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1
Steve can rank the reasons he’s furious with Phil Coulson in reverse order.
He’s, well no, he’s not furious with him for not being dead, that makes no sense, but he’s furious with him for being not dead and not telling people.
He’s really furious with him for starting SHIELD up again, because what part of ‘Burn it to the ground!’ had Steve not been clear about? What should he have done, got Iron Man to skywrite ‘SHIELD is an irredeemable Nazi cesspit!’ in neon lettering?
He’s absolutely incandescently furious with Coulson because Coulson has got Bucky locked up in his creepy SHIELD basement.
“James Barnes is a war hero who survived seventy years of torture. How dare you put him in a cell?”
“He’s not the man you knew,” says Coulson calmly. “He’s the Winter Soldier.”
“He’s in there. Did you read that damned file, Coulson? They had to wipe him over and over, because he kept starting to claw his way back.”
“He killed people for HYDRA.”
“So what?” Steve spits. “We’ve all killed people for HYDRA. He was the one they had to brainwash, instead of just handing out the Kool-aid, doesn’t that tell you something?”
“Captain, I cannot run the risk of letting him lose. We need to determine he is no threat.”
“And how are you going to determine that when he’s in a cell? A cell run by SHIELD. You think he sees you as any different from HYDRA? He was tortured by people with SHIELD badges!”
“We will look into getting him appropriate treatment.”
“What, you think you can heal him from seventy years as a prisoner by dishing out more of the same? You think he’s going to get any better on a diet of windowless walls and interrogations? You’re treating him like a criminal.”
“He has committed crimes,” says Coulson, and Steve has to count backwards from twenty, slowly. Something must show in his face though, because Coulson says in a more placating tone, “Captain, I am sure we can discuss this reasonably.”
Steve tells Coulson to perform an anatomical impossibility on himself and walks out.
He goes back the same night and breaks into the creepy basement.
Steve has picked up a lot of breaking and entering tips from Natasha, on top of the ones he already had from the war. It’s easier than he expected, but then Coulson’s SHIELD must be low on cash. The only thing that goes wrong is he breaks into the wrong cell the first time.
“Hail HYDRA?” the man in the cell says hopefully.
“Sorry, wrong room,” says Steve and locks him back in again. Luckily the next cell is the right one.
“Are you here to kill me?” There is a frightening lack of feeling in Bucky’s voice.
“No,” Steve whispers. “I’m here to get you out.”
Bucky doesn’t say anything else until they’re outside, when he says “Where are you taking me?”
“Well, I guess that’s your choice,” Steve says. “Where would you like to go?”
“Are you claiming you broke me out because you felt like it? No strings, no agenda?”
It’s the most words Steve has heard Bucky say at one time since 1944, and he feels his mouth curling into a grin. “Pretty much. You’re my friend.”
“I’m not that guy,” Bucky says. “I’m what HYDRA stuck into his body.”
When Steve had started visiting Peggy a nurse had taken him aside and told him he shouldn’t argue with her. So he takes a long breath and says, “Even if that’s true, you’re a human being and they have no moral or legal right to keep you locked up. I know you weren’t working for HYDRA willingly. I’ve seen the records, seen how hard it was for them to stop you breaking free. SHIELD would have held you there as long as they pleased, with no trial. That’s wrong.”
“Are you real?” Bucky mutters.
“Last time I checked,” says Steve. When the silence gets uncomfortable he says, “Did you know there’s another guy down there?”
“Yeah. I’ve met him before, he’s a HYDRA bastard. But if you’re bothered about trials, he hasn’t had one.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Steve says, though he doesn’t plan on any more breakouts. Then “Wait, you met him before. Does that mean you’re remembering things?”
Bucky doesn’t look at Steve.
“Some things.”
“Do you remember me?”
“I remember you’ve no sense of self-preservation. But I could have guessed that from you’re being in a car with an assassin.”
“Some of my best friends are assassins.” Steve’s stupid grin is creeping back.
“Proves my point.” Then he says, “Thanks for the breakout, but this is where we part ways.” And opens the car door. And throws himself through it.
Steve breaks instantly with a painful screech, but they were at the top of an embankment, and by the time he’s out of the car and round to the far side Bucky is gone. Steve plunges down through the bushes, but it’s hopeless of course, what is he going to do run around calling for Bucky like a stray dog?
Steve swears a lot, then he drives to a motel, and composes an e-mail to Coulson demanding to know just how many people he’s got locked up without trial in his basement.
2
The second time Coulson’s team catch Bucky, Steve demands to be let in to see him.
