Chapter 7
"It was a gift."
Steve started. Not because hearing Bucky's voice was unexpected, because it wasn't. Not because he'd forgotten the Bucky lay beside him on his bed, because he definitely hadn't. He started slightly and turned his head towards him because Bucky had spoken at all. Because Steve hadn't asked a question and they'd made a rule: that Bucky answered what Steve asked. They'd clung to that rule for months.
But Bucky chose to speak. For the first time, Bucky spoke without Steve asking a question.
Through the darkness that they always maintained in Steve's room, he could see Bucky well enough. He could see the outline of him as well as the paleness of his face, the darkness of his hair and the shadows of his cheekbones. Steve's eyes were adjusted enough that he could even make out the curl of eyelashes around his dark eyes as they stared upwards towards his raised arm. His metal arm; with the faintest of clinks, he curled, uncurled and twisted his fingers.
Steve had explored that arm. With his fingers, his eyes, his mouth. He knew the coldness of it, the groves of its links and the seam where it knitted into Bucky's shoulder. He'd winced over the scarring that was so old as to have become little more than a white crosshatch on Bucky's skin. Steve had never asked questions about the arm, because Bucky hadn't given him any indication that he would answer them, but he still found it fascinating – as much because it was so clearly a part of Bucky as because of the mastery of its make.
"Is that so?" Steve finally said, though his words didn't really feel like a question. They always spoke in questions, the two of them, but not this time.
Bucky didn't glance his way when he replied. "I didn't lie, you know. When I said my old arm came off."
"I didn't think you did."
"It came off forcefully," Bucky said, as though Steve hadn't spoken at all. Maybe he hadn't even heard him. His voice was low in retrospect, faintly detached. "I was pretty deep in shit, Stevie, and it was just one step too far. Stupid, but it happened. It was entirely my fault."
For a moment, Steve didn't speak. He didn't want to break the spell, for it almost felt like an enchantment that it could induce Bucky to speak as he did. Slowly over the past weeks, ever since Bucky had disappeared for days and returned with blood on his hands that Steve had actually seen, things had changed. Not dramatically. Not starkly. But slowly, incrementally, and eventually, when Steve asked – not about HYDRA but about Bucky – Bucky started to answer.
He told Steve of how he'd left home, left school, left New York entirely, which went above and beyond what Steve had expected. When Steve asked, Bucky told him of what he'd done, speaking vaguely but sufficiently of the kind of unsavoury jobs he'd pulled to get by. He spoke just as vaguely of how he'd pissed off the wrong people, how he'd known he'd had his name marked, and how HYDRA had stepped in for him.
Always HYDRA. No names, it was always just 'HYDRA', or sometimes 'they'. Sometimes even 'him', though Steve didn't know who 'him' was. Bucky had revealed that much, and before the drilling of Steve's questioning, he knew that Bucky would likely reveal more if he asked.
Steve didn't ask about HYDRA. Not at all. He was starkly aware of the allowance that Bucky was making for him in revealing anything at all and was unspeakably grateful for that. Steve had shared stories of himself when Bucky had used his questions against him, and Steve didn't mind sharing. He wanted Bucky to know him better, as well as he'd known him before. Just as Steve wanted to know Bucky, and just as he'd grown to realise he hadn't ever known that much about him at all.
But he would remedy that. This time around, it would be different.
"It didn't happen immediately," Bucky was continuing. "There's no point in investing in something that's not going to provide benefits back. So I made my way, and showed them I was worth it without even realising it. And they gave me this."
His metal hand curled into a gentle fist, the little clicks of metal on metal just audible. Steve watched it intently and couldn't help but marvel; not only was it an incredible piece of machinery but it really was a part of Bucky. It was a part of him as much as his other arm. As Bucky thought, as he commanded, the hand and arm responded.
"It's incredible," Steve said, and he raised his own hand to reach absently to Bucky's wrist.
Bucky snorted. The sound was almost amused. "You would say that."
"And you wouldn't?"
"It's a weapon."
"It's a part of you, regardless of where it came from."
Steve felt as much as saw Bucky's gaze dart briefly towards him as he grazed his fingers over the back of Bucky's metal hand. His voice was even lower when he spoke. "Just like I said. A weapon."
Steve flicked a glance to Bucky the moment Bucky drew his eyes away. He felt his jaw tighten and edged towards him across the mattress just slightly. His hand dropped from Bucky's wrist to rest atop his shoulder. "Bucky," he said quietly. "You're not a bad person."
Bucky only hummed flatly in reply.
How Steve's mindset had changed. How so much of his thoughts had changed since he'd met Bucky again. A year ago everything had been so simple; Sam was right in that the ignorance of a black and white perception was a benefit. That it made things easier. All of that had changed now, though, because Steve had changed. He'd changed so much that he knew there was no going back. No one could retrace that many steps.
The difference lay not in HYDRA, because Steve would always consider them Wrong. They would always be a mar upon the face of New York that needed to be hacked out before the wound could be stitched back up again and begin to heal anew. HYDRA would always be wrong for as long as they existed, and the more of Loki's leads, the more of the operations that were, while more than they'd ever managed before, inevitably barely the tip of the HYDRA iceberg, the more Steve's understanding of that fact was reinforced.
But Bucky wasn't wrong. He wasn't bad. He was so firmly planted in the region between the two extremes that Steve had hitherto considered were the only possibilities that he demanded Steve overturn his blindness. Because Bucky killed people; it was what he did, what he was still doing, and it was for the wrong side. For the wrong reasons. Bucky murdered people, and in the vaguest of replies to Steve's vaguest of questions, he'd admitted that those people weren't bad. That some of them weren't even from HYDRA. That some, many, had simply made the wrong decision that had them wind up with a bullet through their heads.
More wrong decisions. More greyness. Even without Bucky, the midpoint of the extremes grew more and more pronounced in Steve's mind.
It was why Steve spoke as he did. Why he denied Bucky when he said he was bad. Because Steve didn't believe it. He couldn't believe Bucky was bad, because people didn't wear the expression he'd worn when he'd first admitted his murders to Steve. People who murdered with not the faintest touch of remorse didn't kiss like Bucky did, didn't feel warm like him, didn't keep returning again and again when they knew they shouldn't because they wanted to.
Bucky wasn't Bad. He just did Bad Things. Steve took every opportunity to remind him of that fact.
"You're not, Bucky," he repeated. "I know you're not."
"You know next to jack-shit, Stevie," Bucky said, though there wasn't any heat or resentment to his words. He still wasn't looking at Steve.
"I do, actually. I know you."
"You don't."
"I knew you fourteen years ago. Nearly fifteen, now. You haven't changed that much."
"And that," Bucky said, fluttering his metallic fingers above him once more, "is where you're wrong."
Steve curled his own fingers into Bucky's shoulder. He pressed his lips together but couldn't help replying. "I'm not," he said quietly. "I'm not wrong, Buck. And even though you don't tell me all that much and I'm not going to ask, I know you don't like HYDRA. I know you know they're wrong. And I reckon you'd get yourself out of there if you could."
I'd do it for you if you'd let me, Steve wanted to say, but he held his tongue. Somehow, something within him told him that should he even try, Bucky would leave him again. That much Steve wouldn't be able to endure. He didn't think he could survive Bucky leaving him again. Not now.
Bucky was silent for a long moment. Silent and staring at his hand, and so still as to seem like he wasn't breathing at all. Bucky could do that, Steve found; it was the predator within him that could remain as immobile yet attentive as a shadowy statue when he wanted to. Nights of watching him seated on Steve's windowsill had proven that much.
But then Bucky turned. Slowly, so slowly, he turned his head towards Steve and though his eyes were dark, the shadows making them darker still, Steve could see something in them. There was something… there. "Of course you'd think that," Bucky murmured. "You have this stupid tendency to see the best of people, Steve."
