SUMMARY: Guess what?
•
What . . . in heaven's name . . . was happening.
Had he just . . . been . . . with Bucky?
He was lying flat on his back in his bed soaking wet. Like he had just gotten out of a lake. Except that— he looked down at himself. No, he was perfectly dry.
He fell back on the pillows, confused. Closing his eyes, he tried to catch the images from the dream. There had been . . . He'd fallen into multicolored waters, but maybe that was from the memory of that lake of multicolored flowers he'd seen in the Connected Realm. But then . . . there'd also been a green lake in his dream. But that too seemed from just recently thinking about that lake outside of Lisbon where Bucky had jumped in after him. But . . . in the dream Bucky had been there, holding him tightly, somehow struggling with him. Then he remembered . . . a beach and a forest. But a sight like something out of a fantasy painting. And then he had looked down to find Bucky under him. He had seen Bucky.
Although not quite. Bucky too had seemed more like a color painting, like an impression of Bucky. But Bucky had on a type of fitted cover on his arm that he had never seen before. In a color that hadn't been in that box.
He'd even spoken to him.
But he couldn't remember what he had said.
But even as he tried to hold the thoughts, the images wafted away, like blowing at smoke, leaving only the sensation . . . of fading pleasure.
It seemed . . . Bucky had kissed him.
On the mouth.
Letting out a long, silent breath, he laid back down and simply did what he'd been doing for days now. He just let it go.
—
Inside the Quinjet's empty cargo hold, he put his arm against the bulkhead, taking a moment to pull himself together. For days, ever since his dream of Bucky appearing and saying to meet him in Wonderland, he'd been swamped with sensations of physical proximity to Bucky. And if that wasn't odd enough on its own, proximity of a kind he'd spent the past couple weeks failing at. Sensations more than dreams, and lingering all day. It certainly wasn't his imagination, since apparently he didn't have one. Feelings of physically touching Bucky, touching his face, his hair, his mouth, just as he'd been trying in all his attempts at fantasies. Except there were no images, just feeling.
Which was the issue.
Right then, he could feel the aftereffects of Bucky's body against him. He'd just been hugging Bucky, as far as his body could tell. The feel of their faces next to each other was as definite as the bulkhead against his arm. As though if he merely turned his head right now they would be breathing in the same space. He had never felt anything as odd. And that wasn't even getting to his nights before falling asleep, before dreams came and actually saved him from even rougher waters.
He straightened as voices began moving into the corridor. He could hear everything on the Quinjet if he gave it his attention, and recognized as Natasha and two new Shield operatives entered the short corridor leading to the cargo hold. The three cleared the threshold. Natasha briefly recapped for the operatives the protocol for securing Chitauri weapons cases, then dismissed them. She turned to a terminal and began tapping in an update to the task.
"Do you have a fever?" she asked. "Can you get a fever?"
"No to both. Why?"
"You've been flushed for about a week straight. A normal person would be dead by now."
He snorted quietly. Leaned against the bulkhead, pretended to be reading his pad.
"Steve . . . are you all right?"
He kept looking at the fields of information he had finished inputting some time ago. Normally he'd tell her or anyone asking that he was fine. And he usually was. Because he always knew that he'd be all right.
But he wasn't fine. And he didn't know whether he'd be all right.
She turned from the terminal and faced him. All five foot four inches of her, yet somehow like a steel door. "Steve," she said. "Sometimes, it helps to talk."
"I'm aware of that," he said truthfully. "It's just— I don't know. I need to figure some stuff out."
She nodded, and leaving, came over and closed a hand over his shoulder, offered him a small smile before departing.
—
Returning to the Helicarrier, they offloaded their five detainees, and as he'd been doing for days, he scanned the flight deck. But there'd been no signs of Richard Jones since the night in his quarters. Neither did he expect to find any. And he was sure that he wouldn't see him again until Rick gave SHIELD the slip to come find him once more. Because he got the feeling that SHIELD was hiding Rick.
Whatever work Rick was doing for them, it seemed it was too important to risk him running into Rick on the flight deck or elsewhere. Because that man would be sorry.
—
Apart from the sensations bombarding him throughout the day, his nights were even worse. A barrier of some kind had broken, and all those mental attempts with Bucky he'd been struggling with, trying to get there, wondering whether it was that he didn't find Bucky physically attractive. Well.
It was exactly as Sam as had predicted. Thirteen all over again and having no control.
Nights, turned on his side, he clutched his pillow and tried to lie still, while caught between a dream and something more physical. Something squeezing his body without an ounce of input from him. Not letting up until he was shuddering in climax. In a fevered state during, afterward he opened his eyes each time praying he wasn't, but was always having to stand up after and go change his pajama bottoms.
He'd been infatuated many times, had even half lost his mind when Peggy at last took him to bed. This, however, was something else.
A little after 4 a.m., he went down to sick bay. A dormitory style section decks beneath their habitat level with frosted glass partitions for privacy. On their last raid to grab the detainees, Sam had broken his arm and hadn't told anyone. Just applied some Stark Industry pain gels and carried on.
It hurt to see Sam laid out, doped up, arm slinged. Not that Sam, Clint, Natasha, and even Tony hadn't had to find themselves in a sick bay once in a while. Not that he didn't know what broken bodies in an aid station looked like. More that for him, with the kind of obliviousness he'd had all his life, he was perpetually surprised when non-sickly people found themselves bedridden. In his head, it was either you were hit with imminent death or you kicked until you were in fact dead. His idiot self had never had an in-between. Never considered that the proper thing to do when you were sick was to just take it easy and get taken care of. If he would ever write the book the Smithsonian still nearly daily begged him to, it would be entitled You're an idiot, take it from me, Steve Rogers.
So he sat beside Sam, reading. Nodding and maintaining as harmless an expression as he could manage when the doctor came by to check on Sam, eyeing him as though he was there to give her grief. She swept keen eyes over his reading material, around his seat, as though looking for contraband. "He's medicated," she finally said, giving up. "And we gotta get that bone healing fast, so . . . no funny business."
"No, m'am," he said, and pulled on a smile, but only managing a half one, wondering what aid station doctors she'd been talking to.
Sam woke at about 6 a.m. He smiled as Sam's eyes opened and slid his way. "Hey, slacker," he said, lowering the SHIELD tactical manual he was reading. "How'ya been?"
