Steve
They leave the cemetery.
Sam drives, and behind them, Nat and Nick Fury fade into shadows in the rear view mirror. Steve had spectacularly failed to answer Sam's Where do we start? but the man keeps his peace as they leave the city behind. It's obvious he was expecting some well-constructed strategy for finding Bucky, but Steve has nothing. Honestly, it's all he can do at this point just to keep walking and talking. Steve makes some vague comment about them heading for New York, because he's pretty sure they'll end up at Stark Tower eventually. He'll need JARVIS's help to sift through all the HYDRA data Nat leaked to find any leads but it is going to take a while. They should start as soon as possible. Also, Tony's been calling non-stop, though Steve has mostly been letting it go to voicemail. He just...can't talk to Tony right now. Doesn't really want to talk to anyone.
Thank God for Sam Wilson though, because as soon as Steve can't answer, Sam understands. His buddy Mitch has a place in upstate Minnesota in the hills, he says, couple of days' drive. He'll borrow a car from someone named Tessa, they'll go up there, take a few days. Steve's still recovering after all. It's not hiding so much as just...not being around.
It's pretty quiet as they drive and they go slow, take the scenic route. Steve dozes a lot; after all, it's only been six days since he was shot three times and almost drowned, and he's still far from healthy. They talk, sometimes. Sam asks about Bucky, of course, which was inevitable. Steve hadn't been able to help himself; he had been drawn back to the Smithsonian the moment he got out of the hospital, like he was on a leash. Normally, Steve would have clammed up or changed the subject, but this was Sam. Sam, who had stood next to him in the museum and watched a 15 second loop of a dead man laughing for three hours, and never said a word. Steve finds, suddenly, that he can talk about Bucky, maybe for the first time. Nothing recent, nothing about the horrors they both know Bucky must have endured; that's still too bloody a wound (the Kiev file is sitting unread on Steve's lap. He hasn't yet had the courage to open it). But he can talk about Brooklyn, about growing up. And then, finally, about the war.
He tells Sam all about Austria. He'd mentioned it before, of course, when they were wondering just how Bucky could still be alive, after all this time. He'd mentioned the experiments. But now he tells Sam everything. The USO tour, the dancing monkey. Peggy and Howard and Chester Phillips. The slaughter at Azzano, the factory in Kreischberg and the cages. The laboratory. Bucky. About how scared he had been.
"Busting in there," Steve says. "...God, I had no idea what I was doing. I was lucky I didn't get shot in the head."
Sam agrees. "You had no training? At all?"
"I went through basic," Steve admits. "But I was half the size back then, before the serum, and after that everything was new. And either way, nothing could have prepared me for that, for seeing what I saw there...It hadn't even been six months since I'd last seen Bucky. He barely knew me."
He doesn't say anything else again for a long time.
On the first night they pass three different motels before they turn off their course in a random direction and stop at the fourth. It doesn't seem like overkill, not after the week they've had, but perhaps Nat's paranoia is catching. Sam showers first, then Steve, then they order pizza and pay by cash. Sam has to give Steve the hard stare until he can force some down. After they eat, Steve turns his phone on. There's now five missed calls from Stark, a new record. Looks like someone's finally noticed he's absconded from the hospital. Steve texts him with "I'm okay. I'll call later," and then turns the phone off again.
They plan to sleep in shifts, but both of them lie awake most of the night regardless. Neither can shake the feeling that they are still in danger, still hunted men. Nothing happens, and the next day passes much like the first, with a blur of endless fields, small towns, identical intersections. Sam drives slow and they stick to the back roads. They spend the night in the third motel they see, twenty miles from the highway. Sam drinks a single beer that night and talks about Riley. Steve listens.
They sleep, but badly.