“This is an outrage, Coulson. You’ve no evidence he’s hurt anyone since the helicarriers.”
“Some rather forcefully killed HYDRA bodies say otherwise.”
“Anyone who isn’t HYDRA,” Steve course corrects. “How many pains does SHIELD take to bring its enemies in alive? And doesn’t that prove you should be treating him as an ally, not an enemy?”
“We need to find out what he knows.”
“Oh, and you think he’ll talk to the people who keep locking him in a basement? Why would he? Let me in to see him!”
“You’re compromised on this.”
“You’re forgetting Coulson, I know where you live.”
Coulson looked gratifyingly puzzled. “I live here.”
“And I can make sure General Talbot finds that out.”
“That’s playing dirty.”
“You,” Steve says pettily, “should know.” Now the idea has occurred to him he’s not sure he shouldn’t tell Talbot anyway. Not while Bucky’s here though, he’s not handing Bucky to the military.
Bucky is leaning against the cell wall, looking mildly bored. That’s a relief.
“Hello, Rogers. I wondered if you’d show up.”
“I wasn’t going to just leave you here,” Steve says. “I’ll get you out. I’ve got leverage.” Coulson hasn’t guessed it was Steve who broke Bucky out before and Steve prefers to keep it that way, he also has no delusions there isn’t recording equipment in the cell.
“You are leverage,” says Bucky. “Sorry about this.” Then his left arm is around Steve’s neck and there’s a blade at Steve’s throat. A razor blade that flipped out of the index finger of his metal hand. He must be right about Steve’s lack of self-preservation, because Steve isn’t frightened at all, he just thinks ‘That’s clever.’
It works, because Coulson isn’t prepared to be the man who let Captain America die. They walk out together with the keys to a van that’s parked outside, and this time Bucky drives. His driving is insane, which Steve enjoys, because being Captain America is a pain sometimes, and one of those times is when you know you have reflexes faster than any regular human but have a responsibility not to get pulled over for speeding.
“You wouldn’t really have killed me, would you?” Steve says.
“Nah,” says Bucky. “Lots of messy blood for no gain.” It’s not quite the answer Steve was hoping for. “You probably can’t die from a cut throat, anyway,” Bucky adds. “I can’t.”
“Oh, Bucky,” is all Steve can say to that. Then he thinks to say, “Do you mind if I call you Bucky?”
“You can call me what you like,” says Bucky. “As long as it isn’t ‘The Asset’.”
Steve thinks murderous thoughts about HYDRA, which prompts him to say, “Coulson said you’d killed some HYDRA agents.”
“They were trying to take me back,” Bucky says flatly.
“I’m glad you killed them, then.” They drive in silence for a bit, and Steve watches Bucky’s profile. His face is eerily still, as though he’s out of practice at showing expression. “Where are we going?” Steve asks at last.
“Where would you like me to drop you?”
“You’re discarding me as a hostage already? I’m wounded. Should I have screamed louder?”
He thinks he sees Bucky’s mouth twitch. “You argue too much to be a good hostage. Also I’m on the run, and you’re not.”
“You can come back with me. Nobody’s going to be looking for you with Captain America.” Except Steve didn’t have anywhere to stay right now. Minor flaw.
“Everyone Coulson alerts will be looking for Captain America being held hostage by the Winter Soldier.” Damn. Steve hadn’t thought of that. Still Coulson was secrecy obsessed, ‘everyone’ would probably be a short list.
“You hungry?” Steve says. “I am. And I could do with a good night’s sleep, being taken hostage has that effect.”
There’s a long pause, then Bucky admits “I could eat.”
They find a drive through outlet selling fried chicken, and eat it in the stolen car. There’s a motel next to it, and Bucky shrugs, one-shouldered, when Steve suggests getting a room. Maybe, Steve thinks. Maybe.
“You’ll have to pay,” Bucky says. “Coulson took all the money I had on me.”
“You have money?” Bucky doesn’t look like he’s been starving or sleeping on the streets at least.
“I have a lot of HYDRA money. Figured they owe me seventy years of back pay.”
Steve pays in cash and gets a twin room. When they get inside, he turns the TV on at random to fill the silence. It’s what they call a romcom, really bad in Steve’s opinion, but he leaves it playing.
“I keep telling everyone, these kind of films were so much smarter when we were young,” Steve says. “Remember His Girl Friday?”
A long silence before Bucky says, “You went three times.”
“Four.” He’d had a thing for Rosalind Russell.
