A/N: A regular update? Me? I'm just as surprised as you are! But between work being temporarily slow and Baby Kappa sleeping like a champ, I've had a bit more time than usual. Let's just enjoy this moment and appreciate that I didn't make any of us wait another 9 months for the long-promised reunion.
Speaking of which, the fact that y'all are still here after such a long hiatus is just, I can't even. Thank you so, SO much for all of the love and congratulations for Baby Kappa! Extra love to Not Enough Answers and my beta-extraordinaire Stencil Your Heart for all of their input. They're the real MVP's.
Warnings for language!
Disclaimer - You know what's mine and what isn't.
Chapter 8 - Echo
France - 1945
All morning long the steady rumble of vehicles kept Bucky from catching too much sleep. The loud engines echoed off the remains of half-crumbled brick buildings and rattled the creaky wood floor beneath his boots. Combining the unholy noise with the thoughts and worries running rampant through his restless mind was enough to keep Bucky awake. When he couldn't quiet his mind he did his best to ease his body, taking the time given to lay still on an ancient bed where he tried to loosen his tight muscles one by one, ignoring the ache in his knees and back. Sometimes Bucky swore that one year of fighting overseas aged him ten years, leaving him feeling closer to forty than to twenty-eight.
Eventually, the sun rose and brought with it a mild summer morning. Bucky emerged into the fine day with Steve. Though he tried his best not to let it show, he was anxious and jittery. Bucky felt out of step with the rest of the world, moving to a different beat that had everything to do with the war and nothing to do with it at the same time. He barely touched his breakfast but drank two cups of coffee and while he hardly spoke a word, his mind was racing at ninety to nothing. During the morning briefing at Battalion HQ, he kept his whole attention on the maps but the words of the commanding officers went in one ear and out the other. Bucky found it hard to concentrate on anything when the aide team would arrive at any moment.
Normally Bucky did an excellent job of separating his duties as a soldier from his personal life but after the carnage he'd witnessed on the battlefields of France, he'd never been more eager to see Sadie. A litany of reasons comprised his desperation, the chief being his desire to ensure that she came through the intense invasion unscathed but also for the sheer relief that her presence brought him. Bucky craved her steady disposition and calming demeanor. Some people thought Sadie's total balance indicated coldness but he knew better; Bucky knew that beneath her composed exterior was a heart so warm and bright that with one touch she could pull him back from the edges of his darkest nightmares. Bucky needed that now; he needed to feel her hands in his and hear the sweetness in voice, if only to remind him that even in the midst of these horrendous days, there was still goodness to be found.
"You know, you could have tried harder to focus in there," Steve remarked when they ducked out of Battalion HQ with nowhere in particular to go except to wait for the aide team to show so they could all get on their merry way to London.
Bucky rolled his eyes. "Did I miss anything?"
"No," Steve admitted in an annoyed sort of voice. "But I'm sure the brass noticed you were only halfway there."
"The brass'll get over it."
"You know she's okay, don't you? Doc radioed in to say they were all fine and would meet us as soon as possible."
"Doc Holmes can say whatever he wants," Bucky observed. Both of them stopped and checked in all directions before crossing the street. "I'm still not going to believe it until I see her for myself."
Steve made a sound that perfectly conveyed his amusement and saved him the trouble of informing Bucky that he was being pathetic. Bucky didn't even need to be told once; he was perfectly aware that he'd turned into a truly cringeworthy version of the same guys he used to judge for worshipping the ground their girls walked on. And yet, for all of his awareness, Bucky didn't care one iota. The last time he'd seen Sadie was in Weymouth when they were forced to say their goodbye in public view before departing to their separate assembly areas on the eve of landing in Normandy. Bucky certainly couldn't speak for Sadie but he knew their goodbye hadn't been what he wanted and he'd been quietly counting down the days, hours, and minutes until he saw her again. In his opinion, he was more than entitled to act as sappy and pathetic as he wanted. They were trying to make an honest go of things in the middle of a war for crying out loud, what else did Steve expect?
Overhead the sun moved behind a grouping of fluffy clouds, bathing the cobblestone street in shade and casting strange shadows over the half-destroyed buildings. The signs of the war were inescapable, no matter which direction Bucky turned. He thought by now he'd be accustomed to seeing sloping piles of rubble practically pouring out of half-standing buildings or hearing the laments of the locals trying to make sense of their tattered lives. But some things, like the sight of locals recovering bodies from the shattered brick and wood, would never get easier. Back home, he knew that Brooklyn was still standing; it was impossible for Bucky to imagine his home in ruins. He watched as several locals formed a chain to transport intact furniture out of a second-floor sitting room, passing the items down a miniature mountainside of debris.
"It's a shame," Steve remarked and Bucky barely registered him.
"Yeah," he replied, his voice sounding even further away.
They continued toward their temporary quarters, a building that stood at one corner of the town square. The square functioned as a makeshift assembly area. As soon as the aid team returned and debriefed, they would all load up in trucks at the square and head to an airfield where they would once again split up and move on to new missions. Bucky and the Commandos were bound for Kiev and a weapons depot somewhere beyond the grim city. Sadie, to the best of his knowledge, would be dropping in and out of France, tailing the front line and helping units and hospitals that needed it the most. He hated the idea of being apart for so long but there wasn't much he could do. It wasn't like he could seek a temporary reprieve from his duties just so he could follow his girlfriend around Western Europe like a lost puppy, not that she'd even allow it in the first place.
Beneath Bucky's boots, the cobblestone started to rumble. Tiny pebbles rattled about and a few civilians had to duck out of the way as some debris fell from the open floor above them.
"Tanks?" He asked, turning to where Steve stared down the main road.
"Shermans." Steve's face split into a sunny grin. "And it looks like they've got some hangers on."
