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Eliot was 10 when they were found.
Bucky felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, realised they were being watched days before he was able to pinpoint his stalker. He packed them up and drove around the continent, ostensibly for a father-son road trip, always feeling a set of eyes on him wherever they happened to stop.
But no team ever came out of the woodworks. No words were ever spoken to disassemble him once more. The infinitesimal moments Eliot was out of his sight, he always seemed mostly unawares that anything was amiss.
Which meant, they were being hunted.
Bucky only knew one person capable of tracking him this closely.
From the moment they’d escaped Bucky’s past, he’d drilled into his son’s head three things. First, his daddy loved him completely, unconditionally, and overwhelmingly. Two, there were bad people in this world, and his daddy would do anything to keep them from Eliot. Three, if Bucky were to ever disappear and didn’t come when Eliot called, Eliot needed to get himself to safety, repeat one and two to himself over and over so he never forgot, and under absolutely no circumstances was he ever to go after his father. The boy would repeat the rules as often as Bucky prompts, even if he thought his dad was just being melodramatic.
So, when she finally catches up to them in a small town in California, empty enough to keep civilians safe should fighting break out but close enough to an old friend of Bucky’s who could keep Eliot safe if it comes to that, he’s made sure he’s far enough away from his son that the boy could escape while Bucky leads her away from him.
Eliot is practicing various martial arts with Martin below on the beach when Bucky cocks the gun he has in his right hand, his left gearing up for a fight, as he keeps his eyes on the peaceful lapping of the waves.
“Should have known you’d survive,” he mutters, his eyes flicking down to his boy before returning to the horizon.
“I could say the same for you.”
“They send you?” he feels himself swallow convulsively, all the wonderful dreams he’d imagined for Eliot’s life disappearing in an instant.
She breathes in a deep sigh.
“I needed to know if it was worth it,” she answers instead. She looks down to the section of beach he’d been studiously avoiding and gestures with her head directly where he didn’t want her attention.
“Is he enhanced?”
Bucky grits his teeth, the fact that her gaze ever touched his son raising his hackles. He wasn’t about to tell her that whatever Hydra had injected into the both of them had seemed to pass down to the 10-year-old who never seemed to get sick, who was faster, stronger, and more strategic than all his friends. Who often healed before the bumps and bruises that came with childhood ever got bandaged.
“You won’t take him,” he says instead. “I’ll make sure you stay dead before I let that happen.”
“… Such love is overwhelming, Husband.”
“Love is for children, and that child is mine. He won’t be like us. He’ll get a choice. He’ll always, always have a choice.”
She stares at him for a long moment, that piercing gaze that enthralled him long before her visible inner strength and determination impressed him. He shuts down any feelings of affection he could have ever felt for her, and concentrates again on a Room far, far away from him, where no kid had any business being. A Room that took everything from both of them, but that their son would never even imagine existed.
He watches the emotions playing behind her eyes. She’s far too good to ever let them show on her face, but he’s known her longer than probably any other living being, regardless of how many times they’ve each been remade.
Finally, she turns again to stare at the laughing little boy in the sand, expertly and voluntarily doing drills both his parents had once forced on others.
Still staring at the two people below him, she asks Bucky, “And if he chooses to be soldier? If he becomes everything we both are, we both never asked to be, despite everything? What will you do then?”
Bucky hears the gears in his arm grinding as his fist tightens involuntarily, as she exposes all the fears he’s kept hidden deep within himself. Suddenly, the image of another small boy with too much fight in him for his own good enters his mind, and Bucky smirks involuntarily.
“I will make sure he’s as prepared as possible for any life. But, as long as he makes his own decision… Well, I’d be a fool to try to stop the little punk once he’s made up his mind."
She seems to digest that for a long, long while, her eyes still on their son.
“What did you name him?”
He relaxes his stance a hair, accepting the truce she seems to have offered.
“Eliot. I called him Eliot.”
Eliot, he watches the silent syllables roll over her tongue. One side of her lips quirks up, just a bit, and then she meets his eyes and nods before walking away.
The Winter Soldier, most effective assassin of the century, calls to his adversary’s retreating figure one last warning.
“Natalia.” She freezes for just a moment, turning her ear toward him, “If I ever see you again, I will shoot you.”
She turns and gives him that cold, terrifying smile that has signalled doom for so many others.
“Only if you remember me, Soldat.”
And with that she’s gone.
Bucky unclenches his fist and holsters his gun, the anxiety only a parent can grasp finally leaving his body in a rush. He walks slowly down to the beach, where drills have devolved into a full-on tickling war.
“Okay Riggs, time to admit my kid can take you and just forfeit.”
“Yeah, yeah, I yield. Come on, Kid. Victoria probably has lunch ready,” the detective says, leading the way off the sand. He meets Bucky’s eyes, and the two communicate without words.
Bucky throws an arm around his son’s shoulders, trying not to squeeze any harder than normal, and Eliot smiles up at his dad and tells him all the new moves he’s learned.