- - Present Day - -
Arctic wind sliced at the onlookers as the laser cut into both ice and steel, until the metal disk dropped free with a clang. The delay between separation from the roof and landing on the floor certainly matched the estimated size of the airship. Even within the hulking wreck, however, temperatures only marginally improved once protected from the frigid, blasting weather outside. Hazy beams from flashlights caught frosty girders, icicle-toothed rails, jagged ghosts of wrecked machinery, and undulating curves of ice where nature had forced its way in through what probably used to be the front window panels.
"Um, you're gonna want to see this…" said one of the operatives. Under the glassy surface, he pointed out a clear pattern of red, white, and blue.
The other gaped, then reached for his head set. "Base, get me a line to the Colonel. I don't care what time it is! This one's waited long enough." They both began to scour the mass of ice inch by inch.
. . .
The phone shrieked in the darkness. An answering groan came not from the bedroom, but buried in covers on the couch. Sometimes it was easier to sleep there. One hand fumbled for the device (why they had to call the elusive little brick instead of his perfectly good home phone, especially at whatever ungodly hour it must be, was beyond him).
"The world had better be ending, if this can't possibly wait until morning," he grouched, using his other hand to partly sit up, braced against the edge of the coffee table.
"Well, nice to hear from you too. I wouldn't say the world's ending, but it's on a similar monumental level," replied the caller.
"Spit it out, what're you—"
"They found 'im. I got the wakeup call five minutes ago, now I'm telling you. Russian oil surveyors stumbled upon the wreck, and called us in."
The table edge crunched under the force of gleaming fingers. He sat bolt upright. "What?"
"Whole thing's going to take a lot of work to extract and process. Huge-ass pile of metal stuck in a floating ice shelf with pretty much no good weather days. He was in there, though. I thought you would want to know."
"Where?"
"We've got this under wraps for now, even from the rest of the agency. You go barreling out to the middle of nowhere, and it becomes a big deal. To our allies, enemies, not to mention the efficiency of the work crew. I can't have you getting in the way."
"I'm coming in."
"There's not much for you to do here, either—"
"The hell there's not. I have to see for myself. I need to. Don't 'let me know' and then tell me to sit on my hands. You wouldn't have called me five minutes after hearing the news if you thought it was less important or that I shouldn't be involved."
Silence reigned on the other end for a few moments. "Fine. He'll be brought in to the medical lab once extraction of that section is complete, they're going to report directly to me when they're wheels up. You need us to send you a ride?" Typing started up that could be heard through the phone connection.
"I can get myself there, as long as my credentials still work. You haven't kicked me out completely yet, right?"
"Doesn't mean I'm not tempted to. You should really drop a line every so often. Just don't cause too much trouble on the way. I don't need to go bailing out your ass from jail or something on top of the excitement already going on."
Bucky's sports car rounded the last turn practically on two wheels into the SHIELD complex. The gates lifted before he even neared them; they must have been told to expect a speeding arrival. Nick Fury paced the hall that led to the lab in question. Upon Bucky's entrance, the one-eyed administrator held up his hands.
"Still waiting, and even then they want unhindered space to load in once they do get here. The less people they have to trip over, the faster it'll go," he explained.
"Keeping me out is going to be more of a headache for them than dealing with an extra person in the room," Bucky shot back indignantly.
"I hope that wasn't a threat, if you want to still be here by the time they are," Natasha Romanoff remarked coolly. She sauntered out of a recessed doorway.
"See, this is one of the reasons I chose to take a break."
"A couple years' break…"
"Well it looks like nothing much has changed. I figured a hiatus was less likely to be dangerous to my health than spending months as a prisoner, or some other snafu where you suddenly couldn't juggle all the cogs at once."
"You and I both know that you were going to 'juggle' yourself whether I liked it or not, so it was my job to make sure no other cogs got knocked out of the works in the process. You could handle it too, more than any other asset we have," bristled Fury.
"They didn't just want intel, they tried to hijack the serum for some kind of super-assassin project! When I finally came back, some people here still wondered if I was that ghost operative, who you never did track down by the way—hell, I still don't remember everything from those months!"
"But we did clear you of involvement, that record should speak for itself."
