Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts with him finding the gun.

Steve is out again for his morning run. He definitely doesn't need it, but he ignores Bucky's jibes and goes out every morning and comes back stinking to high heaven. It's the only time Steve ever leaves Bucky to his own devices, though, so he only complains a little. Besides, Google says running is good for mental health, which is probably the only health issue about Steve that the serum didn't solve. If running will make Steve less prone to bad decisions, Bucky muses, he hopes Steve runs all the way to Mexico.

Feeling a little adventurous, Bucky prowls about the fancy kitchen, savouring the rare bit of alone time he has. It's not a big apartment, so it's the only place he hasn't explored thoroughly, because he's never had a reason to. Ever since he'd found himself on Steve's doorstep, the guy has been plying him with all kinds of exotic food that makes his stomach ache pretty bad, not that he'd admit it to Steve. It's probably still missing the days of pale, sodden meat scraped urgently from the edges of a tin can. 

He'd spent the better part of the last few days watching the cooking channel enough to feel like he can cook pretty well, so he decides maybe he should give it a try. It shouldn't be that different, even after seventy years, right? Throw a few ingredients together, boil it up 'til it's hot enough to not make you sick. He'd had a fair few family recipes under his belt back in Brooklyn. Maybe he could make some of those biscuits like he used to. Steve would like that.

He starts by absently twiddling with the knobs on the stove, marvelling at its smooth black surface and complete lack of an open flame. The red ring glows serenely, a bright circle on the shiny black countertop. He resists the urge to test it against his palm. The exploration continues.

The microwave oven sits unassumingly on a shelf above the dish drying rack.

He'd read about it in a book Steve had loaned to him called Thing Explainer. Thing Explainer says that the microwave oven is really just a food-heating radio box. While it makes sense and is pretty succinct, Bucky can't decide if it's being really considerate to people like him and Steve, or just plain condescending.

His jabs at the door opener button and jumps backwards in mild shock at the sight of the pistol lying there on the food plate, its barrel somewhere at his eye level.

Blinking quickly, he ends up scowling at it in half-annoyance and half-confusion. Jesus Christ, Steve. Didn't the war teach you anything about guns at all?

He flinches again when the front door slams open and Steve barges in, panting like he's sprinted across the country right back home. Maybe he really was on his way to Mexico. His eyes settle on where Bucky's standing.

Bucky gazes at him with detachment, his hand still draped over the small tinted oven door. "You left your gun in the microwave oven," he points out casually, gesturing like he's showing off a prize display.

"Er," Steve explains. His cheeks are flushed with colour from the run, and it makes him look mortified, as if Bucky has exposed a his dirtiest secret. His mouth opens and closes soundlessly for awhile.

"Pretty sure that's not what these are for," Bucky continues, smirking slightly at the alarm on Steve's face. "Why the fuck would you put a gun in there, huh? You thinkin' of eatin' bullets for breakfast?"

The moment the words come out of his mouth, he narrows his eyes in suspicion. "Were you thinking of eating bullets for breakfast?"

He wouldn't put it past the punk to think of something balls-crazy as that. He may have a year or seventy to catch up on, but he's not stupid: he'd overheard Steve arguing with Sam over the phone about "war trauma" and "depression" the other day. The thought of Steve not coping well after the War is unsettling but unsurprising - he remembers, very clearly, the long nights that the both of them had sat up till dawn, holding a sleepless vigil for the dreams they were never going to have. He still has those nights. He's willing to bet Steve does, too.

On the bright side, at least Steve has the sense to talk to a therapist about his problems.

"You're hilarious," Steve snaps, closing the front door and coming closer, looking fidgety. His eyes flick back and forth uneasily, from Bucky to the gun then back to Bucky. "I got it from a friend, okay? Just didn't know where to put it, is all."

"I can think of at least ten better hiding places than the food-heating radio box," Bucky retorts. He pokes at the glass plate and watches the gun revolve forlornly, wondering if the microwave oven could heat a gun up like it could food.

"Yeah? In a drawer? Under my pillow? Come on. Admit it. The damn food-heating radio box is the last place you'd look." Steve sighs finally, then shakes the sweat out of his hair like a stray dog. "Just leave it."

Bucky raises his eyebrows and sneers a little in disgust, then shrugs. He has a point. A sane person wouldn't keep loaded weapons inside their kitchen appliances. Being sane himself, he probably wouldn't think to look there either. He makes a mental note to hide the bullets the next time Steve steps out. Just in case. The guy did crash a plane into the Arctic Circle, after all. Maybe he should speak to Sam about this. He makes another mental note. "Anyone ever tell you you're insane?"

"Only every Thursday."

---

So here's the story.

A month ago, Bucky Barnes fell off a train in Switzerland.

Now he lives with Captain America in Washington DC and the war's over. Apparently they won, but not really, because HYDRA's still out there and they're sinking flying ships into the city streets and putting the blame on him, so they hide in the apartment like common criminals for the most part.

Also, there's a loaded Glock in the microwave oven, which Steve may or may not be planning to use on himself.

The future is insane.

---

Actually, it starts with him waking up. He feels winded, as if he'd just fallen off a train -

He opens his eyes with the echoes of his own scream dying on his lips, but something's amiss. He's whole and alive and definitely not hurting like he's fallen a few thousand feet off the side of a cliff.

It does, however, feel a little like he was soundly whaled on by ten Nazis a day ago. Which is impossible, because a day ago he'd been hiking up that godforsaken mountain, freezing his balls off as he followed Steve blindly to certain death. At least, he was convinced it was certain death, but Steve had only laughed and slapped him on the shoulder and reminded him of all the times he'd made Steve ride the Cyclone back in Coney Island.

Which wasn't the same thing at all.

In any case, he finds himself sighing the biggest sigh of relief because he's alive and whole and that's what matters. Nothing else is quite as important as that. Except... except there is no mountain, no snow, and definitely no train. 

There is, however, a dumpster behind his back, and a roach ambling across his chest. He scrambles into a sitting position, feeling his bones creak and groan in protest. What the fuck?

The air is filled with strange smells, chemical smells. The only smell that's vaguely familiar is that of hot asphalt rising from the ground, but it feels like it's been forever since he's touched a tarred road. There had been months and months of slippery ice-melt and biting wind that numbed all his senses, and now he's scraping his palms on the rough skin of a city he shouldn't even be in. It's even warm under his palm.

Everything's too bright and clean, too sharp and slick. Even the dingy alley is a confusing swirl of technicolour. He stares at the rainbow puddles of grease that he's soaking up through the seat of his pants. His clothes are heavy and foreign, smelling thickly of blood and grease and, strangely, pond.

Barely remembering to breathe, Bucky heaves himself to his feet. His mind is a whirl, but he's alive. He can do this. He just needs to find out where he is, and find a radio, somehow get word to base to let Steve know his coordinates. God knows how worried Steve is. Let him not do anything stupid while I'm gone.

He takes a step forward and staggers under a terrible weight on his shoulders, even though he's not carrying a thing on his back. Shaking his head doggedly in confusion, he looks down at his hands and stares hard. Then blinks, then stares more. He doesn't feel his mouth open, and he doesn't hear the ragged gasp that rushes past his lips. He clenches his fists anxiously and what he does feel is his head spin. He also tastes the bile rising in his throat.

His entire left arm is covered in metal. The joints whir and click with his every movement as he bites down a horrified yelp. God, it's heavy. He grabs at the plates, trying to force his fingertips in between the joints, scrabbling at the fluttering sections desperately. Get it off, get it off. He needs to get it off. His arm can't breathe. He can't breathe.

He swings it into the brick building, trying to crack its surface. The brick gives like packed earth under a mortar, exploding into his eyes and hair. It stays on. He shakes his hair out of his face, then throws himself backwards in shock. His hair, his hair, it's grown past his ears, it's almost at his shoulders. This can't be possible. It's not possible. He tears at it wildly with his hands, and lets out a low groan when a tuft of it comes away painfully, grasped tightly in the metal fist that isn't his -

He screams a little bit more and throws himself onto the ground, writhing and panting a little. Get it off. Jesus, it weighs a ton. It's probably welded shut. It's so tight he can't feel his left arm. And then suddenly he can, a burning prickle that itches to high heaven. He thrashes on the grimy asphalt, knocking small craters with his fist and elbow. What's going on, he thinks wildly, flailing like a dying fish. 

He staggers to his feet and charges at the wall again, feeling his teeth shake at the impact. Dust rains down on his face and hair. It stays on.

He runs, heaving and panting under the weight of the arm he can't shake off. He hits the main road and the lights and colours seem to scream themselves into his eyes. This is unreal. It's a city but not a city. He must be on another fucking planet. Then he thinks, he must be back in Austria. This can't be real. Everything looks too new, too clean, too -

A huge red bus rumbles past with a giant picture printed on its side. A costumed man points outwards confidently. WE WANT YOU! A speech bubble shouts.

The cacophonous roar in his brain quietens, all at once. He stares dumbly at the picture, which smirks back at him.

Is that Steve fucking Rogers?

---

It continues with him finding himself having a staring match with a door.

He's standing on the stoop of a nondescript brownstone. There's a crumpled up slip of paper in his hand, and he can't remember how it got there, but that's the least of his problems. He can't remember how he got out of Switzerland too, or how he survived falling off a train, for that matter, so an inexplicable piece of paper mashed between his metal fingers is pretty low priority on his mental list of worries. A unit number is written onto it in neat lettering.

When he checks the unit number against the short tenant list beside the door of the building, his heart leaps to his throat. This can't be possible, but it is. He's alive, he's not in Switzerland, and he's standing on the doorstep of S. G. Rogers' apartment building. Either that, or he's crazy and he's going to have a nasty shock when he wakes up in the cold dark, and finds out he's still strapped to Zola's table and feeling unknown chemicals burn through his bloodstream.

He jams a finger on the button beside the name for an indefinite amount of time, until the door clicks open a fraction. The sliver of face he sees through the crack is familiar. It's pretty much the last thing he remembers seeing too, before he woke up in the back alley of Oz.

At least Steve is here, too. To hell with it. He'll take what he can get.

Squinting at Steve's shadowed features, Bucky smiles so hard his face hurts. It feels unnatural, like he's awakened muscles in his face that haven't been used in years. It feels like it makes the edges of his eyes split, and the lines on his lips crack. He smiles anyway, painfully, at the face he's all too glad to see.

"Heya, punk. How much did you pay them to put your ugly mug on a bus?"

Though Steve's face is half in darkness, Bucky can tell his skin has gone milk-white. He doesn't want to imagine how he looks like to Steve, showing up on his doorstep looking like a half-drowned rat crawled out of its watery grave. "Bucky?" he finally whispers, his voice low and hoarse. "Is that you?"

"No, it's fuckin' Santa Claus. Make a hole, it's been a long day." He doesn't wait and shoulders his way past, making Steve stumble back a little. He's still gripping the edge of the door tightly and blinking stupidly at Bucky's face.

Bucky chuckles darkly, but he's not in the mood for pleasantries. Now that he's past the threshold of the doorway, all his muscles feel like they're shutting down and screaming for rest His brain is a sizzling nest of short circuits. "Close your mouth, pal. I can see your brain from over here."

Steve closes his mouth with a click.

Bucky stumbles thankfully into Steve's apartment. There's an open carton of orange juice on the table, and Bucky snatches it up immediately. He hasn't had the luxury of drinking something like that since... was it since he shipped out from the docks? Or did he chance across something in London? He can't remember, but at this moment, he's too tired to try. He grabs the juice and chugs it like a dying man, extremely aware of Steve watching him from the door. It's cold and sweet and some of it runs down his chin, and the taste of it makes his eyes water.

He drains it anyway, even the clumps of pulp at the bottom.

When he's finished, he wipes at his mouth with his sleeve and slams the empty carton back down in satisfaction. There's a dull crack that comes from the kitchen counter and he stares in mute horror at his metal fist and the dent it just made.

Then he looks back up and grins sheepishly at Steve, who's still standing in the doorway looking like he's seen a ghost.

"What'sa matter, Stevie? You look like you've seen a ghost."

---

Apparently, there's a giant hole in Bucky's memory, and he's ended up in the future for some magical reason. They fill it after Bucky ditches the weird tac gear he'd found himself wearing under his jacket and has the best shower of his life. He's so tired that he falls asleep in the shower, sitting on the cool tiles and letting the warm spray hammer at his head for longer than necessary. Old blood washes off his skin and out of his hair in brown rivulets. He doesn't know where the blood came from, or whose it was. His body's covered in spectacularly huge bruises, all over his limbs and torso, but if he'd been cut up, it's all healed now.

He wakes up to Steve shaking him violently on the bathroom floor. "God," Bucky complains, swatting his hand away and trying to get to his feet. Somehow, that bit of rest made his head ache more than it did before he'd started showering.

"Bucky?" Steve asks, peering at him with concern.

Bucky rolls his eyes and pulls himself to his feet, shivering a little. Steve must have shut the water off already. "You coppin' a feel, Rogers?"

Steve huffs in annoyance and shoves a bundle of warm clothing at him. "Get dressed before I pull my eyes out."

Bucky obliges and slips into a soft shirt and even softer pants. It feels amazing and smells so clean that Bucky has to resist a very strong urge to curl back up onto the floor and fall asleep again. He doesn't, though, and finally makes it back to the living room where Steve sorts out the blank spaces in Bucky's head.

You fell. I thought I'd lost you, Buck.

Well, you didn't. I mean, I did fall off that train, yeah. What'd I say? I told you it was a dumb plan -

I'm sorry, Bucky, God. I'm so sorry. I should've looked for -

- shut up, I'm not finished. It's fucking weird, okay, hear me out. So the last thing I see is you, unfortunately -

- Bucky -

- and you're screamin' like a little girl, right? Yeah, knew I didn't imagine that. Next thing I know, I'm awake and stinkin' like Dugan's corpse. And I ain't in Kansas anymore.

Huh.

I swear, Steve. I remember it clear as day. I remember it clear as yesterday, because it was really fuckin' yesterday, okay? Morita was getting sick from being so high up in the mountain, remember? And we tried to make ourselves some Howling Snowmen, but the blizzard was too strong -

My God. I'd forgotten that. Dernier damn near froze his fingers off trying to pack the snow together.

And we all practically slept on top of you, because your freakish body was the only warm thing we had.

And I lay there with six human icicles freezin' me up all night. Yeah, I remember. God. It's been so long, Buck.

Last night for me, pal.

Steve tells him what he'd missed when he fell off the train. Somehow, Bucky had survived the fall, and was captured by HYDRA. They'd held him ever since, making him half-robot by replacing the arm he'd lost, and freezing him in a chamber in between their experiments.

You're shittin' me. That couldn't have happened. Seventy years' worth of Austria all over again? Getting a metal arm? Sleepin' on ice? I'd remember somethin' like that, wouldn't I?

I dunno, do you?

Hell no. Christ. Thank fuck.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's one good thing.

Seventy goddamn years, and the only thing I remember is the worst day of my life in 1944.

I'm... I'm really sorry about that, Bucky. I should've, I should've listened to you -

Oh, shut it already. I'm here, aren't I? What the hell did they keep me so long for, anyway?

Not your stunning personality, that's for sure.

You think you're funny, huh? But you're right. Must've been my face. I'd keep me around for seventy years myself.

Ugh, God, get the fuck outta here, Barnes.

I'm just sayin'. Well, that explains me. How about you, Steve? What the fuck are you doin' here? Look at ya, you haven't aged a day. They take you too? Lord, tell me they didn't, tell me they didn't take you -

No, calm down, Buck - no, they didn't take me. But, uh. I kinda got frozen too, myself.

Then Steve explains further, sheepishly, like he's finally admitting to doing something he knows he's gonna get ribbed for.

Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ. You're not serious. The Arctic Circle, pal? What the hell's your problem? What if the whole fucking thing had exploded? What if the ice had killed you? Are you insane?

People were gonna die, Buck. I couldn't let that happen.

---

Steve shows him the television first. "Remember the one we saw at the World Fair? Same idea, seventy years later."

"Jesus." Bucky gazes at the screen and circles round behind it. "Where the hell's the rest of it? How much does this gizmo cost?"

"Not a lot, apparently. Everyone has one in their living room. And there are, like, thousands of channels playing all the time."

The future is insane.

Steve turns it on. The newspeople on the television speak calmly but urgently about a criminal at large.

"What the hell?" Bucky asks nervously, forcefully, as he stares at a blurry photograph of his face, and at the footage of crumbling buildings and exploding planes. Steve changes the channel hurriedly, but it's too late.

Bucky levels a calm glare in his direction, frowning as Steve refuses to look him in the eye. "Why am I a wanted man?"

Steve dithers for a moment, then sighs and pushes his fingers through his hair nervously. "Don't trust anything you see on the screen. HYDRA's in the system. They know you've escaped, and they're pullin' out all the stops to get you back."

"By saying I crashed a giant flying ship into a river?" Bucky retorts, aghast. He knows HYDRA's always been on the dramatic side, but this seems way too over-the-top. Is it a future thing, too? Is it normal to commit such far-fetched crimes these days?

"Nothing like a big show to get the manhunt going," Steve says quietly. "HYDRA pinned that one on me, too. We gotta be careful, Buck. Or they'll come for us again."

Bucky snorts. "For you, maybe," he reasons, "because you're Captain fuckin' America. What the hell do they want with me?"

Steve purses his lips for a moment, then rolls his eyes and shoves at Bucky. "You're dumber than you look. You think that fancy arm came free?"

---

He catches Steve coming out of the bathroom the following night. He knows that body like the back of his hand, which is why he knows that ever since Steve Rogers became Captain America, there wasn't a single scar left on his body. Given a month or so, even the worst scars disappeared like they'd never been there in the first place. All evidence of his rough childhood in the back alleys of Brooklyn were wiped away, much to Bucky's unease. 

So it startles him when he sees two clear marks on Steve's torso, remnants of freshly-healed bullet wounds. Judging from the pink rawness of his skin and the uneven bumps marring its surface, Bucky guesses it couldn't have been more than two weeks ago that he'd gotten them. He hisses in sympathy.

"Who shot you? Was it HYDRA?"

"Oh - nobody, it's nothing, it healed up fast," Steve mumbles, hastily crossing the room to rummage for a clean shirt. "It from the fighting on the helicarriers. It wasn't too bad. You should've seen the other guy." Steve smiles tightly, then turns back to his dresser.

Bucky surveys the welts from afar: one in his upper back near the shoulder, another just below the rib. "You leave yourself unguarded again? I told you, you shouldn't rely on that damn dinner plate so much. Smart guy would shoot you in the leg first. Your other guy wasn't even trying, was he?"

Steve tugs a too-small shirt over his head harder than necessary, frowning deeply. "Trust me, I'm pretty sure he tried really hard."

"Useless HYDRA goons," Bucky snorts and turns back to his Thing Explainer, rolling his eyes as he does so.  "If it were me really tryin', you'd be dead in a heartbeat, shield or no shield."

Steve walks back into the bathroom and slams the door. Always so dramatic.

---

It's not just the gun. His powers of observation aren't the most keen, but he's at least sixty percent sure he's not imagining things.

"Didn't there used to be a small plant by that window?"

Steve makes an unconcerned humming sound, not looking up from his sketchbook.

"Steve. Over there. Look." He points at the space where there maybe definitely was some kind of thing yesterday. Maybe it wasn't a plant. Maybe it was a. Another thing.

He finally stops sketching and looks where Bucky's pointing, then shakes his head slowly. "I don't keep plants, Buck."

He could've sworn there'd been something there. Maybe he should look in the microwave oven. Bucky makes another mental note.

---

"You should talk to Sam," Steve says suddenly one day.

He lets a flicker of annoyance show on his face. "I'm not the one who needs a therapist," Bucky mumbles under his breath, not bothering to take his eyes off his Sudoku puzzle book. Yet another great invention of the 21st century.

"He's not my therapist." Steve chucks a couch cushion at him, and Bucky grabs it out of the air and puts it behind his back. That's better. He hums contentedly in his warm sun-spot by the window.

"He is a therapist," Bucky points out flatly.

He ends up having a short chat with Sam anyway, because Steve insists on it and there's nowhere Bucky can escape when he's under some sort of house arrest. To his relief, Sam speaks to him like a normal person and doesn't ask much about his predicament or his feelings, so he finds himself warming to the guy pretty quickly. He orders Steve out of the room on the grounds of having privacy, and begins a quiet discussion with Sam about how Steve may be well on his way to having a mental breakdown. The concern laced in Sam's voice upon hearing the story of the gun and the plant brings some strange sort of comfort to Bucky. It makes him feel a whole lot better, somehow.

"I gotta say, Barnes, I'm really glad you're telling me about all this."

"Are you kidding me? I'm goin' crazy keeping it to myself. Half the time I'm wondering if one day I'll wake up to the sound of a gun and find that he's done it -"

"It won't get to that."

"I wanna believe you, I really do. But you need to come talk to him. It's, I feel it's been gettin' worse. God knows all the signs I've missed. These are just the ones I found out about."

"Barnes -"

"He talks about you. A hell lot. It's almost creepy. But you get the idea."

"Okay, I'll see what I can do. Thanks for the... heads-up. Are you okay?"

"Am I okay? I don't know. Everything's... fucked. But it's always been. I'll handle it. I'm worried about Steve, because he's not okay."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"I'll try to talk to him about this. And Barnes?"

"Yeah."

"You look out for Steve, you hear me?"

"Pal, I've been doing that since your grandfather was born."

---

It may be the future, but Steve hasn't changed much. Bucky doesn't know what kinds of places Steve finds when he's sleeping at night, but every other day, the injuries sort of just appear out of nowhere. Busted lip here, cut on the eyebrow there. Bucky doesn't make a big deal out of it anymore because he's all big and Captain America now, and even if he can't take care of himself, his magic body will. The small cuts and bruises heal by the following morning, but are always quickly replaced with new ones, as if he waits specifically for Bucky to fall asleep at night before he moonlights as a human punching bag in the streets.

He pretends it doesn't bother him that Steve keeps finding ways to get himself hurt. He figures it's only a matter of time before he finds another bomb-laden plane to bury into the North Pole.

He should talk to Sam about this, too. He's losing track of his mental notes.

Chapter Text

It starts when his doorbell rings in the middle of a random day of a random week.

He's been obsessively shifting his furniture about ever since he moved into the new apartment. Most of the it is from his previous place, which was left in disarray after Nick Fury's apparent assassination and the subsequent crime scene hullabaloo. Thanks to the ridiculous army pension he woke up to, it was easy to find another decent apartment quickly, although Steve still went for a nondescript flat in a quiet neighbourhood. Somehow, the couch and coffee table don't look right anymore in a different space. He's pretty sure this apartment is bigger. It feels that way, anyway.

