Chapter Text
It’s Sarah who sees the news first; they had been washing the dishes, after dinner, when she burst back into the kitchen. Years of knowing his sister had Sam at her side in an instant, taking note of the wild, almost scared look in her eyes.
“Sarah?”
Beside him, Bucky had reached for his hip, automatically, forgetting momentarily that he wasn’t armed.
“It… the TV…” she brought up a hand to cup over her mouth. “Sam…”
The boys – who had been flicking soapy bubbles at each other, and at Bucky – slipped out of the kitchen without being asked. Sam paused just long enough to take note of the two of them sitting down on the edge of the porch, AJ pulling out his phone, before he followed Sarah through to the living room where she’d left the TV playing. Whatever it was, the boys would probably pick up the news through whatever social media the kids were using, and under normal circumstances, Sam probably would have pulled them back, prevented them from seeing anything until he knew what it was, but Sarah’s insistent tugging distracted him just enough to follow her first.
There was a reporter on-screen, standing with her back to a building that Sam only identified as a bank thanks to the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen. Attack on Bank in Liechtenstein.
“What’s…”
The reporter had her hand to her ear, “And I am hearing her described as using methodology concerningly similar to that of the Winter Soldier.”
Bucky stiffed; Sam felt the movement next to him but couldn’t quite pull his eyes away from the screen to check on him as the image switched to a picture of a girl. She was dressed in clothing almost identical to what Bucky had been wearing when Sam first met him, right down to the muzzle, metal arm, and smudged eye-makeup. Her eyes, the only part of her face that was really visible, were fixed directly up at the security camera that had caught her, partially in movement, about to shoot it down.
“The only security camera that wasn’t disabled before the massacre began caught this image of a young woman entering the bank, again dressed almost identically to the Winter Soldier.” The reporter’s words were a little rushed, a little stumbled, clearly repeating information as she received it. “Her origins remain unknown, but people are already questioning the involvement of both Hydra and the pardoned Sergeant Barnes.”
The image on-screen switched again, displaying pictures of the victims – a mother and son, the bank tellers, a few managers, even more random civilians whose lives had ended, simply because they made the mistake of choosing that day to go to the bank.
Sam could have stood there for hours, picturing that one image of her in his mind’s eye – she was young, that much was clear, but the muzzle, and the makeup, and her fringe combined to cover enough of her face that anything else was almost impossible to tell – but Bucky sank down onto the couch beside him with a strangled, horrified noise.
“They made another one.” He whispered, voice barely audible over another reporter reading out a list of the confirmed dead. “After everything… they still…”
Pictures continued to cross the screen, images that had clearly been donated by family members or other people who loved the victims. They were intimate, casual in the same way that the pictures of him and Sarah and Gideon and the boys and their parents that lined the house’s walls were.
“Another one of me.”
Sarah made an aborted sobbing noise, pressing her hand back to her mouth as she sunk down next to him, wrapping her free arm around his shoulders and looking up at Sam as if she expected him to say something, as if he could fix this.
“It’s not you.” Sam said, the words sounding like meaningless platitudes even to his own ears. “It’s not your fault.”
The original reporter appeared back on screen, more put-together than she had been before, and cleared her throat. “We will return later for further coverage, but for now the authorities are asking anyone with any information to come forward, and the public is beginning to ask: does the Winter Soldier, James Barnes, have anything to do with--?”
The screen went black before she finished her sentence. When Sam turned back to the couch, he saw Sarah with the remote pointed at the screen, hand still shaking. For a moment they all just stayed there, the silence quiet enough that Sam almost thought he could hear the water lapping up against the dock, even from inside the house.
He needed to do something. “I’m going to…” he paused, took in a shaking breath and glanced around at the normality of the house, the calm atmosphere of earlier shattered in such a brutal way that everything looked wrong. “I’m going to call Hill. See what SHIELD is thinking.”
Sarah nodded, the shadow of that wild, scared look still in her eyes, and her arm still around Bucky. Sam paused to look at his partner: face buried in his hands, still as a statue, and unresponsive to anything they’d said.
“OK.” He turned, pulled out his phone and walked towards the back door, stumbling against the still floor like it was a moving boat, swaying with the water’s movement. There was nothing really classified in anything he was going to say; Sarah knew almost everything anyway, but it seemed like a good idea to take it away from Bucky, to keep whatever Hill said at a distance, so he could translate it into softer words.
“Uncle Sam?”
The boys were still sat on the edge of the porch, AJ’s phone abandoned, screen-down, between them, and they looked up at him as he exited the house.