Evelyn's flaming red hair caught Bucky's eye first. She perched atop the lead Sherman, holding up a hand to shield her eyes from the reemerging sun. His attention shifted immediately to the woman next to her, leaning back on her elbows and laughing at her friend. Bucky's knees almost gave in relief. Sadie was, as promised, in one piece, almost exactly as Bucky left her at Weymouth. Although he couldn't see her eyes owing to her aviators, he knew the second she saw him because her laughter died but the smile on her face grew until she practically beamed.
"Heya boys! Going our way?" Evelyn called as soon as they came within range.
Bucky jogged up to the side of the tank to help Evelyn down and then he reached up for Sadie. She tossed her gear down to Steve before slipping down the side and into Bucky's waiting hands.
"Hi," she said, gripping his upper arms for a few seconds longer than necessary. A breathless laugh escaped her. "I've been trying to come up with something better to say the whole ride but I just-"
Bucky knew what she wanted to say, or rather, what she'd prefer to do. Out in the open he couldn't even hold onto her for too long or brush the loose tendril of hair from her forehead. Kissing her wasn't even remotely an option regardless of that being the way both of them would prefer to say hello after such a fraught few days apart.
"I know," he murmured and rustled up his best smile.
"Hey! You two coming? We've got a debriefing!" Steve yelled over the din.
As though they'd been electrocuted, they sprang apart and Sadie waved at him. "Good to see you too, Captain!"
Sadie fell into step with Bucky, though he had to slightly slow his gait to allow for her shorter legs. They followed Steve, Evelyn and the rest of the aid team across the square toward their temporary setup. Ducking into the house, Bucky led her down the narrow hall toward the crowded briefing room. He started to turn a corner when a hand closed over his wrist and pulled him back. He stumbled through an open door into a storage closet.
"Sade what are you-" Sadie cut him off, rising up to the tips of her toes to claim his mouth in a fierce kiss. His surprise melted away and he wound an arm around her waist, bringing her against him.
"What was that for?" He asked in a hoarse voice when they pulled away.
Sadie's hands framed either side of his face and she stared at him through her long lashes. When she replied her voice came out barely above a whisper, small and fearful, giving Bucky a glimpse into the emotions simmering beneath her cool and collected exterior. "For not dying."
Bucky nodded in silent understanding. He dipped his head and kissed her once more, this time softer and slower. She tasted like spearmint and he could smell the antiseptic coming off her skin, little pieces that made up this extraordinary woman. When they parted, he kissed her forehead and held her close, hiding his smile in her thick hair.
"You're not getting rid of me that easily," he promised and she muffled her laugh in his chest. "It'd take more than a measly European invasion to keep me from you."
X X X
Over the past two years, Bucky had looked at Sadie Reid's photograph more times than he cared to admit. The first time he saw her was at the Smithsonian, mere days after walking away from the wreckage of SHIELD. There, tucked away in a corner of the Howling Commandos exhibit, was the black and white picture of a woman smiling from beneath the short brim of a peaked cap. Bucky stared at the picture for a long time and before he even read Sadie's name on the plaque or examined her uniform dressed on a mannequin or the other personal effects donated by her family, he knew her. He couldn't remember her name or anything special about her but he stared at her picture and knew she was a brunette and her clear eyes were grey, not blue. After that day he'd hunted her down in a handful of history books, using a few coins he'd scraped together to make a couple of photocopies that he tucked away in the pages of a notebook.
Sometimes when he was alone, he pulled Sadie's picture out and tried to make heads and tails of how she fit into his life. At first he recognized her merely as another HYDRA captive, one who had the misfortune of being thrown in his destructive path. But then, as the fog of his brainwashing began to lift, memories of Sadie Reid began to trickle in with the rest. Bucky understood then that she was like Steve: more important than the rest and a weakness capable of being exploited. He clung to the pictures and relied on them to help bring the happy memories of her to life in a bid to chase away the darkness and the image of the last time he'd seen her.
But pictures and mental images couldn't do justice to the woman standing before him. Even Bucky's best memories of Sadie were colored by the war, strange and intimate scenes painted on a pallet of olive drab, cracked earth, and blood. He half-expected to see her wearing her Class A's with her hair pinned in a neat chignon, revealing her clear face and bold red lipstick. What he got instead was a vision wrapped in a pale blue dress, framed by soft curls that tumbled down her shoulders and a full petal pink mouth that caused Bucky's heart to stumble over a beat. He swallowed hard as he took in every detail his hungry eyes would allow.
His mind went blank. Bucky knew he'd come up with something to say but his tongue felt numb as he grappled for the words. In the end he gave up and the first thing that came to mind tumbled off his lips.
"Sadie," he said.
She drew to a halt upon hearing his voice. Bucky watched her chest expand and shudder when she exhaled. He wondered if his voice had such a monumental impact on her as hers did on him. Her wide grey eyes roved over his face, down the length of his body and back up to meet his gaze.
The back of Bucky's neck felt hot under the intensity of her stare. A thousand thoughts could be racing in her mind and he found himself terribly self-conscious of that fact. Without thinking, his hand shot to his metal shoulder plate.
"I know I, uh-" he wondered if it was possible to sound any stupider. "I look-"
Sadie shook her head, cutting off his self-deprecation before he could even start. "It doesn't matter," she assured him. When she smiled his heart sped up, an automatic reaction he couldn't hope to control if he tried. "Well, the hair is a bit unexpected but it suits you. I just- I can't believe you're here."
Bucky didn't even know what to say in response. He'd had so much more time than her to process the realities of their situation and knew that she was still alive. But he could tell that she was still grappling with her disbelief and he didn't blame her. Their circumstances were bizarre to say the absolute least.
