Chapter 6: Do you remember?
Summary: James is not coping very well.

When James woke up he was back in SHIELD Medical and Phil was sitting at his bedside, watching TV on mute. "Here we are again."

"We've got to stop meeting like this." Phil turned the TV off. "Very stealthy, Barnes. You lasted a whole hour in New York before Natasha bashed your head in."

"In my defense, Stark's property surveillance is way more sophisticated than I was told." James pushed himself into a sitting position. At least his arm was functioning this time. The Avengers were notable absent. "I was expecting a crowd."

"Oh, they're here." He didn't seem too angry for a man that had been pulled out of his lover's bed. "I know you don't want to see Steve. I don't understand it, but I've been respecting it. The problem is, he won't leave without seeing you. When Fury asked him to leave, told him that you didn't want to see him, the Captain punched him in the face. The Avengers are keeping him company in the brig."

James groaned. Steve had never let anyone keep them apart, not even the US Army. He didn't know why he thought Fury would have any better luck. "Of course he is." James peered over the edge of the bed and found his boots. He sat up and started pulling them on. "Will Fury let him out, if I can convince him to go?"

"The Director wants the Avengers out of HQ before Stark breaches our firewalls. Also, I can't go home until someone else takes responsibility for them." When Phil stood, James noticed his shirt was buttoned up wrong. "I really want to go home, Barnes."

Right, an hour. They'd probably barely wrapped up round one when SHIELD called. "I'll take care of it. Show me where you have them stashed, then head out."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea. The Avengers have proven themselves to be a bit unpredictable." The elevator ride to the brig seemed to take forever. "They almost killed each other during the Battle for New York. We're still not sure how much of that was Loki."

James could hear Steve before they even walked into the room. "They gave me a piece of paper that said he was dead. That was two years ago. Agent Coulson is alive. What else is SHIELD lying about?"

He could hear Natasha, trying to talk him down. "I told them he was dead. That's on me."

"And letting us thing Agent Coulson was dead? Letting *Clint* think his husband was dead?" Steve was off and running, James knew he'd be pacing the room even before they walked through the door.

"Looks like a team to me." Steve was indeed pacing like an animal. The door to his cell was wide open. If they'd wanted it to stay locked, they should have kept his teammates out. Clint and Natasha were on the floor, leaning against each other and Bruce and Tony were writing on the walls.

Steve stopped dead in his tracks. Then he stepped forward, slowly, like if he moved too quickly James might disappear. "Bucky."

"Ste-" He managed to get the first syllable out before Steve darted forward. Then his mouth was busy doing other things. Steve's kiss was full of desperation, of decades apart even though Steve hadn't lived them like James had. Maybe it had been worse for him, waking up here alone.

For a minute, it was like they were totally alone, one of the dozen other times they'd come back from missions they'd barely survived. It was the sound that made James pull away.

Phil had dropped his briefcase. His mouth was a little open and he was staring. James hated being stared at. "Everything okay over there?" They'd never talked about it, in the weeks he'd been searching for Clint and Natasha. Maybe they should have.

"I'm fine." Phil reached down and picked up his briefcase. When he straightened up again, he looked very much the government agent in total control. "Barnes has agreed to vouch for you, Captain. You're free to go."

Steve wasn't really paying attention. His hand was still tangled in James' hair.

Clint pulled away from Natasha, whose gaze made James feel a little like a prey animal. "We'll catch up tomorrow, Nat. I have to take Phil home now. I think they broke him."

Natasha waited until they were gone, then rose. The flight urge didn't get any better. He'd taught her everything he knew and she'd had decades to get better while he was on ice. "I'm not sorry."

"I know." He'd made her, after all. He was lucky she'd needed information. She could have snapped his neck, he'd seen her do it with the kind of casual ease that would probably make her teammates' skin crawl. "You're usually a bit subtler with your interrogations, and you used to be able to tell when your target was lying."

"Your criticism is noted." She extended her hand. "Natasha Romanoff."

"James Barnes." He shook it. She didn't electrocute him with whatever gear she was wearing on her wrists so James decided to count it as a win.

