gah, merging Buckys is damn near impossible. Working on it!

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Sam woke up because someone had kicked him hard in the hip and when you woke up like that, it was a good idea to get away fast. He somersaulted, which got him halfway to the other side of the living room, and gave him time to check the hip damage during the roll. Not bad enough to incapacitate but it hurt.

The Winter Soldier stood panting in the center of the room, a smoking gun with a suppressor in one hand – only until Steve hit him at the torso, carrying him backwards. Without the arm, the Winter Soldier weighed much less, landing with a grunt. Steve pinned him easily.

"Sam, you okay?" he asked, without looking up.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm cool. What the hell though?"

"One of the blankets fell off and took some books off the end table. He woke up in a hurry and I don't think he's— hey Buck," Steve said to the snarling Winter Soldier. "Everything's okay."

The Winter Soldier struggled, pushing upwards, but there wasn't much he could do with Steve sitting on him. At least some of that muscle was weight and there was a lot of muscle. Steve was still watching the man, brow knitted in concentration. The Winter Soldier twisted with surprising speed, managing to get Steve off him and a knife out of a pocket of the coat. Both were standing now, tensed for a fight.

"Steve—" Sam said warningly.

"Bucky, there's no need to do this. You know me, you came to Sam's house—"

Any further dialogue stopped as the Winter Soldier rushed the super soldier. Steve side-stepped, grabbed at the arm, missed it and almost fell as the Winter Soldier dropped to sweep his leg around. Instead, Steve managed to jump the sweep and grab the arm. He squeezed until the knife dropped. Then he pinned the Winter Soldier again.

"Stop," Steve said, the order almost a bark.

"Soldier," Sam said, approaching just close enough to move the knife out of reach. The Winter Soldier looked at him, then back at Steve, intent. "Hey. Hey," Sam repeated.

Eye contact established.

"Sit-rep," Sam said firmly.

"Completing the mission."

"What mission?"

Eye contact broke, wavered a little. All intonation died: "Kill Rogers. Issue date: 04.04.2014."

"Abort mission. Directives changed," Sam said immediately. "Do not complete mission."

"Confirmation number."

Sam glanced at Steve, who just shrugged. He didn't know any confirmation number, but the Winter Soldier was responding. Sam didn't want to tap out here for the sake of a forgotten number. From where he was sitting, he could see numbers inscribed on inside of the circular arm slot, like a product code.

"#6002010 dash 110," he read, hoping and praying it was the right one.

"Confirmed. Mission aborted." The Winter Soldier stopped struggling. There was a long moment of stillness from all of them. Steve looked down at his friend and then over at Sam. Mouthed "…thank you" with an expression that left no doubt he had been lost in the situation. It was the second time he had tried to bring Bucky back after the helicarrier and Sam knew from subtle hints after their jogs that the incident still haunted Steve.

"Bucky?" Steve said. The Winter Soldier had closed his eyes but, at the name, they opened again. A strange moment passed where he appeared to be deciding how to react, scanning through emotions as if unable to choose just one to present but knowing something had to be said.

"…Steve," he said finally.

The name carried life; it carried the spirit and personality of someone behind it. Someone with confidence and strength, someone who sounded like he had never been anyone's puppet. The super soldier stared down at his friend as if he had lost all trace of time and weight and the fact he was still pinning the other man to the ground like a threat. Sam stared because the two personalities just didn't correlate.

The man speaking wasn't the man who had spoken to him the night before. That didn't make sense.

"It's me," Steve said.

The man seemed to take heart in that, though he still laid there like an automaton.

"Just couldn't find something to do after the war, Steve?"

—an automaton trying to joke.

"Saving you," Steve replied automatically, trying to be funny, trying to be normal. The confident persona staggered and retreated. That haunted look came back into the other man's eyes. The rasp that followed sounded more like the man Sam had spoken to the night before.

"There isn't anything left to save."

"There is. You're here. I'm here, Sam's here."

Eye contact, briefly, flicking to Sam then towards the kitchen where the prosthetic still lay, then back to Steve. It was a moment where it felt like the man would smile, if he still knew how, but there weren't enough pieces left for the jigsaw to emerge.

"Tell us about yesterday," Sam said, because this could spiral downwards quickly. Steve was gearing up to say something and men couldn't be won back to living through a couple of inspirational words, even if Steve was the one saying them. It worked in wartime; in peacetime, people just had to figure out how to live.