Sadie's eyes were so wide that she reminded him of a deer caught in headlights. He was afraid of making any sudden movement lest he spook her and send her running in the opposite direction. Instead he stood perfectly still, waiting for her to draw up her courage and come to him. Each step she took closer to him seemed to be enormous in so many ways and Bucky's heart continued to hammer in his throat until at last she stood right before him.
"Do you remember the last time we saw each other?"
Yes. Bucky remembered in vivid detail. He remembered a dank room, the circle of light from the sole overhead fixture and the crackling voice over a loudspeaker. The last time he saw Sadie, she was a bedraggled and half-starved shell of her former self, littered with bruises hidden behind her atrociously long, tangled hair. She'd been so weak she swayed on her feet, squinting into the darkness and then the open devastation when she recognized him. His hands were hard, she struggled to breathe and then- "Bucky, please."
But that wasn't the meeting Sadie asked about. Sadie's last memory of Bucky was of a snowy clearing in the mountains.
"It's fuzzy," he admitted. She stood so close now he could smell the subtle floral note embedded in her shining hair.
Sadie nodded and lifted a trembling hand. "After that day, I thought I would never see you again. This is-"
"I know."
Bucky watched as she opened her fingers and pressed her palm to his chest. The touch wasn't electrifying or even surprising but it stole the breath from his lungs anyway. If he blinked he was back in that Godforsaken lab, reaching, always reaching for her but never bridging the gap. Sadie squeezed her eyes shut to keep the brimming tears at bay. Almost as soon as Bucky processed the significance of her touch, she withdrew it and took a step back as though she were uncomfortable just being so close.
"I'm sorry," she wiped away the stray tears from her cheeks. "I've had weeks to wrap my head around this and I'm still a mess."
Sadie's voice was thick with emotion and some part of Bucky, though he had no idea what part, felt the urge to bring his arm around her and hold her close. Decades ago, that was what he would have done. Bucky knew any attempt now would ring hollow. He could go through the physical motions but he couldn't tap into those old emotions; he didn't even know how to even try. He fought the urge to shove his hand in his pocket and shrink away and swallowed his discomfort to do the very least he could.
"You don't have to apologize. Do you want to sit?"
Internally he kicked himself. This meeting was not going how he envisioned, not that he'd really envisioned anything specific, just smoother and less… awkward. Bucky thought about their very first meeting and the ease with which he flirted and tried to charm his way into her good graces. He would give anything for a dose of that Bucky now to iron over the wrinkles in this situation and put Sadie more at ease.
Despite his obvious inability to string an intelligent thought together, Sadie gave him the benefit of the doubt and nodded. Bucky led her to the long bench on one side of the reflecting pool and waited for her to sit before doing his best to be half as graceful with just one arm. She settled her skirt over her legs and Bucky swallowed. It was hard to believe that once upon a time, she'd spent more nights in his bed than not and he gave and received affection with zero thought. Now Bucky was scared of what would happen if his knee accidentally brushed hers.
"This is just so odd," she admitted at last and shook her head. "I've been trying to think what to say for weeks now and I'm not sure there are correct words."
Bucky was relieved to hear he wasn't the only one feeling the pressure and awkwardness.
"Yeah, stuff like this doesn't happen every day."
Her half-laugh went a little bit toward easing his discomfort. "No, it definitely does not. Of course, I don't even know how I got here. One minute I was leaving Hamburg bound for Ypres and the next I woke up in a hospital room almost seven decades later. We - Steve and I - were hoping that, given the fact you seemed to know I was still alive, you could fill in the gaps in my memory?"
Bucky should have seen her question coming from a hundred miles away. If he were in her shoes, he would want to know the exact same thing. Except he stood on the other side of the question with the things he knew. Looking at her now, he could still see the lingering effects of her time in captivity. Weeks under the care of qualified doctors had put some of the meat back on her bones but she was still noticeably too thin. Hollows sharpened her cheekbones and the tendons stood out on her long fingers, running up to her tiny wrists. How could Bucky tell her that he knew exactly how she wound up a wasted byproduct of Arnim Zola's ruthless brand of science?
He realized then that he stood on a frightening precipice. On the one hand, he could lay it all out for her, every stomach-churning detail up until the bitter, bloody end. Bucky could explain to her that as his memories started coming back, those endless hours of torture came first. His mind returned to a question that Tony Stark asked him in the midst of trying to murder him only a few weeks before. "Do you even remember them?" He hadn't lied when he said he remembered all of them. Bucky blinked at Sadie, drinking in her beautiful face shining with hope. He remembered every single one of his victims, even the ones that inexplicably survived.
On the other hand, being so close to Sadie proved to be an odd balm even if he couldn't explain at all why. Though he couldn't describe what he felt for her as anything like his old romantic feelings, he was drawn to her nonetheless - perhaps because she was a tangible connection to his past and the man he'd once been. In any event, Bucky couldn't chase away the sneaking suspicion that if she knew the truth, not only would she hate herself for it but she would hate him too. The idea of driving her away, this magnetic creature, was too much to bear.
And so, in that moment, Bucky made a choice.
"I'm sorry, Sadie. I wish I could but I don't remember," he lied.
Sadie's face fell in disappointment before her nose scrunched in confusion. "How did you know to look for me?"
Bucky's mind lurched to the first answer he could think of, the one closest to the truth. "When SHIELD fell, Natasha Romanoff dumped all of it and HYDRA's files onto the internet. I started going through the old records to try and figure out more of what happened back then and your name popped up. I wasn't even sure you were still alive but I needed something to focus on, so I started looking for you."
The half-truth rolled off his tongue so easily that Bucky caught himself believing that was the entire story. Sadie nodded, though a frown continued to tug at her lips. "You didn't see anything else in those records? Because there are a lot of questions outside of how I got here."
