Content Warning for painful morning sickness.
Perfect Illusion
Chapter Four
Move Like a Soldier
It was hard to mark time in the cell, the light from the observation window was harsh and electric and held at a constant level, just like the kind from the overhead light within the cell. The circulated air was recycled and heavily filtered, making Steve and the Soldier believe that whatever base they were in was likely subterranean; or at least this part of it was.
They learned something that first night, it was not a good idea to sleep at the same time. They were both prone to violent nightmares more often than not, and while the Soldier was able to work around his orders when fully awake it was a different story when his mind was vulnerable from sleep. So the two of them traded off, sleeping short bursts throughout the measureless days, trying to keep each other safe.
As close as they could tell they were fed once a day through the feed drawer in the door, a handful each of calorie dense bars packed with protein and nutrients that Steve was intimately familiar with since he had eaten them as part of his field rations on Shield ops. They were designed to keep up with even his metabolism.
They would keep himself and the Soldier healthy, but the bars did little to stop actual hunger and did not fill his stomach for long. When he felt a creeping sort of daily nausea begin, it was a torture of dry heaves and attempting to drink water from cupped hands out of the tiny sink built into the wall to give his body any kind of relief from choking on nothing.
Like now, his body shook and shuddered, rearing up and back with involuntarily clenching muscles and bile burned the back of his throat, but there was nothing in his system to lose. Steve was left panting and trembling with sweat beading on his forehead making unclipped hair stick uncomfortably until the Soldier's heavy hand brushed it back out of the way. The other man a steady presence beside him but there was little else he could do while Steve's body rebelled against him in the first overt signs of growing life.
Slowly, finally, the spasms lessened and Steve regained a little more control over himself, drained but already starting to feel his strength building back up, blessing Erskine in his head once again for giving him the physical resilience to match his stubbornness.
The Soldier realized the worst of it had passed and pulled Steve up off his knees slowly so he wouldn't get dizzy, then guided them back over to their slab of a bed and laid down before encouraging Steve to lay against his chest for support, careful to make sure he was resting against flesh instead of metal. "I'm sorry." He spoke quietly, the words barely ghosting into Steve's ear, but he knew they were heard.
"Not your fault," Steve insisted, squeezing the arm clutching him to the Solider almost unconsciously.
"Pretty sure it might be." The Soldier spoke with a small quirk of lips against the shell of his ear, and a hint of a tease that sent Steve's heart racing. Hearing something so much like his Bucky when Steve was working so hard to come to terms with the reality of who he was now; it hurt and felt good at the same time.
Steve brushed their cheeks together softly, "Just because he might be yours doesn't mean I blame you for it, I don't. You didn't have any more control over the situation than I did, if anything you had less."
The Soldier went quiet for a moment, before voicing a hesitant, "He?"
"Hydra wants this baby to be something less than human, I refuse to let that happen and the least I can do to change that is to never call him an it. I have no idea if I'm right but you already have a daughter you are proud of, so for now I'm going to keep thinking of him as a boy." Steve explained his reasoning easily.
"You want him," The Soldier recognized that desire.
Steve shifted the Soldier's hold so that his human arm wrapped around his waist and laced their hands together on top of his lower abdomen. "Yes, he is mine and I want my baby. Hydra commanded this and made the baby a prisoner just as much as we are and I'm fucking furious. I don't know who his father is, but if he isn't yours that makes him Tony's and I want him either way."
Once again, the Soldier sat in silence for a long moment, something Steve had gotten used to over time. The Soldier took time to process information and did not speak often, and when he did it was usually short and blunt. A far cry from the charming Brooklyn social butterfly. That more than anything was helping Steve figure out where the line was between his Bucky and this person who was picking up the pieces of a life stuck between worlds.
When the Soldier finally found the words he was searching for, they weren't any where near ones Steve was expecting, "What happens when you go free, if he is mine?"
Swallowing down the pain in his heart that question brought, Steve tackled it head-on like he did every overwhelming obstacle, "To start with if I'm free so are you, I'm not leaving you behind. Next, I just told you, this baby is mine. I want him for that reason alone. However, if he is yours I'm going to have to talk it over with Tony and you, because I am keeping my baby no matter what happens, but I really don't see Tony rejecting me or him once he has time to calm down and think. We will work something out between the three of us that will make sure this little one knows he is loved."
The answer both satisfied the Soldier and gave him something else to consider, so Steve waited patiently for his thoughts to come together. It wasn't like there was much else to do in the cell. They had spent most of the days like this. Conversing with long pauses between question and answer, using intervening time for thinking or maintaining physical strength. They would not risk missing an opportunity to escape because they let their conditioning go lax.
