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PROLOGUE
“Looking for answers of my own,” Bucky answered.
Across the table, Steve looked up from his plate, watching him with that same mix of concern and wariness: There was more Bucky wasn’t letting onto, and Steve knew it.
“There was no one around anymore to keep wiping my memory,” Bucky explained. “It started coming back, some of the places they—” and he had to stop to swallow the bile that had risen in his throat at the sheer thought of it: the experiments, the repairs—being electro-shocked, beaten, erased. “Hydra had bases and vaults all over the world,” he grit out.“They would move me around; keep me places—sometimes for weeks or months.”
Steve’s mouth was a thin line. “Conscious?” he asked.
“Sure,” Bucky said hollowly. “More or less.”
“Where?”
“Siberia,” though everyone knew about that already. He paused. Wilson, Lang and Barton were clearly listening now, too. “Ukraine,” he choked out. “Norway. Austria. Sokovia—”
A plate shattered then, scattering broken shards across the floor. Wanda cursed under her breath and crouched behind the kitchen counter to pick up the pieces, then yanked her hand back and cursed again—Bucky caught it the second time, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise: Sokovian, he thought. Wanda was Sokovian.
He wasn’t the only one staring at her. Barton was the first to move, offering help, but Wanda waved him off. “I’m fine,” she said, maneuvering around him, “I can take care of it,” and she hurried away cradling her bleeding hand.
1.
“It’s hard for her to talk about home,” Steve told him later. “There’s a lot of pain and guilt wrapped up in it.”
Together, they managed to piece together a rough timeline: Bucky knew he’d been in Sokovia since 2012 at the very least, transferred there some time after Pierce had acquired what Steve described as some magic god’s magic, mind-controlling scepter. He’d never seen the scepter himself, but knowing something like that existed didn’t phase him: he’d seen stranger, he thought, and he’d definitely seen worse. Besides, there wasn’t much for him to see anyhow: he’d spent the entire time bolted to the table while the doctors poked and prodded at him relentlessly. He remembered thinking it was the end; he was going to be decommissioned, and then killed, and he was glad for it: It was finally over. But then the mission orders eventually arrived: D.C., Fury, Romanoff—Steve. He was gone by the time the first batch of experiments started. He and Wanda’d just missed each other.
Up ahead, the tall grass rustled, pulling him out of his thoughts. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting out on the porch, but he couldn’t bring himself to move: He thought of the other winter soldiers, and how he’d been tasked to train them—Would he have been made to train her, too? He shook his head; no, of course not: Wanda was nothing like the other enhanced he’d encountered. She was a walking contradiction: smaller, frailer; breakable—and yet she was also the most powerful person he’d ever met—a true force to be reckoned with. God, he would have hated being pitted against her. He would have hated having to fight her, or hurt her; break her.
Would they have put her in the chair?—and suddenly he was strangling for air, imagining it: Would they have clamped a mask over her? Would they have wiped her? Put her in cryo? Sent on her missions? Forced her to torture for them—to murder for them?
It was then that he felt it: that subtle thrill in the air, a charge of energy that seemed to split the wind—her only tell. He turned around.
Wanda was standing under the open doorway, arms crossed to her chest. “I don’t remember you,” she said. Bucky didn’t have to ask—he knew she meant the base; Novi Grad Castle; Sokovia. “I think I would have remembered you,” she said, gaze flickering to his new arm.
“I was there,” Bucky assured her. “Not while you were, but—well,” he said, considering it, “you wouldn’t have seen me either way. They kept me underground,” and that caught her off-guard. Her mask slipped, and for a split second, she looked terrified, though she quickly covered it up.
“Why were they keeping you?” she demanded. “What did they want with you?”
Bucky hesitated. “I don’t know. They—they kept running tests,” he said, because that was what he remembered vividly: machines beeping, pens scratching, “drawing blood, running scans, cutting—” and he had to stop again, but for different reasons: Wanda had gone pale. She looked like she was going to be sick. Bucky could have kicked himself. They’d done it to her, too. Of course they had.
“They wanted to know why we were the only ones who survived,” Wanda said, sounding far away from him, “why the experiments worked for us and not for the others.”
“Did they?”
Wanda smiled at him wanly: What do you think?
“Right,” Bucky said.
“I hated that place,” Wanda said vehemently. “There was something about all of it that felt—off from the start. I was just so angry, I refused to see it.” He took it as a good sign when she joined him on the top step, and then she looked at him. “I could never go back there,” she said. “I don’t ever want to go back there.” Then: “I don’t know how you did it.”
Bucky blinked at her. She’d gotten it wrong. “I never made it to Sokovia,” he said, and Wanda stared at him. “I was supposed to. It was my next—” He faltered, and then tried again: “By the time I got to Bucharest, I was remembering more than bases…” he managed tightly. “I—I couldn’t go on.”
“More than bases,” she repeated. Bucky tensed. “Missions, you mean.”
Bucky didn’t say anything, just jut his chin down—yes.
And then she surprised him: “I understand,” Wanda said softly, and now it was his turn to stare. “I know what it’s like.” She looked miserable. “I’ve—I’ve done my share of awful too.”
