I don't own the Avengers. Or Bucky Barnes.
As always, thanks to my American-picker for saving my backside, and thank you to everyone who's read, reviewed, favourited, followed, and expressed general distress at the situation I've put our team into. ;) You rock.
Here we go, guys. Chapter Four of Four. The Big One. Natasha's point of view.
Thanks again. Leave me a note if you enjoyed it!
Nat follows them downstairs, Clint at her side. Bucky and Steve walk in step at the front of the group, elbows jostling, heads together. Hissed arguments float back to her. She doesn't bother paying them much attention. Bucky's won this. He won it the moment Steve called him by name, back when he was under Hydra's control.
"What do you think?" Clint asks.
The reaction to Bucky's plan had been… well. Mostly stunned disbelief, really.
Bruce had chuckled and shook his head. Took his glasses off. Polished them on his shirt tail. Put them back on. "I can't decide if you're more brave or stupid."
"Stupid," said Steve. "Definitely."
Wanda had looked thoughtful. "I can pull you back if you get in too deep. But I can't redo the effects of the cryo. That's on you."
Now, Nat finds she's in favour of the plan, somewhat to her surprise. "I think we should let him."
"He tried to kill you," Clint says.
"I tried to kill him, too."
"He tried to kill me."
She grins. "I know."
"That doesn't worry you?"
"Don't take it personally. He tried to kill most of us at one time or another. But it's in the past, Clint. He's on our side now."
"You mean he's on Steve's side."
Bucky turns a neat 180 and walks backward, keeping in time with Steve while looking straight at Clint. "I heard that. And I know you don't mean it."
"Sorry, what?" Clint fakes innocence and cups a hand to his ear, grinning.
Bucky repeats the point in flawless sign language before spinning around to face forward again.
Clint's jaw drops, and Nat laughs. "He's got you there."
"I'll get him. One of these days, I'll…"
"No you won't," calls Bucky over his shoulder, and goes back to the argument with Steve like he'd never left it in the first place.
The Other Guy's room, as it turns out, is a diamond-paned room ("Not the shape," Tony mutters behind her, "the stone.") at the centre of a very deep moat in the middle of a vast cavern. As Tony explains all the defences and counter-measures he's put in place and Bruce looks more and more amused/uncomfortable, Bucky draws Nat off to the side.
"Are you okay with this?" he asks in Russian.
"Yes. Why wouldn't I be?"
He cocks an eyebrow. "Because I could revert to the mindless homicidal maniac I used to be, perhaps?"
"You won't," Nat says.
His certainty wavers for a moment, just long enough for her to see it as the mask it is. "How do you know?"
"Because you'd never put us in danger like that."
"I might be doing just that," he says, half under his breath. His eyes drop for a moment and lift again. "I need you to understand, Nat. I need to know —"
"I know." She smiles. "You need to make sure that's behind you. All of it. That it won't ever come back, even if you're triggered."
"Yes."
"Hey." She puts a hand to his metal arm. "I understand, okay?"
She feels almost jealous of him, sometimes. At least he has the excuse of the brainwashing. Some of them have done things just as terrible while in their right mind.
Some shadows aren't so easily shaken.
The tension drains from him. "Thank you." He hesitates; something soft and yearning crosses his face; and then, infinitely gentle, he kisses her cheek.
Nat tries to memorise the sensation, because it's everything the Winter Soldier is not. Warm. Emotional. Human. It's everything Hydra stripped from him, methodically, systematically, for decades. It's everything he's spent the last few years digging in the ashes for, clawing it back piece-by-piece from the grasping clutch of ghosts.
This is Bucky Barnes now.
And this is what he will still be when this is over.
He steps back, that granite certainty settling into the lines of his face again, the devil-may-care dancing in his eyes. And he passes her a folded piece of paper.
She opens it and see the list of neatly handwritten words.
He's given her the power to destroy him.
"Steve can't — ?"
Bucky shakes his head. "Steve can't speak Russian."
She absorbs that. "Right."
"You'll do it?"
"Yes."
"Good."
"See you on the other side," she says, only half joking. The other half is sick with nerves, because they don't know for sure what that other side will be. Oh, she said she knows. But nobody knows for sure, do they?
Already halfway across the floor, he lifts a hand and calls a casual, "Wilco," over his shoulder.
And pauses.
