Work Text:
“We Will Always Come For Each Other”
Yelena flipped over the back of an armed thug and launched herself at the one behind him, jamming her wrist tasers into his neck and bringing him down. Then before the first could even turn around fully, she shot a mobile taser at him, neutralizing him.
“You know, I thought when we became the Avengers,” she said over the comms, “that’d we be handling things bigger than a bunch of simple bank robbers.”
“Bank robbers armed with AKs and bullet proof armor are simple?” Walker retorted, followed by the echo of some punches and groans.
“We are doing good work!” Alexei roared as something smashed in the background of his comms. “Protecting the people!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Yelena said as she made her way down to the main floor of the branch.
“It’s good publicity,” Bucky said with as much enthusiasm as Yelena felt.
“I know, I just feel like we’ve been working hard and we should be doing something…bigger.”
“The military still calls Captain America for their stuff,” Walker said.
Yelena rolled her eyes at no one as she reached the corner and peeked around. Twenty hostages. Five more armed guards. Easy.
Ava phased in beside her and they made their move together. The rest of the team converged on the same location, and with a quick round of fighting, the bad guys were out and the hostages being directed out the door to safety.
“There’s more,” one of them said frantically. “They took the manager to the vault.”
Bucky gave her a reassuring nod and waved for her to keep going. “We’ve got this.”
They headed for the vault where they found the last four robbers with the bank manager. Unfortunately, a group of five Avengers fighting in a confined space didn’t go as smoothly as Yelena had hoped. The armed robbers got several shots off, and Yelena of course returned fire with her Glock. Walker deflected multiple bullets with his shield, which ricocheted a bullet at Bucky, who deflected it with his vibranium arm—and almost took out the bank manager if Ava hadn’t phased in to shove him down. And Alexei smashed several safety deposit boxes in his galumphing charge.
In the silence of the aftermath, the only sound was the bank manager whimpering on the floor.
Bucky sighed. “And that is why we aren’t called for the bigger stuff.”
One of the robbers tried to scramble for a fallen weapon, but Bucky grabbed her with his metal arm and shoved her against the wall.
“Just stop,” he said.
She seethed at him, then abruptly raised her arms and slammed her palms on either side of Bucky’s head. Blue electricity shot out, jerking him ramrod straight.
“Shit,” Walker exclaimed and surged forward to slam his shield into the woman, knocking her away.
Bucky collapsed, squiggles of blue energy spritzing over his head. Ava rushed to his side as Yelena and Walker turned to the bank robber, who clearly wasn’t a normal bank robber. But the woman yanked some grenades from her belt and threw them on the ground. The light explosion briefly threw them all backward, and then thick gas was spewing up and enveloping the room.
Yelena tucked her face into her arm to shield her mouth and nose as she reached for the bank manager with the other to haul him out. They all staggered back out into the lobby, coughing. Alexei laid Bucky on the floor and slapped his face repeatedly when he didn’t get a reaction the first time.
“Hey, easy,” Walker chastised.
“What the hell was that?” Ava gasped.
Yelena looked around for the woman, but she’d escaped. “I don’t know.” She looked back at Bucky. “We need to get him back to the Watchtower.”
The jet was on the roof where they’d made entry, so fortunately they could avoid the authorities and press outside. Bucky didn’t regain consciousness the entire short flight back, which was worrying. He didn’t often take bad hits, but when he did, he got back up quickly enough.
This wasn’t a regular hit, though. Yelena didn’t know what this was.
Maybe they weren’t ready to be the Avengers after all…
Bucky groaned as he came to on a cold, concrete floor. He knew from experience that waking up like this meant he needed to get up, fast. He rolled over and planted his metal arm on the ground to prop himself up as he did a quick scan of his surroundings. Wherever he was, it was dark. His head was killing him, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet, swaying into a nearby wall to catch himself. His vision went spotty for a moment before correcting, and he blinked uncomprehendingly at the symbol on the wall. Then he jerked backward, nearly falling again.
Hydra.
He whirled around, heart pounding. This was a Hydra facility. But there were no sounds, no one here. He reached up to brace his pounding head. What the hell happened? He was in New York…there was a robbery at the largest international bank and the team had been called…
Had the Void gotten released again? Bucky straightened and took some shuffling steps forward down the corridor. The motion seemed to trigger some backup power, and low-level lighting fizzled along the floor panels.
“Bob?” he called. He looked over his shoulder. Nothing. This wasn’t like the rooms in the Void, no past memories playing out on a loop, so that probably wasn’t what was going on. But then how did he get here?
“Walker? Yelena!” There wasn’t any sign of them here with him. Bucky reached up to tap his ear comm, only to find it wasn’t there.
He made his way through the deserted corridors. Maybe this was some kind of space-time continuum relocation thing, like what Doctor Strange could do. Though, Bucky didn’t remember anything like that happening at the bank. He really didn’t like not knowing. Gaps in his memory never meant anything good.
