Bucky closes his eyes, instead of seeing white death approach.
The world is steel and ice and snow; the fall is not so much pretty as harsh. He lands on a mound of powdered snow from a height of three hundred feet- and instantly feels his leg break; a moment later he'll feel a thousand other injuries, but there's a sickening moment when he hears the leg snap and the pain hasn't come yet and all he can think is I want to die. He blacks out from the pain, and Bucky doesn't wake up again for seventy years.
(Later, he'll think that the three hundred foot fall didn't last for the flashes of memory that are all he can remember of it, but rather for every painful, aching second he survived onwards, for the seventy years he lived without Steve.)
Hydra froze Bucky in water just as surely as they did to Steve- except they knew exactly where Bucky was, and how to break him. They took the darkness that existed in him, broke it out of the glass prison he'd erected around it- war often, after all, brings out the worst in people- and told him that that was everything that mattered.
The only person left inside of him then was the Winter Soldier, the demon inside of Bucky that Hydra dragged out and restructured into a tool. Into the ultimate Asset.
And while Bucky'd always- always- fought for the right side, he now has blood on his hands: and the most unforgivable part isn't that the blood's innocent, or that he doesn't feel remorse (much, really, because he isn't a monster. Honest. He's just… a little psychopathic. But even then, he feels a little sorry for some of his killings.) but rather that Bucky let himself be used in such a manner. It isn't just painful, but so damn terrifying.
He's both the Soldier and Bucky, and being too close to Steve is tipping the scales too much in Bucky's favor for the Winter Soldier to be okay with it.
Both of them want to survive, and both want to kill the other so much they wake up with bloody scratches down his flesh arm and clumps of hair clutched in his hands.
The two agree unilaterally to cut his hair. It's something that's Bucky's, and so it feels like a triumph for him- but the Soldier also realizes that a tall man with patches of scalp showing is not the way to keep a low profile. It's a bittersweet victory for both of them. Bucky laughs until he screams that he now counts victory in the frayed edges of his hair, the glittering (untainted, unbloodied, alive) gold of Steve's smile, and the way he can make his toes twitch when he really, really puts his mind to it.
(Which is funny in and of itself. He exists only in his mind; the Soldier is the one in control for the vast majority of the time. Nonetheless, he grows stronger every day away from Hydra, and the Soldier's a little scared of it.)
Then they have to decide where to go, and nearly blow up three towns before they can come to a decision. Certain things bring out Bucky (cough, Steve, cough) while other bring out the Soldier (cough, murdering innocents, cough), and neither are all that good at compromising.
Bucky wants to go west; the Soldier wants to go south.
They compromise- despite hating it- and head south-west.
Because he's stronger than the average man, doesn't need as much sleep, and has the knowledge to hotwire cars- Bucky questions Hydra's thoughts sometimes; they didn't think he needed to know how to speak Russian but they taught him to hotwire cars?- they make it to the opposite side of the country in less than a week.
The sky's blue in San Diego. It's quiet and simple there, and far easier to hide; the Soldier noticed that if they walked on the hiking trails nobody ever bothered to see the tatters in their clothing. Apparently running like in clothes like that wasn't… inappropriate, in the twenty-first century.
The Winter Soldier wants to disappear into the darkness of yesterday- maybe even head back to Hydra. But Bucky sets his feet in his mental brain, clenches his jaw, and tells the Soldier that they. Aren't. Going. Back. Hydra brainwashed the Soldier, too, so the battle isn't as hard as Bucky'd once have thought it'd be.
They reach the ocean early in the morning, when the beach is absolutely empty.
The sky's grey; there's fingers of mist reaching inland. It shrouds the outside world, and if Bucky pretends just a little he could be all alone. They sit down in the damp sand just below the water mark- it's firmer- and wait.
The Soldier gets impatient quickly, wants to go and steal something-
-a cold wave runs over the armored toes of their boots.
