This chapter was in development for quite a while – sorry! Wanted to get Sam's perspective right and I didn't feel it was for a long time. Plus, we change perspectives a few times so I wanted it to be… personal. I dunno, this fic's gotten kind longer than I expected and I wanted to do right by it and you all. J
Also, guys, Brubaker's comic run on Captain America? Gorgeous. Eeeeeee~ 3 I have amassed all the omnibuses and I haven't been this happy bout comics since readin' Fables.
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"Please, please tell me he did not just put a hole in the Hulk's shoulder!" Sam yelled as Captain America, otherwise known as Steve in full red-white-and-blue gear, and he went running down the alley. The incident didn't require a lot of interpretation: the Winter Soldier had just shot Hulk. Even from several dozen yards away and a couple of flights down, that much was clear and Steve was moving like WWIII had broken out on a fire escape in a suburb of Chesapeake.
"He's confused!" Cap yelled back.
"You don't shoot the Hulk because you're confused!"
You could shoot when you thought you might die, but not at someone who yanked your gun into their shoulder to prevent you from shooting someone else. Firing at Hulk was an act of calculation. Sam was pretty sure Cap knew that.
If the cops didn't have a raging Hulk on their hands, they would have taken down the Winter Soldier.
If Cap and Sam didn't have to deal with a raging Hulk, Cap would have been going after Bucky.
Either way, it worked out for the assassin, who had vaulted off the fire escape, landed on someone's Buick, and was booking it towards the medical arts building across the street. Calculation and expert execution.
Cap hurled his shield in the direction of the Police vs. Hulk conflict. The shield did its usual ping-off-three-buildings-and-a-light-pole activity before slamming into the side of Hulk's head. The green giant roared and the police backed away, calling for back up that would be no better prepared than they were. Moments like this, it would have been nice if the Winter Soldier hadn't grounded him. Ignoring the familiar irritation, Sam started running towards the uniformed men.
"Get out of here, we got this!"
Ordinarily, the police might have been hesitant, but he was with Captain America and the Hulk was something else together. The men retreated at a run as Cap maneuvered Hulk back towards the corner of an alley, keeping always a jump or two ahead of the green giant's grasp. This got Hulk out of the public eye and out of an area where he could smash cars, public fixtures, and people…
But into an area where there was just Cap to smash.
Sam rejoined them just as Cap finished driving Hulk back into the alley. The situation looked grim, but nothing the Avengers hadn't faced before: a panting, furious thing out of gamma-radiated nightmares about to smash Cap into the ground. But this was different – this was Bruce, and Bruce was hesitating.
"Cap, you wanna—" Sam began.
"I apologize," Cap yelled up at the towering figure.
Hulk took a breath and roared at the super-soldier, the sound like a train going by only feet away. Cap did nothing, no step back, no wince, though the blast would have made a smaller man stumble backwards.
"I'm happy to pay for any medical bills," Cap continued.
A chuff of indignant exasperation.
"You're one of the very few I reasonably could, on his behalf," Cap said quietly.
A sigh. Hulk shook his head and growled at the suggestion, reluctantly probing at where the bullet had entered his shoulder. After a couple moments of checking, he brushed off his shoulder, growled again. The bullet had gone cleanly through and his healing factor had already compensated for it.
"He is a good man. We were soldiers together. I am sorry for the actions he took and the situation he's put you in, Banner."
Placated, the Hulk seemed to shake itself, sighing again, and sat, knocking over several garbage cans as he did so.
The transformation from Hulk to Banner was as gradual as aging, or the deterioration of eyesight. There was Hulk and a minute of changes later, there was Banner, sitting on the ground and gripping his head.
"Did I hurt any—" Banner asked after a moment, lacking even the energy to look up.
"No. No, everyone is fine."
"God, that was fun," the scientist muttered. "There's… argh, there's a spare pair of pants in my car, if someone… wants to grab them…"
For a mile-a-minute soldier like Cap, this was quick work. Momentarily, Banner had pants again, as well as a wrinkled extra-large button-down shirt that Cap had found under the front seat. Banner pulled on the shirt but didn't bother buttoning it.
"I'm sorry for what happened. Bucky is very confused," Cap began. Banner snorted, still leaning against the alley wall.
"He's not confused. He just wasn't happy I was here and definitely not happy those yahoos decided to shoot at him."
The super-soldier didn't bat an eye; much worse things had happened to the Winter Soldier than some cops taking a potshot at him.
"Thank you for stopping him," Cap said.
