' Steve added quietly, closing his eyes against pain in his head. It twisted at Bucky too, probably less agonizing but just as sharply. 'Maintenance is required.'

'The handlers won't come here,' Bucky promised instead. 'You should get some rest, sleep, and I should—I should keep watch.' Steve shook his head. 'You'll be safe if I'm keeping watch. You'll be safe here in the Tower.'

'You should sleep,' Steve corrected, stubborn like he had been when he was himself. 'They came after, when you weren't sleeping, and recalibrated. System recalibration—'

'If I promise I'll sleep,' Bucky began, 'will you come let me tuck you in?' Steve nodded. He reached out and took Bucky's hand in his metal palm. The metal was cold, which Bucky had for some reason not expected. Bucky gave a little tug and Steve stumbled to his feet. 'Come on,' he said again. He tried to release Steve's hand but Steve held fast.

'I remember,' he said. 'Safe. Bucky.'

'Yeah,' Bucky promised. 'You're safe.'

He looked at the huge bed in the master bedroom (what a concept). He wondered if this was crossing a line, somehow, giving Steve this small, physical comfort. He felt unsure. He had never felt unsure about touching Steve before, not even at the height of his panic when he realised he might love a man the way the Bible and his parents and everyone said he shouldn't. He had never doubted Steve's ability to stand up for himself—his ability to consent—before, not even when Steve had first been back from Azzano. He had worried about a lot of things, but not that. Now he felt worried. He looked down at Steve.

Steve was staring up at him, waiting in the doorway. At Bucky's side, he seemed small, looking up at him. Bucky swallowed nervously. Steve eyed the gesture but didn't question him.

'I know you,' Steve said, his voice soft, hushed, like he was afraid the non-existent neighbours would hear.

'I know you too,' Bucky replied, just as softly. 'You're a good man and you need sleep.'

'Bucky,' Steve said aimlessly, looking away. His face was blank, unreadable. He looked at the bed and Bucky sighed before tugging him forward. 'Location is not recognized.'

'You're home,' Bucky said.

'Home,' Steve repeated. The knowledge did not seem to put him at ease.

'Get in,' Bucky told him after he pulled his hand away to pull the blankets back. These sheets and the comforter were softer and warmer than anything Steve had ever been able to afford; after decades of spending impossibly long nights in a cryochamber, Bucky had to imagine the soft might be overwhelming. It had been for him when he first came to the Tower. All of the opulence of Tony's home, plus the modern conveniences of the time, had overwhelmed him too. Steve hesitated.

'Is this storage?' he asked. 'The asset is stored in a cryochamber. People sleep in beds.'

'You're a person,' Bucky reminded Steve. 'We're both people. People aren't stored; they sleep and they sleep in beds.'

'I remember,' Steve told him, unhelpful and vague. He stared at the edge of the bed.

'This is your bed,' Bucky told him, hesitant. He didn't know what was going on in Steve's head, and it had been a very long time since he hadn't known exactly what Steve was thinking. He couldn't help but wonder if he'd ever get to the point of knowing Steve like that again. 'Come on; I'll tuck you in.' Steve looked at the blankets like they might swallow him up as the sea swallowed sinking ships and dying whales. 'It's safe,' Bucky promised. Steve climbed in. He lay like he thought something might go wrong.

He curled on his side, placing his head on the pillow. Once Bucky had pulled the blankets back up around him, warm and secure, Buck sat on the edge of the bed. Steve peeked out from behind his hair, and Bucky couldn't have stopped himself from tucking the blond strands behind Steve's ear if someone had offered him the Presidency and all of Tony's money and wits.

'You stay,' Steve said, as close to an assertive statement as Bucky had heard from him over the past day. 'I remember,' he said insistently, and he grabbed Bucky's collar with his flesh hand. He tugged, and Bucky lost balance against Steve's strength, which he hadn't expected would be used to manhandle him into the bed. Steve wiggled, making room for Bucky at his left side.

'All right,' Bucky chuckled. 'I'm staying. I'm staying.' He wiggled himself, tugging the comforter over him. He usually slept in boxers and a tee shirt, not a tee shirt and sweatpants, but he was certainly not going to get half-naked with someone who barely knew where they were. It was bad enough he agreed to stay the night. It felt like taking advantage, even if Steve was terrified and clearly—in this moment at least—felt better with Bucky there.

Steve watched him from the middle of the bed, staring. When Bucky turned his head where he lay on his back, Steve's eyes fell away to Bucky's shoulder. His hand, soft and warm and gentle, was pressed suddenly against Bucky's deltoid, like a hesitant assurance that Bucky was really there. His palm was dwarfed by Bucky's own inhuman strength. 'I'm here,' Bucky promised. 'You're safe. You're free.'

'Free,' Steve whispered. Bucky nodded.

'Yeah,' Bucky agreed. 'Hell of a thing, ain't it?'

'Important,' Steve said, but it sounded like a guess. Bucky nodded, watching Steve as he winced at something internal, making the smallest noise of discomfort.

'Yeah, freedom is important,' Bucky agreed. 'You're important too, you know.'

'To you?' Steve guessed, still grimacing.

'To me,' Bucky allowed, 'but also because you're a person. You matter.' Steve sighed. His breath whistled just a bit and a wave of fucking nostalgia rushed over Bucky and threatened to drown him all over again. His eyes prickled and he looked up at the ceiling, in vain, to disguise the dampness licking at his lashes. Steve tapped Bucky's shoulder twice with the flat of his palm. The metal arm whined quietly, insistently. Bucky lifted his arm and Steve tucked under it, like he used to, a hundred lifetimes ago.

'I remember,' he said, fisting his human hand in the soft cotton of Bucky's shirt, right over his heart. Bucky was unafraid, for all a few days ago Steve might have killed him, killed Nat, killed Fury, stopped Bucky from preventing the destruction of liberty and free will for the world. None of it had happened; Steve had broken thru his own lack of free will to save everyone else's. Steve pressed closer, tucking his head in the crook of Bucky's neck and shoulder.

That at least felt right.

Chapter Text

Steve had been calm, weirdly calm, about lying back on a surgical table for medical staff at the deprogramming unit to examine and check on him. Bucky watched from the observation room, which he'd tried to get Steve's permission to do. Steve hadn't seemed to understand what he had been asking, so Bucky stood uncomfortably behind the glass anyway.

Bruce opened the door to the observation room and knocked on the door frame. Bucky glanced over; he nodded Bruce in. It was odd how suddenly this new team began treating him as a captain rather than another operative after the Battle of New York. Even now, after SHIELD's collapse, the team deferred to him. It was odd. It reminded him of home.

'How's he dealing with the examination?' Bruce asked, peering into the room.

'He's passive,' Bucky said. He wasn't willing to say Steve was comfortable, or that he wasn't afraid, but he was certainly passive. He'd let the portable CT and MRI scanners encircle his head and shoulders, let them Xray his entire frame and take blood. Steve had no resistance; he didn't even track the movement of needles and scanners around him. It worried Bucky. Perhaps that passivity, that victimization would help; he wasn't naïve. He knew there would be a significant portion of the American public—of the world—that would want Steve's blood and head for what the Winter Soldier's handlers had done. Perhaps seeing him as a victim, as a prisoner, seeing him sick and broken would spare him from facing the misplaced sword of Justice. He wasn't above manipulating this terrible twenty-four hour news cycle to protect someone who had been vulnerable for so long.

He'd need Pepper's help with that, but he would do almost anything to protect Steve from what blood the people would want as payment.

'Wow,' Bruce said quietly, a tablet lighting up with the scans the doctor and nurse had taken. Bucky glanced at the blue light.

'What?' Bucky asked.

'Look at this,' Bruce said, flicking up a fMRI scan. 'Look at what they've done to his brain. They must have cauterized his memory and emotional centres a dozen times if they did it once. Look at this scarring.' Bruce passed the tip of a pen along the scan, showing Bucky nearly half a century of torture. Bucky didn't understand the scan's colours and shadows—it barely looked like what he thought of as a brain—but he understood what Bruce was telling him well enough to start nausea rioting in his stomach. 'On the other hand, look at this new cell growth,' Bruce added, showing Bucky another section of the scan. 'I bet they kept him in cryo because if they didn't, the physical measures they had to take to weaponize him would heal over. I wonder how much he'll be able to heal, what long-term damage will remain.'

'I'm scared,' Bucky admitted after a long silence, watching the nurse. She touched Steve's flesh shoulder and he sat up for her, staring away and despondent. He was unselfconsciously semi-nude, wearing only a set of boxers. He made no effort to preserve his modesty and gave a more disturbing lack of effort to tracking the movements of the doctor or nurse, both swarming with equipment and needles.

'Scared?' Bruce echoed. Bucky nodded, watching Steve's blank face as a doctor prodded at his metal arm, using gentle hands to test the range of motion of his mechanical wrist. The plates clicked and shifted; they caught at the light delicately.

'I'm scared that—' Bucky halted, unsure what he was really scared of. He took a deep breath and forced himself to articulate. Tony said he always felt better after talking to Bruce; Bucky hoped his adage would hold true. 'I'm scared there's no part of him left. It's not quite that—I'm scared that the weapon won't let him go.'

