#
The Winter Soldier's plan had not involved crashing in on the archer and Banner's hotel room but it had happened. The plan also didn't involve nightmares keeping him up half the night. Banner was supposed to stay up, probably, but the bowman made coffee and told him to get some sleep because 'he [Barton] had this.'
Bucky watched them both through narrowed eyes and said nothing. He had already stolen the map with its various circled sites and, based on the address of the Thai food place they had been to, he knew which one they had gone to.
Barton offered him a cup of the first pot of coffee and Bucky refused. It smelled amazing though.
What are you doing here, his mind asked him, as if from a long way off and between nightmares. This wasn't the plan. What possessed you to come to Virginia and break into their hotel room? You're not under orders.
'It seemed like a good idea at the time.' Steve must have said that hundreds of times on missions or maybe it was Bucky who had held to that one. Maybe it even predated the war; maybe this was how he always made plans. But he hadn't made plans in years, so how was this one working? How were things working if he wasn't under orders?
-unless he was under orders and he had forgotten that he was given orders.
That thought spurred a whole new angle of nightmare.
Barton woke him up at three a.m. by making more coffee. Banner slept through the activity. Bucky sat in the dark, smelling the sharp scent of instant coffee and watching the glow of the green smoke detector light on the wall. Below, a couple was arguing in the parking lot, just barely visible through the slightly ajar sliding door and the early morning fog. His own breath rasped in his throat as he breathed and he shifted position.
The archer knew the moment he moved that Bucky was awake, but said nothing. There was the sound of coffee pouring.
"What if I'm under orders?" Bucky asked.
The sound of his own voice was like a reminder that everything that was happening was real. That he should be pretending to be Steve's Bucky, instilling confidence or instilling respect at the very least, that there should be a performance going on so Barton would fear him. The bowman sat down on the opposite bed.
"If you were under orders, you wouldn't be asking that question. It's not how it works."
"They could…" They could want me to? No, that didn't make sense; it was too delicate for his handlers to instill insubordination, just so they could convince the subject he wanted to obey. Where was the guarantee that he would overcome his own doubt? They wouldn't have, but… if he wasn't under orders, why was he here?
"What brought me here, though?" he asked, more to his hands than Barton. His body seemed to know things, actions, crimes, better than his mind did.
"You wanted justice. Or, at the very least, answers." Barton sipped the coffee. "You certainly didn't come to relax."
"What did…"
"Faustus," the archer supplied.
"…Faustus… tell you?"
"He wants Cap in the room with him. Not a good idea. But he's not doing anything illegal, so what we can do is limited."
"I'll take care of it."
The idea had poetic justice to it. It was the kind of thing that happened during war; you didn't 'wait and see', trial and red tape; you took out Nazis where you found them. You did the thing that needed to be done. Only Barton was shaking his head.
"It wouldn't help anyone, especially you. Hell, it would ruin what little life you can try to build. Faustus is established, recently in the news, and he has an office setup. You can't re-kill this guy just because he's alive. Besides, you kill him, you never get your memories back."
"You really think that's an option." The memories and everything surrounding them was like listening to a fairy tale. A fairy tale being told to a soldier by his superiors with an unlikely happy ending. Bucky had come down here because Barton and Banner were down here for him. That was all; he had been clear about exactly what level of bull the idea of getting his memory back was.
"I do," Barton replied. "Seen a lot of magical crap the past few years, I'll believe it if some guy says he has a few puzzle pieces that aren't his."
And Steve would want him to get the memories back. Everyone would want him to get them back, just like everyone would want him to stand trial and move past this and make a life for himself in the chaos that was this century. Thinking about having the memories back, about not living in a haze, brought into focus how kind the fog was sometimes. Unhealthy, debilitating, transparent at just the wrong moments, but if the fog was gone, there would be nothing between him and the choking pressure of the last few decades.
When he realized he had gone quiet, he looked up to answer Barton and realized he had drifted off in the thought, losing hours in the process. A new day had started. The light had changed. There was more coffee – new coffee—and it was morning. Both Barton and Banner were absent, though someone was humming in the bathroom.
Forget Barton. He would kill Faustus and then vanish, just like the media already said he had. It was what they were expecting, Faustus would be out of everyone's hair, and this would no longer be a problem for Steve. It wouldn't stop here, if Faustus was alive; these kinds of things never stopped here. If Bucky ignored everything about this, Faustus would come back – through someone closer to Steve.
