Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s a beautiful Louisiana morning in Baton Rouge. A soft fog hugs the Mississippi, burning off under a clearing sky. A sighing breeze rustles the cottonwoods, takes the bite out of the southern summer humidity. It’s a beautiful Louisiana morning. Outside the cab of Sam’s pickup.

Inside, it’s a different story.

“What kind of uncle are you?” Bucky snipes from the passenger seat. “How could you forget his birthday?”

“I did not forget A.J.’s birthday,” Sam bites back. “I’ve just…been busy.”

“You forgot,” Bucky counters. “Seriously, Sam, you already missed five of them. First time back in existence, and you forget the next one?” Sam shoots the other man a death glare that puts Bucky’s own to shame.

“Sam?” Bucky points at the slow-moving SUV they’re about to rear-end.

“Shit!” Sam swerves wildly to avoid it, angry horns blaring at the imposition.

“And you’re a terrible driver,” Bucky continues. “How did you ever convince them to let you fly?” 

“Jesus,” Sam snarls, yanking at the knot of his tie to get another inch of air. “Do you know how busy all the Cap stuff is keeping me?”

“I do,” Bucky replies, “because you complain about it. Every. Day.”

“Steve never told me it would be like this.”

Bucky snorts. “Steve got dragged around on tour with a bunch of show girls. And he had to pretend to punch out Adolf Hitler. What are you complaining about?”

“I’ve been in seventeen meetings in the past month. Which would you prefer? Sitting through another PowerPoint on providing adequate sewage treatment facilities to the resettlement camps, or punching out fake Hitler?”

Bucky clucks his tongue. “Think I would rather punch out actual Hitler. But I take your point.”  

“Look,” Sam says, cutting off a small sedan to catch his exit from the highway, “I get it. I’m a terrible uncle.”

“The worst,” Bucky agrees.

“And I’m a terrible person.”

“God awful.”

“And I shouldn’t be asking you to pick up the slack for me.”

“Again.”

“But look, man, I have to make this meeting with Senator Kinsey. That gives me just enough time to get back before the party starts. And I can’t show up empty handed. A.J. will never forgive me.”

“He’ll forgive you,” Bucky corrects. “Sarah won’t.”

Sam winces. “Right. So hey, just do me a solid, alright? They’ve got these sneakers he’s been begging for in stock. You get in, get out. Takes you ten minutes, tops.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this for you,” Bucky grumbles.

“Well,” Sam remarks, “you’re a good friend.”

“I’m a great friend. And you’re a terrible person.”

Sam sighs as he turns into the parking lot. “Yes, awful, terrible. And if I show up to A.J.’s party without a gift, I’m going to be even worse. Consider this your opportunity to set me on the path to redemption. You’re kind of an expert at that, right?”

Bucky snorts. “You really don’t deserve me, you know.”

Sam smirks. “Funny. I was thinking the same thing.”

“You owe me, Wilson,” Bucky says with a glower.  

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam tilts his head. “Hey. Did you get A.J. something for his birthday already?”

Bucky stares at him, aghast. “Yes, Sam. I got A.J. something for his birthday already. Because I’m a good person. Unlike some people.”

Sam stops the truck with a squeal at the yellow-blazed curb outside Macy’s. He examines Bucky, suddenly doubtful. “Have you ever even been to a mall?”

“Sure,” Bucky declares.

Sam’s gaze turns hard. “Let me rephrase that. You ever been in a mall to buy something, not shoot someone?”

Bucky scrubs a hand through his hair. “Sam, I can manage it.” Sam stares. “Jesus. You’re sending me in to buy a pair of shoes at a suburban mall in Baton Rouge on a Saturday morning. I think I can handle it.” Sam says a million things by not saying a word. “If you’re so worried about it, you go.”

Sam grins. “Nah, man, you know I’d be swarmed by beautiful women asking for my autograph the second I went in there.” Bucky rolls his eyes. “Seriously, I’ve got to make this meeting. Shouldn’t take too long. I’ll give you a call when I’m coming back, alright? Party’s at two, we gotta be back by then.”

Bucky slides out of the truck, grumbling, “Yeah, yeah.”

“Hey,” Sam calls out. Bucky leans into the open window. “Size seven. Mantra Orange, okay? That’s A.J.’s favorite color.”

“Mantra Orange is A.J.’s favorite color?” Bucky asks in disbelief. “What the fuck is Mantra Orange?”

Sam scowls. “It’s orange, okay? He likes orange. Not everyone wears black leather everywhere. Except Magic Mike. And you, apparently.”

Bucky blinks. “Am I supposed to know who Magic Mike is?”

Sam’s brow creases. “Who? No, it’s a…you know what? Never mind. I don’t need to have that talk with you right now. Just…buy the shoes. In orange. Think you can manage that?” 

Bucky glares. “Yeah, Sam. I got it.”

Sam gives him a good look. “Alright. Thanks. And hey,” he calls as Bucky turns to leave. “Try not to shoot anyone this time, okay?”

Bucky flips him the bird over one shoulder in response, ignoring the affronted gasp from a young woman dragging a tow-headed child behind her. He strolls through the sliding glass doors, winces at the glaringly bright store lighting and the overpowering stench of cologne. The super soldier serum is great in a pinch and all, but sometimes hyperactive senses aren’t everything they’re cracked up to be.

He ignores the pristinely stacked polo shirts in easter egg colors, the gleaming jewelry cases, finds his eyes lingering on a bank of cashmere scarves, out of season, on clearance. He idly runs the fabric through a hand, debates taking off his gloves to feel the warp and weft of the wool. But he can tell from the burning between his shoulder blades, and the view in a small mirror on top of the shelf, that the woman from earlier is glaring, just waiting for an excuse to snap out her phone or call out to an employee.

He can imagine that text to Sam. Hey Sam. Gonna need you to pick me up a little early. Locals got a look at the vibranium arm and chased me out of the place with torches and pitchforks. He lets the fabric slide through his fingers, wistful, and heads to the mall entrance.

The inner sanctum of the mall isn’t exactly bustling, though it’s still filled with older people getting their steps in, harried looking parents, and a few teens idling away their summer breaks. It’s one of the odd quirks of the blip – this reinvigorated interest in public spaces, in being around people and noise, even if anyone can buy just about anything from their couch.

The old Bucky loved a crowd. The blare of trombones in a dance hall, the excited murmur at an expo, the press of bodies in line for the newest ride on Coney Island.

The new Bucky is too busy scanning faces and hands in a crowd for any sign of a threat to enjoy them much. Raynor said it was an understandable paranoia he would eventually overcome. That was before a misguided teenager weaponized a disenfranchised group outside the GRC building and almost took out half the world’s leaders in one night, though.

He finds the store he’s searching for easily enough, makes his way to a wall of sneakers. He considers the floor to ceiling display, blinking. How many shoes do people need? He’s given Sam plenty of crap about the man’s need for a different pair of sneakers for every occasion, but this is a little absurd. It takes him a few minutes to absorb it all, to find the pair he’s looking for.

Got it – size seven. He eases the cardboard box open, peels a layer of thin tissue paper back to reveal a white high top. A swish in —he checks the label —Mantra Orange. He looks closer. “It’s just orange,” he mutters to himself. A clerk comes over and he chats idly with her before he hands off the box.

He debates taking out his phone, shooting off a quick text. Hey Sam. Mission accomplished. Supplies procured. Zero casualties.

The he feels it – nothing he can see or hear, exactly, but something that pings against the Winter Soldier’s razor sharp senses. Something wrong.

He sneaks a look out the shop windows. A young father pushing a stroller, cooing at a toddler with tight curls. An older woman powerwalking with weighted bands, in nylon shorts and socks up to her calves. He slinks closer to the window, casts his glance up and down the corridor. Nothing. He looks up at the second floor mezzanine.

There – a middle-aged man, dressed too heavily for the weather, pacing along the railing and muttering. He watches the man for a moment, heavy jacket and baseball hat. Bucky flexes a hand, looks down. Maybe, in a dark jacket and gloves in the middle of summer himself, he’s not able to judge anyone else’s sartorial choices. He reaches into a pocket to trace his fingers over his phone case, reconsiders texting Sam.

Hey Sam, he could write, I saw a guy in an ugly coat in a mall and lost my shit. Guess you’re right, I’m great in a life-or-death fight, but buying a pair of damn shoes may be too much stress for my delicate psyche.

He shakes his head. Probably nothing. He strides back to the register. The clerk scans the shoes, frowns at her computer.

“Problem?” he asks.

“Looks like our system’s having issues.” She gives him an apologetic smile, poking at the screen. “I’m sure it will be back up in a second.”

“Sure,” Bucky agrees. He turns back to the window. Pair of chattering teens, in skirts that would have given Rabbi Schmidt from the old neighborhood apoplexy. That woman with the weighted bands, puffing, laser focused, again. Another woman, in a tailored dark suit and impeccable makeup, scowling at her phone.

Bucky really does pull out his phone this time. He frowns at the no service icon. Must be a dead spot. A quick glance tells him the clerk is still fighting with the computer.

He stalks to the entrance, again, lets his eyes drift over the scene, focusing on everything and nothing. A woman coming down the escalator catches his attention – heavy coat and baseball cap, too. He shifts, uneasy, looks down the opposite length of corridor.

There – two more people, same get-up as the others. He checks his phone again. Still no service. He takes a step back, two, turns to the clerk, still absorbed at the register.

“Hey, is your phone wor—”

The lights go dark in an instant, and he hears mumbled curses and shouts from the hallways. Then there’s a flash, a scream, a loud booming voice and the unmistakable clap of gunfire.

Emergency lights flicker on, pale and sickly. He creeps to the store window, watches panicked shoppers scattering like a school of fish. More people in coats and caps, and now with guns, pluck a few out of the current to drag them to the center of the atrium, near a burbling fountain. An armed group mills on the mezzanine. Yet another marches in from one of the department stores, tracing rifle rounds into the ceiling.

“Goddamnit,” he curses. “Sam is going to kill me.”

He dashes back to the register, finds the clerk staring into the hall, wide-eyed. “Hey,” he snaps his fingers in front of her face. “Do you have a back exit here?” She points mutely. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Bucky steers her through the dimly lit store, to an employee break room, and finally a door to a loading area that runs the length of the building. He scans the gloomy concrete hallway, spots a metal door to the outside. He drags the clerk there and pushes her through, squinting in the blaring daylight reflecting off the half-filled parking lot. “Run,” he tells her. “To the next building. Go inside. Call the police.” She nods, lips tight, and sprints across the lot until she’s out of sight.