Bucky doesn’t undress, just takes his boots off. He took a gun from one of Coulson’s people, and Steve doesn’t know where it is now. To hell, with it, he decides, strips down to his underwear and gets under the covers.
“Night, Buck.”
Bucky doesn’t say ‘Are you really going to sleep in the same room as an assassin?’, but Steve can see him thinking it. He flips the light out anyway.
He wonders how much Bucky remembers. If he remembers the times they’d shared a bed, and more than a bed. They’d called it practice, they’d called it helping each other out, they’d never called it love. It had stopped the couple of times Bucky had seemed serious about a girl, and only happened once in Europe when Steve had been half in love with Peggy Carter. Then Steve had woken up and learned about Stonewall and Gay Pride, and wondered if they’d been born in this time how different would things have been? Because of all the things he’d lost the worst loss was Bucky.
Bucky is gone in the morning.
Of course.
Steve calls Coulson when he’s back in New York.
“Perhaps you’ll accept now,” Coulson begins.
“Like Hell! I’d have done the same thing in his place.”
“How did you know we had him?” Coulson says. The answer is JARVIS, but Steve feels no need to give it.
“Are you still holding Grant Ward without trial, Coulson?”
“Ward is –”
“Yeah, he is, but he should still get a fair trial.” Steve hangs up.
3
The third time…
Quite a lot happens before the third time. An anonymous call to local police, leading to small HYDRA base, most of the occupants still alive, tied up inside. A dump of files on the internet, implicating two judges and a real estate dealer, Steve believes Natasha when she says it wasn’t her. Another call, leading to a warehouse, stocked with weapons. A scientist handcuffed in his own lab, files listing his HYDRA funding on the bench, babbling about a man with a metal arm.
“He’s on our side,” Steve tells Coulson.
“Could be a blind,” Coulson says. “HYDRA would sacrifice a few pawns. Anyway we still need to interrogate him, find out what he knows, and how much of him is still programmed.”
“So you’re going to force him to have someone else rummage around in his brain. Wonderful idea. I can’t think of a better way to make an enemy.”
That’s the end of that conversation. The next time they speak, it’s Coulson calling to say he’d agreed to hand Ward over for trial, but the HYDRA agent had taken the chance to escape. If he’s hoping to get Steve to say he’s been wrong to push for Ward being tried he’s disappointed.
The third time Coulson’s team catch Bucky, Steve doesn’t bother arguing. He just uses knockout gas.
It’s a gas which doesn’t work on Steve, some sort of side effect of the serum. An AIM cell had tried it a while back and he’d taken some capsules for Banner to analyse, so he knows it doesn’t have any serious after effects on regular humans just a slight dizziness that soon wears off. Bruce hands the capsules back without question when Steve asks; Steve doesn’t tell him what he’s planning, but thinks Bruce might agree with their use. Bruce had never cared for SHIELD, and maybe Steve should have listened to his reasons more.
As Steve had hoped the gas doesn’t work on Bucky either. It’s the third time the two of them have stolen a SHIELD car, and Bucky has also grabbed an assortment of weaponry and a couple of laptops. Coulson’s determination to bring in the Winter Soldier is certainly costing him.
“We really ought to stop meeting like this,” Steve says, as he takes a road they haven’t taken on their previous two escapes from Coulson’s base, because he can.
Bucky says, “There’s a HYDRA base I’ve had my eye on. It’s more than a one man job. Care to join me?”
“You’re spoiling me, Bucky.” Steve’s grinning again.
They get takeout and book into another motel, so Bucky can brief him on the HYDRA base “I usually call the local cops,” he tells Steve, “HYDRA didn’t bother much with infiltration or recruitment at that level, and they’re pretty much public enemy number one at the moment, so most cops who aren’t HYDRA will want credit for catching them. You want to be sure, we can call the press as well.”
They take down the base, which has rather weirdly decided to disguise itself as a company selling kitchen units. It goes well enough, apart from Steve getting some minor burns when one of the HYDRA agents throws a modified toaster at him, and Bucky getting an electric shock from a built in microwave with a concealed computer interface and nasty defence system. It puts him in a foul mood, and he barely talks until they’re well clear.
When Bucky parks on the outskirts of the next town Steve speaks first. “You don’t have to, you know. You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I need to,” Bucky says, and his face is flat and expressionless again, but his eyes are intensely alive. “I know what you want, Steve, but… not yet. Not yet.”
“OK,” Steve says, and it’s hard, he can hardly get the words out, but this has to be Bucky’s choice, it has to. “You know where to find me?”
“Yeah,” Bucky says, “I know where to find you.”