'I think the weapon is already gone,' Bruce said. 'You're alive. No other target has lasted more than thirty-two hours after his handlers pointed him in their direction, according to the files I looked at. Even Fury lasted about ten.' Bucky didn't correct him, not then; the CIA deprogrammers might have come with Clint's stamp of approval, but Bucky didn't trust anywhere but Stark Tower not to be bugged nowadays. 'But he's completely given up on killing you; he's not a weapon anymore.'

'Do you think—' Bucky stopped again.

'I think he won't be the same man you knew,' Bruce said, somehow understanding. 'I think you know that. He can recover. It might take his whole life, but he's lucky. He's made it this far.' Bucky looked away from Steve's passivity to Bruce.

He looked almost nauseated, for all his comforting words, like seeing the person behind the Soviet-era surgical files in the flesh was too close to the reality of the torture. Files were written like nothing going had gone wrong; files didn't really describe the person being torn apart. Seeing Steve, who was shaking and sick, had to yank the reality curtain down, and down hard. It was hard to slot brain scars and a terrified victim against sterile language in files comfortably.  

Bucky watched as a nurse tried to tug Steve's mouth open to peer into his airways. That at least set off something for Steve, and he bared his teeth and pulled his jaw from her grasp when she tried to press a wooden stick against his tongue. She tried once more and Steve twisted his face away.

The doctor stopped her, and Steve kept his head down and still, clearly afraid of punishment. His breath came heavier and his stillness was tense. The doctor said they'd move on, try any stressful procedures when the patient was more in control.

'Bucky,' Bruce said. 'He's in the best place he can be. The damage, the trauma: it's enormous. The support we're going to try to give him is just as big.'

'Yeah,' Bucky said. Steve hadn't moved, but he was tracking the doctor suspiciously. Bucky hoped, when the doctor and nurse would leave without having punished Steve, that Steve might understand that he was allowed to protest when he was frightened, that he might have a say in what happened to him. 'Yeah, you know, you're right. It's just—It's him, you know?'

'I know,' Bruce agreed.

'When we were real little, he told me we shouldn't be friends because he wasn't gonna grow up, just die young,' Bucky said. He sniffed, but wasn't quite crying. 'He was so sure and he was always so sick. Must've been a half dozen times I was sure he was right. How are we both still here?'

'The answer depends on what sort of thing you believe in,' Bruce offered. 'Do you believe in fate? In God? In chance?'

'I don't know,' Bucky admitted. 'Steve believed in God. He believed in a lot of good things. It seems unfair that of all the people in the world he's the one they took that from.'

'Life isn't fair,' Bruce said sadly. 'I think the greatest disservice belief in God does to any of us is that it somehow implies that the world is a meritocracy. Of course it isn't but we all hope and think it is.'

'It sure as hell isn't a meritocracy,' Bucky agreed. 'After today, the deprogrammers are going to make us leave. They're not going to let us visit until Steve is well enough to make a visitation permissions list.'

'How long will that be?' Bruce asked. Bucky shook his head; he didn't know. The deprogrammers wouldn't give him a timeline of any of this, apparently because there were no real answers. Bucky hated that. 'I hope it'll be soon,' Bruce offered. 'I know you missed your friend, while you thought he was dead. He's alive, but he might be locked away here for a long time.'

'He's a lot more than just my friend, Doctor Banner,' Bucky admitted. 'He's always meant a lot more to me than that.'

'Oh. Oh,' Bruce said, with two different inflections. He squinted thru his glasses down at the scan. 'That must have been hard, in your day.'

'The first time he got sick after we, uh, after we started,' Bucky said, a little awkward but mostly unsure where the story was coming from or why, 'he got sick real bad. His ma called the rabbi and everything, for the final prayers a Jew is supposed to say. He was too far gone to say them, barely knew anyone was in the room. His ma said them for him, with the rabbi. I thought that God was taking him from me because of what we had done.' Bruce was watching him, but Bucky didn't know the man well enough to know what the look in his eyes was, pity or sympathy or something else entirely.

'There I was, a Catholic in a room full of Jews, thinking I was the reason that Missus Rogers was gonna lose her baby,' Bucky continued. 'He pulled thru, but he spent that night barely breathing. Kept asking for me, and I was right there. His ma wouldn't leave his bedside, obviously, but I just wanted to hold him, have him in my arms when he died, and I couldn't, couldn't hold him like that. I was so scared he was gonna stop breathing and I was so sure if he did, it woulda been my fault. I kissed him first. I woulda been the one to send him to Hell.'

'That's a horrible thing to think,' Bruce sighed. 'It's horrible that someone taught you that.'

'Steve used to say the same thing,' Bucky laughed. 'The world he believed in was a beautiful one. Now look at him.'

The doctor and the nurse had gotten him to lie down again, and they were opening a service panel in the arm, removing the radio trackers HYDRA had put in. Bucky realised that Tony had externally disabled them before they boarded the plane from DC to New York, but he hadn't been willing to open Steve's arm like that, not with Steve so out of his head. Bucky figured this part didn't bother Steve. System analysis and maintenance, he thought darkly, was as close to routine comfort as Steve seemed to have right now.

'There's no part of this that's easy,' Bruce sighed. 'Look, I have to go; Tony wants me to—'

'Go,' Bucky said easily. 'They'll be kicking me out soon too. I'm just waiting around to say goodbye.'

'Well,' Bruce said after a moment. 'It's not going to be goodbye. At most, it'll be a see you later.' Bruce patted his shoulder awkward, reaching up to it. Bucky smiled down at his friend.

'Thank you, Doctor Banner,' he said sincerely. Bruce smiled back, nodding.

'Anytime, Captain Barnes,' he replied.

⍟

Bucky woke up to JARVIS's apology.

'I'm sorry to wake you, Sir,' the AI said. Bucky groaned, shoving his head into his pillow. He was tired. He was hungry. He was sad and worried and Steve had been taken out of Stark Tower to a CIA treatment facility in New Jersey. Bucky hated New Jersey, but it wasn't like he was allowed to visit anyway. Apparently Steve had asked them to keep him away until the asset was gone; he was scared he'd lose the fight against his programming. Bucky thought the chances of that were nil, but he'd always thought Steve was stronger than anyone gave him credit for, even himself. He also thought if Steve had really asked that, he couldn't dare protest the dumb fucking policy keeping him from seeing Steve. 'Agent Romanova is here to see you.' Bucky groaned again.

'OK,' he said. 'Let her in; tell her I'll be out in a few minutes.' He rolled onto his back. 'What time is it?' he asked.

'It is ten forty-two in the morning, Sir,' JARVIS replied. 'You had a bit of a lie in. I hope you feel rested.' Bucky chuckled.

'I'll feel rested when Steve is back at home,' he promised. 'Thanks, JARVIS.'

'It is only my pleasure, Sir,' JARVIS said before opening Bucky's curtains. Encouragement to properly wake up was always welcome, so Bucky didn't resent the AI doing things for him. He rubbed his face roughly. He hadn't slept that heavily in a long while. He felt groggy. He rolled out of bed and went to his closet, which was enormous and only half-full. Bucky couldn't help the swell of hope in his chest that maybe soon the other half would be full of Steve's things, like they used to share cheap drawers in their old homes. He grabbed some comfortable lounging clothes and rushed thru a shower and brushing his teeth. He considered combing his hair but decided it didn't matter. Men didn't really keep their hair neatly parted anymore; combing it neatly and what Bucky remembered as stylishly had made Tony tease him for being a choirboy. Bucky had been unable to carry a tune in his youth; the choir at the Catholic church his family went to never would have given him a spot. He remembered when Rebecca had turned twelve she'd started singing in church; she had had a beautiful voice that filled him with both brotherly pride and brotherly jealousy.

When he had a shirt and some track pants on, he went out to his kitchen, where Natasha had helped herself to his icebox and was making him breakfast. He smiled tiredly and snuck past her to pour a hot cup of coffee. Caffeine didn't really affect him anymore, but he still felt more awake after the comforting routine of black, strong liquid in the mornings.

'Sorry,' she said, referring to the fact she'd invaded his kitchen. 'Figured I'd feed you.'

'It's not free food if it's mine,' he quipped, sitting on the far side of the island. She hummed amusement as she pushed eggs about a pan.

'Free chef, then. In my bag,' she said, and he looked at the leather briefcase on the next seat, 'is an update from Steve's deprogrammers. He's having a rough time, but he's doing well.'

'What's rough?' he asked, even as he pulled the folder out and opened it. She shrugged, pushing bacon in the other pan. 'Will you pass me one of the muffins from behind you?' She turned, peeling open the Tupperware he'd left on his counter.

'Did you make these, Mister Baker?' she asked, passing him a blueberry one. He nodded and she picked out another for herself, even if she didn't tuck in but returned to the stove.

'Yeah, yesterday,' he said, skimming the files. 'Jesus, they did surgery?'

'They wanted to take out the drug implants in his head,' she replied. 'Apparently, when they explained what they wanted to do, he gave his consent and understood why it was happening. Generally, they won't do a surgery without the programmed's consent, unless it's lifesaving. They'll delay things until the programmed is able to give consent. He'd barely been there two weeks when he agreed to it.' That felt like a good sign to Bucky, that Steve wanted someone else's controllers out of his head. It seemed like somehow recovery was possible, if Steve understood and wanted it too.

