Author's Note: A shorter, bridging sort of chapter, but hopefully still enjoyable, with plenty of feels.

you belong with me, not swallowed in the sea

Pt 4

On the fifth day Steve jerks awake from a doze – sprawled on the hard floor in front of the wardrobe, a blanket from the bed tucked around him like a cocoon. Bucky, he thinks, smiling sad and drowsy at the thought of Bucky thinking to fetch a blanket and cover Steve up, with gentle hands and lost eyes. Caring and not remembering why. Then; Bucky, he thinks with a shot of terror, and, I fell asleep, and rolls to face the wardrobe – flinging the blanket off and sitting upright. His eyes land on Bucky, slouched in the corner of the wardrobe and watching Steve with hooded eyes. His hair falls over his face in a lank tangle, and there is a knife in his hand.

His eyes are blank behind the straggles of hair hanging forward around his face and his mouth is slack; Steve can tell even in his bleary, still only half-awake state that Bucky isn't in the room anymore. He's gone behind the eyes – lost in a memory; Steve is guessing, of Hydra's making. Bucky's knuckles whiten as his hand tightens around the knife handle, and his lips flatten, and Steve can see panic flaring deep in his eyes. Something in another language that Steve doesn't recognise murmurs and whispers from Bucky's lips, something that sounds like desperation and pleading, fear Steve's gentle and coaxing when he speaks, but it doesn't get through to Bucky, who stares past Steve's shoulder with an animal kind of misery in his eyes. Trying to get the knife away from Bucky results in a light cut to Bucky's cheek that streaks thin and red from under his eye to his ear, and a deep slash to Steve's hand that bleeds thick and red and leaves Bucky stricken with guilt.

"Just kill me," Bucky says afterwards, voice thick and halting but sanity in his eyes, and Steve fumbles the bandage he's found to wrap his hand in, dropping it to the floor. It bounces and unravels, landing in front of Bucky. The wound in Steve's hand is deep – the blade skittering over small bones and nicking at tendons – but by tomorrow it should be mostly healed, courtesy of the serum. He forgets it now, and the bandage, and stares at Bucky wide-eyed and horrified.

"No," he says and it is hoarse and desperate, and full of revulsion at the idea. "Bucky, no. Never." Bucky goes stiff at Steve's slip in using his name, but he doesn't lash out. Steve supposes tiredly that there has been enough of that already.

"Don't call me that," Bucky says instead, like a broken record, and Steve nods dully. "I'm sorry," Bucky says then, and shuffles forward a little. "I don't want to hurt you, Steve. But I…I'm not me. I'm not…anything." With a little twist of his lips, Bucky looks down and away, eyes shuttering.

"That's not true!" Steve protests, and Bucky doesn't answer, lips sealing together. Instead he reaches cautiously out and takes Steve's injured hand into his two – metal cold and smooth, and flesh hand feverish hot and clammy. There's a careful reverence in the way he bandages Steve's hand, and an odd clumsiness too, teeth denting into his lower lip and eyebrows drawing together in concentration. "You're…everything, Bu– pal. You're everything to me."

"You don't even know if there's anything left of who I was," Bucky says, his human fingers carefully winding the bandage snugly around Steve's hand, while Bucky cradles it in his metal one. The bandage is soft and rough at once, and so are Bucky's fingers. There's a mesmerising tenderness to the way he touches Steve's hand, which should be accompanied by warmth, and intimate smiles, and perhaps gentle open-mouthed kisses. But the Bucky in front of Steve knows nothing of these things. His voice is a dead thing, and his eyes are muddled pain. "You don't know anything."

"I –"

"I wish you'd killed me, on the helicarrier. I wish you'd snapped my goddamn neck and then none – none of this would have – I don't – I can't…" Bucky's hands stutter into stillness, and his fingers dig at Steve's hand as he squeezes without seeming to notice, the wound beneath the bandaging stinging sharp and raw. Bucky snaps his eyes to meet Steve's and they are wet and bleak. "You should have killed me." And Steve has nothing to say to that, only tears that prick hot behind his own eyes, and a hollow ache in his chest that grows with each passing day.

The next day Steve puts Bucky under with a tranquiliser. He gets Bucky's dull, passive permission to inject the small vial's contents, but that really doesn't make Steve feel better, considering what Bucky had let Hydra do to him. Torture and conditioning could conceivably have Bucky nodding yes to anything that someone wanted to do to him no matter how awful, and passively suffering through it like an automaton. Sometimes he seems no more than a living doll. Steve feels like he's betraying Bucky as he carefully tucks his now-unconscious body under the blankets that line the wardrobe, but he doesn't have much choice. They need food, and Steve can't trust Bucky to be alone and fully conscious for the several hours it might take to go shopping.

When Steve gets back he sits with Bucky until he wakes, carding his fingers gently through Bucky's hair, teasing out the tangles and watching Bucky breathe slow through parted lips.

