Chapter Text
Bucky woke with a start. His heart was pounding furiously somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach, and a clammy sweat stretched over his skin in a thin layer. He threw the heavy blankets off of him angrily and clambered out of bed, wincing internally as his bare feet touched the freezing hardwood floor. He pattered across the boards and into the living room, eyes roving restlessly over the couch, the television, into the kitchen. He quickly identified the mysterious lumps and shapes throughout the apartment as being his own belongings, but the thumping of his heart wouldn't settle. He was unnerved, though you'd never know it to look at him. He checked the locks on the doors and windows at least three times each. He flung open the pantry door and then slammed it closed again. His fingers slid into his hair and tightened, the metal ones tugging almost imperceptibly harder as he pulled his hair back away from his forehead. He ran a hand - his real one - over his sweaty face, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers as his feet carried him, almost without his permission, to his couch, onto which he sank heavily. His backpack lay on the floor by his feet, and he fumbled his pack of cigarettes out of it, lighting one with fingers made steady only by long practice. As the smoke curled up towards the ceiling, a blinking light came on in the corner, Tony's alarm system recognizing the smoke and alerting him to its presence. Like he didn’t already know.
"Mr. Barnes," said FRIDAY's voice calmly, emanating from wherever Tony had hidden the speakers. "Smoking is not permitted in the Tower."
"Yeah, well," said Bucky, and found he had nothing else to add. He inhaled and exhaled another cloud of smoke, the nicotine settling him slightly and the familiarity of the action settling him more.
"Mr. Barnes," said FRIDAY, more sharply this time. "I am going to have to insist you put the cigarette out."
"Come on," he said. "What are you gonna do about it, anyway?"
"I will be forced to alert Captain Rogers. He will be concerned about your behavior."
"Tattling on me to Stevie, huh?" said Bucky, but he stubbed out the cigarette on the sleek glass coffee table the apartment had been furnished with and slumped back in his seat. He didn't need Steve knowing about the nightmares, didn't want to deal with his concerned face and his questions. It wasn't like Bucky could remember the dreams anyway. There wasn't anything to talk about. He rubbed a hand unconsciously up and down his metal arm, fingers sliding over the plates and ridges. His insides were still churning, restless energy zinging through his limbs. He wanted to hit something, to pack a bag and go, to destroy everything he'd built since Steve had brought him in. Something. Restraining those impulses just made the restlessness worse. He thought about going for a run, but it had been suggested (politely, with lots of euphemisms) that he probably shouldn't leave the Tower until the press had calmed down, and until he himself was less volatile. They still weren't sure of him, although he thought Steve might be. Bucky certainly wasn't. How could he be sure he didn't have that programming still tucked away in some corner of his brain? More immediately, how could he be sure he wouldn't just snap, just let the shit he'd been through catch up with him and give in to the part of him that would like nothing better than to run, and to beat the shit out of anyone who got in his way?
He thumbed his pack of cigarettes, foot tapping spasmodically. His fingers tattooed a random beat on the coffee table. This lasted several minutes. Finally, fed up, he wrenched himself off the couch and out his front door. He didn't wander around the Tower much - there were too many people, too many questioning eyes on him. But he couldn't sit still another minute. He padded out into the hallway, the patterned carpet under his bare feet soft, and of a much higher quality than he was used to. Everything in the place screamed of money, from the carpets to the high-tech security cameras installed at intervals along the ceiling. Steve had assured him there were no cameras in the rooms, but he thought there probably were, and Tony had just decided Steve didn't need to know about it. It seemed like there was a lot Tony got up to that Steve didn't know about.
As he made his way down the hall to the bank of elevators, he realized he didn't really have any idea of where he was going. He considered heading down to the communal kitchen/living room that Tony had set up on what they usually referred to as "the Avengers floor" (that is, where Steve and the rest of the team had their apartments) but the likelihood of running into one of the others was too high. Not his first choice in a mood like this. The rest of the floors were occupied with either Stark Industries or the labs. He didn't think he had business being in the offices, and he'd been staunchly avoiding any kind of labs or medical, except for the battery of tests they'd insisted he undergo when Steve first brought him in. Shockingly enough, labs didn't exactly fill him with joy. Not that anything did these days.