Sam says he's being ridiculous, and technically Sam's right, because this new apartment is actually a few square feet smaller than the old one, so it doesn't quite make sense that Steve would think it's too big. It makes him feel empty anyway, in a way that keeps him from relaxing too much and settling in. He spends most of his time feeling like he should be packing up and heading off somewhere - heading home - despite the fact that this place is the closest to home he's ever going to get.

In the day, he uses his free time to call Natasha for news about any sightings of Bucky. Then he calls up every old ex-SHIELD agent he remembers to ask them about Bucky sightings too.

He'd stopped the latter a couple of days ago when he called up Janice from tech support and almost got her fired from her new job at a private security firm. Apparently, chatting about aiding enemies of the state on a monitored line on your first day of work isn't the best idea. She'd only gotten off the hook because Steve had Natasha send him the contacts of her bosses there so he could explain it away. For that, he'd sheepishly endured a half-hour of Natasha railing on him over the phone about how he needed to find a hobby or make more friends.

"I have friends," Steve had snapped back heatedly, stabbing his pencil into his Sudoku puzzle a little too hard. "But they're mostly dead. Or part of a neo-Nazi organisation and running from the law for killing a bunch of important people. Then there's you. And Sam."

You mean your therapist?

"You've personally witnessed him jump out of a collapsing building into an airborne helicopter," Steve said patiently.

Clark Kent can be Superman and a reporter, Natasha replied smoothly. Look, I already told you, if you want me to find Barnes fast, you're going to have to stop calling me so often.

"You're a Soviet spy. Multitasking is your thing."

So is assassination. Don't push your luck.

"God, I really do need more friends." Steve pinched the bridge of his nose.

Sit tight. I'll send over a giant Sudoku book, how about that?

That was about a week ago. He's pretty sick of Sudoku already, and by the time the thick tome of Ultimate Sudoku arrives on his doorstep, he doesn't bother unwrapping it. 

The doorbell rings just as he finishes swapping the positions of the couch and the television. It's to reduce the glare on the screen from the window, he reasons. The incessant buzzing startles him more than it should, because Steve never gets any visitors, and when he does, they're not the doorbell-ringing sort. He contemplates grabbing his shield, then decides that's a little excessive.

Besides, it's been doing so well in its new role as a decorative fruit bowl on the coffee table.

The ringing doesn't let up as Steve trudges warily down the steps to the door, and opens it just a crack. At first he sees nothing but bright white light that blinds him momentarily, a sharp difference from the dingy darkness of the old hallway. Then his vision sharpens and something freezes in his throat all the way to his fingertips.

He should've brought his shield down. He should slam the door, bar it, run back to the apartment and grab his phone. Grab the shield. Get Sam on the line, his workplace is about twenty minutes away by car. Less by flight. He could crawl out the fire escape and -

"Heya, punk," says the Winter Soldier, voice lazy and low and sounding of home. "How much did you pay them to put your ugly mug on a bus?"

It's not the Winter Soldier. His voice finds its way to his lips, even though his face is too numb to consciously articulate any sound. "Bucky? Is that you?"

He doesn't get a straight answer, but he doesn't need one. Bucky pushes past him with a scowl on his unkempt face. Suddenly it's 1938 and Steve's doing the same thing, opening the door for Bucky because he'd forgotten his key again, and getting shouldered aside by 150 pounds of muscle stinking of sweat and smoke and the sea. Only now it's 2014 and he's clearly not 150 anymore, and instead of the docks, he smells of drainwater and hard rust. All that time wasted searching for Bucky fruitlessly, and here he is, grinning on Steve's doorstep like he's forgotten that he'd shot Steve three times the last time they saw each other.

With a lump in his throat and his brain malfunctioning, he leads Bucky soundlessly to his apartment door and lets him in.

Bucky sweeps into his house like he owns it already and downs all his orange juice at one go. When he puts the carton of juice down, his fist makes a crack in the new kitchen counter and they both flinch at the sound.

Steve stares apprehensively at Bucky, who stares even more apprehensively at his hand, like he doesn't really know what to do with it or why it's behaving that way. For a moment, his eyes grow wild, as if he's a hair's breadth away from going berserk and tearing the whole thing off. 

Where's the Winter Soldier? Steve wants to ask, but he doesn't. Something tells him Bucky doesn't really know the answer to that question, either.

Chewing on his inner cheek a little, Bucky looks away from his hand and up at Steve. He quirks his mouth to the side, lazy and wicked like always, and it makes something in Steve snap a little further. It's the same sad smile as shown on those newsreels that still play on loop in the Smithsonian. God knows how many times Steve has snuck back just to watch them, the only evidence of Bucky's existence other than a faded enlistment photograph that Coulson had given to him one day. It's a shock to see it again in real life. He wants to see it again.

Bucky laughs at the look on Steve's face and teases him about seeing ghosts.

Yeah, Buck. I'm lookin' right at one.

---

He slowly begins to piece together some sort of explanation for this bizarre situation. He's definitely not dreaming, because Bucky has been around for at least an hour now, and the scene hasn't changed, the people he's killed don't show, and he doesn't suddenly start strapping Bucky onto a table and shoving it off the back of a train. Not a dream.

He wants to call Sam and Nat, but he hasn't had the time, because apparently Bucky has no knowledge of anything that's happened after 1944. He puts a plate strategically over the cracked counter surface and shows Bucky how the shower works. Bucky follows him eagerly, peeling off his layers of clothing gingerly and chucking them unceremoniously onto the floor. His body is a garden of bruises, deep blue and purple fading to yellow-green at the edges. Steve averts his eyes guiltily, remembering that even after Austria and whatever Zola put into him, Bucky has never been able to heal quite as fast as him.

He doesn't seem to notice or care about his injury-mottled skin, though. At Steve's mention of "hot water", he pushes his way into the cubicle immediately, still half-dressed, making a quietly pleased sound in the back of his throat when the water hits him.

"My God," he breathes reverently, turning his face into the steam. His metal arm clicks and shudders quietly under the spray, its grooves closing reflexively. Steve forces himself to look away. "Thought I'd never be warm again."

As Bucky finally remembers to remove the rest of his clothing, Steve excuses himself from the bathroom quickly and wonders if he'd behaved like that too, when he'd just gotten out of the ice. It was all so sudden that he didn't really think to process much of it. He barely remembers the first 48 hours of debriefings and information overload Fury had made him sit through. At the end of it, his only question had been "But are the rest okay?". He remembers the uncomfortable looks the agents had exchanged with one another.

He seats himself nervously by the bed, watching the bathroom door and fiddling with his phone. What do you say to someone who tried to kill you just two weeks ago? What do you say to an old friend whom you thought has been dead this entire time? How do you apologise to someone whom you promised to protect but didn't? Your death was my greatest failure? Does that make up for seventy years of torture at the hands of their enemies?

His body seizes up with the familiar pang of guilt, a hard seed in the bottom of his gut that stretches its roots into his limbs. He's heavy all over. He doesn't deserve to look at Bucky at all, let alone have him back as a friend. 

Half an hour goes by and the shower's still running. The water's probably gone ice-cold by now, because Steve keeps forgetting to upgrade the heater to one of those instant contraptions that provides infinite hot water. Bucky's taking really long in there. He puts the phone down and strides over to rap his knuckles gently on the door.

"Bucky? Everything okay?"

Silence.

"You drownin' or what?"

Silence.

"Don't make me come in there, Barnes."

He tries the knob and realises Bucky hadn't locked the door. The steady splatter of the shower slaps noisily on the cold tile, and whatever warm steam that was made from when the water was first hot is long gone by now. The water pools all over the floor because Steve hasn't gotten around to putting any shower curtains up, either. Bucky crouches in the corner of the stall underneath the shower head, coiled like a spring, his face oddly blank of expression and his eyes narrowed.

"B -"

Bucky flies at him silently with a raised fist. Steve gasps as at least 200 pounds of wet hair and slippery skin almost bowls him over. He flails his arms and manages to maintain his balance on the wet floor. Seizing this opportunity, Bucky immediately starts punching precisely into his unguarded torso. The jabs find their mark: high on his shoulder, low in his gut. Exactly where the Winter Soldier had stabbed and shot him on the helicarrier. His wounds have long since closed but the inner muscles are still a little sore, so Steve grunts a little in surprise at the pain that comes back a little sharper than expected.

He remembers, Steve thinks stupidly, as Bucky's flesh hand glances past his jaw. He remembers the fight.

He recovers quickly enough to parry a few more hits before rushing at Bucky until he's pinned back against the shower wall by Steve's forearm.

"Bucky, stop! It's me, it's -"

His head whips forward and catches Steve right above the eye, but they're both soaked through from the shower water and the hit turns into a messy swipe that barely stings. Steve inhales a mouthful of freezing water and throws a hook into Bucky's temple, and he sags to the floor with a sodden plop.

Steve gasps and shudders, staring mutely at his unconscious friend for a moment. Biting back the shiver that's making his teeth chatter, he shuts off the water and squats down to prod Bucky on the shoulder. If he wakes up and tries to attack him again, at least Steve's ready now.

Nothing happens, so Steve ends up gripping him by the shoulder and shaking hard. Bucky's eyelids flutter and slide open. Steve tenses immediately and watches the metal arm closely. It makes odd sounds like a computer and the fingers twitch slightly, but it remains down.

"God." Bucky's eyes dart about blearily, then settle on Steve's face. Confusion changes to surprise, then annoyance. He pushes Steve's hand away none too gently, shaking his head slightly as though trying to clear water from his ears.

"Bucky?" Steve asks, to be sure. It's Bucky alright, grumbling and complaining about Steve interrupting his nap and having no memory of the fistfight that has just taken place. He rubs at his head, looking faintly puzzled, and Steve leaves him to it.

So on one hand, he has Bucky back, with no memory of anything that's happened to him for the past 70 years. On the other hand, he has the Winter Soldier too, who apparently waits until Bucky's asleep to take over his brain and finally finish his mission to kill Steve.

He should call Sam. He'd know what to do. He's a therapist, after all.

---

"I know you think I'm a therapist," Sam pants, bending over and resting his hands over his knees. He shakes his head incredulously at Steve. "But this is way above my pay grade."

Steve continues doing his pushups as he waits for Sam to catch his breath. "But how do I help him? I don't know what the hell I'm doing, Sam."

"Right now you're hiding a world-class assassin in your home. That's what you're doing."

"He's my friend," Steve insists.

"With what appears to be the worst case of dissociative identity disorder I've ever heard of! How can you live with someone who's trying to kill you every other -"

"It doesn't happen that often," Steve interrupts, unable to keep the pleading tone from his voice. "Really, it doesn't. At first I thought maybe it's only when he sleeps, but I watched him the other night. Slept like a baby."

Sam straightens up and puts his hands on his hips. "Okay, that didn't sound weird at all. Come on, man. How many times are you gonna let him go all Eastern Promises on your ass?"

"What does that even mean? Is that a Western?" Steve stops and gets to his feet too, dusting off his hands. It sounds like a Western. Although it does have the word "eastern" in it. He instantly regrets his stupid question.

"No, it's this film where Viggo Mortensen fights off a bunch of people completely naked. You should add it to your list, just for that scene alone."

"Pass." His list is too long to add a movie just to watch a naked man fighting. It's not like he hasn't seen it happen before, anyway. "And he's only done it once."

"How can you leave him alone in the apartment? What if his switch suddenly flips when you're out here with me?"

Steve shrugs and shifts his weight uncomfortably. "Called in a few favours. Tony let me use JARVIS to monitor his activity when I'm out." He pulls out his Starkphone to show Sam. Also, despite showing her full disapproval, Natasha had told him the best places to set up the surveillance in the room.

"You bugged your own apartment? You just bypassed weird and went straight to creepy." Sam gapes at him incredulously. "Here I thought that bluetooth thing in your ear was your workout music."

Slipping the phone back into his pocket, Steve shrugs again. "Desperate times, I guess."

Sam sighs. He wipes away the sweat from his brow, looking off into the distance pensively. "So? How about the other times? Am I gonna need to sit down before I hear how many times he's almost managed to kill you in your sleep?"

They start a slow walk. "It's mostly random moments, I guess. I don't really know what triggers it, but so far it's nothing I can't handle. I used to need to knock him out every time, but yesterday I actually managed to talk him down."

"Talk him down. You mean talk Bucky down, or talk the Winter Soldier down?"

"The Winter Soldier, I think. I mean, I did wake up to find him pressing a gun to my face, so I'll hazard a guess and assume it wasn't Bucky at the time."

"...fuck."

"Yeah, that's what I thought too. But - obviously - he didn't shoot me. I think he was afraid, even. Started asking me a lot of questions in Russian about his mission or something. So I, er. I kind of told him that I'm his handler, I think. I'm not sure how I sounded like in Russian, but he ended up giving me his gun and going back to sleep, so I guess I was okay at it."

Sam raises his eyebrows. "For the love of God, keep that gun well away from him."

"I did. I hope. I'll throw it out when I get the chance."

"Well, shit. He's gonna be shitting himself with guilt over all these episodes."

Steve picks up the pace and walks a little faster, so that Sam has to break into a light jog to keep up.

"Well?" Sam presses. Steve contemplates speeding up, but they pass a teenage girl walking her Husky, and her face lights up in recognition. She squeals and wrings her hands when Steve smiles gently and kneels down to pet the dog, which slobbers all over Steve's neck and sheds aggressively on his damp shirt.

After taking a quick selfie with the girl, Steve turns back to Sam, who's standing a little off to the side looking bored and slightly disgruntled. He's used to people stopping Steve on the street, so Steve knows the reason he's displeased isn't because of the sudden interruption of their conversation. It's because he knows Steve is avoiding the question. His expression already shows that he's figured out the answer.

"He doesn't know," Sam accuses, folding his arms across his chest in silent judgement.

"He remembers falling off the train," Steve admits quietly, "and nothing after. He - I couldn't -"

" - tell him about everything he's done as the Winter Soldier?" Sam says harshly, then exhales sharply and contains his emotions quickly, looking pained.

"It's not just what he did. You saw the files. You saw what they did to him." Steve pauses, his heart hammering in his throat. "He's alright now, Sam. He's happy, and he's not - damaged, or troubled, or afraid. He hates his metal arm, he doesn't even know how to use it properly, he tells terrible jokes - he's Bucky, just as he's supposed to be. I can't... I can't take that away from him. I know you understand. Tell me you understand."

Sam nods slowly, but Steve can tell he's only doing it to make him feel better about himself. "He deserves to know," Sam says eventually. At least the bluntness in his tone is gone.

"I know. I'm just... waiting for the right time."

Sam levels a gaze at Steve, warm and strong and sad all at once. "Is that gonna be before or after he wakes up and finds out he's shot and killed you for no apparent reason?"

The phone in his pocket vibrates and the Bluetooth device in his ear chirps a soft warning. "Captain Rogers, Mr. Barnes is in close proximity to the concealed firearm in the kitchen."

"I have to go," Steve blurts apologetically, wincing at the warning glare on Sam's face. "I'll call you - I have to go -"

Without waiting to hear Sam's response, he sprints all the way back to the apartment.

---

So.

The microwave oven wasn't the best place to hide it. He manages to dispose it discreetly on another morning run, dissembling it and tossing the parts into a garbage truck surreptitiously.

---

He wakes up one night to the round of faint rustling and muffled bangs. Senses on high alert, he creeps out of his bedroom to check on Bucky. In the darkness, he makes out the couch and notes that it's empty, then he's thrown back against the wall by a huge hulking shadow. Something blunt hits him in the mouth and he tastes the familiar tang of his own blood.

"Ты обещал мне," Bucky hisses, pressing a blade to his jugular. Steve swallows against the cold steel, his palms already turned upwards in surrender. Promise? What promise?

"Это не безопасное место." His eyes are wide and panicked, his mouth taut and trembling. Steady hands hold Steve down firmly.

"What do you mean?" Steve mutters as non-threateningly as possible. "It's safe. Безопасно. I'm staying here too, you know."

"Вы же говорили, что эта квартира безопасна?" Bucky straightens and throws a mass of tangled wire at his feet, looking livid and betrayed. Steve lets out a long, controlled exhale. It's no wonder JARVIS hadn't alerted him earlier. The Winter Soldier had found the bugs and ripped them out completely.

"I know how it looks," Steve says carefully, palms still raised. "I can explain. Oправдывать. Explain? Is that how you say it? Fuck." Steve needs to get the knife away from him, at least. He kicks away the wires on the floor and steps closer to Bucky, who scrambles ten feet backwards like a startled cat, his back hitting the flowerpot on the windowsill. It shatters on the floor, spilling earth everywhere. Steve tries not to wince.

"Your mission's over, soldier. Oтступить."

Bucky pauses, his right hand halfway reaching for the window latch. "You have a terrible accent," he says suddenly, peering curiously at Steve through the darkness. His voice is low and gravelly, devoid of any expression. He realises it's the first time he's heard the Winter Soldier speak since the helicarrier. "You are not Russian."

"No, I'm not," Steve agrees. Thank God, I think I've used up all the Russian vocabulary I know.

"Are you HYDRA? Are you my mission?" The knife hasn't lowered.

"I used to be," says Steve nervously, eyeing the weapon in Bucky's hand. "Your mission, I mean. Not HYDRA. But I'm your friend, I've always been your friend. I'm not gonna hurt you."

"HYDRA. They are watching us," Bucky hisses his warning, throwing a hateful look at the destroyed equipment on the floor then back at Steve. "We need to find a new safehouse."

"No, no, they're not watching us," Steve says quickly, before Bucky suddenly decides to hightail it out the window into the street. "That was all of my stuff. I put it there just in case someone... breaks in."

Bucky - no, the Winter Soldier - looks at him like he's made of stupid, or talking out of his ass. But the lie works because he looks unsure, and he lowers the knife slowly. "I should trust you."

Immense relief courses through Steve's body and he sags, dropping his arms too. It's an odd but comforting statement to hear. "Yes, you should."

The Winter Soldier looks unimpressed. "No more surveillance," he warns Steve, pointing his knife a little to emphasise the consequences.

"Okay. Okay, no more surveillance."

"He trusts you." He keeps his distance, circling away from Steve as he comes a little closer.

"'He'? Bucky? Is he - is he there?"

"Sleeping." The Winter Soldier taps at his temple absently, as though it explains everything. He points his knife in the direction of Steve's bedroom. "Go back to bed. I will do the cleanup. No evidence."

"What?" Steve's brain isn't processing this quickly enough. "What evidence?"

The Winter Soldier looks nonplussed, then points to the mess on the ground and the shattered pot between them. Steve hesitates, but a look of warning comes back into the Winter Soldier's eyes, so he backs away and closes his bedroom door.

Two days later, Steve's busted lip is all but healed up, so all the evidence really is gone. Then Bucky realises the plant's missing, and his eyes display genuine confusion. Steve shifts in his seat uneasily, wondering if the Winter Soldier's watching and assessing his every movement at this moment from somewhere beneath Bucky's consciousness.

After Steve vehemently denies the existence of any plants in his house, Bucky sighs and looks at him sadly. He suddenly declares that Steve can talk to him if he wants to.

"Huh?" Is all Steve can say. He can't know about the Winter Soldier. There's no way he could find out, not with him staying indoors 24/7.

"M' serious, Steve. If there's anything you need to get off your chest. Promise I won't judge."

He shoots Bucky a blank look. "Thanks, Buck, but I got nothing to say."

"He is a terrible liar." Bucky's voice becomes blunt and toneless.

"Am not," Steve replies automatically, then frowns at the weird way Bucky phrased it.

Bucky blinks and raises his eyebrows. "Not what?"

"A terrible liar," Steve repeats slowly.

Bucky looks faintly surprised, then chuckles softly and goes back to his puzzle book. "Yeah, you are."

Chapter Text

"I get it, we're both going fucking insane, but stop it already!" Bucky huffs out a breath and slams his pen down heatedly, glaring daggers across the room.

Steve looks up from his laptop screen in mild surprise at the outburst. He's plugged in and listening to some sort of music or something, because he simply frowns at Bucky's livid expression and pulls an earbud free. "You said somethin', Buck?"

"Of course I said something," Bucky growls. "You're a shitty fuckin' roommate, you know that?"

As if in tune with his emotions, his metal arm clicks in annoyance, but he clenches his teeth and pretends it's not there. Lately, its presence has been jarring at best. You'd think he would get used to the idea the longer he's had it, but so far, it's been the opposite. If anything, it seems like his control over it slips a little more each day. Or maybe it's because he's going stir-crazy living practically two inches from Steve Rogers' stinking armpits.

Steve looks a little offended, and makes a sniffing noise of disapproval. "That's uncalled for. I haven't done anything."

"Yeah? I ignored it the first few times, but I'm putting my foot down right now," Bucky accuses, tearing out a page from the book in front of him and balling it up. He flings it at Steve. 

Steve catches it just before it hits him in the forehead. His expression is unreadable as he unfurls it, looking down at the mess of numbers and squares. "What am I supposed to be guilty of, exactly?"

Bucky scowls harder. It's not like Steve to play dumb, and he's at the end of his tether. "There are numbers all over the sides of my squares, Steven."

"So what?" Steve retorts sullenly.

"So fucking what - You've fucked with my thought process! I can't even see the numbers I put in anymore!"

"The numbers are there so you can keep track of your clues," Steve says slowly, stonily. The bastard.

"Well, I don't need your damn clues. There's plenty of other sudoku puzzles in the damn book. Fuckin' start your own. Jesus."

---

He's in a forest clearing and it's cold, so cold even the trees around him seem to shiver in the bitter frost.

He's naked and he has a short, blunt knife in his hand. At least, he thinks he does. When he looks down, though, it changes into a baseball bat.

He doesn't know what he's doing in the clearing, but the trees start to shuffle around him slowly. He should get out, but he can't. Beyond the gaps in the trees, nothingness. He grips his weapon tightly; it's a rusty crowbar.

"Don't be afraid," a tree whispers, and the other trees laugh quietly in the wind.

Then he's afraid.

There is a roar and he turns and the snow is hot under his soles. It's a bear, shaggy and dark and huge, with teeth bared and slaver dripping from its jaws. It rushes at him, so he throws his arms up because it's all he can do because there are no weapons in his hands and the paw comes down on him, heavy and hurting, because he has no arms -

---

"What's the weirdest dream you've ever had?"

Bucky's lying on the floor near the window because there's a warm patch of sun and he's going to stay there no matter what, and anyone who tries to move him from it is going to die a painful death.

"What?" Steve pulls an earbud out of his ear again. What the hell is so interesting on the computer that keeps him so preoccupied?

He rolls his eyes and repeats himself. "Do you get weird dreams?"

"Define weird." Steve starts typing quickly on the keys again, a frown forming in between his eyes.