It came to him then: “Lagos,” he said. He’d seen the headlines on all the papers; the cellphone footage of her and Steve playing on loop on the news. “But,” and he frowned, “but that was an accident,” and Wanda glared at him.
“It was still me.”
He could sense that she was challenging him to fight her on it, and Bucky had been ready to, had opened his mouth to—except hadn’t he been saying the exact same thing all this time? She was right: it was still her, even if it wasn’t; it’d been him, even if it wasn’t. He understood more than anyone: there was no easy comfort for that kind of truth.
“It was still you,” he heard himself agree.
Wanda looked at him strangely then. There was something in her expression he couldn’t read, and he feared that maybe he’d said the wrong thing. She looked like she was considering him, coming to a decision about him—and then, finally, her lips curled slowly into a small, sad smile.
“There’s something you should know about Novi Grad,” she said. “Once Steve and the others found the base—once we were under attack—” and he appreciated that she was trying to be gentle about it, but Bucky already knew what she was going to say.
“Strucker had all the data scrubbed,” he said, finishing the thought. “Yeah, Steve told me. Stark tried to recover it, but it was all gone.”
Wanda nodded somberly. “Nothing survived. Not a single record. Nothing on me and my brother or the experiments or what they put us through,” and Bucky looked up; the way she’d said us—she’d meant the two of them. They shared this now. “I’m sorry,” Wanda said.
Bucky sighed. “I’m sorry, too.”
Wanda shook her head. “You’re not the only one with questions, Sergeant Barnes,” she said, getting up to leave. “But those answers you say you’re looking for? I’m afraid you won’t find them in Sokovia,” and Bucky had been ready to let her go without another word, except something deep in him compelled him.
“Bucky. You can—my name’s Bucky,” he said, and Wanda stopped in her tracks.
She looked past her shoulder at him. “Good night, Bucky,” she said softly and then she turned away and disappeared into the house.
2.
“How does it work?” he asked her, the next time they were alone.
“How does what work?” Wanda replied distractedly. She flicked her hand, and the overhead kitchen cabinets swung open, pots and pans levitating out.
He’d walked in on her floating half the kitchen around, brow furrowed in concentration so as to make sure she didn’t make a sound. He was relieved to find her—a tightness in his chest was easing: Just moments before, he’d come out into the hallway and tensed at the sight of the empty bed across the hall, imagining the worst.
Wanda kept her door open all the time, making it easy to tell when she was in. Not like him: All his time spent under watchful eyes had taught him to keep his doors and windows secured, to sleep with his back against the wall, a clear view of all possible entry points, a gun and knife within quick reach. Wanda, he’d discovered, was the complete opposite: she propped her doors open with a chair, and thrived on being out in the fresh air. She abhorred being locked up. Even now, in the kitchen, she had the windows wide open.
“Hey,” she’d smiled, glancing his way when he walked in, “couldn’t sleep either, huh?” but Bucky’d barely heard her. He was transfixed: the entire kitchen moved in time with her, around her—gracefully, he thought, and some familiar part of him buried deep added: like she’s dancing.
It was the first time he’d seen her use her powers since the Raft.
“Wanda’s our best way out,” Steve’d told him before they split up. He’d sent Bucky because they wouldn’t be expecting him—recon provided by T’Challa had informed them that Wanda was being held on a different level from Wilson and the others, behind tightly secured doors, with her own battalion of guards. Not that it mattered: The guards weren’t expecting the Winter Soldier, and his new arm worked like a dream. He ripped the heavy steel door off its hinges and found her glaring at him from the floor, tied up in all sorts of restraints. He’d been more than happy to snap the collar off—and he did it just in time, too: someone had triggered the alarm, sending the Raft into emergency shut down. Klaxons blared overhead and emergency lights flooded the cell—and they were plunging down at a terrific speed, towards the bottom of Atlantic.
Wanda seemed to understand from the look on his face that something terrible must have happened up above them, because she threw her arms out and red energy rippled out in waves, crawling up the walls and out the cell, swallowing the Raft whole, bringing everything to a grinding halt. Bucky’d been transfixed then, too: he’d never seen anything like it.
He still wasn’t used to it. “How does it work?” he asked.
“How does what work?” Wanda replied.
“You,” Bucky said in wonder. “I mean—how do you do all of this?”
Now he had her attention. “Oh,” she said, flustered, “you—” She froze, arms still outstretched. Even in the dark he could tell she was blushing. “I’m not sure I can…It’s—it’s hard to explain.”
Bucky considered this while she lowered her arms, everything around the kitchen settling in place. “So,” he began, “one day you could just…” He frowned, rolled one hand and said, “You could just, what, move things with your mind?”
Wanda bit her bottom lip. “Yes. No. Yes—I can do other things, too,” she admitted hesitantly, and Bucky knew what that meant too. He pictured the guards on the Raft: the dazed look on their faces, the way they moved mechanically in place, barely registering their presence while they walked out of the place. Wanda shifted, self-conscious. He had a feeling she was thinking about it too. “It wasn’t some big discovery, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said then, clearing her throat. “But you’re right, one day I could just…” She twirled one hand, “—do this, all of this. After the experiment, I woke up on the floor of my cell, and I just knew.” She opened the fridge and began pulling out breakfast things. “It—” She sighed. “It was like there was a voice in my head telling me what to do,” she said quietly. “It was still my voice. It was still me. But it was also—more than me. Not me.” She looked at him, and put her hands on her hips, frowning: “Did that make any sense?”
