you belong with me, not swallowed in the sea
Pt 2
Moscow is cold and beautiful, but Steve's accommodation is still some low-end dump, because he's not wasting good money on what for him is just a place to sack out for a few hours here and there, and sit around staring at a screen the rest of the time. And also because it's close to Petrikov's house; the man has come down in the world, and lives in a decidedly bad area of the city. He managed to find Alexei Petrikov easily, thanks to Natasha's emailed address, and the next two weeks are reconnaissance – hence the odd sleeping hours. Reconnaissance doesn't leave much time for sleep; it's important to identify all the possible variable people, and learn patterns and routines, and what the potential deviations from routine could most likely be. Although in Steve's case, he's not really watching Petrikov, as much as he is just waiting for Bucky.
But Steve read the dossier, and so he can't help watching Petrikov as though he really was his target. Petrikov; an old, frail man, who was one of the head scientists working on the Winter Soldier project throughout the latter half of the sixties. Petrikov, with a still-living wife and three grown children, who was determined to measure the Winter Soldier's limits of pain, endurance, strength, and more. Petrikov, who made the Winter Soldier hurt and bleed beyond anything he had experienced up until that point, and Steve wonders if Bucky remembers. Petrikov, who had noted in the file that in '67 the Winter Soldier had gotten confused part way through a mission. Had kept asking for his mother – she'd died of tuberculosis in '32. Had said, 'where's Steve?'
Bucky had started to remember, and Petrikov had wiped it all away to nothing again, and Steve could kill the man for it. Bucky had been wiped many times – sometimes after each mission – but that was the one and only time he had ever remembered someone. Up until the small notation – one of the very last in the folder – that says, 'recognised target as familiar. Initiated total scrub. No apparent memory retention.' The signature is illegible. When Steve looks through the Bucky's folder, he is unnerved by how he reacts. He's unaccustomed to feeling such rage, such pure, driving hatred, and it feels wrong, like worms beneath his skin, and he understands why Natasha warned him – but he needed to know. Not knowing would have been a betrayal of Bucky, and Steve will be damned if he ever fails Bucky again.
So he commits what the Winter Soldier underwent to memory, and watches Petrikov's house – a full view handily provided by little S.H.I.E.L.D cameras that he's set up in unobtrusive places, the feed linking up to both a tablet and his phone. He's glued to the screen, searching for Bucky in every angle and frame, waiting. He doesn't eat enough, checks his tranq gun obsessively, and scripts his first meeting with Bucky in his head, over and over. He's acting like a girl fussing over her first date, he thinks one afternoon, lying in bed at the hotel a block over from Petrikov's house and trying to sleep, and it's ridiculous because Bucky's likelier to shoot him than kiss him. And then all Steve's brain can think about is kissing Bucky; and it's a familiar downward spiral through lust and shame and disgust at himself, and then if he keeps going with this line of thought there'll be a temporary surrender to the lust before the intense guilt saturates him, and he swears to never do it again.
He could be a skinny little 5'5" Brooklyn kid again, because he feels exactly the same way about Bucky as that kid did, over seventy damn years ago. He loves him, all twisted up in confusion and a good dollop of shame – because even though he knows it's okay to be a homosexual now, old habit is hard to break. But he loves Bucky, despite the shame. Steve Rogers has always loved Bucky Barnes. Best friends, just like brothers, and then puberty hit and he started to love him in another, new way too. Steve glances at the tablet on the bedside table and still sees nothing. The surveillance cameras have built-in detection software anyway; they'll spot Bucky if he doesn't. So Steve shuts his eyes, and thinks of kissing Bucky, guilt and shame in the back of his mind, old lessons telling him that this is wrong.
And in a shitty hotel room in Russia, Captain America palms his dick and bites his lip, and slow and dirty brings himself off thinking of the Winter Soldier's mouth hot and swollen ripe against his, tongue dipping and teasing, and his hand replacing Steve's on his dick, squeezing and sliding and slicked with his own spit. No – no, Steve thinks of Bucky's mouth, and the way those sulky lips curve into a generous grin, and the sparkling eyes that got hard and shadowed beneath during the war, and the way he said Steve's name so soft and earnest when he was being serious, and the way he had smelt… And if the hand Steve imagines curling firm and greedy around his dick is metal, well, that's Bucky too.
It has to be. Because Steve can't let Bucky go again.