"Only when it's already there to be seen," Steve replied.
For another moment, Bucky stared. Then, in a fluid motion that reminded Steve intimately of everything about Bucky – how he fought, how he kissed, how he simply was – he rolled across the distance between them until he was atop of him. He legs straddled Steve's waist and he settled upon his hips in a way that was so natural that they could have been acting such a way for years.
And that was the whole of it. It was natural. Steve would never feel more comfortable, more right, then when he was touching Bucky, feeling him, knowing him. He hadn't realised that fact until he'd had it within his grasp. Even at that moment, feeling the heavy weight of Bucky on top of him, it wasn't with fear for being pinned beneath someone who could very definitely destroy him. Instead, Steve revelled in the chance to curl his hands along Bucky's naked thighs, to press warm, hard skin beneath his fingertips and feel the tightness of muscle beneath. To stare up at him, all broad shoulders and pale skin and spans of beauty that Steve just hadn't appreciated when they were youths. How hadn't he seen it?
Bucky was staring back down at him, but there was a different weight to his gaze. A difference to the touch of his metal fingers as they grazed briefly beneath Steve's chin before falling to his shoulder. His lips parted for a long moment before he finally spoke. "You're not getting anywhere."
Steve blinked. It was hard to concentrate on anything besides the feel of Bucky on top of him, the heat of his body and the smoothness of skin that Steve couldn't help but touch and touch and touch. "What?"
"Your missions," Bucky said shortly. "Your team. You're not getting anywhere."
Steve's fingers stilled. He felt his whole body still, and it wasn't only because of the abrupt turnabout that Bucky's words had taken. It was because of the truth of those words that Steve – that the whole of SHIELD, for that matter – had realised but never voiced. It had been a niggling understanding for weeks, now. Months.
Their missions were a success, but they were all self-contained. Loki's leads were valid, but it was the barest scrapings upon the surface of intelligence. The HYDRA they'd captured were difficult to break, but when they did they were ignorant as often as not. Even those that did cough up further intel provided as little if not less than Bucky did himself.
It was frustrating. As it had been with SHIELD for so many years, it was frustrating. This time, however, it felt worse, because they'd had something else. They'd had a respite, their moments of success and progression and the tentative steps to getting somewhere. Only to find that they'd abandoned one maze for a longer, taller and deeper one, just as riddled with booby traps. They were a little closer to the centre, but not by much. Infuriatingly, it wasn't by much at all.
Swallowing, Steve nodded once. "I know."
"What are you going to do about it?"
Bucky's question didn't sound like an interrogation. True, it wasn't entirely innocent because Bucky was Bucky, and regardless of what Steve might want, that made him HYDRA. But there was no digging to the question. No unveiled attempts at espionage. Bucky asked and it didn't feel like he asked for HYDRA. If nothing else, it was that feeling that confirmed it to Steve: Bucky murdered, was a murderer, even, but he wasn't bad. Steve couldn't think him bad.
He shook his head. "I don't know."
Bucky regarded him for a moment. His finger, his real finger, tapped slightly on Steve's chest. Then he clicked his tongue and sat back slightly. His gaze fell down to his metal arm. "It was a gift," he said, just as he had minutes before. Steve nodded. He felt like Bucky requested the reply, despite the fact that he wasn't even looking to him, and sure enough, a moment later Bucky continued. "You know who it was, who gave it to me."
Steve stared. He blinked, stared again, then frowned. "What?"
"You know who he is, Steve," Bucky said, and he still hadn't raised his gaze from his arm. His metal fingers had begun to tap on Steve's shoulder as well, the feeling entirely different to that of his other hand. "You know. You know the doctor. I don't need to tell you."
I won't tell you, went unvoiced, but Steve heard it anyway. He knew it even without Bucky saying as much. Just as Steve couldn't – wouldn't – betray SHIELD with speaking of them even to Bucky, Bucky wouldn't – couldn't – betray HYDRA. He might not like HYDRA, Steve was slowly growing to realise, but he owed them. He owed them his life. He couldn't betray them.
But there was something else to the words. Something that Steve couldn't quite understand. He felt himself frown. "What do you mean?"
"You know him, Steve," Bucky repeated. His taps became insistent pokes, gaze flickering to meet Steve's briefly. Just briefly, tellingly. Pointedly. "You've been after the doctor for some time now. I know you have."
Steve slowly shook his head. Bucky wouldn't give him this doctor's name, but he was implying. Heavily implying, to the point that he practically said it himself. Another shake of his head as Steve wracked his brains for anything – who? What was Bucky referring to? What did he mean? – and then it clicked.
He knew. He knew, if only distantly. Only vaguely. Only in the way a pursuer recognised the soles of their escapees fleeing feet. "You mean… Zola?"
Bucky didn't reply. He'd drawn his gaze back down to his arm, and that simple blankness – nothing could convince Steve more that he wasn't a cold-hearted assassin than that. Almost emotionless, but not quite. Almost careless, but not quite. Sobriety thinned Bucky's lips slightly, and when he spoke it was hushed, seemingly almost to himself.
"The doctor wasn't the one directly involved, but he directed. He's a mastermind. He's…" Bucky paused, and his thinned lips pursed instead. He hadn't confirmed Steve's suspicions but the very fact that he didn't deny them was confirmation enough. "He's not a real doctor. He's not a real – fuck, he's not even a real chemist or anything. But he does experiment. On everything."
Seemingly unconsciously, Bucky raised his real hand to his shoulder, to the seam between metal and skin that held his cybernetic arm in place. He was still regarding his metal hand, lips still slightly pursed but expression otherwise blank.
Steve felt his gut tighten and had to force himself ot let got of Bucky's legs to avoid bruising them in a way that Bucky likely wouldn't comment upon. He settled his hands upon Bucky's waist instead. "Experimenting?" he said, a struggle through teeth that longed to clench tightly.
"Experiments," Bucky nodded. "He's insane."
Three words. Three words, and Bucky seemed to encompass all that Zola was to him. Steve knew little enough of Zola but what they'd managed to scrounge together at SHIELD. He knew that he was of HYDRA, of course, and that he was a silent, invisible player of the HYDRA drug trafficking industry. Whispers of his name carried through the air from unidentifiable figures and apprehended members of HYDRA alike.
But he hadn't been found. Despite Steve's askance of Fury, who had already been going to ask Thor if he could in turn ask Loki, Loki hadn't provided them with anything on Zola. No base location, nor any incriminating intelligence, nor even the corners that the dealing went down upon. They knew Zola was involved in dealing, which was one of the main reasons the Asgard Squad still scrambled at his tail.
Few enough real head-honchos of HYDRA had been heard of, let alone named. Zola remained a faceless figure pinned to the wall and Nat's corkboard at the SHIELD basement. He had been for years.
Steve swallowed. He didn't know what Zola had to do with Bucky but… experiments? He wanted to punch something. Maybe even someone. "You know where he is?" he asked quietly, almost warily.
Bucky still stared at his fingers. Through the darkness, his eyes were smears of shadow in his face. Until he tipped his head and turned to stare instead down at Steve's face. "Don't suppose you get any time off?" he said just as quietly.
"Not really."
"Then make some time. You're gonna enjoy me showing you this, Stevie."
It was cool outside. Cool drifting towards cold, though Steve couldn't quite feel it through the thickness of his jacket. His breath plumed in a vaguely pale smoke.
Night had long since fallen. The streets weren't empty – they were never empty, never quiet, in New York City – but the narrow road Steve stood upon was still. The cars parked along either side – some illegally, Steve noted detachedly – slept with headlights blackened and engines smothered. The few lights that flickered in the buildings alongside the sidewalk did little to support the wan orange glow of the streetlamps overhead.
Steve was alone. In the darkness of night, he was alone, and waiting, and when he was alone and waiting it was usually for Bucky. Just like this time.
