{ 16. The Cause }

Fifteen days off the grid.

Steve dug through the footlocker by the front door. Two bunches of bananas, a tub of protein powder, nutrition bars, a plastic bag containing all their cash, bandages, alcohol, batteries, and candles. None of those things were going to help Sam. He sighed and closed it, turned back to the man lying on the floor behind him.

Sam's coughing had kept him awake for three days—and kept the others awake too. Only Tony managed to sleep by saturating himself with alcohol, waking up nauseous and irritable each afternoon. Sam visibly shivered in his sleeping bag, clad in a hat and several layers under his extra blankets.

The temperature only dropped, the snow continuing to pile up outside. Every once in a while, Steve had to sweep it off the roof so the tarps didn't collapse. Steve turned to the window, saw Tony still retching outside. The sun was barely up. It had been a rough night.

To Tony's left, Bucky was trying to start a fire in the pit. They were completely out of matches and their last lighter was apparently running out of fluid. He sparked the lighter over and over, desperately trying to light up the damp kindling. The wood was damp, all of their supplies were damp, everything was god damn damp and cold and caked with frost.

Steve picked up his shield and went outside, shielded the firepit from the wind. With his help, Bucky managed to light some tinder and nurse it into a decent flame. Steve sighed with relief and handed the shield over to him, then approached Tony as he leaned over with his palm against a tree trunk.

"Feeling any better?" Steve queried. He winced as he said it, already knowing the answer by the miserable look Tony gave him.

"If you hadn't left your stupid shit-water jug next to the clean stuff, this never would've happened…" Tony croaked. Steve furrowed his brow.

"I kind of expected you to use your eyes and read the label…"

Tony glanced back at Steve's jug of creek water, half-frozen on the ground near the purified waters. "It was dark and I was drunk!" he argued, then turned to dry-heave.

"You're always drunk, Tony! Maybe if you didn't waste all your daylight in a blackout, you could have avoided this! What if you stumble into the fire?"

"Pff, what fire?"

A gust of wind plowed through the forest. Bucky held the shield steady, protecting the pitiful little flame. His long, greasy hair whipped in the breeze and he squinted as snowflakes splattered against his eyes. His handlers (friends?) were bickering. That was nothing new. But they were compromising their survival at a critical time and though Bucky knew they should be more attentive to this fire, it was not his place to tell them what to do.

He was only a tool. (That was permitted to speak.)

He was only a weapon. (That was permitted to feel.)

He was only an asset. (That was permitted to think.)

Nothing made sense anymore, not even a bit. Bucky was doing his best with the fractured, contradictory logic he'd been dealt since escaping the S.H.I.E.L.D facility. Sometimes he felt like two or three or a dozen different people all sharing the same body and none of them could agree on anything. It seemed like new aspects of himself were developing all the time. Some of them carried memories that others didn't. Some of them had imagination and nonsense thoughts while others operated on cold, hard logic.

Getting all these facets of himself to play nice and form a functional human was a challenge in itself. Now on top of it all, Bucky's handlers—the superiors who were supposed to oversee his order and function—were disorderly and dysfunctional themselves. His whole world was a mess and all Bucky could do was roll with the punches until they killed him.

He heard Tony warble at Steve over the howling wind, "…I didn't have to do any of this for you!" and Steve shouted back,

"I never forced you to! You chose this, Tony!"

"I chose to help you bust your war-buddy out of the clanker—I didn't choose to be separated from everyone I love! I didn't choose to be on the run for the rest of my life, and I didn't choose to freeze to death in fuckin' Sasquatch Country!"

Steve threw up his palms. "What did you really expect, Tony? That we could attack S.H.I.E.L.D and they'd just let it go, give you a slap on the wrist like everyone else does?" He sighed, dropped his tone and continued, "When you agreed to help Bucky, I told you we might be in this for the long haul. I was prepared to die for this cause and I assumed you were too."

"Cause? What cause?" Tony sneered. "Fuck off with that righteous bullshit, Rogers. Don't even pretend this is about anything other than yourself."

Steve turned slightly, slapping a palm over his hood as the wind threatened to rip it from his head. He queried, "What the hell are you talking about?"

Tony jerked his head towards Bucky, still trying to coax the fire to life. "Come on. Nobody goes through something like this to make a political statement. Nobody would give up everything—everything!—and go through hell like this unless it was about two things: love or money." He paused. "And I don't see Barnes coughing up Benjamins, do you?"

"What they did to Bucky wasn't right!" insisted Steve. "The people need to know that! They need to know that he's—he's not the monster they—"

"Oh, piss off!" Tony pushed himself off the tree and stood up straight, facing Steve straight on. "You damn well must have thought you couldn't live without him, because you threw everything else in your life in the trash for him! You're head-over-heels in love with the guy, Rogers! Just admit that and find some peace with yourself!"

