Sam Wilson:
Steve knows that Sam thinks this is a fool's errand. Every futile near encounter; every quick, fleeting glance. Like the time in London fighting agents sent after them by HYDRA when they were outnumbered and overwhelmed only to hear the whizz of a bullet streak scant inches from his earlobe and strike the guy beating him right in the middle of the forehead. Enough of a distraction for him to have time to wrestle away his arms and legs from the five other agents holding him. To get to Sam, pinned underneath their car.
After freeing him he'd searched the rooftops surrounding the street. Looking for brown hair. Blue eyes gazing at him over the barrel of a sniper rifle, smiling and always ready with a quip. "What would you do without me, Steve?"
Searching. Never finding anything.
Sam thinks that Steve is naïve. Knows from experience in the hot desert and anonymous empty church rooms given to shelter wrecked soldiers (men and women suffering from the loss of who they once were. Trapped by the horrors of what they'd seen and done) that there are some things a man doesn't come back from. He looks at him with his concerned gaze and sees the cracks that form, hidden but not well, in Steve's demeanor with each failure. Each time the space on Steve's left is still bare. Still empty.
Sam has to hand it to him even as worried as he is for Steve. He's dedicated – pushing on – a slave to that guilt. The guilt of surviving. Sam knows the yearning deep in the pit of your stomach for the one you couldn't save. Every night he sees Riley shot out of the sky. The way his limbs had been bent unnaturally on the sand in the desert far from his home in Oklahoma. The blood pooling underneath the dark hair on his head. Eyes blank. He knows that pit of despair that keeps you trapped because of the one that you let fall while you clung on to your own suddenly pitiful life. There just to watch.
The cracks first began to appear in Steve's façade in London. Then in Scotland. Two seconds away from catching The Winter Soldier running through the streets in Oslo, following him through the fjords of Scandinavia while they spared the time to help root out HYDRA bases in the North. Sailing across the Black Sea aboard a cruise ship that intel had told them a man with a metal arm had been spotting on only to find the man was a disabled war vet from Iraq.
In Germany, Steve had taken time to walk past the restored buildings lost to bombs during the War and congratulate the people on their ability to recognize the horrors of the past and their ability to paste themselves back together and keep on. They'd spent a few days just hiking through the Black Forest while Steve reminisced about camping in the dirt with the Commandos waiting for enemy soldiers. His voice would turn quiet and taper off every time Bucky was mentioned. Every time Steve remembered Bucky wasn't there.
They are in Italy when Sam can't stay quiet anymore. Bedding down in a hostel in the downtown district of Rome. Steve has cuts up and down his back given to him from a knife attack by more and more HYDRA agents coming out of the sewers. Six months following a dead end trail only for it to come up with zilch. No one has helped them since London. No mysterious sniper bullet strikes.
Either they're following a weapon, a ghost, or they're following someone who doesn't want to be found.
Regardless, there are some people you just can't save. Some people you have to let go. Watch them fade into the dust.
Steve's been out of the ice for three years but Sam knows that yearning to just return. Feels it every time he sinks into his mattress and misses the smell of dirt. The scent of sand and the feel of rock under his ear.
He's not going to let this man fall.
"Thinking we should head to Naples. Saw something on the internet. Girl with her dog got spooked by a guy matching Bucky's description," Steve calls from the bathroom where he is applying alcohol to his latest wounds, "Might be nothing. Might be something. Rome's gone stale anyway."
Sam sighed, sinking down into the mattress of the hotel room bed, "Look, why don't we stay a bit? Relax a little. Go out, have some downtime. Lots of pretty Italian women out there – nothing big, just some fun. We've been at it for a while man and you haven't let yourself rest. Not going to be finding anyone if you kill yourself attempting it."
His friend walks out of the bathroom with a deep frown etched into his face, "Naples is a couple of hours away. We leave now we could be there before he's gone."
"You just said it could be nothing. This blog mention anything about the metal arm because unless she said she saw Robocop this is probably just another dead end," Sam pointed out.
"There's a chance it could be something though. Spent a lot of time here in the '40s. Everywhere we've been, every sighting we've had. HYDRA hideouts all over the North, places that….missions… places that me and Bucky spent time during the war. He's remembering Sam. I know he is."
"We just going to chase him to the end of the earth? We're not playing hide-and-seek. This isn't some playground game and in five minutes he's not going to spring out from behind a tree saying "I'm here." Some people don't want to be found. If he remembers," Sam sighed, feeling his muscles tense as he got up to place his hand on Steve's shoulders.
He stared him right in the eyes, "…maybe he doesn't want to be near you now. Been through some shit man. Some hell. Done things the devil himself might scoff at. Sometimes a man don't want to be found after they've been down that road. Sometimes they just want to be on their own. Deal with things on their own."
He sees this kind of running all the time. Not everyone comes to the VA. The few cases he gets in there are nothing compared to the hundreds who don't come. Who deal with their issues fighting or in the bottom of a bottle. Those who can't crawl out of that hole and don't want to find someone to help carry that load.
Steve knows this too but he refuses to believe it even when it stares at him with blank, mechanical eyes. Steve's lost too. Far from home. Home is running. Home is Peggy's smile and the Howling Commando's laughter. Home was Bucky. Nights spent huddled together for warmth in a dilapidated Brooklyn apartment with the heat broken and cracks in the walls letting the cold winter air in. Bucky wrapping as many threadbare blankets around them as he could and limbs strewn across his frail body like an octopus so that Steve didn't expire in the night.
"Bucky shouldn't have too," Steve replies and his steely tone makes it clear he's done talking.
Steve is stubborn and head-strong. He could beat off ten men in three minutes and not even break a sweat. He could run thirteen miles in a half hour. Physically he was the perfect soldier.
Perfect soldiers were just a shell covering the vulnerable insides.
They head out to Naples three hours later.
Natasha Romanoff
Sometimes Steve thinks this was God's plan all along. With every near miss – every time that Bucky proves to be the ghost in the machine that he was warned about – he thinks that divine intervention had its hands in taking off the mask that day. A weapon who stealthily used the shadows as a cloak to complete his mission? Explosions in the streets of D.C. and chaotic gunfire were not the usual style of a cloak-and-dagger assassin.
It gives him hope. Resolution. That he is meant to save Bucky.
Natasha had told him that The Winter Soldier was so elusive most of the intelligence community hadn't believed he existed. The files they had on him attested to that fact. Numerous successful mission where the shooter was never seen; never emerging from the shadows.
The perfect asset. One whose life had been stolen and bartered. Kept on ice for long stretches of time, passed from one corrupt agency to the other like the holy grail of weaponry.
Steve believes that God is punishing him with this endless chase as equally as he showed his mercy the day The Winter Soldier's competency was down enough to reveal himself.
He feels like Moses wandering in the desert for forty years searching for the Promised Land with every mile he leaves behind him looking for Bucky. In every cathedral he passes he lights a candle and prays down on his knees reminding him of Sunday mornings in his childhood before the war. Praying to the God of his mother. He used to pray for life. For a little more time. For the strength to fight. Use to be his own life he was begging for.
I promise I'll save him this time. He is a good man.
Help him remember. Help him through this.
Forgive me. I let him fall.