It's nothing more than a gentle pressure, but the Soldier honest-to-god flinches, and Bucky cackles in mad laughter, because that was something he'd done to Steve a long time ago and the fact that he could do that to himself?
Awesome.
The Soldier settles down, after that, and Bucky does too. No more surprises or banter- just a quietness that sinks into every crevice of their body. The very world seems to be trying to help in that, and nobody so much as whistles in the distance. The nightmares and horrors that had plagued them over the course of their cross-country run (quite literally, not just what these kids do in high school) fade into the distance, and the two just… float.
This is peace, Bucky tells the Soldier.
He hasn't known much peace in all his life; Bucky's fought for every scrap of respect and love he'd ever get from the world, and finding Steve only meant he had that much more to fight for. He'd thrown challenges and gauntlets in the face of his enemies and sneered at their weaknesses.
The Winter Soldier fought actively against peace, and has never known it in all his years.
So… they sit together, these two warriors in one body- and try to learn it together.
(Emphasis on try.)
They spend a long time in San Diego, hidden in this place where ragged mountains and smooth shores meet- both are content, for maybe the first time in their lives, and blend into the backdrop of woven brown fairly easily.
There's dust on their shoes and dirt in their hair, but no nightmares in their sleep.
Then, the Soldier sees Natasha.
She went by Natalya, when the Soldier met her- Bucky's never seen her before. He knows she's pretty, smart and a badass, and Bucky thinks he might just be in love. The Soldier scoffs and tells him that she'd tear his throat out just as soon as bed him.
Bucky reflects, later, that laughing when he knows the Soldier's utterly serious is probably not the healthiest reaction.
Still, they've seen Natasha Romanoff- Natalya Romanova- and she's too good at what she does to hope that she won't notice them.
They head north.
Which, you know. Might not have been the best idea when Stark lived in the area. Malibu was a short hour's drive from San Diego, and he was- through some universal karma- hanging out on the beach when Bucky and the Soldier stumble on him.
As in, literally stumble.
They trip over a beach bum that both will swear didn't exist a moment before, and of all people, it had to be Stark. Of course it did. The universe frigging hated them.
And sure, they should have been paying more attention. But they hadn't, and- miracle of miracles- Stark had, and somehow- neither really knows, it's a blur of anger and confusion and no little amount of whatthehell- they're corralled into his mansion.
It's glass and metal and modern beauty.
Bucky giggles when he sees the suits and the Soldier spends two weeks considering ways to destroy them all. The house is calm and quiet- Stark spends most of his time in his lab, which they're not allowed in, and there's no other person to be wary of- but also close to the ocean, which is good because it's the only thing that can calm the Soldier down when he gets angry. They get new clothes and hot showers and good food, and even if the Soldier's suspicious…
Bucky's ecstatic.
They stay for a month, and then Natalya walks in.
Both of their eyes widen, and then she's throwing a glass vase at him and the Soldier's flinging a grenade- where did it even come from, Bucky asks, in a voice too calm for almost-murders- and the entirety of the front part of Stark's house is in flames in less than four seconds.
A part of him feels bad about it.
Then Natalya flings herself out of the broken rust and begins to try her level best to claw his eyes out- and his day just goes downhill from there.
Honestly. A man should never be forced to dive into the ocean in order to escape a mad Russian assassin.
What is the world coming to?
Bucky shrieks the whole way down- the Soldier will never let him live that down- but they somehow manage to survive, and resurface a mile away.
Somehow, Stark's waiting for them, and for some utterly stupid reason, he's not wearing his armor.
The Soldier decides that he doesn't like how easily Stark has figured out their plays and bodily abilities, and decides to repay their gracious host by strangling him.
By the time Bucky's grabbed enough control to yank him back, Stark's purple and almost unconscious. The Soldier hisses furiously- but Stark's alive, so no foul, right?
Heh. If only he could actually believe that.
