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Germany, 1940s
The wind picks up as Jack hovers just above the zip-line, watching Steve and the rest of the Howling Commandoes getting ready to slide down the cable onto a train.
He’d been tailing Steve for a while now. He’d had too much free time on his hands, too much time to think about past wrongs, too much time to think about why people couldn’t ever see him, so he’d picked a person and followed them around.
It turned out that Steve was a very interesting person.
He’d ignored the complaints of cold as he hovered in the rooms Steve visited; he’d pretended to meet Bucky, Steve’s best friend; he’d had imaginary conversations with Steve and his team of Howling Commandoes.
He didn’t know all of their names, but that was okay. He didn’t need to.
He’d followed Steve’s progress throughout Germany, taking out the rogue science division of the Nazis, blowing up stuff and rescuing people.
Just Jack’s kind of person, although Jack didn’t blow stuff up, since fire wasn’t really his thing.
But there he was, balancing lightly on the cable that stretched over the train tracks. Someone snapped a pocketwatch shut, and the first person dropped off, hanging for their dear life by their fingertips, dropping down onto the train when it was right beneath them, flattening to the roof quietly and efficiently.
Two others join – that is Bucky, right? Yeah, that's Bucky – on the roof of the train, breaking in and entering with barely any noise.
He knows from the first gunshot that things aren’t going well.
He zips along the outside of the train – not quite pushing his top speeds yet, but getting there – and tries to look in the windows, but all he sees is his own reflection in the foggy glass. He growls to himself and tries to land on top of the roof of the train, but the airflow on the top of the train is enough to send Jack flying.
He pours on a burst of speed as the first piece of the train comes off, and there was Bucky, holding onto the train by his fingertips, swinging wildly as Steve tried to reach out a hand.
But then he’s falling, away into the ravine, and Jack glances at Steve before diving after Bucky, snagging the straps of his vest.
While he can’t touch Bucky himself, he can grab his vest; he tries to keep the two of them afloat as the train speeds off, tries to keep them from hitting the ground too hard.
But his wind can only do so much; Bucky’s about twice as big as Jack, and taller too; and Jack does his best to slow the man’s fall as they tumble down.
They hit the ground none too gently, Jack stumbling away from Bucky, pains shooting up his legs from his awkward landing.
But then something hits Bucky’s arm – a piece of the train that had obviously fallen off, smashing Bucky’s arm and causing him to cry out in pain.
Jack watches with wide eyes as blood starts to seep onto the snow, too shocked and startled to really do anything about it.
But before he can, people wearing white coats pour from behind the trees; some of them are wearing leather jackets and those people remove the piece of metal from Bucky’s arm.
Poor Bucky cries out in pain, passing out from blood loss soon after.
“The process has already started,” one of the German scientists says, a heavy accent coating his words, and Jack moves closer to hear. “Tie up that wound, his arm is useless now.”
“No!” Jack yells, but his cry goes unheard, and Bucky is dragged onto a pallet waiting nearby, covered by a tarp with snow on it, and he’s pulled away.
Jack frowns and follows the Germans, trying to tell them that Steve’s on the train, Steve’d want to know that Bucky was alive, Steve should know–
But the scientists ignore him, just like everyone else, and tote Bucky’s prone body off. They discuss tests and procedures, and if it hadn’t been for the bit of German he’d picked up over the years, he wouldn’t have known what they were saying.
Once the first scientist says something about mind-wiping him, about turning him into a perfect soldier, about turning him to the Hydra cause, Jack’s eyes widen and he stumbles to a halt, watching them take Bucky to the Moon-knows-where, to experiment on him and turn him against Steve, to turn him against the fight he fought for.
Should I have just let him die? he asks himself, because he from what he’s learned about Bucky is that he’s fiercely loyal, and protective, and would rather die than fight against America.
He shakes this thought off and chases after the Hydra goons.
The facility is underground, made of cement and metal, sleek and efficient and cold and dangerous.
Jack watches as they drag Bucky to an operation table, as they operate on his arm without anesthesia, as they bolt a metal arm in place.
The temperature of the room drastically lowers as Jack screams along with Bucky.
Poor, poor Bucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the doctors snaps at a goon to turn the temperature up.
