Just as Rhodes put a fresh pot of coffee on the table, Natasha, Barton, and Coulson came back. Natasha had composed herself, Barton was wiping his eyes on his forearms.
"I'll say it again," Coulson said, "the lie wasn't my choice, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry for lying to you, and I hope I can convince all of you that I keep secrets I'm entrusted with to the grave, and through it. I'm not nominated as your handler in the traditional sense of the word, as much as I'd love to be asked. I'm nominated to be your guard and your secret keeper, and maybe sometimes your advocate. But I think Agent Barton will tell you, I know when to keep my mouth shut and I repay loyalty with loyalty."
"Yes." Barton said. He still sounded slightly choked. "I cannot explain to you how much I trust Coulson. He's known everything I've wanted to keep secret for years, longer than Nat's known it. He's lied to his handler to protect me. And Nat would still be in hiding if it weren't for him. He sorted out all the identity stuff, he staked his career on me being right about her."
Nat nodded. "Most SHIELD handlers would have killed me rather than risk it."
"Turned out to be a pretty good call." Coulson said.
"You all know which way I'm voting on this." Barton said.
"Given who was jumpiest about the data thing to start with…" Rhodes said.
"Yeah, given that Missie Eight Legs and Katniss don't trust anyone..." Stark continued. Steve was inclined to agree. Barton had been the most vocal critic of the handler thing in the contract. He'd worked with Coulson for years, he was much better placed to judge than Steve. And the fact that Coulson had brought Natasha in from the cold… could they hope for the same for Bucky?
"Are we voting on this with Agent Coulson here?" Steve asked. Nobody objected. "Okay, same rules, hands for yes."
Barton and Natasha's hands were up before Steve had finished speaking. Steve raised his hand, so did Stark and Rhodes.
"Hands for no."
No one
"Abstaining."
"On principle." Bruce said, raising his hand. There was a metallic thump from inside the vent. Coulson looked at it.
Sam raised his hand too. "Sorry, but I only just met you."
"Bruce, you're safe with him." Natasha said. "You don't know what secrets he let me and Barton keep."
"Five for…" Steve didn't finish his sentence. He didn't want to say that there was someone in the vent. "This is a yes, isn't it. We've got two provisional handlers."
"We put our cards on the table now." Natasha said.
"What?" Coulson asked.
Steve looked hard at Natasha. She was looking at him. "He brought me in, this is the best chance we're going to get."
"You sure?"
"Fury already knows. This is a time bomb now."
Steve took a deep breath. "Okay. Bucky? You heard her."
"Bucky?" Coulson repeated, standing up, and looking at Steve. "The same thing you called-"
The vent flapped open. Bucky dropped on to his front and pulled himself clear, then turned and shut the vent.
"James Barnes. The only commando you knew from before." Coulson said. "It isn't. How..?"
"Did Fury not tell you?" Natasha said.
"He said something about a new Avenger, a HYDRA agent you were trying to turn." Steve could see the wheels turning in Coulson's brain. Natasha pulled up her top to show Coulson the scar where Bucky had shot her. Coulson looked at the scar, then looked at Bucky. Steve saw him take in the metal hand. "No. Oh no. Oh god. Okay." He sat back down, elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced in front of him. "Tell me everything. Starting from late January 1945 in the Swiss Alps."
"Sounds like you know about that." Steve said.
"I know what you told Higgs and Carter. You two were trying to lift Arnim Zola off a high-speed train, HYDRA tesseract-powered weapons blew a hole in the side, in the struggle, Barnes fell. Nobody even looked for a body. The only commando you lost in combat, beside yourself. Which was impressive for a unit crawling its way north through Italy seeking out the most overpowered weapons the Axis powers had." Coulson took a breath. "And we can truthfully say Captain America never had a man killed in action." Steve had time to wonder how he knew that much off the top of his head. "Where does that account come undone?"
"I didn't die." Bucky said simply. "I don't remember hitting the ground, I just about remember being picked up. I remember trying to fight early on, then… It gets patchy."
"They were using very heavy-handed methods to keep him compliant." Natasha started. Coulson held up a hand to her.
"I want to hear it from him."
Bucky was thousand-yard-stare-ing past the table. "I remember being hit, being shocked… I remember killing people. Sometimes hand-to-hand, sometimes at range. Everything is mixed up and out of order."
"Coulson, they were delivering high voltage shocks to his brain every couple of days when he wasn't in cryostasis." Natasha said. "You want to hear it from him, he doesn't remember. I can show you the HYDRA files I lifted detailing how they kept him on side. It isn't pretty."
Coulson paused as though to think. "So in sequence, what's the next thing you can tell me confidently from your own experience?" He said, still looking at Bucky. "No lifted documents. Just what you remember."
Bucky looked at Steve as though for permission. Steve nodded slightly. "It's a big gap." Bucky said, staring through the table again. I remember a fight on massive aircraft, but even that's not very clear. It's… sort of dream like."
"Give me what you have."
