Work Text:
"Please stop, you're scaring me"
I can't help this awful energy
Goddamn right, you should be scared of me
Who is in control?
Halsey - Control
This mission he’s on… It doesn’t sit right with him. There’s no violence. He doesn’t have to take this Captain America guy out. He has to somehow take him in and get the guy to trust him, before taking him out. The whole mission has him on edge just a little. More than he’d want. More than he can show.
It isn’t just the mission itself. It’s the clothing they’ve given him too. They’re soft. Gentle. And it isn’t that he misses the rough feel of the leather shirt or the face mask; to say he'd miss it meant that he'd been something more than indifferent towards what he wore. To miss it meant that he had emotions. Machines don't feel. Weapons don’t feel. Which is why it doesn’t make sense to send a weapon to first chat up a guy. So, Captain America? He must be dangerous.
James scowls at the apartment building ahead of him. There is no apparent security. No cameras. Just a kid near the entrance. He shrugs on the jacket that Rumlow had handed him earlier - smooth, supple leather jacket that's cold to the touch - and puts on the knitted blue mittens; although they should know he doesn't get cold. That he doesn't need the jacket or mittens. James's hands go to the dog tags on the chain around his neck, habit. Way to ease the tension in his shoulder. The sound of metal grating against metal frays his nerves and shuts out the pain in his shoulder. Machines don't feel.
“Smile,” Rumlow grunts. “Act human for once, will you? Guy's name is Steve Rogers.” James forces a small smile on his face, going for relaxed. He isn't programmed for this but he's seen the people around him act this way. Admittedly, not often around him, but they sometimes relax when they don't know he is there. “Be civil with him at first. Now, go.”
James doesn't even acknowledge that but goes through the sliding doors of the building. Near the entrance a young kid – although he must be at least eighteen – sits absorbed in a book about Mathematics. Once he notices James though, he puts it down and comes over to greet him. He's got thick rimmed glasses and a mostly unkempt appearance. It's only ten PM, but the kid looks like he is ready to crash into bed and sleep until noon.
“Who're you here for?” he asks, youthful arrogance in his voice but barely hiding the awkwardness. Smile.
“Eh, Steve Rogers,” James replies. Steve. The name ring odd in his head. Remembered, but barely. No face attached to it. No full memories. Just familiarity and a vague scent of charcoal, the sounds of it scraping against paper. And a sentence. I had him on the ropes. He shakes his head, willing the voice away. It doesn't fit in this timeline. Not here. Belongs to the years past. The memories were distractions, so HYDRA took them.
“Is he expecting you?” the guy asks, almost surprised. He really has no facial filters, does he?
“No, just an old friend dropping by.” The boy – James can't see him as a man; he looks too young, still wet behind the ears – doesn't even matter, really.
“Okay. Just give me a sec, gotta make sure he's okay with the visit. Who shall I say is here for him?” James nods. Sure, the place doesn't have any guards or security cameras, but they're not as loose as could be either. It took him too long to remember his own name. Seconds. Why is it this difficult?
“James Barnes.” Manners, Asset. Keep 'em. “Thank you.” The kid disappears into the little office and James just waits, toying with the dog tags again. Old. Faded name, there's some rust on 'em and the chain is too new. Apparently HYDRA still hasn't figured out that metal doesn't exactly freeze too well.
The kid's back again half a minute later, with an uneasy smile on his face. As if he's about to tell bad news and doesn't know how to say it.
“Something wrong?” James asks, trying his best to keep a civil tone to his voice but really, he isn't made for friendly chatter and it comes out too harsh. Too curt. Well.. There's no time to worry about that right now.
“I am sorry, but he's kinda insisting on talking to you first,” the guy says, pushing his glasses back up on his nose, where they'd slipped down. “He said something about how you're supposed to be dead? Do you mind?” James shrugged and stretches out his the metal hand, the plates whirring softly as they expand to make them move. Kid probably didn't pick up on it. No one ever does. He puts the small thing that passes for a phone these days to his ear and before he can even say so much as 'yeah' or 'hello' or 'James Barnes' a threatening but somehow familiar voice echoes over the speaker. Impossibly loud.
“I don't know who you are or what you want, but I am warning you: be careful.” James frowns at the distance. What? This Steve Rogers guy doesn't make sense whatsoever. “That is not the way you want to draw my attention.”