Bucky always played on his mind. Always, in some way or another, he was there. Thoughts of meeting him again, of holding onto him, because Steve wouldn't let him leave this time. Thoughts of what they now shared that was a mess of passion, and unspoken feelings, and fervour, and heat that Steve somehow still didn't know what to make of but wouldn't want any other way.
Bucky killed people. That fact was unshakeable and Steve couldn't rid himself of it. More than that, he was a good killer. Great, even. Steve had seen him fight and it was enough to know that Steve himself wouldn't want to challenge him; not because it was Bucky and he never wanted to fight Bucky, but because he wasn't sure he would win. Sam always said how Steve was a 'great fighter' and could 'win fights with the best of them', but Steve had been questioning his fighting skills for months. Several months, in fact. Ever since the night at Dogend Docks.
The fact of the matter was that Bucky was built for it. Not just physically, though he was. Not just because he seemed to possess the unnerving ability to blank himself from the situation and fight, just as Steve had seen. It was because he was good at it. Made for it, even.
Built. Steve shuddered at the thought – the recollection of Zola, of experiments – even as the recurring urge to punch something arose. Experiments? On people? He'd thought Zola and thus HYDRA had been predominately focused on what every criminal organisation wanted: money and power. Apparently they went above that, however. They went above, and the evidence lay in Bucky.
He's not a killer, Steve thought. He was just made to be one.
For that was the truth. Steve believed – knew – that Bucky wasn't bad. Maybe he was blind for thinking so, but he felt it to his very core. And yet Bucky was good at killing, and it was all because of what HYDRA had made him.
They'd saved his life? He owed them? The urge to strike something was never stronger in Steve when he contemplated Bucky's flat, detached non-explanation. He didn't work for HYDRA. He was practically a slave, and his commitment to their cause was scarcely more than compulsion.
"I belong to them, Steve," Bucky had said nights before. It might have been a profession of loyalty, but it hadn't sounded that way to Steve. "So if you want to take HYDRA down then you've got to manage it yourself."
Steve knew that. He knew Bucky couldn't betray HYDRA for the same reasons that Steve couldn't do the same to SHIELD; there was complex loyalty there that ran deeper than simply 'the job'. That fact, Bucky's inability to do what he surely knew needed doing, was the very reason Steve stood in the darkness at eleven o'clock chill on a Thursday night.
For perhaps the hundredth time, Steve checked his watch. He hadn't had to leave the basement early that evening, but he had, and in doing so he'd drawn more than a few raised eyebrows.
"This that new girlfriend you've got going on the side?" Tony asked, not glancing up from whatever he was fiddling with as Steve packed away his papers. "No, wait, it's the ex-boyfriend, isn't it?"
"No," Steve said.
"You going to go and see Abraham and Anna?" Sam asked.
"No."
"Turning in early?" Wanda suggested, for some reason sounding almost hopeful. Then, with a pointed glance Vision's way, said, "Some of us should try that sometimes rather than return to our beds and pretend to sleep while cracking useless codes on their phones instead."
Vision missed her pointed remark.
Steve flashed her a smile and spared another for the oblivious Vision. He hoped it hid his growing nervousness for the coming evening. "Not that either."
"Not doing something dangerous I hope, Steve," Nat asked, and the tone of her voice – teasing, but only to the passing listener – drew Steve's momentary attention.
He met her gaze across the room to where she glanced briefly his way. His hands still for just a moment before he shook his head. "Don't worry, Nat. I'm not."
"That's ominous," Clint called from his perch.
"Give the man a break," Rhodie said. "He's allowed to leave without being hassled."
"Are we leaving?" Bruce called from his office. "Already?"
"Get your ass back to work, Banner," Tony said, raising his voice distractedly. Bruce subsided with an unintelligible mutter of reply that had Tony chuckling.
Of course, that night was the one night that everyone in SHIELD decided to stay past nine. So expectedly, that night was the night that they all saw him leave. Steve had never being a particularly guileful person; he could only hope that by avoiding replying he was concealing enough.
Leaving with the weight of numerous pairs of eyes upon his back, Steve didn't think he'd managed quite so successfully. At least none of them – namely the eternally sceptical Nat and the hawk-eyed Clint – followed him. Steve knew he was good enough, and recognised to be good enough, at catching tails that even they wouldn't try.
Which was how he found himself in the middle of an empty street and glancing at his watch that, by the light of the overhead streetlamp, read eleven-oh-four. Four minutes late wasn't late, but it still made Steve jittery. He shuffled in place, then paced in a circle, glanced along one length of the road and then another.
Then he stilled as the sound of a motorbike purred into hearing. Steve turned instinctively as it built before, seconds later, without the glow of headlights to speak of its passage, a black beast scored around the corner. It glided to a rumbling stop alongside him.
Hands stuffed casually in his pockets, Steve stepped from the curb. "You know, it's illegal to drive without your lights on."
Bucky stared at him. Through the darkness, the ever-present darkness that always seemed to be Bucky's constant companion, his unwavering context, Steve saw him blink.
"A Harley?" Steve nodded his head in a gesture, eyeing the bike – and admittedly its rider – appreciatively. "What's that, a Breakout? It suits you."
Bucky still stared at him, though Steve could swear he saw his eyebrow twitch just slightly.
"I can't say I approve of the lack of helmet, though. That's illegal too."
"You going to book me, then?" Bucky asked.
The words might have been teasing – a tease for Steve's tease, as it were. Steve might have even been able to pretend they were if he hadn't noticed the tightness of Bucky's hands curled around the handlebars, the tension of his shoulders, or his unwavering stare. Bucky wasn't scared, and Steve wasn't sure he even could be scared like most people, but he certainly wasn't comfortable.
And why would he be? Steve acknowledged silently. With what we're going to do, how would he?
Shaking his head and recognising his half-hearted attempts at banter as his own uneasiness, Steve shook his head. "No. I don't think I will."
"Good to hear," Bucky said. Then he tipped his head slightly to the pillion behind him. "Haul arse, Rogers. We don't have all night."
Steve was quick to oblige. It might be illegal to ride without lights, without a helmet, with – well, with an assassin at all, but Steve was past that. As it was with Bucky, as it had always been and perhaps was even Wrong to be so, it didn't matter. Bucky was the exception. He always would be.
Maybe that made Steve a little Wrong, a little Bad, too?
He disregarded the thought, though, because he had to. Because the world wasn't divided into black and white, and the kind of grey that Bucky presented was necessary. Where they were going, what they were doing – it was necessary. Steve slung a leg over the back of Bucky's Breakout, locking his arms around him and fingers into Bucky's thick leather jacket. His feet had barely left the ground before Bucky was kicking of with a gun of the engine, and they were lurching from the street at a leap that drew in bare seconds into a gallop.
Steve didn't know where they were going. Not exactly. He hadn't asked because Bucky hadn't given him the information, and he wouldn't push it. Loki's intel was one thing, but this? This went beyond that. This went far beyond that, and Steve couldn't run the risk of missing the opportunity for asking questions. He trusted Bucky because he was Bucky, and that might be foolish of him, but it was true. He trusted him, but in many ways Bucky was as skittish and flighty as an wild stallion; one too many question and he could disappear through Steve's window again forever.
So Steve didn't ask. He didn't question where they were going. When Bucky told him to bring his Glock, he did. When he told him to meet him on the curb of Arlan Street seven blocks from his apartment building, Steve met him.
And when Bucky told him to jump illegally onto his illegally-driving Harley, he did so. Some wrong, Steve had realised, was necessary for the greater right.
They headed south. Down roads that Steve recognised and then into those he didn't. Cold air whipped his face as they drove, descending empty alleyways rather than streaking along highways, and only swerving between late-night drivers when necessary.