It's the third and last night of their journey when they finally hear from Nat. They drive past two perfectly nice motels after deciding to stop, and so, of course, the third resembles a septic tank. They're both too tired to find somewhere else or go back, so they check in, requesting the last room in the row, as usual. Steve is content to do little more than watch TV and pass out. Nat texts them while they're eating some sort of microwaved frozen dinner. The food is some awful combination of bland, sweet and greasy, and Steve's fairly confident he's eaten more palatable K-rations. Nat tells them her interview at Capitol Hill did not go without incident but she's not concerned. Steve just hopes she knows what she's doing.
Steve unintentionally falls asleep, quite suddenly, after eating and he pays the price for it when he wakes about 0130 to find he hasn't moved in an hour and the closing bullet wound in his gut is aching like a son of a bitch. By the steady orange glow of the sodium streetlight outside he can see that Sam is fast asleep on the other bed. Their plan of sleeping in shifts has already gone out the window, but Steve is too tired to remember which of them was supposed to be on watch right now anyway.
He heads into the bathroom. He's moving quietly, trying not to wake Sam, but there's water spilled on the tile by the sink and for a moment Steve loses his usually flawless balance. The slip saves his life though, because it means his head is two inches to the left when the bullet flies past his ear.
A figure launches itself from the dark and instantly there's a gun at Steve's head; Steve knocks it from the attacker's hand, strikes out, hitting only air. Something impacts against his back over the right kidney, and then a punch like a tire iron connects with his face and his jaw goes crack . Agony floods him and he falls to the floor with the attacker on him. A knife blade flashes, and he can't open his mouth to call for help even if the thought had occurred to him. He throws his arm out, grabbing a wrist, but the assailant's other fist follows up with a grinding punch into his stomach, straight into the site of a healing bullet wound. Steve groans through his teeth and his grip loosens.
The Winter Soldier twists, snatches up the gun from the floor with his free hand and swings it around to aim at Steve. A gunshot cracks through the air, deafening in the small room, but it is the Soldier that jolts and goes over sideways. Steve gasps out " Sam!" through his teeth - a futile warning - as Sam runs in, lowering his Glock, and stomping down on the Winter Soldier's hand, kicking the SIG-Sauer away. Steve rolls after the Soldier, trying to grapple him.
In his peripheral vision Steve sees Sam pull out a second gun and he fires again, straight at the Soldier. At the last second the Soldier kicks out hard and throws himself back, breaking Steve's grip, and a red tipped dart embeds itself harmlessly in the black body armour rather than flesh. Sam curses, yanking at the tranq gun in a way that suggests the next round is jammed, but the moment's pause is long enough. The Soldier twists the metal arm up out of Steve's grip and Steve tries to deflect it but the blade in the Soldier's fist slips free and punches straight into Steve's bicep, just as the Winter Soldier's head flies back and smashes into Steve's nose. Steve's grip falters, and the Soldier is free; he rolls over, bringing the blade up to Steve's throat.
Sam fires a third time.
This time, the dart catches the Soldier in the thigh, punching through the thick fabric like paper. The Soldier clearly recognises the threat and instantly rips the dart out, but it's too late and whatever is in there is working fast. The Winter Soldier stoops, snatches up the SIG-Sauer but he's already shaking and there's no time to raise the gun before he slumps to one knee, fingers loose. The gun skitters from his hand across the floor and Sam runs over, knocking the Soldier's knife out of his other fist and kicking the weapons away into a corner. The Soldier makes one last wild, uncoordinated swing, and then collapses face first onto the tile.
For a moment, nobody moves. Sam keeps the gun trained on the Winter Soldier, before using one foot to shove him over onto his back. He seems unconscious. Steve wants to go to him, but for the moment he can't do anything but curl forward, trying to breathe through his busted nose, cradling his jaw. Sam backs over to him.
"You okay?" Sam demands, breathless. Steve manages a nod. Sam pushes the Glock into Steve's hands. "Alright. Just watch him; I'll be right back."
Sam disappears back into the bedroom.