Bucky came to mass sporadically when Steve asked him too and never when his parents tried to force him once he'd hit twelve years old and believed himself grown enough to make his own choices. Steve had never asked but he knew Bucky's trust in God was long gone because of every winter he saw Steve bedbound – coughing up blood, weight sinking off his bones like water – every year he sat vigil by his frail friend's bedside and wondered if this was the last one.
Steve was in a church in Moscow and had been for several hours. Just praying. The Winter Soldier had killed a family here in these walls back in the late '60s. A politician selling off KGB secrets to the CIA. He'd been strangled with an electric wire right in front of his two children and his wife.
The photos in the files Natasha handed him at the cemetery before he'd started on his search had showed blood splatter from a bullet wound near where The Winter Soldier had been hiding crouched behind the pews while the Patriarch's body grew cold next to him; the exact spot Steve had chosen to sit down on.
He pretends that sitting in this spot doesn't make him want to crawl back into the ice. Doesn't make him wish – for a second, only a second – that Bucky had died that day.
"Getting any answers there, Cap?"
Natasha is taking a seat next to him, red hair curled and pulled back under an emerald green scarf, only a few strands escaping the fabric wrapped tight around her head. Outside, looking through the stained glass windows, the snow is falling onto the ground harshly, flakes blown about by the wind. The howling echoes like the Lord's wrath in Steve's ears.
Natasha didn't believe in God but Natalia had. She believed in God as a tool, a weapon to be wielded and manipulated to further her ends. That had been in the programming that the Red Room had given her. She could mouth the words to hymns and psalms in perfect Russian or Greek or Latin and claim it was for the glory of the motherland. Religion was a mixed bag. Either it bred trust or it put you further apart. You had to have the skill to spot when it could be used as an in.
Yasha hadn't believed in God. Didn't believe in anything. He wasn't programmed for belief or even ideology. Just orders. He fought with the competency of a blank slate and not the ferocity of true belief in a cause. He was willing to die not for what he believed to be right but because he did not fear death. He didn't understand that there was anything to be terrified about or the way people clung to the promise of an afterlife.
To Yasha, holy places like this one were merely hiding spots for the perfect bullet to go through his target. Natasha could remember one mission when he had pretended to be a priest in Spain to get close to a subversive cardinal making trouble for the KGB. He'd preached the words like he was reading from a script but nobody had blinked an eye because he could speak Spanish with the ease and fluency of a native-born and knew how to charm when it was beneficial to the mission. That was back in '74. Back before she had rewritten her entire history and tied it up neatly in a bow to gift wrap to SHIELD. Natasha Romanoff. Born in '84. Not such a bad life. If you erased everything that had come before.
Natalia had been his back-up, going in disguise as a novice nun. Two weeks into the their charade she had surprised the cardinal with his pants down being sucked off by a choir boy and then she and Yasha had some of their own downtime right on the desk where its owner had probably gotten off a hundred times before.
She had told Steve that she first met the Winter Soldier from a botched mission in Iran and that wasn't a lie. The Winter Soldier had shot the diplomat right through her without blinking an eye. No recognition. That hadn't surprised her (The Red Room had wiped his mind so many times it was practically his nourishment; his bread-and-butter) but it was there, bleeding out while her diplomat expired, that she had realized she'd never really met The Winter Soldier before. She had known Yasha. As blank as he was, as cold as he was, he'd still trained her diligently and worked with her seamlessly for years.
What had surprised her was just how much of a ghost the destruction of the Red Room could make him. How hard her old teacher and lover had been to find. A whisper. A shadow. The Red Room's programming had run deep and her defection had caused ripples but she'd still had a few connections. Defectors like herself or those who'd made their careers following Putin and the tidal wave of post-Soviet politics in their attempts to keep power. Even those hiding behind affable smiles while they wrote up their schemes and plots to build a new Red Room.
There would always be Red Rooms. Natasha couldn't believe she'd ever been so blind to the one hiding within S.H.I. .
Natasha was a born spy. Taught from a young age to con the bread out of people's hands to feed parents too corrupt to work and then sold to those who'd seen her beauty and knew they could profit from it.
She could be whoever they wanted her to be. She could mold herself into a socialite, assistant, or the perfect nun; the utterly normal soccer mom or housewife. She did everything she was ordered with no questions. No guilt. If Steve though he could save Yasha whose mind had been washed clean from years of psychological torment because he'd seen people break free from control of the mind – Clint; her – he was going to be bitterly disappointed. Yasha wasn't there to be the perfect in. He wasn't a spy putting on costumes left and right and leaving them discarded when given brighter options. He was just a trigger.
Whoever he'd been, whoever Bucky had been, had been pulled from him to leave a vacuum. Even Yasha had barely been able to feel for her – just enough that he protected her, just enough that he watched her back – and that man had been swept away by the time they'd met again in Iran.
There was red in his ledger. Rivers of red. Rivers of forgotten thoughts and feelings lost under the currents of programming that ran so deep not even a telepath would be able to tug those webs out of his synapses.
"Doesn't usually work that way," Steve replied, looking at her with that penetrating gaze.
"So why bother," she asked with a smirk, placing her heels up on the edge of the pew in front of them. Steve sighed.
"Because it gives me hope," he told her.
False hope. Natasha use to worry back when they'd first met that he was two seconds from locking himself away and never coming out. Getting lost in the memories of the dead.
Now she knew he was.
"Sometimes we're just looking for hope because we can't face the truth," she said. She didn't look at him. She stared at the picture of Jesus hanging on the wall to her right. Suffering man nailed to a cross. One time Yasha had killed a man by dragging a cross off the wall of his home and striking him through the gut with it. He'd bled out slow.
"You broke free," Steve reminded her gently, "Would you tell Clint to make a different choice that day? If he could?"
"Clint made a foolish choice that day," she snapped. Best choice of her life. Someone trusting her enough to see her as more than a Black Widow. Placing belief in her.
Stupid move for an agent that should know when to put down an enemy. She would never have done it. Let the enemy walk and then bring them into the fold. Choices like that were usually the last choice someone made.
"He still made it. I know what they did to him Natasha. I know how bad it is. But I don't believe that he's not still in there. He saved me from the Potomac. The Winter Soldier wouldn't have done that. That was Bucky."
She closed her eyes as Steve rose next to her. Opening them, she looked through her lashes and watched him cross himself the wrong way. Left to right. He picked up his jacket and placed his hat down over his hair and ears.
She followed him out, habitually moving her fingers from right to left before she headed to the door.
Tony Stark:
Steve would never get used to living in Stark Tower. His S.H.I.E.L.D. sanctioned D.C. apartment had been too large, even with only the one bedroom. It was odd, trying to fill up space for one man in rooms that would have housed four families in the neighbor where he'd grown up. Poor immigrants trying to make their way in a country that feared them and didn't want them.
That had been largest apartment he'd ever lived in. His childhood in Brooklyn had been spent moving from one run down flat to another, up and down the same few streets of the same neighborhood. The living room that he'd stacked full with records and books trying to make it smaller and less expansive, less daunting, that room had been bigger than the one room plus kitchen that he and Bucky had shared after Mr. and Mrs. Barnes had passed away. A year after Steve's own mama.
Lived in that flat for five years and they had counted themselves lucky to have a small kitchen separate from the main room. About a year in they'd brought in an old, rusted tub to take real baths more than once a month down at the local youth center. Bucky had worked two jobs day and night for six months to save up for a cheap one from their old neighbors. The tub had been pushed against the left wall, far enough away from the rickety stove that had to be balanced on the floorboards, that they could move around in the tiny kitchen but close enough it had been convenient to reach a long arm-length and pour the boiling water in.