Jack huddles into himself, trying to forget Bucky’s raw wound. He’s sedated heavily, but still screams in his sleep, as they perform tests on his blood, as they run diagnostics on his arm.
Bucky comes to and strangles the nearest doctor.
“Hello,” Arnim Zola – and apparently that’s the creepy doctor’s name – says. He babbles on about perfect weapons and Hydra and heads, and forces Bucky into a chair, says that everything will be okay, and Jack doesn’t believe a moment of it as they wipe his mind, as they force him into a cryo freeze tube.
Jack’s aware of the scientists muttering to themselves as the tube doesn’t freeze fast enough, since Jack’s diverting the cold into his own body, since Jack’s doing everything he can to keep Bucky alive, since Jack’s chance at letting Bucky die had disappeared into his wind.
Iraq, 2014
Should I have just let him die? Jack asks himself again, even though he’s had over seventy years to think about this already.
He watches the Winter Soldier – Bucky, he reminds himself – scope out his next targets, tries to understand the politics behind the assassinations.
“Bucky?” he asks, quietly. “Hey, Bucky.”
Bucky tilts his head and rubs his temple like he has a headache, but other than that Jack gets no response.
He doesn’t want to imagine the inside of Bucky’s head. Where the Winter Soldier had taken over, pressing what memories he had left away, where love and compassion had turned into cold killing instinct.
Poor, poor Bucky.
The Winter Soldier loads the bullets into his gun. There’s a light buzzing in his head, Alexander Pierce ordering him, saying it’ll be good for the world, to get rid of this man and his wife, even if he doesn't know why.
He ignores the cold seeping into the air wherever he steps. There’s a reason he’s called the Winter Soldier, since the lingering effects of the cryo had followed his every step, even though the scientists had run every test and counter-test and nothing had been abnormal.
It’s hot in Iraq, and he’s glad for the cold.
The buzzing continues, even after he does his mission, even after he’s picked up by his handlers.
He’s forced into the cryo tube and finally the buzzing stops, and the freeze as slow as always, and the last thing he sees is a teenager with white hair yelling at him, blue hoodie-clad arms pounding at the window desperately.
The Winter Soldier writes it off as a hallucination; why would Hydra let a kid into their base?
New York, 2015
Jack freezes as Bucky walks into the Avengers Tower, nearly dropping from his hover at the sight of Bucky in jeans and a hoodie, a pair of gloves covering his hands.
Why would Bucky be here? Why would – oh.
Bucky glances around furtively and gruffly tells the panicked lady at the desk that he’s here for Steve Rogers, that he’s a friend and he just wants to see him.
The lady calms down somewhat, letting him pass without calling security.
Jack shoots up the outside of the building, tumbling through the Quinjet dock, out of breath and startled, pressing himself to the wall and curling in on himself.
“What’s got you in a flurry?” Natasha says, with a light smirk at his pun.
Jack shakes his head, quick and fast. “Sam – Steve – get them back here, quick, please, please please.”
“Why?” Natasha says, cocking her head. “Oh. You think you’ve found Bucky?”
Natasha had filled him in, only talking once Jack had asked questions, telling what few leads they had, and unleashing him on the world, seeing if Jack could have more success where they hadn’t.
He shakes his head and gulps, curling in on himself when FRIDAY announces the arrival of a guest, and Natasha’s hand goes to her hip, where a gun’s concealed in her sweats.
The gun is out as the elevator door slides open.
Jack panics, unsure what to do. He knows Bucky, knows what dilemmas he faces, knows that the Winter Soldier tears apart his mind.
Bucky sweeps the room with a cautious eye, spooking slightly at Natasha’s gun, his gaze landing finally on Jack, who’s trying to make himself unseen, even though he knows everybody who steps foot in the Tower can see him.
“Who are you?” he says gruffly, like he hasn’t used his voice in a long time, his voice wavering slightly on the you.
Jack tries to keep his own voice from wavering as he says “I’m sorry,” and ducks out of the window, staff gripped tightly in hand.
Steve comes back quickly, Sam with him.
“Why’d you-” he starts to ask as he storms into the main common room, but halts once he sees Natasha braiding Bucky’s hair. “Oh.”
“There you are,” Natasha says, stretching languidly. “Jack’s in a tizzy, go check on him, huh? I’ll introduce Sam to Bucky.”