He hears via Natasha that the Winter Soldier – their words, not his and he thinks in his head Bucky, Bucky – is heading toward Russia, and time begins to slowly wind down. It takes five days that seem to stretch on forever, before Steve just happens to see a medium-height figure in a hoodie appear on one of the street view cameras as he drinks his morning coffee, and there's something in the walk that's…familiar. He squints at the person. The hood is up, hiding his face, but a few strands of longish dark hair flutters outside the bounds of it in a way that makes him think of...and the boots – he knows those boots he's sure…
And then the figure turns, smoothly sliding a gun from a holster into one gloved hand while the other pushes back the hood, and the world tips unbalanced, everything skewing wrong but right because it's Bucky. Steve's breath shudders in and he stiffens in his chair, hand knocking his coffee and it floods the table and drips down on the floor. He ignores it, simply snatching up the tablet and staring at the man on the screen. Bucky. Hair brushing down to his shoulders and past now, straggled and lank and his eyes are worse than blank - they're seething with pain. He's staring right at the camera. As if he's looking through it, at -
"Steve," he mouthes and - why would he say that? - and then he shoots out the tiny camera that Steve had hidden in the streetlight outside Petrikov's home, and the screen goes black. Steve drops the tablet to the table, uncaring of the coffee puddles it lands in.
Shit.
Steve barely stops to grab his shield before he's out the door of his hotel room, tearing down the hallway and bursting like a cannonball through the window at the end, tucking and rolling onto the street four stories down. It takes Steve eleven seconds that he counts under his breath to get to Petrikov's house. He stutters to a halt there on a patch of pavement where Bucky had stood just seconds before, and realises belatedly that he is in socks, grey workout pants, and a spaghetti stained white tee-shirt. He almost wants to laugh.
Not exactly his suit, but it'll have to do.
The door to Petrikov house is open, and Steve goes in quiet and careful; he almost wants to just leave Bucky to do what he needs to do, but he wants to watch his back. Just in case. Down a shabby hallway carpeted by a threadbare rug, following the sound of Bucky's voice speaking in what sounds like Russian, icy and brimming with hate. It's Bucky and yet it's not, and Steve can't help the shivers that go down his spine because it sounds so wrong to hear those words and that tone in Bucky's voice. He hefts the shield and edges into the doorway, looking into a lounge.
Bucky stands off to the left, stance strong and hair falling forward to hide his face, and Petrikov is on the floor on his knees in front of Bucky. Hands clasped together. Begging desperately. But it's not what Steve thought; it's not the scene of dubiously righteous vengeance he'd anticipated. Bucky's gun presses into a child's temple. A girl. She must be about six years old; old enough to be scared out of her wits. There are small puddles on the floor at her feet, and her pants legs are wet down the insides. A woman who must be her mother stands frozen in the corner of the lounge, face contorted, tears tracing her cheeks and Russian spilling in a hoarse whisper from her lips, hands clasped together as if in prayer.
Steve's stomach flips sickly, and he darts forward without thinking – arm flung out and shield fitted to it harmlessly, other hand empty and offered palm up like a sacrifice. "Bucky! No!" Because if he shoots this child in the head, in front of Steve…Steve can't even contemplate it without feeling like he is going to shake apart from the inside out. Bucky's metal hand dives into his hoodie, and rips out an Uzi, liquid-fast movements, his head snapping to Steve, hair flying around his face, and then back to Petrikov, begging on the floor. Bucky levels the second weapon at Steve's face, and his metal arm is perfectly steady but Steve can see his human hand is trembling slightly. Seeing that ever-steady snipers hand trembling rocks Steve to the core; Bucky must be in a bad way to be shaking like an old man.
His eyes flick to Steve for an assessing second, before apparently classifying him as less important than Petrikov. "Drop the shield." His voice is dispassionate and rough, slow as if he hasn't spoken English for too long, and Steve drops the shield without hesitation, holding both hands up a little, trying to communicate that he is not a threat.
"Please let the girl go. You're scaring her," he tells Bucky as calm as he can be. Bucky stares at him as though he doesn't comprehend the idea. His eyes are bruised beneath with sleeplessness, his skin pallid and clammy, those full lips Steve had fantasised about just days ago now chapped and pale. There is a fragility to the way he stands; dangerous still but brittle with it, not the same force he had been in DC – pure brutal force, as though he'd been invincible. Steve stares at him helplessly; at the hollowness to his cheeks and the sore at the corner of his mouth, the lank way his hair falls – it hurts to look at him. "The child. Don't hurt her, Bucky, pl–"
"Don't call me that!" Bucky snarls and his voice slurs and shakes, the gun pointed at Steve wavering in his grip as he vibrates with fury and confusion, pain soaking dark in his eyes. Steve jerks in a breath. He doesn't think it's a good sign that Bucky – the Winter Soldier – flinches from the name.
"Okay – Okay then. I won't. Just…please let the girl go."