Bucky's eyes flicked over at the two. Steve's guard dropped, deflating his squared shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak but no sound would come out. Tony bulldozed over him and went on, "Look. I agreed to do this for you because I consider you my friend. One of my best. Top five, at least. And yeah, I thought maybe I could throw some money at a judge or two and we'd get off with a warning..."

He sighed, eyes rolling to the side. "But it's…Y-you were…Right. You were fuckin' right, okay? I underestimated the consequences and overestimated myself. And now," he gestured to the forest all around, "I'm in a position I was never prepared for. And, uh, honestly?" He shook his head, eyes drifting away from Steve. "I wasn't willing to go this far for you, Steve. I mean, you're my friend, but you're not…"

He swept a hand towards Bucky. "You're not that to me. If I knew it would turn out like this, I never would've messed with S.H.I.E.L.D. Now if it were all for Pepper, I'd do this a million times over!" A little smile crossed his face, but it was gone in an instant. "Because, you know, she's the love of my life. And, uh…I'll never see her again. I guess that's what I'm trying to say here."

Wind rustled the branches around them, whispering through the silence. Steve took in a deep breath, let it out slow through his nostrils. Finally, he nodded.

"I understand," he said solemnly. "I'm sorry, Tony. For everything."

Tony nodded too, glanced up at the blond man. "Thanks." He pressed his lips together, looking like he wanted to say more. He didn't. Bucky crouched next to the fire, wide eyes staring off into oblivion as his facets broke into a bloody war with eachother. His arm dropped and the shield went with it, slicing down into the snow. The little fire crackled in the wind, died out in a puff of smoke.

xXxXxXx

Sam's whole body quaked with each cough, barely allowing food and water to pass down his throat. Steve kneeled beside him with a cup of warm water and one of Bucky's bananas. Sam took the cup and tried to drink, sputtered half of the mouthful onto the floor.

Tony leaned on the wall nearby, cupping his gloved hands over his cold nose. Only Bucky was outside, still tending to the fire as far as they knew. Steve sighed, turned to Tony and said, "It's not getting better. He needs medicine." He tilted his head towards the footlocker. "We're low on supplies anyway…"

"You're asking me to be the new pack-mule," Tony deduced flatly. Steve swiped at his neck and replied,

"Uh, not necessarily…."

"I'm the only one who doesn't have my face on a damn cereal box," croaked Sam. He broke into another coughing fit, muffled it under his blanket.

"Doubt we still have those endorsements after all the shit we pulled," Tony muttered. "Whole world thinks we're criminals now." Steve rolled his eyes and said,

"Tony's most likely to get recognized—by people and facial recognition tech alike. Bucky probably wouldn't, but…"

He threw a glance out the window, where Bucky was standing motionless by the dead firepit. There was a lost and troubled look on his face. Steve sighed, "He's, uh, not quite ready for that. So that leaves me."

Sam muttered, "Probably carry twice what I can anyway…"

"You're gonna have to have a talk with him," Tony told Steve. "We all know what happens when you try to leave him behind."

Steve stepped outside and approached the fire pit. Bucky stood like a statue, head tilted down with a vacuous stare. The shield was still attached to his arm. Steve didn't like it—it was like the expression he wore when they first ripped him away from S.H.I.E.L.D. "Bucky," he began quietly, cautiously, "listen. Sam is really sick. I'm going to get supplies, but I need you to stay here."

The brunet blinked. Stormy-blue eyes flicked up at Steve as he continued, "You need to take care of Sam and Tony. Especially…" He rubbed the back of his neck. "If something happens and…Well, if I'm not back by noon, don't come looking for me. I mean it. I want you to listen to Sam, do as he says. He's smart. And Tony too, I guess. If it comes to that."

Bucky's brow sagged, eyes wide with anxiety. He stared back at Steve for what felt like forever. "Affirmative," he said. The word was strained. He swallowed a lump in his throat and Steve offered him a weak smile, patted his shoulder.

"Don't worry, Pal. Those are all really big 'if's. I'll be back soon, okay?"

xXxXxXx

Two miles went by a lot slower in the snow. The trail was easier to lose, landmarks harder to see when everything was buried under whiteness. Steve wasn't as familiar with this trip as Sam was, tried not to get disoriented as he made his way to the little border-town.

A hoodie over a ballcap obscured his head, a gray scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth. It was cold enough to look inconspicuous, but all the backpacks and duffel bags hanging off of him might seem unusual. With the beard, the state of his clothes and the smell of him, he could pass as a vagrant. A very disturbed vagrant, because no one in their right mind would choose to live in a cold, remote, wilderness like this. Not unless they were hiding from something—such as the whole entire world.

