Chapter Nine
The soup had some kind of rice and a lot of spices in it. It was hot—nothing Bucky had had to eat for the past few months had been hot. It scalded his tongue the first time he took a sip, so he resolved to eat it slowly.
As dangerous as it was to have any opinion, he felt that he liked it. Yet he could hardly seem to touch the food. Two voices—the voice of the new woman and...Steve—hovered at the edge of his hearing, and try as he might, he couldn't ignore what they were saying. He eventually set down the spoon, lifted his head, and turned towards the hall.
"Ah. Can't eat 'cause your buddy's upset, huh?"
Bucky whipped his head back to the front, which made it smart. He'd forgotten about the other man sitting at the table in front of him.
He was smiling. Normally that indicated no ill will. And there was something else in it...something Bucky didn't recognize.
Bucky lowered his eyes, trying to hide on the other side of the table. "I tore off your wings," he said quietly. "And kicked you. You fell."
The other man raised his eyebrow and snorted. "Yeah, and it was a pretty long way down, too."
There was something unusual in his expression. Watchfulness. Bucky hadn't seen that in Steve, and it made him nervous.
This man knew who he was and what he was capable of.
So Bucky just looked at him, the unsaid question of why are you helping me? hanging in the air.
"Steve was looking everywhere for you, yannow." The other man yawned, showing a gap in his teeth, and scrubbed his face with one hand. "Wouldn't give up short of death. That's why we're all here, up eating soup at a godforsaken time in the morning. All for you."
Bucky turned his head slightly and didn't answer.
"Guess I should be happy he got you back. I just want a nap. Probably easier to be happy in the morning." He threw an arm over the back of his chair and slumped on it. "But fact is, Steve is my friend. I'd go to hell and back for 'im. Probably how he feels about you too."
Bucky just looked at him.
The other man smiled again. "Chatty, aren't you?"
"Who are you?" rasped Bucky.
His expression finally turned serious. "My name's Sam."
Everyone around here seems so sure of their names...Bucky thought to himself.
Why aren't I?
That's when he heard footsteps come back through the doorway, and when he looked up, there was Steve.
Steve hoped his eyes weren't as red as they felt as he took a seat beside Bucky. He gave his friend a valiant attempt at a smile. Bucky looked at him for a long second.
"Feeling better?" asked Sam from across the table.
Steve exhaled heavily. "Yeah."
Bucky dipped his spoon into the bowl in front of him and took a few mouthfuls of soup.
"Hah. I knew it." Sam smirked in victory, but there was something gentle and kind about it.
Before Steve could ask what that meant, Bucky wiped his scraggly beard with the back of his sleeve and turned to Steve. "You were crying," he said quietly.
It was all Steve could do not to show his disappointment. "Is it that obvious?"
Bucky looked unsure for a moment, but then he reached up with his flesh hand and gently, carefully touched under Steve's eyes.
Steve sat very still and watched him. His ears rang a little with how silent the room had become.
Bucky moved his hand to the side of Steve's face and held on loosely, just barely propping up his jaw.
Steve shut his eyes and swallowed heavily. He couldn't have described if he tried how good it felt to have Bucky reaching out and trying to comfort him.
Bucky shifted that hand down to Steve's shoulder and started to rub in mechanical circles. Two little creases had shown up between his eyebrows, he was frowning so hard. But then he reached down with his free hand, shifted his chair closer to Steve, and threw his arm fully over Steve's shoulders.
"I used to do this," he whispered, his head right by Steve's ear.
And that was just too much.
If Steve had tried to count the times he'd wished to feel Bucky's arm on his shoulders after he'd crashed the plane, he would have run out of numbers. He put his face in his hands and just let the tears come back.
Finally, finally he had his brother again.
Bucky froze a little, watching Steve's face with a mix of fear and worry, but he seemed to regain his resolve and moved a little closer.
"My god," whispered Sam. If Steve didn't have the serum, he wouldn't have heard it.
"Remind you of somebody?" asked Clint, elsewhere in the room.
"Maybe a little," answered Natasha, and she sounded like she was smiling.
It took him a few moments, but Steve finally calmed down enough to smile at Bucky. "Thank you," he said, and his voice was mercifully steady. "I missed this."
Bucky took his arm off Steve's shoulders and stared at the table. "I hurt you," he said, frowning. "This is because of me."
Steve sighed. "It's okay." He reached across Bucky and set his hand on top of Bucky's metal one. "I knew this was going to be rough. It's not all bad."
Bucky stared at their overlapping hands for a second. He looked unsure.
"I can take it." Steve mustered the best smile he possibly could. "It's worth it just to have you here."
Bucky was thinking hard. He bit his lip and asked slowly, "Is this...what...the woman—Carter—talked about?"
Steve had to take a deep breath in at that, but he managed to control himself otherwise. "What did Peggy call it, Buck?" he asked quietly.
Bucky was staring harder than ever at their hands. "Love."
Steve's heart broke into a million pieces and healed up all at once. He grinned like it would break his face. "Y-yeah," he managed. "Yeah, it is."
It was almost morning. There were still a few hours to go until dawn, but Steve could hear the birds already chirping outside.
He felt like he was going to collapse. This was the first time in months that he hadn't gotten a full night's rest. That and the emotions of the day were a potent combination to bring him down.
Clint had already punched out and gone to sleep. He'd had a long night. But for Steve, there was one last issue that had to be resolved.
"All of the HYDRA bases we found destroyed around D.C.," Steve began. "That was you?"