Bucky picks his way back into the store, crouches behind a display of shoes. “Just a quick favor, Sam said. Pick up some shoes for A.J.’s birthday. Take you ten minutes, tops, Sam said,” he grumbles. A peek around a corner reveals two men with guns in front of the store next door, a few more in front of a Raising Cane’s. A glance at the upper floor finds several more gunmen patrolling the promenade.

He ducks back, checks his phone again. Still no service. Shit. Cash register, lights, phones, all out. They must be blocking the signal, somehow. So, no text to Sam: Hey Sam, so, turns out a suburban mall in Baton Rouge on a weekend morning is just as dangerous as a den of Hydra goons. Go figure, right?

Well, nothing for it, then.

A low whistle draws the two nearest gunmen closer. Bucky’s on them the second they get past the door, drops them both with sharp blows before they have a chance to react. He pats them down, comes up with a radio. He bends one rifle in half, takes the other for himself.

Another survey from the doorway shows a small group of shoppers corralled on their knees in between a band of armed people. A few more gunmen have appeared across the way, and Bucky counts at least four prowling the second floor from his vantage point. “Yeah, Sam, I think I can handle it,” he echoes to himself. He takes one more look, checks his gun, turns off the radio.

Then the Winter Solider goes to work.

He shadows the mall’s perimeter, avoiding the larger groups of gunmen and focusing on the singletons and pairs. He doesn’t use the rifle, decides it’s better to pick off as many as he can before someone raises the alarm.

Two armed women are patrolling the aisles of the Stark Tech store, harsh light from rows of tablets casting spectral shadows across their faces in the dark. Bucky sequesters himself under a table adorned with wearables and watches.

“Is it set up yet?” one asks as they come level with Bucky’s position. He dives out, dispatches her with an elbow, the other with a knee. He goes down the aisles himself, looking for something, anything, with a connection to the outside world. No dice.

He’s about to toss the latest Stark phone down to the table with disgust when he hears a stifled whimper. He peeks over the register to find a pair of clerks huddled together.

“You alright?” he whispers. They nod. He looks around, sees a door on the back wall. “That lead outside?” Another pair of nods. “Good. Go. Don’t stop until you’re out of here.” He doesn’t need to tell them twice.    

Next is a man with a rifle slung around his neck helping himself to waffle fries at the Chick-Fil-A. He’s gabbling into a radio around masticated potato. “Yeah, yeah, she says it’s almost ready.” A sharp blow to his head from behind, and Bucky catches his body before it can hit the counter. A teenage cook cowering near the lemonade machine twists his white paper hat in his hands. Bucky points to the back, and the boy sets off without a word.  

There are two more men more rifling through women’s undergarments in Victoria’s Secret instead of watching their own hostages. “He out of the tunnels yet?” one asks, tracing a curl of lace atop a brassiere cup.

“Soon,” the other answers, eyeing a baby blue nightie. “Won’t know what hit ‘em,” he adds, a second before Bucky hits him. Bucky’s on the other man before he can shout, takes him to the floor with one hand.

A handful of employees and shoppers cower on their knees in the center of the store. They all stand when he motions at them, an older woman helping her husband up. They’re on the second floor now, so no back door here. He shepherds the group out the front, leads them through the shadows to an emergency exit. He shoulders the door open to find the stairwell empty and motions the group through.   

He’s reaching to help the couple, bringing up the rear, when a cap and coat-clad woman comes out of the Dillards, pulls up her rifle in surprise. He lets off a round from his own gun, and she drops to the floor. Someone screams. Then all hell breaks loose.

More gunmen come at him from the other direction, and he shoves the wife toward the door with one hand. The husband stumbles, crashes to the floor without her. Bucky trades pot shots with the shooters, no cover here, tries to keep them pinned behind a nearby wall. One gunman pops out and Bucky hits him in the chest, sends him to the ground.

Bucky runs to haul the older man up and drags him upright. He propels the man into his wife’s waiting arms when a woman with a rifle leans around the corner, training her sights on them.

Bucky spins to snap his own rifle up just in time to catch a pair of bullets in his right shoulder. They bloom with a terrible warmth. He lets out a sharp yell, gets off a shot that takes the woman down. He charges over to her position, takes a breath when he doesn’t see any immediate threats.

He may not see the threat, but it’s still there. Bullets ping the floor around him and he hot foots it behind a nearby planter. A quick look through the ficuses shows a gunman on the opposite side of the escalator. He lets off a few shots to force his opponent’s head down. His rifle clicks empty, and he dives to his next cover.   

He picks his way behind obstacles — another planter, a set of couches, a piano that makes him do a double take —until he’s able to slink into a shadowed Pottery Barn. He makes it past the faint light cast from the skylights in the atrium, then the pain crashes over him.

Bucky catches himself on a shelf full of tableware and vases, almost gasping loud enough to drown out the sound of approaching footsteps. Almost. He snags a few cloth napkins from the display and squirrels himself away in the darkness under a dining set to take stock.

He peels his jacket and shirt away from his shoulder with a hiss. He can’t see the damage, but he can feel the bullets in there, mushroomed metal scraping against his collarbone, hot and barbed and filling the back of his throat with acid. He folds the napkins up, bites back a cry when he presses the starched linen against his torn flesh. He breathes hard through his nose, peers around the silhouettes of sectionals and bar stools to see the goons fan out in the atrium, rifles at the ready.

He knows there’s no signal, so he can’t send the text he wants. Hey Sam, so, turns out this place is full of angry people with guns shooting up the place. And me. Guess they aren’t all terrible shots. Any chance you could pop in, lend a hand right about now? K thx.

Who the fuck are these people? No masks to say Flag Smashers, no apparent powers, nothing obviously in common with one another. He hasn’t heard any demands, no indication they’re even in contact with anyone on the outside.

Well, whoever they are, they know he’s here now. Despite his best efforts, they still have hostages. And guns. Lots of guns. He’s got an empty magazine, a vibranium arm, and two bullets in one shoulder. And they’re coming for him.       

He bangs the back of his head against a table leg. “Fuck,” he whines. “Sam is really going to kill me.”

Chapter Text

Bucky calculates, based on experience, that he’s got no more than an hour before the blood loss is really going to start fucking with him. The serum will help, but a bullet in his chest is still a bullet in his chest. He also estimates the freed hostages should have had more than enough time to get to safety, make a call. So why isn’t this place swarming with police yet?

The crash of an acacia salad server splitting on the ground yanks his head up. He spies a man making his way through the store, searching behind bar carts, poking his gun into dark corners. Bucky waits for him to walk by, sends a booted foot out to crash into the man’s kneecap. Bucky pounces, the gun skids across the tile, and then they’re both on the floor, grappling atop a Moroccan rug.

The thug gets a lucky hit out, lands a blow on Bucky’s wounded shoulder. Bucky shouts, arm going limp for a second, then the other man’s got him by the throat, bashes Bucky’s head into a bookcase. Bucky hauls himself out of the splintered wood, snaps his vibranium arm up against the man’s cheekbone, hears the crack of bone splitting. Another hit, across the temple, and the hand around Bucky’s neck goes slack.

“Fuck,” Bucky gasps, curling down to drop his forehead against the tufted wool for a moment. “Fuck,” he hisses again, panting. Another encounter like that, and he’s not even going to make it that hour. He takes a shuddering breath in, lets out a sharp exhale.

Think, he tells himself. If there are still small groups of gunmen wandering around, they’re probably going to rally together now that they know someone is hunting them. They’ve probably moved the hostages to one place, too. Someplace that’s safer from an ambush. One way in, one way out. Shit. There’s probably about a dozen stores here that mostly fit that description.

Is it worth it to attempt a rescue by himself? The Winter Soldier was a terror, capable of inflicting impossible destruction against unsurmountable odds. The Winter Soldier also didn’t care about collateral damage. Bucky does. There’s no way he’s getting those people free by himself. Not if he wants them intact, anyways.

Bucky spares a glance at the motionless goon on the rug next to him. They’ll probably send someone to look for that lost sheep pretty soon. He cradles his right arm to his stomach with a vibranium hand. He’s not in the best shape to put up a fight when they do.

Bucky fishes his phone out of his pocket one more time, ignores the smudged blood on the screen. Nothing. No, Hey Sam, sorry, had to bail on all those people. Hope these goons aren’t in a shooting mood. Not feeling too great at the moment. Could really use the calvary right about now, so anytime you want to show up, that’d be swell.  

Okay. At least if he gets out, he can share what he knows with whatever response they’re mounting out there. He hopes they’re mounting a response out there. Whoever they are. He takes another breath, wincing as it jars his injured shoulder. He eyes the rug again, soft and plush, if now a little bloody, wonders if he could fit in a quick cat nap before he goes. At least a moment to beat back the throbbing in his shoulder, and in his head.

He flinches at a radio crackling beyond the shop doors. So much for that. Three men fan out, rifles at the ready, stand sentry by the store’s entryway.  

Bucky casts about. The gun he knocked out of his opponent’s hands is too far away to retrieve without the men out front spotting him. There’s nothing in this store that’s going to serve as good cover for anything more than the briefest of moments. He peers toward the back. No exit that he can see, so the only way out is the way he came in. The way three beefy thugs are currently guarding.

He takes a minute to study his opponents. They’re just standing there. Watching. Waiting. And he’s a sitting duck. His only hope is that they don’t know where he is. Yet.

One of the men pulls out his radio. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ve got him pinned in the Pottery Barn. Nadia said he took a hit. We’ll let the blood loss soften him up before we go in.”

Well. Shit.

Wait. Radio.

He pulls the handset he purloined from that first goon, half a dozen thugs ago. Weighs it in his palm. Takes another look at the thugs outside – automatics for each of them. If they start shooting, he better not be in range.

Nowhere to go to the back. The store isn’t that wide – 40 feet maybe, easy to cover with automatic fire. He looks down at the rug. Too bad he can’t pull an El Chapo. Or a Zemo. He looks up at the dark pendant lights hanging from exposed girders below a dropped ceiling.

