Title: The Replacement
Author: overlithe
Fandom: Captain America film series/The Avengers (2012)/MCU
Summary: AU/What-If. Steve falls off the train. Bucky doesn't, and he takes up the shield long enough to land the Valkyrie in the ice. When he wakes up in New York almost 70 years later, the 21st century turns out to come with its own set of complications.
Mostly action/adventure with some mystery/thriller elements and slow-build romance.
Characters/Pairings: James "Bucky" Barnes, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, Nick Fury, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, Pepper Potts, Maria Hill, Alexander Pierce, Background & Cameo Characters; James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanoff, James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanoff/Sam Wilson (there will be additional characters and pairings in later sections of the story)
Rating: T for some language, situations, and canon-typical violence
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and concepts owned by Marvel Entertainment, the Walt Disney Company, and various other corporations. I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement.
Author's Note: Hey guys! Writing Wasp Harvest was immensely cathartic and rewarding, but after that fic clearly it was time for some lighter fare. I have been planning this fic for a long time, and once Marvel Big Bang 2014 was out of the way, I figured it was time to get on with it. I love AUs and What-Ifs and while there are many excellent takes out there on the "Steve falls off the train instead of Bucky" concept, I hope you'll like my spin on it. Given my various RL commitments, I don't want to set an updates schedule for now, but hopefully you shouldn't have to wait too long for each new chapter (she said ;)).
With that out of the way, let's jump right on this train! /ba-dum-tish No, but seriously, I hope you'll enjoy the story. And thanks once again to muffinbitch for the comments, suggestions, and epic brainstorming sessions!
01. The Fall
The blow was strong enough to bruise his bones. He had time to think, once—blast-proof thanks Stark—then he struck twisted metal and his hands instinctively grabbed a rail as the shield embedded itself on the torn carriage wall.
His foot dangled over a chasm. Christ. A bit more to the right and—
Later, he would like to think that what happened next happened very, very fast.
It didn't. It happened slowly, so slowly he had a thousand chances to change the outcome. He was just frozen, unable to do anything but watch as Steve cried out 'Bucky!', picked the fallen pistol off the floor, and exchanged fire with Zola's contraption.
Later, Bucky would also like to think that he didn't see Steve glance at him just a fraction, just for a split-second.
Long enough for Steve to get a glancing blow from the last blast of the robot's cannon just as the machine died with a blue crackle of electricity and a groan of metal.
For all his strength, Steve was thrown back a few feet. For a moment Bucky was sure he was going to slam into him, but Steve's hand grabbed the edge of the shield and Bucky had long enough to think That was close before the shield pulled loose with a metallic squoink sound. He felt the torn wall buckle under their weights, and the two of them pitched backwards into the hole.
He reached for Steve's hand but he was too slow, his arm turned to molasses. He only managed to catch the other edge of the shield. The sudden yank nearly dragged Bucky out of the train as well, but his left arm remained stubbornly curled around the rail, the hand clamped on the metal.
'Steve.' It wasn't even a cry. Steve hung from the other edge of the shield, dangling above the frozen river a thousand feet below. Bucky had been pulled halfway down with him; his right arm felt like it was going to rip out of its socket.
The rail wasn't strong enough for both of them. Bucky could feel it tearing away, rivet by rivet.
Steve tried to gain purchase on the edge of the torn wall with his foot and his other hand, but they were too far away, and each motion sent darts of pain up Bucky's arm. 'Bucky, let go of the shield!' Steve yelled. Snowflakes melted on his face, just below his helmet. 'I can climb back on the train.'
How?
'No.' His grip on the shield was slipping and his back and arms were on fire. He was sliding down into the chasm. He tried to use his left leg to brace himself, pull the two of them back up, but his foot just slipped on the wet floor. He felt the skin of his palm tear as he was dragged down the rail. 'Just hang on. I can—'
God, one of his bursts of strength. Just one.
Steve stared at him for one impossibly long moment. Bucky's body was a slab of useless flesh. He could see the snow hanging in the air. A gloved hand's grip slipping down burnished metal, then opening.
A sudden release. He felt a pop in his right shoulder.
'Steve! Steve!'
Steve's face was calm as he tumbled downwards and out of sight, until he was only a shrinking splash of blue and red in an ocean of grey. If he made any sound the pumping of the train's pistons and the screech of cold rails drowned it out.
