2136 HOURS | SEPTEMBER 06, 2014 | NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

Steven Grant Rogers had not been having a very good year.

Events since January seemed to have just blurred together in one great big mess of terrible and awful. And yet, somehow fixing everything that had happened since then was something that the world seemed to think was solely his responsibility. He had attended dozens of public press conferences and private meetings with government officials from all across the globe. All of them in an attempt to assuage their worries and fears about the damage caused by the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. and subsequent unveiling of HYDRA on the public stage as a global threat once more.

It was Fury that should've been answering these questions, but the former Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. had chosen to stay dead and remove himself from the public eye. And so, it had fallen onto the Captain's shoulders to answer for it all.

And how did he hate it.

The only saving grace had been when Stark had chosen to step up to bat and take the brunt of the political weight away from him. Apparently, Tony could only stand the sight of him floundering under the political pressure for a limited period of time before choosing to intervene on his behalf.

The multi-billionaire had very quickly delegated several legal teams and public relations specialists under his employ to work on damage control. In addition, Stark had – after a very long discussion with the others potential team members – openly declared the official reformation of the Avengers as a peacekeeping body. Something that he had hoped would sooth some of the world's ruffled feathers. Advertised as an organization meant to step up into the shoes left vacant by S.H.I.E.L.D. and combat those forces that normal law enforcement and militaries were unable to.

A smart choice and an incredibly necessary one with the appearance of unnaturally powerful threats, both superpowered and technological, rising by the month. A trend that seemed to have been on the uptick constantly since the turn of the 21st Century.

But with that heat taken away from him, Steve had been able to commit more resources towards far more important pursuits – in his opinion – than playing nice with politicians.

First amongst them was hunting down the scattered remnants of HYDRA. Fury and his remaining loyal agents had been in contact, which varying degrees of infrequency, and had been passing along valuable intelligence that they had managed to accumulate.

Possible strongholds, hideouts and bunkers scattered across the continents. Lists of agents that had managed to maintain their covers after January and had continued their business as usual without any repercussions. Affiliated corporations, private sponsors and off-shore bank accounts that had kept their machinations under the radar and well-funded.

And Steve was hunting them all down relentlessly so that they could pay for what they had done.

He would destroy them. Burn it all, root and stem. Once and for all, like he should have before.

Because, beyond all of the damage they had wrought over the decades, they had been the ones who had taken Bucky away from him.

In Steve's mind that was one of the only positive things that had come from the unveiling of HYDRA to the public. The knowledge that James Buchanan Barnes had survived his fall from the train in the Alps. That the best friend he'd had for nearly his entire childhood was alive. That the man that he had loved – still loved – more than anything was still alive.

But the uncovering of that information had been so incredibly painful to experience. Before that heated battle on the highway, the Winter Soldier had just been a dangerous combatant.

"I know who killed Fury. Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones who do call him the Winter Soldier and he's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."

"So, he's a ghost story."

"Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran, somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me."

A super-soldier loyal to HYDRA and they'd been equally matched.

Steve had sprinted onto the scene to save Natasha from a bullet through the back of her head and was met with the ringing clang of that metal arm meeting his shield with nearly equal, bone-shattering force before being kicked away. Steve's running and rolling, avoiding the wave of gunfire sent his way. The assault rifle's magazine clicking empty. Surging forwards over the hood of a car to kick the machine pistol out of his hands when he'd attempted to reload. The series of pistol rounds blocked with the shield at less than two yards away followed by the transition into hand-to-hand combat, where Steve was certain he would have gained an advantage.

But that flurried exchange of strikes had been anything but in his favor. The Soldier had matched him blow for blow. His equal in strength and speed and skill. But then he'd managed to gain that split-second advantage, flipping his metal-armed assailant over his shoulders, and ripping that mask away from the lower half of his face.

And then his enemy hadn't been his enemy any longer.

It had been Bucky.

Cold-eyed and merciless and without any memory of who he was.

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

Those words had hit harder than any punch ever could have. His stomach had seemingly dropped down to his toes and his heart had surged up into his throat in that instant. He'd been frozen and only saved from a bullet between his eyes by the timely arrival of Sam and a grenade launched by Natasha.

But all he could see or think about was his former best friend. His lover that the world had never known about. For their own safety, of course, given the rampant homophobia of the early 1900s. But Bucky had been the most important person in his whole world after the death of his mother.

His closest friend and the love of his life had been turned into a weapon by his oldest enemy.

And it was entirely his fault.

He should've gone back and looked for the body.

They'd known that Zola had done things, but at the time there hadn't been any significant changes to make note of. There hadn't been any clear signs of experimentation and Buck hadn't been able to remember most of what they'd done to him. Not a single noticeable increase in his strength, speed, healing rate or muscle mass. But somehow, he had survived the fall from the train. He'd survived and then been found by someone and turned over into the custody of HYDRA.

Bucky's presumed death had broken him and all his thoughts from then had spiraled down into a pit filled with nothing but rage and grief. The attack on HYDRA Headquarters had been that rage and grief made manifest. They'd pay for killing him. They'd all pay.

And then the Valkyrie had been damaged and was out of control, Schmidt had vanished into some sort of wormhole and the Tesseract had fallen through the plane and dropped into the ocean. But in that moment Steve had seen an out. A way to escape from the pain.

So, he'd crashed the plane and tried to die.

That decision haunted him now. The thought that when he'd crashed the Valkyrie Bucky had still been alive somewhere. That if Steve had successfully committed suicide then there would've been no chance of him breaking through HYDRA's brainwashing.