Slowly, haltingly, Bucky talked through the helicarrier fight, never making eye contact with anyone. Colson was looking between the two of them with something like awe in his eyes.
"Then I just ran. I'd seen him breathe, so I knew he wasn't dying, but I'd disobeyed orders and I… I guess I just didn't know what to do any more. So I just started running."
"Skip that. Where were you running to?"
"I didn't even know. I wound up in Ohio. It was like I had a map in my head with marks on it. HYDRA bases. It's all kind of a blur, but I used more or less the same tactics every time: blitz raids. Still works better than anything else does. Stake out for twenty-four hours or so, then rush them at some unknowable hour of the morning, get to a hundred percent casualties before they've got their boots on."
"Wait, hold on, there are multiple HYDRA bases on American soil still?"
Bucky nodded. "They're all over the place. I think I stripped four before they caught me again."
"You stripped six." Steve said.
"Solo raids?" Coulson asked. Bucky nodded. Coulson shook his head in wonder. "How did they catch you?"
"I don't remember."
"They will have electrocuted him right after-" Nat said. Coulson held up a hand to her.
"What did they do with you after they had?" He asked
"I don't remember."
"So what's the next thing you do?"
"It gets fuzzy. They sent me out to do something, and-"
Natasha raised her hand.
"What?" Coulson asked.
"They sent you to kill Captain America."
"And I bolted. It's all kind of a mess again until I woke up here."
"Did you come in voluntarily?"
"Hell he did." Barton said. "I tranqued him and he took forever to go down."
"Do you remember why you fought?"
"No. I don't even remember seeing Steve after the Helicarrier until I woke up here."
"He just looked terrified." Natasha said.
Coulson ignored her. "So what do you remember from when you woke up?"
Bucky filled in as best he could, saying nothing about either mission he'd been on, or St Patrick's, Coulson let the rest of them fill in Bucky's blackouts.
"Who else knows?" Coulson asked when they'd finished. "Who not in this room knows about him?"
"Fury, Potts, O'Malley, Hill." Barton said.
"O'Malley." Coulson repeated. "Oh, yes. SHIELD medic, redhead, four foot ten, southern. That figures. She was a major advocate for you early on." He said to Steve. Steve looked at him blankly. "For welfare and pain management, before we had any hope you'd regain consciousness. As soon as there was any flicker of brainstem activity, before your heart was beating, she was on everyone else's backs to consider pain. She has a good heart."
"She was on Insight's kill list." Bruce said. "So we assumed."
"Wait, you got the kill list?"
"Nothing like all of it." Tony said. "Just a few dozen people, about half of them SHIELD or ex."
"And the lawyers." Natasha said
"What?" Coulson asked.
"We thought that getting legal counsel on board and briefed ahead of time would be a good idea. We picked on a couple of young boys, competent but very clean, they've done work for a company that I think is a front once, but I don't think they knew that. That's the worst dirt I can find on them."
"Natasha, why did you do that?"
"Because we didn't know what sort of fight we might have to defend him. You and Fury change things. They might make the boys unnecessary."
Coulson sighed. He seemed to think for a long moment. "The… the bits Sergeant Barnes doesn't remember." Sergeant Barnes. Not The Winter Soldier. "What… how does it… look? What state were you in when Barton darted you?"
"Not a good one." Bucky said. "I don't remember, so I'm assuming that was The Soldier."
"If The Soldier doesn't have clear orders, he can get difficult." Natasha said. "He thrives on clarity. One time when he was wound up, I spent a couple of hours teaching him to dance."
"What?" Bucky interjected.
"New Years. The fireworks were making you jumpy, having something to do calmed you down." She looked back at Coulson. "The Winter Soldier accepts two of us as handlers"
Coulson looked at Steve. "Who's the other one?"
"Natasha." Steve said. "Either he's James Barnes, or he's The Winter Soldier, who will do anything I tell him. He only disobeyed HYDRA when they sent him to kill me."
"What happens if a HYDRA agent finds you and starts giving orders?" Coulson asked.
"If I'm me, I'll kill them for trying." Bucky said, completely calmly.
"But if you're The Winter Soldier?"
"He'll disobey anyone The Captain contradicts." Natasha said.
Coulson sighed heavily. "Okay. I think I get this, or at least I get it enough. Stark, does this explain your amazing prostheses?"
"Yeah." Stark said. "HYDRA had something remarkable there. Using weapons tech to help people…" He shrugged. "Felt on brand." Steve didn't bother to point out that using weapons tech to help people had included keeping Bucky without his left arm for two weeks.
"Okay." Coulson stood up. "I take it I don't need to tell you how important it is that nobody knows he's here. Romanoff, I'm going to want to do some reading. Send me some files." He handed her a card. "Sergeant Barnes," Bucky looked up at him. "I'm so, so sorry for what happened to you, for what you've been through. I promise you, I'm going to do everything in my power to bring you in from the cold, but I can't promise you it's going to be easy. God knows you deserve better. Don't show yourself to the third handler until I say so. Clear?"
"Clear."
"Okay. And once again, to all of you, it's an honour."
