Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been a hard mission.

It shouldn’t have been difficult but it had been. They’d only been a team for a few months now and they just could not get a good rhythm down with one another. They were too independent. They’d all been out in the cold, alone, for too long, and Valentina was threatening team building exercises.

Nobody wanted that.

But the threat of trust falls didn’t really bother Yelena. What bothered her was the threat of losing her team. That scared her. Going back out into the cold. Alone.

So, as they dragged themselves into the penthouse of the Watchtower, dusty, smelling of something putrid, exhausted from the mission, she couldn’t help but watch everyone.

“You guys did a great job!” Bob beamed at them as he came scurrying out of the penthouse kitchen.

“Thanks Bob,” Yelena sighed.

“We did a terrible job,” Ava groused. She went to the lounge in the middle of the space they’d agreed to call ‘HQ’ and plopped down with a grunt as she reached to peel off her boots.

“C’mon you guys, it wasn’t that bad,” Yelena insisted.

But even her father, she noticed, was grumpy. He went to the bar first. Alexei had recently shaved his beard off after the initial wave of Santa Clause memes had reached his Instagram feed. He didn’t mind so much as Valentina. She threatened to cut him off from sponsors if he kept it. The shave made him look younger and that weirded her out.

“We suck as Avengers,” the Red Guardian insisted with a dour and contemplative smoothing of his mustache.

“But you got the bad guy!” Bob pressed.

Bob. Always good for a pick-me-up.

“We pancaked the bad guy,” Walker corrected. He went to the computers and started pulling up the drone footage of their performance like it was footage of a football game that he needed to study. “And we were supposed to take him in alive.”

Bob hesitated, idly wiping at the bright flower-patterned apron he was wearing. “…I probably shouldn’t have made pancakes for dinner…”

“You made pancakes for us?” Yelena gave him a big smile. “Aww that’s so sweet, Bob, thank you.”

He shot her a shaky grin. “You’re welcome.”

The atmosphere of the room was flat and heavy, like a wet wool blanket. Everyone was distant and deflated and overwhelmed by all of the grandeur of the job, the place. Nobody really fit into the Watchtower. They were all a bunch of loser gutter rats set loose in a palace.

“Guys, I think we should talk about this,” Yelena started.

“About how we’re not the Avengers?” Walker sneered. “Great. That’s just the encouragement I needed, thanks.”

 “No, but the Avengers weren’t that great,” she argued. “They had a better balance of super powers, sure, but they weren’t all buddy-buddy good friends. They were just really opinionated colleagues who got smooshed together on the same team because of some guy with an eye patch.”

“Fury,” Alexei supplied for her, before he tipped back a shot of vodka.

“Oh and we’re special because we all walked through each other’s shame rooms?” U.S. Agent asked sarcastically. He too had undergone a change, swapping the stupid helmet for an even stupider hat. “When exactly is that trauma bonding supposed to kick in? Are we buddies yet?”

“Look, all I’m saying is that maybe we should take the lesson we learned with Bob and apply it to everyone on the team,” Yelena tried to clarify. “And I would love to be your buddy, Walker.”

“Yes!” Alexei pumped his fists into the air. “We shall unite as one under the glorious haze of battle wounds and be invincible!”

Yelena rubbed at her temples. While she appreciated that Alexei would always support her, she wished sometimes that her father would at least be a little less eager about it.

“Do you really expect us to just…what, open up to each other?” John pressed, his expression dubious.

“I wouldn’t mind talking about what happened today,” Ava said as she set her boots down and let her bare feet bury into the thick shaggy carpet that was probably more expensive than anything Yelena had ever bought. “Not so sure about sharing feelings but we could certainly talk bad tactics. I recall a certain shield that nearly cut me in half today…”

“I said I was sorry!” Walker threw his hands up.

“No, that’s not what I mean! I mean we need to bond and talk about things that happen!” Yelena threw up her hands too.

“That was definitely a thing that happened!” Ava snapped. She gestured obviously to the cut in her suit, where her hip was now visible.

“…Not to interrupt but, uh, where’s Bucky?” Bob cut in, innocently.

Yelena looked around with a frown. “He…He came in with us. I saw him come in with us.”

“He did. He must have slipped out.” Ava was looking around too. “Look, I’m also going to slip out. I’m having a shower and a change of clothes.”

“Same,” Walker agreed. “Bob, you got any bacon to go with those pancakes?”

Bob brightened. “I can make some. Uh…” He glanced at Yelena. They’d talked about their bonding issues a lot and he understood. “Family dinner in…say forty-five minutes? In the dining room?”

“We have a dining room?” Yelena frowned. The vastness of this place was absurd.

“Ah…Family dinner here in HQ. Forty-five minutes,” Bob amended.

And, like magic, they all dispersed, each to their own spaces. And there were a lot of spaces to be had. The Watchtower really was too much. There weren’t even any other workers in the tower. It was literally just them – and hundreds of empty rooms.

The team had been assigned quarters on the penthouse floor. Valentina insisted on keeping most of their activity – or rather the use of utilities – on one floor but they were permitted to use the parking garage, the helipad, the clinic on the floor below them, and the gym on 52. The other floors were locked out of the elevator (as if that could stop any of them, which was a laughable assumption, really).

The quarters (hidden away from the media tour) were markedly less lavish than HQ but still comfortably equipped. Each of them had a small studio apartment space with a kitchenette, bathroom, and bedroom. Hers was across the hall from Bobs. It was a little sterile and corporate for her taste but it beat bouncing around from flea-infested slum to flea-infested slum and not having to pay rent was nice.

Yelena showered quickly and changed into joggers, an oversized hoodie, and a pair of slippers. By the time she came out, she could smell bacon.

And she could see blood.

It wasn’t a lot of blood, just a smear of it, but it brushed across the doorframe to Bucky’s apartment.

She frowned, trying to remember the injuries they’d accrued on this mission and coming up blank. Yelena rapped her knuckles on his door.

“Barnes? Hey, are you in there? Are you okay?”

No sounds from inside.

But there was more blood, in droplets, on the floor, leading away from the apartments and the rest of the penthouse.

Walker emerged from his room, his damp hair askew, in gym shorts and a college football tee-shirt. “What are you looking at?” he wondered from a few doors down.

“There’s blood on the floor,” Yelena told him.

Concern etched across Walker’s face and John came over to peer at what she was seeing. “Bucky?”

“I think so…” She started down the hall to follow it. “Did he get hurt while we were out? Like, for real hurt. I mean, you guys get hit a lot and get thrown into things a lot but that’s just like always.”

Walker trailed behind her. “…I don’t remember. I lost him when he went into the research tent. And then it exploded but he was already running out of it by then.”

“What are we looking at?” Ava had materialized from her room, in a long cardigan and leggings, and joined in the parade down the hall.

“Blood on the floor,” Yelena told her.

The three of them moved cautiously, as they were all trained to do, with Yelena leading the way. The blood drops were a steady distance apart and went all the way down the hall, past all of their rooms, past the two guest bedrooms that nobody was living in, past the guest bathroom, and into the stairwell.

The blood droplets were starkly visible here, on the industrial gray-blue latex paint. They went down and wound around and went through to the next floor. Down another hallway.

“He’s probably in the clinic,” Walker remarked.

And then they walked past the clinic. It was remarkably empty. The blood drops did go towards the clinic, inside, but then came right back out again.

“Nope, the trail keeps going,” Yelena remarked. Down the hall again, around the corner, and to a closed door. That was the end of the trail, presumably.

“What do you think is in there?” Ava asked in a soft whisper. “Another exam room?”

“Isn’t that the laundry room?” John asked with a frown.

“I think it’s an office or something…”

“Laundry room is on the other side of the penthouse, how do you not know where it is?” Ava asked with a deeper frown.

Yelena yanked the door open, quickly, like she was expecting to find something dangerous on the other side.

And technically, she did find something dangerous.

Bucky was there.

He was there, at a large mahogany desk that was littered with medical supplies, with a suturing needle clenched between his teeth and a nasty circular gash in his arm that pulled to the side in the motion of the needle and thread. Shock painted over his face.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Yelena snapped.

The shock gave way to a perturbed frown. He spat the needle out and it dangled from his bicep. “What does it look like I’m doing?” he grumped back.

“We have a clinic, you know! What is this? Is this an office?”

Bucky let out a sigh through his nose and picked up a square of gauze that he pressed to his arm.

The room had all the trappings of an office, and a nice one at that. Maybe an office for some kind of big important research doctor, once upon a time. The windows let in the golden glow of the late evening sun.

“Geeze, Barnes,” Walker gawked from the doorway.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Ava insisted.

“I’m fine.”

“You know what? This is the kind of thing I was talking about.” Yelena started back down the hallway. “Stay there. All of you. I’ll be right back, we’re having a team meeting. Make sure he stays there, Walker!”

There was a chorus of grumbling behind her as she left them behind and stormed back up to the penthouse, retracing her steps. As she went past the living quarters, Alexei poked his head out of his apartment and gave her a quizzical look.

“Team meeting in the office,” she told him.

“In the where?”

“The office-the…Go to the clinic and go around the corner, down the hallway. You’ll see the others.” She motioned sharply back the way she’d come.

Anger percolated in her belly but it mingled with a confusing blend of sorrow and exasperation.

Why couldn’t they all just be normal?

“Bob? Bob!” Yelena called as she came up on the penthouse kitchen. It didn’t have a door which was a shame because she was in a door kicking mood. “We’re having a team meeting in the office.”

Bob was mid-motion, a tong-full of bacon being placed on a plate that was already piled high with bacon. He must have cooked three pounds of it for them. And that was touching, because nobody really had ever cooked for her in a nice way since she was a girl pretending to be in a normal American family.

“Is everything ok? No…Sorry, that’s a dumb question, you’re not ok,” he observed. “What’s wrong?”

Yelena paced in a tight circle, her fists in tight balls. “I found Bucky in the office trying to stitch up a hole in his arm and I just…I just want us to stop doing this! So we’re going to talk about it!”

Bob absorbed that a moment and then nodded. “Uh. Ok, but maybe let’s not go in there angry.”

“I’m not angry!”

“Well…”

“Okay, I’m a little angry but I still need us to talk about it. To talk to each other. About real things,” Yelena pressed her fingers into her palm as she laid out her needs. “And I need us to help each other and not just do these stupid things by ourselves!”

Bob fixed her with a contemplative look. He wasn’t exactly a bold man. He tried too hard to be agreeable to everyone, all the time, but he wanted to help. She felt bad sometimes because she was terrible at letting people help.

“What? What’s your ideas?” she finally asked him, deflating a little.

He smiled at her. “Hand me the tray over there.”

--

Bob balanced two loaded trays, one on each steady palm, as Yelena navigated them back down towards the office. He knew exactly what room she was talking about and liked to think of it as the Library but that didn’t matter much.

The argument was obvious before they even got into the room.

“—I swear to god, Walker—”

“—Just hold still—”

“—taught you how to stitch!?”

“Oh my god, shut up, all of you!” Yelena snapped.

They all fell silent at her admonishment but Bob knew the silence probably wouldn’t last long. He cleared his throat. “Uhm…dinner?”

The tone shifted immediately.

He carefully slid the trays on the desk, pushing aside medical supplies. Yelena had the coffee carafe and a handful of mugs. He had everything else.

The Library was a comfortable size but it felt a little small with them all in it. It boasted two leather armchairs, a sofa, the desk, and walls of book shelves. He’d taken upon himself to find books for the shelves the last few months so they were half-filled by now.

And as Ava and Walker and Yelena helped themselves to pancakes and bacon, Bob watched as the Red Guardian quietly sided up to the Winter Soldier.

“Товарищ, позвольте мне позаботиться об этой травме. Я потороплюсь,” Alexei murmured softly, a genuine look of care and concern in his eyes.

And something gave in Bucky Barnes because the man nodded. “Спасибо.”

While the others settled around the Library with paper plates and coffee, Alexei carefully started to stitch the wound closed in a way that reminded Bob that Alexei took pride in his identity as a family man. His big hands were gentle and calm and sure. Something like brotherhood seemed to be growing between the super soldiers, Walker included – although Walker was clearly the baby brother of the three.

“That’s a nasty hole in your arm,” Yelena observed. She sat on the couch and patted the space next to her for Ava to sit. “I don’t remember that happening.”

“Uh, the research tent,” Bucky admitted tersely.

“Knew it,” Walker boasted. He smirked as he sat down on the floor near Ava, a mug in one hand and a flopping pancake in the other. He unceremoniously dipped the pancake in his mug.

Yelena gasped. “Did you just dip your pancake into your coffee?”

Walker glanced up at her, his cheeks full. He nodded, and a sudden uncertainty crossed his face.

“That sounds delicious!” she quickly assured him.

Ava reached over his shoulder and dipped a piece of her own pancake into his coffee mug, humming appreciatively.

“Hey, thanks Bobby,” Walker mumbled out around his mouthful.

“Yes, thank you Bob,” Ghost agreed.

The praise was unexpected and Bob smiled at them, nodding, feeling warm.

Bucky heaved a sigh. “Look, much as I appreciate the moral support and the dinner, I’d really rather just brood in silence. Why did you all follow me in here?”

“Group therapy,” Yelena supplied. “Team support. Team um…debriefing.”

“Group therapy…” Bucky rolled his eyes.

“C’mon, Buck. Elders first,” John joked.

“Mm, no, you don’t get to call me Buck—"

“Look, I know it feels a little co-dependent but we need to debrief and check in with each other. Here’s what I want to know,” Yelena started. Then she paused. Bob could read the hesitation in her expression, like she was ready to ask some deep soul-searching question but thinking better of it.  “Uh, doesn’t that hurt like a lot? Your arm? You’re not even wincing or anything.”

Bucky’s scowl lifted upwards as he pointed his long-suffering ire at the ceiling. But he was quiet for a long moment and they all let the silence stand, even as Alexei very carefully tied off a stitch.

“If I leave the room, are you all going to follow me?” Bucky finally asked.

“Probably,” Yelena answered with a smirk.

The Winter Soldier fixed her with a look. “Fine. Did you know that it’s very difficult to drug a Super Soldier?”

“Да,” Alexei said with a nod, giving the thread a tug before snipping it.

Walker bobbed his head slowly in affirmation, suddenly more interested in the floor.

“I think I probably knew that but I’ve never really thought about it,” Yelena admitted. “Does that also give you some kind of super pain tolerance too?”

“No, but it does mean that it’s harder to get drunk, or high,” Bucky explained. “It’s harder to be poisoned. It has to do with our metabolism. And consequently, it…it makes it harder to be put under for procedures. Anesthesia doesn’t work like it should. Or at least, the options of anesthesia in my day were pretty terrible.”

“There’s a higher risk of being awake during surgery,” Walker piped in. “While you’re paralyzed. For me and my brand of serum, anyway. It happened once. After you broke my arm, actually.” He looked over at Bucky.

“Sorry 'bout that…”

“Oh sheesh,” Bob murmured, his eyebrows quirked into a frown. He only had trace memories of what O.X.E did to him and when that surfaced, it was usually in the form of a night terror that sent him spiraling for a few days. But even then, he still didn’t have clear memories.

Yelena looked from Bucky to Walker to her father and for once, the Red Guardian was not so boisterous. He looked distant, trapped in memories.

“Dad, is that true for you too?”

Alexei gave her a non-committal shrug. “Is not important when you’re a hero—”

“No, that’s important,” she insisted. “That’s really pretty important, you guys. You get like tortured every time you go in for a medical something? That’s really traumatizing!” She sat back in the couch, outraged on their behalf. “This is good to talk about. Let’s talk about it.”

“There’s not much to talk about,” Bucky said wearily. “And that’s not—My point is…” He pressed his lips together, as if he lost his point altogether.

“It changes you,” Ava said softly. “That kind of pain. After a while, you just sort of…accept the pain. Or you go mad from it. But accepting it becomes something like a self-defense mechanism. The pain tolerance.” Her eyes were a little glassy. “It’s easy to forget what not being in pain feels like when you’re in those moments. And it’s easy to slip into madness when you’re not looking.”

Silence again, as they digested that.

“Are you always in pain, Ava?” John craned his head back to look at her. “Are you in pain now?”

She quickly shook her head. “No. No, I have mostly good days now. Someone used quantum energy to stabilize my condition. But my early years were…”

“Hell,” Bucky supplied.

“Yeah.”

Yelena reached over to give the Ghost an understanding pat on the knee. There was a kinship between them and Bob felt a twinge of jealousy, which was immediately chased by a twinge of guilt for feeling jealous. They’d accepted him into this weird little family and he wasn’t about to ruin it by being ungrateful and petty.

“I can’t feel my arm,” Barnes blurted.

“What?!” came the collective outrage.

“That-that’s where I was going with my story,” Bucky fumbled. “I can’t feel anything. It’s not pain tolerance. I’m not trying to be anything…”

“Oh my god, Bucky!” Yelena was gaping at him. She patted the couch on either side of her. “Where’s my phone? We need to call—”

“No, please don’t call anyone,” the Winter Soldier pleaded.

“Bob, do you have your phone? Dad?”

“I’ll go and get mine! I left it by the toilet—”

“STOP! I’m not going to the doctor!”

They all stared at him again and he couldn’t meet the stares.

“W-why not?” Bob finally asked.

“Because,” Walker supplied, “anesthesia doesn’t work well on super soldiers.”

There was a beat as they absorbed this. Bucky gave Walker a tight-lipped look.

An inkling of knowledge tickled through him and Bob frowned as a wisp of a memory crossed his mind.

“And,” Bob added distantly, “the first time someone worked on your arm… Well, that didn’t exactly end very well.” He saw the memory, suddenly. A young, bloodied James Buchanan Barnes, restrained, screaming.

Bucky glared over at him, startled at the statement. Bob held up his hands.

“Sorry, I get… I get glimpses sometimes of what happened…y’know, in my mind. From before. Makes it easier to make connections,” Bob mumbled, his cheeks growing hot.

“Is that true, Bucky?” Yelena pressed. “Because that’s definitely stuff that you should get out of your deep trauma hole, man.”

The Winter Soldier was silent again for a long moment and, again, they let it stand. Then he let out a sudden noise of disgust that was suspiciously watery. Bob glanced over at him and felt his cheeks get even hotter and tighter. The guilt wiggled up again. He’d exposed Bucky. He left him open to scrutiny. That was rude. Bucky probably hated him…

“Bucky, it’s ok—”

“It’s an old wound. I’ve already done my court mandated therapy,” he snapped back at them. “I’m fine. My arm is fine. Everything’s fine.”

“They made you do therapy?” Alexei scoffed. “In Russia, I just get tossed in prison for a few decades. They don’t make me do therapy.” The Red Guardian finished taping down fresh gauze and finally turned to the pancakes and bacon.

“See? That’s the problem! Dad!” Yelena glared over at him. “You’d rather go to jail for twenty years instead of talking to someone?! This is why the Avengers never worked out. They all just went about their business and they never really talked to each other! We can be different, you guys! Or, I dunno, we could just wait until Walker is the next Void—”

“Hey!”

Bob’s ears felt full and stuffy all of a sudden.

“We all know it’s true, Walker,” Ava insisted, but her voice sounded far away. “And wouldn’t you rather talk to us about your family? We’ve already seen your worst rooms.”

He scowled from Yelena to Ava and then down at his coffee. “It’s called privacy.”

“It’s called being big stupid stubborn people,” Yelena grumbled. “Just…it feels so good, you guys. It feels so much better when you just talk about your problems and let it all out of you. We all got really bad sob stories, okay? It’s not a competition on who can keep it bottled up the longest.”

The next stretch of silence was a grumpy one. The tension was thick, and it wasn’t just his own. It filled the room.

Don’t run away-don’t run away-don’t run away…

Finally, Bucky let out a heavy breath.

All the eyes went back to him. He took a moment to meet each gaze, pointedly. Like he was gauging how safe it was in the room. When he looked at Bob, Bob almost flinched, expecting anger…but there was no anger, just a moment of stern concern. And was that…trust?

“If I see any of my story on the internet—”

“You won’t,” Yelena assured him. “Vault of secrets. Everyone agree?”

“What we share in group therapy stays in group therapy,” John affirmed.

“Agreed,” Ava chimed in.

“Of course, yeah,” Bob said with a nod, letting out a shaky breath.

“Yes! I like this! Thunderbolts Group Therapy,” Alexei started.

“No, that’s—enough with the Thunderbolts, Alexei, please. I can’t do that game anymore. We’re not the Thunderbolts,” Yelena grumbled.

Her father just laughed.

Bucky shook his head. He heaved one final sigh and pushed back his hair with his metal hand, leaning back in the desk chair.

“Okay. My arm,” he started, pulling the conversation back into focus. “I, uh, I already…They gave me the serum before they started working on my arm,” Bucky said in a clipped tone. “The serum happened before I fell off the train. That’s what kept me alive.” He looked down at his metal hand, flexing the fingers. “I actually had some stump left when they put the first arm on. And they tried to put me under. They did. It’s all a groggy haze from the drugs…but I remember. They had to keep me strapped down.”

He paused and frowned as the images probably came flicking back to life in his minds eye. They were certainly coming back to Bob, and he wished they weren’t.

“The first arm was clunky. It got ripped off by Isaiah Bradley in the late fifties. They put a new one on and they kept fussing with it. And it hurt. All the time. But I was only awake for missions and they didn’t really stop to ask me how I felt so it didn’t matter. Nobody cared. All they cared about was me killing the next target and being compliant. That was it. I couldn’t…I couldn’t even tell them if I’d wanted to…I didn’t…”

He trailed off, shaking his head.

“It matters,” Yelena said quietly. “It matters that it hurt. That they did that to you. I’m so sorry, Bucky.”

“That’s a raw deal, man,” John added.

“This…this is really good therapy,” Alexei whispered in a watery voice.

Bucky nodded to the affirmations but he seemed to be struggling. His jaw clenched and his lips twitched. Something else was weighing on him. Something heavy that wanted out.

“What else happened?” Yelena asked. “What do you want to talk about?”

Barnes squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, but his expression was tight, strained.

“It’s fine, Bucky, you can talk about it,” John insisted. “We’re not judging.”

“N-no,” Bucky ground out. He reached his metal hand over to his freshly bandaged arm and gave it a squeeze, letting out a stuttery breath.

“Something’s wrong,” Bob offered lamely. That wasn’t helpful. Of course something was wrong.

“It-it hurts,” Bucky hissed through clenched teeth.

“I thought you said you couldn’t feel anything,” Walker challenged, which was also unhelpful.

Bucky shot him a glare that was a little feral around the edges. Fist clenched, he extended his flesh arm out as if he was flexing out a Charlie-horse. It was trembling.

“What did you get hit with?” Yelena asked, horrified.

He shook his head, unsure, and that’s when they all saw it. A long sinuous lump lifted up under Bucky’s skin along his forearm and moved.

The horror was instantaneous.

“OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT?!” Walker yelped.

At the same time came Yelena’s “Get him to the clinic! Get him to the clinic!”

Overlaid with a throaty “Что за чертовщина это чудовище!” from Alexei.

Bucky Barnes, however, was not paying attention to any of it. He was screeching. The sound broke over them like a clap of thunder. He clamped his metal hand just under his elbow squeezed like he could wall off the intruder from climbing further up his arm.

Ava took a wide step back from the scene and did her best to shut out the noise. Panic would do her no good.

What would do good, then?

The thing in his arm had to come out.

“Bob, with me,” Ava ordered sharply. Bob was the only other one who wasn’t panicking outwardly. “Yelena, we’ll meet you in the clinic!”

She caught the Widow’s eye and Yelena nodded sharply. “Go.”

Ava Starr was good at going. She was arguably the best of them at sprinting in and out of situations. Only this time, she didn’t have her suit. There would be no quick phasing through doors or using the quantum energy to sprint faster – not if she wanted to maintain control of her corporeal body.

Bob was running with her, keeping pace, as they careened down the hall and around the corner and into the neat, clean clinic.

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

It was a fair question and Ava held still a moment, drawing in a slow breath as she thought back. She’d spent a lot of time trapped in her quantum chamber, reading books. There had been several periods of her life where she’d been acutely interested in medical science, as if she could cure her own condition with enough biology. But she did have some knowledge that could be helpful.

“Scalpel. Forceps. Antiseptic. A container to put that thing in once we get it out,” she listed. And Bob started rifling through drawers.

She could hear the commotion as they brought Bucky along. Moments later, John and Alexei were hauling Bucky into the room while Bucky tried his best to keep his legs under him. They heaved him onto the exam table where he writhed.

“Get it OUT,” he bellowed.

Yelena grabbed the scalpel that Bob had just put on a tray and advanced towards the Winter Soldier. “Hold him down!”

The two other super soldiers did their best to pin his shoulders to the exam table and keep his arm outstretched but between Bucky’s writhing and the slithering shape, it was an impossible task.

“Wait wait wait, you’re going to slice open an artery!” Ava barked.

“DO IT!” Bucky wailed.

“Just wait, I’ve got an idea!” Ava spun to the cabinet of medications; all kinds of vials lined up on wire shelves. She scanned the labels. “Bob, get me a syringe.”