Someone had said Peggy was still alive. That would be worse and wasn't going to happen on Bucky's watch.
The Winter Soldier got stiffly to his feet, replacing the guns and stretching the knee in its brace to get a feel for it. Good to know nothing had changed. Pushing the sliding glass door open, he vaulted over the balcony and headed out, map from the dresser in his pocket. It was the right thing to do and after it was done, the right thing was vanishing. Good as orders.
#
Bruce came out of the hour-long shower to find the hotel room empty, which was not how he had left it. The bowman should have been watching the assassin, then they would have gone down to the free breakfast, if they could manage it, and inconspicuously had a meal. Bringing up enough food for the 'big guy' wasn't even considered.
But Barton wasn't here and the full coffeepot was perking happily. A folded piece of stationary, stained with coffee, sat tucked under the pot and, groaning, Bruce unfolded it.
'nat needs an assist, trickshot stuff, super-sorry, cap'll be here by 10. –b'
Nothing about the missing assassin, which meant Bucky had left almost as soon as the archer had. The numbers "9:47" glowed blue on the base of the coffeepot. Great. Great.
Breathe. His fingers gripped the dresser tight enough to warp wood and he couldn't get mad. That wouldn't get Bucky back and more importantly, it wouldn't be as rewarding as punching Clint Barton into next week. No, no, remember, he's the one you can't punch into next week. Barton is breakable. Everyone is breakable.
Bruce took a deep breath and tore up the piece of stationary very carefully.
In doing so, he noticed that the sliding glass door stood slightly ajar. Bruce put on some clothes, put a 'do not disturb' sign on the door-handle, and vaulted off the balcony, landing easily on the pavement below. The assassin would be going after the doctor, which meant going back to the office building.
-surrounded by other, similar-height office buildings.
He sighed, remembering Cap's assessment. Bucky would be on a rooftop unless he had reason to be elsewhere. Based on the conversation last night, he hadn't bought the 'he's got your memories' excuse for not killing Faustus. If he didn't get there in a hurry, Faustus would be sniped and that would be the end of it.
Switching on his Avengers ID, he hailed a cab, already recording a message to Stark.
'Winter's in the wind, check rooftops surrounding the doctor's office. Good reason to think we're going to have a sniping attempt, since the doctor does have a window. Hawkeye's out of the game." He gave them the address and finished the recording.
If that didn't get them down here in a hurry, nothing would.
#
The guns weren't sniper's weapons. The Winter Soldier had known that before getting up on the rooftop, had known that when he left the hotel room, but somewhere in the trip he had gotten lost in his mind and fallen into habit. Habit being rooftops. Habit didn't take into consideration that his guns didn't have the range to reach the window and no handler was going to hand him the gun he would need to get the job done.
Get another gun and come back or just leave the roof of this office building. Those were all his mind had to offer in the way of orders and he didn't like either of them. It had been a nightmare getting up with the leg being what it was. Somewhere along the way, he had lost the knee brace, only to find it strapped to the upper part of his metal arm several seconds after settling into position. Out of the way. Sometime, maybe fifteen minutes ago while he was climbing, he had been clever about this. Not that it did much good now. He pulled the knee brace off his arm and replaced it on his leg, watching the window. Its position hadn't changed: several stories down, far too far for sniping.
Wouldn't it be more rewarding to shoot the man point-blank anyway?
He would have to be in speaking range of the man to do that though. And his hands were already trembling with hesitation at the thought of killing the man, in a way they hadn't been when he left the hotel room. And if he couldn't kill the man, then maybe there really was a block in his mind and what if there were also the cities beneath cities? It could be real, like Atlantis or El Dorado; a road back to who he had once been.
So get off the roof and go try to kill him, his mind murmured. An order. Thank God. An order that asked no questions.
Of course, his mind continued. If you can't kill him, the path exists. That thought stalled out his progress, halfway down the fire escape. The path exists and he won't show you the path unless you bring Cap to him, which you won't, which means you'll never find the path and all these trigger words will stay in your head.
