Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s not aliens this time. Nor is it super-human villains with a bug up their ass or even remnants of Hyrda looking to take their asset back.

No, this time it’s something else. It seems, out of all the impossible, crazy, unbelievable things that he’s witnessed, that he’s been apart of, it can always get weirder.

Of course, in all of the places he’s been and all the people he’s come across, never in a million years would he have believed it would be faeries.

**

By now, several months after the incident—fire, failure, a face he shouldn’t know, a name that no longer belonged to him, falling, lost, so lost—he should be used to the ebb and surge of memories that either leave him bereft and blank or come upon him all at once, crowding over each other like a tidal wave of images and sensations and thoughts. There is either chaos in his head or a black void. They seared into his brain with electricity and malice and burned away who he was until there was nothing but a pile of ashes. They burned his very self right out of him.

Hydra took away his laugh and his tears, his family and his dreams and every last good thing in him. And then they took his free will too.

The thing about Hydra, though, is they never counted on Steve Rogers.

More specifically, the Steve that lived in James Barns’s head. The stubborn, brilliant, dogged little shit with his abundance of passion and kindness and loyalty. With his golden hair and golden heart and vibrant blue eyes.

They could not burn away Steve. He is a permanent fixture in the Soldier’s mind. Even after he stopped being James Barns and was slowly dismantled and rebuilt into the Soldier—thing, asset, weapon—-Steve was still there. Like a ghost, haunting the recesses of his thoughts where his memories used to live.

It did not matter how much they wiped him, or threw him into cryo, they could not erase Steve Rogers.

But the best part, the very best part, the part that makes him laugh out loud, (though he only did this once where other people could hear and vowed never to do it again. Apparently the dry, dusty sound of his laugh had disturbed several bystanders rather violently) is that they had no idea. How could they, when none of them could ever comprehend how Sargent James Barns felt about Captain Steve Rogers? By the time they were fourteen, Steve owned a very large piece of Bucky’s soul and something like that simply could not be eradicated. Not even when they carved into his body and replaced so much of it with cold metal. Not even when they cut him to ribbons testing the limits of Zola’s serum. Not even when they kept him in a cell that was too short for him to stand in and too narrow for him to stretch out in, naked and cold. Not even when they starved him and beat him. Not even when their best programmers went into his head and began to plant a new identity in place of the old one they’d burned out.

Not even when Bucky Barns became Soldier, Thing, Asset.

They had no idea how much of Bucky Barns had soaked up the rays of light that pour off of Steve, how much of him didn’t even belong to himself anymore but to Steve.

Well, if he thinks about it now, through the holes and the confusion and doubt, Bucky Barns had belonged to Steve completely.

So, when the shield—red, blue, silver, familiar—fell out of the helicarrier and took the long plunge into the river below, when blue eyes, still so vibrant, so full of love and grief, met his own, when the words were spoken—I’m with you to the end of the line—-the Soldier’s careful, long-cultivated programming began to crumble.

First it was those words.

They echoed in his mind until he thought he would go mad with it because he could swear he heard another voice whispering along with Steve’s—I’m with you to the end of the line, pal—and it’s a voice he knows but he don’t know who it belongs to. He just remembers the words and Steve, but smaller, slight, breakable, looking up at him with…

What is that emotion? The Soldier has no name for the expression he remember’s on Steve’s face. He thinks it is very similar to the one the Captain wore on the helicarrier right before he got his face smashed in with a metal fist. But he can't be sure.

But quickly on the heels of those words comes other things, other memories.

Always of Steve.

Steve sitting at a small, unsteady table, golden head bowed as his long, thin fingers move a pencil across left-over paper from their latest meager groceries—I’m gonna get him a sketchbook, he deserves at least that much—sketching away with an intent look on his face. Steve bigger, standing across a great chasm while the world blows to hell at their feet and he’s waving, telling Bucky to go on—not without you, together or not at all—and then he jumps and it’s like, for a moment, Steve got scooped out of that big, new body of his and was replaced by a god. Steve at nineteen, lying in bed trying to catch his breath while a fever laid waist to his body under his skin—Our Father, who art in Heaven…please, please God don’t let him die, he’s everything to me… thy kingdom come, thy will be done—and every time Steve got this sick it scared Bucky down to his bones. Steve, at seven, looking up at him with wide eyes and a bloodied nose and he’d wondered who this skinny blond kid was, starting fights he couldn’t finish—you’re a dumb punk, kid, trying to take on a couple’a fourth graders—. Even then he’d thought Steve was beautiful.

It’s no wonder Hydra couldn’t get rid of Steve entirely. They never stood a chance.

So what happens when the Soldier fails a mission? He’s never failed one before. Not that he would remember if he did because everything is gone; the wipes take care of that. But he knows with an iron surety that he never failed a mission.

He not only failed but he jumped in after Steve and pulled his bruised, bleeding body out of the filthy river water. Watched that water pour out of Steve’s mouth as he struggled to breathe and that had a touch of familiarity too, though the Soldier didn’t know why.

Mission: Kill Captain America

Failed.

New Mission Parameters: Protect Steve Rogers.

It happened in a blink, between one breath and the next. All at once, the Soldier knew what he needed to do. So he left Steve’s prone body on the river bank because he can’t protect Steve if he’s caught and he could already hear the sirens. He left him but not really.

The Soldier will stay in the shadows and this time, he will complete his mission.

**

The wind that rushes in from the sea smells of brine and something deep and unnameable. It brings with it, too, the sound of waves breaking high upon the cliff walls and the occasional call of a sea bird. They sound melancholy, like something just on the edge of his memory that used to be attached to something good. Warm sands, maybe, a calmer sea, the scent of hot metal and salt. Tamed, maybe. Here, the weather is wild and the land is too and the air has a cold bite that promises rain. The cliffs are open, green and windswept and he’d only seen one person wandering the moors, an older gentleman with a big, grey dog pacing at his side as they slowly slogged through the wet grass. Likely one of the local famers.

Farms are pretty much all there is in this area, which the Soldier is infinitely grateful for. The less human traffic to worry about the better. There’s a village a mile to the east, tucked up against the rocks, like great stone creatures dredged up by the ocean and left to wither in the sunlight. Well, when there is sunlight to be had. The Soldier remembers this country from…he doesn’t remember why or when but there is no sun to be had in any of those memories either.

It doesn't really matter now. The memories gave him enough information on how to dress (long thermals under thick black pants and a scratchy wool sweater) and what to expect as far as terrain and civilian interference. The former being large rolling hills, muddy ravines and glens that could hide armies, and the latter being minimal to none. His boots are caked with mud and the jacket he has pulled over the warm, scratchy sweater is beaded with mist. The damp makes his long hair curl and he’ll be forced to pull it back if it gets any more unruly.

He peers through the scope of his rifle and watches Captain Rogers and Sam Wilson walking along the sliver of beach far below.

The beach is actually a strange little cove, carved into the cliff face probably by constant unforgiving winds and centuries of battering storms. Perhaps, one day, the roof of a cave, one of the many that tunnel through the roots of the cliffs, gave way and over time became a tiny space of calm amid the thundering chaos of waves and wind. The opening is practically invisible from the sea; the Solder took a boat past the day before when he read the coordinates from Steve’s lips during a briefing a few days ago through the scope. There was no evidence the opening even existed, even though he passed by four times and knew what he was looking for. The only way the beach is accessible is by a helicopter or quintjet, most of which have been destroyed along with S.H.I.E.L.D., or by a tiny, winding staircase that has been carved into the cliffside.

He can see why Hydra hid a base here. The beach isn’t invisible from the cliffs above but with so few people around, the risk of being detected is low. Not to mention it is nearly impossible for an average person to get to. Even if the locals knew about the staircase, only the bravest of souls would attempt to use it.

It is a treacherous climb down and the Soldier’s heart beats uncomfortably in his throat as he watches the Captain and Wilson slowly make their way down the cliff. It is not an unfamiliar feeling, though he hasn’t experienced it since the war. It had a lot to do with the Captain then, too.

“Tell me why we can’t just use my wings?” the Soldier saw Wilson ask though the scope when they were still up on top of the cliff peering down. The Captain smiled a strange, tight smile and said,

“Because we’ll both be smashed against the rocks by the wind,” which is true, even as well as Wilson handles his wings. The wind is too strong here and the cliff-side too close all around. It would have ended very badly for both of them. Wilson heaved a sigh the Soldier could see even without the scope and his lips very emphatically formed the word,

“Fuck.”

Now they are all the way down and, besides a slip of the Captain’s boot near the top, they’ve made it without incident. The Soldier adjusts his position on the top of the cliff edge so he can keep them in his scope as they move unerringly down the beach. Halfway between the staircase and the water that laps quietly at the shore, there is a smoother section of stone about five feet wide and eight feet tall. It is obvious to him, sticks out like a sore thumb but it takes Captain and Wilson a few minutes to spot it. Makes sense, he thinks distractedly, since he’s had much more practice spotting hidden Hydra bases.

The Soldier feels a spike of unease when they force the door open and slip into the blackness beyond.

He stays on the scope, settling into the patient stillness of waiting. It is something he always assumed was trained into him by the Red Room but he remembers now this stillness wasn’t beaten into him by anyone. He’d learned it a long time ago during a war he remembers in flashes of cold and scared and missing Steve. Best sniper in the regiment, his superiors used to boast. He hadn’t been proud of it then and now he feels just a detached disinterest. There was only one time he was grateful for this particular talent and that was when he was at the Captain’s six, shooting down his enemies one by one. He suspects the itchiness in the tips of his fingers and between his shoulder blades when the Captain disappears from the reach of his scope comes from that time too.

The Soldier mentally agrees to give them a half hour. If they don't come out in that time, he's following them in. It shouldn’t take them longer than ten minutes to clear this base as it’s small and likely unmanned, nothing more than a relay hub. But if they attempt to extract information, it’ll take a little longer.