'This one wasn't emergent,' Nat went on, 'but he could wait for the drug implants to run out or have them taken out. Either way, he's going thru withdrawal now. It's not pretty.'

'He must have been scared,' Bucky said. He hated that Steve had to go this alone, that Bucky couldn't somehow take all the pain away and fix everything for him. He wished he could go back in time and change everything, but that couldn't happen. He felt lucky to have Steve back at all; he wished he could make things better, but he wouldn't change anything else for the world.

'I talked to him beforehand,' Nat said. 'He was scared but he believed me when I promised they were good doctors. I'm interviewing there, looking at joining the deprogramming unit. You'd be surprised at the demand.'

'Done with the whole espionage thing?' he asked. He didn't mean it as a harsh callback to what she had done to him, what secrets she had stolen from him, but he bet it felt that way to her. She shrugged, not meeting his eyes as she poked at his breakfast. He could tell by the smell it was nearly done; his stomach growled and she laughed at him.

'Yeah, I think,' she said. 'I want to make up for things, not make more mistakes. Besides, I was programmed pretty heavily, once, not like Steve, but in the normal scheme of programming. I have insight to offer people who don't have much of themselves left.' She passed him a heaping plate of hot, delicious food. He thanked her.

'And, uh,' Bucky began, unsure how to ask. 'Are you still on my team? When I have enough settled to start taking out HYDRA bases, can I call you?' Nat frowned at him.

'I thought you needed to trust your team members,' she said. He recognized the challenge. He shrugged.

'I trust you to get the job done,' Bucky replied. 'You're a good soldier. You follow orders and you point out the bad ones. What happened with Fury, what you told him—It was your job, and maybe I should have known better. I mean, it was enough for me to—' He stopped, unsure of what he really meant.

'Enough for you to break off the nothing between us?' she prompted and he chuckled softly as he pushed more eggs onto his fork.

'Yeah, the nothing,' he agreed. 'But it's not enough for me to—I still trust you, at least to fight, and I'll need all hands on deck to take down HYDRA, for real.' Nat nodded, considering that.

'Then I'm yours to command, Captain,' she said, flat and serious in the way she only was when she was joking. 'I'm sorry too, you know,' she added and he nodded.

'Yeah, but that's not enough,' he admitted. 'I was grieving. I had a broken heart and I showed it to you. You showed it to everyone else.' She looked away. Bucky sighed, feeling uncomfortable in his own home for a moment. Whether Nat had lied or spied or betrayed him or what, she had still opened herself up and he had still shot her down.

'Steve told me to tell you he misses you,' Nat said after a moment.

'Really?' Bucky said. 'He said that?'

'Not word for word,' Nat said, leaning against the counter by the sink and picking a piece off the top of her muffin. She tossed it in her mouth and rudely talked as she chewed. 'He isn't able to piece together a lot right now. He's pretty confused. Starting withdrawal didn't help that.'

'Is that normal?' Bucky asked. Nat shrugged.

'There's nothing normal about what he went thru, not even with what I know about programming,' she said. 'But he misses you.' Bucky looked down at the folder again, looking at the notes from the head doctor. He felt sick suddenly, and he closed the folder, pushing it away. 'What?' Nat prompted. He shook his head.

'I just wanna see him,' Bucky admitted. 'I don't wanna read a file; I don't wanna feel like I'm doing research on Steve. It's bad enough I read this much.' Nat was frowning at him and he shrugged, poking his breakfast. Nat was a good cook, he had to give her that. 'I love him. Why would I read a file about him?'

'I don't understand you,' Nat told him. Bucky smiled sadly.

'Yeah, I know,' he said.

⍟

Bucky waited outside the CIA visiting rooms. His leg was jogging up and down as he sat in a hard, plastic chair. He resisted the urge to check his watch again. He was on time and he damn well knew it. The waiting room was empty, unsurprisingly, and filled with rows of these black, plastic chairs. He was uncomfortable, and honestly, the chair was only a small part of his discomfort.

'Hello, Captain Barnes,' a woman called. He looked up and leapt to his feet, smoothing his jacket as she made her way over to him. Clint's contacts at the CIA got Steve into an institution run in New Jersey that could give Steve the deprogramming he needed while keeping him secure enough if the programming proved dangerous when damaged. Bucky wasn't sure it was. Steve had seemed lost to him, disarmed by whatever tripped wire made him question killing Bucky in the first place. Steve had seemed docile and afraid. Bucky wanted to hide him away from the world and protect him, but then, Bucky had never felt anything less than protective of Steve.

Failing him like this was something Bucky could never earn forgiveness for.

The woman stuck out a hand, a clipboard cradled in her left arm, casual and professional and easy. He took her hand, nodding cordially at her. She was tall, especially for a woman, lithe and reeking of confidence.

'I'm Doctor Nguyen,' she said, shaking Bucky's hand. 'But call me Melissa, please. I understand you're hoping to have some visitation contact with Private Rogers.'

'I am his superior officer,' Bucky joked weakly, and Doctor Nguyen gave him a polite smile. 'I just—I want to know he's gonna be OK,' he admitted. He looked away, afraid that she'd see right thru him. She probably would. The type of things people went to therapists about nowadays were the things he would have talked to Father Doyle about, and that man had always seen right thru his bluster.

'Let's sit,' Melissa said, gesturing to the same waiting room seats Bucky had just leapt out of. 'Please,' she said, when he waited for her to be seated first. He sat.

'I understand the need for privacy,' Bucky began. Bucky tried to hide his uncertainty, as Doctor Nguyen settled in, tilting her clipboard against her crossed knee so he couldn't read it. 'I didn't even read the file Natasha Romanova was given for me; it felt like an invasion. But I'm the closest thing to family Steve's got; I'm the only one alive who even really knows who he is. Shouldn't I be involved in getting that person back?' Doctor Nguyen made a small note on her pad, not tilting her head down to even do so, just a flick of the pen and a pacific smile.

'We're not here to get your Steve Rogers back,' Melissa said easily. Bucky blinked at her. She shrugged, her narrow, elegant shoulders moving under her dark blue cardigan. He opened his mouth to try to rebut, but she plowed right on without him. 'That person, that version of Steve Rogers that existed before the war is gone. I'd bet he started dying the moment he went to war and I'm certain pre-war Steve Rogers died his first day on Doctor Zola's table.'

'Excuse me, Doctor,' Bucky tried, and Melissa shrugged again, dramatic.

'Frankly, Captain, I'm sure you feel like you're not the same man you were before the war either,' Melissa said. 'I'm sure you wake up some days thinking you don't know who or what you're getting up for. It's more complicated than that and neither of you are in the same situation, sure, but neither of you are the same people you were and you never will be. That's how trauma works. It is an injury. You can recover from it, but you can't go back in time.'

Bucky looked down at his knees, feeling like he'd been socked in the jaw. Bucky hated this. He wondered if head doctors had been this way in the thirties. He felt like Steve's mum had been told she had nervous trouble and nothing more, none of these specialty diagnoses like today (a part of him knew Missus Rogers had been a woman, and a Jew at that; even if specialty diagnoses had been around, she wouldn't have gotten one). Steve never talked about the times he'd been forced to see one for his asthma; it had been one of the very few things Bucky knew were off limits between them. So many things were so complicated now. It figured. A black eye wasn't normal on a nine year old and head shrinks knew what was wrong the first day they met you.

'My goal is to get Private Rogers to a point where he won't be a danger to others, or himself,' Melissa said. 'I want to trace healthy paths for his changing brain neurons. A brain like Private Rogers' is remarkable. It is so incredibly damaged.' Bucky wanted to bristle at the word damaged but Melissa's kind, sincere, fascinated tone kept him at bay. She was in awe of Steve's brain; every one of its faults and damages was a miracle to her, not a detraction to Steve. 'The electrocution scars alone would have a normal person comatose. His brain isn't only managing to function past that, but it's still actively healing itself, tangibly, where we can see. We get fMRIs every two days. It is a constant uphill battle for him, but he is tangibly improving.'

'He's healing,' Bucky said. Melissa nodded, smiling without joy. She looked sad. It made Bucky clarify: 'That's good.'

'It's hopeful,' Melissa agreed. 'He's begun regaining old memories, and sharing them, so I understand quite a lot about your relationship with Private Rogers.'

Melissa said this and then paused, like she was inviting him to identify himself as something more than Steve's superior officer. Bucky realised why her smile was sad: she knew she was sitting with her patient's spouse, even if they'd never been married or even been out. Steve had told her who Bucky was and Melissa wasn't going to get either of them arrested. Melissa knew, but they were still safe.

The world had changed so much but it didn't stop Bucky from almost choking on fear, like New York City police in the old uniforms he remembered were going to pop into the waiting room and drag him outside in cuffs, like Melissa might be a plainclothes officer trying to trick him somehow, entrap him, cuff him in the alley behind a bar. He knew all of that was behind him now, but he swallowed around a hard lump of fear all the same.

'I—' Bucky said. He stopped.

Bucky didn't know what to say. Bucky used to be just a queer and that was indecent enough that no one pushed him on what that meant: did he sleep with women too, or just men, and which kind of sex would make him queer? Steve called Bucky his best girl and Bucky meant that to his bones; was he a girl not brave enough to admit it? Most people didn't use the word queer at all anymore; the Internet had given Bucky a hundred words for everything he didn't understand about himself: words like gay, or polyamorous, or transgender, bisexual. He didn't know which ones fit; he didn't know who he'd have been if he'd lived now.