Her voice is lilting and soft, but her eyes are commanding, and Steve nods and heads up to Jack’s room.
The ice is out of control; the frost patterns splay across the walls, sharp and angled instead of soft and fernlike, and that’s how Steve knows Jack’s upset.
His breath hangs in the air and his boots crunch against the frost on the floor. He’s still dressed in full tactical gear, and he’s glad, because it’s cold in Jack’s room.
Jack’s pacing across the walls – horizontal, yes, and perpendicular to the ice-blue walls, muttering under his breath. He glances up after one of Steve’s particularly loud crunches and startles, falling to the ground and picking himself back up.
“Hi.”
Okay, Steve thinks, he can work with this. “Hi, son.”
Jack arches an eyebrow. “I’m three times older than you.”
“And now you pull the age card?” Steve asked indignantly. “Not when Tony’s teasing me?”
“Nope,” Jack says, but it lacks its usual flippancy.
“Okay, what’s up?”
“Huh?”
“You’re acting funny, kid.”
Jack freezes. “Oh.”
“Why?”
“Um, no reason, I just-”
“Why.”
Jack flops down on his bed. “Um, I have my reasons.”
“You’ve encountered him in the past?”
“Um, yeah, you could say that.” Jack pauses, flips back to his feet, and resumes pacing horizontally, the grip on his staff tight. A lethargic breeze swirls through the room, keeping Jack steady on the wall. “You remember the train, right?”
Steve frowns. “How do you know about that?”
Jack waves him off. “Because I was there, but that’s not the point.”
Steve makes a noise accurately described as rage. “What do you mean, that’s not the point?” he snarls. “You were there! You could have saved him!”
“I tried!” Jack shouts back. “I tried, I tried so hard,” he says again, crumpling in on himself. “I tried to slow him down, but I couldn’t stop him, he’s too heavy, you know that, I tried, Steve, I tried so hard.”
Jack’s eyes start to well up as he looks at Steve, scared and tired. “I tried.”
“I-” Something in Steve breaks, and he kneels next to Jack in this cold room, breath making puffy white clouds in the air. “Okay, Jack. I understand.”
Jack curls up even tighter, and Steve reminds himself that Jack’s just a kid, even with three hundred years of experience. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, and he starts crying. “I couldn’t stop them, I couldn’t slow them down, they took him, they did all that stuff to him, I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t say anything, do you know how it feels to be powerless?”
Steve swallows and puts an arm around Jack, pulling him close. “It’s okay,” Steve says, because it kind of is, Jack had tried and that was all that mattered. “It’s okay.”
“But it’s not,” Jack says. “I couldn’t do anything.” His white hair brushes his knees and he shudders, rocking back and forth. “And I feel so bad. Would he have wanted me to let him fall?” The teenager peers up at Steve, eyes bright with tears. “Would it have been better if I had let him die?”
“I don’t know,” Steve says, because he doesn’t.
The tears freeze on Jack’s pants. “I’m sorry, Steve.”
“It’s okay,” Steve says, pulling Jack tighter, even though it’s like hugging an ice pack in the middle of winter. “It’s okay.”
It’s not really okay, but neither of them say that.
Steve retreats to the common room, leaving Jack alone for the moment. He’ll come down when he wants to, and Steve wanted to see how Sam and Natasha and Bucky got along.
They’re laughing and talking, swapping stories about him, and Steve freezes.
He doesn’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
“-and then he said, I could do this all day,” Bucky says, with a wheezing laugh.
Sam and Natasha grin and laugh along, and Natasha says, “How ‘bout that time-”
“I really hate it when you guys tell stupid stories about me,” Steve says, and Sam smiles and Natasha quirks an eyebrow.
“But this is a good one!” she says.
“If it’s about the glitter in the milk cartons, no it’s not.”
“That glitter was the best,” Sam said. “It looked like dicks.”
Steve blushes, and Natasha crows with laughter.
Jack knows he’s avoiding Bucky.
He also knows Bucky’s looking for him.
The air ducts are a great place to hide, especially for someone as small as he is (he’ll have to thank Clint for the pro tip later), so he unscrews the vent cover with a piece of metal.
It takes a while, but he finally gets in.
He sticks his staff down the back of his hoodie and shirt. It’s not comfortable, but it gets the big hook at the end out of the way, and it’s easier to crawl with both his hands free. The wood is cold against his skin, and Jack shimmies forwards.