Steve drops the Glock and stumbles across to the Winter Soldier. He's completely out of it; head slumped to the side and limbs splayed around. Steve kneels in the blood pooling onto the tile and pushes Bucky's head back, forcing his mouth open. The bare bulb in the ceiling is too dingy to see by, so Steve shoves two fingers in instead, running them around the unconscious man's teeth.
Sam comes back in at a run, and Steve hears his startled intake of breath.
"What the hell…?"
"Cyanide," Steve grinds out through his own gritted teeth, trying not to move his jaw. "In false teeth." He'd seen too many HYDRA agents choking and spitting their way to an agonising death on bloody foam. Getting the tooth out before the captured enemy could rob them of their prize had always been the first priority. Old ingrained training he thought he'd long forgotten. Incapacitate, disarm. Find the tooth and rip it out.
"Fuck me," Sam breathes as Steve slumps back in relief, letting go of the Soldier's head and bringing his hands up to cradle his own jaw again.
"Nothing," he tells Sam. "There's nothing." The Soldier's teeth seem to be all his own, mouth clear of capsules or hollow implants or bloody foam. Maybe HYDRA didn't do that anymore.
Sam crouches down beside the Soldier, and Steve finally sees what he went back to the room for; a set of bands of thick dull metal, the same handcuffs Rumlow's STRIKE team had tried to get on Steve's wrists in the elevator at the Triskelion. Sam drags the Soldier's arms behind him and cuffs them, firmly. He crouches beside the downed Soldier, monitoring his breathing for a long two minutes before he seems to be satisfied that whatever the hell was in that tranq dart hasn't put Bucky so deeply under that he's at risk of forgetting how to breathe. Then Sam is at Steve's side again, reaching for him urgently.
"Steve. Steve, sit still, let me see. I think he broke your jaw."
Sam pushes Steve into a chair, and despite Steve's urgent gestures towards the Winter Soldier still lying bleeding on the bathroom floor, Sam insists on seeing to Steve's injuries first; setting his nose, bandaging the stab wound in his arm and then checking that the older GSWs in his torso haven't reopened. Sam also confirms that the Soldier's blow has probably fractured Steve's mandible on the right hand side. They can't do much about it other than dose him with painkillers that he'll burn through in hours. Sam doesn't even suggest going back to the hospital, for which Steve is grateful; the fracture doesn't feel displaced, and Steve usually heals from broken bones within a day or two. This one should be no different so long as he doesn't talk too much. "Shame," Steve hears Sam mutter, and decides just to roll his eyes in comment.
They finally turn their attention to the Winter Soldier. Sam checks his injuries with a brisk efficiency that is becoming comfortably familiar. The blood is from where Sam had winged the Soldier with that first bullet; the shot scored a deep gouge through the muscle in his right thigh. It's bleeding pretty badly but not badly enough to indicate an artery has been nicked. Still, it would be a serious injury for a normal man, but for a supersoldier it should mend well enough. Steve helps where he can but largely he's just in the way, so he sits back while Sam stitches and bandages and just stares at the man who used to be Bucky Barnes. There hasn't been a waking minute in the past eight days when that moment hasn't been replaying over and over in Steve's head, the moment the mask clattered away across the asphalt and the Winter Soldier - ghost, terrorist, monster - had turned his face towards him. The shock and horror had hit him like a lightning strike. When he had suddenly realised just who the fabled Winter Soldier really was, that Bucky was alive and standing right there, not beside him but across from him, on the side of the enemy. For HYDRA. The thought of Bucky so deadly, so coldly detached, so utterly merciless...it had paralysed Steve, even as Rumlow's men were cuffing him, aiming their guns at Sam, even as Nat was bleeding out in the prison van.