"I dreamt I fought a bear naked," Bucky supplies, staring up at the ceiling. Something about that dream stuck with him. He'd woken up with the smell of the bear's matted fur in his nose, all blood and wet dog. Dreams weren't meant to do that, were they?

"That's nice," Steve says absently, still typing feverishly. The bastard.

Bucky lobs a couch cushion at him carelessly, and it sails over his head.

"I'm listening - wait - yes." Steve grins triumphantly and nods happily to himself, then looks up from his screen. "Sorry, what? You dreamt you were a bear?"

"I fought one," Bucky snaps irritably. "What the fuck do you keep doing on your computer?"

"Online pictionary. And no, I can't say I have weird dreams. That was always your thing."

"No, I'm serious," Bucky says, sitting up now to show Steve he's serious. "You know sometimes you have a ridiculous dream but when you wake up you really don't know whether it's really happened or not?"

"Like I said, I think that was always you," Steve points out evenly. "Remember when you were, like, fifteen? You ran all the way to my house at six in the morning?"

"Yeah. That was a bad one. I really thought it'd happened."

"Because dying from eating too much cheese is a common cause of death," Steve snickers.

"You were in a coffin," Bucky recalls, feeling silly. It really had been a ridiculous dream. "And I thought it had to be true because -"

"- you poked me and made a hole in my arm. And discovered that I'd turned into cheese in death."

"I don't choose what I dream," Bucky mumbles defensively, recalling the horror of the dream with vivid clarity. They'd all had to sit around Steve's coffin to eat him with forks and knives, after the funeral service. That part he didn't tell anyone.

Steve laughs, bubbly and loud, and Bucky lies back down slowly. "You laugh now. I was terrified. Damn near shit my pants over it."

Steve hums sympathetically. "So? Who won?"

"Hmm?"

"Who won? You or the bear?"

Bucky purses his lips, thinking hard as the last traces of the dream move farther out of reach in his mind. "Dunno. It was kickin' my ass because I had no hands. Then a tree gave me a giant foam hand and I used it to rip its head off."

"Yep, that definitely happened," Steve affirms, his grin wide and only a little mocking. Bucky resists throwing another cushion.

---

He's in a desert, perched atop a rock and baking in the sun. His skin is peeling, and his metal arm glows red hot.

In the distance, a figure. It comes closer, and closer. He sits and stares as the blob slowly becomes bigger, more human-shaped. The silhouette waves gently in the heat-mirage of the scorching sand.

It's a girl. She has no face, but Bucky knows who she is. She makes human-sounds and gives him a sack. He opens it and starts taking its contents out, one by one. A rattling canister of teeth. A gun. Tin of breathmints. Also someone's head, bled out completely and wrapped securely in clear plastic wrap. He nods in satisfaction because apparently it's everything he expected.

He picks the girl up, folds her like a marionette, and shoves her into the bag, too.

---

"I have to step out."

"I'll come with."

"Hell you are. It's not safe for you out there."

"And it is for you? Pal, I've been lookin' out for you all my life -"

"I can do that on my own."

"C'mon. Steve. I'm dyin' here. I haven't seen the sun in months."

"You literally lie in the sun every day." Steve pauses. "I won't be gone long, okay? I just need to grab more clothes."

"Why? Plenty of clothes here for you to choose from."

"Bucky, you rip the left sleeve off of everything you take from me. I have nothing left except what I'm wearing right now." Steve waves his arm irritably at himself as an explanation.

It's not a bad t-shirt, in Bucky's opinion. It's mostly black with a colourful slogan in the front that says, I saved Manhattan and all I got was this stupid T-shirt!.

"The fucking cloth keeps catching and jamming the fucking arm, okay? Besides, nothin' wrong with what you're wearing now."

"It's at least two sizes too small. My biceps are suffocating."

"Boo fuckin' hoo. I'm Captain America, my muscles are too big. You know, I bet if I took the sleeves off that shirt, it'd fit better."

"Shut up. Just stop ruining my clothes. God, why do I even put up with you?"

"I'm your only friend, you loser," Bucky retorts sourly. He leans forward uncontrollably as Steve cracks the front door open. "C'mon. Please. I didn't escape a prison to end up in another."

Steve's expression crumples a bit, his hand hesitating on the doorknob. Bucky almost feels bad about it, but he's never passed up the chance to fight dirty. He tries not to grin as he sees Steve's resolve visibly crumble in front of him.

What he doesn't expect is Steve sighing heavily and closing the door.

Before Bucky can register what's going on, Steve crosses the small living room and plops back down onto the couch, groaning and rubbing at his eyes tiredly. "I'm sorry," he says finally. "If you gotta stay, I'll stay in, too."

Bucky chews on his lip. "But - your clothes."

"I'll get help. Believe it or not, you're not my only friend, Bucky."

---

He's lying on his back, awake but not awake. His vision is blurred, and to his left, he hears a loud buzzing sound. Why is he lying down in a barber shop?

It's not a barber shop. The buzzing comes closer to him, so he turns his head to see what it is. It's shiny, and metal, and it's spinning. It comes closer and kisses his skin, right above the elbow. The blade sinks in easily, its teeth wicking out globs of flesh and blood.

Strangely, it doesn't hurt. It's real, it's happening. The buzzing clears all thought in his head. He's awake. He's not. His eyes flutter.

"It's alive," someone says to his right.

"In the name of God!" someone else agrees.

The blade hits bone, and he feels the vibrations everywhere, from his teeth to his toes. Oh, in the name of God, indeed. The buzzing settles deep in his bones, rattling, rattling. It tickles so he starts laughing: small chuckles at first, then wide-mouthed and gasping, with tears streaming from his eyes. The people around him laugh along with him.

When he wakes up, really wakes up, he's trembling cold and alone on a lumpy couch with a metal fist digging a hole in the fabric. He's still crying.

---

He takes the laptop from Steve and learns how to use it pretty quickly. The online pictionary is fun, but he keeps getting banned because his drawings are inappropriate, apparently.

"The word was 'arrest', Steve, it's perfectly valid. People get arrested for swingin' their dicks around in public."

"There are many other things you can get arrested for," Steve sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Some people have no sense of humour.

After cussing him out for hours about getting banned and depriving him of his only form of entertainment, Steve resorts to drawing a crude and funny comic strip about a naked man fighting a bear with a foam finger. The man ends up making a suit out of the dead bear's fur and lives out the rest of his days in the woods wearing the rotting onesie like a trophy, until the maggots inside it eat him alive too.

Bucky loves it so much he pastes it onto the living room wall next to the television.

---

He's in a war hospital in London, but he can't remember who he's supposed to be visiting. The wards are full and the screaming and moaning never ceases, just varies in pitch and volume from time to time. He can't find the person he's looking for, but he knows he recognises the faces of each patient he walks past. The whole ward. They're all there because of him.

Nobody tells him this. It's just something he knows. It's his dream, after all.

It's not an ordinary hospital. Sometimes the sheets are different. A little boy lies in a bed under a dark blue quilt, crying. Someone had taken a shotgun to his face, but he's alive and crying and glaring angrily with his one remaining eye.

Sometimes the bed doesn't have sheets. He passes a few patients that have been tied down with ropes instead, or metal cuffs. The rows go on forever, and he can't see the back of the ward for a long time. It keeps going. It probably goes around the whole planet.

He wants to ask the nurses what's going on, and where he can find the person he's looking for, but the nurses are busy and don't acknowledge his presence. They zip about hurriedly from patient to patient on chunky roller-skates, never actually doing anything. Just hovering and looking miserable. They twirl about in sad circles as he squeezes past them.

He reaches the end of the row and he hasn't found who he's looking for, but there's an empty bed with its covers folded back neatly. There's a clipboard at the foot of the bed and he picks it up. The writing is blurry, but he knows it's his name he's reading, even though he doesn't really know what it is at the moment. Then he understands.

He climbs into the bed and closes his eyes. The metal cuffs close on his wrists and ankles, and he joins in the chorus of wails.

---

If Steve knows Bucky wakes up screaming, he doesn't mention it, so Bucky doesn't, either.

The days bleed together and Bucky loses all sense of time and real life. He takes Steve's laptop again and surfs Youtube until he doesn't even know how he ends up watching a man singing a song called "Bed Intruder Song".

"Enough," Steve groans, as Bucky hits "replay" and sings along.

"But they're raping everybody out there," Bucky insists, but he stops anyway because he's not an asshole.

He uses Google a lot, too. It passes the time.

"Hitler wasn't even German?!" Bucky exclaims.

"Apparently he was an artist, too." Steve shudders, as though that anecdote irks him.

He's halfway Googling something else just as insignificant when he blinks and the laptop is on the other side of the room, completely wrecked. Steve is on his feet, looking shocked and annoyed. "What the hell was that for?" he half-shouts, staring at Bucky wildly.

"I - I don't know." Bucky licks his lips. They've gone dry. His metal arm whirs knowingly, cool and mocking. The fingers make a fist, unclench, then ball up again. Bucky trembles and wills it to stop, but it keeps moving. It's not listening. It's not his arm. "I'm not crazy," Bucky hears himself say, distantly, but he's not too sure about it. "I - I didn't say I was crazy. No. Of course. You're not."

The words are coming from his mouth, but not from him. The arm makes a loud humming sound, like how the laptop gets when Bucky's opened too many programs at once. The laptop that's now smashed against the wall across the room. He closes his eyes. What's going on?

"Steve -" the clicking sounds get louder, as the arm awakens and moves like a robotic snake, sinuous and heavy. He can't do this. The arm, this thing - it's. It's not his. "Steve, help me -"

A dull roar fills his ears and he can't hear anything apart from the mechanical gears in his body. What has he - it - done? He gapes at the laptop again at the other side of the room. He doesn't remember how it got there. The arm. The arm knows how it got there.

He lies down because it's hard to breathe. His chest expands painfully, so full of air but there's no air at all. He's going to die, oh God, what's happening? What's happening to me? I'm going to - to - this arm, get it off, it's going to kill me. It's going to kill everyone.

A sound and a warm weight on his shoulder. He looks up. It's Steve, and concern is written all over his face. Bucky would feel annoyed if not for the panic he's feeling now.

"Calm down," Steve is saying, his face white. "What's happening to you?"

How the fuck, Bucky thinks, am I supposed to know? 

The arm twitches hard, shuddering and jerking, and Bucky feels like throwing up. He probably would have by now, if he could breathe properly. God. He grits his teeth. He can't breathe. He's going to die.

"Jesus Christ, Buck, are you okay? Do you need to - to eat some food, or something? It's okay, it's just a laptop, I can order a new one -"

"Stop. Stop. Talking," Bucky bites out, curling up and groaning. His vision swims, and he's clenching his jaw so hard that his head starts to hurt. He can't stop. He's wound like a spring, tighter and tighter, he needs to run away but he can't move. The metal hand slaps against the side of his head, hard, and he doesn't know if he's done it voluntarily or not. He gasps harder and squeezes his eyes shut.

"I'll - maybe I'll get some water? I'll - stay here, I'll be right back." Steve pulls away.

"No, no, don't - don't, please," Bucky cries out, thrashing helplessly. He's drowning. He's drowning, Steve can't go now, he's fucking drowning. He draws a shuddering breath and tries to explain as much.

"Asshole!" he says instead, and he slaps himself hard in the temple again.

"Tell me what to do!" Steve shouts desperately, kneeling back down beside Bucky and fumbling for his phone. "Jarvis, help me, he can't breathe, he's dying!"

Who the hell is Jarvis? Bucky reaches for Steve and pulls him closer. The pain in his chest lessens a little, but his body is still paralysed. He needs to breathe. He tries, and fails. He's going to die.

The metal arm grasps Steve's arm and shakes him hard. "Fix it, fix him," Bucky snarls under his breath, but he doesn't know what he means. He didn't mean to say any of that at all.

"I gotcha, Buck, just keep - keep breathing, okay?" Then Steve turns to the side again, attention focused on his phone.

Keep breathing. Fuck you.

"A what? Nobody's attacking us right now," Steve snaps irritably. "Forget it, get Stark on the line! Bucky, calm down, stop moving about, you'll just make it worse."

Fuck you. Bucky grinds his teeth together, and wonders if his teeth are about to crack from the pressure. Then the room spins and he's gone, he's dead and dying, he's spilling his guts onto Steve's knees and it's never going to end. He thinks he inhales some of the vomit right back into his lungs, and chokes even more. His vision darkens.

Maybe it's just another stupid dream. He'll wake up with tear tracks down his cheeks and he'll tell Steve about it and they'll laugh and Steve'll draw a cartoon about it and maybe they'll be able to leave this damn apartment soon -

His vision goes black. 

---

This dream he knows. This dream he knows it really happened.

The train moves slow in the dream, like it's forcing its way through thick honey. He sees everything about to happen in slow motion, powerless to change any of it. He hefts the shield up and braces himself, but the blast knocks him off his feet anyway. He knows this. It's already happened.

He flies through the air and wonders if he'll ever be warm again. He reaches his arms out because he knows there's something to hold on to.

He doesn't look down because he knows what awaits him down there. He looks up because he knows who he'll see, and that fills him with impossible hope even though he knows what happens in the end.

In the dream, though, the ending is different. In the dream, Steve follows him down.

---

He wakes up and doesn't know if he's had a dream or a nightmare. There's a taste of death in his mouth. Feeling his face scrunch up in disgust, he pushes himself up into a sitting position. He feels exhausted, like he's just pulled an all-night shift behind enemy lines. His brain is so frazzled he can barely process what just happened.

Steve stares at him guiltily from a chair he'd pulled up by the bed. Huh. He's in Steve's bed. So now he knows how to get the more comfortable deal. Scare Steve into thinking he's dying.

Bucky tests his voice. "How. How do you make a circus clown cry?"

"How - what?" Steve's face changes from concern to confusion.

"You kill his family." He heaves himself out of bed and plods to the bathroom to wash the vile taste of puke out of his mouth.

Steve breathes out hard through his nose, and Bucky can feel his gaze following him all the way. "You're all better, then?"

Bucky makes a noncommittal sound of agreement. "Sorry I scared you," he calls over his shoulder.

"No, it's okay," Steve says immediately, getting up to follow Bucky. "It was my fault, I was the worst."

"Worst what?" The satisfying taste of mint hits his tongue and he almost swallows all the mouthwash, it feels that clean. He savours the burn of it swishing in his mouth.

"Apparently, you had an anxiety attack. And I made it worse because I didn't know how to handle it."

Bucky spits the mouthwash in the sink. "A what now?"

"Yeah. They exist, who knew?" Steve explains sheepishly, watching the mouthwash swirl away down the drain. "According to Tony, it can happen to anyone."

"So all of that. I was just panicking?" Bucky feels bummed and really stupid. "I thought I was gonna die. You sayin' it's all in my head?"

"I dunno," Steve says sadly. "But I got really scared for a moment there, Buck. I thought. I thought -"

"Heh. Yeah, I thought so too." Then a grin pulls at his lips, tight and painful. "Sorry for hurling on your khakis."

Steve waves it off, smiling slightly. "They were ugly, anyway."

"And destroying your laptop."

"I'll get another."

"And stealing Sandy Abernathy from you in third grade."

"I'm never forgiving you for that."

"Damn it."

Chapter Text

Sleep doesn't come to him easily, never had.

When he was young it was always his lungs, or the weather: breathing was difficult, his nose was too blocked, the air was too still, the sheets were too hot. His ma had been patient and understanding. Bucky had been, too, in his own way. He'd kick back at Steve and call him names and lament dramatically to the mouldy ceiling about all the beauty sleep he was missing out on over Steve's muffled panting or pained wheezing, but as the night drew on and the air became chilly, they drew themselves closer inexplicably, the curved smalls of their backs touching, their voices hushed. Bucky would murmur stories about what they'd do in school the next day.

Which turned into stories about after they'd graduated school. After they'd gotten jobs. After they'd found better jobs. After he'd returned from Basic. After he'd shipped out to England. After he'd come home. After they'd left Italy, after the next mission and the next mission and catching Zola killing Schmidt after after

He lies in bed a lot, after coming out of the ice, but he doesn't really sleep. Sometimes when he does, it doesn't even feel like sleep: just a sort of zoning out of his consciousness, a short few hours of his brain swimming through lost memories and lost time. At night, it feels like his soul's sinking into the too-soft bed in search of roots that have been cut off long ago. Man out of Time, the newspapers had called him.

This night, he's thinking about their old apartment, or trying to, anyway. Thing is, he can't really remember how it looked like. Or what was inside. Maybe there never was anything inside worth remembering. He racks his brain but the only image his brain throws back at him is the pattern of the stained ceiling above the bed. There's nothing else. He remembers the war a lot more. The dank sodden canvas tents and dirt-packed bedrolls. The unsettling quiet of the night when you knew, you just knew, that something horrible was about to happen. Only nothing happened, and you realised you'd spent the entire night sitting up with your jaw clenched so tight that your head hurts.

Faint rustling sounds at first, then the definite sounds of drawers sliding open and banging shut. Steve rises smoothly, still fully clothed, and glances at the clock. 4:39am. Something about the muted sounds of movement in the kitchen tells him it's Winter Soldier hour.

"I told you, there aren't any more wires in the house," he says quietly, leaning in the doorway as he watches Bucky tear up his understocked kitchen. Most of the cupboards are empty, and his cutlery is a bunch of plastic takeout forks and spoons he'd carefully washed and saved for reuse.

The Winter Soldier doesn't startle or look up, but continues his methodical search. Steve watches warily, eyeing the tic of the muscle in his jaw and blandly wondering if tonight's going to be a Good Soldier night or a Bad Soldier night. He's not in the mood for a Bad Soldier night, he decides, but there's nothing he can do about it either way.

"No weapons," the Winter Soldier finally bites out, slamming the last cupboard closed and throwing him an irritated look. His hands are balled into anxious fists, clenching and unclenching like he really needs to be holding something in them.

Steve suppresses the urge to smirk. "I don't need weapons."

"You took my gun," the Winter Soldier growls. He starts searching for secret stashes now, peering under counters and knocking on the backs of the shelves, but Steve can tell he's just doing this out of hope. He knows there isn't anything to find. "Everybody needs weapons."

Steve remembers their helicarrier fight, and the fight before that too, on the highway. The Winter Soldier had practically been a walking arsenal, a cartoon character pulling weapons out of nowhere. Looking back on that, he doesn't know how he'd survived those encounters.

"I don't need weapons," Steve says helpfully. "I have my shield."

Scoff. "Бесполезно. Fruit bowl."

"It's not a - " Steve glances at the coffee table behind him and stops. Well. He's not wrong.

"No knives. What kitchen has no knives? This is the worst safehouse. HYDRA. Тупые ублюдки. Who stocked it?" Bucky paces around the small kitchen, bristling in annoyance.

"It's my house. I live here," Steve points out.

The Winter Soldier stops in his tracks and blinks at him. "Your house," he repeats slowly. "You live here."

"You were the one who came to find me, remember?"

"...yes." He sounds unsure. The Winter Soldier's eyes flit surreptitiously to the window across the room, to the doorway, to Steve, back to the window. "You took my gun away," he says again, in a small voice, as if he wants to say give it back, but he's not sure if he should.

"You don't need it," Steve assures him evenly, keeping his tone cool and planting his feet firmly. He knows better than to make a move now, because spooked Winter Soldier means Bad Soldier night. "You're safe here, Bucky. HYDRA's gone."

"Not him." The Winter Soldier frowns hard, then continues mechanically, unconvinced. "Cut off the head - "

"Two more take its place? Yeah, it's all bullshit, pal. Come on.Their secrets are all out now. The government's rounding them all up, smoking them out of their holes... when they're done, you'll be safe. Forever."

Bucky chuckles darkly, unimpressed and humourless, and casts a final despairing look around his vicinity. Then he shrugs stiffly and plops back down in his usual seat, resuming his sudoku marathon.

Steve lets out a breath he doesn't know he'd been holding, and slumps a little against the doorframe. "You know, you should really stop doing that. Bucky thinks I'm the one fucking up his puzzles."

The Winter Soldier doesn't look up. ""Здесь, бля, так скучно. Ты держишь меня тут как в тюрьме," he mutters under his breath, making a show out of scratching out a few more numbers onto the paper to prove his point.

"Тюрьмe. Prison? Is that what you meant? Can we try that again in English?"

"Prisoner. Bored."

"You're not my prisoner, you're my friend."

Another scoff, and this time the Winter Soldier looks up, sharp and challenging. "Will you let me leave?"

Steve chews on his lip wordlessly, dropping his gaze a little.

Bucky raises his eyebrow like his point has been made, and goes back to the puzzle.

---

He doesn't remember what their apartment used to look like, but he remembers all the stupid fights they'd had living together in it. Sure, he and Bucky were best friends, but Steve's pretty sure they didn't go longer than two days without chewing each other out about something stupid. Most of the time it was over Bucky's irritating habit of not putting anything back in the right place, or whose turn it was to do the laundry.

Over the years they'd grown used to each other's proximity, but it was always something they had to tolerate. The straw that almost broke the proverbial camel's back and almost made Steve want to sleep out on the street was when they'd both discovered that they'd been sharing the same toothbrush for a year.

"Mine has ALWAYS been the one with the chip in the handle, you punk!" Bucky had yelled, looking mortified and wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand like it would undo the months of brushing his teeth with the wrong toothbrush.

"I chipped it the night our lights went out and I slipped while showering!" Steve had shouted back.

"It was chipped way before that," Bucky had snarled, chucking the tainted-beyond-saving toothbrush into the bin.

They never found out whose toothbrush it actually was, but Steve's still ready to fight Bucky on that any day.

And it seems like Bucky is too, because speaking of toothbrushes, Steve wakes up one morning and finds his missing. Really? An eighty-year grudge?

"Bucky, where's my toothbrush?"

"How the fuck would I know? I use my own."

"Don't start this again, I'm serious!" Steve looks around another time just in case, but the bare bathroom hides nothing. The glass on the counter sits innocently in front of him, its one green toothbrush still damp from recent use.

"Mine's green, yours is red," Bucky shouts back from the living room. "I ain't colour-blind, pal. And for the record, the chipped toothbrush was mine."

"You never had any proof," Steve retorts automatically, feeling increasingly irritated by the minute. First Bucky destroys all his clothes, then he hides his toothbrush. Having Bucky back wasn't supposed to be like this. His patience is running lower than his supplies, and he tries to calm himself down by reminding himself that Nat's going to drop by soon with fresh groceries.

"Check the trash," Bucky calls back, sounding like he's holding back laughter.

"Buck, I swear to God - quit fuckin' around!"

"I didn't do anything to your God damn toothbrush!"

"It's. Not. Here!"

"Too bad. Don't use mine."

Steve seethes silently for awhile, then steels himself and picks up Bucky's toothbrush. Fine. If he can't brush his teeth, nobody can.

He uses the toothbrush vindictively, grimacing and trying not to think about the fact that it's not his, then slides out of the bathroom smugly to tell Bucky all about it.

