Not my characters, borrowed from Marvel. Just having some fun with them...
Chapter Two
For the first time in a long time, he was warm. Warm and full and relaxed. Well, as relaxed as he ever got.
Until he realized he couldn't move.
He was strapped to something. Taking a steadying breath, he turned his head, taking in his surroundings. It was a bed, a nicely cushioned one unlike the hard pallet in his former cell at the HYDRA base, but with similar bands that kept him still. He didn't like it.
The room was mostly white, even the floor, except a large inset TV on one wall that showed relaxing scenes from a deserted beach. The soft sound of crashing waves and seagulls was being piped in from somewhere, clearly intended to be calming.
But he wasn't feeling very mellow anymore.
Jerking his metal arm, the one that got him out of nearly any restraint, he snarled when it held fast. This was bad. Somehow he'd been compromised. All he remembered was red, and then the black of nothing. His pulse sped up as his gaze darted around the room, cataloguing every corner, every crack.
"Buck."
That voice. He... knew it? Maybe.
He turned to stare at the wall to his left, across the room, as the opaque whiteness dissolved to show a clear floor to ceiling window. Behind it stood the blond man from the bridge. The one he'd tried to kill, but couldn't make himself follow through. Later on the gun ship he'd shot him, but again, couldn't finish the job. He did know him. Somehow.
The man placed one hand on the glass, his mouth tight, eyes filled with sadness. "Buck, we're not here to hurt you. We want to help. But you need to let us, you need to stop trying to leave."
That's right. The blond man had shown up again with some more friends a few weeks ago and tried corner him. But he'd escaped. They finally captured him, but he escaped again. This game had gone on for a while, until a girl with red eyes and long hair had done something to him as he was slowly prying off pieces off the armor of the man in the metal suit during the last fight, and he'd passed out at her feet.
Next thing he knew, he was a hamster in a cage. Again.
"Why?"
"Why trust us?" The blond man sighed, his hands dropping to his side. "Because you're my friend, Bucky. No matter what you've done, I know it wasn't you. Not really. And I think there's a chance we can help you get back to being, well, maybe not your old self, but—"
"No." He interrupted, flexing his metal arm against the bands again. He really didn't like feeling helpless. "Why do you keep calling me that name?"
The blond man opened and closed his mouth for a moment, then his hands fisted at his side.
"Because it's your name, the one you were born with. James Buchanan Barnes. You insisted we call you Bucky, though. Said James sounded like a tightass. And that, you were not." He raked a hand through his perfect combed hair, looking frustrated by the blankness that met his words. "We grew up together, like brothers. Do you remember what I said on the gun ship?"
Memory flickered, not a particularly good one, and Bucky flinched, metal arm rattling in the bands.
"'Til the end of the line," he rasped out, throat suddenly dry.
The blond man stilled, a hint of hope coming into his bright blue eyes.
"Yeah. That's us. You and me, Buck. It always has been."
Another memory took the ugly one's place, a stronger one. Playing in a field as children, baseball gloves on their hands, trash talking and laughing.
Bucky raised his chin and studied the blond man, taking in every detail. He looked different than the skinny kid with dirty knees, but in many ways, the exact same.
"Steve."
Steve's eyes filled with tears. "Yes."
There was a long moment of silence, spooling out into eternity, as they stared at each other through the glass. Then Bucky felt something he hadn't felt in a long time, maybe decades. Amusement. It was faint, hardly more than a passing wisp of humor, but he let one corner of his mouth quirk upward.
"Still pickin' fights, huh?"
Steve's laugh was broken, as he swiped a hand over his eyes. "I think this was the right fight to pick, this time."
Was it? Was there anything left of James Buchannan Barnes, besides a few random memories? Bucky didn't know, but something else he hadn't felt in a long time was worming its way through the twisted ruins of his mind:
Hope.
They removed his restraints that day, retracting them into the sides of the bed by remote. It took another three weeks, and multiple sessions with a SHEILD physiatrist, before they allowed Steve into the box with him.
Bucky couldn't deny that, for a moment, he'd wanted to attempt an escape, as the door swung open to let Steve in. Run, rabbit, run. Rabbit. He snorted at the thought. He'd been a wolf for a very long time.
He fought the urge, beating it into submission, because he knew if HYDRA tried to take him here, they'd have to go through Steve first. And that didn't seem very likely, with the only man who could match him being the very one he guarded. Bucky could... heal. He had time here. Recover, both in body and mind. As best he could, anyway.
It was three months before he left the box, even for short breaks.
Six months before he was allowed outside, with a superhero escort, of course.
Ten months had gone by before he was handed a gun again, and pointed toward the shooting range. It was gratifying to find his skills hadn't rusted. Or depressing. Both, really.