No. Even if he couldn't kill Faustus, he had… other skills. Skills he didn't want to remember he had, much less that he had taught those skills to others. They hadn't come to mind since he left his handlers, even when he needed intel from Sam, even when he had wanted Faustus to leave him alone in the mall… if they came to mind now, maybe he was the same person he was before, maybe—
#
"Hey."
Bruce saw the Winter Soldier hear his voice; the smaller man's whole body tensed up, one hand going to the gun on his hip, but not drawing. The assassin had been caught thinking. It was probably a dangerous way to catch him, but Bruce was running out of patience. Moving like a cat, the assassin made eye contact with Bruce and descended a few flights of fire escape stairs, until they were separated by just two flights. The Winter Soldier leaned over the railing, looking down from a highly-defensible position, and Bruce craned to see up and around the stair edges.
"Hey. Bucky Barnes."
The cat-like aspect only strengthened as the assassin kept staring down over the railing, waiting for him to say something important.
"I wouldn't shoot off anything rocket-launcher-sized. Cap's on his way, we'll get this sorted out," Bruce said. The other man glanced in the direction of the window then back at Bruce.
"Where's Barton?" the assassin asked.
"Called away."
This generated no response. It was possible the Winter Soldier was stalling, still trying to come to a conclusion about whatever he had been debating with himself earlier.
"How about you come down another flight as we wait?"
This option was considered. Considered for a long enough stretch of time that Bruce came up one flight of stairs so he could face the assassin, who didn't move or blink. The assassin's control over his heart rate must have been phenomenal. Then again, this was a sniper.
"What made you leave this morning?" Bruce said, trying to keep the assassin from thinking too much.
"I was going to…"
"…kill him? You're going to kill an unarmed man, in an office building, with a handgun."
The assassin considered this again and by now, Bruce could read the man's discomfort in his stance.
"You know you're not stable right now. Put down the gun, come back to the hotel, and—"
The gun came up instead, leveling with Bruce's head. No unsteadiness here and the message was clear as a cell phone in a silent theater. Don't tell me what to do.
But Bruce rose to it.
"You shoot me, the other guy takes you out. Okay? It's been a long morning and we don't want to get me banned from the eastern seaboard. Again."
Still the gun held point.
At least, until the railing wobbled. Both men looked down and Bruce groaned internally. Several of Chesapeake Bay's finest had taken position at the base of the fire escape and other strategic positions. No.
"No, no, no, guys, I'm fine, I'm an Avenger!" he called down.
"That ain't a damage blanket!" One of the wittier policemen yelled back. "Have him set the gun down easy and we'll handle the arrest from here. Less green giant that way."
"He hasn't done anything yet, just let me—" He heard the gun's safety click off and so did the men below. He immediately changed tactics, speaking directly to the Winter Soldier on the railing above. "You have never killed someone outside of orders, don't start now."
That jarred the assassin. Torn between ideas, the gun wavered. Somewhere far below, some policeman with damn good aim decided to fire a warning shot at the situation. The policeman's bullet pinged off the Winter Soldier's metal arm, denting it considerably but otherwise without injury. The Winter Soldier, on the other hand, took a half second to redirect his aim at the policeman, hesitated – and that was where everything went south.
In that moment of hesitation, Bruce took two giant steps forward and yanked the gun over into the fleshy part of his shoulder, where it could hurt absolutely no one but him. The Winter Soldier stared at him, puzzled, and then there came a… calculating look. A completely unexpected look.
The Winter Soldier pulled the trigger. Redirecting the gun had already scared Bruce; feeling the white heat of a bullet enter his shoulder at point blank enraged him and, as he usually did, the Hulk showed up.
The Winter Soldier had never seen the Hulk. Still, he wore the poker face as he moved gracefully as possible backwards up the fire escape. If Bruce had been thinking, he might have realized what the assassin was doing, maybe even seconds before the Winter Soldier flipped over the railing of the fire escape and dropped several stories to land on the hood of a car. Hulk roared, turned, and began tearing his way down the fire escape and the police began firing.
Everything went to hell and lost Bucky along the way.
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I'm sorry, that's what happens when I don't plot in advance. Apparently we get Hulk and severe delays in updating. …it hasn't been a lovely start to the year. Sorry, and thank you to everyone who has stuck around; I appreciate you and your kind words a lot and hope the story manages to entertain/make sense. :)