“It won’t work on him!” Yelena yelled.

Ava ignored her and yanked a vial of lidocaine out of the cabinet.

There was a tremendous CRASH as something toppled.

Bob thrust the packaged syringe at her and darted to where the Winter Soldier was flailing. He shoved in next to Walker and grabbed Bucky’s metal hand.

“Squeeze my hand as hard as you can, man,” he instructed the super soldier. “Just focus here. Squeeze!”

He did. The metal squealed as he bore down on Sentry’s hand, and Bob held steady, putting his other palm on Bucky’s chest.

“Alexei, John, hold his arm out!”

The two super soldiers did as she asked and Ava held a loaded syringe poised over his skin, waiting…

There was the lump.

She jabbed the needle down into it and slammed the plunger home.

The thing went mad under his skin. It roiled and twisted and stretched.

An inhuman noise rippled out of Bucky as he pushed mindlessly against the three super humans holding him down, back arching off the table. The noise petered out as his lungs squeezed out all of his air and there was a horrible moment as they watched his eyes bulge, tears leaking free.

And then he sucked in a breath and sagged. The lump in his arm went still.

“Get it-get it-get it-get it,” he rasped, gasping.

Yelena was ready and she did not hesitate. She gritted her teeth and sliced into his arm. Blood spurted everywhere.

“Sorry, sorry,” she mumbled. But the apology died even as she said it once they all spied a shiny blue something under the blood. “Боже мой...»

A moan of horror hummed out of Bucky.

“What is that!?” Walker squeaked.

Yelena kept slicing, following the length of the lump for couple of inches. “Where’s the-the…the wound opener thing…”

“Retractor,” Ava supplied, finding the tool in a drawer and coming to unceremoniously jab it into the wound and force it open.

Bucky cursed, his eyes fluttering closed. He hadn’t let go of Bob’s hand.

“Take a breath, man. Breathe,” Bob cooed to him.

But it was hard for any of them to breathe. Bucky had a worm in his arm. A big fat one. Or maybe it was more of a centipede. It was hard to tell in all the blood.

The thing shifted and Ava reached for the lidocaine again.

“You sure you’re drug resistant?” she asked Barnes.

He gave a weak nod of the head, cracking his eyes open to frown at her.

“Good. I’m going to kill it. Unless anyone has any better ideas?” Ava looked at them all. They were all blood splattered now and wide-eyed.

“Maybe I can just pull it…” Yelena used forceps to give it an experimental tug and Bucky sucked in a breath.

“Kill it,” he moaned. “Just kill it.”

Ava filled the syringe and plunged it directly into the thing. Then she injected the lidocaine into Bucky’s muscles, hoping the thing would absorb it somehow there too; and maybe ease a little of his pain. She went through two vials before Bucky visibly relaxed.

“Is it working? Can you feel anything?”

“It won’t last,” Bucky muttered. “Is it dead?”

Yelena tugged at the creature again. There was some resistance for half a moment and then…then it slowly pulled free with a wet sucking sound – all five limp inches of it.

She held it up for all of them to see.

More like a caterpillar, Ava finally decided. A blue, blood-streaked caterpillar with sharp looking feet and some nasty looking pinchers. It was covered in clear, fine spines.

“What the hell you guys?” came a new voice from behind them.

“Oh, hey Mel,” Yelena greeted brightly.

Val’s assistant stared at the mess, at them, at the freaky blue caterpillar, at all the blood. And then she promptly fainted.

“Oh. Oh uh…oops,” Yelena grimaced. “Somebody should probably go help her…”

Hours later, they were back in HQ. Walker and her father had dragged up the comfortable chairs from the office and they sprawled. Bucky was flat on his back on the sofa, his arm freshly stitched and bandaged, his skin still ashen from the blood loss.

He was shaken. They all were, but they were more keenly aware now of how badly Bucky must be shaken. He didn’t even try to pretend to be fine and that made them all just a little bit gentler – Walker got Bucky’s pillow from his bedroom, Alexei draped an old thrift-store quilt over top of him, Ava brought him her peppermint oil to try and help ease the headache he had. Yelena came from the kitchen with a fresh cold pack and laid it on his arm for him, swapping out the warm one. Cold, he insisted, would at least numb the pain for a while.

Mel had come around quickly, to her credit. But they insisted she stay and hang out with them for a while, just in case.

More food was ordered – Chinese, as if that somehow complimented the pancakes and bacon.

“Anyone else expecting some really bad nightmares tonight?” Yelena asked idly as she sat down in the chair that they’d saved for her. She crumbled bacon into her noodles and mixed it together with her chopsticks. “Because this will probably live in my trauma hole for a really long time.”

Bucky raised his metal hand. “Same.”

She winced sympathetically. “Man, I’m so sorry…”

“What even was that thing?” Mel asked.

“It was in the research tent,” Bucky supplied wearily. “I remember something hitting me but then the explosion…” He shook his head. “I didn’t see what it was.”

“Botfly,” Walker announced. He had his phone out “Botfly larvae burrow into the skin of a human or animal and grow there. So says ChatGPT. These terrorists were doing genetic experiments. So my money’s on the botfly.”

“That’s disgusting.” Ava shuddered.

“I would prefer we not talk about burrowing larvae,” Bucky insisted, his nose wrinkled.

“I’ll send it to a lab,” Mel promised. “I’m also going to talk to our research team and see if we can’t come up with a better option for anesthesia for the team. One that’s… y’know, accessible.”

Yelena heaved a sigh. “Thank you, Mel. Bob, you okay over there?”

He was sitting on the floor by the coffee table, quiet, contemplative, but in the group circle. “I’m ok.”

“Dad, how about you?” She looked over at her father.

“I was just thinking about the time when I got bitten by a giant centipede in the desert on a mission back in the days of glory,” he said with a rogue grin. “Hurt so bad, I peed myself.”

“Oh, dad, that’s not—”

“But I crushed it in my bare hands and fed it’s guts to the jackals!” He cackled. 

This earned a bemused snort from the Winter Soldier on the sofa.

“What were you doing in the desert?” Walker asked with a smirk.

And that launched Alexei into a tale that was both impressive and absurd and as they all laughed or jeered, Yelena was able to relax. She looked over at Bob and he gave her knowing smile and a nod.

That night, long after Mel had left, they camped out in HQ and stayed up as long as any of them could manage. And when the nightmares started, they were there for each other, and only felt a little stupid.

It was a messy start but they got there in the end. It was excellent group therapy*.

*family time

Chapter Text

It was a clear, late spring day in Delacroix – and abnormally warm for the time, although not nearly as humid as it could be.

This weekend, they had no mission, no press junket, no vitally important meeting. It was Val who insisted that they get out of the Watchtower. Or rather, it was actually Mel who promised that it was Val who insisted.

There had been no protests when it was suggested that they take the weekend and Bucky took it upon himself to direct them to head down to the Wilson family home. Everyone was craving a break and Bucky was craving that sense of normalcy that he got every time he visited the swampy little town.

The team had insisted on driving Alexei’s new limo for this road trip (where he got it, no one knew) and Bucky had insisted on driving his motorcycle separately for the sake of his own sanity. Could they have taken a jet to Delacroix? Absolutely. But all of them were more interested in the slow way – and in the peace that comes from a long drive with no agenda.

He led the way on his bike to the bright blue home and couldn’t help the broad smile that split his face as he saw AJ – the youngest of Sarah’s sons – go sprinting from the dock to the house as they approached.

Sarah was already on the porch, grinning at them as they parked vehicles and stretched limbs.

“Hi Sarah,” he said in a rhythmic sing-song tone, his smile going dorky around the edges.

“Hi Bucky,” she mimicked back to him with an equally dorky grin that made him feel, well, normal inside. Normal and happy and hopeful.

“Oh my god is this Sarah?!”

Then the abnormal spilled out of the limo behind him and Bucky promptly tamped down his smile, as if none of them had caught on yet to how much he liked her.

“Sarah Wilson, I’d love to introduce you to my uh…team?” He quirked his head to the side with a snort. “Guys, this is Sarah. Sarah, this is—”

“I’m Yelena, it’s so nice to meet you,” Yelena gushed, she came up to Sarah, took her hand, and kissed her cheeks. “Bucky tells us all about you all the time. You’re definitely his favorite Wilson.”

“That’s…not what I say…”

Then the Red Guardian was pushing his way forward. “Alexei Shostakov, maybe you hear of me. The Red Guardian!” He made a move as if he were going to repeat his daughters very Eastern European greeting but was cut short with a glareful throat-clearing from Bucky.

Walker stepped in before he could get much further.  “John Walker, nice to meet you ma’am.”

“You’re the John Walker who caused all that fuss all those years back?” she asked him, dubiously.

He froze for half a moment and then dipped his head. “Well uh, hopefully not anymore.”

“You’re welcome in my home, John,” Sarah said politely. “I trust you won’t be making any trouble while you’re here.”

“No ma’am,” he said smartly.

Ghost approached next and settled for a handshake. “Ava Starr, pleasure to meet you.”

And then came Bob. He forewent a handshake and gave her an awkward wave instead. “I’m Bob.”

Sarah smiled at him, ever the picture of grace. “It’s nice to meet you all. Please, come and sit and relax. Bucky, you wanna help me get some tea for our guests?”

This earned him a chorus of ‘oooo’s’ from the team and he cast them all stern glare.

“Stop it,” he warned them.

“Go get that tea, Bucky,” Yelena teased, grinning. “We’re fine out here, you two take your time.”

“O-okay, that’s enough,” he grumbled as he stepped inside the house.

Sarah was chuckling at him as she headed for the kitchen. He took a moment to just settle there, in the house. It was the same as the last time he’d come. The same smells. The same pile of shoes from the boys on the floor. The same artwork on the walls and squeak of floorboards. When he stepped into the kitchen, he automatically started for the cabinet with the glasses in it, knowing exactly what she’d want to take out for guests.

“They look like a good group of people,” she told him. He didn’t have to look at her to know she was smiling. He could hear it in her voice.

“They’re…well, they’re genuine,” he decided. “Enthusiastic…Hard working?” He narrowed his eyes at that one and looked over at her with a smirk.

“You like them,” she surmised with a snort.

“I do,” Bucky admitted. “I really do.”

He helped Sarah brew some fresh sweet tea, taking note of the fact that there was likely a whole pitcher of it already brewed in the fridge but he didn’t mind the excuse to linger there with her. It was easy to talk to Sarah, and easy to be relaxed with her.

Bucky was about to make a comment about how lovely she looked – there was a dance to these things, after all – when he heard a commotion outside. Another car had come down the driveway.

“You expecting company?” he asked as he glanced out the window.

And Sarah sighed. Heavily.

“I forgot to warn you, I’m sorry…”

He turned to look over at her, as the team outside let out a series of whoops and cheers – deeply sarcastic ones, mostly. There were stomps on the porch. The front door slammed. Bucky grimaced. He knew who it was before he even turned around. The look at Sarah confirmed it.

“You had to call him?”

“One of the boys texted him yesterday,” she said with an apologetic wince.

Bucky heaved a sigh and turned, his smile a painful tight mess. “Sam, hi.”

“Sam hi? That’s it?” Sam Wilson was glaring daggers. “Who the hell is sitting on my sister’s porch and why the hell did you think you could bring them here? I swear to god, Bucky, if you try to tell me that you need my help—”

“Gumbo,” Bucky injected.

“Excuse me?” Sam’s eyebrows hitched up.

“They came for my gumbo, Samuel,” Sarah said as she took a step closer to Bucky, her arms crossed firmly in front of her. “And I invited them. They are my guests.”

“Are you for real? Sarah—”

She held up her hands to silence him. “You talk about whatever it is you gotta talk about, Sam, and then you may either stay for dinner or you can leave but you will not make my guests feel guilty for enjoying my hospitality. Do you understand me?”

Bucky pressed his lips together, avoiding Sam’s eye for the moment.

“Fine.”

“Fine. Now if you’ll please take your arguments out of my kitchen…”

“Sorry, Sarah,” Bucky said with an abashed smile.

“Man, shut up,” Sam snapped. He tromped from the kitchen into the living room, casting Bucky a withering and expectant glare.

Bucky followed him. He kept his mouth shut as he watched Sam pace. It’d been a while since he’d seen Wilson so worked up and Bucky just leaned against the wall and watched him.

After a minute, Sam stopped, his hands spread wide as if he could catch up all of the words that were obviously darting around his brain, like so many shrimp.

“I’m angry at you,” Sam started.

“Yeah, I gathered that,” Bucky deadpanned.

“Do you understand why I’m angry at you?”

Bucky sighed through his nose. He felt like he was talking to a therapist and he hated that. “Because they’re calling us the New Avengers and nobody invited you to the team?”

“Because we’re supposed to be friends, Buck!” Sam snapped.

Bucky scowled, pushing off the wall. “We are friends, Sam. At least, I thought we were.”

“Yeah, me too, but you’ve been acting like I’m an afterthought since you started running for Congress. Y’know, I could’ve used your actual help with the President? Or, hell, I dunno, I could’ve used your help with anything! I’ve been busting my ass to be Captain America—”

“And you’re doing fine, Sam, you’ve never needed me!” Bucky insisted.

“Oh but those freaks outside do?”

“Easy—”

“I asked you if you wanted to be on my team and you said no!”

“I didn’t ask to be on a team! It just…It happened,” Bucky insisted.

“Why couldn’t it just happen with my team?” Sam challenged.

Bucky frowned at him, trying to understand exactly what Sam was trying to say. He wouldn’t have understood it a few months ago but being with the New Avengers had made him keenly aware of how emotions impacted these things. Those goddamned Thunderbolts…

He steepled his fingers in a play for focus. How would the others handle this? What would Yelena say?

“A-are…Are you feeling…Did I hurt your feelings, Sam?”

Sam scowled at him. “Yes, Bucky! Yes, you hurt my feelings! I just thought we were close, man!”

“Look, Sam, you know I love you—”

“Do I? Enough to just walk away when my only other teammate is in the hospital so you can go to a fundraiser? Is that love and support?” Sam huffed.

Bucky almost snapped something stupid back at the man. It was on the tip of his tongue and he chewed it back, hands on his hips now as he refrained from the snark that was begging to escape him at Sam Wilson’s melodramatic hissy-fit.

No. No, that was unkind. Sam’s feelings were valid. Sam’s feelings were valid.

“What?” Sam snapped.

“What what?”

“You look like you just ate something nasty. Is it really that hard to apologize?”

Bucky scoffed. “I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry that I didn’t join your team and didn’t help you with President Ross. I didn’t realize…” What? What didn’t he realize? “That… it was that important. To you.”

Sam looked away from him, his head bobbing. The anger had ebbed somewhat. That was a good sign. “I guess I just don’t understand why you picked those people over me, Buck. That’s why it’s important. I needed you and you picked them.”

Bucky almost rolled his eyes but he managed to keep them focused. “It wasn’t like that, Sam. I didn’t choose one over the other. It’s…It’s just…”

“They got the super powers? Is that it? Super soldiers, Ghost? I get it. That’s way cooler than two regular guys with flight suits,” Sam huffed. “Or should I say two assassins, a dishonored vet, a psychopath? How many of them were Russian assets again?”

That needled him. Bucky was glaring now too. “I was the psychopath, damn-it!”

Sam looked over at him, still scowling. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He wasn’t entirely sure but Bucky kept pressing in because he was pretty sure there was a lot of truth here that he hadn’t directly addressed. Not out loud, anyway.

“I was the dishonored Russian assassin psychopath, Sam. Me. They are me. We’re related in a way that you and I will never be and I’m glad for that, I am. Because you have no idea what these people have been through and what they’re willing carry to be heroes. You don’t get it, Sam, because you have never suffered the way that we have. And if I can help them – if I can walk with them for a while – then that’s what I want to do. I had you and Steve to help me and I was able to turn things around. I want to be that for them because they fucking deserve it and I love those weirdos.”

Sam scowled at him. “Damn it, Bucky,” he muttered.

“Look, I brought them here because this has been the first place since Wakanda that I’ve felt at home, okay? I wanted to share that with them because you shared it with me and I—”

He broke off, abruptly, when he felt the pressure starting to build behind his eyes. Things were getting a little too close to the truth now.

The team would encourage him to keep going. They’d tell him to get it all out into the open and he knew they wouldn’t judge him for it. And, honestly, Sam would probably say that too because Sam was Sam and he understood how this worked way better than Bucky did.

“I’m hurt,” Sam started, his voice low and tight, “because you didn’t come to me first. I respect that you do your own thing, Bucky, but I thought it was because you preferred being alone. It hurts because I needed you on my team and I told you that and you still went off and joined a different team the moment a more powerful crew came along.”

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Bucky sighed. Fear was prickling over his scalp now and that startled him. Because this was the closest thing to home that he’d had since Wakanda and if he’d been able to go back to Wakanda he would have but they locked him out because of his choices. He prayed to God that Sam wouldn’t lock him out too.

Wilson let out a grunt and glared at him for a moment longer. “I can’t believe you picked Walker—”

“Hey!” came an offended exclamation.

Bucky turned to the windows – all of which were wide open on the warm spring day, letting in the breeze. And he saw all of them there, on the porch, casually watching him back.

“Hey, sorry, guys,” Yelena started from outside. “We should probably warn you that we can hear everything out here. Like, literally, every word you just said.”

“We love you too, Bucky,” Bob encouraged, smiling broadly. “You’re doing great.”

“Sam, you’re being a really big dick right now, I hope you know that,” Ava injected.

“Oh my god,” Sam groaned, turning away from the windows.

A warmth came over Bucky then, soothing away the prickly fear. A smirk overtook his expression and something like laughter was trying to snort its way out, breaking the tension.

“Stop it,” Sam hissed.

“Somebody piss in that guys Wheaties this morning or what?” Alexei scoffed.

“Your inspiration superpower needs a little bit of a recharge there, Wilson,” Walker injected.

Sam covered his face with his hands. “Oh my god…”

“You should give him a hug now, Bucky, that’s what he needs. You need to hug it out now,” Yelena insisted. “Or maybe you both need a good cry or something, I dunno.”

Bucky looked over at Sam, holding his arms out expectantly, a grin tugging at his lips.

“I hate you. Get out of my house,” Sam grumbled.

“It’s not your house, man,” Bucky reminded him. “Sarah invited me.”

“Hold up, why did she invite you?” Sam rounded on him.

“They text each other,” Yelena told him.

“All the time,” Ava added.

“Sometimes he giggles when she texts him,” Walker jumped in.

Bucky scowled over at them. “Th-that’s enough from the peanut gallery, thank you.”

“All the time?” Sam was glaring at him again.

“Just…y’know, sometimes,” Bucky shrugged. “She checks in on us.”

“Sarah is really nice, we like her,” came the opinions from the porch.

“I…may have mentioned to her that some of the team had never had gumbo before,” Bucky admitted. “So here we are.”

“It was me,” Alexei crowed. “I never have it before.”

“Me neither,” Ava added. “It wasn’t something that ever ended up on the menu in the lab.”

“Do they ever stop commenting?” Sam asked him.

Bucky snorted. “No.”

“That must drive you crazy,” he observed.

Bucky’s smile went a little brittle. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Are you done being butt-hurt Sam?” came Yelena’s voice. “Because Sarah gave us this big bag of corn and we need someone to show us proper corn shucking technique.”

“They don’t have corn in Russia?”

“No, they do, but shucking corn isn’t really part of the child assassin uhm…” She snapped her fingers “…Как это называется, когда у вас есть планы уроков...”

“Syllabus,” Bucky supplied, seamlessly.

“Thank you. Yes. Syllabus. So, y’know, c’mon out here and shuck some corn with us. That’s it. We’re gonna walk away from the windows now. Guys, go away from the windows. Give them some privacy. That’s so rude…”

There was a sound of obvious footsteps leading away from the living room windows and Bucky chanced a glance over at Sam. They shared a look.

“I am sorry, Sam. I didn’t realize how much it mattered,” Bucky said earnestly. “Can you forgive me?”

“For the team? Sure, man. But texting my sister…” Sam tilted his head to the side, his face scrunched into a dramatic scowl.

Bucky put on the most innocent expression he could muster. “Look, she texted me…”

“Yeah, shut up man. What happened to your arm?”

Bucky looked down at his tightly wrapped forearm. It was halfway healed by now but still a little oozy. “Oh uh…botfly,” he answered vaguely.

“…Botfly?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

Walker left the drama at the windows as the others sat back down to the bag of corn. He smirked to himself as he picked up an ear and began peeling away the leafy greens. None of them had come in gear to this little cookout and it was nice. He hadn’t had the chance to just be a normal guy in a long time.

“John, what are you looking at?” Ava questioned as she sat back in her plastic chair and watched him.

“Hmm? Nothing,” he said with a shrug.

“No, you keep looking over at the lawn,” she insisted and pointed.

He hadn’t realized that he’d been looking anywhere in particular and John felt a stir of embarrassment which he hated. “I’m not looking at—”

“Is it the football?” Bob asked.

The embarrassment blipped out of him and John craned his head to look for real and, sure enough, there was a football in the grass.

Man. How long had it been since he’d played football? Was it…god, was it before he’d been chosen as the next Captain America? Surely not…

“You should teach us how to play sometime,” Yelena injected.

“Football? No, no, I’m not a…I’m not a teacher. I’m not good at that,” John insisted.

The porch door creaked as it swung open. Bucky and Sam came out. As if on cue, they all looked up to read the two original Avengers, looking for signs that this fun little outing was about to turn nasty. But Barnes was relaxed, happy even (and wasn’t that a strange sight). Sam Wilson still looked like he had a stick shoved up his ass and he couldn’t look anyone in the eye but he wasn’t spitting mad like before.

“Bucky, Walker says he wants to play football,” Yelena announced.

“I didn’t say that—”

“Oh?” Bucky looked over at him and it felt, for all the world, like one of his big brothers looking at him.

“I…didn’t say that,” John repeated.

Barnes held his gaze a moment, doing the staring thing that made John feel stupid. Then he broke off and scanned the yard. “AJ! Cass!” Barnes bellowed, then in considerably less of a bellow, “Sam, you in?”

“I dunno, man—”

“Bob?”

“Hm?”

“You play football?” Bucky pressed.

“Oh uh, yeah, sure.”

“Bob’s in. Alexei?” He pointed at the Red Guardian who was covered in corn silk.

“Yes. Yes, god, yes, I don’t want be shucking corn anymore,” he rumbled.

“Ladies?”

Ava shook her head with a wrinkle of her nose.

Yelena smirked. “I’ll watch, I’ll watch. Next game, maybe.”

Bucky clapped his hands together as Sarah’s boys came running around the corner of the house. “Ok uh…Me, Sam, Alexei and AJ versus Cass, Bob, and Walker. Let’s go.”

It was, he decided, the single stupidest game of football that Walker had ever played in his entire life. They didn’t have enough open space and had to dodge around trees. The super powered folks had to consciously pull back on everything to avoid hurting the Wilsons. The yard was sloped and pitted and scrubby. The Red Guardian didn’t even know the rules.

But.

It was the most fun he’d had in a long time.

Something in his chest, that had been tight and locked up for years now, was suddenly loose again. He forgot about missions and combat training and the weight of his disgrace. Nobody was shooting. There was no blood. There were no judgmental glares and nobody expecting him to be the villain – to fail.

For that moment in time, Walker felt like a regular guy again. Just a dumb jock right out of high school, tossing the ball around the back yard with the neighbor kids.

But as quickly as that feeling came over him, a deep longing opened up in John. For a moment – just one stupid moment – he glanced to the side to look for Olivia and Xander. Because this was exactly the kind of thing she would have loved. And it was exactly the kind of thing he wanted to share with his son.

But they weren’t there. And they would never be there. He was here by himself, playing ball with kids that weren’t his own.

The longing in his belly grew heavy and painful. He lost track of the play. Bitterness grew and clouded his vision with a haze of self-loathing. Because it all of his fault, of course. No matter how many excuses he came up with, it was all his fault.

Unthinking, John rocketed the ball too hard and too fast to Bob. Bob didn’t even try to catch it. He ducked.

And the ball hurtled past him.

Into the porch.

Directly into Ava’s face.

There was a distinct THUNK as her head snapped back. And, almost simultaneously, she blinked out of sight.

Thunk. Blink.

And she was gone.

“Ava!” Yelena yelped. “Oh my god!”

For a split second, nobody moved – almost as if they were expecting her to phase back and start lecturing whoever it was that hit her in the head. And who was the culprit anyway?

Yelena peered over at the guys, who were all frozen, but it was John Walker who looked like he was ready to puke.

Then everyone was running for the porch.

“Ava?” Yelena peered around.

“Is she ok?”

“I can’t see her!”

“Guys, I don’t know where she went!” Yelena threw up her hands and stepped towards the chair where Ghost had been sitting and then pulled up sharply when she stepped on something – something that she couldn’t see. “She’s here! Ava!”

Yelena bent down to feel with her hands and found her foot, calf, leg. All invisible.

“She’s not moving! I think she’s unconscious,” Yelena yelled up at whoever was crashing onto the porch now.