The only way for Steve to feel comfortable getting any sleep is if Bucky is also sleeping, or otherwise incapacitated. He starts handcuffing them together so Bucky at least can't slip away to find a weapon. He sleeps lightly, waiting for the crush of a metal hand around his throat, but it never comes. Once Steve wakes from a doze to Bucky lying nose to nose with him, cross-eyed and concentrating very hard, his hand all curled awkward up with Steve's making a spidery interlacing of cool metal fingers and warm human ones. "We slept together when the air was smoke and heavy with damp, and the cold bled deep in my bones," Bucky whispers as Steve stifles the instinct to jerk back a little, blinking into Bucky's sea-foam eyes instead. "You were smaller and you wouldn't stop coughing, even with all the blankets on the bed, and I was scared because you were…" Bucky pauses and those bright eyes cast down, darkening as he frowns and struggles to remember. "You were…important to me."

Were important. Steve's insides twist and ache with grief that is selfish and unselfish both.

"After my ma died, you spent more nights at my house than your own in the middle of the winters," Steve whispers back, forcing a smile to his lips, and resisting the urge to trace the thumb of his free hand down the lines of Bucky's face. He can feel Bucky's breath hot on his face – the scent of the tinned tomato soup they had for dinner. "You always worried that the house was too cold and draughty. You'd crawl into bed with me to keep me warm." Steve's smile grows into something unforced; sad but real, and the memories are sharp and crisp-clear in his mind. The scent of wood smoke and the feel of Bucky jammed up against him in the bed that used to be Steve's ma's, Bucky all elbows and knees and sleepy banter that was teasing and a little worried at once. Talking about girls and work and the war, while all Steve could think about was how good Bucky smelt, and how warm he was, and how much Steve wanted to just touch him in ways that he could never do. "I don't know if it ever helped stop me from getting sick, but I appreciated the company. I got real lonely after my ma passed, and having you there made things a little more cheerful. You ended up moving in, in the end."

"Mmph. Tha's nice..." Bucky murmurs drowsily, eyes slipping shut, and Steve puzzles over the non-sequitur for a split second before he realises with a shock that he's started idly caressing Bucky's face, despite his determination not to. And caressing is the only word for it. Thumb dragging from Bucky's forehead, down his temple and along the curve of his cheek and jaw, down to the jut of chin, thumb resting just below his lower lip, before starting the upward journey again. Steve freezes with his thumb at Bucky's temple, and Bucky blinks his eyes open after a few seconds pass.

"Steve?" he asks confusedly, handcuffed hand squeezing Steve's, and he sounds so much more like himself that Steve's heart skips a beat. And it's wrong for Steve to be taking advantage of Bucky like this by pretending – but Bucky is so soothed by the gentle, outwardly innocent little motion, that Steve can't bring himself to stop, no matter how inappropriate his own motivations behind doing it might be. Bucky hasn't seemed this peaceful in days. In years, decades, since the fall from the train. Steve doesn't know.

"Sorry," Steve apologises quietly, and takes a deep, steadying breath before beginning again. Thumb joined by the touch of two fingers; sweeping from the forehead down, detouring slightly to scrape his fingernails lightly over Bucky's scalp along the edges of his hairline, prompting a contented hum almost like a purr as Bucky's eyes close again, and an odd little smile drags at the edges of his lips. Bucky falls asleep like that; body curling towards Steve, arching into his touch, and he is all elbows and knees.

And Steve drapes an arm over the sleeping man, pretending that they are young again in a damp house in a Brooklyn winter, Steve still grieving his ma but taking comfort in Bucky. He sighs soft, a sound that Bucky echoes, they unconsciously shifting closer together, and then Steve slips into sleep by slow degrees.

He dreams of falling.

Days pass. Steve struggles with the art of story-telling in the silent hotel room. Bucky makes an unreliable audience. Sometimes when he's docile, he lays his head in Steve's lap, and allows – makes – Steve comb the tangles out of his dark hair with his fingers. It leaves them both calmer. Steve still feels weird about it though.

Five hours after reminiscing with Steve about a particularly bad double date they'd had shortly after Bucky had enlisted, Bucky wakes screaming – violent in his panic, trapped inside the nightmare that Hydra inflicted upon him. And Steve can do nothing but try to limit the damage that Bucky causes to himself and Steve. It's as if the peaceful moments never happen. They're erased by fear – obliterated by the evil that Zola stuffed and stitched beneath Bucky's skin, stricken out through the way he burnt at Bucky's brain, and trained him with pain until he lost all of himself. And every time Bucky dreams of it all, it seems like any progress they make is forgotten and crushed beneath the weight of the horrors. For every step forward they take, they take another straight back. It's been weeks without any real progress, and Steve is running out of sanity; every minute is chipping away at him, wearing him down inexorably. But Bucky is worth it; worth every hurt and every worry, because Bucky swore to him – 'til the end of the line, and Steve swore it right back. Because Buck is his best damn friend, and he loves him.