"I'll protect him, don't care if he's mine. I promise." The Soldier broke his silence abruptly, but when he did, Steve couldn't stop the smile from coming on his face. Though it ended up being short lived, just like most smiles in this place, disappearing with the Soldier's next carefully measured words, "But they might try to separate us, now that it's obvious he's coming."
"I've thought that too," Steve admitted, then continued low and vicious, "And I'd like to see them try while keeping all their limbs attached. They'd have to knock us both out and drag us. The only way it might work is if they tossed one of those grenades through the feed drawer, but we would have a chance to flush it and hope our systems burn the rest out of our systems. They attempt to open that door and we both rush them. They aren't going to sacrifice the 'Asset' they've worked so hard for, so we would have the advantage in a brawl."
"All they have to do to me is recite the damn words," The Soldier pointed out blankly, not arguing the rest of Steve's observations because he was mostly right, but there was a far too optimistic shine on his role.
"Then I just have to knock them out before they finish the string, or wrestle with you until I get your ears covered." Steve pressed, before pulling himself upright and starting to pace in agitation. As much as he took comfort from the Soldier's arms he was never one that took well to sitting still even before the whole Captain America thing happened, always tapping a foot or scrapping a pencil across a page. Made life difficult when he had lungs that didn't want to work and a body that hated to be still. "My point still stands that they could not knock us both out at once because I would be very much awake and fighting if they attempted that on you. We've proven several times to be even matches for each other and I just said they aren't going to risk their plans. They would likely stop trying to reset you if I was putting myself in the line of fire. Also, it's been pretty obvious for a while, today isn't the first time my insides tried to force themselves out. They have to know, and yet they haven't interfered with us yet which means one of two things." There he paused, giving both himself and the Solider a chance to catch up with the rapid thoughts and pacing steps.
When he got a slight go on motion from the seated Soldier, Steve continued, "Either they are aware knocking us out is a gamble they probably won't win, so they are reluctant to try it, or this is the only cell in the base capable of holding someone with our strength. In that case they wouldn't have a choice but to keep us together. I would go so far to say that if that did turn out to be true then at least one of the chairs we were threatened with is fake, and maybe even both of them. There was no actual reason Strucker couldn't have used them on either one of us, so the fact he didn't makes it suspicious."
Long pause, before, "You have a point."
Steve slumped a bit, "I almost wish they would try and move us, because the way I see it that would be our best chance of getting out of here without help from the outside."
The Soldier's eyes flickered between Steve and the way out, before shaking his head slowly. "No. All we need is for them to open the door."
Steve considered it, "Risky. I was going to use the element of surprise that came from foiling their plan to throw them off balance and give us a better chance. Without that we'd be fighting an uphill battle."
The Soldier locked eyes with his, suddenly nothing but cold and hard edges, "Do you still trust me?"
"Yes." That went without question. "Why?"
The coldness filled the Soldier's voice as much as his eyes. "Because my orders were to produce a new Asset, nothing in there about what happens after. I won't hurt him, but I can make it look like it."
"And they would open the door to break up the fight. Worrying about the Winter Soldier trying to kill their new Asset would be a pretty damn good distraction." Steve followed along without a problem, but it was a plan he would never have been able to come up with on his own.
"Yes." The Soldier affirmed.
Taking deep breaths to think and center himself, the plan took shape in Steve's head, "It could work. We should time it around when they feed us, it's the only guaranteed point when someone is watching through the window so they will see the fight. You have to start it. Maybe pretend to sleep? You've lost control over yourself when you've slept before, we could play this like another round of that but this time you caught me off guard."
"You'll have to signal me if I'm pretending to sleep, they'll see it." The Soldier warned, pointing out the weak spot in the plan.
"You're overthinking it." Steve admonished. "As soon as I see the person coming with our rations I'll just go over to the door and kick the bed on my way over. That could serve both as our signal and give you an excuse to jolt up and start swinging."
Watching the thoughts play across sharp features helped contain Steve's nerves for a little while, but he was still off and pacing again before the Soldier spoke again. "They are going to try and gas us as soon as they realize the fight is a ruse, possibly before as a way of stopping the fight."
"They wouldn't risk indirect delivery of the gas if they thought you were actively trying to kill me though, so either way they would still be opening the door. As long as we're prepared for it we could get the drop on them." Steve refuted, "This is not the first time I've fought them and I've got a hell of a lot more at stake now than I did before. We'll take weapons and ammo from the first handlers we cross paths with then work our way to Strucker. Taking that bastard down and burning that fucking journal is the first objective, then we are getting the hell out of here."
"Sounds good." The little quirk of the Soldier's lips was not made in humor and just served to make him look even more vicious. "Now, when should I be taking a little nap?"
Steve took a moment to consider it, "Well they usually feed us after my body decides to stop tearing itself apart, so if we were going to pull it off today it would have to be soon. That begs the question, you want to try it now or wait a day or two to see if we think up any problems with the idea?"
