As Bucky crossed the square he saw him. The man was supposedly bartering with a street vendor. But Bucky had seen him on the bridge as well.
Pulling down his cap a little lower and hunching his shoulders, Bucky headed into his apartment building and climbed to the third floor. He let himself into the dingy, one room apartment and headed to the grimy window to look out. The man was still out there, still arguing with the street seller. But Bucky noticed he was standing so that he had a perfect view of the apartment building.
Who was it?
Not HYDRA. He knew that instantly. HYDRA would have known to be more subtle. HYDRA would have known he'd spot the man a mile off. No. Someone else had sent him. But who? Who else would be looking for him?
Enemies of HYDRA? Possibly. But there was a more obvious choice. Steve or whatever remained of SHIELD. Possibly both together.
Either way, if the man was outside the building, Bucky doubted he had long.
He pulled his backpack out from under the bed, checked to make sure all the journals were in it and then grabbed the handful of clothes that he had and stuffed them in on top of the notebooks.
And then he hesitated. There was an ache in his chest. Steve might be coming.
Suddenly he felt exhausted. Years of hell and even now his own brain couldn't let him rest. And he had to keep running. He wanted nothing more right now than to just sit on that bed and wait for whoever was coming. He was almost willing to gamble that if it were foe he could fight them. But something told him it wouldn't be a foe. It would be Steve. It had to be Steve. He knew it in a way he couldn't quite put into words.
But he couldn't do it. Steve didn't deserve that. Somewhere in his brain there was still the Winter Soldier. And if the journals proved nothing else, they proclaimed loud and clear that he wasn't Bucky Barnes anymore. Not really. Not the one Steve had known and was looking for.
Bucky knew it, no matter how much he might wish it weren't true. And Steve should know it.
There was only one way.
Reluctantly, because it was a piece of him and there weren't that many pieces left, Bucky opened the backpack and pulled out one of the red notebooks. He had been trying to sort the killings by decade, as best he could place them. This one had killings from the 90s. Still he opened it and flicked through, just to make sure somehow Howard Stark hadn't ended up in it. He couldn't let Steve know that.
It was a wrench to place it on the bed.
But Steve had to stop looking.
He swung the bag back onto his back and glanced out the window. His watcher was walking briskly away. That meant whoever was coming, was coming very soon.
Bucky hurried out of the room and into the hallway. Near the rear of the building, facing out into a muddy courtyard, piled with trash, that the complex shared with three other buildings, was a window. He shoved it up, climbed out and pulled himself up onto the roof above.
Five minutes later Steve burst into the small, dingy room Bucky had recently vacated and looked around, Tony and Natasha following behind.
"He should be here," said Tony, "My contact said he hasn't left the building."
"He knew he was being followed," said Natasha. "That guy downstairs couldn't follow a toddler without tipping it off."
"So we sweep the area."
"I doubt it will be any use. With his training he doesn't need long to become invisible. And he was given plenty of time."
Steve sunk down onto the bed, dejected and tired. "I really thought I would find him this time. I really thought-" Red caught his eye and he glanced down beside him. A red notebook lay next to him on the bed. He picked it up and started to read.
"What is it?" asked Natasha.
"It's…" Steve flicked through several pages, his expression unreadable. Slowly, he handed it over to Natasha.
She took in a page. And then another. "Oh."
"What?" Tony came over to read over her shoulder. After several seconds he said: "Is this what I think it is?"
"It looks that way," said Natasha. "Assignments. All completed by the Winter Soldier. We'll finally be able to close quite a few cases with this. And some of these killings were never even suspected to be anything but accidents."
"So he has a kill book and he just forgot about it when packing?"
"I don't think so," she said. "He left it here on purpose. It's a message."
"A message that he's scary stuff so back off?"
"A message to stop looking. He must have guessed it was Steve coming for him. And he thinks this will stop him." She gestured to the notebook.
Steve stood up. "Then he's wrong." He took the book. "This only gives us a reason to try harder. He's remembering things. He wants me to think there's no Bucky left. But this just proves that there is. He was always looking out for me. Trying to protect me. And that's just what he's doing now. Only this time I'm the one who's going to look out for him."