"I'll see you tomorrow, then, James Barnes. Stark, do I have a room in that monstrosity somewhere?"

"JARVIS will hook you up." Tony capped the marker he'd been using. The wall was covered in an elaborate timeline. He'd obviously already gotten through SHIELD's firewall, documenting every time the Winter Soldier had been debriefed.

He'd also been telling tales because Steve was tugging the gloves off his hands. James hated when Steve looked like that, like he'd failed at something. "Don't. It's fine."

Steve shook his head. He'd always been stubborn. "It's not fine. You have a robotic-"

"Cybernetic." Stark was leaning in closer, staring with open interest now.

"Cybernetic arm. I thought you were dead, Bucky. If I had known, I would have come for you."

"I know." He gave Steve's arm a squeeze. "I'm alive, you're alive, no one's being mind controlled. It's fine."

"You just have really low standards." Steve gave him back his gloves. "We read through most of the files. Everyone thought it was impossible to rescue you. How did you get free?"

"Not here." He didn't want to talk about it in SHIELD, where anyone could be watching, but he still hadn't managed to get a hotel room.

"You can come back to the tower." Tony made another note on the wall. His handwriting was apparently the barely legible one. "We've got sturdy beds and sound-" Banner jabbed him in the ribs. "What? All I'm saying is I designed the bed frames for the Hulk and the walls have top of the line soundproofing, right out of our labs. Do you want to subject some unsuspecting hotel to super soldier reunion sex?"

Bruce pushed his glasses back up his nose and translated from Stark to English. "What Tony meant to say was that he's currently collecting strays, including Steve and I, to fill up his giant tower full of unrentable apartments. So you're welcome to come stay with us."

He really was planning on telling Steve about Loki right away but he'd forgotten how susceptible he was to Steve's hands. Steve kept touching him on the ride back to the Tower, like he was afraid James might disappear. By the time they got into an elevator, alone, those hands had untucked his shirt and unbuckled his belt.

When the door finally opened again, James had forgotten all about talking. Steve led him into an apartment and when they were inside muttered, "Privacy Mode," to no one James could see. Then he shoved James against the front door and kissed him again.

He was still wearing his jacket and he shoved back far enough to shrug it off. After his reaction in the brig, James had been expecting Steve to say something, maybe call this off but his concern about James' arm being metal seemed to have passed. All he said was, "Tell me I'm awake. Please."

Had Steve dreamed when he was in the ice? The Winter Soldier hadn't but in the weeks between waking up on that rooftop and Natasha bashing his head open all James had dreamed about was Steve. So he got it. He did.

"I'm here. I'm real and I'm here." This was a really bad idea and James knew they should stop but what came out of his mouth was, "Is there a bed in here somewhere?"

"This way." Steve pushed James' shirt off his shoulder and let it fall to the ground with his jacket.

Steve's room was dimly lit with the red indicator lights every single piece of technology seemed to have these days. It was more than enough for them to work with. Whatever else that had happened to them, they still knew each other in the dark.

He woke up from a nightmare where his target had been Steve, shouting. Steve, in bed beside him with a sketchbook, didn't even flinch. James pushed away thoughts of what Steve's nights had been like since they thawed him out. If he didn't think about it, it was like a hundred other mornings they'd had like this. "What are you working on?"

"A sketch I did from memory. I got a few things wrong." Steve brushed his fingers against the metal of James' arm. "Can you feel that?"

"I feel enough." He had fine motor control but everything felt distant. Erik had promised him an upgrade but it was going to involve some neurosurgery.

Steve's fingers circled around his wrist and he set the sketchbook aside to sprawl out beside James. They'd fit into a single once, a lifetime ago, but this was better. "Are you an active agent? Do you need to report in?"

"No. I think I'm done with SHIELD." He'd found Clint as a favor, for Marcus and for Phil. "Erik said he needed an extra set of hands."

"Erik." Steve's hands went still.

"What?"

"Even if I set aside everything I've read in SHIELD's files? Genosha is on the other side of the world." Steve touched his shoulder, where metal met flesh. "I could use another set of eyes myself, if you're looking for work."

"Steve." Oh, they really should have talked about this.