A year after the Avengers captured the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes stepped out of the elevator onto the main living floor of the Tower and set down his duffel bag. He'd collected a few books and other things over the past few months, during his wanders through the city with Steve. Nothing he couldn't live without, but when asked if he'd like to bring them to his new suite on the team's floor, he'd appreciated the opportunity.
It was still hard to attach himself to things, and people, but he was working on it. Proximity helped. Being surrounded by objects like books or posters, that he'd chosen himself, helped. Steve had pushed the team to extend an invitation to live on the same floor as them, citing that it would only help his recovery. Socialize and rehabilitate the assassin. Slowly integrate him back into society, or something.
Steve, the eternal optimist.
With a sigh, Bucky picked his bag up and followed the blue arrows Friday so helpfully lit along the walls to show him toward his room. He'd deliberately picked a time to move in when the AI informed him most of the team had left the building for an evening of entertainment. The last thing he needed until he'd acclimated to his new situation was dealing with that group. Steve had tried to be upbeat when Bucky asked him how the others reacted to the news of his imminent arrival downstairs, but his verbal dancing around the question was answer enough.
Lost in thought, he rounded the corner and slammed into a body moving the other way at considerable speed. Dropping his bag, he got a double handful of lush curves and fuzzy cotton, and a mouthful of hair. Hair that smelled like flowers, fresh and sweet.
"Shit! Ow!"
Stepping back carefully, Bucky removed the hank of hair from where it had tangled in his days old beard and lips, taking a long look at the girl who'd run into him. Scratch that, not a girl. A young woman. A beautiful young woman.
Dark, curling hair that flowed over her shoulders, snapping green eyes, a wide, soft red mouth, and he was right about the curves. Rounded and full in all the right places, the kind of figure he hadn't seen since the pin-up bombshells he and Steve used to watch in the movies. Nowadays the actresses seemed to all be competing for who was the most skeletal.
Blinking, Bucky narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, taking a step back.
The lush figure was currently encased in a full pajama bodysuit of fuzzy red and white stripes, with bright green attached booties. Booties with little sparkly bows on the tips. She looked like an adorably sexy, pissed off elf.
"Excuse you. This is a restricted floor. You can't be here without a special pass." She tapped one bootie rapidly, crossing her arms. "Friday, send Security."
"Sure thing, Darcy, but—"
"Now, Friday!"
"We're good, Friday. Stand down." Bucky pulled his pass out from under his tee shirt, and held it up for inspection. With a suspicious glance towards the ceiling at Friday's silence, she leaned forward, squinting.
"Crap. I can't see without my glasses. Friday, help a girl out?"
"Darcy Lewis, meet James Barnes, Clearance Level Eight. Cap cleared him, and Tony's assigned him a suite on this floor."
"What?" Darcy's eyes widened and she hopped back a couple steps, just out of reach. Or what she clearly thought was his reach. She was wrong, but didn't need to know that now. "Who...What... Why wasn't I informed of this? I mean, sure, I'm just an assistant but I live here too and—"
"I believe it was in the memo slipped under your door last week. The one currently being used as scrap paper for a shopping list, on your kitchen table."
"Don't be a jerk, Friday."
"My apologies, a'course, Darcy girl."
Darcy made a face at the ceiling as the IA's Irish accent thickened with charm, and Bucky couldn't stop the snort of amusement that came out.
Which brought Wrathful Elf's gaze back down to him. She licked her lips nervously, and he couldn't help but watch the flicker of tongue over rose tinted softness. How long had it been since he'd had a woman in his arms?
Longer than he liked to think about.
Bucky cleared his throat and looked away from her plump mouth, concentrating on tucking his pass back into his shirt collar.
"So, umm... welcome to the Tower." Darcy paused, then worried her lower lip with perfect white teeth for a moment, her gaze flicking over to his metal arm. It was covered by the long sleeve tee, but her eyes darted away as soon as she saw him notice. "Stupid. Sorry. I forgot you've been here a while. I mean, not here here, upstairs really, but... Anyway. Welcome to the Avengers floor, I guess."
Yes, she sounded as thrilled to have him there as he imagined the rest of the team would be. Bucky hefted his duffel bag on his shoulder again, resigned. The road to freedom, and earning the Avengers trust, was going to be a long one. And probably damned rocky.
"Don't worry, I'll stay out of your way. You won't even know I'm here." He brushed past her, following the blue arrows again.
"Somehow, I doubt it." Her muttered comment at his back was grumpy, but also held a note of something else he couldn't decipher. Unable to help himself, he glanced back as he rounded the next corner.
Arms still crossed, she stood in her fuzzy pajamas, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders like crashing waves of silk, watching him with deep green eyes. It was an image he wouldn't be able to get out of his mind for a very long time.