"Your enhancement," he surmised and she nodded. "Steve told me. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you can heal like that. I didn't see any details." At least he didn't have to lie to her about this. "Whatever happened to you took place so long ago that I wouldn't be surprised if there was only one copy of your file and it could have easily gotten lost in the shuffle between bases, if you were ever catalogued at all."
Sadie made a face. "There's nothing quite like being catalogued to make you feel like a failed science experiment or livestock."
The words escaped Bucky before he could stop them, springing off the tip of his tongue before he could catch them and shove them back. "Just be glad you were a failure."
"Oh Bucky, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to suggest that you- oh, damn, there's no good way to talk my way around this one is there?"
Despite the seriousness of their conversation, Bucky wanted to smile. He remembered now that he'd always liked the rare occasion when Sadie swore. There was something about hearing those four letter words pop out of that perfect mouth, reminding him that she wasn't some goddess to place on a pedestal.
"It's okay. I shouldn't have said anything. My point is, I couldn't find any other information on you other than you were in HYDRA's custody after you disappeared. The only other thing I found out from tracking down old HYDRA operatives was mainly where you might have been transferred."
Sadie nodded, taking his words at face value. Dropping her chin, she let her dark curls slide off her shoulder to curtain her face. Unable to read her expression, Bucky had nothing to go on. He suspected that she was lamenting her misfortune or perhaps struggling over what to say next. She twisted her fingers in her lap.
"Bucky," she whispered. Just the shift in her voice and the way she now refused to look at him told Bucky exactly where she was going. He braced himself for the inevitable. "You have no idea- leaving you in that ravine."
From the sound of it her throat closed up, preventing her from finishing her thought. Bucky had already been through this guilt game once before. Reassuring Steve that he didn't blame him in the slightest had been tough enough and Bucky didn't relish doing it again with Sadie. How were they supposed to know that he'd survived the fall?
"It's okay."
"It's not okay and you know it," she countered, a swift, decisive note in her voice. Bucky's eyes widened. He wasn't used to people talking to him like they knew him. In Sadie's case, however, she did know him. Like Steve, she knew him far too well, better than he knew himself in many ways. "I never forgave myself for leaving you behind and if I'd known you were still alive, I would have dismantled all of Europe until I found you."
Bucky frowned. He'd heard almost the exact same lament from Steve, the same regrets, the same guilt and a nasty part of him wondered just how self-serving it was. There was nothing any of them could do to change things. Sadie said if only Bucky knew, but he did know. He was the one who fell, the one who lay in the snow broken, in agony, coming in and out of consciousness, discovering over and over the bloody stump with no clue where the other part of his arm landed. He was the one who stared up into the dreary sky convinced Steve would find him and thinking with longing of Sadie's gentle hands nursing him back to health. But they never came. Someone else did. Sadie and Steve could have taken Europe apart piece by piece together and they still never would have found him. Besides, Sadie did know he was alive. She did know that he'd been taken and she knew what happened to him. And she was lucky, beyond lucky she didn't remember.
"There's nothing you could have done," he said and she shook her head, wiping away a few stray tears.
"I know but I-"
Bucky felt his temper snap like an old rubber band stretched too far.
"Just drop it." Sadie's voice died in an instant. She slid away from him, gaze glued to her knees and her trembling hands resting there. Bucky's stomach sank through his body. He realized a beat too late how harsh he'd been. In a pathetic attempt to soften the blow, he added a soft "please" at the end.
But the damage was done.
"Yeah, of course," she promised. Taking a deep breath, she rearranged her face and offered a polite, distant smile that he instantly hated. She wasn't Sadie anymore. She was just another stranger. "I think maybe I should go. We'll have more time to catch up later but I-" she looked away and Bucky caught the trembling of her lower lip. "I just- I need to-"
Without another word she left his side, walking toward the door. She revealed Steve on the other side, who grasped her upper arms to steady her. The door started to close on its own but Bucky caught the split second her face collapsed before Steve pulled her in, letting her bury her face in his chest. Bucky dropped his head back and scrubbed his face.
"Fucking great job, Bucky," he muttered to himself. "You really knocked that one out of the park."
X X X
"Your pronunciation is still off. Try it again."
Steve glared at Natasha's image on the screen. "I thought it was fine. Sadie, will you tell her it's fine?"
Sadie raised an eyebrow but didn't look up from her history book. "I'm staying out of it. But if Natasha is fluent in Russian, then I'm sure she's the authority."
"Oh, you're no help," he grumbled, doing his best not to crumple the paper in his hands. Sadie hid her smile behind her book.
"You should listen to her and to me," Natasha berated. "If this little test is going to work then you need to get the words right, so try it again."
Steve blew out an exaggerated sigh but complied, consulting the list of Bucky's trigger words once more. He'd been reviewing the words since the day before, trying his best to to get the tight syllables and unfamiliar combinations correct ever since. Because Bucky was the subject of this particular experiment, he couldn't exactly help and so Steve fell back on Natasha to tutor him. She proved to be just as tough of a Russian teacher as she was a fight instructor, which was to say Steve would be feeling the bruises to his ego for days.
Drawing himself up he tried yet again, speaking as clearly as he could while a nonplussed Natasha watched him, leaning back in her chair with her feet propped up on an ancient desk. Steve was surprised she even had a wifi signal in an abandoned warehouse just outside of Kharkiv, but he supposed Ukraine was just like the rest of the world - connected no matter where you went. When he finished working his way through Bucky's trigger words, he raised his eyes to find Natasha with her arms crossed, drumming her fingers to a tune he couldn't hear.
"Well?"
Natasha brought her feet back down and shrugged. "Well, it's not great but it'll get the job done."
