A/N: Welcome back to Age of Ultron: Mark II. Last time, Bucky promises to stay in contact with Steve after TWS, and also starts a one-man war on Hydra. Steve and Sam move to New York in order to Avenge. This time, the Winter Soldier has a Day™, and Steve gets a call and goes haring off into the sunset, in true Steve Rogers fashion.


APRIL, 2015. THE CZECH REPUBLIC.

The weather is a sniper's dream. Not a breath of wind, clear but not sunny enough for glare, and cool out. It's mid spring, finally starting to warm out of the eastern European winter that smothers this part of the world for more than half the year. The Winter Soldier appreciates winter, of course, but as a matter of personal comfort, Bucky prefers warmer weather. He's been flat and motionless against a ridge for the past six hours, cataloguing the guard shifts at the lab that, until around 1400 yesterday, had been a carefully guarded secret. He's been after this base for months, it puts out new and terrifying weapons at an alarmingly fast rate, and there are scientists here, doing Hydra's good work.

So, naturally, he's going to kill everything he finds inside and then blow it to hell. A sharp, nasty smile twists his face at the thought.

He stays there until dark, getting real familiar with the movements of the guards and personnel, and then he suits up, out of sentry mode, into holyfuckingshitit'sthefuckingSoldier mode. Knives wherever he can get them, his matched SIG Sauers strapped to his thighs, the obnoxious but way-too-much-fun-to-leave-behind Skorpion clipped between his shoulder blades, and, because he finally managed to acquire it last week and he's been looking forward to using it, dammit, the M21. No C4 needed, Hydra bases all have suicide switches, but where can you go wrong with a few(dozen) grenades, right? Finally, he tugs his tac goggles over his head and straps the mask on. He has an image to maintain, after all, and it makes him look scary, and since he threatened a Russian gear designer into a new one, it doesn't cover his ears anymore either. Fucking Hydra.

The moon is well up, casting the rocky valley in dim, silvery light. Not ideal sneaking conditions, but he's not the most accomplished assassin in the modern world for nothing, and he slips across the open ground between the ridge and the base's truck entrance without a sound. Then, he waits the 90 seconds remaining before shift change with his back pressed against the outer wall, in the camera's blind spot.

The door slides open right on time, and the Soldier grins behind his mask. Showtime.

The replacement guard gets a heavy, rubber-soled boot to the chest and goes flying. The guy who's been on shift gets a bullet to his unprotected neck, and drops with a gurgle. The Winter Soldier looks up at the camera, flashes a backwards V for Victory, and stalks into the base, M21 held loose against his body. Hydra soldiers come boiling out into the hallway, bristling with body armor and guns. The Soldier huffs a laugh to himself, because it's just so damn much like the Front. He empties the M21 into the crowd, twisting and ducking around bullets, and then drops it and draws his handguns. He'll pick it up and reload later if he has time, but this is a production and it's most effective if it's seamless.

By now, the soldiers he hasn't already killed have gotten into close quarters with him, and the fight takes on a little more grace. He slams his knee into a black-clad chest, hears ribs crack, and snaps his foot into the man's thigh, just in case the ribs weren't enough of a deterrent. You never know, with Hydra. As he jerks an unfortunate Nazi against his chest to absorb bullets, left arm wrapped around his throat, he hears the intercom crackle, something German about attack and 'Hail Hydra.' The Soldier rolls his eyes. He throws the now very dead soldier against two of his fellows, and follows up with two head shots with the SIGs. There are four left now, and they hang back, warier than their dead comrades. Whatever. He can move. Two are just that terrified, and he drops them before either can get a shot off. The other two are too still, too relaxed to be scared. And as he gets closer, one of them draws a knife.

That's fine. The Winter Soldier has knives, too. He holsters the handguns and draws two, just to be thorough, and they dance. The last mook is watching, for now, and the Soldier has to pay attention to him because there's something sinister in how calm he is. Knife-guy is fast, too, faster than he should be. Not like St-like the Captain, but fast enough to hold his attention and draw the fight out, which is not something he needs just now. He grits his teeth against the havetobeperfectcannotfailcannotfail in his head and deliberately blocks two inches too low when the guy slashes at his leg. The blade doesn't go all the way into his thigh, only an inch or so, and it gives the Soldier the opening he needs to lunge forward at his own full speed and rip the shorter of his two combat knives through Knife-guy's throat. Blood sprays in a pressurized arc from the severed carotid, and splashes, hot and iron-and-salt, across the Soldier's face. He lets the guy go. Knife-guy drops like a cut marionette, and the Soldier spins in time to avoid the knife the last Hydra soldier flings at his face, dropping a hand to the blade in his leg as he does so, tugging it free and sending it at his opponent in one smooth motion. Hydra Mook #1 steps back, all efficient movement, to avoid it.