He doesn’t want to have to go down there but it’s not like they don’t know he’s here.

Stalking the Captain from the shadows.

The Black Widow, or Natalia his mind keeps insisting, figured it out quickly enough. He really shouldn’t have been surprised by that. In the beginning he’d been sloppy; between his memories coming back and having been under someone else’s control for decades, right down to people telling him when to piss and what to eat, it was difficult to operate under his own autonomy again. He knows he was dirty most of the time and often slept beneath underpasses or in abandoned warehouses. Food wasn’t hard to come by as he was adept at pickpocketing money but there was a long string of bleak days where he couldn’t keep it down or it hurt as it was digested. It was no wonder she found him out.

He’d seen the conversation through his scope while the Widow and the Captain sat outside of a small cafe in Chelsea. The Soldier had tucked himself into an alcove on a roof across the street, hidden by shadow and a rusted lock on the entrance door.

“How is your search for Bucky going?” she’d asked and by the bland expression on her face, the Soldier had known she was digging but trying not to give herself away. The Captain had shrugged, staring down into the cup clutched in his big hands.

“It’s not. We’ve hit dead ends at every turn,” the Captain’s blue eyes had turned sharp on her, “but you knew that already, didn’t you?” and it was her turn to shrug, not looking as chagrined as she should have.

“I wanted you to tell me, for once. You never tell me anything unless I pry,” she says and the Soldier vaguely wonderd what her tone of voice might have been.

“That’s because you already know before I say anything. It’s…disconcerting,” the Widow’s red hair rippled in the sunlight when she ducked her head on a laugh.

“I’m sorry, it’s a really hard habit to break. I like knowing things, Rogers. Especially about the people in my life,” the Soldier wondered if that was realyy true that but didn’t have enough information to draw any conclusions. Nor could he hear the tone of their conversation; reading lips leaves out a lot, unfortunately. He does see the Captain run his fingers through his hair and it is such a familiar gesture, the Soldier is tempted to lower the scope and examine it. But the Captain started speaking again before he could and the moment passed quickly.

“I wish you would just use the word friend and get it over with,” this time, the Soldier didn’t know where the stab of discomfort in his chest came from. The Widow—Natalia, the Soldier amended—smiled a crooked smile and said nothing for a moment. Then she leaned forward in her seat, eyes intent on the Captain.

“You should call off the search, Steve,” the Soldier watched as the Captain’s face pulled tight in a frown.

“Not you too, Natasha. I can’t leave him out there. Hydra is still…they could have him even now. Or he could be lost and confused somewhere and even if he’s not, I need…”

“Steve,” Natalia cut him off, eyebrows high, “Hydra doesn’t have him and he’s not lost,” the Soldier’s heart started beating quicker, sudden suspicion making dread pool in his stomach. She knew. The Captain’s face did something funny, then. The frown twisted, morphing into something more open, more vulnerable. The Soldier felt helpless upon seeing the expression. The Captain needed to be more careful where he wears that expression or he’s going to find himself letting in trouble.

“You know where he is, don’t you,” the Captain—Steve, a part of the Soldier whispered but he shook it away, not ready to think of the Captain like that—said and there was a strangely familiar tilt to the corners of his mouth. The Soldier wished he could remember what that meant.

“He’s across the street, on the roof of the red brick apartment building and he’s been watching us have this conversation. He’s been watching you for weeks, Steve,” the Soldier didn’t need to see any more after that. He’d packed up his rifle in a matter of seconds and was gone on the next breath of warm wind.

He came back, though, that night, setting up across from the Captain’s DC apartment building and watched until the Captain went to sleep. It does not matter if the Captain knows he is there. That does not change the parameters of the mission.

Sometimes, he catches the Captain glancing around, searching, face expectant. The Soldier is not ready, though. He has more memories, enough that the puzzle is beginning to look like a complete, continuous image rather than tiny islands of light in the darkness of his mind. But he has been somebody else for too long and the idea of slipping back into an old life he barely remembers, wearing a name that no longer fits, is daunting.

So he watches through the scope and he protects.

Upon the cliff, with only a small amount of brush to afford him cover from the wind, the seconds count down in his head. His gaze never wavers and his hand never shakes.

And at twenty seven minutes and thirty nine seconds, the Captain emerges from the bunker with Wilson in tow. They are unharmed. They don’t even look like they encountered any hostiles and they pause to discuss something on the beach that the Soldier has no desire to interpret.

Softly, the Soldier breathes out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding and lowers the scope. He figured the base was empty but with Hydra, he has learned not to assume. But Hydra is not his prerogative here. He does not care what they found. The Captain is whole and unharmed and in no danger. So the Soldier dismantles his rifle and scope, puts it neatly back in its case and slips away from the cliff edge carefully so they don’t spot him. After a weeks of doing this every day, he knows the Captain is aware of his presence but it’s easier to remain unseen.

The Soldier is already half way back to the village, walking tucked amid the trees and scrub, a shadow even during the day, when he feels it.

A shift in the air.

A spark of electricity brushing against his skin. Though if it were truly electricity, it would spark on his arm first. It is not a shift in temperature, not a change in the weather. It is still as damp and chilly as it has been for the past two days. But it’s there. He can feel it, the wrongness, pulling at the roots of his hair and making him shiver.

Wrong.

Out of all the things he’s seen and done, the Soldier has never felt anything like this.

Just then, down below the ridge he’s walking along, he sees through the trees the old truck the Captain borrowed from a local farmer bouncing down the road, on its way back to the village too. The Soldier pauses to watch it and the wrongness moves around him, licks at his cheeks like snow, before turning away.

Like a predator turning its head in the direction of more alluring prey.

And the Soldier has the feeling it has spotted the Captain and wants.

Queasy, he starts walking again, boots leaving tracks along the muddy track. The strange feeling has gone as quickly has it came, leaving behind just the normal misty cold but he can still feel the pressure of it. The fight or flight instinct trying to kick in. The Soldier wants to write it off as a fluke of his imagination. Lord knows he’s seen enough horrors to make up a few of his own. But his instincts have been honed to razor sharpness and right now, they scream at him. With no visible enemy to fight and no real certainty that anything really happened at all, he can only just hurry on, hoping to get back to the village quickly so he can resume watching the Captain’s back.

But the feeling of dread does not disappear and he does not like the feeling that whatever it is, he can not fight it with guns or knives or even his metal arm.

**

The Captain and Wilson have gotten two rooms at a small bed and breakfast in the middle of the village. It’s a neat little place, made of stone and wood, with clean beds and good food. The Soldier chose a house across the square to watch them from, keeping himself to the attic like some watchful ghost. The old woman the house belongs to is hard of hearing and she goes to sleep with the sun so the Soldier is not overly concerned if he steps on a squeaky floorboard. The attic was clearly someone’s bedroom at one time, with a bed tucked into one corner and a wardrobe full of delicate dresses hunched under the rafters. It’s dusty but warm from the heat of the chimney and he likes it because sometimes the old woman will sing to her cats and her voice is low and warm like fine whisky.

He has holed up in much worse places.

The scope is already set up in the attic window that points at the inn and, more specifically, the Captain’s window and the Soldier perches on a rickety chair in front of it. He watches as the Captain moves about his room, getting changed into pajamas and readying for bed. He and Wilson have already frequented a pub for dinner and, upon returning, stayed in the common area of the bed and breakfast talking with their hosts for a while. Now it is nearly eleven o’clock and the rest of this quiet village has gone to sleep. The Soldier spots only a few lights on in surrounding houses.

He himself does not feel tired but his stomach aches with hunger, reminding him he only snatched breakfast from his own inattentive host this morning.

When the Captain’s light finally shuts off and he is settled in bed, the Soldier steals downstairs, stepping carefully over the orange cat that tries to tangle his feet together. It meows as he makes his way past the old lady’s bedroom door but there is no sound when he pauses and holds his breath so he moves on only after a moment.

The cat watches him intently from the top of the stairs, eyes glowing in the dim light of the fireplace.

The house smells like wool and cat and his footfalls are silenced by a thick rug that covers the floors until he reaches the kitchen. There the slate blocks are less forgiving. But he moves quickly and he has the refrigerator and the pantry opened and food gathered all in silence. A few slices of thick, crusty bread, some cheese and cuts of ham, and a couple of apples all piled on a plate. He eats over the sink, careful not to scatter any crumbs and he’s mostly finished with it when there’s a whisper of sound in the doorway.

The Soldier spins, a knife already in his hands and almost yells when he finds the old woman watching him from the other end of the kitchen. He doesn’t make a sound in reality but alarm shrieks through him and his heart slams uncomfortably high in his chest. He hadn't even heard her come down the steps.

She does not look surprised to see him.

“The young man with the metal arm, we finally meet,” she says and her speaking voice is just as nice as her singing voice. The Soldier wills himself not to tremble and it takes him a moment to realize he has his arm covered by a hoodie and his hand is hiding under the plate he’s still holding.

“You…you knew I was here?” he croaks, voice rusty from disuse and the old woman laughs a little. He can’t see her expression clearly from the shadows but the laugh does not sound all that friendly. She moves to the cupboard to her left and clicks on a lamp, flooding the kitchen with warm light. He does not blink and his eyes adjust quickly. When they do, he finds himself pinned by pale, searching eyes

“Boy, you think I couldn’t tell there was another body taking up space in my house?” he has no answer to that so he stays quiet. The woman peers at him closely, noting the knife he still holds and the way he grips the plate, ready to throw it if he needs to. The Soldier doesn’t know if he wants to hurt an old woman but he is ready for anything, “You are very troubled, aren’t you? You are missing pieces of yourself and there is darkness in your eyes. Blood on your hands,” he shifts, uneasy, and does not like the way her gaze stays sharp upon his face.

