Disclaimer: I own nothing! Anything you recognize belongs to Stan Lee/Marvel/Joss Whedon. Also there are a few quoted conversations taken directly from both Captain America movies later on here.
Spoilers: Mostly cannon compliant through CA:TFA, Avengers, and CA:WS. Brief mentions of events in Dark World and IM3. Events start to go AU after Bucky/WS saves Steve from drowning. Also, slightly AU in that it's implied here that the Avengers all lived together at Avengers' Tower in NY at least briefly between the Battle of New York and the events of CA:WS.
AN: This is my first attempt at writing in the Avengers verse, but hopefully not my last. I have so many Steve'n'Bucky bromance feels after watching both CA movies that I just couldn't help myself. I keep hoping for a happy reunion for the two, but so far no tomato. I was really gunning for a brief cameo from our favorite brainwashed Brooklyn boy in Age of Ultron, but alas it was not meant to be. :( This is meant to be read as an EPIC FRIENDSHIP between Bucky and Steve; I just loved the dynamic between the two and couldn't help myself. Plus, hurt!Steve is just so hard to resist! :D
AN2: Story title comes from the Aly & AJ song "Insomniatic"
From My Loss of Sleep (Deprived I Greet the Day)
Captain America doesn't sleep.
Captain America is truth and justice and freedom personified. He is good and pure and right. He leads the Avengers into battle with a firm, commanding disposition. He knows his teammates strengths and weaknesses in battle, knows how to best utilize them to get the job done and get everyone home safe at the end of the day.
Captain America is a man out of time, but he doesn't let that stop him. He soldiers on and does what is asked of him without complaint. He knows this script like he knows what is right; he follows orders like a good soldier and clashes heads with Stark over it, just like everyone has come to expect. When his long day (filled with battles, briefings, fighting, and bleeding) finally comes to an end, he lays his head down on his pillow on the ridiculously opulent bed in his room (in his suite) at Avengers' Tower.
But Captain America doesn't sleep.
Steve Rogers dreams.
Steve dreams of ice and bitter, freezing cold and drowning, drowning, drowning. He dreams of painted red lips and a kiss so desperate and passionate that it hurts. He dreams of screaming and falling, of being too late and fingers slipping from his grasp. He dreams of bursting bombs and rat-a-tat-tat gunfire, of men groaning and dying and bleeding. He dreams of waking up completely alone and lost in a world that is not (will never be) his.
When he wakes, gasping and sweating, he allows himself to simply be Steve for a moment. Steve is broken. Steve feels. Steve is a man out of time, lost in a world far bigger and much more fast-paced than the one he remembers.
Steve grieves, he cries, he comes apart at the seams. Steve is tired of being strong. Steve misses Bucky (it's only been a few weeks, for him) and Peggy. He misses Howard and Phillips. He misses Dum-Dum, Gabe, Jim, Jacques, and Monty. He wishes he'd never been dug out of his icy tomb. He wishes that he'd simply ceased to be out there in the cold, unforgiving arctic. When he crashed the Valkyrie all those long years ago (just last week), he never expected to survive.
Steve Rogers wakes up and he dies.
Captain America gets better at pretending. He forces a smile around his teammates and joins in their jokes and team-bonding activities with false gusto. He welcomes Thor's friends with perfectly faked enthusiasm after the horror that they faced over in London. He accepts Fury's missions without complaint and allows Natasha to believe that he's growing close to her. He tolerates her attempts at matchmaking with a fake smile and off-beat excuses, polite and vague.
The Captain ignores the cracks and faults that continue to grow in the ice surrounding (protecting) his heart. He ignores how Natasha's continued presence in his life warms him or how Sam's persistent friendliness chips away at his carefully constructed walls. He ignores how Nick's—Fury's—trust reaches out to touch his poor, shattered heart.
Captain America ignores and pretends and re-builds his walls until suddenly he can't anymore.
Bucky is alive!
The minute Steve saw those eyes—a familiar clear, crystal blue—his carefully constructed walls and masks and shields crumbled to pieces. He was suddenly faced with the truth, a truth he had been denying since the day he woke up in this unfamiliar century: Steve Rogers was still alive and Captain America (as the world knew him) was a lie. Captain America was the mask that insecure, lost Steve Rogers wore to protect himself (and his heart) from the harshness of his new reality.
None of that mattered, though, because Bucky was alive. Suddenly all Steve wanted was to be himself again; Steve Rogers, the skinny little punk from Brooklyn who didn't know when to back down from a fight. Suddenly he wanted to be Steve of Steve'n'Bucky again, back before the war scarred them both and left them broken and alone (and apart). More than anything, he wanted his best friend—his brother in everything but blood—back…even if he no longer remembered who he was.