Mind made up, Bucky decided to forgo the elevators and instead made for the stairs. They were industrial and cold, unlike the rest of the Tower, and as best Bucky could figure Tony wasn't even aware of their existence. He suspected Pepper had added them to bring Tony's design in line with fire code regulations. They were always deserted, which made Bucky like them pretty well, and more importantly, they had access to one of the smaller roofs. It was there that Bucky was headed. The fresh air would clear his head. Another plus was that, like the stairs, that roof was generally pretty empty, although someone had set up a folding chair there recently, which irked Bucky to no end. He suspected it was Barton. That man turned up in the darnedest places. Just the other day he had fallen out of the ceiling in the common room and interrupted one of Bucky's longstanding arguments with Steve. But it was (Bucky checked the glowing display of his Starkphone) almost 4 in the morning. Barton, or whoever it was, would be sound asleep. He pushed open the heavy metal door to the roof.
"Ow!" someone exclaimed as Bucky felt the door smack into resistance. "What the fuck?"
Taken aback, Bucky let the door swing closed. It swung open again immediately, revealing an angry brunette in pajama pants and a tank top. Her hand was pressed firmly to her forehead, and Bucky suspected she was angry because he'd just conked her with a door. A door he had opened with his metal arm. He winced.
"Sorry," he said.
"Sorry doesn't even begin to cover it, mister," said the girl, now poking gingerly at the red spot on her head. "What are you doing, skulking around in the stairwell in the middle of the night? Who are you, anyway?"
"I could ask you the same thing," he said, temper and indignation flaring up his spine.
"Hey, I am one hundred percent allowed to be here. For all I know, you could be - whoa."
He followed her gaze to his metal arm. He hadn't been wearing a shirt while asleep and hadn't bothered to put one on when he woke up. Which didn't exactly lend credence to her accusation that he might be an intruder. They generally came equipped with shirts. Without one the arm was displayed to full effect, and her eyes were now firmly affixed to his left side. His hand came up instinctively to cover it, but there wasn't a lot he could do about an entire arm. He settled for hiding his shoulder from her gaze. He didn't like people looking at the scars.
"Cool arm," she said, and Bucky blinked. That...wasn't the reaction he'd been expecting. It wasn't the reaction he usually got. Like, sure, Stark had basically fanboyed all over the arm (while ignoring Bucky entirely) but most people eyed it with fear, or at least wary uncertainty.
"Thanks?" Bucky said, not sure how to respond. "I promise I'm not an intruder."
"Yeah, well, if you are you're kind of an incompetent one," she said, appearing to concede that he was not, in fact, dangerous. Which was completely wrong. But whatever. "I'd like to be think HYDRA could do better than thwacking a lab assistant with a door."
He flinched when she mentioned HYDRA, but he didn't think she noticed.
"You a new Avenger or something?" she asked, then didn't wait for an answer to continue. "I swear, they bring home all sorts. Mostly attractive sorts," she added, giving him an appraising look. "But you get some wacky superpowers here in New York. What do they call you? Cyborg?"
"I'm not a superhero," he said, nonplussed. The salacious look she'd given him threw him. He didn't think of himself that way, didn't think of his body as more than a tool, just as a gun or a knife or even the arm was a tool. It has been imperative to his work to keep his body in shape, and then it had been a habit, a convenient outlet for excess energy. Probably what he should have done tonight, rather than getting tangled up with this girl, with her bruised forehead and her dark eyes. The way her gaze had lingered on his bare chest, on his muscles, made Bucky's stomach stir uncertainly. She didn't know who he was, of course. She probably thought he was like Steve. Someone she could trust. She couldn't trust Bucky. He couldn't even trust himself.
"Well, Mr. Not-a-Superhero," she said, interrupting his thought spiral. "You got a name, or should I just call you Terminator?"
He'd heard the same reference from Tony, but still didn't understand it. He ran a hand over his hair to hide his confusion, tugging ineffectually at the long strands. "I'm..." he started, then trailed off. It was nice, he thought suddenly, interacting with someone who didn't know his history, who didn't automatically recoil every time he moved. He took a deep breath. Maybe he could pretend - just for tonight, just to this girl - that he wasn't a fucked up assassin masquerading as a real person.