Bucky was sitting on the couch in the den, and he looked up with surprise and an edge of terror in his eyes. Then he nodded.
Sam whistled. "Remind me never to cross threads with you again."
Bucky just gave him a steady look.
"There will be more," said Natasha. "There always are, with people like this. We're lucky to have found you," she said to Bucky, "but the information on the scepter is still out there, and so is the threat to us and ours. You can't stop now."
"You want me to neutralize them?" asked Bucky.
The other three people in the room went silent.
"Not now," Steve finally answered, biting down the terror at the idea of his best friend facing the people who'd put him in a state like this. "Not until we all get some sleep and I know that you won't—that you're going to be okay."
Bucky stared at the floor and nodded.
"But after that..." Steve turned to Natasha, who raised an eyebrow at him. She didn't smile, but he could read approval in her expression.
Steve bent down and took Bucky's hand. "After that, I'd be honored to fight beside you again. If that's what you want."
Bucky's face was expressionless, but the look he gave Steve was level and calm.
He might not have known how to make his own choices yet, but that was enough for now.
"They hurt me." Bucky's voice rasped, and his eyes darted around in fear. "I don't really remember all of it, but I know..." He bit his lip.
"They took away everything that was you," Steve said, his heart breaking. "They put a killer in your place instead."
Bucky looked horror-stricken. "How?" He stared right at Steve, begging for an answer. "What did they do to me?"
Steve opened his mouth, shook his head, and shut it again.
It all hurt too much.
"We don't know the details of that," Sam spoke up gently. "It's as fuzzy to us as it is to you."
Sam turned to Steve and raised an eyebrow, as if to check for affirmation, and then he pulled something off the top of a nearby shelf. "All we know is in this folder."
Steve sat up a little, recognizing the Russian on the cover. When he stole a look at Bucky, he saw that Bucky was staring at it like the thing was his lifeblood.
Sam shrugged. "Can't read half of it, because it's in Russian. Maybe you'll have better luck."
Bucky was looking at Steve, a timid, hopeful look on his face.
Steve heaved a sigh. "There's some pretty heavy stuff in there, Buck. But if you want to know, you deserve to know. It's yours."
Sam nodded and set the folder on the coffee table in front of Bucky. Bucky didn't pick it up; he just stared at it.
Steve wondered what kind of a turned-around world they lived in that someone would want to know how he was tortured.
"Nat. Can I ask a favor?"
It was just an hour before dawn, and everyone had finally settled down enough to sleep. Natasha turned around to see Steve behind her standing in the hall.
He looked nervous.
"You can definitely ask," she said lightly. "Doesn't mean I'll do it."
Steve didn't laugh.
She stepped forward and looked up at him. "What is it?"
He sighed. "When we first found Bucky—and a few times afterward—he's speaking Russian. I don't know why."
Natasha nodded. She set her lips in a line. "Soviet handlers. It was probably the language of his commands."
Steve looked like his heart had broken for the nth time tonight.
"Hey." She made him raise his chin a little bit. "What's the favor?"
His eyes got a bit of their brightness back.
"Bucky."
He was sitting on the couch in Steve's living room, but he looked up as soon as he heard the familiar voice.
Steve was back. The expression on his face looked like fear, but also like love.
"Ya..." Steve looked back at the woman who stood in the doorway.
She nodded. She was watching Bucky. He couldn't read her expression.
For his part, Bucky had sat up ramrod straight at the sound of that language. Something cold and fretful was boiling in his stomach.
Steve took a deep breath, and his voice shook as he said, "Ya lyublyu tebya."
Bucky felt his eyes go wide.
"I know this isn't going to be easy," Steve ran on. "I know this is hard, and you've been through so much, and I can't fix all of it. But I want you to know that I care. I'll be here. If I can just be your friend, that's all I ask for. From now on, it's going to be different. You're safe."
He took another deep breath and turned to the woman. "How do you say 'I will never hurt you'?"
"Ya nikogda ne prichinyu tebe vreda," she said softly.
Bucky recognized her expression now.
It was how Carter had looked at him.
Steve's smile looked a little bit broken. "Y-yeah, I can't," he said. "I'm not that good."
Bucky couldn't take his eyes off of Steve. He knew those words. He knew what they meant. He'd heard them before—maybe separately, possibly strung together. But never directed at him. Never for him.
Ya lyublyu tebya.
I love you.
"Ya lyublyu tebya. I l-love you." He could hear his own voice shaking.
Steve smiled like it would break his face and put his arms around him and held him. Bucky grabbed two fists full of the fabric of Steve's shirt and leaned into it.
Nothing in the world felt better than when Steve held him.
The woman—Natasha?—looked on and smiled.
Steve laughed a little into his shoulder, but it sounded choked and wrong. "We were stupid not to say it sooner, huh, Buck?" he asked.
Bucky was thinking as hard as he could. Steve had said that he could choose his own mission. The thought still terrified him to no end (what if I choose wrong what if there's punishment what if I fail what if what if), but at least he knew this.
His old handlers were dead.
He was with Steve now.
Steve said he was free. He could choose.
His mission was his own.
"Protect you," Bucky said shakily, and was almost surprised by the sound of his own voice. "I'm going to protect you."
Steve pulled away from him and stared for a moment, but then he smiled the biggest Bucky had ever seen it.
It felt like something familiar.
"Okay, Buck," he said. "If that's what you want."
Bucky looked up at Steve.
Mission: Eliminate Captain America: Nullified. Cancelled.
Mission: Protect Steve Rogers.
Bucky smiled.
tbc...
A/N: Whoo! Buck making his own choices!
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