As expected, Bucky pitches a fit and throws the toothbrush away. "You're a little shit," he fumes, and they yell a bit more about both the missing red toothbrush from now and the chipped toothbrush from then, but come to no resolution on either. Bucky doesn't speak to Steve for the rest of the day, and they spend the next few days rubbing their teeth with their fingers.

---

"I saw all the news about HYDRA."

Steve sits up so quickly something in his back pops. "Bucky!" he gasps, blinking rapidly in the darkness. He'd been lost in thought again, this time trying to remember the last time he'd tried to draw something with a piece of charcoal. He must have drifted off, because he hadn't heard anyone coming into his room.

"Not Bucky," the Winter Soldier corrects, standing attention-straight by the door with his back to the wall. "You told me HYDRA was looking for me. That's why I need to stay."

"They are," Steve says slowly. "I mean, that's what we think. We can't - we can't have you going back to them when we're so close to killing them for good."

"Why would I ever go back to them?" the Winter Soldier says incredulously. "Do you have any idea - no. Never mind."

A lump forms at the back of his throat, and the apology that wants to come out gets caught somewhere along the way. "I know what they did to you," Steve breathes instead. "The files."

"Files are files," the Winter Soldier replies cryptically, shrugging, then runs a nervous hand through his hair. "I need to leave. I read - all about him. On the Internet."

"What? What d'you mean?" Steve finds himself halfway out of bed and moving closer to the Winter Soldier.

Bucky backs away an equal number of paces, moving closer to his bedroom window. The answer comes out in a rush, as if he knows he's not supposed to be saying the name out loud. "Alexander Pierce."

"What about him?" Steve asks with trepidation.

"He's - he needs to go." He wets his lips quickly. "I have to finish it. I can't sit around here while he's out there, doing all that - "

Steve relaxes and almost laughs in relief. "You don't need to go," he blurts happily, only half-registering that Bucky's hand is already opening his window. "It's been done, Buck, it's over. He's long dead. Nick Fury killed him."

The hand on the window latch stills. "Alexander Pierce is dead?"

"As a fuckin' doornail," says Steve, firmly.

"Confirmed kill?" The childish hopefulness in the Winter Soldier's voice makes Steve's chest hurt a little more.

"Yeah," Steve says hurriedly. "Yes, yes, I swear it. Nick Fury did it himself."

"Impossible. Nick Fury - he's dead. I killed him." His voice is still disbelieving, but he hovers uncertainly.

"Nah," Steve says lightly, and he can't help but grin. "Nah, you didn't."

The Winter Soldier lets out something that sounds like a combination of a laugh and a sob. "Good," he mutters wetly, "good." Then he's closing the window slowly and sinking to the floor. Steve keeps his distance, just in case. He watches as Bucky presses his back to the wall, breathing deeply, taking long shuddering breaths in the still air. The only other sound is of his arm spasming slightly as if in distress. 

He cries silently in the corner the rest of the night. Steve settles down and watches him from his own spot on the floor, and lets him.

---

On hindsight, he should've warned Bucky a little about Nat coming over, but too late for that now. He watches in amusement as Nat sidles into his apartment as if she owns it, dumping the bags of food and clothing unceremoniously onto the table where Bucky's sitting. Bucky jumps visibly in his seat, his half-chewed pen falling from his lips as he gets to his feet hurriedly.

The amusement is pretty short-lived, sadly.

"You," Bucky says lowly, and Nat frowns at Bucky with an unreadable expression on her face as his metal arm makes an odd aborted gesture, as if it were trying to reach out to her. It drops as suddenly as it raises. "Ты не должна быть здесь. Но я думал, ты мертва."

Nat's mouth falls open slightly and she steps back hurriedly, shooting Steve a look that makes him cringe inwardly.

Before she can do anything else, though, Bucky backs up so quickly he knocks his chair over. "I'm sorry," he blurts, his eyes wild. He looks from Steve to Nat and sucks in a few noisy breaths. "I - give me a minute. Bathroom. Ma'am." He waves an awkward acknowledgement in Natasha's direction, then flees the scene and slams the bathroom door shut. The sound of running water immediately follows, along with some muffled thuds. Steve really hopes it's not the metal arm smashing up the tiles.

Natasha rounds on him immediately and he almost cowers. Almost. "What's going on here?" she demands, but something in her eyes tells him she's already got it half-figured out.

Steve mumbles out a half-assed explanation distractedly, wincing at the noises coming from the bathroom. He really hopes Bucky isn't having another anxiety attack now. If the Winter Soldier is going to emerge from the toilet, he doesn't want Nat to be anywhere in the vicinity.

"You know, Wilson did brief me a little," she hisses accusingly, "but I didn't imagine it to be this bad. How long are you planning on keeping him here like this?!"

"It's nothing," Steve insists. "I've got it under control."

Thunk. "Fuckin' - shut up, stop - with the fuckin' Russian, and the motherfucking arm - "

"Anyone ever tell you you're a terrible liar?" Nat murmurs, turning to the bathroom door towards the sound of Bucky mumbling to himself. Steve grits his teeth and says nothing. The noises die down abruptly and the tap shuts off.

"Bucky?" Steve tries tentatively, avoiding Nat's gaze.

"Yeah," Bucky replies hurriedly, voice falsely bright even from behind the door. "Gimme a moment."

"Steve," Natasha starts warningly. "You know what has to be done. I don't care if he's your best friend. You need to take him to Nick for deprogramming. Seventy years of brainwashing under HYDRA - "

"Keep your voice down," Steve interjects.

" - seventy years, Rogers, and you think hiding in here and hugging it out is gonna fix anything? You're lucky Fury's too busy pretending to be dead to be on your case already - "

"So what, I'm just supposed to let Fury put his brain in a blender again, like what they did? What if whatever Fury does to him makes him even worse?" Steve cuts in desperately.

"Worse than this? You think he got lucky with Barton? With me?"

"I don't trust him," Steve says stubbornly. "After everything that's happened. I'm not sure I'm ready to just hand Bucky over to him like that, Nat, God knows what he'd do with all the intel inside that head..."

"You might not have a choice." Nat sighs and shakes her head. "Just... think about it."

"Yeah," Steve says distractedly. "Yeah, okay."

"You don't get to choose for him, Steve," Nat pushes. "James deserves better than this."

The use of his name catches Steve's attention. "He knew you," he starts, his brow furrowed in confusion, but then the bathroom door clicks open and Bucky's sliding out sleepishly, so Steve stops abruptly. His face is damp and his long hair's dripping a little with the cold water he'd probably splashed onto his face to calm himself down.

"Hi," he says quietly, his lips tilting to the side. "I'm sorry about that - I was just surprised. Steve didn't tell me we were expecting company."

"Steve doesn't tell people a lot of things," Natasha replies smoothly, matching her smile to Bucky's and holding out her hand in greeting. "Natasha."

"Natasha. Hi. I'm Bucky. Actually, I'm James. It's just. Steve, he calls me Bucky, but it's not really my name, so you can call me James. Or Bucky, if you - if you want - " his voice trails away weakly and he looks ready to walk back into the bathroom again. He throws Steve a despairing look that says help me, you fucking moron.

Steve laughs easily. "Don't mind him, Nat, he's always had a soft spot for redheads."

Bucky sighs in exasperation, but now that he's gotten his composure back, he winks cheekily at Nat. "Hey, Natasha, do you ever ask yourself why you're friends with Steve Rogers in the first place?"

"Only every time he does something stupid - " she replies, without missing a beat, smiling slyly at Steve out of the corner of her eye.

"Hey," Steve says wearily.

" - so... at least twice a day," she finishes. She flashes her teeth, brilliant and perfect and lethal in one, and Steve sighs in defeat.

"You know what," Bucky says delightedly, "I think I do have a soft spot for this one."

Natasha rolls her eyes and steps forward to help unpack the food. "Idiot," she murmurs fondly. "Get a haircut, then we'll talk." 

---

There aren't any sounds coming from the living room, but Steve finds himself going there in the night. He's too keyed up to lie still with his thoughts the whole night, not this time. Too many unanswered questions that he couldn't ask Nat, and he knows the Winter Soldier can answer them.

Whether he will is another question altogether.

"Bucky? Are you awake?" He walks to the couch, but it's empty save for the lump of covers. He frowns and realises with a jolt that there's a silhouette in the window: it's the Winter Soldier, crouched against the glass, ready to make a break for it. Steve freezes instinctively, like he's trying not to scare off a stray cat.

"You're not to leave," Steve says quietly, in a tone that he hopes sounds commanding and disapproving enough to force compliance.

It's not.

"Отъебись. Do you never sleep?"

"You can't leave," Steve says again, stepping closer. "It's not safe out there."

"Not safe." The Winter Soldier climbs back into the room, smooth and sinuous. "What do you know about what's out there? What do you know about HYDRA? Nothing."

"I know they're looking for you," Steve pleads. "And I know they'd do anything to get you back on their side. Don't do it, Bucky. Don't let them win. If you go out there, if they catch you - "

"It's nothing I have not experienced before," the Winter Soldier hisses suddenly, his words cutting and accent thick. "I am not stupid. I am not going back."

"Then stay," Steve presses insistently. "Just stay here. Stay for Bucky. Stay for me."

The Winter Soldier laughs in disdain. "For you. I will tell you a secret," he says softly. The shadow draws closer. Steve stands his ground, struck dumb. "Your Bucky, he thinks about it all the time. Every night, he thinks about the train every night. He hates you for it, that you never tried. You could have pulled him back from the edge. You could have followed him down. You could have gone back to look for his body in the snow. Yet you did nothing. So tell me, Steve Rogers, why should I do anything for you?"

An invisible knife in his gut, and the ground below Steve's feet seems to fall away. Then the shadow leaps at him, graceful and quiet. Before he knows what's going on, he's knocked flat onto his back, air forcing itself out of his lungs.

The Winter Soldier doesn't say anything else, but the echo of his words linger on repeat in his ears. He hates you for it. Distantly, he hears the soft hissing sound of a metal arm moving quickly through the air, and a slick rhythmic SHK SHK SHK SHK SHK that seems to interrupt his breathing.

That can't be right.

By the time the smell of his own blood hits his nose, the window's wide open and the room is empty, the air already chilly from the outside wind. You did nothing, the Winter Soldier's voice reminds him again, cold and mocking.

He feels around in the dark with shaking hands, blinking away the white spots in his vision as his fingers skate over his chest dazedly. Everything feels warm and wet, and he's having trouble breathing. The thick taste of iron bubbles past his lips.

Finally, his fingers close around something small and hard in the side of his neck, and he yanks it out instinctively even though he probably shouldn't. He's overcome with a wave of nausea as he feels more blood pulse out onto the floor. He chokes a little more as he raises his head weakly to look at the thing in his hand in the slanting street light from outside the window.

It's his toothbrush, its little red plastic handle broken off and sharpened to a short, mean point like a prison shank. Steve drops his head back, a burst of weak laughter hacking its way out of his mouth. So that's where my toothbrush went, he thinks wildly, and it clatters to the floor as his fingers slacken.

He hates you for it, Bucky whispers in his ear, that you never tried. He closes his eyes as the pain washes over him in waves. "Yeah, Buck," he mumbles into the darkness. "I hate me for it, too."

Chapter Text

Maybe it starts with his body coming out of hypothermia. The soldier opens his eyes and everything comes into sharp focus. Every part of his body trembles finely, blood thrumming insistently against the cold current running through his veins.

At the back of his head, someone is curled up in a corner, shocked and silent, watching blood pool under him from the stump of an arm.The soldier thinks this man's name is Bucky, but he can't be sure. He doesn't fight back, like he usually does.

The soldier is wrong. This is not where it starts.

---

The internet cafe is empty save for a bleary-eyed teenager slouched at the front counter, nodding off while tapping absently at the screen of his phone. He doesn't give the soldier a second glance when he signs in and starts up his assigned computer.

The soldier is distracted. There are too many things running through his mind, all of them wrong. Dates and words and names are out of order, facts and figures knocked adrift without the tether of electricity fixing them back into place. He knows his name, at least, or at least the name of the person lurking in his subconscious. James Buchanan Barnes. The soldier doesn't need him now, but it's become increasingly difficult to keep him away ever since he'd decided to go to Steve Rogers for help.

Which was such a bad idea, because not only did Steve Rogers not know anything important, but he also made Bucky near impossible to handle. He thinks about the state he'd left Steve Rogers in, and shrugs minutely to himself. He'll live. Probably.

One thing Steve Rogers had done was tell him many times about HYDRA and SHIELD, but he can't remember it again, so he has to find out for himself. He types things up in the search bar, and reads as many news reports as he can find. Acronyms jump out at him. HYDRA, SHIELD, NSA, FBI, CIA, UN, all of it makes his eyes hurt. The room is too warm, and he feels Bucky stirring and struggling to wake.

The body jerks in surprise, a startled noise escapes his mouth as Bucky finds himself sitting alone in a room full of computers.

The soldier pushes back, and Bucky slips back under. Close call, but it's easier without Steve Rogers around messing with his head. He looks around and catches the counter boy staring at him. The soldier thinks about how long it would take for him to snap the boy's neck from where he's sitting. Maybe 8 seconds in total. 7 if he jumps over the counter instead of going around it. He smiles passively at the kid, then gets back to work.

He collates all the news reports and documents and prints everything out. There are so many names, so many organisations. The list of names goes on and on, fine print on double-sided paper. The widow's released intel, a whole other mystery in itself. HYDRA had told him she was dead, or so he thought. He wonders which side she's on now, then wonders the same for himself.

The soldier thinks about HYDRA, and he thinks about SHIELD. He thinks about the SSR, the Howling Commandos, the war, Brooklyn. He thinks about Steve Rogers. He's on his own side, he decides. As always.

He finds the name easily in the list, because it's sorted alphabetically. PIERCE, ALEXANDER. The soldier stares at it for a long time until the words blur together. Just a word, after all, so he picks up a pen to black it out carefully. Then his eyes travel down the paper. That's one hell of a long list, but that doesn't faze him. He has all the time in the world.

Somebody is muttering. The soldier looks around again at the boy, who's speaking to someone on the phone. Suspicious activity, his lips say. Black cap. Metal arm. No sir, I'm not - I'm serious, I swear it's metal. I din' smoke anything.

Turns out the soldier was wrong. It takes him 6 seconds, and the thin body's barely begun to slide to the floor when he picks up the dropped phone.

"Sorry, officer. My mistake. It wasn't metal. No sir, didn't mean to waste your time."

---

Maybe it starts in a small control room of HYDRA soldiers.

They're caught off-guard when Bucky accidentally discovers their super-secret entrance panel and stupidly goes in without cover. The rest of the team had split up to clear the premises, long abandoned by the enemy. Or so they thought.

They're caught off-guard, but they still outnumber him twelve to one, so when Bucky freezes and mutters out a grudging "Oh, fuck me", they draw instead of run. His eyes widen when he sees the weapons in their hands, glowing ozone-blue.

Terror grips Bucky so suddenly that his finger slips instead of presses down on the trigger. The soldier knows when it happens. The soldier pushes past the terror, levels the gun, and gets to work.

Loud bangs of gunfire, yelps and wet thuds of bodies hitting the floor. The soldier grins because he knows what he's good at and he loves it. A well-aimed shot zings past his face and burns a fine line across his cheekbone, and he grins harder. The bloodlust fills his lungs, the lines of the scene sharpen with startling clarity. As soon as his gun clicks empty, he knocks it into the nearest nose bridge and switches to his knives. Yes, he thinks, I was born for this.

The Howlies find him resting on his haunches, wiping his knives tenderly against any unstained cloth he can find, his eyes glittering. They stare for a moment, equal parts horror and fascination. "Took you long enough," the soldier drawls. "Party's over, you missed the fun."

Later, as the team reports back to Rogers at his other location, Bucky comes back to himself and claims he remembers none of it, turning his hands over and staring at the blood caked on them, touching the seared flesh on his face. The others roll their eyes and tell him to stop feigning modesty. Rogers looks at him long and hard.

This is not the first time, nor is it the last. The soldier knows this isn't where it starts. He has a funny feeling Rogers knows, too.

---

The thing about not being a part of HYDRA anymore means he has no more handlers. Which means freedom, which is a good thing. Which means less pain, also a good thing. But it means no electrotherapy, which is supposed to be a good thing, but it's currently a bad thing because. His brain. Is. Such. A mess.

It also means no weapons, no intel, no money, and no food. Bad things.

Of course, the soldier could get them himself. He's not useless. But he's been so used to having those things handed freely to him for so many years that it seems such a chore to do it on his own. Sure, he has all the time in the world, but he doesn't want to waste it on trivial matters, especially when he has so many people to kill. He almost misses holing up with Steve Rogers, because that man can be annoying, but he made a pretty good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He's pretty sure he'd eaten a lot more than that at Rogers' safehouse, but he'd been resting for the most part and didn't bother to pay attention.

Now, alone on the street with nobody pressing food on him or telling him what to do, the soldier tries to ignore the body's needs. He soon learns that this is a bad idea, because he finds their roles reversed for a moment when he wakes up and he's standing in an old public phone booth with no memory of getting there. Bucky's doing, obviously.

The phone is in his hand, and someone's giving him instructions. " - on, just give me the name of the street you're on, or any landmarks - "

The soldier slams the phone back into the receiver and hightails it out of the booth, cursing darkly in Russian because that's the best thing he's learnt after living there for fifty-odd years. Okay, then. Food and sleep. He can't ignore food and sleep again.

He digs the paper out of his pocket and checks his list just to see if Alexander Pierce is dead. Turns out he is. He wonders when that happened, then hits himself in the head, not gently. Nothing falls into place. He finds himself wishing to go back to the chair, then hits himself again in the head for wishing it in the first place. He shakes his head. "Чувствую себя, как ёбаный дебил."

The soldier passes a homeless man sitting by the side of the pavement. He's asleep, his body slouched against the brick wall behind him. The street is dark and empty. A limp sign droops from his slack fingers that reads, BE KIND, FOR EVERYONE IS FIGHTING A HARD BATTLE.

"Fight this," he mutters sourly, and punches the sleeping man in the face. Then he takes the man's money, all five dollars of it, so he can buy his own damn peanut butter and jelly.

---

Maybe it starts during his first firefight after he'd been captured. Their second attempt to advance into Austrian territory is almost as poorly-planned as the first: only this time, the 107th has an odd amount of random POWs from the work camp Rogers had broken them all out of. Also, it's Steve Rogers' first real battle on the front, and the soldier doesn't know whether he should just let that stupid little shit die to rid the world of its main source of idiocy, or risk his own life fixing his stupid mistakes.

The way Rogers moves, you'd think he was bulletproof. Bucky knows otherwise, and the soldier does too. He stays as close as possible to Rogers, defending his flank, stiff with worry every time Rogers tears a little too far ahead to be properly covered. When Rogers drops suddenly from a bullet to the shin, Bucky lurches forward to pull him to safety, even though there is none, dropping his gun carelessly and shouting profanities. Training forgotten, his own flank exposed. Of course, the soldier can't allow that.

Rogers struggles to his feet after the last shots die down, his face white from blood loss and something else. They lock eyes from across the gulf of twenty feet, across the hard dry dirt between them, still greedily sucking up the blood offering from the battle. The soldier presses his lips together and nods slightly, not without satisfaction.

"Bucky," Rogers gasps uncertainly, a plea and a question both.  The soldier smirks and wipes the blood from his face, and they both know the answer is no, not really.

No, this is not where it starts.

--- 

It takes him longer than he'll admit. Intel has never been his job, after all. The soldier is a killer, not a spy.

He finally finds an address and goes in through the window. It's so easy he almost wants to laugh. The man in the apartment is awake, even though it's 2 in the morning. "Who are you?" he wheezes, a trembling hand raising a .40. The soldier eyes it eagerly, a pleased sound escaping his throat. Finally, a decent weapon.

"You know who I am," the soldier replies quietly, then frowns. "Wait. Who are you again?"

He checks his right palm, where he'd scribbled the name because he knew he'd probably forget it, but most of it had rubbed off while climbing up the side of the building. He squints. "Armor... Dustbin?"

"It's Anders. Justin Anders," the man says uncertainly. The soldier checks his hand. That makes a lot more sense.

"Thank you for the confirmation," the soldier nods, then steps forward. Then stops. Then he mutters, "Боже ж ты мой, бля," because Bucky chooses this time to push against him again. Bad timing. Very bad timing. He freezes mid-step, shaking his head slowly. Not now.

Anders starts to plead with him. "I worked admin, for crying out loud. Fifteen years ago. For two months."

The soldier rolls his shoulders and stretches like a cat, irritably, trying to shake off the pressure in his brain. Not now, Barnes. Go to sleep. He knocks a fist against his temple, but Bucky jumps forward anyway.

"Jesus," is the first word out of his mouth. The soldier rages and tries to push back. Jesus is right. You'll be dead if you don't let me come back right now.

"Where the hell am I?" Bucky half-shouts, backing away and tripping over the leg of the table behind him.

The shot rings out before Bucky hits the floor, catching him near his hipbone. The soldier growls, landing on the floor in a crouch. The numbness hits the soldier like a truck before pain lances through the body. Bucky disappears as quickly as he came, and the soldier grits his teeth. In the half-dark, it looks like a feral grin.

Anders drops the gun like he can't believe he's shot someone. "I'm sorry, I haven't done anything wrong, okay? I don't understand why HYDRA wants me dead, please -"

The soldier's eyes dart to the gun, then back to Anders' wide-eyed face. He swallows the biting pain.

The soldier says, "Don't worry, HYDRA doesn't want you dead."

Then he says, "I do."

---

Actually, it starts with Bucky strapped to a table and a bunch of scientists poking and prodding him with sharp objects. It starts when said objects turn into objects that hum and fizzle, that target points on his head, genau da, and burn through his brain until all his thoughts lay unfurled and exposed.

Until something stirs at the back of his head, something dark and twisted and scary that has him muttering his name through the night because he's not sure who or what he is anymore. His body is weak and trembling from sickness and starvation, but his consciousness twists into something ungodly and dark, unraveling like an ugly carnivorous flower. When he stutters over his name, it grows, and when he forgets the next digit in his designation, his fingers twitch with the need to kill.

On that table, Bucky thinks he's turning into a monster. He isn't, not really. It's only the soldier. The soldier isn't a monster. The soldier only wants to survive, because Bucky can't. Not on his own. The shocks keep coming, the chemicals keep pumping. The soldier strains and stretches his limbs against the restraints, biding his time. Not yet. Soon.

But the time never comes, and he never has to escape on his own, because Steve Rogers comes and Bucky returns and shoves the soldier back just as violently as he was born. The soldier steps back reluctantly because at least the danger is gone for now. He keeps watch as Steve hauls Bucky from the table and brings them out safe and sound.