"Who the hell is Bucky?"
The thing about lies is that no matter how much time and effort is put into crafting and perfecting them, all it takes is a single touch to knock them down. A single chink in Captain America's armor was enough to bring down the lie that he had been living since he had woken up in the twenty-first century nearly two years earlier. If he was completely honest with himself (something he'd been avoiding for a while), he'd been living this lie, the lie that was Captain America, since that fateful day in the Alps back in 1945 when he'd felt Bucky's fingers slip from his grasp and watched him fall to his death from a speeding train. It was that day, when he realized he'd never hear Bucky's ribbing laughter or be saved by his suave (timely) intervention again, that he slipped on the mantle of Captain America and buried Steve Rogers for good…or so he'd thought.
Fighting Bucky aboard the helicarrier was the final blow. As he faced his best friend turned brainwashed Hydra assassin, he felt the lie that was Captain America crack open wide, leaving behind just plain old Steve Rogers. Where the good Captain would have fought like hell to defeat the Winter Soldier (to protect the world), Steve could only see his brother and all the pain he must have gone through in Hydra's hands. So Steve did something so un-Captain America-like, but so incredibly Steve Rogers.
Steve Rogers stopped fighting.
Avengers' Tower had been quiet lately. It had started when Cap and Natasha had left to join SHIELD's headquarters in DC. Thor and Jane had left soon after to pay a visit to Asgard and Darcy had gone back to school (Tony hadn't really been paying attention to which one) to get her degree requirements settled and completed. Clint had simply disappeared one morning after receiving a mysterious phone call that not even JARVIS could trace and Rhodey (who had been given honorary Avenger status after the whole debacle with the Mandarin and the president) was currently needed elsewhere by the Air Force. Currently it was only Bruce, who had a tendency to isolate himself from others, who was residing in the Tower with Tony and Pepper, who had made the place their permanent home after the destruction of Tony's house in Malibu.
Tony was working in his lab late, as per his usual, when JARVIS interrupted him. "Sir," the AI said, "there are three people requesting admission to the Avengers' private levels. Agent Romanoff is one of them."
"Pull up the feed, J," said Tony, spinning his chair to face the large, empty space that he used for his interactive holograms.
JARVIS was quick to pull up the live feed from the Tower lobby and Tony saw that one of the three intruders (visitors) was indeed the redheaded SHIELD assassin and spy. The second was an unfamiliar black man sporting a military haircut and a large black duffle slung over one shoulder. Between the two a third, much larger person was supported, his right arm in a sling and the rest of his muscled body covered in a variety of cuts, bruises, and makeshift bandages. It took Tony about half a second to realize that the wounded man (who had a familiar head of matted blond hair) was the Captain. Natasha glanced up at the security camera and there was a look of contained desperation and total fatigue in her usually guarded emerald eyes.
"J, let 'em up."
By the time Tony made it to the Avengers' common area, Natasha and the black man were already there, settling the semi-conscious super soldier on the largest, most comfortable couch in the room. "What's the sitch, KP?" the inventor asked as Natasha stepped away from the Captain.
"Have you seen the news lately?" she asked quietly, pulling Tony over into the kitchen area.
"Been a bit distracted," said Tony, shrugging.
Natasha sighed tiredly and sat down gracefully on a barstool at the island. "SHIELD is gone," she said. "Fury's dead."
Tony sat down hard on the stool next to her. He had never trusted Fury or SHIELD, but he hadn't ever, even in his wildest dreams, imagined that they could just one day be gone. "They're…gone? Seriously, Tash, what's been going on lately?"
"Turns out SHIELD's actually been Hydra pretty much from its inception," said Natasha, her voice taking on the familiar emotionless tone she used for briefings (and most any time, really). "Alexander Pierce of the World Security Council ordered Fury's death. Fury made it to Steve in time to pass on Hydra's plans, but he was shot by a sniper and bled out on the operating table. Pierce set Rumlow and the STRIKE team on Steve and pinned Fury's death on him. Steve got away and I met up with him at the hospital where I told him I was going to help him, so we went off to find out what was on the USB Fury gave him. The information on the USB led us to Camp Lehigh, the old SSR headquarters, where we found out that Arnim Zola, Schmidt's right hand scientist back during WWII, had preserved his mind in a computer system. We found out, through him, that the algorithm on the USB was designed to target potential threats to Hydra. Basically anyone who was, is, or could be a threat to Hydra would be targeted by this equation that was to be uploaded to the Project Insight helicarriers. But the base blew up while Steve and I were still there and we—"
"They came knockin' on my door." Tony turned his head to see the black man with the military bearing standing with his arms crossed over his chest in the doorway. "Sam Wilson," he said, introducing himself. "I'm a friend of Steve's, so when he showed up at my place with Romanoff here, both of them looking like hell, I wasn't going to turn them away. Steve's out for the count, by the way," he added. "He passed out about ten seconds after you left. He could probably use a doctor."
