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We Walk on Water (Don't Let Go)

Chapter 5

"Home sweet home," Tony sighed as he pushed open the doors and entered the Tower. The Quinjet had been safely landed on the roof, and Tony had his armor stripped off by FRIDAY as he entered. "Where's everyone sleeping?"

"86." Clint answered.

"73." Natasha said, both of them rattling off the floor numbers of the rooms they had stayed in the last time they were here.

Steve looked at Bucky, who shrugged. "We'll take 65 again." Steve said.

"Alright, sounds good. Pepper's still out, she'll be back tomorrow. If you need something, just ask FRIDAY." Tony said. "Nice job group. See you in the morning."

The four of them stood there for a moment after Tony was gone, staring after him, then Natasha spoke. "Steve, you should go after him."

"Why me?" Steve asked.

"He found just found out exactly how and why his father died. You knew his father." She said, as though it were simple.

"What if he wants to be alone?" Steve asked.

"He's not going off by himself to be alone. He's going off to drink himself into a stupor." The spy announced. "So you should go after him and try and console him a little."

Steve shrugged, but headed off after the man. "FRIDAY, where is he going?" The super soldier asked.

"The lounge is on Floor 89, Captain Rogers. I presume that if Agent Romanov is correct, that is where Mr. Stark will be." FRIDAY responded.

"Are these the stairs?" Steve asked, pointing to a door on his left.

"They are." The A.I. confirmed, and Steve pushed open the door and vanished down the steps.

The other three walked quietly to the far end of the room, where the elevator was. Natasha pushed the button for it, and when they were inside, selected floor 73. Clint selected 54. "I'm getting something to eat."

Other than that, they rode down in silence. The spy told them goodnight when she stepped off on her floor – the elevator just opened to a wide living area, so there was nothing to be seen – and the two men rode on in silence.

Then Bucky spoke. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it." Clint said.

The assassin pulled out the USB drive he'd been given earlier that night, and held it out to Clint. "Do you know somewhere I can get something to open the files on this with?"

"FRIDAY, where can we get something to open the files on this drive?" Clint asked.

"Mr. Stark keeps several laptops and netbooks that are USB capable in his workshop, Mr. Barton. Several of them are available for use by his guests." FRIDAY replied.

"Can you take us there, please?" Clint asked.

"Of course, Mr. Barton." The A.I. replied smoothly, and the light on the button that read 65 on the elevator panel went off, and the one on the button that read 91 came on. The elevator shifted, and they began to ascend.

Moments later the elevator door opened, and they stepped out into the workshop.

"This is Floor 1 of the workshop." FRIDAY announced as they came into the room. "You will find the net books in the bottom right drawer of the worktable."

Clint pulled the drawer and pulled out one of the machines, which he handed to Bucky. "Headphones?" He asked FRIDAY.

"There are several new pairs in the top drawer." She replied.

Clint opened the drawer and found the packets of headphones. "Thank you." He told FRIDAY as he pulled out a set and handed it to Bucky.

"You are welcome, Mr. Barton."

The archer turned to the assassin. "If you need anything else, let FRIDAY know. I'm beat. I'm heading downstairs to get some food, then I'm going to bed."

Bucky nodded. "Thank you."

Clint nodded and headed back towards the elevator. A moment later he was gone.

"FRIDAY, where are the stairs?" Bucky asked after a moment.

"If you head straight on through the workshop, Sergeant Barnes, you will find them behind the third door on the left."

~xXx~

When he was back in his room on the 65th floor, Bucky set the computer on the table in front of the couch in his room, turned on the computer and waited for it to boot up, turning the flash drive over in his hands as he waited.

As soon as the machine was up, before he had time to second-guess himself, he plugged the drive in and opened it. It opened to a series of files, each carefully labeled.

Carter, Margaret (Peggy)

Dernier, Jacques

Dugan, Corporal Timothy Aloysius Cadwaller (Dum Dum)

Falsworth, James Montgomery

Jones, Gabriel (Gabe)

Morita, James (Jim)

For a long moment, he looked at the screen, trying to figure out which file to start with, before he decided to start from the bottom and work his way up. The name Peggy Carter sounded familiar, in a way he couldn't place, but in a way that made him think that file was best left until the end.