Huh.

He clings to the darkest parts of the store, keeps an eye on the trio out front. A quick scramble up a media cabinet and he’s perched atop one of the massive decorative wooden beams that run the length of the store. 

He twists the radio knob on, presses the button to talk. “Hey assholes. Sorry to disappoint. I’m not dead yet. So come and fucking get me.”     

They don’t. They light up the store with automatic weapons fire instead. Glass shatters, furniture splinters, upholstery explodes in a shower of goose down and polyester filling. The thugs reload once, twice, firing until the interior of the Pottery Barn is a pulverized mess.

Above the carnage, Bucky waits. The goons let the dust settle and the smoke clear before they move in, fanning out. They search the desiccated sectional cushions and shattered remains of driftwood sculptures. One thug jabs the body of Bucky’s former assailant with the barrel of his gun, curses. They reconvene in the center of the store, puzzled.

“You said he was in here, right?” one asks.

“Well, someone took out Julian,” another responds.

“Where the hell else could he be?” the third rejoins. He spins in a circle, scanning. He looks up.

And then Bucky’s on him. All of them. Close quarters, too tight to shoot the long guns. Bucky takes a rifle butt to the jaw, counters with a fist between the eyes to take out the first man. The second dives, wraps his arms around Bucky, then the third cracks a marble vase against his ribs. Bucky snaps out a kick to take him to his knees, another to his chest that sends him crashing into the wall.

Bucky twists, trying to dislodge the grip pinning his arms to his body. The other man throws his weight forward, down, crashes them through a glass-topped coffee table to the floor. Bucky thrashes, butts his forehead against the other man’s temple, sends a knee into his groin. He finally gets his wounded arm out of the vice grip, snatches up a splintered table leg. He jabs it at the other’s face, again and again, until he can yank his vibranium arm free with a shout. Another hit, two, with the metal, and the man goes limp.

Bucky detangles himself, spins to his feet, arms up, gasping. He manages it for a moment before crashing back to a knee. He presses a vibranium arm against his wounded shoulder, keening.

hey sam fucking shit fuck it hurts where do they keep coming from who are they why the fuck isn’t my fucking phone working why aren’t the fucking cops here yet? He can’t send that text.

What he can do, though, is ask himself, teeth gritted, chest heaving, body shaking, “Where the fuck are you, Sam?”

Bucky knows he doesn’t have much time before the next troupe of assholes comes by to put more lead in him. He snags a spare rifle and staggers out of the store, glass crackling beneath his boots. He stumbles into a pool of darkness outside an empty storefront. He scans, leaning up against the glass.

An exit sign’s emerald glow hangs blurry in his vision, several stores down. He pushes himself off, leaving a streak of red across a Coming Soon sign plastered against the shop window. His shuffling limp drags him toward safety, and he braces along the walls to support himself. He’s almost there, a store more to go, when he hears it.

The distant rattle of gunfire. A crash, a boom, someone screaming. Shit. The hostages.

You can’t help them, the sensible part of his brain says. You have to try, the rest of him shouts. He turns back, retraces his steps. He gets to the end of one hallway, and the sounds and overhead signs tell him the noise is coming from the Macy’s he was in what feels like days ago. He thinks of that angry mother, dragging a sullen, brown-eyed boy behind her. “Fuck,” he mutters.

Bucky crouches down, eases around the corner with the rifle clutched in his vibranium hand to get a look. He doesn’t have a chance to pull away from the hobnailed boot that springs at him, steel toe catching him across the temple. The kick snaps his head sideways, sends the rest of his body tumbling into the corridor after. He lands on his right side, hard, losing the rifle somewhere along the way. The fire in his shoulder arcs outward, up to his hair, down to his heels.

Another blow to the ribs drives the air out of him, splays him onto his back, gasping. He gets his eyes open just in time to see a booted heel crash down on his shoulder, digging into his torn flesh. A shriek rips its way out of his throat. A thug sights down the barrel of his gun at Bucky’s head. He stares, disinterested, studying a moth under glass.

Bucky stares back, swallowing against the bile on the back of his tongue to snarl, “Fuck you.” 

The man’s lips twist into a sneer. He grinds his boot down and Jesus it’s like someone is thrusting a hot poker into Bucky’s chest, blood burning into every extremity, stealing the breath from his lungs. He thrashes around his pinned shoulder, desperate to free himself.

The man drives his heel in harder, until grey shades the edges of Bucky’s vision, his breath coming in gulps. “Should have stayed home today,” he says, dropping his finger to the trigger.

hey sam sorry i tried i really did just too many of them didn’t want them to hurt anyone was trying to keep people safe i’m sorry tell aj i’m sorry and sarah too and you i’m sorry sam

Bucky hears a sharp ping. The rifle sails out of the man’s hands and clatters to the linoleum tiles. The goon stares down at his mangled fingers in disbelief. Half a second later, another ping as something smashes into the side of his head, launching him off Bucky and ass over tea kettle down the hallway after his gun.

Bucky blinks away stars, gazes up at the ceiling tiles, air shuddering in his chest and every nerve ending screaming bloody murder. “Hey, Sam,” he wheezes out when the other man enters his line of sight, in full Captain regalia. The guy really does take the suit everywhere he goes. “You’re late.”

Sam latches the shield onto his back, drops to a knee beside Bucky. “I ask you to do one thing. One simple thing, and you can’t manage it without getting into a shootout.”

“I think shopping was safer in the forties,” Bucky groans. “But we didn’t have any money, and we never bought anything, so I could be wrong.” Sam eases Bucky’s jacket and shirt, tacky with blood, away from his shoulder. Bucky bites his lip as the fabric tugs at raw flesh, snaps a few breaths in through his nose.

Sam’s eyes are hard behind his goggles. “Didn’t I tell you not to get shot?” he asks, pulling a wad of gauze from one of the million pockets the Wakandans managed to conceal in his suit.

“No, you told me not to shoot anyone,” Bucky pants.

Sam drapes the gauze over Bucky’s shoulder and presses it down with his palm. Bucky swallows back another cry. “Did you manage that, at least?”

“Not exactly,” Bucky grumbles.

“Well,” Sam replies, hushed, “I won’t hold it against you.” He rests the fingers of his free hand against Bucky’s chin, eases his head to one side get a better look at the damage. “This time.”

Bucky lets out a wet sound. “Gee, thanks.”   

Sam tapes the gauze in place with the efficient ease of a man who’s had far too much practice. “How does it feel?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s great,” Bucky almost giggles. “Just a scratch.”

Sam scowls. “Bucky.”

“Well, it didn’t tickle,” Bucky allows. “You’re the pararescue guy, you tell me.”

“It’s not great. We need to get you out of here, soon.”

Bucky lifts his head. “Yeah. Hostages first, though.”

Sam meets his eyes. “Got ‘em. Took care of that woman in Macy’s who was watching them. Sent them out the exit. They’re safe.”

“Oh,” Bucky drops his skull back to the floor with a crack. Sam winces, slides a hand between the tile and Bucky’s head. It’s soft, a balm against the ache, so Bucky lets his eyes drift closed for a moment.

“Buck?”

They spring back open. “Wait. Woman? Singular?”  Sam nods. Bucky thinks. “Way more than one person, last time I saw them. You sure?”

“Yeah, man. All I found. Saw some of your handiwork along the way, but my HUD’s not picking up any other signatures in the building. Maybe they made a run for it?”

Bucky squints. “Why would they just leave? Now? Sounded like they were planning…” He casts his mind back. Set it up. Almost ready. Out of the tunnels yet? Won’t know what hit ‘em.

“Bucky?”

Won’t know what hit ‘em.

Then it hits him. “Oh. Shit. Sam, I think they’re —”

Then there’s a roaring, a flash, and a falling, falling. Then the dark.

Chapter Text

It’s darker when he opens his eyes again. He waits for them to adjust. Dust clouds his vision. Loose stones and rubble clink and clatter to the ground. The still air is redolent with smoke and ash and damp earth. He feels like he’s been shot, beat up, kicked in the face, and thrown down a dreary and dingy hole.

Oh. Right.

Explosive scars pockmark the ceiling, cracks affording him the smallest window to the world above. Orange halos flicker from a few lights barely attached to their supports. He drops his head to one side, the other. He’s underground now, though he has no idea how far, in some sort of tunnel. If only he’d realized what was happening a few seconds sooner, he and Sam could have—

Hey Sam. Where the fuck are you?

“Sam,” he tries to shout out, chokes on dirt and the taste of copper. He coughs. “Sam!” he calls again, louder. No response. He heaves himself to a vibranium elbow, gulping with the effort. “Sam?”

He winces at the hammers pounding on his skull and looks around. Chunks of rubble and concrete walls surround him on three sides. Behind him there’s an opening between the debris, where the tunnel continues.

He casts about, yells “Sam,” again, close to desperate. Still nothing. He pulls himself to a seat, stomach churning, head complaining, and shoulder screaming. “Fuck.”   

Another look around, and he sees it: a booted foot, sticking out of the rubble. He crawls over, cursing, aches forgotten. “Sam, Sam,” he whispers, pleads. He dislodges the chunk of concrete separating them. Closer, he makes out Sam, on his back in a tiny alcove with a wing draped over his body, more rubble hovering little more than a foot above his chest.

“Sam!” he implores, once more, near a prayer, and the man stirs.

“Bucky?” Sam mumbles. “What the hell?”

“You alright? You hurt?” Bucky asks, urgent.

Sam shifts. Bucky holds his breath. “Yeah, man, I’m alright.”

A sharp exhale. “They blew the tunnels,” Bucky marvels. “Why the fuck did they blow the tunnels?”

“Hell if I know.” Sam blinks at the several tons of rock overhead. “But I think it’s time for us to get gone.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. He shoots a nervous glance behind him, wonders if the man Sam took out is down here too.

“Just that I’m…a little stuck,” Sam admits.

Bucky leans in and spots Sam’s other foot, wedged underneath a slab of concrete but remarkably intact. “How did that happen?” he gapes, inching nearer. “You are one lucky son of a bitch.”

“Not luck, exactly,” Sam remarks, and Bucky drops his head to get a better look. It’s the wing, vibranium feathers bunched together, relieving the pressure on Sam’s leg. All that stands between him and a brutal amputation.

“Oh,” Bucky says. “Shit.”