“Hey.” The ground was still wobbling under his feet, but he had grown up on the water, he knew how to deal with it, and he smiled, a sad smile, but one that he hoped was reassuring.
The two of them exchanged a glance, the innocence of their childhood overshadowed by their understanding of Sam’s job and Bucky’s past. Sighing, Sam eased himself down to sit between them, nudging AJ’s phone over towards him as they both shuffled obligingly sideways to make room for him.
“Is Mom OK?”
“Yeah. Yes.” It wasn’t quite a lie, Sarah would recover, would be able to push it away and focus on her present. “She’s gonna be fine.”
Two sets of eyes blinked at him, a little disbelieving, but wanting to believe that he was telling the truth.
“She’s just a little shaken by… what happened.”
They all glanced down at AJ’s phone.
“Y’all saw what happened?”
“Bits of it.” AJ said, voice quiet, subdued. “There’s a woman who’s also the Winter Soldier. She robbed a bank and killed everyone.”
“We saw the picture of her.” Cass added. “She looked so… scary.”
The way he dithered before settling on ‘scary’ told Sam enough; he didn’t quite know how to express how he feels, can’t quite express the bone-deep horror that Sam found himself tiringly familiar with.
“I know. But… she’s probably no different from Bucky, underneath.”
He received two disbelieving looks in response and sighed.
“Look, you guys know that Bucky used to work for the bad guys.”
“Because they forced him to!” AJ put in quickly, a level of defence to his tone, and Sam wrapped an arm around his shoulder as he nodded.
“Because they forced him to. But he escaped, and turned against them to help us, and they lost a very valuable asset.” Using Hydra’s words sent a shiver down his spine that he repressed, violently, ignoring the feeling of disgust that crawled over his skin.
“Uncle Bucky’s not an asset.” Cass said quietly, large brown eyes wide and worried. “He’s a person.”
Sam sighed again, the disgusted feeling receding slightly. “I know. But that’s how they saw it.”
Cass looked down at AJ’s phone again, a small crease between his brows. “Do they… do they want him back?”
“No, not… I mean, they probably would if they had the option, but they don’t. It’s not that. We think that the girl you saw, she’s probably another soldier that they made to… do what they used to force Bucky to do.”
“And Mom’s scared of that?” AJ asked, ever the perceptive one.
“Yeah. We… this could be very dangerous for a lot of people.”
“Are you and Uncle Bucky gonna be leaving again?”
Sam swallowed down the miserable feeling that rose up in his throat in response to the tiny, scared look in his nephew’s eyes. “I think so. I need to call some people, find out what they want us to do. OK?”
They both nodded, shuffling back into the space he vacates to lean up against each other as he began to make his way down towards the dock, far enough that they can’t hear him greeting Hill.
“It’s OK,” he heard AJ quietly reassure his brother. “They’ll come back, they’re the good guys. The good guys always survive.”
Images of all those he had lost flashed across his vision as Hill sighed his name in response, led by a memory of Natasha, her red hair tossed over her shoulder as she laughed, and his eyes burned against the prickle of tears.
*
Sarah stayed there, on the couch, long after Sam had left the room, rubbing circles methodically into Bucky’s shoulders, feeling his muscles tense and relax periodically.
“How long?” He eventually whispered, lifting his head from his hands, just enough to look at her, his voice hoarse. “How long have they had her?”
She looked away from the sheer emotion in his face, shaking her head. “I don’t know… I don’t…” she wanted to say something, reassure him that there’s no way he could have known she existed, but the words get stuck in her throat as she thinks over the question.
“She’s so young.” He said, almost too quiet for her to hear, looking back up at the black screen.
The image of the girl wouldn’t leave Sarah’s head, the way almost all her face was covered, just a pair of dark eyes peering out from the uniform and the choppy fringe that reminded her of a girl she had gone to school with, whose mother insisted on cutting her hair long after everyone else had graduated to hairdressers. She couldn’t be that old… maybe late teens. Her eyes seemed old, holding fathomless depths but that could be for a number of reasons, not least the trauma of being forced to kill people. Or she could be much older; after all, Bucky was still in his late-twenties/early-thirties biologically after the serum and the cryofreeze…
“Can you turn it back on?”
Her eyes snapped back to his face, and a level of her surprised uncertainty must have shown because he met her gaze levelly, determined.
“Yeah, OK.”
They were still filming outside the bank, a man being interviewed by yet another reporter – although Sarah thought she could see the original woman in the background, seemingly arguing with the police.
