"So what are we doing?" Bucky restrained himself from gawking at everything as they entered the mall.
"Getting you clothes of your own." Natasha flashed one of Tony's credit cards at him. "Courtesy of Tony. It's about time you had things that fit, he's going to expect us to dress up at least a little tonight, and you need clothes of your own because let's be honest, Steve is living proof that liking men does not automatically give a man a sense of style." Bucky gave her a surprised look. Natasha smirked. "I like the look of his neck, by the way. I'm guessing he has no idea?"
Bucky rewarded her with a tentative smile. "I'm hoping it'll take him 'til the party."
"It is fun to embarrass him. Don't worry, I'm not competition." Natasha reassured him without looking up from the store directory that she was reading. "I've got my eye on someone else." She looked around them, orienting herself on the map. "And speaking of embarrassing Steve, I think we should get you an actually modern wardrobe, unlike his. He won't be sure whether to be scandalized or aroused."
Now Bucky grinned for real. Natasha was alright. "Sounds perfect."
Several hours later and loaded down with shopping bags, Bucky was feeling rather pleased with himself. Having his own clothes that fit felt good. Steve had said something, weeks ago, about how he'd always had to look his best back in their own time. That was believable. He couldn't wait to get home (when had the tower become home?) and get out of the sweats he'd borrowed from Steve and into something that wasn't so...shapeless. He didn't even mind that Natasha had talked him into so many short-sleeved shirts, though he doubted he would wear them in public any time soon.
Out of habit, he scanned the crowds as he waited for Natasha to get out of the ladies' room. Modern people were interesting. (And all potential threats, but he was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.) They seemed glued to their phones. Everybody walking around with personal phones just sitting in their pockets was weird. It seemed like overkill. And they seemed to use their phones to type messages more often than to make calls. That didn't make sense, and it made him uneasy watching everyone walk around fiddling with little gadgets that he couldn't see what they were doing. They could have been remote triggers for things for all he knew.
That man. There. Coming out of a store, his nose in his phone like everyone else. He looked familiar. Bucky knew him from somewhere, and considering with whom the majority of his human contact in the past 70 years had been, that wasn't a good sign. Bucky buried his metal hand deeper in his pocket and casually picked up an abandoned newspaper in his real hand to hide behind, peeking over it.
Yes. Hydra. When the familiar-looking man looked up from his phone and Bucky got a glimpse of his face, it snapped into place. He wasn't one of his regular handlers as the Winter Soldier, but he'd been there occasionally on missions. A specialist in something, presumably. Regardless, this wasn't good. He didn't look on alert, but he also seemed fairly aware of his surroundings and was probably armed. Bucky was an expert in places to conceal weapons, and the man had plenty of places on him that he could have one.
Natasha chose that moment to emerge. As she weaved through the crowds and tables of the food court towards the table where Bucky had planted himself and the shopping bags with a soda to wait for her, he saw the Hydra agent glance over her, do a double take, and reach around behind his back. Yup. There would be a gun at the small of his back. Bucky didn't even think about it. He bolted through the tables and tackled Natasha out of the way, the shot shattering a storefront display on the other side of the room.
Natasha swore in Russian as they rolled in opposite directions out of the path of the next shot, so colorfully that Bucky would have blushed had the majority of his attention not been on the shooter. Okay, he was definitely aiming for her. He didn't seem to have spotted Bucky's metal hand protruding from his sweatshirt yet, conveniently shielded from his line of sight by Bucky's body, or else the escaped asset surely would have become the main target. But that meant that his attention was disproportionately on her, unaware that the man who had tackled her was an actual threat rather than a passerby who had been in the right place at the right time. Perfect. Neither needed to look at the other to know they were thinking the same thing.
Bucky took advantage of the shooter's distraction to make a lunge to snatch a pack of golf balls out of a bag dropped by a fleeing shopper and hurl it, hitting the man's temple. It dropped him, sending his gun skating across the floor. Not taking a chance, Bucky bounded across the tabletops and pinned him down.
"Quick thinking, sir. We'll take it from here." Two policemen caught up. They stopped and stared. "My god..." Bucky followed their gaze. They'd spotted the metal arm. Shit.
"I think I'd...better go now." He stammered, backing away quickly.
"Hey!" One of the policemen called, one eye and his gun still trained on the (starting to come around) Hydra agent that his partner was handcuffing, "You one of the good guys now?"
Natasha caught up, rubbing her cracked wrist through the brace on it, and slung an arm around him with an expression that dared them to challenge her. "Yes he is. He's one of us now."