But apparently Stark hasn't told anyone that he's letting a brainwashed Hydra assassin- sure, a part of him has broken the programming, but the Soldier still exists, and Bucky's not skilled enough at lying to make himself believe that that doesn't matter- and so, when one of his fellow friends walked in, they panicked. Bucky almost lets the Soldier choke the life out of Stark for that one; willful ignorance of safety is one thing, but actively throwing yourself into danger isn't that forgivable.
Tony is on all fours, struggling to breathe.
When did he become Tony and not Stark? The Soldier asks sardonically.
Bucky shrugs. When did you begin to think you might want to save his life?
They can both ask questions they don't know the answers to. Rather- answers they don't want to know.
"You don't let your guard down like that, alright?" He spits at Tony. "Not ever."
Tony's given him a home to stay in, and food, and silence. To a certain extent, he's protected him more than even Rogers or SHIELD.
So, Bucky doesn't walk away. He sits and snarls and spits, but he also glares at anyone who tries to come close to him, and curses the Soldier, who has only recently started to sleep without three guns and seven knives on his body, Natalya, who managed to single-handedly wreck his chance at a good life, and himself, for being such an absolute idiot.
It's only days later that he realizes that for the first time, he was in control of his body- not the Soldier.
Ton- Stark recovers a short while later, and sends a half-glare up at him.
"I've been trying to be less irritating," he wheezes, instead of recovering, like a normal person- though it isn't like Bucky's in any position to judge, not really, "but what did I do, for you to choke me?"
"At least I didn't defenestrate you?" Bucky retorts, Hydra memories coalescing into a complete whole for a brief moment, showing a man in a green suit and horned helmet holding Stark up by the throat, and… throwing him out of the window.
Of a frigging skyscraper.
Man, who's the supersoldier here, Bucky or Stark? It takes a lot to kill Bucky, he knows, but a fall of that height would be a definite toss-up.
"Hydra show you that?" He coughs out.
Bucky chews on that question for all of a second before throwing up his hands and going with the flow. He'd always been the easy-going type, anyways. "They had some pretty messed-up priorities," he says, and ignores Stark's look of absolute incredulity. "Was a shame they could pose such a threat. Honest- who keeps helicarriers so damn easy to hack? And if you had to, why'd you…"
Stark's eyes are narrowed on him. "You think there are Hydra agents that're secretly SHIELD?"
"SHIELD's dead," Bucky replies flatly. "I killed it. But… Hydra isn't."
"Cut off one head, and two grows in its place," Stark says, sounding weary. When he sees Bucky's arched eyebrow, he grimaces. "My dad was… Howard. Howard Stark." He adds, taking in the hard edge of Bucky's eyes, "He talked about Cap, a lot."
There's a strange note of bitterness in his voice, but it isn't the unhealed wounds that Bucky carries in his psyche. It's comfortably worn around the edges, the hatred scrubbed down and tarnished into unwilling respect, the memory rusted from age and newer, sharper betrayals.
"You talk about Steve, a lot?" Bucky asks, fighting to keep his voice casual.
Tony shrugs. "Good ol' Dad should've batted for the other team with how much he loved Rogers. He gave up a lot, you know, to go find him in the Arctic, every summer-" and, silently, Bucky adds, and left me behind, "and, go figure, right? The universe hated him… and he didn't see Rogers, again."
He tries not to flinch at the raw emotion in Tony's voice, the undefinable tension there when he talks about Steve. This, he realizes, is not a scabbed-over scar, to be reminisced over on long nights, not at all. There's a history, with Steve and To- Stark, and it's fresh and hurting and painful.
(For one glorious moment, he remembers idols and gods and fighting against them all, and he bites his tongue to keep from blurting something stupid out.)
Not hard enough, though, because his mouth then moves- without his permission- and says, flatly, "Howard Stark. Died twelfth of April, in a car crash. Collateral damage: wife and butler. No remains."