"Yeah, what happened to Capsicle anyway?"
"A brainwashed Hydra assassin who happens to be his best friend from back in the forties," said Sam.
Tony blinked and furrowed his brow in confusion. "Barnes? He died falling off a train in the Alps in '45." At Natasha's arched eyebrow, he said, "What? Dad told me every Captain America story there was to tell, and let me tell you; Barnes was a major player in most of them."
"Can we argue about Barnes later?" said Sam, glancing worriedly into the lounge. "I know he's a super soldier and all, but I'm pretty sure being shot multiple times isn't healthy for anyone."
Steve floated in a hazy dream-like state between consciousness and oblivion. He was tired; tired of lying, tired of pretending. He was tired of being an unfeeling machine, a man out of time, a perfect soldier. He thought about letting go and just fading away. He couldn't think of any reason not to, except…
Bucky. Bucky was out there somewhere, lost and confused and hunted by Hydra and SHIELD alike. He was out there all alone and in pain, with a shattered memory. If anything was worth fighting for, Bucky was. Even when he'd had nothing, he'd had Bucky. Now that the roles were reversed, Steve would not abandon his best friend—his brother.
"Bucky, I'm so sorry. I promised you till the end of the line and that's a promise I intend to keep."
"So what's the verdict, Doc?" asked Sam.
Bruce glanced up from the Captain and fidgeted with his glasses. "Most of his wounds appear superficial and are already starting to heal," he said. "What concerns me is the stab wound in his right shoulder and the bullet wounds in his left leg and his abdomen. He has several cracked or possibly broken ribs as well and, judging by his breathing, he may have punctured a lung."
"Can you fix him?" asked Natasha, staring at the nasty bruising on Steve's young face.
Bruce fidgeted nervously. "I'm not really that kind of doctor," he protested.
"You're the best we've got," insisted Natasha. "There's no one else we can trust with him right now."
"Just do your best, Doc," said Sam. "I have a bit more than your basic first aid training, but I'm no doctor. I was pararescue in the Air Force."
"Please Bruce," said Natasha softly, her eyes pleading. "We can't lose him, not now. There's so much—he thinks no one cares," she admitted. "I—somehow I managed to get him to let me in. Sam too, but he's broken. He thinks no one sees and the truth is that I almost didn't."
"He hides it well," said Sam. "I've seen this kind of behavior with some of the soldiers I work with at the VA. I once asked Steve what made him happy and you know what he told me? He said he didn't know. He was genuinely confused when I asked him that, like he couldn't even remember what it was like to be happy."
Tony snorted into his glass of scotch. "So Capsicle's not a prefect little boy scout after all, whoop-de-fuckin-do. News flash: none of us are."
"Yeah, but the difference is no one expects the rest of us to be prefect all the time," said Bruce, examining the bullet wound in Steve's stomach. "Everyone expects it of the Captain."
"Steve," said Natasha firmly. "His name is Steve. Do either of you realize that none of us ever call him by his given name? We always call him Cap or the Captain."
Tony refused to look up from his drink. Bruce stilled. "It's a sign of respect," the scientist said weakly.
"No," said Sam, "it's a sign of distance and a lack of understanding. Do you know, when we first met, he looked absolutely shocked when I called him Steve? It's like he doesn't feel like a person anymore, just—"
"A laboratory experiment," said Tony harshly, squeezing his glass a little too tightly. "I'll go make sure JARVIS has the infirmary prepped. When you're ready, Bruce knows the way."
"Tony—" began Natasha, narrowing her eyes, but before she could continue, Steve began to fidget in his sleep.
"…Bucky—sorry—end of the line—promise…"
"Don't worry," said Natasha, leaning down as graceful as a dancer to whisper in Steve's ear, "we'll help you find him. You never have to be alone again."
The Winter Soldier doesn't sleep.
The Winter Soldier is a tool (a weapon), not a person, and tools (weapons) don't require sleep, only storage. When the Soldier (the Asset, they sometimes call him) isn't needed, he is wiped clean and stored away. The Soldier has no memories, so the Soldier never dreams. All the Soldier knows is orders and missions (and pain and fear and blood and eyes the color of the sky); Hydra has no use for a Soldier who can think for himself. So they muzzle him like a dog and set him on their enemies, confident of their absolute control over their favorite tool (weapon). They never imagined that there was a part of the Soldier (deep, deep down) that still belonged to the young, cocky Brooklyn boy who had been beaten and tortured into the empty shell that was the Winter Soldier. They never imagined that one simple word, spoken by a desperate, heartbroken man could undermine decades of their hard work. They never imagined just how much Steve and Bucky meant to each other.