Stark's closets could fit in two of that Brooklyn apartment and have room to spare. Steve had known in a vague sense that Howard Stark had been rich, (even though he worked for low-pay with the military experimenting with the latest technological advancements that civilians wouldn't catch wind of for decades) but he could never quite reconcile the sheer amount of money Tony would just throw away. Food thrown into the trashcans; milk not even spoiled, cheese that hadn't gone bad. Leftovers that the teammates had gotten sick of down the drain. So much wasted.
All that money would have paid for food and medicine for months back in the 30's.
It was so easy to get into the habit of taking money for granted – even for someone who'd grown up with nothing. In the past year he'd spent about as much money as he and Bucky had ever seen before the war running around the world looking for him. Air fare, hotels, basic necessities like food and toiletries. He and Sam could go through all of it as fast as any group of twenty or so full grown men. By the time he'd tried to follow the trail into Afghanistan one-hundred thousand dollars was forever gone from his bank account. He'd have spent even more by now if Fury hadn't contacted him asking him to band together with the Avengers once more to defeat Ultron.
In the end only the threat of Earth's complete destruction had been enough to pull him away.
His eyes traced the file that he was holding. It was one he'd come across browsing the internet the night before. The date on the newsprint was from two days ago and had been translated from Polish to English. 'Two dead former Russian KGB officers found in Warsaw'. Man with a metallic hand casually seen walking away from the building before the bodies had been discovered.
Their deaths had been personal. Brutal. Shallow stab wounds to the guts so that they could bleed out slowly. Lacerations and bruises on their faces and necks. One man had his leg broken in three places. The other had a crushed right hand. The safe had been wrenched from its spot and used to pound his bones into shattered pieces. The hotel room had been torn apart. Papers strewn all over. One of the men's briefcases was missing and remained unrecovered.
They'd been eighty-nine years old. Alexei Dorofeyev and Vladimir Zharkov. Former Red Army soldiers during WWII. America and Russian had been allies in that war. The two men had pulled Bucky from the bottom of the pass he'd fallen too according to the file Natasha had given him.
War made strange bedfellows. Those two young soldiers had been the ones to strap James Buchanan Barnes down on a gurney while scientists removed his arm and replaced it with soviet metal. If The Winter Soldier had even wondered what happened to his arm he would have been told he'd lost it to frostbite. Steve had his doubts.
Three days later their new soldier was on his way to "training" in Moscow. To the Red Room. Four years after that they'd recruited Zola who passed intelligence on from S.H.I.E.L.D about opts and missions that festered the Cold War. Later on, they had started contracting their asset(s) out to H.Y.D.R.A. In the nineties they'd been eradicated and The Winter Soldier had seemingly disappeared. Until 2014, when he'd stood in full view of everyone on a busy street during rush-hour traffic to fire on a Nicholas Fury.
There was a flight leaving for Poland from J.F.K in four hours and one seat left available according to their website.
And there was always plenty of money in his bank account.
A half-hour later Steve's suitcase was laying open, clothes being packed neatly inside when Tony found himself walked inside without bothering to knock. A print out of an itinerary was folded next to the leather case.
"Little bird told me you're heading off to Poland. Feeling hungry for borscht? There is this great deli in Manhattan – delicious pierogis, best you've ever had. Fifteen minute drive in the limo if we tell Happy to step on the gas," he said, leaning against the doorway. One hand scratched at his goatee.
"Got a lead. You know how to get in touch with me if you need me," Steve told him, pulling his passport out of the bedside drawer.
Tony rolled his eyes and walked in. His tower, he paid the bills. Well his people signed the checks. And he'd built it. But it was with his money from his company, so really, he could do what he wanted.
"We'll order it in than. Your taste buds will explode with pleasure. Best oral orgasm you've ever had in your life." Steve didn't even stop what he was doing long enough to glare at Tony's ninety-year old virgin slight.
Still packing. Tony sighed and plopped down on the armchair in Steve's room. This was too familiar for his comfort zone while he was this sober. Now, here came the silence. Howard use to get like that every time he left to go off searching the ocean for months and always coming back empty handed. A little more distant each time. A little more determined.
By the end the man had forgotten he'd even had a family. A wife who, for some reason, had loved him. A son he should have raised. Not chasing some ghost long gone.
Tony was an intelligent man. He knew it. Steve knew it. And he could see the situation for what is was.
If Barnes hadn't contacted Steve by now than this was a man who didn't want to be found. Steve was better off forgetting about this quest that was shaping up to be as futile as searching for Atlantis before he gave up everything else he had.
Tony was a little too not-fond of Mr. Ninety-Year Virgin to see him become a drone searching for something that just wasn't coming back.
"I'm going to order you one of those Bucky Barnes pillows they sell down at the Smithsonian. It's soft. Cuddly. Has your friend's face on it. You can talk to it with the same amount of stone-dead silence as you're getting now," Tony said blithely, ignoring Steve's icy glare, "I'd give Thor one of Reindeer Games for when he gets in his princess-sulks but I don't think mass-murderers sell well as comfort pillows these days. Maybe a squeeze ball?"
"Tony," Steve said, voice low with a slight warning behind it. He closed the lid of his suitcase and zipped it. While his back was turned going through the itinerary, Tony ran his fingers over the file Steve had left open on his desk. Gory pictures. Looked like a B-rated horror flick. Blood splatter everywhere. Creative ways of mutilating victims. There was such morbid artistry behind the murder that Tony could almost feel the appeal to go running off to becoming the next candidate for the icicle pincushion kill exhibit.
"You think some hugs and memories is going to fix this," he asked when Steve turned around. He gestured to the image, "Some sobbing? Little manly bonding and suddenly everything's fixed? Seventy years of brainwashing and murder like a bad dream you just shake off?"
The man Barnes had been before the fall had been many things (Tony had heard a little about the guy from Howard), like a flirt and a charmer. A guy who loved to dance with the dames in the bars they'd had downtime in. Always ready to buy a brew for a fellow soldier (well sweet-talk a bartender or patron out of a brew). Loyal. Tony's kind of partier.
That guy was dead. Dead after the fall. Even if Steve made him remember who he was born as he was never going to be the same. All that blood on his hands – doesn't matter if he was the one that made the choice to pull the trigger, doesn't matter that he was just the weapon, the machine – no one came back from that.
You talked and you smiled and you joked and all the while, inside your head, you remembered. You woke up in cold sweats, nightmare after nightmare, watching yourself standing there while the bombs went off. Limbs torn apart.
Poison to everyone around you.
"I'm started to get a bit sick of everyone telling me what I can and can't do. I have to try. All he has in this world is me and I'm not going to give up on him," Steve said. Tony opened his mouth to argue but Steve cut him off, holding up his hand.
"I'm getting on that plane. You can either move out of my way or I go around you."
"This," Tony pointed to one of the dead officers, "This is specific. It's targeted. Every move you've caught that you think points to your friend? Look at them. Bunch of dead octopuses. Bunch of dead commies. People that took him apart. It's revenge. Who's to say he can tell the difference between a friend and just one more person who let him down? Who's to say Frosty the Abominable Assassin won't take one glance at you and decide that he just doesn't need that kind of disappointment in his life?"