"If you're still insisting I snore, you can have the other bedroom." He hated the desperation that had crept into Steve's voice.

"Steve, I can't stay here." James put his hand on Steve's shoulder. "You're Captain America and I'm a killer."

"You're not responsible for what the Winter Soldier did."

He'd been a killer long before that. If he hadn't fallen, history would have sanitized everything he'd done during the war. Instead, he'd been found by the Red Room. "What did Natasha tell you?"

"That you were a sniper. And her lover. I don't care about that." Steve was apparently still good at sharing. "You don't have to leave."

"Did she tell you I killed her parents?" He had never known their names or what they'd done. The Winter Soldier didn't ask questions like that. "Right in front of her. Then I took her back to the Red Room, and they brainwashed her. Then I taught her how to kill, how to fight. When she was older, they gave her to me as a partner and I taught her how to fuck. We killed a lot of people together."

If he'd thought that would make Steve hesitate, he'd been wrong. "That wasn't you."

"Maybe, but it was my choice. I could have said no." He squeezed Steve's shoulder. "I killed a lot of people and SHIELD was involved. Do you know what will happen, if that gets out?"

"I don't care." That was the kind of thing most people regretted saying but Steve wasn't like that. He meant it. "No one cares."

That might be going a little far. "They don't care that I've murdered hundreds of people?"

"No. They don't."

It was possible that was true, at least among the Avengers. Natasha, Clint and the Hulk certainly had body counts. Stark too, in a more indirect way. He would have to try harder. "What if I told you I owed Loki my life?"

"You were here, during the battle?" Steve looked confused, which wasn't the reaction he was going for but at least it wasn't another plea to stay.

"No." Marcus was still playing a game. He hadn't told Steve anything, either before or after the punch. "Three months ago, the Red Room thawed me for one last mission. I was on the roof, in position to take the shot, when the target tapped me on the soldier. He ripped the control chip out of my brain and he let me go."

"Loki helped you?" He could tell Steve was looking for a mark, a scar. He'd done the same. There was nothing to find though. "Why?"

"No one knows."

That got Steve out of bed at least, and talking to thin air. "JARVIS, can you assemble the others? We need to talk."

Thin air answered him, in a very proper accent. "Breakfast is being served on the common floor, Captain. Agents Barton and Coulson won't be joining us until later but the rest of the team is present."

"Good, good." Steve looked around the room. "Do you remember what we did with my pants?"

"In the hallway." He wasn't sure, but it sounded like a reasonable answer.

"Thanks." Jesus, he'd forgotten how impressive Steve was completely naked. "Come on down when you're ready."

"Steve-" It was pointless. He was already out of the room, getting dressed.

"Robot breakfast, Bucky. Come downstairs."

Robot what? He heard the door open and shut, he would have to go downstairs to ask. James let his head fall back against the pillows and reached for his phone. He dialed Erik. Erik still made sense. "What have you been up to while I was asleep? What the hell is the Brotherhood?"

"When I said Charles got the children, I didn't mean all of them. Some of them left the Mansion with me, when I formed the Brotherhood of Mutants." Erik sounded perfectly calm and collected although it was probably still the middle of the night where he was. "Is everything all right?"

"My former partner cracked my skull open." It was healed, the serum's gift, but it didn't mean he hadn't been careless. "Everything is fine."

"Did they take x-rays? Until the bone heals around the chip, it could be vulnerable to shock."

"I appreciate your concern, but I'm fine. When is your plane coming?"

"Mystique has been… delayed." The way Erik talked, the delay could have been caused by anything from a head cold to an explosion. "I'll have to send someone else. In the meantime, I was hoping I could put your tactical judgment to good use."

"Whatever you need." He owed Erik and there was something satisfying in using what Zolla had given him to help him.

"I need you to attend a meeting."

Erik gave him an address, a familiar one. It was the Winter Soldier's last assignment. "This is the Latverian embassy."

"We had a visitor last night. There was a bit of an altercation before we sorted things out. Fortunately, the house didn't take any structural damage and Mystique is out of the infirmary. Our guest told me a disturbing story and offered me a seat at this meeting."