“How do you know that?” he finally asks and the wrinkles in the woman’s face shift around when she smiles.

“I know a great many things, boy. You are not any harder to read than anyone else. No one is as mysterious as they think they are,” she says and taps her chin with a bony finger. He highly doubts that but he does not say so. Instead he looks at the plate in his metal hand and says slowly,

“I was going to pay you back. For the food and…” he gestures upwards meaning the attic and gets waved away by a gnarled hand for his trouble.

“No one was using that space and I am glad to share my food with someone other than my cats,” this time her laugh is less sinister but the Soldier is still looking for an easy exit. As he does, the orange cat slips into the room and sits at the old woman’s feet. When it stares at the Soldier, its eyes flash like molten gold. He shivers. The old woman spots the movement and her face changes, “Ah, you do feel it,” she says and he sees that she’s gone serious.

“Feel…” he doesn’t make it a question. The stillness of the night has become expectant. Like it is waiting for something. The old woman looks at the window behind the Soldier and she flaps her hand.

“Listen, man with the metal arm, listen!” her voice rises with urgency and her eyes shine. The Soldier takes an involuntary step forward, suddenly drawn in, “The Hunt rides this night, the Queen and her Court, they Ride! And She will take her consort from our world, just as She always has,” fear dribbles down the Soldier’s spine, cold, so cold. Colder than a mountain pass and falling, colder than cryo.

“Who is she going to take,” he whispers and everything in him shudders when she meets his eyes and he realizes they are the same color as those of the orange cat.

“You already know who She wants,” the woman intones and points at the window. Slowly, with cold shivers crawling under his skin and a dreadful certainty buzzing in the pit of his stomach, he follows the line of her finger and looks outside the window.

There, in the light of the inn spilling into the village square, is the Captain.

His hair burns in the dim light and his eyes look into the distance, like he can hear something far away. He is still in his pajamas, flannel pants and a t-shirt and his feet are bare on the cold, damp ground. Terror bolts down the Soldier’s spine and it is unnecessary when the old woman cries,

“Go!”

He is already running.

**

The Captain is out of sight by the time the Soldier is out in the street.

For a moment, the Soldier stands in the middle of the square, undecided. The stars are bright above his head, visible now that the clouds have gone and only two street lights along the square throw dim, orange light onto the pavement. No shadows move along in the darkness and he cannot hear any footsteps. He’d seen the direction the Captain had been walking in but there are several streets he could have gone down, two of which lead directly out of town. The thought that he might take the wrong route and be too late…

Too late for what?

The Soldier doesn’t know but what he does know is that he doesn’t want to find out. Protect the target. The Captain is the target—Steve, standing in the wreckage of an enemy base, his helmet off as he surveys the damage and his hair blazing like the sun while Bucky watches the wreckage for any lingering threats—and the target must be protected.

The Soldier stills his body, makes his mind quiet. He breathes in, wills his heartbeat to slow, turns himself off. Like flicking a switch, everything around him sharpens. Vague shadows in the darkness become defined shapes, the edges of trees, of a fence, a handful of parked cars in a lonely parking lot. A stray cat dashes across an alley between two dark houses at the end of the row and the Soldier tracks its progress. Sees its long tail flick and the way the light catches in its eyes for a split second. Infinite details, all in moments. A skill he honed long before Hydra got their hands on him. He thinks.

Then he closes his eyes and focuses on listening.

The sound of the wind, of the waves crashing against the cliffs in the distance, the muffled sound of a radio coming from one of the houses. These are irrelevant and he ignores them. There is a soft rustle in the grass down the lane, too small to be human, and the steady chirp of a cricket braving the cool weather. They mean nothing. For a moment, those are the only things that reach his ears. Just when the Soldier is beginning to think he is going to just find the Captain another way, he hears something new.

At first he does not realize what he is even hearing. It is distant, even more so than the battle of ocean waves against rock. But as he concentrates, it resolves itself into something sort of recognizable.

Music.

A kind of music he has never heard before.

Without thought, the Soldier takes off in that direction, down a dark street lined with a handful of houses before the village ends and becomes fields of grass and shrub. Even with the little light the village offered, it is much darker out in the open when he leaves it behind. He can see enough not to be tripped up by half-hidden rocks or sudden dips in the land but only just. Enough that he needs to slow his pace to a jog and impatience boils in his chest. Yet no matter how he runs, out into farm lands, over low rock walls and around thick shrub boarders, the music never gets any closer.

It wavers just inside his hearing range, strange and alluring.

He runs until the cold air saws in his lungs like razor wire and he is beginning to sweat when everything around him begins to change.

The landscape changes first, shifting rapidly from tamed fields and lanes to forest, dark and wild. Roots lift up unexpectedly out of the ground, nearly tripping him a few times. Great branches hang low over the thin footpath that wanders away from civilization, plucking at his hair and leaving a long scratch on his cheek. Leaves hang thick and suffocating all around, letting in no light and rustling in ominous warning. He imagines the trees trying to tell him not to move any further, reaching out to hold him back, and goosebumps dot his right arm as a chill runs through him.

But it isn’t just the trees and the bushes of thorns that grab at his clothes like tiny hands and the darkness scrubbing out everything but the vaguest of outlines. As he runs (trips), a low mist begins to roll over the land, curling around his ankles and breaking like slow moving waves against his calves. It is a cold mist and drags at him, slows his stride, makes him tire. This mist is like nothing he’s ever encountered before, climbing up his waist like a flood and an unnamable terror spikes through him at the idea of breathing it in. Of it climbing into his nostrils and clogging his lungs as if it is tar.

When it reaches his chest, thick curls of it chilling his arms, metal and flesh alike, the Soldier skids to a halt. The sound of his breathing is hurried and harsh in the quiet of the woods and for that single moment, he cannot make himself to take another step.

Dread lies heavy on his shoulders and he shakes, torn between rescuing the Captain and not wanting to get any closer to the thing that lured the Captain in.

Fear ending a mission before its completion used to be unthinkable. The Soldier did not feel fear and he remembers many occasions doing things that would have frozen even the most stalwart of men. Standing on a beam of an unfinished sky rise for hours while the wind shrieked around him. Four nights hunting someone in the dead of winter in Siberia with only hungry wolves as company. Being awake when they took the rest of his arm. And then there were worse things, too. Worse was the three children and their mother, left beheaded in their home for their father, a diplomat, to find when he came home. Made to wait there for three days as their corpses rotted before the man returned and then killing him too. Shooting an old, old man point blank. Letting a little boy find his parents with their throats cut. A group of young woman he helped turn into weapons, their dead, dead eyes.

All those things he has crammed in his head, along with being on the front in a war that has mixed with the long years of freezing and unfreezing, watching friends and fellow soldiers being ripped apart by mortar and shells, by bullets and bombs and gas. And all that time he kept shooting, kept moving, finished the mission.

But now.

Now the Soldier does not know if he can.

He stands there in the woods for long moments, watching the smoke-like mist crawl and seethe around him and he does not know if he can complete the mission. Steve, says a voice in his mind, you can’t just leave Steve behind. The voice is right, of course. Turning around and leaving the Captain here is even more unthinkable than stepping further into the mist. The Soldier must not feel fear. And the fear he feels is less for what waits in the mist and more for the Captain.

The Soldier takes a step.

His footfall doesn’t make a sound.

He takes another step.

There is no noise. Nothing but the music. No breeze to rustle the leaves on the trees, no night scrambling from animals in the brush, no cry of a startled bird or the buzzing hum of a night bug. Just the music and the voice in his head frantically telling him to move.

With his third step, the mist envelopes him completely and he breathes in stubbornly and does not suffocate. The only thing that really changes is the way his hair gets heavy after a few moments and how his skin turns damp and cold. With halting breaths and even shakier steps, he walks deeper into the mists, following the thin thread of music that always seems to be a little bit out of reach. He walks until he is chilled to the bone. And then, between one step and the next, he stumbles into a clearing.

Startled, the Soldier freezes. There’d been no warning. No lightening in the trees around him, no shift in the shadows half hidden by the fog. One minute he is deep in the woods and the next, trees and mist fall away and he is left standing frozen at the edge if a clearing like a scared cat.

It’s so startling, in fact, it takes him a moment to realize the Captain is standing very still in the middle of the clearing, his back to the Soldier. He makes no indication he heard the Soldier, though he wasn’t concentrating on being quiet. With the Captain’s advanced senses, he’d surely have heard.

But he just stands unnaturally still, facing away. Staring straight ahead like he’s been entranced.

The Soldier wants to march up to him, to grab his wrist and haul him back to safety. But that is not the way the Soldier does things and he takes a moment to assess the situation he’s walked into.

It is no longer dark, for one. A soft, bluish light fills the clearing, though he cannot discern a source for it. It touches upon the edges of the Captain’s body and the tips of the grass at his feet, though it does not quite reach the Soldier where he stands. A few times he thinks the light flickers, or moves but he cannot be certain and that is disturbing all on its own. The music is louder here too, though if he listens carefully it does not sound like music at all but a cacophony of voices. The sound of it is sick-making but he cannot tune it out.

The Soldier shivers.

Smaller details come to him in the span of a few moments; the perfect roundness of the clearing in which they stand, the way the trees that edge it are not dark and brooding like the ones he’d walked through but thin and silver. Shapes flicker at the edges of them, an arm, a face, the curve of a cold smile. There are other lights, tiny pinpricks weaving through the leaves, golden and unnatural. They look like stars that have fallen to earth but keep trying to leap back into their place in the sky. When he glances up, he sees that, no, they don’t look anything like stars after all, because those are cold and stationary and they stare down into the clearing with uncaring curiosity.