Steve tells the Colonel and Carter about the torture and interrogation and the state he'd found Bucky in. The soldier hears his anguished, insistent voice ringing, even from outside the tent. Everyone in the company hears it, but they pretend not to. Dugan rests a heavy hand on Bucky's shoulder, nods awkwardly, then trudges away.

When Carter comes to speak to him, the soldier is ready. He listens patiently as she recites pretty formalities about good service for the country and going home with honour. Bucky stirs slightly, unknowing, resting in the recesses of his mind. The soldier nods along and politely declines. His place is on the lines. He's good at what he does. He's the best marksman in the company.

Carter's gaze is piercing, and for a moment the soldier worries that she'll decide to send Bucky back home anyway. "Well, you're not wrong," she bites out finally.

This is how it starts, with the soldier making his choice. He chooses war over peace, fight over flight. Death over life.

Later, Bucky makes his choice. Steve Rogers, over everything. Yes, this is how it starts.

Chapter Text

The smell of the room hits him first, or rather, the lack of it. The hollow, sterile air scours his nose unpleasantly, but the sensation is wholly familiar.

When he opens his eyes, he suppresses a weary sigh. Of course he's back here. Of course there's someone hovering by the bed, too, practically vibrating with anxiety. He can almost hear it, the low hum of pent-up energy.

Déjà vu. His lips quirk to the side as he forces words through his parched throat. "On your left."

"No," Sam Wilson bites out vehemently, spitting mad. His hands rest on the edge of the bed, white-knuckled. "No, you don't get to do that shit. Not this time."

Steve tries to sit up, but bites back a groan and lets his head fall onto the soft pillow. His head spins a little from the loss of blood, and his entire body feels like a huge bruise. "Sam -"

"I said no,"  Sam says sharply, eyes blazing. "There is no 'I can explain' here. What the fuck were you thinking? Do you have a death wish? I thought I was humouring Barnes, but now I'm not so sure. Do you actually want to die?"

Steve chews his tongue and looks away. There's nothing he can say right now. He closes his eyes and lets Sam's hot words wash over him for awhile. He kind of deserves it, after all.

"- under control, my ass. Imagine what would have happened if Romanoff didn't tip me off about how bad he was getting. If I hadn't thought to check on you -"

"I'm sorry, Sam -"

"EIGHT HOLES. He made eight holes in your chest and neck, and you're lying there saying sorry to me. Look at your face. You didn't even try to stop him, did you? Lord help me, I'm this close to finding the nearest sharp object and finishing what Barnes didn't have the balls to do in the first place -"

"I know, Sam, I know I should've told you it was getting worse, but -"

"Your body was cold when I found you, do you know that?"

Steve swallows uncomfortably and doesn't think about how long Sam must have spent knocking on his front door and calling his phone. He doesn't think about Sam finally busting the door open and stopping short and seeing him lying on the floor of his living room, a halo of blood around his body. Instead, he skates his fingers over the bandages on his chest. The skin underneath is tender, newly-knitted back into place, but the pain throbs deep with very breath. He'll be right as rain in two days. That's something better to think about.

"I couldn't tell anyone," says Steve finally, quietly, his voice thick. "You know why I couldn't."

Sam glares down at him, his anger wavering, then he sighs in defeat and plops down onto a nearby seat, scrubbing at his head with his hands. "Putting him behind bars isn't as bad an option as you think. He can get help. He needs to get help. You know it's true."

"It is," Steve says slowly, but he's still shaking his head. "But I can't trust anyone to - he's a wanted criminal, they're not going to go easy on him. Nobody is. They'll persecute him. Hell, after the whole SHIELD fiasco, the board's out for blood, looking for someone to crucify. It'd probably be Fury if he weren't so good at playing dead. Bucky's been through enough. I'd rather - I owe him that much. He's all I got."

Sam scowls, but all the fight's already gone out of him. "All you got," he echoes, rolling his eyes. "What am I, chopped liver?"

"You know what I mean." Gently.

"Yeah." Another sigh, and a despairing laugh. "Yeah, unfortunately, I do."

"I'm sorry, Sam. For putting you through all this."

Sam raises an eyebrow at him. "Oh, you don't know sorry until Natasha's done with you. Good luck explaining to her why you volunteered to be the Winter Soldier's human pincushion. I'm going to grab my hard-earned coffee and reflect on my choices in making friends."

---

She slides into the room like a shadow, heading straight for the chair Sam has just vacated and draping herself across it easily, long-limbed and graceful. She doesn't even look angry.

Steve waits for her to start, watching her warily, but she seems to be content with taking her time. Natasha folds her legs, rearranges her knees, stretches her neck languidly, then regards him with a calculating stare, like she already expects him to know whatever she's about to say. Like she knows that her glance could peel a grown man apart.

Steve fidgets and tries to burrow down into the sheets, then winces and thinks better of it. He clears his throat lightly. "I'm sorry about all of this," he says simply, sincerely. "I wasn't thinking."

Natasha snorts a little then makes a small humming noise, neither disapproving nor assenting. "I was thinking about how your second funeral would be like," she muses casually. "It'll probably be a national event. Broadcast live on international television. Steven Grant Rogers, last words: I've got it under control. Remarks: death by toothbrush."

Steve chuckles weakly. "Pretty sure that's not how funerals go."

Natasha's gaze hardens. "Do you think this is funny? Do you see me laughing?"

"...no."

"You're compromised," she spits venomously, her demeanour changing completely. She leans forward, a snake about to strike. "You stupid idiot. How could you have let this happen?"

"You knew him," Steve blurts, avoiding the question. Curiosity bubbles over. It's kind of the whole reason why he's here in the first place. If he hadn't thought to speak to Bucky, he would have discovered an empty living room in the morning.

"I showed you. He shot me in the stomach, remember?"

"Nat, please."

"I didn't lie to you."

"You didn't tell me everything."

"It wasn't necessary for our mission. Plus, I had this funny feeling that somehow that would affect the way you functioned." She shakes her head at him in disgust. "Look at you, you're one step away from finding a sword to fall on. You should be on a suicide watchlist."

Her gaze softens then, her mouth twitching slightly. "You were given a second chance to live. Stop acting like you want to give it back."

"I don't," Steve huffs, adamant. "I just -"

"Stop acting like you're the only one who ever loved him."

"I just - what?"

She smiles slightly, abruptly, as if recalling a fond memory. "The Red Room acquired him for our training, briefly. I think it was 1986. And before you ask, no. James didn't know who he was. I didn't know, myself. I had no way of knowing."

Steve exhales slowly. "He had his name."

"He hated all of it, but you know, they had their ways of making you do what they want you to do."

"I saw the files," Steve replies hollowly. "It was -"

"It was worse than the files," Natasha says calmly, almost flippantly. "Don't be naïve."

Steve suppresses a shudder. The files were bad enough. "You said you loved him. I don't get it. Why'd he shoot you then, back in Odessa?"

She tilts her head to the side, pursing her lips. "I asked myself that question for a long time. I went off on my own hunt. In a sense, I was a little bit like you. Stupid, reckless. Almost got myself killed several times. Didn't amount to anything other than my blood all over Clint's favourite IKEA carpet and Nick Fury threatening to deport me. But then I took SHIELD's shit online, and as you know, I've been trawling through that trash heap ever since the helicarriers went down. Then I found out what happened after the Red Room."

Don't pull that thread, she had told him. "They brainwashed him," Steve mutters. That much is clear.

"New technology happened. Neurological experimentation happened. Basically, Alexander Pierce happened." Her fingers twist reflexively, like they're itching to find a throat to wrap themselves around. "For him, torture and punishment wasn't enough. He wanted loyalty, not forced compliance. I'll let your imagination run wild on how he managed to achieve that."

"Bucky was terrified of him," Steve recalls, thinking about watching him cry silently on the other side of the room. It all makes sense now. "But... the brainwashing's gone. I'm pretty sure Bucky, or whoever he is now, is a hundred percent done with HYDRA. He said so himself."

Natasha gives him a patronising oh, honey look. "The brain's not a machine, Steve. You can't just press undo and have everything back in its pretty place again."

"He needs time," Steve presses insistently. "He just needs some time to figure out who he is, and to build a life again, away from the missions and the violence. He'll get better. I have to believe that he'll get better."

"Sometimes I wake up thinking I'm going to be late for my ballet rehearsal."

"That's - alright," Steve manages. "I'll take that. I can work with stuff like that."

"Sometimes I catch myself thinking about all the ways I could kill Clint." At Steve's look of horror, she smiles blithely. "Oh, he knows. He thinks it's hilarious, he says he can tell because I look at him different when I'm doing it. Some people daydream, I guess, then there's me. But you see my point. When something's practically burned into your brain, it's kind of impossible to scrub the stains away."

"Sam was right. I do feel worse talking to you," Steve groans.

"Let me add to that," Nat says helpfully. "I have ears on the ground and I hear our favourite Soviet loose cannon has already turned some heads. Literally."

"What do you mean?"

"Broken their necks," Natasha explains, looking pleased with herself at her terrible murder-pun. "Well, it's nothing conclusive, but I pride myself in better detective work than these amateurs. A part-time worker at an internet cafe just outside town, a retired ex-civil servant, some Korean diplomat's nephew, an Alzheimer's patient in an old folks' home -"

"What? Why is he targeting these people?" His chest throbs again as he scrambles upright in shock.

"You're not gonna like it," Natasha warns. "I checked the printers at Cyber Zone. He'd gone there for intel, and he'd killed the guy there because the guy tried to call the cops. He has a list of names of everyone HYDRA has ever hired. Ever. Down to the poor guys on contract basis in sanitation." She produces a sheaf of papers and pushes it into Steve's hands apologetically. The print is neat and small. Columns and columns of names in alphabetical order.

"Jesus." His jaw drops as he scans through the names quickly, sheet after sheet.

"And that's not even the worst part."

"What could be worse than the world's deadliest assassin having a hit list longer than the United States Constitution?!"

"The world's deadliest assassin not caring if his marks are the right ones," Natasha says darkly. "From the random pattern of the killings so far, I'd wager he's been playing eeny-meeny to pick his targets. And using Facebook to track them down."

"Oh, Jesus." It could be anyone. He'd be killing innocent people with the misfortune of having the same name. And they wouldn't even know who he'd narrowed down until it was too late. "We need to stop him. Before he gets caught."

"You're not going to do anything," Natasha says, her voice hard, raising her voice over Steve's immediate protest. "You're going to lie in bed until all of this is over and we have Barnes back in custody. I can't work with you, not when you're like this."

"I'll be fine, the wounds are already closed," Steve snaps.

"Not when you're like this," Natasha emphasises, raising her eyebrow. "All emotional and ready to sacrifice yourself. I don't need babysitting duties on top of my mission."

"I can handle myself," Steve says hotly.

"Says the guy who was almost stabbed to death with a toothbrush." She gets to her feet and snatches the list back from Steve, smirking. "Sit tight. Luckily, unlike his stupid ass - and yours - I was actually trained in intelligence."

"You can't make me stay here!" Steve calls to her desperately, as she winks and sweeps out the doorway with a swish of her red hair. "Romanoff!"

---

He spends the better part of the next ten minutes fuming and fidgeting and trying to work himself up to getting out of bed. By the time his feet hit the floor, though, it's too late.

"Whoa, they really weren't kidding about the 'stabbed to hell and back' part."

"Barton." Steve grits his teeth and slumps back onto the bed, defeated.

"Rogers," Clint sings back cheerfully, plonking down onto the chair and wriggling around in it to get comfortable, then kicking off his shoes.

"What... are you doing?" Steve asks slowly. Clint throws himself back, lounging in the chair like he's just come home, and immediately grabs for the remote. He also puts his feet up on Steve's bed.

"First watch. I drew the short straw." He flicks the television on and surfs at lightning speed, before catching the look on Steve's face. "Okay, I'm kidding. I volunteered for this. I'd choose Ellen over fieldwork any day."

Steve eases back onto his mountain of pillows, groaning under his breath.

"Thanks for not asking for my help, though," he carries on conversationally. "I mean, I was pretty busy trying to build a pizza box fort at home, but I would've come if you'd called. But by all means, ask a random army vet you met while running on the street."

Steve winces. He's not wrong. "I thought of calling. Really. I just didn't know..."

"Who to trust?"

"You could say that."

Clint considers him briefly. "Eh," he says eventually, waving a lazy hand. "No offense taken."

Steve spends the next few hour on edge, fidgeting and watching Clint recite the adverts under his breath when they come on. 

He doesn't pay any attention to the television. His mind is racing with possibilities about where Bucky could be now, and what he could be doing. The Winter Soldier could be killing someone else. Or maybe Bucky could have come back, and has no idea how to contact him. Steve fidgets more, surreptitiously glancing around the room and trying to figure out some kind of exit plan. All his ideas require Clint to be gone, though.

Hour two. A nurse comes by to check on his dressings. When she peels them back gingerly, most of the scabs come off with them. Steve hisses reflexively, but the taut new skin underneath is pink and whole. She raises her eyebrows and lets him put on a shirt. "Stay put, you're not done healing yet." She wags a threatening finger at him before leaving.

Hour three. Clint presses the call button by his bed and asks the nurse if she could bring extra jello during mealtime.

"You're not gonna leave, are you?" Steve asks eventually, watching the nurse stalk off without a word.

" 'Course not," Clint sniffs ruefully. "I'm watching ya, Steve. Like a hawk. Hahaha. Hawk."

Steve counts his breathing slowly and carefully. Things just got a hell lot harder. 

Hour four.

"Hey, you got any sudoku?" Steve asks casually.

"Do I look like an ageing lady trying to stave off dementia? No, I don't have any fucking sudoku."

"I'm bored. You couldn't have brought a book or something? I mean, I am recuperating, after all."

"God, you're demanding. But nice try. I'm not leaving this room just to find you a bunch of geriatric activity books." He grins, then brightens up more when the door opens. "Jello time!"

The nurse ignores Clint completely and sets the food off to the side, well away from him. "How are you feeling, Captain?"

"Bored to tears," Steve says placidly.

She hums distractedly, fiddling with the tubes by the bed. "Why is your IV out? How long ago did this happen? Are you still in pain?"

Steve considers for a moment. "Not really," he says eventually.

"Yeah, he's used to getting stabbed, don't worry about him," Clint drawls. "Don't believe a word he says."

The nurse slides the IV needle into the back of his hand. "Sit tight. This should take the edge off," she says briskly, though Steve doubts it actually will. The dose is never high enough for him anyway.

"When do visiting hours end?" Steve asks innocently, hiding his arm under the blanket and sliding the IV needle back out slowly.

She scoffs and drags his food over. "I was warned about you, you know," she says sternly. "To quote your really scary girlfriend, you're on 'unofficial suicide watch'. Your friend here can stay as long as he likes. Unfortunately."

"I just want the damn jello, Nurse, come on," Clint whines. "I'm an Avenger, please?"

This is a bad idea, Steve thinks, as he crushes the tube in his palm and dribbles the morphine all over the jello. This is a very bad idea.

"Sorry, I only give handouts to members of the Justice League." The nurse flashes a smile and turns to go.

"Savage," Clint mutters. "Well, there's always the next time I fall off a building."

Steve makes a show of opening the jello, swirling its contents around with the plastic spoon, and grimacing at it. "Ugh. Here, I don't like the lime ones."

Clint narrows his eyes slightly, then frowns and starts fiddling with something in his ear. "I'm sorry, what? Is my hearing aid acting up?"

"Don't make me take it back."

"Thanks," Cliff says stiffly, throwing him an odd glance before snatching it up and shovelling it into his mouth. Steve watches nervously out of the corner of his eye.

"Does it taste as bad as it looks?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah," Clint mumbles distractedly. "Delicious."

It takes about half an hour to hit him, and when it does, Steve feels terrible about it. Clint's quietly flipping through channels again, looking increasingly confused by the minute. His frown deepens and he starts to squint. Then he suddenly drops his arm and gives a laboured sigh. "Oh my God," he slurs, slumping lower in his seat. "I'm high. I'm so fucking high. Tell me you didn't."

Steve bites his lip. "I'm sorry, I really can't stay here."

"I got roofied by Captain America," Clint groans, then lets his head fall back. "Wait... wait till I tell Tony 'bout this. He'll never let you... live... it down. Ughhhhh. You'd... better not have... over-roofied me, man."

"I'll get help," Steve promises, and throws the covers back. By the time he's at the door, Clint's out cold. He hurriedly informs a nurse of a possible morphine overdose in his room, then makes a break for it. He can apologise more later. Maybe he'll buy Clint a year's worth of pizza. And jello. Lots of jello.

---

The apartment is exactly how he'd expected to find it: empty and reeking of old blood. Sam hadn't bothered with the cleanup and Steve guesses his floor is ruined for good. He pours a few mugs of warm water halfheartedly over the bloodstains, then gives up and goes to the bedroom. His phone is still on the nightstand, with three voice messages, several missed calls and a string of texts.

     SW : STEVEN GRANT ROGERS, PICK UP YOUR FUCKING PHONE.

     SW : HE COULD HAVE DIED, YOU DUMB SHIT! THAT FENTANYL DRIP WAS ONLY FOR YOU. IT COULD HAVE DROPPED THREE ELEPHANTS.

     SW : PICK THE FUCK UP.

     SW: I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL MURDER YOU.

Steve's stomach lurches and he dials back immediately.

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!

"Sam -"

DON'T SAM ME, STEVE! YOU ALMOST PUT HIM IN A COMA! HOLY FUCKING SHIT, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH YOU?!

"How is he?" Steve asks meekly, gripping the phone tight.

HIGH AS A FUCKING KITE, YOU MORON! NAT'S GOING TO KILL YOU WHEN SHE FINDS OUT. WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? YOU BETTER FUCKING GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE -

Steve disconnects the call and runs a hand through his hair. Oh, God, he's really done it this time. "This better be worth it, Buck," he says out loud.

With shaking hands, he plays back his voice messages.

     Beep. Hey, operator? I need to contact a friend. Is this the right number? Hello? Fuck. How do I -

     Beep. Operator? Machine? Need a connection to Steve Rogers. Hello?

     Beep. Am I remembering the number wrong? Jesus fuckin' Christ. Beep-beep-beep beep beep-beep-beep. Hello? Hello? Yeah, fuck you, too.

He pulls out his sketchpad and pencil, then flips to a new page and starts writing down the list of names in neat rows, just as he remembers it. Yeah, Natasha, I'm no spy, he thinks wryly, but I'm Captain fuckin' America.

Chapter Text

There's a deep ache in his belly, like someone has folded their fist into his guts and left it there. The only sign of injury is a mottled bruise beside his belly button and a round scar in the middle of it. Must be a few days old, but he doesn't know what happened.

He groans and gets to his feet, his muscles screaming in protest. His stomach lurches as the ache burrows impossibly deeper. 

Maybe he's just not eating enough. He can't remember the last time he ate... or where he is, for that matter. The soldier leans against a nearby shelf of boxes and takes stock of his surroundings. Warehouse. 倉庫. Склад. Warenh-

HOW MANY FUCKING LANGUAGES DO YOU KNOW, Bucky demands.

The soldier jerks in surprise, hisses, then scowls. Yes, he's probably just hungry. "Enough," he mutters, then stumbles out of the storage area. He thinks he can hear Bucky saying something at the back of his head, prowling and pacing like a caged cat, but he pushes his fingers into the soft part of his stomach and Bucky vanishes like smoke. The steady thrum of pain cranks up to an insistent whine, as if his body were a malfunctioning machine, but his vision sharpens, and so does his resolve.

He puts his hand into his jacket up against the cool metal of the stolen gun, grins suddenly, then goes in search of breakfast. Somewhere with peanut butter, then somewhere to sit quietly and find familiar names on his mission list. He may not remember much, but names he knows.

YEAH? WHAT'S YOURS, HOTSHOT? Bucky sneers.

"Я убью тебя нахрен," the soldier snaps, then his brain is blissfully quiet again.

---

Bethany Sauer's house is pleasantly unguarded. The soldier swings open the low front gate and shuts it carefully behind him, because it's coloured a nice shade of blue and it's a bit excessive to kick it down just to get even. He wasn't raised by wolves. His footsteps falter.

"Shut up," the soldier grumbles, and digs his fingertips into his side, where it still hurts even after three tall stacks of pancakes with an equal amount of maple syrup on top. His eyes water from the pain, and he imagines the pancakes coming back up. Not optimal. He swallows hard and continues.

Bethany Sauer. His brain conjures up her face in bits and pieces: a sharp nose, drooping almond eyes. Hard fingernails pressing into his skin as he's prepped for cryo. The memory of her face bares her teeth at him. Let's see you try and hit me now, she hisses into his ear. Idiot American dog. He fleetingly remembers getting confused by that statement, right before he went under at all. At that time, he didn't remember being American, or anything at all.

The soldier climbs up the drainpipe running up the back of the house and slips through a loosely-latched window. Civilians. Too easy.

The room's dark, but there's someone in it, and the soldier immediately stills where he's landed, cat-soft on a plush rug. The someone hasn't noticed him, because he's standing with his back to the window. He's singing softly under his breath, a rhyme the soldier can't care enough to recognise. It's barely audible because there's a baby in his arms that's screaming. The soldier's skin crawls. It's an unpleasant sound.

"Bethany Sauer," he says, straightening up, gritting his teeth against the pull deep in his guts. Stay where you are, pancakes.

"Holy SHIT!" the man shouts, swivelling around and stumbling, but catching himself in time. The baby in his arms continues screaming, beating little fists against his forearms. Either he doesn't notice, or he doesn't care. He takes one step back, then two. "Oh my god, get out of my house! I'm - I'll call the cops! KAREN! KAREN, CALL THE COPS!"

"Bethany Sauer," the soldier says calmly, casting a glance around the room. Sharp nose. Even but yellowing teeth, very close to his ear. 

The man twists away instinctively, wrapping his frame around the kicking child. He says, "Get away from her."

The soldier frowns -

- he's lying on the floor and there's something warm and sticky flowing into his eyes. The crying baby is a lot farther away from him now, there's a lady's voice screeching in the background, and the man is standing over him with a baseball bat in both hands.

The bat is swinging downwards.

The soldier rolls away in time to save his skull from being split in two, but at this point that might already have happened. His vision refuses to steady, and the floor sways like a boat in a storm. His thoughts come all at once, a thousand voices clamouring for attention. He shields his face with his arms, feeling the bat crack painfully against his elbows, forearms. "ちくしょう。なにか あった?"

The man yells and swings again, but this time the soldier ducks and catches the bat in his left hand. There's a loud clang and now the bat is his. His head quietens and he heaves himself to his feet, a little shaken, and white from pain.