Shit.

"Soldier," he says. American English. "You are very far off the reservation." The Soldier barks out a laugh.

"Oh, you have no fuckin' idea, pal." It comes out all Brooklyn drawl, which is where his shredded personality has been all day, so really not that surprising. Brooklyn doesn't stutter, at least.

"I think the Baron will be ecstatic to have you back." The Winter Soldier rolls his eyes again. As if Strucker had ever ranked high enough to have laid eyes on him before DC.

"I'm sure he would, pal. Unfortunately for the both of you, I got a job to do here, and it doesn't include gettin' reconditioned." And, because he's in a showy mood, he aims a flip kick at #1 to start off. Mook blocks his boot with a sturdy, armored forearm. The Soldier bounces off and lands only to spring at him, slashing at his chest with the knife in his right hand. Abruptly, a wickedly curved-scythe? appears in the guys' hand, and the knife blade screeches along its edge. Undeterred, the Soldier snaps a kick at Scythe's knee, but the guy twists away before he can make contact.

And then the Winter Soldier smells the ozone in the air. Fucking hell, I hate electricity, is what he has time to think before the lightning has grounded in his left arm and shot through the plates. Luckily, Hydra isn't actually stupid and his arm is insulated at the shoulder joint, so he just ends up with a twitchy and slow limb, not serious burns and probably a panic attack. But fuck, is he so not a fan of this fight. So not a fan, in fact, that he retrieves one of his grenades and flings it at the motherfucker's ankles. It goes off with a spectacular bang, and gives the Soldier enough cover to up the output on his left arm's reactor to compensate for the short. He's going to pay for the extra power later, but for now, he needs the strength. As he jams the burned plate back in place, he hears the scrape of boots on cement, and spins in time to block the fist that's flying at his face. The man's injured, a little slower than before, and the Soldier presses that, throwing out combinations as fast as he can, making fuck all sure Hydra Mook has no time to fire the current in the scythe again.

The Soldier pushes him slowly back, further into the base. From experience, he knows any other soldiers will be in the labs, protecting files and scientists. He needs to end this before he goes down there. With that in mind, he disengages from Mook #1 and draws the Skorpion, intending to find out if that scythe is bulletproof. This time, his ears pick out the reactor-hum well before the scythe can fire, and by the time white-blue energy races into the space between them, he's in the air, curling in on himself and rolling, firing a burst from the pistol. Mook turns, but not fast enough, and catches two in the gut. He staggers, the Soldier lands, pivots on his right foot, and slams his left into the guy's wrist, forcing him to drop the weapon. From there, it's a simple matter of putting a bullet into his forehead, and it's over.

Asset-1, Hydra Mook-0. Well, alright, .25, his arm's still a little twitchy.

One of the very, very few good things about being a mostly successful Hydra science experiment is that the Soldier has a pretty good layout in his head of the average Hydra base. This one doesn't deviate much from the norm, and so he finds the labs with minimal effort and blood. The doors are thick cement, but a grenade takes care of them. He stalks through the smoke, a walking nightmare, a horror show come home. There are only two guards down here with the mad scientists, and they go down before they even see him, a neat bullet in each forehead. These particular excuses for humanity are braver than some of the others, not even one tries to beg for their life. One tries a command word, she murmurs, "Слушайте, Порожняк, слушайте." at him, hands out and placating.

The words drag at his brain, making his hands drop a fraction before he clenches his fist hard enough to make the joints hurt, and the pain gives him something else to focus on. She dies first, bullet to the head. He does the rest with his hands. Wastes fewer bullets that way, and none of them are fighters.