“What do you see?” Sam asks, twisting to get a better look.

“Don’t move,” Bucky snaps. “Wing’s holding up this rock, but it looks like it’s the only thing holding up this rock.” He peers again. “Can you get your leg out?”

Sam pulls his knee up. The rock groans dangerously and catches his foot around the ankle. “Not without losing part of it, I don’t think.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, thinking. “Okay. Need something to prop in there, give you another inch or two.” He scrabbles at the ground, searching.

“Bucky.”

“Gotta be something around here,” Bucky mutters.

“Buck,” Sam interjects. “You see a way out of here?”

Bucky peers over his shoulder, at the breach in the rubble. “Maybe. Looks like we could get a little ways, at least.”

“Okay,” Sam says. “Listen, you go down there, see if you can get out, find some help and —”

“No.”

“Bucky, look, I’m stuck and you’re not so—”

“Fuck you,” Bucky snipes.

“Bucky.”

“No. End of discussion.” He crawls over to Sam’s position, wedges vibranium fingers in the gap, strains at the rock. Nothing. He’s not strong enough, and the angle is all wrong. He needs something incredibly sturdy, long enough to get some leverage.

“Bucky,” Sam tries, one more time.  

Leverage. Bucky’s head snaps to look at Sam. “Where’s the shield?”

Sam twists his own head to look back. “Seriously, man? That’s what you’re worried about right now?”

Bucky rolls his eyes even though he knows Sam can’t see it in the gloom. “No, dumbass. I need something thin that can support a few thousand pounds. You got another idea?” 

Sam drops his head back with a grunt, shifts a little bit. “Feels like it’s still on my back.”

“Can you get to it?” Bucky asks.

“Not sure.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure?”

“Well,” Sam says, “I must have wrapped the other wing around me, to protect myself.”

Bucky blinks. “Uh. Good?”

“Yeah,” Sam grunts, “except that wing’s under this rock, too. Not sure I can get my arms out.”

Bucky presses his face to the gap holding Sam’s foot again. It’s too dark to make out anything past the first bunch of feathers. “Are you sure it’s in there?” He has no idea how the wings work, really. This is probably not the time to figure it out.

“Pretty fucking sure,” Sam hisses. “You know where all your limbs are right now?”

Yes. And one of them is voicing its displeasure. Loudly. “Fine, fine,” he grants. “Can you get an arm free?”

Sam tries to tug an arm up. The motion pulls at his wing and shifts the rubble atop his foot ominously. “No, shit, stop,” Bucky barks. “Don’t move. Fuck, I need more light.” He pats down his pockets for a phone, comes up empty.

“Hold on,” Sam says. A moment later there’s a red glow spilling from his goggles, filling the space above his head.

“Jesus,” Bucky murmurs. “They put a bottle opener in that thing too?”

“Bucky.”

“Right.” He reassesses Sam’s leg in the eerie glimmer, then the space Sam’s stuck in. A few inches of spare room on either side of Sam’s body, a slab of concrete above, more rubble on the other side of his head. Like the space was made for him. Like a…tomb, his traitorous mind supplies.

Fuck. No.

He takes a shaky breath. “Okay. I’m gonna come get it.”

“What?” Sam demands. “The hell you are.”

“Just…” Bucky crawls to the entry of the narrow space, “Just don’t move.” He leans back, biting his lip. “I’m gonna apologize in advance for this. Don’t take it personally.”

His right arm is all but useless, so he shuffles forward over Sam on one hand and his knees. He crouches lower when he gets to Sam’s thighs, forced down by the sloping ceiling.

“Little fucking close, Buck,” Sam warns.

Bucky’s back scrapes against the cement above. “Yeah. No shit.” The space gets even tighter around Sam’s waist, and Bucky lays himself flat on the other man, clawing vibranium fingers into the ground to worm himself along. He yelps when his right arm catches on the wing’s upturned feathers, sparks flaring through the holes in his shoulder.

“Bucky?” Sam demands.

“Fine, it’s fine,” he mumbles, a mantra, and inches himself up. He gets up to Sam’s chest and slumps his chin to the other man’s collar with a wheeze.

“We are never telling anyone about this,” Sam groans, the vibration in his chest echoing through Bucky’s.

“Taking it to our graves,” Bucky agrees. He works his good arm over Sam’s shoulder, hand questing at the other man’s back. His fingers brush against curved metal. He hooks a thumb around the shield, tugs. Nothing. Two fingers around the other side, and he pulls. Stuck fast. “Fucking Wakandan engineering,” he whines.

“Two latches,” Sam instructs. “At the top.”

Bucky wedges himself farther in with a grunt, ignores the pulsing ache around his collarbone and Sam’s harsh breathing in his ear. He searches – a latch, there, crawls his fingers to the right until he hits another one, frees it. He claws at the shield again, tugs it up, metal grating against concrete. He still needs to get it above Sam’s head, so he twists his body, forcing his right shoulder into the concrete with something close to a whimper.

If he can just get it…one…more…inch…there! It slides free of Sam’s back and Bucky holds it at an angle between the cavern roof and Sam’s head with a victorious groan. “Got it!” he proclaims to himself, to Sam, to Steve, to the bastards who kept putting his brain in a meat grinder, to the assholes who put a few bullets in his shoulder.

He drops his cheek to Sam’s chest with a relieved sigh, closes his eyes. “Got it.” Sam lets him rest his head for a minute, a gift he doesn’t recognize.

Hey Sam, I got it I got it. Hurts like a mother fucker but I got it, is what he’ll tell Sam.

Oh.

“Wanted to text you before,” he mumbles. “Knew something was wrong but I ignored it. Wanted to act like a normal person for a while but I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out. And then they shot me. Fucking hurt.”

Bucky feels Sam swallow hard. “Okay,” Sam says. “Okay. Bucky.” An inhale, as deep as Sam can manage, considering. “You gotta get the fuck off me. Get me free, man.”

“Get you free,” Bucky parrots dumbly.

“Yeah,” Sam’s breath puffs at his forehead. “Take the shield. Get out there. Use it to get this fucking rock off my fucking foot.”

“Take the shield.” Bucky repeats, opening his eyes. “Fucking rock.” He switches the shield to his bad hand, scrambles back with his vibranium arm. “Fucking foot,” he mutters, back of his head thumping against the concrete. He scampers his way into the open. “Get Sam free.”   

Bucky crawls to Sam’s leg, pinned between the looming debris and the uncaring earth. He wedges the shield in, bowed side down. He pushes it, but it isn’t going to work, isn’t going to give them the space they need. He flips it, star facing up to the heavens, wherever they are. He sets his feet, bends his knees, grabs the shield with his vibranium hand, and pulls.

The earth won’t move, but the slab grumbles, complains, jolts from its resting place with a furious wail.

“Shit, Bucky, need another inch!”

His arm is shaking, the bones of his feet grind through his soles into the ground and this fucking rock won’t move but he sure as fuck isn’t going to leave Sam alone in the dark at the bottom of an endless chasm, swirling wind spitting snow and ice in his eyes roar of a speeding train receding in the distance shouts in German coming closer. He grabs the shield with his other hand too and something breaks wet and warm through his shoulder. He drags a broken foundation up one more inch.

“Got it! I’m out Bucky, let go!”

He shouts as he wrenches the shield free of the stone, falls back and down and hits the ground with a quake, shield spinning wildly away above his head. His muscles are screaming his head is throbbing apart his shoulder is on fire and he curls up on one side, trembling.

hey sam hey fuckfuckfuck it hurts it fucking hurts jesus i can’t i can’t it hurts it hurts it hurts  

“Bucky? Bucky!” And there are hands, crawling over him, pawing at him and he can’t he can’t he can’t they’re coming he won’t go back and he thrashes, crashes, but there’s a weight bearing down holding him down holding him together.

“Bucky! It’s me!”

hey sam we’re not going back i can’t i won’t let them get us sam sam sam

“Bucky! It’s Sam!”

hey sam

sam

“Sam?” The name tears at his throat, scrapes through his chest, bloody and bruised.

“Bucky!” A hand on his head now, tilting his face. “Look at me. Open your eyes.”

He does.

“Sam,” he gasps. “Shit.”

Sam smiles, teeth gleaming through the ash and blood streaked across his face. “Yeah. Shit, Bucky.” He leaves his hand there, thumb pad pressing into Bucky’s cheekbone. “Take it easy. It’s just me.”

“Sam,” Bucky repeats.

“Yup,” Sam confirms, sprawled atop Bucky now, their positions reversed.  

“Fuck,” Bucky says. “Fuck.”

“Yup,” Sam agrees. “You back with me, man?”

“Yea…yes,” he croaks out. “Think so.”

“Good,” Sam says and pushes up to his knees. “Because my HUD’s picking up some company, and I think this place is about to come crashing down, so we gotta move.”

Move. Bucky chokes out a laugh. “Don’t think I’m going anywhere, Sam.” He can’t.

Sam scrambles out of view for a moment, returns with the shield. He slides it into the space on his back Bucky worked so hard to get it out of. “Yeah, you are,” he declares.

“It hurts,” Bucky whispers, small.

“Tough shit,” Sam counters. “Get your ass up.”

“Sam,” Bucky begs. “I can’t. You go.”

Sam stares, eyes hot. “The fuck you can’t. You’re coming with me.”

“Sam.”

“End of discussion,” Sam echoes.

Bucky blinks. “Well. Shit.”

“Yeah,” Sam concurs. He eases Bucky up to a seat on the dirt.

Bucky sags against Sam’s chest, breath hitching. “Or here. Here’s fine. Could stay here.” 

“Up on your feet, Bucky,” Sam wraps his arms around him, hauls them both to standing. “See, not so bad.”

Bucky stifles a groan into Sam’s shoulder. “Speak for yourself.”

“Alright.” Sam reaches to toggle his visor display, leaving an arm around Bucky’s waist. “Got a couple bogeys to the southwest. Looks like this tunnel splits in about 20 yards. We can head north, hit a maintenance access point, take us to the surface.”

“Okay.”

Sam starts forward, stops. “Buck. Gotta move your feet, here.”

“Oh,” Bucky replies. “Yeah.” They shuffle forward, Sam carrying the lion’s share of the load. Past the narrow ravine Bucky spotted earlier, the cavern widens into a true tunnel.