Bad move, Nat thinks. She knows the response required when he was triggered. Wilco — will comply — is standard talk for the Avengers, but here and now it's too close, far too close, to that verbal ready to comply his handlers asked for. It doesn't matter that it's in a different language. Bucky's so close to the edge after yesterday that intent alone would be enough…
Steve's head comes up, a concerned frown flashing across his face. Bucky tenses, shoulders straightening into something perilously close to a fighting stance.
And then he relaxes and keeps walking.
She blows out a breath. Grips the paper. And goes to stand with Clint at the console.
Bucky doesn't resist when they cuff his hands behind his back. Why should he? He's the one who suggested this stunt, the one who's making the rest of them go along with it. He walks across the drawbridge and into the room willingly. He jokes with Bruce while they strap him to a chair that's been welded to the floor.
It's only when the door slams shut, locks firing into place, that his smile drops. He's shivering again, she notices. Or still. But it's cold down here, she can feel it even through her jacket, and he's in the borrowed med locker sweatpants and hoodie.
Clint clasps a hand to her shoulder and shifts closer. She appreciates it. It's a casual reminder of his presence, a nonverbal reassurance that she and Steve aren't the only ones worried here.
Not worried about Bucky.
Worried for him.
Bucky leans his head against the back of the chair, breathing unsteady. And then, eyes cold, he sets his jaw and deliberately tests the restraints.
"Are we clear?" Steve asks through the microphone when Bucky's finished. He's watching Bucky with an intensity she's rarely seen. The frown is a constant companion now.
"Clear," Bucky says. His voice comes loud through the console speakers; of course Tony put good microphones in the cage. "I can't speak for whether I'm stronger under the influence, I don't know — "
"About point zero two," Steve says absently.
" — but I'm not getting out of here under my own power anytime soon. That being said, you may want to form a perimeter before Natasha tries to trigger me. Steve, I need you front and centre where I can see you. If I'm wrong about this, you've got the best shot at talking me down."
"I'm not — "
"I said talking, not taking."
And just like that, Steve settles.
Tony gives the orders and soon they're spread out around the cavern. Wanda's close by, ready and waiting in case she needs to send Bucky to sleep. Nat's at the console with the microphone. Clint's somewhere up top with an arrow or three on the string. And Steve's front and centre as Bucky asked, with five metres — and a diamond-rock wall — separating them.
They're not usually codependent on anything like this level, but after the last twenty four hours, she can tell the enforced distance is making both Steve and Bucky edgy. Steve's shield is on his arm, but the arm itself isn't raised. He prowls up and down in front of the cell, his fingers twitching like they want to reach through the clear wall and pluck Bucky out of his self-imposed prison. Bucky, for his part, looks almost relaxed in his chair. It's only when she notes the flaring of his nostrils, the almost desperate way he tracks Steve with his gaze, the way Steve keeps his head turned so as to not break eye contact, that she realises how much this is already rattling him.
And they've hardly even started.
"Okay, Nat." Bucky takes a breath, eyes fixed on Steve, and Steve stills, feet planted squarely, facing the cell. "When you're ready."
She takes her own steadying breath. Smooths the creases out of the paper. She doesn't want to do this, she really doesn't, but Bucky needs her to, and there's nothing to be gained by delaying.
She starts to read.
"Zhelaniye."
Bucky gasps, and she darts a quick look up at him. He's shaking worse than before. He speaks without looking away from Steve. "It's nothing. Memories. Keep going."
"Rzhavyy."
Another gasp. The camera view on the console shows his hands gripping together white-knuckled behind him.
"Semnadtsat'."
His teeth clench.
"Rassvet."
Bucky drops his head, and for a moment she thinks they've lost him — but his eyes stay with Steve, locked in that blue gaze. He's still with them. For now.
"Pech'. Devyat'." She says those two in quick succession, hoping to get it over with.
Bucky groans. He's sweating, looking like the words are torturing him worse than Hydra ever had, but he forces out through gritted teeth: "I'm here. Keep. Going."
"Dobroserdechnyy."
Another groan, quieter than the last.
"Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu."
Silence.
"Odin."
Silence.
Last one. "Gruzovoy vagon."
He shudders, a full-body spasm that would have jerked him from the chair if he hadn't been strapped down. But his eyes are still on Steve, clear and alert. He's still with them.
