Chapter 8 – The Morning After The Night Before

Diana woke when Bucky did. Somehow, he'd turned back over and put his arms around her in the night, and she was now curled up to him with her head on his chest. At least she was warm, she thought fuzzily as he moved his arm carefully off her back. Opening her eyes blearily, she realised she could see him. There was a faint grey light in the cave.

"Oh, fuck," she scrambled up, struggling out of her sleeping back. "Sun's well up, we need to go."

"What?" he blinked at her, nevertheless quickly gathering their things, yanking his boots on. "It's barely dawn."

"We're in a west-facing cave, Bucky: there's full sunlight down there on the valley floor!"

"How long will it take to get to the airfield?" he asked as they headed down to get the horses.

"Depends," she said crisply, and then seeing his frustrated expression, took out her map and folded it to show him. "Look, we're here. Near the southern tip of the lake, where the dam is. From there, the river runs down into the lower dam, the Wivenhoe. There's a couple of places where it's shallow enough to ford on horseback if – and I mean if – the sluice gates aren't open. Otherwise we'll have to go down to the road, which is about another five kilometres, and cross on this bridge, because the airfield is here on the western side of the lake, so we have to get across." Her finger slid across the map. "There's no other bridge."

"We'll still have to cross the road somewhere," Bucky pointed out, looking at the road she pointed out, which curved up the western side of the lake after crossing the river some distance below the dam.

"Yes," she said, "but there's plenty of isolated spots. That bridge, though," she tapped her finger on the map, "if they suspect we came this way, they'll be on that bridge watching for us. And they'd have had the sluice gates opened so we have no choice."

"Well," Bucky said, "then I guess we'll know once we get south of the dam wall, won't we? If the gates are open, then they'll be waiting for us."

"Not necessarily," Diana folded the map and climbed stiffly up into the saddle, barely suppressing a groan. "It's been a wet year. There's plenty of water in the lake and they regularly drain some down into Wivenhoe."

"No sense worrying about it just yet," Bucky decided with a shrug, swinging up easily. He caught the dirty look Diana shot him and grinned, guessing she was resenting him for not being sore. "Sorry."

"You could at least pretend it hurts," she scoffed.

"Ohh," he put a hand to his hip, fake groaning, "I'm so stiff!"

She cracked up laughing, almost falling off her horse. "Christ, Barnes, you sound like you're in a bad porno!"

"A what?" he frowned at her in confusion, only making her laugh harder.

"Oh my God, you've got a lot to catch up on, but I'm not helping you out with that one!"

Bucky found himself laughing too as he followed Diana. She was quite a dame, he mused, watching her shapely arse shift in the saddle as she ducked under a low-hanging tree branch. For the first time in a very, very long time, his cock twitched with interest.

Not now and not her, he told himself firmly. The time and place couldn't be less appropriate, and Diana was a decent woman who really didn't deserve a fucked-up bastard like him in her life. She did make him laugh, though, more than he ever remembered a dame doing even when he had been Bucky Barnes for real and not just a schizophrenic assassin with Bucky's memories in his head. And she sure was pretty.

It was no hardship to look at her, even tired and grubby after a night sleeping rough, with her long curly chestnut hair stuffed up under an ugly battered hat. Bucky lost himself – that part of himself that wasn't constantly alert for danger – in watching Diana, the way she moved easily with the horse despite her stiffness, the serene calm she seemed almost to radiate. She turned back and smiled at him, beckoning him to bring his horse up alongside her, and he obeyed.

"We might be in luck. Listen."

He listened, looking at her strangely. There was very little to hear: the wind in the trees, birdsong, occasional rustling of animals in the bush. "What am I listening for?"

"It's what I can't hear. I can't hear four massive waterfalls pouring out of the sluice gates." She pointed through the trees, and he realised that they were almost level with the lip of the dam. It was pretty full, the water only about two or three metres below the top of the wall, but Diana was right. At this range they'd be able to hear the water if it was being released.

"We'll have to go on foot for a while, lead the horses. The ground gets really bad," she warned, and Bucky dismounted and followed her unquestioningly.