He patted his pockets in search of his phone, but it wasn’t on him either. Perfect.
Blue squiggles of energy started rippling down the walls, and he pulled up short warily.
Something slammed into him, throwing him down the hallway twenty feet. He scrambled to get back up as a figure masked in full body armor and helmet stomped after him. Bucky threw a punch, which the figure ducked. A fist slammed into his stomach, actually knocking the wind from him. Shit, a super soldier.
Bucky caught the next punch, wrenched the arm around and back, and then kicked his attacker so hard that he went flying twenty feet back down the hall. Wheezing, Bucky turned and bolted through a nearby door. He twisted the metal handle until it was warped, then shoved a huge piece of equipment in front of it. That wouldn’t stop the super soldier for long. Bucky just needed to find a way out of this place, call for backup and an evac…then figure out what the hell was going on.
Yelena stood in the med bay, watching the medical team huddle together over Bucky and some scans on various monitors. They’d attached electrodes to his head and heart, though Yelena didn’t understand the lines and blips, only that the red color was probably bad.
“Well?” she demanded.
They looked up.
“He’s in a coma,” one of them responded.
Her jaw went slack. “Okay, and what are you doing about it?”
The doctors shared silent looks.
“Something is attacking his neurons. We don’t know what, or how.”
“Shouldn’t his serum take care of it?” Walker put in.
Another of those irritating, private glances among them.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” the lead doctor said noncommittally.
“What, that’s it?” Ava said. “I thought you’re supposed to be some of the best doctors on the planet.”
“Unfortunately, no one on the planet has seen anything like this,” another doctor replied.
“And you rang them all up and asked?” Walker snorted.
The doctors went back to ignoring them all.
Yelena clenched her fists and started to pace. This couldn’t be happening.
“Don’t worry, Yelena,” Alexei said. “Bucky is strong. He will overcome this.”
“We don’t even know what this is!” she shouted back, gesturing at their unconscious teammate sharply.
Bob had been lingering in the doorway, but now he moved closer, slowly, cautiously. Brows pinched, he tentatively reached out to brush his fingers against Bucky’s face. The rest of them exchanged uncertain looks. Then he pulled back, eyes widening.
“There’s something inside him,” he said.
Everyone stiffened in alarm.
“What the hell does that mean?” Walker asked.
“Is it an alien?” Alexei asked. “Like from the movie, Alien?”
“Oh my god, Dad, what are you—”
“No,” Bob interrupted. “Not a thing. Something…” He shook his head. “Never mind. Don’t listen to me, I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Yelena hurried over to him. “You know more than these pissant doctors are giving us, so try. Please.”
He bit his lip, worried gaze shifting back to Bucky. “It’s, um, a signature, or resonance. Like a virus, sort of. Or a predator. It’s on the hunt.”
“Like alien.”
“Alexei, would you stop?” Yelena snapped.
“There is no entity showing up on the scans,” one of the doctors put in.
“Because it’s not physical. It’s- psionic.”
“Psionic,” Alexei repeated. “What is this word?”
“It has to do with psychic abilities,” Ava answered.
“That bank robber did zap him with her hands,” Walker added.
Yelena turned to the doctors. “Okay, there, now you have something to go on.”
“If that is the case…we can’t treat something like that.”
Yelena scowled. “Oh my god, what is even the point of having a medical team in the Watchtower?”
The lead doctor bristled. “We treat physical injuries, not psychological ones.”
“Psychic,” Ava corrected tartly.
The doctor shot her a sharp look. “Or that.” He straightened. “And, I’m afraid, not even the serum is going to be able to handle that. It, also, only heals the physical.” He gave them a pointed glare before turning away to consult quietly with his colleagues.
“Maybe he’ll recover anyway,” Walker put in.
One of the other doctors looked back with a touch of sympathy. “Even though our scans can’t identify anything, based on the damage we’re seeing, your friend is right comparing it to a virus. The neuron collapse is progressive, and with it will come complete shutdown of organ and cellular function.”
“What- what are you saying?” Yelena demanded.
The woman sighed. “He’s not going to survive this, even with the super soldier serum.”
The devastated silence that followed could have suffocated the air.
After a long moment, Walker cleared his throat. “Someone should tell Sam.”
“Go ahead,” Ava said listlessly.
Walker snorted. “Sam wouldn’t take my call even if the world was ending.”
“I’ll do it,” Yelena said.
Alexei tried to put a comforting hand on her shoulder but she shrugged away from him and walked out.
Of course this new team…new family…had been too good to last.
There was no exit. Every hatch, every bulkhead door, was completely sealed. None of this made any sense. How could Bucky have been suddenly transported from New York to a defunct Hydra facility? One that had a sleeper super soldier just…hanging around? No way would Zemo have missed that in his quest to eradicate Hydra’s program.