"Great," Sam croaked. "I feel great."
"You're gonna tell us the next time you're busted up so Natasha and I can do something to help?"
Sam yawned. "Can you distill your blood?"
"Hah."
"Thennn I'm good." Sam lowered his gaze to his plastered arm. "What's a little broken bones among friends." Rubbing his eyes, Sam glanced over. "What're you reading?"
He lifted the field tactical manual. Sam grimaced. "Listen," he said, "let's just thank God I can read. It was touch and go there for a minute as a kid."
Sam laughed softly. And it was good to see it. "What's happening topside?"
"Oh, you know. New operatives to run through."
"And in your quarters?"
He slid Sam a patient look. Which Sam didn't see thankfully.
"Still having dreams?"
He paused for a second. "Yeah, actually."
"More dark dreams?"
He skipped a beat.
Sam started laughing hoarsely. "The other kind. Are we immersed yet?"
"Ah, quit it."
"Called it."
Sam laid there and laughed himself to tears. Wiped the corner of his eye. "Steve, you are a bottomless well of entertainment. What was your breakthrough moment. Did you get an internet account somewhere and see how it's done?"
Again he paused, this time involuntarily. He wished it had been that mundane a breakthrough.
Not wanting to think abut it then, he nonetheless found himself thinking about it. He wasn't the kind of person to conflate things, confuse bad actions with good ones, or have a problem separating the two and calling it complicated. What Richard Jones had done to him was a violation and an aggression that required payback. What had resulted from it had happened. And since it had to do with Bucky and no one else was hurt, it was a good result and he would take it. He had no doubt that he would have gotten there with Bucky. No doubt at all. And he could take a personal slight. He knew how to avenge that.
"You don't have to tell me," Sam said, when he hadn't answered. "I know how it goes." Sam drowsily blinked at the ceiling. "So you are all in for Bucky Barnes, huh."
"All right, well, Sam. Say it a little louder."
Sam fell quiet, sighing. "You know," Sam said contemplatively. "This whole thing has been a learning experience in not judging people. We all knew him as this withdrawn, brooding terror. Like, you had to sleep with one eye open around him. And yeah I know that he was brainwashed and programmed to turn into that, but honestly, I thought there had to have been some underlying bad person that Hydra just tapped into, you know?"
"Well, Sam, that hurts to hear."
"I know, Steve, that's what I'm saying. His letters show this . . . really good hearted person. Thoughtful and smart. And loved him some Steve Rogers."
He smiled, lowered his head. And Steve Rogers loved him back.
"If I hadn't read those letters," Sam continued, wonderingly, "nothing could have convinced me that— well, you know."
"Well, those letters don't tell a fraction of who that guy is. I wish you'd known Bucky before all of this. Bucky's one in a million. And there is no greater sin than what Hydra did to him."
Sam took a long breath. "I know I should be tempted to insert an assassin joke here . . . but this whole thing, plus the drugs, is starting to get me emotional."
He laughed. "Thanks." Then he glanced over. "Hey, listen, Sam. I wanna thank you. I think you changed my life."
"I did change your life."
He nodded. "You did change my life."
Sam yawned once more. "Better. We like you assertive, Cap." And sighed. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm starving."
"I'll take care of it," he said, reaching over to push the call button. "Get better, Sam," he told him, to Sam tiredly nodding. Then he sat back. "Gotta split. We have a briefing for said new set before the next mission. On which we will miss you."
"Of course I'm coming."
"No, you're not, Sam. And that's an assertion."
As he stood, Sam said, "Hey, you notice how they keep rotating them on us? Wouldn't it be more logical to assign us a permanent support team?"
"It's not a coincidence," he told Sam. "It's a need-to-know method. Shield doesn't want anyone to have all the pieces."
"All the pieces to what?"
"Exactly."
—
Later that afternoon inside a security office, he was viewing the footage from the night of Rick's break-in. The cameras picked up neither how Rick had entered his quarters — even though his door registered the entry — nor when Rick exited. Just showed him running out, then Natasha, then Sam walking out shortly after. He watched it a few times. An enhanced envoy to alien civilizations. Who was confidentially overseeing their collection of Chitauri weapons. Not suspicious at all.
He tracked Natasha to the officer's rec section, where she was having some downtime watching a ping-pong tournament among senior officers. She had her feet up and headphones on, bopping her head to whatever she was listening to while the cries of personnel bounced off the steel walls. Half the room turned when he walked in, but he kept his gaze on her only, and when she turned to see what everyone was looking at, he tapped his ear. She pulled her earphones and joined him out into the hallway.
He leaned against the wall and she came close, an inquisitive look in her eyes.
"Is there a clean window of time to hack Shield while we're here on the Helicarrier? You said you could find better information on Richard Jones that way."
She twisted her lips, raising a cautious but interested eyebrow. "Hm. Chancy."
"Do it. We'll deal with the consequences later."
She nodded. Kept her eyes on him. He shook his head.
During the birthday party while he'd been dodging questions about Bucky's letters, she'd said he'd come asking. And he knew he would. But he wasn't ready to talk. Self-awareness had clarified his understanding of women like her. Hers was the Peggy type — way ahead of rubes like him. Their conversation wouldn't be like the ones with Sam, and already sensing where she could help, he wanted to know well beforehand what he would say to her.
"It'll be okay, Steve," she said, confident as always. "Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll figure it out."
He nodded his thanks. She pointed back toward the rec section and he lifted a hand, letting her go back to her tournament. He returned to lower decks.
—
But after hours prowling the Helicarrier's innards, he found nothing. Their weapons cases were all accounted for, and he kicked at walls and listened quietly, and heard no echoes indicating hollow compartments or sections. If SHIELD was hiding any kind of alien tech onboard, they were doing a solid job of it.
Sam meanwhile was being discharged that evening. He went down to sick bay and stood beside Sam who was giving the doctor his one-of-us-is-crazy look for the instructions she was putting in her discharge orders. Sam had needed surgery, so bed rest, lots of sleep, no missions, then in a week or so, physiotherapy, which was something they'd had even in his day. So at Sam's incredulous look at the doctor, he gently took the orders and assured her they'd be back for it. Sam had then looked at him like he was crazy, but he'd been at professional levels giving those looks as a six year old, so he'd walked Sam right up to quarters.