Bucky swallowed hard. “Yeah—” he managed, the red book in his pocket burning into his flesh. “Sure--that makes sense.”
Wanda tilted her head at him, unconvinced.
“No, really,” Bucky insisted, and suddenly he had to move, had to do something with his hands. He pulled a bowl and a carton of eggs over to his side of the table and said, trying to be offhanded about it, “I know exactly what you mean.”
3.
It surprised him how quickly they fell into step with each other as the days passed. For the first time, he wasn’t alone in it, and that baffled him, because it turned out there was this other person who knew what it was like, another person who’d been through Hydra’s hell and back and had, somehow, miraculously survived, too.
It wasn’t just her he’d grown fond of, either. He liked all of Steve’s team, and of course Steve had managed to find the best team—and a couple of weeks into this new life, Bucky found himself thinking that maybe this would work. Ideal or not, this was their life now, so be it.
He was wrong.
Bucky wasn’t sure whether it’d been him or Barton who’d heard it first, but Barton’s bow was closer, and by the time the top of the black SUV appeared on the horizon, Barton already had three arrows aimed out the window. The red light on the nocks began flashing like a warning, and Bucky counted them out in his head, hand steady on his rifle: one, two—
—and the bow flung out of Barton’s grasp and skidded across the floorboards. They whirled around, shocked: Wanda was standing in the kitchen, arm stretched out, looking winded. The back door swung behind her. She’d come running.
Barton’s eyes widened. He seemed to understand something from this, because a second later he was bursting out onto the porch, completely unarmed. The SUV pulled to a stop and a woman climbed out of the car’s passenger side. She flung her arms around his neck, embracing him tightly.
She wasn’t alone, either. There were three children, and the driver—another woman Bucky didn’t know, who gave their safe house a once-over and said, sounding simultaneously impressed and annoyed: “Jeez, Clint—how many of these do you have?”
Barton didn’t answer; he couldn’t be bothered. He was kissing each of the children’s heads, holding onto his family tightly. Bucky stared at them, thrown off-kilter: Barton had a family, he thought. Barton had a wife. Barton had kids.
Steve and Wilson had come out the door, too. “Hill?” Steve asked incredulously. “What are you doing here?”
“Damage control,” the driver smirked. Steve tensed at that, so she quickly added: “I’m actually here on a favor—a couple of favors. Maybe three favors,” she said, glancing at Barton and his family. Then she looked back to Steve, serious now: “Is there some place we can talk?”
Steve studied her carefully. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Come on in.”
They crowded around the living room and listened carefully to what Maria Hill had to say: It turned out that as soon as news of their prison break out reached them, Stark put his army of lawyers to work, and they’d managed to procure a deal that would allow the non-enhanced violators of the Accords to return to their homes under house arrest if they heeded to certain conditions.
“Non-enhanced,” Barton noted under his breath. He glanced in Wanda’s direction, and Bucky felt guilt wash over him anew. His own hopes hadn’t been high: he knew where he and Steve and Stark stood, but he also knew Wanda didn’t deserve to get mixed up in it. “You brought Laura and the kids,” Barton was saying now, frowning.
“Sure,” Hill said. “Nat made me.”
“You’ve seen Nat?” Steve asked her. “You know where she is?”
Hill was shaking her head. “She made sure Laura and the kids got to me safely, then she disappeared. She said she had things to take care of. I’m sorry, Steve, I don’t—”
“But she made you bring them,” Barton pressed.
Hill turned to him now. “She figured you would want the option,” she said, "in case you didn’t take to the deal.”
Barton laughed, hard. “She was right. Maria, it’s a terrible deal,” he said—and then they were all talking over one another, Barton and Lang and Wilson and Steve, because Barton and Lang and Wilson were ready to refuse their chance at freedom, point blank. Bucky sat back and watched, both bewildered and amused; Steve’d found his team, alright.
“Take it,” Wanda said then, speaking up for the first time, and that shut them up. She was looking at Barton in particular. “It’s—it’s not about us, it’s about them,” and she glanced out the window where the Barton children were playing. “You guys should take the deal.”
“Wanda,” Barton began, but Wanda wouldn’t hear it.
She turned to Hill and said, “So Clint and Scott and Sam get to go home. What about the rest of us? What happens to us?”
Surprisingly, Maria Hill had a solution for that, too: The Avengers disbanding had caused wide-spread panic and confusion across the global justice system, and several groups were planning to exploit it. Hill offered them a new temporary safe house along the Nysa Klodzka and a ticking clock of a mission in the Eastern Sudetes, where a group of terrorists had carved a headquarters for themselves. Intel suggested they were planning something big, something catastrophic, and Bucky could already see that Steve was going to take the job—Steve wasn’t going to let that happen. But he wasn’t going to force it on them, either.
“What do you think?” Steve asked him, and Bucky heard the real question hidden underneath: Do you think you can do this? Are you staying?
Bucky rolled his eyes at him. “You better have a plan,” he warned, and Steve grinned.