It was a rough, steep scramble down the eastern side of the valley, and there wasn't much cover for a while. Bucky felt itchy between his shoulder blades, staring up at the dam wall, but there was no one up there, and on the other side of the lake there weren't many vantage points. They weren't exposed for long, and then they were back in the trees, riding alongside the river.

Two small permanent gates were open in the dam, controlling a steady flow along the river, but he could see the four massive ones that Diana had been talking about, and having seen the terrain, realised she had to be right. If HYDRA had even suspected they were coming this way, there would have been snipers atop the dam wall waiting for them and those sluices would have been open to block their way across the river.

"There can't be another tracker in me," he said to Diana as they lost themselves among the trees once more. "This would have been the perfect spot for an ambush. We could cross at that bridge if we need to."

"We don't need to," Diana replied calmly, checking her map again. "The ford's less than a kilometre downstream from here. The river spreads right out in a shallow spot."

"Thank you for getting me out," he said impulsively fifteen minutes later, as the horses splashed their way across the river. Diana shot him an enquiring look. "You've done a lot to help me, and all you really know about me is that I helped kidnap your friend two days ago."

"And then helped her escape. Besides, I don't think that was really you that kidnapped Jen, was it?" Diana said, before realising that she was setting him off on subjects she wasn't supposed to again. Shit.

"Sort of. And sort of not." He looked down. "It's hard to explain. When I – when Soldier – is given an order by a handler, it becomes – painful – not to carry it out."

"I'm really not supposed to be talking to you about this stuff," Diana said after they rode on in silence for a few minutes. "I think it's supposed to wait until you get back Stateside to be debriefed."

"If they're gonna try and open more of these doors in my head, I'll pass, thanks," Bucky said bluntly. "I think I can learn to live with what's in my head now. I know there's more – all too much more – but I don't want to know the details."

There wasn't really a lot Diana could say to that. She nodded silently, and then pointed ahead. "We're coming up on the road. It's really quiet, but we'll have to cross about a hundred metres of open ground."

Bucky clearly didn't like being exposed for even the short period of time it took to trot the horses across the open area and across the road, but not a single car came past and they were soon into the trees again.

"All right, how far to the airfield?" he wasn't relaxed by a long shot, but some of the tension had visibly gone out of him once they were under cover.

"It would be a couple of hours, but we're not going straight there." Diana held up a hand when he started to question again. "I want to drop the horses off with a friend who will see that they get back to Aunt Vivi, and we'll get the same friend to give us a lift to the airfield in his truck. It's up on an open plateau and two horse riders up there would be pretty visible. You need to trust me, Bucky, okay? I'm the one with the local knowledge here."

His head hurt. Trust was – not a concept he understood. Orders, he understood just fine. But Diana wasn't ordering him, she was asking him to accept her decisions, and it wasn't easy. The Winter Soldier in him wanted to head on in with the sniper rifle, kill everyone at the airfield and commandeer the fastest plane they could find. But that wasn't exactly a method designed to keep them covert, so he kept silent and followed Diana's lead.

She made him wait alone in the cover of the trees while she took the two horses over to the friend's house, and fifteen minutes later she returned, riding alongside an old guy in a very battered old pickup truck.

"This is Maurice," she introduced the old guy, "Uncle Morrie, this is James."

"Huh," the old guy grunted, squinting at Bucky from under a hat even more battered than the truck. That appeared to be the limit of his conversation, for which Bucky was extremely grateful, and ten minutes later they were being dropped off at a gate.

"Where…" he looked around blankly, and then spotted a windsock hanging from a pole.

"It's a grass runway. There's some small hangars up there," Diana waved to Maurice as he drove away, and then clambered over the gate. "Come on."

They walked through the grassy field. Bucky hated every second of it. He felt open and exposed, there was absolutely no cover. A helicopter gunship could sweep up on them and raze them both in a second. His rifle wasn't even assembled, Diana had made him break it down and put it in his pack, and she had stowed her pistol away too. He was shaking and sweating by the time they got to the small row of hangars.

"Barnes," Diana didn't touch him, but stood at a small distance eyeing him warily. "Are you all right? The third hangar along is where my friend keeps his plane. He has a small apartment in back, so if he's not here we can crash there for a little while. No one's gonna see us." She extended her hand towards him slowly, a little surprised when he clutched at it like a lifeline. "It's all right. Come on." She kept her voice low and soothing, and after a couple of minutes he was able to get his feet moving.