"Bucky?"
Bucky Barnes dreams.
He dreams of torture and pain and blood (so much blood). He dreams of killing and remorseless, relentless nothingness. He dreams of orders and missions and emptiness. He dreams of cold, dark spaces and bright, sharp, white-hot pain.
He dreams of the man on the bridge, the Soldier's one uncompleted mission. He dreams of blond hair, bright blue eyes, and twig-like limbs. "I had 'em on the ropes." He dreams of a boy with a heart too big for his frail body and a sense of justice and fairness to match. He dreams of sickness and an emotion he can't quite place that makes his chest constrict and his heart swell. He dreams of casual conversations in the height of summer and heart-felt confessions in the dead of winter. He dreams of two boys growing up together; one the protector, but the other never truly a victim. "No one else was gonna defend her, Buck! I had to!"
He dreams of war. He dreams of gunshots and blood and torture. He dreams of a lab on fire and a large, avenging angel come to rescue him. "I thought you were smaller." He dreams of brotherhood, of bonding over shared sorrows and joys. He dreams of a soldier whose size finally matches the heart within.
He dreams of falling and cold. He dreams of fingers slipping from his grasp and pain, worse than any he'd felt before (but he somehow knows that it had only just begun). He dreams of capture and torture and nothingness.
The Winter Soldier is dying, but Bucky Barnes is just beginning to claw his way out of the depths of Hell. And Bucky dreams. Bucky dreams of Steve.
"I'm with you till the end of the line."
Steve slowly and groggily blinked his way back into consciousness. He didn't recognize where he was exactly, but it looked like every other hospital that he'd ever been in as a kid, only more futuristic. That part no longer gave him pause as it once did. He knew he should be more worried; Hydra was still out there, after all. They were bound to come after him, Natasha, and Sam now that they'd had all their dirty little secrets exposed for the world to see. He knew that he should be more worried, but he simply couldn't muster the strength to care. So he simply lay still on the strangely comfortable hospital bed, blue eyes fixed on the white ceiling, thoughts of Bucky and Hydra and the fight on the helicarrier running through his foggy mind like horses on a racetrack.
"On your right."
On instinct, Steve turned his head to the right. There, sitting beside his bed in a strangely plush armchair, was Sam Wilson. "Sam," he said, his voice hoarse, but relieved. "You're okay."
Sam gave him a half smile. "Yeah, Steve, I'm good."
"Tasha?"
"She's fine too. She actually just left about five minutes ago to get some sleep. She's been like a momma bear with her cub lately. You, on the other hand," said Sam, "gave us all a scare."
Steve furrowed his brow. "I didn't mean—"
Sam snorted. "Of course you 'didn't mean' to, Steve," he said. "But the fact is that you did."
"What happened?" asked Steve. He looked around the room tiredly. "Where are we?"
"We're in Avengers' Tower," said Sam. "It was the only place Romanoff could think of that was safe from Hydra. As for what happened…" he trailed off. "We were kind of hoping you could tell us." Flashes of the fight on the helicarrier played in front of Steve's eyes, loud and unforgiving. "Romanoff and I found you half drowned on the banks of the Potomac looking like you came out worse in a fight with a semi."
"Bucky." The word slipped from his lips like a prayer.
Sam frowned. "This is all from your fight with him?"
"He saved me," said Steve, his eyes wide with hope. "I remember falling…then there was cold and I was drowning, dying…but when I opened my eyes, Bucky was there."
"So the Tin Man might just have a heart after all," mused Sam. Seeing the exhausted look in Steve's eyes, he added, "You should get some more rest; you're still not a hundred percent. Doc Banner'll be in to check on you soon and he'll smash me to tiny brown pieces if he thinks I've kept you up."
Steve frowned. "Dr. Banner's here?"
"He never left," said a familiar voice. Steve turned his head to the doorway and saw Tony Stark standing there with an unreadable expression on his face. It didn't take long for the dark haired inventor to start fidgeting under the Captain's intense gaze. "Hangin' in there, Capsicle?" he finally asked.
Steve shrugged. "I've been worse."
Tony raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, leaning casually against the doorframe. "Sure ya have, Gramps," he snarked. "You do know that red stuff is supposed to stay on the inside."
Steve blinked lethargically. "Always a pleasure, Stark," he slurred as sleep threated to take over his brain once again.
Tony must have noticed. "Pretty nifty stuff, huh?" he said. "Just something Brucie and I cooked up that should work on even your super human metabolism." It was a nice gesture, thought Steve as he drifted off into the realm of unconsciousness. If only it did something to stop the dreams…
"Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own."
"The thing is, you don't have to. I'm with you till the end of the line, pal."
"Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone."
"How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you."
"You're a punk."
"Jerk."
"I thought you were dead."
"I thought you were smaller."
"Come on."
"What happened to you?"
"I joined the army."
"Did it hurt?"
"A little."
"Is this permanent?"
"So far."
"Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone on Coney Island?"
"Yeah, and I threw up?"
"This isn't payback, is it?"
"Now why would I do that?"
"Bucky?"
"Who the hell is Bucky?"
"You know me."
"No I don't."
"Bucky, you've known me your entire life. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."
"SHUT UP!"
"I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend."
"You're my mission! YOU ARE MY MISSION!"
"Then finish it. 'Cause I'm with you till the end of the line."
In two very different places, two men who used to be the closest of brothers woke, sweating.
"Bucky!"
"Steve!"
Bucky crouched in a dark alley, cradling his broken flesh-and-blood arm (already healing improperly) close to his chest. The dreams—memories—were getting worse. His days since Hydra had been uncovered had been filled with running and fighting, simply trying to stay free and survive in a world that was as foreign to him as his own mind. His nights were full of fitful fits of sporadic sleep; sleep fraught with memories, nightmares, and dreams—when he dared to sleep, that is.
The dreams—memories—haunted him even when he was awake. He couldn't tell what was real and what was lies. Emotions he couldn't name flirted with colors and voices in his head. Faces half-familiar dogged his every waking (and sleeping) moment.
He knew he should keep moving. It was dangerous to stay in one place too long, especially with one arm broken and the other badly in need of repairs. He shouldn't let himself wallow in the flood of unfamiliar (unnamed) emotions that the dreams—memories—brought him. He was stronger than this; better than this. He was above inconsequential things like emotions and feelings. He was the Winter Soldier; the Asset. He was a tool (a weapon) and tools (weapons) don't feel.
Except that he wasn't. He was Bucky. That's what Steve called him. His memories may have been jumbled up like the pieces of a puzzle rattling around in a box, but one thing he was absolutely certain of was Steve. Steve was important. Steve mattered. Steve cared. Steve was his friend.
"I know him," he said, his voice hoarse from lack of use. "I know him."
The Soldier was a weapon. He was trained to be invisible; a ghost. Bucky knew, somehow, that being a ghost wasn't going to help him hide from Hydra or SHIELD—both organizations were experts at avoiding detection and keeping secrets, after all. He needed to blend in, out in the open among normal people. He had quickly realized that his full body armor and metal arm stood out amongst the masses of ordinary people and made him too much of a target. His handlers had always provided him with any weapons or equipment that he might need for a mission and he simply wore whatever they forced on his body. Not that he remembered much of his previous missions, but since he had left Hydra behind, his head had been full of flashes of memories jumbled together with no particular rhyme or reason. Though those memories of Steve were clearest in his mind, he could also recall bits and pieces of his prior missions. Flashes of cold, pain, blood, needles, guns, hazy faces and panicked voices flashed unbidden through his fractured mind. His once empty mind was beginning to fill with fragments of thoughts and memories long forgotten; thoughts and memories that told him that he was once an intelligent human being rather than a blank tool (weapon).
He'd gotten lucky. It was a nice spring day when SHIELD (Hydra) fell and a few of the houses in the neighborhood that Bucky had found himself in boasted clotheslines in their yards; clotheslines on which hung a variety of different clothing choices. He had sized them up and snatched a pair of worn blue jeans and a ratty gray hoodie that he figured would fit him. In a dark secluded alley, he'd changed into them, stretching and pulling until they fit over his body armor (for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to remove it). From a small corner store, he swiped a pair of sunglasses, a ball cap, and pair of black, leather gloves to hide his metal hand. While not completely inconspicuous, his new look garnered less attention than the old.
Bucky (it didn't quite feel like the name belonged to him, but he wasn't sure what else to call himself) gazed up at the Smithsonian's exhibit of Captain America and his Howling Commandos. He wasn't sure why he kept coming back here except…the mission, the target—Steve, his name was Steve—knew him. Since he had pulled the target (Steve) from the river, he'd been here three times (now four), spending hours on end gazing up at the half-familiar faces and soaking up every bit of information he could find about Barnes and Steve. Steve had told him that his name was James Buchanan Barnes; he'd called him Bucky. He always spent the longest amount of time standing in front of the exhibit dedicated to James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes, searching the grim, occasionally smirking face for any scrap of familiarity. He knew that face; it was the face he saw in every reflective surface he passed, but it was still unfamiliar to him. Strange that the target's—Steve's face was more familiar to him than his own. He'd finally accepted after his second visit that he had once been Steve's friend Bucky Barnes; he'd even started thinking of himself as such, but he still wasn't sure if he could ever be that person again. Bucky Barnes was a hero; the Soldier was a coldblooded assassin. Bucky was happy and free; the Soldier was an emotionless weapon meant to be kept in storage. Bucky had friends; the Soldier had only missions. The Soldier—Bucky—wanted more than anything to be Bucky Barnes again and he was coming to the realization that there was only one thing that could possibly help him complete his self-appointed mission: he had to find Steve. Steve who had given him his name, who had refused to fight him on the helicarrier once he'd completed his own mission. Steve had given up and somehow that bothered the Soldier—Bucky—more than anything else. Steve was strong. Steve was a little punk. Steve fought and scrapped with guys three and four times his size. But above all else, Steve didn't give up.