4
The fourth time Coulson locks Steve up.
That’s a couple of weeks after Steve gets caught by a HYDRA cell in New Jersey. It’s a bit embarrassing, because these aren’t highly trained agents, they’re obviously just young idiots who’d decided to join HYDRA after seeing it on the news. In fact Steve’s trying not to seriously hurt them is what gets him into trouble, he allows one to get close enough to hit him with a gas that does work on supersoldiers.
What followed is very blurred, because the wannabes turn out to be just smart enough to keep him hooked up to an IV with sedative pumping through him, not that Steve’s aware of that at the time. The next thing he’s aware of clearly is Bucky swearing a blue streak beside him, in between the crack of gunfire.
“They’re just dumb kids,” Steve mumbles from where he was propped against a wall.
“These aren’t. These are fullblown HYDRA come to pick you up.” An explosion rocks the wall behind them. “Now this is just overkill. Stay down, Steve, I’m borrowing your shield.”
Steve tries to get up, he really does, but his legs aren’t co-operating and he hasn’t been so furious with his body since he got the serum. He’s still angrily battling them when Bucky gets back and, oh yeah, things have gone quieter.
“Time to move,” he hauls Steve up, putting the left arm round his chest, supported Steve can sort of walk and there’s daylight and some bodies with arrows in them, then suddenly the arm is withdrawn, and Steve is swaying on his feet, before there’s a flash of silver wings and Sam’s voice says “I got you.”
Bucky has vanished again by the time Steve can think clearly, leaving the shield. “I thought you’d be mad if I shot him,” says Barton.
Two weeks later Steve is kidnapped by SHIELD.
This is even more embarrassing, getting taken down by the gas twice in quick succession, although in Steve’s defence he could hardly have expected that SHIELD were going to gas him. He wakes up in a basement cell with Coulson and a killer headache.
“I’m sure you want to know why you’re here,” says Coulson.
What Steve wants is aspirin that works on him, but the chances of that are non-existent so he says, “Do tell.”
“The Winter Soldier came for you when you were captured by HYDRA.”
“James Barnes,” says Steve. “He has a name.”
“We worked out he must have access to some of the HYDRA channels. So do we, so we put out word that we have you and are willing to do an exchange. Not quite in those words, we wrapped it up a bit, but I’m sure he’ll get the reference.”
“You’re going to use the fact he’ll want to help me against him?” Oh, but Steve is angry now, angry that Coulson knows Bucky is back to himself enough to protect Steve no matter what, and that Coulson should dare to try to use that to bring him down. But Steve has learned since he was shooting his mouth off in back alleys, and letting that anger rip now won’t help.
“We need to interrogate him,” Coulson says. “And dismantle what remains of the programming.”
“Can you hear yourself? He’s not a machine.”
“I will take whatever measures I think necessary in the interests of security, Captain. We can’t afford kid gloves when dealing with HYDRA.”
“You haven’t learned anything from Project Insight, Coulson.” Steve snaps. “This is exactly why Fury should have left SHIELD buried. You’re still thinking in the same old rotten ways, making the same mistakes. HYDRA will be running you again in, oh, I give it ten years.”
He can tell he’s rocked Coulson and feels a sharp twist of triumph, but the man recovers. “We will not be infiltrated again. We have our methods.”
“If you don’t want to be a puppet of fascists, don’t act like a fascist. It’s not Asgardian science!”
The conversation doesn’t get any better, and Coulson leaves eventually. Steve sits on the cot they’ve given him because he’s too proud to pace and internally chants ‘don’t fall for it, don’t fall for it, don’t fall for it’ until one of Coulson’s junior agents (he should remember names but all he can think is how young they look) comes in with his supper and the news the Winter Soldier has surrendered. They don’t let Steve go yet. Steve’s pretty sure Coulson knows who has been breaking Bucky out by now, and they plan on moving Bucky before they let Steve loose.
Thing is, Steve has never really learned how to break out of places. The door is heavily reinforced, he can’t break it down without his shield, and he doesn’t exactly carry breakout kit concealed on him everywhere he goes. He never, well yes, actually, he does have a history of getting himself deliberately captured, but he always relied on other people kicking the door in.
So it’s a good thing form runs true, and around midnight Bucky breaks into his room. Bucky doesn’t say a word, just jerks his head towards the door. Outside there’s nobody around, presumably Coulson’s relatively small team are all sleeping. Steve mouths “Wait,” as they reach ground level, and spends a few moments looking for his shield. Once he’s found it propped against a desk he can’t resist scribbling Arrivederci on a note pad and drawing two waving stick figures.