Far. That was all Steve deduced they drew after forty-five minutes of wordless driving. Forty-five minutes and then some. The alleys Bucky roared down with the unerring turns of one long familiar with the area were lit by even less than the streetlamps. The absence of a headlight was made even more apparent for that darkness, and then more so again when they left the limits of New York City to continue even further south. Out of the city, and away from everything.
Steve might have been scared. He might have been – but he hadn't been truly scared for a long time.
Down a highway, weaving swiftly – and still illegally – through the similarly city-departing. Across a bridge that Steve recognised from passing over barely a handful of times himself. South and south, and then the spread of borderless streets trickled into those watched with quiet regard by silent, blank-eyes houses. The houses remained for long enough to dribble into a region distinctly industrial. Steve watched his surroundings pass with keen attentiveness; if nothing else, he'd ensure he could make it back there in the future.
Bucky drove them past a wall of dark brick building, windowless on the lower three floors. Past a water tower, looming and stoic. Along another alley, the guttering the Harley's engine rebounding off the tall walls along either side of them, and then out onto a span of openness eerily cavernous despite the lack of buildings.
Bucky slowed the bike to a stall and Steve silently climbed off. The night seemed forebodingly quiet in the absence of the bike's engine.
Steve could guess where they were. He had a good enough sense of direction for that, at least. "This is," he began. Then he paused because Bucky glanced towards him.
They hadn't spoken of it expressly, not aloud, but Steve wasn't stupid. He didn't think of himself as a genius – not like Tony who could rattle off mathematical theorems in his sleep, or Vision who all but spoke in binary – but he knew he was smart enough. And he might not be able to make deductions like Clint, but this was apparent enough; what Bucky was showing him, what he was doing that night, was off the record. It 'wasn't happening'. It was why Bucky was never the one to speak names. It was why he didn't tell Steve what they were doing.
Steve had to deduce for himself – about Zola, about where they were going, and about just what Bucky was showing him, all so that he could force himself to remember the important bits.
Steve pressed his lips together, and though they were only illuminated by the distant glare of night pollution, by the half-waxed moon hanging suspended overhead, he saw Bucky's acknowledgement. Knew that he understood Steve's acceptance of the need for silence.
Bucky plucked his keys from the Harley, thrust them into his pocket, and turned on his heel with a sharp scrape of his boots on concrete. Steve cast a quick glance around them – open parking lot that might not have even been a parking lot, more of the distant, murky-coloured buildings with high windows, a dark and possibly abandoned car fifty feet away – before thrusting his hands into his pockets and following after him. He was abruptly glad he'd worn his own heavy jacket, hood and all; the chill that settled upon him lay in more than just the air.
There weren't any buildings that Bucky headed towards. At first, Steve didn't know where he was being led at all – not because he didn't trust Bucky, because he did, but because there simply wasn't anything to see. Then Bucky stepped from the concrete of the parking lot, took several striding steps into the tufts of grass and smears of dehydrated dirt, and cast a swiping kick at the ground.
Steve didn't ask. He didn't ask 'what' or 'where'. He simply watched through the darkness as Bucky squatted on the ground and scratched at the dirt with his gloved left hand. Then, with an unexpected an almighty heave, he hauled at something that squeaked slightly as it rose. It was the only sound to interrupt the distant hum of cruising traffic.
A door. Or a hatch, Steve supposed. Stepping to Bucky's side where he still silently squatted, Steve peered down into a hole in the ground that he wouldn't have noticed had he Bucky not led him straight to it. The hole was a circle of metal, barely two feet across, and circular. Steve could only see the top rung of an embedded ladder before they disappeared into darker blackness.
He felt his gut tighten. Missions had found Steve in countless tight situations, heart pounding, blood pumping, and muscles straining for the tension, both physical and mental. Steve could almost claim he was used to it; in a way, as a field officer in a specialist force, he was.
But this was different. It was different undertaking an operation in cold blood. It was so vastly different slipping through the night, through the darkness that masked their presence, and sneaking into criminal territory. Steve could overlook the legalities of the trespassing for who those criminals were, but he still felt uneasy. He still fought the urge to shift in place, to glance over his shoulder and squint for the phantom watcher that he could feel standing behind him from the prickling on the nape of his neck.
Exhaling sharply, his breath puffing in a thin, barely visible cloud, Steve lowered himself onto his haunches at Bucky's side. "This is it?"
Bucky didn't look at him. He hadn't quite looked at Steve since he'd first told him to meet him three blocks from Steve's apartment nights before. Steve watched him sidelong as Bucky regarded the hatch, lips pressed firmly together and a muscle twitching just visibly beneath the shadows blurring his jaw. He nodded shortly.
"The doctor?"
Another nod.
Steve dropped his gaze to the hatch. "This isn't the only entrance, is it?"
Slowly, Bucky shook his head. "No. Just the one I use."
"The one you use?"
"When I'm ordered to visit. The doctor requests seeing me sometimes. As a check-up, if you will."
The way he said it informed Steve that Bucky was far from fond of such check-ups, if nothing else. That it wasn't a simple doctor's visit. That Bucky didn't want to go, and that as Steve was realising more and more – as he'd found himself hoping yet hated now that he knew it was true – Bucky didn't really have a choice in the matter. He was ordered, and he did what he was told because he had to.
Because he has to, Steve thought harshly, and his fingers curled where they rested on his knees. Bucky said he owed HYDRA, or owed someone in HYDRA for 'saving his life' in a way that Steve still didn't understand. But this went further than owing. What kind of a person demanded regular assassinations as payment?
It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. None of it was. And Bucky… Steve didn't say as much, but Bucky seemed to know it. He professed that nothing was fair, but that it didn't matter. And yet here they were, and despite his loyalty to HYDRA –
"I'm not turning them over to you," Bucky said, breaking into Steve's thoughts. His voice was so low as to be nearly unintelligible, and he still didn't look at Steve. "You know I can't be the one to do it."
"I know," Steve said, barely a whisper.
Bucky nodded slowly. "Just so you do," he said, then he edged forwards, slung a leg into the hatch, and twisted to start his descent.
"If this isn't the only way in," Steve began, and Bucky paused.
"Don't be an idiot, Steve," he said and finally, finally, he glanced up at him. His left hand clinked faintly, metallically, on the top rung of the ladder. "Even with all of your SHIELD people and that drug-busting squad, you wouldn't make it in that way. Ever."
Steve never asked how Bucky knew so much of SHIELD. He never asked how he knew anything, because that would be pushing for a conversation that would shut down their question-and-answering in a heartbeat. This time, too, Steve didn't ask – not about Bucky's knowledge or the other entrance. He believed him in that regard. Bucky hadn't lied to him yet.
Claustrophobia enveloped Steve as, after Bucky disappeared into the hatch with only the barest scuffle of sound to mark his descent, Steve followed after him. He could feel the tunnel at his back, the faint grittiness of rust on the rungs beneath his gloved fingers. The night above had never seemed to bright yet so distant as it disappeared into utter blackness.
It was a relief when his feet touched the ground. Concrete, Steve felt through the soles of his boots. In a cavernous space, he also gauged, given the faint echoing of his breath.
"Bucky?" he whispered, and that too echoed.
When fingers touched Steve's arm, he didn't quite flinch. Almost, but not quite, and likely would have been greater had it been more than the barest of touches. Which was also likely why Bucky had withheld.
"Follow me," Bucky's voice murmured through the darkness, and then he touched Steve's arm again, urging him forwards slightly, and drew away. Steve followed silently, dutifully, as Bucky's footsteps retreated.
Steve didn't know how Bucky saw. Or maybe he didn't see at all but instead simply knew the way so well that he didn't need his eyes. Steve stared with fierce attentiveness into the darkness before him, ears straining for the sound of Bucky's steps even if he didn't truly believe that he would be left behind. It was a relief when the darkness, the stillness, and the deeper chill of hard concrete and walls of a similar hardness, was alleviated just slightly by a distant light.