"Lie down," he instructed, as Sam sat on his bed and looked at him like he was out of his mind.
"Steve, you need to get out of here."
"Are you gonna lie down?"
"Maybe," Sam said, almost laughing with disbelief and indignation.
He could have just shaken his head. What went around, really did come around.
"Listen, Thomas—"
"Oh-h," Sam sputtered. "Go 'head Grant."
"You gotta recuperate," he said, sounding so like Bucky that he felt his heart warming all over. "Trust me, the fact that science can have your arm mended in a week is a God honest miracle. So respect that. Wha'do I need to do?"
"Uhh . . . you can leave the order and . . . go."
"I'll get you some food. Wha'do you want."
Sam sighed. And gave him a pretty healthy-portioned order. He smiled. Left for the cafeteria.
Yasmin loaded him a to-go pack, then told him he didn't know he drank vodka. He ignored him and took the pack back to Sam.
Reentering, Sam was in fact lying down. And gave him a big smile when he entered with a pack and the small plastic bottle.
"You got the vodka."
"Fastest way to recover," he confirmed. "Just don't get up, 'cause you're on medication."
Sam laughed deeply. "Thank you, Captain America."
"You're welcome, Falcon."
The door to Sam's quarters slid closed behind him. And he only had to reach his own door to admit to himself that he had lost all desire to stay inside his quarters.
The saying went to be careful what you wish for, and that sure did apply to him. He'd spent all that time chasing a high of imagining him and Bucky getting physical, presuming how exciting it would be. Oh, he was getting exciting all right, and it was mentally turning him into a pretzel. His heart taking a beating. He found no relief in that kind of release, feeling worse, more lonely for Bucky when it was over. Even got to the point where he considered trying for Thor's Connected Realm again, only to cut that thought short. The place was obviously even more complicated than Thor had portrayed, because he'd gone and brought back something very wrong, and he could understand now why it took high religious mediation and things like that as a guide in. He wasn't trying it again.
So rather than lying in bed, brushing his knuckles across his lips, trying to recapture the feeling of a kiss, he finished up reports at his laptop, showered, and left his quarters for a midnight walk.
—
Strolling along the long, dim, empty corridors of their deck, he listened to the hum of the solar engines, and to the fainter background buzz of the quartered occupants of the deck. A pair of lower deck crew passed him, whispering quietly excited hellos, to which he nodded, but slowly continued his walk.
When, a corridor later, another pair of lower deck crew, who ought to be several decks below, once again passed him floating breathless hellos, and soon another one who simply pressed her lips tight and nodded at him, excitement barely contained, he figured word was out that he was on a walk. He supposed after three nights straight it was bound to happen. It would be a little while before it died down. After so many years of being with SHIELD, he'd honestly thought they'd all be over seeing him by now. But he guessed not.
But he didn't mind the peeking at all. He was never interrupted, and he especially liked the walks which reminded him of his older teenage years, patrolling for street kids in those dark, dingy alleys and convincing them to come out of there. A hundred years into the future and he was somehow endowed with powers to carry on the fight. Not a bad wish that had come through for him.
No mistake, it was still the greatest of temptations to stay in his quarters. And when he returned it would be those amorphous dreams or that in-between state drowning in passions whose origins remained mysterious. What he would have wanted was another dream in which Bucky came to him, got in bed with him and talked as he had that night. But no, instead he was having phantom sex with himself.
He wanted none of that.
But he did want something. He could feel it, feel himself at an ending he didn't know or understand. But an ending nonetheless.
So nights now, he barely slept.
Made worse by him and Natasha staying up late, leaned over the steel railings outside armory and staring out at the night sky. Armory was where his uniform was mended in case of damage. A uniform he wore on missions because Nick said it was good for troop morale. And he was all for troop morale. It was also where Tony stored his Iron Man suit whenever on board.
But he and Natasha had taken up the location because it opened up to the rear of the Helicarrier — to the wishbone section, from where it was easiest to see any and all aircraft leaving the ship.
From where, a hacked comm softly announcing flight ops from her wrist wear, they'd taken to watching SHIELD airlift the prisoners they worked so hard to secure.
"Where do you think they take them?" she asked, four nights after he'd asked her to look into Richard Jones, and four days of watching Sam glare at his cast.
"No idea. I'm just as curious about who Shield feels can make them talk more easily than Natasha Romanov."
She smiled.
"You been to see Sam?" he asked her. "He's being really ornery about getting bedrest. Reminds me of someone I know."
She nodded, snorting softly. "He told me. Said if he'd wanted a wife, he'd have married one."
He shook his head. "But we're gonna make sure he doesn't do the wrong things?"
"Of course."
"Cause I don't wanna see him hurt."
They watched a Jump Jet take off on yet another secret SHIELD mission, and she softly said, "You've a good heart, Steve."
Watching the near invisible jet trail, he sometimes wondered. "I appreciate you saying that."
She was silent. Waited until the jet disappeared from sight., then glanced at him. "Are you gonna talk about what's going on with you?"
He lowered his head, eventually shook it. "I don't know, Natasha."
"Are you uncomfortable with your feelings about Bucky."
"No."
"'Cause . . . it would be a matter of crisis for a lot of people."
"Crisis," he said, turning back to the black skies. "I've seen crisis. This ain't it."
He lowered his head again, shook it. "I don't know what's going on with me. I don't feel right. I don't feel like myself."
"When Sam said all of this was about letters Bucky Barnes wrote you during the World War Two, and Sam mentioned the girl, I made assumptions. But it didn't take a roomful of intel to get that I'd misunderstood."
He said nothing, hoping her assessment would help sort his own thoughts.
"You know I think you forget that Sam and I were on the Quinjet when we were getting everyone to safe places. When you were taking him to Wakanda. Even though he was pretty messed up by Hydra, it was a month of watching you two together."
"And?"
"And it was . . . very . . . tender."
"Yeah, a real heart-warmer. The clueless Army Captain fumbling the care of his best buddy."
"Yeah," she said. Then, astonishingly, in a flawless imitation of him, "Ya' right there Buck?"
He turned and stared at her.