The rest is routine by now, but Steve is still really angry, so when they get out he has an idea. The idea is to do with Coulson having at least one Quinjet.
“Can you fly one of those?” he asks Bucky.
Bucky eyes it for a moment. “Yes.”
“Good. It’s while since I stole one.”
Bucky seems to know what’s he’s doing, although the intent focus on his face temporarily makes Steve wonder if it was really a good idea, because that’s far too like the man he fought on the helicarrier. Once they’ve levelled off in the air though, some of that focus fades.
“So,” Steve says. “I guess that means you could have broke out on your own every time.”
Bucky flexes his metal hand. “This can do all sorts. They couldn’t work out how to disable it, it shocks people who try to mess around. I could have got out. I appreciate the breakouts though.” He turns to look at Steve directly. “There’s nobody else who’d do that for something like me. So thanks.”
“Any time,” Steve says. Then, “How come you kept on getting caught by Coulson’s people anyway? Nobody else could find you.”
“The first time I was having an off day. They got lucky. After that.” He turns his attention back to the controls. “After that I might have kept on letting them catch me, to see if you’d turn up again.”
Steve tries to make a quip, but his throat chokes up. He wants to say, ‘I’ll always come for you,’ but they both know he didn’t the time it mattered most.
They land the jet at a military base in Nevada. Steve had recovered his phone at the same time as his shield, and he sends a text to Stark so SHIELD will know where to get their plane back. Coulson has somehow got back on sort of speaking terms with the government, though the thought of him trying to explain who stole his plane is pretty funny.
The base personnel are rather surprised, so they make an extremely rapid exit.
“So,” Steve says. “I guess we’re both on the run now.”
Bucky snorts. “Like they’re going to arrest Captain America. Even if you did just steal a plane.”
“Coulson will probably try kidnapping me again though. And next time he’ll be more careful.”
There’s a long pause, before Bucky says, “OK, maybe I’m stuck with you.”
Steve ditches his phone, buys a new one, and calls Sam to get him to mail the false IDs Natasha got him a while ago, one for Bucky and one for himself, as well as the bank card that gives access to the emergency account she set up. Then for a change he hires a car instead of stealing it.
“I’m not him,” Bucky says.
“OK,” Steve says. “But I’d like to get to know who you are.”
Over the next weeks they stay in a lot of cheap motels. Bucky lets Steve sleep in the same room, but makes Steve promise never to try and wake him in the night. “I don’t want to have to find out if you can survive a broken neck,” he says, his eyes so dark Steve takes the warning to heart. Bucky’s nightmares prove to be almost silent. He doesn’t cry out or thrash, but sometimes Steve hears his breath harsh and rapid, and he hates being powerless but it’s something, it’s quite a lot, that Bucky trusts him enough to be able to sleep with Steve in the same room. Even after Steve puts his fist through the wall one night, reliving the Chitauri attack.
They eat in a lot of cheap diners, sometimes three a night, because that’s the drawback of enhanced metabolisms, which makes Steve want to ask how Bucky managed in the war. Was he always hungry? Shamed, Steve realises he probably was. Bucky reads a lot, which surprises Steve, although perhaps it shouldn’t since Bucky always loved to read, although in the past he’d been a big fan of science-fiction. Now he reads long nineteenth century novels, picking up cheap second-hand paper backs. Steve tries a couple of times to get him to talk about them, but it doesn’t work, Bucky just says “Read them yourself if you’re interested.” Bucky’s never unarmed, even taking knives into the shower, and he’s very careful with his weapons, checking the guns, cleaning and oiling which is the Bucky of the war showing through, Steve is sure, remembering the Winter Soldier had discarded weapons like litter.
They don’t touch much, there’s no avoiding some accidental contact, two big men in small rooms, but they don’t have more contact than they can help. They don’t talk about the past a lot either, so Steve still doesn’t know how much Bucky remembers. If he lies awake listening to Bucky breathe, remembering other nights, it’s better not to say anything.
Steve suggests they do some tourist things, and Bucky shrugs, but he doesn’t refuse. They go to Yellowstone National Park, and it’s amazing. Steve takes a ridiculous number of photographs. They go to Niagara Falls. Steve says, “You know, I bet I could survive going over those.”
Bucky scowls. “Why would you want to?” And when he thinks about it Steve doesn’t want to. Sure it would be a rush, but the water will be really cold.