"Bucky won't kill me," Steve told him firmly.
Just like Obie would have never tried to kill me, Tony replied sarcastically in his head. Capsicle didn't know about that and Tony wasn't up to having the big heart-to-heart "the one I trusted tried to skewer" me talk without lots of booze flavored ice-cream involved. Without the ice cream.
"Sometimes you spend so much time thinking you're getting rid of the bad when really you're just perpetuating it that the realization comes too late. Everything you do trying to change it? Doesn't matter. It's just who you are now."
Steve lifted the suitcase off the bed and walked over to the door. Tony growled in frustration and kicked the bottom of the desk with the toe of his boot. A hollow thud followed. He was trying to talk logic with a brick wall. Brick wall of two-hundred odd pounds of new-deal liberalism stupid.
"We're all a bit screwed up here. I'm sure we could handle one more," he said. Closing argument. Tony would give him 5:10. Little weak on the execution.
He let him walk out the door. Tony wasn't going to risk his ass on a suicide-mission to keep on trying to stop Captain Blockhead.
Fury:
"Want to enlighten me as to what you're doing in Poland, Cap," the former director's voice was tiny but still managed to have enough force behind it to sound like a drill sergeant to Steve's ears.
His brain is fuzzy as he flips himself over onto his back, sheets coming untangled from underneath his legs. There is a bottle of water on the dresser next to him. He reaches over to retrieve it but manages to knock it down onto the floor with the back of his hand. He blinks, sleep in his eyelashes and mouth dry, and then groans.
"You better not be groaning at me for calling you out on the runner you've done to your obligations," Fury growled. The man was like big-brother. (Yes, Steve had read a few books trying to catch-up). The second one of his Avengers stepped out he knew about it. Steve had only been on Polish soil for four hours. He'd meant to stay awake and go immediately to the place The Winter Soldier had been seen but he hadn't been able to sleep on the flight here.
His mind keep going over and over the images of the dead KGB officers.
"What time is it?"
"Six in the morning. Your time. Not mine. As your ass is not currently waking up to all the comforts of home in Stark Tower – excuse me – Avengers tower," Fury replied dryly. Steve had never been happier not to have to deal with the man face-to-face. He might trust Fury's motives a little bit more now than he had before taking down HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D but that didn't make the man's attitude and methods any less infuriating.
"I don't see how it's your business sir. You're not my commanding officer," Steve snapped. He sat up, stretching his arms over his head and working out the kinks in his shoulders from the position he'd been sleeping in for the last couple of hours. Yawning, he reached down over the side of the bed to retrieve the bottle of water.
"Do you know how much of a pain in my ass you are right now Rogers? I thought Stark was going to be the difficult one. Hell, I even conceived that Thor was going to be difficult. But you? You have raised my blood pressure up to dangerous levels in the span of twelve-hours. Congratulations."
"You're welcome," Steve replied though gulps of water, voice even. His mind goes through what he can do before he leaves the hotel. He has time to quickly fix his hair and grab something to eat and then he can be on his way. Google maps said that the scene of the crime was about a fifteen minute train ride from where his hotel is. He's not naïve enough to believe that Bucky is still in that exact area but there was always the chance he left something behind that Steve could use to track him. Maybe someone had seen him.
He pulled his wallet out of the pocket of his jeans to make sure his picture of Bucky – old, from the forties, smiling – was still there to show people. At the bottom of his wallet, the chain-links twined together, was Bucky's dog tags. He'd taken them from the Smithsonian the day he'd decided to put on his old uniform again.
They'd been there because someone in the CIA had found them in a KGB base during the '80's. No one had ever really questioned why the Russians would have a deceased American war hero's dog tags locked away in a vault in one of their labs.
They probably figured it was some sort of silent stick-it to the West.
"I'm not grateful. I got one of my Avengers risking his ass looking for a metal-armed assassin when he should be in New York. You're too attached Rogers. You're going to get your ass handed to you and I'm not going to do a thing to stop it. You know why? Because I'm not in fucking Poland and you trotted off before I could tell you what a damn fool idea this is."
Steve snorted, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and tugged down his t-shirt that had rucked itself up while he'd been sleeping, "Wasn't so much of a damn fool idea last month."
Fury laughed, "Oh it was a damn fool idea then too. But Earth's under the eye of a lot of threats Rogers and we need all our soldiers on the front lines. Not running around like a chicken with its head cut off in the Ass-End-of-Nowhere, Poland."
"And I understand that. No one understands fighting threats more than me. Right no nothing's threatening us. And when something does, Bucky can help. He's had a lot of experience. Not like your criteria to join the team is people with spotless records."
He looked around the room to make sure he had everything he needed. Grabbed his sunglasses and his wallet. Brushed his teeth. He didn't smell too good but he could take a quick shower when he got back.
"Bucky can't help anyone. If there is a Barnes in that messed up cranium inside his head then he's not in any position to be helping anyone but a therapist collect a lot of pay."
Steve felt a noise of protest come from the back of his throat. His nerves were beginning to become frayed from lack of sleep and the pleasure of being woken up by the world's least sympathetic protector.
"Can it Rogers. Look, I'll admit, the Winter Soldier's got some great skills. Barnes is a brilliant shot. Better than Barton maybe and that's not something I'm willing to admit in a crowd. But let someone else look for him. Someone that can compartmentalize," Fury's voice was soft but insistent.
Steve pressed the down button for the elevator and waited for it to open. "Sorry sir. I just don't trust that someone else wouldn't find him, somehow manage to take him in, and then manage to misplace him somewhere. Let's say, a holding cell? No, it's better that it be me."
A dinging sound rang as the door began to open. He stepped on.
"Rogers, listen…" Fury's voice was cut off as the call dropped from being in the elevator. Steve frowned, deliberately holding his thumb down hard on the red button and watched the screen fade out to black.
How did someone ask "do you know this man" in Polish?
The Winter Soldier:
You have never had such a dogged pursuer before. Granted, most of the time you were the pursuer and your mission was usually finalized before any of them could get it into their heads that they should follow you. The fact was still relevant to the here and now. Your mission knows that you should have him under your knife and still stood in front of you. Surrendered.
You don't know why you saved him and yet you do.
Something about those blue eyes. Their pleading gaze. Looking at you. Begging. Gazing at you with – relief? – was that it? That you were in front of him. Begging you – for what you don't know. You pulled him out of the river. Why? Should have left him there. Let him drown. He was your mission.
He kept referring to you by a name. Bucky. Not asset. Not "The Winter Soldier".
You let yourself into the first home you see after you leave the man battered but breathing on the bank of the river. Quickly disabling the security you look around for the computer. An older style model it sits on a desk in the living room. Outdated web browser. Suits your purposes though.
Target: Steven Rogers. Other known monikers: Captain America. Born: 1918. Age: mid-twenties.
Steve.
Google images had varied pictures of his target. Some clearly faked – the body doesn't match the headshots (you had been taught to spot a fake from what was real, it was important for the missions). Some older. A small, skinny kid and you feel something pricking at you as you take in the image. Your eyes trace the face of the man you recognize in the photo but you do not understand why there is this persistent nagging in your head that you should know him.
You go back to the web search. The Smithsonian has an exhibit dedicated to Captain America. You click the exit button out of the search window and go in search of attire that will help you blend. There is a baseball cap on the couch. You pick it up.