He changed tactics and went looking for a communications station instead. When he found one, there was no electricity, so he stripped a panel off the wall and started splicing wires in an attempt to kickstart the system.
Blue squiggles appeared over the console without Bucky having even gotten a spark. And then the hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he turned around. The soldier was standing in the doorway.
“Great,” Bucky muttered as he moved away from the wall to the center of the room. “Look, you may not have heard, but Hydra’s gone. There’s no one left to give orders…or control you.”
The soldier charged.
“Yeah, knew that wouldn’t work.” Bucky threw his vibranium arm up to catch a fist, then punched his opponent in the face. But the soldier crouched and spun around, kicking out Bucky’s legs. He hit the floor and rolled out of the way of getting stomped in the face.
They exchanged several more brutal blows, each equally matched. Except Bucky was actually feeling…tired. He started to flag.
Grappling, they went crashing into the control panel, crunching it into jagged metal. Bucky grabbed a piece and tried to stab at the super soldier, but the guy caught it midair and redirected the momentum down, skewering Bucky in the thigh with it. He cried out and his leg buckled, but it put him within sight of a gun on the soldier’s belt. Bucky snatched it and fired off the entire cartridge into the soldier, who went crashing back into the broken console again.
Bucky waited, but the soldier didn’t get up. Breathing heavily, he pushed himself to his feet with a grunt, then hobbled out of the room. He dragged himself to the nearest infirmary and ransacked the cabinets and drawers for supplies, throwing everything onto the floor. Then he slid down against the wall, gritting his teeth as his impaled leg straightened out. Taking a deep breath, he gripped the piece of metal and wrenched it out, screaming at the explosion of pain. He tossed the metal away and reached for padded gauze to pack into both holes on either side of his thigh. He was getting really tired of this. Whatever this was. The whole thing just didn’t make sense. He couldn’t find a way out, or a way to contact the outside world.
His leg spasmed and he ground his teeth against the pain, just as the ground started to rumble. Dust sprinkled down on his head as cracks split up through the walls. Bucky stared in dismay before dropping his head back against the concrete.
Of course things could get worse.
Sam sat in his apartment, going over the documents his lawyer had sent him. Going this route left a sour curdle in his stomach, but what choice did he have?
His phone lit up with an incoming call—again. This time the caller ID was Bucky. Sam scowled and swiped to ignore. He’d seen the news reporting that the “New Avengers” had responded to a bank robbery in New York, and he’d immediately turned the TV off.
A ping followed with a text message: “Call back. It’s about Bucky.”
Sam frowned. There weren’t too many circumstances in which someone else would be using Bucky’s phone… To his shame, he still hesitated, but beneath the brooding anger and resentment was stirring worry. He picked up the phone and called back.
“Finally,” a woman huffed irritably.
Judging by her Russian accent, Sam deduced this was Yelena Belova.
“Why are you using Bucky’s phone to call me?”
“Because you haven’t been answering my calls.”
“I don’t take calls from numbers I don’t know. Now what do you want?”
There was a sharp breath through the speaker, then, “Bucky’s dying.”
Sam stiffened. “What are you talking about?”
“We were dealing with simple bank robbers, or what we thought were simple bank robbers. But one of them had freaky powers and zapped Bucky and now he’s in a coma and the doctors say he’s dying.”
Sam shook his head at the room. “They’re wrong. The serum will heal him.”
“No, it won’t,” Belova said, something heavy in her voice. There was a brief muffling of the speaker before she came back. “Anyway, we thought you should know.”
Sam surged to his feet. “Where is he?”
“The Watchtower.”
The…right, the New Avengers’ headquarters. What used to be the real Avengers tower. “I’m on my way.”
He hung up before she could try to argue. Whatever beef Sam had with these posers—and Bucky’s role in it all—Sam still cared about him.
Bucky limped through the dim corridors, eyeing the spreading cracks along the walls and floor with growing trepidation. No way a small quake would bring an underground bunker like this down. Just one more thing to add to the list of incongruities. And yet he was certain this wasn’t the Void.
He reached an elevator and prized the doors open. The shaft was empty and he couldn’t see the top, but he could scale it. Probably. Grabbing the door frame, he readied himself to take the leap.
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and yanked him backward, throwing him back down the hallway. His arm skidded on the concrete, sending sparks flying.
“Dammit,” he cursed, pushing himself up to face whatever new threat this was. But he froze when he saw the soldier, the same soldier, facing him down. It had to be the same one…and yet no super soldier walked off a bunch of bullets to the chest that quickly.
Electrified blue energy rippled over the ceiling and floor around the soldier as he strode forward. Super soldier plus powers? Bucky braced himself. He just had to get past this guy and to the elevator shaft.