Then Steve felt them turn a corner.
The corridor – and it was concrete, Steve saw as they progressed into greater lightness; the floor, the walls, even the ceiling – stood a foot above Steve's head. It stretched into a bare hallway of similar size with only a single door and throbbing yellow light stationed above it. The corridor extended barely twenty feet beyond the door until it branched to the left and disappeared into similarly throbbing light; the promise of more doors, more lights.
Steve registered the facts: Bucky was leading him to Zola's lair of sorts, his lab, his base. Zola was an infamous if scarcely known member of HYDRA, and in New York City, HYDRA stood at the head of the illegal drug industry in its production of synthetic heroin. Bucky had said he climbed through the hatch for his 'check-ups', which meant that something had to be here, wouldn't it? Evidence, files on members of HYDRA, enough to pin them with the blame and arrest to them on sight?
Yet at the same time as the facts flooded through him, Steve felt himself chill. This was a HYDRA base. There could be HYDRA here, and though he wasn't quite scared, Steve had dealt with HYDRA enough to be thoroughly wary of them. He'd followed Bucky straight into the snake pit.
Steve should have called for back up. He couldn't have, didn't think Bucky would have taken him half as far with the rest of SHIELD following on their tail, but he wished he had. The weight of his Glock at the small of his back was reassuring, but not much.
Bucky had paused in step as they drew towards the door and its overhead light. Just outside of the greater sphere of light, he turned towards Steve. His expression was sombre in a way that would have spat in the face of his childhood self's brightness, and it chilled Steve further with certainty of the danger that he already knew himself to be in.
With deliberate hands, Bucky reached behind his head and shucked the hood of his jumper from beneath the collar of his leather jacket. He wordlessly indicated for Steve to do the same of himself before reaching into a pocket and extracting a pair of mottled grey scarves. He held one out to Steve. "You know how to tie it so it doesn't fall off?"
Steve felt the ridiculous urge to smile. Was Bucky really mothering him? Here? But he didn't, and he nodded, following suit once more as Bucky tied his scarf around the lower half of his face with practiced fingers. When he dropped his hands, it was to regard Steve critically before nodding shortly.
"You get your evidence," Bucky said, his voice a slightly muffled murmur. "I'm not handing you anything –"
"I know you're not, Buck," Steve said, acknowledging what they both knew as being a fallacy.
Bucky nodded shortly once more. "You've got your gadgets or whatever, don't you? 'Cause we're not coming back again after this time. I'm not bringing you back."
Steve nodded in reply, his hands dropping to his pockets. He hadn't known where Bucky was taking him, so he'd brought as much as he could carry on his person; a miniature, hi-res camera of Tony's make, his phone, an old-fashioned lock pick, a pair of gloves he tugged on after the scarf, and the firearm that he hoped he wouldn't have to use. Steve wasn't trigger happy – he never wanted to shoot anyone – but he would if he had to. He would shoot a HYDRA snake if he had to, even if he wasn't quite so ready to do so as he'd been in the past.
"I know," he said. "I wouldn't ask you to, Buck."
Bucky turned away from him then. Without another word, he started towards the illuminated door.
That was how it happened. That was how Steve got his first glimpse of an active HYDRA hideout that wasn't left upheaval as its residents attempted to slip through NYPD fingers. As Bucky tapped a code into the keypad beside the door with his metal hand, Steve saw the first room.
It was empty but for a bed. Not unclean. Not uncomfortable. Just a bed with neatly folded blankets. Steve took pictures.
Around the corner, through the brief hint of deeper darkness then back into another sphere of light, was another room. Another bed. Steve took his pictures.
There were more rooms. Some were completely empty. Some held a table with chairs, and there wasn't anything brutal or cruel about them. Nothing that reeked of criminals. They were bare, minimalistic, of good, solid make and… nothing else. They passed cameras, black little spiders planted in the corners of the corridors, but Bucky didn't pause before them. Steve trusted he ignored them for a reason and focused upon his task.
Until Steve saw the room with the chair.
It was the first one they came across that was different. The first one that was more. The concrete beneath their feet had faded at some indiscernible point – frustratingly indiscernible, because Steve should have mentally recorded exactly where – and the dips from light into darkness had become expected. Seven doors, they'd passed. Seven doors without a word between them, and Bucky would wait as Steve drew his miniature camera from his pocket, would snap his pictures and check to be sure they were being sent to the SHIELD basement on Tony's unrestricted line, and pass to the next.
Outside that door – door number eight – Bucky paused.
Steve stared at the back of his head, at the mess of overlong hair that wasn't quite a tangle but held a certain degree of carelessness. Bucky didn't move, didn't glance over his shoulder, and his finger hovered statically over the keypad lock.
"Bucky?" Steve asked quietly.
Bucky shifted slightly. Just slightly, the barest of leans and the barest twitch of a finger. Then he tapped the numbers into the keypad; Steve watched with the same attentiveness he had to every other door: six-seven-six-one.
Steve didn't know what he was looking at when he first stepped into the room. Bucky edged to the side to allow him to pass, arms folding as he had at every other room, and Steve was left to stare at the mess of machines, the half-reclined chair in the very centre, the overhead light that hung suspended above that chair, shuttered and dark in sleep. A trolley with a metal tray rested to one side, glaringly clean, and what looked almost like an oxygen mask dangled from a cord beside the headrest. A screen – a computer screen? – hung black-faced and silent upon an arm, pushed away from the central seating station.
Steve frowned. He could still feel tension thrumming through him, still felt the urge to whisper rather than talk, but he could think without straining his ears for the barest hint of an intruder's approach. He glanced over his shoulder to Bucky. "What is this?"
Bucky was staring at the chair. Or maybe at the light, or the trolley, or the blank computer screen. He didn't glance towards Steve at his question, but he'd clearly heard it. With a casual, almost offhanded gesture, Bucky raised his real hand and tapped absently upon his shoulder.
His metal shoulder. Upon his –
"This?" Steve glanced back towards the chair, towards the machines that he couldn't identify. There was nothing telling about their structure or their positioning. They weren't poorly crafted as far as Steve could tell, but this… "They put your arm on here?"
"Put it on," Bucky said quietly. "After taking the other one off. Yeah."
"An underground –"
"Amputation studio, yes," Bucky said. "Welcome to the gig, Rogers."
Steve's eyes darted across the machines. It truly wasn't as dirty as he might have imagined from off-the-grid surgery studios. The machines weren't cheap, which Steve could recognise from Tony's education of the basics. But there was something macabre about the entire structure; maybe it was the darkness, the emptiness, the lack of activity that Steve would anticipate in such a context. Maybe it was because he could imagine – horribly, enough that he almost flinched – Bucky sitting in that seat and… and…
"They took your arm off here," Steve said quietly. "That's…" For a moment, words abandoned him, and the most stupid, foolish, irrelevant one arose in the absence of anything else. "Illegal."
He felt more than heard Bucky shift slightly behind him. "You done staring? Take your pictures, Steve, or I'm leaving you behind."
Bucky wouldn't. Steve knew he wouldn't leave him, because, though he'd done just that so long ago, he wouldn't again. Steve wouldn't let him. He had so many questions – about Bucky's arm, about HYDRA as always, but about Bucky's involvement as much as HYDRA itself – but he didn't voice them.
Steve took his pictures.
There were other studios. Other rooms that made little sense to Steve. He wasn't a doctor, but he could recognise medical equipment when he saw it, and the bunker was all but clogged with it. It had to be illegal, and Steve snapped pictures of everything, pointedly ignoring his imagination that sought to contemplate just what had happened on that operating table, this chair, in that room that required a viewing station. Bucky had said Zola liked to experiment. Just what the hell kind of experiments did Zola conduct?