It is all too strange and the hairs on the back of his neck are standing up again as his instincts scream at him—wrong, wrong there’s something wrong— and he takes another step towards the Captain. His voice is ready to call out, his fingers already reaching.

But he’s hesitated too long and he only gets a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye as warning before a pack of dogs burst into the clearing.

The Soldier does not move a single muscle but for the second time tonight his nerves scream at him. The dogs flood the open space, a rolling wave of canine chaos, surging around the Captain’s legs very much like waves breaking around a particularly stubborn rock. Then the Soldier sees how these dogs are bigger than any dog he’s ever seen, coming well up to the Captain’s waist and their baying cries—how did he not hear them before they arrived— are more like peals of bells than barking. Their eyes are bone white in their skulls, their teeth flash like silver blades in the blue light and their bodies flow more like smoke than solid muscle and bone. First they circle the Soldier, grinning fiercely, their blood red tongues lolling out of their open jaws and he holds himself ready to fend them off.

But the dogs have no interest in him. They quickly change course and sniff at the Captain’s lax hands and his knees. The sound of their baying changes in pitch, going high and excited and the Soldier fights the urge to cover his ears with his hands. It is a horrific sound and he thinks bearing it will send him into madness before very long.

All the while the Captain stands, distant and unheeding.

True fear begins to work its way up the Soldier’s spine. This is not an enemy he thinks he can fight. This is a supernatural power like he’s never even heard of and he is certain he does not want to meet the owner of such creatures as the dogs. The Soldier only advances a few steps closer to the Captain, though, when another sound echoes through the clearing.

Clear and bright, it is the sound of a blown horn and he knows it is too late.

Too late to grab the Captain and run.

The dogs all lift their muzzles and howl one long, terrible note before breaking into a run, flowing out of the clearing to continue on into the night. Before the last disappears through the trees, a line of great silvery horses race into the clearing. Their golden hooves make no sound but he can feel in his bones the pound of them on the earth where they churn up the loam into a froth. On their backs are tall, pale people with hair as black as the night sky and armor that glows like the sun. They barely even acknowledge his or the Captain’s presence, intent on the chase. They raise their long, wooden spears above their heads and shout in voices that are just beyond his hearing. The Soldier does not count them but there are dozens of riders, all strange and other worldly. Like the dogs, they flow through like smoke and fire and soon are also lost to the night.

The Soldier barely has a moment to breathe before another rider arrives and at once he can tell this one is different.

He is taller than the others, with a steed that is as dark as the other horses had been light. His armor does not glow and his hair is a riot of dark braids that fall down his back and his horse’s flank like water. Upon spotting the Captain still standing passively in the middle of the clearing, the creature slows, reining in with something flickering across his strange face. The horse snorts and paws at the ground as the rider circles the Captain slowly and when he's finished his circuit, he sneers. It is an ugly expression on his pointy face, curling his thin lips unnaturally. The Soldier tenses, waiting for the strange person to reach for the sword at his side but he does not. He just shakes his head and wheels around like he will follow the rest of the riders.

But he catches sight of the Soldier and jerks to a surprised halt.

“What are you doing here?” the creature asks in an odd voice, lilting and as bell-like as the dog’s baying had been. The Soldier cannot read the intent behind the question and only jerks his eyes to the Captain and back. The creature’s face clears at once and a horrible kind of pitying amusement replaces the surprise, “Ah, I see. Poor fool,” and he laughs, teeth gleaming sharp and threatening.

Everything in the Soldier winds tight but before he can respond, more riders come into the clearing.

The Soldier holds himself very still and barely breathes.

The five riders enter at a sedate pace, like they care not for the rest of their party’s eagerness. Two in front, one in the middle, two behind. The four in front and behind ride horses with coats the color of blood and eyes like black pits. Their manes flicker like flames and their tails cut their air like blades. The riders are not as tall as the creature who spoke to him and their hair is held back by gold clasps and rings. They wear armor so black it appears to be drinking in all of the light. Their faces are blank and terrible and the Soldier shudders because he feels like he’s looking into a mirror when peering up at them. Each rider holds a golden lance in their hands and the Soldier knows he cannot protect both himself and the Captain against weapons with such long reach.

But all of the creatures pale in comparison to the rider in the middle.

She is beautiful. So beautiful it dazzles him and he can feel it dragging at him like a physical touch. Her hair is golden and her skin is pale and her eyes so green and lovely he thinks he could waste away for eternity staring at them and not care. Everything about her is breathtaking. How her hair falls over her bare shoulders and thighs, how her gown that is clearly spun from spider webs and flower petals cling to her curves, how her delicate hands clutch the reins and how her feet peek out from under her dress. Even her horse is lovely, slender and white, with a gentle step and eyes like a summer sky. The Soldier wants to do anything she says, wants to offer her everything he is and there is a buzzing in his head that makes everything but her seem insignificant—It makes him ill, the void in his mind and he beats against it fruitlessly—.

“My Lady, your choice this time is unexpected,” the creature with the braids is saying, voice distant and the Soldier thinks he should care but he cannot stop staring at the lady. When she laughs, it is like the sweetest breeze in spring.

“How so, Liath? Do you not have misgivings about my choice every Hunt?” her words are like honey in the Soldier’s mind and he sees the dark haired creature she called Liath curl his mouth down in displeasure. He is looking at the Soldier again but he says nothing. The Lady’s eyes capture the Captain, who has not moved at all, and her face softens with delight, “Ah, yes, he will do nicely,” and she rides forward so she can bend down and run a finger along the Captain’s jaw. The Soldier is wildly jealous of the Captain for a moment—no, don’t touch him, take your hands off of him—because she must belong to the Soldier, he must have her and then…

And then he takes a breath that feels like glass shards in his chest and the strange fuzziness in his head shatters.

It takes him a moment to realize he’d broken the spell himself by speaking out loud, “Don’t touch him.”

All six of the riders are staring at him now, their eyes cruel and alien. But the Soldier has had nearly seventy years of practice ignoring very similar gazes and he walks further into the clearing, closer to the Captain. His limbs do not shake and his mind is no longer fuzzy with whatever enchantment the Lady had bewitched him with. When he looks at her, he sees the same oddness as the others, her features sharp and otherworldly and terrifying. But not beautiful. She does not back away at his approach but she does drop her hand.

“Well, I had not counted on two tonight,” she says and her voice is more terrible than any of the others without the guise of enchantment. The Soldier grinds his teeth and locks his knees. The creatures on the red horses laugh but the other rider does not. He watches with pale, interested eyes. Too interested, in fact.

“You will have neither of us,” the Soldier says and is pleased when his voice does not sound wobbly. A creature with the power to turn off his will is more terrifying than falling hundreds of feet onto ice but he’s thrown off her influence once and he will do it a thousand more times if he must. His words bring upon a sudden silence before the Lady looks at him closely.

“You cannot stop me from taking what I want,” it sounds like she is simply stating a fact. The Soldier stares her down.

“If what you want is him, then yes, I can,” he states, indicating the Captain and again laughter ripples through the clearing. He does not pass out but it is a close thing. The only one who does not laugh is Liath. Though his intent expression is just as disturbing in its own way.

“A puny human like you! Against my will?” the Lady cries, shrieks, cackles and he sees even the Captain, lost in his stupor as he is, shudder a little. Shakily, the Soldier lifts his chin, “I think you will find, human, that this is a game you cannot win,” and she is probably right. But he does not move. Something happens in that moment, a rising threat closing in around him, making the clearing suddenly seem small and crowded. He feels it heavy in his stomach and he takes comfort from it. A threat, the Soldier understands. In a flash, he gauges the position of the four riders on the red horses, sees how they grip their lances with familiar ease and puts all of his energy into the soles of his feet.

Liath, the dark haired rider, asks, “Who are you, human?” and the Soldier smiles.

“I am a ghost,” and moves.

He only needs one lance and the riders do not expect him to attack. That much is evident in their relaxed positions in their saddles and how they point their weapons at the sky. They do not think him a threat. So it is easy to take down the closest rider on its red horse, foot in his chest, follow him to the ground, throat crushed under the Soldier's knee. The rider has no time to even cry out before he is dead. By then the others are swinging around, lances aimed at the Soldier and they move faster than any human. But they are not fast enough. He is between them and the Captain with the lance clutched in his metal arm that gleams in the bluish light.

There is a moment of shocked silence before the Lady holds up her hand. The other riders lower their lances, one or two throwing an uneasy look at the dead rider on the ground. His horse is gone, nothing but a quickly disappearing smudge of red smoke in the air.

“Aren’t you intriguing,” she says softly and the Soldier just bares his teeth at her. One of the riders, his face paler than the remaining two, says softly,

“Look at his arm, my Lady,” and gets a sharp glare for his trouble.

“What kind of magic did that, I wonder?” she queries. It is the Soldier’s turn to laugh, a cold, brittle sound that chills even him. He thinks of how they gave him the arm, the months of agony, of operations done without anesthesia, of blood in his throat from screaming, of an alien weight permanently attached to him without his consent and he wishes it had been mere magic that had put it there.

“No magic. Just regular human cruelty,” he answers and sees Liath shift in his saddle from the corner of his eye. Sees the flicker of greed on his pointed face. The Lady sneers at him.

“Yet you took down one of my Knights. No mere human can do such a thing!” the points of the lances catch some non-existent flash of light, threatening though they no longer point at the Soldier’s chest. There is more, a sick creeping of something behind him, like a roiling sea of blackness that reminds him of his own mind right after Hydra wiped him time and again. The edges of the clearing flicker and the shapes he saw earlier begin to resolve themselves into hundreds of creatures the like he’s never even imagined before. Short and stunted some are, others willowy and cruel looking, others still having a strange combination of no mass at all and too much. Mouths with teeth like a fox, hair made of twigs or mud, fingers with too many joints, clothes of leaves, of flowers, of butterfly wings, or no clothes at all. Human-like creatures with legs of a goat, tiny people with fluttering wings that look like glass, small, odd beings with red mushrooms for hats. They all crowd the edge of the clearing, sneering and pointing and hissing amongst each other. Behind them, the rest of the riders have returned, a white, surging line of horses and dogs and all of them watch him with eyes black as night or white as bone.