“I got blood." Sam was up near where her head might be, his fingers bloody. He was feeling around with them, gently prodding what appeared to be nothing. Then his hand went still, midair. “Got a pulse. She’s alive. Sarah?”

“I’m here,” Sarah assured him, hovering in the door. 

“You got a towel?”

“On it.”

As Sam took over, Yelena stepped back, allowing the others to swarm in around the invisible and unconscious woman - Sam and Sarah and Alexei and the boys and Bob. Yelena caught sight of Bucky’s pensive frown from the edge of the porch as he supervised. But where was…

Ah. Walker was in the yard still.

He was just standing there, his hands on his hips, looking absolutely horrified.

“Bucky…” Yelena sided up to the Winter Soldier and jerked her chin in the direction of John.

Bucky glanced back and then over at her. “What?”

“Someone needs to go talk to him,” Yelena muttered.

“Well, go talk to him then,” he muttered back.

“No, not me. I don’t want to do that,” she hissed.

“What makes you think I do?”

“Walker looks up to you!”

“He looks up to Steve Rogers,” Bucky corrected. “I’m not on his list of personal heroes.”

Yelena huffed up at him and then looked back out at John. Walker was turned away from the house now, sort of hunched in on himself. “He looks like he’s crying, Bucky.”

“Then you should hurry,” he huffed right back at her. “I’ve already had my emotional conversation today, thank you.”

She pressed her lips together in a scowl, then stepped off the porch.

“Walker? Are you okay?” she asked as she approached.

He spun to look at her, his eyes wide. “Is Ava alright? I didn’t mean to hit her,” he rushed. “Bob was supposed to catch it and the guy ducks. I mean, who does that during a game of football? Yes—”

“—Walker—”

“—was a little too hard. I just lost focus—”

“John!”

He paused, his eyes still wide and a little wild. And she saw fear there. Yelena stared at him for a moment and he stared back like he was waiting for…what? For her to yell at him? Tell him how stupid he’d been? He was bracing for a tirade. He was bristling with all of the defenses that were brewing to counter any attack on his character. And there had once been a lot of attacks on his character, hadn’t there?

“What?” he barked, finally.

“Are you okay?” Yelena asked again.

“Why wouldn’t I be ok? I’m fine. Obviously. I mean, I made a mistake. I threw the ball too hard and that was an accident. So why wouldn’t I be fine? Is Ava ok? Because that’s way more important, obviously,” he dodged, putting on a shaky proud smirk, as if everything was perfectly right with his world.

Yelena stepped towards him slowly and reached out to touch his elbow. He looked at her with a stupefied scowl.

“You’re not okay,” she stated.

He stared, silently, his face pale.

“Ava’s breathing, so that’s good,” Yelena assured him. “I know it was an accident.”

“I didn’t mean to,” he whispered, his voice tight and raspy. His eyes were a little wet.

“I know,” Yelena said with a nod. “I know that. Why do you think that happened?”

“I just…I got distracted,” he admitted. “It’s…stupid.”

“What distracted you?” Yelena pressed.

He looked like she’d just held up a picture of his very worst nightmare.

“Xander,” he breathed.

“Who’s Xander? Is…is he like some kind of really big powerful guy who you’re really scared of or something?” She frowned.

Walker took a step away from her, his eyes downcast, shoulders tight. He hugged his arms around himself.

“It’s his son,” came Bucky’s soft explanation.

“Geeze, Bucky,” she hissed. The Winter Soldier had come up silently behind her.

“Alexander Walker,” Barnes went on. “How old is he now?”

Walker wouldn’t look at either of them. The moisture in his eyes was more pronounced. “Almost three,” he murmured. “His birthday’s next week.”

“Oh now fun, are we all going to his party?” Yelena asked with a smile.

But she caught Bucky’s obvious side eye as he gave his head a firm shake.

Walker hunched further into himself.

“Oh…”

“When’s the last time you got to see him?” Bucky asked.

Walker dug the heel of his hand into his eye, sniffing. “Five months ago,” he clipped.

The sadness welled up in her as Yelena thought about her own painful separation from her family. It wasn’t the same flavor of pain but it was definitely the same brand.

“Was that right before the O.X.E. mission?” Yelena frowned.

He bobbed his head. “I told Liv that I’d have more time to be around after that mission. Just one more, I told her. And then everything would be right again.”

“Because Val promised you a clean slate,” she connected, remembering their conversation back in the incinerator.

He glanced over at her, his expression tight. “I guess she technically delivered but this wasn’t exactly what I had planned on – the New Avengers.”

“How’d Olivia take the new gig?” Bucky asked, frowning.

Walker looked away again and shook his head. “She won’t talk to me. She uh…She told me she was seeing someone else. So.” He shrugged. “I don’t think she’s impressed. And if being an Avenger won’t impress her, I guess I’m pretty screwed huh?” Walker gave a strained chuckle, as if laughing made it less painful.

But there were still tears in his eyes.

“Oh Walker,” Yelena sighed.

Bucky put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Nope, don’t be sorry. I don’t deserve any of that. It’s uh…it’s my fault,” Walker insisted. He nodded firmly, trying to meet their sympathy with a brave face. “Right? I mean, I made my choices, remember?”

“We’ve all done things we regret,” Yelena told him, recalling the words her father spoke to her. “And that’s why we need each other.”

Walker shook his head. “No, but you guys,” he gestured between the pair of them, “you guys didn’t have a choice. You were brainwashed.”

“It doesn’t make it easier,” Yelena insisted.

“No, but it does make a difference,” John shot right back. “Because at the end of the day, you weren’t responsible for your own choices.”

He wasn’t wrong. But it was still a horrible weight to carry what she did when she was a child assassin. She would forever think about all of the missed opportunities that she had to escape that life. But if she'd done those things willingly? That was different. That was her dad.

“Alexei wasn’t brainwashed,” Yelena said softly. She looked back at the porch, where she could pick out the hulking silhouette of her father. “He knew what he was doing. He knew what would happen when he brought me and my sister out of America and he did it anyway. He had a choice.”

“And you still call him father?”

“Yep.” She popped the ‘p’ a little, looking back at John.

“Why?” He looked lost. Lost and desperate.

“I know he regrets what he did. And, in the end, he made the better decisions,” she said with a shrug. “And he’s the only dad I got.”

Walker fell silent for a long moment, his gaze distant.

“You might not get back everything you lost,” Bucky started, “but you can start here and make better decisions too, John. Let Olivia move on. Let yourself move on.”

“Just don’t wait twenty-years,” Yelena added. “Xander’s gonna need you a lot sooner than that.”

John processed that too for a moment before he looked at them both sheepishly. “Vault of secrets?”

“What’s said in group therapy stays in group therapy,” Yelena replied with a smile.

There was a cheer from the direction of the porch and Bucky reached over to give Walker a firm slap on the shoulder before he headed back.

Bucky’s mood was tempered a little as he watched over the activity on the porch now. Ava wasn’t all the way visible yet. She was, oddly, faded in from her extremities. Her fingers and toes were completely invisible still though her core was opaque. The blood had come from her nose and split lip but her teeth were all miraculously intact.

What was more curious than her fading was the way that Walker was suddenly treating her. Whatever shit she gave him for the accident, he took it with no complaints. And the whole rest of the night, he waited on her hand and foot – fetching tea, ice packs, and, later, bowls of gumbo and pieces of pecan pie. There was a new gentleness in him that Bucky had never seen before. It was suddenly very easy to see how he could have wooed Olivia in high school.

By the time they got to the actual meal, everything had settled back down again and they were free to enjoy the evening. Even Sam stayed.

Bucky relaxed back beside Sarah, his metal hand curled around a cup of coffee, pie plate abandoned on the porch. He heaved a contented sigh.

“I’m just saying,” came Walker’s voice, “that we really need to get on the same page for football rules.”

“I know the rules to football,” Bucky groused.

“Did they even have football in your day?” Walker challenged.

Bucky smirked at him. “My grandfather played football in college back in 1884,” he said smoothly. Then he nodded towards walker. “Granted, that was back when football was mostly still rugby.”

“See, thank you! Different rules!”

“In Russia, I play ice hockey. I was very very good at it. I show you sometime, when its properly cold out,” Alexei insisted.

“I’m decent at ice hockey. Been a while though,” Walker said thoughtfully.

“Shut up-shut up!” Yelena suddenly yelled. “Look!” She gestured out into the yard. Everyone was silent for a moment and then…

…the lightning bugs started.

Just a few, at first, and then hundreds of them. Maybe even thousands.

“Wow,” Bob breathed. “That’s really beautiful.”

It was. And they all enjoyed it together. Until…

“Oh for pete’s sake, just hold her hand already,” came Ava’s taunting.

Bucky sat up straight, putting on an innocent face as he caught the Ghost’s accusatory stare.

Beside him, Sarah snickered.

“Excuse me?” Sam barked.

“Nothing. We weren’t doing anything, Sam, calm down.”

“I saw it,” Ava insisted. “I saw your fingers over there, brushing against each other. Just do it already. She clearly wants you to.”

Bucky looked over at Sarah and she was smirking at him, eyebrows raised. He chewed his lip, feeling the heat of Sam’s fury to his left.

“Don’t you dare, man. I’m not playing—”

“You know what, Sam…” Bucky looked over at him, feeling stupid and brave all at once. “Sarah gets a say in this too.”

He held his hand out to her, holding Sam’s gaze for a moment longer before he looked over at Sarah on his right. A grin tugged at his lips.

“Hi Sarah,” he said in a rhythmic sing-song tone.

She snickered at him. Then reached over, took his hand, and entwined their fingers. “Hi Bucky.”

The ‘oooo’s erupted around them and he pointedly did not look at anyone else. He kept his eyes on hers, and gently gave her hand a squeeze. She squeezed it back.

Sam had nothing to say to him the rest of the night, but he suspected that had more to do with Sam not wanting to spoil the evening than it did with his anger. Because the rest of that night really was pretty beautiful.

Chapter Text

Bucky felt dragged back to consciousness and he wasn’t too pleased about it when he got there. As soon as his eyelids fluttered open, he remembered what had happened – not completely in the correct sequence, but it was all there. A concussive force, the sting of a dozen darts, and then blackness.

Well, it wasn’t the first time. And it probably wouldn’t be the last. But he wouldn’t let himself dwell there, not yet, anyway.

He looked around slowly, not moving his head, taking a silent inventory of his surroundings.

Concrete walls, heavy steel door, metal grating under his feet, and more concrete below that.

Bare feet, no boots.

He flexed his fingers, and found his flesh hand completely numb. His arms were stretched above his head, holding him upright. He didn’t look yet but he assumed his wrists were either fastened to the wall or to a chain in the ceiling.

With each new piece of input, he began to construct a clear picture – drawing from his too-deep well of reference on kidnappings, torture, and general capture.

He glanced down but only because his head was hanging down. No shirt, he observed dryly. That was never a fun sign. That usually meant someone wanted him to be intensely uncomfortable over the next few hours.

Bucky paused then to listen. There were no shuffling footsteps, no muttered conversations. He was fairly certain that he was alone. And that was alarming, because he distinctly remembered being with some of the team when something had exploded.

Finally, Bucky raised his head and oh that sent shooting pain down his back and shoulders. He must have been out for a while.

“Bucky?” came a timid soft voice.

He looked to the left. And there was Bob.

Bob was curled in the corner, with no shoes on, his eyes wide and terrified. His hands were in handcuffs and these chained to the floor so that he had to stay low. He was sitting on his feet so that his knees were drawn up and poking out on either side of his arms, like a frog. But he had his shirt on, so that was good news.

Bucky was about to say something when an electric jolt ricocheted through his metal arm, sending a needling pain through his armpit, across his shoulders. His body went tight, his lungs frozen, for one…two…three…four…five… And then the current ended.

Shit.

He heaved a breath as he looked up at his hands, with the stark realization that both of them were numb. His metal arm clicked and whirred as something reset inside of it but he didn’t feel it. Couldn’t move it, not even to twitch. He had considerably fancier cuffs than Bob did. His were wide and thick and tight and stupidly high tech.

“Bucky…o-oh no…”

This was bad.

This wasn’t going to end well for him. And if it didn’t end well for him, then it was going to end considerably less well for Bob. And if that happened, then the world was in for a nasty trip to some interconnected shame rooms.

He couldn’t let that happen.

Very suddenly, all of his observations coalesced sharply into focus.

Bucky licked his lip, tasting blood.

“Okay,” he rasped. “Here’s the plan.”

Bob was watching him, studying him.

Bucky did his best to hold a steady gaze. “Bob, I need you stay very calm,” Bucky told him. “They’re not after you, they’re after me.”

“They can’t hurt me,” Bob observed. “I should just…maybe I should…”

“I know they can’t hurt you,” Bucky said quickly. “You know they can’t hurt you. But they don’t know that yet. But if they know that, they’ll test that. If they test that and you lose your cool—”

“The Void…” Bob completed the thought. His jaw clenched, and flexed.

“Exactly. So, the plan is that you’re gonna stay calm, Bob. And that’s gonna be hard because you’re gonna see and hear some things that neither of us are gonna enjoy,” Bucky said in an even, smooth tone. “But that’s your job—”

“—to stay calm.”

“To stay calm.”

He could see the panic already rising up in Bob and Bucky wasn’t really sure if this was going to even work.

“But if I can help—” Bob started, and Bucky suddenly connected a dot.

“You’re going to help,” he insisted. “You’re going to help in more ways than one, Bob. Staying calm isn’t just to keep the Void quiet. In a little while, I’m not going to be able to stay calm. I’m only gonna be able to hang on to one thing – making sure they hit me instead of you. So that means you’re gonna have to think for both of us, okay? My job is to draw the hits. Your job is to find a way out. And to find a way out—”

“I stay calm,” Bob finished.

“You stay calm. You focus. You look for all the details. What kinda guys are they letting in? How many are there? What’s the lock on the door look like? Can you smell anything when they open the door? Details. That’ll help you later. And it—”

He cut short. The electricity in his wrist kicked on again and his jaws snapped shut. His metal arm clicked and whirled as he jerked. The fingers on his metal fist went askew in discordant directions before snapping into a tight fist and going still.

…four…five…

Release.

“…what was that?” Bob asked, horrified.

The breath huffled out of him and Bucky shook his head. “M-my cuffs are electrified. It paralyzes my arm.”

“We’re gonna die…”

“We’re not gonna die, Bob. You’re going to stay calm,” Bucky insisted. “When they come in here, I don’t want you looking at me. You hear me? You look away. Close your eyes. Try to focus on something else. If we’re lucky, they’ll take me out of the room first.”

He didn’t think they’d be that lucky.

He didn’t think they expected to do much of anything with Bob besides using him as leverage to get Bucky to do something. That was a problem. He had to make sure they didn’t try to shoot him. He had to draw all the ire towards himself. That was going to hurt. A lot.

“Have you ever tried deep breathing?” Bucky asked him. “My therapist suggested it for when I get night terrors.”

“Does it help?”

“Yeah, sure,” he lied. Realistically, he hated deep breathing exercises because they looked stupid.  “C’mon, we’ll try it together. Exhale through your mouth and make a whoosh sound. Empty out your lungs. Then we’ll breathe in for four seconds. Hold it for seven. Then out again with a whoosh for eight seconds. Ready?”

The pair of them, shackled, barefoot, locked in a cell, made exaggerated whooshing noises with pursed lips.

Over and over again.

Until the electricity kicked back on and seized his lungs, sending hot pain up behind his eyeballs.

Bob felt like he was going to puke as he watched the Winter Soldier spasm. He wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t already trapped in a shame room, reliving one of Bucky’s repressed memories. There was a surreal feeling in the air but maybe that was just his own terror clouding his thoughts.

It was probably why Bucky kept insisting on calm.

The electricity popped off and, now that he was paying attention, Bob could hear it when it stopped.

For a while, they both stayed silent. Bob tried to focus. He started counting as soon as the electricity went off. The loop was ninety seconds. Every minute and a half, Bucky Barnes was getting shocked.

Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.

A trickle of anger trilled through him for a moment. Because this was all foolish. He could end it all right now. He could help in a way that mattered. He knew that now. He was powerful. He didn’t need to be afraid. Bucky didn’t need to be suffering. His mom shouldn’t have had to suffer—

Bob whooshed out a breath. Maybe one day he could be the Sentry again. But that wasn’t today. He knew it couldn’t be today.

Today, he could only be Bob and it had to be enough.

“I believe in you, man,” came Bucky’s low rasp.

Bob looked over to catch the steely blue eyes locked on to his. “I don’t,” Bob admitted softly.

“You can do this. I’m here with you,” Bucky insisted.

Bob squeezed his hands together and nodded.

It was another two cycles of electricity before the men came.

Details, focus. Stay calm.

There were three who walked into the cell. Four more were outside. The three who entered were in slate gray fatigues with no insignia. They didn’t want to be identified. Two of them wore balaclavas that covered everything but their empty, listless eyes. The third, who took the lead in the room, was a tall man – easily as tall as Bob himself – but bulkier than Alexei. His hair was closely shaved to his head and his face was stern.

Bob did his best to be small and unnoticed in the corner as the door shut—shoot, what was the lock? Was it a keypad? He forgot to look!

“Зимний Солдат, посмотри, во что ты превратился,” growled the man in the lead.

Bob broke the rule. He looked at Bucky. He’d seen Barnes glare before but this wasn’t anything like what the team received. Bucky was snarling at the man, his eyes flashing with an animalistic rage.

“Дмитрий,” Bucky spat. And then Bucky smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was a nasty, mocking smile. “Вы все еще червь России? Чего теперь хотят от меня твои хозяева? Их мужественность? У вас самого, наверное, не так уж много от этого осталось...”

It was like watching a train wreck. Bob knew he wasn’t supposed to look – and agreed that he didn’t want to look – but he forgot to turn away as the first blow landed. It was a wrenching gut punch. And only then did Bob realize that the man had something like a gauntlet on that looked suspiciously like an old Iron Man piece. This was a super powered punch. The sound whumped and Bucky grunted.

And then he started to laugh – a slow, unhinged cackle.

That’s when Bob thought to turn away.

He focused on the other two men in the room, peering up at them as they watched what their colleague was doing. They seemed so distant – like they weren’t interested in making any kind of human connection – and that made sense. You didn’t want your henchmen bonding with prisoners.

One of the henchmen produced a small silver box from his pocket and it was then that Bob realized that they had a lot of pockets. He made the mistake of following the box as it was passed form henchman to interrogator, his eyes skimming over Bucky.

Nope. That wasn’t smart.

Stay calm.

Bob’s eyes darted around as he sought somewhere better to look and then realized, suddenly, that the interrogator was looking at him. The henchmen were looking at him.

“И кто такой этот маленький червячок? Ваш питомец, солдат?” he asked casually as he opened up the little box and withdrew a long thick needle. One of the henchmen took a step towards Bob.

Bob’s eyes went wide. He sucked in a breath and let it out in a petering w-wh-oo-sshh.

And then Bucky kicked the interrogator, snapping everyone’s attention back to the Winter Soldier as the box of needles went flying. One of the henchmen scurried to pick up the mess while the interrogator barked an order at the other one, who came to wrangle one of Bucky’s legs up. Bucky flailed against them, shouting what Bob could only assume were obscenities.

Turn away.

He watched as the henchmen finally dragged Bucky into a taut, awkward line, diagonal to the floor. The interrogator pulled back his booted foot.

TURN AWAY.

Bob squeezed his eyes shut but that didn’t stop the sounds – the thud of a boot, the dull snap of a bone, and the roar of pain and outrage.

He decided to keep his eyes shut.

He counted in his head.

He heard the sound of his father. And the whimpers of his mother. And he tried to breathe, hating that he was useless. Hating that he knew he had the power to help but—

--but no, Bucky had promised that he was going to help. And he knew he had to. Just not here. Not yet.

A new sound assailed him – a modulating wail that started low and guttural and then hitched upwards in the high-pitched squeal of agony – an animal noise that sounded nothing like Bucky Barnes.

Don’t look. Stay calm. That’s your job.

What was the other part of his job? Get them out. That was the other part. Stay calm and get them out. And he would be useless if he panicked and oh gosh, he wanted to panic.

Focus. This was arguably worse for Bucky. Bob had the easy job.

Bob breathed through his nose and regretted it when he came up with the tang of copper and the sour stench of sweat.

He switched to mouth breathing.

This wasn’t going to last forever. He knew it couldn’t last forever. So, what happened when it was over? What did he do then?

Assuming Bucky was still alive.

Bob looked down at the cuffs on his own wrists. They were just handcuffs. When he was a kid, he went through a phase where he studied Houdini – his methods, his life. He liked to pretend that he could be a magician too, one day, and create illusions that everyone would love.  And maybe he could disappear his father too.

But he had nothing to pick a lock with…

Details.

Bob looked back at the floor where the box of needles had dropped. It wasn’t on the floor anymore but if he was lucky…Yes. There was one. He saw it just a little ways away from his foot.

“На данный момент достаточно. Он бесполезен. Мы дадим ему отдышаться,” the interrogator suddenly growled.

And Bob looked up.

They left quickly, stepping around him like he wasn’t even there. The door opened from the outside but Bob noticed this time that there was a handle on the inside. And a keyhole. He heard the lock engage once they went through – and it sounded like a deadbolt.

He stared at the door for a few moments longer, after it had closed, but only because he didn’t want to look back at Bucky.

The man was breathing but it was a rattled breathing, like something had been knocked loose in his chest. But he was breathing. That was a positive, right?

Bob slowly turned his head.

He let out another stuttered who-oo-oosh.

Bucky hung there, limply, dangling from his wrists. His hair hung around his face, hiding it in the harsh overhead lighting, and blood dripped from somewhere, going down his neck, his chest. His leg was crooked at a strange angle.

“B-Bucky?” Bob breathed.

Nothing. The Winter Soldier was out cold and that was probably a good thing.

Bucky had finished his job. It was Bob’s turn now.

Something new appeared in Bucky’s heart of hearts as his super-soldier brain clicked back into wakefulness. Something new and totally unexpected. It caught him off guard so thoroughly that it distracted him from the inevitable task of cataloguing his injuries.

He missed congress.

He missed the 4pm recess time.

He missed the fancy, too-expensive lunches and the stupid cat-and-mouse political games that were played over crystal tumblers of fine whiskey.

He missed the goddamned boring packets.

Because none of those things hurt.

They were all mind-numbing, sure, but he would have killed to have his mind numbed just then. He was getting too old for this torture shit.

He just wanted to have a normal job. Like on a boat, with Sarah, in the warmth of the South. Something low-key. Probably not congress, not for real. As much as he preferred it in the moment, he knew there were better places to be.

There was a jolt in his arm and Bucky flinched.

Oh yes, back to reality.

“Sorry,” someone breathed in his ear.

Bucky frowned and tried to turn and see what was happening. He was suddenly very aware of someone pressed close to him. Who… Oh right. “Bob?”

Immediately, Bob took a step back to look at Bucky. “Hey man,” he said with a shaky smile. “Hang on, I almost got it…”

Bob pressed in again and Bucky was about to ask what was happening when there was a faint click and suddenly his weight pitched forward, into Bob’s arms.

Many things lit up in his nervous system and Bucky groaned.

“Sorry, sorry,” Bob murmured as he gently lowered Bucky to the ground, arranging his numb arms across his chest. “Are you okay?”

Bucky peered up at Bob now, from the floor. His brain was working slowly, muddled now from a haze of pain that clamored to be known. “…you getting us out, Bob?” he asked in a daze.

Bob gave him a lopsided smile. “Working on it. I just need to figure out how to pick the lock on the door. It’d help if I had another needle…” He held up the bent needle and Bucky’s stomach turned as he recalled what those needles had been used for.

Then he frowned over at his flesh arm that was starting to burn as circulation resumed down the length of his forearm and into his fingers. He couldn’t move it yet. “C-check my arm,” he mumbled to Bob. “I think they left one…”

Bob looked ashen as he processed that but he did it. He gently pulled Bucky’s arm out straight and Buck hummed as the pain flexed with it.

“Oh shit,” Bob cursed. “That’s in your elbow, man.”

“The ulnar nerve,” Bucky informed him in a dull flat voice. As he spoke it, he could feel it. And he could remember it too - the white hot nerve pain that happily licked down his arm and into his fingers, overriding any numbness that he'd been feeling.

“Okay, uhm… Hang on,” Bob told him.

Bucky felt the trembling fingers against his skin and then Bob abruptly yanked out the needle.

Bucky grunted, pleased that it didn’t hurt as much coming out as it did going in.

Bob held the needle in his hands and stared at it for a long moment, his features going dark.

“Bob…Bob!” Bucky barked.

The younger man flinched. “Yeah…Yeah, hang on. Hang on. Y-you wait there.”

As if he had another choice.

He could hear Bob tinkering at the door and he let his mind wander then over his own body because they still had to get out of the room and off the compound, wherever they were. And could he do that?