"He's gonna be there, you know?"

"I know."

"Look, whoever he used to be, the guy he is now, I don't think he's the kind you save. He's the kind you stop."

"I don't know if I can do that."

"Well, he might not give you a choice. He doesn't know you."

"He will."

It had been a vow going into his fight against Buck in the data center of last INSIGHT Helicarrier.

A promise to himself that had put him a disadvantage throughout the whole fight, trying to accomplish two tasks simultaneously: switching the targeting blade and fending off Bucky. Fending off a combatant that was doing his level best to kill him with non-lethal force.

Even when a bullet clipped his side and burned. Even when a combat knife had been driven handle-deep into his shoulder. Hating himself when he heard the skeletal crunch of Bucky's normal arm being dislocated and screaming internally as he'd wrapped himself around his lover like a constrictor snake in an impossibly tight chokehold. Ignoring the three gunshots he took in the back when clambering back up to the array.

He took it all as his punishment. His duly deserved retribution for abandoning and leaving for dead the one person who had been the most important in the world to him.

Hearing that scream of agony. The cry of pain that had emptied his mind of every other thought but the desperate, instinctual need to go and save the love of his life, even as the Helicarrier was exploding into pieces around them and falling out of the sky. Putting every ounce of strength – even as his limbs trembled and burned and he could feel the sickly warm ooze of his own blood trailing down his skin – he had had left into lifting the steel beam to allow Bucky to crawl free.

"You know me."

"No, I don't!"

The gut-wrenching pain of seeing the blinding panic and confusion and fear and rage on his face.

"You've known me your whole life. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes…"

"SHUT UP!"

"I'm not gonna fight you."

He'd thrown off his helmet and dropped the shield, letting it fall into the Potomac without regret.

"I love you."

Allowed himself to be tackled onto the glass and pinned down without a struggle.

"You're my mission."

Taking the six punches to the face from the metal arm without a care because he just couldn't do it.

He couldn't fight him.

"You're my mission!"

"Then finish it. 'Cause I'm with you to the end of the line."

And then he'd blacked out with nothing but the image of his lover's horrified expression and the sensation of falling and rushing wind to accompany him down into the river.

All of it – every thought, scenario and memory – had been quickly added into his usual repertoire of nightmare fuel. Horrifying dreams that had only gotten worse since he'd started reading through the KGB file on the Winter Soldier that Natasha had procured for him.

The graphic and analytical descriptions of what they'd done to him. To his body and his mind. It was both horrific and sickening to the extent where Steve had more than once had to rush to the bathroom to vomit. Wiping away the endless tracks of tears from his cheeks. It filled him with the most terrible pain to think of anyone, not just the man he loved, enduring that level of mental and physical trauma.

But he had remained undaunted by the monumental task he had chosen for himself. He had fully committed himself to finding Bucky after being discharged from the hospital. It didn't matter to him that Bucky had nearly killed him. The bruises and gunshots and stab wound had healed. And any others he might accumulate he would endure and then they would heal as well.

Steve needed to find Bucky.

He had to.

Even if it was only just to make sure he could receive the proper help and find somewhere safe to live. And yet, while Steve was hopeful that Bucky would be able to make a full recovery and that they could try and be together again, he knew it was statistically unlikely. He would just have to content himself with ensuring that Buck had access to whatever he might need.

However, the search for his former lover was turning out to be far more difficult that hunting HYDRA. Even with Sam's help and the various other resources at his disposal, Bucky was proving himself to be a master as staying under the radar. Unsurprising for an assassin of his caliber, according to the file and Natasha's testimony.

Steve suspected that Barton and Romanov would have been just as difficult to track if they had similarly chosen to go completely off-grid.

There had only been three sightings of Bucky in the past eight months and only one of them had been early enough that they could act on it and deploy.

He was grasping at straws and neither Sam, Natasha or even J.A.R.V.I.S. had managed to find anything else of use. The last update of information in regards to Bucky's whereabouts had been nearly a month ago in southern Bolivia. Just a few brief seconds of poor-quality footage from CCTV cameras at an open-air market. Steve, Sam and Clint, who had generously offered his services as a translator, had taken off from the Avengers Tower in the Quinjet not even an hour later. But upon their arrival they'd turned up nearly nothing. No traces of Bucky to be found except for a few words from an elderly woman that had sold him some produce.

There had been nothing but silence since then and Steve was beginning to come to the conclusion that maybe Bucky didn't want to be found. Maybe he had remembered enough to know that Steve had gone and abandoned him in 1945 and wanted nothing to do with him?

And maybe that was what Steve deserved for all that he had done.

Which up led up to that very moment, where he sat despondently on the couch in his apartment within the Tower. They'd been on a mission several hours earlier to a minor HYDRA outpost hidden in the forested depths of Canada. Nothing difficult. But after the team debriefing and shared meal, Steve had decided to take a moment to sit and relax after showering. Trying to unwind from the combat high that still sung in his veins.

But, instead, he'd found himself falling down a rabbit-hole of introspection.

He should have been trying to get some sleep. He knew he should've been. But the mere thought of the nightmares that he knew were waiting for him on the other side made the idea extremely unappealing. So, he sat and stared out across the New York skyline thinking about Bucky. Remembering their shared past and all the good memories they had been with one another.

Hoping that he was alright, wherever he was.

Wondering what he might be doing right now.

Wishing that he could be there to help.

Praying that they'd be reunited sometime soon.