Every instinct in the Soldier tells him he has lost the fight but he does not drop the lance and he turns back to the Lady with a lift of his eyebrows.

She taps her bottom lip with one long finger and considers him.

“What is he to you, that you would stand up to the might of my Court? They would have blood tonight,” there is a collective hiss of excitement that she silences with a raised hand, “And I would have what I came here for.” The Soldier hoists the lance higher and angles himself so he’s solidly in front of the Captain.

“You can spill every single drop of my blood and turn my body into dust but I will still come back and take him from you,” the Soldier says, voice steel, “I have done it once before.” There is silence after and when he breathes in, he thinks he can smell a hint of fear. After all, he holds one of their lances and has killed one of her Knights. The Lady is staring at him, her face still and her eyes intent.

“Yes, you have, haven’t you. Perhaps I should have chosen you instead,” she says, voice thoughtful. The Soldier shakes his head ruefully.

“You should have. Might have worked,” and the gathered creatures hiss in outrage. The Lady just continues to stare at him though and it is Liath who urges his mount forward, interrupting.

“My Lady, might I suggest a test?” he says, voice loud enough that the gathered crowd hears him and gives a twittering cheer. Confused, the Soldier looks uneasily around, the lance wavering in his hand, but the Lady’s face clears, expression turning thoughtful.

“Ah, yes, perhaps you are right,” she nods, golden hair spilling around her like a waterfall and the Soldier catches himself before he can get dragged into her spell again, “Very well, Ghost, listen well. If you can pass my test, I will set both you and him free. If not, I will take you both. Seems my Liath here has taken a particular shine to you,” she grins and it is sharp and mean. The Soldier frowns, still uneasy, glancing around. The creatures are all watching with avid interest, here and there fluttering or growling to a neighbor. They are all so…strange and the Soldier does not know if the test is some kind of trick.

“You give your word?” he asks, though he cannot say why after he says it. The Lady narrows her eyes and he catches a momentary flash of towering anger before it is squashed under a relatively mild smile. Strangely, the creature names Liath is smiling too. It has a predatory edge to it.

“Yes, you have my word,” and as she says it, he feels a little shiver. Like something monumental has just happened but he doesn’t know what it is. But he has no choice so he drops the lance into the grass and nods.

“Tell me what I must do,” he says.

“It is simple,” the Lady begins with a shrug that is unnaturally smooth then points at the Captain, “You must hold on to him until dawn. No matter what happens, you cannot let go. If you succeed, he is yours,” the Soldier blinks, surprised. That’s all? With some trepidation, feeling like there is something he is missing, he turns to the Captain and looks in his face for the first time all night. It is blank, his blue eyes distant, full mouth slack. Like the Captain has been scooped out of his body and nothing was put back in to replace him. This is the first time he has been this close to the Captain since the helicarrier—confusion, burning, falling, Steve, oh my God Steve—and he is momentarily overcome—Steve, skinny, small, leaning over a piece of paper while he draws. Steve with his nose crooked and bleeding but his blue eyes vivid and defiant. Steve in the rain, tall, beautiful, eyelashes dark with water and lips red and wet. He’s not ready to face the Captain, he needs more time. But the Captain does not see him and the Soldier breathes in a steadying breath. Reminds himself of his mission.

With a resolute set to his shoulders, he curls his fingers of both hands around the Captain’s wrists and says to the Lady, “He was always mine.” He surprises himself by how true it rings, even though he has so few memories to prove it. The curl of the Lady’s lips is ugly. How could he ever have thought her beautiful, he wonders, turning back to the Captain. Blue eyes, so familiar, like the sky, like the paint Steve used to love—It’s called ultramarine, Buck, how many times I gotta tell you—like home and the Soldier lets the color fill him up until he is nothing but that exact shade of blue.

“We will see,” the Lady says and that is the Soldier’s only warning before the Captain begins to change.

The Soldier sucks in a shocked breath as the Captain’s shape warps before his very eyes and he morphs into a huge golden bear, rearing back on his hind legs because his front ones are caught fast in the Soldier’s grip. The bear roars in his face, the sound almost concussive but he remembers at the last second not to let go. Great claws grow inches from his wrists and teeth snap at his face. The bear—the Captain—twists around, trying to take a swipe at the Soldier with his great paw but the Soldier grimly hangs on. The motion sends him reeling but no matter how the bear lunges and bites and tries to free himself, the Soldier keeps both hands firmly curled around the Captain’s wrists.

He is lucky, he realizes after long moments of trying not to get mauled or his head bitten clean off while keeping hold of the Captain, that the bear, while terrifyingly strong, moves slowly. Slowly enough he has no trouble predicting the bear’s next movement every time he shifts his considerable weight. It takes all of his training but his left hand stays locked and his right only almost gets knocked away a couple times. Then the bear lurches backwards, trying to shake him by dropping down to all fours and the Soldier is nearly ripped off his feet.

There is laughter around him when he stumbles but he ignores it in favor of vaulting onto the bear’s—Steve’s—back and wrapping his arms around the massive neck. The bear roars again, loud enough to leave the Soldier’s ears ringing and he scrabbles at the thick, golden hair when the bear flings himself back onto his hind feet again.

The creatures around him twitter again.

But he does not let go.

When the Captain-bear drops back down onto all fours again, the Soldier looks at the Lady astride her pretty horse and says with barely strain in his voice, “Is that all?” Her laugh is less like pealing bells and more like the shrieking of gale force winds.

“We have hardly begun!” and the Captain changes again, going from a great beast with thick hair and broad form down to a lithe serpent. The snake is as wide around as the Soldier’s thigh and long enough to swallow him whole and this presents a very different challenge. For the Soldier must hug the snake to his chest if he has any hope of holding on. The Captain-snake is too big for him to fit his right hand around but he fears he will crush the snake if he uses his left. In clutching the snake to himself, however, it leaves him open to the Captain rearing up and whipping around so he can strike at the Soldier’s face.

The Soldier jerks his head out of the way just in time but long, wicked teeth graze his shoulder when the snake comes in for a second strike.

He quickly grabs the Captain-snake as gently as he is able in his left hand just behind the head and heaves a breath when the snake just thrashes his great body uselessly when he realizes he is caught.

Yet before the Soldier takes more than a breath, the Captain is shifting again, down to a tiny little mouse that almost slips through the Soldier’s fingers.

This is worse than both bear and snake because as a mouse, he is swift and sneaky and keeps nearly escaping through the cracks between the Soldier’s mismatched fingers. A few times the Captain-mouse bites the Soldier’s flesh fingers, undoubtedly drawing blood. The Soldier keeps his fingers rounded in a careful cage and stoically ignores the pain. It is not real pain, anyway. Just single drops of water in an ocean of agony he keeps stored in his memory.

When the Captain shifts again, he is a little more prepared, adapting his hold to accommodate a great, tawny cougar that thrashes and bites and scratches like a wild thing. It bucks and yowls and snaps its jaws at the Soldier’s fingers, teeth gleaming wickedly in the blue light. The gathered crowd of strange creatures jeer at seeing the Captain-cat, mostly because it nearly rips itself out of the Soldier’s hold with how much it twists around. He deflects claws and teeth with his metal arm and clutches the Captain around his middle.

The Captain stays a cat the longest because this form is the most successful at nearly throwing the Soldier off. But he has a memory, half buried under the blood and gristle that is his mind, of fending off a bigger cat than this, with great black stripes on its orange coat and hunger in its eyes. Teeth screech on metal and he shudders at the sound.

And does not let go.

The Captain becomes a wolf after that, even more vicious than the cat. He may have lost the claws but he makes up for that in sheer size and strength that he throws around in unpredictable directions. It is nearly impossible for the Soldier to keep his grip, his right hand coming away with more than one fistful of reddish brown hair. After one particularly hard buck of the Captain-wolf’s shoulders combined with teeth scraping at the Soldier’s flesh shoulder, he is only holding onto the Captain with his metal hand buried in his hair.

The Soldier curses when the wolf snarls in his face, a flash of teeth too close to his cheek, and grimly hangs on.

Long nails rend into the skin at the inside of the Soldier’s thigh and he bites back another curse. The Lady, he notes, is still watching dispassionately, though her eyes burn. They remind him of forest fires when she calls,

“Are you ready to give up now, Ghost?” the Soldier won’t allow her the satisfaction of getting distracted and makes sure he has a good hold of the Captain-wolf before he answers.

“It’s gonna take a lot more than this,” he says, voice rough because the wolf is battering against his hold again and he is strong. The crowd shifts around him, restless and dangerous, more dangerous, he knows, than the furious Captain-wolf in his arms. But the Soldier will fight all of them and still keep his hold on the Captain no matter what form if he must. The Lady does not rally the creatures to her, though. She just watches from astride her horse, eyes filled with angry fire.

The Captain shifts; an eagle now, huge, with wicked claws and beak. Wings that beat the air into a froth, churning it until the clearing has become filled with a storm. The Soldier holds onto one of the Captain-eagle’s legs and practically dances in place trying to avoid a set of talons and the curved beak determined to tear his flesh into strips. Then he shifts again, a slippery seal the Soldier cannot get a good grip on.

The Captain becomes many things while the night grows old. A fox, an eel, a great horse with dangerous hooves, a raven.