Such thoughts were shunted to the side of Steve's mind, however, when Bucky led him into one particular cavernous room. It was wide, sleek, floors cleanly tiled and walls painted a glaring white. Steve hardly noticed that whiteness. He barely noticed that overhead lights only feebly lit the room itself, too. Stepping past Bucky's usual point of observation and into the room, Steve stared.
"I trust you know what you're looking at?" Bucky said.
Steve nodded slowly. He knew what he was looking at.
Vats. Bulbous, heavy vats, and half a dozen of them spread about the room. Sinks lined the walls, runners of narrow counters scrubbed clean and empty but for the occasional similarly empty glass beaker or plastic tub. Steve edged further into the room and, with a glance over his shoulder that wasn't really asking Bucky for permission, lifted the lid on one of the vats.
A rush of scent, both somehow overwhelming and faint, flooded his nostrils. Distinctly chemical, Steve could place it in a heartbeat. Morphine didn't especially have a smell, and neither did heroin from Steve's experience, but the tang of vinegar was just slightly detectable.
"Don't dip your finger in that," Bucky said in a quiet monotone. "It'll be a bitch dragging you out of here."
Steve didn't glance his way. "How far along is it?" he asked quietly.
"Are you asking me a question?"
This time Steve did turn. Bucky's chin was dropped to his chest again, his eyes blank above his scarf, and yet despite that blankness it was apparent what he was thinking. What he was feeling. Steve had spent too much time with Bucky, too many nights staring at him through the darkness of his bedroom, to mistake what he was thinking at least in part.
Bucky wouldn't look at him. He never admitted he was scared, but…
"You won't be compromised," Steve said. Or murmured, even without intention. "When this gets out, you'll be left out of it. I guarantee it."
Bucky snorted but he did raise his gaze. Just briefly, and just enough to quirk an eyebrow alongside it before dropping it again into further expressionlessness. "It's not you and yours I'm worried about," he said, and Steve nodded his understanding. Bucky might not be scared, but if he was it was clear that HYDRA was the one who induced it rather than the NYPD. "But in answer to your question – fuck if I know. I don't take the stuff."
"You don't?"
"I'm not that stupid, Steve."
I didn't think you were, Steve thought, but he didn't speak. He didn't admit how relieved he was that Bucky didn't, though he was. So unutterably relieved that he felt himself sag slightly in relief from a weight he hadn't even known he carried.
Bucky clearly saw it leave him. "You're a bit of a sap, you know that?"
"Because I've just been assured my boyfriend isn't a heroin addict?"
"We're not having the boyfriend discussion right now," Bucky said, muffled exasperation touching his tone. "Seriously. Now?"
"Well, are you?" Steve said, and despite the circumstances, despite the fact that he was even then leaning over a vat of stewing heroin, he felt himself smile. They'd never talked about it, not expressly, and Steve abruptly regretted that fact. When we get out of here…
"Are you asking me another question?" Bucky said. "Because you're tipping the hundred mark right now, you know."
Steve shook his head as he lowered the lid on the vat. "Not now," he said, glancing back to where Bucky had raised his gaze to regard him intently. "Just for you to think about. For later."
Bucky snorted a little less profusely this time. He could have even been smiling behind the scarf. "Take your pictures, Steve."
Steve took his pictures.
There were more rooms. More with vats, some with wall-to-wall shelves of bottles, boxes, glass containers, and measuring devices. Others contained only storage material, and Steve glimpsed one that appeared to be nothing if not a room-sized dishwasher, the scent of soap hanging in the air and the floor damp. Steve had already deduced that the bunker-base was huge, had seen the evidence of it himself in the rabbit warren of corridors – empty, blessedly empty – branching off into single locked rooms. His inventory of pictures was likely clogging up Tony's drive at the basement; he'd be in for a surprise the next day.
Door number twenty-two was when he first heard the sound of a distant voice. The corridor had widened into a pale, glowing hall that resembled nothing if not a deserted hospital cleared of machinery, trolleys, and waiting gurneys. Steve could almost forget that he was underground at all.
At the first hint of a voice, Bucky reached behind himself, grabbed onto Steve's shoulder, and hauled him towards the closest door. It was all Steve could do not to snap to attention, to unwind himself from Bucky's hold and retaliate with a strike. The beep of the electronic lock sounded and the door clicked behind them.
Bucky was against him, pinning him to the wall and a hand pressing against the scarf at Steve's mouth. "The night-watch," he murmured.
Steve stared at him. He would always stare when Bucky stood so close, even in a situation that had his muscles tensing and heart skipping a beat for the sudden severity of their circumstances. It was habit now to look at Bucky and only him, to be all too aware of the heat of his presence against him. It was almost a struggle, a war with instinct that had somehow overwhelmed the instinct Steve had developed on the force for years, to thrust aside the urge to simply lean forwards and kiss him.
"Guards?" Steve whispered.
Bucky offered his customary snort, though it came out as little more than a puff of breath. "Not anything quite so prestigious as that. But they do have a pair of eyes."
Steve fell silent for a moment, ears straining for the slightest noise. Then he continued with a whispered, "You took out the cameras?"
A statement, not a question. Bucky hummed. "It was necessary."
"You prepared all of this, didn't you? To bring me here?"
"You wouldn't be here if I wasn't prepared."
Steve nodded. Fair enough. He could understand the necessity for that much at least.
They stood for a long pause, Steve listening, Bucky with his head cocked as though listening too. Then Bucky drew away from him as if by a signal that Steve couldn't discern. "We need to get out of here."
Steve nodded, even if he didn't quite agree. "How far in are we?"
Bucky glanced towards him from where he'd turned briefly towards the rest of the room. "About halfway. You're getting to the offices now."
"The offices?"
Bucky tipped his head to the room. "This is Karpov's."
Steve followed the direction of his nod. The room was… an office. The spread of a desk. A high-backed chair. A computer that was the only item atop that desk. A wall of shelving stood against the far wall, stacked with heavy books and an assortment of personalised items that didn't seem all that personalised at all; a glass ornament, a bowl with a fake flower inside, a contraption made of something that looked vaguely metallic through the gloom. A faintly luminescent orb – was it a light? – was the only thing illuminating the darkness.
An office. Just an office.
"Karpov?" Steve asked.
"You don't know him."
"Yet?"
"Yet."
There was something in Bucky's voice that was almost resentful. Something that didn't touch his expression, but Steve saw nonetheless. It sounded almost the same as how he spoke of the doctor, Zola. Steve immediately hated the man. "What did he do to you?"
Bucky only shook his head. "It doesn't matter."
"Bucky –"
"Not now, Steve." And the 'or ever' was heard alongside it. "We've got to go."
Steve nodded slowly, then more rapidly in acceptance. He didn't want to accept it, but it was necessary. "Alright. We'll go. I'll ask my questions –"
"You always do."
" – later, but we'll go. After," and Steve turned and started towards the desk, "I get what I can from this."
The computer was encoded. Of course it was. And Bucky didn't know how to get into it either – "Steve, how the hell would I know?" "You've known the codes to every door thus far." "This is different." – which was a problem. But that didn't matter. Steve pulled out the final item from his pocket, his final 'gadget' as Bucky called it, the one that Tony had built, that Vision had advised upon, that Nat used on a regular basis. He plugged it into the computer.
"What is that?" Bucky asked.
"SHIELD stuff."
"Is it good?"
"It's a Stark product. You've heard of him."
"Stark," Bucky murmured. "You mean Howard Stark?"
Steve chewed upon his words for a moment, staring at the resistant screen of the computer opened before him. "His son. Tony."
"Huh. So you're working with billionaires now."
"Only their children."