"I'm James," he told her finally.
"Darcy," she said, holding out her hand. "Jane's assistant."
"Jane Foster," he said, his brain supplying an image of a petite brunette scientist. "Thor's girlfriend?"
"That's Janey," said the girl. Darcy. It made sense that he hadn't seen her before if she worked in the labs, since he avoided them like the plague. In fact, just knowing she was a scientist set his teeth slightly on edge. "Look," she said, stepping back a little. "I was here first and you will NOT stop me stargazing, robot hand or no, but you could hang out, too. If you want."
He stared at her maybe a moment longer than was polite, then nodded once. She stepped back again, and this time he slid past her onto the roof. She dropped gracelessly into the folding chair (which he could only assume was her doing) and he slung his long legs over the wall, dangling above the lights of New York. For a while they just sat there, her watching the sky (Jane Foster was an astrophysicist, right?), him just trying to be alone with his thoughts, despite the presence of the pretty brunette. She was pretty, he acknowledged. Bucky might be fucked up but he wasn't blind. In another life - a former life - she'd have been exactly his type. All dark curls and gentle curves. He resisted the urge to glance at her over his shoulder and get a better look.
She was the one who broke the silence first. "What brings you to my humble rooftop, James?" she asked, and he twisted around to see her leaning back, long legs crossed casually.
"Your rooftop?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow. "Don't see your name on it. Although Stark's probably is, somewhere."
"Stuff it, wise guy," she said, then raised one eyebrow, her voice going almost sultry. "You, uh, come here often?"
"Oh, come on," he said, half laughing, which was at least half a miracle. "That line's been old since my day."
"Shut up, you can't be that much older than me."
"Would you believe me if I said I was 94?" he asked, knowing he was playing with fire, risking her figuring out who he was.
"Well," she said contemplatively, "Thor's sure looking good for his age." She gave him another appraising look, this one clinical. "But you don't look Asgardian."
"You have a lot of experience with Asgardians?"
"Enough," she said, a smug look stealing over her face. "I tased Thor."
He bust out laughing. It felt good to laugh, to release some of the tension that lived coiled in his gut. He found himself smiling stupidly at Darcy. She'd made him laugh. Nobody had made him laugh in...
He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed.
"What about you?" he asked, unreasonably curious about her. "What brings you up to 'your' rooftop?"
"The stars," she said simply.
He cocked an eyebrow at her, glanced up to check the New York sky hadn't suddenly become less light polluted in the last five minutes. It hadn't. "There aren't any," he said.
"I know," she said, her face twisting into a bitter moue. "Don't remind me. And stop looking at me like I'm crazy," she added. She sighed, eyes fixed on the heavens. "I just miss them is all."
"You an astrophysicist too?"
"No," said Darcy, looking taken aback. "God no. I was a Political Science major. I’m mostly just here to keep Jane fed and caffeinated. I do busywork, too. Crunch numbers. I'm no scientist."
Bucky's mouth turned up slightly. "Good."
"What?"
"Nothing."
It was easy, talking to Darcy. Like it had been with Steve, before...everything.
But that wasn't quite right, either. Nothing about Steve made Bucky's stomach clench in quite the same way, made him question his own self-imposed celibacy. He crushed those feelings ruthlessly. He might have been interested, once upon a time, but that didn't mean he should just relax his carefully won self-control and start kissing lab assistants. If he liked her - and he had to admit to himself he did - that just meant he was getting better, not that he was ready to jump back into the dating pool. Maybe he should tell Steve. That was the kind of shit that made Steve happy.
Around 5am Darcy started yawning widely in the middle of telling him about Puente Antigua, and he decided maybe it was time for both of them to turn in. Darcy went willingly when he pulled her out of her chair, and she didn't even flinch at his metal hand on her own soft, fleshy one. She let him half carry her down the stairs, and it wasn't until his feet had unconsciously brought him halfway to his door that he realized he had no idea where she lived.