“Yeah, she was… uh, focused? I suppose.” His mouth moved, speaking German words, and an off-screen voice translated. “I nearly walked into her, and I joked with my wife that she would have just walked through me if I hadn’t moved.” The translation was almost emotionless, but his face twisted up in discomfort as he breaks off.
“Did you think she looked like the Winter Soldier?”
“No, no. I mean, you know the strange things that kids wear these days, I don’t… I didn’t really think anything of it. And she didn’t…” he broke off again, glancing around and away from the reporter.
“Didn’t?” the reporter prompted.
“The Soviet Star.” He eventually says. “She didn’t have a Soviet Star.”
Next to her, Bucky’s hand rose to press at the place on his shoulder where that same star had sat. Sarah had never really thought about it before, but it struck her then that it was almost like branding.
The reporter peered over at the camera, an odd sort of almost-glee in his eyes. “Was there something else there? Instead?”
“I…” the man breathed in. “There was a crescent moon. I think… it was very dark coloured, but… maybe purple?”
The reporter glanced at the camera again, eyes flickering up to whoever is behind it and nodded. “Well, thank you. Did you have anything else to add?”
Apparently, he didn’t. The interviewer thanked him for his time and the camera followed him briefly as he returned to his wife, a woman stood a short distance away and with a worried frown on her face. Even as she reached out to draw him into a hug, she seemed to be scolding him for something.
“He could be a target now.” Bucky said, quiet, like he wasn’t quite aware that he was speaking. “A witness who gave out a key piece of identifying information.”
Sarah nodded, thoughtlessly, as a question rose in her throat, an almost-innocent wondering of what the consequences would be for the girl, but the tense muscles under arm, and the way her hands still shook from the horrified adrenaline rush earlier on, reminded her where she was and who she was with. When she looked back over at him, his stare was blank, emotionless, and more than a little unnerving.
She turned the TV off again. “I’m going to check on the boys.” she told him, and turned away without waiting for a response, knowing that he was deep enough in his head that he wouldn’t have really heard her.
Sam passes her on his way back in, eyes deeply lined in a way they hadn’t been earlier in the evening. “I spoke to the boys,” he told her, voice low, “they’ve seen bits of it online. Seen the photo of her.” He dug his teeth into his bottom lip and glanced through the doorway into the living room where Bucky sat, still enough that he could have been carved out of marble.
“Are they…”
He shrugged. “They seem to be handling it alright.” Something dark flashed across his face. “I mean, they shouldn’t have to, but…”
She cuts him off with a hand on his shoulder before he can spiral right down into blaming himself for everything they’ve seen. The internet and the news, and the blip itself hold more blame than Sam, who has spent too long trying to fix everything.
“Sorry.” He takes her hand, squeezed it. “Yeah. Cass might… struggle tonight, I think the look in her eyes really got to him. Or you know,” he laughed, once, humourlessly, “the lack thereof.”
“And you two?” she asked, matching his volume and following his gaze back through to Bucky.
“SHIELD wants us back in New York. They’re sending a plane to get us this evening.”
Biting back a sigh, she drew him into a hug, wrapping her arms around him, pressing the memory of his breathing, the shape of his arms around her, into her mind. “Be careful,” she plead into his shoulder, trying not to remember the early days of the blip, back when she had thought she might never hug him again. “Both of you.”
He smiled as he pulled back, one tinged with sadness, and squeezed her hand again, reassuringly, even as he turns away from her, and back towards Bucky, back towards the crazy life he led without her. She watched his back for a moment, bites back the pleas that really want to escape, that he forgets the whole thing and stays with them, stays in Delacroix where nothing can really hurt him, bites back the quiet, guilt-tripping phrase that she’s suppressed since he came back from the blip and still chose to go back out there.
I can’t lose anyone else.
It doesn’t escape her notice that he hadn’t answered her.
*
There was a veritable sea of reporters outside of SHIELD’s new, public headquarters, and judging by the sudden rise in volume that happened when the two of them stepped out of the car, they had been waiting specifically for Sam and Bucky – or Captain America and the old Winter Soldier.
“I thought you said Hill was going to take care of this?” Bucky muttered as he shoved his sunglasses onto his face, managing to angle his arm in such a way that the reflection of the sun hit some of the closer reporters directly in the eye.
“I thought I said that as well.” Sam muttered back, through his carefully constructed media smile, a performance for the cameras that were beginning to be pointed in their direction. “Just keep walking. They shouldn’t get too close.”
“Oh,” Bucky said, clenching his metal fist in such a way that Sam could hear the machinery whirring inside, “they won’t.”