The flashes start mere hours after you leave the Smithsonian where you'd stood paralyzed and staring at the man who had your face. James Barnes. Born: 1917. Died: 1944. Age: mid-twenties. Nickname: Bucky?
You don't know who this man is. This man who was born in Brooklyn and went off to fight in a war that you know about as random numerical data, sporadic bits of information that might be used as an advantage on a mission. Knowledge gained for or from the targets.
You think maybe you can remember the way the cold rain had hit your face in the Black Forest. Maybe you don't. Maybe you're projecting. Standard psychological response. You have read about this before in mission reports and psych evals.
You keep moving because HYDRA – Pierce – is dead or dismantled and you don't know what to do. You shouldn't stay. Too much exposure in one area. Too risky to nest. Safer on the move.
There is a lockbox in a safe house at the edge of D.C. Passport(s), birth certificates, drivers licenses: all under various aliases. You've needed them before for missions. Papers in Russian, Romanian, Polish, Hebrew, Swedish, Greek, Arabic, Italian, German, French, Spanish, English. So many names. Yasha Zolnerowich, Iacov Lupei, Jakub Sierzant, Ya'akov Sitz, Jakob Gunvaldsson, Iakov Kokinos, Ya'qub Nader, Giacomo Capello, Jacques Boucher. False names. Same face.
The nagging in the back of your head had returned. A voice whispering to you that you could speak all these languages once. Sometimes a few times over. Sometimes for days. Sometimes for a few hours. But when you try to read the papers all you can comprehend are the Russian and English words though you can feel that pulling in your brain – the headache behind your eyes – as you strive to remember.
There is a fog clouding your brain but you can suddenly recall, like it had just happened, that you had snapped the neck of the man who lived in this safe house in '99. You remember he was a politician. He was for rights of the minorities and preached about clean energy. He was also looking into S.H.I.E.L.D. paper trails that would have lead him straight to several HYDRA off-shore accounts and laboratories.
Memories are buried in your head. You don't know if they are Bucky's memories or Yasha's or whoever else that you have been but you need to know.
You do know where each and every HYDRA base is. That has never been lost to you.
You stuff the money from the lockbox into a wallet you took from the house and put it in your pocket along with the English written papers. Seamus Winters.
(At night you dream and it's full of blood. Broken bodies and scattered pieces. Men, women; children who got caught in the crossfire. You dream of destruction. You dream of churches and opera houses and deserts. You dream of labs and abandoned bank vaults and freezer boxes with sterile monikers –cryotube. Pain in your head – excruciating. Knives piercing into your nerves over and over again. Behind your eyes. Blinding you.
Then you start to dream of falling. Of screaming and crying out, believing that someone would hear you and reach towards you. You see him – Steve – above you, eyes screwed shut. He can't even watch you die. Your eyes snap open – alert.)
You've been too three different HYDRA bases in Europe – France, Luxemburg, Belgium – before you remember The Red Room. The transaction papers were in the Belgium lab, triggering your recollection of your previous owners. You were traded there, in that lab. Like a gun. Like covert plans. Like a commodity. Bought and sold.
You were not, of course, a person.
One of the men who bought you from the Russians lived in London. One of the men who'd managed to slip through the cracks of the destruction of their secret regime.
You think you would like to pay this man a visit. There is a smile on your face but nothing like that flash of the arrogant, cheerful grins James Barnes gave to Steve Rogers in the videos from the '40's that you watch over and over (trying to remember: failing).
No. This smile reminds you of razors.
(James Barnes spent a month in London with Steve Rogers once. The food sucked. They were staying at a base right on the outskirts (always cold and wet and they had to bunk together but that was nothing new and not a hardship) and all that the army could afford was rations. Sometimes the local girls would stop by and give them casserole dishes full of bangers-and-mash or steak-and-kidney pies. James Barnes would flash them a grin and a wink and watch as they blushed. Then he'd look at Steve. In London and far, far from the dirty streets of Brooklyn. So much bigger. So much stronger. How could he protect him from war when he needed Steve to save him now?
James Barnes spent a month in London with Steve Rogers once. He'd been recovering.)
Steve Rogers was engaging your target in London. He was losing. You shoot. Your target falls. You don't stick around.
This is when you remember that Steve Rogers is the most stubborn son-of-a-bitch on the planet.
You seek out more targets. HYDRA. KGB. S.H.I.E.L.D. It doesn't matter. Anyone who has ever handled you. Anyone that has ever given you a mission and pointed you at targets. Anyone who has ever looked at you and seen a blank slate. Someone they could twist up and screw up and mold to their desires.
An asset.
You're sloppy sometimes. You think maybe you want him to catch you.
Most times you're just a ghost. Slipping in and out of the shadows.
(Time goes on and you're beginning dreaming of hot dogs. The smell of boiled corn beef and cabbage and gray vegetables that you would sneak onto Steve's plate. They told you it would help you grow up big and strong. Steve needs that.
You dream of Coney Island and roller coasters. The awe you felt going up so high – you felt like you could touch heaven – your stomach leaping as you descend. Rushing straight to the ground and if you don't stop you'll hit the tar and that's it. Your breath catches as the rickety cart loops and rocks upwards. Next to you, Steve looks green.
You dream of nights spent worrying. You dream of harsh breathing and bloody handkerchiefs and rooms with no heat. Pneumonia. The flu. Fevers. Allergies. Asthma. You dream of nuns who tell you that you need to repent or you'll burn. You dream of funerals.
Once, you see yourself sitting in the same spot for hours while Steve – patient, calm, determined Steve – sketches you.)
You can climb mountains. You know how to scale walls and do the most complicated of combat maneuvers. You can fly planes and sail boats. You can speak 15 languages. You remember them all now. You know how to build computers and tear them apart and you can expertly hack your way into secure databases.
James Barnes had never seen a computer. He knew how to swim. He knew how to swagger and dance to jazz music and talk a good game. He knew how to put on a show. He only knew one language.
Your metal arm needs to be lubricated. It squeaks when it bends and there will be rusting. You need to find a power source for it soon or else it will fail and become a liability. Your hair is bothering you. You think you need to shave because your face is almost completely obscured and that makes you look untrustworthy. The hair can be pulled in a fight.
James Barnes was a man with two arms and neat hair and a clean face. Was he still broken?
In Moscow you start to remember Natalia Alianovna Romanova. Fake name. Fake name for a real face. Real codename for a real project. "The Black Widow." She was the most promising of the serum-tested girls that The Red Room had tried their product on. They'd picked her up in a warehouse where she was running cons for low-life criminals. She'd been 16. You remember them telling you her age. This was in the '60s. They'd keep her on ice sometimes. It's slowed down the natural aging process. Why find and train new assets when you can keep the old?
The Black Widow. Age: 16. Agency: The Red Room/KGB
Target: Natasha Romanoff. Appearance of Age: mid-twenties. Agency: S.H.I.E.L.D.
Traitor.
You think of God. Not the God that The Red Room told you about so you could pass as so many kinds of holy men: a priest, a pastor, a patriarch, a rabbi, an imam. No, you think of Steve Roger's god. His never-ending faith even when he lay dying in bed every time he got sick while his mama sat there and prayed. Hands that would stroke the brown hair at night of the boy who had come to sit vigil with a best friend, trail numbly over rosary beads. He always got better.
You created Natalia. The Black Widow. You trained her and molded her. She had looked up to you, in awe of you. You had been sent to kill her. Does God feel guilt for destroying what he created?