Bucky nearly slipped out of the hole right after him. Instead his right arm threw the shield to the train floor—to hell with it—and his left arm released the rail and dragged the rest of him forward, onto solid ground. He kneeled at the very edge of the hole and leaned down, as far as he could, already knowing he would see nothing but the mountain slopes and the frozen river, pulling away.
'Steve!' he yelled. 'Steve! Steve!' Over and over. 'Steve!'
There was only swirling snow and the cold metal by his side.
:=:
'I don't know what we're all waiting for.' Too soft. No one could hear him in the busy room. He cleared his throat, spoke louder. 'What're we waiting for?'
Peggy was the only one at the table to meet his eyes. None of the others looked at him. Bucky didn't blame them. He wouldn't have wanted to look at himself either.
'The search party should be out there right now,' he said, and shifted his grip on the shield sitting at his side. He refused to let go of it. Not until he could return it to Steve in person.
'Right now, the gorge is impassable,' the colonel said. 'You want to pay attention to the thing we can do something about, Sergeant?'
'He can still be alive,' Bucky said. He wanted to not sound like a whiny brat, and instead sound like who he was supposed to be: a soldier, a leader, someone his men could count on.
Then again, who could count on him? He'd spent most of his life playing the big hero in two-bit alley scuffles. And now look at what he'd done on the one time Steve had needed him the most.
'It was a thousand foot drop,' Gabe said, his voice very flat.
'It's possible. All I'm saying.'
'Hell, son, you think we don't know that?' The colonel's tone wasn't wholly harsh, which somehow made it worse. 'You think anyone is happy about this mess? We'll have men combing every inch of the place with goddamn toothbrushes if they have to, but right now we have a madman who wants to blow up half the world, and Stark here tells me he can wipe out the entire Eastern seaboard in the time it takes us to sing Yankee-Doodle.'
'One hour,' Stark said, but Phillips wasn't done yet.
'Now, my new best friend says this is going down in less than 24 hours. So what do you think Rogers would want us to do?'
Bucky didn't answer, but he didn't have to. He saw Peggy's head dip, heavy with misery. They understood each other, at least.
'Where is Schmidt now?' Jacques asked.
That was that, Bucky realised. The cloud of ash hanging over the table turned just a little less thick. People had talked. They would talk more. The world kept on spinning, as though nothing had happened.
The colonel tossed a photo on the table. 'In Hydra's last base, holed up like a mole 500 feet below the surface.'
'Anyone got any ideas?' Jim Morita said. He kept looking at the surveillance photo, as though it contained all the answers. 'Because I don't think he's gonna invite us in.'
Bucky looked at the papers on the table, at the Hydra symbol on an intercepted letter. He hated them like he'd never hated anyone or anything before, but the hatred didn't sharpen him, it just sat in his mouth and throat like a lump of cold poison.
'Why not?' The words were out of his mouth before the idea could take shape in his head, but then that figured. He glanced at Peggy. Her eyes were glassy with pain, but still she looked at him and nodded, once. Hell no, he wanted to say. Forget it. Not that. Her eyes widened a little.
What choice did he have? What choice did any of them have?
'Why not?' he repeated. The words should sound like nails on a chalkboard, to fit in with this horrible joke of a thing they were about to do, but instead his voice was treacherously normal. 'We got something he wants, don't we?' His hand gripped the shield so tightly his fingers felt numb.
The table looked at him.
'What's the plan?' Dum Dum said.
Sorry, Steve. I know you'd come up with something smarter.
'I'm going to walk right to Schmidt's front door.'
:=:
Getting himself captured wasn't too difficult. Even he couldn't screw that up too badly. He was sure the ruse was going to be spotted straight away—he put his all into the fighting, but even his all wasn't good enough—but if any of the Hydra goons felt he was captured too easily, they kept it to themselves. After that, Bucky was sure the jig would be up as soon they started dragging him through the base. One of them would notice that he was too short, or all the places where the star-spangled uniform didn't quite fit, or even the sourness balling up in his stomach.
No one did, though, and even the Numbskull was fooled at first. Maybe it was just the elation of getting to punch Captain America in the stomach, Bucky thought, on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Schmidt finally caught on, halfway through his rant. One gloved hand yanked Bucky's chin up. The hairless brows furrowed. This close, his face—if it could be called that—was smooth as a billiard ball, as though someone had sandpapered the skin.
'Who are you?' Schmidt said. The edges of his fleshless nose flared a little.