Steve did not convalesce well. He hadn't when he was ninety pounds soaking wet and had a list of illnesses longer than he was tall, and he certainly didn't now that he was the picture of health and human perfection. "I'm fine, really," he told Bruce irritably when he came in to check on his progress. "Look, I'm practically healed already."
"I'll be the judge of that," said Bruce calmly, flicking slowly through the Captain's charts on his StarkPad.
"My metabolism is enhanced," insisted Steve. "I heal pretty damn fast."
"I'm aware of that," said Bruce, finally looking at Steve. "I've studied the super soldier serum extensively, but even you can't just bounce back from a gunshot wound to the stomach."
"Look Dr. Banner," said Steve, his face a mask of stubborn resolve, "I know you mean well, but I'm fine. Besides, I have things I need to do."
Steve started to sit up from the bed when Bruce's soft voice stopped him cold. "You're not going to find your friend in your condition, I guarantee it. You can't expect to help him when you can barely function yourself. You're not invincible, Steve."
"What did you call me?" the soldier-out-of-time croaked, turning wide, scared blue eyes on the usually mild-mannered scientist.
"That's your name, isn't it?" he said nonchalantly, avoiding the wild-eyed look of confusion on the older/younger man's face. "Steve Rogers, the man behind the Captain America mask. I think sometimes we all forget that you're a real person too, not just a hero. I think sometimes that maybe you forget that too. You have people who care about you, Steve, even if you don't think so. Please don't forget that."
The Soldier—Bucky—stared up at the metal and glass tower, his face as blank and cold as marble. From surveillance footage and first-hand accounts, he'd learned that the target—Steve—had been taken here after he'd been found on the river bank, where the Soldier (Bucky) had left him after saving his life. He'd done his research; the tower, owned by Tony Stark, was outfitted with the most sophisticated security system he'd ever seen and the top, residential floors were so tightly locked down that even the Soldier (the Asset, Bucky Barnes) would have trouble breaking in. That didn't mean he couldn't; he was the Winter Soldier after all and there was no mission that he couldn't complete (except…Steve).
Sneaking into the ground level of the tower was laughably easy. The Soldier—Bucky let himself get lost in the throngs of Stark Industries employees coming into work for the day and, once the crowd was so thick that everyone was bumping shoulders, he lifted a badge from one poor soul, gaining himself access to the elevator to the business levels. From there it was a simple matter of finding the access points in the air vents (there was one, hidden out of view, in the janitors' closet on the twelfth floor) and hoisting himself up into them. He was almost to Steve; Steve who knew him, even when he didn't know himself. Surely Steve could fix him (Hydra was out of the question; there was no way he was going back to them), make him whole again. The Asset (the Soldier, Bucky) was in desperate need of repairs and there was only one person his fractured, battered mind knew was safe: Steve Rogers.
"Pardon the interruption, Sir, I believe there is someone attempting to gain access to the Avengers' levels of the tower," said JARVIS, his British accented voice taking the place of the loud AC/DC music that had been blasting from the speakers in the lab.
"Pull it up, J," said Tony, twirling in his chair at his workshop table to face the open air used for just this purpose. His eyebrows flew up at the picture that appeared. "Is that Barnes?" he asked, his voice incredulous.
"Running analysis, Sir," said JARVIS. "Facial match is 99.99999% for Sargent James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes."
"Son of a bitch," swore Tony. "What the hell's a brainwashed former WWII hero doing in my air vents?"
"My best conjecture is that Barnes is seeking out the Captain," said JARVIS.
Tony swore harshly. "JARVIS, alert Bruce, Romanoff, and Wilson of the intruder and make sure Pepper stays away for the time being."
"Shall I inform Captain Rogers as well?"
"No, J; that's the last thing he need right now. We'll let him know if we catch Barnes, not before. It wouldn't do to get Capsicle's hopes up over nothing."
"What's going on?" Steve asked after watching Natasha rush in and out of his room for the twelfth time in the past five minutes.
"Nothing," said Sam, avoiding the Captain's eyes. "Stark just has Romanoff keeping an eye on something for him."