(Your dreams are no longer memories. You wake up in cold sweats, mouth half open in silent screams. Shaking from nightmares. Parades of bodies. Men. Women. Children. Natalia. Your mother. (You had one once. She had been as sweet as sunshine but with a temper like fire). Your father (always gone, always disappointed in you).
The worst is Steve. Dead. Rotting on the banks of the Potomac. Forgotten like trash casually discarded out of a window. His face bruised and battered. He didn't like bullies.
You…what were you suppose to do? You… Bucky was supposed to protect him.)
Bucky wishes that Steve had decided he was going to stop following him when he'd rejoined the Avengers to fight Ultron. He'd thought about getting on a plane and following him to the states when he'd eavesdropped on that news. He had pictured doing it. Pictured picking up a sniper rifle and helping him. Protecting him.
Even got as far as the airport. Then turned around and threw up in an alley on his hands and knees. Steve on the street. Red dot on his forehead.
Most days he spent holed up wishing for death. Wishing for the hell that his Catholic school nuns had told him he was going. Fire and brimstone and seven levels full of the worst of human sinners. Pictured his scarred, pale flesh burning; could smell the sickly sweet scent of burnt skin and taste ash in the back of his throat. Sat in the middle of a ratty bed in a rundown motel room with no hot water. Rocked back and forth, whimpering like a baby, when the nightmares flashing behind his eyes became too much.
He'd stare at his guns and pictured blowing his head off. Blood scattering over the walls and the headboard, pooling on the sheets. Those days where the worst. Why shouldn't he feel the pain for the horrors he'd committed? Why should he have the easy way out?
He didn't deserve it.
Most mornings he'd wake up… and you don't remember who you are. Then the fog would lift and the pieces of the puzzle would snap back into place like a bullet leaving a sniper rifle. Hitting him right in the heart. He'd roll over and throw up, bile hot and sour on his tongue.
Sometimes he'd drink and drink and wished that he could get drunk. He used to be able to feel the alcohol rushing through his veins and giving him courage he could never have without that sweet intoxication; that euphoria. That forgetfulness it gave to all his cares.
He didn't deserve to forget either. Not the little kids. Not the damage. Not the girls in the Red Room brutalized and made into assets. Just. Like. Him.
Not the innocent women and children; the bystanders.
He needed to scratch every one of their faces into his flesh. Blood welling up from his veins, a mockery of their own, as if it could bring them back from their unmerciful graves.
Some days he'd stand for hours and look at himself in the mirror. Scars that hadn't been there before. Some small and barely visible. Others thick and ropey. He'd pull up his long-sleeved shirt and stare at his skin. Torn and broken.
Then the sleeve of his right arm would be pulled-up and he'd stare at the scratches gained in the throes of his nightmares. Waking up with his blood tainting the white of the pillow cases.
One day, Bucky finally shaved and cut his hair. He stared in the mirror and tried to smile like it was 1939 and he was picking up dates for him and Steve.
It never reached his eyes.
His left arm mechanically snaps up and his gloved hand goes straight through his reflection. Between his eyes. The glass cracks and crashes around his feet. So much destruction.
On rare days when he felt like he could function enough to walk outside with the light from the sun glaring down on him he would leave one room and move to another. During those times he looked for more files. Stare at the names. Promised himself that he wouldn't kill.
Three more bodies followed him from Afghanistan to Poland. One in Kabul. Two in Warsaw. They were all part of The Red Room. Two were former Red Army soldiers. He remembered pleading with them to take him back to his base. Weren't they supposed to be allies. One scientist. Took his arm. Put him in ice. Put him in hell. Which level was the cold?
After their deaths he spent three days huddled in the shower and let the hot water bubble as it struck his skin. Then he left to buy a rope. He wasn't brave like Steve. He'd always been a coward. Tie it tight enough to bruise. Maybe he wouldn't remember to wiggle out of it. Oxygen flow to the brain cuts off.
Of course, like the kind of miracle his mama had believed in, that was when he'd seen Steve. Just walking out of a room in the hotel where Bucky had holed himself. Panicking, he ducked back into the elevator, hoping that Steve hadn't seen him, heart hammering in his chest.
Stupid son-of-a-bitch.
Stupid, loyal son-of-a-bitch.
There was still blood on his hands. Couldn't see it but it was there. Underneath. Blood on his face from where it had spattered. Bruises mottling his face and arms – not many, they were frail and decrepit – but they'd tried to fight back.
Moving as quickly as lightning, he made sure to leave a note at the front for room 560 before he got in a taxi that would take him to the airport. Left everything that he'd brought with him (Practically nothing. Just a change of clothes and a gun) and ran. Didn't matter where. One hole in hell was as good as any other for someone as monstrous as him.
"Steve. Stop looking for me."
Thor:
Steve placed the glass filled to the brim with the best whiskey that Tony owned in front of Thor. It wasn't much – wouldn't even make a dent in an Asgardian constitution – but it was one-hundred proof and would have probably knocked Tony on his ass so Steve figured that Thor could appreciate the gesture.
"Thank you, friend Steven," Thor said, not moving to pick up the glass in front of him. His eyes were sad and his hair was a mess, falling out of the elaborate braids that tied parts of away from his face. Mjolnir was on the floor in front of him along with his vambraces. The insignia of the horned helmet faced upwards facing Steve.
Steve had never seen Thor as downcast as he seemed before. Not even during their first battle of New York. There was something unsettling to think about Thor – optimistic, cheerful, boisterous Thor – huddled quietly, trying to make himself as small as his large body could manage on Steve's couch in Avengers Tower.
Steve sighed and sat down next to Thor. The soft plush of the cushions was like attempting to sit on air. He needed to get a different couch. He placed his own glass in front of him. Liquid cure just as useless. The heat in the apartment felt stifling. Condensation began to drip onto the note he left on the table, threatening to blur the black ink into splotches.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Thor could have gone back to his own rooms after returning from Asgard where he'd been for the last three months. He'd disappeared right after Steve had left for Poland saying only that he was being called home to fight an ancient enemy named Surtur. He'd arrived back earlier and embraced them all while he'd related the success they'd had pushing the demon back but he'd had such a forlorn look on his face it looked like he'd lost the battle. A few hours later, Steve had heard a knock on his door while he'd been getting ready to turn in for the night (another night of staring restlessly at the ceiling).
He wasn't very adept with this. Comforting. He could say the right words to bring up morale but dealing with PTSD was Sam's expertise. Not his. That had become more and more clear lately. The note on the table mockingly stared at him.
Thor sighed heavily, shoulders slumped, "In truth Steven, I am unsure. Much has passed in Asgard that I cannot explain. I fear that I do not yet understand what has happened there in my absence. All that I was blind to. Again. My…"
He stopped, his breathing long and drawn out. His mouth shook and he raised one large hand to rub underneath his weary eyes.
"My brother, Loki," Thor said purposefully, as if Steve could ever forget the name of the man who'd brought an alien army to New York City intent on world domination, "he is gone."
Vaguely, Steve had known this in the back of his mind. It wasn't something he dwelled on much. Not since that first initial relief he'd felt knowing that Loki couldn't hurt anyone else. He'd been too busy when he was told the news to stop and consider the details of Loki's death. He'd heard Thor had been there. That Loki had "redeemed" himself enough for his name to pass Thor's lips one or two times with nostalgic fondness rather than reluctance in front of the Avengers during and after Ultron.