“How was I supposed to draw it, then?” he asks, voice a dull monotone. Act human for once, will you? Of course. He has to try harder, but there are no directives for this mission, except: no violence and James really doesn't know how to proceed. How to get this guy to come out willingly if he won't even allow James into his apartment. Probably a good idea since places tend to get trashed when he is around. There's a pause on the other end of the line, hitched breathing.
“Buck?” It shouldn't trigger anything for James. Memories that are supposed to be burnt out run back all the same. Echoes of memories. Parts. Snow. Falling. An outstretched hand. Pain. James pinches the bridge of his nose with the metal hand, probably leaving bruises and now it's his turn for the breathing to stop for a second. He bites his lip, hard. Pain makes memories leave. Makes him think clearly again. This 'Buck' it can't be him. There is no way to get that out of James or Barnes. Unless you are very creative. Except that it does belong to him. It’s... There's something there, barely out of reach.
“I don't know who that is,” he replies, voice no longer a monotone, but slightly high pitched. Great. You're a weapon, Asset, a machine. You don't have emotions. “But 'm here to talk.” Buck. It bothers him. Because he knows that name, knows it like he knows... well. Nothing anymore. Like the past that isn’t there anymore but once was.
“Come on up,” Rogers replies and his voice is distant. Less broken but odd. “Apartment 6B.” James hands the phone back to the kid without ending the call. There's a brief discussion between him and Rogers, then he sends James through.
He could have taken the elevator up six floors but it would have only gotten him on the correct floor faster and that isn’t what James wants. At all. A machine doesn’t want. He is as confused as he can remember ever being – although he can’t remember more than half a week clearly, to be entirely honest – and it is distracting. Too distracting. But he’d come here with a clear goal: “get Rogers comfortable and kill him” and nothing like that can keep him from his mission. He’s been toying with the tags again, running his fingers over the letters on them: JAMES B. BARNES. B. Maybe that’s where he’d gotten the Buck from. Buchanan. God, his middle name is crap. No. No. Machine. Not human. Weapon.
When he gets into the hallway, the door to apartment 6B is already open. A tall blonde dressed in a winter sweater and a pair of sweatpants stands in the doorway, music spilling out from the apartment, but not too loud, acceptable. Even soft. Old music. Familiar. Why is everything about this guy so familiar?
“Bucky.” The guy’s smiling despite the way he’s obviously trying to keep himself from saying something wrong. Bucky? Buck? Just how many nicknames can a guy have? “You’ve changed.” James brushes a lock of hair out of his faces, avoiding the blonde’s gaze. His mind is too distracting, coming up with imagines of a scrawny blonde with baggy clothing and a broken nose, paper towels pressed to the bleed. Except that blonde was tiny and not the perfect model standing in front of him. When he gets no reply, Rogers just continues. “I thought you were dead.”
“I thought you were smaller,” James says, monotone again. Voice barely fluctuating but he has to hide amusement. Rogers’s smile turns into a grin. And he can remember hundreds of times that he’s seen that grin. Hundreds of times that all come flashing before his eyes now. Why now? What’s so special about Rogers?
“Yeah, you’ve told me that before.” As he moves his hand down from his hair again, Rogers frowns. “What’s that whirring?” James shrugs and pulls off the left mitten, showcasing the metal of his arm. And then it’s clear. Too clear. The train. Falling. More pain. His arm left on the ground. “Oh. Don’t let Stark see that. He’ll want to improve on it. Come on in, it’s freezing outside.” The smile turns into a disapproving frown. “You’re way underdressed for the middle of winter.” James snorts. He may be. Thin Henley. Jeans, leather jacket and mittens.
“’m not cold.” But he moves to follow Rogers into the apartment all the same. It’s warmer in there and smells of strong coffee. A metal shield sits near the edge of the door. “Expecting trouble?” Steve looks almost sheepish.
“Not every day your best friend comes back from the dead. I had to be sure it was you. Coffee?” James frowns, standing motionless by the coffee table. Not every day your best friends comes back from the dead. Were they, once? Steve is familiar, sure, but best friends? He should remember him. More of him.
“What makes you think that I’m not dangerous?” He is. Of course he is. Dangerous. He’s here to take the guy out for good. Rogers’s shoulders tense up slightly but he doesn’t turn until he’s poured in two coffee cups.