"Why?" A dully curious voice, Bucky wetting his lips and cocking his head slightly as his eyes flick back from Petrikov to Steve. The gun nudges unintentionally firmer into the girl's temple and she whimpers, standing there in her pink puffy jacket and urine-wet jeans, dirty blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail that looks as if it has been half wrenched out and a small bruise flowering on her cheek – Steve winces, horrified – and a gun at her head. "Why?" Bucky growls, and the girl's whimpering becomes a sob and Bucky's eyes flash with anger and bewilderment and hurt and – "Shut up," he tells the child with no trace of empathy or compassion whatsoever, and Steve wants to cry as he stares at the Winter Soldier, and goddamnit, everyone else was right.
"It's not her fault, what he did to you. She – she shouldn't be punished for what he did to you. She's a child. Please. Don't do this." Steve begs calm and steady, because he doesn't want to set Bucky off, and the girl cries softly, in unison with her mother – who still stands transfixed in the corner although her whole body seems to strain toward her child – and Petrikov gives a constant stream of desperate, pleading Russian. Steve stares at Bucky. If he shoots the girl…Steve knows that he has killed children before as the Winter Soldier, but to read dispassionate files, and to witness his best friend murder a little girl in front of him, feel like very different things right now.
"Please. I know that you know it's not the right thing to do. I know. Please." Steve longs to say 'please, Buck,' – the nickname as natural on his tongue as breathing – but he fears using the name after Bucky's reaction to it will just make things worse. So instead he just falls silent and stares helplessly into the Winter Soldier's bruised, hurt-filled eyes, searching for something – anything – of Bucky in them.
"I don't know anything about the right thing," Bucky says in a small, wounded voice, and then swings his arm and puts a bullet through Petrikov's head.
The next few seconds move very fast. The girl's mother runs to her child and snatches her up, staggering terrified for the door, and Steve lunges forward, putting himself between Bucky and the two civilians. Bucky spins and the Uzi comes up as if on instinct, and Steve doesn't wait to see if he'll pull the trigger or not. He slams into Bucky, tackling him hard and sending them both flying back into the thin wall and crashing straight through it into a bedroom.
Steve ends up on top of Bucky who lies on a pile of crumbling plaster and debris, both of them wedged up against the broken bed, and Bucky gasping and whining below him like an animal, dazed and hurting. The Uzi is lost somewhere in their mad tumble and roll, but Bucky still has the pistol in his human hand, Steve is pretty sure. Bucky struggles under Steve, trying to get out, but it's panicked and ineffective. His metal arm is wedged under the bed, which has fallen on it, and Bucky's chest heaves under Steve and his eyes are wide blue-green like the sea and bloodshot to hell, his tongue running over his lips as he thrashes against the hands Steve pins to his shoulders.
Steve stares at him. Bucky right there, right here, in his hands, and there's a feeling swelling in his chest that is choking him, it's so much. "Buck…"
Bucky snarls, teeth baring and nose crinkling, eyes narrowed and human arm rising and Steve can see the pistol in his hand and he cracks his head forward into Bucky's nose with a silent apology. He hasn't come this far just to fail. But it hurts to feel the crack of Bucky's nose and see the blood come leaking out, shockingly dark on his pale skin. It hurts when Bucky grunts in pain. Steve's forearm lashes out and knocks Bucky's human arm down and away, so the pistol – still clutched in Bucky's white-knuckled hand – is pointing away from them both when Bucky reflexively pulls the trigger. Bucky screams at him, spitting out words in Russian that Steve doesn't understand in the slightest. "остановить меня так называть! Я не он!" Bucky's face clouds in confusion and then clears sharp and icy, and this time when he speaks it is in English: "Stop calling me that!"
"It's your name!" They're grappling on the floor, gasping and panting and furious, and either one of them should have badly injured the other by now, if they'd been trying to, but Steve hasn't been, and Bucky… Well, maybe everyone else hadn't been right after all. "James…Buchanan…Barnes…"
"Stop!" Bucky jerks and wrenches from his left side with the metal arm, and the bed goes flipping up into the air and crashing down again, as if it weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. "Stop it!" Freed, Bucky's arm rolls forward at the shoulder before jerking back again into place, and the arm makes a whirring sound, fingers flexing against Steve's waist. Steve swears internally, but just keeps his eyes fixed to Bucky's.
"It's who you are, Buck," he says gently, and Bucky's face screws up, and his breath shudders out on a sob. He flips under Steve like an eel and gets his legs up somehow, booting Steve hard and shoving with his metal arm. Steve goes flying across the room just like the damn bed, making a fair dent in an undamaged section of wall when he hits. He scrambles up to his feet, and Bucky's got the pistol pointed at Steve's head, backed up against the wall opposite Steve. They face off across the room, silent except for their rasping breaths. The blood from Bucky's nose drips sluggish and dark off his chin onto the floor.