There was a note of anxiety in Erik's voice. That made James uneasy. "How bad is it?"

"If what I was told is true? Very bad. Find out the truth for me."

James got dressed in yesterday's clothes, thinking about what could have a survivor like Erik on edge. Wandering around to get dressed, he found out Steve's apartment was huge. The spare bedroom Steve had offered him was almost as big as the apartment they'd once shared. He gave a low whistle. "I'd ask who you have to fuck to get an apartment like this, but the answer is sorta obvious."

He almost jumped out of his skin when the British voice from thin air answered. "Mister Stark has stated numerous times that the idea of engaging in sexual relations with the Captain is 'creepy.' All the Avengers were given suites of this size."

"Are you… Jarvis?" He craned his head, looking for cameras.

"Yes, sir. Captain Rogers would like me to remind you that breakfast is in progress."

He followed the voice's directions to the elevator and got out on the common floor. James' clothes covered up whatever marks Steve had left that hadn't faded, but he was pretty sure everyone knew what they'd spent the night doing.

There was really a robot making breakfast. James let himself stare at it, but just for a few seconds. Everyone was in the kitchen, eating, like it was completely normal for a robot to be cooking.

Natasha was doing a crossword puzzle, which was really messing with James' head. Bruce was sitting across from her, eating oatmeal. "Sorry we kidnapped you."

"It happens." More to him than normal people, probably. Peggy had snatched him off the street more than once.

Stark was standing next to the blender, drinking some disgusting looking green concoction, forgoing the eggs and potatoes the robot was making. "So, I've got to ask about the arm. Did Uncle Erik build that for you?"

"The control chip is his." Uncle Erik. That was a new one. James took a plate from the cooking bot. The eggs were scrambled and there was cheese melted on top.

Steve gave Tony a look. "You told me Erik Lehnsherr was a dangerous mutant who controlled metal."

"Uhuh." Tony slurped from his straw.

"And you call him Uncle Erik."

"I called Obie Uncle too. Erik never ripped out my heart and left me for dead."

Yeah, Tony had some pretty low standards. The robot was a good cook though. "I need to know. Everyone just keeps dancing around this. Is Erik a terrorist or something?"

"No. Of course not." Tony took another slurp of his drink and leaned over Natasha to look at her crossword. "13 down is epoch." James felt a brief flash of relief but Tony squashed it pretty quickly. "Terrorists are what the winners call the losers. Erik won, so he was a freedom fighter."

Steve, who had never been great with moral ambiguity, choked on a bit of potato. "That's not how it works."

"That's totally how it works." Tony patted Steve on the shoulder, and gave him a pitting look. "It's cool. I still get a birthday card and everything."

"Stark, stop breaking Steve." Natasha was using a pen to fill in the answers. "Bruce deserves a medal for putting up with you for over a year."

"I have one. Pepper had it made." James wasn't sure if he was serious or not. He was probably joking. "It's okay, there's lot of perks. Like indoor plumbing. And holographic interfaces with near limitless processing power."

"I can't believe you're making that comparison." Tony abandoned his smoothie when the coffee machine made a burbling noise. "Do you need your own floor? Steve snores."

"I'm only going to be here a few more days." The room went dead silent. Even the robot stopped in it's tracks.

"Why?" Tony seemed to be personally offended that he was leaving. "You can't tell me wherever SHIELD has you is better than luxury apartments."

"Because I'm not part of your superhero club?" Was he missing something here? It seemed so obvious to James. "You let a stranger come into your house. I could be fooling all of you, Steve especially. I could be working for Loki, I could still be under the Red Room's control. Even if you don't believe any of that, I'm still a murderer."

"Yeah, okay." Tony reached out and stole a strawberry from the edge of Bruce's plate. "Raise your hand if you're responsible for the deaths of too many innocent people to think about." Everyone raised a hand, except for Steve. "There, see? If you're actually worried about having more sleeper programing, I know a guy that can check you out."

"You're not a murderer, Bucky." Of course Steve wouldn't let that go.

James gave up, and ate his eggs.

Steve pushed a cup of coffee across the table to James. "We were wondering if there was anything else you could tell us about Loki."