"Yeah, well, Hawkeye's rubbing off on me about looking out for people." Banner massaged his shoulder and looked in the direction the police had gone. "Unless you think you're going to need the other guy, I'm going. I don't… I don't want to stick around Chesapeake, not after this."
"We'll be fine. Are you alright to drive?"
Banner rolled his shoulder, glanced in the direction of the medical arts building, then at Cap. "Does it matter? You've got a murder to stop and you've wasted enough time caring for me."
"Bucky won't kill him. Are you going to be all right?"
"Your pal just shot me in the shoulder, I'd say he's willing to—"
"Which was wrong, and you took a bullet for policemen. Thank you."
"The other guy took—" Banner protested.
"You took a bullet, to keep 'my pal' from making a terrible choice in the heat of the moment and proving everything everyone says about him is right. Sam. Do you want to get…?" Cap gestured at the medical arts building and it legitimately took a minute for Sam to connect the dots.
"You're not coming?"
"I should stay with Banner."
"I'm fine."
"Then we'll bring the car around for Sam and Bucky," Cap said, like it was some special thing that needed two people to do. Which was odd. When Steve was being odd, it usually meant something was going on.
"You sure you wanna do this this way?" Sam asked. "Your friend might actually get his memories back from this, if the doctor caves. If he does, you need to be there. And if he doesn't cave, if Bucky does try to kill this guy, I'm not going easy on him—"
"I believe in Bucky," Cap said. "He won't kill Faustus. And I believe that if he got his memories back… I'm the last person he would want to see."
And there it was. The trip wire of guilt, buried beneath a leafy spread of friendship and altruism. Captain America was a soldier of the 1940s, Steve was a soldier, and it took a long time to get anything from him in terms of emotion. Guilt was nothing new to Sam, not when the majority of the veterans he spoke to carried a fair amount of survivor's guilt, regardless of the situation. When Steve had opened up, he talked about Bucky's fall like the guilt was a part of himself; carried it the way he carried his visits to Peggy in the hospital or his monthly Sunday morning visits to Arlington. And he had found a way to carry it now, even when Bucky was alive. Bucky would want to see him, fine, but only if Bucky was broken. If Bucky was whole, to Steve's mind, he would know who had let him fall and Steve didn't want to be there for that.
Too bad.
"If I'm coming out of that building with two people in custody, I'm going to need you. This guy has mental powers, you said, and the Winter Soldier ain't the kind of guy you just bash over the head," Sam said.
Across the street, the fire alarm began going off in the medical arts building.
"Evacuating the place," Sam said. That didn't bode well for the whole 'not-killing-Faustus' idea. You evacuated a building when you wanted everyone out for a certain period of time and it seemed highly unlikely an emergency was actually happening, right now, with Captain American already running towards the medical arts building.
"Bruce, you gonna be—" Sam began, but the scientist was already headed for the parking lot on the other side of the surrounding buildings.
"I'll drive the getaway car. Get the patriots back before somebody else gets hurt."
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Sam caught a glimpse of the super-soldier's boot at the top of the stairs of medical arts building, heard the door bang open, and then nothing but the sound of running footsteps in the hall. Cap could run like the devil when he wanted to and right now, he wanted to. They were the only ones heading in and up – there had been enough people (patients and doctors) in the parking lot, milling around and wondering why the evacuation. No one had stopped two superheroes from running in.
The door of what must be Faustus's office was open into the hallway. Sam didn't have long to dwell on it, because Faustus's voice carried out into the hall as well, over the sound of the alarm.
"Ah, hello James."
Cap slowed his pace as he approached the door, hidden by the wall. For a moment, Sam thought about putting in the earplugs they had brought, but they might have to converse with the doctor to get to the bottom of this. Bucky certainly was. And beyond Bucky shooting him in the Manhattan mall, there hadn't been a problem yet so the porous yellow buds they'd picked up at the airport could stay in storage. Cap shifted position with his shield, ready for a charge. Unseen in the room, Faustus's voice droned on. Sam hoped they wouldn't need the earplugs.
"The gun is very impressive and I take it that you've made up your mind that I'm bluffing? There's no way to remove the trigger words and you're condemned to this. A practical idea, a very decisive idea. You should certainly want to kill me, if it were true."
"And I do," the Winter Soldier said.
"But if it's false, and I can remove the triggers and restore your obsolete memories… you've ended your only chance at normalcy. Well, you've already done that, by not bringing the Captain."
"Told you I wouldn't." The assassin sounded confident. A break in the words, the tiniest of uncertainties, and then back to confidence. "And I don't want him to."