"That something had better not be me," snarled Steve. "I'm not a child; I don't need a fucking babysitter."
"Language, Capsicle," said Tony, walking into the room at the tail end of Steve's speech. "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
Steve ignored the inventor. "What's going on around here?" he asked again. "I know you're all hiding something from me."
"Why would you think that, Cap'n Courageous?" asked Tony, studiously avoiding the older/younger man's piercing gaze.
"Call it a hunch," said Steve dryly. "I'll find out on my own if you won't tell me; just ask Natasha. I don't like secrets very much."
Tony snorted. "Yeah, I can believe that," he muttered. "Don't get your star-spangled panties in a bunch; it's nothing to worry your pretty little head about, Cap."
Steve snorted. "I'll be the judge of that, Stark. Now for the last time, what the hell is going on around here?"
Bucky Barnes (he'd decided he liked the name after all) peered down through the grating in the vents at his quarry. Steve Rogers (Captain America, the Soldier's target) was propped up on a hospital bed in a large comfortable room, though he certainly looked less than pleased to be there. (Something in the back of Bucky's mind rolled its eyes and scoffed at the idea of Steve staying put in anything resembling a hospital…unless someone was there to sit on him.) He surveyed the room with a practiced assassin's eye, cataloguing every entry point and weakness. The room was fairly well guarded (his training allowed him to pick out security camera's in all four corners of the room and a motion sensors on the bed, window, and door, which was also locked with some sort of bio-scanner), but empty aside from the wounded captain. Bucky's training warred with his deeply ingrained instincts; one telling him to stay a ghost in the shadows, the other screaming at him to go protect Steve.
Bucky the former Asset of Hydra dropped to the floor soundlessly, staring at the dozing Captain with a mix of curiosity and fond exasperation in his blue-grey eyes, no longer as lifeless as they once were (but still a far cry from what they had long ago been). The more he stared, the more certain that he knew this man he became. He also realized something else rather quickly. "You can stop pretending," he said, his voice hoarse from disuse, but tinted with a faint accent that he could almost name. "I know you're awake."
"You always did, Buck," said Steve, opening his blue eyes and staring at Bucky with a strange sort of desperate disbelief. "You're really here?"
Bucky shrugged and uncharacteristically shoved both of his hands in his pants' pockets. "Don't think you're dreamin,' Punk," he said, the words flowing from his tongue as if he already knew this routine, Brooklyn accent creeping unbidden into his speech. "If you are, I must be too."
Steve let out a short bark of laughter and gave him a wry grin. "Not sure I could dream up that ugly mug of yours, Jerk," he quipped.
Bucky's lips twitched. "Same to you, Punk," he replied automatically. He frowned. "I'm not him," he said abruptly, avoiding Steve's penetrating gaze, "not completely. My memory's holier than the Pope. I-I might never remember everything."
Steve shrugged, his blue eyes fixed on the white blanket covering his legs. "That's okay," he said softly. "As long as you're here, alive, that's enough for me."
"JARVIS, are you recording this?"
"Always, Sir," the AI replied.
Tony sat rigidly on top of one of the cluttered worktables in his lap, dark eyes glued to the holographic screen that showed the security feed to the Captain's hospital room. "They're just…talking," he said, carefully watching as the Winter Soldier moved to sit gingerly on the bed beside the Captain.
"You used to be smaller," said the Winter Soldier, his blue grey eyes, eerily devoid of emotion, fixed steadily on the Captain.
"So did you," retorted the Captain, a sad sort of half-smile on his infuriatingly perfect face.
"You know, I think that's meant to be a private conversation."
Tony nearly fell off the table. "Goddammit, Natashalie," he snapped. "We need to get you a fucking bell or something."
Natasha stood primly in the doorway and raised a delicate eyebrow at him. "I'm a spy," she said simply, as if it explained everything (which it kind of did, not that Tony would ever admit it).
"Why didn't you warn me, J?" Tony whined.
"I assumed you were aware of Agent Romanoff's presence, Sir," said the AI, a hint of amusement coloring his voice.
"From now on, J, I want you to tell me anytime someone unexpected pops into my workshop, got it?"
"Clear as crystal, Sir," said JARVIS. "May I assume that means you'd like to know that Agent Barton has been camping out in the air vents for the past two weeks?"
"Aw, JARVIS, no!" came Clint's muffled voice from somewhere in the ceiling.
"I don't remember everything," Bucky blurted out, fingering the blanket nervously. "I might never get everything back."
"That's okay," said Steve, smiling brightly up at his best friend. "As long as you're here, with me, we can work through everything else."
"You were always an optimistic little shit, weren't you?" said Bucky quietly.
"One of us had to be," said Steve, smirking at him.