He plugged the headphones into the machine, and settled down to listen.

"Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I'm Phillip Coulson, a SHIELD agent, and I'm interested in hearing more about Captain America…"

The first forty minutes of the interview contained enough to interest him: names and stories of places that felt like they should be familiar, though he couldn't place them. Phil's voice he remembered from meeting the man earlier that night; the voice of the other man sounded vaguely familiar, and he knew that he knew that voice, knew that Morita was a Howling Commando.

It was frustrating to feel that he knew this man but for all intents and purposes had to research him to fill in the gaps of memory in his own mind.

The counter bar at the bottom of the screen showed the interview was almost at end when Phil asked one more question: "What do you think Captain America's greatest regret was?"

There was a long pause, before Morita said. "We went out to stop Armin Zola, some HYDRA bigwig who was responsible for a lot of suffering. He had to be stopped, and we had to intercept a train. It was the Captain, and Sergeant Barnes, and Jones who went to do it. Three of 'em went out. Two came back." The man explained matter-of-factly, and Bucky stiffened. "When he came back, the Captain just walked past us, like he hadn't even seen us, and maybe he hadn't. Jones was escorting Zola, so the mission was a success in that regard. And then Dum Dum asked where the Sergeant was. All Jones said was "He's not coming back." And then we all knew what had happened. The Captain never said it, but we all knew he was torn up over that. Those two had been friends since before the Army. He never said anything, but you just knew, that what happened that day was probably the thing he had the biggest regrets over."

Mercifully, the interview ended not long after that. After a longer bout of hesitation, Bucky finally selected the next folder up: Jones.

The interview ran similarly to the first. Coulson introduced himself, and asked several questions.

"Tell me about the first time you met Captain America?…What's your best memory of him?...What do you think his greatest accomplishment was?" And then, at the end, that last question: "What do you think his biggest regret was?"

Jones was very quiet for a while, and then he spoke. "The Captain's greatest regret was that he couldn't save Sergeant Barnes. I was with them on the train where Zola was captured, and I saw what happened. Rogers was reaching out for Barnes, but, he couldn't get there in time, and Barnes fell."

Bucky grimaced at the retelling of his supposed death again, and tried to focus on what was being said.

Phil interrupted. "Were you close to Sergeant Barnes?"

"Close as you can be with someone you've spent weeks locked in a cage with. But he was closer to Rogers then any of the rest of us were. Sometimes he drove me nuts, Barnes did. He was one of those people you meet sometimes who just have a knack for learning languages. It took him three weeks to learn on the field what it took me three months in college to learn."

"He was multilingual?" Phil interrupted.

"Very much so by the time he died. I taught him German, I helped him learn French from Jacques, and he learned Russian from a Russian squad we worked with for a little while, and then when they left before I had much a grasp on the language, he wound up teaching me Russian, which I guess is only fair. He learned a smattering of Italian, too, but I never figured out where he picked it up from. POWs from an Italian troop, maybe." There was another pause, and then Jones went on.

"Rogers took Barnes' death badly. He looked like a ghost walking back into the SSR after we captured Zola. I remember Dum Dum asked where Barnes was, and the Captain walked right by and didn't even hear him. I was the one who told them Barnes wasn't coming back."

"Zola said something when I brought him into the building; I forget now what it was. Something stupid, I'm sure. But it got the captain's attention. It was like, you know how sometimes the power goes out after a storm, and there's this sudden moment when it comes back on? That's what happened to the Captain. Zola made some dumb remark and Rogers turned to look at him, and it was like the power came back on and Rogers in that five seconds put together the fact that had this monster not been speeding around some railroad bend some thousand or more feet from the ground below, maybe none of that jumping onto a speeding train would have been necessary and maybe Barnes wouldn't have fallen. You could just see the moment on his face that when that realization hit."

"And then what happened?" Phil pressed.