Having those words didn't help him in this questioning silence. They didn't quell the voices fresh in his head that had lived a century ago; they didn't quell his confusion He didn't know how he could say these things past the fear in his throat. He wished it would die out; Bucky didn't want to sit here afraid of something so stupid. He had so much to be afraid of that was real: Bucky might not get to see Steve today, or soon.

'I care about him quite a lot,' Bucky said after withholding a sputter. Melissa smiled again, still that sad curve of her mouth.

'How is he?' Bucky asked. 'I mean, he was a wreck when I last saw him. He'd be afraid to let me out of his sight one-second and afraid he was gonna kill me the next.'

'He's not well,' Doctor Nguyen said, not cushioning a thing. 'He has a lot of trouble differentiating between new and old memories, keeping a hold on either. The withdrawal didn't help that. But he is doing better. I feel like I see a little more of him each day, a little less of the programming.'

'Does he still ask for system recalibration?' Bucky asked.

'No,' she promised, understanding why that compulsion had been so important to dislodge. 'No, but he's started asking for you quite often.' Melissa stood. 'I think your visitation today will be a safe one, and now that you understand the goal of our treatment a little better, it will be a productive one as well, I think.'

'Productive?' Bucky echoed. 'I didn't really come here with a mission.' Melissa nodded as Bucky stood as well. Even this a tall woman, he overshadowed her height easily. Bucky hoped he didn't intimidate. Judging by her irenic smile, Bucky didn't.

'Every element of Steve's recovery is a mission,' she said. 'Altho, I would avoid that particular trigger word when you're in there,' she joked, as if by the time Clint had given her the stamp of approval Bucky hadn't learned that. 'We'll go in together today; maybe next time, Steve will feel up to seeing you on his own.'

'Why isn't he up to it now?' Bucky asked. 'I mean, I'm not—I'm just worried.' Melissa sighed.

'He's in a lot of pain still,' Melissa explained. 'His brain is literally stitching itself back together, and that hurts. He's peeling programmes out of his cognitive behaviours; that's painful too. His memory centres are scarred like you wouldn't believe, but he's trying to recall things and store new memories. That hurts too.

'When his handlers were responsible for his care, he was constantly filled with incredible drugs, mostly benzodiazepines and some illegal, experimental, hypnotic drugs. The pain could cause what's known as a paradoxical reaction, to drugs designed to make someone docile or suggestible; he's still afraid the stress he's in might make him lash out at you, at Pepper, at the people he remembers but aren't with us any longer.'

'That's horrible,' Bucky said. Melissa nodded. Bucky wished there were something better he could say, but Steve's torture was a horror and Bucky couldn't fix it.

'He's doing better,' she promised, and crossed the waiting room, opening one of the visitation rooms' doors. Bucky made his way in behind her.

Behind a table sat Steve, idly tracing lines in sugar. A tipped sugar canister laid on one of the table's corners. His metal arm was held close to his chest, his flesh hand moving granules of sugar softly and slowly. He had a wooden coffee stirrer stuck behind his ear, no doubt used to make more delicate lines, and Bucky spotted the coffee station Steve had robbed at a smaller table in the corner of the room. It made him quirk a grin; Steve had always traced drawings in weird things during the war, rubble, twigs, dirt, even in dark ash against light concrete. This behaviour felt familiar even tho everything else was so different to be surreal.

'Steve,' Melissa prompted, and Steve started. He snapped his hand away from the sugar and wrapped his fingers around his metal wrist as if to hold himself back. 'You have a visitor,' she continued, pulling a chair out for Bucky across from Steve. She sat too, a few feet from them at the foot of the table. Steve followed her movement, glancing at Bucky for only a second.

'The asset—I made a mess,' Steve told Melissa.

'It's only sugar,' she said. She smiled, leaning to look at the lines he'd traced in the dark wood of the table and the white specks. 'Would you like to tell Bucky what you've drawn there?'

'Bucky,' Steve repeated, in that almost-compulsive way Bucky had gotten not-quite-used to during Steve stint in the Tower's guest apartment, before Clint had gotten in contact with Melissa. He didn't look over at Bucky as he said it. Bucky couldn't tell if Steve knew he was there.

'You were very excited about your visit,' Melissa reminded Steve. 'It seems you were distracted by your sugar drawing, huh?'

'Oh,' Steve said.

He turned to look at Bucky again. Bucky mimicked Melissa's encouraging smile, but Steve was staring at his shoulder, hands still held to his chest. 'Visit,' Steve added.

'Hiya, Stevie,' Bucky said, grinning despite his gnawing worry. Bucky leaned his elbows on the table, crooking his neck a bit in effort to meet Steve's eyes. Steve turned his head away at that, not moving his gaze from the shoulder of Bucky's jacket.

Steve's hair had been shorn recently; Bucky could see lines in the stubble across his scalp, the remnants of a brain surgery that must have happened only a week or so ago, already looking like years-old scars. Bucky would bet next time he saw Steve that blond hair would be sprouting over faded scar tissue, as tho the trauma had never happened. He wished he could fix everything that quickly.

'Hello,' Steve said. His metal fingers whined as they twitched, soft enough for Bucky's ears to pick it up. 'I know you.'

'I'm Bucky,' Bucky agreed. Steve nodded slowly, considering that. 'I was told you wanted me to visit you.'

'Yes,' Steve replied easily, looking back down at the sugar. 'Home,' he said. Bucky leaned forward to peek.

'That's your ma,' Bucky realised, squinting at the picture upside down, as Steve pulled the coffee stirrer out from behind his ear.

The movement made Bucky eye the device welded into his skull. He carried unreasonable resentment for it. He understood it served the same purpose as Clint's hearing aids, which never bothered him. But Clint chose his hearing aids; he could take them out when he was tired or didn't need them. Even the cochlear implants, which Bucky had googled when trying to understand how a metal box stuck in Steve's head could hear things, could be removed, at least the outside part. Even people who opted to have a magnet and technology put in their brain for electronic hearing had the choice of taking it off and going back to silence or muffled consonants and vowels. Steve didn't have the choice of taking it out, and judging from the file Bucky had stopped reading after the first few pages, neither did his doctors, without significant risks. 'Do you remember your ma?'

'Ikh vis nit,' Steve said, tracing out Missus Rogers' lower lip with delicate pushes of sugar. Bucky watched, impressed at the tiny lines Steve could make in the granules.

'That's not the Russian he usually blurts out,' Melissa said quietly, looking to Bucky.

''S Yiddish,' he told her. 'He says he doesn't know,' Bucky translated, nearly at the limit of his ability to do so. He'd never learned as much as he should have, only the barest of basics, absorbed from Steve and learned from Miss Miriam Schwartzman from upstairs. Steve looked at him, tilting his head like he had on the helicarrier.

'Yiddish?' Melissa repeated. 'How old was he when he learned?'

'I'm not sure,' Bucky replied, watching Steve finish his drawing. 'Little, probably. He and his ma spoke it almost always when they were alone, not that they didn't both speak English. It was hard to be Jewish in our day, harder than now; I think speaking their language—y'know, holding onto the good parts tightly—I think it made it easier to get hassled for a bad reason.

'They lived in an Irish neighbourhood, mostly Catholics,' Bucky said. He wondered how different Steve's life would have been if his father hadn't died when Steve was a baby, if he'd been raised in a church like Bucky's and with a father to teach him right from wrong. 'I guess he learned Russian with HYDRA.' He wondered if Steve had been forced to learn it, if they had installed it like they had installed protocols and orders, or if he had picked it up over the impossibly long time he'd been held. He didn't look much older than Bucky did, and he wondered if that was an effect of the cryochamber or of Steve's bastardized serum. Bucky had been told his own aging might be slowed, the same type of side effect of never getting drunk. The serum protected from damage and breakdown, and apparently aging was just a cellular breakdown over time. It worried him.

'It's the first time you've drawn your mother,' Melissa prompted Steve, who didn't seem to hear her. 'Do you remember her, Steve?' Steve didn't reply, poking at the sugar of his mother's hair.

'She died when we were teens,' Bucky explained, when it became clear Steve wouldn't. 'Maybe he's remembering older things now, if he's just now drawing Missus Rogers. He didn't get much chance to speak Yiddish outside his synagogue, living with me—And in the war, only when we needed the Jews at concentration camps to trust a bunch of hooligans with guns and no Allied uniforms.'

'He slips in and out of Russian most days,' Melissa told Bucky. 'Miss Romanova has been a big help with him, in the days she's here.'

'Is Nat here a lot?' Bucky asked.

'We're considering adding her to our permanent team,' Melissa said. 'Currently, because of the language barrier, and because Steve remembers her in a way he doesn't always remember me or the other therapists quite yet, she's here four or five days a week. More than most of our trainees.'

'Bucky,' Steve blurted. Bucky turned to him, smiling again.

'Hey there,' he said. 'How you doing, pal?'

'Es geyt gut,' Steve said. 'Un dir?' Bucky thought very hard, trying to think of his response. Bucky was good, fine, really. He was more concerned with how Steve was, not how he himself was dealing with all of this. His heart hurt, a bit, seeing Steve a bit despondent, a bit confused, still visibly afraid or maybe still shaking with withdrawal.