"So what happens now?" asked Bucky, his shoulders hunching in defensively.
"What do you want, Bucky?" asked Steve. "I-I'd love for you to stay with me, but if that's not—"
A fragile smile appeared on Bucky's pale face. "I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be, Punk," he said.
"Jerk," replied Steve, smile brightening in intensity. "It's good to have you back, Buck."
"It's good to be back, Stevie," he replied, smile finally reaching his eyes. Steve, overcome with emotion, lunged forward and hugged Bucky tight. After a moment of hesitation, the ex-Assest known as Bucky Barnes hugged him back.
When the rest of the Avengers (including Thor who had just arrived from London with Drs. Erik Selvig and Jane Foster and Jane's assistant Darcy) finally barged into Steve's recovery room hours later, they found the two super soldiers curled together on the large white hospital bed, fast asleep with huge, contented smiles on their faces.
Things weren't perfect; there was no magical cure for seventy years of Hydra brainwashing and conditioning. Bucky had good days and he had bad days, but he had Steve all days which made everything just a little bit easier. On his worst days, he'd revert back to his Winter Soldier persona, only responding to direct orders and barely speaking (when he did, it was often in clipped Russian). He'd often wake in the middle of the night, caught between reality and memory, unsure of where or when (or who) he was.
Steve could relate, in a way, and took to sleeping in the same room (often the same bed) as his friend to help calm and ground him after one of his nightmares. It wasn't much different from how they'd operated their whole lives, really, except their roles had reversed. Steve was now the protector and Bucky the one who needed help. Steve was always there when Bucky woke, ready with a hug and words of comfort to sooth his broken soul or a strong arm and a stubborn will to subdue his feral rage.
Bucky's good days grew steadily more abundant as the months passed by. He formed friendships with the other residents of the tower and could be found with anyone of them on any given day. Bucky and Natasha often had long, drawn out conversations in Russian while watching the Discovery Channel. Bucky and Clint would spend hours on end playing video games and comparing sniping techniques. Bucky and Bruce bonded over their inner "monsters" and took to meditating together every morning before breakfast. Bucky and Thor (surprisingly) bonded over a shared affection for tall tales and spent hours on end trying to outdo each other. Bucky and Tony butted heads at first, but once Bucky let the inventor take a look at his metal arm, the two could be found, heads bent together over Tony's latest invention, working on ways to make it better (faster, etc.). Darcy appointed herself the resident pop-culture teacher and dragged Bucky off to watch this movie or listen to that music at all random hours of the day (Steve was often dragged along as well). Jane was a bit reluctant at first, but eventually she warmed up to the ex-assassin and soon the pair could be found, brunette heads bent together discussing their favorite works of science-fiction. Selvig had been wary of Bucky too, but eventually the pair found a common ground sharing their experiences with brainwashing (Clint joined them sometimes too, Natasha less often). Pepper took to mother-henning Bucky and, surprisingly he let her (Steve admitted that it might be because she reminded them both of Steve's mother, who had loved Bucky as much as her own son). Rhodey, though he wasn't around often, and Bucky bonded over their lamentable, self-destructive best friends. Sam, once he found out that Bucky used to love to cook, took it on himself to introduce the sniper to the joys of modern cuisine (the two were fast friends after that and the residents of Avengers' Tower were always well-fed). Through all his interactions with the Avengers' team and their hangers-on, Bucky's one constant was Steve. No matter where he went or what he did, Steve was right there to give him an encouraging smile or a snarky response (he was always there to stop him, if needed, which comforted Bucky to no end; he didn't want to hurt anyone ever again). Life was good.
"Stevie? Do you ever have nightmares?" asked Bucky, lying flat on his back and staring up at the white ceiling of Steve's (their) bedroom.
Steve, who was mirroring his friend's position on the other side of the bed, turned his head and smiled softly at Bucky. "Not nearly as much as I used to Buck," he admitted. "It helps that you're here."
"Yeah, me too," said Bucky, his expression softening as he took in the peaceful look on Steve's face. "Ain't we just a couple o' saps."
"Jerk," said Steve, elbowing his dark haired friend gently in the ribs.
"Punk," replied Bucky, elbowing the blonde right back.
When the two best friends eventually drifted off to sleep, it was a peaceful slumber free from nightmares of blood and ice. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were finally at peace, free to be themselves; the masks of Captain America and the Winter Soldier shelved until the next megalomaniac decides to try to take over the world. Then, of course, the two super soldiers would be more than ready to don their infamous personas and save the world. Until then, they were free to just be two Brooklyn boys, finally reunited after being torn apart by war and death.
Steve and Bucky dreamed and all was well.
…for now.
I hope you enjoyed this story! Please leave a review and let me know what you think! (No flames please.)