"Yesterday?" Bucky said. "I don't…"

"The mall in Manhattan. Someone died and you were there."

Bucky twisted free of Steve's grip (the man let him, Sam was sure) and sat very still, thoughts whirring behind the numb stare. Steve glanced over at Sam again, apologetic, but not moving from Bucky's side. This was going to be a problem, Sam could tell, but they had always known that.

"He was talking about trigger words," Bucky said. "And then I shot him."

"Did he say something? One of the triggers?" Sam asked.

"You think I know?" Bucky said, a snarl brewing in it. "Everything since falling off a train looks like a %^&*ing radio going in and out to me. I don't even remember shooting him."

"He's asking a question, Buck."

Bucky looked over at the super soldier and the look held layers of complexity. Why aren't you on my side? Am I wrong? What the hell am I – Weariness kicked in and Sam could see the man's inclination to participate slipping further and further away. This was difficult and, more than that, it was embarrassing. Memories should be easy to find and, when murders were the one thing that came easily, it was terrifying to have one you couldn't remember. It called everything into question.

"Security footage would show it better," Sam said, more to Steve than the man Steve was still restraining.

"Yeah, Tony'll have that by now," Steve agreed, then glanced towards the kitchen. "We'll need him to get the arm reattached too. You up for a field trip, Bucky?"

"Been following you years, why would I stop now," the man said gamely but, as Steve got up, Bucky didn't; moving to stand had incited a coughing fit. One that… wasn't ending. Sam was far enough away he didn't have to worry about the Winter Soldier attacking again, but it wasn't even an option.

"Maybe driving would be easier," Steve said. Bucky shook his head, the coughing too severe for him to speak for another few seconds.

"Planning on leaving a lung on my carpet?" Sam asked, more concerned than joking. Another minute of this and he would try to give the man water, never mind that Bucky had tried to kill him a minute ago. The man tried to speak through the cough, holding together the last shreds of the confident persona.

"The iron man—would love—that. Lungs're… mine—" Speech died in his throat, becoming just coughing, single hand braced on the floor.

"Stark could send a car," Steve said as Sam stood to get water.

"…Barton," Bucky managed.

"Barton? What's Barton got to do with—"

"Why you gotta ruin a man's stealth ego?" Clint said from the doorway. Both Sam and Steve looked up—Bucky's coughing had obscured all sound of the archer's entry. "Don't bother calling, car's coming around the corner."

"He knew?" Sam asked, more out of irritation than inquiry. He had been in here with the ghost of the intelligence community all night and Stark had done nothing?

"Stark would've sent thirty suits and a tank to pick him up. I knew and Nat knew. We're good." Clint glanced at the dissembling man on the floor, then at Sam and Steve. "But I'm guessing he's not?"

Bucky had stopped coughing but he had also stopped moving. Steve touched him on the shoulder and the Winter Soldier didn't respond. Said his name—then repeated it several times. No response.

Clint stood in the doorway and watched, the blonde man's expression getting nearer and nearer to concern. Sam knew what it was like to spend the night doing surveillance and it showed in the shadows under Clint's eyes. Everyone had had a long night.

"Steve, you can get him to the car?" Sam asked.

"He's not—he'll be—Buck, you want to get up?" Steve began the sentence to Sam then broke it off and directly addressed his friend.

Sam could see the signs like a readout: eye contact was gone, body language was confined; in short, Bucky didn't feel any more secure here than he would have in a Hydra facility on the wrong end of a needle. It might have happened when Clint walked in; it might have been the coughing fit. Somewhere, the confident façade had taken too much of a beating to continue and what Bucky was—what he really was now—shone through. Watching Steve figure it out was like watching a Labrador try to find its way up a too-high flight of stairs, searching this way and that for an opening but finding walls at every corner.

"We should go, Buck. Stark will be able to get the arm back on and… we can figure things out from there."

When Steve said his name, the Winter Soldier pushed himself smoothly to his feet, slipped past Clint and went into the kitchen. Metal grated on the floor as he picked up the arm. It was a mission and he could handle missions, Sam felt. Steve followed his friend, the super soldier's size big and yet powerless. No eye contact here.

"He'll help with the trigger words. I'm not going to give up."

Bucky's vacant stare flickered for a moment, shifting to the fridge instead of the cabinets, but no less intent. He gripped the arm tighter, then, as if he came to an agreement with himself, the intensity slipped away.

"…yeah."

#

Thank you to anyone who has made it this far with me.