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John isn’t safe.
That fact is clear and simple as the weather. No metaphors, no room for doubt. Just a definite fact.
Working under OXE, and more specifically Valentina, has put his life in danger more times than anyone wants to count. She excels at sticky concealment, hiding her cruelty behind procedure and paperwork. She makes depravity look like plain assets.
But Bucky knows how to dig. Decades of doing that sort of dirty, quiet work as the Winter Soldier leaves stains that don’t fade just because the uniform changes or the suit is pressed. Those skills don’t disappear for time, they simply become dormant and wait.
He’d always had a few tabs on John, just in case. Monitoring OXE. Looking into CIA missions. Scanning the small trickle of news about the U.S. Agent. Hell, he’s even got the court documents of John’s divorce tucked away in an encrypted folder, untouched but accounted for.
Beyond his gritty scars and old wounds reopened, Bucky also has connections. Real ones. Political ones. Ugly ones. The kind that gets your name smeared on newspapers if they become publicly known. Some people would say he’s playing dirty now, crossing lines that should remain pristine. He’s becoming something he swore he never would.
But through these aforementioned connections and keen eyed tabs, he learns how exposed John is. He might even use the word fragile.
And that’s what keeps him going. He reminds himself it’s for John. Fragile John who needs him.
That makes it acceptable. Necessary even. Lines need to be crossed.
They’d understand if they knew the whole story.
He pushes past thoughts of doubt and knows how to make things right for John. For them. He knows it’ll hurt at first but in the end they’ll have their family. Simple means to a delicious end.
Bucky doesn’t spend much time dawdling on a plan, he already knows well how to work the system, and more importantly, John.
Stage one is to link John back to OXE and the skeletons in their closet.
He knows how to start, what he needs and where to find it. Madripoor always delivers.
It does, of course. He picks up some lackeys, just a handful. Disposable, unmemorable, forgettable. Enough to do the work he needs them to do, few enough for them to disappear quietly without question. They were already filth. Smugglers, thieves, killers. No one would miss them, let alone look very hard.
It’s for John.
And, if one stopped to think, God knows what would happen if they decided to blackmail the reformed congressman, a man costing on hard-earned good faith. He’d lose credibility. Lose the seat of power that could be so easily handed to some yuppie scum, someone polished and empty who wouldn’t lift a finger for the people he and John had been helping. So, Bucky dealing with them isn’t a bad thing in the grander scheme of things. He’s a good person.
Their instructions are simple. Follow John to OXE’s sights. Observe. Report. Stay silent. Find John’s trail, anything to point him back to OXE.
Looking after a super-soldier isn’t like following a regular person. Super hearing and super sight, plus intuition sharped by training and experience– John would notice any slight slip up or disturbance. But Bucky knows how another super-soldier ticks, he knows what tips to give and what tells to look out for. Under his pointed instructions, the error margin for mistakes slims and slims and slims.
After days of recon, they report that John’s good at what he does. He’s too good. He’s clean, efficient, perfectly precise because OXE wants a weapon they can point without a trail of gun powder. Every mission of John’s involved some ‘Golden Guardian of Good’, dressing virtue up as rot.
Bucky loathes what John’s done, the carnage splattered on his face and blood lacing his fingers, but what other choice does he have after what happened with the flagsmashers? What other path does a man who’s gone through what he has got? It’s okay, Bucky forgives John.
Regardless, it’s a problem. An annoyingly pristine problem.
John’s competence makes him dangerous to himself. He’s too effective, too reliable. A good weapon. OXE trusts him, even protects him. There’s no slip, nothing for Bucky to point to as evidence for OXE’s crime and John’s involvement.
So Bucky intervenes.
His ‘employees’ plant pieces of him around the sights and crappy motels he usually leaves without a trace. Objects with John’s fingerprints that Bucky’s procured in meticulously devised places. Nothing obviously staged, but enough to show that John’s been ‘getting sloppy’.
Then comes the anonymous tips. Whispered allegations. Paper trails nudged into visibility. Of course spawned by Bucky and his men.
The system does the rest. That's stage two of the plan.
John Walker is in the public spotlight again. Nobody really questions it, they already believe him to be a monster for defiling Captain America’s brand. Few, if not none, rush to his defense.
Bucky feels a pit in his gut. He truly is sorry. He hates this part, it was the section he dreaded the most. He knows it must hurt. The world is unkind and Bucky will fix that too, eventually.
But it’s necessary for right now and to start their happily ever after.