"So you resort to murder." There was no fear in Faustus's tone, no tremor or intimidation. Even from an outside perspective, it was infuriating.
"I have skills." The Winter Soldier's voice was a razor again. "I have skills that I can use without killing you and you'll tell me. You'll tell me what I need to know."
"Torture, on an unarmed American citizen who has broken no law, and no mind control to blame? James, what would your Captain say?"
Silence. Ahead of Sam, Cap's face went very still. The super-soldier took a quiet, rattling breath, about to step forward to stop the event, when Sam stepped forward into the doorway ahead of him.
Faustus stood at the side of the desk, facing the Winter Soldier, who held the gun pointed at his right kneecap. The pair were very quiet, despite the tableau, and Bucky gave no sign that Sam's appearance had surprised him. Faustus, for his part, smiled.
"I'm doing this," the Winter Soldier said.
"Doesn't go against anything I've seen Daredevil or Punisher do in the course of an interrogation," Sam said. That took the assassin a second, no doubt trying to pull up a mental file on the individuals.
"I'm not them," Bucky said finally. Sam sidestepped around the pair, coming into the assassin's line of sight. Unsurprisingly, the assassin was avoiding eye contact with anything but Faustus. That was fine, Sam just needed to talk.
"No, Cap's not them. You're whoever you want to be. Defined by things like this, right now."
The Winter Soldier looked to Faustus, wavering a little. His grip on the gun tightened.
"Let him decide," Faustus contributed, refusing to even look at Sam. "You'll notice I'm not controlling him."
And the statement… made sense. It was Bucky's decision, it was pointless to say anything to the contrary. But even that thought made little sense and Sam could hear Cap hissing at him to do something. That was background noise compared to the look of sudden panic that had stolen across Bucky's face. What if he is? the assassin's expression asked. What if he is, what if he makes me do something to someone else and I don't—
The assassin's next words came quickly: "Get out of here, Falcon. I'm handling this."
An easy opening to begin talking him down. "You're handling this and what's going to happen after you 'handle' it? You have to live in this world. You can't do that on the run, killing everyone who threatens you. Nobody gets to live that way."
"But we're…" the assassin started, then stopped, struggling with the words.
"We're not at war. Not with Faustus." Cap stepped into the room and red flags started waving in Sam's mind the moment Dr. Faustus smiled. The Winter Soldier stared back at Cap, then glanced at Falcon, yet the gun trained on Faustus's kneecap didn't waver.
"You knew—you weren't supposed to bring him—"
"But I'm so happy you came, Captain," Faustus said warmly. "You, my friend, are the one to control. James proved resistant to my voice, yet I'm sure you'll be more open to helping me. Now, take his gun and—"
Before he could finish the sentence, the Winter Soldier jerked the gun up and fired it twice into the window which exploded outward. The sound of the weapon firing and breaking glass drowned out whatever Faustus was going to say and it irked the doctor. Sam could see it in the man's face. Not just the interruption, but that it had been the work of a moment for Bucky to completely interfere with his vocal powers.
"Discharging a weapon in a white-collar area, soldier?" Faustus said tightly, coming away from his desk. "They'll have you commended to my care if you're not careful. Captain, restrain him."
The super-soldier moved to do so, without a word, without resisting, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing. When Sam moved forward to stop him, Cap no more than glanced at him before kicking him across the room to land heavily against a bookshelf. The Winter Soldier let Cap begin to restrain him, the assassin registering only a sort of dulled confusion –until Cap reached out to lower his gun-hand.
Then, it was like a sequence of decisions kicked into motion:
Elbow Cap in the face with the metal arm,
Switch hands with the gun,
Duck under Cap's grab, and
Shoot Faustus in the kneecap.
The doctor went down heavily, shouting in pain, and the Winter Soldier was shoving Cap backwards the way a linebacker would drive an opponent. The metal arm lent him strength but it wasn't enough – Steve stepped back in surprise rather than a true lack of balance. It gave Sam time to cross the room and shove the earplugs at Cap. Steve took them, puzzled, imitating Sam's pantomime of putting the earplugs in.
"Captain!" Faustus yelled, managing to get back to one knee with the desk as support. Again, the Winter Soldier was a sequence of motions –
Check Faustus's position,
SHOVE Cap towards the door, with more force than Sam thought the man could summon,
Push Sam after him,
Slam the door behind them, and
Break off the doorknob.