They charged at the same moment, meeting in a collision of fists and kicks. Bucky tried to duck under a swing and past him, but the soldier grabbed him by his vibranium arm and swung him around so hard he dented the concrete wall, raining down a fresh fall of silt. A hand as hard as granite seized his throat. Bucky slapped both hands around the offending arm but couldn’t prize it off. He kicked out at his attacker’s knee but barely made it flinch. He writhed and bucked as his vision went spotty.
Then the soldier pulled him away from the wall, hefting him into the air and bringing him down to slam into the concrete floor. Bucky’s skull hit with a crack and everything blacked out.
When he woke, there was a splitting pain in his head and a crick in his neck, which he groggily realized was because his head was slumped forward against his chest. He lifted it with a flop, thumping against something solid behind him. It took his dulled senses a few moments to work out he was restrained in a chair. He gave his arms a good jerk, but they were fastened in wide steel cuffs around his forearms and bicep. His heart rate kicked into overdrive. This wasn’t a chair, it was the chair.
The suited figure stood by the control console. “Welcome home, soldier,” he intoned in Russian. He started hitting keys.
“No!” Bucky strained until his cheeks puffed, but he couldn’t break out of the restraints.
The chair whirred to life, tipping him backward as the rotating halo came down.
“No!” This couldn’t be happening. He strained harder, but it did no good.
The electronic plates descended to clamp over his head. Then the lightning through his brain came and he screamed as the device proceeded to rip his mind to shreds.
The morose silence of the med bay was abruptly shattered by alarms blaring as Bucky started seizing.
“What’s happening?” Yelena exclaimed, but the doctors ignored her as they frantically shouted out things to each other that Yelena didn’t understand. The team could only watch, helpless, until the seizure finally petered out and everything fell quiet again, save for the underlying beep of the monitors that showed Bucky was still alive.
“That was scary,” Bob breathed.
Yelena’s pulse was jackhammering in her throat.
“Alright, that’s it,” Walker said. “I say we hunt down the bank robber and find out what she did.”
“How?” Ava countered. “We don’t have an ID and none of the security footage caught where she went.”
“There you all are!”
Yelena closed her eyes in vexation as Valentina strode into the med bay.
“You’ve been ignoring my calls and we have a press conference to do after you foiled that robbery!”
“Bucky’s hurt,” Bob explained meekly.
Valentina wrinkled her nose and looked past them, like she was only just now noticing there was someone unconscious on a bio bed. “That’s fine,” she waved off. “The rest of you can do it. Yelena, it’s a good time to practice that close-up you wanted,” she said with that slimy grin of hers.
“He’s dying, Valentina!” she snapped.
The woman scoffed. “He’s a super soldier; he’ll walk it off.”
“Not this time,” Walker said stiffly.
Valentina rolled her eyes in apparent annoyance.
“You heartless shrew,” Alexei began, raising his voice.
Her brows shot upward. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. You are most vile, disgraceful—”
“You know, I don’t remember inviting you to be part of this team,” she cut him off.
Alexei’s eyes widened in indignation. “I am on cereal box!” he proclaimed. “Just try to remove me.”
Yelena couldn’t take this anymore. She was about to explode on them both when the internal communications system interrupted.
“Miss de Fontaine, Captain America is trying to get into the building.”
Valentina huffed. “Admittance denied.”
“Shut up!” Yelena snapped at her, then directed her attention to the guard on the other end of the speaker. “And let him in.” She spun on her heel and stormed out, heading down to the ground floor lobby.
When she got there, Sam Wilson was in his Captain America suit.
“You took the time to change so you could make a point?” she snipped.
“It was faster to fly,” he retorted. “Now where’s Bucky?”
Yelena had half a mind to tell him to piss off after his recent actions, but she took a breath and used the pause to collect herself. “Follow me,” she said curtly and led him upstairs.
They passed Valentina as she was leaving, and she looked down her nose at Wilson but didn’t say anything. They entered the med bay.
“Sam,” Walker greeted.
Wilson ignored him and immediately went to the bio bed. “What’s his condition?” he asked the doctors.
“Progressive neural, organ, and cellular deterioration.”
Sam whirled back toward the team. “What happened?”
“I told you, a person with freaky powers zapped him,” Yelena said.
“It’s a psionic attack,” Bob put in helpfully.
Sam shook his head and turned back to the doctors. “What are you doing to treat it?”
“As we’ve explained already, there’s nothing we can do against an attack of psychic energy.”
“Then find someone who can!”
“If this is magic,” Alexei interjected. “Then we need magic doctor, like Doctor Strange.”
“He’s not that kind of doctor,” Wilson said.
“Actually, he was a doctor,” Walker pointed out.
Sam scowled at him. “Well, I don’t have his number.”
“Bruce Banner, then,” Ava said.
“He definitely isn’t that kind of doctor,” Sam retorted.