Each the Soldier holds close and does not let go.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, after sweat is sliding down his back and makes his right-hand grip slippery, after the muscles in his right arm start to burn and the place where his left arm connects to his body aches—the Asset does not sweat. The Asset does not feel fatigue. The Asset does not jeopardize the mission—the Lady’s impatience explodes outwards in a shriek and a shiver of power.

“Enough!” she cries and everything in the clearing falls still. The Captain is himself again, standing in the circle of the Soldier’s arms with that vague expression on his face and his hands still hanging at his sides. The Soldier is close, close enough his chest is pressed to the Captain’s and his hands clutch the Captain’s shoulders tight. Warm breath falls over his forehead and the bridge of his nose and familiarity flickers at the back of his mind, though the memory attached does not surface. When he looks up, he can see that the sky is still dark above his head, though instinct tells him dawn is swiftly approaching.

The Lady is losing and she knows it.

They all seem to know it. The circle of creatures watch him, their silence more unnerving than their earlier racket. Some have begun to look at the Lady, too, oddly hungry. Liath’s smile has not disappeared. It is the Lady, though, that sends a chill up the Soldier’s spine.

“I can see that this method will not work,” the Lady says thoughtfully, one eerily long finger tapping her full bottom lip. Her eyes on the Soldier feel like a physical touch, raking at his skin. He shudders when pain flairs in his head—sitting in the chair, the smell of leather and fear heavy in his nose, his arms restrained as the panels fold in around his head—snarling wordlessly at the Lady when he realizes what she is doing. There is a moment when he seriously contemplates letting the Captain go because he will kill her he will not allow anyone else to root around in his head. But the pain is gone as quickly as it came and the Soldier clutches the Captain to himself. Tries to concentrate on the warmth bleeding into him where they are connected.

The Lady is not Hyrda; he doesn’t think he could fight off her magic like he broke through Hydra’s conditioning.

Except he wasn’t the one who broke through the conditioning at all, was he? It was Steve who broke it.

The Soldier shakes off his fear, reminds himself to hold onto the Captain, just don’t let him go, and looks the Lady in the eye. He already knows what is about to come when he says, “Do your worst.”

She does.

The magic rolls off of her in a wave of shadow, like sludge dredged up from the bottom of a rotting swamp, even though his eyes see nothing at all. He can feel it, though. It hits him like an icy blast of arctic air, like…

Like the cryo-freeze, deep, deep into his bones, all the way through until he is winter, until he is the roaring wind over barren, white-swept plains, he is the snow that whips over the landscape, he is the ice, the bite and the shiver. He becomes the cold…

There is laughter, high pitched and delighted but it is so far away. There is a blizzard in his head and ice in his limbs and he can barely hear the words when the Lady says, “Ah, what a damaged, unfortunate creature you are. Had I known sooner, I would have begun with the holes in your memories,” there is a chattering sound, horrible, horrible, and he would shiver if he wasn’t already so numb. Even the strange warmth against his chest is a distant point of contact he can barely feel. He does not even remember why it was anchoring him, “Let’s start with this one, shall we,” says the voice just as he thinks brokenly,

Don’t let go. Don’t let him go.

Then the memory is on him, barreling over him like a speeding train.

He does not remember how long they had him. Weeks, months. Time meant nothing to him there. Sometimes he thinks he hallucinated, saw Steve there, smiling at him but not setting him free, saw his little sister Becca watching him with dry eyes. He is so cold and so hungry all of the time, curled up in the back of a hard, empty metal cell when he isn’t strapped to an even colder table with strangers surrounding him, poking him, taking pieces off of him. They’ve been slowly carving away his arm, already half-missing by the fall. Now when he looks at the bloodied bandages, he can see they have taken everything up to his shoulder.

But that isn’t even the worst part.

The worst part is that they never put him under. Every time, he is awake. Every operation, he feels the saws cutting through his flesh and bone, feels their knives burrowing into his blood vessels. They are adding things too, grafting metal to the inside of his shoulder that he imagines he can feel grating and shifting, unnatural as it was.

He remembers laying in that cell, his entire body thrumming with agony, whispering something over and over again,

“Sergeant James Barns, 32557038,” and knowing that, this time, help is not coming.

The Soldier is gasping when the memory loosens its grip on him. As his vision clears, the first thing he sees is the Captain’s blue eyes, glazed over but lovely all the same. The Soldier sees the circle of creatures ringing the clearing, sees their black eyes watching hungrily, sees the riders upon their restless horses, sees the Lady with her eyes colder than the ice that kept him asleep for so many years and he suddenly trembles with fear.

When he looks back at the Captain, he nearly shouts aloud.

Because the face that looks back at him is not Steve’s face at all but that of a woman, small and dark haired with black eyes that see too much and an unkind twist to her thin lips. He knows this woman. She was one of the lead scientists that took over his programming after Zola was done with him.

“Let’s try this again,” the woman says, voice calm and driving like an ax pick to the brain. He huddles into himself where he is chained, naked to the cold concrete floor and thinks he will go insane if he has to hear her speak one more moment, “Who are you?” and Bucky doesn’t know what the right answer to that question is anymore.

“Sergeant…James….” he tries, like he has the last million times she asked him and an electric jolt burns through his veins like fire.

“No,” she says, not even looking at him when he tries to pick himself off the floor, flattened by pain, “An Asset does not have a name. Again,”

The Soldier nearly jerks away from her, her cold face too close, the memories a sudden flood of pain and confusion. He is only a moment away from fleeing when he remembers. Remembers that the woman is not here, that, just like the fox-raven-wolf-bear, the person in his arms is still the Captain. What he sees now is just the Lady’s magic. The Soldier takes a shuddering breath and whispers, “Steve. You are Steve,” and does not look at the black eyes and dark hair because they are wrong.

A voice says, “Asset, report,” and the Soldier is in another room, this one with just two chairs bracketing a metal table and the woman watches him from the doorway. He does not blink. Does not move. He sits in one of the metal chairs and obeys.

They would punish him if he did not get the details right, he remembers, feeling sick and half expects to feel a current of electricity burn through him when he sees the woman’s—Steve’s—mouth say, “The Asset does not feel cold. The Asset does not feel pain. The Asset is nothing more than a weapon.” And as the dreaded voice speaks, he can feel it, feel himself trying to float away, to let the Asset in. The Soldier clutches the Captain hard with his metal hand, undoubtedly leaving bruises behind, and refuses to give in.

The Captain becomes someone else, then, a man he almost cannot recall at first. He is an older man, shorter than the Soldier and greying about the temples. His face is craggy and his eyes mean and something about him makes the Soldier thinks of—

boots in his stomach, at his kidneys, a voice saying, “You must not damage it,” and another answering, “It heals quickly,” and the feeling of a chain around his neck, pulling, choking—

but the man did not last long and the Soldier can barely even remember the pain of his beatings anymore. He forces himself to look at the Captain even as he shifts again and this time he is a young woman, barely out of her teens, with red, red hair and green eyes that are hard and wary. The Soldier nearly lets go of her out of shock, keeping only his left hand carefully wrapped around one slim bicep.

“I know you,” he breathes despite himself. Natalia his mind provides, a name from his scattered past they desperately tried to bury—

Stolen kisses from plush red lips, mouth on lithe, strong thighs, hands in his hair—

—teaching her how to throw a full grown man by breaking their grip, her and several other girls her age, showing them how to handle a knife, how to drop multiple opponents, how to accurately shoot a sniper rifle—

—“…gotten too close. He needs to be put back on ice,” an unfamiliar voice says in Russian. They are talking over his head again. He is sitting in the chair with his arms in the restraints and they are talking about him like he was a piece of furniture. For all that he reacts, he might as well be.

“It was your idea that he be allowed to get close to the girl in the first place,” responds another voice. Familiar. The Asset knows who they are talking about. The girl, the one that made living a little more bearable. And they are going to take her away from him. No, he thinks violently and maybe he says it aloud because the entire room goes still. With an effort, he lifts his head and looks at the three people standing around his chair.

“No,” he says again, louder and sees the fear come alive in their eyes. The Asset does not refuse an order. And yet.

“Wipe him,” says that familiar voice from the shadows on the other side of the room, “Now,” and, no, there are far more than a few people in the room, their guns pointed at his face. He kills five of them before they are able to subdue him. He tries to hold onto her memory, the way she smiled, small but fierce when he slid between her legs, the way she felt in his arms, solid and warm, the way she reminded him of someone he’d long forgotten. And then the pain sweeps in and steals it all away—

“You forgot me,” she accuses him now, striking at him with her free hand. He blocks clumsily and nearly takes a knee to the groin. They fight like a whirlwind in the middle of the clearing, Nataila—Steve—doing her best to shake him off. The Soldier has locked his metal hand, though, and though his throat aches with a loss he barely remembers, he holds on with as much determination as he had when it was teeth and claws trying to rend his flesh instead of fists.

The Captain becomes several more faces of people he forgotten. There is the agent who first trained him in hand-to-hand and had a perchance for putting out his cigarette on the Soldier’s skin. The young girl they made him kill to test his obedience. A Strike agent who liked to watch when they wiped him, face hungry. An array of handlers that ranged from indifferent to bloodthirsty. Some of them try to fight him like Nataila had and others brought with them an onslaught of memories that often leave the Soldier swaying and shuddering. He holds on through it all, even if everything inside him tells him to run because he cannot let them have him again.

But with every new face, it is getting harder and harder to remember why he must not let go.

With every face, the Captain seems a little bit farther away.