The soldier flip the bat easily into a better grip. Left, right, left again. He smiles, and blood flows through his teeth. "Sauer, Bethany," he repeats mechanically, raising and pointing the bat at the man's face. Mostly to threaten, but also because it's getting difficult to focus.

"Please!" The man shouts. "Please, don't do this, whoever you are -"

The man falls to his knees, scrabbling in a direction the soldier can't figure out. It doesn't matter. The bat has a long reach. The soldier raises the bat almost lazily, squinting through stinging eyes at the crawling figure.

"She's just a baby, I have money, just don't hurt her, don't -"

The soldier lowers the bat a fraction, staring at the babbling man at his feet. That can't be right. "Baby. девочка. 赤ちゃん -" He stops talking, suddenly, as the meaning of the word finally dawns on him.

Well. That's not right.

NO SHIT, YOU FUCKING NUTJOB! Bucky screams.

"静か に 白 よ," the soldier snaps, then drops the bat on the floor. Abort. Stupid fucking mission. That's what he gets when he doesn't have a fucking handler. The ground lurches to the side and his vision's blurry, but he can't just stand there. Like a drunken man, he throws himself back across the room, swings out of the window, leaps to the drainpipe, misses by a good five inches, and crashes into the bushes in the back garden. His knees explode at the impact, and he thinks he's bitten his tongue by accident because his mouth is flooded with a familiar bitter tang.

"Fuck me," he mutters to himself.

FUCK YOU, Bucky agrees.

---

He doesn't know how long he's gone, but when he's back, his surroundings are disappointingly familiar. It's still dark. He's lying by the back door of a convenience store. It doesn't take him more than ten seconds to realise that Bucky has managed to bring him almost all the way back to Steve Rogers' apartment again.

He's also half-lying on a magazine that's soaked up some of the blood from his forehead. INTOUCH, it says. SELENA BACK TO REHAB! 

On a small side column, a badly-edited photograph of Rogers catches his eye. CAPTAIN AMERICA'S SECRET STALKER, the caption reads. HERO LEFT FIGHTING FOR HIS LIFE. Below that, a series of blurry shots of someone being wheeled into the hospital, and a wide shot of his living room floor, bloodstains and all.

He snorts despite himself. Idiot doesn't know when to quit.

TAKES MORE THAN A TOOTHBRUSH TO KILL THE PUNK, Bucky says proudly.

The soldier scowls harder and ignores him. His head hurts so badly that he desperately wants to pass out, but he's lost enough time and control. One more slip and Bucky will waltz back to Rogers and straight to whatever hell Romanoff and Fury has prepared for him. Passing out is not an option.

He considers his other options. Instinct tells him to find his handler. Not an option, either. You're on your own, soldier. Regroup. Evaluate. Think.

Gingerly, he touches the tender spots on his crown. His fringe is matted with blood, but he knows his dark hair easily hides its colour. At best, he'll be mistaken for a homeless man who doesn't wash his hair. His vision greys out when he presses his fingertips down too hard, so he stops quickly and wipes away the thick black blood that oozes out from somewhere under his hair. He wonders if his body can heal a cracked skull, and if people can still survive cracked skulls. He imagines that he's wiping his brains off his fingers now, and stares blearily at the smudges on his knuckles and knees.

The pain in his abdomen burrows through to his spine, deep and insistent. He pulls away his shirt to look at the injury again. The faint scar has almost disappeared completely, but the bruise has grown bigger, spreading to his side and up under his rib. The skin across his belly is swollen and sore. Probably from poking at it too much, he decides.

APPENDICITIS, Bucky supplies helpfully. NO WAIT, FUCK, YOU CAN'T GET THAT TWICE, CAN YOU?

"Think," the soldier says aloud, forcibly not answering Bucky. What did the handlers do after missions, when he'd sustained injury? After missions - report, debrief, reconditioning, reconditioning, rrrrrrreeeeee

His train of thought stutters like bad vinyl. White noise. Pain, electricity, white noise, reconditioning, reconditioning, noi s e p a i nnnnnnn

Bucky is silent.

His fingers are twitching like an electric current is running through them. It's running through his lungs, his ribs are rattling, his face, his muscles, his eyes, his teeth are shaking, his teeth are falling out, they're making sounds, click click click on the floor but it's not his teeth, it's his arm, his arm is electric, his bodybraineyes are electric, click click click his teeth his chest his tags soldier tags tags Sergeant James Bbbbbbbb James Bbb - Jjjjjjjjj click click click

He puts his head between his knees, wheezing as much as he can through the throbbing spreading wide in his belly. His vision brightens and he squeezes his eyes shut, but the darkness is worse than the light, everything is worse, is getting worse, everything is electric pAIN WHITE PAIN

He stumbles blindly back into the store, hands shaking and knees buckling. The girl at the counter looks up and sighs. "Look, mister, you're kinda mysterious and like literally killer gorgeous - like a really hot serial killer or something, but like, no matter how much you look like zombie Luke Skywalker, there's only, like, so many eyes I can close to let you keep coming in here and not expecting me to call, like, the cops -"

Her nails bright on the counter moving fast one after another click click click like teeth like metal and so
many
guns

"Need." The soldier rushes forward and slams into the counter, hunching over and gulping air. "Do you have a. 電話. Fuck what's it called." He can't concentrate. It's so hard to breathe. He doesn't want to die in front of this girl. He doesn't want to die he doesn't don't don't Sergeant Jaaaaaaa Jjjjjjj

"Sir?" The girl bends closer and scrunches her face at him. He peers back blindly, like a fish through water, through glass. She smells of artificial cherry. It makes his eyes hurt. "Hey, Zombie Luke? You're okay, right? The friend you called, is he coming soon?"

"Phone," he gasps suddenly, through the water. Breath of air. Notdrowning. "Give me your phone."

"Oh hell, by all means," she rambles, making a show of removing it from her back pocket. "It's not like you haven't used it already."

The soldier blinks against the white spots in his vision, blinks as fast as his heartbeat in his throat. He doesn't have time he needs to break through the glass before before before before

(it's getting too cold too fast and he reaches out and it's just glass he just needs to break through the glass before)

Unthinkingly, he reaches out and twists it out of her grip, ignoring the scream and clatter of the phone onto the counter as she jumps back, cradling her wrist. "What the hell," she sobs, half-angry and half-shocked. "That fucking hurt!"

She's probably already reaching for the landline to dial the police, but the soldier's already barrelling out of the store, punching in the numbers as he brisk-limps as many blocks as he can away from the scene. 

The phone rings just twice before it gets picked up.

"Youfuckingpieceofshit," the soldier gasps, leaning on a low wire fence. It gives under his weight, click click click a crank lowering him into the ground into the grave

Bucky? I'm almost there, hang tight -

"What did you do to me?" the soldier cuts in, and now he's lying down and he's in the grave and his head is light and he can't breathe anymore and he shouldn't even have the energy to be talking or breathing, with so little oxygen in his body, and somehow he's pissed off about it and this is definitely Rogers' fault, and he was supposed to fix it because that's what he used to do when when when

itwascold

What do you mean? Where are you? Stay on the line, is Cynthia still giving you Gatorade?

"Whothefuck. Is." He retches and tastes nothing but sour bile. His teeth are chattering. He can't stop it, they're zapping him with electricity, his teeth are chattering, he screams, his teeth are chattering, he can't breathe and scream at the same time, his teeth won't stop chattering, he can't breathe and scream and think and his teeth

Are you okay? Are - Bucky, are you running?!

"Yes - no, no. Nnnnnnn. No." Click click click stop, stop, the soldier grabs at the metal arm but it only shifts and pinches at his skin painfully. "Get it off."

GET IT OFF, someone else echoes, somewhere behind his eyelids.

Okay, just listen to my voice, alright? I want you to take a deep breath. Deep breath. Deeper, I can hear you from here. Let it out slowly, count to ten. Good, that's good, Buck. You're okay, nothing bad's happening. Think about happy things, okay? Just make lists in your head and count them off. Stalin, stroke. Mussolini, firing squad. Hitler, blew his brains out. Himmler, HYDRA-style.

The soldier finds his face twisted in a confused frown, through his panic and fear. "You must be... fun... at parties."

You know it, Steve says smoothly. Deep breaths, don't stop. Not too fast.

His breathing slowly evens out, and he closes his eyes in relief. The fence rattles softly in the wind, but he knows it's just the fence. His mouth goes slack. He's so tired. He wants to sleep. It'll be dawn soon. "Steve?" the soldier says, his voice small in his throat. 

Yeah, Buck. ETA 8 minutes. Don't rush a 95-year-old.

"It hurts," he admits, quietly, slumping low on the ground, away from the streetlight. His other arm curls reflexively around his middle because he can't curl up without puking out his pancakes. His stomach shifts uneasily at the thought. It feels strangely empty. There's a bitter taste in his mouth.

It's just a stomachache, come on, Barnes. Walk it off.

A choked laugh bursts past his lips, but he stifles it quickly because it hurts to laugh.  

7 minutes. You still at the store?

Short exhale. Deep breath, count to ten.

Bucky?

"No, not at the store. Steve," he says. "Listen."

I'm listening. Don't hang up on me. Hey, remember that time your appendix exploded?

"Steve, listen."

Still here, idiot. Not going anywhere.

He forgets what he wants to say, so he says, "It fucking hurts."

I know.

He remembers. "I think I fucked up," he whispers, suddenly, his words coming out in a rush.

 Silence.

"Steve?"

You and me both, pal.

Chapter Text

"The neighbours reported hearing gunshots?"

"Gunshot, sir. Only one. We've recovered the firearm, but there's no sign of a bullet. Judging from the crime scene, there's a high chance it found its target."

Steve makes a neutral sound of acknowledgement. There's a lot of blood where Anders' body was, but not much elsewhere. Wherever that bullet hit Bucky couldn't have been that serious.

"Thanks for the help, son," he says. He doesn't mention how the man's obviously got about twenty years of life experience more than he does, but somehow, everyone treats him like the years in the ice were something. So he uses it.

Despite not knowing what the fuck he's doing, Steve claps a warm hand on the officer's shoulder, and watches his eyes go wide. He'll spend the rest of his life feeling guilty about using his status to get places, but for now, it'll serve.

"I hope you catch the person responsible, Captain. SHIELD was a good organisation."

"Yes," Steve says, distracted. He's already turning away. "Thanks again."

He reaches for his cell, a cheap little flip phone from a convenience store. Tony would have a fit if he saw it, but Natasha once told him it's useful, low-key, and near indestructible. Three things he definitely values. On that thought, he sighs. Bucky's likely hurt, and he can't avoid Natasha forever. If he begs nicely, she'll postpone killing him to another day.

It's only after the dial tone sounds that he realises it's already been two weeks since their last contact. She's probably changed her number, Steve thinks dully. That's just great.

So he dials in another number.

"Hey, Sam," he murmurs sheepishly.

You got some nerve, boy.

"I know. I'm sorry."

You need something?

"No, I don't..." He sighs, runs his hand through his too-short hair. "Dunno. I guess I needed someone to talk to."

I'm here. I'm pissed, don't get me wrong. But I'm here, you stupid asshole.

"Thanks, Sam."

Hm.

The line crackles for a moment as Steve takes deep breaths. He doesn't deserve Sam's friendship. He never has, but he keeps giving and giving. A sudden sting of warmth hits the back of his eyes and he tilts his head back, smiles a little like he can't help it. "How's Clint?"

Deaf. Annoying. Alive.

"That's good," Steve breathes, even though he already knows. If anything had happened to Clint, Nat wouldn't have let him walk, for sure.

So you gonna talk to me or do I need to ask you what you're wearing right now?

Steve huffs a laugh. God, Sam, I've missed you, he wants to say out loud, but he bites it back. "Bucky's hurt."

Another crackle down the phone line. He'll live.

"Yeah," Steve agrees. "Doesn't make me feel any better, though. Seems like I'm just picking up after him these days."

He try to contact you?

He has to stifle a sudden laugh again, thinking about the voice messages on his machine. "I gave him my number, but I didn't think to teach him how to use the phone. He kept trying to speak to the operator."

Damn. Sometimes I forget how old you are.

"Yeah, me too."

Silence.

"Sam."

Right here.

"How am I gonna find him?"

Just keep doing what you're doing. You say he's hurt?

"I think so."

Where would you go if you were hurt?

Probably lie down and hope it's bad enough to kill me, Steve doesn't say. "I'll think about it. Thanks, Sam."

You find him, you bring him back, got it?

"That's the plan."

---

There's a public library near Justin Anders' house, and Steve has nothing to do, so he skulks around the shelves in the back with his hands shoved in his pockets. He's tired and hungry, but he doesn't feel like sitting down and resting. Not when his friend is trapped inside his own mind with a psychotic killer bent on revenge. Righteous revenge, true, but seriously misplaced. Sam's words come drifting back to him: he's not the kind you save.

He half wishes Natasha had come along with him to help. Now would be the time she'd smack him across the back of the head, just a soft whap, and say, "Quit spiralling, Rogers."

"Yeah, quit spiralling, Rogers," Steve mutters, then jumps a little when his phone gives a shrill bleat. Everyone in the library collectively turns to him, and he hurries out.

"Rogers."

Hey, is this Steve?

It's a stranger's voice on the line. Bored, female. Safe.

"Yes. Who's this?"

I'm Cynthia.

"Who?"

You got a friend here trying to speak to you. He's your friend, right? I gotta know, because he's kind of not all there -

KIND OF NOT - listen here, you scrawny-ass -

"Bucky? Is that him? Cynthia, thanks so much. Can you put him on, please?"

There's a muffled scuffling noise and some heated whispers over the line, then the noise clears up.

Rogers. My god you are a hard man to find.

"Buck." Steve feels his shoulders sag. "Don't you fucking do that again. Jesus. Where'd you go on me, huh?"

Like I know. I feel like I'm going crazy here. What the fuck is going on?

"You tell me," Steve snaps back tersely. "Where are you? I'll come pick you up."

Hey, Cindy-doll, where are we?

Convenience store on fifth, genius.

Hear that, Steve? I got no idea. I feel like I'm stuck in a fuckin' dream loop or something, I keep waking up in different places -

"How are you feeling? Are you hurt?"

Now that you mention it. Yeah, there's something in my gut's killing me. I don't know. Like when Carter tested that rifle on my new body armour. But - worse.

"You were asking for it," Steve says automatically, already striding to the parking lot. He's about twenty minutes out. If he tries hard enough, maybe twelve.

You know sometimes when you're dreaming and you're watching yourself?

"Mm. I think so."

Like you can't control yourself but you're doing stuff anyway. Then I wake up but I don't feel like it's completely gone. Then - it's like the dream just continues. Jesus. I don't know. This might be a dream too. No, kid, I'm not insane, shut your face. Fine.

Hello? Steve?

"Yeah. Sorry about my friend. Can you do me a favour? Get him a drink and tell him to wait outside for me?"

I'm not giving him a beer!

"No, just a soda or something -"

Gatorade? I can do Gatorade, they're having, like, a twin pack offer -

"Yeah, anything," Steve says hurriedly. "Listen, Cynthia. He's friendly now, but he's not safe. I need you to give him the drink, bring him outside, then go back in and lock yourself in the store, okay?"

Why the fuck would I - hey, buddy, don't - he just ran out. You're paying for the drink, by the way. Better show up soon or I'm calling the cops.

"Okay. Thanks, Cynthia. Remember, you need to lock - hello?"

The line is already dead. Oh, Jesus. Steve's heartbeat picks up as his bike peels away from the parking lot. It's okay, he tells himself. The soldier only hurts those on his list.

The old wounds in his clavicles throb as if to say, yeah, right. If the soldier comes back before he gets to the store - he doesn't want to think about it.

His phone rings again and he swerves so hard he bashes through someone's side mirror in his haste to answer. "Bucky! I'm almost there, hang tight -"

Except it isn't Bucky anymore, it's the soldier, and he's pissed off and afraid and having another anxiety attack. This is not great, but Sam did give him some tips since the last one. Breathe, make lists. He feels stupid even saying it, but by some kind of miracle, the soldier - or Bucky - seems to calm down enough to think rationally again.

Then he cuts the line and Steve swears and almost chucks the phone. "Damn it, Buck."

--

Of all the scenarios that ran through his head while he was speeding his way to the store, this isn't what he expected at all. Which is a good thing, because there's a lot less blood in this scenario.

"How did you know I was coming?" he says numbly, when he's caught his breath. Natasha simply flips her hair like it's answering for her and finishes escorting a girl out to a waiting ambulance. That must be Cynthia, Steve thinks.

"Area's clear. What a dead neighbourhood, there weren't even any - oh, hey, Cap."

Steve gives a start, makes an aborted move like he's lunging forward and catching himself. "Hawkeye. It's good to see you."

"Wow, now I know what Wilson was talking about when he said kicked puppy," Clint chirps, grabbing a pack of jerky and shimmying up onto the counter to have a seat. "Don't feel bad, Cap, have one."

Steve takes two. The pieces fall into place. "You let me go. You followed me."

Natasha comes back and shoves at him, half-playful. "Because you're an idiot. Lucky for us, Barnes is an idiot, too. Knew you'd eventually lead us to him."

"But - Clint -" Steve points weakly.

"Clint's the biggest idiot." Natasha rolls her eyes, already working on trying to get into the surveillance feed of the store.

"Don't feel bad, Steve. I knew exactly what I was eating when you gave me that doped-up cocktail." He winks, mouth still full of jerky. "Eyes like a hawk, remember?"

"And he ate it anyway. Like I said, idiot. I was screaming at him over comms."

"It was distracting! I was just sticking to the mission. You almost blew my cover."

"You almost euthanised yourself."

"Hey, go back," Steve cuts in, pointing at the screen. "There's Bucky coming back in."

"And there goes Cynthia's writing hand."

Steve ignores him and leans in. "Great. The most we can learn from his is the direction he turned after he went out that door. Where's that convenient ATM across the street when you need another camera?"

"Another dead end." Natasha's voice is flat. She cracks open a ginger ale and gulps down half in one go. "I'm getting bored of this."

"No," Steve says, snatching the can out of her hand and downing the rest. "We missed him by minutes. He's desperate, but he's hurt. He can't have gotten far. Where would he go?"

Nat's already working her way through a pack of Sour Patch Kids with Clint. Her mouth is full, so she just tilts her head and shrugs. "Any good soldier would follow a protocol, right? We just have to figure out what that is. Maybe go through the tainted SHIELD intel I dumped out again. But he'd be long gone by then."

"If I were hurt and on the run and found a convenience store, I'd stay right here and eat everything I can before I die," Clint says helpfully. "Ugh, it's all stuck to my teeth now." He hops off the counter and goes to the fridges at the back. "Oh. Ice-cream sounds good right now too."

"Quit looting, I only brought a fifty with me," Steve sighs. "Don't make me lock you in the freezer."

Clint laughs and closes the fridge door. "Fine, don't want you having another friend becoming a popsicle. Hey - wait -"

"What if that was the protocol?" Natasha finishes, her eyes lighting up. "His missions always ended with him back in cryo. Maybe..."

Steve frowns. "But he's not done with his mission, not by a long shot."

"What would happen if the soldier sustained injuries? Report in for treatment and cryo?"

"So maybe he's been trying that. But every time he visits someone from his list, he forgets all about the treatment part and jumps straight to revenge." Clint looks pleased with himself, and waves a small cup at Steve. "This one's only two dollars."

"Go for it," Steve sighs.

"Hey, guys?" Natasha makes a face at her phone. "You know that giant fridge in Ratatouille that people could walk in and out of?"

"Wasn't it just a storeroom?" Steve moves closer to peer over her shoulder, then raises his eyebrows. "Restaurants in the area. Smart move."

"I'm not sure if Barnes would be that smart, though. I mean, it's not normal to seek medical assistance in the nearest freezer, so I feel like this is a long shot."

"Sure," Steve admits. "But believe me, as dumb as he is, he can be resourceful. And he's always been a lucky bastard."

"Mmrgh. He did fall off a train and get kidnapped and recruited as the longest-living assassin of all time for a terrorist organisation. Sure, I guess the word 'lucky' has vague parameters, but I'll allow that." Clint polishes off the rest of his ice-cream and claps his hands together. "Okay! Finally, some mission perks. Let's go restaurant hopping."

"Stay on mission, Barton. Our window's getting smaller by the minute. You'll have your pizza party when this is over."

"Yesss. For real? Nat, you're my witness."

"It's the least I can do. Since you nearly put yourself down because of me." Steve grins weakly, feeling less guilty about it now that he knows Clint's okay. He sets the fifty down on the counter, weighing it down with a packet of gum. Natasha logs out of the CCTV system and taps a little more on her phone.

"Alright," she says as Steve's phone buzzes in his pocket. He opens the message to see an address. "We have three restaurants in the area. I've sent you guys the locations."

"Just our luck. Split up and do a sweep. If we see anything, give a shout. If not, we rendezvous here in 20," Steve announces. With Nat and Clint with him, it's only a matter of time before they have Bucky safely in their custody again. And then, and then - Steve's mind goes blank.

Clint lets out a low whistle. "The star-spangled man with a plan."

---

The restaurant Steve checks out turns out to be closed on Tuesdays. He sticks his nose to the glass door, trying to see the inside, but there's nothing out of the ordinary. He circles round to the back. Hesitates, then checks the dumpster. Just in case Bucky decided to take a nap there, but no dice.

There's no sign of a break-in, but the soldier may have some tricks up his sleeve that Steve doesn't know about. Steve sighs and twists at the doorknob, feeling the mechanism crunch and give way. Just then, his phone buzzes.

"So I don't speak Japanese, and my Russian's real rusty," Clint rambles. "I need you here asap because he doesn't look very happy about me finding his final resting place."

"Final resting - where's Romanoff?" Steve jams the doorknob back into the hole in the door, but it goes straight through to the other side and clunks onto the floor. "Fuck."

"Language. She's already on her way," he replies tersely. "Help me, I'm not the Winter Whisperer and the only Russian I know is a really stupid song Tasha taught me."

Steve holds back a groan, then stares desperately around him. There's a camera in the corner of the shop, and he gives it an apologetic half-wave. That should do it.

"I'm coming to you. Ask him about that one time he saw Babe Ruth."

"He's not Bucky right now!" There's a muffled bang in the background, and definitely some shouting in Russian this time.

Steve winces. "Tell him anything he needs to hear. I'm on my way."

For what seems like one too many times, Steve fires up his bike and hightails it.

They end up staring at the freezer door, which stares back at them, eerily silent.

"When did he stop trying to bust out?" Steve asks, eyeing the giant steel contraption warily.

"About ten minutes ago. Nat banged on it and yelled some stuff in Russian. It was brutal. He's probably crying right now." Clint doesn't budge from his position, three feet away from the door with his arrow nocked and ready to fly.

Nat stretches lazily beside him, impervious to Steve's raised eyebrows. "I only told him that his handler was coming to pick him up."