"Sooner the better if I'm going to be wailing on you. Safer when he's smaller." The Soldier attempted to explain, knowing the baby was better protected by Steve's body when he was small and wrapped up in layers of muscle and cushioning fluid. Each day they waited would bring him closer to the surface.
"Then you should probably be laying down right about now," Steve informed, trying not to show how much that statement made his heart lurch. He trusted the Soldier who was both so much like his Bucky and yet nothing like him, but this was his baby.
Except. There was a good chance this was the Soldier's child too and as Steve watched him turn around to face the cell wall, pillowing his head on a metal arm, and letting his rigid body slowly fall loose in feigned sleep; this was his way of getting them out.
He was doing this for Steve, and the baby. A child that may or may not be his, that he had made a promise to protect no matter the outcome. And Steve knew no matter how much the Soldier claimed this plan was working around his orders, this was going to cause near unimaginable pain for him to attempt altering his mission objectives.
Steve found himself blinking back tears as it hit him fully -not for the first time- that no this was not his Bucky, but he was coming to love the man he had become.
Then he realized standing in the center of the cell crying and staring at the mock sleeping Soldier was a great way of looking suspicious, so he forced himself to move. He went through all the exercises the pair of them had been able to come up with to do in the confined space that would also give him a clear view of the door. The repetitive movements helping to clear his head and bring him back into the right frame of mind he needed to pull off this plan.
He felt loose and focused when a shadow darkened the constant light source outside the cell and flickered with the cadence of someone stepping closer, he did one last push up before standing to make his way over to the door, making sure to give the board the Soldier was laying on a solid whack with his foot in the process.
It was less than a heartbeat before arms were on him, choking him backwards and pulling him down to land solidly against Soldier's body, where he held strong and hit fast. It was a near maddening mass of limbs and fists as the Soldier grappled to hold him and land hits to torso and chest, hitting high and short, avoiding his abdomen through shear skill, but he attacked with such speed and in such a rage even Steve had trouble following each blow, anyone looking from the outside would surely miss the contact points.
A small part of Steve feared the Soldier really had fallen asleep and this was a relapse, but it was feeling him carefully missing his son that had him trusting in the plan.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of blows, there was the squeak of metal hinges and both Steve and the Soldier tensed, coiled to spring. At the first sight of a pale arm slipping inside, smoking grenade in hand, it was the Soldier who leapt forwards grabbing the appendage in his own metal one, yanking hard enough to dislocate their shoulder, earning a scream of pain. Steve and the Soldier rushed out of the cell before the gas could reach a high enough concentration to knock them out, practically tripping over the handler in the hallway pointing a gun in their faces with a shaking hand his other arm hanging uselessly. Steve just kicked him in the head knocking him out cold, before seeing six other handlers rushing up the hall.
The Soldier threw himself bodily into the oncoming group, ripping through them like a wild animal, metallic arm crushing windpipes and breaking skulls. Steve following behind and arming himself and the Soldier from what was left on the bodies just like they planned, but sorely missing his shield. They would have to make do with guns, the Soldier having his own disappointment when there was no good way of taking a couple knives with them. Remembering DC made Steve wish they could grab him some too.
Their run through the halls made them realize the base was a freaking labyrinth. They shot and fought whenever they saw movement, stopping only to pick up clothing from downed handlers close enough to their sizes, and even then it was only pants and combat boots, but better than running naked in unknown territory. They replaced guns as they burned ammo and kept climbing, no longer caring whether they found Strucker or the exit first.
It had to have been at least an hour of running, just going by his body clock and the fact they hadn't encountered another handler for quite awhile, when they had their first breakthrough. A locked room, something that barely slowed them down when faced with a metallic fist, revealed the place Steve had woken up in when he was first brought here, chair and monitor still in the same place.
And standing behind that chair was Strucker holding the red bound journal, mocking the pose he had taken with the Soldier in that first meeting. "My, my, haven't you been naughty. You have a baby to think of now Captain." The baron chided, making Steve see red, almost diving forward until the Soldier caught him around his middle stopping the motion.
Walking into that room, no matter how much he wanted to wrap his hands around that bastard's neck and start choking, would be the end of their escape. They'd be trapping themselves. Yet they couldn't turn their backs on him either, and he was holding that damn book too.
"You know what Strucker, I've heard enough dramatic speeches in my life." Steve decided, before raising his gun and pulling the trigger.
Only for Strucker to first flinch at the loud cracking smash of the bullet slamming into the concrete behind him as Steve had taken no time to aim, then start laughing at him for missing.
Which gave the Soldier all the opportunity he needed to send his own bullet through the journal and into Strucker's chest, followed by two more rapid shots into his skull for good measure.
Captain America had always been the flashy decoy for his commandos, now Steve had served the same role once again for his Soldier.