“If you wanted to kill me, you would have taken weapons,” Steve replies simply, as if it that is an absolute fact. James doesn’t need weapons. He’s got his arm. He is a weapon. Steve must have noticed him looking wayward at the exposed metal of his fingers. “Or other weapons, I guess.” James never had his every motion looked at like this. The Handlers don’t care as long as the missions are completed. But Rogers, he is on guard. Looking at every single movement of James’s body. Checking. On guard. But not waiting to attack. Assessing. James doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just stays quiet as he takes off the other mitten as well. They’re too hot. Cold isn’t a problem. Heath is. Steve pushes one of the coffee cups into his hands, metal one taking it at once. There’s no grip on it and if his thumb wouldn’t be linked into the handle, it could slip. He pushes it over to his other hand, feeling the burn of the hot coffee. Fresh made.
“Shouldn’t have come without my gloves,” he mumbles out of routine, habit. When he loses something, he has usually just had to mumble something about it. The Handler would pick up on it and a new pair would appear. All Rogers does is frown. James takes a seat on the couch, the television screen paused on a view of some kind of space ship.
“I was gonna watch Star Trek: The Original Series. You mind if I turn it on?” Steve asks, plopping down next to James, but angled so he’s half turned towards the TV and half to James. “Sam insists it is better than Star Wars, but I don’t know yet.” James shakes his head, sipping of the coffee. It is strong, but sweet. “It’s hard to beat Star Wars.” And James doesn’t know why Rogers is doing this, because he is obviously stalling, talking for the sake of talking. Rambling.
“I don’t mind.” I can’t mind. He doesn’t even know just why he is so off guard around this guy. But he is more at ease than he’s ever been with the Handler. Maybe this was going to be easy. “They don’t allow me to watch TV.” It feels like more than he should share. More than he can share without getting into trouble, but they have no way of checking him. The trust they’ve put on him is more than he expected to get. More than he probably deserves.
He shouldn’t, but he doesn’t want to kill Rogers. Rogers who seems so intent on getting James at ease, while James is the one barging into Rogers’s apartment and claimed to want to talk, yet he hasn’t shared a word. He doesn’t make sense. Probably not.
“I don’t remember everything.” He sighs, clasping his hand a little firmer around the coffee cup, letting the burn silence his mind. “Anything. Except… did you draw?”
“Yeah, I draw.” There’s a small smile on Roger’s face as he turns on the episode and a male voice continues from where it was cut off: ‘… five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.’ Rogers mouths the words along, has already committed them to memory.
It revokes memory. Nights spent hunched over school books, telling tiny Steve that ‘No, no, Pierre belongs to South Dakota, not South Carolina. South Carolina’s capital is Columbia’ and Steve being let down and saying ‘I’ll never get this down.’ Memories of Steve trying to get things memorized, but failing or at least taking longer than James is.
“Just how many episodes of this did you watch?” James asks amusedly, mouth quirking up into an involuntary smile. ‘You’re a machine. A weapon,’ his mind supplies, but he pushes it away, embraces the faint tingle of happiness he feels bubbling up his throat, the warmth there.
“A season and a half, give or take,” Rogers has a sheepish look on his face when he continues, “I may have started watching three days ago.” James snorts. Of course.
“It’s all Stark’s fault!” Rogers exclaims, on guard but playful. Stark. Didn’t he kill that guy? Yeah. Howard Stark and that woman of his. Maria. He hadn’t intended to kill Maria, she just happened to be in the car with Howard. And he remembers earlier. Vague memories of a womanizer and weapons expert. “Do you remember Howard?” James frowns for a moment. This is probably not the time to mention that he killed the guy.
“Vaguely.” It sounds a little harsher than he meant it. Curiosity is clear in Rogers’s eyes. “Don’t think I liked him much.” Rogers manages a chuckle.
“Understatement,” he replies warmly. “You two were too much alike.” James has to bite back a snarl.
“We were not!” he say undignified, remembering the stories about Howard Stark. “I didn’t…” but Rogers isn’t too intend on letting him finish.
“You were too,” Rogers replies confidently, poking a finger in James’s general direction, not actually poking though. As if he knew that touch might not be a good idea. “Well, he had a son, Anthony. Genius kid. Annoying too. It is sort of a long story, but we’re friends and he recommended this series to me after a full hour of argument between him and Bruce about whether Star Trek is better than Star Wars.” James frowns at the television, which now depicts a guy with very pointy ears and a blue shirt, standing in a futuristic environment, talking to some captain of sorts. “If you want, I can put on the first episode for you?”