Bucky tried flexing his metal fingers and they twitched. It was a good sign. They’d come back online soon. It might be the only part of him that was functional though. The rest of him felt broken – from his rib cage to his knee to the back of his head where it had been smashed against the concrete. His nose and orbital cavity. A couple of toes. All broken. He probably had some bruised organs too, though none of those felt like they were actively bleeding and that was good. But his nerves were all on fire. And the fire wasn’t letting up.

Bucky let out a whoosh of air.

He was so tired.

“Got it,” Bob announced.

“Keep your voice down,” Bucky rumbled.

“Oh, sorry,” Bob whispered. He opened the door before Bucky could warn him to look for guards, and honestly, that was fine. His brain felt like mush and he hurt and he was tired and clearly Bob was no dummy. This kid had a good brain on him.

Bucky turned his head to watch as Bob chanced a look out the corridor and realized that he didn’t mind trusting the guy. And that was a nice feeling.

He made a mental note to get Bob some training in espionage skills. Until they could safely trust Sentry to be present, he wouldn’t mind having Bob the Spy on his support team. Maybe some basic engineering…he could be the tech guy in the van…

“I’ll be right back. Stay put,” Bob told him. “Work on your breathing.”

Bucky flashed him a thumbs up with his metal hand, too tired to smirk though the gesture still tugged on his lips.

He must have passed out again because when he blinked his eyes back open, he was outside.

In a truck bed.

Moving swiftly.

Bucky pushed up onto his metal elbow and peered around. Bob was in the drivers seat of the truck. How in the hell…

The truck squealed to a stop, kicking up a dust ball. Bob reached over and pulled open the little window in the back of the truck cab.

“You okay?” he called back to Bucky.

Bucky nodded, a befuddled expression crossing his face.

“Oh good, I was worried there for a minute. Hey, we’re almost out of danger. Team rendezvous is just across the border. You okay for a few more miles?” he pressed.

Bucky nodded again, slowly.

“Okay,” Bob said with a smile. “Hang tight.”

“Bob…”

“Yeah?”

Bucky looked at the kid. It could have been the nerve damage, or the fact that he really was getting too old for this, or it could have been the lingering effects of this stupid team they were on…but he felt emotional. Grateful. Cared for. And so happy that he didn’t have to worry about dragging their asses back to safety.

“Thank you,” Bucky pressed out, nodding to assuage the pressure behind his eyes.

Bob beamed at him, nodding back. “You’re welcome, Buck. Thank you.”

They both nodded at each other again, like idiots.

Then Bucky frowned. “Go already,” he grumped.

“Yeah, on it.”

And the truck rumbled forward again.

Bucky laid back in the bed, letting his eyes drift shut on the warm tropical day as he took in a big deep breath and let it whoosh back out again.

Chapter Text

It was the storm of the century.

Or at least, that’s what the weather guys insisted on. And they kept insisting it, at least once a month. They’d probably had at least three centuries worth of major storms in the past year alone, according to the tv personalities.

What was important was that it was a storm that was heavy enough to make the whole Watchtower sway, just a little. It was a good excuse to stay in.

They made six frozen pizzas and at least five boxes of mac and cheese (it was decided, early on, that none of them were too worried about counting calories, considering their various physical conditions). While all of them preferred getting take out from the local establishments, evenings like this one merited a more domestic approach to dinner.

It would have been a fine night for some quiet personal time – the kind of night where Bob and Ava might end up in the Office/Library, reading books, while Bucky and Yelena ran off to their separate hidey holes in the Watchtower (levels 57 and 81, respectively), and Alexei and Walker enjoyed some time in the gym or watched movies in HQ.

But tonight needed to be a family night, Yelena had decided, because she’d started noticing some things that were worrisome about her father – Alexei Shostakov. He’d started having, for lack of a better term, episodes. Little episodes. Moments that were a few steps out of his larger-than-life character.

She started noticing them in the Watchtower, during downtime. One day, he’d be fine, but then the next day, he’d be keeping to himself, sullen, following a strangely strict schedule. And on those days, it took an army to get him to leave the tower – or at least some very grumpy super soldiers.

Then she caught him breaking down in the grocery store. That was weird too. She’d left him alone to pick out laundry soap and came back to him staring listlessly at the bottles and boxes, muttering in Russian and twisting the shopping basket handles into a knot.

And then a few days later, Yelena observed Alexei standing – just standing – in full gear, for nearly an hour. When asked about it, he laughed and hurried off to pee before she could press him.

She wasn’t the only one making observations. Walker noticed how often Alexei liked to look at himself in the mirror but caught him glaring at himself once, with such a look on his face that Walker nearly said something to him. But then Alexei noticed the attention, pulled out a joke and a laugh, and moved on.

Her father was not doing well, and she had some suspicions as to why after consulting Google.

“I tell you, I can give you a tattoo right now!” Alexei was telling Bob as they settled at the counter in the Penthouse kitchen. He had his shirt off so that the younger man could get a full view of his gallery of prison tats.

“Put your shirt back on, dad,” Yelena moaned as she stirred in an absurd amount of bright orange cheese powder into a massive bowl of cooked macaroni noodles.

“I need a tattoo!” Walker insisted. “We should all get matching tattoos! Like a little lightning bolt—”

“I’d do that,” Ava encouraged.

“I have a couple of tattoos,” Bucky said offhandedly from where he sat at the very end of the countertop, nursing a cold beer that wouldn’t come close to getting him buzzed but he drank it anyway.

Yelena paused her stirring to gape at him. “What, where?”

“I’m not gonna show you,” he grumbled.

“Ok but you can’t just make that kind of statement and not tell us what it is,” Walker protested.

“Of course I can.”

“Bob, you got the closest to seeing him naked—”

“—I wouldn’t call it naked—”

“But did you see the tattoos?” Yelena pressed. “Were they on his, y’know, finely shaped super soldier torso?”

“That’s a very uncomfortably worded question…” Bucky grimaced.

Bob’s head was tilted as he thought back to their time captured together, his eyes squinty. Bucky was frowning over at him with that stern stare of his.

“Maybe they aren’t on his torso. Maybe he’s got something more salacious,” Ava suggested with a smirk. “I bet you Sarah knows where they are…”

Bucky snarl-grinned at her and shook his head, likely full of deep regret for saying anything to begin with.

Yelena gasped at him. “Are you embarrassed because there’s ladies in the room?”

“He is very old fashioned—”

“I had my unit insignia on my left arm, ok?” Bucky hedged. “But that’s obviously gone now.”

“Oh, well that’s not as interesting,” Yelena relented.

Alexei had put his shirt back on but now he was fussing with a clicky-pen, pulling it apart and removing the spring. “Alright, who want to go first?” He held up the spring that he was gently straightening.

“No, thank you, I would not like to have a MRSA tattoo,” Ava insisted.

“What? You won’t get infected! I have many prison tattoos—”

“But we’re not in prison. We can just go to a regular tattoo parlor.” Yelena pressed. “I mean, I guess you can do the painful MacGyver artwork if you want but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“…That’s a good show,” Walker mused.

That settled the issue for a moment and they lapsed into a companionable silence – Yelena dishing out bowls of mac and cheese to accompany the pizzas. This sort of vibe soothed her – the regular life moments, with people who understood her as completely as anyone ever had and accepted her. There was no pressure to keep up any kind of conversation, no posturing, no pretending – there was something of an unspoken agreement that they could all be themselves, however weird or quiet or chatty. And that was nice.

Bucky heaved a sigh around a mouthful of food. “This pizza is shit,” he grumbled.

“Did you put hot sauce on it?” Yelena asked, innocently. She held out the red bottle to him and he took it with an appreciative upwards quirk of his eyebrows.

Thunder rumbled outside.

And then the three Super Soldiers went very very still. All three of them turned to stare in the direction of the elevator.

“You hear that?” Walker asked in a low voice.

“Mmhmm,” Bucky confirmed.

“Да.”

Yelena slowly put down her bowl of macaroni. She strained to pick up what they were picking up but all she could discern was the wind and the rain and the slow growling grind of the shifting skyscraper.

“What is it?” she asked softly.

“The elevator kicked on,” Walker replied.

“It-it could be Mel,” Bob suggested. “Or Valentina.”

“They’re usually in heels,” Bucky remarked. “And Mel usually texts us first.”

That was an informal protocol that they’d enacted after the incident of her walking in on the impromptu surgery on the botfly larvae, although Valentina had insisted that it was her building and she did not need permission to be in it or to send staff in.

“This is why we need that AI computer system,” Yelena insisted, gesturing above her head.

“They’re supposed to install it next week,” Bob mused idly.

Maybe it was the sudden flash of lightning and the thunder, maybe it was something else she couldn’t hear, but suddenly the three super soldiers were out of their seats. Walker had grabbed a knife from the block on the counter. Alexei’s hands were curled into tight fists. Bucky had a combat knife (and where he produced that from was a magic trick – but one she herself knew well).

“Does anyone have access to the security cameras?” Ava was asking.

Bob snapped his fingers. “I do. Mel gave me access on my laptop…”

“What? Why don’t we all have access?” Walker complained.

“She sent an email two months ago,” Bob explained with that slightly confused quirk of his eyebrows. “I assumed everyone had access…”

“I forgot my password,” Alexei admitted.

“I don’t check my email,” from Bucky.

Yelena opened her mouth but then shut it again as she realized that she also both forgot her password and was not prone to checking her email because it was weird that she even had a New Avengers email address and really how secure was that anyway?

Bob retrieved his laptop and they crowded around it as he pulled up the extensive network of security cameras.

“Shit, how many cameras are there?” Walker asked with a deep frown.

“Over two thousand,” Bob replied. “That’s why we’re getting an AI system…”

“And a security team,” Ava injected. “I did read that email.”

Yelena glanced away from the laptop screen that was scrolling through the impossible list of cameras. “This is going to take too long…I—” She stopped as she caught sight of her father.

Alexei’s expression was dark. His eyes drilled into the laptop screen from where he stood, several strides away from the cluster of heroes.

“Dad? Are you okay?”

His eyes flicked over to her and, for just a moment, she saw something strange – suspicion? Distrust? And then he painted over his features with a wry grin.

“You’re right! This take too long to look at all the cameras,” he agreed, boisterous again, as if he had never stopped.

“I agree,” Bucky said smoothly, but she looked over to catch him watching her. Concerned. “Bob, you stay here and keep looking through the cameras, start with the top thirty floors. We’ll be on comms. Let us know if you see anything.”

“Will do,” Bob said with a sharp nod.

It was decided that they should mostly stay together – which Bucky was really starting to appreciate these days. Being a loner badass was fun and all, but it was a lot better being on a team.

They stopped long enough to get comms and a couple of guns, and then made a very absurd parade for the cameras to watch. In gym shorts, jeans, tack suits, tee-shirts - they looked like idiots. Except for Ava, who had the foresight to put on her suit while he and John were arguing over which gun would be better in this particular scenario (he opted for his pistol).

Then they began the slow process of sweeping the levels, moving methodically from staircase to staircase, spiraling downward in the dark. For a while, they didn’t speak to each other, just wordlessly spilled through the Watchtower with an adrenaline fueled precision. But by the time they made it down five floors, he was beginning to wonder if he’d heard anything at all. Walker made it another level before he started voicing his own doubts. It was Alexei who remained adamant that, yes, they had all heard someone taking the elevator.

The lights were mostly all off, save for some safety lighting that was almost always on. Lightning occasionally lit up the levels. Bucky was about to call it off altogether when Bob’s voice finally came over the comms.

“There’s a bag in the hallway just around the corner from you guys,” Bob told them. “Maybe…yeah, it’s right in front of the bathroom. Turn the corner and you’ll be in a lobby. Looks like one of the administration lobbies.”

The whole team went on the alert again.

Bucky nodded over at Starr and the Ghost winked out of sight. He gestured to Yelena to move up and she stepped out in front of him, as light and soundless as could be, her Widow cuffs up and ready to incapacitate whoever was unfortunate enough to break into the Watchtower. She slipped around the corner.

And then several things happened at once.

Bucky and Walker went around the corner and perceived the wide open vestibule, the large plate windows, the smattering of waiting room furniture. Then there was a scream from the bathroom and the door flew open. Yelena jumped back as a man came flying out. And Ava was saying something to them over comms.

“—guard, stand down! It’s a security guard!”

And then Alexei came charging in like a battering ram.

Walker made the mistake of stepping in front of him and the Red Guardian shoved him out of the way like a tackling dummy, shooting John twenty feet across the lobby and into a magazine rack.

“Alexei, stop!” Yelena yelled, and he pushed her aside too.

Bellowing, he closed the distance, hauled the man up by his shirt, and hurled him down the length of the space.

“Stop! Stand down!” someone was yelling over the comm system. It was hard to hear who but two things were very very clear in the middle of the cacophony – the intruder wasn’t an intruder.

And Alexei was going to kill him.

Bucky lunged in front of Alexei and planted his feet like a tree. Ava materialized from the bathroom just behind him. The Russian was glaring over his shoulder, at the guy, not even registering Buck.

“Hey!” Bucky barked, trying to pull his focus, his metal hand raised as if that would stop him. “Step back, Shostakov,” he growled, a snarl on his lips.

Alexei was breathing hard, his teeth bared. He wasn’t charging forward again but the was a man enraged. “Don’t you see?!” he shrieked. “He’s a guard! He’s here to—"

“He’s a security guard,” Ava said quickly. She was kneeling beside the guy where he was crumpled on the floor. “He’s here because Valentina hired him. Because I recommended this company. He’s our security guard, Alexei!”

“I-I’m so sorry, man, I’m sorry,” the guy babbled. “I just-I was on the route and I don’t normally come out here because I’m usually on the other coast, y’know? And we usually got a guy for this place, but I was in the area and I thought oh wow the New Avengers are here and maybe they’d sign my autograph book! So I gave the other guy the night off and I haven’t done real security in a while like this, bro, I’m so sorry. My bad. All my bad—”

“Shut up!” Walker snapped. He came up to stand just a step behind Barnes and Bucky felt his presence like a solid wall behind him, firmly between the victim and the danger.

Yelena stayed close to Alexei, poised with her cuffs again but directly behind her father, her eyes wide. “Dad, please…”

And for a terrible moment, nobody moved but everyone prepared for it. Everyone had seen the Red Guardian in battle, but no one had ever seen him furious before – a true Bear of Russia. If he wanted too, Alexei had the raw power to give both John and Bucky a bad time. But that was fine because the ladies in the room would be free to subdue him if they could keep him occupied—

Bucky finally caught Alexei’s stare and slowly tilted his chin to the side, holding his gaze – wolf to bear. Animal to animal. And he saw a fearful haze glimmering in the man’s eyes. It was an all too familiar haze.

Alexei was triggered, fully embedded in an oversized amygdala reaction, fight rather than flight. But considering he hadn’t barreled through Bucky, John and Ava, there might be just enough thinking brain left to process deescalating. And he was reminded then of how often Steve had tried to deescalate him, and Sam and Ayo, when he was having a meltdown.

Bucky dropped his snarl and pressed his lips together. He brought his other hand forward and held both palms towards the super soldier. And then he slowly turned his shoulders, letting his hips and feet follow, putting himself at an angle to the Red Guardian, though his hands and his gaze held steady. It was meant to make him less of a threat.

“You’re safe,” he said, his voice measured and low and calm. “It’s safe, Alexei.”

Shostakov’s eyebrows quirked into a confused frown.

Bucky continued in a controlled, low tone. “Ava, get our friend out of here, please? John, walk with her. Yelena, go ahead and give us some space. We’re ok here, right Alexei? We’re fine.”

He didn’t break eye contact as he heard the others moving around him. He caught sight of Ava in his periphery, ducking into a conference room, dragging the security guard with her.

When they were more or less alone (he was certain the others were just around a corner or behind a door), Bucky let his shoulders relax. He drew in a deep breath, hoping to encourage Alexei to do the same. And, sure enough, the Red Guardian did breathe deeply.

It was like a spell being broken and Alexei suddenly sagged, the fight bleeding out of him. His fingers relaxed out of their tight fists.

“Ты с нами, друг мой?” Bucky asked.

Alexei nodded his head, dragging his hands across his scalp. “I’m with you, I’m with you,” he mumbled. His frown deepened and he looked around. And then a wide sheepish grin split his face. “Dat was crazy, right? An assassin in the Watchtower?”

“Are you feeling okay?” Bucky pressed.

“Me? I feel fine! Maybe little bit embarrassed,” Alexei said with a scoff, as if he hadn’t just tried to punch a hole in the chest of an innocent man.

Bucky watched him for a moment before he reached up to press his comms earpiece deeper into his ear. “Ava, Walker, can you escort our security guard out of the building? Yelena and I will walk Alexei back up to the penthouse.”

“On it,” Walker confirmed.

Yelena materialized from where she’d disappeared around the corner and came up to loop her arm casually through her fathers. “C’mon, dad. Let’s go talk about it.”

Alexei’s chest was tight as his beloved Lena walked him to the staircase, talking to him like he was a feeble-minded elder and he knew he deserved that to some degree. He was sure he was as red as his suit. His head felt like it was swimming. It was almost like the time he was first escorted to that hell-hole – the Seventh Circle prison. Blood pressure, he thought grimly. His blood pressure must be, as they say in America, through the roof.

Yelena was saying something to him but he was struggling to follow her English. But he was keenly aware of the Winter Soldier directly behind him.  He wasn’t a threat. Not yet. Not now. Because they were allies and Alexei would not betray his allies. He would trust them.

Because he was not in hell. He was in the Watchtower. He was an Avenger! And that was truly glorious. It was honorable.

Bob was waiting for them in the penthouse and Alexei went back to the seat he’d left when this whole thing had started. His fingers found the pen pieces where he’d left them after pulling the thing apart. Idly, he turned them over and over and over as if he could put the whole thing back together...

“Dad?”

Yelena’s voice broke through his empty, idle fidgeting and he looked up at her, putting on a warm smile. Her light was so bright these days, it made him proud. And it made him ache for how many years it had been snuffed out.

Because of him.

He couldn’t stop thinking about that day, back in Cuba. Their waltz through his particular shame room had been quick. He’d known exactly what it was they would see, once they understood what was happening. Alexei did not have many truly shameful moments. His regrets were few. That was the thing about being Russian – they taught you to be proud in your national heritage, your role in the Union, your place. He had never really regretted any of his actions, as his father had taught him. He always looked ahead to the next moment of pride, the next glory, the next mission.

Except for that day in Cuba.

It was his one genuine moment of regret, and one that would always haunt him. The shame room had merely brightened the shine of the memories.

“Dad…”

“Mm, yes, Дорогой?” he finally answered her.

She was sitting close to him, her hand on his. He could tell she was trying to think through this latest problem. What to say, how to look.

“What are you thinking about?” she finally asked.

“Many things,” he said vaguely.

Barnes was watching him from across the kitchen counter. And Bob. And John Walker and the Ghost were coming back now too.

“Were you thinking about prison?” Yelena probed.

He looked back at her. He had been, when he had snapped. He had seen it again, vividly. That had been happening a lot lately and he was confused because he hadn’t been in prison for over a decade now and surely those things would fade. Maybe it was the experience with the Void. Or living so close to family now.

Alexei found his head bobbing in affirmation. “The guards at the Седьмой круг…They were not good men. They were not honorable. Soldier, surely you know what I mean. The prisons in Russia are horror.”

Barnes gave him a subtle, haunted nod.

Alexei heaved a sigh with a chuckle at the end. “I don’t like this mood, my friends. I’m sorry. I was a little confused and I did not mean to be. Please, accept my apologies.”

“Can I ask you something?” Walker was saying as he slid into an empty stool at the counter.

“Yes, of course,” Alexei insisted, waving him on.

“How come you never broke out of prison, Alexei?”

They all turned to look at him and Alexei froze.

It was a fair question, yes. Why did he stay in a Russian prison for all of those years?

“Ehhh, where else will I go that I get such a captive audience?” he ground out, laughing. Always with that boisterous laugh. Keep laughing and they will leave off the accusation. The demons in his past. It was better, anyway, than weeping. He would not suffer such a humiliation.

“No, dad, really,” Yelena pressed. “Why did you stay? You could have broken out on your own. You’re the Red Guardian.”

Alexei looked over at her, his cheeky grin faltering for a moment before holding steady. “It’s...a…Russian prison! So strong and hard to get out…of…”

Silence.

They were all watching him intently now.

“Bob, is that true?”

Alexei’s gaze whipped to the strange young man. He’d forgotten that Bob knew things he shouldn’t.

“I-I…I don’t know how strong Russian prisons are…” Bob stuttered.

“No, but is that why he stayed? Do you remember from his shame rooms? I didn’t get to see that one, I was with you…” Yelena frowned deeper.

Bob cleared his throat, looking from one Russian to the other and back again. “I don’t think it’s my place to say…”

She softened at that, because she was a good and decent person. “No, you’re right. I’m sorry, Bob.” Then Yelena turned her frown back to Alexei. 

He let out another breathy chuckle.

“Vault of secrets,” Ava softly declared, as she demurely took a bite of mac & cheese that had long since gone cold.

“What’s said in group therapy stays in group therapy,” John added.

The two code phrases that they had all adopted. He loved those phrases, and the depth of loyalty they inspired in them all.

And oh, how he hated those words now.

“Dad, you can tell us the truth,” Yelena insisted. “Why did you stay in prison?”

A switch had been thrown in Alexei then.

He felt it go.

His smile slid away and he stared off at the windows, where the rain pelted down and the sky was gray and roiling. The mighty structure of the tower was swaying in the wind, and the mighty Alexei Shostakov was swaying too.

Was it time now to release that thing that was so hidden in his heart? Nobody knew the truth. Nobody who was alive, anyway. What did it matter now to keep it secret?

“You really want know?” he asked, his accent suddenly thick and soupy, his tone low. For the first time in a long time, he felt old. He felt the years that had been ground into his skin, like so many prison tattoos – scars and ink that would never really fade away.

“Что случилось, товарищ?” Bucky asked.

Another beat.

Outside, lightning flashed, and the thunder rumbled a few seconds later.

“Because of you, Дорогой,” Alexei finally said, dragging his gaze up to look at Yelena.

“Mmm, what?” Yelena asked dumbly.

He felt her horror building – could see it behind her eyes.

“You and your sister,” he clarified. The memories came back to him, very clearly. “Months after I let them take you, I learned about their plans for you and Natasha. I threaten Dreykov. I say I want you and Natasha safe – больше не быть частью Красной комнаты.”

A buzz started to come over his skull. Yelena blinked at him. He recalled that day in Cuba – when he told them to be strong. When they were so scared of their mother dying. When he gave them to the Red Room, like he was returning his gear to a quartermaster. And he recalled confronting Dreykov in his office so many weeks later, when he stumbled over the Red Room training regimen. It had horrified him.

“I threaten him…” Alexei blew out his cheeks,” many times. Very bad threats. And so he send me to prison. I don’t leave because…” He shrugged, the emotion shimmering in his eyes now. “He said he would kill you.”

Yelena shook her head, her neck red, cheeks flushed. “No, why are you lying? Why would you lie about that?”

“I’m not lying—”

“Yelena,” Ava soothed.

“No! It’s been ten years! Why would he – why would you lie for that long?”

“Well, the snap was a good five years…” Walker injected.

“What’s wrong with you!?” Yelena was on her feet now, tears burning in her eyes.

Alexei felt struck by her anger – like a blow to his chest to cave in his ribs. “I don’t know,” he breathed. “I was so ashamed…I deserve your anger, your scorn. Я подвел вас и я подвел Россию, и мне больше нечего было предложить. Why not rot away in prison?”

“Я думал, ты жестокий отец! Я думал, ты ненавидишь нас, и что я просто должен принять тебя как кусок дерьма отец!” she yelled, her hands flying around her.

“I’m sorry,” he moaned. “I’m so sorry, Lena.”

Yelena backed up, hands raised to ward off any more earth shattering revelations. Her tears were falling in earnest now and she struggled to say anything.

Alexei dropped his gaze.

That’s when she stormed off – fleeing her low-life father, and the overwhelming shame that clouded over him. He would never blame her for that.

“I’ll go,” Bob was saying quietly, and Alexei heard him hurrying off after Yelena. He was at least glad for that.

Then it was just the judgement of Walker, Barnes, and the Ghost.

He did not want to see their faces so Alexei kept his focus down on the mangled pen in his fingers. He twisted the plastic casing this way and that.

And then a light feminine hand was on his arm, and he looked up to see Ava at his side, offering him a sad smile. She leaned over and kissed his cheek.

He stared at her, gob smacked.

“She’ll come ‘round,” Ava insisted. “It’s a lot to process, but she’ll come ‘round.”

John leaned his elbows on the counter, studying Alexei. “You really stayed in prison all that time to keep them alive?”

Alexei nodded. “I did. Dreykov does not make idle threats…”

“He would have sent you their hands if you’d have tried anything,” Bucky insisted. “I remember him. He was a monster.”

“I wish I knew that sooner,” Alexei bemoaned. But it was comforting to hear the confirmation from the Winter Soldier. He had spent much time wondering if staying in prison was the right move, or if he should have tried to rescue them after all. “The first few years, they make me do all the punishments they can. They called me a neutered dog. No balls anymore, they laughed. I spent a whole year in solitary confinement.”