He was maybe a little in love with the coffee machine. "Not much, but he gave me this." James put the phone on the table. "He gave it to me. SHIELD says it's just a phone. They cloned it and gave it back to me."

Tony snatched up the phone and pried off its shiny green case. "Latest model. At least he's got good taste." He thumbed through a few pages. "Okay. That's Doom."

"Doom?" Steve twitched, just a little. He'd never been good at mornings, especially after the serum, not unless they were being shot at. "What do you mean, doom?"

"I mean Doom. Doctor Doom." Tony turned the phone around. He'd opened the photo gallery app. "Although if you found him at the Latverian embassy, I'm not sure who else he would be hanging out with. His email is still logged in. He's debating Norse mythology with some poor grad student, who has no come back for, 'I was there' and there's some Amazon receipts. Honestly, the most incriminating thing in here is a link to the Evil Overlord list, and he's already flunked item 3."

"Is there any way to contact Thor?" Natasha held her hand out for the phone and Tony handed it over. "The most alarming thing is how quickly he's adapted to our technology. He's following both the Tony Stark and Iron Man hashtags on Twitter. We can assume he's been tracking your every move since he returned to Earth."

"If there's a way to reach Thor, people way more motivated than us would have found it. Doctor Foster, for example." Bruce winced when Natasha passed him the phone. "I see he's an active member of several anti-Hulk blogs."

James sighed into his coffee. "I may be able to get you some information."

He spent the day going over all the available information, SHIELD's reports and raw footage out on the web. Clint's reports got special attention. It was half confession, half mission report, written in the days between the battle and and when he and Natasha had taken off. They were excruciatingly detailed but James couldn't shake the feeling they were incomplete.

He didn't know Thor but his reports felt too personal. Loki was his brother and Thor framed everything he had done in terms of their family problems. Clint's reports, on the other hand, were clinical. Loki had clearly been tortured, Clint had been very insistent about it. He'd provided detailed sketches of the wound he'd seen beneath Loki's glamour. A lot of them were in places that clothing would hide with no explanation of how Clint had seen them.

The whole Battle for New York felt off. Why had Loki wanted Earth? Why had he brought his army onto the Avengers home turf? It was possible Loki was beyond his understanding, which just pissed James off. He had a tactical mind and he'd been a monster. If anyone was capable of understanding Loki, it was him.

"Sergeant," James jumped in his seat when JARVIS talked, he couldn't help it. "You asked to be informed when Agent Barton arrived."

James checked the clock and found it was past six. "What's he up to?"

"He and Agent Coulson are moving in, sir, although it appears dinner is on the agenda before unpacking. You are also strongly encouraged to attend."

"I don't think that's a good idea." James made bad decisions about Steve, it had always been his weak spot. "Steve will just try and get me to stay and the rest of them will help him."

There was a pause and then the invisible man agreed with him. "There is a significant probability that Sir's housemates will question your desire to leave."

James let his head rest of the desk. He felt tired down to his bones, like he'd spent the past three months running. He couldn't stop here, he had to keep going. He reached for a tablet and turned it on, trying to will himself to get back to work. It didn't work but after a few minutes a plate was set down in his field of vision.

Clint dropped into the chair beside the desk. "Eat, then come help me test out Stark's new shooting range."

James sat up and pulled the fork out of the steak on the plate. "Did Steve send you?"

"No." Barton had his own plate, with a giant pile of mashed potatoes. "I want to eat my mashed potatoes and then go shoot things. If you're not up for that, I can ask Natasha."

"I'm up for it."

Even though Clint claimed he wasn't at his best with his gun, they were pretty much evenly matched, which was pretty amazing considering Clint was vanilla human. Clint didn't ask him stupid questions about why he was leaving, they just shot every sniper rifle in the armory. Afterwards, when they were cleaning the weapons, Clint finally asked, "I have to know. How did you find us?"

"One of your neighbors was writing a vacation blog. A Russian mail order bride and a recently discharged army sniper? She had all kinds of theories about you two." James gave him a smirk. "I really liked the one where you were a genetically engineered super soldier and she was your doctor who fell in love with you and helped you escape."