James’s frown turns to Rogers now. “No, you don’t have to.”
And James really meant to kill Rogers. He was completely ready to, except… Well. Rogers was Rogers and had somehow managed to completely make James forget about his mission. There he was, with his strange and widely speculative theories about Vulcan Spock and Captain James T. Kirk and the chemistry between them. With his digging up leather biker’s gloves so James can grab stuff without letting them fall. The first time someone said James to captain Kirk, Steve had turned to him with a grin and said: “I didn’t know you were a starship Captain, Buck.”. Buck. He isn’t a James to him. Not an "Asset" or "Weapon". He’s "Bucky" or "Buck". And it is even okay with him. Hell, he had even teased back with: “Well, you’re the captain, Captain America. I’ll be Spock.” Because very honestly, he can sort of relate to Spock. Spock who doesn’t understand human emotion and if something isn’t logical he doesn’t really understand it. And James hadn’t even realized that when the third episode of the night started playing, he’d actually murmured the intro along. His Handler would be getting worried about the mission. James drinks three more cups of coffee, all of them strong as before, but sweet. Not even too sweet for him. More memory, more nostalgia. It makes his head hurt, but he doesn’t mind so much. He’s never before been able to remember so much, never felt more at home.
“Damn, it is getting late,” Steve says – somehow, along the way, James has stopped mentally referring to him as Rogers but as Steve, as the childhood friend – barely able to stifle the yawn that drawn out. And it is late; a little past midnight. “Sorry. I... I’ve been completely ignoring why you came here for. You wanted to talk?” James frowns for a moment before he remembers the pretense he’s come out with. Before he remembers that he is supposed to kill him. Everything tells him he should, but he doesn’t want to and for the first time in maybe years he can’t care about what he is supposed to. Because he is not a machine. He is a human. And now he wants something, he’s going to grab it in both hands.
“That’s okay,” he manages. “I just.” He bites his bottom lip and shakes his head. Out with the truth. “I was supposed to kill you.” And Steve doesn’t even tense, he barely even pauses before he stops the forth episode from starting. “They’re probably waiting out there until I have, freezing.” And James can’t help it, he has to laugh – genuinely laugh – at the thought of Rumlow and Jones, huddled together trying to get warm. Steve either has some serious issues with self-defense or… he knew. That look says it all. He knew. Why would he not say anything before? How could he have sat there and just laugh and talk without saying anything? Without being on guard and shielded?
“You knew?” James has trouble keeping the confusion out of his voice, Steve has surely picked up on it.
“I knew,” he acknowledges, he almost slumps down a bit, leaned back against the leather couch. More relaxed than ever. “I wanted to see what you’d do.” There is a tired smile on his face. “Which is, apparently, watching Star Trek with me while listening to Bing Crosby.” He seems amused by it. He doesn’t notice the tenseness of James’s shoulders, the worry there. “Don’t get me wrong, when I realized that you were the Winter Soldier…” James looks up sharply. Winter Soldier. Asset. Weapon.
“How?” Command. More bark than question. Steve isn’t fazed.
“Not many people have a metal arm like that, Buck.” It makes sense. Sort of. “Look, I’m not a fool. I knew you could have ulterior motives. So I covered myself. Backup’s only a minute away and probably getting real bored right about now.” Backup. What? Iron Man and his other Avenger buddies? James picks his cup back up, wrapping his hand around it.
“I don’t intend on killing you.” It is out before James has even thought about it. Just the truth. He doesn’t mean to. “It is my mission, but I don’t want to.” He doesn’t look at Steve, but squarely at a black spot on the TV-screen. “They keep telling me I’m only an asset. A weapon. They use me and wipe me.” He doesn’t read Steve’s face to know the look that’s in there. “But I am not a boomerang. They send me. I come back. Not this time.” He sounds stubborn, he knows. Except, when he looks over to gage Steve’s reaction, the guy is grinning.
“What do you say, Bucky, shall we test how long they’ll stay freezing their asses off? Or do we send in my backup plan?” James can’t help but grin back. Sort of. Steve bites his bottom lip. As if he’s not sure whether he should say this. “Come home to me.”