“Oh my god, are you that mad at Bucky that you won’t at least try to save his life?” Yelena blurted.
“It won’t matter,” the other doctor stepped in. “There isn’t time. Sergeant Barnes’s condition is deteriorating rapidly. Based on the rate of progression, he only has a few hours left.”
Yelena felt the oxygen get ripped from her lungs as the same kind of devastation she felt at losing her sister began to well up. She couldn’t believe she’d grown so attached to this ragtag team of misfits, but she had. And Bucky…he more than anyone knew exactly what it was like to have done terrible things and want to change, to crawl out of a hole so deep it didn’t seem possible. He never looked down on any of them for their mistakes once they had chosen to do better, had even tried to help them on this path toward redemption. Not just as the New Avengers, but looking inward as well. Granted, pretty much all of them except Bob had initially scoffed and gotten pissed at the suggestion of therapy, but Bucky had been patient, saying he’d felt the exact same way in the beginning, but if they wanted to change, really wanted it, they had to do the work, and the work wasn’t just avenging. Yelena was doing better because of him. She wasn’t ready to lose him.
“Okay,” Ava said, “if there is a psychic virus attacking him, then what if we went into his mind to help him fight it? Like we did with the Void.”
“Yes!” Alexei exclaimed. “I like this plan!”
Yelena turned to Bob with a surge of hope. “Could you do that?”
Bob immediately winced. “I can’t use my powers…”
“You wouldn’t have to. You still connect with people when you touch them. That’s how you sensed what was wrong with Bucky, right? So, what if you just act as a bridge, connect us to him?”
He started shaking his head. “I want to save him, but I don’t want to end up killing him and all of you.”
“You won’t,” Yelena assured him.
“And it’s a risk we’re willing to take,” Walker stepped up.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Sam interrupted. “What powers? And who even are you?”
“He’s Bob,” Yelena said.
Bob lifted a hand and gave Wilson a half smile.
“You can do this,” Yelena went on. “Bucky needs us.”
Bob took in a shaky breath and nodded. “Okay.” He went up to the bio bed.
“Hang on,” Sam barked. “What are you planning?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Ava retorted. “We’re going into Bucky’s mind to fight off the psionic attack.”
Sam pulled a face like they were crazy.
“You’ll have to hold hands,” Bob said.
Any of them could have easily made a snide remark or expression at that, but no one did. They clasped hands, Yelena at the end ready to connect with Bob. Wilson attached himself to Walker at the other end.
“You don’t need to come, Sam,” Walker said.
“Like hell.” He looked nervous but resolute.
Bob met Yelena’s eyes, his full of worry. “Maybe I should come with you to help…”
“You are helping. You’re the only one who can do this part, and it’s enough.” She gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “I believe in you.”
He lifted his chin and nodded, then turned to Bucky and reached out to press his other hand to Bucky’s temple.
Yelena closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was in a dark, bunker type room. The others were there as well, and they all quickly let go of each other.
“This is Bucky’s mind?” Walker said dubiously. “What kind of place is this?”
“Hydra,” Wilson said in a low voice as he aimed a light from his suit at a symbol on the wall.
Yelena turned in a full circle, but there was no sign of Bucky. “Bucky!” she yelled.
“Bucky!”
“Okay, we need to find him,” Yelena said and set off.
The corridor outside was just as dark, save for some flickering backup lighting. The place was eerily quiet. Where the hell was Bucky?
Deep fissures appeared in the walls, like a massive quake had split the foundation. It was odd. Then they turned a corner and pulled up short when the floor and walls abruptly fell away into a black abyss. The edges were continuing to crumble into the darkness…like it was spreading.
“That can’t be good,” Ava commented.
They backed up and turned down another corridor.
“Bucky!” they continued to call.
A tremor rippled through the ground beneath their feet and the walls shook as they splintered. Then came the echoes of distant screaming. Yelena bolted into a run, the others quick on her heels. They barreled into a large room and skidded to a stop. Bucky was strapped into a horrific looking chair with plates on his head and a screeching whir that overlaid the endless screaming.
“Oh my god,” Yelena breathed.
“Get him out!” Sam Wilson snapped.
Ava rushed to the controls, only to stop. “It’s in Russian.”
Yelena jolted out of her horror and went to take over. She quickly turned the machine off. The buzzing ceased, and with it Bucky’s screams. The plates detached from his head and the metal ring lifted away. Yelena scanned for the command to release the restraints, but Wilson was already bashing his shield against the metal clasps. Walker smashed his own shield into the electronic plating that had been attached to Bucky’s face until they were sparking, mangled bits of electronics.
Ava and Alexei pulled Bucky from the chair, but he was completely limp as they laid him on the floor, his eyes wide and unseeing. Blood poured out the side of his mouth.
“Bucky,” Ava called urgently.