Steve had never thought of Loki as Thor's brother. Until now. Thor's eyes closed, grief seeming to weigh like a mountain on his shoulders. The lines on his face made him look ancient.
"Is it," he began to say, words sitting awkwardly on his tongue, "has it been a year? Is it the first anniversary?"
Thor laughed and it was bitter and hollow. He picked up the whiskey, swirling the deep, golden liquid around. "In Asgard, there would be feasting. Stories would be told. Fond memories. Deeds of valor. It is believed that the fallen can hear the tales and mighty songs all the way in Valhalla and that each valiant act retold strengthens them for when Ragnarok comes."
Steve hadn't bothered to wonder if anyone on Asgard had been Loki's friend. There was no reason to think about if anyone held fond memories of him. Loki had been cruel and malicious. He'd seen people as flies to be swatted out of the way or tools to be used. Over a hundred people had died because of him and the chaos he'd brought to New York. One good man had died from his hands.
Steve had been told he'd saved Thor's life at the cost of his own though and his mama had always said that forgiveness was something not given lightly and that even sinners deserved some faith. If Valhalla existed (and that was a stretch but he'd seen stranger things. Case: the man on his couch) Steve wasn't too convinced that was where Loki was spending his afterlife but that wasn't something Thor needed to listen to right now.
"Do you think he can hear you, Thor?"
Thor's left hand fell onto his lap, fingers clenching into his knee, "I know not. Loki hears what he wants to hear. He twists and turns words. He is a fool who never listens."
Steve frowned, "Then why did you come to me? If you don't want to talk?"
"You are a good man Steven. A good friend. An honorable shield-brother. I believe that you know what it is like to lose friends. To lose brothers on the field of battle. You know…"
Whatever Thor was going to say he cut off by taking a gulp of the whiskey. Steve's sat forgotten, a ring building up on the paper of the note. Slowly, with the ticking from the clock on the wall ringing in his ears, his teammate started to talk again.
"I was six years old when my mother introduced Loki to me. It seems a considerable age difference for your Midgardian years but I scarcely remember before those days. I was what you would consider a toddler. From the moment my mother placed him in my cradle, Loki was always with me. By my side, inseparable. She called us her sun and moon. Loki was forever following me and I was always there to make sure he was safe."
Steve sat there, silent, and listened to the low cadence of Thor's voice as he lost himself in his memories.
"Loki was a small child. Thin and dark. He had the unique ability to tell people that which they did not wish to hear. He did not like the training yard but I would force him to come with me. He would drag his books and sit on a ledge watching me train with our friends and allow himself to be instructed only when he bid. He preferred magic. When he was not with me then he and mother would spend hours locked away inside her chambers. I use to stand outside the door and wait till he came out so I could drag him off again. Usually, to some fool-headed scheme. So many times he had to drag me out of messes."
"I miss my brother," Thor confessed with a whisper, "I miss his laughter. I miss his arrogance. I miss his mischief. I miss turning around and seeing him there beside me. Two-thousand years. Two-thousand years I loved him above all others. I protected him. I raged at him and raged for him. How can two-thousand years be so easily broken?"
There was a lump in Steve's throat. He could hear Thor but his mind had tuned out. Turned the channel and flipped the switch so that all he could see was Bucky. He saw twenty-seven years spent in playgrounds and back-alleys; churches and one-room apartments; dance halls to battlefields. The Bucky who'd shadowed him in the alleys of Brooklyn to finish off bullies because Steve always dragged himself into messes. The boy who'd taken care of him when he was sick and yelled at him for being a damn fool every time he'd tried to enlist. Bucky, who'd charmed every dame he'd ever come across and annoyed every little old lady that lived within two-blocks when he'd steal pies from their windowsills to share with Steve.
The boy who'd worked long hours and rough jobs, coming home cold and wet and tired but so damned proud every time they could afford to pay their bills. Enough left over for groceries and medicines. Who stayed up late with him and nursed him through his asthma attacks. Taught him how to swim in the Hudson River. Gave him his first drink and smiled like a fool when he came home from his first date. The man who'd lied to him about being drafted because he'd probably believed that Steve wouldn't understand how much he'd rather sit on the sidelines in Brooklyn in a heat-deprived apartment with a perpetually ill best-friend. Bucky, broken and bleeding, strapped down to a table, smiling up at him like he was the savior. Refusing to leave him. His best friend who'd followed him back into the war and had thrown down his life without blinking. He never deserved the hand he'd been dealt.
There was no one standing on his left anymore and no matter how many people he found to call friend in this time, no one that could ever take that place. Even after finding him again there was still that empty space. Cold. Like the waters of the Arctic Ocean.
Steve placed his hand on Thor's shoulder, "I don't know."
Maybe Loki didn't deserve this kind of love. At least, not the man he was at the end of his life. The megalomaniac revealing in destruction and nothing was going to wash away the blood on his hands. The boy from Thor's memories? Maybe he did.
Or maybe it was Thor who deserved to feel this kind of love. This affection that wouldn't die no matter how long and deep the knife had been twisted and Steve understood now why the Asgardian had chosen to talk to him about their childhood. Tony, Natasha, Clint, Jane. None of them would understand nor would they want to – why someone so good and just and noble could feel for a man drenched in horrors. Thor came to him because Steve knew the twists and hurts of grasping for something broken and Thor didn't deserve to have his love belittled or scorned. This man – this confused and mourning man – hadn't had anyone to talk to since the day he'd first found out his brother had betrayed him.
They sat there in silence for a long time. The type of silence that was meant to pick you up and piece you back together. The one where you knew the man beside you felt as deeply as you felt. Knew the pain you knew. The type of silence only those who'd been forged by bonds of brotherhood so long and deep understood; the knowledge only those born of blood and strife and loss could ever really comprehend.
It was almost light out when Thor finally rose to leave, "My deepest gratitude Steven. I know that my brother has caused your world great pain and horror. It is the mark of a good man to sit and commiserate with a friend while he speaks of an enemy."
Steve ran a hand though his hair, "It's what friends do."
Thor smiled and for the first time that night it had a hint of his usual optimism, "Then, as a friend, let me offer you this advice," he gestured to the note on the table, completely soaked through from the condensation created from the heat of Steve's room and the long melted ice cubes, "and that which I often must remind myself of now. Never give up. Even when there is no glimmer of hope. That the man you knew is gone and can never be recovered. Even when there is blood left behind and some punishment is just. Endless running. Hiding. Tricks. When those around you say that your brother cannot be saved and all that remains is revenge. Certain that he will betray you. Knowing he doesn't want to be saved. Listening as he screams at you that he shouldn't be. There is nothing left to save. Refuse to let that daunt you. To give up that hope is to confine yourself to your guilt. Watching without end the fall. Take my words to heart. Though you be a fool – keep trying Steven."
Steve blinked, eyes bleary but focused down, not looking at Thor's face. The words on the note were indecipherable. His hand shook as he moved to remove the glass, wavering, before he crumpled up the ruined paper.
Thor began to walk towards the door and Steve followed him to show him out. Standing there, gripping Mjolnir in his hands, Thor's shoulders suddenly seemed higher. Held up with new life. Strong with assurance.
"Thank you," Steve told him. His voice was hoarse and nasally from the pressure building up in the back of his throat.