"I'm going to get the journal, you stay out here and keep watch," Steve ordered, adrenaline running through his veins only making his thoughts sharper. He was literally designed for conflict, this was what he lived for.
The Soldier just nodded, having gone silent during their escape, but there was a sign of genuine relief in his eyes at seeing Strucker laid out and bleeding on the ground.
It only took a moment to duck into to the room and scoop up the now tattered and bloodstained journal, but Steve was not leaving it in this place to be picked up and used to control his Soldier any more. He stuffed it in a pocket of his stolen tactical pants and rejoined the other man keeping and watch and they resumed their search for a way out.
What they stumbled on wasn't an exit, but it was arguably better; a computer terminal that the Soldier had no problem hacking. From there Steve sent a message straight to his team, and now all they had to do was wait for Tony and JARVIS to trace it. An answering ping responding within minutes.
Steve and the Soldier slumped against each other, facing the terminal, watching the incoming beacon JARVIS was putting on the screen that was their lifeline and breathed a sigh of relief. "We did it." Steve spoke first, breaking the silence.
"I hurt you." The Soldier reminded, tracing a bruise on Steve's ribcage with a pale fingertip.
Steve put his hand over the Soldier's, stopping the motion, "You did it to save me, and protect him. Your plan worked, my team is coming right now to get us out of here. I can handle a little roughing up if it means we walk free. You know that or you wouldn't have suggested it."
Long silence, then, "What happens now?"
"Now we go home, and you get to learn what it feels like to be safe again. If all of this has taught me anything it's that you deserve a little peace after everything you endured. I'll help you figure out who you want to be now, because you are a person; not a tool."
The seemed to trouble the Soldier, "What about your Bucky?"
"My Bucky was a good soldier and a better man," Steve responded sorrowfully, before looking the other man straight in the eye, "But this Bucky right here? He's loyal and dedicated, a bit quieter and a lot colder than the Bucky from before, but he is a good man that I'm coming to know and love all on his own."
That blew the Soldier away, left him reeling, and he needed steady silence to process it all before he could even try responding. Emotions were hard for him, especially now when his brain was rebelling against the death of his mission commander, the wound raw and sore in the back of his head where the annoying buzz of his orders had been. It was an enduring kind of pain that only Cryo or new orders had ever been able to take the edge off.
When he did speak, his eyes stung, "Steve, you deserve more than a shadow."
Not wanting to overstimulate him when he was obviously already overwhelmed, Steve just grabbed his hands and squeezed, "It is my choice, and I say you are worthy. You are so much more than a shadow or a ghost of a man who once was. Everything you managed to survive has made you who you are, you fought and despaired and lost, and every once and awhile you managed to hurt them back. I have trouble sometimes because when we were growing up it was you and me against the world, and then we fought a war together, but then I got trapped in ice and you kept going. Just because time stopped for me does not mean I can't recognize that it didn't for you."
The Soldier could not meet Steve's eyes any longer, everything just felt too raw, so he shifted his gaze back to the computer screen and the incoming beacon they were waiting on. "Look," He urged the moment it struck him what he was seeing.
There was nothing small or sad about the smile that crossed Steve's face this time, "They're almost here."
"Any reason there should be two flyers?" The Soldier questioned worriedly, pointing out the two separate dots now that they were close enough to spot the smaller one out front, though the second was only trailing the first by a hairsbreadth.
Steve's smile grew even brighter, "Tony." It looked to him like the Quinjet was racing Iron Man, and Tony was winning.
The Soldier's eyes flickered from the monitor to Steve and back, before commenting, "Your guy's a drama queen."
All Steve was raise a single eyebrow, "And you're not?"
"That's fair," At least he didn't argue. Even under orders he did have a flair for the dramatic, example a, the job the two of them just pulled off on Strucker. And his Spiderling was a work of art, a fucking deadly one, but art all the same.
The sound of repulsor blasts on concrete had never been so sweet to Steve's ears as it was when Tony cut his way into the bunker using JARVIS to guide his efforts with surgical precision, using first the location of the computer terminal and then the pair's heat signature to narrow down the search.
As the last door fell Tony walked out of the suit and Steve walked into the space left by retracting armor. There were no words to make this moment better so all they did was cling to each other, running hands along bodies long missed, reacquainting themselves with each dip and groove, cataloguing every scar or new bruise.
They were far too wrapped up in each other to notice the stalk still Soldier, or the rest of the team standing at the door waiting, unsure what the best move would be.
It was Natasha that came inside, moving slowly but deliberately and without fear, over to the frozen form of the Soldier. "Soldat? Do you know me?"
His face was a picture of blankness, but his eyes showed remorse and more importantly recognition, "My Spiderling." He whispered before lifting a hand and bringing it up towards her face, not touching her until he got a nod of permission, then he lightly stroked her cheek.