-----
Parting ways had been unpleasant, but Bucky was impressed by how Wanda kept her poker face on even until late in the night. It wasn’t until he came across her mixing hair dye in a bowl in the bathroom of their new safe house that he finally saw how she really felt. She looked smaller, somehow. She didn’t even seem to notice him standing there.
“You okay?” Bucky asked her.
“Mhm,” she said, glancing at him in the bathroom mirror. “I’m fine.” She was a terrible liar.
Bucky leaned against the door frame. “It must have been hard,” he tried again, “saying good-bye.”
Wanda made a face. “Believe me, I’m used to it.” She folded a section of hair to the other side, then looked at him again in the mirror. “We just have to—” she gave a little shrug, “start over again, right? Eyes forward, not back.”
She was waiting for him to answer. “Yeah,” Bucky said, after a second. “Yeah, sure.”
“Well,” Wanda said, looking away, satisfied. “Then that’s that.”
“Right,” Bucky said. She wasn’t going to talk about it; he wasn’t going to force her. “—I’ll leave you then,” he said, gesturing in general.
“Okay,” Wanda said, and he turned away, except Wanda spoke up again—so softly he almost missed it: “Or—”
Bucky doubled-back. “Or?”
Her eyes were watery. “Or, you could stay,” she said finally. “If you don’t mind,” she added.
“Not at all,” Bucky said sincerely. He glanced around the small bathroom and settled on the edge of the tub.
Wanda wiped at her eyes. “I’ve been at this since I’ve was ten, you know,” she said, “starting over, and over, and over…and every time I have to do it, it only means I’ve lost something along the way.” She took a deep breath, then smiled thinly. “I don’t know why I thought this would be different. I don’t know—maybe it’s just me,” and then she was coming over and sitting next to him. “Maybe I’m cursed, or—or I’m the curse. I make mistakes and people pay. I make mistakes and people—die.” Her voice was shaking terribly; she seemed overcome with a realization. “Steve told me about Zemo,” she said, looking at him now. “The connection with Ultron,” Her mouth twisted, and Bucky suddenly got what she was thinking.
“Hey, no—no—”
“Bucky, this is all on me—”
“No,” Bucky said forcefully. “Stop. Don’t. Wanda, if you start going down this hole—trust me when I say there’s no point to it.”
Wanda shook her head. “How do you do this? How do you manage?”
“I’m not,” Bucky said honestly.
Wanda glared at him. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not,” Bucky said again. “I mean it—I’m barely hanging on here. But I have to try,” he said, and she groaned and put her face in her hands. Bucky gently pat her on the back. “And you’re not cursed,” he said, gently now. “You’re not.”
He was startled when she curled into him, and Wanda noticed: “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, pulling away. “I shouldn’t have.”
“It’s okay—I was just,” and he shut up then and pulled her back in. She was on his left-side; he was trying to be careful; gentle—but the arm didn’t seem to worry her at all. It was unnerving.
“I just need a minute,” she said.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Bucky said softly, holding her close. “Take all the time you need.”
4.
He’d had his concerns about being out on the field again, but it turned out he’d been worried for nothing: the four of them worked surprisingly well as a unit and swiftly put a stop to the terrorists, and once inside the base, they discovered an armory stacked with crates full of weapons. Not just any weapons, either: these guns were alien-tech.
He shuddered at the sight of the menacing blue energy source swirling around the gun’s chamber. It looked eerily familiar—and suddenly, in his mind’s eye he was being blasted off the train again, blood rushing in his ears, clawing hopelessly at the air as he shot down to what he’d been sure was a certain death.
He pushed the memory back and tried to shut the crate, but Steve stopped him. Steve was looking at the guns too, expression grim. “I’ve seen these before,” he said. “Strucker’s men were using them in Novi Grad.”
“I thought the Avengers secured the base,” Bucky said, looking at him.
“We did,” Steve said. “We—ran scans on the entire castle grounds. We found everything they were hiding.”
“What about underground?” Bucky asked, and to his surprise, Steve just looked at him blankly.
“What—what do you mean ‘underground’?”
“There was an underground level,” Bucky answered. His heart hammered in his chest; Steve didn’t know; the Avengers hadn’t found—“It’s where they kept me,” he said, and now that he thought about it: “It was well-hidden, secured. Steve, they had a lot to hide,” he said. “They buried all their real secrets deep underground. Deep enough that—”
“Ghosts wouldn’t be able to find them.” They turned around. Wanda was gripping the lid of another crate. She was staring at the weapons, too. “Bucky’s right about the underground level,” she said tightly. “I’ve seen it. It’s where they ran our experiments. They—they kept me there too.”
-----
The sudden turn of events left him feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while. “It could all still be there,” he said, trailing after Wanda while Steve and Wilson stayed back to debrief. “If they never found it, then the records might still be there—” and he had to jerk to a stop when Wanda whirled around, glaring at him.
“I’m not going back,” she said shortly. “I’ve already told you, I’m never going back there.”
Bucky worked his mouth, but no words came out. He was flummoxed. He thought he understood her; he thought they understood each other.