She laughed, and then not helping matters at all, she spoke in Russian, with a wicked pull of her lips. He blinked at her while she went on laughing. "Bucky Barnes would understand."
"Natasha," he breathed. "Slow down. I'm just a kid a from Brooklyn."
"It was heart-warming," she said. "Captain America falls in love with the assassin know as the Winter Soldier. Click for details."
"Whoa there," he said, his heart skipping a beat to hear it said aloud. "Falls in love? Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself there?"
"Hush, you."
And he shut up. Looked at her. "You're not surprised?"
"That you fell in love with your best friend? No, Steve," she said, nicely. "It doesn't surprise me."
"What'd you think of him," he asked, realizing it had never crossed his mind to ask her. That this too might help.
"What'd I think of him?"
"Yeah. They teach you all kinds of . . . psychological mind stuff in the KGB—"
"They teach everyone in covert ops, Steve," she said, laughing. "Not just us."
"Fine. Spies are outta my league, not gonna lie. I mean, it was pretty scary the stuff Peggy would pass on from British Intelligence. It's a different game from special forces, I'll tell you that." He glanced at her. "So talk to me. You said I'd come asking, and here I am."
"What'd you wanna know?"
"I wanna know what you think of him," he repeated.
"Well, I won't lie to you, I found him incredibly distracting. Especially since he wasn't trying to kill me, you know? All my life I'd heard of him, Similarity, we used to called him." She paused, tipped her head. "Sounds better in Russian. But there he was on the jet, and it was . . . pretty exciting. If nothing else, he could certainly clear up a lot of gaps and missing pieces in fifty years of covert intel. So I'd say he was probably among the most distracting I've had to deal with on the jet."
"Well, holy wow, Natasha. I'll be sure to tell Bucky."
She laughed softly. "But it didn't take a minute, Steve."
"What didn't?"
"To know that I wasn't in competition."
"Ah," he said. "Buck's always had options. Competition is right. Maybe it's why I never— saw myself in the running."
"Steve," she said blandly. "End that. Don't be coy with me. When it comes to you and him, there is no contest happening, and you know that. Bucky Barnes's got nothing in his head but Steve Rogers. Initially, I really did think it was programming, cause I'd never seen a lockout like that. But now I get it. You two go back far. And while I don't know the details of your personal history, I gotta say, given the opportunity, you need to do right by that man."
Around them, the stars winked, their light momentarily blotted out by the small craft continually coming and going around the Helicarrier. And he said nothing. Found himself imagining instead what teenage him would have been like being here with her. Getting her attention. That would have been months, nay, years of nights alone in his bed taken care of.
But him now was a different being. One'a dem worldly kids, he was now. Touch more aware that women like Natasha, Peggy, would always be a half century ahead of him. That in fact, when it came to Natasha, he didn't belong in her century period. That if she smiled and kissed him, no different than Peggy, he ought to be looking over his shoulder at what was approaching and possibly the real source of interest in him.
Only in recent days had he been able to tear down Buck's advice in the War regarding Peggy — for him to smile like a virgin at her. Because of course Buck too had been ahead of him, and had known what a woman like Peggy would find attractive in a guy like he'd been back then.
He knew now that he would never completely be at home with women like her. When Peggy, merely with a glance, had been able to see clearly the nature of his bond with Buck.
On her wrist wear, flight ops quietly announced the last of the prisoner transports cleared for takeoff. Seconds later, they watched the jet cross the night sky away from the Helicarrier. Watched until it was a pinpoint of star.
Natasha straightened from the steel railing, placing a warm hand on his shoulder as she left. "At the very least, you'll have cute babies."
—
The next morning, he got up with a nagging thought. Stood still at his bay windows waiting for the thought to click. When it did, he called a team meeting.
The meeting held in Sam's quarters. Because he wasn't having Sam getting out of bed, and Sam wasn't having him and Natasha holding meetings without him. So compromise.
There he explained why he'd called the meeting. Telling Natasha how their conversation last night about interrogating detainees had stayed with him all night.
"Wait," Sam said. "When did this happen."
"Sam," he said. "You're bedridden."
"Yes," Sam said loudly. "Not dead."
Natasha waited, while Sam sent her a miserable side eye.
"Can I continue?" he asked.
"Yes," Sam groused.
"Right," he said. "So that reminded me of what Maria Hill said when you asked her about interrogating our own prisoners, Tasha. How she said he can make them talk much more easily. You remember that?"
Natasha nodded.
He took a breath, but before he could, Natasha said, "They're using Richard Jones to interrogate our prisoners."
He nodded. Sam blinked.
"Has to be," she said.
"Why would Shield call in someone so blatantly unbalanced for something as delicate as prisoner interrogations?" Sam asked. "I mean, based on what Steve's described alone, I'd just be waiting for him to implode."
He looked at Sam. "He's not like that. He's not that kinda crazy."
"Okay, fine," Sam said. "So what's his Shield role?"
"He has to have a skill set no one else has," Natasha said. And now she looked dead at him. "Any indication of what that might be, Steve?"
He took a moment, then realized that all the counter-intel measures the Army had drilled into special forces were useless against spies. From the start she had known something was up. And he wanted to get this guy.
So he said, "He can get inside your head. Like Wanda."
Both Natasha and Sam fell silent. And mid-morning, above-atmosphere sunlight washing across their faces, they both looked actually shaken.
Reminding him that for the rest of normal humans, enhanced humans were ever an unknown, and therefore a frightening thought.
"What'd he do to you," Natasha asked him, giving him a stare that asked for no obfuscation.
"He showed me how well he could get inside my head," he said flatly. "And he doesn't have the scruples of Wanda Maximoff."
Both of them stared at him.
"Okay," Natasha said, locking her arms around herself and looking out Sam's bay windows. "Okay. I'll wait for my tracer to bring in some answers."
—
A day later, six after he'd set the task, Natasha's tracer brought in . . . Well, long and short of it, not good.
She secured Sam's quarters with some kind of radio and microwave disrupter, while Sam, who wasn't in bed but in a chair, protested vocally that they should just hold the meeting in secure comms. Then him and Natasha pulled chairs, pointedly moving them over to the bed, at which Sam gave them a dark look.