The screen flickered, a strange stutter like a spark of static. Then, in the otherwise blankness of that screen, an image appeared. Small, flashing – the Stark symbol, barely discernible for its size. Steve didn't know the first thing about Tony's inventions besides the fact that they worked for him to use. He wasn't computer illiterate, but such progressiveness passed over his head. This, though – he knew it worked. Nat used it, after all.
"Is it getting anything?" Bucky asked in a murmur, standing planted with arms folded and staring at the computer at Steve's side.
"I reckon it is."
"You can tell?"
"That's what it usually does."
Bucky didn't speak until, after a long pause of silent staring at the screen, Steve glanced towards him. His eyebrow was slightly raised and he regarded Steve rather than the computer. "You involved in espionage much, Rogers?"
Steve smiled behind his scarf. "Not really," he muttered. "I'd rather get into the thick of things."
"Really? Wouldn't have picked it of you."
Steve smothered a chuckle.
He didn't know how long he had. He didn't know how long Tony's device would take to work. Steve didn't know if it could grab everything, or if the invisible cyber tentacles would be able to bypass the firewalls certainly installed. They had in the past, but the past was different. This was important, because Steve didn't know if he'd get the chance to break in again.
He didn't know this Karpov, but he could hope that anyone with an office and a guarded computer in the middle of a HYDRA base had to know something.
Steve would have waited forever, perhaps, except that Bucky heard something that he didn't. Or maybe his agitation went beyond what Steve perceived of him and he decided he'd waited long enough. "Steve, we're leaving."
"Now?"
"Now."
Steve pressed his lips together. Stark's symbol still flashed in taunting regret and Steve stared at it for a long moment before Bucky twitched at his side. He actually twitched. Then Steve yanked the drive it from the computer and strode after Bucky as Bucky in turn slipped silently to the door.
They made it from the office. They made it a whole two corridors from the office in the direction they'd come. Steve thought they might have even evaded the unseen guards, despite Bucky's persisting tension.
That was until an overloud and demanding cry of "Halt!" echoed off the empty walls around them.
"Run," Bucky ordered.
They ran.
It would have been a miracle had they made it from the base without a fight. Steve didn't really believe in miracles. Second chances, maybe, but not miracles.
Or at least he didn't really believe in miracles, but watching Bucky as he took out a trio of guards in a matter of seconds using nothing but his fists – Steve had to admit he was beginning to believe in the supernatural just a little bit.
They made it down three corridors, arcing around corners and leaping down the next with the slap of their footsteps their only company. Steve's hand rested compulsively on his pocket, upon Tony's gadget and the camera that was stashed there. The pictures would surely have been enough to incriminate the HYDRA base, but Steve was still neurotic – in this instance, if nothing else.
But the guards had spread. In the time Steve and Bucky had been in the Karpov's office, the guards had passed beyond the door in the only direction they could have taken through the labyrinthine underground nest. Steve should have expected it, but, pounding the tiled floors in Bucky's wake as they flowed into hard concrete instead, he still jerked when they came upon them. Steve still slowed, step catching for a moment because Should I attack them?
Bucky didn't slow.
He was upon them in an instant. All three of them strode down the corridor, carbines – actual carbines, and ridiculous for close quarters – unslung from their shoulders and hanging casually from their hands. They'd turned at the sound of Steve and Bucky's appearance, and the man in the middle managed a bark in sharp German. "Was bist du -?"
Bucky was upon him. He slammed into the man, and in an instant, the speaker's words choked into a grunt. Bucky grabbed him, spun into a half crouch, and the man sailed over his shoulder with a swing of Bucky's arm. The crack of his impact as he struck the ground rung through Steve to his bones.
The carbines rose and Steve was leaping forward, grabbing for his Glock. He didn't need to. He didn't even get the chance to raise it before Bucky was on the next one, all but flying through the air and launching a roundhouse kick that sent a second man flying into the wall. The third trained his carbine, but –
Bucky caught it. With his metallic hand, he caught the gun, jerked it in his hand, and it snapped. It actually snapped.
"Soldat? Fick -!" The man began, then he toppled to the ground. Steve couldn't blame him; the force of Bucky's fist to his face likely would have induced just the same effect from the hardiest man.
The three guards were felled. Steve darted his gaze between them – the one gasping and only half conscious on his back, the second crumpled in a heap beside the wall, the third with blood spurting from his nose and dribbling down either side of his face.
The Glock rested unused in Steve's hands. He hadn't really intended to use it, only to threaten, but to know that even that was unnecessary was… it was unnerving. For a long second, Steve stared at Bucky, at where Bucky stood in the middle of his toppled opponents that had been more like bowling pins than foes. He wasn't even breathing heavily.
"Bucky," Steve said quietly, and Bucky glanced towards him, his eyes dark and flat above the concealing weight of his scarf. "How did you -?"
"Not now," Bucky said shortly.
"Your arm," Steve said, a hint of demand, of urgency, to his words. "Bucky, you snapped the –"
"Steve, we're leaving," Bucky overrode him, and he turned on his heel to start in the opposite direction. Back the way they'd come. Steve understood that there was no leeway this time when he broke into a run without a backwards glance. Bucky wouldn't leave him behind, Steve knew, but he didn't want to be dragged after him either.
They nearly made it back to the first door they'd come across, its throbbing yellow light a beacon, when the alarm sounded. It began as a sudden, deafening wail, not even vaguely distant, and Steve spun in an instant. His Glock rose almost instinctively.
Bucky's hand clamped upon his shoulder. "Don't wait," he said, voice barely audible over the siren.
Steve snapped a glance his way. "But they're –"
"Don't. Wait." Bucky was almost glaring down the corridor in their wake.
"They'll know you?" Steve asked, then realised he didn't need to ask. "They'll know you. How many people in HYDRA can snap a gun with their bare hand."
"It doesn't matter," Bucky said, yanking him backwards a step.
"Bucky –"
"It doesn't matter, Steve. We're leaving." And then he really was. Diving into the darkness, Bucky disappeared almost immediately. Steve could either truly be left behind or follow in his wake.
He followed. Steve was always following Bucky in some way or another.
The night seemed colder as Steve hauled himself into it. Wider. Cleaner, after the claustrophobia of the underground, the corridors, the climb through the tunnel. Quieter, too, and Steve couldn't even hear the faintest echo of a siren from the hatch. Just how far down did it reach?
He didn't pause to ask Bucky, and mostly because Bucky was urging him from the hatch in a sweeping gesture of his hand. The metal lid clanged shut violently, the scuff of dirt from Bucky's swiped foot smothering the echoing ring. Then they were away.
Running.
Running, because Steve didn't trust that a hatch and a climb would be enough of a barrier between himself and HYDRA. Not with the pictures and the potential intelligence that he'd stolen.
They ran, then they were driving, and the empty parking lot, the smear of dark buildings, and the silence of the industrial area, was behind them. Steve spared a glance over his shoulder, down the stretch of mangled road that faded into smooth bitumen the further they fled away. Would the have tails? Would they be chased? He didn't know.
Clinging to Bucky's jacket, Steve grimly set his jaw and turned from the abandoned lot. He knew the location, if it would still even be there by the time he could rustle SHIELD together. He would be back.
The trip back to New York City and the street three blocks from Steve's house seemed longer than that going out. Steve wasn't sure what the time was, hadn't checked how long they'd been in the bunker for, and he didn't check throughout the drive. Holding onto Bucky, he bit his tongue on the torrent of questions that longed to spill forth on likely selectively-deaf ears. Bucky didn't glance towards him, but he still wondered. He still considered as he stared at Bucky's metal fingers curled around the grip of the Harley's handlebar.
When they slowed to a stop, Bucky didn't follow Steve as he unslung himself from the pillion. Leaning forward upon the handlebars, he drew his gaze from their downturned stare only to glance the way they'd come. A brief glance, something that seemed almost a nervous tick.