Steve groans. "I'm not gonna like what I see on the other side of that door, am I?"

"I only caught a glimpse before I noped outta there. He's armed with pretty much half the knives from the kitchen, but that's about it. I think he was trying to take a nap."

Steeling himself, Steve pushes the door open. Then he strides forward, automatic, and drops to a crouch. "Does this look like a nap to you?!" he wrenches the knife from Bucky's limp fingers and presses his palms to the deep gashes in his stomach. There's blood everywhere on the white floor, oozing slickly black. He feels his vision go grey. "Bucky, hey, what the hell did you do? Jesus fucking christ."

Bucky's eyelids flutter and peel open slowly. Steve registers the exact moment he becomes fully conscious, but by the time that happens, he's shoved to the side, slipping on the blood, cutting his lip on some jagged frost on a shelf, and then a thick band of unyielding metal is thrown around his neck. Caught off-guard, Steve finds his jaw snapping shut on his own tongue.

"Не приближайся," the soldier snarls into his ear, as Steve chokes on his blood.

"Nat," Clint says calmly, his bow taut and still. "I have him."

Don't shoot him, Steve tries to yell, but his throat is constricted. "Nushfllghm," he blurts instead.

Nat takes a slow step over the threshold, telegraphing her movements clearly. "Не надо. Яша, доверять мне."

"殺したはずよ," Bucky says, quieter. His grip loosens slightly, but Steve stays in place, swallowing hard and gulping air as much as possible. In this position he could try to twist out and throw Bucky into the nearest wall, but the small of his back pressing into Bucky's stomach is soaking in a lot more warmth than he's comfortable with, so he stays still and tries not to jolt him too much.

"C'mon, Barnes, don't make me kick you in the nuts," Steve mutters thickly.

"Tell me you're real, Steve," he whispers back. "I don't know what's real anymore - I don't - it hurts. I don't want to be here anymore. I just want some goddamn rest."

"You're sure as hell not choking out a figment of your imagination," Clint pipes up helpfully, his arrow still trained on Bucky, even the small sliver of his forehead that's peeking out from behind Steve.

"I dreamt I killed the President," Bucky says wildly, backing up slowly and dragging Steve with him. "Only - only it wasn't even FDR. There was a car."

"It's not a dream," Nat drawls. "Let him go. Yasha."

Bucky jerks back like she's whipped him. "Stop calling me that!"

"Bucky, stop. Listen to them. We can save you," Steve bites out. "I have a - friend - Nick Fury -"

"You were going to sell me out!" he growls back. "I heard you, you and the Widow, I know you want nothing more than to hand me back for - for reconditioning -"

"Listen, that's not what we do," Steve cuts in desperately. "These are my friends, they're all here to help! Bucky, let go. You're bleeding out all over me, come on."

"Я знаю что ты установила тот жучок."

Natasha frowns and shakes her head slowly. "What are you saying?"

"Somewhere. Inside. It hurts, I had to try to cut it out..."

"What is he saying?!" Clint says, exasperated.

"He says we put a tracker in him."

Understanding hits Steve like a tank. "It's a bullet, Bucky, Justin Anders -"

The arm tightens around his neck again, vibrating and clacking up and down the plates. His vision blurs as his throat closes again, so he just squeezes his eyes shut and holds his breath. His blood is pooling in his brain, in his temples, and he feels like he might burst like a melon.

"I killed him," Bucky gasps. "I remember."

"And now you're killing Steve," Natasha says loudly. "Barnes, you need to let him go, or Barton's going to take that shot."

Steve feels Bucky's entire body tremble and break. "I can't go back," he whispers, more to himself than anyone else. His breath ghosts past Steve's neck. "Don't make me go back."

"James. Look at me. You're safe now. I promise, nothing is going to happen to you. Just let Steve go and we can talk about this nicely. This isn't you. You're sick, you need help. Let us help you."

"I wanted to kill that family too. That one with the - that baby..."

"It was the Winter Soldier," Natasha says firmly.

"I am the Winter Soldier. IT WAS ALL ME!" Bucky roars, swaying on his feet. Natasha's mouth twists grimly and Steve closes his eyes. Don't do this, Bucky, Bucky, please, don't do this.

"Steve, Stevie, I can't live like this," Bucky gasps wetly. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry - "

He lets go of Steve and all of a sudden the colour rushes back into his vision. Steve blinks then goes rigid because it's Bucky's hands on his neck, on his jaw, and he knows this angle, this intimate position, and of all endings he never expected this. Still, he feels himself relax into the hot-cold grip, and his lips part slightly with a sigh.

"NO - " Nat screams, darting forward. There's a sharp sound and the crackle of electric singing in the air.

Steve feels his body drop to the floor, heavy and dumb. He's still conscious somehow, his jaw working as his heart thrums rabbit-quick through his veins. He tilts his head this way and that, incredulous. Bucky hadn't done it. He hadn't -

Steve turns just as Bucky's heavy weight drops right onto him and they both go down, wild-limbed and messy. His mouth turns sour - there's an arrow right between his eyes and he feels something tear from his throat, unbidden. "No - Buck. No."

Blinking and shuddering, he spots the arrow and almost falls over in relief. It's one of Barton's trick arrows, its tip three-pronged and digging into Bucky's forehead, the points still releasing small pulses of electricity. Bucky twitches on the floor, wide-eyed and silent. Once, twice, three times, then goes still.

"Relax, Steve, he'll live," Nat murmurs softly, after leaning over to take a look. Steve nods and spits out a mouthful of blood, his tongue aching too much to talk.

Clint slides over and gently removes the arrow, hissing in sympathy.

"Thanks," Steve manages, putting a clumsy hand on Clint's elbow. "For - not doing it."

"He wanted me to," Clint says, shaking his head. "You didn't see the look on his face. He was ready to die."

Natasha looks up from where she's squatting, securing cuffs around Bucky's wrists. Her eyes burn into Steve's, and he resists the urge to look away.

"Yeah, he was," she says, her tone unreadable.

Chapter Text

February 1945.

He wakes up despite the cold, his head buzzing with static. It takes a long time for him to realise that it's not because the neighbours have left their radio on next door, and it's not because he's accidentally left the crappy window of their tiny apartment open. He's on the side of a mountain, somewhere behind enemy lines.

Bucky tries to move his fingers and toes. He imagines that it's possible, but he can't summon the strength to lift his head to check. Either way, it's too cold to feel anything at all. 

It's fine. He's fine. He's alive and breathing and nothing hurts, not really. 

Steve will come.

April 1945.

They make him march with the rest of the POWs the moment they figure he's looking better and relatively healed up. He doesn't understand a lick of Russian, but the way they side eye him and mutter, it's not hard to guess what they think of him. 

He keeps his head down, focusing on the near constant pain in his left arm. It's practically useless, broken at more points than he can count, and he can't even lift it high enough to scratch his nose. They shackle him up all the way to the elbows anyway, and it's so heavy that he feels it in his back. 

They don't know what to do with him, not really. His uniform had given him away from the start, and he figured maybe they'd use him as a bargaining chip or something, but all they've done is make his life pain and transfer him to so many places he's lost count. Probably trying to make it hard for Steve to find him, but that never really stopped him before.

They march until they get shoved into an overcrowded train that reeks of piss and fear. The soldiers exchange words - American, they say, pointing at him. Hail Hydra, they say, and nod knowingly like they have a big secret to keep. 

God, he really hopes Steve will find him soon.

July 1945.

He arrives at the smallest work camp he's ever seen, in the middle of nowhere. He doesn't even know which country he's in anymore. For all the walking he's done it might be smack in the middle of Russia.

There must be maybe twenty POWs assembled at the side when he's shoved out of the truck. They barely even look at him, just stare at the ground or into the middle distance, their faces devoid of hope. The product of their labour sits in front of Bucky: an ugly, squarish concrete bunker with no windows, crouched low between the trees. The doorway barely reaches Bucky's shoulders.

Stupidly, Bucky blurts, "Yannow, that's not gonna fit -"

The soldiers open fire and the prisoners drop like puppets with their strings cut. The words die in his throat. The bunker is opened, and there's a short flight of stairs leading down into the ground. 

"Залезай," the nearest soldier says, pointing down with his gun. It's still smoking. Bucky goes.

January 1946.

"...so that's three strikes! Aaaand he's out, whatta sucker. Go home, Jones, have some dinner and cry about it. Oh, food's here. I'll have some of that, cry along with you."

The slit in the door slides shut without responding, but Bucky doesn't mind. He's having a pretty good day. Later he will play another game of baseball in his head, maybe pit the Dodgers against the Howlies. Maybe they'll all play naked. Maybe they'll use guns instead of bats,

"Pew pew pew," Bucky says softly, licking up the last of the beans that got burnt and stuck to the bottom of the shallow tin. "Ow, that was a miss. God damn, Carter, you've hit the spectators. They're all dead now."

He throws the empty can at the door. "If ya gonna burn it at least give it to me hot!" he yells. It rolls all the way back and hits his face.

It must be years since the fall, Bucky thinks. He's lost count of how many escape attempts he's made. He's lost count of what he's said to himself, to his guards, to anyone who'd listen. He could have given them all the addresses to their secret bases and he wouldn't even have remembered or cared. He's lost count of how many times he's tried to kill himself.

"It's really not that easy," he tells himself, laughing a little and then a lot, when he tries again. There's blood dribbling down through his eyes, dripping off his chin. The slit in the door opens and someone stares at him like they're assessing if it's worth opening the door to clean up. 

"Four fucking concrete walls all around me and I can't even bash my head against one of them," Bucky muses, waving back at them. It slides shut again. He tries to do some finger-painting with the blood on his hands. 

Steve likes art. He'll have a good laugh when he comes in through that door.

November 1946.

Sometimes if Bucky talks loud enough, his voice will echo and it will feel like there are other people in the room, instead of just inside his head. It's kind of nice. He sings happy birthday to himself every day, because there's gotta be one time when it's actually his birthday and he'll have gotten it right. Maybe it's today.

March 1947.

The guard who opens his door is the first face Bucky's looked at in what seems like years. It isn't what he expected. He's so surprised that he doesn't even move, not to run out of the room, and not even to punch it in.

"I don't know why I expected you to be a looker," Bucky blurts, then the guy steps aside.

Arnim Zola walks in.

Bucky laughs and laughs and laughs.

"Hey, Stevie, I gotta joke for you," he says, hitting Steve on the shoulder. Steve doesn't say anything.

"Your Captain is dead, Sergeant Barnes." Zola looks him up and down with faint distaste. "I see captivity has not done you any favours."

"Aw, don't say that to him," Bucky coos. "He'll get his punk little ass all riled up, and pal, you don't wanna see that side of him."

Zola frowns. "I overestimated myself. I counted on my serum keeping you physically well, but I had not taken your mental state into account." 

"Take your ugly face into account," Steve snaps, and Bucky howls.

"There was an experiment we conducted with a rat once," Zola says in his wheedly voice, unperturbed. "We put it in a bucket of water. It lasted maybe ten minutes before it gave up and stopped swimming. We rescued it when it started to sink, and then we repeated the experiment. It was amazing how long it persevered after it learned that it would get saved eventually."

"Oh. I get it. I'm the rat," Bucky says. "You wanna insult me, just call me a rat straight up next time, save your breath a little."

"Yes. Considerably better than a rat. On the second try, the same rat swam for two days before its heart finally gave out."

"If you're gonna tell me I've only been here two days, Doc, I will literally go mad."

"This should help." Zola takes out a little square piece of paper from the folds of his coat, unfurling it and letting it float to the floor. It's a newspaper cutting.

THE DEATH OF THE DREAM
Captain America laid to rest in official ceremony at Arlington

Hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered to pay respects for the fallen war hero on the first 4th of July celebration since the end of World War 2. Captain Steven Grant Rogers, 27, died when he flew an airplane into the middle of the Arctic Ocean. The plane, initially bound for New York, was carrying weapons of mass destruction that was meant to target millions of civilians. This final heroic deed by Captain Rogers -

Bucky reads it once, twice: at first not really registering anything at all apart from the fact that he can still read. 

He's not coming, he realises.

"No, Sergeant. He isn't." Zola sighs and plucks the article back out of Bucky's hands, folding it carefully and sliding it back into his wallet, like the photograph of a precious child. "And since SHIELD has made me destroy all my work with the serum, I'm afraid the only thing I have left of my work... is you."

His lip curls as his gaze settles on Bucky's useless arm.

Bucky barks out something that's not really a laugh. "Oh, yeah, sure," he says casually. "Hope whatever you need me to do doesn't require both hands." He starts laughing again, even though it's not really funny. "My legs still work, so maybe if you need someone to run a marathon for you. I'm your guy."

Zola's thin smile makes Bucky's hair stand on end. "Oh, don't you worry, Sergeant Barnes. Don't you worry at all."

December 1951.

Bucky can finally pick up a pen with his new hand without passing out from the pain. He uses this opportunity to shove it straight at the closest guy's face, repeatedly, and doesn't stop even when he's no longer screaming.

"I'm disappointed in you, Sergeant Barnes," Zola says, clucking like Bucky's just gone and spilled a cup of water on the floor.

"I wish that had been you," Bucky retorts, and the door closes on him again.

March 1953.

"If you cooperate," Zola says through the door for the twelfth time, "We will let you out."

"Suck my balls," Bucky says, and throws his tin of beans at the door.

They don't feed him for a long time after that, so he eventually has to lick the dried sauce off the floor.

August 1954.

He says yes. They chain him up and lead him out of the bunker for the first time in years.

The sun assaults his eyes and he winces, feeling like some creature emerging from the dirt. The grass. The grass looks so soft. He falls face first into it, burying his face into the clay and dirt and leaves and breathing it in. Oh God. Oh God. He's never going to move again. They can shoot him right here and now and he won't even care. This is the best way to die.

"Get up, Sergeant, or you're going back in forever."

He feels himself scramble to obey, even if a small part of his brain protests. Fuck that, he would do anything to not go back in.

Zola crinkles his eyes almost kindly. "Are you ready to comply, Soldier?"

Someone in his head is screaming NO. He's screaming, FUCK YOU. NEVER. 

The soldier pushes that aside. He doesn't want to go back. His mouth moves on its own accord. "Yes, sir."

September 1954.

"This erratic behaviour needs to stop," Zola says, impatience bleeding into his voice. His white coat has blood splattered on it, and he's wiping his spectacles impassively on his sleeve.

The soldier grinds his teeth in frustration, watching the lab technician's body get dragged out of the room by the ankles. He's trying, he's trying really hard, but the blood on his fist is damning and says otherwise. "Yes, sir."

"Are you ready to comply?"

"Fuck you," Bucky Barnes spits. They hit him with the cattle prod and lock him in the dark until he starts talking to himself again.

June 1956.

There's something different about this routine this time. Usually they hurt him a little, lock him up and threaten to forget about him in there, but this time they don't wait for him to lose his mind.

The door opens when he's still counting the minutes to try to keep track of time while in the dark. He's at 19,801 minutes of being awake, so maybe it hasn't been a month yet. He usually gives himself some buffer time because of sleeping and generally checking out of his brain entirely.

"I'm not crazy yet," he points out blithely, as if they're interrupting his process.

"У нас есть кое-что для вас." The guard gestures minutely with his gun, standing just out of lunging distance. At least he's smart. Even bound and weak, Bucky has learnt how to be dangerous.

"Something for me, huh," Bucky repeats under his breath. "Alright, where is it - I don't have all day."

The guard doesn't acknowledge his banter, just leads him into the main room where Zola usually briefs him for missions. Maybe he'll choose to be good this time. If it's killing a random someone with no family, it'll be easy enough. Sometimes he gets a hot meal if he cooperates. It's almost worth hating himself after it. There isn't anyone alive who would be disappointed in him anyway.

The contraption in the middle of the room is new and ominous. Bucky stops in his tracks. 

"A crude solution to your little problem up here," Zola explains, from behind a thick glass panel on the other side of the room. He uses his index finger to draw loops around his temple to drive the meaning home.

Bucky doesn't know what this thing does, but he doesn't like it. Panic thrums through his veins and he makes a sort of abortive move to get away.

"No, please, I'll comply," the soldier says desperately. "Sir, I'll be good. Give me the mission. Please."

"Your mission is to get in that chair."

"I can't," Bucky whispers. "Please don't make me." There's no escape. He can feel his eyes dart around like a trapped animal, looking for a way out, but there are more guards and they've formed a ring and even if he can get to one fast enough, they would open fire. Maybe that would be better. Maybe -

He darts to the left and immediately a bullet slams through his thigh. He drops silently, his ears ringing from the sound of the gunshot. "Just kill me," he gasps, shuffling forwards on his knees, then throws his weight at the guard again. 

His arm isn't activated so it's dead weight. He goes down heavy, his chains clanging on the floor, knocking his forehead forward as hard as he can, but it just meets the guy's helmet and his own vision goes black and blue. The guards don't even shoot this time, just kick him off dispassionately and haul him into the chair anyway.

"ZOLA!" Bucky screams, his voice tearing his throat up. He thrashes ineffectively, but the straps are going on and the metal ring is going around his head and he can feel his arm muscles tear from trying to twist out.  "JUST KILL ME!"

"Yes, Sergeant Barnes," Zola's reedy voice agrees from behind the screen. "I'll try my best."

The shock is so sudden and so strong that it knocks his head backwards. He cracks a tooth from clenching his jaw so hard. When it's over the room is quiet and smells of burnt hair and blood.

Then Zola is standing in front of him, and he's stepping forward to undo the restraints himself. The guards tense and look at each other uneasily.

The soldier stands and stumbles. Confused, he looks down and sees a fresh bullet wound on his leg. The blood is still flowing freely, puddling around the heel of his shoe. Everything hurts so bad. Make it stop. Make it stop.

"Soldier. Are you ready to comply?"

The soldier straightens up as best he can, and nods.

February 1959.

It is standard HYDRA protocol to put the Winter Soldier in the chair for reconditioning before and after a mission. It's in the handler's manual, complete with a recording of Zola's voice. If the mission drags on too long, the soldier becomes violent and acts out against the handlers and technicians.

Or sometimes he thinks he's someone else, fighting in the World War that's been over for awhile now. He makes jokes about punching Hitler or going to the movies or taking girls out for dances, which is very not standard protocol, but reconditioning fixes all of it.

Most of the handlers at HYDRA get used to it. "He's not really all there," Richardson laughs, not quite out of earshot. "You should hear him mewl at the walls after a good long lockup. Fella can't stand being alone with his own thoughts."

He's caught in the crossfire two missions later. The soldier doesn't have an answer to why, but he smirks before he sits in the chair.

"It seems that we cannot trust you to function without this," Zola sighs, almost regretfully. "Like a cockroach, the undesirable part of you keeps coming back."

"Thought I was a rat," the soldier blurts inanely. He doesn't know where that came from. The metal crown descends and he screams until he doesn't know anything at all.

December 1960.

Zola's getting on in his years. He sells the Winter Soldier to the Russian arm of HYDRA, complete with a usage manual and instructions for which punishments and rewards work best. The first thing they do is replace the arm with a brand new one. The pain is much worse than what he remembers the first procedure to be like. But then again, he barely remembers the first procedure. He doesn't even remember how he lost his arm.

October 1965.

"Ma'am..." the soldier shifts uneasily. They don't like it when he questions orders. But the last time they showed him something new, it was because he deserved it. He's learnt how to be their perfect soldier over the years, and his recent mission had been no different. He'd enjoyed it a little, even. When they screamed he pretended they were HYDRA. "I don't understand."

"Oh, no, this is not a punishment," Dr. Harlan says, fiddling with the pod distractedly. "It's actually to help you. A better way to keep you between missions."

"I have a cell."

"And I have no idea how you're still holding it together. Years of isolation isn't good. Not even for our mean ol' Fist of HYDRA. I've seen your cell. It doesn't even have proper air ventilation."

"You have the chair. To fix me."

She purses her lips. "We're not asking."

The soldier bites down on his tongue and steps into the pod.

May 1969.

He's still biting his tongue when he thaws out. It hurts more than the chair.

June 1999.

"It just seems a little unnecessary," Sitwell dithers, as the soldier gets into the chair and straps himself in grudgingly.

"Last person who thought that ended up holding their guts in their hands while they died," Rumlow grunts.

"Yeah, but that was, like, ten years ago."

The soldier blinks at them, his face stony and unreadable. He imagines pushing their heads together slowly and deliberately, until they burst like overripe watermelons. He doesn't know where he gets these thoughts. Better let the chair take care of that sooner than later. It's probably for his own good. He's not all there. He gets disobedient and hurts the wrong people when they don't fix him.

"Just pull the damn lever, Jesus Christ," Rumlow says, rolling his eyes.

April 2011.

Alexander Pierce watches him thaw out. This isn't a normal thing. The soldier tries to keep it together, even though the process hurts like hell and he's cold and vulnerable and shaking like a newborn. He doesn't know what Piece wants from him. Hopefully not something important. His body doesn't listen to him after a thaw, at least not for a few hours.

"Soldier," Pierce says, like he's acknowledging an old friend.

"Ready to comply," the soldier gasps.

"What would you do if I told you that Captain America was still alive?"

Is this a trick question? The soldier tries not to look confused. "What are my orders, sir." 

"I need a report from you. What do you know about Steve Rogers?"

The soldier frowns. He feels like he knows the answer to this, like he had the answer just a moment ago, but somehow forgot everything. "I... the name is familiar, sir. Is this a past mission?"

"How could you forget," Pierce hisses, then his hand whips out and the soldier is on the floor from just that, a shower of pins and needles radiating from where his knuckles connected. He feels the impact like an icicle exploding against the ground.

"Report! Tell me what you know about Steve Rogers."

The soldier gets to his feet, shaking his head desperately. He looks to the nervous technician, who steps backwards hastily. "I don't remember, sir. Request permission to read his file. I'm sorry. The reconditioning - interferes with my memory."

Pierce tilts his head to the side. "You're not lying," he says slowly, like he's quietly amazed about it.

"Never, sir," the soldier says hastily.

Pierce smiles widely now, sudden and brilliant. He claps the soldier's face between both palms and squeezes a little. "Good boy."

The technician puts him in the chair anyway.

Chapter Text

"So, I have good news and not so good news." Natasha sidles up next to him, blowing a bubble with her gum until it pops on her nose.

Steve tears his eyes away from the middle of the room. They're in a nondescript warehouse previously owned by SHIELD. Or maybe HYDRA. Either way, it doesn't matter anymore. What matters is the prototype containment unit that Natasha somehow managed to uncover in the noise of the SHIELD data dump: a white little capsule with clear windows and a soft bench and a two-way speaker setup.

"We can also gas him if he tries to escape," Natasha had pointed out distractedly, scrolling through the options panel on the side.