It was only when she turned on her heel and walked away that he found his voice: “You said you wanted answers, too,” he called out. “We’ve got a chance at it now, and you’re—you’re—” He fumbled; she was far away, desperate to put as much distance between the two of them. Running away from him, he thought. Like she was—“You’re terrified,” Bucky said, and as soon as he said the words, he knew it was true. Wanda stopped; she’d heard. Bucky pressed on: “You’re terrified to go back. You’re terrified about what you might find.”
Wanda didn’t say anything for a while. Then: “I’m not getting into this with you,” she said, voice dangerously low. “Do whatever you want. I’m not discussing this anymore.”
-----
She meant it, too. Wanda kept her distance from him after that, like he was an unfortunate reminder of everything horrible about her past, and Bucky couldn’t fault her; he supposed he was, in a way. But she’d been wrong to say that nothing had survived Novi Grad—they had; they were what was left. Them, and whatever might still be lurking there, waiting for them. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. The castle was calling to him and it refused to be ignored.
He was sure Wanda couldn’t stop thinking about it either. At the safe house, she drifted around distractedly, and on their next mission—a Children’s Home in Necpaly being used as a front; another possible Hydra connection—it cost her. Bucky’d caught his breath when she broke through the wall, scattering glass and brick, and tumbled into a twisted heap onto the yard. He was supposed to be watching her six; they were supposed to be evacuating the children. He quickly moved into position to cover her, begging fiercely: Get up. Come on—Get up.
She did. She was sporting a brand new gash on her forehead but was surprisingly otherwise unharmed. She was also furious. He realized that he hadn’t actually seen Wanda furious, not until then.
She ended the mission for them shortly after that, levitating a few feet in the air and doing something that made the mercenaries move in unison, and like rolling thunder, they swept their guns up and directed them at each other. They had that same dazed look on their faces, that tiny hint of red in their eyes.
“Wanda,” Steve called out, rushing out onto the grounds. He looked nervous. Wilson shot down from the sky, retracting his wings; he looked nervous, too. They’d never seen her like this; use her powers like this.
But Bucky had. “She’s okay,” he said, holding out a hand. “She’s going to let them go. Right, Wanda?”
Wanda blinked, hearing her name this time. She floated back to the ground, coming back to them, and with a twist of her wrist, the mercs crumpled to the ground like rag dolls. “I didn’t mean to,” Wanda breathed, looking to Steve. “I swear, Steve, I wasn’t—”
Behind Bucky, one of the younger children had begun to cry. He tried to shift surreptitiously, shielding Wanda from their view, but it was no use. Her eyes met his and her lower lip quivered: she’d done that—that was on her. All these people around her were watching her every move, nervous and terrified, and hell if he didn’t know what that was like. That was the loneliest feeling in the world.
Later, on the jet, he figured he should say something. He’d been mulling over it: You wouldn’t have done it. You’re not a killer. You’re not—but then Wanda just stared across the jet at him, hard, like she knew what he was going to say.
“Don’t lie to me, just—don’t,” she said, broken and miserable. “I know what I am.”
-----
Back at the safe house, Steve took her aside to discuss what had happened. Bucky put a pot of coffee on while Wilson sat at the table, tinkering with his drone. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
It was Wilson who broke the silence between them: “So,” he said lightly, “what’re you going to do?” and when Bucky tensed and said nothing, he added: “I’m just saying—I figured you would’ve been halfway to Sokovia by now.”
Bucky blinked at him. Wilson was talking about Novi Grad.
He looked away. “Fury’s people are probably all over it by now,” he muttered, hoping to leave it at that. But Wilson shook his head.
“No,” he said slowly. “They’re not. Steve didn’t disclose that particular piece of information,” he explained. He shrugged. “It—it didn’t seem relevant to the mission.”
Bucky frowned. “And you agreed to that?”
“Sure, I did,” Wilson scoffed, as though Bucky’d been crazy to think otherwise. “Hey, man, whatever’s down there—as far as I’m concerned, that belongs to you and Wanda,” and Bucky stared at him disbelief until he remembered that Wilson had spent the better part of year trying to help Steve find him; trying to help him. We looked everywhere for you, but we never came close. Where the hell were you?
Wilson gave him an appraising look. “So, what are you going to do?” he asked, and Bucky’d been ready to answer—he owed it to Wilson to answer, he supposed—but he never got to: Steve came into the kitchen then.
“Wanda’s taking herself off the next few missions,” Steve said, looking between them. “She doesn’t want to risk anyone’s safety.”
Bucky crossed his arms. He didn’t care about the missions. The missions were a job, Wanda was—“What about her?” he asked. “How is she?”
Steve didn’t answer right away; just looked at him thoughtfully. Then he said: “You can ask her yourself. She’s waiting for you.” Steve saw right through his surprise, too: “She wants to talk to you, Buck,” Steve said. Go, and so he went, except Wanda’s door was drawn shut for the first time since he’d known her.
Maybe Steve had gotten it wrong, he thought, and he was just about to step away when her voice came through: “Bucky?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s me.”
-----
Wanda was sitting cross-legged on the floor when he entered, her back against the foot of her bed. The tiny television set propped up on the bureau was the only source of light in the room. She had it on mute; she wasn’t paying attention—she was looking down at her hands, fidgeting with the rings around her fingers. “Hey,” she said, looking up at him.