'Nishkoshe,' he said, not sure if that was what he meant to say. Steve looked back at his drawing, frowning at it.

Bucky couldn't imagine how scrambled things must be in Steve's mind. Steve winced, shaking his head too hard.

'Gentle,' Melissa warned.

'Gentle,' Steve echoed. His head stilled but Bucky could still read tension in his neck and shoulders.

'I'm glad to see you,' Bucky told him, testing.

'We slept,' Steve said. 'I remember.' Bucky laughed.

'Yeah, we did,' he said. 'You don't look so tired now. They must be taking good care of you.'

Steve hand wrapped around his wrist again, holding his hands close to his diaphragm. How did doctors nowadays control his asthma? Steve was breathing easy, easier than he had been in Stark Tower or even during the medical exam Bucky had seen.

'That was a while ago, tho, Stevie,' Bucky said in the silence. 'I don't even know how long it's been.'

'Time elapsed: one month, six days, seven hours, approximately forty-three minutes,' Steve reported. Bucky huffed a little laugh. Steve smiled slightly at the table.

'What, since we said goodbye?' he asked. Steve's smile fell into a frown.

'We did not say goodbye,' he said firmly. 'It is not goodbye.'

'All right,' Bucky agreed, understanding Steve's distinction easily. 'Since we said see you later then.'

'Yes,' Steve said. 'I have not been frozen.'

'Nah, nobody's gonna freeze you anymore,' Bucky promised. 'No more storage.'

'Just sleeping,' Steve said, looking up and meeting Bucky's eyes. Bucky smiled. He had missed Steve, so God damn much, and he was finally sure Steve was gonna be OK. He would have to thank Melissa, send her a beautiful bottle of wine and a Christmas card. Clint had promised Bucky a hundred times if Bucky had wrung it out of him once that he trusted her; Nat trusted her too; seeing she interacted with Steve, how Steve watched her without any fear, Bucky trusted the dame as well. She watched the two of the interact with a wise eye, and Bucky didn't even mind.

'I am not afraid,' Steve told him. 

'I'm proud of you,' Bucky replied. 'You drew your ma just now, you remember?' Steve looked down at the messy pile of sugar and then nodded, his fingers twitching like he wanted to push the granules around again. 'Tell me what you remember about your ma, Stevie. It's been a while since I've heard you talk about her.'

'Her name was Sarah,' Steve began, and Bucky listened, letting Melissa prompt Steve thru halting sentences and jumbled languages. He watched as Steve finally gave into his twitching, human hand, sprinkling sugar as he talked and beginning to trace out the fire escape he and Bucky used to clamper on as kids, the one they smoked Luckies and asthma cigarettes on as teens, the one on which they'd spent their final night in that tenement building together after Steve's ma died and he was getting kicked out. The struts and trusses were hard to make out in sugar, but Bucky recognized it easily.

When Steve finished, he offered the coffee stirrer to Bucky awkwardly. Bucky took it, careful and delicate. It really did feel like a gift, even if it were an impossibly flimsy bit of birch. Steve's face remained impassive at that, but the tips of his ears turned pink.

'Home,' Steve said. Bucky nodded. 

Chapter Text

'Hello, Bucky,' Pepper greeted brightly as he waited for the elevator. He looked up from his tablet. He forced himself to smile at her, dimming his screen. He'd tried again to visit Steve today, only to be turned away for the third time. Steve was apparently having a rough experience with his withdrawal and the changing neural layout of his brain. Between the seizures and the difficulty he was having communicating, Bucky had been bared for their own safeties. He smiled at Pepper despite his bad mood; she was a friend to both him and Steve. He wouldn't lash out at her because he was having a bad week. 'You did like the tablet, huh?' she asked. The doors opened and they stepped in.

'I do,' he agreed. 'I like the screen better than using the trackpad of the laptop.'

'It's good to see you doing so well with technology,' she told him. He chuckled, because he remembered too well his first day at a computer with her, when the last thing he had typed on had been a typewriter. He'd asked where the paper went, and she had been unbearably patient and kind.

'Couldn't have done it without you,' Bucky said. 'My apartment, please, JARVIS.'

'Of course, sir,' JARVIS chimed in response. 'The penthouse, ma'am?'

'Yes, please,' Pepper said. 'I saw Steve yesterday,' she said as the lift started moving. Bucky frowned down at her, but as she rifled thru the papers she was carrying, she didn't notice. 'He seems to be having quite a rough time. Doctor Nguyen says the reduction of his scar tissue is what's causing his seizures, but once his brain gets used to the restored function, he should stabilize—'

'They let you in?' Bucky interrupted. Pepper looked up at him, surprised.

'Um, yes,' she said. 'Have you not—'

'They told me he's not safe for visitors,' Bucky said. 'I only saw him twice before they restricted his visitation.' Pepper blinked and then looked away. The doors opened to Bucky's apartment but he didn't move, staring at her. 'You saw him yesterday?' he pressed.

'I'm sorry,' she said, seeming thrown. 'I didn't know you haven't been able to see him.'

'We've arrived,' JARVIS prompted.

Pepper took Bucky's elbow and lead Bucky into the hall between guest apartments. His door used to be labelled unit one, but because Tony thought he was hilarious, there was now a grey-etched emblem of his shield. Bucky avoided looking at it, opting instead to stare at Pepper.

'You've been able to see him?' Bucky asked. 'This whole time?'

'Have they told you why you can't?' Pepper replied. Bucky looked away from her, away from the worry etched into her eyes. He shook his head. 'Oh, Bucky, I'm so sorry. You know, he's not really in control of himself right now. I'm sure if you just wait it out—'

A laugh broke out of Bucky's chest, sounding broken and rough as bombed-out asphalt. He bit his lip to stop it. It hurt his ears, let alone what it must sound like to Pepper. Her tiny hand found its way onto his arm, a comforting gesture that threatened to break his levees.

'I've spent my whole life waiting,' he told her. He kept his voice as measured as he could, keeping the torrent of fire far back. 'I don't want to wait anymore.' Her hand rubbed up and down his arm, trying to soothe him. Nothing could.

'Steve's only going to be in deprogramming for a few months,' she offered. 'He's only been back about eight weeks. It's hardly been a lifetime—'

'It has been a lifetime,' Bucky corrected her. He shook his head. He wanted to pull away but he didn't want Pepper to think he was ungrateful for her kindness. He was also afraid that if he pulled away he'd lose his very tenuous grip on the urge to yell and rage. It was so fucking unfair. 'He'd get sick, and I'd wait for him to die. He'd get better and I'd wait for him to get sick. I waited for my draft to end so I could go home to my family, then for the whole war, and then I woke up here and had to wait for a judge to tell me I wasn't under SHIELD's control. I'm so tired of waiting.'

'Bucky,' Pepper began, but she didn't know what to say. He didn't think there was anything she could say.

'Does he—Does he not want to see me?' he begged. He looked back at Pepper, wondering if she could possibly have answers.

'I'm sure that's not what it is,' Pepper promised. 'I was never one of his targets; maybe that's all there is to it. To be honest,' she began, before hesitating, 'I'm not sure he always remembers who you are. I tell him how you are, but he doesn't—I'm sorry.' She looked lost and unsure.

'I used to be his world,' Bucky confessed. He had to pull away then; he felt like he was shattering. 'I used to be the one he reached for in the morning. Now I can't even see him; I'm just sitting around waiting.'

⍟

'So? Steve? Who is this?' Melissa asked, tapping the sketch he'd begun fleshing out with scraped paint and blood against the walls. The asset blinked, seeing the sketch in front of him suddenly, like it was brand new. The asset did not remember beginning it, but there it was, nearly finished. The asset had never been good at identifying colour, even when he'd been changed and was suddenly able to see it all, but would report the wall as pale green if pressed. Melissa did not press. He scratched hard at the wall, drawing more blood and rubbing it into the shadows below the jaw.

The portrait was of a man, his face almost in profile but turned slightly, looking back. His hair was dark, his lips soft, and his jaw looking more right than the asset understood. Only a little of his shoulder was sketched out, just enough to finish the neck and military collar, because the memory of the muscles' sizes flickered between states. This was not a target. This was someone the asset had seen grow up. The asset had seen him thru other things, but the asset could not remember.

'Steve,' Melissa called. 'You with me?'

'Oh,' Steve said, vocalizing his realization. He was Steve. The asset was fading, and he was supposed to be Steve now. The failure of the asset had caused a collapse of HYDRA and its shell; the asset's handlers couldn't freeze him. The man who wasn't a handler had brought him to Pepper. The asset wasn't a weapon anymore. The asset was being helped.

'Why don't you climb down and tell me about it?' Melissa asked. Steve turned, looking at her. He was standing on his thin cot, scratching at what had started as a tiny chip in the paint and evolved into a developed portrait. He didn't remember finding the chip or scratching the portrait, but he didn't remember a lot of things. 'You're not in trouble, even tho you're really not supposed to be vandalizing things anymore.' Steve looked down at his hand, which he'd scratched bloody with torn nails, and had then used the blood to colour, even as it healed as quick as the blood on the wall would dry. The nails would grow back in a day or two, but the bloody quicks would heal faster.