"High praise coming from you," he joked.
A tiny grin pulled at one corner of her mouth, a sly look that suggested she was more amused than she let on. "Don't let it go to your head. When's the big moment?"
Steve looked over his shoulder. "Sade?"
"We need to leave in about five minutes."
So soon! Steve hoped to have more time to talk to Natasha about matters beyond Bucky's deprogramming. While Sadie went about her business putting her book back in her bedroom and taking care of her own affairs, he got the rundown on Natasha and Sam's latest movements and Wanda's brief planned departure from the team.
"Alright, well you know you can always reach me here," Steve said, checking over his shoulder but Sadie still hadn't appeared.
"When do you think you'll be rejoining us? Sam's starting to pout."
Steve rolled his eyes. Sam Wilson was not a pouter, but Natasha always found humor in her droll dramatics. "Don't know. Things haven't gone as smoothly as I'd hoped."
"Uh oh, trouble in paradise?"
Trouble in paradise didn't really do the tension between Sadie and Bucky justice. In fact, Steve wasn't even sure he could call their situation tense; in order for tension to exist, they had to interact with each other. He hadn't expected their reunion to be the stuff of fairy tales but he also never anticipated that Sadie and Bucky would actively avoid each other either, no matter how difficult their initial meeting had been.
He heard Sadie's door close. "It's not worth getting into right now. I'll check in later and we'll talk more about it then."
"Good luck," Natasha said in a dry voice with a smirk. She wiggled her fingers in a goodbye before the screen went black.
"She's something else," Sadie remarked from behind him. "Are you ready?"
Together they left their corner of the palace and made their way down to the waiting transporter. Though the ride was short, it gave Steve a couple of minutes uninterrupted.
"I'm surprised you're coming."
Sadie shrugged. "King T'Challa and Shuri both wanted me there. I can't exactly refuse a royal request, can I?"
Steve shook his head in disbelief. "And you still haven't talked to him since?"
"Nope," she replied, popping the 'p.' "I figure when he's ready, he'll break the ice."
Although Steve couldn't deny this as a sound strategy, he still hated it. He didn't know what he'd hoped for but Sadie raising her own defenses in response to Bucky's cagey behavior certainly wasn't it. If he was being brutally honest, he supposed he'd been hoping that she would find a way to break Bucky's stony exterior. During the war, she'd been particularly adept at curbing Bucky's darker side and bringing him back from the edge when he strayed too far. But Steve had forgotten that the sole reason Sadie could do that at all was because Bucky was madly in love with her. Not anymore, apparently.
"You know you two are going to have to figure something out if you stay."
"You're preaching to the choir," she murmured, staring out toward Shuri's lab as it grew steadily larger. "But neither of us can force it. So, the long route it is."
Steve admired and resented her patience. How she could maintain her perfect composure all the way up to Shuri's lab was beyond him, though even her mouth fell open in surprise at the sight of a small company of armed Dora Milaje soldiers all standing at the ready. Immediately he sought out Okoye, who watched Bucky speak to Shuri and T'Challa with wary, dark eyes.
"Is the cavalry really necessary?" He asked her under his breath.
Okoye's distrustful gaze slipped over to Steve and she raised an eyebrow. "How many people died the last time he was under the influence of these trigger words?" Well, she had him there. When he didn't answer, she returned to keeping an eagle eye on Bucky's every move. "That is what I thought."
"Captain Rogers, are you ready?" Shuri drifted over to him.
She practically vibrated with excitement. Looking past her to Bucky, he nodded in his direction. Bucky shoved his hand in his pocket and nodded back, jaw hard and face grim. Steve supposed he was nervous; in a way, his entire future hung in the balance. Shuri was likely Bucky's only option for a real shot at a second chance and if her algorithm failed, Steve couldn't imagine what he would do. And at this point, there was only one way to find out.
"Yeah, let's give it a whirl."
The Dora Milaje fanned out, placing themselves between Bucky and the spectators. Okoye put herself directly next to T'Challa, leaning over to speak to him in a low voice that nobody else could hear. The sight was a little daunting, an entire group of powerful women brandishing tall spears. Most disturbing, however, was that Steve knew if Bucky really wanted to, he could kill every single one of them without breaking a sweat, even without his left arm. One look at Okoye's stony face told Steve she was thinking the exact same thing.
Bucky stood a few feet away from him, hand shoved in his pocket, green fabric tied over his right shoulder. In spite of his physically imposing stature, Steve thought he looked small, staring out at Okoye's insurance policy like a child being scolded before he even stole a cookie from the jar. Clearing his throat, he retrieved the list from his pocket.
"Ready?" He asked Bucky.
"Ready."
One at a time Steve read the trigger words, in the right order, doing his best to get the pronunciation perfect. His tongue felt thick and his lips clumsy; despite the dozens of times he repeated the list he still felt awkward, even moreso now that he was repeating them to Bucky's face instead of Natasha. He'd take her quiet, amused judgement a thousand times over Bucky's paltry attempts to hide his fear. Before him, Bucky twitched and scowled. He paused after each word to quickly assess the situation, to ensure that things were staying the course and when Bucky gave no further reaction, he continued on. Steve glanced up to see him shake his head once or twice as if to clear his mind but he stayed rooted to one spot. Almost as soon as Steve began, it was over and he swallowed hard. He jumped to the final word on the page.
"Soldat?"
Bucky blinked at him and then, slowly, the corner of his mouth rose. He closed the distance between them and clapped Steve on the shoulder.
"Your Russian is terrible."
The entire room breathed a collective sigh of relief. Steve's shoulders sagged and he grinned at Bucky.
"I told you!" Shuri crowed, flitting past the now at-ease Dora Milaje. "I told you it would work, didn't I?"