The policemen stared again. "I know you!" One of them gasped. "You're an Avenger! You're that lady that exposed the bad guys infiltrating the government!"
Now it was Bucky's turn to answer for her. "Yes she is, and that man is Hydra, so be very careful. He's a specialist of some sort, and a lot of them also have a cyanide pill hidden in a false tooth in case of capture."
"Yeah, don't let him use that. The director will probably be sending a team to take him off your hands, and he'll want him alive to question." Natasha added.
"Were you two pursuing him?" One of the policemen asked.
"No, not actively. We're trying to catch them all, yes, but today we were just out shopping. We didn't expect to see him or attempt to pursue him until he started shooting." Natasha told them.
"I was waiting for her, spotted him come out of a store, recognized him, tried to avoid him noticing me. She came out of the bathroom, I saw him see her and go for his gun, I tackled her out of the way." Bucky filled in, glancing around them nervously at the crowd. "Can we go? People are staring at us."
"Breaking news! The Avengers recruit ex-Hydra assassin. Details at seven." Listening to the radio in the car on the way back from the docks, Steve froze, Clint choked on his drink of water, and Maria groaned.
"Something happened."
"Something definitely happened."
"I'm calling Nat now." Clint whipped his phone out. "Nat! What the heck happened on your shopping trip? Radio DJ just announced on air that we've recruited Bucky. Whoa. You okay? Good. How's everyone taking it? That's good. Tony's-Please tell me Pepper is helping him with the PR. Oh, that's even better. You home yet? Okay, we'll be back soon. Bye." He hung up the phone. "Bucky accidentally revealed his arm while tackling Nat out of the way of a Hydra goon who tried to shoot them at the mall. They're fine, it wasn't a deliberate attack, they just happened to run into the guy. Tony and Phil are handling the press."
"Virtual press conference in the living room." JARVIS told them as they stepped onto the elevator. "You may change quickly or show up as-is."
Steve glanced down at himself. His uniform had some dirt and soot on it, but not too bad. He probably had helmet hair, but who cared. He wanted to see for himself that Bucky and Nat were okay.
"Compose yourself, Steve." Maria warned him.
"What do you mean?"
"You're fidgeting and you tend to lose your composure where Bucky is involved."
Steve nodded and straightened. "You're right. No showing my concern about the incident at the mall during the press conference. Captain Showreel, right?"
By silent agreement, they all got off at the common floor and headed for the living room without changing.
"...Of course he's a hero." Tony was saying, "We've been going through files taken from Hydra bases and in the process discovering just how barbaric the things that they did to him were and just how hard he resisted their brainwashing program. That alone would make him a hero, and in fact we had already planned a small party tonight in honor of him holding the world record in throttling Hydra agents. In light of his joining the team becoming public, we will be expanding the guest list and moving it to tomorrow night, and there will be a brief opportunity for questions and photos in the lobby at the beginning of the night."
That sounded less than relaxing. Steve shot Tony a glare and Bucky an apologetic wince, schooled his face straight, and joined his teammates in the webcam's field of view, Clint a step behind.
"So you say. Why should we believe that he won't go back to Hydra if they appear to be winning?"
Everybody tried not to wince. "What, apart from the fact that they intend to kill me on sight?" Bucky deadpanned. "As far as they're concerned, I'm no different from a police dog that turned around and mauled its handler instead of going after the person they set it on. I'm not a person to them. I'm a piece of equipment, and one that has developed a critical fault."
"And what fault is that?"
"I remember now. Who I am, who I was, the things they did to me. They've discovered that it is possible to break through their conditioning, and not only that but their enemies have discovered it too. Even if they could take me alive-which I don't intend to let happen, because I hate them and they tortured me and I will die fighting and take as many of them with me as I can rather than go back there and let them brainwash me again, I'd be too much of a liability now because everyone knows how to break it. Safer for them to destroy me than try to fix me." Hidden behind the back of the couch, Bucky's hands were shaking. Steve wished that he could reach over and hug him.
"Mmm." The same reporter was dominating the floor, undeterred, even as her colleagues behind her looked uncomfortable with her line of questioning. "Can you give us any examples?"
The tension rose in both rooms, the looks that the other reporters were giving her indicating that they were nearly as angry at her pressuring a torture victim to give details as the Avengers were. Behind the couch, Steve gave Bucky's flesh hand a squeeze. Bucky returned it, then pulled away, taking a deep breath. He didn't want to do this. Didn't want to be here. Wanted nothing more than to curl up in a hysterical little ball. But maybe a good shock would shut her up long enough for someone else to take over who had actually covered violent things before and would handle this better instead of some desensitized horror movie junkie, make this stop.