'Hello,' Steve said, which wasn't what he meant, but he couldn't always find the right words. Melissa smiled, and held out a hand. He placed his metal palm inside of it, because it seemed natural, and Melissa chuckled. She called him endearing, which the asset did not understand. He felt broken. His brain hurt and memory hurt and nightmares hurt and what he'd been told was withdrawal had him still confused and aphasic. He had seizures and shook still and didn't understand the tricks of being a person over a weapon easily.

'Hello, Steve,' she said warmly. 'Step on down, come on.' She pulled his hand and he understood the gesture, the image of helping a lady off a streetcar back home leaping in front of his eyes and taking the room from him for a terrifying second. Melissa was taller than Steve, but he could kill her one hundred ways, even without the metal arm. He stepped down.

'Who is this?' she asked. Steve looked at the portrait. He remembered.

'I know him,' he said. 'I was smaller. We said hello. We said—forever. We did not say goodbye.' He shook his head to demonstrate the negation. 'We did not say goodbye,' he told Melissa firmly, and she hummed her agreement.

'How old is the person?' Melissa asked. Steve stared at the portrait, considering. It felt like that portrait was from a very long time ago. If it was from a long time ago, the man in the picture had to be older now, younger then, but Steve swore he had seen the man and he still looked young.

'He is the same as me,' he decided. He didn't really know, but they had always fit together so they had to be the same. 'Ik vis nit.'

'What does he like to do?' Melissa asked.

'Bake,' Steve said, unsure why he knew that. He wanted to stand on the bed again and touch the picture. He did just that, pressing the palm with human nerves where the shoulder would be. His hand covered the bits of the shoulder he had drawn, sticky with drying blood, but in real life, Steve's hand felt small against this man. He didn't understand why it wasn't small against the picture. He didn't understand why touching the shoulder on the wall was dissatisfying. What else could the asset want?

Melissa moved along the bed, folding her leg under her and settling onto the mattress. 'He steals my drawings and thinks I don't notice,' Steve told her. She nodded, like that was the right answer. Steve would not be punished for it. 'He goes to church every Sunday and he likes the brown suit he wears when he goes. I do not like it,' he said, staring at his hand and frowning. 'It is not nice. Scratches. Itches.'  

'What does he dislike doing?' Melissa asked. Dislikes were negative. The asset hesitated. 'You're doing very well,' she promised when Steve didn't reply. He thought about it.

'He does not like killing,' Steve decided. Melissa tilted her head ever-so-slightly, a concerned tick she seemed not to know she had. 'He had to leave and go to war,' Steve said by way of explanation. He kept his palm on the drawing and looked down, staring at Melissa's folded knee. He was supposed to look at her eyes but it scared him. 'He did not like war. He did not like blood. He liked bread.'

'Has anyone tried to hurt him?' Melissa asked. Steve nodded.

'Da,' he replied. 'The asset. Someone shot him outside Prague. Someone shot him in Lille. Someone shot him in—Nyet,' he realised, and he also realised he had to speak English for Melissa. 'We were on a train,' he explained. 'I had his shield. I stopped the blue from taking him away.' Steve frowned at Melissa's knee. He couldn't piece the whole scene together; it hurt too much. He shook his head hard enough to hear the shake in his ears, trying to shake the pain out somehow. It failed.

'Gentle,' Melissa warned him.

'Gentle,' he repeated, and he tilted his head instead, like that could let the stabbing sensation fall out. 'That was good.'

'Who looks out for him?' Melissa said finally, and Steve remembered these questions. She asked him these about every person he drew. He didn't always know the answers, and he knew everything about this person. He wondered what their name was. A sharp pain in his skull forced his right eye to squeeze shut and Steve to pull a face. He closed his other eye for good measure, pulling his features together to stop the stabbing sensation. It failed.

'Ow,' he said, because he was supposed to vocalize pain so people would know they were hurting him, that they should stop. 'Ow.'

'Oh, Steve,' Melissa sighed, sounding not disappointed but empathetic. The asset had failed to answer the question and this new handler did not punish for failure. That didn't make sense. The asset was shaking. The asset was not cold and the asset didn't understand why he was shaking. 'Sit down; you're going to fall.' He struggled to sit, struggled to make his body cooperate.

'He is a target,' Steve choked out, folding himself onto the bed. Melissa's hand touched his knee; he did not pull away. 'He is the mission. The asset has failed.'

'Steve, the mission is over,' she promised. 'You saved his life. You stopped a lot of destruction and it was your choice. Do you know what a choice is?' She asked him that a lot, and only sometimes did he know.

'Da,' he said, because today he remembered. 'Where's Bucky? Where's Pepper? Gde oni?'

'They're not here,' Melissa said. 'I'm sorry, Steve. It's just you and me.'

'Is the asset gone?' Steve asked. He forced his eyes open and the room swam. 'Ow,' he said, trying to warn Melissa that a seizure was coming. She understood, even tho he hadn't said the right words, and she left him on the bed to go to the intercom at the door. He laid on the bed and felt his body start shaking in earnest, real, painful clenches of muscle. It hurt.

'Code Mike,' she said into the intercom, and the world faded as Steve's brain betrayed him and took him away.

⍟

It was a while before Bucky was let in to visit Steve again. He purposefully didn't count the days, stopping by the deprogramming unit to ask after Steve four times a week, at fifteen hundred hours. He liked keeping a schedule, and he organized his research and VA meetings and appointments at consulates around the possibility that he might get to visit again. His preparation for HYDRA assaults was going well, but Bucky couldn't relax without knowing Steve was doing well too.

Nat claimed he was, when he interrogated her for vague details. Melissa, on days she came out to the visitor's lobby to refuse Bucky directly, promised him the same things. He buried himself in dumped SHIELD files, trying to track down every HYDRA base he needed to take down. He spent hours with various national delegates, trying to get permissions and support to truly wipe this particular evil off the face of the planet. He kept himself busy, kept himself active, but nothing he could do seemed to take the worry away from his nights.

'Captain Barnes,' a familiar voice called as he waited in the visitation lobby to be turned away. He smiled at Melissa, giving her a familiar handshake. 'How are you today?'

'I'm fine, Doctor,' he replied. 'How are you?'

'I'm very happy to have good news for you,' she replied, for the first time. Bucky almost jumped, he was so surprised.

'Really?' he demanded. His heart started pounding, hopeful and traitorous in his chest.

'Yes,' she promised. 'Steve's ready to see you.'

'Really?' he asked again. He sounded incredulous. He felt bewildered, somehow, as tho he had genuinely stopped anticipating he would ever see Steve again. It made him feel a bit silly, and it put a bit of a shake in his knees as he thought about seeing Steve.

'Really, really,' Melissa laughed. 'He's in visiting room three.' Bucky looked at the neatly painted numbers. He'd started to think he would never see Steve ever again. 'He has had a turbulent time over the last few weeks you've been unable to visit,' Melissa explained, comfortable telling him now that he assumed she had an end to the tale. 'His brain sped up its healing, which was good, but it lead to increased seizure activity and it made Steve unwilling to trust himself to see many visitors. We've gotten him to agree to some temporary control medications, to help with the seizures and hopefully with the pain. He's distrustful of them—'

'As well he should be,' Bucky put in.

'As well he has the right to be,' Melissa hedged. 'But things have improved.'

'He's not in pain anymore?' Bucky clarified.

'Oh, no, just not as much,' Melissa told him frankly. He appreciated her honesty.

'Was it dangerous to let me visit while he was having fits regularly?' Bucky asked.

'Probably not,' Melissa admitted. 'But it was very hard for Steve, to be unable to trust his body again. I think the feeling of a seizure coming up reminded him of times he was unable to resist the programming. He makes as many of the decisions as we can let him. He made that call.'

'I see,' Bucky said, because he really did. He remembered the very first night in Stark Tower, when Pepper had ordered him away. He had hated that. He had hated that Steve couldn't even trust himself, of all people. He prayed that that would change soon. Melissa nodded at the door, leading Bucky over.

'It's a solo mission today, Captain,' she told him, and he nearly gaped.

'Really?' he asked. Melissa laughed. She opened it for him, and nodded him in.

'I'll be right out here if you need me,' she said. 'Any reason,' she ordered, 'just knock.' She closed the door behind him. Security deadbolts engaged, and Bucky bet neither the door behind him nor the door on the other side of the room opened internally.

Bucky barely noticed. Standing by the dark couch against an ugly, minty wall was Steve. His hair was longer, almost long as it had been in nineteen-forty-five, combed like it had been. The shadows in his eyes were lesser than Bucky remembered them being. Steve even looked up when the door closed, smiling hesitantly at Bucky. His flesh hand hugged the wrist of his other arm, a nervous gesture that worried Bucky, but Bucky's own face split into a grin so big it nearly hurt. Steve's hesitant smile grew in response.

'Holy shit, guy,' Bucky crowed. 'You look great. Can I give you a hug?' he asked. Steve nodded. Steve rounded the low coffee table, moving between the two wooden chairs to meet Bucky. He tucked his head into Bucky's shoulder, slinging his arms around Bucky's waist. Steve gave a shaky breath into his shirt, like just holding Bucky felt as good as holding Steve did to him. 'God, Stevie, how long has it been?' He didn't really mean it as a question, but Steve knew the answer.

'Time elapsed,' Steve reported into his shoulder: 'two months, one week, four days, nine hours, approximately twenty-four minutes.'