"Darcy," he said, giving her a gentle shake. "Darcy, which apartment is yours?"
Darcy looked around blearily, then gestured limply back the way they'd come. "Tha' one," she yawned.
She was just down the hall from him. Shit, had he been passing her all this time and never noticed?
Probably not. He'd have noticed a girl like her.
He brought her back down the hall to her door, and she pressed her thumb against the pad to unlock it. She paused there, turned back to him, and said, "How'd you know which floor I live on?"
He shrugged. "Lucky guess."
When he got back to his own room he closed the door gently and leaned against it with a thunk. He could almost feel her still, her soft curves pressed against his shirtless chest. He could almost smell her shampoo.
"Fuck," he said.
He spent a lot of time with Darcy after that. They'd stay up nights together and talk. Well, she did most of the talking. He didn't say a lot, but when he did it was just...nice. Talking to Steve was having all his words and actions analyzed, worrying what Steve would think if he told him about the nightmares and about how tense Bucky felt all the time, like a coiled spring. Darcy didn't judge him. She even got it, a little, about the nightmares. She told him she dreamt sometimes of the Destroyer. That was why she'd been on the rooftop so late at night when he'd met her. They'd both been driven there by their respective demons.
Of course, her demon was a deathbot controlled by a crazed god, and his was, well...him.
The only thing Bucky liked about himself was his strength, his competence. Not being able to use any of the skills he had drove him crazy. Sometimes it felt like fighting the bad guys was the only way he could possibly make up for being one of them. So when some crazy Asgardian lady calling herself the Enchantress turned up on their doorstep? Bucky was actually kind of glad.
There were fucking goblins or some shit everywhere. Bucky had no idea how this dame had fallen in with a bunch of fucking goblins, but it took all sorts, right? Bucky stuck one of the suckers with his knife, flipped he blade to his other hand and stabbed another, but more just kept on coming. They'd broken the elevator cables and the stairwell was full of the things, much to his chagrin, since he had to get up to Tony's floor, where Steve had told Bucky to meet him. Never one to let Stevie down, he sighed the sigh of a man regretting all his life choices at once. He jammed the fingers of his left hand into the crack in the elevator doors and just pulled. One of the doors peeled away with a screech, and Bucky leapt nimbly across the gap to grab onto the ladder. It creaked ominously at his weight.
Except it wasn't just his weight. One of the fucking goblin whatevers had grabbed onto his boots, and it clung to his legs with its abnormally long fingers. He pulled one leg free of its grasp, lifted his boot, and slammed it back down forcefully into goblin face. The creature, dazed, let go of Bucky and tumbled down the elevator shaft shrieking. Bucky climbed on, hurrying up the ladder in smooth pulls. He counted floors as he climbed, and when he reached the penthouse he turned, clinging to the ladder with his metal arm.
"Steve!" he yelled. "Steve, you punk, open the door!"
After a long moment, the doors slid apart, Steve holding an edge in either hand. He looked bemused to see Bucky clinging to the side of an elevator shaft, but he was obviously trying not to let it throw him. He reached out a hand, and Bucky swung for it, grabbing hold of Steve. He dropped slightly into the gap, but Steve caught him, one hand still braced on the doors. Bucky's boots found purchase on the metal wall, and he clambered up, holding onto Steve with both hands.
Once he was out of the elevator shaft he took a moment to breathe and survey his surroundings. His brain was in tactical mode, taking note of the goblin-free nature of the room and the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far wall. Stupid decision if you asked him. What the hell sort of security was that? He also noted that some Assembling seemed to be happening, with Wanda, Vision, and Barton clustered around Thor, who was sitting on Tony's expensive couch looking disgruntled.
"Thor's on lockdown," said Barton almost gleefully as they approached. "Looks like this Enchantress is after him. The rest of the team is taking care of her, and we're watching him. Welcome to the party."
"Don't know that I'd call this a party," said Bucky, the corner of his mouth turning up. "You're here, Barton."
"He made a joke!" said Barton, pointing at Bucky in astonishment. "Broody McBroodsalot made a joke!"
"At your expense," Wanda said.
"No, that's great," Steve said, looking at Bucky with big eyes. Bucky would almost swear they were glistening. "You haven't exactly been in a joking mood, Buck."