A memory flashes by, leeched of all color but the brilliant red of Howard's horror and open-mouthed scream, that drenches the memory in blood. He struggles not to react under the weight, eyes locked on Stark's, and…
…he doesn't see fury.
Or betrayal.
"We buried ashes," Stark says quietly, into the gaping silence. "I always thought Dad would've liked it that way, buried with the steel of the machines he… loved. Like a pharaoh."
"You knew?" Bucky croaks.
Tony- it isn't Stark, not really, not after he killed his parents and he was still allowed into his home- inclines his head, slowly. "She-bitch dumped it all on the Net a couple months ago. You, her, Rogers, everyone. All the info SHIELD had, open to the public."
"You don't like her," Bucky says slowly, dawning realization.
His lip curls, into a perfect sneer of absolute contempt. "I don't particularly like people who spend hours in Congress talking about 'no secrets' when they call me before everything and use me as a safety net."
The Soldier stills, and reveals another memory of Hydra's.
Bucky wants to snarl.
"Natalya didn't ever have many lines she wouldn't cross."
Tony chokes. "You knew her. Before."
It isn't a question, but Bucky still answers: "Yes."
Though, really, that's a lie- he remembers pieces of memory-
(hair redder than blood woven around his arms, the smell of pine and sweat and terror on her skin when he unspooled her under his hands, and the hatred in her green eyes that was more real than any promise when he last spoke to her)
-he is the memory of her past resurrected, and he can't quite blame her for not forgiving him.
"Meh. There're more people than you'd imagine, who're POWs, or have PTSD, or-"
"I killed your parents," Bucky whispers, harshly. "I killed them and I didn't care, Stark! I'm an assassin who doesn't really know what else to do with life, and that's why I'm here, but this was a mistake!"
"Do you wanna go after Hydra?" He asks abruptly, cutting off Bucky's growing rage with one slicing movement, rising to his knees and then his feet in the same motion. His lips thin under the tension, but he just grits his teeth and continues.
Bucky pauses. And considers.
There's a part of him that wants to say no- but he can't find it in himself to let go of revenge, not when it marks so much of his life. And he won't lie, not to a man who opened his home and pantry to Bucky.
"Yes."
"Let's go," Tony says, suddenly, with a shit-eating grin that reminds Bucky of Steve at his worst.
"…go where?"
They are children and monsters, lost creatures scrabbling for a hold on a sheer cliff, shoving those who dare come too close to their ultimate doom. Bucky might not be an assassin, not truly, not with memories of blood on his hands and no regrets- but, in the end, it is all he has ever known.
Tony is not much better, servicing two sides of a war and watching as his curtains grew to cloth-of-gold, his cars to Lamborghinis, his family to gods.
But neither are utterly broken, though they are still shattered, and Tony's eyes are brighter than a star's when he says:
"Destroy Hydra!"
Bucky's head swims from all this- Tony is a whirlwind on a good day, but when he has a new passion…
It's terrifying.
Blue images flash around him, dancing in a brilliant circle like a galaxy on a fulcrum. Jarvis and Tony are in constant motion, pulling supplies and synthesizing information down to as small a folder as possible- and Bucky wonder why Tony's helping him.
He asks, and Tony pauses, hands full of clothes and medicine and a box of food.
"Because I know revenge," he says, meeting Bucky's gaze. There isn't any decorum there, no anger or artifice, just raw truth. "And I hated everyone, the world, for the longest time- because I had to pay my debts in blood, receive my debts with my own hands."
Bucky knows that, knows debts owed and received and balanced. He believed in them in another lifetime, when he was just a soldier and was in the trenches, where money was just paper but favors- favors cost so much more. Then he was owned by men who just took and took and took, ignoring debts like they were for some lesser mortals.
He will take back his debts, in their blood, in their screams, and if nothing else, in their deaths.
Maybe one day he will even feel whole.
"And I know," Tony continues, eyes level and calm, "that I could've torn the world apart- and I almost did, but Fury stopped me. With… the She-Bitch. But… you would've done a lot worse."