'Well, shit,' Bucky said, letting Steve go and clapping his hands against Steve's cheeks. He held his friend, still grinning. 'Those last twenty-four minutes were especially killer.'

'A joke,' Steve said. Bucky laughed, letting him go. Steve pushed himself into another hug. Bucky kissed the top of his head; he couldn't help old habits which refused to die now that their focus wasn't dead anymore. 'A long time,' Steve added, taking his arms from Bucky almost hesitantly. He seemed unsure of what to do then, so Bucky gestured at the chairs and the couch. Steve followed his gesture and stared at the seating. Bucky took the lead and sat in the corner of the couch, which was infinitely more comfortable than the black plastic outside.

'So?' Bucky prompted, wondering if he should prompt Steve to sit. 'How are you?' Steve looked around the small, bare room, honestly considering the question.

'Better,' Steve decided. He rounded the table mechanically and sat in the other corner from Bucky. He didn't lift his eyes up, just staring at the corner of the bare table. 'I am better.'

'How come?' Bucky asked. Steve shrugged both his shoulders.

'I am not afraid,' Steve said. 'I am better, not good, because it still hurts. I remember and it hurts. There are scars—' Steve touched his right thumb to his forehead, and Bucky understood the scars he meant were big ones, left by Howard and many others, marks from the burning and cutting of the most precious part of his brain. '—but they are healing. It is slow.'

'Hey, it's faster than anyone else could heal,' Bucky offered. Steve nodded. Bucky imagined that was an empty comfort. 'Nobody else could come back from where you've been.'

'How are you?' Steve asked the table.

'I'm better,' Bucky said, echoing Steve because he would follow Steve anywhere. 'Better now that I'm allowed to see you. I've been worried about you, but it seems like you're doing well. You're in good hands here, in any case.' Steve looked up, making eye contact in earnest.

'Did you meet Melissa?' he asked, obviously forgetting that Bucky had sat in a room with the both of them for nearly an hour two months ago. 'I like her.' Bucky grinned.

'Of course you do,' he agreed. 'You always like strong women. She doesn't take any of your shit, huh?' Steve shook his head. 'That's good, pal; that's real good.'

'She—I would steal paper and pens from the nurses, from my chart,' Steve told him. 'She brought me pencils and, um.' He looked away, thinking. After a moment, he mimed a book with his hands, frowning.

'A sketchbook?' Bucky guessed. Steve nodded again, meeting Bucky's eyes once the word was found.

'She asks me questions about what I draw,' Steve told him. 'I don't always know the answers to the questions, but I am not punished when I fail. I think I draw you a lot.'

'You think?' Bucky asked. Steve shrugged both his shoulders again, a slow, deliberate gesture he'd clearly absorbed from Melissa. It wasn't as fluid as her dramatic shrug had been, but the blueprints of the movement were there. It was endearing, somehow, to see Steve mimicking behaviours he had learned from such a positive influence as Melissa. Seeing how much better Steve was, Bucky wanted to knock on the door quickly and kiss her. He couldn't believe it.

'It is hard to remember, even new things,' Steve explained, smoothly, without halting and wincing like he had even at his best moments of Bucky's last visit. 'But I think it's you I draw. Were we small? Were we small together?'

'Once upon a time,' Bucky promised, 'we were both real small. You were always smaller, I'm sorry to say.'

'Small is an advantage,' Steve corrected. 'The asset was small and could hide more easily. Small weapons can perform delicate tasks; the asset performed many.'

'You're not the asset anymore,' Bucky guessed, because when Steve had said the asset before, it had been like he was speaking in a stilted code, in an artificial first-person. Now it felt different, like he really meant the weapon they forged and controlled with lightning and ice, not me. Steve shook his head. 'No?' Bucky prompted, wanting more.

'No,' Steve said. 'I was, but—' He tapped his forehead again. '—I am better now. I missed you,' he added after a moment. That made Bucky smile, even if hearing it prickled his eye like smoke from a dying campfire. 'Did—Did Natalia—' Steve faltered briefly, losing his sentence.

'She told me,' Bucky assured him. 'Nat told me you missed me, and, damn, Stevie, that meant a lot to me.'

'I shot her,' Steve told him. He looked remorseful, which almost amused Bucky, in a morbid, distant way. 'I remember.'

'Yeah, I know,' Bucky sighed. 'Technically, the asset shot her, and you're not the asset anymore.'

'No,' Steve agreed. 'But I told her I was sorry. She told me I was an idiot.' Bucky chuckled at that, his voice a little wet. Steve smiled despite that, looking a little sad himself. 'Did you read the file she gave you?' he asked. Bucky shook his head. 'I didn't think you would,' Steve admitted. 'I don't remember why but I thought you wouldn't.'

'Why did you let her take it?' Bucky asked. 'Did you ask her to give it to me?' Steve nodded and looked away, thinking and frowning.

'I thought you might want to know,' he said simply.

'I do,' Bucky said, 'but I don't want to hear anything you don't want me to.' Steve avoided his eyes. 'I just want to know what you want me to know, and if that's nothing, I'll stew in my worry and never say a damn word.'

'I killed Howard,' Steve told him. 'He was my friend; I remember.' Bucky nodded and the prickle in his eyes grew stronger. He swiped a thumb under one of them, but not to wipe away a tear, no.

'Howard did a lot of things,' Bucky hedged. 'I don't think he deserved to die, not like that at least, and not to orphan his son, but he did a hell of a thing to you. I don't know how he could have done this, not to you, not to anyone.'

'I remember him; he was our friend. I remember he helped replace my spine, my shoulder, my bones,' Steve said. Bucky hadn't known that, but considering the weight and force the metal arm could bear, of course it had to be anchored irreparably in Steve's body. He hoped at least the new spine was straight as Bucky's and that Steve's hips stopped paining him with every fifth step. He hoped, for all the horror of it, the new bones took some of Steve's pain. 'I remember. Not all of it, but—but pieces, I remember. Who did I orphan? Who did HYDRA orphan? Did I orphan him?'

'I think HYDRA did,' Bucky offered. 'If you'd had any choice, you wouldn't have murdered Howard, no matter what he'd done to you. His son's name is Tony,' Bucky replied. 'You met him; do you remember that? He found you after you started me breathing, when you were running south along the Potomac. He brought you home, that first night you were back in New York, before the deprogrammers took you to fucking Jersey?'

'Everyone hates New Jersey,' Steve said automatically, and Bucky laughed. It broke out of him, unexpected, big and sincere, and Steve looked up to smile and watch the laughter.

'Yeah, you're damn right they do,' Bucky agreed. 'Fuck, Stevie, that's funny.'

'I remember Pepper,' Steve said. 'I know Tony loves her.'

'Yeah, he does,' Bucky said, softer than he'd meant to. 'It's nice. They're very lucky.'

'We loved each other once,' Steve told him. Bucky nodded, unsure, suddenly, what to say. 'I still don't know who I am, not really, so you don't love me now, but maybe when I know who I am, you can.' Steve broke his eyes away and his hand encircled his metal wrist again. Bucky leaned forward before he could stop himself, taking a hand and pulling it out of the nervous gesture.

'Steve,' he said seriously, 'I loved you since we were small together, remember? I loved you in the thick of the war, and I loved you when I thought you were dead. I love you now,' he admitted. 'And I even loved you on that fucking helicarrier, when you dropped me into the Potomac like an asshole.'

'Til the end of the line,' Steve supplied, bypassing Bucky's tease. 'You said that once.'

'I've said it more than once,' Bucky promised. 'And I fucking meant it, sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere. You're not alone.'

'My mother died alone,' Steve said, apropos to almost nothing, staring at their mismatched palms. Bucky wondered, if they both squeezed as hard as they could, which would break first: metal or bone. It was a morbid question and he hoped he would never have cause to know for sure. 'You said it when you found my key. I buried her alone, but you came to the service. I needed the money to pay for rent and the funeral. I didn't even sit shiva.' Steve frowned at the words as they came out of his mouth. Bucky didn't know if Steve remembered what shiva was, if he remembered sitting it for members of his synagogue, or for the Blumenfelds in Bucky's folks' first building, when their second baby died, the second one at three years old. Bucky wondered if Steve remembered the prayer he used to say twice a day, always better at practicing his faith than Bucky had been, if he said it now, or if that had been stolen too effectively for him to remember.

'No, you couldn't sit shiva for your ma,' Bucky sighed. 'You coulda if I'd been living with you then, but you insisted you could make it on your own.'

Bucky realised, for the first time, that Steve had probably known how badly Bucky's own mother would react to him moving out; that was why Steve had been so resistant to the idea. It hadn't only been a matter of Steve's pride, wanting to make it alone. Steve had understood that Evelyn would take offence; he'd known the tension Bucky's choice would bring to his relationship with his mother.

Bucky realised for the first time that Steve had been trying to protect his best girl from losing a mother like he had, not just trying to stubbornly prove he was man enough to live alone. No matter how cold Evelyn grew to Steve, Steve must have known how lucky Bucky was to have his parents. Steve must have known what he was preserving all those times he brushed off Evelyn's disdain so Bucky could go home without needed to defend his best guy.

'I couldn't,' Steve supposed. Bucky huffed a tiny laugh.