Taking their seats, Natasha looked pale. The roots of her hair, which he had always thought of as an Irish red, were whitish. Noticing that detail was what had him paying attention almost even more than her words. She was frightened.
"I've uncovered two words," she said softly. "Black, and order."
In the silence that followed, Sam sending him a furrowed look, he said, "Those are pretty random words."
"I know. But not as linked."
"What'd you mean?"
"I mean that those words are attempted to be randomized. Which means they're linked. Black . . . Order."
Sam and him exchanged looks, shrugged at her.
She nodded. "I had nothin' too. Until a third word kept popping in connection. Breakwater, the codeword translates to."
Again, Sam and him shook their heads at her.
"Mole," she said.
They stared blankly.
"Richard Jones, if he really is an envoy to alien civilizations for Shield, is a mole inside an alien organization named Black Order."
Still they continued staring at her. She glanced at them, then said, "Yeah, doesn't ring any bells with me either."
"For what kind of information?" Sam asked.
"No records that I could find."
"So Shield is using Richard Jones to find out anything it can on the Chitauri and their weaponry," he said.
"I'd say so," Natasha agreed.
"And they've also sent him as a mole to steal intel from this Black Order."
"Looks that way."
"So there's a connection," Sam said. "This Black Order people have something to do with the Chitauri, and Shield is sending Richard Jones to bring back intel."
"Possibly," Natasha said.
"Where'd you find all this?" he asked her.
Natasha sighed, hard. "That's the scary part."
"Wait," Sam interjected, "we're just getting to scary?"
Natasha paused, and he noticed as she uncharacteristically, though very slightly, bit her lip.
"I found the info in a set of supposedly defunct databases," Natasha said.
"Databases on what?" he asked.
"For an old initiative. A planetary defense initiative."
He looked at her, then at Sam, who returned his stare as if waiting for him to deny what he thought that meant.
Instead he turned and looked out Sam's windows. "So Shield does think there's a threat to Earth."
All three of them were silent.
—
They left Sam nearly ashen. Grim faced and shaking his head. "I don't like the sound of this," Sam said. "I'm not ready for any of this. I know we've been chasing alien weapons all this time, but I've never seen an alien my life. You know that, Steve?"
"No, I didn't, actually," he said, realizing.
"Exactly. You metahuman types are out of your minds. I don't wanna see an alien. I assure you, for a normal human, seeing one on video is mind-squelching enough. And I'm not ready for this, Steve. I'm just not."
No less pale, Natasha had soon left.
He stayed a while longer with Sam, trying to cheer him up. He didn't know how well he succeeded. Only knew that at a point he had to let Sam get some sleep.
But first going over to Sam's desk to check that the checkboxes on the doctor's orders had been filled in for the day.
"Gooooo . . ." Sam moaned at him.
He turned to Sam. "Do you have a wife?" And Sam, to his credit, laughed. "Listen, look who you're talking to," he said. "If I didn't think it was important, I wouldn't bother you. Just rest, Sam. It's a few days, maybe a couple weeks out of a hundred years of your life. You got time."
Sam had turned his face up to ceiling and sighed dramatically. "Hate this!"
He smiled tp himself. "Maybe I don't got the touch," he said, leaving, then over his shoulder, "I'll have Buck call ya." The door slid shut on Sam's baffled, "Huh?"
Inside his own quarters, staring into the night from his own bay windows, it took a really, really long time to acknowledge that he'd been staring at the pale moonlight on the serene night clouds in the hopes of seeing the Tree of Life.
Hope and dreading, but willing.
Because it had been as close as he'd come to true feelings of having Bucky with him. If he couldn't manage any more dreams of Bucky in his bedroom, getting into bed with him and making him feel that he was back home, he'd take the authentic emotions from that Realm any day over the mysterious, fevered, physical pleasures.
He never once saw the Tree again. Of course he didn't.
Nonetheless, the repeated failure had him thinking about a few things. Starting with how far he'd come from just a month ago.
Seated at his desk, trying merely to access archives whose contents he'd had no clue what that would bring him.
How he'd sat there determined to look self-awareness in the face, while banishing the real pain underlying everything — that he'd been doing everything to not think about Wakanda.
Self-awareness on his own terms.
Well.
His version of self-awareness had been the simple dots and dashes of a Morse code letter back then, versus now, as the complex signals of the Native American Windtalkers who'd helped win the War.
Nine months, he'd spent — held out for nine months.
Nine months of not wanting to go back having to drop Bucky off in Wakanda. A name that invoked in him both emotional pain and joy. All wrapped up in five days. The strength of a hundred years of living barely making him face it.
But the truth was that self-awareness from Bucky's letters had drained him.
His letters to Bucky had drained him.
These dreams had drained him.
There was, apparently, more to this life than even strength. His ma was probably among the strongest people he had known. And she had likely died no less of a broken heart.
With each passing day it got more difficult not to think about Bucky, his heart overflowing with things he wanted to say to him.
So what was life, if not letting those you loved know. That you loved them and would do anything for them. Of what practical use was a eulogy.
SHIELD was acting up. It wasn't just him feeling it now. And things felt . . . weirdly urgent.
And it seemed he was wasting his life — their lives — waiting.
—
Around 1 a.m. or so, he left his quarters. Meaning to head to the cafeteria and hear whatever missive Yasmin had formulated for him this time. Only to step out and look to his right, because there was a guy standing at Natasha's open doorway.
He looked away as Natasha and her guest kissed, waited until the guy was down the corridor, well out of earshot, and turned to her. She was leaning in her doorway, waiting for him to speak.
He said softly, "Can I talk to you?"
They went into the cafeteria.
Surprisingly, or maybe not, Yasmin took one look at Natasha and didn't subject him to any tirades that night.
So they sat by the port side, looking at the sound-proofed repair deck. Tonight it was silent. No welding, no sparks flying. She began eating her sandwich, while he simply pushed aside his tray, and wouldn't you know it, over at the counters Yasmin saw his action and registered dismay. Probably all set to take it personally. But tonight food could wait a little.
He waited until she'd eaten three sandwiches, those genetically modified apples the twenty-first century called fruit, downed some yogurt — tonight the flavor was supposedly Greek, which just made him shake his head at the audacity, recalling how one of the Novaks' five adult daughters used to make fresh Greek yoghurt daily — drank her bottles of juice, and wiped her lips.