Bucky held onto the door knob. “Should I keep it open?” he asked.
“Yes,” Wanda said. Then: “No. No, I—I don’t want it…” She trailed off.
Bucky shut the door. “How’s your head?” he asked, glancing at the bandage on her forehead.
“It’s—fine,” Wanda replied. “It barely hurts.”
He sat next to her on the floor, and she looked at her hands again and took a long, deep breath; she seemed to be ramping herself up to say something. “I grew up in an orphanage, did you know?” Bucky shook his head. “Well, I did. After our parents died, Pietro and I were sent to one and we stayed there until we were of age. It wasn’t a very pleasant experience,” she added. “They had this little closet under the stairs where they kept the brooms and cleaning things, and they would lock us inside if we misbehaved. I spent a lot of time—isolated.” Wanda frowned, lost in the memory. “To be fair,” she said slowly, managing a small smile, “it was just about the only room you could actually hear yourself think in that place…”
“Yeah?” Bucky asked. “What would you think about?”
“How much I hated it there,” Wanda said, then: “No, but seriously I—I’d think about what I wanted to do once I got out. What life would be like. I wanted to live anywhere but Sokovia. Start over,” she added, shaking her head, “But not Pietro. He wanted to stay. He said Novi Grad was still home, no matter what.” Wanda hesitated. “I—I think being there, earlier, it just reminded me of…of everything, and—Bucky,” she said suddenly, looking at him now, “Bucky, I’m sorry. I’ve—I’ve been pushing you away.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bucky said. “Just forget about it.”
“No, I—” She exhaled, tilting her chin to her chest, and her red hair fell down like a curtain, covering her face. Wanda drew a breath. “I—I wasn’t being completely honest with you, before, when you asked me about my powers. About knowing I could do the things I do. It didn’t happen after the experiment.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, looking at him now. “It was during. I touched the scepter, and I saw—I saw myself. A version of myself, looking right at back at me.” Wanda brought one hand up, and drew a ball of swirling energy out of her chest. “All of the sudden there was this power inside of me, clawing its way out—and it was tainted. There was all this pain and misery, all this—this despair and fear. It was me,” she said, mouth twisting in anguish. The ball of energy fizzled out slowly until it vanished. “I was the source of it all. I—I still am. People fear me, and they have a good reason to be.”
“Wanda,” Bucky began, his own chest tightening. “Wanda, it’s—” but she looked at him then, and he couldn’t lie to her. There was no simple comfort for that kind of truth. “I’m—I’m not afraid of you,” he said instead.
Wanda smiled at him. “I know,” she said. “I’ve known since the Raft. What I don’t know, is why—”
He knew why. He’d known all this time; he just didn’t—and he slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out the book. His book, with its tattered red cover and its damned black star, and offered it to her like a piece of his soul.
“What’s this?” Wanda asked, taking it.
“What they used to control me,” Bucky answered. “A set of trigger words that activate the winter soldier programming.” Wanda inhaled sharply. She’d begun leafing through the pages. “Everything I am, everything they made me into—the winter soldier was built to kill, to destroy. A living weapon, a murderer—that’s me,” he said, and Wanda looked at him, agonized. “I know what I am, too,” he said softly. “But I think I can take what they’ve turned me into and do some good with it. I want to try. I have to try.”
Wanda closed the book, treating it with a surprising gentleness. “You think you might find something in Sokovia to help you with the programming,” she said, understanding now.
“Back in Wakanda, they said they might be able to remove it,” Bucky said, nodding. “They took scans, but they—they need to know more before they proceed. They won’t risk it otherwise.” And he sighed, because if he was really doing this, he wanted her to be the first to know: “I’m going,” he said, “I’m leaving—tomorrow. If there’s a chance in hell that I find something—I can’t afford to pass it up.”
“Yeah, I—of course you can’t,” Wanda said after a moment. She seemed like she wanted to say more.
“Bucky, I—” she began, looking up at him, and a new feeling bloomed in his chest, looking back at her: it felt like something was weighing down between them, something Bucky couldn’t explain. He blinked, trying to make sense of it.
Wanda pressed her lips together. “I—”
And it happened all at once, like the dam breaking: she couldn’t speak at all, she’d clamped her mouth shut to swallow down the sobs. Bucky pulled her into his arms without hesitation, and she pressed her face into his chest. He let her cry there silently for a while, rubbing her arm.
“I—I just need a minute,” she said.
No problem, that was fine with him; he wasn’t ready to let go yet either. “Take all the time you need.”
-----
He’d planned to leave while she was asleep, for selfish reasons: It would make it easier, he thought, no looking back; no good-byes. Steve’d offered to go with him, predictably, but Bucky turned him down—if Steve went, then Wilson would too, and he couldn’t do that to Wanda.
He’d underestimated her, though. There he was stepping out of the house, and there she was, already standing out on the porch. Her eyes were glassy. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she said, getting into it right away. “About taking what they’ve turned me into and—doing some good with it. About trying.”
She took a deep breath.
“I want to try, too,” she said. “Bucky, I’m coming with you.”
5.
But Novi Grad Castle was a trap waiting for them to arrive.