"Codename: Winter Soldier," Bucky says thickly, and his hand is shaking, he is shaking, all over, slumping back against the wall, his metal hand pressing to his abdomen, hunching in on himself as if a wound is paining him. Steve shakes his head, because Bucky's remembered before, and he can remember again – if he isn't already beginning to now, despite his denials. Bucky whimpers and jabs the gun at Steve again, and Steve wonders if he should bring Bucky down now – he can do it; the state Bucky's in, he's no real threat, even with the gun – or if he should try to talk him down gentle.
"I know." He goes for gentle, his voice soothing and easy. "I read the dossier, Buck."
Bucky flinches as if Steve has struck him, and his eyes are pure Bucky and pure horror, and his throat bobs as he swallows convulsively. He's dry and scratchy when he speaks, voice cracking and breaking to pieces. "Steve. No." As if Steve reading the file and knowing the contents is more than Bucky can bear, and Steve's heart aches for the man huddled against the wall opposite. Bucky slowly sinks down to a crouch, wall bracing him, face dead white except for the blood, and those bloodshot sea-green eyes that belong to Bucky and not the Winter Soldier. "I am not him." Bucky's still holding up the gun, but its wobbling now, dropping and raising as his muscles start to tire. He must be hurt badly, somewhere under those clothes, Steve thinks, for him to be like this. But despite that Steve is feeling hope, scorching hot in him and radiating clean like hot summer days in Brooklyn, when they were young and Bucky's grin was brighter than anything.
"I know, Bucky."
"No," Bucky says, shaking his head, mouth tipping up into an odd little smile, human hand dropping to the ground – still holding the gun – as he crouches there. "No, you really don't." And then the smile is gone and Bucky blinks at Steve. "I can't be him. He would never…"
The Winter Soldier stares at Steve, and all Steve can see is Bucky, and he is rooted to the floor like he's paralysed, because no. "I'm a monster," Bucky whispers in a cracked voice, eyes sliding from Steve's to the floor. Bucky's lips press and fold together, frightened and sad, and Steve still knows him well enough after everything to know when Bucky makes the decision; to know the little not-smile twist his mouth gets. "I'm the Winter Soldier."
"Bucky…" Steve prepares himself to have to shift away for a shot – prepares himself for the pain, because Bucky will likely clip him – thinking that he knows, but he doesn't. Bucky doesn't shoot him. Steve was wrong.
"Я сожалею." Bucky drops his head back against the wall like a surrender, and his eyes close as he lifts the gun and shoves the muzzle into his own mouth.
Steve is frozen; like being under the ice again, the desperate cold soaking through him, agony. Unbearable. Helpless. "Please." And Steve means it like he's never meant anything before, desperation grinding in his body, the need to stop this surging like an ocean under his skin. "Please Buck, don't. I need you. Don't leave me again. I can't – can't lose you again. Not like the train. Not again." Steve's voice breaks, and there are tears on his face he thinks, but nothing matters except the crumpled figure with the gun in his mouth and his shaking finger on the trigger. Bucky flutters his eyes open, and Steve wants to resurrect and murder every single damned person who put that horror behind Bucky's eyes. And he hates himself a little bit too, when he says, "Don't you dare do this to me. Bucky. Bucky, don't do this to me. Please."
Bucky makes a horrible, gargling sound around the gun, and he shakes as if he is trying to fight against what Steve has said, but can't. Thank god,he can't. The muzzle of the gun is gleaming with bloodied saliva as Bucky draws it from between his cracked, pale lips, and drops his hand to the ground. His mouth shapes and twists wordlessly and bitter as though he is trying to speak, and then he lets his head loll forward, saying nothing. Like a broken doll as Steve kneels down beside him and carefully uncurls Bucky's fingers from around the gun, replacing the gun with his own hand – folding it warm around Bucky's cold one.
"It's okay, Bucky. It's okay. I'm – I'm going to help you. Everything is going to be – everything is going to get better. I promise. Scout's honour." Steve smiles a little, other hand very carefully coming up to push Bucky's hair back from his face, so that he can see Bucky's expression. Bucky flinches as if he expects pain, but allows Steve to tuck his hair behind one ear with clumsy little motions, just sitting and breathing with his hand slack in Steve's. It's as if he just…isn't there anymore, his eyes gone empty. It worries Steve.
"Buck?"
Bucky shuts his eyes and doesn't speak.
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