The computers are all down here, yay, no more finding today, Soldier. The suicide switch is easy enough to rig, but he leaves it for the moment, in favor of looking through the files they haven't managed to delete. Its. Pretty worrying, actually. Like maybe-he-needs-to-call-someone worrying. There are mentions in the files of an 'alien object' and 'serious progress made with Subjects 4 and 5.' Also a heavily encrypted file titled 'Project Hecate' that he does not like the look of, thank you very much. That, he puts on a USB drive, because happy is the super soldier who doesn't get caught off guard. Crive safely in his tac vest, he activates the explosives laid into the walls, and starts the 10 minute timer.

Then, he sees the two heat signatures in what is definitely a detention block.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

He sprints, which, for him, means he gets to the deepest sublevel in under a minute. The lock is heavy and computerized, but that's what grenades are for. The thick, hot metal groans horribly as he hauls the door open enough to squeeze through and finds himself in some kind of lab/prison combo. Fun. There are several cells, but only two of them have living things in, and oh, Jesus, they're just kids. Bucky shoves the tac goggles up onto his forehead and unbuckles the mask so it hangs 'round his neck. Kids. Fucking Hydra.

"Hey, hey there. It's a person under here, I promise." He says, soft and slow, moving toward the cells. The girl is the first one to move, she shrinks back into the corner of her little room, pupils blown wide. The boy stays where he is. He reminds Bucky of the skinny, starving dogs that skulk in alleyways everywhere, hoping not to have to move too much, but ready to bite if they need to. Bucky makes a shooing motion at him, and the boy steps away from the door of his cell. His eyes don't leave Bucky as he sinks into a brace position, draws back his left hand, and sends his fist through the reinforced plexiglass window. The girl flinches violently, hands flexing around nothing. Before he can break the lock itself, the door snaps open with a screech of metal on metal. He catches a flash of red light as it opens, and files that away for later. She's enhanced, has to be. Probably the boy too, from the way the ends of his floppy hair have gone silvery white. Bucky breaks the lock on his door with a little more force than strictly necessary, and the kid slips out. He goes immediately to the girl's side, wraps her in his arms. She's shaking, fine tremors running through her little frame.

"Outside, come, we have to go," he says, switching to Russian. The boy looks up.

"I can take us outside," he says in the same language. There's a southern burr in his accent, but Bucky can't place it off the top of his head. "I'm fast, I just need to hold your necks so you don't get whiplash." Bucky shakes his head.

"Take her if you want, and meet me outside, but I c-can't do people touching me where I can't see 'em." Fuck, the mission headspace is wearing off. The boy narrows his eyes at Bucky, then scoops the girl, sister, they have to be siblings, into his arms and is gone, a silver and black blur. Bucky sighs and takes off after him at his own pace. He still has more than five minutes after all. Plenty of time.

Sure enough, they're all three of them up on top of the ridge when the base goes up. Buck thinks the fairy tale landscape is much improved already, even if there's a big smoking hole in the ground. The girl is watching the smoke curl with something pained and angry in her brown eyes. Neither of them can be older than 16. Bucky feels a little sick, looking at them. He shoves the goggles and mask back into his duffel, along with the Skorpion and one of the SIGs. He leaves the knives be, but he strips the bloodstained tac vest off and pulls a hoodie on over his t shirt. Then, he switches his attention to patching himself up. Fuck, out of the mission, his leg hurts like a sonofabitch, and he can feel the beginnings of neural feedback from his jury-rigged left arm. By the time he's done cleaning his blood off his hands, the kids are looking at him instead of the ex-Hydra base.

"I'm James," he says softly. "Where are y-you from?" He's surprised when it's the girl that speaks first.

"I am Wanda. This is Pietro, my brother. We are from Novi Grad, in Sokovia." Sokovia, shit. It's not far, but it's war-torn and a fucking wreck and he hates to leave them there.

"You have family there?" His answer is in the way her face falls, but the brother, Pietro, answers aloud.

"We have nothing." And shit, he's gonna have to ask Steve if he'd ever brought kittens in from the rain back in Brooklyn. He has the sneaking suspicion he had, more than once.

"W-w-well," says the Fist of Hydra, "not anymore."

APRIL, 2015. NEW YORK.