His shield-brother nodded and then opened the door. It closed gently behind him.
A tired but reassured sob echoed after.
Peggy Carter:
Every time Steve visited it was a toss-up between one of her good days and one of her bad. He checked with her doctors and called her nurses every week to inquire how she was doing. A few times they'd told him not to hope for much longer when he left the rooms during the times that Peggy screamed when she saw him; the times she didn't even recognize him. When she thought she was still a little girl growing up in the English countryside and the room around her frightened her.
He made a point of saying good-bye to her when he left every time because he never knew if it was going to be the last time.
Today was one of her good days. She knew the nurses. She knew where she was. She remembered Steve's last visit from the week before. Some days she remembered that he'd been pulled out of the ice. Remembered it wasn't the 40's. Other days she remembered his death and she cried when she saw his face. Sometimes it flashed her back to the days when he was just a simple soldier in a big war. Before S.H.I.E.L.D. Before the Avengers. Before the ice.
The sun was shining through her window when he arrived and she was sitting up in bed. Her white hair had been pulled back into a braid and there was an open book in front of her. She smiled when he entered the room and opened her arms. He bent down to kiss her cheek, skin soft and weathered underneath his lips. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders.
They held each other for a few minutes. He breathed in the clean, flowery scent of her. Finally, they released one another and he pulled up a chair next to the bed, dropping the roses he'd brought with him into a vase filled with water on her dresser. The nurses knew to keep an empty vase around.
They sat and made small talk for a while. Peggy related to him all the nursing-home gossip. The woman down the hall who'd yelled that her son was a crook. The old man who wanted to marry her. She'd told him no, of course. The nurse who worked the night-shift who had just gotten engaged. He told her about Tony and the number of stupid things he'd done in the last week. How Pepper seemed to be reaching her "dealing with Tony Stark" meter every other day. Told her about Bruce's new attempts to keep zen and how many times they'd found Clint sleeping in odd places like air ducts or once, amazingly, in a chandelier.
After a while their conversation tapered off and Peggy began to study his face.
There were more roses than usual in the bundle he'd brought today. Her mind was as sharp as ever even with her memories fading and she quick to decipher the significance.
"You're going away again, aren't you?"
Steve nodded, looking down. The comforter on her bed was red and blue. Her book lay there, facing him. He read a few lines on the page. "A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended." The words seemed tailor made to prick at him in judgment. He tore his gaze away to look at her face. Her expression was soft. Knowing.
Peggy had been the person he'd turned to after he'd received Bucky's note in Poland. He'd barely gotten off the plane at Dulles before he was hailing a cab straight to her nursing home. It had been one of her good days. She'd taken him in her arms and stroked his hair.
Every week he drove fourteen hours to D.C. and back to see her. Stark offered him the use of his private jet but he always declined. It seemed like an unnecessary extravagance when he was perfectly capable of getting behind the wheel and affording the gas.
"I have too. This is something I have to do."
Peggy's hand reached over to take his, squeezing his fingers comfortingly, "You always believed that. It's what made you strong. Your tenacity. I saw this in you from the first moment I met you."
Her voice was strong but her eyes were out of focus. They seemed to be looking past him. Her beautiful brown eyes, staring over his shoulder. They got like this during the times he was about to lose her. She'd stare at his face or the windows or the door and her eyes would lose all recognition. He gripped on to her hand tighter. As if he could banish away time.
There was a long pause.
"Stop blaming yourself," she said suddenly, startling Steve. Her words rang with familiarly. He half expected her to turn and look at him, determined and calm. Attempting to bring solace to a raging, grieving man who couldn't deal with his problems at the bottom of a bottle.
She continued to gaze past him.
"Allow Barnes the dignity of his choices." Her murmur was an echo, words that she'd told him once before when she'd found him raging at fate and unable to drown away his sorrows. His eyes felt heavy and his throat like lead. Unable to speak.
Then she laughed, "I told you that a long time ago. I meant it then. I mean it now," she pulled her eyes away from the doorway and held his own, "I never told that that you are allowed the dignity of your own choices. If you want to follow him, if you're prepared for it? Then go."
A noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob made its way past the cage that seemed to be trapping his voice. This woman was the most amazing woman he had ever known or would ever know, no matter how long he lived. She'd watched him make a hundred foolish decisions. Going after the 107th alone into enemy lines. Unauthorized. Landing a plane with no hope of coming back. Raiding Nazi trains over mountain passes on a zip line with only a small crew at his back.
Every decision he'd made that could have cost him everything. Decisions no sane man would have ever even contemplated. She'd stood and supported him. Actively helped him.
Steve wished that he could have grown to love her as much as his mother had loved his father. Arrived for their date at The Stork Club. Married her. Brought her back to Brooklyn or lived with her in a cottage in the English countryside. Raised kids together. He wished that Bucky had never fallen from the side of that train. Wished the three of them could have grown old together. Stubborn and brave and hard-headed. Annoying their grandchildren while lying about in a nursing home, listening to Glenn Miller albums.
"Next time I come," his voice wobbled and he swallowed.
Steadier, he continued, "I'll bring him with me. It will be like old times."
Peggy grinned and it made her cheeks full and round like they had been in her youth, "I look forward to it. You still owe me a dance after all and I've heard about your two left feet, young man. Someone needs to teach you how to sweep a woman off her feet proper."
"I'm not sure he'll ever be able to fix that," Steve joked. A warm belly laughed from her followed it.
And then, her eyes moved past him, gazing over his shoulder.
A few hours later Steve left, closing the door to her room behind him. He smiled at the nurses who told him goodbye and wished him well. Took in the walls and breathed in the sterilized smell of the hallways. He walked past the entrance door that led to the parking lot and instead went out the one that lead to the garden.
The sun was just going down over the horizon, light dimmed but not dark. The air was a bit brisk on his face with the slight breeze that brushed past the flowers and the leaves on the trees. There was a bench vacant in front of him. He sat down on it and clasped his hands together, elbows on his knees.
He waited.
The moon was shining on the cobblestones of the garden's walkway when the empty space on his left was taken up. His legs were almost touching Steve's, so close Steve only had to shift a bit, and gloved hands were placed on his thighs to show they held nothing. His face was carefully blank but his eyes – they were alive. Lost and tormented but filled with awareness and recognition.
"You just couldn't give up, could you?" The words were carefully enunciated. As if they wanted to form themselves funny on the tip of his tongue or in the roof of his mouth and he had to stop and think before he spoke. Relearn how to sound like home.
"Never," Steve replied, staring straight at Bucky until he broke, two sets of blue eyes meeting for the first time in seventy-one years, "I'm with you till the end of the line."
Author's Notes: This ended up way longer than I intended it on being. I realize the switched tenses in The Winter Soldier's point of view might be a bit jarring seeming but it was suppose to signify the Winter Soldier's blank-slated identity and slowly becoming a person again and finding Bucky inside himself. The one line with the sudden switched tenses in the same sentence is suppose to juxtapose the two sides against one another.
Thor's part was in no way intended to say that Loki and Bucky had similar situations. They didn't. It was intended to parallel Thor's loss with Steve's because regardless of Loki's choices he's still Thor's brother.
The line Steve reads from Peggy's book is from Atonement by Ian McEwan and obviously not mine. He is far above me when it comes to breaking his readers with their own crippling emotions.