"Yeah, well," said Bucky, shrugging one shoulder noncommittally. He joked all the time around Darcy, but he had long ago made the tactical decision not to tell Steve about her. Or, he supposed, emotion might have factored into it. She was exactly Steve's type. Tough, curvy brunettes were a weakness with him. Bucky hated to admit it - in fact, every cell in his body screamed at him not to think about it - but he didn't think he could bear it if Steve and Darcy hit it off. Steve, after all, would be good for Darcy and was emotionally equipped to handle a relationship with her. So it was absolutely imperative they never meet.
Thor-sitting duty turned out to be pretty boring. Bucky entertained himself by throwing bits of paper at Barton, and Barton entertained himself by throwing them back with a higher degree of accuracy. Bucky had once considered himself the World's Greatest Marksman, just like Hawkeye, but he had to admit Clint was better. At least with arrows and spitballs. Bucky didn't know how he was with a rifle. Finally, just when Bucky was deciding Natasha had taken care of this Enchantress hours ago and was just enjoying watching them wait, something happened. He wasn't entirely sure WHAT, but something was definitely happening. Vision was instantly alert. That red bastard probably understood what was going on and just didn't feel it was necessary to share, but nevertheless. Nevertheless, Bucky could feel it happening. Something was curling through the room, curling through Bucky's skull. There was a voice in the fog, speaking a language he thought he almost knew, a song from his childhood. He saw, absently, Thor rise from his chair, heard Vision's calm voice speaking seriously to Thor as he walked towards the wall of windows. Something niggled distantly in his brain, in the place where he went when he went in the chair, and oh god, the chair, Hydra and the fucking chair and killing people over and over and over.
He slammed his fist into the coffee table, and the sound of the glass shattering brought him out of the fog. He flung himself across the room, stepped in front of Thor, his metal arm pressed into Thor's chest. He had no hope of stopping him, really, was already being pushed backwards across the plush carpeting by Thor's superior strength. But he slowed him down, and as he did so, Vision went into action. He glided forward smoothly, moving past Bucky, taking advantage of Thor's distraction to get one hand on Thor's forehead. Thor swung at him, but he was too slow. Vision closed his eyes, and whatever had been possessing Thor seemed to be neutralized, or at least held back, by Vision’s powers. The two of them sank to the carpet, leaving Bucky standing between them and the window.
There was a howl of rage.
Bucky whirled, and the window shattered, broken glass busting into the room in a wild wind. There was a woman there. He could see Tony, Sam, and Rhodey in the air behind her, firing with abandon, but their attacks hit an invisible barrier a few feet away from her and bounced off uselessly. She seemed to be floating inside some kind of spherical shield. Her long blonde hair whipped around her face, her hands outstretched in anger. She floated forward, and her eyes, green and glowing, seemed to be focused entirely on Bucky. He met her gaze, unflinching, but honestly she was freaking him the fuck out. There was something about her that screamed of power, and anger, and a willingness to use both to hurt other people. People like Bucky.
“I wanted him,” she said. Or maybe she thought it. Her voice echoed inside his ears and his skull, and he wasn’t sure she was speaking English. “He would have been mine already if not for you. You resisted me. How?”
Bucky didn’t answer her. Her voice compelled him to respond, but he clamped down on the impulse. He wouldn’t allow anybody to fuck around inside his head ever again. He couldn’t.
“Oh,” she said, and her voice lost a hint of its ethereal quality. She sounded almost disappointed. “You have some practice resisting mind control, that is all. There is no magic about you.” She extended her long, thin fingers with their long, thin nails directly towards Bucky. “Whereas I? I have plenty of magic. I need not restrict myself to controlling the minds of others. Why should I, when I can do this?” She punctuated the last word with a flick of her wrist, and something unseen hit Bucky square in the center of his chest. He was sent flying, his whole body lifted into the air and sent crashing into – and through – the far wall. Lying in the dust and splintered plywood, Bucky felt the sensation of falling, of tumbling into nothingness. He reached out one hand towards Steve, whom he could vaguely see running towards him, and then everything went black.