“Longing,” a voice spoke in Russian from the darkness, and they all tensed as a figure suited from head to toe stalked out of the shadows. “Rusted. Seventeen.”
“What’s he saying?” Walker asked.
“It’s just random words,” Alexei answered, perplexed.
“Cucumber!” Yelena shouted back.
Sam’s eyes widened. “Random words? Shit.” He dropped down next to Bucky.
“Is that a sign of brain damage?” Ava asked.
But Sam was grabbing Bucky’s face and trying to get his gaze to focus. “Bucky, listen to me, the programming is gone. It can’t control you anymore. This isn’t real.”
There was no sign of awareness or recognition, only a barely perceptible flinch as another word was spoken. But understanding dawned on Yelena. She’d seen snippets of the Hydra files her sister had released to the world, enough to put together the nightmare scene they were standing in.
She drew her Glock and fired at the masked figure, but he deftly dodged with what could only be super human ability. She traded the gun for her baton and charged at the soldier. He effortlessly blocked every strike she launched, but at least she’d distracted him from saying the words.
The others joined the attack, alternating blows and strikes as they drove the masked figure backward. Captain America’s shield came out of nowhere, striking the soldier in the chest and propelling him back into the wall where he hit a conduit that triggered an overload. Electricity jolted through him, but instead of bringing him down, it seemed to strengthen him. Blue squiggles of energy rippled over him as he dropped to his feet and straightened. His visage flickered, the helmet and mask disappearing.
“What the hell?” Ava uttered as they all stared in confusion.
The face staring back at them—though half covered in a muzzle-like mask—was Bucky’s. His metal arm was silver steel, not black and gold, and his eyes were cold and dead as he began to stalk around them like a predator.
Predator…that blue electricity still curling around him.
“That’s the psionic energy,” Yelena breathed. The thing they had to defeat.
“You sure?” Ava asked.
Yelena glanced back at where Bucky—the real Bucky—was still lying on the floor. “Pretty sure…”
“Longing. Rusted,” the shade started over.
“Oh, hell no,” Sam Wilson snarled and launched himself at the entity.
The rest of them threw themselves back into the fight as well, but their opponent was somehow stronger than its previous iteration, and every blow it landed sent each of them flying several feet through the air. Yelena landed hard and curled in on herself as pain radiated through her entire body. The ground shook, and the walls around them began to fracture and dust rained down—Bucky’s mind was literally crumbling around them as his brain succumbed to the psionic energy. Yelena briefly wondered if being in here meant they’d all die too.
Alexei let out a raging bellow as he body slammed the Winter Soldier avatar, but then he was being thrown across the room. Walker and Wilson both let out strained cries as they tried to attack next but ended up on the defensive as blow after blow reverberated through their respective shields.
Yelena turned to a catatonic Bucky and crawled over to him. “Bucky,” she grunted. She reached for his hand, which happened to be the vibranium one. Unlike the steel one that had punched her multiple times, this one was unexpectedly warm, pulsing circuitry that ran like circulation through the prosthetic. Yelena squeezed.
“Bucky, I know you’re in there. I know what they did here, and I know you were always alone before, but you’re not alone now. We’re all here.” She tightened her grip desperately. “Do you remember the Void? It’s like that. We’re in your head this time. You have to get up.”
That vacant gaze finally shifted toward her, and there was a flicker of abject terror in it.
“We’re not leaving without you,” she promised, then in Russian, “You’re not alone.”
He blinked once, then again. “Yelena?” he rasped.
Gritting her teeth, she started to push herself up off the floor, keeping her grip on his hand as she shuffled sideways so she could haul him into a sitting position. He nearly collapsed again and spat out a mouthful of blood. Face twisted in a grimace, he looked up to see the others still fighting his counterpart, and he paled further.
“We have to kill it,” Yelena said, wincing at the declaration when the thing they had to kill was wearing Bucky’s own face. “Or you’re going to die.” She nodded to the disintegrating walls and ceiling.
Bucky’s breaths were coming in ragged hitches as he looked around. “My head?” he checked breathlessly.
“Yep.”
He struggled to stand on shaky legs, and Yelena helped him up. The psionic Winter Soldier had just tossed Walker and Ava across the room and now turned to face them. Without warning, he charged. Yelena let go of Bucky so she could whip out her other baton, but the soldier backhanded her with his metal arm and sent her crashing into the computer stations with a cry. When she finally got herself up again, her heart stalled to see the psionic soldier had Bucky by the throat and pinned against the wall.
“Ready to comply, soldier?”
Bucky’s face puffed red as his oxygen was cut off and his fingernails scrabbled at the metal arm.
“Bucky!” Yelena tried to get to her feet, but the ground lurched, knocking her down again. A beam broke from the ceiling and came crashing down, nearly hitting Alexei. Ava dove under a table as more debris rained down, and Sam’s suit shot out its wings to cover his and Walker’s heads. The blue plasma was rippling over everything as it converged toward where Bucky was pinned.
