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He sees Ayo, and for a moment he’s back in Wakanda lit by a fire and he hears her promise, “I won’t let you hurt anyone,” and he wants to fall to his knees and ask for forgiveness. He did what he had to do, he’s pretty sure. Zemo is a necessary evil. But Zemo isn’t just a prison break he’d organized, he is a break of trust, and he knows Ayo is extending him more grace than he’s earned.
“Eight hours, White Wolf.”
“She’s just a kid,” Sam says, and Bucky nods without meaning to. Dammit. He’s really trying not to be an optimist these days because Steve’s got enough of that for the both of them, but he doesn’t want to think this teenager is evil. He just doesn’t.
“You are seeing something in her that isn’t there.”
That’s not what Sam does. Bucky trusts his judgement of character almost as much as he trusts him in battle. He may still be pretty sure psychology is a crack science, but Sam’s an expert in shell shock—PTSD, Bucky corrects himself mentally—and if he thinks there’s still a Karli in that super soldier, then there’s still a Karli in that super soldier. Ayo murmurs, “You’re free,” in his head and Bucky only becomes more determined. Sam’s right. She’s just a kid who happened to be pumped full of bad luck and serum, and Bucky of all people knows what that’s like.
“The desire to become a superhuman cannot be separated from supremacist ideals. Anyone with that serum is inherently on that path. She will not stop. She will escalate until you kill her. Or she kills you.”
His confidence grates on Bucky’s nerves. He sees, in dull and grainy memories that have never fully come back to him, the bloodied bodies of corpses surrounding him after a mission gone well. Heavy German accents murmur about a better soldier, a perfect army made of perfect weapons, ones that can think for themselves but won’t. And past all of that, he hears Steve’s gasping asthmatic breathing and the first night he slept soundly after Steve got the serum and was guaranteed to wake up tomorrow, even in a war zone.
“Maybe you’re wrong, Zemo,” Bucky interrupts. “The serum never corrupted Steve.”
Zemo concedes. “Touché. But there has never been another Steve Rogers, has there?”
Bucky’s arm whirs.
The more he and Sam wander the building, the harder it is to remember what exactly they’re fighting against. Karli is an escalating radical, there was a bombing just yesterday, but there are kids here. Learning to read and speak and growing up in a community that Bucky wishes he still had.
They drag themselves back into the safe house, heavy on their feet except for Zemo.
“Well, I got nothin’. No one’s talkin’ about Donya.”
“Yeah, it’s because Karli is the only one fighting for them,” Sam says, and Bucky sighs, exhausted from having to be the bad guy to be the good guy.
“And she’s not wrong,” Sam continues.
“What do you mean?”
Sam collapses onto the couch and Bucky sees the weight on his shoulders clearer than he ever has before. “For five years, people have been welcomed into countries that have kept them out using barbed wire. There were houses and jobs. Folks were happy to have people around to help them rebuild. It wasn’t just one community coming together, it was the entire world coming together. And then, boom. Just like that, it goes right back to the way it used to be. To them, at least Karli’s doin’ somethin’.”
“You really think her ends justify her means? Then, she’s no different than him,” he waves his metal hand vaguely in Zemo’s direction, “or anybody else we’ve fought.”
“She’s different. She’s not motivated by the same things.”
And dammit dammit dammit, how many times has Bucky had this argument with Steve Rogers himself? What more does Sam need to prove he should put on the damn suit? Bucky doesn’t understand why he can’t just take one for the team and be the golden boy the world needs right now.
“This is something that you or Steve will never understand,” Sam reminds him in his head, but Bucky shoves the thought aside.
He throws the glass against the wall and Sam stops him from taking it further but Bucky wishes he hadn’t. Bucky wishes he could just knock the teeth out of the skull who knows his trigger words not because he trusted him with them but because he stole them. Break the fingers of the hand that flipped through his notebook like it was light reading for a plane ride. Cut open the man who cut his head open and fucked around because Bucky was a means to an end, just like he always was.
“The bombing,” Steve says before Bucky even gets a greeting out. Sam’s on the phone with Sharon and the Dora are practically waiting outside and Zemo’s being a jackass so Bucky had figured he could soothe Steve’s heart rate for a moment. “That’s part of your mission, isn’t it?”
Bucky nods gruffly before remembering Steve can’t see him, and he actually has to speak. “Yes,” he tells him shortly, and his mouth curls at how aggressively the word comes out.
“Are you free to talk about it?”
Bucky glares at Zemo, who’s watching him like he’s an amusing comedy. “No.”
He hears a long sigh from the other end of the phone, and he wishes he was better at this whole communication thing, but he’s not. He may not be one now, but he was a spy for 70 years and withholding information from everyone but his handler was key, and Steve is not his handler.
“I don’t have a lot of time. I just wanted to let you know I’m okay.”
“I appreciate it, Buck.”
They spend a few precious seconds holding onto the other’s presence.