‘Just keep walking’ remained a task that was easier said than done. As soon as they were close enough to be heard, the reporters turned on them, yelling out prepared questions and shoving the microphones closer than Sam was really comfortable with.
“Captain! How are you going to deal with this new threat?”
“Sergeant Barnes! Any comment on your whereabouts since the defeat of the flag-smashers?”
“Will the two of you be working together on this?”
“Captain! Are you sure you want to be working with the Winter Soldier on this case?”
Sam gritted his teeth, keeping the smile up, perfectly pleasant and calm, even as he wanted to turn, to ask them what right they had to be asking that question. Ask what they even knew about Bucky as a person to be judging him based on his past. Just keep walking. The door was in sight, along with the guards that would prevent any reporters following them into the building.
“Winter Soldier!” One reporter demanded, somehow having managed to push past everyone else and just far enough into the barriers to reach forward and stick his microphone directly under their noses. “Why do you think Hydra are using their new asset to rob banks rather than as an assassin?”
Sam flinched back slightly at the sudden movement. “Buck, don’t—”
“I think Hydra, or what remains of them, are likely incredibly short on funds at the moment.” Bucky replied, pulling his glasses off in one motion that managed to silence all the clamouring reporters at once. “The Avengers have spent the last few years, and the years before the Blip, hunting down any remaining Hydra cells and arresting their members. Any surviving cells must have been incredibly underground and would have been unable to rely on a wider group to support them, so they are probably in need of money and resources if they want to become anything like as big as they used to be.”
The man looked as though he wasn’t actually expecting a well thought out response to his question. “Uh. Why do you think they made another you? With the arm and everything?”
“I don’t know.” Bucky replied honestly. “And it horrifies me that anyone could do this to someone that young.”
“Do you have a plan to handle this threat?”
Noting the slight tension in Bucky’s shoulders and the way they turned an almost imperceptible amount towards him, Sam cleared his throat and stepped forward into the impromptu press-conference that had been created, placing a hand on Bucky’s arm as he did.
“We are currently planning to attempt to handle this with as little violence as possible. Currently, the girl’s motivations are unknown, but assuming that this is a situation similar to Sergeant Barnes’, we will lead with compassion and the hope that she can be rehabilitated into society.”
Most of the reporters nod in response, general murmurs that suggested to Sam that his plan was well-received.
“Are you certain that she is being forced to do this?” A woman asked, stepping out of the crowd.
Sam felt Bucky tense up again at his side and bit back the anger that wanted to respond to the question. “What are you asking?”
“How do we know that she isn’t doing this because she wants to do it?” She clarified.
“We don’t.” Bucky agreed, still tense, “But I know that they muzzled me as a form of control, it is unlikely they would need to have that kind of control over someone doing this willingly.”
“But what if she is?” The woman persisted. “What will you do?”
Sam glanced back over at the doors, so close and yet, so far. “We do not want to hurt someone that young,” he informed her, “we will, of course, try and avoid it as much as possible, as we do in all missions.”
Bucky nodded beside him. “But, as in all missions, we will consider any and all possible extreme scenarios while planning.”
He paused, glanced at Sam, a question and apology in his eyes – sorry for interrupting, was that alright? – Sam nodded at him, feeling the press-ready smile slip into something more genuine, and a breath released from Bucky’s chest.
It was at that point that a few SHIELD agents emerged from the building, having apparently decided to put an end to the impromptu press conference, and proceeded to shepherd the two of them through the still-clamouring crowd to the door. The second the door sealed behind them, the noise from outside was silenced, leaving only the buzzing in Sam’s ears, the steady hum of computers, and the careful, slow clapping of SHIELD Director Hill.
“You handled that well.”
“You told me there wouldn’t be any reporters.” Sam replied, stamping down on the anger that wanted to snap out at her.
Hill shrugged. “I told you I would take care of it.” She gestured for them to follow her and turned away. “They needed to know that Barnes isn’t connected to this ‘Night Soldier.’”
They exchanged a glance behind her back.
“Night Soldier?”
“That’s what the media has taken to calling her, yes.” Hill turned, sharply, leading them into a conference room, which held some more SHIELD agents, and the other surviving Avengers – Lang, Wanda, and Strange.
It was a little odd, Sam thought, seeing them in normal clothes, especially Strange who was dressed in jeans and a hoodie, although still with the cape draped over the top of his outfit, and a mug clutched in his hand with a fox pun on it. He raised the mug in Sam’s direction briefly with a small nod.
“Now,” Hill continued, taking her place at the head of the room, “Barnes. Did you mean what you said about Hydra?”