'Nobody,' Bucky said, and managed to get most of the word out before Schmidt backhanded him. Christ, he's strong. He looked up again, ears ringing, hot wetness dripping from his nose. Good. The pain didn't matter as much as the time the Red Dope was wasting. Keep doing that. I can take it. 'That all you got?'
Bucky couldn't stop himself from flinching just a fraction as the hand reached for him again, but this time Schmidt only undid the strap on his helmet and yanked it off.
'Surprise, jackass,' Bucky said, just as the windows exploded.
:=:
The flight controls were locked. It figured.
'Copy that,' Peggy said. 'I'll get Howard on the line. He'll work out a way for you to land.'
Bucky looked at the coordinates flickering madly on the nav screens, the white shapes of continents on the radar display.
'There's no time for that,' he said. His voice was calm, which surprised him a little. When you shipped out, you told yourself that if the day ever came, you'd try to face death with some dignity, even if in the back of your mind you were sure you'd bawl like a baby. Those thoughts got knocked out of you quick, either by your first mortar round, or by your first big stretch of mind-killing boredom. Not much time to worry about death when you were trying to keep yourself and your men alive and well.
There was no need for that now. No boredom, no gunfire. Only clouds, gilded by the pale Arctic sun. It made everything seem not real. Like he could just drift onwards forever, kept airborne by whatever magic he'd just seen consume a man in front of him.
'This bird is going to turn New York into a smoking crater and it's travelling fast. Only thing I can do now is bring it down.'
'Barnes—Bucky. You don't have to do that.' Her tone and the use of his name put the lie to her words, but he didn't mind what she was saying. There were worse ways to go, he knew. 'Listen, we'll figure something out.'
'Ah—sorry. Don't really have a choice.' Steve would come up with a plan to save them both, but Steve wasn't here. He pushed the control yoke down, as far as it'd go. Seconds later the plane came out of the cloud bank and a stretch of water appeared, dotted with archipelagos of ice. 'Hey, I—I want you to promise me a couple of things, all right?'
'Anything.'
'Really? Gotta do this more often.' Neither of them laughed at that. 'Steve—if you don't find him, he died a hero, all right? Not getting killed because of some idiot.'
He could say it now, even if the thought of Steve slowly bleeding to death in some icy hell while the rest of them sat around a table was unbearable.
Let it have been quick. Please let it have been quick.
'Bucky, I—'
'No, don't worry about me.' The rush from the fight was wearing off and the pain from the beating he'd taken from Schmidt was flowing back in. He made himself grip the yoke harder so he wouldn't—
let go
—scratch the places where the spare Captain America suit was too ill-fitting. 'And the second thing, when this is all over, can you talk to my sister? I want her to know her big brother didn't abandon her. Can't have her thinking that. And… help her make something of herself. She got all the brains in the family. Me, I got all the charm and the good looks.' He heard Peggy let out a half-hearted chuckle at that. 'She can really go places if she gets a break, but I won't. I won't be there to do that. And if you can. If you can…'
'I will, Bucky. I promise.'
Keep looking for Steve, he almost added, but he knew he didn't have to ask her that.
Below him the sea grew closer, closer, closer.
I'm going to die. The thought was cool and alien. Everybody was going to die, he knew that, but he was going to die today. He was going to die now. Snow drifted in through the window. That made it right, somehow, as though everything since the train—the raid, stopping the bomber planes, Schmidt vanishing into nothing, the borrowed suit, the borrowed shield sitting at his side—had just been some strange frostbite dream. Pictures in his head while he tumbled downwards and Steve lived, as it should have been.
It was right that it was going to end this way. Even if he was a coward and couldn't stop himself from shaking.
The ocean filled the whole window now.
'Peggy? You still there?' He heard the tremor in his voice, blinked sweat off his eyes. His bladder felt suddenly very full.
'I'm here, James.' Was her voice tearful? He couldn't tell. 'I'm not going anywhere.'
'I was wondering, do you have any funny st—'
He didn't have time to think. He didn't have time to be afraid. There was a roar of sound, splintering glass. The world was ripping in half. He closed his eyes, raised the shield in front of his face, purely on instinct.
There was a searing pain in his left side.
Then cold.
Then nothing.
TBC…
Notes: Bucky's various nicknames for the Red Skull and his near-reenactment of a certain meme are without a doubt the artistic highlight of everything I've ever written. ;) I hope you enjoyed this chapter and that it piqued your interest for the rest of the story. I have story notes for the whole thing and a detailed outline for the next section, so hopefully I shouldn't take too long to post the next few chapters. Thanks for reading!
