Chapter Text
Location? Month? Day? Year? Time?
He'd been in solitary confinement for days. He didn't know how many days, he hadn't bothered to count.
It didn't matter.
They came and gave him more food and water this morning than the past few meals. It wasn't enough to completely fill him up, he doesn't remember the last time he was full. They wanted him desperate, hungry. They only ever gave him just enough food to make sure he'd be able to stand on his own two feet.
Getting more meant they were going to make him fight.
Fight for his life.
Whatever the hell his life was.
Fight – train - make Pierce, Rumlow or someone else mad - get smacked around - go to solitary - then do it all over again.
He blinks against the bright lights in the hall as they open the door to his room and tell him to 'move it'
They stick him in the back of a panel van like always to take him where ever the fight is happening. He doesn't know where they were going, likely some shady old warehouse or maybe a backroom of a mob run sweatshop. All he knows is there will be people placing bets and forcing him and some other asshole to fight for their entertainment.
He puts his head back against the side of the van and tries to think about nothing. He tries to ignore the terror and the nerves and the anger.
He tries not to loose himself to the animal they want him to be.
'My name is James Buchanan Barnes, my parents were George and Winnifred Barnes, I had two sister and a brother... ' The mantra starts in his head and soon he mouths it silently to himself as he stares at nothing.
The ride is a rough one. He's just sitting on the floor of the van, he's got no seat, no seat belt. When the van turns a corner and hits a tire buster of a pothole his whole body is jolted.
He has to bite his lip against the pain that screams to life in his bad arm.
He cradles it with his right and rocks, his back hitting the side of the van. His eyes squeezed tight.
His left arm is getting worse. He doesn't know how much longer he'll be able to pretend it doesn't hurt like Hell. He fears what Pierce will have done to him if he thinks it's so bad he can't fight.
He bites his lip and tries to straighten up. He blinks his eyes to clear the wetness from them.
When he looks up he notices something.
He's not sure if he's seeing it right.
The door to the van has come open, just a crack.
'Must not have been closed tight.' 'Must have come undone when they hit the pothole.' The thoughts float through his tried mind.
He blinks wondering what it means.
Then the van starts to come to a stop and the door starts to swing back. Swing back and possibly latch.
He catches it, reflexively, his foot goes out and stops the door from closing.
Without another thought he slides out the back, his feet hit the pavement and he's gone.
A ghost in the dark of night.
He's got no plan and there's only one place he knows to go. Only one address he has memorized.
Outside of Jackson Mississippi, Saturday, August 13, 2016 1:15am
“Sam, Sam I can't understand you... what did you say?” Steve sits up in bed and puts his hand to the ear he's not got his phone up to with hopes of hearing Sam better.
He's trying to figure out what's going on.
The phone going off in the middle of the night had startled him awake. The call is breaking up and Sam seems really far away on the other end of the line.
“Steve... there's a guy... here, he came into the... apartment through... he's got a knife.” Sam's talking in a hushed and measured tone.
Steve's heart skips a beat. “Sam? Sam are you ok? Have you called the police?”
“Steve... asking for you.”
“What? Sam, get out of there! Get help.” Steve jumps up from his own bed, like he could possibly do something.
“I... he's more scared... than I am of him.”
“Sam you're breaking up, what's going on?”
Brooklyn NY, Saturday, August 13, 2016, 1:22 am
The line goes dead.
Sam chances a glance down at his phone, it says 'call dropped.' He debates if he should try and call back.
He watches the figure across the room.
Their eyes are wide watching him right back.
Earlier
Sam had been up late reading a new fantasy novel he'd burrowed from the library. He's heading to his room to go to bed when he hears a commotion out in the kitchen.
The old hard to open or close window is being opened, the one that leads to the fire escape.
He stops in his tracks, a chill runs through him.
He is sure someone is breaking in to rob them, of what he doesn't know. They're only poor college students, it's not like they have a PlayStation 4.
His mind races trying to think of something he could grab and use as a weapon.
“Steve?”
Sam hears a voice ask and something in him relaxes slightly. Maybe it was just some dumb drunk friend of Steve's from school who decided to come up the fire escape and well, break in.
Hell maybe it was Clint and he got locked out of the building.
“Steve?”
It doesn't sound like Clint.
Sam gathers up his courage, moves very deliberately down the hall and maybe deepens his voice just a little. “Steve's not here, man.”
There is another commotion and Sam flips the light switch in the main room on.
The person freezes in the little kitchenette, holding a paring knife out in front of himself.
This was definitely not a friend from class.
Unless that friend had spent the summer maybe lost in the woods or shipwrecked on a deserted island.
He looks wild, underfed, dirty, and banged up. His hair hung in his face like it didn't bother him that it covered his eyes.
“You're not Steve.” His voice sounds horse, strained.
Sam clears his own throat. “Steve's not here right now. You're about a week too early, he's in Mississippi.”
The kid looks confused and, Sam thinks, scared.
“I'm Steve's roommate. He's a friend of mine...” Sam inches just a little into the space they call the living room.
There's still a good fifteen feet between them but the kid backs up until he hits the wall behind him. “You can put the knife down, look I'll call Steve.” Sam holds up his phone and shows the kid and hits the speed dial.
Now
The phone doesn't want to connect with Steve again and Sam curses his crappy cell service.
He needs to figure out what his next move is. He doesn't get a chance to figure something out because the front door opens. Both he and the wild kid with the knife jump.