The last wasn't necessary, it wasn't even wise, but Sam was left looking at a sturdy wooden door and the impression that they really weren't wanted right now.
#
"There are five bullets left in this gun. You let him go, you let them both go now, and I don't fill you with them," the Winter Soldier hissed.
"You won't kill me. Off. Now."
The Winter Soldier snarled a profanity and the words that followed were charged with fury and confidence: "I remember you now. Are you proud? Talking to me about the— talking about the experiments. You made your victims look like suicides, you made your victims commit suicide. How will it look when it happens to you?"
"You're—"
"I'm a ghost, everyone says. But sometimes ghosts take people back to hell."
"Your services are no longer required, sidekick," Faustus rasped. The words struck a potent code in Bucky's memory. It was a trigger phrase, pulling up detailed memories of implanted images. He gripped Faustus's neck – the metal arm was more than strong enough to crush this voice and wanted to, because these words were familiar.
An untested trigger code – 'end the Winter Soldier's services.'
End the Winter Soldier.
Eliminate whatever was left of the person once known as James Buchanan Barnes.
But an untested code, no matter how many images and self-loathing statements and obedience-priorities had been implanted, wasn't as strong.
Certainly not as strong as keeping the reality that was Doctor Faustus pinned to the floor of a real office building, with a real alarm blaring, with a real pair of superheroes just outside the door. He clung to it, even as his grip on the doctor's throat tightened.
"I'm… not… going…" Bucky said.
"Your services are no longer required, sidekick."
"I got a funeral a long time ago, nothing here to kill," Bucky managed and the words came like a confession. Agh. "Only stepped up 'cause you attacked Cap."
Wait. Wait, there was something there. Something illegal. Something Cap and Sam could take him in for. The fingers loosened slightly, metal creaking at the infinitesimal movement. Don't overreact. There is a reason to bring him in; maybe you don't have to kill him.
"You attacked Cap. Cap did nothing to you."
Important. Important, people couldn't do that; people couldn't just attack people and walk away in the real world.
"Your point? You're a vigilante, James, and wanted by everyone wearing a badge. You can't take me in and the pair of them can barely admit they're down here, much less violate the American way and bring me in under suspicion of doing something they can't explain or prove. Every way this works out badly for you."
"I…" Ah, the logic of it was falling apart. Shooting him again in the kneecap wasn't going to help. "I… you can't practice, not with what—who—you are…"
"Indeed, James, I am a 'who.' You are the 'what' here. The ghost."
"You can't practice though." Clinging to the statement, Bucky dragged the doctor to his feet, the other man groaning in pain. He had to keep repeating the words in case they slipped away. "You can't be out and about."
"I'll walk right out of prison, James," Faustus said. "And I've done my work with Cap. I can end him when I want, place him where I want, with just a phone call. You'll spend years second-guessing his motivations just as he'll spend years guessing yours – keeping the spy in the cold for fear of what I might do with you—"
That did it. He lifted the gun again and put it to the doctor's head.
The block was screaming at him that he couldn't kill Faustus and it wasn't wrong. It was both sides of him, the Bucky and the Soldier, screaming that this was not just something he had been programmed not to do: this was murder. Murder without trial or justice. Don't do it, don't do it, we are not at war; you'll make everything worse.
How could anything be worse than this?
Trying to defy programming was like that day on the helicarrier, watching Steve fall. Independent thought was like trying to trace words during the aftermath of an explosive shell; everything bleeding quiet around it as people's lives fell apart.
As they stood there, Faustus staunchly denying that he could do it, and Bucky clicking the safety off the gun, one of them broke.
Faustus said something as Bucky stood there, the gun to the doctor's head, a brief sentence that Bucky was never able to remember afterwards. It was like a second shell dropping within the concussion of the first. The hush shook upon itself and extended its reach – the trigger phrase for his memories.
Everything came in on him then, a wave of images and colors over the past several decades. Faustus shoved him backwards as he made a break for the door and Bucky caught himself against the desk. Papers fell. Noiseless, flippy things without weight or bearing. He stared at them as they settled on the floor. The door to the office banged open, visible only in the flipping over of several of the papers.
#
The moment the doctor came hobbling out the office door, Cap came at him like a train taking down a street sign. It wasn't as if Faustus could truly move with the bullet in his leg, so he held up a single hand and yelled: "Stop!"
Against earplugs, it was no contest: the psychiatrist was in custody and gagged within a minute. Sam pushed the office door open wider, glancing inside for Bucky. The room stood empty, draft whistling in through the broken window.