There is silver in the sky when the Captain shifts one last time and says in a voice that will haunt the Soldier for the rest of his life, “We meet again, Sergeant Barns. How kind of you to allow me to finish what I started.” Arnim Zola was a small man, barely as tall as the Soldier’s chest, with small beady eyes and a swiftly balding head. His smile is cruel, just as it had been all those times—

when he leaned over the Solder on the table, after they took his arm and replaced it with metal, when he injected the Soldier with needles that made him burn under his skin for days, when he studied the Soldier slumped in his cell and said, “Break his fingers again.”—

The Soldier gets lost for too long and when his vision clears, he is on his knees, hand wrapped around Zola’s—the Captain’s—ankle. Zola stares down at him like he always had done, like a science experiment, and terror squeezes the Soldier’s lungs, makes his heart skip and pound and his entire body shake. And he knows. He knows what Zola is going to say—

He knows it as soon as he sees that glint in Zola’s eyes that looks too much like triumph. He knows when Zola asks the dark haired woman how her programming is working and her response is, “He is a stubborn one,” like he is a horse she hasn’t broken yet. He knows when Zola nods and responds, “I believe I have the solution,” and steps into his cell.

“Sergent Barns, I hear you have been reluctant to cooperate,” there is too much blood in the Soldier’s throat from screaming to spit 'fuck you' like he wants. He just lifts his head as best he can and glares at the tiny scientist. Zola shrugs, “No matter, I just came to give you some news. It seems your beloved Captain has gone and killed himself,” Zola doesn’t even bother to smother his laugh, “Crashed a plane right into the Arctic! From what I hear, he didn’t even last a week after your fall. What a pity,” his smile is a twisted thing when the Soldier snarls at him and rasps,

“It’s not fucking true,” because Steve wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. It takes them a week to convince him that, yes, Steve is really dead. They give him a newspaper and show him the newsreels of the funeral and it hurts like nothing he’s ever felt before.

Bucky goes hollow.

It is very easy for them to break him when there is no him left—

“Steve,” the Soldier hears himself saying and realizes he has his forehead in the dirt and tears on his face. He is crouched on the ground, head aching but his hand has not moved from the Captain’s ankle. He can hear the anxious rustle of creatures around him, a snort of a horse, the yip of a dog. Slowly, feeling like he has lived twenty years in the span of one night, he lifts his head and looks at the sky.

And laughs.

It is not a pleasant sound, rasping from his throat like he’s forgotten how. He probably has; he cannot remember the last time he laughed. But he must laugh because he’s won.

It is dawn and he has not let go of the Captain.

Relief and elation flood through him and when he picks himself off the ground, careful to keep one hand buried in the Captain’s clothing, he turns to the Lady upon her white horse to find her watching him with no emotion.

“They tried for seventy years to take him away from me and didn’t succeed,” he says plainly, “What did you think you could accomplish in one night?” Beside him, the Captain is himself again and the haze is beginning to lift from his eyes, the Lady’s spell dissipating with the coming daylight. She clicks her tongue at him but she is not angry at losing like he thought she’d be. She looks at him and there is fear in her eyes. All around them the creatures shift, like the sea during a storm and the Lady glances at them.

“Very well,” she says, “you have fulfilled the terms of the challenge. He is free,” the Soldier turns back in time to see the Captain’s knees buckle, like he is a puppet with its strings cut and he catches him easily to guide him onto the grass. At first he fears the Captain has been harmed but his breath is easy and his face unlined. The Soldier notes his long eyelashes resting gently over his cheekbones and turns away before he can get caught up in how familiar it seems.

The clearing is awash in a more natural light now, silver from the early morning sun that still hides behind the trees, and the creatures begin fade into it like melting water. Like they are eager for something. The hunters on their silver horses dissolve into the early mist beginning to sneak between the branches. A great horn blows, clear and melancholy but it sounds far away now, like he is hearing it though a closing door to another world. The odd dogs mill about the clearing one more time then they too are gone, there voices lingering like ghosts, like distant bells. The Soldier is oddly sorry to see them go.

The Lady says nothing more to him before taking her leave. She wheels her horse around, flanked by her three knights and they follow the rest, here one moment, gone the next. Like they’d never been. The only one that remains is the rider on the black horse, watching him intently.

“No one has passed that test before,” Liath finally says. “There have been several who have tried but in they end, they always let go.” The Solder does not doubt it and he wonders momentarily over the fate of the poor souls who the Lady had taken.

“I am not like them,” he states and the rider tilts his head in acknowledgement.

“No, you aren’t, are you?” Liath murmurs and he is looking at the Soldier too closely for comfort, “There is darkness in you. Not magical, no, but…it is like a cavern waiting to open under your feet. Be careful you do not let it swallow you,” and the Soldier thinks wryly, too late for that. He has been in the dark for a very long time.

“What does it matter to you?” he demands instead and the rider’s smile curls strangely on his lips. Sharp. Deadly. Shadows cling to the edges of it and Liath’s eyes burn like molten metal. The Soldier realizes that, while the Lady was powerful, this creature is the one he should have been afraid of all along.

“If the Tithe is not met every seventh year, the pact is ended and the cycle is disrupted,” he grins and under him, his horse snorts and dances in place, “Her reign is no longer protected by mortal blood.” The Soldier shivers, moving subtly so he keeps himself between Liath and the Captain when the rider pulls a small golden knife from his belt. But Liath is not interested in harming them. He cuts one of his long braids and tosses it to the Soldier’s feet where it gleams among the blades of grass.

“A boon, Ghost, when you are in need,” Liath says as the knife disappears from his fingers in a spray of sparks and bloodlust clings to him, thick and cloying.

“Why?” the Soldier asks as the dark horse kicks up clumps of dirt and grass under its restless feet. He thinks he smells blood on the air.

“Because you have just won me a crown,” and he laughs as he kicks his horse around, a deep, terrible sound. Between one stride and the next, the horse and rider are gone. And the Soldier is smiling is own sharp smile as he leans down and picks up the braid. It is soft and shines with a strange, unnatural light when he winds it about his wrist and tugs his sleeve over it. He does not care all that much about the fate of the strange creatures and their bloody politics. He only really cares about the man sprawled in the grass at his feet, here and whole and safe.

Mission perimeters met he thinks, suddenly exhausted, and drops down into the grass beside Steve.

He takes a moment to stare down at Steve’s face, still and peaceful—Steve was up all night coughing and he’d finally fallen asleep just after dawn, his face relaxed. Bucky barely breathes where he lays next to Steve, afraid that if he so much as draws a breath, he’ll wake and the coughing will start again—before laying back in the damp grass with a sigh.

The magic is long gone from the clearing, the trees once again dark and silent, the clearing just a normal clearing. Only the light of the slowly waking sun offers any kind of illumination. Even the music has gone, leaving behind nothing but the occasional call of a bird. The Solder stares up at the lightening sky and lets the peace flow over him. Touches the tips of his fingers to Steve’s hand and promptly falls asleep.

**

The Soldier comes awake suddenly to a hand on his shoulder and a voice saying “Bucky?” He sits up quickly, taking in his surroundings with sharp eyes as the events from last night click into place. The clearing, sun still low in the sky, Steve. His internal clock tells him it is almost 9:30 am. When he peers at the trees and the sky, he thinks he might see a stray flicker of light or hear the chiming bay of a dog but there is nothing. The only evidence last night even happened is the clearing in which they woke, the lingering scratches on the Soldier’s skin from teeth and claws, and a single dark braid fastened around his wrist.

When he finally looks at Steve (and he is Steve now, no matter how the Soldier tries to keep thinking of him as the Captain), squatting on the grass next to him with his bare feet damp with dew, Steve is wearing an expression the Soldier cannot read. He thinks he’s seen it somewhere before but he cannot figure out where. They stare at each other for a second before Steve’s eyebrows furrow.

“What happened?” he asks, voice rough. The Soldier shrugs because how does he explain what really happened? Magic and impossibilities and strange creatures with strange faces and even stranger tests. He doesn’t even know where to begin. Steve seems to take that as a refusal to talk, though, because his face hardens and his shoulders tense. So the Soldier concedes and says,

“It’s hard to explain,” which really means nothing at all but it takes some of the hardness out of Steve’s face. Hesitantly, he asks, “Do you remember anything at all?” and isn’t that ironic, the Soldier asking that of anyone, when he still only remembers his own life in broken snippets. Whatever the Lady had done to him last night making him remember, it didn’t stick. Steve doesn’t seem to get the joke, though, because he does that thing with his eyebrows again, this time in concentration.

“I think…there was music. I was in bed and I heard music,” he shakes his head, “and then I woke up here in nothing but my pajamas and there you were…” his eyes are very blue when he looks at the Soldier. There might be something like hope on his face but there is also grief and exhaustion. Not from being tired, the Soldier thinks, but from missing something so bad it saps all his energy. Bucky would have known what to say to make it better but the Soldier doesn’t know how to fix it.

In the awkward silence that follows, Steve glances around at the clearing, eyes dark and troubled and the Soldier watches him. Like he’s been doing for months.

“It’s been months since Washington,” Steve finally, softly. Hurt, “Natasha says that you’ve been following me but I could never spot you,” he swallows thickly and looks away. Down at the damp grass, “I looked for you and all that time you were watching from the shadows,” the Soldier doesn’t know how to respond to that. But he doesn’t like seeing Steve upset.

“I was,” he answers simply and Steve makes a rough noise, rubbing a hand over his face.

“Buck,” he begins but the Soldier cuts him off,

“I am not him,” he says flatly, needing Steve to understand. Anguish floods Steve’s face and he opens his mouth to protest but the Soldier shakes his head to cut him off, “I’m not. I have some of his memories and I remember you but I was something else far longer than I was ever him,” he searches Steve’s face, sees him go still and quiet. Sad. Steve looks so very sad. The Soldier licks his lips and shifts closer. But he’s forgotten how to give comfort.

“Then, if you’re not Bucky, who are you?” Steve asks, eyes searching the Soldier’s face. They flicker between his eyes, down to his nose, chin, lips, cheeks then back to his eyes again.

“Just…me,” he responds with a shrug because he doesn’t know how else to answer.