They don’t go to the Grand Canyon. Steve had set out to go there after he was done fighting aliens, but he hadn’t been able to, because the Grand Canyon had been the place they were going together, after the war, the promise to each other they were going home; he couldn’t face it on his own back then, and he doesn’t suggest it now. They don’t go to any battlefields either. They do go to Las Vegas, because Steve has been wanting to check out the tinsel glitter for a while now. And it doesn’t take long to get into a poker game, which ends with Bucky cleaning everyone out because he now has a completely impenetrable poker face.
Afterwards he asks Steve if there’s a fund for the families of the SHIELD people who were killed resisting HYDRA. There is, although there have been a lot of problems, because in some cases it was hard to tell which side someone had been on.
“Can you get the money to it?” Bucky says. “I killed a lot of SHIELD pilots.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Steve says.
“They’re still dead.”
“I’ll get the money to Sam,” Steve says, because what else can he say.
The tourist trips are less than half of it and the other half is following HYDRA. Most of the bases they visit are abandoned, many of the trails are dead ends, after six weeks Steve doesn’t feel they are any closer to their goal.
“There’s a HYDRA a brainwashing technique,” Bucky tells him the second night out. “It’s been used on former SHIELD agents, among others. I’m trying to get a line on it, see if it can be undone.”
“Is it what they used on you?” It takes an effort, but Steve keeps his tone matter of fact.
“No, though there are similarities. What they used on me tends to kill people without serum.”
“We should bring someone else in,” Steve puts up a hand hastily. “Only from a distance. But I don’t have the scientific knowledge to deal with this and I’m willing to bet you don’t either.”
“I passed what I knew to SHIELD.” Bucky evidently sees Steve staring. “Why not? I don’t like them, but they don’t like HYDRA. And it passed the time while they were interrogating me.”
“Did they hurt you?” Steve says sharp and fast.
“No, they didn’t even come in the room. I don’t know whether they’ve done anything about it. they’re a small outfit, I couldn’t give them much, and I’m not sure they believed me anyway.”
Steve passes the information to Tony Stark in the end. He works out a system, but he’s pretty certain Stark could find them if he wanted to do so, in fact he should probably thank the man for not doing so at some point. This kind of thing isn’t really Tony’s field, or Bruce Banner’s either, but it’s not like he can think of anyone else’s he’s certain isn’t HYDRA.
Bucky disappears occasionally, when Steve sees him go it’s always with his face set and expressionless, he never says where he’s going. He always comes back, even the time he goes missing for three days after a news broadcast, which leaves Steve completely strung out wondering if he should stay at the cheap motel room or start searching, getting no sleep at all until Bucky returns. Either Steve looks worse than he knows, or Bucky still has the ability to read him like a book, because he takes one long look at Steve before his shoulders sag and he says, “I’m sorry. Next time, I’ll leave a note or something.”
“You could text,” Steve suggests. He hasn’t seen Bucky with a phone, but he has a tablet and spends hours on it, and though Steve doesn’t know what he’s doing from the cold frown of concentration he’s not just surfing the web.
“I just… I get angry. Well, I’m always angry, but sometimes it’s so bad I can’t trust myself to be around anyone.”
“I know someone who might give you some tips,” Steve says.
There’s a base that’s not quite deserted and a couple of stray HYDRA agents who try to use a thing like an electric cattle prod on Bucky; one of them gets a smashed kneecap and the other a broken arm and collar bone, both from Bucky. Steve has to fight himself not to make it worse for them, but he wins and they leave the two agents cuffed for the police. Bucky won’t speak on the journey out, his expression flat and dead as when he’d asked Steve ‘Who the hell’s Bucky?’ on the roadway, and when they get to the next motel room he locks the door of the tiny bathroom and stays there for hours. Steve has no idea what to do, whether trying to talk to him through the door would make it worse, so he tries to limit himself “I’m here if I can help.” It sounds stilted and useless. When Bucky does come out he looks exhausted.
“I hate it,” he says. “Being electrocuted. Really hate it.” Steve, remembering the file, has a pretty good idea why. Anything he might say feels incredibly fatuous, in the end he goes over and reaches out a hand.
“Is this OK?” Bucky doesn’t say anything, but he does take hold of Steve’s forearm with his right hand , and clasps it hard, Steve mirrors the gesture, and after a moment Bucky leans into him, resting his shoulder against Steve’s, although he doesn’t relax, he doesn’t pull away when Steve carefully rests his other hand on Bucky’s back.
“I think you’re doing incredibly well,” Steve tells him. “You are one tough bastard.”