Peaking in the door with only the barest regard for their own safety are Natasha and Clint, Sam and Steve's neighbors from two doors down.
“Hi Sam.” Natasha says like it's normal to get an urgent call from Steve in the middle of the night and just pop by to see what's happening.
“What's going on?” Clint follows her rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with one hand, holding a baseball with the other.
“What are you gonna do with a baseball?” Sam asks him.
“I don't know, throw it at the intruder.” He shrugs.
“You guys have a key?” Sam raises an eyebrow.
“Steve gave me a key last winter when he went on a service trip to Puerto Rico and you went home for the holidays.” Nat steps into the room and holds up the key as proof. It's on a keychain with a ballet slipper keychain. “You should be glad right about now, Steve called is everything ok?”
Nat looks around and doesn't seem to see anything out of the ordinary.
Sam moves cautiously from where he is in the living room over to Nat and Clint by the door and keeps his eyes on the far corner of the kitchen.
“I'm ok, kinda freaked out, kind of confused. I don't know that he's ok.” Sam leans over so he can see past the kitchen island and the other two do the same.
Sam draws their attention to a kid who is now sitting with his back shoved into the corner, where the wall with windows met the kitchen cabinets. His knees are up in front of him protectively and a paring knife clenched tight in his right hand. He watches them all warily with tired dark circled eyes.
“Who is he?” Clint asks.
Sam shrugs his shoulders. “I don't know. He broke in, only thing he's really said is Steve's name.”
Nat looks thoughtful. “If he's looking for Steve why didn't he come to the door?”
“Beats me.” Sam hasn't got a clue who this kid could be. He'd known Steve for a year and a half and had been rooming with him since January. He didn't know of any weird feral kids in Steve's past.
“Steve is freaking out by the way.” Natasha's phone buzzes for the like tenth time. “I'm going to Facetime him, hopefully it gets through.”
It rings once, twice and then connects. “Nat! What is going on?!” Steve pops up on screen, expression worried and frustrated, bad case of bedhead.
“Clint and I are here with Sam, he's fine but there is person in your kitchen and we don't know what he wants.”
“What? Why? Have you called the police?” Steve asks wide eyed.
“I'm going to turn the camera around Steve so you can see him.” Nat lets him know.
Natasha moves into the room a little and around a chair so she can get a straight shot at the kid. Who's watching her nervously.
She turns the camera off front facing and tries to give Steve a good look at the kid.
Steve is quiet for a second. Then in a breathy voice he says a name but it comes out more as a question.
“Bucky?”
Natasha turn the camera back to her. “So you know him.”
The color has drained from Steve's face. “I... that, that looks like Bucky.”
Natasha raises an eyebrow and then calls across the room to the kid. “Hey you, is your name Bucky?”
There a little hesitation on his part but then he does give her a quick little nod.
“If you put the knife away I'll give you the phone and you can talk to Steve, ok?”
Sam watches the interaction, the kid looks nervous but seems to be weighing his options. He finally gives the knife a little toss away from him. He holds up his empty hand.
“I'm just going to come a little closer.” She says calmly, like she's used to negotiating.
“I don't know what's going on Nat...” Steve says in a breathy voice, she can tell he's shocked.
“Well maybe talking to him yourself with help us all understand what's going on.”
She moves slowly and when she's a few feet away she bends down and slides the phone across the linoleum floor to the kid.
It lands by his left foot.
She notices he reaches across his body with his right hand to pick it up.
Steve goes from seeing nothing but a blur that threatens to give him motion sickness to seeing Bucky's face.
It's Bucky.
He can't believe it.
“Bucky, is it really you?” This all feels surreal.
It's got to be.
He's too thin, his eyes are dark, his lips are dry and split, there's are bruises bloomed along his jaw and on his cheek and his shaggy hair is hanging in his face.
Still Steve would recognize him anywhere.
Bucky's eyes's start to shine, like there's tears in them and his voice sounds watery. “Steve... Steve I... I I got away. They're p probably looking for me...” The video image Steve is seeing is shaky like Bucky can't keep the phone steady.
“Got away? Where have you been Bucky? Who's looking for you?”
Bucky starts to blink rapidly and a horrible sad noise gets caught in his throat.
“It's ok, you're ok... you're ok Buck.” Steve tries to reassure his friend and feels like he can't, he can't do anything over the phone and 1,000 miles away.
“Bucky, breathe. Just focus on breathing” It's the same thing Bucky used to say to him when he was having a panic attack. “You're at my place, those are my friends there with you, you're safe. I'm going to get back to you as soon as I can, hell, I'll get on the first bus out of here tomorrow. You're ok.”
Bucky nods slowly like he's afraid to believe what Steve is saying.
Steve doesn't want to stop talking to Bucky. He doesn't want to leave him alone. Steve feels his eyes start to water. He takes a shaky breath himself.
Part of him is afraid after the call ends he'll wake up and this all will have been a dream. “Bucky, will you give the phone back to Natasha, please?”
Bucky nods and takes a shaky breath before Steve can tell he's sliding across the kitchen floor again.
Nat picks up the phone and Steve can tell Sam and Clint are crowded around to try and hear.
“So what did you find out.” Nat asks him.
“I'm still not quite sure what's going on, he says he's gotten away from someone but they'll be looking for him. All I know is he's in trouble and I'm not there to help him.” Steve's heart breaks a little.
“Steve who is he?” It's Sam asking.
“He's my brother.”