Bucky glanced over at him before responding. “Struggling with a lack of funds?”
She nodded, once, and Sam was struck suddenly by how many of Fury’s mannerisms she had taken on when she took on his position.
“Yes.”
“I agree,” Strange offered, mouth opening as though he was about to continue speaking before Hill cut him off.
“Can you see anything about this girl? Where she is? What she’s going to do?”
Strange shook his head. “Nothing. It would seem that this new Hydra have some way of removing her from the universe or the timeline that interrupts the abilities of the time and soul stones.”
“Fantastic.” Sam muttered, only stamping down on his urge to ask how much use Strange was at that point by the careful show of respect the man had given him earlier.
“Miss Maximoff?” Hill prompted.
Wanda glanced up, seemingly surprised at being called on – Sam had a faint memory of a briefing that had come through his emails, about a town in New Jersey and a sitcom – “I don’t know.” She replied, voice soft and still accented despite all her years living in America, and Sam was reminded of how young she had been when everything had started, how young she still was, really.
Hill nodded. “Alright. So…”
“Can I ask a question?” Scott put in quickly, ignoring the irritated looks the other SHIELD agents gave him.
She looked at him for a moment before raising her eyebrows. “Go ahead.”
“Why am I here?”
“Under the current circumstances, we need all available Avengers prepared to deal with the threat.” One of the other SHIELD agents in the room replied, chin tilted up in a decidedly irritated way.
Sam decided that it had probably been his idea to call everyone together.
“Well, yeah, but I think we all saw over the past few months or whatever that Sam – sorry, Captain America – and Barnes work best as a pair, I mean we all saw the news with the Flagsmashers, that was really something by the way, guys, I mean—”
“I agree.” Wanda cut him off, possibly a little too eager, but Sam supposed it was possible she felt uncomfortable using her powers after everything.
Hill sighed, finally bringing her hands out from behind her back to brace herself on the table instead. “I guess you’re right. And if no one has any information on the girl or her location, then I suppose there’s no reason to keep you here.”
There was a general level of nodding around the room, and Sam watched, bemused, as the meeting seemed to collapse in on itself, Wanda and Strange vanishing through portals almost immediately, as if the entire situation was one they wanted to stay as far away from as possible, Scott bouncing up and out the room, and the remaining agents being dismissed until only the two of them and Hill remained in the room.
She sighed as the door closed behind the last agent, reaching up a hand to tug on her collar. “Well, as you can see, we currently have nothing.”
“Nothing?” Sam repeated, a little incredulously. “Then why are we here?”
“Well,” she replied, “it’s probably safer for your family, if nothing else, and we needed Barnes’ insight.”
He did not point out that they could have gotten Bucky’s opinion over video call, or that if the new Hydra knew about Sarah, AJ and Cass then it was definitely safer for the two of them to be in Delacroix just in case.
Bucky nudged their shoulders together, raised an eyebrow when Sam looked over at him. Do we trust her?
He looked down at the table again. “Yeah. OK.”
“Did you get anything on her after she’d left the bank?” Bucky asked.
“Yes, actually.” Hill tapped the screen embedded into the table, bringing up a map of the area, the bank circled in red, a few other lines drawn on, and one deep purple line that Sam guessed was tracking the movements of the so-called Night Soldier.
“She was caught on a few other security cameras in places around the bank, but not enough that we could create a path, and some of these sightings might have been mistakes.” She paused to sigh. “Security camera footage is not very clear, and she appears to have put on a hoodie or something to hide herself.”
Sam watched as Bucky leaned over the map, carefully tracing the lines with his metal hand and mouthing words to himself.
“We should go to Liechtenstein.” He finally said, pausing to glance up at Sam.
Hill did a double take. “You can’t possibly think they’re still there.”
Bucky looked up at her, “I do. Hydra isn’t going to have the capabilities to just disappear at the moment and—” he paused to trace the outline of the country on the map, “—you said they’ve increased security all along the border.”
“Alright.” Hill agreed after a long pause. “Captain?”
“We’d like transport to Liechtenstein.” Sam replied. “Soon as possible.”
She shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.
After she’d left the room, Bucky sat back down and frowned after her. “That was weirdly easy.”
“That was weird.” Sam agreed. “But this is a bad situation, and she’s gonna take your experience with them to be our strongest asset at the moment.”
Bucky winced and Sam had a minor moment of regret over his word choice, but he didn’t get a chance to apologise because Hill reappeared in the doorway.
“You leave in two hours. Get ready.”