They find a printed list of names, presumably HYDRA needed to keep track of who was brainwashed and who was a willing recruit somehow. Bucky takes it, so it’s not until they are back at the latest cheap hotel room that Steve runs down the list, although he’d tried to brace himself there’s no preventing the twist in his gut.
“Kara Palamas.” Bucky turns to look at him, but doesn’t say anything and Steve wonders whether he should explain, but there’s so little to say. They had shared a mission and discovered a joint love of Superman. Not much. But she was a decent person who hadn’t treated Steve like he had no more business being real than Superman had, and Steve, remembering the horrific blankness of the Winter Soldier, feels ill. “We’ll find a way to help them,” he says “There has to be a way.”
“We’ll keep looking,” Bucky says. “And if we send a copy of that list to Stark at least people will know it wasn’t their fault.”
Steve wonders if Bucky believes that of himself, but he still doesn’t care to ask.
Steve is in the shower when the hot water suddenly fails and turns sharply cold. He ends up cowering against the tiled wall, waiting for freezing water to creep up and up until it entered his lungs. The scientists tell him he froze before he drowned, but he remembers the certainty he would drown, and the unprepared horror, he’d thought he’d accepted death but when it came to it he’d been aghast this new, miraculous, body couldn’t save him.
When he’s aware again the water is switched off and Bucky is saying, “Steve, just breathe. Steady. In. Out. In. Out. You’ll be fine. Just breathe.”
“M’OK,” Steve manages to mumble.
“I know,” says Bucky, and he sounds as though he means it.
They find some more material on an insufficiently wiped computer which neither of them can make much out of, but Steve hopes it will mean something to Bruce and Tony because he has to keep hoping. “There’s got to be a way,” Bucky says, and this time Steve is sure Bucky isn’t just saying it for him.
The thing is, Steve had tried to believe the man he had known might be gone. Had tried to think that even if this man was wholly new he was still a person worth befriending. But he can’t accept it any longer. No, he hasn’t seen the charming Bucky, who the girls loved back in Brooklyn. But he sees the sniper of the war time missions every day, and sometimes the Bucky of the harder times before the war, putting up a tough front to hide the strain when Steve was ill again, or there was too little money, or both. There are new sides to him now, as well as some of the old. But he is Bucky.
½
They’re in a bar, because Steve still likes to drink, even though he can’t get drunk, and Bucky doesn’t object. They are in a bar, and there are four big men hassling two other men who aren’t harming anyone, they’re just staring into each other’s eyes a lot. Steve loses his temper in a way his old skinny self would have been proud of, but doesn’t punch the men, he grabs Bucky by the shoulders and plants a kiss smack on his lips, which certainly distracts the bullies. Naturally this leads to a bar fight, which gives Steve a bad moment but it turns out Bucky does know how to hold back his full strength and moderate his moves. Then the cops turn up, and naturally it’s Steve and Bucky that get arrested.
Then they get a lecture from the cops about public indecency, and Steve sees the familiar glint a second before Bucky grabs him and plants an even more enthusiastic kiss than the one Steve had given in the bar.
So they end up in a cell, although Steve does get to make one phone call first. He calls Sam, because Natasha would probably be better suited to getting him released but is a lot more erratic at answering the phone.
And now they’ve kissed Steve finds his body is electrically aware of Bucky’s, in a way he hadn’t been these past months, even when he’d been thinking about the sex, he’d thought he’d remembered but the feel of it, raw and real, had told him how much he’d forgotten.
“So,” he says, careful to crowd Bucky as little as possible in the small cell, while also not looking like he was trying to get as far away as possible. “Say no if you want, but I did get the sense you were enjoying that as much as I was.” The uncomfortably tight state of his pants doesn’t let him forget how much he’d enjoyed it.
They share a look. It’s a long look. It’s possibly verging on spontaneous combustion (well for all Steve knows that could be another side effect of the serum) when Bucky says, “I am not doing it in a cell, Rogers. I’m particularly not doing it in a cell for the first time in seventy years.”
“Later?” Steve says.
“Later.”
Of course he assumes Bucky could break them out, in fact Steve could probably break out on his own as the cell wasn’t set up for supersoldiers. But although they haven’t been recognised so far you never know, and ‘Captain America jailbreaks,’ is a headline Steve doesn’t really want to have to experience, although ‘Captain America gets in fight with homophobes’ is definitely one he can live with. Anyway he doesn’t ask and Bucky doesn’t offer.
They play Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Phillips until Tony Stark shows up with a smug expression.
“OK, you get the gloating rights this time,” Steve concedes.