“Geeze,” Walker murmured.

“I’m so sorry, Alexei,” Ava soothed. “And I’m sorry that we didn’t know the security guard was in the building. I should have kept better track of my email.”

“We all should have,” Bucky injected. “Alexei, you can’t afford to lose control out there.”

Fresh shame welled up in him and Alexei nodded. “I know…”

“None of us can,” Barnes went on. “We have to let each other know when we’re having problems. That’s not just for you, Alexei. That’s for all of us. If any of us start flashbacking to a traumatic memory when we’re on mission and someone gets hurt—”

“—they’ll strip you of every single honor that you’ve ever earned,” John finished, his eyes flashing. “They’ll drag your name through the mud and the internet will never forget.”

Alexei looked up at the young Super Soldier, his heart suddenly tender for the man. Of course, Alexei knew all about John Walker – he’d followed that story as closely as anyone did. And he was suddenly keenly aware of how close he was to being the next John Walker. At least his own shame had played out before smartphones. They would not have that luxury again.

“So you let us know,” Bucky circled back. “We let each other know if we’re struggling.”

There was a sniffle from the open archway into the kitchen.

“That’s really good therapy,” came Yelena’s watery tone.

Alexei looked over at her. She’d had a good cry, he thought. Bob had his arm around her shoulders and was gently herding her back into the kitchen.

“Yelena, I’m—”

She held up her hand to silence him. “Just let me think on it for a while, okay? Let me absorb.”

He nodded at her. “Okay.”

Yelena shuffled towards him and Alexei froze on his stool, not daring to breathe until she wrapped her arms around him and leaned in. Then he relaxed and returned the hug, squeezing tight. She snuffled into his shirt and he pressed his cheek to the top her head.

“Okay,” he breathed.

The hug ended and they all settled back in around the kitchen as the rain eased around the Watchtower and night fell in earnest. Slowly, they picked up the forgotten plates and bowls and resumed eating a cold meal.

The next silence was a contemplative one, heavy with the weight of their memories and trauma. But hopeful, as they all gained a fresh understanding of each other.

Alexei, certainly, felt a real glimmer of hope. A weight seemed to lift off of him.

“You said couple,” Yelena suddenly said, breaking the silence as she glared over at Barnes.

“…what?” He blinked owlishly at her.

“You said that your tattoo was an insignia on your arm but you said before that it was a couple of tattoos – not just the one.”

Bucky sucked in a breath to answer. Thought about it. Closed his mouth and looked off innocently at the ceiling. “Yeah…yeah, I did.” And then he grinned at them as he took a bite of shitty pizza.

The outrage erupted and, from deep deep down in his belly, Alexei let out a bellow of laughter.

Chapter Text

Bucky lost a bet.

And that was a dangerous enough prospect no matter who was making the bet. But the stakes were infinitely higher considering he had lost a bet to the entire team and that was catastrophically dangerous. That was five bets in one.

Bucky was no stranger to squadron antics. It had been a while, yes, but he’d done some gnarly things with the Howling Commandos. There was no telling what the Thunderbolts would ask him to do.

He’d promised them that he would do one thing they collectively asked. There were some ground rules – he wouldn’t physically harm anyone and he also wouldn’t eat anything that wasn’t already widely considered food fit for human consumption (a mistake he’d made once with the Howling Commandos), make permanent alterations to his own body, or subject himself to public humiliation. And above all else, he wouldn’t have anything to do with the internet.

They told him to give them ten business days to come up with a thing for him to do.

And here he was on day ten, waiting calmly at the kitchen counter while the other five filtered in on the other side of the counter. Yelena was holding onto a folder.

Oh how deep his regret was already.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” Yelena started slowly, formally, “we have come to an agreement on the fulfillment of the bet that you lost. Like a sad and unloved puppy. Ten days ago.”

He frowned at them.

Yelena elbowed John.

“Oh uh, we have taken your terms into consideration,” Walker added, grinning, “and we’ve come up with a task for you to complete that we believe is in everyone’s best interest.”

“This is task,” Alexei said woodenly, also grinning. He gestured to the folder that Yelena was holding. “All of it there in the folder.”

“And truly, this is absolutely the best of all of our ideas,” Ava insisted. “It’s—”

“—oh my god, just give me the damn folder,” Bucky snapped. “What the hell is this? Are you all ten-year-olds presenting a school project?”

They were all beaming now, stupidly.

Yelena handed the folder to Bob who walked it dramatically around the counter to Bucky and held it out to him with both hands.

“To clarify,” Bob told him as Bucky reached for it, “it’s all one task. The whole folder. You have to do everything in there as part of it.”

Bucky’s frown deepened. He took the folder and flipped it open. The papers inside didn’t make a whole lot of sense at first. There was a map, a cocktail napkin with an address on it with a date and time, a receipt for a car rental, a prepaid valet parking ticket. And finally, at the bottom of a pile, an invitation. Addressed to Sarah. Or, as he observed more carefully, it was a photocopy of an invitation. One already sent.

He looked at all the pieces in the folder, brow furrowed. “…what?”

Bucky glanced up at the five and they were all still grinning at him.

“What the hell is this?” he clarified.

“We want you to take Sarah on a date,” Ava answered. “A proper one.”

“We’ve already made the arrangements. Sarah knows, she’s thrilled by the way,” Yelena added. “You are picking her up from Delacroix on Friday night.”

Bucky blinked at them, his face going slack.

This was not what he’d been expecting.

“A date…”

“Proper date,” Alexei nodded.

“With…”

“Sarah,” John assured him.

“Oh…” Bucky looked back down at the folder. “And you told her already.”

“She’s thrilled. She can’t wait to go, she already picked out her dress. So, y’know, you can’t go back on your bet now. If you do, you will crush Sarah, just—” Yelena crushed her fist into her palm. “So you have to go.”

“You’ll want to wear something nice,” Ava added. “With dress shoes, no boots.”

“We’ll take the jet to Delacroix and the rental car will be there for you guys to drive into New Orleans,” Walker explained. “I picked out the car. It’s so sweet—"

“We?” Bucky looked at them skeptically.

“Someone has to babysit,” Bob told him. “We offered.”

Bucky rubbed at his jaw as he tried to process the ‘task’ they’d come up with. Part of him was horrified at the team planning a date for him. He’d intended to go slow with Sarah – ease into a gentle courtship, maybe, before trying to face the prospect of an actual date. The last date he went on – many years ago – had been embarrassingly bad and put a kibosh on any ounce of confidence that he may have once had.

Because he’d been so good at this once – taking girls out on the town, wooing them. Hadn’t he? He’d been told he was. He’d even been accused, on more than one occasion, of being a little too good at wooing women and that he was a real wolf with the ladies. He was a flirt, sure, but Bucky Barnes had been raised to be respectful of women and he wasn’t one to play with hearts. Not really. Wasn’t that right? Was he remembering right? He just never really found the right girl…

He let out a sigh through the nose. “This Friday, huh?”

“Yeah, you got plans or something?” Yelena challenged.

Bucky snapped the folder shut and looked at all of them, at all their eager faces. And he found himself touched by the gesture. Of all the things they could have done, they wanted him to go on a date with a woman he liked. What a bunch of sappy idiots.

“Well, I guess I do now,” he consented, gesturing with the folder.

And oh how they cheered.

There weren’t a whole lot of places to land a quinjet in Delacroix (one of the reasons they rarely took one) but Sam had preemptively worked out an agreement with a guy who owned one of the boat launches for his own needs and Bucky had sort of piggy-backed off of the deal.

Delacroix was an incredibly small township – under fifty people, by the last census. So when it was said that everyone in town knew them, it wasn’t hyperbole. Everyone in town knew who he was and they knew the team at least from the internet, if not by personal relationship yet. But that would grow personal one of these days, if he had anything to do with it.

Once the quinjet had landed, someone was usually there with a truck to pick them up. This particular resident’s name was Franklyn and they all loved Franklyn. He was one of the Delacroix natives who knew them by name already. Eighty years old, he walked with a stoop and had a dog that wouldn’t listen to anyone but Franklyn.

God, Bucky loved this town.

The build-up to landing in Delacroix had been stuffed with everyone telling him what he should wear and how he should fix his hair (these efforts led valiantly by Yelena, Ava, and Alexei). He still ended up wearing exactly what he wanted – which was a nice pair of black jeans, dress shoes, and a black blazer over a dark red teeshirt. And a leather glove over his metal hand. It was the glove that caused an uproar until he threatened to wear his combat boots. And then there was a hurried and whispered discussion between his three advisors about whether or not they should broach the subject of a tie and it was at that moment that he banished them from his quarters.

Every conversation from between that moment and this one had been replete with unsolicited advice from everyone until he was questioning his recent life decisions. He hadn’t started the day nervous but he was now.

“I’m just saying, I think the flowers are just a little old fashioned,” Walker was saying as they bumped along the road in the back of Franklyn’s truck. Bucky was holding a plastic wrapped bouquet upside-down to try and protect the flowers from the wind.

“It’s so precious though,” Yelena argued. “Like, when was the last time Sarah had someone give her flowers for a date? I love that so much for her!”

“I’ve never gotten flowers,” Ava remarked. “But I’ve also never been on a date. I’m not saying I’d like to get flowers because I don’t see the point of that but I can see how someone…” She trailed off, searching for the right word.

“Normal?” Bob offered.

“Normal, thank you. Someone normal might like flowers. Sarah’s very normal,” Ava affirmed.

Bucky rubbed at his temple. The flowers had been his idea and he was ready to toss them.

Luckily, they were coming down her driveway and Franklyn was stopping outside the house. Bucky was the first over the side of the truck.

“Wait wait wait!” Yelena yelled as she scrambled after him. “We’ll go first and make sure she’s ready.”

“Go check out your sweet ride that we rented for you guys,” Walker insisted, jerking his head at the car that was also in the driveway.

Bucky stared at the car as the others hurried into the house without him. It was blue. It was a muscle car. The keys were on the front seat and it was a nice car, sure. But Bucky had never really been a car guy. He’d never had the chance.

Bucky took a few steps away from it, from the house, and turned to look at the water. He could feel the overwhelm as it was happening, coming over his senses. His thoughts started to scatter and ping around his brain. He felt tired.

Maybe the date was a bad idea. Maybe he wasn’t actually ready for this. He didn’t know if Sarah even liked flowers or muscle cars. What if she asked him about this one? What was that insignia on the front? The SS stood for something and he knew he should know it and it wasn’t…there…

But other things were there. It was this keen knowing that he should be able to do social activities and not be hidden from them. Friendships, romance, all of those things that weren’t what he had been explicitly and painfully programmed to do for decades on end. He remembered the disastrous date back in Brooklyn, a few years ago, and indigestion soured up his esophagus.   

“You look about as ready as I am for this date,” came Sarah’s voice.

His head whipped to the side. She was leaning up against a tree, her arms crossed over her belly, smiling sheepishly at him. She was wearing a lovely pale yellow dress and with a denim jacket. Her little braids were pulled into one big braid, with bits of yellow wrapped in here and there.

She reminded him of sunshine.

Bucky ducked his head, cringing. “It’s been a while,” he admitted.

“It sure has,” she sighed, casting her gaze back out at the river.

He wondered how long it’d been since she tried to get close to anyone. It made his heart hurt to think of her being alone.

“Y’know, you don’t have to do this,” Sarah told him, still looking at the river. “I know they put you up to it and it’s okay—”

“I want to,” Bucky said quickly. “I really do.”

“You sure?” She finally looked at him, cautiously hopeful but with an edge of…fear?

Maybe a fear that he’d flake out on her. A fear that he’d reject her? It made him feel foolish for being worried about flowers.

“You’re staring…” Sarah remarked with a quirk of her eyebrows.

“Sorry…” Bucky shook his head. “Sorry, I uh…” He stepped towards her, closing the distance. Cleared his throat. “Sarah, I’m sorry that my team beat me to asking you out on a date. May I take you out tonight?”

He held the flowers out to her.

Sarah slowly smiled at him. One of her hands broke away from her stomach and twirled around her necklace chain while the other one took the proffered bouquet. “I would love that.”

He grinned at her and held his hand out. She took it.

When they turned back to the house, the team were all there on the porch, watching them with the sappiest of expressions.

“Stop it,” he grumped at them.

“Have a good night, you two,” Bob replied with smirk. “We’ll be sure the boys are fine.”

“Thank you, Bob,” Sarah said graciously.

Bucky steered her towards the muscle car, his thoughts starting to scatter again under their eyes. He tried to focus on her hand in his.

“Don’t do anything stupid while you’re out,” Walker called.

“How can I? You’re keeping all the stupid with you!” Bucky called back. It rolled out of him, effortlessly. He didn’t pause to think about it. It was an immediate quip back at the gaggle of idiots behind him.

He didn’t slow down as he opened the door for Sarah, offering her a wide smile as she got in, and then he went to the drivers side and managed to get in and get the door shut before, god forbid, an emotional reaction splashed through his brain.

He sat there, in the car, hands firmly on the wheel, and remembered. He recalled Steve. He saw that evening at the Worlds Fair, and the wild mix of fear, and excitement, and dread, and the warmth of friendship.

“Bucky?”

Buck looked over at her and smiled. “Yeah, sorry. I’m fine. Just thinking about something…” He fired up the engine and it rumbled to life.

They were awkwardly quiet for the first half of the drive – as if they both genuinely forgot who the other person was or why they were here or what they could even say.

And, honestly, Bucky assumed it was his fault. He assumed he was the one glitching out – his big cyborg brain tripping over the programming.

“So uh, how’s the seafood business been going?” he asked, and then immediately cringed. What a dumb question.

“Actually, it’s been insane,” Sarah answered, she sounded somewhat shocked at her own answer – as if it were absurd that the business would be good.

“Has it?” He glanced over at her.

“I picked up a government contract with the state of Louisiana!” Sarah exclaimed. She laughed. “I don’t even know how this guy got my number but he called me up out of the blue at the beginning of the year and started talking to me about how much we could supply the state – and at a good price too. I’ve started looping in other fishermen from the community…”

And she went on for a little while about Wilson Family Seafood and the enthusiasm from Delacroix and Bucky felt his mind ease a little. He’d forgotten about that. That was one of the things he managed to do when he started in congress – he’d had one very productive conversation with a representative from Louisiana.

“And that’s not to mention that private buyer a couple of years ago,” she said coyly, looking over at him with a knowing smirk.

“Oh, what? A private buyer?” Bucky put on an innocent face.

“Yeah, just after I told Sam about how we weren’t selling enough, some mystery private buyer sent in a rep to buy all of my stock for the next three weeks at a stupid price,” Sarah told him. And he could feel her eyes on him as he watched the road.

“S-stupid good, right?” he asked.

“Very good, actually,” she affirmed.

“Wow, what a crazy uh…happenstance,” he admitted with a chuckle.

Silence for a beat.

“Do you still have shrimp in your freezer?” Sarah asked him.

“I do, yeah,” Bucky admitted with a goofy grin. “I don’t really know how to cook it…”

She let out a pssh noise and chuckled and that was good because he’d been trying to be subtle in his support.

“You better do something with it – don’t you let that food go to waste,” she admonished.

“No ma’am, I will come up with a plan,” he assured her.

And that settled the tension for a little while. He navigated into New Orleans and they chattered about easy things that were more normal and that eased a lot of the nerves from them both.

But something happened when he pulled up to the lounge where the team had made them reservations. Sullenness tugged at him again. He left the car with the valet and escorted Sarah into the Red Cat Jazz Club. His body language was automatic – offering her an arm, matching her pace, navigating through the tightly packed restaurant.

It was the crowd, he decided. He’d finally gotten into a grove in the car, when they were alone and secure, but now there were all of these people around him and it was loud. There was a band playing. It smelled like alcohol and cologne and perfume and bodies. The walls were covered in photos and decorations and lights and there was just too much of everything.

And if he’d been there on a job, it would’ve been different. If he’d gone in with focus, with a plan, with a mission – but there were none of those things. He was supposed to be there as himself, with no plan and with no task besides being emotionally available. He felt naked.

Bucky vaguely felt Sarah shift from holding his arm to holding his hand. She took the lead through the tightly packed crowd and navigated to the bar. He fumbled out a drink order, got it – whiskey, neat. And then Sarah took his hand again and pulled him through the throng of people – too loud in every context, visually, audibly, aromatically.

And then they were outside, on a back patio, and it was like everything dampened down.

He took a deep breath. And a sip of his whiskey.

She aimed for a table at the back of the patio, where the river lapped nearby. The whole patio was roofed in sparkling string lights. There were only a handful of tables out here, and even fewer people, who were smoking.

“Sorry, there were a lot of people back there,” Sarah was saying as she settled down in a seat that he forgot to pull out for her.

“Yeah,” he breathed, “no, this is fine. Better. This is better.”

He sat too and took another sip of his whiskey. Why’d he order whiskey? This was not a nice drink for a date, this was a drink he got when he needed to try to get drunk. It didn’t taste nice. It tasted like he’d need a whole bottle before anything would happen to his memories and he wasn’t about to do that to Sarah.

Sarah had…Sarah had a coke. Just a coke? Yes, because he remembered her ordering it now. Just a coke.

He made a mental note of that and tried to remember if he’d ever seen Sarah with a beer or a glass of wine before. He didn’t remember her ever having wine in the house.

“The uh, the band sounds nice,” Sarah commented.

He nodded. “Yeah, they’re great. Uh…” Bucky paused, paying attention now to the music. “They’re playing 40’s music.” He recognized the tune. It was a Benny Goodman tune. “How much do you want to bet that the team arranged the band?”

Sarah chuckled. “I’m sure you’re right. They really do love you, you know.”

Bucky gave her a lopsided smirk. “It’s weird though, right? They’re really affectionate.”

She shrugged. “I think it’s nice. They’ve all had such a…unique life. I think it’s nice that y’all are supporting each other – even if it looks strange. Y’know, the blip changed a lot for folks. I think it changed how we treat each other.”

“I guess so…” He pondered that for a moment, reflecting on the deep comradery that developed so fast between him and the others. It was a wartime effect, he decided. That’s how it’d been with the Howlies too. Hadn’t it? They bonded over their imprisonment. He had a vague whisper of memory – being sick, getting the ever-living shit beat out of him by one of those Nazi guards, and being nursed by…was it Dugan? Pinky?

Trauma bonds.

That’s all the team was, really. A pack of walking talking trauma bonded screwballs, himself included.

Hot damn, he was a mess.

Back in his time – back where he belonged – Bucky would have been considered a ‘war-wrecked’ man. In today’s terms, he was pretty sure they were talking about PTSD but he preferred his 40’s vernacular on this one. War-wrecked was pretty apt. And there weren’t a whole lot of women in the world who had that in their dating preferences. Who would?

Come and date the wrecked fossil, girls. He’s fresh from battle and broken into thousands of little pieces. If you’re real lucky, he won’t have any night terrors on your honeymoon! What a swell fella!

“You wanna tell me about it?” Sarah was asking him, so sweetly.

He looked over at her with a wry, sad smile and said nothing.

She returned the sad smile as she reached over to gently brush a finger across his gloved metal hand and he watched her perfectly painted yellow nails, holding still. They were yellow like her dress, like the wraps flecked through her braids. Sunshine.

“What’s with the glove?” she asked.

Ah yes, the glove. He sighed, lips pressed together, and had no answer for her either – not one that wasn’t a sob story. He wished he did. He wished they were back in chilly New York where it was easy to keep gloves on and his secrets hidden.

“Hey you gotta give me something here, Bucky,” Sarah pressed him.

He dared to look up at her and caught those stunning velvety brown eyes that had every right to be fed up with him. He was fed up with himself and hating that his team set this up and hating that he couldn’t do this anymore – dating, relationships, emotional intimacy. That part of him was too old, too lost, too damaged.

“Sarah—”

“No, I know. I know you have a lot of layers. I don’t know what they all are but I know you’ve got some nasty things behind you,” Sarah went on. “I’m not asking for everything. I’m not even asking you for the worst things. That’s a lifetime of trust and we’ve only known each other for a little while. That’s okay. But you gotta give me something, Bucky. Something that’s really you.”

Bucky absorbed that, nodding, processing. What could he give her of himself that was safe? Did he even have anything like that? Something tame and normal and not scary…Or did he have to temper himself? Sarah was resilient. She’d seen pain, and lost people. She had a lot of responsibility on her strong shoulders – which is one of the things he admired about her and wanted to bear with her, for her.

And he was going to lose her. If he couldn’t be brave, open, he was going to lose any chance he might have had.

Bucky licked his lips and looked down at those pretty yellow nails against his glove. “People gawk. At my arm,” he said lamely. “It makes people uncomfortable. I didn’t want that happening while I was out with you. It’s just…easier. And I’m aware, I stick out in a million different ways and what the hell does it matter—”

“You only stick out because you’re handsome,” Sarah insisted.

He scoffed, derailed from what he had meant to say, feeling his cheeks go a little hot as he snuck a wrinkle-nosed glance up at her. That caught him off guard. That he might be handsome to her. How absurd to hear after all this time.

“You don’t wear it in town though,” she observed. “Your glove.”

It was true. He didn’t. “I dunno, there’s something about Delacroix,” he admitted. “The people there – they don’t care. Your family, the fishermen…Franklyn. God, I love Franklyn.”

Sarah laughed and the vice of fear around his heart loosened a fraction. “Frankie? He’s such a cranky old man.”

“Well, so am I, to be fair,” Bucky added with a smile. “We’re kindred spirits.”

Sarah took his metal hand and he moved to hold hers with it but then she reached up to peel the glove off and Bucky froze.

“You don’t need this with me,” she told him, as she pulled the thing off and exposed the metal to the muggy air. “You don’t need to hide.”

It was an invitation and a challenge all in one and his heart was pounding. But she was there, steady and gentle in front of him. It made him want to be brave.

Ok. Maybe he could do this.

Bucky pulled back from her, and then grabbed the sleeve of his jacket to pull it off, so that he was left with his teeshirt, leaving his metal arm naked in the hazy glow of the string lights around them.

Sarah was watching him, smiling at him so softly.

And he had a vague memory then, rising up from the time before. Those memories were hard for him to access and they were often fractured. Maybe it was the smell of cigarette smoke, or the cacophony of the jazz music from inside the lounge that spilled out onto the rooftop patio. Maybe it was the taste of the whiskey on his lips or the way she was looking at him – with attraction, with pleasure, with a keen interest in who he was.

He saw a different dame, on a different day, on a hazy night in Brooklyn and felt something deep in his chest, right at the root of his lungs – a cocksure boldness that was desperately romantic and desperately wanted to drown in those deep brown eyes and sweep that beauty off her feet.

Was that who he used to be?

“Wow, you really do that staring thing…” Sarah remarked with a sardonic smirk.

Bucky ducked his head, grinning, abashed. “Sorry, I was uh…I was remembering something.” He looked up at her. “Do you dance?”

“Dancing? Like, you mean a nightclub or something?” she asked dubiously. “I-I don’t really—”

“No, god no,” Bucky said quickly. “Not like that. Modern nightclubs give me a nervous breakdown… Swing dancing. Have you ever gone swing dancing?”

Sarah’s eyes glittered at the suggestion. “Right, because that’s what they did back then,” she surmised. She seemed delighted in making that connection and that built up some confidence. “I took some ballroom and swing in high school…Do you still remember how?”

He put on a look of mock offense as the words floated up from that same deep before place that he’d been walking around all night. “Do I—sweetheart, you won’t find a smoother hoofer this side of the Hudson— and that’s a promise.”

The cheese in that line made him cringe and he was thankful his team hadn’t been there for that one but Sarah’s grin, her laughter, was worth it.

Bucky rose from his chair and held his hand out to her. She took it and he felt his body click into some ancient muscle memory as he twirled her and teased her back onto the wide open space on the patio.

He distantly heard some hoots and whistles from the lounge but paid them no mind because now he had Sarah in his arms and he could smell the mango and cocoa butter on her skin and feel her against him and she was watching him with delight.

His war-wrecked self would have to take a step back for a moment, because Sarah was here and he was choosing her as a focal point.

It took a few awkward steps before either of them really remembered what they were doing and it was probably nothing quite as resplendent of what he once knew how to do, but as Bucky started shaking the rust off of this particular set of memories, it mostly all came back to him.  He led her through a simple lindy hop and Sarah followed him and it did not matter that it was metal against her fingers or that his cues were sometimes sluggish or that he had to look down at his feet once or twice. She didn’t seem to care and if she was anything but a perfect picture of grace, he didn’t notice.

The second dance was much better though. By the second dance, they were both sure now of what they were doing and he dared to toss a Texas Tommy and a Frankie Sixes into the simple swing-out and circle. She didn’t know these steps but she followed along and her laughter sparkled around him like an umbrella against any lingering sullen darkness.

By the third song, the band slowed down their tempo, switching from lively 40’s swing to a leisurely intimate jazz. Sarah started to pull away from him, assuming the swing dancing was over. And it was, that was true. But now a social daring had been sparked in Bucky Barnes.