“Must be in the maintenance shafts below the mall,” Sam grunts.

Bucky sets one foot in front of the other, gamely ignoring the way every step rocks his aching body, sends bolts through his wounded shoulder. “How big is this fucking place?”

“Hundred fifty stores or so,” Sam tells him, eyes flickering over his HUD. “Looks like these tunnels extend the whole length of the place, branch out into the parking lot too.” They walk around a chunk of rubble the size of a small sedan. “What’s left of them, anyways.”

“Why did they blow the place?” Bucky asks to get his mind off how much everything fucking hurts.

Sam shakes his head. “No idea.”

Bucky sneaks a glance to the side. “They didn’t contact anyone? Make any demands?” Another shake of Sam’s head. “Who the hell are these people?”

Sam frowns. “Was hoping you might have a clue. I’ve got nothing. Redwing didn’t pick up any comms chatter, no matches on facial recognition. But I lost the signal when I got further in, so they must be jamming him.”

“What the fuck?” Bucky wonders.

“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “What the fuck.”

“Why are you here then?”

Sam stubs a foot on a loose piece of stone, catches them both. He stops. “Why am I here? Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“I…uh…” Bucky stumbles too, over that tone in Sam’s voice. “Right.”

Sam gives him a moment to digest, then he tugs them forward again. Bucky stutter steps to keep up. “Come on, old man. Not asking you to run a marathon here. Just need to walk a little bit.”

“Yeah,” Bucky mumbles. “Sure.”

“Those people you saved,” Sam starts, stressing the last word, “they did what you told them to. Called the cops. They’ve got this place locked down, man.”

“I didn’t see them,” Bucky says. Wasn’t sure anyone was coming, he doesn’t.

“Yeah,” Sam offers, almost an apology. “I got the notification over the local channel. No one knew exactly what was going on. Said I’d check it out, let them know when the place was clear. Bad guys killed the comms in here, though, so I couldn’t get word out.”  

“And you—” Bucky stumbles over his own feet, gasps at the daggers of pain that sends into every joint. Sam’s the only thing that keeps him from crashing to the ground face first. “Fuck,” he whines, eyes watering.

“Okay, okay,” Sam grants Bucky a few seconds to catch his breath. “And I came in and saved your ass, right?” he adds with a forced smile as he pulls them forward again.

Bucky coughs, back of his throat burning. “You came in. By yourself. No backup.” Sam nods. “Jesus. You are such a goddamn…”

“Yeah?” Sam prompts.

“Such a goddamn Captain America,” he grumbles, defeated. Sam shakes his head, smiling. Then his grin drops.

“Shit,” Sam whispers, eyes tracking something on his HUD. “We got incoming.”

“Maybe it’s friendly incoming,” Bucky says with a hope he doesn’t feel. Sam drags them into the shadows next to a pile of rubble. A moment later Bucky hears the all-too familiar static crackle of another radio. “Or not,” he sighs.

Sam props Bucky against the wall. “I got this.” He tugs the shield off his back. “Stay here.” Then he’s gone.

“Fuck that,” Bucky hisses. He crouches, braces before he leans around a corner. No boot to the face this time, thank God. Sam’s already halfway to the approaching group. Bucky counts four of them. Sam flings the shield ahead of him, and it bounces off an armed woman’s head. Make that three.

Bucky ducks back behind the debris when the bullets start flying. They pepper the ground, the concrete ceiling, the stacked stone he’s sheltering behind. Sure would be nice to have his own rifle now. Or a shield. Or, hell, a goddamn throwing star. He peers around the corner again when there’s a second between pops.

Sam's feet are on the ground, quarters too close for any useful flight. He’s diving, juking, deflecting rounds left and right with his wings and the shield. His suit catches all the faint light, flashing bright white against a grey backdrop. He’s a beacon. He’s a lighthouse flame. He’s…

“Drawing all the fucking fire,” Bucky hisses. Oh, no. Oh hell no. A thug charges through the wings, and then he and Sam are grappling, trading blows. Bucky eyes the back of the gunman closest to him. The man sets his sights on the fighting pair, and Bucky gathers that he won’t hesitate to shoot his own man if it means a chance of pegging Sam.

Bucky leaps out of the darkness, tugs the rifle’s barrel up and away with a vibranium hand, redirecting a spray of bullets into the roof of the tunnel. The man flails an elbow into Bucky’s cheek, finger still on the trigger, and Bucky clamps down harder on the muzzle. The thug sets his shoulder into Bucky’s chest and launches them into the nearest wall. He tugs his gun back, almost has it free of Bucky’s grasp before Bucky can shake off the sickle of pain that shudders through his body.

Bucky yanks the rifle free with final heave and a yell. He snaps it across the thug’s face in a backhanded volley that would make Serena Williams proud. The goon drops bonelessly to the ground. Bucky’s knees hit the dirt a second later.

Another roaring rattle draws his head up. The last woman standing stares at the space Sam was a moment before, where she just fired half her magazine. Sam’s behind her now, though, and he brings the shield down on the back of her head. She flops down join her colleagues.     

A still moment, when the only sound is Sam’s ragged breathing, Bucky’s panted gasps. Sam checks his downed opponents one last time, then bounds over to Bucky. He crouches on his toes, claws a hand into Bucky’s good arm.

“Is it just me? Or are you constitutionally incapable of doing what anyone tells you to do?”

Bucky sucks in some stale air. “Just you, Sam.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam comments, unimpressed. “You good to go?”

Good to go? Go? He can barely breath around the angry agony that’s settled into his shoulder and chest, the harsh ache nesting in his skull, the spike of misery crawling across every inch of skin.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m good.”

Sam frowns “You cold?”

Sweat prickles down his spine, through his scalp. “Huh?”

“You’re shivering.”  

So he is. Funny, he hadn’t noticed. “Oh?”

“Your teeth are chattering.” Sam leans in closer, like the goggles can peel back Bucky’s layers, find whatever problem is rooted beneath his skin.

“I…” Bucky starts, has no idea where to finish.   

“Come on.” Sam wraps his other arm around Bucky. “Up on your feet.”

Sam hauls him up, again, and Bucky’s not sure if the roaring in his head or the roiling in his gut is going to get him first. Sam gives him a moment, looks at him evenly.

“You gonna throw up on me, Buck?”

He swallows, hard. Takes a breath through his nose. “No?”

Sam sighs. “Right. Well,” he nods at the man on the ground next to them, “throw up on him, if you have to, okay?”

Bucky doesn’t trust himself to nod or speak, just hums his agreement.

“Alright,” Sam continues. “We gotta move. Almost there, I promise.”

Hey Sam. You’re a lying asshole.  

Sam pulls Bucky’s vibranium arm across his shoulder, braces his other arm against Bucky’s back. They set off again. A few more minutes of shuffling through the warrens, teeth gritted, then Sam stops him at the next junction, searches down each hallway. This far from the mall’s center, the tunnels seem relatively untouched by the explosions.

“Okay,” Sam whispers. “Left and right circle back under the building. Straight ahead is the access point, but we’ve got a few baddies hanging around it.”

“Gotta go through ‘em?” Bucky asks.

“Unless you feel like walking another klick, then yes.”

He’s not sure he can make it another twenty yards, let alone a kilometer. “Not happening.”

“Didn’t think so,” Sam says. He casts about, finds a space in the shadows between the glow of two orange lights. He eases Bucky down to a seat on the cold concrete. Fuck, sitting hurts too.

“What’re you doing?” Bucky growls.

“I’m going to clear them out. Stay here. For real this time.”

Why, dies on his lips. Because you’re a liability right now. You’ll get him killed, is the answer he knows to be true. Fuck.

“Fine,” he says instead. Sam leans in, tugs Bucky’s shirt collar down to get another look at his shoulder.

“Gonna have a new scar to show the ladies?” Bucky jokes weakly.

“Sure,” Sam agrees, plucking another wad of gauze from a pocket.

Hey Sam. Your poker face is shit, you know that?

“What are you doing with that?” he asks.

Sam twists his lips. “Sorry, man.” He presses it over the soaked cloth already covering the wound before Bucky can object.

A cry burbles past Bucky’s clenched teeth as he curls around Sam’s hand. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

“You said it,” Sam mutters. He grabs Bucky’s vibranium palm, brings it over the gauze. “Hold that there, until I get back.”

Bucky nods, panting. “Sure. Easy.” He floats in a reddish haze for a moment before Sam’s hand snakes around the back of his neck.

“Hey,” Sam says, earnest, bringing their foreheads close. “Gonna go take care of these jokers, alright? I’ll be back soon, I promise.”     

Bucky blinks, until Sam squeezes the nape of his neck. “Okay. Okay. Go.” Sam stares at him for a moment too long. “What?” he snarls, exhausted beyond measure.        

“Try not to die before I get back,” Sam says. “That’s all.”

He snorts. “I’ll do my best.”

Sam pushes himself to his feet with an ease that Bucky can only marvel at. “Back in two shakes, man,” and he stalks off toward the exit.

Bucky closes his eyes again, slumps miserably into the wall. He tries all the distraction techniques he’s learned over the years – counting his breaths, conjugating verbs in Turkish, naming every animal in Wakanda, largest to least. But the bite in his shoulder keeps coming back with a vengeance, and now that he’s not absorbed with doing everything possible to stay alive at this very moment, he feels all of it. Every blow he’s taken today – his head, his face, his back, his stomach, his legs.

The only thing that isn’t vibrating with pain right now is his feet. Good footwear makes all the difference. Away from the fight, he has a chance to remember those sneakers from forever ago. He wonders how long he’s been here. He wonders if A.J.’s party is starting without them.

The sound of returning footfalls from the tunnel Sam went down earlier shakes him from his reverie. “Sam?” he asks, pleased that his voice isn’t shaking. The footsteps grow closer.

“Sam?” he asks again when the feet stop next to him. Nothing.

He opens his eyes just in time to see the rifle butt crash into the side of his head.

Then he doesn’t see anything for a while.

Chapter Text

He’s aware, dimly, of movement, of his feet dragging along in the dirt. Of multiple languages flying above his head. Of dark, then dim light, then more dark, then brightness enough to make the backs of his eyelids pulse.

And of being dropped, face down, on the uncaring ground, hard enough to make his mind skitter away from his flailing, failing body.

hey sam. shit, think i fucked up.