“Are you okay?” Bucky asks. “Managing three meals a day?”
Steve snorts out, “You gonna ask if I’m keeping my inhaler on me next? Yeah, I’m eating and breathing and walking around. I’m just worried about you.”
“Now you know how I always felt.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
They hang up at the same time and it's the closest they can come to an “I love you” in times like these.
“The person closest to her died. She’s vulnerable. If there’s any time to reason with her, it’s now.”
“I think we’re way past reasoning with her,” Walker growls and Bucky fantasizes about ripping the shield off the man’s back himself.
He’s twitchy. Bucky can tell when a man’s on the edge of snapping, and he watches as Walker paces back and forth, more than likely counting the seconds until he can burst in, guns blazing. Literally. The man thinks he’s Captain America, and yet he carries a fucking gun.
Zemo’s detained, at least, and if anyone has a chance of talking down Karli, it’s Sam.
“It hasn’t been ten minutes, John,” Bucky reminds him. “Just sit tight.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t patronize me,” he spits.
“He knows what he’s doing.”
But that’s not enough for Walker because Sam’s not doing it his way. Bucky watches it happen. The shift of the shoulders, his jaw clenching in a way that doesn’t show confidence but bullheadedness, and Bucky blocks the door before he has a chance to do something stupidly violent.
The venom seeping from that man’s eyes beneath the Captain America cowl almost knocks Bucky out cold.
“This is all really easy for you, isn’t it?” he growls. “All that serum runnin’ through your veins.”
Bucky feels the cold metal shackles wrapped around his arms and an electricity surge in his skull, but he clenches his metal fist and keeps his face blank. John Walker’s one to talk about easy.
“Barnes, your partner needs backup in there.” Walker looks pointedly at the metal arm as he says, “Do you really want his blood on your hands?”
Maybe he should have put more of an effort into stopping Walker from leaving, but God help him, Bucky’s always had a hard time fighting that shield.
He walks in on the tail end of a conversation that no one wanted him to hear, including himself.
“What about Bucky?” Sam asks. “Blood isn’t always the answer.”
He chooses to act like he didn’t hear it, chooses to act like he won’t be thinking about it. What the hell does that mean? How is he evidence that blood isn’t the answer? Every question he’s ever been asked has ended in blood.
“Something’s not right about Walker,” he says instead, yanking his jacket off aggressively and pouring himself a drink. He doesn’t even know why he does it anymore. Is it possible to be an alcoholic if your body doesn’t let you get drunk?
“You don’t say,” Sam murmurs.
“Well, I know a crazy when I see one. Because I am crazy.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Sam says, but Bucky thinks he might be one of the only people on the planet who really does believe he’s recovered from his HYDRA days.
“Shouldn’t have give him the shield,” he responds because he’s an asshole and he’s still not over it and fuck, he wants to be at home in his Brooklyn apartment and make Sam deal with this superhero shit so the rest of them don’t have to and that’s… bad. He knows it. But he keeps pushing it anyway.
Sam stands, rightfully angry. “I didn’t give him the shield.”
“Well, Steve definitely didn’t.”
Sam might want to do something about the Dora Milaje beating John Walker, but Bucky is more than happy to watch it happen because he’s been wanting to do it for ages and Sam has a better sense of self-control than he ever will.
“We have to do something.”
“Lookin’ good, John!” Bucky calls, and he hopes Sam understands what he means: this is not their jurisdiction. The Dora have already extended enough time to the two of them.
Even if they don’t get involved, Bucky knows he’s crossed a line. And when Ayo strips him of his arm, she does a lot more than that with her hissed, “James.” She’s stripped him of his title, and it makes him sick but goddamn if he doesn’t deserve it for letting the man who killed their king get free from prison.
“Pack an overnight bag. Take the boys,” Sam says into the phone and Bucky can hear the tremor in his voice, and when Sam tells him how far over the line Karli’s stepped, it’s over.
“She said come alone.”
He thinks about how Sam didn’t even hesitate when there were hostages involved. He thinks about the way Sam’s voice dips when he talks about his sister, and how he promised to keep his family safe. Bucky doesn’t even hesitate. “I’m coming with you.”
The shield. Steve had… he’d chosen a shield. He didn’t even choose a weapon, the fucking idealist he was, he went into international war with a thing made to protect.
Metal sings against the air.
It wasn’t just a hunk of metal, it was never just a hunk of metal, it was a symbol, it was the symbol, and now… now it’s just a blunt instrument. And all the weight that it comes with that smashes against the bricks. Straight through bone.
Bucky’s never seen the shield so red.
Governments need people calm, people need symbols. You can’t kill an idea, right? Unless you destroy what it stands for. Unless, in broad fucking daylight, you take that idea and smear it with blood and you stand, remorseless, above the body of a teenager.
“Maybe it’s time Captain America died,” Steve whispers in his head.