Without pausing to think about it, Buck pulled Sarah in to him, his right arm smoothing around her waist and tugging her close. And there was no-split second of terror that she’d resist because she didn’t resist. Sarah stepped in.

And she leaned her head against his shoulder.

And his heart just about fluttered out of his throat.

“Alright, smooth hoofer,” Sarah breathed against him, her voice low, “I guess that’ll teach me not to question your dance moves.”

Bucky grinned as he gently rocked them through a slow series of steps. “I can’t say those were my best moves but, hey, a guys gotta start somewhere after eighty years, right?”

“Wow, has it really been eighty years?” she asked with a shake of her head that he felt against his collarbone.

“More or less. I spent most of it in cryostasis though.”

“That musta been hard trying to navigate the world again,” Sarah remarked.

Their voices were dreamy and soft – the words held close between them, where it was safe to share secrets.

“Probably like navigating the Blip,” Bucky affirmed.

And she hmmed against him. “I was terrified,” she confessed.

He waited to comment, holding her just a little more snugly as they danced.

“My parents had passed a few years before that happened,” Sarah went on. “And my husband. And then I thought I lost Sam…AJ had just started kindergarten but half the teachers were gone and they sent everybody home for the rest of the school year. I remember sitting at the table, looking at the letter that the principal sent with them and I couldn’t even read the words. They didn’t make sense…”  

Bucky closed his eyes, imagining how overwhelming that must have been for her. “Did you have anyone else? Family?”

“Neighbors, friends, church family,” she listed. “But we were all in shock so it was like the blind leading the blind. Everything had been tipped upside down.”

Sarah heaved a sigh like she was releasing a pressure valve and he felt some tension ease out of her shoulders.

How often did she get a chance to unpack her own feelings, he wondered? Probably about as often as she got a chance to go on a date as a single mom running a thriving business.

“What was your husband like?” he asked her.

“He was tall,” she answered, and he heard a warm smile in her tone. “Handsome. Kind. He was so kind. He was part of the fabric of the community. He cared about folks and loved his family.”

“I wish I could’ve met him,” Bucky lamented. And he did, in a sense, but not really. Not if it meant he wouldn’t have had the chance to be there with Sarah.

“Oh he woulda sat you down and fed you until you straightened out all your problems,” Sarah said with a laugh. “And you woulda loved every moment of it.”

“What makes you think I need straightened out?” Bucky said with mock offense.

And she laughed some more. “Alright, you go ahead and put that glove back on, old man.”

He grinned. That sounded like Sam and it made him imagine of the Wilson kids trading barbs on the fishing boat with the parents, ages ago. It must have been a nice upbringing.

“Ok, maybe I have a few issues to work out,” he conceded.

She chuckled. “But at least you got some family of your own now. Friends. That helps.”

He pondered that for a few steps. “I couldn’t remember my family for the first few years, after I escaped Hydra,” Bucky confessed in a peculiar tone. Sam knew this, his therapist knew some, but he didn’t usually talk about those early in-between months, before Steve tracked him down. “I could barely remember how to function on my own.”

“How’d you do it?” she wondered. “Without anyone to help you?”

He shook his head. “I can’t even remember. It was all such a blur. I remember waking up in somebody's garden shed, all messed up from Steve. I…” He squinted as he called up the memory. “I definitely stole somebody's clothes off a clothes line.”

“Wow,” Sarah said with a snort.

“I was that guy. I did that,” Bucky chuckled. “They were nice jeans too. I kept those for a while…”

Sarah was melted into his shoulder now, her weight resting on him. It felt nice. Calm.

“I broke into the church after the Blip,” she confessed.

“Sacrilege!” he exclaimed quietly.

She started laughing. “Nobody had a key and the pastor was gone—”

“You broke into Jesus’ house, that’s a whole new level of low…”

“He forgave me! We needed to get into the pantry and I had tools in my car so I just…I jimmied the lock…Jesus wasn’t mad. I know He wasn’t,” she insisted.

“Such bad company…I’m not sure if I’m allowed to be out with a delinquent, I should probably call the team…” He shook his head.

She picked her head up off his shoulder to look at him with a scrunch nosed-glare-smile and he returned it, minus the glare. And her lips were so close to his. Inches away.

Her glare softened. The wrinkled nose eased away. She searched his face.

“Is uh…is Jesus gonna be mad if I kiss you?” Bucky’s voice was husky.

“That depends.” She was almost whispering. “Maybe if you come to church with me sometime, He won’t be mad—”

“Okay.” His head bobbed in a quick nod. A quick concession. He’d go to the moon for her if she asked him to.

And then she was leaning in, tilted towards him, and he met her there.

A brush of lips. A promise.

Her fingers were in the hair at the nape of his neck, her arms resting on his shoulders.

“Sam won’t forgive you,” she breathed at him, her eyes closed.

“Nope.”

And he kissed her again, with purpose this time.

The rest of the night was a dream, a pure silver that lined the storm clouds of his psyche, coupled with the bright sunshine that was Sarah’s very being.

They left the lounge, left the planned date, and wandered down the streets of the French Quarter, hand in hand. They ate beignets and stole more kisses and then ate fried egg sandwiches from Verti Marte and kissed some more and then walked until Sarah’s feet hurt and the very late night hours turned into very early morning hours.

And then he swept her up and carried her all the way back to the ill-fated jazz club, where the car was parked. She rested her head against him the whole way there and Bucky felt more like a super hero in that moment then he had ever felt his entire life.

The drive back was soft and quiet and they didn’t say much but they held hands and listened to the radio – the oldies station, which was playing a run of love songs from the likes of the Ink Spots, the Andrews Sisters, and Roy Brown.

It was a tranquil healing balm over his war-wrecked spirit. Normal. Real.

It was about 4am when the car rumbled up the drive.

They found everyone sprawled out in the living room, sound asleep – Bob, Yelena, Alexei, John, Ava, AJ, and Cass. It wasn’t clearly evident what had happened but it looked like all of the pillows and blankets in the house were now on the living room floor.

Sarah smiled warmly at the scene and crept into the kitchen. She made them tea. He liberated a blanket from a snoring Alexei. They met on the dock and Bucky wrapped the blanket around them both as Sarah snuggled into him.

“Y’know, I’m glad you lost that bet,” Sarah said, her voice sleepy as they watched fog rise off of the river.

“Me too,” Bucky admitted. “But I had my doubts a week ago when Alexei wouldn’t stop giggling at me.”

She snorted. “What was the bet anyway? That you lost?”

“Oh uh… They wanted to meet other super heroes. We took a bet on who could find heroes to meet. There was ranking involved, it was very complicated,” Bucky explained. “I woulda won because I know some actual goddamn aliens but they were in another galaxy and I couldn’t get a hold of them.”

“Oh wow,” she laughed. “You poor thing.”

“Noboby was sympathetic. Nobody. Yelena got us a phone call with Hawkeye. Uh, Ava won outright – she connected us to both Ant Man and the Wasp. John has ties to the military so he got Rhodes to stop by for tacos. Bob pulled out a surprise contact with Shuri – apparently the two of them got connected somehow. And Alexei came up with somebody named the Doorman – apparently some guy who used to be a superhero back in the 80’s who he fought with when he was the Red Guardian. The guy lives in Jersey.” Bucky shook his head, still puzzling out that connection.

“And you had a no-call, no-show,” Sarah finished for him.

“Exactly. So here we are.” He took a sip of his tea and grinned at her. “I can’t say I’m mad.”

“Me neither. Remind me to thank them.”

“Mm, don’t do that. Don’t. Their egos are already big enough,” he groused.

And that’s how the date trickled down to a close – with soft conversations until Sarah fell asleep against him as they sat on the dock.

He held her in perfect stillness, watching the river, listening to the buzz of insects and the croak of frogs until light whispered over the horizon and the brilliance of the dawn matched the sunshine in his arms.  

And Bucky Barnes was at peace.

Chapter Text

He woke up. And, for a moment, that was all that John Walker was aware of. He was conscious.

Great. That was always a good place to start.

And what else?

He was…in the dark. Yes, his eyes were open and it was still dark.

Got it.

What else.

It was—

He coughed.

It was dusty. Hard to breathe. So much dust.

He coughed again and pain finally broke past the daze.

Walker let out a stuttered growl, reaching for the source of pain.

Only his hand bumped along something hard. Many things. He was surrounded by things.

He put out both hands now and felt around him, his breathing growing ragged. He was in a space that was boxed in all around him with rough…was it concrete, maybe? He felt a surface with his fingertips and it was jagged and irregular. Pieces of concrete. Rubble. Bits of rebar. Wood. Wiring. Paper. Plastic. It was like he’d crash landed in the worlds worst Home Depot.

But only along his left side. On his right, he felt metal. It wasn’t smooth, it was scrunched in a way that made him think of a crushed soda can. It formed a wall on his right and went under the debris and—a dumpster, maybe? Had he fallen into a dumpster? The metal was pinched over his right hip and leg, holding him snug.

John almost sat up but his hands moved before his head did and he felt the concrete above him too – maybe three feet over his head? It came down at a slight angle, he felt, like it was tipping over the side of the dumpster, making a little awning over him.

He shifted, and the pain announced itself again, reminding him none-to-gently that it was there. Mostly, it was focused on his side. His right side. That’s where it was raging the loudest.

Gingerly, John explored down with his fingertips. He knew he was in trouble when he felt the wetness seeping through his uniform. And then his fingers brushed the metal coming out of his side.

That’s when the panic kicked in.

The dumpster was cutting into him. Like when you stomp a soda can and the side ruptures out in a sharp edge. That’s what this felt like.   

John let out a sound – something like distress, maybe – as he felt all around him again. He shifted his feet. One of them was pinned, numb, under the crumpled metal wall. The concrete. Why was there so much concrete around him? He was effectively in a box of construction junk; he could feel it all around him now.

In the dark.

With a dumpster crunching into his abdomen.

Walker drew in a sharp breath and let it out in a long “HHHEEEEEELLLLLP!” and his voice echoed back at him, adding a fresh layer of hell to his panic.

Ear piece. Did he have comms in?

He swatted at his head and felt for the earwig.

Gone.

Sour stirred up in his stomach, threatening to come spewing out.

Calm was the right thing to do here. He needed to stay calm. He needed to keep his mind engaged with the problem. Breathe. Break the problems into smaller pieces. Assess the situation. Set the pain aside and go to work.

Breathe.

John did that first. He closed his eyes, as if it weren’t already pitch black in his little rubble death box, and made himself take three deep, full breaths.

A moan whispered out of him and he breathed again, three deep breaths.

Okay, Walker. Lock it down. Assess the situation.

What had happened and where was he?

They were on mission in Georgia. No, not the state, the country. The Republic of Georgia. They had tracked a super villain here and cornered her in an unfinished building. A tall building.

And then there had been…an explosion? A collapse? He wasn’t sure about that one. That’s where it went dark. And still was dark.

So, ok, the building came down on top of him. That’s what had happened.

And how badly was he screwed?

The debris was all around him, as far as he could tell. It wasn’t tight around him; he had a nice bubble of space down there – nearly an arm’s length of space above his head, less surrounding him but still some. That was helpful.

So what was keeping him down? What were the problems to overcome?

1. His right side was pinned.
2. It was too dark to see.
3. There was no telling how stable the wreck was around him and it would be risky to move too much stuff out of the way just yet.
4. There was a piece of metal in his stomach.

“Oh god,” he whispered to himself.

Breathe again. Take a breath. Stay calm.

“ANNYBOOODY!” he shrieked. “HEEELLLLLP!”

There was no answer.

Ok.

So.

John was alone for this one. He was on his own.

Why was he shaking?

Why did that scare him?

Why was it hard to think through this? He had his list, so neatly itemized. He had all the critical thinking courses and the years of battle worn experience.

Maybe the oxygen was getting thin.

Or maybe he was bleeding out.

How badly was he bleeding?

John reached down again, his fingers trembling, and gently prodded the wound. He hissed. It was in there, all right. The metal. Maybe it was a piece of rebar. There was a lot of rebar around. He remembered looking at the rebar as it jutted out of half-finished concrete slabs when they walked up on the place. He—

Where were the others?

They’d been scattered on the battlefield but not that badly. They’d be close enough for him to catch the eye-roll that Yelena cast at him at the inane argument that he and Ava had been having about music. They would have been close to him when the floor collapsed. Were they trapped down here too? Ava was probably fine but everyone else would be in trouble.

But he couldn’t help them from here.

He couldn’t even help himself from here.

He was going to have to move.

His side was pinned, that was the first obstacle. He couldn’t sit up but he had some wiggle room to his left. Maybe if he could just jimmy himself free…

Sheer agony lit up his nerves, white hot, stealing his breath to scream.

There would be no jimmying free.

The metal was going through him, not just cutting in. He could feel that now in the worst possible way. It wasn’t that he was just pinned by the dumpster. He was pinned to the dumpster.

Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm.

His eyes started to roll back in his head and consciousness slipped into a thin place. Auras bloomed in his vision. He felt his pulse thudding thudding thudding. And a cold vice of fear clamped onto his chest.

“Walker! WALKER!”

Something tapped against his face and John’s eyes flew open.

There was green light around him. Ava was above him.

What—

A glowstick. She’d dropped a glowstick beside him. And she was only halfway inside his space – his tomb, for all intents and purposes.

“Ava?”

She glanced over at him and her face was grim. “Hold still.”

“I—”

Pain again, new and fresh.

Walker let out a strangled gasp, his head wobbling up so he could see where she was jamming wads of combat gauze into his side, moving quickly and not particularly gently.

“God damn it,” he groaned, as his side burned from the ministrations. His head dropped back down again, of its own accord.

She ignored him and reached into a little pouch at her belt to pull out another wad of gauze, shoving that one unceremoniously in with the rest, packing the wound. He squirmed, his breathing hitching, cheeks puffing, as he tried to hold back a scream. It felt like she was packing steel wool and barbed wire into his liver.

“We’re gonna need something that can cut,” she was saying.

“What?” Walker looked up at her, dazed.

Ava finally looked back at him and tapped her ear. She was on comms. Her eyes flicked away as she was listening to something and nodded. “Yeah, on my way.” Eyes to him. “Hey, we’re working on a plan. I’ll be right back.”

And then she was phasing out of his space, heaving upwards like one might push off the bottom of a pool and slipping seamlessly into the concrete above.

Walker stared at where she wasn’t anymore, trying to play catch-up.

They were rescuing him.

They weren’t going to just leave him down there, or expect him to dig his way out. They were coming for him.

And he wasn’t sure why this was so astounding to him but it was. It floored him. Because he remembered distinctly a day when all the super heroes in the room had left him with a shattered distal humerus, a dislocated elbow, and tendons and ligaments that were stretched like saltwater taffy. He remembered laying there, in a puddle, stunned. In pain. Reeling from injuries, from the fresh dose of super soldier serum, from Lemar.

He missed Lemar.

He missed him so bad, it hurt his chest to think about it.

But he wasn’t alone now.

He was in pain, yes, but Ava was coming back. The others were coming back. They weren’t going to leave him for some strangers to scrape off the pavement and haul away to court-martial for meddling in international affairs.

Walker realized that his cheeks were wet and he sniffled, rubbing the moisture away with a dusty hand.

“Are you seriously crying right now?”

Ava’s head dipped back into view.

His chin bobbed from side to side. “I-It’s dusty,” he mumbled. “’m not crying.”

Her face softened at him and she gently lowered herself down a little bit more. “Here, drink some water. They’re working on stabilizing the area around you so they can get to you safely. It might be a minute but once you get past this slab up here, it’s easy going. It’s a nice tunnel of sorts.”

She produced a water bottle from inside her suit and handed it to him and he drank a few sips.

“What if I drink too much and have to pee,” he wondered stupidly, prodding her because it was something he’d say to Lemar – a dumb man joke, as Olivia called them.

“Well, if you piss yourself, you won’t have to worry about anyone remembering that you were crying,” Ava teased back. Her face was almost serious but there was a feral gleam in her eye and a twist to her lips. She loved this kind of stuff.

“What a bright alternative,” he deadpanned.

“Luminous. Hey, you okay otherwise? Besides the wound in your side? How’s your head?” She reached up to touch his temple and he winced.

“Hurts,” he grumbled. “Probably concussed. I don’t think anything’s split open though.”

“That’s good then. You’ll be alright,” she mused as she peered at the wound.

“Is everyone else? Alright, I mean,” he asked. “How bad is it up there? Do I need to—”

“You need to lie still and relax, John,” Ava admonished, fixing him with a serious look now. “Everyone’s fine. We’re concerned about you right now.”

“Okay but I’ll bet you there’s a crane nearby or some kinda heavy excavator that you can use to—”

“Yeah, we know,” she said quickly, rolling her eyes. “Stop trying to direct your own rescue.”

His cheeks went hot. “I’m just trying to be helpful…”

Ava opened her mouth to say something when there was a rumble that shook through the rubble. A crack.

Something screamed at John to move and his hands shot up in an instant as the concrete above them shuddered downwards, grinding against the metal dumpster like he was trapped inside a trash compactor.

Ava was already phased when the concrete began to fall and she shot up now, standing, planting her feet beside him. He could see her legs in the eerie glowstick green as she turned around, took a step fully out of the pocket and then back in again while he was busy concentrating on keeping the concrete above his head.

And then Ava suddenly dropped down into his space and settled on his chest, her eyes impossibly wide.

“What are you—"

“The tunnel’s gone,” she reported sharply. “I don’t know if there’s a path out.”

He grunted as he held the ceiling off his head. The space was disappearing, inch by inch. And Ava was on his chest, and that was awkward. And his arms muscles were starting to hurt.

“I don’t know if I can get out,” Ava went on, her tone urgent, and understanding began to dawn on him. “I can’t hold it for more than a minute—”

That’s why she was on his chest.

“Shit. Shit!”

“John!”

He anchored both palms upwards and tried to angle his hips out of the way, to give her some room as he heaved against the slab, staying its movement. “Squeeze in!”

She tried to. She sprawled out on top of his chest, tying to fit her legs where his were, her hips, her chest. “There’s not enough room!”

The slab groaned overhead and he felt a shock through his hands as something jolted down.

The green glow disappeared under her as she pretzeled her way into any space she could find, shunting them back into darkness.

John could not let her die.

He could not let her get crushed.

It was his job to save people and he would be damned if he didn’t give it his all.

Especially for Ava.

He wedged his left knee up, his foot, his toes bent up to try and get some traction on the slab, and he pushed upwards – impossibly upwards – against the crush of the building on top of them. Dust billowed as air pockets compressed.  His body ached.

“John!” she squeaked. 

He let out a yell as he shoved, his arms trembling. He locked his elbows, tried to freeze his knee, his foot, his ankle, in place. Hold hold hold.

Then Ava jolted. She gasped. He felt the weight of her coalesce on top of him and he knew, somehow, that she lost control of her phasing. She was solid.

And she was still breathing. Her heart was still beating. He could feel it against his chest like a wild thrashing bird.

“…Ava…”

Her face was buried in the crook of his neck and her breath was hot against his skin.

“Ava?” John pressed again.

Her breathing stuttered. “T-the suit’s damaged,” she reported in a stilted tone.

“Are you ok? What does that mean, the suit’s damaged?”

She didn’t answer him.

His arms were burning now, trembling, and he did his best to drive that out of his mind but it was an alarm going off. He wouldn’t be able to just hold up the slab forever.

“We’re gonna die down here,” she whispered in his ear.

“Hey, hey, no we’re not,” he argued back, hotly. “Hey, there’s pieces of rebar around you. Can you find the pieces? I need you to wedge them up in the seam of the slab around us, ok? I need you to be my hands, Ava. Can you do that? Ava!”

She was shaking on top of him and he had to wonder just how much of her made it into the hole with him when she lost control. Was there a whole slice of Ava lost in the concrete? Was she bleeding out around them?

“Alright…” she finally breathed. “Alright. H-hold on.”

He felt her moving, heard a metallic rasp and then her grunt as she tried to wedge something up. First one side and then the other. Flashes of green light strobed here and there as she shifted and moved.

His shoulders were burning now too. Sweat prickled down his forehead, his neck. The concrete above him seemed to grow heavier and heavier. John gritted his teeth and shoved his foot up higher, making his burning thigh work, even if his ankle felt like it was about to snap.

She was still shifting around him, moving bits of metal around, a piece of board. He felt, rather than saw, her turn a piece of concrete up on its side and wedge it into place by his head.

“I-I can’t hold it,” he grasped out, his eyes pinched shut.

“Hold on,” she admonished. And he felt her squirming on top of him before she pressed in really close to him, trying to squeeze herself down as flat as possible. “Wa—”

He lost it. His elbow caved on him without warning and his ankle popped and rolled in an incredible explosion of pain and he felt a shift as the slab came down—

Stopped.

Groaned.

But stopped. How in the hell it stopped, he did not know, but it did. Only just.

“...Ava?”

“Present,” she replied dryly, in his ear.

“You okay?”

“Very cozy, thanks.”

“No, seriously—”

“I’m about to lose my shit, Walker,” Ava snapped.

And he could hear it. He could hear it in her voice – a quavering tightness. It was fear.

“Okay, okay,” he soothed, his tone low and rumbly because it didn’t need to be loud when they were compressed together so tightly. “They know we’re down here. They’re coming.”

“If we don’t get crushed first—”

“We’re not getting crushed,” John insisted. “When you say your suit is damaged…”

She was shaking now, her whole body, and he felt every tremor to his core.

New crisis.

“I’m trying not to phase into you, John, I’m trying really hard,” Ava ground out tightly.

“Are you hurt, Ava?” he pressed.

A noise tumbled out of her.

“Okay, easy. Try to relax. Where’s your hand?” John asked.

He felt it, moving to the side of his chest and he brought his up to hers, found her fingers, then her hand, and held it.

“Breathe with me, Ava. Just take a breath.”

She was breathing but it came out in short hot puffs. And those puffs were hard fought. He could feel it in his own lungs. There wasn’t enough room to take a deep breath. And this was how one suffocated in a grain silo, he thought grimly.

“I don’t wanna die like this, John,” she whimpered.

“Well, good, because we’re not dying here,” he huffed, and his lungs already felt heavy. “You’re not dying stuck in a hole with me. That’s the worst. I would be demanding a refund on my death experience, I don’t know about you.”

She snorted.

“You’re going to die from old age, sitting in the sun, feeling the breeze on your skin,” he went on, in a soft drone. “Close your eyes and imagine that sun with me, ok? Just a nice wide open field. Sun’s coming down but it’s not too hot. The breeze is blowing your hair back. There’s no bad guys. There’s nobody. It’s just you and all that nice space. What kinda flowers you want in your field? Hmm?”

She didn’t answer him but her breathing had slowed down a little. The electric tension in her body eased.

“My mom always liked Black Eyed Susan's, you ever see one of those? Bright yellow flowers with brown in the middle,” Walker went on. He was rubbing the back of her hand now with his thumb.

“Queen Anne’s Lace,” Ava mumbled against him.

“Good choice. A whole field of lace around you. Gosh, that’s pretty.”

She squeezed his hand, hard, and sucked in a breath. That one sounded like pain.

“I’m here,” he murmured with a sympathetic wince. “I-I’m here. Whatever happens, we’re doing it together.” And how he wished he could just take back all his screaming for help earlier. If he had known she could get trapped with him, he would have insisted she stay away. This was his fault, just like Lemar was his fault.

It was hot, he noticed. Hot, stuffy. The air was getting real thick. He tried synchronize his inhales with her exhales but he wasn’t sure if it was doing much good. Everything felt hazy.

“…Walker…” Her voice was far away, weak.

He waited for more. But there was no more. She went limp on top of him.

“…Ava? Ava… N-no…No no.” His fingers fumbled for her wrist and he squeezed it. Her pulse was there. Thin, thready, but there.

Only just.

Something stirred inside of him then, opening up, yawning, like a waking monster.

It wasn’t the first time he’d met this beast – he met it back when Lemar was murdered by a terrorist; when Bucky and Sam made him fight them, and took the shield and ruined his life; when the government stripped him of his honor and thrust him out of the military like an rabid pit-bull; when he came home to find the house empty; and in Afghanistan, endlessly, when the enemy paraded children past his sights or sent them into camps with bombs in their soccer balls.  

But it was first time he’d met the beast on such a lethargic battlefield.

There was a rage in him, hot and bright, but only for a moment before the energy dissipated and left him feeling cold and heavy.  There’s nowhere to run, and nothing to fight. There was only this thing inside him. Usually, it shouted at him in the voices of those around him but now it whispered to him in oily tones.

You’re not good enough, John.

You will never be good enough.

You will always be just that far off the mark and it’s going to get everyone around you killed.

They will not love you.

They will not thank you.

They will never understand what you do or how hard you try or how much you care.

Because you don’t care enough, you don’t try hard enough, and you aren’t good enough.

You are a joke.

Walker laid there, holding on to what he was fairly sure was a dying woman – and one he liked very much – whom he wasn’t able to save all the way.

In the dark.

While he slowly suffocated.

And in the absence of air to scream with, his body betrayed him with bitter silent tears.