Steve shrugged at Bucky but grinned all the same. In his book, Shuri had earned the right to gloat; she'd achieved the impossible. Now perhaps there was a future for Bucky, one that didn't depend on his hiding away from the world forever. There were other hurdles to clear, of course; trigger words or not, Bucky was still the world's most-wanted criminal. But those were issues for another day. For now it was enough to see Bucky's genuine smile, awash in Shuri's exultations. Bucky, however, wasn't focused on Shuri. Rather he looked past her, beyond T'Challa, the Dora Milaje, and even Steve himself. Sadie stood apart from the group, back pressed against the wall and arms draped loosely over her chest. And unless Steve was mistaking himself, he swore he detected the faintest trace of hope radiating off him.
Maybe, Steve thought, a bit hopeful himself. Just maybe.
X X X
Sadie swore she could feel the beginnings of a headache. Pressure started to throb inward from her temples but every time it started, it vanished just as quickly. She lay in bed for a long time, keeping her eyes closed while she tried to figure it out. Was she just imagining the headache or was her body healing it before it even started? The harder she concentrated, the more confused she became, brows furrowed and hand clenching her blankets. Green light flickered at the edges of the darkness behind her closed eyes. The light continued to swirl, growing in intensity and Sadie reached for it, trying to grasp what it was and what she could do with it.
"Focus," she whispered on an exhale.
Green wisps slipped through her and around her, filling her up and chasing away the aches that sought to upset her. Sadie wanted to understand. She wanted to figure out what these powers were and what they meant. What could she really do? What were her limits? How could she control something she didn't understand?
A beat throbbed behind her eyes, a rust-colored ache that she associated with headache.
"Go away," she whispered and imagined flicking the green light toward it, banishing it with a flourish.
And just like that, the rust disappeared. Sadie drew in a breath and willed the green away. Eventually the color subsided and all she saw were white spots dancing in the blackness. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw the same thing she'd seen for years. Smooth white sheets, a perfectly fluffed, unused pillow and nothing.
Rolling away from the empty half of her bed, Sadie looked to the clock. Six-fifteen in the morning wasn't too early to try and find something to eat. She exchanged her thin nightgown for a pair of cotton shorts and a loose long-sleeved shirt. Stifling a yawn, Sadie padded barefoot out of her room into the dark hallway. There was a light panel just around the corner in the common area. Halting before it, Sadie pressed the screen, still surprised when it woke, shining in a calm shade of blue.
"Okay," she muttered, tilting her head to the side while she tried to work out the many options. "All I want to do is turn on the lights. So if I were a futuristic light switch, how would I work?"
Tiny pictures littered the screen, a scale that she thought perhaps controlled the brightness and another that maybe would do the trick. She pressed the little icon and started when the lights did indeed come on, so bright they nearly blinded her. Wincing, she tried to find the fix but every time she pushed another picture, something else happened that she couldn't control. The lights turned purple and then bright green. Sadie cursed under her breath and fumbled until she pressed the first icon again and-
"Great," she muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Sadie? Is everything okay?"
Sadie startled, nearly jumping from her skin in surprise. Hand pressed against her chest to quell her pounding heart, she whirled around to see Bucky emerge from the shadow of the other hall, only partially illuminated by the daylight creeping in through the windows.
"Bucky- Good Lord, you scared the daylights out of me!"
He drew to a halt and held his hand up to mollify her. "Sorry, I was awake and under the door I thought I saw-"
"A ridiculous light show?" She suggested and he nodded. Sadie gestured to the screen. "I can't figure out how to work the damned thing."
Bucky drew his fingers through his mussed hair. "Yeah, this thing's kind of a pain in the ass. I think maybe you touched this one-" he indicated a picture of a big lightbulb, "which turns the lights on full brightness. If you use this one-" he pressed a smaller bulb in the bottom right corner. "Voila."
Sadie turned to see a warm glow fill the common area, pleasing and comfortable. "Why on earth would anyone replace a good, old-fashioned lightswitch with that?"
"You got me, but you'll get used to it."
She offered a fleeting smile. "I'd offer to make you coffee but I couldn't identify the coffee maker if someone bet my life on it."
To her surprise, Bucky snorted in a small laugh. Jerking his head toward the kitchen, he moved past her. "Come on, I can help with that, too."
Bucky's gait was only slightly affected by his lack of arm. Against her better judgment, Sadie examined his form, on display in a grey tank. He'd always been well built but now he was all muscle, a marvel to behold from his broad shoulders down to his cut waist. Sadie swallowed hard. She'd lost count of the times she'd trailed her hands down his chest or dragged her fingers along his shoulder blades, trying to get as close to him as she could get. To stave off the dryness in her throat, Sadie focused instead on the cap of black fabric stretched tightly over his metal shoulder plate. The metal extended beneath his shirt, creating a stiffness to that part of his silhouette. Glimpses of the scar tissue were visible, marking the line where metal met skin though Sadie suspected the metal extended beneath his flesh, anchored to bone to keep it in place.
"I can't remember how you take your coffee," Bucky admitted, drawing her out of her reverie.
He stood at the kitchen counter, white porcelain cup in hand. Sadie couldn't explain why but this small slip in Bucky's memory hurt worse than anything they discussed at their first meeting. During her grieving period she lamented the little things she took for granted, the way Bucky touched the small of her back when leading her through a door, the way he used to leave love notes and cute cartoons tucked between the pages of her medical textbooks, and the fact that he could make his coffee and hers practically in his sleep. Those were the details that Sadie thought she would have forever, the puzzle pieces that made up the full picture of their love. She shouldn't have expected him to remember such a tiny, insignificant detail as a cup of coffee but it bothered her because it was yet another missing piece.
Rubbing the back of her neck, Sadie shoved the thought away. "Just a splash of milk is fine."