Diana led him to the indicated hangar, counted a sequence of bricks in the side wall and slid out a seemingly-solid brick to produce a key. Bucky raised his eyebrows at her, and she grinned in response.

"I know Tod's not here." She gestured to a seemingly random piece of red thread dangling from the bars of a small window. "He's former Special Forces," when he still looked inquiring. "Was in the troop with my husband and Jen's brother. We've stayed friends. I've often stopped here in my chopper to visit."

It astonished Bucky that he could still feel jealousy, but when they got into the small apartment and he saw that there was only one bed, he wondered just how close friends Diana and this Tod were. She seemed quite at home, checking the fridge and freezer.

"He's not gone for long, there's fresh milk and bread here," she called. "Probably just out on a day flight. He does take tourist parachutists up sometimes."

Bucky had by now thoroughly searched the place. He ended up standing at the kitchen door watching Diana as she pulled out food and started cooking. "Omelettes sound good?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder to see him standing, watching her silently.

He had to think about it. "Yeah. Haven't had an omelette in a long time."

"You'll like mine." She was dicing vegetables and ham, whisking eggs, humming softly as she did so. "For heaven's sake, stop looming and sit down. Want coffee?"

"Yes. Please." He hesitated. "Your friend won't mind this?"

"He's pulled this stunt on me more times than I care to count," she said with a grin, looking over her shoulder at him again as she started the coffeemaker. "He'll be back by nightfall anyway. His plane doesn't have night flight capabilities, so we'll be stuck here until morning."

Bucky really didn't like that idea, she could see it in the way his hands clenched on the edge of the table. The wood squeaked as the metal hand compressed it.

"I trust him, Barnes. My husband trusted him with his life, so did Jen's brother, and he had their back. He's one of the good guys."

He wanted to ask why Tod had left the military, but when the small plane rolled into the hangar late that afternoon and he met the former soldier, he understood at once. Because Tod was missing his left leg below the knee. He had a crude prosthetic on, and was wearing shorts so it was clearly visible.

"IED in Afghanistan," Diana murmured quietly as she saw Bucky staring at Tod's leg. "You've got something in common, huh?"

Tod turned out to be a pleasant, if quiet, guy, especially once he found out Bucky had a prosthetic arm. Bucky was careful not to show off its capabilities, and since he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt only the hand was visible anyway. He told Tod that he lost his arm falling off a train, which was the truth.

Diana led Tod off for a long, quiet conversation. Bucky itched to go after them and listen but realised that they didn't want him to hear, and after a while they came back. Tod gave him a short nod, went into the bedroom and closed the door.

"We can take the plane at first light," Diana came and sat down beside Bucky on the tiny couch. "Tod will get another pilot to fly him down to Amberley AFB and collect my chopper, bring it back here. Then he'll get a commercial flight up to Darwin to pick up his plane."

"Is that where we're headed?"

"Yeah." She smiled at his doubtful look and squinched brow as he tried to remember the geography of this large, bare continent. "Trust me, Barnes. I've been flying helicopters and light aircraft across this wide brown land for quite a few years now. We'll kangaroo-hop between half a dozen small airfields like this one, just like dozens of other bush pilots do every day, and absolutely no one will even notice us. There's a nice big military base at Darwin and I've got friends there too. We can hide out as long as we need to until your buddies can get back with paperwork for you."

"What about you? If HYDRA find out you helped me, they won't leave enough of you to bury," he warned. "You need to get out of the country. Come where I can protect you."

"Your mission isn't to protect me, Soldier," she quirked an eyebrow at him.

"Soldier doesn't give a shit about you. Bucky Barnes does," he stared right back at her.

Surprised, Diana took a moment to process that. And then she smiled. "Bucky, that is really nice of you. I'll make you a deal. If Tod has had no trouble getting my chopper back when we meet him in Darwin, I'm coming back here with him and going back to my normal life. If he thinks there is anything at all suspicious – and he's a very suspicious man by nature – I'll fly out with you guys."

"All right," he acquiesced after a moment, seeing that her eyes were narrowed and her chin firmed. He looked around then. "You should get some rest."

"You too."