He's still with her.
"Soldat?" she asks, because if she's going to do this, she's damn well going to do it properly.
A breathless smile crosses his face. "Ne gotov otvechat." And then, before Stark can get the wrong idea and pull the plug on the whole thing, he says in English, "Not ready to comply. Not now, not ever. And your Russian is beautiful, by the way. Absolutely flawless."
"I know," she says, and can't stop her own smile bubbling up. "But thank you."
Steve makes a gulping, desperate noise and springs toward the door, hand rising to enter the unlock sequence.
Bucky's voice rings out. "Don't."
Steve stops. Turns to look at Bucky, and even from the console desk Nat can see the hurt, confused stare. "What? Bucky — "
"Don't," he says again. His eyes drop to the ground. "We're safe there, that's good. But — " his breath catches.
"But?" Steve leaps across the moat, landing on the narrow toe-hold this side of the wall. Splays a hand against it like he's expecting Bucky to cross the floor and mimic the action.
But Bucky's still strapped to the chair. A red flush creeps up his cheekbones. "I didn't." He blinks a few times. Swallows. "Didn't want you know. But they, uh… they made me do it. Sometimes."
"Do what?"
"Trigger myself."
Steve wavers. Curls a hand into the wall to steady himself. "What?"
"Oh, you're going to make me repeat it? Bad enough that I had to say it the first time. Are you sure it's Clint who needs hearing aids?"
Natasha, for one, finds the touch of humour welcome. She hears a snort of laughter over the comms channel from Clint, and another from Sam.
Steve doesn't smile. "They made you trigger yourself."
"Yeah." Bucky takes a sharp breath through his nose, still staring at his feet. "I don't know why. Don't think they needed a reason. Just to see if they could, I s'pose. But… it means that's still a threat."
"So you're going to try it."
"I am." Bucky's eyes lift and quickly fall again, but it's long enough for Nat to see the stark fear in them.
Long enough for Steve to see it, too. He leaps back across the moat, comes around to stand in front of Bucky again. "Okay," he says. "I'm here. Whenever you're ready."
In the rear camera, Bucky's hands are shaking. The first noise that leaves his mouth is incomprehensible, a garbled nothing of remembered horror. He lifts his eyes again, fixes them on Steve, and she can see them both clinging to the eye contact.
Nat watches him gather himself.
And he recites slowly, with a measured cadence, not rushing, not delaying:
"Zhelaniye. Rzhavyy. Semnadtsat'. Rassvet. Pech'."
No change. He's sweating as much as he was before.
"Devyat'. Dobroserdechnyy."
She's expecting a pause at some point, some sort of break to gather himself and go on, but the list is relentless. Even in pain, overwhelmed by memories of torture, Bucky is relentless.
"Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu. Odin. Gruzovoy vagon…"
That's all ten. Nat holds her breath.
"Soldat?" Only now, when the list is complete, does he stop.
He tilts his head. His eyes narrow in concentration for a long moment, and she gets the feeling he's analysing himself, every thump of his heart, every drop of blood flowing through his veins, examining it for anything impure, anything that might still belong to Hydra and not to James Buchanan Barnes.
The smile breaks out again. "No. Not ready to comply. Not now. Not ever. I'm not — not ready — not — " He slumps forward, head hanging. For a moment the only thing she can hear is his heavy breathing. And then he laughs, breathless and disbelieving, elated like she's never seen him before. His shoulders shake. Droplets splash to ground at his feet; at first she thinks it's sweat, because he has been sweating, hasn't he? And then as Steve races to the door and hits the unlock sequence, Bucky catches his breath on a sob and she realises.
Oh. He's crying. Bucky Barnes is crying.
And then Steve's there, in the cell with him, and Bucky is muffling his sobs into Steve's shoulder even as Steve works frantically to free him from the chair. The others pour in, trying to help Steve get Bucky out even as they try to give Bucky some space, because they've never seen the Winter Soldier cry before, they've never seen Bucky Barnes cry before.
Nat feels the hand at her back a second before her knees go weak. Clint keeps a hand on her until she's got herself together again. His eyes look suspiciously bright; he opens his mouth, closes it again, shrugs helplessly. Clearly bereft of words, he signs, Job well done, huh?
Yeah, she signs back, as Steve helps Bucky out of the cell to freedom. Job very well done.