Steve is bone-tired, and sore as anything because lasers, for Christ's sake. All he wants to do is get through this debrief, take a hot shower, and sleep. Looking around the room, the rest of his team looks about the same. Thor is his usual cheery post-battle self, but Nat and Clint are nearly in each other's laps, Tony's got his head in his hands at the other end of the glass conference table, and Bruce is wrapped in a zip-up hoodie that's at least two sizes too big for him. Curled up in his chair, he looks like a fluffy, bespectacled cat. Across the table, Nat catches his eye and gives him a tired smile, white against her sand and sun-stained face. He smiles back at her, and feels another wave of relief that they'd gotten to Sudan in time to help her. Good as she is, she's not cut out to take on Hydra by herself, and he's very sure he can't handle losing any more friends.

With a flash of shame, Steve realizes he's missed a couple of sentences of Fury's voice and drags his head back to the briefing and his eyes back to the holographic display.

"-found it at 0600 this morning, ashes still hot. Intel points to it having been a Hydra lab." he says.
"I don't know about you all, but I'm getting a little tired of being behind." Steve, who is in fact not tired of it, doesn't say anything. Bucky's made an art out of beating Fury's European boys to every single Hydra outpost by an average of about three hours.

"I don't know, Nicholas, maybe he's doing you a favor." That's Tony, bless him. For all his annoying habits and utter lack of anything resembling boundaries, Tony's a good guy to have in your corner. Clint snorts.

"Not like there's anything you can really do about him, other than step up your game," he says. "As a fellow assassin, though, props to him. That's what, like fifteen bases he's worked through in the last nine months? All with no survivors."

"All until now, anyway." says Fury grimly. "The base was blown to hell, but the detention level was buried pretty deep, stayed more intact than the rest." Pictures flash up on the display, a lab with cells, the locks and doors of two of them broken in. Steve's stomach twists with nausea at the sight of the tables. "There's nothing left of the base's files," comes Fury's disembodied voice. "We can't know who was in here, but I for one am not comfortable with how little we know about the Winter Soldier's agenda." And then, then, Steve's done.

"He has a name, Fury. And unless I'm mistaken, he hasn't done anything your men weren't going to do anyway since DC." he snaps. "I know you think my judgement's off on this one, but from where I'm sitting, you're pissed off because Buck's doing your job for you. Now, maybe there were prisoners there and maybe there weren't, but I know Bucky, and he's not going to attack your men or us. If he was, he'd have done it already, all he'd have to do would be stick around for a few hours after hitting a base." He glares around the room. Tony looks kind of stunned, Natasha's watching him, a worried look in her green eyes, Thor's observing, and Clint leans back in his seat, crossing his arms across his chest. Bruce nods.

"He's not wrong, Nick. Remember Belgrade?" he says, in his best, most I'm-a-highly-educated-and-sensible-person voice. Fury's face reappears on the monitor, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Yes, Dr., I remember Belgrade."

"Where else could that intel have come from? The Winter Soldier dropped that lead to us, and we were able to stop Hydra before they could blow the capitol building. I'm not saying we should bow out of Europe, but he hasn't been a threat to any of us since he broke programming more than a year ago. Steve's right."

Fury scowls, but doesn't argue, and Steve figures that's the best he's going to get.

"Right," says the former director eventually. "I'm meeting with a potential lead tomorrow afternoon, I'll call Maria if there's news. Get some rest, you all look terrible. Fury out." The image vanishes into thin air.

"Good call, team," says Steve. "Get cleaned up, get some rest. We'll meet in the morning in case Hill has something for us." They nod, and begin the process of hauling tired, sore limbs off to showers and beds. Natasha, though, waits for everyone else to leave, and gets close enough to him that even Jarvis won't be able to hear her.

"When's the last time you talked to him?" she asks.

"Two weeks ago," he answers, barely above a whisper. "I've told you, he won't talk to me about-"

"No, I know that. How was he, though?"

"Normal enough. We talked about how weird the future is for a few minutes, but he hung up early, said he had a headache." She's worrying at her lower lip with her front teeth, so Steve asks, "Why? What's got you looking like that?"

"It's just," she sighs. "It's maybe nothing, I can be paranoid, but." she sighs again. "He's efficient. Really efficient, and fast. To do what he's been doing, he's brutal, Steve. And yeah, it's Hydra, but I know how hard it is to break out of the headspace where you can do anything, be anything to get the job done." She looks up at him, green eyes full of worry. "And if he was robotic and inhuman on the phone too, then I'd actually be less worried. But he's not. He's something else for you, Steve. And I don't know if he's that fucked up, if he can be that divided, or if he's pretending to be a person for you."