He shook his head. "I've had more sleep in the last couple of nights than I'd normally get in a week. I'm good. I feel," he stopped to consider how to describe the unfamiliar emotion. "I feel that I need to do something useful. I've just been following along ever since you and Barton picked me up. I want to go out and patrol the airfield. No one will see me, don't worry."

"I'm more worried about you getting startled by something and hurting someone by accident," Diana said honestly.

That – was probably fair enough. Bucky had no idea what might trigger the Soldier. He frowned, thinking about it. "Give me orders, then."

Diana blinked, one side of her mouth curling up in a crooked grin. "Well, now there's an offer."

Confused, Bucky blinked at her, and she shook her head. "Never mind. All right." She considered for a minute. "Soldier," she said finally. "Patrol the airfield. Remain covert and do not alert anyone to our presence. If armed forces enter the area, avoid engaging if possible and return here to alert me. Complete your patrol and return here before dawn."

"Yes, ma'am," he saluted her, and was gone, slipping out into the night.

Diana curled up to sleep on the couch – not the first time she'd crashed on Tod's couch, and at least this time she had a sleeping bag – but couldn't rest. She lay staring up at the dark ceiling, wondering about Bucky and what would become of him. He was a very broken man, suffering possibly the world's worst case of PTSD combined with induced schizophrenia. The poor guy was probably going to spend most of the rest of his life getting his head read, and that's if the Powers That Be didn't just decide it was all too difficult and lock him up.

Sleep was a long time coming, but in the end Diana drifted off.

Bucky woke her at dawn with a hand on her shoulder. Diana shot upright, alarmed for a moment, and then nodded when he hushed her.

"All quiet. No suspicious movement around the airfield. I heard helicopters during the night on the other side of the lake, though."

"They're looking for you," Diana said grimly. "The sooner we get out of here, the better."

Tod came out a few minutes later and quietly helped Diana prepare the plane for takeoff, filling the fuel tanks and doing pre-flight checks. Bucky prowled, feeling useless again, until Diana asked him to check their weapons. They ate a hasty meal of toast and left, Diana thanking Tod profusely. The former soldier just shook his head gruffly.

"I owe Paul a good deal more than this, Di."

"Thank you anyway. I'll be in touch."

Tod just nodded and headed for another hangar, where a friend was preparing another light plane to go out.

It was another clever bit of subterfuge, Bucky realised. Four planes took off in the space of ten minutes, all heading off in different directions. Diana took them out last, heading due west for a while – the least likely escape route, as she pointed out, since west had them heading into the vast empty interior of the continent.

They flew for four hours before landing at another small airfield and refuelling. Diana had packed sandwiches for lunch, which they shared in the air after taking off again.

"Are you tired?" Bucky asked in the late afternoon, after their second fuel stop. The plane had no autopilot, so Diana was flying manually all the time, and they'd been battling some strong updrafts for the last hour. She was regularly shifting in her seat, obviously uncomfortable, sore from two long days on horseback and now many hours of flying.

"Kinda," she replied through the headset. "Not much longer, though, until we stop for the night. We've made good time."

She'd been speaking on the radio, very rarely, checking in with a few small airfields and ground stations along the way. Talking to other small craft pilots when they saw one in the distance. Bucky couldn't hear the incoming transmissions, could only hear when Diana spoke, but he knew something had happened when she stiffened, her hand coming up to her ear.

"What is it?" he asked impatiently, but she waved him to silence. He waited, pressing the tip of the finger and thumb of his metal hand together in a nervous tic he'd picked up over the years. The sensation was strange, different to how it felt when he made the motion with his real hand.

At length Diana pushed a button and looked across at Bucky. "There was an explosion at Amberley AFB."

"When?" he barked.

"Just a few minutes ago. I didn't ask questions, didn't want to draw attention to us, so I just listened in on the chatter. They're saying a helicopter took off and exploded once it hit five hundred feet." Her voice sounded choked. "No more detail than that, but I think you can guess the rest."

He could indeed. HYDRA had figured out that at least some of their targets had used the chopper to escape, though Bucky could hope they didn't think he was still out there. Remembering the helicopters searching on the other side of the lake last night though, he suspected that was a forlorn hope. But even knowing that their targets had gone, HYDRA had rigged the chopper to blow. A petty revenge, but one that had killed a good man.