He yanked off his shirt, deliberately putting his many scars and his dogtags and his metal arm fully on display. "You see how my entire arm is metal now? Do you know where I actually lost it originally? At the elbow. Hydra cut the rest of it off, with a fucking chainsaw, with me strapped down, awake and screaming, no drugs whatsoever, so that they could install this stupid thing and use me as a weapon." He could see it so clearly in his mind. Why did the most traumatic memories have to be the clearest? He knew his distress was visible now, but he couldn't help it. He couldn't keep his cool.
Steve squeezed his shoulder, an attempt at being comforting while maintaining public composure. "Breathe." He reminded him.
"Do you know what that feels like?" His voice shook. "The pain is indescribable. It hurt more than losing my arm originally did, because it was slower. Do you know what it's like to be strapped down, helpless, while someone violently takes away a piece of you?" He knew. Too well. Memories were flooding him, not just of that time but of being wiped over and over. "I have scars from the straps cutting into my skin from bucking against them so hard in agony." He could feel those straps digging into his flesh as if it were still happening. He gripped the back of the couch so hard that his knuckles turned white and the frame dented under his metal hand. "Do you know what it looks like, watching your own blood spraying under a saw blade?" He could see it in his mind's eye, feel the dizziness as he watched his blood leave his body, spraying in the air in a scarlet arc, hear the saw blade. "What it smells like, the combination of bone dust and blood and burning flesh and gasoline? Because I do." He could smell it even now. He looked down at the carpet and swallowed hard. "I think I'm gonna hurl." He told the team quietly, but some of the reporters seemed to catch it too. "Or pass out. I-I'm not sure which. Maybe both."
Bruce got up quickly and put an arm around Bucky's back. "Come on." He guided him, staggering slightly, to a chair well off camera. "Put your head between your knees. Deep breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth. I'll get you a waste basket."
"Good going." Steve snapped. "Pressing him for details of the trauma he's been through. Because that's a really humane and appropriate thing to do to a torture victim."
That did seem to break the intrusive reporter's stride, at least long enough for someone else to hurriedly crowd her out. "Yes, please, let's change the subject. Not all of us, let alone our audiences, have the stomachs for such gory details. Captain Rogers, how does it feel to have your childhood friend back from the dead?"
"I'm just so grateful that he's alive. He's been through a lot, but he's home now and he's recovering and I kind of don't want to let him out of my sight again." Steve pasted on his public face. He didn't really want to be answering questions right now. He knew that Bruce was perfectly capable, but he should be the one taking care of Bucky.
"And will this have any effect on the team?" Someone else asked.
"Not really." Natasha took that one. "We have another capable person. We live and train well together, this afternoon's incident proves we fight well together, he fits right in. SHIELD collapsing is by far the bigger impact on us. We've gone from one cog in a very big machine to a central player in what's left."
"Can you tell us why two of you showed up late, dirty, and in uniform?"
"Following a lead on some Hydra agents." Clint spoke up. Off camera, Phil held up one finger. "And we can take one more question, so make it good."
Bucky slunk back into the camera's view, pale but determined to at least make an appearance again before the end of the press conference. An older reporter spotted the earlier troublemaker opening her mouth and jumped on the opening before she could get her question out. "Sergeant Barnes, I want to thank you for your service and for returning to the fight not once but twice even after the things you've been through. My father was a prisoner in one of the Hydra factories that the Howling Commandos liberated, so without you, who knows if he would have gotten out alive to have me. Tell us, how are you adjusting to modern life?"
"I'm adjusting. It's different. Things cost a lot more." That drew a chuckle from everyone. "I think I like the modern world though, so far."
"Alright, that's all we have time for right now. Thank you everyone for your time, and don't forget to turn up tomorrow night." Tony switched off the video chat. "Oof. That was fun. I need a drink. JARVIS, figure out who that last guy was and send him a fruit basket for the quick save."
Steve pulled Bucky in to his side. "That was brave. You okay?"
"Had her on the ropes." He told him in a flat voice, dropping his head limply on Steve's shoulder.
"More than had her on the ropes. You actually shut her up, temporarily. I'm impressed."
"Yeah, well, I don't do things halfway. Unlike some people, I don't like getting hit." Bucky quipped.
"Neither do I, jerk. Come on. Let's go upstairs and take it easy. It's been a long day."