"Just think for once how it looks from somebody else's position, if you're such a strategic genius! This, right now, this is a dig-up-and-resolve-a-historic-cold-case venture for you. For me it's been an actual 70 years of waiting. I still have his frickin' effects at my apartment, because he didn't have any family left to send them to!"
"They're shipping him back in a solid block of ice, Barnes," Natasha said with a mixture of iron will and blunt fact masking a hint of compassion. "It's not a small undertaking, not to mention how to get him out of that ice afterward. There's no imminent threat. Let them do their jobs, they'll make sure you get a chance to see him, okay?"
The hallway fell into tense silence, everyone shifting or pacing in some way to avoid further pointless confrontation. Fury occasionally pressed his earpiece closer to listen in to whatever was going on. His expression remained unreadable. Natasha kept her distance, though with an ever watchful eye. Bucky felt out of place, despite having worked with SHIELD longer than the two of them combined. He was a man caught between two times, a man stranded by time, really. As much as he knew he did what had to be done over the decades, and chose to do so, the sheer number of years wore him down. No one was meant to do this forever…
Suddenly a great deal of bustle and noise erupted on the other side of the door. Natasha had said it would be a hefty task bringing Steve in still frozen, but somehow this seemed more than just tricky maneuvering, or even excitement over the find. The pitch continued to rise, too. All three of them picked up on it.
They burst through the double doors together. The room was in chaos, technicians and other personnel running around, gathering equipment. Bucky recognized one of them as a medical doctor. He grabbed the woman's arm just as she momentarily lost her footing on the slick floor. "What's going on?"
"They figured they'd start the process on the way here, carefully working on the ice while trying to keep the body stable. Nobody was prepared for this, Cap—"
"I'm not the Captain, at least not right now. Prepared for what?"
"Look, I'll hopefully have more to tell you once we get set up—"
"We're standing right here, clearly something's going on or you wouldn't be scrambling—"
"He's still alive. Don't ask me how, or for more details, or what we can possibly do next except try to keep him that way. It's all I have to work with at this point."
Bucky's jaw dropped. All non-occupied eyes snapped over to the motionless figure dressed in red, white, and blue. Steve's head and upper body were just exposed; his helmet was missing, and there was no sign of his shield. He looked for all the world like he was simply asleep, despite being mostly encased in glistening ice. Personnel started to go about determining the best way to attach monitors and assess his condition.
Fury seized the back of Bucky's jacket collar. "Keep us updated on any changes, and I mean any. We'll get out of your way for the time being. Looks like we've got some new arrangements to make." Utter shock prevented Bucky from resisting until they were back out in the hallway.
"What the hell, Fury?!" he sputtered.
"Giving them room to work is more important than ever, and we gotta focus."
"Oh, don't tell me you didn't already have some kind of idea, the way you were keeping tabs the whole time. You ran in there same as me, and then decided to drag me back out after letting me hear the news like that?"
"It's not like I could hear every single person on the crew, I got what was relayed to me. They certainly had their hands full once they realized this was the one problem we didn't anticipate."
"What d'you mean problem?! We just went from 70 years presumed KIA to hey, we found him just so you know, to he's not dead! I'd say that's the opposite of a problem!"
"You wanna try sleeping through 70 years of history and then picking up where you left off?" Natasha cut in. "He's going to think it's still 1945. He might as well have been abducted by aliens, everything has changed so much, on top of what being frozen that long and surviving could do to somebody's head. We have to ease him into it slowly, which means not overwhelming him right off the bat, which means putting together a complete mock room. Give him familiar surroundings to orient him to being conscious again, after that we can worry about bringing him up to speed."
"Natasha's right. Plus making sure we have a chance of containing him should he take the news less than well," added Fury. "If he's anything like you, that won't be easy."
"He's more, probably. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for him…" Bucky trailed off.
"Requisition one of the iso cells, it should already have the most framework to withstand a super soldier. Start figuring out what all we'll need to pull this off, and where we can find it. I want a plan, yesterday," Fury rapped out. Natasha nodded, started walking away with her phone in hand. Bucky raised an eyebrow.
"Isolation cells built for super soldiers?"
"Not specifically for you, we've considered a few enhanced or otherwise concerning individuals. Though I won't say it hadn't crossed my mind a couple times. You have a tendency to be a bit of a loose cannon. Now hurry up before she leaves you in the dust."