"I'm sorry about Tod," Bucky said quietly.

Diana didn't say anything, but he saw her swipe roughly at her eyes. "He deserved better," was all she said.

They landed some forty minutes later on a tiny private airstrip. "Cattle station," Diana said tersely when Bucky asked. "I know the owners slightly. They run a sort of small guesthouse for overnighting pilots. It's not fancy, but it'll do." She was chewing on her thumbnail as they gathered their things and walked towards the small, barnlike structure at one end of the strip.

"Where are we?" Bucky asked eventually. They'd shared dinner with the station owners, a pleasant older couple, and then gone down to the barn which was a sort of bunkhouse. It wasn't fancy, as Diana said, but it was a bed for the night and she, at least, would need to rest.

"Just on the eastern side of the Queensland-Northern Territory border. A long way from any town. Mount Isa's the closest, but it's a good hour from here by road. Gravel track, rather. Roads are few and far between out here."

He'd seen that as they were flying. Huge expanses of apparently trackless wilderness. "So what are you looking worried about?"

Diana chewed harder on her thumbnail. "The plane." Bucky just looked at her, waiting for her to explain. Diana stood up and paced around the room. "HYDRA had to have someone at Amberley to rig the chopper to blow, right?" She didn't wait for Bucky's nod before continuing. "We have to assume that Clint and the others got out all right, since we haven't heard about any other major incidents. They weren't looking for them at Amberley. Only figured out afterwards that they came in on the chopper."

Bucky frowned. "I'm not following."

"Tod would have had to show ID to get on the base to collect the chopper. So if HYDRA had someone at the base, they knew who he was. And the chopper was registered in my name. A cursory search would connect Tod as having been in my husband's regiment; therefore a likely person I'd turn to for help. When HYDRA go looking at his place and find his plane gone, they're going to start looking for the plane. I disabled the transponder before we even took off and I've been changing call signs all day, but if HYDRA have access to satellite data they could probably track us, as we can only fly in daylight hours."

"They have satellite access," Bucky said, worry suddenly coiling in his gut. "Shit. You should have asked Tod to wait a couple of days before going to get the chopper."

"I know." Diana dropped her head. "And I hate myself for thinking this way. Because Tod would still have been killed but at least we'd have gotten away clear."

"We have to leave. Now."

"I told you, I can't fly the plane at night! It's not equipped."

"Not by plane. Too easily tracked. By land. I'm sure our hosts have a vehicle."

Diana thought they should ask. Bucky was adamant that they shouldn't. Plausible deniability, he said. And since their hosts lived so far from anywhere that they'd simply left the keys in their pickup truck, they didn't even have to ask. Not that Diana couldn't have hot-wired it anyway, but she didn't mention that.

Fortunately the truck was kept in an out-building far enough from the main house they wouldn't be heard. Bucky drove, after taking a few minutes to figure out the pickup's gear shift. He hadn't driven a car for a long time, not that he mentioned that to Diana. She was exhausted, moving more stiffly by the minute.

She directed him on the rough gravel tracks, shining her tiny penlight at the map each time they came to a fork – only a couple of times. Bucky had expected them to be on the tracks for an hour before they reached the town she'd mentioned, but it was only twenty minutes or so before he saw headlights crossing in the distance, on what looked like a bigger road.

"There it is," Diana folded the map, clicked off the light and sat back with a sigh. "The Barkly Highway. Head west about two hundred kilometres, then when you get to the Three Ways roadhouse head north for Darwin. It's about another eleven hundred kays from there." She leaned over him to look at the fuel gauge. "Wake me at Three Ways and we'll stop for fuel."

She curled up in the seat, leaned her cheek against the window and was asleep in under a minute. Bucky glanced over at her and shook his head. A lot more tired even than she'd looked, then. Well. Up to him for a while.

He focussed on the highway they were joining. It was paved, at least, but very quiet, only an occasional car or truck moving along it. He pulled out after a big truck heading westbound and pressed his foot on the accelerator.

OK, so Diana and Bucky are on the road, middle of the night, in the vast empty north of Australia. HYDRA are on their trail, but they should be safe – for now.

So let's head off and find out what all our other friends are up to!