'No, not really,' he said. 'You had a lot going against you. But you're not alone now, OK? I'm here, OK, and even when I'm not around, all you have to do is call and I'll come running.' He rubbed his thumb against the back of Steve's metal palm.

'Did I say the Kaddish?' Steve asked. Bucky shook his head.

'I don't know,' he admitted. He felt like a sorry excuse for a wife in that moment; even if they couldn't have been married in their time, Bucky should have done more to memorize Steve's prayers, to know his religious holidays as intimately as Bucky knew his own. 'You always prayed, so if you were supposed to, I'm sure you did.' Steve nodded slowly at that, taking a moment to wince. His breath caught for a moment before he opened his eyes.

'I meant to bring my drawings for you, but I did not remember,' Steve told him. Bucky laughed.

'That's fine,' he promised. 'You show me next time.'

'Next time,' Steve repeated, like a vow. Bucky watched their hands, together on the couch.

'Can you feel that?' Bucky asked, curious.

'The—my hand?' Steve guessed. Bucky nodded. 'I feel pressure,' Steve said. 'I need to be able to pull triggers, which requires pressure, but I cannot feel pain, not heat, not much else. The asset's arm would have been a hindrance and not an added weapon if it could feel all that my other hand could.' That made Bucky sad, somehow, to imagine half of Steve's tactile world had been reduced to another form of blade for the knife he'd been turned into. 'I can't feel that,' Steve said finally, as if deciding. 'If you press, I'll feel more,' he added, almost shyly, and Bucky did, easily applying enough pressure to pull a trigger, eleven pounds of affection pouring into Steve from his thumb. Steve smiled, watching the movement of Bucky's thumb.

'I am not afraid,' Steve said after a long silence. He pulled Bucky's hand off of his own, draping Bucky's arm over the back of the couch, and then he pointed at Bucky's side. 'Permission?' he asked, stilted and awkward and avoiding Bucky's eyes, but so God damned sincere it nearly made Bucky cry again. He nodded, and Steve shifted over the cushions, pressing against Bucky's side like a lifetime of muscle memory had to demand, curling his legs over and onto Bucky's lap. Bucky draped an arm over him, his own memory warm and alive in his bones. They used to sit like this at home, curled together and desperate to never let go. He pressed his face into Steve's hair. He smelled clean, and a little bit like crisp metal from the arm, but mostly he smelled like Steve.

He smelled like home.

Chapter Text

'I'm not willing to just—just fly into random countries and start blowing things up,' Bucky repeated, passing Tony his coffee. 'Sovereignty exists, pal.' Tony snorted, poking at the hologram he had all lit up.

'So you're, what, liaising with multiple national governments for permission to take out the HYDRA bases in their countries?' Tony asked. 'That's why it's been nearly five months and we've only made forward movement in the States?'

'Yes,' Bucky said simply. 'We can't just go places and blow things up. What if we need civilian evacuations? HYDRA isn't gonna avoid tearing down the cities around them. We have to go about this aboveboard and safely, or else we're just vigilantes, criminals. We're don't have any real jurisdiction by virtue of being superheroes.'

'And what if Sokovia, for example, tells you to fuck off?' Tony asked. Bucky sighed, watching his friend tinker with the hologram. 'What if HYDRA has infiltrated those governments and gets headwind that the Avengers are coming for them?'

'We'll cross that bridge if we get to it. Besides, no country has said no to me yet,' he pointed out. 'We're good to go into Latvia next week. They're evacuating the villages around the base because of pretend leaks at the natural gas plant nearby; it's only about five thousand civilians, but that's five thousand who won't be in a direct line of fire. They're also shutting down the plant, making it less likely to explode if HYDRA hits it with a mortar. And as far as HYDRA getting a warning, I don't think they'll be able to hold against my whole team, advanced warning or no.'

'Wow, a high opinion of us, huh?' Tony mused. Bucky shrugged.

'We did stop hundreds aliens from space and a demi-god,' he said. 'And I've never been wrong to trust my team before.'

'Well, your team did not dismantle HYDRA last time,' Tony pointed out, a little sharper than he needed to be.

'Actually, we did,' Bucky snapped. 'I've been reading a lot about it, in all those dumped files. We took out nearly every single base, and all the major ones. HYDRA crumbled, reduced to maybe six hundred men in fringe groups. Once the Red Skull was gone, the few functioning bases were abandoned. Four hundred men went to hiding in Eastern Europe, which HYDRA hadn't had a foothold in before; Stalin distrusted them more than Hitler had the sense to. They should have just died out without a real leader. They would have, if Arnim fucking Zola hadn't built it back up from the inside of SHIELD. I shoulda shot him in his wormy fucking face when we captured him on that train, lied and said he popped his cyanide like everyone else did.'

'Captain America can't lie; everyone knows that,' Tony chirped.

'You're an asshole,' Bucky told him seriously, picking up his own coffee. Tony laughed, like that was funny. Bucky sighed. 'What is this?' Bucky asked, pointing at the hologram.

'It's a hologram,' Tony began, explaining. Bucky rolled his eyes so hard it hurt.

'No, you dick,' he grumbled without real malice. 'What are you working on?'

'Oh,' Tony said, frowning at him. 'Yeah, I was surprised you didn't know what a hologram was by now, living here, clogging up my workspace every other day.'

'You love having me here to pass you things,' Bucky retorted. Tony nodded.

'I like bouncing ideas off your ancient brain,' he agreed. 'Um, I uploaded Dad's old schematics for Rogers' metal arm. I figure I can update the tech somehow, maybe let him feel a bit of texture, or maybe hot and cold. If I can do it at all, I can do it so we can disable it during ops if he joins the team, let him keep grappling asphalt and deflecting bullets like a badass.'

'He's not joining the team,' Bucky snapped. Tony eyed him, surprised at the outright refusal.

'Really?' he asked. 'I thought you'd be excited to have your old pal back in the field with you.' Bucky scoffed.

'Out in the field is a dangerous place,' Bucky said. 'He's been thru a lot. I'm not sending him back into the line of fire, and certainly not against HYDRA.' Tony looked away. 'It's not right, or fair, to expect him to fight again. I won't have it.'

'Shouldn't it be his choice?' Tony said, poking at a very soft spot of Bucky's temper. He bristled, but he knew it was probably unintentional that Tony had landed such a well-aimed blow. 'He hasn't had a lot of them lately,' Tony prompted when Bucky didn't reply.

'I don't know,' he admitted, holding back the urge to yell barely. 'What I do know is that I got him killed once before—'

'He wasn't killed—' Tony interrupted, trying to ease Bucky's mind.

'No,' Bucky agreed, seething. 'What fucking happened was much, much worse.' He practically slammed his mug down on the worktable he sat at, rage hot in the bones of his fingers. 'It's not going to happen again.'

'Well, I'm hoping we can replace or update the processors integrated his remaining nerves,' Tony said, changing the subject. Bucky wondered if he changed it because he regretted setting Bucky off like this, or if he just didn't know how to deal with Bucky's raw fucking emotions. Bucky forcibly stopped his leg from jogging against the rung of his stool. 'We need to do it without damaging those nerves. Once nerves are dead, he's basically fucked. I'm gonna get Bruce to look at this too. He knows bio-organics better than almost anyone alive.'

'That's an incredible gift you're giving Steve,' Bucky admitted, staring at the lights he now recognized as nerves of the shoulder and servomotors and plates of the arm. He didn't understand the technology, not really, but he understood that that type of advancement would mean the world to Steve, after decades of weaponized sensory feedback. 'Right now, less than nine pounds of pressure, he can't feel it. If it had been his right arm they sliced away, he wouldn't even be able to draw anymore. This will mean a lot to him.'

'If I can make it work,' Tony went on after heaving a sigh, 'I'm also gonna start holding fundraisers for further development. Lots of people don't have arms, or legs, and Steve's prosthetic is already far more advanced than anything on the market today. Most prosthetics out there don't have a real grip, and he can flip knives and has impeccable proprioception. I figure I can get some veterans for the first wave of clinical testing, maybe market the development to help public opinion on Steve.'

'It's not so positive right now,' Bucky sighed. 'I don't understand how anyone could look at what they did to Steve and still think Steve deserves to be imprisoned, or killed. Shit, isn't what they did to him punishment enough, if you thought he needed some?' Tony shook his head, clearly without answers.

'Sirs?' JARVIS chimed. 'Miss Potts invites you both to join her in the penthouse.'

'Thanks, JARVIS,' Bucky replied. 'You coming?' he asked Tony as he pushed off the tall stool he'd been sitting on. Tony nodded, still tinkering.

'Yeah, just behind you,' he said.

'She'll just tell JARVIS to tell you to stop fucking around down here if you don't come up with me,' Bucky pointed out. 'Don't make JARVIS clean up Pepper's profanity; he already does so much. Come on.' Tony rolled his eyes, waving his work away. He heaved himself up with an exaggerated groan, and Bucky snorted. God, Tony called him an old man.

They made their way to the elevator, and JARVIS took them up. 'You look tired,' Bucky told Tony. 'You sleeping all right?'

'No worse than usual, I suppose,' Tony said. 'I've been up late working on things, mostly. I want to beat our market projections by fifteen percent this quarter, and the arc reactor of the Tower needs to be renewed.'

'Take smaller bites,' Bucky advised as the doors opened.

'Pepper?' Tony called.