Clint just shook his head and grabbed a cleaning rag for his rifle. "She did seem a little too curious."

He didn't want to ask, because he got the impression Clint was mainly held together with scotch tape and stubbornness, but he had to. "Barton, I've been reading your report." Clint's hands kept moving on autopilot but James could see him tense up, all the calm of their shooting spree melted away. "You warned him that pushing the Avengers too hard could unite them against him. He did it anyway."

Clint set the gun down and rested his palms against the table. He stared at the gun like it had all the answers. "The first night, he called me into his room, told me to strip naked and climb into bed with him. He put his arms around me, stroked my hair and asked me the best way to win. I told him we should go to North Korea, that if he made their Supreme Leader part of the family the whole country would follow him without question. I told him we should build the portal generator there and bring his Master's army through as quietly and quickly as we could then march on Beijing. The chances of China accepting help right away were almost zero and SHIELD wouldn't be able to bring in the Avengers. Once that was in motion, I recommended he and I lead a strike force into Odin's vault. We would take the Casket of Winter and anything else Loki thought would be useful. Then he thanked me and went to sleep. I was…" Clint trailed off. None of that had made it into the report and James could see why. It was a brilliant plan and it would have been devastating.

"Did it happen again?"

"The next morning, he told me we were going to attack New York. Every night he would call me into his room for another round of questions and cuddling." Barton was pale and seemed far away but James didn't want to touch him to shake him out of it. "I would lie awake at night, wondering where I was going wrong, why he didn't want me, why he wouldn't take my advice. I can't…"

Fuck. James went to the little fridge in one of the corners and found it full of liquor. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey and brought it back to the table. "Drink this. You look like you're ready to drop."

"I'm okay." He took the bottle. His hands were rock steady, that was the scary part, and he took a few long drinks before he set the bottle down and took a shaky breath. "I've been tortured before. It's hard to come back from but it was nothing like this. I would say you couldn't understand, but here I am, in a skyscraper full of superheroes with the only people in the world who know what it's like."

James picked up the bottle and took a few sips himself. "You want to shoot some more things? You can show me what you can really do with that bow."

"Yes, please." Clint got out his bow and they spent another hour on the range.

When James took the elevator back up to Steve's apartment, he hesitated at the door to Steve's bedroom. Nothing helpful was going to happen if he went in there and crawled into bed with Steve. He wasn't staying, he wasn't going to let the things he'd done bring Steve down. Still, it was Steve and James was only human. He pushed the door open but the bed was empty. It was probably for the best. He went to the spare bedroom instead.

The curtains were open and there was moonlight coming in through the window. Steve was asleep, naked, on top of the covers and that was it, James was thinking about this tonight. He stripped down and climbed into bed. "Steve? You want to get under the covers?"

Steve didn't open his eyes but he gave a sleepy smile in James' general direction. "I'm good." Steve wasn't in the middle of the bed, he was sleeping on the left side, like they'd done for years but when James got into bed he shifted closer, like they were still in that freezing apartment in Brooklyn.

He was starting to drift off when Steve spoke. "I meant to die."

James had the sudden urge to vomit. "Steve, you don't mean that."

"I do. I meant to die. I told them it was a distraction, so they could set up their ziplines, but I thought I would die. I had it all planned. I would die storming the compound or Red Skull would execute me. When I put that plane in the ocean I thought, this is better. I could die saving everyone and then it would be over, but I didn't die. I woke up here and you were still dead." Steve's fingers curled around his cybernetic arm. "But you weren't dead and no one told me. You've spent most of your life protecting me but you don't have to do it anymore. You don't have to join the Avengers or work for SHIELD, you don't have to live in this madhouse. Just stay with me."

He had never, in the years they'd had together, ever imagined getting to keep Steve, not even when Peggy had agreed to play along. He still couldn't. The Winter Soldier hadn't left any witnesses but some of the people he worked for were still alive. Steve had always been his priority and Steve was Captain America. Captain America couldn't be in love with a killer.

There was nothing to say so he pressed his mouth to Steve's.

Notes: For my random ramblings, reblogs, and ficlets please find me on tumblr as roguewrld