"What?"
"Few people are going to know as well as you how to recreate 1945, and we're on a deadline. Go."
Bucky reluctantly followed Natasha. They spent the rest of the night drawing up an idea for a general recovery room, something with spartan military efficiency yet also sensible amenities for the time period. They'd have to use the old SSR insignia, as Steve wouldn't have any frame of reference for SHEILD.
"What about ambient noise? Sound plays a significant role, things we don't realize clue us in, until we don't have them," asked Natasha.
"A radio would be the easiest, most likely. Music shouldn't be hard to find."
"You sure we don't want something that connects to a particular date, old sports broadcast, or anything?"
"If he cared about a baseball game, he went to it. Saved every bit of pay he could spare. Even I don't remember all of them, but it might tip him off if we pick one he went to in person. Not such a risk with music."
"Okay, fine. I can look up a playlist once we get the big things going. And we should have some city noise on loop outside the room so it doesn't seem like he's in a bunker." She made some notes, thought for a few seconds, wrote some more.
"I want to be the first one to walk in. When he wakes up, I mean," Bucky declared abruptly.
"We're going to have to assess a lot in a short amount of time. One of the doctors might be more—"
"You need it to feel like authentic 1945, right? I can do that better than anyone. A familiar face, right here, right now. The truth is going to go down easier if it's someone he knows he trusts. Plus let's face it, on the off chance he takes the whole thing badly, who else is going to last five seconds in a room with him?"
Natasha stared at Bucky, then turned away with an 'okay, point made' shrug of her eyebrows. "We'll get archives to dig up some vintage clothes."
"I still have some of mine. My duty uniform, a few other things I didn't completely wear out or get rid of. I was still an active officer at the time, and wouldn't have worn civilian clothes into the SSR anyway. They worked out of Camp Lehigh in the early days. Maybe the room should look a little more barracks-like, then, if we can find some Army-issue furniture, or even some of the old signage."
"Oh, is that all?"
"Yeah, so can I go check on the progress downstairs now? Just buzz me if you need my input on anything else."
"Well, if you're going back into the Army you'll probably need to shave."
Bucky scowled at her.
"Fine. Yes, I'll call if I need you." She rolled her eyes, but her tone was more sympathetic. Bucky always found it somewhat unnerving how well the former double agent read people. He didn't like others figuring things out about him that he didn't want found out.
Back in the lab, the remaining ice had considerably shrunk down. Medical staff began carefully working on removing the old uniform, drawing blood, and other vital checks to assess what they might be dealing with. Bucky had to fight a tightness in his own chest as he watched from one corner. He couldn't believe this was possible. Well, okay, his existence shouldn't be possible either, technically being in his 90s yet still living and appearing to be decades younger.
His gaze dropped to his hands, one warm and human, the other plated metal. He was used to being a singularity, a loner. The longer he lived, the less he could relate to people in terms of personal experience. Now not only did he have someone else from his own time, that person happened to be his best friend, of all the possibilities, whom he had thought killed in action.
And the real Captain America…I may have taken up the shield, but it was never really mine.
A light touch on Bucky's shoulder caused him to jump. The same doctor who spoke earlier stood in front of him, her eyes full of gentle concern.
"We have to bring his body temperature slowly up to normal, for safety. He's going to be sedated anyway until the room is ready. It's going on 6 o'clock—get a few hours' sleep, a shower, some coffee. We can contact you directly if anything develops."
"After this long…I'm okay, really…"
"He's in good hands here, and I think you probably know better than anyone what the serum is capable of."
"I get that, really I do. I promise I'll do what you say, just let me have a little time here first. Please?" He looked back at Steve, but in his mind he saw a white ward, sunlight muted by drawn curtains. Heard the creak of a metal bedframe under restless movement. 70 years ago, their positions had been flipped. The weight of those memories stuck with him even after he made it to the SHIELD duty barracks, well after sunrise.
A/N: I know I'm also fudging the line as far as the serum and passage of time (this was originally written pre-Endgame), but I found enough info from various comic sources to say this version is plausible enough. Please don't flame me =) And anyway, that detail isn't the focus of the rest of the story. Thanks for sticking around, readers, I know I haven't been as diligent about updating.