Bucky had known the second they stepped into the desolate ballroom—something felt off. He turned around to warn Wanda, but it was too late—“Bucky!” Wanda shouted as he was blasted backwards by an invisible force. He crashed hard into the stone wall and crumpled to the ground, and then, before he could react, he was hoisted into the air, arms binding together behind his back. Wanda threw her arms out trying to bring him down, but nothing happened. She tried again.
“It’s no use, my dear,” a voice said, and then the metal shutters screeched to life, rattling down and plunging them in darkness. Glowing symbols lit up the room, and a woman appeared out of thin air. “Wanda, Wanda, Wanda,” she tsk’ed, smiling grandly. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited. How patient I’ve been,” and Wanda gave a surprised shout as she was lifted and bound, too. Her eyes flashed red and then dimmed. “Oh, honey,” the woman drawled, pointing at the the walls. “Don’t even bother. You’ll only wear yourself out.”
“Who are you?” Wanda demanded. “What do you want?”
“Oh, how rude of me,” the woman said, and did a little twirl of her hand, violet energy snaking around her wrist. She bowed. “Agatha Harkness, dear. What a pleasure it is to finally meet you.”
-----
Agatha was a witch, and she claimed that Wanda was one, too. “Every witch’s magic comes with its own little signature,” she said. “A gentle nod in the wind—I did this. But not yours, Wanda. Yours,” and Agatha shuddered, “I followed yours to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and when I saw what you’d done—I knew I just had to meet you.”
Wanda glared at her. “It was you,” she spat out. “The weapons. The orphanage.”
“Smart girl,” Agatha said. “But don’t get ahead of yourself. No, let’s start at the Raft. What you did there, that level of power—hundreds of men enchanted into their own private worlds, trapped without a chance of escape…unheard of. You’re welcome, by the way,” she added. “I fixed your mess there. I released them. Took me forever—not like you; you did it all in an instant. I only had one question in mind after that: How did you do it?”
“—I don’t know,” Wanda and Agatha said in unison.
“When you told Sarge here that you didn’t know how any of this work, that just blew me away," Agatha continued. "So many questions—and all of them pointing to this dump. But you were stubborn. I gave you chance and chance again to do the right thing and come back home, but nothing could convince you…” Agatha smiled then, gave a little shrug, “Well, not nothing. My one mistake was forgetting to consider the Bucky of it all,” and when she reached up to touch him, Bucky jerked his face away. “Don’t get me wrong, I see the appeal,” she told Wanda. “He’s quite handsome, even if he’s a bit—” and Agatha twirled her finger near her ear. She barked out a laugh and clapped her hands. “The best ones always are.”
“What do you want, Agatha?” Wanda demanded.
“The same thing you want, Wanda: answers.” Agatha narrowed her eyes. “There’s something about you that doesn’t quite add up, my dear, and it’s high-time we figured it out. I think I know just how to go about it, too,” and she waved her hands and Wanda floated to the ground, free of her binds. A door appeared, and Bucky’s heart stopped at the sight of the red symbol—the skull and tentacles.
"No,” Wanda said then, stepping back. “I won’t do it.”
Agatha tutted. “That’s too bad,” and then she flicked her hand and Bucky was lifted higher in the air, binds tightening, crushing him. He clenched his jaw.
“No—” Wanda said, and Agatha said, “No again?” She curled her hand into a fist, and binds twisted around his neck. He couldn’t speak; he couldn’t breathe. “You’re forgetting, Wanda—you brought me leverage,” Agatha said, “you brought me something you’re not willing to lose. It’d be such a waste, don’t you think—”
“Stop,” Wanda said. “O—okay. If you release him,” Wanda said, “I’ll go with you.”
Agatha made a show of considering it. “I have a better idea,” she said, and Bucky caught a flash of violet out of the corner of his eye before the world blurred over.
-----
Coming out of Agatha’s spell was like coming out of programming: time came to a stop, sounds were distant and everything around him moved slowly. Eventually it all caught up with him, and he heard Wanda’s voice in his ears and his head, telling him to get up—please, get up, because they had to get out of there. “I can’t fight her in here,” Wanda said desperately, dragging him out of the castle and into the safety of the forest.
She was right: being outside changed everything. He was sharper out there, too: and he saw the bolt heading towards them before she did and shoved her out of the way, hard, taking the brunt of it, and crashed into an old, abandoned bunker.
Wanda shot up into the air. She and Agatha were evenly matched, but Wanda snagged the upper hand, using a broken pillar and pinning Agatha with it to the castle wall.
Agatha merely shook her head at her. “Party tricks will only take you so far, hon. Look at you, you don’t even know what you are.”
Wanda tilted her head at her. “That’s where you’re wrong, Agatha,” and she raised her hands and the same symbols from earlier materialized all around the forest—this time, a striking red. “I know exactly what I am.”
-----
Wanda took Agatha with her and vanished into thin air; she was locking her up somewhere—somewhere Agatha could think, as Wanda put it—and when she returned Bucky figured that was the end of it. But he was wrong.
“There’s something you need to see,” Wanda said, and she looked conflicted: hopeful and terrified; both.