"How?" Bucky asks, biting his tongue rather than letting the Soldier flow out and kill Tony for his presumptions.
"You would make the world bleed," Tony says. "You would destroy it, run through the ashes, and laugh. If I… if I ever stood on the other side of a battlefield, and you were truly angry, I think… I think nobody would've stood a chance."
"Steve did," Bucky argues, a strange desperation rising inside him. "I can't kill him."
Tony drops the box of medicine and clothes on the floor, whirls around, and pins Bucky down with a too-knowledgeable stare. "That's because you do care for him, Bucky."
Bucky fills with happiness, but the Soldier lashes out- furious and just a little betrayed. Maybe Tony sees something of that in his eyes, because he takes a step back; red armor wraps around him and Bucky just knows that there are nuclear missiles Jarvis is pointing at him, and there's not a chance he'll survive if he moves an inch in the wrong direction.
"Don't call me that."
"Okay," Tony intones, voice gravelly and metallic through the armor. "Then what should I call you?"
"…James," he decides, on the spot and quick.
"James," Tony murmurs, eyes narrowing. But he nods, and Bucky… James doesn't care anymore.
Standing there, held hostage by his own mind and by a thrice-damned house, he tries not to think about his present situation, which inevitably leads to thinking about his past-
To remembering dancing and kissing and loving, so much that a thousand deaths later and seventy years later and countless breakings later, he still can't kill Steve. Hydra did its level best to erase him and make him the killing machine, but Bucky was more resilient than any kid from Brooklyn had a right to be.
He'd held on through the nightmares and confusion, survived, and even when the Soldier was everything, Bucky had stopped his hand when it mattered most.
-the Soldier prowls, now, circling his mind in a wary dance. He cannot accept being relegated to second-best, not when everything he has ever known has told him there's none better. He would have killed Steve, simply for his abilities, but Bucky had stopped him.
(A silver arc, gleaming in the sunlight, frozen forever at the apex of the curve.)
(Tell me, is my arm a sword, to scythe through the sinful? Am I to be called God, to judge the worthy and the not?)
(Or am I a weapon, to be discarded when a better one comes along?)
Do you plead mercy? The Soldier snarls, furious and cutting.
Bucky pushes back, just as hard and vicious. They'd called a temporary truce, in San Diego and in Tony's mansion, but now the decision to hunt Hydra seems to tip the Soldier into insanity- a straw to break his back.
Why should I, he retorts, when I know you will never have any?
And that's another thing- over seventy years, and Bucky never begged, never lost his pride. He screamed (oh, how he screamed) but it was because he broke, not because he bent.
He never pleaded for mercy that would never come.
"Tony," he says aloud, voice strangled and urgent, "I'm gonna have to fight now. Inside… in my head. Don't come near me, whatever else you do, and if…"
There's no more time, though, because the Soldier grabs him and throws him down, and Bucky leaps up; grapples for all of three seconds, and then begins to send potshots, with memories of life before the Depression and before the War and before even Steve.
The Soldier is draped in black in his mind, his eyes the colorless grey of a night sky that never quite faded, his skin the paper-thin of old men and starved children. He is a demon wrapped in Bucky's skin, but Bucky will never let this demon out of him, not as long as he still has breath in his lungs, not as long as he still has blood in his body, not as long as he still has memories of a time before the Fall.
Pain blooms, dully on his left side; he thinks that's where he knocked his hip when he fell. The Soldier has a lesser amount of sheer memories, embedded in his mind, so that is… okay.
Bucky will not lose, not now that he has something to fight for. His dreams might be drenched in blood, his hands soaked in them, and his soul destined for the ninth part of hell… but the deck is no longer stacked so high against him that he has no chance.
(What was in the air, in Brooklyn, on the days that Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were born? What milk were the suckled on, what water did they drink, that they hold the seeds of kindness despite the universe's attempts to corrupt them?)