Steve didn't think Bucky got scared, or at least not in the conventional sense of the term, for conventional triggers, but he was clearly unsettled. It birthed only more questions, and Steve couldn't help but ask. In the relative quiet of the curb-side, folding his arms across his chest, Steve stared at Bucky unwaveringly as the words slipped out almost without his intention.
"Why? Why would you do this?"
"Steve –"
"They'll know who you are," Steve said, and abruptly he realised that his head was throbbing. Not in pain, but with something that felt a lot like fury; like anger and frustration and something that felt very much like fear that had nothing to do with himself. "There's no way they won't recognise it was you, even with that scarf on. What was it that man called you? Soldat, was it? Soldier? Bucky, unless HYRDA has invested in an army of hitmen with cybernetic arms, I'm pretty sure they'll know who's responsible."
Bucky didn't look up at him. That more than anything else was indication of his unease. Bucky always stared at Steve with the watchful eyes of a wary predator, but that night he'd barely spared him a glance. He shook his head shortly. "It doesn't matter. They'll overlook it."
Steve huffed his disbelief. "They'd overlook – "
"It wouldn't be the first time I've snapped like a madman and they've had to deal with it. Stop freaking out."
Steve swallowed. Not the first time? And 'snapped like a madman'? What did that mean, exactly? Steve wanted to know, as he always did, but at the same time he was almost certain he didn't want to hear of it at all. What could make Bucky snap? How bad could it be that he would snap?
"They won't let you go unpunished," Steve said quietly through clenched teeth. "Don't think I'm so stupid as to believe they would."
Bucky shrugged. "I knew that going into this," he said.
So simple. So blunt, and without even a question to incite it. Bucky's words slapped Steve like a blow to the face. He stared at where Bucky stood before him, arms leaning on his handlebars and head bowed between them. "Then why do it? Why would you do it?"
"Don't ask stupid questions."
"It's not a stupid question."
Bucky scoffed in what definitely wasn't a laugh, and dragged his gaze to the side. He regarded the road of their wake with slightly narrowed eyes, as though daring their passage to admit any potential pursuers. Then he shook his head slightly. "It's not that I give a fuck about killing people," he muttered in what Steve knew was a lie because Bucky, his Bucky, cared even if he didn't let himself believe he did. "I've done too much of it to bother me anymore. But that doesn't mean I know it's not wrong, and that some people – some people have a problem with that." He regarded Steve flatly without raising his head. "Guess I've always been a sucker for your stupid face."
"What?" Steve asked, frowning.
"Fuck, you're so stupid sometimes, Steve."
"Tell me," Steve said, and he wasn't sure which part he was referring to – Bucky's words, or those he hadn't said.
Bucky finally turned his regard from the road to Steve. His face might as well have been carved from stone, and Steve saw in that moment that there was so much – so much – that Bucky knew, that he'd done, that he was, that Steve still didn't understand. Not yet, anyway. It hurt a little to realise.
Then Bucky spoke and all such thoughts were shunted to the back of Steve's mind. "You've got more than a lot on your plate, Steve. HYDRA – that's what they're called here, but not everywhere. They're not just in New York; you've got to know that, right?" He stared at Steve with his familiar unblinking intentness. "Surely you know that. They're an infection, and New York's just gotten hit by it more recently."
"What are you talking about?" Steve said, hearing the policeman's command trickle into his words. He didn't mean to, but that was the way it was; this was abruptly all business.
Bucky didn't pull him up on it. For once, he didn't make a jibe about foolish and arrogant officers and how they were hypocrites when they weren't simply blindly righteous. "Like you always are," Bucky would say.
Except that instead, with that unwavering stare that seemed to block out everything else from Steve's world, Bucky continued. "They were birthed in Germany. Prussia it was at the time, if you can believe it. Dropped by Switzerland and that's where they found the doctor. About up in Россия –" he paused and said something distinctly Russian that sounded as fierce as Nat's curses, " – then bled over into the US. This is just the tail end of it."
Steve shook his head slowly. Such a possibility, so far reaching, was inconceivable. "That's…"
"That's what happened," Bucky said, and spared another glance over his shoulder. Steve hadn't heard anything but he looked too. "They go way back. Early twentieth century."
"I don't…" Steve began, but it wasn't in denial. Disbelief made his skin tingle, his heartbeat throb in his head. The darkness grew suddenly sharper, more detailed, and yet darker. What Bucky was saying…
It was so much bigger than he'd imagined. So much bigger as to be impossible – and yet it wasn't. Steve believed Bucky. He'd always believe him. He hadn't gleaned much from Zola's files, and his German and French was spotty at best, but he believed it. It was just unbelievable that such a thing could span beyond what already plagued New York. HYDRA had been a presence in the criminal world, an organisation targeted by SHIELD and the force as a whole, for nearly ten years. They were villains, leaving destruction and disaster in their wake. That it would extend beyond the city…?
Steve believed Bucky – he just wished it wasn't true. It made the prospect of HYRA all the greater and all the harder to destroy. Steve found himself reaching for the drive stuffed in his pocket, just to feel the outline of its shape. To know it was still there.
Bucky saw him do it. Steve saw as Bucky watched him trace the shape. The tension rippling off of Bucky's shoulders was tangible, and even more so when, after another glance over his shoulder, he folded his arms across his chest.
"You're a good little policeman, right, Steve?" Bucky said, pinning him with his stare, dark and intent and insistent. "This's what you do. You protect your city and take these HYDRA bastards down 'cause I sure as fuck can't do it myself. This head they've got sticking all the way out to New York?" He shook his own slightly. "This isn't anything on what they've already done to the cities they've left behind them."
"You've seen them?" Steve asked, and his voice was so hushed it was almost a croak.
Bucky's expression, impossibly, hardened even further. "I've seen them. And I'll tell you this: I'm never fucking going back to Russia."
The SHIELD basement was empty. Startlingly empty, and not because Steve hadn't seen it so before. He'd woken up alone in the basement with only a blanket draped over him by an altruistic colleague just as he'd draped them over his friends countless times himself.
It was startling because so much had happened that night. Steve had learned so much – too much, even – and it was throwing him. HYDRA was huge. It was impossibly huge, and as slippery as a snake. It had seemed an impossible task to Steve for years, and despite sticking to his morals and trying and trying and trying, he'd half accepted it as much. To learn the HYDRA didn't even stop at his own city?
Steve was only a policeman. A member of a special force, perhaps, but only that. He'd never heard that 'only' quite so loudly as he did in that moment.
Striding through the darkness and ignoring the splutter of lights that flared to life at his presence – courtesy of Tony's installations – he made his way to Fury's office. All the lines in the SHIELD basement were supposed to be secure, but Fury's, Steve knew, would be doubly so. More than that, Fury would know immediately that something was up should Steve call him from his own phone.
Which he did. Fury picked up on the second ring.
"You better have a good reason," he said shortly.
"Fury," Steve said by way of greeting. "We need to talk."
Fury was instantly attentive. Steve heard it in his silence, in the way he didn't snap back another condescending retort. Steve only had a moment to pause, to think of what he was going to say – about Zola, about Bucky – before his tongue was speaking for him. "I got a lead."
"Who?" Fury said, attentiveness even sharper. Typical of Fury, he didn't waste time with asking the 'how's and the 'what's. 'Who' was infinitely more relevant in determining the usefulness of the intel.
Except Steve shook his head. "It doesn't matter. But it's legit. And we need everyone on deck right now."
It was a testament to how much faith Fury put in his operatives that he didn't question further. There was a moment of static silence, then Fury grunted. "Hold fast, Rogers. Stay put right where you are."
"I'll call –"
"I've got it handled," Fury interrupted him. "You hold fast. I'll have the team pull ranks immediately."
Then he hung up. The line deadened in Steve's hand and he was left holding the worn plastic, staring into the dark chaos that was Fury's office. To think of everything HYDRA and everything Bucky.
And wait.