He consults his memory more than once. Three times, he has to freeze fans temporarily so he can squeeze by without being diced by the blades.
Jack feels bad, because Tony’s always complaining about how ice melts into water which damages his electronics, but shakes it off as he keeps moving.
He approaches the team common area quietly, peering through the vent, looking at Sam and Natasha and Steve and Bucky.
Steve’s in the middle of asking Bucky something. “-know who Jack is?”
“Jack?” Bucky looks confused, then anguished. “I don’t know.”
“Jack Frost,” Sam supported. “White hair, blue eyes, maybe seventeen?”
Bucky’s eyes widen fractionally and Jack has to slap a hand over his mouth to stop himself from gasping. Had Bucky seen him before today? It didn’t seem possible, but…
“I don’t know who he is,” Bucky says, raking his flesh hand through his greasy hair. “I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe if he came out of the air ducts he could tell you,” Natasha says, and Jack backpedals mentally. What?
“Yes, Jack, I do know you’re up there,” she says.
“I can’t unscrew the cover from the inside,” he says sheepishly.
Sam rolls his eyes.
Steve drags over the coffee table and Natasha hands him a screwdriver from one of her pockets, and Steve undoes the vent cover and steps away.
Steve’s eyes are soft, apologetic, and Jack nods before he tumbles out of the duct, landing softly on his feet.
Bucky frowns.
“You were there, weren’t you?” he asks. “Why didn’t you do anything?”
And somehow it strikes him that Bucky hadn’t asked how he’d stayed seventeen for seventy years, or how he’d gotten into Hydra, but why he didn’t do anything.
“I can’t touch people who don’t believe in me,” he says, with a half-hearted shrug. “I’ve been alone for three hundred years.”
“Can you prove it?” Sam asks. “Maybe it’d make him feel better.”
Natasha’s nodding, already moving to disable the wards on the building that allow nonbelievers to see him. “I’ll call a pizza guy,” she says.
“Hawaiian?” Jack asks.
“Sure.”
The moments spent waiting for the pizza are tense, awkward.
Bucky’s studying Jack, eyes sharp and wary, and Jack tosses his staff from hand to hand as he paces along the backs of the couches. Sam leans against the wall, wing-backpack at his feet, and Natasha and Steve recline on one of the couches.
The pizza guy is told to come up by the lady at the front desk; he steps into the room moments after, scanning the room to see Captain America, the guy they called the Falcon, the Black Widow, and a creepy guy with a metal arm.
“Um, one Hawaiian for Jack?”
He doesn’t notice Jack walk through him.
As Captain America pays, he gives the pizza guy a sad look, like he’d kicked a puppy. The pizza guy frowns when he realizes that Steve’s focusing on a point just to the left of him.
The pizza guy leaves, thoroughly confused.
Jack whimpers as he passes through the unsuspecting pizza guy.
There was a reason he’d had Stark put up those wards – he hated hated hated walking through people and being walked through. It’s like freezing his body, shattering it into pieces, and then reassembling them on the other side of the person.
It sucks.
Steve gives him a tight hug after the dude leaves with a twenty in his hand and a confused expression. “Are you okay, Jack?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” He wriggles out of Steve’s grip and jumps to the back of the couch again – seeking the high point, keeping himself removed but also able to help when he needed to.
It was a nice thought.
Natasha types in the code to reboot the wards, and Jack shudders once more.
“See why I couldn’t help you?” he says miserably. “The doctors didn’t care, they didn’t know who I was, so they couldn’t see me.”
“How come I saw you then? Outside the cryo tube?”
Jack shrugs. “You were so desperate for anybody to get you out of there that you were willing to believe anything, but once you got out you forgot.”
Bucky stares at the ground between his feet.
“I’m sorry, Bucky,” the spirit says, small and very sorry-sounding. “I tried.”
It sounds hollow, even to Jack, who curls into himself a bit but keeps walking.
“You tried, punk.” Bucky shrugs, his non-metal shoulder going up and down in a jerky motion. “Good enough.”
Jack deflates a bit, relieved.
“Aren’t you the reason they called me the Winter Solider? ‘Cause it always got real cold around me?”
Jack winces. “Oops.”