He comes back to himself at the sound of a sharp voice, words polished and cut like diamonds. “This is it? This is the fucking thing that took out half your men, Silva?”

He eases his aching eyes open, drags his cheek against the ground until he can rest his chin in the dirt and look up. It’s bright here, too bright after the darkened mall and the darker tunnels. The cement walls and the heavy sense of earth around him suggest he’s still underground, somewhere the day’s violence hasn’t touched. The slanting yellow lines on the ground and evenly spaced concrete pillars tell him he’s in a parking garage. The crates of ammunition and weapons tell him this parking garage isn’t being used for cars.  

hey sam. found the bad guys.

He tries to get an arm under himself, to get a better look. When he pulls his good hand forward, though, it drags his wounded shoulder over, sends bile burning up his throat. He works gloved fingers for a moment. Cuffs. Binding his wrists behind his back. Not too thick. Shouldn’t be a problem.

Wouldn’t be a problem, if he could move his right arm without passing out. So. New plan.

His eyes drift to the arresting figure in front of him. A woman, tall, perfectly comfortable in a tac vest, one hand resting on the holster at her hip. Fifties, maybe, judging by the gray streaks in her curled dark hair. “It looks like a mangled rat,” she says.

“Took out half your men too, Camille,” a man this time, thin legs and broad shoulders, dark hair over a square face. Must be Silva.

The woman scoffs, looks down at Bucky to see him looking back. “It’s awake,” she remarks, hint of a central European accent shadowing her words. Silva comes over, regards Bucky with disdain. He slides a boot under Bucky’s right shoulder, flips him to his back with a sharp move.

Breath flees Bucky’s body. Shit. He was safer in the Pottery Barn.

The two figures reenter his field of vision, upside down this time. Camille’s sneer twists her otherwise handsome features. “What the fuck is it?” she asks.

“Who the fuck are you?” he gasps.

She looks at him, then at Silva. “Where the fuck did he come from? Who sent him?” Well, at least he’s graduated from it to he. That’s progress. Maybe.

“As far as we can tell, no one,” Silva says in the staccato beat of a South American brogue. “From the video footage, it looks like he was shopping here.”

Camille raises a sculpted brow. “Shopping?” Silva nods. “For what?”

Silva shrugs. “Shoes.” Camille gapes at him in disbelief.

Bucky clears his throat. “So, back to my question. Who the fuck are you assholes?”

That earns him a quick kick to the jaw from Silva, and dark stars dance above his head. Camille doesn’t flinch. “How did this manage to survive our best people?”

“Think you and I have a different definition of best, lady,” he pans through a mouth filled with blood.

Silva nudges his left arm with a boot toe. “Some sort of body modification, it looks like.”

“He did it to himself?” Camille seems impressed for the first time. It’s not a reassuring sound. Bucky suppresses a shiver.

“Maybe. We’re looking into it now,” Silva answers.

It’s not going to take them too long to figure out how many people with metal arms there are who can take out a mall’s worth of terrorists. Bucky’s surprised they haven’t managed it yet.

There’s a crunching of boots on dirt next to him and he turns his head. Stares. It’s one of the two goons from the shoe store, the one Bucky stole the radio from a lifetime ago. The man stares back through one eye, the other swollen shut and haloed by bruised flesh.

“You don’t recognize him?” the man asks around a split lip. He grins, exposes more than a few missing teeth. “That’s the Winter Solider.”

Shit. Maybe he should start using one of Sharon’s disguises everywhere he goes.

Camille and Silva exchange a look. “He’d be worth more than everything in this mall combined,” Camille marvels. Smiles, even.

Oh hell no. “Yeah, shop’s closed, lady. Sale is over.”

She utterly ignores him. “We find the right buyer, this disaster of an operation might just be worth it.” She spares him a glance. “Or we keep him ourselves, figure out how to unlock whatever Hydra locked in there.”

That gets him half up on a vibranium elbow. “Oh like hell—”

Another swift kick, this one from the toothless goon, pegs him in his damaged shoulder. Bucky doesn’t think he has any screaming left in him after all the other blows. He proves himself wrong.

Hey Sam. Getting kind of tired of getting kicked around like…like…what do you kick around? A soccer ball? Never played. We preferred baseball. Think that blood loss is starting to kick in. Get it? Kick in? Bet you were surprised to come back and find me gone, huh? It’s a fun game. I’ll hide. You seek.

Steve and I used to play that when we were young. Steve was always good at the hiding part, you know? Benefit of being a little squirt. He wasn’t as good at the seeking. Never much for subtlety, our Steve.

Do kids still play that game? I don’t really know any, anymore. The ones I used to know are dead. Maybe I’ll ask A.J. and Cass, next time I see them. You think I’ll ever see them again? 

A far-off boom, a faint rumble in the ground, pull him back to awareness. It takes a minute before he can dial back the pain enough to remember where he is, open his eyes. He’s not even angry anymore, not filled with a cold rage, he’s just filled with cold, glacial blood sludging through his veins, dripping out onto the hard concrete beneath him.  

When he can muster the energy to look around the garage, it’s only the woman left with him. Guess they don’t think he’s much of a threat. What was her name? Carmen? He gropes through his foggy mind for a minute. Oh. Camille. That’s right.

“Who are you?” he finally asks.

She glances up from a tablet, face perfectly composed. She grins, prowls over to him. Shit. He does not like that look.

“I suppose I should have recognized you. Though most of the footage of the Winter Solider I’ve seen had him rampaging through buildings, killing everything in sight.” She smirks. “Not curled up outside an American shopping mall, bloody and mewling like a newborn kitten.”

“That’s…” he has to pause for air, “oddly specific.”

“But,” she continues, cheerfully, “what serendipity. Netting you is going to be a much more lucrative move for us.” She purses her lips. “Well, if you survive the journey, that is.”

“Journey?” he asks.

“And Lucas said he saw Captain America earlier.” Her face brightens even more. “Oh, we could get the matching set! Think of what people will pay for that!” She frowns. “Of course, that explosion we just heard might have done him in. A little surprise we left by the exit. How will that suit fare against several kilos of plastique, I wonder?”

Bucky blinks sluggishly, comprehension dawning. “You’re…fucking insane.”

hey sam. you’re fine. you are fine. you did not get blown to pieces trying to clear an exit for me because i was too stupid and slow to not get shot by a bunch of fucking lunatics inside a goddamn shopping mall. you have to be alive. i’ll kill you myself if you aren’t. you have to be okay. did i get you killed i’m sorry i’m so sorry sam i’m sorry please

A disapproving glare from Camille. “I think I expected more from you, given all those stories. But I suppose all tales become tall the further away you get, and I’ve not met anyone who fought you.”

“Most of the people I fought are dead,” he notes, no boast in his voice. 

“Hmm,” she replies. “Batroc didn’t have much to say about you. But he had plenty to say about the Falcon.”

He lifts a split eyebrow, pieces sliding together. “Batroc. So, you’re LAF, then.” She tuts, turns back to her tablet. He licks blood off his teeth. “What the fuck is the LAF doing in a fucking shopping mall?”

“Oh, I quite agree.” She looks up. “I told them. This operation isn’t even close to the scale we need to undertake to showcase our skillset.”

“Your…skillset?” he asks in disbelief.

Camille nods. “Yes. To potential clients.”

“So this whole thing,” he coughs, damp, “was a fucking advertising campaign?”

She hums. “People seem to believe we are defunct since Batroc’s death. We needed to correct that assumption.”

“So you, so you…” shot people shot me tried to kill me beat me down again and again and again killed sam no, “you took over a mall to get attention?

A sharp look for that. “Yes. We needed to remind our customers that we can strike anywhere, and everywhere.”

He swallows, beats back the darkness creeping at the edges of his vision. “But…why’d you blow it up?”

“The spectacle, of course,” she says, as if she’s describing simple arithmetic to a small child. “Anyone can grab a gun and shoot up a place. It takes planning, numbers, materiel to destroy an entire building. People pay more attention to the destruction of property than lives.”

hey sam. shit maybe i’m getting a little woozy but crazy bitch has a point.

Sam said he got the hostages out first. Thank God. But that means… “Your own people were still in there.”

Camille shrugs. “An unavoidable loss. Tragic, I suppose, but they can be replaced.”  

hey sam. fuck me.

Camille makes to continue, smug expression plastered across her face, before she’s interrupted by the squeal of metal hinges. Bucky follows her gaze to a stairwell door. He stares, wide-eyed, as the man from the shoe store strolls in again. The goon strides over to Camille, drops something at her feet. Something round, crimson and blue, soot and blood streaked across a shining star.

No. Not something. The shield. Sam’s shield.

hey sam. no. nononono.

Camille leans over to look, disappointment writ across her features. “This all you found, Salim?”

Salim shrugs. “All that was left. Just rubble, down there.”  

“No.” Bucky stares at the metal, dull grey in the dim light, splattered with red. Too much red. “No.”

Camille tsks. “Pity. Well, it’s a nice trophy, at least. And our rates should go up, now that we can tell clients we killed Captain America.” She beams.  “And we weren’t even trying!”

Bucky clumsily rolls to his knees. “No,” he wheezes. “You’re wrong. He isn’t dead.”

Salim paces closer to Bucky, aims his rifle at Bucky’s head. “Can I just finish the job now?” he asks Camille.

She shakes her head indulgently. “No, dear. You know how much that one is worth. At least we have half of the pair now.”    

Bucky looks between them. Salim. Camille. Then to the shield. The fucking shield, laying there like a discarded hubcap in the garage.

hey sam. you’ve survived worse, right? a thousand pararescue missions. thanos. madripoor. walker. karli. a fight against half the avengers. shit, a fight against me.    

“You know you’re not getting out of here, right?” Bucky asks.

hey sam. they aren’t leaving alive. or i’m not. wonder which one it’ll be.   

She laughs, delighted. “Of course I am. And we’re taking you with us. And that shield. We can always melt it down for the metal. Doesn’t mean much now that the man who used it is dead, does it?”

“Fuck you,” he snarls. “Fuck you, you psychotic bitch, fuck you he isn’t dead if he is I’ll fucking kill all—"

And then shit, Salim moves and something hard crashes over the back of his head and he falls back into the misery coursing throughout his body. Can’t help but let that darkness take him.

hey sam. feeling a little funny. also my mouth tastes like copper everything’s a little hazy but my shoulder doesn’t hurt as much anymore so that’s a good thing right? 