“I would never be so petty,” says Stark. “The fact I’m recording this is entirely in the interests of history.”
“Nice beard,” says Bucky. “Makes you look like Mephistopheles.”
“Thanks. Nice arm.”
They’re leaving just as Coulson arrives, with a determined stride and several of his team in tow. Steve has to give the man credit for being up to date. He thinks for a moment of flipping Coulson off, then has a better idea and pulls Bucky into a highly melodramatic kiss which lasts even after they tumble into the backseat of Tony’s car together, until Bucky pulls away, insisting, “I’m not doing this in the back of a car either!”
“Steamy!” says Stark. “If I’d known I’d have brought the car with pull down blinds and a double bed in the back.”
“Sorry to be clichéd,” says Steve, “but let’s get out of here.”
At which point they discover the car that Stark did bring can fly, and Bucky’s grin is straight out of 1943.
“I can’t believe you called Stark!” Steve says to Sam later that evening after winning an argument with Tony about whether they are going to Sam’s house or to Stark’s tower. They find Sam and Natasha sharing a couch and watching reruns of Cheers.
Sam shrugs. “I figured this one might get a bit awkward. And since jailbreaks aren’t my area, I called the person most likely to pull off bribery and corruption.”
“What did he offer them?” says Bucky with what sounds like real interest.
“I hate to think,” says Steve. “If they did it for Iron Man autographs and limited edition action figures we’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Shut up, all of you, I like Cheers,” Natasha says.
Natasha has already bagged the only guest room. “It’s fine,” Steve tells Sam. “We’ll put the couch cushions on the floor. It’ll be fun.” Sam gives him a long suffering look but doesn’t argue. Bucky doesn’t either.
“So,” Steve says, when it’s quiet, and the lights have all gone off, “Are you OK with doing it on Sam’s floor? Because I’ve been thinking about this solidly for twenty-four hours.”
“You sure know how to treat your dates right, Rogers.”
“Yeah,” Steve agrees. “Spend the night in a cell, then get a ride in a flying car. You’ve got to admit, it’s different.” And he feels Bucky laughing softly against him.
Epilogue
Nick Fury arrives two days later, while the four of them are having breakfast. Steve is still mad at Fury, for a number of reasons, but he has to hand it to the man, he takes Bucky pointing a gun right between his eyes with remarkable cool.
“You can stand down, Barnes,” he says. “Is the coffee hot?”
“I shot you, didn’t I?” Bucky says. He lowers the gun but doesn’t put it away. Sam pushes a mug of coffee across to Fury.
“Yeah, and it hurt like a bastard. But then I didn’t notice for years that half of SHIELD was HYDRA, and that let HYDRA go right on torturing you, so I’m ready to call it even.”
“Then perhaps you’ll call Coulson off,” Steve says irritably. “Did you start SHIELD up again so it could chase down good men?”
“Coulson was going to try to keep SHIELD alive whether I gave him permission or not. Man’s got an obsessive streak even I think is overdone. Giving him some encouragement meant what remains of HYDRA in the US would be kept busy.”
“You put Coulson in charge of SHIELD as a diversion?” Steve can’t tell whether Natasha is shocked or admiring.
“SHIELD is a shell. Coulson’s not a well man, but forcing him to quit would probably kill him. I couldn’t put him in charge of anything bigger, not in his condition. His team know the situation.”
That doesn’t make Steve less angry, especially with Fury, but it does put things in a different light.
“The fact you haven’t killed any of Coulson’s people, Barnes, and the information you and Rogers have been sending Stark, is evidence enough you’re on our side. You’ve had the rope and haven’t hanged anyone, so I’ll give Coulson notice that you’re part of the Avengers Initiative now.”
“I haven’t signed up for any Initiative,” Bucky says.
“So you go right on doing what you have been doing, but have a few more bragging rights. In the right company.”
“Is there a badge?” says Sam. “If there’s a badge, I want one.”
“Ask Stark,” Fury grunts. “Meantime, I’ve got some leads for you.” He put a flash drive down on the table. “All on here. Also a number for Barton, if you need backup. He says he’s sorry for losing touch, Romanoff. A dog ate his phone.”
“The sad thing,” Natasha says to Sam, “is that’s probably not a lie.”
“We choose what leads we follow,” Steve insists.
“I’m counting on it,” Fury says.
So Fury’s still a bastard, but Steve doesn’t try to stop Bucky as he reaches for the drive.
“You know I said I wasn’t him,” Bucky says one night. “I think I can be wrong sometimes.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Steve promises.
They get to the Grand Canyon eventually.