Because what else was there left to do?

There was no one to talk—

Ava. Ava was on top of him. Ava had comms.

A wild hope – like a butterfly in a windstorm – battled against his malaise and stirred up his battle-sense. It was an uncertain avenue but it was important, if only because Ava would need help. They needed to know that, if they got to them in time.

Gingerly, John reached up in the dark, pushed her hair aside, felt for an ear, and plucked the earwig out, scooching it up into his own ear. “H-hey, anyone there?”

“Walker! Are you guys alive?” came Yelena’s worried shout.

“Barely,” he replied in a low rasp, his tone modulating as the fuzz crept back into his vision. “Ava’s unconscious. I think she’s really hurt. It’s hard to…hard to breathe. N-not a lot of time left, guys…”

“We’re coming as fast as we can…” a voice droned to him. Maybe it was Yelena’s. He wasn’t sure anymore. His thoughts were scattering. What was the important thing he needed to tell them? It was so important…

Oh yeah.

“I…I think Ava’s…she’s gonna need medical evac, I think,” he relayed, breathlessly. “Can’t say for sure what’s wrong but…I think it’s bad so…be ready. Be ready for bad.”

If the voices were talking to him again, John didn’t notice. He didn’t notice his own pain anymore, or the thick soupy air over his head. He was only noticing Ava now. Her hand in his own, her weight on his chest, and that distant thready heartbeat.

And as he finally slipped into darkness, he sidestepped his own beast to consider that maybe this wasn’t the worst way to go – all things considered.

Ava blinked awake to an all-too familiar sight – medical equipment, monitors, a hospital bed. And for a split second, she felt the fingers of panic begin to dance along her skull—

--until her eyes landed on the flowers, beside her bed, in a lovely crystal vase. She blinked at them. Queen Annes Lace and Black Eyed Susans.

That’s when she noticed that this was not a science lab but a hospital room – and a very nice one at that.

Snoring drew her attention next and she rolled her head to the side.

Walker was there, his leg in a boot cast that was propped on her bed. He wore a zip hoodie that was half open to reveal bandages around his abdomen. His face – perfectly at ease as he slept – was peppered with nearly healed cuts and bruises and several days of new beard growth.

She stared at this for a long long time, making sense of it, or trying to. She remembered the incident, the rescue attempt, getting—

Ava sat up with a jolt, and Walker jolted with her, snorting awake. She threw her blankets back, shoving his foot off the bed in the process, and he cursed as she patted down her body and ripped the hospital gown aside.

“Geeze, Ava!” John exclaimed. And then she remembered, belatedly, that hospital gowns were there for a reason.

“Look away!” she yelled at him, as she pawed at a peculiarly thick bandage going over the curve of her hip.

“I-I’m not looking! Put your clothes back on!”

“I can’t, I have to see—”

“There’s no chunks missing!” he yelled.

Ava paused, her fingers on that bandage. “What?”

“You’re gonna be sore for a while and they said you should avoid phasing for a few weeks until the grafts take—”

“What?!”

“They…they filled all the …chunks,” he stuttered.

“…What—”

“Are you decent?”

Ava grumpily flicked the blanket back over her body and leaned back in the bed, arms crossed over her chest. “Yes, now tell me what happened.”

Walker gingerly sat back down, casting her a cautious glance before he looked her fully in the eye.

“We’re in Kenya,” he started, “at a satellite Wakandan research base.”

Her eyebrows hitched up. That didn’t sound real.

“You had some chunks missing. And you were in shock, when they pulled us out. The compression from the concrete saved your life.” He paused and looked at her. “You remember what happened, right?”

Ava nodded.

“Well, the slab stopped the bleeding long enough for them to get us. I guess I wasn’t much better.” He gestured to the boot he was wearing, and his side, and shrugged. “The Wakanda team was working with Helen Cho. I don’t know the science behind it but you have some grafts there that are regenerating the lost tissue and muscle. They uh…they’ve kept you sedated the past couple of days so that you wouldn’t phase out of the repairs.”

Ava looked down at her lap as she processed all of that. She kept rolling it through her mind but it didn’t feel like it was sticking particularly well.

“A-are you in pain, Ava?” John was asking. And he had such a concern in his eyes that it startled her. That was still something she was getting accustomed to – having people who were concerned about her well being, besides Bill Foster of course.

“Ava?”

“I’m…” She trailed off and really thought about it. She wasn’t in pain. But there were parts of her body that tingled in a strange way. They didn’t hurt though. “No, I’m not.”

He visibly relaxed, nodding. “Good. Good, hey uh…Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head, frowning. “No. Where are the others?”

“Yelena’s finding something to eat with Bob. Alexei and Bucky went back to Georgia to tie up the loose ends,” John explained.

Ava looked over at Walker and he offered a tight-lipped smile. Her mind whispered back to that moment with him, the way he’d spoken to her so softly, trying so hard to keep her from panicking. And she remembered the panic too – it was one of her worst fears, being trapped inside of something solid.

“We almost died,” Ava blurted.

John’s smile drooped and he nodded. “Yeah, we did. But we didn’t die. Thanks for coming back for me.”

Ava shook her head. “No, Walker, you…You kept us from being crushed.”

He shrugged again, his head bobbing down. “It was a team effort.”

“John…Thank you.”

He glanced back up at her and smiled again, a genuine thing, something true. “I’ll always try to keep you safe, Ava. I promise.”

Ava stared at him and thought about Olivia then. She wondered if Olivia knew how much John must have cared about her. And she didn’t have to wonder about what Walker thought about their separation. She knew exactly where it fell on his shame scale.

Her eyes flicked back to the vase of flowers.

“Where’d those come from?” she wondered.

“Oh uh, turns out Sam Wilson was doing business out this way and he was planning on stopping by so I asked Sarah to ask him to bring some flowers,” John explained. “Special delivery from Captain America.” He smirked at her, but after a beat his smirk turned a little brittle around the edges and he looked away.

“They’re really beautiful,” she remarked. “Thank y—”

“Oh it was all Cap’s doing,” John rebuffed. “And, uh, Bob tracked down a couple of books he thought you’d like. Are you guys doing a book club or something?”

It was Ava’s turn to smirk. “We’ve been discussing the classics,” she clarified. It was something she found in common with the strange gangly man. They both had troubled childhoods and they’d both found some solace in reading.

Ava heaved a sigh, pressing deeper into the pillows at her back. A wave of exhaustion was lapping at her mind, and she’d been around enough labs and chronic pain to know where it was coming from.

“Hey, you get some rest, ok?” Walker was telling her as he gently tugged her blanket up higher on her chest.

Ava blinked over at him and caught his hand in hers before he could move too far away. “John, thank you.”

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze and something – maybe relief? – flickered in his eyes. “You’re welcome.” And then he settled back down in the chair beside her, gingerly resting his booted foot on the edge of her bed. “And you’re welcome for me not telling everyone that you about ripped all your clothes off in front of me in a blind panic.”

“I hate you, Walker,” Ava said with a chuckle, scrunching her nose.

“No, you don’t. You love me. You said so,” Walker insisted as he leaned back in his chair with a satisfied grin on his face.

“I have said no such thing,” she argued. “I just thanked you, is all.”

“Yeah, same thing,” John said with a shrug.

And she peered over at him, seeing ease in his shoulders as he relaxed and closed his eyes. It was, wasn’t it? For John, gratitude was as much an expression of affection as anything else. What a shame that she was the one to notice because she was terrible at encouraging words. But she could see it now – a hunger in him for affection that was continuously going unsatiated, like a pain that never went away. A chronic need.

“Ok but I’ll bet you Captain America couldn’t have done what you did,” Ava blurted out again. That was encouraging, right?

He scoffed and looked over at her with a crooked grin. “Hell no, he couldn’t. The man can barely bench press, what, three hundred pounds? That slab was at least a half a ton and I didn’t even have good leverage, so—”

“So that was pretty fucking amazing, John Walker. Thank you.”

He scoffed again, confusing crossing over his features at her affirmation, but there was still a warmth in his eyes, crinkling at the corners of his eyelids. It was sinking in, in a good way. Building him up. “I-I mean…”

“And how would he know what flowers to bring if you hadn’t told Sarah? So really, I should be thanking you for the flowers because I know exactly what they are. So thank you, John,” Ava pressed.

“Well…I mean,  you’re welcome,” he fumbled.

“What happened to your leg?” Ava pressed.

“Oh, my Achillies ruptured,” he said with a grimace.

Her heart twisted in sympathy. “That’s how hard you were pushing?”

John’s head bobbed. “I tried…”

“And I’m alive,” she stressed. “I’m alive, John, because you tried so hard. Thank you.”

She must have had a wild look in her eye (which was common, she was told) because he was looking at her like an abused animal might when you’re trying to feed it. Guarded, hopeful, starving. And here she was trying to force-feed him compliments.

She could hear Bill admonishing her, telling her to relax her face, to be patient.

“I’m…I’m just really grateful, Walker. That’s what I’m trying to say,” Ava tried to clarify. She felt her cheeks burning and he also looked pretty flushed. She’d made them both uncomfortable.

But then John was smiling at her. He took a breath and nodded. “Well, you’re welcome, Ava.” A beat. And then, “you still have shit taste in music though.”

The awkwardness melted away as they bantered, picking up a well worn debate.

And Ava relaxed into that banter until they were both murmuring insults at each other and letting sleep overtake them.

Chapter Text

They called New York the city that never sleeps and that was technically true. Even at 3 a.m., on a foggy night, with a wet chill in the air, there was still plenty of traffic, sirens, pedestrians. What there was not was the curtain of day-time people. During the day, the more normal denizens flooded the pavement – folks who had 9-5’s, who worked in office buildings, or went to school. People with families. People with lives to live and jobs that paid the rent. These were folks who had the privilege of abiding by their circadian rhythms.

But when they were home? In bed? Tucked away in their apartments? That’s when the veil was pulled back, when the cracks could be seen better. The forgotten, the abandoned, the abused, the lost, the desperate – these folks suddenly became more visible without the clamor of daytime.

Because there was nowhere else for them to go.

Sure, there were those on the street at 3 a.m. who had daytime intentions – jobs to attend to, or perhaps night school, or even those at the tail end of a night on the town. But for every one of these, there were two of the others – huddled souls tucked into door ways, under awnings, sprawled across staircases, surrounded by meager belongings that would otherwise be called trash by the daytime folks.

Bob watched a man ahead of them as they walked with purpose down the sidewalk – he and John Walker. The man’s pants were slipping down his waist, dangerously low. He walked with an improbable hunch and a wobbly balance that told Bob he was on something. He was probably lost by now in a haze of some kind of downer – something that slowed the central nervous system. Probably not dangerous, just trying to dull an ache in his past, but his loneliness cried out to Bob in a painful way.

But the guy across the street – the one with no shirt, strutting with his elbows pulled back, skin slick with sweat even in the cool air – he probably was dangerous. He was on a stimulant. Bob recognized the wild sheen to his eyes, like he’d let a shadow come into his body to dwell in his soul. That was meth. But that was also loneliness. That was loneliness turned desperate and feral.

They made eye contact and the man’s face twisted, his eyes opening as wide as possible as he let out a sound that wasn’t a growl or a scream but wasn’t words either.

Bob looked away from him, jerking his chin down and to the side. Shame made his cheeks hot.

A police siren drew past them like a wave, growing, cresting, dissipating, as the police cruiser sped past, the red and blue blooming against the fog. By the time it was gone, so was the meth addict.

“God, I hate New York.”

Bob’s head whipped around. John had a look on his face like he’d just caught a whiff of something that Bob couldn’t smell.

“Mm,” Bob grunted, non-committedly. Hate was a strong word. He tried not to hate any place. The only place he truly hated was his family home. New York wasn’t exactly his favorite place to be but he couldn’t say he hated it.

“You’re from Georgia, right?”

“Yeah, Custer Grove. Small Town U.S.A,” John commented.

“You don’t have drug addicts in Custer Grove?” Bob wondered, a little more bite to his voice than he’d intended.

“What?” Walker frowned over at him. “Of course we do. I’m just saying it smells like pee out here and there’s a weird, I dunno, vibe.”

Bob glowered down at his feet. “Sure.”

The silence between them grew a little more terse than it normally was. Maybe he was creeping up on a bad day. He’d been feeling more withdrawn lately. He was probably due for a dark episode as Yelena liked to call them.

Maybe New York wasn’t so great for his mental health...

“Ok, here we go. You got the shopping list?” Walker was asking.

Bob nodded as he looked up at the big illuminated MORTON WILLIAMS SUPERMARKET sign. The store was virtually dead at this hour but at least it was brightly lit. He could see workers with big rolltainers of boxes stocking shelves while they had the advantage of a sparse crowd.

“Great, you go grab the meat and produce, I’ll get the uh…” Walker trailed off, giving him a side-eye that made Bob bristle in spite of himself.

“The pharmaceuticals?” he snapped. “Sure. Probably safer that way.”

“Now, c’mon, Bob, I didn’t mean it like that—”

But Bob was already storming off, snagging a basket from the stack. He held the paper list tight in his hand as he headed off towards the green groceries. And already, he felt stupid for the display. That was an overreaction. He knew it was.

Didn’t he?

Surely, Walker didn’t actually mean to imply that Bob would have issues getting cold medicine. Surely, he was just antsy from seeing the addicts on the street.

Bob grabbed a bunch of beets, some potatoes, a big yellow onion. What else was on his list… He uncrinkled the paper. Parsnips, carrots, a bag of apples, a cabbage, fresh dill, and at least two, maybe three, pounds of stew beef.

He let out a sigh through his nose as he picked out each of the items.

He was overreacting. He was sure of it. Because his emotions were high. It was an emotionally urgent day with too many moving parts, flights, conversations. And he couldn’t help but be worried after talking with Alexei. After Yelena didn’t answer her phone. After picking up Walker from a military base. After being sent across the country by himself a few days ago.

Focus, Bob. Complete the mission.

He had just finished fishing out the bulkier packages of stew beef when Walker walked up with his own basket filled with tissues, various varieties of tea, and four different cold medicines.

“You good?” he asked.

Bob nodded. “Good.”

“No, really…are you? I…I’m sorry, Bob—”

“I’m fine,” Bob murmured quickly.

“It’s just…I don’t know what parsnips are and the last time I picked out fruit, everyone yelled at me. So I figured…”

Bob looked up at him and saw a genuine concern in John Walker’s face. Was it concern over hurting his feelings because he was telling the truth now? Or because he was scared that Bob would find out that he meant it in a bad way?

He had a choice. He didn’t always have that choice but he had a choice in his suspicion. Two options. One would smooth over this tension. One would send him skipping a few steps closer to the dark.

Bob did not want to be in the dark.

“…Y-you picked out really ripe bananas, man,” Bob pointed out. “And bruised apples.”

“I didn’t see the bruising!” John insisted hotly. “And the riper bananas are sweeter anyway! I don’t see what the big deal is!”  

A smirk lifted up the corner of Bob’s face, in spite of himself. Ok. He was telling the truth. Bob could tell. “Sorry for storming off,” he mumbled.

“Nah, I get it. It’s all good,” John insisted.

They scurried to the self-checkouts – Walker scanning the items while Bob bagged them.

“…Is this a parsnip?”

“Those are beets…That’s the parsnips,” Bob pointed out.

“Oh…those aren’t just white carrots? What about purple carrots? Are those a cross between beets and regular orange carrots?” John wondered.

“…I see why you asked me to get the produce now.”

“I’m asking an honest question here, Bob!”

“No, purple carrots are just carrots, I think,” Bob insisted. His smile was a little warmer now.

No need for a dark episode.

Everything was fine.

As long as Yelena was fine.

Yelena was pretty sure she was dying.

Okay, maybe figuratively dying. 

There was a persistent ache in her head that pinched sharply above the bridge of her nose and pulsed behind her cheekbones. Adding to that was an even more persistent postnasal drip of mucus going down the back of her throat. She was hot and shivery. Her back ached. Her whole body felt like it was lagging about two steps behind her.

And to add insult to injury, she was literally the only one on the team who was sick due the simple fact that she was the only one who even remotely had a biologically normal immune system. She was alone in her suffering and they had left her alone because of it.

Two days ago, they had all left her.  Bucky had looked her dead in the eye and told her she was grounded because of her cold. They went to Indonesia without her. And Bob? He left too. He’d been sent off on a conference because Valentina was determined that he do something for the team (as if he didn't already do enough).

Rest, they told her. Just rest, and recover. Maybe read a book, or watch tv, or just sleep for a few days. Ava told her to drink plenty of fluids. Alexei gave her some weird babushka remedies to try and, damn-it, she did try. She tried putting onions on the soles of her feet with plastic wrap (getting onion juices all over her bedsheets). She tried sticking garlic cloves up her nose (thankful that she was alone for that particular experiment). She tried breathing in hot potato steam (which, as it turns out, wasn’t any more special than regular steam).

And still, the cold persisted – for two long days now.

Yelena tried to sleep now but discomfort drove it far from her and she laid there in darkness, wadded up tissues strewn about, her duvet in disarray, the faint smell of onion and garlic in the air. A plastic neti-pot mocked her from the nightstand. Alexei had given it to her before he left on the mission with Bucky and Ava and Walker. He’d called it a ‘nose kettle’ and it was useless.

This was the worst.

Yelena stared up at the ceiling, her mouth-breathing a noisy rasp in the dark, limbs akimbo on the bed.

It was the helplessness, maybe – being unable to make herself feel better or to shake the virus that clung to her cells. That bothered her. But also doing it alone bothered her too – sitting miserably, all alone, in the hurt. It was too much like her childhood; the early years in the Red Room, before her body was conditioned to withstand the punishment and neglect.

In the dark, Yelena could see the face of a little girl in her cohort. She didn’t know the girls name. Her skin was a lovely caramel color, her eyes a warm brown. She’d been ill before they even arrived at the Red Room and maybe that was a blessing. The wet coughs rattled across the space between them when they slept at night. None of the grown-ups bothered to help much. None of the children knew what to do. That little girl passed in her sleep and Yelena recalled the way her skin got cold and stiff.

Eventually, they all got sick. Eventually, the chorus of coughing was all that they heard from one another. Many others died.

But she made it. She endured.

 A creeping feeling formed in the pit of her stomach as she remembered. They were memories that she’d been dancing around for the past few days but now, in the weary dark hours of morning, she couldn’t hold them back.

Yelena sat up and the room swirled around her for a moment before a semblance of balance returned to her inner ears. She fumbled out of bed and snagged an oversized hoodie from where she’d abandoned it on the floor days ago, shrugging into it with a mewling grunt.

The floor tipped again under her feet and she wobbled there a moment, swathed in the hoodie, her hands spread wide to either side of her. Then she wobbled out to the hallway, towards the kitchen.

She got almost all the way there before perception pinged past the wall of mucus.

There were voices from the kitchen. Soft music was playing. There was a faint shunk shunk shunk of a knife on a cutting board.

Was she hallucinating? Surely. No one was meant to be home. But why would an intruder be listening to music and making food? That was nonsense. Maybe she had a fever. Maybe she was well and truly lost to her illness and they would come home in a few days to find her in a raving heap on the floor.

Yelena crept forward, into the kitchen, and found…

John Walker. And Bob.

Right there, in the kitchen.

Cooking.

Talking to each other like pals.

John was yammering about beets while Bob was frying something in a pan.

“…W-what are you…what are you doing?” Yelena asked with a deep frown.

Walker jumped, hissing. “Geeze, Yelena!” he barked. “I almost sliced my finger off!”

“Yelena! Why are you up? You should be resting!” Bob chided. He hurried over to her and gently took her elbow, his arm going around her waist.

She leaned into him as he helped her to a stool.

“I can’t sleep,” she explained dreamily, still not sure she wasn’t hallucinating. “Why are you here? And with…Walker? I thought you were on mission…?”

Walker smirked at her, shrugging. “We got to thinking that if we could do the mission without you, we probably could do it with an even smaller team. We figured someone should probably be home in case something happens so we found me a jump seat on a military flight. Sorry, you weren’t exactly conscious when we got in a few hours ago. By the way, why does your room smell like onions?”

Yelena gaped at him, processing that – although the details were slippery in her mucus-packed brain. She had been sleeping before. Fitfully. And she remembered startling awake but she hadn’t been sure of what had woken her, besides the snot sliding down the back of her throat.

“Um…Alexei called me. He was worried about you. He asked me to make you um…borscht,” Bob told her.  

Yelena blinked, slowly. That, too, took its sweet time in sinking into her virus addled mind. “But…But you had a thing to do too, Bob, didn’t you? Weren’t…I thought…The technology conference.”

“I was,” Bob said with a nod. “I saw what I needed to see. This was more important.”

“W-what was more important?” She blinked at him again, the pressure of tears swelling against her already swollen sinuses at the whisper of his implication.

“You, dummy,” Walker sniped, grinning up at her from where he was slicing carrots.

“What?! No no, I’m not…I am not a dummy, Walker,” she whined. “And I am not that important—”

“Yes, you are,” Bob insisted, his tone turning a little bit sharp. He was staring at her, his lips pressed into a firm line.

The tears finally leaked free and she pawed at them, sniffling. It was the cold, of course. It was making her leaky and emotional. “Oh,” she mumbled. “What time is it?”

“Uh, 4:13 am,” Walker announced.

“You should be sleeping,” Bob admonished.

“But why are you making borscht at four in the morning,” Yelena challenged.

Bob looked a little sheepish. He shrugged. “I wanted it to be ready for when you woke up. Alexei promised it was good reheated.”

“What Bob means to say,” Walker added, “is that his flight got in a little before mine and he picked me up from the base and then Alexei called us and was worried about you so we dumped our gear here and then went out to get soup ingredients because, hell, woman, did you eat any fresh food while we were gone?”

“…I…I ate raman noodles and orange juice,” she admitted softly. “You guys really did that for me?”

“Well, yeah,” Bob said with a shrug.

Yelena wiped at her eyes again, her lip quivering. “I missed you guys,” she peeped, in a watery tone. “Like I really missed you a lot. And I’m really glad that you are home because I feel really bad and I can’t figure out the nose kettle and my head really hurts and…and…”

Bob was wrapping her up in a hug then, squeezing her tight. She melted into him, snuffling. “You should have called me earlier,” he murmured to her,

“I didn’t want to be pathetic but I am. I’m really pathetic,” Yelena sniffed.

“Geeze, you sound like death,” Walker observed.

She let out a scoff and peeled her head back from Bob’s shoulder and nodded at John. “I feel like death.”

“Ooo-kay, how about we get you back into bed, hmm?” Bob asked softly.

“No, I don’t want to go back to my room, it smells like onions,” she grumped.

“How about the couch? I’ll put on a movie. My mom always got me Star Wars from the library when I was sick as a kid.” He was already shuffling her away from the kitchen.

“Are you going to watch it with me?” she asked.

“Sure, just as soon as we get the borscht on the stove,” Bob promised. “But I’ll be close by.”

“Okay,” she mumbled.

Bob helped her to the couch and Yelena already felt less miserable for his being there. It was a warm feeling – something deeply familial that rang of a time before the Red Room. Like a really nice hug. Or a really good home-cooked meal. Or being complimented in all of the exact ways that you need when you’re feeling really really low.

Yelena didn’t question it; she lapped at it – like a feral kitten lapping up a bowl of milk from a kind stranger. But it wasn’t a stranger, it was Bob. And she was so glad it was Bob.

He got her settled on the couch, swathed in a blanket and propped up by pillows. Within minutes, a glass of orange juice also appeared, and a dose of cold medicine, and a box of tissues, and – to her utter delight – a warm bag of something that he gently put on her forehead to soothe her sinuses.

When he eventually sat down, he sat on the end of the couch, by her feet. She heard the movie turn on, the iconic soundtrack. But her eyes were closed. Her mind was scattered and aloof. The warmth that wrapped around her like a cocoon was soft and safe and she felt almost detached from her body as she rested in it. Time skipped around her. She heard the murmur of voices talking and the sounds of the movie that blended together until she sighed and sunk, finally, into sleep.

Bob watched over her.

It was similar to the time he had found himself captured with Bucky. It was a real mission in the sense that people were relying on him. And that both terrified him and drove him forward with purpose. But this was also different, because this wasn’t Bucky.

This was Yelena.

And she was precious.

She was light and life itself and he hated that she’d been abandoned the last two days. If only he had known how bad the cold would get, he would have never left. Anxiety prickled across his chest, but there was a relief there too, in a sense. She needed help, and he was able to provide that help for her. He was helpful. For real, actually, helpful. As Bob, not as the Sentry. As someone who was not despised or unwanted.

That was nice.

Walker had helped him finish the borscht before disappearing to his own quarters to sleep. Bob stayed with Yelena. She was well and truly resting now and that made him happy. He watched Star Wars episodes IV and V, before he started to doze himself.

Because it was safe to doze. Because he was not alone. He was not the meth addicted homeless man. Not anymore. And he wouldn’t choose to go walking down that path that took him back to the dark, not while he had people around him who cared about him and whom he could care for.