Yelena watched in horror as Bucky abruptly stopped struggling and stared himself in the face.
“No,” he ground out. His vibranium arm came up and clamped over the steel one, then began to prize it backward with a grinding screech. “I’m not him anymore.” He twisted the arm up and back, and the psionic solider dropped to one knee. Bucky slammed a fist into its head. “And you were never me.”
He rained down more punches and then kicked the soldier in the chest, propelling him backward into the middle of the room.
Yelena heaved herself up and attacked as well, as did the others. Together, they surrounded the psionic soldier, delivering blow after blow between them, until Bucky finally landed one more punch in the sternum that sent the entity flying into the mechanical chair. Electricity exploded from the broken unit and shot through the soldier, who suddenly exploded into bits of fizzling blue particles.
They all stood there, breathing heavily, unsure if they’d finally done it. Bucky blinked and staggered, and a bright light started filling the room from every angle. Bucky furrowed his brow in confusion.
“Sam...?”
Everything turned a blinding white, and then Yelena was opening her eyes in the med bay and gazing up at Bob. He smiled at her.
“You did it.”
She blinked. “What?” She looked at the others behind her, who seemed equally dazed, then nudged past Bob to see Bucky. He was still on the bio bed, unconscious. “Why isn’t he waking up?” she asked desperately.
The doctors were huddled together murmuring again, but the nicer one turned around.
“His vitals have stabilized. We can’t explain it, but the damage has stopped progressing, and there’s even signs it’s beginning to reverse.”
“So the serum will heal him now?” Sam Wilson put in.
“It looks that way, but we can’t know for sure. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“But the psionic threat is gone?” Yelena checked, looking to Bob again.
He nodded. “I can’t sense it anymore. You guys really did do it.”
All of the tension left her in a flood, leaving her feeling like jelly. Bucky was going to be okay.
Her team—her family—was still whole.
Bucky woke to the soft cushioning of a mattress and pillow beneath him. He stayed still for a long while, partly to listen and evaluate his surroundings but also because he felt too heavy to even try opening his eyes. But the comfort of this waking told him there probably wasn’t any urgency.
It was mostly quiet, save for the soft crinkle of a page turning now and then. Finally, he was able to crack his eyelids open, and then he was squinting in surprise to find Sam sitting in his room…his room at the Watchtower. Now Bucky needed another few moments to sort through his memories and mental faculties because the two did not compute…
“Sam,” he croaked.
Sam straightened and quickly set the magazine aside. “Hey. Finally. How are you feeling?”
Bucky frowned in growing confusion but decided to take stock of himself. “Like I’ve been asleep for a week,” he said in surprise.
Sam smirked. “Nothing that dramatic, just a little over twenty-four hours.”
That was not clearing anything up…
“What happened? And what are you doing here?”
Sam’s expression fell, and he folded his hands across his lap. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
Thinking shouldn’t have felt so tiring. “The bank robbery,” he said slowly. “And then one hell of a nightmare.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t a nightmare.”
Bucky furrowed his brows at him.
“Being in a Hydra facility? Getting tortured in the chair? And to top it off, a little Freudian duel with your evil alter ego?”
Bucky’s frown deepened, and he struggled to push himself up onto his elbows so he could rest upright against the backboard. “How do you know all that?”
“You don’t remember us coming to help you?”
Us. The team, and…Sam?
“Sure, but…”
“It was real,” Sam finished. “That Bob guy apparently was able to send us into your mind. Which is not a sentence I ever thought I’d say.”
Bob. Okay, Bucky supposed that wasn’t too big of a leap, considering the whole Void experience. That’s right, he remembered now, Yelena telling him they were in his head.
“Why?” he asked.
“You got attacked by an enhanced with psychic powers at the bank.” Sam hesitated. “You were dying, Buck. We…actually, they—your team—figured they could go into the Matrix or whatever to fight off the psionic attack. And they were right.”
Processing all this was coming a little slower than he’d like, but there was one question at the forefront. “How’d you get involved?”
“Belova called to tell me you were dying.”
Oh.
“Look, I know things have been…between us,” Sam went on, expression tightening. “But I would never not come.”
Bucky ran a weary hand down his face. “I never asked for this, you know. I tried to explain but you didn’t want to hear it.”
Sam leaned back in the chair. “Okay. I’m listening now.”
Bucky sighed. “Valentina ambushed us in front of the press, calling us the New Avengers. She was trying to put herself in the spotlight in a positive way to save herself from impeachment and prison.” Which worked, to his daily chagrin.
“You already told me that. And I could have accepted it, but then you stayed. You chose sides.”