The spotlight placed on John drags to OXE as well, unseen seems being finally exposed. Their cruelty and inhumanity is broadcasted and picked apart on a mass scale. Bucky is doing the right thing. What he is doing isn’t selfish, at least not fully. Again, he’s a good person. Means to an end.
As he’s warped in a new scandal, John is trying again. Hard. Rough. John fights damn hard about it, insisting on arguments he can’t fully deliver on. It doesn’t matter. The evidence is clean and his actions are true.
He’s found guilty in the end to no-one’s shock.
Meanwhile, as John’s already fragile life is destroyed brick by brick, Bucky begins stage three– building their home and John’s new life. Construction is sped up, money is placed in the right places.
Originally, John’s slotted for The Raft. That can’t happen. Bucky won’t allow it. The Raft is too far, too isolated, too final. And worse, he’d be treated like a villain. A monster. Bucky refuses.
So he reaches out and shakes hands with those who he hates with all his hearts, taps back into those connections. The connections that smell like blood and gun powder.
It’s for John. They’ll understand. He’ll understand.
Bucky is a good person, he has his reasons and they are damn good.
The transfer is arranged quietly. That’s stage three.
Paperwork is altered, press isn’t loud about it either. John is moved to a private facility, one built for super soldiers. Well, one super soldier by Bucky. When questions are asked about the structure, Bucky answers them firmly about protection for citizens. Specialized containment. Risk mitigation. All the right words that get him even more praise and credibility.
They sign off.
Bucky receives reports of John’s character switch, his off-kilter quietness. After the shackles, the verdict, the finality of it, something in John darkens. Exhausted in so many ways he can’t name.
John doesn’t know about how Bucky’s orchestrated the whole thing, that part was intentional. He would lose the sudden quiet, morph into something beyond anger. Anger that would be too red, too hot, too dangerous. Another difficulty that would keep John away from safety. Bucky will tell him and fix that when he comes home to him. He’s really doing him a favor, keeping his emotions low and not exhausted. Bucky is a good person.
The day of his imprisonment comes and John is caged down inside of a reinforced transport vehicle, restraints he doesn’t fight back against settling into place. The prison itself is nowhere on any map worth reading and underground. Perfectly anonymous and isolated, yet still ringed with enough weaponry to deter any breaching attack.
John changes into a stark white outfit hastily, rushed by guards, before being moved to an elevator that descends lower and lower, closer to his home. Their home. He follows down a hallway armed to the teeth with guards.
Metal doors open to reveal a starkly lit room with equally starkly white ceiling, floor and walls. Notably, the room is the void of guards as of the moment. A wide cage made out of the same reinforced glass able to keep a super soldier inside is the only thing occupying the space, hulking and almost taking up the entire room. The lights are perfectly bright, almost clinically so. As he glances at them, he notices as well plentiful security cameras dotted around the ceiling, always watching and waiting for him to make a move.
He’s pushed inside carelessly, before being decorated with beeping metal cuffs around his arms and feet, which were again sourced from Madripoor. The guards escorting him shut the heavy glass door and lock him inside without another glance. They soon leave the room with heavy metal doors closing behind them.
John begins to pace the perimeter of the enclosure like a trapped animal. Too much space to think, not enough to understand. This is life now, he’ll come to learn. His perfect life. But he doesn't know that, not yet.
Doors open, slide open again, smooth and quiet.
John freezes at the sound of delicate oxford shoes strolling inside with a level-headed calm. He looks at Bucky, and for the first time in a long time, his eyes twist. Dulled blue eyes crackle with something, not anger or fear, but something sharp and distorted.
“Bucky?” John murmurs through cracked lips, voice rough and low. He approaches the glass tentatively, like he can’t fully believe Bucky is standing in front of him. The last time he’d really seen Bucky was on TV as Congressman Barnes. Hell, Bucky still looks like that TV broadcast version, looking so sharp and clean, which made everything even more surreal.
They didn’t exactly leave on good terms, they’d worked together to take down the Flagamashers, but proximity didn’t always equal connection. But hearing his name come out of John’s mouth made Bucky’s chest tighten.
“John.” Bucky breathes. A plain smile curls on his lips, unguarded and pleased.
He pauses to admire the view– John contained in a pristine, glass cage. Nowhere to hide. No place to run to and pretend that old wounds aren’t there. No foe to face. No media shoved in his face.
No more hurt.
All his work was worth it.
“You’re home.”