He must be out of it for a while because the next time he opens his eyes, Silva is back, and he and Camille are arguing about…something. He can’t quite follow it. Bucky watches with a strange disinterest as Silva pulls out a pistol and aims it at his face.

hey sam. that’s not good.

“Too late,” Silva says. “We need to get rid of him.” Camille knocks his arm to the side just as he pulls the trigger. The bullet puffs into the ground by Bucky’s head, spalling up clouds of dust.

“No,” she snarls. “That’s valuable merchandise.”

Silva throws her off, takes aim at Bucky’s head again.

hey sam, how pissed at me would you be if i let this guy shoot me? because i’d be pretty pissed if you let him shoot you. if you let anyone shoot you. or blow you up.

Bucky rolls to the side as Silva fires, barely feels the bullet trace a path through his jacket, along his bicep. Not like that arm was doing him much good, anyway. “Fuck,” Silva curses and steps closer.

The thought alone of breaking the cuffs apart, of putting thousands of pounds of pressure on his wrecked arm, almost makes Bucky retch. He does it anyway, howling through the agony. He throws a vibranium arm up just in time to absorb the next shot at his face. Furious, Silva stomps over right next to him, points his gun at Bucky’s face.

Then he tumbles in a heap when Bucky’s arm sweeps his feet out from under him. Bucky hauls himself to a seat and chops a vibranium hand to the bridge of Silva's nose. A crack, then he’s down for the count.

“Asshole,” Bucky curses, gasping. He stills when a cold steel barrel presses into the back of his head.

“He knows who we are,” Salim says from behind him. “He’s seen our faces. We can’t leave him alive.”

Camille pushes up from the ground, brushes dirt off her pants. “Of course he knows who we are. By the time we’re done with him, though, he won’t know who he is. He’ll be worth a fortune, Salim.”

“You sure?” Salim asks.

“Positive,” Camille smiles.

“Alright.” The pressure on Bucky’s skull eases. “So, we’ll split the profit halfway and—”

A shot rings out. Salim lets out a small, sad sound. He slumps to his knees. Bucky marvels at the perfect hole above his left eyebrow, then Salim totters to the ground face first.

Camille sighs down the barrel of her Beretta. “I don’t share,” she declares. Her eyes shift to Bucky. “You. Get up. Now.”

Bucky stares dumbly.

hey sam. fuck everything hurts and you’re fucking dead and this bitch thinks i’m getting up?

“Put it down.” A new voice, this time. They both look over.

And there’s Sam, the lost shield back in his hand. His white suit streaked black with ash and smoke, wings outstretched. Every inch the vengeful angel, wrought with righteous fury. “Put the fucking gun down. Now,” he demands. Commands.

Camille lowers the barrel a few inches. “Captain. So pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m glad you showed up when you did. I think we have so much to discuss. I’d love to make you a proposal to —” A vibranium shield smashing into her mouth shuts her up, drops her to the ground like a stone.

Oh. So, Sam’s not in a talking mood.

Bucky blinks, and Sam is there, crouched in front of him. Bloody gash carved into one cheek. More red smeared into the seams of his cowl. Face smudged with ash. Sweat dripping tracks down his forehead. Brown eyes beyond exhausted.

Alive.  

“Man, we really have to stop meeting like this.” He gives Bucky a weak smile.

A thousand quips Bucky could counter with, a hundred droll comments he could try, if his head wasn’t mired in muck and his body wasn’t wrapped in barbed wire and he hadn’t spent the last however many hours getting shot at and shot and hounded and hunted and punched and kicked and dragged into new depths of hell. If some lunatic hadn’t just told him his friend was dead. If he hadn’t believed it, for a while.  

hey sam.

“Bucky?”

hey, sam. hey. you’re okay.

Bucky doesn’t come back with that witty rejoinder or an aggrieved sigh. Instead, he drops his forehead to Sam’s chest, lets out something close to a sob.

“Shit,” Sam hisses and brings his arms around Bucky’s shaking, shivering, broken form. “I got you, Buck.”

There are more words after that, ones he can’t even process. A hand on his face, too. “You’re gonna be okay.” Sam’s voice floats, hazy, somewhere above his head. “Gonna get you out of here, alright?” But this time he can’t get up, he really can’t, no matter how much Sam cajoles. “Just hold on.”

Sam shuffles him, stay with me, man, and there’s something around his back, you’re okay you’re okay you’re fine and the stretch of Wakandan fabric under his cheek hey Bucky stay with me and Sam’s asking something begging him to do something Bucky don’t you fucking do this to me, and he’s trying but he just can’t, sorry Sam, Bucky, Bucky, and he’s off the ground and they’re moving, and then he sinks into the dark one more time.

Chapter Text

This time, when he wakes up, it’s to the soft hum of a clarinet leading a chorus of trumpets, a double bass bringing up the rear.

“Glenn Miller,” he places, easily. “Blue Rain.”

“Man, this stuff is old,” Sam says next to his head. “But you don’t like Marvin Gaye, so…”

“I like Marvin Gaye,” he retreads that argument, no heat behind it. He blinks his eyes open to a clinical ceiling, a hospital room lit by the mellow glow of a low, dusky sun. He turns his head to make out Sam in a chair by his side. The other man is in civilian clothes this time, a grey t-shirt, a clean white bandage dashed across his cheek to match the one wrapped around his hand.

Hey Sam.

Sam’s fiddling with a phone that’s hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker on a far cabinet. He sets it down on a nearby table, gives Bucky an easy smile. “Hey. How you feeling?”

Bucky closes his eyes, does the internal inventory he’s done after a thousand fights. All he comes up with is a deep body ache, a distant pounding in his bones, warning of something worse. When he tries to pull that thread it’s like reaching into a black room, fingers brushing against indistinct objects, unable to get purchase. A groan escapes his lips.

Then a cool palm slips over his forehead. “Huh,” he mutters.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Kinda what I figured. Docs said you wouldn’t be feeling too hot. You lost a lot of blood, man, even for a super soldier. And that shoulder got infected. What you get for running all over and under a mall with an open gunshot wound. You’ve got a fever, but the meds are bringing it down.”

Ah. That explains the fuzziness, the way his skin is prickling, feels too tight for his bones. That dull, hazy throbbing in his shoulder. He got shot. Had to drag himself onward anyways because…why? Oh. “Those people, in the mall…they make it out okay?”

Sam snorts. “Yeah, Buck, they did.” A thumb slides down to sooth away the crease in Bucky’s brow. “You’re the one we’re all kinda worried about.”

Bucky rests there for a bit, until the question niggling the back of his mind becomes impossible to ignore. “Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Why…why are you being so nice to me?”

Sam’s thumb stops moving. His hand stays where it is. “Jesus, Bucky. Let’s recap. You rescued a bunch of hostages and got shot for it in a fucking mall, which you were only in because I asked you to go there, and when I got there some dick was about to put a bullet in your brain. Then the fucking building collapsed on us, and then you almost killed yourself getting me out, then you got grabbed and beat up by a bunch of terrorists who almost killed you, again. And then, then, I finally found you, got you out of there, and you almost fucking bled out in my arms.” A shaky inhale, a rough exhale. “You scared the shit out of me, Bucky.”      

“Oh,” Bucky says after a long moment. “Sorry.”

A genuine laugh from Sam this time. “Yeah, asshole. You should be sorry.” Bucky frowns, considering. “What?”

“I did find the shoes.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Mantra Orange. Size seven,” Bucky adds.

“Probably buried under a few tons of rubble, now,” Sam notes ruefully. “Hell of an explosion they set off.”

Bucky’s breath catches. “Plastique. In the tunnels. She said…said they set a trap for you.”

“She? The woman down there? Yeah, they tried to get the jump on me. Would have, too, if I hadn’t got the signal from Redwing right before the explosives went off. Got the wings up just in time. Thank God for vibranium, right?”

“The shield,” Bucky rasps. “The shield.” He starts to lever himself up. “They had your shield…they said…they said…just rubble…and you were—”

“Bucky,” Sam interrupts. “I’m okay.” He presses Bucky back into the bed. “See? Right here in the flesh.”

Bucky pants. “Yea…yeah. But the shield.” He swallows. “It was covered in blood.”

Sam works his mouth. “Yeah, that was…man, that was your blood.”

“Ah.” He licks dry lips. “Well how…how did you get out?”

Sam sighs. “We don’t have to talk about this right n—”

“How?” he hisses.

“Like I said, Redwing pinged me about the explosives. Ones behind me went off first. Had to go forward. Knocked the hatch open with the shield, but I didn’t have a chance to catch it before I had to get out of there. Assholes must have picked it up after the explosion.”

“You didn’t go back for it?”

Sam stares. “I was a little fucking busy looking for you, Bucky.”

Bucky blinks. “Oh. Okay.”

“Alright,” Sam says, squeezing Bucky’s good shoulder. “Now why don’t you just take it easy and—”

“How’d you find me?”

Sam frowns. Bucky glares. “Fine,” Sam capitulates. “Had a clearer signal from Redwing, once I was out in the open. He picked up some gunfire. You know, when they were trying to shoot you? Again? I followed that.” He lets out another breath. “Seriously, Bucky, you need to get some—"

“That woman, Camille,” Bucky persists. “She said they were LAF.”

Sam grinds his teeth before answering. “She was right about one thing, then. Looks like there was a whole cell of them in there. GRC went in after we got out, mopped up what was left.” He shakes his head. “They blew up their own people, man.”

Bucky’s tongue works against a parched throat. “Yeah. She was…she was a little nuts, Sam.”

“No shit. She’s gonna be needing some serious dental work now, too.”

“I think…I think she wanted to sell me. To the highest bidder. Or restore the Winter Soldier programming.”

Sam’s fingers twitch. “Well. That sure as fuck wasn’t going to happen.”

“She was happy when I thought…when she thought you were dead. She…she said it would be good advertising. Said…said she was gonna take the shield. Said she—"

“Enough,” Sam snaps. He continues, softer, “Hey, enough about all that now, alright? We can worry about the after-action later. You look beat, man.”