But even knowing that this is Bucky, the man lying on the floor is barely recognisable even beyond the list of changes that Steve's brain has already catalogued, like the hair, the hollowed shadow of his eyes and the awful brutal horror of damage implied by the prosthetic arm. Right now though, he looks far worse than before. Now the Soldier is also filthy, bearded and half-starved. As they search him and treat his injuries, it's also clear that beneath the grimy tac gear the solid bulk of his body is already whittling away to something that for Steve is a more familiar whipcord thinness. He looks like a feral animal.
Back in DC, the Winter Soldier had been backed up by a dozen HYDRA agents, armed to the teeth and at the top of their game. Sam had described the way the HYDRA men on the overpass had let the Soldier take lead, had handed him any weapon he needed, had whisked him away the moment the fight was done. But now he's alone. He has only the one handgun and a knife, and it looks and smells like he's wearing the same clothes as a week ago. This whole attack has an air of desperation to it, even if it was far too close to succeeding for comfort. God only knows how he got in here without either of them hearing it. And what does it all mean? If Bucky somehow escaped from HYDRA after DC, why is he still trying to kill them? If he's not alone why is he in such bad shape? Are more HYDRA agents waiting outside right now, ready to kick the door in? Steve has a million questions but the only person he has a chance of getting any answers out of is Sam, because where the hell did Sam get a supersoldier tranquiliser gun from?
Steve's patience lasts just as long as it takes for Sam to be finished with the medical care. Steve drags Sam back into the main room, grabs one the spent tranq darts and holds it out pointedly. He wants an explanation, right now.
Unfortunately he has to wait a little longer, because, as Sam points out they're under a ticking clock.
"I'll explain it, Steve, I swear, but when we're in the car and well away from here. There's probably more HYDRA guys on the way. And if there aren't, someone has to have heard those gunshots and even in a shithole like this they'll probably have called the cops. As much as I'd love some heavily armed backup right now, I really don't know how to even start explaining the unconscious bleeding man we have tied up in our bathroom."
It's a good point, and they definitely do not want to be dealing with civilian law enforcement right now. Quickly and quietly as they can, the pair of them drag the unconscious Winter Soldier out of the motel and stuff him in the back of the car. He's a dead weight, at least as heavy as Steve, and the arm alone feels like it weighs about a ton. Steve's face can certainly attest to that.
There's not much else to bring out of the room; Sam is only travelling with a bug-out bag he grabbed from his place before they set off, and Steve's apartment was still a crime scene when they left DC. Still, they grab what they have, do a swift but efficient clean down of the room and scramble into the car. Sam pushes the tranq gun into Steve's hands just before they pull out of the lot. There's a fresh dart in the magazine.
"What the hell is this?" Steve mumbles as soon as the lights of the motel have disappeared out of the rear window. He keeps his body turned in the seat, eyes fixed on the black, unmoving mass on the Winter Soldier in the back. He's got the tranq gun aimed at Bucky and the other hand is clutching a bag of melting ice to his aching face. It's not doing nearly enough to quell the stabbing pain.
"Man, stop talking."
"Tranq gun…" Steve persists. "Where'd you get it?"
"Seriously, Steve. Shut up. I'm not re-aligning a fractured mandible at a pitch black roadside because you couldn't keep from yapping your trap. It was Nat, if you hadn't figured that out. The darts, tranq gun, cuffs…She left it all with me when she came to visit you at the hospital, before you even asked her to get you the Winter Soldier's file. Apparently she knows you better than you do 'cause she clearly knew you would take off after him first chance you got."
"Where?" Steve says, through clenched teeth, not content with Sam's answer.
Sam navigates them out onto the freeway. "Where did she get it? I don't know, man. Maybe it was old SHIELD tech. All she told me was that the knock-out juice is the same stuff Dr Banner came up with to use as anaesthetic on you during surgery, but until a few minutes ago I had no idea if it would work on him too but there wasn't much choice. Better than me shooting him somewhere more permanent."