Then she seemed to look over and notice him. She breathed. "Sorry. It's taxing for us normals."
He smiled.
"You could use some," she said lightly.
He scrunched up his face. "I'm holdin' out."
She laughed under her breath. Then said, "I'm listening."
He leaned forward. "I just wanted to run something by you." And taking a breath, he pushed out all the things — not that he was holding onto, but that were holding onto him. And making him feel that the universes itself worked in one way, when life, and everything he'd seen since walking into an Army experimental unit seventy years ago, had assured him that he absolutely needed to let all that go.
It was no longer Brooklyn, no longer New York. It was maybe even no longer Earth itself.
He knew that. He was a changed person, and he was more than ready to face that.
"I'm considering getting Buck out of stasis."
He watched her eyebrows go up. And so waited. "Continue," she said.
He nodded. "Bucky's—" he dropped his gaze to their trays, not quite believing how hard it was to go there. But everything was over as far as he was concerned. He needed to say it all. "In about a couple months, Buck woulda been in stasis for a full year. If by then, nothing's changed, I wanna get him out. I figured, and I know this is rich coming from me, but— life's too short for this."
"That is rich coming from you."
"So— am I being selfish in wanting to do that. I don't wanna be separated from Bucky anymore. It seems that . . . a lot of things are happening. A lot of signs. I know it's not rational, but I remember the years leading up to the War. I remember there were people, Buck included, who felt something. And the rest of us were just clueless. And— while I can't say I feel anything coming, cause I think it's just— maybe I'm just tired of Shield."
"Well, you're not alone there."
He looked her, but she had her eyes on her tray. "So . . . maybe for me," he continued, "it's just time. Maybe I need a break. But I don't wanna have my needs interfere with what Shuri's doing. It's just that Buck's been through a lot. Things I can't imagine . . . and it might be time for me to step up and go take care of him."
Finished, he waited.
She said nothing.
"What do you think?" he prompted.
She didn't say anything still. Then, "Signs?"
"Maybe. Kinda."
She finished up her tray. "Well, I'm the wrong person ask about signs and things like that. I can only give you practicalities. If you feel the same way at that twelve month mark, I'd say go for it."
After a minute, he blinked, realizing that was it.
And she was right. It was that simple.
"I do have another question," he heard himself saying, unaware until the words came out.
"Shoot."
And as with so much in the last month, he forced the words out.
"What do I do if he's the same way as when I left him? How do I handle it if he can't go back to being the Bucky I knew?"
She directed her gaze at the silent repair section. It seemed an eternity before she spoke.
"Even when they break you," she said. "When there's nothing left inside you, there's always something left. In fact, I think they leave nothing but the real you. The core of you, I guess. And Steve, that's always a great place to start." She stared into the partitioned section as if seeing a whole other world. "So my answer to you would be that if all you have is the core of him, I think you're both on a good track for a new life."
Silence settled like a warm blanket between them. Only making him aware of the fact when a handful of personnel noisily entered the cafeteria. Glancing over at them, he watched for a long moment as the young operatives found their way to the dispensing line. Where Yasmin was imperiously overseeing the small mob.
Bringing his gaze back to Natasha, he watched as she unpretentiously, unassumingly, finished her meal.
"Thanks, Natasha."
"Any time."
And that night, seated on his window sill, he finally let himself think of Wakanda. Of those five days.
"He doesn't like me," Buck had said, on that their second morning.
The words had prompted him to follow Bucky's gaze across the palace grounds toward where the King had been striding wherever in the company of his all-female guard.
It had been day two of delaying Buck's return to stasis. His second day of wondering just how he was supposed to do that. How another sickening, involuntary separation was happening to them yet again, when it was so obvious that the universe itself had taken a person interest in them staying together. Even before he could consciously take himself back to the pier at Boston Harbor, it had been one of the defining moments of his life, informing their imminent separation without him realizing.
Day two of muting Shuri's ever more persistent messages, asking, pleading, then threatening that he bring in Sergeant Barnes for "the procedure," or else. Usually around mid-morning: He will be all right; Captain, I promise that he is in good hands; My brother is going to kill me; Captain Rogers, you cannot continue this! Please just bring him in! Then, the final set he'd simply ignored, I swear by the Ancestors—!
He didn't know what the swear was by the Ancestors. Only that he'd look at her messages and feel that he was going to throw up. Shredded by guilt that when it came to Bucky, he was continually messing up and failing Bucky. Buck who, without superpowers, had consistently saved his life. But now when it was his turn, he was as incompetent at caring for Bucky's life as he'd been with his own ma's.
Why otherwise had Buck fallen. How could he have let that happen? How useless could he actually be, especially now that he had reflexes "short of the lightning," to hear Thor tell it.
Why, except that when it really mattered, he was actually no good at it.
"I don't think you'd be here if he didn't," he'd replied Bucky. Buck had said nothing, compelling him to add, "Besides, even if he doesn't like you now, it's only because he and everyone else hasn't gotten a chance to know you. You'll be a superstar here."
But seeing the worried look on Buck's face, he'd looked again at the departing figure of the King. By the time T'Challa disappeared from view, he realized that Buck wasn't worried, but rather resigned. Expectant. Including that whatever Bucky was resigned about, watching T'Challa, Bucky also seemed to have accepted.
Inside T'Challa's office mere minutes after Buck had been put into stasis, and him wondering how his legs were still supporting him, he'd looked into the King's eyes. Thanked him for his generosity, his hospitality, for everything.
But he had looked hard at T'Challa's eyes. And said nothing aloud. Certainly nothing along the lines of If Bucky doesn't make it, it needs to have been purely from natural causes.
He didn't believe in waging preemptive wars. Not when real ones were always waiting around the corner.
But he had gone to war all his life over things a billion times less important.
And the world could keep Captain America where Bucky was concerned.
T'Challa hadn't taken his eyes off him. Slowly nodded. "We have an understanding, Captain."
It hadn't been a discussion needing to happen anyway. Not when T'Challa had been present in Siberia, waiting on the cliff outside of Hydra's facility, long after Zemo had gone in, to see who among the three who'd followed in would emerge.