The Soldier, without Hydra backing him, without memories and nothing more than violence, has no chance, not against Bucky Barnes, just-a-kid-from-Brooklyn.
A memory of Steve is flung, gilt-tipped and fine, at the Soldier; it leaves an indelible scar across his left cheek. Black blood spurts from the opening-
(There is nothing more horrifying than a miracle)
-and the Soldier recoils backwards, pallid eyes glowing an eerie blue, the actinic, acid shade of Hydra's electric chair.
Mercy is for the weak.
Hydra taught him that.
So he doesn't hesitate, this creature formed from a childhood in Brooklyn and freedom, broken in a war, and undone in evil, he doesn't hesitate. He lunges forward, takes the memories of his past, boils them down into one monstrous weapon, both sword and shield.
For one glorious moment, he is suspended between worlds, between the outside one of Tony and Steve and Natalya, and the inside one of monsters and Hydra and the Soldier.
Then he lands, and the memories are lodged, in that perfect gap between chest and head- the area that lesser people would call the neck.
Blood seeps from the edges of the injury, dripping onto his mind; memories come, too, memories of death and murder and red, red, red blood.
Do you plead-
Do you plead-
Do you plead for mercy, Soldier of Death? Do you plead, Soldier of Winter? Do you plead, you who carry your demons alive? You, who have formed a century of darkness?
Do you plead?
And Bucky- not the Soldier, not their compromised amalgam of James, just Bucky, the kid who loved Steve enough to fight for him for the rest of his life-
('til the end of the line)
-Bucky jerks the memories out of the Soldier, they're dripping black oil onto his mind, memories and feelings and emotion, but Bucky doesn't care, he's fighting for himself. He's fighting for his soul, and there's enough tarnish there to last another ten-thousand-thousand years. He doesn't need any more, and it all starts with the Soldier's destruction.
And he stands, bloodied but unbowed, bruised but not dead, and says, I will never plead.
Vicious pride blossoms in his chest as he flows into his body proper; there are and always will be and always have been scars, ragged and raw on his body and mind. But he holds onto his dignity with the strength of a man who knows the consequences of losing it.
His eyes flutter open, drag upwards to meet Tony's gaze.
He never doubts that Tony would be there.
And Tony is, red armor still around him, faceplate locked down and eyes glowing. But he doesn't threaten, not just yet, waiting to see who he is.
"No mercy," Bucky croaks out, smiling, and he knows that his teeth are tipped with blood, that his skin holds the pallor of exhaustion and weakness. "Not to those who don't give it."
Laughter scrapes out of the armor, sharp and broken. "Let's go, Barnes."
"The Soldier is dead," he says, holding Tony's eyes.
There's a long, spiraling moment of silence. Then- "Can I call you Bucky, then?"
He doesn't answer, just hauls himself up to his knees and then his feet, a mocking parody of what the Soldier did to Tony just hours back- only this time the bruises are indelible and the injuries are in his mind.
But he does take Tony's arm, grips it like they are brother in arms, and they head out of the house with heads held high, an iron soldier, and a Winter Soldier, to slay the monster and reclaim their lives.
The jagged edge of the hilt of the knife Tony presses into his hand tastes of freedom.
Um, yeah. In my head canon, TWS happens before IM3. Which is kinda weird. I'm just now realizing how many things are head canon for me and are not true in the canon universe.
But this happened after too many readings of the same 'Steve meets Bucky with an OFC taking care of him' trope. As a result, I began to wonder when Bucky would've been taken care of by Tony. Then I decided that he wouldn't have been taken care of by Tony, because Tony'd be far more likely to throw money and/or homes at him as nurse him.
So, you know. I can totally see Tony and Bucky kicking Mandarin's ass and Steve kinda hanging in the background clueless. And there'd definitely be BlackHawk in that movie, peeps. Def. In. Ite. Ly.
Anyways. Hope you guys liked it!
Reviews do inspire me.
-Dialux