"You should've just told me." Steve tries not to feel the little burn of emotion at the deception, tries to recognise Sam's actions as a tactical move and not another betrayal. He's been getting used to secrets and lies and agendas from Fury, Nat, Clint...even Tony. But Sam... Sam had seemed like the first honest person he'd met in this century, except perhaps Thor. Sam was certainly the first person who wasn't playing from a different rulebook to Steve, who didn't always have some other agenda of their own. The first person who wanted absolutely nothing from him.
Sam sighs. "I didn't tell you about the dart gun before because...well, if I'm honest, I never thought we'd find any trace of the Winter Soldier, maybe not for months. I read the file, I know what he's been trained to do. If he wasn't dead or back with HYDRA, I figured he'd go underground, disappear off to Africa or Eastern Europe or somewhere. I certainly never thought he'd turn round and come straight for you, after everything. I only had the gun case with all the stuff in with us in the motel 'cause I didn't want to risk it getting jacked from the car overnight."
Steve is silent. Sam lied to him by omission but he's also just saved both their lives and provided a way to neutralise the Winter Soldier that hopefully hasn't done any long term damage, resulted in zero civilian casualties and meant Steve didn't have to get the crap kicked out of him again. And if he really thought this search would take months, then that means Sam willingly signed himself up for the long haul, and that he's going to see this thing through. But even knowing that, knowing that Sam isn't going anywhere, it still kind of feels like the rug has been pulled out from under Steve's feet again, when he'd barely got his balance back the first time. HYDRA are back. Nat is in hiding and Fury is in the wind. SHIELD has gone, forever, and Bucky is alive . Alive and broken and all but unrecognisable.
"And not to change the subject," Sam continues, probably aware of Steve's spiralling thoughts. "But what are we supposed to do now? Cruising around with a wanted terrorist on the backseat might be an everyday event for you but I'm still getting used to this whole spy agency/superhero thing."
Steve shrugs and shakes his head. He honestly has no idea. At the moment, Sam is just driving north, the sole aim of which is to get as far from the motel as possible. But the Winter Soldier isn't going to stay unconscious. At the moment he's slumped on his side on the backseat, still and limp, wild hair covering a slack, pale face. Seeing him relaxed like this, totally out of it, he looks so like the Bucky Steve remembers from those first months after Kreischberg that it's painful.
"How long?" Steve asks, gesturing back towards the Soldier with the dart gun.
Sam understands the question. "Nat said they guessed the dosage might keep someone of your size and metabolism under for about three hours. But with him? All I know is we gotta get him somewhere secure fast before it wears off. "
"The cabin," Steve says through his teeth. They should carry on to the cabin. It's the only real option. It's remote, isolated and currently unoccupied. Until they can figure out how dangerous the Winter Soldier is Steve doesn't want him near other people.
Sam is frowning. "Mitch's place is still about five hours away…I'm pretty sure this guy is gonna come round before that and he's probably gonna be pissed. I mean, I know he's cuffed but it's not like that ever stopped you . It's making my neck itch just to have him lying there asleep behind me while I'm driving, let alone awake. Not keen to go through the whole destroy-the-car, freeway-death-slide thing again. Isn't there someone we can radio, you know, for containment? Or back-up?"
Steve just sighs a little and rubs his aching jaw. Does he have back-up? There's the Avengers, of course. Tony has been trying to call for a week - Steve could probably ask for his help. Or Maria Hill, if there is anything left of SHIELD that's still operational, and if Steve can find it in him to trust any of them ever again. Would Nat come back if he needed her? Maybe. But the thing is...he doesn't think he even wants their help. Bucky...the Winter Soldier...whatever the man on the backseat is. It all just seems so unreal, so fantastical that he should be here, alive, breathing. The essence of Steve's world has been deconstructed and rebuilt so many times now - the serum, the war, the ice, the Avengers, HYDRA - and this time the fabric of his reality has pulled apart and let Bucky back in. Steve needs to figure out what is left of the man he knew, on his own. The others, particularly Tony; they would want to take command, to take control. To possess. He knows they would only see the Winter Soldier. They would only see an enemy.