"Whywhywhy won't it stop? Whywon'titstop? Please pleasepleasemakeit STOP," Bucky screams muffled as he curls into a ball in the back corner of the wardrobe, hands tearing at his hair, and Steve stares at him hollow and helpless. He stares at the lost and hopeless agony that is written in every line of Bucky, and wonders when love becomes selfish greed. He wonders whether he is fighting a losing battle.

Steve dials the number that Barton had given him with no questions asked and little ribbing – surely a sign of how strung out Steve must have sounded. He takes a slow, deep breath and tries to compose himself and order his sleep-deprived brain as the phone connects and begins to ring. It burrs six times, and then he hears a slightly ragged breath on the other side of the line. He doesn't wait for her to speak, the words rushing out. "Natasha? It's me. Steve."

"I know, Steve." She's out of breath, and there's a hint of warm frustration at his stupidity in the way she says his name – he always forgets about caller id. "Who gave you this number? Was it – never mind, hang on." The blat of a gunshot sounds on Natasha's end, and then she's back on the line, still a little out of breath, her tone light. "So, what's happening, Rogers?"

"Are you…all right? I can call back, if you like."

"It's fine. I'm just wrapping this up. With my cover blown so completely, people keep chasing me." She sounds almost pleased about that, and Steve thinks to himself, and you keep letting them catch you. "How are things going with Barnes?" she says then, casual and easy. Steve isn't surprised Natasha knows he managed to catch up to Bucky; Natasha has her ways. She says that she doesn't know everything – just pretends to, but it's a close thing, Steve thinks. He doesn't care how she found out, to be frank, but asks her the expected question anyway.

"How did you know?"

"Avengers gossip." Her voice is very wry and amused. "After your chat with Banner, he spoke to Tony about getting in specialised medical equipment to examine Barnes with, when you eventually bring him back to the Tower. MRIs and the like," Natasha says lightly, as if it should have been obvious, as if Steve should have known that he has friends who will not only house him and his brainwashed assassin best friend, but spend untold sums of money on equipment to help the brainwashed assassin. Steve's glad Natasha keeps talking because he's choking up and wouldn't trust himself to speak. "And then Tony went on and on and on about the excitement of having a vintage prosthetic like Barnes' to study to anyone with, ah, clearance in earshot. I couldn't help hearing."

"Who knows?" Anxiety rises up thick and fast in Steve, because Bucky is a wanted man. A target. And if Tony has been playing fast and loose with his life…

"Banner, Tony, Clint, Pepper, Thor, Jane Foster – oh, and Foster's assistant, Darcy Lewis. That's all, unless you include Jarvis. It would be better if none if them knew, of course, but at least none of them owe any loyalty to Hydra or S.H.I.E.L.D. It should be fine, Steve."

"Good, good." He's beyond tired and barely thinking straight. Then something occurs to him, with a pang and a spasm of grief and awkwardness. "Tony – Tony doesn't know about his parents?"

"No. Not yet. I think he suspects – he's done his own digging into the Winter Soldier's history – but he doesn't seem particularly…bothered."

There's a pause as Steve tries to organise his fractured thoughts.

"Natasha?"

"Hm?"

Steve rubs his eyes and shoots Bucky a look; asleep for now, curled up peaceful as a lamb in the nest he's made himself in the wardrobe. When Bucky has his nightmares – or those awful fadeouts where he goes blank behind the eyes – often there's a physical struggle when he snaps out of the daze, or the dreaming. It's violent and noisy, and people in the rooms beside them have been complaining. The hotel manager is suspicious and sour, and unsurprisingly doesn't believe Steve is alone in the room. She told Steve he'll have to go. With use of his most charming smile, Steve managed to wrangle an extra two nights in order for him to find somewhere else, but then they will have to be gone.

So they're moving on – but not going too far, yet. Steve doesn't think Bucky's quite ready for the Avengers Tower; he barely seems to trust Steve – skittish and frightened sometimes – so Steve doubts he'll be able to handle the occupants of the Tower. Especially Tony; Steve grimaces at the thought of Bucky and Tony meeting. Not only is Tony just too much in general, he's also too much like Howard, which would be a positive thing in Bucky's case if it would revive old memories, except…well. Given what Steve knows of the Winter Soldier's activity, Steve's afraid the sight of Tony will trigger the wrong set of memories. And Bucky's shaken his head vehemently at any mention of going on a plane anyway, and Steve hasn't wanted to risk pushing the topic. They stay in Russia, for now.

So, their options are unfortunately rather limited. He could try another hotel, but then the same issues would arise. And Steve hates having to ask Natasha for a favour, but he's hoping she may be able to help out. "Natasha, do you happen to have a – a safehouse or anything, in Russia? Preferably something that's not in a densely populated area? I – I hate to ask, but…" he begins tentatively. He's doing this for Bucky he reminds himself – but that doesn't mean he has to like it. Because he doesn't. He doesn't want Natasha feeling…obliged. It doesn't seem fair to her, as private and distant as she always prefers to be.

"It's fine, Steve. It's not a problem, honestly." Steve can hear the tight little smile smoothing the edges off Natasha's cool voice. "I'm sure I can find the two of you something suitable."

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