"You're worried about him?" she snorts.

"Steve, I'm worried about all of it. Him, you, us, hell, Nick's people in Europe. Brainwashing is really, really nasty stuff, and it has a tendency to have a lot of fallout. And I don't know enough, don't have enough intel to predict how bad the fallout's going to be here. It could be as easy as him showing up at your door one day, jumpy and traumatized, but okay. Or it could be worse. The worse is what I'm worried about. Just. Be careful, okay? Please."

"I will." She turns to go, and Steve reaches out to catch her wrist. "Nat, I'm glad you're all right." She smiles.

"You and me both, Rogers."

The shower is phenomenal, and Steve stays under the spray for nearly an hour, letting the heat leech the ache out of his muscles. Clean, dry clothes feel nearly as good, and Steve fully intends on sleeping for at least twelve hours, but before he can collapse into bed, his phone goes off. Blocked number.

"Hey, Buck."

"S-s-steve," comes Bucky's voice, "I-I need your help." And all the sleepiness in Steve's limbs vaporizes.

"Sure. What do you need? Money?" There's a quiet huff of laughter.

"No, champ, little more difficult than that. Can you g-get to Romania?" Steve's heart clenches, but his voice is steady and sure.

"Of course. You want Cap?"

"Shit, no. Steve. Just you. You r-remember how to find me?" Steve nods, knowing Bucky will hear the rustle of his hair against the phone.

"I'll be there in, say, five hours?" A Quinjet can do that, and he can borrow one.

"Ok-k-kay. Be careful." He hangs up. Steve throws on jeans and a t shirt, grabs his jacket and a ball cap, and takes off.

Maria finds him a jet, and, while she stares at him the whole time, brown eyes calculating, she doesn't ask where he's going. He guns the jet's engines as soon as he's out of the Tower, and keeps them as open as is safe all the way across the Atlantic.

He's in Bucharest by dawn, and he heads to the largest train station in the city, finds the lockers, and paces up and down the rows until he finds the one he's looking for. Locker number 18, combination 11-17-23. They'd actually made all this up as kids, reading spy novels. They'd do a dead drop, just like Agent 47, leave it at the 18th locker at the train station, for the year they'd both been born, and the combination is Bex's birthday, November 17th, 1923. Bucky'd added the part about the biggest city in a country a few months back, when they'd talked about it on the phone. Sure enough, the locker opens under his hands, shedding flecks of blue paint as it does so, and there's a notebook inside. Written on the first page is an address and instructions to say hello after knocking. Because Bucky knows his voice. Steve smiles, and wonders what his 12-year-old self would have thought of all this.

The address is a ramshackle old building, but it's inhabited, Steve nearly runs into a middle-aged woman on the stairs. Buck's door, he notices, has a new doorknob and hinges. He knocks twice, says, "Hey, it's me," and rocks back half a step. He hears the deadbolt disengage, and the rattle of a chain, then a soft,

"Come in." He does, and finds Bucky leaning against the wall of the tiny studio apartment. It's not nice, but it is clean, drawn curtains and a bed in the corner a kitchen and a table, at which is seated-oh.

"Meant to a-ask you," murmurs Bucky, jerking his chin in the direction of the two skinny kids at his kitchen table, "I ever adopt the little kittens that used to c-c-creep around-" He takes a deep breath. "Gimme a sec. Our. Our building." Steve can't help the laugh that bubbles out of his chest, half hysterical and half real.

"Yeah, actually, you did. Every time there was a storm. Your Mamma hated it." Bucky's mouth twitches up in something that's trying to be a smile.

"See, I th-thought so."


A/N2: See, I told there'd be less dialogue next time. Also, Bucky Barnes in the middle of a fight is my new favorite point of view. Also, any inaccuracies between my Bucky n' Steve and MCU canon's is more than likely purposeful. Like the year they were born, for example. Canon is a box of scraps in a cave, and I pick and choose what I please.

What will our intrepid super soldiers do next? Where were the rest of the Avengers while Steve was haring off into the sunset? Find out next time on: "Age of Ultron: Mark II!"

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