Not when T'Challa seemed to have realized, well before him, that he would have killed Tony Stark to protect Bucky. Or more precisely, he would have killed himself and Tony and anyone else to give Buck a chance at escape. Not an easy thing to accept about himself, and he wouldn't have let himself off the hook had he done such a thing and survived. But he would have done it.
He's my friend, was all and how, expectant of death himself, he'd been able back then to convey it to Tony. I used to be your friend, Tony had answered, and even depleted it had almost made him laugh. Tony who had never grappled with the feeling that the world was ending for an entire generation and there was nothing they, just kids from neighborhoods, could do about it. All of them, who'd been made to toss aside their early adulthoods — their movie theaters and street fairs and parties, their barrels of liquior, hot jazz and bomba numbers, their passionate, yet so innocent steamboat rides. Who'd left their guys and gals behind to go die in lands they'd never heard of.
To be forever gone.
Nothing to be done, not even if they played as hard, or as fair, or as smart as they could, loved and cared for one another as much as they could — there was no getting their arms around the thing. For their generation there would only be most of the men, if not all of them, returning home as steel dog-tags.
A world gone. Alive only in the person before him. With him. When he'd had less than nothing. Then to be loved enough by God and the universe to have it actually be your own person. Your Iron Man, your Falcon, your own personal Captain America, all rolled into one. Then to hand that person over, the impossibility of it.
Tony didn't really know what a friend was, one to lay down his life for, and if Howard Stark's son really lived a blessed life, Tony would never have to find out.
He wouldn't wish that even on Arnim Zola.
Definitely, on the morning Buck was put under, it struck him as one of life's painful ironies that it took the king of a mythical kingdom to nod in understanding of what his own side could not. That his loyalty to Bucky was nonnegotiable. That he would start wars over Buck. And that the notion was without an expiration date.
He'd returned to Shuri's lab right after to look at Buck in stasis. And he had cried his heart out. He really didn't know how he had survived that kind of pain. Even swiped his face, expecting it to be wet.
But all he'd had at the time, feeling the loneliest he had ever in his life, was his Buck in a glass case. Frost over his skin, breathing — he'd checked like his own heart was connected. A heart rate monitor, logging steady across the display. Oxygen, everything else as steady as Buck himself.
He'd walked over and looked as closely as his enhanced sight would let him, at the consistency of Bucky's skin under the cryogenic atmosphere, at the displays showing Buck's cellular bonding structure holding. Things he would have bashed himself over the head in high school being forced to retain, sticking like magnets in his mind as he went over everything. He'd stayed all day, sure if he so much as turned his head things would go wrong.
Shuri certainly hadn't appreciated. But he'd been her a hundred years before, and her spiked looks hadn't bothered him at all.
"Captain Rojaz," she'd bite out every so often. Only serving as a momentary reminder to move a little out of their way.
Morning — showered, dressed — he stood before Bucky's glass stasis chamber, of itself challenging his science-fiction-teen mind not to see a cryogenic coffin. Rendering him unable to see much less answer hers or her lab techs' prodding. "Move," "Please move," "Move, please," "Captain Rogers, would you mind moving, please."
The struggle along to not think of it in morbid terms had had him nearly causing problems.
It was only their evidently near magical tech that had saved him from misbehaving. Only because T'Challa had, in such a causal yet fully aware manner, told him to bring him.
Each morning, standing before the bedroom mirror that had been Buck's in the royal apartments they'd spent five days living and laughing in — and him sleeping on the couch after — waking and dressing, he'd ignored his own image. Because he wouldn't be able to look at himself unless and until Buck made it.
Then it would be heading over to Shuri's lab to stand and cry before Bucky's glass chamber. What was he doing in a new century with a miracle, able body if he wasn't able t care of Bucky?
For five days he had believed. That if he just talked, held his hand, pushed memories, touched, that somehow Buck would start healing on his own. Simply lift his marble eyes and say, "Th' fuck, Steve? Th' fuck'er we doin' heya? Why you cryin'?"
And they'd have departed so fast, the slipstream would have sent jets off course.
But Buck hadn't. Neither had Buck started healing on his own. He'd been on his own. Lost. Confused. Facing a terrible, hard reality of putting Bucky in a cold sleep for who knew how long, and it seemed an evil he'd wanted no part of.
It had been a decision well above his capacity.
Two days later, Natasha had sent a gentle message that she and Sam were back from Addis and could pick him up any time.
From that day, until now, he'd recorded Buck a message, whether he sent it or not.
But from that day a picture was forming. His sharpest memory of the time was always the same painful one. But rather than retreat in its face anymore, for nine months turning from the mere thought, he pressed a first to his chest and pressed on. Bucky in a chair before him, him pulled up to Bucky's side, tending to Bucky's missing arm.
How, he thought miserably now— how did Bucky have a missing arm. What right did the universe have to do that? Did it even understand? Bucky who had saved his life over and over. Who needed both arms more than Bucky Barnes?
How much had wanted to trade fates, that his could give his own arm for Bucky to have his back.
Talking to Bucky, he had tried to draw him in. Wishing that the want in his heart had been like a field Wanda Maximoff could effect. Into which they could both escape.
Talking to him, he'd thought anyway. Only to look up in the deep silence and see Bucky gone. There, but lost inside. Lost to him. A knife slicing open his heart would have been less painful.
He had not been the person to see that, to handle that. He hadn't been the Steve back then to look up and see his superhero motionless, distant.
And he had known that if he put his arms around Bucky then, death itself would not make him let go.
He was drenched in a cold sweat when he finished scraping through the memories.
Seated on his window sill, staring out at the pale night sky.
It was raining. He could hear it falling on the planet, but here above the clouds, it was just sound.
Bucky's steamboat in the sky.
And the one who had called it, who would most appreciate it, not mentally whole enough to enjoy it.
The droning hiss of rain sounded for a long time after. Peaceful, serene.
Until, suddenly, clear forks of lighting lit up the sky. And for a moment he held his breath, looked across the sky, thinking Thor was arriving.
But no such thing happened.
A long time later, he realized it hadn't been anything except what he didn't even believe in — a sign.
He didn't need another two months to make his decision. He only needed the time to pass so that he could land a jet in Wakanda.
—
He was asleep. That he knew. And he was dreaming. At least . . . he had to be dreaming.