Steve saw lights in the distance and followed them onto a street. He passed some houses and ended up on the main drag of the town. There wasn't much to it; just a diner, a bank, two bars, and a grocery store with an adjacent gas station. The icy streets were barren except for children playing in the snow. Apparently school was cancelled.

There were only a few faces in the grocery store and most of them were eyeballing Steve like a shoplifter as he filled up his cart. He stuck to his list, carried only as much cash as he needed. He wiped out half of the banana display, filled a whole cardboard packing crate. Bucky went through twenty-one bananas per day and that was still not enough to sustain him. He was still getting thinner but Steve was in no position to turn that around just yet.

Sam wasn't wrong. Steve could carry a lot more than he could and maybe that would extend the time between trips, he thought. He walked out with three hundred pounds on his back and a crate of bananas in his hands. Most of the weight came from canned food and water jugs. If he had enough bags and it wouldn't draw too much suspicion, Steve would have loaded a few hundred more pounds on.

For now, he had everything he needed. Almost. On the way out of the store, he spotted a newspaper stand, forked over some quarters for a paper and learned it was already halfway through December. They had been on the run for about a month now.

How many more? Would the months become years before they could show their faces in the world?

Would those years become an eternity?

xXxXxXx

There was so much left to do. Steve didn't get a chance to settle down with his newspaper until the sun went down. Tony was passed out as usual, Sam in a merciful medicine-induced sleep. Steve lay on his belly in his sleeping bag, reading the paper by candlelight. Bucky sat nearby, "solving" the crossword page. In reality, he was drawing tiny pictures in each square—stars, spirals, hearts, flowers…

The paper was fat today. Chaos was brewing since a chunk of the Avengers went rogue and disappeared. Conspiracy theories were popping up, washed-up old villains coming out of the woodwork to wreak havoc, media outlets going nuts in the midst of it all.

The paper crinkled under Steve's tightening fingers. He read about terrorists and nefarious characters supposedly "inspired" by the Avengers' "treason". Copycat personalities setting out to achieve the infamy Captain America, Falcon, and Iron Man had built for themselves recently. Steve tossed the paper aside and scrubbed at his eyes. Who would ever want to live this way?

Well, he did, apparently. Because here he was, still freezing his ass off in the wilderness. Steve looked over at Bucky, sitting on the foot of the sleeping bag as he doodled on the crossword. He could surrender Bucky any time. Steve himself would probably get a slap on the wrist from the justice system—a few years in the clink at most. That wasn't his concern.

Aside from being on S.H.I.E.L.D's shit-list for the rest of his life, his real concern was what would happen to Bucky. He knew the public didn't see him the way he did. The media built up this Winter Soldier Boogeyman thing for too long, and as far as the courts were concerned: Bucky was an evil terrorist assassin at worst and criminally insane at best.

Either way, Bucky would face the rest of his life in confinement if Steve should surrender him. In prison or a mental institution, it didn't matter. After 70 years locked down by Hydra, Steve thought he deserved nothing short of total freedom.

Steve rolled on his side, pulled the blanket over his shoulder. He left the candle burning for Bucky and closed his eyes, muttered, "Good night, Buck." Bucky turned back to him, staring, pen frozen over the paper. All the facets of his personalities were grappling and colliding. Facets that were natural, artificial, programmed, taught and beat into him from unknown sources, over decades and decades.

The Soldier, the Sergeant, the Boy From Brooklyn, the Asset, the Survivalist, the Assassin, the Terrorist, the Prisoner…There were more, Bucky was sure, rattling around inside of him. And every action he took, every move he made, now he questioned which one was piloting it all as the memories crept back.

Steve was nearly asleep when he heard the rustle of the sleeping bag. Just Bucky, he reasoned, settling down on top to freeze all night like usual. Only this time, he felt a body slip in behind him, under the blankets and bag and all. Steve quietly turned his head to see the back of Bucky's head, dirty lank hair spilling over the folded shirt he used as a pillow.

They were back-to-back. Not the warmest position, but it was something. Steve realized that somehow, at some point, Bucky overcame another piece of his programming to do this. His whole body tensed, afraid to make a wrong move—scare Bucky away like a skittish rabbit on the trail.

This was progress. Despite the instability, the suicide attempts, the robotic behavior, Bucky was ultimately moving forward. Steve lie there in thought long after the candlelight vanished, thinking about the future in a whole new way.

Maybe they weren't sentenced to an eternity of fear. Maybe there would come a day when Bucky could speak on his own behalf, present himself as the person he really was rather than the machine he was conditioned to be. Then the world would know James Buchanan Barnes—not the Winter Soldier.

Steve had to question if they could survive this way until then.

xXxXxXx