He is beat, languor threatening to pull him under again. He scans the rest of the space to fight it back. “Never been in a hospital room before,” he comments.

Sam lifts a brow. “Seriously?”

Bucky thinks harder. “Not as a patient, at least.” He tries to shrug, regrets it when his shoulder complains with a dull thud.

“Don’t do that,” Sam warns, too late. “Hydra didn’t have hospitals?”

He almost shrugs again, brain blitzed by fever and painkillers. Sam shifts his hand to Bucky’s bandaged shoulder to keep him still with an exasperated exhale. “Maybe they did. For the higher ups. Not for…whatever. Soldiers. Weapons. Me.” Eyes glazed by memory, he misses Sam’s frown. “Sent me down to one of the labs anytime I needed to be patched up.” He takes in the soft blanket on his bed, the flat screen TV on the far wall. “Not as nice as this. They…they would…”

“Bucky,” Sam cautions.

“Don’t think they were big on morphine, you know. Or anything else like that. They’d just put me in the chair, stick a mouth guard between my teeth if I was lucky…”

“Bucky,” Sam presses.

“Then they, then they’d…” his eye traces the IV cord from his arm to the bag, the machines whirling behind it. The fever daze connects two lines, decades apart.

He didn’t know what they put in him, before they clamped that metal around his head, never asked, never could ask, shrieked when it all started, tore scream after scream from his raw throat.

“Bucky!” A hand tugs his head away from the recollection, tilts his face up until it’s Sam’s devastated expression he sees above him. “Bucky, hey. Stay with me, here, okay?”

He blinks, shudders. Wheezes and tethers himself to Sam’s palm against his cheek. “Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.”

Sam shakes his head. “No, man, you don’t have to be…look, you’re here. Now.” A frown flits across his features. “Back in the tunnel there, too, for a minute, you were…” His nostrils flare. “Anyways. It doesn’t matter. You’re here, okay? Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good.” Sam lets his own eyes close for a minute. “Man, you…you’re gonna give me a heart attack by the time I turn fifty. I’m too old for this shit. You have got to stop doing this to me.”

“I’ll try,” Bucky offers.

Sam opens his eyes, smirks. “No, you won’t.” They share a small smile before it flies from Sam’s face. “Hey. Bucky. I am not going to let any…well, anything else like that happen to you, okay?”

Bucky’s brow creases again. “Getting shot?”

Sam sighs. “Yeah, can’t exactly make that promise. I mean…Hydra, all that. Zemo. Shit. Selling you. It’s not going to happen again. I won’t let it.”

“What?” Bucky asks.

Sam grimaces. “It’s…back in that tunnel, when you were…I don’t know, somewhere else. You said…some things. About not wanting to go back there. Not wanting them to get you again. And they won’t, okay? I won’t let them.”

Bucky blinks to clear his eyes. “I…okay.”

Sam nods, firm. “Okay.”

“Sam, it’s…that’s not your responsibility.”

Sam scoffs. “Yeah, well, that’s where you’re wrong. Shield comes with a lot of responsibilities. And apparently one of them is to save your ass. Like, all the time. Kind of a tradition, now.”

Bucky’s turn for a snort. “Sure, man. Admit it, you like having me around.”  

“Like is not the word I would use, Bucky,” Sam counters.

Bucky grins, finally lets his gritty eyes droop closed. “Sure.”

“Sure,” Sam repeats, and Bucky can hear the smile. “Now, would you can it and get some rest so I can get a break here? Maybe listen to some music that’s not older than dirt?”

“It’s good,” Bucky mutters. The first mournful notes of Moonlight Serenade come on. “You like it too,” he mumbles.

Sam’s hand on his head again. “Fine. I like it too. Now for fuck’s sake, go to sleep, Bucky.”

Bucky works his vibranium arm up, drapes his fingers over Sam’s other hand, resting on his chest. “Sure,” he sighs, once more, before he glides under.  

Bucky’s outside the Wilson house a few days later, sitting in the shade of an ancient live oak. A soft breeze from the water ruffles the leaves, dapples the sunshine around him. He’s in the comfiest lawn chair the Wilsons own, with unmistakable instructions from Sarah and Sam to keep his ass there for every situation short of a bathroom break or a nuclear disaster.

Sarah says it’s a smaller birthday party for A.J. than the one they initially planned, just a few family friends. Based on the train of people that come streaming through the house and the backyard, Bucky concludes the Wilsons may not know what the definition of “a few friends” is.

It’s like he’s in a reception line, sometimes. The men drop by with a bump to his unwounded shoulder, or a clasp of his forearm, say it’s good to see him, glad he’s here, hell of a thing he did up there in Baton Rouge.

The women linger longer. The older ones stoop down to drop a kiss on his cheek around the bruises. The younger ones coo over his sling-bound arm and ask if he wants more potato salad or fried okra. He laps it up like a parched dog while Sam shakes his head in the background, disgusted. 

The crowd has thinned a bit by the time Sam drags over his own chair and plops down next to Bucky. He shoves a plate laden with cornbread and boudin into Bucky’s lap. Bucky quirks a brow.

“Sarah says you aren’t eating enough,” Sam offers.

“How much am I supposed to eat?”

“More. And I’m under strict guidance from Mrs. Jackson,” Sam pitches his voice higher, “to sit there until that boy’s finished every bite.” 

“You might be here a while.”

Sam reaches over to break off a piece of cornbread. “I got time,” he counters, crumbs tumbling onto his shirt. He brushes them off with his bandaged hand.

Bucky’s eyes linger on the white dressing. “How’s the hand?”

Sam holds it in front of his face, considering. “Not too bad. Just a few burns, coming out of that situation, I can’t complain.”

Bucky steals a glance at the healing cut on Sam’s cheek. He picks at the remaining cornbread. “Yeah.”

“I know that look. What is it?”

He frowns. “It’s…I was thinking, while I was down there. When they brought the shield, and I thought you were…”

“No,” Sam says. “Uh-uh. Don’t you fucking start.”

“I didn’t even—”

“Nope. None of that puppy dog I-almost-got-my-friend-killed bullshit.”

“But—”

“No. Because if you get that, I get it like seven times as much. You wanna put that on me?” Sam quirks a brow.

“I…” Bucky sighs. Sam shoots him a look. “Fine. No.” He sucks at a tooth. “You’re a jerk.”

Sam laughs. “I’ve been called worse. By you, in fact. But I’ll take it.” His smile fades. “You know, I didn’t think I was gonna get there in time, when that guy was about to shoot you. And then, after the explosion, when I was tearing through the parking garage, looking for you…”

“I thought we weren’t starting with this?”

“You aren’t starting with this. Give me a moment, though, okay?”

Bucky opens his mouth to retort, snaps it shut at the expression on Sam’s face. “Okay.”

“I should have been in there, buying the shoes. It was my responsibility. I shouldn’t be putting that on other people.”

“What,” Bucky asks, “so you could have gotten shot, too? No offense, Sam, but I prefer to do that on my own.”

“I should have been there. I should have been there for you. I should have been there for,” he waves at the house, “A.J., too. Instead, I was all wrapped up in this Cap stuff, thinking I have to do everything and take every meeting, and not taking time for the things that matter.” Sam rubs a hand over his face. “I should have been there.”

Bucky stares down at his food, nudges a few crumbs into the greasy puddle in the center of the plate. He clears his throat. “Hey, Sam.“ Sam doesn’t lift his eyes from the patchy grass. Bucky nudges Sam’s foot with his own until Sam’s gaze meets his. “You were there when I really needed you, though.”    

“Yeah.” Sam takes another chunk of cornbread off Bucky’s plate. He chews it slowly, studying Bucky. “I guess I was.”

“But next time,” Bucky sighs, “next time, they have this thing called Amazon. Ever heard of it?”  

Another smile, all Sam. “Yeah. Sounds like a plan.” He taps Bucky’s foot back. “Now eat your damn food, man, or I’ll never hear the end of it from Mrs. Jackson.”

Bucky nibbles at the plate for a bit, closes his eyes a few times to enjoy the chittering of distant conversation and the breeze sighing through the trees. He must doze off for a little while, because when he opens his eyes the sun is setting, the plate in his lap is gone, and Sam and Sarah are cleaning up the tables.

He tips his head back to watch the leaves sway against a dusky sky, until he hears the pad of Sam’s shoes on the dirt stop next to him.  

“Ready to go in?” Sam asks. Bucky nods. Sam reaches down to help him to his feet. Bucky leans against him when he’s upright a moment longer than he needs. For Sam’s sake. Really.

He blinks drowsily while Sam guides him to the house. A.J. and Cass have come out to help clean up, and he watches them for a moment. A.J. trots to the trash bin, white shoes a signal flare in the coming gloaming. Bucky stares.

“Bucky?” Sam asks.

Bucky looks closer. White sneakers, check. High tops, check. A jaunty swish in…no.

“Sam,” he growls.

“Yes?” Sam replies nervously.

“Those are green.”

“Technically, they’re Pine Green.”

“Sam,” he snarls.

Sam rubs his free hand over the back of his head. “Yeah, so. Turns out orange is Cass’s favorite color. A.J.’s is green. My bad.”

“I am,” Bucky declares, “going to kill you.”

Sam hums. “Well, I think I’ll be alright ‘til that shoulder heals up. Stiff breeze could take you down right now, man.”

Bucky plants his feet against Sam’s hand on his back pushing him forward. Turns his head. Glares. Sam smiles, all perfect teeth and warm eyes crinkled at the corners. Asshole. “Fine,” Bucky relents. “But after that. Dead.”

“Dead,” Sam agrees. “But do you think you could wait ‘til after next month? That’s Cass’s birthday, and I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

“Of course,” Bucky concurs. “After that, though.”

Sam nods, then grimaces. “Oh, but the month after that is Sarah’s birthday, so…”

Bucky sighs. “I hate you.” 

Sam rests an arm lightly around Bucky’s shoulders. “Hey man, when’s your birthday?”

Bucky jabs his good elbow into Sam’s side, just hard enough to draw out a little grunt. “Never.”

“Come on,” Sam smiles.  “I’ll get you something real nice.” He looks down at Bucky’s feet. “You could use some new shoes, you know.”

Bucky groans, utterly defeated, and lets Sam pull him out of the Louisiana night into the warm glow of the Wilson house.

“Fine. But only if they come in black.”