So he wasn't entirely sure how he was now in the Connected Realm. Because Thor had said being in the Realm was never a dream, but instead perfectly real.
And the last time, he hadn't quite known how he'd come upon the rock outcropping to be looking out across the golden grassland. But now none of that seemed applicable.
He was standing now at what seemed a cave mouth, staring through it at the golden landscape. Seeing the daunting sight of that massive Tree.
Stumped, as much to find himself there as anything, he looked around. But behind him was darkness. Rock and nothing else. Not even an exit as far as he could see. Onward seem to be the only option. And even so he might have remained where he stood until something showed itself.
But the lightning across the world before he'd fallen asleep had seemed a harbinger to the dream. So he moved forward toward the cave mouth. Clearing its entrance, he looked out onto the golden world and saw Bucky standing there. Just meters from where he'd exited the cave.
Of course, he stared.
He'd never been inside a dream and felt that he was awake, fully conscious, and that what he was seeing should make him question his own mind.
But he knew he was in a dream.
And that he was in fact awake, and fully conscious.
And that he would only question his own mind at his own dire stupidity.
Bucky was standing just meters away, at the edge of the rock outcropping he'd stood on himself the first time he'd been there.
Bucky was smiling at him.
No, not smiling.
Buck had tears in his eyes.
And looked . . .
He stood as still as the day itself, staring at the person he knew could not be looking at him.
Bucky looked as beautiful and as healthy as a spring morning. No distortions, clear as sight. His hair was cut to just beneath his jaw, his arm covered in the type of waterproof looking material he'd been seeing in his dreams.
Buck was dressed in cargos and a T-shirt, but had a big, multicolored scarf around his neck and shoulder. Like how he had seen on Wakandans when he'd dropped Bucky off.
Had he said Bucky looked beautiful. And healthy, and—
"Hey, you," Bucky breathed hoarsely.
His feet seemed to have lifted off the ground, taking the place of where his head should be.
He stood there, staring at Buck's smiling, glistening eyes, Bucky's tightening expression. "How are'ya, Steve?"
If this was a dream, he was going to die here.
And it was a dream, because try as he might, he couldn't move toward Bucky.
"Can you see me?" he asked, intently, and Bucky nodded, swallowed. "Why can't I come to you?" he asked him.
"We can't," Bucky said thickly, his alluring blue eyes on him like a warm blanket.
"Why not?" he asked directly, untrusting of whatever world he was presumably existing in at the moment.
"I don't know."
And they stood there, staring at each other. Him feeling like nothing he had ever experienced in his entire life, like an earthquake was taking place inside him that he was trying to prevent by just holding Bucky's eyes.
"Steve," Bucky cried softly, his eyes almost physically flooding him with love and attention. "Jesus Christ. Look at you."
And as if he was having a heart attack, he slowly realized that he was seeing Bucky—
He had no breath to say it. "Are you awake?"
Bucky seemed unable to speak, nodded again and again.
His breathing had stopped, his movements. He was looking at Bucky.
This wasn't a dream.
He held Bucky's eyes. Bucky looked right back at him.
He opened his mouth, and on a suspended breath said, "I'm on my way."
—
Waking to the morning sunshine blasting against the drawn gauze of his window blinds, he was on his back, slowly opening his eyes. Staring darkly at the dark dome on his desk.
He was sick of these dreams. Sick of everything. But laid there feeling his heart on fire. Feeling tears that wouldn't fall. Eventually he got up and went to shower. Before leaving his quarters, he still, like a hopeless case, passed by his desk and glanced at the dome. Of course not. No he didn't have any messages. In nearly ten months, he'd never had a single message.
Their next mission was planned for a couple days' time. Sam, on pain gels and slinged up, and moving conspicuously slowly, like trying to head off any comments, was standing in the Quinjet's cargo bay, logging into a terminal.
He didn't even bother ragging on Sam. He'd scanned and retained the doctor's orders, and as long as they'd kept Sam off his feet and not using that arm for a good five days, Sam was good. The rest was just going to be gripey attitude. That, he could handle.
"See you're respecting the doctor's orders."
"It's an arm, Steve. I can actually take it anywhere."
He said nothing, rubbed his eye, looking at his pad and trying to pull his thoughts together.
Until he realized Sam had sassed him back but not stopped looking at him. He glanced over.
Sam was staring at him.
"What?" he asked, a little more sharply than maybe he ought to. But he simply wasn't feeling all that great.
"Nothing," Sam said, but went on looking at him. Looking like he was suppressing both worry and confusion. Looking muddled. "I just thought— we'd be burning a hole through the atmosphere by now."
"Why, what happened."
After a long silence, he remembered they'd been talking, and glanced at Sam.
Sam blinked and stared back. As did he.
Sam said, "You . . . have a message from— "
But he gone.
He smashed right through the flight deck doors, sending personnel plastering themselves against the walls as he flew straight down the corridor — dropped himself down several flights of stairwell instead of taking the stairs, and on their deck tore to his quarters. He pushed through the retracting doors and ended his flight at his desk like he'd reached the end of the world.
Shaking all by himself in a storm, he stared down at the dome, realizing in an instant that he didn't know whether it only sent messages or whether it was a live two-way communicator. But of course it would be a two-way communicator, it—
It was glowing. It was amber. Inside it was a green light he had never seen. Beneath the green dot, in small letters—
Shuri's Miracle is: ONLINE.
He slammed the dome so hard the glass cracked. He didn't know how to make it work.
"Buh- buh- Bucky. Buck!"
"Hey, Steve."
He sat down so hard his steel chair dented.
"Is- is- is there visual!"
"Why don't you just get down here, bud."
"Jesus Christ," he wailed.
Bucky laughed, low, kindly.
Just as he remembered him.
"Natasha said the Helicarrier's somewhere over Buenos Aires," Bucky said. Smoothly, calmly. "And that a Quinjet can be here in eight hours. Eight hours it is, Steve."
He just blinked at the dome, like it had come to life and was talking to him in Bucky' voice.
"Bucky," he keened at it. "Buck."
Bucky only laughed. "Right here, Steve. Come on, you can do it. Seven hours . . . and fifty-nine minutes. And counting."
He hurtled into the Quinjet in lift-off, as Natasha was closing the landing ramp.
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