Chapter 2
Sunset encapsulated the sky as Steve Rogers regained consciousness. He felt damp and sore, and his right eye was swollen to a size that his sight was temporarily suspended. The air reeked of smoke and the ringing in his ears was due to his broken communication device. Sirens wailed from across the river.
But with all that background noise it was the sound of crunching foliage that woke him.
He wasn't sure that he could get up. The Soviet-style bullets Bucky had shot went clean through his body. He was running on pure adrenaline when he lifted the beam off him. His fists pummeled his face, but he couldn't finish his mission. The real Bucky was trapped in there. Bucky was two-sides of a coin, a killer and a child.
It was the sound of Natasha's voice that kept Rogers from putting up defenses again.
"Hey Cap," she said, calmly.
Rogers listened to her.
"I can't drag you all the way to the hospital so Fury is going to scoop you up in the copter, you can go back to sleep, you don't have to do anything," she added.
He could imagine her hovering over him, a hand placed on her hip or her arms tucked on her chest. She'd have a half-smile on her face, signs of a person who didn't linger on tragedy.
Then he felt pressure on his body, Natasha was attaching a harness to hoist him into the air. He fell back asleep to the whispering blades of a S.H.I.E.L.D stealth helicopter.
After a several day stint in the hospital recuperating from the gun shot wounds and having Sam go through an in-depth analysis of every song on Marvin Gaye's 'Trouble Man,' Steve was back on his feet. His body never took this long to recover before, but he had also never been shot with straight-through Russian bullets.
When Sam wasn't around and Steve was solely surrounded by the beeps of monitors and squeaky shoes running down the hallway, he would often think about the few encounters he had with his back-from-the-dead best friend.
"Who the hell is Bucky?"
His retort hurt more than the gunshot wound to his abdomen did. Bucky's body wreaked havoc like a madman, but the look in his eyes conveyed to Steve the man he knew was buried somewhere deep inside. His Bucky, the one who protected him from schoolyard bullies, was in that madman. And it was going to be the only mission he was going to do.
When Sam, Steve, Natasha, and Fury met by Fury's gravesite, and they all realized they were going separate ways, Steve saw this as his chance to reclaim a part of his life he had deserved all along.