"We're not gassing anyone," Steve said bluntly.

Natasha looks at him expectantly now, her lip curved into that deceptively soft smile. "Well? Which do you wanna hear first?"

"Yes," Steve sighs tiredly.

Natasha laughs and bumps her shoulder against him affectionately. "Okay. Good news. I found a decent therapist through Sam. She's actually retired but you know... I can be very persuasive."

Steve looks back at Bucky's sedated form, sprawled awkwardly on the floor of the container right where Steve dumped him. "That's putting the cart ahead of the horse, isn't it?"

"For you, idiot."

"...oh. Thanks." 

After what went down at the restaurant, Natasha had chewed him a new one about having no regard for his life or safety. It was a little terrifying, and more true than Steve was willing to admit. But it was really nice that she cared enough to make him feel better, so he's decided he'll go with whatever play she suggests.

"And the not so good news is, I know how to stabilise James' condition."

Steve blinks and throws her a suspicious side-eye. "Are you mixing the good and bad news up?"

"I never said there was bad news. But it's not a great method. HYDRA kept a pretty comprehensive video footage of how they did it."

Steve's gut twists. "There has to be another way. Bucky's in there somewhere, I know it."

"Hate to break it to ya, Cap, but... I watched some of it with her. Your friend here's a complete nutcase. Ow." Clint winces as Nat's pen cap hits his forehead.

Steve sighs. "Yeah, I know. Think that ship sailed after the toothbrush incident."

"On the bright side, I no longer have to imagine what you'd look like with hickeys all over your neck."

"Why would you -" Steve starts, bemused.

"Bad news coming, boys," Natasha straightens up a little, shifting into alert mode. "He's waking up."

It's a tense half hour watching Bucky fight the remnants of the sedative, which ends with him puking up a small puddle of it on the floor of the unit. 

"Nice, the analysis feature kicked right in," Natasha breathes, her face lighting up when the info flashes onto the panel. "Hey Barnes, that PBJ tastes a little different the second time around, huh?"

The joke doesn't register. Bucky pushes himself slowly into a sitting position, leaning heavily on the wall behind him. His eyelids flutter as he takes stock of his surroundings, a range of emotions flickering across his face: confusion, panic, then bitter resignation.

"Request for reconditioning," he mutters, hanging his head.

"How're you feeling, Buck?" Steve asks instead.

Bucky cracks an eye open. "Usually takes me a lot longer to start hallucinating your punk ass."

"Do you know what year it is?" Clint presses, his eyes narrowed.

"Wish I didn't," Bucky retorts shortly. He shoots an unreadable glare at Steve. "You're harder to kill than I thought."

"Thanks," Steve says dryly. "I guess that's what we specialise in around here. Except we don't try it on each other."

There's a beat, then Bucky throws himself at the clear panel. It's so reinforced that the sound is dampened to a tiny muffled thump.

"Ooh, that recorded as almost ten kilonewtons of force," Natasha mutters under her breath. "Lights in there are gonna run for another week."

"I waited for you," Bucky seethes, slamming his fists against the panel. Steve feels the ghost of their force on his chest. "Since 1945. I waited."

"I know," Steve says helplessly. He can't bring himself to look away. "I know, Buck, I'm so sorry."

"You don't know. You don't know - you don't know how much - " Bucky stops, his eyes wild. "LET ME OUT!"

"Can't do that, Barnes," Natasha says tersely. "Safety reasons, you know how it is."

"We're trying to help you here." Clint points out.

He bares his teeth and punches at the glass a few more times, like somehow his fist can break through and hit Steve in the face. "I. DON'T. NEED. YOUR. HELP!"

"Bucky, come on. You're hurting yourself."

"SEVENTY YEARS. SEVENTY YEARS OF HELL, ROGERS. AND YOU - YOU'RE STANDING THERE, LOOKING SORRY FOR ME - LIKE - WHAT, YOU'RE DISAPPOINTED IN ME? FUCK YOU! NO - YOU DON'T GET TO FEEL BAD! YOU DON'T GET TO FEEL ANYTHING, YOU PIECE OF SHIT. I WAS ALONE. AND I SUFFERED. FOR SEVENTY FUCKING YEARS. YOU TAKE YOUR JUSTICE AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS, STEVEN, I SWEAR THE MOMENT I GET OUT I WILL KILL ALL OF THEM, AND ALL OF YOU, FUCKING - AAAARGH!"

The final smash he uses his normal fist, which splits horribly and leaves a fresh smear of blood on the reinforced glass.

"BLOOD TYPE: B POSITIVE," the system says.

Clint twirls another trick arrow between his fingers like a skilled drummer, hissing in sympathy. Nat touches Steve on the elbow, gently, and he finally remembers to let out a breath. Shudders a little, then breathes in again shakily.

Bucky's raging finishes as quickly as it starts. He glares daggers at Steve, panting hard, then spins away and sits down, his face wooden. "Request reconditioning."

"We're not gonna do that, Bucky," Steve says quietly. "HYDRA's gone. You're safe now."

A muscle ticks in his jaw.

"We found the rest of your list. Trust me, we're working on rounding up all the ex HYDRA goons. We're taking care of it, Buck, and nobody's gonna control you or make you do any more killing."

Bucky smiles suddenly, bright and cutting. "Oh, I know. I killed those people because I wanted to."

"That's not gonna hold up in court," Clint mutters.

"Did you want to kill Bethany?"

Bucky narrows his eyes. "Who?"

"The baby."

Bucky looks away.

"Is that a no?"

"I didn't know it was a fucking baby, okay," Bucky mumbles. "Just - why are you all just standing there looking at me? You either zap my brain, freeze me, or kill me. Pick one. Just - stop fucking with my head. It's too much. Just make me forget already. I don't wanna know any of it. I don't wanna know any of you." He tears at his hair a little.

"We're just having a conversation," Steve says gently.

"I'm having an aneurysm," Bucky snaps.

Steve laughs suddenly, his heart aching. God, how stupid it is to miss someone who's sitting right in front of you. "We're not HYDRA, Buck. I don't know what else to say that will convince you."

"I dunno, getting Captain America to come and tell me that HYDRA's gone is a little too on-the-nose for me," Bucky says, slouching like he's trying for casual, but the blooming red on his bandage says otherwise.

Steve shoots a concerned look at Natasha, and she shakes her head minutely. "He'll jump you the moment we get the door open."

"What's the plan, Buck? You escape, kill off the remaining HYDRA folks and anyone who happens to get in your way, then what? When does the killing stop?"

Bucky flips him off. "Since when do you plan that far ahead?"

"Humour me."

Bucky prods at the bandage on his abdomen. "Maybe I'll pull these stitches out and see if I can strangle myself on them."

"I've never heard of anything so badass and batshit at the same time," Clint says, awed. "I gotta write this down."

"Please don't do that," Steve says pointedly.

Bucky's eyes widen. "Wow, that's exactly what my imaginary Steve says all the time. Uncanny."

"Cut the crap, soldier," Steve snaps. "We're trying to help you here. Which one am I talking to?"

Bucky gets to his feet in one fluid motion, tightly wound like a cat ready to spring. "Can't you tell, Stevie? Did you expect me to go back to being your clueless friend from the 40s forever?"

"Now that you mention it, at least he's not a complete dickhead like you," Steve retorts, stepping forward. "Jesus Christ, Buck, who the fuck do you think I am? When have I ever thought less of you? You think I don't remember what you did during the war? You're still my friend, the blood on your hands ain't changin' that."

"How about if I liked it? That enough for you to change your mind?" Bucky asks, his mouth twisting. "Yeah, pal, let that sink in. Soldier over here's always been the good one, followin' orders and lookin' out for you. We'd both be dead without him. It's me that's fucked up, Steve. They turned my brain inside out and I can't even tell you what I might do next if I wanted to. For all I know there's a pretty high chance I'm rotting away in my usual cell shouting at nothing because I've gone crazy again. Request. Reconditioning."

"We're really not HYDRA, buddy, that's not really on the menu," Clint says. "The only reconditioning we have is 'Tasha over here. She'll hit you really hard if you ask nice enough."

Natasha sighs and turns away. "This isn't getting anywhere."

"I say we wait it out," Steve says, eyeing Bucky warily. "He's obviously progressed a hell lot from amnesiac with a split personality. Maybe it was Clint's trick arrow."

"He was a lot nicer when I dropped by your apartment last time," Natasha says, making a face. "I'm gonna wager that keeping him locked up and alone is not gonna help. That's pretty much what HYDRA did."

"Yeah, now he's just SUPER fucked in the head and SUPER pissed off!" Bucky yells, banging on the door for emphasis. "Recondition me, asshole, or just shoot me in the head. Put me outta my misery. Widow. Natashka. Сделать это для меня, huh? Вы были добрее к Алексею."

"TRANSLATION MODE ACTIVATED," the pod chimes. "Do it for me, huh, you were kinder to Alexei."

"Ah," Clint breathes, sudden understanding dawning on his face. Steve frowns and looks at the OLED screen, swiping this way and that. Natasha was right, this thing really does have some pretty nifty features.

"Not now, Barton," Natasha says shortly. She levels a calm look at Bucky. "I also remember that you were a lot easier to talk down than him."

Bucky melts a little, visibly. "You were just a little shrimp then," he says wistfully.

Natasha shrugs off the look Steve's giving her. "I told you, I didn't know who he was. Just another sad prisoner who needed companionship, you know how it is."

"She gave me chocolate," Bucky said, smiling a little at the idea, then the smile falls. "Sorry for shooting you."

"I shot you a few times, too," Natasha admits. "You probably don't remember. It's whatever."

"Hold on," Clint interrupts. "He shoots you and you're cool with it, but I get mind controlled one time and I'm still never hearing the end of it?"

"I'll call it even when you've earned it."

"Unbelievable. H - Steve!"

Steve waves at them from inside the containment unit as the door snicks shut. "Wow, it's a lot colder in here than I thought. Turn up the heat, will ya?"

Bucky snaps out of his shocked daze and shoves at him hard enough that he hits the wall. The lights get marginally brighter and the air vents colder. "What the fuck, Rogers. I could kill you right the fuck now."

"You won't," Steve says, planting his ass firmly on the bench and watching dispassionately as Romanoff and Barton flick through the settings on the pod and look more and more furious by the second. 

"What did you do?!" Bucky snarls. "Get out!"

"Yeah, he can't," Natasha says, scowling and hitting the panel in frustration after she's figured it out. "The idiot set a timelock on the thing. Nobody's getting this open anytime soon."

"I'm not leaving you here alone," Steve says stubbornly. "We're gonna wait this out together and talk like civilised adults, or you can kill me, or we can both go crazy. I told you, Buck. I'm with you till the end of the line. Even if it means this."

Bucky lets out a garbled string of various languages put together and kicks at the door ineffectually.

"TRANSLATION ERROR. PLEASE REPEAT." The pod beeps.

"Look for an override!" Clint crowds in and takes control, shouldering Natasha away. 

"Yeah, weird thing about that. Override's tagged to Phil Coulson's iris scan."

"No! But... he's, y'know."

"It's a prototype, what did you expect?" Natasha says irritably, brushing Clint off. "Probably got decommissioned a long time ago, never made it out of production."

Clint starts shaking his head like he can't believe it. "This is not happening. This is not happening. No, no, nonononono."

"It's just a week, Barton, calm down," Steve calls through the glass.

"Oh, because the screen says until 1/9, right?" Clint's voice goes a little higher and more desperate. "Because today's date is the SECOND OF JANUARY?! RIGHT?!"

"It's the first of February, what are you talking about?" Natasha says, then she stops and her mouth forms a small O.

"Oh." Realisation dawns on Steve a little too late. God, he is an idiot. "It's in day-month, isn't it. Not month-day."

Bucky starts laughing silently until tears stream down his cheeks.

"Steve," Natasha says, thunderstruck and looking like she doesn't know whether she should laugh or cry.

"You little shit," Bucky wheezes, hysterical, and his stitches are definitely torn up now with how red the bandages are looking. "You're stuck in here with me until September."

Chapter Text

The soldier watches numbly as Romanova and the archer walk away, shouting at each other, then their phones, then again at each other. 

Bucky Barnes keeps laughing.

"It's not that funny," Steve says eventually, after he finally raises his face from his palms.

"Pal," Bucky wheezes, and the soldier winces from how much it hurts the wound on his abdomen. "This is funnier than that time in Calais."

Steve's expression hovers between hopeful and disgruntled. "It worked, didn't it?"

NO. It did not work. The soldier scowls. "Lucky. I saved you in the end," he bites out through his teeth.

"You always do, Buck," Steve says, all fond and floppy and bright, like they're not stuck in this godawful tank with this godawful puddle of puke between them and with a hundred voices in his head trying to break his skull apart. Closes his eyes. Now's a good time as any to start counting.

It used to be a lot easier to get into it, but Steve interrupts his process before he even reaches ten minutes.

"You've gone all quiet," he says, like he's pointing out that the sun is still out. "Bucky?"

The soldier sighs and shakes his head minutely. Bucky swears.

"You haven't tried to kill me yet," Steve adds.

"Ten thousand eight hundred and twenty. Thereabouts." The soldier bites out, trying his best to stare into the middle distance and not look at the giant golden distraction in the other corner.

"What? Is that... that's not your number," Steve says, aghast. 

"No," the soldier agrees, but he feels a slow smile stretch his features. "That's usually when we get into the killing mood."

Steve has a heroic determined look on his face. "Not this time," he promises. 

The soldier ignores him.

---

He lasts all the way until 320 minutes before he can't take it any more. "Идиот. Your shirt. Give it to me."

Steve jerks out of his daze. "Huh? You cold?" He's halfway to peeling it off when he freezes and narrows his eyes suspiciously. "Why do you need it?"

"You did not give me one," the soldier points out.

"'M not gonna kill you with your own shirt, sweetheart," Bucky drawls.

"Don't talk like that," Steve huffs, pulling it the rest of the way off and flinging it at him.

Finally. The soldier wads it up nice and tight and stuffs it in the corner, then finally, finally, gets to have a piss.

"Christ, that's my -!" Steve yelps. "What the fuck?!"

"You wanna sit here for days watching your own piss flow everywhere?" Bucky points out, tucking himself back in.

Steve glares at him mutinously and folds his arms across himself. "Barton! Can you please get back here and increase the temp on this thing?"

"The hell are the both of you doing in there, strip poker?" Barton says. 

"He peed on my fucking shirt."

"Ah, that's how you make it stay in the corner." Barton nods and tilts his head like he's been there. "Took me way too long to figure that trick out, buddy. Like, at least three kidnaps."

The soldier nods back, points to himself. "8 years."

Barton snorts, and Bucky grins. At least he gets it. Captain America has never been captured before. Captain America hasn't had to deal with stupid things like struggling to survive and even hoping that the piss doesn't dry up too quickly if they decide he doesn't need water. Fuck Captain America. 

"Bucky," Steve breathes, his voice hitching like he can't help himself.

"Shut up," Bucky snaps back. "Just shut up. I don't need your pity."

"Yeah, well, I'm gonna need you to budge over," Steve says mildly, "because I gotta pee too."

"No," Bucky says, petulant. "That's mine. Get your own."

"That's literally my shirt, bonehead."

Barton makes a small sympathetic noise. "Yeah, weirdly, no toilet features in this thing. SHIELD sucks."

Captain America hunches in the corner and groans with his hands over his crotch. "Bucky, come on."

"I'm not drinking your piss, don't fucking mix it with mine!" Bucky aims a sharp kick at Steve's ankle.

"Whoa, nobody's drinking any piss around here, okay," Barton says, holding his hands up placatingly. "We're not gonna leave you stuck there until September. Just give us awhile to figure it out."

---

347 minutes. 

Grinding his teeth, the soldier switches sides with Rogers so that he can relieve himself. "Widow, if you don't open this soon," he threatens. It's mostly an empty threat. He doesn't know what to do with himself or these idiots around him. All he knows is he has to get away before Bucky crawls out of his skin and strangles Rogers.

She grins humourlessly behind the screwdriver between her teeth, then clips another wire behind the panel.

The lights flicker.

"Careful," Steve warns. 

Natalia shrugs. "I'm trying to trigger a power surge to fry the hydraulics. But you know, whoever designed this is slightly smarter than I am." 

There's a muffled pop, a shower of sparks, then the lights go out completely, in the pod and in the warehouse.

"Slightly," Steve agrees.

---

Around the 780th minute, she finds the hydraulic line.

"Whoops," Romanova mutters, when the vents shut with a bang. "Wrong one."

"Oh, oxygen deprivation, this should be fun. The handlers had a thing for that in the 80s."

"On the bright side, we won't starve to death," Steve says lightly, but the sound of his fingers drumming on his thigh is suddenly amplified in the dark.

---

934 minutes. 

This is fine. You've done this before. Keep counting. But the darkness is not helping, and neither is the weight of Rogers' eyes on him. When the sound of Barton's chainsaw starts up, he feels his throat constrict, even though there's still plenty of air left for the both of them.

"Bucky," Steve says, his voice very far away. The soldier screws his eyes shut. 45, 46, 47, Shut upshutupshutup. 48, 49. 

The buzzing sound gets louder, the whole cell vibrates, his bones vibrate, and his - he looks down, and his arm is gone, and it's just a stump just under the elbow and there's blood everywhere and he tries to close a fist but there's nothing to close because he has no fingers,

and and and

there is Zola's voice, directing the techs and recording his observations and narrating the whole process so that he knows every single thing that's coming next, and 

just kill me please I can't my arm I can't feel my fingers but it hurts hurts hurts no not the elbow no please PLEASE

Zola says, " - a little higher up -"

Bucky screams like his entire throat is a chainsaw too, bright and jarring and unrestrained, but hahahaha ha ha jokes on you Barnes it's just the marker, it's cold and wet and Zola is marking out the incision points, but the buzzing doesn't stop.

"Steve, Stevie, please help me," Bucky gasps, and tears are streaming down his cheeks now. The soldier in him is disappointed, he knows. He usually doesn't beg until around maybe the 2000-minute mark. He knows Steve can't hear him because the sound of the machine is so loud, so loud, and his teeth are chattering from the impact and the fear and and and trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr against his bone, he can feel it. 

Somewhere outside his body, Steve catches his scrabbling hands and holds his wrists together tightly. "Stop that, come on, don't hurt yourself." But he's not. He's not, it's the fucking saw, and he's lying there all strapped down and the bright blade is descending on what's left of him, the edge spinning so fast it's a blur,

He screams until he's all hollow and his chest feels like it's turned to stone. When he stops he realises that it's quiet. The chainsaw has turned off awhile ago. The shaking has stopped. He's just been lying on the bench screaming for - he's lost track of time. What was the last count? 850?

"Please not the arm," Bucky rasps, his voice almost nothing. "Please."

"Okay," Steve says simply, his warm hands never letting go. "Nat?"

"No more chainsaws," Romanova says quietly, her voice muffled. "Tony's not answering his phone, but I've called everyone he knows, so he should... turn up. How's the air in there really?"

"Not so bad," Steve lies, but he's gotta be feeling it too, how the air is getting thin and tepid and just stinking of old piss and his own damn fear sweating out of every pore.

"I'm so sorry," Romanova whispers, her voice hoarse. "I've tried everything, called every contact..."

"Don't sweat it, Romanoff, this isn't on you," Steve cuts in.

"I'm sweatin' it. We're g-gonna fucking die h-her-here, Steve," Bucky gasps, his voice small, and the soldier clarifies, "and it's - all your fault."

Steve pets blindly at his face. His fingers shake a little. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll take this one, my bad. You can get the next."

---

The soldier thinks they must be at around 1000 minutes by now, at least. He's so tired. Each breath feels like he's trying to breathe while someone is sitting on his chest. Any moment now they will unlock the cell door. Sometimes they throw it open real loud and shine bright lights and shout in his face. Other times it's just a simple bucket of cold water over the head. The worst times are when the stun batons are out and sizzling the hair off his flesh.

Like every time, Bucky hopes that this time is the last time. Maybe they misjudge his lung capacity. Maybe they forget him and open the cell too late. Maybe he'll fall asleep and never wake up and it will be painless mercy. He closes his eyes and checks out, wishing for it, his brain slowly filling with cotton.

In the darkness, there's a very big shape right next to him. It's telling him it'll be alright. The voice is warm, its cadence even and sure. This hasn't happened before. He's usually alone. But then something is touching him very softly and tentatively, just a thumb brushing small circles over his temple over and over, and he sighs into it.

"I hope it ends like this," he mumbles aloud.

He and Rogers have a rhythm set up - they take turns sucking in even, shallow breaths. He can feel his heartbeat so very slow and soft. They're both calm now, especially since Steve has stopped talking inanely about the dumbest things. Bucky swears he almost lost it when he started on all the reasons why they're friends. Jesus Christ, Steven, the fucking arrow guy can hear you from here, and I know he has a hearing problem. Don't make it weird.

Maybe an hour passes.

Maybe two.

Maybe ten.

He's jostled awake by someone holding him close and weeping quietly, warm drops of tears splashing on his cheeks and running into his ears. Where is he? Wasn't he alone?

The soldier opens his eyes and grasps at the weak tendrils of thought left in his head - it's mostly empty and quiet and just... done. Bucky's not fighting anymore. Asleep, or maybe given up, or just gone - but that's not right. He's not entirely gone, because he knows the familiar weight on his neck, the breath on his face. Guess he's always been Bucky. Guess he's always known.

Every inch of his body seems to sag completely like he's finally, finally letting go after a century of barely holding it together by the skin of his teeth. 

"Huh," Bucky says disbelievingly. "You came."

Steve Rogers snorts quietly, his shoulders shaking, and grips him tighter.

---

Bucky's mostly drifting in and out of consciousness by the time help arrives in the form of a glowing blue arc reactor. It comes with a bossy voice, kind of sarcastic but also sounding very urgent and worried, and it won't shut up. 

There's no epic explosion or laser cutting. There's a distant, "Hang in there, buddies," then an inordinate amount of time later the lights click on tentatively, one at a time, as if they're not sure it's allowed. Everything turns into bright white halos, too much, and Bucky groans minutely and shuts his eyes.

"I don't wanna rush, you, Tony," a rumbling voice says very very close to his face. "But I think I might pass out in... maybe ten minutes."

The voice talks even faster about how dumb everyone is and how he has to hook the pod up to a laptop to reflash it with a whole new programming to bypass the fried circuits and tell it to open because whoever made this really didn't want it hacked and he has to write a new code, right here, on the fucking spot, and he can only type so fast, and technically this material is his proprietary tech and he specifically designed it himself to be impenetrable and why the hell would they even use prototype tech blind, you bunch of fucking amateurs, no I don't mean you Romanoff don't kill me, yes I can type faster than I can talk,

"...Howard?" Bucky exhales, then he's done.