Bucky nodded and got to work on the coffee machine, a complicated-looking contraption. His long hair fell across his face, the strands catching on the short hairs of his beard. Every few seconds or so, he pushed the offending strands away. Sadie wanted to ask why he hadn't cut it yet but stopped herself. She still didn't know where the line was drawn between them, what was and wasn't appropriate.
"Hey, so, uhm-I 'm sorry for the other day. I didn't mean to take your head off."
Sadie crossed her arms tighter over her chest. "You don't need to apologize. If this situation is half as overwhelming for you as it is me, then it's bound to happen."
He glanced at her over his shoulder, mouth soft and eyes unreadable. "I don't know if overwhelming really covers it. But I am sorry. None of this can be easy for you."
"Well, I guess I wouldn't call being forcibly woken up after eight decades in deep freeze to find myself in possession of inexplicable powers and in the custody of a bunch of strange men all with strong opinions on what should happen to me easy," she mused and then shrugged. "But it's no world war so I suppose I'll take it."
Her stomach flopped over when Bucky smiled. She'd been afraid he didn't really know how to smile anymore. "I heard about that. The Secretary is something else."
"I think the word you're looking for is bastard," Sadie suggested.
They both laughed at the same time. An easy feeling draped over her. "Yeah, that's the word."
She rested her elbows on the counter and watched as he poured coffee into two cups. One splash of milk later and he handed her coffee out to her. Sadie was careful not to touch his fingers when she took it. Thin tendrils of the milk still swirled out into the coffee, disseminating slowly. For a moment neither of them spoke and then Bucky found his voice.
"I'm sure that Ross said some stuff. About me."
She frowned into her coffee. "He gave me your dossier, actually."
"I bet that made for some light reading," he lamented.
Sadie wasn't standing in the kitchen anymore. She stared out over a pile of burnt corpses in the woods in Northern Italy. Blinking brought her to seeing limbs sticking out of the rubble in Kiev. And then she was treating half-dead soldiers, holding their internal organs in place, picking debris out of severed limbs, listening to them moan in their sleep and crying out for help. Finally, she stood at the gates of a POW camp in Japan, staring out on the walking skeletons of former soldiers, tortured to the brink of starvation and worked until their very souls were ground into powder. Tears stung her lower eyelids.
"I've seen worse." Her voice was hoarse, far away.
The way Bucky stared at her now threatened to undo her. Maybe he didn't know how she took her coffee but he understood her now, reading between the lines to the past they shared and to the things she had to experience alone. She wasn't trying to make him feel better and she wasn't minimizing his trauma and Bucky seemed to get that. There was nothing that Bucky could have done in his blood-soaked, terrible, brainwashed past that could compare to the atrocities she saw willingly committed on other human beings.
"Yeah," Bucky commented, still staring at her. "I guess you have."
Sadie could have drowned in his blue eyes. There wasn't a cell in her body that didn't ache to go to him, to draw him close and never let go. But one conversation didn't mean anything. It was just a baby step, one of the first in a path that lay ahead of her, unrevealed and scary.
Down the hall, she heard another door open.
"That will be Steve," she murmured. "He and I are supposed to meet with Shuri to go over the details of her plan to figure me out. So, that's my cue. Thank you for the coffee."
Bucky nodded. "Sure, any time. Good luck today."
She paused and smiled at him over her shoulder before she kept walking, wishing the whole way back that he would follow her and tackle her into bed, begging for five more minutes.
X X X
A steady click kept interrupting Brock Rumlow as he tried to sleep. The longer he listened, the angrier he got. What did a guy have to do to get a fucking nap without the incessant knocking of the outside world on his door? He was sore and drained and he needed sleep. After everything else, didn't he deserve at least that much?
He tried to roll on his side but couldn't. He tried to move his arms but they felt heavy, two leaden weights at his side sinking him deeper into the mattress. His legs were just as heavy. A cold sensation trickled into his bones through his right wrist. Something stretched and scratched over his hand. Was it tape? He couldn't tell. Brock couldn't tell anything about his situation except that he was stuck in a state of semi-consciousness and so stiff he felt paralyzed.
"Ah, you're beginning to wake up. Finally."
Brock had never heard that voice before - crisp, polished, English. He never made much of an effort to rub elbows with the elite of the world. Important men were always afflicted with the same insufferable sense of superiority and the belief that they were above getting dirt under their fingernails. That's what men like Brock were for and he'd preferred to spend his time with the rest of the scum of the earth willing to wallow in the mud.
"For a while it seemed you wouldn't turn the corner, but you did and now here you are on the mend, as it were."
If it were possible, Brock wanted to punch that accent until it sounded like nothing more than garbled gibberish from a toothless, bleeding mouth. Had he ever heard anyone sound so pretentious in his entire life? He didn't think so and he'd been Alexander Pierce's lapdog.
The smarmy-ass voice did do one thing, however; it brought Brock clarity, pulling him out of the fog. He could now place the beeps as coming from an IV, feeding fluids up a plastic tube to the catheter poking into the vein on the back of his right hand. His limbs weren't heavy, they were numb, likely owing from the medicine. Brock was in a hospital bed, attached to wires and monitors because- oh, yeah.
"How the fuck am I not dead?" His throat felt like sandpaper.
"Well, it turns out when Miss Maximoff - a rare talent, if I do say so myself - well, when she tried to move you out of range of the civilians in Lagos, she somehow managed to pull you free of that vest. I'm not well-versed in the particular details but as I understand it, the blow knocked you into a neighboring building. That truly heinous suit of yours softened the blow to minimize your injuries. Your men found you, I contracted them to bring you to me and, well, here we are."
Brock snorted. "Sounds almost too good to be true. And just who the hell are you?"