"And then all of us and some SSR fellas who were there had to pull the Captain off Zola. I'm no coward; I marched at Selma, and worked in the Civil Rights movement, and before that I was a prisoner of war in a HYDRA camp. I saw men get disintegrated by HYDRA weapons. I'd seen the Captain upset before, I'd seen him angry before. But when he turned on Zola there was this …fury in his eyes. And I think if we hadn't intervened he'd have killed Zola right then and there, information be damned. And all of us together couldn't stop him anyway. Colonel Phillips came in and had to order Rogers to stop, which was when we were actually able to separate the two of them. I'd never seen the captain so angry before, and it scared me."

"Were there any attempts made to recover Sergeant Barnes' body?"

"Oh you can be sure there were. But with the snow, and no one knowing where exactly he'd fallen, we couldn't recover a trace."

He was starting to hyperventilate again, though (like every time it happened) he didn't want to.

"All of us Commandos went back out with the Captain and for three days we combed that mountain. But we couldn't find him. Then Colonel Phillips called us all back to headquarters. He had the information on Johann Schmidt, and it was times for us to stop them once and for all.

"Is there anything else you'd like to add to your account?" Phil asked, moving on to the next question.

Bucky yanked the ear buds out of his ears and let them drop to the table as the counter on the computer ran down the last five minutes of the interview. He didn't want to hear anymore.

After the timer had run out, he still sat there, staring at a now-dead screen. Finally he stirred enough "FRIDAY, where's Steve?" He asked.

"Captain Rogers retired for the evening about an hour ago. Shall I wake him for you?" FRIDAY offered.

"No! No. If he's asleep don't wake him." Bucky said. "Where in this tower is he?"

"If I may," FRIDAY said, opening up a new window on the computer and pulling up a schematic on the screen. "Captain Rogers' room is on the other side of the floor." She marked the room.

"Where are the others?"

Two more markings appeared, showing two rooms on different floors and almost opposite sides of the tower. "Mr. Barton is on floor 86, Agent Romanov is on floor 73. Mr. Stark has not retired yet. He is still in the lounge." Another marking appeared, three floors above the one Clint was on.

Bucky glanced at the clock on corner of the computer screen. It read 1:08 a.m.

"What is Stark doing?" He asked.

"He is still drinking." FRIDAY said matter- of- factly.

For a long moment he said there, indecisive. On the one hand, he didn't want to sit here any longer. And he certainly didn't want Steve woken up though he knew Steve would come and stay as long as he was needed.

Finally he got up and headed for the door. Stark was no doubt drunk by now, but he was still company.

And he almost smiled at the thought that maybe Stark would be better company when he was drunk.

[A/N:] FFN ate the border on my cover images. Meh. I kind of added some stuff to the plot of The First Avenger. In that movie, Phillips talks to Zola and makes a remark about how "Since the last man you cost us was Captain Roger's closest friend" Zola's safety if he was sent to America as a prisoner was in doubt, so I think it's plausible that Rogers would have been angry enough to try and attack Zola. And I don't think the Commandos would have done anything less then try and find Bucky's body after he fell. I place the scene with Steve and Peggy in the bombed-out bar as set after that search. Speaking of Peggy, the reason Bucky didn't start with her file is because he has a vague recollection that somehow she was important to Steve, and he's not sure about listening to someone that close to him, since he knew that they were becoming a couple while they were together and before Steve got frozen. Bucky's struggling with listening to the tapes because I think one of the most pressing questions he has is if Steve is his friend, then where was Steve after he fell? Well, now Bucky has an answer to that question.

This chapter was mostly setting up for the next one. In the next one, however, Tony weaponizes his ability to be irritating to make Bucky come out of his shell. Also, I'm thinking that this story is going to be eight chapters long, maybe. Depends how Chapter 8 goes.

By the way, to those of you who subscribed, I appreciate that because it tells me you are interested in my work, but reviews tell me why you are interested and what you like about the story, and I'd like to hear more feedback from you. Anyway, irregardless of that, thank you to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited, and followed this story. Please review and let me know what you thought of this chapter.