“That’s not- it wasn’t like that, Sam.” Bucky shook his head in shame. “I thought I had worked out what I wanted to do with my life, help people without using all the skills I was programmed with. Be something besides the soldier.” He looked down at his vibranium arm. “I thought getting elected to Congress meant I could help people. I wanted to improve veteran services. And then the politics of it all…I was a lousy congressman. Couldn’t get any bills passed. I wasn’t able to do anything to make a difference. And then I found out about Valentina’s projects and this…” He gestured vaguely at the tower and then himself. “Well, this I am good at.”
“You could have called me,” Sam said accusingly. “You knew I was trying to put together a team. We could have been that team.”
“It all went down pretty fast, at the time. I was only going to arrest Valentina’s hired assassins as evidence against her, but then there was suddenly this huge threat and there wasn’t time to call anyone, so I took them with me…” Bucky stopped to take a breath. “It’s never going to stop, Sam. Experimenting on people, turning them into…things. Using and abusing them. I was eventually saved, but I was lucky. Who saves these other victims?”
Sam was frowning at him now. “This Bob guy?”
Bucky nodded. “That darkness that almost swallowed New York. Valentina’s project. I didn’t stay to become an Avenger, Sam. I stayed because there is a group of broken people out there and I know exactly what that’s like. To be lost, to spend every moment of every day drowning under the weight of a past you can’t change. I healed, though, and I thought…maybe that’s who I could really help. Maybe that’s how I could finally make a difference as me, not as…everything else.”
Sam didn’t speak for a long moment. Then he exhaled heavily. “Well, damn. I’ll be the asshole if I go against that.”
Bucky sagged. “I’m sorry, Sam. This isn’t how I wanted any of this to go.”
“I’m sorry, too. I was so absorbed in my own issues with carrying the mantle of Captain America, the responsibility of assembling a new team…and you’d made a new life for yourself in Congress, so I knew I couldn’t ask you to be part of it. So when I saw you at the forefront of the ‘New Avengers’…I don’t know. It seemed like you were just doing whatever the hell you wanted without regard for anyone else.”
“Without regard for you,” Bucky filled in.
Sam huffed. “Yeah. But I see it now. You were doing the opposite; you weren’t putting me last, you were putting them first.”
Bucky frowned. “Um…”
“Above yourself, is what I meant,” Sam added, then shook his head with a small snort. “You do that a lot. My fault for not knowing better.”
“I don’t care about the name, Sam. They wanted to call themselves the Thunderbolts. It just…it all got away from us.”
Sam nodded. “I get that.”
There was a moment of silence between them.
“That Valentina is a real piece of work,” Sam went on.
Bucky huffed. “Yeah, but at least this way we get to keep her under our foot instead of the other way around. And protect Bob from her.”
“Not to mention protecting the world from Bob?”
“That too, but it’s not his fault,” Bucky was quick to say.
Sam held up a hand. “I’m not judging.” He let out another heavy sigh. “So, where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know.”
Sam just nodded. “You good to get up? Your team will want to know you’re awake. We took shifts sitting here.”
Bucky was oddly touched by that. He pushed himself up further and gingerly swung his legs over the side of the bed. He felt heavy and a little stiff, like his muscles had been electrocuted, but otherwise he was fine.
He stood up the rest of the way and he and Sam made their way out to the Penthouse.
Alexei spotted them first. “Ah, he is awake!” he declared heartily and strode over to grab Bucky in a hefty hug, drawing a startled “oomph,” from him. “I told you the Winter Soldier would rise again!”
Bucky sighed. While he hated the moniker, Alexei always used it with admiration, and to snap at him for it would turn the very enthusiastic, and large, Russian super soldier into a bear-sized version of a kicked puppy.
Walker and Ava appeared behind him, looking Bucky over critically.
“You okay?” Ava asked with barely concealed concern.
He nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “I remember you all coming for me. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“We will always come for each other,” Yelena spoke up, an uncharacteristic softness in her eyes as she looked at him.
“I wanted to,” Bob said quietly, shifting his weight. “But I…”
“Helped them reach me,” Bucky finished. “That’s how a team works; everyone has their role to fill.”
Bob gave him a small smile at that. “Are you hungry? I can make you something to eat,” he said hopefully.
“Sure, that’d be great.”
Walker eyed Bucky and Sam speculatively. “And are you two good?” he asked.
Bucky looked at Sam.
“Yeah,” Sam answered. “We’re good.” He swept his gaze over the rest of them. “We’re all good.”
“I have solution to the name, Sam Wilson,” Alexei declared.
“Oh god,” Yelena moaned.
“We are the Avengerz! With a Z!”
“No, we’re not,” Bucky said tiredly.
Sam looked torn between confusion and laughter, but he shook both off. “The name doesn’t matter. Protecting the planet does.” He held an arm out to Bucky, who clasped it. “And I’d say Earth has some pretty good heroes in its wings.”
Bucky smiled in relief and gratitude. Things were still complicated, but they’d figure it out. Together.