They found the elevator, and took it down, down, down to a desolate corridor that lit up when Wanda winked at him, smiling nervously. And it turned out it really was all still there: and Bucky found the door to the lab, and inside, he traced a vibranium finger against the metal table he’d been strapped to for months, at a loss for words: He’d been here, he thought numbly, and here he was, again.
He sat there in that laboratory for what felt like hours, poring over the records: everything on the Winter Soldier experiments, everything on his programming, and his missions—hell, even a goddamned hand-written report detailing how he’d been recovered bleeding half to death on February 10th, 1945 by soldiers following a tracker that had been implanted into his left leg. The reports emphasized repeatedly that the asset was extremely valuable—unique; and that certain factors made him irreplaceable. He was Hydra’s most valuable possession.
Bucky wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there, but when he looked up, Wanda was gone.
He found her in a similar laboratory down the corridor, staring forlornly at a pair of glass cells placed next to each other. There was a console table nearby and a book had been propped up against it. Looking at it made his skin crawl—it exuded an otherworldly energy. He was about to ask what the hell it was when Wanda said, “They were studying you.”
“How do you know?” he asked her. The reports hadn’t explicitly said.
“A spell,” Wanda said softly. She looked at him, stone-faced. “The serum wasn’t the only thing they exposed you to. There was something else: Agatha called it an Infinity Stone: the Tesseract; the Space Stone. And when Hydra lost it, you became—”
“—irreplaceable,” Bucky choked out. His throat had gone dry. He could picture it now: a blinding blue light—and his body tensed; his body remembered better than his mind did.
“And then they got their hands on the scepter,” Wanda continued, looking back at the joined cells. “And thought, perhaps…”
Bucky finished the thought for her: “Perhaps they could do it again,” he said hollowly. “Another asset; another—But it didn’t work,” he said, frowning, “Not until your brother and you—”
“I went first, not Pietro,” Wanda interjected distantly. “I—I walked in thinking—knowing with all my heart that it work. Wanting it to working. Willing it.” She shook her head. “Wouldn’t have otherwise.”
Bucky took this in. “So it’s true, then,” he said, jumping forward. “This—all of this is…”
Wanda held his gaze. “It’s true,” she said.
Bucky exhaled. His eyes found the book again. “What’s that?”
“The Darkhold,” Wanda answered, scowling at the book. Then she said, thoughtfully, “Agatha said there’s an entire chapter inside it that’s devoted to me,” and went over to the table and waved her hand, and the book opened itself aptly, surrendering itself to her command.
Bucky came over, watching the pages flipped methodically until they landed on—“Are you—is that you?” he asked, and Wanda tilted her head to one side, and bit her bottom lip.
After a moment, she nodded—yes.
“The Scarlet Witch.”
EPILOGUE
They took him to the exact same laboratory where they’d taken the scans of his brain, except instead of a table for him to lie on there was a cryogenic chamber in the middle of the room, and it looked nothing like the one’s he’d been in in the past: Hydra’s chambers had been built like coffins; this one was made entirely out of glass. It made him feel better in a way: at least they weren't hiding him this time.
He felt it then: that subtle thrill in the air, and turned around. Wanda smiled at him warmly, pulling the door shut behind her. “Big day today,” she said. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” Bucky said. Then: “No.” He thought it over. “I don’t know,” and Wanda scrunched her nose at him, amused. He sighed, running a hand through his hair. They’d cut it short for the procedure—Well, Wanda had; she'd had to because he hadn’t been comfortable enough to let one of the nurses do it. “Just nervous, I guess.”
She nodded sympathetically. “How long are they going to keep you in that?” she asked, staring at the chamber.
“As long as it takes,” Bucky said. “Might not be too long,” he added, because Wanda looked stricken, “A day or two. A week.”
“A month,” Wanda glared at him. “A year.” She hesitated. “Maybe more,” and they both turned serious, knowing it could be true. Wanda drew a breath. “Will it—does it hurt?” she asked.
“Not at all,” Bucky said. “It used to scare me—before,” he admitted, “I didn’t know if I was coming back from it, or if it was…But now, I know I’m coming back. I am coming back,” he repeated pointedly. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and she pressed her cheek into his palm.
“You know,” Wanda said slowly, “when this first started, I didn’t know what to think of you. But it felt good not to be alone anymore, and I thought that was why I liked talking to you; why I liked you. You knew what it was like,” and Bucky nodded; he’d thought the same of her, too. “I thought I liked you because we were the same,” Wanda continued, “but it turns out we couldn’t be more different—and that’s even better. Agatha was right to say I wasn’t willing to lose you,” and Bucky felt a twinge in his chest. “I’m still not,” Wanda said.
“You’re not--losing me,” Bucky said, chest tightening.
“I know that now,” Wanda said. She lowered his hand, threaded their fingers together. “You know what this feels like,” she began. “It feels like—”
“Don’t,” Bucky warned, reading her mind, and that got a laugh from her. He smiled; it sounded like music to his ears.
“Right, right,” she said, taking a breath. “Everything’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to work out fine. I’ll see you—in a day or two,” she added, smiling at him. “Or a week.”
“A month," Bucky said.
“A year,” and she groaned. “Sooner than a year, I hope—”
Bucky grinned at her. He squeezed her hand. “And when it happens, we'll pick up right where we left off.”