“I can’t call you ‘just me’,” Steve responds with a slight upwards curling on his lips. He thinks for a moment then asks hesitantly, “How about James?” and instantly they both wrinkle their noses. The Soldier shakes his head.

“No, you can call me Bucky,” because it’s still the name that fits the best. Perhaps he can even think of himself as Bucky someday, “I just want you to know that I will never be the same man as the friend you used to know.” Steve looks at him and laughs a little.

“Nether am I, you know,” he says with a sharp, self-deprecating smile and the Soldier finds himself shaking his head.

“No, you’re still a punk,” he says, surprising both of them. Startled, he looks at Steve, who wears the same expression of shock on his face. It melts quickly, though, into something soft and warm and familiar. The Soldier thinks the expression in Steve’s eyes is affection.

“Can I hug you?” Steve asks quietly and the Soldier—Bucky, he tells himself, it’s easier to think of himself that way—lifts his shoulder again. Nods slightly. He remembers hugs, in a vague, general sort of way. He’s seen people hug each other, seen Sam Wilson clasp Steve in a warm embrace a time or two, seen Steve give the Widow one armed hugs, seen her return them. And he thinks he remembers what they used to feel like but his memory on the matter cannot really be trusted. But when Steve rocks forward and slides his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, warm and strong, he thinks, oh yeah. Tentatively, he reaches up and curls his right arm around Steve’s waist, breathing in the smell of him, of sunlight and morning dew and something else that tickles at his memories.

Steve’s scent, real and warm in his nose, the strength and solidity of him pressed close and something in the Soldier—Bucky—clicks into place.

Because they broke him by telling him Steve was dead but now he’s not. He’s very much alive and in Bucky’s arms and he doesn’t realize he’s clinging until he feels the fabric of Steve’s t-shirt tear a little under his metal fist.

“I missed you,” Steve breathes into Bucky’s neck where he’s buried his face and Bucky can’t help but grip him tighter. Steve makes a low noise in the back of his throat and his arms clutch tighter too, “I missed you, so much,” and there is water on his neck, and his own breathing is stilted. It takes Steve a long moment to compose himself and when he sits back his eyes are red. But he smiles at Bucky and there is not a shadow of sadness hiding in its depths.

“They couldn’t tear you out of me, you know,” Bucky says quietly, unable to let Steve go completely. Not that he seems to mind, as he keeps one arm around Bucky’s shoulder, “All the wiping and freezing and programming and you were always still in my head,” emotions flicker across Steve’s face, anger, grief, relief, before settling on something that steals Bucky’s breath but that he has no name for.

“Come back with me, Bucky. Stay.” It kind of shocks Bucky to realize that he has no reason to distance himself again. Protecting Steve’s wellbeing includes making sure he never has the occasion to look sad or lost again. Protecting him means fighting at his side, means making him smile, means never letting him miss Bucky again. So he nods and lets Steve help him to his feet, hand warm in metal fingers. Steve looks around again, at the clearing, at the normal trees and the normal grass and then at his bare feet.

“Are you going to tell me how we got here, me in my pajamas and you in just your socks?” he asks as they head back into the trees, Bucky in front because he’s the only one who remembers the way back. Surprised, he looks down at his feet and realizes, yes, he is indeed just wearing his socks. He'd taken off his boots so he wouldn’t make too much noise sneaking about in the old woman’s house and ran out after Steve without pausing to put on boots. His socks are damp and filthy and make him croak a laugh.

“I can try,” he says as he leads them along a narrow dirt path that he doesn’t remember being there last night. But then, the forest looks very different in the morning light. The trees are no longer dark and sinister, letting in cheerful sunlight between their leaves and nothing tries to trip them as they walk. If the smooth dirt of the path is a little unnatural Steve doesn’t remark upon it and Bucky just smiles to himself.

So he tells Steve, as best he can, about the strange night, about the magic and the creatures and the test. Steve listens quietly as they walk, his face incredulous, even when Bucky shows him the dark twist of hair around his wrist. Steve touches it with his fingertips, lips parted and eyes wondering. They are nearing the village when Steve glances at him and says,

“You never really explained how you beat the test,” they are strolling through a rolling field of the greenest grass he thinks he’s ever seen, the countryside around them like pictures he remembers seeing on post cards.

“She changed you,” he says as he watches a couple sea birds wheel about in the sky, their cries distant, “Your shape and then your face and I couldn’t let go of you until dawn,” Steve is quiet beside him, the only sound the soft hush of his legs through the grass. But after a moment, he reaches out and tangles his fingers through Bucky’s metal ones and hangs on all the way back into town.

**

Sam Wilson is frantic by the time they show up at the bed and breakfast.

The sun is high in the sky and the air pleasantly warm, the day as different from yesterday as it could be. He is almost disappointed to make it back to the village and realizes this is perhaps the first time he has enjoyed a day simply because it’s a nice day in a long time. Maybe even before he shipped out to war.

A black car is pulled in front of the inn and the sight of it makes Steve click his tongue impatiently against his teeth and pull Bucky along a little faster. They have gotten a few looks from a couple of locals as they walked through the streets but it is the sight of that car that sends of spike of worry through Bucky. He’d forgotten, when he agreed to stay with Steve, that he would have to deal with Steve’s friends. That it would mean returning to the real world, becoming an actual person, rather than a ghost who lives at the edges of life. It makes him feel suddenly claustrophobic, trapped. But he only pulls his hand free as the door to the inn bursts open and hangs back when Sam and the Widow stride across the small yard towards them. But he doesn't turn heel and run like he wants to. He said he’d stay and he will.

“What the hell happened to you, man?” Sam demands, and there’s stress in his voice and in the lines that bracket his lips. A good friend then. Bucky is glad for it. Natalia (Natasha now, his brain supplies) hangs back, watching Bucky with sharp, cool eyes. Steve rubs his hand over the back of his neck, a sheepish gesture Bucky remembers from back alleys after fights.

“It’s kinda a long story, actually,” Steve tries and gets two matching unimpressed looks that make Bucky bite back a smile. They have his number.

“Did he have something to do with it?” Natasha demands, jerking her chin at Bucky who just regards her calmly. He’d be concerned too, in her place. Steve glances at Bucky then places himself solidly between Bucky and his teammates.

“He’s the reason I’m standing here, Nat,” Steve says quietly but with steel in his voice. She looks at him carefully, then looks at Bucky again. Her nod is sharp and reluctant, backing down. For now.

“I was going to call Stark if you didn’t show up by this evening,” Sam begins but the rest of the conversation washes over Bucky when he sees a movement at the corner of his eye. He glances over to find a familiar cat with gold eyes watching him from the sidewalk. It gives a flick of its tail then starts to walk away. But it only goes a few paces down the road before stopping again and looking back at him. Bucky realizes with a jolt that the cat wants him to follow it. He glances at Steve, who is talking quietly to Sam and Natasha, and quietly slips away, trotting after the little tabby as it whisks around the corner.

Bucky pauses when he rounds the corner and sees the tabby sitting at the feet of the old woman, their matching eyes reflecting the sunlight oddly. She smiles when she sees him and now he knows why it seemed so sinister last night. It reminds him a little of the creatures from the woods.

“I see you returned with your boy,” she says and he nods, uneasy, “Then you did better than I, once upon a time.” Her voice is sad, though her smile does not fade. The cat murmurs softly and winds around her ankles.

“They took someone of yours?” he asks, unable to imagine what it would have been like to fail.

“Yes. They took my fiancé. I was young, then, and foolish and thought I could challenge their power,” she looks at him closely and he thinks she can see straight through him, “I am glad you succeeded,” and it sounds genuine. He opens his mouth to thank her when footsteps interrupt him and Steve’s voice calls his name. Feeling like he’s been pulled out of a stupor, Bucky turns to find Steve walking up behind him, expression cautious and tinged with fear.

“Are you alright?” he asks quietly, clearly concerned and Bucky can’t help his small smile.

“I’m not gonna disappear on you again, Steve,” he answers and enjoys the way Steve’s expression relaxes a little bit.

“Alright. You were talking to someone…” his eyes flicker to the street behind Bucky and back, curious and Bucky turns to the old lady. Only the street behind him is empty expect for a small tabby cat, cleaning its ear in the shadows of a trash can. He makes a small noise of surprise, looking at Steve helplessly.

“The old woman, she was right there,” he points to the empty street, suddenly feeling foolish. Steve gently touches his elbow, eyebrows furrowed.

“What old woman, Buck?” he asks gently and Bucky makes a frustrated sound.

“The old woman. She lives across the street from the inn and I stayed in her attic,” he explains because he’s not crazy. Steve blinks at him and goes a little pale. The feeling of unease returns stronger this time, a tingle along his spine and chills down his right arm.

“Buck, when I was talking to the owner of the bed and breakfast last night, he mentioned the house across the street was empty,” he says softly, fingers gentle on the inside of Bucky’s arm, “She died a few months ago.” For some reason, he isn’t surprised.

“I ate in that house,” he says hollowly, skin going cold, even though Steve’s words ring true. The look he gets in return is just as troubled as he feels. Steve shrugs, as if to say, it’s possible for magical creatures to take him and change him into all kinds of shapes but not for an old woman to appear and feed him even after she died? Bucky bites his lip, looks at the cat one more time where it watches with its golden eyes then turns away. He takes Steve’s hand and clutches it tight, feeling the strength in his fingers, the warmth of his palm, and says tiredly,

“Lets go home, Stevie,” and the brilliance of Steve’s smile takes his breath away.

“Yeah, Buck, alright,” Steve says, sounding stupidly happy and making Bucky smile in turn. They walk back with their hands clasped and for the first time in a very, very long time, Bucky thinks maybe things will be alright now.

After all, he has Steve. This time he vows to never, ever let him go.



end