Chapter 19: Bucky

The game was finally over. No more hiding. No more pretending to be on the wrong side or dead. Bucky had never been so happy to admit to having lied as right now.

Once Steve had composed himself, and Bucky had had a moment to wipe away his own tears, everyone wanted to know the full story of what had happened. Bucky started with his side of the story.

"After the Triskelion battle," he began, "I went in search of answers. I knew I remembered you, Steve, but I had to supplement my few memories of us with a lot of research. That's when I realized whose side I was supposed to be on."

He shrugged. "But I still didn't have the full picture and the government was after me, so I laid low. Then Loki found me and asked for help."

"Help with what?" Steve asked.

"Defeating the greatest threat to the known worlds," Loki answered. "Thanos."

"The purple giant from the Observatory?" Steve queried.

"Yes."

Romanoff frowned. "How does kidnapping me and faking Barnes' death achieve that?"

"Thanos had to believe the Avengers were broken," Loki replied.

It was Steve's turn to frown. "Why?"

Loki sighed. "Because I needed time. Three years ago I promised to get Thanos the Tesseract in return for taking over Earth. He called me up on that broken bargain a couple of weeks ago. In order to keep my life, I agreed to destroy you."

"So why are you helping us now?" Banner asked coolly.

Loki smiled without humor. "Because if I don't, Thanos will destroy everything. I'd take out you, then he'd take out me, and then the Nine Realms would fall. I'd rather that didn't happen for several reasons."

"What about Rhodes?" Romanoff demanded.

Bucky had been wondering when that would come up. "His death was never part of the plan," he said quietly. "When Loki approached me, he wanted help to attack the team, without actually destroying you. He only wanted Thanos to believe he was trying in order to buy us time."

"Barnes agreed to help me on the condition that HYDRA went down as a result," Loki supplied. "So we befriended HYDRA, staged our little meeting in the park to draw you in, and went from there. Barnes' 'death' was intended to fool Thanos more so than you," he added to Steve.

Steve turned to the twins. "You knew this all along?"

"Not from the start," Wanda explained. "But once we found out what HYDRA really was and what Loki and Barnes were trying to achieve, we changed sides. We joined the Avengers on Loki's orders."

Bucky watched as his friend took that in. He wasn't happy with how things had panned out by a long way, but war was always messy. Hopefully Steve would see past the pain his and Loki's deception had caused to the reasons underneath. The universe hung in the balance.

"You said all of that was to buy time," Steve said at last. "Time to do what?"

"Time to figure out how to fight Thanos," Bucky replied. "We needed the Frost Giants on our side in case things went south, and we needed to stop Thanos from completing his set."

Steve frowned. "'Set?'"

In answer to his unasked question, Bucky moved to the rocks at the base of the hill and uncovered two objects from beneath the black sand – the Chitauri scepter and the Tesseract. He brought them back to the group, tossing the Cube to Loki before it could damage his cybernetic hand.

"The six Infinity Stones are the most powerful objects in the universe," he explained. "Or so Loki tells me. The Tesseract is one." He tapped the blue gem in the blade of the scepter. "This is another. Thanos has two already. If he gets them all, he'll be unstoppable."

"What are the other ones?" Romanoff asked.

A look of understanding dawned on Thor's face. "The Aether," he said, and Loki nodded.

Banner nodded. "Okay. Where's that at the moment?"

"It's in the care of a man known as the Collector," Loki said. "Odin sent it to him after Thor defeated the last Dark Elves."

Thor shook his head. "He is not to be trusted with it."

"Then we need to find this Collector before Thanos does," Steve summed up. He turned to Bucky. "You ready to fight beside me once more?"

Bucky knew the words were more than a simple question. Steve was offering him forgiveness, saying he understood and that everything was okay between them again. Bucky smiled. "I wouldn't want to fight beside anyone else."