"The cabin," Steve just says again.
Sam nods, slowly. "All right, it's your call. Just keep your eyes on him. There's only one dart left, but even then I think we shouldn't use it on him again if we can help it. It was pretty risky tranquilising him in the first place given the cocktail of shit that file says they were pumping into him. I really don't wanna risk sedating him again. But if he wakes up fighting and we have to use the other tranq dart, we're gonna need help. A lot of help."
Steve nods. What else can they do?
Despite Sam's estimate of three hours, they only manage to drive for just over one before the Winter Soldier starts shifting on the back seat. Sam's eyes snap straight to the rear view mirror.
"Shit. Is he waking up already?"
Steve has the dart gun raised and ready, but the Soldier doesn't even seem to open his eyes. Instead he rolls slightly on his side and then starts retching.
"I'm pulling over."
Sam stops at the edge of the road and they both make their way cautiously to the back of the car. Steve keeps the tranq gun up and trained on their prisoner, while Sam carefully opens the rear door nearest the Soldier's head end so he can't get kicked. The Soldier is lying hunched on his side and doesn't look up.
"Hey," says Sam.
There's no answer. Sam takes a cautious step closer.
"Hey," he tries again, louder. "Can you hear me?"
Again there's no response except for a painful-looking convulsion and more retching. It's the oldest trick in the book - pretending to be ill - but this time Steve just can't see the Soldier being capable of deception when he hardly even seems to really be conscious. His eyes are half closed and the gaze behind the lids is unfocused. He still hasn't said a word.
After some deliberation, they carefully drag the Soldier up and spin him around so he's leaning out the car door. He doesn't struggle. Thin strings of bile, vomit and spit are smeared across his face and his pants, and unless puking on command was a skill HYDRA taught all their operatives, that part at least wasn't faked. They wash what they can off the Soldier's face and hair but honestly there's not much to clean up; it's mostly just bile. Through it all the Soldier doesn't look at them or speak a word, but neither does he show any signs of attacking. He's like a limp ragdoll. A puppet with its strings cut.
Steve can't help but worry at the state of him. It's clear from his meagre stomach contents that Bucky hasn't eaten or drunk much of anything for hours. Maybe longer. Whatever he's been doing for the past week, neither food nor water featured prominantly. Sam is concerned about dehydration so they find a bottle of water in the trunk, and carefully pour the contents into him in little sips. The Soldier is at least aware enough not to choke and for now he manages to keep the fluids down.
They decide to carry on. The Soldier doesn't seem to be violent any more at least. Sam thinks he's biding his time. Sam and Steve take it in turns between who drives and who keeps the Soldier at gun point. His eyes remain open after the last bout of throwing up but he doesn't seem to be any more aware of his surroundings. He just sits and silently stares forward at the passenger seat from behind his curtain of hair and he doesn't answer when Steve tries to speak to him. If he has been trying to get free of the cuffs, neither of them have seen it.
It's a long, tense drive that takes the rest of the night but they finally arrive at the cabin around eight in the morning, just as it is getting light. The house itself is up a long track, covered over by low maple trees dropping the last of their red leaves across the drive. When they reach the summit of the low hill they can see the place is more of a house than a log cabin – it's only one story but there's probably seven or eight rooms extending back into the trees.
Steve stays to watch the Winter Soldier while Sam goes up to unlock the house. He still hasn't moved or spoken; his unfocused gaze lingering somewhere being his knees in the footwell. When they try and move the Soldier inside, however, it's clear that the blank staring is no act - whether it's still the tranquillisers or some other injury, it's clear the Winter Soldier is barely conscious and his legs don't seem to want to function at all. Once more they end up essentially dragging him up to the house and into the front room. They dump their prisoner into a solid wood chair and cuff his arms behind the seat back.
The Soldier closes his eyes and sits in silence.