When Bob woke the next morning, he and Walker silently agreed to change out the onion-y bedsheets in Yelena’s room and clean up the piles of snotty tissues that had been recklessly abandoned. Bob brought her borscht and Walker set himself up as a quiet protector in the Watchtower. It was a strange arrangement that rang out with more harmony than the two men had realized was possible. It was a sweet relief. 

So when he and Walker and Yelena sat and watched the next Star Wars trilogy together, he quietly shopped for parsnip and carrot seeds on Amazon while Walker read wiki entries on the finer points of root vegetables and Bob felt like he'd hit the jackpot on the lottery or like he'd grabbed hold of the sun with both hands.

And he had no intention of letting go.

Chapter Text

It was not often that Sam Wilson ever had the opportunity to really get the jump on Bucky Barnes. The man had radar for ears. He could count the number of times he’d caught Bucky off guard on one hand (and three of those times ended in him almost getting shot or stabbed). It was tempting to not even try to sneak up on him.

But something funny happened when Sam started to turn onto the driveway to Sarah’s house and he saw a familiar black motorcycle up by the porch. Something flared up, hot and bright. He eased off the breaks and pulled the truck back onto the road and kept on driving until he was safely behind a stand of trees a dozen yards away.

Call it pettiness. Call it professional rivalry. Call it whatever the hell you like – but Sam Wilson was going to get to the bottom of whatever was happening between his sister and Bucky Barnes.

He slipped into stealth mode, killing the engine on the truck and easing the door open. He left it open as he quietly snuck through the trees to the house, approaching just north of the driveway, where the trees were the thickest and gave him more coverage. He measured his steps and watched for twigs or rocks before placing his feet, easing his weight from foot to foot.

See, Buck? He could do stealth, when he needed to.

Sam took his time coming up on the porch, making sure he stayed out of sight-lines until it was impossible. He didn’t step on the porch itself – it was squeaky as hell – but he crouched down and followed it around the house, peering into the windows as he went. Nobody in the living room, nobody in the dining room…

There. He saw movement in the kitchen. He saw…someone under the sink? There was a metallic gleam as an arm reached out and blindly felt for the toolbox on the floor beside him.

Bucky was…fixing his sisters sink?

Bucky was in…in shorts. In gym shorts. And he was barefoot.

Sam almost started shouting right then and there, from outside. Bucky woulda heard him just fine. Because what the hell was he doing in Sarah’s house barefoot and in leisure wear at ten o’clock in the morning on a Monday?

A scowl fixed itself to his face as Sam contemplated his next move. He debated charging in there, trying to scare the ever-living daylights out of Bucky. He also debated giving Bucky a call from the car, see if the other man had the nerve to lie about his whereabouts. Or maybe he’d call Sarah instead. Maybe she’d be the one to lie to him.

He settled for the least dramatic approach – because he still had his dignity.

Sam quietly stepped around to the front door and then he stomped up the steps like he was just now coming up on the scene. He made an obnoxious noisy display of pulling out his keys and trying the door that was already unlocked, and strode through.

“Hey, anyone home? Sarah?” he called. “It’s your favorite brother.”

Sam turned the corner to see Bucky scrambling upwards, looking for all the world like a fox caught in the hen-house.

“Sam, hi,” he said lamely, putting on a chagrined smile.

Sam looked him up and down. Silent. Lips pressed firmly together. His get-up was even stupider without the window between them. He was wearing shiny green basketball shorts that went almost to his knees and a white tee-shirt that was splotched with stains. Sam had seen Bucky in a lot of questionable outfits when they were on missions together but there was a big difference between seeing Bucky’s shins as he shimmied into tactical gear and seeing his shins in Sarah's’ house, on a quiet weekday morning.

Bucky squirmed under his stare. “Uh, Sarah ran out to the city for a few hours. She’ll be back later. Probably this afternoon. I guess. Uh…the boys are at camp…”

Sam took one step towards Bucky and the other man automatically backed up, bumping into the kitchen island.

“W-we didn’t know…you were…coming—”

“Bucky,” he started, his tone low and menacing.

“Yeah, Sam?”

“I’m gonna ask you something and I need you to be very honest with me…”

“Yeah.”

“A-Are you…” Sam chewed his lip as he tried to grind out the thoughts in his head. He steepled his fingers and pointed them at Bucky. “Are you sleeping with my sister? And don’t get cute with me. I know you know what I mean. Are you—”

“No, Sam,” Bucky said simply, his eyebrows quirking together.

“Don’t you lie to me—”

“I’m not sleeping with Sarah,” Bucky insisted with an awkward grimace.

Sam looked him up and down, his lip curling into a snarl. “Bullshit.”

Bucky’s frown deepened. “You do know this Sarah we’re talking about, right? When’s the last time you went to church with her?”

“When’s the—” Sam barked out a noise and shook his head, feeling some outrage creeping into his tone. “Man, when’s the last time you were at church with her?”

“Yesterday,” Bucky retorted with a haughtily arched eyebrow.

“Bucky!”

“We’re not sleeping together, Sam!”

“No? Okay, alright,” Sam said with a mock acceptance. He gestured to Bucky’s get-up. “What’s with the outfit, then? You looking real comfy over there. You finally stop wearing your skinny jeans?”

“Oh uh…” Bucky looked down at himself, face scrunched up in thought. “I’m…The shorts are yours, actually. I wouldn’t normally wear this shade of green on purpose but my clothes are in the washing machine.”

“Ahh ahh, see, I know you’re lyin’. Her washer is broke—”

“I fixed it,” Bucky snapped at him. “Because someone else kept putting it off, Samuel.”

“You did not—”

“Two days ago. Go check. It’s running right now,” Bucky challenged him.

Sam was about to go do that very thing – go stomping off to the utility room to check the damn washing machine – when a new thought occurred to him. He fixed Bucky with narrowed eyes and then took another step towards him. Bucky edged around the kitchen island and backed up again.

“Two days ago? How long have you been here, exactly?”

“Just…you know, a few days,” Bucky hedged, taking a sudden great interest in everything in the kitchen but Sam’s face.

“Buck…”

“I-I’ve been here…” Bucky shook his head, “recovering. Okay?” He finally looked back at Sam.

Sam threw up his hands and turned in a tight circle. “Oh yeah, sure, that answers all my questions.”

“She…she didn’t tell you any of this?” Bucky asked, his brow furrowed.

“Does it look like Sarah told me anything?”

Bucky pursed his lips.

“Bucky, I swear to God…”

He raised his hands. “Okay, relax, Sam. Nothing untoward happened, alright? Not that it’s any of your business.”

“You think it’s none of my business? Oh-oh, you think it’s none of my business.” Sam’s hands flew up. “Captain America’s sister is just out here having a sleepover with Valentina De Fontaine’s new lap dog—”

“Easy Sam,” Bucky growled. “There have been no…relations. And don’t talk about your sister like that.”

“Fine, then tell me what did happen.” Sam reached over and grabbed one of the stools, letting it scrape along the yellow kitchen tiles as he pulled it to him. He sat on it, very pointedly, and glared at Bucky.

Bucky ran a hand through his hair and then thought better of it, pulling his hand down to look at the kitchen grime that was between his fingers and now on his scalp. “Okay,” he murmured as he reached for a towel, “I got injured on our last mission.”

“Like you always do,” Sam commented.

“Like I always do,” he conceded. “But this was a bad one and the team is doing really great right now and it’s been kinda slow otherwise…” Bucky shrugged. “I took some time to recover. Sarah and the team suggested I come here. Insisted, actually. They probably would have kidnapped me if I hadn’t agreed.”

“So you’ve been recovering from your injuries at my sisters house…” Sam’s eyebrow cocked up high.

“And taking some vacation days,” Bucky admitted sheepishly. “You can check your bedroom – your bedroom, Sam. That’s where I’ve been sleeping. My stuff is all there.”

Sam stared at him for a long minute, trying to decide if it would be worth calling the wanna-be Avengers, but they’d back any story for each other so they weren’t exactly trustworthy.

“What’d you do? How’d you hurt yourself?” Sam asked instead.

Bucky’s lips twisted up sideways. He leaned off to his right and pulled up his tee shirt to show off a wide swath of shiny pink scar tissue. It curled around his chest and over his side.

Sam whistled. He’d been in action enough with Bucky to know that scar tissue like that on a super soldier meant that the injury had to be significant. And, damn it, now he felt bad for the guy.

“Geeze,” he hissed. “Fire?”

“Caustic steam,” Bucky informed him, with a grimace. “’bout scalded all my skin off. Got thrown into a ventilation pipe. Hurt like a son-of-a-bitch; fractured a bunch of ribs.”

Sam winced sympathetically.

“It was a bad one, Sam,” Bucky repeated. “I spent the first week stuck in bed. Could hobble around by the second week—”

“Hold up,” Sam snapped, his anger flaring back to life. “How many weeks have you been here?”

Bucky let his shirt drop back down and he got that same dumb look on his face that he had the time he explained how he broke Zemo out of prison. “Just…around, maybe three and a half weeks. Give or take a day.”

“…by yourself.”

“Well, the team’s been in and out. Someone was with me the whole first week. We weren’t about to ask Sarah to just drop her life to take care of me,” Bucky insisted. “Someone usually pops in every couple of days to check in on things, let me know how things are going. And they’re doing fine – the team.”

“Well, I’m so glad your team of delinquents are doing great…” Sam pinched at the bridge of his nose, feeling a sting of offense in the heart of his anger – offense that no one thought to call him, shoot him a text, tell him what was going on at his own sisters house. It all pressed against the lingering outrage over the whole Avengers business.

“Sarah really didn’t tell you any of this?” Bucky asked with a frown.

“No, she didn’t,” Sam grumbled.

“…sorry, Sam. I didn’t…I don’t even know where my phone is right now. I’ve been out of it.”

“Out of it but you fixing my sisters stuff?” Sam asked him warily.

Bucky shrugged. “I thought it’d be a nice surprise for her. Look, she’s been working really hard the last few weeks and she finally had the day off today so…”  He shrugged.

Sam let out a heavy sigh as he considered all of this. His anger petered out, though he found that he was still hurt that nobody had told him about Bucky. He would have come and helped – gotten Bucky someplace other than his sister’s house to recover. But maybe it was Sarah who he needed to talk to. She absolutely should have known to call him and she didn’t. That was a problem.

But so was Bucky having to step in to fix up things around the house. That was supposed to be his responsibility and Sam was more than a little embarrassed that he’d let it slip.

So, ok, maybe Sarah had a point.

Bucky was plinking tools back into the tool box, watching him carefully.

Sam watched him back. “You fix the sink?”

He nodded. “Mostly. I’m just about done.”

“What else needs doing around here?” Sam asked.

Bucky plucked a piece of paper from the lid of the tool box and handed it over to him. In Bucky’s neat, tiny handwriting was a list of projects. It looked for all the world like a Honey Do List.

Oil the screen door hinges; replace warped boards on the porch; replace cracked outlet cover in living room; fix the leak over AJ’s bedroom; clean/sanitize A/C units; paint dock; check oil in Sarah’s car. And on and on it went.

He blew out another sigh, feeling his anger slip all the way away – at least for now. He looked at Bucky and nodded. “Okay, lemme get my truck and change shirts. I’ll help you bust some of this out and you can tell me all about this mission of yours that boiled you like a lobster.”

A lopsided smirk crossed over Bucky’s face as the tension eased out of his shoulders and he nodded back. “Okay.”

They worked on house projects for the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon hours until the awkwardness eased away completely and they could be just two friends again – fixing things and talking about dumb stuff that didn’t matter. Sam complained about being able to see Bucky’s weirdly muscular calves and Bucky complained about Sam’s lumpy mattress and gushed about how great it’d be to have an excuse to sleep on the couch – although they were both sure that Sarah would insist on Sam sleeping in Cass’ bed.

Neither of them talked about the Avengers.

It was the big Missing Thing in their conversation and Sam certainly wasn’t keen to discuss it then. He’d chalk it up to a temporary cease fire. It would do, for now.

The day was creeping up on 5pm when Sarah pulled down the driveway to see not one but two men hammering down new boards on the porch. Her stomach clenched as she recognized the truck.

“Lord Jesus, help me,” she murmured as she parked.

They were watching her now as she stepped out and put on a big beaming smile.

“Hey Sam, didn’t expect to see you home,” she greeted brightly.

He gave her a tight-lipped smile. “No, you probably been hoping I woulda texted first, huh? S’ok, Bucky explained some things.”

She cringed, feeling her cheeks go hot. “You staying for dinner?”

“Am I welcome to stay for dinner?” Sam challenged.

“Don’t do that,” she grumbled.

Bucky cleared his throat and stepped off the porch, his eyes fixed on her. She tried to ground herself there, in his confidence.  

“How’d your day go?” he asked, offering her a warm, sympathetic smile.

“It was nice. I stopped by the market, picked up some fresh pasta for dinner…Y’all been fixing the porch?”

“Yeah, Bucky’s been helping me catch up on some chores,” Sam drawled and Bucky shot him a look.

Bucky pressed a paper into her hand as he passed her, aiming for the car. She looked down at the paper – a to-do list with an impressive amount of things crossed off. It took a while for that to sink in. Being a single mom didn’t leave a lot of time to fix things around the house – you learned how to strike a delicate balance between things you could live with, things you could fix yourself, and things you could afford to pay someone to fix. More often than not, the repairs usually fell into the ‘things you could live with’ category.

To have so many of those things taken care of, without asking, was shocking. Sarah felt such a weight come off her shoulders that she felt a little dizzy. “Y’all did all this…?”

“Yeah, we’ll finish the list tomorrow,” Sam insisted.

Bucky was already at the car, stringing bags on his arm. She knew for a fact that he’d only need one trip.

“Thank you, Bucky,” she told him.

Sam made an obnoxious noise and Sarah rolled her eyes.

“Thanks Sam,” she tagged on.

“I’ll go unload these bags,” Bucky was saying. He leaned close to her as he shifted back towards the house. “I think Sam wants to talk to you. If you need backup, just say the word.”

“What’s the word?” she murmured to him.

He grinned at her, winking. “Pumpernickel.”

Sarah snorted at him, swatting his shoulder. She just knew that if they had been alone, he would have kissed her cheek before he headed back into the house. She wished they’d been alone.

Sarah watched him until he disappeared through the doorway. Sam was scowling by the time she looked back over at where her brother was leaning against the porch post, arms crossed firmly across his chest. She rolled her eyes again, as if that would stop the dread blooming in her belly.

“Stop it,” Sarah hissed at him.

“Is that what these last three weeks have been?” Sam challenged. “Flirting?”

“So what if it has? Maybe I like the flirting,” Sarah snapped at him. “And, oh I’m sorry, did we forget the part where I’m a grown woman who can make her own decisions?”

“Sarah, he’s…he’s…”

Her eyes narrowed. “What, Sam? He’s what? Damaged? A hundred years old? He’s nice and I like him.”

Sam rolled his eyes.  

Sarah shook her head. “No, you don’t get to judge me. Don’t you dare,” she snapped.

“I just can’t believe you let him come here like that,” Sam insisted. “And you didn’t tell me!”

“What was I supposed to say, Sam? You barely talk to him since this whole Avengers thing started up,” she shot back. She snatched her purse from the car and slammed the door shut.

“It’s, no, it’s more than that—”

“It’s not like it was romance and roses, Sam. The man had no skin on his ribs when they brought him over,” Sarah told him. “He could not walk. They brought him here because the pain was making him delirious and he almost took out one of the nurses at the hospital.”

Horror crossed over Sam’s face. “So you let him stay here? Sarah, you have no idea how dangerous that was! He coulda hurt you! The boys!”

“The boys are at camp for the summer – it was my idea! And, y’know what, I would’ve gone to him in New York if I didn’t have the business to worry about. It was better for everybody that he come here, Sam,” she insisted hotly. “And I’ll ask you not to question my judgement when you been busy up in D.C. with your own super hero gig. This is mine, Sam. This is my gig. I wanna be the house where folks like you and Bucky can come and be safe, alright?”

Sam tilted his head to frown at her like she was a crazy person. “Oh that’s your gig, huh? Since when?”

“Since you invited that white boy over to sleep on my couch all those years ago,” she shot back, her eyebrows raised high in defiance.

“You’re not running a clinic, Sarah! If he was so hurt, why didn’t the Wakandans step up? They took care of their assassin—”

“—her name is Ava,” Sarah snapped. “And I don’t know why they weren’t available – that’s above my pay grade. Boy, you better get an attitude adjustment real fast. You’re gettin’ mean and daddy would be ashamed of you.”

Sam’s face grew hard at that – his jaw clenching. They stood in an ugly silence for a few minutes, stewing in each others fury in the Louisiana humidity.

Sam was the one who broke first. He heaved another sigh. “There’s a lot going on behind the scenes on this one, Sarah – political things that I can’t just ignore,” he said in a low tone.

“I know,” she insisted. “Bucky’s told me about it. He doesn’t trust that CIA lady either but you gotta talk to him about it, not me.”

“I’m not sure this is something we can just talk out,” Sam insisted.

Sarah fiddled with the necklace around her neck as she pondered that. “I got a hypothetical for you…”

Sam groaned.

“No, just listen,” Sarah insisted. “Hypothetically, let’s say Bucky and I get really serious. Let’s say we move past flirting.”

“Are you sleeping with him?!” Sam stared at her.

For just a moment, Sarah saw red. She was a teenager again, being accused of sneaking off with a boy from school so that her self-righteous big brother Sam could sneak off with his own forbidden girlfriend.

The murder must have been evident in her eyes because he immediately raised his hands in surrender.

“Sorry, sorry…I just—”

“Huh uh, no. I don’t wanna hear it,” she snapped. “This is why I didn’t call you, Sam! You’re so worked up over all of this that you can’t even see that what’s happening is good. I know you didn’t come all the way over from D.C. to work on my porch. That was all Bucky, wasn’t it?”

“…Maybe…But that’s not the point, Sarah. His team is toxic. They’re dangerous. Think about AJ and Cass—”

“I am, Sammy. That team has spent more time with them this past three months then you have this whole year,” Sarah hissed.

She could feel the pressure rising. Something pulsed sharply behind her temples. Lord Jesus, take away this rage before I start sinning…

“I’m trying to protect you, Sarah,” Sam said pitifully. “You wanna be this resource to help folks like me? Great. But j-just don’t get wrapped up in this team with Bucky... Please just listen to me…”

She held up a hand and fixed him with a look. She took a slow, intentional breath. “Here’s what I need you to do, Sammy. I need my house to be Switzerland, okay? Neutral ground. Because if, hypothetically, we get really serious…I need you to be okay with seeing him around here. Can you do that for me?”

Sam sucked on his teeth, looking out over the yard, to the water. He shook his head. “I don’t know, Sarah...”

“Think about it. Go for a walk. I’ll have dinner ready at six. You can sleep in Cass’ room tonight,” Sarah told him. She tried her best to put on her ‘I’m a boss and I run my own business’ expression but she was pretty sure it only read as ‘I’m desperate to be in a relationship, please don’t mess this up’.

Sam looked over at her, a dubious sneer to his face, but he nodded. “Yeah, okay…” he grumbled.

He thunked down off the porch and passed her without looking.  

“Hey,” Sarah called before he got too far. “I love you.”

His eyes flicked over to hers.

There was a beat.

Then, “Love you too.”

She held his gaze for a moment and then she turned to the house.

Bucky hadn’t really been trying to snoop on the conversation – per say – but it was awfully hard not to hear everything as clearly as if he’d been standing out on the porch. Unease twisted in his gut as he pulled things from the reusable grocery bags and set them out on the kitchen counter, only halfway registering what he was grabbing.

Pasta, lemons, a bag of fresh mussels…

He almost went slamming through the door as he heard Sam accuse her. He could handle Sam throwing mud on his character – God knew he’d done enough to deserve it. But he couldn’t handle Sarah’s reputation being tarnished, especially because of him.

And this was all because of him, wasn’t it?

Because he couldn’t stay away. Because he joined up with the New Avengers. Because he’d rejected Sam’s offers of teamwork.

When Sarah stepped into the house a few moments later, he clocked the tears in her eyes and shame tipped over him. This was all his fault. Cold squeezed his insides as he watched her try valiantly to pull herself together.

He didn’t need to be here. He shouldn’t have even come but he hadn’t exactly been capable of making decisions three weeks ago. But he could have left after that first week. He should have left. Everything after those first few days of recovery was pure selfish indulgence.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” Bucky murmured at her.

Sarah hadn’t moved yet. She was staring at the floor, her arms wrapped around herself, her one hand wedged up into the crook of her neck as if she could contain all the emotion that was inside of her.

He swallowed.

This was it, then. This was the end of this fun little vacation, this fantasy of a normal life.

“I’ll uh…I’ll just…”

Just what? Pack up his things? Hop on his bike and ride off into the sunset? Maybe he’d change his name, cut his hair again, leave everything behind and just keep running—

“Pumpernickel,” she breathed.

“…what?”

He looked over to find her watching him with her big watery eyes. She wiped at her cheeks with a trembling hand.

“You heard me,” Sarah insisted.

He did.

And in two long strides, he was there. He pulled her into his arms and she melted into him as he balanced between an obtuse dichotomy of relief and shame.

“I’m sorry,” he admitted softly. He gently ran his hand up and down the small of her back. “I shouldn’t have stayed so long. This is my fault.”

“Don’t you start,” she chided into his shoulder with a snuffle. “I didn’t want you to leave.”  

Her arms shifted up to his shoulders, her hands going around behind his neck. She pulled back so she could look at him and his face was grim.

“Thanks for doing all of that work on the house,” she murmured at him.

“Thanks for letting me stay,” he murmured back.

Bucky tipped his head forward until their foreheads touched. Sarah released a shuddering sigh.

“I hate this,” she grumbled. “I hate that he’s like this”

“He’s trying to keep you safe,” Bucky argued. He’d never fault Sam for that.

“I can’t think of a safer place to be right now,” Sarah pressed.

She idly fussed her fingers through his hair and Bucky had to fight to keep his focus on the conversation at hand.

He leaned his head back to fix her with a serious look. “He’s right,” he insisted. “I’m not the safest person to be around.”

She didn’t flinch. “James Buchanan Barnes, I trust you with my life and there’s no other place I’d rather be.”

Bucky stared at her for a long piercing moment, gauging her honesty, waiting for her to take it back – as she very well should have. But she didn’t. And he knew without the faintest shadow of doubt that he would lay down his life to protect this woman and her children.

At all costs.

Bucky leaned in again and planted a sweet soft kiss on her forehead.  And finally, the smile came back to her face.

“We’re more serious than flirting, right?” she asked him, her nose wrinkling up with her smile.

Bucky thought about it. “Hypothetically,” he said with a grin.

When Sam trudged his way back – sufficiently cooled off in temperament, though swampy now with sweat – he didn’t mean to sneak up on the house. He was lost in his own haze of conflicted thoughts as he wandered up the walkway and was about to step up onto the porch when he heard the faint music coming from inside. It was something old and stupid that Bucky loved. 40’s music.

Sam stepped off the walkway and peered in through the windows.

There they were – in the dining room. Bucky and Sarah, slow dancing to Glenn Miller like his mawmaw and papaw used to do. They were pressed close to each other.

And Sarah was smiling.

Not just smiling but glowing.

He watched as Bucky gave her a squeeze and a kiss on the cheek before he let go to grab some silverware to set out on the table, laughing at something Sarah was saying that Sam didn’t catch. Bucky was smiling too – relaxed, at ease in the space there with her.

Sam heaved a sigh.

And it must have been a loud sigh because suddenly Bucky was staring back at him, through the window. The super soldier’s smile drooped down as his lips pressed into a slant. He lifted his shoulder in a helpless shrug at Sam.

Sam rolled his eyes and shuffled back towards the door, pushing it open.

“Okay, I get it, you two like each other,” he grouched as he crossed the threshold.

Sarah just grinned at him.

“Took you long enough,” Bucky joked, cautiously.

Sam came to a stop in the dining room, looking over the three place settings at the table and then he looked at Sarah and Bucky. “Look, officially, politically, we can’t be friends right now. I can’t just back off the Avengers thing—”

“Switzerland, Sam, Switzerland,” Sarah pled.

He made a face but nodded slowly. “Switzerland,” he agreed. “But I make no guarantees if you two start sucking face in front of me. If you guys are making out, I’m nuking Switzerland.”

Bucky shook his head, deadpan. “No. No making out. I don’t even know how to make out. I’m a poor innocent soul stuck in the 1940’s where nobody ever did anything scandalous.”

Sarah snickered at him, a glint in her eye.

“Bucky…”

“Yeah, Sam.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“Good to have you back, pal. Missed you.”

“Don’t push it, man.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “I’ll go grab dinner.”

As the super soldier disappeared into the kitchen, Sam shot Sarah a weary look. She offered him a soft smile.

“Love you,” she murmured at him.

“Love you too,” he told her. It was true and he’d stand by the declared Switzerland – if only in Delacroix. He’d let it be a place out of time, out of the reality of the situation with the criminal team and his complicated history with Bucky Barnes. This place would be the safe zone.

He just hoped he wouldn’t come to regret it.