"My name is Doctor Emmanuel Greyson. At your service."
It took a while for his eyes to adjust but when they did he beheld a tall, well-dressed man wearing a white coat. His burnished brunette hair swept away from his face in a stylish cut and his beard was neatly trimmed above the collar of his pale blue dress shirt. Greyson's hazel eyes watched him from behind round, wire-framed glasses and he looked so dapper Brock halfway expected him to burst out into a dandy song and do the Charleston across the dank, ancient-looking hospital room.
"So, you gotta tell me," he groaned, doing his best to lift his head to get a better look at the man. "What's a sharp-dressed guy like you doing in a shithole like this with an asshole like me?"
"An excellent question. One that we can address in due time. For now it's enough that you know you're in a secure location, being well-tended and in no further danger of death today."
Brock would have raised an eyebrow if he had them to raise. "Are you even a real doctor?"
"I am. I attended Cambridge, if you must know."
"If you must know," he mocked through a nasty smirk. "When?"
"Some time ago and let's leave it at that."
The thin smile that tugged at his equally thin lips unsettled Brock. He couldn't put a finger on why, but he got the sense that this Doctor Emmanuel Greyson was far more dangerous than his prissy exterior indicated.
"Would you like to sit up? Perhaps you're hungry."
"Sure, why the fuck not. Gotta be better than staring at the ceiling."
Greyson reached over to the button on the inside of his hospital bed. "Well, the rumors are true; you are extremely charming."
Once he was upright, Brock got a better look around the room. At first he thought he was in an operating theater, judging from the tiled walls and the stained black and white floor. He followed the stains to a small drain in the center a few feet from his bed. There were rough areas on the floor where the linoleum was missing, set in even spaces where he supposed some kind of furniture once stood. He ignored the stainless steel tray tables, the mini fridge plugged into the wall, and the wooden crates stacked up in the corner. It was hard to concentrate on anything except the series of metal doors beyond the crates.
Greyson shrugged a straight shoulder though he seemed to take some measure of satisfaction from the drawers. "It's a bit morbid I suppose, but it's safe."
"A bit? We're in a morgue."
"A morgue, an OR, a hospital room. Honestly, what's the difference?"
"Well for one thing, there aren't dead people fridges in regular hospital rooms. There's not anyone in there, right?"
"Not for some time I'd imagine, though it didn't occur to me to check." Greyson jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Shall I?"
Brock, finally in some control of his faculties, waved him off. "No, I'm good."
Greyson nodded. He crossed one long leg over the other and, leaning back in his chair, stared hard at Brock. Years of tactics training taught Brock how to stay still and observe his foes without arousing suspicion. He could dress someone down across a crowded room without them realizing it. This doctor, however, had none of his finesse. Greyson jiggled his foot and pursed his lips while he surveyed his patient. There was a cold, clinical bent to him and Brock got the feeling that he was being sized up for some hereto unknown purpose.
"You know your face is truly remarkable."
Remarkable was code for unbelievable, shocking, monstrous, any number of adjectives that didn't add up to anything good. At first, after the incident, he couldn't look in the mirror. It took weeks for the bandages to come off and then months longer until Brock could stomach his own reflection. Some combination of self-loathing, whiskey, and burning hatred for Steve Rogers and his merry men gave Brock the ability to learn to accept his scars. He covered up the worst of his misery with self-deprecation or outright threats to anyone who so much as looked at him funny.
"Are you gonna tell me what you really want?"
Grey's humorless laugh reeked of practiced politeness. "That's the trouble with mercenaries: You always have to get to the point."
"Which is?"
"I have a proposition for you."
Well no shit, Brock thought. He figured he'd still be a bloody mess somewhere in Lagos if this pampered smart-ass hadn't deigned to take care of him. Brock didn't like being at the mercy of anyone's kindness and he certainly didn't want to be indebted to Greyson.
"You see, I'm in a bit of a medical quandary and what I need to cure it is going to be extremely difficult to obtain."
Brock hadn't seen that coming. Just looking at Greyson didn't suggest he was ill but you never could tell from looks alone. One of the few useful pieces of advice from his drunk of a mother was to never judge a book by its cover. "You know there are probably a dozen other mercs out there who can do a hit job on a lab."
"Oh, no, no. What I need isn't contained in a vial in a lab somewhere. I should be more specific. I don't need a thing, I need a person. A very specific person."
Greyson reached around to the nearest wooden crate and took up a newspaper. He dropped it on Brock's lap. On the front page he read the big, bold headline "Decades Old Mystery Solved: Sadie Reid Found At Last." Brock knew that name. He would know that name even if Sadie Reid wasn't mentioned in his sophomore American History unit on World War II, even if her picture wasn't hanging in the Smithsonian or her name affixed to one of the conference rooms at the old SHIELD headquarters. Because in the depths of various rooms around the world, even ones just like the morgue he occupied now, he'd heard the word Sadie ring out, a desperate plea from a tortured soul who didn't even know what he was saying. It wasn't just Steve Rogers that Bucky Barnes begged for. Oh no, it was Sadie Reid too. Procuring Sadie Reid for Greyson made no sense but he supposed that didn't matter. In his line of work, there was really only one thing he cared about.
"What's in it for me?"
Greyson took the paper back to admire the black and white photograph of Sadie Reid from the war.
"Why, Bucky Barnes on a silver platter, of course."
A/N: So, while everyone else has been anticipating the reunion, I've been dreading it. I think I've been dreading that scene for years. Although I'm pleased with the end result, you can't even imagine how relieved I am to have it out of the way. The next chapter continues on with more of Bucky's recovery and Sadie exploring her options.
There is a ton to unpack from this chapter and I would love to know any and all thoughts! Much love-Kappa.