"He went out the window," he called back to Cap, who was taking out his earplugs.
Cap looked down at Faustus, who was sitting against the wall and stiffly favoring his knee. Noticing that he had the super-soldier's attention, Faustus smiled tightly, the area around his eyes crinkling even if he couldn't speak. Cap crouched in front of him, watching closely.
"The memories weren't a bluff."
The doctor shook his head.
Cap sighed heavily and looked down the hallway with something less than the confident manner he had entered with.
"He'll be fine," Sam said, though it was tricky to say the same of Cap. The idiot running off had just confirmed in Cap's mind that Bucky didn't want to see him and that it would be because of the fall. Sam put a hand on the super-soldier's shoulder and gestured towards the elevator.
"Come on. I think we can take the elevator this time."
Cap's thoughts aside, if Bucky didn't want to see him right now, it probably had little to do with Bucky blaming him.
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Forty-five minutes slipped by before Bruce saw anyone other than office workers and the fire trucks that responded to the alarm going off. No Sam, no Cap, and no one-armed assassins. Tony had even begun texting to ask what was going on and if they had apprehended Faustus yet, because 'it really shouldn't be that hard to get a fat man into a chokehold. We're talking about Cap here.'
The first sign of the trio Bruce saw was the Winter Soldier, moving stealthily across the parking lot. Well, not quite 'stealthily,' – covert limping was a better term. Moving slowly, keeping to the lengthening shadows of the buildings, until he spotted Bruce's car. Then it was out from the shadows, across the parking lot, and a metal finger tapping on the glass. To save time, Bruce pushed open the door rather than rolling down the window. The Winter Soldier took a couple of quick steps backwards.
"I shot you in the shoulder," the Winter Soldier said, before Bruce could say anything and the tone alone caught him short of saying anything caustic. The assassin sounded contrite. Not devastated, there had been planning behind the shot, but apologetic that he had done what he had done.
"Yeah," Bruce said carefully. "The big guy took care of it."
"I'm sorry though." The assassin said the words like a hard-won privilege and they probably were. Accept this, Bruce thought suddenly. Accept it and move on. He shrugged with the other shoulder and gestured back at the medical arts building to change the subject.
"Not the first time. Where are Cap and—"
"It is the first time. I haven't shot you before." The Winter Soldier took hold of the top of the open car door with his metal hand, though whether this was for support or to intimidate, Bruce wasn't sure. Didn't matter, there was nothing to be worried about here. Stay calm.
"No, but not the first time I've been shot," Bruce said easily. "Where are Cap and Falcon?"
"With the doctor. With Faustus. With Dr. Johnann Fennhoff. They're coming." The names disoriented him but the assassin pulled it together, looked over his shoulder. "I'm not, though. I'm finding my own way home."
"You even know where we are?" Bruce asked, feeling incredulous and hearing it seep into his tone.
"Chesapeake. I got myself here, I'll get back."
"You're limping. You're a wanted man. Melodramatically staggering off is going to panic everybody and throw you back ten steps in recovery. Get in the car."
The assassin's grip on the door tightened.
"Don't tell me what to do."
Control was the key. Bruce couldn't yell at him, couldn't use the Hulk to stuff the idiot in the truck, and wasn't quite sure he could stuff the assassin in the back on his own. Hand-to-hand, he wasn't terrific or even passable. The Winter Soldier was going to win this round because, even limping, he could take Bruce Banner, physicist extraordinaire.
"At least tell Cap," Bruce said finally.
"Wouldn't be talking to you if I was going to do that. I'll talk to him in a few days, need to clear my—" He paused, as if running through words. "Just… to get things in order. Keep him safe. Keep everybody… alive."
He released the door with a grating of steel. "Sorry. Sorry."
The assassin retreated faster than Bruce could or wanted to follow. That threat was still there; that the Winter Soldier would draw him into a fight and antagonize him to get away. The thought burned in the back of his throat, the fear of blacking out into the other guy, and the dormant frustration with Hawkeye for ditching him in Chesapeake.
By the time Sam and Cap got out, a gagged and hands-tied Faustus in tow, Bucky was long gone.
"Did he say where? Did he say anything?" Cap demanded.
"He'll talk to you in a few days. He…" Bruce glanced at the silent Faustus. "He got his memories back didn't he."
The psychologist nodded, eyes crinkling with what-must-be a grim smile. Cap looked about to punch the man in the face, but that was well out of the purview of truth, justice, and the American way.
"He'll be fine, Cap. He seemed… on top of it."
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At least one more chapter?
